In this ill-starred expedition, Garcilasso was entrusted with the command of thirty companies of Spanish troops. The Marechal de Montmorency, to whom the French army was committed, resolved to act wholly on the defensive, to weary out the enemy by delay, and by laying waste the country around to deprive him of subsistence. This plan, to which he inflexibly adhered, had all the effect he desired. After unsuccessfully investing Marseilles and Arles, with his troops wasted by famine or disease, the emperor was under the necessity of ordering a retreat. In this retreat, effected with much disorder and with more precipitation, his army suffered a thousand calamities. Crowds of peasants, eager to be revenged on a foe, through whom their cultured fields had been turned into a frightful desert, lying ambushed in the lanes and mountainous defiles which overhung their way, by frequent attacks, now in front, now in the rear, kept them in perpetual alarm; nor was there a day passed without their being obliged, every two or three hundred paces, to stand and defend themselves. The farther they advanced, the more their difficulties increased. At Muy, near Frejus, the army was put to a stand. A body of fifty rustics, armed with muskets, had thrown themselves into a tower, and inconsiderable as they were in number prevented its progress. The emperor ordered Garcilasso to advance with his battalion, and attack the place. Gratified with this mark of his sovereign's confidence, and eager for distinction, he planted his scaling-ladders, and prepared for the ascent. The simple peasants, seeing the decorated garment which he wore over his armour, and the high honour that was every where paid him by the soldiers whose motions he directed, supposed it to be the emperor himself, and marked him out for destruction.[AJ] With showers of missiles and the fire of musquetry, they saluted the assailants, whom however they could neither check nor dismay. Garcilasso himself, cheering on his men, was the first that mounted the ladder, and was perhaps the only individual who in this disastrous campaign acquired any splendid addition to what would be considered his military glory. But his life was destined to be the price of this distinction. A block of stone, rolled over the battlements by the combined strength of numbers, fell upon his shielded helmet, and beat him to the ground. He was borne to Nice, where after lingering four and twenty days he expired, November 1536; showing, says D. T. Tamaio de Vargas, no less the spirit of a Christian in his last moments, than that of a soldier in the perils he had braved. Every one was penetrated with sorrow at the loss of one so deservedly dear; but the Emperor was so deeply afflicted, that having taken the tower, he caused twenty-eight of the peasants, the only survivors of the escalade, to be instantly hung; giving thus a strong, though at the same time a barbarous proof of the esteem and affection he entertained for Garcilasso. Thus perished, at the early age of thirty-three, Garcilasso de la Vega, a youth of whom no record remains but what is honourable to his character and talents, and who conferred more real glory on his country by his pen, than all the conquests of the mighty Charles, achieved by his ambitious sword. With every mark and ceremonial of public respect, his body was conveyed to the church of St. Domingo, at Nice; whence it was afterwards in 1538 removed to Spain, and finally deposited in a chapel of the church of San Pedro Martyr de Toledo, the ancient sepulchre of his ancestors, the Lords of Batres.
Garcilasso left three sons and a daughter. His eldest son, named also Garcilasso, as he grew up was highly distinguished by the emperor, who seemed to find a melancholy pleasure in having him near his person. He too fell in the field at the yet earlier age of twenty-four, fighting valiantly at the battle of Ulpian: he lies beside his father. Francisco de Figueroa has celebrated his fall in a sonnet, too beautiful to be here omitted.
"Oh tender slip of the most beauteous tree
That fruitful earth e'er nourished, full of flowers,
And to that other glory of the bowers,
Thy parent sylvan, equal in degree!
The same tempestuous wind, by the decree
Of Eolus that plucked up by the roots,
Far from its native stream, thy trunk, its shoots
Stript off to flourish in a greener lea.
One was your doom; the same fond Angel too
Transplanted you to heaven, where both your blooms
Produce immortal fruits; your fatal case
I weep not, as the wont is, but to you,
On my raised altar burn all sweet perfumes,
With hymns of gladness and a tearless face."
His second son, Francisco de Guzman, entered a convent of Dominicans, and became a great theologian. Lorenzo de Guzman, his youngest son, was distinguished by much of his father's genius, and highly esteemed as such by Don Ant. Augustin, most illustrious, says Vargas, in dignity and doctrine, who, being banished to Oran for a lampoon, died upon the passage. Donna Sancha de Guzman, the poet's daughter, married D. Antonio Portocarrero de Vega, a son of the Count of Palma, who had married Garcilasso's sister. The grandson of Don Pedro Lasso was created Count of Los Arcos, and Charles the Second created his descendant, D. Joachim Lasso de la Vega, the third Count of Los Arcos, a Grandee of Spain, October, 1697.[AK]
Garcilasso in person was above the middle size; with perfect symmetry of figure, he had such dignity of deportment, that strangers who knew him not were sensible at once that they were in the presence of some superior personage. His features corresponded with his deportment; his countenance, not without a shade of seriousness, was expressive of much mildness and benevolence; he had most lively eyes, his forehead was expansive, and his whole appearance presented the picture of manly beauty. Graceful and genteel in his address, courteous and gallant in his behaviour, he is said to have been a first favourite with the ladies; by the most winning manners he engaged his own sex, and accomplished as he was in all the duties of knighthood, he may with much propriety be called the Sidney or the Surrey of Spain. Notwithstanding the great favour he enjoyed at court, he passed through life without incurring the jealousy of the courtiers; a rare piece of good fortune, which he owed to some happy art or sincerity of conduct that disarmed envy. With a disposition peculiarly affectionate, he was more inclined to praise than to censure; in the whole course of his writings, we meet with but one passage that bears the least approach to satire or severity, and this he immediately checks, as though it were something foreign to his nature. He has preserved in his verses the names of his particular friends. Boscán was evidently the one whom he loved with most devotedness; but his attachment seems also to have been great to the Countess of Ureña, Donna Maria de la Cueva, to the Marchioness of Padula, Lady Maria de Cardona, to the Marquis del Vasto, the Duke of Alva, Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, Julio Cæsar Caracciola, a Neapolitan poet, and other distinguished characters, whom he celebrates in his poems. Boscán charged himself with performing the last honour to his memory, and published in 1544 their joint productions, under the title of 'Obras de Boscán y Garcilasso.'[AL]
Had Garcilasso lived longer, his poems would probably have been made yet more deserving of cotemporary praise and the perusal of posterity, for the relics he has left are to be considered rather as the early flowers than as the fruits of his genius; yet from these few blossoms we may imagine how rich would have been the autumn of his muse. His style is unaffected, his thoughts ingenious; the language he uses, though employed upon lowly subjects, never sinks into poverty or meanness; he is full of the lights, the colours, and ornaments which the place and subject require; and not satisfied often with the mere production of his sentiments, he amplifies, he compounds, he illustrates them with admirable elegance, yet not without suffering his wealth of ideas frequently to run into diffuseness. He had at his command a rich variety of significant words, which he sometimes selects and combines with so much skill, that the beauty of the words gives splendour to their disposition, and the lucidness of disposition lustre to the words; yet, in some cases, it must be acknowledged, there is too much involution in the structure of his sentences. His feelings and sentiments are either new, or if common, set forth in a certain manner of his own, which makes them seem so. The passages he translates from other authors seem introduced from no ostentation of classical pride, but simply to effect the intention he has in view, and are inlaid with so much art that it becomes a question whether they give or receive the ornament. The flowers with which he sprinkles his poetry seem to spring up spontaneously, the lights he introduces to fall like unconscious sunshine to adorn the spot where he has placed them. His versification, simple, clear, and flowing, has a purity, music, and dignity of numbers, that ever and anon seems to bring upon the ear the mellifluous majesty of Virgil: he tempers the gravity of his style with such a continuous sweetness as to form in their union a harmony equally proportioned. The pause of his verses is always full of beauty, the closing melody of the sentence gratifying the reader as he rests. With all his delicacy of expression and artful sweetness, he has remarkable pliancy and ease; his only constraint is that which he himself imposes, when, abandoning his natural tone of thought, he becomes a sophist on his feelings, and consents to surprise by ingenuity when he should affect by tenderness. Tender, however, he always is in an eminent degree, whenever he ceases to reason on his sensations, and gives himself up without reserve to the promptings of his native sensibility. His first eclogue breathes throughout a spirit of melancholy tenderness that speaks eloquently to the imagination and the heart. Under the name of Salicio he unquestionably introduces himself, and I cannot help thinking that the shepherd's beautiful lament over the inconstancy of his mistress owes half its sweetness and pathos to his own remembrances of the lady whom he loved in youth. There is a truth and a warmth of expression in the feelings that could originate alone from real emotion: nothing can excel the touching beauty of some of the descriptions.
"In the charmed ear of what beloved youth
Sounds thy sweet voice? on whom revolvest thou
Thy beautiful blue eyes? on whose sworn truth
Anchors thy broken faith? who presses now
Thy laughing lip, and hopes thy heaven of charms,
Locked in the embracings of thy two white arms?
Say thou, for whom hast thou so rudely left
My love, or stolen, who triumphs in the theft?
I have not yet a bosom so untrue
To beauty, nor a heart of stone, to view
My darling ivy, torn from me, take root
Against another wall or prosperous pine,
To see my virgin vine
Around another elm in marriage hang
Its curling tendrils and empurpled fruit,
Without the torture of a jealous pang,
Ev'n to the loss of life."
The song and sorrow of Salicio seem to carry our interest to the highest point; but the lamentations of Nemoroso[AM] surpass them in depth of regret, and in the greater variety of sentiments and images with which the emotions are illustrated. The whole eclogue is in fact full of poetry, and from the elegance of its language, its choice imagery, its soft sweet harmony, and the pastoral air that pervades it, it must be pronounced the first composition of its class, not only in Castilian but Italian poetry. Almost equally admirable, though different in character, is the third eclogue. It does not appeal so to the heart, it is less eloquent, but it is characterised by a finer fancy, a yet more classical taste, and a more continuous harmony; and being written in octaves, though octaves are perhaps somewhat too sounding for a pastoral, succeeds in gratifying the ear by its periodical reposes, as well as by its music. In the whole compass of poetry, I do not remember a more delicate image than the following:—
"All with dishevelled hair were seen to shower
Tears o'er the nymph, whose beauty did bespeak
That Death had cropt her in her sweetest flower,
Whilst youth bloomed rosiest in her charming cheek;
Near the still water, in a cypress bower,
She lay amongst the green herbs, pale and meek,
Like a white swan that, sickening where it feeds,
Sighs its sweet life away amidst the reeds."
The second eclogue is decidedly inferior to the other two; it is justly to be censured for its heterogeneous character, its unsatisfactory conclusion, and its great lengthiness;[AN] but it abounds with beautiful passages, and the poet's description of the sculptures on the Urn of Tormes, an elegant conception, however unsuitably introduced, is given with an almost lyrical spirit that half redeems the fault of the episode. Finally, something very like the light romantic touch of Lorraine in his delicious landscapes, is to be met with in the pastoral poetry of Garcilasso; the same freshness, the same nature, the same selection of luxuriant images, and harmony of hues. His elegies are less perfect of their kind; with somewhat of the softness and philosophy of Tibullus, they are too frigid and verbose. That to the Duke of Alva, principally translated from Fracastor, has however many touches of sensibility; and a few stanzas, charged with poetical fire, might be selected from that to Boscán; though from the excessive and unnatural refinement of thought it presents upon the whole, it is what I might have been excused the trouble of translating, if the omission would not have rendered the volume incomplete. The same fault of frigidity and overmuch refinement of thought, though variously modified, applies to many of his sonnets; others are free from all affectation, and of singular beauty. His odes are more uniformly excellent. In the last of them, Garcilasso shows some approach to a sublimer height than he had yet aspired to; his lyre assumes in its tones somewhat of the fervid grandeur that was soon to be exhibited in the lyric poetry of Torquato Tasso. In this the shades are darker, the colours more burning, the thoughts, if I may so say, more gigantic than in any other of his poems whatever; yet I cannot consider, the prolonged personification of Reason, and of its combat with the passions, which indeed both Boscán and he are apt to dilate upon till they displease by their monotony, as the product of a pure taste. I am aware that Muratori, 'suono magnifico,' praises this ode for the very thing I am condemning;[AO] I shall therefore forbear, in deference to his authority, to say more; I will only remark that this example from Garcilasso comes opportunely for the illustration of his theory on the personification of speculative thoughts, and that on this account he may have looked upon the ode with a somewhat more favourable eye than his judgment would otherwise have allowed him to do. He must have admitted that though personification gives life and action to images that would else strike the fancy but feebly, the same artificially extended through a whole cancion, offends as something too unnatural to be reconciled to the mind, even by the beautiful expressions in which it may be clothed. But whatever difference of opinion may exist on this, there can be but one sentiment on the merit of the Ode to the Flower of Gnido. Elegance, delicacy, harmony, and lyrical spirit, are all combined in its composition, and fully authorize the opinion of Paul Jovius, that it has the sweetness of the odes of Horace; an opinion confirmed by the praises of our own countryman, Sir William Jones. Had Garcilasso written nothing else, this graceful composition would have sufficed to give his name all the immortality that waits upon the lyre: it shows with what success he had studied the classics of antiquity, and how deeply his mind was imbued with their spirit. This pervading spirit it is that has advanced Garcilasso to the distinction of being entitled the most classical of all the Spanish poets; and although from their not having received his last polish, and from the unfavourable circumstances under which they were written, his poems may present some defects unpleasing to the cultured minds of a more refined age, such blemishes can be allowed to subtract neither from this classical reputation, nor from the deserved admiration with which their many beauties must be regarded, and the genius that could give at once, amid the tumult of the camp, to Spanish poetry a consideration, and to Spanish language a charm, which in other countries, are commonly communicated by many, in the slow course and literary ease of years.