The terms in which his friends speak of him, prove that the honesty and integrity of his disposition, and his great understanding, inspired them with love and veneration; for, though their language be exaggerated, still it bears marks of sincerity. A friend and disciple writing his life, soon after his death, speaks of him as "the greatest man that not only Spain, but the world ever saw." He laments his brief career, as he names sixty-six years; but his praises being written in the excess of the culto style, it is impossible almost to understand—quite impossible to translate them. In this style the literal translation only offers nonsense: there is a hidden meaning which is to be guessed at, and that, so metaphoric and obscure, that it very much resembles a Chinese puzzle—difficult to put together, and, when, discovered and arranged, not worth the trouble. The cultoristos themselves nourished unbounded contempt for any thing that was at all explicable to common understandings in a common manner.
It is remarkable that in the early poetry of Gongora there is no trace of this style which he afterwards invented (as his followers called it), and insisted upon as a prodigy of good taste and poetic genius. His early poetry is peculiarly simple and plain. He wrote redondillas or seguidillas in the old Spanish style, on the most common-place topics, which yet he treats with spirit and power; others of his poems are softly pathetic; but all are written without inflation—without conceits, but with all that fire and brilliancy—that gaiety and poignancy which characterised his vivid imagination. Of the first mentioned, those that even verge on the common-place, we may mention the "Child's Address to his Sister," as to how they should amuse themselves on a holiday; in which he describes the pleasures of Spanish children, with infinite vivacity and nature. The subject of another, is the story of Hero and Leander. He transforms the hero and heroine of this romantic love story, into two poor peasants—she too poor to buy a lantern, he to hire a boat. The catastrophe, the last swimming of Leander, his coming to the dreary, stormy sea beach, and his throwing himself in—though tarnished by vulgarisms, is lively and picturesque. In all that he wrote there was fire and spirit, facility and a diction truly poetic. One of his sweetest lyrics is the "Song of Catherine of Arragon," lamenting her sad destiny; it will prepossess the reader in favour of Gongora's pure style, and we therefore quote the translation of Dr. Bowring:—
"THE SONG OF CATHERINE OF ARRAGON.
"O take a lesson, flowers! from me,
How in a dawn all charms decay—
Less than my shadow doomed to be,
Who was a wonder yesterday.
I, with the early twilight born,
Found ere the evening shades, a bier,
And I should die in darkness lorn,
But that the moon is shining here.
So must ye die—though ye appear
So fair—and night your curtain be;
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
My fleeting being was consoled
When the carnation met my view:
One hurrying day my doom has told—
Heaven gave that lovely flower but two.
Ephemeral monarch of the wold—
I clad in gloom—in scarlet he;
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
The jasmin, sweetest flower of flowers,
The soonest is its radiance fled;
It scarce perfumes as many hours
As there are starbeams round its head.
If living amber fragrance shed,
The jasmine sure its shrine must be:
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
The bloody-warrior fragrance gives,
It towers unblushing, proud and gay;
More days than other flowers it lives,
It blooms through all the days of May.
I'd rather like a shade decay,
Than such a gaudy being be:
O take a lesson, flowers! from me."
The following song, sent with flowers, and asking from his lady a kiss for every sting he received while gathering them, is tender and elegant:—
"From my summer alcove, which the stars this morn
With lucid pearls o'erspread,
I've gathered these jessamines, thus to adorn
With a wreath thy graceful head.
From thy bosom and mouth, they, as flowers, ere death,
Ask a purer white, anti a sweeter breath.