Y haura quien le cultiue? No ay tal hõbre.
The British Museum Library contains a copy of Ramírez Pagán's Floresta: a book esteemed by Gallardo, Gayangos, and Salvá (op. cit., vol. i., p. 153, no. 339) as "uno de los más raros que existen en la literatura poética española."
[49] See the prologue to Pérez' continuation (A 5 of the Antwerp edition, 1580) " ... casi en toda esta obra no ay narracion, ni platica, no solo en verso, más aun en prosa, que à pedaços de la flor de Latinos y Italianos hurtado, y imitado no sea; y no pienso por ello ser digno de reprehension, pues lo mesmo de los Griegos hizieron."
[50] The whole history, bibliographical and literary, of the pastoral movement in Spain may be studied in the searching and learned monograph of Professor Hugo Albert Rennert, The Spanish Pastoral Romances (Baltimore, 1892). A minute examination of Texeda's plagiary, which escaped detection by Ticknor, will be found on pp. 39-42 of Professor Rennert's work.
[51] The reference is, no doubt, to the passage in the fifth book of Montemôr's Diana: "Y tomando el vaso que tenía en la mano izquierda le puso en la suya á Sireno, y mando que lo bebiese, y Sireno lo hizo luego; y Selvagia y Silvano bebieron ambos el otro, y en este punto cayeron todos tres en el suelo adormidos, de que no poco se espantó Felismena y la hermosa Belisa que allí estaba...." Cp. Sannazaro's Arcadia (Prosa nona, Scherillo's edition, p. 171): "Al quale subgiunse una lodula, dicendo, in una terra di Grecia (dela quale yo ora non so il nome) essere il fonte di Cupidine, del quale chiunche beve, depone subitamente ognie suo amore."
The expedient of the magic water, to which Cervantes refers once more in the Coloquio de los Perros (see vol. viii. of the present edition (Glasgow, 1902), p. 163), seems to be as old as most things in literature. Scherillo, in his valuable commentary to the Arcadia cites a parallel from Pliny, Naturalis Historia, lib. xxxi., cap. 16: "Cyzici fons Cupidinis vocatur, ex quo potantes amorem deponere Mucianus credit."
[52] It is just possible, however, that Cervantes may have omitted the Habidas deliberately; for though Ticknor (op. cit., vol. iii., p. 99, n. 18), on the authority of Gayangos, quotes the book as "among the earliest imitations of the Diana," so excellent a scholar as Professor Rennert (op. cit., p. 111) inclines to think "that it is rather a 'Novela Caballeresca.'"
[53] This seems to follow from the references in the Viaje del Parnaso:
El fiero general de la atrevida
Gente, que trae un cuervo en su estandarte,