No suspicion seems to have been whispered, either at the moment of their first publication, or for a long time afterwards, that these poems were the productions of any other than the unknown personage whose name appeared on their title-page. In 1753, however, a second edition of them was published by Velazquez, the author of the “Essay on Spanish Poetry,” claiming them to be entirely the work of Quevedo;[480]—a claim which has been frequently noticed since, some admitting and some denying it, but none, in any instance, fairly discussing the grounds on which it is placed by Velazquez, or settling their validity.[481]
The question certainly is among the more curious of those that involve literary authorship; but it can hardly be brought to an absolute decision. The argument, that the poems thus published by Quevedo are really the work of an unknown Bachiller de la Torre, is founded, first, on the alleged approbation of them by Ercilla,[482] which, though referred to by Valdivielso, as well as by Quevedo, has never been printed; and, secondly, on the fact, that, in their general tone, they are unlike the recognized poetry of Quevedo, being all on grave subjects and in a severely simple and pure style, whereas he himself not unfrequently runs into the affected style he undoubtedly intended by this work to counteract and condemn.
On the other hand, it may be alleged, that the pretended Bachiller de la Torre is clearly not the Bachiller de la Torre referred to by Boscan and Quevedo, who lived in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and whose rude verses are found in the old Cancioneros from 1511 to 1573;[483] that, on the contrary, the forms of the poems published by Quevedo, their tone, their thoughts, their imitations of Petrarch and of the ancients, their versification, and their language,—except a few antiquated words which could easily have been inserted,—all belong to his own age; that among Quevedo’s recognized poems are some, at least, which prove he was capable of writing any one among those attributed to the Bachiller de la Torre; and finally, that the name of the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre is merely an ingenious disguise of his own, since he was himself a Bachelor at Alcalá, had been baptized Francisco, and was the owner of Torre de la Abad, in which he sometimes resided, and which was twice the place of his exile.[484]
There is, therefore, no doubt, a mystery about the whole matter which will probably never be cleared up; and we can now come to only one of two conclusions:—either that the poems in question are the work of some contemporary and friend of Quevedo, whose name he knew and concealed; or that they were selected by himself out of the great mass of his own unpublished manuscripts, choosing such as would be least likely to betray their origin, and most likely, by their exact finish and good taste, to rebuke the folly of the affected and fashionable poetry of his time. But whoever may be their author, one thing is certain,—they are not unworthy the genius of any poet belonging to the brilliant age in which they appeared.[485]
Quevedo’s principal works, however,—those on which his reputation mainly rests, both at home and abroad,—are in prose. The more grave will hardly come under our cognizance. They consist of a treatise on the Providence of God, including an essay on the Immortality of the Soul; a treatise addressed to Philip the Fourth, singularly called “God’s Politics and Christ’s Government,” in which he endeavours to collect a complete body of political philosophy from the example of the Saviour; treatises on a Holy Life and on the Militant Life of a Christian; and biographies of Saint Paul and Saint Thomas of Villanueva. These, with translations of Epictetus and the false Phocylides, of Anacreon, of Seneca “De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ,” of Plutarch’s “Marcus Brutus,” and other similar works, seem to have been chiefly produced by his sufferings, and to have constituted the occupation of his weary hours during his different imprisonments. As their titles indicate, they belong to theology and metaphysics rather than to elegant literature. They, however, sometimes show the spirit and the style that mark his serious poetry;—the same love of brilliancy, and the same extravagance and hyperbole, with occasional didactic passages full of dignity and eloquence. Their learning is generally abundant, but it is, at the same time, often very pedantic and cumbersome.[486]
Not so his prose satires. By these he is remembered and will always be remembered throughout the world. The longest of them, called “The History and Life of the Great Sharper, Paul of Segovia,” was first printed in 1627. It belongs to the style of fiction invented by Mendoza, in his “Lazarillo,” and has most of the characteristics of its class; showing, notwithstanding the evident haste and carelessness with which it was written, more talent and spirit than any of them, except its prototype. Like the rest, it sets forth the life of an adventurer, cowardly, insolent, and full of resources, who begins in the lowest and most infamous ranks of society, but, unlike most others of his class, never fairly rises above his original condition; for all his ingenuity, wit, and spirit only enable him to struggle up, as it were by accident, to some brilliant success, from which he is immediately precipitated by the discovery of his true character. Parts of it are very coarse. Once or twice it becomes—at least, according to the notions of the Romish Church—blasphemous. And almost always it is of the nature of a caricature, overrun with conceits, puns, and a reckless, fierce humor. But everywhere it teems with wit and the most cruel sarcasm against all orders and conditions of society. Some of its love adventures are excellent. Many of the disasters it records are extremely ludicrous. But there is nothing genial in it; and it is hardly possible to read even its scenes of frolic and riot at the University, or those among the gay rogues of the capital or the gayer vagabonds of a strolling company of actors, with any thing like real satisfaction. It is a satire too hard, coarse, and unrelenting to be amusing.[487]
This, too, is the character of most of his other prose satires, which were chiefly written, or at least published, nearly at the same period of his life;—the interval between his two great imprisonments, when the first had roused up all his indignation against a condition of society which could permit such intolerable injustice as he had suffered, and before the crushing severity of the last had broken down alike his health and his courage. Among them are the treatise “On all Things and many more,”—an attack on pretension and cant; “The Tale of Tales,” which is in ridicule of the too frequent use of proverbs; and “Time’s Proclamation,” which is apparently directed against whatever came uppermost in its author’s thoughts when he was writing it. These, however, with several more of the same sort, may be passed over to speak of a few better known and of more importance.[488]
The first is called the “Letters of the Knight of the Forceps,” and consists of two-and-twenty notes of a miser to his lady-love, refusing all her applications and hints for money, or for amusements that involve the slightest expense. Nothing can exceed their dexterity, or the ingenuity and wit that seem anxious to defend and vindicate the mean vice, which, after all, they are only making so much the more ridiculous and odious.[489]
The next is called “Fortune no Fool, and the Hour of All”;—a long apologue, in which Jupiter, surrounded by the deities of Heaven, calls Fortune to account for her gross injustice in the affairs of the world; and, having received from her a defence no less spirited than amusing, determines to try the experiment, for a single hour, of apportioning to every human being exactly what he deserves. The substance of the fiction, therefore, is an exhibition of the scenes of intolerable confusion which this single hour brings into the affairs of the world; turning a physician instantly into an executioner; marrying a match-maker to the ugly phantom she was endeavouring to pass off upon another; and, in the larger concerns of nations, like France and Muscovy, introducing such violence and uproar, that, at last, by the decision of Jupiter and with the consent of all, the empire of Fortune is restored, and things are allowed to go on as they always had done. Many parts of it are written in the gayest spirit, and show a great happiness of invention; but, from the absence of much of Quevedo’s accustomed bitterness, it may be suspected, that, though it was not printed till several years after his death, it was probably written before either of his imprisonments.[490]
But what is wanting of severity in this whimsical fiction is fully made up in his Visions, six or seven in number, some of which seem to have been published separately soon after his first persecution, and all of them in 1635.[491] Nothing can well be more free and miscellaneous than their subjects and contents. One, called “El Alguazil alguazilado,” or The Catchpole Caught, is a satire on the inferior officers of justice, one of whom being possessed, the demon complains bitterly of his disgrace in being sent to inhabit the body of a creature so infamous. Another, called “Visita de los Chistes,” A Visit in Jest, is a visit to the empire of Death, who comes sweeping in surrounded by physicians, surgeons, and especially a great crowd of idle talkers and slanderers, and leads them all to a sight of the infernal regions, with which Quevedo at once declares he is already familiar, in the crimes and follies to which he has long been accustomed on earth. But a more distinct idea of his free and bold manner will probably be obtained from the opening of his “Dream of Skulls,” or “Dream of the Judgment,” than from any enumeration of the subjects and contents of his Visions; especially since, in this instance, it is a specimen of that mixture of the solemn and the ludicrous in which he so much delighted.