Note 843 — Chapter XXIX
Reading edition
Montemayor, as we shall see hereafter, introduced the prose pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro, into Spanish in 1542; and a collection of his poetry, called a “Cancionero,” was printed in 1554. In the edition of Madrid, 1588, 12mo, which I use, about one third of the volume is in the Castilian measures and manner; after which it is formally announced, “Here begin the sonnets, canciones, and other pieces in the measures of Italian verse.” A cancion occurs in the first book of the “Diana,” on the regrets of a shepherdess who had driven her lover to despair, which is very sweet and natural, and is well translated by old Bartholomew Yong in his version of the Diana (London, 1598, folio, p. 8). Polo, who continued the Diana, pursued the same course in the poems he inserted in his continuation, and good translations of several of them may be found in Yong.
“The works of Montemayor touching on Devotion and Religion”—those, I presume, in his “Cancionero”—are prohibited in the Index of 1667, and in that of 1790.