The Works of Garcilasso de la Vega, Surnamed the Prince of Castilian Poets, Translated into English Verse / With a Critical and Historical Essay on Spanish Poetry and a Life of the Author

by Garcilaso de la Vega

ESSAY ON SPANISH POETRY.

CHAPTER I.
OF THE ORIGIN OF SPANISH POETRY, AND ITS PROGRESS TO JUAN DE MENA.

To poetry is given by general assent the first place amongst the imitative arts. Whether we regard the antiquity of its origin, the range of objects which it embraces, the duration and pleasure of its impressions, or the good it produces, we must be struck alike with its dignity and importance; and the history of its advances must ever go hand in hand with that of the other branches of human improvement. It is said that poetry and music civilized the nations; and this proposition, which, rigorously examined, is exaggerated, and even false, shows at least the influence that both have had in the formation of society. The lessons given by the first philosophers to men, the first laws, the most ancient systems, all were written in verse; whilst the fancy of the poets, the flattering pictures and pomp of rites, which they invented, interrupted, with a pleasing and necessary relaxation, the fatigue of rural labours.

It is true that poetry does not afterwards present itself with the dignity attendant upon the absolute and exclusive exercise of these various services; yet it preserves an influence so great in our instruction, in our moral perfection, and our pleasures, that we may consider it as a dispenser of the same benefits, though under different forms. It serves as an attraction to make truth amiable, or as a veil to screen her; it instructs infancy in the schools, awakens and directs the sensibilities of youth, ennobles the spirit with its maxims, sublimes it with its pictures, strews with flowers the path of virtue, and unbars to heroism the gates of glory. So many advantages, united with charms so fascinating, have excited in mankind an admiration and a gratitude eternal.

Its primary and essential business is to paint nature for our delight, as that of philosophy is to explain her phenomena for our instruction. Thus, whilst the philosopher, observing the stars, inquires into their proportions, their distances, and the laws of their motion, the poet contemplates and transfers to his verses the impression they make upon his fancy and feelings, the lustre with which they shine, the harmony that reigns amongst them, and the benefits which they dispense to the earth. The difficulty of fulfilling worthily and well the object of poetry is extreme, even though, considering the rapid progress which it sometimes makes, it might appear easy. From the vague maxim or insipid tale, rendered vigorous by the charm of an uncertain rhyme or rude measure, to the harmony and sustained elegance of the Iliad or Eneid; from the waggon and winelees of Thespis to the grand spectacle offered by the Iphigénie or Tancrède, the distance is immense, and can only be overcome by the greatest efforts of application and genius.

Some nations, the favourites of Heaven, accomplish it with more promptitude, and pass quickly from the feebleness of first essays to the vigour of thoughts more grand, and combinations more perfect. Such was the case with Greece, where the genius of poetry, scarcely numbering a few moments of infancy, grew and raised itself to the height of producing the immortal poesies of Homer. Such, though with less brilliancy and perfection, was the case with modern Italy, where in the midnight of the barbarous ages that succeeded Roman refinement, appeared on the sudden Dante and Petrarch, bringing with them the dawn of the arts and of good taste. Other nations, less fortunate, wrestle entire centuries with rudeness and ignorance, and become more slowly sensible to the blandishments of elegance and harmony; and perfection, in the degree that men can attain it, is conquered by them solely by force of time and toil. This is found to be the case with the greater number of modern nations, and amongst them, we must of necessity mention Spain.

In Spain, as in almost all countries, written verse was anterior to prose; the Poem of the Cid having appeared, being the first known book in Castilian, as well as the first work of poetry. In the midst of the confusion of languages caused by the invasion of the northern barbarians, the Romance, which was afterwards to be presented with so much splendour and majesty in the writings of Garcilasso, Herrera, Rioja, Cervantes, and Mariana, was assuming a definite form. Considering the work for the argument alone, few would have the advantage over it, at the same time that few warriors might dispute with Rodrigo de Bivar the palm of prowess and heroism. His glory, which eclipsed that of all the kings of his time, has been transmitted from age to age down to the present, by means of the infinite variety of fables which ignorant admiration has accumulated in his history. Consigned to poems, to tragedies, to comedies, to popular songs, his memory, like that of Achilles, has had the fortune to strike forcibly and occupy the fancy; but the Castilian hero, superior without doubt to the Greek in strength and in virtue, has not had the advantage of meeting with a Homer.

It was not possible to meet with one at the period when the rude writer of that poem sat down to compose it. With a language altogether uncouth, harsh in its terminations, vicious in its construction, naked of all culture and harmony; with a versification devoid of any certain measure and marked rhymes, and a style full of vicious pleonasms and ridiculous puerilities, destitute of the graces with which imagination and elegance adorn it; how was it possible to produce a work of genuine poetry, that should sweetly occupy the mind and ear? The writer is not however so wanting in talent, as not to manifest from time to time some poetic design, now in invention, now in sentiment, and now in expression. If, as Don Tomas Sanchez, the editor of this and other poems previous to the fifteenth century, suspects, there be wanting to that of the Cid merely a few verses at the beginning, it is surely a mark of judgment in the author that he disencumbered his work of all the particulars of his hero's life anterior to his banishment by Alfonso the Sixth. There the true glory of Rodrigo begins, and there the poem commences; relating afterwards his wars with the Moors and with the Count of Barcelona, his conquests, the taking of Valencia, his reconciliation with the king, the affront offered to his daughters by the Infantes of Carrion, the solemn reparation and vengeance which the Cid took for it, and his union with the royal houses of Arragon and Navarre, with which the work finishes, slightly indicating the epoch of the hero's death. In the course of his story, the writer is not wanting in vivacity and interest, great use of the dialogue, which is a point most to the purpose in animating the narration, and in occasional pictures that are not without merit in their art and composition. Such, amongst others, is the farewell of Rodrigo and Ximena, in the church of San Pedro de Cardeña, when he departs to fulfil the royal mandate. Ximena, prostrate on the steps of the altar where divine service is celebrated, makes a prayer to the Eternal in behalf of her husband, which concludes thus:

'Oh God, thou art the King of kings, and Sire of all mankind!
Thee I adore, in thee I trust with all my heart and mind;
And to divine San Pedro pray to help me in praying still,
That thou wilt shield my noble Cid the Campeador from ill,
And since we now must part, again to my embrace restore!'
Her orison thus made, high mass is offered, and is o'er;
They leave the church, they mount their barbs—with sad and solemn pace,
The Cid to Donna Ximena went to take a last embrace;
Donna Ximena, she bent down to kiss the hand of the Cid,
Sore weeping with her bright black eyes, she knew not what she did;
He turned, and kissed his little girls with all a father's love,
'Bless you, my girls,' he said, 'I you commend to God above,
To your sweet mother and ghostly sire! When we shall meet again
God only knows, but now we part.' Not one could say Amen.
Thus, weeping in a way that none e'er saw the like, at length
They part like nail from finger torn with agonizing strength.
My Cid with his vassals thought to ride, and took the onward track;
Waiting for all, his plumed head he evermore turned back.
Out then, with gallant unconcern, Don Alvar Fanez spake:
'Come, come, my Cid, what means all this? cheer up for goodness' sake;
In happy hour of woman born! fast wears the morn away;
Since we must go, let us begone, nor dally with delay;
A happier time shall turn to joy the very ills we rue;
God, who has given us souls to feel, shall give us counsel too.'

There is doubtless a great distance between this parting and that of Hector and Andromache in the Iliad, but the picture of a hero's sensibility at the time of separation from his family is always pleasing; beautiful is that turning of his head when at a distance, and fine the idea that those same warriors to whom he gives in battle an example of fortitude and constancy, should then fortify and cheer him. Superior, in my opinion, for art and dramatic effect, is the act of accusation which the Cid makes against his traitor sons-in-law before the Cortes assembled to receive it. The first shock of the Infantes and the champions of Rodrigo in the lists has much animation and even style.

They grasp their shields before their hearts; down, down their lances go;
Bowed are their crested helms until they touch the saddle-bow;
Fiercely they strike their horses' sides with streaming rowels red,
And onward to the encounter run: earth trembles to their tread.
****
Don Martin Antolinez, with the drawing of his sword,
Illumined all the field.——

No record is left for us to ascertain who was the author of this first faint breath of Spanish poetry. Two writers flourished in the following age, in whom we trace the improvement and progress which the versification and language had now made. In the sacred poems of Don Gonzalo de Bercéo, and in the Alexandro of Juan Lorenzo, are discovered more fluency, more connexion, and forms more determinate. The march of these authors, although difficult, is not so trailing and jejune as that of the preceding poet. The difference that subsists between the two later poets is, that Bercéo, if we except his narrative and some of his moral counsels, shows neither copiousness of erudition, variety of knowledge, nor fancy for invention; a deficiency arising from the nature of his subjects, which for the most part turn upon legends of the saints. Juan Lorenzo, on the contrary, is more rapt with his subject, and manifests an information so extensive in history, mythology, and moral philosophy, as to make his work the most important of all that were written in that age. The following verses on the same subject may serve to show the style of both.

"I, hight Gonzalo de Bercéo, going
On pilgrimage, came one day to a mead,
Green, and well-peopled with fair plants, which blowing
Made it a place desirable indeed
To a tired traveller; the sweet-scented flowers
Gave forth a smell that freshened not alone
Men's faces, but their fancies, whilst in showers
Clear flowing fountains to the sky were thrown,
Each singing to itself as on it rolled,
Warm in midwinter, and in summer cold."
Bercéo.

"It was the month of May, a glorious tide,
When merry music make the birds in boughs,
Dressed are the meads with beauty far and wide,
And sighs the ladye that has not a spouse:
Tide sweet for marriages; flowers and fresh winds
Temper the clime; in every village near
Young girls in bevies sing, and with blythe minds
Make each to each good-wishes of the year.
Young maids and old maids, all are out of doors,
Melting with love, to gather flowers at rest
Of noon—they whisper each to each, amours
Are good—and the most tender deem the best."
Lorenzo.

Alfonso the Tenth was then reigning in Castile; a prince, to whom, to render his glory complete, fortune ought to have given better sons, and vassals less ferocious. Posterity has given him the surname of The Wise; and beyond all doubt it was merited by the extraordinary man, who in an age of darkness could unite in himself the paternal and beneficent regards of the legislator, the profound combinations of the mathematician and astronomer, the talent and knowledge of the historian, and the laurels of the poet. He it was who raised his native language to its due honours, when he gave command that the public instruments, which before were engrossed in Latin, should be written in Spanish. Mariana, less favourable to his merits, asserts that this measure was the cause of the profound ignorance that afterwards ensued. But what was known before? The Latin then in use was as barbarous, was yet more barbarous than the Romance. The new uses to which the Romance was applied by that decree, the dignity and authority it acquired, influenced its culture, its polish, and its progress. Can it by any chance be believed that these advantages of the language had no literary influence, or that there can be diffused knowledge and a national literature, whilst the native language remains uncultivated? The assertion of Mariana then must be considered as a result of the somewhat pedantic prejudices of the age in which he lived; but, even leaving out of consideration the political convenience of the law, let us regard it as one of the causes, which having had an influence on the improvement of the language, must necessarily have influenced also the advancement of Spanish poetry.

There is an entire book of Cantigas or Letras to be sung, composed in the Galician dialect by this king, specimens of which are to be seen in the Anales de Sevilla of Ortiz de Zuñiga; another entitled El Tesoro, which is a treatise on the philosopher's stone, as far as can be judged, for to the present day a great part remains undeciphered; and to him likewise is attributed that of Las Querellas, of which two stanzas only are preserved. Both are written in verses of twelve syllables, with rhymes crossed like those of the sonnet, to which is given the name of coplas de arte mayor, and which was a real improvement in Spanish poetry; as the rhythm of the Alexandrine verse, the measure used both by Bercéo and Lorenzo, was insufferable from its heaviness and monotony. Let us compare the coplas with which the book El Tesoro commences, with the stanzas alluded to.

The strange intelligence then reached my ears
That in the land of Egypt lived a man,
Who, wise of wit, subjected to his scan
The dark occurrences of uncome years:
He judged the stars, and by the moving spheres,
And aspects of the heavens, unveiled the dim
Face of futurity, which then to him
Appeared, as clear to us the past appears.
A yearning toward this sage inspired my pen
And tongue that instant, with humility
Descending from my height of majesty;
Such mastery has a strong desire o'er men:
My earnest prayers I wrote—I sent—with ten
My noblest envoys, loaded each apart
With gold and silver, which with all my heart,
I offered him, but the request was vain.
With much politeness the wise man replied,
'You, sire, are a great king, and I should be
Most glad to serve you, but in the rich fee
Of gold and gems I take no sort of pride:
Deign, then, yourself to use them; I abide
Content in more abundant wealth; and may
Your treasures profit you in every way
That I can wish, your servant.' I complied;
But sent the stateliest of my argosies,
Which reached, and from the Alexandrian port
Brought safe this cunning master to my court,
Who greeted me with all kind courtesies:
I, knowing well his great abilities,
And learning in the movement of the spheres,
Have highly honoured him these many years,
For honour is the birthright of the wise.

The two coplas with which the book of Las Querellas began, are altogether superior in style, harmony, and elegance.

'Cousin, friend, faithful vassal, all and each,
Diego Perez Sarmiento, thee
The ills which from my men adversity
Makes me conceal, do I intend to teach;
To thee who, far, alas! from friendship's reach,
Hast left thy lands for my concerns in Rome,
My pen flies; hearken to the words that come,
For mournfully it grieves in mortal speech.

How lonely lies the monarch of Castile,
Emperor of Germany that was! whose feet
Kings humbly kissed, and at whose mercy-seat
Queens asked for alms; he who in proud Seville
Maintained an army sheathed from head to heel,
Ten thousand horse and thrice ten thousand foot,
Whom distant nations did with fear salute,
Awed by his wisdom[A] and his sword of steel.'

There seems to be a century between verse and verse, between language and language; but what is yet more remarkable, to meet with coplas de arte mayor of equal merit, as well in diction as in cadence, we must overleap almost two centuries more, and look for them in Juan de Mena.[B]

If the impulse which this great king gave to letters had been continued by his successors, Spanish literature would not only be two centuries forwarder, but would have produced more works, and those more perfect. The ferocious character of the times did not allow it. The fire of civil war began to blaze in the last years of Alfonso, with the disobedience and rebellion of his son, and continued, almost without intermission, for a whole century, till it arrived at the last pass of atrocity and horror in the tempestuous and terrible reign of Pedro. The Castilians, during this unhappy period, seem to have had no spirit but for hatred, no arms but for destruction. How was it possible, amidst the agitation of such turbulent times, for the torch of genius to shine out tranquilly, or for the songs of the muses to be heard? Thus only a very scanty number of poets can be named as flourishing then: Juan Ruiz, archpriest of Hita; the Infante Don Juan Manuel, author of Conde Lucanór; the Jew, Don Santo; and Ayala, the historiographer. The verses of these writers are some of them lost, others exist wholly unedited, and those only of the archpriest of Hita have seen the light, which, fortunately, are the most worthy, perhaps, of being known. The subject of his poems is the history of his loves, interspersed with apologues, allegories, tales, satires, proverbs, and even devotions. This author surpassed all former writers; and but few of those by whom he was succeeded, excelled him in faculty of invention, in liveliness of fancy and talent, or in abundance of jests and wit; and if he had taken care to choose or to follow more determinate and fixed metres, and had his diction been less uncouth and cumbrous, this work would have been one of the most curious monuments of the Middle Age. But the uncouthness of the style makes the reading insufferable. Of his versification and manner, let the following verses serve as specimens, in which the poet begs of Venus to interpose her influence with a lady whom he loved, who was, according to his pencil,

"Of figure very graceful, with an amorous look, correct,
Sweet, lovely, full of frolic, mild, with mirth by prudence checked,
Caressing, courteous, lady-like, in wreathed smiles bedecked,
Whom every body looks upon with love and with respect.
Lady Venus, wife of Love, at thy footstool low I kneel,
Thou art the paramount desire of all, thy force all feel.
O Love! thou art the master of all creatures; all with zeal
Worship thee for their creator, or for sorrow or for weal.
Kings, dukes, and noble princes, every living thing that is,
Fear and serve thee for their being; oh, take not my vows amiss!
Fulfil my fair desires, give good fortune, give me bliss,
And be not niggard, shy, nor harsh; sweet Venus, grant me this!
I am so lost, so ruined, and so wounded by thy dart,
Which I carry close concealed and buried deep in my sad heart,
As not to dare reveal the wound; I dare not e'en impart
Her name; ere I forget her, may I perish with the smart!
I have lost my lively colour, and my mind is in decay;
I have neither strength nor spirits, I fall off both night and day;
My eyes are dim, they serve alone to lead my steps astray,
If thou do not give me comfort, I shall swoon and pass away."

Venus, amongst other counsels, says to him:—

"Tell all thy feelings without fear or being swayed by shame,
To every amorous-looking miss, to every gadding dame;
Amongst a thousand, thou wilt scarce find one that e'er will blame
Thine unembarrassed suit, nor laugh to scorn thy tender flame.
If the first wave of the rough sea, when it comes roaring near,
Should frighten the rude mariner, he ne'er would plough the clear
With his brass-beaked ship; then ne'er let the first word severe,
The first frown, or the first repulse, affright thee from thy dear.
By cunning hardest hearts grow soft, walled cities fall; with care
High trees are felled, grave weights are raised; by cunning many swear:
By cunning many perjured are, and fishes by the snare
Are taken under the green wave; then why shouldst thou despair?"

Other passages much more striking might be quoted; and amongst them the description of the power of money, which has a severity and freedom, of which it would be difficult to find examples in other writers of that time, either in or out of Spain, though the independent Dante were to enter into the comparison; or the facetious apology and praise of little women, which begins:

I wish to make my speeches suit the season,
Short; for I always liked, the more I read,
Short sermons, little ladies, a brief reason;
We fructify on little and well said, &c.[1]

But the examples already quoted will suffice for our assertion. Sometimes the poet, weary perhaps of monotony and heaviness, varies from the measure which he generally uses, and introduces another combination of rhymes in songs which he mingles with his narrative; as, for instance, the following:—

Near the vale's fresh fountain,
Having past the mountain,
I found relief, at play
Of the first beams of day.
I thought to die upon
The mountain summits lone,
With cold and hunger, lost
Mid glaciers, snows, and frost.
Beside the sparkling rill,
At foot of a small hill,
A shepherdess I met,—
I see her smiling yet:
Her cheeks made e'en the red
Ripe roses pale; I said
To her, 'Good morrow, sweet,
I worship at thy feet!' &c.

Don Tomas Antonio Sanchez has published the works of almost all the authors mentioned, with illustrations, excellent, as well for the notices given of them, as for the elucidation of the text, which the antiquity and rudeness of the language, and the errors of manuscripts, by their complication, obscured. There, as in an armoury, rest these venerable antiques, precious objects of curiosity for the learned, of investigation for the grammarian, of observation for the philosopher and historian, whilst the poet, without losing time in studying them, salutes them with respect, as the cradle of his language and his art.

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CHAPTER II.
OF SPANISH POETRY TO THE TIME OF GARCILASSO.

Both language and versification present themselves more fully formed and more vigorous, in the verses written by the poets of the fifteenth century; and this progress is matter of no surprise, if we attend to the multitude of circumstances which at that time concurred to favour poetry. The floral games, established at Tolosa in the middle of the former century, and introduced by the kings of Arragon into their states towards the conclusion of the same; the concourse of wits who contended for the prizes proposed at these solemnities; the ceremonies observed in them; the rank and consideration given to the art of song; the favour of princes; a more extended knowledge of ancient books; the light which now broke forth from all parts, and dispersed the dark mists of so many barbarous centuries; a growing acquaintance with Italy, which, with a happier and more mercurial genius, had been enlightened before the rest of Europe;—all contributed powerfully to the kind reception of this art, the first that becomes cultivated when nations approach their civilization. Thus, in casting our eyes upon the ancient Cancioneros wherein the poetry of this period was collected, the first thing that surprises us is the multitude of authors, and the second, their quality. Juan the Second, who found much pleasure in listening to their rhymes, and who occasionally rhymed himself, introduced this taste into his court, and thus all the grandees, in imitation of him, either protected or cultivated it. The Constable Don Alvaro made verses; the Duque de Arjona made verses; the celebrated D. Enrique de Villena made verses; the Marques de Santillana made verses; in fact, a hundred others more or less illustrious than they.

The form which had now been given to versification was much less imperfect than that of former ages. Coplas de arte mayor and octosyllabic verses prevailed over the tedious heaviness of the Alexandrine: their crossed rhymes struck upon the ear more delightfully, and stunned it not with the rude and heavy hammered sounds of the quadruplicate rhyme; whilst the poetic period, more clear and voluminous, came from time to time upon the spirit with some pretensions of elegance and grace. The writers of this period sweetened down a little the austere aspect which the art had hitherto presented, and abandoning the lengthy poems, devotional legends, and wearisome series of dry precepts and bald sentences, devoted themselves to subjects more proportioned to their powers, and the murmurs of the love-song and tone of the elegy were now most commonly felt upon their lips. Lastly, a more general reading of the Latin writers taught them sometimes the mode of imitation, and at others, furnished those allusions, similes, and ornaments, which served to embellish their verse.

Amongst the great number of poets which flourished then, the one that most excels all others for the talent, knowledge, and dignity of his writings, is Juan de Mena. He raised, in his Laberinto, the most interesting monument of Spanish poetry in that age, and with it left all cotemporary writers far behind him. The poet in this work is represented as designing to sing the vicissitudes of Fortune: whilst he dreads the difficulty of the attempt, Providence appears to him, introduces him into the palace of that divinity, and becomes his guide and tutor. There he beholds, first, the earth, of which he gives a geographical description, and afterwards the three grand wheels of Fortune, upon which revolve the present, past, and future times. Each wheel is composed of seven circles, allegorical symbols of the influence which the seven planets have upon the lot of men, in the inclinations which they give them; and in each circle are an innumerable multitude of people, who receive their temper and disposition from the planet to which the circle belongs; the chaste from the moon, the warlike from Mars, the wise from the sun, and so on of the rest. The wheel of time present is in motion, the other two at rest; whilst that of future time is covered with a veil, so that although forms and the images of men are apparent, they are but dimly distinguishable. The work, conceived upon this plan, naturally divides itself into seven divisions: and the poet in describing what he sees, or in conversing with Providence, paints all the important personages with whom he was acquainted; recounts their celebrated actions, assigns their causes, displays great information in history, mythology, natural, moral, and political philosophy, and deduces, from time to time, admirable precepts and maxims for the conduct of life, and the government of nations. Thus the Laberinto, far from being a collection of frivolous or insignificant coplas, where the most we have to look for is artifice of style and rhyme, must be regarded as the production of a man learned in all the compass of science which that epoch permitted, and as the depository of all that was then known.

If the invention of this picture, which, without doubt, is the product of a comprehensive and philosophical mind, had belonged exclusively to our poet, his merit would be infinitely greater, and we must have conceded to him, in a plan so noble, the gift of genius. But the terrible visions of Dante and the Trionfi of Petrarch being now known in Spain, the force of fancy necessary to create the plan and argument of the Laberinto, appears much less; Mena having done nothing more than imitate these writers, changing the situation of the scene in which he places his allegorical world. His sentiments are noble and grand, his views just and virtuous. We see him take advantage of his subject, and apostrophize therein the monarch of Castile, reminding him that his laws should not be like spiders' webs, but curb alike the strong and the weak: elsewhere he prays him to repress the horror of a practice that was then growing common, of poisonings between the closest connexions; now he is indignant at the barbarism which had burnt the books of D. Enrique de Villena;[C] and now he represents the slaughters and disorders in Castile, as a punishment for the repose in which the grandees were leaving the infidels, in order to attend solely to their own ambition and avarice.

Juan de Mena expresses himself generally with more fire and energy than delicacy and grace; his course is unequal; his verses at times are bold and resonant, at others, they grow weak for want of cadence and metre; his style, animated, vivid, and natural at times, occasionally borders on the turgid and the trivial: language, in fine, in his hands is a slave that he holds but to obey him, and follow willingly or by compulsion the impulse which the poet gives it. No one has manifested, in this way, either greater boldness or loftier pretension; he suppresses syllables, modifies phrases at his will, lengthens or contracts words at his pleasure, and when he does not find in his own language the expressions, or modes of expression, which he wants, he sets himself to search for them in the Latin, the French, the Italian, in short, where he can. Spanish idiom not being yet finished in its formation, gave occasion and opportunity for these licenses,—licenses which would have been converted into privileges of poetic language, if the talents of this writer had been greater, and his reputation more permanent. The poets of the following age, whilst polishing the harshnesses of diction, and making an innovation in the metres and subjects of their compositions, did not preserve the noble freedom and acquisitions which their predecessors had gained in favour of the tongue. Had they followed their example in this, the Castilian language, and, above all, the language of its poetry, so harmonious, so various, so elegant and majestic, would have had no cause to envy the richness and flexibility of any other. The Laberinto has met with the fate of all works which, departing from the common sphere, form epochs in an art. It has been several times printed and reprinted: many have imitated it, and some respectable critics have written commentaries on it, and, amongst them, Brocensis. Thus it has been transmitted to us: if it has not been read throughout with delight, from the rudeness of the language and monotony of the versification, it has at least been dipped into with pleasure, occasionally quoted, and always mentioned with esteem. The author would have conciliated greater respect, if, when he imposed on himself the task of writing on the events of the day, he had removed at a distance from the tumults and intrigues which were then passing in Castile. This would have been the way both to see them better, and to judge of them with greater freedom. Juan de Mena took upon himself a duty which a courtier could not satisfactorily fulfil; and his vigorous spirit, employing but half its power in regard to circumstances, was left far below the dignity and eminence to which, with greater boldness, it could easily have attained.

The other most distinguished poets of this century were the Marques de Santillana, one of the most generous and valiant knights that adorned it, a learned man, and an easy and sweet love poet, just and serious in sentiment; Jorge Manrique, who flourished after, and who, in his coplas on the death of his father, left a fragment of poetry, the most regular and purely written of that time; Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, who wrote verses with much fire and vivacity; and, lastly, Macías, anterior to them all, the author of only four songs, but who will never be forgotten for his amours and melancholy death.[D]

Whoever looks in the old Cancioneros for a poetry constantly animated, interesting, and agreeable, will be disappointed. After perusing one or two pieces, wherein indulgence towards the writer supplies their frequent want of merit, the book drops from our hands, and we have little inclination to stoop to resume it. It is true that we often meet with an ingenious thought, an apposite image, and a stanza well constructed; but it is equally true, that we stumble, at the same instant, upon ideas puerile, mean, and trivial, upon uncouth verses, and indeterminate rhymes. The writer is seen to struggle with the rudeness of the language, as well as with the heaviness of the versification, and, in spite of all the efforts he makes, entirely overcome by the difficulty, he neither strikes out true expression nor elegant harmony. They knew, and they handled Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and other ancient poets; but if occasionally they subjected them to their service with propriety, they more frequently drew from those sources incoherent allusions, and a learning that degenerated into inapposite and puerile pedantry.[E] They did not succeed in imitating either the simplicity of their plans, or the admirable art with which, in their compositions, they knew how to unfold a thought with vigour, and to sustain and graduate the effect from first to last. Finally,—their verses, though more tolerable than those of a more ancient period, have the great disadvantage of monotony, and inability to accommodate themselves to the variety, elevation, and grandeur which the poetic period ought to possess in correspondence with the images, affections, and sentiments it developes.

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CHAPTER III.
FROM GARCILASSO TO THE ARGENSÓLAS.

To Juan Boscán is generally attributed the introduction into Spanish poetry of endecasyllables, and Italian measures. Andreas Navagero, ambassador of Venice to the court of Spain, recommended to Boscán this novelty, which, begun by him, and followed by Garcilasso, Mendoza, Acuña, Cetina, and other fine spirits, effected an entire change in the art. Not that endecasyllabic verse was unknown in Castile before. There are some specimens of it in the Conde Lucanór, written in the fourteenth century; and the Marques de Santillana in the fifteenth, composed many sonnets in the mode of the Italians. But these essays had not obtained consequence, and it was only in the time of Boscán that the poets generally devoted themselves to this species of versification. And herein, if rightly I judge, the intimate relation that now subsisted between the two nations had more influence than the authority of a second-rate poet like Boscán; it is, notwithstanding, without dispute much to his glory to have been the author of so happy a revolution, and to have contributed by his example and his talents to its establishment.

But those who were sufficiently satisfied with the old versification, instantly rose in clamour against the innovation, and treated its favourers as guilty of treason against poetry and their country. At the head of these, Christoval de Castillejo, in the satires which he wrote against the Petrarquistas (for so he called them) compared this novelty to that which Luther was then introducing in religion, and making Boscán and Garcilasso appear in the other world before the tribunal of Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other troubadours of earlier time, he puts into their mouth the judgment and condemnation of the new metres. To this end he supposes that Boscán repeats a sonnet, and Garcilasso an octave, before their judges, and presently adds:

"Juan de Mena, when he through
Had heard the polished stanza new,
Looked most amused, and smiled as though
He knew this secret long ago;
Then said: 'I now have heard rehearse
This endecasyllabic verse,
Yet can I see no reason why
It should be called a novelty,
When I, long laid upon the shelf,
Oft used the very same myself.'
Don Jorge said: 'I do not see
The most remote necessity
To dress up what we wish to say
In such a roundabout fine way;
Our language, every body knows,
Loves a clear brevity, but those
Strange stanzas show, in its despite,
Prolixity obscure as night.'
Cartagena then raised his head
From laughing inwardly, and said:
'As practical for sweet amours,
These self-opinioned troubadours,
With force of their new-fangled flame
Will not, it strikes me, gain the game.
Wondrously pitiful this measure
Is in my eyes,—a foe to pleasure,
Dull to repeat as Luther's creed,
But most insufferable to read!'"

If Juan de Mena and Manrique could then have manifested any regret, it would have been for not having had the new versification established when they wrote. The fiery and daring genius of the one, the grave and sedate spirit of the other, would have found for the expression of their thoughts and pictures, a fit instrument in endecasyllabic verse. They would instantly have known that the coplas de arte mayor, reduced to their elements, were one continued and wearying combination of verses of six syllables; that the rhymed octosyllabics serve rather for the epigram and the madrigal than for sublime poetry, and that coplas de piè quebrado,[F] essentially opposed to all harmony and pleasure, ought not to be defended. This Castillejo could not know; he wrote indeed the Castilian language with propriety, facility, and purity; but the inspiration, the invention, sublime and animated imagery, force of thought, warmth of emotion, variety, harmony,—all these qualities, without which, or without many of which, no one can be considered a poet—all were wanting in him. Hence it is nothing extraordinary, that, entrenched in his coplas, all sufficient for the acute and ingenious thoughts in which he abounds, he perceived not the need that Spanish poetry had for the new versification to issue from its infancy. The latter had more freedom and ease, gave opportunity to vary the pauses and cesuras; and the variety of combinations of which long and short verses are capable, supplied a flexible instrument for the various purposes of imitation. Such were the advantages gained by the new system, and they were all recognised by the new geniuses who adopted it; but it was an exact touchstone of the quality of a poet, and Castillejo, finding it a rigorous one, would not hold with it. This circumstance was of much more consequence to the dispute than at first sight appears; for though there had not been the great difference which there was between the two metres, that party would have borne away the palm, which could have produced in its favour the most, and the most agreeable verses and compositions. In this point of view, the single talent of Garcilasso should diminish and reduce to nothing, as he did, all the partisans of the Copla. A thing truly extraordinary, not to say admirable! A youth who died at the age of thirty-three, devoted to the bearing of arms, without any regular studies, with only his native genius, assisted by application and good taste, drew Spanish poetry suddenly forth from its infancy, guided it happily by the footsteps of the ancients, and of the most celebrated moderns then known; and coming into rivalry with each in turn, adorned it with graces and appropriate sentiments, and taught it to speak a language, pure, harmonious, sweet, and elegant! His genius, more delicate and tender than strong and sublime, inclined him by preference to the sweet images of the country, and to the native sentiments of the eclogue and elegy. He had a vivid and pleasing fancy, a mode of thought noble and decorous, an exquisite sensibility; and this happy natural disposition, assisted by the study of the ancients, and intercourse with the Italians, produced those compositions which, though so few, conciliated for him instantly an estimation and a respect, which succeeding ages have not ceased to confirm.

There are some who wish that he had given himself up more fully to his own ideas and sentiments; that, studying the ancients with equal devotedness, he had not allowed himself to be led away so much by the taste of translating them; that he had not abandoned the images and emotions which his own fine talent could suggest, for the images and emotions of others; that, as for the most part he is a model of purity and elegance, he had caused some traces which he keeps of antique rudeness and negligence to disappear; they wish, lastly, that the disposition of his eclogues had preserved more unity and connexion between the persons and the objects introduced in them. But these defects cannot counterbalance the many beauties which his poetry contains, and it is a privilege allowed to all that open a new path, to err without any great diminution of their glory. Garcilasso is the first that gave to Spanish poetry wings, gentility, and grace; and for this was needed, beyond all comparison, more talent, than to avoid the errors into which his youth, his course of life, and the imperfection of human powers, caused him to fall.

To the supreme endowments which he possesses as a poet, is added that of being the Castilian writer who managed in those times the language with the most propriety and success. Many words and phrases of his cotemporaries have grown old and disappeared: the language of Garcilasso, on the contrary, if we except some Italianisms, which his constant intercourse with that nation caused him to contract, is still alive and flourishing, and there is scarcely one of his modes of speech which cannot be appropriately used at the present day.

So many kinds of merit, united in a single man, excited the admiration of his age, which instantly gave him the title of the Prince of Castilian poets—foreigners call him the Spanish Petrarch; three celebrated writers have illustrated and written comments on him; he has been printed times innumerable, and all parties and poetical sects have respected him. His beautiful passages pass from lip to lip with all who relish tender thoughts and soothing images; and if not the greatest Castilian poet, he is at least the most classical, and the one that has conciliated the most votes and praises, who has maintained this his reputation the most inviolate, and who will probably never perish whilst Castilian language and Castilian poetry endure.

The impulse given by Garcilasso was followed by the other geniuses of his time; by D. Hernando de Acuña, Gutierre de Cetina, D. Luis de Haro, D. Diego de Mendoza, and a few others, but all very unequal to him: and to meet with a writer in whom the art made any progress, we must look for him in Fray Luis de Leon. This most learned man, versed in every kind of erudition, familiar with the ancient languages, connected by ties of friendship with all the learned of his time, was one of those writers to whom the Spanish language has owed most, for the nerve and propriety with which he wrote it; and as the one who gave to its poetry a character hitherto unknown. The songs and sonnets of Garcilasso were written in the elegiac and sentimental tone of Petrarch, and his Flor de Gnido was the only one of his compositions in which he approaches near to the character of ancient lyric poetry. Luis de Leon, full of Horace, whom he was constantly studying, took from him the march, the enthusiasm, and the fire of the ode; and in a diction natural and without ornament, he knew how to assume elevation, force, and majesty. His profession and his genius inclined him more to the moral lyric than to the epic, yet his Profecía del Tajo[2] shows what he could have accomplished in this; in that he has left some excellent odes, which very nearly approach, if they do not equal, the models which he proposed to himself for imitation. His principal merit and character in them, is that of producing majestic and forcible thoughts, grand images, and sententious maxims, without effort, and with the greatest simplicity. His style and diction are animated, pure, and copious, as though they gushed from a rich and crystal spring. He is not so fortunate in his versification; although sweet, fluent, and graceful, his verse wants stateliness, and fails not unfrequently from want of harmony and fulness. With this defect must be named another, greater yet in my estimation, which is, that no one shows less poetry when the heat abandons him: languid then and prosaic, he neither touches, nor moves, nor elevates; the merit remains alone of his diction and style, which are always sound and pure, even when they preserve neither life nor colour.

To this same epoch belongs, in my opinion, the poetry of Francisco de la Torre, published by Quevedo in 1631. No one doubted then that these were the works of a poet anterior to the editor; but in these later days, a gentleman of much merit, D. Luis Velasquez, reprinted them with a preliminary discourse, wherein he assures us they were the production of Quevedo, who wished to publish his amatory verses under a feigned name. The absolute ignorance that existed of the quality and particulars of this Francisco de la Torre; the example of Lope de Vega, who published, under the name of Burguillos, poetry known to be his own; the similarity of style which Velasquez thought he saw between these verses and those of Quevedo, with other less important reasons, were the foundation of this opinion, which at that time was followed without any contradiction.

But these proofs not only pass for mere conjectures, but being moreover unconfirmed by any positive fact, vanish the instant we examine the nature and character of the poetry. He who might not know how to distinguish the verses of Quevedo from those of Garcilasso, or any other poet of the former age, could alone confound Francisco de la Torre with him. Verses gleaned from the works of both writers, drawn from their places, and jumbled together, are not proof sufficient of similarity; nor, even taken in this manner, will they, if they are well examined, show the similarity so well as is supposed. To know if the poetry of Francisco de la Torre be, or be not that of Quevedo, it is absolutely necessary, after reading the former, to seek out in the Erato or Euterpe of the latter, the verses which he there gives for pastoral poetry: it is then that the vast difference which subsists between them becomes palpable; whether we examine the diction, the style, the verses, the images, or nature of the composition. It is not possible to mistake them, as it is impossible ever to confound women that are naturally beautiful with those who torture themselves to appear so.[G]

In fact, these poems of Francisco de la Torre are the most exquisite of the fruits which the Parnassus of Spain had then produced. All of them pastorals, his images, his thoughts, and his style, detract nothing from this character, but preserve the most rigorous keeping with it. His most eminent qualities are simplicity of expression, the liveliness and tenderness of his emotions, the luxury and smiling amenity of his fancy. No Castilian poet has known how to draw from rural objects so many tender and melancholy sentiments: a turtle-dove, a hind, an oak thrown down, a fallen ivy, strike him, agitate him, and excite his tenderness and enthusiasm. The imitations of the ancients, in which his poems abound, are recast so naturally in his character and style, as to be entirely identified with him. It is a pity that to the purity of his language was not added greater study of elegance, which suffers at times from trivial words and prosaic expressions. At times, also, the diction becomes obscure from dislocations and omissions of expression, the results perhaps of negligence, and a corruption of the manuscript. Lastly, we miss in his eclogues variety, knowledge of the art of dialogue, and opposition and contrast in his situations and interlocutors: the poet who paints and feels with so much delicacy and fire when he speaks for himself, does not succeed in making others speak, and loses himself in uniform and prolix descriptions, which at last weary and grow tiresome.

Hitherto poetry preserved the natural graces and simplicity which it had caught from Garcilasso; and Luis de Leon had succeeded in giving it some sublimity and grandeur: Francisco de la Torre inclined more to subjects that require a middle style, such as those which rural nature presents. He had ornaments of taste, but without ostentation or wealth, and his language was more pure and graceful than brilliant and majestic. The best supporters of this style were Francisco de Figueroa, who in his eclogue of Tirsi gave the first example of good blank verse in Spanish; Jorge de Montemayor, who, with his Diana, introduced the taste and love of pastoral novels; and Gil Polo, one of his imitators, who, less happy than he in invention, had much the advantage of him in versification, and almost arrived at the point of throwing him into the shade. But, passing from these writers to the Andalusians[H], the art will now be seen to take a change in taste, to assume a tone more lofty and vehement, to enrich and adorn the diction, and to manifest the intention of surprising and ravishing; in short, to aspire to the mens divinior atque os magna soniturum, by which Horace characterises true poetry.

At the head of these authors must indisputably be named Fernando de Herrera, a man to whom poetic elocution owes more than to any other. His genius was equal to his industry; and, familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he devoted himself to the imitation of the great writers of antiquity, to form a poetic language which might compete in pomp and wealth with that which they used in their verses. He was not, it is true, circumstanced like Juan de Mena; he had not the license to suppress syllables, syncopate phrases, or change terminations. This physical part of the language was now fixed by Garcilasso and his imitators, and could not suffer alteration. But the picturesque part might, and in fact, did receive from him great improvements: he made much use of the compound epithets that already existed, he introduced other new ones, he re-established many forgotten adjectives, to which he imparted new strength and freshness by the fitness with which he applied them, and used in fine more phrases and modes of speech distinct from usual and common language than any other poet. To this careful attention, he added another quality, not less essential, that of painting to the ear by means of imitative harmony, making the sounds bear analogy with the image. He breaks them; he suspends them; he drags them wearily along, he precipitates them at a stroke; he rubs them into roughness, he touches them into mildness;—in short, they sometimes roll fluently and easily along, at others they pierce the ear with a calm and quiet melody. These effects, which the verses of Herrera produce by the mechanism of their language, distinguish them from prose in such a manner, that though they may be broken up, and lose their measure and cadence, they still preserve the picturesque and poetic character which the poet stamped upon them.

If from the exterior forms we pass to the essential qualities, it may be said that no one surpasses Herrera in force and boldness of imagination, very few in warmth and vivacity of emotion, and none even equal him, if we except Rioja, in dignity and decorum. The greater part of his poems consists of elegies, songs, and sonnets, in the taste of Petrarch. It was Petrarch who first, deviating from the manner in which the ancients painted love, gave to this passion a tone more ideal and sublime. He refined it from the weakness of the senses, converting it into a species of religion; and reduced its activity to be constantly admiring and adoring the perfections of the object beloved, to please itself with its pains and martyrdom, and to reckon its sacrifices and privations as so many other pleasures. Herrera having, throughout his life, a passion for the Countess of Gelves, gave to his love the heroism of Platonic affection; and under the titles of Light, Sun, Star, Eliodora, consecrated to her a passion fiery, tender, and constant, but accompanied by so much respect and decorum, that her modesty could not be alarmed, nor her virtue offended. In all the verses which he devoted to this lady, there is more veneration and self-denial, than hope and desire. This taste has the inconvenience of running into metaphysics nothing intelligible, into a distillation of pains, griefs, and martyrdoms, very distant from truth and nature, and which, consequently, neither interests nor affects. To this error, which may occasionally be remarked in Herrera, must be added that his diction, too much studied and refined, offends, almost always, by affectation, and not seldom by obscurity. The style and language of love must flow more easy and unencumbered, to be graceful and delicate. Thus Herrera, who, no doubt, loved with vehemence and tenderness, seems, in uttering his sentiments, to be more engaged about the manner of expressing them, than with the desire of interesting by them; and to this cause must be attributed, that, of the Spanish poets, he is the one whose love-verses are the least calculated to pass from lip to lip, and from nation to nation.

But the composition in which this rich poetic diction shines equally with his ardent and vigorous imagination, is the elevated Ode, which Herrera, a happy imitator of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin poetry, knew how to fill with his fire, and thus to become the rival of the ancients. Lyric poetry, in its origin, was very distant from the range of ordinary ideas. The poet, possessed by an afflatus which it was not in his power either to moderate or to rule, chanted his verses before the altars of the temples, in the public theatres, at the head of armies, in grand national solemnities. The genius that inspired him caused him then to take flight to other regions, and to see things hidden from the ken of common mortals. Thence, in a language of fire, and through all their wonderful circumstances, in grand and forcible addresses to the people, he made Truth descend from on high, he opened the gates of destiny, and announced the future; tuned hymns of gratitude and praise to gods and heroes; or, filling with patriotic and martial fury armed squadrons, called them on to battle and to victory. In this situation of things, the lyric poet should not appear a mortal like the rest of mankind; his agitation, his language, the numbers to which he reduced it, the music with which he sang it, the boldness of his figures, the grandeur of his conceptions,—all should concur to the consideration of him, in these moments of enthusiasm, as a supernatural being, an interpreter of the Divinity, a sibyl, and a prophet.

Such, in ancient times, was the character of the ode; which modern nations have since introduced into their poetry with more or less success. But, stript of the accompaniment of song, and removed from solemnities and numerous assemblages, it has been but a weak reflection of the first inspiration. The modern poets of Spain have thought that, to restore it to the exalted and divine character which it held at its origin, it was necessary to transplant it again to the regions whence it sprung, and to fill it with antique ideas, images, and even phrases. Herrera was the first that thought so. Horace would have adopted with pleasure his ode to Don Juan of Austria; his hymn on the battle of Lepanto breathes throughout the most fervent enthusiasm, and is adorned with the rich images and daring phrases that characterise Hebrew poetry; whilst the elegiac cancion to King Don Sebastian, animated with the same spirit as the hymn, but much more beautiful, is full of the melancholy and agitation which that unhappy catastrophe should produce on a vivid imagination. Even in songs, little interesting in their subject and composition, are found flights daring and worthy of Pindar. So absolutely superior to all others is his assiduous attention to diction and the poetry of style, that never can three of his verses be possibly mistaken for those of any other poet. The following passage may serve as a specimen here, extracted from his song to San Fernando, which is not one of the best.

"The sacred Betis strewed the wavy shore
With purple flowers, fine emeralds, golden ore,
And tender pearls; toward heaven he raised his head,
Adorned with grasses, reeds, and corals red;
Spread o'er the sands the moving glass that shot
Capricious lustres round his shadowy grot;
Then stretched his humid horns, increasing so
His affluent floods, dilated in their flow;—
Swift roll his billows, murmuring, pure, and cool,
And into ocean far extend his rule."

Lope de Vega, quoting these verses as a model of poetic elevation, so opposite to the extravagances of Purism,[I] exclaimed with enthusiasm, "Here no language exceeds our own; no, not the Greek nor the Latin. Fernando de Herrera is never out of my sight."

His countrymen gave him the surname of Divine; and of all the Castilian poets on whom that title has been bestowed, none deserved it but he. In spite of this glory, and the praises of Lope, his style and principles of composition had then but few imitators; nor, till the re-establishment of good taste in our own times, has the eminent merit of his poetry, and the necessity of following his steps to elevate the poetic above the vulgar language, been properly appreciated. Don Juan de Arguijo imitated him in his sonnets, a little curtailing the style of that excessive ornament which sparkles in Herrera; but the poet who improved infinitely upon Arguijo was Francisco de Rioja, a Sevillian like the other two, and a disciple of the same school, although he flourished several years afterwards.

Equal in talent to Herrera, and superior in taste, Rioja would, doubtless, have fixed the true limits between the language of poetry and prose, if he had written more, or if his compositions had but been preserved. How is it possible that a man of so great a genius, and who lived so many years, should have written no more than one ode, one epistle, thirteen silvas, and as many sonnets? It is easier to believe that his writings were lost in the different vicissitudes which his life sustained, or that they lie forgotten with the many other literary monuments which, in Spain, wrestle still with dust and worms. The few that he has left are sufficient, notwithstanding, to give us an idea of his poetic character, superior to others for nobleness and chasteness of phrase, for novelty and choice of subject, for the force and vehemence of his enthusiasm and fancy, and for the excellency of a style always pure without affectation, elegant without superfluity, without tumidity magnificent, and adorned and rich without ostentation or excess. A merit which particularly distinguishes him is the happy success with which he constructs his periods, which neither grow dull from brevity, nor cumbrous from prolixity; a great and frequent defect amongst the poets of Spain, whose sentences, ill distributed, fatigue the voice when recited. I am well aware that, even in these few compositions, there are traces of that prosing which marked the poets of the sixteenth century, and of the tinsel of the following one; but, besides that these are very rare, it should be kept in mind that he neither polished nor arranged his verses for publication; a circumstance that would sufficiently excuse yet greater errors. But whatever importance may be attributed to such defects, none will be able to deprive the delicate Silvas to the flowers, the magnificent ode on the ruins of Italica, and the almost perfect moral epistle to Fabio, of the foremost rank which they enjoy amongst the poetical treasures of Spain.

To the last third division of the sixteenth century belong other poets, celebrated then, but of a merit and order very inferior to those already named:—Juan de la Cueva, who more properly belongs to the history of comedy, is considered amongst its first corrupters; Vicente Espinel, to whom music owes the introduction of the fifth chord in the guitar, and poetry the combination of rhymes in octosyllabic verses, to which was then given the name of espinela, but which are now better known under that of decima; Luis Barahona de Soto, author of Las Lagrimas de Angelica, a poem very celebrated then, and read by no one now; Pablo de Cespedes, sculptor, painter, and poet, in whose didactic poem on Painting breathes, at times, the vigorous and picturesque style of Virgil; Pedro de Padilla, whom some esteemed highly for his pure diction and fluent versification, but poor of fancy and fire; and lastly, others less noted, who cultivated the art, and who, if they did not obtain a great reputation in it, contributed with the rest to give to verse and style more ease, harmony, and copiousness.

---

CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE ARGENSÓLAS AND OTHER POETS TO GONGÓRA.

None of the authors of this time equalled the Argensólas in severity of sentiment, facility of rhyme, or correctness and propriety of language. They are so paramount in this last quality, that Lope de Vega says of them, that they came to Castile from Arragon to teach the Castilian language. Their learning, the dignity of their maxims, their connexions, and the great protection extended to them by the Count de Lemus, were the causes of that kind of sovereignty which they exercised over their cotemporaries, and of that authority recognised and confirmed by the praises that were lavished on them from all quarters. They have been entitled the Horaces of Spain, and have ever been regarded as poets of the first rank, preserving a reputation almost as inviolate as Garcilasso himself.

Without intending to diminish the just esteem which is their due, or to contend with their many admirers, we may observe, that their fame appears to us much greater than their merit; and that if language owes them much for the exact attention and propriety with which they wrote it, poetry is indebted to them less, and that their reputation appears to rest more on their freedom from the vices, than on any great display of the virtues of composition. In lyric poetry they are easy, pure, and ingenious; but generally devoid of enthusiasm, majesty, and fancy. As little have they in their love pieces the grace and tenderness which erotic poetry requires; and if we except some sonnets of Lupercio, not one of their compositions in this class can be quoted as deserving to arrest the attention, or be recommended to the memory of lovers. I will not speak of the Isabella and the Alexandra, as it is evident to all, even without the necessity of a profound acquaintance with the subject, that these compositions have nothing of the tragedy in them but the name, and the coolly atrocious deaths with which they end. Their severe character, the bias of their disposition, more ingenious and neat than florid and expansive, the wit and mirth which at times they knew how to fling forth, were more fit for moral and satiric poetry, in which they have succeeded best. There are in them an infinite number of strokes, some valuable for their depth and boldness, and many for that ingenuity of thought, that facility and propriety of expression, which has rendered them proverbial.

"Well say the vulgar, that the man's an ass,
Who, having his own villa roofed with glass,
Wreaks or his hate or spleen, from all aloof,
In flinging stones upon his neighbour's roof.
*****
The grave authority of gold,
Never provoked by harsh asperity,
Because it never heard a harsh reply.
*****
The nuptial bed your industry profanes
With lawless tires, and even the cradle stains;
Into the winepress throws, ere half matured,
The virgin grapes; delay is not endured;
Picks locks, breaks bars, climbs walls however steep,
And drugs the total family with sleep.
*****
So the genteel adult'ress, on her charms
Relying, with feigned warmth and false alarms,
Stands sure of her soothed consort; now she faints,
Now, agitated, pours forth wild complaints;
From her disloyal bosom breathes deep sighs,
And for a flood of tears prepares her eyes;
Storms at the servants for their lawful zeal,
And acts the indignant rage she does not feel:
Her honest husband, credulous, beholds,
And growing tenderer as she louder scolds,
Gives useless satisfaction to his wife,
Embraces, kneels to her to end the strife,
Drinks with warm kiss the atrocious tears that rise
To his dear Portia's well commanded eyes:
But, though her protestations more renew,
Her escritoire will tell thee if they are true;
Search but the desk, and, gracious Gods! what schemes
Must be found out, in what perfidious reams!
*****
And if the jug's of plate, engraved with cost,
Or with a Satyr's laughing face embossed,
'Twill more, forsooth, assuage thy thirst than e'er
Did the plain jug of horrid earthenware!
When from plain vessels, filled with water pure,
I wet the thirsty lip, I drink secure:
Say, would a vase whereon rich sculptures live,
Filled in a palace, like assurance give?
No! the Greek tyrants for their guests of old,
Mixed poison always in a vase of gold."

These passages, extracted from various satires of Bartolomé, and many others of equal or superior merit, which might be quoted as well from him as from Lupercio, prove their happy genius for this kind of poetry. They have been compared to Horace, and undoubtedly bear most similarity to him, notwithstanding the preference that Bartolomé gave to Juvenal.[J] But at what a distance do they stand from him! The vivacity, the freedom, the variety, the conciseness, the exquisite and delicate mixture of praise and censure, the amiable disdain, and spirit of friendship, which enchant and despond in that ancient model, are all wanting in them, and condemn the excessive condescension or want of taste which led their cotemporaries to give them the title of Horaces. Facility of rhyming led them to string tercetos together without end, in which, if we meet with no unnecessary words, we find plenty of unnecessary thoughts. This causes their satires and epistles frequently to appear prolix, and even at times wearisome. Horace would have counselled Lupercio to shorten the introduction of his satire on the Marquesilla, and many of the tales that occur in it; and Bartolomé to suppress, in his fable of the Eagle and Swallow, the long enumeration of birds, useless and unseasonable for a poet, superficial and scanty for a naturalist; he would have reminded both, in short, that strokes of satire, like arrows, should carry feathers and fly, to wound with certainty and force. It is painful, on the other hand, to find that they never leave the tone of ill-temper and suspicion which they once assume; and that neither indignation against vice, nor friendship, nor admiration, can draw from them one warm sentiment or gleam of enthusiasm. We choose friends amongst the authors we read, as amongst the men we have to deal with: I confess that I am not for those poets who, to judge by their verses, never appear to have loved nor esteemed any body.

Villegas was a disciple of the younger Argensóla, and if to the native talent he had joined some portion of the judgment and good sense of his master, he would have left nothing to desire in the department which he cultivated. He was the first that introduced Anacreontics in Spanish poetry, and, in spite of their defects, his Cantilenas and Monostrophes are read with delight, and remain imprinted on the minds of youth. The cause of this is, that there is vivacity in them, playfulness, grace, and cadence, which are the qualities that characterise this class of compositions, charming alike the imagination and the ear. His longer verses have not had equal success, because their ease, their harmony, and learning, do not compensate for the dissatisfaction caused by affectation, pedantry, and want of enthusiasm, for the violent transpositions, vicious modes of speech, and, lastly, the ringing changes and puerile antitheses in which they abound.[K]

He attempted another innovation, which required for its establishment greater powers than his. He set himself to compose Castilian sapphics, hexameters, and distichs; and although the specimens he published are not altogether unsuccessful, especially the sapphic, from its analogy to endecasyllabic verse,[L] he has had no successor in this enterprise. The hexameter demands a prosody more determinate and fixed than the Spanish language possesses, to satisfy the ear; and therefore the imitation of it is so much the more difficult, not to say impossible. He would, doubtless, however, have enriched the art by establishing this novelty, had it not been necessary, for this purpose, that the art were then in its infancy, in order that the docile and flexible language might accommodate itself to the will of the poet, and had he been the colossal genius that could subjugate others, and dictate to them a law of like versification. It was an unfortunate time to introduce fresh measures, when the fine endecasyllabics of Garcilasso, Leon, and Herrera were known, and when the consistency and fixedness of the language and poetry did not permit them to retrocede to their infancy, which was absolutely necessary to exercise them in the manège of Latin versification.

The reputation of this poet did not then correspond to the proud hopes he cherished when he published his book. In this, he insulted Cervantes, scoffed at Góngora, jested with Lope de Vega; and, fancying himself some superior star about to eclipse his cotemporaries, he represented himself at the head of his Eroticas, as a rising sun extinguishing the stars with its rays, and raised the arrogant note,—Sicut sol matutinus: me surgente, quid istæ? Even if he had united in himself the talents of Horace, Pindar, and Anacreon, in all their extent and purity, from which he was yet far distant, this would have been an unpardonable boast, which not even his youth could excuse. The public is always greater than any writer, how great soever he may be; and it is necessary for him to present himself before it with modesty, unless he wishes to pass for a madman or a fool. Villegas, after impertinently irritating his equals, caused no sensation on the public, but attracted the rude and biting sarcasms of Góngora, and the just and moderate reprehension of Lope.[M] He was consigned to oblivion till the appearance of the Parnaso Español, in which collection he had an eminent place; from that time, he was again printed, with a prefatory discourse, in which Don Vincente de los Rios, a man of vast learning and exquisite taste, but on this occasion too good-natured, assigned to him the palm of lyric poetry, which no subsequent critic has confirmed.

The Spanish poets had cultivated up to this time almost every species of Italian versification. The harmonious and rounded octave, the exact and laborious terza, the artificial sonnet, the trifling sextine, the canzone in its infinite combinations, and blank verse, although for the most part extremely ill managed[N]—were the forms of all their compositions, which came to be reflections, more or less luminous, of ancient, and of Tuscan poetry. Some coplas and trobas were made, though very few, in which the taste prior to Garcilasso prevailed; but when the use of the asonante[O] became general in the last third division of this sixteenth century, the taste and inclination for Romances became equally in vogue, and in them were continued, and, as it were, perpetuated, the old Castilian poesies.

Utterly stript of the complexity and force, to which imitation in other kinds of writing obliged them to have recourse, their authors little caring for a resemblance with the odes of Horace, or the canzone of Petrarch, and composing them more happily by instinct than by art, the Romances could not have the pomp and loftiness of the odes of Leon, Herrera, and Rioja. Yet were they peculiarly the lyric poetry of Spain: in them music employed its accents; they were heard at night in the halls and gardens to the sound of the harp or guitar; they served as the vehicle and the incentive of love, as well as shafts for satire and revenge; they painted most happily Moorish customs and pastoral manners, and preserved in the memory of the vulgar the prowess of the Cid and other champions. In fine, more flexible than other kinds of composition, they accommodated themselves to all kinds of subjects, made use of a language rich and natural, clothed themselves with a mezzo-tinto soft and sweet, and presented on every hand that facility and freshness which rise from originality, and which flow without effort and without study.

There are in them more fine and energetic expressions, more delicate and ingenious passages, than in the whole range of Spanish poetry besides. The Morisco ballads, in particular, are written with a vigour and a sprightliness of style that absolutely enchant. Those customs in which prowess and love are so beautifully blended, those Moors so gallant and so tender, that so romantic and delicious country, those names so sweet and so sonorous, each and all contribute to give novelty and poetry to the compositions wherein they are portrayed. The poets afterwards grew weary of disguising gallantries under the Morisco dress, and had recourse to the pastoral. Then to challenges, tournaments, and devices, succeeded green meads, brooks, flowers, and ciphers carved on trees; and what the Romances lost in vigour by the change, they gained in sweetness and simplicity.

The invention in both kinds was beautiful, and it is wonderful to see with how little effort, and with what conciseness, they describe the scenery, the hero, and the feelings that agitate him. Now, it is the alcayde of Molina, who, entering the town, alarms the Moors by the report that the Christians are ravaging their fields; now, it is the unfortunate Aliatar, borne bloody and lifeless to his grave in melancholy pomp through the very gate whence the day before he was seen to issue, full of gaiety and life: there it is a simple beauty, who having lost her earrings, the keepsake of her lover, is in great affliction, dreading the reproaches that await her; and here it is the solitary and rejected shepherd, who, indignant at the sight of two turtles billing in a poplar, scares them away with stones.

The defects of these compositions spring from the same source as their beauties, or, to speak more correctly, are the excess or abuse of those very beauties. Their facility and freedom often degenerated into negligence and slovenliness, their ingenuity into affectation; puns, conceits, and false ornaments were introduced with so much the more liberty, as they more assisted those flights of gallantry which passed for refinements of speech, and as they appeared more excusable in works written merely for self-amusement. The principal authors of this poetry cannot be decidedly ascertained; but the golden epoch of the Romances was before Lope de Vega, Liaño, and a thousand others, not even remembered, introduced the bad taste which afterwards corrupted the whole literature of Spain; it comprises the youth of Góngora and Quevedo, and terminates in the Prince de Esquilache, the only one after them that succeeded in giving to the Romances the colouring, grace, and lightness, which they formerly possessed. But this taste, if on the one hand it tended to popularize poetry, to give it greater ease and sweetness, and to remove it from the bounds of imitation, to which former poets had restricted it, had an equal influence in making it incorrect and careless, the same facility of composition inviting to this looseness. Thus it is that the poets who flourished at the end of the sixteenth, and commencement of the succeeding century, more harmonious, more easy, more delightful, and above all, more original than their predecessors, will be found at the same time more negligent, and to exhibit less artifice and polish, less purity and correction in their style and diction.

At this period lived the three poets whose verses have possessed most amenity, richness, and facility. The first is Balbuena, born in La Mancha, educated in Mexico, and author of El Siglo de Oro and of Bernardo. No one, since Garcilasso, has had such command over the language, versification, and rhyme; and no one, at the same time, is more slovenly and unequal. His poem, like that New World in which the author lived, is a country spacious and immense, as fruitful as uncultivated, where briers and thorns are mingled in confusion with flowers, treasures with scarcity, deserts and morasses with hills and forests more sublime and shady. If at times he surprises by the freedom of his verse, by the novelty and vividness of his expression, by his great talent for description, in which he knows no equal, and even occasionally by his boldness and profundity of thought, he yet more frequently offends by his unseasonable prodigality, and inconceivable carelessness. The greatest defect of the Bernardo, is its excessive length; it being morally impossible to give to a work of five thousand octaves the sustained and continued elegance necessary to give pleasure. The eclogues of the Siglo de Oro have not the same defects of composition as the poem, and in the public estimation enjoy the nearest place to those of Garcilasso. They undoubtedly deserve it, considering the propriety of style, the ease of the verse, the suitableness and freshness of the images, and the simplicity of the invention. If his shepherds were not at times so rude, if he had had a more constant eye to elegance in diction, and beauty in the incidents; if, in short, he had thrown more variety into his versification, reduced almost entirely to tercetos,—there is no doubt but that good taste would have conceded to him in this branch of the art an absolute supremacy.

The second of these poets is Jauregui, celebrated for his translation of the Aminta, a florid poet, an elegant and harmonious versifier. He is the one who expressed his thoughts in verse with the most ease and elegance; but he had little nerve and spirit, and was, besides, poor of invention. His taste in early life was very pure, as his Rimas show. But after having been one of the sharpest assailants of Purism, he ended in suffering himself to glide with the current, and in his translation of the Pharsalia, and in his Orpheus, he has abandoned himself to all the extravagances he had before burlesqued.

But the man who received from nature the most poetical endowments, and who most abused them, was, without doubt, Lope de Vega. The gift of writing his language with purity, elegance, and the deepest clearness; the gift of inventing, the gift of painting, the gift of versifying in whatever measure he desired; flexibility of fancy and talent to accommodate himself to all sorts of writing, and to all sorts of colouring; a richness that never knows impediment or dearth; a memory enriched by a vast range of reading; and an indefatigable application, which augmented the facility he inherited from nature: with these arms he presented himself in the arena, knowing in his bold ambition neither curb nor limit. From the madrigal to the ode, from the eclogue to the comedy, from the novel to the epic—he ran through all, he cultivated all, and has left in all signs of devastation and of talent.

He brought the theatre under his subjection, and fixed upon him universal attention,—the poets of his time were nothing compared to him. His name was the seal of approbation for all; the people followed him in the streets; strangers sought him out as an extraordinary object; monarchs arrested their attention to regard him. He had critics who raised the cry against his culpable carelessness, enviers who murmured at him, detractors who calumniated him,—a mournful example, in addition to the many other instances which prove that envy and calumny are born with merit and celebrity; for neither the amiable courtesy of the poet, nor the placidity of his genius, nor the pleasure with which he lent himself to commend others, could either disarm his slanderers or temper their malignity. But none of them could snatch away the sceptre from his hands, nor abrogate the consideration which so many and such celebrated works had acquired for him. His death was mourned as a public calamity; his funeral drew an universal attendance. A volume of Spanish poetry was composed upon his death, another of Italian; and, living and dying, he was always hearing praises, always gathering laurels; admired as a prodigy, and proclaimed "the Phœnix of Wits."

What, at the end of two centuries, remains of all that pomp, of all the loud applauses which then fatigued the echoes of fame? When we see that, of all the poetry and poems he composed, there are few, perhaps none, which can be read through without our being shocked at every step by their repugnance; when we see that his most studied and favourite work, the Jerusalem,[P] is a compound of absurdities, wherein the little excellence we meet with, makes the abuse of his talent but the more deplored; when we see that of so many hundreds of comedies, there is scarcely one that can be called good; and finally, that of the many thousands of verses which his inexhaustible vein produced, there are so few that remain engraved on the tablets of good taste,—can we do less than exclaim, where are now the foundations of that edifice of glory raised in homage of a single man by the age in which he lived, and which still surprises and excites the envy of those who contemplate it from afar?

It was not possible for works written with so much precipitation to have any other result, with his utter forgetfulness of all rules, and neglect of all great models; without plan, without preparation, without study, or attention to nature. The necessity of writing hastily for the theatre, when he had accustomed the public to almost daily novelties, unsettled, and, as it were, relaxed all the springs of his genius, carrying the same hurry and negligence into all his other writings.[Q] Hence it is that, with the exception of some short poems in which he improved the happy inspiration of the moment, there are, in all his others, unpardonable faults of invention, of composition, and of style. Fatal facility! which corrupted all his excellencies, which led him to obscure the clearness, the harmony, the elegance, the freedom, the affluence, and even the strength with which he was alike gifted; giving place to unappropriate figures, to historic or fabulous allusions pedantic and ill-timed; to frigid and prolix explanations of the very thing he had said before; to weakness in short, to shallowness, to an insufferable tone, into which the rich abundance and amiable purity of his diction and versification degenerated.

The age then, it will be said, was barbarous, that tolerated such errantries, and that gave so much applause to a writer so defective. It was not barbarous, but excessively compliant. There were many men of talent who deplored this abuse; but they could not resist the popular approbation which the nature of Lope's writings carried with it, and which in some degree his genius authorized. The general sweetness and fluency of his verse; the lucidness of his expression, intelligible almost always to the most illiterate; the fine and polished language of gallantry which he invented, and brought into use in his comedies; the decorum and ornament with which he invested the stage;[R] the vivid and delicate touches of sensibility which he from time to time presents; the eminent and brilliant parts which the women generally sustain in his works; in short, his absolute dominion in the theatre, where acclamations have most solemnity and force; are all circumstances which concur to excuse the public of that day, who were not unjust in admiring most the individual that gave them most delight.[S]

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CHAPTER V.
OF GÓNGORA, QUEVEDO, AND THEIR IMITATORS.

To restore to Castilian poetry the tone and vigour which were failing it, the powers of Horace and Virgil, with all the grandeur of their genius, the perfection of their taste, and the high protection they enjoyed, would scarcely have sufficed. Two men in Spain applied themselves to this task; both of great talent, but of a depraved taste, and of different pursuits. Their defects, which they sometimes relieve by better qualities, had the effect of a contagion, and produced consequences more fatal than the evil itself which they sought to remedy.

The first was Don Luis de Góngora, the father and founder of the sect called Purists. All know that after a century of adoration by the followers of his style, Luzán and the other professors who re-established good taste, set themselves to destroy the sect by decrying their founder; and with them Góngora and the detestable poet, were terms synonymous. But this was unjust; and in him, the brilliant, gay, and pleasant poet, should ever be distinguished from the extravagant and capricious innovator. His independent genius was incapable of following, or of imitating any body; his imagination, fiery and vivid in the extreme, could not see things in a common light; and the weak and pallid colouring of other poets will not bear comparison with the rich emblazonry, if we may so say, of his style and expression. In which of them are poetical periods met with, that in wealth of language, brilliancy, and music, can be compared with the following?

Deep king of other streams, whose waters go
Renowned in song, and crystal in their flow;
Let a rough coronal of dark green pine
Bind thy broad brow and wandering locks divine!
****
Rise, glorious sun, illuminate and print
The laughing mountains with thy golden tint;
Chase the sweet steps of rosy-red Aurora,
And loose the reins to Zephyrus and Flora!

In which are images more delicate and appropriate, or more naturally expressed, than these?

Sleep, for your winged Lord in guardianship
Keeps watch, the finger on his serious lip.
Lovers! touch not, if life you love, the chaste
Sweet smiling mouth that wooes you to its taste!
For 'twixt its two red lips armed Love reposes,
Close as a poisonous snake 'twixt two ripe roses.
*****
Each wind that breathes, gallantly here and there
Waves the fine gold of her disordered hair,
As a green poplar-leaf in wanton play
Dances for joy at rosy break of day.

There is not in all Anacreon a thought so graceful as that of the song, wherein, presenting some flowers to his lady, he begs from her as many kisses as he had received stings from the bees that guarded them.

"From my summer alcove, which the stars this morn
With lucid pearls o'erspread,
I have gathered these jessamines, thus to adorn
With a wreath thy graceful head.
From thy bosom and mouth they, as flowers, ere death,
Ask a purer white and a sweeter breath.

Their blossoms a host of bees, alarmed,
Watched over on jealous wing;
Hoarse trumpeters seemed they all, and armed
Each bee with a diamond sting:
I tore them away, but each flower I tore
Has cost me a wound which smarteth sore.

Now as I these jessamine flowers entwine,
A gift for thy vagrant hair,
I must have, from those honey-sweet lips of thine,
A kiss for each sting I bear:
It is just that the blooms I bring thee home,
Be repaid by sweets from the golden comb."

If from Italian measures we pass to Letrillas and the Castilian Romance, Góngora will be found king of that class, which has received from no one so much grace, so many splendours, and so much poetry. His merit indeed, in this department, is so great, and specimens of his success in it are so common, that there remains no other difficulty to prove it than that of choice. This fragment will suffice for our purpose.

"Now, all pomp, the Moorish hero,
Whilst his robes sweet perfumes throw,
Lays aside his crooked sabre,
Hangs on high his moony bow.
His hoarse tambours, hoarse no longer,
Seem like amorous turtle-doves;
And his pendants streaming favours,
Favours given by her he loves.
She goes forth with bosom naked,
Loosely flow her golden locks;
If she stays them, 'tis with jasmines,
Chains them, 'tis with pinks and stocks.
All things serve their gentle passion,
Every thing fresh joy assumes;
Flattering, if not babbling breezes,
Stir their robes and toss their plumes.
Green fields yield them mossy carpets,
Trees pavilions, flowers the vales,
Peaceful fountains golden slumber,
Music love-lorn nightingales.
Trunks their bark, whose tablets better
Keep their names than plates of brass;
Better far than ivory pages,
Than the marble's sculptured mass.
Not a beech but bears some cipher,
Tender word, or amorous text;
If one vale sounds Angelina,
Angelina sounds the next."

How could a writer possessing this strength and richness afterwards abandon himself to the pitiable frenzies in which he lost himself, without preserving even a shadow of their excellences! Thinking that the poetic period was enervated, and looking upon nature as poverty, purity as subjection, and ease as looseness, he aspired to extend the limits of the language and poetry, by the invention of a new dialect which should re-elevate the art from the plain, dull track into which, according to him, it was reduced. This dialect was distinguished by the novelty of the words, or by their application; by the singularity and dislocation of the phrase, or by the boldness and profusion of its figures; and in it he not only composed his Soledades and Polifemo, but distorted, after the same manner, almost all his sonnets and songs, sprinkling as well with a sufficient number of false ornaments his romances and letrillas.

If Góngora, to the excellent qualities he possessed, had joined the judgment and good taste he wanted; if he had made the same profound study of the language as Herrera, both meditating on the resources which the idiom presented, and attending to its character, richness, and harmony, then would have followed the result he desired, and he would, perhaps, have gained the glory of being the restorer, and not the opprobrium of having been the corrupter of the art. But the same circumstance befel him which befals all who seek to erect a building without foundations; he gave into a world of freaks and extravagances, into an abominable gibberish, as opposite to truth as to beauty, and which, whilst it was followed by a multitude of the ignorant, was censured by as many as yet preserved a spark of sense and judgment.

"He sought," says Lope de Vega, "to enrich the art, and even the language, with such figures and ornaments, as were never, till his time, imagined or beheld. In my opinion, he fully succeeded in what he aimed at, if this was his aim; the difficulty is in receiving it. According to many, he has raised the novelty into a peculiar class of poetry, and they are not at all mistaken; for, in ancient times, men were made poets by the study of a whole life; in the modern, they become poets in a day; as, with a few transpositions, four precepts, and six Latin words or emphatic phrases, you will see them elevated where they neither know nor understand themselves. Lipsius wrote that new Latin which good judges in these matters say Cicero and Quintilian laughed at in the other world. The whole foundation of the structure is transposition; and what makes it the more harsh is the so far separating the substantive from the adjective, where the parenthesis is impossible: it is a composition full of tropes and figures; a face coloured in the manner of angels with the trumpet of judgment, or of the winds in maps. Sonorous words and figures enamel an oration; but if the enamel covers all the gold, it is no longer a grace to the jewelling, but a notable deformity." And in another part he says, "..., without going in search of so many metaphors on metaphors, wasting in rouge what is needed in features, and enfeebling the spirit with the weight of such an excessive body. This it is that has destroyed a great number of talented men in Spain, with such deplorable effect, that an illustrious poet, who, writing with his native powers and in his proper language, was read with general applause, since he has abandoned himself to purism, has lost it all."

Not satisfied with these demonstrations of severity, this placid man, who scarcely knew what malignity was, thought it his duty to persecute the pest as with fire and sword, and in his comedies, in the burlesque poetry of Burguillos, in the Laurel de Apollo, and in a thousand other places, ridiculed and cursed this kind of poetry, which he characterized as "an odious invention to make the language barbarous." He was aided in this warfare by Jauregui, Quevedo, and some others; but their efforts were unavailing, and they themselves were at length forced to yield to the contagion. For though they cannot be called Purists in all the rigour of the term, they adopted some of the elements which composed the dialect, such as violent transpositions, extravagant hyperboles, and incoherent figures. Góngora, meanwhile, as he had never known restraint or subjection, fulminated against his adversaries the grossest taunts; and, fierce and proud from the applauses of the ignorant, internally exulted with all the glory of a triumph. This was increased by the support given to his party by the celebrated preacher, Fray Hortensio Paravicino, from the great influence which he had with the theologians and sacred orators, and by the unfortunate Count de Villamediana, in the secret and powerful favour which he was supposed to have at court. Both imitated Góngora, and drew after them other writers of less note, propagating thus this barbarous language till the middle of the century in which Luzán and other admirable critics entirely succeeded in weaning the nation from it.

At the same time with the Purists appeared the Concettisti, punsters, and utterers of grave saws in frigid and sententious language: D. Francisco de Quevedo surpassed all, as well by his merit as influence, in the progress of these different sects. Quevedo, according to some, is the father of laughter, the treasury of jests, the fountain of wit, the inventor of a number of happy words and phrases, in a word, the Comus of Spain. According to others, he is, on the contrary, a writer inauspicious to the beauty and decorum of wit: his humour, say they, instead of being festive, is low buffoonery; he has impoverished the language, depriving it of an infinite number of modes of speech, once noble and becoming, now, thanks to him, low and indecorous; and if he at any time amuses, it is by the original extravagance of his follies. These two judgments, so contradictory, are yet both true; and if we consider attentively the character of this writer, we shall see what foundation both the one and the other have for their censures and applauses. Quevedo was every thing in excess: no one, in the same manner, displays in the serious a gravity so rigid and morals so austere; no one, in the jocose, shows a humour so gay, so free, and so abandoned to the spirit of the thing. In the choice of his subjects, we are alike sensible of this contrariety. Alguazils, scriveners, procuresses, compliant husbands, ruffians, and women of easy access, generally form the subject matter of his buffooneries; and we must, in justice, acknowledge that he very often lashes them in a masterly manner. At another time a theologian and stoic, he translates Epictetus, comments on Seneca, interprets Scripture, and entangles himself in the useless labyrinths of metaphysics; lost labours, which, for the most part, are no longer read, and which have scarcely any other merit than their astonishing erudition.

From this contradiction springs so often the effort and difficulty with which he writes in both kinds of composition. His style, in prose as in verse, in serious as in jocose, is always struck forth without connexion or graduation, sacrificing almost always truth and nature to exaggeration and hyperbole. His imagination was most vivid and brilliant, but superficial and negligent; and the poetic genius that animates him, sparkles but does not glow, surprises but does not agitate, bounds with impetuosity and force, but neither flies nor ever supports itself at the same elevation. The rage of expressing things with novelty made him call the brink of the sea the law of the sand; love, the civil war of the born; trunks of trees on which lovers' names are engraved, a rural book written in enamel. In burlesque verse, he heaps together forced allusions, ambiguities, and paragraphs of nonsense. A ruffian, to denote how keenly he has felt his disgrace, will say, that he has wept rope for rope, and not, at every lash; he will say, that he has had more grasshoppers than the summer, more tenants than the tomb, more bookstrings than the missal. I am well aware that Quevedo often diverts with what he writes, and raves because it is his pleasure: I know that puns have their proper place in such compositions, and that no one has used them more happily than he. But every thing has its bounds; and, heaped together with a prodigality like his, instead of pleasing, they create only weariness.

The same incorrectness and bad taste that mark his style, composed of words and phrases noble and sublime, united with others as mean and trivial, are found in his images and thoughts, which are mixed together without economy, judgment, or decorum. The following sonnet will show this miserable confusion better than any description:—

"Cæsar, the fortunate and forceful, bled;
Pity and warning know it not—a wreath
This of his glory, for there is a death
Even to the grave that sepulchres the dead.
Dies life, and like life, dies, and soon is fled
The rich and sumptuous funeral; time flies,
And, in his unseen circuit, stills the cries,
Shouts, and huzzas, that fame delights to spread.
The sun and moon wind night and day the web
Of the world's life robust, and dost thou weep
The warning which age sends thee? all things ebb!
Auroras are but smiling illnesses,
Delight the lemon of our health, nor less
Our sextons the sure hours that seem to creep."

In spite of these defects, which are certainly very great, Quevedo will be read with respect, and be justly admired in many passages. In the first place, his verse is for the most part full and sonorous, his rhyme rich and easy, and yet this merit, the first which a poet should possess, is not the principal one; our author knows how to accompany them with many touches, excellent, some from the brightness of their colouring, others from their spirit and boldness. His poetry, strong and nervous, proceeds impetuously to its end; and if his movements betray too much of the effort, affectation, and bad taste of the writer, their course is yet frequently seen to have a wildness, an audacity, and a singularity, that is surprising. His verses oft-times spring from his own imagination, and without extraneous aid strike the ear with their loud and strong vibration, or sculpture themselves in the mind by the profundity of the thought they develope, or by the novelty and strength of the expression. From no one can such beautiful isolated verses be quoted as from him; from no one, poetic periods so stately and so strong.

"Pure, ardent virtue was a joy divine."

"The' unbounded hemisphere fatigued his rage."

"I felt my falchion conquered by old age."

"Lashed by the waves, before, around, behind,
And rudely lashed by the remorseless wind;
The storm's thy glory, and its groans, that tear
The clouds, move more thy triumph than thy care.
Then, daring cliff, thou reign'st in majesty,
When the blast rages and the sea rides high."

Rome buried in her Ruins.

"Pilgrim, thou look'st in Rome for Rome divine,
And ev'n in Rome no Rome canst find! her crowd
Of mural wonders is a corse, whose shroud
And fitting tomb is the lone Aventine.
She lies where reigned the kingly Palatine,
And Time's worn medals more of ruin show
From her ten thousand fights than ev'n the blow
Struck at the crown of her Imperial line.
Tiber alone remains, whose rushing tide
Waters the town now sepulchred in stone,
And weeps its funeral with fraternal tears:
Oh Rome! in thy wild beauty, power, and pride,
The durable is fled, and what alone
Is fugitive, abides the ravening years."

On meeting in his works with these brilliant passages, after paying them the high admiration they deserve, we cannot restrain a feeling of indignation, to see the deplorable abuse which Quevedo has made of his talents, in employing on the useless evolutions and balanced movements of a tumbler, the muscular limbs and strength of an Alcides.

Don Francisco Manuel Melo was a friend of Quevedo, a Portuguese, and as indefatigable a writer as he was an active warrior and politician. He managed the Castilian idiom with equal facility as his own, and poet, historian, moralist, author political, military, and even religious, he excels in some of these departments, and is contemptible in none. The volume of his verses is extremely rare, and though some have made him the imitator of Góngora, he has more points of resemblance to Quevedo; the same taste in versification, the same austerity of principles, the same affectation of sententiousness, the same copiousness of doctrine. He has besides conformed to the example of Quevedo in publishing his poems, in divisions of the nine Muses, though three of them are in Portuguese. There are in the Spaniard colours more brilliant, and strokes more strong; in Melo more sobriety and fewer extravagances. His style, though elegant and pure, is barely poetical; and his amatory verses are deficient in tenderness and fire, as are his odes in enthusiasm and loftiness. He is as little happy in the many burlesque verses with which the large volume of his poetry abounds; but when the subject is grave and serious, then his philosophy and doctrine sustain him, and his expression equals his ideas. Naturally inclined to maxims and reflections, he was most at home in moral poetry; in the epistle particularly, where strength and severity of thought best combine with a tempered and less profound fancy. Here, if he is not always a great painter, he is at least chaste and severe in style and language, in his verse sonorous, grave and elevated in his thoughts, a respectable moralist in character and principles. Notwithstanding these distinctions, the claims of his glory as a writer are more firmly grounded on his prose works; on the Eco politico for instance, on his Aula militar, and, above all, on the Historia de las alteraciones de Cataluña, the most excellent production of his pen, and perhaps the best work of its kind in the Castilian language.

Poetry was meanwhile expiring; tortured by such demoniacs, it could not recover its beauty and freshness from the aid of the few who yet composed with care, and wrote with greater purity. Rebolledo had neither force nor fancy, and his verses are nothing more than rhymed prose: Esquilache, with somewhat more grace in his romances, was spruce and affected, and had neither the talent nor strength which are necessary for higher compositions: Ulloa wrote nothing good but his Raquel: and lastly, Solis, who sometimes shows himself a poet in his comedies, and often in his history, is a mere rhymester in his lyrics, which now are read by none. How could these emasculated writers raise the art from the abyss into which it had fallen? The thing was impossible. This vicious taste was reduced to a system in the extravagant and singular work of Gracian, Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio, which is an art of writing in prose and verse, founded on the most absurd principles, and supported by good and bad specimens, jumbled together in the most discordant manner. This Gracian is the same that composed a descriptive poem on the seasons, under the title of Silvas del Año; the first I fancy that was written in Europe on this subject, and most assuredly the worst. As a specimen of his manner, and of the laughable degradation to which poetry had fallen, the following verses will suffice, selected from the opening of Summer:—

"After, in the celestial theatre,
The horseman of the day is seen to spur
To the refulgent Bull, in his brave hold
Shaking for darts his rays of burning gold.
The beauteous spectacle of stars—a crowd
Of lovely dames, his tricks applaud aloud;
They, to enjoy the splendour of the fight,
Remain on heaven's high balcony of light.
Then in strange metamorphosis, with spurs
And crest of fire, red-throated Phœbus stirs,
Like a proud cock amongst the hens divine
Hatched out of Leda's egg, the Twins that shine,
Hens of the heavenly field."

This is beyond every thing: the whole poem is written in the same barbarous and ridiculous manner, and it is a proof as evident as mournful, that there now remained no memory of the principles of composition, no vestiges of eloquence. Ornaments, suited to the madrigal and epigram, were transferred to the higher kinds of composition, and the whole was changed into concetti, conundrums, puns, and antitheses. Thus Castilian poesy came to an end! In her more tender youth, the simple flowers of the field which Garcilasso gathered sufficed to adorn her; in the fine writings of Herrera and Rioja, she presents herself with the pomp of a beautiful lady, richly attired; in Balbuena, Jauregui, and Lope de Vega, although too free and gay, she yet preserved traits of elegance and beauty; but first spoiled by the contortions taught her by Góngora and Quevedo, she afterwards gave herself up to a crowd of Vandals, who completed her ruin. Thenceforward her movements became convulsions, her colours paint, her jewels tinsel, and old and decrepid, there was nothing more for her to do than madly to act the girl, to wither, and to perish.

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CHAPTER VI.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS; RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF GOOD TASTE.

If in this state a glance is cast at the steps which the art in little more than a century of its existence had taken, it will be seen that nothing had been left unattempted. There were translations of all, or of the greater number, of the ancient authors: epics of all kinds had been written; the theatre had taken a compass, and presented a fruitfulness so great as to have communicated of its wealth to foreigners; lastly, the ode in all its forms, the eclogue, the epistle, the satire, descriptive poetry, the madrigal, and epigram, all had been noticed, and all cultivated.

If this compass and variety do honour to its flexibility and boldness, the success of its accomplishments in all these various kinds of composition is not equal. For, in the first place, the translations are almost all bad or indifferent. Who, in good truth, can say that that of the Odyssey, by Gonzalo Perez; of the Eneid, by Hernandez de Velasco; or of the Metamorphoses, by Sigler, are real substitutes for the originals? What person, possessing the least taste in poetic language and versification, can read two pages of these versions, wherein the greatest poets of antiquity are metamorphosed into trivial rhymers, without elegance and harmony? Spain has a number of epic poems; and although some fragments of good poetry may be culled from them, not one can be looked upon as a well-arranged fable, or as corresponding in dignity and interest with its title and argument. Of Spanish comedies, it is notorious that the defects exceed the beauties. Happier in shorter kinds of composition, her odes, elegies, sonnets, romances, and letrillas, approach nearer to perfection. But even in these, what forgetfulness of propriety, what negligence at times, and at times what pedantry and false taste exist! In the best writers, in the choicest pieces, the mind is offended by finding too frequently joined to a fine turn a harsh extravagance, and a sharp thorn to an incomparable flower.

There is one thing extraordinary in the good poets of the sixteenth century, that their genius never rises to the level of the events which passed around them. The compositions of Virgil and of Horace in Rome correspond with the dignity and majesty of the empire. Lucan afterwards, though very distant from the perfection of his predecessors, preserved in his poem the bold and fiery tone adapted to the subject on which he wrote, and to the patriotic enthusiasm with which he was animated. Dante, in his extraordinary poem, shows himself inspired by all the sentiments which the rancour of faction, civil dissension, and the effervescence of men's minds, stirred up. Petrarch, if in his love-sonnets he sacrificed to the gallantry of his time, rises, in his Trionfi, to a level with the elevation to which the human mind was rising at that period. It was not so with the poets of Spain. The Moors expelled from the peninsula; a discovered world opening a new hemisphere to Spanish fortune; fleets sailing from one extremity of the ocean to the other, accompanied by terror, and exchanging the riches of the east and west; the church torn by the reformation of Luther; France, Holland, Germany, convulsed and desolated by civil wars and religious dissensions; the Ottoman power rolled away on the waters of Lepanto; Portugal falling in Africa, to be then united to Castile; the Spanish sword agitating the whole world with the spirit of heroism, of religion, of ambition, and of avarice;—when was there ever a time more full of astonishing events, or more suited to sublime the fancy? Yet the Castilian muses, deaf and indifferent to this universal agitation, could scarcely inspire their favourites with aught but moralities, rural images, gallantry, and love.[T]

This deficiency of grandeur is compensated in part by a moral quality which distinguishes those poets, and recommends them infinitely. Neither in Garcilasso, nor in Luis de Leon, nor in Francisco de la Torre, nor in Herrera, are to be found any traces of rancour and literary envy, of gross indecency, or of servile and shameless adulation. The praises which they sometimes pay to power are restricted within those bounds of moderation and decorum which make them endurable. Till the corruption of literary taste, there was no appearance of this moral degradation, made up of meanness towards superiors, of insolence towards equals, and of utter forgetfulness of all respect towards the public; vices unfortunately sufficiently contagious, and which defame and destroy the nobleness of an art, that from the nature of its object, and the means it uses, has in it something superhuman.

There cannot be denied to a great number of the Spanish poets admirable talent, extensive learning, and great acquaintance with the ancient classics, although it is an uncommon thing to meet in them the sustained elegance and perfection of taste which other modern authors have drawn from the same fountains. Many causes contributed to this. One is, that these poets communicated little with each other: there wanted a common centre of urbanity and taste, a literary legislature, that should draw the line between bombast and sublimity, exaggeration and vigour, affectation and elegance. The universities, where dwelt the greatest knowledge, could not become such, from the nature of their studies, more scholastic than classical. The court, where the tone of society and fashion is most quickly perfected, would have been more to the purpose; but wandering under Charles the Fifth, severe and melancholy under the Second Philip, it gave not till Philip the Third to poetical talent the encouragement necessary for its perfection; even then, but much more in the time of his successor, taste was vitiated, and the encouragement given by princes and grandees, and even the occasional share they took themselves in poetical pursuits, could do nothing but authorize the corruption. In short, there wanted in Spain a court like that of Augustus, of Leo the Tenth, of the dukes of Ferrara, and of Louis the Fourteenth; where polite and refined conversation, devotion to the Muses, culture and elegance, with other fortunate circumstances, powerfully contributed to the perfection of the great writers that flourished therein.

Another cause is the secondary place which poetry held with many of those who cultivated it. They wrote verses to unbend themselves from other more serious occupations; and he who writes verses to amuse himself, is not usually very nice in the choice of his subject, nor very careful in its execution. Fatal lot to Spain in the finest and most difficult of all arts! Poetry, which is a recreation and amusement for those who enjoy it, should be a very serious and almost exclusive occupation with those who profess it, if they aspire to hold any distinguished rank in reputation. When it is considered that Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Tasso, Ariosto, Pope, Racine, and others, were at once the greatest poets and the most laborious, it should not be thought extraordinary that those have remained so far behind, who, even supposing them to have possessed equal talent, equalled them neither in application nor perseverance.

To this evil was added another and a worse, arising in a great measure from the same cause. Very few of the good poets of Spain published their works in their lifetime. The works of Garcilasso, Luis de Leon, Francisco de la Torre, Herrera, the Argensólas, Quevedo, and others, were published after their death by their heirs or friends, with more or less judgment. How much would they not have rejected, if they had published their writings in their own name! how many corrections would they not have made in the selection, and how many spots of slovenliness, bad taste, and obscurity, would they not have expunged!

But even though the want of perfection from this cause should seem less imputable to them, it is not on that account less certain. It has given cause to a diversity of opinion on the merit of the ancient poets of Spain, whom some value as admirable models, whilst others depreciate them so far as to think them unworthy of being read. In this, as in all cases, partiality and prejudice are wont to carry critics to their conclusions more than truth and justice; and to exalt or depress the dead is often with them nothing but an indirect mode of exalting or depressing the living. But setting this consideration aside, it may be said that this vast difference arises from the different points of view which are taken for the comparison. Comparing Leon, Garcilasso, Herrera, Rioja, and a few others, with the monstrous extravagances introduced and sanctioned by Góngora and Quevedo, there is no doubt that the former should be regarded as classical writers, perfect, and worthy to be imitated and followed: if compared even with the great authors of antiquity, or with the few moderns that have approached near, or have excelled them, we have yet to discover the reason why many treat them with such excessive rigour. As to myself, without pretending to lay down for a rule my particular opinion, and judging by the effect produced on me in the perusal, I would say, that though I consider the ancient Spanish poesies as sufficiently distant from perfection, they yet convey to my mind and ear sufficient pleasure for me to overlook in their graces the negligences and blemishes I meet with. I would, moreover, be bold to say, that if the poets of Spain had cultivated the loftier kinds of poetry, the epopee and the drama, with the same successful diligence as the ode and other shorter species, Spain would have been satisfied with the praises that would have fallen to her lot in this delightful department of literature. I will add, lastly, that, in my judgment, it is absolutely necessary to read and study these poets, in order to learn the purity, propriety, and genius of the language, to form the taste and ear to the harmony and flow of its verse, and to acquire the structure of the true poetic period. It would not be difficult, nor perhaps foreign to my subject, to show in her modern compositions the influence which exclusive admiration or exaggerated depreciation of the fathers of Spanish poetry has had upon her authors; but this application, necessarily odious, enters neither into my character nor design.

Castilian poetry, buried in the ruins wherein sank the other arts, sciences, and power in the time of Charles the Second, began to be revived towards the middle of the last century, by the laudable efforts of some literary characters who devoted themselves wholly to the re-establishment of classical study. The principal glory of this happy revolution is due to D. Ignacio de Luzán, who, not satisfied with pointing out the path of good taste in his Poetica, published in 1737, gave no less the example of treading in it, by the poetical beauties which are visible in the few compositions of his that have been published. His poetry, like that of all professed critics, is recommended more by its dignity, circumspection, and propriety, than by any sublimity or boldness; but his memory will be always respected as that of the restorer of Spanish poesy. Others followed in the same career: the Count of Torrepalma, whose Deucalion, notwithstanding some touches of bombast and purism which it preserves, is one of the strongest and best pieces of descriptive poetry in Castilian; D. Josef Porcel, author of some hunting eclogues, much praised by all his cotemporaries, but which I have not read, nor indeed have they been collected for publication; D. Augustin Montiano, a learned man and of good taste, though deficient in imagination and genius; D. Nicolas de Moratin, a poet gifted with a lively and flexile fancy, and an original and forcible expression, who for his whole life has been struggling with indefatigable zeal in favour of the principles and rules of correct composition: and, lastly, Don Josef Cadalso, in whose hands, the Anacreontic, which had been buried with Villegas, revived towards the end of the century. In this gay and agreeable writer terminate the trials and efforts for the revival of the art. From that period a new epoch in Castilian poetry commences, upon another foundation, with another character, with other principles, and it may even be said, with other models; an epoch, the description and judgment of which posterity will know how to give with more justice, authority, and propriety, than it is generally supposed can be given by a cotemporary.

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