I á los catorce escritas.
Ed. 1617, f. 88.
[914] There is an interesting notice of Villegas and his works by the kindred spirit of Wieland, in the Deutsche Merkur, 1774, Tom. V. pp. 237, etc.; the first time, I suspect, that his name had been mentioned with the praise it deserves, out of Spain, for a century. It should be remembered, however, that Villegas, though he generally wrote with very great simplicity, and, in his Elegy to Bartolomé de Argensola (Eróticas, 1617, Tom. II. f. 28) and elsewhere, censures the obscure and affected writers of his time, yet sometimes himself writes in the bad style he condemns, and devotes his sixth Elegy to praise of the absurd “Phaeton” of the Count Villamediana.
[915] In the Academy’s edition of the “Siglo de Oro,” Madrid, 1821, 8vo, there is other poetry besides that contained in the pastoral itself.
[916] Poems are found in all the stories of Salas Barbadillo, which would, perhaps, double the amount published by himself in his “Rimas Castellanas,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo, and by his friends after his death, in the “Coronas del Parnaso,” Madrid, 1635, 12mo. The volume of Rimas is more than half made up of sonnets and epigrams.
[917] “Obras de Salvador Jacinto Polo,” Zaragoça, 1670, 4to. His “Apollo and Daphne” is partly in ridicule of the culto style.
[918] “Desengaño del Amor en Rimas por Pedro Soto de Rojas,” Madrid, 1623, 4to. He was of Granada, and, as his sonnets show, a great admirer of Góngora.
[919] The poetry of Rioja was not published till near the end of the eighteenth century, when it appeared in the collections of Sedano and Fernandez in 1774 and 1797. The two odes of Rioja and Caro are printed together in the Spanish translation of Sismondi’s “History of Spanish Literature,” Sevilla, 1842, in the notes to which is the best account to be found of Rioja. (Tom. II. p. 173.) Rioja, it may be added, was a friend of Lope de Vega, who addressed to him a pleasant poetical epistle on his own garden, which was first printed in 1622.
Fuentecillas, que reis,