CHAPTER X.
Cervantes. — His Family. — Education. — First Verses. — Life in Italy. — A Soldier in the Battle of Lepanto. — A Captive in Algiers. — Returns Home. — Service in Portugal. — Life in Madrid. — His Galatea, and its Character. — His Marriage. — Writes for the Stage. — His Life in Algiers. — His Numancia. — Poetical Tendencies of his Drama.
The family of Cervantes was originally Galician, and, at the time of his birth, not only numbered five hundred years of nobility and public service, but was spread throughout Spain, and had been extended to Mexico and other parts of America.[80] The Castilian branch, which, in the fifteenth century, became connected by marriage with the Saavedras, seems, early in the sixteenth, to have fallen off in its fortunes; and we know that the parents of Miguel, who has given to the race a splendor which has saved its old nobility from oblivion, were poor inhabitants of Alcalá de Henares, a small, but nourishing city, about twenty miles from Madrid. There he was born, the youngest of four children, on one of the early days of October, 1547.[81]
No doubt, he received his early education in the place of his nativity, then in the flush of its prosperity and fame from the success of the University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before. At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts of his works; as in his Don Quixote, where he alludes to the burial and enchantments of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of Zulema,[82] just as he had probably heard them in some nursery story; and in his prose pastoral, “Galatea,” where he arranges the scene of some of its most graceful adventures “on the banks,” as he fondly calls it, “of the famous Henares.”[83] But concerning his youth we know only what he incidentally tells us himself;—that he took great pleasure in attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;[84] that he wrote verses when very young;[85] and that he always read every thing within his reach, even, as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he picked up in the public streets.[86]
It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid, and there is some probability, notwithstanding the poverty of his family, that he passed two years at the University of Salamanca. But what is certain is, that he obtained a public and decisive mark of respect, before he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers; for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos published, by authority, on the death of the unhappy Isabelle de Valois, wife of Philip the Second, a volume of verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his “dear and well-beloved disciple.” This was, no doubt, Cervantes’s first appearance in print as an author; and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied, and the circumstance, that one of his elegies was written in the name of the whole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of his teacher and the good-will of his fellow-students.[87]
The next year, 1570, we find him, without any notice of the cause, removed from all his early connections, and serving at Rome as chamberlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards a cardinal; the same person who had been sent, in 1568, on a special mission from the Pope to Philip the Second, and who, as he seems to have had a regard for literature and for men of letters, may, on his return to Italy, have taken Cervantes with him from interest in his talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and had too proud a spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that, too, at a period when the world was full of solicitations to adventure and military glory.
But whatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome and its court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice, concluded what was called a “Holy League” against the Turks, and set on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chivalrous Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancient oppressor of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom, were more than Cervantes, at the age of twenty-three, could resist; and the next thing we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it as a common soldier. For, as he says in a work written just before his death, he had always observed “that none make better soldiers than those who are transplanted from the region of letters to the fields of war, and that never scholar became soldier that was not a good and brave one.”[88] Animated with this spirit, he entered the service of his country among the troops with which Spain then filled a large part of Italy, and continued in it till he was honorably discharged in 1575.
During these four or five years he learned many of the hardest lessons of life. He was present in the sea-fight of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and, though suffering at the time under a fever, insisted on bearing his part in that great battle, which first decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe. The galley in which he served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty to his country and to Christendom he carried proud and painful proof to his grave; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm during the rest of his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the hospital at Messina, where he remained till April, 1572; and then, under Mark Antonio Colonna, went on the expedition to the Levant, to which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the “Galatea,” and which he has so well described in the story of the Captive, in Don Quixote.
The next year, 1573, he was in the affair of the Goleta at Tunis, under Don John of Austria, and afterwards, with the regiment to which he was attached,[89] returned to Sicily and Italy, many parts of which, in different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited, remaining at one time in Naples above a year.[90] This period of his life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems never to have been regarded by him with regret. On the contrary, above forty years afterwards, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he declared, that, if the alternative were again offered him, he should account his wounds a cheap exchange for the glory of having been present in that great enterprise.[91]
When he was discharged, in 1575, he took with him letters from the Duke of Sessa and Don John, commending him earnestly to the king, and embarked for Spain. But on the 26th of September he was captured and carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served successively three cruel masters,—a Greek and a Venetian, both renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; the first two tormenting him with that peculiar hatred against Christians which naturally belonged to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined themselves to the enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for his slave, and treating him with great severity, because he had fled from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain liberty for himself and his fellow-captives.
Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and strengthened by it. On one occasion he attempted to escape by land to Oran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea-shore, where, at the constant risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily wants, while waiting for rescue by sea; but at last, after he had joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole punishment of the conspiracy on himself. Once he sent for help to break forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted; and once he had matured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen,—a scheme of which, when it was defeated by treachery, he again announced himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in Algiers, which was, perhaps, not unlikely to succeed, as their number was full twenty-five thousand, and which was certainly so alarming to the Dey, that he declared, that, “if he could but keep that lame Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves, and his galleys safe.”[92] On each of these occasions, severe, but not degrading,[93] punishments were inflicted upon him. Four times he expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire; and the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomplices.
At last, the moment of release came. His elder brother, who was captured with him, had been ransomed three years before; and now his widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son’s freedom, all the pittance that remained to her in the world, including the dowry of her daughters. But even this was not enough; and the remainder of the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his liberty was made up partly by small borrowings, and partly by the contributions of religious charity.[94] In this way he was ransomed on the 19th of September, 1580, just at the moment when he had embarked with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue would have been all but hopeless. A short time afterwards he left Algiers, where we have abundant proof, that, by his disinterestedness, his courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained the affection and respect of the multitude of Christian captives with which that city of anathemas was then crowded.[95]
But though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of freedom,[96] still it should be remembered that he returned after an absence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon as he left it. His father was dead. His family, poor before, had been reduced to a still more bitter poverty by his own ransom and that of his brother. He was unfriended and unknown, and must have suffered naturally and deeply from a sort of grief and disappointment which he had felt neither as a soldier nor as a slave. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his country,—joining his brother, probably in the same regiment to which he had formerly belonged, and which was now sent to maintain the Spanish authority in the newly acquired kingdom of Portugal. How long he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1581, as well as in the more important one of the year following, to reduce the Azores, which still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period, therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda,” as well as in other parts of his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the Second.[97]
It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the first direction of his more serious efforts as an author, which, soon after his return to Spain, ended in the pastoral romance of “Galatea.” For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal from the days of the “Menina e Moça”[98] down to our own times; and had already been introduced into Spanish literature by George of Montemayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, whose “Diana Enamorada” and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books with Cervantes.
But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February, 1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it “An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101]
Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an affectation which can never be successful; and which, in this particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it is disfigured, and from the poor poetry profusely scattered through it, is more than usually unfortunate. Yet there are traces both of Cervantes’s experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third books, are interesting; others, like Timbrio’s capture by the Moors, in the fifth book, remind us of his own adventures and sufferings; while yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book, is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. In all, we have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never, perhaps, with what is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology, almost inevitable in such a work, are its most obvious defects; though nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately deceased shepherd.[102]
But when speaking thus slightingly of the Galatea, we ought to remember, that, though it extends to two volumes, it is unfinished, and that passages which now seem out of proportion or unintelligible might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second part, which Cervantes had perhaps written, and which he continued to talk of publishing till a few days before his death,[103] had ever appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we are bound to bear in mind his own touching words, when he represents it as found by the barber and curate in Don Quixote’s library.[104] “‘But what book is the next one?’ said the curate. ‘The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,’ replied the barber. ‘This Cervantes,’ said the curate, ‘has been a great friend of mine these many years; and I know that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not without happiness in the invention; it proposes something, but finishes nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises; for perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him; and in the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.’”
If the story be true, that he wrote the Galatea to win the favor of his lady, his success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first part, he was married, December 12th, 1584, to a lady of a good family in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.[105] The pecuniary arrangements consequent on the marriage, which have been published,[106] show that both parties were poor; and the Galatea intimates that Cervantes had a formidable Portuguese rival, who was, at one time, nearly successful in winning his bride.[107] But whether the course of his love ran smooth before marriage or not, his wedded life, for above thirty years, seems to have been happy, and his widow, at her death, desired to be buried by his side.
In order to support his family, he probably lived much at Madrid, where, we know, he was familiar with several contemporary poets, such as Juan Rufo, Pedro de Padilla, and others, whom, with his inherent good-nature, he praises constantly in his later works, and often unreasonably. From the same motive, too, and perhaps partly in consequence of these intimacies, he now undertook to gain some portion of his subsistence by authorship, turning away from the life of adventure to which he had earlier been attracted.
His first efforts in this way were for the stage, which naturally presented strong attractions to one who was early fond of dramatic representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, however, in the time of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already noticed, that he had witnessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de Rueda and Naharro,[108] which must have been before he went to Italy, and when, from his description of its dresses and apparatus, we plainly see that the theatre was not so well understood and managed as it is now by strolling companies and in puppet-shows. From this humble condition, which the efforts made by Bermudez and Argensola, Virues, La Cueva, and their contemporaries, had not much ameliorated, Cervantes undertook to raise it; and he succeeded so far, that, thirty years afterwards, he thought his success of sufficient consequence frankly to boast of it.[109]
But it is curious to see the methods he deemed it expedient to adopt for such a purpose. He reduced, he says, the number of acts from five to three; but this is a slight matter, and, though he does not seem to be aware of the fact, it had been done long before by Avendaño. He claims to have introduced phantasms of the imagination, or allegorical personages, like War, Disease, and Famine; but, besides that Juan de la Cueva had already done this, it was, at best, nothing more in either of them than reviving the forms of the old religious shows. And finally, though this is not one of the grounds on which he himself places his dramatic merits, he seems to have endeavoured in his plays, as in his other works, to turn his personal travels and sufferings to account, and thus, unconsciously, became an imitator of some of those who were among the earliest inventors of such representations in modern Europe.
But, with a genius like that of Cervantes, even changes or attempts as crude as these were not without results. He wrote, as he tells us with characteristic carelessness, twenty or thirty pieces, which were received with applause;—a number greater than can be with certainty attributed to any preceding Spanish author, and a success before quite unknown. None of these pieces were printed at the time, but he has given us the names of nine of them, two of which were discovered in 1782, and printed, for the first time, in 1784.[110] The rest, it is to be feared, are irrecoverably lost, and among them is “La Confusa,” which, long after Lope de Vega had given its final character to the proper national drama, Cervantes fondly declared was still one of the very best of the class to which it belonged;[111] a judgment which the present age might perhaps confirm, if the proportions and finish of the drama he preferred were equal to the strength and originality of the two that have been rescued.
The first of these is “El Trato de Argel,” or, as he elsewhere calls it, “Los Tratos de Argel,” which may be translated Life, or Manners, in Algiers. It is a drama slight in its plot, and so imperfect in its dialogue, that, in these respects, it is little better than some of the old eclogues on which the earlier theatre was founded. His purpose, indeed, seems to have been simply to set before a Spanish audience such a picture of the sufferings of the Christian captives at Algiers as his own experience would justify, and such as might well awaken sympathy in a country which had furnished a deplorable number of the victims. He, therefore, is little careful to construct a regular plot, if, after all, he were aware that such a plot was important; but, instead of it, he gives us a stiff and unnatural love-story, which he thought good enough to be used again, both in one of his later plays and in one of his tales;[112] and then trusts the main success of the piece to its episodical sketches.
Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are jeered at as slaves and Christians by the Moors, and in which they give an account of the martyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was subsequently used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas. Next, we have the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt, taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of a drawing from life. And, in different places, we have two or three painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de Vega thought worth borrowing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls it, to the monarchy of the scene.[113] The whole play is divided into five jornadas or acts, and written in octaves, redondillas, terza rima, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish poetry; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered, as prominent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon.
Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are poetical. Aurelio, the hero,—who is a Christian captive, affianced to another captive named Sylvia,—is loved by Zara, a Moorish lady, whose confidante, Fatima, makes a wild incantation in order to obtain means to secure the gratification of her mistress’s love; the result of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Necessity and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her upon the stage, and—invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the spectators—tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions of the fair unbeliever.[114] When they are gone, he thus expresses, in soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of having nearly yielded:—
Aurelio, whither goest thou? Where, O where,
Now tend thine erring steps? Who guides thee on?
Is, then, thy fear of God so small, that thus,
To satisfy mad fantasy’s desires,
Thou rushest headlong? Can light and easy
Opportunity, with loose solicitation,
Thus persuade and overcome thy soul,
And yield thee up to love a prisoner?
Is this the lofty thought and firm resolve
In which thou once wast rooted, to resist
Offence and sin, although in torments sharp
Thy days should end and earthly martyrdom?
So soon hast thou offended, to the winds
Thy true and loving hopes cast forth,
And yielded up thy soul to low desire?
Away with such wild thoughts, of basest birth
And basest lineage sprung! Such witchery
Of foul, unworthy love shall by a love
All pure be broke! A Christian soul is mine,
And as a Christian’s shall my life be marked;—
Nor gifts, nor promises, nor cunning art,
Shall from the God I serve my spirit turn,
Although the path I trace lead on to death![115]
The conception of this passage and of the scene preceding it is certainly not dramatic, though it is one of those on which, from the introduction of spiritual agencies, Cervantes valued himself. But neither is it without poetry. Like the rest of the piece, it is a mixture of personal feelings and fancies, struggling with an ignorance of the proper principles of the drama, and with the rude elements of the theatre in its author’s time. He calls the whole a Comedia; but it does not deserve the name. Like the old Mysteries, it is rather an attempt to exhibit, in living show, a series of unconnected incidents; but it has no properly constructed plot, and, as he honestly confesses afterwards, it comes to no proper conclusion.[116]
The other play of Cervantes, that has reached us from this period of his life, is founded on the tragical fate of Numantia, which, having resisted the Roman arms fourteen years,[117] was reduced by famine; the Roman forces consisting of eighty thousand men, and the Numantian of less than four thousand, not one of whom was found alive when the conquerors entered the city.[118] Cervantes probably chose this subject in consequence of the patriotic recollections it awakened and still continues to awaken in the minds of his countrymen; and, for the same reason, he filled his drama chiefly with the public and private horrors consequent on the self-devotion of the Numantians.
It is divided into four jornadas, and, like the Trato de Argel, is written in a great variety of measures; the ancient redondilla being preferred for the more active portions. Its dramatis personæ are no fewer than forty in number; and among them are Spain and the River Duero, a Dead Body, War, Sickness, Famine, and Fame; the last personage speaking the Prologue. The action opens with Scipio’s arrival. He at once reproaches the Roman army, that, in so long a time, they had not conquered so small a body of Spaniards,—as Cervantes always patriotically calls the Numantians,—and then announces that they must now be subdued by Famine. Spain enters, as a fair matron, and, aware of what awaits her devoted city, invokes the Duero in two poetical octaves,[119] which the river answers in person, accompanied by three of his tributary streams, but gives no hope to Numantia, except that the Goths, the Constable of Bourbon, and the Duke of Alva shall one day avenge its fate on the Romans. This ends the first act.
The other three divisions are filled with the horrors of the siege endured by the unhappy Numantians; the anticipations of their defeat; their sacrifices and prayers to avert it; the unhallowed incantations by which a dead body is raised to predict the future; and the cruel sufferings to old and young, to the loved and the lovely, and even to the innocence of childhood, through which the stern fate of the city is accomplished. The whole ends with the voluntary immolation of those who remained alive among the starving inhabitants, and the death of a youth who holds up the keys of the gates, and then, in presence of the Roman general, throws himself headlong from one of the towers of the city; its last self-devoted victim.
In such a story there is no plot, and no proper development of any thing like a dramatic action. But the romance of real life has rarely been exhibited on the stage in such bloody extremity; and still more rarely, when thus exhibited, has there been so much of poetical effect produced by individual incidents. In a scene of the second act, Marquino, a magician, after several vain attempts to compel a spirit to reënter the body it had just left on the battle-field, in order to obtain from it a revelation of the coming fate of the city, bursts forth indignantly and says:—
Rebellious spirit! Back again, and fill
The form which, but a few short hours ago,
Thyself left tenantless.
To which the spirit, reëntering the body, replies:—
Restrain the fury of thy cruel power!
Enough, Marquino! O, enough of pain
I suffer in those regions dark, below,
Without the added torments of thy spell!
Thou art deluded, if thou deem’st indeed
That aught of earthly pleasure can repay
Such brief return to this most wretched world,
Where, when I barely seem to live again,
With urgent speed life harshly shrinks away.
Nay, rather dost thou bring a shuddering pain;
Since, on the instant, all-prevailing death
Triumphant reigns anew, subduing life and soul;
Thus yielding twice the victory to my foe,
Who now, with others of his grisly crew,
Obedient to thy will, and stung with rage,
Awaits the moment when shall be fulfilled
The knowledge thou requirest at my hand;
The knowledge of Numantia’s awful fate.[120]
There is nothing of so much dignity in the incantations of Marlowe’s “Faustus,” which belong to the contemporary period of the English stage; nor does even Shakspeare demand from us a sympathy so strange with the mortal head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth’s guilty question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering spirit, recalled to life only to endure a second time the pangs of dissolution.
The scenes of private and domestic affliction arising from the pressure of famine are sometimes introduced with unexpected effect, especially one between a mother and her child, and the following between Morandro, a lover, and his mistress, Lira, whom he now sees wasted by hunger and mourning over the universal desolation. She turns from him to conceal her sufferings, and he says tenderly,—
Nay, Lira, haste not, haste not thus away;
But let me feel an instant’s space the joy
Which life can give even here, amidst grim death.
Let but mine eyes an instant’s space behold
Thy beauty, and, amidst such bitter woes,
Be gladdened! O my gentle Lira!—thou,
That dwell’st for ever in such harmony
Amidst the thoughts that throng my fantasy,
That suffering grows glorious for thy sake;—
What ails thee, love? On what are bent thy thoughts,
Chief honor of mine own?
Lira.
I think, how fast
All happiness is gliding both from thee
And me; and that, before this cruel war
Can find a close, my life must find one too.
Morandro.
What sayst thou, love?
Lira.
That hunger so prevails
Within me, that it soon must triumph quite,
And break my life’s thin thread. What wedded love
Canst thou expect from me in such extremity,—
Looking for death perchance in one short hour?
With famine died my brother yesterday;
With famine sank my mother; and if still
I struggle on, ’t is but my youth that bears
Me up against such rigors horrible.
But sustenance is now so many days
Withheld, that all my weakened powers
Contend in vain.
Morandro.
O Lira! dry thy tears,
And let but mine bemoan thy bitter griefs!
For though fierce famine press thee merciless,
Of famine, while I live, thou shalt not die.
Fosse deep and wall of strength shall be o’erleaped,
And death confronted, and yet warded off!
The bread the bloody Roman eats to-day
Shall from his lips be torn and placed in thine;—
My arms shall hew a passage for thy life;—
For death is naught when I behold thee thus.
Food thou shall have, in spite of Roman power,
If but these hands are such as once they were.
Lira.
Thou speak’st, Morandro, with a loving heart;—
But food thus bought with peril to thy life
Would lose its savor. All that thou couldst snatch
In such an onset must be small indeed,
And rather cost thy life than rescue mine.
Enjoy, then, love, thy fresh and glowing youth!
Thy life imports the city more than mine;
Thou canst defend it from this cruel foe,
Whilst I, a maiden, weak and faint at heart,
Am worthless all. So, gentle love, dismiss this thought;
I taste no food bought at such deadly price.
And though a few short, wretched days thou couldst
Protect this life, still famine, at the last,
Must end us all.
Morandro.
In vain thou strivest, love,
To hinder me the way my will alike
And destiny invite and draw me on.
Pray rather, therefore, to the gods above,
That they return me home, laden with spoils,
Thy sufferings and mine to mitigate.
Lira.
Morandro, gentle friend, O, go not forth!
For here, before me, gleams a hostile sword,
Red with thy blood! O, venture, venture not
Such fierce extremity, light of my life!
For if the sally be with dangers thick,
More dread is the return.[121]
He persists, and, accompanied by a faithful friend, penetrates into the Roman camp and obtains bread. In the contest he is wounded; but still, forcing his way back to the city, by the mere energy of despair, he gives to Lira the food he has won, wet with his own blood, and then falls dead at her feet.
A very high authority in dramatic criticism speaks of the Numancia as if it were not merely one of the more distinguished efforts of the early Spanish theatre, but one of the more striking exhibitions of modern poetry.[122] It is not probable that this opinion will prevail. Yet the whole piece has the merit of originality, and, in several of its parts, succeeds in awakening strong emotions; so that, notwithstanding the want of dramatic skill and adaptation, it may still be cited as a proof of its author’s poetical talent, and, in the actual condition of the Spanish stage when he wrote, as a bold effort to raise it.