Inopemque paterni
Et laris et fundi; paupertas impulit audax
Ut versus facerem.—Epist. lib. ii.
[26] Tomando ya la espada, ya la pluma. Lope de Vega’s Laurel de Apolo.
[27] Bouterwek’s “History of Spanish Literature.”
[28] A shepherd of the banks of the Tagus.
[29] A shepherdess, born on the margin of that river.
[30] Pellicer is of opinion that Cervantes intended the Galatea as an homage to the lady of his affections; a sort of literary courtship, not uncommon among the writers of that age. “Catalina, the name of the lady in question,” he observes, “might by a slight change, and the transposition of the letters, be converted into Galatea. In like manner,” he adds, “the fictitious names given to the shepherds in the romance, bear some resemblance to the real ones of the persons to whom they are supposed to apply; viz.—Meliso for Mendoza (the celebrated Don Diego de Mendoza), Lauso for Luis (Luis Barabona de Soto being the individual referred to).”
[31] Literally Comedies of the cloak and the sword. Their subjects were taken from the sphere of Spanish fashionable life, and they were pictures of the manners of the age. They were performed in the prevailing costume of the time, to which circumstance they owe their specific classification as plays of the cloak and sword.
[32] These observations occur in the Adjunta or Appendix to the Viaje del Parnaso, in an imaginary conversation between Cervantes and one Don Pancrasio de Roncesvalles, who describes himself to be a poet “by the grace of Apollo.” Don Pancrasio enquires whether Cervantes has written any plays; to which question our author returns the following answer—“Si, muchas, i a no ser mias me parecieran dignas de alabanza, como lo fueron los tratos de Argel, la Numancia, la gran Turquesea, la Batalla naval, la Gerusalem, la Amaranta, el Bosque amoroso, la Unica i la Vizarra Arsinda, i otras muchas de que no me acuerdo. Mas la que yo más estimo i de la que más me precio, fué, i es de una llamado la Confusa, la qual, con paz sea dicho, de quantas comedias de capa i espada hasta hoi se han representado, bien puede tener lugar señalado por buena entre las mejoras.”
[33] Bouterwek’s History of Spanish Literature.
[34] Canto de Caliope.