Such was the reputation that Montemayor acquired by this romance, that the queen of Portugal was desirous that he should return to his native country. He was, accordingly, recalled, and nothing more is known of him than that it is supposed that he died a violent death[29],—where, even, is not known; for some say in Portugal, some in Italy: the dates tolerably agree, those named being 1561 and 1562, so that he was scarcely more than forty at the time of his death.
[29]Sedano tells us that the queen Catalina of Portugal, on recalling him, conferred on him an honourable situation in the royal household. The date of his death is ascertained through an elegy which is printed in all the editions of the "Diana;" and which mentions that he died in 1562.
[CASTILLEJO]
To give a catalogue raisonnée of all the poets that flourished in Spain in this age would be of little avail, as little is known of them and their poetry: though much of it is beautiful, and much more of it agreeable, it does not bear the stamp of the originality and genius necessary to form an era in literature. Sedano gives brief notices of some of them. From him we learn that Fernando de Acuna, a nobleman of Portuguese extraction, a distinguished courtier in the court, a gallant soldier in the camp of Charles V., was also an intimate friend of Garcilaso de la Vega, and imitated him and Boscan in the style of his poetry. He died in Granada about the year 1580. There is elegance, and a certain degree of originality in his poems. Sedano almost places him above his friend Garcilaso. He mingled the Italian and old Spanish styles together, introducing metres more adapted to the Castilian language than the terzets of his predecessors, being shorter, more airy, and more graceful.
Gil Polo, a native of Valentia, flourished about the year 1550. He continued the Diana of Montemayor, and called his work "La Diana Enamorada." He is chiefly famous for the praise that Cervantes bestows on him, when in "Don Quixote" the curate says to the barber "Take as much care of Gil Polo's work, as if it were written by Apollo himself." Posterity has not confirmed this preference, and it is chiefly praised for elegance and purity of style.
Cetina, an anacreontic poet of merit, also finds a place in the "Parnaso Español." The same honour is not bestowed on Castillejo, who, however, deserves peculiar mention as the great partisan of the old Castilian style, and the antagonist of Boscan. Cristoval Castillejo flourished also in the time of Charles V., in whose service he went to Vienna, remaining there as secretary to Ferdinand I.; as, notwithstanding, the imperial crown of Germany was separated from the regal one of Spain, on the death of Charles V., there continued to subsist for some years intimate relations between the courts of Vienna and Madrid. The greater part of Castillejo's poems were written at Vienna, and are full of allusions to the gaieties of the court. He admired and celebrates a young German lady, named Schomburg, whose barbaric appellation he translates into Xomburg. Late in life he returned to Spain, became a Cistercian monk, and died in a convent in 1596.
Some Spanish critics raise Castillejo to a high rank among the poets of that nation, while others give him a juster place, and perceive that it was the want of strength to soar beyond, that led him, in his own compositions, to confine himself to the old coplas, and want of penetration that made him so violent an enemy of those whom he named the Petrarquistas. His satires against them are witty, and not without some justice; and certainly prolixity is a fault to be attributed to these poets he attacks. He begins with the true Spanish taste for persecution, exclaiming,—
As the holy Inquisition
Is apt, with saintly diligence,
To make eager perquisition,
And punish too with violence,
Each novel heresy and sect,
I would that it were found correct
To castigate in native Spain
A heresy as bad as any
That Luther, to our grief and pain,
Has introduced in Germany.
The Anabaptists' crime they share,
And well deserve their punishment:
Petrarchists—the new name they bear,
Which they assume with bad intent;
And they are renegades most fierce
To the old Castilian measure;
Believing in Italian verse.
Finding there more grace and pleasure.[30]
Upon this, he institutes a ghostly tribunal, presided over by Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other ancient poets, before whom Bosean and Garcilaso are forced to appear—of course, to their utter discomfiture and disgrace. While it is impossible to accede to this sentence, and while we must look on Castillejo as an inferior poet, he merits great praise within the boundaries which he prescribes himself. His lyrics are light, airy, graceful; and though they possess a fault little known in Spain—that of levity,—this defect is with him akin to that animation and wit which is the proper charm of poetry of this class.