[902] See Appendix (G).
[903] We know nothing of Medrano, except his poems, printed at Palermo, in 1617, at the end of an imitation, rather than a translation, of Ovid by Venegas. But Pedro Venegas de Saavedra was a Sevilian gentleman, and Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 246) hints that the imprint of the volume may not show the true place of its publication.
[904] He is mentioned in Cervantes, “Canto de Calíope,” and there is a life of him in the notes to Sismondi, Spanish translation (Tom. I. p 274). His poems are found in the “Flores” of Espinosa, and in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez.
[905] Varflora, Hijos de Sevilla, No. III. p. 14; Sismondi’s Lit. Española por Figueroa, Tom. I. p. 282; Espinosa, Flores; and Fernandez, Coleccion, Tom. XVIII. pp. 88-124. It may, perhaps, be noted here, that the “Hijos de Sevilla Ilustres en Santidad, Letras, Armas, Artes ó Dignidad,” published in that city in 1791, in 8vo, is a poor book, but one that sometimes contains facts not elsewhere to be found, and one that is now become very rare, from the circumstance that it was published in separate numbers. On its title-page it is said to have been written by Don Firmin Arana de Varflora; but Blanco White, in “Doblado’s Letters,” 1822, p. 469, says its author was Padre Valderrama.
[906] “El Poeta Castellano, Antonio Balvas Barona, Natural de la Ciudad de Segovia,” Valladolid, 1627, 12mo.
[907] All needful notices of the two Argensolas and their works—and more too—can be found in the elaborate lives of them by Pellicer, in his “Biblioteca de Traductores,” 1778, pp. 1-141; and by Latassa, in the “Biblioteca Nueva de Escritores Aragoneses,” Tom. II. pp. 143, 461. Besides the original edition of their Rimas, (Zaragoza, 1634, 4to), two editions are found in Fernandez, “Coleccion,” the last being of 1804. The sonnet of Bartolomé on Sleep is commonly much admired; but of his poems I prefer the sonnet on Providence, (p. 330), and the ode in honor of the Church after the battle of Lepanto, ed. 1634, p. 372.
[908] It is a curious fact, and one somewhat characteristic of the carelessness with which works in Spain were attributed to persons who did not write them, that the “Orfeo” of Jauregui is printed in the “Cythara de Apolo,” a collection of the posthumous poems of Agustin de Salazar, (which appeared at Madrid, 1694, 4to), as if it were his. So far as I have compared the two, I find nothing altered but the first stanza, and the title of the poem, which, instead of being simply called “Orfeo,” as it was by its author, is entitled, in imitation of Góngora’s school, “Fábula de Euridice y Orfeo.”
[909] Sedano, Tom. IX. p. xxii. Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 38. Signorelli, Storia de’ Teatri, 1813, Tom. VI. p. 13. Cervantes, Novelas, Prólogo. Orfeo de Juan de Jauregui, Madrid, 1624, 4to. Fernandez, Coleccion, Tom. VII. and VIII., containing the “Farsalia”; and Rimas de Juan de Jauregui, Sevilla, 1618, 4to, reprinted by Fernandez, Tom. VI. But the best text of the “Amynta” is that in Sedano, (Parnaso, Tom. I.), which is made by a collation of both the editions that were prepared by Jauregui himself. Of this beautiful version it may be noted that Cervantes (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 62) says, as he does of the “Pastor Fido” by Figueroa, “We happily doubt which is the translation and which the original.” The “Farsalia” of Jauregui was not printed till 1684.
Jauregui’s silva on seeing his mistress bathing can be compared, much to its advantage and honor, with a longer silva on the same subject, entitled “Anaxarete,” and published at the end of his “Gigantomachia,” by Manuel de Gallegos, Lisboa, 1628, 4to, ten years after the appearance of Jauregui’s poem. The “Anaxarete” is not without graceful passages, but it is much too long, and shows frequent traces of the school of Góngora.
[910] This allusion occurs in a satire on the culto style of poetry, not found in his collected works, but in Sedano, (Tom. IX., 1778, p. 8), where it appeared for the first time.