"He himself will confess that he knows not whither he goes." That, indeed, appears to have been Castillejo's fixed idea on the subject, and he expends an infinite deal of sarcasm and ridicule upon the apostates who, as he thinks, hide their poverty of thought in tawdry motley. His own subjects are perfectly fitted to treatment in the villancico form, and when he is not simply improper—as in El Sermón de los Sermones—his verses are remarkable for their sprightly grace and bitter-sweet wit, which can, at need, turn to rancorous invective or to devotional demureness. Had he lived in Spain, it is probable that Castillejo's mordant ridicule might have delayed the Italian supremacy. As it was, his flouts and jibes arrived too late, and the old patriot died, as he had lived, a brilliant, impenitent, futile Tory.
In one of his sonnets, conceived in the most mischievous spirit of travesty, Castillejo singles out for reprobation a poet named Luis de Haro, as one of the Italian agitators. Unluckily Haro's verses have practically disappeared from the earth, and the few specimens preserved in Nájera's Cancionero are banal exercises in the old Castilian manner. A practitioner more after Castillejo's heart was the ingenious Antonio de Villegas (fl. 1551), whose Inventario, apart from tedious paraphrases of the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in the style of Bottom the Weaver, contains many excellent society-verses, touched with conceits of extreme sublety, and a few more serious efforts in the form of décimas, not without a grave urbanity and a penetration of their own. Francisco de Castilla, a contemporary of Villegas, vies with him in essaying the hopeless task of bringing the old rhythms into new repute; but his Teórica de virtudes, dignified and elevated in style and thought, had merely a momentary vogue, and is now unjustly considered a mere bibliographical curiosity.
A student in both schools was the Portuguese Gregorio Silvestre (1520-70), choirmaster and organist in the Cathedral of Granada, who, beginning with a boy's admiration for Garci Sánchez and Torres Naharro, practised the redondilla with such success as to be esteemed an expert in the art. A certain Pedro de Cáceres y Espinosa, in a Discurso prefixed to Silvestre's poems (1582), tells us that his author "imitated Cristóbal de Castillejo, in speaking ill of the Italian arrangements," and that he cultivated the novelties for the practical reason that they were popular. It is certain that Silvestre is as attractive in the new as in the old kind, that his elegance never obscures his simplicity, that he shows a rare sense of ordered outline, an exceptional finish in the technical details of both manners. His conversion is the last that need be recorded here. The villancico still found its supporters among men of letters, and, as late as the seventeenth century, both Cervantes and Lope de Vega profess a platonic attachment to it and kindred metres; but the public mind was set against a revival, and Cervantes and Lope were forced to abandon any idea (if, indeed, they ever entertained it) of breathing life into these dead bones.
Didactic prose was practised, according to the old tradition, by Juan López de Vivero Palacios Rubios, who published in 1524 his Tratado del esfuerzo bélico heróico, a pseudo-philosophic inquiry into the origin and nature of martial valour, written in a clear and forcible style. Francisco López de Villalobos (1473-1549), a Jewish convert attached to the royal household as physician, began by translating Pliny's Amphitruo in such fashion as to bring down on him the thunders of Hernán Núñez. Villalobos works the didactic vein in his rhymed Sumario de Medicina which Ticknor ignores, though he mentions its late derivatives, the Trescientas preguntas of Alonso López de Corelas (1546) and the Cuatrocientas respuestas of Luis de Escobar (1552). But the witty physician's most praiseworthy performance is his Tratado de las tres Grandes—namely, talkativeness, obstinacy, and laughter—where his familiar humour, his frolic, fantasy, and perverse acuteness far outshine the sham philosophy and the magisterial intention of his other work. A graver talent is that of Fernando Pérez de Oliva (1492-1530), once lecturer in the University of Paris, and, later, Rector of Salamanca, who boasts of having travelled three thousand leagues in pursuit of culture. His Diálogo de la Dignidad del Hombre, written to show that Castilian is as good a vehicle as the more fashionable Latin for the discussion of transcendental matters, is an excellent example of cold, stately, Ciceronian prose, and the continuation by his friend, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, is worthy of the beginning; but the hold of ecclesiastical Latin was too fast to be loosed at a first attempt.
Oliva's reputation is strictly Spanish: not so that of Carlos Quinto's official chronicler, Antonio de Guevara (d. 1545), a Franciscan monk who held the bishopric of Mondoñedo. His Reloj de Príncipes (Dial of Princes), a didactic novel with Marcus Aurelius for its hero, was originally composed to encourage his own patron to imitate the virtues of the wisest ancient. Unluckily, however, Guevara passed his book off as authentic history, alleging it to be a translation of a non-existent manuscript in the Florentine collection. This brought him into trouble with antagonists as varied as the court-fool, Francesillo de Zúñiga, and a Sorian professor, the Bachelor Pedro de Rhua, whose Cartas censorias unmasked the imposture with malignant astuteness. But this critical faculty was confined to the Peninsula, and North's English translation, dedicated to Mary Tudor, popularised Guevara's name in England, where he is believed by some authorities to have exercised considerable influence on the style of English prose. This, however, is not the place to discuss that most difficult question. An instance of Guevara's better manner is offered by his Década de los Césares, though even here he interpolates his own unscrupulous inventions and embellishments, as he also does in his Familiar Epistles, Englished by Edward Hellowes, Groom of the Leash, from whose version an illustration may be borrowed:—"The property of love is to turn the rough into plain, the cruel to gentle, the bitter to sweet, the unsavoury to pleasant, the angry to quiet, the malicious to simple, the gross to advised, and also the heavy to light. He that loveth, neither can he murmur of him that doth anger him: neither deny that they ask him: neither resist when they take from him: neither answer when they reprove him: neither revenge if they shame him: neither yet will he be gone when they send him away." These pompous commonplaces abound in the Familiar Epistles, which, though still the most readable of Guevara's performances, are tedious in their elaborate accumulation of saws and instances, unimpressively collected from the four quarters of the earth. But the rhetorical letters went the round of the world, were translated times out of number, and were commonly called "The Golden Letters," to denote their unique worth.
More serious and less attractive historians are Pedro Mexía (1496-1552), whose Historia Imperial y Cesárea is a careful compilation of biographies of Roman rules from Cæsar to Maximilian, and Florián de Ocampo (1499-1555), canon of Zamora, and an official chronicler, who, taking the Deluge as his starting-point, naturally enough fails to bring his dry-as-dust annals later than Roman times, and endeavours to follow the critical canons of his time with better intention than performance. The Comentarios de la Guerra en Alemania of Luis de Ávila y Zúñiga are valuable as containing the evidence of an acute, direct observer of events; but Ávila's exaggerated esteem for his master causes him to convert his history into an elaborate apology. Carlos Quinto's own dry criticism of the book is final:—"Alexander's achievements surpassed mine—but he was less lucky in his chronicler." The conquest of America begot a crowd of histories, of which but few need be named here. González Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478-1557), once secretary to the Great Captain, gives an official picture of the New World in his Historia general y natural de Indias, and a similar study from an opposed and higher point of view is to be found in the work of Bartolomé de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa (1474-1566), whose passionate eloquence on behalf of the American Indians is displayed in his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de Indias (1552); but here again history declines into polemics, the offices of judge and advocate overlapping. The famous Hernán Cortés (1485-1554), El Conquistador, was a man of action; but his official reports on Mexico and its affairs are drawn up with exceeding skill, and in energy of phrase and luminous concision may stand as models in their kind. Cortés found his panegyrist in his chaplain, Francisco López de Gómara (1519-60), whose interesting Conquista de Méjico is an uncritical eulogy on his chief, whom he extols at the expense of his brother adventurers. The antidote was supplied by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (fl. 1568), whose Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España is a first-class example of military indignation. "Here the chronicler Gómara in his history says just the opposite of what really happened. Whoso reads him will see that he writes well, and that, with proper information, he could have stated his facts correctly: as it is, they are all lies." The manifest honesty and simplicity of the old soldier, who shared in one hundred and nineteen engagements and could not sleep unless in armour, are extremely winning; his prolix ingenuousness has been admirably rendered in our day by a descendant of the Conquistadores, M. José María Heredia, whose French version is a triumph of translation.
Incredible tales from the Western Indies stimulated the popular appetite for miracles in terms of fiction. Paez de Ribera added a sixth book to Amadís, under the title of Florisando (1510); Feliciano de Silva wrote a seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh—Lisuarte (1510), Amadís de Grecia (1530), Florisel de Niquea (1532), and Rogel de Grecia; and he would certainly have supplied the eighth book had he not been anticipated by Juan Díaz with a second Lisuarte. Parallel with Amadís ran the series of Palmerín de Oliva (1511), which tradition ascribes to an anonymous lady of Augustobriga, but which may just as well be the work of Francisco Vázquez de Ciudad Rodrigo, as it is said to be in its first descendant Primaleón (1512). Polindo (1526) continues the tale, and an unknown author pursues it in the Crónica del muy valiente Platir (1533), while Palmerín de Inglaterra (1547-48) closes the cycle. Curious readers may study this last in the English version of Anthony Munday (1616), who commends it as an excellent and stately history, "wherein gentlemen may find choice of sweet inventions, and gentlewomen be satisfied in courtly expectations." These are but a few of the extravagances of the press, and the madness spread so wide that Carlos Quinto, admirer as he was of Don Belianís de Grecia, was forced to protect the New World against invasion by books of this class. Scarcely less numerous are the continuations of the Celestina, due to the indefatigable Feliciano de Silva, to Gaspar Gómez de Toledo, to Sancho Muñoz, and others.
A new species begins with the first picaroon novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, long ascribed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, an attribution now commonly rejected on the authority of that distinguished Spanish scholar, M. Alfred Morel-Fatio. There is something to be said in favour of Mendoza's claim which may not be said for lack of space. As to Lazarillo de Tormes, authorship, date and place of publication are all uncertain: the three earliest editions known appeared at Antwerp, Burgos, and Alcalá de Henares in 1554. It is the autobiography of Lázaro, son of the miller, Tomé González, and the trull, Antonia Pérez. He describes his adventures as leader of a blind man, as servant to a miserly priest, to a starving gentleman, to a beggar-monk, to a vendor of indulgences, to a signboard painter, to an alguazil, ending his career in a Government post—un oficio real—as town-crier of Toledo. There we leave him "at the height of all good fortune." Lázaro's experience with the hungry hidalgo may be quoted from the admirable archaic rendering by David Rowland, of Anglesea:—
"It pleased God to accomplish my desire and his together, for when as I had begun my meat, as he walked, he came near to me, saying: 'Lázaro, I promise thee thou hast the best grace in eating that ever I did see any man have; for there is no man that seest thee eat, but seeing thee feed, shall have appetite, although they be not a-hungered.' Then would I say to myself, 'The hunger which thou sustainest causeth thee to think mine so beautiful.' Then I trusted I might help him, seeing that he had so helped himself, and had opened me the way thereto. Wherefore I said unto him, 'Sir, the good tools make the workmen good: this bread hath good taste, and this neat's-foot is so well sod, and so cleanly dressed, that it is able, with the flavour of it only, to entice any man to eat of it.' 'What? is it a neat's-foot?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Now, I promise thee it is the best morsel in the world: there is no pheasant that I would like so well.' 'I pray thee, sir, prove of it better and see how you like it.'... Whereupon he sitteth down by me, and then began to eat like one that hath great need, gnawing every one of those little bones better than any greyhound could have done for life, saying, 'This is a singular good meal: by God, I have eaten it with a good stomach, as if I had eaten nothing all this day before.' Then I, with a low voice, said, 'God send me to live long as sure as that is true.' And, having ended his victuals, he commanded me to reach him the pot of water, which I gave him even as full as I had brought it from the river.... We drank both, and went to bed, as the night before, at that time well satisfied. And now, to avoid long talk, we continued after this sort eight or nine days. The poor gentleman went every day to brave it out in the street, to content himself with his accustomed stately pace, and always I, poor Lázaro, was fain to be his purveyor."