[493] Obras, Tom. VII. p. 289.
[494] A violent attack was made on Quevedo, ten years before his death, in a volume entitled “El Tribunal de la Justa Venganza,” printed at Valencia, 1635, 12mo, pp. 294, and said to be written by the Licenciado Arnaldo Franco-Furt; probably a pseudonyme. It is thrown into the form of a trial, before regular judges, of the satirical works of Quevedo then published; and, except when the religious prejudices of the author prevail over his judgment, is not more severe than Quevedo’s license merited. No honor, however, is done to his genius or his wit; and personal malice seems apparent in many parts of it.
In 1794, Sancha printed, at Madrid, a translation of Anacreon, with notes by Quevedo, making 160 pages, but not numbering them as a part of the eleventh volume, 8vo, of Quevedo’s Works, which he completed that year. They are more in the terse and classical manner of the Bachiller de la Torre than the same number of pages anywhere among Quevedo’s acknowledged works; but the translation is not very strict, and the spirit of the original is not so well caught as it is by Estévan Manuel de Villegas, whose “Eróticas” will be noticed hereafter. The version of Quevedo is dedicated to the Duke of Ossuna, his patron, Madrid, 1st April, 1609. Villegas did not publish till 1617; but it is not likely that he knew any thing of the labors of Quevedo.
[495] Quintana, Historia de Madrid, 1630, folio, Lib. III., c. 24-26. Cabrera, Historia de Felipe II., Madrid, 1619, folio, Lib. V., c. 9; where he says Charles V. had intended to make Madrid his capital.
[496] The “Comedia Jacobina” is found in a curious and rare volume of religious poetry, entitled “Libro de Poesía, Christiana, Moral, y Divina,” por el Doctor Frey Damian de Vegas (Toledo, 1590, 12mo, ff. 503). It contains a poem on the Immaculate Conception, long the turning-point of Spanish orthodoxy; a colloquy between the Soul, the Will, and the Understanding, which may have been represented; and a great amount of religious poetry, both lyric and didactic, much of it in the old Spanish measures, and much in the Italian, but none better than the mass of poor verse on such subjects then in favor.
[497] It is ascertained that the Canon Tarrega lived at Valencia in 1591, and wrote eleven plays, two of which are known only by their titles. The rest were printed at Madrid in 1614, and again in 1616. Cervantes praises him in the Preface to his Comedias, 1615, among the early followers of Lope, for his discrecion é inumerables conceptos. It is evident from the notice of the “Enemiga Favorable,” by the wise canon in Don Quixote, that it was then regarded as the best of its author’s plays, as it has been ever since. Rodriguez, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1747, folio, p. 146. Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Valencia, 1747, Tom. I. p. 240. Fuster, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1827, folio, Tom. I. p. 310. Don Quixote, Parte I., c. 48.
[498] This farce, much like an entremes or saynete of modern times, is a quarrel between two lackeys for a damsel of their own condition, which ends with one of them being half drowned by the other in a public fountain. It winds up with a ballad older than itself; for it alludes to a street as being about to be constructed through Leganitos, while one of the personages in the farce speaks of the street as already there. The fountain is appropriately introduced, for Leganitos was famous for it. (See Cervantes, Ilustre Fregona, and D. Quixote, Parte II., c. 22, with the note of Pellicer.) Such little circumstances abound in the popular portions of the old Spanish drama, and added much to its effect at the time it appeared.
[499] The “Enemiga Favorable” is divided into three jornadas called actos, and shows otherwise that it was constructed on the model of Lope’s dramas. But Tarrega wrote also at least one religious play, “The Foundation of the Order of Mercy.” It is the story of a great robber who becomes a great saint, and may have suggested to Calderon his “Devocion de la Cruz.”
[500] Laurel de Apolo, (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 21), where Lope says, speaking of Tarrega, “Gaspar Aguilar competia con él en la dramática poesía.”