[7] Cervantes is a strong case in point. In the fourth chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus,” immediately after speaking of his Don Quixote, he disavows having ever written any thing satirical, and denounces all such compositions as low and base. Indeed, the very words sátira and satírico came at last to be used in a bad sense oftener than in a good one. Huerta, Sinónimos Castellanos, Valencia, 1807, 2 tom. 12mo, ad verb.
[8] A striking instance of this is to be found in the “Primera Parle del Parnaso Antártico,” by Diego Mexia, printed at Seville, 1608, 4to, and the only portion of it ever printed. It consists of an original poetical letter by a lady to Mexia, and a translation of twenty-one of the Epistles of Ovid and his “Ibis”; all in terza rima, and nearly all in pure and beautiful Castilian verse. In the edition in the collection of Fernandez, Tom. XIX., 1799, the epistle by the lady is omitted, which is a pity, since it contains notices of several South American poets.
[9] The best elegiac poetry in the Spanish language is, perhaps, that in the two divisions of the first eclogue of Garcilasso. Elegies, or mournful poems of any kind, are often called Endechas in Spanish, as Quevedo called his sad amatory poems; but the origin of the word is not settled, nor its meaning quite well defined. Venegas, in a vocabulary of obscure words at the end of his “Agonía del Tránsito de la Muerte,” 1574, p. 370, says he thinks it comes from inde jaces, as if the mourner addressed the dead body. But this is absurd. It may come from the Greek ἕνδεκα, for when the last verse of each stanza contained just eleven syllables, the poem was said to be written in endechas reales. See Covarrubias, and the Academy, ad verbum, who give no opinion.
[10] There are many editions of the Works of Saa de Miranda; but the second and best (s. l. 1614, 4to) is preceded by a life of him, which claims to have been composed by his personal friends, and which states the odd fact, that the lady of whom he was enamoured was so ugly, that her family declined the match until he had well considered the matter; but that he persevered, and became so fondly attached to her, that he died, at last, from grief at her loss. His merits as a poet are well discussed by Ant. das Neves Pereira, in the fifth volume of the “Memorias de Litt. Portugueza” of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisboa, 1793, pp. 99, etc. Some of his works are in the Spanish Index Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 72.
[11] Of the poets whose eclogues are found in their prose pastorals I shall speak at large when I examine this division of Spanish romantic fiction. Montemayor, however, it should be noted here, wrote other eclogues, which are in his Cancionero, 1588, ff. 111, etc.
[12] It is found in the important collection, the “Flores,” of Espinosa, f. 66, where it first appeared.
[13] “Eglogas Pastoriles de Pedro de Padilla,” Sevilla, 1582, 4to; thirteen in number, in all measures, and the last one partly in prose. Of Padilla, who was much connected with the men of letters of his time, all needful notices may be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 396-402, and in Clemencin’s Notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 147. The curate well says of his “Tesoro de Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo,) “They would be better, if they were fewer.” They fill above nine hundred pages, and are in all forms and styles. Padilla died as late as 1599.
[14] There are six of them, in terza and ottava rima, with a few lyrical poems interspersed, in other measures and in a better tone, in a volume entitled “Versos Espirituales,” Cuenca, 1596, 12mo. Their author was a monk.
[15] The eclogue of Morales is in Espinosa, f. 48, and that of Tapia occurs—where we should hardly look for it—in the “Libro de Montería, que mandó escribir el Rey Don Alfonso XI.,” edited by Argote de Molina, 1582. It is on the woods of Aranjuez, and was written after the birth of a daughter of Philip II.; but its descriptions are long and wearisome.
[16] Rimas, 1591, ff. 50-57.