[213] I have failed to find any example of Silvestre de Espinosa's work.
[214] García Romeo (the name is sometimes given as García Romero) appears to have escaped all the bibliographers.
[215] Romero in Spanish means rosemary. A. B. W.
[216] The Jeromite monk, Pedro de Huete, contributed a sonnet to the Versos espirituales (Cuenca, 1597) of the Dominican friar, Pedro de Encinas.
[217] Pedro de Láinez joined with Cervantes in writing eulogistic verses for Padilla's Jardín espiritual: see note 27. Examples of his skill are given in Pedro Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres de España (1605). Fernández de Navarrete, in his biography of Cervantes, states (p. 116) that Láinez died in 1605: he is warmly praised by Lope de Vega in the Laurel de Apolo (silva iv.).
His widow, Juana Gaitán, lived at Valladolid in the same house as Cervantes and his family: she is mentioned, not greatly to her credit, in the depositions of some of the witnesses examined with reference to the death of Gaspar de Ezpeleta; but too much importance may easily be given to this tittle-tattle. Luisa de Montoya, a very respectable widow, corroborated the evidence of other witnesses who assert that the neighbours gossiped concerning the visits paid to Láinez's widow by the Duque de Pastrana and the Conde de Concentaina—"que venian a tratar de un libro que había compuesto un fulano Laynez, su primer marido."
The contemptuous phrase—un fulano Laynez—would imply that Luisa de Montoya was not a person of literary tastes: she was, however, widow of the chronicler, Esteban de Garibay Zamalloa, author of the Ilustraciones genealogicas de los catholicos reyes de las Españas, y de los christianissimos de Francia, y de los Emperadores de Constantinopla, hasta el Catholico Rey nuestro Señor Don Philipe el II y sus serenissimos hijos (Madrid, 1596). The words—su primer marido—which are likewise used by another witness (Cervantes's niece, Costanza de Ovando), might be taken, if construed literally, to mean that Láinez's widow had married again shortly after her husband's death: for the evidence was taken on June 29, 1605. But, apparently, the inference would be wrong. When examined in jail, to which she was committed with Cervantes and others, Juana Gaitán described herself as over thirty-five years of age, and as the widow of the late Pedro Láinez. She accounted for Pastrana's visits, which had given rise to scandal, by saying that she intended to dedicate to him two books by her late husband, and that Pastrana had merely called to thank her in due form. A reference to Pastrana in the Viaje del Parnaso (cap. viii.) seems to suggest that Pastrana was a munificent patron:—
Desde allí, y no sé cómo, fuí traído
Adonde ví al gran Duque de Pastrana
Mil parabienes dar de bien venido;
Y que la fama en la verdad ufana
Contaba que agradó con su presencia,
Y con su cortesía sobrehumana:
Que fué nuevo Alejandro en la excelencia
Del dar, que satisfizo á todo cuanto
Puede mostrar real magnificencia.
It is a little unlucky that these works by Láinez, concerning the publication of which the author's zealous widow consulted Pastrana, should not after all have found their way into print. For details of the evidence in the Ezpeleta case, see Dr. Pérez Pastor's Documentos Cervantinos hasta ahora inéditos (Madrid, 1902), vol. ii., pp. 455-527.
[218] Francisco de Figueroa, el Divino, was born at Alcalá de Henares in 1536 and is conjectured to have died as late as 1620. Very little is known of this distinguished poet. He is said to have served as a soldier in Italy where his verses won him so high a reputation that he was compared to Petrarch. He married Doña María de Vargas on February 14, 1575, at Alcalá de Henares, and travelled with the Duque de Terranova through the Low Countries in 1597. After this date he disappears. He is stated to have died at Lisbon, and to have directed that all his poems should be burned. Such of them as were saved were published at Lisbon in 1626 by Luis Tribaldos de Toledo. As noted in the Introduction (p. xxxi. n. 2) to the present version, Figueroa is the Tirsi of the Galatea. There is a strong family likeness between the poems of Figueroa and those of the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre, whose verses were issued by Quevedo in 1631. So marked is this resemblance that, as M. Ernest Mérimée has written:—"Un critique, que le paradoxe n'effraierait point, pourrait, sans trop de peine, soutenir l'identité de Francisco de la Torre et de Francisco de Figueroa." See his admirable Essai sur la vie et les œuvres de Francisco de Quevedo (Paris, 1886), p. 324.