BIRTH OF ISABELLA. 17 Europe to see him. Although passionately devoted chapter to letters, he did not, like his friend the marquis of Villena, neglect his public or domestic duties for them. On the contrary, he discharged the most important civil and military functions. He made his house an academy, in which the young cavaliers of the court might practise the martial exercises of the age ; and he assembled around him at the same time men eminent for genius and science, whom he munificently recompensed, and encouraged by his example.^^ His own taste led him to poetry, of which he has left some elaborate specimens. They are chiefly of a moral and pre- ceptive character ; but, although replete with noble sentiment, and finished in a style of literary excel- lence far more correct than that of the preceding age, they are too much infected with mythology and metaphorical affectations, to suit the palate of the present day. He possessed, however, the soul of a poet ; and when he abandons himself to his native redondillas, delivers his sentiments with a sweetness and grace inimitable. To him is to be ascribed the glory, such as it is, of having natural- ized the Italian sonnet in Castile, which Boscan, many years later, claimed for himself with no small degree of self-congratulation.^^ His epistle on the 23 Pulgar, Claros Varones de — Sanchez, Poes;as Castellanas, Castilla, y Letras, (Madrid, 1755,) torn. i. p. 21. — Boscan, Obras, tit. 4. — Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca (1543,) fol.l9. — Itmust be admit- Vetus, lib. 10, cap. 9. — Quin- ted, however, that the attempt was cuagenas de Gonzalo de Oviedo, premature, and that it required a MS., batalla 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8. riper stage of the language to give 24 Garcilasso de la Vega, Obras, a permanent character to the in- ed. de Herrera, (1580,) pp. 75, 76. novation. VOL. I. 3
