1595-1669.
The vast number of poets who flourished in Spain at this epoch renders the task of furnishing the biography of even a selection from among them, hopeless. When we turn to the "Laurel de Apolo" of Lope de Vega, and see stanza after stanza devoted to different poets; and when, in the "Voyage to Parnassus" of Cervantes we find poets rain in showers, we give up the task as hopeless—especially when we are told that, although many of those so brought forward are unknown, many there are, who wrote well, who are not mentioned at all in these works.
Poetry was then the fashion; and it was easy to spin many hundred lines with few ideas, and those few common-place, though pretty and graceful. Despotism and the inquisition gave the creative or literary spirit of Spain no other outlet. Thought was forbidden. Description, moral reflection, where no originality nor boldness was admitted, and love and sentiment,—these were all the subjects that Spanish poets rung the changes on, till we wonder where they found fresh words for the same thoughts. In any longer poems they wholly failed: and the only compositions we read with pleasure are songs, madrigals, redondillas, and romances, which are often fresh and sparkling—warm from the heart, either dancing with animal spirits or soft with pathetic tenderness. Among the writers of such, none excelled Vicente Espinel. The following is a specimen, and may be taken as an example of that style of Spanish poetry, simple, feeling and elegant, which preceded the innovations of the refined school. It is taken from Dr. Bowring's translation, and is good, though not comparable to the charming simplicity of the original:—
"A thousand, thousand times, I seek[104]
My lovely maid;
But I am silent still—afraid
That if I speak,
The maid might frown, and then my heart would break.
I've oft resolved to tell her all,
But dare not—what a woe 't would be
From doubtful favour's smiles to fall
To the harsh frown of certainty.
Her grace, her music cheers me now;
The dimpled roses on her cheek;
But fear restrains my tongue—for how,
How should I speak,
When, if she frown'd, my troubled heart would break?
No, rather I'll conceal my story
In my full heart's most secret cell:
For though I feel a doubtful glory,
I 'scape the certainty of hell.
I lose, 't is true—the bliss of heaven,—
I own my courage is but weak,—
That weakness may be well forgiven,
For should she speak
In words ungentle—O, my heart would break!"
Vicente Espinel was born at Ronda, a city of Granada, in the year 1544. He was of poor parentage, and left his native town early to seek his fortunes. A countryman, don Francisco Pacheco, bishop of Malaga, so far favoured as to ordain him, and he became a beneficiary of the church at Ronda. He sought better preferment at court, but met with no success, either in his own native place nor out of it. In Ronda itself he had enemies, who pursued him with such calumnies and malignity that he withdrew into a sort of voluntary exile, which, loving Granada as he did, he bitterly lamented. He was at first a friend, and then an attacker, of Cervantes, which circumstance does not redound to his credit.[105] Lope de Vega speaks of his poetry with the approbation it deserved. He was a musician as well as a poet, and added a fifth string to the Spanish guitar. He died poor and in obscurity at Madrid, in 1634, in the ninetieth year of his age. He describes himself in some spirited and comic verses, as singularly ugly—a tub with a priest's cap at top, a monster of fat;—large face, short neck, short arms, each hand looking like a tortoise, slow of foot: "whoever sees me," he says, "so fat and reverend-looking, might think that I were a rich and idle epicure.—What a pretty figure for a poet!"
Another writer of the natural school; named the Anacreon of Spain, more easy, sweet and spirited even than Vicente Espinel, was Estévan Manuel de Villegas. He was born in the city of Nagera of Naxera, in the province or Rioja, in Old Castile, in the year 1595. He was of a noble and distinguished family. He spent his boyish years at Madrid. At fourteen he was entered in the university of Salamanca, and studied the law. His tastes inclined him, however, to the more agreeable parts of literature: he was a proficient in Latin and Greek; and, at fourteen, translated from Anacreon and Horace; and at the same time wrote original anacreontics, which he published in 1618, in his twenty-third year.
On the death of his father, he returned to Nagera, to assist his widowed mother, and attend to the interests of his estate. Here, in retirement and peace, he dedicated himself to the acquirement of knowledge and the cultivation of poetry. He married, in the year 1626, donna Antonia de Leyva Villodas, a beautiful and distinguished lady. Having six children, he endeavoured, by means of powerful friends, to obtain some employment that might add to his scanty income, and give him leisure at the same time to prosecute various designs in literature and poetry which he projected on a large scale, but he only succeeded in being appointed to a place of slight importance and emolument "Thus," says Sedano, "this great man was, in common with almost every other person of eminence, pursued by adversity, which was the cause that his talents did not shine as brilliantly as they might have done, and that his name has not come down with due celebrity to our days." At last, giving up hope of worldly advancement, he retired to his estate, where he died in 1669, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
Although the conceits, the fashion of the age, sometimes deteriorate from Villegas's poetry, he has more natural facility, added to classical correctness, than almost any other Spanish poet. His verses flow on with elegance and softness, joined to a nature and feeling quite enchanting. His translations of Anacreon have the simplicity and pure unencumbered expression of the original; that of the "Dove" breathes Anacreon himself. For the sake of the Spanish reader it is appended at the bottom of the page[106], and he can compare it with the Greek, and perceive that Anacreon never found poet so capable of transfusing into another language the vivacity, and grace of his lyrics.