An early sectary of the school is discovered in the person of the Portuguese poet, Francisco de Sâ de Miranda (1495-1558), who so frequently forsakes his native tongue that of 189 pieces included in Mme. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos' edition, seventy-four are in Castilian. Sâ de Miranda's early poems written before 1532—the Fábula de Mondego, the Canção á Virgem, and the eclogue entitled Aleixo—are in the old manner. His later works, such as Nemoroso, with innumerable sonnets and the three elegies composed between 1552 and 1555, are all undisguised imitations of Boscán and Garcilaso, for whom the writer professes a rapturous enthusiasm. Sâ de Miranda ranks among the six most celebrated Portuguese poets; and, stranger though he be, even in Castilian literature he distinguishes himself by his correctness of form, by his sincerity of sentiment, and by a genuine love of natural beauty very far removed from the falsetto admiration too current among his contemporaries.
The soldier, Gutierre de Cetina (1520-60) is another partisan of the Italian school. Serving in Italy, he pursued his studies to the best advantage, and won friendship and aid from literary magnates like the Prince of Ascoli, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza; but soldiering was little to his taste, and, after a campaign in Germany, Cetina retired to his native Seville, whence he passed to Mexico about the year 1550. He is known to have written in the dramatic form, but no specimen of his drama survives, unless it be sepultured in some obscure Central American library. Cetina is a copious sonneteer who manages his rhyme-sequences with more variety than his predecessors, and his songs and madrigals are excellent specimens of finished workmanship. His general theme is Arcadian love—the beauty of Amaríllida, the piteous passion of the shepherd Silvio, the grief of the nymph Flora for Menalca. His treatment is always ingenious, his frugality in the matter of adjectives is edifying, though it scandalised the exuberant Herrera, who, as a true Andalucían, esteems emphasis and epithet and metaphor as the three things needful. Cetina's sobriety is paid for by a certain preciosity of utterance near akin to weakness; but he excels in the sonnet form, which he handles with a mastery superior to Garcilaso's own, and he adds a touch of humour uncommon in the mannered school that he adorns.
Fernando de Acuña (? 1500-80) comes into notice as the translator of Olivier de la Marche's popular allegorical poem, the Chevalier Délibéré, a favourite with Carlos Quinto. The Emperor is said to have amused himself by translating the French poem into Spanish prose, and to have commissioned Acuña to a poetic version. A courtier like Van Male gives us to understand that some part of Acuña's Caballero determinado is based upon the Emperor's prose rendering, and the insinuation is that Acuña and his master should share the praise of the former's exploit. This pleasant tale is scarce plausible, for we know that the Cæsar never mastered colloquial Castilian, and that he should shine in its literary exercise is almost incredible. Be that as it may, Acuña's Caballero determinado, a fine example of the old quintillas, met with wide and instant appreciation; yet he never sought to follow up his triumph in the same kind. The new influence was irresistible, and Acuña succumbed to it, imitating the lira of Garcilaso to the point of parody, singing as "Damon in absence," practising the pastoral, aspiring to Homer's dignity in his blank verses entitled the Contienda de Ayax Telamonio y de Ulises. Three Castilian cantos of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato won applause in Italy; but Acuña's best achievements are his sonnets, which are almost always admirable. One of them contains a line as often quoted as any other in all Castilian verse:—
"Un Monarca, un Imperio, y una Espada,"
"One Monarch, one Empire, and one Sword." And this pious aspiration after unity had perhaps been fulfilled if Spain had abounded with such prudent and accomplished figures as Fernando de Acuña.
A more powerful and splendid personality is that of the illustrious Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575), one of the greatest figures in the history of Spanish politics and letters. Educated for the Church at the University of Salamanca, Mendoza preferred the career of arms, and found his opportunity at Pavia and in the Italian wars. Before he was twenty-nine he was named Ambassador to the Venetian Republic, became the patron of the Aldine Press, and studied the classics with all the ardour of his temperament. One of the few Spaniards learned in Arabic, Mendoza was a distinguished collector: he ransacked the monastery of Mount Athos for Greek manuscripts, secured others from Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, and had almost all Bessarion's Greek collection transcribed for his own library, now housed in the Escorial. The first complete edition of Josephus was printed from Mendoza's copies. He represented the Emperor at the Council of Trent, and saw to it that Cardinals and Archbishops did what Spain expected of them. In 1547 he was appointed Plenipotentiary to Rome, where he treated Pope Julius III. as cavalierly as his Holiness was accustomed to treat his own curates. In 1554 Mendoza returned to Spain, and the accession of Felipe II. in 1556 brought his public career to a close. He is alleged to have been Ambassador to England; and one would fain the report were true.
His wit and picaresque malice are well shown in his old-fashioned redondillas; which delighted so good a judge as Lope de Vega, and his real strength lay in his management of these forms. But his long Italian residence and his sleepless intellectual curiosity ensured his experimenting in the high Roman manner. Tibullus, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Pindar, Anacreon: all these are forced into Mendoza's service, as in his epistles and his Fábula de Adonis, Hipómenes y Atalanta. It cannot be said that he is at his best in these pseudo-classical performances, and he dares to eke out his hendecasyllabics by using a final palabra aguda; but the extreme brilliancy of the humour carries off all technical defects in the burlesque section of his poems, which are of the loosest gaiety, most curious in a retired proconsul. Yet, if Mendoza, who excelled in the old, felt compelled to pen his forty odd sonnets in the new style, how strong must have been its charm! Whatever his formal defects, Mendoza's authority was decisive in the contest between the native and the foreign types of verse: he helped to secure the latter's definitive triumph.
The greatest rebel against the invasion was Cristóbal de Castillejo (? 1494-1556), who passed thirty years abroad in the service of Ferdinand, King of Bohemia. Much of his life was actually spent in Italy, but he kept his national spirit almost absolutely free from the foreign influence. If he compromises at all, the furthest he can go is in adopting the mythological machinery favoured by all contemporaries, and even for this he could plead respectable Castilian precedent; but in the matter of form, Castillejo is cruelly intransigent. Boscán is his especial butt.
"Él mismo confesará
Que no sabe donde va"—