Until the surety comes whom I oblige
With my Jerusalem, which I indite,
Prune, polish, and correct from morn till night.
Epistle to Gaspar de Barrionuevo.
What ideas of taste, correctness, elegance, and order, must the writer have had, who with such diligence and study, produced so wild a work!
If my free neck had not been broke
To strict necessity's hard yoke,
I should have seen around my head
Some honour due to merit shed,
That would have given, as honour goes,
Green lustre to its hoary snows.
I ever have invoked the laugh
Of the vile vulgar on behalf
Of love-intrigues, meet or unmeet,
Oft dashed off at a single heat;
So—but far less impolitic,
Great painters daub their canvass quick.
Lope; Eclogue to Claudio.
Achilles' pictured wrath to Greece,
In gold-illumined palaces
Decorum kept, vile flatterers shamed,
The headstrong youth with love inflamed,
The beauteous lady under ban
Of some stern sire, the rich old man
Shrewd and sententious as a Jew,
To whom are these creations due?
[S] After his death, Calderon, Moreto, and others, who in his lifetime were contented with the title of his pupils, eclipsed him in the scene, though his name was always respected as a writer. This respect was, however, daily diminishing under a more attentive observation of the principles of taste and of good models, till the representation in later days of some of his comedies with general applause served to re-establish his tottering reputation. In France, a very good translation of some of his poems, has within these few years been made by the Marquis d'Aguilar; and in England, a man respectable as well for rank and character as for learning, philosophy, and taste (Lord Holland), has published an excellent essay and criticism on his life and writings. A vicissitude sufficiently singular; and which at least proves, that although Lope may be a very faulty writer, he is yet very far from being an object of but little interest in the history of Spanish literature.
[T] Three odes of Herrera, and some fragments little interesting, are no more than an exception of this general position. Neither the Gulf of Lepanto, nor the Carolea, nor the Austriada, approach at all near to the dignity and importance of their subjects. Even in the Araucana itself, if there is any thing well painted, it is not the Spaniards, but the Indians.
[U] The author of that very delightful old work, half romance, half history, Las Guerras Civiles de Granada, whence Bishop Percy translated the ballad, "Gentle river, gentle river," has introduced amongst others a Romance which perpetuates this action; only that he attributes it to the father of Garcilasso the poet, saying that it was performed by that personage in his youth, during the siege of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. But this is evidently a great mistake, as the surname De la Vega is ascribed to the family in chronicles of a far earlier time. This contradiction could not escape Lord Holland's perspicacity; he makes mention of it in his life of Lope de Vega, but seems somewhat disposed to doubt the truth of the story altogether, as it is related, he observes, of another knight, with little variation, in the Chronicle of Alonzo the Eleventh. But I would say, with great deference to the judgment that dictated this remark, that the popular ballads of a nation generally take their rise from some event of commanding interest, universally recognised at the time as true, and like our own beautiful ballad of Chevy Chase, perpetuate the memory thereof to long posterity, with the authority and assuredness of history. The language of this ballad, it is true, precludes us from giving it a date of greater antiquity than the author of the above imaginative work; and it may be rational to suppose that finding a Garcilasso at the siege of Granada, he chose to embellish his book as well as his hero, by ascribing to him the deed, known either from its mention in the chronicle or from current tradition. But a full confirmation of the truth of the story is, I think, to be found in the family arms; they bear, or, the words Ave Maria, Gracia Plena, per pale in letters azure; and the house of Mendoza show the same words in their scutcheon, only per pale a bend dexter, assumed, I am inclined to think, on the marriage of D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza with Leonora de la Vega. I at one time thought that the incident specified in the Chronicle of Alonzo the Eleventh, might refer to the Garcilasso so favoured by that monarch, more particularly as Mariana gives him the surname; but subsequent research satisfies me in ascribing it to his son, which I do on the authority of Sandoval. Appended to the Chronicle of Alonzo the Wise in the British Museum, is a work by this historian with MS. notes of his own, under this title: Genealogies de algunos grandes Cavalleros que florecieron en tiempo de Don Alonzo VII. Emperador de España. Cuyos descendientes ay oy dia A. D. 1600, por Fr. Prudencio de Sandoval, predicador de la orden de San Benito. His words I have translated in the text, and there is a MS. note in the margin to much the same effect. I should have been glad to give the incident alluded to by Lord Holland, but the chronicle I consulted was printed so villanously in Gothic type, that it is little wonder I missed finding it: the reader may not however be displeased to see a translation of the Romance.[3]