Another volume, not unlike the last, followed in 1624. It contains three poems in the octave stanza: “Circe,” an unfortunate amplification of the well-known story found in the Odyssey; “The Morning of Saint John,” on the popular celebration of that graceful festival in the time of Lope; and a fable on the Origin of the White Rose. To these he added several epistles in prose and verse, and three more prose tales, which, with the one already mentioned, constitute all the short prose fictions he ever published.[263]
The best part of this volume is, no doubt, the three stories. Probably Lope was induced to write them by the success of those of Cervantes, which had now been published eleven years, and were already known throughout Europe. But Lope’s talent seems not to have been more adapted to this form of composition than that of the author of Don Quixote was to the drama. Of this he seems to have been partially aware himself; for he says of the first tale, that it was written to please a lady in a department of letters where he never thought to have adventured, and the other three are addressed to the same person, and seem to have been written with the same feelings.[264] None of them excited much attention at the time when they appeared. But, twenty years afterwards, they were reprinted with four others, torn, apparently, from some connected series of similar stories, and certainly not the work of Lope. The last of the eight is the best of the collection, though it ends awkwardly, with an intimation that another is to follow; and all are thrust together into the complete edition of Lope’s miscellaneous works, though there is no pretence for claiming any of them to be his, except the first four.[265]
In the year preceding the appearance of the tales we find him in a new character. A miserable man, a Franciscan monk, from Catalonia, was suspected of heresy; and the suspicion fell on him the more heavily because his mother was of the Jewish faith. Having been, in consequence of this, expelled successively from two religious houses of which he had been a member, he seems to have become disturbed in his mind, and at last he grew so frantic, that, while mass was celebrating in open church, he seized the consecrated host from the hands of the officiating priest and violently destroyed it. He was at once arrested and given up to the Inquisition. The Inquisition, finding him obstinate, declared him to be a Lutheran and a Calvinist, and, adding to this the crime of his Hebrew descent, delivered him over to the secular arm for punishment. He was, almost as a matter of course, ordered to be burned alive; and in January, 1623, the sentence was literally executed outside the gate of Alcalá at Madrid. The excitement was great, as it always was on such occasions. An immense concourse of people was gathered to witness the edifying spectacle; the court was present; the theatres and public shows were suspended for a fortnight; and we are told that Lope de Vega, who, in some parts of his “Dragontea,” shows a spirit not unworthy of such an office, was one of those who presided at the loathsome sacrifice and directed its ceremonies.[266]
His fanaticism, however, in no degree diminished his zeal for poetry. In 1625, he published his “Divine Triumphs,” a poem in five cantos, in the measure and the manner of Petrarch, beginning with the triumphs of “the Divine Pan” and ending with those of Religion and the Cross.[267] It was a failure, and the more obviously so, because its very title placed it in direct contrast with the “Trionfi” of the great Italian master. It was accompanied, in the same volume, by a small collection of sacred poetry, which was increased in later editions until it became a large one. Some of it is truly tender and solemn, as, for instance, the cancion on the death of his son,[268] and the sonnet on his own death, beginning, “I must lie down and slumber in the dust”; while other parts, like the villancicos to the Holy Sacrament, are written with unseemly levity, and are even sometimes coarse and sensual.[269] All, however, are specimens of what respectable and cultivated Spaniards in that age called religion.
A similar remark may be made in relation to the “Corona Trágica,” The Tragic Crown, which he published in 1627, on the history and fate of the unhappy Mary of Scotland, who had perished just forty years before.[270] It is intended to be a religious epic, and fills five books of octave stanzas. But it is, in fact, merely a specimen of intolerant controversy. Mary is represented as a pure and glorious martyr to the Catholic faith, while Elizabeth is alternately called a Jezebel and an Athaliah, whom it was a doubtful merit in Philip the Second to have spared, when, as king-consort of England, he had her life in his power.[271] In other respects it is a dull poem; beginning with an account of Mary’s previous history, as related by herself to her women in prison, and ending with her death. But it savors throughout of its author’s sympathy with the religious spirit of his age and country;—a spirit, it should be remembered, which made the Inquisition what it was.
The Corona Trágica was, however, perhaps on this very account, thought worthy of being dedicated to Pope Urban the Eighth, who had himself written an epitaph on the unfortunate Mary of Scotland, which Lope, in courtly phrase, declared was “beatifying her in prophecy.” The flattery was well received. Urban sent the poet in return a complimentary letter; gave him a degree of Doctor in Divinity, and the cross of the Order of Saint John; and appointed him to the honorary places of Fiscal in the Apostolic Chamber and Notary of the Roman Archives. The measure of his ecclesiastical honors was now full.
In 1630, he published “The Laurel of Apollo,” a poem somewhat like “The Journey to Parnassus” of Cervantes, but longer, more elaborate, and still more unsatisfactory. It describes a festival, supposed to have been held by the god of Poetry, on Mount Helicon, in April, 1628, and records the honors then bestowed on nearly three hundred Spanish poets;—a number so great, that the whole account becomes monotonous and almost valueless, partly from the impossibility of drawing with distinctness or truth so many characters of little prominence, and partly from its too free praise of nearly all of them. It is divided into ten silvas, and contains about seven thousand irregular verses. At the end, besides a few minor and miscellaneous poems, Lope added an eclogue, in seven scenes, which had been previously represented before the king and court with a costly magnificence in the theatre and a splendor in its decorations that show, at least, how great was the favor he enjoyed, when he was indulged, for so slight an offering, with such royal luxuries.[272]
The last considerable work he published was his “Dorotea,” a long prose romance in dialogue.[273] It was written in his youth, and, as has been already suggested, probably contains more or less of his own youthful adventures and feelings. But whether this be so or not, it was a favorite with him. He calls it “the most beloved of his works,” and says he has revised it with care and made additions to it in his old age.[274] It was first printed in 1632. A moderate amount of verse is scattered through it, and there is a freshness and a reality in many passages that remind us constantly of its author’s life before he served as a soldier in the Armada. The hero, Fernando, is a poet, like Lope, who, after having been more than once in love and married, refuses Dorotea, the object of his first attachment, and becomes religious. There is, however, little plan, consistency, or final purpose in most of the manifold scenes that go to make up its five long acts; and it is now read only for its rich and easy prose style, for the glimpses it seems to give of the author’s own life, and for a few of its short poems, some of which were probably written for occasions not unlike those to which they are here applied.
The last work he printed was an eclogue in honor of a Portuguese lady; and the last things he wrote—only the day before he was seized with his mortal illness—were a short poem on the Golden Age, remarkable for its vigor and harmony, and a sonnet on the death of a friend.[275] All of them are found in a collection consisting chiefly of a few dramas, published by his son-in-law, Luis de Usategui, two years after Lope’s death.
But as his life drew to a close, his religious feelings, mingled with a melancholy fanaticism, predominated more and more. Much of his poetry composed at this time expressed them; and at last they rose to such a height, that he was almost constantly in a state of excited melancholy, or, as it was then beginning to be called, of hypochondria.[276] Early in the month of August, he felt himself extremely weak, and suffered more than ever from that sense of discouragement which was breaking down his resources and strength. His thoughts, however, were so exclusively occupied with his spiritual condition, that, even when thus reduced, he continued to fast, and on one occasion went through with a private discipline so cruel, that the walls of the apartment where it occurred were afterwards found sprinkled with his blood. From this he never recovered. He was taken ill the same night; and, after fulfilling the offices prescribed by his Church with the most submissive devotion,—mourning that he had ever been engaged in any occupations but such as were exclusively religious,—he died on the 25th of August, 1635, nearly seventy-three years old.