But such things were common in Spain, and tended to conciliate the favor of the clergy for the theatre.
[754] P. de Sandoval, Hist. del Emperador Carlos V., Amberes, 1681, folio, Lib. XII. to XVIII., but especially the last book.
[755] The Dictionary of Torres y Amat contains a short, but sufficient, life of Boscan; and in Sedano, “Parnaso Español,” (Madrid, 1768-78, 12mo, Tom. VIII. p. xxxi.,) there is one somewhat more ample.
[756] Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Italiana, Roma, 1784, 4to, Tom. VII., Parte I. p. 242; Parte II. p. 294; and Parte III. pp. 228-230.
[757] Andrea Navagiero, Il Viaggio fatto in Spagna, etc., Vinegia, 1563, 12mo, ff. 18-30. Bayle gives an article on Navagiero’s life, with discriminating praise of his scholarship and genius.
[758] Letter to the Duquesa de Soma, prefixed to the Second Book of Boscan’s Poems.
[759] Letter to the Duquesa de Soma.
[760] It is mentioned in the permission to publish his works granted to Boscan’s widow, by Charles V., Feb. 18, 1543, and prefixed to the very rare and important edition of his works and those of his friend Garcilasso, published for the first time in the same year, at Barcelona, by Amoros; a small 4to, containing 237 leaves. This edition is said to have been at once counterfeited, and was certainly reprinted not less than six times as early as 1546, three years after its first appearance. In 1553, Alonso de Ulloa, a Spaniard, at Venice, who published many Spanish books there with prefaces of some value by himself, printed it in 18mo, very neatly, and added a few poems to those found in the first edition; particularly one, at the beginning of the volume, entitled “Conversion de Boscan,” religious in its subject, and national in its form. At the end Ulloa puts a few pages of verse, attacking the Italian forms adopted by Boscan; describing what he thus adds as by “an uncertain author.” They are, however, the work of Castillejo, and are found in Obras de Castillejo, Anvers, 1598, 18mo, f. 110, etc.
[761] Góngora, in the first two of his Burlesque Ballads, has made himself merry (Obras, Madrid, 1654, 4to, f. 104, etc.) at the expense of Boscan’s “Leandro.” But he has taken the same freedom with better things.
The Leandro was, I think, the first attempt to introduce blank verse, which was thus brought by Boscan into the poetry of Spain in 1543, as it was a little later into English, from the versi sciolti of the Italians, by Surrey, who called it “a strange meter.” Acuña soon followed in Castilian with other examples of it; but the first really good Spanish blank verse known to me is to be found in the eclogue of “Tirsi” by Francisco de Figueroa, written about half a century after the time of Boscan, and not printed till 1626. The translation of a part of the Odyssey by Perez, in 1553, and the “Sagrada Eratos” of Alonso Carillo Laso de la Vega, which is a paraphrase of the Psalms, printed at Naples in 1657, folio, afford much longer specimens that are generally respectable. But the full rhyme is so easy in Spanish, and the asonante is so much easier, that blank verse, though it has been used from the middle of the sixteenth century, has been little cultivated or favored.