l. 15. Carpacio, the Carpathian mountains.
[Page 141].—l. 2. sepoltura, i.e., sepultura.
[LUIS DE ARGOTE Y GÓNGORA]. Góngora is chiefly remembered as the founder of culteranismo, that bombastic and obscure style which invaded Spanish literature at the end of the sixteenth century and which is marked by traits similar to those of Marinism in Italy, of Euphuism in England and of préciosité in France. In his earlier period, Góngora imitated Herrera and wrote poems free from affectation. It is in his later manner that he 369 reaches the height of extravagance in metaphor and that general obscurity of expression which is exemplified by the selection here given from his Soledades. See his verse in vol. XXXII (Poesías líricas del siglo XVI) of the Biblioteca de autores españoles, which is supplemented by unedited poems published by H. Rennert in the Revue hispanique, vol. IV. Cf. also Archdeacon Churton’s Góngora, an Historical and Critical Essay, etc., and the English verse translations there given.
[Page 141].—l. 16. sus ojos, i.e., her beloved.
[Page 143].—l. 1. This first of the Solitudes, although a mass of verbal absurdities, was rendered into English verse by Thomas Stanley; cf. the ed. of the latter’s poems by Brydge (1814).
[Page 144].—l. 6. Quien, etc.: possibly an attack upon Quevedo, at first a vigorous enemy of Gongorism. It may rather apply to Pedro de Valencia, a contemporary scholar, who was one of the first to arraign Góngora for his methods in the Solitudes.
[CONDE DE VILLAMEDIANA]. A noble of the court of Philip IV., and a disciple of Góngora. He is said to have loved the queen—a daughter of Henry IV. of France—and on that account to have been assassinated by order of Philip. The sonnet on [p. 144] may contain an allusion to this love. His verse is printed in vol. II of Líricos del siglo XVI (in the Biblioteca de autores españoles). Cf. Ticknor, III, 23 ff.
[Page 145].—l. 12. Calderón was a courtier constantly attacked by Villamediana.
[VICENTE ESPINEL]. Noted as the author of the picaresque novel Marcos de Obregón, Espinel was also a lyric poet with clear Italian tendencies, as his Diversas rimas, Madrid, 1591, show. He is said to have invented, or at least to have revived the use of the décimas, a form utilized in the letrilla on [p. 146]. Cf. Ticknor, III, 5.
[LOPE FÉLIX DE VEGA CARPIO]. One of the marvels of the modern literary world and one of the greatest writers that Spain has produced. Renowned chiefly as a dramatist of the siglo de oro period, he composed more than two thousand plays of various kinds. As a lyric poet, he possessed talents of the highest order, a fact amply attested by the poems scattered through his dramas and other productions and by those brought together in the volume 370 Obras no dramáticas de Lope de Vega of the Biblioteca de autores españoles. His works are in process of publication by the Spanish Academy, under the editorship of Menéndez y Pelayo. A considerable number of them may be found in four volumes of the Biblioteca de autores españoles. Cf. Barrera’s Nueva biografía de Lope de Vega prefixed to vol. I of the Academy edition; and Ticknor, II, 152 ff.; Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Spanish Literature (New York, 1898), pp. 241 ff.