It is on the constantly recurring subject of Bernardo del Carpio; but it takes from the old traditions only the slight outline of that hero’s history, and then fills up the space between his first presentation at the court of his uncle, Alfonso the Chaste, and the death of Roland at Roncesvalles, with enchantments and giants, travels through the air and over the sea, in countries known and in countries impossible, amidst adventures as wild as the fancies of Ariosto, and more akin to his free and joyous spirit than any thing else of the sort in the language. Many of the descriptions are rich and beautiful; worthy of the author of “The Age of Gold” and “The Grandeur of Mexico.” Some of the episodes are full of interest in themselves, and happy in their position. Its general structure is suited to the rules of its class,—if rules there be for such a poem as the “Orlando Furioso.” And the versification is almost always good;—easy where facility is required, and grave or solemn, as the subject changes and becomes more lofty. But it has one capital defect. It is fatally long;—thrice as long as the Iliad. There seems, in truth, as we read on, no end to its episodes, which are involved in each other till we entirely lose the thread that connects them; and as for its crowds of characters, they come like shadows, and so depart, leaving often no trace behind them, except a most indistinct recollection of their wild adventures.[817]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Narrative Poems on Subjects from Classical Antiquity. — Boscan, Mendoza, Silvestre, Montemayor, Villegas, Perez, Cepeda, Góngora, Villamediana, Pantaleon, and others. — Narrative Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. — Salas, Silveira, Zarate. — Mock-Heroic Narrative Poems. — Aldana, Chrespo, Villaviciosa and his Mosquea. — Serious Historical Poems. — Cortereal, Rufo, Vezilla Castellanos and others, Mesa, Cueva, El Pinciano, Mosquera, Vasconcellos, Ferreira, Figueroa, Esquilache. — Failure of Narrative and Heroic Poetry on National Subjects.
There was little tendency in Spain, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to take subjects for the long narrative and heroic poems that were so characteristic of the country from ancient history or fable. Shorter and in general more interesting tales, imbued with the old national spirit, were, however, early attempted out of classical materials. The “Leander” of Boscan, a gentle and pleasing poem, in about three thousand lines of blank verse, is to be dated as early as 1540, and is one of them. Diego de Mendoza, Boscan’s friend, followed, with his “Adonis, Hippomenes, and Atalanta,” but in the Italian octave stanza, and with less success. Silvestre’s “Daphne and Apollo” and his “Pyramus and Thisbe,” both of them written in the old Castilian verse, are of the same period and more genial, but they were unfortunate in their effects, if they provoked the poems on “Pyramus and Thisbe” by Montemayor and by Antonio Villegas, or that on “Daphne” by Perez, in the second book of his continuation of the “Diana.”[818]
The more formal effort of Romero de Cepeda on “The Destruction of Troy,” published in 1582, is not better than the rest. It has, however, the merit of being written more in the old national tone than almost any thing of the kind; for it is in the ancient stanza of ten short lines, and has a fluency and facility that make it sound sometimes like the elder ballad poetry. But it extends to ten cantos, and is, after all, the story to which we have always been accustomed, except that it makes Æneas—against whom the Spanish poets and chroniclers seem to have entertained a thorough ill-will—a traitor to his country and an accomplice in its ruin.[819]
But with the appearance of Góngora, simplicity such as Cepeda’s ceased in this class of poems almost entirely. Nothing, indeed, was more characteristic of the extravagance in which this great poetical heresiarch indulged himself than his monstrous poem,—half lyrical, half narrative, and wholly absurd,—which he called “The Fable of Polyphemus”; and nothing became more characteristic of his school than the similar poems in imitation of the Polyphemus which commonly passed under the designation he gave them,—that of Fábulas. Such were the “Phaeton,” the “Daphne,” and the “Europa” of his great admirer, Count Villamediana. Such were several poems by Pantaleon, and, among them, his “Fábula de Eco,” which he dedicated to Góngora. Such was Moncayo’s “Atalanta,” a long heroic poem in twelve cantos, published as a separate work; and his “Venus and Adonis,” found among his miscellanies. And such, too, were Villalpando’s “Love Enamoured, or Cupid and Psyche”; Salazar’s “Eurydice”; and several more of the same class and with the same name;—all worthless, and all published between the time when Góngora appeared and the end of the century.[820]
Of heroic poems on miscellaneous subjects, a few were produced during the same period, but none of value. The first that needs to be mentioned is that of Yague de Salas, on “The Lovers of Teruel,” published in 1616, and preceded by an extraordinary array of laudatory verses, among which are sonnets by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. It is on the tragical fate of two young and faithful lovers, who, after the most cruel trials, died at almost the same moment, victims of their passion for each other,—the story on which, as we have already noticed, Montalvan founded one of his best dramas. Salas calls his poem a tragic epic, and it consists of twenty-six long cantos, comprehending, not only the sad tale of the lovers themselves, which really ends in the seventeenth canto, but a large part of the history of the kingdom of Aragon and the whole history of the little town of Teruel. He declares his story to be absolutely authentic; and in the Preface he appeals for the truth of his assertion to the traditions of Teruel, of whose municipality he had formerly been syndic and was then secretary.
But his statements were early called in question, and, to sustain them, he produced, in 1619, the copy of a paper which he professed to have found in the archives of Teruel, and which contains, under the date of 1217, a full account of the two lovers, with a notice of the discovery and reinterment of their unchanged bodies in the church of San Pedro, in 1555. This seems to have quieted the doubts that had been raised; and for a long time afterwards, poets and tragic writers resorted freely to a story so truly Spanish in its union of love and religion, as if its authenticity were no longer questionable. But since 1806, when the facts and documents in relation to it were collected and published, there seems no reasonable doubt that the whole is a fiction, founded on a tradition already used by Artieda in a dull drama, and still floating about at the time when Salas lived, to which, when urged by his skeptical neighbours, he gave a distinct form. But the popular faith was too well settled to be disturbed by antiquarian investigations, and the remains of the lovers of Teruel in the cloisters of Saint Peter are still visited by faithful and devout hearts, who look upon them with sincere awe, as mysterious witnesses left there by Heaven, that they may testify, through all generations, to the truth and beauty of a love stronger than the grave.[821]
The attempt of Lope de Vega, in his “Jerusalem Conquered,” to rival Tasso, turned the thoughts of other ambitious poets in the same direction, and the result was two epics that are not yet quite forgotten. The first is the “Macabeo” of Silveira, a Portuguese, who, after living long at the court of Spain, accompanied the head of the great house of the Guzmans when that nobleman was made viceroy of Naples, and published there, in 1638, this poem, to the composition of which he had given twenty-two years. The subject is the restoration of Jerusalem by Judas Maccabæus,—the same which Tasso had at one time chosen for his own epic. But Silveira had not the genius of Tasso. He has, it is true, succeeded in filling twenty cantos with octave stanzas, as Tasso did; but there the resemblance stops. The “Macabeo,” besides being written in the affected style of Góngora, is wanting in spirit, interest, and poetry throughout.[822]