The first and foremost of those who deliberately based their style on the
Italian was Garcilaso de la Vega, whose pastoral work dates from about
1526. To him, in conjunction with Boscán and Mendoza, the vogue was due.
At his best, when he really assimilates the foreign elements borrowed from
his models and makes their style his own, he writes with the true genius
of his nation. The first of his three eclogues, which was probably
composed at Naples and is regarded as his best work, introduces the
shepherds Salico and Nemoroso, of whom the first stands for the author,
while in the other it is not hard to recognize his friend Boscán. This
poem, a portion of which is translated by Ticknor, should of itself
suffice to place Garcilaso in the front rank of pastoral writers. Yet he
does not appear to occupy any isolated eminence among his fellows, and
Ticknor may be right in thinking that, throughout, the regular pastoral
showed fewer of its defects in Spain than elsewhere. It is also true that
it appears to have been endowed with less vital power of development.

Garcilaso's followers were numerous. Among them mention may be made of
Francisco de Figueroa, the Tirsi of Cervantes' _Galatea_; Pedro de
Encinas, who attempted religious eclogues; Lope de Vega; Alonso de Ulloa,
the Venetian printer, who is credited with having foisted the Rodrigo
episode into Montemayor's _Diana_; Gaspar Gil Polo, one of the
continuators of that work; and Bernardo de Balbuenas, one of its many
imitators, who incorporated in his _Siglo de Oro_ a number of eclogues
which in their simple and rustic nature appear to be studied from
Theocritus rather than Vergil.

In spite of the fashion of writing in Castilian which prevailed among
Portuguese poets, we are not without specimens of pastoral verse composed
in the less important dialect. Sâ de Miranda has been mentioned above.