With John II., who reigned from 1407 to 1454, began a brighter æra. Politically, his reign was disastrous and stormy. The monarchy was threatened with destruction, and the king had not sufficient firmness to make himself respected. His love of poetry and learning, sympathised in by many of his nobles, secured him, however, the affections of his adherents; and in the midst of civil commotion, despite his deficiency of resolution, there gathered round him a court faithful to his cause, and civilised by its love of letters. The marquess of Villena had already distinguished himself; he was so celebrated for his acquirements in natural and metaphysical knowledge that he came to be looked on as a magician. He was admired also as a poet. He wrote an allegorical drama, which was represented at court. He translated the Æneid, and extended his patronage and protection to other poets by instituting floral games. To instruct them, he wrote a sort of Art of Poetry, termed La Gaya Ciencia. In it he praises, as Petrarch had done at the Neapolitan court, the uses of poetry. "So great," he says, "are the benefits derived from this science on civil life, banishing indolence and employing noble minds in useful inquiries, that other nations have sought and established among themselves schools for this art, so that it became spread through various parts of the world." The zeal of this noble elevated the art he protected; he inspired others, as well born as himself, with equal enthusiasm, and was the patron of those less fortunate in worldly advantages. He died at Madrid in 1434.
His friend and pupil, the marquess of Santillana, was a better poet. Quintana remarks of him that "he was one of the most generous and valiant knights that adorned his age. A learned man, an easy and sweet love poet, just and serious in sentiment." His elegy on the death of the marquess of Villena is the most celebrated of his poems. Other names occur of less note. Jorge Manrique, who has left a fragment of poetry more purely written than belongs to his age. Garci Sanchez of Badajos, and Marcias. This last is less known for his poetry, of which we possess only four songs, than for his melancholy death. He loved one who refused to, or, disdaining, him, married another. But still he was unable to conquer his fatal attachment. The husband obtained that he should be thrown into prison; but this did not suffice for his vengeance, nor are we surprised when we know the delicate sense of connubial honour entertained by the Spaniards. He, the husband, concerted with the alcaide of the tower in which Marcias was imprisoned, and found means to throw his lance at him as he stood at a window. Marcias was at this moment singing one of the songs he had composed upon the lady of his love; the lance pierced him to the heart, and he died with the tale of passion still hovering on his lips. These circumstances, and probably the enthusiastic and amiable qualities of the poet, rendered him an object of reverence and regret to his countrymen. He was surnamed the Enemorado, and his name, grown into a proverb, is still the synonyme in Spain for a martyr to devoted love. His contemporary, Juan de Mena, has commemorated his death in some of the sweetest and most poetic verses of his Labyrinto.
[Juan de Mena] is often called the Ennius of Spain. He is the most renowned of the writers of that early age. He was born at Cordova in about the year 1412. Cordova, the seat of the most famous Moorish university, had just been recovered by the Christians. Juan de Mena was sprung from a respectable though not noble family; at the age of twenty-three he fulfilled some civil office in his native city, of which in after times he spoke with affection, as we find these lines in one of his poems:—
"Thou flower of wisdom and of chivalry,
Cordova, mother mine! forgive thy son,
If in the music of my lyre, no tone
Be sweet and loud enough to honour thee.
Models of wisdom and of bravery
I see reflected through thy annals bright.
I will not praise thee, praise thee though I might.
Lest I of flattery should suspected be."[8]
Juan de Mena studied, however, at the university of Salamanca, and, induced by a love of inquiry and desire to gain knowledge, made a journey to Rome. Sismondi says, "On becoming acquainted with the poetry of Dante, his imagination received no inspiration, and his taste was spoilt. His greatest work is called El Labyrinto, or Las Trescients Coplas; it is an allegory, in tetradactyls, of human life." A man is more likely to be incited by the spirit of his age than a single poem. Dante and his contemporaries had most at heart the instructing of their fellow-creatures. The great Tuscan poet, in his Divina Commedia, had the design of comprehending all human knowledge; and the literary men of those days considered visions the proper poetical mode of conveying the secrets of nature and of morals. It is no wonder that Juan de Mena, whose poetic genius was certainly not of the highest description (it might be compared to that of Bruno Latini, the master of Dante), was more led away by the theories and tenets he must have heard continually discussed in conversation in Italy, and endeavoured, as his highest aim, rather to instruct his countrymen in the mysteries of life and death, nature and philosophy, than to express actions and feelings in such harmonious numbers as he heard frequently carolled among the hills, or sung at night beneath some beauty's window. The romances we now prize, as the genuine and poetic expression of the passions of man, could not in his eyes aspire to the height of the muse, whom he sought to gift with the power of penetrating and explaining the mysteries of life and death—the globe and all that it contains.
In this manner, however, he excited the respect of the patrons of learning. King John and the marquess of Santillana both honoured and loved him; he was named one of the king's historiographers, an institution originating with Alphonso X., and those appointed to it were expected to continue the national chronicles down to their own time. Juan de Mena lived in high favour at the court of John II., and constantly adhered to him. He died in 1456, at Guadalaxara in New Castille, and the marquess of Santillana erected a monument to him.
Quintana speaks of the Labyrinto as "the most interesting monument of Spanish poetry in that age, which left all contemporary writers far behind him." But after all, it is a mere specimen of the poetic art of those days: not like Dante, could be put a human soul into his allegory, which wins and enchants with ever renewing interest, nor adorn visible objects with that truth and delicacy, and vividness of description, in which art Dante has been unsurpassed by any poet of any age or country. Juan de Mena's allegory is heavy, his details tiresome, the interest absolutely null, and his poetical invention, such as it was, subordinate to false learning.
He intends to sing of the vicissitudes of fortune, ruled, as they are, by the seven planets, to whom Providence gives such power. He invokes Apollo and Calliope, and then apostrophises Fortune, asking leave to blame her when she may deserve censure. He then, in imitation of all vision-writers, loses himself, when a lady of wonderful beauty appears, and presents herself to him as his guide. The lady is Providence: she bids him look, and he goes on to describe what he saw:—
Turning my eyes to where she bade me gaze,
Behold, three ponderous wheels I saw within;
And two were still—nor even moved their place;
The other swiftly, round and round, did spin.
Below them on the ground I saw the space
O'erspread by nations vast, who once had been,
And each upon the brow engraven wore
The name and fate the which on earth they bore.
And in one wheel that stood immoveable
I saw the gatherings of a future race;
And that, which to the ground was doomed to fall,
A dark veil cast upon the hideous place,
Covered with all her dead.—I was not able
The meaning of the sight I saw to trace;
So I implored my guide that she would show
The meaning of the vision there below.[9]