CHAPTER VII

M. Morel-Fatio's L'Espagne au 16^e et 17^e siécle (Heilbronn, 1878) is invaluable for this period and the succeeding century. Dr. Adam Schneider's Spaniens Anteil an der deutschen Litteratur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Strassburg, 1898) is a work of immense industry, containing much curious information in a convenient form. English readers will find an excellent summary of the literary history of this time in Mr. David Hannay's Later Renaissance (1898).

Manuel Cañete, whose Teatro español del siglo XVI. (1885) is useful but ill arranged, included a single volume of Torres Naharro's Propaladia among the Libros de Antaño so long ago as 1880; the second is still to come, and those who would read this dramatist must turn to the rare sixteenth-century editions. Perhaps the best reprint of Gil Vicente is that issued at Hamburg in 1834 by José Victorino Barreto Feio and José Gomes Monteiro; a most complete account of Vicente, his environment and influence, is given by Theophilo Braga in the seventh volume of his learned Historia de la litteratura portuguesa (Porto, 1898). Boscán's Castilian version of the Cortegiano was reissued in 1873; the completest edition of his verse is that published by Professor Knapp (of Yale University), issued at Madrid in 1873. Professor Flamini's Studi di storia letteraria italiana e straniera (Livorno, 1895) contains a very scholarly essay on the debt of Boscán to Bernardo Tasso. The poems of Garcilaso are in Rivadeneyra, vols. xxxii. and xlii.; but a far pleasanter book to handle is Azara's edition (1765). Benedetto Croce's study entitled Intorno al soggiorno di Garcilaso de la Vega in Italia (1894) appeared originally in the Rassegna storica napoletana di lettere ed arte (a magazine which deserves to be better known in England than it is). Croce's researches have been printed apart, and we may look forward to his publishing others no less important. Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen's biography and translation of Garcilaso (1823) are defective, but nothing better exists in English. Few poets in the world have been so fortunate in their editors as Sâ de Miranda. Mme. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos' reprint (Halle, 1881), with its very learned apparatus of introduction, notes, and variants, is a real achievement unsurpassed in the history of editing. A fine edition of Gutierre de Cetina has been published (Seville, 1895) with a scholarly introduction by D. Joaquín Hazañas y la Rua. Acuña's works appeared at Madrid in 1804; his Contienda de Ayax is in the second volume of López de Sedano's Parnaso Español (1778). Concerning Mendoza, the reader may profitably turn to Charles Graux' Essai sur les origines du fona grec de l'Escorial (1880), published in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études. Professor Knapp edited Mendoza's verses in 1877: a creditable piece of work, though inferior to his edition of Boscán. Castillejo and Silvestre are exampled in Rivadeneyra, vol. xxxii. Of Villegas' Inventario there is no modern reprint.

Guevara is sufficiently represented in Rivadeneyra, vol. lxv.; the English versions by Lord Berners, North, Fenton, Hellowes, and others, are of exceptional merit and interest.

The most important historians of the Indies are reprinted by Rivadeneyra, vols. xxii. and xxvi. Amador de los Ríos edited Oviedo for the Academy of History in 1851-55. Very full details concerning Cortés are given by Prescott in his classic book on Peru, and Sir Arthur Helps' Life of Las Casas (1868) is a pleasing piece of partisanship.

Lazarillo de Tormes should be read in Mr. Butler Clarke's beautiful reproduction of the princeps (1897). M. Morel-Fatio's essay in the first series of his Études sur l'Espagne (1895) is exceedingly ingenious, but, like all negative criticism, it is somewhat unconvincing. His guess that Lazarillo was written by some one connected with the Valdés clique does not seem very happy, but even a conjecture by M. Morel-Fatio carries great weight.

Eduard Böhmer gives a very full bibliography of Juan de Valdés in his Biblioteca Wiffeniana (Strassburg, 1874). Benjamin Barron Wiffen had for Valdés a kind of cult which found partial expression in his quarto Life and Writings of Juan Valdés, otherwise Valdesio (1865). But it is impossible to give more minute references to the voluminous literature which deals with Valdés and his brother Alfonso. An historical essay by Manuel Carrasco, published at Geneva in 1880, is interesting as the work of a modern Spanish Protestant.