O pescador Sincero, que amansado
    Tem o pego de Prochyta co’ o canto
    Por as sonoras ondas compassado. 
      D’este seguindo o som, que pode tanto,
    E misturando o antigo Mantuano,
    Facamos 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 moca.  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 the other hand it resembles the Italian pastoral in the introduction of real characters, which, though their identity was concealed under anagrams and all manner of obscurity, appear to have been traceable by the keen eye of authority, for the book was placed on the Index.  Such knowledge of Sannazzaro’s writings as Ribeiro possessed was of course direct, but before his fragment saw the light there appeared, in 1547, a Spanish translation of the Arcadia.  It must be remembered that Sannazzaro was himself of Spanish extraction, and that he may have had relations with the land of his fathers of a nature to facilitate the diffusion of his works.

The next and by far the most important contribution made by the peninsula to pastoral literature was the work of an hispaniolized Portuguese, who composed in Castilian dialect the famous Diana.  ’Los siete libres de la Diana de Jorge de Montemayor’—­the Spanish form of Montemor’s name and that by which he became familiar to subsequent ages—­appeared at Valencia, without date, but about 1560.[69] As in the case of its Italian and Portuguese predecessors, some at least of the characters of the romance represent real persons.  Sireno the hero, who stands for the author, is in love with the nymph Diana, of whose identity Lope de Vega claimed to be cognizant, though he withheld her name.  The scene is laid in Spain, and actual and ideal geography are intermixed in a bewildering fashion.  Sireno is obliged, for reasons not stated, to leave the country for a while, and on his return finds his lady-love married by her parents to his rival Delio.  In his despair he seeks aid from the priestess of a certain temple, and receives from her a magic potion which drives from him all remembrance of his passion.  This very simple and somewhat unsatisfactory story is interwoven with a multitude of episodes and incidental narratives, pastoral and chivalric, and the whole ends with the promise of a second part, which however never came to be written, the author, as it appears, being either murdered or killed in duel at Turin in 1561.