Note 156 — BOOK VI.

Fernando de Herrera, the chief of the Seville school of poets, was born in 1534 and died in 1597. Herrera, who was a cleric but not a priest, dedicated many of his poems (1582) to the Condesa de Gelves, and there is interminable discussion as to whether these verses are to be taken in a Platonic sense, or not. Besides being a distinguished lyrical poet, Herrera proved himself an excellent critic in the Anotaciones in his edition of Garcilaso de la Vega (1580). This commentary was the occasion of a clever, scurrilous attack, circulated under the pseudonym of Prete Jacopín, by Juan Fernández de Velasco, Conde de Haro, who resented the audacity of an Andaluz in presuming to edit a Castilian poet. Haro evidently thought that invective was an ornament of debate, for in Observación XI. he calls his opponent ydiotíssimo, and in Observación XXVII. he calls Herrera an ass: "sois Asno y no León."

Cervantes was a great admirer of Herrera whose death he commemorated in a sonnet. Moreover, he wove into the short dedication of the First Part of Don Quixote (to the Duque de Béjar) phrases borrowed from the dedication in Herrera's edition of Garcilaso: see vol. iii. of the present edition (Glasgow, 1901), pp. 3-4.