The other person who was most successful as a prose-writer in the age of John the Second was Fernan Perez de Guzman,—like many distinguished Spaniards, a soldier and a man of letters, belonging to the high aristocracy of the country, and occupied in its affairs. His mother was sister to the great Chancellor Ayala, and his father was a brother of the Marquis of Santillana, so that his connections were as proud and noble as the monarchy could afford; while, on the other hand, Garcilasso de la Vega being one of his lineal descendants, we may add that his honors were reflected back from succeeding generations as brightly as he received them.
He was born about the year 1400, and was bred a knight. At the battle of the Higueruela, near Granada, in 1431, led on by the Bishop of Palencia,—who, as the honest Cibdareal says, “fought that day like an armed Joshua,”—he was so unwise in his courage, that, after the fight was over, the king, who had been an eyewitness of his indiscretion, caused him to be put under arrest, and released him only at the intercession of one of his powerful friends.[672] In general, Perez de Guzman was among the opponents of the Constable, as were most of his family; but he does not seem to have shown a factious or violent spirit, and, after being once unreasonably thrown into prison, found his position so false and disagreeable, that he retired from affairs altogether.
Among his more cultivated and intellectual friends was the family of Santa María, two of whom, having been Bishops of Cartagena, are better known by the name of the see they filled than they are by their own. The oldest of them all was a Jew by birth,—Selomo Halevi,—who, in 1390, when he was forty years old, was baptized as Pablo de Santa María, and rose, subsequently, by his great learning and force of character, to some of the highest places in the Spanish Church, of which he continued a distinguished ornament till his death in 1432. His brother, Alvar Garcia de Santa María, and his three sons, Gonzalo, Alonso, and Pedro, the last of whom lived as late as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, were, like the head of the family, marked by literary accomplishments, of which the old Cancioneros afford abundant proof, and of which, it is evident, the court of John the Second was not a little proud. The connection of Perez de Guzman, however, was chiefly with Alonso, long Bishop of Cartagena, who wrote for the use of his friend a religious treatise, and who, when he died, in 1435, was mourned by Perez de Guzman in a poem comparing the venerable Bishop to Seneca and Plato.[673]
The occupations of Perez de Guzman, in his retirement on his estates at Batres, where he passed the latter part of his life, and where he died, about 1470, were suited to his own character and to the spirit of his age. He wrote a good deal of poetry, such as was then fashionable among persons of the class to which he belonged, and his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, admired what he wrote. Some of it may be found in the collection of Baena, showing that it was in favor at the court of John the Second. Yet more was printed in 1492, and in the Cancioneros that began to appear a few years later; so that it seems to have been still valued by the limited public interested in letters in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
But the longest poem he wrote, and perhaps the most important, is his “Praise of the Great Men of Spain,” a kind of chronicle, filling four hundred and nine octave stanzas; to which should be added a hundred and two rhymed Proverbs, mentioned by the Marquis of Santillana, but probably prepared later than the collection made by the Marquis himself for the education of Prince Henry. After these, the two poems of Perez de Guzman that make most pretensions from their length are an allegory on the Four Cardinal Virtues, in sixty-three stanzas, and another on the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, in a hundred. The best verses he wrote are in his short hymns. But all are forgotten, and deserve to be so.[674]
His prose is much better. Of the part he bore in the Chronicle of John the Second notice has already been taken. But at different times, both before he was engaged in that work and afterwards, he was employed on another, more original in its character and of higher literary merit. It is called “Genealogies and Portraits,” and contains, under thirty-four heads, sketches, rather than connected narratives, of the lives, characters, and families of thirty-four of the principal persons of his time, such as Henry the Third, John the Second, the Constable Alvaro de Luna, and the Marquis of Villena.[675] A part of this genial work seems, from internal evidence, to have been written in 1430, while other portions must be dated after 1454; but none of it can have been much known till all the principal persons to whom it relates had died, and not, therefore, till the reign of Henry the Fourth, in the course of which the death of Perez de Guzman himself must have happened. It is manly in its tone, and is occasionally marked with vigorous and original thought. Some of its sketches are, indeed, brief and dry, like that of Queen Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt. But others are long and elaborate, like that of the Infante Don Ferdinand. Sometimes he discovers a spirit in advance of his age, such as he shows when he defends the newly converted Jews from the cruel suspicions with which they were then persecuted. But he oftener discovers a willingness to rebuke its vices, as when, discussing the character of Gonzalo Nuñez de Guzman, he turns aside from his subject and says solemnly,—
“And no doubt it is a noble thing and worthy of praise to preserve the memory of noble families and of the services they have rendered to their kings and to the commonwealth; but here, in Castile, this is now held of small account. And, to say truth, it is really little necessary; for now-a-days he is noblest who is richest. Why, then, should we look into books to learn what relates to families, since we can find their nobility in their possessions? Nor is it needful to keep a record of the services they render; for kings now give rewards, not to him who serves them most faithfully, nor to him who strives for what is most worthy, but to him who most follows their will and pleases them most.”[676]
In this and other passages, there is something of the tone of a disappointed statesman, perhaps of a disappointed courtier. But more frequently, as, for instance, when he speaks of the Great Constable, there is an air of good faith and justice that do him much honor. Some of his portraits, among which we may notice those of Villena and John the Second, are drawn with skill and spirit; and everywhere he writes in that rich, grave, Castilian style, with now and then a happy and pointed phrase to relieve its dignity, of which we can find no earlier example without going quite back to Alfonso the Wise and Don Juan Manuel.