Note 69 — Chapter XXXIII

It is the same book that Cervantes ridicules in the sixth chapter of the first part of Don Quixote, and in the third chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus”; and is curious for some specimens of Sardinian poetry which it contains. But Pedro de Pineda, a teacher of Spanish in London, taking the irony of the good curate in Don Quixote on Lo Frasso’s romance to be sincere praise, printed a new edition of it, in two very handsome volumes, (London, 1740, 8vo,) with a foolish Dedication and Prólogo, alleging the authority of Cervantes for its great merit. Hardly any other of the Spanish prose pastorals is so absurd as this, or contains so much bad verse; a great deal of which is addressed to living and known persons by their titles. The tenth book, indeed, is almost entirely made up of such poetry. I do not recollect that Cervantes is so severe on any poet, in his “Journey to Parnassus,” as he is on Lo Frasso.