No halla en esta vida su reposo.
Mendoza was a person of much consideration in his time, and is noticed as such by Quintana, (Historia de Madrid, Madrid, 1629, folio,) who gives one of his sonnets at f. 27, and a sketch of his character at f. 245.
[25] The “Triunfos Morales de Francisco de Guzman” (Sevilla, 1581, 12mo) are imitations of Petrarca’s “Trionfi,” but are much more didactic, giving, for instance, under the head of “The Triumph of Wisdom,” the opinions of the wise men of antiquity; and under the head of “The Triumph of Prudence,” the general rules for prudent conduct.
[26] The “Arte Poética” of Espinel is the first thing published in the “Parnaso Español” of Sedano, 1768, and was vehemently attacked by Yriarte, when, in 1777, he printed his own translation of the same work. (Obras de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. IV.) To this Sedano replied in the ninth volume of his “Parnaso,” 1778. Yriarte rejoined in a satirical dialogue, “Donde las dan las toman” (Obras, Tom. VI.); and Sedano closed the controversy with the “Coloquios de Espina,” Malaga, 1785, 2 tom. 12mo, under the name of Juan María Chavero y Eslava. It is a very pretty literary quarrel, quite in the Spanish manner.
[27] The “Egemplar Poético” of Cueva was first printed in the eighth volume of the “Parnaso Español,” 1774; and the “Inventores de las Cosas,” taken generally from Polydore Virgil, and dated 1608, was first published in the ninth volume of the same collection, 1778. How absurd the last is may be inferred from the fact, that it makes Moses the inventor of hexameter verse, and Alexander the Great the oldest of paper-makers.
[28] What remains of Céspedes’s poetry is to be found in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez’s collection. His life is well set forth in the excellent “Diccionario de los Profesores de las Bellas Artes, por A. Cean Bermudez,” Madrid, 1800, 6 tom. 12mo, Tom. I. p. 316; besides which, its learned author, at the end of Tom. V., has republished the fragments of the poem on Painting in a better order than that in which they had before appeared; adding a pleasant prose discourse, in a pure style, on Ancient and Modern Painting and Sculpture, which Céspedes wrote in 1604, when recovering from a fever, and two other of his trifles; to the whole of which is prefixed a judicious Preface by Cean himself. Céspedes had been a Greek scholar in his youth, and says, that, in his old age, when he chanced to open Pindar, he “never failed to find a well-drawn and rich picture, grand and fit for Michel Angelo to paint.” He was a friend of Carranza, the great archbishop, who, after being a leading member of the Council of Trent, and confessor of Mary of England after she married Philip II., was worried to death by the Inquisition in 1576. (See, ante, Vol. I. p. 466.) Céspedes himself came near suffering from a similar persecution, in consequence of a letter he wrote to Carranza in 1559, in which he spoke disrespectfully of the Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Office. Llorente, Hist., Tom. II. p. 440.
[29] Lope’s “Arte Nuevo” has been already noticed. The “Selva Militar y Política” of Rebolledo was first printed at Cologne, in 1652, 18mo, its author being then Spanish minister in Denmark, of whose kings he has given a sort of genealogical history in another poem, his “Selvas Dánicas.”—“La Cruz, por Albanio Ramirez de la Trapeza,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo, pp. 368, to which are added a few pages of short poems on the Cross.
[30] “Los Emblemas de Alciato, etc., añadidos de nuevos Emblemas,” Lyon, 1549, 4to,—on the Index Expurgatorius of 1790. Those of Covarrubias were printed in Spanish in 1591; and in Spanish and Latin, Agrigenti, 1601, 12mo;—the last, a thick volume, with a long and learned Latin dissertation on Emblems prefixed. Covarrubias was brother of the lexicographer of the same name. Tesoro, Art. Emblema.
[31] “Aula de Dios, Cartuxa Real de Zaragoza. Descrive la Vida de sus Monjes, acusa la Vanidad del Siglo, etc., consagrala á la Utilidad Pública Don Miguel de Mencos,” Zaragoza, 1637, 4to. They are written in silvas, and their true author’s name is indicated by puns in some of the laudatory verses that precede the work.
[32] The pleasantest, if not the most important exception to this remark, which I recollect, is to be found in an epistle by the friend of Lope de Vega, Cristóval de Virues, to his brother, dated June 17, 1600, and giving an account of his passage over the Saint Gothard with a body of troops. It is in blank verse that is not very exact, but the descriptions are very good, and marked with the feeling of that stern scenery. Obras, 1609, f. 269.