History of Spanish Literature, vol. 3 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

That an ill man doth not securely looke

Upon it; but will loathe or let it passe,

As a deformed face doth a true glasse.”[99]

This, however, is not its real, or at least not its main character. The Guzman is chiefly curious and interesting because it shows us, in the costume of the times, the life of an ingenious, Machiavellian rogue, who is never at a loss for an expedient; who always treats himself and speaks of himself as an honest and respectable man; and who sometimes goes to mass and says his prayers just before he enters on an extraordinary scheme of roguery, as if on purpose to bring it out in more striking and brilliant relief. So far from being a moral book, therefore, it is a very immoral one, and Le Sage spoke in the spirit of its author, when, in the next century, undertaking to give a new French version of it, he boasted that he “had purged it of its superfluous moral reflections.”[100]

It has, naturally, a considerable number of episodes. That of Sayavedra has already been noticed, as occupying a space in the work disproportionate to every thing but the anger of its author. Another—the story of Osmyn and Daraxa, which occurs early—is a pleasing specimen of those half-Moorish, half-Christian fictions that are so characteristic a portion of Spanish literature.[101] And yet another, which is placed in Spain and in the time of the Great Constable, Alvaro de Luna, is, after all, an Italian tale of Masuccio, used subsequently by Beaumont and Fletcher in “The Little French Lawyer.”[102] But, on the whole, the attention of the reader is fairly kept either upon the hero or upon the long discussions in which the hero indulges himself, and in which he draws striking, though not unfrequently exaggerated and burlesque, sketches of all classes of society in Spain, as they successively pass in review before him. At first, Aleman thought of calling his work “A Beacon-light of Life.” The name would not have been inappropriate, and it is the qualities implied under it—the sagacity, the knowledge of life and character, and the acuteness of its reflections on men and manners—that have preserved for it somewhat of its original popularity down to our own times.

In 1605 another story of the same class appeared, the “Pícara Justina,” or the Crafty Justina,—again a seeming autobiography, and again a fiction of very doubtful morality. It was written by a Dominican monk, Andreas Perez of Leon, who was known, both before and after its appearance, as the author of works of Christian devotion, and who had so far a sense of the incongruity of the Pícara Justina with his religious position, that he printed it under the assumed name of Francisco Lopez de Ubeda. He claims to have written it when he was a student at the University of Alcalá, but admits, that, after the appearance of the “Guzman de Alfarache,” he made large additions to it. It is, however, in truth, a mere imitation, and a very poor one, of Aleman. The first book is filled with a tedious, rambling account of Justina’s ancestors, who are barbers and puppet-showmen; and the rest consists of her own life, brought down to the time of her first marriage, marked by few adventures, and ending with an intimation, that, at the time of writing it, she had already been married yet twice more; that she was then the wife of Guzman de Alfarache; and that she should continue her memoirs still further, in case the public should care to hear more about her.

The Justina discovers little power of invention in the incidents, which are few and not interesting. Indeed, the author himself declares that nearly all of them were actual occurrences within his own experience; and this circumstance, together with the meagre “improvements,” as they are called,—or warnings against the follies and guilt of the heroine, with which each chapter ends,—is regarded by him as a sufficient justification for publishing a work whose tendency is obviously mischievous. Nor is the style better than the incidents. There is a constant effort to say witty and brilliant things; but it is rarely successful; and besides this, there is an affectation of new words and singular phrases which do not belong to the genius and analogies of the language, and which have caused at least one Spanish critic to regard Perez as the first author who left the sober and dignified style of the elder times, and, from mere caprice, undertook to invent a new one.[103]

But though the “Pícara Justina” proved a failure, the overwhelming popularity of “Guzman de Alfarache,” when added to that of “Lazarillo,” rendered this form of fiction so generally welcome in Spain, that it made its way into the ductile drama, and into the style of the shorter tales, as we have already seen when treating of Lope de Vega and Cervantes, and as we shall see hereafter when we come to speak of Salas Barbadillo and Francisco de Santos. Meantime, however, the “Escudero Marcos de Obregon” appeared; a work which has, on many accounts, attracted attention, and which deserves to be remembered, as the best of its kind in Spanish literature, except “Lazarillo” and “Guzman.”

It was written by Vicente Espinel, who was born about 1540, at Ronda, a romantic town, boldly built in the mountain range that stretches through the southwestern portion of the kingdom of Granada, and picturesquely described by himself in one of the most striking of his poems.[104] He was educated at Salamanca, and, when Lope de Vega appeared as a poet before the public, Espinel was already so far advanced in his own career, that the young aspirant for public favor submitted his verses to the critical skill of his elder friend;[105]—a favor which Lope afterwards returned by praises in “The Laurel of Apollo,” more heart-felt and effective than he has usually given in that indiscriminate eulogium of the poets of his time.[106]

What was the course of Espinel’s life we do not know. It has generally been supposed that many of its events are related in his “Marcos de Obregon”; but though this is probable, and though some parts of that story are evidently true, yet many others are as evidently fictions, so that, on the whole, we are bound to regard it as a romance, and not as an autobiography. We know, however, that Espinel’s life in Italy was much like that of his hero; that he was a soldier in Flanders; that he wrote Latin verses; that he published a volume of Castilian poetry in 1591; and that he was a chaplain in Ronda, though he lived much in Madrid, and at last died there. He was regarded as the author of the form of verse called sometimes décimas, and sometimes, after himself, Espinelas; and he is said to have added a fifth string to the guitar, which soon led to the invention of the sixth, and thus completed that truly national instrument.[107] He died, according to Antonio, in 1634; but according to Lope de Vega, he was not alive in 1630. All accounts, however, represent him as having survived his ninetieth year,[108] and as having passed the latter part of his life in poverty and in unfriendly relations with Cervantes;—a fact the more observable, because both of them enjoyed pensions from the same distinguished ecclesiastic, the kindly old Archbishop of Toledo.[109]