The order in which the poetic works of Villegas are arranged, is by no means the best; but as it was chosen by the author, it is proper that it should be observed in pursuing a notice of the poems themselves. The first book of the first part commences with thirty-six odes in the style of some of the odes of Horace. The Dedicatory Ode addressed to the king, announces, in language truly charming, the spirit of the whole collection.[501] Then follow in a similar strain, the most delightful plays of fancy, abounding in classical allusions, without the least trace of pedantry. The style of Villegas even imparts a charm of novelty to descriptions of the oftenest described things.[502] In these odes, romantic levity assumes freedoms, which if not always of the most excusable, are invariably of the most graceful description;[503] and the soft and melodious expression of tender passion, which in more than one instance occurs, has never been surpassed.[504]
The second book of the first division of the poems of Villegas, consists of odes, which are free translations of the first book of Horace. It ought not, therefore, to have been ranked under the same title with the other poems in the collection. There is something pedantic in the generical titles by which he distinguishes the different odes; for example—Memptica, Enetica, Parænetica, &c.
With the third book of the first division commence the Anacreontic songs, or as they are styled in the collection, the Delicias of the poet. Their measure is chiefly anacreontic, sometimes in blank verse, and at other times presenting the most pleasing alternation of rhymes and assonances. Light pleasing images and soft luxuriant ideas float through these songs even more gracefully than in the odes attributed to Anacreon.[505] Nothing can exceed the beauty of those in which a certain delicate moral feeling is combined with a pathetic simplicity.[506] Only a few can be said to be absolutely copied from the greek or latin originals.
The fourth book of the first part, contains the complete translation of the greek odes ascribed to Anacreon. The second division is chiefly occupied with elegies and idyls, or eidillios, as Villegas, in hellenizing the term, chooses to call them. The elegies which might with greater propriety be denominated epistles, do not belong to the best of the kind in Spanish literature; in the idyls, or mythological tales, as they ought to be called, Villegas appears as one of the Cultoristos, or disciples of the school of Gongora.[507]
The collection concludes with several imitations of greek and latin verse, which may be regarded as the first compositions of the kind in Spanish, that were not complete failures. Doubtless the Spanish language adapts itself somewhat more readily to the ancient metres than the Italian; for final syllables sounded in pronunciation, but subject to elision in scanning, do not occur so frequently in Spanish as in Italian.—This difference is, however, in reality but of trivial importance; and Spanish verses in the ancient syllabic measures do not flow much more naturally than the Italian compositions of the same kind; because many words derived from the latin, have received in Spanish, as well as in Italian, a modern quantity,[508] which is generally confounded with the ancient quantity by the imitators of the greek and latin metres. The Spanish hexameters of Villegas, it is true, approach in point of facility to the hexameters of antiquity.[509] But the pentameters defied his imitative talent.[510] In his sapphic verse the measure resolves into iambics: one of these sapphic odes is, however, exquisitely beautiful.[511]
CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF LYRIC, BUCOLIC, EPIC, DIDACTIC, AND SATIRICAL POETRY, TO THE CLOSE OF THE PERIOD EMBRACED BY THIS SECTION.
After Quevedo and Villegas, and before entering upon the notice of a series of dramatic poets, whose works must form a subject of separate consideration, it will be necessary to mention several ingenious writers, who, though endowed with eminent talents, were nevertheless unable to retard the fast approaching close of the golden era of Spanish poesy.
JAUREGUI.
If pure diction, joined to a descriptive style of the most perfect kind, might form a sufficient claim to the title of poet of the first rank, the right of Juan de Jauregui, or Xauregui, to that distinction, among the Spanish poets of the first half of the seventeenth century, could not be disputed. Jauregui, who was of Biscayan origin, but educated in the interior of Spain, first developed his talents in Italy. In that country he prosecuted his poetic studies, and at the same time thought it no degradation to practise painting as a profession, though he was a nobleman and a knight of the order of Calatrava. He is said to have excelled in painting even more than in poetry. While in Italy he made a Spanish translation of Tasso’s Amynta, in which he was so successful, that the translation is still regarded by the educated portion of his countrymen as possessing the characteristics of the happiest original composition. Jauregui was a decided opponent of the Gongorists; but his taste did not coincide with that of Quevedo. He devoted much talent and industry to a free translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia in octaves. He died in 1610; and his poetic remains, exclusive of his translations, are by no means numerous. The translation of Lucan was not published till long after the death of Jauregui; but ever since its appearance, the Spaniards have admired it as a classic composition; and it unquestionably possesses all the merit that the translation of such a work can possibly present. But from a man who could be induced to apply so much labour and time to a translation of Lucan, no very extraordinary proofs of poetic talent were to be expected; and it must be confessed that Jauregui, in none of his compositions has risen above what may be called the poetry of style. He might have carried this kind of merit still farther, had not his Lucan led him into a kind of mannered affectation. Among his original works, his Orfeo, a mythological tale, in five cantos, deserves to be distinguished.[512] But his lyric poems, and particularly his sonnets, bear evident traces of the man of genius and of cultivated mind.[513] Jauregui’s dramatic compositions, which were written with the view of reforming the national taste, are now lost to literature, and were at the time of their production indignantly banished from the stage. He is the author of some small works in prose, one of which is a treatise on painting.[514]