Herrera, FERNANDO DE

Herrera, FERNANDO DE, a Spanish lyric poet, of whom we only know that he was born at Seville in 1534, took orders, and died in 1597. As a poet he ranked so high in the opinion of his contemporaries that they bestowed upon him the appellation of the divine. Many of his love-poems are remarkable for tender feeling, while his odes, such as that on the 'Battle of Lepanto,' frequently display a lofty enthusiasm; but his language is very artificial, being full of words, inflections, and inversions in imitation of Greek, Latin, and Italian authors. Many of his poems were accidentally burned shortly after his death; most of what survived were published by Pacheco, the painter, in 1619, and all were printed in the Colección of Ramon Fernandez (1786; new ed. 1808). Herrera wrote in prose a good Account of the War in Cyprus (1572), and translated from the Latin of Stapleton a life of Sir T. More (1592).