[788] Schack’s Geschichte der dramat. Lit. in Spanien, Berlin, 1846, Tom. III. 8vo, pp. 22-24; a work of great value.
[789] Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, ed. 1693, Tom. I. p. 55.
[790] “La Carolea,” Valencia, 1560, 2 tom. 12mo. The first volume ends with accounts of the author’s birthplace, in the course of which he commemorates some of its merchants and some of its scholars, particularly Luis Vives. Notices of Sempere are to be found in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 135, in Fuster, Tom. I. p. 110, and in the notes to Polo’s “Diana,” by Cerdá, p. 380.
A poem entitled “Conquista de la Nueva Castilla,” first published at Paris in 1848, 12mo, by J. A. Sprecher de Bernegg, may, perhaps, be older than the “Carolea.” It is a short narrative poem, in two hundred and eighty-three octave stanzas, apparently written about the middle of the sixteenth century, by some unknown author of that period, and devoted to the glory of Francisco Pizarro, from the time when he left Panamá, in 1524, to the fall of Atabalipa. It was found in the Imperial Library at Vienna, among the manuscripts there, but, from a review of it in the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Band CXXI., 1848, it seems to have been edited with very little critical care. It does not, however, deserve more than it received. It is wholly worthless;—not better than we can easily suppose to have been written by one of Pizarro’s rude followers.
[791] “Carlo Famoso de Don Luis de Çapata,” Valencia, 1565, 4to. At the opening of the fiftieth canto, he congratulates himself that he has “reached the end of his thirteen years’ journey”; but, after all, is obliged to hurry over the last fourteen years of his hero’s life in that one canto. For Garcilasso, see Canto XLI.; and for Torralva’s story, which strongly illustrates the Spanish character of the sixteenth century, see Cantos XXVIII., XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., with the notes of the commentators to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 41.
[792] Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 323) gives the date and title, and little else. The only copy of the poem known to me is one printed at Alcalá de Henares, 1579, 4to, 149 leaves, double columns. It is dedicated to the great Duke of Alva, under whom its author had served, and consists chiefly of the usual traditions about the Cid, told in rather flowing, but insipid, octave stanzas.
In the Library of the Society of History at Madrid, MS. D. No. 42, is a poem in double redondillas de arte mayor, by Fray Gonzalo de Arredondo, on the achievements both of the Cid and of the Count Fernan Gonzalez, the merits of each being nicely balanced in alternate cantos. It is hardly worth notice, except from the circumstance that it was written as early as 1522, when the unused license of Charles V. to print it was given. Fray Arredondo is also the author of “El Castillo Inexpugnable y Defensorio de la Fé,” Burgos, 1528, fol.
[793] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 179, and Velazquez, Dieze, p. 385.
[794] The “Historia Parthenopea,” in eight books, by Alfonso Fernandez, was printed at Rome in 1516, says Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 23). Nicolas de Espinosa’s second part of the “Orlando Furioso” is better known, as there are editions of it in 1555, 1556, 1557, and 1559, the one of 1556 being printed at Antwerp in 4to. Juan de Coloma’s “Década de la Pasion,” in ten books, terza rima, was printed in 1579, in 8vo, at Caller (Cagliari) in Sardinia, where its author was viceroy, and on which island this has been said to be the first book ever printed. There is an edition of it, also, of 1586. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 175.) It is praised by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and is a sort of harmony of the Gospels, not without a dignified movement in its action, and interspersed with narratives from the Old Testament. The story of St. Veronica, (Lib. VII.), and the description of the Madonna as she sees her son surrounded by the rude crowd and ascending Mount Calvary under the burden of his cross, (Lib. VIII.), are passages of considerable merit. Coloma says he chose the terza rima “because it is the gravest verse in the language and the best suited to any grave subject.” In a poem in the same volume, on the Resurrection, he has, however, taken the octave rhyme; and half a century earlier, the terza rima had been rejected by Pedro Fernandez de Villegas, as quite unfitted for Castilian poetry. See ante, Vol. I. p. 486, note.
[795] In Canto XXVII. he says: “Behold the rough soil of ancient Biscay, whence it is certain comes that nobility now extended through the whole land; behold Bermeo, the head of Biscay, surrounded with thorn-woods, and above its port the old walls of the house of Ercilla, a house older than the city itself.”