Whose page of gold
The story of Medora told,"
and all contemporaries, from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza downwards, swell the chorus of applause. The priest who sacked Don Quixote's library softened at sight of Barahona's book, which he calls by its popular title, the Lágrimas de Angélica (Tears of Angelica):—"I should shed tears myself were such a book burned, for its author is one of the best poets, not merely in Spain, but in all the world." Cervantes was far from strong in criticism, and he proves it in this case. The Angélica, which purports to continue the story of Orlando Furioso—itself a continuation of the Orlando Innamorato—looks mean beside its great original. Yet, though Barahona fails in epic narrative, his lyrical poems, given in Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres, are full of grace and melody.
The epic's fascination also seduced the Córdoban, Juan Rufo Gutiérrez. We know the date of neither his birth nor his death, but he must have lived long if his collection of anecdotes, entitled Las seiscientas Apotegmas, were really published in 1548. His Austriada, printed in 1584, takes Don Juan de Austria for its hero, and contains some good descriptive stanzas; but Rufo's invention finds no scope in dealing with contemporary matters, and what might have been a useful chronicle is distorted to a tedious poem. Great part of the Austriada is but a rhymed version of Mendoza's Guerra de Granada, which Rufo must have seen in manuscript. When, leaving Ariosto in peace, he becomes himself, as in the verses at the end of the Apotegmas, he gives forth a natural old-world note, reminiscent of earlier models than Boscán and Garcilaso. Since Luis de Zapata (1523-? 1600) wrote an epic history of the Emperor, the Carlos famoso, he must have read it; and it is possible that Cervantes (who delighted in it) was familiar with its fifty cantos, its forty thousand lines. It is more than can be said of any later reader. Zapata wasted thirteen years upon his epic, and witnessed its failure; but he was undismayed, and lived to maltreat Horace—it sounds incredible—beyond all expectation. It is another instance of a mistaken calling. The writer knew his facts, and had a touch of the historic spirit. Yet he could not be content with prose and history.
A nearer approach to the right epical poem is the Araucana of Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-95), who appeared as Felipe II.'s page at his wedding with Mary Tudor in Winchester Cathedral. From England he sailed for Chile in 1554, to serve against the Araucanos, who had risen in revolt; and in seven pitched battles, not to speak of innumerable small engagements, he greatly distinguished himself. His career was ruined by a quarrel with a brother-officer named Juan de Pineda; he was judged to be in fault, was condemned to death, and actually mounted the scaffold. At the last moment the sentence was commuted to exile at Callao, whence Ercilla returned to Europe in 1562. With him he brought the first fifteen cantos of his poem, written by the camp-fire on stray scraps of paper, leather, and skin. The first book ever printed in America was, as we learn from Señor Icazbalceta, Juan de Zumárraga's Breve y compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana. The first literary work of real merit composed in either American continent was Ercilla's Araucana. It was published at Madrid in 1569; and continuations, amounting to thirty-seven cantos in all, followed in 1578 and 1590. Ercilla never forgave what he thought the injustice of his general, García Hurtado de Mendoza, Marqués de Cañete, and carefully omits his name throughout the Araucana. The omission cost him dear, for he was never employed again.
His is an exceeding stately poem on the Chilian revolt; but epic it is not, whether in spirit or design, whether in form or effect. In the Essay Prefatory to the Henriade, Voltaire condescends to praise the Araucana, the name of which has thus become familiar to many; and, though he was probably writing at second hand, he is justified in extolling the really noble speech which Ercilla gives to the aged chief, Colocolo. It is precisely in declamatory eloquence that Ercilla shines. His technical craftsmanship is sound, his spirit admirable, his diction beyond reproach, or nearly so; and yet his work, as a whole, fails to impress. Men remember isolated lines, a stanza here and there; but the general effect is blurred. To speak truly, Ercilla had the orator's temperament, not the poet's. At his worst he is debating in rhyme, at his best he is writing poetic history; and, though he has an eye for situation, an instinct for the picturesque, the historian in him vanquishes the poet. He himself was vaguely conscious of something lacking, and he strove to make it good by means of mythological episodes, visions by Bellona, magic foreshadowings of victory, digressions defending Dido from Virgil's scandalous tattle. But, since the secret of the epic lies not in machinery, this attempt at reform failed. Ercilla's first part remains his best, and is still interesting for its martial eloquence, and valuable as a picture of heroic barbarism rendered by an artist in ottava rima who was also a vigilant observer and a magnanimous foe. His omission of his commander's name was made good by a copious Chilian poet, Pedro de Oña, in his Arauco domado (1596), which closed with the capture of "Richerte Aquines" (as who should say Richard Hawkins); and, in the following year, Diego de Santisteban y Osorio added a fourth and fifth part to the original Araucana. Neither imitation is of real poetic worth, and, as versified history, they are inferior to the Elegías de Varones ilustres de Indias of Juan de Castellanos (?1510-?1590), a priest who in youth had served in America, and who rhymed his reminiscences with a conscientious regard for fact more laudable in a chronicler than a poet.
But we turn from these elaborate historical failures to religious work of real beauty, and the first that offers itself is the famous sonnet "To Christ Crucified," familiar to English readers in a free version ascribed to Dryden:—
"O God, Thou art the object of my love,
Not for the hopes of endless joys above,
Nor for the fear of endless pains below