When unshaken his fate is met.[689]
The last person who wrote a poem of any considerable length, and yet is properly to be included within the old school, is one who, by his imitations of Dante, reminds us of the beginnings of that school in the days of the Marquis of Santillana. It is Juan de Padilla, commonly called “El Cartuxano,” or The Carthusian, because he chose thus modestly to conceal his own name, and announce himself only as a monk of Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville.[690] Before he entered into that severe monastery, he wrote a poem, in a hundred and fifty coplas, called “The Labyrinth of the Duke of Cadiz,” which was printed in 1493; but his two chief works were composed afterwards. The first of them is called “Retablo de la Vida de Christo,” or A Picture of the Life of Christ; a long poem, generally in octave stanzas of versos de arte mayor, containing a history of the Saviour’s life, as given by the Prophets and Evangelists, but interspersed with prayers, sermons, and exhortations; all very devout and very dull, and all finished, as he tells us, on Christmas eve in the year 1500.
The other is entitled “The Twelve Triumphs of the Twelve Apostles,” which, as we are informed, with the same accuracy and in the same way, was completed on the 14th of February, 1518; again a poem formidable for its length, since it fills above a thousand stanzas of nine lines each. It is partly an allegory, but wholly religious in its character, and is composed with more care than any thing else its author wrote. The action passes in the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which the poet is successively carried by Saint Paul, who shows him, in each of them, first, the marvels of one of the twelve Apostles; next, an opening of one of the twelve mouths of the infernal regions; and lastly, a glimpse of the corresponding division of Purgatory. Dante is evidently the model of the good monk, however unsuccessful he may be as a follower. Indeed, he begins with a direct imitation of the opening of the “Divina Commedia,” from which, in other parts of the poem, phrases and lines are not unfrequently borrowed. But he has thrown together what relates to earth and heaven, to the infernal regions and to Purgatory, in such an unhappy confusion, and he so mingles allegory, mythology, astrology, and known history, that his work turns out, at last, a mere succession of wild inconsistencies and vague, unmeaning descriptions. Of poetry there is rarely a trace; but the language, which has a decided air of yet elder times about it, is free and strong, and the versification, considering the period, is uncommonly rich and easy.[691]
CHAPTER XXII.
Prose-writers. — Juan de Lucena. — Alfonso de la Torre. — Diego de Almela. — Alonso Ortiz. — Fernando del Pulgar. — Diego de San Pedro.
The reign of Henry the Fourth, was more favorable to the advancement of prose composition than that of John the Second. This we have already seen when speaking of the contemporary chronicles, and of Perez de Guzman and the author of the “Celestina.” In other cases, we observe its advancement in an inferior degree, but, encumbered as they are with more or less of the bad taste and pedantry of the time, they still deserve notice, because they were so much valued in their own age.
Regarded from this point of view, one of the most prominent prose-writers of the century was Juan de Lucena; a personage distinguished both as a private counsellor of John the Second and as that monarch’s foreign ambassador. We know, however, little of his history; and of his works only one remains to us,—if, indeed, he wrote any more. It is a didactic prose dialogue “On a Happy Life,” carried on between some of the most eminent persons of the age: the great Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, the poet, Alonso de Cartagena, the bishop and statesman, and Lucena himself, who acts in part as an umpire in the discussion, though the Bishop at last ends it by deciding that true happiness consists in loving and serving God.
The dialogue itself is represented as having passed chiefly in a hall of the palace, and in presence of several of the nobles of the court; but it was not written till after the death of the Constable, in 1453; that event being alluded to in it. It is plainly an imitation of the treatise of Boëthius “On the Consolation of Philosophy,” then a favorite classic; but it is more spirited and effective than its model. It is frequently written in a pointed, and even a dignified style; and parts of it are interesting and striking. Thus, the lament of Santillana over the death of his son is beautiful and touching, and so is the final summing up of the trials and sorrows of this life by the Bishop. In the midst of their discussions, there is a pleasant description of a collation with which they were refreshed by the Marquis, and which recalls, at once,—as it was probably intended to do,—the Greek Symposia and the dialogues that record them. Indeed, the allusions to antiquity with which it abounds, and the citations of ancient authors, which are still more frequent, are almost always apt, and often free from the awkwardness and pedantry which mark most of the didactic prose of the period; so that, taken together, it may be regarded, notwithstanding the use of many strange words, and an occasional indulgence in conceits, as one of the most remarkable literary monuments of the age from which it has come down to us.[692]
To this period, also, we must refer the “Vision Deleytable,” or Delectable Vision, which we are sure was written before 1463. Its author was Alfonso de la Torre, commonly called “The Bachelor,” who seems to have been a native of the bishopric of Burgos, and who was, from 1437 till the time of his death, a member of the College of Saint Bartholomew at Salamanca; a noble institution, founded in imitation of that established at Bologna by Cardinal Albornoz. It is an allegorical vision, in which the author supposes himself to see the Understanding of Man in the form of an infant brought into a world full of ignorance and sin, and educated by a succession of such figures as Grammar, Logic, Music, Astrology, Truth, Reason, and Nature. He intended it, he says, to be a compendium of all human knowledge, especially of all that touches moral science and man’s duty, the soul and its immortality; intimating, at the end, that it is a bold thing in him to have discussed such subjects in the vernacular, and begging the noble Juan de Beamonte, at whose request he had undertaken it, not to permit a work so slight to be seen by others.