CHAPTER XIX.
Quevedo. — His Life, Public Service, and Persecutions. — His Works, Published and Unpublished. — His Poetry. — The Bachiller Francisco de la Torre. — His Prose Works, Religious and Didactic. — His Paul the Sharper, Prose Satires, and Visions. — His Character.
Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas, the contemporary of both Lope de Vega and Cervantes, was born at Madrid, in 1580.[462] His family came from that mountainous region at the northwest, to which, like other Spaniards, he was well pleased to trace his origin;[463] but his father held an office of some dignity at the court of Philip the Second, which led to his residence in the capital at the period of his son’s birth;—a circumstance which was no doubt favorable to the development of the young man’s talents. But whatever were his opportunities, we know, that, when he was only fifteen years old, he was graduated in theology at the University of Alcalá, where he not only made himself master of such of the ancient and modern languages as would be most useful to him, but extended his studies into the civil and canon law, mathematics, medicine, politics, and other still more various branches of knowledge, showing that he was thus early possessed with the ambition of becoming a universal scholar. His accumulations, in fact, were vast, as the learning scattered through his works plainly proves, and bear witness, not less to his extreme industry than to his extraordinary natural endowments.
On his return to Madrid, he seems to have been associated both with the distinguished scholars and with the fashionable cavaliers of the time; and an adventure, in which, as a man of honor, he found himself accidentally involved, had wellnigh proved fatal to his better aspirations. A woman of respectable appearance, while at her devotions in one of the parish churches of Madrid, during Holy Week, was grossly insulted in his presence. He defended her, though both parties were quite unknown to him. A duel followed on the spot; and, at its conclusion, it was found he had killed a person of rank. He fled, of course, and, taking refuge in Sicily, was invited to the splendid court then held there by the Duke of Ossuna, viceroy of Philip the Third, and was soon afterwards employed in important affairs of state,—sometimes, as we are told by his nephew, in such as required personal courage and involved danger to his life.
At the conclusion of the Duke of Ossuna’s administration of Sicily, Quevedo was sent, in 1615, to Madrid, as a sort of plenipotentiary to confirm to the crown all past grants of revenue from the island, and to offer still further subsidies. So welcome a messenger was not ungraciously received. His former offence was overlooked; a pension of four hundred ducats was given him; and he returned, in great honor, to the Duke, his patron, who was already transferred to the more important and agreeable viceroyalty of Naples.
Quevedo now became minister of finance at Naples, and fulfilled the duties of his place so skilfully and honestly, that, without increasing the burdens of the people, he added to the revenues of the state. An important negotiation with Rome was also intrusted to his management; and in 1617 he was again in Madrid, and stood before the king with such favor, that he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago. On his return to Naples, or, at least, during the nine years he was absent from Spain, he made treaties with Venice and Savoy, as well as with the Pope, and was almost constantly occupied in difficult and delicate affairs connected with the administration of the Duke of Ossuna.
But in 1620 all this was changed. The Duke fell from power, and those who had been his ministers shared his fate. Quevedo was exiled to his patrimonial estate of Torre de Juan Abad, where he endured an imprisonment or detention of three years and a half; and then was released without trial and without having had any definite offence laid to his charge. He was, however, cured of all desire for public honors or royal favor. He refused the place of Secretary of State, and that of Ambassador to Genoa, both of which were offered him, accepting the merely titular rank of Secretary to the King. He, in fact, was now determined to give himself to letters; and did so for the rest of his life.
In 1634, he was married; but his wife soon died, and left him to contend alone with the troubles of life that still pursued him. In 1639, some satirical verses were placed under the king’s napkin at dinner-time; and, without proper inquiry, they were attributed to Quevedo. In consequence of this he was seized, late at night, with great suddenness and secrecy, in the palace of the Duke of Medina-Cœli, and thrown into rigorous confinement in the royal convent of San Márcos de Leon. There, in a damp and unwholesome cell, his health was soon broken down by diseases from which he never recovered; and the little that remained to him of his property was wasted away till he was obliged to depend on charity for support. With all these cruelties the unprincipled favorite of the time, the Count Duke Olivares, seems to have been connected; and the anger they naturally excited in the mind of Quevedo may well account for two papers against that minister which have generally been attributed to him, and which are full of personal severity and bitterness.[464] A heart-rending letter, too, which, when he had been nearly two years in prison, he wrote to Olivares, should be taken into the account, in which he in vain appeals to his persecutor’s sense of justice, telling him, in his despair, “No clemency can add many years to my life; no rigor can take many away.”[465] At last, the hour of the favorite’s disgrace arrived; and, amidst the jubilee of Madrid, he was driven into exile. The release of Quevedo followed as a matter of course, since it was already admitted that another had written the verses[466] for which he had been punished by above four years of the most unjust suffering.
But justice came too late. Quevedo remained, indeed, a little time at Madrid, among his friends, endeavouring to recover some of his lost property; but failing in this, and unable to subsist in the capital, he retired to the mountains from which his race had descended. His infirmities, however, accompanied him wherever he went; his spirits sunk under his trials and sorrows; and he died, wearied out with life, in 1645.[467]