Memento mei![715]
Next after the division of devotional poetry comes the series of authors upon whom the whole collection relied for its character and success when it was first published; a series, to form which, the editor says, in the original dedication to the Count of Oliva, he had employed himself during twenty years. Of such of them as are worthy a separate notice—the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and the three Manriques—we have already spoken. The rest are the Viscount of Altamira, Diego Lopez de Haro,[716] Antonio de Velasco, Luis de Vivero, Hernan Mexia, Suarez, Cartagena, Rodriguez del Padron, Pedro Torellas, Dávalos,[717] Guivara, Alvarez Gato,[718] the Marquis of Astorga, Diego de San Pedro, and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz,—the last a poet whose versification is his chief merit, but who was long remembered by succeeding poets from the circumstance that he went mad for love.[719] They all belong to the courtly school; and we know little of any of them except from hints in their own poems, nearly all of which are so wearisome from their heavy sameness, that it is a task to read them.
Thus, the Viscount Altamira has a long, dull dialogue between Feeling and Knowledge; Diego Lopez de Haro has another between Reason and Thought; Hernan Mexia, one between Sense and Thought; and Costana, one between Affection and Hope;—all belonging to the fashionable class of poems called moralities or moral discussions, all in one measure and manner, and all counterparts to each other in grave, metaphysical refinements and poor conceits. On the other hand, we have light, amatory poetry, some of which, like that of Garci Sanchez de Badajoz on the Book of Job, that of Rodriguez del Padron on the Ten Commandments, and that of the younger Manrique on the forms of a monastic profession, irreverently applied to the profession of love, are, one would think, essentially irreligious, whatever they may have been deemed at the time they were written. But in all of them, and, indeed, in the whole series of works of the twenty different authors filling this important division of the Cancionero, hardly a poetical thought is to be found, except in the poems of a few who have already been noticed, and of whom the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, and the younger Manrique are the chief.[720]
Next after the series of authors just mentioned, we have a collection of a hundred and twenty-six “Canciones,” or Songs, bearing the names of a large number of the most distinguished Spanish poets and gentlemen of the fifteenth century. Nearly all of them are regularly constructed, each consisting of two stanzas, the first with four and the second with eight lines,—the first expressing the principal idea, and the second repeating and amplifying it. They remind us, in some respects, of Italian sonnets, but are more constrained in their movement, and fall into a more natural alliance with conceits. Hardly one in the large collection of the Cancionero is easy or flowing, and the following, by Cartagena, whose name occurs often, and who was one of the Jewish family that rose so high in the Church after its conversion, is above the average merit of its class.[721]
I know not why first I drew breath,
Since living is only a strife,
Where I am rejected of Death,
And would gladly reject my own life.
For all the days I may live
Can only be filled with grief;