[1339] In a former chapter, on the authority of Nicolas Antonio, which I do not find very trustworthy, I have said that the first edition of Lazarillo de Tormes was in 1586. It seems, however, to be doubtful, from what we read in Brunet, whether this edition exists. In return he mentions one printed at Burgos in 1554, and three at Antwerp in 1553 and 1555. Supplement au Manuel du Libraire, art. Hurtado. The following early edition is also in the British Museum, of which I transcribe the title-page. La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades, nuevamente impressa, corregida, y de nuevo anadida en este segunda impression. Vendense en Alcala de Henares en casa de Salzedo librero año de N.D. 1554. A colophon recites the same date and place of impression. The above-mentioned Antwerp edition of 1553 seems to be rather apocryphal. If it exists, it must be the first; and is it likely that the first should have been printed out of Spain?
Though the continuation of Lazarillo de Tormes is reckoned inferior to the original, it contains the only story in the whole novel which has made its fortune, that of the man who was exhibited as a sea-monster.
[1340] The following passage, which I extract from the Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 199, is a fair and favourable specimen of Aleman as a moralist, who is however apt to be tedious, as moralists usually are.
“The poor man is a kind of money that is not current, the subject of every idle housewife’s chat, the offscum of the people, the dust of the street, first trampled under foot, and then thrown on the dunghill; in conclusion, the poor man is the rich man’s ass. He dineth with the last, fareth with the worst, and payeth dearest; his sixpence will not go so far as the rich man’s threepence; his opinion is ignorance, his discretion foolishness, his suffrage scorn, his stock upon the common, abused by many, and abhorred by all. If he come into company he is not heard; if any chance to meet him, they seek to shun him; if he advise, though never so wisely, they grudge and murmur at him; if he work miracles, they say he is a witch; if virtuous, that he goeth about to deceive; his venial sin is a blasphemy; his thought is made treason; his cause, be it never so just, is not regarded; and to have his wrongs righted, he must appeal to that other life. All men crush him; no man favoureth him. There is no man that will relieve his wants; no man that will bear him company when he is alone and oppressed with grief. None help him, all hinder him; none give him, all take from him; he is debtor to none, and yet must make payment to all. O the unfortunate and poor condition of him that is poor, to whom even the very hours are sold which the clock striketh, and payeth custom for the sunshine in August.”
This is much in the style of our English writers in the first part of the seventeenth century, and confirms what I have suspected, that they formed it in a great measure on the Spanish school. Though this sententiousness and antithetical balancing of clauses is not pleasant to read, it is less insipid than the nerveless elegance of the Italians. Guzman d’Alfarache was early translated into English, as most other Spanish books were; and the language itself was more familiar in the reigns of James and Charles than it became afterwards.
Las Guerras de Granada. 42. It may require some excuse that I insert in this place Las Guerras de Granada, a history of certain Moorish factions in the last days of that kingdom, both because it has been usually referred to the seventeenth century, and because many have conceived it to be a true relation of events. It purports to have been translated by Gines Perez de la Hita, an inhabitant of the city of Murcia, from an Arabic original of one Aben Hamili. Its late English translator seems to entertain no doubt of its authenticity; and it has been sagaciously observed that no Christian could have known the long genealogies of Moorish nobles which the book contains. Most of those, however, who read it without credulity, will feel, I presume, little difficulty in agreeing with Antonio, who ranks it “among Milesian fables, though very pleasing to those who have nothing to do.” The Zegris and Abencerrages, with all their romantic exploits, seem to be mere creations of Castilian imagination; nor has Conde, in his excellent history of the Moors in Spain, once deigned to notice them even as fabulous; so much did he reckon this famous production of Perez de la Hita below the historian’s regard. Antonio mentions no edition earlier than that of Alcala in 1604; the English translator names 1601 for the date of its publication, an edition of which year is in the Museum; nor do I find that any one has been aware of an earlier, published at Saragoça in 1595, except Brunet, who mentions it as rare and little known. It appears by the same authority that there is another edition of 1598.
Sydney’s Arcadia. 43. The heroic and pastoral romance of Spain contributed something, yet hardly so much as has been supposed, to Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, the only original production of this kind, except such wretched and obscure attempts at story as are beneath notice, which our older literature can boast. The Arcadia was published in 1590, having been written, probably, by its highly accomplished author about ten years before.
Its character. 44. Walpole, who thought fit to display the dimensions of his own mind, by announcing that he could perceive nothing remarkable in Sir Philip Sydney (as if the suffrage of Europe in what he admits to be an age of heroes were not a decisive proof that Sydney himself over-topped those sons of Anak), says of the Arcadia, that it is “a tedious lamentable pedantic pastoral romance, which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade through.” We may doubt whether Walpole could altogether estimate the patience of a reader so extremely unlike himself; and his epithets, except perhaps the first, are inapplicable; the Arcadia is more free from pedantry than most books of that age; and though we are now so accustomed to a more stimulant diet in fiction, that few would read it through with pleasure, the story is as sprightly as most other romances, sometimes indeed a little too much so, for the Arcadia is not quite a book for “young virgins,” of which some of its admirers by hearsay seem not to have been aware. By the epithet “pastoral,” we may doubt whether Walpole knew much of this romance beyond its name; for it has far less to do with shepherds than with courtiers, though the idea might probably be suggested by the popularity of the Diana. It does not appear to me that the Arcadia is more tiresome and uninteresting than the generality of that class of long romances, proverbially among the most tiresome of all books; and, in a less fastidious age, it was read, no doubt, even as a story, with some delight.[1341] It displays a superior mind, rather complying with a temporary taste than affected by it, and many pleasing passages occur, especially in the tender and innocent loves of Pyrocles and Philoclea. I think it, nevertheless, on the whole inferior in sense, style, and spirit, to the Defence of Poesy. The following passage has some appearance of having suggested a well-known poem in the next age to the lover of Sacharissa; we may readily believe that Waller had turned over, in the glades of Penshurst, the honoured pages of her immortal uncle.[1342]
[1341] “It appears,” says Drake, “to have been suggested to the mind of Sir Philip by two models of very different ages, and to have been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic History of Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, and the Arcadia of Sannazaro,” p. 549. A translation of Heliodorus had been published a short time before.
[1342] The poem I mean is that addressed to Amoret, “Fair! that you may truly know,” drawing a comparison between her and Sacharissa.