It was not, however, in Spain alone that such follies were known. From the middle of the fifteenth century, when a knowledge of the great masters of antiquity had become, for the first time, common among scholars throughout the West, efforts had been made to build up and cultivate a style of writing not unworthy of their example in the languages of the principal countries of Europe. Some of these efforts were wisely made, and resulted in the production of a series of authors that now constitute the recognized poets and prose-writers of Christendom, and emulate the models on which they were more or less formed. Others, misled by pedantry and an unsound judgment, have long since fallen into oblivion. But the period when such efforts were made with the least taste and discretion was the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth; the period when the Pleiades, as they were called, prevailed in France, the Euphuists in England, and the Marinisti in Italy.
How far the bad taste that was fashionable for a time in these several countries had an effect on the contemporary tendencies of a similar kind in Spain cannot be exactly determined. Probably what was the favored literature of London or Paris was little known at Madrid, and less cared for. But that whatever was done in Italy was immediately carried to Spain, in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, we have abundant proof.[868]
The poet who introduced “the cultivated style” into Spanish literature, and whose name that style has ever since worn, was Luis de Góngora, a gentleman of Córdova, who was born in 1561, and was educated at Salamanca, where it was intended he should qualify himself for the profession of the law, of which his father was a distinguished ornament. But it was too late. The young man’s disposition for poetry was already developed, and the only permanent result of his studies at the University is to be sought in a large number of ballads and other slight compositions, often filled with bitter satire, but written with simplicity and spirit.
In 1584 he is noticed by Cervantes as a known author.[869] He was then only twenty-three years old; but he continued to live in his native city, poor and unpatronized, yet twenty years longer, when, to insure a decent subsistence for his old age, he took the tonsure and became a priest. About the same time, he resorted to the court, then at Valladolid, and was there in 1605, the year in which Espinosa published his collection of poetry, to which Góngora was the largest contributor.[870] But he was not more favored at court than he had been at Córdova; and, after waiting and watching eleven years, we do not find that he had obtained any thing more than a titular chaplaincy to the king, a pleasant note from the patronizing Count de Lemos,[871] the good-natured favor of the Duke de Lerma and the Marquis de Siete Iglesias, and the general reputation of being a wit and a poet. At last he was noticed by the all-powerful favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, and seemed on the point of obtaining the fortune for which he had waited so long. But at this moment his health failed. He returned, languishing, to his native city, and died there in peace soon afterwards, at the age of sixty-six.[872]
Much of the early poetry of Góngora is in short lines, and remarkable for its simplicity. One of his lyrical ballads, beginning,—
The loveliest maiden
Our village has known,
Only yesterday wed,
To-day, widowed, alone,[873]—
contains an admirably natural expression of grief, by a young bride to her mother, on the occasion of her husband’s being suddenly called to the wars. Another yet more lyrical, which begins,—