In mild responses deep;
Sweet Echo, starting from her couch of moss,
Lengthened the dirge; and tenderest Philomel,
As pierced with grief and pity at his loss,
Warbled divine reply, nor seemed to trill
Less than Jove's nectar from her mournful bill.
What Nemoroso sang in sequel, tell,
Ye sweet-voiced Sirens of the sacred hill."
This is, in a sense, "unnatural"; but if we are to condemn it as such, we must even reject the whole school of pastoral, a convention of which the sixteenth century was enamoured. When Garcilaso introduced himself as Salicio, and, under the name of Nemoroso, presented Boscán (or, as Herrera will have it, Antonio de Fonseca), he but took the formula as he found it, and translated it in terms of genius. He was consciously returning upon nature; not upon the material facts of existence as it is, but upon a figmentary nature idealised into a languid and ethereal beauty. He sought for effects of suavest harmony, embodying in his song a mystic neo-platonism, the morbidezza of "love in the abstract," set off by grace and sensibility and elfin music. It may be permissible for the detached critic to appreciate Garcilaso at something less than his secular renown, but this superior attitude were unlawful and inexpedient for an historical reviewer.
Time and unanimity settle many questions: and, after all, on a matter concerning Castilian poetry, the unbroken verdict of the Castilian-speaking race must be accepted as weighty, if not final. Garcilaso may not be a supreme singer; he is at least one of the greatest of the Spanish poets. Choosing to reproduce the almost inimitable cadences of the Virgilian eclogue, he achieves his end with a dexterity that approaches genius. Others before him had hit upon what seemed "pretty i' the Mantuan": he alone suggests the secret of Virgil's brooding, incommunicable, and melancholy charm. What Boscán saw to be possible, what he attempted with more good-will than fortune, that Garcilaso did with an instant and peremptory triumph. He naturalised the sonnet, he enlarged the framework of the song, he invented the ode, he so bravely arranged his lines of seven and eleven syllables that the fascination of his harmonies has led historians to forget Bernardo Tasso's priority in discovering the resources of the lira. In rare, unwary moments he lets fall an Italian or French idiom, nor is he always free from the pedantry of his time; but absolute perfection is not of this world, and is least to be asked of one who, writing in moments stolen from the rough life of camps, died at thirty-three, full of immense promise and immense possibilities. To speculate upon what Garcilaso might have become is vanity. As it is, he survives as the Prince of Italianates, the acknowledged master of the Cinque Cento form. Cervantes and Lope de Vega, agreed upon nothing else, are at one in holding him for the first of Castilian poets. With slight reservations, their judgment has been sustained, and even to-day the sweet-voiced, amatorious paladin leaves an abiding impress upon the character of his national literature.