Garcilaso de la Vega

Garcilaso de la Vega, a great Spanish poet, was born at Toledo about 1503. He early adopted the profession of arms, and gained a distinguished reputation for bravery in the wars carried on by the Emperor Charles V. against the French and Turks, but was mortally wounded while storming a castle near Fréjus, in the south of France, and died at Nice, November 1536, in the thirty-third year of his age. Though prematurely cut off, he lived long enough to win immortality; and, though he wrote little, he revolutionised the national poetic taste of his countrymen. For the short metre of the older romances and redondillas he substituted the hendecasyllabic verse of the Italians. Strangely enough, his poems contain not a trace of military ardour, but are inspired by a tender sweetness and melancholy which appear to have deeply affected his countrymen. 'His sonnets,' says Ticknor, 'were heard everywhere; his eclogues were acted like popular dramas. The greatest geniuses of his nation express for him a reverence they show to none of his predecessors. Lope de Vega imitates him in every possible way; Cervantes praises him more than he does any other poet, and cites him oftener. And thus Garcilaso de la Vega has come down to us enjoying a general admiration, such as is hardly given to any other Spanish poet, and to none that lived before his time.' The best of the numerous editions of his poems is that by Azagra (Madrid, 1765). They have been translated into English by Wiffen (1823).