There can be no doubt, then, as to his deliberate opinion in relation to it. Indeed, Góngora assailed him with great severity for it; and though Lope continued to praise the uneasy poet for such of his works as deserved commendation, the attack on his “cultivated style” was never forgiven by Góngora, and a small volume of his unpublished verse still shows that his bitterness continued to the last.[898] And yet Lope himself not unfrequently fell into the very fault he so sharply and wittily reprehended; as may be seen in many of his plays, particularly in his “Wise Man in his own House,” where it is singularly unsuited to the subject; and in many of his poems, especially his “Circe” and his “Festival at Denia,” in which, if they had not been addressed to courtly readers, it can hardly be doubted that he would have used the simple and flowing style most natural to him.
The affected style of Góngora was attacked by others;—by Cascales, the rhetorician, in his “Poetical Tables,” printed in 1616, and in his “Philological Letters,” printed later;[899] by Jauregui, the poet, in his “Discourse on the Cultivated and Obscure Style,” in 1628;[900] and by Salas, in 1633, in his “Inquiries concerning Tragedy.”[901] But the most formidable attack sustained by this style was made by Quevedo, who, in 1631, published both his Bachiller de la Torre, and the poetry of Luis de Leon, intending to show by them what Spanish lyrical verse might become, when, with a preservation of the national spirit, it was founded on pure models, whether ancient or modern, whether Castilian or foreign. From this attack—made, it should be observed, about the time Góngora’s works and those of his most successful followers were published, rather than at the time when they were written and circulated in manuscript—his school never entirely recovered the measure of its former triumphant success.[902]
Quite unconscious of this discussion, if we may judge by his style and manner, lived Francisco de Medrano, one of the purest and most genial of Spanish lyric poets, and one who seemed to be such without an effort to avoid the follies of his time. His poems, few in number, are better than any thing in the “Sestinas” of Venegas, to which they form a sort of supplement, and with which they were printed in 1617. Some of his religious sonnets are especially to be noticed; but his Horatian odes, and, above all, one on the Worthlessness of Human Pursuits, beginning, “We all, we all mistake,” must be regarded as the best of his graceful remains.[903]
Another writer of the same class, who can be traced back to 1584, but who did not die till 1606, is Baltasar de Alcazar, a witty Andalusian, who has left a moderate number of short lyrical poems, most of them gay, and all of them in a better taste than was common when they appeared.[904]
Similar praise, if not the same, may be given to Arguijo, a Sevilian gentleman of fortune, distinguished by his patronage of letters, to whom Lope de Vega dedicated three poems, and whose verses Espinosa—apparently to attract favor for his book—placed at the opening of his selections from the poets of his time. He wrote, if we are to judge from the little that has come down to us, in the Italian forms; for his twenty-nine sonnets,—which, with a singularly antique air, are sometimes quite poetical,—a good cancion on the death of a friend, and another on a religious festival at Cadiz, constitute the greater part of his known works. But his little lyric to his guitar, which he calls simply a “Silva,” is worth all the rest. It is entirely Spanish in its tone, and breathes a gentle sensibility, not unmingled with sadness, that finds its way at once to the heart.[905]
Antonio Balvas, who died in 1629, is of more humble pretensions as a poet than either of the last, but perhaps was more distinctly opposed than either of them to the fashionable taste. When in his old age he had prepared for publication a volume of his verse, he called it, after some hesitation, “The Castilian Poet,” and Lope de Vega pronounced it to be purely written, and well fitted to a period “when,” as he added, “the ancient language of the country was beginning to sound to him like a strange tongue.” Still, in this very volume, humble in size and modest in all its pretensions, Balvas compliments Góngora and praises Ledesma: so necessary was it to conciliate the favored school.[906]
CHAPTER XXX.
Lyric Poetry, continued. — The Argensolas, Jauregui, Estévan Villegas, Balbuena, Barbadillo, Polo, Rojas, Rioja, Esquilache, Mendoza, Rebolledo, Quiros, Evia, Inez de la Cruz, Solís, Candamo, and others. — Different Characteristics of Spanish Lyrical Poetry, Religious and Secular, Popular and Elegant.
Among the lyric poets who flourished in Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and who were opposed to what began to be called the “Gongorism” of the time, the first, as far as their general influence was concerned, were the two brothers Argensola,—Aragonese gentlemen of a good Italian family, which had come from Ravenna in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The eldest of them, Lupercio Leonardo, was born about 1564; and Bartolomé Leonardo, the other, was his junior by only a year. Lupercio was educated for the civil service of his country, and married young. Not far from the year 1587 he wrote the three tragedies which have already been noticed, and two years later was distinguished at Alcalá de Henares in one of the public poetical contests then so common in Spain. In 1591, he was sent as an agent of the government of Philip the Second to Saragossa, when Antonio Perez fled into Aragon; and he subsequently became chronicler of that kingdom, and private secretary of the Empress Maria of Austria.