In the first paragraph of his "François Rabelais" [Footnote 45] (written for the French Men of Letters Series), Arthur Tilley, whose "Literature of the French Renaissance" had shown how competent he was to judge, has summed up the character and place of Rabelais. It is to Tilley that I owe most of the [{475}] details that are given here, and his paragraph will serve as a fitting conclusion.
[Footnote 45: Lippincott, Phila., 1907.]
"It is a characteristic of the very greatest writers that they sum up, with more or less completeness, the thought, the aspirations, and the temper of their age, and this not only for their own country, but for the whole civilized world. Of this select band is Rabelais. He is the embodiment not only of the early French Renaissance, but of the whole Renaissance in its earlier and fresher manifestations, in its devotion to humanism, in its restless and many-sided curiosity, in its robust enthusiasm, in its belief in the future of the human race."
CHAPTER IV
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LITERATURE
The Spanish literature of the period contains some all-important material of great significance not only for Spanish literature itself, but also for the literature of the world. In the chapter on Women of the Renaissance, I have called attention to the interest of Queen Isabella in things literary, and while she did not produce any formal literary work, her letters have been pronounced by the Spanish Academy classic documents in the Spanish language. The most important contribution to Spanish literature during the century came also from a woman, though she doubtless had as little thought of making literature when she wrote as did the Queen. This was St. Teresa, to whose works serious writers on spiritual subjects in all countries and at all times, often in spite of differences of belief, have turned as classics of spirituality. Her literary work consists of the treatises which she wrote by order of her confessors on mystical subjects and then her many letters. It is these last, particularly, that have been widely read in the modern time and that are world classics in their order. Probably no one has been more misunderstood than St. Teresa. She has come to be considered by many, who, as a rule, know nothing at all of her at first hand, as one of the almost impossible saintly personages whose hours of concentration in prayer and fasting and other mortifications have driven them into states of mind bordering on the irrational, if not frankly hysterical. Indeed she is often considered to be the most striking type of these.
FRANCIA, VIRGIN WEEPING OVER BODY OF CHRIST (LONDON)
David Hannay, in his "The Later Renaissance" in Professor Saintsbury's series, Periods of European Literature (New York: Scribner's, 1898), who has read her works with care, says: "Her letters, which are not only the most attractive part of her writing, but even the most valuable, show her [{477}] not only as a great saint, but as a great lady with a very acute mind, a fine wit and an abounding good sense. Her own great character is stamped on every line. Nobody ever showed less of the merely emotional saintly character 'meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly.'"
To get the real charm of St. Teresa's writings, one must read her letters, and from those it is almost impossible to take such selections as might be included in the brief space allowed here. Fortunately they have come to us as she wrote them. Fray Luis de Leon was himself literary enough to save them from a worthy father-confessor, who would have "improved upon and polished her periods." The world came near losing the marvellous language of which Crashaw said, "Oh it is not Spanish, but it is Heaven she spoke."