la grave desventura
del lusitano, por su mal valiente,
la soberbia bravura
de su animosa gente
desbaratada miserablemente.
This passage obviously recalls the disastrous defeat of Sebastian I, King of Portugal, at Al-Kaor al-Kebir in August 1578, when Luis de Leon was more than fifty years of age. If these inferences are valid, it would follow that many of his original poems were not composed till he was nearly forty or more. It is difficult to reconcile these conclusions with the author's categorical assertion that the poems were produced during his early years. As Luis de Leon was the least vain, as well as the most truthful of men, an explanation must be found, and it is perhaps permissible to suggest that Luis de Leon wrote a prefatory note to Portocarrero intending it to be placed at the beginning of the Second Book which contains his poems translated from Roman and other authors. By some mischance the poet's intention was frustrated; perhaps a leaf was out of place in Sarmiento de Mendoza's copy; perhaps Quevedo is directly responsible for what occurred. At any rate, the letter dedicatory was bisected, the greater part of it being transferred to the beginning of the First Book, while a mere morsel came to be printed at the beginning of the Third Book. This surmise may serve till a better explanation is forthcoming.
It is not to be inferred from the foregoing summary that all Luis de Leon's original and graver compositions were written during his maturity, but there is some reason to think that his earlier efforts in verse took the form of translations. Though it is undoubtedly true that his poems as a whole were not published till 1631, four isolated pieces of his strayed into print as early as 1574 when they were included by Francisco Sanchez, el Brocense, in the notes to his edition of the Obras del excelente poeta Garci-Lasso de la Vega.[269] At that date Luis de Leon was in the secret prison-cells of the Inquisition at Valladolid. Sanchez had been a colleague of his at Salamanca for some six years, was on friendly terms with him, knew the exact turn things were taking, felt that no good, and possibly some harm, might be done by mentioning the prisoner's name, and accordingly gave a version of an Horatian ode with the comment: 'vn docto destos reynos la traduxo biẽ'[270]. This needs interpretation. There can be no doubt that Luis de Leon was a very competent Latin scholar; neither is there any doubt that he had a profound admiration for Horace. At his best, his Horatian versions, if somewhat lacking in polish, are remarkably faithful and vigorous. But when we find him in his translation of the eighteenth ode of the Second Book rendering salis avarus by de sal avariento—the second person singular of the present indicative of the verb salire being mistaken for the genitive of the substantive sal[271]—we may perhaps conclude that a boyish exercise has somehow escaped destruction.
It is sometimes alleged against Luis de Leon that he is restricted in his choice of themes, and it is impossible to deny that his sacred profession acted as something of a limitation to him. Still, when the mood was on him, he rent his chains asunder as readily as Samson broke the seven green withs at Gaza: 'as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire.' Perhaps nobody would guess off-hand that the Profecia del Tajo was the handiwork of a sixteenth-century monk, a dweller in the rarefied atmosphere of mysticism. It only remained for a friar in the opposition camp to discover nearly three hundred years later a tendency in Luis de Leon to treat sensual themes in a sensual fashion.[272] To deal seriously with a belated judgement based on malignant ignorance would be a waste of time. It is the very irony of fate that the poem which has been the subject of severe censure should prove to be a translation from Cardinal Bembo.[273] The standard of the twentieth century is not the standard of the sixteenth, and it is certain that Luis de Leon has not the unfettered liberty of a godless layman. He is restrained by his austere temperament, by his monk's habit, by Christian doctrine. Nevertheless he moves with easy grace and dignity on planes so far apart as those of patriotism, of devotion, of human sympathy, of introspection. His patriotism finds powerful expression, as already noted, in the Profecia del Tajo, besprinkled with sonorous place-names, these growing fewer as the movement is accelerated, and Father Tagus describes with a mixture of picturesque mediaeval sentiment and martial music the onset of the Arabs and the clangour of arms as they meet the doomed Gothic host. In the sphere of devotional poetry Luis de Leon nowhere displays more unction, more ecstatic piety than in the verses on the Ascension beginning with the line:
Y dexas, Pastor santo.
It will be observed that the conjunction y, so superabundant in La Perfecta Casada, is the first word of this poem, of which Churton has supplied a well-known rendering:
And dost Thou, holy Shepherd, leave
Thy flock in this dark vale alone,
In cheerless solitude to grieve,
Whilst Thou to endless rest art gone?
The sheep, in Thy protection blest,
Untended wilt Thou leave to mourn?
The lambs, once cherished at Thy breast,
Forlorn,—oh! whither shall they turn?
Where shall those eyes now find repose,
That pine Thy gracious glance to see?
What can they hear but sounds of woes,
Sad exiles from discourse with Thee?