Opening
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
* Italics are denoted by underscores as in italics, and small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.
* Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant usage was found.
* Notwithstanding, original Spanish text in the Appendices has been kept without any alteration, as found in the printed book.
* Footnotes have been renumbered into a single series and placed at the end of the paragraph that includes each anchor.
HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
VOL. III.
HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
BY GEORGE TICKNOR.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOLUME III.
NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. M DCCC XLIX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by GEORGE TICKNOR, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME THIRD.
SECOND PERIOD. (CONTINUED.)
Chapter XXXI
SATIRICAL POETRY, EPISTOLARY, ELEGIAC, PASTORAL, EPIGRAMMATIC, DIDACTIC, AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Satirical Poetry 3 Mendoza, Boscan 3 Castillejo, Montemayor 4 Padilla, Cantorál 4 Murillo, Artieda 4 Barahona de Soto 4 Juan de Jauregui 4 The Argensolas 5 Quevedo, Góngora 5 Cervantes, Espinel 6 Arguijo, Rioja 6 Salcedo, Ulloa, Melo 6 Rebolledo, Solís 6 Satire discouraged 7 Elegiac Poetry 8 Garcilasso 8 Figueroa, Silvestre 9 Cantorál, the Argensolas 9 Borja, Herrera 9 Rioja, Quevedo 9 Villegas 9 Elegy does not succeed 9 Pastoral Poetry 10 Garcilasso, Boscan, Mendoza 10 Figueroa, Cantorál 10 Montemayor 10 Saa de Miranda 10 Polo, Balbuena 12 Barahona de Soto 12 Padilla, Silvestre 12 Pedro de Enzinas 12 Morales, Tapia 13 Balvas, Villegas 13 Carrillo, Esquilache 13 Quevedo, Espinosa 13 Soto de Roxas, Zarate 13 Ulloa, Los Reyes 13 Barrios, Inez de la Cruz 13 Pastorals successful 14 Epigrams, amatory 14 Maldonado, Silvestre 15 Villegas, Góngora 15 Camoens, Argensolas 15 Villegas, Quevedo 15 Esquilache 15 Francisco de la Torre 15 Rebolledo 16 Didactic Poetry 17 Earliest 17 In the Cancioneros 17 Boscan, Silvestre, Mendoza 17 Guzman, Aldana, Rufo 19 Virues, Cantorál 19 Morillo, Salas 19 Argensola, Artieda 19 Mesa, Espinel 19 Juan de la Cueva 20 Pablo de Céspedes 20 Lope de Vega 22 Rebolledo, Trapeza 22 Emblems 22 Daza, Covarrubias 22 Descriptive Poetry 23 Dicastillo 23 Didactic Poetry fails 23
XXXII. BALLAD POETRY
Effect of the Romanceros 25 Lorenzo de Sepúlveda 26 Alonso de Fuentes 27 Juan de Timoneda 29 Pedro de Padilla 30 Juan de la Cueva 31 Ginés Perez de Hita 31 Hidalgo, Valdivielso 31 Lope de Vega 32 Arellano 32 Roca y Serna, Esquilache 33 Mendoza, Quevedo 33 Silva de Romances 33 Los Doce Pares 34 Romancero del Cid 34 Primavera de Perez 34 Esquilache 35 Silvestre, Montemayor 35 Espinel, Castillejo 35 Lopez de Maldonado 35 Góngora, Arteaga 35 Villamediana, Coronel 35 Cervantes, Lope de Vega 36 Fereira, Alarcon 36 Diego de la Chica 36 Universal Love of Ballads 37
XXXIII. ROMANTIC FICTION.--PROSE PASTORALS
Romances of Chivalry 38 Changed Taste 39 Seen in Pastoral Fictions 39 Shepherd’s Life in Spain 39 Sannazaro in Italy 40 Montemayor 41 His Diana Enamorada 41 Continued by Perez 43 And by Gil Polo 44 Antonio de Lo Frasso 45 Luis Galvez de Montalvo 46 His Fílida 46 Cervantes 47 Bartolomé de Enciso 47 Bovadilla 48 Bernardo de la Vega 48 Lope de Vega 49 Bernardo de Balbuena 49 His Siglo de Oro 49 Suarez de Figueroa 50 His Amaryllis and Pastor Fido 50 Adorno, Botelho 51 Quintana, Cuevas 51 Corral, Saavedra 51 Popularity of Pastorals 52 Their Incongruities 53 Their Foundation 54 Their Failure 54
Chapter XXXIV
ROMANTIC FICTION, CONTINUED.--STORIES IN THE GUSTO PICARESCO.
Their Origin 55 Military Life 56 Contempt for honest Labor 56 Feeling of the lower Classes 57 The Pícaros 58 Lazarillo de Tórmes 58 Mateo Aleman 59 His Guzman de Alfarache 59 Spurious Second Part 61 Genuine Second Part 61 Andreas Perez 66 His Pícara Justina 67 Drama and Short Tales 67 Vicente Espinel 67 His Marcos de Obregon 68 Yañez y Rivera 71 His Alonso 71 Quevedo, Solorzano 72 Enriquez Gomez 73 Estevanillo Gonzalez 74 Success of Pícaro Stories 75
Chapter XXXV
ROMANTIC FICTION, CONTINUED.--SERIOUS AND HISTORICAL ROMANCES.
Early Specimens 76 Juan de Flores 77 Nuñez de Reinoso 77 Luzindaro y Medusina 77 Hierónimo de Contreras 78 Relations with Italy and Algiers 79 Ginés Perez de Hita 79 His Guerras de Granada 79 Not imitated 84 La Cryselia de Lidaceli 86 Benito Remigio Noydens 86 Gonzalo de Céspedes 87 Cervantes, Lamarca 87 Dos Verdaderos Amigos 88 Valladares de Valdelomar 88 Grave Fictions discouraged 89 Cosmé de Texada 90 Christóval Lozano 91 Serious Fictions not successful 92
XXXVI. ROMANTIC FICTION, CONCLUDED.--TALES
Arise from the State of Society 93 Antonio de Villegas 93 His Story of Narvaez 94 Juan de Timoneda 96 His Patrañuelo 97 Cervantes, Hidalgo 99 Suarez, Figueroa 99 Salas Barbadillo 99 Eslava, Agreda 102 Liñan y Verdugo 103 Lope de Vega 103 Salazar, Lugo, Camerino 103 Changed Form of Tales 104 Tirso de Molina 104 Montalvan 105 Matias de los Reyes 106 Fernandez y Peralta 106 Montalvan 106 Céspedes y Meneses, Moya 107 Castro y Anaya 107 Mariana de Carbajal 107 María de Zayas 108 Mata, Castillo, Lozano 108 Solorzano 108 Alcalá, Villalpando, Prado 109 Isidro de Robles 109 Luis Velez de Guevara 110 Jacinto Polo 111 Marcos Garcia 112 Francisco Santos 113 Tales everywhere 117 Early Appearance of Romantic Fiction 118 Its early Decay 119
XXXVII. ELOQUENCE.--EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE
Forensic Eloquence little cultivated 121 Courts of Justice 121 Cortes 121 Eloquence of the Pulpit 122 Luis de Leon 123 Luis de Granada 123 Cultismo in the Pulpit 127 Paravicino 127 Pulpit Eloquence fails 128 Letter-writers formal 128 Queen Isabella, Columbus 128 Guevara, Avila 129 Zurita and his Friends 129 Antonio Perez 130 Santa Teresa 135 Argensola, Lope de Vega 136 Quevedo, Cascales 136 Antonio, Solís 136
XXXVIII. HISTORICAL COMPOSITION
Fathers of Spanish History 138 Gerónimo de Zurita 138 Ambrosio de Morales 141 Diego de Mendoza 142 Ribadeneyra, Siguenza 142 Juan de Mariana 143 His Persecutions 146 His History of Spain 147 Prudencio Sandoval 151 Spanish Discoveries and Conquests 153 Antonio de Herrera 153 Bartolomé de Argensola 155 Garcilasso de la Vega, Inca 155 Francisco de Moncada 159 Coloma, Marquis of Espinar 160 Manuel Melo 161 Saavedra Faxardo 164 Antonio Solís 164 Character of Spanish History 167
XXXIX. DIDACTIC PROSE
Proverbs 169 Oldest 170 Marquis of Santillana 170 Garay, Valles, Nuñez 171 Mal Lara, Palmireno 172 Oudin, Sorapan, Cejudo 172 Juan de Yriarte 173 Great Number of Proverbs 173 Didactic Prose 174 Antonio de Torquemada 174 Christóval de Acosta 175 Luis de Granada 176 Juan de la Cruz 178 Santa Teresa 179 School of Spiritualists 180 Malon de Chaide 180 Agustin de Roxas 181 Suarez de Figueroa 183 Marquez, Vera y Zuñiga 184 Fernandez de Navarrete 184 Saavedra Faxardo 185 Quevedo, Antonio de Vega 186 Nieremberg, Benavente 186 Guzman, Dantisco 187 Andrada, Villalobos 188 Aleman, Faria y Sousa 188 Francisco de Andrade 189 Cultismo in Spanish Prose 190 Paravicino 191 Baltazar Gracian 191 Cultismo prevails 194 Juan de Zabaleta 194 Lozano, Heredia, Ramirez 195 Small Success of Didactic Prose 196
XL. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PERIOD
Decay of the Spanish Character 198 Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second 199 Philip the Third 200 Philip the Fourth 201 Charles the Second 203 Degradation of the Country 203 Religion sinks into Bigotry 204 Loyalty sinks into Servility 207 Literature fails with Character 209
THIRD PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE ACCESSION OF THE BOURBON FAMILY AND THE INVASION OF BONAPARTE; OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EARLY PART OF THE NINETEENTH.
I. REIGN OF PHILIP THE FIFTH
Death of Charles the Second 213 His Will 214 War of the Succession 214 Peace of Utrecht 214 Philip the Fifth 215 Academy of the Language 216 State of the Language 217 Dictionaries of the Language 219 Dictionary of the Academy 219 Its Orthography 220 Its Grammar 221 Its other Labors 223 Other Academies 223 State of Poetry 224 Moraes 225 Reynosa, Cevallos 226 Lobo, Benegasi 227 Alvarez de Toledo 228 Antonio Muñoz 228 Sagradas’s Flores 228 Jorge de Pitillas 229
II. REIGN OF PHILIP THE FIFTH, CONCLUDED
Marquis of San Phelipe 230 French Influences 232 Translations from the French 233 Ignacio de Luzan 233 Elder Works on Criticism 235 Enzina, Rengifo, Lopez 236 Cascales, Salas 236 Luzan’s Poética 237 State of the Moral and Physical Sciences 239 State of the Universities 240 Low State of Spanish Culture 240 Benito Feyjoó 242 His Teatro Crítico 244 His Cartas Eruditas 244 Effect of his Works 245
III. REIGNS OF PHILIP THE FIFTH AND FERDINAND THE SIXTH
The Inquisition 246 Intolerance 247 Autos da Fé and Judaism 248 Culture under Ferdinand 249 The Inquisition 249 Policy of the State 250 Condition of Letters 250 Saldueña, Moraleja, Ortiz 250 Academy of Good Taste 251 Velazquez 251 Mayans y Siscar 252 Blas Nasarre 253
IV. REIGN OF CHARLES THE THIRD
State of the Country 254 Character of the King 255 The Jesuits 256 The Universities 256 The Inquisition 257 Dawn of Better Things 258 Father Isla 258 His Juventud Triunfante 258 His Dia Grande 259 His Sermones 260 His Fray Gerundio 260 His Exile 264 His Cicero 265 His Translation of Gil Blas 266 Question of its Authorship 266 Efforts to restore the Old School 270 Sedano, Sanchez, Sarmiento 271 Efforts to encourage the French School 272 Moratin the Elder 272 Club of Men of Letters 274 Cadahalso 275 Yriarte 277 His Fables 279 Samaniego 280 His Fables 281 Arroyal, Montengon 282 Salas, Meras, Noroña 282
Chapter V
SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA AND OTHER POETS.--REIGN OF CHARLES THE FOURTH.
State of Literary Parties 285 Melendez Valdes 285 His Works 287 His Exile and Death 291 Gonzalez 293 Forner 294 Iglesias 294 Cienfuegos 295 Jovellanos 297 Connected with Melendez 298 His Political Services 299 His Exiles 300 His Share in the Revolution 301 His Death 303 His Character 304 Muñoz 305 Escoiquiz 306 Moratin the Younger 307 His Relations to Godoy 308 Quintana 309
VI. THE THEATRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Important Movement 312 Translations from the French 312 Cañizares, Torres, Lobo 313 Lower Classes rule 313 The old Court-yards 314 The new Theatres 314 The Opera 315 Castro, Añerbe, Montiano 316 The Virginia and Athaulpho 317 Translations from the French 318 The Petimetra of Moratin the Elder 318 His Hormesinda 319 His Guzman el Bueno 319 Cadahalso 319 Sebastian y Latre 320 Yriarte, Melendez 321 Ayala 321 Huerta 322 Jovellanos 323 Autos suppressed 324 Low State of the Theatre 325 Ramon de la Cruz 326 Sedano, Lassala, Cortés 329 Cienfuegos, Huerta 329 Discussions 330 Valladares, Zavala 331 Comella 332 Moratin the Younger 333 Patronized by Godoy 334 His first Play 335 His Nueva Comedia 336 His Baron and Mogigata 337 His Sí de las Niñas 338 His Translations 339 State of the Drama 340 Actors of Note 340 State of the Theatre 341 Prospects 341
Chapter VII
REIGNS OF CHARLES THE FOURTH AND FERDINAND THE SEVENTH.--CONCLUSION.
Charles the Fourth and Godoy 343 French Revolution 343 Index Expurgatorius 344 Affair of the Escurial 345 Abdication 345 French Invasion 345 French expelled 346 Ferdinand the Seventh 346 Effect of the Times on Letters 347 Interregnum in Culture 349 Revival of Letters 349 Prospects for the Future 350
APPENDIX, A.
ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE.
Spain and its Name 355 The Iberians in Spain 356 The Celts 357 The Celtiberians 358 The Phœnicians 358 The Carthaginians 359 The Romans 360 Their Colonies 362 Their Language 363 Their Writers 364 Christianity introduced 365 Its Effects on the Language 366 Irruption of the Northern Tribes 368 The Franks, Vandali, etc. 369 The Goths 369 Their Culture 370 Their Effect on the Language 371 The Arabs 372 Their Invasion 373 Their Effect on the Provençal 374 Their Refinement 375 The Christians and Pelayo 376 The Mozárabes 377 Their Influence 378 Their Reunion 379 The Language of the North 380 How modified 381 First written Spanish 382 Carta Puebla de Avilés 383 The Romance 384 The Spanish or Castilian 384 Materials that compose it 385 Its rapid Prevalence 386
APPENDIX, B.
THE ROMANCEROS.
Ballads on separate Sheets 388 Oldest Ballad-book 389 That of Antwerp 390 Other early Ballad-books 392 Ballad-book in Nine Parts 392 Romancero General 393 Early Selections from the Romanceros 394 Recent Selections 395 What is still wanted 396
APPENDIX, C.
FERNAN GOMEZ DE CIBDAREAL AND THE CENTON EPISTOLARIO.
Suggestions on its Genuineness 397 Probably a Forgery 398 No such Person mentioned early 398 No Manuscript of the Letters 398 Date of the earliest Edition false 398 Second Edition admits it 398 No Date to the Letters at first 399 Their Style 399 That of the First Edition 399 Misstatements about Juan de Mena 399 About Barrientos 400 About Alvaro de Luna 401 Appeared in an Age of Forgeries 402 State of the Question 403
APPENDIX, D.
THE BUSCAPIÉ.
Statement by Los Rios 404 By Ruydiaz 405 Effect of their Statements 406 Don Adolfo de Castro 406 Publishes a Buscapié 406 What it is 407 Contradicts Los Rios and Ruydiaz 408 Its long Concealment suspicious 408 Its External Evidence 409 Argote de Molina 409 The Duke of Lafões 410 Don Pascual de Gándara 411 Its Internal Evidence 411 Resemblances to the Style of Cervantes 411 Mistake about Enzinas 412 About an old Proverb 413 Its Title-page 414 Its Notice of Alcalá 414 State of the Question 415
APPENDIX, E.
EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND IMITATIONS OF THE DON QUIXOTE.
First Part 416 Second Part 417 Both Parts 417 Lord Carteret’s Edition 417 That of the Academy 418 Of Bowle 418 Of Pellicer 418 Of Clemencin 419 Translations 419 Imitations out of Spain 420 In Spain 421 Its Fame everywhere 422
APPENDIX, F.
EARLY COLLECTIONS OF OLD SPANISH PLAYS.
Comedias de Diferentes Autores 423 Comedias Nuevas Escogidas 424 Various smaller Collections 426
APPENDIX, G.
ON THE ORIGIN OF CULTISMO.
Controversy about it in Italy 427 Bettinelli and Tiraboschi 427 Spanish Jesuits in Italy 428 Serrano and Andres 428 Vannetti and Zorzi 428 Arteaga and Isla 429 Lampillas 429 End of the Controversy 430 Result of it 431
APPENDIX, H.
INEDITA.
No. I. Poema de José el Patriarca 432 No. II. La Danza General de la Muerte 459 No. III. El Libro del Rabi Santob 475
* * * * *
INDEX 505
HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
SECOND PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION, OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH.
(CONTINUED.)
HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
SECOND PERIOD. (CONTINUED.)
Chapter XXXI
SATIRICAL POETRY: THE ARGENSOLAS, QUEVEDO, AND OTHERS.--ELEGIAC POETRY AND EPISTLES: GARCILASSO, HERRERA, AND OTHERS.--PASTORAL POETRY: SAA DE MIRANDA, BALBUENA, ESQUILACHE, AND OTHERS.--EPIGRAMS: VILLEGAS, REBOLLEDO, AND OTHERS.--DIDACTIC POETRY: RUFO, CUEVA, CÉSPEDES, AND OTHERS.--EMBLEMS: DAZA, COVARRUBIAS.--DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: DICASTILLO.
Satirical poetry, whether in the form of regular satires, or in the more familiar guise of epistles, has never enjoyed a wide success in Spain. Its spirit, indeed, was known there from the times of the Archpriest of Hita and Rodrigo Cota, both of whom seem to have been thoroughly imbued with it. Torres Naharro, too, in the early part of the sixteenth century, and Silvestre and Castillejo a little later, still sustained it, and wrote satires in the short national verse, with much of the earlier freedom, and all the bitterness, that originally accompanied it.
But after Mendoza and Boscan, in the middle of that century, had sent poetical epistles to one another written in the manner of Horace, though in the Italian terza rima, the fashion was changed. A rich, strong invective, such as Castillejo dared to use when he wrote the “Satire on Women,” which was often reprinted and greatly relished, was almost entirely laid aside; and a more cultivated and philosophical tone, suited to the stately times of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, took its place. Montemayor, it is true, and Padilla, with a few wits of less note, wrote in both manners; but Cantorál with little talent, Gregorio Murillo with a good deal, and Rey de Artieda in a familiar style that was more winning than either, took the new direction so decidedly, that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the change may be considered as substantially settled.[1]
[1] All these satires are found in the works of their respective authors, heretofore cited, except that of Morillo “On the Corrupted Manners of his Times,” which is in Espinosa, Flores, 1605, f. 119. The “Epístolas” of Artieda were printed the same year, under the name of “Artemidoro,” and are six in number. The best are one against the life of a sportsman, and one in ironical defence of the follies of society. A letter of Virues to his brother, also dated 1605, might have been added. It is a pleasant satirical account of a military march from Milan to the Low Countries, passing the St. Gothard.
Barahona de Soto was among the earliest that wrote in this new form, which was a union of the Roman with the Italian. We have four of his satires, composed after he had served in the Morisco wars; the first and the last of which, assailing all bad poets, show plainly the school to which he belonged and the direction he wished to follow. But his efforts, though seriously made, did not raise him above an untolerated mediocrity.[2]
[2] They were first printed in Sedano, Parnaso, Tom. IX., 1778.
A single satire of Jauregui, addressed to Lydia, as if she might have been the Lydia of Horace, is better.[3] But in the particular style and manner of the philosophical Horatian satire, none succeeded so well as the two Argensolas. Their discussions are, it is true, sometimes too grave and too long; but they give us spirited pictures of the manners of their times. The sketch of a profligate lady of fashion, for instance, in the one to Flora, by Lupercio, is excellent, and so are long passages in two others against a court life, by Bartolomé. All three, however, are too much protracted, and the last contains a poor repetition of the fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, in which, as almost everywhere else, its author’s relations to Horace are apparent.[4]
[3] Rimas, 1618, p. 198. It is a remarkably happy union of the Italian form of verse and the Roman spirit.
[4] Rimas, 1634, pp. 56, 234, 254. It is singular, however, that, while Bartolomé imitates Horace, he expresses his preference for Juvenal.
Pero quando á escribir sátiras llegues, A ningun irritado cartapacio, Sino al del cauto Juvenal, te entregues.
He seems, too, to have been accounted an imitator of Juvenal by his contemporaries; for Guevara, in his “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco IX., calls him “Divino Juvenal Aragones.” But it is impossible not to see that he is full of Horatian turns of thought.
Quevedo, on the other hand, followed Juvenal, whose hard, unsparing temper was better suited to his own tastes, and to a disposition embittered by cruel persecutions. But Quevedo is often free and indecorous, as well as harsh, and offends that sensibility to virtue which a satirist ought carefully to cultivate. It should, however, be remembered in his favor, that, though living under the despotism of the Philips, and crushed by it, no Spanish poet stands before him in the spirit of an independent and vigorous satire. Góngora approaches him on some occasions, but Góngora rarely dealt with grave subjects, and confined his satire almost entirely to burlesque ballads and sonnets, which he wrote in the fervor of his youth. At no period of his life, and certainly not after he went to court, would he have hazarded a satirical epistle like the one on the decay of Castilian spirit and the corruption of Castilian manners, which Quevedo had the courage to send to the Count Duke Olivares, when he was at the height of his influence.[5]
[5] It is the last poem in the “Melpomene.”
The greatest contemporaries of both of them hardly turned their thoughts in this direction; for as to Cervantes, his “Journey to Parnassus” is quite too good-natured an imitation of Caporali to be classed among satires, even if its form permitted it to be placed there; and as to Lope de Vega, though some of his sonnets and other shorter poems are full of spirit and severity, especially those that pass under the name of Burguillos, still his whole course, and the popular favor that followed it, naturally prevented him from seeking occasions to do or say any thing ungracious.
Nor did the state of society at this period favor the advancement, or even the continuance, of any such spirit. The epistles of Espinel and Arguijo are, therefore, absolutely grave and solemn; and those of Rioja, Salcedo, Ulloa, and Melo are not only grave, but are almost entirely destitute of poetical merit, except one by the first of them, addressed to Fabio, which, if neither gay nor witty, is an admirably wise moral rebuke of the folly and irksomeness of depending on royal favor. Borja is more free, as became his high station, and speaks out more plainly; but the best of his epistles--the one against a court life--is not so good as the youthful tercetos on the same subject by Góngora, nor equal to his own jesting address to his collected poems. Rebolledo, his only successor of any note at the time, is moral, but tiresome; and Solís, like the few that followed him, is too dull to be remembered. Indeed, if Villegas in his old age, when, perhaps, he had been soured by disappointment, had not written three satires which he did not venture to publish, we should have nothing worth notice as we approach the disheartening close of this long period.[6]
[6] The satires of all these authors are in their collected works, except those of Villegas, which were printed from manuscripts, supposed to be the originals, by Sedano (Tom. IX. pp. 3-18); or rather, two of them on bad poets were so printed, for the third seems to have been suppressed, on account of its indelicacy.
Nearly all the didactic satires and nearly all the satirical epistles of the best age of Spanish literature are Horatian in their tone, and written in the Italian terza rima. In general, their spirit is light, though philosophical,--sometimes it is courtly,--and, taken together, they have less poetical force and a less decided coloring than we might claim from the class to which they belong. But they are frequently graceful and agreeable, and some of them will be oftener read, for the mere pleasure they bestow, than many in other languages which are distinguished for greater wit and severity.
The truth, however, is, that wit and severity of this kind and in this form were never heartily encouraged in Spain. The nation itself has always been too grave and dignified to ask or endure the censure they imply; and if such a character as the Spanish has its ridiculous side, it must be approached by any thing rather than personal satire. Books like the romances of chivalry may, indeed, be assailed with effect, as they were by Cervantes; men in classes may be caricatured, as they are in the Spanish picaresque novels and in the old drama; and bad poetry may be ridiculed, as it was by half the poets who did not write it, and by some who did. But the characters of individuals, and especially of those in high station and of much notoriety, are protected, under such circumstances, by all the social influences that can be brought to their defence, and cannot safely be assailed.
Such, at least, was the case in Spain. Poetical satire came there to be looked upon with distrust, so that it was thought to be hardly in good taste, or according to the conventions of good society, to indulge in its composition.[7] And if, with all this, we remember the anxious nature of the political tyranny which long ruled the country, and the noiseless, sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition,--both of which are apparent in the certificates and licenses that usher in whatever succeeded in finding its way through the press,--we shall have no difficulty in accounting for the fact, that poetical satire never had a vigorous and healthy existence in Spain, and that, after the latter part of the seventeenth century, it almost entirely disappeared till better times revived it.
[7] Cervantes is a strong case in point. In the fourth chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus,” immediately after speaking of his Don Quixote, he disavows having ever written any thing satirical, and denounces all such compositions as low and base. Indeed, the very words sátira and satírico came at last to be used in a bad sense oftener than in a good one. Huerta, Sinónimos Castellanos, Valencia, 1807, 2 tom. 12mo, ad verb.
* * * * *
Elegies, though from their subjects little connected with satire, are yet, by their measure and manner, connected with it in Spanish poetry; for both are generally written in the Italian terza rima, and both are often thrown into the form of epistles.[8] Garcilasso could write elegies in their true spirit; but the second that passes under that name in his works is merely a familiar epistle to a friend. So is the first by Figueroa, which is followed by others in a tone more appropriate to their titles. But all are in the Italian verse and manner, and two of them in the Italian language. The eleven “Lamentations,” as he calls them, of Silvestre, are elegiac epistles to his lady-love, written in the old Castilian measures, and not without the old Castilian poetical spirit. Cantorál fails; nor can the Argensolas and Borja be said to have succeeded, though they wrote in different manners, some of which were scarcely elegiac. Herrera is too lyric--too lofty, perhaps, from the very nature of his genius--to write good elegies; but some of those on his love, and one in which he mourns over the passions that survive the decay of his youth, have certainly both beauty and tenderness.
[8] A striking instance of this is to be found in the “Primera Parle del Parnaso Antártico,” by Diego Mexia, printed at Seville, 1608, 4to, and the only portion of it ever printed. It consists of an original poetical letter by a lady to Mexia, and a translation of twenty-one of the Epistles of Ovid and his “Ibis”; all in terza rima, and nearly all in pure and beautiful Castilian verse. In the edition in the collection of Fernandez, Tom. XIX., 1799, the epistle by the lady is omitted, which is a pity, since it contains notices of several South American poets.
Rioja, on the contrary, seems to have been of the true temperament, and to have written elegies from instinct, though he called them Silvas; while Quevedo, if he were the author of the poems that pass under the name of the Bachiller de la Torre, must have done violence to his genius in the composition of ten short pieces, which he calls Endechas, in Adonian verse, but which read much like imitations of some of the gentler among the old ballads. If to these we add the thirteen elegies of Villegas, nearly all of which are epistles, and one or two of them light and amusing epistles, we shall have what is most worthy of notice in this small division of Spanish poetry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that has not been already considered. From the whole, we should naturally infer that the Spanish temperament was little fitted to the subdued, simple, and gentle tone of the proper elegy; a conclusion that is undoubtedly true, notwithstanding the examples of Garcilasso and Rioja, the best and most elegiac portions of whose poetry do not even bear its name.[9]
[9] The best elegiac poetry in the Spanish language is, perhaps, that in the two divisions of the first eclogue of Garcilasso. Elegies, or mournful poems of any kind, are often called Endechas in Spanish, as Quevedo called his sad amatory poems; but the origin of the word is not settled, nor its meaning quite well defined. Venegas, in a vocabulary of obscure words at the end of his “Agonía del Tránsito de la Muerte,” 1574, p. 370, says he thinks it comes from inde jaces, as if the mourner addressed the dead body. But this is absurd. It may come from the Greek ἕνδεκα, for when the last verse of each stanza contained just eleven syllables, the poem was said to be written in endechas reales. See Covarrubias, and the Academy, ad verbum, who give no opinion.
* * * * *
Pastoral poetry in Spain is directly connected with elegiac, through the eclogues of Garcilasso, which unite the attributes of both. To his school, indeed, including Boscan and Mendoza, we trace the earliest successful specimens of the more formal Spanish pastoral, with the characteristics still recognized. But its origin is much earlier. The climate and condition of the Peninsula, which from a very remote period had favored the shepherd’s life and his pursuits, facilitated, no doubt, if they did not occasion, the first introduction into Spanish poetry of a pastoral tone, whose echoes are heard far back among the old ballads. But the Italian forms of pastoral verse were naturalized as soon as they were introduced. Figueroa, Cantorál, Montemayor, and Saa de Miranda--the last two of whom were Portuguese, and all of whom visited Italy and lived there--contributed their efforts to those of Garcilasso and Boscan, by writing Spanish eclogues in the Italian manner. All had a good degree of success, but none so much as Saa de Miranda, who was born in 1495, and died in 1558, and who, from the promptings of his own genius, renounced the profession of the law, to which he was bred, and the favor of the court, where his prospects were high, in order to devote himself to poetry.
He was the first of the Portuguese who wrote in the forms introduced by Boscan and Garcilasso, and none, perhaps, since his time has appeared in them with more grace and power,--certainly none in the particular form of eclogues. His pastorals, however, are not all in the new manner. On the contrary, some of them are in the ancient short verse, and seem to have been written before he was acquainted with the change that had just been effected in Spanish poetry. But all of them are in one spirit, and are marked by a simplicity that well becomes the class of compositions to which they belong, though it may rarely be found in them. This is true, both when he writes his beautiful pastoral story of “The Mondego,” which is in the manner of Garcilasso, and contains an account of himself addressed to the king; and when he writes his seventh eclogue, which is in the forms of Enzina and Vicente, and seems to have been acted amidst the rejoicings of the noble family of Pereira, after one of their number had returned from military service against the Turks.
But a love of the country, of country scenery and country occupations, pervades nearly every thing Saa de Miranda wrote. The very animals seem to be treated by him with more naturalness and familiarity than they are elsewhere; and throughout the whole of his poetry, there is an ease and amenity that show it comes from the heart. Why he wrote so much in Spanish, it is not now easy to tell. Perhaps he thought the language more poetical than his native Portuguese, or perhaps he had merely personal reasons for his preference. But whatever may have been the cause, six out of his eight eclogues are composed in natural, flowing Castilian; and the result of the whole is, that, while, on all accounts, he is placed among the four or five principal poets of his own country, he occupies a position of enviable distinction among those of the prouder nation that soon became, for a time, its masters.[10]
[10] There are many editions of the Works of Saa de Miranda; but the second and best (s. l. 1614, 4to) is preceded by a life of him, which claims to have been composed by his personal friends, and which states the odd fact, that the lady of whom he was enamoured was so ugly, that her family declined the match until he had well considered the matter; but that he persevered, and became so fondly attached to her, that he died, at last, from grief at her loss. His merits as a poet are well discussed by Ant. das Neves Pereira, in the fifth volume of the “Memorias de Litt. Portugueza” of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisboa, 1793, pp. 99, etc. Some of his works are in the Spanish Index Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 72.
Montemayor, Polo, and their followers in prose pastorals, scattered bucolic verse of all kinds freely through their fictions; and sometimes, though seldom, they added to the interest and merit of their stories by this sort of ornament. One of those who had least success in it was Cervantes; and of those who had most, Balbuena stands in the first rank. His “Golden Age” contains some of the best and most original eclogues in the language; written, indeed, rather in the free, rustic tone of Theocritus, than with the careful finish of Virgil, but not on that account the less attractive.[11]
[11] Of the poets whose eclogues are found in their prose pastorals I shall speak at large when I examine this division of Spanish romantic fiction. Montemayor, however, it should be noted here, wrote other eclogues, which are in his Cancionero, 1588, ff. 111, etc.
Of Luis Barahona de Soto, we possess an eclogue better than any thing else he has left us;[12] and of Pedro de Padilla, the friend of Cervantes and of Silvestre, a remarkable improvisator and a much loved man, we have a number of pastoral poems which carry with them a picturesque, antique air, from being made up in part of ballads and villancicos.[13] Pedro de Enzinas attempted to write religious eclogues, and failed;[14] but, in the established forms, Juan de Morales and Gomez Tapia, who are hardly known except for single attempts of this kind,[15] and Vicente Espinel,--among whose eclogues, that in which a Soldier and a Shepherd discuss the Spanish wars in Italy is both original and poetical,[16]--were all successful.
[12] It is found in the important collection, the “Flores,” of Espinosa, f. 66, where it first appeared.
[13] “Eglogas Pastoriles de Pedro de Padilla,” Sevilla, 1582, 4to; thirteen in number, in all measures, and the last one partly in prose. Of Padilla, who was much connected with the men of letters of his time, all needful notices may be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 396-402, and in Clemencin’s Notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 147. The curate well says of his “Tesoro de Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo,) “They would be better, if they were fewer.” They fill above nine hundred pages, and are in all forms and styles. Padilla died as late as 1599.
[14] There are six of them, in terza and ottava rima, with a few lyrical poems interspersed, in other measures and in a better tone, in a volume entitled “Versos Espirituales,” Cuenca, 1596, 12mo. Their author was a monk.
[15] The eclogue of Morales is in Espinosa, f. 48, and that of Tapia occurs--where we should hardly look for it--in the “Libro de Montería, que mandó escribir el Rey Don Alfonso XI.,” edited by Argote de Molina, 1582. It is on the woods of Aranjuez, and was written after the birth of a daughter of Philip II.; but its descriptions are long and wearisome.
[16] Rimas, 1591, ff. 50-57.
The eclogues of Lope de Vega, of which we have already spoken, drew after them a train of imitations, like his other popular poetry. But neither Balvas, nor Villegas, nor Carrillo, nor the Prince of Esquilache equalled him. Quevedo alone among his compeers, and he only if he is the author of the poems of the Bachiller de la Torre, proved himself a rival of the great master, unless we must give an equal place to Pedro de Espinosa, whose story of “The Genil,” half elegiac and half pastoral, is the happiest and most original specimen of that peculiar form of which Boscan in his “Hero and Leander” gave the first imperfect example.[17] Pedro Soto de Roxas,--who wrote short lyric poems with spirit, as well as eclogues,--Zarate, and Ulloa, belong to the same school, which was continued, by Texada Gomes de los Reyes, Barrios the Jew, and Inez de la Cruz the Mexican nun, down to the end of the century. But in all its forms, whether tending to become too lyrical, as it does in Figueroa, or too narrative, as in Espinosa, Spanish pastoral poetry shows fewer of the defects that accompany such poetry everywhere, and more of the merits that render it a gentle and idealized representation of nature and country life, than can perhaps be found in any other literature of modern times. The reason is, that there was more of a true pastoral character in Spain on which to build it.[18]
[17] Espinosa includes it in his “Flores,” f. 107.
[18] The authors mentioned in this paragraph are, I believe, all more amply noticed elsewhere, except Pedro Soto de Roxas. He was a friend of Lope de Vega, and published in Madrid, 1623, 4to, his “Desengaño de Amor,”--a volume of poems in the Italian manner, the best of which are the madrigals and eclogues.
* * * * *
Quite as characteristic of the Spanish national genius as its pastorals were short poems in different forms, but in an epigrammatic spirit, which appeared through the whole of the best age of its literature. They are of two kinds. The first are generally amorous, and always sentimental. Of these, not a few are very short and pointed. They are found in the old Cancioneros and Romanceros, among the works of Maldonado, Silvestre, Villegas, Góngora, and others of less merit, to the end of the century. They are generally in the truest tone of popular verse. One, which was set to music, was in these few simple words:--
To what ear shall I tell my griefs, Gentle love mine? To what ear shall I tell my griefs, If not to thine?[19]
[19] Á quien contaré yo mis quejas, Mi lindo amor; Á quien contaré mis quejas, Si á vos no?
Faber found this and a few more in Salina’s treatise on Music, 1577, and placed it, with a considerable number of similar short compositions, in the first volume of his collection, pp. 303, etc.
And another, of the same period, which was on a Sigh, and became the subject of more than one gloss, was hardly less simple:--
O gentle sigh! O gentle sigh! For no more happiness I pray, Than, every time thou goest to God, To follow where thou lead’st the way.[20]
[20] O dulce suspiro mio! No quisiera dicha mas, Que las veces que á Dios vas Hallarme donde te envio.
Ubeda, 1588, was the first, I think, who paraphrased this epigram; but where he discovered it I do not know.
But of those a little longer and more elaborate a favorable specimen may be found in Camoens, who wrote such with tenderness and beauty, not only in his own language, but sometimes in Spanish, as in the following lines on a concealed and unhappy passion, the first two of which are probably a snatch of some old song, and the rest his own gloss upon them:--
Within, within, my sorrow lives, But outwardly no token gives. All young and gentle in the soul, All hidden from men’s eyes, Deep, deep within it lies, And scorns the body’s low control. As in the flint the hidden spark Gives outwardly no sign or mark, Within, within, my sorrow lives.[21]
[21] De dentro tengo mi mal, Que de fora no ay señal. Mi nueva y dulce querella Es invisible á la gente: El alma sola la siente, Qu’ el cuerpo no es dino della: Como la viva sentella S’ encubre en el pedernal, De dentro tengo mi mal.
Camões, Rimas, Lisboa, 1598, 4to, f. 179.
Several that precede and follow, both in Spanish and Portuguese, are worth notice.
The number of such compositions, in their different serious forms, is great; but the number of the second kind--those in a lighter and livelier tone--is still greater. The Argensolas, Villegas, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, the Prince Esquilache, Rebolledo, and not a few others, wrote them with spirit and effect. Of all, however, who indulged in them, nobody devoted to their composition so much zeal, and on the whole obtained so much success, as Francisco de la Torre, who, though of the culto school, seemed able to shake off much of its influence, when he remembered that he was a fellow-countryman of Martial.
He took for the foundation of his humor the remarkable Latin epigrams of John Owen, the English Protestant, who died in 1622, and whose witty volume has been often translated and printed at home and abroad down to our own times;--a volume, it should be noted, so offensive to the Romish Church as to have been early placed on its Index Expurgatorius. But La Torre avoided whatever could give umbrage to the ecclesiastical authorities of his time, and, adding a great number of original epigrams quite as good as those he translated, made a collection that fills two volumes, the last of which was printed in 1682, after its author’s death.[22]
[22] “Agudezas de Juan Oven, etc., con Adiciones por Francisco de la Torre,” Madrid, 1674, 1682, 2 tom. 4to. Oven is the Owen or Audoenus of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxon.,” Tom. II. p. 320. His “Epigrammata,” printed about a dozen times between 1606 and 1795, were placed on the list of prohibited books in 1654. Index, Romæ, 1786, 8vo, p. 216.
But though he wrote more good epigrams, and in a greater variety of forms, than any other individual Spaniard, he did not, perhaps, write the best or the most national; for a few of those that still remain anonymous, and a still smaller number by Rebolledo, seem to claim this distinction. Of the sort of wit frequently affected in these slight compositions the following is an example:--
Fair lady, when your beads you take, I never doubt you pray; Perhaps for my poor murdered sake, Perhaps for yours, that slay.[23]
Rebolledo was sometimes happier than he is in this epigram, though rarely more national.
[23] Pues el rosario tomais, No dudo que le receis Por mí, que muerto me habeis, O por vos, que me matais.
Obras, 1778, Tom. I. p. 337.
Camoens had the same idea in some Portuguese redondillas, (Rimas, 1598, f. 159,) so that I suspect both of them took it from some old popular epigram.
* * * * *
Didactic poetry in unsettled and uncertain forms appeared early in Spain, and took, from time to time, the air both of moral philosophy and of religious instruction. Specimens of it in the old long-line stanza are found from the age of Berceo to that of the chancellor Ayala; few, indeed, in number, but sufficiently marked in character to show their purpose. Later, examples become more numerous, and present themselves in forms somewhat improved. Several such occur in the Cancioneros, among the best of which are Ludueña’s “Rules for Good-Breeding”; “The Complaint of Fortune,” in imitation of Bias, by Diego de San Pedro; and the “Coplas” of Don Juan Manuel of Portugal, on the Seven Deadly Sins;--all of them authors known at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. Boscan’s poem on his own Conversion, that of Silvestre on “Self-knowledge,” that of Castilla on “The Virtues,” and that of Juan de Mendoza on “A Happy Life,” continue the series through the reign of Charles the Fifth, but without materially advancing its claims or its character.[24]
[24] The poems of Boscan and Silvestre are found in their respective works, already examined; but of Francisco de Castilla and of Juan de Mendoza and their poetry it may be proper to give some notice, as their names have not occurred before.
Castilla was a gentleman apparently of the old national type, descended from an illegitimate branch of the family of Pedro el Cruel. He lived in the time of Charles V., and passed his youth near the person of that great sovereign; but, as he says in a letter to his brother, the Bishop of Calahorra, he at last “withdrew himself, disgusted alike with the abhorred rabble and senseless life of the court,” and “chose the estate of matrimony, as one more safe for his soul and better suited to his worldly condition.” How he fared in this experiment he does not tell us; but, missing, in the retirement it brought with it, those pleasures of social intercourse to which he had been accustomed, he bought, as he says, “with a small sum of money, other surer and wiser friends,” whose counsels and teachings he put into verse, that his weak memory might the better preserve them. The result of this life merely contemplative was a book, in which he gives us, first, his “Theórica de Virtudes,” or an explanation, in the old short Spanish verse, accompanied with a prose gloss, of the different Virtues, ending with the vengeful Nemesis; next, a Treatise on Friendship, in long nine-line stanzas; and then, successively, a Satire on Human Life and its vain comforts; an Allegory on Worldly Happiness; a series of Exhortations to Virtue and Holiness, which he has unsuitably called Proverbs; and a short discussion, in décimas, on the Immaculate Conception. At the end, separately paged, as if it were quite a distinct treatise, we have a counterpart to the “Theórica de Virtudes,” called the “Prática de las Virtudes de los Buenos Reyes de España”; a poem in above two hundred octave stanzas, on the Virtues of the Kings of Spain, beginning with Alaric the Goth and ending with the Emperor Charles V., to whom he dedicates it with abundance of courtly flattery. The whole volume, both in the prose and verse, is written in the strong old Castilian style, sometimes encumbered with learning, but oftener rich, pithy, and flowing. The following stanza, written, apparently, when its author was already disgusted with his court life, but had not given it up, may serve as a specimen of his best manner:--
Nunca tanto el marinero Desseo llegar al puerto Con fortuna; Ni en batalla el buen guerrero Ser de su victoria cierto Quando puña; Ni madre al ausente hijo Por mar con tanta aficion Le desseo, Como haver un escondrijo Sin contienda en un rincon Desseo yo. f. 45. b.
Never did mariner desire To reach his destined port With happy fate; Ne’er did good warrior, in the fire Of battle, victory court, With hopes elate; Nor mother for her child’s dear life, Tossed on the stormy wave So earnest pray, As I for some safe cave To hide me from this restless strife In peace away.
An edition of Castilla’s very rare volume may have been printed about 1536, when it was licensed; but I have never seen it, nor any notice of it. The one of which I have a copy was printed at Zaragoza, 4to, lit. got., 1552; and I believe there is one of Alcalá, either in 1554 or 1564, 8vo.
The poetry of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, who was Regidor of Madrid, and a member of the Cortes of 1544, is, perhaps, more rare than that of Castilla, and is contained in a small volume printed at Alcalá in 1550, and entitled “Buen Placer trovado en treze discantes de quarta rima Castellana segun imitacion de trobas Francesas,” etc. It consists of thirteen discourses on a happy life, its means and motives, all written in stanzas of four lines each, which their author calls French, I suppose, because they are longer lines than those in the old national measures, and rhymed alternately,--the rhymes of one stanza running into the next. At the end is a Canto Real, as it is called, on a verse in the Psalms, composed in the same manner; and several smaller poems, one of which is a kind of religious villancico, and four of them sonnets. The tone of the whole is didactic, and its poetical value small. I cite eight lines, as a specimen of its peculiar manner and rhymes:--
Errado va quien busca ser contento En mal plazer mortal, que como heno Se seca y passa como humo en viento, De vanos tragos de ayre muy relleno.
Quando las negras velas van en lleno Del mal plazer, villano peligroso, De buen principio y de buen fin ageno, No halla en esta vida su reposo.
Mendoza was a person of much consideration in his time, and is noticed as such by Quintana, (Historia de Madrid, Madrid, 1629, folio,) who gives one of his sonnets at f. 27, and a sketch of his character at f. 245.
In the age of Philip the Second, the didactic, like most of the other branches of Spanish poetry, spreads out more broadly. Francisco de Guzman’s “Opinions of Wise Men,” and especially his dull allegory of “Moral Triumphs,” in imitation of Petrarch, are, for their length, the most important of the different didactic poems which that period produced.[25] But more characteristic than either is the deeply religious letter of Francisco de Aldana to Montano, in 1573; and much more beautiful and touching than either is one written at about the same time by Juan Rufo to his infant son, filled with gentle affection and wise counsels.
[25] The “Triunfos Morales de Francisco de Guzman” (Sevilla, 1581, 12mo) are imitations of Petrarca’s “Trionfi,” but are much more didactic, giving, for instance, under the head of “The Triumph of Wisdom,” the opinions of the wise men of antiquity; and under the head of “The Triumph of Prudence,” the general rules for prudent conduct.
Neither should a call made by Aldana, in the name of military glory, to Philip himself, urging him to defend the suffering Church, be overlooked. It breathes the very spirit of its subject, and may well be put in direct contrast with the earnest and sad persuasions to peace by Virues, who was yet a soldier by profession, and with Cantorál’s winning invitation to the quietness of a country life. Some of the religious poetry of Diego de Morillo and Pedro de Salas, in the next reigns, with several of the wise epistles of the Argensolas, Artieda, and Mesa, should be added; but they are all comparatively short poems, except those by Morillo on the Words of Christ upon the Cross, which extend to several hundred lines on each word, and which, though disfigured by antithesis and exaggeration, are strongly marked specimens of the Catholic didactic spirit.
In the mean time, and in the midst of this group,--partly because the way had been already prepared for it by the publication, in 1591, of a good translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry” by Espinel, and partly from other causes,[26]--we have, at last, a proper didactic poem, or rather an attempt at one. It is by Juan de la Cueva, who in 1605 wrote in terza rima three epistles, which he entitled “Egemplar Poético,” and which constitute the oldest formal and original effort of the kind in the Spanish language. Regarded as a whole, they are, indeed, far from being a complete Art of Poetry, and in some parts they are injudicious and inconsequent; but they not unfrequently contain passages of acute criticism in flowing verse, and they have, besides, the merit of nationality in their tone. In all respects, they are better than an absurd didactic poem, by the same author, on “The Inventors of Things,” which he wrote three years later, and which shows, as he showed elsewhere, that he adventured in too many departments.[27]
[26] The “Arte Poética” of Espinel is the first thing published in the “Parnaso Español” of Sedano, 1768, and was vehemently attacked by Yriarte, when, in 1777, he printed his own translation of the same work. (Obras de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. IV.) To this Sedano replied in the ninth volume of his “Parnaso,” 1778. Yriarte rejoined in a satirical dialogue, “Donde las dan las toman” (Obras, Tom. VI.); and Sedano closed the controversy with the “Coloquios de Espina,” Malaga, 1785, 2 tom. 12mo, under the name of Juan María Chavero y Eslava. It is a very pretty literary quarrel, quite in the Spanish manner.
[27] The “Egemplar Poético” of Cueva was first printed in the eighth volume of the “Parnaso Español,” 1774; and the “Inventores de las Cosas,” taken generally from Polydore Virgil, and dated 1608, was first published in the ninth volume of the same collection, 1778. How absurd the last is may be inferred from the fact, that it makes Moses the inventor of hexameter verse, and Alexander the Great the oldest of paper-makers.
Pablo de Céspedes, a sculptor and painter of the same period,--now better known as a man of learning and a poet,--came nearer to success than Cueva. He was born in 1538, at Córdova, and died there, a minor canon of its magnificent cathedral, at the age of seventy; but he spent a part of his life in Italy and at Seville, and devoted much of his leisure to letters. Among other works, he began a poem, in ottava rima, on “The Art of Painting.” Whether it was ever finished is uncertain; but all we possess of it is a series of fragments, amounting, when taken together, to six or seven hundred lines, which were inserted in a prose treatise on the same subject by his friend Francisco Pacheco, and printed above forty years after their author’s death. They are, however, such as to make us regret that we have received no more. Their versification is excellent, and their poetical energy and compactness are uniform. Perhaps the best passage that has been preserved is the description of a horse,--the animal of whose race the poet’s native city has always been proud,--and of which, it is evident, a single noble individual was pictured before his mind as he wrote. But other portions show much talent,--perhaps more than this does; especially one in which he explains the modes of acquiring practical skill in his art, and that more poetical one in which he discusses color.[28]
[28] What remains of Céspedes’s poetry is to be found in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez’s collection. His life is well set forth in the excellent “Diccionario de los Profesores de las Bellas Artes, por A. Cean Bermudez,” Madrid, 1800, 6 tom. 12mo, Tom. I. p. 316; besides which, its learned author, at the end of Tom. V., has republished the fragments of the poem on Painting in a better order than that in which they had before appeared; adding a pleasant prose discourse, in a pure style, on Ancient and Modern Painting and Sculpture, which Céspedes wrote in 1604, when recovering from a fever, and two other of his trifles; to the whole of which is prefixed a judicious Preface by Cean himself. Céspedes had been a Greek scholar in his youth, and says, that, in his old age, when he chanced to open Pindar, he “never failed to find a well-drawn and rich picture, grand and fit for Michel Angelo to paint.” He was a friend of Carranza, the great archbishop, who, after being a leading member of the Council of Trent, and confessor of Mary of England after she married Philip II., was worried to death by the Inquisition in 1576. (See, ante, Vol. I. p. 466.) Céspedes himself came near suffering from a similar persecution, in consequence of a letter he wrote to Carranza in 1559, in which he spoke disrespectfully of the Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Office. Llorente, Hist., Tom. II. p. 440.
But the poems of Cueva and Céspedes were not printed till long after the death of their authors; and none of their contemporaries was inspired by like influences. The best that was done in didactic poetry, at about the same time, was the slight, but pleasant, sort of defence of his own irregularities produced by Lope de Vega, under the name of “The New Art of Writing Plays”; and the best, written later in the century, were the “Selvas,” as he called them, or poems in irregular verse, by Count Rebolledo, on the Arts of War and Civil Government, which date from 1652, but which are little more than rhymed prose. A long poem in ten cantos, and in the old quintilla verse, by Trapeza, published in 1612, and entitled “The Cross,” because it is a sort of exposition of all the theological virtues attributed to that holy emblem, is too dull to be noticed, even if it were more strictly didactic in its form.[29]
[29] Lope’s “Arte Nuevo” has been already noticed. The “Selva Militar y Política” of Rebolledo was first printed at Cologne, in 1652, 18mo, its author being then Spanish minister in Denmark, of whose kings he has given a sort of genealogical history in another poem, his “Selvas Dánicas.”--“La Cruz, por Albanio Ramirez de la Trapeza,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo, pp. 368, to which are added a few pages of short poems on the Cross.
Some other kindred attempts should, however, be remembered, of which the oldest, made in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout Europe, were in the form called “Emblems,” or explanations in verse for hieroglyphical devices. The most successful of these were probably the Emblems of Daza, in 1549, imitated from the more famous Latin ones of Alciatus; and those of Covarrubias, published originally in Spanish by their author in 1591, and afterwards translated by him into Latin;--both of them curious specimens of this peculiar style of composition, and as agreeable, perhaps, as any which the age of Emblems produced.[30]
[30] “Los Emblemas de Alciato, etc., añadidos de nuevos Emblemas,” Lyon, 1549, 4to,--on the Index Expurgatorius of 1790. Those of Covarrubias were printed in Spanish in 1591; and in Spanish and Latin, Agrigenti, 1601, 12mo;--the last, a thick volume, with a long and learned Latin dissertation on Emblems prefixed. Covarrubias was brother of the lexicographer of the same name. Tesoro, Art. Emblema.
The other form was that in which the didactic runs into the descriptive. Of this the most poetical example in Spanish is by Dicastillo, a Carthusian monk, at Saragossa, who published, in 1637, under the auspices of his friend Mencos, a long poetical correspondence, intended to teach the vanity of human things, and the happiness and merit to be found in a life of penitential seclusion. The parts that relate to the author himself are sometimes touching; but the rest is of very unequal worth,--the better portions being devoted to a description of the grand and sombre monastery of which he was an inmate, and of the observances to which his life there was devoted.[31] Castilian verse, however, did not often take a descriptive character, except when it appeared in the form of eclogues and idyls; and even then it is almost always marked by an ingenuity and brilliancy far from the healthy tone inspired by a sincere love of what is grand or beautiful in nature;--a remark which finds ample illustration in the poems devoted to the Spanish conquests in America, where the marvellous tropical vegetation of the valleys through which the wild adventurers wound their way, and the snow-capped volcanoes that crowned the sierras above their heads, seem to have failed alike to stir their imaginations or overawe their courage.[32]
[31] “Aula de Dios, Cartuxa Real de Zaragoza. Descrive la Vida de sus Monjes, acusa la Vanidad del Siglo, etc., consagrala á la Utilidad Pública Don Miguel de Mencos,” Zaragoza, 1637, 4to. They are written in silvas, and their true author’s name is indicated by puns in some of the laudatory verses that precede the work.
[32] The pleasantest, if not the most important exception to this remark, which I recollect, is to be found in an epistle by the friend of Lope de Vega, Cristóval de Virues, to his brother, dated June 17, 1600, and giving an account of his passage over the Saint Gothard with a body of troops. It is in blank verse that is not very exact, but the descriptions are very good, and marked with the feeling of that stern scenery. Obras, 1609, f. 269.
But except these irregular varieties of didactic poetry, we have, for the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nothing to add to what we have already noticed, beyond a repetition of the old forms of epistles and silvas, which so frequently occur in the works of Castillejo, Ledesma, Lope de Vega, Jauregui, Zarate, and their contemporaries. Nor could we reasonably expect more. Neither the popular character of Spanish poetry, nor the severe nature of the Spanish ecclesiastical and political constitutions of government, was favorable to the development of this particular form of verse, or likely to tolerate it on any important subject. Didactic poetry remained, therefore, at the end of the period, as it was at the beginning, one of the feeblest and least successful departments of the national literature.[33]
[33] The shorter poems, noticed as didactic, are found in the Cancioneros and other collections already referred to, or in the works of their respective authors.
Chapter XXXII
BALLAD POETRY CULTIVATED: SEPÚLVEDA, FUENTES, TIMONEDA, PADILLA, CUEVA, HITA, HIDALGO, VALDIVIELSO, LOPE DE VEGA, ARELLANO, ROCA Y SERNA, ESQUILACHE, MENDOZA, QUEVEDO.--ROMANCEROS OF MORE POPULAR BALLADS: THE TWELVE PEERS, THE CID, AND OTHERS.--GREAT NUMBER OF WRITERS OF BALLADS.
The collection and publication of the popular ballads of the country in the Cancioneros and Romanceros, in the sixteenth century, attracted to them a kind and degree of attention they had failed to receive during the long period in which they had been floating about among the unrecorded traditions of the common people. There was so much that was beautiful in them, so much that appealed successfully to the best recollections of all classes, so much directly connected with the great periods of the national glory, that the minds of all were stirred by them, as soon as they appeared in a permanent form, and they became, at once, favorites of the more cultivated portion of the people, as they had always been of the humble hearts that gave them birth. The natural consequence followed;--they were imitated;--and not merely by poets who occasionally wrote in this among other forms of verse, but by persons who composed them in large numbers and published them by volumes.[34]
[34] When looking through any of the large collections of ballads, especially those produced in the seventeenth century by the popularity of the whole class and the facility of their metrical structure, we find pertinent an excellent remark of Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” 1592, p. 38:--“There is nothing easier than to make a ballad, and nothing more difficult than to make it what it ought to be.”
The first of these persons was Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, whose Ballad-book can be traced back to 1551, the very year after the appearance, at Saragossa, of the earliest collection of popular and anonymous ballads, gathered from the memories of the people. The attempt of Sepúlveda was made in the right direction; for he founded it almost entirely on the old Castilian Chronicles, and appealed, as they did, to popular tradition and the national feelings for his support. In his Preface, he says, that his ballads “ought to be more savory than many others, because not only are they true and drawn from the truest histories he could find, but written in the Castilian measure and in the tone of the old ballads, which,” he adds, “is now in fashion. They were taken,” he declares, “literally from the Chronicle which was compiled by the most serene king Don Alfonso; the same who, for his good letters and royal desires, and great learning in all branches of knowledge, was called ‘The Wise.’” In fact, more than three fourths of this curious volume consist of ballads taken from the “General Chronicle of Spain,” often employing its very words, and always imbued with its spirit. The rest is made up chiefly of ballads founded on sacred and ancient history, or on mythological and other stories of an imaginary nature.
But, unfortunately, Sepúlveda was not truly a poet, and therefore, though he sought his subjects in good sources and seldom failed to select them well, he yet failed to give any more of a poetical coloring to his ballads than he found in the old chronicles he followed. He was, however, successful as far as the general favor was concerned; for not only was his entire work reprinted at least four times, but the separate ballads in it constantly reappear in the old collections[35] that were, from time to time, published to meet the popular demand.
[35] “Romances nuevamente sacados de Historias Antiguas de la Crónica de España, compuestos por Lorenço de Sepúlveda,” etc., en Anvers, 1551, 18mo. There were editions, enlarged and altered, in 1563, 1566, 1580, and 1584, mentioned by Ebert. That of 1584 contains one hundred and fifty-six ballads;--that of 1551 contains one hundred and forty-nine. Many of them are in the Romanceros Generales, and not a few in the recent collections of Depping and Duran.
Quite as characteristic of the period is a small selection of ballads printed for the first time in 1564. It was made by some person of distinction, who sent it to Alonso de Fuentes, with a request that he would furnish it with all needful explanations in prose. This he did; but the original collector died before it was published. Of the forty ballads of which it consists, ten are on subjects from the Bible; ten from Roman history; ten from other portions of ancient history; and the remainder from the history of Spain, coming down to the fall of Granada. We are not told where they were obtained, and none of them has much value;--the great merit of the whole, in the eyes of those who were concerned in their publication, consisting, no doubt, in the wearisome historical and moral commentary by which each is followed.
Fuentes, however, who intimates that the task was hardly worthy of his position, may have had a better taste in such things than the person who employed him; for, in a prefatory epistle, he gives us, of his own accord, the following ballad, evidently very old, if not very spirited, which he attributes to Alfonso the Wise. But it is no otherwise the work of that monarch than that all but the last stanzas are taken from the remarkable letter he wrote on the disastrous position of his affairs in 1280, when, by the rebellion of his son and the desertion of the higher ecclesiastics of his kingdom, he was reduced, in his old age, to misery and despair,--a letter already cited, and more poetical than the ballad founded on it.
I left my land, I left my home, To serve my God against his foes; Nor deemed, that, in so short a space, My fortunes could in ruin close.
For two short months were hardly sped, And April was but gone, and May, When Castile’s towers and Castile’s towns From my fair realm were rent away.
And they that should have counselled peace Between the father and his son, My bishops and my lordly priests, Forgetting what they should have done,--
Not by contrivance deep and dark, Not silent, like the secret thief, But trumpet-tongued, rebellion raised, And filled my house with guilt and grief.
Then, since my blood denies my cause, And since my friends desert and flee,-- Since they are gone, who should have stood Between the guilty blow and me,--
To thee I bend, my Saviour Lord, To thee, the Virgin Mother, bow, For your support and gracious help Pouring my daily, nightly vow:
For your compassion now is all My child’s rebellious power hath left To soothe the piercing, piercing woes That leave me here of hope bereft.
And since before his cruel might My friends have all in terror fled, Do thou, Almighty Father, thou, Protect my unprotected head.
But I have heard in former days The story of another king, Who--fled from and betrayed like me-- Resolved all fears away to fling,
And launch upon the wide, wide sea, And find adventurous fortune there, Or perish in its rolling waves, The victim of his brave despair.
This ancient monarch far and near-- Old Apollonius--was known: I’ll follow where he sought his fate, And where he found it find my own.[36]
[36] The “Cantos de Fuentes,” in the Epístola to which this ballad is found, were printed three times, and in the edition of Alcalá, 1587, 12mo, fill, with their tedious commentary, above eight hundred pages. Fuentes is noted by Zuñiga, in his “Annals of Seville,” 1677, p. 585, as a knight of Seville “of an illustrious lineage.” See also, ante, Vol. I. pp. 36-38.
Juan de Timoneda, partly bookseller and partly poet,--the friend of Lope de Rueda, and, like him, the author of farces acted in the public squares of Valencia,--was, both from his occupations and tastes, a person who would naturally understand the general poetical feeling and wants of his time. In consequence of this, probably, he published, in 1573, a collection of ballads, entitled “The Rose,” consisting, in no small degree, of his own compositions, but containing, also, some by other and older poets. Taken together, they constitute a volume of nearly seven hundred pages, divided into “The Rose of Love”; “The Spanish Rose”; “The Gentile Rose,” so called, because its subjects are heathen; and “The Royal Rose,” which is on the fates and fortunes of princes;--the whole being followed by about a hundred pages of popular, miscellaneous verse, rustic songs, and fanciful glosses.
The best parts of this large collection are the ballads gathered by its author from popular tradition, most of which were soon published in other Romanceros, with the variations their origin necessarily involved. The poorest parts are those written by himself,--such as the last division, which is entirely his own, and is not superior to the similar ballads in Sepúlveda and Fuentes. As a collection, however, it is important; because it shows how true the Spanish people remained to their old traditions, and how constantly they claimed to have the best portions of their history repeated to them in the old forms to which they had so long been accustomed. In another point of view, also, it is of consequence. It furnishes ballads on the early heroes of Spain, some of which are needed to fill up two or three of the best among their traditional stories, while others come down, with similar accounts of later heroes, to the end of the Moorish wars.[37]
[37] The only copy of this volume known to exist is among the rare and precious Spanish books given by Reinhart to the Imperial Library at Vienna; but an excellent account of it, followed by above sixty of the more important ballads it contains, was published at Leipzig, 1846, 12mo, under the title of “Rosa de Romances,” by Mr. Wolf, the admirable scholar, to whom the lovers of Spanish literature owe so much.
In 1583, the series of such popular works was still further continued by Pedro de Padilla, who published a Romancero containing sixty-three long ballads of his own,--about half of them taken from uncertain traditions, or from fables like those of Ariosto, and the others from the known history of Spain, which they follow down through the times of Charles the Fifth and the Flemish wars of Philip the Second. The Italian measures several times intrude, where they can produce only an awkward and incongruous effect; and the rest of the volume, not devoted to ballads,--except fifty villancicos, which are full of the old popular spirit,--is composed of poems in the Italian manner, that add nothing to its value.[38]
[38] “Romancero de Pedro de Padilla,” Madrid, 1583, 12mo. The ballads fill about three hundred and sixty pages. The first twenty-two are on the wars in Flanders; afterwards there are nine taken from Ariosto’s stories; then several on the story of Rodrigo de Narvaez, on Spanish traditions, etc.
Juan de la Cueva, finding the old national subjects thus seized upon by his predecessors, resorted, it would seem, from necessity, to the histories of Greece and Rome for his materials, and in 1587 published a volume containing above a hundred ballads, which he divided into ten books, placing nine of them under the protection of the nine Muses, and the other under that of Apollo. Their poetical merit is inconsiderable. The best are a few whose subjects are drawn from the old Castilian Chronicle, like that on the sad story of Doña Teresa, who, after being wedded against her will to the Moorish king of Toledo, was miraculously permitted to take refuge in a convent, rather than consummate her hated marriage with an infidel. Two ballads, however, in which the author gives an account of himself and of his literary undertakings, are more curious;--the latter containing an amusing account of some of the bad poets of his time.[39]
[39] Cueva, whom we have found in several other departments of Spanish literature, printed his ballads with the title of “Coro Febeo de Romances Historiales,” in his native city, Seville, 1587, 12mo,--a volume of nearly seven hundred pages. Only four or five are on Spanish subjects;--that on Doña Teresa (f. 215) being obviously taken from the “Crónica General,” Parte III. c. 22. The ballad addressed to his book, “Al Libro,” is at the end of the “Melpomene,” and is of value for his personal history.
The publication of the first part of “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by Hita, in 1595, containing about sixty ballads, some of them very old, and several of great poetical merit, increased, no doubt, the impulse which the frequent appearance of volumes of popular anonymous ballads continued to give to Spanish poetry in this attractive form.[40] This is yet more apparent in the new direction taken by ballad-writing, which from this time began to select particular subjects and address itself to separate classes of readers. Thus, in 1609, we have a volume of ballads in the dialect of the rogues, written in the very spirit of the vagabonds it represents, and collected by some one who concealed himself under the name of Juan Hidalgo;[41]--while in 1612, at the other extreme of the cycle, Valdivielso, the fashionable ecclesiastic, printed a large “Spiritual Ballad-book,” whose ballads are all on religious subjects, and all intended to promote habits of devotion.[42] In 1614 and 1622, Lope de Vega, always a lover of such poetry, gave to the religious world a collection of similar devout ballads, often reprinted afterwards;[43] and in 1629 and 1634, he contributed materials to two other collections of the same character,--the first anonymous, and entitled “A Bouquet of Divine Flowers”; and the other by Luis de Arellano, which, under the name of “Counsels for the Dying,” contains thirty ballads, several of which are by the principal poets of the time.[44]
[40] Hita’s “Guerras Civiles de Granada” will be noticed when I come to speak of romantic fiction.
[41] “Romances de Germanía,” 1609; reprinted, Madrid, 1789, 8vo. The words Germanía, Germano, etc., were applied to the jargon in which the rogues talked with one another. Hidalgo, who wrote only six of the ballads he published, gives at the end of his collection a vocabulary of this dialect, which is recognized as genuine by Mayans y Siscar, and reprinted in his “Orígenes”; so that the suggestion of Clemencin, which I have followed in the text, where I speak of Juan Hidalgo as a pseudonyme, may not be well founded;--a suggestion further discountenanced by the fact, that, in Tom. XXXVIII. of the Comedias Escogidas, 1672, the play of “Los Mozárabes de Toledo” is attributed to a Juan Hidalgo. That this had nothing to do with the Gypsies, though supposed, in the last edition, to have been connected with them, is shown in Borrow’s “Zincali,” London, 1841, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 143. Sandoval (Carlos V., Lib. III. § 38) more than once calls the rebellious Comuneros of Valencia a Germanía, or combination, which can leave little doubt about the origin of the word from Hermandad, Hermano,--brotherhood and brother,--though Covarrubias does not seem sure about it, in verb. Alemania.
[42] Valdivielso’s name occurs very often in the Aprobacion of books in the sixteenth century. His “Romancero Espiritual,” Valencia, 1689, 12mo, first printed 1612, was several times reprinted, and fills above three hundred and fifty pages. It is not quite all in the ballad measure or in a grave tone.
[43] In Lope’s Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIII. and XVII.
[44] “Ramillete de Divinas Flores para el Desengaño de la Vida Humana,” Amberes, 1629, 18mo, pp. 262. “Avisos para la Muerte, por L. de Arellano,” Zaragoza, 1634, 1648, etc., 18mo, 90 leaves. See, ante, p. 341, note.
Others, like Roca y Serna, wrote large numbers of ballads, but did not print them separately.[45] Those of the Prince Esquilache, some of which are excellent, amount to nearly three hundred. Antonio de Mendoza wrote about two hundred; and perhaps as many, in every possible variety of character, are scattered through the works of Quevedo; so that, by the middle of the seventeenth century, there can be no doubt that large and successful efforts had been made by the known authors of the period to continue the old ballad spirit by free contributions, both in separate volumes and in masses of ballads inserted among their other published works.
[45] The ballads of Roca y Serna, often disfigured by his Gongorism, are found in his “Luz del Alma,” Madrid, 1726, 12mo, first printed in 1634, and frequently since.
Meantime the old spirit itself had not been lost. The ballad-book known originally under the name of “Flor de Romances,” which we have already traced in its individual parts to five small volumes,--published between 1593 and 1597, in such widely different portions of Spain, that its materials were gathered from the soil of nearly the whole country,--continued to be valued, and was reprinted and enlarged, under the name of “El Romancero General,” four times; till, with the Ballad-book of 1550-1555, it comprehended nearly all the old ballads that had been preserved by tradition, together with not a few by Lope de Vega, Góngora, and other living authors. Out of these two vast storehouses, and from such other sources as could still yield suitable materials, smaller and more popular ballad-books were now selected and published. One appeared at Barcelona in 1582, and was reprinted there in 1602 and 1696, taken in a considerable degree from the collection of 1550, but containing, besides, ballads not found elsewhere, and among the rest, several on the history of the triple league and on the death of Philip the Second.[46] A ballad-book for “The Twelve Peers,” and their marvellous achievements, published for the first time in 1608, has continued to be a favorite ever since;[47] and four years afterwards appeared “The Ballad-Book of the Cid,” which has been printed and reprinted again and again, at home and abroad, down to our own times.[48] These were followed, in 1623, by the “Primavera,” or Spring of Ballads, by Perez, of which a second part was collected and published by Segura in 1629, comprehending together nearly three hundred;--most, but not all, of them known before, and many of them of great beauty.[49] And other ballad-books of the same sort, as well as these, continued to be printed in cheap forms for popular use till the old Castilian culture disappeared with the decay of the old national character.
[46] It is entitled “Silva de Varios Romances,” and contains the well-known ballads of the Conde d’ Irlos, the Marquis of Mantua, Gayferos, and the Conde Claros, with others, to the number of twenty-three, that are in the Ballad-book of 1550. Those on the death of Philip II. and Doña Isabel de la Paz are, of course, not in the first edition of this Silva. They occur in that of Barcelona, 1602, 18mo.
[47] “Floresta de Varios Romances, sacados de las Historias Antiguas de los Hechos Famosos de los Doce Pares de Francia,” Madrid, 1728, 18mo, first printed 1608. See Sarmiento, § 528, for its popularity; but the later ballads in the volume do not relate to the Twelve Peers.
[48] “Romancero y Historia del muy Valeroso Cavallero, el Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar, recopilado por Juan de Escobar,” Alcalá, 1612, 18mo, and many other editions, the most complete being that of Stuttgard, 1840, 12mo.
[49] Besides the editions of 1623 and 1629, I know that of Madrid, 1659, 18mo, in two parts, containing additions of satirical ballads, letrillas, etc., by Francisco de Segura.
But during the long period of a century and a half when this kind of poetry prevailed so widely in Spain, the ballads were not left to the formal Romanceros, whether anonymous, like the largest, or by known authors, like those of Sepúlveda and Cueva, nor even to persons who wrote them in great numbers and printed them in a separate department of their collected works, as did Prince Esquilache. On the contrary, between 1550 and 1700, hardly a Spanish poet can be found through whose works they are not scattered with such profusion, that the number of popular ballads that could be collected from them would, if brought together, greatly exceed in amount all that are found in the ballad-books proper. Many of the ballads which thus occur either separately or in small groups are picturesque and beautiful in the same way the elder ones are, though rarely to the same degree. Silvestre, Montemayor, Espinel, Castillejo, and, above all of his time, Lopez de Maldonado, wrote them with success, towards the end of the sixteenth century.[50] A little later, those of Góngora are admirable. Indeed, his more simple, childlike ballads, and those in which a gay, mischievous spirit is made to conceal a genuine tenderness, are unlike almost any of their class found elsewhere, and can hardly be surpassed.[51] But Góngora afterwards introduced the same affected and false style into this form of his poetry that he did into the rest, and was followed, with constantly increasing absurdities, by Arteaga, Pantaleon, Villamediana, Coronel, and the rest of his imitators, whose ballads are generally worse than any thing else they wrote, because, from the very simplicity and truth required by the proper nature of such compositions, they less tolerate an appearance of affectation.
[50] Lopez Maldonado was a friend of Cervantes, and his Cancionero (Madrid, 1586, 4to) was among the books in Don Quixote’s library. There is a beautiful ballad by him, (f. 35,) beginning,--
Ojos llenos de beldad, Apartad de vos la ira, Y no pagueis con mentira A los que os tratan verdad.
The other authors referred to in the text have been before noticed.
[51] Some of Góngora’s romantic ballads, like his “Angelica and Medoro,” and some of his burlesque ballads, are good; but the best are the simplest. There is a beautiful one, giving a discussion between a little boy and girl, how they will dress up and spend a holiday.
Cervantes, who was Góngora’s contemporary, tells us that he composed vast numbers which are now lost; and, from his own opinion of them, we have no reason to regret their fate. Lope’s, on the contrary, which he preserved with a care for his own reputation that was not at all characteristic of Cervantes, are still numerous and often excellent; especially those that relate to himself and his loves, some of the best of which seem to have been produced at Valencia and Lisbon.[52] At the same time and later, good ballads were written by Quevedo, who descended even to the style of the rogues in their composition; by Bernarda de Fereira, a nun in the romantic convent of Buzaco, in Portugal; by Rebolledo, the diplomatist; and perhaps, though with some hesitation, we should add, by Solís, the historian.[53] Indeed, wherever we turn, in the Spanish poetry of this period, we find ballads in all their varieties of tone and character,--often by authors otherwise little known, like Alarcon, who, in the end of the sixteenth century, wrote excellent devout ballads,[54] or Diego de la Chica, who is remembered only for a single satirical one, preserved by Espinosa in the beginning of the seventeenth;[55]--but we always find them in the works of those poets of note who desired to stand well with the mass of their countrymen.
[52] Cervantes speaks of his “numberless ballads” in his “Viage al Parnaso.” Those of Lope de Vega soon came into the popular ballad-books, if, indeed, some of the best of them were not, as I suspect, originally written for the “Flor de Romances” of Villalta, printed at Valencia in 1593, 18mo.
[53] Solís, “Poesías Sagradas y Humanas,” 1692, 1732, etc.
[54] “Vergel de Plantas Divinas, por Arcangel de Alarcon,” 1594.
[55] It is a ballad about money (Espinosa, Flores, 1605, f. 30), and is the only thing I know by Diego de la Chica. I might add ballads by other authors, which are found where they would least be looked for; like one of by Rufo, in his “Apotegmas,”--one by Jauregui, in his “Rimas,”--and a beautiful one by Camoens, (Rimas, 1598, f. 187,) worthy of Góngora, and beginning,--
Irme quiero, madre, A aquella galera, Con el marinero A ser marinera.
I long to go, dear mother mine, Aboard yon galley fair, With that young sailor that I love, His sailor life to share.
Nor could it be otherwise;--for ballads, in the seventeenth century, had become the delight of the whole Spanish people. The soldier solaced himself with them in his tent, and the muleteer amidst the sierras; the maiden danced to them on the green, and the lover sang them for his serenade; they entered into the low orgies of thieves and vagabonds, into the sumptuous entertainments of the luxurious nobility, and into the holiday services of the Church; the blind beggar chanted them to gather alms, and the puppet-showman gave them in recitative to explain his exhibition; they were a part of the very foundation of the theatre, both secular and religious, and the theatre carried them everywhere, and added everywhere to their effect and authority. No poetry of modern times has been so widely spread through all classes of society, and none has so entered into the national character. The ballads, in fact, seem to have been found on every spot of Spanish soil. They seem to have filled the very air that men breathed.[56]
[56] There is no need of authorities to prove the universal prevalence of ballads in the seventeenth century; for the literature of that century often reads like a mere monument of it. But if I wished to name any thing, it would be the Don Quixote, where Sancho is made to cite them so often; and the Novelas of Cervantes, especially “The Little Gypsy,” who sings her ballads in the houses of the nobles and the church of Santa María; and “Rinconete and Cortadillo,” where they make the coarse merriment of the thieves of Seville. Indeed, as the puppet-showman says, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 26,) “They were in the mouths of every body,--of the very boys in the streets.”
Chapter XXXIII
ROMANTIC FICTION.--CHANGE OF MANNERS PRODUCES A CHANGE OF THE FICTIONS FOUNDED UPON THEM.--PASTORAL ROMANCE AND ITS ORIGIN: MONTEMAYOR AND HIS DIANA, WITH ITS CONTINUATIONS BY PEREZ AND POLO: LO FRASSO, MONTALVO, CERVANTES, ENCISO, BOVADILLA, BERNARDO DE LA VEGA, LOPE DE VEGA, BALBUENA, FIGUEROA, ADORNO, BOTELHO, QUINTANA, CORRAL, SAAVEDRA.--CHARACTERISTICS OF PASTORAL FICTION.
The romances of chivalry, like the institutions on which they were founded, lingered long in Spain. Their grave fictions were suited to the air of the stern old castles with which the Moorish contest had studded large portions of the country, while their general tone harmonized no less happily with the stately manners which the spirit of knighthood had helped to impress on the higher classes of society, from the mountains of Biscay to the shores of the Mediterranean. Their influence, therefore, was great; and, as one natural result of its long continuance, other and better forms of prose fiction were discountenanced in Spain, or appeared later than they might have done under different circumstances;--a fact to which Cervantes alludes, when, even at the opening of the seventeenth century, he complains that Spanish books of the latter character were still rarely to be found.[57]
[57] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 28.
Fifty years, however, before that period, signs of a coming change are perceptible. The magnificent successes of Charles the Fifth had already filled the minds of men with a spirit of adventure very different from that of Amadis and his descendants, though sometimes hardly less wild and extravagant. The cruel wars unceasingly kept up with the Barbary powers, and the miseries of the thousands of captives who returned from Africa, to amaze their countrymen with tragical stories of their own trials and those of their fellow-sufferers, were full of that bitter romance of real life which outruns all fiction. Manners, too,--the old, formal, knightly manners of the nobility,--were beginning to be modified by intercourse with the rest of the world, and especially with Italy, then the most refined and least military country of Christendom; so that romantic fiction--the department of elegant literature, which, above every other, depends on the state of society--was naturally modified in Spain by the great changes going on in the external relations and general culture of the kingdom. Of this state of things, and of its workings in the new forms of fiction produced by it, we shall find frequent proofs as we advance.
* * * * *
The first form, however, in which a change in the national taste manifested itself with well-defined success--that of prose pastorals--is perhaps not one which would have been anticipated even by the more sagacious; though, when we now look back upon its history, we can easily discover some of the foundations on which it was originally built.
From the Middle Ages the occupations of a shepherd’s life had prevailed in Spain and Portugal to a greater extent than elsewhere in Europe;[58] and, probably in consequence of this circumstance, eclogues and bucolics were early known in the poetry of both countries, and became connected in both with the origin of the popular drama. On the other hand, the military spirit of such a civilization as existed in Spain down to the sixteenth century may have gladly turned away from such a monotonous exaggeration of its own character as is found in the romances of chivalry, and sought refreshment and repose in the peace and simplicity of a fabulous Arcadia. At least, these are the two obvious circumstances in the condition and culture of Spain, that favored the appearance of so singular a form of fiction as that of prose pastorals, though how much influence either exercised it may now be impossible to determine.
[58] The laws of the “Partidas,” about 1260, afford abundant illustrations of the extent and importance of the pastoral life in Spain at that period, and for a long time before.
On one point, however, we are not left in doubt. We know whence the impulse came that called forth such a work for the first time in Castilian literature, and when it appeared there. It was Sannazaro,--a Neapolitan gentleman, whose family had been carried from Spain to Naples by the political revolutions of the preceding century,--who is the true father of the modern prose pastoral, which, from him, passed directly to Spain, and, during a long period of success in that country, never entirely lost the character its author had originally impressed upon it. His “Arcadia”--written, probably, without any reference to the Greek pastoral of Longus, but hardly without a knowledge of the “Ameto” of Boccaccio and the Eclogues of Bembo--was first published entire, at Naples, in 1504.[59] It is a genuine pastoral romance in prose and verse, in which, with a slight connecting narrative, and under the disguise of the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses, Sannazaro relates adventures that really occurred to him and to some of his friends;--he himself appearing under the name of Sincero, who is its principal personage. Such a work, of course, is somewhat fantastic from its very nature; but the fiction of Sannazaro was written in the purest and most graceful Italian, and had a great success;--a success which, perhaps, from the Spanish connections of his family, was early extended to Spain. At any rate, Spain was the first foreign country where the Arcadia was imitated, and was afterwards the only one where such works appeared in large numbers, and established a lasting influence.
[59] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Tom. X., par Salvi, pp. 87, 92.
It is singular, however, that, like the romances of chivalry, pastoral romance was first introduced into Spain by a Portuguese,--by George of Montemayor, a native of the town of that name, near Coimbra. When he was born we are not told; probably it was before 1520. In his youth he was a soldier; but later, from his skill in music, he became attached to the travelling chapel of the prince of Spain, afterwards Philip the Second, and thus enjoyed an opportunity of visiting foreign countries, especially Italy and Flanders. But his mind was little cultivated by study. He knew no Latin, which even those of the humblest literary attainments were wont to acquire, in the age when he lived; so that his success is due to his own genius and to the promptings of that passion which gave its color to his life. Probably he left Spain from disappointment in love; probably, too, he perished in a duel at Turin, in 1561. But we know nothing more of him with any tolerable certainty.[60]
[60] Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Tom. II. p. 809, and the Prólogo to the Diana of Perez, ed. 1614, p. 362.
His “Diana Enamorada,” the chief of his works, was first printed at Valencia, in 1542.[61] It is written in good Castilian, like his poetry, which is published separately, though, like that, with some intermixture of his native Portuguese;[62] and it contains, as he tells us, stories of adventures which really occurred.[63] We know, too, that, under the name of Sereno, he was himself its hero; and Lope de Vega adds, that Diana, its heroine, was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, a town near the city of Leon.[64] Montemayor’s purpose, therefore, like that of Sannazaro, is to give, in the forms of a pastoral romance, an account of some events in his own life and in the lives of a few of his friends. To effect this, he brings together on the banks of the Ezla, at the foot of the mountains of Leon, a number of shepherds and shepherdesses, who relate their respective stories through seven books of prose, intermingled with verse. But the two principal personages, Sereno and Diana, who are introduced at first as lovers, are separated by magic; and the romance is brought to an abrupt conclusion, little conformable to all the previous intimations, by the marriage of Diana to Delio, the unworthy rival of Sereno.
[61] I have never seen any edition of the Diana cited earlier than that of Madrid, 1545; but I possess one in 4to, 112 leaves, well printed at Valencia, in 1542, without the name of the printer. The story of Narvaez, of which I shall have occasion to speak when we come to Antonio Villegas, does not stand in the fourth book of this copy, as it does in the copies of subsequent editions. The Diana of Montemayor was so popular, that at least sixteen editions of the original appeared in eighty years; six French translations, according to Gordon de Percel (Bib. de l’Usage des Romans, Paris, 1734, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 23, 24); two German, according to Ebert; and one English. The last, by Bartholomew Yong, (London, 1598, folio,) is excellent, and some of its happy versions of the poetry of Montemayor are found in “England’s Helicon,” 1600 and 1614, reprinted in the third volume of the “British Bibliographer,” London, 1810, 8vo. The story of Proteus and Julia, in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” was supposed by Mrs. Lenox and Dr. Farmer to be taken from that of Felismena, in the second book of Montemayor’s Diana, and therefore Collier has republished Yong’s translation of the last in the second volume of his “Shakspeare’s Library,” (London, s. a. 8vo,) though he doubts whether Shakspeare were really indebted to it. Malone’s Shakspeare, Boswell’s ed., London, 1821, 8vo, Vol. IV. p. 3, and Brydges, Restituta, London, 1814, 8vo, Vol. I. p. 498. Poor abridgments of the Diana of Montemayor, and of Polo’s Continuation, were published at London, 1738, 12mo.
[62] Sometimes he wrote in both languages at once; at least, he did so in his Cancionero, 1588, f. 81, where is a sonnet which may be read either as Spanish or as Portuguese.
[63] In his Argumento to the whole romance.
[64] Dorotea, Act II. Sc. 2. Obras Sueltas, Tom. VII. p. 84.
On first reading the Diana of Montemayor, it is not easy to understand it. The separate stories of which it is composed are so involved with each other, and so inartificially united, that we are constantly losing the thread of the principal narration;--a difficulty which is much increased by the mixture of true and false geography, heathenism, magic, Christianity, and all the various contradictory impossibilities that naturally follow an attempt to place in the heart of Spain, and near one of its best-known cities, a poetical Arcadia, that never existed anywhere. The Diana, however, better merits the name of a romance than the Arcadia, which served for its model. Its principal fiction is ampler and more ingeniously constructed. Its episodes are more interesting. Much of it is warm with the tenderness of a disappointed attachment, which, no doubt, caused the whole to be written. Some of the poetry is beautiful, especially the lyric poetry; and if its prose style is not so pure as that of Sannazaro, it is still to be remarked for its grace and richness. Notwithstanding its many defects, therefore, the Diana is not without an interest for us even at this remote period, when the whole class of fictions to which it belongs is discountenanced and almost forgotten; and we feel that only poetical justice was done to it when it was saved, by the good taste of the curate, in the destruction of Don Quixote’s library.
The Diana, as has been intimated, was left unfinished by its author; but in 1564, three years after his death, Alonso Perez, a physician of Salamanca, to whom Montemayor, before he finally left Spain, had communicated his plan for completing it, published a second part, which opens in the enchanted palace of Felicia, where the first ends, and gives us the adventures and stories of several shepherds and shepherdesses, not introduced before, as well as a continuation of the original fiction. But this second part, like the first, fails to complete the romance. It advances no farther than to the death of Delio, the husband of Diana,--which, according to the purpose of Montemayor, was to have been followed by her union with Sereno, her first and true lover,--and then stops abruptly, with the promise of yet a third part, which never appeared. Nor was it, probably, demanded with any earnestness; for the second, protracted through seven books, and considerably longer than its predecessor, is much inferior to it in merit. It lacks, in all its many stories, the tenderness which the disappointment of Montemayor had given to the first portion of the work; and, what perhaps is of no less consequence in this kind of composition, the prose is heavy and monotonous, and the verse worse.[65]
[65] The first edition cited (Ant., Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 539) is of 1564, and I know of but one other, that which I have, Barcelona, 1614, 12mo; though I have seen one without a title-page, which may be different from both. At any rate, its editions were few, and its popularity was small. It was, however, translated into French, and by Bart. Yong into English; and was printed in the original more than once with the Diana of Montemayor.
But this unfortunate attempt was not the only consequence of Montemayor’s success. The same year with that in which the work of Perez was published, another continuation appeared at Valencia, by Gaspar Gil Polo, a gentleman of that city, who was a Professor of Greek in its University.[66] The Diana of Polo has the merit of being shorter than either of its predecessors. It is divided into five books, and contains an account of the falsehood and death of Delio, and the marriage of Diana to Sereno, whom she finds when she is seeking the husband who had basely abandoned her for another shepherdess. Several episodes and much pastoral poetry of different kinds are skilfully inserted; but though the original plan of Montemayor seems to be completed, the book ends with the promise of a still further continuation, which, though the author lived nearly thirty years after he made it, seems never to have been written.[67] His work, however, was successful. Its prose has always found favor, and so have some portions of its verse; especially the cancion of Nerea in the third book, and several of the shorter poems in the last.[68]
[66] Polo’s “Diana Enamorada” was first printed in 1564, and seven editions of the original appeared in half a century, with two French translations and a Latin one; the last by Caspar Barth. It is well translated by Bart. Yong, as the third part of the Diana, in the same volume with the others; but is really the second part.
[67] There is, however, a third part to the Diana of Montemayor, written by Hier. Texada, and printed at Paris, 1627, 8vo, of which a copy in the Royal Library at Paris is cited by Ebert, but I have never seen it.
[68] The best edition of Gil Polo’s Diana is that with a life of him by Cerdá, Madrid, 1802, 12mo; particularly valuable for the notes to the “Canto de Turia,” in which, imitating the “Canto de Orfeo,” where Montemayor gives an account of the famous ladies of his time, Polo gives an account of the famous poets of Valencia. For lives of Polo see, also, Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 270, and Fuster, Bib. Valentina, Tom. I. p. 150. It is singular that Polo, who had such success with his Diana, should have printed nothing else, except one or two short and trifling poems.
The “Ten Books of Fortune and Love,” by Antonio de Lo Frasso, a Sardinian and a soldier, published in 1573, is the next Spanish romance of the same class with the Diana; but it is without merit, and was forgotten soon after it appeared.[69] Nine years later, in 1582, a better one was published,--the “Fílida,”--which passed early through five editions, and is still valued and read.[70] Its author, Luis Galvez de Montalvo, was born in Guadalaxara, a town near Alcalá, the birthplace of Cervantes; and, perhaps from this circumstance, they soon became acquainted, for they were long friends, and often praised each other in their respective works.[71] They seem, however, to have had very different characters; for, instead of the life of adventure led by Cervantes, Montalvo attached himself to the great family of Infantado, descended from the Marquis of Santillana, and passed most of his life as a sort of idle courtier and retainer in their ducal halls, near the place of his nativity. Subsequently he went to Italy, where he translated and published, in 1587, “The Tears of Saint Peter,” by Tansillo, and had begun a translation of the “Jerusalem Delivered” of Tasso, when he was cut off in the midst of his labors by an accidental death, in Sicily, about the year 1591.[72]
[69] 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.
[70] The best edition of the “Fílida” is the sixth, (Madrid, 1792, 8vo,) with a biographical prologue by Mayans y Siscar; ill-digested, as are all his similar prefaces, but not without valuable matter.
[71] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 66, 278, 407.
[72] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 77, and Tom. XI. p. xxviii. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 146, and Tom. III. p. 14, in the notes. The “Tears” of Tansillo enjoyed the honor of being four times translated into Spanish.
His “Fílida,” in seven parts, was written while he was attached to the Duke of Infantado; for he announces himself on the title-page as “a gentleman and a courtier,” and, in his Dedication to one of the family, says that “his greatest labor is to live idle, contented, and honored as one of the servants of their house.” The romance contains, as was usual in such works, the adventures of living and known personages, among whom were Montalvo himself, Cervantes, and the nobleman to whom it is dedicated. But the tone of pastoral life is not better preserved than it is in the other fictions of the same class. Indeed, in the sixth part, there is a most inappropriate critical discussion on the merits of the two schools of Spanish poetry then contending for fashionable mastery; and in the seventh is a courtly festival, with running at the ring, in which the shepherds appear on horseback with lances and armorial bearings, like knights. The prose style of the whole is pure and good; and among the poems with which it abounds, a few in the old Spanish measure may be selected that are nearly, if not quite, equal to the similar poems of Montemayor.
Cervantes, too, as we have already noticed, was led by the spirit of the times, rather, perhaps, than by his own taste, to begin--as an offering to the lady of his love--the “Galatea,” of which the first six books, published in 1584, were all that ever appeared.[73] This was followed, in 1586, by “Truth for the Jealous”; again a romance in six books, and, like the last, unfinished. It was written by Bartolomé Lopez de Enciso, of whom we know from himself that he was a young man when he wrote it, and that it was his purpose to publish a second part, of which, however, nothing more was heard. Nor can we regret that he failed to fulfil his promise. His fictions, which are occupied chiefly with the nymphs and shepherds of the Tagus, are among the most confused and unmeaning that have ever been attempted. His scene is laid, from its opening, in the days of the most ancient Greek mythology; but the Genius of Spain, in the fifth book, carries the same shepherds who thus figure in the first to a magnificent temple, and shows them the statues of Charles the Fifth, of Philip the Second, and even of Philip the Third, who was not yet on the throne;--thus confounding the earliest times of classical antiquity with an age which, at the end of the sixteenth century, was yet to come. Other inconsequences follow, in great numbers, as matters of course, while nothing in either the prose or the poetry is of value enough to compensate for the absurdities in the story. Indeed, few portions of Spanish literature show any thing more stiff and wearisome than the long declamations and discussions in this dull fiction.[74]
[73] Ante, Vol. II, pp. 61-64.
[74] “Desengaño de Celos, compuesto por Bartholomé Lopez de Enciso, Natural de Tendilla,” Madrid, 1586, 12mo, 321 leaves. There is, I believe, absolutely nothing known of the author, except what he tells us of himself in this romance;--an extremely rare book, of which I possess the copy that belonged to Cerdá y Rico, and which Pellicer borrowed of him to make the needful note on Enciso for his edition of Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6.
Another pastoral romance in six books, entitled “The Nymphs of the Henares,” by Bernardo Gonzalez de Bovadilla, was printed in 1587. The author, who was a native of the Canary Islands, confesses that he has placed the scene of his story on the banks of the Henares without having ever seen them; but both he and his romance have long since been forgotten. So has “The Shepherds of Iberia,” in four books, by Bernardo de la Vega, supposed to have been a native of Madrid, and certainly a canon of Tucuman, in Peru, whose ill-written story appeared in 1591. But that these, and all that preceded them, enjoyed for a time the public favor is made plain by the fact, that they are all found in the library of Don Quixote, and that three of them receive high praise from Cervantes;--much higher than has been confirmed by the decision of subsequent generations.[75]
[75] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte I. Tom. I. p. 67, and ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 144.
Some time, however, elapsed before another came to continue the series, except the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, which, though written long before, was not printed till 1598.[76] At last, “The Age of Gold,” by Bernardo de Balbuena, appeared. Its author, born on the vine-clad declivities of the Val de Peñas, in 1568, early accompanied his family to Mexico, where he was educated, and where, when only seventeen years old, he was already known as a poet. Once, at least, he visited his native country, and perhaps oftener; but he seems to have spent most of his life, either in Jamaica, where he enjoyed an ecclesiastical benefice, or in Puerto Rico, of which he was afterwards bishop, and where he died in 1627.
[76] Ante, Vol. II. p. 125. Perhaps the “Enamorada Elisea” of Gerónimo de Covarrubias Herrera, printed in 1594, 8vo, should also be excepted; but I know this work only from the title of it in Antonio.
Of the manners of the New World, however, or of its magnificent scenery, his “Age of Gold in the Woods of Eriphile” shows no trace. It was printed at Madrid, in 1608, and might have been written, if its author had never been in any other city. But it is not without merit. The poetry with which it abounds is generally of the Italian school, but is much better than can be found in most of these doubtful romances; and its prose, though sometimes affected, is oftener sweet and flowing. Probably nothing in the nine eclogues--as its divisions are unsuitably called--is connected with either the history or the scandal of the times; and if this be the case, we have, perhaps, an explanation of the fact that it was less regarded by those contemporary with its publication than were similar works of inferior merit. But whatever may have been the cause, it was long overlooked; no second edition of it being demanded till 1821, when it received the rare honor of being published anew by the Spanish Academy.[77]
[77] The prefatory notice to this edition contains all that is known of Balbuena.
The very next year after the first appearance of “The Age of Gold,” Christóval Suarez de Figueroa, a native of Valladolid, a jurist and a soldier, published his “Constant Amaryllis, in Four Discourses,” crowded, like all its predecessors, with short poems, and, like most of them, claiming to tell a tale not a little of which was true.[78] Its author, who lived a great deal in Italy, was already known by an excellent translation of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido,”[79] and published, at different times afterwards, several original works which enjoyed much reputation.[80]
[78] There was an edition with a French translation in 1614, but the best is that of Madrid, 1781, 8vo.
[79] It was first printed, I believe, at Naples, in 1602, but was improved in the edition at Valencia, 1609, 12mo, pp. 278, from which I transcribe the opening of Act III.:--
O primavera, juventud del año, Nueva madre de flores, De nuevas yervezillas y d’ amores, Tu buelves, mas contigo No buelven los serenos Y aventurosos dias de mis gustos; Tu buelves, sí, tu buelves, Mas contigo no torna Sino la remembrança Miserable y doliente De mi caro tesoro ya perdido. p. 94.
This passage is so nearly word for word, that it is not worth while to copy the Italian, and yet its fluency and ease are admirable.
There is a translation of the “Pastor Fido,” by a Jewess, Doña Isabel de Correa, of which I know only the third edition, that of Antwerp, 1694, 12mo. It is one of the few trophies in poetry claimed by the fair sex of its author’s faith; but it is not worthy of much praise. Ginguené complains of the original, which extends to seven thousand lines, for being too long. It is so; but this translation of Doña Isabel is much longer, containing, I think, above eleven thousand lines. Its worst fault, however, is its bad taste. There is a drama with the same title, “El Pastor Fido,” in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. VIII., 1657, f. 106;--but, though it is said to be written by three poets no less famous than Solís, Coello, and Calderon, it has very little value.
[80] Antonio (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 251) gives a list of nine of the works of Figueroa, some of which must be noticed under their respective heads; but it is probably not complete, for Figueroa himself, in 1617, (Pasagero, f. 377,) says he had already published seven books, and Antonio gives only six before that date; besides which, a friend, in the Preface to Figueroa’s Life of the Marquis of Cañete, 1613, says he had written eight works in the ten years then preceding.
But he seems to have been a man of an unkind and unfaithful character. In a curious account of his own life which appeared in his “Traveller,” he speaks harshly and insidiously of many of his contemporaries; and towards Cervantes--who had just died, after praising every body most generously during his whole life--he is absolutely malignant.[81] His last work is dated in 1621, and this is the last fact we know in relation to him. His “Amaryllis,” which, as he intimates, was composed to please a person of great consideration, did not satisfy its author.[82] It is, however, written in an easy and tolerably pure style; and though it contains formal and wearisome discussions, like that in the first part on Poetry, and awkward machinery, such as a vision of Venus and her court in the second, it is the only one of his works that has been reprinted or much read within the last century.
[81] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 179-181, and elsewhere. The very curious notices given by Figueroa of his own life, which have never been used for his biography, are in his “Pasagero,” from f. 286 to f. 392, and are, like many other passages of that singular book, full of bitterness towards his contemporaries, Lope de Vega, Villegas, Espinosa, etc.
[82] Pasagero, f. 96. b.
A few pastoral romances appeared in Spain after the Amaryllis, but none of so much merit, and none that enjoyed any considerable degree of favor. Espinel Adorno;[83] Botelho, a Portuguese;[84] Quintana, who assumed the name of Cuevas;[85] Corral;[86] and Saavedra,[87] close up the series;--the last bringing us down to just about a century from the first appearance of such fictions in the time of Montemayor, and all of them infected with the false taste of the period. Taken together, they leave no doubt that pastoral romance was the first substitute in Spain for the romances of chivalry, and that it inherited no small degree of their popularity. Most of the works we have noticed were several times reprinted, and the “Diana” of Montemayor, the first and best of them all, was probably more read in Spain during the sixteenth century than any Spanish work of amusement except the “Celestina.”
[83] “El Premio de la Constancia y Pastores de Sierra Bermeja, por Jacinto de Espinel Adorno,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo, 162 leaves. I find no notice of it, except the slight one in Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 613; but it is not worse than some that were more valued.
[84] “El Pastor de Clenarda de Miguel Botelho de Cavalho,” Madrid, 1622, 8vo. He wrote, also, several other works; all in Castilian, except his “Filis,” a poem in octave stanzas. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. III. p. 466.
[85] “Experiencias de Amor y Fortuna, por el Licenciado Francisco de las Cuevas de Madrid,” Barcelona, 1649, 12mo. See, also, Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. pp. 172 and 189. Francisco de Quintana dedicated this pastoral to Lope de Vega, who wrote him a complimentary reply, in which he treats Quintana as a young man, and this as his first work. There were editions of it in 1626, 1646, 1654, as well as the one at Barcelona, above noted, and one at Madrid, 1666, 12mo; and in the nineteenth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas, pp. 353-400, is a sermon which Quintana delivered at the obsequies of Lope, in the title of which he is called Lope’s “intimate friend.”
[86] “La Cintia de Aranjuez, Prosas y Versos, por Don Gabriel de Corral, Natural de Valladolid,” Madrid, 1629, 12mo, 208 leaves. I know of no other edition. He lived in Rome from 1630 to 1632, and probably longer. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 505.) He is Gongoresque in his style, as is Quintana.
[87] “Los Pastores del Betis, por Gonzalvo de Saavedra,” Trani, 1633, 4to, pp. 289. It seems to have been written in Italy; but we know nothing of its author, except that he was a Veintiquatro of Córdova. His style is affected. In my copy, which in the colophon is dated 1634, there are, as a separate tract, four leaves of religious and moral advice to the author’s son, when he was going as governor to one of the provinces of Naples; better written than the romance that precedes it.
All this seems remarkable and strange, when we consider only the absurdities and inconsequences with which such fictions necessarily abound. But there is another side to the question, which should not be overlooked. Pastoral romance, after all, has its foundation in one of the truest and deepest principles of our common nature,--that love of rural beauty, of rural peace, in short, of whatever goes to constitute a country life, as distinguished from the constrained life of a city, which few are too dull to feel, and fewer still so artificial as wholly to reject. It has, therefore, prevailed more or less in all modern countries, as we may see in Italy, from the success that followed Sannazaro; in France, from the “Astrea” of Durfé; and in England, from the “Arcadia” of Sir Philip Sidney;--the two latter being pastoral romances of enormous length, compared with any in Spanish; and the very last enjoying for above a century a popularity which may well be compared with that of the “Diana” of Montemayor, if, indeed, it did not equal it.[88]
[88] Portugal might have been added. The “Menina é Moça” of Bernardino Ribeyro, printed 1557, is a beautiful fragment; and the “Primaveira” of Francisco Rodriguez de Lobo, in three long parts, printed between 1601 and 1614,--the first of which was translated into Spanish by Juan Bart. Morales, 1629,--is among the best full-length pastoral romances extant. Both for a long time were favorites in Portugal, and are still read there. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. I. p. 518, Tom. II. p. 242.
No doubt, in Spain, as elsewhere, the incongruities of such fictions were soon perceived. Even some of those who most indulged in them showed that it was not entirely from a misapprehension of their nature. Cervantes, who died regretting that he should leave his “Galatea” unfinished, still makes himself merry more than once in his “Don Quixote” with all such fancies; and, in his “Colloquy of the Dogs,” permits one of them, who had been in shepherd service, to satirize the false exhibition of life in the best pastorals of his time, not forgetting his own among the rest.[89] Lope de Vega, too, though he published his “Arcadia” under circumstances which show that he set a permanent value upon its gentle tales, could still, in a play where shepherds are introduced, make one of them--who found a real life among flocks and herds in rough weather much less agreeable than the life he had read of in the pastorals--say, when suffering in a storm,--
[89] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, in the examination of the library, where his niece begs that the pastorals may be burnt as well as the books of chivalry, lest, if her uncle were cured of knight-errantry, he should go mad as a shepherd;--and Parte II. c. 67 and 73, where her fears are very nigh being realized.
And I should like just now to see those men Who write such books about a shepherd’s life, Where all is spring and flowers and trees and brooks.[90]
[90] Comedias, Parte VI., Madrid, 1615, 4to, f. 102. El Cuerdo en su Casa, Act. I.
Still, neither Cervantes, nor Lope, nor any body else in their time, thought seriously of discountenancing pastoral fictions. On the contrary, there was in their very style--which was generally an imitation of the Italian, that gave birth to them all--something attractive to a cultivated Castilian ear, at a time when the school of Garcilasso was at the height of its popularity and favor. Besides this, the real events they recorded, and the love-stories of persons in high life that they were known to conceal, made them sometimes riddles and sometimes masquerades, which engaged the curiosity of those who moved in the circles either of their authors or of their heroes and heroines.[91] But more than all, the glimpses they afforded of nature and truth--such genuine and deep tenderness as is shown by Montemayor, and such graceful descriptions of natural scenery as abound in Balbuena--were, no doubt, refreshing in a state of society stiff and formal as was that at the Spanish court in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, and in the midst of a culture more founded on military virtues and the spirit of knighthood than any other of modern times. As long, therefore, as this state of things continued, pastoral fictions and fancies, filled with the dreams of a poetical Arcadia, enjoyed a degree of favor in Spain which they never enjoyed anywhere else. But when this disappeared, they disappeared with it.
[91] “The Diana of Montemayor,” says Lope de Vega, in the passage from his “Dorotea” already cited, (n. [64],) “was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, near Leon, and he has made both her and the river Ezla immortal. So the Fílida of Montalvo, the Galatea of Cervantes, and the Filis of Figueroa, were real personages.” Others might be added, on the authority of their authors, such as “Los Diez Libros de Fortuna y Amor,” “La Cintia de Aranjuez,” etc. See a note of Clemencin, Don Quixote, Tom. VI. p. 440.
Chapter XXXIV
ROMANCES IN THE STYLE OF ROGUES.--STATE OF MANNERS THAT PRODUCED THEM.--MENDOZA’S LAZARILLO DE TORMES.--ALEMAN’S GUZMAN DE ALFARACHE, WITH THE SPURIOUS CONTINUATION OF IT BY SAYAVEDRA AND THE TRUE ONE BY ALEMAN.--PEREZ.--ESPINEL AND HIS MARCOS DE OBREGON.--YAÑEZ.--QUEVEDO.--SOLORZANO.--ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ.--ESTEVANILLO GONZALEZ.
The next form of prose fiction produced in Spain, and the one which, from its greater truth, has enjoyed a more permanent regard than the last, is found in those stories that have commonly gone under the name of “tales in the gusto picaresco,” or tales in the style of rogues. Taken as a class, they constitute a singular exhibition of character, and are, in fact, as separate and national in their air as any thing in the whole body of modern literature.
Their origin is obvious, and the more so from what is most singular in their character. They sprang directly from the condition of some portions of society in Spain when they appeared;--a condition, it should be added, which has existed there ever since, and contributed to preserve for the stories that bear its impress no little of the favor they have always enjoyed. Before speaking of them in detail, we must, therefore, notice the peculiar circumstances of the country, and the peculiar state of manners that gave them birth.
The wars of the opposing races and religions, that had constituted so much of the business of life, and so long engrossed the thoughts of men, in Spain, had, indeed, nearly ceased from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. But the state of character they had produced in the Spanish people had by no means ceased with them. On the contrary, it had been kept in the freshest activity by those vast enterprises which Charles the Fifth had pushed forward in Italy, France, and Germany, with such success, that the Spanish nation, always marked by a sanguine enthusiasm, had become fully persuaded that it was destined to achieve an empire which, covering the whole of the New World and whatever was most desirable in the Old, should surpass in glory and power the empire of the Cæsars in the days of its palmiest supremacy.
This magnificent result was a matter of such general faith, that men often felt a desire to contribute their personal exertions to accomplish it. Not only the high nobility of Spain, therefore, but all cavaliers and men of honor who sought distinction, saw, with the exception of places in the civil administration of affairs or in the Church, no road open before them on which they were so much tempted to enter as that of military enterprise. Laborious occupation in the business of common life and practical and productive industry were, in consequence, discountenanced, or held in contempt, while the armies were thronged, and multitudes of gentlemen and men of culture, like Cervantes and Lope de Vega, gladly served in them as simple soldiers.
But large as were the armies of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, all who desired it could not be soldiers. Many persons of decent condition, therefore, remained idle, because they found no occupation which was not deemed below their rank in society; while others, having made an experiment of military life sufficient to disgust them with its hardships, returned home unfitted for every thing else. These two sorts of persons formed a class of idlers that hung loose upon society in the principal cities of Spain, thriving at best by flattery and low intrigue, and sometimes driven for subsistence to crime. Their number was by no means small. They were known and marked wherever they went; and their characters, represented with much spirit, and often with great faithfulness, are still to be recognized in the proud, starving cavaliers of Mendoza and Quevedo, who stalk about the streets upon adventure, or crowd the antechamber of the minister, and weary his patience with their abject supplications for the meanest places it is in his power to bestow.
But there was yet another body of persons in Spain, nearly akin to the last in spirit, though differing from them in their original position, who figure no less in this peculiar form of fiction. They were the active, the shrewd, and the unscrupulous of the lower portions of society;--men who were able to perceive that the resources and power of the country, with all the advantages they desired to reach, were already in possession of an aristocratic caste, who looked to them for nothing but a sincere and faithful loyalty. During a long period,--the period of danger and trouble at home,--the fidelity of this class had been complete and unhesitating; bringing with it little feeling of wrong, and perhaps no sense of degradation; for such men, in such times, claimed from their superiors only protection, and, receiving this, asked for nothing else.
At last, however, other prospects opened upon them. Peace came gradually, as the Moors were driven out; and with it came a sense of independence and personal rights, which sometimes expressed itself in social restlessness, as in the frequent troubles at the universities; and sometimes, as in the wars of the Comuneros, in open rebellion. Contemporary, too, with these upward struggles of the masses of the people, which were always successfully rebuked and repressed, came the conquests in America, pouring such floods of wealth as the world had never before seen upon a country that had for ages been one of the poorest and most suffering in Europe. The easily got treasure--which was at first only in the hands of military adventurers or of those who had obtained grants of office and territory in the New World--was scattered as lightly as it was won. The shrewd and unprincipled of the less favored classes, therefore, soon learned to gather round its possessors, as they came home with their tempting burdens, and found ready means to profit by the golden shower that fell on all sides, with a profusion which carried an unhealthy action through every division of society. Little, however, could be obtained by men so humble and in a position so false, except by the arts of cunning and flattery. Cunning and flattery, therefore, were soon called forth among them in great abundance. The wealth of the Indies was a rich compost, that brought up parasites and rogues with other noxious weeds; and Paul, the son of a barber, and nephew of a hangman; Cortadillo, a young thief, whose father was a village tailor; and Little Lazarus, who could never settle his genealogy to his own satisfaction, became, in the literature of their country, the permanent representatives of their class;--a class well known under the degrading name of the Catariberas,[92] or the gayer one of Pícaros.
[92] For these low, vagabond attorneys, or jackals of attorneys,--the Catariberas,--see, ante, Vol. I. p. 519, and note.
The first instance of a fiction founded on this state of things was, as we have already seen, the “Lazarillo de Tórmes” of Mendoza, which was published as early as 1554; a bold, unfinished sketch of the life of a rogue, from the very lowest condition in society. This was followed, forty-five years afterwards, by the “Guzman de Alfarache” of Mateo Aleman, the most ample portraiture of the class to which it belongs that is to be found in Spanish literature. What induced Aleman to write it we do not know. Indeed, we know little about him, except that he was a native of Seville, and wrote three or four other works of less consequence than this tale; that he was long employed in the treasury department of the government, and subjected to a vexatious suit at law in consequence of it; and that at last, retiring of his own choice to private life, he visited Mexico in 1609, and devoted the remainder of his days, either there or in Spain, to letters.[93] He may, at some period, have been a soldier; for one of his friends, in a eulogium prefixed to the second part of “Guzman de Alfarache,” sums up his character by saying that “never soldier had a poorer purse or a richer heart, or a life more unquiet and full of trouble, than his was; and all because he accounted it a greater honor to be a poor philosopher than a rich flatterer.”
[93] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Article Matthæus Aleman; and Salvá, Repertorio Americano, 1827, Tom. III. p. 65. For his troubles with the government, see Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” 1819, p. 441. He seems to have been old when he went to Mexico; and Don Adolfo de Castro, at the end of the “Buscapié,” 1848, gives us a letter, dated at Seville, April 20th, 1607, from Aleman to Cervantes, of whose origin or discovery we receive no account whatever, and into which its author seems to have thrust all the proverbs and allusions he could collect;--none, however, so obscure that the curious learning of Don Adolfo cannot elucidate them. The whole letter is a complaint of Aleman’s own hard fortune, and a prediction of that of Cervantes, ending with a declaration of the purpose of its writer to go to Mexico. It does not seem to me to be genuine; but if it is, it gives the coup de grace to Clemencin’s conjectures, in his notes to both the first and second part of Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 22, and Parte II. c. 4,) that Cervantes intended to speak slightingly of the “Guzman de Alfarache”;--a conjecture not to be sustained, if the relations of Cervantes with Aleman were as friendly as this letter, published by Don Adolfo de Castro, implies.
But whatever he may have been, or whatever he may have suffered, his claims to be remembered are now centred in his “Guzman de Alfarache.” As it has reached us, it is divided into two parts, the first of which was published at Madrid, in 1599. Its hero, who supposed himself to be the son of a decayed and not very reputable Genoese merchant established at Seville, escapes, as a boy, from his mother, after his father’s ruin and death, and plunges into the world upon adventure. He soon finds himself at Madrid, though not till he has passed through the hands of the officers of justice; and there undergoes all sorts of suffering, serving as a scullion to a cook, and as a ragged errand-boy to whomsoever would employ him; until, seizing a good opportunity, he steals a large sum of money that had been intrusted to him, and escapes to Toledo, where he sets up for a gentleman. But there he becomes, in his turn, the victim of a cunning like his own; and, finding his money nearly gone, enlists for the Italian wars. His star is now on the wane. At Barcelona, he again turns sharper and thief. At Genoa and Rome, he sinks to the lowest conditions of a street beggar. But a cardinal picks him up in the last city and makes him his page; a place in which, but for his bold frauds and tricks, he might long have thriven, and which at last he leaves in great distress, from losses at play, and enters the service of the French ambassador.
Here the first part ends. It was very successful; falling in with the vices and humors of the times, just as the loose court of Philip the Third, and the corrupting influences of his favorite, the Duke of Lerma, came to offer a sort of carnival to folly and vice, after the hypocrisy and constraints of the last dark years of Philip the Second. The Guzman, therefore, within a twelve-month after it appeared, passed through three editions; and, in less than six years, through twenty-six, besides being translated into French and Italian.[94] It was imitated, too, in a second part by some unknown person, probably by Juan Marti, a Valencian advocate, who disguised himself under the name of Mateo Luxan de Sayavedra, and published in 1603 what he boldly called a continuation of the Guzman.[95] But it was a base attempt, which, though not without literary merit, brought upon its author the just reproaches of Aleman, who intimates that his own manuscripts had been improperly used in its composition, and the just sarcasm of Aleman’s friend, Luis de Valdes, who exposed the meanness of the whole fraud.
[94] The first three editions, those of Madrid, Barcelona, and Saragossa, are well known, and are all of 1599; but most of the remaining three-and-twenty rest on the authority of Valdes, in a letter prefixed to the first edition of the second part, (Valencia, 1605, 12mo,) an authority, however, which there seems no sufficient reason to question, remarkable as the story is. Valdes says expressly, “The number of printed volumes exceeds fifty thousand, and the number of impressions that have come to my notice is twenty-six.”
[95] This continuation, not quite so long as the first part of the original work, was printed at Madrid, 1846, 8vo, in the third volume of the “Biblioteca” of Aribau. Previously, it had been hardly known in literary history, and much overlooked by the bibliographers; Ebert, who had found some traces of it, attributing it to Aleman himself, and considering it as a true second part of the Guzman. But this is a mistake. Both Aleman himself and his friend Valdes are explicit on the subject, in their epistles prefixed to the first edition of the second part;--Valdes declaring that the author of the continuation in question was “a Valencian, who, falsifying his own name, called himself Mateo Luxan, to assimilate himself to Mateo Aleman.” Aleman himself says he was obliged to rewrite his second part, because he had, through a prodigal communication of his papers, been robbed and defrauded of the materials out of which he had originally composed it. The work of the Valencian was printed at Barcelona in 1603, at Brussels, 1604, etc. On the title-page to the first edition of the genuine second part Aleman says, “Let the reader take notice, that the second part published before this is none of mine, and that this is the only one I recognize.” Fuster, in his “Biblioteca,” Tom. I. p. 198, gives strong reasons for supposing the spurious second part was written by Juan Marti, a Valencian advocate.
In 1605, the genuine second part appeared.[96] It begins with the life of Guzman in the house of the French ambassador at Rome, where he serves in some of the most dishonorable employments to which the great of that period degraded their mercenary dependants. But his own follies and crimes drive him away from a place for which he seems to have been in most respects well fitted, and he goes to Siena. At this point in his story, it seems to have occurred to Aleman to attack the Sayavedra who had endeavoured to impose upon the world with a false second part of the Guzman. He therefore introduces a person who is made thus to describe himself:--
[96] There has been some confusion about the time of the first appearance of these two second parts; one having sometimes been mistaken for the other. But Fuster evidently believed in no edition of the spurious second part older than 1603, the license to which is dated in 1602; and I possess the edition of the genuine second part, printed at Valencia in 1605, with a license of the same year, recognizing no earlier publication, and bearing all the usual proofs of being the first. Both of the second parts promise a third, which never appeared.
“He told me,” says Guzman, who always writes in the style of autobiography, “he told me, that he was an Andalusian, born in Seville, my own native city, Sayavedra by name, with papers to show that he belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families among us. Who would suspect fraud under such a fair outside? And yet it was all a lie. He was a Valencian. I do not give his true name, for good reasons; but what with his flowing Castilian, his good looks, and his agreeable manners, it was impossible for me to suspect that he was a thief, a sponge, and a cheat, who had dressed himself up in peacock’s feathers only to obtain by falsehood such an entrance into my apartments that he could rob me of whatever he liked.”[97]
[97] Parte II. Lib. I. c. 8.
This personage, his history and adventures, fill too large a space in the second part of the Guzman; for when once Aleman had seized him, he seemed not to tire of inflicting punishment so soon as the reader does of witnessing it. Sayavedra robs and cheats Guzman early in this portion of the story; but afterwards accompanies him, in an equivocal capacity, through Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, to Spain, where, partly perhaps to get rid of him, and partly perhaps, as Cervantes did afterwards in the case of Don Quixote and Avellaneda, in order to end his story and prevent his enemy from continuing it any further, Aleman brings his victim’s life to an end.
The remainder of the book is filled with the adventures of Guzman himself, which are as wild and various as possible. He becomes a merchant at Madrid, and cheats his creditors by a fraudulent bankruptcy. He marries, but his wife dies soon; and then he begins, as a student at Alcalá, to prepare himself for the Church;--a consummation of wickedness which is prevented only by his marriage a second time. His second wife, however, leaves him at Seville, where he had established himself, and elopes with a lover to Italy. After this, he is reduced again to abject poverty; and, unable to live with his old, wretched, and shameless mother, he becomes major-domo to a lady of fortune, robs her, and is sent to the galleys, where he has the good luck to reveal a conspiracy and is rewarded with his freedom and a full pardon.
With this announcement the second part abruptly ends, not without promising a third, which was never published, though the author, in his Preface, says it was already written. The work, therefore, as it has come to us, is imperfect. But it was not, on that account, the less favored and admired. On the contrary, it was translated and printed all over Europe, in French, in Italian, in German, in Portuguese, in English, in Dutch, and even in Latin; a rare success, whose secret lies partly in the age when the Guzman appeared, and still more in the power and talent of the author.[98] The long moralizing discourses with which it abounds, written in a pure Castilian style, with much quaintness and point, were then admired, and saved it from censures which it could otherwise hardly have failed to encounter. These are, no doubt, the passages that led Ben Jonson to speak of it as
“The Spanish Proteus, which, though writ But in one tongue, was formed with the world’s wit, And hath the noblest mark of a good booke, That an ill man doth not securely looke Upon it; but will loathe or let it passe, As a deformed face doth a true glasse.”[99]
[98] The common bibliographers give lists of all the translations. The first English is by Mabbe, and is excellent. (See Wood’s Athenæ, ed. Bliss, Tom. III. p. 54, and Ret. Review, Tom. V. p. 189.) It went through at least four editions, the fourth being printed at London, 1656, folio; besides which there has been a subsequent translation by several hands, taken, however, I think, from the French of Le Sage. The Latin translation was by Gaspar Ens, and I have seen editions of it referred to as of 1623, 1624, and 1652. Every thing, indeed, shows that the popular success of the Guzman was immense throughout Europe.
[99] See the verses prefixed to the translation of Mabbe, and signed by Ben Jonson.
This, however, is not its real, or at least not its main character. The Guzman is chiefly curious and interesting because it shows us, in the costume of the times, the life of an ingenious, Machiavellian rogue, who is never at a loss for an expedient; who always treats himself and speaks of himself as an honest and respectable man; and who sometimes goes to mass and says his prayers just before he enters on an extraordinary scheme of roguery, as if on purpose to bring it out in more striking and brilliant relief. So far from being a moral book, therefore, it is a very immoral one, and Le Sage spoke in the spirit of its author, when, in the next century, undertaking to give a new French version of it, he boasted that he “had purged it of its superfluous moral reflections.”[100]
[100] There are four French translations of it, beginning with one by Chappuis, in 1600, and coming down to that of Le Sage, 1732, which last has been many times reprinted. The third in the order of dates was made by Bremont, while in prison in Holland; and, out of spite against the administration of justice, from which he was suffering, he made bitter additions to the original whenever a judge or a bailiff came into his hands. See the Preface of Le Sage.
It has, naturally, a considerable number of episodes. That of Sayavedra has already been noticed, as occupying a space in the work disproportionate to every thing but the anger of its author. Another--the story of Osmyn and Daraxa, which occurs early--is a pleasing specimen of those half-Moorish, half-Christian fictions that are so characteristic a portion of Spanish literature.[101] And yet another, which is placed in Spain and in the time of the Great Constable, Alvaro de Luna, is, after all, an Italian tale of Masuccio, used subsequently by Beaumont and Fletcher in “The Little French Lawyer.”[102] But, on the whole, the attention of the reader is fairly kept either upon the hero or upon the long discussions in which the hero indulges himself, and in which he draws striking, though not unfrequently exaggerated and burlesque, sketches of all classes of society in Spain, as they successively pass in review before him. At first, Aleman thought of calling his work “A Beacon-light of Life.” The name would not have been inappropriate, and it is the qualities implied under it--the sagacity, the knowledge of life and character, and the acuteness of its reflections on men and manners--that have preserved for it somewhat of its original popularity down to our own times.
[101] Parte I. Lib. I. c. 8. It is related by Guzman, however, who is much too young to tell such a story. It may be noted, also, that Guzman grows very suddenly to man’s estate, after leaving Madrid and before reaching Toledo, whither he went as fast as he could to escape pursuit.
[102] Beaumont and Fletcher, ed. Weber, Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo, Vol. V. p. 120. Le Sage omits it in his version, because, he says, Scarron had made it one in his collection of tales. It has, in fact, been often used, as have many other stories of the same class.
In 1605 another story of the same class appeared, the “Pícara Justina,” or the Crafty Justina,--again a seeming autobiography, and again a fiction of very doubtful morality. It was written by a Dominican monk, Andreas Perez of Leon, who was known, both before and after its appearance, as the author of works of Christian devotion, and who had so far a sense of the incongruity of the Pícara Justina with his religious position, that he printed it under the assumed name of Francisco Lopez de Ubeda. He claims to have written it when he was a student at the University of Alcalá, but admits, that, after the appearance of the “Guzman de Alfarache,” he made large additions to it. It is, however, in truth, a mere imitation, and a very poor one, of Aleman. The first book is filled with a tedious, rambling account of Justina’s ancestors, who are barbers and puppet-showmen; and the rest consists of her own life, brought down to the time of her first marriage, marked by few adventures, and ending with an intimation, that, at the time of writing it, she had already been married yet twice more; that she was then the wife of Guzman de Alfarache; and that she should continue her memoirs still further, in case the public should care to hear more about her.
The Justina discovers little power of invention in the incidents, which are few and not interesting. Indeed, the author himself declares that nearly all of them were actual occurrences within his own experience; and this circumstance, together with the meagre “improvements,” as they are called,--or warnings against the follies and guilt of the heroine, with which each chapter ends,--is regarded by him as a sufficient justification for publishing a work whose tendency is obviously mischievous. Nor is the style better than the incidents. There is a constant effort to say witty and brilliant things; but it is rarely successful; and besides this, there is an affectation of new words and singular phrases which do not belong to the genius and analogies of the language, and which have caused at least one Spanish critic to regard Perez as the first author who left the sober and dignified style of the elder times, and, from mere caprice, undertook to invent a new one.[103]
[103] The first edition of the “Pícara Justina” is that of Medina del Campo, 1605, 4to, since which time it has been often printed; the best edition being probably that of Madrid, 1735, 4to, edited by Mayans y Siscar, who, in a prefatory notice, makes the reproach against its author, as the oldest corrupter of the Spanish prose style, alluded to in the text. There is a good deal of poetry scattered through the volume; all very conceited and poor. Some of it is in that sort of verses from which the final syllable is cut off,--such verses, I mean, as Cervantes has prefixed to the first part of Don Quixote; and as both that part and the “Pícara Justina” were originally published in the same year, 1605, some question has arisen with Pellicer and Clemencin, who is the inventor of these poor, truncated verses. Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. But, as the first part of Don Quixote, according to the Tassa prefixed to it, was struck off as early as the 20th of December, 1604, though the full copyright was not granted till the 9th of February following, there can be little doubt that Cervantes was the earliest.
But though the “Pícara Justina” proved a failure, the overwhelming popularity of “Guzman de Alfarache,” when added to that of “Lazarillo,” rendered this form of fiction so generally welcome in Spain, that it made its way into the ductile drama, and into the style of the shorter tales, as we have already seen when treating of Lope de Vega and Cervantes, and as we shall see hereafter when we come to speak of Salas Barbadillo and Francisco de Santos. Meantime, however, the “Escudero Marcos de Obregon” appeared; a work which has, on many accounts, attracted attention, and which deserves to be remembered, as the best of its kind in Spanish literature, except “Lazarillo” and “Guzman.”
It was written by Vicente Espinel, who was born about 1540, at Ronda, a romantic town, boldly built in the mountain range that stretches through the southwestern portion of the kingdom of Granada, and picturesquely described by himself in one of the most striking of his poems.[104] He was educated at Salamanca, and, when Lope de Vega appeared as a poet before the public, Espinel was already so far advanced in his own career, that the young aspirant for public favor submitted his verses to the critical skill of his elder friend;[105]--a favor which Lope afterwards returned by praises in “The Laurel of Apollo,” more heart-felt and effective than he has usually given in that indiscriminate eulogium of the poets of his time.[106]
[104] See the “Cancion á su Patria,” which is creditable alike to his personal feelings and--with the exception of a few foolish conceits--to his poetical character. Diversas Rimas de V. Espinel, Madrid, 1591, 12mo, f. 23.
[105] Espinel’s own Prólogo to “Marcos de Obregon.”
[106] End of the first silva to the “Laurel de Apolo,” which was published in 1630.
What was the course of Espinel’s life we do not know. It has generally been supposed that many of its events are related in his “Marcos de Obregon”; but though this is probable, and though some parts of that story are evidently true, yet many others are as evidently fictions, so that, on the whole, we are bound to regard it as a romance, and not as an autobiography. We know, however, that Espinel’s life in Italy was much like that of his hero; that he was a soldier in Flanders; that he wrote Latin verses; that he published a volume of Castilian poetry in 1591; and that he was a chaplain in Ronda, though he lived much in Madrid, and at last died there. He was regarded as the author of the form of verse called sometimes décimas, and sometimes, after himself, Espinelas; and he is said to have added a fifth string to the guitar, which soon led to the invention of the sixth, and thus completed that truly national instrument.[107] He died, according to Antonio, in 1634; but according to Lope de Vega, he was not alive in 1630. All accounts, however, represent him as having survived his ninetieth year,[108] and as having passed the latter part of his life in poverty and in unfriendly relations with Cervantes;--a fact the more observable, because both of them enjoyed pensions from the same distinguished ecclesiastic, the kindly old Archbishop of Toledo.[109]
[107] Lope de Vega, Dorotea, Acto I. Sc. 8.
[108] Noventa años viviste, Nadie te dió favor, poco escribiste,--
says Lope, in the “Laurel.”
[109] Salas Barbadillo, Estafeta del Dios Momo, 1627, Dedicacion. Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 1819, 8vo, pp. 178, 406.
The “Escudero Marcos de Obregon” was first published in 1618, and therefore appeared in the old age of its author.[110] He presents his hero, at once, as a person already past the middle years of life; one of the esquires of dames, who, at that period, were personages of humbler pretensions and graver character than those who, with the same title, had followed the men-at-arms of old.[111] The story of Marcos, however, though it opens upon us, at first, with scenes later in his life, soon returns to his youth, and nearly the whole volume is made up of his own account of his adventures, as he related them to a hermit whom he had known when he was a soldier in Flanders and Italy, and at whose cell he was now accidentally detained by a storm and flood, while on an excursion from Madrid.
[110] The first edition is dedicated to his patron, the Archbishop of Toledo, whose daily pension to him, however, may have well been called “alms”--limosna--by Salas Barbadillo. Other editions followed, and “Marcos” has continued to be reprinted and read in Spain down to our own times. In London, a good English translation of it, by Major Algernon Langton, was published in 1816, in two volumes, 8vo; and in Breslau, in 1827, there appeared a very spirited, but somewhat free, translation into German, by Tieck, in two volumes, 18mo, with a valuable Preface and good notes. The original is on the Index of 1667 for expurgation.
[111] The Escudero of the plays and novels of the seventeenth century is wholly different from the Escudero of the romances of chivalry of the sixteenth. Covarrubias, in verb., well describes both sorts, adding, “Now-a-days” (1611) “esquires are chiefly used by ladies, but men who have any thing to live upon prefer to keep at home; for as esquires they earn little, and have a hard service of it.”
In many particulars, his history resembles that of his predecessor, Guzman de Alfarache. It is the story of a youth who left his father’s house to seek his fortune; became first a student and afterwards a soldier; visited Italy; was a captive in Algiers; travelled over a large part of Spain; and after going through a great variety of dangers and trials, intrigues, follies, and crimes, sits down quietly in his old age to give an account of them all, with an air as grave and self-satisfied as if the greater part of them had not been of the most discreditable character. It contains a moderate number of wearisome, well-written moral reflections, intended to render its record of tricks, frauds, and crimes more savory to the reader by contrast; but though it falls below both the “Guzman de Alfarache” and the “Lazarillo” in the beauty and spirit of its style, it has more life in its action than either of them, and the series of its events is carried on with greater rapidity, and brought to a more regular conclusion.[112]
[112] “Marcos de Obregon” has been occasionally a good deal discussed, both by those who have read it and those who have not, from the use Le Sage has been supposed to have made of it in the composition of Gil Blas. The charge was first announced by Voltaire, who had personal reasons to dislike Le Sage, and who, in his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” (1752,) said, boldly enough, that “The Gil Blas is taken entirely from the Spanish romance entitled ‘La Vidad de lo Escudiero Dom Marcos d’Obrego.’” (Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo, Tom. XX. p. 155.) This is one of the remarks Voltaire sometimes hazarded, with little knowledge of the matter he was discussing, and it is not true. That Le Sage had seen the “Marcos de Obregon” there can be no doubt; and none that he made some use of it in the composition of the Gil Blas. This is apparent at once by the story which constitutes its Preface, and which is taken from a similar story in the Prólogo to the Spanish romance; and it is no less plain frequently afterwards, in the body of the work, where the trick played on the vanity of Gil Blas, as he is going to Salamanca, (Lib. I. c. 2,) is substantially the same with that played on Marcos, (Relacion I. Desc. 9,)--where the stories of Camilla (Gil Blas, Liv. I. c. 16, Marcos, Rel. III. Desc. 8) and of Mergellina (Gil Blas, Liv. II. c. 7, Marcos, Rel. I. Desc. 3), with many other matters of less consequence, correspond in a manner not to be mistaken. But this was the way with Le Sage, who has used Estevanillo Gonzalez, Guevara, Roxas, Antonio de Mendoza, and others, with no more ceremony. He seemed, too, to care very little about concealment, for one of the personages in his Gil Blas is called Marcos de Obregon. But the idea that the Gil Blas was taken entirely from the Marcos de Obregon of Espinel, or was very seriously indebted to that work, is absurd. See the next Period, Chap. IV., note on Father Isla.
Ten years later, another romance of the same sort appeared. It was by Yañez y Rivera, a physician of Segovia; who, as if on purpose to show the variety of his talent, published two works on ascetic devotion, as well as this picaresque romance; all of them remote from the cares and studies of his regular profession. He calls his story “Alonso, the Servant of Many Masters”; and the name is a sort of index to its contents. For it is a history of the adventures of its hero, Alonso, in the service, first of a military officer, then of a sacristan, and afterwards of a gentleman, of a lawyer, and of not a few others, who happened to be willing to employ him; and it is, in fact, neither more nor less than a satire on the different orders and conditions of society, as he studies them all in the houses of his different masters. It is evidently written with experience of the world, and its Castilian style is good; but something of its spirit is diminished by the circumstance, that it is thrown into the form of a dialogue. When Yañez published the first part, in 1624, he said that he had already been a practising physician twenty-six years, and that he should print nothing more, unless it related to the profession he followed. His success, however, with his Alonso was too tempting. He printed, in 1626, a second part of it, containing his hero’s adventures among the Gypsies and in Algerine captivity, and died in 1632.[113]
[113] The name of this author is one of the many that occur in Spanish literature and history, where it is difficult to determine which part of it should be used to designate its owner. The whole of it is Gerónymo de Alcalá Yañez y Rivera; and, no doubt, his personal acquaintances knew him as “the Doctor Gerónymo.” In the Index to Antonio’s Bib. Nova, he is placed under Alcalá; but as that name only implied, I presume, that he had studied in Alcalá, I have preferred to call him Yañez y Rivera, the first being his father’s name and the second his mother’s; and I mention the circumstance only because it is a difficulty which occurs in many cases of the same sort, and should be noticed once for all. The title of his romance is “Alonso Moço de Muchos Amos,” and the first part was first printed at Madrid, in 1624; but my copy is of the edition of Barcelona, 1625, 12mo, showing that it was well regarded in its time, and soon came to a second edition. Many editions have been published since; sometimes, like that of Madrid, 1804, 2 tom. 12mo, with the title of “El Donado Hablador,” or The Talkative Lay-Brother, that being the character in which the hero tells his story. Yañez y Rivera was born in 1563.
Quevedo’s “Paul the Sharper,” which we have already noticed, was published the year after Yañez had completed his story, and did much to extend the favor with which works of this sort were received. Castillo Solorzano, therefore, well known at the time as a writer of popular tales and dramas, ventured to follow him, but with less good-fortune. His “Teresa, the Child of Tricks,” was published in 1632, and was succeeded immediately by “The Graduate in Frauds,” of which a continuation appeared in 1634, under the whimsical title of “The Seville Weasel, or a Hook to catch Purses.” This last, which is an account of the adventures of the Graduate’s daughter, proved, though it was never finished, the most popular of Solorzano’s works, and has not only been often reprinted, but was early translated into French, and gained a reputation in Europe generally. All three, however, are less strictly picaresque tales than the similar fictions that had preceded them;--not that they are wanting in coarse sketches of life and caricatures as broad as any in Guzman, but that romantic tales, ballads, and even farces, or parts of dramas, are introduced, showing that this form of romance was becoming mingled with others more poetical, if not more true to the condition of manners and society at the time.[114]
[114] Alonso de Castillo Solorzano seems to have had his greatest success between 1624 and 1649, and was at one time in the service of Pedro Faxardo, the Marquis of Velez, who was Captain-general of Valencia. There is an edition of the “Niña de los Embustes” as early as 1632, and one of the “Garduña de Sevilla” in 1634. But, except the few hints concerning their author to be gathered from the titles and prefaces to his stories, and the meagre notices in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel de Apolo,” Silva VIII., and Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 15, we know little of him. He sneers at cultismo on one page of his “Niña de los Embustes,” and falls into it on the next.
Another proof of this change is to be found in “The Pythagoric Age” of Enriquez Gomez, first published in 1644; a book of little value, which takes the old doctrine of transmigration as the means of introducing a succession of pictures to serve as subjects for its satire. It begins with a poem in irregular verse, describing the existence of the soul, first in the body of an ambitious man; then in that of a slanderer and informer, a coquette, a minister of state, and a favorite; and it ends with similar sketches, half in poetry and half in prose, of a knight, a schemer, and others. But in the middle of the book is “The Life of Don Gregorio Guadaña,” in prose, which is a tale in direct imitation of Quevedo and Aleman, sometimes as free and coarse as theirs are, but generally not offending against the proprieties of life; and occasionally, as in the scenes during a journey and in the town of Carmona, pleasant and interesting, because it evidently gives us sketches from the author’s own experience. Like the rest of its class, it is most successful when it deals with such realities, and least so when it wanders off into the regions of poetry and fiction.[115]
[115] “El Siglo Pitagórico y la Vida de Don Gregorio Guadaña,” was written by Antonio Enriquez Gomez, a Portuguese by descent, who was educated in Castile, and lived much in France, where several of his works were first printed. The earliest edition of the “Siglo Pitagórico” is dated Rouen, 1644, but the one I use is of Brussels, 1727, in 4to. There is a notice of the life of Gomez in Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 297, and an examination of his works in Amador de los Rios, “Judios de España,” 1848, pp. 569, etc. He was of a Jewish Portuguese family, and Barbosa says he was born in Portugal, but Amador de los Rios says he was born in Segovia. That he renounced the Christian religion, which his father had adopted, that he fled to France in 1638, and that he was burnt in effigy by the Inquisition in 1660, are facts not doubted. His Spanish name was Enriquez de Paz; and in the Preface to his “Sanson Nazareno” he gives a list of his published works.
But the work which most plainly shows the condition of social life that produced all these tales, if not the work that best exhibits their character, is “The Life of Estevanillo Gonzalez,” first printed in 1646. It is the autobiography of a buffoon, who was long in the service of Ottavio Piccolomini, the great general of the Thirty Years’ war; but it is an autobiography so full of fiction, that Le Sage, sixty years after its appearance, easily changed it into a mere romance, which has continued to be republished as such with his works ever since.[116]
[116] “Vida y Hechos de Estevanillo Gonzalez, Hombre de Buen Humor, compuesta por el mismo,” was printed at Antwerp in 1646, and at Madrid in 1652. Whether there is any edition between these and the one of 1795, Madrid, 2 tom. 12mo, I do not know. The rifacimento of Le Sage appeared, I believe, for the first time in 1707.
Both in the original and in the French translation, it is called “The Life and Achievements of Estevanillo Gonzalez, the Good-natured Fellow,” and gives an account of his travels all over Europe, and of his adventures as courier, cook, and valet of the different distinguished masters whom he at different times served, from the king of Poland down to the Duke of Ossuna. Nothing can exceed the coolness with which he exhibits himself as a liar by profession, a constitutional coward, and an accomplished cheat, whenever he can thus render his story more amusing;--but then, on the other hand, he is not without learning, writes gay verses, and gives us sketches of his times and of the great men to whom he was successively attached, that are any thing but dull. His life, indeed, would be worth reading, if it were only to compare his account of the battle of Nordlingen with that in De Foe’s “Cavalier,” and his drawing of Ottavio Piccolomini with the stately portrait of the same personage in Schiller’s “Wallenstein.” Its faults, on the other hand, are a vain display of his knowledge; occasional attempts at grandeur and eloquence of style, which never succeed; and numberless intolerable puns. But it shows distinctly, what we have already noticed, that the whole class of fictions to which it belongs had its foundation in the manners and society of Spain at the period when they appeared, and that to this they owed, not only their success at home, in the age of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, but that success abroad which subsequently produced the Gil Blas of Le Sage,--an imitation more brilliant than any of the originals it followed.
Chapter XXXV
SERIOUS AND HISTORICAL ROMANCES.--JUAN DE FLORES, REINOSO, LUZINDARO, CONTRERAS, HITA AND THE WARS OF GRANADA, FLEGETONTE, NOYDENS, CÉSPEDES, CERVANTES, LAMARCA, VALLADARES, TEXADA, LOZANO.--FAILURE OF THIS FORM OF FICTION IN SPAIN.
It was inevitable that grave fiction suited to the changed times should appear in Spain, as well as fiction founded on the satire of prevalent manners. But there were obstacles in its way, and it came late. The old chronicles, so full of the same romantic spirit, and the more interesting because they were sometimes built up out of the older and longer-loved ballads; the old ballads themselves, still oftener made out of the chronicles; the romances of chivalry, which had not yet lost a popularity that, at the present day, seems nearly incredible;--all contributed, in their respective proportions, to satisfy the demand for books of amusement, and to repress the appearance and limit the success of serious and historical fiction. But it was inevitable that it should come, even if it should win little favor.
We have already noticed the attempts to introduce it, made in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, by Diego de San Pedro and his imitator, the anonymous author of “The Question of Love.” Others followed, in the reign of Charles the Fifth. The story, that very imperfectly connects the discussions between Aurelio and Isabella, on the inquiry, whether man gives more occasion for sin to woman, or woman to man, is one of them. It is a slight and meagre fiction, by Juan de Mores, which dates as far back as 1521, and which, in an early English translation, was at one time thought to have furnished hints for Shakspeare’s “Tempest.”[117] “The Loves of Clareo and Florisea,” published in 1552, by Nuñez de Reinoso, at Venice, where he then lived, is another;--a fiction partly allegorical, partly sentimental, and partly in the manner of the romances of chivalry, but of no value for the invention of its incidents, and of very little for its style.[118] The story of “Luzindaro and Medusina,” printed as early as 1553, which, in the midst of enchantments and allegories, preserves the tone and air of a series of complaints against love, and ends tragically with the death of Luzindaro, is yet a third of these crude attempts;[119]--all of which are of consequence only because they led the way to better things. But excepting these and two or three more trifles of the same kind, and of even less value, the reign of Charles the Fifth, so far as grave fiction was concerned, was entirely given up to the romances of chivalry.[120]
[117] I know only the edition of Antwerp, 1556, 12mo, but there are several others. Lowndes, Bib. Manual, Article Aurelio, and Malone’s Shakspeare, by Boswell, Vol. XV.
[118] “Historia de los Amores de Clareo y Florisea, por Alonso Nuñez de Reinoso,” Venecia, 1552, reprinted in the third volume of Aribau’s Biblioteca, 1846. The author is said by Antonio to have been a native of Guadalaxara, and, from his poems, published at the same time with his story, and of no value, he seems to have led an unhappy life, divided between the law, for which he felt he had no vocation, and arms, in which he had no success.
[119] It claims to be “sacado del estilo Griego,” and in this imitates one of the common fictions in the title-pages of the romances of chivalry. There are several editions of it,--one at Venice, 1553, 12mo, which is in my library, entitled “Quexa y Aviso de un Cavallero llamado Luzindaro.”
[120] Historia de la Reyna Sevilla, 1532, and 1551;--and Libro de los Honestos Amores de Peregrino y de Jinebra, 1548.
In the reign of Philip the Second, when the literature of the country began to develop itself on all sides, serious romances appeared in better forms, or at least with higher pretensions and attributes. Two instances of attempts in new directions, and with more considerable success, present themselves at once.
The first was by Hierónimo de Contreras, and bears the affected title of “A Thicket of Adventures.” It was published in 1573, and is the story of Luzuman, a gentleman of Seville, who had been bred from childhood in great intimacy with Arboleda, a lady of equal condition with himself; but when, as he grows up, this intimacy ripens into love, the lady rejects his suit, on the ground that she prefers a religious life. The refusal is gentle and tender; but he is so disheartened by it, that he secretly leaves his home in sorrow and mortification, and goes to Italy, where he meets with abundance of adventures, and travels through the whole peninsula, down to Naples. Wearied with this mode of life, he then embarks for Spain, but on his passage is taken by a corsair and carried to Algiers. There he remains in cruel slavery for five years. His master then gives him his freedom, and he returns to his home as secretly as he left it; but finding that Arboleda had taken the veil, and that the society to which he belonged had forgotten him, and had closed over the place he had once filled, he avoids making himself known to any body, and retires to a hermitage, with the purpose of ending his days in devotion.[121]
[121] The “Selva de Aventuras” was printed at Salamanca, in 1573, 12mo, and probably earlier, besides which there are subsequent editions of Barcelona, Saragossa, etc. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 572); but it is in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 529. Philip II., in the Licencia, calls Contreras “nuestro cronista.” The Selva was translated into French by G. Chapuys, and printed in 1580. (Bibliothèque de Duverdier, Tom. IV. p. 221.) Contreras wrote, also, a volume of allegories in prose and verse, (Dechado de Varios Subjetos, Zaragoza, 1572, and Alcalá, 1581, 12mo,) which is very formal and dull.
The whole story, somewhat solemnly divided into seven books, is dull, from want both of sufficient variety in the details, and of sufficient spirit in the style. But it is of some importance, because it is the first in a class of fictions, afterwards numerous, which--relying on the curiosity then felt in Spain about Italy, as a country full of Spaniards enjoying luxuries and refinements not yet known at home, and about Algiers, crowded with thousands of other Spaniards suffering the most severe forms of captivity--trusted, for no small part of their interest, to the accounts they gave of their heroes as adventurers in Italy, and as slaves on the coast of Barbary. Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and several more among the most popular authors of the seventeenth century, are among the writers of fictions like these.
The other form of grave fiction, which appeared in the time of Philip the Second, was the proper historical romance; and the earliest specimen of it, except such unsuccessful and slight attempts as we have already noticed, is to be found in “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by Ginés Perez de Hita. The author of this striking book was an inhabitant of Murcia, and, from the little he tells us of himself, must not only have been familiar with the wild mountains and rich valleys of the neighbouring kingdom of Granada, but must have had an intimate personal acquaintance with many of the old Moorish families that still lingered in the homes of their fathers, repeating the traditions of their ancient glory and its disastrous overthrow. Perhaps these circumstances led him to the choice of a subject for his romance. Certainly they furnished him with its best materials; for the story he relates is founded on the fall of Granada, regarded rather from within, amidst the feuds of the Moors themselves, than, as we are accustomed to consider it, from the Christian portion of Spain, gradually gathered in military array outside of its walls.
He begins his story by seeking a safe basis for it in the origin and history of the kingdom of Granada, according to the best authorities within his reach. This part of his work is formal and dry, and shows how imperfect were the notions, at the time he lived, of what an historical romance should be. But as he advances and enters upon the main subject he had proposed to himself, his tone changes. We are, indeed, still surrounded with personages that are familiar to us, like the heroic Muza on one side and the Master of Calatrava on the other; we are present with Boabdil, the last of the long line of Moorish sovereigns, as he carries on a fierce war against his own father in the midst of the city, and with Ferdinand and his knights, as they lay waste all the kingdom without. But to these historical figures are added the more imaginative and fabulous sketches of the Zegris and Abencerrages, Reduan, Abenamar, and Gazul, as full of knightly virtues as any of the Christian cavaliers opposed to them; and of Haja, Zayda, and Fatima, as fair and winning as the dames whom Isabella had brought with her to Santa Fé to cheer on the conquest.
But while he is thus mingling the creations of his own fancy with the facts of history, Hita has been particularly skilful in giving to the whole the manners and coloring of the time. He shows us a luxurious empire tottering to its fall, and yet, while the streets of its capital are filled with war-cries and blood, its princes and nobles abate not one jot of their accustomed revelry and riot. Marriage festivals and midnight dances in the Alhambra, and gorgeous tournaments and games in presence of the court, alternate with duels and feuds between the two great preponderating families that are destroying the state, and with skirmishes and single combats against the advancing Christians. Then come the cruel accusation of the Sultana by the false Zegris, and her defence in arms by both Moors and Christians; the atrocious murder of his sister Morayma by Boabdil, who suddenly breaks out with all the jealous violence of an Oriental despot; and the mournful and scandalous spectacle of three kings contending daily for empire in the squares and palaces of a city destined in a few short weeks to fall into the hands of the enemy that already surrounded its walls.
Much of this, of course, is fiction, so far as the details are concerned; but it is not a fiction false to the spirit of the real events on which it is founded. When, therefore, we approach the end of the story, we come again without violence upon historical ground as true as that on which it opened, though almost as wild and romantic as any of the tales of feuds or festivals through which we have been led to it. In this way, the temporary captivity of Boabdil and his cowardly submission, the siege and surrender of Alhama and Malaga, and the fall of Granada, are brought before us neither unexpectedly nor in a manner out of keeping with what had preceded them; and the story ends, if not with a regular catastrophe, which such materials might easily have furnished, at least with a tale in the tone of all the rest,--that which records the sad fate of Don Alonso de Aguilar. It should be added, that not a few of the finest of the old Spanish ballads are scattered through the work, furnishing materials for the story, rich and appropriate in themselves, and giving an air of reality to the events described, that could hardly have been given to them by any thing else.
This first part, as it is commonly called, of the Wars of Granada was written between 1589 and 1595.[122] It claims to be a translation from the Arabic of a Moor of Granada, and, in the last chapter, Hita gives a circumstantial account of the way in which he obtained it from Africa, where, as he would have us believe, it had been carried in the dispersion of the Moorish race. But though it is not unlikely, that, in his wanderings through the kingdom of Granada, he may have obtained Arabic materials for parts of his story, and though, in the last century, it was more than once attempted to make out an Arabic origin for the whole of it,[123] still his account, upon the face of it, is not at all probable; besides which, he repeatedly appeals to the chronicles of Garibay and Moncayo as authorities for his statements, and gives to the main current of his work--especially in such passages as the conversion of the Sultana--a Christian air, which does not permit us to suppose that any but a Christian could have written it. Notwithstanding his denial, therefore, we must give to Hita the honor of being the true author of one of the most attractive books in the prose literature of Spain; a book written in a pure, rich, and picturesque style, which seems in some respects to be in advance of the age, and in all to be worthy of the best models of the best period.
[122] The Chronicle of Pedro de Moncayo, published in 1589, is cited in Chap. XII., and the first edition of the first part of the Guerras Civiles, as is well known, appeared at Saragossa in 1595, 12mo. This part was reprinted much oftener than the second. There are editions of it in 1598, 1603, 1604 (three), 1606, 1610, 1613, 1616, etc., besides several without date.
[123] Bertuch, Magazin der Spanischen und Portugiesischen Literatur, Tom. I., 1781, pp. 275-280, with the extract there from “Carter’s Travels.” A suggestion recently reported--not, however, without expressing doubts of its accuracy--by Count Albert de Circourt, in his curious and important “Histoire des Arabes d’Espagne,” (Paris, 1846, 8vo, Tom. III. p. 346,) that Don Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid, has in his possession the Arabic original of the Guerras de Granada, is equally unfounded. From Don Pascual himself, I learn that the MS. referred to is one obtained by him in London, where it had been carried from Madrid as a part of Conde’s collection, and that it is merely an ill-made translation, or rather abridgment, of the romance of Hita;--probably the work of some Morisco Spaniard, not thoroughly acquainted with his own language.
In 1604, he published the second part, on a subject nearly connected with the first. Seventy-seven years after the conquest of Granada, the Moors of that kingdom, unable any longer to bear the oppressions to which they were subjected by the rigorous government of Philip the Second, took refuge in the bold range of the Alpuxarras, on the coast of the Mediterranean, and there, electing a king, broke out into open rebellion. They maintained themselves bravely in their mountain fastnesses nearly four years, and were not finally defeated till three armies had been sent against them; the last of which was commanded by no less a general than Don John of Austria. Hita served through the whole of this war; and the second part of his romance contains its history. Much of what he relates is true; and, indeed, of much he had been an eye-witness, as we can see in his accounts of the atrocities committed in the villages of Felix and Huescar, as well as in all the details of the siege of Galera and the death and funeral honors of Luis de Quijada. But other portions, like the imprisonment of Albexari, with his love for Almanzora, and the jealousies and conspiracy of Benalguacil, must be chiefly or wholly drawn from his own imagination. The most interesting part is the story of Tuzani, which he relates with great minuteness, and which he declares he received from Tuzani himself and other persons concerned in it;--a wild tale of Oriental passion, which, as we have seen, Calderon made the subject of one of his most powerful and characteristic dramas.
If the rest of the second division of Hita’s romance had been like this story, it might have been worthy of the first. But it is not. The ballads with which it is diversified, and which are probably all his own, are much inferior in merit to the older ballads he had inserted before; and his narrative is given in a much less rich and glowing style. Perhaps Hita felt the want of the old Moorish traditions that had before inspired him, or perhaps he found himself awkwardly constrained when dealing with facts too recent and notorious to be manageable for the purposes of fiction. But whatever may have been the cause of its inferiority, the fact is plain. His second part, regarded as genuine history, is not to be compared with the account of the same events by Diego de Mendoza; while, regarded as a romance, he had already far surpassed it himself.[124]
[124] The second part appeared for the first time at Alcalá, in 1604, but has been reprinted so rarely since, that old copies of it are very scarce. There is a neat edition of both parts, Madrid, 1833, 2 tom. 12mo, and both are in the third volume of Aribau’s Biblioteca, 1846.
The path, however, which Hita by these two works had opened for historical fiction amidst the old traditions and picturesque manners of the Moors, tempting as it may now seem, did not, in his time, seem so to others. His own romance, it is true, was often reprinted and much read. But, from the nature of his subject, he showed the Moorish character on its favorable side, and even went so far as to express his horror at the cruelties inflicted by his countrymen on their hated enemies, and his sense of the injustice done to the vanquished by the bad faith that kept neither the promises of Ferdinand and Isabella nor those of Don John.[125] Such sympathy with the infidel enemy that had so long held Spain in fee was not according to the spirit of the times. Only five years after Hita had published his account of the rebellion of the Alpuxarras, the remainder of the Moors against whom he had there fought were violently expelled from Spain by Philip the Third, amidst the rejoicings of the whole Spanish people; few even of the most humane spirits looking upon the sufferings they thus inflicted as any thing but the just retributions of an offended Heaven.
[125] Parte I. c. 18, Parte II. c. 25.
Of course, while this was the state of feeling throughout the nation, it was not to be expected that works of fiction representing the Moors in romantic and attractive colors, and filled with adventures drawn from their traditions, should find favor in Spain. A century later, indeed, a third part of the Wars of Granada--whether written by Hita or somebody else we are not told--was licensed for the press, though never published;[126] and, in France, Madame de Scudéri soon began, in “The Almahide,” a series of fictions on this foundation, that has been continued down, through the “Gonsalve de Cordoue” of Florian, to “The Abencerrage” of Chateaubriand, without giving any token that it is likely soon to cease.[127] But in Spain it struck no root, and had no success.
[126] In my copy of the second part, printed at Madrid, 1731, 12mo, the Aprobacion, dated 10th of September of that year, speaks distinctly of three parts, mentioning the second as the one that was printed at Alcalá in 1604, and the third as being in manuscript. I know no other notice of this third part. Circourt (Histoire des Maures Mudejares et des Moresques) has frequently relied on the second part as an authority, and, in the passage just cited, gives his reasons for the confidence he reposes in it.
[127] Scott is reported to have said, on being shown the Wars of Granada in the latter part of his life, that, if he had earlier known of the book, he might have placed in Spain the scene of some of his own fictions. Denis, Chroniques Chevalresques, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 323.
Perhaps other circumstances, besides a national feeling of unwillingness that romantic fiction should occupy the debatable ground between the Moors and the Christians, contributed to check its progress in Spain. Perhaps the publication of the first part of Don Quixote, destroying, by its ridicule, the only form of romance much known or regarded at the time, was not without an effect on the other forms, by exciting a prejudice against all grave prose works of invention, and still more by furnishing a substitute much more amusing than they could aspire to be. But whether this were so or not, attacks on all of them followed in the same spirit. “The Cryselia of Lidaceli,” which appeared in 1609,--and which, as well as a dull prose satire on the fantastic Academies then in fashion, bears the name of Captain Flegetonte,--assails freely whatever of prose fiction had till then enjoyed regard in Spain, whether the pastoral, the historical, or the chivalrous.[128] Its attack, however, was so ineffectual, as to show only the tendency of opinion to discourage romance-writing in Spain;--a tendency yet more apparent a little later, not only in some of the best ascetic writers of the seventeenth century, but in such works as “The Moral History of the God Momus,” by Noydens, published in 1666, which, as its author tells us distinctly in the Prologue, was intended to drive out of society all novels and books of adventure whose subject was love.[129]
[128] “La Cryselia de Lidaceli, Famosa y Verdadera Historia de Varios Acontecimientos de Amor y Fortuna,” was first printed at Paris, 1609, 12mo, and dedicated to the Princess of Conti; besides which I have seen a third edition, of Madrid, 1720. At the end a second part is announced, which never appeared. The other work of El Capitan Flegetonte is entitled “La Famosa y Temeraria Compañía de Rompe Columnas,” and was also printed in 1609, with two Dialogues on Love; all as poor as can well be imagined. The “Cryselia” is a strange confusion of the pastoral style with that of serious romance;--the whole mingled with accounts of giants and enchantments, and occasionally with short poems.
[129] Benito Remigio Noydens was author of a number of moral and ascetic works. The “Historia Moral del Dios Momo” (4to, Madrid, 1666, 12mo) is an account of the exile of the god Momus from heaven, and his transmigration through the bodies of persons in all conditions on earth, doing mischief wherever he goes. Each chapter of the eighteen into which it is divided is followed by a moralizing illustration; as, for instance, (c. 5,) the disturbance Momus excites on earth against heaven is illustrated by the heresies of Germany and England, in which the Duke of Saxony and Henry VIII. appear to very little advantage.
Still, serious romance was written in Spain during the whole of the seventeenth century, and written in several varieties of form and tone, though with no real success. Thus, Gonzalo de Céspedes, a native of Madrid, and author of several other works, published the first part of his “Gerardo” in 1615, and the second in 1617. He calls it a Tragic Poem, and divides it into discourses instead of chapters. But it is, in fact, a prose romance, consisting of a series of slightly connected adventures in the life of its hero, Gerardo, and episodes of the adventures of different persons more or less associated with him; in all which, amidst much that is sentimental and romantic, there is more that is tragic than is common in such Spanish stories. It was several times reprinted, and was succeeded, in 1626, by his “Various Fortunes of the Soldier Píndaro,” a similar work, but less interesting, and perhaps, on that account, never finished according to the original purpose of its author. Both, however, show a power of invention which is hardly to be found in works of the same class produced so early, either in France or England, and both make pretensions to style, though rather in their lighter than in their more serious portions.[130]
[130] “Poema Trágico del Español Gerardo y Desengaño del Amor Lascivo” is the title of the story; and, besides the first edition, it was printed in 1617, 1618, 1623, 1625, 1654, etc. The “Varia Fortuna del Soldado Píndaro,” who, notwithstanding his classical name, is represented as a native of Castile, was less favored. I know only the editions of 1626 and 1661, till we come to that of Madrid, 1845, 8vo, illustrated with much spirit. Of Céspedes y Meneses a slight notice is to be found in Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 362.
Again in 1617,--the same year, it will be recollected, in which the “Persiles and Sigismunda” of Cervantes appeared,--Francisco Loubayssin de Lamarca, a Biscayan by birth, published his “Tragicomic History of Don Enrique de Castro”; in which known facts and fanciful adventures are mingled in the wildest confusion. The scene is carried back, by means of the story of the hero’s uncle, who has become a hermit in his old age, to the Italian wars of Charles the Eighth of France, and forward, in the person of the hero himself, to the conquest of Chili by the Spaniards; covering meanwhile any intermediate space that seems convenient to its author’s purposes. As an historical novel, it is an entire failure.[131]
[131] The “Historia Tragicómica de Don Enrique de Castro” was printed at Paris, in 1617, when its author was twenty-nine years old. Two years earlier he had published “Engaños deste Siglo.” (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 358.) I believe he sometimes wrote in French.
A similar remark may be made on another work published in 1625, which takes in part the guise of imaginary travels, and is called “The History of Two Faithful Friends”; a story founded on the supposed adventures of a Frenchman and a Spaniard in Persia, and consisting chiefly of incredible accounts of their intrigues with Persian ladies of rank. Much of it is given in the shape of a correspondence, and it ends with the promise of a continuation, which never appeared.[132]
[132] I do not know who was the author of this foolish fancy, which is, perhaps, a chronique scandaleuse of the court. It was printed at Roussillon, and is a small 18mo volume.
Many, indeed, of the works of fiction begun in Spain, during the seventeenth century, remained, like the Two Faithful Friends, unfinished, from want of encouragement and popularity; while others that were written were never published at all.[133] One of these last, called “The Fortunate Knight,” by Juan Valladares de Valdelomar, of Córdova, was quite prepared for the press in 1617, and is still extant in the original manuscript, with the proper licenses for printing and the autograph approbation of Lope de Vega. It is an historical novel, divided into forty-five “Adventures”; and the hero, like many others of his class, is a soldier in Italy, and a captive in Africa; serving first under Don John of Austria, and afterwards under Sebastian of Portugal. How much of it is true is uncertain. Regular dates are given for many of its events, some of which can be verified; but it is full of poetry and poetical fancies, and several of the stories, like that of the loves of the knight himself and the fair Mayorinda, must have been taken from the author’s imagination. Still, in the Prologue, all books of fiction are treated with contempt, as if the whole class were so little favored, that it was discreditable to avow the intention of publishing another, even at the moment of doing it. In the style of its prose, the Fortunate Knight is as good as other similar works of the same period; but the poems with which it is crowded, to the number of about a hundred and fifty, are of less merit.[134]
[133] The names of a good many unpublished manuscripts of such works can be found in the Bibliotheca of Antonio, and in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid.”
[134] The MS. of “El Caballero Venturoso,” which is evidently autograph throughout, belongs to Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University of Madrid, and fills 289 closely written leaves, in 4to. A second part is announced, but was probably never written.
The discouragement just alluded to, whether proceeding from the ridicule thrown on long works of fiction by Cervantes, or from the watchfulness of the ecclesiastical authorities, or from both causes combined, was probably one of the reasons that led persons writing serious romances to seek new directions and unwonted forms in their composition; sometimes going as far as possible from the truth of fact, and sometimes coming down almost to plain history. Two instances of such deviations from the beaten paths--probably the only examples in their time of the class to which each belonged--should be noticed, for their singularity, if not for their literary merit.
The first is by Cosmé de Texada, and is called “The Marvellous Lion.” It was originally published in 1636, and consists of the history of “the great Lion Auricrino,” his wonderful adventures, and, at last, his marriage with Crisaura, his lady-love. It is divided into fifty-four Apologues, which might rather have been called chapters; and if, instead of the names of animals given to its personages, it had such poetical names as usually occur in romantic fiction, it would--except where it involves satirical sketches of the follies of the times--be a mere love-romance, neither more unnatural nor more extravagant than many of its fellows.
Such as it is, however, it did not entirely satisfy its author. The early portions had been written in his youth, while he was a student in theology at Salamanca; and when, somewhat later, he resumed his task, and brought it to a regular conclusion, he was already far advanced in the composition of another romance still more grave and spiritualized and still farther removed from the realities of life. This more carefully matured fiction is called “Understanding and Truth, the Philosophical Lovers”; and all its personages are allegorical, filling up, with their dreams and trials, a shadowy picture of human life, from the creation to the general judgment. How long Texada was employed about this cold and unsatisfactory allegory, we are not told; but it was not published till 1673, nearly forty years after it was begun, and then it was given to the public by his brother as a posthumous work, with the inappropriate title of “The Second Part of the Marvellous Lion.” Neither romance had a living interest capable of insuring it a permanent success, but both are written in a purer style than was common in such works at the same period, and the first of them occasionally attacks the faults of the contemporary literature with spirit and good-humor.[135]
[135] “Leon Prodigioso, Apología Moral, por el Licenciado Cosmé Gomez Texada de los Reyes,” Madrid, 1670, 4to;--“Segunda Parte del Leon Prodigioso, Entendimiento y Verdad, Amantes Filosóficos,” Alcalá, 1673, 4to. The first part was licensed in 1634. The author published “El Filósofo,” a miscellany on the physical sciences and moral philosophy, in 1650. In the “Leon Prodigioso” is a good deal of poetry; particularly, in the first part, a poem called “La Nada,” which is very dull, and one in the second, called “El Todo,” which is still worse. His ridicule of the culto style, in Parte I. pp. 317, 391-395, is acute and successful.
Quite different from both of them, “The New Kings of Toledo,” by Christóval Lozano, introduces only real personages, and contains little but the facts of known history and old tradition, slightly embellished by the spirit of romance. Its author was attached to the metropolitan cathedral of Toledo, and, with Calderon, served in the chapel set apart for the burial of the New Kings, as the monarchs of Castile were called from the time of Henry of Trastamara, who there established for himself a cemetery, separate from that in which the race ending with the dishonored Don Pedro had been entombed.
The pious chaplain, who was thus called to pray daily for the souls of the line of sovereigns that had constituted the house of Trastamara, determined to illustrate their memories by a romantic history; and, beginning with the old national traditions of the origin of Toledo, the cave of Hercules, the marriage of Charlemagne with a Moorish princess whom he converted, and the refusal of a Christian princess to marry a Moor whom she could not convert, he gives us an account of the building of the chapel, and the adventures of the kings who sleep under its altars, down as late as the death of Henry the Third, in 1406. From internal evidence, it was written at the end of the reign of Philip the Fourth, when Spanish prose had lost much both of its purity and of its dignity; but Lozano, though not free from the affectations of his age, wrote so much more simply than his contemporaries generally did, and his story, though little indebted to his own invention, was yet found so attractive, that, in about half a century, eleven editions of it were published, and it obtained for itself a place in Spanish literature which it has never entirely lost.[136]
[136] My copy is of the eleventh edition, Madrid, 1734, 4to; and Lib. III. c. 1, p. 237, was written just at the moment of the accession of Charles II. The story is connected with the favorite doctrine of the Spanish Church: that of the immaculate conception, whose annunciation by the Madonna is described with dramatic effect in Lib. I. c. 10. The earliest edition I have seen noticed is of 1667.
After all, however, the serious and historical fictions produced in Spain, that merit the name of full-length romances, were, from the first, few in number, and, with the exception of Hita’s “Civil Wars of Granada,” deserved little favor. Subsequent to the reign of Philip the Fourth, they almost disappeared for above a century; and even at the end of that period, they occurred rarely, and obtained little regard.[137]
[137] The only grave romance of this class, after 1650, that needs, I believe, to be referred to, is “La Historia de Lisseno y Fenisa, por Francisco Parraga Martel de la Fuente,” (Madrid, 1701, 4to,)--a very bad imitation of the “Gerardo Español” of Céspedes y Meneses.