Thus it is that in the crowning jewels of Italian
pastoralism, in the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_, we trace a yearning
towards a simpler, freer, and more genuine life, side by side with such
incompatible and antagonistic elements as the reproduction in pastoral
guise of the personages and surroundings of the circle of Ferrara. Not
content with the pure ideal, the poets endeavoured, like Faust at the
sight of Helena, to find in it a place for the earthly affections that
bound them, and at the touch of reality the vision dissolved in mist.
VII
When we turn to the literature of the western peninsula during the early
years of the sixteenth century, we find it characterized by a temporary
but very complete subjection to Italian models. This phenomenon, which is
particularly marked in pastoral, is readily explained by the fact that the
similarity of the dialects made the transference of poetic forms from
Italian to Spanish an easy matter. Thus when among the nations of Europe
Italy awoke to her great task of recovering an old and discovering a new
world of arts and letters, it was upon Spanish verse that she was able to
exercise the most immediate and overpowering influence. Under these
circumstances it was impossible but that she should drag the literature of
that country, for a while at least, in her train, away from its own proper
genius and natural course of development.
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