p. 14.
[827] “La Muerte, Entierro y Honras de Chrespina Maranzmana, Gata de Juan Chrespo, en tres cantos de octava rima, intitulados la Gaticida, compuesta por Cintio Merctisso, Español, Paris, por Nicolo Molinero,” 1604, 12mo, pp. 52. I know nothing of the poem or its author, except what is to be found in this volume, of which I have never met even with a bibliographical notice, and of which I have seen only one copy,—that belonging to my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid.
[828] The first edition of the “Mosquea” was printed in small 12mo at Cuenca, when its author was twenty-six years old;—the third is Sancha’s, Madrid, 1777, 12mo, with a life, from which it appears, that, besides being a faithful officer of the Inquisition himself, and making a good fortune out of it, Villaviciosa exhorted his family, by his last will, to devote themselves in all future time to its holy service with grateful zeal. See, also, the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Sevilla, 8vo, Tom. I., 1841, p. 354.
[829] A vast number of tributes were paid by contemporary men of letters to Don John of Austria; but among them none is more curious than a Latin poem in two books, containing seventeen or eighteen hundred hexameters and pentameters, the work of a negro, who had been brought as an infant from Africa, and who by his learning rose to be professor of Latin and Greek in the school attached to the cathedral of Granada. He is the same person noticed by Cervantes as “el negro Juan Latino,” in a poem prefixed to the Don Quixote. His volume of Latin verses on the birth of Ferdinand, the son of Philip II., on Pope Pius V., on Don John of Austria, and on the city of Granada, making above a hundred and sixty pages in small quarto, printed at Granada in 1573, is not only one of the rarest books in the world, but is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the intellectual faculties and possible accomplishments of the African race. The author himself says he was brought to Spain from Ethiopia, and was, until his emancipation, a slave to the grandson of the famous Gonsalvo de Córdova. His Latin verse is respectable, and, from his singular success as a scholar, he was commonly called Joannes Latinus, a sobriquet under which he is frequently mentioned, and which was made the title of a play, I presume about him, by Lopez de Enciso, called “Juan Latino.” He was respectably married to a lady of Granada, who fell in love with him, as Eloisa did with Abelard, while he was teaching her; and after his death, which occurred later than 1573, his wife and children erected a monument to his memory in the church of Sta. Ana, in that city, inscribing it with an epitaph, in which he is styled “Filius Æthiopum, prolesque nigerrima patrum.” Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 716. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. lx., note.
It may not be amiss here to add, that another negro is celebrated in a play, written in tolerable Castilian, and claiming, at the end, to be founded in fact. It is called “El Valiente Negro en Flandes,” and is found in Tom. XXXI., 1638, of the collection of Comedias printed at Barcelona and Saragossa. The negro in question, however, was not, like Juan Latino, a native African, but was a slave born in Merida, and was distinguished only as a soldier, serving with great honor under the Duke of Alva, and enjoying the favor of that severe general.
[830] “Felicissima Victoria concedida del Cielo al Señor Don Juan d’Austria, etc., compuesta por Hierónimo de Cortereal, Cavallero Portugues,” s. l. 1578, 8vo, with curious wood-cuts; probably printed at Lisbon. (Life, in Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 495.) His “Suceso do Segundo Cerco de Diu,” in twenty-one cantos, on the siege, or rather defence, of Diu, in the East Indies, in 1546, was published in 1574, and translated into Spanish by the well-known poet, Pedro de Padilla, who published his version in 1597. His “Naufragio y Lastimoso Suceso da Perdiçaõ de Manuel de Souza de Sepúlveda,” etc., (Lisboa, 1594), in seventeen cantos, was translated into Spanish by Francisco de Contreras, with the title of “Nave Trágica de la India de Portugal,” 1624. This Manuel de Souza, who had held a distinguished office in Portuguese India, and who had perished miserably by shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope, in 1553, as he was returning home, was a connection of Cortereal by marriage. Denis, Chroniques, etc., Tom. II. p. 79.
[831] “La Austriada de Juan Rufo, Jurado de la Ciudad de Córdoba,” Madrid, 1584, 12mo, ff. 447. There are editions of 1585 and 1587, and it is extravagantly praised by Cervantes, in a prefatory sonnet, and in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library. Rufo, when he was to be presented to Philip II.,—probably at the time he offered his poem and dedication,—said he had prepared himself fully for the reception, but lost all presence of mind, from the severity of that monarch’s appearance. (Baltasar Porreño, Dichos y Hechos de Philipe II., Bruselas, 1666, 12mo, p. 39.) The best of Rufo’s works is his Letter to his young Son, at the end of his “Apotegmas,” already noticed;—the same son, Luis, who afterwards became a distinguished painter at Rome.
[832] “Primera y Segunda Parte del Leon de España, por Pedro de la Vezilla Castellanos,” Salamanca, 1586, 12mo, ff. 369. The story of the gross tribute of the damsels has probably some foundation in fact; one proof of which is, that the old General Chronicle (Parte III., c. 8) seems a little unwilling to tell a tale so discreditable to Spain. Mariana admits it, and Lobera, in his “Historia de las Grandezas, etc., de Leon,” (Valladolid, 1596, 4to, Parte II. c. 24) gives it in full, as unquestionable. Leon is still often called Leon de España, as it is in the poem of Castellanos, to distinguish it from Lyons in France, Leon de Francia.
[833] “Sitio y Toma de Amberes, por Miguel Giner,” Zaragoza, 1587, 8vo.—“La Conquista que hicieron los Reyes Católicos en Granada, por Edoardo Diaz,” 1590, 8vo, Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 730; besides which, Diaz, who was long a soldier in the Spanish service, and wrote good Castilian, published, in 1592, a volume of verse in Spanish and Portuguese.—“De la Historia de Sagunto, Numancia, y Cartago, compuesta por Lorencio de Zamora, Natural de Ocaña,” Alcalá, 1589, 4to,—nineteen cantos of ottava rima, and about five hundred pages, ending abruptly and promising more. It was written, the author says, when he was eighteen years old; but though he lived to be an old man, and died in 1614, having printed several religious books, he never went farther with this poem. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 11.
[834] “Las Navas de Tolosa,” twenty cantos, Madrid, 1594, 12mo;—“La Restauracion de España,” ten cantos, Madrid, 1607, 12mo;—“El Patron de España,” six books, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, with Rimas added. My copy of the last volume is one of the many proofs that new title-pages with later dates were attached to Spanish books that had been some time before the public. Mr. Southey, to whom this copy once belonged, expresses his surprise, in a MS. note on the fly-leaf, that the last half of the volume should be dated in 1611, while the first half is dated in 1612. But the reason is, that the title-page to the Rimas comes at p. 94, in the middle of a sheet, and could not conveniently be cancelled and changed, as was the title-page to the “Patron de España,” with which the volume opens. Mesa’s translations are later;—the Æneid, Madrid, 1615, 12mo; and the Eclogues of Virgil, to which he added a few more Rimas and the poor tragedy of “Pompeio,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo. The ottava rima seems to me very cumbrous in both these translations, and unsuited to their nature, though we are reconciled to it, and to the terza rima, in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Viana, a Portuguese, printed at Valladolid, in 1589, 4to; one of the happiest translations made in the pure age of Castilian literature. The Iliad, which Mesa is also supposed to have translated, was never printed. In one of his epistles, (Rimas, 1611, f. 201), he says he was bred to the law; and in another, (f. 205), that he loved to live in Castile, though he was of Estremadura. In many places he alludes to his poverty and to the neglect he suffered; and in a sonnet in his last publication, (1618, f. 113), he shows a poor, craven spirit in flattering the Count de Lemos, with whom he was offended for not taking him to Naples.