[362] “Mexico Conquistada, Poema Heróico, por Don Juan de Escoiquiz,” Madrid, 1798, 3 tom. 8vo. A still more unhappy epic attempt on the subject of the Conquest of Mexico preceded that of Escoiquiz by about forty years. It was by Francisco Ruiz de Leon, and is entitled “La Hernandia, Triunfos de la Fé” (Madrid, 1755, 4to); a poem making nearly four hundred pages, and sixteen hundred octave stanzas.
[363] “Obras de L. F. Moratin,” Madrid, 1830-31, four vols. 8vo, divided into six, prepared by himself, and published by the Academy of History after his death. His Life is in Vol. I., and his miscellaneous poems are in the last volume, where the remarks on the Prince of the Peace occur, at p. 335, and a notice of his relations with Conti at p. 342. An unreasonably laudatory criticism of his works is to be found in the first volume of Hermosilla’s “Juicio.”
[364] “Poesías de M. J. Quintana,” Madrid, 1821, 2 tom. 8vo. The lyrical portion has been often reprinted since 1802, when the first collection of his Poems appeared at Madrid, in a thin beautiful volume of only 170 pages, 12mo. His life is in Wolf’s excellent Floresta, in Ochoa, Ferrer del Rio, etc.
[365] Montiano y Luyando, Discurso de la Tragedia, Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 66.
[366] He says, near the end, that his purpose was “to show how plays are written in the French style.” Plays arising from the circumstances of the times, and more in the forms and character of the preceding century, were sometimes represented, but soon forgotten. Of these, two may be mentioned as curious. The first is called, like one of Lope’s, “Sueños hay que son Verdades,” an anonymous drama, beginning with a dream of the king of Portugal and ending with its partial fulfilment in the capture of Monsanto, by the forces of Philip V., in 1704. The other is by Rodrigo Pero de Urrutia, entitled “Rey decretado en Cielo,” and covers a space of above six years, from the annunciation by Louis XIV. to the Duke of Anjou, in the first scene, that the will of Charles II. had made him king of Spain, down to the victory of Almansa, in 1707, which is its catastrophe. Both are of no value, and represent fairly, I believe, the merit of the few historical plays produced in the beginning of the eighteenth century, in Spain.
[367] Accounts of the theatre during this sort of interregnum, from about 1700 to about 1790, are found in Signorelli (Storia Critica dei Teatri, Napoli, 1813, 8vo, Tom IX. pp. 56-236); L. F. Moratin (Obras, 1830, Tom. II. Parte I., Prólogo); and four papers by Blanco White (in Vols. X. and XI. of the New Monthly Magazine, London, 1824). The facts and opinions in Signorelli are important, because from 1765 to 1783 he lived in Madrid, (Storia, Tom. IX. p. 189,) and belonged to the club of the Fonda de San Sebastian, noticed, ante, [p. 274], several of whose members were dramatic writers, and one of the standing subjects for whose discussions was the theatre. Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, Londres, 1825, p. xxiv.
[368] L. F. Moratin, Prólogo, ut sup.; and Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, 1802, Tom. I. p. 264.
[369] “Alegría Cómica,” (Zaragoza, Tom. I., 1700, Tom. II., 1702,) and “Cómico Festejo,” (Madrid, 1742,) are three small volumes of entremeses, by Francisco de Castro; the last being published after the author’s death. They are not entirely without wit, regarded as caricatures; but they are coarse, and, in general, worthless.
[370] Thomas de Añorbe y Corregel published his “Virtud vence al Destino” in Madrid, 1735, and his “Paolino” in 1740. He calls himself “Capellan del Real Monasterio de la Incarnacion” on the title of the first of these plays, and inserts two absurd entremeses of his own composition between its acts.
[371] “Discurso sobre las Comedias Españolas de Don Agustin de Montiano y Luyando,” Madrid, 1750, 12mo; Discurso Segundo, Madrid, 1753, 12mo. They were translated into French by Hermilly, and an account of them and their author is given in Lessing’s Werke, (Berlin, 1794, 18mo, Band XXIII. p. 95,) where we learn, that Montiano was born in 1697, and that he published, in 1729, “El Robo de Dina,” which seems to have been so much in the tone of a play with the same title, in the seventeenth volume of Lope de Vega’s “Comedias,” that I cannot help thinking Montiano, following the fashion of Cañizares and the other plunderers of the time, was indebted largely to his great predecessor, the enemy of whose reputation he afterwards became. The story of Athaulpho is from the Corónica General, Parte II. c. 22. The “Virginia,” both in its attempt to exhibit Roman manners and in its poetical power, suffers severely when compared with Alfieri’s tragedy on the same subject. But the truth is, Montiano was a slavish imitator of the French school, which he admired so much as to be unable to comprehend and feel what was best in his own Castilian. In the “Aprobacion,” which he prefixed to the edition of Avellaneda, published in 1732, he says, comparing the second part of Don Quixote, by this pretender, with the true one by Cervantes,—“I think no man of judgment will give an opinion in favor of Cervantes, if he compares the two parts together.”