shortly before his death, must be regarded as an interesting appendix
to his other works.[358] The language and the whole composition of the
story, exhibit the purest simplicity, combined with singular precision
and polish. The idea of this romance was not new, and scarcely deserved
to be reproduced in a new manner. But it appears that Cervantes at the
close of his glorious career took a fancy to imitate Heliodorus. He
has maintained the interest of the situations, but the whole work is
merely a romantic description of travels, rich enough in frightful
adventures, both by sea and land. Real and fabulous geography and
history are mixed together in an absurd and monstrous manner; and the
second half of the romance, in which the scene is transferred to Spain
and Italy, does not exactly harmonize with the spirit of the first half.

If we cast a glance on the collected works of Cervantes, in order to
ascertain what their author was entitled to claim as his original
property, independently of his contemporaries and predecessors, we
shall find that the genius of that poet, who is in general only
partially estimated, shines with the brighter lustre the longer it is
contemplated. That kind of criticism which is to be learnt, contributed
but little to the developement and formation of his genius. A critical
tact, which is a truer guide than any rule, but which abandons genius
when it forgets itself, secured the fancy of Cervantes against the
aberrations of common minds, and his sportive wit was always subject
to the control of solid judgment. The vanity which occasionally made
him mistake the true bent of his talent, must be confessed to have been
pardonable, considering how little he was known to his contemporaries.
He did not even know himself, though he felt the consciousness of
his genius. From the mental height to which he had raised himself,
he might, without too highly rating his own abilities, look down on
all the writers of his age. More than one poet of great, of immortal
genius, might be placed beside him in his own country; but of all the
Spanish poets Cervantes alone belongs to the whole world.

LOPE DE VEGA.

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, the rival and conqueror of Cervantes in
the conflict of dramatic art, was born at Madrid, in the year 1562.
He was consequently fifteen years younger than Cervantes. Marvellous
stories are related respecting the early developement of his poetic
genius and his talent for composing verses. Though his parents were
not rich, yet he received a literary education; and he is also said to
have distinguished himself in corporeal exercises. He lost his parents
before he was old enough to attend the university; but through the
assistance of Don Geronymo Manrique, the grand inquisitor, and Bishop
of Avila, who was much attached to him, he was enabled to complete a
course of philosophy at Alcala. After obtaining his degree at that
university, he returned to Madrid, where he became secretary to the
Duke of Alba. He shortly afterwards married; and from this period,
which seemed to promise a career of tranquil happiness, the stormy
vicissitudes of his life commenced. He became engaged in a quarrel,
fought a duel, wounded his antagonist dangerously, and was obliged
to fly. For several years he lived an exile from Madrid; and on his
return his wife unfortunately died. Harrassed by this series of
calamities, and being as warm a patriot as he was a sincere catholic,
he entered into one of the military corps which were embarked on board
the invincible armada for the invasion of England. Though he himself
returned in safety to Madrid, yet he was deeply grieved at the ill
success of the armada. His vigorous constitution, however, enabled
him to keep up his spirits; he again became a secretary, once more
entered into the married state, and passed some time in uninterrupted
domestic happiness. On the death of his second wife, who survived her
marriage only a few years, he resolved to forego the pleasures of the
world, and for that purpose took holy orders. He did not, however,
retire to a convent; but he devoted himself wholly to the study of
poetry,--to that study, which from childhood upwards, had principally
engrossed his mind, and in the active prosecution of which he produced
so extraordinary a result, that it is difficult to conceive how any
man could even during the most protracted existence, write as much as
Lope de Vega: and yet he spent a part of his life in civil business,
and in the discharge of military duties. He composed in all the various
kinds of verse which were in use in his time; and he succeeded in all.
But his dramas in particular were received with an enthusiasm which
the labours of no other Spanish poet had ever excited. He so precisely
struck the chord which harmonized with the taste of the Spanish public,
that he has been worshipped as the inventor of the national comedy,
though he only pursued the tract which Torres Naharro originally opened.

Lope de Vega’s fertility of invention is as unparalleled in the history
of poetry, as the talent which enabled him to compose regular and well
constructed verses with as much facility as if he had been writing
prose. Cervantes styles him _el monstruo de naturaleza_, (the prodigy
of nature) and this name was not given him merely in levity. He was
constrained by no rules of criticism; not that he was ignorant of the
theory of the ancient poetry, but he took delight in letting his verses
flow freely from his pen, confident in the success of whatever he might
produce. The public, he observed, paid for the drama, and he thought it
but fair that those who paid should be served with that which suited
their taste. Lope de Vega required no more than four-and-twenty hours
to write a versified drama of three acts in redondillas, interspersed
with sonnets, tercets and octaves, and from beginning to end abounding
in intrigues, prodigies, or interesting situations. This astonishing
facility enabled him to supply the Spanish theatre with upwards of
two thousand original dramas, of which not more than three hundred
have been preserved by printing. In general the theatrical manager
carried away what he wrote before he had even time to revise it;
and immediately a fresh applicant would arrive to prevail on him to
commence a new piece. He sometimes wrote a play in the short space of
three or four hours. The profits which the theatrical managers derived
from the writings of Lope de Vega, enabled them to bestow such liberal
payment on the author, that at one time he is supposed to have been
possessed of upwards of a hundred thousand ducats. But he did not long
preserve his fortune, though from the commencement of his celebrity he
always possessed enough to enable him to live with comfort. His purse
was ever open to the poor of Madrid.

But Lope de Vega’s poetic talent procured him even more glory than
gain. No Spanish poet was ever so much honoured during his life. The
nobility and the public vied in expressing their admiration of him.
He was chosen president (_capellan mayor_) of the spiritual college
of Madrid, of which he had previously been admitted as a member. Pope
Urban VIII. sent him the cross of Malta, and the degree of doctor of
theology, accompanied by a flattering letter. The pope also appointed
him fiscal of the apostolic chamber. For these distinctions Lope
de Vega was not indebted merely to his poetic talents. No Spanish
poet of celebrity had hitherto manifested in his writings such
enthusiastic interest for the triumph of the catholic religion. He
was accordingly appointed familiar to the inquisition, a post which
was at that period regarded as singularly honourable. But the Spanish
public adopted another mode of expressing their admiration of their
favourite dramatist. Whenever Lope de Vega appeared in the streets,
he was surrounded by crowds of people, all eager to gain a sight of
the prodigy of nature. The boys ran shouting after him, and those who
could not keep pace with the rest, stood and gazed on him with wonder
as he passed. He died in 1631, in the sixty-third year of his age. His
funeral was conducted with princely magnificence. The ceremony was
directed by his patron, the Duke of Susa, whom he appointed executor
of his will. The music of the high mass which was celebrated at his
funeral, was executed by the performers of the chapel royal. During
the exequies, which lasted three days, three bishops officiated in
their pontifical robes. The memory of the “Spanish Phenix,” as he was
usually styled by the publishers of his plays, was celebrated with no
less pomp in all the theatres of Spain. Arithmetical calculations have
been employed, in order to arrive at a just estimate of Lope de Vega’s
facility in poetic composition. According to his own testimony, he
wrote on an average five sheets per day; it has therefore been computed
that the number of sheets which he composed during his life, must have
amounted to one hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred and
twenty-five, and that allowing for the deduction of a small portion of
prose, Lope de Vega must have written upwards of twenty-one millions,
three hundred thousand verses.[359]

Nature would have overstepped her bounds and have produced the
miraculous, had Lope de Vega, along with this rapidity of invention
and composition, attained perfection in any department of literature.
Nature, however, did her utmost for Lope de Vega; for even the rudest,
most incorrect, and verbose of his works, are imbued with a poetic
spirit which no methodical art can create. This poetic spirit is, at
the same time so national and so completely Spanish, that without
an intimate acquaintance with the works of other Spanish poets, and
particularly those who flourished at an early period, it is impossible
to perceive Lope de Vega’s merits and defects, or to understand their
connection with each other. On this account, however, he was in a
peculiar manner the poet of the Spanish public, the favourite of all
ranks; and on this account have his writings always been partially or
erroneously judged.

Lope de Vega was born for dramatic poetry. In every other class of
composition, he was merely an accurate imitator, or if he struck out
a new course, it was in so imperfect a way, that his example was
injurious to the cause of literature. But as a dramatic poet, if he did
not create the Spanish comedy, properly so called, his inexhaustible
fancy and the fascinating ease of his animated composition confirmed
to it that character which has since distinguished it. All subsequent
Spanish dramatic poets trod in the footsteps of Lope de Vega, until
genius was banished from the sphere it occupied by the introduction
of the French taste in Spain. The successors of Lope de Vega merely
improved on the models which he had created. He fixed for a century
and a half the spirit and the style of nearly all the different kinds
of dramatic entertainment in Spain. It may therefore be proper to
unite with a notice of the dramatic works of Lope de Vega, a sketch of
the characteristics of the various species of plays then performed in
Spain; and this sketch will at the same time serve as a key to all the
peculiarities of the Spanish drama.

Since the age of Lope de Vega, the word comedy (_comedia_) has had
in the dramatic language of Spain a totally different signification
from that which was attached to it by the ancient Greeks and Romans,
and which it retains in most countries of modern Europe. It is the
generic name of several species of drama, some of which, according to
our established notions, are neither comedies nor tragedies; but all
of which approximate to one common spirit of invention and execution.
The critic will inevitably form an erroneous judgment of these works,
if he be guided by notions deduced from the Greek and Roman drama,
and which, with certain limitations, are applicable to all dramatic
compositions except the Spanish comedy. The spirit of the Spanish
comedy must not be sought for in that popular satire, which constitutes
the very essence of the ancient and modern comedy, properly so called.
The compositions in which it is to be found are of a totally different
nature. In them stories of country and city life are clothed in
romantic poetic colours, and blended with the interesting inventions
of a bold and irregular fancy, without any distinction between the gay
and the serious, or the comic and the tragic. In a word, a Spanish
comedy is in its principle a dramatic novel; and as there are tragic,
comic, historical, and purely imaginative novels, so, in like manner,
the Spanish comedy readily adopts those various modes of exciting
interest on the stage. In Spanish comedies as in novels, princes
and potentates are no more out of place than jockeys and fops; and
these dissimilar characters may all be introduced on the stage at
once, should the progress of the intrigue require so heterogeneous
an approximation. Satire is therefore merely an agreeable accessary
in the Spanish comedy, of which the poet may avail himself at his
pleasure. In these comedies the powerful delineation of character
is no more essential than in novels. Even a motley combination of
burlesque and serious, vulgar and pathetic scenes, is not hostile to
the spirit of a Spanish comedy, the object of which is not to maintain
the interest in a particular direction. The subject of the piece
may be a moving or a horrific story; still the picture presented is
entertaining, but entertaining in a manner totally different from
that kind of comedy which exhibits the follies of life in a satirical
point of view. A continuance of the pathetic or the horrific would be
as little congenial to the spirit of those dramatic novels which the
Spaniards call comedies, as a continuance of the ludicrous. In this
is manifested the first of the peculiar conditions required by the
Spanish public, of which notice has already been taken in treating
of the origin of the Spanish comedy. With any other people than the
Spaniards these dramatic novels would have assumed a somewhat different
character, without, however, departing from their original spirit. But
this class of dramatic composition, which admits of the most singular
mixture of the pompous and the ludicrous, was particularly suited to
the Spaniards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as by it
they were relieved from any long duration of serious impressions.
With this first requisite of a changeable dramatic form, which Lope
de Vega completely satisfied, was associated a second. A complicated
plot was indispensable in every drama, the subject of which was drawn
from the sphere of common life. As a substitute for that sort of plot
in historical comedies, extraordinary and striking adventures were
introduced, and in spiritual comedies, miracles. According to the
universally received notion of a Spanish comedy, in Lope de Vega’s
time, no distinction was made between the sacred and the profane
styles; for a legend was dramatized as a spiritual novel.

Whether a nation which was satisfied with such comedies did or did not
beguile itself of the purest and most perfect developement of dramatic
genius, is a question for separate discussion. But the Spanish comedy
considered in all its modifications, as a particular species of drama,
may stand the test of sound criticism; and Lope de Vega in a great
measure contributed to fix the national taste in these modifications.
In his time the classification was first made of sacred and profane
dramas, or as the Spaniards called them, _comedias Divinas y Humanas_.
The profane comedies were again divided into _comedias Heroycas_,
(Heroic comedies); and _comedias de Capa y Espada_, (comedies of the
Cloak and Sword.) The heroic comedies were originally the same as the
historical, but the title was subsequently extended to mythological and
allegorical dramas. The comedies of the _Capa y Espada_, were founded
on subjects selected from the sphere of fashionable life, and exhibited
the manners of the age; they were likewise performed in the costume of
the times. At a later period a subdivision of these _comedias de Capa y
Espada_ was formed under the name of _comedias de Figuròn_, because the
principal character was either a needy adventurer representing himself
as a rich nobleman, or a lady of the same class. In Lope de Vega’s time
also, the sacred comedies began to be divided into dramatized _Vidas
de Santos_ and _Autos Sacramentales_. Both classes were founded on the
model of the dramas, which used to be represented in the cloisters. The
_Autos Sacramentales_, which had all a reference to the administration
of the sacrament, according to catholic notions, seem to have had
their origin in the age of Lope de Vega; at least in the prelude to
one of his _Autos_ (the word literally signifies acts) a countrywoman
questions her husband respecting the nature of these dramas.[360]
Finally, to the different kinds of Spanish comedy existing in Lope de
Vega’s age, must be added the little preludes or recommendatory pieces,
called _loas_, and the interludes, or _entremeses_, introduced between
the prelude and the principal comedy, and which when interspersed with
music and dancing, are denominated _saynetes_.

Heroic and historical comedies form a considerable portion of the
dramatic works of Lope de Vega, in so far as they have been preserved.
The tragic scenes in many of these comedies, so well harmonized with
the national taste of the Spaniards, that they readily dispensed with
genuine tragedy; and as vivid a recollection of the old national
history was maintained by these theatrical representations as by the
old romances. But few of Lope’s historical comedies relate, like his
_Gran Duque de Moscovia_, to foreign subjects. In point of composition,
his dramas do not materially differ one from the other. Even in his
historical pieces, he uses such freedoms with respect to the unity of
action, that only a slight similitude connects the acts and scenes
together; and he totally disregards the unities of time and place. The
execution of these dramas is no less irregular than their composition.
According to the humour in which the author happened to be when engaged
in his literary labour, his descriptions and language are vigorous or
feeble, noble or mean, unpolished or highly refined. A description
of _Las Almenas de Toro_ (the Battlements of Toro), one of the best
productions in the class to which it belongs, will afford a tolerably
correct idea of Lope de Vega’s historical comedies. The subject of this
piece is the murder of King Don Sancho, by Bellido Dolfos, a knight
whom the king had offended by a violation of his promise, a story
which has likewise furnished materials for several old romances. The
Cid Ruy Diaz is a principal character in this comedy, which, like all
others of the same kind, is divided into three acts.[361] The scene
opens with a view of the country before the strongly fortified town of
Toro in Leon. The King Don Sancho, the Cid, and a Count Anzures enter.
The king explains to the two knights, that state reasons prevent him
from fulfilling his father’s will, and that he cannot leave his two
sisters, the infantas Elvira and Urraca, in possession of the strong
fortresses of Toro and Zamora.[362] The Cid with noble sincerity
avows his opinion of the king’s injustice towards his sisters, and
offers himself as a mediator in the dispute. The king and Count
Anzures retire. The Cid advances to the walls, and meets a knight
named Ordonez, who has just come out of the fortress to execute some
enterprize in favour of the infanta Elvira. Both knights are about to
draw; but they recognize each other, and embrace. The Cid is pourtrayed
in all the greatness of his character.[363] The infanta appears on the
walls, and states to the Cid her reasons for not opening the gates
to her brother. The king re-appears, and orders preparations for
storming the garrison. The scene changes--Don Vela, an old knight who
has withdrawn from the tumult of public life, appears in front of his
country residence. He communes with himself in a speech full of dignity
and beauty, but in some passages too poetical for the drama.[364]
His daughter enters singing, and surrounded by a rustic group. This
scene introduces a romantic episode which is interwoven with the main
action, and the hero of which is a prince of Burgundy, disguised as a
peasant, who is enamoured of the daughter of Don Vela. The scene again
changes to the neighbourhood of Toro. The infanta Elvira appears on
the battlements, and negotiations are once more set on foot. The king
himself holds a conversation with his sister, which, however, produces
no conciliatory result. This brief, pointed, and not very courteous
dialogue, is interspersed with plays of wit on the word _Toro_, the
name of the fortress, which in Spanish signifies a bull.[365] The king
instantly commands scaling ladders to be brought, and the storming
of the fortress commences, but the besiegers are repulsed. Thus the
first act concludes. With the commencement of the second act the
rural episode becomes more nearly allied to the main action. A sonnet
in which the disguised prince of Burgundy, and his mistress Sancha,
express their sentiments of mutual attachment, affords an instance of
that protracted kind of metaphor, which Lope de Vega employed on such
occasions, and which, a hundred years afterwards, Metastasio likewise
adopted in his opera songs, as the poetic language of passion.[366]
Don Bellido Dolfos prevails on the king to promise him the hand of
the infanta Elvira, on condition of his taking the fortress. By dint
of the vilest perfidy Bellido Dolfos succeeds; but the king, who is
of opinion that a traitor should be rewarded with treachery, refuses
to abide by his promise. Bellido Dolfos meditates revenge. Meanwhile
Elvira escapes in the disguise of a peasant, and takes refuge in the
house of Don Vela. With this combination of heroic and tender, domestic
and rural situations, the action proceeds, until Bellido Dolfos murders
the king; an incident, however, which does not take place oh the stage.
The infanta Elvira returns to Toro, where she receives the homage of
her people, and the prince of Burgundy avowing his real character, is
united to his beloved Sancha.

Lope de Vega’s _Comedias de Capa y Espada_, or those which may
properly be denominated his dramas of intrigue, though wanting in the
delineation of character, are romantic pictures of manners, drawn from
real life. They present, in their peculiar style, no less interest
with respect to situations than his heroic comedies; and the same
irregularity in the composition of the scenes. The language, too, is
alternately elegant and vulgar, sometimes highly poetic, and sometimes,
though versified, reduced to the level of the dullest prose. Lope
de Vega seems scarcely to have bestowed a thought on maintaining
probability in the succession of the different scenes; ingenious
complication is with him the essential point in the interest of his
situations. Intrigues are twisted and entwined together, until the
poet, in order to bring his piece to a conclusion, without ceremony
cuts the knots he cannot untie; and then he usually brings as many
couples together as he can by any possible contrivance match. He has
scattered through his pieces occasional reflections and maxims of
prudence, but any genuine morality which might be conveyed through the
stage, is wanting, for its introduction would have been inconsistent
with that poetic freedom on which the dramatic interest of the Spanish
comedy is founded. His aim was to paint what he observed, not what he
would have approved, in the manners of the fashionable world of his
age; but he leaves it to the spectator to draw his own inferences.
In this indirect way only, could the Spanish public tolerate useful
applications in the drama; for the Spaniard always considered the
morality with which he was occupied in church sufficient. An exuberant
gallantry, which may or may not be veiled by decorum, and which is at
all times only slightly restrained by notions of honour, but never by
a sense of moral duty, constitutes the very essence of these dramas,
_de Capa y Espada_. Where the passion is vehement, it advances with
true Spanish ardour to the attainment of its object; where it is
tender and sentimental, the romantic tirades and far-fetched plays of
wit are inexhaustible. That _love excuses every thing_, was at this
time the darling maxim of the gay world in Madrid; and in conformity
with its spirit, Lope de Vega’s young heroes and heroines plunge
headlong into intrigue. Free scope is given to the basest artifice
and perfidy; the man of fashion draws his sword on the slightest
provocation; and whether he desperately wounds, or even kills his
adversary, is a matter of indifference. Disguises, too, abound in these
dramas. One of the most interesting of Lope’s comedies in this class,
is _La Villana de Xetafe_, (the Peasant Girl of Xetafe, a village
in the vicinity of Madrid). It exhibits a series of the boldest and
most dexterous impostures, by means of which the interesting heroine
succeeds in entrapping her lover, who is a man of condition, into the
bonds of matrimony. The confessors must have found some difficulty in
counteracting the ill effects which could not fail to be occasionally
produced by such examples, though they were by no means set up as
models. The fascinating natural painting of these intrigues, which at
the same time always possess a certain poetic elevation, constitutes
the chief charm of Lope de Vega’s comedies. The deviation from nature
in expression, which has frequently been a subject of reproach to
this prolific writer, is in most instances merely attributable to
negligence or rapidity of composition. He faithfully embodies the
general forms of character, which, to be sure, are all alike in the
class of Spanish comedies now under consideration. The _vejete_ (old
man), the _galan_ (lover), the _dama_ (young lady), together with
a suitable number of servants and waiting women, are the standing
characters which are constantly introduced with no variety, except in
the situations; but at the same time, they are drawn in such animated
colours, that the perusal of one or two of these dramas of intrigue is
sufficient to render the reader familiar with the whole world which the
poet describes. In Lope’s comedies, as in real life, the (_gracioso_)
buffoon and the fool are occasionally the same character. They have
also superfluous parts; personages totally unconnected with the
business of the drama are sometimes introduced.

In order to afford an idea of the composition of this portion of the
dramatic works of Lope de Vega, we may select, as a specimen, the
comedy entitled, _La Viuda de Valencia_ (the Widow of Valencia). It
is one of the pieces of this master in the art of intrigue in which
the complication is best contrived, and it is besides remarkable in
the class to which it belongs for the unity which is preserved in the
action. The scene is laid in Valencia in the time of the carnival.
Leonarda, a young rich and handsome widow, living according to her
own fancy, has resolved never to re-marry. She enters with a book
in her hand; for she reads works of all sorts, sacred and profane,
not from piety or love of literature, but merely to amuse herself,
while she never deigns to bestow a thought on the suitors by whom
she is surrounded. On the subject of her reading she discourses very
reasonably with her waiting woman.[367] Her arch attendant turns
the conversation in such a way, that the young widow, with all her
pretended wisdom, is induced to view herself in a looking glass, and
in the very act of doing so, she is surprised by a visit from her
uncle. The old gentleman assures his fair niece, who is highly vexed
at the surprise, that she does well to convince herself of the power
of her charms by such indisputable testimony.[368] When, however,
he begins to talk of marriage, the lady contemptuously sketches a
burlesque portrait of a Madrid beau,[369] and describes, though in a
less happy style the unfortunate consequences of an imprudent match.
The old uncle takes his leave, and the scene changes, or rather it is
transferred to the other division of the stage. The three admirers of
the beautiful Leonarda meet each other in front of her house. They
express their wishes and hopes in sonnets, the subjects of which are
long-winded metaphors. As none of the party can boast of his mistress’s
favour, they mutually acknowledge their ill success, and each describes
a burlesque adventure, which has occurred to him during the night, in
front of Leonarda’s house. One relates, that under the supposition
that he was stabbing a rival, he thrust his poignard into a skin of
stolen wine.[370] Meanwhile Leonarda hastily returns from church,
where she has seen a young gentleman with whom she has fallen deeply
in love. She immediately forms a plan to induce this gentleman, whose
name is Camillo, to visit her, without either knowing who she is or
whither he is conducted. The whole intrigue is managed by Leonarda’s
coachman Urbano, who is at the same time the _gracioso_, or buffoon
of the piece.[371] While Urbano is gone out in quest of Camillo, the
three suitors, without any previous arrangement with each other,
arrive disguised as dealers in books and copper-plate prints. They
obtain an interview with Leonarda, and make avowals of their passion;
but she receives them very unfavourably, and they are all obliged to
make a rapid retreat to avoid being roughly handled by the servants.
This scene is highly amusing. In the second act Camillo appears,
and after long hesitation, he consents to engage in the romantic
adventure. Urbano dresses him in a doctor’s cloak, and drawing the
hood (_capirote_) over his eyes, he conducts him blindfold, with comic
effect, through a variety of windings, to the house of Leonarda. The
lady receives him in the dark. Lights are afterwards brought in, but
Leonarda remains masked. A sumptuous collation is prepared, of which
the young gentleman’s doubt and embarrassment will not permit him to
taste a morsel. He compares himself to Alexander, when he took the
suspected goblet from the hand of his physician.[372] A tender dialogue
ensues, after which the hood is again drawn over the eyes of Camillo,
and he is conducted from Leonarda’s house. In this manner the intrigue
proceeds; but between many of the scenes, whole days, and even weeks
are supposed to intervene. Leonarda and her lover become more and more
intimate, though he neither knows who she is, nor where she resides.
All his endeavours to discover these secrets are unavailing; and at
length he begins to suspect that his unknown mistress is an old cousin
of Leonarda. In the mean time the three rejected suitors, who still mix
in the plot, become jealous of the coachman Urbano; and one spirited
scene succeeds another until an affray occurs in which an honourable
suitor of Leonarda is wounded. This accident produces the denouement.
Camillo recognizes in his unknown mistress the beautiful widow with
whom he was previously acquainted, and whose hand he joyfully accepts.
Thus the piece is a comedy from beginning to end.

Lope de Vega’s spiritual comedies, afford a picture of the religious
notions of the Spaniards in the age in which he lived, not less
faithfully pourtrayed than that by which his dramas of intrigue
represent the manners of Spanish society. Pure piety, according
to catholic ideas, wildly blended with the most contradictory
chimeras, and these chimeras again ennobled by the boldest flights of
imagination, form altogether a monstrous and extravagant patch-work;
but this heterogeneous variety is, nevertheless, united by the
ramifications of a poetic spirit, into a whole, to which no European
imagination could now be expected to produce a resemblance. But Lope
de Vega seems not to have come to a positive determination respecting
what ought to have been the true spirit of these dramatic pictures of
religious faith. The mixture of poetic and unpoetic elements is very
unequal in his different spiritual comedies. His Lives of the Saints
possess far more dramatic spirit than his Autos Sacramentales; while
on the other hand, allegory imparts a higher dignity to the religious
mysticism of the latter. Both, however, have in common a kind of
operatic style, combined with the display of theatrical machinery and
decoration, calculated to captivate the senses. Of all the dramatic
works of Lope de Vega, the Lives of the Saints are in every respect the
most irregular. Allegorical characters, buffoons, saints, peasants,
students, kings, God, the infant Jesus, the devil, and all the most
heterogeneous beings that the wildest imagination could bring together,
are introduced. Music seems always to have been an indispensable
accessary. Lope de Vega’s spiritual comedy, entitled the Life of Saint
Nicolas de Tolentino,[373] commences with a conversation maintained by
a party of students, who make a display of their wit and scholastic
learning. Among them is the future saint, whose piety shines with the
brighter lustre when contrasted with the disorderly gaiety of those
by whom he is surrounded. The devil disguised by a mask joins the
party. A skeleton appears in the air; the sky opens, and the Almighty
is discovered sitting in judgment attended by Justice and Mercy, who
alternately influence his decisions. Next succeeds a love intrigue
between a lady named Rosalia, and a gentleman named Feniso. The future
saint then re-enters attired in canonicals, and delivers a sermon
in redondillas. The parents of the saint congratulate themselves on
possessing such a son; and this scene forms the conclusion of the first
act. At the opening of the second a party of soldiers are discovered;
the saint enters accompanied by several monks, and offers up a prayer
in the form of a sonnet. Brother Peregrino relates the romantic history
of his conversion. Subtle theological fooleries ensue, and numerous
anecdotes of the lives of the saints are related. St. Nicolas prays
again through the medium of a sonnet. He then rises in the air, either
by the power of faith, or the help of the theatrical machinery; and the
Holy Virgin and St. Augustin descend from heaven to meet him.[374] In
the third act the scene is transferred to Rome, where two cardinals
exhibit the holy sere cloth to the people by torch light. Music
performed on clarionets adds to the solemnity of this ceremony, during
which pious discourses are delivered. St. Nicolas is next discovered
embroidering the habit of his order; and the pious observations which
he makes, while engaged in this occupation, are accompanied by the
chaunting of invisible angels. The music attracts the devil, who
endeavours to tempt St. Nicolas. The next scene exhibits souls in the
torments of purgatory. The devil again appears attended by a retinue
of lions, serpents, and other hideous animals; but in a scene, which
is intended for burlesque, (_graciosamente_) a monk armed with a great
broom drives off the devil and his suite.[375] At the conclusion of the
piece the saint whose beatification is now complete, descends from
heaven in a garment bespangled with stars. As soon as he touches the
earth, the souls of his father and mother are released from purgatory
and rise through a rock; the saint then returns hand-in-hand with his
parents to heaven, music playing as they ascend.

The _Autos Sacramentales_ of Lope de Vega must have been far less
attractive than his Lives of the Saints. Compared with the latter,
their construction appears very simple, and they are executed in a
style of theological refinement which could not have been perfectly
intelligible to the multitude. But the allegorical characters, which
are the most prominent in these pieces, produce an imposing effect.
The dramas themselves are in general short. In one which represents
the fall, Man disputes with Sin and the Devil, and Earth and Time take
part in the dialogue. Next are discovered Justice and Mercy seated
beneath a canopy, and at a table furnished with writing materials.
Man is interrogated before this tribunal. The Prince of heaven, or
Saviour, enters. Reflection, or Care, (_Cuidado_) kneels and delivers
a letter to him. The Saviour, who takes his station behind a grating,
makes Man undergo another judicial examination, and pardons him.[376]
But the devil re-appears and protests against the pardon.[377] Man
has next to contend with Vanity and Folly, who are introduced as
allegorical characters. Christ again appears with the crown of thorns.
In conclusion, the heavens open and Christ ascends to his celestial
throne, with the usual accompaniment of music. Direct allusions to the
sacrament of the altar were seldom necessary in the Autos, as the whole
tendency of the allegorical action was directed to that object.

Lope de Vega’s _Loas_, and more particularly his _Entremeses_ and
_Saynetes_, seem to have been intended to indemnify the audience for
the theological allegory of the sacramental dramas; for it is only in
connection with the Autos that these preludes and interludes are to be
found. The Loas are not always comic, and are sometimes only spirited
monologues. The interludes, or Entremeses and Saynetes, may also be
called preludes, for though they were performed after the Loa, which
was properly the prologue, yet they preceded the Auto: these interludes
are burlesque from beginning to end, and form a preparation for the
devotion of the Auto, quite in the Spanish taste. Farces of this kind,
pourtraying the incidents of common life, never destitute of genuine
comic spirit, and written for the most part in verse, soon became
indispensable to the Spaniards, and even to this day are never omitted
in their dramatic performances. The interludes of Lope de Vega and
Cervantes seem to have been the models of all that succeeded them.

The dramatic genius of Lope de Vega has rendered him immortal. In the
seventeenth century his plays were universally read and performed
throughout Spain. In general they were first published singly, and
for the most part with the bookseller’s epithet--_Comedia Famosa_,
(the Celebrated Comedy), which subsequently became a universal device,
affixed to all comedies printed in Spain. In this manner Lope de Vega’s
most popular comedies were, partly during the life of the author, and
partly after his death, collected in five-and-twenty volumes;[378]
exclusively of the Autos, preludes, and interludes, which afterwards
formed a separate publication.[379] Among Lope’s scattered dramas which
have been printed at a later period, are some which are expressly
denominated tragedies.[380]

The other poetic works of this prolific writer, must be very briefly
noticed; for to give any thing like a particular account of them
would require the space of a considerable volume.[381] In epic poetry
he maintained an unsuccessful contest with Tasso. His _Jerusalem
Conquistada_,[382] consists indeed of twenty cantos in octaves, and
contains some beautiful passages, but it will in no respect bear a
comparison with the Italian poem. Lope de Vega also augmented the
number of the continuers of Ariosto’s Orlando, by the publication of
_La Hermosura de Angelica_,[383] (the Beauty of Angelica), which is
also a narrative poem in twenty cantos, though shorter than those
of the Jerusalem. His other attempts at epic composition are--_La
Corona Tragica_,[384] (the Tragic Crown), or the history of the
unfortunate Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland; and the _Circe_ and
_Dragontea_.[385] The _Corona Tragica_ is full of furious invective
against the protestants and against Queen Elizabeth in particular.[386]
The hero of the _Dragontea_ is Admiral Drake, who is introduced in
this poem as the tool of Satan, in order that he may finally serve as
an example of poetic justice. To compete with Sanazzar, Lope wrote a
second Arcadia,[387] in the style of the Italian. He likewise wrote
several poems, which may be called eclogues in the proper sense of
the term. His _Arte Nueva de Hazer Comedias_, (New Art of Writing
Comedies), is a humorous satire on his opponents under the appearance
of ridiculing himself.[388] He anonymously supplied the _Romancero
General_ with thirty-six romances.[389] His spiritual poems are to
be found in great profusion; and the number of his sonnets, some
of which possess first-rate merit, is considerable. His _Laurel de
Apolo_, a Eulogy on various Spanish Poets, which has been frequently
quoted, is but an indifferent production.[390] His epistles are
sufficiently numerous. Among his miscellaneous poems, those of the
comic kind have most originality, as for example: _La Gatomachia_,
(the Battle of Cats),[391] and the whole collection of miscellaneous
poems which he published under the assumed name of the Licentiate Tomè
de Burguillos.[392] Among his most celebrated prose works, are _El
Peregrino en su Patria_, (the Stranger in his own Country), a tolerably
long novel.[393] _Dorothea_, a dramatic story, or as it is called,
_Accion en Prosa_;[394] and a Collection of Novels.[395]

THE BROTHERS LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA.

Among the poets who flourished during the period now under
consideration, the place next in rank to Cervantes and Lope de
Vega, must be assigned to two brothers, whom their countrymen have
surnamed the Horaces of Spain. Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola
born in 1565, and Bartholemè Leonardo de Argensola, born in 1566,
belonged to a respectable family, of Italian origin, but settled in
Arragon. Lupercio, who pursued his academic studies in Saragossa,
had the satisfaction to witness the successful performance of three
tragedies, which he wrote in the twentieth year of his age, and which
are honourably mentioned by Cervantes in his Don Quixote. His taste,
however, led him to cultivate another style of poetry, in which he
could imitate Horace, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. His
family connection facilitated his introduction to persons of rank;
and he became secretary to the Empress Maria of Austria, who at that
time resided in Spain. He was soon after appointed chamberlain to the
Archduke Albert of Austria. King Philip III. nominated him one of
the chroniclers or historiographers of Arragon, and directed him to
continue the annals of Zurita; and the states of Arragon, which already
possessed their own particular chronicler, seized some plausible excuse
for dismissing him, in order that Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola
might also be appointed historiographer for them. He then determined
to devote himself exclusively to the duties of his office; but he
was induced to go to Italy in company with the Count de Lemos, the
celebrated patron of Cervantes, who was at that time viceroy of Naples.
Lupercio was appointed secretary of state and of war for Naples; but
amidst the varied and laborious duties attached to such a situation,
he actively pursued his poetic studies, and did not even discontinue
his Arragonese annals. He was the principal founder of the academy at
Naples. While prosecuting this honourable career he died in 1613, in
the fortieth year of his age. Like Virgil, when he felt the approach of
death, he burnt a considerable portion of his poems.

Bartholemè, the younger Leonardo de Argensola, entered the
ecclesiastical state. During the first half of his life, his success
in the world was inseparably connected with the fortunes of his
brother. He was chaplain to the Empress Maria of Austria, then a canon
in Saragossa; and afterwards proceeded to Naples in company with his
brother and the Count de Lemos. He quitted Italy on the death of his
brother, and was appointed to complete the continuation of the annals
of Arragon which Lupercio had left in an imperfect state; a task which
he executed in a way that gave universal satisfaction. While the
Count de Lemos was president of the council of the Indies, Bartholemè
Leonardo de Argensola wrote a history of the conquest of the Molucca
islands. He was indefatigable in the pursuit of his historical and
poetic studies; and after passing a tranquil and honourable life, he
died at Saragossa in 1631, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.[396]

The poetry of these two brothers, who, in a critical point of view,
may both be regarded as one individual, is not characterized by
originality, or by depth of genius, in the extended sense of the
word. It is, however, remarkable for a fine poetic feeling distinct
from enthusiasm, a vigorous and aspiring spirit, a happy talent for
description, poignant wit, classic dignity of style, and above all,
singular correctness of taste. Both pursued the same course with equal
ardour and adroitness; but Bartholemè had the better opportunity of
cultivating his talent, because he lived longest. Next to Luis de Leon,
they are the most correct of all Spanish poets.

The tragedies with which Lupercio commenced his poetic career,
considered as youthful essays, are worthy to be remembered, though
they do not merit the unbounded praise which Cervantes bestowed on
them in a fit of panegyrical enthusiasm. It appears that they did not
long maintain their place on the stage. Two of the three mentioned by
Cervantes were, at no very remote period, rescued from oblivion, and
the third still remains undiscovered.[397] The two which have been
recovered, and which are entitled, the one _Isabella_, and the other
_Alexandra_, afford excellent specimens of language and versification.
The Alexandra contains scenes, particularly in the second and third
acts, which the greatest tragic writer might advantageously adopt and
interweave into a better constructed piece.[398] The Isabella is a
trivial web of love intrigues, and terminates in a manner sufficiently
awful; but the piece is totally destitute of tragic dignity,
notwithstanding that it exhibits the languishing and raging of two
Moorish kings, with all the pomp of oriental accessaries. Alexandra
presents more numerous and correct traits of resemblance to the ancient
drama; and yet towards the close the action becomes most extravagant,
and is marked by all the tumult of a modern theatrical spectacle.

But the poetic fame of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, does not rest
on his tragedies. His lyric poems, epistles, and satires in the
manner of Horace, have transmitted his name, without the aid of any
recommendation to posterity. Lupercio formed his style after that
of Horace, with no less assiduity than Luis de Leon; but he did not
possess the soft enthusiasm of that pious poet, who in the religious
spirit of his poetry is so totally unlike Horace. An understanding
at once solid and ingenious, subject to no extravagant illusion, yet
full of true poetic feeling, and an imagination more plastic than
creative, impart a more perfect horatian colouring to the odes, as
well as to the canciones and sonnets of Lupercio. He closely imitated
Horace in his didactic satires, a style of composition in which no
Spanish poet had preceded him. But he never succeeded in attaining
the bold combination of ideas which characterizes the ode style of
Horace; and his conceptions have therefore seldom any thing like the
horatian energy. On the other hand, all his poems express no less
precision of language, than the models after which he formed his style.
His odes, in particular, are characterized by a picturesque tone of
expression, which he seems to have imbibed from Virgil rather than from
Horace.[399] The extravagant metaphors by which some of Herrera’s odes
are deformed, were uniformly avoided by Lupercio. His best sonnets
are those of a sententious cast, which have some moral idea for their
subject.[400] He was likewise successful in the composition of popular
songs in redondillas. His epistles in tercets present, in their
kind, about the same degree of resemblance to the epistles of Horace,
as is observable between his odes and those of his classic model.
The ideas are expressed in a clear, precise, and pleasing style; and
these compositions are not destitute of poetic and didactic interest.
Still, however, the vigour of Horace is wanting.[401] Lupercio did
not enter, with sufficient decision, into the true spirit of horatian
satire. He consigned to his brother the task of cultivating that class
of composition, in which poetry is scarcely distinguishable from
spirited prose. Among his writings, which escaped the flames, there is
only one piece of satirical raillery, in the form of an epistle to a
coquette.[402]

The poetic works of Bartholemè, the younger Leonardo de Argensola,
which have been preserved, are twice as numerous as those of Lupercio.
The style of the two brothers is so similar, that in some cases it is
difficult, and in others totally impossible to distinguish the one
from the other. This extraordinary conformity of character, talent and
taste, appears at first sight no less singular a phenomenon than the
inexhaustible fertility of Lope de Vega. But it will be recollected,
that these brothers, who were nearly of an age, and almost inseparable
companions, and who were constantly occupied in the study and imitation
of the same models, could not fail, by the cultivation of similar, and
in neither original talents, closely to approximate. Still, however,
traces of difference are discoverable in their works. Bartholemè,
by his numerous epistles and satires, performed greater services to
Spanish poetry than his brother Lupercio. He was the first Spanish
writer who introduced concentrated satire in sonnets, which he probably
did after he became acquainted with the Italian poems of that class,
but he has imitated them with the spirit of Horace, and has avoided
every thing like Italian flippancy. His spiritual canciones, which
are not equalled by any in the poetic works of Lupercio, are among
the best in the style to which they belong. His most esteemed works
bear the impress of a more cultivated talent than is discernible in
the writings of his brother. His longer and properly didactic satires
are characterized by more causticity than gaiety in the ridicule of
general and particular follies.[403] But the enthusiasm of the moralist
never leads him into declamation in the manner of Juvenal; and these
satires are equally replete with traits of mild philanthropy and
sound judgment. His epistles on human felicity and human weakness have
nearly the same character, but they are for the most part serious and
devoid of irony.[404] His satirical sonnets present unequal degrees
of merit; but in the best, the pupil of Horace is more obviously
recognisable.[405] That Bartholemè should have succeeded in spiritual
canciones, may at first sight be deemed a psychological enigma. But it
was precisely his critical and reflective turn of mind which proved
most essentially serviceable in guiding him through the gloomy regions
of catholic mysticism. Being an enthusiastic catholic, he wanted
no extraordinary inspiration to furnish him with religious ideas;
and the faculties of a language eminently picturesque, supplied him
with new views and images which he alternately developed in majestic
descriptions,[406] and pleasing comparisons.[407]

The praises lavished on the Argensolas by all parties, would afford
sufficient ground for the conjecture that their poetic works had
produced some influence on their contemporaries. But that influence is
chiefly obvious from the poetic style of the men of talent with whom
they lived on terms of intimacy, of one of whom, named Alonzo Esquerro,
there is extant a short but excellent epistle, published along with the
answer of Bartholemè de Argensola.

The historical works of the younger Argensola, are also deserving
of honourable mention in an account of the polite literature of
Spain. Few narratives of Indian affairs are written with so much
judgment and elegance as his History of the Conquest of the Molucca
Islands;[408] and his continuation of the Annals of Zurita,[409]
exceeds in rhetorical merit the work of the original historiographer.
The circumstances connected with the accession of Charles V. and the
Castilian rebellion, subjects to which no Spanish writer had previously
ventured to allude, are related by Argensola with no less freedom and
fidelity than other events; though of course without his attempting to
urge any apology for the rebels. In the reign of Philip III. but little
danger was to be apprehended from such freedom; and when, in the year
1621, Philip IV. ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of his
age, Argensola did not hesitate to dedicate his Arragonian Annals to
the Duke of Olivarez, who in the name of the young king was invested
with unlimited sovereign authority. The Duke of Olivarez on receiving
this dedication little imagined that the recollection of the ancient
privileges of the Arragonian states, which had been solemnly ratified
by Charles V. and which were so much expatiated on in these annals,
would, at no very remote period, be the means of rousing the people of
Arragon to take up arms in defence of their constitution, on which the
duke wished to encroach, in order to recruit the exhausted strength of
Castile.

    CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF SPANISH POETRY AND ELOQUENCE
    DURING THE AGE OF CERVANTES AND LOPE DE VEGA.

A very accurate idea of the general spirit of elegant literature in
Spain, during the age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, will be obtained,
if, to an examination of the works of those eminent men and the two
Argensolas, be added a recollection of the labours of their immediate
predecessors; for the other Spanish poets of this period followed in
the beaten path as far as they were able to go, and if any one ventured
on a new course he only wandered into insipidity. These authors, though
deficient in originality, are not without merit; but so great is their
number, that it would be impossible to find room for even a very brief
notice of all their works in a general history of literature. There
was at this time a sort of poetical ferment in Spain, which can only
be compared with that which prevailed in Italy during the sixteenth
century. The blending of the Italian style with the old Spanish, had
excited a new enthusiasm throughout the whole nation; and in proportion
as the Spaniards were excluded from philosophic thinking, their passion
for works of fancy was augmented. Under these circumstances eloquence
could only follow in the train of poetry.[410]

FRESH FAILURES IN EPIC POETRY--ERCILLA’S ARAUCANA.

Success in epic poetry was still denied to the Spanish muse. The
confounding of epic poetry with relations of actual events embellished
with poetic language, seems to have perverted the talent for true
epopee. The Spanish poets who attempted this style, studied after the
deceitful model of Lucan, and, according to an old critical phrase,
endeavoured to be more _Lucanists_ than Lucan himself. The imagination
which possessed unbounded dominion over the stage, seems to have
obtained in narrative poetry only the scanty privilege of inventing a
few ornaments.

Among the unsuccessful attempts at epopee, particular distinction is
due to the _Araucana_ of the heroic and amiable Alonzo de Ercilla y
Zuñiga, a poem which has the accidental advantage of being better
known on this side of the Pyrenees than many other Spanish works of
far superior merit. Ercilla has recorded the most remarkable events
of his own biography in the _Araucana_, and the remainder of the poem
also reflects an interest on the author. He was born at Madrid in
1540, or according to some in 1533, and became page to the prince of
Asturias, Don Philip, with whom he travelled to Italy, the Netherlands,
and England. At the age of twenty-two, he embarked as an officer for
America, along with a newly appointed viceroy of Peru. He distinguished
himself in the war against the Araucans, the bravest of the South
American tribes. In the midst of his exploits, he conceived with a
youthful ambition the plan of writing a narrative of the conquest of
Arauco in an epic form, but with the strictest regard to historical
truth. He executed his project in spite of the dangers which surrounded
him, and the fatigues he had to undergo. In a wilderness inhabited by
savages, in the midst of enemies, and under no other cover than that of
heaven, he composed at night the verses which were to be the memorials
of the events of the day. In prosecution of his purpose, he was obliged
to use scraps of waste paper, which often could not contain more than
six lines, or to make pieces of leather supply the total want of paper.
In this way he completed the first part of his poem, consisting of
fifteen cantos. Before he was thirty years of age he returned to Spain,
full of hope, both as a soldier and a poet; but the gloomy Philip,
to whom he enthusiastically dedicated the _Araucana_, took little
notice of him, and less of his work. Ercilla deeply felt this neglect;
but nothing could damp his romantic attachment to his cold-hearted
sovereign, whom he still persisted in celebrating in the sequel of his
poem. He received no mark of favour except from the Emperor Maximilian
II. who appointed him one of his chamberlains. Dissatisfied with his
fate, Ercilla travelled from place to place; but his journies did not
prevent him from proceeding with his poem until he completed it by the
addition of a third part. When he died is not known, but it was after
he had attained his fiftieth year.

The _Araucana_, so called from the country Arauco, is really no
poem. It is, however, impossible to read the work without becoming
attached to the author, and being delighted by his talent for lively
description, and for painting situations, his possession of which no
just critic can call in question. But notwithstanding that talent,
Ercilla is merely a versifying historian, capable of clothing his
subject in a poetic garb, but not of elevating it to the sphere of true
poetry. His diction is natural and correct; and to this the _Araucana_
is in a great measure indebted for its celebrity. Its descriptive
beauties, and some scenes in the style of romantic love, certainly
make the composition approximate to poetry; but the heroic spirit
which pervades the whole work, is by no means a poetic spirit. The
principal events follow each other in chronological order. The combats
are described in succession, as they actually arose, without any regard
to poetic interest. Ercilla, indeed, prided himself on this historical
precision, and he challenged any of his countrymen who were acquainted
with the war in Arauco, to detect a single inaccuracy in his narrative.
The historical succession of events imparts, however, a sort of epic
unity to the work. The Spaniards in Arauco are surrounded by dangers,
which gradually augment until they reach a crisis; when a reinforcement
arrives from Peru, and the Spaniards experience a favourable change of
fortune. The capture of Caupolican, the Araucan commander, who is put
to death in a way repugnant to humanity, closes the narrative, though
it does not terminate the war; but the barbarous and unjust execution
of this brave chief being decreed by a Spanish council of war, is not
censured by Ercilla. From the manner in which the poem concludes, it
must be regarded as incomplete, considered as an historical narrative.
Even the moral interest of the events operates in a way contrary to
the intention of the author; for the feelings of the unprejudiced
reader are, from the commencement excited in favour of the brave
savages, who half-naked, and destitute of fire arms, contend for their
natural freedom against enemies so superior in the art of war. The
style of historical truth in which the principal events are narrated,
forms a disagreeable contrast with the fiction in the details, which is
intended to diffuse a poetic character over the whole work; for Ercilla
at length found it necessary to depart from his plan in order to escape
from the monotony into which he had fallen. In the first fifteen cantos
the poetic colouring is merely confined to the descriptions; but in
the two following parts,[411] the author has interwoven a number of
fabulous accessaries. He has introduced, for example, a poetic account
of the magician Fiton’s wonderful skill and garden of paradise,[412]
and also the story of the fair savage Glaura, who recounts the
incidents of her life in the style of a Spanish romance.[413] Ercilla
likewise relates the death of Dido after Virgil, and in honour of his
king he gives a detailed account of the battle of Lepanto. In addition
to the descriptions, some of the speeches, particularly that delivered
by the Cacique Colocolo in the second canto,[414] may be referred to as
the best parts of this unpoetic poem.

Meanwhile the passion for epic poetry, which took possession of so many
Spanish writers in the age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, gave birth to
a torrent of heroic poems. To the Caroliads, which have already been
noticed, there succeeded _La Restauracion de España_, (the Restoration
of Spain), by Christoval de Mesa; _Las Navas de Tolosa_, (the Plains
of Toulouse), by the same author; _La Numantina_, by Francisco de
Mesquera; _La Invencion de la Cruz_, (the Invention of the Cross), by
Lopez Zarate; _Maltea_, by Hyppolyto Sanz; _El Leon de España_, (the
Spanish Lion), by Pedro de Vezilla; _Saguntina_, by Lorenzo de Zamora;
_Mexicana_, by Gabriel Laso de Vega; _Austriada_, by Rufo Guttieraz;
&c. None but men who make this branch of literature their particular
study, now think of perusing these and similar patriotic effusions,
which were at the period of their publication regarded as epic
poems,[415] but which only serve to prove, with the greater certainty,
that Spain is incapable of producing a Homer. A genuine subject for
epopee was scarcely to be found in the national history of Spain, even
during the ages of chivalry; and modern history was not then more
susceptible than now of receiving a truly epic form.

LYRIC AND BUCOLIC POETS OF THE CLASSIC SCHOOL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Lyric and bucolic poetry and also elegant satire, after the two
Argensolas had given the tone to that species of composition, continued
to be cultivated by various pupils of the classic school of the
sixteenth century. This school which was then on the decline in Italy,
still maintained its ground in Spain, and preserved its reputation in
spite of the opposition made by the different parties who contended
for their respective styles, particularly by that of Lope de Vega,
and by one of a still more dangerous kind, which will soon be more
distinctly noticed. The disciples of this classic school, together
with those writers who, since the time of Boscan and Garcilaso de la
Vega, had formed their style on the model of the ancients and the most
esteemed poets of Italy, may be called the Spanish _Cinquecentisti_,
in a favourable sense of the term, though some of them wrote in
the seventeenth century. The most distinguished among them really
flourished in the sixteenth century; and the rest, whose number is
incalculable, possessed, at least, the merit of endeavouring, like the
Italian _Cinquecentisti_, to express sensible ideas in correct language.

To this classic school belongs Vicente Espinel, an ecclesiastic of the
province of Granada. He was likewise celebrated as a musician, and he
perfected the Spanish guitar by the addition of the fifth string. He
died in poverty, in the ninetieth year of his age, at Madrid in 1634.
His canciones, idyls, and elegies, though destitute of originality,
are distinguished by a spirited and inartificial character, and they
abound in beautiful images and descriptions. Espinel’s poetic style is
extremely melodious. In his idyls he has very successfully imitated
the pleasing syllabic measure which Gil Polo introduced into Spanish
literature under the name of _Rimas Provenzales_;[416] and he was one
of those writers who most contributed to bestow a metrical polish
on the redondilla stanzas of ten lines, (_decimas_). He translated
Horace’s Art of Poetry, in iambic blank verse, and several of Horace’s
Odes after the manner of Luis de Leon. Some of this author’s prose
works will hereafter be noticed.[417]

Christoval de Mesa, an ecclesiastic of Estremadura, was contemporary
with Tarquato Tasso, with whom he maintained the most friendly
intercourse. He made, however, very little improvement in epic art
through his intimacy with that celebrated man. Of three compositions,
which Christoval de Mesa intended for epic poems, not one has been
preserved from oblivion. His tragedy of Pompey is likewise forgotten.
He was nevertheless a good translator; and his translations of the
Æneid and the Iliad are esteemed even at the present day. He also
published a Spanish version of Virgil’s Georgics.

Juan de Morales obtained a similar reputation through his translation
of Horace’s Odes and Virgil’s Georgics. The particulars of his life are
not known. He wrote some good sonnets.[418] This writer must not be
confounded with his namesake, Ambrosio de Morales, the historian.

Agustin de Texada, or Tejada, who was born in the year 1635, is
distinguished as a writer of spiritual odes and canciones. His poems in
this class vie with those of the younger Argensola in poetic dignity of
composition and genuine lyric diction.[419] He has, however, committed
the error of introducing mythological images in his christian poetry.
But in this respect he merely conformed with the bad taste of his age,
which in Spain and Portugal favoured the most absurd misapplication
of the Greek mythology; for, to humour the prejudices of the church,
it was necessary that the heathen deities should appear only as
allegorical characters in catholic poetry.

Andres Rey de Artieda, a brave Arragonian officer, was a very learned
scholar and a particular friend of the Argensolas. Among other works,
he wrote poetic epistles which are full of good sense and natural
feeling.[420] His sonnets are remarkable for their novel and poignant
style.[421]

Gregorio Morillo imitated Juvenal in his didactic satires, and vented
his spleen in well-turned verses.[422]

Luis Barahona de Soto is, in preference to many of his contemporaries,
entitled to an honourable place among Spanish poets. He was born in the
province of Granada, and was a physician by profession. His eclogues
resemble those of Garcilaso de la Vega; and his canciones abound in
romantic grace.[423] His satires, which were lately republished, have
the spirit of Juvenal, but want the delicacy of Horace; they are,
however, written in a clear and energetic style. This writer moreover
gained celebrity by a continuation of the Orlando Furioso, which was
highly esteemed by Cervantes, and which is entitled, _Las Lagrimas de
Angelica_, (the Tears of Angelica).[424]

Pedro Soto de Rojas, who was a particular favourite of Lope de Vega,
endeavoured to introduce the academic systems of Italy, which had never
been successfully imitated in Spain. A literary society established
at Madrid, after the Italian fashion, received the ludicrous title of
_Academia Selvaje_, (Academy of Savages;) and in this society Soto de
Rojas was distinguished by the surname of _l’Ardiente_. His eclogues
have the usual character of Spanish poems of that class, clothed in
elegant and harmonious language.[425]

Luis Martin, or Martinez de la Plaza, an ecclesiastic of Granada,
a province fertile in literary talent, was particularly celebrated
for the grace of his madrigals, and other small poems of a similar
kind.[426]

Balthazar del Alcazar, who appears to have been a native of Andalusia,
sought to distinguish himself as a writer of epigrammatic madrigals.
In his comic madrigals,[427] he was, however, less successful than in
those of gallantry.[428] He also appears to have been one of the first
Spanish poets who wrote odes in sapphic feet, in so far as the Spanish
language would permit the employment of that measure.[429]

Gonzalo de Argote y Molina, one of those brave men, who, in the
reign of Philip II. combated with enthusiasm for the honour of their
country and their king, but whose valour remained unrequited, was
more distinguished as an historian than as a poet. To his literary
patriotism the Spaniards were indebted for the publication of the
Infante Don Manuel’s _Conde Lucanor_.[430] His poems are, however,
worthy of honourable notice. An ardent love of country is the soul of
his canciones and other lyric compositions.[431]

Francisco de Figueroa spent a portion of his life in Italy, in the
twofold capacity of an officer and a statesman. During his residence
among the Italians, he enjoyed a degree of public esteem which was
extended to few of his countrymen. He wrote poems in Italian as well as
in Spanish. Among his friends and admirers he was called the _divine_,
and he was ranked among the most eminent Petrarchists of his age. His
amatory sonnets are written in a pleasing and natural style, and abound
in the softest touches of romantic melancholy.[432] The admirers of
Francisco de Figueroa likewise conferred on him the surname of the
Spanish Pindar; but that was a mere whim.[433]

Christoval Suarez de Figueroa, who was an imitator of Montemayor, wrote
a pastoral romance, entitled _Amarillis_, which was very generally read
at the time of its publication. He also made a translation of Guarini’s
Pastor Fido, and cultivated with some degree of success the Italian
lyric forms of pastoral romance. Some of the poems of the latter class
contained in the _Romancero General_, appear to be written by this
author. His _Endechas_, or Elegiac Songs in the popular style, though
not particularly rich in ideas, are nevertheless pleasing with respect
to language and versification.[434]

Another poet of this name, Bartholomè Cayrasco de Figueroa, is the
author of a long series of spiritual canciones and tales called
_cantos_, which were much esteemed on account of the edification
attributed to their contents. In these poems he explains the mysticism
of the christian religion, according to the catholic dogmas and the
scholastic ideas of christian virtue, in a manner more pedantic than
poetic; but yet in pure and elegant language. He was likewise one of
the Spanish imitators of the Italian verse with dactyllic terminations,
called _versos esdrujolos_, from the Italian _versi sdruccioli_.[435]

Juan de Arguijo, a native of Seville, seems to have enjoyed high
reputation among the poets of his time. Lope de Vega formally dedicated
several of his works to him. Some well written sonnets and other small
poems are the only productions of this author now extant.[436]

Pedro Espinosa, an ecclesiastic who possessed some poetic talent,
and who wrote on various subjects, compiled a lyric anthology of the
works of the above and other Spanish poets, who adhered more or less
rigidly to the principles of the old school, but whose fancy sometimes
roamed unrestrained with Lope de Vega, or sometimes degenerated into
affectation with Gongora.[437]

RISE OF A NEW IRREGULAR AND FANTASTICAL STYLE IN SPANISH POETRY.

It is impossible to draw a rigid line of separation between the
disciples of the classic school, and the partizans of lyric
irregularity, who indulged in no less freedom than Lope de Vega, while
at the same time they endeavoured to exceed him in forced conceits.
Even the disciples of the classic school are not totally exempt from
extravagant ideas and unnatural metaphors; and they occasionally pour
forth a torrent of words, which though sometimes big with brilliant
ideas, more frequently wastes itself in mere froth and foam. It
cannot be doubted that the Italian school of the Marinists exercised
an influence on these Spanish poets. But Marino, being a Neapolitan
by birth, was a Spanish subject, and educated among Spaniards. It is
therefore more natural to regard his style as originally Spanish,
than to trace to Italy the source of those aberrations of fancy,
which, in the age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, again found admirers
in Spain. Marino’s was the old Spanish national style, with all its
faults, divested of its ancient energy and purity, polished after
a new fashion, stripped of its simplicity, tortured into the most
absurd affectation of refinement, and that affectation displayed in a
boundless prolixity.

One of the most zealous adherents of this party was Manuel Faria y
Sousa, a Portuguese by birth. Some cause of discontent had induced him
to quit his native country and to fix his residence in Spain; and in
composing both poetry and prose, he in general preferred the Castilian
to his vernacular tongue.[438] It can scarcely be supposed that he
introduced this perverted taste from Portugal; though his Portuguese
poems exhibit no less affectation of style than those which he composed
in Castilian, and in which a judicious direction of the fancy is seldom
observable. His ideas are, for the most part, intolerably fantastic.
One of his Castilian songs, for example, is composed in honour of his
mistress’s eyes, “in whose beauty, (he says) love has inscribed the
poet’s fate, and which are as large as his pain, and as black as his
destiny, &c.”[439] He displays similar extravagance in most of his
Castilian sonnets: in one, for instance, he relates “how ten lucid
arrows of chrystal, were darted at him from the eyes of his Albania,
which produced a _rubious_ effect on his pain, though the cause was
chrystaline,” &c.[440] In this absurd style he composed hundreds of
sonnets. Faria y Sousa, however, wrote several good works on history
and statistics;[441] and it must be recollected that in his poetry he
merely followed the party which he most admired, and which indeed had
its precursors in Portugal as well as in Spain.

This party which soon became powerful, imitated the negligence of
Lope de Vega. But Lope de Vega was not a pedant; and when he failed
in producing real beauties, he did not coin false ones. His pretended
imitators, however, used the alloy of pedantry most unsparingly, and
thereby carried the affectation of ingenious thoughts, in the style of
the Italian Marinists, to an incredible height.

GONGORA AND HIS ESTILO CULTO--THE CULTORISTOS--THE CONCEPTISTOS.

Luis de Gongora de Argote was the founder and the idol of the
fantastical sect, which at this period led the fashion in literature,
and attempted to create a new epoch in Spanish poetry by dint of
exquisite cultivation and refinement. Gongora was a man of shrewd
and powerful mind; but his natural faculties were perverted by a
systematic prosecution of absurd critical reveries. Through life he
had to maintain a constant struggle with the frowns of fortune. He was
born in Cordova, in the year 1561; and after completing his studies in
his native city found himself without any provision for the future.
He took holy orders, and after eleven years of solicitation at the
court of Madrid, obtained a scanty benefice. The dissatisfied turn of
mind, occasioned by his adverse fortune, contributed to develope that
caustic wit, for which he was particularly distinguished. He wrote
satirical sonnets, which for bitterness of spirit can scarcely be
exceeded;[442] and he was still more successful in romances and songs
in the burlesque satirical style. Works of this kind, did not, it is
true, possess the merit of novelty in Spanish literature; but Gongora’s
satirical poems are vastly superior to those of Castillejo. It would
be scarcely possible to preserve, in a translation, the caustic
spirit of Gongora’s romances and songs. To give full effect to these
compositions, the genuine national spirit of the serious romances and
canciones must never be lost sight of. In Gongora’s satirical works the
language and versification are correct and elegant, and the piquant
simplicity of the whole style would never lead to the supposition that
the ambition of marking an epoch in literature could have betrayed
the author into the most intolerable affectation.[443] He was less
successful in seizing the cordial tone of the old narrative romances.
But his canciones in the ancient Spanish style are in general masterly
compositions, full of true natural and poetic feeling.[444]

It was doubtless in one of his moments of ill-humour that Gongora
conceived the idea of creating for serious poetry a peculiar
phraseology, which he called the _estilo culto_, meaning thereby the
highly cultivated or polished style. In fulfilment of this object,
he formed for himself, with the most laborious assiduity, a style as
uncommon as affected, and opposed to all the ordinary rules of the
Spanish language, either in prose or verse. He particularly endeavoured
to introduce into his native tongue the intricate constructions of
the greek and latin, though such an arrangement of words had never
before been attempted in Spanish composition. He consequently found it
necessary to invent a particular system of punctuation, in order to
render the sense of his verses intelligible. Not satisfied with this
patchwork kind of phraseology he affected to attach an extraordinary
depth of meaning to each word, and to diffuse an air of superior
dignity over his whole style. In Gongora’s poetry the most common
words received a totally new signification; and in order to impart
perfection to his _estilo culto_, he summoned all his mythological
learning to his aid. Such was Gongora’s _New Art_. In this style he
wrote his _Soledades_, his _Polyphemus_, and several other works. Even
the choice of the title _Soledades_, (Solitudes), was an instance of
Gongora’s affectation; for he did not intend to express by that term
the signification attached to a similar Portuguese word, (_Saudade_),
which is the title for a work relating to the thoughts and aspirations
of a recluse. Gongora wished by his fantastic title to convey an idea
of solitary forests, because he had divided his poem into _sylvas_,
(forests), according to a particular meaning which the word bears in
latin. This work, like all Gongora’s productions in the same style,
is merely an insipid fiction, full of pompous mythological images,
described in a strain of the most fantastic bombast.[445] The Duke
of Bejar, to whom the work is inscribed, must, if he only read the
dedicatory lines, have imagined himself transported to some foreign
region, in which the Spanish language was tortured without mercy.[446]
Gongora appears to have been peculiarly anxious to develope the spirit
of his _New Art_, both at the commencement and the close of his
whimsical compositions.[447]

Gongora’s innovations did not, however, tend to better his fortune;
for when he died in 1627, he held merely the post of titular chaplain
to the king. But his works were universally read in Spain; and in
proportion as men of sound judgment emphatically protested against the
absurd innovations of the Gongorists, the more vehemently did these
assert their pretensions.[448] Thus Gongora in some measure attained
his object. His arduous exertions to establish his style did not,
it is true, promote him to a lucrative post; but they were rewarded
with the unlimited admiration of a numerous party, composed of men of
half-formed taste, who found it easy in the crisis of the conflict
between the Spanish national style and the Italian, to raise themselves
into importance. Proud of their half cultivation, they regarded every
writer who did not admire and imitate the style of their master, as a
man of limited talent, incapable of appreciating the beauties of their
_estilo culto_.[449] But none of Gongora’s partizans possessed the
talent of their leader, and their affectation became on that account
still more insupportable. They soon separated into two similar yet
distinct schools, one of which represented the pedantry of its founder,
while the other, in order to render the art of versifying the easier,
even dispensed with that precision of style which Gongora, in his
wildest flights, still sought to preserve. The disciples of the first
school were proud to be the commentators of their master; and in their
voluminous illustrations of Gongora’s unintelligible works, they did
not neglect to pour forth all the stores of their erudition.[450] These
were called the _Cultoristos_, a name which was applied to them in
derision. The second school of the Gongorists more nearly resembled
that of the Marinists; and its disciples were distinguished by the name
of _Conceptistos_, in imitation of the Italian term _Concettisti_,
which was applied to the followers of Marino. The _Conceptistos_
revelled in the wildest regions of fancy, without the least regard
to propriety or precision, and were only desirous of expressing
preposterous and extravagant ideas (_concetti_) in the unnatural
language of Gongora. Some individuals of this party were, however,
inclined to imitate the careless style of Lope de Vega.

Alonzo de Ladesma, who died a few years before Gongora, obtained
admirers for his poems, chiefly spiritual, which he wrote in the
obscure phraseology of the _estilo culto_.[451] For example, in
paraphrazing the mysteries of the catholic faith in lyric romances, he
thus speaks of the birth of the Saviour:--“The star of the east rose
at the time ordained by God, so that the enemy of day might lose the
prey he had seized, and with it the hope of his false pretensions, as
God assumed human flesh in order that man might enjoy him,” &c.[452] To
men imbued with superstition, and denied all reasoning in matters of
faith, ravings of this kind were well calculated to turn their heads,
and involve them in a vortex of romantic mysticism.

Felix de Arteaga was likewise a zealous cultivator of this distorted
style, both in sacred and profane poetry. In 1618, he held the post
of court chaplain at Madrid, and he lived until the year 1633. The
chief portion of his songs, romances, and sonnets, are of the pastoral
kind. He extols “the miracles of the fair Amarillis, that angel of
the superior class, to whom truth and passion have given the name of
Phœnix. She once espied before her door a peasant, who, though not
worthy to adore her, was yet worthy to languish for her sake. This
happened one evening, which was a morning, since Aurora smiled, and
shewed white pearls between rows of glowing carmine. The angel was
amused by burning those she had illumined, and this beautiful angel
fell from the heaven of her ownself,” &c.[453] This author also wrote,
after the manner of Lope de Vega, a comedy, called _Gridonia_, which
he styles a royal invention, (_invencion real_), because potentates,
princes, and princesses are brought together from the most distant
parts of the earth, and introduced with vast scenic pomp.[454]

Some of the adherents of this party, who were distinguished for natural
genius and ability, will be hereafter noticed. We must not, however,
neglect to mention that the _estilo culto_ likewise gained a footing
in Spanish America; and that various works in that style by Alonzo de
Castillo Solorzano, were very neatly printed at Mexico in the year
1625.[455]

TWO DRAMATIC POETS OF THE AGE OF LOPE DE VEGA.

Lope de Vega had now become the model of the Spanish dramatic poets,
who soon appeared as numerous, and laboured as assiduously as if they
had been bound to supply all the theatres in the universe with new
pieces. But most of these dramatists, who may altogether be considered
as forming one great school, were contemporary with Lope de Vega only
during their younger years. The elegant Calderon, who was born in the
year 1600, may also have influenced the exercise of their talents. In
the history of the Spanish theatre, it will therefore be proper to
range together those dramatists on whom it is probable the example of
Calderon may have operated.[456] This, however, is the proper place
for noticing two contemporaries of Lope de Vega.

The first of these writers, whose talents entitle them to an honourable
rank in literature, is Christoval de Virues, a native of Valencia.
He fought in the battle of Lepanto, and is usually distinguished by
his military title of captain. The period of his death is not known.
Both Cervantes and Lope de Vega mention him in terms of commendation.
Virues was not the pupil of Lope. Though older, as it would appear,
than that distinguished man, he was, like him, inspired with enthusiasm
for dramatic poetry; and they entered upon the same career at nearly
the same time. Virues did not adhere more attentively than Lope to
the strict rules of the ancient drama. But he wanted the fertile
imagination of his rival, and he conceived it necessary that the modern
drama should approximate in a slight degree to the antique, at least
in some of its forms. He was one of the Spanish dramatists by whom
the last attempts were made to separate tragedy from comedy; and his
efforts in this way are deserving of more praise than has hitherto
been conceded to them. Virues was a poet born for tragic art; but his
genius wanted cultivation. Pure poetic spirit, and a bold and energetic
style, are the distinguishing features of all his works. But, like
Lope de Vega, he was every inch a Spaniard. He obeyed the influence
of the national taste, and he could not restrain his own genius within
the bounds which he had himself prescribed. Among his five tragedies
are some which might more properly be termed comedies, according to
the Spanish acceptation of the term.[457] It is obvious that Virues
endeavoured to create a sphere of his own, and that in proportion as he
wrote he made advances in his art. His _Semiramis_, the first tragedy
he wrote, which is chiefly in octaves, interspersed here and there
with redondillas, is crude both in conception and execution; but the
language even of this imperfect drama, makes energetic approaches to
that genuine expression of tragic pathos, which Cervantes and the elder
Argensola in some measure attained.[458] His tragedy, entitled _La
Cruel Casandra_, which is richer in dramatic spirit, and more finished
and systematic in its execution, might in the hands of a writer of
genius be easily rendered a tragic master-piece. Virues selected from
the history of the kingdom of Leon, the subject of this tragedy, in
which he intended to unite the ancient and modern styles.[459] That
a drama of intrigue, like the _Casandra_, should not have obtained
greater popularity in Spain would be inexplicable, were it not for the
dislike which the Spanish public manifested towards all dramas in
which the tragic character was exhibited without the intervention of
comic scenes. Cultivated taste will, however, perceive many faults in
this tragedy. The uninterrupted delirium of passion, which prevails
from the beginning to the end of the piece, renders the whole more
astounding than impressive. The stormy movement of the action has,
notwithstanding, in most of the scenes, a very captivating effect;
and that passionate vehemence, in the painting of which Virues was
eminently successful, is, in this drama, characteristically Spanish.
The horrible deaths with which the piece closes, and which, according
to the nature of the catastrophe were by no means necessary, are
likewise in unison with the spirit of a Spanish national tragedy.
The spring of action is the wicked spirit of a revengeful woman whom
jealousy betrays into a series of the most treacherous intrigues. The
dialogue is occasionally somewhat declamatory; but in its best parts
it is energetic and unconstrained.[460] Of all the dramas of Virues,
his _Marcella_ in which princes, princesses, robbers, peasants, and
servants, are jumbled together in irregular confusion, was doubtless
most in unison with the Spanish taste.

The other Spanish dramatist who remains to be noticed among the poetic
writers of the age of Lope de Vega, is Juan Perez de Montalvan,
whom Lope himself regarded as his first pupil, and who obtained,
probably through the interest of his patron, the post of notary to the
inquisition. He was a young man of distinguished talent, and even in
his seventeenth year he wrote plays in the style of Lope de Vega. He
first entered the lists in competition with his master, after whose
death he pursued his literary occupations with such assiduity, that
when he died in 1639, though aged only thirty-five, the number of
his comedies and autos amounted to nearly one hundred. He was also
the author of several novels, which will be particularly noticed in
another place. He put together in a single volume, some of his dramas
and novels, and his moral reflections, full of formal erudition; and
this singular compilation was published under the no less singular
title of Book for All.[461] His comedies are neither more finished nor
more systematic than those of his master, but they prove how easily a
Spanish writer of imagination might, in that age, be roused to venture
into competition with the inexhaustible Lope de Vega, and also how
far a poet of talent, with a certain degree of practice, was capable
of succeeding in dramatic intrigue. Montalvan’s comedies possess,
however, a more particular interest, inasmuch as they exhibit traces
of genius, which under other circumstances would have constituted a
painter of dramatic character. In two of his historical comedies, he
has introduced Henry IV. of France, and Philip II. of Spain. A kind of
moral dignity, almost approaching to sanctity, is falsely attributed
to the latter; but the prominent features of his character are truly
seized and strikingly delineated.[462] The amiable Henry IV. is,
however, pourtrayed to the life.[463] In his _Autos Sacramentales_,
Montalvan even ventured to differ from Lope de Vega, in order to give
to these dramas the popular character which Lope had sacrificed in his
allegorical moralities. He composed an auto on the romantic conversion
of Skanderbeg, in which drums, trumpets, clarionets, explosions of
squibs and rockets, and all the pomp of spectacle is introduced.
But the most extravagant creation of Montalvan’s fancy, is his auto
of _Polyphemus_, in which the cyclops of that name appears as the
allegorical representative of judaism; and the rest of the cyclops,
together with the nymph Galathæa, and other mythological beings, are
introduced for the allegorical personation of faith and infidelity,
according to christian notions. To these characters are added, Appetite
as a peasant, Joy as a lady, and finally the Infant Christ. Drum and
trumpet accompaniments are not forgotten in this auto. The cyclops
too perform on the guitar; and an island sinks amidst a tremendous
explosion of fire works.[464]

NOVELS IN THE AGE OF CERVANTES AND LOPE DE VEGA.

Notwithstanding that poetry, sometimes under heterogeneous, sometimes
under harmonizing forms, was, next to religion, the object which
principally interested the Spanish public in the age of Cervantes and
Lope de Vega, yet elegant prose was not consigned to such obscurity as
to engage only the attention of the learned. The old Spanish soundness
of understanding which particularly displayed itself in Cervantes and
the two Argensolas, still, in some measure maintained its influence.
But upon the whole that rhetorical cultivation which had been so early
developed in Spain was obviously on the decline.

Novels and romances, either decidedly bad or very indifferent, were
as widely circulated as rapidly produced, and so great was their
number that they counteracted the good effects which the master-piece
of Cervantes must necessarily have produced under more favourable
circumstances. If few new romances of chivalry were now written, the
old ones were read with the greater avidity. After the Galatea of
Cervantes, any very successful production in pastoral romance was
scarcely to be expected. Romances, depicting the manners of modern
society, were, however, proportionally the more numerous. Among the
best of the serious, but yet spirited productions of this class, is
the Life of _Marcos de Obregon_;[465] by the poet and musician Vicente
Espinel.[466] The object of the author was, in his old age, to transmit
useful instruction to the rising generation in the form of a novel. The
Spanish title in which the hero of the story is styled an _Escudero_,
would seem to indicate a romance of chivalry, but the whole character
of the work is modern. The Escudero is a sort of gentleman or squire by
courtesy, and by no means a shield-bearer. The book is intended as a
moral warning for young men without fortune, who hope to get honourably
through the world by attaching themselves to persons of distinction.
The story, though entertaining, presents nothing particularly
attractive; the narration is rather prolix, but still natural; and the
diction plainly denotes the classic pupil of the sixteenth century,
though Espinel, as he states in his preface, consigned his romance to
the correction of Lope de Vega, whom he styles the “divine genius,”
after having himself revised the verses which Lope composed in his
youth. The insipid jokes which occur in Marcos de Obregon, for example
those in derision of the Portuguese and their language, must be
considered as belonging to the natural local colouring of the work.

Among the romances of knavery, (_del gusto picaresco_), the celebrated
Don Guzman de Alfarache may claim a distinguished place next to
Lazarillo de Tormes.[467] It was published in the year 1599, and
consequently before Don Quixote appeared. Like Lazarillo de Tormes it
was speedily translated into Italian and French, and was subsequently
published in various other languages, not excepting the latin. Mattheo
Aleman, the author of Guzman de Alfarache, who had withdrawn from the
court of Philip III. and lived in retirement, was not induced by the
success of his comic romance, to devote himself to a second production
of the same class. The knowledge of the world which he had acquired at
court, as well as in the sphere of common life, is doubtless abundantly
unfolded in his Guzman de Alfarache. The manners of the lower classes
of Spanish society, in particular, seem to be pourtrayed with
admirable accuracy. In spite of the vulgarity of the subject, and the
burlesque style in which it is treated, no ordinary share of judgment
is perceptible throughout the whole of this comic novel; and in his
humorous language the author has preserved a certain degree of natural
elegance even in describing the lowest scenes.

That the Spaniards were by no means sparing of approbation to works
of this class, is obvious from the attention bestowed on the mannered
continuation of Aleman’s romance, by a writer styling himself Mattheo
Luzan, and still more by the favour lavished upon _La Picara Justina_,
a silly and pedantic pendant to Guzman de Alfarache, by a writer named
Ubeda. In Cervantes’s Journey to Parnassus, no literary production of
the age is so categorically condemned as this _Picara Justina_. And yet
it was oftener printed, and probably more read than even the Journey to
Parnassus.

Little anecdotal stories of a sprightly character, likewise made their
appearance in Spanish literature at this period. A collection of these
productions, connected together by means of dialogues, was published
in 1610, under the title of Pleasant Dialogues for the Carnival time,
(_Dialogos de Apacible Entretenimiento_), by Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo.

The political romance of Argenis, was pompously arranged to suit the
taste of the Spaniards of that age, by the Gongorist Pellicer de Salas.

Among the novels which possessed more of an imaginative character,
the best then produced were those of Perez de Montalvan, the dramatic
poet.[468]

The present is not the proper place to introduce a complete or copious
list of all the works in the class above alluded to. Other writers have
already enumerated them with sufficient accuracy.[469] Unfortunately
even the very best of these novels and narratives present no traces of
the advancement of taste and literary cultivation.

The novels of a Spanish lady, named Doña Mariana de Caravajal y
Saavedra, must not be passed over without a particular notice.
Respecting this authoress, who was a native of the city of Granada,
but little is said by the writers on Spanish literature. Her ten
novels have been frequently reprinted, and were apparently very well
received by the public.[470] Doña Mariana states in her preface, that
her novels are intended to afford amusement in “the lazy nights of
chill winter;”[471] and they may, even now, be recommended to those
who stand in need of such amusement; for they are by no means devoid
of fancy though they are written in a style of affected verbosity. The
verses with which the tales are interspersed, exhibit no traces of
poetic talent. In her preface, the authoress promises to present to the
Spanish public, twelve comedies “from her ill-made pen,” as a proof of
the “kindness of her intention.”[472] Spain could indeed scarcely be
expected to give birth to a poetess in the true sense of the term. The
terrible yoke imposed on the conscience and the understanding, against
which even masculine genius could only contend by boldly plunging
into the wilds of romantic invention, weighed still more heavily on
the female mind, which without a certain spirit of freedom can seldom
range beyond the boundaries established by custom, and the routine of
ordinary thinking. Writers on Spanish literature, however, mention in
terms of approbation, several female writers of verses, and also women
of erudition, like Aloysia Sigea, distinguished for their knowledge of
languages.

PROGRESSIVE CULTIVATION OF THE HISTORICAL ART--MARIANA.

At this period of Spanish eloquence, history was the only kind of
composition which maintained its old precision and dignity, while of
the perfect cultivation of the other branches of prose literature there
remained little hope.

The General History of Spain, by the Jesuit Juan de Mariana, though not
a model of historical art in the most extended sense of the term, is,
in point of style, unquestionably a classic production. Mariana, who
may be said to have transferred the genuine spirit of the eloquence
of the sixteenth century into the seventeenth,[473] was not one of
the pensioned historiographers or chroniclers who have already been
frequently mentioned, and who, it must be confessed, honourably
discharged their duties. He obtained reputation both in France and
Italy as a professor of scholastic philosophy and theology; but his
love of literary retirement induced him to return to Spain. Of his own
free choice he undertook to compose a new general History of Spain
from the earliest period to the death of Ferdinand the catholic. His
predecessors had been sufficiently numerous, and he did not find
it necessary to collect the materials for his history by laborious
compilations from the old authors and chroniclers of the middle ages.
He was thus at liberty to prescribe to himself a more pleasing task,
namely, that of judiciously combining the most interesting events,
and describing them with rhetorical precision in elegant language.
With the view of acquiring a prose style, formed in the spirit of the
classic historians of antiquity, Mariana composed his work originally
in latin,[474] a method which Cardinal Bembo had adopted in writing
his History of Venice. After he had completed this first labour, and
dedicated the thirty books of his history in latin to Philip II.
he followed the example of Bembo in translating it himself, and he
in fact recomposed it in Spanish.[475] This work he also dedicated
to the king. Though this twofold dedication might have served to
prove that the author was far from being liable to the imputation
of cherishing views dangerous to the state, yet a party, with whose
designs several passages of this history did not accord, found it easy
under the government of the ever jealous Philip, to cast on Mariana
the suspicion of favouring wicked and rebellious principles. He was
formally brought before the inquisition, and it was with difficulty he
escaped destruction. Had he devoted more attention to the philosophy
of history, he could not so easily have repelled the charge of
impartiality, to aim at which was then considered an unwarrantable
assumption not to be tolerated in any Spanish writer. But it is only
in his style that Mariana was impartial. To exhibit facts as they
stood in their natural connection, was sufficient to give umbrage to
the court and the inquisition; and solely to such an exposition was it
owing, that the historian’s intentions became a subject of suspicion.
Elegant composition was his grand object; and in this respect he far
excels Bembo, because he is not, like him, mannered. His diction is
perfectly faultless, his descriptions picturesque without poetic
ornament; and his narrative style may, on the whole, be accounted
a model. He has been very successful in avoiding protracted and
artificially constructed sentences.[476] Mariana could not, however,
resist the temptation of putting speeches into the mouths of his
historical characters, after the manner of the ancient historians. In
fine, comparing this history with other works of a similar kind, which
previously existed in Spanish literature, it will be found that, though
justly entitled to a high share of esteem, it cannot be regarded as
forming an epoch either in a philosophic or literary point of view.

Having described the rise and progress of the historical art in Spain,
it cannot be necessary to give a minute notice of historical works,
which for the most part possess only the negative merit of not being
ill written. The age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega was, moreover,
the period at which the historical literature of the Spaniards began
to form itself into that perfect whole for which it is so peculiarly
remarkable. At that time the old chronicles were committed to the
press one after another: and the continuation and correction of the
national history was the only literary occupation which could be
pursued with any hope of success by men of talent, who felt no impulse
to poetry; unless, indeed, they preferred to distinguish themselves in
scholastic theology, or in writing books of pious edification, in which
it was, above all things, necessary to take care to say nothing new.

It is still less necessary to enter upon a detailed examination of
various works in the didactic department of Spanish literature, which
are upon the whole not badly written, but not one of which exceeds in
rhetorical merit the works of Perez de Oliva, Ambrosio de Morales,
and other authors, who have already been mentioned. The writings of
Balthasar, or Lorenzo Gracian, who endeavoured to introduce a kind of
_gongorism_ into Spanish prose, will be more fully noticed at the close
of the present book.

FLUCTUATION OF SPANISH TASTE FROM THE CLASSIC TO THE CORRUPT STYLE.

In order to mark, by sensible gradations, the transition from the
golden age of Spanish poetry and eloquence, to those sad times, when
the energy of the national genius was, after a long conflict with
opposing circumstances, destined to be overcome, it will be proper
first to notice some poets and prose authors, who during the latter
half of the period embraced by the present section, assumed a tone
peculiar to themselves; and also, another set of writers who were their
immediate successors. Quevedo may with propriety be placed at their
head. During a part of his life he was contemporary with Cervantes,
Lope de Vega, and the Argensolas, and was, moreover, an opposer of
the New Art of Gongora. But both in poetry and prose he deviates so
strikingly from the classic, and so obviously approaches the ornamented
and artificial style, that by commencing with him the retrograde course
which Spanish literature began to take even in the period of its
highest cultivation, will be most distinctly perceived.

QUEVEDO.

The circumstances of the life of Francisco de Quevedo Villegas,[477] a
man who has almost invariably been praised or censured with partiality,
had a most important influence on the developement and employment
of his talents. He began even in childhood to breathe the air of
courts. He was born, in 1580, at Madrid, of a noble family, and was
educated at the court under the care of his widowed mother who was
one of the ladies of the royal household. An eager curiosity was the
first indication of his active and restless mind; and the impressions
which he received in his infancy, induced him to make the scholastic
theology of catholicism his first study in preference to every other
kind of knowledge. He was sent to the university of Alcala, where he
received the degree of doctor in theology in his fifteenth year, a
fact which appears almost incredible. Grown weary of theology, he
directed his attention to law, philology, natural philosophy, medicine,
and elegant literature; and he pursued all these studies without any
regular order. It is probable that at this period he injured his sight
by indefatigable reading; for in the prime of life he was incapable of
distinguishing any object at the distance of three paces, without the
aid of glasses. But neither this infirmity nor the crooked legs which
he had received from nature, deterred him from mingling in fashionable
society. His figure, which was in other respects strong and well
proportioned, joined to his prepossessing countenance, contributed in
no slight degree to the early developement of his self-esteem.

Quevedo returned to the court of Madrid, with a mind stored with
all kinds of academic knowledge. But he soon became engaged in a
dispute, fought a duel in which he wounded his antagonist, and was
compelled to fly. He proceeded to Italy, where the Spanish Viceroy of
Naples, Don Pedro Giron, Duke of Ossuna, interested himself for the
accomplished fugitive. He procured his pardon at Madrid, and retained
him in his service at Naples. Quevedo now became a statesman and a man
of business. He played the most prominent part at the court of the
Vice-king, executed important commissions, visited the papal court,
in quality of ambassador, was rewarded with titles and pensions, and
seemed to be the favourite of fortune. But he was suddenly cast down
by the fall of his patron, the Duke of Ossuna. Quevedo was connected
with that powerful grandee in all his transactions, and thus became
involved in his fate. In 1620, in the fortieth year of his age, he was
arrested and removed to his country seat, La Torre de Juan Abad, where
he was, by the order of the government, confined during three years,
notwithstanding his delicate state of health, which this restraint
rendered daily worse. So rigidly was this kind of imprisonment
enforced, that it was with great difficulty he could obtain leave to go
to a neighbouring town to commit himself to the care of a physician in
whom he could confide.

At length Quevedo’s papers being strictly examined, his innocence
became unquestionable, and he was set at liberty. He now demanded
indemnification and the payment of the arrears of his pension. Instead,
however, of obtaining attention to his claims, he was threatened with
a new exile, and received an order to quit the court. This sentence he
found means to evade, and even court intrigue seemed at last inclined
to favour him; but in the conflict between vanity and reason, Quevedo
in due time proved himself a philosopher. He willingly forsook the
court, retired to his estate of La Torre, and devoted himself wholly
to literary pursuits. It is probable that at this period he wrote the
poems which on their first appearance were published as the works of
the Bachelor de la Torre, an old poet of the fifteenth century. The
name of his country residence apparently suggested to Quevedo the
disguise of the above title. There is also reason to suppose that at
this period he wrote the greater portion of his works both in prose
and verse. But these writings, which overflow with wit and satire, and
display that firmness of judgment and character, which is always so
unwelcome at courts, tended to keep alive the attention of those who
conceived themselves to be attacked. As the crisis of his varied fate
approached, Quevedo seems to have totally forgotten the intrigues of
which he had been the victim. He had already passed several years in
literary tranquillity, and was upwards of fifty years of age when he
married. But his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, did not live
long. Quevedo’s evil star once more induced him to visit Madrid, where
in 1641, he was arrested at midnight in the house of a friend with
whom he resided. The charge preferred against him, was that of being a
libeller, who spared neither the government nor public morals; he was
thrown into a small and unwholesome prison, and treated with the most
rigid severity, not even experiencing the humanity usually extended to
the vilest criminals. In the meanwhile his property was sequestrated,
and though not convicted of any crime, he was compelled to subsist on
charity. He was again seized with a severe fit of illness. His body
broke out in ulcers, in consequence of the insalubrity of his prison,
but he was even then denied the aid of a surgeon. In this situation
Quevedo appealed for justice to the Duke of Olivares, the all-powerful
prime minister of Spain, in a letter which has become celebrated. His
case was now, for the first time, strictly investigated; and it was
ascertained that he had merely been supposed to be the author of a
libel, which was subsequently discovered to have been written in a
monastery. Quevedo once more regained his freedom, but with the loss
of a considerable portion of his fortune, of which indeed he retained
so scanty a remnant, that he was unable to continue long enough in
Madrid to solicit the indemnification which was so justly due to him,
and without which he could not subsist with respectability. A prey
to sickness, and deprived of the hope of ever obtaining justice, he
retired to his country seat, and there died in the year 1645.

A man who, like Quevedo, reaped the bitterest fruits from political
justice, cannot be very heavily reproached for seizing in his
satires every opportunity of more severely chastising and ridiculing
the ministers of that justice, than any other enemies of truth
and equity. But Quevedo was not a mere satirist. He may, without
hesitation, be pronounced the most ingenious of all Spanish writers,
next to Cervantes; and his mind was, moreover, endowed with a degree
of practical judgment, which is seldom found combined with that
versatility for which he was distinguished. Could Quevedo have ruled
the taste and genius of his nation and his age in the same degree in
which that taste and genius influenced him, his versatility, joined
to his talent for composing verses with no less rapidity than Lope
de Vega, might have rendered him, if not a poet of the first rank
in the loftier region of art, at least a classic writer of almost
unrivalled merit. But this scholar and man of the world was too early
wedded to conventional forms of every kind. It may indeed be said that
he was steeped in all the colours of his age. A true feeling of the
independence of genius never animated him, lofty as his spirit in other
respects was. His taste imbibed some portion of all the conflicting
tastes which at that period existed in Spain. His style never acquired
originality, and his mind was only half cultivated.

Quevedo’s writings, taken altogether in verse and in prose, resemble
a massy ornament of jewellery, in which the setting of some parts is
exquisitely skilful, of others extremely rude, and in which the number
of false stones and of gems of inestimable value are nearly equal.
His most numerous, and unquestionably his best productions, are those
of the satirical and comic kind. Though Quevedo did not strike into a
totally new course, yet by a union peculiar to himself of sports of
fancy, with the maxims of reason and morality, he evidently enlarged
the sphere of satirical and comic poetry in Spanish literature. He
occasionally approached, though he never equalled, the delicacy and
correctness of Cervantes. His wit is sufficiently caustic; but it is
accompanied by a coarseness which would be surprising, considering
his situation in life, were it not that Quevedo, as an author,
sought to indemnify himself for the constraint to which, as a man
of the world he was compelled to submit. For this reason, perhaps,
he bestowed but little pains on the correction of his satires. His
ideas are striking; and are thrown together sometimes with absolute
carelessness, sometimes with refined precision; but for the most part
in a distorted and mannered strain of language. This mixed character
of cultivation and rudeness peculiarly characterizes his satirical and
comic works in verse, in which, as he himself says, he has exhibited
“truth in her smock, but not quite naked.”[478] He appears as the
rival of Gongora in numerous comic canciones and romances in the old
national style.[479] In these compositions he humorously parodied the
extravagant images of the Marinists,[480] and the affected singularity
of the Gongorists.[481] Quevedo wrote no inconsiderable number of his
comic and satirical poems in the jargon of the Spanish gypsies; and it
is therefore probable that they are not intelligible to many readers on
this side of the Pyrenees.[482] These romances and canciones, which
were distinguished by the name of Xacaras, were rendered so extremely
popular by Quevedo, that even down to the present day the Spaniards
continue to admire them.[483] His Bayles, or comic dancing songs, are,
on account of their numerous allusions to national peculiarities, no
less obscure to foreigners than the Xacaras.

Of all the Spanish poets, Quevedo has been the most successful writer
of burlesque sonnets in the Italian manner. Some of these sonnets he
shortened by depriving them of the three last of their legitimate
number of lines, while the Italians on the contrary, attached to
theirs the comic sequel which they called the _Coda_.[484] Quevedo’s
productions in this class are, for the most part, like their Italian
models, full of allusions which cannot be understood without the
assistance of a commentary. Some have a piquant sententious turn. But
that licentious humour which distinguishes this species of composition
in Italian literature Quevedo renounced, either voluntarily or from
fear of the inquisition. Besides his burlesque sonnets, he wrote
canciones and madrigals in the same style.

Quevedo’s satires in the manner of Juvenal, naturally connect
themselves with his burlesque poems. Like his model he has infused
into them nearly as much poetry as the satirical style is capable of
receiving.[485] These compositions display the noblest enthusiasm for
truth and justice,[486] and the most patriotic zeal for the honour of
Spain,[487] forcibly and clearly expressed.

Quevedo’s satires in verse and his poems of humour, are not so well
known out of Spain as his prose writings of the same description, of
which the most remarkable are his Visions or Dreams, and his novel of
the Great Tacaño, or the Captain of Thieves, called Don Pablos, (_Vida
del Buscon_, llamado D. Pablos), which certainly may be regarded as
the most burlesque of the knavery romances.[488] Lucian furnished him
with the original idea of satirical visions; but Quevedo’s were the
first of their kind in modern literature. Owing to frequent imitations,
their faults are now no longer disguised by the charm of novelty, and
even their merits have ceased to interest. Still, however, they must
be regarded as ingenious productions abounding in practical truths.
They are not, it is true, remarkable either for delicate satire or
pure philosophy. But Quevedo’s object was to scourge human folly and
vice in the mass; and the severe lashes which he deals out in his
Visions, are in excellent unison with the popular nature of the idea
and the poignant style of its execution. He has made perverted Justice,
with all her servants and satellites, and particularly the Alguazils,
figure in the fore ground of his picture; but the melancholy fate of
the author may well excuse, though even in the visionary world, these
monotonous features in his satirical work. Among the passages for
which no just excuse can be found, are some disgusting descriptions
of the consequences of physical excess. The reader is occasionally
surprised by the humorous sallies with which Quevedo breaks forth in
these Visions; for example, in that of the Last Judgment, in which
he describes “some merchants who had placed their souls across their
bodies, so that their five senses got into the finger nails of their
right hand.[489]”

For the serious works of Quevedo, we must refer to his poems, as his
serious compositions in prose are in general of a theological and
ascetic character. The sonnets, canciones, odes and pastoral poems,
which he published under the name of the Bachelor de la Torre, are even
at the present day highly extolled by critics;[490] and these poems
have certainly more correctness than most of Quevedo’s other works. But
they chiefly consist of imitations of the Spanish Petrarchist style,
which was always foreign to Quevedo; and notwithstanding the great
elegance of language and versification which distinguish them, they are
surcharged with antiquated phrases of affected gallantry. The _snows_
which _inflame_ the poet, and similar tropes in which the beauty of
a mistress is brilliantly set forth, occasionally call to mind the
style of the Italian Marinists. Nevertheless some of these sonnets well
deserve the favour which has been extended to them.[491] Quevedo’s
_Endechas_, or Laments, have a pleasing national character.[492] The
pastoral poems contained in this collection, approximate to the good
specimens of the sixteenth century. Quevedo evidently wished to prove
what he was capable of producing in this style of composition.

The serious poems of which Quevedo has avowed himself the author, are
very unequal in character.[493] His didactic and sententious sonnets
are energetic, but deficient in delicacy.[494] Some of the best assume
a satirical turn.[495] His odes in the Pindaric style are, however,
stiff and formal. He wrote a piece of moral declamation in verse,
called _Sermon Estoyco_, (Estoical Sermon), which is in truth precisely
what the title denotes.

That Quevedo entertained very vague notions respecting poetry, is
particularly evident from the whim which induced him to translate in
rhymed verse, the stoical Enchiridion, or Manual of Epictetus. The
translation is, however, much esteemed by the Spaniards.[496]

VILLEGAS.

An Anacreon was still wanting to Spanish literature, though various
attempts in the Anacreontic style had been made. That a poet penetrated
at once with the classic spirit of Anacreon, Horace and Catullus,
should now arise, and become the favourite of the Spanish public,
was a thing scarcely to be expected; for all the resources of amatory
poetry in the only style which had hitherto been found agreeable to
Spanish taste, seemed to be exhausted. The poetry of Villegas, however,
produced precisely for this reason the more powerful impression on a
public which ardently longed for entertainment.

Estèvan Manuel de Villègas, was born in the year 1595, at Nagera,
or Naxera, a little town in Old Castile. The history of his life is
simple. His parents who were noble, though not rich, sent him to
study at Madrid and Salamanca. His taste for poetry was developed
at a very early period. Even in his fifteenth year he translated
Anacreon, and several of the odes of Horace in verse; and likewise
imitated those poets in original compositions. In his twentieth year
he gave the finishing touch to his youthful effusions, and added to
the collection of his translated and original poems, a second part,
which has since been published conjointly with them.[497] He soon
after printed the whole collection at his own expence at Naxera, under
the title of _Amatorias_; but in the interior of the book, the poems
are styled _Eroticas_.[498] Villegas ventured to dedicate these
poems, together with the part added to them, to which a particular
title might more properly have been assigned, to Philip III. though
individual parts of the collection had previously been addressed to
other patrons. That so indolent a monarch as Philip III. should have
accepted the dedication of such a collection, may not be surprising,
and the freedom was pardonable in a young author of three-and-twenty.
But this dedication is, in another respect, remarkable in the history
of Spanish literature; for the _Eroticas_ of Villegas contain some
passages, which though not wanting in delicacy of expression, are
nevertheless so extremely free, that it is wonderful how they happened
to escape the censure of the inquisition. The dedication was, however,
productive of neither good nor evil to the poet. For several years he
vainly solicited a lucrative office; and was at last obliged to content
himself with the scanty emolument arising from an insignificant post in
Naxera, his native town. From that time he devoted his leisure to the
composition of philological works in the latin language; and though he
produced nothing new for Spanish poetry, he made a prose translation of
five books of Boethius. He lived till the year 1669.

The graceful luxuriance of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in
modern literature; and, generally speaking, no modern writer has
so well succeeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the
modern. But constantly to observe that correctness of ideas, which
distinguished the classical compositions of antiquity, was by Villegas,
as by most Spanish poets, considered too rigid a requisition, and an
unnecessary restraint on genius. He accordingly sometimes degenerates
into conceits and images, the monstrous absurdity of which are
characteristic of the author’s nation and age. For instance, in one
of his odes in which he entreats Lyda to suffer her tresses to flow,
he says, that “when agitated by Zephyr, her locks would occasion a
thousand deaths, and subdue a thousand lives;”[499] and then he adds,
in a strain of extravagance, surpassing that of the Marinists, “that
the sun himself would cease to give light, if he did not snatch beams
from her radiant countenance to illumine the east.”[500] But faults of
this glaring kind, are by no means frequent in the poetry of Villegas;
and the fascinating grace with which he emulates his models, operates
with so powerful a charm, that the occasional occurrence of some little
affectations, from which he could scarcely be expected entirely to
abstain, is easily overlooked by the reader.

The order in which the poetic works of Villegas are arranged, is
by no means the best; but as it was chosen by the author, it is
proper that it should be observed in pursuing a notice of the poems
themselves. The first book of the first part commences with thirty-six
odes in the style of some of the odes of Horace. The Dedicatory Ode
addressed to the king, announces, in language truly charming, the
spirit of the whole collection.[501] Then follow in a similar strain,
the most delightful plays of fancy, abounding in classical allusions,
without the least trace of pedantry. The style of Villegas even
imparts a charm of novelty to descriptions of the oftenest described
things.[502] In these odes, romantic levity assumes freedoms, which
if not always of the most excusable, are invariably of the most
graceful description;[503] and the soft and melodious expression of
tender passion, which in more than one instance occurs, has never been
surpassed.[504]

The second book of the first division of the poems of Villegas,
consists of odes, which are free translations of the first book of
Horace. It ought not, therefore, to have been ranked under the same
title with the other poems in the collection. There is something
pedantic in the generical titles by which he distinguishes the
different odes; for example--_Memptica_, _Enetica_, _Parænetica_, &c.

With the third book of the first division commence the Anacreontic
songs, or as they are styled in the collection, the _Delicias_ of
the poet. Their measure is chiefly anacreontic, sometimes in blank
verse, and at other times presenting the most pleasing alternation
of rhymes and assonances. Light pleasing images and soft luxuriant
ideas float through these songs even more gracefully than in the odes
attributed to Anacreon.[505] Nothing can exceed the beauty of those
in which a certain delicate moral feeling is combined with a pathetic
simplicity.[506] Only a few can be said to be absolutely copied from
the greek or latin originals.

The fourth book of the first part, contains the complete translation of
the greek odes ascribed to Anacreon. The second division is chiefly
occupied with elegies and idyls, or _eidillios_, as Villegas, in
hellenizing the term, chooses to call them. The elegies which might
with greater propriety be denominated epistles, do not belong to the
best of the kind in Spanish literature; in the idyls, or mythological
tales, as they ought to be called, Villegas appears as one of the
_Cultoristos_, or disciples of the school of Gongora.[507]

The collection concludes with several imitations of greek and latin
verse, which may be regarded as the first compositions of the kind
in Spanish, that were not complete failures. Doubtless the Spanish
language adapts itself somewhat more readily to the ancient metres
than the Italian; for final syllables sounded in pronunciation, but
subject to elision in scanning, do not occur so frequently in Spanish
as in Italian.--This difference is, however, in reality but of trivial
importance; and Spanish verses in the ancient syllabic measures do
not flow much more naturally than the Italian compositions of the
same kind; because many words derived from the latin, have received
in Spanish, as well as in Italian, a modern quantity,[508] which is
generally confounded with the ancient quantity by the imitators of the
greek and latin metres. The Spanish hexameters of Villegas, it is true,
approach in point of facility to the hexameters of antiquity.[509]
But the pentameters defied his imitative talent.[510] In his sapphic
verse the measure resolves into iambics: one of these sapphic odes is,
however, exquisitely beautiful.[511]

    CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF LYRIC, BUCOLIC, EPIC, DIDACTIC,
    AND SATIRICAL POETRY, TO THE CLOSE OF THE PERIOD EMBRACED BY THIS
    SECTION.

After Quevedo and Villegas, and before entering upon the notice of a
series of dramatic poets, whose works must form a subject of separate
consideration, it will be necessary to mention several ingenious
writers, who, though endowed with eminent talents, were nevertheless
unable to retard the fast approaching close of the golden era of
Spanish poesy.

JAUREGUI.

If pure diction, joined to a descriptive style of the most perfect
kind, might form a sufficient claim to the title of poet of the first
rank, the right of Juan de Jauregui, or Xauregui, to that distinction,
among the Spanish poets of the first half of the seventeenth century,
could not be disputed. Jauregui, who was of Biscayan origin, but
educated in the interior of Spain, first developed his talents in
Italy. In that country he prosecuted his poetic studies, and at
the same time thought it no degradation to practise painting as a
profession, though he was a nobleman and a knight of the order of
Calatrava. He is said to have excelled in painting even more than
in poetry. While in Italy he made a Spanish translation of Tasso’s
Amynta, in which he was so successful, that the translation is still
regarded by the educated portion of his countrymen as possessing the
characteristics of the happiest original composition. Jauregui was a
decided opponent of the Gongorists; but his taste did not coincide