The Later Renaissance :: CHAPTER XIII. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER XIII. CONCLUSION.

The wealth of the period which we here call the Later Renaissance makes the task of giving the results of a survey of its manifold activities one of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, sufficiently easy to point out the common element of the time—namely, the revival or the development of the literary genius of Spain, England, and France, under the influence of the classic models, and of Italy. In Italy itself the classic impulse had been felt earlier and had borne its best fruits before the middle of the sixteenth century. The time there was one of decadence. Tasso and Giordano Bruno are unquestionably, though in widely different ways, writers of original force. But the author of the Jerusalem Delivered was a survivor,—one, too, who had lived into an unhappy time. His weakness of health and character may have—or rather must have—made him suffer with exaggerated acuteness from the forces which were weighing on the intellect of Italy. Yet on that very account he shows only the more clearly the exhaustion of the race, and the deadening influence of the Roman Catholic revival. As for Bruno, interesting, and in a way attractive, figure as he is, it is doubtful whether he can be said to have had any literary influence at all. His modern fame is even not quite legitimate, since he owes it in some measure to the circumstances of his death. In his own age he fell rapidly into obscurity. He also had lived into an unhappy time, though he bore himself in it very differently from Tasso. Too Italian to reconcile himself to Calvinism or Lutheranism, too independent in mind to be an obedient son of the Church, from the moment he was asked for more than mere outward conformity to ceremonies, he was destined to be crushed between hammer and anvil in an age of religious strife. There was no room for independence of mind in Italy, and there was to be none for long, as the lives of Galileo and of Fra Paolo Sarpi were to show. It required all the power, and the strong political anti-papal spirit of Venice, to preserve Fra Paolo. In literature nothing was any longer quite safe except the more or less elegant presentment of harmless matter. Tasso did the utmost which it was now allowed to an Italian poet to achieve. Beyond him there could only be mere echo, as in the case of Guarini. Beyond Guarini the downward path of Italian literature led only to the preciosities and affectations of Marini.

The difficulty of summing up and defining becomes really sensible when an attempt has to be made to estimate the different ways, and the different degrees, in which the influence of the Renaissance made itself felt in Spain, England, and France. In all three countries it met a strong national genius which it could stimulate, but could not affect in essentials. Garcilaso, Spenser, and Ronsard were all equally intent on making a new poetry for their countries, and all three succeeded. Yet they remained respectively a Spaniard, an Englishman, and a Frenchman, and in their works were as unlike one another as they were to their common models.

It is, I think, fairly accurate to say that the Renaissance influenced each of the three Western countries with increasing force in the order in which they are arranged here. Spain felt it least and France most. The case is emphatically one for the use of the distinguo. When we wish to measure the influence which one literature has had on another, it is surely very necessary to keep the form and the spirit well apart. When only the bulk of what was written, and the bare form, and the mere language, are allowed for, then it is obvious that the Renaissance did affect Spain very much. The hendecasyllabic, the prevailing use of the double rhyme, the ottava rima, the capitolo, and the canzone, were all taken by the Spaniards with slavish fidelity. The very close connection between the languages and the peoples may have made this minute imitation inevitable. Again, it is not to be denied that Italian had a marked influence on literary Castilian as it was written in the later sixteenth century. Very strict critics have noted the presence of Italian constructions in Cervantes. The point is not one on which I care to speak as having authority, and for two reasons. Experience only increases my sense of the danger of expressing opinions as to what is legitimate in a language which is not one’s own—and even in one which is. Then, too, before a new phrase is condemned for being foreign, we have to settle the preliminary questions, Was it taken from a sister tongue or not? Was it superfluous or not? The Spaniard who wishes to say, “Of two things the one,” &c., and who uses the words “De dos cosas, una,” is guilty of a Gallicism, and is wrong, because his own Castilian supplies him with the terser and equally lucid formula, “De dos, una.” Yet the French original might have been taken with profit, and very legitimately, if it had been wanted, since it comes from a kindred tongue, and does no violence to the genius of Spanish. Such a word as “reliable” is an offence mainly because it is displacing an excellent equivalent, and because in itself it is a barbarism only to be excused on the ground of necessity.

Yet while noting that Italian models were profusely imitated in Spain and Portugal, and that Castilian was perfected as a literary instrument by Italian influence, we can still maintain that the Renaissance bore less fruit in the Peninsula than in France or England. By “fruit” we ought to mean not mere writing, be its mechanical dexterity what it may, but that combination of form and matter which makes literature, and which before we can call it “national” must savour of the qualities of some one race. Now, when we look at the literary activity of the Peninsula during the Golden Age, we can find very little which will stand the triple test in matter, form, and national character, and of which we can yet say that it shows the spirit of the Renaissance. Portugal can be left aside with the due passing salute to the great name, and the real, though hardly proportionate, merit of Camoens. What else we find there[122] is no more than a somewhat weaker version of the learned poetry of Spain, of which it has to be said that it might be deducted without reducing the place of Spanish literature in the world. All men who have written well are entitled to their honour. They were skilful workmen, and that too in no mean matter. Yet there is a wide difference between the man of whom we can say that if he had never taken pen in hand, his form and his matter might yet be found in equal perfection elsewhere and in foreign tongues, and that other of whom we are bound to say that if he had remained silent then something would have been missing which no other race could have supplied. Now, if Boscan had never taken the advice of Navagiero, if Garcilaso had never written, if all the learned poets had remained silent, then Spain would not have shown her capacity to produce men who could handle Italian metres competently—and yet her place in the literature of the world would be essentially what it is. The Celestina, from which, through the Novela de PÍcaros, came Le Sage and Smollett and Dickens, would remain, and so would the Amadis of Gaul, the romances, the comedia, Don Quixote, the great adventurers, and Santa Teresa—all in short that makes Spain in literature.

And now, allowing that there was something Spanish which found adequate expression in the Golden Age, and is also the best of the national literature, there comes the difficulty, which I dread to find insuperable, of finding a definition of that something. To say that there is Spanish quality in las cosas de EspaÑa, and that this is why they are Spanish, is the explanation of MoliÈre’s doctors. Again, it is mere reasoning in a circle to begin by taking it for granted that the learned poets who copied the Italian forms were not truly Spanish, and that therefore Spain was not in essentials influenced by the Renaissance. Either form of absurdity is to be avoided. Perhaps the only way of escape lies in defining what we mean by the spirit of the Renaissance. Without professing to be equal to so great a task, it is permissible to assert that there are certain notes which we describe as of the Renaissance, and to which the Italian, the Frenchman, or the Englishman gave expression in forms proper to himself. A love of beauty, a sense of joy, a vehement longing for strong expressions of individual character and of passion, a delight in the exercise of a bold, inquisitive intellect—all these, and the reaction from them, which is a deep melancholy, are the notes of the Renaissance. In the learned poetry of Spain they are rarely heard. The commonplaces of form, with here and there a piety and patriotism which are mediÆval and Spanish, are given in their stead. Therefore it is quite fair to say that the Spaniard was not greatly influenced by the Renaissance—that there was something in it not congenial to him.

There remains the difficulty of saying exactly what is the Spanish quality of the true cosas de EspaÑa. Mr Ford, who knew the flavour well, gave it a name—the borracha—which, being interpreted, is the wine-skin, and the smack it lends to the juice of the grape. The Spaniards say that there are three natural perfumes, and the first of them is the smell of the dry earth after rain. The borracha, and the pungent scent of the “dura tellus IberiÆ” when wet, are not to everybody’s taste. Neither is their equivalent in literature, except where we find it purified and humanised by the genius of Cervantes. There has at all times been little love of beauty in the Spaniard, and not much faculty for ideal perfection of form. His greatest painting is realistic, the exact forcible rendering of the things seen with the eye of the flesh, selected, arranged, kept in their proper proportions in the picture, but rarely imagined. The things seen need not be the vulgar realities of life only. Velasquez is every whit as real in his presentment of the frigid dignity of the King, or in the “Lances,” as he is in the “Spinners” or the “Water-Seller.” Zurbaran’s friars are perfectly real, and their ecstatic devotion was also chose vue. It is the extent of his range of vision which gives Velasquez his solitary eminence among Spanish painters. Among their brother artists, the men of letters, there is the same faculty for seeing and reproducing the common life, though this must be understood to include that devotion to the Church which was far from being the least genuine thing in Spain. All did not see with the same breadth of vision. A Velasquez is rare. It is comparatively easy to be Zurbaran. As a rule the Spaniard could express types better than individuals. The jealous husband, the adventurer, heroic as in Amadis, or rascally as in Lazarillo, a rigid ideal of honour, an orthodox pattern of piety, are what the Spaniard gives us—these, and the stirring action of which they form a part. He drew from the world he saw around him, and fitted his materials into a pattern for the stage, or for the story. The goÛt du terroir, the essentially Spanish borracha, is on it all. The flavour is not delicate. There is little gaiety in the Spaniard, but instead of it a hard jocularity. He very rarely says the profound and universally true thing. It would be hard to make a collection of “beauties” from his literature. In so far as he has helped the general literature of the world, it has been by supplying a model of machinery for the play and the prose story. Therefore his literature stands apart in the modern world. If you are to enjoy it you must be prepared to be satisfied with the action, the ideal of honour, the enthusiastic piety which he can give. And to enjoy them you must read them in his own Castilian. All translation is as the back of the tapestry, but no original loses more than does the Spaniard when he is divested of his own language and lets slip the merits of its terse gravity, its varied picturesque force.

In Spain, then, the Renaissance met something on which it could secure no hold, something in a sense barbarous, not quite European, and recalcitrant to all classic influences. In England it met a strong national genius, but not one which was entirely alien. Sidney, Spenser, and Marlowe showed the influence of the Renaissance, not as mere imitators of forms, but as Englishmen, and yet fully. In Shakespeare it was included with much more. Its love of beauty and its sense of form were never better expressed than in the lyrics. The difference between the two nations is profound. The Spaniard either copied the mere form, or produced what one feels would have come as a natural growth from the Middle Ages, the Libro de CaballerÍas, the Novela de PÍcaros, the Auto Sacramental, and even the comedia, in which no trace of the classic influence is to be seen. A drama which is in no sense classic might have developed from the morality and the farce. As much might be said of the form of the English drama. Seneca might have been forgotten, and Tansillo might never have written (without Seneca he never would have written as he did), as far as the construction of the English play is concerned. But then much of the Renaissance spirit did pass into Elizabethan literature. We could not deduct what it shared with Italy without fatal loss. The genius of Spenser could perhaps have dispensed with a teacher, but as a matter of fact it did not. With no model save Chaucer he would yet have been one of the greatest of poets. He would not have been exactly the poet he was without Ariosto, Tasso, and Du Bellay. Shakespeare had, of all sons of Adam, the least need to borrow, and yet without the influence of the Renaissance we should not have the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, or many passages in the plays. The English genius, in fact, accepted and absorbed the Renaissance without losing its native independence. All the manifestations of its freedom were not equally admirable. The wild incoherence of the early dramatists is not good in itself. When we see it at its worst, we are half tempted to wish that Greene and Marlowe had been more subservient. Yet it was good in so far as it was a striving after an ideal both national and good. It was the necessary preparation for Shakespeare and the great things of the Elizabethan drama. If the time was less mighty in prose than in verse, yet the germs of all that was to come were in Hooker. He had the secret of lucid arrangement, the art of dealing with the greatest questions in his own tongue, and in a form at once unaffected, instantly intelligible to the average thoughtful man, and yet eloquent where the occasion required him to rise above the usual level of speech.

The natural aptitude of the French for discipline in literature, and their tendency to form schools, to set up a doctrine, and to reject all that is not compatible with it, have never been more strongly shown than during the Later Renaissance. Other influences were at work. It would be very rash to say that classic or Italian models had a visible influence on Carloix’s memoirs of Vielleville, or the commentaries of Monluc, or even the vast unnamed, or misnamed, compilation of BrantÔme. Yet the Renaissance did, on the whole, dominate France, though it could not eliminate, or suppress, what was essentially French. Its intense interest in the life and the character of man was never better shown than by Montaigne. In poetry the attempt to adapt the classic and Italian models to French use swept all before it. Nowhere was the French disposition to find its freedom in the service of a classic model more clearly seen than in the drama of the PlÉiade. It is true that Jodelle, Garnier, Belleau, GrÉvin, and the others may be said to have failed. They did not produce any dramatic literature which has much more than an interest of curiosity. Yet the later history of the French stage proves that they were making their efforts on lines congenial to their nation. The dramatists of the Augustan age did no more than work in the same spirit, and to the same ends as their forgotten predecessors, with altered—and but slightly altered—means.

A comparison between the three literatures will go far to explain their respective fates. For the Spanish there could not well be any future. A strong national character, unchanging, and so close in the fibre that it never really admits a foreign influence, could not well do more than express itself once. The time came when it had said its say—and nothing then remained except, first mere juggling with words, and then silence—GÓngorism and Decadence. In England and in France there was the hope, and even the assurance, of far more to come. Though the Spanish story has been carried beyond the dates allowed for France and England, there is no unfairness in this sentence. In 1616 Lope had still much of his best work to do. Quevedo, Calderon, and GÓngora were to come; but the first and second brought nothing, or at least very little, absolutely new, and the third brought destruction. Lope was only to do what he had done already. When Shakespeare died in England and Mathurin Regnier in France, a long succession was to follow them. Englishmen and Frenchmen had learnt their lesson from the Renaissance, and were to use their knowledge.

[1] The fullest collection of Spanish ballads is that of Duran in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra; but the best are in the Rosa de Romances of Wolf and Depping, ed. 1844-1846, with notes by Don A. AlcalÁ Galiano.

[2] For Villalobos see Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, B. xxxvi. There is a modern edition of Perez de Oliva. Madrid, 1787.

[3] Origenes de la Lengua Castillana. Mayans y Siscar. Madrid, ed. of 1873.

[4] The early editions and translations of Guevara are very numerous. The passages spoken of in the text will be found in Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, Obras de FilÓsofos.

[5] I have used the first edition of Boscan, Barcelona, 1543, but have seen mention of a modern reprint by William J. Knapp, Madrid, 1875.

[6] Tesoro del Parnaso EspaÑol of Quintana, 41-51. Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. xxxii.

[7] The Arte PoÉtica EspaÑola, which goes under the name of Juan Diaz Rengifo, a schoolmaster of Ávila, is believed to have been written by his brother Alfonso, a Jesuit. With the addition of a dictionary of rhymes, it became the handbook of Spanish poetasters, a numerous tribe. It appeared at Salamanca in 1592.

[8] The Egemplar PoÉtico is the first piece quoted in vol. viii. of the Parnaso EspaÑol of SedaÑo, 1774.

[9] This seems the most convenient place to note that fairly ample specimens of Spanish literature will be found in the very useful collection known as the Biblioteca de Aribau, or de Ribadeneyra—seventy-one somewhat ponderous volumes printed with middling skill on poor paper. The texts are the best where few are really good, and the introductions of value. It is well indexed. I prefer to make my references to this rather than to earlier editions or better editions published by societies, and therefore not easily accessible in this country.

[10] A very interesting study of this phase of Spanish poetry, and some account of its writers, will be found in the introduction written by M. Alfred Morel-Fatio to his reprint of a Cancionero General of 1535, in his L’Espagne au XVI^me. et au XVII^me. SiÈcle. Heilbronn, 1878.

[11] Parnaso EspaÑol of SedaÑo, vol. vii.; and Ribadeneyra, vol. xxxii.; Poetas Liricos de los Siglos, xvi., xvii.

[12] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. xxxvii., contains the work of Luis de Leon, both prose and verse, together with a selection from the papers of his trial before the Inquisition.

[13] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. xxxii.

[14] The reference is again to Ribadeneyra, vols. xxxii., xlii.

[15] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. xxxii.

[16] “Made” is the past tense of the verb. The order is “made to leave,” which is shown by the inflection in Spanish.

[17] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. xxiii., xlviii., lxix. There is a very pretty edition of Quevedo in eleven octavo volumes, by Sancha, Madrid, 1791, which is occasionally met with.

[18] Vols. xvii. and xix. of the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra contain not only all, but more than all, that is entitled to survive of this portion of Spanish literature.

[19] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. iv.

[20] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra. Obras no dramaticas de Lope de Vega; also, Obras Sueltas. Madrid, 1776-1779.

[21] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. xvii.

[22] Article on Portuguese Literature in the Quarterly for May 1809.

[23] The general reader cannot do better than make his acquaintance with the Lusiads in Mr Aubertin’s translation, which gives the Portuguese text opposite the English version.

[24] Whether because the subject is maritime, or in consequence of our long trading and fighting alliance with Portugal, the Lusiads has been translated into English with an almost curious persistence. Sir Richard Fanshawe made a very quaint version in the middle of the seventeenth century. The flowing, and extremely free, translation of Mickle proved lucrative to its author as late as 1776. In our time Mr Aubertin has translated it closely, and Sir Richard Burton has given a version both of the Lusiads and of the minor poems which is admirably fitted to introduce the English reader—to the translator.

[25] Obras de Camoens. Lisbon, 1782-1783.

[26] Historia de las Ideas EstÉticas en EspaÑa.

[27] Autos Sacramentales in Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra. The introduction by Don Eduardo Gonzalez Pedroso gives the early history of these religious plays in Spain, but with scarcely sufficient recognition of the fact that they were common to all western Europe.

[28] An accessible and still most useful account of the early Spanish drama is to be found in the first volume of Ochoa’s Tesoro del Teatro EspaÑol, which gives the introduction and catalogue of Don Leandro de Moratin, Paris, 1836; but the standard authority is Schack’s Geschichte der Dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien, Berlin, 1845-46. Yet, here and always, the English reader cannot do better than follow Mr Ticknor.

[29] Published by the Sociedad de BibliÓfilos EspaÑoles, 1870.

[30] Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. xxiv., xxxiv., xli., lii., give the best modern texts of 120 of Lope de Vega’s comedies, including, not very properly, the Dorotea; but the Spanish Academy has begun a portentous edition, in quarto, of his whole work. The first volume contains a life by Don C. A. de la Barrera, founded largely on the poet’s numerous extant letters. The Obras Sueltas—i.e., non-dramatic works of Lope—are to be found in a desirable form published at Madrid from the excellent press of Francisco de Sancha in 21 vols., 1776-79.

[31] All the writers mentioned in this paragraph will be found under their names in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra.

[32] Whoever wishes to gain an original knowledge of the dramatists of this time may be referred to vols. xliii. and xlv. of the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, with their introductions and catalogues by Don Ramon Mesonero Romanos.

[33] Not the best but the most accessible edition of Calderon’s plays is that of J. J. Keil, Leipzig, 1827. Don Eugenio Hartzenbusch has edited him for the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. vii., ix., xii., xiv., and lviii.

[34] For an example see the Spanish Drama by Mr G. H. Lewes, 1846, a shrewd piece of criticism by one who was a good judge of a play. But Mr Lewes was too manifestly excited to revenge his own once excessive confidence in Schlegel on Calderon. Don M. Menendez’s Calderon y su escuela, a series of lectures delivered in 1881, is a very sound piece of criticism.

[35] Those who wish to make a closer acquaintance with the minor forms of the Spanish play may be referred to the Entremeses, Loaas, y JÁcaras, of Don Luis QuiÑones de Benavente (——?-1652), edited by Don C. Rosell in the Libros de AntaÑo. Madrid, 1872.

[36] Vol. v. of Autos Sacramentales de Don P. Calderon, published by Don Juan Fernandez de Apontes, Madrid, 1757-1760—five years before the public performance of autos was forbidden by Charles III.

[37] There is a pretty and not uncommon edition of the Diana published at Madrid by Villalpando in 1795.

[38] The PatraÑuelo is reprinted by Ochoa in his Tesoro de Novelistas EspaÑoles, Paris, 1847, vol. i. He also gives one story from Tirso de Molina—The Three Deceived Husbands. It is a fabliau. A Cigarral was the name given to a country villa near Toledo.

[39] Libros de CaballerÍas in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, with an exhaustive introduction by Don Pascual de Gayangos, vol. xl.

[40] The Guerras Civiles de Granada is in vol. iii. of the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra.

[41] See Novelistas anteriores a Cervantes and Novelistas posteriores a Cervantes in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. iii. and xviii.

[42] For the history of the Celestina see Mr Fitz Maurice Kelly’s introduction to the reprint of Mabbe’s excellent version in Mr Henley’s Tudor Translations.

[43] The early history of the book, with an account of the doubts which prevail as to its authorship, will be found in the Vie de Lazarillo de TormÉs. A new translation by M. A. Morel Fatio. Paris, 1886.

[44] Quevedo’s works are in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra; but the desirable edition is that of Sancha, Madrid, 1791, in eleven pretty volumes. A translation of ‘The Sharper’ was published in London in 1892, admirably illustrated by the Spanish draughtsman known as Daniel Vierge.

[45] The main authority for the life of Cervantes is still the Biography by Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, published by the Spanish Academy in 1819. The memory of Cervantes has undergone the misfortune of becoming the object of a cult to the persons calling themselves Cervantistas, who have made it an excuse for infinite scribbling. A few new facts of no importance have been discovered, but Navarrete’s Vida remains the real authority.

[46] The fame and the excellence of Le Diable Boiteux of Le Sage entitle the author of El Diablo Cojuelo to notice in this chapter. Luis Velez de Guevara (1572 or 1574-1644) of Ecija was a fertile dramatist. His Diablo Cojuelo, published in 1641, supplied the starting-point, and the matter but not the form, of the two first chapters of Le Diable Boiteux. There is nothing answering to the famous “AprÈs cela on nous rÉconcilia; nous nous embrassÂmes; depuis ce temps lÀ nous sommes ennemis mortels.” The matter of the Diablo Cojuelo is akin to the Visions of Quevedo, and the style is very idiomatic.

[47] This and most of the other works mentioned here will be found in the two volumes of Historiadores de Sucesos Particulares in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. xxi. and xxviii.

[48] The Historiadores Primitevos de Indias fill two volumes—xxii. and xxvi.—in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra.

[49] The standard edition of the Historia General y Natural de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, is that in four volumes folio, edited by Don Amador de los Rios for the Academy of History in 1851-1855.

[50] Coleccion de Documentos inÉditos para la Historia de EspaÑa, vols. lxii.-lxvi.

[51] The commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso were early translated into English, and have been reprinted by the Hakluyt Society.

[52] The works of Mariana are in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vols. xxx. and xxxi.; but it is much more pleasant to read his history in the edition of Ibarra, 1780, 2 vols. folio, beautifully printed.

[53] There is not, I think, any modern edition of Sandoval, whose life of Charles V. first appeared in 1604-1606, since the second edition of Antwerp, 1681. It was translated and abridged in 1703 by Captain John Stevens, an indefatigable hack to whom we are indebted for many bad versions of Spanish originals.

[54] A very finely printed edition of The Conquest of Mexico, unfortunately disfigured by silly plates, was published at Madrid by Sancha in 1783.

[55] Part of Gracian is in the Biblioteca de Ribadeneyra, vol. lxv. A translation of the OrÁculo Manual has been included in The Golden Treasury.

[56] El Viage Entretenido de Agustin de Roxas. Madrid, 1793.

[57] For this rather unexpected side to the character of Philip IV., and strange feature of the Spanish life of the time, see Cartas de las Venerable Madre Sor Maria de Agreda y del SeÑor Rey Don Felipe IV. Don Francisco Silvela. Madrid, 1885.

[58] For this example of the Inquisition at work see the papers of his case in vols. x. and xi. of the Documentos inÉditos.

[59] My own obligation is mainly to M. Paul Rousselot’s Mystiques Espagnols, Paris, 1867, which the Spaniards have found it easier to call insufficient than to displace.

[60] All the writers mentioned here will be found in the Tesoro de Escritores MÍsticos EspaÑoles of Ochoa. Paris, n.d.

[61] Tottel’s Miscellany has been reprinted by Mr Arber, who has also republished Gascoigne’s Steel Glass, and the Eclogues, Epitaphs, and Sonnets of Barnabe Googe in his English reprints. Turberville is in vol. ii. of Chalmers’s British Poets. Works of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, 1859.

[62] The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, edited by the Rev. A. B. Grosart, 2 vols., 1873, in “The Fuller’s Worthies Library.”

[63] Poems of Thomas Watson, in Arber’s English reprints.

[64] For Barnes, Percy, Constable, Lynch, Zepheria, and Smith, see Mr Arber’s English Garner; for Daniel and Drayton, vols. iii. and iv. of Chalmers’s British Poets.

[65] Mr Arber in his English Garner, and Mr Bullen in his Lyrics from the Song-books of the Elizabethan Age, 1887, have made selections from these sources.

[66] Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. iv.

[67] Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. iii. Complete works, edited by Dr Grosart. 5 vols., 1885-1896.

[68] Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. iv. A very thorough monograph on Drayton by Mr O. Elton has been published by the Spenser Society, 1895.

[69] Satires by Joseph Hall. Chiswick Press, 1824.

[70] Dodsley’s Old Plays. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Vol. iii.

[71] Dodsley’s Old Plays. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Vol. iii.

[72] Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1825.

[73] Dramatic Works of John Lyly. Edited by F. W. Fairholt, 1858.

[74] Dramatic Works of Robert Greene. Dyce, 1883.

[75] Dramatic Works of George Peele. Dyce, 1883.

[76] Works of Christopher Marlowe. Dyce, 1865.

[77] These two sentences are reprinted as one by Petheram, but it is obvious that the want of a full stop after “book” is a printer’s error. No changes in the punctuation can reduce Dean Bridges to order. It would be necessary to treat him as Cobbett did Castlereagh.

[78] Last Fight of the Revenge in Arber’s English Reprints. I have suppressed the full stop after “assaults and entries,” which is plainly a printer’s error. Raleigh would have been as inarticulate as Dr Bridges if he thought that a new sentence could begin at “and that himself.” When the full stop is replaced by a comma, what we have is a grammatical though overladen and redundant sentence.

[79] Arber’s English Reprints. John Lyly, M.A., Euphues. 1868.

[80] We still await a good edition of the Arcadia. The old are numerous. Dr Sommer’s reprint (London, 1891) is useful.

[81] The first of these sentences hardly gives the full absurdity of the Spanish. “La razon de la sinrazon que Á mi razon se hace de tal manera mi razon enflaquece, que con razon me quejo de la vuestra fermosura”—i.e., “The cause of the wrong, which is done to my right, so weakens my reason, that with reason I complain of your beauty.” The Spaniard punned on the different meanings of the word razon. Accurate translation does not diminish the likeness to Sidney, who must have known the original.

[82] Greene and Breton have been reprinted by Dr Grosart. Lodge’s Euphues’ Golden Legacy is in the Shakespeare’s Library, vol. ii.

[83] Complete works of Thomas Nash, in six vols. Dr Grosart in “The Huth Library,” 1883-1884. Guzman de Alfarache was translated into English by Mabbe, the translator of the Celestina, in 1623, and was imitated in The English Rogue, but the inspiration for Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders did not come from either.

[84] The Puritan position is very clearly stated in John Udall’s Demonstration of Discipline. Arber’s “English Scholar’s Library.”

[85] Maskell’s History of the Martin Marprelate Controversy, 1845, and Mr Arber’s “Introduction,” give accounts of the conflict from very different points of view. Mr Arber has reprinted Udall’s Diotrephes and Demonstration of Discipline in his “English Scholar’s Library.” The chief among the succeeding tracts were reprinted in 1845-1846 by Petheram under the title of Puritan Discipline Tracts.

[86] The full title is, “The state of the Church of England, laid open in a Conference between Diotrephes a Bishop, Tertullus a Papist, Demetrius a Usurer, Pandochus an Inn-Keeper, and Paul a Preacher of the Word of God”; with quotations from Psalm cxxii. 6 and Revelations xiv. 9, 10. The titles of all these pamphlets are long, and commonly also abusive.

[87] The titles of these pamphlets were very important parts of them, and this may be quoted as an example: “Hay any Work for Cooper, or a briefe Pistle directed by way of hublication to the reverend Byshopps, counselling them if they will needs be barrelled up, for fear of smelling in the nostrels of her Magestie and the State, that they would use the advice of reverend Martin, for the providing of their Cooper. Because the reverend T. C. (by which mystical letters is meant either the bouncing Parson of Eastmeane, or Tom Coakes his Chaplaine) hath showne himself in his late Admonition to the people of England to bee an unskilfull and deceytfull tub-trimmer. Wherein worthy Martin quits himselfe like a man, I warrant you, in the modest defences of his self and his learned Pistles, and makes the Cooper’s hoops to fly off, and the Bishops’ tubs to leake out of all crye. Penned and compiled by Martin the Metropolitane. Printed in Europe, not farre from some of the Bounsing Priests.”

[88] Works of Richard Hooker. Oxford, 1841.

[89] Sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la Poesie FranÇaise et du ThÉÂtre FranÇais au XVI^me. SiÈcle. Le SeiziÈme SiÈcle en France. Par MM. Darmsteter et Hatzfeld.

[90] Œuvres complÈtes de P. de Ronsard, edited by M. Prosper Blanchemain. BibliothÈque ElzÉvirienne, 1858.

[91] Ed. Marty-Laveaux. 2 vols.

[92] A Selection of BaÏf’s verse has been made by M. Becq de FonquiÈres, 1874, and his Mimes have been reprinted by M. Blanchemain.

[93] Ed. M. Alfred Michiels. 1858.

[94] There is still no modern edition of Du Bartas. The standard edition is that of 1610-1611, in 2 vols. folio.

[95] An edition of the works of D’AubignÉ, complete with the exception of L’Histoire Universelle, was published in Paris, 1873-1892, by MM. RÉaume et de Caussade. Partial reprints are numerous.

[96] Ed. M. Prosper PoitÉvin.

[97] Ed. Marty Laveaux, 1868-1870; and Ancien ThÉÂtre FranÇois in the “BibliothÈque ElzÉvirienne,” vol. iv.

[98] Ed. 1562, but Les Esbahis is in the Ancien ThÉÂtre FranÇais.

[99] Ed. M. RenÉ de Maulde. 4 vols., 1878-1882.

[100] Ed. of 1585 reprinted in Sammlung FranzÖsischer Neudrucke. Heilbronn, by Herr Wendelin FÖrster.

[101] It is advisable not to burden one’s page with illustrations, but it may be pointed out that the modern “well-made play” supplies copious examples of what is said above. The Jalin of Alexandre Dumas fils, in the Demi Monde, or the Duc de Montmeyran in Le Gendre de M. Poirier of Emile Angier, are chorus; and it may be added that they are also legion.

[102] Ancien ThÉÂtre FranÇais. BibliothÈque ElzÉvirienne. Vols. v. and vi.

[103] Ancien ThÉÂtre FranÇais, vol. iv.

[104] The true title, which is too characteristic not to be given in full, is, “Des Sages et Royales Œconomies domestiques, politiques, et militaires de Henri le Grand, le prince des vertus, des armes, et des lois, et le pÈre en effet [i.e., en realitÉ] de ses peuples franÇois. Et des servitudes utiles, obÉissantes, convenables, et administrations loyales de Maximilien de BÉthune, l’un des plus confidents familiers et utiles soldats et serviteurs du grand Mars des FranÇois. DÉdiÉs À la France, À tous les bons soldats et tous peuples FranÇois.” It is described as printed at Amestelredam (Amsterdam), at the sign of the three immortal virtues crowned with amaranth—i.e., Faith, Hope, Charity (of which last Sully had no great share), by Alethinosgraphe of ClearÉtimÉlÉe, and Graphexechon of Pistariste—i.e., Veracious-Writer of Glory-Virtue-Care, and Emeritus Secretary of High Probity. The Œconomies Royales are included by M. Petitot in his collection of memoirs, 2nd series, vols. i.-ix.

[105] These memoirs are included in the great collections of Petitot, and Michaud and Poujoulat. M. Zeller, in two volumes of his excellent Histoire de France racontÉe par les contemporains, has made up a consecutive story by extracts from the writers named above and others. No other literature could supply so much good reading of the same kind, and they are to be obtained for the “ridiculous sum” of tenpence each.

[106] Petitot, vols. xxvi.-xxviii.

[107] The memoirs are printed in the thirty-fourth volume of Petitot.

[108] Ed. of M. L. Lalanne, 1854.

[109] Much remained unprinted till it was published by MM. RÉaume and Caussade.

[110] The Commentaries of Monluc are included in Petitot’s Collection, vols. xx.-xxii., but the definitive edition is that of M. Alphonse de Ruble, published by the SociÉtÉ de l’Histoire de France. The first three volumes contain the Commentaries; the fourth and fifth the Letters, which M. de Ruble discovered in Russia.

[111] The best edition of BrantÔme is that of the SociÉtÉ de l’Histoire de France. Prosper MÉrimÉe edited an incomplete edition in the “BibliothÈque ElzÉvirienne.” Partial reprints are numerous.

[112] Ed. Brunet et Champollion, 1875-1881.

[113] Ed. M. Ch. Read, Paris, 1880, in Jouaust’s “Librairie des Bibliophiles.”

[114] The standard edition of Montaigne’s Essays is still that of Le Clerc, reprinted in 1865-66. There have been two recent reprints of our own excellent and contemporary translation by John Florio; one, very handsome, in Mr Henley’s “Tudor Translations”; and another, cheap and pretty, edited by Mr Waller, in six small volumes.

[115] Ed. Amaury Duval, 1828.

[116] Œuvres ComplÈtes, 1641.

[117] Opere. Edited by Giov. Rosini. Pisa, 33 vols., 1821-1832.

[118] The Godfrey of Bulloigne of Fairfax has been praised well beyond the full extent of its merits. The sober fact concerning it is that though the language has a real interest, the translation has not the merit of great accuracy, and it is wanting in those flashes of original power with which Fairfax’s contemporaries seldom failed to redeem their infidelity to their author. He, on the contrary, is too often far below Tasso, and he is addicted to the detestable practice of replacing the simplicity of the Italian by classic commonplaces. Now and then he is inept, or shirks a difficulty which he ought to have faced. Examples of all three vices may be found in the beginning of the fifteenth canto. Tasso opens with the simple and direct words—

“GiÀ richiamava il bel nascente raggio

All’ opere ogni animal che ’n terra alberga.”

For this Fairfax writes—

“The rosy-fingered morn with gladsome ray

Rose to her task from old Tithonus’ lap”—

the commonplace of a boy doing a copy of Latin verse. In the second stanza, where the Italian has—

“Erano essi giÀ sorti, e l’arme intorno

Alle robuste membra avean giÀ messe”—

Fairfax renders—

“They started up, and every tender limb

In sturdy steel and stubborn plate they dight.”

The tender limbs of two hardened old soldiers is surely weak.

At the end of the next stanza, we have in the Italian—

“E in poppa quella

Che guidar gli dovea, fatal donzella.”

The word “fatal,” an appropriate epithet for Fortune, who sits in the stern to steer the boat, disappears in Fairfax, and we get the colourless line—

“Wherein a damsel sate the stern to guide.”

And these are not exceptions. Fairfax constantly gives the inapplicable adjective, or the vague general term, where Tasso is faultless in his precision.

[119] Life of Giordano Bruno, by Mr L. Frith: London, 1897. Opere de Giordano Bruno, ed. Wagner: Leipzig, 1830.

[120] This controversy has its place in every life of Tasso, and is told at length by Serassi, Vita de Tasso: Bergamo, 1790. My own trifling acquaintance with it has given me the impression that it can be profitable to no mortal, except perhaps a historian of criticism.

[121] Il Pastor Fido. Verona, 1735.

[122] The names of Corte-Real (1540-1593), P. de Andrade (1576-1660), SÁ de Menezes (——?-1664), may represent this class. Others, with the classical prose of Vieira and G. de Andrade, which continued the work of Barros (1496-1570), may be referred to in the next volume.

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