[86] “La Cintia de Aranjuez, Prosas y Versos, por Don Gabriel de Corral, Natural de Valladolid,” Madrid, 1629, 12mo, 208 leaves. I know of no other edition. He lived in Rome from 1630 to 1632, and probably longer. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 505.) He is Gongoresque in his style, as is Quintana.
[87] “Los Pastores del Betis, por Gonzalvo de Saavedra,” Trani, 1633, 4to, pp. 289. It seems to have been written in Italy; but we know nothing of its author, except that he was a Veintiquatro of Córdova. His style is affected. In my copy, which in the colophon is dated 1634, there are, as a separate tract, four leaves of religious and moral advice to the author’s son, when he was going as governor to one of the provinces of Naples; better written than the romance that precedes it.
[88] Portugal might have been added. The “Menina é Moça” of Bernardino Ribeyro, printed 1557, is a beautiful fragment; and the “Primaveira” of Francisco Rodriguez de Lobo, in three long parts, printed between 1601 and 1614,—the first of which was translated into Spanish by Juan Bart. Morales, 1629,—is among the best full-length pastoral romances extant. Both for a long time were favorites in Portugal, and are still read there. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. I. p. 518, Tom. II. p. 242.
[89] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, in the examination of the library, where his niece begs that the pastorals may be burnt as well as the books of chivalry, lest, if her uncle were cured of knight-errantry, he should go mad as a shepherd;—and Parte II. c. 67 and 73, where her fears are very nigh being realized.
[90] Comedias, Parte VI., Madrid, 1615, 4to, f. 102. El Cuerdo en su Casa, Act. I.
[91] “The Diana of Montemayor,” says Lope de Vega, in the passage from his “Dorotea” already cited, ([n. [64],) “was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, near Leon, and he has made both her and the river Ezla immortal. So the Fílida of Montalvo, the Galatea of Cervantes, and the Filis of Figueroa, were real personages.” Others might be added, on the authority of their authors, such as “Los Diez Libros de Fortuna y Amor,” “La Cintia de Aranjuez,” etc. See a note of Clemencin, Don Quixote, Tom. VI. p. 440.
[92] For these low, vagabond attorneys, or jackals of attorneys,—the Catariberas,—see, ante, Vol. I. p. 519, and note.
[93] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Article Matthæus Aleman; and Salvá, Repertorio Americano, 1827, Tom. III. p. 65. For his troubles with the government, see Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” 1819, p. 441. He seems to have been old when he went to Mexico; and Don Adolfo de Castro, at the end of the “Buscapié,” 1848, gives us a letter, dated at Seville, April 20th, 1607, from Aleman to Cervantes, of whose origin or discovery we receive no account whatever, and into which its author seems to have thrust all the proverbs and allusions he could collect;—none, however, so obscure that the curious learning of Don Adolfo cannot elucidate them. The whole letter is a complaint of Aleman’s own hard fortune, and a prediction of that of Cervantes, ending with a declaration of the purpose of its writer to go to Mexico. It does not seem to me to be genuine; but if it is, it gives the coup de grace to Clemencin’s conjectures, in his notes to both the first and second part of Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 22, and Parte II. c. 4,) that Cervantes intended to speak slightingly of the “Guzman de Alfarache”;—a conjecture not to be sustained, if the relations of Cervantes with Aleman were as friendly as this letter, published by Don Adolfo de Castro, implies.
[94] The first three editions, those of Madrid, Barcelona, and Saragossa, are well known, and are all of 1599; but most of the remaining three-and-twenty rest on the authority of Valdes, in a letter prefixed to the first edition of the second part, (Valencia, 1605, 12mo,) an authority, however, which there seems no sufficient reason to question, remarkable as the story is. Valdes says expressly, “The number of printed volumes exceeds fifty thousand, and the number of impressions that have come to my notice is twenty-six.”
[95] This continuation, not quite so long as the first part of the original work, was printed at Madrid, 1846, 8vo, in the third volume of the “Biblioteca” of Aribau. Previously, it had been hardly known in literary history, and much overlooked by the bibliographers; Ebert, who had found some traces of it, attributing it to Aleman himself, and considering it as a true second part of the Guzman. But this is a mistake. Both Aleman himself and his friend Valdes are explicit on the subject, in their epistles prefixed to the first edition of the second part;—Valdes declaring that the author of the continuation in question was “a Valencian, who, falsifying his own name, called himself Mateo Luxan, to assimilate himself to Mateo Aleman.” Aleman himself says he was obliged to rewrite his second part, because he had, through a prodigal communication of his papers, been robbed and defrauded of the materials out of which he had originally composed it. The work of the Valencian was printed at Barcelona in 1603, at Brussels, 1604, etc. On the title-page to the first edition of the genuine second part Aleman says, “Let the reader take notice, that the second part published before this is none of mine, and that this is the only one I recognize.” Fuster, in his “Biblioteca,” Tom. I. p. 198, gives strong reasons for supposing the spurious second part was written by Juan Marti, a Valencian advocate.