Bouterwek intimates, that the art of printing was first practised in Spain by German printers at Seville, in the beginning of the sixteenth century. (Bouterwek, Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, (Göttingen, 1801-17,) band iii. p. 98.)—He appears to have been misled by a solitary example quoted from Mayans y Siscar. The want of materials has more than once led this eminent critic to build sweeping conclusions on slender premises.
[40] The title of the book is "Certamen poetich en lohor de la Concecio," Valencia, 1474, 4to. The name of the printer is wanting. Mendez, Typographia Española, p. 56.
[41] Ibid., pp. 61-63.
[42] Mendez, Typographia Española, pp. 52, 53.—Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 138, 139.
[43] Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 13, art. 1.
"Adempto per inquisitiones," says Tacitus of the gloomy times of Domitian, "et loquendi audiendique commercio." (Vita Agricolae, sec. 2.) Beaumarchais, in a merrier vein, indeed, makes the same bitter reflections. "Il s'est établi dans Madrid un système de liberté sur la vente des productions, qui s'étend même a celles de la presse; et que, pourvu que je ne parle en mes écrits ni de l'autorité, ni de culte, ni de la politique, ni de la morale, ni des gens en place, ni des corps en crédit, ni de l'Opéra, ni des autres spectacles, ni de personne qui tienne à quelque chose, je puis tout imprimer librement, sous l'inspection de deux ou trois censeurs," Mariage de Figaro, acte 5, sc. 3.
CHAPTER XX.
CASTILIAN LITERATURE.—ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.—LYRICAL POETRY.-THE DRAMA.
This Reign an Epoch in Polite Letters.—Romances of Chivalry.—Ballads or Romances.—Moorish Minstrelsy.—"Cancionero General."—Its Literary Value.—Rise of the Spanish Drama.—Criticism on "Celestina."—Encina.— Naharro.—Low Condition of the Stage.—National Spirit of the Literature of this Epoch.
Ornamental or polite literature, which, emanating from the taste and sensibility of a nation, readily exhibits its various fluctuations of fashion and feeling, was stamped in Spain with the distinguishing characteristics of this revolutionary age. The Provencal, which reached such high perfection in Catalonia, and subsequently in Aragon, as noticed in an introductory chapter, [1] expired with the union of this monarchy with Castile, and the dialect ceased to be applied to literary purposes altogether, after the Castilian became the language of the court in the united kingdoms. The poetry of Castile, which throughout the present reign continued to breathe the same patriotic spirit, and to exhibit the same national peculiarities that had distinguished it from the time of the Cid, submitted soon after Ferdinand's death to the influence of the more polished Tuscan, and henceforth, losing somewhat of its distinctive physiognomy, assumed many of the prevalent features of continental literature. Thus the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella becomes an epoch as memorable in literary, as in civil history.