Isla fails in his attempt to solder fast impossibilities, to amalgamate rhetorical doctrine with farcical burlesque; nor has his book the saving quality of style. Still, though it be too long drawn out, it abounds with an emphatic, violent humour which is almost irresistible at a first reading. The Second Part, published in 1770, is a work of supererogation. The First caused a furious controversy in which the regulars combined to throw mud at the Jesuits with such effect that, in 1760, the Holy Office intervened, confiscated the volume, and forbade all argument for or against it. Ridicule, however, did its work in surreptitious copies; so that when the author was expelled from Spain with the rest of his order in 1765, Fray Gerundio and his like were reformed characters. In 1787 Isla translated Gil Blas, under the impression that he was "restoring the book to its native land." The suggestion that Le Sage merely plagiarised a Spanish original is due in the first place to Voltaire, who made it, for spiteful reasons of his own, in the famous Siècle de Louis XIV. (1751). As some fifteen or twenty episodes are unquestionably borrowed from Espinel and others, it was not unnatural that Spaniards should (rather late in the day) take Voltaire at his word; none the less, the character of Gil Blas himself is as purely French as may be, and Le Sage vindicates his originality by his distinguished treatment of borrowed matter. Isla's version is a sound, if unnecessary, piece of work, spoiled by the inclusion of a worthless sequel due to the Italian, Giulio Monti.
The action of French tradition is visible in Nicolás Fernández de Moratín (1737-80), whose Hormesinda (1770), a dramatic exercise in Racine's manner, too highly rated by literary friends, was condemned by the public. His prose dissertations consist of invectives against Lope and Calderón, and of eulogies on Luzán's cold verse. These are all forgotten, and Moratín, who remained a good patriot, despite his efforts to Gallicise himself, survives at his best in his brilliant panegyric on bull-fighting—the Fiesta de Toros en Madrid—whose spirited quintillas, modelled after Lope's example, are in every Spaniard's memory.
Moratín's friend, José de Cadalso y Vázquez (1741-1782), a colonel in the Bourbon Regiment, after passing most of his youth in Paris, travelled through England, Germany, and Italy, returning as free from national prejudices as a young man can hope to be. A certain elevation of character and personal charm made him a force among his intimates, and even impressed strangers; as we may judge by the fact that, when he was killed at the siege of Gibraltar, the English army wore mourning for him. His more catholic taste avoided the exaggerations of Nasarre and Moratín; he found praise for the national theatre, and many of his verses imply close study of Villegas and Quevedo. Even so, his attachment to the old school was purely theoretical. His knowledge of English led him to translate in verse—as Luzán had already translated in prose—passages from Paradise Lost; his sepulchral Noches Lúgubres, written upon the death of his mistress, the actress María Ignacia Ibáñez, are plainly inspired by Young's Night Thoughts; his Cartas Marruecas derive from the Lettres Persanes; his tragedy, Don Sancho García, an attempt to put in practice the canons of the French drama, transplants to Spain the rhymed couplets of the Parisian stage. The best example of Cadalso's cultivated talent is his poem entitled Eruditos á la Violeta, wherein he satirises pretentious scholarship with a light, firm touch. In curious contrast with Cadalso's Don Sancho García is the Raquel (1778) of his friend Vicente Antonio García De la Huerta y Muñoz (1734-87), whose troubles would seem to have affected his brain. Though Huerta brands Corneille and Racine as a pair of lunatics, he is a strait observer of the sacred "unities": in all other respects—in theme, monarchical sentiment, sonority of versification—Raquel is a return upon the ancient classic models. Its disfavour among foreign critics is inexplicable, for no contemporary drama equals it in national savour. Huerta's good intention exceeds his performance in the Theatro Hespañol, a collection (in seventeen volumes) of national plays, arranged without much taste or knowledge.
This involved him in a bitter controversy, which probably shortened his life. Prominent among his enemies was the Basque, Félix María de Samaniego (1745-1801), whose early education was entirely French, and who regarded Lope much as Voltaire regarded Shakespeare. Though Huerta's intemperance lost him his cause, Samaniego's real triumph was in another field than that of controversy. His Fábulas (1781-94), mostly imitations or renderings of Phædrus, La Fontaine, and Gay, are almost the best in their kind—simple, clear, and forcible. A year earlier than Samaniego, the Jesuit Lasala, of Bologna, had translated the fables of Lukmān al-Hakīm into Latin, and, in 1784, Miguel García Asensio published a Castilian version. It does not appear that Samaniego knew anything of Lasala, nor was he disturbed by García Asensio's translation. Before the latter was in print, he was annoyed at finding himself rivalled by Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa (1750-91), who had begun his career as a prose translator of Molière and Voltaire, and had charmed—or at least had drawn effusive compliments from—Metastasio with a frigid poem, La Música (1780). In the following year Iriarte published his Fábulas literarias, putting the versified apologue to doctrinal uses, censuring literary faults, and expounding what he held to be true doctrine. He took most pride in his plays, El Señorito mimado and La Señorita mal criada; yet the Spoiled Young Gentleman and the Ill-bred Young Lady are forgotten—somewhat unjustly—by all but students, while the wit and polish of the fables have earned their author an excessive fame. Iriarte was, in the best sense, an "elegant" writer. Unluckily for himself and us, much of his short life was, after the eighteenth-century fashion, wasted in polemics with able, learned ruffians, of whom Juan Pablo Forner (1756-97) is the most extreme type. Forner's versified attack on Iriarte, El Asno erudito, is one of the most ferocious libels ever printed. Literary men the world over are famous for their manners: Spain is in this respect no better than her neighbours, and the abusive personalities which form a great part of her literary history during the last century are now the driest, most vacant chaff imaginable.
In pleasing contrast with these irritable mediocrities is the figure of Gaspar Melchor de Jove-Llanos (1744-1811), the most eminent Spaniard of his age. Educated for the Church, Jove-Llanos turned to law, was appointed magistrate at Seville in his twenty-fourth year, was transferred to Madrid in 1778, became a member of the Council of Orders in 1780, was exiled to Asturias on the fall of Cabarrús in 1790, and seven years later was appointed Minister of Justice. The incarnation of all that was best in the liberalism of his time, he was equally odious to reactionaries and revolutionists. A stern moralist, he strove to end the intrigue between the Queen and the notorious Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and at the latter's instance was dismissed from office in 1798. He passed the years 1801-8 a prisoner in the Balearic Islands, returning to find Spain under the heel of France. His prose writings, political, economic, and didactic, do not concern us here, though their worth is admitted by good judges. Jove-Llanos is most interesting because of his own poetic achievement, and because of his influence on the group of Salamancan poets. His play, El Delincuente Honrado (1774), is a doctrinaire exercise in the manner of Diderot's Fils Naturel; it shows considerable knowledge of dramatic effect, and its sentimental, sincere philanthropy persuaded audiences in and out of Spain to accept Jove-Llanos for a dramatist. At most he is a clever playwright. Yet, though not an artist in either prose or verse, though far from irreproachable in diction, he occasionally utters a pure poetic note, keen and vibrating in satire, noble and austere in that Epistle to the Duque de Veragua, which, by common consent, best reflects the tranquil dignity of his temperament.
Jove-Llanos' official position, his high ideals, his knowledge, discernment, and wise counsel were placed at the service of Juan Meléndez Valdés (1754-1817), the chief poet of the Salamancan school, who came under his influence in or about 1777. Jove-Llanos succeeded by sheer force of character: Meléndez was a weather-cock at the mercy of every breeze. A writer of erotic verses, he thought of taking orders; a pastoral poet, he turned to philosophy by Jove-Llanos' advice; unfortunate in his marriage, discontented with his professorship at Salamanca, he dabbled in politics, becoming, through his friend's patronage, a government official: and when Jove-Llanos fell, Meléndez fell with him. It is hard to decide whether Meléndez was a rogue or a weakling. Upon the French invasion, he began by writing verses calling his people to arms, and ended by taking office under the foreign government. He fawned upon Joseph Bonaparte, whom he vowed "to love each day," and he hailed the restoration of the Spanish with patriotic enthusiasm. Finally, the dishonoured man fled for very shame and safety. Loving iniquity and hating justice, he died in exile at Montpellier.
He typifies the fluctuations of his time. His natural bent was towards pastoralism, as his early poems, modelled on Garcilaso and on Torre, remain to prove; he took to liberalism at Jove-Llanos' suggestion, as he would have taken to absolutism had that been the craze of the moment; he read Locke, Young, Turgot, and Condorcet at the instance of his friends. "Obra soy tuya" ("I am thy handiwork"), he writes to Jove-Llanos. He was ever the handiwork of the last comer: a shadow of insincerity, of pose, is over all his verse. Yet, like his countryman Lucan, Meléndez demonstrates the truth that a worthless creature may be, within limits, a genuine poet. He has neither morals nor ideas; he has fancy, ductility, clearness, music, charm, and a picturesque vision of natural detail that have no counterpart in his period. Compared with his brethren of the Salamancan school—with Diego Tadeo González (1733-94), with José Iglesias de la Casa (1753-91), even with Nicasio Álvarez de Cienfuegos (1764-1809)—Meléndez appears a veritable giant. He was not quite that any more than they were pigmies; but he had a spark of genius, while their faculty was no more than talent.[29]
His one distinct failure was when he ventured on the boards with his Wedding Feast of Camacho, founded on Cervantes' famous story, though even here the pastoral passages are pleasing, if inappropriate. It is to his credit that his theme is national, while his general dramatic sympathies were, like those of his associates, French. Luzán and his followers found it easier to condemn the ancient masterpieces than to write masterpieces of their own. Their function was negative, destructive; yet when the prohibition of autos was procured in 1765 by José Clavijo y Fajardo (1730-1806)—whose adventure with Louise Caron, Beaumarchais' sister, gave Goethe a subject—they hoped to force a hearing for themselves. They overlooked the fact that there already existed a national dramatist named Ramón de la Cruz y Cano (1731-? 95), who had the merit of inventing a new genre, which, being racy of the soil, was to the popular taste. Convention had settled it that tragedies should present the misfortunes of emperors and dukes; that comedies should deal with the middle class, their sentimentalities and foibles. Cruz, a government clerk, with sufficient leisure to compose three hundred odd plays, became in some sort the dramatist of the needy, the disinherited, the have-nots of the street. He might very well sympathise with them, for he was always pinched for money, and died so destitute that his widow had not wherewith to bury him. Beginning, like the rest of the world, with French imitations and renderings, he turned to representing the life about him in short farcical pieces called sainetes—a perfect development of the old pasos. In the prologue to the ten-volume edition of his sainetes (1786-91), Cruz proclaims his own merit in a just and striking phrase—"I write, and truth dictates to me." His gaiety, his picaresque enjoyment, his exuberant humour, his jokes and puns and quips, lend an extraordinary vivacity to his presentation of the most trifling incidents. He might have been—as he began by being—a pompous prig and bore, preaching high doctrine, and uttering the platitudes, which alone were thought worthy of the sock and buskin. He chose the better part in rendering what he knew and understood and saw, in amusing his public for thirty years, and in bequeathing a thousand occasions of laughter to the world. He wrote with a reckless, contagious humour, with a comic brio which anticipates Labiche; and, unambitious and light-hearted as Cruz was, we may learn more of contemporary life from El Prado por la Noche and Las Tertulias de Madrid than from a mountain of serious records and chronicles.
In the following generation Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828) won deserved repute as a playwright. His father, the author of Hormesinda, made a jeweller's apprentice of the boy who, in 1779 and 1782, won two accesits from the Academy. He thus attracted the notice of Jove-Llanos, who secured his appointment as Secretary to the Paris Embassy in 1787. His stay in France, followed by later travels through England, the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, completed his education, and obtained for him the post of official translator. His exercises in verse are more admirable than his prose version of Hamlet, which offended his academic theories in every scene. Molière, who was his ideal, has no more faithful follower than the younger Moratín. His translations of L'École des Maris and Le Médecin malgré lui belong to his later years; but his theatre, including those most striking pieces El Sí de las Niñas (The Maids' Consent) and La Mojigata (The Hypocritical Woman), reflects the master's humour and observation. The latter comedy (1804) brought him into trouble with the Inquisition; the former (1806) established his fame by its character-drawing, its graceful ingenuity, and witty dialogue. His fortunes, which seemed assured, were wrecked by the French war. Moratín was always timid, even in literary combats: he now proved himself that very rare thing among Spaniards—a physical coward. He neither dared declare for his country nor against it, and went into hiding at Vitoria. He finally accepted the post of Royal Librarian to Joseph Bonaparte, and when the crash came he decamped to Peñiscola. These events turned his brain. All efforts to help him (and they were many) proved useless. He wandered as far as Italy to escape imaginary assassins, and finally settled in Bordeaux, where he believed himself safe from the conspirators. El Sí de las Niñas is an excellent piece among the best, and is sufficient to persuade the most difficult reader that Leandro Moratín was one of nature's wasted forces. He must have won distinction in any company: in this dreary period he achieves real eminence.
No prose-writer of the time rises to Isla's level. His brother Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735-1809), is credited by Professor Max Müller with "one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language," and may be held for the father of comparative philology; but his specimens and notices of three hundred tongues, his grammars of forty languages, his classic Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas (1800-5) appeal more to the specialist than to the lover of literature. Yet in his own department there is scarcely a more splendid name.