[805] “Argentina, Conquista del Rio de la Plata y Tucuman, y otros Sucesos del Peru,” Lisboa, 1602, 4to. There is a love-story in Canto XII., and some talk about enchantments elsewhere; but, with a few such slight exceptions, the poem is evidently pretty good geography, and the best history the author could collect on the spot. I know it only in the reprint of Barcia, who takes it into his collection entirely for its historical claims.
One thing has much struck me in this and all the poems written by Spaniards on their conquests in America, and especially by those who visited the countries they celebrate. It is, that there are no proper sketches of the peculiar scenery through which they passed, though much of it is among the most beautiful and grand that exists on the globe, and must have been filling them constantly with new wonder. The truth is, that, when they describe woods and rivers and mountains, their descriptions would as well fit the Pyrenees or the Guadalquivir as they do Mexico, the Andes, or the Amazon. Perhaps this deficiency is connected with the same causes that have prevented Spain from ever producing a great landscape painter.
[806] “La Conquista del Nuevo Mexico, por Gaspar de Villagra,” was printed at Alcalá in 1610, 8vo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 535.
[807] “Universal Redencion de Francisco Hernandez Blasco,” Toledo, 1584, 1589, 4to, Madrid, 1609, 4to. He was of Toledo, and claims that a part of his poem was a revelation to a nun.
[808] “El Cavallero Assisio, Vida de San Francisco y otros Cinco Santos, por Gabriel de Mata,” Tom. I., Bilbao, 1587, with a wood-cut of St. Francis on the title-page, as a knight on horseback and in full armour; Tom. II., 1589, 4to. A third volume was promised, but it never appeared. The five saints are St. Anthony of Padua, St. Buenaventura, St. Luis the Bishop, Sta. Bernadina, and Sta. Clara, all Minorites. St. Anthony preaching to the fishes, whom he addresses (Canto XVII.) as hermanos peces, is very quaint.
[809] In a hermitage on a mountain near Córdova, where about thirty hermits lived in stern silence and subjected to the most cruel penances, I once saw a person who had served with distinction as an officer at the battle of Trafalgar, and another who had been of the household of the first queen of Ferdinand VII. The Duke de Rivas and his brother, Don Angel,—now wearing the title himself, but more distinguished as a poet, or for his eminent merits in the diplomatic and military service of his country, than for his high rank,—who led me up that rude mountain, and filled a long and beautiful morning with strange sights and adventures and stories, such as can be found in no other country but Spain, assured me that cases like those of the Spanish officers who had become hermits were still of no infrequent occurrence in their country. This was in 1818.
[810] Of Virues a notice has been already given, (ante, [p. 28]), to which it is only necessary to add here that there are editions of the Monserrate of 1588, 1601, 1602, 1609, and 1805; the last (Madrid, 8vo) with a Preface written, I think, by Mayans y Siscar. A poem by Francisco de Ortega, on the same subject, appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century, in small quarto, without date, entitled “Orígen, Antiguedad é Invencion de nuestra Señora de Monserrate.” It is entirely worthless.
[811] “La Benedictina de F. Nicolas Bravo,” Salamanca, 1604, 4to. Bravo was a professor at Salamanca and Madrid, and died in 1648, the head of a rich monastery of his order in Navarre. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 151.) Of Valdivielso I have spoken, ante, [p. 316]. His “Vida, etc., de San Josef,” printed 1607 and 1647, makes above seven hundred pages in the edition of Lisbon, 1615, 12mo; and his “Sagrario de Toledo,” Barcelona, 1618, 12mo, fills nearly a thousand;—both in octave stanzas, as are nearly all the poems of their class.
[812] “La Christiada de Diego de Hojeda,” Sevilla, 1611, 4to. It has the merit of having only twelve cantos, and, if this were the proper place, it might well be compared with Milton’s “Paradise Regained” for its scenes with the devils, and with Klopstock’s “Messiah” for the scene of the crucifixion. Of the author we know only that he was a native of Seville, but went young to Lima, in Peru, where he wrote this poem, and where he died at the head of a Dominican convent founded by himself. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 289.) There is a rifacimento of the “Christiada,” by Juan Manuel de Berriozabal, printed Madrid, 1841, 18mo, in a small volume; not, however, an improvement on the original.
[813] “Poema Castellano de nuestra Señora de Aguas Santas, por Alonso Diaz,” Seville, 1611, cited by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 21).—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico,” Valladolid, 1613, 8vo, and “Historia de la Vírgen Madre de Dios,” 1608, afterwards published with the title of “Nueva Jerusalen María,” Valladolid, 1625, 18mo; both by Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza, and both the work of his youth, since he lived to 1668. (Ibid., p. 115.) The last of these poems, my copy of which is of the fourth edition, absurdly divides the life of the Madonna according to the twelve precious stones that form the foundations of the New Jerusalem in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation; each fundamento, as the separate portions or books are called, being subdivided into three cantos; and the whole filling above twelve thousand lines of octave stanzas, which are not always without merit, though they generally have very little.—“Creacion del Mundo de Alonso de Azevedo,” Roma, 1615. (Velazquez, Dieze, p. 395.)—“La Verdadera Hermandad de los Cinco Martires de Arabia, por Damian Rodriguez de Vargas,” Toledo, 1621, 4to. It is very short for the class to which it belongs, containing only about three thousand lines, but it is hardly possible that any of them should be worse.—“David, Poema Heróico del Doctor Jacobo Uziel,” Venetia, 1624, pp. 440; a poem in twelve cantos, on the story of the Hebrew monarch whose name it bears, written in a plain and simple style, evidently imitating the flow of Tasso’s stanzas, but without poetical spirit, and in the ninth canto absurdly bringing a Spanish navigator to the court of Jerusalem.—“La Mejor Muger Madre y Vírgen, Poema Sacro, por Sebastian de Nieva Calvo,” Madrid, 1625, 4to. It ends in the fourteenth book with the victory of Lepanto, which is attributed to the intercession of the Madonna and the virtue of the rosary.—“Grandezas Divinas, Vida y Muerte de nuestro Salvador, etc., por Fr. Duran Vivas,” found in scattered papers after his death, and arranged and modernized in its language by his grandson, who published it, (Madrid, 1643, 4to); a worthless poem, more than half of which is thrown into the form of a speech from Joseph to Pontius Pilate.—“Pasion del Hombre Dios, por el Maestro Juan Dávila,” Leon de Francia, 1661, folio, written in the Spanish décimas of Espinel, and filling about three-and-twenty thousand lines, divided into six books, which are subdivided into estancias, or resting-places, and these again into cantos.—“Sanson Nazareno, Poema Eróico, por Ant. Enriquez Gomez,” Ruan, 1656, 4to, thoroughly infected with Gongorism, as is another poem by the same author, half narrative, half lyrical, called “La Culpa del Primer Peregrino,” Ruan, 1644, 4to.—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico, escrivialo Hernando Dominguez Camargo,” 1666, 4to, a native of Santa Fé de Bogotá, whose poem, filling nearly four hundred pages of octave rhymes, is a fragment published after his death.—“La Christiada, Poema Sacro y Vida de Jesu Christo, que escrivió Juan Francisco de Encisso y Monçon,” Cadiz, 1694, 4to; deformed, like almost every thing of the period when it appeared, with the worst taste.