The dancers wore?
These two stanzas, as well as the one in the text, are from Mr. H. W. Longfellow’s beautiful translation of the Coplas, first printed, Boston, 1833, 12mo, and often since. They may be compared with a passage in the verses on Edward IV. attributed to Skelton, and found in the “Mirror for Magistrates,” (London, 1815, 4to, Tom. II. p. 246,) in which that prince is made to say, as if speaking from his grave,—
“Where is now my conquest and victory?
Where is my riches and royall array?
Where be my coursers and my horses hye?
Where is my myrth, my solace, and my play?”
Indeed, the tone of the two poems is not unlike, though, of course, the old English laureate never heard of Manrique and never imagined any thing half so good as the Coplas. The Coplas were often imitated;—among the rest, as Lope de Vega tells us, (Obras Sueltas, Madrid, 1777, 4to, Tom. XI. p. xxix.,) by Camoens; but I do not know the Redondillas of Camoens to which he refers. Lope admired the Coplas very much. He says they should be written in letters of gold.
[687] For the earliest editions of the Coplas, 1492, 1494, and 1501, see Mendez, Typog. Española, p. 136. I possess ten or twelve copies of other editions, one of which was printed at Boston, 1833, with Mr. Longfellow’s translation. My copies, dated 1574, 1588, 1614, 1632, and 1799, all have Glosas in verse. That of Aranda is in folio, 1552, black letter, and in prose.
At the end of a translation of the “Inferno” of Dante, made by Pero Fernandez de Villegas, Archdeacon of Burgos, published at Burgos in 1515, folio, with an elaborate commentary, chiefly from that of Landino,—a very rare book, and one of considerable merit,—is found, in a few copies, a poem on the “Vanity of Life,” by the translator, which, though not equal to the Coplas of Manrique, reminds me of them. It is called “Aversion del Mundo y Conversion á Dios,” and is divided, with too much formality, into twenty stanzas on the contempt of the world, and twenty in honor of a religious life; but the verses, which are in the old national manner, are very flowing, and their style is that of the purest and richest Castilian. It opens thus:—
Away, malignant, cruel world,