C'est là qu'en peu de temps on apprend à bien vivre."
Unluckily for Granada, his Guía de Pecadores and his Tratado de la Oración y Meditación were placed on the Index, chiefly at the instigation of that hammer of heretics, Melchor Cano, the famous theologian of the Council of Trent. Certain changes were made in the text, and the books were reprinted in their amended form; but the suspicion of iluminismo long hung over Granada, whose last years were troubled by his rash simplicity in certifying as true the sham stigmata of a Portuguese nun, Sor María de la Visitación. The story that Granada was persecuted by the Inquisition is imaginary.
His books have still an immense vogue. His sincerity, learning, and fervour are admirable, and his forty years spent between confessional and pulpit gave him a rare knowledge of human weakness and a mastery of eloquent appeal. He is not declamatory in the worst sense, though he bears the marks of his training. He sins by abuse of oratorical antithesis, by repetition, by a certain mechanical see-saw of the sentence common to those who harangue multitudes. Still, the sweetness of his nature so flows over in his words that didacticism becomes persuasive even when he argues against our strongest prepossessions. It may interest to quote a passage from the translation made by that Francis Meres whose Palladis Tamia contains the earliest reference to Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets":—
"This desire which doth hold many so resolutely to their studies, and this love of science and knowledge under pretence to help others, is too much and superfluous. I call it a love too much and desire superfluous; for when it is moderate and according to reason, it is not a temptation, but a laudable virtue and a very profitable exercise which is commended in all kind of men, but especially in young men who do exercise their youth in that study, for by it they eschew many vices and learn that whereby they will counsel themselves and others. But unless it be moderately used it hurteth devotion.... There be some that would know for this end only, that they might know—and it is foolish curiosity. There be some that would know, that they might be known—and it is foolish vanity; and there be some that would know, that they might sell their knowledge for money or for honours—and it is filthy lucre. There be also some that desire to know, that they may edify—and it is charity. And there are some that would know, that they may be edified—and it is wisdom. All these ends may move the desire, and, in choice of these, a man is often deceived, when he considereth not which ought especially to move; and this error is very dangerous."
This distrust of profane letters is yet more marked in the Augustinian, Pedro Malón de Chaide of Cascante (1530-?1590), who compares the "frivolous love-books" of Boscán, Garcilaso, and Montemôr and the "fabulous tales and lies" of chivalresque romance to a knife in a madman's hand. His practice clashes with his theory, for his Conversión de la Magdalena, written for Beatriz Cerdán, is learned to the verge of pedantry, and his elaborate periods betray the imitation of models which he professed to abhor. More ascetic than mystic, Malón de Chaide lacks the patrician ease, the tolerant spirit of Juan de Ávila, Granada, and León; but his austere doctrine and sumptuous colouring have ensured him permanent popularity. His admirable verse paraphrases of the Song of Solomon have much of the unction, without the sensuous exaltation, of Juan de la Cruz. A better representative of pure mysticism is the Extremaduran Carmelite, Juan de Los Ángeles (fl. 1595), whose Triumphos del Amor de Dios is a profound psychological study, written under the influence of Northern thinkers, and not less remarkable for beauty of expression than for impassioned insight. With him our notice of the Spanish mystics must close. It is difficult to estimate their number exactly; but since at least three thousand survive in print, it is not surprising that the most remain unread. A breath of mysticism is met in the few Castilian verses of the brilliant humanist, Benito Arias Montano (1527-98), who gave up to scholarship and theology what was meant for poetry. His achievement in the two former fields is not our concern here, but it pleases to denote the ample inspiration and the lofty simplicity of his song, which is hidden from many readers, and overlooked even by literary historians, in Böhl de Faber's Floresta de rimas antiguas.
The pastoral novel, like the chivalresque romance, reaches Spain through Portugal. The Italianised Spaniard, Jacopo Sannazaro, had invented the first example of this kind in his epoch-making Arcadia (1504); and his earliest follower was the Portuguese, Bernardim Ribeiro (?1475-?1524), whose Menina e moça transplants the prose pastoral to the Peninsula. This remarkable book, which derives its title from the first three words of the text, is the undoubted model of the first Castilian prose pastoral, the unfinished Diana Enamorada. This we owe to the Portuguese, Jorge de Montemôr (d. 1561), whose name is hispaniolised as Montemayor. There is nothing strange in this usage of Castilian by a Portuguese writer. We have already recorded the names of Gil Vicente, Sâ de Miranda, and Silvestre among those of Castilian poets; the lyrics and comedies of Camões, the Austriada of Jerónimo Corte Real, continue a tradition which begins as early as the General Cancioneiro of García de Resende (1516), wherein twenty-nine Portuguese poets prefer Castilian before their own language. A Portuguese writer, Innocencio da Silva, has gone the length of asserting that Montemôr wrote nothing but Castilian. This only proves that Silva had not read the Diana, which contains two Portuguese songs, and Portuguese prose passages spoken by the shepherd, Danteo, and the shepherdess, Duarda. Nor is Silva alone in his bad eminence; the date of the earliest edition of the Diana is commonly given as 1542. Yet, as it contains, in the Canto de Orpheo, an allusion to the widowhood of the Infanta Juana (1554), it must be later. The time of publication was probably 1558-59,[14] some four or five years after the printing of his Cancionero at Antwerp.
Little is known of Montemôr's life, save that he was a musician at the Spanish court in 1548. He accompanied the Infanta Juana to Lisbon on her marriage to Dom João, returning to Spain in 1554, when he is thought to have visited England and the Low Countries in Felipe II.'s train. He was murdered in 1651, apparently as the result of some amour. Faint intimations of pastoralism are found in such early chivalresque novels as Florisel de Niquea, where Florisel, dressed as a shepherd, loves the shepherdess, Sylvia. Ribeiro had introduced his own flame in Menina e moça in the person of Aonia, and Montemôr follows with Diana. The identification of Aonia with the Infanta Beatriz, and with King Manoel's cousin, Joana de Vilhena, has been argued with great heat: in Montemôr's case the lady is said to have been a certain Ana. Her surname is withheld by the discreet Sepúlveda, who records that she was seen at Valderas by Felipe III. and his queen in 1603.
In all pastoral novels there is a family likeness, and Montemôr is not successful in avoiding the insipidity of the genre. He endeavours to lighten the monotony of his shepherds by borrowing Sannazaro's invention of the witch whose magic draughts work miracles. This wonder-worker is as convenient for the novelist as she is tedious for the reader, who is forced to cry out with Don Quixote's Priest:—"Let all that refers to the wise Felicia and the enchanted water be omitted." The bold Priest would further drop the verses, honouring the book for its prose, and for being the first of its class. Montemôr accepts the convention by making his shepherds—Sireno, Silvano, and the rest—mouth it like grandiloquent dukes; but the style is correct, and pleasing in its grandiose kind. The Diana's vogue was immense: Shakespeare himself based the Two Gentlemen of Verona upon the episode of the shepherdess Felismena, which he had probably read in the manuscript of Bartholomew Young, whose excellent version, although not printed until 1598, was finished in 1583; and Sidney, whose own pastoral is redolent of Montemôr, has given Sireno's song in this fashion:—
"Of this high grace with bliss conjoin'd