Note 138 — BOOK VI.
Herman Oelsner translation
This can scarcely refer to the famous diplomatist who died in 1575. Possibly Cervantes may have alluded here to Captain Diego de Mendoza de Barros, two of whose sonnets are included in Pedro Espinosa's collection entitled Flores de poetas ilustres de España (1605). The sonnet on f. 65—
"Pedís, Reyna, un soneto, ya lo hago—"
may have served as Lope de Vega's model for the celebrated Sonnet on a Sonnet in La Niña de plata. A still earlier example in this kind was given by Baltasar del Alcázar: see note 43. For French imitations of this sonnet, see M. Alfred Morel-Fatio's article in the Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris, July 15, 1896), pp. 435-439. See also Father Matthew Russell's Sonnets on the Sonnet (London, 1898), and a note in Sr. D. Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín's Castilian version of my History of Spanish Literature (Madrid, 1901), p. 344.