Still, as we have seen, several of the historians that were produced even under the overshadowing influence of the Austrian family were not unworthy of the national character. Mariana shows much manly firmness, Solís much fervor, Zurita much conscientious diligence, while Mendoza, Moncada, Coloma, and Melo, who confined themselves to subjects embracing shorter periods and less wide interests, have given us some of the most striking sketches to be found in the historical literature of any country. All of them are rich and dignified, abounding rather in feeling than philosophy, and written in a tone and style that mark, not so much, perhaps, the peculiar genius of their respective authors, as that of the country that gave them birth; so that, though they may not be entirely classical, they are entirely Spanish; and what they want in finish and grace, they make up in picturesqueness and originality.[222]
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Proverbs: Santillana, Garay, Nuñez, Mal Lara, Palmireno, Oudin, Sorapan, Cejudo, Yriarte. — Didactic Prose: Torquemada, Acosta, Luis de Granada, Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa, Malon de Chaide, Roxas, Figueroa, Marquez, Vera y Zuñiga, Navarrete, Saavedra, Quevedo, Antonio de Vega, Nieremberg, Guzman, Dantisco, Andrada, Villalobos, Paton, Aleman, Faria y Sousa, Francisco de Portugal. — Gongorism in Prose: Gracian, Zabaleta, Lozano, Heredia, Ramirez. — Failure of good Didactic Prose.
The last department in the literature of any country, that comes within the jurisdiction of criticism on account of its style, is that of Didactic Prose; since in this branch, so remote from every thing poetical, the ornaments of manner are more accidental than they are elsewhere, and, beyond it, are not at all to be exacted. In modern times, the French seem to have been more anxious than any other nation, not excepting even the Italians, to add the grace of an elegant style to their didactic prose, while, on the other hand, none have been more unsuccessful than the Spaniards in their attempts to cultivate it.
In one particular form of didactic composition, however, Spain stands in advance of all other countries; I mean that of Proverbs, which Cervantes has happily called “short sentences drawn from long experience.”[223] Spanish proverbs can be traced back to the earliest times. One of the best known—“Laws go where kings please they should”—is connected with an event of importance in the reign of Alfonso the Sixth, who died in the beginning of the twelfth century, when the language of Castile had hardly a distinct existence.[224] Another has been traced to a custom belonging to the days of the Infantes de Lara, and is itself probably of not much later date.[225] Others are found in the General Chronicle, which is one of the oldest of Spanish prose compositions, and among them is the happy one on disappointed expectations, cited in Don Quixote more than once: “He went for wool and came back shorn.”[226] Several occur in the “Conde Lucanor” of Don John Manuel,[227] and many in the poetry of the Archpriest of Hita,[228] both of whom lived in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh.
Thus far, however, we have only separate and isolated sayings, evidently belonging to the old Spanish race, and always used as if quite familiar and notorious. But in the reign of John the Second, and at his request, the Marquis of Santillana collected a hundred in rhyme, which we have already noticed, besides above six hundred, he says, such as the old women were wont to repeat in their chimney-corners. From this period, therefore, or rather from 1508, when this collection was published, the old and wise proverbs of the language may be regarded as having obtained a settled place in its didactic literature.[229]
The number of proverbs, indeed, was soon so great,—not only those floating about in the common talk of men, but those collected and printed,—that they began to be turned to account. Garay, who was attached to the cathedral of Toledo, and therefore lived in the centre of whatever was peculiarly Castilian, wrote a long letter, every sentence of which was a popular saying; to which he added two similar letters, found, as he says, by accident, and made up, in the same way, of proverbs.[230] But, in the middle of the century, a still higher honor awaited the old Spanish adages. Pedro Valles, who wrote the history of the great Marquis of Pescara, published an alphabetical series of four thousand three hundred of them in 1549; and the famous Greek scholar and distinguished nobleman, Hernan Nuñez de Guzman, Professor successively at Alcalá and at Salamanca, found amusement for his old age in making another series of them, which amounted in all to above six thousand. To some he added explanations; to others, various parallel sayings from different languages; but, finding his strength fail him, he gave the task to a friend, who, like himself, was a Professor in Salamanca, and who published the whole in 1555, two years after the death of Nuñez; rather, as he intimates, from respect to the person from whom he received it, than from regard to the dignity of the employment.[231]
Out of these proverbs, another of the friends of Hernan Nuñez—Mal Lara, a Sevilian—selected a thousand, and, adding a commentary to each, published them in 1568, under the not inappropriate title of “Philosophy of the Common People”; a volume which, notwithstanding its cumbersome learning, can be read with pleasure, both for the style in which many parts of it are written, and for the unusual historical anecdotes with which it abounds. Another collection, made by Palmireno, a Valencian, in 1569, consisting of above two hundred proverbs appropriate to the table, shows how abundant popular aphorisms must be in a language that can furnish so many on one subject. Yet another, by Oudin, was published at Paris in 1608, for the use of foreigners, and shows no less plainly how much the Spanish had become spread throughout Europe. Sorapan, in 1616 and 1617, published two collections, in which it was intended that the condensation of popular experience and wisdom should teach medicine, as, in the hands of Mal Lara, they had been made to teach the philosophy of life. And, finally, in 1675, Cejudo, a schoolmaster of Val de Peñas, gave the world about six thousand, with the corresponding Latin adages, whenever he could find them, and with explanations more satisfactory than had been furnished by his predecessors.[232]
Still, though so many thousands have been collected, many thousands still remain unpublished, known only among the traditions of the humbler classes of society, that have given birth to them all. Juan de Yriarte, a learned man, who was nearly forty years at the head of the King’s Library at Madrid, collected, about the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than twenty-four thousand; and yet it is not to be supposed that a single individual, however industrious, living in Madrid, could exhaust their number, as they belong rather to the provinces than to the capital, and are spread everywhere among the common people, and through all their dialects.[233]