Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVI. p. 332.
[250] Obras, Tom. XIII., etc.
[251] For instance, the sonnet beginning, “Yo dormiré en el polvo.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 186.
[252] Such as “Gertrudis siendo Dios tan amoroso.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 223.
[253] Some of them are very flat;—see the sonnet, “Quando en tu alcazar de Sion.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 225.
[254] Triumfos de la Fé en los Reynos de Japon. Obras, Tom. XVII.
[255] See ante, Vol. I. p. 338, and [Vol. II. p. 79].
[256] The successful poem, a jesting ballad of very small merit, is in the Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. pp. 171-177.
[257] An account of some of the poetical joustings of this period is to be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” § 162, with the notes, p. 486; and a good illustration of the mode in which they were conducted is to be found in the “Justa Poética,” in honor of our Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, collected by Juan Bautista Felices de Caceres, (Çaragoça, 1629, 4to), in which Joseph de Valdivielso and Vargas Machuca figured. Such joustings became so frequent at last as to be subjects of ridicule. In the “Caballero Descortes” of Salas Barbadillo, (Madrid, 1621, 12mo, f. 99, etc.), there is a certámen in honor of the recovery of a lost hat;—merely a light caricature.
[258] The details of the festival, with the poems offered on the occasion, were neatly printed at Madrid, in 1620, in a small quarto, ff. 140, and fill about three hundred pages in the eleventh volume of Lope’s Works. The number of poetical offerings was great, but much short of what similar contests sometimes produced. Figueroa says in his “Pasagero,” (Madrid, 1617, 12mo, f. 118), that, at a festival, held a short time before, in honor of St. Antonio of Padua, five thousand poems of different kinds were offered; which, after the best of them had been hung round the church and the cloisters of the monks who originally proposed the prizes, were distributed to other monasteries. The custom extended to America. In 1585, Balbuena carried away a prize in Mexico from three hundred competitors. See his Life, prefixed to the Academy’s edition of his “Siglo de Oro,” Madrid, 1821, 8vo.