1588.
Ætat.
26.
Almost immediately after he became a soldier, and joined the Invincible Armada.
The causes of this apparent freak are differently represented. Montalvan attributes it chiefly to his grief on losing his wife. In the eclogue to Claudio, which Lope writes with the avowed intention of recording the events of his early life, but in which he mentions no adventures anterior to this period, he speaks of being banished from Filis, and that he sought relief from his tender sorrows by changing climate and element; and Mars coming to his aid, he marched to Lisbon with the Castilian troops, with a musket on his shoulder, and tore up for cartridges the verses he had written in his mistress's praise. In several of his sonnets also he gives the same reason for his military career.[83]
It is the fashion of the present day to ransack every hidden corner of a man's life, and to bring to light all the errors and follies which he himself would have wished to consign to oblivion. A writer offers a fairer mark than any other for these inquiries, as we can always fancy at least that we trace something of the man himself in his works, and so form a tissue of some sort from these patchwork materials; Lope felt this, and in one of his epistles, laments that by publishing his verses, he has perpetuated the memory of his follies. "My love-verses," he says, "were the tender error of my youth; would I could cover them in oblivion! Those poets do well who write in enigmas, since they are not injured by the hidden." We do not know that we should have enlarged on this portion of his life, but for some conjectures given in the article before quoted in the eighteenth volume of the "Quarterly Review." The author of that article, in mentioning Lope's second marriage, says, "Lope speaks of this marriage as a happy one; yet among the sonnets there are two which may excite a suspicion that his heart was placed on another object. The inference from the first of these poems is, that he did not love the woman whom he married; and from the second that he had formed a miserable attachment to the wife of another man. This last inference will be much strengthened if there be any reason for supposing that he shadowed out his own character in the 'Dorotea;' one of the most singular, and, unless such a supposition be admitted, the most unaccountable of all his works."
Taking it for granted that these sonnets and the 'Dorotea' refer to himself, we think there is every proof to show that they allude to his early life, his first marriage, and all those subsequent disasters, to fly from which he embarked on board the Armada. Certainly great obscurity hangs over the period of his first marriage, and the causes of his long exile at Valencia. His antagonist in the duel was a man of no consequence, and merely wounded; so, although that duel might have occasioned him to fly, it would not have forced so protracted an absence. He does not allude to any of these circumstances in his eclogue to Claudio. In his epistle to doctor Gregorio de Angulo he seems to imply that being married, he loved another woman, or that he was not happy in his first marriage.[84] Montalvan, in speaking of his flight to Valencia, mentions, in addition to the duel, youthful scrapes, which his enemies took that opportunity of bringing against him.[85] In a funeral eulogium, written on Lope by don Joseph Pellicer, there are these expressions:—"The excellent qualities of Lope excited the animosity of several powerful enemies, who forced him several times to become a wanderer. His pen was his faithful companion in his disasters and exile, and secured him shelter and welcome in distant provinces."[86]
Putting all these circumstances and hints together, it is plain that Lope suffered a good deal of adversity at this time. His illustrious patron, the duke of Alva, died soon after his marriage. When the duel and other circumstances caused him to fly, he had no powerful friend to assist him, but was driven to absent himself even for years. During so long a separation from home, and being only about four-and-twenty at this period, it is not impossible nor strange that he should have formed an unfortunate attachment.
The sonnets Mr. Southey mentions, and which he translates, are the following:—
"Seven long and tedious years did Jacob serve,
And short had been the term if it had found
Its end desired. To Leah he was bound,
And must by service of seven more deserve
His Rachael.—Thus will strangers lightly swerve
From their pledged word. Yet Time might well repay
Hope's growing debt, and Patience might be crowned,
And the slow season of expectance passed,
True Love with ample recompense at last,
Requite the sorrows of this hard delay.
Alas for me—to whose unhappy doom,
No such blest end appears! Ill fate is his,
Who hopes for Rachael in the world to come,
And chained to Leah drags his life in this."[87]
"When snows before the genial breath of spring
Dissolve—and our great Mother reassumes
Her robe of green; the meadow breathes perfumes,
Loud sings the thrush, the birds are on the wing,
The fresh grass grows, the young lambs feed at will.
But not to thee, my heart, doth nature bring
The joy that this sweet season should instil:
Thou broodest alway on thy cherished ill.
Absence is no sore grief—it is a glass,
Wherein true love from falsehood may be known;
Well may the pain be borne which hath an end;
But woe to him whose ill-placed hopes attend
Another's life, and who till that shall pass
In hopeless expectation wastes his own."[88]
These sonnets are two among many, all addressed to a lady whom he calls Lucinda. Generally speaking, they treat only of her cruelty and his sufferings: there is no date given to certify at what period they were written; but they were published in 1604, during the life of his second wife—with whom there is every proof that he lived in harmony, and he would never have pained her by publishing his desire for her death. This circumstance renders it conclusive that they referred to the passions of his youth.