Chapter XXXVI…

Chapter XXXVI

TALES.--VILLEGAS, TIMONEDA, CERVANTES, HIDALGO, FIGUEROA, BARBADILLO, ESLAVA, AGREDA, LIÑAN Y VERDUGO, LOPE DE VEGA, SALAZAR, LUGO, CAMERINO, TELLEZ, MONTALVAN, REYES, PERALTA, CÉSPEDES, MOYA, ANAYA, MARIANA DE CARBAJAL, MARÍA DE ZAYAS, MATA, CASTILLO, LOZANO, SOLORZANO, ALONSO DE ALCALÁ, VILLALPANDO, PRADO, ROBLES, GUEVARA, POLO, GARCIA, SANTOS.--GREAT NUMBER OF TALES.--GENERAL REMARKS ON ALL THE FORMS OF SPANISH FICTION.

Short stories or tales were more successful in Spain, during the latter part of the sixteenth century and the whole of the seventeenth, than any other form of prose fiction, and were produced in greater numbers. They seem, indeed, to have sprung afresh, and with great vigor, from the prevailing national tastes and manners, not at all connected with the tales of Oriental origin, that had been introduced above two hundred years earlier by Don Juan Manuel, and little affected by the brilliant Italian school, of which Boccaccio was the head; but showing rather, in the hues they borrowed from the longer contemporary pastoral, satirical, and historical romances, how truly they belonged to the spirit of their own times, and to the state of society in which they appeared. We turn to them, therefore, with more than common interest.

The oldest Spanish tales of the sixteenth century, that deserve to be noticed, are two that are found in a small volume of the works of Antonio de Villegas, somewhat conceitedly called “El Inventario,” and prepared for the press about 1550, though not published till 1565.[138] The first of them is entitled “Absence and Solitude,” a pastoral consisting of about equal portions of prose and poetry, and is as affected and in as bad taste as the ampler fictions of the class to which it belongs. The other--“The Story of Narvaez”--is much better. It is the Spanish version of a romantic adventure that really occurred on the frontiers of Granada, in the days when knighthood was in its glory among Moors as well as among Christians. Its principal incidents are as follows.

[138] The “Inventario” of Villegas was twice printed, the first edition in 4to, 1565, and the second in small 12mo, 1577, 144 leaves;--both times at Medina del Campo, of which its author is supposed to have been a native, and both times with a note especially prefixed, signifying that the first license to print it was granted in 1551.

Rodrigo de Narvaez, Alcayde of Alora, a fortress on the Spanish border, grows weary of a life of inaction, from which he had been for some time suffering, and goes out one night with a few followers, in mere wantonness, to seek adventures. Of course they soon find what, in such a spirit, they seek. Abindarraez, a noble Moor, belonging to the persecuted and exiled family of the Abencerrages, comes well mounted and well armed along the path they are watching, and sings cheerily through the stillness of the night,--

In Granada was I born, In Cartama was I bred; But in Coyn by Alora Lives the maiden I would wed.

A fight follows at once, and the gallant young Moor is taken prisoner; but his dejected manner, after a resistance so brave as he had made, surprises his conqueror, who, on inquiry, finds that his captive was on his way that very night to a secret marriage with the lady of his love, daughter of the lord of Coyn, a Moorish fortress near at hand. Immediately on learning this, the Spanish knight, like a true cavalier, releases the young Moor from his present thraldom, on condition that he will voluntarily return in three days and submit himself again to his fate. The noble Moor keeps his word, bringing with him his stolen bride, to whom, by the intervention of the generous Spaniard with the king of Granada, her father is reconciled, and so the tale ends to the honor and content of all the parties who appear in it.

Some passages in it are beautiful, like the first declaration of his love by Abindarraez, as described by himself; and the darkness that, he says, fell upon his very soul, when his lady, the next day, was carried away by her father, “as if,” he adds, “the sun had been suddenly eclipsed over a man wandering amidst wild and precipitous mountains.” His Moorish honor and faith, too, are characteristically and finely expressed, when, on the approach of the time for his return to captivity, he reveals to his bride the pledge he had given, and in reply to her urgent offer to send a rich ransom and break his word, he says, “Surely I may not now fall into so great a fault; for if, when formerly I came to you all alone, I kept truly my pledged faith, my duty to keep it is doubled now that I am yours. Therefore, questionless, I shall return to Alora, and place myself in the Alcayde’s hands; and when I have done what I ought to do, he must also do what to him seems right.”

The original story, as told by the Arabian writers, is found at the end of “The History of the Arabs in Spain,” by Conde, who says it was often repeated by the poets of Granada. But it was too attractive in itself, and too flattering to the character of Spanish knighthood, not to obtain a similar place in Spanish literature. Montemayor, therefore, borrowing it with little ceremony from Villegas, and altering it materially for the worse in point of style, inserted it in the editions of his “Diana” published towards the latter part of his life, though it harmonizes not at all with the pastoral scenery which there surrounds it. Padilla, too, soon afterwards took possession of it, and wrought it into a series of ballads; Lope de Vega founded on it his play of “The Remedy for Misfortune”; and Cervantes introduced it into his “Don Quixote.” On all sides, therefore, traces of it are to be found, but it nowhere presents itself with such grace or to such advantage as it does in the simple tale of Villegas.[139]

[139] The story of Narvaez, who is honorably noticed in Pulgar’s “Claros Varones,” Título XVII., and who is said to have been the ancestor of Narvaez, the minister of state to Isabella II., is found in Argote de Molina (Nobleza, 1588, f. 296); in Conde (Historia, Tom. III. p. 262); in Villegas (Inventario, 1565, f. 94); in Padilla (Romancero, 1583, ff. 117-127); in Lope de Vega (Remedio de la Desdicha; Comedias, Tom. XIII., 1620); in Don Quixote (Parte I. c. 5), etc. I think, too, that it may have been given by Timoneda, under the title of “Historia del Enamorado Moro Abindarraez,” sine anno, (Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 162,) and it is certainly among the ballads in his “Rosa Española,” 1573. (See Wolf’s reprint, 1846, p. 107.) It is the subject, also, of a long poem by Francisco Balbi de Corregio, 1593. (Depping’s Romancero, Leipsique, 1844, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 231.) That Montemayor took his version of the story of Narvaez from Villegas nobody will doubt who compares both together and remembers that it does not appear in the first edition of the “Diana”; that it is wholly unsuited to its place in such a romance; and that the difference between the two is only that the story, as told by Montemayor, in the “Diana,” Book IV., though it is often, for several sentences together, in the same words with the story in Villegas, is made a good deal longer by mere verbiage. See, ante, Chap. XXXIII., note.

In the “Nobiliario” of Ferant de Mexia, (Sevilla, 1492, folio,)--a curious book, written with Castilian dignity of style, and full of the feudal spirit of an age that believed in the inherent qualities of noble blood,--its author (Lib. II. c. 15) boasts that Narvaez was the brother of his grandfather, calling him “cavallero de los bienaventurados que ovo en nuestros tiempos desde el Cid acá batalloso é victorioso.”

Juan de Timoneda, already noticed as one of the founders of the popular theatre in Spain, was also an early writer of Spanish tales. Indeed, as a bookseller who sought to make profit of whatever was agreeable to the general taste, and who wrote and published in this spirit several volumes of ballads, miscellaneous poetry, and farces, it was quite natural he should adventure in the ways of prose fiction, now become so attractive. His first attempt seems to have been in his “Patrañuelo,” or Story-teller, the first part of which appeared in 1576, but was not continued.[140]

[140] Rodriguez, Biblioteca, p. 283. Ximeno, Bib., Tom. I. p. 72. Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 161, Tom. II. p. 530. The “Sobremesa y Alivio de Caminantes,” by Timoneda, printed in 1569, and probably earlier, is merely a collection of a hundred and sixty-one anecdotes and jests, in the manner of Joe Miller, though sometimes cited as a collection of tales. They are preceded by twelve similar anecdotes, by a person who is called Juan Aragones. In all the editions of the “Patrañuelo,” I believe, except the first and that in Aribau’s Biblioteca, there are only twenty-one tales;--the eighth, which is a coarse one borrowed from Ariosto, being omitted.

It is a small work, which draws its materials from widely different sources, some of them being found, like the well-known story of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, in the “Gesta Romanorum,” and some in the Italian masters, like the story of Griselda in Boccaccio, and the one familiar to English readers in the ballad of “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,” which Timoneda probably took from Sacchetti.[141] Three or four--of which the first in the volume is one--had already been used in the construction of dramas by Alonso de la Vega and Lope de Rueda. All of them tend to show, what is proved in other ways, that such popular stories had long been a part of the intellectual amusements of a state of society little dependent on books; and, after floating for centuries up and down through the different countries of Europe,--borne by a general tradition or by the minstrels and Trouveurs,--were about this period first reduced to writing, and then again passed onward from hand to hand, till they were embodied in some form that became permanent. What, therefore, the Novellieri had been doing in Italy for above two hundred years, Timoneda now undertook to do for Spain. The twenty-two tales of his “Patrañuelo” are not, indeed, connected, like those of the “Decamerone,” but he has given them a uniform character by investing them all with his own easy, if not very pure, style; and thus, without anticipating it, sent them out anew to constitute a part of the settled literature of his country, and to draw after them a long train of similar fictions, some of which bear the most eminent names known among those of Spanish prose-writers.

[141] The story of Apollonius,--the same with that in Shakspeare’s “Pericles,”--was, as we have seen, (Vol. I. p. 24,) known in Spanish poetry very early, though the old poetical version of it was not printed till 1844; but it is more likely to have been taken by Timoneda from the “Gesta Romanorum,” Tale 153, in the edition of 1488. The story of Griselda he, no doubt, took from the version of it with which the “Decamerone” ends, though he may have obtained it elsewhere. (Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, Firenze, 1742, 4to, p. 603.) As to the story so familiar to us in Percy’s “Reliques,” he probably obtained it from the fourth Novella of Sacchetti, written about 1370; beyond which I think it cannot be traced, though it has been common enough ever since, down to Bürger’s version of it. Similar inquiries would no doubt lead to similar results about other tales in the “Patrañuelo”; but these instances are enough to show that Timoneda took any thing he found suited to his purpose, just as the Italian Novellieri and the French Trouveurs had done before him, without inquiring or caring whence it came.

Indeed, the very next is of this high order. It is that of Cervantes, who began by inserting such stories in the first part of his “Don Quixote” in 1605, and, eight years later, produced a collection of them, which he published separately. Of these tales, however, we have already spoken, and will, therefore, now only repeat, that, for originality of invention and happiness of style, they stand at the head of the class to which they belong.[142]

[142] See, ante, Vol. II. p. 84.

Others followed, of very various character. Hidalgo published, in 1605, an account of the frolics permitted during the last three days of Carnival, in which are many short tales and anecdotes, like the slightest and gayest of the Italian novelle;[143] and Suarez de Figueroa, who was no friend of Cervantes, if he was his follower, inserted other tales of a more romantic tone in his “Traveller,” which he published in 1617.[144] Perhaps, however, no writer of such fictions in the early part of the seventeenth century had more success than Salas Barbadillo, who was born at Madrid, about 1580, and died in 1630.[145] During the last eighteen years of his life, he published not less than twenty different works, all of which, except three or four that are filled with such dramas and poetry as Lope de Vega had made fashionable, consist of popular stories, neither so short as the tales of Timoneda, nor long enough to be accounted regular romances, but all written in a truly national spirit, and in a strongly marked Castilian style.

[143] It is in the form of dialogues, and called “Carnestolendas de Castilla, dividido en las tres Noches del Domingo, Lunes y Martes de Antruexo, por Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo, Vezino de la Villa de Madrid,” Barcelona, 1605, 12mo, ff. 108. Editions are also noted of 1606 and 1618.

[144] “El Pasagero” (Madrid, 1617, 12mo, ff. 492) is in ten dialogues, carried on in the pauses or rests of two travellers, and thence affectedly called Alivios. I have a small volume entitled “Historia de los Siete Sabios de Roma, compuesta por Marcos Perez, Barcelona por Rafael Figuero,” 12mo,--no date; but, I think, printed in the eighteenth century. It contains the story of “The Seven Wise Masters,” which is one of the oldest of modern fictions,--the Emperor, in this version of it, being named Ponciano, and being called the son of Diocletian. The style is somewhat better than that of the “Donzella Teodor,” (ante, II. 212,) but seems to be of about the same period.

[145] Notices for the life of Barbadillo may be found in Baena (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. I. p. 42); in Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 28); and in the Prefaces to his own “Estafeta del Dios Momo,” (Madrid, 1627, 12mo,) and his “Coronas del Parnaso” (Madrid, 1635, 12mo). He was associated with Cervantes in the same religious fraternity, and gave his strong testimony in favor of the tales of his friend in their first edition. (Navarrete, Vida, §§ 121, 132.) He seems to have had an office at court, for he calls himself “Criado de su Magestad.”

“The Ingenious Helen, Daughter of Celestina,” which is one of the earliest and most spirited of these fictions, appeared in 1612, and was frequently printed afterwards. It is the story of a courtesan, whose adventures, from the high game she undertakes to play in life, are of the boldest and most desperate kind. She is called the daughter of Celestina, because she is made to deserve that name by her talent and her crimes; but, with instinctive truth, she is at last left to perish by the most disgraceful of all the forms of a Spanish execution, for poisoning an obscure and vulgar lover. One or two minor stories are rather inartificially introduced in the course of the main narrative, and so are a few ballads, which have no value except as they serve to illustrate the ruffian life, as it was called, then to be found in the great cities of Spain. The best parts of the book are those relating to Helen herself and her machinations; and the most striking scenes, and perhaps the most true to the time, are those that occur when she rises to the height of her fortunes by setting up for a saint and imposing on all Seville.[146]

[146] “La Ingeniosa Helena, Hija de Celestina,” Lerida, 1612, and often since. The edition I have is of Madrid, 1737, 12mo.

Of course, with such materials and incidents, the Helena takes much of its tone from the stories in the gusto picaresco, or the style of Spanish rogues. Quite opposite to it, therefore, in character and purpose, is “The Perfect Knight,”--a philosophical tale, not without some touch of the romances of chivalry. It is addressed to all the noble youth of the realm, at a time when the Cortes were assembled, and is intended to set the ideal of true knighthood before them, as before an audience the younger part of which might be excited to strive after its attributes and honors. To accomplish this, Barbadillo gives the history of a Spanish cavalier, who, travelling to Italy during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the conqueror of Naples, obtains the favor of that monarch, and, after serving him in the highest military and diplomatic posts,--commanding armies in Germany, and mediating between imaginary kings of England and Ireland,--retires to the neighbourhood of Baia and enjoys a serene and religious old age.[147]

[147] “El Caballero Perfeto,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo.

Again, “The House of Respectable Amusements” differs from both of the preceding fictions, and exhibits another variety of their author’s very flexible talent. It relates the frolics of four gay students of Salamanca, who, wearied by their course of life at the University, come to Madrid, open a luxurious house, arrange a large hall for exhibitions, and invite the rank and fashion of the city, telling stories for the amusement of their guests, reciting ballads, and acting plays;--all of which constitute the materials that fill the volume. Six tales, however, are really the effective part of it; and the whole is abruptly terminated by the dangerous illness of the most active among the four gay cavaliers who had arranged these Lenten entertainments.[148]

[148] “Casa del Plazer Honesto,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo.

But it is not necessary to examine further the light fictions of Barbadillo. It is enough to say of the rest, that “The Point-Device Knight,” in two parts, is a grotesque story in ridicule of those who pretend to be first in every thing;[149]--that “The Lucky Fool” is what its name implies;[150]--that “Don Diego” consists of the love-adventures, during nine successive nights, of a gentleman who always fails in what he undertakes;[151]--and that all of them, and all Barbadillo’s other productions, are within the range of talent of not a very high order, but uncommonly flexible, and dealing rather with the surface of manners than with the secrets of character which manners serve to hide. His latest work, entitled “Parnassian Crowns and Dishes for the Muses,” consists of a medley of verse and prose, stories and dramas, which were arranged for the press, and licensed in October, 1630; but he died immediately afterwards, and they were not printed till 1635.[152]

[149] “El Caballero Puntual,” Primera Parte, Madrid, 1614; Segunda Parte, Madrid, 1619, 12mo. At the end of the second part is a play, “Los Prodigios de Amor.” A work not entirely unlike the “Caballero Puntual” was printed at Rouen in 1610, 12mo, called “Rodomuntadas Castellanas.” It is in Spanish, as were many other books printed at that time in France, from the connection of the French court with Spain, and it consists of the incredible boastings of a braggadocio, something like Baron Munchausen. But it has little value of any sort, and I mention it only because it preceded the fiction of Barbadillo by four years.

[150] “El Necio bien Afortunado,” Madrid, 1621, 12mo.

[151] “Don Diego de Noche,” Madrid, 1623, 12mo. All nine of his unhappy adventures occur in the night. For some reason, I know not what, this story appears among the translated works of Quevedo, (Edinburgh, 1798, 3 vols. 8vo,) and, I believe, may be found, also, in the previous translation made by Stevens. There is a play with the same title, “Don Diego de Noche,” by Roxas (in Tom. VII. of the Comedias Escogidas, 1654); but it has, I think, nothing to do with the tale of Barbadillo.

[152] “Coronas del Parnaso y Platos de las Musas,” Madrid, 1635, 12mo. There is some resemblance in the idea to that of the “Convito” of Dante; but it is not likely that Salas Barbadillo imitated the philosophical allegory of the great Italian master.

During the life of Barbadillo, and probably in some degree from his example and success, such fictions became frequent. “The Winter Evenings” of Antonio de Eslava, published in 1609, belong to this class, but are, indeed, so early in their date, that they may have rather given an impulse to Barbadillo than received one from him.[153] But “The Twelve Moral Tales” of Diego de Agreda, in 1620, belong clearly to his manner,[154] as does also “The Guide and Counsel for Strangers at Court,” published the same year, by Liñan y Verdugo,--a singular series of stories, related by two elderly gentlemen to a young man, in order to warn him against the dangers of a gay life at Madrid.[155] Lope de Vega, as usual, followed where success had already been obtained by others. In 1621, he added a short tale to his “Philomena,” and, a little later, three more to his “Circe”; but he himself thought them a doubtful experiment, and they, in fact, proved an unhappy one.[156] Other persons, however, encouraged by the general favor that evidently waited on light and amusing collections of stories, crowded more earnestly along in the same path;--Salazar, with his “Flowers of Recreation,” in 1622;[157]--Lugo, with his “Novelas,” the same year;[158]--and Camerino, with his “Love Tales,”[159] only a year later;--all the last six works having been produced in three years, and all belonging to the school of Timoneda, as it had been modified by the genius of Cervantes and the practical skill of Salas Barbadillo.

[153] The “Primera Parte de las Noches de Invierno, por Antonio de Eslava,” was printed at Pamplona in 1609, and at Brussels in 1610, 12mo; but, as was so common in these works of amusement, I believe no second part followed. It is ordered to be expurgated in the Index of 1667, p. 67.

[154] “Doce Novelas Morales y Exemplares, por Diego de Agreda y Vargas,” Madrid, 1620; reprinted by one of his descendants, at Madrid, in 1724, 12mo. Diego de Agreda, of whom there is a notice in Baena, (Tom. I. p. 331,) was a soldier as well as an author, and, in the tale he called “El Premio de la Virtud,” relates, apparently, an event in the history of his own family. Others of his tales are taken from the Italian. That of “Aurelio y Alexandra,” for instance, is a rifacimento of Bandello’s story of “Romeo and Juliet,” used at just about the same time by Shakspeare.

[155] “Guia y Avisos de Forasteros, etc., por el Licenciado Don Antonio Liñan y Verdugo,” Madrid, 1620, 4to. In a discourse preceding the tales, which are fourteen in number, their author is spoken of as having written other works, and as being an old man; but I find no notice of him except that in Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 141,) which gives only the titles of the tales, and mistakes the year in which they were printed. Some of the stories, it may be added, seem true, and some of the sketches of manners are lively.

[156] See, ante, Vol. II. pp. 156, 157, an account of these tales of Lope, and the way in which four others that are not his were added to them, and yet appear in his collected works, Tom. VIII.

[157] Literally, Pinks of Recreation,--“Clavellinas de Recreacion, por Ambrosio de Salazar,” Ruan, 1622, 12mo. He wrote several other Spanish works, printed, as this was, in France, where he was physician to the queen. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 68.

[158] “Novelas de Francisco de Lugo y Avila,” Madrid, 1622, 12mo.

[159] “Novelas Amorosas por Joseph Camerino,” Madrid, 1623 and 1736, 4to. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. II. p. 361.) He was an Italian, as appears from the hint in Lope de Vega’s sonnet prefixed to his tales, as well as from his own Proemio. His Spanish, however, is pure enough, except in those affectations of style which he shared with many Castilian writers of his time. His “Dama Beata,” a longer tale, was printed at Madrid, in 1655, in 4to.

This was popular success; but it was so much in one direction, that its results became a little monotonous. Variety, therefore, was soon demanded; and, being demanded by the voice of fashion, it was soon obtained. The new form, thus introduced, was not, however, a violent change. It was made by a well-known dramatic author, who--taking a hint from the “Decamerone,” already in part adopted by Barbadillo, in his “House of Respectable Amusements”--substituted a theatrical framework to connect his separate stories, instead of the merely narrative one used by Boccaccio and his followers. This fell in, happily, with the passion for the stage which then pervaded all Spain, and it was successful.

The change referred to is first found in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” published in 1624, by Gabriel Tellez, who, as we have already observed, when he left his convent and came before the public as a secular author, always disguised himself under the name of Tirso de Molina. It is a singular book, and takes its name from a word of Arabic origin peculiar to Toledo; Cigarral signifying there a small country-house in the neighbourhood of the city, resorted to only for recreation and only in the summer season. At one of these houses Tirso supposes a wedding to have happened, under circumstances interesting to a large number of persons, who, wishing in consequence of it to be much together, agreed to hold a series of entertainments at their different houses, in an order to be determined by lot and under the superintendence of one of their company, each of whom, during the single day of his authority, should have supreme control and be responsible for the amusements of the whole party.

The “Cigarrales de Toledo” is an account of these entertainments, consisting of stories that were read or related at them, poetry that was recited, and plays that were acted,--in short, of all that made up the various exhibitions and amusements of the party. Some portions of it are fluent and harmonious beyond the common success of the age; but in general, as in the descriptions and in the poor contrivance of the “Labyrinth,” it is disfigured by conceits and extravagances, belonging to the follies of Gongorism. The work, however, pleased, and Tirso himself prepared another of the same kind, called “Pleasure and Profit,”--graver and more religious in its tone, but of less poetical merit,--which was written in 1632, and printed in 1635. But, though both were well received, neither was finished. The last ends with the promise of a second part, and the first, which undertakes to give an account of the entertainments of twenty days, embraces, in fact, only five.[160]

[160] Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 267. I find no edition of the “Cigarrales de Toledo” cited earlier than 1631; but my copy is dated Madrid, 1624, 4to, and is evidently of the first publication. Covarrubias (ad verb. Cigarral) gives the proper meaning of the word, which is perhaps plain enough from the work itself. The “Deleytar Aprovechando” was reprinted at Madrid in 1765, in 2 tom. 4to. In the “Cigarrales,” Tirso promises to publish twelve novelas, with an argument to connect them, adding, satirically, ”Not stolen from the Tuscans”;--but they never appeared.

The style they adopted was soon imitated. Montalvan, who, like his master, never failed to follow the indications of the popular taste, printed, in 1632, his “Para Todos,” or For Everybody, containing the imaginary amusements of a party of literary friends, who agreed to cater for each other during a week, and whose festivities are ended, as those of the “Cigarrales” began, with a wedding. Some of its inventions are very learnedly dull, and it is throughout less well arranged than the account of the entertainments near Toledo, and falls less naturally into a dramatic framework. But it shows its author’s talent. The individual stories are pleasantly told, especially the one called “At the End of the Year One Thousand”; and, as a whole, the “Para Todos” was popular, going through nine editions in less than thirty years, notwithstanding a very severe attack on it by Quevedo.[161] Its popularity, too, had the natural effect of producing imitations, among which, in 1640, appeared, “Para Algunos,”--For a Few,--by Matias de los Reyes;[162] and, somewhat later, “Para Sí,”--For one’s own Self,--by Juan Fernandez y Peralta.[163]

[161] Baena, Tom. III. p. 157. I own the ninth edition of “Para Todos,” Alcalá, 1661, 4to. Quevedo seems to have borne some personal ill-will against Montalvan, whom he calls “a little remnant of Lope de Vega,” and says his “Para Todos” is “like the coach from Alcalá to Madrid, full of all sorts of passengers, including the worst.” (Obras, Tom. XI. p. 129.) Quevedo does not appear among those who in 1639 offered verses or other tributes to the memory of Montalvan, though their number is above a hundred and fifty, and includes, I think, nearly or quite every other Spanish author of any note then living. See “Lágrimas Panegyricas en la Muerte de Montalvan,” 1639.

[162] Matias de los Reyes was the author of other tales besides those in his “Para Algunos.” His “Curial del Parnaso,” (Madrid, 1624, 8vo,) of which only the first part was published, contains several. He also wrote for the stage. His “Para Algunos” was printed at Madrid, 1640, in quarto, and is not ill written. Baena, Hijos, Tom. IV. p. 97.

[163] I have never seen the “Para Sí” of Peralta, and know it only from its title in catalogues. Two other similar works, of a later date, may be added to these. The first is “El Entretenido,” by Antonio Sanchez Tortoles, which was licensed to be printed in 1671, but of which I have seen no edition except that of Madrid, 1729, 4to. It contains the amusements of an academy during the Christmas holidays; namely, a play, entremes, and poems, with discussions on subjects of natural history, learning, and theology. But it contains no tales, and goes through only ten of the fourteen evenings whose entertainments it announces. The remaining four were filled up by Joseph Moraleja, (Madrid, 1741, 4to,) with materials generally more light and gay, and, in one instance, with a tale. The other work referred to is “Gustos y Disgustos del Lentiscar de Cartagena, por el Licenciado Gines Campillo de Bayle” (Valencia, 1689, 4to). It takes its name from the “Lentiscar,” a spot near Carthagena where the Lentisco or mastich-tree abounds; and it consists of twelve days’ entertainment, given at a country-house to a young lady who hesitated about taking the veil, but, finding her mistake from the unhappy ending of each of these days of pleasure, returns gladly to her convent and completes her profession. Neither of these works is worth the trouble of reading. The four “Academias” of Jacinto Polo, the amusements of four days of a wedding, (Obras, 1670, pp. 1-106,) are better, but consist chiefly of poems.

Meantime the succession of separate tales had been actively kept up. Montalvan published eight in 1624, written with more than the usual measure of grace in such Spanish compositions; one of them, “The Disastrous Friendship,” founded on the sufferings of an Algerine captivity, being one of the best in the language, and all of them so successful, that they were printed eleven times in about thirty years.[164] Céspedes y Meneses followed, in 1628, with a series entitled “Rare Histories”;[165]--Moya, at about the same time, published a single whimsical story on “The Fancies of a Fright”; in which he relates a succession of marvellous incidents, that, as he declares, flashed through his own imagination while falling down a precipice in the Sierra Morena;[166]--and Castro y Anaya published, in 1632, five tales called “The Auroras of Diana,” because they are told in the early dawn of each morning, during five successive days, to amuse Diana, a lady who, after a long illness, had fallen into a state of melancholy.[167]

[164] They were translated into French by Rampale, and printed at Paris in 1644 (see Baena and Brunet); and are in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 735.

[165] Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, “Historias Peregrinas,” Zaragoza, 1628, 1630, and 1647, the last in 12mo. Only the first part was ever published. It is a curious book. It opens with “An Abridgment of the Excellences of Spain,” and each of the six tales of which it consists, having its scene laid in some famous Spanish city, is preceded by a similar abridgment of the excellences of the particular city to which it relates. Céspedes is the author of the “Gerardo Español,” noticed, ante, p. 87, and, like many of the story-writers of his time, was a native of Madrid.

[166] Juan Martinez de Moya, “Fantasías de un Susto.” It reminds us of the theory of Coleridge about the rapidity with which a series of events can be hurried through the mind of a drowning man, or any person under a similar excitement of mind. It is, however, a very poor story, intended for a satire on manners, and is full of bad verses. There is a reprint of it, Madrid, 1738, 12mo.

[167] “Auroras de Diana, por Don Pedro de Castro y Anaya.” He was a native of Murcia, and there are editions of his “Auroras” of 1632, 1637, 1640, and 1654, the last printed at Coimbra, in 12mo.

The fair sex, too, entered into the general fashionable competition. Mariana de Carbajal, a native of Granada, and descended from the ancient ducal families of San Carlos and Rivas, published, in 1638, eight tales, pleasing both by their invention and by the simplicity of their style, which she called “Christmas at Madrid,” or “Evening Amusements.”[168] And in 1637 and 1647, María de Zayas, a lady of the court, printed two collections; the first called simply “Tales,” and the last “Saraos,” or Balls; each a series of ten stories within itself, and both connected together by the entertainments of a party of friends at Christmas, and the dances and fêtes at the wedding of two of their number, during the holidays that followed.[169]

[168] Mariana de Carbajal y Saavedra, “Novelas Entretenidas,” Madrid, 1633, 4to. At the end of these eight stories, she promises a second part; and in the edition of 1728 there are, in fact, two more stories, marked as the ninth and tenth, but I think they are not hers.

[169] Baena, Hijos, Tom. IV. p. 48. Both collections are printed together in the edition of Madrid, 1795, 4to;--the first being called Novelas and the second Saraos.

Again, slight changes in such fictions were attempted. Mata, in two dull tales, called “The Solitudes of Aurelia,” published in 1637, endeavoured to give them a more religious character;[170] and in 1641, André del Castillo, in six stories misnamed “The Masquerade of Taste,” sought to give them even a lighter tone than the old one.[171] Both found successors. Lozano’s “Solitudes of Life,” which are four stories supposed to be told by a hermit on the wild peaks of the Monserrate, belong to the first class, and, notwithstanding a somewhat affected style, were much praised by Calderon, and went through at least six editions;[172]--while, in the opposite direction, between 1625 and 1640, we have a number of the freest secular tales, by Castillo Solorzano, among which the best are probably “The Alleviations of Cassandra,” and “The Country-House of Laura,” both imitations of Castro’s “Diana.”[173]

[170] Gerónimo Fernandez de Mata, “Soledades de Aurelia,” 1638, to which, in the edition of Madrid, 1737, 12mo, is added a poor dialogue between Crates and his wife, Hipparcha, against ambition and worldliness; originally printed in 1637.

[171] André del Castillo, “La Mogiganga del Gusto,” Zaragoza, 1641. Segunda Impresion, Madrid, 1734. They are written in the affected style of the cultos.

[172] Christóval Lozano, “Soledades de la Vida,” 6a impresion, Barcelona, 1722, 4to. After the four connected stories told by the hermit, there follow, in this edition, six others, which, though separate, are in the same tone and style. Lozano wrote the “Reyes Nuevos de Toledo,” noticed, ante, p. 91; the “David Perseguido,” and other similar works;--at least, I believe they are all by one person, though the Index Expurgatorius of 1790 makes the “Soledades” the work of Gaspar Lozano, as if he were not the same.

[173] Of Alonso del Castillo Solorzano I have spoken, ante, p. 72, as the author of picaresque tales. A list of most of his works may be found in Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 15,) among which is a sort of suite with the following titles: “Jornadas Alegres,” 1626;--“Tardes Entretenidas,” 1625;--and “Noches de Placer,” 1631. None of these had much success; nor, indeed, did he succeed much in any of his tales, except “La Garduña de Sevilla,” already noticed. But his “Quinta de Laura” was printed three times, and his “Alivios de Cassandra,” which first appeared in 1640,--and is something like the “Para Todos” of Montalvan, being a collection of dramas, poetry, etc., besides six stories,--was translated into French, and printed at Paris, both in 1683 and 1685.

In the same way, the succession of short fictions was continued unbroken, until it ceased with the general decay of Spanish literature at the end of the century. Thus we have, in 1641, “The Various Effects of Love and Fortune,” by Alonso de Alcalá; five stories, such as may be imagined from the fact, that, in each of them, one of the five vowels is entirely omitted;[174]--in 1645, “The Warnings, or Experiences, of Jacinto,” by Villalpando, which may have been taken from his own life, since Jacinto was the first of his own names;[175]--in 1663, “The Festivals of Wit and Entertainments of Taste,” by Andres de Prado;[176]--and, in 1666, a series collected from different authors, by Isidro de Robles,[177] and published under the title of “Wonders of Love.” All these, as their names indicate, belong to one school; and although there is an occasional variety in their individual tones, some of them being humorous and others sentimental, and although some of them have their scenes in Spain and others in Italy or Algiers, still, as the purpose of all was only the lightest amusement, they may all be grouped together and characterized in the mass, as of little value, and as falling off in merit the nearer they approach the period when such fictions ceased in the elder Spanish literature.

[174] Alonso de Alcalá y Herrera, “Varios Efetos de Amor,” Lisboa, 1641, 18mo. He was a Portuguese, but was of Spanish origin, and wrote Spanish with purity, as well as Portuguese. (Barbosa, Bib. Lus., fol., Tom. I. p. 26.) Clemencin cites these stories of Alcalá as proof of the richness of the Spanish language. (Ed. Don Quixote, Tom. IV. p. 286.) There is a tale, printed by Guevara, called “Los Tres Hermanos,” in the volume with his “Diablo Cojuelo,” (Madrid, 1733, 12mo,) in which the letter A is omitted; and in 1654 Fernando Jacinto de Zarate published a dull love-story, called “Méritos disponen Premios, Discurso Lírico,” omitting the same vowel;--but the five tales of Alcalá are better done than either.

[175] Jacinto de Villalpando, “Escarmientos de Jacinto,” Zaragoza, 1645. He was Marquis of Osera, and published other works in the course of the next ten years after the appearance of the “Jacinto,” one of which, at least, appeared under the name of “Fabio Clymente.” See, ante, Vol. II. p. 483.

[176] Literally, Luncheons of Wit, etc. “Meriendas del Ingenio y Entretenimientos del Gusto,” Zaragoza, 1663, 8vo. Six tales.

[177] Isidro de Robles collected the “Varios Efetos de Amor” (Madrid, 1666, 4to). They were published again, with the five tales of Alcalá, already noted, in 1709, 1719, and 1760;--the number of tales being thus eleven, with three “Sucesos” at the end, published under the title of “Varios Prodigios de Amor.”

One more variety in the characteristics of this style of writing in Spain is, however, so distinct from the rest, that it should be separately mentioned,--that which has sometimes been called the Allegorical and Satirical Tale, and which generally took the form of a Vision. It was, probably, suggested by the bold and original “Visions” of Quevedo; and the instance of it most worthy of notice is “The Limping Devil” of Luis Velez de Guevara, which appeared in 1641. It is a short story, founded on the idea that a student releases from his confinement, in a magician’s vial, the Limping Devil, who, in return for this service, carries his liberator through the air, and, unroofing, as it were, the houses of Madrid, during the stillness of the night, shows him the secrets that are passing within. It is divided into ten “Leaps,” as they afterwards spring from place to place in different parts of Spain, in order to pounce on their prey, and it is satirical throughout. Parts of it are very happy; among which may be selected those relating to fashionable life, to the life of rogues, and to that of men of letters, in the large cities of Castile and Andalusia, though these, like the rest, are often disfigured with the bad taste then so common. On the whole, however, it is an amusing fiction,--partly allegorical and partly sketched from living manners,--and is to be placed among the more spirited prose satires in modern literature, both in its original form and in the form given to it by Le Sage, whose rifacimento has carried it, under the name of “Le Diable Boiteux,” wherever letters are known.[178]

[178] Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 68) and Montalvan (in the catalogue at the end of his “Para Todos,” 1661, p. 545) make him one of the principal and most fashionable dramatic authors of his time. (See, ante, Vol. II. p. 293.) The “Diablo Cojuelo” has been very often reprinted in Spanish since 1641. Le Sage published his “Diable Boiteux” in 1707, chiefly from Guevara; and nineteen years afterwards enlarged it by the addition of more Spanish stories from Santos and others, and more Parisian scandal. In the mean time, it had been carried upon the stage, where, as well as in its original form, it had a prodigious success.

Earlier than the appearance of the Limping Devil, however, Polo had written his “Hospital of Incurables,” a direct, but poor, imitation of Quevedo; and in 1647, under an assumed name, he published his “University of Love, or School for Selfishness,” a satire against mercenary matches, thrown into the shape of a vision of the University of Love, where the fair sex are brought up in the arts of profitable intrigue, and receive degrees according to their progress.[179] It is, in general, an ill-managed allegory, filled with bad puns and worse verse; but there is one passage so characteristic of Spanish wit in this form of fiction, that it may be cited as an illustration of the entire class to which it belongs.

[179] “Universidad de Amor y Escuela del Interes, Verdades Soñadas ó Sueño Verdadero.” The first part appeared under the name of Antolinez de Piedra Buena, and the second under that of El Bachiller Gaston Daliso de Orozco; but both were printed subsequently in the works of Jacinto Polo, and both appear together in a separate edition, 1664, filling sixty-three leaves, 18mo, and including some of Polo’s poetry.

“‘That young creature whom you see there,’ said the God of Love, as he led me on, ‘is the chief captain of my war, the one that has brought most soldiers to my feet and enlisted most men under my banners. The elderly person that is leading her along by the hand is her aunt.’ ‘Her aunt, did you say?’ I replied; ‘her aunt? Then there is an end of all my love for her. That word aunt is a counter poison that has disinfected me entirely, and quite healed the wound your well-planted arrow was beginning to make in my heart. For, however much a man may be in love, there can be no doubt an aunt will always be enough to purge him clean of it. Inquisitive, suspicious, envious,--one or the other she cannot fail to be,--and if the niece have the luck to escape, the lover never has; for if she is envious, she wants him for herself; and if she is only suspicious, she still spoils all comfort, so disconcerting every little project, and so disturbing every little nice plan, as to render pleasure itself unsavory,’ ‘Why, what a desperately bad opinion you have of aunts!’ said Love. ‘To be sure I have,’ said I. ‘If the state of innocence in which Adam and Eve were created had nothing else to recommend it, the simple fact that there could have been no aunts in Paradise would have been enough for me. Why, every morning, as soon as I get up, I cross myself and say, “By the sign of the Holy Rood, from all aunts deliver us this day, Good Lord!” And every time I repeat the Paternoster, after “Lead us not into temptation,” I always add,--“nor into the way of aunts either.”’”

The example of Quevedo was, again, followed by Marcos Garcia, who in 1657 published his “Phlegm of Pedro Hernandez,” an imaginary, but popular, personage, whose arms, according to an old Spanish proverb, fell out of their sockets from the mere listlessness of their owner. It is a vision, in which women-servants who spend their lives in active cheating, students pressing vigorously forward to become quacks and pettifoggers, spendthrift soldiers, and similar uneasy, unprincipled persons of other conditions, are contrasted with those who, trusting to a quiet disposition, float noiselessly down the current of life, and succeed without an effort and without knowing how they do it. The general allegory is meagre; but some of the individual sketches are well imagined.[180]

[180] Marcos Garcia, “La Flema de Pedro Hernandez, Discurso Moral y Político,” Madrid, 1657, 12mo. The author was a surgeon of Madrid, and wrote “Honor de la Medecina”; and another “Papelillo,” without his name, which he mentions in his Prólogo. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 83.) He shows, at the beginning of his “Flema,” that he means to imitate Quevedo; but he has a good deal of cultismo in his style. For the meaning of “Flema,” see Covarrubias, ad verb.--One more trifle may here be mentioned; the “Desengaño del Hombre en el Tribunal de la Fortuna y Casa de Descontentos, ideado por Don Juan Martinez de Cuellar,” 1663. It is a vision, in which the author goes to the house of “Desengaño,”--that peculiarly Castilian word, which may here be translated Truth. He is led afterwards to the palace and tribunal of Fortune, where he is disabused of his errors concerning all earthly good. The fiction is of little worth, and the style is that of the school of Góngora.

The person, however, who, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, succeeded best in this style of composition, as well as in tales of other kinds, was Francisco Santos, a native of Madrid, who died not far from the year 1700. Between 1663 and 1697, he gave to the world sixteen volumes of different kinds of works for popular amusement;--generally short stories, but some of them encumbered with allegorical personages and tedious moral discussions.[181] The oldest of the series, “Dia y Noche en Madrid,” or, as it may be translated, Life in Madrid, though a mere fiction founded on manners, is divided into what the author terms Eighteen Discourses. It opens, as such Spanish tales are too apt to open, somewhat pompously; the first scene describing with too much elaborateness a procession of three hundred emancipated captives, who enter Madrid praising God and rejoicing at their release from the horrors of Algerine servitude. One of these captives, the hero of the story, falls immediately into the hands of a shrewd and not over-honest servant, named Juanillo, who, having begun the world as a beggar, and risen by cunning so far as to be employed in the capacity of an inferior servant by a fraternity of monks, now undertakes to make the stranger acquainted with the condition of Madrid, serving him as a guide wherever he goes, and interpreting to him whatever is most characteristic of the manners and follies of the capital. Some of the tales and sketches thus introduced are full of life and truth, as, for instance, those relating to the prisons, gaming-houses, and hospitals, and especially one in which a coquette, meeting a poor man at a bull-fight, so dupes him by her blandishments, that she sends him back penniless, at midnight, to his despairing wife and children, who, anxious and without food, have been waiting from the early morning to have him return with their dinner. This little volume, several parts of which have been freely used by Le Sage, ends with an account of the captive’s adventures in Italy, in Spain, and in Algiers, given by himself in a truly national tone, and with fluency and spirit.[182]

[181] Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 216. There is a coarse edition of the works of Santos, in 4 tom. 4to, Madrid, 1723.

[182] “Dia y Noche en Madrid, Discursos de lo mas Notable que en él passa,” Madrid, 1663, 12mo; besides which there are editions of 1708, 1734, etc.

“Periquillo”--another of these collections of sketches and tales, less well written than the last, except in the merely narrative portions--contains an account of a foundling, who, after the ruin and death of a pious couple that first picked him up at their door on a Christmas morning, begins the world for himself as the leader of a blind beggar. From this condition, which, in such Spanish stories, always seems to be regarded as the lowest possible in society, he rises to be the servant of a cavalier, who proves to be a mysterious robber, and after escaping from whom he falls into the hands of yet worse persons, and is apprehended under circumstances that remind us of the story of Doña Mencia in “Gil Blas.” He, however, vindicates his innocence, and, being released from the fangs of justice, returns, weary of the world, to his first home, where he leads an ascetic life; makes long, pedantic discourses on virtue to his admiring townsmen; and proves, in fact, a sort of humble philosopher, growing constantly more and more devout till the account of him ends at last with a prayer. The whole is interesting among Spanish works of fiction, because it is evidently written both in imitation of the picaresque novels and in opposition to them; since Periquillo, from the lowest origin, gets on by neither roguery nor cleverness, but by honesty and good faith; and, instead of rising in the world and becoming rich and courtly, settles patiently down into a village hermit, or a sort of poor Christian Diogenes. No doubt, he has neither the wit nor the cunning of Lazarillo; but that he should venture to encounter that shrewd little beggar in any way makes Periquillo, at once, a personage of some consequence.[183]

[183] “Periquillo, él de las Gallineras,” Madrid, 1668, 12mo. He gets his name from the circumstance, that, as a child, he was employed to take care of chickens.

Yet one more of the works of Santos should be noticed; an allegorical tale, called “Truth on the Rack, or the Cid come to Life again.” Its general story is, that Truth, in the form of a fair woman, is placed on the rack, surrounded by the Cid and other forms, that rise from the earth about the scaffold on which she is tormented. There she is forced to give an account of things as they really exist, or have existed, and to discourse concerning shadowy multitudes, who pass, in sight of the company that surrounds her, over what seems to be a long bridge. The whole is, therefore, a satire in the form of a vision, but its character is consistently sustained only at the beginning and the end. The Cid, however, is much the same personage throughout,--bold, rough, and free-spoken. He is heartily dissatisfied with every thing he finds on earth, especially with the popular traditions and ballads about himself, and goes back to his grave well pleased to escape from such a world, “which,” he says, “if they would give it to me to live in, I would not accept.”[184]

[184] “El Verdad en el Potro y el Cid Resuscitado,” Madrid, 1679, 12mo, and again, 1686. The ballads cited or repeated in this volume, as the popular ballads sung in the streets in honor of the Cid, are, it is curious to observe, not always to be found in any of the Romanceros. Thus, the one on the insult to the Cid’s father begins,--

Diego Lainez, el padre De Rodrigo el Castellano, Cuidando en la mengua grande Hecha á un hombre de su grado, etc. p. 9, ed. 1686.

It is quite different from the ballad on the same subject in any of the ballad-books. So is the one at p. 33, upon the death of Count Lozano, as well as the one at p. 105, upon the Cid’s insult to the Pope at Rome. On hearing the last sung in the streets, the Cid is made, in the story, to cry out, “Is it pretended I was ever guilty of such effrontery? I, whom God made a Castilian,--I treat the great Shepherd of the Church so?--I be guilty of such folly? By St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lazarus, with whom I held converse on earth, you lie, base ballad-singer!” Several ballads might be taken from this volume and added even to the “Romancero del Cid,” Keller, Stuttgard, 1840, which is the most ample of all the collections on the Cid.

Other works of Santos, like “The Devil let loose, or Truths of the other World dreamed about in this,” and “The Live Man and the Dead One,” are of the same sort with the last;[185] while yet others run even more to allegory, like his “Tarascas de Madrid,”[186] and his “Gigantones,”[187] suggested by the huge and unsightly forms led about to amuse or to frighten the multitude in the annual processions of the Corpus Christi;--the satirical interpretation he gives to them being, that worse monsters than the Tarascas might be seen every day in Madrid by those who could distinguish the sin and folly that always thronged the streets of that luxurious capital. But though such satires were successful when they first appeared, they have long since ceased to be so; partly because they abound in allusions to local circumstances now known only to the curiosity of antiquarians, and partly because, in all respects, they depict a state of society and manners of which hardly a vestige remains.

[185] “El Diablo anda Suelto,” (Madrid, 1677,) and “El Vivo y el Difunto,” (1692,) are both very curious fictions.

[186] “Las Tarascas de Madrid y Tribunal Espantoso,” Madrid, 1664, Valencia, 1694, etc. “La Tarasca de Parto en el Meson del Infierno y Dias de Fiestas por la Noche,” Madrid, 1671, Valencia, 1694, are again interesting, partly because they contain anecdotes and sketches that serve to explain the popular religious theatre.

[187] “Los Gigantones de Madrid por defuera,” Madrid, 1666, 12mo.

Santos is the last of the writers of Spanish tales previous to the eighteenth century that needs to be noticed.[188] But though the number we have gone over is large for the length of the period in which they appeared, not a few others might be added. The pastoral romances from the time of Montemayor are full of them;--the “Galatea” of Cervantes, and the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, being little more than a series of such stories, slightly bound together by yet another that connects them all. So are, to a certain degree, the picaresque fictions, like “Guzman de Alfarache” and “Marcos de Obregon”;--and so are such serious fictions as “The Wars of Granada” and “The Spanish Gerardo.” The popular drama, too, was near akin to the whole; as we have seen in the case of Timoneda, whose stories, before he produced them as tales, had already been exhibited in the form of farces on the rude stage of the public squares; and in the case of Cervantes, who not only put part of his tale of “The Captive” in “Don Quixote” into his second play of “Life in Algiers,” but constructed his story of “The Liberal Lover” almost wholly out of his earlier play on the same subject. Indeed, Spain, during the period we have gone over, was full of the spirit of this class of fictions,--not only producing them in great numbers, and strongly marked with the popular character, but carrying their tone into the longer romances and upon the stage to a degree quite unknown elsewhere.[189]

[188] The Spanish tales of the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century are much infected with the false taste of cultismo; no portion of Spanish literature more so. As we approach the end of the century, not one, I think, is free from it.

[189] Italy is the only country that can enter into competition with Spain in the department of tales, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, I am not certain, considering the short period (a little more than a century) during which Spanish tales were fashionable, that as many in proportion were not produced as were produced of Italian tales in Italy during the long period--four centuries and a half--in which they have now been prevalent there. And if, to the Spanish tales found in books professing and not professing to be collections of them, we add the thousands used up in Spanish dramas, to which the elder Italian theatre offers no counterpart, I suppose there can hardly be a doubt that there are really more Spanish fictions of this class in existence than there are Italian. If, however, we were to settle the point only by a comparison of the meagre and imperfect catalogues of Spanish stories in Antonio’s Bibliotheca with the admirably complete one of Italian stories in the “Bibliografia delle Novelle Italiane,” by Gamba, we should settle it differently. But, in any event, when speaking of the Italian novelle, we should remember, that, until very lately, the whole spirit and power of fiction in Italy, so to speak, have been taken from the theatre and romances, and cast into these short tales.

The most striking circumstance, however, connected with the history of all romantic fiction in Spain,--whatever form it assumed,--is its early appearance, and its early decay. The story of “Amadis” filled the world with its fame, when no other Spanish prose romance of chivalry was heard of; and, what is singular, though the oldest of its class, it still remains the best-written in any language;--while, on the other hand, the book that overthrew this same Amadis, with all his chivalry, is the “Don Quixote”; again, the oldest and best of all similar works, and one that is still read and admired by thousands who know nothing of the shadowy multitudes it destroyed, except what its great author tells them. The “Conde Lucanor” appeared full half a century earlier than the “Decamerone.” The “Diana” of Montemayor soon eclipsed its Italian prototype in popularity, and, for a time, shone without a successful rival of its class throughout Europe. The picaresque stories, exclusively Spanish from the very first, and the multitudes of tales that followed them with attributes hardly less separate and national, never lose their Spanish air and costume, even in the most successful of their foreign imitations. Taken together, the number of these fictions is very great;--so great, that their mass may well be called enormous. But what is more remarkable than their multitude is the fact, that they were produced when the rest of Europe, with a partial exception in favor of Italy, was not yet awakened to corresponding efforts of the imagination; before Madame de Lafayette had published her “Zayde”; before Sidney’s “Arcadia” had appeared, or D’Urfé’s “Astrea,” or Corneille’s “Cid,” or Le Sage’s “Gil Blas.” In short, they were at the height of their fame, just at the period when the Hôtel de Rambouillet reigned supreme over the taste of France, and when Hardy, following the indications of the public will and the example of his rivals, could do no better than bring out upon the stage of Paris nearly every one of the tales of Cervantes, and many of those of Cervantes’s rivals and contemporaries.[190]

[190] Puibusque, Histoire Comparée, Tom. II. c. 3.

But civilization and manners advanced in the rest of Europe rapidly from this moment, and paused in Spain. Madrid, instead of sending its influences to France, began itself to acknowledge the control of French literature and refinement. The creative spirit, therefore, ceased in Spanish romantic fiction, and, as we shall presently see, a spirit of French imitation took its place.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVII

ELOQUENCE, FORENSIC AND PULPIT.--LUIS DE LEON.--LUIS DE GRANADA.--PARAVICINO AND THE SCHOOL OF BAD TASTE.--EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE.--ZURITA.--PEREZ.--SANTA TERESA.--ARGENSOLA.--LOPE DE VEGA.--QUEVEDO.--CASCALES.--ANTONIO.--SOLÍS.

We shall hardly look for forensic or deliberative eloquence in Spain. The whole constitution of things there, the political and ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and, perhaps we should add, the very genius of the people, were unfriendly to the growth of a plant like this, which flourishes only in the soil of freedom.

The Spanish tribunals, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whether in the ordinary course of their administration of justice, or in the dark proceedings of the Inquisition, took less cognizance of the influences of eloquence than those of any other Christian country of modern times. They dealt with the wheel and the fagot,--not with the spirit of persuasion. Nor was this spirit truly known or favored in the political assemblies of the kingdom, though it was not supplanted there by the formidable instruments familiar in the courts of justice. In the ancient Cortes of Castile, and still more in those of Aragon, there may have been discussions which were raised by their fervor to something like what we now call deliberative eloquence. We have, in fact, intimations of such discussions in the old chronicles; especially in those that record the troubles and violence of the great nobles in the reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth. But a free, living debate on a great political principle, or on the conduct of those who managed the affairs of the country,--such a debate as sometimes shook the popular assemblies of antiquity, and in modern times has often controlled the destinies of Christendom,--was, in Spain, a thing absolutely unknown.

Even the grave and dry discussions, to which the pressure of affairs gave rise, were rare and accidental. There was no training for them; and they could be followed by none of the great practical results that are at once the only sufficient motive and reward that can make them enter freely into the institutions of a state. Indeed, whatever there was of discussion in any open assembly could occur only in the earlier period of the monarchy, when the language and culture of the nation were still too little advanced to produce specimens of careful debate; for from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and the days of the Comunidades, the Cortes were gradually restrained in their privileges, until at last they ceased to be any thing but a part of the pageantry of the empire, and served only to record the laws they should themselves have discussed and modelled. From this period, all opportunity for the growth of political eloquence in Spain was lost. It would have been no more tolerated by one of the Philips than Lutheranism.

The eloquence of the pulpit was checked by similar causes, but in a different way. The Catholic religion has maintained in Spain, down to a late period, more than it has in any other country, the character it had during the Middle Ages. It has been to an extraordinary degree a religion of mysteries, of forms, and of penance;--a religion, therefore, in which such modes of moving the understanding and the heart as have prevailed in France and England since the middle of the seventeenth century have been rarely attempted, and never with great success.

If any exception is to be made to this remark, it must be made in the case of Luis de Leon and in that of Luis de Granada. Of the first we have already spoken. He printed, indeed, no sermons as such; but he inserted in his other works, and especially in his “Names of Christ” and in his “Perfect Wife,” long declamations, sometimes preceded by a text and sometimes not, but regularly divided into heads, and wearing the general appearance and attributes of religious discourses. These, since they were printed as early as 1584, may be accounted the earliest specimens of Spanish eloquence fitted for the pulpit, and, if not actually delivered, are still worthy of notice.[191]

[191] The most remarkable, and perhaps the most beautiful, specimen is in the first book of “The Names of Christ”; the text being from Isaiah, ix. 6: “The everlasting Father.”

The case of Luis de Granada is one more directly in point. That remarkable man was head of the Dominican order, or the order of the Preaching Monks, so that both his place and his profession led him to the cultivation of the eloquence of the pulpit. But, besides this, he seems to have devoted himself to it with the strong preference of genius, preaching extemporaneously, it is said, with great power and unction. In 1576, he published a Latin treatise on the subject of Pulpit Eloquence; and in 1595, after his death, his friends printed, in addition to those published during his lifetime, fourteen of his more formal discourses, in which he has been thought, not only to have given a full illustration of the precepts he inculcated, but to have placed himself at the head of the department of eloquence to which he devoted so much of his life.

They are in a bold and affluent style,--somewhat mystical, as were his own religious tendencies,--and often more declamatory than seems in keeping with the severe and solemn nature of their subjects; but they are written with remarkable purity of idiom, and breathe everywhere the spirit of the religion that was so deeply impressed on his age and country. Perhaps a more characteristic specimen of Spanish eloquence can hardly be found, than that in which Luis de Granada describes the resurrection of the Saviour; adding to it his descent into hell to rescue the souls of the righteous who were pining there because they had died before his great sacrifice was completed,--a doctrine of the Catholic Church capable of high poetical ornament, and one which, from the time of Dante, has been often set forth with the most solemn effect.

“On that glorious day,” exclaims Luis de Granada, in his sermon on the Resurrection, “the sun shone more brightly than on all others, serving its Lord in dutiful splendor amidst his rejoicings, as it had served him in darkness through his sufferings. The heavens, which had been veiled in mourning to hide his agonies, were now bright with redoubled glory as they saw him rise conquering from the grave. And who would not rejoice in such a day? The whole humanity of Christ rejoiced in it; all the disciples of Christ rejoiced in it; heaven rejoiced, earth rejoiced; hell itself shared in the general jubilee. For the triumphant Prince descended into its depths, clothed with splendor and might. The everlasting darkness grew bright before his steps; the eternal lamentations ceased; the realms of torment paused at his approach. The princes of Edom were disturbed, and the mighty men of Moab trembled, and they that dwelt in the land of Canaan were filled with fear. And the multitude of the suffering murmured and said, ‘Who is this mighty one, so resplendent, so powerful? Never before was his likeness seen in these realms of hell; never hath the tributary world sent such a one to these depths,--one who demands judgment, not a debtor; one who fills us with dread, not one guilty like ourselves; a judge, and not a culprit; a conqueror, not a sinner. Say, where were our watchmen and our guards, when he burst in victory on our barred gates? By what might has he entered? And who is he, that can do these things? If he were guilty, he were not thus bold; if the shade of sin lay on his soul, how could our darkness be made bright with his glory? If he be God, why should hell receive him? and if he be man, whence hath he this might? If he be God, why dwelt he in the grave? and if man, by what authority would he thus lay waste our abodes?’

“Thus murmured the vassals of hell, as the Conqueror entered in glory to free his chosen captives. For there stood they, all assembled together,--all the souls of the just, who from the foundation of the world till that day had passed through the gates of the grave; all the prophets and men of might who had glorified the Lord in the manifold agonies of martyrdom;--a glorious company!--a mighty treasure!--the richest inheritance of Christ’s triumph! For there stood the two original parents of the generations of mankind,--the first in sin and the first in faith and hope. There stood that aged saint who rescued in the ark of safety those that repeopled the world when the waters of the deluge were spent. There stood the father of the faithful, who first received by merit the revelation of God’s will, and wore, in his person, the marks of his election. There stood his obedient son, who, bearing on his shoulders the wood of his own sacrifice, showed forth the redemption of the world. There stood the holy progenitor of the Twelve Tribes, who, winning his father’s blessing in the stranger guise of another’s garb, set forth the mystery of the humanity and incarnation of the Divine Word. There stood, also, as it were, guests newly arrived in that strange land, the Holy Baptist and the blessed Simeon, who prayed that he might not be taken from the earth till with his own eyes he had seen its salvation; who received it in his arms, and sang gently its canticle of peace. And there, too, found a place the poor Lazarus of the Gospel, who, for the patience with which he bore his wounds, deserved to join so noble a company, and share its longing hopes. And all this multitude of sanctified spirits stood there mourning and grieving for this day; and in the midst of them all, and as the leader of them all, the holy king and prophet repeated without ceasing his ancient lamentation: ‘As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God! My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?’ O blessed and holy king, if this be the cause of thy lamentation, let it cease for ever; for behold thy God! behold thy Saviour! Change, then, thy chant, and sing as thou wast wont to sing of old: ‘Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land; thou hast pardoned the offences of thy people; thou hast hidden thy face from the multitude of their sins.’”[192]

[192] See the accounts of Luis de Granada in Antonio, and in the Preface to the “Guia de Pecadores,” Madrid, 1781, 2 tom. 8vo. His treatise on pulpit eloquence, entitled “Rhetoricæ Ecclesiasticæ, sive de Ratione Concionandi, Libri Sex,” was valued in other countries. An edition of it, Cologne, 1611, 12mo, fills above 500 closely printed pages. It is somewhat remarkable, that, besides the sermon on the Resurrection, from which the extract I have translated was made, one of the best of his meditations, that entitled “De la Alegría de los Santos Padres,” is on the same subject. He was born in 1504, and died in 1588.

It would not be easy to select a more striking example than this of the peculiar rhetoric that was most sought in the Spanish pulpit. But the portions of equal merit are few, and the amount of the whole is small. After the beginning of the seventeenth century, the affected style of Góngora and the conceits of the school of Ledesma found their way into the churches generally, and especially into the churches of Madrid. This was natural. No persons depended more on the voice of fashion than the preachers of the court and the capital, and the fashion of both was thoroughly infected with the new doctrines. Paravicino, at this period, was at the head of the popular preachers; himself a poet devoted to the affectations of Góngora; a man of wit, a gentleman, and a courtier. From 1616 he was, during twenty years, pulpit orator to Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, and enjoyed, as such, a kind and degree of popularity before unknown. As might have been expected, he had many followers, each of whom sought to have a fashionable audience. Such audiences were soon systematically provided. They were, in fact, collected, arranged, and seated by the friends and admirers of the preacher himself,--generally by those who, from their ecclesiastical relations, had an interest in his success; and then the crowds thus gathered were induced in different ways to express their approbation of the more elaborate passages in his discourse. From this time, and in this way, religious dignity disappeared from the Spanish pulpit, and whatever there was of value in its eloquence was confined to two forms,--the learned discussions, often in Latin, addressed to bodies of ecclesiastics, and the extemporaneous exhortations addressed to the lower classes;--the latter popular and vehement in their tone, and, by their coarseness, generally unworthy of the solemn subjects they touched.[193]

[193] For Paravicino and his school, see Sedano, (Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xlviii.,) Baena, (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 389,) and Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 612,) who speaks as if he had often heard Paravicino’s eloquence, and witnessed its effects. E contra is Figueroa, who, in his “Pasagero,” (1617, Alivio IV.,) is severe upon the preachers and audiences of Madrid. The fact, however, that Capmany, in his five important volumes devoted to Spanish eloquence, has been able to find nothing in the seventeenth century, either in the way of forensic orations or popular pulpit eloquence, with which to fill his pages, but is obliged to resort to the eloquent prose of history and philosophy, of ethics and religious asceticism, tells at once, in a way not to be mistaken, the tale of the deficiencies in Castilian eloquence, as the word eloquence is understood in English.

* * * * *

There is little in Spanish epistolary correspondence that requires notice as a portion of the elegant literature of the country. The heartiness of a simpler age gives, indeed, a charm to such letters as those which claim to have been written by Cibdareal, and in a less degree to those of Pulgar and Diego de Valera. Later, the despatches of Columbus, in which he made known to the world his vast discoveries, are occasionally marked by the fervor of an enthusiasm inspired by his great subject; and those of his queen and patron, though few in number and less interesting, are quite as characteristic and quite as true-hearted.

But, with the stately court brought from the North by Charles the Fifth, all this was changed. Added forms, and more than the old national gravity, passed into the intercourse of social life, and infected the style of the commonest correspondence. Genial familiarity disappeared from the letters of friends, and even private affections and feelings were either seldom expressed, or were so covered up as to be with difficulty recognized. Thus, what was most valued in this department at the time, and for a century afterwards, were Guevara’s “Golden Epistles,” which are only formal dissertations, and the “Epistles” of Avila, which are sermons in disguise, that moved the hearts of his countrymen because they were such earnest exhortations to a religious life.[194]

[194] These writers have all been mentioned earlier, (see, ante, Vol. I. pp. 395, 540, 543,) except Queen Isabella, whose letters are best found in Clemencin’s excellent work on her character and times, filling the sixth volume of the “Memorias de la Academia de la Historia.” They are addressed to her confessor, Hernando de Talavera, and strongly illustrate both her prudence and her submission to ecclesiastical influences. (See pp. 351-383.) Several letters addressed to Columbus, and marked with her spirit rather than that of her husband, though signed by both of them, may be seen in the second volume of Navarrete, (Viages, etc.,) which is rich in such curious documents.

From these remarks, however, we should except portions of the correspondence of Zurita, the historian, extending over the last thirty years of his life, and ending in 1582, just before his death. They give us the business-like intercourse of a man of letters, carried on with all classes of society, from ministers of state and the highest ecclesiastics of the realm down to persons distinguished only because they were occupied in studies like his own. The number of letters in this collection is large, amounting to above two hundred. More of them are from Antonio Agustin, Archbishop of Tarragona, an eminent scholar in Spanish history and civil law, than from any other person; but the most interesting are from Zurita himself, from his friend Ambrosio Morales, from Diego de Mendoza, the historian, Argote de Molina, the antiquarian, and Fernan Nuñez, the Greek Commander. Each of these series is marked by something characteristic of its author, and all of them, taken together, show more familiarly the interior condition of a scholar’s life in Spain, in the sixteenth century, than it can be found anywhere else.[195]

[195] The correspondence of Zurita and his friends is to be sought in the “Progresos de la Historia en el Reyno de Aragon,” by Diego Josef Dormer, (Zaragoza, 1680, folio,) and especially pp. 362-563, which are entirely given up to it.

But the principal exception to be made in favor of Spanish epistolary correspondence is found in the case of Antonio Perez, secretary of Philip the Second, and for some time his favorite minister. His father, who was a scholar, and made a translation of the “Odyssey,”[196] had been in the employment of Charles the Fifth, so that the younger Perez inherited somewhat of the court influence which was then so important; but his rapid advancement was owing to his own genius, and to a love of intrigue and adventure, which seemed to be a part of his nature. At last, in 1578, at the command of his master, he not unwillingly brought about the murder of Escovedo, a person high in the confidence of Don John of Austria, whose growing influence it was thought worth while thus to curtail;--a crime which, perpetrated as it was in consequence of the official connection of the secretary with the monarch, brought Perez to the very height of his favor.

[196] “La Ulyxea de Homero,” etc., por Gonzalo Perez, (Venecia, 1553, 18mo,) is in blank verse; but in this edition we have only the first thirteen books, with a dedication to Philip the Prince, whose chief secretary Gonzalo Perez then was, as his son Antonio was afterwards secretary of the same Philip on the throne. Subsequently, when he had translated the remaining eleven books, he dedicated the whole anew to Philip as king, (Anvers, 1556, 12mo,) correcting and amending the first part carefully. Lope de Vega (in his Dorotea, Acto IV. sc. 3) praises the version of Perez; but, like most of the Spanish translations from the ancients in the sixteenth century, it shows little of the spirit of the original.

But it was not long before the guilty agent became as unwelcome to his guilty master as their victim had been. A change in their relations followed, cautiously brought on by the unscrupulous king, but deep and entire. At first, Philip permitted Perez to be pursued by the kinsmen of the murdered man, and afterwards, contriving plausible pretexts for hiding his motives, began himself to join in the persecution. Eleven long years the wretched courtier was watched, vexed, and imprisoned, at Madrid; and once, at least, he was subjected to cruel bodily tortures. When he could endure this no longer, he fled to Aragon, his native kingdom, whose freer political constitution did not permit him to be crushed in secret. This was a great surprise to Philip, and, for an instant, seems to have disconcerted his dark schemes. But his resources were equal to the emergency. He pursued Perez to Saragossa, and finding the regular means of justice unequal to the demands of his vengeance, caused his victim to be seized by the Inquisition, under the absurd charge of heresy. But this, again, in the form in which Philip found it necessary to proceed, was a violation of the ancient privileges of the kingdom, and the people broke out into open rebellion, and released Perez from prison;--a consequence of his measures, which, perhaps, was neither unforeseen by Philip nor unwelcome to him. At any rate, he immediately sent an army into Aragon, sufficient, not only to overwhelm all open resistance, but to strike a terror that should prevent future opposition to his will; and the result, besides a vast number of rich confiscations to the royal treasury, was the condemnation of sixty-eight persons of distinction to death by the Inquisition, and the final overthrow of nearly every thing that remained of the long-cherished liberties of the country.

Meantime, Perez escaped secretly from Saragossa, as he had before escaped from Madrid, and, wandering over the Pyrenees in the disguise of a shepherd, sought refuge in Bearn, at the little court of Catherine of Bourbon, sister of Henry the Fourth. Public policy caused him to be well received both there and in France, where he afterwards passed the greater part of his long exile. During the troubles between Elizabeth and Philip, he instinctively went to England, and, while there, was much with Essex, and became more familiar with Bacon than the wise and pious mother of the future chancellor thought it well one so profligate as Perez should be. Philip, who could ill endure the idea of having such a witness of his crimes intriguing at the courts of his great enemies, endeavoured to have Perez assassinated both in Paris and London, and failed more from accident than from want of well-concerted plans to accomplish his object.

At last peace came between France and England on one side, and Spain on the other; and Perez ceased to be a person of consequence to those who had so long used him. Henry the Fourth, indeed, with his customary good nature, still indulged him even in very extravagant modes of life, which rather resembled those of a prince than of an exile. But his claims were so unreasonable, and were urged with such boldness and pertinacity, that every body wearied of him. He therefore fell into unhonored poverty, and dragged out the miserable life of a neglected courtier till 1611, when he died at Paris. Four years later, the Inquisition, which had caused him to be burnt in effigy as a heretic, reluctantly did him the imperfect justice of removing their anathemas from his memory, and thus permitted his children to enter into civil rights, of which nothing but the most shameless violence had ever deprived them.

From the time of his first imprisonment, Perez began to write the letters that are still extant; and their series never stops, till we approach the period of his death. Some of them are to his wife and children; others, to Gil de Mesa, his confidential friend and agent; and others, to persons high in place, from whose influence he hoped to gain favor. His Narratives, or “Relations,” as he calls them, and his “Memorial” on his own case, occasionally involve other letters, and are themselves in the nature of long epistles, written with great talent and still greater ingenuity, to gain the favor of his judges or of the world. All these, some of which his position forbade him ever to send to the persons to whom they were addressed, he carefully preserved, and during his exile published them from time to time to suit his own political purposes;--at first anonymously, or under the assumed name of Raphael Peregrino; afterwards under the seeming editorship of his friend Mesa; and finally, without disguise of any sort, dedicating some of them to Henry the Fourth, and some to the Pope.

Their number is large, amounting in the most ample collection to above a thousand pages. The best are those that are most familiar; for even in the slightest of them, as when he is sending a present of gloves to Lady Rich, or a few new-fashioned toothpicks to the Duke of Mayenne, there is a nice preservation of the Castilian proprieties of expression. Many of them sparkle with genius; sometimes most unexpectedly, though not always in good taste; Thus, to his innocent wife, shamefully kept in prison during his exile, he says: “Though you are not allowed to write to me, or to enjoy what to the absent is the breath of life; yet here [in France] there is no punishment for the promptings of natural affection. I answer, therefore, what I hear in the spirit, your complaints of the punishment laid on your own virtues and on the innocence of your children,--complaints, which reach me from that asylum of darkness and of the shadow of death, in which you now lie. But when I listen, it seems as if I ought to hear you no less with my outward ears, just as the words and cries that come from the caves under the earth only resound the louder, as they are rolled up to us from their dark hiding-places.”[197] And again, when speaking of the cruel conduct of his judges to his family, he breaks out: “But let them not be deceived. Their victims may be imprisoned and loaded with irons; but they have the two mightiest advocates of the earth to defend them,--their innocence and their wrongs. For neither could Cicero nor Demosthenes so pierce the ears of men, nor so stir up their minds, nor so shake the frame of things, as can these two, to whom God has given the especial privilege to stand for ever in his presence, to cry for justice, and to be witnesses and advocates for one another in whatsoever he has reserved for his own awful judgment.”[198]

[197] Obras, Genevra, 1654, 12mo, p. 1073.

[198] Ibid., p. 96.

The letters of Perez are in a great variety of styles, from the cautious and yet fervent appeals that he made to Philip the Second, down to the gallant notes he wrote to court ladies, and the overflowings of his heart to his young children. But they are all written in remarkably idiomatic Castilian, and are rendered interesting from the circumstance, that in each class there is a strict observance of such conventional forms as were required by the relative social positions of the author and his correspondents.[199]

[199] The first publication of Perez, I think, is the one made at Lyons, without date, but supposed to be of 1598, and entitled “Pedaços de Historia,” etc.; but, the same year, the contents of this volume were reprinted at Paris, with the more appropriate title of “Relaciones.” Perez seems to have amused himself with publishing different portions of his works at different times and in different places; but the most complete collection is that of Geneva, 1654, 12mo, pp. 1126. His life is admirably discussed by M. Mignet, in his “Antonio Perez et Philippe II.” (2de édit., Paris, 1846). The work of Salvador Bermudez de Castro, entitled “Antonio Perez, Estudios Históricos,” (Madrid, 1841, 8vo,) would be better worth reading if the author had not permitted himself to indulge in fictions, such as ballad poetry, which he calls the poetry of Perez, and which he gives as part of the means Perez used to stir up the people of Saragossa, but which is, no doubt, the work of Castro himself. The lives of Perez in Baena (Tom. I., 1789, p. 121) and Latassa (Bib. Nov., Tom. II., 1799, p. 108) show how afraid men of letters were, as late as the end of the eighteenth century, to approach any subject thus connected with royalty. The works of Perez are strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition to the last,--in 1790 and 1805. The letters of Perez to Essex are in pretty good Latin, and out of his Spanish works there were early made two or three collections of very acute and striking aphorisms, which have been several times printed. There are many MS. letters of Perez at the Hague and elsewhere, referred to by Mignet, and there is in the Royal Library at Paris an important political treatise which bears his name, but which, though strongly marked with his acuteness and brilliancy, Ochoa hesitates to attribute to him. It is, however, I doubt not, his. (See Ochoa, Manuscritos Españoles, pp. 158-166; and Seminario Erudito, Tom. VIII. pp. 245 and 250.) Further accounts of Perez are to be found in Llorente, Tom. III. pp. 316-375.

The letters of Santa Teresa, who was a contemporary of the secretary of Philip the Second, and died in 1582, are entirely different; for while nothing can be more practical and worldly than those of Perez, the letters of the devout nun are entirely spiritual. She believed herself to be inspired, and therefore wrote with an air of authority, which is almost always solemn and imposing, but which sometimes, through its very boldness and freedom from all restraint, becomes easy and graceful. Her talents were versatile and her perceptions acute. To each of her many correspondents she says something that seems suited to the occasion on which she is consulted;--a task not easy for a nun, who lived forty-seven years in retirement from the world, and during that time was called upon to give advice to archbishops and bishops, to wise and able statesmen like Diego de Mendoza, to men of genius like Luis de Granada, to persons in private life who were in deep affliction or in great danger, and to women in the ordinary course of their daily lives. Her letters fill four volumes, and though, in general, they are only to be regarded as fervent exhortations or religious teachings, still, by the purity, beauty, and womanly grace of their style, they may fairly claim a distinguished place in the epistolary literature of her country.[200]

[200] “Cartas de Santa Teresa de Jesus,” Madrid, 1793, 4 tom. 4to,--chiefly written in the latter part of her life.

Some portions of the correspondence of Bartolomé de Argensola about 1625, of Lope de Vega before 1630, and of Quevedo a little later, have been preserved to us; but they are too inconsiderable in amount to have much value. Of Cascales, the rhetorician, we have more. In 1634, he printed three Decades of Letters; but they are almost entirely devoted to discussions of points that involve learned lore; and, even where they are not such, they are stiff and formal. A few by Nicolas Antonio, the literary historian, who died in 1684, are plain and business-like, but are written in a hard style, that prevents them from being interesting. Those of Solís, who closes up the century and the period, are better. They are such as belong to the intercourse of an old man, left to struggle through the last years of a long life with poverty and misfortune, and express the feelings becoming his situation, both with philosophical calmness and Christian resignation.[201]

[201] The letters of Argensola are in the “Cartas de Varios Autores Españoles,” by Mayans y Siscar, (Valencia, 1773, 5 tom. 12mo,)--itself a monument of the poverty of Spanish literature in that department from which it attempts to make a collection, since by far the greater part of it consists of old printed dedications, formal epistles of approbation that had been prefixed to books when they were first published, lives of authors that had served as prefaces to their works, etc. The letters of Quevedo and Lope are chiefly on literary subjects, and are scattered through their respective writings. Those of Antonio and Solís are in a small volume published by Mayans at Lyons, in 1733; to which may be added those at the end of Antonio’s “Censura de Historias Fabulosas,” Madrid, 1742, fol. The “Cartas Philologicas” of Cascales, (of which there is a neat edition by Sanchez, Madrid, 1779, 8vo,) are to Spain and the age in which they were written what the terse and pleasant letters published by Melmoth, under the pseudonyme of Fitzosborne, are to England in the reign of George II.,--an attempt to unite as much learning as the public would bear with an infusion of lighter matter in discussions connected with morals and manners.

But no writer in the history of Spanish epistolary correspondence can be compared for acuteness and brilliancy with Antonio Perez, or for eloquence with Santa Teresa.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVIII

HISTORICAL COMPOSITION.--ZURITA, MORALES, RIBADENEYRA, SIGUENZA, MARIANA, SANDOVAL, HERRERA, ARGENSOLA, THE INCA GARCILASSO, MENDOZA, MONCADA, COLOMA, MELO, SAAVEDRA, SOLÍS.--GENERAL REMARKS ON THE SPANISH HISTORIANS.

The fathers of Spanish history, as distinguished from Spanish chronicling, are Zurita and Morales, both of whom, educated in the reign of Charles the Fifth, show that they were not insensible to the influences of that great period in the annals of their country, and both of whom, after its close, prepared and published their works under the happiest auspices.

Zurita was born in Saragossa in 1512, and died there in 1580; so that he had the happiness to live while the political privileges of his native kingdom were yet little impaired, and to die just before they were effectually broken down. His father was a favored physician of Ferdinand the Catholic, and accompanied that monarch to Naples in 1506. The son, who showed from early youth a great facility in the acquisition of knowledge, was educated at the University of Alcalá, where it was his good fortune to have, for his chief instructor, Fernan Nuñez, who was commonly called the Greek Commander, from the circumstance, that, while his position in the state as a member of the great family of the Guzmans made him Knight Commander of the Order of Santiago, his personal acquisitions and talents rendered him the first Greek scholar of his age and country.

As the elder Zurita continued to be much trusted by Charles the Fifth, and as his son’s connections were chiefly with persons of great consideration, the progress of the future historian was, at first, rather in the direction of public affairs. But in 1548, under circumstances peculiarly honorable to him, he was appointed historiographer of Aragon; being elected unanimously by the free Cortes of the kingdom to the office, which they had just established, and as a candidate for which he had to encounter the most powerful and learned competitors. The election seems to have satisfied his ambition, and to have given a new direction to his life. At any rate, he immediately procured a royal warrant to examine and use all documents needful for his purpose that could be found in any part of the empire. Under this broad authority he went over much of Spain, consulting and arranging the great national records at Simancas, and then visited Sicily and Naples, from whose monasteries and public archives he obtained further ample and learned spoils.

The result was, that between 1562 and 1580 he published, in six folio volumes, “The Annals of Aragon,” from the invasion of the country by the Arabs to 1516, the last third of his labor being entirely given to the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, for which the recollections of his father’s life at the court of that monarch probably afforded some of the more interesting materials. The whole work is more important for Spanish history than any that had preceded it. It has hardly any thing of the monkish credulity of the old chronicles, for Zurita was a man of the world, and always concerned in the stirring interests of his time; first, from having been intrusted with the municipal affairs of one of the principal cities of the kingdom; next, from being charged with the general correspondence of the Inquisition; and finally, from his duties as one of the secretaries of Philip the Second, which kept him much at court and about the king’s person. It shows, too, not unfrequently, a love for the ancient privileges of Aragon, and a generosity of opinion on political subjects, remarkable in one who was aware that whatever he wrote would not only be submitted before its publication to the censorship of jealous rivals, but read by the wary and severe monarch on whom all his fortunes depended. Its faults are its great length and a carelessness of style, scarcely regarded as faults at the time when it was written.[202]

[202] The best notice of Gerónimo de Zurita is the one at the end of Part II. Chap. I. of Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella”;--the most ample is the folio volume of Diego Josef Dormer, entitled “Progresos de la Historia en Aragon” (Zaragoza, 1680, folio); really a life of Zurita, published in his honor by the Cortes of his native kingdom. There are several editions of his Annals; and Latassa (Bib. Nueva, Tom. I. pp. 358-373) gives a list of above forty of his works, nearly all unpublished, and none of them, probably, of much value, except his History, to which, in fact, they are generally subsidiary. He held several offices under Philip II., and there is a letter to him from the king in Dormer, (p. 109,) which shows that he enjoyed much of the royal consideration; though, as I have intimated, and as may be fully seen in Dormer, (Lib. II. c. 2, 3, 4,) he was much teased, at one time, by the censors of his History. The first edition of the “Anales de la Corona de Aragon” was published in different years, at Saragossa, between 1562 and 1580, to which a volume of Indices was added in 1604, making seven volumes, folio, in all. The third edition (Zaragoza, 1610-21, 7 tom. folio) is the one that is preferred.

Another volume was added to the Annals of Zurita (Zaragoza, 1630, fol.) by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, the poet, who brought them down to 1520, and whose style is better than that in Zurita’s portion; but not much of it is the work of Argensola, so heavy is it with documents.

I have said that Zurita was employed as secretary of Philip II., from time to time; and such was the fact. But this title often implied little except the right of the person who bore it to receive a moderate salary from the public treasury;--a circumstance which I mention because I have occasion frequently to notice authors who were royal secretaries, from the time of Baena, the Jew, in the days of John II., down to the disappearance of the Austrian family. Thus Gonzalo Perez and his son Antonio were royal secretaries; so were the two Quevedos, and many more. In 1605, Philip III. had twenty-nine such secretaries. Clemencin, note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 47.

Morales, who was an admirer of Zurita, and defended him from one of his assailants in a tract published at the end of the last volume of the “Annals of Aragon,” was born in 1513, a year after his friend, and died in 1591, having survived him by eleven years. He was educated at Salamanca, and, besides early obtaining Church preferments and distinctions, rose subsequently to eminence as a Professor in the University of Alcalá. But from 1570, when he was appointed historiographer to the crown of Castile, he devoted himself to the completion of the History begun on so vast a scale by Ocampo, whose work he seems to have taken up in some degree out of regard for the memory of its author.

He began his task, however, too late. He was already sixty-seven years old, and when he died, eleven years afterwards, he had been able to bring it down no further than to the union of the crowns of Castile and Leon, in 1037,--a point from which it was afterwards carried, by Sandoval, to the death of Alfonso the Seventh, in 1097, where it finally stops. Imperfect, however, as is the portion compiled in his old age by Morales, we can hardly fail to regard it, not, indeed, as so wise and well-weighed an historical composition as that of Zurita, but as one marked with much more general ability, and showing a much more enlightened spirit, than the work of Ocampo, to which it serves as a continuation. Its style, unhappily, is wanting in correctness;--a circumstance the more to be noticed, since Morales valued himself on his pure Castilian, both as the son of a gentleman of high caste, and as the nephew of Fernan de Oliva, by whom he was educated, and whose works he had published because they had done so much to advance prose composition in Spain.[203]

[203] The History of Ambrosio de Morales was first published in three folios, Alcalá, 1574-77; but the best edition is that of Madrid, 1791, in six small quartos, to which are commonly added two volumes, dated 1792, on Spanish Antiquities, and three more, dated 1793, of his miscellaneous works;--the whole being preceded by the work of Ocampo, in two volumes, already noticed, and followed by the continuation of Sandoval, in one volume, a work of about equal merit with that of Morales, and first printed at Pamplona, in 1615, folio. The three authors, Ocampo, Morales, and Sandoval, taken together, are thus made to fill twelve volumes, as if they belonged to one work, to which is given the unsuitable title of “Corónica General de España.”

Morales, in his youth, cruelly mutilated his person, in order to insure his priestly purity of life, and wellnigh died of the consequences.

I might have mentioned here the “Comentario de la Guerra de Alemaña de Luis de Avila y Zuñiga,” a small volume, (Anvers, 1550, 12mo,) first printed in 1548, and frequently afterwards, both in Latin and French, as well as in Spanish. It is an account of the campaigns of Charles V. in Germany, in 1546 and 1547, prepared, probably, from information furnished by the Emperor himself, (Navarra, Diálogos, 1567, f. 13,) and written in a natural, but by no means polished, Castilian style. Parts of it bear internal evidence of having been composed at the very time of the events they record, and the whole is evidently the work of one of the few personal friends Charles V. ever had; one, however, who does not appear to much advantage in the private letters of Guillaume van Male, printed by the Belgian Bibliophiles, in 1843. See, ante, Vol. I. p. 499, n.

Contemporary with both Zurita and Morales, but far in advance of both of them as a writer of history, was the old statesman, Diego de Mendoza, whose fresh and vigorous account of the rebellion of the Moors in 1568 we have already considered, noticing it rather at the period when it was written than at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was first given to the world, and when Siguenza, Ribadeneyra, Mariana, Sandoval, and Herrera had already appeared, and determined the character which should be finally impressed on this department of Spanish literature.

Of this group, the first two, who devoted themselves to ecclesiastical history, and entered into the religious discussions of their time, were, perhaps, originally the most prominent. Ribadeneyra, one of the early and efficient members of the Society of Jesuits, distinguished himself by his “History of the Schism in the English Church,” in the time of Henry the Eighth, and by his “Lives of the Saints.” Siguenza, who was a disciple of Saint Jerome, was no less faithful to the brotherhood by whom he was adopted and honored, as his life of their founder and his history of their Order abundantly prove. Both were men of uncommon gifts, and wrote with a manly and noble eloquence; the first with more richness and fervor, the last with a more simple dignity, but each with the earnest and trusting spirit of his peculiar faith.[204]

[204] Pedro de Ribadeneyra, who died, aged 84, in 1611, and for whom a beautiful epitaph was composed by Mariana, wrote several works in honor of his company, and several ascetic works, besides his “Cisma de Inglaterra,” (Valencia, 1588,) and his “Flos Sanctorum,” Madrid, 1599-1601, 2 tom. folio.

José de Siguenza, who was born in 1545, and died in 1606, as Prior of the Escurial,--whose construction he witnessed and described,--published his “Vida de San Gerónimo,” in Madrid, 1595, 4to, and his “Historia de la Orden de San Gerónimo,” in Madrid, 1600, 4to. He was persecuted by the Inquisition. Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. II., 1817, p. 474.

It would be easy to add to these two writers on ecclesiastical history the names of many more. Hardly a convent or a saint of any note in Spain, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, failed of especial commemoration; and each of the religious orders and great cathedrals had at least one historian, and most of them several. The number of books on Spanish ecclesiastical history to be found in the list at the end of the second volume of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Nova is, therefore, one that may well be called enormous. Some of them, too, like the history of the order of St. Benedict, by Yepes, and several of the histories of those orders that were both knightly and religious, are of no little importance for the facts and documents with which they are crowded. But nearly all of them are heavy, monkish annals, and not one, I believe, has literary merit enough to attract our attention.

From the nature of their subjects, however, neither of them rose to be the great historian of his country;--an honor which belongs to Juan de Mariana, a foundling, who was born at Talavera in 1536, and whose extraordinary talents attracted the attention of the Jesuits, then fast advancing into notice as a religious power. Having gone through a severe course of studies at Alcalá, he was selected, at the age of twenty-four, to fill the most important place in the great college which the members of his society were then establishing at Rome, and which they regarded as one of their principal institutions for consolidating and extending their influence. After five years, he was removed to Sicily, to introduce similar studies into that island; and, a little later, he was transferred to Paris, where he was received with honor, and taught for several years, lecturing chiefly on the works and opinions of Thomas Aquinas, to crowded audiences. But the climate of France was unfriendly to his health, and in 1574, having spent thirteen years in foreign countries, as a public instructor, he returned to Spain, and established himself in the house of his order at Toledo, which he hardly left during the forty-nine remaining years of his life.

This long period, which he devoted to literary labor, was not, however, permitted to be as peaceful as his merits should have made it. The Polyglot Bible published by Arias Montano at Antwerp, in 1569-72,--which was at first received with great favor, but afterwards, by the intrigues of the Jesuits, was denounced to the Inquisition,--excited so bitter a quarrel, that it was deemed necessary to inquire into the truth of the charges brought against it. By the management of the Jesuits, Mariana was the principal person employed to make the investigation; and, through his learning and influence, they felt sure of a triumph. But though he was a faithful Jesuit, he was not a subservient one. His decision was in favor of Montano; and this, together with the circumstance that he did not follow the intimations given to him when he was employed in arranging the Index Expurgatorius of 1584, brought upon him the displeasure of his superiors in a way that caused him much trouble.[205]

[205] Llorente, Tom. I. p. 479, Tom. II. p. 457, Tom. III. pp. 75-82. Carvajal, the author of the “Elógio Historico” of Montano, in the seventh volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of History, (1832, 4to, p. 84,) does not think the course of Mariana, in this investigation, was so frank as it should have been. Perhaps it was not; but he came to the right conclusion at last, and it was a bold and honest thing to do so.

In 1599, he published a Latin treatise on the Institution of Royalty, and dedicated it to Philip the Third;--a work liberal in its general political tone, and even intimating that there are cases in which it may be lawful to put a monarch to death. At home, it caused little remark. It was regularly approved by the censors of the press, and is even said to have been favored by the policy of the government, which, in the time of Philip the Second, had sent assassins to cut off Elizabeth of England and the Prince of Orange. But in France, where Henry the Third had been thus put to death a few years before, and where Henry the Fourth suffered a similar fate a few years afterwards, it excited a great sensation. Indeed, the sixth chapter of the first book directly mentions, and by implication countenances, the murder of the former of these monarchs, and was claimed, though contrary to the truth of fact, to have been among the causes that stimulated Ravaillac to the assassination of the latter. It was, therefore, both attacked and defended with extraordinary acrimony; and at last the Parliament of Paris ordered it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman. What was more unfortunate for its author, the whole discussion having brought much popular odium on the Jesuits, who were held responsible for a book which was written by one of their order, and could not have been published without permission of its heads, Mariana himself became more than ever unwelcome to the great body of his religious associates.[206]

[206] The account of this book, and of the discussions it occasioned, is given amply by Bayle, in the notes to his article Mariana; but, as is usual with him, in a manner that shows his dislike of the Jesuits. I know the treatise “De Rege et Regis Institutione” only in the edition “Typis Wechelianis,” 1611, 12mo; but I believe that edition is not at all expurgated. Certainly, the passage Lib. I. c. 6 is quite strong enough, in extenuation of the atrocious crime of Jaques Clemens, to be open to severe animadversion. (Sismondi, Hist. des Français, Paris, 8vo, Tom. XXII., 1839, p. 191.) From the very remarkable letters of Loaysa, the confessor of Charles V., it appears that the great Emperor himself was as little scrupulous as his son in such matters. This renders the passage in Mariana more easy of explanation. See Briefe an Kaiser Karl V., etc., von D. G. Heine, Berlin, 1848, 8vo, p. 130, and note.

At last, an occasion was found where he could be assailed without assigning the reasons for the attack. In 1609, he published, not in Spain, but at Cologne, seven Latin treatises on various subjects of theology and criticism, such as the state of the Spanish theatre, the Arab computation of time, and the year and day of the Saviour’s birth. Most of them were of a nature that could provoke no animadversion; but one, “On Mortality and Immortality,” was seized upon for theological censure, and another, “On the Coinage of the Realm,” was assailed on political grounds, because it showed how unwise and scandalous had been the practices of the reigning favorite, the Duke of Lerma, in tampering with the currency and debasing it. The Inquisition took cognizance of both; and their author, though then seventy-three years old, was subjected first to confinement, and afterwards to penance, for his offences. Both works were placed at once on the Index Expurgatorius; and Philip the Third gave orders to collect and destroy as many copies as possible of the volume in which they were contained. As Lope de Vega said, “His country did not pardon the most learned Mariana when he erred.”

His treatment on this occasion was undoubtedly the more severe, because among his papers was found a treatise “On the Errors in the Government of the Society of Jesuits,” which was not printed till after its author’s death, and then with no friendly views to the order.[207] But the firm spirit of Mariana was not broken by his persecutions. He went forward with his literary labors to the last; and when he died, in 1623, it was of the infirmities which his extreme age had naturally brought with it. He was eighty-seven years old.

[207] “Joh. Mariana, e Soc. Jesu, Tractatus VII., nunc primum in Lucem editi,” Colon. Agrip., 1609, fol.; my copy of which is mutilated according to the minute directions given in the Index Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 719. It should be noted that the treatise “De Ponderibus et Mensuris,” which contains the obnoxious discussions about the coin, had been previously published at Toledo, in a neat quarto volume, in 1599, a copy of which I have, with all needful authority and privileges. (Santander, Catalogue, 1792, 8vo, Tom. IV. pp. 152, 153, article Proceso del Padre Mariana, MS. Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 295.) The “Discursus de Erroribus qui in Formâ Gubernationis Societatis Jesu occurrunt,” written in Mariana’s beautiful flowing style, was first printed at Bordeaux, 1625, 8vo, and then again on the suppression of the order by Charles III.; but in the Index Expurgatorius, (1667, p. 735,) where it is strictly prohibited, it is craftily treated as if it were still in manuscript, and as if its author were not certainly known. In the Index of 1790, he is still censured with great severity. A considerable number of his unpublished manuscripts is said to have been long preserved in the Jesuits’ Library at Toledo.

The main occupation of the last thirty or forty years of his life was his great History. In the foreign countries where he had long lived, the earlier annals of Spain were so little known to the learned men with whom he had been associated, that, as a Spaniard, he had felt mortified by an ignorance which seemed disrespectful to his country. He determined, therefore, to do something that should show the world by what manly steps Spain had come into the larger interests of Europe, and to prove by her history that she deserved the consideration she had, from the time of Charles the Fifth, everywhere enjoyed. He began his work, therefore, in Latin, that all Christendom might be able to read it, and in 1592 published, in that language, twenty out of thirty of the books, of which it consists.

But, even before he had printed the other ten books, which appeared in 1609, he was fortunately induced, like Cardinal Bembo, to become his own translator, and to give his work to his countrymen in the pure Castilian of Toledo. In doing this, he enjoyed a great advantage. He might use a freedom in his version that could be claimed by no one else; for he had not only a right to change the phraseology and arrangement, but, whenever he saw fit, he might modify the opinions of a book which was as much his own in the one language as in the other. His “Historia de España,” therefore, the first part of which appeared in 1601, has all the air and merit of an original work; and in the successive editions published under his own direction, and especially in the fourth, which appeared the very year of his death, it was gradually enlarged, enriched, and in every way improved, until it became, what it has remained ever since, the proudest monument erected to the history of his country.[208]

[208] The most carefully printed and beautiful edition of Mariana’s History is the fourteenth, published at Madrid, by Ibarra, (two vols. fol. 1780,) under the direction of the Superintendents of the Royal Library;--a book whose mechanical execution would do honor to any press in Europe. It is remarkable how much Mariana amended his History in the successive editions during his lifetime; the additions between 1608 and 1623 being equal, as stated by the editors of that of 1780, to a moderate volume.

It begins with the supposed peopling of Spain by Tubal, the son of Japhet, and comes down to the death of Ferdinand the Catholic and the accession of Charles the Fifth; to all which Mariana himself afterwards added a compressed abstract of the course of events to 1621, when Philip the Fourth ascended the throne. It was a bold undertaking, and in some respects is marked with the peculiar spirit of its age. In weighing the value of authorities, for instance, he has been less careful than became the high office he had assumed. He follows Ocampo, and especially Garibay,--credulous compilers of old fables, who were his own contemporaries,--confessing freely that he thought it safest and best to take the received traditions of the country, unless obvious reasons called upon him to reject them. His manner, too, is, in a few particulars, open to remark. In the beautiful dedication of the Spanish version of his History to Philip the Third, he admits that antiquated words occasionally adhere to his style, from his familiar study of the old writers; and Saavedra, who was pleased to find fault with him, says, that, as other people dye their beards to make themselves look young, Mariana dyed his to make himself look old.[209]

[209] Mariana, Hist., Lib. I. c. 13. Saavedra, República Literaria, Madrid, 1759, 4to, p. 44. Mariana admits the want of critical exactness in some parts of his history, when, replying to a letter of Lupercio de Argensola, who had noticed his mistake in calling Prudentius a Spaniard, he says: “I never undertook to make a history of Spain, in which I should verify every particular fact; for if I had, I should never have finished it; but I undertook to arrange in a becoming style, and in the Latin language, what others had collected as materials for the fabric I desired to raise. To look up authorities for every thing would have left Spain, for another series of centuries, without a Latin History that could show itself in the world.” J. A. Pellicer, Ensayo de una Biblioteca de Traductores, p. 59.

But there is another side to all this. His willing belief in the old chronicles, tempered, as it necessarily is, by his great learning, gives an air of true-heartedness and good faith to his accounts, and a picturesqueness to his details, which are singularly attractive; while, at the same time, his occasional antiquated words and phrases, so well suited to such views of his subject, add to the idiomatic richness, in which, among Spanish prose compositions, the style of Mariana is all but unrivalled. His narratives--the most important part of an historical work of this class--are peculiarly flowing, free, and impressive. The accounts of the wars of Hannibal, in the second book; those of the irruption of the Northern nations, with which the fifth opens; the conspiracy of John de Procida, in the fourteenth; the last scenes in the troubled life of Peter the Cruel, in the seventeenth; and most of the descriptions of the leading events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, towards the conclusion of the work, give abundant proof of this peculiar historical talent. They seem instinct with life and movement.

His formal speeches, in which he made Livy his model, are, generally, less fortunate. Most of them want individuality and appropriateness. But the one which in the fifth book he has given to Ruy Lope Davalos, when that nobleman offers the crown of Castile to the Infante Don Ferdinand, is remarkable for the courageous spirit in which it discusses the foundations of all political government, and leaves the rights of kings to rest on the assent of their subjects;--a boldness, it should be added, which is apparent in many other parts of his history, as it was in much of his life.

The characters he has drawn of the prominent personages that, from time to time, come to the front of the stage, are almost always short, sketched with a few touches, and struck off with the hand of a master. Such are those of Alvaro de Luna, Alfonso the Wise, and the unhappy Prince of Viana, in which so few words could hardly be made to express more.

As a general remark, a certain nobleness of air and carriage, not, perhaps, without something of the old Castilian sturdiness, but never without its dignity, is the characteristic that most prevails throughout the whole work; and this, with its admirably idiomatic style,--so full, yet so unencumbered, so pure and yet so rich,--renders it, if not the most trustworthy of annals, at least the most remarkable union of picturesque chronicling with sober history, that the world has ever seen.[210]

[210] The first attack on Mariana was made by a Spaniard in Italy, who called himself Pedro Mantuano, and who printed his “Advertencias” at Milan in 1611. Thomas Tamayo de Vargas wrote a vituperative reply to it (Toledo, 1616, 4to). But Mariana wisely refused to read either. The Marquis of Mondejar, a most respectable authority, renewed the discussion, and his “Advertencias” were published, (Valencia, 1746, folio,) with a preface by Mayans y Siscar, somewhat mitigating their force. Still, neither these, which are the principal criticisms that have appeared on Mariana, nor any others, have, in the estimation of Spaniards, seriously interfered with his claims to be regarded as the great historian of his country.

Sandoval, who was one of the salaried chroniclers of the monarchy, and who, in that capacity, prepared the continuation of Morales, already noticed, seems to have been willing to constitute himself the successor of Mariana, and prosecute the general history of Spain where that eloquent Jesuit was likely to leave it, rather than from the point where he had himself officially taken it up. At least he began there, and wrote an elaborate life of Charles the Fifth. But it is too long. It fills as many pages as the entire work of Mariana, and, though written with simplicity, is not attractive in its style. His prejudices are strong and obvious. Not only the monk,--for he was a Benedictine, and enjoyed successively two very rich bishoprics,--but the courtier of Philip the Third, is constantly apparent. He lays the whole crime of the assault and capture of Rome upon the Constable de Bourbon; and, besides tracing the Austrian family distinctly to Adam, he connects its honors genealogically with those of Hercules and Dardanus. Still, the History of Sandoval is a documentary work of authority much relied on by Robertson, and one that, on the whole, by its ample and minute details, gives a more satisfactory account of the reign of Charles the Fifth than any other single history extant. It was first published in 1604-6, and its author died at the end of 1620 or the beginning of 1621.[211]

[211] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 255. La Mothe le Vayer, in a discourse addressed to Cardinal Mazarin, (Œuvres, Paris, 1662, folio, Tom. I. pp. 225, etc.,) assails Sandoval furiously, and sometimes successfully, for his credulity, superstition, flattery, etc., not forgetting his style. It was a part of the warfare of France against Spain.

After this, no important and connected work on the history of Spain, that falls within the domain of elegant literature, appeared for a long period.[212] Portions of Spanish history, and portions of the history of Spanish discovery and conquest in the East and the West, were indeed published from time to time, but the official chroniclers of the crowns of Castile and Aragon no longer felt themselves bound to go on with the great works of their predecessors, and the decaying spirit of the monarchy made no earnest demands on others to tread in their steps. Some, however, of these historians of the outposts of an empire which now extended round the globe, and some of the accounts of isolated events in its annals at home, should be noticed.

[212] During this period, embracing a large part of the seventeenth century, two remarkable controversies took place in Spain, which, by introducing a more critical caution into historical composition, were not without their effect on Mariana, and may have tended to diminish the number of his successors, by subjecting history, in all its forms, to more rigorous rules. The discussions referred to arose in consequence of two extraordinary forgeries, which, for a time, created a great sensation throughout the country, and deluded not a few intelligent men and honest scholars.

The first related to certain metallic plates, sometimes called “The Leaden Books,” which, having been prepared and buried for the purpose several years before, were disinterred near Granada between 1588 and 1595, and, when deciphered, seemed to offer materials for defending the favorite doctrine of the Spanish Church on the Immaculate Conception, and for establishing the great corner-stone of Spanish ecclesiastical history, the coming to Spain of the Apostle James, the patron saint of the country. This gross forgery was received for authentic history by Philip II., Philip III., and Philip IV., each of whom, in a council of state, consisting of the principal personages of the kingdom, solemnly adjudged it to be true; so that, at one period of the discussion, some persons believed the “Leaden Books” would be admitted into the Canon of the Scriptures. The question, however, was in time settled at Rome, and they were decided, by the highest tribunal of the Church, to be false and forged; a decision in which Spain soon acquiesced.

The other fraud was connected with this one of the “Leaden Books,” whose authority it was alleged to confirm; but it was much broader and bolder in its claims and character. It consisted of a series of fragments of chronicles, circulated earlier in manuscript, but first printed in 1610, and then represented to have come, in 1594, from the monastery of Fulda, near Worms, to Father Higuera, of Toledo, a Jesuit, and a personal acquaintance of Mariana. They purported, on their face, to have been written by Flavius Lucius Dexter, Marcus Maximus, Heleca, and other primitive Christians, and contained important and wholly new statements touching the early civil and ecclesiastical history of Spain. They were, no doubt, an imitation of the forgeries of John of Viterbo, given to the world about a century before as the works of Berosus and Manetho; but the Spanish forgeries were prepared with more learning and a nicer ingenuity. Flattering fictions were fitted to recognized facts, as if both rested on the same authority; new saints were given to churches that were not well provided in this department of their hagiology; a dignified origin was traced for noble families, that had before been unable to boast of their founders; and a multitude of Christian conquests and achievements were hinted at or recorded, that gratified the pride of the whole nation, the more because they had never till then been heard of. Few doubted what it was so agreeable to all to believe. Sandoval, Tamayo de Vargas, Lorenzo Ramirez de Prado, and, for a time, Nicolas Antonio,--all learned men,--were persuaded that these summaries of chronicles, or chronicones, as they were called, were authentic; and if Arias Montano, the editor of the Polyglot, Mariana, the historian, and Antonio Agustin, the cautious and critical friend of Zurita, held an opposite faith, they did not think it worth while openly to avow it. The current of opinion, in fact, ran strongly in favor of the forgeries; and they were generally regarded as true history till about 1650 or a little later, and therefore till long after the death of their real author, Father Higuera, which happened in 1624. The discussion about them, however, which, it is evident, was going quietly on during much of this time, was useful. Doubts were multiplied; the disbelief in their genuineness, which had been expressed to Higuera himself, as early as 1595, by the modest and learned Juan Bautista Perez, Bishop of Segorbe, gradually gained ground; writers of history grew cautious; and at last, in 1652, Nicolas Antonio began his “Historias Fabulosas”; a huge folio, which he left unfinished at his death, and which was not printed till long afterwards, but which, with its cumbrous, though clear-sighted learning, left no doubt as to the nature and extent of the fraud of Father Higuera, and made his case a teaching to all future Spanish historians, that does not seem to have been lost on them. See the Chronicle of Dexter at the end of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Vetus; the Historias Fabulosas of Antonio, with the Life of its author prefixed by Mayans y Siscar, (Madrid, 1742, folio,) to show the grossness of the whole imposture; and the “Chrónica Universal” of Alonso Maldonado, (Madrid, 1624, folio,) to show how implicitly it was then believed and followed by learned men. The man of learning who was the most clear-sighted about “The Leaden Books” and the chronicones, and who behaved with the most courage in relation to them from the first, was, I suppose, the Bishop of Segorbe, who is noticed in Villanueva, “Viage Literario á las Iglesias de España,” (Madrid, 1804, 8vo, Tom. III. p. 166,) together with the document (pp. 259-278) in which he exposes the whole fraud, but which was never before published.

Of this class, the first in importance and the most comprehensive in character is “The General History of the Indies,” by Antonio de Herrera. It embraces the period from the first discovery of America to the year 1554; and as Herrera was a practised writer, and, from his official position as historiographer to the Indies, had access to every source of information known in his time, his work, which was printed in 1601, is of great value. But he was the author of other historical works, for which his qualifications and resources were less satisfactory and his prejudices more abundant;--such as a “History of the World during the Reign of Philip the Second,” a History of the affairs of England and Scotland, during the unhappy times of Mary Stuart; a History of the League in France; and a History of the affair of Antonio Perez and the troubles that followed it;--all written under the influence of contemporary passions, and all published between 1589 and 1612, before any of these passions had been much tranquillized.

It is sufficient to say of them, that, in the case of Antonio Perez, Herrera suppresses nearly every one of the important facts that tend to the justification of that remarkable man; and that, by way of a glorious termination to his Universal History, he gives Philip the Second, in his death-struggles, miraculous assistance from heaven, to enable him to end his long and holy life by an act of devotion. Herrera’s chief reputation, therefore, as an historian, must rest upon his great work on the Discovery and Conquest of America, in which, indeed, his style, nowhere rich or powerful, seems better and more effective than it is in his other attempts at historical composition. He died in 1625, above seventy-six years old, much valued by Philip the Fourth, as he had been by that monarch’s father and grandfather.[213]

[213] “Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Océano,” Madrid, 1601-15, 4 vols. fol.--“Historia General del Mundo del Tiempo del Señor Rey Don Felipe II., desde 1559, hasta su Muerte,” Madrid, 1601-12, 3 vols. fol.--Five books on the History of Portugal and the Conquest of the Azores were printed, Madrid, 1591, 4to; the History of the League, Madrid, 1598, 4to; and the History of the Troubles in Aragon, in 1612, 4to; the last being only a tract of 140 pages. A work on the History of Italy, from 1281 to 1559, printed at Madrid in 1624, folio, I have never seen. The of Historia General del Mundo is on the Index of 1667, for expurgation.

But the East, as well as the West, was now opened to Spanish adventure. The conquest of Portugal had brought the Oriental dependencies of that kingdom under the authority of the Spanish crown; and as the Count de Lemos, the great patron of letters in his time, and President of the Council of the Indies, chanced to have his attention particularly drawn in that direction, he commanded the younger of the Argensolas to write an account of the Moluccas. The poet obeyed, and published his work in 1609, dedicating it to Philip the Third. It is one of the most pleasing of the minor Spanish histories; full of the traditions found among the natives by the Portuguese, when they first landed, and of the wild adventures that followed when they had taken possession of the islands. Parts of it are, indeed, inconsistent with the nature of the civilization they found there, such as formal and eloquent harangues attributed to the natives; while other parts, like some of its love-stories, are romantic enough to be suspected of invention, even if they are true. But, in general, the work is written in an agreeable poetical style, such as is not unbefitting an account of the mysterious isles

“Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants brought Their spicy drugs,”--

striving, for a long time, to hide from the competition of other nations the history and resources of the oppressed race whom they compelled to minister to their love of gain.[214]

[214] “Conquista de las Islas Molucas,” Madrid, 1609, folio. Pellicer, Bib. de Trad., Tom. I. p. 87. The love-story of Durante, an ensign, in the third book of the “Conquista,” is good and probable; and the account of the Patagonian giants, in the same book, turns out to be almost true, like some of the long-discredited stories of Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto.

Quite as uncertain in authority and less elegant in style are the histories of Garcilasso de la Vega,--a gentle and trusting spirit rather than a wise one; proud of being a captain in the service of the king of Spain, and allied, as a son of one of the unscrupulous conquerors of Peru, to the great house of Infantado; but always betraying the weaker nature of his mother, who was of the blood royal of the Incas, and never entirely forgetting the glories of his Indian race, or the cruel injuries they had suffered at the hands of Spain. He was born at “Cuzco, in Peru, the seat of Atabalipa,” in 1540, and was educated there, amidst the tumults of the conquest; but, when he was twenty years old, he was sent to Spain, where, under difficult and trying circumstances, he maintained an honorable reputation during a life protracted to the age of seventy-six.

The military part of his personal history, which consisted of service under Don John of Austria against the Moriscos of Granada, was not of much consequence, though he seems to have valued himself upon it not a little. The part he gave to letters was more interesting and important. This portion he began, in 1590, with a translation of the “Dialogues on Love,” by Abarbanel, a Platonizing Jew, whose family had been expelled from Spain in the persecution under Ferdinand and Isabella, and who in Italy had published this singular work under the name of “The Hebrew Lion.” The attempt, so far as Garcilasso was concerned, was not a fortunate one. The Dialogues, which enjoyed considerable popularity at the time, had been already printed in Spanish,--a fact evidently unknown to him; and though, as it appears from a subsequent statement by himself, he had obtained for his translation the favorable regard of Philip the Second, still there was an odor both of Judaism and heathen free-thinking about it, that rendered it obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities of the state. Garcilasso’s first work, therefore, was speedily placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and was rarely heard of afterwards.

His next attempt was on a subject in which he had a nearer interest. It was a “History of Florida,” or rather of the first discovery of that country, and was published in 1605,--a work which, when, twenty years before, he spoke of writing it, he appropriately called “The Expedition of Fernando de Soto”; since the adventures of that extraordinary man, and his strange fate, not only form its most brilliant and attractive portion, but constitute nearly the whole of its substance. In this Garcilasso was more successful than he was in his version from the Italian; and his “History of Florida,” as it is still called, has been often reprinted since.

But, in his old age, his heart turned more and more to the thoughts and feelings of his youth, and, gathering together the few materials he could collect from among his kinsmen on the Pacific, as well as from the stores of his own memory and the records already accumulated in Spain, he published, in 1609, the first part of his “Commentaries on Peru”; the second of which, though licensed for the press in 1613, did not appear till 1617, the year after its author’s death. It is a garrulous, gossiping book, written in a diffuse style, and abounding in matters personal to himself. In its very division, he acknowledges frankly the conflicting claims that he felt were upon him. The earlier half, he says, relates to the eighteen Incas known to Peruvian history, and contains an account of the traditions of the country, its institutions, manners, and general character; all which he offers as a tribute due to his descent from the Children of the Sun. The remainder--which, with many episodes and much irrelevant, but not always unpleasant, discussion, contains the history of the Spanish conquest, and of the quarrels of the Spaniards with each other growing out of it--he offers, in like manner, to the glories of the great Spanish family with which he was connected, and which numbered on its rolls some of the brightest names in the Castilian annals. In both parts, his Commentaries are a striking and interesting book, showing much of the spirit of the old chronicles, and infected with even more than the common measure of chronicling credulity; since, with a natural willingness to believe whatever fables were honorable to the land of his birth, he mingles a constant anxiety to show that he is, above every thing else, a Catholic Christian, whose faith was much too ample to reject the most extravagant legends of his Church, and too pure to tolerate the idolatry of that royal ancestry which he yet cannot help regarding with reverence and admiration.[215]

[215] “La Traduccion del Indio de los Tres Diálogos de Amor, de Leon Hebreo, echado de Italiano en Espagnol, por Garcilasso Inga de la Vega,” Madrid, 1590, 4to. A Spanish translation of it, which I have seen, had appeared at Venice in 1568, and I believe there was another at Zaragoza in 1584, of which it seems strange that Garcilasso knew nothing. (Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. II. p. 920; Castro, Bib., Tom. I. p. 371; and Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 232.) The letter of Garcilasso to Philip II., with additional remarks by its author, containing interesting materials for his own life, is prefixed to the first edition of the second part of the Commentaries on Peru. “La Florida” was printed at Lisbon in 1606, 4to; the first part of the Peru at Lisbon, 1609, folio; and the second part at Córdova, 1617, folio. Both of the historical works are to be found in several other editions, and both have been translated into most of the languages of modern Europe.

Two striking examples may be given of the opposite kinds of that credulity in Garcilasso which so much impairs the value of his Commentaries. He believed that the subjection of Peru by the Spaniards was predicted by the last of the Incas that reigned before their arrival, (Parte I. Lib. IX. c. 15, and Parte II. Lib. VIII. c. 18,) and he believed that all the Spaniards in the army of Peru, who were notorious blasphemers, perished by wounds in the mouth (Parte II., Lib. IV. c. 21).

The publication, in 1610, of “The War of Granada,” by Mendoza, had--as might have been anticipated from its attractive subject and style--an effect on Spanish historical composition; producing, in the course of the century, several imitations more worthy of notice than any thing in their class that appeared after the great work of Mariana.

The first of them is by Moncada, a nobleman of the highest rank in the South of Spain, and connected with several of the principal families, both in Catalonia and Valencia. His father was, successively, viceroy of Sardinia and Aragon; he himself was governor of the Low Countries and commander-in-chief of the armies there; and both of them filled, in their respective times, the most important of the Spanish embassies. But the younger Moncada had tastes widely different from the cares that beset his life. In 1623 he published his “Expedition of the Catalans against the Turks and Greeks”; and when he died, in 1635, just after putting to rout two hostile armies, he left several other works, of less value, one or two of which have since been printed. The History of the Catalan Expedition, by which alone he has been known in later times, is on the romantic adventures and achievements of an extraordinary band of mercenaries, who, under Roger de Flor,--successively a freebooter, a great admiral, and a Cæsar of the Eastern Empire,--drove back the Turks, as they approached the Bosphorus in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and then, after being for some time no less formidable to their allies than they had been to the infidel, settled down into a sort of uneasy tranquillity at Athens, where their historian leaves them.

It is an account, therefore, of a most wild passage in the affairs rather of the Middle Ages than of the Spanish peninsula,--one that may be trusted, notwithstanding its air of romance, since its foundations are laid in the great work of Zurita, and one by no means wanting in picturesque effect, since its details are often taken from Ramon Muntaner, the old Catalan, who had himself shared the perils of this very expedition, and described them in his own Chronicle with his accustomed spirit and vigor. Parts of it are very striking in themselves, and strikingly told; especially the rise of Roger de Flor till he had reached the highest place a subject could hold in the Greek empire, and then his assassination in the presence and by the command of the same Emperor who had raised him so high,--his blood soiling the imperial table, to which, with treacherous hospitality, he had been invited. The whole is written in a bold and free, rather than in a careful style; but the coloring is well suited to the dark ground-work of the picture, and, though less energetic in its tone than Mendoza’s “War of Granada,” of which, from the first sentence, we see it is an imitation, it is often more easy, flowing, and natural.[216]

[216] “Expedicion de los Catalanes contra Griegos y Turcos, por Francisco de Moncada, Conde de Osona,” Barcelona, 1623, and Madrid, 1772 and 1805, 12mo. There is an edition, also, of Barcelona, 1842, 8vo, edited by Don Jaime Tió, with a poem at the end by Calisto Fernandez Campo-redondo, which is on the same subject with the History, and in 1841 gained a prize at Barcelona for its success at a festival, that reminds us of the days of the Floral Games and of the Marquis of Villena.

Another military history written by a nobleman connected with the service of his country, both in its armies and its diplomacy, is to be found in an account of eleven campaigns in Flanders by Coloma, Marquis of Espinar, published in 1625. A translation which he made of the “Annals” of Tacitus has been regarded as the best in the language; but, in his own work, he shows no tendency to imitate the ancients. On the contrary, it is, as it were, fresh from the fields of the author’s glory, and full of the honorable feelings of a soldier, sketching the adventures of the army when in camp, when in immediate action, and when in winter-quarters; and adding to his main narrative occasional glimpses of the negotiations then going on in the Low Countries respecting Spanish affairs, and of the intrigues of the courtiers at Madrid round the death-bed of Philip the Second. The style of Coloma is unequal; but much of what he describes he had seen, and the rest had passed within the compass of what he deemed sure information; so that he speaks, not only with authority, but with the natural vivacity which comes from being so near the events he records, that their color is imparted to his language.[217]

[217] “Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos, desde Maio, 1588, hasta el Año 1599,” Amberes, 1625 and 1635, 4to, and Barcelona, 1627. Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 338. He was ambassador to James I. of England, viceroy of Majorca, etc., and died in 1637, sixty-four years old.

To the same class with the last belongs the spirited history of a portion of the Catalan rebellion in the time of Philip the Fourth. It was written by Melo, a Portuguese gentleman, who remained attached to the service of Spain till 1640-41, when he joined the standard of the Braganzas, and fought for the independence of his own country. His life, which extended from 1611 to 1667, was full of adventure. He was in the dreadful tempest of 1627, when the whole navy, as it were, of Portugal suffered shipwreck; and it fell to his lot to bury above two thousand bodies of those who had perished in the waves, from which he himself had hardly escaped. He was in the wars of Flanders and of Catalonia. Twelve years he was in prison in his own country, under an accusation of murder that was at last proved to be without foundation; and six years he was an exile in Brazil. But under all circumstances, and through all his trials, he sought consolation in letters. His published works, in prose and verse, in Spanish and in Portuguese, some of which have been already noticed, exceed a hundred volumes, and the unpublished would materially increase even this vast amount. What is more remarkable, he is, in both languages, admitted to the honors of a classic writer.

His “History of the War of Catalonia,” which embraces only the short period during which he served in it, was written while he was in prison, and was first published in 1645. Owing to political causes, he did not give his name to it; and when one of his friends in a letter expressed surprise at this circumstance, he answered, with a characteristic turn of phrase, “The book loses nothing for want of my name, and I shall lose nothing for want of the book.” It was, however, successful. The accounts of the first outbreak in Barcelona, on the feast of Corpus Christi, when the city was thronged with the bold peasantry of the interior; the subsequent strife of the exasperated factions; the debates in the Junta of Catalonia, and those in the king’s council, under the leading of the Count Duke Olivares; and the closing scene of the whole,--the ineffectual storming of the grand fortress of Mon Juich by the royal forces, and the disastrous retreat that followed,--are all given with a freshness and power that could come only from one who had shared in the feelings he describes, and had witnessed the very movements he sets with such a lifelike spirit before us. His style, too, is suited to his varying subjects; sometimes animated and forcible, sometimes quaint and idiomatic, and sometimes in its dark hints and abrupt turns reminding us of Tacitus. But the work is short,--not longer than that of Mendoza, which was its model,--and it covers only the space of about six months at the end of 1640 and the beginning of 1641.

Whether Melo intended to carry his narrative farther is uncertain. From his striking conclusion, where he says, “The events that followed--greater in themselves than those I have related--are perhaps reserved for a greater historian,” we might infer that he was desirous to describe only what he had witnessed. But, on the other side, in his Preface we have the following characteristic address to his readers, alluding to the concealment of his name as the author of the work he offers them. “If in any thing I have served you, I ask only that you would not endeavour to know more of me than it pleases my humor to tell you. I present to you my faithful opinion of things, just as it has been my lot to form it;--I do not present myself to you; for a knowledge of my person is not necessary to enable you to judge either kindly or harshly of what I have written. If I do not please you, read me no further;--if I do, I make no claims on your gratitude. I speak without fear and without vanity. The theatre before us is vast; the tragedy long. We shall meet again. You will know me by my voice; I shall know you by your judgment.” But, whatever may have been Melo’s original intentions, he survived the publication of this interesting work above twenty years, and yet added nothing to its pages.[218]

[218] “Historia de los Movimientos, Separacion, y Guerra de Cataluña, por Francisco Manuel de Melo,” Lisboa, 1645, and several other editions; one by Sanchez, 1808, 12mo, and one at Paris, 1830. His poetry in Spanish has been mentioned, ante, II. 529. For his life and multitudinous works, see the “Bibliotheca Lusitana” of Diogo Barbosa Machado, (Lisboa, 1741-59, 4 tom. folio,) which I have often referred to, as to the great authority on all matters of fact in Portuguese literary history, though of little or no value for the literary opinions it expresses. It is one of the amplest and most important works of literary biography and bibliography ever published; but, unhappily, it is also one of the rarest, a large part of the impression of the first three volumes having been destroyed in the fire that followed the great earthquake at Lisbon in 1755. Its author, who gives some account of himself in his own work, was born in 1682, and died, I believe, in 1770.

From this period, prose composition, which had been long infected with the bad taste of the age, suffered a still further and more marked decline. Saavedra Faxardo, indeed, who lived forty years out of Spain, employed in diplomatic missions, was educated in a better school, and formed himself on more worthy models, than he could have found among his contemporaries at home; but his “History of the Goths in Spain” is an imperfect work, published in 1646, at Munster, when he was there as a member of the congress that made the peace of Westphalia, and was left unfinished at his death, which occurred at Madrid two years later.[219] The only historian of eminence that remains to be noticed in this period is, therefore, Solís.

[219] The work of Saavedra was continued, very poorly, by Alonso Nuñez de Castro, through the reign of Henry II., the labors of both making seven volumes in the edition of Madrid, 1789-90, 12mo, of which the first two only, coming down to 716, are by Saavedra.

Of him we have already spoken as a lyrical poet and a dramatist, who in 1667 had retired from the world, and dedicated himself to the separate service of religion. He was, however, the official historiographer of the Indies, and thought himself bound to do something in fulfilment of the duties of an office to which, perhaps, a nominal income was attached. He chose for his subject “The Conquest of Mexico,” and, beginning with the condition of Spain when it was undertaken, and the appointment of Cortés to command the invading force, he brings his history down to the fall of the city and the capture of Guatimozin. The period it embraces is, indeed, short,--less than three years; but they are years so crowded with brilliant adventures and atrocious crimes, that hardly any portion of the history of the world is of equal interest. The subject, too, from this circumstance, is more easily managed; and Solís, who looked upon it with the eye of an artist, as well as of an historian, has succeeded in giving his work, to an extraordinary degree, the air of an historical epic;--so exactly are all its parts and episodes modelled into an harmonious whole, whose catastrophe is the fall of the great Mexican empire.

The style of Solís is somewhat peculiar. That he had the Roman historians, and especially Livy, before him, as he wrote, is apparent both in the general air of his work and in the structure of its individual sentences. Yet there are few writers of Spanish prose who are more absolutely Castilian in their idiom than he is. His language, if not simple, is rich and beautiful; suited to the romantic subject he had chosen for his history, and deeply imbued with its poetical spirit. In boldness of manner he falls below Mendoza, and in dignity is not equal to Mariana; but for copious and sustained eloquence, he may be placed by the side of either of them. That his work is as interesting as either of theirs is proved by the unimpaired popularity it has enjoyed from its first appearance down to our own times.

The Conquest of Mexico was written in the old age of its author, and is darkened by the feelings that shut him out from the interests and cares of the world. He refused to see the fierce and marvellous contest which he recorded, except from the steps of the altar where he had been consecrated. The Spaniards, therefore, are in his eyes only Christians; the Mexicans, only heathen. The battle he witnesses and describes is wholly between the powers of light and the legions of darkness; and the unhappy Indians,--whom the Spaniards had no more right to invade, in order to root out religious abominations, of which they had never heard till after their landing, than Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth had to invade Spain, in order to root out the abominations of the Spanish Inquisition,--the unhappy Indians receive none of the historian’s sympathy in the extremity of suffering they underwent during their vain, but heroic, struggle for all that could make existence valuable in their eyes.

The work of Solís, beautifully written and flattering to the national vanity, was at once successful. But success was then a word whose meaning was different from that which it bears now, or had borne in Spain in the time of Lope de Vega. The publication, which took place in 1684, by the assistance of a friend who defrayed the charges, found its author poor and left him so. On this point there are passages in his correspondence which it is painful to read;--one, for instance, where he says, “I have many creditors who would stop me in the street, if they saw I had new shoes on”; and another, where he asks a friend for a warm garment to protect him from the winter’s cold. Still he was gratified at the applause with which his work was received, though, at the end of a year, only two hundred copies had been sold. Two years afterwards he died, at the age of seventy-six, “leaving,” in the technical phrase and the technical habit of the time, “his soul to be the only heir of his body,” or, in other words, giving the remnants of his poverty to purchase expiatory masses.[220] Diego de Tovar, the same ecclesiastic who had been confessor to Quevedo and Nicolas Antonio, stood by the bedside of the dying man, and consoled the last moments of Solís, as he had consoled theirs.[221]

[220] Mad. d’Aulnoy (Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. II. pp. 17, 18) explains this custom, and shows to what an absurd and ridiculous length it was carried in the time of Solís.

[221] There are many editions of the “Conquista de México,” the first being that of Madrid, 1654, folio, and the best in two vols. 4to, Madrid, 1783. The author of the life prefixed to his poems says: “Solís left materials for a continuation of the History of Mexico, but they are not now known to exist.” A few of his letters, with a sketch of his life, by Mayans y Siscar, were published, as I have already noticed, in 1733. They appear again, carefully revised, in the “Cartas Morales,” etc., 1773. See, ante, II. 420, 549, III. 136.

Solís was the last of the good writers in the elder school of Spanish history;--a school which, even during its best days, numbered but few names, and which, now that the whole literature of the country was decaying, shared the general fate. Nor could it be otherwise. The spirit of political tyranny in the government, and of religious tyranny in the Inquisition,--now closer than ever united,--were more hostile to bold and faithful inquiry in the department of history than in almost any other; so that the generous national independence and honesty announced in the old chronicles were stopped midway in their career, before half of their power had been put forth.

Still, as we have seen, several of the historians that were produced even under the overshadowing influence of the Austrian family were not unworthy of the national character. Mariana shows much manly firmness, Solís much fervor, Zurita much conscientious diligence, while Mendoza, Moncada, Coloma, and Melo, who confined themselves to subjects embracing shorter periods and less wide interests, have given us some of the most striking sketches to be found in the historical literature of any country. All of them are rich and dignified, abounding rather in feeling than philosophy, and written in a tone and style that mark, not so much, perhaps, the peculiar genius of their respective authors, as that of the country that gave them birth; so that, though they may not be entirely classical, they are entirely Spanish; and what they want in finish and grace, they make up in picturesqueness and originality.[222]

[222] From the times of Charles V. and Philip II., when, in Aragon and Castile, chroniclers were multiplied as a part of the pageantry of the court, the rest of the kingdoms that entered into the united Spanish monarchy began to desire to have their own separate histories, as we can see in Valencia, where those of Beuter, Escolano, and Diago were written. Besides this, a great number of the individual cities obtained their own separate annals from the hand of at least one author,--sometimes works of authority, like that on Segovia by Colmenares, and that on Seville by Avila y Zuñiga. But though more of such local histories were written in Spain between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth centuries, than were written during the same period, I believe, in any other country in Europe, none of them, so far as I know, has such peculiar merit as to be noticeable in the literary history of the country. Still, the spirit that produced them in such great numbers, and especially the spirit which, during the reign of Philip II., made, with so much care and cost, the vast collections of documents yet to be found in the Castle of Simancas and the convent of the Escurial, should not be overlooked.

When the chapter on the Chronicles of the fifteenth century (First Period, Chap. IX.) was printed, I had not seen the Chronicle by the Prince of Viana, “Crónica de los Reyes de Navarra,”--of which there is only one edition, that of Pamplona, 1843, 4to, by Don José Yanguas y Miranda. It was written in 1454 by the Prince Don Carlos, to whom I have already alluded, (Vol. I. p. 332, note,) who died, forty years old, in 1461, and whose translation of Aristotle’s Ethics was printed at Saragossa in 1509. (Mendez, Typographia, 1796, p. 193.) The Chronicle was carefully prepared for publication from four manuscripts, and it embraces the history of Navarre from the earliest times to the accession of Charles III. in 1390, noticing a few events in the beginning of the next century. Besides the life of the author, it makes about 200 pages, written in a modest, simple style, but not so good as that of some of the contemporary Castilian chronicles. A few of the old traditions concerning the little mountain kingdom, whose early annals it records, are, however, well preserved; some of them being told as they are found in the General Chronicle of Spain, and some with additions or changes. The portions where I have observed most traces of connection between the two are in the Chronicle of the Prince of Viana, Book I. chapters 9-14, as compared with the latter portion of the General Chronicle, Part III. Sometimes the Prince deviates from all received accounts, as when he calls Cava the wife of Count Julian, instead of calling her his daughter; but, on the whole, his Chronicle agrees with the common traditions and histories of the period to which it relates.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIX

PROVERBS: SANTILLANA, GARAY, NUÑEZ, MAL LARA, PALMIRENO, OUDIN, SORAPAN, CEJUDO, YRIARTE.--DIDACTIC PROSE: TORQUEMADA, ACOSTA, LUIS DE GRANADA, JUAN DE LA CRUZ, SANTA TERESA, MALON DE CHAIDE, ROXAS, FIGUEROA, MARQUEZ, VERA Y ZUÑIGA, NAVARRETE, SAAVEDRA, QUEVEDO, ANTONIO DE VEGA, NIEREMBERG, GUZMAN, DANTISCO, ANDRADA, VILLALOBOS, PATON, ALEMAN, FARIA Y SOUSA, FRANCISCO DE PORTUGAL.--GONGORISM IN PROSE: GRACIAN, ZABALETA, LOZANO, HEREDIA, RAMIREZ.--FAILURE OF GOOD DIDACTIC PROSE.

The last department in the literature of any country, that comes within the jurisdiction of criticism on account of its style, is that of Didactic Prose; since in this branch, so remote from every thing poetical, the ornaments of manner are more accidental than they are elsewhere, and, beyond it, are not at all to be exacted. In modern times, the French seem to have been more anxious than any other nation, not excepting even the Italians, to add the grace of an elegant style to their didactic prose, while, on the other hand, none have been more unsuccessful than the Spaniards in their attempts to cultivate it.

In one particular form of didactic composition, however, Spain stands in advance of all other countries; I mean that of Proverbs, which Cervantes has happily called “short sentences drawn from long experience.”[223] Spanish proverbs can be traced back to the earliest times. One of the best known--“Laws go where kings please they should”--is connected with an event of importance in the reign of Alfonso the Sixth, who died in the beginning of the twelfth century, when the language of Castile had hardly a distinct existence.[224] Another has been traced to a custom belonging to the days of the Infantes de Lara, and is itself probably of not much later date.[225] Others are found in the General Chronicle, which is one of the oldest of Spanish prose compositions, and among them is the happy one on disappointed expectations, cited in Don Quixote more than once: “He went for wool and came back shorn.”[226] Several occur in the “Conde Lucanor” of Don John Manuel,[227] and many in the poetry of the Archpriest of Hita,[228] both of whom lived in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh.

[223] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 39.

[224] In the great contest between the two liturgies, the Roman and the Gothic, which disturbed the Church of Spain for so long a period, Alfonso VI. determined to throw a copy of each into a fire duly kindled and blessed for the purpose, and give the supremacy to the one that should come out unconsumed. The Gothic MS. was successful; but the king broke his word, and tossed it back into the flames, thus giving rise, it is said, to the proverb, “Alla van leyes adonde quieren reyes”; or, freely translated, “Laws obey kings.” (Sarmiento, § 411.) A similar historical origin is given to the proverb, “Ni quito rey, ni pongo rey”; which is traced to the personal quarrel of Peter the Cruel and his brother and successor, Don Enrique. Clemencin, ed. Don Quixote, Tom. VI., 1839, p. 225.

[225] Dissertation of Cortés in Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. p. 211.

[226] Chrónica General, 1604, Parte III. f. 61, and Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 7.

[227] For example: “Ayudad vos, y Dios ayudarvos ha,”--“Help yourself and God will help you,”--near the end; and “El Bien nunca muere,”--“Good never dies,”--which is in the first tale.

[228] “Quien en l’arenal sembra, non trilla pegujares,”--“He that sows on the sea-beach reaps little for himself.” Stanza 160. Pegujares, a singular word, which occurs once in Don Quixote, is said by Clemencin (Tom. IV. p. 34) to come from peculio. See, also, Partida IV. Título xvii. Ley 7.

Thus far, however, we have only separate and isolated sayings, evidently belonging to the old Spanish race, and always used as if quite familiar and notorious. But in the reign of John the Second, and at his request, the Marquis of Santillana collected a hundred in rhyme, which we have already noticed, besides above six hundred, he says, such as the old women were wont to repeat in their chimney-corners. From this period, therefore, or rather from 1508, when this collection was published, the old and wise proverbs of the language may be regarded as having obtained a settled place in its didactic literature.[229]

[229] Reprinted in Mayans, Orígenes, Tom. II. pp. 179-210. See also, the Proverbs from Seneca by Pero Diaz, mentioned in note 33 to Period I. chap. 19, and pp. 376, 377, of Vol. I.

The number of proverbs, indeed, was soon so great,--not only those floating about in the common talk of men, but those collected and printed,--that they began to be turned to account. Garay, who was attached to the cathedral of Toledo, and therefore lived in the centre of whatever was peculiarly Castilian, wrote a long letter, every sentence of which was a popular saying; to which he added two similar letters, found, as he says, by accident, and made up, in the same way, of proverbs.[230] But, in the middle of the century, a still higher honor awaited the old Spanish adages. Pedro Valles, who wrote the history of the great Marquis of Pescara, published an alphabetical series of four thousand three hundred of them in 1549; and the famous Greek scholar and distinguished nobleman, Hernan Nuñez de Guzman, Professor successively at Alcalá and at Salamanca, found amusement for his old age in making another series of them, which amounted in all to above six thousand. To some he added explanations; to others, various parallel sayings from different languages; but, finding his strength fail him, he gave the task to a friend, who, like himself, was a Professor in Salamanca, and who published the whole in 1555, two years after the death of Nuñez; rather, as he intimates, from respect to the person from whom he received it, than from regard to the dignity of the employment.[231]

[230] I have never seen the Proverbs collected by Pedro Valles, the Aragonese, but Mayans y Siscar had in his library a copy of them, which is described in the “Specimen Bibliothecæ Hispano-Majansianæ, etc., ex Musæo Davidis Clementis,” Hannoveræ, 1753, 4to, p. 67. The “Cartas de Blasco de Garay” have been often printed; but the oldest and most complete edition I have seen is that of Venice, 1553, 12mo; probably not the first. The second of the letters of Garay is not in proverbs, and, in this edition, is followed by a devout prayer; the whole being intended, as the author says, “to win the attention not so much of the wise as of those who are wont to read nothing but Celestina and such like books.” The “Proverbios” of Francisco de Castilla, in the volume with his “Theórica de Virtudes,” (1552, ff. 64-69,) are not proverbs, but an exhortation in verse to a wise and holy life.

[231] “Refranes, etc., que coligio y gloso, el Comendador, Hernan Nuñez, Profesor de Retórica en la Universidad de Salamanca,” Madrid, 1619, 4to. The preface, by Leo de Castro, implies that the volume was printed during the life of Nuñez, who died in 1553; but I find no edition older than that of 1555. See the note of Pellicer to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 34.

Out of these proverbs, another of the friends of Hernan Nuñez--Mal Lara, a Sevilian--selected a thousand, and, adding a commentary to each, published them in 1568, under the not inappropriate title of “Philosophy of the Common People”; a volume which, notwithstanding its cumbersome learning, can be read with pleasure, both for the style in which many parts of it are written, and for the unusual historical anecdotes with which it abounds. Another collection, made by Palmireno, a Valencian, in 1569, consisting of above two hundred proverbs appropriate to the table, shows how abundant popular aphorisms must be in a language that can furnish so many on one subject. Yet another, by Oudin, was published at Paris in 1608, for the use of foreigners, and shows no less plainly how much the Spanish had become spread throughout Europe. Sorapan, in 1616 and 1617, published two collections, in which it was intended that the condensation of popular experience and wisdom should teach medicine, as, in the hands of Mal Lara, they had been made to teach the philosophy of life. And, finally, in 1675, Cejudo, a schoolmaster of Val de Peñas, gave the world about six thousand, with the corresponding Latin adages, whenever he could find them, and with explanations more satisfactory than had been furnished by his predecessors.[232]

[232] “La Filosofía Vulgar de Juan de Mal Lara, Vezino de Sevilla,” (Sevilla, 1558, Madrid, 1618, 4to, etc.,)--a person of note in his time, whom we have mentioned (ante, II. 26) among the dramatic poets, and who died in 1571, forty-four years old. (Seman. Pintoresco, 1845, p. 34.) The collection of Lorenzo Palmireno is reprinted in the fourth volume of Nuñez, ed. Madrid, 1804, 12mo. Oudin’s collection was reprinted at Brussels in 1611, 12mo. Juan Sorapan de Rieros, “Medecina Española, en Proverbios Vulgares de Nuestra Lengua,” was printed at Granada, 1616-17, 4to, in two parts. “Refranes Castellanos con Latinos, etc., por el Licenciado Gerónimo Martin Caro y Cejudo,” Madrid, 1675, 4to; reprinted 1792. I do not notice the “Apotegmas” of Juan Rufo, (1596,) nor the “Floresta de Apotegmas of Santa Cruz,” (first printed in 1574, and often afterwards; e. g. Bruselas, 1629,)--the last of which is a pleasant hook, praised by Lope de Vega in his first tale,--because both of them are rather jest-books than collections of proverbs. The “Proverbios Morales” of Christ. Perez de Herrera (Madrid, 1618, 4to) are in rhyme, and too poor to deserve notice, even if they had been in prose.

Still, though so many thousands have been collected, many thousands still remain unpublished, known only among the traditions of the humbler classes of society, that have given birth to them all. Juan de Yriarte, a learned man, who was nearly forty years at the head of the King’s Library at Madrid, collected, about the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than twenty-four thousand; and yet it is not to be supposed that a single individual, however industrious, living in Madrid, could exhaust their number, as they belong rather to the provinces than to the capital, and are spread everywhere among the common people, and through all their dialects.[233]

[233] Vargas y Ponce, Declamacion, Madrid, 1793, 4to, App., p. 93.

Why proverbs should abound so much more in Spain than in any other country of Christendom, it is not possible to tell. Perhaps the Arabs, whose language is rich in such wisdom, may have furnished some of them; or perhaps the whole mass may have sprung from the original soil of the less cultivated classes of Spanish society. But however this may be, we know they are often among the pleasantest and most characteristic ornaments of the national literature; and those who are most familiar with them will be most ready to agree with the wise author of the “Dialogue on Languages,” when he says, and repeats the remark, that we must go to the old national proverbs for what is purest in his native Castilian.[234]

[234] Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. I. pp. 188-191, and the Diálogo de las Lenguas, p. 12, where the author says, “In our proverbs, you see the purity of the Castilian language”; and p. 170, where he says, “The purest Castilian we have is in our proverbs.” The “Don Quixote” will occur to every body as a book that proves how much proverbs enter into Spanish literature; but I should rather cite the “Celestina,” where their number is, I think, equally great in proportion, and their serious application more effective.

* * * * *

Turning now to the proper Didactic prose of Spanish literature, the first instance we find--after those formerly noticed as imitating the Italian philosophical discussions of the sixteenth century--is one that comes near to the borders of fiction. It is “The Garden of Curious Flowers,” by Torquemada, originally published in 1570, of which the curate, in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library, says, that “he does not know whether it is more true, or, to speak strictly, less full of lies,” than the “Olivante de Laura,” a book of chivalry by the same author, which, for its peculiar absurdities, he sends at once to the bonfire in the court-yard. “The Garden of Curious Flowers,” however, is still a curious book. It consists of six colloquies between friends, who talk for their amusement on such subjects as the monstrous productions of nature, the terrestrial paradise, phantasms and enchantments, the influence of the stars, and the history and condition of those countries that lie nearest to the North Pole. It is, in fact, a collection of whatever strange and extravagant stories a learned man could make, beginning with such as he found in Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Olaus Magnus, and Albertus Magnus, and including those told by the most credulous of his own time. Being put into a form then popular, and related in a pleasing style, they had no little success. They were several times printed in the original, and, beside being translated into Italian and French, are well known to those who are curious in the literature of Queen Elizabeth’s time, under the much-abused name of “The Spanish Mandeville.” It may be added, that some of Torquemada’s accounts of spectres and visions are still pleasant reading; and that, though Cervantes spoke slightingly of the whole book in his “Don Quixote,” he afterwards resorted to it, both for facts and for fancies respecting the wonders of Friesland and Iceland, when he wrote the first part of his “Persiles and Sigismunda.”[235]

[235] “Jardin de Flores Curiosas, etc., por Ant. de Torquemada,” 1570, 1573, 1587, 1589. The edition of Anveres, 1575, 18mo, fills 536 pages. “The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles, or the Garden of Curious Flowers,” (London, 1600, 4to,) is a translation into good old English, by Ferdinand Walker. The original is strictly prohibited in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 68. The “Coloquios Satíricos,” by the same author, (1553,) I have never seen.

Christóval de Acosta, a Portuguese botanist,--who was accustomed to call himself “the African,” because he happened to be born in one of the African possessions of Portugal,--travelled much in the East, and after his return published, in 1578, a work on Oriental plants and drugs, to which he added at the end a treatise on the natural history of the Elephant. But, though he succeeded in attracting the attention of Europe to this publication, and though the early part of his life had been that of a soldier, an adventurer, and a captive among pirates and robbers, he spent many of his later years, if not all of them, in religious retirement at home, where, besides other things, he wrote a discourse on “The Benefits of Solitude,” and a treatise on “The Praise of Women.” The last was printed in 1592, and, except that it is too full of learning, may still be read with some interest, if not with pleasure.[236]

[236] “Tractado de las Drogas y Medicinas de las Indias Orientales, por Christóval Acosta,” Burgos, (1578, 4to,) where its author was a surgeon; but there are other editions, (1582 and 1592,) and early Italian and French translations. The “Tractado en Loor de las Mugeres, por Christóval Acosta, Affricano,” was printed at Venice, 1592, 4to, and I know no other edition. Barbosa, in his life of Acosta, spells his name Da Costa.

It was not, however, moral and philosophical writers, like Oliva and Guevara, nor writers on subjects connected with natural history, like Torquemada and Acosta, that were most favored in the reigns of Philip the Second and his immediate successors. It was the ascetics and mystics,--the natural produce of the soil of Spain, and, almost without exception, faithful to the old Castilian genius.

Among the most prominent of this class was Luis de Granada, distinguished as a Spanish preacher, but still more remarkable for his eloquence as a mystic. His “Meditations for the Seven Days and Nights of a Week,” his treatises “On Prayer” and “On Faith,” and his “Memorial of a Christian Life,” were early translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English,--one of them into Turkish, and one into Japanese,--and, like his other Spanish works, have continued to be printed and admired in the original down to our own times.

The most effective of them all was his “Guide for Sinners,” first published in 1556. It makes two moderate volumes, and portions of it are marked with a diffuse declamation, which is perhaps imitated from that of Juan de Avila, the Apostle of Andalusia, whose friend and follower he more than once boasts himself to have been. But its general tone is that of a moving and harmonious eloquence, which has made it a favorite book of devotion in Spain ever since it first appeared, and has spread its reputation so widely, that it has been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, including the Greek and Polish, and, at one time, seemed likely to obtain a place, in the religious literature of Christendom, very near that of the great ascetic work which passes under the name of Thomas à Kempis. In its native country, however, the Guide for Sinners encountered at first not a little opposition. As early as the year after it was published, it had been placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and no edition except the first seems to have been permitted till we find that of Salamanca, in 1570. But the very Index that condemned it became itself the subject of condemnation; and, in the case of the Guide for Sinners, the ecclesiastical powers went so far in the opposite direction as to grant special indulgences by proclamation to all who should have read or heard a chapter of the very work they had earlier so harshly censured.

Luis de Granada passed all the latter part of his life in Lisbon,--perhaps because he had been repeatedly annoyed by the Inquisition at home, perhaps because his duties seemed to lead him there. But, whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that he enjoyed much more favor in Portugal than he did in Spain; and when he died, in 1588, eighty-four years old, he could boast that he had refused the highest honors of the Portuguese Church, and humbly devoted the whole of his long life to the reformation and advancement of the Order of Preachers, of which, during his best years, he had been the active and venerated head.[237]

[237] Preface to Obras de Luis de Granada, Madrid, 1657, folio, and Preface to Guia de Pecadores, Madrid, 1781, 8vo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 38. Llorente, Hist., Tom. III. p. 123. His works are numerous, and he enjoys the singular honor of having had an edition of them published by Planta, at the expense of the Duke of Alva, the minister and general of Philip II.

San Juan de la Cruz, who was in some respects an imitator of Luis de Granada, was born in 1542, and, having spent the greater part of his life in reforming the discipline of the Carmelite monasteries, died in 1591, and was beatified in 1674. His works, which are chiefly contemplative, and obtained for him the title of the Ecstatic Doctor, are written with great fervor. The chief of them are the allegory of “The Ascent to Mount Carmel,” and “The Dark Night of the Soul,”--treatises which have given him much reputation for a mystical eloquence, that sometimes rises to the sublime, and sometimes is lost in the unintelligible. His poetry, of which a little is printed in some of the many editions of his works, is of the same general character, but marked by great felicity and richness of phraseology.[238]

[238] Obras de San Juan de la Cruz, Sevilla, 1703, folio, twelfth edition.

Santa Teresa, who was associated with Juan de la Cruz in the work of reforming the Carmelites,--or rather with whom he was associated, since hers was the leading spirit,--died in 1582, sixty-seven years old. Her didactic works, the most remarkable of which are “The Path to Perfection” and “The Interior Castle,” are less obscure than those of her coadjutor, though more declamatory. But all she wrote, including an account of her own life, and several discussions connected with the religious duties to which she dedicated herself, were composed with apparent reluctance on her part, and in obedience to the commands of her superiors. She believed herself to be often in direct communion with God; and as those about her shared her faith on this point, she was continually urged by them to make known to the world what were thus regarded as revelations of the Divine will. On one occasion she says: “Far within, God appeared to me in a vision, as he has been wont to do, and gave me his right hand, and said,--Behold this print of the nail; it is a sign that, from this day forth, thou art my spouse. Hitherto, thou hast not deserved it; but hereafter not only shalt thou regard my honor as that of thy Creator, and King, and God, but as that of a true spouse;--for my honor is now thine, and thine is mine.”

Living, as she undoubtedly did, under the persuasion that she was favored with numberless revelations of this kind, she wrote boldly and rapidly, and corrected nothing. Her style, in consequence, is diffuse and open to objections, which, in Spain, the spirit of a merely literary criticism is too reverent to desire to remove. But whatever she wrote is full of earnestness, sincerity, and love; and therefore her works have never ceased to be read by those of her own nation and faith. During her life, she was persecuted by the Inquisition; but after her death, her manuscripts were collected with pious care, and published, in 1588, by Luis de Leon, who exhorts all men to follow in the bright path she has pointed out to them; adding, “She has seen God face to face, and she now shows him to you.”[239]

[239] Obras de Santa Teresa, (Madrid, 1793, 2 tom. 4to,) Tom. I. p. 393. Of her letters I have spoken, ante, p. 135, and an excellent discussion of her character, and that of the mystical school to which she belonged, may be found in the Christian Examiner, No. 152, Boston, March, 1849. Her works are accompanied with many offers of indulgence to those who read a chapter or a letter of any of them, or hear it read. For her troubles with the Inquisition, see Llorente, Tom. III. p. 114. Santa Teresa was beatified in 1614, and canonized in 1622; besides which, in 1617 and 1626, the Cortes chose her to be the co-patroness and advocate of Spain with Santiago; an honor that was long resisted, but was urged anew by the testament of Charles II., and confirmed by the Cortes of 1812, June 28, at the urgent petition of the Carmelites, in a spirit worthy of the age in which she lived. See Southey’s Peninsular War, London, 1832, 4to, Tom. III. p. 539.

This school of spiritualists, to which belonged Juan de Avila and Luis de Leon, of whom we have before spoken, had, no doubt, a very considerable effect on Spanish didactic prose. They raised its tone, and did more towards placing it on the old foundations, where the chronicles and the earlier writers of the country, like Lucena, had left it, than had been done for nearly two centuries. Such efforts gave dignity, if not purity or an exact finish, to the proper Castilian style; so that, at the end of the reign of Philip the Second, it was not only of more consequence to an author’s reputation to write well upon any grave subject in prose than it had ever been before, but, with such examples before him, it was easier to do so. In all this, the movement made was in the right direction, and produced happy results. But, on the other hand, we should remember that it confirmed in the didactic literature of the country that tendency to a diffuse and florid declamation, which was early one of its blemishes, and from which, with such authority in its favor, Castilian prose has never since been able completely to emancipate itself.

A remarkable proof of this is to be found in “The Magdalen” of Malon de Chaide, first published in 1592, after the death of its author. It is a religious work, and is divided into four parts; the first being merely introductory, and the three others on the three characters of Mary Magdalen as a sinner, a penitent, and a saint. It has a very rhetorical air throughout, and sometimes reads almost like a romance;--so free is its conception of the character and conversations of the saint. But some of its discussions, like one on fashionable dress, and one on religious pictures, are curious; and some of its religious exhortations, like that to repent before old age comes on, are moving and powerful. The moral tone of the whole is severe. With a great deal of the spirit of a monk, the author is earnest against books of chivalry; and he not only rebukes the habit of reading the ancient classics, but even such Spanish poets as Garcilasso de la Vega, because he thinks admiration of them inconsistent with a preservation of the Christian character. Occasionally, he grows mystical; and then, though his style is more than ever prodigal, his meaning is not always plain. But, on the whole, and regarded as an exhortation to a religious life, the Conversion of Mary Magdalen is written with so much richness of language, and is often so eloquent, that it was much read when it first appeared, and has not, even in recent times, ceased to be reprinted and admired.[240]

[240] Malon de Chaide was an Augustinian monk, and Professor at Salamanca; and there are editions of his Magdalen of 1592, Alcalá, 12mo, of 1596, 1603, 1794, etc. A somewhat similar book had preceded it, “The History of the Queen of Sheba, when she discoursed with King Solomon in Jerusalem.” It was written by another Augustinian monk, Alonso de Horosco, a somewhat voluminous writer, and was printed at Salamanca, in 1568, 12mo. But it is little more than a collection of ordinary sermons, some of which do not mention the Queen of Sheba at all, and is to be regarded only as a courtly offering to Isabella, wife of Philip II., whose chaplain Horosco was.

Quite different from this is “The Amusing Journey” of Roxas,--a book that hardly falls within the strict limits of any class, but one which has always been popular in Spain. Its author was an actor; and his travels consist of an account of some of his personal adventures and experiences, thrown into the form of dialogues between three of his fellow-comedians and himself, as they visit some of the principal cities of Spain in the exercise of their profession as strolling players. They travel on foot; and their conversations, which are little molested by scruples of any sort, make up a very amusing book.

In some parts of it, we have sketches of the places they visit, with notices of the local history belonging to each. In others, Roxas himself, in a spirit that not unfrequently reminds us of Gil Blas, relates his own previous adventures, as a soldier, as a captive in France, and as a play-actor at home. In yet others, we have fictions, or what seem to be such, and among them, the story on which Shakspeare founded his Christopher Sly and the Induction to “The Taming of the Shrew.” But, in general, it is rather an account of what relates to the theatre and the affairs of the four gay companions at Seville, Toledo, Segovia, Valladolid, Granada, and on the roads between all of them, interspersed with forty or fifty loas, which Roxas wrote with recognized success, and of which he is evidently very proud. It is a pleasant book, loosely and carelessly put together, but important for the history of the Spanish drama, and with talent enough to attract the attention of Scarron, who took from it the hint for his “Roman Comique.” From internal evidence, “The Amusing Journey” was written in 1602, and, at the end, a continuation is announced; but, like so many other promises of the same sort in Spanish literature, it was never kept.[241]

[241] An edition of 1583 is cited by Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 178,) but this cannot be. See Viage, Madrid, 1640, 12mo, f. 66. a. The first edition must be that of Madrid, 1603, cited in the Index Expurgatorius, 1667, where it is roughly handled, but since which it has been often reprinted. Clemencin, (Don Quixote, Tom. III. p. 395,) when speaking of Spanish actors, rightly calls the Viage of Roxas “libro magistral en la materia.” Another work, imputed to Roxas, which I have never seen, called “El Buen Repúblico,” was wholly prohibited.

Perhaps the work of Roxas served, also, as a hint for the “Pasagero,” or Traveller, of Suarez de Figueroa. At any rate, the well-known author of the “Amarillis,” published in 1617, a half-narrative, half-didactic work with this title, containing ten long discussions, on a great variety of subjects, held by four persons, as they journey from Madrid to Barcelona, in order to embark for Italy;--the discussions themselves being called alivios, or rests by the way. The chief conversation is in the hands of Figueroa, the principal person in his own drama; and so far as he is concerned, and so far as the discussions relate to the men of letters of his own time, the Pasagero is somewhat cynical. His autobiography, which is contained in the eighth dialogue, is interesting, and so are the ninth and tenth dialogues, in which he gives his view of the state of Spain at the time he wrote, and the means of leading an honest and honorable life there. But the most important conversations are the third, which relates to the theatre, and the fourth, which is on the popular and courtly mode of preaching. The whole work is too diffuse in its style, though less declamatory than much in the didactic prose of the period.[242]

[242] “El Pasagero, Advertencias utilíssimas á la Vida Humana, por el Doctor Christ. Suarez de Figueroa,” Madrid, 1617, 12mo, ff. 492. Figueroa also published (Madrid, 1621, 4to) a volume of five hundred pages, entitled, “Varias Noticias importantes á la Humana Comunicacion,” which he divides into twenty essays, entitled “Variedades.” It is less well written than the Pasagero, falling more into the faults of the time. The seventeenth Essay, however, which is on Domestic Life, with illustrations from Spanish history, is pleasant. His “Plaza Universal de las Ciencias,” first printed at Madrid, in 1615, 4to, and reprinted in folio, with large changes and additions, in 1737, is an attempt at a compendium of human knowledge, curious in the first edition, as showing the state of knowledge and opinion at that time in Spain, but of little value in either.

A more serious book of travels might here have been added; that of Pedro Ordoñez de Cevallos, entitled “Viage del Mundo,” and first printed at Madrid, 1614, 4to. It is an agreeable and often interesting autobiography of its author, beginning with his birth at Jaen and his education at Seville, and giving his travels, for thirty-nine years, all over the world, including China, America, many parts of Africa, and the northern kingdoms of Europe. Its spirit is eminently national, and its style simple and Castilian.

Some of the best portions of the didactic literature of Spain during the seventeenth century were partly or wholly political. Marquez, a writer in the old style of the reign of Philip the Second, published in 1612 his “Christian Governor,” a work composed at the request of the Duke of Feria, then viceroy of Sicily, and intended to serve as an answer to Machiavelli’s “Prince.”[243] Vera y Zuñiga, author of a strange epic on the conquest of Seville, who was a better minister of Philip the Third than he was poet, published in 1620 a treatise, in four discourses, on the character and duties of an ambassador; full of learning, and occasionally illustrated with appropriate anecdotes drawn from Spanish history, but citing indiscriminately books of authority and no authority on the grave subjects he discusses, and relying apparently with as much confidence upon an opinion of Ovid as upon one of Comines.[244] Fernandez de Navarrete, a secretary of the same monarch, chose his subject a little higher up, and in 1625, under the disguise of an assumed name, and in a letter to a Polish prime-minister who never existed, gave the world his notions of what “a royal favorite” should be; but it is evident that Spain only was in his thoughts when he wrote, and his little treatise is so encumbered with ill-assorted learning and ungraceful conceits that it was soon forgotten.[245]

[243] “El Governador Christiano, deducido de las Vidas de Moyses y Josua, por Juan Marquez.” There are editions of 1612, 1619, 1634, etc., with translations into Italian and French. The same author wrote, also, “Dos Estados de la Espiritual Jerusalem,” 1603. He was born in 1564, and died in 1621. Capmany (Eloquencia, Tom. IV. pp. 103, etc.) praises him highly.

[244] “El Embaxador, por Don Juan Antonio de Vera y Zuñiga,” Sevilla, 1620, 4to, 280 leaves. I have noticed him as an epic poet, Vol. II. p. 500.

[245] “El Perfecto Privado, Carta de Lelio Peregrino á Estanislao Bordio, Privado del Rey de Polonia.” It was first printed in 1625, (Antonio, Bib. Nov.,) but I know it only in a collection called “Varios Eloquentes Libros recogidos en uno,” (Madrid, 1726, 4to,) a volume which, besides the above work of Navarrete, contains the “Retrato Político del Rey Alfonso VIII.,” by Gaspar Mercader y Cervellon, (see Ximeno, Tom. II. p. 99,) the “Govierno Moral” of Polo, noticed, II. 544, III. 111, with some discussions which it excited, and the “Lagrimas de Heraclito defendidas,” a tract by Antonio de Vieyra, read before Christina of Sweden, at Rome, to prove that the world is more worthy of being wept over than laughed at; all of them attempts at wisdom and wit in the worst taste of their times.

Not so the “Idea of a Christian Prince,” by Saavedra Faxardo, who died at Madrid in 1648, after having been long in the diplomatic service of the Spanish crown. It was a higher subject than either of those taken by Navarrete and Figueroa, and managed with more talent. Under the awkward arrangement of a hundred ingenious Emblems, with mottoes, that are generally well chosen and pointed, he has given a hundred essays on the education of a prince;--his relations with his ministers and subjects; his duties as the head of a state in its internal and external relations; and his duties to himself in old age and in preparation for death;--all intended for the instruction of Balthasar, son of Philip the Fourth, to whom it is dedicated, but who died too young to profit by its wisdom. It is written in a compact, sententious style, with much quaint and curious knowledge of history, and with a large and not always judicious display of learning. But in many points it reminds us of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Cabinet Council” and Owen Feltham’s “Resolves”;--a measure of praise that can be given to few such prose works in the Spanish language. Its success was great; nor is it yet fallen into neglect. The first edition was published in 1640, at Munster. Many others followed in the course of the century. It was translated into all the languages of Europe, and, in Spain at least, has continued to be printed and valued down to our own days.[246]

[246] “Empresas Políticas, Idea de un Príncipe Christiano, por Diego Saavedra Faxardo.” The number of editions is very great, and so is that of the translations. There are, I think, two in English, one of which is by Sir J. Astry, London, 1700, 2 vols. 8vo. A Latin version which appeared at Brussels in 1640, the year in which the original Spanish appeared at Munster, has also been reprinted.

“The Divine Politics” of Quevedo, a part of which was published before the Christian Prince and a part after it, may have suggested his subject to Saavedra, but not the mode of treating it; and, in the same way, the great satirist may have had some influence in determining Antonio de Vega, the Portuguese, to write his “Political Dream of a Perfect Nobleman,” in 1620;[247] Nieremberg, the Jesuit, to write his “Manual for Gentlemen and Princes,” which appeared in 1629;[248] and Benavente, his “Advice for Kings, Princes, and Ambassadors,” which appeared in 1643.[249] But none of these works, nor any thing else in the nature of didactic prose that appeared in the seventeenth century, is equal to the Christian Prince of Saavedra; unless, indeed, we are to except his own vision of a state, which he calls “The Literary Republic,” and in which he discusses somewhat satirically, but in a vein of agreeable criticism, the merits of the principal writers of ancient and modern times, foreign and Spanish. The Literary Republic, however, was not published till after its author’s death, and never enjoyed a popularity like that enjoyed by his longer and elder work; a work which leaves far behind every thing in the class of books of emblems, that so long served to tax the ingenuity of the higher classes of society in Europe.[250]

[247] “El Perfeto Señor, etc., de Antonio Lopez de Vega,” 1626 and 1652, the latter, Madrid, 4to. He published, also, (Madrid, 1641, 4to,) a series of moral Dialogues, on various subjects connected with Rank, Wealth, and Letters, under the title of “Heraclito y Demócrito de nuestro Siglo,” and giving the opposite views of each, which the names of the interlocutors imply; a book that affords sketches of manners and opinions at the time it was written, that are often amusing, and generally delivered in an unaffected style. The poetry of Antonio de Vega has been noticed, II. 529.

[248] “Obras y Dias, Manual de Señores y Príncipes, por Juan Eusebio Nieremberg,” Madrid, 1629, 4to, ff. 220. His father and mother were Germans, who came to Spain with the Empress of Austria, Doña Maria, but he himself was born at Madrid in 1595, and died there in 1658. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 686) and Baena (Tom. III. p. 190) give long lists of his works, chiefly in Latin. The “Contemplations on the State of Man,” published in 1684, seventeen years after the death of Jeremy Taylor, as his work, turns out to have been substantially taken from a treatise of Nieremberg, first published as early as 1654, and entitled “Diferencia de lo Temporal y Eterno”; the “Contemplations,” however, being a rifacimento of an English translation of the work of Nieremberg, by Sir Vivian Mullineaux, published in 1672. (See an interesting pamphlet on this subject, “Letter to Joshua Watson, Esq., etc., by Edw. Churton, M. A., Archdeacon of Cleveland,” London, 1848, 8vo.) Why the fraud was not earlier detected, since Heber and others had noted the difference between the style of this work and that of Bishop Taylor’s works generally, it is difficult to tell. The treatise of Nieremberg has always been valued in Spanish, and, besides being early translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English, was published in Arabic in 1733-34, at the Convent of St. John, on the Mountain of the Druses. See Brunet.

[249] “Advertencias para Reyes, Príncipes, y Embaxadores, por Don Christóval de Benavente y Benavides,” Madrid, 1643, 4to, pp. 700. It a good deal resembles the “Embaxador” of Vera y Zuñiga; and, like the author of that work, Benavente had been an ambassador of Spain in other countries, and wrote on the subject of what may be considered to have been his profession with experience and curious learning.

[250] His “República Literaria” is a light work, in the manner of Lucian, written with great purity of language, and was not printed till 1670. A spirited dialogue between Mercury and Lucian, on “The Follies of Europe,” in which Saavedra defends the House of Austria against the attacks of the rest of the world, remained in manuscript till it was produced, in 1787, in the sixth volume of the Seminario Erudito.

To these writers of the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century a few more might be added, of less consequence. Juan de Guzman, in 1589, published a formal treatise on Rhetoric, in the seventh dialogue of which he makes an ingenious application of the rules of the Greek and Roman masters to the demands of modern sermonizing in Spain.[251] Gracian Dantisco, one of the secretaries of Philip the Second, published in 1599 a small discourse on the minor morals of life, which he called the “Galateo,” in imitation of Giovanni della Casa, whose classical Italian treatise bearing the same name was already translated into Spanish.[252] In the same year appeared a curious work by Pedro de Andrada, on “The Art of Horsemanship,” well written and learned, with amusing anecdotes of horses; and this was followed, in 1605, by a similar treatise of Simon de Villalobos, but one which, from its more military character, and from the exaggerated importance it gives to its subject, might well have been made a part of Don Quixote’s library.[253] Both of them bear marks of the state of society at the time they were written.

[251] “Primera Parte de la Rhetórica, etc., por Juan de Guzman,” Alcalá, 1590, 12mo, 291 leaves. It is divided affectedly into fourteen “Combites,” or Invitations to Feasts. Its author was a pupil of the famous Sanctius, “El Brocense.”

[252] The “Galateo” was several times reprinted. It is a small book, containing, in the edition of Madrid, 1664, only 126 leaves in 18mo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 17.

[253] “Libro de la Gineta de España, por Pedro Fernandez de Andrada,” Sevilla, 1599, 4to, 182 leaves.--“Modo de pelear á la Gineta, por Simon de Villalobos,” Valladolid, 1605, 18mo, 70 leaves.

Paton, the author of several works of little value, published, in 1604, a crude treatise on “The Art of Spanish Eloquence,” founded on the rules of the ancients;[254] and, in Mexico, Aleman, while living there, printed, in 1609, a treatise on “Castilian Orthography,” which, besides what is appropriate to the title, contains pleasant discussions on other topics connected with the language, over which he has himself shown a great mastery in his “Guzman de Alfarache.”[255] A series of conversations on miscellaneous subjects, divided into seven nights, which their author, Faria y Sousa, intended to have called simply “Moral Dialogues,” but which his bookseller, without his knowledge, published in 1624 with the title of “Brilliant Nights,” are dull and pedantic, like nearly every thing this learned Portuguese wrote; and the second part, which he offered to the public, was never called for.[256] And, finally, another Portuguese, Francisco de Portugal, who died in 1632,[257] wrote a pleasant treatise on “The Art of Gallantry,” with anecdotes showing the state of fashionable, or rather courtly, society at the time; but it was not printed till long after its author’s death.[258]

[254] “Eloquencia Española en Arte, por el Maestro Bartolomé Ximenez Paton,” Toledo, 1604, 12mo. The extracts from old Spanish books and hints about their authors, in this treatise, are often valuable; but how wise its practical suggestions are may be inferred from the fact, that it recommends an orator to strengthen his memory by anointing his head with a compound made chiefly of bear’s grease and white wax.

[255] “Ortografía Castellana, por Mateo Aleman,” Mexico, 1609, 4to, 83 leaves.

[256] “Noches Claras, Primera Parte, por Manoel de Faria y Sousa,” Madrid, 1624, 12mo, a thick volume. Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 257.

[257] Francisco de Portugal, Count Vimioso, left a son, who published his father’s poetry with a life prefixed, but I know no edition of the “Arte de Galantería,” etc., earlier than that of Lisbon, 1670, 4to.

[258] Before we come into the period when bad taste overwhelmed every thing, we should slightly refer to a few authors who were not infected by it, and who yet are not of importance enough to be introduced into the text.

The first of them is Diego de Estella, who was born in 1524, and died in 1578. He was much connected with the great diplomatist, Cardinal Granvelle, and published many works in Latin and Spanish, the best of which, as to style and manner, are “The Vanity of the World,” 1574, and “Meditations on the Love of God,” 1578.

Several treatises in the form of biography, but really ascetic and didactic in their character, were published soon afterwards, which are written with some purity and vigor; such as the Life of Pius V., (1595,) by Antonio Fuenmayor, who died at the early age of thirty; the Life of Santa Teresa, (1599,) by Diego de Yepes, one of her correspondents, and the confessor of the last dark years of Philip II.; and the Lives of two devout women, Doña Sancha Carillo, and Doña Ana Ponce de Leon, (1604,) by Martin de Roa, a Jesuit, who long represented the interests of his Society at the court of Rome.

To these may be added three other works of very different characters.

The “Examen de Ingenios,” or How to determine, from the Physical and External Condition, who are fit for Training in the Sciences, by Juan de Huarte, (Alcalá, 1640, 12mo, first published in 1566,) is one of them. It enjoyed a prodigious reputation in its time, was often published in Spanish, and was translated into all the principal languages of Europe; into English by Richard Carew, 1594; and, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, into German by a person no less distinguished than Lessing, whose version, entitled “Prüfung der Köpfe,” was printed for the second time at Wittenberg, 1785, 12mo. It is a work full of striking, but often wild, conjectures in physiology, written in a forcible, clear style, and Lessing aptly compares its author to a spirited horse, that, in galloping over the stones, never strikes fire so brilliantly as he does when he stumbles. It is praised by Forner, (Obras, Madrid, 1843, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 61,) and is on the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 734. The “Examen de Maridos,” a spirited play of Alarcon, (see, ante, II. 322,) and the “Vexamen de Ingenios,” a lively prose satire of Cancer, (Obras, 1761, p. 105,) were, I suppose, understood by their contemporaries to have reference to the title of the “Examen de Ingenios,” then very popular. A work not unlike the “Examen de Ingenios” appeared at Barcelona, (1637, 4to,) entitled “El Sol Solo, etc., y Anatomía de Ingenios,” taking a view of the same subject more in the nature of Physiognomy, and not without an approach to what has since been called Phrenology. It was written by Estevan Pujasol, an Aragonese; and is curious for its manner of treating the subjects it discusses,--half anatomical, half spiritual; but is not otherwise interesting.

The second is the “Historia Moral y Philosóphica” of Pero Sanchez of Toledo, published at Toledo, 1590, folio, when its author, who was connected with the cathedral there, was already an old man. It consists of the Lives of distinguished men of antiquity, like Plato, Alexander, and Cicero, and ends with a treatise on Death;--each of the Lives being accompanied by moral and Christian reflections, which are sometimes written in a flowing and fervent style, but are rarely appropriate, and never original or powerful.

The last is by Vincencio Carducho, a Florentine painter, who, when quite a boy, was brought to Spain in 1585, by his brother Bartolomé, and died there in 1638, having risen to considerable eminence in his art. In 1634, he published, at Madrid, “Diálogos de la Pintura, su Defensa, Orígen,” etc. (4to, 229 leaves); but the licencias are dated 1632 and 1633. It is written in good plain prose, without particular merit as to style, and is declared by Cean Bermudez, (Diccionario, Tom. I. p. 251,) in his notice of the author, to be “el mejor libro que tenemos de pintura en Castellano.” At the end is an Appendix, in which are attacks of Lope de Vega, Juan de Jauregui, and others, on a duty laid upon pictures, which, Cean Bermudez says, “the efforts of Carducho and his friends succeeded in removing in 1637.”

During the period embraced by the works last mentioned, a false taste had invaded Spanish prose. It was the same unhappy taste which we have noticed in Spanish poetry by the name of “Gongorism,” but which its admirers called sometimes “the polite,” and sometimes “the cultivated,” style of writing. Traces of it have been sought in the sixteenth century among some of the best writers of the country; but for this there seems no foundation, except in the fact, that a rigorous taste never at any time prevailed in Spain, and that the luxuriant success of letters towards the end of the reign of Philip the Second, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining fashionable distinction by authorship, had led to occasional affectations even in the style of those who, like Cervantes and Mariana, stood foremost among the better writers of their time.

But now, the admiration that followed Góngora almost necessarily introduced conceits into prose writing, such as were thought so worthy of imitation in poetry. Those, therefore, who most coveted public favor, began to play with words, and seek to surprise by an unexpected opposition of ideas and quaintness of metaphor, little consistent with the old Castilian dignity, until at last they quite left the stately constructions in which resides so much of what is peculiar to the sonorous declamations of Luis de Leon and Luis de Granada, and by excessive efforts at brilliancy became so involved and obscure, that they were not always intelligible. Instances of such affectation may be found in Saavedra and Francisco de Portugal. But the innovation itself is older than either of their published works. It broke out with Paravicino, who, besides imitating Góngora’s poetry, as we have already seen, carried similar extravagances of metaphor and construction into his oratorical and didactic prose; intimating, in a characteristic phrase, that he claimed the honor of being the Columbus who had made this great discovery. As early as 1620, it was matter of censure and ridicule to Liñan, in his “Guide to Strangers in Madrid,” and soon afterwards to Mateo Velazquez, in his “Village Philosopher”; so that from this period we may consider cultismo nearly or quite as prevalent in Spanish prose as it was in Spanish poetry.[259]

[259] See Declamacion, etc., of Vargas y Ponce, 1793, App., § 17; Marina, Ensayo, in Memorias de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., 1804; Liñan y Verdugo, Avisos de Forasteros, 1620, noticed (ante, p. 103) under the head of Romantic Fiction; and “El Filosofo del Aldea, y sus Conversaciones Familiares, su Autor el Alferez Don Baltazar Mateo Velazquez,” Zaragoza, por Diego de Ormer, 12mo, 106 leaves, s. a.; a singular book, didactic in its main purpose, but illustrating with stories its homely philosophy. I find no notice of it, though the author, in his Dedication, intimates that it is not his first published work. It seems to have been written soon after the death of Philip III. in 1621, and its last dialogue is against cultismo, of the introduction of which into Spanish prose I have spoken when noticing the “Pícara Justina” of Andreas Perez, 1605, ante, p. 67.

The person, however, who settled its character, and in some respects gave it an air of philosophical pretension, was Balthazar Gracian, a Jesuit of Aragon, who lived between 1601 and 1658; exactly the period when the cultivated style took possession of Spanish prose, and rose to its greatest consideration. He began in 1630, by a tract called “The Hero,” which is not so much the description of a hero’s character as it is a recipe to form one, given in short, compact sentences, constructed in the new style. It was successful, and was followed by five or six other works, written in the same manner; after which, to confirm and justify them all, there appeared, in 1648, his “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio”; a regular Art of Poetry, or rather system of rhetoric, accommodated to the school of Góngora, and showing great acuteness, especially in the ingenuity with which the author presses into his service the elder poets, such as Diego de Mendoza, the Argensolas, and even Luis de Leon and the Bachiller de la Torre.

The most remarkable work of Gracian, however, is his “Críticon,” published in three parts, between 1650 and 1653. It is an allegory on human life, and gives us the adventures of Critilus, a noble Spaniard, wrecked on the desert island of Saint Helena, where he finds a solitary savage, who knows nothing about himself, except that he has been nursed by a wild beast. After much communication in dumb show, they are able to understand each other in Spanish, and, being taken from the island, travel together through the world, talking often of the leading men of their time in Spain, but holding intercourse more with allegorical personages than with one another. The story of their adventures is long, and its three portions represent the three periods of human life; the first being called the Spring of Childhood, the second the Autumn of Manhood, and the third the Winter of Old Age. In some parts it shows much talent; and eloquent discussions on moral subjects, and glowing descriptions of events and natural scenery, can be taken from it, which are little infected with the extravagances of the Cultivated Style. Sometimes, we are reminded of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,”--as, for instance, in the scenes of the World’s Fair,--and might almost say, that the “Críticon” is to the Catholic religion and the notions of life in Spain during the reign of Philip the Fourth, what Bunyan’s fiction is to Puritanism and the English character in the age of Cromwell. But there is no vitality in the shadowy personages of Gracian. He bodies nothing forth to which our sympathies can attach themselves as they do to such sharply-defined creations as Christian and Mr. Greatheart, and, when we are moved at all by him, it is only by his acuteness and eloquence.

His other works are of little value, and are yet more deformed by bad taste; especially his “Politico-Fernando,” which is an extravagant eulogium on Ferdinand the Catholic, and his “Discreto,” which is a collection of prose miscellanies, including a few of his letters. It is singular, that, in consequence of being an ecclesiastic, he thought it proper that all his works should be printed under the name of his brother Lorenzo, who lived at Seville; and it is yet more singular, perhaps, that they were published, not by himself, but by his friend, Lastañosa, a gentleman of literary taste, and a collector of ancient works of art, who lived at Huesca in Aragon. But however indirectly and cautiously the works of Gracian won their way into the world, they enjoyed great favor there, and made much noise. His “Hero” went early through six editions, and his collected prose works, most of which were translated into French and Italian, and some of them into English and Latin, were often reprinted in the original Spanish, both at home and abroad.[260]

[260] There are editions of Gracian’s Works, 1664, 1667, 1725, 1748, 1757, 1773, etc. I use that of Barcelona, 1748, 2 tom. 4to. His Life is in Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. III. pp. 267, etc., and a pleasant account both of him and of his friend Lastañosa is to be found in Aarsens, Voyage d’Espagne, 1667, p. 294, and in the dedication to Lastañosa of the first edition of Quevedo’s “Fortuna con Seso,” 1650. His poem on “The Four Seasons,” generally printed at the end of his Works, is, I believe, the worst of them; certainly it would be difficult to find much in any language more absurd and extravagant in its false taste.

From this period, the rich old prose style of Luis de Leon and his contemporaries may be said to have been driven out of Spanish literature. Lope de Vega and Quevedo, after resisting the innovations of cultismo for a time, had long before yielded, and Calderon was now alternately assailing the depraved taste of his audiences and gratifying it by running into extravagances almost as great as those he ridiculed. The language of the most affected poetry passed into the prose of the age, and took from it the power and dignity which, even in its more declamatory portions, had constituted its prominent merit. Style became fantastic, and the very thoughts that were to be conveyed were not unfrequently covered up with ingenuities of illustration till they disappeared. In the phrase of Sancho, men wanted better bread than could be made of wheat, and rendered themselves ridiculous by attempting to obtain it. Tropes and figures of all kinds were settled into formulas of speech, and then were repeated appropriately and inappropriately, till the reader could often anticipate, from the beginning of a sentence, how it would inevitably end. Every thing, indeed, in prose composition, as in poetry, announced that corrupted taste which both precedes and hastens the decay of a literature; and which, in the case of Spain during the latter half of the seventeenth century, was but the concomitant of a general decline in the arts and the gradual degradation of the monarchy.

Among those who wrote best, though still infected with the prevailing influences, was Zabaleta. His “Moral Problems” and “Famous Errors,” but especially his “Feast Days at Madrid,” in which he gives lively satirical sketches of the manners of the metropolis at those periods when idleness brings the people into the streets and places of amusement, are worth reading. But he lived in the reign of Philip the Fourth; and so did Lozano, whose different ascetic works on the character of King David, if not so good as his historical romance on the New Kings of Toledo, are better than any thing else of the kind in the same period. They are, however, the last that can be read. The reign of Charles the Second does not offer examples even so favorable as these of the remains and ruins of a better taste. “The Labors of Hercules,” by Heredia, in 1682, and the “Moral Essays on Boëthius,” by Ramirez, in 1698, if they serve for nothing else, serve at least to mark the ultimate limits of dulness and affectation. Indeed, if it were not for the History of Solís, which has been already noticed, we should look in vain for an instance of respectable prose composition after this last and most degenerate descendant of the House of Austria had mounted the Spanish throne.[261]

[261] Juan de Zabaleta flourished as an author from 1653 to 1667; and his works, which were soon collected, have been frequently printed, 1667, Madrid, 1728, 4to, 1754, etc. (Baena, Tom. III. p. 227.)--Christóval Lozano (noticed, pp. 91, 108) was known as an author from 1656, by his “David Arrepentido,” to which he afterwards added his “David Perseguido,” in three volumes, and yet another work on the subject of David’s Example illustrated by the Light of Christianity; all of little value.--Juan Francisco Fernandez de Heredia wrote “Trabajos y Afanes de Hercules,” Madrid, 1682, 4to. He makes it a kind of book of emblems, but it is one of the worst of its conceited class. Latassa (Bib. Nov., Tom. IV. p. 3) notices him.

Of Antonio Perez Ramirez, I know only the “Armas contra la Fortuna,” (Madrid, 1698, 4to,) which is a translation of Boëthius, with dissertations in the worst possible taste interspersed between its several divisions.

One other author might, perhaps, have been placed at the side of Lozano,--Joseph de la Vega,--who published (at Amsterdam in 1688, 12mo) three dialogues, entitled, “Confusion de Confusiones,” to ridicule the passion for stockjobbing which came in with the Dutch East India Company, in 1602, and was then at the height of its frenzy. They are somewhat encumbered with learning, but contain anecdotes, ancient and modern, very well told. The author was a rich Jew of Antwerp, who had fled thither from Spain, and published several works between 1683 and 1693, but none, I think, of much value. Amador de los Rios, Judíos Españoles, p. 633.

Nor is this remarkable. On the contrary, it is rather to be considered worthy of notice, that didactic prose should have had any merit or obtained any success in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the end it proposes is not, like that of poetry, to amuse, but, like that of philosophy, to enlighten and amend; and how dangerous in Spain was the social position of any teacher or moral monitor, who claimed for himself that degree of independence of opinion without which instruction becomes a dead form, needs not now to be set forth. Few persons, in that unhappy country, were surrounded with more difficulties; none were more strictly watched, or, if they wandered from the permitted paths, were more severely punished.

Nor was it possible for such persons, by the most notorious earnestness in their convictions of the just control of the religion of the state, or any degree of faithfulness in their loyalty, to avoid sometimes falling under the rebuke of the jealousy that watched each step of their course; a fact sufficiently apparent, when we recollect that nearly all the didactic writers of merit during this period, such as Juan de Avila, Luis de Leon, Luis de Granada, Quevedo, San Juan de la Cruz, and Santa Teresa, were persecuted by the Inquisition or by the government, and the works of every one of them expurgated or forbidden.

Under such oppression, free and eloquent writers,--men destined to teach and advance their generation,--could not be expected to appear, and the few who ventured into ways so dangerous dwelt as much as possible in generals, and became mystical, like Juan de la Cruz, or extravagant and declamatory, like Luis de Granada. Nearly all,--strictly prevented from using the logic of a wise and liberal philosophy,--fell into pedantry, from an anxious desire, wherever it was possible, to lean upon authority; so that, from Luis de Leon down to the most ordinary writer, who, in a prefatory letter of approbation, wished to give currency to the opinions of a friend, no man seemed to feel at ease unless he could justify and sustain what he had to say by citations from the Scriptures, the fathers of the Church, and the ancient and scholastic philosophers. Thus, Spanish didactic prose, which, from its original elements and tendencies, seemed destined to wear the attractions of an elevated and eloquent style, gradually became so formal, awkward, and pedantic, that, with a few striking exceptions, it can only be said to have maintained a doubtful and difficult existence during the long period when the less suspected and less oppressed portions of the literature of the country--its drama and its lyric poetry--were in the meridian of their success.

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