The Literature that existed in Spain between the First Appearance of the present Written Language and the Early Part of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth; or from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Beginning of the Sixteenth. HISTORY FIRST PERIOD. CHAPTER I.Division of the Subject. — Origin of Spanish Literature in Times of great Trouble. In the earliest ages of every literature that has vindicated for itself a permanent character in modern Europe, much of what constituted its foundations was the result of local situation and of circumstances seemingly accidental. Sometimes, as in Provence, where the climate was mild and the soil luxuriant, a premature refinement started forth, which was suddenly blighted by the influences of the surrounding barbarism. Sometimes, as in Lombardy and in a few portions of France, the institutions of antiquity were so long preserved by the old municipalities, that, in occasional intervals of peace, it seemed as if the ancient forms of civilization might be revived and prevail;—hopes kindled only to be extinguished by the violence amidst which the first modern communities, with the policy they needed, were brought forth and Like much of the rest of Europe, the southwestern portion, now comprising the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, was affected by nearly all these different influences. Favored by a happy climate and soil, by the remains of Roman culture, which had lingered long in its mountains, and by the earnest and passionate spirit which has marked its people through their many revolutions down to the present day, the first signs of a revived poetical feeling are perceptible in the Spanish peninsula even before they are to be found, with their distinctive characteristics, in that of Italy. But this earliest literature of modern Spain, a part of which is ProvenÇal and the rest absolutely Castilian or Spanish, appeared in troubled times, when it was all but impossible that it should be advanced freely or rapidly in the forms it was destined at last to wear. For the masses of the Christian Spaniards filling the separate states, into which their country was most unhappily divided, were then involved in that tremendous warfare with their Arab invaders, which, for twenty generations, so consumed their strength, that, long before the cross was planted on the towers of the Alhambra, and peace had given opportunity Under such circumstances, a large portion of the Spaniards, who had been so long engaged in this solemn contest, as the forlorn hope of Christendom, against the intrusion of Mohammedanism[1] and its imperfect civilization into Europe, and who, amidst all their sufferings, had constantly looked to Rome, as to the capital seat of their faith, for consolation and encouragement, did not hesitate again to acknowledge the Italian supremacy in letters,—a supremacy to which, in the days of the Empire, their allegiance had been complete. A school formed on Italian models naturally followed; and though the rich and original genius of Spanish poetry received less from its influence ultimately than might have been anticipated, still, from the time of its first appearance, its effects are too important and distinct to be overlooked. Of the period, therefore, in which the history of Spanish literature opens upon us, we must make two divisions. The first will contain the genuinely national poetry and prose produced from the earliest times down to the reign of Charles the Fifth; while the second will contain that portion which, by imitating the refinement of Provence or of Italy, was, during the same interval, more or less separated from the popular spirit and genius. Both, when taken together, will fill up the period in which the main elements and characteristics of Spanish literature were In the first division of the first period, we are to consider the origin and character of that literature which sprang, as it were, from the very soil of Spain, and was almost entirely untouched by foreign influences. And here, at the outset, we are struck with a remarkable circumstance, which announces something at least of the genius of the coming literature,—the circumstance of its appearance in times of great confusion and violence. For, in other portions of Europe, during those disastrous troubles that accompanied the overthrow of the Roman power and civilization, and the establishment of new forms of social order, if the inspirations of poetry came at all, they came in some fortunate period of comparative quietness and security, when the minds of men were less engrossed than they were wont to be by the necessity of providing for their personal safety and for their most pressing physical wants. But in Spain it was not so. There, the first utterance of that popular feeling which became the foundation of the national literature was heard in the midst of the extraordinary contest which the Christian Spaniards, for above seven centuries, urged against their Moorish invaders; so that the earliest Spanish poetry seems but a breathing of the energy and heroism which, at the time it appeared, animated the great mass of the Spanish Christians throughout the Peninsula. Indeed, if we look at the condition of Spain, in the centuries that preceded and followed the formation of its present language and poetry, we shall find the mere As, however, they gradually grew inured to adversity, and understood the few hard advantages which their situation afforded them, they began to make incursions into the territories of their conquerors, and to seize for themselves some part of the fair possessions, once entirely their own. But every inch of ground was defended by the same fervid valor by which it had originally been won. The Christians, indeed, though occasionally defeated, generally gained something by each of their more considerable struggles; but what they gained could be preserved only by an exertion of bravery and military power hardly less painful than that by which it had been acquired. In 801, we find them already possessing a considerable part of Old Castile; but the very name now given to that country, from the multitude of castles with which it was studded, shows plainly the tenure by which the Christians from the mountains were compelled to hold these early fruits of their courage and constancy.[3] A century later, or in 914, they had pushed the outposts of their conquests to the chain of the Guadarrama, separating New from Old Castile, and they may, therefore, at this date, be regarded as having again obtained a firm foothold in their own country, whose capital they established at Leon. From this period, the Christians seem to have felt assured of final success. In 1085, Toledo, the venerated head of the old monarchy, was wrested from the Moors, who had then possessed it three hundred and sixty-three years; and in 1118, Saragossa was recovered: so that, from the beginning of the twelfth But it was in the midst of this desolating contest, and at a period, too, when the Christians were hardly less distracted by divisions among themselves than worn out and exasperated by the common warfare against the common enemy, that the elements of the Spanish language and poetry, as they have substantially existed ever since, were first developed. For it is precisely between the capture of Saragossa, which insured to the Christians the possession of all the eastern part of Spain, and their great victory on the plains of Tolosa, which so broke the power of the Moors, that they never afterwards recovered the full measure of their former strength,[4]—it is precisely in this century of confusion and violence, when the Chris CHAPTER II.First Appearance of the Spanish as a Written Language. — Poem of the Cid. — Its Hero, Subject, Language, and Verse. — Story of the Poem. — Its Character. — St. Mary of Egypt. — The Adoration of the Three Kings. — Berceo, the first known Castilian Poet. — His Works and Versification. — His San Domingo de Silos. — His Miracles of the Virgin. The oldest document in the Spanish language with an ascertained date is a confirmation by Alfonso the Seventh, in the year 1155, of a charter of regulations and privileges granted to the city of AvilÉs in Asturias.[6] It is important, not only because it exhibits the new dialect just emerging from the corrupted Latin, little or not at all affected by the Arabic infused into it in the southern provinces, but because it is believed to be among the very oldest documents ever written in Spanish, since there is no good reason to suppose that language to have existed in a written form even half a century earlier. How far we can go back towards the first appearance of poetry in this Spanish, or, as it was oftener called, Castilian, dialect is not so precisely ascertained; but we know that we can trace Castilian verse to a period surprisingly near the date of the document of AvilÉs. It is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of The first of these monuments in age, and the first in importance, is the poem commonly called, with primitive simplicity and directness, “The Poem of the Cid.” It consists of above three thousand lines, and can hardly have been composed later than the year 1200. Its subject, as its name implies, is taken from among the adventures of the Cid, the great popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain; and the whole tone of its manners and feelings is in sympathy with the contest between the Moors and the Christians, in which the Cid bore so great a part, and which was still going on with undiminished violence at the period when the poem was written. It has, therefore, a national bearing and a national character throughout.[7] The Cid himself, who is to be found constantly commemorated in Spanish poetry, was born in the northwestern part of Spain, about the year 1040, and died in 1099, at Valencia, which he had rescued from the Moors.[8] His original name was Ruy Diaz, But, whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a deep shadow,[11] he comes to us in modern times as the great defender of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen, that, centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry and tradition The Poem of the Cid partakes of both these characters. It has sometimes been regarded as wholly, or almost wholly, historical.[13] But there is too free and romantic a spirit in it for history. It contains, indeed, few of the bolder fictions found in the subsequent chronicles and in the popular ballads. Still, it is essentially a poem; and in the spirited scenes at the siege of Alcocer and at the Cortes, as well as in those relating to the Counts of Carrion, it is plain that the author felt his license as a poet. In fact, the very marriage of the daughters of the Cid has been shown to be all but impossible; and thus any real historical foundation seems to be taken away from the chief event which the poem records.[14] This, however, does not at But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so remote from our own experience, that, where The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and stood looking at them. He saw his doors open and his household chests unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks, and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee, Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have done this thing unto me.’” He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his time, to win lands and fortunes from the common enemy, and providing for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him in their turn, so that he can save himself Their shields before their breasts, · forth at once they go, Their lances in the rest, · levelled fair and low, Their banners and their crests · waving in a row, Their heads all stooping down · toward the saddle-bow; The Cid was in the midst, · his shout was heard afar, “I am Ruy Diaz, · the champion of Bivar; Strike amongst them, Gentlemen, · for sweet mercies’ sake!” There where Bermuez fought · amidst the foe they brake, Three hundred bannered knights, · it was a gallant show. Three hundred Moors they killed, · a man with every blow; When they wheeled and turned, · as many more lay slain; You might see them raise their lances · and level them again. There you might see the breast-plates · how they were cleft in twain, And many a Moorish shield · lie shattered on the plain, The pennons that were white · marked with a crimson stain, The horses running wild · whose riders had been slain.[19] The most spirited part of it consists of the scenes at the Cortes, summoned, on demand of the Cid, in consequence of the misconduct of the Counts of Carrion. In one of them, three followers of the Cid challenge three followers of the Counts, and the challenge of Munio Gustioz to Assur Gonzalez is thus characteristically given:— Assur Gonzalez · was entering at the door, With his ermine mantle · trailing along the floor; With his sauntering pace · and his hardy look, Of manners or of courtesy · little heed he took; He was flushed and hot · with breakfast and with drink. “What ho! my masters, · your spirits seem to sink! Has he been to Riodivirna, · to besiege the windmills there? Does he tax the millers for their toll? · or is that practice past? Will he make a match for his daughters, · another like the last?” Munio Gustioz · rose and made reply:— “Traitor, wilt thou never cease · to slander and to lie? You breakfast before mass, · you drink before you pray; There is no honor in your heart, · nor truth in what you say; You cheat your comrade and your lord, · you flatter to betray; Your hatred I despise, · your friendship I defy! False to all mankind, · and most to God on high, I shall force you to confess · that what I say is true.” Thus was ended the parley · and challenge betwixt these two.[21] The opening of the lists for the six combatants, in the presence of the king, is another passage of much spirit and effect. The heralds and the king · are foremost in the place. They clear away the people · from the middle space; They measure out the lists, · the barriers they fix, They point them out in order · and explain to all the six: “If you are forced beyond the line · where they are fixed and traced, You shall be held as conquered · and beaten and disgraced.” Six lances’ length on either side · an open space is laid; They share the field between them, · the sunshine and the shade. Their office is performed, · and from the middle space The heralds are withdrawn · and leave them face to face. Here stood the warriors of the Cid, · that noble champion; Opposite, on the other side, · the lords of Carrion. Earnestly their minds are fixed · each upon his foe. Face to face they take their place, · anon the trumpets blow; They stir their horses with the spur, · they lay their lances low, They bend their shields before their breasts, · their face to the saddle-bow. Earnestly their minds are fixed · each upon his foe. The heavens are overcast above, · the earth trembles below; The people stand in silence, · gazing on the show.[22] Three other poems, anonymous like that of the Cid, have been placed immediately after it, because they are found together in a single manuscript assigned to the thirteenth century, and because the language and style of at least the first of them seem to justify the conjecture that carries it so far back.[24] The poem with which this manuscript opens is called “The Book of Apollonius,” and is the reproduction of a story whose origin is obscure, but which is itself familiar to us in the eighth book of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and in the play of “Pericles,” that has sometimes been attributed to Shakspeare. It is found in Greek rhyme very early, but is here taken, almost without alteration of incident, from that great repository of popular fiction in the Middle Ages, the “Gesta Romanorum.” It consists of about twenty-six hundred lines, In God’s name the most holy · and Saint Mary’s name most dear, If they but guide and keep me · in their blessed love and fear, I will strive to write a tale, · in mastery new and clear, Where of royal Apollonius · the courtly you shall hear. The new mastery or method—nueva maestrÍa—here claimed may be the structure of the stanza and its rhyme; for, in other respects, the versification is like that of the Poem of the Cid; showing, however, more skill and exactness in the mere measure, and a slight improvement in the language. But the merit of the poem is small. It contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it was produced,—among the rest, some sketches of a female jongleur, of the class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Alfonso the Wise,—that are curious and interesting. Its chief attraction, however, is its story, and this, unhappily, is not original.[25] The next poem in the collection is called “The Life of our Lady, Saint Mary of Egypt,”—a saint formerly much more famous than she is now, and one whose history is so coarse and indecent, that it has often been rejected by the wiser members of the church that canonized her. Such as it appears in the old traditions, however, with all its sins upon its head, it is here set Listen, ye lordlings, listen to me, For true is my tale, as true can be; And listen in heart, that so ye may Have pardon, when humbly to God ye pray. It consists of fourteen hundred such meagre, monkish verses, and is hardly of importance, except as a monument of the language at the period when it was written.[26] The last of the three poems is in the same irregular measure and manner. It is called “The Adoration of the Three Holy Kings,” and begins with the old tradition about the wise men that came from the East; but its chief subject is an arrest of the Holy Family, during Thus far, the poetry of the first century of Spanish literature, like the earliest poetry of other modern countries, is anonymous; for authorship was a distinction rarely coveted or thought of by those who wrote in any of the dialects then forming throughout Europe, among the common people. It is even impossible to tell from what part of the Christian conquests in Spain the poems of which we have spoken have come to us. We may infer, indeed, from their language and tone, that the Poem of the Cid belongs to the border country of the Moorish war in the direction of Catalonia and Valencia, and that the earliest ballads, of which we shall speak hereafter, came originally from the midst of the contest, with whose very spirit they are often imbued. In the same way, too, we may be persuaded that the poems of a more religious temper were produced in the quieter kingdoms of the North, where monasteries had been founded and Christianity had already struck its roots deeply into the soil of the national character. Still, we have no evidence to show where any one of the poems we have thus far noticed was written. His works amount to above thirteen thousand lines, and fill an octavo volume.[30] They are all on religious subjects, and consist of rhymed Lives of San Domingo de Silos, Santa Oria, and San Millan; poems on the Mass, the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, the Merits of the Madonna, the Signs that are to precede the Last Judgment, and the Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross, with a few Hymns, and especially a poem of more than three thousand six hundred lines on the Miracles of the Virgin Mary. With one inconsiderable exception, the whole of this formidable mass of verse is divided into stanzas of four lines each, like those in the poem of Apollonius of Tyre; and though in the language there is a perceptible advance since the days when the Poem of the Cid was written, still the power and movement Occasionally, however, we find better things. In some portions of his work, there is a simple-hearted piety that is very attractive, and in some, a story-telling spirit that is occasionally picturesque. The best passages are to be found in his long poem on the “Miracles of the Virgin,” which consists of a series of twenty-five tales of her intervention in human affairs, composed evidently for the purpose of increasing the spirit of devotion in the worship particularly paid to her. The opening or induction to these tales contains, perhaps, the most poetical passage in Berceo’s works; and in the following version the measure and system of rhyme in the original have been preserved, so as to give something of its air and manner:— My friends, and faithful vassals · of Almighty God above, If ye listen to my words · in a spirit to improve, A tale ye shall hear · of piety and love, Which afterwards yourselves · shall heartily approve. I, a master in Divinity, · Gonzalve Berceo hight, Once wandering as a Pilgrim, · found a meadow richly dight, Green and peopled full of flowers, · of flowers fair and bright, A place where a weary man · would rest him with delight. And the flowers I beheld · all looked and smelt so sweet, That the senses and the soul · they seemed alike to greet; While on every side ran fountains · through all this glad retreat, Which in winter kindly warmth supplied, · yet tempered summer’s heat. And of rich and goodly trees · there grew a boundless maze, Granada’s apples bright, · and figs of golden rays, And many other fruits, · beyond my skill to praise; But none that turneth sour, · and none that e’er decays. The freshness of that meadow, · the sweetness of its flowers, The dewy shadows of the trees, · that fell like cooling showers, Renewed within my frame · its worn and wasted powers; I deem the very odors would · have nourished me for hours.[33] This induction, which is continued through forty stanzas more, of unequal merit, is little connected with the stories that follow; the stories, again, are not at all connected among themselves; and the whole ends abruptly with a few lines of homage to the Madonna. It is, therefore, inartificial in its structure throughout. But in the narrative parts there is often naturalness and spirit, and sometimes, though rarely, poetry. The tales themselves belong to the religious fictions of the Middle Ages, and were no doubt intended to excite de “The Miracles of the Virgin” is not only the longest, but the most curious, of the poems of Berceo. The rest, however, should not be entirely neglected. The poem on the “Signs which shall precede the Judgment” is often solemn, and once or twice rises to poetry; the story of MarÍa de Cisneros, in the “Life of San Domingo,” is well told, and so is that of the wild appearance in the heavens of Saint James and Saint Millan fighting for the Christians at the battle of Simancas, much as it is found in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” But perhaps nothing is more characteristic of the author or of his age than the spirit of childlike simplicity and religious tenderness that breathes through several parts of the “Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross,”—a spirit of gentle, faithful, credulous devotion, with which the Spanish people in their wars against the Moors were as naturally marked as they were with the ignorance that belonged to the Christian world generally in those dark and troubled times.[35] I cannot pass farther without offering the tribute of my homage to two persons who have done more than any others in the nineteenth century to make Spanish literature known, and to obtain for it the honors to which it is entitled beyond the limits of the country that gave it birth. The first of them, and one whose name I have already cited, is Friedrich Bouterwek, who was born at Oker in the kingdom of Hanover, in 1766, and passed nearly all the more active portion of his life at GÖttingen, where he died in 1828, widely respected as one of the most distinguished professors of that long favored University. A project for preparing by the most competent hands a full history of the arts and sciences from the period of their revival in modern Europe was first suggested at GÖttingen by another of its well-known professors, John Gottfried Eichhorn, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. But though that remarkable scholar published, in 1796-9, two volumes of a learned Introduction to the whole work which he had projected, he went no farther, and most of his coadjutors stopped when he did, or soon afterwards. The portion of it assigned to Bouterwek, however, which was the entire history of elegant literature in modern times, was happily achieved by him between 1801 and 1819, in twelve volumes octavo. Of this division, “The History of Spanish Literature” fills the third volume, and was published in 1804;—a work remarkable for its general philosophical views, and by far the best extant on the subject it discusses; but imperfect in many particulars, because its author was unable to procure a large number of Spanish books needful for his task, and knew many considerable Spanish authors only by insufficient extracts. In 1812, a translation of it into French was printed, in two volumes, by Madame Streck, with a judicious preface by the venerable M. Stapfer;—in 1823, it came out, together with its author’s brief “History of Portuguese Literature,” in an English translation, made with taste and skill, by Miss Thomasina Ross;—and in 1829, a Spanish version of the first and smallest part of it, with important notes, sufficient with the text to fill a volume in octavo, was prepared by two excellent Spanish scholars, JosÉ Gomez de la Cortina, and NicolÁs Hugalde y Mollinedo,—a work which all lovers of Spanish literature would gladly see completed. Since the time of Bouterwek, no foreigner has done so much to promote a knowledge of Spanish literature as M. Simonde de Sismondi, who was born at Geneva in 1773, and died there in 1842, honored and loved by all who knew his wise and generous spirit, as it exhibited itself either in his personal intercourse, or in his great works on the history of France and Italy,—two countries, to which, by a line of time-honored ancestors, he seemed almost equally to belong. In 1811, he delivered in his native city a course of brilliant lectures on the literature of the South of Europe, and in 1813, published them at Paris. They involved an account of the ProvenÇal and the Portuguese, as well as of the Italian and the Spanish;—but in whatever relates to the Spanish Sismondi was even less well provided with the original authors than Bouterwek had been, and was, in consequence, under obligations to his predecessor, which, while he takes no pains to conceal them, diminish the authority of a work that will yet always be read for the beauty of its style and the richness and wisdom of its reflections. The entire series of these lectures was translated into German by L. Hain in 1815, and into English with notes by T. Roscoe in 1823. The part relating to Spanish literature was published in Spanish, with occasional alterations and copious and important additions by JosÉ Lorenzo Figueroa and JosÉ Amador de los Rios, at Seville, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1841-2,—the notes relating to Andalusian authors being particularly valuable. None but those who have gone over the whole ground occupied by Spanish literature can know how great are the merits of scholars like Bouterwek and Sismondi,—acute, philosophical, and thoughtful,—who, with an apparatus of authors so incomplete, have yet done so much for the illustration of their subject. CHAPTER III.Alfonso the Wise. — His Life. — His Letter to Perez de Guzman. — His CÁntigas in the Galician. — Origin of that Dialect and of the Portuguese. — His Tesoro. — His Prose. — Law concerning the Castilian. — His Conquista de Ultramar. — Old Fueros. — The Fuero Juzgo. — The Setenario. — The Espejo. — The Fuero Real. — The Siete Partidas and their Merits. — Character of Alfonso. The second known author in Castilian literature bears a name much more distinguished than the first. It is Alfonso the Tenth, who, from his great advancement in various branches of human knowledge, has been called Alfonso the Wise, or the Learned. He was the son of Ferdinand the Third, a saint in the Roman calendar, who, uniting anew the crowns of Castile and Leon, and enlarging the limits of his power by important conquests from the Moors, settled more firmly than they had before been settled the foundations of a Christian empire in the Peninsula.[36] Alfonso was born in 1221, and ascended the throne in 1252. He was a poet, much connected with the ProvenÇal Troubadours of his time,[37] and was besides so greatly skilled in geometry, astronomy, and the occult sciences then so much valued, that his reputation was His character is still an interesting one. He appears to have had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any other man of his time; to have reasoned more wisely in matters of legislation; and to have made further advances in some of the exact sciences;—accomplishments that he seems to have resorted to in the latter part of his life for consolation amidst unsuccessful wars with foreign enemies and a rebellious son. The following letter from him to one of the Guzmans, who was then in great favor at the court of the king of Fez, shows at once how low the fortunes of the Christian monarch were sunk before he died, and with how much simplicity he could speak of their bitterness. It is dated in 1282, and is a favorable specimen of Castilian prose at a period so early in the history of the language.[39] “Cousin Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman: My affliction is great, because it has fallen from such a height that it will be seen afar; and as it has fallen on me, who was the friend of all the world, so in all the world will men know this my misfortune, and its Signed, The King.”[41] The unhappy monarch survived the date of this very striking letter but two years, and died in 1284. At one period of his life, his consideration throughout Christendom was so great, that he was elected Emperor of Germany; but this was only another source of sorrow to him, for his claims were contested, and after some time were silently set aside by the election of Rodolph of Hapsburg, upon whose dynasty the glories of the House of Austria rested so long. The life of Alfonso, therefore, was on the whole unfortunate, and full of painful vicissitudes, that might well have broken the spirit of most men, and that were certainly not without an effect on his.[42] So much the more remarkable is it, that he should be distinguished among the chief founders of his country’s intellectual fame,—a distinction which again becomes more extraordinary when we recollect that he enjoys it not in letters alone, or in a single department, but in many; since he is to be remembered alike for the great advancement which Castilian prose composition made in his hands, for his poetry, for his astronomical Of his poetry, we possess, besides works of very doubtful genuineness, two, about one of which there has been little question, and about the other none; his “CÁntigas,” or Chants, in honor of the Madonna, and his “Tesoro,” a treatise on the transmutation of the baser metals into gold. Of the CÁntigas, there are extant no less than four hundred and one, composed in lines of from six to twelve syllables, and rhymed with a considerable degree of exactness.[44] Their measure and manner are ProvenÇal. They are devoted to the praises and the miracles of the Madonna, in whose honor the king founded in 1279 a religious and military order;[45] and in devotion The Galician, however, was originally an important language in Spain, and for some time seemed as likely to prevail throughout the country as any other of the dialects spoken in it. It was probably the first that was developed in the northwestern part of the Peninsula, and the second that was reduced to writing. For in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, just at the period when the struggling elements of the modern Spanish were disencumbering themselves from the forms of the corrupted Latin, Galicia, by the wars and troubles of the times, was repeatedly separated from Castile, so that distinct dialects appeared in the two different territories almost at the same moment. Of these, the Northern is likely to have been the older, though the Southern proved ultimately the more fortunate. At any rate, even without a court, which was the surest centre of culture in such rude ages, and without any of the reasons for the development of a dialect which always accompany political power, we know that the Galician was already sufficiently formed to pass with the conquering arms of Alfonso the Sixth, and This was between the years 1095 and 1109; and though the establishment of a Burgundian dynasty on the throne erected there naturally brought into the dialect of Portugal an infusion of the French, which never appeared in the dialect of Galicia,[47] still the language spoken in the two territories under different sovereigns and different influences continued substantially the same for a long period; perhaps down to the time of Charles the Fifth.[48] But it was only in Portugal that there was a court, or that means and motives were found sufficient for forming and cultivating a regular language. It is therefore only in Portugal that this common dialect of both the territories appears with a separate and proper literature;[49] the first intimation of which, with an exact date, is found as early as 1192. This is a document in prose.[50] The oldest poetry is to be sought in three curious fragments, originally published by Faria y Sousa, which can hardly be placed much later than the year 1200.[51] Both show that the Galician in Portugal, under less favorable circumstances than those which accompanied the Castilian in Spain, rose at the We may fairly infer, therefore, from these facts, indicating the vigor of the Galician in Portugal before the year 1200, that, in its native province in Spain, it is somewhat older. But we have no monuments by which to establish such antiquity. Castro, it is true, notices a manuscript translation of the history of Servandus, as if made in 1150 by Seguino, in the Galician dialect; but he gives no specimen of it, and his own authority in such a matter is not sufficient.[52] And in the well-known letter sent to the Constable of Portugal by the Marquis of Santillana, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we are told that all Spanish poetry was written for a long time in Galician or Portuguese;[53] but this is so obviously either a mistake in fact, or a mere compliment to the Portuguese prince to whom it was addressed, that Sarmiento, full of prejudices in favor of his native province, and desirous to arrive at the same conclusion, is obliged to give it up as wholly unwarranted.[54] We must come back, therefore, to the “CÁntigas” or Chants of Alfonso, as to the oldest specimen extant in the Galician dialect distinct from the Portuguese; and since, from internal evidence, one of them was written after he had conquered Xerez, we may place them between 1263, when that event occurred, and 1284, when But however this may be, all the rest of his works are in the language spoken in the centre of the Peninsula, while his CÁntigas are in the Galician. Some of them have considerable poetical merit; but in general they are to be remarked only for the variety of their metres, for an occasional tendency to the form of ballads, for a lyrical tone, which does not seem to have been earlier established in the Castilian, and for a kind of Doric simplicity, which belongs partly to the dialect he adopted and partly to the character of the author himself;—the whole bearing the impress of the ProvenÇal poets, with whom he was much connected, and whom through life he patronized and maintained at his court.[57] And here the first work we meet with is one that was rather compiled under his direction, than written by himself. It is called “The Great Conquest beyond Sea,” and is an account of the wars in the Holy Land, which then so much agitated the minds of men throughout Europe, and which were intimately connected with the fate of the Christian Spaniards still struggling for their own existence in a perpetual crusade against misbelief at home. It begins with the history of Mohammed, and comes down to the year 1270; much of it being taken from an old French version of the work of William of Tyre, on the same general subject, and the rest from other less trustworthy sources. But parts of it are not historical. The grandfather of Godfrey of Bouillon, its hero, is the wild and fanciful Knight of the Swan, who is almost as much a representative of the spirit of chivalry as Amadis de Gaul, and goes through adventures no less marvellous; fighting on the Rhine like a knight Castilian prose, in fact, can hardly be said to have existed earlier, unless we are willing to reckon as specimens of it the few meagre documents, generally grants in hard legal forms, that begin with the one concerning The precise time when this translation was made has But the wise forecast of Saint Ferdinand soon extended beyond the purpose with which he originally commanded the translation of the old Visigoth laws, and he undertook to prepare a code for the whole of Christian Spain that was under his sceptre, which, in its different cities and provinces, was distracted by different and often contradictory fueros or privileges and laws given to each as it was won from the common enemy. But he did not live to execute his beneficent Still, though Alfonso had been employed in preparing this code, he did not see fit to finish it. He, however, felt charged with the general undertaking, and seemed determined that his kingdom should not continue to suffer from the uncertainty or the conflict of its different systems of legislation. But he proceeded with great caution. His first body of laws, called the “Espejo,” or “Mirror of all Rights,” filling five books, was prepared before 1255; but though it contains within itself directions for its own distribution and enforcement, it does not seem ever to have gone into practical use. His “Fuero Real,” a shorter code, divided into four books, was completed in 1255 for Valladolid, and perhaps was subsequently given to other cities of his kingdom. Both were followed by different laws, as occasion called for them, down nearly to the end of his reign. But all of them, taken together, were far from constituting a code such as had been projected by Saint Ferdinand.[66] This last great work was undertaken by Alfonso in 1256, and finished either in 1263 or 1265. It was originally called by Alfonso himself “El Setenario,” from the title of the code undertaken by his father; but it is now always called “Las Siete Partidas,” or The Partidas, however, though by far the most important legislative monument of its age, did not become at once the law of the land.[68] On the contrary, the great cities, with their separate privileges, long resisted any thing like a uniform system of legislation for the whole country; and it was not till 1348, two years before the death of Alfonso the Eleventh, and above sixty after that of their author, that the Partidas were finally proclaimed as of binding authority in all the territories held by the kings of Castile and Leon. But from that period the great code of Alfonso has been uniformly respected.[69] It is, in fact, a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since; and becoming in this way a part of the constitution of the state in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time when Louisiana and Florida were added to the United The Partidas, however, read very little like a collection of statutes, or even like a code such as that of Justinian or Napoleon. They seem rather to be a series of treatises on legislation, morals, and religion, divided with great formality, according to their subjects, into Parts, Titles, and Laws; the last of which, instead of being merely imperative ordinances, enter into arguments and investigations of various sorts, often discussing the moral principles they lay down, and often containing intimations of the manners and opinions of the age, that make them a curious mine of Spanish antiquities. They are, in short, a kind of digested result of the opinions and reading of a learned monarch, and his coadjutors, in the thirteenth century, on the relative duties of a king and his subjects, and on the entire legislation and police, ecclesiastical, civil, and moral, to which, in their judgment, Spain should be subjected; the whole interspersed with discussions, sometimes more quaint than grave, concerning the customs and principles on which the work itself, or some particular part of it, is founded. As a specimen of the style of the Partidas, an ex “A tyrant,” says this law, “doth signify a cruel lord, who by force, or by craft, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or country; and such men be of such nature, that, when once they have grown strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit, though it be in harm of the land, than the common profit of all, for they always live in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to fulfil this their purpose unencumbered, the wise of old have said that they use their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous, because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that they be not kindly and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one another, for, while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm, that it may never come into their hearts to devise any thing against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from oppression. And, moreover, we say, that, though any man may have In other laws, reasons are given why kings and their sons should be taught to read;[72] and in a law about the governesses of king’s daughters, it is declared:— “They are to endeavour, as much as may be, that the king’s daughters be moderate and seemly in eating and in drinking, and also in their carriage and dress, and of good manners in all things, and especially that they be not given to anger; for, besides the wickedness that lieth in it, it is the thing in the world that most easily leadeth women to do ill. And they ought to teach them to be handy in performing those works that belong to noble ladies; for this is a matter that becometh them much, since they obtain by it cheerfulness and a quiet spirit; and besides, it taketh away bad thoughts, which it is not convenient they should have.”[73] Many of the laws concerning knights, like one on their loyalty, and one on the meaning of the ceremonies used when they are armed,[74] and all the laws on the establishment and conduct of great public schools, which he was endeavouring, at the same time, to encourage, by the privileges he granted to Salamanca,[75] are But however this may be, there is no doubt, that, mingled with something of the rudeness and more of the ungraceful repetitions common in the period to which they belong, there is a richness, an appropriateness, and sometimes even an elegance, in their turns of expression, truly remarkable. They show that the great effort of their author to make the Castilian the living and real language of his country, by making it that of the laws and the tribunals of justice, had been successful, or was destined speedily to become so. Their grave and measured movement, and the solemnity of their tone, which have remained among the characteristics of Spanish prose ever since, show this success beyond all reasonable question. They show, too, the character of Alfonso himself, giving token of a far-reaching wisdom and philosophy, and proving how much a single great mind happily placed can do towards imparting their final direction to the language and literature of a country, even so early as the first century of their separate existence.[77] CHAPTER IV.Juan Lorenzo Segura. — Confusion of Ancient and Modern Manners. — El Alexandro, its Story and Merits. — Los Votos del Pavon. — Sancho el Bravo. — Don Juan Manuel, his Life and Works, published and unpublished. — His Conde Lucanor. The proof that the “Partidas” were in advance of their age, both as to style and language, is plain, not only from the examination we have made of what preceded them, but from a comparison of them, which we must now make, with the poetry of Juan Lorenzo Segura, who lived at the time they were compiled, and probably somewhat later. Like Berceo, he was a secular priest, and he belonged to Astorga; but this is all we know of him, except that he lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and has left a poem of above ten thousand lines on the life of Alexander the Great, drawn from such sources as were then accessible to a Spanish ecclesiastic, and written in the four-line stanza used by Berceo.[78] What is most obvious in this long poem is its confounding the manners of a well-known age of Grecian antiquity with those of the Catholic religion, and of knighthood, as they existed in the days of its author. Similar confusion is found in some portion of the early Among the most attractive subjects that offered themselves to such persons was that of Alexander the Great. The East—Persia, Arabia, and India—had long been full of stories of his adventures;[80] and now, in the West, as a hero more nearly approaching the spirit of knighthood than any other of antiquity, he was adopted into the poetical fictions of almost every nation that could boast the beginning of a literature, so that the Monk in the “Canterbury Tales” said truly,— “The storie of Alexandre is so commune, That every wight, that hath discretion, Hath herd somewhat or all of his fortune.” Juan Lorenzo took this story substantially as he had read it in the “AlexandreÏs” of Walter de Chatillon, whom he repeatedly cites;[81] but he has added whatever he found elsewhere, or in his own imagination, that seemed suited to his purpose, which was by no means that of becoming a mere translator. After a short introduction, he comes at once to his subject thus, in the fifth stanza:— I desire to teach the story · of a noble pagan king, With whose valor and bold heart · the world once did ring: For the world he overcame, · like a very little thing; And a clerkly name I shall gain, · if his story I can sing. This prince was Alexander, · and Greece it was his right; Frank and bold he was in arms, · and in knowledge took delight; Darius’ power he overthrew, · and Porus, kings of might, And for suffering and for patience · the world held no such wight. Now the infant Alexander · showed plainly from the first, That he through every hindrance · with prowess great would burst; For by a servile breast · he never would be nursed, And less than gentle lineage · to serve him never durst. And mighty signs when he was born · foretold his coming worth: The air was troubled, and the sun · his brightness put not forth, The sea was angry all, · and shook the solid earth, The world was wellnigh perishing · for terror at his birth.[82] Then comes the history of Alexander, mingled with the fables and extravagances of the times; given generally with the dulness of a chronicle, but sometimes showing a poetical spirit. Before setting out on his grand expedition to the East, he is knighted, and receives an enchanted sword made by Don Vulcan, a girdle made by DoÑa Philosophy, and a shirt made by two sea fairies,—duas fadas enna mar.[83] The conquest of Asia follows soon afterwards, in the course of which the Bishop of Jerusalem orders mass to be said to stay the conqueror, as he approaches the Jewish capital.[84] In general, the known outline of Alexander’s adventures is followed, but there are a good many whimsical digressions; and when the Macedonian forces pass the site of Troy, the poet cannot resist the temptation of making an abstract of the fortunes and fate of that city, which he represents as told by Don Alexander himself to his followers, and especially to the Twelve Peers, who accompanied him in his expedition.[85] Homer is vouched as authority for the extraordinary narrative that is given;[86] but how little the poet of Astorga A poem called “Los Votos del Pavon,” The Vows of the Peacock, which was a continuation of the “Alexandro,” is lost. If we may judge from an old French poem on the vows made over a peacock that had been a favorite bird of Alexander, and was served accidentally at table after that hero’s death, we have no reason to complain of our loss as a misfortune.[89] Lorenzo was an ecclesiastic,—bon clÉrigo É ondrado,—and his home was at Astorga, in the northwestern portion of Spain, on the borders of Leon and Galicia. Berceo belonged to the same territory, and, though there may be half a century between them, they are of a similar spirit. We are glad, therefore, that the next author we meet, Don John Manuel, takes us from the mountains of the North to the chivalry of the South, and to the state of society, the conflicts, manners, and interests, that gave us the “Poem of the Cid,” and the code of the “Partidas.” Don John was of the blood royal of Castile and Leon; grandson of Saint Ferdinand, nephew of Alfonso the Wise, and one of the most turbulent and dangerous of the Spanish barons of his time. He was born in Escalona, on the 5th of May, 1282, and was the son of Don Pedro Manuel, an Infante of Spain,[91] brother of The affairs of the kingdom during the administration of Prince John seem to have been managed with talent and spirit; but at the end of the regency the young monarch was not sufficiently contented with the state of things to continue his grand-uncle in any considerable employment. Don John, however, was not of a temper to submit quietly to affront or neglect.[94] He left the court at Valladolid, and prepared himself, with all his great resources, for the armed opposition which the politics of the time regarded as a justifiable mode of obtaining redress. The king was alarmed, From this time we find him actively engaged on the frontiers in a succession of military operations, till 1327, when he gained over the Moors the important victory of Guadalhorra. But the same year was marked by the bloody treachery of the king against Prince John’s uncle, who was murdered in the palace under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.[96] The Prince immediately retired in disgust to his estates, and began again to muster his friends and forces for a contest, into which he rushed the more eagerly, as the king had now refused to consummate his union with Constantia, and had married a Portuguese princess. The war which followed was carried on with various success till 1335, when Prince John was finally subdued, and, entering anew into the king’s service, with fresh reputation, as it seemed, from a spirited rebellion, and marrying his daughter Constantia, now grown up, to the heir-apparent of Portugal, went on, as commander-in-chief, with an uninterrupted succession of victories over the Moors, until almost the moment of his death, which happened in 1347.[97] Don John, to whom belongs the distinction of producing one of these forms, showed himself worthy of a family in which, for above a century, letters had been honored and cultivated. He is known to have written twelve works; and so anxious was he about their fate, that he caused them to be carefully transcribed in a large volume, and bequeathed them to a monastery he had founded on his estates at PeÑafiel, as a burial-place “In the time of King Jayme the First of Majorca,” says he, “there was a knight of Perpignan, who was a great Troubadour, and made brave songs wonderfully well. But one that he made was better than the rest, and, moreover, was set to good music. And people were so delighted with that song, that, for a long time, they would sing no other. And so the knight that made it was well pleased. But one day, going through the streets, he heard a shoemaker singing this song, and he sang it so ill, both in words and tune, that any man who had not heard it before would have held it to be a very poor song, and very ill made. Now when the knight heard that shoemaker spoil his good work, he was full of grief and anger, and got down from his beast, and sat down by him. But the shoemaker gave no heed to the knight, and did not cease from singing; and the further he sang, the worse he spoiled the song that knight had made. And when the knight heard his good work so spoiled by the foolishness of the shoe “Now, when the shoemaker saw his shoes, and beheld how they were cut in pieces, and that he had lost all his labor, he was much troubled, and went shouting after the knight that had done it. And the knight answered: ‘My friend, our lord the king, as you well know, is a good king and a just. Let us, then, go to him, and let him determine, as may seem right, the difference between us.’ And they were agreed to do so. And when they came before the king, the shoemaker told him how all his shoes had been cut in pieces and much harm done to him. And the king was wroth at it, and asked the knight if this were truth. And the knight said that it was; but that he would like to say why he did it. And the king told him to say on. And the knight answered, that the king well knew that he had made a song,—the one that was very good and had good music,—and he said, that the shoemaker had spoiled it in singing; in proof whereof, he prayed the king to command him now to sing it. And the king did so, and saw how he spoiled it. Then the knight said, that, since the shoemaker had spoiled the good work he had made with great pains and labor, so he might spoil the works of the shoemaker. And the king and all they that were there with him were very merry at this and laughed; and the king commanded the shoemaker never to sing that song again, nor trouble the good work of the knight; but the king paid the shoemaker for the harm that was done him, and commanded the knight not to vex the shoemaker any more.[104] “And now, knowing that I cannot hinder the books I have made from being copied many times, and seeing that in copies one thing is put for another, either because he who copies is ignorant, or because one word looks so much like another, and so the meaning and sense are changed without any fault in him who first wrote it; therefore, I, Don John Manuel, to avoid this wrong as much as I may, have caused this volume to be made, in which are written out all the works I have composed, and they are twelve.” Of the twelve works here referred to, the Madrid manuscript contains only three. One is a long letter to his brother, the Archbishop of Toledo, and Chancellor of the kingdom, in which he gives, first, an account of his family arms; then the reason why he and his right heirs male could make knights without having received any order of knighthood, as he himself had done when he was not yet two years old; and lastly, the report of a solemn conversation he had held with Sancho the Fourth Another of the works in the Madrid manuscript is a treatise in twenty-six chapters, called “Counsels to his Son Ferdinand”; which is, in fact, an essay on the Christian and moral duties of one destined by his rank to the highest places in the state, referring sometimes to the more ample discussions on similar subjects in Don John’s treatise on the Different Estates or Conditions of Men, apparently a longer work, not now known to exist. But the third and longest is the most interesting. It is “The Book of the Knight and the Esquire,” “written,” says the author, “in the manner called in Castile fabliella,” (a little fable,) and sent to his brother, the Archbishop, that he might translate it into Latin; a proof, and not the only one, that Don John placed small value upon the language to which he now owes all his honors. The book itself contains an account of a young man who, encouraged by the good condition of his country under a king that called his Cortes together often, and gave his people good teachings and good laws, determines to seek advancement in the state. On his way to a meeting of the Cortes, where he intends to be knighted, he meets a retired cavalier, who in his hermitage explains to him all the duties and honors of chivalry, and thus prepares him for the distinction to which he aspires. On his return, he again visits his aged friend, and is so delighted with his instructions, that he remains with him, ministering to his infirmities and profiting by his wisdom, till his death, after which the young knight goes to his own The “Conde Lucanor,” the best known of its author’s works, bears some resemblance to the fable of the Knight and the Esquire. It is a collection of forty-nine tales,[106] anecdotes, and apologues, clearly in the Oriental manner; the first hint for which was probably taken from the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Petrus Alphonsus, a collection of Latin stories made in Spain about two centuries earlier. The occasion on which the tales of Don John are supposed to be related is, like the fictions themselves, invented with Eastern simplicity, and reminds us constantly of the “Thousand and One Nights,” and their multitudinous imitations.[107] “On one occasion, Count Lucanor came from a foray, much wearied and worn, and poorly off; and before he could refresh or rest himself, there came a sudden message about another matter then newly moved. And the greater part of his people counselled him, that he should refresh himself a little, and then do whatever should be thought most wise. And the Count asked Patronio what he should do in that matter; and Patronio replied, ‘Sire, that you may choose what is best, it would please me that you should know the answer which Count Fernan Gonzalez once gave to his vassals. “‘And you, my Lord Count Lucanor, if you desire to do what you ought, when you see that it should be achieved for the defence of your own rights and of your own people and of your own honor, then you must not be grieved by weariness, nor by toil, nor by danger, but rather so act that the new danger shall make you forget that which is past.’ “And the Count held this for a good history[115] and “Hold this for certain and for fact, For truth it is and truth exact, That never Honor and Disgrace Together sought a resting-place.” It is not easy to imagine any thing more simple and direct than this story, either in the matter or the style. Others of the tales have an air of more knightly dignity, and some have a little of the gallantry that might be expected from a court like that of Alfonso the Eleventh. In a very few of them, Don John gives intimations that he had risen above the feelings and opinions of his age: as, in one, he laughs at the monks and their pretensions;[116] in another, he introduces a pilgrim under no respectable circumstances;[117] and in a third, he ridicules his uncle Alfonso for believing in the follies of alchemy,[118] and trusting a man who pretended to turn the baser metals into gold. But in almost all we see the large experience of a man of the world, as the world then existed, and the cool observation of one who knew too much of mankind, and had suffered too much from CHAPTER V.Alfonso the Eleventh. — Treatise on Hunting. — Poetical Chronicle. — Beneficiary of Ubeda. — Archpriest of Hita; his Life, Works, and Character. — Rabbi Don Santob. — La Doctrina Christiana. — A Revelation. — La DanÇa General. — Poem on Joseph. — Ayala; his Rimado de Palacio. — Characteristics of Spanish Literature thus far. The reign of Alfonso the Eleventh was full of troubles, and the unhappy monarch himself died at last of the plague, while he was besieging Gibraltar, in 1350. Still, that letters were not forgotten in it we know, not only from the example of Don John Manuel, already cited, but from several others which should not be passed over. The first is a prose treatise on Hunting, in three books, written under the king’s direction, by his Chief-huntsmen, who were then among the principal persons of the court. It consists of little more than an account of the sort of hounds to be used, their diseases and training, with a description of the different places where game was abundant, and where sport for the royal amusement was to be had. It is of small consequence in itself, but was published by Argote de Molina, in the time of Philip the Second, with a pleasant addition by the editor, containing curious stories of lion-hunts and bull-fights, fitting it to the taste of his own age. In style, the original work is as good as the somewhat similar treatise of the Marquis of Villena, The next literary monument attributed to this reign would be important, if we had the whole of it. It is a chronicle, in the ballad style, of events which happened in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh, and commonly passes under his name. It was found, hidden in a mass of Arabic manuscripts, by Diego de Mendoza, who attributed it, with little ceremony, to “a secretary of the king”; and it was first publicly made known by Argote de Molina, who thought it written by some poet contemporary with the history he relates. But only thirty-four stanzas of it are now known to exist; and these, though admitted by Sanchez to be probably anterior to the fifteenth century, are shown by him not to be the work of the king, and seem, in fact, to be less ancient in style and language than that critic supposes them to be.[121] They are in very flowing Castilian, and their tone is as spirited as that of most of the old ballads. We turn, therefore, without further delay, to Juan Ruiz, commonly called the Archpriest of Hita; a poet who is known to have lived at the same period, and whose works, both from their character and amount, deserve especial notice. Their date can be ascertained His works consist of nearly seven thousand verses; and although, in general, they are written in the four-line stanza of Berceo, we find occasionally a variety of measure, tone, and spirit, before unknown in Castilian poetry; the number of their metrical forms, some of which are taken from the ProvenÇal, being reckoned not less than sixteen.[124] The poems, as they have come to us, open with a prayer to God, composed apparently at the time of the Archpriest’s imprisonment; when, as one of the manuscripts sets forth, most of his works were written.[125] Next comes a curious prose prologue, explaining the moral purpose of the whole collection, or rather endeavouring to conceal the immoral tendency of the greater part of it. And then, after somewhat more of prefatory matter, follow, in quick succession, the poems themselves, very miscellaneous in their subjects, but ingeniously connected. The entire mass, when taken together, fills a volume of respectable size.[126] In the next of his adventures, a false friend deceives him and carries off his lady. But still he is not discouraged.[130] He feels himself to be drawn on by his fate, like the son of a Moorish king, whose history he then relates; and, after some astrological ruminations, The Archpriest now goes to DoÑa Venus, who, though he knew Ovid, is represented as the wife of Don Amor; and, taking counsel of her, is successful. But the story he relates is evidently a fiction, though it may be accommodated to the facts of the poet’s own case. It is borrowed from a dialogue or play, written before the year 1300, by Pamphylus Maurianus or Maurilianus, and long attributed to Ovid; but the Castilian poet has successfully given to what he adopted the coloring of his own national manners. All this portion, which fills above a thousand lines, is somewhat free in its tone; and the Archpriest, alarmed at himself, turns suddenly round and adds a series of severe moral warnings and teachings to the sex, which he as suddenly breaks off, and, without any assigned reason, goes to the mountains near Segovia. But the month in which he makes his journey is March; the season is rough; and several of his adventures are any thing but agreeable. Still he preserves the same light and thoughtless air; and this part of his history is mingled with spirited pastoral songs in the ProvenÇal manner, called “CÁntigas de A shrine, much frequented by the devout, is near that part of the Sierra where his journeyings lay; and he makes a pilgrimage to it, which he illustrates with sacred hymns, just as he had before illustrated his love-adventures with apologues and songs. But Lent approaches, and he hurries home. He is hardly arrived, however, when he receives a summons in form from DoÑa Quaresma (Madam Lent) to attend her in arms, with all her other archpriests and clergy, in order to make a foray, like a foray into the territory of the Moors, against Don Carnaval and his adherents. One of these allegorical battles, which were in great favor with the Trouveurs and other metre-mongers of the Middle Ages, then follows, in which figure Don Tocino (Mr. Bacon) and DoÑa Cecina (Mrs. Hung-Beef), with other similar personages. The result, of course, since it is now the season of Lent, is the defeat and imprisonment of Don Carnaval; but when that season closes, the allegorical prisoner necessarily escapes, and, raising anew such followers as Mr. Lunch and Mr. Breakfast, again takes the field, and is again triumphant.[133] Don Carnaval now unites himself to Don Amor, and both appear in state as emperors. Don Amor is received with especial jubilee; clergy and laity, friars, nuns, and jongleurs, going out in wild procession to meet and welcome him.[134] But the honor of formally receiving his Majesty, though claimed by all, and foremost by the nuns, is granted only to the poet. To the poet, too, Don Amor relates his adventures of the preceding winter at Seville and Toledo, and then leaves him to go in search of others. Meanwhile, the Archpriest, with the assistance of his cunning agent, Trota-conventos, begins a new series of love intrigues, even more freely mingled with fables than the first, and ends them only by the death of Trota-conventos herself, with whose epitaph the more carefully connected portion of the Archpriest’s works is brought to a conclusion. The volume contains, however, besides this portion, several smaller poems on subjects as widely different as the “Christian’s Armour” and the “Praise of Little Women,” some of which seem related to the main series, though none of them have any apparent connection with each other.[135] The tone of the Archpriest’s poetry is very various. In general, a satirical spirit prevails in it, not unmingled with a quiet humor. This spirit often extends into the gravest portions; and how fearless he was, when he indulged himself in it, a passage on the influence of money and corruption at the court of Rome leaves no doubt.[136] Other parts, like the verses on Death, are The happiest success of the Archpriest of Hita is to be found in the many tales and apologues which he has scattered on all sides to illustrate the adventures that constitute a framework for his poetry, like that of the “Conde Lucanor” or the “Canterbury Tales.” Most of them are familiar to us, being taken from the old store-houses of Æsop and PhÆdrus, or rather from the versions of these fabulists common in the earliest Northern French poetry.[138] Among the more fortunate of his very free imitations is the fable of the Frogs who asked for a King from Jupiter, that of the Dog who lost by his Greediness the Meat he carried in his Mouth, and that of the Hares who took Courage when they saw the Frogs were more timid than themselves.[139] A few of them have a truth, a simplicity, and even What strikes us most, however, and remains with us longest after reading his poetry, is the natural and spirited tone that prevails over every other. In this he is like Chaucer, who wrote a little later in the same century. Indeed, the resemblance between the two poets is remarkable in some other particulars. Both often sought their materials in the Northern French poetry; both have that mixture of devotion and a licentious immorality, much of which belonged to their age, but some of it to their personal character; and both show a wide knowledge of human nature, and a great happiness in sketching the details of individual manners. The original temper of each made him satirical and humorous; and each, in his own country, became the founder of some of the forms of its popular poetry, introducing new metres and combinations, and carrying them out in a versification which, though generally rude and irregular, is often flowing and nervous, and always natural. The Archpriest has not, indeed, the tenderness, the elevation, or the general power of Chaucer; but his genius has a compass, and his verse a skill and success, that show him to be more nearly akin to the great English master than will be believed, The Archpriest of Hita lived in the last years of Alfonso the Eleventh, and perhaps somewhat later. At the very beginning of the next reign, or in 1350, we find a curious poem addressed by a Jew of Carrion to Peter the Cruel, on his accession to the throne. In the manuscript found in the National Library at Madrid, it is called the “Book of the Rabi de Santob,” or “Rabbi Don Santob,” and consists of four hundred and seventy-six stanzas.[141] The measure is the old redondilla, uncommonly easy and flowing for the age; and the purpose of the poem is to give wise moral counsels to the new king, which the poet more than once begs him not to undervalue because they come from a Jew. Because upon a thorn it grows, The rose is not less fair; And wine that from the vine-stock flows Still flows untainted there. Although his nest sits low; And gentle teachings have their power, Though ’t is the Jew says so.[142] After a longer introduction than is needful, the moral counsels begin, at the fifty-third stanza, and continue through the rest of the work, which, in its general tone, is not unlike other didactic poetry of the period, although it is written with more ease and more poetical spirit. Indeed, it is little to say, that few Rabbins of any country have given us such quaint and pleasant verses as are contained in several parts of these curious counsels of the Jew of Carrion. In the Escurial manuscript, containing the verses of Another of these poems is called a Revelation, and is a vision, in twenty-five octave stanzas, of a holy hermit, who is supposed to have witnessed a contest between a soul and its body; the soul complaining that the excesses of the body had brought upon it all the punishments of the unseen world, and the body retort We come, then, to one of more value, “La DanÇa General,” or the Dance of Death, consisting of seventy-nine regular octave stanzas, preceded by a few words of introduction in prose, that do not seem to be by the same author.[146] It is founded on the well-known fiction, so often illustrated both in painting and in verse during the Middle Ages, that all men, of all conditions, are summoned to the Dance of Death; a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which the different ranks of society, from the Pope to the young child, appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is striking and picturesque,—more so, perhaps, than in any other,—the ghastly nature of the subject being The first seven stanzas of the Spanish poem constitute a prologue, in which Death issues his summons partly in his own person, and partly in that of a preaching friar, ending thus:— Come to the Dance of Death, all ye whose fate By birth is mortal, be ye great or small; And willing come, nor loitering, nor late, Else force shall bring you struggling to my thrall: For since yon friar hath uttered loud his call To penitence and godliness sincere, He that delays must hope no waiting here; For still the cry is, Haste! and, Haste to all! Death now proceeds, as in the old pictures and poems, to summon, first, the Pope, then cardinals, kings, bishops, and so on, down to day-laborers; all of whom are forced to join his mortal dance, though each first makes some remonstrance, that indicates surprise, horror, or reluctance. The call to youth and beauty is spirited:— Bring to my dance, and bring without delay, Those damsels twain, you see so bright and fair; They came, but came not in a willing way, To list my chants of mortal grief and care: Nor rich attire, avail their forms to save. They strive in vain who strive against the grave; It may not be; my wedded brides they are.[148] The fiction is, no doubt, a grim one; but for several centuries it had great success throughout Europe, and it is presented quite as much according to its true spirit in this old Castilian poem as it is anywhere. A chronicling poem, found in the same manuscript volume with the last, but very unskilfully copied in a different handwriting, belongs probably to the same period. It is on the half-fabulous, half-historical achievements of Count Fernan Gonzalez, a hero of the earlier period of the Christian conflict with the Moors, who is to the North of Spain what the Cid became somewhat later to Aragon and Valencia. To him is attributed the rescue of much of Castile from Mohammedan control; and his achievements, so far as they are matter of historical rather than poetical record, fall between 934, when the battle of Osma was fought, and his death, which occurred in 970. The poem in question is almost wholly devoted to his glory.[149] It begins with a notice of the invasion The death of the Count of Toulouse, on the other The meeting of Fernan Gonzalez with the King of Navarre at the battle of ValparÉ, which occurs in both, is thus described in the poem:— And now the King and Count were met · together in the fight, And each against the other turned · the utmost of his might, Beginning there a battle fierce · in furious despite. And never fight was seen more brave, · nor champions more true; For to rise or fall for once and all · they fought, as well they knew; And neither, as each inly felt, · a greater deed could do; So they struck and strove right manfully, · with blows nor light nor few. Ay, mighty was that fight indeed, · and mightier still about The din that rose like thunder · round those champions brave and stout: For he that listened could not hear, · amidst such rush and rout. The blows they struck were heavy; · heavier blows there could not be; On both sides, to the uttermost, · they struggled manfully, And many, that ne’er rose again, · bent to the earth the knee, And streams of blood o’erspread the ground, · as on all sides you might see. And knights were there, from good Navarre, · both numerous and bold, Whom everywhere for brave and strong · true gentlemen would hold; But still against the good Count’s might · their strength proved weak and cold, Though men of great emprise before · and fortune manifold. For God’s good grace still kept the Count · from sorrow and from harm, That neither Moor nor Christian power · should stand against his arm, etc.[151] This is certainly not poetry of a high order. Invention and dignified ornament are wanting in it; but still it is not without spirit, and, at any rate, it would be difficult to find in the whole poem a passage more worthy of regard. In the National Library at Madrid is a poem of twelve hundred and twenty lines, composed in the same system of quaternion rhymes that we have already noticed as settled in the old Castilian literature, and with irregularities like those found in the whole class of poems to which it belongs. Its subject is Joseph, the son of Jacob; but there are two circumstances which distinguish it from all the other narrative poetry of the period, and render it curious and important. The first The manuscript of the “Poem of Joseph” is imperfect, both at the beginning and at the end. Not much of it, however, seems to be lost. It opens with the jealousy of the brothers of Joseph at his dream, and Then up and spake his sons: · “Sire, do not deem it so; Ten brethren are we here, · this very well you know;— That we should all be traitors, · and treat him as a foe, You either will not fear, · or you will not let him go. “But this is what we thought, · as our Maker knows above: That the child might gain more knowledge, · and with it gain our love, To show him all our shepherd’s craft, · as with flocks and herds we move;— But still the power is thine to grant, · and thine to disapprove.” And then they said so much · with words so smooth and fair, And promised him so faithfully · with words of pious care, That he gave them up his child; · but bade them first beware, And bring him quickly back again, · unharmed by any snare.[153] When the brothers have consummated their treason, and sold Joseph to a caravan of Egyptian merchants, the story goes on much as it does in the Koran. The fair Zuleikha, or Zuleia, who answers to Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who figures largely in Mohammedan poetry, fills a space more ample than usual in the fancies of the present poem. Joseph, too, is a more considerable personage. He is adopted as the king’s son, and made a king in the land; and the dreams of the real king, the years of plenty and famine, the journeyings of the brothers to Egypt, their recognition by Joseph, and his message to Jacob, with the grief of the latter that Benjamin did not return, at which the manuscript breaks off, are much amplified, in the Oriental manner, and made to sound like passages Among the inventions of the author is a conversation which the wolf—who is brought in by his false brethren, as the animal that had killed Joseph—holds with Jacob.[154] Another is the Eastern fancy, that the measure by which Joseph distributed the corn, and which was made of gold and precious stones, would, when put to his ear, inform him whether the persons present were guilty of falsehood to him.[155] But the following incident, which, like that of Joseph’s parting in a spirit of tender forgiveness from his brethren[156] when they sold him, is added to the narrative of the Koran, will better illustrate the general tone of the poem, as well as the general powers of the poet. On the first night after the outrage, Jusuf, as he is called in the poem, when travelling along in charge of a negro, passes a cemetery on a hill-side where his mother lies buried. And when the negro heeded not, · that guarded him behind, From off the camel Jusuf sprang, · on which he rode confined, And hastened, with all speed, · his mother’s grave to find, Where he knelt and pardon sought, · to relieve his troubled mind. He cried, “God’s grace be with thee still, · O Lady mother dear! O mother, you would sorrow, · if you looked upon me here; For my neck is bound with chains, · and I live in grief and fear, Like a traitor by my brethren sold, · like a captive to the spear. “They have sold me! they have sold me! · though I never did them harm; They have torn me from my father, · from his strong and living arm, By art and cunning they enticed me, · and by falsehood’s guilty charm, And I go a base-bought captive, · full of sorrow and alarm.” But now the negro looked about, · and knew that he was gone, For no man could be seen, · and the camel came alone; So he turned his sharpened ear, · and caught the wailing tone, Where Jusuf, by his mother’s grave, · lay making heavy moan. And the negro hurried up, · and gave him there a blow; So quick and cruel was it, · that it instant laid him low; “A base-born wretch,” he cried aloud, · “a base-born thief art thou; Thy masters, when we purchased thee, · they told us it was so.” But Jusuf answered straight, · “Nor thief nor wretch am I; My mother’s grave is this, · and for pardon here I cry; I cry to Allah’s power, · and send my prayer on high, That, since I never wronged thee, · his curse may on thee lie.” And then all night they travelled on, · till dawned the coming day, When the land was sore tormented · with a whirlwind’s furious sway; The sun grew dark at noon, · their hearts sunk in dismay, And they knew not, with their merchandise, · to seek or make their way.[157] The last poem belonging to these earliest specimens of Castilian literature is the “Rimado de Palacio,” on the duties of kings and nobles in the government of the state, with sketches of the manners and vices of the times, which, as the poem maintains, it is the duty of the great to rebuke and reform. It is chiefly written in the four-line stanzas of the period to which it belongs; and, beginning with a penitential confession of its author, goes on with a discussion of the ten command The “Rimado de Palacio,” which may be translated “Court Rhymes,” was the production of different periods of Ayala’s life. Twice he marks the year in which he was writing, and from these dates we know that parts of it were certainly composed in 1398 and 1404, while yet another part seems to have been written during his imprisonment in England, which followed the defeat of Henry of Trastamara by the Duke of Lancaster, in 1367. On the whole, therefore, the Rimado de Palacio is to be placed near the conclusion of the fourteenth century, and, by its author’s sufferings in an English prison, reminds us both of the Duke of Orleans and of James the First of Scotland, who, at the same time and under similar circumstances, showed a poetical spirit not unlike that of the great Chancellor of Castile. In some of its subdivisions, particularly in those that have a lyrical tendency, the Rimado resembles some of the lighter poems of the Archpriest of Hita. Others are composed with care and gravity, and express the When entering on a lawsuit, · if you ask for their advice, They sit down very solemnly, · their brows fall in a trice. “A question grave is this,” they say, · “and asks for labor nice; To the Council it must go, · and much management implies. “I think, perhaps, in time, · I can help you in the thing, By dint of labor long · and grievous studying; But other duties I must leave, · away all business fling, Your case alone must study, · and to you alone must cling.”[162] Somewhat farther on, when he speaks of justice, whose administration had been so lamentably neglected in the civil wars during which he lived, he takes his graver tone, and speaks with a wisdom and gentleness we should hardly have expected:— True justice is a noble thing, · that merits all renown; It fills the land with people, · checks the guilty with its frown; But kings, that should uphold its power, · in thoughtlessness look down, And forget the precious jewel · that gems their honored crown. And many think by cruelty · its duties to fulfil, But their wisdom all is cunning, · for justice doth no ill; With pity and with truth it dwells, · and faithful men will still From punishment and pain turn back, · as sore against their will.[163] There is naturally a good deal in the Rimado de Palacio that savors of statesmanship; as, for instance, nearly all that relates to royal favorites, to war, and to the manners of the palace; but the general air of the poem, or rather of the different short poems that make it up, is fairly represented in the preceding passages. It is grave, gentle, and didactic, with now and then a few lines of a simple and earnest poetical feeling, which seem to belong quite as much to their age as to their author. We have now gone over a considerable portion of the earliest Castilian literature, and quite completed an examination of that part of it which, at first epic, and afterwards didactic, in its tone, is found in long, irregular verses, with quadruple rhymes. It is all curious. Much of it is picturesque and interesting; and when, to what has been already examined, we shall have added the ballads and chronicles, the romances of chivalry and the drama, the whole will be found to constitute a broad basis, on which the genuine literary culture of Spain has rested ever since. But, before we go farther, we must pause an instant, and notice some of the peculiarities of the period we have just considered. It extends from a little before the year 1200 to a little after the year 1400; and, both in But there are two traits of the earliest Spanish literature which are so separate and peculiar, that they must be noticed from the outset,—religious faith and knightly loyalty,—traits which are hardly less apparent in the “Partidas” of Alfonso the Wise, in the stories of Don John Manuel, in the loose wit of the Archpriest of Hita, and in the worldly wisdom of the Chancellor Ayala, than in the professedly devout poems of Berceo and in the professedly chivalrous chronicles of the Cid and Fernan Gonzalez. They are, therefore, from the earliest period, to be marked among the prominent features in Spanish literature. Nor should we be surprised at this. The Spanish But Castilian poetry was, from the first, to an extraordinary degree, an outpouring of the popular feeling and character. Tokens of religious submission and knightly fidelity, akin to each other in their birth and often relying on each other for strength in their trials, are, therefore, among its earliest attributes. We must not, then, be surprised, if we hereafter find, that submission to the Church and loyalty to the king constantly break through the mass of Spanish literature, and breathe their spirit from nearly every portion of it,—not, indeed, without such changes in the mode of expression as the changed condition of the country in successive ages demanded, but still always so strong in their original attributes as to show that they survive CHAPTER VI.Four Classes of the more popular early Literature. — First Class, Ballads. — Oldest Form of Castilian Poetry. — Theories about their Origin. — Not Arabic. — Their Metrical Form. — Redondillas. — Asonantes. — National. — Spread of the Ballad Form. — Name. — Early Notices of Ballads. — Ballads of the Sixteenth Century, and later. — Traditional and long unwritten. — Appeared first in the Cancioneros, then in the Romanceros. — The old Collections the best. Everywhere in Europe, during the period we have just gone over, the courts of the different sovereigns were the principal centres of refinement and civilization. From accidental circumstances, this was peculiarly the case in Spain, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise, Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala, to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who, perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of Spain and at the North.[164] But the literature produced or encouraged by these What, however, is thus essentially popular in its sources and character,—what, instead of going out from the more elevated classes of the nation, was neglected or discountenanced by them,—is, from its very wildness, little likely to take well-defined forms, or to be traced, from its origin, by the dates and other proofs which accompany such portions of the national literature as fell earlier under the protection of the higher orders of society. But though we may not be able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be distributed into four different classes, These four classes are, first, the Ballads, or the poetry, both narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times; second, the Chronicles, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued with the popular feelings and character; third, the Romances of Chivalry, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the Drama, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France. These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very nature, were opposed to the ProvenÇal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be subsequently examined. The Ballads.—We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote than that of The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the asonante,—an imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the consonante, or full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore, just what rhyme is in English.[172] Thus, ferÓz and furÓr, cÁsa and abÁrca, infÁmia and contrÁria, are good asonantes in the first and third ballads of the Cid, just as mÁl and desleÁl, volÁre and caÇÁre, are good consonantes in the old ballad of the Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The asonante, therefore, is something be A metrical form so natural and obvious became a favorite at once, and continued so. From the ballads it soon passed into other departments of the national poetry, especially the lyrical. At a later period, the great Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are, no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest times, their very name, Romances, may intimate; since it seems to imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the Romance language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other than the one immediately following the formation of the language itself. Popular poetry of some sort—and more probably ballad poetry than any other—was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as early as 1147.[179] A century later than this, It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics, arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now, merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185] One more fact will conclude what we know of their early history. It is, that ballads were found among the poetry of Don John Manuel, the nephew of Alfonso the Tenth, which Argote de Molina possessed, and intended to publish, but which is now lost.[186] This brings our slight knowledge of the whole subject down to the death of Don John in 1347. But from this period—the same with that of the Archpriest of Hita—we almost lose sight, not only of the ballads, but of all genuine Spanish poetry, whose strains seem hardly to have been heard during the horrors of the reign of Peter the Cruel, the contested succession of Henry of Trastamara, But these few historical notices of ballad poetry are, except those which point to its early origin, too slight to be of much value. Indeed, until after the middle of the sixteenth century, it is difficult to find ballads written by known authors; so that, when we speak of the Old Spanish Ballads, we do not refer to the few whose period can be settled with some accuracy, but to the great mass found in the “Romanceros Generales” and elsewhere, whose authors and dates are alike unknown. This mass consists of above a thousand old poems, unequal in length and still more unequal in merit, composed between the period when verse first appeared in Spain and the time when such verse as that of the ballads was thought worthy to be written down; the whole bearing to the mass of the Spanish people, their For a long time, of course, these primitive national ballads existed only in the memories of the common people, from whom they sprang, and were preserved through successive ages and long traditions only by the interests and feelings that originally gave them birth. We cannot, therefore, reasonably hope that we now read any of them exactly as they were first composed and sung, or that there are many to which we can assign a definite age with any good degree of probability. No doubt, we may still possess some which, with little change in their simple thoughts and melody, were among the earliest breathings of that popular enthusiasm which, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, was carrying the Christian Spaniards onward to the emancipation of their country; ballads which were heard amidst the valleys of the Sierra Morena, or on the banks of the Turia and the Guadalquivir, with the first tones of the language that has since spread itself through the whole Peninsula. But the idle minstrel, who, in such troubled times, sought a precarious subsistence from cottage to cottage, or the thoughtless soldier, who, when the battle was over, sung its achievements to his guitar at the door of his tent, could not be expected to look beyond the passing moment; so that, if their unskilled verses were preserved at all, they must have been preserved by those who repeated them from memory, changing their tone and language with the changed feelings of the times and events that chanced to recall them. Whatever, then, belongs to this earliest period belongs, at the same time, to the unchronicled popular life and character of which it was a part; and This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down. Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were, of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed. But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special “Cancioneros”—which were collections of whatever verses the person who formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]—began to come in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked, that not a single ballad occurs in either of them. The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and 1500, or The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the ProvenÇal manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop, on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true lover, pass almost into a proverb. “It grieves me, Count, it grieves my heart, That thus they urge thy fate; Since this fond guilt upon thy part Was still no crime of state. For all the errors love can bring Deserve not mortal pain; And I have knelt before the king, To free thee from thy chain. But he, the king, with angry pride Would hear no word I spoke; ‘The sentence is pronounced,’ he cried; ‘Who may its power revoke?’ The Infanta’s love you won, he says, When you her guardian were. O cousin, less, if you were wise, For ladies you would care. For he that labors most for them Your fate will always prove; Since death or ruin none escape, Who trust their dangerous love.” A true heart never hears; For I would rather die to please Than live and not be theirs.”[189] The next is also a fragment, and relates, with great simplicity, an incident which belongs to the state of society that existed in Spain between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the two races were much mingled together and always in conflict. I was the Moorish maid, Morayma, I was that maiden dark and fair,— A Christian came, he seemed in sorrow, Full of falsehood came he there. Moorish he spoke,—he spoke it well,— “Open the door, thou Moorish maid, So shalt thou be by Allah blessed, So shall I save my forfeit head.” “But how can I, alone and weak, Unbar, and know not who is there?” “But I’m the Moor, the Moor Mazote, The brother of thy mother dear. A Christian fell beneath my hand, The Alcalde comes, he comes apace, And if thou open not thy door, I perish here before thy face.” I rose in haste, I rose in fear, I seized my cloak, I missed my vest, And, rushing to the fatal door, I threw it wide at his behest.[190] Cooling fountain, cooling fountain, Cooling fountain, full of love! Where the little birds all gather, Thy refreshing power to prove; All except the widowed turtle Full of grief, the turtle-dove. There the traitor nightingale All by chance once passed along, Uttering words of basest falsehood In his guilty, treacherous song: “If it please thee, gentle lady, I thy servant-love would be.” “Hence, begone, ungracious traitor, Base deceiver, hence from me! I nor rest upon green branches, Nor amidst the meadow’s flowers; The very wave my thirst that quenches Seek I where it turbid pours. No wedded love my soul shall know, Lest children’s hearts my heart should win; No pleasure would I seek for, no! No consolation feel within;— So leave me sad, thou enemy! Thou foul and base deceiver, go! For I thy love will never be, Nor ever, false one, wed thee, no!” The parallel ballad of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” is “Rose, fresh and fair, Rose, fresh and fair, That with love so bright dost glow, When within my arms I held thee, I could never serve thee, no! And now that I would gladly serve thee, I no more can see thee, no!” “The fault, my friend, the fault was thine,— Thy fault alone, and not mine, no! A message came,—the words you sent,— Your servant brought it, well you know. And naught of love, or loving bands, But other words, indeed, he said: That you, my friend, in Leon’s lands A noble dame had long since wed;— A lady fair, as fair could be; Her children bright as flowers to see.” “Who told that tale, who spoke those words, No truth he spoke, my lady, no! For Castile’s lands I never saw, Of Leon’s mountains nothing know, Save as a little child, I ween, Too young to know what love should mean.”[191] The Cancionero of Castillo, where they appeared, was enlarged and altered in eight subsequent editions, the last of which was published in 1573; but in all of them this little collection of ballads, as originally printed in the first edition, remained by itself, unchanged, though in the additions of newer poetry a modern ballad is occasionally inserted.[193] It may, therefore, be doubted whether the General Cancioneros did much to attract attention to the ballad poetry of the country, especially when we bear in mind that they are almost entirely filled with the works of the conceited school of the period that produced them, and were probably little known except among the courtly classes, who placed small value on what was old and national in their poetical literature.[194] But while the Cancioneros were still in course of publication, a separate effort was made in the right direction to preserve the old ballads, and proved successful. As might be anticipated from such an origin, their character and tone are very various. Some are connected with the fictions of chivalry, and the story of Charlemagne; the most remarkable of which are those on Gayferos and Melisendra, on the Marquis of Mantua and on Count Irlos.[195] Others, like that of the cross miraculously made for Alfonso the Chaste, and that on the all of Valencia, belong to the early history of Spain,[196] and may well have been among those The genuine ballad-book thus published was so suc But since the appearance of these collections, above two centuries ago, little has been done to increase our stock of old Spanish ballads. Small ballad-books on particular subjects, like those of the Twelve Peers and of the Cid, were, indeed, early selected from the larger ones, and have since been frequently called for by the general favor; but still it should be understood, that, from the middle and latter part of the seventeenth cen The old collections of the sixteenth century, however, are still the only safe and sufficient sources in which to seek the true old ballads. That of 1593-1597 is particularly valuable, as we have already intimated, from the circumstance, that its materials were gathered so widely out of different parts of Spain; and if to the multitude of ballads it contains we add those found in the Cancionero of 1511, and in the ballad-book of 1550, we shall have the great body of the anonymous ancient Spanish ballads, more near to that popular tradition which was the common source of what is best in them than we can find it anywhere else. But, from whatever source we may now draw them, we must give up, at once, all hope of arranging them in chronological order. They were originally printed in small volumes, or on separate sheets, as they chanced, from time to time, to be composed or found,—those that were taken from the memories of the blind ballad-singers in the streets by the side of those that were taken from the works of Lope de Vega and GÓngora; and just as they were first collected, so they were afterwards heaped together in the General Romanceros, without affixing to them the names of their authors, or CHAPTER VII.Ballads on Subjects connected with Chivalry. — Ballads from Spanish History. — Bernardo del Carpio. — Fernan Gonzalez. — The Lords of Lara. — The Cid. — Ballads from Ancient History and Fable, Sacred and Profane. — Ballads on Moorish Subjects. — Miscellaneous Ballads, Amatory, Burlesque, Satirical, etc. — Character of the old Spanish Ballads. Ballads of Chivalry.—The first thing that strikes us, on opening any one of the old Spanish ballad-books, is the national air and spirit that prevail throughout them. But we look in vain for many of the fictions found in the popular poetry of other countries at the same period, some of which we might well expect to find here. Even that chivalry, which was so akin to the character and condition of Spain when the ballads appeared, fails to sweep by us with the train of its accustomed personages. Of Arthur and his Round Table the old ballads tell us nothing at all, nor of the “Mervaile of the Graal,” nor of Perceval, nor of the Palmerins, nor of many other well-known and famous heroes of the shadow land of chivalry. Later, indeed, some of these personages figure largely in the Spanish prose romances. But, for a long time, the history of Spain itself furnished materials enough for its more popular poetry; and therefore, though Amadis, Lancelot du Lac, Tristan de Leonnais, and their compeers, present themselves now and then in the ballads, it is not till after the prose romances, filled with their adventures, The only considerable exception to this remark is to be found in the stories connected with Charlemagne and his peers. That great sovereign—who, in the darkest period of Europe since the days of the Roman republic, roused up the nations, not only by the glory of his military conquests, but by the magnificence of his civil institutions—crossed the Pyrenees in the latter part of the eighth century, at the solicitation of one of his Moorish allies, and ravaged the Spanish marches as far as the Ebro, taking Pamplona and Saragossa.[202] The impression he made there seems to have been the same he made everywhere; and from this time the splendor of his great name and deeds was connected in the minds of the Spanish people with wild imaginations of their own achievements, and gave birth to that series of fictions which is embraced in the story of Bernardo del Carpio, and ends with the great rout, when, according to the persuasions of the national vanity, “Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia.” These picturesque adventures, chiefly without countenance from history, in which the French paladins appear associated with fabulous Spanish heroes, such as Montesinos and Durandarte,[203] and once with the noble Moor The ballads of this class are occasionally quite long, and approach the character of the old French and English metrical romances; that of the Conde d’ Irlos extending to about thirteen hundred lines. The longer ballads, too, are generally the best; and those, through large portions of which the same asonante, and sometimes, even, the same consonante or full rhyme, is continued to the end, have a solemn harmony in their protracted cadences, that produces an effect on the feelings like the chanting of a rich and well-sustained recitative. Taken as a body, they have a grave tone, combined with the spirit of a picturesque narrative, and entirely different from the extravagant and romantic air afterwards given to the same class of fictions in Italy, and even from that of the few Spanish ballads which, at a Historical Ballads.—The most important and the largest division of the Spanish ballads is, however, the historical. Nor is this surprising. The early heroes in Spanish history grew so directly out of the popular character, and the early achievements of the national arms so nearly touched the personal condition of every Christian in the Peninsula, that they naturally became the first and chief subjects of a poetry which has always, to a remarkable degree, been the breathing of the popular feelings and passions. It would be easy, therefore, to collect a series of ballads,—few in number as far as respects the Gothic and Roman periods, but ample from the time of Roderic and the Moorish conquest of Spain down to the moment when its restoration was gloriously fulfilled in the fall of Granada,—a series which would constitute such a poetical illustration of Spanish history as can be brought in aid of the history of no other country. But, for our present purpose, it is enough to select a few sketches from these remarkable ballads devoted to the greater heroes,—personages half-shadowy, half-historical,—who, between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the twelfth century, occupy a wide space in all the old traditions, and The first of these, in the order of time, is Bernardo del Carpio, concerning whom we have about forty ballads, which, with the accounts in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, have constituted the foundations for many a drama and tale, and at least three long heroic poems. According to these early narratives, Bernardo flourished about the year 800, and was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de SaldaÑa and the sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was so much offended, that he kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment, and sent the Infanta to a convent; educating Bernardo as his own son, and keeping him ignorant of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo, ending with the victory of Roncesvalles,—his efforts to procure the release of his father, when he learns who his father is,—the falsehood of the king, who promises repeatedly to give up the Count de SaldaÑa and as often breaks his word,—with the despair of Bernardo, and his final rebellion, after the Count’s death in prison,—are all as fully represented in the ballads as they are in the chronicles, and constitute some of the most romantic and interesting portions of each.[206] Of the ballads which contain this story, and which generally suppose the whole of it to have passed in one reign, though the Chronicle spreads it over three, none, perhaps, is finer than the one in which the Count de SaldaÑa, in his solitary prison, complains of his son, who, he supposes, must know his descent, and of his wife, the Infanta, who, he presumes, must be in league The tale of my imprisoned life Within these loathsome walls, Each moment, as it lingers by, My hoary hair recalls; For when this castle first I saw, My beard was scarcely grown, And now, to purge my youthful sins, Its folds hang whitening down. Then where art thou, my careless son? And why so dull and cold? Doth not my blood within thee run? Speaks it not loud and bold? Alas! it may be so, but still Thy mother’s blood is thine; And what is kindred to the king Will plead no cause of mine: And thus all three against me stand;— For the whole man to quell, ’T is not enough to have our foes, Our heart’s blood must rebel. Meanwhile, the guards that watch me here Of thy proud conquests boast; But if for me thou lead’st it not, For whom, then, fights thy host? And since thou leav’st me prisoned here, In cruel chains to groan, Or I must be a guilty sire, Or thou a guilty son! Yet pardon me, if I offend By uttering words so free; For while oppressed with age I moan, No words come back from thee.[207] The very walls are wearied there, So long in grief to hold A man whom first in youth they saw, And now see gray and old. And if, for errors such as these, The forfeit must be blood, Enough of his has flowed from me, When for your rights I stood.[208] In reading the ballads relating to Bernardo del Carpio, it is impossible not to be often struck with their resemblance to the corresponding passages of the “General Chronicle.” Some of them are undoubtedly copied from it; others possibly may have been, in more ancient forms, among the poetical materials out of which we know that Chronicle was in part composed.[209] The best The next series is that on Fernan Gonzalez, a popular chieftain, whom we have already mentioned, when noticing his metrical chronicle; and one who, in the middle of the tenth century, recovered Castile anew from the Moors, and became its first sovereign Count. The number of ballads relating to him is not large; probably not twenty. The most poetical are those which describe his being twice rescued from prison by his courageous wife, and those which relate his contest with King Sancho, where he displayed all the turbulence and cunning of a robber baron, in the Middle Ages. Nearly all their facts may be found in the Third Part of the “General Chronicle”; and though only a few of the ballads themselves appear to be derived from it as distinctly as some of those on Bernardo del Carpio, still two or three are evidently indebted to The ballads which naturally form the next group are those on the Seven Lords of Lara, who lived in the time of Garcia Ferrandez, the son of Fernan Gonzalez. Some of them are beautiful, and the story they contain is one of the most romantic in Spanish history. The seven Lords of Lara, in consequence of a family quarrel, are betrayed by their uncle into the hands of the Moors, and put to death; while their father, by the basest treason, is confined in a Moorish prison, where, by a noble Moorish lady, he has an eighth son, the famous Mudarra, who at last avenges all the wrongs of his race. On this story there are about thirty ballads; some very old, and exhibiting either inventions or traditions not elsewhere recorded, while others seem to have come directly from the “General Chronicle.” The following is a part of one of the last, and a good specimen of the whole:—[211] What knight goes there, so false and fair, That thus for treason stood? Who sold his brother’s blood. Where Almenar extends afar, He called his nephews forth, And on that plain he bade them gain A name of fame and worth. The Moors he shows, the common foes, And promises their rout; But while they stood, prepared for blood, A mighty host came out. Of Moorish men were thousands ten, With pennons flowing fair; Whereat each knight, as well he might, Inquired what host came there. “O, do not fear, my kinsmen dear,” The base Velasquez cried, “The Moors you see can never be Of power your shock to bide; I oft have met their craven set, And none dared face my might; So think no fear, my kinsmen dear, But boldly seek the fight.” Thus words deceive, and men believe, And falsehood thrives amain; And those brave knights, for Christian rights, Have sped across the plain; And men ten score, but not one more, To follow freely chose: So Velasquez base his kin and race Has bartered to their foes. But, as might be anticipated, the Cid was seized upon with the first formation of the language as the subject of popular poetry, and has been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of Spanish history or fable.[212] They were first collected in a separate ballad-book as early as 1612, and have continued Sorrowing old Laynez sat, Sorrowing on the deep disgrace Of his house, so rich and knightly, Older than Abarca’s race. To avenge his wrong was needed; That, by years enfeebled, broken, None his arm now feared or heeded. But he of Orgaz, Count Lozano, Walks secure where men resort; Hindered and rebuked by none, Proud his name, and proud his port. While he, the injured, neither sleeps, Nor tastes the needful food, Nor from the ground dares lift his eyes, Nor moves a step abroad, Nor friends in friendly converse meets, But hides in shame his face; His very breath, he thinks, offends, Charged with insult and disgrace.[215] In this state of his father’s feelings, Roderic, a mere stripling, determines to avenge the insult by challenging Count Lozano, then the most dangerous knight and the first nobleman in the kingdom. The result is the death of his proud and injurious enemy; but the daughter of the fallen Count, the fair Ximena, demands vengeance of the king, and the whole is adjusted, after the rude fashion of those times, by a marriage between the parties, which necessarily ends the feud. The ballads, thus far, relate only to the early youth of the Cid in the reign of Ferdinand the Great, and constitute a separate series, that gave to Guillen de Castro, and after him to Corneille, the best materials Away! away! proud Roderic! Castilian proud, away! Bethink thee of that olden time, That happy, honored day, When, at Saint James’s holy shrine, Thy knighthood first was won; When Ferdinand, my royal sire, Confessed thee for a son. He gave thee then thy knightly arms, My mother gave thy steed; Thy spurs were buckled by these hands, That thou no grace might’st need. And had not chance forbid the vow, I thought with thee to wed; But Count Lozano’s daughter fair Thy happy bride was led. With her came wealth, an ample store, But power was mine, and state: Broad lands are good, and have their grace, But he that reigns is great. Thy wife is well; thy match was wise; Yet, Roderic! at thy side A vassal’s daughter sits by thee, And not a royal bride![216] Indeed, in the earlier part of the period when historical ballads were written, their subjects seem rather to have been chosen among the traditional heroes of the country, than among the known and ascertained events in its annals. Much fiction, of course, was mingled with whatever related to such personages by the willing credulity of patriotism, and portions of the ballads about them are incredible to any modern faith; so that we can hardly fail to agree with the good sense At a later period, all sorts of subjects were introduced into the ballads; ancient subjects as well as modern, sacred as well as profane. Even the Greek and Roman fables were laid under contribution, as if they were historically true; but more ballads are connected with Spanish history than with any other, and, in general, they are better. The most striking peculiarity of the whole mass is, perhaps, to be found in the degree in which it expresses the national character. Loyalty is constantly prominent. The Lord of Buitrago sacrifices his own life to save that of his sovereign.[218] The Cid sends rich spoils from his conquests in Valencia to the ungrateful king who had driven him thither as an exile.[219] Bernardo del Carpio bows in submission to the uncle who basely and brutally outrages Ballads on Moorish Subjects.—The Moorish ballads form a brilliant and large class by themselves, but none of them are as old as the earliest historical ballads. Indeed, their very subjects intimate their later origin. Few can be found alluding to known events or personages that occur before the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and even in these few the proofs of a more recent and Christian character are abundant. The truth appears to be, that, after the final overthrow of the Moorish power, when the conquerors for the first time came into full possession of whatever was most luxurious in the civilization of their enemies, the tempting subjects their situation suggested were at once seized upon by the spirit of their popular poetry. The sweet South, with its picturesque, though effeminate, refinement; the foreign, yet not absolutely stranger, manners of its people; its magnificent and fantastic architecture; the stories of the warlike achievements and disasters at Baza, at Ronda, and at Alhama, with the romantic adventures and fierce feuds of the Zegris and Abencerrages, the Gomeles and the Aliatares;—all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada, its rich plain and snow The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century that elapsed after the fall of Granada; the same in which all classes of the ballads were first written down and printed. The early collections give full proof of this. Those of 1511 and 1550 contain several Moorish ballads, and that of 1593 contains above two hundred. But though their subjects involve known occurrences, they are hardly ever really historical; as, for instance, the well-known ballad on the tournament in Toledo, which is supposed to have happened before the year 1085, while its names belong to the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and the ballad of King Belchite, which, like many others, has These, with some of the ballads on the famous Gazul, occur in the popular story of the “Wars of Granada,” where they are treated as if contemporary with the facts they record, and are beautiful specimens of the poetry which the Spanish imagination delighted to connect with that most glorious event in the national history.[223] Others can be found in a similar tone on the stories, partly or wholly fabulous, of MuÇa, XarifÉ, Lisaro, and TarfÉ; while yet others, in greater number, belong to the treasons and rivalries, the plots and adventures, of the more famous Zegris and Abencerrages, which, as far as they are founded in fact, show how internal dissensions, no less than external disasters, prepared the way for the final overthrow of the Moorish empire. Some of them were probably written in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; many more in the time of Charles the Fifth; the most brilliant, but not the best, somewhat later. Ballads on Manners and Private Life.—But the bal Her sister Miguela Once child little Jane, And the words that she spoke Gave a great deal of pain. “You went yesterday playing, A child like the rest; And now you come out, More than other girls dressed. “You take pleasure in sighs, In sad music delight; With the dawning you rise, Yet sit up half the night. “When you take up your work, You look vacant and stare, And gaze on your sampler, But miss the stitch there. “You’re in love, people say, Your actions all show it;— New ways we shall have, When mother shall know it. “She’ll nail up the windows, And lock up the door; Leave to frolic and dance She will give us no more. “Old aunt will be sent To take us to mass, With the girls as we pass. “And when we walk out, She will bid our old shrew Keep a faithful account Of what our eyes do; “And mark who goes by, If I peep through the blind, And be sure and detect us In looking behind. “Thus for your idle follies Must I suffer too, And, though nothing I’ve done, Be punished like you.” “O sister Miguela, Your chiding pray spare;— That I’ve troubles you guess, But not what they are. “Young Pedro it is, Old Juan’s fair youth; But he’s gone to the wars, And where is his truth? “I loved him sincerely, I loved all he said; But I fear he is fickle, I fear he is fled! “He is gone of free choice, Without summons or call, And ’t is foolish to love him, Or like him at all.” “Nay, rather do thou To God pray above, Lest Pedro return, And again you should love,” Said Miguela in jest, As she answered poor Jane; “For when love has been bought At cost of such pain, Unless the soul part, That the passion you cherish Should yield up your heart? “Your years will increase, But so will your pains, And this you may learn From the proverb’s old strains:— “‘If, when but a child, Love’s power you own, Pray, what will you do When you older are grown?’”[225] A single specimen like this, however, can give no idea of the great variety in the class of ballads to which it belongs, nor of their poetical beauty. To feel their true value and power, we must read large numbers of Yet there are certainly few portions of the literature of any country that will better reward a spirit of adventurous inquiry than these ancient Spanish ballads, in all their forms. In many respects, they are unlike the earliest narrative poetry of any other part of the world; in some, they are better. The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal coarseness and violence prevailed, which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness, but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty; a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons or the gross maraudings of a border warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio; or if we compare the deep tragedy of Edom o’ Gordon with that of the Conde Alarcos; or what would be better than either, But, besides what the Spanish ballads possess different from the popular poetry of the rest of Europe, they exhibit, as no others exhibit it, that nationality which is the truest element of such poetry everywhere. They seem, indeed, as we read them, to be often little more than the great traits of the old Spanish character brought out by the force of poetical enthusiasm; so that, if their nationality were taken away from them, they would cease to exist. This, in its turn, has preserved them down to the present day, and will continue to preserve them hereafter. The great Castilian heroes, such as the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith and poetry of the common people of Spain; and are still, in some degree, honored as they were honored in the age of the Great Captain, or, farther back, in that of Saint Ferdinand. The stories of Guarinos, too, and of the defeat of Roncesvalles are still sung by the wayfaring muleteers, as they were when Don Quixote heard them in his journeying to Toboso; and the showmen still rehearse the adventures of Gayferos and Melisendra, in the streets of Seville, as they did at the solitary inn of Montesinos, when he encountered them there. In short, the ancient Spanish ballads are so truly national in their spirit, that they became at once identified with the popular char CHAPTER VIII.Second Class. — Chronicles. — Origin. — Royal Chronicles. — General Chronicle by Alfonso the Tenth. — Its Divisions and Subjects. — Its more Poetical Portions. — Its Character. — Chronicle of the Cid. — Its Origin, Subject, and Character. Chronicles.—Ballad poetry constituted, no doubt, originally, the amusement and solace of the whole mass of the Spanish people; for, during a long period of their early history, there was little division of the nation into strongly marked classes, little distinction in manners, little variety or progress in refinement. The wars going on with unappeased violence from century to century, though by their character not without an elevating and poetical influence upon all, yet oppressed and crushed all by the sufferings that followed in their train, and kept the tone and condition of the body of the Spanish nation more nearly at the same level than the national character was probably ever kept, for so long a period, in any other Christian country. But as the great Moorish contest was transferred to the South, Leon, Castile, and indeed the whole North, became comparatively quiet and settled. Wealth began to be accumulated in the monasteries, and leisure followed. The castles, instead of being constantly in a state of anxious preparation against the common enemy, were converted into abodes of a crude, but free, hospitality; and those distinctions of society that come from differ The oldest of these forms was that of the Spanish prose chronicles, which, besides being called for by the changed condition of things, were the proper successors of the monkish Latin chronicles and legends, long before known in the country, and were of a nature to win favor with men who themselves were every day engaged in achievements such as these very stories celebrated, and who consequently looked on the whole class of works to which they belonged as the pledge and promise of their own future fame. The chronicles were, therefore, not only the natural offspring of the times, but were fostered and favored by the men who controlled the times.[228] I. General Chronicles and Royal Chronicles.—Under such circumstances, we might well anticipate that the proper style of the Spanish chronicle would first appear at the court, or in the neighbourhood of the throne; because at court were to be found the spirit and the materials most likely to give it birth. But it is still to be considered remarkable, that the first of the It is divided, perhaps not by its author, into four parts: the first opening with the creation of the world, and giving a large space to Roman history, but hastening over every thing else till it comes to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths; the second comprehending the Gothic empire of the country and its conquest by the Moors; the third coming down to the reign of Ferdinand the Great, early in the eleventh century; and the fourth closing in 1252, with the death of Saint Ferdinand, the conqueror of Andalusia and father of Alfonso himself. Its earliest portions are the least interesting. They contain such notions and accounts of antiquity, and especially of the Roman empire, as were current among the common writers of the Middle Ages, though occasionally, as in the case of Dido,—whose memory has The last part, though less carefully compiled and elaborated, is in the same general tone. It opens with the well-known history of the Cid,[240] to whom, as to the great hero of the popular admiration, a disproportion The striking characteristic of this remarkable Chronicle is, that, especially in its Third Part, and in a portion of the Fourth, it is a translation, if we may so speak, of the old poetical fables and traditions of the country into a simple, but picturesque, prose, intended to be sober history. What were the sources of those purely national passages, which we should be most curious to trace back and authenticate, we can never know. Sometimes, as in the case of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, the ballads and gestes of the olden time[241] are distinctly appealed to. Sometimes, as in the case of the Children of Lara, an early Latin chronicle, or perhaps some poetical legend, of which all trace is now lost, may have constituted the foundations of the narrative.[242] And once at least, if not oftener, an entire and separate history, that of the Cid, is inserted without being well fitted into its place. Throughout all these portions, the poetical character predominates much oftener than it does in the rest; for while, in the earlier parts, what had been rescued of ancient history is given with a grave sort of exactness, that renders it dry and uninteresting, we have in the concluding portion a simple narrative, where, as in the account of the death of Among the more poetical passages are two at the end of the Second Part, which are introduced, as contrasts to each other, with a degree of art and skill rare in these simple-hearted old chronicles. They relate to what was long called “the Ruin of Spain,”[243] or its conquest by the Moors, and consist of two picturesque presentments of its condition before and after that event, which the Spaniards long seemed to regard as dividing the history of the world into its two great constituent portions. In the first of these passages, entitled “Of the Good Things of Spain,”[244] after a few general remarks, the fervent old chronicler goes on: “For this Spain, whereof we have spoken, is like the very Paradise of God; for it is watered by five noble rivers, which are the Duero, and the Ebro, and the Tagus, and the Guadalquivir, and the Guadiana; and each of these hath, between itself and the others, lofty mountains and sierras;[245] and their valleys and plains are great and broad, and, through the richness of the soil and the watering of the rivers, they bear many fruits and are full of abundance. And Spain, above all other things, is skilled in war, feared and very bold in battle; light of heart, loyal to her lord, diligent in learning, courtly in speech, accomplished in all good things. Nor is there land in the world that may be accounted like her in abundance, nor may any equal her in strength, and few there be in But now reverse the medal, and look on the other picture, entitled “The Mourning of Spain,” when, as the Chronicle tells us, after the victory of the Moors, “all the land remained empty of people, bathed in tears, a byword, nourishing strangers, deceived of her own people, widowed and deserted of her sons, confounded among barbarians, worn out with weeping and wounds, decayed in strength, weakened, uncomforted, abandoned of all her own.... Forgotten are her songs, and her very language is become foreign and her words strange.” The more attractive passages of the Chronicle, however, are its long narratives. They are also the most poetical;—so poetical, indeed, that large portions of them, with little change in their phraseology, have since been converted into popular ballads;[246] while other portions, hardly less considerable, are probably derived from similar, but older, popular poetry, now either wholly lost, or so much changed by successive oral traditions, that it has ceased to show its relationship with the chronicling stories to which it originally gave birth. Notwithstanding this refusal, however, when great services are wanted from Bernardo in troubled times, his father’s liberty is promised him as a reward; but these promises are constantly broken, until he renounces his allegiance, and makes war upon his false uncle, and on one of his successors, Alfonso the Great.[248] At last, Bernardo succeeds in reducing the royal authority so low, that the king again, and more solemnly, promises to give up his prisoner, if Bernardo, on his part, will give up the great castle of Carpio, which had rendered him really formidable. The faithful son does not hesitate, and the king sends for the Count, but finds him dead, probably by the royal procurement. The Count’s death, however, does not prevent the base monarch from determining to keep the castle, which was the stipulated price of his prisoner’s release. He therefore directs the dead body to be brought, as if alive, on horseback, and, in company with Bernardo, who has no suspicion of the cruel mockery, goes out to meet it. “And when they were all about to meet,” the old Chronicle goes on, “Bernardo began to shout aloud with great joy, and to say, ‘Cometh indeed the Count Don Sandias de SaldaÑa!’ And the King, Don Alfonso, said to him, ‘Behold where he cometh! Go, therefore, and This constitutes one of the most interesting parts of the old General Chronicle: but the whole is curious, and much of it is rich and picturesque. It is written with more freedom and less exactness of style than some of the other works of its noble author; and in the last division shows a want of finish, which in the first two parts is not perceptible, and in the third only slightly so. But everywhere it breathes the spirit of its age, and, when taken together, is not only the most interesting of the Spanish chronicles, but the most interesting of all that, in any country, mark the transition from its poetical and romantic traditions to the grave exactness of historical truth. The next of the early chronicles that claims our notice is the one called, with primitive simplicity, “The Chronicle of the Cid”; in some respects as important as the one we have just examined; in others, less so. The first thing that strikes us, when we open it, is, that, although it has much of the appearance and arrangement of a separate and independent work, it is substantially the same with the two hundred and eighty pages which When it was arranged in its present form, or by whom this was done, we have no notice.[251] But it was As a part of the General Chronicle of Spain,[253] we must, with a little hesitation, pronounce the Chronicle of the Cid less interesting than several of the portions that immediately precede it. But still, it is the great Much of it is as fabulous[254] as the accounts of Bernardo del Carpio and the Children of Lara, though perhaps not more so than might be expected in a work of such a period and such pretensions. Its style, too, is suited to its romantic character, and is more diffuse and grave than that of the best narrative portions of the General Chronicle. But then, on the other hand, it is overflowing with the very spirit of the times when it was written, and offers us so true a picture of their generous virtues, as well as their stern violence, that it may well be regarded as one of the best books in the world, if not the very best, for studying the real character and manners of the ages of chivalry. Occasionally there are passages in it like the following description of the Cid’s feelings and conduct, when he left his good castle of Bivar, unjustly and cruelly exiled by the king, “And when he saw his courts deserted and without people, and the perches without falcons, and the gateway without its judgment-seats, he turned himself toward the East and knelt down and said, ‘Saint Mary, Mother, and all other Saints, graciously beseech God that he would grant me might to overcome all these pagans, and that I may gain from them wherewith to do good to my friends, and to all those that may follow and help me.’ And then he went on and asked for Alvar FaÑez, and said to him, ‘Cousin, what fault have the poor in the wrong that the king has done us? Warn all my people, then, that they harm none, wheresoever we may go.’ And he called for his horse to mount. Then spake up an old woman standing at her door and said, ‘Go on with good luck, for you shall make spoil of whatsoever you may find or desire.’ And the Cid, when he heard that saying, rode on, for he would tarry no longer; and as he went out of Bivar, he said, ‘Now do I desire you should know, my friends, that it is the will of God that we should return to Castile with great honor and great gain.’”[255] Some of the touches of manners in this little passage, CHAPTER IX.Effects of the Example of Alfonso the Tenth. — Chronicles of his own Reign, and of the Reigns of Sancho the Brave and Ferdinand the Fourth. — Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh, by Villaizan. — Chronicles of Peter the Cruel, Henry the Second, John the First, and Henry the Third, by Ayala. — Chronicle of John the Second. — Two Chronicles of Henry the Fourth, and two of Ferdinand and Isabella. The idea of Alfonso the Wise, simply and nobly expressed in the opening of his Chronicle, that he was desirous to leave for posterity a record of what Spain had been and had done in all past time,[256] was not without influence upon the nation, even in the state in which it then was, and in which, for above a century afterwards, it continued. But, as in the case of that great king’s project for a uniform administration of justice by a settled code, his example was too much in advance of his age to be immediately followed; though, as in that memorable case, when it was once adopted, its fruits became abundant. The two next kings, Sancho the Brave and Ferdinand the Fourth, took no measures, so far as we know, to keep up and publish the history of their reigns. But Alfonso the Eleventh, the same monarch, it should be remembered, under whom the By whom this office was first filled does not appear; but the Chronicle itself seems to have been prepared about the year 1320. Formerly it was attributed to Fernan Sanchez de Tovar; but Fernan Sanchez was a personage of great consideration and power in the state, practised in public affairs, and familiar with their history, so that we can hardly attribute to him the mistakes with which this Chronicle abounds, especially in the part relating to Alfonso the Wise.[258] But, whoever may have been its author, the Chronicle, which, it may be noticed, is so distinctly divided into the three reigns, that it is rather three chronicles than one, has little value as a composition. Its narrative is given with a The example of regular chronicling, having now been fairly set at the court of Castile, was followed by Henry the Second, who commanded his Chancellor and Chief-Justiciary, Juan NuÑez de Villaizan, to prepare, as we are told in the Preface, in imitation of the ancients, an account of his father’s reign. In this way, the series goes on unbroken, and now gives us the “Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh,”[259] beginning with his birth and education, of which the notices are slight, but relating amply the events from the time he came to the throne, in 1312, till his death in 1350. How much of it was actually written by the chancellor of the kingdom cannot be ascertained.[260] From different passages, it seems that an older chronicle was used freely in its composition;[261] and the whole should, therefore, probably be regarded as a compilation made under the responsibility of the highest personages of the realm. Its opening will show at once the grave and measured tone it takes, and the accuracy it claims for its dates and statements. “God is the beginning and the means and the end of all things; and without him they cannot subsist. For by his power they are made, and by his wisdom ordered, and by his goodness maintained. And he is the Lord; and, in all things, almighty, and conqueror in The reign of the father, however, occupies only three short chapters; after which, the rest of the Chronicle, containing in all three hundred and forty-two chapters, comes down to the death of Alfonso, who perished of the plague before Gibraltar, and then abruptly closes. Its general tone is grave and decisive, like that of a person speaking with authority upon matters of importance, and it is rare that we find in it a sketch of manners like the following account of the young king at the age of fourteen or fifteen. “And as long as he remained in the city of Valladolid, there were with him knights and esquires, and his tutor, Martin Fernandez de Toledo, that brought him up, and that had been with him a long time, even before the queen died, and other men, who had long been used to palaces, and to the courts of kings; and all these gave him an ensample of good manners. And, moreover, he had been brought up with the children of men of note, and with noble knights. But the king, of his own condition, was well-mannered in eating, and But though there are few sketches in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh like the preceding, we find in general a well-ordered account of the affairs of that monarch’s long and active reign, given with a simplicity and apparent sincerity which, in spite of the formal plainness of its style, make it almost always interesting, and sometimes amusing. The next considerable attempt approaches somewhat nearer to proper history. It is the series of chronicles relating to the troublesome reigns of Peter the Cruel and Henry the Second, to the hardly less unsettled times of John the First, and to the more quiet and prosperous reign of Henry the Third. They were written by Pedro Lopez de Ayala, in some respects the first Spaniard of his age; distinguished, as we have seen, At first, the cause of Henry was successful. But Peter addressed himself for help to Edward the Black Prince, then in his duchy of Aquitaine, who, as Froissart relates, thinking it would be a great prejudice against the estate royal[265] to have a usurper succeed, entered Spain, and, with a strong hand, replaced the fallen monarch on his throne. At the decisive battle of Naxera, by which this was achieved, in 1367, Ayala, who bore his prince’s standard, was taken prisoner[266] and carried to England, where he wrote a part at least of his poems on a courtly life. Somewhat later, Peter, no longer supported by the Black Prince, was dethroned; and Ayala, who was then released from his tedious imprisonment, returned home, and afterwards became Grand-Chancellor to Henry the Second, in whose service he gained so much consideration and influence, that he seems to have descended as a sort of traditionary “He was,” says his nephew, the noble Fernan Perez de Guzman, in the striking gallery of portraits he has left us,[267] “He was a man of very gentle qualities and of good conversation; had a great conscience and feared God much. He loved knowledge, also, and gave himself much to reading books and histories; and though he was as goodly a knight as any, and of great discretion in the practices of the world, yet he was by nature bent on learning, and spent a great part of his time in reading and studying, not books of law, but of philosophy and history. Through his means some books are now known in Castile that were not known aforetime; such as Titus Livius, who is the most notable of the Roman historians; the ‘Fall of Princes’; the ‘Ethics’ of Saint Gregory; Isidorus ‘De Summo Bono’; Boethius; and the ‘History of Troy.’ He prepared the History of Castile from the King Don Pedro to the King Don Henry; and made a good book on Hunting, which he greatly affected, and another called ‘Rimado de Palacio.’” We should not, perhaps, at the present day, claim so much reputation as his kinsman does for the Chancellor For such an undertaking Ayala was singularly well fitted. Spanish prose was already well advanced in his time; for Don John Manuel, the last of the elder school of good writers, did not die till Ayala was fifteen years old. He was, moreover, as we have seen, a scholar, and, for the age in which he lived, a remarkable one; and, what is of more importance than either of these circumstances, he was personally familiar with the course of public affairs during the forty-six years embraced by his Chronicle. Of all this traces are to be found in Among the many curious and striking passages in Ayala’s Chronicle, the most interesting are, perhaps, those that relate to the unfortunate Blanche of Bour The last of the royal chronicles that it is necessary to notice with much particularity is that of John the Second, which begins with the death of Henry the Third, and comes down to the death of John himself, in 1454.[273] It was the work of several hands, and contains But whoever may have been at first concerned in it, the whole work was ultimately committed to Fernan Perez de Guzman, a scholar, a courtier, and an acute as well as a witty observer of manners, who survived John the Second, and probably arranged and completed the Chronicle of his master’s reign, as it was published by order of the Emperor Charles the Fifth;[279] some passages having been added as late as the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are more than once alluded to in it as reigning sovereigns.[280] It is divided, like the Chronicle of Ayala, which may naturally have been its model, into the different years of the king’s reign, each year being subdivided into chapters; and it contains a great number of important original letters and other curious contemporary documents,[281] from which, as well as from the care used in its compilation, it has been considered more absolutely trustworthy than any Castilian chronicle that preceded it.[282] In its general air, there is a good deal to mark the manners of the age, such as accounts of the court ceremonies, festivals, and tournaments that were so much loved by John; and its style, though, on the whole, un Similar remarks must be made about the chronicles of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, extending from 1474 to 1504-16. There are several of them, but only two need be noticed. One is by Andres Bernaldez, often called “El Cura de los Palacios,” because he was curate in the small town of that name, though the materials for his Chronicle were, no doubt, gathered chiefly in Seville, the neighbouring splendid capital of Andalusia, to whose princely Archbishop he was chaplain. His Chronicle, written, it should seem, chiefly to please his own taste, extends from 1488 to 1513. It is honest and sincere, reflecting faithfully the physiognomy of his age; its credulity, its bigotry, and its love of show. It is, in truth, such an account of passing events as would be given by one who was rather curious about them than a part of them; but who, from accident, was familiar with whatever was going on The other chronicle of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella is that of Fernando del Pulgar, their Councillor of State, their Secretary, and their authorized Annalist. He was a person of much note in his time, but it is not known when he was born or where he died.[290] That he was a man of wit and letters, and an acute observer of life, we know from his notices of the Famous Men of Castile; from his Commentary on the Coplas of Mingo Revulgo; and from a few spirited and The Chronicle of Ferdinand and Isabella by Pulgar is the last instance of the old style of chronicling that should now be noticed; for though, as we have already observed, it was long thought for the dignity of the CHAPTER X.Chronicles of Particular Events. — The Passo Honroso. — The Seguro de Tordesillas. — Chronicles of Particular Persons. — Pero NiÑo. — Alvaro de Luna. — Gonzalvo de CÓrdova. — Chronicles of Travels. — Clavijo, Columbus, Balboa, and others. — Romantic Chronicles. — Roderic and the Destruction of Spain. — General Remarks on the Spanish Chronicles. Chronicles of Particular Events.—It should be borne in mind, that we have thus far traced only the succession of what may be called the general Spanish chronicles, which, prepared by royal hands or under royal authority, have set forth the history of the whole country, from its earliest beginnings and most fabulous traditions, down through its fierce wars and divisions, to the time when it had, by the final overthrow of the Moorish power, been settled into a quiet and compact monarchy. From their subject and character, they are, of course, the most important, and, generally, the most interesting, works of the class to which they belong. But, as might be expected from the influence they exercised and the popularity they enjoyed, they were often imitated. Many chronicles were written on a great variety of subjects, and many works in a chronicling style which yet never bore the name. Most of them are of no value. But to the few that, from their manner or style, deserve notice we must now turn for a moment, beginning with those that refer to particular events. “Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,” and Rodamont maintained the bridge of Montpellier, for the sake of the lady of his love, it is yet all plain matter of fact, spread out in becoming style, by an eyewitness, with a full account of the ceremonies, both of chivalry and of religion, that accompanied it. The theory of the whole is, that QuiÑones, in acknowledgment of being prisoner to a noble lady, had, for some time, weekly worn her chains; and that he was now to ransom himself from this fanciful imprisonment by the payment of a certain number of real spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. All this, to be sure, is fantastic enough. But the ideas of love, honor, and religion displayed in the proceedings of the champions,[296] who hear mass devoutly every day, and yet cannot obtain Christian burial for the Aragonese knight who is killed, and in the conduct of QuiÑones himself, who fasts each Thursday, partly, it should seem, in honor of the Madonna, and partly in honor of his lady,—these and other whimsical incongruities are still more fantastic. They seem, indeed, as we read their record, to be quite worthy of the admiration expressed for them by Don Quixote in his argument with the wise canon,[297] but hardly worthy of any other; so that we are surprised, at first, when we find them specially recorded in The other work of the same period to which we have referred gives us, also, a striking view of the spirit of the times; one less picturesque, indeed, but not less instructive. It is called “El Seguro de Tordesillas,” the Pledge or the Truce of Tordesillas, and relates to a series of conferences held in 1439, between John the Second and a body of his nobles, headed by his own son, who, in a seditious and violent manner, interfered in the affairs of the kingdom, in order to break down the influence of the Constable de Luna.[299] It receives its peculiar name from the revolting circumstance, that, even in the days of the Passo Honroso, and with some of the knights who figured in that gorgeous show for the parties, true honor was yet sunk so low in Spain, that none could be found on either side of this great quarrel,—not even the King or the Prince,—whose This proud distinction was given to Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, commonly called the Good or Faithful Count Haro; and the “Seguro de Tordesillas,” prepared by him some time afterwards, shows how honorably he executed the extraordinary trust. Few historical works can challenge such absolute authenticity. The documents of the case, constituting the chief part of it, are spread out before the reader; and what does not rest on their foundation rests on that word of the Good Count to which the lives of whatever was most distinguished in the kingdom had just been fearlessly trusted. As might be expected, its characteristics are simplicity and plainness, not elegance or eloquence. It is, in fact, a collection of documents, but it is an interesting and a melancholy record. The compact that was made led to no permanent good. The Count soon withdrew, ill at ease, to his own estates; and in less than two years his unhappy and weak master was assailed anew, and besieged in Medina del Campo, by his rebellious family and their adherents.[301] After this, we hear little of Chronicles of Particular Persons.—But while remarkable events, like the Passage of Arms at Orbigo and the Pledge of Tordesillas, were thus appropriately recorded, the remarkable men of the time could hardly fail occasionally to find fit chroniclers. Pero NiÑo, Count de Buelna, who flourished between 1379 and 1453, is the first of them. He was a distinguished naval and military commander in the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second; and his Chronicle is the work of Gutierre Diez de Gamez, who was attached to his person from the time Pero NiÑo was twenty-three years old, and boasted the distinction of being his standard-bearer in many a rash and bloody fight. A more faithful chronicler, or one more imbued with knightly qualities, can hardly be found. He may be well compared to the “Loyal Serviteur,” the biographer of the Chevalier Bayard; and, like him, not only enjoyed the confidence of his master, but shared his spirit.[303] His accounts of the education of Pero NiÑo, Next after Pero NiÑo’s Chronicle comes that of the Constable Don Alvaro de Luna, the leading spirit of the reign of John the Second, almost from the moment The last of the chronicles of individuals written in the spirit of the elder times, that it is necessary to notice, is that of Gonzalvo de CÓrdova, “the Great Captain,” who flourished from the period immediately preceding the war of Granada to that which begins the reign of Charles the Fifth; and who produced an impression on the Spanish nation hardly equalled since the earlier days of that great Moorish contest, the cyclus of whose heroes Gonzalvo seems appropriately to close up. It was about 1526 that the Emperor Charles the Fifth desired one of the favorite followers of Gonzalvo, Hernan Perez del Pulgar, to prepare an account of his great captain’s life. A better person could not easily have been selected. For he is not, as was long supposed, Fernando del Pulgar, the wit and courtier of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.[316] Nor is the work he As might be expected from the character of its author,—who, to distinguish him from the courtly and peaceful Pulgar, was well called “He of the Achievements,” El de las HazaÑas,—the book he offered to his monarch is not a regular life of Gonzalvo, but rath Chronicles of Travels.—In the same style with the histories of their kings and great men, a few works should be noticed in the nature of travels, or histories The oldest of them, which has any value, is an account of a Spanish embassy to Tamerlane, the great Tartar potentate and conqueror. Its origin is curious. Henry the Third of Castile, whose affairs, partly in consequence of his marriage with Catherine, daughter of Shakspeare’s “time-honored Lancaster,” were in a more fortunate and quiet condition than those of his immediate predecessors, seems to have been smitten in his prosperity with a desire to extend his fame to the remotest countries of the earth; and for this purpose, we are told, sought to establish friendly relations with the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, with the Sultan of Babylon, with Tamerlane or Timour Bec the Tartar, and even with the fabulous Prester John of that shadowy India which was then the subject of so much speculation. What was the result of all this widely spread diplomacy, so extraordinary at the end of the fourteenth century, we do not know, except that the first ambassadors sent to Tamerlane and Bajazet chanced actually to be present at the great and decisive battle between those two preponderating powers of the East, and that Tamerlane sent a splendid embassy in return, with some of the spoils of his victory, among which were two fair captives, who figure in the Spanish poetry of the time.[323] King Henry was not ungrateful for such a tribute of respect, and, to acknowledge it, despatched to Tamerlane three persons of his court, one of whom, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, has left us a minute account of the whole embassy, its adventures and its results. In the course of it, we have a description of Constantinople, which is the more curious because it is given at the moment when it tottered to its fall;[325] of Trebizond, with its Greek churches and clergy;[326] of Teheran, now the capital of Persia;[327] and of Samarcand, where they found the great Conqueror himself, and were entertained by him with a series of magnificent festivals continuing almost to the moment of his death,[328] which happened while they were at his court, and was followed by troubles embarrassing to their homeward journey.[329] The honest Clavijo seems to have been well pleased to lay down his commission at the feet of his sovereign, whom he found at AlcalÁ; and though he lingered about the court for a year, and was one of the witnesses of the king’s will at Christmas, yet on the death of Henry he retired to Madrid, his native place, where he spent the last four or five years of his life, His travels will not, on the whole, suffer by a comparison with those of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville; for, though his discoveries are much less in extent than those of the Venetian merchant, they are, perhaps, as remarkable as those of the English adventurer, while the manner in which he has presented them is superior to that of either. His Spanish loyalty and his Catholic faith are everywhere apparent. He plainly believes that his modest embassy is making an impression of his king’s power and importance, on the countless and careless multitudes of Asia, which will not be effaced; while, in the luxurious capital of the Greek empire, he seems to look for little but the apocryphal relics of saints and apostles which then burdened the shrines of its churches. With all this, however, we may be content, because it is national; but when we find him filling the island of Ponza with buildings erected by Virgil,[331] and afterwards, as he passes Amalfi, taking note of it only because it contained the head of Saint Andrew,[332] we are obliged to recall his frankness, his zeal, and all his other good qualities, before we can be quite reconciled to his ignorance. Mariana, indeed, intimates, that, after all, his stories are not to be wholly believed. But, as in the case of other early travellers, whose accounts were often discredited But the great voyagings of the Spaniards were not destined to be in the East. The Portuguese, led on originally by Prince Henry, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, had, as it were, already appropriated to themselves that quarter of the world by discovering the easy route of the Cape of Good Hope; and, both by the right of discovery and by the provisions of the well-known Papal bull and the equally well-known treaty of 1479, had cautiously cut off their great rivals, the Spaniards, from all adventure in that direction; leaving open to them only the wearisome waters that were stretched out unmeasured towards the West. Happily, however, there was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the height to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true, Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national Gradually these and other kindred ideas took firm possession of his mind, and are found occasionally in his later journals, letters, and speculations, giving to his otherwise quiet and dignified style a tone elevated and impassioned like that of prophecy. It is true, that his adventurous spirit, when the mighty mission of his life was upon him, rose above all this, and, with a purged vision and through a clearer atmosphere, saw, from “My brother and the rest of the people,” he says, “were in a vessel that remained within, and I was left solitary on a coast so dangerous, with a strong fever and grievously worn down. Hope of escape was dead within me. I climbed aloft with difficulty, calling anxiously and not without many tears for help upon your Majesties’ captains from all the four winds of heaven. But none made me answer. Wearied and still moaning, I fell asleep, and heard a pitiful voice which said: ‘O fool, and slow to trust and serve thy God, the God of all! What did He more for Moses, or for David his servant? Ever since thou wast born, thou Three years afterwards, in 1506, Columbus died at Valladolid, a disappointed, broken-hearted old man; little comprehending what he had done for mankind, and still less the glory and homage that through all future generations awaited his name.[341] But the mantle of his devout and heroic spirit fell on none of his successors. The discoveries of the new continent, which was soon ascertained to be no part of Asia, were indeed prosecuted with spirit and success by Balboa, by Vespucci, by Hojeda, by PedrÁrias DÁvila, by the Portuguese Magellanes, by Loaisa, by Saavedra, and by many more; so that in twenty-seven Romantic Chronicles.—It only remains now to speak of one other class of the old chronicles; a class hardly represented in this period by more than a single specimen, but that a very curious one, and one which, by its date and character, brings us to the end of our present inquiries, and marks the transition to those that are to follow. The Chronicle referred to is that called “The Chronicle of Don Roderic, with the Destruction of Spain,” and is an account, chiefly fabulous, of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. An edition is cited as early as 1511, and six in all may be enumerated, including the last, which is of 1587; thus showing a good degree of popularity, if we consider the number of readers in Spain in the sixteenth century.[343] Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346] Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress wander The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written, was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction, just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least, were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350] This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements. In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and CHAPTER XI.Third Class. — Romances of Chivalry. — Arthur. — Charlemagne. — Amadis de Gaula. — Its Date, Author, Translation into Castilian, Success, and Character. — Esplandian. — Florisando. — Lisuarte de Grecia. — Amadis de Grecia. — Florisel de Niquea. — Anaxartes. — Silves de la Selva. — French Continuation. — Influence of the Fiction. — Palmerin de Oliva. — Primaleon. — Platir. — Palmerin de Inglaterra. Romances of Chivalry.—The ballads of Spain belonged originally to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads, and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we can easily see, but a single step be Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity. Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings, tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne by AdenÉs in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief scenes of which At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed, at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors. This extraordinary family of romances, whose de But the Portuguese original can no longer be found. At the end of the sixteenth century, we are assured, it was extant in manuscript in the archives of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon; and the same assertion is renewed, on good authority, about the year 1750. From this time, however, we lose all trace of it; and the most careful inquiries render it probable that this curious manuscript, about which there has been so much discussion, perished in the terrible earthquake and conflagration of 1755, when the palace occupied by the ducal family of Arveiro was destroyed with all its precious contents.[365] The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia OrdoÑez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist, nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal. It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate, and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child, exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions and amidst enchantments,—sometimes under the favor of their ladies, and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island, The Amadis is admitted, by general consent, to be the best of all the old romances of chivalry. One reason of this is, that it is more true to the manners and spirit of the age of knighthood; but the principal reason is, no doubt, that it is written with a more free invention, and takes a greater variety in its tones than is found in other similar works. It even contains, sometimes,—what we should hardly expect in this class of wild fictions,—passages of natural tenderness and beauty, such as the following description of the young loves of Amadis and Oriana. “Now Lisuarte brought with him to Scotland Brisena, his wife, and a daughter that he had by her when he dwelt in Denmark, named Oriana, about ten years old, and the fairest creature that ever was seen; so fair, that she was called ‘Without Peer,’ since in her time there was none equal to her. And because she suffered much from the sea, he consented to leave her there, asking the King, Languines, and his Queen, that they would have care of her. And they were made very glad therewith, and the Queen said, ‘Trust me that I will have such a care of her as her mother would.’ And Lisuarte, entering into his ships, made haste back into Great Britain, and found there some who had made disturbances, such as are wont to be in such cases. And for this cause, he remembered him not of his daughter, for some space of time. But at last, with much toil that he took, he obtained his kingdom, and he was the “And now the author leaves Lisuarte reigning in peace and quietness in Great Britain, and turns to the Child of the Sea, [Amadis,] who was twelve years old, but in size and limbs seemed to be fifteen. He served before the Queen, and was much loved of her, as he was of all ladies and damsels. But as soon as Oriana, the daughter of King Lisuarte, came there, she gave to her the Child of the Sea, that he should serve her, saying, ‘This is a child who shall serve you.’ And she answered, that it pleased her. And the child kept this word in his heart, in such wise that it never afterwards left it; and, as this history truly says, he was never, in all the days of his life, wearied with serving her. And this their love lasted as long as they lasted; but the Child of the Sea, who knew not at all how she loved him, held himself to be very bold, in that he had placed his thoughts on her, considering both her greatness and her beauty, and never so much as dared to speak any word to her concerning it. And she, though she loved him in her heart, took heed that she should not speak with him more than with another; but her eyes took great solace in showing to her heart what thing in the world she most loved. “Thus lived they silently together, neither saying aught to the other of their estate. Then came, at last, the time when the Child of the Sea, as I now tell you, understood within himself that he might take arms, if any there were that would make him a knight. And this he desired, because he considered that he should Other passages of quite a different character are no less striking, as, for instance, that in which the fairy Urganda comes in her fire-galleys,[373] and that in which the venerable Nasciano visits Oriana;[374] but the most characteristic are those that illustrate the spirit of chivalry, and inculcate the duties of princes and knights. In these portions of the work, there is sometimes a lofty tone that rises to eloquence,[375] and sometimes a sad one full of earnestness and truth.[376] The general story, The great objection to the Amadis is one that must be made to all of its class. We are wearied by its length, and by the constant recurrence of similar adventures and dangers, in which, as we foresee, the hero is certain to come off victorious. But this length and these repetitions seemed no fault when it first appeared, or for a long time afterwards. For romantic fiction, the only form of elegant literature which modern times have added to the marvellous inventions of Greek genius, was then recent and fresh; and the few who read for amusement rejoiced even in the least graceful of its creations, as vastly nearer to the hearts and thoughts of men educated in the institutions of knighthood than any glimpses they had thus far caught of the severe glories of antiquity. The Amadis, therefore,—as we may easily learn by the notices of it from the time when the great Chancellor of Castile mourned that he had wasted his leisure over its idle fancies, down to the time when the whole sect disappeared before the avenging satire of Cervantes,—was a work of extraordinary popularity in Spain; and one which, during the two Nor should it be forgotten that Cervantes himself was not insensible to its merits. The first book that, as he tells us, was taken from the shelves of Don Quixote, when the curate, the barber, and the housekeeper began the expurgation of his library, was the Amadis de Gaula. “‘There is something mysterious about this matter,’ said the curate; ‘for, as I have heard, this was the first book of knight-errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others have had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch-heretic of so mischievous a sect, I think he should, without a hearing, be condemned to the fire.’ ‘No, Sir,’ said the barber, ‘for I, too, have heard that it is the best of all the books of its kind that have been written, and therefore, for its singularity, it ought to be forgiven.’ ‘That is the truth,’ answered the curate, ‘and so let us spare it for the present’”;—a decision which, on the whole, has been confirmed by posterity, and precisely for the reason Cervantes has assigned.[377] But before Montalvo published his translation of the Amadis, and perhaps before he had made it, he had written a continuation, which he announced in the Preface to the Amadis as its fifth book. It is an original work, about one third part as long as the Amadis, and contains the story of the son of that hero and Oriana, named Esplandian, whose birth and education had already been given in the story of his father’s adventures, and constitute one of its pleasantest episodes. But, as the curate says, when he comes to this romance in Don Quixote’s library, “the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son.” The story of Esplandian has neither freshness, spirit, nor dignity in it. It opens at the point where he is left in the original fiction, just armed as a knight, and is filled with his adventures as he wanders about the world, and with the supernumerary achievements of his father Amadis, who survives to the end of the whole, and sees his son made Emperor of Constantinople; he himself having long before become King of Great Britain by the death of Lisuarte.[378] But, from the beginning, we find two mistakes committed, which run through the whole work. Amadis, represented as still alive, fills a large part of the can The scene of the whole work is laid chiefly in the East, amidst battles with Turks and Mohammedans; thus showing to what quarter the minds of men were turned when it was written, and what were the dangers apprehended to the peace of Europe, even in its westernmost borders, during the century after the fall of Constantinople. But all reference to real history or real geography was apparently thought inappropriate, as may be inferred from the circumstances, that a certain Calafria, queen of the island of California, is made a formidable enemy of Christendom through a large part of the story; and that Constantinople is said at one time to have been besieged by three millions of heathen. Nor is the style better than the story. The eloquence which is found in many passages of the Amadis is not found at all in Esplandian. On the contrary, large portions of it are written in a low and meagre style, and the rhymed arguments prefixed to many of the chapters are any thing but poetry, and The oldest edition of the Esplandian now known to exist was printed in 1526, and five others appeared before the end of the century; so that it seems to have enjoyed its full share of popular favor. At any rate, the example it set was quickly followed. Its principal personages were made to figure again in a series of connected romances, each having a hero descended from Amadis, who passes through adventures more incredible than any of his predecessors, and then gives place, we know not why, to a son still more extravagant, and, if the phrase may be used, still more impossible, than his father. Thus, in the same year 1526, we have the sixth book of Amadis de Gaula, called “The History of Florisando,” his nephew, which is followed by the still more wonderful “Lisuarte of Greece, Son of Esplandian,” and the most wonderful “Amadis of Greece,” making respectively the seventh and eighth books. To these succeeded “Don Florisel de Niquea,” and “Anaxartes, Son of Lisuarte,” whose history, with that of the children of the last, fills three books; and finally we have the twelfth book, or “The Great Deeds in Arms of that Bold Knight, Don Silves de la Selva,” which was printed in 1549; thus giving proof how extraordinary was the success of the whole series, since its date allows hardly half a century for the production in Spanish of all these vast romances, most of which, during the same period, appeared in several, and some of them in many editions. The Palmerin has often, perhaps generally, been regarded as Portuguese in its origin, and as the work of a lady; though the proof of each of these allegations is somewhat imperfect. If, however, the facts be really as they have been stated, not the least curious circumstance in relation to them is, that, as in the case of the Amadis, the Portuguese original of the Palmerin is lost, and the first and only knowledge we have of its story is from the Spanish version. Even in this version, we can trace it up no higher than to the edition printed at Seville in 1525, which was certainly not the first. But whenever it may have been first published, it was successful. Several editions were soon printed in Spanish, and translations followed in Italian and French. A continuation, too, appeared, called, in form, “The Second Book of Palmerin,” which treats of the achievements of his sons, Primaleon and Polendos, and of The next in the series, “Palmerin of England,” son of Don Duarde, or Edward, King of England, and Flerida, a daughter of Palmerin de Oliva, is a more formidable rival to the Amadis than either of its predecessors. For a long time it was supposed to have been first writ Regarded as a work of art, Palmerin of England is second only to the Amadis of Gaul, among the romances of chivalry. Like that great prototype of the whole class, it has among its actors two brothers,—Palmerin, the faithful knight, and Florian, the free gallant,—and, like that, it has its great magician, Deliante, and its perilous isle, where occur not a few of the most agreeable adventures of its heroes. In some respects, it may be favorably distinguished from its model. There is But the family of Palmerin had no further success in Spain. A third and fourth part, indeed, containing “The Adventures of Duardos the Second,” appeared in Portuguese, written by Diogo Fernandez, in 1587; and a fifth and sixth are said to have been written by Alvarez do Oriente, a contemporary poet of no mean reputation. But the last two do not seem to have been printed, and none of them were much known beyond the limits of their native country.[383] The Palmerins, therefore, notwithstanding the merits of one of them, failed to obtain a fame or a succession that could enter into competition with those of Amadis and his descendants. The “Bibliotheca Hispana” has already been referred to more than once in this chapter, and must so often be relied on as an authority hereafter that some noticeof its claims should be given before we proceed farther. Its author, Nicolas Antonio, was born at Seville, in 1617. He was educated, first by the care of Francisco Jimenez, a blind teacher, of singular merit, attached to the College of St. Thomas in that city; and afterwards at Salamanca, where he devoted himself with success to the study of history and canon law. When he had completed an honorable career at the University, he returned home, and lived chiefly in the Convent of the Benedictines, where he had been bred, and where an abundant and curious library furnished him with means for study, which he used with eagerness and assiduity. He was not, however, in haste to be known. He published nothing till 1659, when, at the age of forty-two, he printed a Latin treatise on the Punishment of Exile, and, the same year, was appointed to the honorable and important post of General Agent of Philip IV. at Rome. But from this time to the end of his life he was in the public service, and filled places of no little responsibility. In Rome he lived twenty years, collecting about him a library said to have been second in importance only to that of the Vatican, and devoting all his leisure to the studies he loved. At the end of that period, he returned to Madrid, and continued there in honorable employments till his death, which occurred in 1684. He left behind him several works in manuscript, of which his “Censura de Historias Fabulosas”—an examination and exposure of several forged chronicles which had appeared in the preceding century—was first published by Mayans y Siscar, and must be noticed hereafter. But his great labor—the labor of his life and of his fondest preference—was his literary history of his own country. He began it in his youth, while he was still living with the Benedictines,—an order in the Romish Church honorably distinguished by its zeal in the history of letters,—and he continued it, employing on his task all the resources which his own large library and the libraries of the capitals of Spain and of the Christian world could furnish him, down to the moment of his death. He divided it into two parts. The first, beginning with the age of Augustus, and coming down to the year 1500, was found, after his death, digested into the form of a regular history; but as his pecuniary means, during his lifetime, had been entirely devoted to the purchase of books, it was published by his friend Cardinal Aguirre, at Rome, in 1696. The second part, which had been already printed there, in 1672, is thrown into the form of a dictionary, whose separate articles are arranged, like those in most other Spanish works of the same sort, under the baptismal names of their subjects,—an honor shown to the saints, which renders the use of such dictionaries somewhat inconvenient, even when, as in the case of Antonio’s, full indexes are added, which facilitate a reference to the respective articles by the more common arrangement, according to the surnames. Of both parts an excellent edition was published in the original Latin, at Madrid, in 1787 and 1788, in four volumes, folio, commonly known as the “Bibliotheca Vetus et Nova of Nicolas Antonio”; the first being enriched with notes by Perez Bayer, a learned Valencian, long the head of the Royal Library at Madrid; and the last receiving additions from Antonio’s own manuscripts that bring down his notices of Spanish writers to the time of his death in 1684. In the earlier portion, embracing the names of about thirteen hundred authors, little remains to be desired, so far as the Roman or the ecclesiastical literary history of Spain is concerned; but for the Arabic we must go to Casiri and Gayangos, and for the Jewish to Castro and Amador de los Rios; while, for the proper Spanish literature that existed before the reign of Charles V., manuscripts discovered since the careful labors of Bayer furnish important additions. In the latter portion, which contains notices of nearly eight thousand writers of the best period of Spanish literature, we have—notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies and oversights inevitable in a work so vast and so various—a monument of industry, fairness, and fidelity, for which those who most use it will always be most grateful. The two, taken together, constitute their author, beyond all reasonable question, the father and founder of the literary history of his country. See the lives of Antonio prefixed by Mayans to the “Historias Fabulosas,” (Valencia, 1742, fol.,) and by Bayer to the “Bibliotheca Vetus,” in 1787. CHAPTER XII.Other Romances of Chivalry. — Lepolemo. — Translations from the French. — Religious Romances. — CavallerÍa Celestial. — Period during which Romances of Chivalry prevailed. — Their Number. — Their Foundation in the State of Society. — The Passion for them. — Their Fate. Although the Palmerins failed as rivals of the great family of Amadis, they were not without their influence and consideration. Like the other works of their class, and more than most of them, they helped to increase the passion for fictions of chivalry in general, which, overbearing every other in the Peninsula, was now busily at work producing romances, both original and translated, that astonish us alike by their number, their length, and their absurdities. Of those originally Spanish, it would not be difficult, after setting aside the two series belonging to the families of Amadis and Palmerin, to collect the names of about forty; all produced in the course of the sixteenth century. Some of them are still more or less familiar to us, by their names at least, such as “Belianis of Greece” and “Olivante de Laura,” which are found in Don Quixote’s library, and “Felixmarte of Hircania,” which was once, we are told, the summer reading of Dr. Johnson.[384] But, in general, like “The Renowned Among the latter is “The Invincible Knight Lepolemo, called the Knight of the Cross and Son of the Emperor of Germany”; a romance, which was published as early as 1525, and, besides drawing a continuation after it, was reprinted thrice in the course of the century, and translated into French and Italian.[385] It is a striking book among those of its class, not only from the variety of fortunes through which the hero passes, but, in some degree, from its general tone and purpose. In his infancy Lepolemo is stolen from the shelter of the throne to which he is heir, and completely lost for a long period. During this time he lives among the heathen; at first in slavery, and afterwards as an honorable knight-adventurer at the court of the Soldan. By his courage and merit he rises to great distinction, and, while on a journey through France, is recognized by his own family, who happen to be there. Of course he is restored, amidst a general jubilee, to his imperial estate. In all this, and especially in the wearisome series of its knightly adventures, the Lepolemo has a sufficient resemblance to the other romances of chivalry. But in two points it differs from them. In the first place, it Spain, however, not only gave romances of chivalry to the rest of Europe in large numbers, but received also from abroad in some good proportion to what she gave. From the first, the early French fictions were known in Spain, as we have seen by the allusions to them in the “Amadis de Gaula”; a circumstance that may have been owing either to the old connection with France through the Burgundian family, a branch of which filled the throne of Portugal, or to some strange accident, like the one that carried “Palmerin de Inglaterra” to Portugal from France rather than from Spain, its native country. At any rate, somewhat later, when the passion for such fictions was more developed, the French stories were translated or imitated in Spanish, The rival story of Charlemagne, however,—perhaps from the greatness of his name,—seems to have been, at last, more successful. It is a translation directly from the French, and therefore gives none of those accounts of his defeat at Roncesvalles by Bernardo del Carpio, which, in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, so gratified the national vanity; and contains only the accustomed stories of Oliver and Fierabras the Giant; of Orlando and the False Ganelon; relying, of course, on the fabulous Chronicle of Turpin as its chief authority. But, such as it was, it found great favor at the time it appeared; and such, in fact, as Nicolas de Piamonte gave it to the world, in 1528, under the title of “The History of the Emperor Charlemagne,” it has been constantly reprinted down to our own times, and has done more than any other tale of chivalry to keep alive in Spain a taste for such reading.[388] During a considerable period, however, a few other romances shared its popularity. “Reynaldos de Montalban,” for In most of the imitations and translations just noticed, the influence of the Church is more visible than it is in the class of the original Spanish romances. This is the case, from its very subject, with the story of the Saint Graal, and with that of Charlemagne, which, so far as it is taken from the pretended Archbishop Turpin’s Chronicle, goes mainly to encourage founding religious houses and making pious pilgrimages. But the Church was not satisfied with this indirect and accidental influence. Romantic fiction, though overlooked in its earliest beginnings, or perhaps even punished by ecclesiastical authority in the person of the Greek Bishop to whom we owe the first proper romance,[391] was now become important, and might be made directly useful. Religious romances, therefore, were written. In general, they were cast into the form of allegories, like “The Celestial Chivalry,” “The Christian Chivalry One of the oldest of them is probably the most curious and remarkable of the whole number. It is appropriately called “The Celestial Chivalry,” and was written by HierÓnimo de San Pedro, at Valencia, and printed in 1554, in two thin folio volumes.[393] In his Preface, the author declares it to be his object to drive out of the world the profane books of chivalry; the mischief of which he illustrates by a reference to Dante’s account of Francesca da Rimini. In pursuance of this purpose, the First Part is entitled “The Root of the Fragrant Rose”; which, instead of chapters, is divided into “Wonders,” Maravillas, and contains an allegorical version of the most striking stories in the Old Testament, down to the time of the good King Hezekiah, told as the adventures of a succession of knights-errant. The Second Part is divided, according to a similar conceit, into “The Leaves of the Rose”; and, beginning where the preceding one ends, comes down, Its chief allegory, from the nature of its subject, relates to the Saviour, and fills seventy-four out of the one hundred and one “Leaves,” or chapters, that constitute the Second Part. Christ is represented in it as the Knight of the Lion; his twelve Apostles as the twelve Knights of his Round Table; John the Baptist as the Knight of the Desert; and Lucifer as the Knight of the Serpent;—the main history being a warfare between the Knight of the Lion and the Knight of the Serpent. It begins at the manger of Bethlehem, and ends on Mount Calvary, involving in its progress almost every detail of the Gospel history, and often using the very words of Scripture. Every thing, however, is forced into the forms of a strange and revolting allegory. Thus, for the temptation, the Saviour wears the shield of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and rides on the steed of Penitence, given to him by Adam. He then takes leave of his mother, the daughter of the Celestial Emperor, like a youthful knight going out to his first passage at arms, and proceeds to the waste and desert country, where he is sure to find adventures. On his approach, the Knight of the Desert prepares himself to do battle; but, perceiving who it is, humbles himself before his coming prince and master. The baptism of course follows; that is, the Knight of the Lion is received into the order of the Knighthood of Baptism, in the presence of an old man, who turns out to be the The great Anagogic Master, according to an understanding previously had with the Church Militant, now follows the Knight of the Lion to the desert, and there explains to him the true mystery and efficacy of Christian baptism. After this preparation, the Knight enters on his first adventure and battle with the Knight of the Serpent, which, in all its details, is represented as a duel,—one of the parties coming into the lists accompanied by Abel, Moses, and David, and the other by Cain, Goliath, and Haman. Each of the speeches recorded in the Evangelists is here made an arrow-shot or a sword-thrust; the scene on the pinnacle of the temple, and the promises made there, are brought in as far as their incongruous nature will permit; and then the whole of this part of the long romance is abruptly ended by the precipitate and disgraceful flight of the Knight of the Serpent. This scene of the temptation, strange as it now seems to us, is, nevertheless, not an unfavorable specimen of the entire fiction. The allegory is almost everywhere There is, no doubt, a wide space between such a fiction as this of the Celestial Chivalry and the comparatively simple and direct story of the Amadis de Gaula; and when we recollect that only half a century elapsed between the dates of these romances in Spain,[395] we shall be struck with the fact that this space was very quickly passed over, and that all the varieties of the romances of chivalry are crowded into a comparatively short period of time. But we must not forget that the success of these fictions, thus suddenly obtained, is spread afterwards over a much longer period. The earliest of them were familiarly known in Spain during the fifteenth century, the sixteenth is thronged with them, and, far into the seventeenth, they were still much read; so that their influence over the Spanish character extends through quite two hundred years. Their number, too, during the latter part of the time when they prevailed, was large. It exceeded seventy, nearly all of them in folio; each often in more than one volume, and still oftener repeated in successive editions;—circumstances which, at a period when books were comparatively rare and not frequently reprinted, show that This might, perhaps, have been, in some degree, expected in a country where the institutions and feelings of chivalry had struck such firm root as they had in Spain. For Spain, when the romances of chivalry first appeared, had long been peculiarly the land of knighthood. The Moorish wars, which had made every gentleman a soldier, necessarily tended to this result; and so did the free spirit of the communities, led on as they were, during the next period, by barons, who long continued almost as independent in their castles as the king was on his throne. Such a state of things, in fact, is to be recognized as far back as the thirteenth century, when the Partidas, by the most minute and painstaking legislation, provided for a condition of society not easily to be distinguished from that set forth in the Amadis or the Palmerin.[396] The poem and history of the Cid bear witness yet earlier, indirectly indeed, but very strongly, to a similar state of the country; and so do many of the old ballads and other records of the national feelings and traditions that had come from the fourteenth century. But in the fifteenth, the chronicles are full of it, and exhibit it in forms the most grave and imposing. Dangerous tournaments, in some of which the chief men of the time, and even the kings themselves, took part, occur constantly, and are recorded among the important events of the age.[397] At the passage of arms A state of society like this was the natural result of the extraordinary development which the institutions of chivalry had then received in Spain. Some of it was suited to the age, and salutary; the rest was knight-errantry, and knight-errantry in its wildest extravagance. When, however, the imaginations of men were so excited as to tolerate and maintain, in their daily life, such manners and institutions as these, they Such credulity, it is true, now seems impossible, even if we suppose it was confined to a moderate number of intelligent persons; and hardly less so, when, as in the admirable sketch of an easy faith in the stories of chivalry by the innkeeper and Maritornes in Don Quixote, we are shown that it extended to the But whatever we may think of this belief in the romances of chivalry, there is no question that in Spain, during the sixteenth century, there prevailed a passion for them such as was never known elsewhere. The proof of it comes to us from all sides. The poetry of the country is full of it, from the romantic ballads that still live in the memory of the people, up to the old plays that have ceased to be acted and the old epics that have ceased to be read. The national manners and the national dress, more peculiar and picturesque than in other countries, long bore its sure impress. The old laws, too, speak no less plainly. Indeed, the passion for such fictions was so strong, and seemed so dangerous, that in 1553 they were prohibited from being CHAPTER XIII.Fourth Class. — Drama. — Extinction of the Greek and Roman Theatres. — Religious Origin of the Modern Drama. — Earliest Notice of it in Spain. — Hints of it in the Fifteenth Century. — Marquis of Villena. — Constable de Luna. — Mingo Revulgo. — Rodrigo Cota. — The Celestina. — First Act. — The Remainder. — Its Story, Character, and Effects on Spanish Literature. The Drama.—The ancient theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued under some of its grosser and more popular forms at Constantinople, in Italy, and in many other parts of the falling and fallen empire, far into the Middle Ages. But, under whatever disguise it appeared, it was essentially heathenish; for, from first to last, it was mythological, both in tone and in substance. As such, of course, it was rebuked and opposed by the Christian Church, which, favored by the confusion and ignorance of the times, succeeded in overthrowing it, though not without a long contest, and not until its degradation and impurity had rendered it worthy of its fate and of the anathemas pronounced against it by Tertullian and Saint Augustin.[405] A love for theatrical exhibitions, however, survived the extinction of these poor remains of the classical drama; and the priesthood, careful neither to make itself needlessly odious, nor to neglect any suitable Gross abuses, dishonoring alike the priesthood and religion, were, no doubt, afterwards mingled with these representations, both while they were given in dumb show, and when, by the addition of dialogue, they became what were called Mysteries; but, in many parts of Europe, the representations themselves, down to a comparatively late period, were found so well suited to the spirit of the times, that different Popes granted especial indulgences to the persons who frequented them, and they were in fact used openly and successfully, not only as means of amusement, but for the religious edification of an ignorant multitude. In England such shows prevailed for above four hundred years,—a longer period than can be assigned to the English national drama, as we now recognize it; while in Italy and other countries still under the influence of the See of Rome, they have, in some of their forms, That all traces of the ancient Roman theatre, except the architectural remains which still bear witness to its splendor,[407] disappeared from Spain in consequence of the occupation of the country by the Arabs, whose national spirit rejected the drama altogether, cannot be reasonably doubted. But the time when the more modern representations were begun on religious subjects, and under ecclesiastical patronage, can no longer be determined. It must, however, have been very early; for, in the middle of the thirteenth century, such performances were not only known, but had been so long practised, that they had already taken various forms, and become disgraced by various abuses. This is apparent from the code of Alfonso the Tenth, which was prepared about 1260; and in which, after forbidding the clergy certain gross indulgences, the law goes on to say: “Neither ought they to be makers of buffoon plays,[408] that people may come to see them; and if other men make them, clergymen should not come to see them, for such men do many things low and unsuitable. Nor, moreover, should such things be done in the churches; but rather we say that they should be cast But though these earliest religious representations in Spain, whether pantomimic or in dialogue, were thus given, not only by churchmen, but by others, certainly before the middle of the thirteenth century, and probably much sooner, and though they were continued for several centuries afterwards, still no fragment of them and no distinct account of them now remain to us. Nor is any thing properly dramatic found even amongst the secular poetry of Spain, till the latter part of the fifteenth century, though it may have existed somewhat earlier, as we may infer from a passage in the Marquis of Santillana’s letter to the Constable of Portugal;[410] from Hollo, Revulgo! Mingo, ho! Mingo Revulgo! Ho, hollo! Why, where’s your cloak of blue so bright? Is it not Sunday’s proper wear? And where ’s your jacket red and tight? And such a brow why do you bear, And come abroad, this dawning mild, With all your hair in elf-locks wild? Pray, are you broken down with care?[415] Its author wisely concealed his name, and has never been absolutely ascertained.[417] The earlier editions generally suppose him to have been Rodrigo Cota, the elder, of Toledo, to whom also is attributed “A Dialogue between Love and an Old Man,” which dates from the same period, and is no less spirited and even more dramatic. It opens with a representation of an old man retired into a poor hut, which stands in the midst of a neglected and decayed garden. Suddenly Love appears The next contribution to the foundations of the Spanish theatre is the “Celestina,” a dramatic story, con The first act, which is much the longest, was probably written by Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo, and in that case we may safely assume that it was produced about 1480.[420] It opens in the environs of a city, which is not named,[421] with a scene between Calisto, a young Thus far Cota had proceeded in his outline, when, from some unknown reason, he stopped short. The fragment he had written was, however, circulated and admired, and Fernando de Rojas of Montalvan, a bachelor of laws living at Salamanca, took it up, at the request of some of his friends, and, as he himself tells us, wrote the remainder in a fortnight of his vacations; the twenty acts or scenes which he added for this purpose constituting about seven eighths of But this is not the account given by Rojas himself. He says that he found the first act already written; and he begins the second with the impatience of Calisto, in urging Celestina to obtain access to the high-born and high-bred Meliboea. The low and vulgar woman succeeds, by presenting herself at the house of Mel Meantime, the unhappy Meliboea, urged by whatever insinuation and seduction can suggest, is made to confess her love for Calisto. From this moment, her fate is sealed. Calisto visits her secretly in the night, after the fashion of the old Spanish gallants; and then the conspiracy hurries onward to its consummation. At the same time, however, the retribution begins. The persons who had assisted Calisto to bring about his first interview with her quarrel for the reward he had given them; and Celestina, at the moment of her triumph, is murdered by her own base agents and associates, two of whom, attempting to escape, are in their turn summarily put to death by the officers of justice. Great confusion ensues. Calisto is regarded as the indirect cause of Celestina’s death, since she perished in his service; and some of those who had been dependent upon her are roused to such indignation, that they track him to the place of his assignation, seeking for revenge. There they fall into a quarrel with the servants he had posted in the streets for his protection. He hastens to the As has been intimated, the Celestina is rather a dramatized romance than a proper drama, or even a well-considered attempt to produce a strictly dramatic effect. Such as it is, however, Europe can show nothing on its theatres, at the same period, of equal literary merit. It is full of life and movement throughout. Its characters, from Celestina down to her insolent and lying valets, and her brutal female associates, are developed with a skill and truth rarely found in the best periods of the Spanish drama. Its style is easy and pure, sometimes brilliant, and always full of the idiomatic resources of the old and true Castilian; such a style, unquestionably, as had not yet been approached in Spanish prose, and was not often reached afterwards. Occasionally, indeed, we are offended by an idle and cold display of learning; but, like the gross manners of the piece, this poor vanity is a fault that belonged to the age. The great offence of the Celestina, however, is, that large portions of it are foul with a shameless libertinism of thought and language. Why the authority of church and state did not at once interfere to prevent its circulation seems now hardly intelligible. Probably it was, in part, because the Celestina claimed to be written for the purpose of warning the young against the seductions and crimes it so loosely unveils; or, in other words, because it claimed to be a book whose tendency was good. Certainly, strange as the fact may now seem to us, many so received it. It was dedicated to rever Such success insured for it a long series of imitations; most of them yet more offensive to morals and public decency than the Celestina itself, and all of them, as might be anticipated, of inferior literary merit to their model. One, called “The Second Comedia of Celestina,” in which she is raised from the dead, was published in 1530, by Feliciano de Silva, the author of the old romance of “Florisel de Niquea,” and went through four editions. Another, by Domingo de Castega, was sometimes added to the successive reprints of the original work after 1534. A third, by Gaspar Gomez de Toledo, appeared in 1537; a fourth, ten years later, by an unknown author, called “The Tragedy of Policiana,” in twenty-nine acts; a fifth, in 1554, by Joan Rodrigues Florian, in forty-three scenes, called “The Comedia of Florinea”; and a sixth, “The Selvagia,” in five acts, also in 1554, by Alonso de Villegas. In 1513, Pedro de Urrea, of the same family with the translator of Ariosto, rendered the first act of the original Celestina into good Castilian verse, dedicating it to his mother; and in 1540, Juan SedeÑo, the translator of Tasso, performed a similar service for the whole of it. Tales and romances followed, somewhat later, in large numbers; some, like “The Ingenious Helen,” and “The Cunning Flora,” not without merit; while others, like “The Eufrosina,” praised more than it deserves by Quevedo, were little regarded from the first.[429] At last, it came upon the stage, for which its original character had so nearly fitted it. Cepeda, in 1582, formed out of it one half of his “Comedia Selvage CHAPTER XIV.Drama continued. — Juan de la Enzina. — His Life and Works. — His Representaciones, and their Character. — First Secular Dramas acted in Spain. — Some Religious in their Tone, and some not. — Gil Vicente, a Portuguese. — His Spanish Dramas. — Auto of Cassandra. — Comedia of the Widower. — His Influence on the Spanish Drama. The “Celestina,” as has been intimated, produced little or no immediate effect on the rude beginnings of the Spanish drama; perhaps not so much as the dialogues of “Mingo Revulgo,” and “Love and the Old Man.” But the three taken together unquestionably lead us to the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain, Juan de la Enzina,[433] who was probably born in the village whose name he bears, in 1468 or 1469, and was educated at the neighbouring University of Salamanca, where he had the good fortune to enjoy the patronage of its chancellor, then one of the rising family of Alva. Soon afterwards he was at court; and at the age of twenty-five, we find him in the household of Fadrique de Toledo, first Duke of Alva, to whom and to his duchess Enzina addressed much of his poetry. In 1496, he published the earliest edition of his works, divided into four parts, which are successively dedicated to Ferdinand and Isabella, to the Duke and Duchess of Alva, to Prince John, and to Don Garcia de Toledo, son of his patron. Of his collected works six editions at least were published between 1496 and 1516; showing, that, for the period in which he lived, he enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity. They contain a good deal of pleasant lyrical poetry, songs, and villancicos, in the old popular Spanish style; and two or three descriptive These compositions are called by Enzina himself “Representaciones”; and in the edition of 1496 there are nine of them, while in the last two editions there are eleven, one of which contains the date of 1498. They are in the nature of eclogues, though one of them, it is difficult to tell why, is called an “Auto”;[436] and they were represented before the Duke and Duchess of Alva, the Prince Don John, the Duke of Infantado, and other distinguished personages enumerated in the notices prefixed to them. All are in some form of the old Spanish verse; in all there is singing; and in one there is a dance. They have, therefore, several of the elements of the proper secular Spanish drama, whose origin we can trace no farther back by any authentic monument now existing. Two things, however, should be noted, when considering these dramatic efforts of Juan de la Enzina as the foundation of the Spanish drama. The first is The remaining five are altogether secular; three of them having a sort of romantic story, the fourth introducing a shepherd so desperate with love that he kills himself, and the fifth exhibiting a market-day farce and riot between sundry country people and students, the materials for which Enzina may well enough have gathered during his own life at Salamanca. These five eclogues, therefore, connect themselves with the The other circumstance that should be noted in relation to them, as proof that they constitute the commencement of the Spanish secular drama, is, that they were really acted. Nearly all of them speak in their titles of this fact, mentioning sometimes the personages who were present, and in more than one instance alluding to Enzina himself, as if he had performed some of the parts in person. Rojas, a great authority in whatever relates to the theatre, declares the same thing expressly, coupling the fall of Granada and the achievements of Columbus with the establishment of the theatre in Spain by Enzina; events which, in the true spirit of his profession as an actor, he seems to consider of nearly equal importance.[438] The precise year when this happened is given by a learned antiquary of the time of Philip the Fourth, who says, “In 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan de la Enzina.”[439] From this year, then, the great year of the discovery of America, we may safely date the foundation of the Spanish secular theatre. It must not, however, be supposed that the “Representations,” as he calls them, of Juan de la Enzina have much dramatic merit. On the contrary, they are rude This belongs to the class of Enzina’s religious dramas. One, on the other hand, which was represented at the conclusion of the Carnival, during the period then called popularly at Salamanca Antruejo, seems rather to savor of heathenism, as the festival itself did.[442] It is merely a rude dialogue between four shepherds. It begins with a description of one of those mummings, common at the period when Enzina lived, which, in this case, consisted of a mock battle in the village between Carnival and Lent, ending with the discomfiture of Carnival; but the general matter of the scene presented is a somewhat free frolic of eating and drinking among the four shepherds, ending, like the rest of the eclogues, with a villancico, in which Antruejo, it is not easy to tell why, is treated as a saint.[443] Quite opposite to both of the pieces already noticed is the Representation for Good Friday, between two hermits, Saint Veronica, and an angel. It opens with the meeting and salutation of the two hermits, the elder of But the nearest approach to a dramatic composition made by Juan de la Enzina is to be found in two eclogues between “The Esquire that turns Shepherd,” and “The Shepherds that turn Courtiers”; both of which should be taken together and examined as one whole, though, in his simplicity, the poet makes them separate and independent of each other.[445] In the first, a shepherdess, who is a coquette, shows herself well disposed to receive Mingo, one of the shepherds, for her lover, till a certain gay esquire presents himself, whom, after a fair discussion, she prefers to accept, on condition he will turn shepherd;—an unceremonious transformation, with which, and the customary villancico, the piece The most poetical passage in the two eclogues is one in which Mingo, the best of the shepherds, still unpersuaded to give up his accustomed happy life in the country, describes its cheerful pleasures and resources, with more of natural feeling, and more of a pastoral air, than are found anywhere else in these singular dialogues. But look ye, Gil, at morning dawn, How fresh and fragrant are the fields; And then what savory coolness yields The cabin’s shade upon the lawn. And he that knows what ’t is to rest Amidst his flocks the livelong night, Sure he can never find delight In courts, by courtly ways oppressed. O, what a pleasure ’t is to hear The cricket’s cheerful, piercing cry! And who can tell the melody His pipe affords the shepherd’s ear? Thou know’st what luxury ’t is to drink, As shepherds do, when worn with heat, From the still fount, its waters sweet, With lips that gently touch their brink; And frolic down their pebbly bed, O, what delight to stoop the head, And drink from out their merry gush![446] Both pieces, like the preceding translation, are in double redondillas forming octave stanzas of eight-syllable verses; and as the two together contain about four hundred and fifty lines, their amount is sufficient to show the direction Enzina’s talent naturally took, as well as the height to which it rose. Enzina, however, is to be regarded not only as the founder of the Spanish theatre, but as the founder of the Portuguese, whose first attempts were so completely imitated from his, and had in their turn so considerable an effect on the Spanish stage, that they necessarily become a part of its history. These attempts were made by Gil Vicente, a gentleman of good family, who was bred to the law, but left that profession early and devoted himself to dramatic compositions, chiefly for the entertainment of the families of Manuel the Great and John the Third. When he was born is not known, but he died in 1557. As a writer for the stage he flourished from 1502 to 1536,[447] and produced, in all, forty-two pieces, arranged as works of devotion, comedies, tragi The first thing, however, that strikes us in relation to them is, that their air is so Spanish, and that so many of them are written in the Spanish language. Of the whole number, ten are in Castilian, fifteen partly or chiefly so, and seventeen entirely in Portuguese. Why this is the case, it is not easy to determine. The languages are, no doubt, very nearly akin to each other; and the writers of each nation, but especially those of Portugal, have not unfrequently distinguished themselves in the use of both. But the Portuguese have never, at any period, admitted their language to be less rich or less fitted for all kinds of composition than that of their prouder rivals. Perhaps, therefore, in the case of Vicente, it was, that the courts of the two countries had been lately much connected by intermarriages; that King Manuel had been accustomed to have Castilians about his person to amuse him;[448] that the queen was a Spaniard;[449] or that, in language as in other things, he found it convenient thus to follow the leading of his master, Juan de la Enzina;—but, whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that Vicente, though he was born and lived in Portugal, is to be numbered among Spanish authors as well as among Portuguese. Vicente, however, understood that the queen desired to have such an entertainment as she had been accus Of these six pieces, three of which, we know, were written in 1502 and 1503, and the rest, probably, soon afterwards, the most curious and characteristic is the one called “The Auto of the Sibyl Cassandra,” which was represented in the rich old monastery of Enxobregas, on a Christmas morning, before the queen mother. It is an eclogue in Spanish, above eight hundred lines They say, “’T is time, go, marry! go!” But I’ll no husband! not I! no! For I would live all carelessly, Amidst these hills, a maiden free, And never ask, nor anxious be, Of wedded weal or woe. Yet still they say, “Go, marry! go!” But I’ll no husband! not I! no! So, mother, think not I shall wed, And through a tiresome life be led, Or use, in folly’s ways instead, What grace the heavens bestow. Yet still they say, “Go, marry! go!” But I’ll no husband! not I! no! The man has not been born, I ween, Who as my husband shall be seen; And since what frequent tricks have been Undoubtingly I know, In vain they say, “Go, marry! go!” For I’ll no husband! not I! no![452] She is wild! She is wild! Who shall speak to the child? On the hills pass her hours, As a shepherdess free; She is fair as the flowers, She is wild as the sea! She is wild! She is wild! Who shall speak to the child?[453] The three uncles first endeavour to bribe their niece into a more teachable temper; but, failing in that, Moses undertakes to show her, from his own history of the creation, that marriage is an honorable sacrament and that she ought to enter into it. Cassandra replies, and, in the course of a rather jesting discussion with Abraham about good-tempered husbands, intimates that she is aware the Saviour is soon to be born of a virgin; an The maid is gracious all and fair; How beautiful beyond compare! Say, sailor bold and free, That dwell’st upon the sea, If ships or sail or star So winning are. And say, thou gallant knight, That donn’st thine armour bright, If steed or arms or war So winning are. And say, thou shepherd hind, That bravest storm and wind, If flocks or vales or hill afar So winning are.[454] And so ends this incongruous drama;[455] a strange Vicente, however, did not stop here. He took counsel of his success, and wrote dramas which, without skill in the construction of their plots, and without any idea of conforming to rules of propriety or taste, are yet quite in advance of what was known on the Spanish or Portuguese theatre at the time. Such is the “Comedia,” as it is called, of “The Widower,”—O Viudo,—which was acted before the court in 1514.[456] It opens with the grief of the widower, a merchant of Burgos, on the loss of an affectionate and faithful wife, for which he is consoled, first by a friar, who uses religious considerations, and afterwards by a gossiping neighbour, who, being married to a shrew, assures his friend, that, after all, it is not probable his loss is very great. This, indeed, is not a plot, but it is an approach to one. The “Rubena,” acted in 1521, comes still nearer,[457] and so do “Don Duardos,” founded on the romance of “Palmerin,” and “Amadis of Gaul,”[458] founded on the CHAPTER XV.Drama continued. — Escriva. — Villalobos. — Question de Amor. — Torres Naharro, in Italy. — His Eight Plays. — His Dramatic Theory. — Division of his Plays, and their Plots. — The Trofea. — The Hymenea. — Intriguing Drama. — Buffoon. — Character and Probable Effects of Naharro’s Plays. — State of the Theatre at the End of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. While Vicente, in Portugal, was thus giving an impulse to Spanish dramatic literature, which, considering the intimate connection of the two countries and their courts, can hardly have been unfelt in Spain at the time, and was certainly recognized there afterwards, scarcely any thing was done in Spain itself. During the five-and-twenty years that followed the first appearance of Juan de la Enzina, no other dramatic poet seems to have been encouraged or demanded. He was sufficient to satisfy the rare wants of his royal and princely patrons; and, as we have seen, in both countries, the drama continued to be a courtly amusement, confined to a few persons of the highest rank. The commander Escriva, who lived at this time and is the author of a few beautiful verses found in the oldest Cancioneros,[463] wrote, indeed, a dialogue, partly But in 1517, or a little earlier, a new movement was felt in the difficult beginnings of the Spanish drama; and it is somewhat singular, that, as the last came from Portugal, the present one came from Italy. It came, however, from two Spaniards. The first of them is the anonymous author of the “Question of Love,” a fiction to be noticed hereafter, which was finished at Ferrara in 1512, and which contains an eclogue of respectable poetical merit, that seems The other, a person of more consequence in the history of the Spanish drama, is BartolomÉ de Torres Naharro, born at Torres, near Badajoz, on the borders of Portugal, who, after he had been for some time a captive in Algiers, was redeemed, and visited Rome, hoping to find favor at the court of Leo the Tenth. This must have been after 1513, and was, of course, at the time when Juan de la Enzina resided there. But Naharro, by a satire against the vices of the court, made himself obnoxious at Rome, and fled to Naples, where he lived for some time under the protection of the noble-minded Fabricio Colonna, and where, at last, we lose sight of him. He died in poverty.[466] His works, first published by himself at Naples in 1517, and dedicated to a noble Spaniard, Don Fernando Davalos, a lover of letters,[467] who had married Victoria Colonna, the poetess, are entitled “Propaladia,” or “The Firstlings of his Genius.”[468] They consist of satires, epistles, ballads, a Lamentation for King Ferdinand, who died in 1516, and some other miscellaneous poetry; but chiefly of eight plays, which he calls “Comedias,” and which fill almost the whole volume.[469] He was well situated for making an at The eight plays of Naharro, however, do not afford much proof of a familiarity with antiquity, or of a desire to follow ancient rules or examples; but their author gives us a little theory of his own upon the subject of the drama, which is not without good sense. Horace, he says, requires five acts to a play, and he thinks this reasonable; though he looks upon the pauses they make rather as convenient resting-places than any thing else, and calls them, not acts, but “Jornadas,” or days.[472] As to the number of persons, he would have not less than six, nor more than twelve; and as to that sense of propriety which refuses to introduce materials into the subject that do not belong Besides this, his plays are all in verse, and all open with a sort of prologue, which he calls “Introyto,” generally written in a rustic and amusing style, asking the favor and attention of the audience, and giving hints concerning the subject of the piece that is to follow. But when we come to the dramas themselves, though we find a decided advance, in some respects, beyond any thing that had preceded them, in others we find great rudeness and extravagance. Their subjects are very various. One of them, the “Soldadesca,” is on the Papal recruiting service at Rome. Another, the “Tinelaria,” or Servants’ Dining-Hall, is on such riots as were likely to happen in the disorderly service of a cardinal’s household; full of revelry and low life. Another, “La Jacinta,” gives us the story of a lady who lives at her castle on the road to Rome, where she violently detains sundry passengers and chooses a husband among them. And of two others, one is on the adventures of a disguised prince, who comes to the court of a fabulous king of Leon, and wins his daughter after the fashion of the old romances of chivalry;[473] and the other on the adventures of a child stolen in infancy, which involve disguises in more humble life.[474] How various were the modes in which these subjects were thrown into action and verse, and, indeed, how different was the character of his different dramas, may be best understood by a somewhat ampler notice of the two not yet mentioned. The other drama, called “Hymenea,” is better, and gives intimations of what became later the foundations of the national theatre. Its “Introyto,” or prologue, is coarse, but not without wit, especially in those parts which, according to the peculiar toleration of the times, were allowed to make free with religion, if they but showed sufficient reverence for the Church. The story is entirely invented, and may be supposed to have passed in any city of Spain. The scene opens in front of the house of Febea, the heroine, before daylight, where Hymeneo, the hero, after making known his love for the lady, arranges with his two servants to give her a serenade the next night. When he is gone, the servants discuss their own position, and Boreas, one of them, avows his desperate love for Doresta, the heroine’s maid; a passion which, through the rest of the piece, becomes the running caricature of his master’s. But at this moment the Marquis, a brother of Febea, comes with his servants into the street, and, by the escape of the others, who fly immediately, has little doubt that there has been love-making about the house, and goes away determined to watch more carefully. Thus ends the first act, which might furnish materials for many a Spanish comedy of the seventeenth century. In the second act, Hymeneo enters with his servants and musicians, and they sing a cancion which reminds us of the sonnet in MoliÈre’s “Misantrope,” and a villancico which is but little better. Febea then appears The next act is devoted entirely to the loves of the servants. It is amusing, from its caricature of the troubles and trials of their masters, but does not advance the action at all, The fourth, however, brings the hero and lover into the lady’s house, leaving his attendants in the street, who confess their cowardice to one another, and agree to run away, if the Marquis appears. This happens immediately. They escape, but leave a cloak, which betrays who they are, and the Marquis remains undisputed master of the ground at the end of the act. The last act opens without delay. The Marquis, offended in the nicest point of Castilian honor,—the very point on which the plots of so many later Spanish dramas turn,—resolves at once to put both of the guilty parties to death, though their offence is no greater than that of having been secretly in the same house together. The lady does not deny her brother’s right, but enters into a long discussion with him about it, part of which is touching and effective, but most of it very tedious; in the midst of all which Hymeneo presents himself, and after explaining who he is and what are his intentions, and especially after admitting, that, under the circumstances of the case, the Marquis might justly have The two pieces are very different, and mark the extremes of the various experiments Naharro tried in order to produce a dramatic effect. “As to the kinds of dramas,” he says, “it seems to me that two are sufficient for our Castilian language: dramas founded on knowledge, and dramas founded on fancy.”[475] The “Trofea,” no doubt, was intended by him to belong to the first class. Its tone is that of compliment to Manuel, the really great king then reigning in Portugal; and from a passage in the third act it is not unlikely that it was represented in Rome before the Portuguese ambassador, the venerable Tristan d’ AcuÑa. But the rude and buffoon shepherds, whose dialogue fills so much of the slight and poor action, show plainly that he was neither unacquainted with Enzina and Vicente, nor unwilling to imitate them; while the rest of the drama—the part that is supposed to contain historical facts—is, as we have seen, still worse. The “Hymenea,” on the other hand, has a story of considerable interest, announcing the intriguing plot which became a principal characteristic of the Spanish theatre afterwards. It has even the “Gracioso,” or Droll Servant, who makes love to the heroine’s maid; a character which is also found in Naharro’s “Serafina,” but which Lope de Vega above a century afterwards claimed, as if invented by himself.[476] Boreas. O, would to heaven, my lady dear, That, at the instant I first looked on thee, Thy love had equalled mine! Doresta. Well! that’s not bad! But still you’re not a bone for me to pick.[478] Boreas. Make trial of me. Bid me do my best, In humble service of my love to thee; So shalt thou put me to the proof, and know If what I say accord with what I feel. Doresta. Were my desire to bid thee serve quite clear, Perchance thy offers would not be so prompt. Boreas. O lady, look’ee, that’s downright abuse! Doresta. Abuse? How’s that? Can words and ways so kind, And full of courtesy, be called abuse? Boreas. I’ve done. I dare not speak. Your answers are so sharp, They pierce my very bowels through and through. That thou so mortal art. Dost think to die Of this disease? Boreas. ’T would not be wonderful. Doresta. But still, my gallant Sir, perhaps you’ll find That they who give the suffering take it too. Boreas. In sooth, I ask no better than to do As do my fellows,—give and take; but now I take, fair dame, a thousand hurts, And still give none. Doresta. How know’st thou that? And so she continues till she comes to a plenary confession of being no less hurt, or in love, herself, than he is.[479] All the plays of Naharro have a versification remarkably fluent and harmonious for the period in which he wrote,[480] and nearly all of them have passages of easy and natural dialogue, and of spirited lyrical poetry. But several are very gross; two are absurdly composed in different languages,—one of them in four, and the other in six;[481] and all contain abundant proof, in That they were represented in Italy before they were printed,[483] and that they were so far circulated before their author gave them to the press,[484] as to be already in some degree beyond his own control, we know on his own authority. He intimates, too, that a good many of the clergy were present at the representation of at least one of them.[485] But it is not likely that any of his plays were acted, except in the same way with Vicente’s and Enzina’s; that is, before a moderate number of persons in some great man’s house,[486] at Naples, But though men like Juan de la Enzina, Gil Vicente, and Naharro had turned their thoughts towards dramatic composition, they seem to have had no idea of founding a popular national drama. For this we must look to the next period; since, as late as the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, there is no trace of such a theatre in Spain. CHAPTER XVI.ProvenÇal Literature in Spain. — Provence. — Burgundians. — Origin of the ProvenÇal Language and Literature. — Barcelona. — Dialect of Catalonia. — Aragon. — Troubadour Poets in Catalonia and Aragon. — War of the Albigenses. — Peter the Second. — James the Conqueror and His Chronicle. — Ramon Muntaner and his Chronicle. — Decay of Poetry in Provence, and Decay of ProvenÇal Poetry in Spain. — Catalonian Dialect. ProvenÇal literature appeared in Spain as early as any portion of the Castilian, with which we have thus far been exclusively occupied. Its introduction was natural, and, being intimately connected with the history of political power in both Provence and Spain, can be at once explained, at least so far as to account for its prevalence in the quarter of the Peninsula where, during three centuries, it predominated, and for its large influence throughout the rest of the country, both at that time and afterwards. Provence—or, in other words, that part of the South of France which extends from Italy to Spain, and which originally obtained its name in consequence of the consideration it enjoyed as an early and most important province of Rome—was singularly fortunate, during the latter period of the Middle Ages, in its exemption from many of the troubles of those troubled times.[487] While the great movement of the North Greatly favored in this comparative quiet, which, though sometimes broken by internal dissension, or by the ineffectual incursions of their new Arab neighbours, was nevertheless such as was hardly known elsewhere, and favored no less by a soil and climate almost without rivals in the world, the civilization and refinement of Provence advanced faster than those of any other portion of Europe. From the year 879, a large part of it was fortunately constituted into an independent government; and, what was very remarkable, it continued under the same family till 1092, two hundred and thirteen years.[488] During this second period, its territories were again much spared from the confusion that almost constantly pressed their borders and threatened their tranquillity; for the troubles that then shook the North of Italy did not cross the Alps and the Var; the Moorish power, so far from making new aggressions, maintained itself with difficulty in Catalonia; and the wars and convulsions in the North of France, from the time of the first successors of Charlemagne to that of Philip Augustus, flowed rather in the opposite direction, and furnished, at a safe distance, occupation for tempers too fierce to endure idleness. In the course of these two centuries, a language Thus things continued under twelve princes of the Burgundian race, who make little show in the wars of their times, but who seem to have governed their states with a moderation and gentleness not to have been expected amidst the general disturbance of the world. This family became extinct, in the male branch, in 1092; and in 1113, the crown of Provence was transferred, by the marriage of its heir, to Raymond Berenger, the third Count of Barcelona.[489] The ProvenÇal poets, many of whom were noble by birth, and all of whom, as a class, were attached to the court and its aristocracy, naturally followed their liege lady, in considerable numbers, from Arles to Barcelona, and willingly established themselves in her new capital, under a prince full of knightly accomplishments and yet not disinclined to the arts of peace. Nor was the change for them a great one. The Pyrenees made then, as they make now, no very serious difference between the languages spoken on their opposite declivities; similarity of pursuits had long before induced a similarity of manners in the population of Political causes, however, similar to those which first brought the spirit of Provence from Arles and Marseilles to Barcelona, soon carried it farther onward towards the centre of Spain. In 1137, the Counts of Barcelona obtained by marriage the kingdom of Aragon; and though they did not, at once, remove the seat of their government to Saragossa, they early spread through their new territories some of the refinement for which they were indebted to Provence. This remarkable family, whose power was now so fast stretching up to the North, possessed, at different times, during nearly three centuries, different portions of territory on both sides of the Pyrenees, generally maintaining a control over a large part of the Northeast of Spain and of the South of France. Between 1229 and 1253, the With this slight outline of the course of political power in the northeastern part of Spain, it will be easy to trace the origin and history of the literature that prevailed there from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century; a literature which was introduced from Provence, and retained the ProvenÇal character, till it came in contact with that more vigorous spirit which, during the same period, had been advancing from the northwest, and afterwards succeeded in giving its tone to the literature of the consolidated monarchy.[492] The character of the old ProvenÇal poetry is the same on both sides of the Pyrenees. In general, it is Alfonso the Second, however, who received the crown of Aragon in 1162, and wore it till 1196, is admitted by all to have been a Troubadour. Of him we still possess a few not inelegant coblas, or stanzas, addressed to his lady, which are curious from the circumstance that they constitute the oldest poem in the modern dialects of Spain, whose author is known to us; and one that is probably as old, or nearly as old, as any of the anonymous poetry of Castile and the North.[494] Like the other sovereigns of his age, who loved and practised the art of the gai saber, Alfonso collected poets about his person. Pierre Rogiers was at his court, and so were Pierre Raimond de Toulouse, and AimÉric de PÉguilain, In the beginning of the next century, external circumstances imparted a great impulse to this spirit in Aragon. From 1209 to 1229, the shameful war which gave birth to the Inquisition was carried on with extraordinary cruelty and fury against the Albigenses; a religious sect in Provence accused of heresy, but persecuted rather by an implacable political ambition. To this sect—which, in some points, opposed the pretensions of the See of Rome, and was at last exterminated by a crusade under the Papal authority—belonged nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, whose poetry is full of their sufferings and remonstrances.[496] In their great distress, the principal ally of the Albigenses and Troubadours was Peter the Second of Aragon, who, in 1213, perished nobly fighting in their cause at the disastrous battle of Muret. When, therefore, the Troubadours of Provence were compelled to escape from the Among those who thus appeared in Spain in the time of Peter the Second were Hugues de Saint Cyr;[497] AzÉmar le Noir;[498] Pons Barba;[499] Raimond de Miraval, who joined in the cry urging the king to the defence of the Albigenses, in which he perished;[500] and Perdigon,[501] who, after being munificently entertained at his court, became, like Folquet de Marseille,[502] a traitor to the cause he had espoused, and openly exulted in the king’s untimely fate. But none of the poetical followers of Peter the Second did him such honor as the author of the curious and long poem of “The War of the Albigenses,” in which much of the king of Aragon’s life is recorded, and a minute account given of his disastrous death.[503] All, however, except Perdigon and Folquet, regarded him with gratitude, as their patron, and as a poet,[504] who, to use the language of one of them, The glorious reign of Jayme or James the Conqueror, which followed, and extended from 1213 to 1276, exhibits the same poetical character with that of the less fortunate reign of his immediate predecessor. He protected the Troubadours, and the Troubadours, in return, praised and honored him. Guillaume AnÉlier addressed a sirvente to him as “the young king of Aragon, who defends mercy and discountenances wrong.”[506] Nat de Mons sent him two poetical letters, one of which gives him advice concerning the composition of his court and government.[507] Arnaud PlagnÉs offered a chanso to his fair queen, Eleanor of Castile;[508] and Mathieu de Querci, who survived the great conqueror, poured forth at his grave the sorrows of his Christian compatriots at the loss of the great champion on whom they had depended in their struggle with the Moors.[509] At the same period, too, Hugues de Mataplana, a noble Catalan, held at his castle courts of love and poetical contests, in which he himself bore a large part;[510] while one of his neighbours, Guillaume de BergÉdan, no less distinguished by poetical talent and ancient descent, but of a less honorable nature, indulged himself in a style of verse more gross than can easily be found elsewhere in the Troubadour poetry.[511] All, however, the bad and the good,—those who, like Sordel[512] and Bernard de James himself has sometimes been reckoned among the poets of his age.[515] It is possible, though none of his poetry has been preserved, that he really was such; for metrical composition was easy in the flowing language he spoke, and it had evidently grown common at his court, where the examples of his father and grandfather, as Troubadours, would hardly be without their effect. But however this may be, he loved letters, and left behind him a large prose work, more in keeping than any poetry with his character as a wise monarch and successful conqueror, whose legislation and government were far in advance of the condition of his subjects.[516] The work here referred to is a chronicle or commentary on the principal events of his reign, divided into four parts;—the first of which is on the troubles that followed his accession to the throne, after a long minority, with the rescue of Majorca and Minorca from the From this Chronicle of James the Conqueror there was early taken an account of the conquest of Valencia, beginning in the most simple-hearted manner with the conversation the king held at AlcaÑiÇ (AlcaÑizas) with Don Blasco de Alagon and the Master of the Hospitallers, Nuch de Follalquer, who urge him, by his successes in Minorca, to undertake the greater achievement of the conquest of Valencia; and ending with the troubles that followed the partition of the spoils after the fall of that rich kingdom and its capital. This last work was printed in 1515, in a magnificent volume, where it serves for an appropriate introduction to the Foros, or privileges, granted to the city of Valencia from the time of its conquest down to the end of the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic;[517] but the com It is written in a simple and manly style, which, without making pretensions to elegance, often sets before us the events it records with a living air of reality, and sometimes shows a happiness in manner and phraseology which effort seldom reaches. Whether it was undertaken in consequence of the impulse given to such vernacular histories by Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, in his “General Chronicle of Spain,” or whether the intimations which gave birth to that remarkable Chronicle came rather from Aragon, we cannot now determine. Probably both works were produced in obedience to the demands of their age; but still, as both must have been written at nearly the same time, and as the two kings were united by a family alliance and constant intercourse, a full knowledge of whatever relates to these two curious records of different parts of the Peninsula would hardly fail to show us some connection between them. In that case, it is by no means im But James of Aragon was fortunate in having yet another chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, born at Peralada, nine years before the death of that monarch; a Catalan gentleman, who in his old age, after a life of great adventure, felt himself to be specially summoned to write an account of his own times.[520] “For one day,” he says, “being in my country-house, called Xilvella, in the garden plain of Valencia, and sleeping in my bed, there came unto me in vision a venerable old man, clad in white raiment, who said unto me, ‘Arise, and stand on thy feet, Muntaner, and think how to declare It opens, with much simplicity, with a record of the earliest important event he remembered, a visit of the great conqueror of Valencia at the house of his father, when he was himself a mere child.[521] The impression of such a visit on a boyish imagination would naturally be deep;—in the case of Muntaner it seems to have The life of the Conqueror, however, serves merely as an introduction to the work; for Muntaner announces his purpose to speak of little that was not within his own knowledge; and of the Conqueror’s reign he could remember only the concluding glories. His Chronicle, therefore, consists chiefly of what happened in the time of four princes of the same house, and especially of Peter the Third, his chief hero. He ornaments his story, however, once with a poem two hundred and forty lines long, which he gave to James the Second, and his son Alfonso, by way of advice and caution, when the latter was about to embark for the conquest of Sardinia and Corsica.[523] In relating what he himself saw and did, his statements seem to be accurate, and are certainly lively and fresh; but elsewhere he sometimes falls into errors of date, and sometimes exhibits a good-natured credulity that makes him believe many of the impossibilities that were related to him. In his gay spirit and love of show, as well as in his simple, but not careless, style, he reminds us of Froissart, especially at the conclusion of the whole Chronicle, which he ends, evidently to his own satisfaction, with an elaborate account of the ceremonies observed at the coronation of Alfonso the Fourth at Saragossa, which he attended in state as syndic of the city of Valencia; the last event recorded in the work, and the last we hear of its knightly old author, who was then near his grand climacteric. During the latter part of the period recorded by this Chronicle, a change was taking place in the literature of which it is an important part. The troubles and confusion that prevailed in Provence, from the time of the cruel persecution of the Albigenses and the en As might be expected, the delicate plant, whose flower was not permitted to expand on its native soil, did not long continue to flourish in that to which it was transplanted. For a time, indeed, the exiled Troubadours, who resorted to the court of James the Conqueror and his father, gave to Saragossa and Barcelona something of the poetical grace that had been so attractive at Arles and Marseilles. But both these princes were obliged to protect themselves from the suspicion of sharing the heresy with which so many of the Troubadours they sheltered were infected; and James, in 1233, among other severe ordinances, forbade to the laity the Limousin Bible, which had been recently prepared for them, and the use of which would have tended so much to confirm their language and form their literature.[525] His successors, however, continued to favor the spirit of the minstrels of Provence. Peter the Third was numbered amongst them;[526] and if Alfonso the Third But these are among the later notices of ProvenÇal literature in the northeastern part of Spain, where it began now to be displaced by one taking its hue rather from the more popular and peculiar dialect of the country. What this dialect was has already been intimated. It was commonly called the Catalan or Catalonian, from the name of the country, but probably, at the time of the conquest of Barcelona from the Moors in 985, differed very little from the ProvenÇal spoken at Perpignan, on the other side of the Pyrenees.[529] As, however, the ProvenÇal became more cultivated and gentle, the neglected Catalan grew stronger and ruder; and when the Christian power was extended, in 1118, to Saragossa, and in 1239 to Valencia, the modifications which Perhaps, if the Troubadours had maintained their ascendency in Provence, their influence would not easily have been overcome in Spain. At least, there are indications that it would not have disappeared so soon. Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, who had some of the more distinguished of them about him, imitated the ProvenÇal poetry, if he did not write it; and even earlier, in the time of Alfonso the Ninth, who died in 1214, there are traces of its progress in the heart of the country, that are not to be mistaken.[530] But failing in its strength at home, it failed abroad. The engrafted fruit perished with the stock from which it was originally taken. After the opening of the fourteenth century we find no genuinely ProvenÇal poetry in Castile, and after the middle of that century it begins to recede from Catalonia and Aragon, or rather to be corrupted by the harsher, but hardier, dialect spoken there by the mass of the people. Peter the Fourth, who reigned in Aragon from 1336 to 1387, shows the conflict and admixture of the two influences in such portions of his poetry as have been published, as well as in a letter he addressed to his son;[531]—a confusion, or transition, which we should probably be able to trace with some distinctness, if we had before us the curious dictionary of rhymes, still extant in its original manuscript, which CHAPTER XVII.Endeavours to revive the ProvenÇal Spirit. — Floral Games at Toulouse. — Consistory of the Gaya Sciencia at Barcelona. — Catalan and Valencian Poetry. — Ausias March. — Jaume Roig. — Decline of this Poetry. — Influence of Castile. — Poetical Contest at Valencia. — Valencian Poets who wrote in Castilian. — Prevalence of the Castilian. The failure of the ProvenÇal language, and especially the failure of the ProvenÇal culture, were not looked upon with indifference in the countries on either side of the Pyrenees, where they had so long prevailed. On the contrary, efforts were made to restore both, first in France, and afterwards in Spain. At Toulouse, on the Garonne, not far from the foot of the mountains, the magistrates of the city determined, in 1323, to form a company or guild for this purpose; and, after some deliberation, constituted it under the name of the “Sobregaya Companhia dels Sept Trobadors de Tolosa,” or the Very Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse. This company immediately sent forth a letter, partly in prose and partly in verse, summoning all poets to come to Toulouse on the first day of May in 1324, and there “with joy of heart contend for the prize of a golden violet,” which should be adjudged to him who should offer the best poem, suited to the occasion. The concourse was great, and the first prize was given to a poem in honor of the Madonna by Ramon Vidal de BesalÚ, a Catalan gentleman, who seems to have been Toulouse was separated from Aragon only by the picturesque range of the Pyrenees; and similarity of language and old political connections prevented even the mountains from being a serious obstacle to intercourse. What was done at Toulouse, therefore, was soon known at Barcelona, where the court of Aragon generally resided, and where circumstances soon favored a formal introduction of the poetical institutions of the Troubadours. John the First, who, in 1387, succeeded Peter the Fourth, was a prince of more gentle manners than were common in his time, and more given to festivity and shows than was, perhaps, consistent with the good of his kingdom, and certainly more than was suited to the fierce and turbulent spirit of his nobility.[535] Among his other attributes was a love of poetry; and in 1388, he despatched a solemn embassy, as if for an affair of state, to Charles the Sixth of France, praying him to cause certain poets of the company at Toulouse At length, when Ferdinand the Just was declared king, their meetings were resumed. Enrique de Villena—whom we must speedily notice as a nobleman of the first rank in the state, nearly allied to the blood royal, both of Castile and Aragon—came with the new king to Barcelona in 1412, and, being a lover of poetry, busied himself while there in reËstablishing and reforming the Consistory, of which he became, for some time, the principal head and manager. This was, no doubt, the period of its greatest glory. The king himself frequently attended its meetings. Many poems were read by their authors before the judges appointed to examine them, and prizes and other distinctions were awarded to the successful competitors.[536] From this time, therefore, poetry in the native dialects of the country was held in During the period, however, of which we have been speaking, and which embraces the century before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catalan modification of ProvenÇal poetry had its chief success, and produced all the authors that deserve notice. At its opening, Zurita, the faithful annalist of Aragon, speaking of the reign of John the First, says, that, “in place of arms and warlike exercises, which had formerly been the pastime of princes, now succeeded trobas and poetry in the mother tongue, with its art, called the ‘Gaya Sciencia,’ whereof schools began to be instituted”;—schools which, as he intimates, were so thronged, that the dignity of the art they taught was impaired by the very numbers devoted to it.[538] Who these poets were the grave historian does not stop to inform us, but we learn something of them from another and better source; for, according to the fashion of the time, a collection of poetry was made a little after the middle of the fifteenth century, which includes the whole period, and contains the names, and more or less of the works, of those who were then best known and most considered. It begins with a grant of assistance to the Consistory of Barcelona, by Ferdinand the Just, in 1413; and then, going Among the poets here brought together are Luis de Vilarasa, who lived in 1416;[539] Berenguer de Masdovelles, who seems to have flourished soon after 1453;[540] Jordi, about whom there has been much discussion, but whom reasonable critics must place as late as 1450-1460;[541] and Antonio Vallmanya, some of whose poems are dated in 1457 and 1458.[542] Besides these, Juan Rocaberti, FogaÇot, and Guerau, with others apparently of the same period, are contributors to the collection, so that its whole air is that of the Catalan The first of them is Ausias or Augustin March. His family, originally Catalan, went to Valencia at the time of the conquest, in 1238, and was distinguished, in suc So much of his poetry as has been preserved is dedicated to the honor of a lady, whom he loved and served in life and in death, and whom, if we are literally to believe his account, he first saw on a Good Friday in church, exactly as Petrarch first saw Laura. But this is probably only an imitation of the great Italian master, whose fame then overshadowed whatever there was of literature in the world. At any rate, the poems of March leave no doubt that he was a follower of Petrarch. They are in form what he calls cants; each of which generally consists of from five to ten stanzas. The whole collection, amounting to one hundred and sixteen of these short poems, is divided into four parts, and comprises ninety-three cants or canzones of Love, in which he complains much of the falsehood of his mistress, fourteen moral and didactic canzones, a single spiritual one, and eight on Death. But The other poet who should be mentioned in the same relations was a contemporary of March, and, like him, a native of Valencia. His name is Jaume or James Roig, and he was physician to Mary, queen It is divided into four books, which are subdivided into parts, little connected with each other, and often little in harmony with the general subject of the whole. Some of it is full of learning and learned names, and some of it would seem to be devout, but its prevailing air is certainly not at all religious. It is written in short rhymed verses, consisting of from two to five syllables,—an irregular measure, which has been called cudolada, and one which, as here used, has been much praised for its sweetness by those who are familiar Bed I abjured, Though hardly cured, And then went straight To seek my fate. A Catalan, A nobleman, A highway knight, Of ancient right, Gave me, in grace, A page’s place. With him I lived, And with him thrived, Till I came out Man grown and stout; For he was wise, Taught me to prize My time, and learn My bread to earn, By service hard At watch and ward, To hunt the game, Wild hawks to tame, On horse to prance, In hall to dance, And make my way.[551] The poem, its author tells us, was written in 1460, and we know that it continued popular long enough to pass through five editions before 1562. But portions of it are so indecent, that, when, in 1735, it was thought worth while to print it anew, its editor, in order to account for the large omissions he was obliged to make, resorted to the amusing expedient of pretending he could find no copy of the old editions which was not deficient in the passages he left out of his own.[552] Of course, Roig is not much read now. His indecency and the obscurity of his idiom alike cut him off from the polished portions of Spanish society; though out of his free and spirited satire much may be gleaned to illustrate the tone of manners and the modes of living and thinking in his time. The death of Roig brings us to the period when the The period, when these two literatures, advancing from opposite corners of the Peninsula, finally met, cannot, from its nature, be determined with much precision. But, like the progress of each, it was the result of political causes and tendencies which are obvious and easily traced. The family that ruled in Aragon had, from the time of James the Conqueror, been connected with that established in Castile and the North; and Ferdinand the Just, who was crowned in Saragossa in 1412, was a Castilian prince; so that, from this period, both thrones were absolutely filled by members of the At length, forty years after the death of Villena, we find a decided proof that the Castilian was beginning to be known and cultivated on the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1474, a poetical contest was publicly held at Valencia, in honor of the Madonna;—a sort of literary jousting, like those so common afterwards in the time of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. Forty poets contended for the prize. The Viceroy was present. It was a solemn and showy occasion; and all the poems offered were printed the same year by Bernardo Fenollar, Secretary of the meeting, in a volume which is valued as the first book known to have been printed in Spain.[553] Four of these poems are in Castilian. This Probably Castilian poetry was rarely written in Valencia during the fifteenth century, while, on the other hand, Valencian was written constantly. “The Suit of the Olives,” for instance, wholly in that dialect, was composed by Jaume Gazull, Fenollar, and Juan Moreno, who seem to have been personal friends, and who united their poetical resources to produce this satire, in which, under the allegory of olive-trees, and in language not always so modest as good taste requires, they discuss together the dangers to which the young and the old are respectively exposed from the solicitations of worldly pleasure.[555] Another dialogue, by the same three poets, in the same dialect, soon followed, dated in 1497, which is supposed to have occurred in the bed-chamber of a lady just recovering from the birth of a child, in which is examined the question whether young men or old make the best husbands; an inquiry decid Meantime, Valencian poets are not wanting who wrote more or less in Castilian. Francisco CastelvÍ, a friend of Fenollar, is one of them.[559] Another is Narcis ViÑoles, who flourished in 1500, who wrote in Tuscan as well as in Castilian and Valencian, and who evidently thought his native dialect somewhat barbarous.[560] A third is Juan Tallante, whose religious poems This, in fact, was the circumstance that determined the fate of all that remained in Spain on the foundations of the ProvenÇal refinement. The crowns of Aragon and Castile had been united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; the court had been removed from Saragossa, though that city still claimed the dignity of being regarded as an independent capital; and This was singularly the misfortune and the fate of the ProvenÇal and of the two principal dialects into which it was modified and moulded. For the ProvenÇal started forth in the darkest period Europe had seen since Grecian civilization had first dawned on the world. It kindled, at once, all the South of France with its brightness, and spread its influence, not only into the neighbouring countries, but even to the courts of the cold and unfriendly North. It flourished long, with a tropical rapidity and luxuriance, and gave token, from the first, of a light-hearted spirit, that promised, in the fulness of its strength, to produce a poetry, different, no doubt, from that of antiquity, with which it had no real connection, but yet a poetry as fresh as the soil from which it sprang, and as genial as the climate CHAPTER XVIII.The ProvenÇal and Courtly School in Castilian Literature. — Partly influenced by the Literature of Italy. — Connection Of Spain With Italy, Religious, Intellectual, and Political. — Similarity of Language in the two Countries. — Translations from the Italian. — Reign of John the Second. — Troubadours and Minnesingers throughout Europe. — Court of Castile. — The King. — The Marquis of Villena. — His Art of Carving. — His Art of Poetry. — His Labors of Hercules. The ProvenÇal literature, which appeared so early in Spain, and which, during the greater part of the period when it prevailed there, was in advance of the poetical culture of nearly all the rest of Europe, could not fail to exercise an influence on the Castilian, springing up and flourishing at its side. But, as we proceed, we must notice the influence of another literature over the Spanish, less visible and important at first than that of the ProvenÇal, but destined subsequently to become much wider and more lasting;—I mean, of course, the Italian. The origin of this influence is to be traced far back in the history of the Spanish character and civilization. Long, indeed, before a poetical spirit had been reawakened anywhere in the South of Europe, the Spanish Christians, through the wearisome centuries of their contest with the Moors, had been accustomed to look towards Italy as to the seat of a power whose foundations were laid in faith and hopes extending In truth, from the time of the great Arab invasion down to the fall of Granada, this devoted people had rarely come into political relations with the rest of Europe. Engrossed and exhausted by their wars at home, they had, on the one hand, hardly been at all the subjects of foreign cupidity or ambition; and, on the other, they had been little able, even when they most desired it, to connect themselves with the stirring interests of the world beyond their mountains, or attract the sympathy of those more favored countries which, with Italy at their head, were coming up to constitute the civilized power of Christendom. But the Spaniards always felt their warfare to be peculiarly that of soldiers of the Cross; they always felt themselves, beyond every thing else and above every thing else, to be Christian men contending against misbelief. Their religious sympathies were, therefore, constantly apparent, and often predominated over all others; so that, while they were little connected with the Church of Rome by those political ties that were bringing half Europe into bondage, they were more connected with its religious spirit than any other people of modern times; more even than the armies of the Crusaders whom that same Church had summoned out of all Christendom, and to whom it had given whatever of its own resources and character it was able to impart. To these religious influences of Italy upon Spain In the next century, the instruction of Spaniards in Italy was put upon a more permanent foundation, by Cardinal Carillo de Albornoz; a prelate, a statesman, and a soldier, who, as Archbishop of Toledo, was head of the Spanish Church in the reign of Alfonso the Elev Commercial and political relations still further promoted a free communication of the manners and literature of Italy to Spain. Barcelona, long the seat of a cultivated court,—a city whose liberal institutions had given birth to the first bank of exchange, and demanded the first commercial code of modern times,—had, from the days of James the Conqueror, exercised a sensible influence round the shores of the Mediterranean, and come into successful competition with the enterprise of Pisa and Genoa, even in the ports of Italy. The knowledge and refinement its ships brought back, joined to the spirit of commercial adventure that sent them out, rendered Barcelona, therefore, in the thirteenth, The political relations between Spain and Sicily were, however, earlier and more close than those between Spain and Italy, and tended to the same results. Giovanni da Procida, after long preparing his beautiful island to shake off the hated yoke of the French, hastened, in 1282, as soon as the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers were fulfilled, to lay the allegiance of Sicily at the feet of Peter the Third of Aragon, who, in right of his wife, claimed Sicily to be a part of his inheritance, as heir of Conradin, the last male descendant of the imperial family of the Hohenstauffen.[574] The revolution thus begun by a fiery patriotism was successful; but from that time Sicily was either a fief of the Aragonese crown, or was possessed, as a separate kingdom, by a branch of the Aragonese family, down to the period when, with the other possessions of Ferdinand the Catholic, it became a part of the consolidated monarchy of Spain. The connection with Naples, which was of the same sort, followed later, but was no less intimate. Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, a prince of rare wisdom and much But the language of Italy, from its affinity to the Spanish, constituted a medium of communication perhaps more important and effectual than any or all of the others. The Latin was the mother of both; and the resemblance between them was such, that neither could claim to have features entirely its own: Facies non una, nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum. It cost little labor to the Spaniard to make himself master of the Italian. Translations, therefore, were less common from the few Italian authors that then existed, worth translating, than they would otherwise have been; but enough are found, and early enough, to show that Italian authors and Italian literature were not neglected in Spain. Ayala, the chronicler, who died in 1407, was, as we have already observed, acquainted with the works of Boccaccio.[577] A little later, we are struck by The long reign of John the Second, extending from 1407 to 1454, unhappy as it was for himself and for his country, was not unfavorable to the progress of some of the forms of elegant literature. During nearly the whole of it, the weak king himself was subjected to the commanding genius of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose control, though he sometimes felt it to be oppressive, he always regretted, when any accident in the troubles of the times threw it off, and left him to bear alone the burden which belonged to his position in the state. It seems, indeed, to have been a part of the Constable’s policy to give up the king to his natural indolence, and encourage his effeminacy by filling his time with amusements that would make business more unwelcome to him than the hard tyranny of the minister who relieved him from it.[579] Surrounded by persons such as these, in continual intercourse with others like them, and often given up There has been a period like this in the history of nearly all the modern European nations,—one in which a taste for poetical composition was common at court, and among those higher classes of society within whose limits intellectual cultivation was then much confined. In Germany, such a period is found as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the unhappy young Conradin, who perished in 1268 and is commemorated by Dante, being one of the last of the princely company that illustrates it. For Italy, it begins at about the same time, in the Sicilian court; and though discountenanced both by the spirit of the Church, and by the spirit of such commercial republics as Pisa, Genoa, and Florence,—no one of which had then the chivalrous tone that animated, and indeed gave birth, to this early refinement throughout Europe,—it can still be traced down as far as the age of Petrarch. Of the appearance of such a taste in the South of France, in Catalonia, and in Aragon, with its spread to Castile under the patronage of Alfonso the Wise, notice has already been taken. But now we find it in the heart and in the North of the country, extending, too, into Andalusia and Portugal, full of love and knighthood; and though not without the conceits that distinguished it wherever it appeared, yet sometimes showing touches of nature, and still oftener a graceful ingenuity And the first person in the group to whom our notice is attracted, as its proper, central figure, is King John himself. Of him his chronicler said, with much truth, though not quite without flattery, that “he drew all men to him, was very free and gracious, very devout and very bold, and gave himself much to the reading of philosophy and poetry. He was skilled in matters of the Church, tolerably learned in Latin, and a great respecter of such men as had knowledge. He had many natural gifts. He was a lover of music; he played, sung, and made verses; and he danced well.”[584] One who knew him better describes him more skilfully. How much poetry he wrote we do not know. His physician says, “The king recreates himself with writing verses”;[586] and others repeat the fact. But the chief proof of his skill that has come down to our times is to be found in the following lines, in the ProvenÇal manner, on the falsehood of his lady.[587] O Love, I never, never thought Thy power had been so great, That thou couldst change my fate, Till now, alas! I know it. I thought I knew thee well, For I had known thee long; But though I felt thee strong, I felt not all thy spell. Nor ever, ever had I thought Thy power had been so great, That thou couldst change my fate, By changes in another wrought, Till now, alas! I know it. Among those who most interested themselves in the progress of poetry in Spain, and labored most directly to introduce it at the court of Castile, the person first in rank after the king was his near kinsman, Henry, Marquis of Villena, born in 1384, and descended in the paternal line from the royal house of Aragon, and in the maternal from that of Castile.[588] “In early youth,” says one who knew him well, “he was inclined to the sciences and the arts, rather than to knightly exercises, or even to affairs, whether of the state or the Church; for, without any master, and none constraining him to learn, but rather hindered by his grandfather, who would have had him for a knight, he did, in childhood, when others are wont to be carried to their schools by force, turn himself to learning against the good-will of all; and so high and so subtile a wit had he, that he learned any science or art to which he addicted himself, in such wise, that it seemed as if it were done by force of nature.”[589] But his rank and position brought him into the af But though the unhappy Marquis of Villena may have been in advance of his age, as far as his studies and knowledge were concerned, still the few of his works now known to us are far from justifying the whole of the reputation his contemporaries gave him. His “Arte Cisoria,” or Art of Carving, is proof of this. It was written in 1423, at the request of his friend, the chief carver of John the Second, and begins, in the most formal and pedantic manner, with the creation of the world and the invention of all the arts, among which the art of carving is made early to assume a high place. Then follows an account of what is necessary to make a good carver; after which we have, in detail, the whole mystery of the art, as it ought to be practised at the royal table. It is obvious from sundry passages of the work, that the Marquis himself was by no means without a love for the good cheer he so carefully explains,—a circumstance, perhaps, to which he owed the gout that we are told severely tormented his latter years. But in its style and composition this specimen of the didactic prose of the age has little value, and can be Similar remarks might probably be made about his treatise on the “Arte de Trobar,” or the “Gaya Sciencia”; a sort of Art of Poetry, addressed to the Marquis of Santillana, in order to carry into his native Castile some of the poetical skill possessed by the Troubadours of the South. But we have only an imperfect abstract of it, accompanied, indeed, with portions of the original work, which are interesting as being the oldest on its subject in the language.[598] More interesting, however, than either would be his translations of the Rhetorica of Cicero, the Divina Commedia of Dante, and the Æneid of Virgil. But of the first we have lost all trace. Of the second we know only that it was in prose, and addressed to his friend and kinsman the Marquis of Santillana. And of the Æneid there remain but seven books, with a commentary to three of them, from which a few extracts have been published.[599] Villena’s reputation, therefore, must rest chiefly on Thus, in the fourth chapter, after telling the commonly received tale, or, as he calls it, “the naked story,” of the Garden of the Hesperides, he gives us an allegory of it, showing that Libya, where the fair garden is placed, is human nature, dry and sandy; that Atlas, its lord, is the wise man, who knows how to cultivate his poor desert; that the garden is the garden of knowledge, divided according to the sciences; that the tree in the midst is philosophy; that the dragon watching the tree is the difficulty of study; and that The book, however, is worth the trouble of reading. It is, no doubt, full of the faults peculiar to its age, and abounds in awkward citations from Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and other Latin authors, then so rarely found and so little known in Spain, that they added materially to the interest and value of the treatise.[601] But the allegory is sometimes amusing; the language is From the Marquis of Villena himself, it is natural for us to turn to one of his followers, known only as “Macias el Enamorado,” or Macias the Lover; a name which constantly recurs in Spanish literature with a peculiar meaning, given by the tragical history of the poet who bore it. He was a Galician gentleman, who served the Marquis of Villena as one of his esquires, and became enamoured of a maiden attached to the same princely household with himself. But the lady, though he won her love, was married, under the authority that controlled both of them, to a knight of Porcuna. Still Macias in no degree restrained his passion, but continued to express it to her in his verses, as he had done before. The husband was naturally offended, and complained to the Marquis, who, after in vain rebuking his follower, used his full power as Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, and cast Macias into prison. But there he only devoted himself more passionately to the thoughts of his lady, and, by his persevering love, still more provoked her husband, who, secretly following him to his prison at Arjonilla, and watching him one day as he chanced to be singing of his love and his sufferings, was so stung by jealousy, that he cast a dart through the gratings of the window, and killed the unfortunate poet with the name of his lady still trembling on his lips. CHAPTER XIX.Marquis of Santillana. — His Life. — His Tendency to imitate the Italian and the ProvenÇal. — His Courtly Style. — His Works. — His Character. — Juan de Mena. — His Life. — His Shorter Poems. — His Labyrinth, and its Merits. Next after the king and Villena in rank, and much before them in merit, stands, at the head of the courtiers and poets of the reign of John the Second, IÑigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana; one of the most distinguished members of that great family which has sometimes claimed the Cid for its founder,[604] and which certainly, with a long succession of honors, reaches down to our own times.[605] He was born in 1398, but was left an orphan in early youth; so that, though his father, the Grand Admiral of Castile, had, at the time of his death, larger possessions than any other nobleman in the kingdom, the son, when he was old enough to know their value, found them chiefly wrested from him by the bold barons who in the most lawless manner then divided among themselves the power and resources of the crown. He was early, but not violently, opposed to the great favorite, the Constable Alvaro de Luna. In 1432, some The king, disheartened by the loss of the minister on whose commanding genius he had so long relied, died in 1454. But Henry the Fourth, who followed on the throne of Castile, seemed even more willing to favor the great family of the Mendozas than his father had been. The Marquis, however, was little disposed to take advantage of his position. His wife died in 1455, and the pilgrimage he made on that occasion to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the religious poetry he wrote the same year, show the direction his It is remarkable, that one, who, from his birth and position, was so much involved in the affairs of state at a period of great confusion and violence, should yet have cultivated elegant literature with earnestness. But the Marquis of Santillana, as he wrote to a friend and repeated to Prince Henry, believed that knowledge neither blunts the point of the lance, nor weakens the arm that wields a knightly sword.[616] He therefore gave himself freely to poetry and other graceful accomplishments; encouraged, perhaps, by the thought, that he was thus on the road to please the wayward monarch he served, if not the stern favorite who governed them all. One who was bred at the court, of which the Marquis was so distinguished an ornament, says, “He had great store of books, and gave himself to study, especially the study of moral philosophy and of things foreign and old. And he had always in his house doctors and masters, with whom he discoursed concerning the knowledge and the books he studied. Likewise, he himself made The works of the Marquis of Santillana show, with sufficient distinctness, the relations in which he stood to his times and the direction he was disposed to take. From his social position, he could easily gratify any reasonable literary curiosity or taste he might possess; for the resources of the kingdom were open to him, and he could, therefore, not only obtain for his private study the poetry then abroad in the world, but often command to his presence the poets themselves. He was born in the Asturias, where his great family fiefs lay, and was educated in Castile; so that, on this side, he belonged to the genuinely indigenous school of Spanish poetry. But then he was also intimate with the Marquis of Villena, the head of the poetical Consistory of Barcelona, who, to encourage his poetical studies, addressed to him, in 1433, his curious letter on the art of the Troubadours, which Villena thus proposed to introduce into Castile.[618] And, after all, he lived chiefly at the court of John the Second, and was the friend and patron of the poets there, through whom and through his love of foreign letters it was natural he should come in contact with the great Italian masters, now exercising a wide sway within their own peninsula. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find that his own works belong more or less to each of these schools, and define his position Of his familiarity with the ProvenÇal poetry abundant proof may be found in the Preface to his Proverbs, which he wrote when young, and in his letter to the Constable of Portugal, which belongs to the latter period of his life. In both, he treats the rules of that poetry as well founded, explaining them much as his friend and kinsman, the Marquis of Villena, did; and of some of the principal of its votaries in Spain, such as BergÉdan, and Pedro and Ausias March, he speaks with great respect.[619] To Jordi, his contemporary, he elsewhere devotes an allegorical poem of some length and merit, intended to do him the highest honor as a Troubadour.[620] But besides this, he directly imitated the ProvenÇal poets. By far the most beautiful of his works, and one which may well be compared with the most graceful of the smaller poems in the Spanish language, is entirely in the ProvenÇal manner. It is called “Una Serranilla,” or A Little Mountain Song, and was composed on a little girl, whom, when following his military duty, he found tending her father’s herds on the hills. Many such short songs occur in the later ProvenÇal poets, under the name of “Pastoretas,” and “Vaqueiras,” one of which, by Giraud Riquier,—the same person who wrote verses on the death of Alfonso the Wise,—might The traces of Italian culture in the poetry of the Marquis of Santillana are no less obvious and important. Besides praising Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio,[622] he imitates the opening of the “Inferno” in a long poem, in octave stanzas, on the death of the Marquis of Villena;[623] while, in the “Coronation of Jordi,” he shows that he was sensible to the power of more than one passage in the “Purgatorio.”[624] Moreover, he has the merit—if it be one—of introducing the peculiarly Italian form of the Sonnet into Spain; and with the differ But his principal works were more in the manner then prevalent at the Spanish court. Most of them are in verse, and, like a short poem to the queen, several riddles, and a few religious compositions, are generally full of conceits and affectation, and have little value of any sort.[626] Two or three, however, are of consequence. One called “The Complaint of Love,” and referring apparently to the story of Macias, is written with fluency and sweetness, and is curious as containing lines in Galician, which, with other similar verses and his letter to the Constable of Portugal, show he extended his thoughts to this ancient dialect, where are found some of the earliest intimations of Spanish literature.[627] Another of his It fills a hundred and twenty of the old Italian octave stanzas,—such stanzas as are used in the “Filostrato” of Boccaccio,—and much of it is written in easy verse. There is a great deal of ancient learning introduced into it awkwardly and in bad taste; but there is one passage in which a description of Fortune is skilfully borrowed from the seventh canto of the “Inferno,” and another in which is a pleasing paraphrase of the Beatus ille of Horace.[635] The machinery and management of the story, it is obvious, could hardly be worse; and yet when it was written, and perhaps still more when it was declaimed, as it probably was before some of the sufferers in the disaster it records, it may well have been felt as an effective exhibition of a very grave passage in the history of the time. On this account, too, it is still interesting. The Comedieta, however, was not the most popular, if it was the most important, of the works of Santillana. That distinction belongs to a collection of Proverbs, Indeed, in all respects we can see that he was a remarkable man; one thoroughly connected with his age and strong in its spirit. His conduct in affairs, from his youth upwards, shows this. So does the tone of his Proverbs, that of his letter to his imprisoned cousin, and that of his poem on the death of Alvaro There lived, however, during the reign of John the Second, and in the midst of his court, another poet, whose general influence at the time was less felt than that of his patron, the Marquis of Santillana, but who has since been oftener mentioned and remembered,—Juan de Mena, sometimes, but inappropriately, called the Ennius of Spanish poetry. He was born in CÓrdova, about the year 1411, the child of parents respected, but not noble.[640] He was early left an orphan, and from the age of three-and-twenty, of his own free choice, devoted himself wholly to letters; going through a regular course of studies, first at Salamanca, and afterwards at Rome. On his return home, he became a The chronicler, however, who seems to have been happy in possessing a temperament proper for courtly success, has left proofs enough of the means by which he reached it. He was a sort of poet-laureate without the title, writing verses on the battle of Olmedo in He stood well, too, in Portugal. The Infante Don Pedro—a verse-writer of some name, who travelled much in different parts of the world—became personally acquainted with Juan de Mena in Spain, and, on his return to Lisbon, addressed a few verses to him, better than the answer they called forth; besides which, he imitated, with no mean skill, Mena’s “Labyrinth,” in a Spanish poem of a hundred and twenty-five stanzas.[645] With such connections and habits, with a wit that made him agreeable in personal intercourse,[646] and with an even good-humor which rendered him welcome to the opposite parties in the kingdom,[647] he seems to have led a contented life; and at his death, which happened suddenly in 1456, in consequence of a fall from his mule, the Marquis of Santillana, always his friend and patron, wrote his epitaph, and erected a monument to his memory in Torrelaguna, both of which are still to be seen.[648] His poem on the Seven Deadly Sins, in nearly eight hundred short verses, divided into double redondillas, is a work of graver pretensions. But it is a dull allegory, full of pedantry and metaphysical fancies on the subject of a war between Reason and the Will of Man. Notwithstanding its length, however, it was left unfinished; and a certain friar, named GerÓnimo de Olivares, added four hundred more verses to it, in order to bring the discussion to what he conceived a suitable conclusion. Both parts, however, are as tedious as the theology of the age could make them. His “Coronation” is better, and fills about five hundred lines, arranged in double quintillas. Its name comes from its subject, which is an imaginary journey of Juan de Mena to Mount Parnassus, in order to witness the coronation of the Marquis of Santillana, both as a poet and a hero, by the Muses and the Virtues. It is, therefore, strictly a poem in honor of his great patron; and being such, it is somewhat singular that it should be written in a light and almost satirical vein. At the opening, as well as in other parts, it has the appearance of a parody on the “Divina Commedia”; for it begins with the wanderings of the author in an obscure wood, after which he passes through regions of misery, where he beholds the punishments of the dead; visits the abodes of the blessed, where he sees the great of former ages; and, at last, comes to Mount Parnassus, where he is present at a sort of apotheosis of the yet living object of his reverence and admiration. The versification of the poem is easy, and some passages in it are amusing; but, in general, it is rendered dull by unprofitable learning. The best portions are those merely descriptive. After the dedication of the Labyrinth to John the Second, and some other preparatory and formal parts, the poem opens with the author’s wanderings in a wood, like Dante, exposed to beasts of prey. While there, he is met by Providence, who comes to him in the form of a beautiful woman, and offers to lead him, by a sure path, through the dangers that beset him, and to explain, “as far as they are palpable to human understanding,” the dark mysteries of life that oppress his spirit. This promise she fulfils by carrying him to what she calls the spherical centre of the five zones; or, in other From this point, therefore, the poem becomes a confused gallery of mythological and historical portraits, arranged, as in the “Paradiso” of Dante, according to the order of the seven planets.[652] They have generally little merit, and are often shadowed forth very indistinctly. The best sketches are those of personages who lived in the poet’s own time or country; some drawn with courtly flattery, like the king’s and the Constable’s; others with more truth, as well as more skill, like those of the Marquis of Villena, Juan de Merlo, and the young DÁvalos, whose premature fate is recorded in a few lines of unwonted power and tenderness.[653] And he who seems to sit upon that bark, Invested by the cruel waves, that wait And welter round him to prepare his fate,— His and his bold companions’, in their dark And watery abyss;—that stately form Is Count Niebla’s, he whose honored name, More brave than fortunate, has given to fame The very tide that drank his life-blood warm. And they that eagerly around him press, Though men of noble mark and bold emprise, Grow pale and dim as his full glories rise, Showing their own peculiar honors less. Thus Carrion or Arlanza, sole and free, Bears, like Pisuerga, each its several name, And triumphs in its undivided fame, As a fair, graceful stream. But when the three Are joined in one, each yields its separate right, And their accumulated headlong course Each his own claim to stand the noblest knight, If brave Niebla came not with his blaze Of glory to eclipse their humbler praise. Too much honor is not to be claimed for such poetry; but there is little in Juan de Mena’s works equal to this specimen, which has at least the merit of being free from the pedantry and conceits that disfigure most of his writings. Such as it was, however, the Labyrinth received great admiration from the court of John the Second, and, above all, from the king himself, whose physician, we are told, wrote to the poet: “Your polished and erudite work, called ‘The Second Order of Mercury,’ hath much pleased his Majesty, who carries it with him when he journeys about or goes a-hunting.”[655] And again: “The end of the ‘third circle’ pleased the king much. I read it to his Majesty, who keeps it on his table with his prayer-book, and takes it up often.”[656] Indeed, the whole poem was, it seems, submitted to the king, piece by piece, as it was composed; and we are told, that, in one instance, at least, it received a royal correction, which still stands unaltered.[657] His Majesty even advised that it should be extended from three hundred stanzas to three hundred and sixty-five, though for no better reason than to make their number correspond exactly with that of the days in the year; and the twenty-four stanzas commonly printed at the end of it are supposed to have been an attempt to fulfil the monarch’s command. But whether this be so or not, nobody now wishes the poem to be longer than it is.[658] CHAPTER XX.Progress of the Castilian Language. — Poets of the Time of John the Second. — Villasandino. — Francisco Imperial. — Baena. — Rodriguez del Padron. — Prose-writers. — Cibdareal and Fernan Perez de Guzman. In one point of view, all the works of Juan de Mena are of consequence. They mark the progress of the Castilian language, which, in his hands, advanced more than it had for a long period before. From the time of Alfonso the Wise, nearly two centuries had elapsed, in which, though this fortunate dialect had almost completely asserted its supremacy over its rivals, and by the force of political circumstances had been spread through a large part of Spain, still, little had been done to enrich and nothing to raise or purify it. The grave and stately tone of the “Partidas” and the “General Chronicle” had not again been reached; the lighter air of the “Conde Lucanor” had not been attempted. Indeed, such wild and troubled times, as those of Peter the Cruel and the three monarchs who had followed him on the throne, permitted men to think of little except their personal safety and their immediate well-being. But now, in the time of John the Second, though the affairs of the country were hardly more composed, they had taken the character rather of feuds between the great nobles than of wars with the throne; while, at the same time, knowledge and literary culture, from acci As it was, he rendered it good service. He took boldly such words as he thought suitable to his purpose, wherever he found them, chiefly from the Latin, but sometimes from other languages.[659] Unhappily, he exercised no proper skill in the selection. Some of the many he adopted were low and trivial, and his example Another poet, who, in the reign of John the Second, enjoyed a reputation which has faded away much more than that of Juan de Mena, is Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino, sometimes called De Illescas. His earliest verses seem to have been written in the time of John the First; but the greater part fall within the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second, and especially within that of the last. A few of them are addressed to this monarch, and many more to his queen, to the Constable, to the Infante Don Ferdinand, afterwards king of Aragon, and to other distinguished personages of the time. From different parts of them, we learn that their author was a soldier and a courtier; that he was married twice, and repented heartily of his second match; and that he was generally poor, and often sent bold solicitations to every body, from the king downwards, asking for places, for money, and even for clothes. As a poet, his merits are small. He speaks of Dante, but gives no proof of familiarity with Italian At any rate, he was much regarded by his contemporaries. The Marquis of Santillana speaks of him as one of the leading poets of his age, and says that he wrote a great number of songs and other short poems, or decires, which were well liked and widely spread.[661] It is not remarkable, therefore, when Baena, for the amusement of John the Second and his court, made the collection of poetry which now passes under his name, that he filled much of it with verses by Villasandino, who is declared by the courtly secretary to be “the light, and mirror, and crown, and monarch of all the poets that, till that time, had lived in Spain.” But the poems Baena admired are almost all of them so short and so personal, that they were soon forgotten, with the circumstances that gave them birth. Several are curious, because they were written to be used, by persons of distinction in the state, such as the Adelantado Manrique, the Count de Buelna, and the Great Constable, all of whom were among Villasandino’s admirers, and employed him to write verses which passed afterwards un Francisco Imperial, born in Genoa, but in fact a Spaniard, whose home was at Seville, is also among the poets who were favored at this period, and who belonged to the same artificial school with Villasandino. The principal of his longer poems is on the birth of King John, in 1405, and most of the others are on subjects connected, like this, with transient interests. One, however, from its tone and singular subject, is still curious. It is on the fate of a lady, who, having been taken among the spoils of a great victory in the far East, by Tamerlane, was sent by him as a present to Henry the Third of Castile; and it must be admitted that the Genoese touches the peculiar misfortune of her condition with poetical tenderness.[663] Of the remaining poets who were more or less valued in Spain, in the middle of the fifteenth century, it is not necessary to speak at all. Most of them are now known only to antiquarian curiosity. Of by far the But while verse was so much cultivated, prose, though less regarded and not coming properly into the fashionable literature of the age, made some progress. We turn, therefore, now to two writers who flourished in the reign of John the Second, and who seem to furnish, with the contemporary chronicles and other similar works already noticed, the true character of the better prose literature of their time. “I foresee very plainly,” he says to the Bishop, “that you will read with tears this letter, which I write to you in anguish. We are both become orphans; and so has all Spain. For the good and noble and just King John, our sovereign lord, is dead. And I, miserable man that I am,—who was not yet twenty-four years old when I entered his service with the Bachelor Arrevalo, and have, till I am now sixty-eight, lived in his palace, or, I might almost say, in his bed-chamber and next his bed, always in his confidence, and yet never thinking of myself,—I should now have but a poor pension of thirty thousand maravedÍs for my long service, if, just at his death, he had not ordered the government of Cibdareal to be given to my son, who I pray may be happier than his father has been. But, in truth, I had always thought to die before his Highness; whereas he died in my presence, on the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen, a blessed saint, whom he greatly resembled in sorrowing over his sins. It was a sharp fever that destroyed him. He was The other person who was most successful as a prose-writer in the age of John the Second was Fernan Perez de Guzman,—like many distinguished Spaniards, a soldier and a man of letters, belonging to the high aristocracy of the country, and occupied in its affairs. His mother was sister to the great Chancellor Ayala, and his father was a brother of the Marquis of Santillana, so that his connections were as proud and noble as the monarchy could afford; while, on the other hand, Garcilasso de la Vega being one of his lineal descendants, we may add that his honors were reflected back from succeeding generations as brightly as he received them. He was born about the year 1400, and was bred a knight. At the battle of the Higueruela, near Granada, in 1431, led on by the Bishop of Palencia,—who, as the honest Cibdareal says, “fought that day like an armed Joshua,”—he was so unwise in his courage, that, after the fight was over, the king, who had been an eyewitness of his indiscretion, caused him to be put under arrest, and released him only at the intercession of one of his powerful friends.[672] In general, Perez de Guzman was among the opponents of the Constable, as were Among his more cultivated and intellectual friends was the family of Santa MarÍa, two of whom, having been Bishops of Cartagena, are better known by the name of the see they filled than they are by their own. The oldest of them all was a Jew by birth,—Selomo Halevi,—who, in 1390, when he was forty years old, was baptized as Pablo de Santa MarÍa, and rose, subsequently, by his great learning and force of character, to some of the highest places in the Spanish Church, of which he continued a distinguished ornament till his death in 1432. His brother, Alvar Garcia de Santa MarÍa, and his three sons, Gonzalo, Alonso, and Pedro, the last of whom lived as late as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, were, like the head of the family, marked by literary accomplishments, of which the old Cancioneros afford abundant proof, and of which, it is evident, the court of John the Second was not a little proud. The connection of Perez de Guzman, however, was chiefly with Alonso, long Bishop of Cartagena, who wrote for the use of his friend a religious treatise, and who, when he died, in 1435, was mourned by Perez de Guzman in a poem comparing the venerable Bishop to Seneca and Plato.[673] The occupations of Perez de Guzman, in his retirement on his estates at Batres, where he passed the latter part of his life, and where he died, about 1470, were suited to his own character and to the spirit of his age. He wrote a good deal of poetry, such as was then fashionable among persons of the class to which he belonged, and his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, admired what he wrote. Some of it may be found in the collection of Baena, showing that it was in favor at the court of John the Second. Yet more was printed in 1492, and in the Cancioneros that began to appear a few years later; so that it seems to have been still valued by the limited public interested in letters in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. But the longest poem he wrote, and perhaps the most important, is his “Praise of the Great Men of Spain,” a kind of chronicle, filling four hundred and nine octave stanzas; to which should be added a hundred and two rhymed Proverbs, mentioned by the Marquis of Santillana, but probably prepared later than the collection made by the Marquis himself for the education of Prince Henry. After these, the two poems of Perez de Guzman that make most pretensions from their length are an allegory on the Four Cardinal Virtues, in sixty-three stanzas, and another on the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, in a hundred. The best verses he wrote are in his short hymns. But all are forgotten, and deserve to be so.[674] “And no doubt it is a noble thing and worthy of praise to preserve the memory of noble families and of the services they have rendered to their kings and to the commonwealth; but here, in Castile, this is now held of small account. And, to say truth, it is really little necessary; for now-a-days he is noblest who is richest. Why, then, should we look into books to learn what relates to families, since we can find their nobility in their possessions? Nor is it needful to keep a record of the services they render; for kings now give rewards, not to him who serves them most faithfully, nor to him who strives for what is most worthy, but to him who most follows their will and pleases them most.”[676] In this and other passages, there is something of the tone of a disappointed statesman, perhaps of a disappointed courtier. But more frequently, as, for instance, when he speaks of the Great Constable, there is an air of good faith and justice that do him much honor. Some of his portraits, among which we may notice those of Villena and John the Second, are drawn with skill and spirit; and everywhere he writes in that rich, grave, Castilian style, with now and then a happy and pointed phrase to relieve its dignity, of which we can find no earlier example without going quite back to Alfonso the Wise and Don Juan Manuel. CHAPTER XXI.Family of the Manriques. — Pedro, Rodrigo, Gomez, and Jorge. — The Coplas of the Last. — The Urreas. — Juan de Padilla. Contemporary with all the authors we have just examined, and connected by ties of blood with several of them, was the family of the Manriques,—poets, statesmen, and soldiers,—men suited to the age in which they lived, and marked with its strong characteristics. They belonged to one of the oldest and noblest races of Castile; a race beginning with the Laras of the ballads and chronicles.[677] Pedro, the father of the first two to be noticed, was among the sturdiest opponents of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, and filled so large a space in the troubles of the time, that his violent imprisonment, just before he died, shook the country to its very foundations. At his death, however, in 1440, the injustice he had suffered was so strongly felt by all parties, that the whole court went into mourning for him, and the good Count Haro—the same in whose hands the honor and faith of the country had been put in pledge a year before at Tordesillas—came into the king’s presence, and, in a solemn scene well described by the chronicler of John the Second, obtained for the children of the deceased One of these children was Rodrigo Manrique, Count of Paredes, a bold captain, well known by the signal advantages he gained for his country over the Moors. He was born in 1416, and his name occurs constantly in the history of his time; for he was much involved, not only in the wars against the common enemy in Andalusia and Granada, but in the no less absorbing contests of the factions which then rent Castile and all the North. But, notwithstanding the active life he led, we are told that he found time for poetry, and one of his songs, by no means without merit, which has been preserved to us, bears witness to it. He died in 1476.[679] His brother, Gomez Manrique, of whose life we have less distinct accounts, but whom we know to have been both a soldier and a lover of letters, has left us more proofs of his poetical studies and talent. One of his shorter pieces belongs to the reign of John the Second, and one of more pretensions comes into the period of the Catholic sovereigns; so that he lived in three different reigns.[680] At the request of Count Benevente, he at one time collected what he had written into a volume, which may still be extant, but has never been published.[681] The longest of his works, now known to exist, is an allegorical poem of twelve hundred lines on the death of his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, in which the Seven Cardinal Virtues, together with Poetry and These two somewhat long poems, with a few that are much shorter,—the best of which is on the bad government of a town where he lived,—fill up the list of what remain to us of their author’s works. They are found in the Cancioneros printed from time to time during the sixteenth century, and thus bear witness to the continuance of the regard in which he was long held. But, except a few passages, where he speaks in a natural tone, moved by feelings of personal affection, none of his poetry can now be read with pleasure; and, in some instances, the Latinisms in which he indulges, misled probably by Juan de Mena, render the lines where they occur quite ridiculous.[684] Nor does it. Instead of being a loud exhibition of his sorrows, or, what would have been more in the spirit of the age, a conceited exhibition of his learning, it is a simple and natural complaint of the mutability of all earthly happiness; the mere overflowing of a heart filled with despondency at being brought suddenly to feel the worthlessness of what it has most valued and pursued. His father occupies hardly half the canvas of Our lives are rivers, gliding free To that unfathomed, boundless sea, The silent grave; Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave. Thither the mighty torrents stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill. There all are equal. Side by side The poor man and the son of pride Lie calm and still. The same tone is heard, though somewhat softened, when he touches on the days of his youth and of the court of John the Second, already passed away; and it is felt the more deeply, because the festive scenes he describes come into such strong contrast with the dark and solemn thoughts to which they lead him. In this respect his verses fall upon our hearts like the sound of a heavy bell, struck by a light and gentle hand, which continues long afterwards to give forth tones that grow sadder and more solemn, till at last they come to us like a wailing for those we have ourselves loved and lost. But gradually the movement changes. No earlier poem in the Spanish language, if we except, perhaps, some of the early ballads, is to be compared with the Coplas of Manrique for depth and truth of feeling; and few of any subsequent period have reached the beauty or power of its best portions. Its versification, too, is excellent; free and flowing, with occasionally an antique air and turn, that are true to the character of the age that produced it, and increase its picturesqueness and effect. But its great charm is to be sought in a beautiful simplicity, which, belonging to no age, is the seal of genius in all. The Coplas, as might be anticipated, produced a Another family that flourished in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and one that continued to be distinguished in that of Charles the Fifth, was marked with similar characteristics, serving in high places in Both the sons of the first Count of Aranda, Miguel and Pedro, were lovers of letters; but Pedro only was imbued with a poetical spirit beyond that of his age, and emancipated from its affectations and follies. His poems, which he published in 1513, are dedicated to his widowed mother, and are partly religious and partly secular. Some of them show that he was acquainted with the Italian masters. Others are quite untouched by any but national influences; and among the latter is the following ballad, recording the first love of his youth, when a deep distrust of himself seemed to be too strong for a passion which was yet evidently one of great tenderness:— In the soft and joyous summer-time, When the days stretch out their span, It was then my peace was ended all, It was then my griefs began. When the earth is clad with springing grass, When the trees with flowers are clad; When the birds are building up their nests, When the nightingale sings sad; When the stormy sea is hushed and still, And the sailors spread their sail; When the rose and lily lift their heads, And with fragrance fill the gale; When, burdened with the coming heat, Men cast their cloaks aside, And turn themselves to the cooling shade, From the sultry sun to hide; Save the gentle twilight hour;— In a tempting, gracious time like this, I felt love’s earliest power. But the lady that then I first beheld Is a lady so fair to see, That, of all who witness her blooming charms, None fails to bend the knee. And her beauty, and all its glory and grace, By so many hearts are sought, That as many pains and sorrows, I know, Must fall to my hapless lot;— A lot that grants me the hope of death As my only sure relief, And while it denies the love I seek, Announces the end of my grief. Still, still, these bitterest sweets of life I never will ask to forget; For the lover’s truest glory is found When unshaken his fate is met.[689] The last person who wrote a poem of any considerable length, and yet is properly to be included within the old school, is one who, by his imitations of Dante, reminds us of the beginnings of that school in the days The other is entitled “The Twelve Triumphs of the Twelve Apostles,” which, as we are informed, with the same accuracy and in the same way, was completed on the 14th of February, 1518; again a poem formidable for its length, since it fills above a thousand stanzas of nine lines each. It is partly an allegory, but wholly religious in its character, and is composed with more care than any thing else its author wrote. The action passes in the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which the poet is successively carried by Saint Paul, who shows him, in each of them, first, the marvels of one of the twelve Apostles; next, an opening of one of the twelve mouths of the infernal regions; and lastly, a glimpse of the corresponding division of Purgatory. Dante is evidently the model of the good monk, however unsuc CHAPTER XXII.Prose-writers. — Juan de Lucena. — Alfonso de la Torre. — Diego de Almela. — Alonso Ortiz. — Fernando del Pulgar. — Diego de San Pedro. The reign of Henry the Fourth, was more favorable to the advancement of prose composition than that of John the Second. This we have already seen when speaking of the contemporary chronicles, and of Perez de Guzman and the author of the “Celestina.” In other cases, we observe its advancement in an inferior degree, but, encumbered as they are with more or less of the bad taste and pedantry of the time, they still deserve notice, because they were so much valued in their own age. Regarded from this point of view, one of the most prominent prose-writers of the century was Juan de Lucena; a personage distinguished both as a private counsellor of John the Second and as that monarch’s foreign ambassador. We know, however, little of his history; and of his works only one remains to us,—if, indeed, he wrote any more. It is a didactic prose dialogue “On a Happy Life,” carried on between some of the most eminent persons of the age: the great Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, the poet, Alonso de Cartagena, the bishop and statesman, and Lucena himself, who acts in part as an umpire in the discussion, though the Bishop at last ends it by deciding that true happiness consists in loving and serving God. It shows a good deal of the learning of its time, and still more of the acuteness of the scholastic metaphysics then in favor. But it is awkward and uninteresting in the general structure of its fiction, and meagre in its style and illustrations. This, however, did not prevent it from being much read and admired. There is one edition of it without date, which probably appeared An injustice not unlike the one that occurred to Alfonso de la Torre happened to his contemporary, Diego de Almela, and for some time deprived him of the honor, to which he was entitled, of being regarded as the author of “The Valerius of Stories,”—a book long It is thrown into the form of a discussion on Morals, in which, after a short explanation of the different virtues and vices of men, as they were then understood, we have all the illustrations the author could collect under each head from the Scriptures and the history of Spain. It is, therefore, rather a series of stories than a regular didactic treatise, and its merit consists in the grave, yet simple and pleasing, style in which they are told,—a style particularly fitted to most of them, which are taken from the old national chronicles. Originally, it was accompanied by “An Account of Pitched Battles”; but this, and his Chronicles of Spain, his collection of the Miracles of Santiago, and several discussions of less consequence, are long since forgotten. Almela, who enjoyed the favor of Ferdinand and Isabella, accompanied those sovereigns to the siege of Granada, in 1491, as a chaplain, carrying with him, as was not uncommon at that time among the higher ecclesiastics, a military retinue to serve in the wars.[694] Another of the prose-writers of the fifteenth century, and one that deserves to be mentioned with more respect than either of the last, is Fernando del Pulgar. Some of these sketches, to which he has given the general title of “Claros Varones de Castilla,” like those of the good Count Haro[697] and of Rodrigo Manrique,[698] are important for their subjects, while others, like those of the great ecclesiastics of the kingdom, are now interesting only for the skill with which they are drawn. The style in which they are written is forcible and generally concise, showing a greater tendency to formal elegance than any thing by either Cibdareal or Guzman, with As a specimen of his best manner, we may take the following passage, in which, after having alluded to some of the most remarkable personages in Roman history, he turns, as it were, suddenly round to the queen, and thus boldly confronts the great men of antiquity with the great men of Castile, whom he had already discussed more at large:— “True, indeed, it is, that these great men,—Castilian knights and gentlemen,—of whom memory is here made for fair cause, and also those of the elder time, who, fighting for Spain, gained it from the power of its enemies, did neither slay their own sons, as did those consuls, Brutus and Torquatus; nor burn their own flesh, as did ScÆvola; nor commit against their own blood cruelties which nature abhors and reason forbids; but rather, with fortitude and perseverance, with wise forbearance and prudent energy, with justice and clemency, gaining the love of their own countrymen, and becoming a terror to strangers, they disciplined their armies, ordered their battles, overcame their enemies, conquered hostile lands, and protected their own.... So that, most excellent Queen, these knights and prelates, and many others born within your realm, whereof here leisure fails me to speak, did, by the praiseworthy labors they fulfilled, and by the virtues they strove to attain, achieve unto themselves the name of Famous Men, whereof their descendants should be above others emulous; while, at the same This is certainly remarkable, both for its style and for the tone of its thought, when regarded as part of a work written at the conclusion of the fifteenth century. Pulgar’s Chronicle, and his commentary on “Mingo Revulgo,” as we have already seen, are not so good as such sketches. The same spirit, however, reappears in his letters. They are thirty-two in number; all written during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the earliest being dated in 1473, and the latest only ten years afterwards. Nearly all of them were addressed to persons of honorable distinction in his time, such as the queen herself, Henry the king’s uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and the Count of Tendilla. Sometimes, as in the case of one to the king of Portugal, exhorting him not to make war on Castile, they are evidently letters of state. But in other cases, like that of a letter to his physician, complaining pleasantly of the evils of old age, and one to his daughter, who was a nun, they seem to be familiar, if not confidential.[700] On the whole, therefore, taking all his different works together, we have a very gratifying exhibition of the character of this ancient servant and counsellor of Queen Isabella, who, if he gave no considerable impulse to his age as a writer, was yet in advance of it by the dignity and elevation of his thoughts and the careless richness of his style. He died after 1492, and probably before 1500. The first of these attempts was made by Diego de San Pedro, a senator of Valladolid, whose poetry is found in all the Cancioneros Generales.[701] He was evidently known at the court of the Catholic sovereigns, and seems to have been favored there; but, if we may judge from his principal poem, entitled “Contempt of Fortune,” his old age was unhappy, and filled with regrets at the follies of his youth.[702] Among these follies, however, he reckons the work of prose fiction which now constitutes his only real claim to be remembered. It is called the Prison of Love, “Carcel de Amor,” and was written at the request of Diego Hernandez, a governor of the pages in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. It opens with an allegory. The author supposes himself to walk out on a winter’s morning, and to find in a wood a fierce, savage-looking person, who drags along an unhappy prisoner bound by a chain. This savage is Desire, and his victim is Leriano, the hero of the fiction. San Pedro, from natural sympathy, follows them to the castle or prison of Love, where, after groping through sundry mystical passages and troubles, he sees the victim fastened to a fiery seat and enduring From this time the story is much like an episode in one of the tales of chivalry. A rival discovers the attachment between Leriano and Laureola, and making it appear to the king, her father, as a criminal one, the lady is cast into prison. Leriano challenges her accuser and defeats him in the lists; but the accusation is renewed, and, being fully sustained by false witnesses, Laureola is condemned to death. Leriano rescues her with an armed force and delivers her to the protection of her uncle, that there may exist no further pretext for malicious interference. The king, exasperated anew, besieges Leriano in his city of Susa. In the course of the siege, Leriano captures one of the false witnesses, and compels him to confess his guilt. The king, on learning this, joyfully receives his daughter again, and shows all favor to her faithful lover. But Laureola, for her own honor’s sake, now refuses to hold further intercourse with him; in consequence of which he takes to his bed and with sorrow and fasting dies. Here the original work ends; but there is a poor continuation of it by Nicolas NuÑez, which gives an account of the grief of Laureola and the return of the author to Spain.[703] Among the consequences of the popularity enjoyed by the Carcel de Amor was probably the appearance of the “Question de Amor,” an anonymous tale, which is dated at the end, 17 April, 1512. It is a discussion of the question, so often agitated from the age of the Courts of Love to the days of Garcilasso de la Vega, who suffers most, the lover whose mistress has been taken from him by death, or the lover who serves a living mistress without hope. The controversy is here carried on between Vasquiran, whose lady-love is dead, and Flamiano, who is rejected and in despair. The scene is laid at Naples and in other parts of Italy, beginning in 1508, and ending with the battle of Ravenna and its disastrous consequences, four years later. It is full of the spirit of the times. Chivalrous games The style is that of its age; sometimes picturesque, but generally dull; and the interest of the whole is small, in consequence both of the inherent insipidity of such a fine-spun discussion, and of the too minute details given of the festivals and fights with which it is crowded. It is, therefore, chiefly interesting as a very early attempt to write historical romance; just as the “Carcel de Amor,” which called it forth, is an attempt to write sentimental romance.[705] CHAPTER XXIII.The Cancioneros of Baena, EstuÑiga, and Martinez de Burgos. — The Cancionero General of Castillo. — Its Editions. — Its Divisions, Contents, and Character. The reigns of John the Second and of his children, Henry the Fourth and Isabella the Catholic, over which we have now passed, extend from 1407 to 1504, and therefore fill almost a complete century, though they comprise only two generations of sovereigns. Of the principal writers who flourished while they sat on the throne of Castile we have already spoken, whether they were chroniclers or dramatists, whether they were poets or prose-writers, whether they belonged to the ProvenÇal school or to the Castilian. But, after all, a more distinct idea of the poetical culture of Spain during this century, than can be readily obtained in any other way, is to be gathered from the old Cancioneros; those ample magazines, filled almost entirely with the poetry of the age that preceded their formation. Nothing, indeed, that belonged to the literature of the fifteenth century in Spain marks its character more plainly than these large and ill-digested collections. The oldest of them, to which we have more than once referred, was the work of Juan Alfonso de Baena, a converted Jew, and one of the secretaries of John the Second. It dates, from internal evidence, between the years 1449 and 1454, and was made, as the compiler On examining the Cancionero of Baena, however, we find that quite one third of the three hundred and eighty-four manuscript pages it fills are given to Villasandino,—who died about 1424, and whom Baena pronounces “the prince of all Spanish poets,”—and that nearly the whole of the remaining two thirds is divided among Diego de Valencia, Francisco Imperial, Baena himself, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and Ferrant Manuel de Lando; while the names of about fifty other persons, some of them reaching back to the reign of Henry the Third, are affixed to a multitude of short poems, of which, probably, they were not in all cases the authors. A little of it, like what is attributed to Macias, is in the Galician dialect; but by far the greater part was written by Castilians, who valued themselves upon their fashionable tone more than upon any thing else, and who, in obedience to the taste of their time, generally took the light and easy forms of ProvenÇal verse, and as much of the Italian spirit as they comprehended and knew how to appropriate. Of poetry, except in some of the shorter pieces of Ferrant Lando, Alvarez Gato, and Perez de Guzman, the Cancionero of Baena contains hardly a trace.[706] Thus far, more had been done in collecting the poetry of the time than might have been anticipated from the troubled state of public affairs; but it had been done only in one direction, and even in that with little judgment. The king and the more powerful of the nobility might indulge in the luxury of such Cancioneros and such poetical courts, but a general poetical culture could not be expected to follow influences so partial and inadequate. A new order of things, however, soon arose. In 1474, the art of printing was fairly established in Spain; and it is a striking fact, that the first book ascertained to have come from the Spanish press is a collection of poems recited that year by forty different poets contending for a public prize.[711] No doubt, such a volume was not compiled on the principle of the elder manuscript Cancioneros. Still, in some respects, it resembles them, and in others seems to have been the result of their example. But however this may be, a collection of poetry was printed at Saragossa, in 1492, con It was a remarkable book to appear within eighteen years after the introduction of printing into Spain, when little but the most worthless Latin treatises had come from the national press; but it was far from containing all the Spanish poetry that was soon demanded. In 1511, therefore, Fernando del Castillo printed at Valencia what he called a “Cancionero General,” or General Collection of Poetry; the first book to which this well-known title was ever given. It professes to contain “many and divers works of all or of the most notable Troubadours of Spain, the ancient as well as the modern, in devotion, in morality, in love, in jests, ballads, villancicos, songs, devices, mottoes, glosses, questions, and answers.” It, in fact, contains poems attributed to about a hundred different persons, from the time of the Marquis of Santillana down to the period in which it was made; most of the separate pieces being placed under the names of those who were their authors, or were assumed to be so, while the rest are collected under the respective titles or divisions just enumerated, which then constituted the favorite subjects and forms of verse at court. Of proper order or arrangement, of critical judgment, or tasteful selection, there seems to have been little thought. The work, however, was successful. In 1514, a new Taking this Cancionero, then, as a true poetical representative of the period it embraces, the first thing we observe, on opening it, is a mass of devotional verse, evidently intended as a vestibule to conciliate favor for the more secular and free portions that follow. But it is itself very poor and gross; so poor and so gross, that we can hardly understand how, at any period, it can have been deemed religious. Indeed, within a century from the time when the Cancionero was published, this part of it was already become so offensive to the Church it had originally served to propitiate, that the whole of There can be no doubt, however, about the devotional purposes for which it was first destined; some of the separate compositions being by the Marquis of Santillana, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and other well-known authors of the fifteenth century, who thus intended to give an odor of sanctity to their works and lives. A few poems in this division of the Cancionero, as well as a few scattered in other parts of it, are in the Limousin dialect; a circumstance which is probably to be attributed to the fact, that the whole was first collected and published in Valencia. But nothing in this portion can be accounted truly poetical, and very little of it religious. The best of its shorter poems is, perhaps, the following address of Mossen Juan Tallante to a figure of the Saviour expiring on the cross:— O God! the infinitely great, That didst this ample world outspread,— The true! the high! And, in thy grace compassionate, Upon the tree didst bow thy head, For us to die! O! since it pleased thy love to bear Such bitter suffering for our sake, O Agnus Dei! Save us with him whom thou didst spare, Because that single word he spake,— Memento mei![715] Thus, the Viscount Altamira has a long, dull dialogue between Feeling and Knowledge; Diego Lopez de Haro has another between Reason and Thought; Hernan Mexia, one between Sense and Thought; and Costana, one between Affection and Hope;—all belonging to the fashionable class of poems called moralities or moral discussions, all in one measure and manner, and all counterparts to each other in grave, metaphysical refinements and poor conceits. On the other hand, we have light, amatory poetry, some of which, like that of Garci Sanchez de Badajoz on the Book of Job, that of Rodriguez del Padron on the Ten Commandments, and that Next after the series of authors just mentioned, we have a collection of a hundred and twenty-six “Canciones,” or Songs, bearing the names of a large number of the most distinguished Spanish poets and gentlemen of the fifteenth century. Nearly all of them are regularly constructed, each consisting of two stanzas, the first with four and the second with eight lines,—the first expressing the principal idea, and the second repeating and amplifying it. They remind us, in some respects, of Italian sonnets, but are more constrained in their movement, and fall into a more natural alliance with conceits. Hardly one in the large collection of the Cancionero is easy or flowing, and the following, by Cartagena, whose name occurs often, and who was one of the Jewish family that rose so high in the Church after its conversion, is above the average merit of its class.[721] I know not why first I drew breath, Since living is only a strife, And would gladly reject my own life. For all the days I may live Can only be filled with grief; With Death I must ever strive, And never from Death find relief. So that Hope must desert me at last, Since Death has not failed to see That life will revive in me The moment his arrow is cast.[722] This was thought to be a tender compliment to the lady whose coldness had made her lover desire a death that would not obey his summons. Thirty-seven Ballads succeed; a charming collection of wild-flowers, which have already been sufficiently examined when speaking of the ballad poetry of the earliest age of Spanish literature.[723] After the Ballads we come to the “Invenciones,” a form of verse peculiarly characteristic of the period, and of which we have here two hundred and twenty specimens. They belong to the institutions of chivalry, and especially to the arrangements for tourneys and joustings, which were the most gorgeous of the public amusements known in the reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth. Each knight, on such occasions, had a device, or drew one for himself by lot; and to this device or crest a poetical explanation was to be affixed by himself, which was called an invencion. Some of these posies are very ingenious; for conceits are here in their place. King John, for instance, drew a prisoner’s cage for his crest, and furnished for its motto,— Even imprisonment still is confessed, Though heavy its sorrows may fall, To be but a righteous behest, When it comes from the fairest and best Whom the earth its mistress can call. The well-known Count Haro drew a noria, or a wheel over which passes a rope, with a series of buckets attached to it, that descend empty into a well and come up full of water. He gave, for his invencion,— The full show my griefs running o’er; The empty, the hopes I deplore. On another occasion, he drew, like the king, an emblem of a prisoner’s cage, and answered to it by an imperfect rhyme,— In the gaol which you here behold— Whence escape there is none, as you see— I must live. What a life must it be![724] Akin to the Invenciones were the “Motes con sus Glosas”; mottoes or short apophthegms, which we find here to the number of above forty, each accompanied by a heavy, rhymed gloss. The mottoes themselves are generally proverbs, and have a national and sometimes a spirited air. Thus, the lady Catalina Manrique took “Never mickle cost but little,” referring to the difficulty of obtaining her regard, to which Cartagena answered, with another proverb, “Merit pays all,” and then explained or mystified both with a tedious gloss. The rest The “Villancicos” that follow—songs in the old Spanish measure, with a refrain and occasionally short verses broken in—are more agreeable, and sometimes are not without merit. They received their name from their rustic character, and were believed to have been first composed by the villanos, or peasants, for the Nativity and other festivals of the Church. Imitations of these rude roundelays are found, as we have seen, in Juan de la Enzina, and occur in a multitude of poets since; but the fifty-four in the Cancionero, many of which bear the names of leading poets in the preceding century, are too courtly in their tone, and approach the character of the Canciones.[726] In other respects, they remind us of the earliest French madrigals, or, still more, of the ProvenÇal poems, that are nearly in the same measures.[727] The last division of this conceited kind of poetry collected into the first Cancioneros Generales is that called “Preguntas,” or Questions; more properly, Questions and Answers; since it is merely a series of riddles, with Thus far the contents of the Cancionero General date from the fifteenth century, and chiefly from the middle and latter part of it. Subsequently, we have a series of poets who belong rather to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, such as Puerto Carrero, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Don Juan Manuel of Portugal, Heredia, and a few others; after which follows, in the early editions, a collection of what are called “Jests provoking Laughter,”—really, a number of very gross poems which constitute part of an indecent Cancionero printed separately at Valencia, several years afterwards, but which were But this change belongs to another period of the literature of Castile, before entering on which we must notice a few circumstances in the Cancioneros characteristic of the one we have just gone over. And here the first thing that strikes us is the large number of But the rank and personal consideration of those that throng it are, perhaps, more remarkable than their number, and certainly more so than their merit. John the Second is there, and Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Fourth; the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[732] the Count Haro, and the Count of Plasencia; the Dukes of Alva, Albuquerque, and Medina Sidonia; the Count of Tendilla and Don Juan Manuel; the Marquises of Santillana, Astorga, and Villa Franca; the Viscount Altamira, and other leading personages of their time; so that, as Lope de Vega once said, “most of the poets of that age were great lords, admirals, constables, dukes, counts, and kings”;[733] or, in other words, verse-writing was a fashion at the court of Castile in the fifteenth century. But it was impossible such a wearisome state of poetical culture should become permanent in a country so full of stirring interests as Spain was in the age that followed the fall of Granada and the discovery of America. Poetry, or at least the love of poetry, made progress with the great advancement of the nation under Ferdinand and Isabella; though the taste of the court in whatever CHAPTER XXIV.Spanish Intolerance. — The Inquisition. — Persecution of Jews and Moors. — Persecution of Christians for Opinion. — State of the Press in Spain. — Concluding Remarks on the whole Period. The condition of things in Spain at the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella seemed, as we have intimated, to announce a long period of national prosperity. But one institution, destined soon to discourage and check that intellectual freedom without which there can be no wise and generous advancement in any people, was already beginning to give token of its great and blighting power. The Christian Spaniards had, from an early period, been essentially intolerant. To their perpetual wars with the Moors had been added, from the end of the fourteenth century, an exasperated feeling against the Jews, which the government had vainly endeavoured to control, and which had shown itself, at different times, in the plunder and murder of multitudes of that devoted race throughout the country. Both races were hated by the mass of the Spanish people with a bitter hatred: the first as their conquerors; the last for the oppressive claims their wealth had given them on great numbers of the Christian inhabitants. In relation to both, it was never forgotten that they were the enemies of that cross under which all true Spaniards had for centuries gone to battle; and of both it was taught by the priesthood, When, therefore, it was proposed to establish in Spain the Inquisition, which had been so efficiently used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses, and which had even followed its victims in their flight from Provence to Aragon, little serious opposition was made to the undertaking. Ferdinand, perhaps, was not unwil Such severity brought with it, of course, a great amount of fraud and falsehood. Multitudes of the followers of Mohammed—beginning with four thousand whom Cardinal Ximenes baptized on the day when, contrary to the provisions of the capitulation of Granada, he consecrated the great mosque of the Albaycin as a Christian temple—were forced to enter the fold of the Church, without either understanding its doctrines or desiring to receive its instructions. With these, as with the converted Jews, the Inquisition was permitted to deal unchecked by the power of the state. They The effect was appalling. The imaginations of men were filled with horror at the idea of a power so vast and so noiseless; one which was constantly, but invisibly, around them; whose blow was death, but whose steps could neither be heard nor followed amidst the gloom into which it retreated farther and farther as efforts were made to pursue it. From its first establishment, therefore, while the great body of the Spanish Christians rejoiced in the purity and orthodoxy of their faith, and not unwillingly saw its enemies called to expiate their unbelief by the most terrible of mortal punishments, the intellectual and cultivated portions of society felt the sense of their personal security gradually shaken, until, at last, it became an anxious object of their lives to avoid the suspicions of a tribunal which infused into their minds a terror deeper and more effectual in proportion as it was accompanied by a misgiving how far they might conscientiously oppose its authority. Many of the nobler and more enlightened, especially on the comparatively free soil of Aragon, struggled against an invasion of their rights whose consequences they partly foresaw. But the powers of the From this moment, Spanish intolerance, which through the Moorish wars had accompanied the contest and shared its chivalrous spirit, took that air of sombre fanaticism which it never afterwards lost. Soon, its warfare was turned against the opinions and thoughts of men, even more than against their external conduct or their crimes. The Inquisition, which was its true exponent and appropriate instrument, gradually enlarged its own jurisdiction by means of crafty abuses, as well as by the regular forms of law, until none found himself too humble to escape its notice, or too high to be reached by its power. The whole land bent under its influence, and the few who comprehended the mischief that must follow bowed, like the rest, to its authority, or were subjected to its punishments. From an inquiry into the private opinions of individuals to an interference with the press and with printed books there was but a step. It was a step, however, that was not taken at once; partly because books were still few and of little comparative importance anywhere, and partly because, in Spain, they had already been subjected to the censorship of the civil authority, which, in this particular, seemed unwilling to surrender its jurisdiction. But such scruples were quickly removed by the appearance and progress of the Reformation of Luther; a revolution which comes within the next period of the history of Spanish literature, when we shall find displayed in their broad practical results If, however, before we enter upon this new and more varied period, we cast our eyes back towards the one over which we have just passed, we shall find much that is original and striking, and much that gives promise of further progress and success. It extends through nearly four complete centuries, from the first breathings of the poetical enthusiasm of the mass of the people down to the decay of the courtly literature in the latter part of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is filled with materials destined, at last, to produce such a school of poetry and elegant prose as, in the sober judgment of the nation itself, still constitutes the proper body of the national literature. The old ballads, the old historical poems, the old chronicles, the old theatre,—all these, if only elements, are yet elements of a vigor and promise not to be mistaken. They constitute a mine of more various wealth than had been offered, under similar circumstances and at so early a period, to any other people. They breathe a more lofty and a more heroic temper. We feel, as we listen to their tones, that we are amidst the stir of extraordinary passions, which give the character an elevation not elsewhere to be found in the same unsettled state of society. We feel, though the grosser elements of life are strong around us, that imagination is yet stronger; imparting to them its manifold hues, and giving them a power and a grace that form a striking contrast with what is wild or rude in their original nature. In short, we feel that we are called to witness the first efforts of a generous people to emancipate themselves from the cold restraints of a HISTORY |