[71] Ibid., Tom. IV.
[72] Ibid., Tom. I. and II.
[73] Obras, Tom. VI. p. 2.
[74] The materials for the life of Luis de Leon are to be gathered from the notices of him in the curious MS. of Pacheco, published, Semanario Pintoresco, 1844, p. 374;—those in N. Antonio, Bib. Nova, ad verb.;—in Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. V.;—and in the Preface to a collection of his poetry, published at Valencia by Mayans y Siscar, 1761; the last being also found in Mayans y Siscar, “Cartas de Varios Autores” (Valencia, 1773, 12mo, Tom. IV. pp. 398, etc.). His birthplace has been by some supposed to have been Belmonte in La Mancha, or else Madrid. But Pacheco, who is a sufficient authority, gives that honor to Granada, and settles the date of Luis de Leon’s birth at 1528, though it is more commonly given as of 1526 or 1527; adding a description of his person, and the singular fact, not elsewhere noticed, that he amused himself with the art of painting, and succeeded in his own portrait.
[75] The poems of Luis de Leon fill the last volume of his Works; but there are several among them that are probably spurious.
[76] In noticing the Hebrew temperament of Luis de Leon, I am reminded of one of his contemporaries, who possessed in some respects a kindred spirit, and whose fate was even more strange and unhappy. I refer to Juan Pinto Delgado, a Portuguese Jew, who lived long in Spain, embraced the Christian religion, was reconverted to the faith of his fathers, fled from the terrors of the Inquisition to France, and died there about the year 1590. In 1627, a volume of his works, containing narrative poems on Queen Esther and on Ruth, free versions from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the old national quintillas, and sonnets and other short pieces, generally in the Italian manner, was published at Rouen in France, and dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, then the all-powerful minister of Louis XIII. They are full of the bitter and sorrowful feelings of his exile, and parts of them are written, not only with tenderness, but in a sweet and pure versification. The Hebrew spirit of the author, whose proper name is Moseh Delgado, breaks through constantly, as might be expected. Barbosa, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 722. Amador de los Rios, Judios de España, Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. 500.
[77] It is the eleventh of Luis de Leon’s Odes, and may well bear a comparison with that of Horace (Lib. I. Carm. 15) which suggested it.
[78] It is in quintillas in the original; but that stanza, I think, can never, in English, be made flowing and easy as it is in Spanish. I have, therefore, used in this translation a freedom greater than I have generally permitted to myself, in order to approach, if possible, the bold outline of the original thought. It begins thus:—
Y dexas, pastor santo,
Tu grey en este valle hondo escuro