It must be confessed that Villena owes more of his celebrity to his legend than to his literary work. Perhaps the nearest parallel to him in our own history is Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Both were fired by the enthusiasm of the Renaissance; both were patrons of literature; both were popularly supposed to practise the black art—Villena in person, and Gloucester through the intermediary of his wife, Eleanor Cobham. But, while Duke Humphrey was content to give copies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio to the University of Oxford, Villena took an active part in spreading the light that came from Italy. He was not the first Spaniard in the field. Francisco Imperial, in his Dezir de las siete virtudes, had already hailed Dante as his guide and master, and had borrowed phrases from the Divina Commedia. Thus when Dante writes—
O somma luz, che tanto ti levi
dai concetti mortali, alla mia mente
ripresta un poco di quel che parevi—
Imperial transfers these lines from the Paradiso to his own page in this form:—
O suma luz, que tanto te alçaste
del concepto mortal, á mi memoria
represta un poco lo que me mostraste.
This is rather close translation; but students, more interested in matter than in form, asked for a complete rendering. Villena was already at work on the Æneid; at the suggestion of Santillana, he further undertook to translate the Divina Commedia into Castilian prose. His diligence was equal to his intrepidity. Begun on September 28, 1427, his translation of Virgil was finished on October 10, 1428, and before this date he had finished his translation of Dante. These prose versions are Villena’s most useful contributions to literature. With the exception of the Arte cisoria—a prose pæan on eating which would have attracted Brillat-Savarin, and which confirms Pérez de Guzmán’s report concerning the author’s gormandising habits—his extant original writings are of small value. Pérez de Guzmán, Mena, and Santillana speak of him with respect as a poet, and, as Argote de Molina mentions his ‘coplas y canciones de muy gracioso donayre,’ it is evident that Villena’s verses were read with pleasure as late as 1575 when the Conde Lucanor was first printed. But they have not reached us, and perhaps the world is not much the poorer for the loss. Still, we cannot feel at all sure of this. Villena showed some promise in Los Trabajos de Hércules, and ended by becoming one of the clumsiest prose writers in the world; yet Mena exists to remind us that a man who writes detestable prose may have in him the breath of a true poet.
Judged by the vulgar test of success, Villena’s career was a failure, and a failure which involved him in dishonour. He did not obtain the marquessate of Villena, and, though inaccurate writers and the general public may insist on calling him the Marqués de Villena, the fact remains that he was nothing of the kind. He had set his heart on becoming Constable of Castile, and this ambition was also baulked. He winked at the adultery of his wife with Enrique III. and connived at her obtaining a decree of nullity on the ground that he was impotent—a statement ludicrously and notoriously untrue of one whom Pérez de Guzmán describes as ‘muy inclinado al amor de las mugeres.’ Enrique el Doliente rewarded the complaisant husband by conferring on him the countship of Cangas de Tineo and the Grand Mastership of the Order of Calatrava; but he was unable to take possession of his countship, was chased from the Mastership by the Knights of the Order, and remained empty-handed and scorned as a pretentious scholar who had not even known how to secure the wages of sin. Meekly bowing under the burden of his shame, Villena retired to his estate of Iniesta or Torralba—two petty morsels of what had once been a rich patrimony—and there passed most of his last years working at his translations or miscellaneous treatises, and dabbling in alchemy. He had once hoped to reach some of the highest positions in the state; in his obscurity, his heart leapt up when he beheld a turkey or a partridge on his table, and he speaks of these toothsome birds with a glow of epicurean eloquence. But his ill luck pursued him even in his pleasures. His gluttony and sedentary habits brought on repeated attacks of gout, and he died prematurely at Madrid on December 15, 1434. As a man of letters he is remarkable rather for his industry than for his performance. But there is a certain picturesqueness about this enigmatic and rather futile personage which invests him with a singular interest. It is not often that a great noble who stands so near the throne cultivates learning with steadfast zeal. In collecting manuscripts and texts Villena set an example which was followed by Santillana, and by Luis de Guzmán, a later and more fortunate Master of the Order of Calatrava. We cannot doubt that, in his own undisciplined way, Villena loved literature and things of the mind, and that by personal effort and by patronage he helped a good cause which has never had too many friends.