None of the Provençal poets, I think, wrote so beautiful Pastoretas as Riquier; so that the Marquis chose a good model.
[622] See the Letter to the Constable of Portugal.
[623] Cancionero General, 1573, f. 34. It was, of course, written after 1434, that being the year Villena died.
[624] Faber, Floresta, ut sup.
[625] Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. xx., xxi., xl. Quintana, Poesías Castellanas, Madrid, 1807, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 13. There are imperfect discussions about the introduction of sonnets into Spanish poetry in Argote de Molina’s “Discurso,” at the end of the “Conde Lucanor,” (1575, f. 97,) and in Herrera’s edition of Garcilasso (Sevilla, 1580, 8vo, p. 75). But all doubts are put at rest, and all questions answered, in the edition of the “Rimas Ineditas de Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza,” published at Paris, by Ochoa (1844, 8vo); where, in a letter by the Marquis, dated May 4, 1444, and addressed, with his Poems, to Doña Violante de Pradas, he tells her expressly that he imitated the Italian masters in the composition of his poems.
[626] They are found in the Cancionero General of 1573, ff. 24, 27, 37, 40, and 234.
[627] Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 143-147.
[628] It received its name from Ochoa, who first printed it in his edition of the Marquis’s Poems (pp. 97-240); but Amador de los Rios, in his “Estudios sobre los Judios de España,” (Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. 342,) gives reasons which induce him to believe it to be the work of Pablo de Sta. María, who will be noticed hereafter.
[629] Faber, Floresta, No. 743. Sanchez, Tom. I. p. xli. Claros Varones de Pulgar, ed. 1775, p. 224. Crónica de D. Juan IIº, Año 1448, Cap. 4.
[630] Cancionero General, 1573, f. 37.