The impulse given by Garcilasso was followed by the other geniuses of his time; by D. Hernando de Acuña, Gutierre de Cetina, D. Luis de Haro, D. Diego de Mendoza, and a few others, but all very unequal to him: and to meet with a writer in whom the art made any progress, we must look for him in Fray Luis de Leon. This most learned man, versed in every kind of erudition, familiar with the ancient languages, connected by ties of friendship with all the learned of his time, was one of those writers to whom the Spanish language has owed most, for the nerve and propriety with which he wrote it; and as the one who gave to its poetry a character hitherto unknown. The songs and sonnets of Garcilasso were written in the elegiac and sentimental tone of Petrarch, and his Flor de Gnido was the only one of his compositions in which he approaches near to the character of ancient lyric poetry. Luis de Leon, full of Horace, whom he was constantly studying, took from him the march, the enthusiasm, and the fire of the ode; and in a diction natural and without ornament, he knew how to assume elevation, force, and majesty. His profession and his genius inclined him more to the moral lyric than to the epic, yet his Profecía del Tajo[2] shows what he could have accomplished in this; in that he has left some excellent odes, which very nearly approach, if they do not equal, the models which he proposed to himself for imitation. His principal merit and character in them, is that of producing majestic and forcible thoughts, grand images, and sententious maxims, without effort, and with the greatest simplicity. His style and diction are animated, pure, and copious, as though they gushed from a rich and crystal spring. He is not so fortunate in his versification; although sweet, fluent, and graceful, his verse wants stateliness, and fails not unfrequently from want of harmony and fulness. With this defect must be named another, greater yet in my estimation, which is, that no one shows less poetry when the heat abandons him: languid then and prosaic, he neither touches, nor moves, nor elevates; the merit remains alone of his diction and style, which are always sound and pure, even when they preserve neither life nor colour.
To this same epoch belongs, in my opinion, the poetry of Francisco de la Torre, published by Quevedo in 1631. No one doubted then that these were the works of a poet anterior to the editor; but in these later days, a gentleman of much merit, D. Luis Velasquez, reprinted them with a preliminary discourse, wherein he assures us they were the production of Quevedo, who wished to publish his amatory verses under a feigned name. The absolute ignorance that existed of the quality and particulars of this Francisco de la Torre; the example of Lope de Vega, who published, under the name of Burguillos, poetry known to be his own; the similarity of style which Velasquez thought he saw between these verses and those of Quevedo, with other less important reasons, were the foundation of this opinion, which at that time was followed without any contradiction.
But these proofs not only pass for mere conjectures, but being moreover unconfirmed by any positive fact, vanish the instant we examine the nature and character of the poetry. He who might not know how to distinguish the verses of Quevedo from those of Garcilasso, or any other poet of the former age, could alone confound Francisco de la Torre with him. Verses gleaned from the works of both writers, drawn from their places, and jumbled together, are not proof sufficient of similarity; nor, even taken in this manner, will they, if they are well examined, show the similarity so well as is supposed. To know if the poetry of Francisco de la Torre be, or be not that of Quevedo, it is absolutely necessary, after reading the former, to seek out in the Erato or Euterpe of the latter, the verses which he there gives for pastoral poetry: it is then that the vast difference which subsists between them becomes palpable; whether we examine the diction, the style, the verses, the images, or nature of the composition. It is not possible to mistake them, as it is impossible ever to confound women that are naturally beautiful with those who torture themselves to appear so.[G]
In fact, these poems of Francisco de la Torre are the most exquisite of the fruits which the Parnassus of Spain had then produced. All of them pastorals, his images, his thoughts, and his style, detract nothing from this character, but preserve the most rigorous keeping with it. His most eminent qualities are simplicity of expression, the liveliness and tenderness of his emotions, the luxury and smiling amenity of his fancy. No Castilian poet has known how to draw from rural objects so many tender and melancholy sentiments: a turtle-dove, a hind, an oak thrown down, a fallen ivy, strike him, agitate him, and excite his tenderness and enthusiasm. The imitations of the ancients, in which his poems abound, are recast so naturally in his character and style, as to be entirely identified with him. It is a pity that to the purity of his language was not added greater study of elegance, which suffers at times from trivial words and prosaic expressions. At times, also, the diction becomes obscure from dislocations and omissions of expression, the results perhaps of negligence, and a corruption of the manuscript. Lastly, we miss in his eclogues variety, knowledge of the art of dialogue, and opposition and contrast in his situations and interlocutors: the poet who paints and feels with so much delicacy and fire when he speaks for himself, does not succeed in making others speak, and loses himself in uniform and prolix descriptions, which at last weary and grow tiresome.
Hitherto poetry preserved the natural graces and simplicity which it had caught from Garcilasso; and Luis de Leon had succeeded in giving it some sublimity and grandeur: Francisco de la Torre inclined more to subjects that require a middle style, such as those which rural nature presents. He had ornaments of taste, but without ostentation or wealth, and his language was more pure and graceful than brilliant and majestic. The best supporters of this style were Francisco de Figueroa, who in his eclogue of Tirsi gave the first example of good blank verse in Spanish; Jorge de Montemayor, who, with his Diana, introduced the taste and love of pastoral novels; and Gil Polo, one of his imitators, who, less happy than he in invention, had much the advantage of him in versification, and almost arrived at the point of throwing him into the shade. But, passing from these writers to the Andalusians[H], the art will now be seen to take a change in taste, to assume a tone more lofty and vehement, to enrich and adorn the diction, and to manifest the intention of surprising and ravishing; in short, to aspire to the mens divinior atque os magna soniturum, by which Horace characterises true poetry.
At the head of these authors must indisputably be named Fernando de Herrera, a man to whom poetic elocution owes more than to any other. His genius was equal to his industry; and, familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he devoted himself to the imitation of the great writers of antiquity, to form a poetic language which might compete in pomp and wealth with that which they used in their verses. He was not, it is true, circumstanced like Juan de Mena; he had not the license to suppress syllables, syncopate phrases, or change terminations. This physical part of the language was now fixed by Garcilasso and his imitators, and could not suffer alteration. But the picturesque part might, and in fact, did receive from him great improvements: he made much use of the compound epithets that already existed, he introduced other new ones, he re-established many forgotten adjectives, to which he imparted new strength and freshness by the fitness with which he applied them, and used in fine more phrases and modes of speech distinct from usual and common language than any other poet. To this careful attention, he added another quality, not less essential, that of painting to the ear by means of imitative harmony, making the sounds bear analogy with the image. He breaks them; he suspends them; he drags them wearily along, he precipitates them at a stroke; he rubs them into roughness, he touches them into mildness;—in short, they sometimes roll fluently and easily along, at others they pierce the ear with a calm and quiet melody. These effects, which the verses of Herrera produce by the mechanism of their language, distinguish them from prose in such a manner, that though they may be broken up, and lose their measure and cadence, they still preserve the picturesque and poetic character which the poet stamped upon them.
If from the exterior forms we pass to the essential qualities, it may be said that no one surpasses Herrera in force and boldness of imagination, very few in warmth and vivacity of emotion, and none even equal him, if we except Rioja, in dignity and decorum. The greater part of his poems consists of elegies, songs, and sonnets, in the taste of Petrarch. It was Petrarch who first, deviating from the manner in which the ancients painted love, gave to this passion a tone more ideal and sublime. He refined it from the weakness of the senses, converting it into a species of religion; and reduced its activity to be constantly admiring and adoring the perfections of the object beloved, to please itself with its pains and martyrdom, and to reckon its sacrifices and privations as so many other pleasures. Herrera having, throughout his life, a passion for the Countess of Gelves, gave to his love the heroism of Platonic affection; and under the titles of Light, Sun, Star, Eliodora, consecrated to her a passion fiery, tender, and constant, but accompanied by so much respect and decorum, that her modesty could not be alarmed, nor her virtue offended. In all the verses which he devoted to this lady, there is more veneration and self-denial, than hope and desire. This taste has the inconvenience of running into metaphysics nothing intelligible, into a distillation of pains, griefs, and martyrdoms, very distant from truth and nature, and which, consequently, neither interests nor affects. To this error, which may occasionally be remarked in Herrera, must be added that his diction, too much studied and refined, offends, almost always, by affectation, and not seldom by obscurity. The style and language of love must flow more easy and unencumbered, to be graceful and delicate. Thus Herrera, who, no doubt, loved with vehemence and tenderness, seems, in uttering his sentiments, to be more engaged about the manner of expressing them, than with the desire of interesting by them; and to this cause must be attributed, that, of the Spanish poets, he is the one whose love-verses are the least calculated to pass from lip to lip, and from nation to nation.
But the composition in which this rich poetic diction shines equally with his ardent and vigorous imagination, is the elevated Ode, which Herrera, a happy imitator of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin poetry, knew how to fill with his fire, and thus to become the rival of the ancients. Lyric poetry, in its origin, was very distant from the range of ordinary ideas. The poet, possessed by an afflatus which it was not in his power either to moderate or to rule, chanted his verses before the altars of the temples, in the public theatres, at the head of armies, in grand national solemnities. The genius that inspired him caused him then to take flight to other regions, and to see things hidden from the ken of common mortals. Thence, in a language of fire, and through all their wonderful circumstances, in grand and forcible addresses to the people, he made Truth descend from on high, he opened the gates of destiny, and announced the future; tuned hymns of gratitude and praise to gods and heroes; or, filling with patriotic and martial fury armed squadrons, called them on to battle and to victory. In this situation of things, the lyric poet should not appear a mortal like the rest of mankind; his agitation, his language, the numbers to which he reduced it, the music with which he sang it, the boldness of his figures, the grandeur of his conceptions,—all should concur to the consideration of him, in these moments of enthusiasm, as a supernatural being, an interpreter of the Divinity, a sibyl, and a prophet.