“Periquillo”—another of these collections of sketches and tales, less well written than the last, except in the merely narrative portions—contains an account of a foundling, who, after the ruin and death of a pious couple that first picked him up at their door on a Christmas morning, begins the world for himself as the leader of a blind beggar. From this condition, which, in such Spanish stories, always seems to be regarded as the lowest possible in society, he rises to be the servant of a cavalier, who proves to be a mysterious robber, and after escaping from whom he falls into the hands of yet worse persons, and is apprehended under circumstances that remind us of the story of Doña Mencia in “Gil Blas.” He, however, vindicates his innocence, and, being released from the fangs of justice, returns, weary of the world, to his first home, where he leads an ascetic life; makes long, pedantic discourses on virtue to his admiring townsmen; and proves, in fact, a sort of humble philosopher, growing constantly more and more devout till the account of him ends at last with a prayer. The whole is interesting among Spanish works of fiction, because it is evidently written both in imitation of the picaresque novels and in opposition to them; since Periquillo, from the lowest origin, gets on by neither roguery nor cleverness, but by honesty and good faith; and, instead of rising in the world and becoming rich and courtly, settles patiently down into a village hermit, or a sort of poor Christian Diogenes. No doubt, he has neither the wit nor the cunning of Lazarillo; but that he should venture to encounter that shrewd little beggar in any way makes Periquillo, at once, a personage of some consequence.[183]
Yet one more of the works of Santos should be noticed; an allegorical tale, called “Truth on the Rack, or the Cid come to Life again.” Its general story is, that Truth, in the form of a fair woman, is placed on the rack, surrounded by the Cid and other forms, that rise from the earth about the scaffold on which she is tormented. There she is forced to give an account of things as they really exist, or have existed, and to discourse concerning shadowy multitudes, who pass, in sight of the company that surrounds her, over what seems to be a long bridge. The whole is, therefore, a satire in the form of a vision, but its character is consistently sustained only at the beginning and the end. The Cid, however, is much the same personage throughout,—bold, rough, and free-spoken. He is heartily dissatisfied with every thing he finds on earth, especially with the popular traditions and ballads about himself, and goes back to his grave well pleased to escape from such a world, “which,” he says, “if they would give it to me to live in, I would not accept.”[184]
Other works of Santos, like “The Devil let loose, or Truths of the other World dreamed about in this,” and “The Live Man and the Dead One,” are of the same sort with the last;[185] while yet others run even more to allegory, like his “Tarascas de Madrid,”[186] and his “Gigantones,”[187] suggested by the huge and unsightly forms led about to amuse or to frighten the multitude in the annual processions of the Corpus Christi;—the satirical interpretation he gives to them being, that worse monsters than the Tarascas might be seen every day in Madrid by those who could distinguish the sin and folly that always thronged the streets of that luxurious capital. But though such satires were successful when they first appeared, they have long since ceased to be so; partly because they abound in allusions to local circumstances now known only to the curiosity of antiquarians, and partly because, in all respects, they depict a state of society and manners of which hardly a vestige remains.
Santos is the last of the writers of Spanish tales previous to the eighteenth century that needs to be noticed.[188] But though the number we have gone over is large for the length of the period in which they appeared, not a few others might be added. The pastoral romances from the time of Montemayor are full of them;—the “Galatea” of Cervantes, and the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, being little more than a series of such stories, slightly bound together by yet another that connects them all. So are, to a certain degree, the picaresque fictions, like “Guzman de Alfarache” and “Marcos de Obregon”;—and so are such serious fictions as “The Wars of Granada” and “The Spanish Gerardo.” The popular drama, too, was near akin to the whole; as we have seen in the case of Timoneda, whose stories, before he produced them as tales, had already been exhibited in the form of farces on the rude stage of the public squares; and in the case of Cervantes, who not only put part of his tale of “The Captive” in “Don Quixote” into his second play of “Life in Algiers,” but constructed his story of “The Liberal Lover” almost wholly out of his earlier play on the same subject. Indeed, Spain, during the period we have gone over, was full of the spirit of this class of fictions,—not only producing them in great numbers, and strongly marked with the popular character, but carrying their tone into the longer romances and upon the stage to a degree quite unknown elsewhere.[189]
The most striking circumstance, however, connected with the history of all romantic fiction in Spain,—whatever form it assumed,—is its early appearance, and its early decay. The story of “Amadis” filled the world with its fame, when no other Spanish prose romance of chivalry was heard of; and, what is singular, though the oldest of its class, it still remains the best-written in any language;—while, on the other hand, the book that overthrew this same Amadis, with all his chivalry, is the “Don Quixote”; again, the oldest and best of all similar works, and one that is still read and admired by thousands who know nothing of the shadowy multitudes it destroyed, except what its great author tells them. The “Conde Lucanor” appeared full half a century earlier than the “Decamerone.” The “Diana” of Montemayor soon eclipsed its Italian prototype in popularity, and, for a time, shone without a successful rival of its class throughout Europe. The picaresque stories, exclusively Spanish from the very first, and the multitudes of tales that followed them with attributes hardly less separate and national, never lose their Spanish air and costume, even in the most successful of their foreign imitations. Taken together, the number of these fictions is very great;—so great, that their mass may well be called enormous. But what is more remarkable than their multitude is the fact, that they were produced when the rest of Europe, with a partial exception in favor of Italy, was not yet awakened to corresponding efforts of the imagination; before Madame de Lafayette had published her “Zayde”; before Sidney’s “Arcadia” had appeared, or D’Urfé’s “Astrea,” or Corneille’s “Cid,” or Le Sage’s “Gil Blas.” In short, they were at the height of their fame, just at the period when the Hôtel de Rambouillet reigned supreme over the taste of France, and when Hardy, following the indications of the public will and the example of his rivals, could do no better than bring out upon the stage of Paris nearly every one of the tales of Cervantes, and many of those of Cervantes’s rivals and contemporaries.[190]
But civilization and manners advanced in the rest of Europe rapidly from this moment, and paused in Spain. Madrid, instead of sending its influences to France, began itself to acknowledge the control of French literature and refinement. The creative spirit, therefore, ceased in Spanish romantic fiction, and, as we shall presently see, a spirit of French imitation took its place.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Eloquence, Forensic and Pulpit. — Luis de Leon. — Luis de Granada. — Paravicino and the School of Bad Taste. — Epistolary Correspondence. — Zurita. — Perez. — Santa Teresa. — Argensola. — Lope de Vega. — Quevedo. — Cascales. — Antonio. — Solís.
We shall hardly look for forensic or deliberative eloquence in Spain. The whole constitution of things there, the political and ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and, perhaps we should add, the very genius of the people, were unfriendly to the growth of a plant like this, which flourishes only in the soil of freedom.