[113] The name of this author is one of the many that occur in Spanish literature and history, where it is difficult to determine which part of it should be used to designate its owner. The whole of it is Gerónymo de Alcalá Yañez y Rivera; and, no doubt, his personal acquaintances knew him as “the Doctor Gerónymo.” In the Index to Antonio’s Bib. Nova, he is placed under Alcalá; but as that name only implied, I presume, that he had studied in Alcalá, I have preferred to call him Yañez y Rivera, the first being his father’s name and the second his mother’s; and I mention the circumstance only because it is a difficulty which occurs in many cases of the same sort, and should be noticed once for all. The title of his romance is “Alonso Moço de Muchos Amos,” and the first part was first printed at Madrid, in 1624; but my copy is of the edition of Barcelona, 1625, 12mo, showing that it was well regarded in its time, and soon came to a second edition. Many editions have been published since; sometimes, like that of Madrid, 1804, 2 tom. 12mo, with the title of “El Donado Hablador,” or The Talkative Lay-Brother, that being the character in which the hero tells his story. Yañez y Rivera was born in 1563.
[114] Alonso de Castillo Solorzano seems to have had his greatest success between 1624 and 1649, and was at one time in the service of Pedro Faxardo, the Marquis of Velez, who was Captain-general of Valencia. There is an edition of the “Niña de los Embustes” as early as 1632, and one of the “Garduña de Sevilla” in 1634. But, except the few hints concerning their author to be gathered from the titles and prefaces to his stories, and the meagre notices in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel de Apolo,” Silva VIII., and Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 15, we know little of him. He sneers at cultismo on one page of his “Niña de los Embustes,” and falls into it on the next.
[115] “El Siglo Pitagórico y la Vida de Don Gregorio Guadaña,” was written by Antonio Enriquez Gomez, a Portuguese by descent, who was educated in Castile, and lived much in France, where several of his works were first printed. The earliest edition of the “Siglo Pitagórico” is dated Rouen, 1644, but the one I use is of Brussels, 1727, in 4to. There is a notice of the life of Gomez in Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 297, and an examination of his works in Amador de los Rios, “Judios de España,” 1848, pp. 569, etc. He was of a Jewish Portuguese family, and Barbosa says he was born in Portugal, but Amador de los Rios says he was born in Segovia. That he renounced the Christian religion, which his father had adopted, that he fled to France in 1638, and that he was burnt in effigy by the Inquisition in 1660, are facts not doubted. His Spanish name was Enriquez de Paz; and in the Preface to his “Sanson Nazareno” he gives a list of his published works.
[116] “Vida y Hechos de Estevanillo Gonzalez, Hombre de Buen Humor, compuesta por el mismo,” was printed at Antwerp in 1646, and at Madrid in 1652. Whether there is any edition between these and the one of 1795, Madrid, 2 tom. 12mo, I do not know. The rifacimento of Le Sage appeared, I believe, for the first time in 1707.
[117] I know only the edition of Antwerp, 1556, 12mo, but there are several others. Lowndes, Bib. Manual, Article Aurelio, and Malone’s Shakspeare, by Boswell, Vol. XV.
[118] “Historia de los Amores de Clareo y Florisea, por Alonso Nuñez de Reinoso,” Venecia, 1552, reprinted in the third volume of Aribau’s Biblioteca, 1846. The author is said by Antonio to have been a native of Guadalaxara, and, from his poems, published at the same time with his story, and of no value, he seems to have led an unhappy life, divided between the law, for which he felt he had no vocation, and arms, in which he had no success.
[119] It claims to be “sacado del estilo Griego,” and in this imitates one of the common fictions in the title-pages of the romances of chivalry. There are several editions of it,—one at Venice, 1553, 12mo, which is in my library, entitled “Quexa y Aviso de un Cavallero llamado Luzindaro.”
[120] Historia de la Reyna Sevilla, 1532, and 1551;—and Libro de los Honestos Amores de Peregrino y de Jinebra, 1548.
[121] The “Selva de Aventuras” was printed at Salamanca, in 1573, 12mo, and probably earlier, besides which there are subsequent editions of Barcelona, Saragossa, etc. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 572); but it is in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 529. Philip II., in the Licencia, calls Contreras “nuestro cronista.” The Selva was translated into French by G. Chapuys, and printed in 1580. (Bibliothèque de Duverdier, Tom. IV. p. 221.) Contreras wrote, also, a volume of allegories in prose and verse, (Dechado de Varios Subjetos, Zaragoza, 1572, and Alcalá, 1581, 12mo,) which is very formal and dull.
[122] The Chronicle of Pedro de Moncayo, published in 1589, is cited in Chap. XII., and the first edition of the first part of the Guerras Civiles, as is well known, appeared at Saragossa in 1595, 12mo. This part was reprinted much oftener than the second. There are editions of it in 1598, 1603, 1604 (three), 1606, 1610, 1613, 1616, etc., besides several without date.