His presentiments were verified: Lope was soon to die; this his feelings foretold, and so prepared him for the event. On the 18th of the same month he rose very early, recited the divine service, said mass in his oratory, watered his garden, and then shut himself up in his study. At mid-day he felt chilled, either from his work among his flowers, or from having, as his servants averred, used the discipline on himself with severity, as was proved by the recent marks of blood being found on the discipline, and staining the walls of the room. Lope was indeed a rigid catholic, as this circumstance proves, and also his refusing to eat any thing but fish, though he had a dispensation to eat meat, and it was ordered him during his indisposition. In the evening he attended a scientific meeting, but being suddenly taken ill, he was obliged to return home. The physicians now gathered round with their prescriptions; and it happened that doctor Juan de Negrete, the king's physician, passed through the street, and he was told that Lope de Vega was indisposed, on which he visited him, not as a doctor, as he had not been called in, but as a friend. He soon perceived his danger, and intimated that it were better that he should take the sacrament, with the usual excuse, that it was a relief to any one in danger, and could only benefit him if he lived. "If you advise this," said Lope "there must be a necessity;" and that same night he received the sacrament. Extreme unction followed but two hours after. He then called for his daughter, and blessed her, and took leave of his friends as one about to make so long a journey; conversing concerning the interests of those left behind, with kindness and piety. He told Montalvan, that virtue was true fame, and that he would exchange all the applause he had received, for the consciousness of having fulfilled one more virtuous deed; and followed up these counsels with prayers and acts of catholic piety. He passed the night uneasily, and expired the next day, weak and worn, but alive to a sense of religion and friendship to the last.
His funeral took place the third day after his death, and was conducted with splendour by the duke of Sesa, the most munificent of his patrons, whom he had named his executor. Don Luis de Usategui, his son-in-law, and a nephew, went as mourners, accompanied by the duke of Sesa and many other grandees and nobles. The clergy of all classes flocked in crowds. The procession attracted a multitude; the windows and balconies were thronged, and the magnificence was such, that a woman going by, exclaimed, "This is a Lope funeral!" ignorant that it was the funeral of Lope himself, and so applying his name as expressive of the excess of all that was splendid. The church was filled with lamentation when at last he was deposited in the tomb. For eight days the religious ceremonies were kept up, and on the ninth, a sermon was preached in his honour, when the church was again crowded with the first people of Spain.
By his will, his daughter, donna Feliciana de Vega, married to don Luis de Usategui, inherited the moderate fortune he left behind. He added in his will a few legacies of pictures, books, and reliques to his friends.
In person Lope de Vega was tall, thin, and well made; dark complexioned, and of a prepossessing countenance; his nose aquiline; his eyes lively and clear; his beard black and thick. He had acquired much agility, and was capable of great personal exertion. He always enjoyed excellent health, being moderate in his tastes, and regular in his habits.
To gather Lope's character from the events of his life, and his accounts of himself, it may be assumed that while young his disposition had all the vivacity of the south—that his passions were ardent, his feelings enthusiastic—that he was heedless and imprudent perhaps, but always amiable and true. Generous to prodigality—pious to bigotry—patriotic to injustice, he was given to extremes, yet he did not possess the higher qualities, the cheerful fortitude, and fearless temper of Cervantes. Time and sorrow softened in after times some portions of his character; but still in his garden, among his flowers and books, he was vivacious, perhaps petulant (for his complaints of neglect are to be attributed to petulancy rather than to a repining temper); warm-hearted, charitable and social, vain he might also be, for that we all are. The activity of his mind resembled more a spontaneous fertility of soil, than the exertion of labour: "plays and poetry were the flowers of his plain," as he says: and this seems an unexaggerated picture of the ease with which he composed. We need scarcely allude to the hypochondria that darkened his last hours, as Montalvan seems to mention it as a mere precursor of death. If it were more, it is only another proof that the mind must not work too hard, while it has this fragile body for its instrument and prop.
In drawing up Lope's character, Montalvan[101] praises him as agreeable and unpresuming in conversation. He was zealous in the affairs of others, careless of his own; kind to his servants, courteous, gallant and hospitable, and exceedingly well bred. His temper, he says, was never ruffled but by those who took snuff before company; with the grey who dyed their locks; with men who, born of women, spoke ill of the sex; with priests who believed in gipsies; and with persons who without intentions of marriage asked others their age. Good taste as well as good feeling is displayed in most of these slight intimations of character: it is to be cleanly to dislike to see snuff taken; it is being unusually just always to speak well of women.
As no writer ever surpassed him in quantity, so it will be impossible to give a full account of his works. We have already mentioned several:—His "Arcadia," the production of his youth, which may be considered the best of such of his writings as are not dramas;—"The Beauty of Angelica," is chiefly remarkable as showing how superior the Italian romantic poets are to any that Spain has produced. The "Dragontea" is another poem of which Sir Francis Drake is the hero, and the poet has not been sparing of vituperation. It is founded on the last expedition of Drake, when, to revenge the armada, and to inflict a deep blow on the Spanish power, injured by the destruction of its fleet, he scoured the Spanish coast, and did immense injury to the shipping. The poem of Lope is very patriotic; the hatred felt in Spain for the English queen was furious and personal; the marriage of Philip II. with bloody queen Mary, having caused much intercourse between the two nations, and the accession of Elizabeth being the signal of our island again falling off from the Roman Catholic faith; all therefore that could be imagined of horror for her heresy and wickedness, and that of her ministers, animated the soul, and directed the pen of Lope.
The "Jerusalem" was his next attempt at an epic; of this Richard Cœur de Lion is the hero, though the English of course are rendered subordinate to the Spaniards. We have not read it. Lord Holland pronounces it a failure; and the critic of the Quarterly observes, "A failure indeed it is, and a total one; the plan, when compared to that of the 'Angelica' is as 'confusion worse confounded,'—it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; neither method, nor purpose, nor proportion; and many of the parts might be extirpated, or, what is more extraordinary, might change places without any injury to the whole. But there is more vigour of thought in it, and more felicity of expression than in any other of his longer poems." And thus Spaniards alone write; with them a poem resembles a pathless jungle: you come to a magnificent tree, a wild and balmy breathing flower, a mossy pathway, and clear bubbling fountain; and beside these objects you linger a moment, but soon you plunge again among tangled underwood and uncultivated interminable wilds. When Lope takes a subject in hand he does not follow it up as a traveller who has a bourne in view; but he scrambles up every mountain, visits every waterfall, and plunges into every cavern; and like a tourist without a guide in an unknown country, he often loses his way, and often leads his reader a wild chase after objects, which, when reached, were not worth visiting.
This prodigality of verse, which caused him to be named the Potosi of rhymes, was indulged in to the utmost, when, on the canonisation of St. Isidro, he entered into the lists to win the prize instituted for poems in celebration of the event. Isidro had been elevated into a saint at the solicitation of Philip III., who had been cured of a fever by the body of the defunct miracle-maker being brought to him. Every Spanish poet of the age, and they were all but innumerable, entered the lists. There are two volumes of Lope's productions, some in his own name, consisting of a sort of epic, composed in quintillas, or stanzas of five short lines each, a measure more suited to the genius of the Spanish language than longer ones; and a play, and a vast quantity of lyrics given under the name of Burguillos. These were all burlesque; but subsequently Lope continued to adopt the name, and published several poems under it, among others, the "Gatomaquia, or War of Cats," a mock heroic, which is a great favourite in Spain. The "Corona Tragica," a poem written on the death of Mary, queen of Scots, brought him an increase of reputation: it is bigoted to the excess of blind Spanish inquisitorial bigotry, and, except in a few passages, does not rise above mediocrity. It is impossible to give even a cursory account of Lope's lyrics and sacred poems. The best of the former are to be found in the "Arcadia" and the "Dorotea."
But it is not on any of these productions that the reputation of Lope really rests. That was founded on his theatre, and on that it must continue to subsist. There he showed himself master of his art: original, fecund, national, universal, true and spirited, he produced a form of dramatic writing that, to this day, rules the stage of every country of the world.