Of all the Spanish poets, Quevedo has been the most successful writer of burlesque sonnets in the Italian manner. Some of these sonnets he shortened by depriving them of the three last of their legitimate number of lines, while the Italians on the contrary, attached to theirs the comic sequel which they called the Coda.[484] Quevedo’s productions in this class are, for the most part, like their Italian models, full of allusions which cannot be understood without the assistance of a commentary. Some have a piquant sententious turn. But that licentious humour which distinguishes this species of composition in Italian literature Quevedo renounced, either voluntarily or from fear of the inquisition. Besides his burlesque sonnets, he wrote canciones and madrigals in the same style.
Quevedo’s satires in the manner of Juvenal, naturally connect themselves with his burlesque poems. Like his model he has infused into them nearly as much poetry as the satirical style is capable of receiving.[485] These compositions display the noblest enthusiasm for truth and justice,[486] and the most patriotic zeal for the honour of Spain,[487] forcibly and clearly expressed.
Quevedo’s satires in verse and his poems of humour, are not so well known out of Spain as his prose writings of the same description, of which the most remarkable are his Visions or Dreams, and his novel of the Great Tacaño, or the Captain of Thieves, called Don Pablos, (Vida del Buscon, llamado D. Pablos), which certainly may be regarded as the most burlesque of the knavery romances.[488] Lucian furnished him with the original idea of satirical visions; but Quevedo’s were the first of their kind in modern literature. Owing to frequent imitations, their faults are now no longer disguised by the charm of novelty, and even their merits have ceased to interest. Still, however, they must be regarded as ingenious productions abounding in practical truths. They are not, it is true, remarkable either for delicate satire or pure philosophy. But Quevedo’s object was to scourge human folly and vice in the mass; and the severe lashes which he deals out in his Visions, are in excellent unison with the popular nature of the idea and the poignant style of its execution. He has made perverted Justice, with all her servants and satellites, and particularly the Alguazils, figure in the fore ground of his picture; but the melancholy fate of the author may well excuse, though even in the visionary world, these monotonous features in his satirical work. Among the passages for which no just excuse can be found, are some disgusting descriptions of the consequences of physical excess. The reader is occasionally surprised by the humorous sallies with which Quevedo breaks forth in these Visions; for example, in that of the Last Judgment, in which he describes “some merchants who had placed their souls across their bodies, so that their five senses got into the finger nails of their right hand.[489]”
For the serious works of Quevedo, we must refer to his poems, as his serious compositions in prose are in general of a theological and ascetic character. The sonnets, canciones, odes and pastoral poems, which he published under the name of the Bachelor de la Torre, are even at the present day highly extolled by critics;[490] and these poems have certainly more correctness than most of Quevedo’s other works. But they chiefly consist of imitations of the Spanish Petrarchist style, which was always foreign to Quevedo; and notwithstanding the great elegance of language and versification which distinguish them, they are surcharged with antiquated phrases of affected gallantry. The snows which inflame the poet, and similar tropes in which the beauty of a mistress is brilliantly set forth, occasionally call to mind the style of the Italian Marinists. Nevertheless some of these sonnets well deserve the favour which has been extended to them.[491] Quevedo’s Endechas, or Laments, have a pleasing national character.[492] The pastoral poems contained in this collection, approximate to the good specimens of the sixteenth century. Quevedo evidently wished to prove what he was capable of producing in this style of composition.
The serious poems of which Quevedo has avowed himself the author, are very unequal in character.[493] His didactic and sententious sonnets are energetic, but deficient in delicacy.[494] Some of the best assume a satirical turn.[495] His odes in the Pindaric style are, however, stiff and formal. He wrote a piece of moral declamation in verse, called Sermon Estoyco, (Estoical Sermon), which is in truth precisely what the title denotes.
That Quevedo entertained very vague notions respecting poetry, is particularly evident from the whim which induced him to translate in rhymed verse, the stoical Enchiridion, or Manual of Epictetus. The translation is, however, much esteemed by the Spaniards.[496]
VILLEGAS.
An Anacreon was still wanting to Spanish literature, though various attempts in the Anacreontic style had been made. That a poet penetrated at once with the classic spirit of Anacreon, Horace and Catullus, should now arise, and become the favourite of the Spanish public, was a thing scarcely to be expected; for all the resources of amatory poetry in the only style which had hitherto been found agreeable to Spanish taste, seemed to be exhausted. The poetry of Villegas, however, produced precisely for this reason the more powerful impression on a public which ardently longed for entertainment.
Estèvan Manuel de Villègas, was born in the year 1595, at Nagera, or Naxera, a little town in Old Castile. The history of his life is simple. His parents who were noble, though not rich, sent him to study at Madrid and Salamanca. His taste for poetry was developed at a very early period. Even in his fifteenth year he translated Anacreon, and several of the odes of Horace in verse; and likewise imitated those poets in original compositions. In his twentieth year he gave the finishing touch to his youthful effusions, and added to the collection of his translated and original poems, a second part, which has since been published conjointly with them.[497] He soon after printed the whole collection at his own expence at Naxera, under the title of Amatorias; but in the interior of the book, the poems are styled Eroticas.[498] Villegas ventured to dedicate these poems, together with the part added to them, to which a particular title might more properly have been assigned, to Philip III. though individual parts of the collection had previously been addressed to other patrons. That so indolent a monarch as Philip III. should have accepted the dedication of such a collection, may not be surprising, and the freedom was pardonable in a young author of three-and-twenty. But this dedication is, in another respect, remarkable in the history of Spanish literature; for the Eroticas of Villegas contain some passages, which though not wanting in delicacy of expression, are nevertheless so extremely free, that it is wonderful how they happened to escape the censure of the inquisition. The dedication was, however, productive of neither good nor evil to the poet. For several years he vainly solicited a lucrative office; and was at last obliged to content himself with the scanty emolument arising from an insignificant post in Naxera, his native town. From that time he devoted his leisure to the composition of philological works in the latin language; and though he produced nothing new for Spanish poetry, he made a prose translation of five books of Boethius. He lived till the year 1669.
The graceful luxuriance of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in modern literature; and, generally speaking, no modern writer has so well succeeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the modern. But constantly to observe that correctness of ideas, which distinguished the classical compositions of antiquity, was by Villegas, as by most Spanish poets, considered too rigid a requisition, and an unnecessary restraint on genius. He accordingly sometimes degenerates into conceits and images, the monstrous absurdity of which are characteristic of the author’s nation and age. For instance, in one of his odes in which he entreats Lyda to suffer her tresses to flow, he says, that “when agitated by Zephyr, her locks would occasion a thousand deaths, and subdue a thousand lives;”[499] and then he adds, in a strain of extravagance, surpassing that of the Marinists, “that the sun himself would cease to give light, if he did not snatch beams from her radiant countenance to illumine the east.”[500] But faults of this glaring kind, are by no means frequent in the poetry of Villegas; and the fascinating grace with which he emulates his models, operates with so powerful a charm, that the occasional occurrence of some little affectations, from which he could scarcely be expected entirely to abstain, is easily overlooked by the reader.