Ribeiro too, better known for his romance, left a series of five
autobiographical eclogues[68] dating from about 1516-24, and consequently
earlier than Garcilaso's. They are composed, like some of Sâ de Miranda's,
in the short measures more natural to the language than the _terza rima_
and intricate stanzas of the Italianizing poets. Later on Camoens wrote
fifteen eclogues, four of which are piscatorial, and in one, a dialogue
between a shepherd and a fisherman, refers in the following terms to
Sannazzaro:

O pescador Sincero, que amansado
Tém o pégo de Prochyta co' o canto
Por as sonoras ondas compassado.
D'este seguindo o som, que póde tanto,
E misturando o antigo Mantuano,
Façamos novo estylo, novo espanto.

Whereas in the case of the verse pastoral the Italian fashion passed from
Spain into Portugal, exactly the reverse process took place with regard to
the prose romance more or less directly founded upon Sannazzaro. The first
to imitate the _Arcadia_ was the Portuguese Bernardim Ribeiro, who during
a two-years' residence in Italy composed the 'beautiful fragment,' as
Ticknor styles it, entitled from the first words of the text _Menina e
moça_. This unfinished romance first appeared, in the form of an octavo
charmingly printed in gothic type, at Ferrara in 1554, though it must
have been written at least thirty years earlier. It differs considerably
from its model, the verse being purely incidental, and the intricacy of
the story anticipating later examples, as does likewise the admixture of
chivalric adventure. It is, indeed, to a large extent what might have
arisen spontaneously through the elaboration of the pastoral element
occasionally to be met with in the old chivalric romances themselves. On