The discussion between the two, however, soon became a formal one. Argote de Molina naturally brought it into his Discourse on Spanish Poetry in 1575,[802] and Montalvo introduced it into his Pastoral, where it little belongs, but where, under assumed names, Cervantes, Ercilla, Castillejo, Silvestre, and Montalvo[803] himself, give their opinions in favor of the old school. This was in 1582. In 1599, Lope de Vega defended the same side in the Preface to his “San Isidro.”[804] But the question was then substantially decided. Five or six long epics, including the “Araucana,” had already been written in the Italian ottava rima; as many pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro’s; and thousands of verses in the shape of sonnets, canzoni, and the other forms of Italian poetry, a large portion of which had found much favor. Even Lope de Vega, therefore, who is quite decided in his opinion, and wrote his poem of “San Isidro” in the old popular redondillas, fell in with the prevailing fashion, so that, perhaps, in the end, nobody did more than himself to confirm the Italian measures and manner. From this time, therefore, the success of the new school may be considered certain and settled; nor has it ever since been displaced or superseded, as an important division of Spanish literature.
CHAPTER IV.
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. — His Family. — His Lazarillo de Tórmes, and its Imitations. — His Public Employments and Private Studies. — His Retirement from Affairs. — His Poems and Miscellanies. — His History of the Rebellion of the Moors. — His Death and Character.
Among those who did most to decide the question in favor of the introduction and establishment of the Italian measures in Spanish literature was one whose rank and social position gave him great authority, and whose genius, cultivation, and adventures point alike to his connection with the period we have just gone over and with that on which we are now entering. This person was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a scholar and a soldier, a poet and a diplomatist, a statesman and an historian,—a man who rose to great consideration in whatever he undertook, and one who was not of a temper to be satisfied with moderate success, wherever he might choose to make an effort.[805]
He was born in Granada in 1503, and his ancestry was perhaps the most illustrious in Spain, if we except the descendants of those who had sat on the thrones of its different kingdoms. Lope de Vega, who turns aside in one of his plays to boast that it was so, adds, that, in his time, the Mendozas counted three-and-twenty generations of the highest nobility and public service.[806] But it is more important for our present purpose to notice that the three immediate ancestors of the distinguished statesman now before us might well have served as examples to form his young character; for he was the third in direct descent from the Marquis of Santillana, the poet and wit of the court of John the Second; his grandfather was the able ambassador of Ferdinand and Isabella, in their troublesome affairs with the See of Rome; and his father, after commanding with distinguished honor in the last great overthrow of the Moors, was made governor of the unquiet city of Granada not long after its surrender.
Diego, however, had five brothers older than himself; and therefore, notwithstanding the power of his family, he was originally destined for the Church, in order to give him more easily the position and income that should sustain his great name with becoming dignity. But his character could not be bent in that direction. He acquired, indeed, much knowledge suited to further his ecclesiastical advancement, both at home, where he learned to speak the Arabic with fluency, and at Salamanca, where he studied Latin, Greek, philosophy, and canon and civil law, with success. But it is evident that he indulged a decided preference for what was more intimately connected with political affairs and elegant literature; and if, as is commonly supposed, he wrote while at the University, or soon afterwards, his “Lazarillo de Tórmes,” it is equally plain that he preferred such a literature as had no relation to theology or the Church.
The Lazarillo is a work of genius, unlike any thing that had preceded it. It is the autobiography of a boy—“little Lazarus”—born in a mill on the banks of the Tórmes, near Salamanca, and sent out by his base and brutal mother as the leader of a blind beggar; the lowest place in the social condition, perhaps, that could then be found in Spain. But such as it is, Lazarillo makes the best or the worst of it. With an inexhaustible fund of good-humor and great quickness of parts, he learns, at once, the cunning and profligacy that qualify him to rise to still greater frauds and a yet wider range of adventures and crimes in the service successively of a priest, a gentleman starving on his own pride, a friar, a seller of indulgences, a chaplain, and an alguazil, until, at last, from the most disgraceful motives, he settles down as a married man; and then the story terminates without reaching any proper conclusion, and without intimating that any is to follow.
Its object is—under the character of a servant with an acuteness that is never at fault, and so small a stock of honesty and truth, that neither of them stands in the way of his success—to give a pungent satire on all classes of society, whose condition Lazarillo well comprehends, because he sees them in undress and behind the scenes. It is written in a very bold, rich, and idiomatic Castilian style, that reminds us of the “Celestina”; and some of its sketches are among the most fresh and spirited that can be found in the whole class of prose works of fiction; so spirited, indeed, and so free, that two of them—those of the friar and the seller of dispensations—were soon put under the ban of the Church, and cut out of the editions that were permitted to be printed under its authority. The whole work is short; but its easy, genial temper, its happy adaptation to Spanish life and manners, and the contrast of the light, good-humored, flexible audacity of Lazarillo himself—a perfectly original conception—with the solemn and unyielding dignity of the old Castilian character, gave it from the first a great popularity. From 1553, when the earliest edition appeared of which we have any knowledge, it was often reprinted, both at home and abroad, and has been more or less a favorite in all languages, down to our own time; becoming the foundation for a class of fictions essentially national, which, under the name of the gusto picaresco, or the style of the rogues, is as well known as any other department of Spanish literature, and one which the “Gil Blas” of Le Sage has made famous throughout the world.[807]
Like other books enjoying a wide reputation, the Lazarillo provoked many imitations. A continuation of it, under the title of “The Second Part of Lazarillo de Tórmes,” soon appeared, longer than the original, and beginning where the fiction of Mendoza leaves off. But it is without merit, except for an occasional quaintness or witticism. It represents Lazarillo as going upon the expedition undertaken by Charles the Fifth against Algiers, in 1541, and as being in one of the vessels that foundered in a storm, which did much towards disconcerting the whole enterprise. From this point, however, Lazarillo’s story becomes a tissue of absurdities. He sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and there creeps into a cave, where he is metamorphosed into a tunny-fish; and the greater part of the work consists of an account of his glory and happiness in the kingdom of the tunnies. At last, he is caught in a seine, and, in the agony of his fear of death, returns, by an effort of his own will, to the human form; after which he finds his way back to Salamanca, and is living there when he prepares this strange account of his adventures.[808]