The first of these historical epics is the “Carolea” of Hierónimo Sempere, published in 1560, and devoted to the victories and glories of Charles the Fifth, whose name, in fact, it bears. The author was a merchant,—a circumstance strange in Spanish literature,—and it is written in the Italian ottava rima; the first part, which consists of eleven cantos, being devoted to the first wars in Italy, and ending with the captivity of Francis the First; while the second, which consists of nineteen more, contains the contest in Germany, the Emperor’s visit to Flanders, and his coronation at Bologna. The whole fills two volumes, and ends abruptly with the promise of another, devoted to the capture of Tunis; a promise which, happily, was never redeemed.[790]
The next narrative poem in the order of time was published by Luis de Çapata, only five years later. It is the “Carlo Famoso,” devoted, like the last, to the fame of Charles the Fifth, and, like that, more praised than it deserves to be by Cervantes, when he places both of them among the best poetry in Don Quixote’s library. Its author declares that he was thirteen years in writing it; and it fills fifty cantos, comprehending above forty thousand lines in octave stanzas. But never was poem avowedly written in a spirit so prosaic. It gives year by year the life of the Emperor, from 1522 to his death at San Yuste in 1558; and, to prevent the possibility of mistake, the date is placed at the top of each page, and every thing of an imaginative nature or of doubtful authority is distinguished by asterisks from the chronicle of ascertained facts. Two passages in it are interesting, one of which gives the circumstances of the death of Garcilasso, and the other an ample account of Torralva, the great magician of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella;—the same person who is commemorated by Don Quixote when he rides among the stars. Such, however, as the poem is, Çapata had great confidence in its merits, and boastfully published it at his own expense. But it was unsuccessful, and he died regretting his folly.[791]
Diego Ximenez de Ayllon, of Arcos de la Frontera, who served as a soldier under the Duke of Alva, wrote a poem on the history of the Cid, and of some other of the early Spanish heroes, and dedicated it, in 1579, to his great leader. But this, too, was little regarded at the time, and is now hardly remembered.[792] Nor was more favor shown to Hippólito Sanz, a knight of the Order of Saint John, in Malta, who shared in the brave defence of that island against the Turks in 1565, and wrote a poetical history of that defence, under the name of “La Maltea,” which was published in 1582.[793]
Other poems were produced during the same period, not unlike those we have just noticed;—such as the “Historia Parthenopea” of Alfonso Fernandez, whose hero is Gonzalvo de Córdova; Espinosa’s continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” which is not entirely without merit; “The Decade on the Passion of Christ,” by Coloma, which is grave and dignified, if nothing else;—all in the manner of the contemporary Italian heroic and narrative poems. But no one of them obtained much regard when it first appeared, and none of them can now be said to be remembered. Indeed, there is but one long poem of the age of Philip the Second which obtained an acknowledged reputation from the first, and has preserved it ever since, both at home and abroad;—I mean the “Araucana.”[794]
Its author, whose personal character is impressed on every part of his poem, was Alonso de Ercilla, third son of a gentleman of Biscayan origin,—a proud circumstance, to which the poet himself alludes more than once.[795] He was born in 1533, at Madrid, and his father, a member of the council of Charles the Fifth, was able, from his influence at court, to have his son educated as one of the pages of the prince who was afterwards Philip the Second, and whom the young Ercilla accompanied in his journeys to different parts of Europe between 1547 and 1551. In 1554, he was with Philip in England, when that prince married Queen Mary; and news having arrived there, as he tells us in his poem, of an outbreak of the natives in Chili which threatened to give trouble to their conquerors, many noble Spaniards then at the English court volunteered, in the old spirit of their country, to serve against the infidels.
Among those who presented themselves to join in this romantic expedition was Ercilla, then twenty-one years old. By permission of the prince, he says, he exchanged his civil for military service, and for the first time girded on his sword in earnest. But the beginning of the expedition was not auspicious. Aldrete, a person of military experience, who was in the suite of Philip, and under whose standard they had embarked in the enterprise, died on the way; and after their arrival, Ercilla and his friends were sent, under the less competent leading of a son of the viceroy of Peru, to achieve the subjugation of the territory of Arauco,—an inconsiderable spot of earth, but one which had been so bravely defended by its inhabitants against the Spaniards as to excite respect for their heroism in many parts of Europe.[796] The contest was a bloody one; for the Araucans were desperate and the Spaniards cruel. Ercilla went through his part of it with honor, meeting the enemy in seven severe battles, and suffering still more severely from wanderings in the wilderness, and from long exposure to the harassing warfare of savages.
Once he was in greater danger from his countrymen and from his own fiery temper than he was, perhaps, at any moment from the common enemy. In an interval of the war, when a public tournament was held in honor of the accession of Philip the Second to the throne, some cause of offence occurred during the jousting between Ercilla and another of the cavaliers. The mimic fight, as had not unfrequently happened on similar occasions in the mother country, was changed into a real one; and, in the confusion that followed, the young commander, who presided at the festival, rashly ordered both the principal offenders to be put to death,—a sentence which he reluctantly changed into imprisonment and exile, though not until after Ercilla had been actually placed on the scaffold for execution.
When he was released he seems to have engaged in the romantic enterprise of hunting down the cruel and savage adventurer, Lope de Aguirre, but he did not arrive in the monster’s neighbourhood till the moment when his career of blood was ended. From this time we know only, that, after suffering from a long illness, Ercilla returned to Spain in 1562, at the age of twenty-nine, having been eight years in America. At first, his unsettled habits made him restless, and he visited Italy and other parts of Europe; but in 1570 he married a lady connected with the great family of Santa Cruz, Doña María de Bazan, whom he celebrates at the end of the eighteenth canto of his poem. About 1576, he was made gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Emperor of Germany,—perhaps a merely titular office; and about 1580, he was again in Madrid and in poverty, complaining loudly of the neglect and ingratitude of the king whom he had so long served, and who seemed now to have forgotten him. During the latter part of his life, however, we almost entirely lose sight of him, and know only that he began a poem in honor of the family of Santa Cruz, and that he died as early as 1595.
Ercilla is to be counted among the many instances in which Spanish poetical genius and heroism were one feeling. He wrote in the spirit in which he fought; and his principal work is as military as any portion of his adventurous life. Its subject is the very expedition against Arauco which occupied eight or nine years of his youth; and he has simply called it “La Araucana,” making it a long heroic poem in thirty-seven cantos, which, with the exception of two or three trifles of no value, is all that remains of his works. Fortunately, it has proved a sufficient foundation for his fame. But though it is unquestionably a poem that discovers much of the sensibility of genius, it has great defects; for it was written when the elements of epic poetry were singularly misunderstood in Spain, and Ercilla, misled by such models as the “Carolea” and “Carlo Famoso,” fell easily into serious mistakes.
The first division of the Araucana is, in fact, a versified history of the early part of the war. It is geographically and statistically accurate. It is a poem, thus far, that should be read with a map, and one whose connecting principle is merely the succession of events. Of this rigid accuracy he more than once boasts; and, to observe it, he begins with a description of Arauco and its people, amidst whom he lays his scene, and then goes on through fifteen cantos of consecutive battles, negotiations, conspiracies, and adventures, just as they occurred. He composed this part of his poem, he tells us, in the wilderness, where he fought and suffered; taking the night to describe what the day had brought to pass, and writing his verses on fragments of paper, or, when these failed, on scraps of skins; so that it is, in truth, a poetical journal, in octave rhymes, of the expedition in which he was engaged. These fifteen cantos, written between 1555 and 1563, constitute the first part, which ends abruptly in the midst of a violent tempest, and which was printed by itself in 1569.