During the period embraced by the works last mentioned, a false taste had invaded Spanish prose. It was the same unhappy taste which we have noticed in Spanish poetry by the name of “Gongorism,” but which its admirers called sometimes “the polite,” and sometimes “the cultivated,” style of writing. Traces of it have been sought in the sixteenth century among some of the best writers of the country; but for this there seems no foundation, except in the fact, that a rigorous taste never at any time prevailed in Spain, and that the luxuriant success of letters towards the end of the reign of Philip the Second, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining fashionable distinction by authorship, had led to occasional affectations even in the style of those who, like Cervantes and Mariana, stood foremost among the better writers of their time.
But now, the admiration that followed Góngora almost necessarily introduced conceits into prose writing, such as were thought so worthy of imitation in poetry. Those, therefore, who most coveted public favor, began to play with words, and seek to surprise by an unexpected opposition of ideas and quaintness of metaphor, little consistent with the old Castilian dignity, until at last they quite left the stately constructions in which resides so much of what is peculiar to the sonorous declamations of Luis de Leon and Luis de Granada, and by excessive efforts at brilliancy became so involved and obscure, that they were not always intelligible. Instances of such affectation may be found in Saavedra and Francisco de Portugal. But the innovation itself is older than either of their published works. It broke out with Paravicino, who, besides imitating Góngora’s poetry, as we have already seen, carried similar extravagances of metaphor and construction into his oratorical and didactic prose; intimating, in a characteristic phrase, that he claimed the honor of being the Columbus who had made this great discovery. As early as 1620, it was matter of censure and ridicule to Liñan, in his “Guide to Strangers in Madrid,” and soon afterwards to Mateo Velazquez, in his “Village Philosopher”; so that from this period we may consider cultismo nearly or quite as prevalent in Spanish prose as it was in Spanish poetry.[259]
The person, however, who settled its character, and in some respects gave it an air of philosophical pretension, was Balthazar Gracian, a Jesuit of Aragon, who lived between 1601 and 1658; exactly the period when the cultivated style took possession of Spanish prose, and rose to its greatest consideration. He began in 1630, by a tract called “The Hero,” which is not so much the description of a hero’s character as it is a recipe to form one, given in short, compact sentences, constructed in the new style. It was successful, and was followed by five or six other works, written in the same manner; after which, to confirm and justify them all, there appeared, in 1648, his “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio”; a regular Art of Poetry, or rather system of rhetoric, accommodated to the school of Góngora, and showing great acuteness, especially in the ingenuity with which the author presses into his service the elder poets, such as Diego de Mendoza, the Argensolas, and even Luis de Leon and the Bachiller de la Torre.
The most remarkable work of Gracian, however, is his “Críticon,” published in three parts, between 1650 and 1653. It is an allegory on human life, and gives us the adventures of Critilus, a noble Spaniard, wrecked on the desert island of Saint Helena, where he finds a solitary savage, who knows nothing about himself, except that he has been nursed by a wild beast. After much communication in dumb show, they are able to understand each other in Spanish, and, being taken from the island, travel together through the world, talking often of the leading men of their time in Spain, but holding intercourse more with allegorical personages than with one another. The story of their adventures is long, and its three portions represent the three periods of human life; the first being called the Spring of Childhood, the second the Autumn of Manhood, and the third the Winter of Old Age. In some parts it shows much talent; and eloquent discussions on moral subjects, and glowing descriptions of events and natural scenery, can be taken from it, which are little infected with the extravagances of the Cultivated Style. Sometimes, we are reminded of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,”—as, for instance, in the scenes of the World’s Fair,—and might almost say, that the “Críticon” is to the Catholic religion and the notions of life in Spain during the reign of Philip the Fourth, what Bunyan’s fiction is to Puritanism and the English character in the age of Cromwell. But there is no vitality in the shadowy personages of Gracian. He bodies nothing forth to which our sympathies can attach themselves as they do to such sharply-defined creations as Christian and Mr. Greatheart, and, when we are moved at all by him, it is only by his acuteness and eloquence.
His other works are of little value, and are yet more deformed by bad taste; especially his “Politico-Fernando,” which is an extravagant eulogium on Ferdinand the Catholic, and his “Discreto,” which is a collection of prose miscellanies, including a few of his letters. It is singular, that, in consequence of being an ecclesiastic, he thought it proper that all his works should be printed under the name of his brother Lorenzo, who lived at Seville; and it is yet more singular, perhaps, that they were published, not by himself, but by his friend, Lastañosa, a gentleman of literary taste, and a collector of ancient works of art, who lived at Huesca in Aragon. But however indirectly and cautiously the works of Gracian won their way into the world, they enjoyed great favor there, and made much noise. His “Hero” went early through six editions, and his collected prose works, most of which were translated into French and Italian, and some of them into English and Latin, were often reprinted in the original Spanish, both at home and abroad.[260]
From this period, the rich old prose style of Luis de Leon and his contemporaries may be said to have been driven out of Spanish literature. Lope de Vega and Quevedo, after resisting the innovations of cultismo for a time, had long before yielded, and Calderon was now alternately assailing the depraved taste of his audiences and gratifying it by running into extravagances almost as great as those he ridiculed. The language of the most affected poetry passed into the prose of the age, and took from it the power and dignity which, even in its more declamatory portions, had constituted its prominent merit. Style became fantastic, and the very thoughts that were to be conveyed were not unfrequently covered up with ingenuities of illustration till they disappeared. In the phrase of Sancho, men wanted better bread than could be made of wheat, and rendered themselves ridiculous by attempting to obtain it. Tropes and figures of all kinds were settled into formulas of speech, and then were repeated appropriately and inappropriately, till the reader could often anticipate, from the beginning of a sentence, how it would inevitably end. Every thing, indeed, in prose composition, as in poetry, announced that corrupted taste which both precedes and hastens the decay of a literature; and which, in the case of Spain during the latter half of the seventeenth century, was but the concomitant of a general decline in the arts and the gradual degradation of the monarchy.
Among those who wrote best, though still infected with the prevailing influences, was Zabaleta. His “Moral Problems” and “Famous Errors,” but especially his “Feast Days at Madrid,” in which he gives lively satirical sketches of the manners of the metropolis at those periods when idleness brings the people into the streets and places of amusement, are worth reading. But he lived in the reign of Philip the Fourth; and so did Lozano, whose different ascetic works on the character of King David, if not so good as his historical romance on the New Kings of Toledo, are better than any thing else of the kind in the same period. They are, however, the last that can be read. The reign of Charles the Second does not offer examples even so favorable as these of the remains and ruins of a better taste. “The Labors of Hercules,” by Heredia, in 1682, and the “Moral Essays on Boëthius,” by Ramirez, in 1698, if they serve for nothing else, serve at least to mark the ultimate limits of dulness and affectation. Indeed, if it were not for the History of Solís, which has been already noticed, we should look in vain for an instance of respectable prose composition after this last and most degenerate descendant of the House of Austria had mounted the Spanish throne.[261]
Nor is this remarkable. On the contrary, it is rather to be considered worthy of notice, that didactic prose should have had any merit or obtained any success in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the end it proposes is not, like that of poetry, to amuse, but, like that of philosophy, to enlighten and amend; and how dangerous in Spain was the social position of any teacher or moral monitor, who claimed for himself that degree of independence of opinion without which instruction becomes a dead form, needs not now to be set forth. Few persons, in that unhappy country, were surrounded with more difficulties; none were more strictly watched, or, if they wandered from the permitted paths, were more severely punished.
Nor was it possible for such persons, by the most notorious earnestness in their convictions of the just control of the religion of the state, or any degree of faithfulness in their loyalty, to avoid sometimes falling under the rebuke of the jealousy that watched each step of their course; a fact sufficiently apparent, when we recollect that nearly all the didactic writers of merit during this period, such as Juan de Avila, Luis de Leon, Luis de Granada, Quevedo, San Juan de la Cruz, and Santa Teresa, were persecuted by the Inquisition or by the government, and the works of every one of them expurgated or forbidden.
Under such oppression, free and eloquent writers,—men destined to teach and advance their generation,—could not be expected to appear, and the few who ventured into ways so dangerous dwelt as much as possible in generals, and became mystical, like Juan de la Cruz, or extravagant and declamatory, like Luis de Granada. Nearly all,—strictly prevented from using the logic of a wise and liberal philosophy,—fell into pedantry, from an anxious desire, wherever it was possible, to lean upon authority; so that, from Luis de Leon down to the most ordinary writer, who, in a prefatory letter of approbation, wished to give currency to the opinions of a friend, no man seemed to feel at ease unless he could justify and sustain what he had to say by citations from the Scriptures, the fathers of the Church, and the ancient and scholastic philosophers. Thus, Spanish didactic prose, which, from its original elements and tendencies, seemed destined to wear the attractions of an elevated and eloquent style, gradually became so formal, awkward, and pedantic, that, with a few striking exceptions, it can only be said to have maintained a doubtful and difficult existence during the long period when the less suspected and less oppressed portions of the literature of the country—its drama and its lyric poetry—were in the meridian of their success.