Agustin de Salazar y Torres, was educated in Mexico, and after his return to Spain, lived at the court of Philip IV. He was an admirer of Gongora, and as many of his poems prove, also a faithful disciple; but though an inveterate Gongorist, he was one of the cleverest writers of that school of affectation. His dramatic works are distinguished for ingenuity of invention, and a style which shews that he knew how to elevate himself above the common level, without running into bombast.[557] His heroic comedy, entitled, Elegir al Enemigo, (How to choose an Enemy), is full of genuine poetry.
Antonio Mira de Mescua, or Amescua, who lived as an ecclesiastic at the court of Philip IV. must not be omitted in the list of the Spanish dramatic poets of the period now under consideration. He was regarded by many of his contemporaries as a second Lope de Vega;[558] and he doubtless more nearly approached the rude brilliancy of Lope than the elegant manner of Calderon. He remained, however, far behind his model; yet his historical and spiritual dramas are distinguished for conceptions, which, though extravagant, are not devoid of interest, and which were moreover perfectly in unison with the prevailing Spanish taste. In El Caballero sin Nombre, (The Knight without a Name), he has even ventured to introduce a wild bear on the stage.
To the historian who makes the dramatic literature of Spain his particular object, must be consigned the task of collecting the necessary information respecting the works of Antonio de Mendoza, Luis Velez de Guevara, Alvaro Cubillo, Luis Coello, Felipe Godinez, Juan Matos Fragoso, and other dramatists, who in the age in which they lived, were frequently placed on a level with Calderon. The writer who devotes his attention to this department of Spanish literature, must likewise take into consideration the older dramatic works which appeared during the latter years of Lope de Vega’s career, as, for example, the comedies of Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, Guillen de Castro, &c.[559] Neither must he neglect to furnish bibliographic accounts of the various collections of Spanish dramas published by different editors. In the present work it is only necessary to observe, that these collections, the greater part of which appeared in the seventeenth century, were all speculations of the booksellers. Most of them present abundant traces of haste and negligence, and but few are distinguished for critical discrimination in the selection. The historian of the Spanish national taste will, however, consult those collections with the view of ascertaining what dramas were, at a certain period, the greatest favourites in Spain; for the booksellers published their collections in conformity with the humour of the public. Thus every drama which was printed, was styled a Comedia famosa, so that about the middle of the seventeenth century, the epithet famosa, had, by frequent repetition, lost all value.
CONCLUSION OF THE HISTORY OF SPANISH ELOQUENCE AND CRITICISM WITHIN THE PERIOD OF THIS SECTION.
The works belonging to the department of elegant prose, which appeared during the period of the ascendency of dramatic poetry in Spanish literature, may be noticed in few words. The authors who still adhered to the spirit of genuine eloquence, gave no new direction to rhetorical cultivation; they merely continued, with laudable perseverance, the task begun by their predecessors, namely, that of opposing the party who methodically endeavoured to introduce into prose composition a new tone of ingenious absurdity.
Romantic prose no longer maintained a conflict with true eloquence, but proceeded in a separate course. The reading portion of the Spanish public continued to be supplied with romances and novels, most of which, however, were the production of obscure writers. Several Spanish ladies contributed their share in this kind of authorship.
The necessary distinction between historical and romantic narrative was now made by the historiographers or chroniclers, whose numbers had been augmented since the extension of the Spanish possessions in India and America. But among all these writers, Antonio de Solis, who has already been noticed as a dramatic poet, is the only one who produced a work deserving to be ranked among the models of historical composition. His history, which he wrote in the quality of historiographer of the Indies, is the last classic relic of the kind of which Spanish literature can boast. It contains an account of the Conquest of Mexico, in a genuine historical form, notwithstanding that the subject was calculated to seduce a poetic author into the romantic narrative style.[560] Those who are unacquainted with the fact of Antonio de Solis being a celebrated poet, will never conjecture it from the general tone of this work. No writer could possibly mark with more solidity of taste the distinction between poetry and prose. Antonio de Solis had, however, attained the age of maturity when he laid down the principles by which he was guided in the discharge of his functions as a historian. He states in his preface that in history all ornaments of eloquence are merely accessaries; and that the accuracy of the relation is true historical elegance. He says, that truth must be of all things the most important to the historian, and that in historical composition what is truly stated, is well stated.[561] According to these principles the very worst style possible would be tolerable in a faithful historical narrative. But it would appear that Antonio de Solis, through a distrust of his own poetic imagination, exaggerated to himself the necessity of self-denial as an homage due to historical fidelity; and this exaggeration, which in reality was only theoretical, proved of essential service to him in the execution of his work. His talent for description, and his cultivated taste, naturally elevated him above the dryness and dulness of the common chronicle style. Though he seems scarcely to have reflected on the more essential requisites of the historical art, yet his work has not suffered by their neglect; for as a dramatic poet he had been accustomed to an arrangement of events which concentrated them in a single point of view; and profound political knowledge was not required for the just exposition of transactions occurring in the expedition of a small party of Spanish adventurers, led on by the daring Hernando Cortes, to the conquest of the kingdom of Mexico. Nothing more was necessary than a simple and unaffected narration, to cause the interest naturally belonging to the subject to be strongly felt.
INTRODUCTION OF GONGORISM INTO SPANISH PROSE—BALTHASAR GRACIAN.
The elegant simplicity of the historical style adopted by Antonio de Solis, forms, with the Gongorism which about this time crept into Spanish prose composition from the poetic school of Gongora, a rhetorical contrast, which is the last remarkable phenomenon in the history of Spanish eloquence. The pedantic commentators of the unintelligible Gongora had long been accustomed to write a strange fantastic prose style; but this prosaic Gongorism had not infected any man of distinguished talent, until Lorenzo, or Balthasar Gracian, became a popular author. Writers on literature mention but few particulars respecting the life of this distinguished man, who is supposed to have died in the year 1652. It is probable that he himself concealed his literary existence; for it is conjectured that the works which on their title-pages bear the name of Lorenzo Gracian, were really written by Balthasar Gracian, who was a Jesuit, and the brother of Lorenzo. Respecting Lorenzo nothing further is known than that he is understood to have lent his name to the productions of his brother; but, be this as it may, the writings which have conferred celebrity on that name, are, in some measure, sufficiently jesuitical.[562] They relate, in general, to the morality of the great world, to theological morality, and to poetry and rhetoric. The most voluminous of these works bears the affected title of El Criticon. It is an allegorical picture of the whole course of human life divided into Crisis, that is to say, sections according to fixed points of view, and clothed in the formal garb of a pompous romance. It is scarcely possible to open any page of this book without recognizing in the author a man, who is in many respects far from common, but who from the ambition of being entirely uncommon in thinking and writing studiously and ingeniously, avoids nature and good sense. A profusion of the most ambiguous subtleties, expressed in ostentatious language, are scattered throughout the work;[563] and those affected conceits are the more offensive, in consequence of their union with the really grand view of the essential relationship of man to nature and his Creator, which forms the subject of the treatise. Gracian would have been an excellent writer had he not so anxiously wished to be an extraordinary one. His shorter productions, in which he developes his theory of the intellectual faculties, and the conduct of life, are still more disfigured by affected ornament than the tedious Criticon;[564] they, however, occasionally contain striking observations intelligibly expressed.[565] His Oraculo Manual has been more read than any other of his works. It is intended to be a collection of maxims of general utility, but it exhibits good and bad precepts, sound judgments, and refined sophisms, all confounded together. In this work Gracian has not forgotten to inculcate the practical principle of jesuitism “to be all things to all men,” (hacerse a todos), nor to recommend his own favourite maxim, “to be common in nothing,” (en nada vulgar), which in order to be valid would require a totally different interpretation from that which he has given it.
Gracian’s uncommon prose was formed according to certain principles. His book on the Art of Ingeniously Thinking and Writing,[566] is no inconsiderable contribution to criticism in Spanish literature. He refines to an incredible degree on subtle distinctions and antitheses, with the view of systematically bringing the style of his countrymen to the level of his own. His illustrative examples are selected from Italian and Spanish poets, particularly from Marino, Gongora and Quevedo. Throughout the whole work, ingenious thoughts (conceptos,) are constantly the subject of consideration. A man of genius, he says, may receive these ideas from nature; but art enables him to create them at pleasure. “As he who comprehends such ideas is an eagle, so he who is capable of producing them must be ranked among angels; for it is an employment of cherubims and an elevation of man which raises him to sublime hierarchy.”[567] He then proceeds to describe those conceptos, which he pronounces to be undefinable, because “they are to the understanding what beauty is to the eye, and harmony to the ear.”[568] Next follows an enumeration and explanation of the numerous combinations by which the various classes of these ideas, for example, the proverbial, the pathetic, the heroic, &c. may be produced. Poetic figures are examined in rotation; and the style of true eloquence is defined according to the same principles. Thus throughout the whole book good sense and good taste are most ingeniously abused.