If in this state a glance is cast at the steps which the art in little more than a century of its existence had taken, it will be seen that nothing had been left unattempted. There were translations of all, or of the greater number, of the ancient authors: epics of all kinds had been written; the theatre had taken a compass, and presented a fruitfulness so great as to have communicated of its wealth to foreigners; lastly, the ode in all its forms, the eclogue, the epistle, the satire, descriptive poetry, the madrigal, and epigram, all had been noticed, and all cultivated.
If this compass and variety do honour to its flexibility and boldness, the success of its accomplishments in all these various kinds of composition is not equal. For, in the first place, the translations are almost all bad or indifferent. Who, in good truth, can say that that of the Odyssey, by Gonzalo Perez; of the Eneid, by Hernandez de Velasco; or of the Metamorphoses, by Sigler, are real substitutes for the originals? What person, possessing the least taste in poetic language and versification, can read two pages of these versions, wherein the greatest poets of antiquity are metamorphosed into trivial rhymers, without elegance and harmony? Spain has a number of epic poems; and although some fragments of good poetry may be culled from them, not one can be looked upon as a well-arranged fable, or as corresponding in dignity and interest with its title and argument. Of Spanish comedies, it is notorious that the defects exceed the beauties. Happier in shorter kinds of composition, her odes, elegies, sonnets, romances, and letrillas, approach nearer to perfection. But even in these, what forgetfulness of propriety, what negligence at times, and at times what pedantry and false taste exist! In the best writers, in the choicest pieces, the mind is offended by finding too frequently joined to a fine turn a harsh extravagance, and a sharp thorn to an incomparable flower.
There is one thing extraordinary in the good poets of the sixteenth century, that their genius never rises to the level of the events which passed around them. The compositions of Virgil and of Horace in Rome correspond with the dignity and majesty of the empire. Lucan afterwards, though very distant from the perfection of his predecessors, preserved in his poem the bold and fiery tone adapted to the subject on which he wrote, and to the patriotic enthusiasm with which he was animated. Dante, in his extraordinary poem, shows himself inspired by all the sentiments which the rancour of faction, civil dissension, and the effervescence of men's minds, stirred up. Petrarch, if in his love-sonnets he sacrificed to the gallantry of his time, rises, in his Trionfi, to a level with the elevation to which the human mind was rising at that period. It was not so with the poets of Spain. The Moors expelled from the peninsula; a discovered world opening a new hemisphere to Spanish fortune; fleets sailing from one extremity of the ocean to the other, accompanied by terror, and exchanging the riches of the east and west; the church torn by the reformation of Luther; France, Holland, Germany, convulsed and desolated by civil wars and religious dissensions; the Ottoman power rolled away on the waters of Lepanto; Portugal falling in Africa, to be then united to Castile; the Spanish sword agitating the whole world with the spirit of heroism, of religion, of ambition, and of avarice;—when was there ever a time more full of astonishing events, or more suited to sublime the fancy? Yet the Castilian muses, deaf and indifferent to this universal agitation, could scarcely inspire their favourites with aught but moralities, rural images, gallantry, and love.[T]
This deficiency of grandeur is compensated in part by a moral quality which distinguishes those poets, and recommends them infinitely. Neither in Garcilasso, nor in Luis de Leon, nor in Francisco de la Torre, nor in Herrera, are to be found any traces of rancour and literary envy, of gross indecency, or of servile and shameless adulation. The praises which they sometimes pay to power are restricted within those bounds of moderation and decorum which make them endurable. Till the corruption of literary taste, there was no appearance of this moral degradation, made up of meanness towards superiors, of insolence towards equals, and of utter forgetfulness of all respect towards the public; vices unfortunately sufficiently contagious, and which defame and destroy the nobleness of an art, that from the nature of its object, and the means it uses, has in it something superhuman.
There cannot be denied to a great number of the Spanish poets admirable talent, extensive learning, and great acquaintance with the ancient classics, although it is an uncommon thing to meet in them the sustained elegance and perfection of taste which other modern authors have drawn from the same fountains. Many causes contributed to this. One is, that these poets communicated little with each other: there wanted a common centre of urbanity and taste, a literary legislature, that should draw the line between bombast and sublimity, exaggeration and vigour, affectation and elegance. The universities, where dwelt the greatest knowledge, could not become such, from the nature of their studies, more scholastic than classical. The court, where the tone of society and fashion is most quickly perfected, would have been more to the purpose; but wandering under Charles the Fifth, severe and melancholy under the Second Philip, it gave not till Philip the Third to poetical talent the encouragement necessary for its perfection; even then, but much more in the time of his successor, taste was vitiated, and the encouragement given by princes and grandees, and even the occasional share they took themselves in poetical pursuits, could do nothing but authorize the corruption. In short, there wanted in Spain a court like that of Augustus, of Leo the Tenth, of the dukes of Ferrara, and of Louis the Fourteenth; where polite and refined conversation, devotion to the Muses, culture and elegance, with other fortunate circumstances, powerfully contributed to the perfection of the great writers that flourished therein.
Another cause is the secondary place which poetry held with many of those who cultivated it. They wrote verses to unbend themselves from other more serious occupations; and he who writes verses to amuse himself, is not usually very nice in the choice of his subject, nor very careful in its execution. Fatal lot to Spain in the finest and most difficult of all arts! Poetry, which is a recreation and amusement for those who enjoy it, should be a very serious and almost exclusive occupation with those who profess it, if they aspire to hold any distinguished rank in reputation. When it is considered that Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Tasso, Ariosto, Pope, Racine, and others, were at once the greatest poets and the most laborious, it should not be thought extraordinary that those have remained so far behind, who, even supposing them to have possessed equal talent, equalled them neither in application nor perseverance.
To this evil was added another and a worse, arising in a great measure from the same cause. Very few of the good poets of Spain published their works in their lifetime. The works of Garcilasso, Luis de Leon, Francisco de la Torre, Herrera, the Argensólas, Quevedo, and others, were published after their death by their heirs or friends, with more or less judgment. How much would they not have rejected, if they had published their writings in their own name! how many corrections would they not have made in the selection, and how many spots of slovenliness, bad taste, and obscurity, would they not have expunged!
But even though the want of perfection from this cause should seem less imputable to them, it is not on that account less certain. It has given cause to a diversity of opinion on the merit of the ancient poets of Spain, whom some value as admirable models, whilst others depreciate them so far as to think them unworthy of being read. In this, as in all cases, partiality and prejudice are wont to carry critics to their conclusions more than truth and justice; and to exalt or depress the dead is often with them nothing but an indirect mode of exalting or depressing the living. But setting this consideration aside, it may be said that this vast difference arises from the different points of view which are taken for the comparison. Comparing Leon, Garcilasso, Herrera, Rioja, and a few others, with the monstrous extravagances introduced and sanctioned by Góngora and Quevedo, there is no doubt that the former should be regarded as classical writers, perfect, and worthy to be imitated and followed: if compared even with the great authors of antiquity, or with the few moderns that have approached near, or have excelled them, we have yet to discover the reason why many treat them with such excessive rigour. As to myself, without pretending to lay down for a rule my particular opinion, and judging by the effect produced on me in the perusal, I would say, that though I consider the ancient Spanish poesies as sufficiently distant from perfection, they yet convey to my mind and ear sufficient pleasure for me to overlook in their graces the negligences and blemishes I meet with. I would, moreover, be bold to say, that if the poets of Spain had cultivated the loftier kinds of poetry, the epopee and the drama, with the same successful diligence as the ode and other shorter species, Spain would have been satisfied with the praises that would have fallen to her lot in this delightful department of literature. I will add, lastly, that, in my judgment, it is absolutely necessary to read and study these poets, in order to learn the purity, propriety, and genius of the language, to form the taste and ear to the harmony and flow of its verse, and to acquire the structure of the true poetic period. It would not be difficult, nor perhaps foreign to my subject, to show in her modern compositions the influence which exclusive admiration or exaggerated depreciation of the fathers of Spanish poetry has had upon her authors; but this application, necessarily odious, enters neither into my character nor design.
Castilian poetry, buried in the ruins wherein sank the other arts, sciences, and power in the time of Charles the Second, began to be revived towards the middle of the last century, by the laudable efforts of some literary characters who devoted themselves wholly to the re-establishment of classical study. The principal glory of this happy revolution is due to D. Ignacio de Luzán, who, not satisfied with pointing out the path of good taste in his Poetica, published in 1737, gave no less the example of treading in it, by the poetical beauties which are visible in the few compositions of his that have been published. His poetry, like that of all professed critics, is recommended more by its dignity, circumspection, and propriety, than by any sublimity or boldness; but his memory will be always respected as that of the restorer of Spanish poesy. Others followed in the same career: the Count of Torrepalma, whose Deucalion, notwithstanding some touches of bombast and purism which it preserves, is one of the strongest and best pieces of descriptive poetry in Castilian; D. Josef Porcel, author of some hunting eclogues, much praised by all his cotemporaries, but which I have not read, nor indeed have they been collected for publication; D. Augustin Montiano, a learned man and of good taste, though deficient in imagination and genius; D. Nicolas de Moratin, a poet gifted with a lively and flexile fancy, and an original and forcible expression, who for his whole life has been struggling with indefatigable zeal in favour of the principles and rules of correct composition: and, lastly, Don Josef Cadalso, in whose hands, the Anacreontic, which had been buried with Villegas, revived towards the end of the century. In this gay and agreeable writer terminate the trials and efforts for the revival of the art. From that period a new epoch in Castilian poetry commences, upon another foundation, with another character, with other principles, and it may even be said, with other models; an epoch, the description and judgment of which posterity will know how to give with more justice, authority, and propriety, than it is generally supposed can be given by a cotemporary.