George Ticknor

The Literature that existed in Spain from the Accession of the Austrian Family to its Extinction, or from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century To the End of the Seventeenth.

(CONTINUED.)

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HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

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SECOND PERIOD.

(CONTINUED.)

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CHAPTER XXXI.

Satirical Poetry: The Argensolas, Quevedo, and others. — Elegiac Poetry and Epistles: Garcilasso, Herrera, and others. — Pastoral Poetry: Saa de Miranda, Balbuena, Esquilache, and others. — Epigrams: Villegas, Rebolledo, and others. — Didactic Poetry: Rufo, Cueva, CÉspedes, and others. — Emblems: Daza, Covarrubias. — Descriptive Poetry: Dicastillo.

Satirical poetry, whether in the form of regular satires, or in the more familiar guise of epistles, has never enjoyed a wide success in Spain. Its spirit, indeed, was known there from the times of the Archpriest of Hita and Rodrigo Cota, both of whom seem to have been thoroughly imbued with it. Torres Naharro, too, in the early part of the sixteenth century, and Silvestre and Castillejo a little later, still sustained it, and wrote satires in the short national verse, with much of the earlier freedom, and all the bitterness, that originally accompanied it.

But after Mendoza and Boscan, in the middle of that century, had sent poetical epistles to one another written in the manner of Horace, though in the Italian terza rima, the fashion was changed. A rich, strong invective, such as Castillejo dared to use when he wrote the “Satire on Women,” which was often reprinted and greatly relished, was almost entirely laid aside; and a more cultivated and philosophical tone, suited to the stately times of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, took its place. Montemayor, it is true, and Padilla, with a few wits of less note, wrote in both manners; but CantorÁl with little talent, Gregorio Murillo with a good deal, and Rey de Artieda in a familiar style that was more winning than either, took the new direction so decidedly, that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the change may be considered as substantially settled.[1]

Barahona de Soto was among the earliest that wrote in this new form, which was a union of the Roman with the Italian. We have four of his satires, composed after he had served in the Morisco wars; the first and the last of which, assailing all bad poets, show plainly the school to which he belonged and the direction he wished to follow. But his efforts, though seriously made, did not raise him above an untolerated mediocrity.[2]

A single satire of Jauregui, addressed to Lydia, as if she might have been the Lydia of Horace, is better.[3] But in the particular style and manner of the philosophical Horatian satire, none succeeded so well as the two Argensolas. Their discussions are, it is true, sometimes too grave and too long; but they give us spirited pictures of the manners of their times. The sketch of a profligate lady of fashion, for instance, in the one to Flora, by Lupercio, is excellent, and so are long passages in two others against a court life, by BartolomÉ. All three, however, are too much protracted, and the last contains a poor repetition of the fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, in which, as almost everywhere else, its author’s relations to Horace are apparent.[4]

Quevedo, on the other hand, followed Juvenal, whose hard, unsparing temper was better suited to his own tastes, and to a disposition embittered by cruel persecutions. But Quevedo is often free and indecorous, as well as harsh, and offends that sensibility to virtue which a satirist ought carefully to cultivate. It should, however, be remembered in his favor, that, though living under the despotism of the Philips, and crushed by it, no Spanish poet stands before him in the spirit of an independent and vigorous satire. GÓngora approaches him on some occasions, but GÓngora rarely dealt with grave subjects, and confined his satire almost entirely to burlesque ballads and sonnets, which he wrote in the fervor of his youth. At no period of his life, and certainly not after he went to court, would he have hazarded a satirical epistle like the one on the decay of Castilian spirit and the corruption of Castilian manners, which Quevedo had the courage to send to the Count Duke Olivares, when he was at the height of his influence.[5]

The greatest contemporaries of both of them hardly turned their thoughts in this direction; for as to Cervantes, his “Journey to Parnassus” is quite too good-natured an imitation of Caporali to be classed among satires, even if its form permitted it to be placed there; and as to Lope de Vega, though some of his sonnets and other shorter poems are full of spirit and severity, especially those that pass under the name of Burguillos, still his whole course, and the popular favor that followed it, naturally prevented him from seeking occasions to do or say any thing ungracious.

Nor did the state of society at this period favor the advancement, or even the continuance, of any such spirit. The epistles of Espinel and Arguijo are, therefore, absolutely grave and solemn; and those of Rioja, Salcedo, Ulloa, and Melo are not only grave, but are almost entirely destitute of poetical merit, except one by the first of them, addressed to Fabio, which, if neither gay nor witty, is an admirably wise moral rebuke of the folly and irksomeness of depending on royal favor. Borja is more free, as became his high station, and speaks out more plainly; but the best of his epistles—the one against a court life—is not so good as the youthful tercetos on the same subject by GÓngora, nor equal to his own jesting address to his collected poems. Rebolledo, his only successor of any note at the time, is moral, but tiresome; and SolÍs, like the few that followed him, is too dull to be remembered. Indeed, if Villegas in his old age, when, perhaps, he had been soured by disappointment, had not written three satires which he did not venture to publish, we should have nothing worth notice as we approach the disheartening close of this long period.[6]

Nearly all the didactic satires and nearly all the satirical epistles of the best age of Spanish literature are Horatian in their tone, and written in the Italian terza rima. In general, their spirit is light, though philosophical,—sometimes it is courtly,—and, taken together, they have less poetical force and a less decided coloring than we might claim from the class to which they belong. But they are frequently graceful and agreeable, and some of them will be oftener read, for the mere pleasure they bestow, than many in other languages which are distinguished for greater wit and severity.

The truth, however, is, that wit and severity of this kind and in this form were never heartily encouraged in Spain. The nation itself has always been too grave and dignified to ask or endure the censure they imply; and if such a character as the Spanish has its ridiculous side, it must be approached by any thing rather than personal satire. Books like the romances of chivalry may, indeed, be assailed with effect, as they were by Cervantes; men in classes may be caricatured, as they are in the Spanish picaresque novels and in the old drama; and bad poetry may be ridiculed, as it was by half the poets who did not write it, and by some who did. But the characters of individuals, and especially of those in high station and of much notoriety, are protected, under such circumstances, by all the social influences that can be brought to their defence, and cannot safely be assailed.

Such, at least, was the case in Spain. Poetical satire came there to be looked upon with distrust, so that it was thought to be hardly in good taste, or according to the conventions of good society, to indulge in its composition.[7] And if, with all this, we remember the anxious nature of the political tyranny which long ruled the country, and the noiseless, sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition,—both of which are apparent in the certificates and licenses that usher in whatever succeeded in finding its way through the press,—we shall have no difficulty in accounting for the fact, that poetical satire never had a vigorous and healthy existence in Spain, and that, after the latter part of the seventeenth century, it almost entirely disappeared till better times revived it.

Elegies, though from their subjects little connected with satire, are yet, by their measure and manner, connected with it in Spanish poetry; for both are generally written in the Italian terza rima, and both are often thrown into the form of epistles.[8] Garcilasso could write elegies in their true spirit; but the second that passes under that name in his works is merely a familiar epistle to a friend. So is the first by Figueroa, which is followed by others in a tone more appropriate to their titles. But all are in the Italian verse and manner, and two of them in the Italian language. The eleven “Lamentations,” as he calls them, of Silvestre, are elegiac epistles to his lady-love, written in the old Castilian measures, and not without the old Castilian poetical spirit. CantorÁl fails; nor can the Argensolas and Borja be said to have succeeded, though they wrote in different manners, some of which were scarcely elegiac. Herrera is too lyric—too lofty, perhaps, from the very nature of his genius—to write good elegies; but some of those on his love, and one in which he mourns over the passions that survive the decay of his youth, have certainly both beauty and tenderness.

Rioja, on the contrary, seems to have been of the true temperament, and to have written elegies from instinct, though he called them Silvas; while Quevedo, if he were the author of the poems that pass under the name of the Bachiller de la Torre, must have done violence to his genius in the composition of ten short pieces, which he calls Endechas, in Adonian verse, but which read much like imitations of some of the gentler among the old ballads. If to these we add the thirteen elegies of Villegas, nearly all of which are epistles, and one or two of them light and amusing epistles, we shall have what is most worthy of notice in this small division of Spanish poetry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that has not been already considered. From the whole, we should naturally infer that the Spanish temperament was little fitted to the subdued, simple, and gentle tone of the proper elegy; a conclusion that is undoubtedly true, notwithstanding the examples of Garcilasso and Rioja, the best and most elegiac portions of whose poetry do not even bear its name.[9]

Pastoral poetry in Spain is directly connected with elegiac, through the eclogues of Garcilasso, which unite the attributes of both. To his school, indeed, including Boscan and Mendoza, we trace the earliest successful specimens of the more formal Spanish pastoral, with the characteristics still recognized. But its origin is much earlier. The climate and condition of the Peninsula, which from a very remote period had favored the shepherd’s life and his pursuits, facilitated, no doubt, if they did not occasion, the first introduction into Spanish poetry of a pastoral tone, whose echoes are heard far back among the old ballads. But the Italian forms of pastoral verse were naturalized as soon as they were introduced. Figueroa, CantorÁl, Montemayor, and Saa de Miranda—the last two of whom were Portuguese, and all of whom visited Italy and lived there—contributed their efforts to those of Garcilasso and Boscan, by writing Spanish eclogues in the Italian manner. All had a good degree of success, but none so much as Saa de Miranda, who was born in 1495, and died in 1558, and who, from the promptings of his own genius, renounced the profession of the law, to which he was bred, and the favor of the court, where his prospects were high, in order to devote himself to poetry.He was the first of the Portuguese who wrote in the forms introduced by Boscan and Garcilasso, and none, perhaps, since his time has appeared in them with more grace and power,—certainly none in the particular form of eclogues. His pastorals, however, are not all in the new manner. On the contrary, some of them are in the ancient short verse, and seem to have been written before he was acquainted with the change that had just been effected in Spanish poetry. But all of them are in one spirit, and are marked by a simplicity that well becomes the class of compositions to which they belong, though it may rarely be found in them. This is true, both when he writes his beautiful pastoral story of “The Mondego,” which is in the manner of Garcilasso, and contains an account of himself addressed to the king; and when he writes his seventh eclogue, which is in the forms of Enzina and Vicente, and seems to have been acted amidst the rejoicings of the noble family of Pereira, after one of their number had returned from military service against the Turks.

But a love of the country, of country scenery and country occupations, pervades nearly every thing Saa de Miranda wrote. The very animals seem to be treated by him with more naturalness and familiarity than they are elsewhere; and throughout the whole of his poetry, there is an ease and amenity that show it comes from the heart. Why he wrote so much in Spanish, it is not now easy to tell. Perhaps he thought the language more poetical than his native Portuguese, or perhaps he had merely personal reasons for his preference. But whatever may have been the cause, six out of his eight eclogues are composed in natural, flowing Castilian; and the result of the whole is, that, while, on all accounts, he is placed among the four or five principal poets of his own country, he occupies a position of enviable distinction among those of the prouder nation that soon became, for a time, its masters.[10]

Montemayor, Polo, and their followers in prose pastorals, scattered bucolic verse of all kinds freely through their fictions; and sometimes, though seldom, they added to the interest and merit of their stories by this sort of ornament. One of those who had least success in it was Cervantes; and of those who had most, Balbuena stands in the first rank. His “Golden Age” contains some of the best and most original eclogues in the language; written, indeed, rather in the free, rustic tone of Theocritus, than with the careful finish of Virgil, but not on that account the less attractive.[11]

Of Luis Barahona de Soto, we possess an eclogue better than any thing else he has left us;[12] and of Pedro de Padilla, the friend of Cervantes and of Silvestre, a remarkable improvisator and a much loved man, we have a number of pastoral poems which carry with them a picturesque, antique air, from being made up in part of ballads and villancicos.[13] Pedro de Enzinas attempted to write religious eclogues, and failed;[14] but, in the established forms, Juan de Morales and Gomez Tapia, who are hardly known except for single attempts of this kind,[15] and Vicente Espinel,—among whose eclogues, that in which a Soldier and a Shepherd discuss the Spanish wars in Italy is both original and poetical,[16]—were all successful.

The eclogues of Lope de Vega, of which we have already spoken, drew after them a train of imitations, like his other popular poetry. But neither Balvas, nor Villegas, nor Carrillo, nor the Prince of Esquilache equalled him. Quevedo alone among his compeers, and he only if he is the author of the poems of the Bachiller de la Torre, proved himself a rival of the great master, unless we must give an equal place to Pedro de Espinosa, whose story of “The Genil,” half elegiac and half pastoral, is the happiest and most original specimen of that peculiar form of which Boscan in his “Hero and Leander” gave the first imperfect example.[17] Pedro Soto de Roxas,—who wrote short lyric poems with spirit, as well as eclogues,—Zarate, and Ulloa, belong to the same school, which was continued, by Texada Gomes de los Reyes, Barrios the Jew, and Inez de la Cruz the Mexican nun, down to the end of the century. But in all its forms, whether tending to become too lyrical, as it does in Figueroa, or too narrative, as in Espinosa, Spanish pastoral poetry shows fewer of the defects that accompany such poetry everywhere, and more of the merits that render it a gentle and idealized representation of nature and country life, than can perhaps be found in any other literature of modern times. The reason is, that there was more of a true pastoral character in Spain on which to build it.[18]

Quite as characteristic of the Spanish national genius as its pastorals were short poems in different forms, but in an epigrammatic spirit, which appeared through the whole of the best age of its literature. They are of two kinds. The first are generally amorous, and always sentimental. Of these, not a few are very short and pointed. They are found in the old Cancioneros and Romanceros, among the works of Maldonado, Silvestre, Villegas, GÓngora, and others of less merit, to the end of the century. They are generally in the truest tone of popular verse. One, which was set to music, was in these few simple words:—

To what ear shall I tell my griefs,

Gentle love mine?

To what ear shall I tell my griefs,

If not to thine?[19]

And another, of the same period, which was on a Sigh, and became the subject of more than one gloss, was hardly less simple:—

O gentle sigh! O gentle sigh!

For no more happiness I pray,

Than, every time thou goest to God,

To follow where thou lead’st the way.[20]

But of those a little longer and more elaborate a favorable specimen may be found in Camoens, who wrote such with tenderness and beauty, not only in his own language, but sometimes in Spanish, as in the following lines on a concealed and unhappy passion, the first two of which are probably a snatch of some old song, and the rest his own gloss upon them:—

Within, within, my sorrow lives,

But outwardly no token gives.

All young and gentle in the soul,

All hidden from men’s eyes,

Deep, deep within it lies,

And scorns the body’s low control.

As in the flint the hidden spark

Gives outwardly no sign or mark,

Within, within, my sorrow lives.[21]

The number of such compositions, in their different serious forms, is great; but the number of the second kind—those in a lighter and livelier tone—is still greater. The Argensolas, Villegas, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, the Prince Esquilache, Rebolledo, and not a few others, wrote them with spirit and effect. Of all, however, who indulged in them, nobody devoted to their composition so much zeal, and on the whole obtained so much success, as Francisco de la Torre, who, though of the culto school, seemed able to shake off much of its influence, when he remembered that he was a fellow-countryman of Martial.

He took for the foundation of his humor the remarkable Latin epigrams of John Owen, the English Protestant, who died in 1622, and whose witty volume has been often translated and printed at home and abroad down to our own times;—a volume, it should be noted, so offensive to the Romish Church as to have been early placed on its Index Expurgatorius. But La Torre avoided whatever could give umbrage to the ecclesiastical authorities of his time, and, adding a great number of original epigrams quite as good as those he translated, made a collection that fills two volumes, the last of which was printed in 1682, after its author’s death.[22]

But though he wrote more good epigrams, and in a greater variety of forms, than any other individual Spaniard, he did not, perhaps, write the best or the most national; for a few of those that still remain anonymous, and a still smaller number by Rebolledo, seem to claim this distinction. Of the sort of wit frequently affected in these slight compositions the following is an example:—

Fair lady, when your beads you take,

I never doubt you pray;

Perhaps for my poor murdered sake,

Perhaps for yours, that slay.[23]

Rebolledo was sometimes happier than he is in this epigram, though rarely more national.

Didactic poetry in unsettled and uncertain forms appeared early in Spain, and took, from time to time, the air both of moral philosophy and of religious instruction. Specimens of it in the old long-line stanza are found from the age of Berceo to that of the chancellor Ayala; few, indeed, in number, but sufficiently marked in character to show their purpose. Later, examples become more numerous, and present themselves in forms somewhat improved. Several such occur in the Cancioneros, among the best of which are LudueÑa’s “Rules for Good-Breeding”; “The Complaint of Fortune,” in imitation of Bias, by Diego de San Pedro; and the “Coplas” of Don Juan Manuel of Portugal, on the Seven Deadly Sins;—all of them authors known at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. Boscan’s poem on his own Conversion, that of Silvestre on “Self-knowledge,” that of Castilla on “The Virtues,” and that of Juan de Mendoza on “A Happy Life,” continue the series through the reign of Charles the Fifth, but without materially advancing its claims or its character.[24]

In the age of Philip the Second, the didactic, like most of the other branches of Spanish poetry, spreads out more broadly. Francisco de Guzman’s “Opinions of Wise Men,” and especially his dull allegory of “Moral Triumphs,” in imitation of Petrarch, are, for their length, the most important of the different didactic poems which that period produced.[25] But more characteristic than either is the deeply religious letter of Francisco de Aldana to Montano, in 1573; and much more beautiful and touching than either is one written at about the same time by Juan Rufo to his infant son, filled with gentle affection and wise counsels.

Neither should a call made by Aldana, in the name of military glory, to Philip himself, urging him to defend the suffering Church, be overlooked. It breathes the very spirit of its subject, and may well be put in direct contrast with the earnest and sad persuasions to peace by Virues, who was yet a soldier by profession, and with CantorÁl’s winning invitation to the quietness of a country life. Some of the religious poetry of Diego de Morillo and Pedro de Salas, in the next reigns, with several of the wise epistles of the Argensolas, Artieda, and Mesa, should be added; but they are all comparatively short poems, except those by Morillo on the Words of Christ upon the Cross, which extend to several hundred lines on each word, and which, though disfigured by antithesis and exaggeration, are strongly marked specimens of the Catholic didactic spirit.

In the mean time, and in the midst of this group,—partly because the way had been already prepared for it by the publication, in 1591, of a good translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry” by Espinel, and partly from other causes,[26]—we have, at last, a proper didactic poem, or rather an attempt at one. It is by Juan de la Cueva, who in 1605 wrote in terza rima three epistles, which he entitled “Egemplar PoÉtico,” and which constitute the oldest formal and original effort of the kind in the Spanish language. Regarded as a whole, they are, indeed, far from being a complete Art of Poetry, and in some parts they are injudicious and inconsequent; but they not unfrequently contain passages of acute criticism in flowing verse, and they have, besides, the merit of nationality in their tone. In all respects, they are better than an absurd didactic poem, by the same author, on “The Inventors of Things,” which he wrote three years later, and which shows, as he showed elsewhere, that he adventured in too many departments.[27]

Pablo de CÉspedes, a sculptor and painter of the same period,—now better known as a man of learning and a poet,—came nearer to success than Cueva. He was born in 1538, at CÓrdova, and died there, a minor canon of its magnificent cathedral, at the age of seventy; but he spent a part of his life in Italy and at Seville, and devoted much of his leisure to letters. Among other works, he began a poem, in ottava rima, on “The Art of Painting.” Whether it was ever finished is uncertain; but all we possess of it is a series of fragments, amounting, when taken together, to six or seven hundred lines, which were inserted in a prose treatise on the same subject by his friend Francisco Pacheco, and printed above forty years after their author’s death. They are, however, such as to make us regret that we have received no more. Their versification is excellent, and their poetical energy and compactness are uniform. Perhaps the best passage that has been preserved is the description of a horse,—the animal of whose race the poet’s native city has always been proud,—and of which, it is evident, a single noble individual was pictured before his mind as he wrote. But other portions show much talent,—perhaps more than this does; especially one in which he explains the modes of acquiring practical skill in his art, and that more poetical one in which he discusses color.[28]

But the poems of Cueva and CÉspedes were not printed till long after the death of their authors; and none of their contemporaries was inspired by like influences. The best that was done in didactic poetry, at about the same time, was the slight, but pleasant, sort of defence of his own irregularities produced by Lope de Vega, under the name of “The New Art of Writing Plays”; and the best, written later in the century, were the “Selvas,” as he called them, or poems in irregular verse, by Count Rebolledo, on the Arts of War and Civil Government, which date from 1652, but which are little more than rhymed prose. A long poem in ten cantos, and in the old quintilla verse, by Trapeza, published in 1612, and entitled “The Cross,” because it is a sort of exposition of all the theological virtues attributed to that holy emblem, is too dull to be noticed, even if it were more strictly didactic in its form.[29]

Some other kindred attempts should, however, be remembered, of which the oldest, made in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout Europe, were in the form called “Emblems,” or explanations in verse for hieroglyphical devices. The most successful of these were probably the Emblems of Daza, in 1549, imitated from the more famous Latin ones of Alciatus; and those of Covarrubias, published originally in Spanish by their author in 1591, and afterwards translated by him into Latin;—both of them curious specimens of this peculiar style of composition, and as agreeable, perhaps, as any which the age of Emblems produced.[30]

The other form was that in which the didactic runs into the descriptive. Of this the most poetical example in Spanish is by Dicastillo, a Carthusian monk, at Saragossa, who published, in 1637, under the auspices of his friend Mencos, a long poetical correspondence, intended to teach the vanity of human things, and the happiness and merit to be found in a life of penitential seclusion. The parts that relate to the author himself are sometimes touching; but the rest is of very unequal worth,—the better portions being devoted to a description of the grand and sombre monastery of which he was an inmate, and of the observances to which his life there was devoted.[31] Castilian verse, however, did not often take a descriptive character, except when it appeared in the form of eclogues and idyls; and even then it is almost always marked by an ingenuity and brilliancy far from the healthy tone inspired by a sincere love of what is grand or beautiful in nature;—a remark which finds ample illustration in the poems devoted to the Spanish conquests in America, where the marvellous tropical vegetation of the valleys through which the wild adventurers wound their way, and the snow-capped volcanoes that crowned the sierras above their heads, seem to have failed alike to stir their imaginations or overawe their courage.[32]But except these irregular varieties of didactic poetry, we have, for the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nothing to add to what we have already noticed, beyond a repetition of the old forms of epistles and silvas, which so frequently occur in the works of Castillejo, Ledesma, Lope de Vega, Jauregui, Zarate, and their contemporaries. Nor could we reasonably expect more. Neither the popular character of Spanish poetry, nor the severe nature of the Spanish ecclesiastical and political constitutions of government, was favorable to the development of this particular form of verse, or likely to tolerate it on any important subject. Didactic poetry remained, therefore, at the end of the period, as it was at the beginning, one of the feeblest and least successful departments of the national literature.[33]

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CHAPTER XXXII.

Ballad Poetry cultivated: SepÚlveda, Fuentes, Timoneda, Padilla, Cueva, Hita, Hidalgo, Valdivielso, Lope de Vega, Arellano, Roca y Serna, Esquilache, Mendoza, Quevedo. — Romanceros of more Popular Ballads: The Twelve Peers, the Cid, and others. — Great Number of Writers of Ballads.

The collection and publication of the popular ballads of the country in the Cancioneros and Romanceros, in the sixteenth century, attracted to them a kind and degree of attention they had failed to receive during the long period in which they had been floating about among the unrecorded traditions of the common people. There was so much that was beautiful in them, so much that appealed successfully to the best recollections of all classes, so much directly connected with the great periods of the national glory, that the minds of all were stirred by them, as soon as they appeared in a permanent form, and they became, at once, favorites of the more cultivated portion of the people, as they had always been of the humble hearts that gave them birth. The natural consequence followed;—they were imitated;—and not merely by poets who occasionally wrote in this among other forms of verse, but by persons who composed them in large numbers and published them by volumes.[34]

The first of these persons was Lorenzo de SepÚlveda, whose Ballad-book can be traced back to 1551, the very year after the appearance, at Saragossa, of the earliest collection of popular and anonymous ballads, gathered from the memories of the people. The attempt of SepÚlveda was made in the right direction; for he founded it almost entirely on the old Castilian Chronicles, and appealed, as they did, to popular tradition and the national feelings for his support. In his Preface, he says, that his ballads “ought to be more savory than many others, because not only are they true and drawn from the truest histories he could find, but written in the Castilian measure and in the tone of the old ballads, which,” he adds, “is now in fashion. They were taken,” he declares, “literally from the Chronicle which was compiled by the most serene king Don Alfonso; the same who, for his good letters and royal desires, and great learning in all branches of knowledge, was called ‘The Wise.’” In fact, more than three fourths of this curious volume consist of ballads taken from the “General Chronicle of Spain,” often employing its very words, and always imbued with its spirit. The rest is made up chiefly of ballads founded on sacred and ancient history, or on mythological and other stories of an imaginary nature.

But, unfortunately, SepÚlveda was not truly a poet, and therefore, though he sought his subjects in good sources and seldom failed to select them well, he yet failed to give any more of a poetical coloring to his ballads than he found in the old chronicles he followed. He was, however, successful as far as the general favor was concerned; for not only was his entire work reprinted at least four times, but the separate ballads in it constantly reappear in the old collections[35] that were, from time to time, published to meet the popular demand.

Quite as characteristic of the period is a small selection of ballads printed for the first time in 1564. It was made by some person of distinction, who sent it to Alonso de Fuentes, with a request that he would furnish it with all needful explanations in prose. This he did; but the original collector died before it was published. Of the forty ballads of which it consists, ten are on subjects from the Bible; ten from Roman history; ten from other portions of ancient history; and the remainder from the history of Spain, coming down to the fall of Granada. We are not told where they were obtained, and none of them has much value;—the great merit of the whole, in the eyes of those who were concerned in their publication, consisting, no doubt, in the wearisome historical and moral commentary by which each is followed.

Fuentes, however, who intimates that the task was hardly worthy of his position, may have had a better taste in such things than the person who employed him; for, in a prefatory epistle, he gives us, of his own accord, the following ballad, evidently very old, if not very spirited, which he attributes to Alfonso the Wise. But it is no otherwise the work of that monarch than that all but the last stanzas are taken from the remarkable letter he wrote on the disastrous position of his affairs in 1280, when, by the rebellion of his son and the desertion of the higher ecclesiastics of his kingdom, he was reduced, in his old age, to misery and despair,—a letter already cited, and more poetical than the ballad founded on it.

Juan de Timoneda, partly bookseller and partly poet,—the friend of Lope de Rueda, and, like him, the author of farces acted in the public squares of Valencia,—was, both from his occupations and tastes, a person who would naturally understand the general poetical feeling and wants of his time. In consequence of this, probably, he published, in 1573, a collection of ballads, entitled “The Rose,” consisting, in no small degree, of his own compositions, but containing, also, some by other and older poets. Taken together, they constitute a volume of nearly seven hundred pages, divided into “The Rose of Love”; “The Spanish Rose”; “The Gentile Rose,” so called, because its subjects are heathen; and “The Royal Rose,” which is on the fates and fortunes of princes;—the whole being followed by about a hundred pages of popular, miscellaneous verse, rustic songs, and fanciful glosses.

The best parts of this large collection are the ballads gathered by its author from popular tradition, most of which were soon published in other Romanceros, with the variations their origin necessarily involved. The poorest parts are those written by himself,—such as the last division, which is entirely his own, and is not superior to the similar ballads in SepÚlveda and Fuentes. As a collection, however, it is important; because it shows how true the Spanish people remained to their old traditions, and how constantly they claimed to have the best portions of their history repeated to them in the old forms to which they had so long been accustomed. In another point of view, also, it is of consequence. It furnishes ballads on the early heroes of Spain, some of which are needed to fill up two or three of the best among their traditional stories, while others come down, with similar accounts of later heroes, to the end of the Moorish wars.[37]

In 1583, the series of such popular works was still further continued by Pedro de Padilla, who published a Romancero containing sixty-three long ballads of his own,—about half of them taken from uncertain traditions, or from fables like those of Ariosto, and the others from the known history of Spain, which they follow down through the times of Charles the Fifth and the Flemish wars of Philip the Second. The Italian measures several times intrude, where they can produce only an awkward and incongruous effect; and the rest of the volume, not devoted to ballads,—except fifty villancicos, which are full of the old popular spirit,—is composed of poems in the Italian manner, that add nothing to its value.[38]

Juan de la Cueva, finding the old national subjects thus seized upon by his predecessors, resorted, it would seem, from necessity, to the histories of Greece and Rome for his materials, and in 1587 published a volume containing above a hundred ballads, which he divided into ten books, placing nine of them under the protection of the nine Muses, and the other under that of Apollo. Their poetical merit is inconsiderable. The best are a few whose subjects are drawn from the old Castilian Chronicle, like that on the sad story of DoÑa Teresa, who, after being wedded against her will to the Moorish king of Toledo, was miraculously permitted to take refuge in a convent, rather than consummate her hated marriage with an infidel. Two ballads, however, in which the author gives an account of himself and of his literary undertakings, are more curious;—the latter containing an amusing account of some of the bad poets of his time.[39]

The publication of the first part of “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by Hita, in 1595, containing about sixty ballads, some of them very old, and several of great poetical merit, increased, no doubt, the impulse which the frequent appearance of volumes of popular anonymous ballads continued to give to Spanish poetry in this attractive form.[40] This is yet more apparent in the new direction taken by ballad-writing, which from this time began to select particular subjects and address itself to separate classes of readers. Thus, in 1609, we have a volume of ballads in the dialect of the rogues, written in the very spirit of the vagabonds it represents, and collected by some one who concealed himself under the name of Juan Hidalgo;[41]—while in 1612, at the other extreme of the cycle, Valdivielso, the fashionable ecclesiastic, printed a large “Spiritual Ballad-book,” whose ballads are all on religious subjects, and all intended to promote habits of devotion.[42] In 1614 and 1622, Lope de Vega, always a lover of such poetry, gave to the religious world a collection of similar devout ballads, often reprinted afterwards;[43] and in 1629 and 1634, he contributed materials to two other collections of the same character,—the first anonymous, and entitled “A Bouquet of Divine Flowers”; and the other by Luis de Arellano, which, under the name of “Counsels for the Dying,” contains thirty ballads, several of which are by the principal poets of the time.[44]Others, like Roca y Serna, wrote large numbers of ballads, but did not print them separately.[45] Those of the Prince Esquilache, some of which are excellent, amount to nearly three hundred. Antonio de Mendoza wrote about two hundred; and perhaps as many, in every possible variety of character, are scattered through the works of Quevedo; so that, by the middle of the seventeenth century, there can be no doubt that large and successful efforts had been made by the known authors of the period to continue the old ballad spirit by free contributions, both in separate volumes and in masses of ballads inserted among their other published works.

Meantime the old spirit itself had not been lost. The ballad-book known originally under the name of “Flor de Romances,” which we have already traced in its individual parts to five small volumes,—published between 1593 and 1597, in such widely different portions of Spain, that its materials were gathered from the soil of nearly the whole country,—continued to be valued, and was reprinted and enlarged, under the name of “El Romancero General,” four times; till, with the Ballad-book of 1550-1555, it comprehended nearly all the old ballads that had been preserved by tradition, together with not a few by Lope de Vega, GÓngora, and other living authors. Out of these two vast storehouses, and from such other sources as could still yield suitable materials, smaller and more popular ballad-books were now selected and published. One appeared at Barcelona in 1582, and was reprinted there in 1602 and 1696, taken in a considerable degree from the collection of 1550, but containing, besides, ballads not found elsewhere, and among the rest, several on the history of the triple league and on the death of Philip the Second.[46] A ballad-book for “The Twelve Peers,” and their marvellous achievements, published for the first time in 1608, has continued to be a favorite ever since;[47] and four years afterwards appeared “The Ballad-Book of the Cid,” which has been printed and reprinted again and again, at home and abroad, down to our own times.[48] These were followed, in 1623, by the “Primavera,” or Spring of Ballads, by Perez, of which a second part was collected and published by Segura in 1629, comprehending together nearly three hundred;—most, but not all, of them known before, and many of them of great beauty.[49] And other ballad-books of the same sort, as well as these, continued to be printed in cheap forms for popular use till the old Castilian culture disappeared with the decay of the old national character.

But during the long period of a century and a half when this kind of poetry prevailed so widely in Spain, the ballads were not left to the formal Romanceros, whether anonymous, like the largest, or by known authors, like those of SepÚlveda and Cueva, nor even to persons who wrote them in great numbers and printed them in a separate department of their collected works, as did Prince Esquilache. On the contrary, between 1550 and 1700, hardly a Spanish poet can be found through whose works they are not scattered with such profusion, that the number of popular ballads that could be collected from them would, if brought together, greatly exceed in amount all that are found in the ballad-books proper. Many of the ballads which thus occur either separately or in small groups are picturesque and beautiful in the same way the elder ones are, though rarely to the same degree. Silvestre, Montemayor, Espinel, Castillejo, and, above all of his time, Lopez de Maldonado, wrote them with success, towards the end of the sixteenth century.[50] A little later, those of GÓngora are admirable. Indeed, his more simple, childlike ballads, and those in which a gay, mischievous spirit is made to conceal a genuine tenderness, are unlike almost any of their class found elsewhere, and can hardly be surpassed.[51] But GÓngora afterwards introduced the same affected and false style into this form of his poetry that he did into the rest, and was followed, with constantly increasing absurdities, by Arteaga, Pantaleon, Villamediana, Coronel, and the rest of his imitators, whose ballads are generally worse than any thing else they wrote, because, from the very simplicity and truth required by the proper nature of such compositions, they less tolerate an appearance of affectation.Cervantes, who was GÓngora’s contemporary, tells us that he composed vast numbers which are now lost; and, from his own opinion of them, we have no reason to regret their fate. Lope’s, on the contrary, which he preserved with a care for his own reputation that was not at all characteristic of Cervantes, are still numerous and often excellent; especially those that relate to himself and his loves, some of the best of which seem to have been produced at Valencia and Lisbon.[52] At the same time and later, good ballads were written by Quevedo, who descended even to the style of the rogues in their composition; by Bernarda de Fereira, a nun in the romantic convent of Buzaco, in Portugal; by Rebolledo, the diplomatist; and perhaps, though with some hesitation, we should add, by SolÍs, the historian.[53] Indeed, wherever we turn, in the Spanish poetry of this period, we find ballads in all their varieties of tone and character,—often by authors otherwise little known, like Alarcon, who, in the end of the sixteenth century, wrote excellent devout ballads,[54] or Diego de la Chica, who is remembered only for a single satirical one, preserved by Espinosa in the beginning of the seventeenth;[55]—but we always find them in the works of those poets of note who desired to stand well with the mass of their countrymen.Nor could it be otherwise;—for ballads, in the seventeenth century, had become the delight of the whole Spanish people. The soldier solaced himself with them in his tent, and the muleteer amidst the sierras; the maiden danced to them on the green, and the lover sang them for his serenade; they entered into the low orgies of thieves and vagabonds, into the sumptuous entertainments of the luxurious nobility, and into the holiday services of the Church; the blind beggar chanted them to gather alms, and the puppet-showman gave them in recitative to explain his exhibition; they were a part of the very foundation of the theatre, both secular and religious, and the theatre carried them everywhere, and added everywhere to their effect and authority. No poetry of modern times has been so widely spread through all classes of society, and none has so entered into the national character. The ballads, in fact, seem to have been found on every spot of Spanish soil. They seem to have filled the very air that men breathed.[56]

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Romantic Fiction. — Change of Manners produces a Change of the Fictions founded upon them. — Pastoral Romance and its Origin: Montemayor and his Diana, with its Continuations by Perez and Polo: Lo Frasso, Montalvo, Cervantes, Enciso, Bovadilla, Bernardo de la Vega, Lope de Vega, Balbuena, Figueroa, Adorno, Botelho, Quintana, Corral, Saavedra. — Characteristics of Pastoral Fiction.

The romances of chivalry, like the institutions on which they were founded, lingered long in Spain. Their grave fictions were suited to the air of the stern old castles with which the Moorish contest had studded large portions of the country, while their general tone harmonized no less happily with the stately manners which the spirit of knighthood had helped to impress on the higher classes of society, from the mountains of Biscay to the shores of the Mediterranean. Their influence, therefore, was great; and, as one natural result of its long continuance, other and better forms of prose fiction were discountenanced in Spain, or appeared later than they might have done under different circumstances;—a fact to which Cervantes alludes, when, even at the opening of the seventeenth century, he complains that Spanish books of the latter character were still rarely to be found.[57]

Fifty years, however, before that period, signs of a coming change are perceptible. The magnificent successes of Charles the Fifth had already filled the minds of men with a spirit of adventure very different from that of Amadis and his descendants, though sometimes hardly less wild and extravagant. The cruel wars unceasingly kept up with the Barbary powers, and the miseries of the thousands of captives who returned from Africa, to amaze their countrymen with tragical stories of their own trials and those of their fellow-sufferers, were full of that bitter romance of real life which outruns all fiction. Manners, too,—the old, formal, knightly manners of the nobility,—were beginning to be modified by intercourse with the rest of the world, and especially with Italy, then the most refined and least military country of Christendom; so that romantic fiction—the department of elegant literature, which, above every other, depends on the state of society—was naturally modified in Spain by the great changes going on in the external relations and general culture of the kingdom. Of this state of things, and of its workings in the new forms of fiction produced by it, we shall find frequent proofs as we advance.

The first form, however, in which a change in the national taste manifested itself with well-defined success—that of prose pastorals—is perhaps not one which would have been anticipated even by the more sagacious; though, when we now look back upon its history, we can easily discover some of the foundations on which it was originally built.

From the Middle Ages the occupations of a shepherd’s life had prevailed in Spain and Portugal to a greater extent than elsewhere in Europe;[58] and, probably in consequence of this circumstance, eclogues and bucolics were early known in the poetry of both countries, and became connected in both with the origin of the popular drama. On the other hand, the military spirit of such a civilization as existed in Spain down to the sixteenth century may have gladly turned away from such a monotonous exaggeration of its own character as is found in the romances of chivalry, and sought refreshment and repose in the peace and simplicity of a fabulous Arcadia. At least, these are the two obvious circumstances in the condition and culture of Spain, that favored the appearance of so singular a form of fiction as that of prose pastorals, though how much influence either exercised it may now be impossible to determine.

On one point, however, we are not left in doubt. We know whence the impulse came that called forth such a work for the first time in Castilian literature, and when it appeared there. It was Sannazaro,—a Neapolitan gentleman, whose family had been carried from Spain to Naples by the political revolutions of the preceding century,—who is the true father of the modern prose pastoral, which, from him, passed directly to Spain, and, during a long period of success in that country, never entirely lost the character its author had originally impressed upon it. His “Arcadia”—written, probably, without any reference to the Greek pastoral of Longus, but hardly without a knowledge of the “Ameto” of Boccaccio and the Eclogues of Bembo—was first published entire, at Naples, in 1504.[59] It is a genuine pastoral romance in prose and verse, in which, with a slight connecting narrative, and under the disguise of the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses, Sannazaro relates adventures that really occurred to him and to some of his friends;—he himself appearing under the name of Sincero, who is its principal personage. Such a work, of course, is somewhat fantastic from its very nature; but the fiction of Sannazaro was written in the purest and most graceful Italian, and had a great success;—a success which, perhaps, from the Spanish connections of his family, was early extended to Spain. At any rate, Spain was the first foreign country where the Arcadia was imitated, and was afterwards the only one where such works appeared in large numbers, and established a lasting influence.

It is singular, however, that, like the romances of chivalry, pastoral romance was first introduced into Spain by a Portuguese,—by George of Montemayor, a native of the town of that name, near Coimbra. When he was born we are not told; probably it was before 1520. In his youth he was a soldier; but later, from his skill in music, he became attached to the travelling chapel of the prince of Spain, afterwards Philip the Second, and thus enjoyed an opportunity of visiting foreign countries, especially Italy and Flanders. But his mind was little cultivated by study. He knew no Latin, which even those of the humblest literary attainments were wont to acquire, in the age when he lived; so that his success is due to his own genius and to the promptings of that passion which gave its color to his life. Probably he left Spain from disappointment in love; probably, too, he perished in a duel at Turin, in 1561. But we know nothing more of him with any tolerable certainty.[60]

His “Diana Enamorada,” the chief of his works, was first printed at Valencia, in 1542.[61] It is written in good Castilian, like his poetry, which is published separately, though, like that, with some intermixture of his native Portuguese;[62] and it contains, as he tells us, stories of adventures which really occurred.[63] We know, too, that, under the name of Sereno, he was himself its hero; and Lope de Vega adds, that Diana, its heroine, was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, a town near the city of Leon.[64] Montemayor’s purpose, therefore, like that of Sannazaro, is to give, in the forms of a pastoral romance, an account of some events in his own life and in the lives of a few of his friends. To effect this, he brings together on the banks of the Ezla, at the foot of the mountains of Leon, a number of shepherds and shepherdesses, who relate their respective stories through seven books of prose, intermingled with verse. But the two principal personages, Sereno and Diana, who are introduced at first as lovers, are separated by magic; and the romance is brought to an abrupt conclusion, little conformable to all the previous intimations, by the marriage of Diana to Delio, the unworthy rival of Sereno.

On first reading the Diana of Montemayor, it is not easy to understand it. The separate stories of which it is composed are so involved with each other, and so inartificially united, that we are constantly losing the thread of the principal narration;—a difficulty which is much increased by the mixture of true and false geography, heathenism, magic, Christianity, and all the various contradictory impossibilities that naturally follow an attempt to place in the heart of Spain, and near one of its best-known cities, a poetical Arcadia, that never existed anywhere. The Diana, however, better merits the name of a romance than the Arcadia, which served for its model. Its principal fiction is ampler and more ingeniously constructed. Its episodes are more interesting. Much of it is warm with the tenderness of a disappointed attachment, which, no doubt, caused the whole to be written. Some of the poetry is beautiful, especially the lyric poetry; and if its prose style is not so pure as that of Sannazaro, it is still to be remarked for its grace and richness. Notwithstanding its many defects, therefore, the Diana is not without an interest for us even at this remote period, when the whole class of fictions to which it belongs is discountenanced and almost forgotten; and we feel that only poetical justice was done to it when it was saved, by the good taste of the curate, in the destruction of Don Quixote’s library.

The Diana, as has been intimated, was left unfinished by its author; but in 1564, three years after his death, Alonso Perez, a physician of Salamanca, to whom Montemayor, before he finally left Spain, had communicated his plan for completing it, published a second part, which opens in the enchanted palace of Felicia, where the first ends, and gives us the adventures and stories of several shepherds and shepherdesses, not introduced before, as well as a continuation of the original fiction. But this second part, like the first, fails to complete the romance. It advances no farther than to the death of Delio, the husband of Diana,—which, according to the purpose of Montemayor, was to have been followed by her union with Sereno, her first and true lover,—and then stops abruptly, with the promise of yet a third part, which never appeared. Nor was it, probably, demanded with any earnestness; for the second, protracted through seven books, and considerably longer than its predecessor, is much inferior to it in merit. It lacks, in all its many stories, the tenderness which the disappointment of Montemayor had given to the first portion of the work; and, what perhaps is of no less consequence in this kind of composition, the prose is heavy and monotonous, and the verse worse.[65]

But this unfortunate attempt was not the only consequence of Montemayor’s success. The same year with that in which the work of Perez was published, another continuation appeared at Valencia, by Gaspar Gil Polo, a gentleman of that city, who was a Professor of Greek in its University.[66] The Diana of Polo has the merit of being shorter than either of its predecessors. It is divided into five books, and contains an account of the falsehood and death of Delio, and the marriage of Diana to Sereno, whom she finds when she is seeking the husband who had basely abandoned her for another shepherdess. Several episodes and much pastoral poetry of different kinds are skilfully inserted; but though the original plan of Montemayor seems to be completed, the book ends with the promise of a still further continuation, which, though the author lived nearly thirty years after he made it, seems never to have been written.[67] His work, however, was successful. Its prose has always found favor, and so have some portions of its verse; especially the cancion of Nerea in the third book, and several of the shorter poems in the last.[68]

The “Ten Books of Fortune and Love,” by Antonio de Lo Frasso, a Sardinian and a soldier, published in 1573, is the next Spanish romance of the same class with the Diana; but it is without merit, and was forgotten soon after it appeared.[69] Nine years later, in 1582, a better one was published,—the “FÍlida,”—which passed early through five editions, and is still valued and read.[70] Its author, Luis Galvez de Montalvo, was born in Guadalaxara, a town near AlcalÁ, the birthplace of Cervantes; and, perhaps from this circumstance, they soon became acquainted, for they were long friends, and often praised each other in their respective works.[71] They seem, however, to have had very different characters; for, instead of the life of adventure led by Cervantes, Montalvo attached himself to the great family of Infantado, descended from the Marquis of Santillana, and passed most of his life as a sort of idle courtier and retainer in their ducal halls, near the place of his nativity. Subsequently he went to Italy, where he translated and published, in 1587, “The Tears of Saint Peter,” by Tansillo, and had begun a translation of the “Jerusalem Delivered” of Tasso, when he was cut off in the midst of his labors by an accidental death, in Sicily, about the year 1591.[72]

His “FÍlida,” in seven parts, was written while he was attached to the Duke of Infantado; for he announces himself on the title-page as “a gentleman and a courtier,” and, in his Dedication to one of the family, says that “his greatest labor is to live idle, contented, and honored as one of the servants of their house.” The romance contains, as was usual in such works, the adventures of living and known personages, among whom were Montalvo himself, Cervantes, and the nobleman to whom it is dedicated. But the tone of pastoral life is not better preserved than it is in the other fictions of the same class. Indeed, in the sixth part, there is a most inappropriate critical discussion on the merits of the two schools of Spanish poetry then contending for fashionable mastery; and in the seventh is a courtly festival, with running at the ring, in which the shepherds appear on horseback with lances and armorial bearings, like knights. The prose style of the whole is pure and good; and among the poems with which it abounds, a few in the old Spanish measure may be selected that are nearly, if not quite, equal to the similar poems of Montemayor.

Cervantes, too, as we have already noticed, was led by the spirit of the times, rather, perhaps, than by his own taste, to begin—as an offering to the lady of his love—the “Galatea,” of which the first six books, published in 1584, were all that ever appeared.[73] This was followed, in 1586, by “Truth for the Jealous”; again a romance in six books, and, like the last, unfinished. It was written by BartolomÉ Lopez de Enciso, of whom we know from himself that he was a young man when he wrote it, and that it was his purpose to publish a second part, of which, however, nothing more was heard. Nor can we regret that he failed to fulfil his promise. His fictions, which are occupied chiefly with the nymphs and shepherds of the Tagus, are among the most confused and unmeaning that have ever been attempted. His scene is laid, from its opening, in the days of the most ancient Greek mythology; but the Genius of Spain, in the fifth book, carries the same shepherds who thus figure in the first to a magnificent temple, and shows them the statues of Charles the Fifth, of Philip the Second, and even of Philip the Third, who was not yet on the throne;—thus confounding the earliest times of classical antiquity with an age which, at the end of the sixteenth century, was yet to come. Other inconsequences follow, in great numbers, as matters of course, while nothing in either the prose or the poetry is of value enough to compensate for the absurdities in the story. Indeed, few portions of Spanish literature show any thing more stiff and wearisome than the long declamations and discussions in this dull fiction.[74]

Another pastoral romance in six books, entitled “The Nymphs of the Henares,” by Bernardo Gonzalez de Bovadilla, was printed in 1587. The author, who was a native of the Canary Islands, confesses that he has placed the scene of his story on the banks of the Henares without having ever seen them; but both he and his romance have long since been forgotten. So has “The Shepherds of Iberia,” in four books, by Bernardo de la Vega, supposed to have been a native of Madrid, and certainly a canon of Tucuman, in Peru, whose ill-written story appeared in 1591. But that these, and all that preceded them, enjoyed for a time the public favor is made plain by the fact, that they are all found in the library of Don Quixote, and that three of them receive high praise from Cervantes;—much higher than has been confirmed by the decision of subsequent generations.[75]

Some time, however, elapsed before another came to continue the series, except the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, which, though written long before, was not printed till 1598.[76] At last, “The Age of Gold,” by Bernardo de Balbuena, appeared. Its author, born on the vine-clad declivities of the Val de PeÑas, in 1568, early accompanied his family to Mexico, where he was educated, and where, when only seventeen years old, he was already known as a poet. Once, at least, he visited his native country, and perhaps oftener; but he seems to have spent most of his life, either in Jamaica, where he enjoyed an ecclesiastical benefice, or in Puerto Rico, of which he was afterwards bishop, and where he died in 1627.

Of the manners of the New World, however, or of its magnificent scenery, his “Age of Gold in the Woods of Eriphile” shows no trace. It was printed at Madrid, in 1608, and might have been written, if its author had never been in any other city. But it is not without merit. The poetry with which it abounds is generally of the Italian school, but is much better than can be found in most of these doubtful romances; and its prose, though sometimes affected, is oftener sweet and flowing. Probably nothing in the nine eclogues—as its divisions are unsuitably called—is connected with either the history or the scandal of the times; and if this be the case, we have, perhaps, an explanation of the fact that it was less regarded by those contemporary with its publication than were similar works of inferior merit. But whatever may have been the cause, it was long overlooked; no second edition of it being demanded till 1821, when it received the rare honor of being published anew by the Spanish Academy.[77]

The very next year after the first appearance of “The Age of Gold,” ChristÓval Suarez de Figueroa, a native of Valladolid, a jurist and a soldier, published his “Constant Amaryllis, in Four Discourses,” crowded, like all its predecessors, with short poems, and, like most of them, claiming to tell a tale not a little of which was true.[78] Its author, who lived a great deal in Italy, was already known by an excellent translation of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido,”[79] and published, at different times afterwards, several original works which enjoyed much reputation.[80]

But he seems to have been a man of an unkind and unfaithful character. In a curious account of his own life which appeared in his “Traveller,” he speaks harshly and insidiously of many of his contemporaries; and towards Cervantes—who had just died, after praising every body most generously during his whole life—he is absolutely malignant.[81] His last work is dated in 1621, and this is the last fact we know in relation to him. His “Amaryllis,” which, as he intimates, was composed to please a person of great consideration, did not satisfy its author.[82] It is, however, written in an easy and tolerably pure style; and though it contains formal and wearisome discussions, like that in the first part on Poetry, and awkward machinery, such as a vision of Venus and her court in the second, it is the only one of his works that has been reprinted or much read within the last century.

A few pastoral romances appeared in Spain after the Amaryllis, but none of so much merit, and none that enjoyed any considerable degree of favor. Espinel Adorno;[83] Botelho, a Portuguese;[84] Quintana, who assumed the name of Cuevas;[85] Corral;[86] and Saavedra,[87] close up the series;—the last bringing us down to just about a century from the first appearance of such fictions in the time of Montemayor, and all of them infected with the false taste of the period. Taken together, they leave no doubt that pastoral romance was the first substitute in Spain for the romances of chivalry, and that it inherited no small degree of their popularity. Most of the works we have noticed were several times reprinted, and the “Diana” of Montemayor, the first and best of them all, was probably more read in Spain during the sixteenth century than any Spanish work of amusement except the “Celestina.”

All this seems remarkable and strange, when we consider only the absurdities and inconsequences with which such fictions necessarily abound. But there is another side to the question, which should not be overlooked. Pastoral romance, after all, has its foundation in one of the truest and deepest principles of our common nature,—that love of rural beauty, of rural peace, in short, of whatever goes to constitute a country life, as distinguished from the constrained life of a city, which few are too dull to feel, and fewer still so artificial as wholly to reject. It has, therefore, prevailed more or less in all modern countries, as we may see in Italy, from the success that followed Sannazaro; in France, from the “Astrea” of DurfÉ; and in England, from the “Arcadia” of Sir Philip Sidney;—the two latter being pastoral romances of enormous length, compared with any in Spanish; and the very last enjoying for above a century a popularity which may well be compared with that of the “Diana” of Montemayor, if, indeed, it did not equal it.[88]

No doubt, in Spain, as elsewhere, the incongruities of such fictions were soon perceived. Even some of those who most indulged in them showed that it was not entirely from a misapprehension of their nature. Cervantes, who died regretting that he should leave his “Galatea” unfinished, still makes himself merry more than once in his “Don Quixote” with all such fancies; and, in his “Colloquy of the Dogs,” permits one of them, who had been in shepherd service, to satirize the false exhibition of life in the best pastorals of his time, not forgetting his own among the rest.[89] Lope de Vega, too, though he published his “Arcadia” under circumstances which show that he set a permanent value upon its gentle tales, could still, in a play where shepherds are introduced, make one of them—who found a real life among flocks and herds in rough weather much less agreeable than the life he had read of in the pastorals—say, when suffering in a storm,—

Still, neither Cervantes, nor Lope, nor any body else in their time, thought seriously of discountenancing pastoral fictions. On the contrary, there was in their very style—which was generally an imitation of the Italian, that gave birth to them all—something attractive to a cultivated Castilian ear, at a time when the school of Garcilasso was at the height of its popularity and favor. Besides this, the real events they recorded, and the love-stories of persons in high life that they were known to conceal, made them sometimes riddles and sometimes masquerades, which engaged the curiosity of those who moved in the circles either of their authors or of their heroes and heroines.[91] But more than all, the glimpses they afforded of nature and truth—such genuine and deep tenderness as is shown by Montemayor, and such graceful descriptions of natural scenery as abound in Balbuena—were, no doubt, refreshing in a state of society stiff and formal as was that at the Spanish court in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, and in the midst of a culture more founded on military virtues and the spirit of knighthood than any other of modern times. As long, therefore, as this state of things continued, pastoral fictions and fancies, filled with the dreams of a poetical Arcadia, enjoyed a degree of favor in Spain which they never enjoyed anywhere else. But when this disappeared, they disappeared with it.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Romances in the Style of Rogues. — State of Manners that produced them. — Mendoza’s Lazarillo de Tormes. — Aleman’s Guzman de Alfarache, with the Spurious Continuation of it by Sayavedra and the True One by Aleman. — Perez. — Espinel and his Marcos de Obregon. — YaÑez. — Quevedo. — Solorzano. — Enriquez Gomez. — Estevanillo Gonzalez.

The next form of prose fiction produced in Spain, and the one which, from its greater truth, has enjoyed a more permanent regard than the last, is found in those stories that have commonly gone under the name of “tales in the gusto picaresco,” or tales in the style of rogues. Taken as a class, they constitute a singular exhibition of character, and are, in fact, as separate and national in their air as any thing in the whole body of modern literature.

Their origin is obvious, and the more so from what is most singular in their character. They sprang directly from the condition of some portions of society in Spain when they appeared;—a condition, it should be added, which has existed there ever since, and contributed to preserve for the stories that bear its impress no little of the favor they have always enjoyed. Before speaking of them in detail, we must, therefore, notice the peculiar circumstances of the country, and the peculiar state of manners that gave them birth.

The wars of the opposing races and religions, that had constituted so much of the business of life, and so long engrossed the thoughts of men, in Spain, had, indeed, nearly ceased from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. But the state of character they had produced in the Spanish people had by no means ceased with them. On the contrary, it had been kept in the freshest activity by those vast enterprises which Charles the Fifth had pushed forward in Italy, France, and Germany, with such success, that the Spanish nation, always marked by a sanguine enthusiasm, had become fully persuaded that it was destined to achieve an empire which, covering the whole of the New World and whatever was most desirable in the Old, should surpass in glory and power the empire of the CÆsars in the days of its palmiest supremacy.

This magnificent result was a matter of such general faith, that men often felt a desire to contribute their personal exertions to accomplish it. Not only the high nobility of Spain, therefore, but all cavaliers and men of honor who sought distinction, saw, with the exception of places in the civil administration of affairs or in the Church, no road open before them on which they were so much tempted to enter as that of military enterprise. Laborious occupation in the business of common life and practical and productive industry were, in consequence, discountenanced, or held in contempt, while the armies were thronged, and multitudes of gentlemen and men of culture, like Cervantes and Lope de Vega, gladly served in them as simple soldiers.

But large as were the armies of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, all who desired it could not be soldiers. Many persons of decent condition, therefore, remained idle, because they found no occupation which was not deemed below their rank in society; while others, having made an experiment of military life sufficient to disgust them with its hardships, returned home unfitted for every thing else. These two sorts of persons formed a class of idlers that hung loose upon society in the principal cities of Spain, thriving at best by flattery and low intrigue, and sometimes driven for subsistence to crime. Their number was by no means small. They were known and marked wherever they went; and their characters, represented with much spirit, and often with great faithfulness, are still to be recognized in the proud, starving cavaliers of Mendoza and Quevedo, who stalk about the streets upon adventure, or crowd the antechamber of the minister, and weary his patience with their abject supplications for the meanest places it is in his power to bestow.

But there was yet another body of persons in Spain, nearly akin to the last in spirit, though differing from them in their original position, who figure no less in this peculiar form of fiction. They were the active, the shrewd, and the unscrupulous of the lower portions of society;—men who were able to perceive that the resources and power of the country, with all the advantages they desired to reach, were already in possession of an aristocratic caste, who looked to them for nothing but a sincere and faithful loyalty. During a long period,—the period of danger and trouble at home,—the fidelity of this class had been complete and unhesitating; bringing with it little feeling of wrong, and perhaps no sense of degradation; for such men, in such times, claimed from their superiors only protection, and, receiving this, asked for nothing else.

At last, however, other prospects opened upon them. Peace came gradually, as the Moors were driven out; and with it came a sense of independence and personal rights, which sometimes expressed itself in social restlessness, as in the frequent troubles at the universities; and sometimes, as in the wars of the Comuneros, in open rebellion. Contemporary, too, with these upward struggles of the masses of the people, which were always successfully rebuked and repressed, came the conquests in America, pouring such floods of wealth as the world had never before seen upon a country that had for ages been one of the poorest and most suffering in Europe. The easily got treasure—which was at first only in the hands of military adventurers or of those who had obtained grants of office and territory in the New World—was scattered as lightly as it was won. The shrewd and unprincipled of the less favored classes, therefore, soon learned to gather round its possessors, as they came home with their tempting burdens, and found ready means to profit by the golden shower that fell on all sides, with a profusion which carried an unhealthy action through every division of society. Little, however, could be obtained by men so humble and in a position so false, except by the arts of cunning and flattery. Cunning and flattery, therefore, were soon called forth among them in great abundance. The wealth of the Indies was a rich compost, that brought up parasites and rogues with other noxious weeds; and Paul, the son of a barber, and nephew of a hangman; Cortadillo, a young thief, whose father was a village tailor; and Little Lazarus, who could never settle his genealogy to his own satisfaction, became, in the literature of their country, the permanent representatives of their class;—a class well known under the degrading name of the Catariberas,[92] or the gayer one of PÍcaros.

The first instance of a fiction founded on this state of things was, as we have already seen, the “Lazarillo de TÓrmes” of Mendoza, which was published as early as 1554; a bold, unfinished sketch of the life of a rogue, from the very lowest condition in society. This was followed, forty-five years afterwards, by the “Guzman de Alfarache” of Mateo Aleman, the most ample portraiture of the class to which it belongs that is to be found in Spanish literature. What induced Aleman to write it we do not know. Indeed, we know little about him, except that he was a native of Seville, and wrote three or four other works of less consequence than this tale; that he was long employed in the treasury department of the government, and subjected to a vexatious suit at law in consequence of it; and that at last, retiring of his own choice to private life, he visited Mexico in 1609, and devoted the remainder of his days, either there or in Spain, to letters.[93] He may, at some period, have been a soldier; for one of his friends, in a eulogium prefixed to the second part of “Guzman de Alfarache,” sums up his character by saying that “never soldier had a poorer purse or a richer heart, or a life more unquiet and full of trouble, than his was; and all because he accounted it a greater honor to be a poor philosopher than a rich flatterer.”

But whatever he may have been, or whatever he may have suffered, his claims to be remembered are now centred in his “Guzman de Alfarache.” As it has reached us, it is divided into two parts, the first of which was published at Madrid, in 1599. Its hero, who supposed himself to be the son of a decayed and not very reputable Genoese merchant established at Seville, escapes, as a boy, from his mother, after his father’s ruin and death, and plunges into the world upon adventure. He soon finds himself at Madrid, though not till he has passed through the hands of the officers of justice; and there undergoes all sorts of suffering, serving as a scullion to a cook, and as a ragged errand-boy to whomsoever would employ him; until, seizing a good opportunity, he steals a large sum of money that had been intrusted to him, and escapes to Toledo, where he sets up for a gentleman. But there he becomes, in his turn, the victim of a cunning like his own; and, finding his money nearly gone, enlists for the Italian wars. His star is now on the wane. At Barcelona, he again turns sharper and thief. At Genoa and Rome, he sinks to the lowest conditions of a street beggar. But a cardinal picks him up in the last city and makes him his page; a place in which, but for his bold frauds and tricks, he might long have thriven, and which at last he leaves in great distress, from losses at play, and enters the service of the French ambassador.

Here the first part ends. It was very successful; falling in with the vices and humors of the times, just as the loose court of Philip the Third, and the corrupting influences of his favorite, the Duke of Lerma, came to offer a sort of carnival to folly and vice, after the hypocrisy and constraints of the last dark years of Philip the Second. The Guzman, therefore, within a twelve-month after it appeared, passed through three editions; and, in less than six years, through twenty-six, besides being translated into French and Italian.[94] It was imitated, too, in a second part by some unknown person, probably by Juan Marti, a Valencian advocate, who disguised himself under the name of Mateo Luxan de Sayavedra, and published in 1603 what he boldly called a continuation of the Guzman.[95] But it was a base attempt, which, though not without literary merit, brought upon its author the just reproaches of Aleman, who intimates that his own manuscripts had been improperly used in its composition, and the just sarcasm of Aleman’s friend, Luis de Valdes, who exposed the meanness of the whole fraud.

In 1605, the genuine second part appeared.[96] It begins with the life of Guzman in the house of the French ambassador at Rome, where he serves in some of the most dishonorable employments to which the great of that period degraded their mercenary dependants. But his own follies and crimes drive him away from a place for which he seems to have been in most respects well fitted, and he goes to Siena. At this point in his story, it seems to have occurred to Aleman to attack the Sayavedra who had endeavoured to impose upon the world with a false second part of the Guzman. He therefore introduces a person who is made thus to describe himself:—

“He told me,” says Guzman, who always writes in the style of autobiography, “he told me, that he was an Andalusian, born in Seville, my own native city, Sayavedra by name, with papers to show that he belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families among us. Who would suspect fraud under such a fair outside? And yet it was all a lie. He was a Valencian. I do not give his true name, for good reasons; but what with his flowing Castilian, his good looks, and his agreeable manners, it was impossible for me to suspect that he was a thief, a sponge, and a cheat, who had dressed himself up in peacock’s feathers only to obtain by falsehood such an entrance into my apartments that he could rob me of whatever he liked.”[97]

This personage, his history and adventures, fill too large a space in the second part of the Guzman; for when once Aleman had seized him, he seemed not to tire of inflicting punishment so soon as the reader does of witnessing it. Sayavedra robs and cheats Guzman early in this portion of the story; but afterwards accompanies him, in an equivocal capacity, through Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, to Spain, where, partly perhaps to get rid of him, and partly perhaps, as Cervantes did afterwards in the case of Don Quixote and Avellaneda, in order to end his story and prevent his enemy from continuing it any further, Aleman brings his victim’s life to an end.

The remainder of the book is filled with the adventures of Guzman himself, which are as wild and various as possible. He becomes a merchant at Madrid, and cheats his creditors by a fraudulent bankruptcy. He marries, but his wife dies soon; and then he begins, as a student at AlcalÁ, to prepare himself for the Church;—a consummation of wickedness which is prevented only by his marriage a second time. His second wife, however, leaves him at Seville, where he had established himself, and elopes with a lover to Italy. After this, he is reduced again to abject poverty; and, unable to live with his old, wretched, and shameless mother, he becomes major-domo to a lady of fortune, robs her, and is sent to the galleys, where he has the good luck to reveal a conspiracy and is rewarded with his freedom and a full pardon.

With this announcement the second part abruptly ends, not without promising a third, which was never published, though the author, in his Preface, says it was already written. The work, therefore, as it has come to us, is imperfect. But it was not, on that account, the less favored and admired. On the contrary, it was translated and printed all over Europe, in French, in Italian, in German, in Portuguese, in English, in Dutch, and even in Latin; a rare success, whose secret lies partly in the age when the Guzman appeared, and still more in the power and talent of the author.[98] The long moralizing discourses with which it abounds, written in a pure Castilian style, with much quaintness and point, were then admired, and saved it from censures which it could otherwise hardly have failed to encounter. These are, no doubt, the passages that led Ben Jonson to speak of it as

This, however, is not its real, or at least not its main character. The Guzman is chiefly curious and interesting because it shows us, in the costume of the times, the life of an ingenious, Machiavellian rogue, who is never at a loss for an expedient; who always treats himself and speaks of himself as an honest and respectable man; and who sometimes goes to mass and says his prayers just before he enters on an extraordinary scheme of roguery, as if on purpose to bring it out in more striking and brilliant relief. So far from being a moral book, therefore, it is a very immoral one, and Le Sage spoke in the spirit of its author, when, in the next century, undertaking to give a new French version of it, he boasted that he “had purged it of its superfluous moral reflections.”[100]

It has, naturally, a considerable number of episodes. That of Sayavedra has already been noticed, as occupying a space in the work disproportionate to every thing but the anger of its author. Another—the story of Osmyn and Daraxa, which occurs early—is a pleasing specimen of those half-Moorish, half-Christian fictions that are so characteristic a portion of Spanish literature.[101] And yet another, which is placed in Spain and in the time of the Great Constable, Alvaro de Luna, is, after all, an Italian tale of Masuccio, used subsequently by Beaumont and Fletcher in “The Little French Lawyer.”[102] But, on the whole, the attention of the reader is fairly kept either upon the hero or upon the long discussions in which the hero indulges himself, and in which he draws striking, though not unfrequently exaggerated and burlesque, sketches of all classes of society in Spain, as they successively pass in review before him. At first, Aleman thought of calling his work “A Beacon-light of Life.” The name would not have been inappropriate, and it is the qualities implied under it—the sagacity, the knowledge of life and character, and the acuteness of its reflections on men and manners—that have preserved for it somewhat of its original popularity down to our own times.

In 1605 another story of the same class appeared, the “PÍcara Justina,” or the Crafty Justina,—again a seeming autobiography, and again a fiction of very doubtful morality. It was written by a Dominican monk, Andreas Perez of Leon, who was known, both before and after its appearance, as the author of works of Christian devotion, and who had so far a sense of the incongruity of the PÍcara Justina with his religious position, that he printed it under the assumed name of Francisco Lopez de Ubeda. He claims to have written it when he was a student at the University of AlcalÁ, but admits, that, after the appearance of the “Guzman de Alfarache,” he made large additions to it. It is, however, in truth, a mere imitation, and a very poor one, of Aleman. The first book is filled with a tedious, rambling account of Justina’s ancestors, who are barbers and puppet-showmen; and the rest consists of her own life, brought down to the time of her first marriage, marked by few adventures, and ending with an intimation, that, at the time of writing it, she had already been married yet twice more; that she was then the wife of Guzman de Alfarache; and that she should continue her memoirs still further, in case the public should care to hear more about her.

The Justina discovers little power of invention in the incidents, which are few and not interesting. Indeed, the author himself declares that nearly all of them were actual occurrences within his own experience; and this circumstance, together with the meagre “improvements,” as they are called,—or warnings against the follies and guilt of the heroine, with which each chapter ends,—is regarded by him as a sufficient justification for publishing a work whose tendency is obviously mischievous. Nor is the style better than the incidents. There is a constant effort to say witty and brilliant things; but it is rarely successful; and besides this, there is an affectation of new words and singular phrases which do not belong to the genius and analogies of the language, and which have caused at least one Spanish critic to regard Perez as the first author who left the sober and dignified style of the elder times, and, from mere caprice, undertook to invent a new one.[103]

But though the “PÍcara Justina” proved a failure, the overwhelming popularity of “Guzman de Alfarache,” when added to that of “Lazarillo,” rendered this form of fiction so generally welcome in Spain, that it made its way into the ductile drama, and into the style of the shorter tales, as we have already seen when treating of Lope de Vega and Cervantes, and as we shall see hereafter when we come to speak of Salas Barbadillo and Francisco de Santos. Meantime, however, the “Escudero Marcos de Obregon” appeared; a work which has, on many accounts, attracted attention, and which deserves to be remembered, as the best of its kind in Spanish literature, except “Lazarillo” and “Guzman.”

It was written by Vicente Espinel, who was born about 1540, at Ronda, a romantic town, boldly built in the mountain range that stretches through the southwestern portion of the kingdom of Granada, and picturesquely described by himself in one of the most striking of his poems.[104] He was educated at Salamanca, and, when Lope de Vega appeared as a poet before the public, Espinel was already so far advanced in his own career, that the young aspirant for public favor submitted his verses to the critical skill of his elder friend;[105]—a favor which Lope afterwards returned by praises in “The Laurel of Apollo,” more heart-felt and effective than he has usually given in that indiscriminate eulogium of the poets of his time.[106]

What was the course of Espinel’s life we do not know. It has generally been supposed that many of its events are related in his “Marcos de Obregon”; but though this is probable, and though some parts of that story are evidently true, yet many others are as evidently fictions, so that, on the whole, we are bound to regard it as a romance, and not as an autobiography. We know, however, that Espinel’s life in Italy was much like that of his hero; that he was a soldier in Flanders; that he wrote Latin verses; that he published a volume of Castilian poetry in 1591; and that he was a chaplain in Ronda, though he lived much in Madrid, and at last died there. He was regarded as the author of the form of verse called sometimes dÉcimas, and sometimes, after himself, Espinelas; and he is said to have added a fifth string to the guitar, which soon led to the invention of the sixth, and thus completed that truly national instrument.[107] He died, according to Antonio, in 1634; but according to Lope de Vega, he was not alive in 1630. All accounts, however, represent him as having survived his ninetieth year,[108] and as having passed the latter part of his life in poverty and in unfriendly relations with Cervantes;—a fact the more observable, because both of them enjoyed pensions from the same distinguished ecclesiastic, the kindly old Archbishop of Toledo.[109]

The “Escudero Marcos de Obregon” was first published in 1618, and therefore appeared in the old age of its author.[110] He presents his hero, at once, as a person already past the middle years of life; one of the esquires of dames, who, at that period, were personages of humbler pretensions and graver character than those who, with the same title, had followed the men-at-arms of old.[111] The story of Marcos, however, though it opens upon us, at first, with scenes later in his life, soon returns to his youth, and nearly the whole volume is made up of his own account of his adventures, as he related them to a hermit whom he had known when he was a soldier in Flanders and Italy, and at whose cell he was now accidentally detained by a storm and flood, while on an excursion from Madrid.

In many particulars, his history resembles that of his predecessor, Guzman de Alfarache. It is the story of a youth who left his father’s house to seek his fortune; became first a student and afterwards a soldier; visited Italy; was a captive in Algiers; travelled over a large part of Spain; and after going through a great variety of dangers and trials, intrigues, follies, and crimes, sits down quietly in his old age to give an account of them all, with an air as grave and self-satisfied as if the greater part of them had not been of the most discreditable character. It contains a moderate number of wearisome, well-written moral reflections, intended to render its record of tricks, frauds, and crimes more savory to the reader by contrast; but though it falls below both the “Guzman de Alfarache” and the “Lazarillo” in the beauty and spirit of its style, it has more life in its action than either of them, and the series of its events is carried on with greater rapidity, and brought to a more regular conclusion.[112]

Ten years later, another romance of the same sort appeared. It was by YaÑez y Rivera, a physician of Segovia; who, as if on purpose to show the variety of his talent, published two works on ascetic devotion, as well as this picaresque romance; all of them remote from the cares and studies of his regular profession. He calls his story “Alonso, the Servant of Many Masters”; and the name is a sort of index to its contents. For it is a history of the adventures of its hero, Alonso, in the service, first of a military officer, then of a sacristan, and afterwards of a gentleman, of a lawyer, and of not a few others, who happened to be willing to employ him; and it is, in fact, neither more nor less than a satire on the different orders and conditions of society, as he studies them all in the houses of his different masters. It is evidently written with experience of the world, and its Castilian style is good; but something of its spirit is diminished by the circumstance, that it is thrown into the form of a dialogue. When YaÑez published the first part, in 1624, he said that he had already been a practising physician twenty-six years, and that he should print nothing more, unless it related to the profession he followed. His success, however, with his Alonso was too tempting. He printed, in 1626, a second part of it, containing his hero’s adventures among the Gypsies and in Algerine captivity, and died in 1632.[113]

Quevedo’s “Paul the Sharper,” which we have already noticed, was published the year after YaÑez had completed his story, and did much to extend the favor with which works of this sort were received. Castillo Solorzano, therefore, well known at the time as a writer of popular tales and dramas, ventured to follow him, but with less good-fortune. His “Teresa, the Child of Tricks,” was published in 1632, and was succeeded immediately by “The Graduate in Frauds,” of which a continuation appeared in 1634, under the whimsical title of “The Seville Weasel, or a Hook to catch Purses.” This last, which is an account of the adventures of the Graduate’s daughter, proved, though it was never finished, the most popular of Solorzano’s works, and has not only been often reprinted, but was early translated into French, and gained a reputation in Europe generally. All three, however, are less strictly picaresque tales than the similar fictions that had preceded them;—not that they are wanting in coarse sketches of life and caricatures as broad as any in Guzman, but that romantic tales, ballads, and even farces, or parts of dramas, are introduced, showing that this form of romance was becoming mingled with others more poetical, if not more true to the condition of manners and society at the time.[114]

Another proof of this change is to be found in “The Pythagoric Age” of Enriquez Gomez, first published in 1644; a book of little value, which takes the old doctrine of transmigration as the means of introducing a succession of pictures to serve as subjects for its satire. It begins with a poem in irregular verse, describing the existence of the soul, first in the body of an ambitious man; then in that of a slanderer and informer, a coquette, a minister of state, and a favorite; and it ends with similar sketches, half in poetry and half in prose, of a knight, a schemer, and others. But in the middle of the book is “The Life of Don Gregorio GuadaÑa,” in prose, which is a tale in direct imitation of Quevedo and Aleman, sometimes as free and coarse as theirs are, but generally not offending against the proprieties of life; and occasionally, as in the scenes during a journey and in the town of Carmona, pleasant and interesting, because it evidently gives us sketches from the author’s own experience. Like the rest of its class, it is most successful when it deals with such realities, and least so when it wanders off into the regions of poetry and fiction.[115]

But the work which most plainly shows the condition of social life that produced all these tales, if not the work that best exhibits their character, is “The Life of Estevanillo Gonzalez,” first printed in 1646. It is the autobiography of a buffoon, who was long in the service of Ottavio Piccolomini, the great general of the Thirty Years’ war; but it is an autobiography so full of fiction, that Le Sage, sixty years after its appearance, easily changed it into a mere romance, which has continued to be republished as such with his works ever since.[116]

Both in the original and in the French translation, it is called “The Life and Achievements of Estevanillo Gonzalez, the Good-natured Fellow,” and gives an account of his travels all over Europe, and of his adventures as courier, cook, and valet of the different distinguished masters whom he at different times served, from the king of Poland down to the Duke of Ossuna. Nothing can exceed the coolness with which he exhibits himself as a liar by profession, a constitutional coward, and an accomplished cheat, whenever he can thus render his story more amusing;—but then, on the other hand, he is not without learning, writes gay verses, and gives us sketches of his times and of the great men to whom he was successively attached, that are any thing but dull. His life, indeed, would be worth reading, if it were only to compare his account of the battle of Nordlingen with that in De Foe’s “Cavalier,” and his drawing of Ottavio Piccolomini with the stately portrait of the same personage in Schiller’s “Wallenstein.” Its faults, on the other hand, are a vain display of his knowledge; occasional attempts at grandeur and eloquence of style, which never succeed; and numberless intolerable puns. But it shows distinctly, what we have already noticed, that the whole class of fictions to which it belongs had its foundation in the manners and society of Spain at the period when they appeared, and that to this they owed, not only their success at home, in the age of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, but that success abroad which subsequently produced the Gil Blas of Le Sage,—an imitation more brilliant than any of the originals it followed.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Serious and Historical Romances. — Juan de Flores, Reinoso, Luzindaro, Contreras, Hita and the Wars of Granada, Flegetonte, Noydens, CÉspedes, Cervantes, Lamarca, Valladares, Texada, Lozano. — Failure of this Form of Fiction in Spain.

It was inevitable that grave fiction suited to the changed times should appear in Spain, as well as fiction founded on the satire of prevalent manners. But there were obstacles in its way, and it came late. The old chronicles, so full of the same romantic spirit, and the more interesting because they were sometimes built up out of the older and longer-loved ballads; the old ballads themselves, still oftener made out of the chronicles; the romances of chivalry, which had not yet lost a popularity that, at the present day, seems nearly incredible;—all contributed, in their respective proportions, to satisfy the demand for books of amusement, and to repress the appearance and limit the success of serious and historical fiction. But it was inevitable that it should come, even if it should win little favor.

We have already noticed the attempts to introduce it, made in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, by Diego de San Pedro and his imitator, the anonymous author of “The Question of Love.” Others followed, in the reign of Charles the Fifth. The story, that very imperfectly connects the discussions between Aurelio and Isabella, on the inquiry, whether man gives more occasion for sin to woman, or woman to man, is one of them. It is a slight and meagre fiction, by Juan de Mores, which dates as far back as 1521, and which, in an early English translation, was at one time thought to have furnished hints for Shakspeare’s “Tempest.”[117] “The Loves of Clareo and Florisea,” published in 1552, by NuÑez de Reinoso, at Venice, where he then lived, is another;—a fiction partly allegorical, partly sentimental, and partly in the manner of the romances of chivalry, but of no value for the invention of its incidents, and of very little for its style.[118] The story of “Luzindaro and Medusina,” printed as early as 1553, which, in the midst of enchantments and allegories, preserves the tone and air of a series of complaints against love, and ends tragically with the death of Luzindaro, is yet a third of these crude attempts;[119]—all of which are of consequence only because they led the way to better things. But excepting these and two or three more trifles of the same kind, and of even less value, the reign of Charles the Fifth, so far as grave fiction was concerned, was entirely given up to the romances of chivalry.[120]

In the reign of Philip the Second, when the literature of the country began to develop itself on all sides, serious romances appeared in better forms, or at least with higher pretensions and attributes. Two instances of attempts in new directions, and with more considerable success, present themselves at once.

The first was by HierÓnimo de Contreras, and bears the affected title of “A Thicket of Adventures.” It was published in 1573, and is the story of Luzuman, a gentleman of Seville, who had been bred from childhood in great intimacy with Arboleda, a lady of equal condition with himself; but when, as he grows up, this intimacy ripens into love, the lady rejects his suit, on the ground that she prefers a religious life. The refusal is gentle and tender; but he is so disheartened by it, that he secretly leaves his home in sorrow and mortification, and goes to Italy, where he meets with abundance of adventures, and travels through the whole peninsula, down to Naples. Wearied with this mode of life, he then embarks for Spain, but on his passage is taken by a corsair and carried to Algiers. There he remains in cruel slavery for five years. His master then gives him his freedom, and he returns to his home as secretly as he left it; but finding that Arboleda had taken the veil, and that the society to which he belonged had forgotten him, and had closed over the place he had once filled, he avoids making himself known to any body, and retires to a hermitage, with the purpose of ending his days in devotion.[121]

The whole story, somewhat solemnly divided into seven books, is dull, from want both of sufficient variety in the details, and of sufficient spirit in the style. But it is of some importance, because it is the first in a class of fictions, afterwards numerous, which—relying on the curiosity then felt in Spain about Italy, as a country full of Spaniards enjoying luxuries and refinements not yet known at home, and about Algiers, crowded with thousands of other Spaniards suffering the most severe forms of captivity—trusted, for no small part of their interest, to the accounts they gave of their heroes as adventurers in Italy, and as slaves on the coast of Barbary. Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and several more among the most popular authors of the seventeenth century, are among the writers of fictions like these.

The other form of grave fiction, which appeared in the time of Philip the Second, was the proper historical romance; and the earliest specimen of it, except such unsuccessful and slight attempts as we have already noticed, is to be found in “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by GinÉs Perez de Hita. The author of this striking book was an inhabitant of Murcia, and, from the little he tells us of himself, must not only have been familiar with the wild mountains and rich valleys of the neighbouring kingdom of Granada, but must have had an intimate personal acquaintance with many of the old Moorish families that still lingered in the homes of their fathers, repeating the traditions of their ancient glory and its disastrous overthrow. Perhaps these circumstances led him to the choice of a subject for his romance. Certainly they furnished him with its best materials; for the story he relates is founded on the fall of Granada, regarded rather from within, amidst the feuds of the Moors themselves, than, as we are accustomed to consider it, from the Christian portion of Spain, gradually gathered in military array outside of its walls.He begins his story by seeking a safe basis for it in the origin and history of the kingdom of Granada, according to the best authorities within his reach. This part of his work is formal and dry, and shows how imperfect were the notions, at the time he lived, of what an historical romance should be. But as he advances and enters upon the main subject he had proposed to himself, his tone changes. We are, indeed, still surrounded with personages that are familiar to us, like the heroic Muza on one side and the Master of Calatrava on the other; we are present with Boabdil, the last of the long line of Moorish sovereigns, as he carries on a fierce war against his own father in the midst of the city, and with Ferdinand and his knights, as they lay waste all the kingdom without. But to these historical figures are added the more imaginative and fabulous sketches of the Zegris and Abencerrages, Reduan, Abenamar, and Gazul, as full of knightly virtues as any of the Christian cavaliers opposed to them; and of Haja, Zayda, and Fatima, as fair and winning as the dames whom Isabella had brought with her to Santa FÉ to cheer on the conquest.

But while he is thus mingling the creations of his own fancy with the facts of history, Hita has been particularly skilful in giving to the whole the manners and coloring of the time. He shows us a luxurious empire tottering to its fall, and yet, while the streets of its capital are filled with war-cries and blood, its princes and nobles abate not one jot of their accustomed revelry and riot. Marriage festivals and midnight dances in the Alhambra, and gorgeous tournaments and games in presence of the court, alternate with duels and feuds between the two great preponderating families that are destroying the state, and with skirmishes and single combats against the advancing Christians. Then come the cruel accusation of the Sultana by the false Zegris, and her defence in arms by both Moors and Christians; the atrocious murder of his sister Morayma by Boabdil, who suddenly breaks out with all the jealous violence of an Oriental despot; and the mournful and scandalous spectacle of three kings contending daily for empire in the squares and palaces of a city destined in a few short weeks to fall into the hands of the enemy that already surrounded its walls.

Much of this, of course, is fiction, so far as the details are concerned; but it is not a fiction false to the spirit of the real events on which it is founded. When, therefore, we approach the end of the story, we come again without violence upon historical ground as true as that on which it opened, though almost as wild and romantic as any of the tales of feuds or festivals through which we have been led to it. In this way, the temporary captivity of Boabdil and his cowardly submission, the siege and surrender of Alhama and Malaga, and the fall of Granada, are brought before us neither unexpectedly nor in a manner out of keeping with what had preceded them; and the story ends, if not with a regular catastrophe, which such materials might easily have furnished, at least with a tale in the tone of all the rest,—that which records the sad fate of Don Alonso de Aguilar. It should be added, that not a few of the finest of the old Spanish ballads are scattered through the work, furnishing materials for the story, rich and appropriate in themselves, and giving an air of reality to the events described, that could hardly have been given to them by any thing else.

This first part, as it is commonly called, of the Wars of Granada was written between 1589 and 1595.[122] It claims to be a translation from the Arabic of a Moor of Granada, and, in the last chapter, Hita gives a circumstantial account of the way in which he obtained it from Africa, where, as he would have us believe, it had been carried in the dispersion of the Moorish race. But though it is not unlikely, that, in his wanderings through the kingdom of Granada, he may have obtained Arabic materials for parts of his story, and though, in the last century, it was more than once attempted to make out an Arabic origin for the whole of it,[123] still his account, upon the face of it, is not at all probable; besides which, he repeatedly appeals to the chronicles of Garibay and Moncayo as authorities for his statements, and gives to the main current of his work—especially in such passages as the conversion of the Sultana—a Christian air, which does not permit us to suppose that any but a Christian could have written it. Notwithstanding his denial, therefore, we must give to Hita the honor of being the true author of one of the most attractive books in the prose literature of Spain; a book written in a pure, rich, and picturesque style, which seems in some respects to be in advance of the age, and in all to be worthy of the best models of the best period.

In 1604, he published the second part, on a subject nearly connected with the first. Seventy-seven years after the conquest of Granada, the Moors of that kingdom, unable any longer to bear the oppressions to which they were subjected by the rigorous government of Philip the Second, took refuge in the bold range of the Alpuxarras, on the coast of the Mediterranean, and there, electing a king, broke out into open rebellion. They maintained themselves bravely in their mountain fastnesses nearly four years, and were not finally defeated till three armies had been sent against them; the last of which was commanded by no less a general than Don John of Austria. Hita served through the whole of this war; and the second part of his romance contains its history. Much of what he relates is true; and, indeed, of much he had been an eye-witness, as we can see in his accounts of the atrocities committed in the villages of Felix and Huescar, as well as in all the details of the siege of Galera and the death and funeral honors of Luis de Quijada. But other portions, like the imprisonment of Albexari, with his love for Almanzora, and the jealousies and conspiracy of Benalguacil, must be chiefly or wholly drawn from his own imagination. The most interesting part is the story of Tuzani, which he relates with great minuteness, and which he declares he received from Tuzani himself and other persons concerned in it;—a wild tale of Oriental passion, which, as we have seen, Calderon made the subject of one of his most powerful and characteristic dramas.

If the rest of the second division of Hita’s romance had been like this story, it might have been worthy of the first. But it is not. The ballads with which it is diversified, and which are probably all his own, are much inferior in merit to the older ballads he had inserted before; and his narrative is given in a much less rich and glowing style. Perhaps Hita felt the want of the old Moorish traditions that had before inspired him, or perhaps he found himself awkwardly constrained when dealing with facts too recent and notorious to be manageable for the purposes of fiction. But whatever may have been the cause of its inferiority, the fact is plain. His second part, regarded as genuine history, is not to be compared with the account of the same events by Diego de Mendoza; while, regarded as a romance, he had already far surpassed it himself.[124]

The path, however, which Hita by these two works had opened for historical fiction amidst the old traditions and picturesque manners of the Moors, tempting as it may now seem, did not, in his time, seem so to others. His own romance, it is true, was often reprinted and much read. But, from the nature of his subject, he showed the Moorish character on its favorable side, and even went so far as to express his horror at the cruelties inflicted by his countrymen on their hated enemies, and his sense of the injustice done to the vanquished by the bad faith that kept neither the promises of Ferdinand and Isabella nor those of Don John.[125] Such sympathy with the infidel enemy that had so long held Spain in fee was not according to the spirit of the times. Only five years after Hita had published his account of the rebellion of the Alpuxarras, the remainder of the Moors against whom he had there fought were violently expelled from Spain by Philip the Third, amidst the rejoicings of the whole Spanish people; few even of the most humane spirits looking upon the sufferings they thus inflicted as any thing but the just retributions of an offended Heaven.

Of course, while this was the state of feeling throughout the nation, it was not to be expected that works of fiction representing the Moors in romantic and attractive colors, and filled with adventures drawn from their traditions, should find favor in Spain. A century later, indeed, a third part of the Wars of Granada—whether written by Hita or somebody else we are not told—was licensed for the press, though never published;[126] and, in France, Madame de ScudÉri soon began, in “The Almahide,” a series of fictions on this foundation, that has been continued down, through the “Gonsalve de Cordoue” of Florian, to “The Abencerrage” of Chateaubriand, without giving any token that it is likely soon to cease.[127] But in Spain it struck no root, and had no success.

Perhaps other circumstances, besides a national feeling of unwillingness that romantic fiction should occupy the debatable ground between the Moors and the Christians, contributed to check its progress in Spain. Perhaps the publication of the first part of Don Quixote, destroying, by its ridicule, the only form of romance much known or regarded at the time, was not without an effect on the other forms, by exciting a prejudice against all grave prose works of invention, and still more by furnishing a substitute much more amusing than they could aspire to be. But whether this were so or not, attacks on all of them followed in the same spirit. “The Cryselia of Lidaceli,” which appeared in 1609,—and which, as well as a dull prose satire on the fantastic Academies then in fashion, bears the name of Captain Flegetonte,—assails freely whatever of prose fiction had till then enjoyed regard in Spain, whether the pastoral, the historical, or the chivalrous.[128] Its attack, however, was so ineffectual, as to show only the tendency of opinion to discourage romance-writing in Spain;—a tendency yet more apparent a little later, not only in some of the best ascetic writers of the seventeenth century, but in such works as “The Moral History of the God Momus,” by Noydens, published in 1666, which, as its author tells us distinctly in the Prologue, was intended to drive out of society all novels and books of adventure whose subject was love.[129]Still, serious romance was written in Spain during the whole of the seventeenth century, and written in several varieties of form and tone, though with no real success. Thus, Gonzalo de CÉspedes, a native of Madrid, and author of several other works, published the first part of his “Gerardo” in 1615, and the second in 1617. He calls it a Tragic Poem, and divides it into discourses instead of chapters. But it is, in fact, a prose romance, consisting of a series of slightly connected adventures in the life of its hero, Gerardo, and episodes of the adventures of different persons more or less associated with him; in all which, amidst much that is sentimental and romantic, there is more that is tragic than is common in such Spanish stories. It was several times reprinted, and was succeeded, in 1626, by his “Various Fortunes of the Soldier PÍndaro,” a similar work, but less interesting, and perhaps, on that account, never finished according to the original purpose of its author. Both, however, show a power of invention which is hardly to be found in works of the same class produced so early, either in France or England, and both make pretensions to style, though rather in their lighter than in their more serious portions.[130]

Again in 1617,—the same year, it will be recollected, in which the “Persiles and Sigismunda” of Cervantes appeared,—Francisco Loubayssin de Lamarca, a Biscayan by birth, published his “Tragicomic History of Don Enrique de Castro”; in which known facts and fanciful adventures are mingled in the wildest confusion. The scene is carried back, by means of the story of the hero’s uncle, who has become a hermit in his old age, to the Italian wars of Charles the Eighth of France, and forward, in the person of the hero himself, to the conquest of Chili by the Spaniards; covering meanwhile any intermediate space that seems convenient to its author’s purposes. As an historical novel, it is an entire failure.[131]

A similar remark may be made on another work published in 1625, which takes in part the guise of imaginary travels, and is called “The History of Two Faithful Friends”; a story founded on the supposed adventures of a Frenchman and a Spaniard in Persia, and consisting chiefly of incredible accounts of their intrigues with Persian ladies of rank. Much of it is given in the shape of a correspondence, and it ends with the promise of a continuation, which never appeared.[132]

Many, indeed, of the works of fiction begun in Spain, during the seventeenth century, remained, like the Two Faithful Friends, unfinished, from want of encouragement and popularity; while others that were written were never published at all.[133] One of these last, called “The Fortunate Knight,” by Juan Valladares de Valdelomar, of CÓrdova, was quite prepared for the press in 1617, and is still extant in the original manuscript, with the proper licenses for printing and the autograph approbation of Lope de Vega. It is an historical novel, divided into forty-five “Adventures”; and the hero, like many others of his class, is a soldier in Italy, and a captive in Africa; serving first under Don John of Austria, and afterwards under Sebastian of Portugal. How much of it is true is uncertain. Regular dates are given for many of its events, some of which can be verified; but it is full of poetry and poetical fancies, and several of the stories, like that of the loves of the knight himself and the fair Mayorinda, must have been taken from the author’s imagination. Still, in the Prologue, all books of fiction are treated with contempt, as if the whole class were so little favored, that it was discreditable to avow the intention of publishing another, even at the moment of doing it. In the style of its prose, the Fortunate Knight is as good as other similar works of the same period; but the poems with which it is crowded, to the number of about a hundred and fifty, are of less merit.[134]

The discouragement just alluded to, whether proceeding from the ridicule thrown on long works of fiction by Cervantes, or from the watchfulness of the ecclesiastical authorities, or from both causes combined, was probably one of the reasons that led persons writing serious romances to seek new directions and unwonted forms in their composition; sometimes going as far as possible from the truth of fact, and sometimes coming down almost to plain history. Two instances of such deviations from the beaten paths—probably the only examples in their time of the class to which each belonged—should be noticed, for their singularity, if not for their literary merit.

The first is by CosmÉ de Texada, and is called “The Marvellous Lion.” It was originally published in 1636, and consists of the history of “the great Lion Auricrino,” his wonderful adventures, and, at last, his marriage with Crisaura, his lady-love. It is divided into fifty-four Apologues, which might rather have been called chapters; and if, instead of the names of animals given to its personages, it had such poetical names as usually occur in romantic fiction, it would—except where it involves satirical sketches of the follies of the times—be a mere love-romance, neither more unnatural nor more extravagant than many of its fellows.

Such as it is, however, it did not entirely satisfy its author. The early portions had been written in his youth, while he was a student in theology at Salamanca; and when, somewhat later, he resumed his task, and brought it to a regular conclusion, he was already far advanced in the composition of another romance still more grave and spiritualized and still farther removed from the realities of life. This more carefully matured fiction is called “Understanding and Truth, the Philosophical Lovers”; and all its personages are allegorical, filling up, with their dreams and trials, a shadowy picture of human life, from the creation to the general judgment. How long Texada was employed about this cold and unsatisfactory allegory, we are not told; but it was not published till 1673, nearly forty years after it was begun, and then it was given to the public by his brother as a posthumous work, with the inappropriate title of “The Second Part of the Marvellous Lion.” Neither romance had a living interest capable of insuring it a permanent success, but both are written in a purer style than was common in such works at the same period, and the first of them occasionally attacks the faults of the contemporary literature with spirit and good-humor.[135]

Quite different from both of them, “The New Kings of Toledo,” by ChristÓval Lozano, introduces only real personages, and contains little but the facts of known history and old tradition, slightly embellished by the spirit of romance. Its author was attached to the metropolitan cathedral of Toledo, and, with Calderon, served in the chapel set apart for the burial of the New Kings, as the monarchs of Castile were called from the time of Henry of Trastamara, who there established for himself a cemetery, separate from that in which the race ending with the dishonored Don Pedro had been entombed.

The pious chaplain, who was thus called to pray daily for the souls of the line of sovereigns that had constituted the house of Trastamara, determined to illustrate their memories by a romantic history; and, beginning with the old national traditions of the origin of Toledo, the cave of Hercules, the marriage of Charlemagne with a Moorish princess whom he converted, and the refusal of a Christian princess to marry a Moor whom she could not convert, he gives us an account of the building of the chapel, and the adventures of the kings who sleep under its altars, down as late as the death of Henry the Third, in 1406. From internal evidence, it was written at the end of the reign of Philip the Fourth, when Spanish prose had lost much both of its purity and of its dignity; but Lozano, though not free from the affectations of his age, wrote so much more simply than his contemporaries generally did, and his story, though little indebted to his own invention, was yet found so attractive, that, in about half a century, eleven editions of it were published, and it obtained for itself a place in Spanish literature which it has never entirely lost.[136]

After all, however, the serious and historical fictions produced in Spain, that merit the name of full-length romances, were, from the first, few in number, and, with the exception of Hita’s “Civil Wars of Granada,” deserved little favor. Subsequent to the reign of Philip the Fourth, they almost disappeared for above a century; and even at the end of that period, they occurred rarely, and obtained little regard.[137]

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Tales. — Villegas, Timoneda, Cervantes, Hidalgo, Figueroa, Barbadillo, Eslava, Agreda, LiÑan y Verdugo, Lope de Vega, Salazar, Lugo, Camerino, Tellez, Montalvan, Reyes, Peralta, CÉspedes, Moya, Anaya, Mariana de Carbajal, MarÍa de Zayas, Mata, Castillo, Lozano, Solorzano, Alonso de AlcalÁ, Villalpando, Prado, Robles, Guevara, Polo, Garcia, Santos. — Great Number of Tales. — General Remarks on all the Forms of Spanish Fiction.

Short stories or tales were more successful in Spain, during the latter part of the sixteenth century and the whole of the seventeenth, than any other form of prose fiction, and were produced in greater numbers. They seem, indeed, to have sprung afresh, and with great vigor, from the prevailing national tastes and manners, not at all connected with the tales of Oriental origin, that had been introduced above two hundred years earlier by Don Juan Manuel, and little affected by the brilliant Italian school, of which Boccaccio was the head; but showing rather, in the hues they borrowed from the longer contemporary pastoral, satirical, and historical romances, how truly they belonged to the spirit of their own times, and to the state of society in which they appeared. We turn to them, therefore, with more than common interest.

The oldest Spanish tales of the sixteenth century, that deserve to be noticed, are two that are found in a small volume of the works of Antonio de Villegas, somewhat conceitedly called “El Inventario,” and prepared for the press about 1550, though not published till 1565.[138] The first of them is entitled “Absence and Solitude,” a pastoral consisting of about equal portions of prose and poetry, and is as affected and in as bad taste as the ampler fictions of the class to which it belongs. The other—“The Story of Narvaez”—is much better. It is the Spanish version of a romantic adventure that really occurred on the frontiers of Granada, in the days when knighthood was in its glory among Moors as well as among Christians. Its principal incidents are as follows.

Rodrigo de Narvaez, Alcayde of Alora, a fortress on the Spanish border, grows weary of a life of inaction, from which he had been for some time suffering, and goes out one night with a few followers, in mere wantonness, to seek adventures. Of course they soon find what, in such a spirit, they seek. Abindarraez, a noble Moor, belonging to the persecuted and exiled family of the Abencerrages, comes well mounted and well armed along the path they are watching, and sings cheerily through the stillness of the night,—

A fight follows at once, and the gallant young Moor is taken prisoner; but his dejected manner, after a resistance so brave as he had made, surprises his conqueror, who, on inquiry, finds that his captive was on his way that very night to a secret marriage with the lady of his love, daughter of the lord of Coyn, a Moorish fortress near at hand. Immediately on learning this, the Spanish knight, like a true cavalier, releases the young Moor from his present thraldom, on condition that he will voluntarily return in three days and submit himself again to his fate. The noble Moor keeps his word, bringing with him his stolen bride, to whom, by the intervention of the generous Spaniard with the king of Granada, her father is reconciled, and so the tale ends to the honor and content of all the parties who appear in it.

Some passages in it are beautiful, like the first declaration of his love by Abindarraez, as described by himself; and the darkness that, he says, fell upon his very soul, when his lady, the next day, was carried away by her father, “as if,” he adds, “the sun had been suddenly eclipsed over a man wandering amidst wild and precipitous mountains.” His Moorish honor and faith, too, are characteristically and finely expressed, when, on the approach of the time for his return to captivity, he reveals to his bride the pledge he had given, and in reply to her urgent offer to send a rich ransom and break his word, he says, “Surely I may not now fall into so great a fault; for if, when formerly I came to you all alone, I kept truly my pledged faith, my duty to keep it is doubled now that I am yours. Therefore, questionless, I shall return to Alora, and place myself in the Alcayde’s hands; and when I have done what I ought to do, he must also do what to him seems right.”

The original story, as told by the Arabian writers, is found at the end of “The History of the Arabs in Spain,” by Conde, who says it was often repeated by the poets of Granada. But it was too attractive in itself, and too flattering to the character of Spanish knighthood, not to obtain a similar place in Spanish literature. Montemayor, therefore, borrowing it with little ceremony from Villegas, and altering it materially for the worse in point of style, inserted it in the editions of his “Diana” published towards the latter part of his life, though it harmonizes not at all with the pastoral scenery which there surrounds it. Padilla, too, soon afterwards took possession of it, and wrought it into a series of ballads; Lope de Vega founded on it his play of “The Remedy for Misfortune”; and Cervantes introduced it into his “Don Quixote.” On all sides, therefore, traces of it are to be found, but it nowhere presents itself with such grace or to such advantage as it does in the simple tale of Villegas.[139]

Juan de Timoneda, already noticed as one of the founders of the popular theatre in Spain, was also an early writer of Spanish tales. Indeed, as a bookseller who sought to make profit of whatever was agreeable to the general taste, and who wrote and published in this spirit several volumes of ballads, miscellaneous poetry, and farces, it was quite natural he should adventure in the ways of prose fiction, now become so attractive. His first attempt seems to have been in his “PatraÑuelo,” or Story-teller, the first part of which appeared in 1576, but was not continued.[140]

It is a small work, which draws its materials from widely different sources, some of them being found, like the well-known story of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, in the “Gesta Romanorum,” and some in the Italian masters, like the story of Griselda in Boccaccio, and the one familiar to English readers in the ballad of “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,” which Timoneda probably took from Sacchetti.[141] Three or four—of which the first in the volume is one—had already been used in the construction of dramas by Alonso de la Vega and Lope de Rueda. All of them tend to show, what is proved in other ways, that such popular stories had long been a part of the intellectual amusements of a state of society little dependent on books; and, after floating for centuries up and down through the different countries of Europe,—borne by a general tradition or by the minstrels and Trouveurs,—were about this period first reduced to writing, and then again passed onward from hand to hand, till they were embodied in some form that became permanent. What, therefore, the Novellieri had been doing in Italy for above two hundred years, Timoneda now undertook to do for Spain. The twenty-two tales of his “PatraÑuelo” are not, indeed, connected, like those of the “Decamerone,” but he has given them a uniform character by investing them all with his own easy, if not very pure, style; and thus, without anticipating it, sent them out anew to constitute a part of the settled literature of his country, and to draw after them a long train of similar fictions, some of which bear the most eminent names known among those of Spanish prose-writers.

Indeed, the very next is of this high order. It is that of Cervantes, who began by inserting such stories in the first part of his “Don Quixote” in 1605, and, eight years later, produced a collection of them, which he published separately. Of these tales, however, we have already spoken, and will, therefore, now only repeat, that, for originality of invention and happiness of style, they stand at the head of the class to which they belong.[142]

Others followed, of very various character. Hidalgo published, in 1605, an account of the frolics permitted during the last three days of Carnival, in which are many short tales and anecdotes, like the slightest and gayest of the Italian novelle;[143] and Suarez de Figueroa, who was no friend of Cervantes, if he was his follower, inserted other tales of a more romantic tone in his “Traveller,” which he published in 1617.[144] Perhaps, however, no writer of such fictions in the early part of the seventeenth century had more success than Salas Barbadillo, who was born at Madrid, about 1580, and died in 1630.[145] During the last eighteen years of his life, he published not less than twenty different works, all of which, except three or four that are filled with such dramas and poetry as Lope de Vega had made fashionable, consist of popular stories, neither so short as the tales of Timoneda, nor long enough to be accounted regular romances, but all written in a truly national spirit, and in a strongly marked Castilian style.

“The Ingenious Helen, Daughter of Celestina,” which is one of the earliest and most spirited of these fictions, appeared in 1612, and was frequently printed afterwards. It is the story of a courtesan, whose adventures, from the high game she undertakes to play in life, are of the boldest and most desperate kind. She is called the daughter of Celestina, because she is made to deserve that name by her talent and her crimes; but, with instinctive truth, she is at last left to perish by the most disgraceful of all the forms of a Spanish execution, for poisoning an obscure and vulgar lover. One or two minor stories are rather inartificially introduced in the course of the main narrative, and so are a few ballads, which have no value except as they serve to illustrate the ruffian life, as it was called, then to be found in the great cities of Spain. The best parts of the book are those relating to Helen herself and her machinations; and the most striking scenes, and perhaps the most true to the time, are those that occur when she rises to the height of her fortunes by setting up for a saint and imposing on all Seville.[146]

Of course, with such materials and incidents, the Helena takes much of its tone from the stories in the gusto picaresco, or the style of Spanish rogues. Quite opposite to it, therefore, in character and purpose, is “The Perfect Knight,”—a philosophical tale, not without some touch of the romances of chivalry. It is addressed to all the noble youth of the realm, at a time when the Cortes were assembled, and is intended to set the ideal of true knighthood before them, as before an audience the younger part of which might be excited to strive after its attributes and honors. To accomplish this, Barbadillo gives the history of a Spanish cavalier, who, travelling to Italy during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the conqueror of Naples, obtains the favor of that monarch, and, after serving him in the highest military and diplomatic posts,—commanding armies in Germany, and mediating between imaginary kings of England and Ireland,—retires to the neighbourhood of Baia and enjoys a serene and religious old age.[147]

Again, “The House of Respectable Amusements” differs from both of the preceding fictions, and exhibits another variety of their author’s very flexible talent. It relates the frolics of four gay students of Salamanca, who, wearied by their course of life at the University, come to Madrid, open a luxurious house, arrange a large hall for exhibitions, and invite the rank and fashion of the city, telling stories for the amusement of their guests, reciting ballads, and acting plays;—all of which constitute the materials that fill the volume. Six tales, however, are really the effective part of it; and the whole is abruptly terminated by the dangerous illness of the most active among the four gay cavaliers who had arranged these Lenten entertainments.[148]

But it is not necessary to examine further the light fictions of Barbadillo. It is enough to say of the rest, that “The Point-Device Knight,” in two parts, is a grotesque story in ridicule of those who pretend to be first in every thing;[149]—that “The Lucky Fool” is what its name implies;[150]—that “Don Diego” consists of the love-adventures, during nine successive nights, of a gentleman who always fails in what he undertakes;[151]—and that all of them, and all Barbadillo’s other productions, are within the range of talent of not a very high order, but uncommonly flexible, and dealing rather with the surface of manners than with the secrets of character which manners serve to hide. His latest work, entitled “Parnassian Crowns and Dishes for the Muses,” consists of a medley of verse and prose, stories and dramas, which were arranged for the press, and licensed in October, 1630; but he died immediately afterwards, and they were not printed till 1635.[152]

During the life of Barbadillo, and probably in some degree from his example and success, such fictions became frequent. “The Winter Evenings” of Antonio de Eslava, published in 1609, belong to this class, but are, indeed, so early in their date, that they may have rather given an impulse to Barbadillo than received one from him.[153] But “The Twelve Moral Tales” of Diego de Agreda, in 1620, belong clearly to his manner,[154] as does also “The Guide and Counsel for Strangers at Court,” published the same year, by LiÑan y Verdugo,—a singular series of stories, related by two elderly gentlemen to a young man, in order to warn him against the dangers of a gay life at Madrid.[155] Lope de Vega, as usual, followed where success had already been obtained by others. In 1621, he added a short tale to his “Philomena,” and, a little later, three more to his “Circe”; but he himself thought them a doubtful experiment, and they, in fact, proved an unhappy one.[156] Other persons, however, encouraged by the general favor that evidently waited on light and amusing collections of stories, crowded more earnestly along in the same path;—Salazar, with his “Flowers of Recreation,” in 1622;[157]—Lugo, with his “Novelas,” the same year;[158]—and Camerino, with his “Love Tales,”[159] only a year later;—all the last six works having been produced in three years, and all belonging to the school of Timoneda, as it had been modified by the genius of Cervantes and the practical skill of Salas Barbadillo.

This was popular success; but it was so much in one direction, that its results became a little monotonous. Variety, therefore, was soon demanded; and, being demanded by the voice of fashion, it was soon obtained. The new form, thus introduced, was not, however, a violent change. It was made by a well-known dramatic author, who—taking a hint from the “Decamerone,” already in part adopted by Barbadillo, in his “House of Respectable Amusements”—substituted a theatrical framework to connect his separate stories, instead of the merely narrative one used by Boccaccio and his followers. This fell in, happily, with the passion for the stage which then pervaded all Spain, and it was successful.

The change referred to is first found in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” published in 1624, by Gabriel Tellez, who, as we have already observed, when he left his convent and came before the public as a secular author, always disguised himself under the name of Tirso de Molina. It is a singular book, and takes its name from a word of Arabic origin peculiar to Toledo; Cigarral signifying there a small country-house in the neighbourhood of the city, resorted to only for recreation and only in the summer season. At one of these houses Tirso supposes a wedding to have happened, under circumstances interesting to a large number of persons, who, wishing in consequence of it to be much together, agreed to hold a series of entertainments at their different houses, in an order to be determined by lot and under the superintendence of one of their company, each of whom, during the single day of his authority, should have supreme control and be responsible for the amusements of the whole party.

The “Cigarrales de Toledo” is an account of these entertainments, consisting of stories that were read or related at them, poetry that was recited, and plays that were acted,—in short, of all that made up the various exhibitions and amusements of the party. Some portions of it are fluent and harmonious beyond the common success of the age; but in general, as in the descriptions and in the poor contrivance of the “Labyrinth,” it is disfigured by conceits and extravagances, belonging to the follies of Gongorism. The work, however, pleased, and Tirso himself prepared another of the same kind, called “Pleasure and Profit,”—graver and more religious in its tone, but of less poetical merit,—which was written in 1632, and printed in 1635. But, though both were well received, neither was finished. The last ends with the promise of a second part, and the first, which undertakes to give an account of the entertainments of twenty days, embraces, in fact, only five.[160]

The style they adopted was soon imitated. Montalvan, who, like his master, never failed to follow the indications of the popular taste, printed, in 1632, his “Para Todos,” or For Everybody, containing the imaginary amusements of a party of literary friends, who agreed to cater for each other during a week, and whose festivities are ended, as those of the “Cigarrales” began, with a wedding. Some of its inventions are very learnedly dull, and it is throughout less well arranged than the account of the entertainments near Toledo, and falls less naturally into a dramatic framework. But it shows its author’s talent. The individual stories are pleasantly told, especially the one called “At the End of the Year One Thousand”; and, as a whole, the “Para Todos” was popular, going through nine editions in less than thirty years, notwithstanding a very severe attack on it by Quevedo.[161] Its popularity, too, had the natural effect of producing imitations, among which, in 1640, appeared, “Para Algunos,”—For a Few,—by Matias de los Reyes;[162] and, somewhat later, “Para SÍ,”—For one’s own Self,—by Juan Fernandez y Peralta.[163]

Meantime the succession of separate tales had been actively kept up. Montalvan published eight in 1624, written with more than the usual measure of grace in such Spanish compositions; one of them, “The Disastrous Friendship,” founded on the sufferings of an Algerine captivity, being one of the best in the language, and all of them so successful, that they were printed eleven times in about thirty years.[164] CÉspedes y Meneses followed, in 1628, with a series entitled “Rare Histories”;[165]—Moya, at about the same time, published a single whimsical story on “The Fancies of a Fright”; in which he relates a succession of marvellous incidents, that, as he declares, flashed through his own imagination while falling down a precipice in the Sierra Morena;[166]—and Castro y Anaya published, in 1632, five tales called “The Auroras of Diana,” because they are told in the early dawn of each morning, during five successive days, to amuse Diana, a lady who, after a long illness, had fallen into a state of melancholy.[167]

The fair sex, too, entered into the general fashionable competition. Mariana de Carbajal, a native of Granada, and descended from the ancient ducal families of San Carlos and Rivas, published, in 1638, eight tales, pleasing both by their invention and by the simplicity of their style, which she called “Christmas at Madrid,” or “Evening Amusements.”[168] And in 1637 and 1647, MarÍa de Zayas, a lady of the court, printed two collections; the first called simply “Tales,” and the last “Saraos,” or Balls; each a series of ten stories within itself, and both connected together by the entertainments of a party of friends at Christmas, and the dances and fÊtes at the wedding of two of their number, during the holidays that followed.[169]

Again, slight changes in such fictions were attempted. Mata, in two dull tales, called “The Solitudes of Aurelia,” published in 1637, endeavoured to give them a more religious character;[170] and in 1641, AndrÉ del Castillo, in six stories misnamed “The Masquerade of Taste,” sought to give them even a lighter tone than the old one.[171] Both found successors. Lozano’s “Solitudes of Life,” which are four stories supposed to be told by a hermit on the wild peaks of the Monserrate, belong to the first class, and, notwithstanding a somewhat affected style, were much praised by Calderon, and went through at least six editions;[172]—while, in the opposite direction, between 1625 and 1640, we have a number of the freest secular tales, by Castillo Solorzano, among which the best are probably “The Alleviations of Cassandra,” and “The Country-House of Laura,” both imitations of Castro’s “Diana.”[173]

In the same way, the succession of short fictions was continued unbroken, until it ceased with the general decay of Spanish literature at the end of the century. Thus we have, in 1641, “The Various Effects of Love and Fortune,” by Alonso de AlcalÁ; five stories, such as may be imagined from the fact, that, in each of them, one of the five vowels is entirely omitted;[174]—in 1645, “The Warnings, or Experiences, of Jacinto,” by Villalpando, which may have been taken from his own life, since Jacinto was the first of his own names;[175]—in 1663, “The Festivals of Wit and Entertainments of Taste,” by Andres de Prado;[176]—and, in 1666, a series collected from different authors, by Isidro de Robles,[177] and published under the title of “Wonders of Love.” All these, as their names indicate, belong to one school; and although there is an occasional variety in their individual tones, some of them being humorous and others sentimental, and although some of them have their scenes in Spain and others in Italy or Algiers, still, as the purpose of all was only the lightest amusement, they may all be grouped together and characterized in the mass, as of little value, and as falling off in merit the nearer they approach the period when such fictions ceased in the elder Spanish literature.

One more variety in the characteristics of this style of writing in Spain is, however, so distinct from the rest, that it should be separately mentioned,—that which has sometimes been called the Allegorical and Satirical Tale, and which generally took the form of a Vision. It was, probably, suggested by the bold and original “Visions” of Quevedo; and the instance of it most worthy of notice is “The Limping Devil” of Luis Velez de Guevara, which appeared in 1641. It is a short story, founded on the idea that a student releases from his confinement, in a magician’s vial, the Limping Devil, who, in return for this service, carries his liberator through the air, and, unroofing, as it were, the houses of Madrid, during the stillness of the night, shows him the secrets that are passing within. It is divided into ten “Leaps,” as they afterwards spring from place to place in different parts of Spain, in order to pounce on their prey, and it is satirical throughout. Parts of it are very happy; among which may be selected those relating to fashionable life, to the life of rogues, and to that of men of letters, in the large cities of Castile and Andalusia, though these, like the rest, are often disfigured with the bad taste then so common. On the whole, however, it is an amusing fiction,—partly allegorical and partly sketched from living manners,—and is to be placed among the more spirited prose satires in modern literature, both in its original form and in the form given to it by Le Sage, whose rifacimento has carried it, under the name of “Le Diable Boiteux,” wherever letters are known.[178]

Earlier than the appearance of the Limping Devil, however, Polo had written his “Hospital of Incurables,” a direct, but poor, imitation of Quevedo; and in 1647, under an assumed name, he published his “University of Love, or School for Selfishness,” a satire against mercenary matches, thrown into the shape of a vision of the University of Love, where the fair sex are brought up in the arts of profitable intrigue, and receive degrees according to their progress.[179] It is, in general, an ill-managed allegory, filled with bad puns and worse verse; but there is one passage so characteristic of Spanish wit in this form of fiction, that it may be cited as an illustration of the entire class to which it belongs.

“‘That young creature whom you see there,’ said the God of Love, as he led me on, ‘is the chief captain of my war, the one that has brought most soldiers to my feet and enlisted most men under my banners. The elderly person that is leading her along by the hand is her aunt.’ ‘Her aunt, did you say?’ I replied; ‘her aunt? Then there is an end of all my love for her. That word aunt is a counter poison that has disinfected me entirely, and quite healed the wound your well-planted arrow was beginning to make in my heart. For, however much a man may be in love, there can be no doubt an aunt will always be enough to purge him clean of it. Inquisitive, suspicious, envious,—one or the other she cannot fail to be,—and if the niece have the luck to escape, the lover never has; for if she is envious, she wants him for herself; and if she is only suspicious, she still spoils all comfort, so disconcerting every little project, and so disturbing every little nice plan, as to render pleasure itself unsavory,’ ‘Why, what a desperately bad opinion you have of aunts!’ said Love. ‘To be sure I have,’ said I. ‘If the state of innocence in which Adam and Eve were created had nothing else to recommend it, the simple fact that there could have been no aunts in Paradise would have been enough for me. Why, every morning, as soon as I get up, I cross myself and say, “By the sign of the Holy Rood, from all aunts deliver us this day, Good Lord!” And every time I repeat the Paternoster, after “Lead us not into temptation,” I always add,—“nor into the way of aunts either.”’”

The example of Quevedo was, again, followed by Marcos Garcia, who in 1657 published his “Phlegm of Pedro Hernandez,” an imaginary, but popular, personage, whose arms, according to an old Spanish proverb, fell out of their sockets from the mere listlessness of their owner. It is a vision, in which women-servants who spend their lives in active cheating, students pressing vigorously forward to become quacks and pettifoggers, spendthrift soldiers, and similar uneasy, unprincipled persons of other conditions, are contrasted with those who, trusting to a quiet disposition, float noiselessly down the current of life, and succeed without an effort and without knowing how they do it. The general allegory is meagre; but some of the individual sketches are well imagined.[180]

The person, however, who, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, succeeded best in this style of composition, as well as in tales of other kinds, was Francisco Santos, a native of Madrid, who died not far from the year 1700. Between 1663 and 1697, he gave to the world sixteen volumes of different kinds of works for popular amusement;—generally short stories, but some of them encumbered with allegorical personages and tedious moral discussions.[181] The oldest of the series, “Dia y Noche en Madrid,” or, as it may be translated, Life in Madrid, though a mere fiction founded on manners, is divided into what the author terms Eighteen Discourses. It opens, as such Spanish tales are too apt to open, somewhat pompously; the first scene describing with too much elaborateness a procession of three hundred emancipated captives, who enter Madrid praising God and rejoicing at their release from the horrors of Algerine servitude. One of these captives, the hero of the story, falls immediately into the hands of a shrewd and not over-honest servant, named Juanillo, who, having begun the world as a beggar, and risen by cunning so far as to be employed in the capacity of an inferior servant by a fraternity of monks, now undertakes to make the stranger acquainted with the condition of Madrid, serving him as a guide wherever he goes, and interpreting to him whatever is most characteristic of the manners and follies of the capital. Some of the tales and sketches thus introduced are full of life and truth, as, for instance, those relating to the prisons, gaming-houses, and hospitals, and especially one in which a coquette, meeting a poor man at a bull-fight, so dupes him by her blandishments, that she sends him back penniless, at midnight, to his despairing wife and children, who, anxious and without food, have been waiting from the early morning to have him return with their dinner. This little volume, several parts of which have been freely used by Le Sage, ends with an account of the captive’s adventures in Italy, in Spain, and in Algiers, given by himself in a truly national tone, and with fluency and spirit.[182]

“Periquillo”—another of these collections of sketches and tales, less well written than the last, except in the merely narrative portions—contains an account of a foundling, who, after the ruin and death of a pious couple that first picked him up at their door on a Christmas morning, begins the world for himself as the leader of a blind beggar. From this condition, which, in such Spanish stories, always seems to be regarded as the lowest possible in society, he rises to be the servant of a cavalier, who proves to be a mysterious robber, and after escaping from whom he falls into the hands of yet worse persons, and is apprehended under circumstances that remind us of the story of DoÑa Mencia in “Gil Blas.” He, however, vindicates his innocence, and, being released from the fangs of justice, returns, weary of the world, to his first home, where he leads an ascetic life; makes long, pedantic discourses on virtue to his admiring townsmen; and proves, in fact, a sort of humble philosopher, growing constantly more and more devout till the account of him ends at last with a prayer. The whole is interesting among Spanish works of fiction, because it is evidently written both in imitation of the picaresque novels and in opposition to them; since Periquillo, from the lowest origin, gets on by neither roguery nor cleverness, but by honesty and good faith; and, instead of rising in the world and becoming rich and courtly, settles patiently down into a village hermit, or a sort of poor Christian Diogenes. No doubt, he has neither the wit nor the cunning of Lazarillo; but that he should venture to encounter that shrewd little beggar in any way makes Periquillo, at once, a personage of some consequence.[183]

Yet one more of the works of Santos should be noticed; an allegorical tale, called “Truth on the Rack, or the Cid come to Life again.” Its general story is, that Truth, in the form of a fair woman, is placed on the rack, surrounded by the Cid and other forms, that rise from the earth about the scaffold on which she is tormented. There she is forced to give an account of things as they really exist, or have existed, and to discourse concerning shadowy multitudes, who pass, in sight of the company that surrounds her, over what seems to be a long bridge. The whole is, therefore, a satire in the form of a vision, but its character is consistently sustained only at the beginning and the end. The Cid, however, is much the same personage throughout,—bold, rough, and free-spoken. He is heartily dissatisfied with every thing he finds on earth, especially with the popular traditions and ballads about himself, and goes back to his grave well pleased to escape from such a world, “which,” he says, “if they would give it to me to live in, I would not accept.”[184]

Other works of Santos, like “The Devil let loose, or Truths of the other World dreamed about in this,” and “The Live Man and the Dead One,” are of the same sort with the last;[185] while yet others run even more to allegory, like his “Tarascas de Madrid,”[186] and his “Gigantones,”[187] suggested by the huge and unsightly forms led about to amuse or to frighten the multitude in the annual processions of the Corpus Christi;—the satirical interpretation he gives to them being, that worse monsters than the Tarascas might be seen every day in Madrid by those who could distinguish the sin and folly that always thronged the streets of that luxurious capital. But though such satires were successful when they first appeared, they have long since ceased to be so; partly because they abound in allusions to local circumstances now known only to the curiosity of antiquarians, and partly because, in all respects, they depict a state of society and manners of which hardly a vestige remains.

Santos is the last of the writers of Spanish tales previous to the eighteenth century that needs to be noticed.[188] But though the number we have gone over is large for the length of the period in which they appeared, not a few others might be added. The pastoral romances from the time of Montemayor are full of them;—the “Galatea” of Cervantes, and the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, being little more than a series of such stories, slightly bound together by yet another that connects them all. So are, to a certain degree, the picaresque fictions, like “Guzman de Alfarache” and “Marcos de Obregon”;—and so are such serious fictions as “The Wars of Granada” and “The Spanish Gerardo.” The popular drama, too, was near akin to the whole; as we have seen in the case of Timoneda, whose stories, before he produced them as tales, had already been exhibited in the form of farces on the rude stage of the public squares; and in the case of Cervantes, who not only put part of his tale of “The Captive” in “Don Quixote” into his second play of “Life in Algiers,” but constructed his story of “The Liberal Lover” almost wholly out of his earlier play on the same subject. Indeed, Spain, during the period we have gone over, was full of the spirit of this class of fictions,—not only producing them in great numbers, and strongly marked with the popular character, but carrying their tone into the longer romances and upon the stage to a degree quite unknown elsewhere.[189]

The most striking circumstance, however, connected with the history of all romantic fiction in Spain,—whatever form it assumed,—is its early appearance, and its early decay. The story of “Amadis” filled the world with its fame, when no other Spanish prose romance of chivalry was heard of; and, what is singular, though the oldest of its class, it still remains the best-written in any language;—while, on the other hand, the book that overthrew this same Amadis, with all his chivalry, is the “Don Quixote”; again, the oldest and best of all similar works, and one that is still read and admired by thousands who know nothing of the shadowy multitudes it destroyed, except what its great author tells them. The “Conde Lucanor” appeared full half a century earlier than the “Decamerone.” The “Diana” of Montemayor soon eclipsed its Italian prototype in popularity, and, for a time, shone without a successful rival of its class throughout Europe. The picaresque stories, exclusively Spanish from the very first, and the multitudes of tales that followed them with attributes hardly less separate and national, never lose their Spanish air and costume, even in the most successful of their foreign imitations. Taken together, the number of these fictions is very great;—so great, that their mass may well be called enormous. But what is more remarkable than their multitude is the fact, that they were produced when the rest of Europe, with a partial exception in favor of Italy, was not yet awakened to corresponding efforts of the imagination; before Madame de Lafayette had published her “Zayde”; before Sidney’s “Arcadia” had appeared, or D’UrfÉ’s “Astrea,” or Corneille’s “Cid,” or Le Sage’s “Gil Blas.” In short, they were at the height of their fame, just at the period when the HÔtel de Rambouillet reigned supreme over the taste of France, and when Hardy, following the indications of the public will and the example of his rivals, could do no better than bring out upon the stage of Paris nearly every one of the tales of Cervantes, and many of those of Cervantes’s rivals and contemporaries.[190]

But civilization and manners advanced in the rest of Europe rapidly from this moment, and paused in Spain. Madrid, instead of sending its influences to France, began itself to acknowledge the control of French literature and refinement. The creative spirit, therefore, ceased in Spanish romantic fiction, and, as we shall presently see, a spirit of French imitation took its place.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Eloquence, Forensic and Pulpit. — Luis de Leon. — Luis de Granada. — Paravicino and the School of Bad Taste. — Epistolary Correspondence. — Zurita. — Perez. — Santa Teresa. — Argensola. — Lope de Vega. — Quevedo. — Cascales. — Antonio. — SolÍs.

We shall hardly look for forensic or deliberative eloquence in Spain. The whole constitution of things there, the political and ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and, perhaps we should add, the very genius of the people, were unfriendly to the growth of a plant like this, which flourishes only in the soil of freedom.

The Spanish tribunals, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whether in the ordinary course of their administration of justice, or in the dark proceedings of the Inquisition, took less cognizance of the influences of eloquence than those of any other Christian country of modern times. They dealt with the wheel and the fagot,—not with the spirit of persuasion. Nor was this spirit truly known or favored in the political assemblies of the kingdom, though it was not supplanted there by the formidable instruments familiar in the courts of justice. In the ancient Cortes of Castile, and still more in those of Aragon, there may have been discussions which were raised by their fervor to something like what we now call deliberative eloquence. We have, in fact, intimations of such discussions in the old chronicles; especially in those that record the troubles and violence of the great nobles in the reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth. But a free, living debate on a great political principle, or on the conduct of those who managed the affairs of the country,—such a debate as sometimes shook the popular assemblies of antiquity, and in modern times has often controlled the destinies of Christendom,—was, in Spain, a thing absolutely unknown.

Even the grave and dry discussions, to which the pressure of affairs gave rise, were rare and accidental. There was no training for them; and they could be followed by none of the great practical results that are at once the only sufficient motive and reward that can make them enter freely into the institutions of a state. Indeed, whatever there was of discussion in any open assembly could occur only in the earlier period of the monarchy, when the language and culture of the nation were still too little advanced to produce specimens of careful debate; for from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and the days of the Comunidades, the Cortes were gradually restrained in their privileges, until at last they ceased to be any thing but a part of the pageantry of the empire, and served only to record the laws they should themselves have discussed and modelled. From this period, all opportunity for the growth of political eloquence in Spain was lost. It would have been no more tolerated by one of the Philips than Lutheranism.

The eloquence of the pulpit was checked by similar causes, but in a different way. The Catholic religion has maintained in Spain, down to a late period, more than it has in any other country, the character it had during the Middle Ages. It has been to an extraordinary degree a religion of mysteries, of forms, and of penance;—a religion, therefore, in which such modes of moving the understanding and the heart as have prevailed in France and England since the middle of the seventeenth century have been rarely attempted, and never with great success.

If any exception is to be made to this remark, it must be made in the case of Luis de Leon and in that of Luis de Granada. Of the first we have already spoken. He printed, indeed, no sermons as such; but he inserted in his other works, and especially in his “Names of Christ” and in his “Perfect Wife,” long declamations, sometimes preceded by a text and sometimes not, but regularly divided into heads, and wearing the general appearance and attributes of religious discourses. These, since they were printed as early as 1584, may be accounted the earliest specimens of Spanish eloquence fitted for the pulpit, and, if not actually delivered, are still worthy of notice.[191]

The case of Luis de Granada is one more directly in point. That remarkable man was head of the Dominican order, or the order of the Preaching Monks, so that both his place and his profession led him to the cultivation of the eloquence of the pulpit. But, besides this, he seems to have devoted himself to it with the strong preference of genius, preaching extemporaneously, it is said, with great power and unction. In 1576, he published a Latin treatise on the subject of Pulpit Eloquence; and in 1595, after his death, his friends printed, in addition to those published during his lifetime, fourteen of his more formal discourses, in which he has been thought, not only to have given a full illustration of the precepts he inculcated, but to have placed himself at the head of the department of eloquence to which he devoted so much of his life.

They are in a bold and affluent style,—somewhat mystical, as were his own religious tendencies,—and often more declamatory than seems in keeping with the severe and solemn nature of their subjects; but they are written with remarkable purity of idiom, and breathe everywhere the spirit of the religion that was so deeply impressed on his age and country. Perhaps a more characteristic specimen of Spanish eloquence can hardly be found, than that in which Luis de Granada describes the resurrection of the Saviour; adding to it his descent into hell to rescue the souls of the righteous who were pining there because they had died before his great sacrifice was completed,—a doctrine of the Catholic Church capable of high poetical ornament, and one which, from the time of Dante, has been often set forth with the most solemn effect.

“On that glorious day,” exclaims Luis de Granada, in his sermon on the Resurrection, “the sun shone more brightly than on all others, serving its Lord in dutiful splendor amidst his rejoicings, as it had served him in darkness through his sufferings. The heavens, which had been veiled in mourning to hide his agonies, were now bright with redoubled glory as they saw him rise conquering from the grave. And who would not rejoice in such a day? The whole humanity of Christ rejoiced in it; all the disciples of Christ rejoiced in it; heaven rejoiced, earth rejoiced; hell itself shared in the general jubilee. For the triumphant Prince descended into its depths, clothed with splendor and might. The everlasting darkness grew bright before his steps; the eternal lamentations ceased; the realms of torment paused at his approach. The princes of Edom were disturbed, and the mighty men of Moab trembled, and they that dwelt in the land of Canaan were filled with fear. And the multitude of the suffering murmured and said, ‘Who is this mighty one, so resplendent, so powerful? Never before was his likeness seen in these realms of hell; never hath the tributary world sent such a one to these depths,—one who demands judgment, not a debtor; one who fills us with dread, not one guilty like ourselves; a judge, and not a culprit; a conqueror, not a sinner. Say, where were our watchmen and our guards, when he burst in victory on our barred gates? By what might has he entered? And who is he, that can do these things? If he were guilty, he were not thus bold; if the shade of sin lay on his soul, how could our darkness be made bright with his glory? If he be God, why should hell receive him? and if he be man, whence hath he this might? If he be God, why dwelt he in the grave? and if man, by what authority would he thus lay waste our abodes?’

“Thus murmured the vassals of hell, as the Conqueror entered in glory to free his chosen captives. For there stood they, all assembled together,—all the souls of the just, who from the foundation of the world till that day had passed through the gates of the grave; all the prophets and men of might who had glorified the Lord in the manifold agonies of martyrdom;—a glorious company!—a mighty treasure!—the richest inheritance of Christ’s triumph! For there stood the two original parents of the generations of mankind,—the first in sin and the first in faith and hope. There stood that aged saint who rescued in the ark of safety those that repeopled the world when the waters of the deluge were spent. There stood the father of the faithful, who first received by merit the revelation of God’s will, and wore, in his person, the marks of his election. There stood his obedient son, who, bearing on his shoulders the wood of his own sacrifice, showed forth the redemption of the world. There stood the holy progenitor of the Twelve Tribes, who, winning his father’s blessing in the stranger guise of another’s garb, set forth the mystery of the humanity and incarnation of the Divine Word. There stood, also, as it were, guests newly arrived in that strange land, the Holy Baptist and the blessed Simeon, who prayed that he might not be taken from the earth till with his own eyes he had seen its salvation; who received it in his arms, and sang gently its canticle of peace. And there, too, found a place the poor Lazarus of the Gospel, who, for the patience with which he bore his wounds, deserved to join so noble a company, and share its longing hopes. And all this multitude of sanctified spirits stood there mourning and grieving for this day; and in the midst of them all, and as the leader of them all, the holy king and prophet repeated without ceasing his ancient lamentation: ‘As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God! My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?’ O blessed and holy king, if this be the cause of thy lamentation, let it cease for ever; for behold thy God! behold thy Saviour! Change, then, thy chant, and sing as thou wast wont to sing of old: ‘Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land; thou hast pardoned the offences of thy people; thou hast hidden thy face from the multitude of their sins.’”[192]

It would not be easy to select a more striking example than this of the peculiar rhetoric that was most sought in the Spanish pulpit. But the portions of equal merit are few, and the amount of the whole is small. After the beginning of the seventeenth century, the affected style of GÓngora and the conceits of the school of Ledesma found their way into the churches generally, and especially into the churches of Madrid. This was natural. No persons depended more on the voice of fashion than the preachers of the court and the capital, and the fashion of both was thoroughly infected with the new doctrines. Paravicino, at this period, was at the head of the popular preachers; himself a poet devoted to the affectations of GÓngora; a man of wit, a gentleman, and a courtier. From 1616 he was, during twenty years, pulpit orator to Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, and enjoyed, as such, a kind and degree of popularity before unknown. As might have been expected, he had many followers, each of whom sought to have a fashionable audience. Such audiences were soon systematically provided. They were, in fact, collected, arranged, and seated by the friends and admirers of the preacher himself,—generally by those who, from their ecclesiastical relations, had an interest in his success; and then the crowds thus gathered were induced in different ways to express their approbation of the more elaborate passages in his discourse. From this time, and in this way, religious dignity disappeared from the Spanish pulpit, and whatever there was of value in its eloquence was confined to two forms,—the learned discussions, often in Latin, addressed to bodies of ecclesiastics, and the extemporaneous exhortations addressed to the lower classes;—the latter popular and vehement in their tone, and, by their coarseness, generally unworthy of the solemn subjects they touched.[193]

There is little in Spanish epistolary correspondence that requires notice as a portion of the elegant literature of the country. The heartiness of a simpler age gives, indeed, a charm to such letters as those which claim to have been written by Cibdareal, and in a less degree to those of Pulgar and Diego de Valera. Later, the despatches of Columbus, in which he made known to the world his vast discoveries, are occasionally marked by the fervor of an enthusiasm inspired by his great subject; and those of his queen and patron, though few in number and less interesting, are quite as characteristic and quite as true-hearted.

But, with the stately court brought from the North by Charles the Fifth, all this was changed. Added forms, and more than the old national gravity, passed into the intercourse of social life, and infected the style of the commonest correspondence. Genial familiarity disappeared from the letters of friends, and even private affections and feelings were either seldom expressed, or were so covered up as to be with difficulty recognized. Thus, what was most valued in this department at the time, and for a century afterwards, were Guevara’s “Golden Epistles,” which are only formal dissertations, and the “Epistles” of Avila, which are sermons in disguise, that moved the hearts of his countrymen because they were such earnest exhortations to a religious life.[194]

From these remarks, however, we should except portions of the correspondence of Zurita, the historian, extending over the last thirty years of his life, and ending in 1582, just before his death. They give us the business-like intercourse of a man of letters, carried on with all classes of society, from ministers of state and the highest ecclesiastics of the realm down to persons distinguished only because they were occupied in studies like his own. The number of letters in this collection is large, amounting to above two hundred. More of them are from Antonio Agustin, Archbishop of Tarragona, an eminent scholar in Spanish history and civil law, than from any other person; but the most interesting are from Zurita himself, from his friend Ambrosio Morales, from Diego de Mendoza, the historian, Argote de Molina, the antiquarian, and Fernan NuÑez, the Greek Commander. Each of these series is marked by something characteristic of its author, and all of them, taken together, show more familiarly the interior condition of a scholar’s life in Spain, in the sixteenth century, than it can be found anywhere else.[195]

But the principal exception to be made in favor of Spanish epistolary correspondence is found in the case of Antonio Perez, secretary of Philip the Second, and for some time his favorite minister. His father, who was a scholar, and made a translation of the “Odyssey,”[196] had been in the employment of Charles the Fifth, so that the younger Perez inherited somewhat of the court influence which was then so important; but his rapid advancement was owing to his own genius, and to a love of intrigue and adventure, which seemed to be a part of his nature. At last, in 1578, at the command of his master, he not unwillingly brought about the murder of Escovedo, a person high in the confidence of Don John of Austria, whose growing influence it was thought worth while thus to curtail;—a crime which, perpetrated as it was in consequence of the official connection of the secretary with the monarch, brought Perez to the very height of his favor.

But it was not long before the guilty agent became as unwelcome to his guilty master as their victim had been. A change in their relations followed, cautiously brought on by the unscrupulous king, but deep and entire. At first, Philip permitted Perez to be pursued by the kinsmen of the murdered man, and afterwards, contriving plausible pretexts for hiding his motives, began himself to join in the persecution. Eleven long years the wretched courtier was watched, vexed, and imprisoned, at Madrid; and once, at least, he was subjected to cruel bodily tortures. When he could endure this no longer, he fled to Aragon, his native kingdom, whose freer political constitution did not permit him to be crushed in secret. This was a great surprise to Philip, and, for an instant, seems to have disconcerted his dark schemes. But his resources were equal to the emergency. He pursued Perez to Saragossa, and finding the regular means of justice unequal to the demands of his vengeance, caused his victim to be seized by the Inquisition, under the absurd charge of heresy. But this, again, in the form in which Philip found it necessary to proceed, was a violation of the ancient privileges of the kingdom, and the people broke out into open rebellion, and released Perez from prison;—a consequence of his measures, which, perhaps, was neither unforeseen by Philip nor unwelcome to him. At any rate, he immediately sent an army into Aragon, sufficient, not only to overwhelm all open resistance, but to strike a terror that should prevent future opposition to his will; and the result, besides a vast number of rich confiscations to the royal treasury, was the condemnation of sixty-eight persons of distinction to death by the Inquisition, and the final overthrow of nearly every thing that remained of the long-cherished liberties of the country.

Meantime, Perez escaped secretly from Saragossa, as he had before escaped from Madrid, and, wandering over the Pyrenees in the disguise of a shepherd, sought refuge in Bearn, at the little court of Catherine of Bourbon, sister of Henry the Fourth. Public policy caused him to be well received both there and in France, where he afterwards passed the greater part of his long exile. During the troubles between Elizabeth and Philip, he instinctively went to England, and, while there, was much with Essex, and became more familiar with Bacon than the wise and pious mother of the future chancellor thought it well one so profligate as Perez should be. Philip, who could ill endure the idea of having such a witness of his crimes intriguing at the courts of his great enemies, endeavoured to have Perez assassinated both in Paris and London, and failed more from accident than from want of well-concerted plans to accomplish his object.

At last peace came between France and England on one side, and Spain on the other; and Perez ceased to be a person of consequence to those who had so long used him. Henry the Fourth, indeed, with his customary good nature, still indulged him even in very extravagant modes of life, which rather resembled those of a prince than of an exile. But his claims were so unreasonable, and were urged with such boldness and pertinacity, that every body wearied of him. He therefore fell into unhonored poverty, and dragged out the miserable life of a neglected courtier till 1611, when he died at Paris. Four years later, the Inquisition, which had caused him to be burnt in effigy as a heretic, reluctantly did him the imperfect justice of removing their anathemas from his memory, and thus permitted his children to enter into civil rights, of which nothing but the most shameless violence had ever deprived them.

From the time of his first imprisonment, Perez began to write the letters that are still extant; and their series never stops, till we approach the period of his death. Some of them are to his wife and children; others, to Gil de Mesa, his confidential friend and agent; and others, to persons high in place, from whose influence he hoped to gain favor. His Narratives, or “Relations,” as he calls them, and his “Memorial” on his own case, occasionally involve other letters, and are themselves in the nature of long epistles, written with great talent and still greater ingenuity, to gain the favor of his judges or of the world. All these, some of which his position forbade him ever to send to the persons to whom they were addressed, he carefully preserved, and during his exile published them from time to time to suit his own political purposes;—at first anonymously, or under the assumed name of Raphael Peregrino; afterwards under the seeming editorship of his friend Mesa; and finally, without disguise of any sort, dedicating some of them to Henry the Fourth, and some to the Pope.

Their number is large, amounting in the most ample collection to above a thousand pages. The best are those that are most familiar; for even in the slightest of them, as when he is sending a present of gloves to Lady Rich, or a few new-fashioned toothpicks to the Duke of Mayenne, there is a nice preservation of the Castilian proprieties of expression. Many of them sparkle with genius; sometimes most unexpectedly, though not always in good taste; Thus, to his innocent wife, shamefully kept in prison during his exile, he says: “Though you are not allowed to write to me, or to enjoy what to the absent is the breath of life; yet here [in France] there is no punishment for the promptings of natural affection. I answer, therefore, what I hear in the spirit, your complaints of the punishment laid on your own virtues and on the innocence of your children,—complaints, which reach me from that asylum of darkness and of the shadow of death, in which you now lie. But when I listen, it seems as if I ought to hear you no less with my outward ears, just as the words and cries that come from the caves under the earth only resound the louder, as they are rolled up to us from their dark hiding-places.”[197] And again, when speaking of the cruel conduct of his judges to his family, he breaks out: “But let them not be deceived. Their victims may be imprisoned and loaded with irons; but they have the two mightiest advocates of the earth to defend them,—their innocence and their wrongs. For neither could Cicero nor Demosthenes so pierce the ears of men, nor so stir up their minds, nor so shake the frame of things, as can these two, to whom God has given the especial privilege to stand for ever in his presence, to cry for justice, and to be witnesses and advocates for one another in whatsoever he has reserved for his own awful judgment.”[198]

The letters of Perez are in a great variety of styles, from the cautious and yet fervent appeals that he made to Philip the Second, down to the gallant notes he wrote to court ladies, and the overflowings of his heart to his young children. But they are all written in remarkably idiomatic Castilian, and are rendered interesting from the circumstance, that in each class there is a strict observance of such conventional forms as were required by the relative social positions of the author and his correspondents.[199]

The letters of Santa Teresa, who was a contemporary of the secretary of Philip the Second, and died in 1582, are entirely different; for while nothing can be more practical and worldly than those of Perez, the letters of the devout nun are entirely spiritual. She believed herself to be inspired, and therefore wrote with an air of authority, which is almost always solemn and imposing, but which sometimes, through its very boldness and freedom from all restraint, becomes easy and graceful. Her talents were versatile and her perceptions acute. To each of her many correspondents she says something that seems suited to the occasion on which she is consulted;—a task not easy for a nun, who lived forty-seven years in retirement from the world, and during that time was called upon to give advice to archbishops and bishops, to wise and able statesmen like Diego de Mendoza, to men of genius like Luis de Granada, to persons in private life who were in deep affliction or in great danger, and to women in the ordinary course of their daily lives. Her letters fill four volumes, and though, in general, they are only to be regarded as fervent exhortations or religious teachings, still, by the purity, beauty, and womanly grace of their style, they may fairly claim a distinguished place in the epistolary literature of her country.[200]

Some portions of the correspondence of BartolomÉ de Argensola about 1625, of Lope de Vega before 1630, and of Quevedo a little later, have been preserved to us; but they are too inconsiderable in amount to have much value. Of Cascales, the rhetorician, we have more. In 1634, he printed three Decades of Letters; but they are almost entirely devoted to discussions of points that involve learned lore; and, even where they are not such, they are stiff and formal. A few by Nicolas Antonio, the literary historian, who died in 1684, are plain and business-like, but are written in a hard style, that prevents them from being interesting. Those of SolÍs, who closes up the century and the period, are better. They are such as belong to the intercourse of an old man, left to struggle through the last years of a long life with poverty and misfortune, and express the feelings becoming his situation, both with philosophical calmness and Christian resignation.[201]

But no writer in the history of Spanish epistolary correspondence can be compared for acuteness and brilliancy with Antonio Perez, or for eloquence with Santa Teresa.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Historical Composition. — Zurita, Morales, Ribadeneyra, Siguenza, Mariana, Sandoval, Herrera, Argensola, the Inca Garcilasso, Mendoza, Moncada, Coloma, Melo, Saavedra, SolÍs. — General Remarks on the Spanish Historians.

The fathers of Spanish history, as distinguished from Spanish chronicling, are Zurita and Morales, both of whom, educated in the reign of Charles the Fifth, show that they were not insensible to the influences of that great period in the annals of their country, and both of whom, after its close, prepared and published their works under the happiest auspices.

Zurita was born in Saragossa in 1512, and died there in 1580; so that he had the happiness to live while the political privileges of his native kingdom were yet little impaired, and to die just before they were effectually broken down. His father was a favored physician of Ferdinand the Catholic, and accompanied that monarch to Naples in 1506. The son, who showed from early youth a great facility in the acquisition of knowledge, was educated at the University of AlcalÁ, where it was his good fortune to have, for his chief instructor, Fernan NuÑez, who was commonly called the Greek Commander, from the circumstance, that, while his position in the state as a member of the great family of the Guzmans made him Knight Commander of the Order of Santiago, his personal acquisitions and talents rendered him the first Greek scholar of his age and country.

As the elder Zurita continued to be much trusted by Charles the Fifth, and as his son’s connections were chiefly with persons of great consideration, the progress of the future historian was, at first, rather in the direction of public affairs. But in 1548, under circumstances peculiarly honorable to him, he was appointed historiographer of Aragon; being elected unanimously by the free Cortes of the kingdom to the office, which they had just established, and as a candidate for which he had to encounter the most powerful and learned competitors. The election seems to have satisfied his ambition, and to have given a new direction to his life. At any rate, he immediately procured a royal warrant to examine and use all documents needful for his purpose that could be found in any part of the empire. Under this broad authority he went over much of Spain, consulting and arranging the great national records at Simancas, and then visited Sicily and Naples, from whose monasteries and public archives he obtained further ample and learned spoils.

The result was, that between 1562 and 1580 he published, in six folio volumes, “The Annals of Aragon,” from the invasion of the country by the Arabs to 1516, the last third of his labor being entirely given to the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, for which the recollections of his father’s life at the court of that monarch probably afforded some of the more interesting materials. The whole work is more important for Spanish history than any that had preceded it. It has hardly any thing of the monkish credulity of the old chronicles, for Zurita was a man of the world, and always concerned in the stirring interests of his time; first, from having been intrusted with the municipal affairs of one of the principal cities of the kingdom; next, from being charged with the general correspondence of the Inquisition; and finally, from his duties as one of the secretaries of Philip the Second, which kept him much at court and about the king’s person. It shows, too, not unfrequently, a love for the ancient privileges of Aragon, and a generosity of opinion on political subjects, remarkable in one who was aware that whatever he wrote would not only be submitted before its publication to the censorship of jealous rivals, but read by the wary and severe monarch on whom all his fortunes depended. Its faults are its great length and a carelessness of style, scarcely regarded as faults at the time when it was written.[202]

Morales, who was an admirer of Zurita, and defended him from one of his assailants in a tract published at the end of the last volume of the “Annals of Aragon,” was born in 1513, a year after his friend, and died in 1591, having survived him by eleven years. He was educated at Salamanca, and, besides early obtaining Church preferments and distinctions, rose subsequently to eminence as a Professor in the University of AlcalÁ. But from 1570, when he was appointed historiographer to the crown of Castile, he devoted himself to the completion of the History begun on so vast a scale by Ocampo, whose work he seems to have taken up in some degree out of regard for the memory of its author.

He began his task, however, too late. He was already sixty-seven years old, and when he died, eleven years afterwards, he had been able to bring it down no further than to the union of the crowns of Castile and Leon, in 1037,—a point from which it was afterwards carried, by Sandoval, to the death of Alfonso the Seventh, in 1097, where it finally stops. Imperfect, however, as is the portion compiled in his old age by Morales, we can hardly fail to regard it, not, indeed, as so wise and well-weighed an historical composition as that of Zurita, but as one marked with much more general ability, and showing a much more enlightened spirit, than the work of Ocampo, to which it serves as a continuation. Its style, unhappily, is wanting in correctness;—a circumstance the more to be noticed, since Morales valued himself on his pure Castilian, both as the son of a gentleman of high caste, and as the nephew of Fernan de Oliva, by whom he was educated, and whose works he had published because they had done so much to advance prose composition in Spain.[203]

Contemporary with both Zurita and Morales, but far in advance of both of them as a writer of history, was the old statesman, Diego de Mendoza, whose fresh and vigorous account of the rebellion of the Moors in 1568 we have already considered, noticing it rather at the period when it was written than at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was first given to the world, and when Siguenza, Ribadeneyra, Mariana, Sandoval, and Herrera had already appeared, and determined the character which should be finally impressed on this department of Spanish literature.

Of this group, the first two, who devoted themselves to ecclesiastical history, and entered into the religious discussions of their time, were, perhaps, originally the most prominent. Ribadeneyra, one of the early and efficient members of the Society of Jesuits, distinguished himself by his “History of the Schism in the English Church,” in the time of Henry the Eighth, and by his “Lives of the Saints.” Siguenza, who was a disciple of Saint Jerome, was no less faithful to the brotherhood by whom he was adopted and honored, as his life of their founder and his history of their Order abundantly prove. Both were men of uncommon gifts, and wrote with a manly and noble eloquence; the first with more richness and fervor, the last with a more simple dignity, but each with the earnest and trusting spirit of his peculiar faith.[204]

From the nature of their subjects, however, neither of them rose to be the great historian of his country;—an honor which belongs to Juan de Mariana, a foundling, who was born at Talavera in 1536, and whose extraordinary talents attracted the attention of the Jesuits, then fast advancing into notice as a religious power. Having gone through a severe course of studies at AlcalÁ, he was selected, at the age of twenty-four, to fill the most important place in the great college which the members of his society were then establishing at Rome, and which they regarded as one of their principal institutions for consolidating and extending their influence. After five years, he was removed to Sicily, to introduce similar studies into that island; and, a little later, he was transferred to Paris, where he was received with honor, and taught for several years, lecturing chiefly on the works and opinions of Thomas Aquinas, to crowded audiences. But the climate of France was unfriendly to his health, and in 1574, having spent thirteen years in foreign countries, as a public instructor, he returned to Spain, and established himself in the house of his order at Toledo, which he hardly left during the forty-nine remaining years of his life.

This long period, which he devoted to literary labor, was not, however, permitted to be as peaceful as his merits should have made it. The Polyglot Bible published by Arias Montano at Antwerp, in 1569-72,—which was at first received with great favor, but afterwards, by the intrigues of the Jesuits, was denounced to the Inquisition,—excited so bitter a quarrel, that it was deemed necessary to inquire into the truth of the charges brought against it. By the management of the Jesuits, Mariana was the principal person employed to make the investigation; and, through his learning and influence, they felt sure of a triumph. But though he was a faithful Jesuit, he was not a subservient one. His decision was in favor of Montano; and this, together with the circumstance that he did not follow the intimations given to him when he was employed in arranging the Index Expurgatorius of 1584, brought upon him the displeasure of his superiors in a way that caused him much trouble.[205]

In 1599, he published a Latin treatise on the Institution of Royalty, and dedicated it to Philip the Third;—a work liberal in its general political tone, and even intimating that there are cases in which it may be lawful to put a monarch to death. At home, it caused little remark. It was regularly approved by the censors of the press, and is even said to have been favored by the policy of the government, which, in the time of Philip the Second, had sent assassins to cut off Elizabeth of England and the Prince of Orange. But in France, where Henry the Third had been thus put to death a few years before, and where Henry the Fourth suffered a similar fate a few years afterwards, it excited a great sensation. Indeed, the sixth chapter of the first book directly mentions, and by implication countenances, the murder of the former of these monarchs, and was claimed, though contrary to the truth of fact, to have been among the causes that stimulated Ravaillac to the assassination of the latter. It was, therefore, both attacked and defended with extraordinary acrimony; and at last the Parliament of Paris ordered it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman. What was more unfortunate for its author, the whole discussion having brought much popular odium on the Jesuits, who were held responsible for a book which was written by one of their order, and could not have been published without permission of its heads, Mariana himself became more than ever unwelcome to the great body of his religious associates.[206]

At last, an occasion was found where he could be assailed without assigning the reasons for the attack. In 1609, he published, not in Spain, but at Cologne, seven Latin treatises on various subjects of theology and criticism, such as the state of the Spanish theatre, the Arab computation of time, and the year and day of the Saviour’s birth. Most of them were of a nature that could provoke no animadversion; but one, “On Mortality and Immortality,” was seized upon for theological censure, and another, “On the Coinage of the Realm,” was assailed on political grounds, because it showed how unwise and scandalous had been the practices of the reigning favorite, the Duke of Lerma, in tampering with the currency and debasing it. The Inquisition took cognizance of both; and their author, though then seventy-three years old, was subjected first to confinement, and afterwards to penance, for his offences. Both works were placed at once on the Index Expurgatorius; and Philip the Third gave orders to collect and destroy as many copies as possible of the volume in which they were contained. As Lope de Vega said, “His country did not pardon the most learned Mariana when he erred.”

His treatment on this occasion was undoubtedly the more severe, because among his papers was found a treatise “On the Errors in the Government of the Society of Jesuits,” which was not printed till after its author’s death, and then with no friendly views to the order.[207] But the firm spirit of Mariana was not broken by his persecutions. He went forward with his literary labors to the last; and when he died, in 1623, it was of the infirmities which his extreme age had naturally brought with it. He was eighty-seven years old.

The main occupation of the last thirty or forty years of his life was his great History. In the foreign countries where he had long lived, the earlier annals of Spain were so little known to the learned men with whom he had been associated, that, as a Spaniard, he had felt mortified by an ignorance which seemed disrespectful to his country. He determined, therefore, to do something that should show the world by what manly steps Spain had come into the larger interests of Europe, and to prove by her history that she deserved the consideration she had, from the time of Charles the Fifth, everywhere enjoyed. He began his work, therefore, in Latin, that all Christendom might be able to read it, and in 1592 published, in that language, twenty out of thirty of the books, of which it consists.

But, even before he had printed the other ten books, which appeared in 1609, he was fortunately induced, like Cardinal Bembo, to become his own translator, and to give his work to his countrymen in the pure Castilian of Toledo. In doing this, he enjoyed a great advantage. He might use a freedom in his version that could be claimed by no one else; for he had not only a right to change the phraseology and arrangement, but, whenever he saw fit, he might modify the opinions of a book which was as much his own in the one language as in the other. His “Historia de EspaÑa,” therefore, the first part of which appeared in 1601, has all the air and merit of an original work; and in the successive editions published under his own direction, and especially in the fourth, which appeared the very year of his death, it was gradually enlarged, enriched, and in every way improved, until it became, what it has remained ever since, the proudest monument erected to the history of his country.[208]

It begins with the supposed peopling of Spain by Tubal, the son of Japhet, and comes down to the death of Ferdinand the Catholic and the accession of Charles the Fifth; to all which Mariana himself afterwards added a compressed abstract of the course of events to 1621, when Philip the Fourth ascended the throne. It was a bold undertaking, and in some respects is marked with the peculiar spirit of its age. In weighing the value of authorities, for instance, he has been less careful than became the high office he had assumed. He follows Ocampo, and especially Garibay,—credulous compilers of old fables, who were his own contemporaries,—confessing freely that he thought it safest and best to take the received traditions of the country, unless obvious reasons called upon him to reject them. His manner, too, is, in a few particulars, open to remark. In the beautiful dedication of the Spanish version of his History to Philip the Third, he admits that antiquated words occasionally adhere to his style, from his familiar study of the old writers; and Saavedra, who was pleased to find fault with him, says, that, as other people dye their beards to make themselves look young, Mariana dyed his to make himself look old.[209]

But there is another side to all this. His willing belief in the old chronicles, tempered, as it necessarily is, by his great learning, gives an air of true-heartedness and good faith to his accounts, and a picturesqueness to his details, which are singularly attractive; while, at the same time, his occasional antiquated words and phrases, so well suited to such views of his subject, add to the idiomatic richness, in which, among Spanish prose compositions, the style of Mariana is all but unrivalled. His narratives—the most important part of an historical work of this class—are peculiarly flowing, free, and impressive. The accounts of the wars of Hannibal, in the second book; those of the irruption of the Northern nations, with which the fifth opens; the conspiracy of John de Procida, in the fourteenth; the last scenes in the troubled life of Peter the Cruel, in the seventeenth; and most of the descriptions of the leading events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, towards the conclusion of the work, give abundant proof of this peculiar historical talent. They seem instinct with life and movement.

His formal speeches, in which he made Livy his model, are, generally, less fortunate. Most of them want individuality and appropriateness. But the one which in the fifth book he has given to Ruy Lope Davalos, when that nobleman offers the crown of Castile to the Infante Don Ferdinand, is remarkable for the courageous spirit in which it discusses the foundations of all political government, and leaves the rights of kings to rest on the assent of their subjects;—a boldness, it should be added, which is apparent in many other parts of his history, as it was in much of his life.

The characters he has drawn of the prominent personages that, from time to time, come to the front of the stage, are almost always short, sketched with a few touches, and struck off with the hand of a master. Such are those of Alvaro de Luna, Alfonso the Wise, and the unhappy Prince of Viana, in which so few words could hardly be made to express more.

As a general remark, a certain nobleness of air and carriage, not, perhaps, without something of the old Castilian sturdiness, but never without its dignity, is the characteristic that most prevails throughout the whole work; and this, with its admirably idiomatic style,—so full, yet so unencumbered, so pure and yet so rich,—renders it, if not the most trustworthy of annals, at least the most remarkable union of picturesque chronicling with sober history, that the world has ever seen.[210]

Sandoval, who was one of the salaried chroniclers of the monarchy, and who, in that capacity, prepared the continuation of Morales, already noticed, seems to have been willing to constitute himself the successor of Mariana, and prosecute the general history of Spain where that eloquent Jesuit was likely to leave it, rather than from the point where he had himself officially taken it up. At least he began there, and wrote an elaborate life of Charles the Fifth. But it is too long. It fills as many pages as the entire work of Mariana, and, though written with simplicity, is not attractive in its style. His prejudices are strong and obvious. Not only the monk,—for he was a Benedictine, and enjoyed successively two very rich bishoprics,—but the courtier of Philip the Third, is constantly apparent. He lays the whole crime of the assault and capture of Rome upon the Constable de Bourbon; and, besides tracing the Austrian family distinctly to Adam, he connects its honors genealogically with those of Hercules and Dardanus. Still, the History of Sandoval is a documentary work of authority much relied on by Robertson, and one that, on the whole, by its ample and minute details, gives a more satisfactory account of the reign of Charles the Fifth than any other single history extant. It was first published in 1604-6, and its author died at the end of 1620 or the beginning of 1621.[211]

After this, no important and connected work on the history of Spain, that falls within the domain of elegant literature, appeared for a long period.[212] Portions of Spanish history, and portions of the history of Spanish discovery and conquest in the East and the West, were indeed published from time to time, but the official chroniclers of the crowns of Castile and Aragon no longer felt themselves bound to go on with the great works of their predecessors, and the decaying spirit of the monarchy made no earnest demands on others to tread in their steps. Some, however, of these historians of the outposts of an empire which now extended round the globe, and some of the accounts of isolated events in its annals at home, should be noticed.

Of this class, the first in importance and the most comprehensive in character is “The General History of the Indies,” by Antonio de Herrera. It embraces the period from the first discovery of America to the year 1554; and as Herrera was a practised writer, and, from his official position as historiographer to the Indies, had access to every source of information known in his time, his work, which was printed in 1601, is of great value. But he was the author of other historical works, for which his qualifications and resources were less satisfactory and his prejudices more abundant;—such as a “History of the World during the Reign of Philip the Second,” a History of the affairs of England and Scotland, during the unhappy times of Mary Stuart; a History of the League in France; and a History of the affair of Antonio Perez and the troubles that followed it;—all written under the influence of contemporary passions, and all published between 1589 and 1612, before any of these passions had been much tranquillized.

It is sufficient to say of them, that, in the case of Antonio Perez, Herrera suppresses nearly every one of the important facts that tend to the justification of that remarkable man; and that, by way of a glorious termination to his Universal History, he gives Philip the Second, in his death-struggles, miraculous assistance from heaven, to enable him to end his long and holy life by an act of devotion. Herrera’s chief reputation, therefore, as an historian, must rest upon his great work on the Discovery and Conquest of America, in which, indeed, his style, nowhere rich or powerful, seems better and more effective than it is in his other attempts at historical composition. He died in 1625, above seventy-six years old, much valued by Philip the Fourth, as he had been by that monarch’s father and grandfather.[213]

But the East, as well as the West, was now opened to Spanish adventure. The conquest of Portugal had brought the Oriental dependencies of that kingdom under the authority of the Spanish crown; and as the Count de Lemos, the great patron of letters in his time, and President of the Council of the Indies, chanced to have his attention particularly drawn in that direction, he commanded the younger of the Argensolas to write an account of the Moluccas. The poet obeyed, and published his work in 1609, dedicating it to Philip the Third. It is one of the most pleasing of the minor Spanish histories; full of the traditions found among the natives by the Portuguese, when they first landed, and of the wild adventures that followed when they had taken possession of the islands. Parts of it are, indeed, inconsistent with the nature of the civilization they found there, such as formal and eloquent harangues attributed to the natives; while other parts, like some of its love-stories, are romantic enough to be suspected of invention, even if they are true. But, in general, the work is written in an agreeable poetical style, such as is not unbefitting an account of the mysterious isles

striving, for a long time, to hide from the competition of other nations the history and resources of the oppressed race whom they compelled to minister to their love of gain.[214]

Quite as uncertain in authority and less elegant in style are the histories of Garcilasso de la Vega,—a gentle and trusting spirit rather than a wise one; proud of being a captain in the service of the king of Spain, and allied, as a son of one of the unscrupulous conquerors of Peru, to the great house of Infantado; but always betraying the weaker nature of his mother, who was of the blood royal of the Incas, and never entirely forgetting the glories of his Indian race, or the cruel injuries they had suffered at the hands of Spain. He was born at “Cuzco, in Peru, the seat of Atabalipa,” in 1540, and was educated there, amidst the tumults of the conquest; but, when he was twenty years old, he was sent to Spain, where, under difficult and trying circumstances, he maintained an honorable reputation during a life protracted to the age of seventy-six.

The military part of his personal history, which consisted of service under Don John of Austria against the Moriscos of Granada, was not of much consequence, though he seems to have valued himself upon it not a little. The part he gave to letters was more interesting and important. This portion he began, in 1590, with a translation of the “Dialogues on Love,” by Abarbanel, a Platonizing Jew, whose family had been expelled from Spain in the persecution under Ferdinand and Isabella, and who in Italy had published this singular work under the name of “The Hebrew Lion.” The attempt, so far as Garcilasso was concerned, was not a fortunate one. The Dialogues, which enjoyed considerable popularity at the time, had been already printed in Spanish,—a fact evidently unknown to him; and though, as it appears from a subsequent statement by himself, he had obtained for his translation the favorable regard of Philip the Second, still there was an odor both of Judaism and heathen free-thinking about it, that rendered it obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities of the state. Garcilasso’s first work, therefore, was speedily placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and was rarely heard of afterwards.

His next attempt was on a subject in which he had a nearer interest. It was a “History of Florida,” or rather of the first discovery of that country, and was published in 1605,—a work which, when, twenty years before, he spoke of writing it, he appropriately called “The Expedition of Fernando de Soto”; since the adventures of that extraordinary man, and his strange fate, not only form its most brilliant and attractive portion, but constitute nearly the whole of its substance. In this Garcilasso was more successful than he was in his version from the Italian; and his “History of Florida,” as it is still called, has been often reprinted since.

But, in his old age, his heart turned more and more to the thoughts and feelings of his youth, and, gathering together the few materials he could collect from among his kinsmen on the Pacific, as well as from the stores of his own memory and the records already accumulated in Spain, he published, in 1609, the first part of his “Commentaries on Peru”; the second of which, though licensed for the press in 1613, did not appear till 1617, the year after its author’s death. It is a garrulous, gossiping book, written in a diffuse style, and abounding in matters personal to himself. In its very division, he acknowledges frankly the conflicting claims that he felt were upon him. The earlier half, he says, relates to the eighteen Incas known to Peruvian history, and contains an account of the traditions of the country, its institutions, manners, and general character; all which he offers as a tribute due to his descent from the Children of the Sun. The remainder—which, with many episodes and much irrelevant, but not always unpleasant, discussion, contains the history of the Spanish conquest, and of the quarrels of the Spaniards with each other growing out of it—he offers, in like manner, to the glories of the great Spanish family with which he was connected, and which numbered on its rolls some of the brightest names in the Castilian annals. In both parts, his Commentaries are a striking and interesting book, showing much of the spirit of the old chronicles, and infected with even more than the common measure of chronicling credulity; since, with a natural willingness to believe whatever fables were honorable to the land of his birth, he mingles a constant anxiety to show that he is, above every thing else, a Catholic Christian, whose faith was much too ample to reject the most extravagant legends of his Church, and too pure to tolerate the idolatry of that royal ancestry which he yet cannot help regarding with reverence and admiration.[215]

The publication, in 1610, of “The War of Granada,” by Mendoza, had—as might have been anticipated from its attractive subject and style—an effect on Spanish historical composition; producing, in the course of the century, several imitations more worthy of notice than any thing in their class that appeared after the great work of Mariana.

The first of them is by Moncada, a nobleman of the highest rank in the South of Spain, and connected with several of the principal families, both in Catalonia and Valencia. His father was, successively, viceroy of Sardinia and Aragon; he himself was governor of the Low Countries and commander-in-chief of the armies there; and both of them filled, in their respective times, the most important of the Spanish embassies. But the younger Moncada had tastes widely different from the cares that beset his life. In 1623 he published his “Expedition of the Catalans against the Turks and Greeks”; and when he died, in 1635, just after putting to rout two hostile armies, he left several other works, of less value, one or two of which have since been printed. The History of the Catalan Expedition, by which alone he has been known in later times, is on the romantic adventures and achievements of an extraordinary band of mercenaries, who, under Roger de Flor,—successively a freebooter, a great admiral, and a CÆsar of the Eastern Empire,—drove back the Turks, as they approached the Bosphorus in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and then, after being for some time no less formidable to their allies than they had been to the infidel, settled down into a sort of uneasy tranquillity at Athens, where their historian leaves them.

It is an account, therefore, of a most wild passage in the affairs rather of the Middle Ages than of the Spanish peninsula,—one that may be trusted, notwithstanding its air of romance, since its foundations are laid in the great work of Zurita, and one by no means wanting in picturesque effect, since its details are often taken from Ramon Muntaner, the old Catalan, who had himself shared the perils of this very expedition, and described them in his own Chronicle with his accustomed spirit and vigor. Parts of it are very striking in themselves, and strikingly told; especially the rise of Roger de Flor till he had reached the highest place a subject could hold in the Greek empire, and then his assassination in the presence and by the command of the same Emperor who had raised him so high,—his blood soiling the imperial table, to which, with treacherous hospitality, he had been invited. The whole is written in a bold and free, rather than in a careful style; but the coloring is well suited to the dark ground-work of the picture, and, though less energetic in its tone than Mendoza’s “War of Granada,” of which, from the first sentence, we see it is an imitation, it is often more easy, flowing, and natural.[216]

Another military history written by a nobleman connected with the service of his country, both in its armies and its diplomacy, is to be found in an account of eleven campaigns in Flanders by Coloma, Marquis of Espinar, published in 1625. A translation which he made of the “Annals” of Tacitus has been regarded as the best in the language; but, in his own work, he shows no tendency to imitate the ancients. On the contrary, it is, as it were, fresh from the fields of the author’s glory, and full of the honorable feelings of a soldier, sketching the adventures of the army when in camp, when in immediate action, and when in winter-quarters; and adding to his main narrative occasional glimpses of the negotiations then going on in the Low Countries respecting Spanish affairs, and of the intrigues of the courtiers at Madrid round the death-bed of Philip the Second. The style of Coloma is unequal; but much of what he describes he had seen, and the rest had passed within the compass of what he deemed sure information; so that he speaks, not only with authority, but with the natural vivacity which comes from being so near the events he records, that their color is imparted to his language.[217]

To the same class with the last belongs the spirited history of a portion of the Catalan rebellion in the time of Philip the Fourth. It was written by Melo, a Portuguese gentleman, who remained attached to the service of Spain till 1640-41, when he joined the standard of the Braganzas, and fought for the independence of his own country. His life, which extended from 1611 to 1667, was full of adventure. He was in the dreadful tempest of 1627, when the whole navy, as it were, of Portugal suffered shipwreck; and it fell to his lot to bury above two thousand bodies of those who had perished in the waves, from which he himself had hardly escaped. He was in the wars of Flanders and of Catalonia. Twelve years he was in prison in his own country, under an accusation of murder that was at last proved to be without foundation; and six years he was an exile in Brazil. But under all circumstances, and through all his trials, he sought consolation in letters. His published works, in prose and verse, in Spanish and in Portuguese, some of which have been already noticed, exceed a hundred volumes, and the unpublished would materially increase even this vast amount. What is more remarkable, he is, in both languages, admitted to the honors of a classic writer.

His “History of the War of Catalonia,” which embraces only the short period during which he served in it, was written while he was in prison, and was first published in 1645. Owing to political causes, he did not give his name to it; and when one of his friends in a letter expressed surprise at this circumstance, he answered, with a characteristic turn of phrase, “The book loses nothing for want of my name, and I shall lose nothing for want of the book.” It was, however, successful. The accounts of the first outbreak in Barcelona, on the feast of Corpus Christi, when the city was thronged with the bold peasantry of the interior; the subsequent strife of the exasperated factions; the debates in the Junta of Catalonia, and those in the king’s council, under the leading of the Count Duke Olivares; and the closing scene of the whole,—the ineffectual storming of the grand fortress of Mon Juich by the royal forces, and the disastrous retreat that followed,—are all given with a freshness and power that could come only from one who had shared in the feelings he describes, and had witnessed the very movements he sets with such a lifelike spirit before us. His style, too, is suited to his varying subjects; sometimes animated and forcible, sometimes quaint and idiomatic, and sometimes in its dark hints and abrupt turns reminding us of Tacitus. But the work is short,—not longer than that of Mendoza, which was its model,—and it covers only the space of about six months at the end of 1640 and the beginning of 1641.

Whether Melo intended to carry his narrative farther is uncertain. From his striking conclusion, where he says, “The events that followed—greater in themselves than those I have related—are perhaps reserved for a greater historian,” we might infer that he was desirous to describe only what he had witnessed. But, on the other side, in his Preface we have the following characteristic address to his readers, alluding to the concealment of his name as the author of the work he offers them. “If in any thing I have served you, I ask only that you would not endeavour to know more of me than it pleases my humor to tell you. I present to you my faithful opinion of things, just as it has been my lot to form it;—I do not present myself to you; for a knowledge of my person is not necessary to enable you to judge either kindly or harshly of what I have written. If I do not please you, read me no further;—if I do, I make no claims on your gratitude. I speak without fear and without vanity. The theatre before us is vast; the tragedy long. We shall meet again. You will know me by my voice; I shall know you by your judgment.” But, whatever may have been Melo’s original intentions, he survived the publication of this interesting work above twenty years, and yet added nothing to its pages.[218]

From this period, prose composition, which had been long infected with the bad taste of the age, suffered a still further and more marked decline. Saavedra Faxardo, indeed, who lived forty years out of Spain, employed in diplomatic missions, was educated in a better school, and formed himself on more worthy models, than he could have found among his contemporaries at home; but his “History of the Goths in Spain” is an imperfect work, published in 1646, at Munster, when he was there as a member of the congress that made the peace of Westphalia, and was left unfinished at his death, which occurred at Madrid two years later.[219] The only historian of eminence that remains to be noticed in this period is, therefore, SolÍs.

Of him we have already spoken as a lyrical poet and a dramatist, who in 1667 had retired from the world, and dedicated himself to the separate service of religion. He was, however, the official historiographer of the Indies, and thought himself bound to do something in fulfilment of the duties of an office to which, perhaps, a nominal income was attached. He chose for his subject “The Conquest of Mexico,” and, beginning with the condition of Spain when it was undertaken, and the appointment of CortÉs to command the invading force, he brings his history down to the fall of the city and the capture of Guatimozin. The period it embraces is, indeed, short,—less than three years; but they are years so crowded with brilliant adventures and atrocious crimes, that hardly any portion of the history of the world is of equal interest. The subject, too, from this circumstance, is more easily managed; and SolÍs, who looked upon it with the eye of an artist, as well as of an historian, has succeeded in giving his work, to an extraordinary degree, the air of an historical epic;—so exactly are all its parts and episodes modelled into an harmonious whole, whose catastrophe is the fall of the great Mexican empire.

The style of SolÍs is somewhat peculiar. That he had the Roman historians, and especially Livy, before him, as he wrote, is apparent both in the general air of his work and in the structure of its individual sentences. Yet there are few writers of Spanish prose who are more absolutely Castilian in their idiom than he is. His language, if not simple, is rich and beautiful; suited to the romantic subject he had chosen for his history, and deeply imbued with its poetical spirit. In boldness of manner he falls below Mendoza, and in dignity is not equal to Mariana; but for copious and sustained eloquence, he may be placed by the side of either of them. That his work is as interesting as either of theirs is proved by the unimpaired popularity it has enjoyed from its first appearance down to our own times.

The Conquest of Mexico was written in the old age of its author, and is darkened by the feelings that shut him out from the interests and cares of the world. He refused to see the fierce and marvellous contest which he recorded, except from the steps of the altar where he had been consecrated. The Spaniards, therefore, are in his eyes only Christians; the Mexicans, only heathen. The battle he witnesses and describes is wholly between the powers of light and the legions of darkness; and the unhappy Indians,—whom the Spaniards had no more right to invade, in order to root out religious abominations, of which they had never heard till after their landing, than Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth had to invade Spain, in order to root out the abominations of the Spanish Inquisition,—the unhappy Indians receive none of the historian’s sympathy in the extremity of suffering they underwent during their vain, but heroic, struggle for all that could make existence valuable in their eyes.

The work of SolÍs, beautifully written and flattering to the national vanity, was at once successful. But success was then a word whose meaning was different from that which it bears now, or had borne in Spain in the time of Lope de Vega. The publication, which took place in 1684, by the assistance of a friend who defrayed the charges, found its author poor and left him so. On this point there are passages in his correspondence which it is painful to read;—one, for instance, where he says, “I have many creditors who would stop me in the street, if they saw I had new shoes on”; and another, where he asks a friend for a warm garment to protect him from the winter’s cold. Still he was gratified at the applause with which his work was received, though, at the end of a year, only two hundred copies had been sold. Two years afterwards he died, at the age of seventy-six, “leaving,” in the technical phrase and the technical habit of the time, “his soul to be the only heir of his body,” or, in other words, giving the remnants of his poverty to purchase expiatory masses.[220] Diego de Tovar, the same ecclesiastic who had been confessor to Quevedo and Nicolas Antonio, stood by the bedside of the dying man, and consoled the last moments of SolÍs, as he had consoled theirs.[221]SolÍs was the last of the good writers in the elder school of Spanish history;—a school which, even during its best days, numbered but few names, and which, now that the whole literature of the country was decaying, shared the general fate. Nor could it be otherwise. The spirit of political tyranny in the government, and of religious tyranny in the Inquisition,—now closer than ever united,—were more hostile to bold and faithful inquiry in the department of history than in almost any other; so that the generous national independence and honesty announced in the old chronicles were stopped midway in their career, before half of their power had been put forth.

Still, as we have seen, several of the historians that were produced even under the overshadowing influence of the Austrian family were not unworthy of the national character. Mariana shows much manly firmness, SolÍs much fervor, Zurita much conscientious diligence, while Mendoza, Moncada, Coloma, and Melo, who confined themselves to subjects embracing shorter periods and less wide interests, have given us some of the most striking sketches to be found in the historical literature of any country. All of them are rich and dignified, abounding rather in feeling than philosophy, and written in a tone and style that mark, not so much, perhaps, the peculiar genius of their respective authors, as that of the country that gave them birth; so that, though they may not be entirely classical, they are entirely Spanish; and what they want in finish and grace, they make up in picturesqueness and originality.[222]

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Proverbs: Santillana, Garay, NuÑez, Mal Lara, Palmireno, Oudin, Sorapan, Cejudo, Yriarte. — Didactic Prose: Torquemada, Acosta, Luis de Granada, Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa, Malon de Chaide, Roxas, Figueroa, Marquez, Vera y ZuÑiga, Navarrete, Saavedra, Quevedo, Antonio de Vega, Nieremberg, Guzman, Dantisco, Andrada, Villalobos, Paton, Aleman, Faria y Sousa, Francisco de Portugal. — Gongorism in Prose: Gracian, Zabaleta, Lozano, Heredia, Ramirez. — Failure of good Didactic Prose.

The last department in the literature of any country, that comes within the jurisdiction of criticism on account of its style, is that of Didactic Prose; since in this branch, so remote from every thing poetical, the ornaments of manner are more accidental than they are elsewhere, and, beyond it, are not at all to be exacted. In modern times, the French seem to have been more anxious than any other nation, not excepting even the Italians, to add the grace of an elegant style to their didactic prose, while, on the other hand, none have been more unsuccessful than the Spaniards in their attempts to cultivate it.

In one particular form of didactic composition, however, Spain stands in advance of all other countries; I mean that of Proverbs, which Cervantes has happily called “short sentences drawn from long experience.”[223] Spanish proverbs can be traced back to the earliest times. One of the best known—“Laws go where kings please they should”—is connected with an event of importance in the reign of Alfonso the Sixth, who died in the beginning of the twelfth century, when the language of Castile had hardly a distinct existence.[224] Another has been traced to a custom belonging to the days of the Infantes de Lara, and is itself probably of not much later date.[225] Others are found in the General Chronicle, which is one of the oldest of Spanish prose compositions, and among them is the happy one on disappointed expectations, cited in Don Quixote more than once: “He went for wool and came back shorn.”[226] Several occur in the “Conde Lucanor” of Don John Manuel,[227] and many in the poetry of the Archpriest of Hita,[228] both of whom lived in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh.

Thus far, however, we have only separate and isolated sayings, evidently belonging to the old Spanish race, and always used as if quite familiar and notorious. But in the reign of John the Second, and at his request, the Marquis of Santillana collected a hundred in rhyme, which we have already noticed, besides above six hundred, he says, such as the old women were wont to repeat in their chimney-corners. From this period, therefore, or rather from 1508, when this collection was published, the old and wise proverbs of the language may be regarded as having obtained a settled place in its didactic literature.[229]

The number of proverbs, indeed, was soon so great,—not only those floating about in the common talk of men, but those collected and printed,—that they began to be turned to account. Garay, who was attached to the cathedral of Toledo, and therefore lived in the centre of whatever was peculiarly Castilian, wrote a long letter, every sentence of which was a popular saying; to which he added two similar letters, found, as he says, by accident, and made up, in the same way, of proverbs.[230] But, in the middle of the century, a still higher honor awaited the old Spanish adages. Pedro Valles, who wrote the history of the great Marquis of Pescara, published an alphabetical series of four thousand three hundred of them in 1549; and the famous Greek scholar and distinguished nobleman, Hernan NuÑez de Guzman, Professor successively at AlcalÁ and at Salamanca, found amusement for his old age in making another series of them, which amounted in all to above six thousand. To some he added explanations; to others, various parallel sayings from different languages; but, finding his strength fail him, he gave the task to a friend, who, like himself, was a Professor in Salamanca, and who published the whole in 1555, two years after the death of NuÑez; rather, as he intimates, from respect to the person from whom he received it, than from regard to the dignity of the employment.[231]

Out of these proverbs, another of the friends of Hernan NuÑez—Mal Lara, a Sevilian—selected a thousand, and, adding a commentary to each, published them in 1568, under the not inappropriate title of “Philosophy of the Common People”; a volume which, notwithstanding its cumbersome learning, can be read with pleasure, both for the style in which many parts of it are written, and for the unusual historical anecdotes with which it abounds. Another collection, made by Palmireno, a Valencian, in 1569, consisting of above two hundred proverbs appropriate to the table, shows how abundant popular aphorisms must be in a language that can furnish so many on one subject. Yet another, by Oudin, was published at Paris in 1608, for the use of foreigners, and shows no less plainly how much the Spanish had become spread throughout Europe. Sorapan, in 1616 and 1617, published two collections, in which it was intended that the condensation of popular experience and wisdom should teach medicine, as, in the hands of Mal Lara, they had been made to teach the philosophy of life. And, finally, in 1675, Cejudo, a schoolmaster of Val de PeÑas, gave the world about six thousand, with the corresponding Latin adages, whenever he could find them, and with explanations more satisfactory than had been furnished by his predecessors.[232]

Still, though so many thousands have been collected, many thousands still remain unpublished, known only among the traditions of the humbler classes of society, that have given birth to them all. Juan de Yriarte, a learned man, who was nearly forty years at the head of the King’s Library at Madrid, collected, about the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than twenty-four thousand; and yet it is not to be supposed that a single individual, however industrious, living in Madrid, could exhaust their number, as they belong rather to the provinces than to the capital, and are spread everywhere among the common people, and through all their dialects.[233]

Why proverbs should abound so much more in Spain than in any other country of Christendom, it is not possible to tell. Perhaps the Arabs, whose language is rich in such wisdom, may have furnished some of them; or perhaps the whole mass may have sprung from the original soil of the less cultivated classes of Spanish society. But however this may be, we know they are often among the pleasantest and most characteristic ornaments of the national literature; and those who are most familiar with them will be most ready to agree with the wise author of the “Dialogue on Languages,” when he says, and repeats the remark, that we must go to the old national proverbs for what is purest in his native Castilian.[234]

Turning now to the proper Didactic prose of Spanish literature, the first instance we find—after those formerly noticed as imitating the Italian philosophical discussions of the sixteenth century—is one that comes near to the borders of fiction. It is “The Garden of Curious Flowers,” by Torquemada, originally published in 1570, of which the curate, in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library, says, that “he does not know whether it is more true, or, to speak strictly, less full of lies,” than the “Olivante de Laura,” a book of chivalry by the same author, which, for its peculiar absurdities, he sends at once to the bonfire in the court-yard. “The Garden of Curious Flowers,” however, is still a curious book. It consists of six colloquies between friends, who talk for their amusement on such subjects as the monstrous productions of nature, the terrestrial paradise, phantasms and enchantments, the influence of the stars, and the history and condition of those countries that lie nearest to the North Pole. It is, in fact, a collection of whatever strange and extravagant stories a learned man could make, beginning with such as he found in Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Olaus Magnus, and Albertus Magnus, and including those told by the most credulous of his own time. Being put into a form then popular, and related in a pleasing style, they had no little success. They were several times printed in the original, and, beside being translated into Italian and French, are well known to those who are curious in the literature of Queen Elizabeth’s time, under the much-abused name of “The Spanish Mandeville.” It may be added, that some of Torquemada’s accounts of spectres and visions are still pleasant reading; and that, though Cervantes spoke slightingly of the whole book in his “Don Quixote,” he afterwards resorted to it, both for facts and for fancies respecting the wonders of Friesland and Iceland, when he wrote the first part of his “Persiles and Sigismunda.”[235]

ChristÓval de Acosta, a Portuguese botanist,—who was accustomed to call himself “the African,” because he happened to be born in one of the African possessions of Portugal,—travelled much in the East, and after his return published, in 1578, a work on Oriental plants and drugs, to which he added at the end a treatise on the natural history of the Elephant. But, though he succeeded in attracting the attention of Europe to this publication, and though the early part of his life had been that of a soldier, an adventurer, and a captive among pirates and robbers, he spent many of his later years, if not all of them, in religious retirement at home, where, besides other things, he wrote a discourse on “The Benefits of Solitude,” and a treatise on “The Praise of Women.” The last was printed in 1592, and, except that it is too full of learning, may still be read with some interest, if not with pleasure.[236]

It was not, however, moral and philosophical writers, like Oliva and Guevara, nor writers on subjects connected with natural history, like Torquemada and Acosta, that were most favored in the reigns of Philip the Second and his immediate successors. It was the ascetics and mystics,—the natural produce of the soil of Spain, and, almost without exception, faithful to the old Castilian genius.

Among the most prominent of this class was Luis de Granada, distinguished as a Spanish preacher, but still more remarkable for his eloquence as a mystic. His “Meditations for the Seven Days and Nights of a Week,” his treatises “On Prayer” and “On Faith,” and his “Memorial of a Christian Life,” were early translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English,—one of them into Turkish, and one into Japanese,—and, like his other Spanish works, have continued to be printed and admired in the original down to our own times.

The most effective of them all was his “Guide for Sinners,” first published in 1556. It makes two moderate volumes, and portions of it are marked with a diffuse declamation, which is perhaps imitated from that of Juan de Avila, the Apostle of Andalusia, whose friend and follower he more than once boasts himself to have been. But its general tone is that of a moving and harmonious eloquence, which has made it a favorite book of devotion in Spain ever since it first appeared, and has spread its reputation so widely, that it has been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, including the Greek and Polish, and, at one time, seemed likely to obtain a place, in the religious literature of Christendom, very near that of the great ascetic work which passes under the name of Thomas À Kempis. In its native country, however, the Guide for Sinners encountered at first not a little opposition. As early as the year after it was published, it had been placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and no edition except the first seems to have been permitted till we find that of Salamanca, in 1570. But the very Index that condemned it became itself the subject of condemnation; and, in the case of the Guide for Sinners, the ecclesiastical powers went so far in the opposite direction as to grant special indulgences by proclamation to all who should have read or heard a chapter of the very work they had earlier so harshly censured.

Luis de Granada passed all the latter part of his life in Lisbon,—perhaps because he had been repeatedly annoyed by the Inquisition at home, perhaps because his duties seemed to lead him there. But, whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that he enjoyed much more favor in Portugal than he did in Spain; and when he died, in 1588, eighty-four years old, he could boast that he had refused the highest honors of the Portuguese Church, and humbly devoted the whole of his long life to the reformation and advancement of the Order of Preachers, of which, during his best years, he had been the active and venerated head.[237]

San Juan de la Cruz, who was in some respects an imitator of Luis de Granada, was born in 1542, and, having spent the greater part of his life in reforming the discipline of the Carmelite monasteries, died in 1591, and was beatified in 1674. His works, which are chiefly contemplative, and obtained for him the title of the Ecstatic Doctor, are written with great fervor. The chief of them are the allegory of “The Ascent to Mount Carmel,” and “The Dark Night of the Soul,”—treatises which have given him much reputation for a mystical eloquence, that sometimes rises to the sublime, and sometimes is lost in the unintelligible. His poetry, of which a little is printed in some of the many editions of his works, is of the same general character, but marked by great felicity and richness of phraseology.[238]

Santa Teresa, who was associated with Juan de la Cruz in the work of reforming the Carmelites,—or rather with whom he was associated, since hers was the leading spirit,—died in 1582, sixty-seven years old. Her didactic works, the most remarkable of which are “The Path to Perfection” and “The Interior Castle,” are less obscure than those of her coadjutor, though more declamatory. But all she wrote, including an account of her own life, and several discussions connected with the religious duties to which she dedicated herself, were composed with apparent reluctance on her part, and in obedience to the commands of her superiors. She believed herself to be often in direct communion with God; and as those about her shared her faith on this point, she was continually urged by them to make known to the world what were thus regarded as revelations of the Divine will. On one occasion she says: “Far within, God appeared to me in a vision, as he has been wont to do, and gave me his right hand, and said,—Behold this print of the nail; it is a sign that, from this day forth, thou art my spouse. Hitherto, thou hast not deserved it; but hereafter not only shalt thou regard my honor as that of thy Creator, and King, and God, but as that of a true spouse;—for my honor is now thine, and thine is mine.”

Living, as she undoubtedly did, under the persuasion that she was favored with numberless revelations of this kind, she wrote boldly and rapidly, and corrected nothing. Her style, in consequence, is diffuse and open to objections, which, in Spain, the spirit of a merely literary criticism is too reverent to desire to remove. But whatever she wrote is full of earnestness, sincerity, and love; and therefore her works have never ceased to be read by those of her own nation and faith. During her life, she was persecuted by the Inquisition; but after her death, her manuscripts were collected with pious care, and published, in 1588, by Luis de Leon, who exhorts all men to follow in the bright path she has pointed out to them; adding, “She has seen God face to face, and she now shows him to you.”[239]

This school of spiritualists, to which belonged Juan de Avila and Luis de Leon, of whom we have before spoken, had, no doubt, a very considerable effect on Spanish didactic prose. They raised its tone, and did more towards placing it on the old foundations, where the chronicles and the earlier writers of the country, like Lucena, had left it, than had been done for nearly two centuries. Such efforts gave dignity, if not purity or an exact finish, to the proper Castilian style; so that, at the end of the reign of Philip the Second, it was not only of more consequence to an author’s reputation to write well upon any grave subject in prose than it had ever been before, but, with such examples before him, it was easier to do so. In all this, the movement made was in the right direction, and produced happy results. But, on the other hand, we should remember that it confirmed in the didactic literature of the country that tendency to a diffuse and florid declamation, which was early one of its blemishes, and from which, with such authority in its favor, Castilian prose has never since been able completely to emancipate itself.

A remarkable proof of this is to be found in “The Magdalen” of Malon de Chaide, first published in 1592, after the death of its author. It is a religious work, and is divided into four parts; the first being merely introductory, and the three others on the three characters of Mary Magdalen as a sinner, a penitent, and a saint. It has a very rhetorical air throughout, and sometimes reads almost like a romance;—so free is its conception of the character and conversations of the saint. But some of its discussions, like one on fashionable dress, and one on religious pictures, are curious; and some of its religious exhortations, like that to repent before old age comes on, are moving and powerful. The moral tone of the whole is severe. With a great deal of the spirit of a monk, the author is earnest against books of chivalry; and he not only rebukes the habit of reading the ancient classics, but even such Spanish poets as Garcilasso de la Vega, because he thinks admiration of them inconsistent with a preservation of the Christian character. Occasionally, he grows mystical; and then, though his style is more than ever prodigal, his meaning is not always plain. But, on the whole, and regarded as an exhortation to a religious life, the Conversion of Mary Magdalen is written with so much richness of language, and is often so eloquent, that it was much read when it first appeared, and has not, even in recent times, ceased to be reprinted and admired.[240]

Quite different from this is “The Amusing Journey” of Roxas,—a book that hardly falls within the strict limits of any class, but one which has always been popular in Spain. Its author was an actor; and his travels consist of an account of some of his personal adventures and experiences, thrown into the form of dialogues between three of his fellow-comedians and himself, as they visit some of the principal cities of Spain in the exercise of their profession as strolling players. They travel on foot; and their conversations, which are little molested by scruples of any sort, make up a very amusing book.

In some parts of it, we have sketches of the places they visit, with notices of the local history belonging to each. In others, Roxas himself, in a spirit that not unfrequently reminds us of Gil Blas, relates his own previous adventures, as a soldier, as a captive in France, and as a play-actor at home. In yet others, we have fictions, or what seem to be such, and among them, the story on which Shakspeare founded his Christopher Sly and the Induction to “The Taming of the Shrew.” But, in general, it is rather an account of what relates to the theatre and the affairs of the four gay companions at Seville, Toledo, Segovia, Valladolid, Granada, and on the roads between all of them, interspersed with forty or fifty loas, which Roxas wrote with recognized success, and of which he is evidently very proud. It is a pleasant book, loosely and carelessly put together, but important for the history of the Spanish drama, and with talent enough to attract the attention of Scarron, who took from it the hint for his “Roman Comique.” From internal evidence, “The Amusing Journey” was written in 1602, and, at the end, a continuation is announced; but, like so many other promises of the same sort in Spanish literature, it was never kept.[241]

Perhaps the work of Roxas served, also, as a hint for the “Pasagero,” or Traveller, of Suarez de Figueroa. At any rate, the well-known author of the “Amarillis,” published in 1617, a half-narrative, half-didactic work with this title, containing ten long discussions, on a great variety of subjects, held by four persons, as they journey from Madrid to Barcelona, in order to embark for Italy;—the discussions themselves being called alivios, or rests by the way. The chief conversation is in the hands of Figueroa, the principal person in his own drama; and so far as he is concerned, and so far as the discussions relate to the men of letters of his own time, the Pasagero is somewhat cynical. His autobiography, which is contained in the eighth dialogue, is interesting, and so are the ninth and tenth dialogues, in which he gives his view of the state of Spain at the time he wrote, and the means of leading an honest and honorable life there. But the most important conversations are the third, which relates to the theatre, and the fourth, which is on the popular and courtly mode of preaching. The whole work is too diffuse in its style, though less declamatory than much in the didactic prose of the period.[242]

Some of the best portions of the didactic literature of Spain during the seventeenth century were partly or wholly political. Marquez, a writer in the old style of the reign of Philip the Second, published in 1612 his “Christian Governor,” a work composed at the request of the Duke of Feria, then viceroy of Sicily, and intended to serve as an answer to Machiavelli’s “Prince.”[243] Vera y ZuÑiga, author of a strange epic on the conquest of Seville, who was a better minister of Philip the Third than he was poet, published in 1620 a treatise, in four discourses, on the character and duties of an ambassador; full of learning, and occasionally illustrated with appropriate anecdotes drawn from Spanish history, but citing indiscriminately books of authority and no authority on the grave subjects he discusses, and relying apparently with as much confidence upon an opinion of Ovid as upon one of Comines.[244] Fernandez de Navarrete, a secretary of the same monarch, chose his subject a little higher up, and in 1625, under the disguise of an assumed name, and in a letter to a Polish prime-minister who never existed, gave the world his notions of what “a royal favorite” should be; but it is evident that Spain only was in his thoughts when he wrote, and his little treatise is so encumbered with ill-assorted learning and ungraceful conceits that it was soon forgotten.[245]Not so the “Idea of a Christian Prince,” by Saavedra Faxardo, who died at Madrid in 1648, after having been long in the diplomatic service of the Spanish crown. It was a higher subject than either of those taken by Navarrete and Figueroa, and managed with more talent. Under the awkward arrangement of a hundred ingenious Emblems, with mottoes, that are generally well chosen and pointed, he has given a hundred essays on the education of a prince;—his relations with his ministers and subjects; his duties as the head of a state in its internal and external relations; and his duties to himself in old age and in preparation for death;—all intended for the instruction of Balthasar, son of Philip the Fourth, to whom it is dedicated, but who died too young to profit by its wisdom. It is written in a compact, sententious style, with much quaint and curious knowledge of history, and with a large and not always judicious display of learning. But in many points it reminds us of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Cabinet Council” and Owen Feltham’s “Resolves”;—a measure of praise that can be given to few such prose works in the Spanish language. Its success was great; nor is it yet fallen into neglect. The first edition was published in 1640, at Munster. Many others followed in the course of the century. It was translated into all the languages of Europe, and, in Spain at least, has continued to be printed and valued down to our own days.[246]

“The Divine Politics” of Quevedo, a part of which was published before the Christian Prince and a part after it, may have suggested his subject to Saavedra, but not the mode of treating it; and, in the same way, the great satirist may have had some influence in determining Antonio de Vega, the Portuguese, to write his “Political Dream of a Perfect Nobleman,” in 1620;[247] Nieremberg, the Jesuit, to write his “Manual for Gentlemen and Princes,” which appeared in 1629;[248] and Benavente, his “Advice for Kings, Princes, and Ambassadors,” which appeared in 1643.[249] But none of these works, nor any thing else in the nature of didactic prose that appeared in the seventeenth century, is equal to the Christian Prince of Saavedra; unless, indeed, we are to except his own vision of a state, which he calls “The Literary Republic,” and in which he discusses somewhat satirically, but in a vein of agreeable criticism, the merits of the principal writers of ancient and modern times, foreign and Spanish. The Literary Republic, however, was not published till after its author’s death, and never enjoyed a popularity like that enjoyed by his longer and elder work; a work which leaves far behind every thing in the class of books of emblems, that so long served to tax the ingenuity of the higher classes of society in Europe.[250]

To these writers of the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century a few more might be added, of less consequence. Juan de Guzman, in 1589, published a formal treatise on Rhetoric, in the seventh dialogue of which he makes an ingenious application of the rules of the Greek and Roman masters to the demands of modern sermonizing in Spain.[251] Gracian Dantisco, one of the secretaries of Philip the Second, published in 1599 a small discourse on the minor morals of life, which he called the “Galateo,” in imitation of Giovanni della Casa, whose classical Italian treatise bearing the same name was already translated into Spanish.[252] In the same year appeared a curious work by Pedro de Andrada, on “The Art of Horsemanship,” well written and learned, with amusing anecdotes of horses; and this was followed, in 1605, by a similar treatise of Simon de Villalobos, but one which, from its more military character, and from the exaggerated importance it gives to its subject, might well have been made a part of Don Quixote’s library.[253] Both of them bear marks of the state of society at the time they were written.

Paton, the author of several works of little value, published, in 1604, a crude treatise on “The Art of Spanish Eloquence,” founded on the rules of the ancients;[254] and, in Mexico, Aleman, while living there, printed, in 1609, a treatise on “Castilian Orthography,” which, besides what is appropriate to the title, contains pleasant discussions on other topics connected with the language, over which he has himself shown a great mastery in his “Guzman de Alfarache.”[255] A series of conversations on miscellaneous subjects, divided into seven nights, which their author, Faria y Sousa, intended to have called simply “Moral Dialogues,” but which his bookseller, without his knowledge, published in 1624 with the title of “Brilliant Nights,” are dull and pedantic, like nearly every thing this learned Portuguese wrote; and the second part, which he offered to the public, was never called for.[256] And, finally, another Portuguese, Francisco de Portugal, who died in 1632,[257] wrote a pleasant treatise on “The Art of Gallantry,” with anecdotes showing the state of fashionable, or rather courtly, society at the time; but it was not printed till long after its author’s death.[258]During the period embraced by the works last mentioned, a false taste had invaded Spanish prose. It was the same unhappy taste which we have noticed in Spanish poetry by the name of “Gongorism,” but which its admirers called sometimes “the polite,” and sometimes “the cultivated,” style of writing. Traces of it have been sought in the sixteenth century among some of the best writers of the country; but for this there seems no foundation, except in the fact, that a rigorous taste never at any time prevailed in Spain, and that the luxuriant success of letters towards the end of the reign of Philip the Second, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining fashionable distinction by authorship, had led to occasional affectations even in the style of those who, like Cervantes and Mariana, stood foremost among the better writers of their time.

But now, the admiration that followed GÓngora almost necessarily introduced conceits into prose writing, such as were thought so worthy of imitation in poetry. Those, therefore, who most coveted public favor, began to play with words, and seek to surprise by an unexpected opposition of ideas and quaintness of metaphor, little consistent with the old Castilian dignity, until at last they quite left the stately constructions in which resides so much of what is peculiar to the sonorous declamations of Luis de Leon and Luis de Granada, and by excessive efforts at brilliancy became so involved and obscure, that they were not always intelligible. Instances of such affectation may be found in Saavedra and Francisco de Portugal. But the innovation itself is older than either of their published works. It broke out with Paravicino, who, besides imitating GÓngora’s poetry, as we have already seen, carried similar extravagances of metaphor and construction into his oratorical and didactic prose; intimating, in a characteristic phrase, that he claimed the honor of being the Columbus who had made this great discovery. As early as 1620, it was matter of censure and ridicule to LiÑan, in his “Guide to Strangers in Madrid,” and soon afterwards to Mateo Velazquez, in his “Village Philosopher”; so that from this period we may consider cultismo nearly or quite as prevalent in Spanish prose as it was in Spanish poetry.[259]

The person, however, who settled its character, and in some respects gave it an air of philosophical pretension, was Balthazar Gracian, a Jesuit of Aragon, who lived between 1601 and 1658; exactly the period when the cultivated style took possession of Spanish prose, and rose to its greatest consideration. He began in 1630, by a tract called “The Hero,” which is not so much the description of a hero’s character as it is a recipe to form one, given in short, compact sentences, constructed in the new style. It was successful, and was followed by five or six other works, written in the same manner; after which, to confirm and justify them all, there appeared, in 1648, his “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio”; a regular Art of Poetry, or rather system of rhetoric, accommodated to the school of GÓngora, and showing great acuteness, especially in the ingenuity with which the author presses into his service the elder poets, such as Diego de Mendoza, the Argensolas, and even Luis de Leon and the Bachiller de la Torre.

The most remarkable work of Gracian, however, is his “CrÍticon,” published in three parts, between 1650 and 1653. It is an allegory on human life, and gives us the adventures of Critilus, a noble Spaniard, wrecked on the desert island of Saint Helena, where he finds a solitary savage, who knows nothing about himself, except that he has been nursed by a wild beast. After much communication in dumb show, they are able to understand each other in Spanish, and, being taken from the island, travel together through the world, talking often of the leading men of their time in Spain, but holding intercourse more with allegorical personages than with one another. The story of their adventures is long, and its three portions represent the three periods of human life; the first being called the Spring of Childhood, the second the Autumn of Manhood, and the third the Winter of Old Age. In some parts it shows much talent; and eloquent discussions on moral subjects, and glowing descriptions of events and natural scenery, can be taken from it, which are little infected with the extravagances of the Cultivated Style. Sometimes, we are reminded of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,”—as, for instance, in the scenes of the World’s Fair,—and might almost say, that the “CrÍticon” is to the Catholic religion and the notions of life in Spain during the reign of Philip the Fourth, what Bunyan’s fiction is to Puritanism and the English character in the age of Cromwell. But there is no vitality in the shadowy personages of Gracian. He bodies nothing forth to which our sympathies can attach themselves as they do to such sharply-defined creations as Christian and Mr. Greatheart, and, when we are moved at all by him, it is only by his acuteness and eloquence.

His other works are of little value, and are yet more deformed by bad taste; especially his “Politico-Fernando,” which is an extravagant eulogium on Ferdinand the Catholic, and his “Discreto,” which is a collection of prose miscellanies, including a few of his letters. It is singular, that, in consequence of being an ecclesiastic, he thought it proper that all his works should be printed under the name of his brother Lorenzo, who lived at Seville; and it is yet more singular, perhaps, that they were published, not by himself, but by his friend, LastaÑosa, a gentleman of literary taste, and a collector of ancient works of art, who lived at Huesca in Aragon. But however indirectly and cautiously the works of Gracian won their way into the world, they enjoyed great favor there, and made much noise. His “Hero” went early through six editions, and his collected prose works, most of which were translated into French and Italian, and some of them into English and Latin, were often reprinted in the original Spanish, both at home and abroad.[260]

From this period, the rich old prose style of Luis de Leon and his contemporaries may be said to have been driven out of Spanish literature. Lope de Vega and Quevedo, after resisting the innovations of cultismo for a time, had long before yielded, and Calderon was now alternately assailing the depraved taste of his audiences and gratifying it by running into extravagances almost as great as those he ridiculed. The language of the most affected poetry passed into the prose of the age, and took from it the power and dignity which, even in its more declamatory portions, had constituted its prominent merit. Style became fantastic, and the very thoughts that were to be conveyed were not unfrequently covered up with ingenuities of illustration till they disappeared. In the phrase of Sancho, men wanted better bread than could be made of wheat, and rendered themselves ridiculous by attempting to obtain it. Tropes and figures of all kinds were settled into formulas of speech, and then were repeated appropriately and inappropriately, till the reader could often anticipate, from the beginning of a sentence, how it would inevitably end. Every thing, indeed, in prose composition, as in poetry, announced that corrupted taste which both precedes and hastens the decay of a literature; and which, in the case of Spain during the latter half of the seventeenth century, was but the concomitant of a general decline in the arts and the gradual degradation of the monarchy.

Among those who wrote best, though still infected with the prevailing influences, was Zabaleta. His “Moral Problems” and “Famous Errors,” but especially his “Feast Days at Madrid,” in which he gives lively satirical sketches of the manners of the metropolis at those periods when idleness brings the people into the streets and places of amusement, are worth reading. But he lived in the reign of Philip the Fourth; and so did Lozano, whose different ascetic works on the character of King David, if not so good as his historical romance on the New Kings of Toledo, are better than any thing else of the kind in the same period. They are, however, the last that can be read. The reign of Charles the Second does not offer examples even so favorable as these of the remains and ruins of a better taste. “The Labors of Hercules,” by Heredia, in 1682, and the “Moral Essays on BoËthius,” by Ramirez, in 1698, if they serve for nothing else, serve at least to mark the ultimate limits of dulness and affectation. Indeed, if it were not for the History of SolÍs, which has been already noticed, we should look in vain for an instance of respectable prose composition after this last and most degenerate descendant of the House of Austria had mounted the Spanish throne.[261]

Nor is this remarkable. On the contrary, it is rather to be considered worthy of notice, that didactic prose should have had any merit or obtained any success in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the end it proposes is not, like that of poetry, to amuse, but, like that of philosophy, to enlighten and amend; and how dangerous in Spain was the social position of any teacher or moral monitor, who claimed for himself that degree of independence of opinion without which instruction becomes a dead form, needs not now to be set forth. Few persons, in that unhappy country, were surrounded with more difficulties; none were more strictly watched, or, if they wandered from the permitted paths, were more severely punished.

Nor was it possible for such persons, by the most notorious earnestness in their convictions of the just control of the religion of the state, or any degree of faithfulness in their loyalty, to avoid sometimes falling under the rebuke of the jealousy that watched each step of their course; a fact sufficiently apparent, when we recollect that nearly all the didactic writers of merit during this period, such as Juan de Avila, Luis de Leon, Luis de Granada, Quevedo, San Juan de la Cruz, and Santa Teresa, were persecuted by the Inquisition or by the government, and the works of every one of them expurgated or forbidden.

Under such oppression, free and eloquent writers,—men destined to teach and advance their generation,—could not be expected to appear, and the few who ventured into ways so dangerous dwelt as much as possible in generals, and became mystical, like Juan de la Cruz, or extravagant and declamatory, like Luis de Granada. Nearly all,—strictly prevented from using the logic of a wise and liberal philosophy,—fell into pedantry, from an anxious desire, wherever it was possible, to lean upon authority; so that, from Luis de Leon down to the most ordinary writer, who, in a prefatory letter of approbation, wished to give currency to the opinions of a friend, no man seemed to feel at ease unless he could justify and sustain what he had to say by citations from the Scriptures, the fathers of the Church, and the ancient and scholastic philosophers. Thus, Spanish didactic prose, which, from its original elements and tendencies, seemed destined to wear the attractions of an elevated and eloquent style, gradually became so formal, awkward, and pedantic, that, with a few striking exceptions, it can only be said to have maintained a doubtful and difficult existence during the long period when the less suspected and less oppressed portions of the literature of the country—its drama and its lyric poetry—were in the meridian of their success.

CHAPTER XL.

Concluding Remarks on the Second Period. — Decay of the National Character. — Diminished Number of Writers and Diminished Interest of the Public in Letters. — Ruin of the State begun in the Time of Philip the Second, and Continued in the Reigns of Philip the Third, Philip the Fourth, and Charles the Second. — Effects of this Condition of Things on Literary Culture. — False Influences of Religion. — False Influences of Loyalty.

It is impossible to study with care the Spanish literature of the seventeenth century, and not feel that we are in the presence of a general decay of the national character. At every step, as we advance, the number of writers that surround us is diminished. In what crowds they were gathered together during the reigns of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, we may see in the long lists of poets given by Cervantes in his “Galatea” and his “Journey to Parnassus,” and by Lope de Vega in his “Laurel of Apollo.” But in the reign of Philip the Fourth, though the theatre, from accidental circumstances, flourished more than ever, the other departments showed symptoms of decline; and in the reign of Charles the Second, wherever we turn, the number of authors sinks away, till it is obvious that some great change must take place, or elegant literature in Spain will speedily become extinct.

The public interest, too, in the few writers that remained, was gone. At least, that general, national interest, which alone can sustain the life it alone can give to the literature of any country, was no longer there; and all the favor, that Spanish poets and men of letters enjoyed at the end of the century, came from the court and the superficial fashion of the time, which patronized the affected style of those followers of GÓngora, whose bad taste seemed to go on increasing in extravagance, as talent among them grew more rare.

Every thing, meanwhile, announced, that the great foundations of the national character were giving way on all sides; and that the failing literature of the country was only one of the phases and signs of the coming overthrow of its institutions. The decay which was so visible on the surface of things had, however, long mined unseen beneath what had been thought a period of extraordinary security and glory. Charles the Fifth, while, on the one side, by the war of the Comuneros, he had crushed nearly all of political liberty that Cardinal Ximenes had left in the old constitutions of Castile, had given, on the other, by his magnificent foreign conquests, a false direction to the character of his people at home;—both tending alike to waste away that vigor and independence which the Moorish wars had nourished in the hearts of the nation, and which had so long constituted its real strength. Philip the Second had been less successful than his father in his great labors to advance the permanent prosperity of the monarchy. He had, indeed, added Portugal and the Philippine Islands to his empire, which now comprehended above a hundred millions of human beings, and seemed to threaten the interests of all the rest of Europe. But such doubtful benefits were heavily overbalanced by the religious rebellion of the Netherlands, the fatal source of unnumbered mischiefs; by the exhausting wars with Elizabeth of England and Henry the Fourth of France; by the contempt for labor, that followed the extraordinary prevalence of a spirit of military adventure, and broke down the industry of the country; by the vast increase of the ecclesiastical institutions, which created a ruinous amount of pensioned idleness; and by the wasteful luxury brought in with the gold of America, which seemed to corrupt whatever it touched; so that, when that wary prince died, he left an impoverished people, whose energies he had overstrained and impaired by his despotism, and whose character he had warped and misdirected by his unrelenting and unscrupulous bigotry.[262]

His successor, feeble-minded and superstitious, was neither able to repair the results of such mischiefs, nor to contend with the difficulties they entailed upon his country. The power of the clergy, grown enormous by the favor of Philip the Second and the consolidated influence of the Jesuits, continued to gain strength, as it were of itself; and, under the direct persuasions of this mighty hierarchy, nearly six hundred thousand descendants of Moors—who, though preserving, as their fathers had done for a century, the external appearances of Christianity, were yet suspected of being Mohammedans at heart—were now, by a great crime of state, expelled from the land of their birth; a crime followed by injuries to the agriculture and wealth of the South of Spain, and indeed of the whole country, from which they have never recovered.[263]

The easy, gay selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and the open profligacy of his ministers, gave increased activity to the causes that were hastening on the threatened ruin. Catalonia broke out into rebellion; Jamaica was seized by the English; Roussillon was ceded to France; Portugal, which had never been heartily incorporated into the monarchy, resumed her ancient place among the independent nations of the earth;—every thing, in short, showed how the external relations of the state were disturbed and endangered. Its internal condition, meanwhile, was no less shaken. The coin, notwithstanding the wise warnings of Mariana, had been adulterated anew; the taxes had been shamelessly increased, while the interest on the ever-growing public debt was dishonestly diminished. Men, everywhere, began to be alarmed at the signs of the times. The timid took shelter in celibacy and the institutions of the Church. The bolder emigrated. At last, the universal pressure began to be visible in the state of the population. Whole towns and villages were deserted. Seville, the ancient capital of the monarchy, lost three quarters of its inhabitants; Toledo one third; Segovia, Medina del Campo, and others of the large cities, fell off still more, not only in their numbers and opulence, but in whatever goes to make up the great aggregate of civilization. The whole land, in fact, was impoverished, and was falling into a premature decay.

The necessary results of such a deplorable state of things are yet more apparent in the next reign,—the unhappy reign of Charles the Second,—which began with the troubles incident to a long minority, and ended with a failure in the regular line of succession, and a contest for the throne. It was a dreary period, with marks of dilapidation and ruin on all sides. Beginning at the southern borders of France, and following the coast by Barcelona and Gibraltar round to Cadiz, not one of the great fortresses, which were the keys of the kingdom, was in a state to defend itself against the most moderate force by which it might be assailed. On the Atlantic, the old arsenals, from which the Armada had gone forth, were empty; and the art of ship-building had been so long neglected, that it was almost, or quite lost.[264] And, in the capital and at court, the revenues of the country, which had long been exhausted and anticipated, were at last unable to provide for the common wants of the government, and sometimes even failed to furnish forth the royal table with its accustomed propriety; so that the envoy of Austria expressed his regret at having accepted the place of ambassador at a court where he was compelled to witness a misery so discreditable.[265]

It was a new lesson to the world in the vicissitudes of empire. No country in Christendom had, from such a height of power as that which Spain occupied in the time of Charles the Fifth, fallen into such an abyss of degradation as that in which every proud Spaniard felt Spain to be sunk, when the last of the great House of Austria approached the grave, believing himself to be under the influence of sorcery, and seeking relief by exorcisms which would have disgraced the credulity of the Middle Ages;—all, too, at the time when France was jubilant with the victories of CondÉ, and England preparing for the age of Marlborough.[266]

In any country, such a decay in the national character and power would be accompanied by a corresponding, if not an equal, decay in its literature; but in Spain, where both had always been so intimately connected, and where both had rested, in such a remarkable degree, on the same foundations, the wise who looked on from a distance could not fail to anticipate a rapid and disastrous decline of all that was intellectual and elegant. And so, in fact, it proved. The old religion of the country,—the most prominent of all the national characteristics,—the mighty impulse which, in the days of the Moors, had done every thing but work miracles,—was now so perverted from its true character by the enormous growth of the intolerance which sprang up originally almost as a virtue, that it had become a means of oppression such as Europe had never before witnessed. Through the whole period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which we have just gone over,—from the fall of Granada to the extinction of the Austrian dynasty,—the Inquisition, as the grand exponent of the power of religion in Spain, had maintained, not only an uninterrupted authority, but, by constantly increasing its relations to the state, and lending itself more and more freely to the punishment of whatever was obnoxious to the government, had effectually broken down all that remained, from earlier days, of intellectual independence and manly freedom. But this was not done, and could not be done, without the assent of the great body of the people, or without such an active coÖperation on the part of the government and the higher classes as brought degradation and ruin to all who shared in its spirit.

Unhappily, this spirit, mistaken for the religion that had sustained them through their long-protracted contest with their infidel invaders, was all but universal in Spain during this whole period. The first and the last of the House of Austria,—Charles the Fifth and the feeblest of his descendants,—if alike in nothing else, were alike in the zeal with which they sustained the Holy Office while they lived, and with which, by their testaments, they commended it to the support and veneration of their respective successors.[267] Nor did the intervening kings show less deference to its authority. The first royal act of Philip the Second, when he came from the Low Countries to assume the crown of Spain, was to celebrate an auto da fÉ at Valladolid.[268] When the young and gay daughter of Henry the Second of France arrived at Toledo, in 1560, that city offered an auto da fÉ as part of the rejoicings deemed appropriate to her wedding; and the same thing was done by Madrid, in 1632, for another French princess, when she gave birth to an heir to the crown;[269]—odious proofs of the degree to which bigotry had stifled both the dictates of an enlightened reason and the common feelings of humanity.

But in all this the people and their leaders rejoiced. When a nobleman, about to die for adherence to the Protestant faith, passed the balcony where Philip the Second sat in state, and appealed to him not to see his innocent subjects thus cruelly put to death, the monarch replied, that, if it were his own son, he would gladly carry the fagots for his execution; and the answer was received at the time, and recorded afterwards, as one worthy of the head of the mightiest empire in the world.[270] And again, in 1680, when Charles the Second was induced to signify his desire to enjoy, with his young bride, the spectacle of an auto da fÉ, the artisans of Madrid volunteered in a body to erect the needful amphitheatre, and labored with such enthusiasm, that they completed the vast structure in an incredibly short space of time; cheering one another at their work with devout exhortations, and declaring that, if the materials furnished them should fail, they would pull down their own houses in order to obtain what might be wanting to complete the holy task.[271]Nor had the principle of loyalty, always so prominent in the Spanish character, become less perverted and mischievous than the religious principle. It offered its sincere homage alike to the cold severity of Philip the Second, to the weak bigotry of Philip the Third, to the luxurious selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and to the miserable imbecility of Charles the Second. The waste and profligacy of such royal favorites as the Duke of Lerma and the Count Duke Olivares, which ended in national bankruptcy and disgrace, failed seriously to affect the sentiments of the people towards the person of the monarch, or to change their persuasions that their earthly sovereign was to be addressed in words and with feelings similar to those with which they approached the Majesty of Heaven.[272] The king—merely because he was the king—was looked upon substantially as he had been in the days of Saint Ferdinand and the “Partidas,” when he was accounted the direct vicegerent of Heaven, and the personal proprietor of all those portions of the globe which he had inherited with his crown.[273] The Duc de VendÔme, therefore, showed his thorough knowledge of the Spanish character, when, in the War of the Succession,—Madrid being in possession of the enemy, and every thing seeming to be lost,—he still declared, that, if the persons of the king, the queen, and the prince were but safe, he would himself answer for final success.[274] In fact, the old principle of loyalty, sunk into a submission—voluntary, it is true, and not without grace, but still an unhesitating submission—to the mere authority of the king, seemed to have become the only efficient bond of connection between the crown and its subjects, and the main resource of the state for the preservation of social order. The nation ceased to claim its most important rights, if they came in conflict with the rights claimed by the royal prerogative; so that the resistance of Aragon in the case of Perez, and that of Catalonia against the oppressive administration of the Count Duke Olivares, were easily put down by the zeal of the very descendants of the Comuneros of Castile.

It is this degradation of the loyalty and religion of the country, infecting as it did every part of the national character, which we have felt to be undermining the general culture of Spain during the seventeenth century; its workings being sometimes visible on the surface, and sometimes hidden by the vast and showy apparatus of despotism and superstition under which it was often concealed even from its victims. But it is a most melancholy fact in the case, that whatever of Spanish literature survived at the end of this period found its nourishment in such feelings of religion and loyalty as still sustained the forms of the monarchy,—an imperfect and unhealthy life, wasting away in an atmosphere of death. At last, as we approach the conclusion of the century, the Inquisition and the despotism seem to be everywhere present, and to have cast their blight over every thing. All the writers of the time yield to their influences, but none in a manner more painful to witness, than Calderon and SolÍs; the two whose names close up the period, and leave so little to hope for the future. For the “Autos” of Calderon and the “History” of SolÍs were undoubtedly regarded, both by their authors and by the public, as works eminently religious in their nature; and the respect, and even reverence, with which each of these great men treated the wretched and imbecile Charles the Second, were as undoubtedly accounted to them by their contemporaries for religious loyalty and patriotism. At the present day, we cannot doubt that a literature which rests in any considerable degree on such foundations must be near to its fall.[275]

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.