With amorous murmurs drop persuasive tears.
The rivers in their courses love invite,
Love is the only sound their motion bears.
The winds in whispers soothe these kind desires,
And fan with their mild breath Love's glowing fires."
Ticknor ranks this as "the most agreeable and original of Boscán's works," and as to the correctness of the first adjective there can be no two opinions. But concerning Boscán's originality there is much to say. Passage upon passage in the Octava Rima is merely a literal rendering of Bembo's Stanze, and the translation begins undisguised at the opening line. Where the Italian writes, "Ne l'odorato e lucido Oriente," the Spaniard follows him with the candid transcription, "En el lumbroso y fértil Oriente"; and the imitation is further tesselated with mosaics conveyed from Claudian, from Petrarch, and Ariosto. None the less is it just to say that the conveyance is executed with considerable—almost with masterly—skill. The borrowing nowise belittles Boscán; for he was not—did not pose as—a great spirit with an original voice. He makes no claim whatever, he seeks for no applause—the shy, taciturn experimentalist who published never a line of verse, and piped for his own delight. Equipped with the ambition, though not with the accomplishment, of the artist, Boscán has a prouder place than he ever dreamed of, since he is confessedly the earliest representative of a new poetic dynasty, the victorious leader of a desperately forlorn hope. That title is his laurel and his garland. He led his race into the untrodden ways, triumphing without effort where men of more strenuous faculty had failed; and his results have successfully challenged time, inasmuch as there has been no returning from his example during nigh four hundred years. Not a great genius, not a lordly versifier, endowed with not one supreme gift, Boscán ranks as an unique instance in the annals of literary adventure by virtue of his enduring and irrevocable victory.
His is the foremost post in point of time. In point of absolute merit he is easily outshone by his younger comrade, Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-36), the bearer of a name renowned in Spanish chronicle and song. Grandson of Pérez de Guzmán, Garcilaso entered the Royal Body-guard in his eighteenth year. He quitted him like the man he was in crushing domestic rebellion, and, despite the fact that his brother, Pedro, served in the insurgent ranks, Garcilaso grew into favour with the Emperor.
At Pavia, where Francis lost all save honour, Garcilaso distinguished himself by his intrepidity. For a moment he fell into disgrace because of his connivance at a secret marriage between his cousin and one of the Empress' Maids of Honour: interned in an islet on the Danube,—Danubio, rio divino, he calls it,—he there composed one of his most admired pieces, richly charged with exotic colouring. His imprisonment soon ended, and, with intervals of service before Tunis, and with spells of embassies between Spain and Italy, his last years were mostly spent at Naples in the service of the Spanish Viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, Marqués de Villafranca, father of Garcilaso's friend, the Duque de Alba. In the Provençal campaign the Spanish force was held in check by a handful of yeomen gathered in the fort of Muy, between Draguignan and Fréjus. Muy recalls to Spanish hearts such memories as Zutphen brings to Englishmen. In itself the engagement was a mere skirmish: for Garcilaso it was a great and picturesque occasion. The accounts given by Navarrete and García Cerezeda vary in detail, but their general drift is identical. The last of the Spanish Cæsars named his personal favourite, the most dashing of Spanish soldiers and the most distinguished of Spanish poets, to command the storming-party. Doffing his breastplate and his helmet that he might be seen by all beholders—by the Emperor not less than by the army—Garcilaso led the assault in person, was among the first to climb the breach, and fell mortally wounded in the arms of Jerónimo de Urrea, the future translator of Ariosto, and of his more intimate friend, the Marqués de Lombay, whom the world knows best as St. Francis Borgia. He was buried with his ancestors in his own Toledo, where, as even the grudging Góngora allows, every stone within the city is his monument.
His illustrious descent, his ostentatious valour, his splendid presence, his seductive charm, his untimely death: all these, joined to his gift of song, combine to make him the hero of a legend and the idol of a nation. Like Sir Philip Sidney, Garcilaso personified all accomplishments and all graces. He died at thirty-three: the fact must be borne in mind when we take account of his life's work in literature. Yet Europe mourned for him, and the loyal Boscán proclaimed his debt to the brilliant soldier-poet. Pleased as the Catalan was with his novel experiments, he avows he would not have persevered "but for the encouragement of Garcilaso, whose decision—not merely to my mind, but to the whole world's—is to be taken as final. By praising my attempts, by showing the surest sign of approval through his acceptance of my example, he led me to dedicate myself wholly to the undertaking." Boscán and Garcilaso were not divided by death. The former's widow, Ana Girón de Rebolledo, gave her husband's verses to the press in 1543; and, more jealous for the fame of her husband's friend than were any of his own household, she printed Garcilaso's poems in the Fourth Book.
Garcilaso is eminently a poet of refinement, distinction, and cultivation. What Boscán half knew, Garcilaso knew to perfection, and his accomplishment was wider as well as deeper.[6] Living his last years in Naples, Garcilaso had caught the right Renaissance spirit, and is beyond all question the most Italianate of Spanish poets in form and substance. He was not merely the associate of such expatriated countrymen as Juan de Valdés: he was the friend of Bembo and Tansillo, the first of whom calls him the best loved and the most welcome of all the Spaniards that ever came to Italy. To Tansillo, Garcilaso was attached by bonds of closest intimacy, and the reciprocal influence of the one upon the other is manifest in the works of both. This association would seem to have been the chief part of Garcilaso's literary training. His few flights in the old Castilian metres, his songs and villancicos, are of small importance; his finest efforts are cast in the exotic moulds. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that fundamentally he is a Neapolitan poet.