  The Literature that existed in Spain between the Accession of the Bourbon Family and the Invasion of Bonaparte; or from the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century to the Early Part of the Nineteenth. HISTORY THIRD PERIOD. CHAPTER I.War of the Succession. — Bourbon Family. — Philip the Fifth. — Academy of the Spanish Language: its Dictionary, Orthography, Grammar, and other Works. — Academy of Barcelona. — Academy of History. — State of Letters. — Poetry: Moraes, Barnuevo, Reynosa, Zevallos, Lobo, Benegasi, Pitillas. Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers on the first day of November, in the year 1700. How low he left the intellectual culture of his country, and how completely the old national literature had died out in his reign, we have already seen. But, before there could be any serious thought of a revival from this disastrous state of things, a civil war was destined to sweep over the land, and still further exhaust its resources. Austria and France, it had been long understood, would make pretensions to the throne of Spain, so soon as it should be left vacant by the extinction of the reigning dynasty; and the partisans of each of these great powers were numerous and confident of success, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe. At this moment, while The decision was not unexpected, and was, perhaps, as wise as a wiser king would have made under similar circumstances. But it was not the more likely, on either account, to be acquiesced in. Austria declared war against the new dynasty, as soon as the will of the deceased monarch was divulged; and England and Holland, outraged by the bad faith of Louis the Fourteenth, who, hardly two years before, had made an arrangement with them for a wholly different settlement of the Spanish question, soon joined her. The war, known as “the War of the Succession,” became general in its character; Spain was invaded by the allied powers; and the contest for its throne was kept up on the soil of that unfortunate country, partly by foreign troops, and partly by divisions among its own people, until 1713, when the treaty of Utrecht confirmed the claims of the Bourbon family, and gave peace to Europe, wearied with blood. As far as Spain was concerned, the results of this war were most important. On the one hand, she lost by it nearly half of her European dominions, and fell, if not in proportion to such a loss, yet very greatly, in the scale of nations. But, on the other hand, the vast resources of her American colonies still remained untouched; her people had been roused to new energy by their exertions in defence of their homes; and their That Philip the Fifth should desire to restore the intellectual dignity of the country, that had so generously adopted him, was natural. But while the war lasted, it demanded all the care of his government; and when it was over, and he turned himself to the task, it was plain that, in his personal relations and dispositions, he was but imperfectly fitted for it. Notwithstanding the sincerest efforts to assimilate himself to the people he governed, he was still a foreigner, little acquainted with their condition, and unable to sympathize with their peculiar nationality. He had been educated at the court of Louis the Fourteenth; the most brilliant court in Europe, and that in which, more than in any other, letters were regarded as a part of the pageant of empire. His character was not strongly marked; and he expressed no decided love for any definite form of intellectual cultivation, though he had good taste enough to enjoy the elegance to which he had always been accustomed, and which had been an important part of his breeding. He was, in fact, a Frenchman; and never could forget,—what his grandfather had unwisely told him always to remember,—that he was such. When, therefore, he desired to encourage elegant literature, it was natural that he should first recur to the means by At this moment, the idea of patronizing and controlling the literature of a country by academies, established under the authority of its government, and composed of the principal men of letters of the time, was generally favored;—the French Academy, founded by Cardinal Richelieu, and always the model of its class, being now at the height of its success and fame. To establish a Spanish Academy, which should have similar objects and reach similar results, was, therefore, naturally the great literary project of the reign of Philip the Fifth.[277] Probably the king himself had early entertained it. Certainly it was formally brought to his notice, in 1713, by the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman, who, amidst the cares of five successive viceroyalties, had found leisure to devote himself, not only to letters, but to some of the more severe branches of the physical and exact sciences. His first purpose seems to have been, to form an academy whose empire should extend, on all sides, to the limits of human knowledge, and whose subdivisions should be substantially made according to the system of Lord Bacon. This, however, was soon abandoned as too vast an undertaking; and it was deter As it was modelled almost exactly after the form of the French Academy, the first project of its members was that of making a Dictionary. The work was much needed. From the time of Fernando de Herrera the language had not received large additions, but it had received some that were of value. Mendoza and Coloma had introduced a few military terms, that have since passed into common use; and both of them, with Ercilla, Urrea, and many others, had been so familiar with the Italian, as to seize some of its wealth for their own. Cervantes, however, had, perhaps, done more than any body else. That he was insensible neither to the danger of a too free intermixture of foreign words, nor to the true principles that should govern their introduction when needed, he has shown in the conversations of Don Quixote with the printers at Barcelona, and with Sancho at the Duke’s castle; but still he felt the rights of genius within him, and exercised them in this respect as boldly as he did in most others. His new compounds, his Latinisms, his restoration of old and neglected phrases, and his occasional recourse to the Italian, have all been noted; and, in nearly every instance, the words he adopted now enter into the recognized vocabulary of the language. Other writers ventured in the same direction, with less success; but still, from the glossaries added to the poems of Blasco in 1584, But, on the other hand, during the seventeenth century, the old language had been much abused. From the appearance of GÓngora no proper regard had been paid to the preservation of its purity or of its original characteristics, by many of the most popular authors that employed it. The Latiniparla, as Quevedo called the affectation of his time, had brought in many Latin words and many strange phrases, wholly repugnant to the genius of the Spanish. Such words and constructions, too, had enjoyed much favor; and Lope de Vega, Calderon, and the other leading spirits, who pronounced them to be affectations and refused directly to countenance them, yet occasionally yielded to the fashion of their time, in order to obtain the applause which was sure to follow.[280] Both to receive the words that had been rightfully naturalized in the language, and to place a mark of disapprobation on those that were unworthy to be adopted, a Dictionary resting on authority was wanted. None such had been attempted in Spain. Indeed, during the whole of the preceding century, only one Spanish Dictionary of any kind had been produced that received, or deserved, the notice of the Academy. This was the work of Covarrubias, whose “Tesoro,” first printed in 1611, is a curious book, full of learning, and, in the etymological part, valuable, but often conceited, and rarely showing philosophical acuteness in its definitions.[281] The new Academy, therefore, could obtain little help from the labors of their predecessors, and, for such as was worth having, were obliged to go back to Lebrixa and his editors. But they were in earnest. They labored diligently, and between 1726 and 1739 produced their grand work, in six folio volumes. On the whole, it did them honor. No doubt, it shows, in several parts, a want of mature consideration and good judgment. Many words were omitted, that should have been inserted; many were inserted, which were afterwards stricken out; and many were given on unsatisfactory authorities. But its definitions are generally good; its etymologies—though this part of the work was little regarded by its authors—are respectable; and its citations are ample and pertinent. In fact, all that had been done for the language, in the way of dictionaries, since its origin, was not equal to what was now done in this single work. But the Academicians were not slow to perceive, that Another difficulty, however, soon presented itself to the Academy, quite as serious as the size of their Dictionary. It was that of the orthography they had adopted. The spelling of the Castilian—partly, perhaps, from the very various elements of which it was composed, and partly from the popular character of its literature—had always been more unsettled than that of the other modern languages. Lebrixa, the great scholar of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, first attempted to reduce it to order, and the simplicity of his system, which appeared in 1517, seemed at first likely to secure general favor and acceptance. But thirty treatises, that at different times followed, had—with the exception of the acute and pleasant one printed by Aleman when he was in Mexico, in 1609—served It is not surprising, therefore, that the first attempt of the Academy, made in the form of a short discourse, prefixed to its larger Dictionary, produced little effect. A separate work, which appeared in 1742, did something more, but not much; and the successive editions of it which were called for by the public rather showed the uneasy state of opinion in relation to the points under discussion, than any thing else. At last, in 1815, the Academy, in the eighth recension of its treatise on Orthography, and in 1817, in the fifth of its smaller Dictionary, began a series of important changes, which have been generally adopted by subsequent writers of authority, and appear to have nearly settled the spelling of the Castilian, though still it seems open to a few further modifications, and even to invite them.[283] A Grammar, like a Dictionary, was provided for in A History of the Castilian Language, and an Art of Poetry, which were also expressly prescribed by the statutes of the Academy, have never been prepared under their authority; but, instead of these tasks, they have sometimes performed duties not originally imposed upon them. Thus they have published careful editions One good effect that followed from the foundation of the Spanish Academy was the establishment of other academies for kindred purposes. These academies were entirely different from the social meetings, under the same name, that were imitated from the Italian academies in the time of Charles the Fifth,—one of the earliest of which was held in the house of CortÉs,[286] the conqueror of Mexico;—though still the elder associations seem sometimes to have furnished materials, out of which the institutions that succeeded them were constructed. At least, this was the case with the Acade But such associations everywhere, though they may be useful and even important in their proper relations, can neither create a new literature for a country, nor, where the old literature is seriously decayed, do much to revive it. The Spanish academies were no exceptions to this remark. All elegant culture had so nearly disappeared before the accession of the Bourbons, and there was such an insensibility to its value in those classes of society where it should have been most cherished, that it was plain the resuscitation must be the work of time, and that the land must long lie fallow before another harvest could be gathered in. During the entire reign of Philip the Fifth, therefore,—a reign which, including the few months of his nominal abdication in favor of his son, extends to forty-six years,—we shall find undeniable traces of this unhappy state of things; few authors appearing who deserve to be named at all, and still fewer who demand a careful notice. Poetry, indeed, or what passed under that name, continued to be written; and some of it, though little en The most amusing work of Moraes is a prose satire, printed in 1734, called “The Caves of Salamanca,” where, in certain grottos, which a popular tradition supposed to exist, sealed up by magic, within the banks of the TÓrmes, he finds Amadis of Gaul, Oriana, and Celestina, and discourses with them and other fanciful personages on such subjects as his humor happens to suggest. Parts of it are very wild; parts of it are both amusing and wise, especially what is said about the Spanish language and academies, and about the “Telemachus” of FÉnelon, then at the height of its fame. The whole shows few of the affectations of style that still deformed and degraded whatever there was of literature in the country, and which, though ridiculed in “The Caves of Salamanca,” are abundant in the other works of the same author.[288] A long heroic poem, in two parts, in honor of the conquest of Peru by the Pizarros, was printed at Lima in 1732. It is founded principally on the prose History of the Inca Garcilasso, but is rarely so interesting as the gossip out of which it was constructed. The author, Pedro de Barnuevo, was an officer of the Spanish government in South America; and he gives in the Preface a long list of his works, published and unpublished. He was, undoubtedly, a man of learning, but not a poet. Like Moraes, he has arranged a mystical interpretation to his story; some parts of which, such as that where America comes before God, and prays to be conquered that she may be converted, are really allegorical; while, in general, the interpretation he gives is merely an after-thought, forced and unnatural. But his work is dull and in bad taste, and the octave stanzas in which it is written are managed with less skill than usual.[289] Several religious poems belong to the same period. One by Pedro de Reynosa, printed in 1727, is on “Santa Casilda,” the converted daughter of a Moorish king of Toledo, who figures in the history of Spain during the eleventh century. Another, called “The Eloquence of Silence,” by Miguel de Zevallos, in 1738, is devoted to the honor of Saint John of Nepomuck, who, in the fourteenth century, was thrown into the Moldau, by order of a king of Bohemia, because the holy man would No account more favorable can be given of the lyric and miscellaneous poetry of the period, than of the narrative. The best that appeared, or at least what was thought to be the best at the time, is to be found in the poetical works of Eugenio Lobo, first printed in 1738. He was a soldier, who wrote verses only for his amusement; but his friends, who admired them much beyond their merit, printed portions of them, from time to time, until, at last, he himself thought it better to permit a religious congregation to publish the whole in a volume. They are very various in form, from fragments of two epics down to sonnets, and equally various in tone, from that appropriate to religious villancicos to that of the freest satire. But they are in very bad taste; and, if any thing like poetry appears in them, it is at rare intervals. Benegasi y Luxan, who, in 1743, published a volume of such light verses as were called for by the gay society in which he lived, wrote in a simpler style than Lobo, though, on the whole, he succeeded no bet More characteristic than either, however, were two collections of verse, written, as their titles profess, by the poets of most note at the time, in honor of the king and queen, who, in 1722, meeting the Host, as it was passing to a dying man, gave their own carriage to the priest who bore it, and then, according to the fashion of the country, followed reverently on foot. The names of Zamora the dramatist, of Diego de Torres, well known for his various accomplishments in science and letters, and of a few other poets, who are still remembered, occur in the first collection; but, in general, the obscurity of the authors who contributed to it is such as we might anticipate from reading their poetry; while, at the same time, the occasion of the whole shows how low was the culture which could attribute any value to such publications.[292] A single bright spot in the poetical history of this period is only the more remarkable from the gloom that surrounds it. It is a satire attributed to Herbas, a person otherwise unknown, who disguised himself un CHAPTER II.Marquis of San Phelipe. — Influence of France on Spanish Literature. — Luzan. — His Predecessors and his Doctrines. — Low State of all Intellectual Culture in Spain. — FeyjoÓ. One historical work of some consequence belongs entirely to the reign of Philip the Fifth,—the commentaries on the War of the Succession, and the history of the country from 1701 to 1725, by the Marquis of San Phelipe. Its author, a gentleman of Spanish descent, was born in Sardinia, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and early filled several offices of consequence under the government of Spain; but, when his native island was conquered by the Austrian party, he remained faithful to the French family, under whom he had thus far served, and made his escape to Madrid. There Philip the Fifth received him with great favor. He was created Marquis of San Phelipe,—a title chosen by himself in compliment to the king,—and, besides being much employed during the war in military affairs, he was sent afterwards as ambassador, first to Genoa, and then to the Hague, where he died, on the 1st of July, 1726. In his youth the Marquis of San Phelipe had been educated with care, and therefore, during the active portions of his life, found an agreeable resource in intellectual occupations. He wrote a poem in octave stanzas on the story in the “Book of Tobit,” which was printed in 1709, and a history of “The Hebrew Monarchy,” taken It is a spirited book, earnest in the cause of Castile against Catalonia; but still, notwithstanding its partisan character, it is, the most valuable of the contemporary accounts of the events to which it relates; and, notwithstanding it has a good deal of the lively air of the French memoirs, then so much in fashion, it is strongly marked with the old Spanish feelings of religion and loyalty,—feelings which this very book proves to have partly survived the general decay of the national character during the seventeenth century, and the convulsions that had shaken it at the opening of the eighteenth. In style it is not perfectly pure. Perhaps tokens of its author’s Sardinian education are seen in his choice of words; and certainly his pointed epigrammatic phrases and sentences often show, that he leaned to the rhetori But, when we speak of Spanish literature in the reign of Philip the Fifth, we must never forget that the influence of France was gradually becoming felt in all the culture of the country. The mass of the people, it is true, either took no cognizance of the coming change, or resisted it; and the new government willingly avoided whatever might seem to offend or undervalue the old Castilian spirit. But Paris was then, as it had long been, the most refined capital in Europe; and the courts of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth, necessarily in intimate relations with that of Philip the Fifth, could not fail to carry to Madrid a tone which was already spreading of itself into Germany and the extreme North. French, in fact, soon began to be spoken in the elegant society of the capital and the court;—a thing before unknown in Spain, though French princesses had more than once sat on the Spanish throne. But now it was a compliment to the reigning monarch himself, and courtiers strove to indulge in it. Pitillas, under pretence of laughing at himself for following the And French I talk; at least enough to know That neither I nor other men more shrewd Can comprehend my words, though still endued With power to raise my heavy Spanish dough. And Father Isla makes himself merry with the idea of a man who fancies he has married an Andalusian or Castilian wife, and finds out that she proves little better than a Frenchwoman after all.[295] Translations from the French followed this state of things; and, at last, an attempt was made to introduce formally into Spain a poetical system founded on the critical doctrines prevalent in France. Its author, Ignacio de Luzan, a gentleman of Aragon, was born in 1702; and, while still a child, went to Italy and received a learned education in the schools of Milan, Palermo, and Naples; remaining abroad eighteen years, and enjoying the society of several of the most distinguished Italian poets of the time, among whom were Maffei and Metastasio. At last, in 1733, he returned to Spain, a well-bred scholar, according to the ideas of scholarship then prevalent in Italy, and with a singular facility in writing and speaking French and Italian. His personal affairs and his native modesty kept him for some time in retirement on the estates of his family in Aragon. But, in the condition to which Spanish literature was then reduced, a man of so many accomplishments could hardly fail, in any position, to make his influence felt. That of Luzan soon became perceptible, because he loved to write, and wrote a great deal. Whatever he did was well received, but little of it was published at the time, and not much has appeared since. His “Odes on the Conquest of Oran” were particularly admired by his friends, and, though somewhat cold, may still be read with pleasure. These and other compositions made him known to the government at Madrid, and procured for him, in 1747, the appointment of Secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris. There he remained three years, and, from the absence of the ambassador, acted, for a large part of the time, as the only representative of his country at the French court. On his return home, he continued to enjoy the confidence of the king; and when he died suddenly, in 1754, he was in great favor, and about to receive a place of more consequence than any he had yet held.[296] The circumstances of the country, and those of his own education, position, and tastes, opened to Luzan, as a critic, a career of almost assured success. Every thing was so enfeebled and degraded, that it could offer no The attempt was by no means a new one. The rules and doctrines of the ancients, in matters of taste and rhetoric, had frequently before been announced and defended in Spain. Even Enzina, the oldest of those who regarded Castilian poetry as an art, was not ignorant of Quintilian and Cicero, though, in his short treatise, which shows more good sense and good taste than can be claimed from the age, he takes substantially the same view of his subject that the Marquis of Villena and the ProvenÇals had taken before him,—considering all Alonso Lopez, commonly called El Pinciano,—the same person who wrote the dull epic on Pelayo,—went further, and in 1596 published his “Ancient Poetical Philosophy,” in which, under the disguise of a friendly correspondence, he gives, with much learning and some acuteness, his own views of the opinions of the ancient masters on all the modes of poetical composition.[299] Cascales followed him, in 1616, with a series of dialogues, somewhat more familiar than the grave letters of Lopez, and resting more on the doctrines of Horace, whose epistle to the Pisos he afterwards published, with a well-written Latin commentary.[300] Salas, on the contrary, in his “New Idea of Ancient Tragedy,” which appeared in 1633, followed Aristotle rather than any other authority, and illustrated his discussion—which is the ablest in Spanish literature on the side it sustains—by a translation of the “TrojanÆ” of Seneca, All these works, however, and three or four others of less consequence, assumed, so far as they attempted to lay their foundations in philosophy, to be built on the rules laid down by Aristotle or the Roman rhetoricians.[302] In this they committed a serious error. Ancient rhetoric can be applied, in all its strictness, to no modern poetry, and least of all to the poetry of Spain. The school of Lope de Vega, therefore, passed over them like an irresistible flood, leaving behind it hardly a trace of the structures that had been raised to oppose its progress. But Luzan took a different ground. His more immediate predecessors had been Gracian, who defended the Gongorism of the preceding period, and Artiga, who, in a long treatise “On Spanish Eloquence,” written in the ballad measures, had seemed willing to encourage all the bad taste that prevailed in the beginning of the eighteenth century.[303] Luzan took no notice of either of them. He followed the poetical system of Boileau and Lebossu, not, indeed, forgetting the masters of antiquity, but everywhere accommodating his doctrines to the demands of modern poetry, as Muratori had done just before him, and enforcing them by the example of the French school, then The effect was immediate and great. It seemed to offer a remedy for the bad taste which had accompanied, and in no small degree hastened, the decline of the Something more, however, than a reformation in taste was wanted in Spain before a sufficient foundation could be laid for advancement in elegant literature. The commonest forms of truth had been so long excluded from the country, that the human mind there seemed to have pined away, and to have become dwarfed, for want of its appropriate nourishment. All the great sciences, both moral and physical, that had been for a hundred years advancing with an accelerated speed everywhere else throughout Europe, had been unable to force their way through the jealous guard which ecclesiastical and political despotism had joined to keep for ever watching the passes of the Pyrenees. From the days of the Comuneros and the Reformation of Luther, when religious sects began to discuss the authority of princes and the The Spanish universities, in fact, still taught from the same books they had used in the time of Cardinal Ximenes, and by the same methods. The scholastic philosophy was still regarded as the highest form of merely intellectual culture. Diego de Torres, afterwards distinguished for his knowledge in the physical sciences,—a man born and educated at Salamanca in the first half of the century,—says, that, after he had been five years in one of the schools of the University there, it was by accident he learned the existence of the mathematical sciences.[307] And, fifty years later, Blanco White declares, that, like most of his countrymen, he should have completed his studies in theology at the University of Thus far, therefore, the old system of things was triumphant, and the common forms of advancing knowledge were, to an extraordinary and almost incredible degree, kept out of the country. On the other hand, errors, follies, and absurdities sprang up and abounded, just as surely as darkness follows the exclusion of light. Few persons in Spain in the beginning of the eighteenth century were so well informed as not to believe in astrology, and fewer still doubted the disastrous influence of comets and eclipses. The system of Copernicus was not only discouraged, but forbidden to be taught, on the ground that it was contrary to Scripture. The philosophy of Bacon, with all the consequences that had followed it, was unknown. It was not, perhaps, true, that the healing waters of knowledge had been rolled backward to their fountain, but no spirit of power had descended to trouble them, and they had now been kept stagnant till life was no longer in them and life could no longer be supported by them. It seemed as if the faculties of thinking and reasoning, in the better sense of these words, were either about to be entirely lost in Spain, or to be partly preserved only in a few scattered individuals, who, by the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny that oppressed them, would be prevented from diffusing even the imperfect light which they themselves enjoyed. But it could not be so. The human mind cannot be permanently imprisoned; and it is an obvious proof of this consoling fact, that the intellectual emancipation of His personal character and resources, in some respects, fitted him well for the great task he had undertaken. He was a sincere Catholic, and therefore felt no disposition to interfere even with abuses that were protected by the authority of his Church; a circumstance without which he would have been stopped at the very threshold of his enterprise. His mind was strong and patient of labor; and if, on the one hand, his researches were restrained by the embarrassments of his ecclesiastical position, he had, on the other, obtained, what few Spaniards then enjoyed, the means of knowing much of what had been done in Italy, in France, and even in England, for the advancement of At times he seems to have been anxious concerning the result of his labors; but, on the whole, his courage did not fail him. He was not, indeed, a man of genius. He was not a man to invent new systems of metaphysics or philosophy. But he was a learned man, with a cautious judgment, somewhat obscured, but not really impaired, by religious prejudices, from which he could not be expected to emancipate himself; he was a man who understood the real importance of the labors of Galileo, Bacon, and Newton, of Leibnitz, Pascal, and Gassendi; and, what was of vastly more consequence, he was determined that his own countrymen should no longer remain ignorant of the advancement already made by the rest of Christendom under the influence of master-spirits like these. So far as the War of the Succession had served to rouse the national character from its lethargy, and to direct the thoughts of Spaniards to what had been done beyond the Pyrenees, it was favorable to his purpose. But in other respects, as we have seen, it had effected nothing for the national culture. Still, when, in 1726, Of course he was assailed. A work, called the “Antiteatro CrÍtico,” appeared early, and was soon followed by another, with nearly the same title, and by not a few scattered tracts and volumes, directed against different portions of what he had published. But he was quite able to defend himself. He wrote with clearness and good taste in an age when the prevailing style was obscure and affected; and, if he fell occasionally into Gallicisms, from relying much on French writers for his materials, his mistakes of this sort were rare; and, in The attacks made on him, therefore, served chiefly to draw to his works the attention he solicited, and in the end advanced his cause, instead of retarding it. Even the Inquisition, to which he was more than once denounced, summoned him in vain before its tribunals.[309] His faith could not be questioned, and his cause was stronger than they were. Fifteen editions of his principal work, large as it was, were printed in half a century. The excitement it produced went on increasing as long as he lived; and when he died, in 1764, he could look back and see that he had imparted a movement to the human mind in Spain, which, though it was far from raising Spanish philosophy to a level with that of France and England, had yet given it a right direction, and done more for the intellectual life of his country than had been done for a century.[310] CHAPTER III.Intolerance, Credulity, and Bigotry. — Reign of Ferdinand the Sixth. — Signs of Improvement. — Literature. — SaladueÑa. — Moraleja. — Academy of Good Taste. — Velazquez. — Mayans. — Nasarre. It can hardly be said, that, during the forty-six years of the reign of Philip the Fifth, the intolerance which had so long blighted the land relaxed its grasp. The progress of knowledge might, indeed, be gradually and silently accumulating means to resist it, but its power was still unbroken, and its activity as formidable as ever. Louis the Fourteenth, in whom an old age of bigotry naturally ended a life of selfish indulgence, had counselled his grandson to sustain the Inquisition, as one of the means for insuring tranquillity to the political government of the country; and this advice, not given without a knowledge of the Spanish character, was, on the whole, acted upon with success, if not with entire consistency. At first, indeed, the personal dispositions of the king in relation to this mighty engine of state seemed somewhat unsettled. When it was proposed to him to celebrate an auto da fÉ, as a part of the pageant suitable to the coming in of a new dynasty, the young monarch, fresh from the elegance of the court of Versailles, refused to sanction its barbarities by his presence. Even later he encouraged Macanaz, a person high in office, to publish a work in defence of the crown against the But these dispositions were transient. The Spanish priesthood early obtained control of the king’s mind. In one of the sieges of Barcelona, during the War of the Succession, he was induced to consult an image of the Virgin, and to avow afterwards, very solemnly, that she had given him a miraculous promise of the fidelity of the Catalonians,—a promise, it should be added, such as would be likely to insure its own fulfilment. The death of the queen, in 1714, which plunged him into a deep melancholy, further contributed to give power to the clergy who surrounded him; and, a year afterwards, when the Inquisition took firm ground against Macanaz and the royal prerogative, the king yielded, and Macanaz fled to France. And finally, when, in 1724, after a few months of abdication, Philip resumed the reins of government, which he should never have laid down, no small part of the increased energy, with which he fulfilled the duties of his high place, was inspired by the influence of the Church. As he grew older, he grew more bigoted; and in his last years, when the accumulated power placed in his hands by the destruction of the few remaining privileges of Aragon and Catalonia had made him a more absolute monarch than ever before sat on the Spanish throne, he seemed to rejoice, as much as any of his predecessors, in devoting the whole of his prerogatives to advance the interests of the priesthood.[312] But, from first to last, there was no real relaxation in In the reign of Ferdinand the Sixth, which lasted thirteen years, and ended in 1759, there is evidently an improvement in this state of things. The seeds sown in the time of his father, if less cared for and cultivated than they should have been, were beginning to germinate and disencumber themselves from the cold and hard soil into which they had been cast. Foreign intercourse, especially that with France, brought in new ideas. Ferreras, the careful, but dull, annalist of his country’s history; Juan de Yriarte, the active head of the Royal Library; Bayer, his learned successor; Mayans, who had a passion for collecting and editing books; and, above all, the wise and modest Father FeyjoÓ, had not labored in vain, and still survived to see the results of their toils. The Church itself began slowly to acknowledge the irresistible power of advancing intelligence, and the Inquisition, without acknowledging it, felt its influence. Not more than ten persons were burnt alive in the time of Ferdinand the Sixth, and these were obscure relapsed Jews;—men whose fate is as heavy a reproach to the Inquisition as if they had been more intelligent and distinguished, but the example of whose punishment did not strike a terror such as that of the dying Protestants and patriots of Aragon had once done. The direction of the literature of the country, however, was the same it had taken from the beginning of the century. Slight, but unsatisfactory, attempts continued to be made to adhere to the forms of the elder time;—such attempts as are to be seen in a long narrative poem by the Count SaldueÑa on the subject of Pelayo, and two very poor imitations of the “Para Todos” of Montalvan, one of which was by Moraleja, and the other by Ortiz. But the amount of what was undertaken in this way was very small, and the impulse was constantly diminishing; for the French school enjoyed now all the favor that was given to any form of elegant literature.[315] In this respect, a fashionable society, called The Academy of Good Taste, and connected with the court of Madrid, exercised some influence. It dates from 1749, and was intended, perhaps, to resemble those French coteries, which began in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth, at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and were long so important both in the literary and political history of France. The Countess of Lemos, at whose house it met, was its founder, and it gradually ranked among its members several of the more cultivated nobility and most of the leading men of letters, such as Luzan, Montiano, Blas Nasarre, and Velazquez, each of whom was known, either at that time or soon afterwards, by his published works.[316] Except Luzan, of whom we have already spoken, Velazquez was the most distinguished of their number. He was descended from an old and noble family, in the South of Spain, and was born in 1722; but, from his position in society, he passed most of his life at court. There he became involved in the political troubles of the reign of Charles the Third, in consequence of which he suffered a long imprisonment from 1766 to 1772, and died of apoplexy the same year he was released. Velazquez was a man of talent and industry, rather than a man of genius. He was a member, not only of the principal Spanish academies, but of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, and wrote several works of learning relating to the literature and antiquities of his country. The only one of them now Mayans, a Valencian gentleman of learning, and another of those who had a considerable influence on Spanish literature at this period, followed a similar course in his “RetÓrica,” which appeared in 1757, and is founded rather on the philosophical opinions of the Roman rhetoricians than on the modification of those opinions by Boileau and his followers. It is a long and very cumbrous work, less fitted to the wants of the times than that of Luzan, and even more opposed to the old Castilian spirit, which submitted so unwillingly to rules of any sort. But it is a storehouse of curious extracts from authors belonging to the best period of Spanish literature, almost always selected with good judgment, if not always skilfully applied to the matter under discussion.[318] To these works of Mayans, Velazquez, and Luzan CHAPTER IV.Slow Progress of Culture. — Charles the Third and his Policy. — Isla. — His Friar Gerund. — His Cicero. — His Gil Blas. — Efforts to restore the Old School of Poetry. — Huerta. — Sedano. — Sanchez. — Sarmiento. — Efforts to introduce the French School. — Moratin the Elder and his Club. — Cadahalso, Yriarte, Samaniego, Arroyal, Montengon, Salas, Meras, NoroÑa. The reign of Ferdinand the Sixth, which had been marked with little political energy during its continuance, was saddened, at its close, by the death of the monarch from grief at the loss of his queen. But it had not been without beneficial influences on the country. A wise economy had been introduced, for the first time since the discovery of America, into the administration of the state; the abused powers of the Church had been diminished by a concordat with the Pope; the progress of knowledge had been furthered; and Father FeyjoÓ, vigorous, though old, was still permitted, if not encouraged, to go on with his great task, and create a school that should rest on the broad principles of philosophy recognized in England and in France. We must not, however, be misled by such general statements. Spain, notwithstanding half a century of advancement, was still deplorably behind the other countries of Western Europe in that intellectual cultivation, without which no nation in modern times can be prosperous, strong, or honored. “There is not,” says the Marquis of EnseÑada, in a report made to the king, as minister of state,—“there is not a professorship Under these circumstances, the accession of a prince like Charles the Third was eminently fortunate for the country. He was a man of energy and discernment, a Spaniard by birth and character, but one whom political connections had placed early on the throne of Naples, where, during a reign of twenty-four years, he had done much to restore the dignity of a decayed monarchy, and had learned much of the condition of Europe outside of the Pyrenees. When, therefore, the death of his half-brother called him to the throne of Spain, he came with a kind and degree of experience in affairs which fitted him well for his duties in the more important and more unfortunate kingdom, whose destinies he was to control for above a quarter of a century. Happily, he seems to have comprehended his position from the first, and to have understood that he was called to a great In some respects he was successful. His ministers, Roda, Florida-Blanca, Aranda, and Campomanes, were men of ability. By their suggestions and assistance, he abridged the Papal power so far, that no rescript or edict from Rome could have force in Spain without the expressed assent of the throne; he restrained the Inquisition from exercising any authority whatever, except in cases of obstinate heresy or apostasy; he forbade the condemnation of any book, till its author, or those interested in it, had had an opportunity to be heard in its defence; and, finally, deeming the Jesuits the most active opponents of the reforms he endeavoured to introduce, he, in one day, expelled their whole body from his dominions all over the world, breaking up their schools and confiscating their great revenues.[321] At the same time, he caused improved plans of study to be suggested; he made arrangements for popular education, such as were before unknown in Spain; and he raised the tone of instruction and the modes of teaching in the few higher institutions over which he could lawfully extend his control. But many abuses were beyond his reach. When he appealed to the Universities, urging them to change their ancient habits, and teach the truths of the physical and exact sciences, Salamanca answered, in 1771, “Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician, and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does.” And the other Universities showed little more of the spirit of advancement. Under the influence of a spirit like that of Charles the Third, during a reign protracted to twenty-nine years, there was a new and considerable advancement in whatever tends to make life desirable, of which the country on all sides gave token. The population, which had fled or died away, seemed to spring up afresh in places that oppression had made desert, and having regained something under the first of the Bourbons, it now, under the third, recovered rapidly the numbers it had lost in the days of the House of Austria, by wars all over the world, by emigration, by the persecution of the Jews and the expulsion of the Moriscos, by bad legislation, and by the cruel spirit of religious intolerance. The revenues in the same period were increased threefold, without adding to the burdens of the people; and the country seemed to be brought from a state of absolute bankruptcy to one of comparative ease and prosperity. It was certain, therefore, that Spain was not falling to ruin, as it had been in the time of Charles the Second.[323] But all intellectual cultivation is slow of growth, and all intellectual reform still slower. The life and health infused into the country were, no doubt, felt in every part of its physical system, reviving and renewing the powers that had been so long wasted away, and that at one period had seemed near to speedy dissolution. But it was obvious, that much time must still elapse before such healthful circulations could reach the national culture generally, and a still longer time before they could revive that elegant literature, which is the bright, consummate flower of all true civilization. Yet life was beginning to be seen. It was a dawn, if it was nothing more. The first striking effect produced by this movement in the reigns of Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third was one quite in sympathy with the spirit of the nation, then resisting the ecclesiastical abuses that had so long oppressed it. It was an attack on the style of popular preaching, which, originally corrupted by Paravicino, the distinguished follower of GÓngora, had been constantly falling lower and lower, until, at last, it seemed to have reached the lowest point of degradation and vulgarity. The assailant was Father Isla, who was born in 1703 and died in 1781, at Bologna, where, being a Jesuit, he had retired, on the general expulsion of his Order from Spain.[324] His earliest published work is his “Triumph of Youth,” printed in 1727, to give the nation an account of a festival, celebrated that year during eleven days at Salamanca, in honor of two very youthful saints who had been Jesuits, and who had just been canonized by Benedict the Thirteenth; a gay tract, full of poems, farces, and accounts of the maskings and In a work somewhat similar, he afterwards went further. It was a description of the proclamation made in 1746, at Pamplona, on the accession of Ferdinand the Sixth, which was attended with such extravagant and idle ceremonies, that, being required to give some account of them to the public, he could not refrain from indulging in his love of ridicule. But he did it with a satire so delicate and so crafty, that those who were its subjects failed at first to apprehend his real purpose. On the contrary, the Council of the proud capital of Navarre thanked him for the honor he had done them; the Bishop and Archbishop complimented him for it; several persons whom he had particularly noticed sent him presents; and, when the irony began to be suspected, it became a subject of public controversy, as in the case of De Foe’s “Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” whether the praise bestowed were in jest or in earnest;—Isla all the time defending himself with admirable ingenuity and wit, as if he were personally aggrieved at the unfavorable construction put upon his compliments. The discussion ended with his retreat or exile from Pamplona.[325] He was, however, at this period of his life occupied with more serious duties, and soon found among them a higher mark for his wit. From the age of twenty-four he had been a successful preacher, and continued such until he was cruelly expelled from his own country. But he perceived how little worthy of its great subjects was the prevalent style of Spanish pulpit ora Isla, however, was not satisfied with merely setting a good example. He determined to make a direct attack on the abuse itself. For this purpose, he wrote what he called “The History of the Famous Preacher, Friar Gerund”; a satirical romance, in which he describes the life of one of these popular orators, from his birth in an obscure village, through his education in a fashionable convent, and his adventures as a missionary about the country; the fiction ending abruptly with his preparation to deliver a course of sermons in a city that seems intended to represent Madrid. It is written throughout with great spirit; and not only are the national manners and character everywhere present, but, in the episodes and in the occasional sketches Isla The sketches of character and specimens of fashionable pulpit oratory given in the “Friar Gerund” are the best parts of it, and are agreeable illustrations for the literary history of the eighteenth century. Of the preacher whom the Friar took for his model we have the following carefully drawn portrait:— “He was in the full perfection of his strength, just about three-and-thirty years old; tall, robust, and stout; his limbs well set and well proportioned; manly in gait, inclining to corpulence, with an erect carriage of his head, and the circle of hair round his tonsure studiously and exactly combed and shaven. His clerical dress was always neat, and fell round his person in ample and regular folds. His shoes fitted him with the greatest nicety, and, above all, his silken cap was adorned with much curious embroidery and a fanciful tassel,—the work of certain female devotees who were dying with admiration of their favorite preacher. In short, he had a very youthful, gallant look; and, adding to this a clear, rich voice, a slight fashionable lisp, a peculiar grace in telling a story, a talent at mimicry, an easy action, a taking manner, a high-sounding style, and The style of eloquence of this vulgar ecclesiastical fop, a specimen of which follows, is no less faithfully and characteristically given; and was taken, as Father Isla intimates was his custom, from a discourse that had really been preached.[328] “It was well known, that he always began his sermons with some proverb, some jest, some pot-house witticism, or some strange fragment, which, taken from its proper connections and relations, would seem, at first blush, to be an inconsequence, a blasphemy, or an impiety; until, at last, having kept his audience waiting a moment in wonder, he finished the clause, or came out with an explanation which reduced the whole to a sort of miserable trifling. Thus, preaching one day on the mystery of the Trinity, he began his sermon by saying, ‘I deny that God exists a Unity in essence and a Trinity in person,’ and then stopped short for an instant. The hearers, of course, looked round on one another, scandalized, or, at least, wondering what would be the end of this heretical blasphemy. At length, when the preacher thought he had fairly caught them, he went on,—‘Thus says the Ebionite, the Marcionite, the Arian, the Manichean, the Socinian; but I prove it against them all from the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Fathers.’ The first volume of the “Friar Gerund” was printed in 1758, without the knowledge of the author, and in twenty-four hours eight hundred copies of it were sold.[330] Such an extraordinary popularity, however, proved any thing but a benefit. The priests, and especially the preaching friars, assailed it from all quarters, as the most formidable attack yet made in Spain on their peculiar craft. The consequence was, that, though the king and the court expressed their delight in its satire, the license to publish it further was withdrawn, its author was summoned before the Inquisition, and his book was condemned in 1760. But Isla was too strong in public favor and in the respect of the Jesuits to be personally punished, and the Friar Gerund was too true and too widely scattered to be more than nominally suppressed.[331] In consequence of the alarm and anxieties that accompanied his sudden and violent expulsion from Spain, in 1767, Father Isla suffered on the road an attack of paralysis, which made his health uncertain for the remaining fourteen years of his life. Still, after his death, it was found that in these sad years he had not been idle. Among his papers was a poem in sixteen cantos, containing above twelve thousand lines in octave stanzas. It is called “Cicero,” and claims to be a life of the great One of the subjects of its satire is the whole class of Spanish narrative poems, of which, and especially of those devoted to the lives of the saints, it may be regarded as a sort of parody; but its main purpose is to ridicule the lives of modern fine ladies, and the modes of early education then prevalent. The whole, however, is mingled with inappropriate discussions about Italy, poetry, and a country life, and hardly less inappropriate satire of professed musicians, theatres, and poets who praise one another; in short, with whatever occurred to Father Isla’s wayward humor as he was writing. From internal evidence, it seems to have been read, from time to time as it was written, to a society of friends,—probably some of the numerous exiles who, like himself, had resorted to Bologna, and subsisted there on the miserable pittance the Spanish government promised them, but often failed to pay. For such a purpose it was not ill adapted by its clear, flowing style, and occasionally by its pungent satire; but its cumbrous length and endless digressions, often trifling both in matter and manner, render it quite unfit for publication. It was, however, offered to the public censor, and permission to print it was refused, though for reasons so frivolous, that it seems certain the real objection was not to the poem, but to the author.[333] Others of Father Isla’s works were more fortunate. Six volumes of his sermons were collected and published, and six volumes of his letters, chiefly addressed to his sister and her husband, and written in a very affectionate and gay spirit. To these, at different times, were added a few minor works of a trifling character, and one or two that are religious.[334] But what most surprised the world was his translation of “Gil Blas,” printed in 1787, claiming the work, on which the fame of Le Sage must always principally rest, as “stolen from the Spanish, and now,” in the words of Father Isla’s title-page, “restored to its country and native language by a Spaniard, who does not choose to have his nation trifled with.”[335] The external grounds for this extraordinary charge are slight. The first suggestion occurs in 1752, and is made by Voltaire, who, in his “Age of Louis the Fourteenth,” declares Roused by such suggestions, however, Father Isla amused himself with making a translation of Gil Blas, adding to it a long and not successful continuation,[336] and declaring, without ceremony or proof, that it was the work of an Andalusian advocate, who gave his manuscript to Le Sage, when Le Sage was in Spain, either as a secretary of the French embassy, or as a friend of the French ambassador. But all this seems to be without any foundation, for the manuscript has never been produced; the advocate has never been named; and Le Sage was never in Spain. Still, the Spanish claim has not been abandoned. On the contrary, Llorente, in two ingenious and learned works on the subject, one in French and the other in Spanish, but both printed in 1822, reasserts it, with great earnestness, resting his proofs on internal evidence, and insisting that Gil But there is a ready answer to all such merely conjectural criticism. Le Sage proceeded, as an author in romantic fiction, just as he had done when he wrote for the public theatre; and the results at which he arrived in both cases are remarkably similar. In the drama, he began with translations and imitations from the Spanish, such as his “Point of Honor,” which is taken from Roxas, and his “Don Cesar Ursino,” which is from Calderon; but afterwards, when he better understood his own talent and had acquired confidence from success, he came out with his “Turcaret,” a wholly original comedy, which, far surpassed all he had be On this point, the internal evidence is as decisive as the external. The frequent errors of this remarkable romance in Spanish geography and history show, that it could hardly have been the work of a Spaniard, and certainly not of a Spaniard so well informed as SolÍs; its private anecdotes of society in the time of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth prove it to have been almost necessarily written by a Frenchman; while, at the same time, the freedom with which, as we go on, we find that every thing Spanish is plundered,—now a tale taken from “Marcos de Obregon,” now an intrigue or a story from a play of Mendoza, of Roxas, or of Figueroa,—points directly to Le Sage’s old habits, and to his practised skill in turning to account every thing that he deemed fitted to his purpose. The result is, that he has, by the force of his genius, produced a work of great brilliancy; in which, from his entire familiarity with Spanish literature and his unscrupulous use of it, he has preserved the national character with such fidelity, that a Spaniard is almost always unwilling to believe that the Gil Blas, especially now that he has it in the excellent version of Father Isla, could have been written by any body but one of his own countrymen.[338] The chief talent of Father Isla was in satire, and the great service he performed for his country was that of driving from its respectable churches the low and vulgar style of preaching with which they had long been infested;—a work which the “Friar Gerund” achieved almost as completely as the “Don Quixote” did that of destroying the insane passion for books of chivalry which prevailed in the seventeenth century. But, meanwhile, other attempts were making in other directions to revive the literature of the country; some by restoring a taste for the old national poetry, some by attempting to accommodate every thing to the French doctrines of the age of Louis the Fourteenth, and some by an ill-defined and often, perhaps, unconscious struggle to unite the two opinions, and to form a school whose character should be unlike that of either and yet in advance of both. In the direction of the earlier national poetry little was done by original efforts, but something was attempted in other ways. Huerta, a fierce, but inconsis On the other hand, more was done with effect to recall the memory of the old masters themselves. Lopez de Sedano, between 1768 and 1778, published his “Spanish Parnassus,” in nine volumes; a work which, though ill digested and not always showing good taste in its selections and criticisms, is still a rich mine of the poetry of the country in its best days, and contains important materials for the history of Spanish literature from the period of Boscan and Garcilasso.[340] Sanchez went further back, and in 1779 offered, to his countrymen, for the first time, the greater legendary treasures of their heroic ages, beginning with the noble old poem of the Cid, but unhappily leaving incomplete a task for which he had proved himself so well fitted by his learning and zeal, if not by his acuteness.[341] And finally, Sarmiento, a friend of FeyjoÓ, and one of his ablest public defenders, undertook an elaborate history of Spanish The doctrines of the French school, somewhat modified, perhaps, by the reproduction of the elder Spanish literature, but still substantially unchanged, found followers more numerous and active. During the reign of Charles the Third, Moratin the elder, a gentleman of an old Biscayan family, who was born in 1737, and died in 1780, succeeded, in a great degree, to the inheritance of Luzan’s opinions, and devoted himself to the reform of the taste of his countrymen. He was the friend of Montiano, who had himself endeavoured to introduce classical tragedy upon the Spanish stage, and who had, probably, some share in forming the literary character of the young poet. But the court, as usual, was an element in the movement. Moratin was received with flattering regard by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, the head of the great house of the Guzmans; by the Duke of Ossuna, long ambassador in France; by Aranda, the wise minister of state, who rarely forgot the cause of intellectual culture; and by the Infante Don Gabriel de Bourbon, the accomplished translator of Sallust; and His first public effort of any consequence, except a drama that will be noticed hereafter, was his “Poeta,” which appeared in 1764. It consists entirely of his own shorter poems, and is among the many proofs how small was the interest then felt in literature, since, though the whole collection fills only a hundred and sixty pages, it was found expedient to publish it in ten successive numbers, in order to give it a fair opportunity to be circulated and read. This was followed, the next year, by the “Diana,” a short didactic poem, in six books, on the Chase, and in 1765 by a narrative poem on the Destruction of his Ships by CortÉs, to which if we add a volume published by the piety of his son in 1821, and containing, with a modest and beautiful life of their author, a collection of poems, most of which had not before been published, we shall have all of the elder Moratin that can now interest us. Its value is not great; and yet portions of it are not likely to be soon forgotten. The “Epic Canto,” as he calls it, on the bold adventure of CortÉs in burning his ships, is the noblest poem of its class produced in Spain during the eighteenth century, and gives more pleasure than almost any of the historical epics that preceded it in such large numbers. Some of his shorter pieces, like his ballads on Moorish subjects, and an ode to a champion in the bull-fights,—which Moratin constantly frequented, and of which he printed a pleasant historical sketch,—are full of spirit. All he wrote, indeed, is marked by purity and exactness of language and harmony of versification; showing that, though he possessed to an extraordinary degree the power of an improvisator, he composed carefully and finished with Moratin was an amiable man, and gathered the men of letters of the Spanish capital in a friendly circle about him. They met in one of the better class of taverns,—the Fonda de San Sebastian,—where they maintained a club-room that was always open and ready to receive them. Ayala, the tragic writer; CerdÁ, the literary antiquarian; Rios, who wrote the analysis of “Don Quixote” prefixed to the magnificent edition of the Academy; Ortega, the botanist and scholar; Pizzi, the Professor of Arabic Literature; Cadahalso, the poet and essayist; MuÑoz, the historian of the New World; Yriarte, the fabulist; Conti, the Italian translator of a collection of Spanish poetry; Signorelli, the author of the general history of theatres; and others,—were members of this pleasant association, and resorted continually to its cheerful saloon. How truly Spanish was the tone of their intercourse may be gathered from the fact, that they had but one law to govern all their proceedings, and that was, never to speak on any subject except the Theatre, Bull-fights, Love, and Poetry. But in every thing they undertook Among the most interesting members of this agreeable society was JosÉ de Cadahalso, a gentleman descended from one of the old mountain families of the North of Spain, but born at Cadiz in 1741. His education was conducted from early youth in Paris, but before he was twenty years old he had visited Italy, Germany, England, and Portugal, and obtained a knowledge of the language and literature of each, and especially of England, sufficient to emancipate him from many national prejudices, and make him more useful to the cause of letters at home than he would otherwise have been. On his return to Spain he took the military dress of Santiago, and entered the army. There he rose rapidly, till he reached the rank of colonel; but, in all the different places to which his own choice or the service of his regiment carried him,—Saragossa, Madrid, AlcalÁ de Henares, and Salamanca,—he sought occasion to In 1772 Cadahalso published his “Eruditos Á la Violeta,” or Fashionable Learning, to which, from its considerable success, he added a supplement the same year. The original work is a pleasant satire on the superficial scholarship of his times, and is thrown into the form of directions how to teach the whole circle of human knowledge in a course of lectures, that shall just fill the seven days of the week; the supplement giving a few further illustrations of the same subject, and some of the results of such teachings on the unhappy scholars who had been its victims. This, with a volume of poems printed the next year, and containing several careful translations from the ancients, a few satirical trifles after the manner of Quevedo, and a good many Anacreontic songs and tales in the manner of Villegas, are all of his works that were published during his lifetime. But after his death there was found among his papers a collection of letters, supposed to have been Another member of the society founded by Moratin, and one of the most prominent of them, was Thomas de Yriarte, a gentleman who was born on the island of Teneriffe in 1750, but received that part of his education which decided the course of his life at Madrid, under the auspices of his uncle, Don Juan de Yriarte, the learned head of the King’s Library. The young man was known as a dramatic writer, and as a translator of French plays for the royal theatres, from the age of eighteen; and from the age of twenty-one, when he printed some good Latin verses on the birth of the His original poetry is better. It is marked by purity of style, regularity, and elegance, but not by power or elevation. The best of what is merely miscellaneous is to be found in eleven Epistles, with one of which, addressed to his friend Cadahalso, he dedicates to him a translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry.” But in two departments, where his natural taste led him to labor with a decided preference, he apparently made more effort than in any other, and had greater success. The first of these was didactic poetry. His poem “On Music,”—a subject which he chose from his considerable proficiency in that art,—appeared in 1780, and was soon favorably known, not only at home, but The other department, in which Yriarte was more successful, was that of fables. Here he, in some degree, struck out a new path; for he not only invented all his fictions, which no other fabulist in modern times had done, but restricted them all, in their moral purpose, to the correction of the faults and follies of men of learning,—an application which had not before been thought of. Their whole number, including a few that are posthumous, is nearly eighty, above sixty of which appeared in 1782. They are written with great care, in no less than forty different measures, and show an extraordinary degree of ingenuity in adapting the attributes and instincts of animals to the instruction, not of mankind at large, as had always been done before, but to that of a separate and small class, between whom and the inferior creation the resemblance is rarely obvious. The task was certainly a difficult one. Perhaps, on this Yriarte, however, had a rival, who shared these honors with him, and in some respects obtained them even earlier. This was Samaniego, a Biscayan gentleman of rank and fortune, who was born in 1745, and died in 1801; having devoted his life, in the most disinterested manner, to the welfare of his native province. He was one of the earliest and most active members of the first of those societies sometimes called “Friends of the Country,” and sometimes “Societies for Public Improvement,” which began in the reign of Charles the Third, and soon spread through Spain, exercising an important influence on the education and public economy of the kingdom, and laboring to raise the arts of life from the degraded condition into which they had fallen during the latter period of the dominion of the House of Austria. The Biscayan Society, founded in 1765, devoted itself much to the education of the people; and, to favor this great cause, Samaniego undertook to write fables suited to the capacity of the children taught in the Society’s seminary. How early he began to prepare them is not known; but in the first portion, published in 1781, and The best of them are the shortest and simplest, like the following, entitled “The Scrupulous Cats,” which was well suited to the time when it appeared, and can hardly be amiss at any other. Two cats, old Tortoise-back and Kate, Once from its spit a capon ate. And one they could not hide or cure. They licked themselves, however, clean, And then sat down behind a screen, And talked it over. Quite precise, They took each other’s best advice, Whether to eat the spit or no? “And did they eat it?” “Sir, I trow, They did not! They were honest things, Who had a conscience, and knew how it stings.”[350] Samaniego was not the only person who, without belonging to the society of Moratin and his friends, coÖperated with them in their efforts to encourage a better tone in the literature of their country. Among those who, from a similar impulse, but with less success, took the same direction, were Arroyal, who, in 1784, published a collection of poems, which he calls Odes, but which are oftener epigrams; and Montengon, a Jesuit, who, after the expulsion of his Order from Spain, began, in 1786, with his “Eusebio,” a work on education, partly in imitation of the “TÉlÉmaque,” and then went on rapidly with a prose epic called “Rodrigo,” a volume of Odes, and several other works, written with little talent, and showing by their inaccuracies of style that their author had been an exile in Italy till his mother tongue had become strange to him. To these should be added Gregorio de Salas, a quiet ecclesiastic, who wrote odes, fables, and other trifles, that were several times printed after 1790; Ignacio de Meras, a courtier of the worst days of Charles the Fourth, whose worthless dramas and miscellaneous poetry appeared in 1792; and the Count de NoroÑa, a soldier and diplomatist, who, besides a dull epic on the separation of the Arabian empire in Spain from that of the East, printed, in 1799-1800, CHAPTER V.School of Salamanca. — Melendez Valdes. — Gonzalez. — Forner. — Iglesias. — Cienfuegos. — Jovellanos. — MuÑoz. — Escoiquiz. — Moratin the Younger. — Quintana. Both the parties, into which Spanish literature was divided about the middle of the eighteenth century, erred by running into those extremes of opinion which are rarely right in any thing and never in matters of taste. Moratin was wrong in speaking with contempt of such poetry as the fine old ballad of “Calaynos,” and Huerta was equally wrong when he said, that the “Athalie” of Racine might be fit to be represented by boarding-school misses, but was fit for nothing else. It was natural, therefore, that another party, or school, should be formed, which should endeavour to avoid the excesses of both its predecessors, and unite their merits; one that should not be insensible to the power and richness of the old writers of the time of the Philips, and yet, escaping from their extravagances and bad taste, should mould itself in some degree according to the severe state of literary opinion then prevailing on the Continent. Such a school in fact appeared at Salamanca in the latter part of the reign of Charles the Third and the beginning of that of Charles the Fourth. Its proper founder was Melendez Valdes, who was born in Estremadura, in 1754, and at the age of eighteen His earliest public success was in 1780, when he obtained a prize offered by the Spanish Academy for the best eclogue. Yriarte, who was some years older, and had already become favorably known at court and in the capital, was his most formidable rival. But the poem Yriarte offered, which is on the pleasures of a country life, as set forth by one disgusted with that of The next year Melendez came to Madrid. He was received with great kindness by Jovellanos and his friends; and obtained new honors at the Academy of San Fernando, by an ode “On the Glory of the Arts,” which that Academy had been founded to foster. But his preference was still for his old poetical haunts on the banks of the TÓrmes, and, having obtained the chair of Professor of the Humanities or Philology, at Salamanca, he gladly returned thither, and devoted himself to its unostentatious duties. In 1784, at the suggestion of Jovellanos, he became a competitor for the prize offered by the city of Madrid for a comedy, and wrote “The Marriage of Camacho.” But his talent was not dramatic; and therefore, though he obtained the votes of the judges, he did not, to the great disappointment of his patron, obtain those of the public when his drama was brought to the test of a free representation. This failure, however, he retrieved a year afterwards, by publishing a small volume of poetry, chiefly lyric But his success was not altogether wisely used by Melendez. He had been in the habit for some years of spending his vacations at court, where he was a favorite with many persons of distinction; and, now that he had risen so much in general consideration, he employed his influence in soliciting for himself a place under the government,—an old weakness in the Castilian character, which, however it might be disguised by the loyalty of public service, has broken down the independence and happiness of multitudes of high-minded men who have yielded to it. Melendez, unfortunately, succeeded in his aspirations. In 1789 he was made a judge in one of the courts of Saragossa, and in 1791 was raised to He did not, however, neglect his favorite pursuits. He fulfilled with faithfulness and ability the duties of his place; but poetry was still his first love, for whose service he rescued many hours of secret and fond devotion. In 1797, he published a new edition of his works, more than doubling their original amount, and dedicating them to the reigning favorite,—the master of all fortunes in the country he governed so ill. It was successful. The new portions wore a somewhat graver and more philosophical air than his earliest lyrics and pastorals had done, and showed more the influence of studies in English and German literature. But this was not, on the whole, an improvement. He felt, undoubtedly, that the tremendous revolutions he witnessed on all sides, in the fall of kingdoms and the convulsions of society, prescribed to poetry subjects more lofty and solemn than he had been wont to seek; and he made an effort to rise to a requisition so severe. Once or twice he intimates a consciousness that he was not equal to the undertaking; and yet his “Ode to Winter,” as a season for reflection, which shows how much he had read Thomson, his “Ode to Truth,” and his “Ode on the Presence of God in his Works,” are not unworthy of their lofty subjects. Several of his philosophical epistles, too, are good; especially those to Jovellanos and the Prince of the Peace. But, in his longer canzones, where he sometimes imitates Petrarch, and in his epic canto on “The Fall of Lucifer,” which As, however, we have intimated, this new publication of his works was successful. The Prince of the Peace was flattered by his share in it; and Melendez received, in consequence, an important employment about the court, which brought him to Madrid, where, his friend Jovellanos having been made a minister of state, his position became, for a moment, most agreeable and happy; while, for the future, a long vista of preferment and fame seemed opening before him. But the very next year, the virtuous and wise man on whom rested so many hopes, besides those of Melendez, fell from power; and, according to the old custom of the Spanish monarchy, his political friends were involved in his ruin. At first, Melendez was exiled to Medina del Campo, and afterwards to Zamora; but in 1802 the rigor of his persecution was mitigated, and he was permitted But he returned there a saddened and disappointed man; little inclined to poetical studies, and with little of the tranquillity of spirit necessary to pursue them successfully. At the end of six weary years came the revolution of Aranjuez, and he was again free. He hastened at once to Madrid. But he was too late. The king was already at Bayonne, and the French power was in the ascendant in the capital. Unfortunately, he attached himself to the new government of Joseph, and shared first its disasters and then its fate. Once he was absolutely led out to be shot by the excited population of Oviedo, where he had been sent as a commissioner. On another occasion, his house at Salamanca was sacked, and his precious library destroyed, by the very French party whose interests he served. At last, when all was lost, he fled. But, before he crossed the frontier, he knelt down and kissed the last spot of earth that he could call Spain; and then, as the Bidassoa received his tears, cried out in anguish that “he should never again tread the soil of his country.” His prophecy was fulfilled as sadly as it was made. Four miserable years he lived as an exile in the South of France, and then died at Montpellier, on the 24th of May, 1817, in poverty and suffering.[354] To solace the heavy hours of his exile, he occupied himself with preparing the materials for a final publication of all he had written, embracing many new po Older than Melendez, but somewhat influenced by him and by Cadahalso, who had an effect on the taste of both, was the excellent Father Diego Gonzalez, a modest Augustinian monk, a part of whose life was spent in active religious duties at Salamanca, where he became intimate with the poets of the new school; a part of it at Seville, where he was the friend of Jovellanos; and a part of it at Madrid, where he died in 1794, about sixty years old, sincerely lamented by some of the noblest spirits of his time. As a poet, Gonzalez adhered more to the old Castilian school than Melendez did. But his model was the best. He imitated Luis de Leon; and did it with such happy success, that, in some of his odes and in some of his versions of the Psalms, we might almost think we were listening to the solemn tones of his great master. His most popular poems, however, were light and gay; such as his verses “To a Perfidious Bat,” which have been very often printed; his verses “To a Lady who had burned her Finger”; and similar trifles, in which he showed that all the secret idiomatic graces of the old Castilian were at his command. A didactic poem on “The Four Ages of Man,” which he began, and in the first book of which there is a fine dedication of the whole to Jovellanos, was never finished. Indeed, his poetry, though much known and circulated during his lifetime, was an object of little interest or care to himself, and was collected Other poets, among whom were Forner, Iglesias, and Cienfuegos, were more under the influence of the Salamanca school than Gonzalez was. Forner, like Melendez, was born in Estremadura, and the two young friends were educated together at Salamanca. In his critical opinions,—partly shown in a satire “On the Faults introduced into Castilian Poetry,” which gained an academic prize in 1782, and partly in his controversies with Huerta on the subject of the Spanish theatre,—he inclines much to the stricter French school. But his poetry is more free than such opinions would imply; and in his latter years, when he lived as a magistrate at Seville, and studied Herrera, Rioja, and the other old masters who were natives of its soil, he attached himself yet more decidedly to the national manner, and approached nearer to the serene severity of Gonzalez. Unhappily, his life, besides being much crowded with business, was short. He died in 1797, only forty-one years old; and, except his prose works, the best of which is a well-written defence of the literary reputation of his country against the injurious imputations of foreigners, he left little to give the world proof of the merits he possessed, or the influence he really exercised.[357] Iglesias, though his life was even shorter, was, in some respects, more fortunate. He was born in Sala Cienfuegos, who was ten years younger than Melendez, was more strictly his follower than either of the two poets last mentioned. But he had fallen on evil times, and his career, which promised to be brilliant, was cut But the favor with which this publication was received procured for him the place of editor of the government gazette, at Madrid; and, when the French occupied that capital, in 1808, he was found firm at his post, determined to do his duty to his country. Murat, who had the command of the invading forces, endeavoured, at first, to seduce or drive him into submission, but, failing in this, condemned him to death; a sentence which would infallibly have been carried into execution,—since Cienfuegos refused to make the smallest concession to the French authority,—if his friends had not interfered and procured a commutation of it into transportation to France. The change, however, was hardly a mercy. The sufferings of the journey, in which he travelled as a prisoner; the grief he felt at leaving his friends in hands which had hardly spared his own life; and the anticipation of a long exile in the midst of his own and his country’s enemies, were too much for his patriotic and generous spirit; and he died in July, 1809, at the age of forty-five, only a few days One other person, already referred to with honor, must now be particularly noticed, who, if his life belonged to the state, still wrote poetry with success, and exercised over the school formed at Salamanca an influence which belongs to the history of letters. This person was Jovellanos, the wise magistrate and minister of Charles the Fourth, and the victim of his master’s unworthy weakness and of the still more unworthy vengeance of the reigning favorite. He was born in Gijon, in Asturias, in 1744, and from his earliest youth seems to have shown that love of intellectual cultivation, and that moral elevation of character, which distinguished the whole of the more mature portions of his life. The position of his family was such, that all the means for a careful education to be found in Spain were open to him; and, as he was originally destined to the higher dignities of the Church, he was sent to study philosophy and the canon and civil law at Oviedo, Avila, AlcalÁ de Henares, and Madrid. But, just as he was about to take the irrevocable step that would have bound him to an ecclesiastical life, some of his friends, and especially the distinguished statesman, Juan Arias de Saavedra, who was like a second father to him, interfered, and changed his destination. The consequence of this intervention was, that, in 1767, he was sent as a judicial magistrate to Seville, where, by his humane spirit, and his disinterested and earnest devotion to the duties of a difficult and disagreeable place, he made him But the spirit of Jovellanos was of kindred with whatever was noble and elevated. At Seville, he early discovered the merit of Diego Gonzalez, and through him was led into a correspondence with Melendez. One result of this is still to be found in the poetical Epistle of Jovellanos to his friends in Salamanca, exhorting them to rise to the highest strains of poetry. Another was the establishment of a connection between himself and Melendez, which, while it was important to the young school at Salamanca, led Jovellanos to give more of his leisure to the elegant literature he had always loved, but from which the serious business of life had, for some time, much separated him. In consequence of an accidental conversation, he wrote at Seville his prose comedy of “The Honored Criminal,” which had a remarkable success; and in 1769 he prepared a poetical tragedy on the subject of Pelayo, which was not printed till several years afterward. Shorter poetical compositions, sometimes grave and sometimes gay, served to divert his mind in the intervals of severe labor; and when, after a period of ten years, he left the brilliant capital of Andalusia, his poetical Epistle to his friends there shows how deeply he felt that he was leaving behind him the happiest period of his life. This was in 1778, when he was called to Madrid, as one of the principal magistrates of the capital and court; a place that brought him again into the administration of criminal justice, from which, during his stay at Seville, he had been relieved. His duties were distaste In 1780, he was raised to a place in the Council of Orders, where he had more leisure, and was able to give his time to higher objects;—some of the results of which are to be seen in his report to the government on the military and religious Orders of Knighthood; in his system of instruction for the Imperial College of Calatrava; in his Discourse on the Study of History, as a necessary part of the wise study of jurisprudence; and in other similar labors, which proved him to be incontestably an excellent prose-writer, and the first philosophical statesman in the kingdom. At the same time, however, he amused himself with elegant literature, and took great solace in collecting around him the poets and men of letters whom he loved. In 1785, he wrote several burlesque ballads on the quarrels of Huerta, Yriarte, and Forner about the theatre; and the next year published two satires in blank verse and in the style of Juvenal, rebuking the corrupted manners of his times. All of them were received Persons who held the tone implied in such a course of public labors might be sustained at the court of Charles the Third, but were little likely to enjoy regard at that of his son. In 1790, two years after Charles the Fourth ascended the throne, Count Cabarrus not only fell from power, but was thrown into prison; and Jovellanos, who did not hesitate to defend him, was sent to Asturias in a sort of honorable exile, that lasted eight years. But he served his fellow-men as gladly in disgrace as he did in power. Hardly, therefore, had he reached his native city, when he set about urging forward all public improvements that he deemed useful; laboring in whatever related to the mines and roads, and especially in whatever related to the general education of the people, with the most disinterested zeal. During this period of enforced retirement, he made many reports to the government on different subjects connected with the general welfare, and wrote his excellent tract “On Public Amusements,” afterwards published by the Academy of History, and his elaborate treatise on Legislation in Relation to Agriculture, which extended his reputation throughout Europe, and has been the basis of all that has been wisely undertaken in Spain on that difficult subject ever since. In 1797, Count Cabarrus was restored to the favor of Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and Jovellanos was recalled to court and made Minister of Justice. But his season of favor was short. Godoy still hated the elevated views of the man to whom he had reluctantly delegated a small portion of his own power; and in This exile, however, did not satisfy the jealous favorite. In 1801, partly through a movement of the Inquisition, and still more through a political intrigue, Jovellanos was suddenly seized in his bed, and, in violation both of law and decency, carried, like a common felon, across the whole kingdom, and embarked at Barcelona for Majorca. There he was confined, first in a convent and afterwards in a fortress, with such rigor, that all communication with his friends and with the affairs of the world was nearly cut off; and there he remained, for seven long years, exposed to privations and trials that undermined his health and broke down his constitution. At last came the abdication and fall of his weak and ungrateful sovereign. “And then,” says Southey, in his “History of the Peninsular War,” “next to the punishment of Godoy, what all men most desired was the release of Jovellanos.” He was, therefore, at once brought back, and everywhere welcomed with the affection and respect, that he had earned by so many services and through such unjust sufferings. His infirmities, however, were very oppressive to him. He declined, therefore, all public employments, even among his friends who adhered to the cause of their country; he indignantly rejected the proposal of the French invaders to become one of the principal ministers of state in the new order of things they hoped to establish; and then slowly and sadly retired, to seek among his native mountains the repose he needed. But he was not permitted long to remain there. As soon But no man with influence such as his could then have peace in Spain. Like others, in those days of revolution, he was assailed by the fierce spirit of faction, and in 1811 replied triumphantly to his accusers in a defence of what may be considered his administration of Spain in the two preceding years, written with the purity, elegance, and gravity of manner which marked his best days, and with a moral fervor even more eloquent than he had shown before. As he approaches the conclusion of this personal vindication, admirable alike for its modesty and its power, he says, with a sorrow he does not strive to conceal:— “And now that I am about to lay down my pen, I feel a secret trouble at my heart, which will disturb the rest of my life. It has been impossible for me to defend myself without offending others; and I fear, that, for the first time, I shall begin to feel I have enemies whom I have myself made such. But, wounded in that honor which is my life, and asking in vain for an authority that would protect and rescue me, I have been compelled to attempt my own defence by my own pen; the only weapon left in my hands. To use it with absolute moderation, when I was driven on by an anguish so sharp, was a hard task. One more dexterous in such contests might, by the cunning of his art, have oftener At the moment when this eloquent defence of himself was published, the French, by a sudden incursion, took military possession of his native city; and he hurried for safety on board a slight vessel, hardly knowing whither his course should be directed. After suffering severely from a storm of eight days’ continuance in the Bay of Biscay, he disembarked to obtain relief at the obscure port of Vega. But his strength was gone; and on the 27th of November, within forty-eight hours from the time of his landing, he died. He was nearly sixty-eight years old. One historical work of the reign of Charles the Fourth should not be forgotten. It was by Juan Bautista MuÑoz, and was undertaken by the especial order of Charles the Third, who demanded of its author a complete history of the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America. This was in 1779. But MuÑoz encountered many obstacles. The members of the Academy of History were not well disposed towards an undertaking, which seemed to fall within their own jurisdiction; and when he had finished the first portion, they subjected it, by the royal permission, to an examination, which, from its length even more than its rigor, threatened to prevent the work from being printed at all. This, however, was stopped by a summary order from the king; and the first volume, bringing down the history to the year 1500, was published in 1793. But no other followed it; and since the death of MuÑoz, which occurred in 1799, when he was fifty-four years old, no attempt has been made to resume the work. It therefore remains just as he then left it,—a fragment, written, indeed, in a philosophical spirit and with a severe simplicity of style, but of small value, because it embraces so inconsiderable a portion of the subject to which it is devoted.[361] An epic attempt of the same period is of still less importance. It is “Mexico Conquered,” an heroic poem in twenty-six books, and about twenty-five thousand lines, beginning with the demand of CortÉs, at Tlascala, to be received in person by Montezuma, and end The literary ambition of Escoiquiz, however, is of both an earlier and later date than this unhappy interval, when his upright spirit was so tried by political persecutions. In 1797 he published a translation of Young’s “Night Thoughts”; and, while he was a prisoner in France, from 1808 to 1814, he prepared a Spanish version of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which showed, at least, with what pleasure he gave himself up to letters, and what a solace they were to him under his privations and misfortunes. His “Mexico” was first printed in 1798. It is cast more carefully into an epic form than were the heroic poems that abounded in the days of the Philips, and is sustained more than they generally were by such supernatural Christian machinery as was first used with effect by Tasso. But, like them, it is not without cold, allegorical personages, who play parts too important in the action; while, on the other hand, its faithful history of events, its unity of design, and its regular proportions, are no sufficient compensation for its ill-constructed stanzas and its chronicling dulness. The history of SolÍs is much more interesting and poetical than this wearisome romantic epic, which owes to that historian nearly all its facts.[362] Leandro Moratin, son of the poet who flourished in the reign of Charles the Third, was, in some respects, a greater sufferer from the convulsions of the times in which he lived than Escoiquiz, and in all respects more distinguished in the world of letters. His principal success, however, was in the drama, where he must hereafter be more fully noticed. Here, therefore, it is only necessary to say, that, in his lyric and miscellaneous poetry, he was a follower of his father, modifying his manner so far under the influence of Conti, an Italian man of letters who lived long at Madrid, that, in his shorter pieces, the Italian terseness is quite apparent and gives a finish to the surface, though the material beneath may be quite Castilian. This is particularly true of his odes and sonnets, and of a striking Chorus of the Spirits of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament awaiting the Appearance of the Saviour; a solemn composition, breathing the fervent spirit of Luis of Granada. His ballads, on the other hand, though finished with great care, are more national in their tone than any thing else he has left us. But the poems that please us best and interest us most are those that show his own temper and affections; such as his “Epistle to Jovellanos,” and his “Ode on the Death of Conde,” the historian. In none of his personal relations, however, does Moratin appear to such obvious advantage as in the difficult ones in which he stood at different times with the Prince of the Peace. To that profligate minister he owed, not only all his means for training himself as a dramatic writer, but the position in society which insured his success; and when the day of retribution The last of these miscellaneous writers of the reign of Charles the Fourth that should be mentioned is Quintana, who, like Jovellanos, Moratin, and Escoiquiz, suffered much from the violence of the revolutions through which they all passed, but, unlike them, has survived to enjoy a serene and honored old age. He was born at Madrid in 1772, but received the most effective part of his literary education at Salamanca, where he acknowledged the influence of Melendez and Cienfuegos. His profession was the law; and he began the serious business of life in the capital, kindly en Meantime, between these two attempts, he published, in 1802, a small volume of poetry, almost entirely lyric, taking the same noble and patriotic tone he had taken in his successful tragedy, and showing a spirit more deep and earnest than was to be found in any of the school of Salamanca, to which, in his address to Melendez, he leaves no doubt that he now gladly associated himself. In a similar spirit he published, in 1807, a single volume containing five lives of distinguished Spaniards, who, like the Cid and the Great Captain, had successfully fought the enemies of their country at home and abroad; and almost simultaneously he prepared three volumes of selections from the best Spanish poets, accompanying them with critical notices, which, if more slight than might have been claimed from one like Quintana, and less generous in the praise they bestow than they ought to have been, are yet national in their temper, and better than any thing else of their kind in the language. Both show a too willing imitation of the French manner, and contain occasional Gallicisms; but both are written in a clear and graceful prose, both were well received, as they But though the taste of Quintana was somewhat inclined to the literature of France, he was a Spaniard at heart, and a faithful one. Even before the French invasion he had so carefully kept himself aloof from the influence and patronage of the Prince of the Peace, that, though belonging almost strictly to the same school of poetry with Moratin, these two distinguished men lived at Madrid, imperfectly known to each other, and in fact as heads of different literary societies, whose intercourse was not so kindly as it should have been. But the moment the revolution of 1808 broke out, Quintana sprang to the place for which he felt himself called. He published at once his effective “Odes to Emancipated Spain”; he threw out, in the journals of the time, whatever he thought would excite his countrymen to resist their invaders; he became the secretary to the Cortes and to the regency; and he wrote many of the powerful proclamations, manifestos, and addresses that distinguished so honorably the career of the different administrations to which he belonged during their struggle for national independence. In short, he devoted all that he possessed of talent or fortune to the service of his country in the day of its sorest trial. But he was ill rewarded for it. Much of what had been done by the representatives of the Spanish people in the name of Ferdinand the Seventh, during his forced detention in France, was unwelcome to that shortsighted monarch; and, as soon as he returned to Madrid, in 1814, a persecution was begun of those who CHAPTER VI.Theatre in the Eighteenth Century. — Translations from the French. — Original Plays. — Operas. — National Theatre. — Castro. — AÑorbe. — Imitations of the French Theatre. — Montiano. — Moratin the Elder. — Cadahalso. — Sebastian y Latre. — Trigueros. — Yriarte. — Ayala. — Huerta. — Jovellanos. — Autos forbidden. — Public Theatres and their Parties. — Ramon de la Cruz, Sedano, CortÉs, Cienfuegos, and others. — Huerta’s Collection of Old Plays. — Discussions. — Valladares. — Zavala. — Comella. — Moratin the Younger. — State of the Drama at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. The most considerable literary movement of the eighteenth century in Spain, and the one that best marks the poetical character of the entire period, is that relating to the theatre, which it was earnestly attempted to subject to the rules then prevailing on the French stage. Intimations of such a design are found in the reign of Philip the Fifth, as soon as the War of the Succession was closed. The Marquis of San Juan began, in 1713, with a translation of the “Cinna” of Corneille;—the first tragedy under the French rules that appeared in the Spanish language, and one that was probably selected for this distinction, because it was well suited to the condition of a country, that had so much reason to seek the clemency of its prince in favor of many distinguished persons, whom the civil war had led to resist his power.[365] But it was never rep The Spanish theatre, in fact, was now at its lowest ebb, and wholly in the hands of the populace, from whom it had always received much of its character, and The second queen of Philip the Fifth, Isabel Farnese, who had been used to the enjoyment of all kinds of scenic exhibitions in Italy, was not satisfied with this state of things. Finding an ill-arranged theatre, in which an Italian company had sometimes acted, she caused material additions to be made to it, and required regular operas to be brought out for her amusement from 1737. The change was an important one. The two old court-yards took the alarm. First one and then the other began to erect a new and more commodious structure for theatrical entertainments; and as they had been each other’s rivals for a century and a half in the awkwardness of their arrangements, no less than in their claims for public patronage, so now they became rivals in a struggle for improvement. Under such impulses, the new “Theatre of the Cross” was finished in 1743, and that of “The Prince,” in 1745. One cause of this was the exclusive favor shown to the opera by two Italian queens, and encouraged by the new political relations of Spain with Italy. The theatre of the Buen Retiro, where Calderon had so often triumphed, was fitted up with unwonted magnificence, by Farinelli, the first singer of his time, who had been brought to the Spanish court in order to soothe the melancholy of Philip the Fifth, and who still continued there, enjoying the especial protection of Ferdinand the Sixth. Luzan translated Metastasio’s “Clemency of Titus” for the opening of the new and gorgeous saloon in 1747; and both then, and for a considerable period afterwards, all that the resources of the court could command in poetry and music, or in the show and pomp of theatrical machinery, was lavished on an exotic, which at last failed to take healthy root in the soil of the country.[368] Meantime the national theatre, neglected by the court and the higher classes, was given up to such writers as Francisco de Castro, an actor who sought the applause of the lowest part of his audience by vulgar farces,[369] and Thomas de AÑorbe, the chaplain of a nunnery at Madrid, whose “Paolino,” announced as “in the French fashion,” provoked the just ridicule of Luzan, and whose “Virtue conquers Fate,” if no less extravagant, has the merit of being an attack on astrology and a belief in planetary influences.[370] With the success of such absurdities, however, scholars and men of taste seem to have grown desperate. Montiano, a Biscayan gentleman, high in office at court, and a member of the Academy of Good Taste, that met at the house of the Countess of Lemos, led the way in an attack upon them. He began, in 1750, with a tragedy on the Roman story of Virginia, which he intended should be a model for Spanish serious theatrical compositions, and which he accompanied with a long and well-written discourse, showing how far Bermudez, Cueva, Virues, and a few more of the old masters, had been willing to be governed by doctrines similar to his own. The tragedy itself, which comes like a sort of appendix to this discussion, and seems intended to illustrate and enforce its opinions, is entirely after the model of the French school, and especially after Racine;—all the rules, as they are technically called, including that which requires the stage never to be left vacant during Montiano, however, was not discouraged. In 1753 he published another critical discourse and another tragedy, with similar merits and similar defects, taking for its subject the reign and death of Athaulpho, the Goth, as they are found in the old chronicles. But this, too, like its predecessor, was never acted, and both are now rarely read.[371] The earliest comedy within the French rules that ap In the play itself, a similar kind of deference is shown to the popular prejudices and feelings, which adhered faithfully to the old drama and to the miserable imitations of it that continued to be produced. It is divided into the three jornadas to which the public had so long been wonted, and is written in the national manner, sometimes with full rhymes, and sometimes only with asonantes. But the compromise was not accepted by those to whom it was offered. The principal character, DoÑa GerÓnima, is feebly drawn; and, though the versification and style are always easy, and sometimes beautiful, the attempt to reconcile the irregular genius of the elder comedy with what Moratin, on his title-page, calls “the rigor of art” was a failure. A corresponding effort which he made the next year in tragedy, That honor, however, was gained in 1770, with much difficulty, by Moratin’s “Hormesinda,” the first original drama, under the canons that governed Corneille and Racine, which ever appeared in a public theatre in Spain. It is founded on events connected with the Arab invasion and the achievements of Pelayo, and is written, like the “Lucretia,” in that irregular verse, partly rhymed and partly not, which in Spanish poetry is called silva, and is intended to have, more than any other, the air of improvisation. The partial success of this drama, which, notwithstanding an improbable plot, deserved all the favor it received, induced its author, in 1777, to write his third tragedy, “Guzman the True,” dedicating it to his patron, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who was a descendant of that famous nobleman, and who, a few years before, had himself translated the “IphigÉnie” of Racine into Spanish. The well-known character of the hero, who chose rather to have his son sacrificed by the Moors than to surrender the fortress of Tarifa, if it is not drawn with the vigor of the old Castilian chronicles or of the drama of Guevara, is exhibited, at least, with a well-sustained consistency, that gives token of more poetical power than any thing else produced by its author for the theatre. But this is its only real merit; and the last tragedy of Moratin was, on the whole, no more successful, and no more deserving of success, than the first. Cadahalso, the friend whom we have already noticed as much under the influence of Moratin, went one step Yriarte, better known as a didactic poet and fabulist, enjoys the distinction of having produced the first regular original comedy that was publicly represented in Spain. He began very young, with a play which he did not afterwards think fit to place among his collected works; and, beside translations from Voltaire and Destouches, and three or four attempts of less consequence, he wrote two full-length original comedies, which were better than any thing previously produced by the school to which he belonged. One of them, called “The Flattered Youth,” appeared in 1778, and the other, “The Ill-bred Miss,” ten years later;—the first being on the subject of a son spoiled by a foolishly indulgent mother, and the second on the daughter of a rich man equally spoiled by the carelessness and neglect of her father. Both are divided into three acts, and written in the imperfect rhyme and short verses always grateful to Castilian ears; and both are marked by good character-drawing and a pleasant, easy manner, not abounding in wit nor sensibly deficient in it. But, except these plays of Yriarte and Moratin, and an unfortunate one by Melendez Valdes in 1784,—founded on Camacho’s wedding, in “Don Quixote,” and containing occasionally gentle and pleasing pastoral poetry which ill agrees with the rude jesting of Sancho,—nothing that deserves notice was done for comedy in the latter part of the reign of Charles the Third.[374] Tragedy fared still worse. The “Numantia Destroyed,” written by Ayala, a man of learning and the regular censor of the public theatres of Madrid, was acted in 1775. Its subject is the same with that of The “Raquel” of Huerta, printed in 1778, three years after the “Numantia,” is not so creditable to the author, and produced a less lasting impression on the public. The story—that of the Jewess of Toledo, which has been so often treated by Spanish poets—is taken too freely from a play of Diamante; and though Huerta has, in some respects, given the materials he found there a better arrangement, and a more grave and sonorous versification, he has diminished the spirit and naturalness of the action by constraining it within the hard conventions he prescribed to himself, and has rendered the whole drama so uninteresting, that, notwithstanding its considerable reputation at first, it was soon forgotten.[375] The first real success of any thing in the French style on the Spanish stage, though not in the classical forms prescribed by Boileau and Racine, was obtained by How many opportunities for scenes of the most painful interest such a story affords is obvious at the first glance. Jovellanos has used them skilfully, because he has done it in the simplest and most direct manner, with great warmth of kindly feeling, and in a style whose idiomatic purity is not the least of its attractions. “The Honored Culprit,” therefore, was at once successful, and when well acted, though its poetical power is small, it can hardly be listened to without tears. It was first produced in one of the royal theatres, without But from the time when the first attempt was made to introduce regular plays in the French manner upon the Spanish stage, an active contest had been going on, which, though the advantage had of late been on the side of the innovators, did not seem likely to be soon determined. In 1762, Moratin the elder published what he called “The Truth told about the Spanish Stage”;—three spirited pamphlets, in which he attacked the old drama generally, but above all the autos sacramentales, not denying the poetical merit of those by Calderon, but declaring that such wild, coarse, and blasphemous exhibitions, as they generally were, ought not to be tolerated in a civilized and religious community. So far as the autos were concerned, Moratin was successful. They were prohibited by a royal edict, June 17, 1765; and though, even in the nineteenth century, it can hardly be said that they have been entirely driven out of the villages, where they have been the delight of the mass of the people from a period before that of Alfonso the Wise, yet in Madrid and the larger cities of Spain they have never been heard since they were first forbidden.[377] But this was as far as Moratin could prevail. In the public secular theatre, generally, his poetry and wit produced no effect. There, two riotous parties in the two audiences of Madrid—distinguishing themselves by favors worn in their hats and led on by vulgar friars and rude mechanics, making up in spirit what they wanted in decency, and readily uniting to urge an open war against all further innovations—effectually prevented any of the regular dramas that were written from being represented in their presence, until 1770. The old masters they partly tolerated; especially Calderon, Moreto, and the dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century; but the popular favorites were IbaÑez, Lobera, Vicente Guerrero, a play-actor, Julian de Castro, who wrote ballads for the street beggars and died in a hospital, and others of the same class; all as vulgar as the populace they delighted. After Aranda ceased to be minister, in 1773, this state of things was somewhat modified, without being materially improved. Under his administration, the theatres in the royal residences had been opened for tragedy and comedy; and translations from the French had been acted before the court in a manner suited to their subjects. The two popular theatres of the capital, too, had not escaped his regard, and under his influence had been provided with better scenery; and, from 1768, gave representations in the evening.[378] Still, every thing was in a very low state. A blacksmith was the reigning critic to be consulted by those In this confusion of the old and the new,—of what was stiff, formal, and foreign with what was rudest and most lawless in the national drama at home,—a single writer appeared, who, from the mere force of natural talent, fell instinctively into a tone not unworthy of the theatre, and yet one that obtained for him a degree of favor long denied to persons of more poetical accomplishments. This was Ramon de la Cruz, a gentleman of family and an officer of the government at Madrid, who was born in 1731, and from 1765 to the time of his death, at the end of the century, constantly amused the audiences of the capital with dramas, written in any form likely to please at the palace, on the public stages of the city, or in the houses of the nobility, who, like the Duchess In the whole, he wrote about three hundred dramatic compositions, but printed less than a third of that number; most of those he published being farces designed to produce a merely popular effect. They fill ten volumes, and are all in the short, national measure of the old drama, mingled occasionally, though rarely, with other forms of verse. They bear, however, very different names; some of them characteristic and some of them not. A few he calls “Dramatic Caprices”; apparently because no more definite title would be suited to their undefined character. Some he calls “Saynetes to be sung,” and some “Burlesque Tragedies.” Others have no names at all, not even for their personages, except those of the actors who represented the different parts. While yet others pass under the old designations of loas, entremeses, and zarzuelas, though often with a character which it would have been impossible for the early representations bearing the same names to assume. Occasionally, as in the case of the “Clementina,” he takes pains to observe all the rules of the French drama; but they sit very uneasily upon him, and he seldom submits to them. His great merit is almost entirely confined to his short farces; and therefore, when Duran, to whom the Spanish theatre owes so much, undertook to publish what was best of the works of La Cruz, he rejected all the rest, and, taking his materials both from manuscript sources and from what had been already published, gives us merely a hundred and ten proper “Saynetes.” Their subjects are various, and they are very unequal in length; but, amidst all their varieties, one principle gave them a prevailing character and insured their suc Meanwhile the press was not so inactive as it had been. Sedano published his “Jael,” taken from the story in the book of Judges; Lassala his “Iphigenia”; Trigueros his “Tradesmen of Madrid”; and CortÉs his “Atahualpa”; the last two having been written, and successful, at the same festivities of 1784 for which Melendez composed his “Marriage of Camacho,” and failed. Cienfuegos, too, a poet of more original power than either of them, wrote his “Pitaco,” which opened for him the doors of the Spanish Academy; his “Idomeneo,” from which, in imitation of Alfieri, he excluded the passion of love; and his “Countess of Castile,” and his “Zoraida,” taken from the old traditions of his country’s wars and feuds; each giving proof of talent, but of talent rather lyric than dramatic, and each showing too anxious an adherence to Greek models, which were particularly unsuitable for the Zoraida, whose scene is laid in the gardens of the Alhambra.[381] But all of them—so far at least as the public stage is concerned—have been long since forgotten. On the other hand, La Huerta, in 1785, published fourteen volumes of the old full-length plays, and one volume of the old “Entremeses”; a work intended to vindicate the national theatre of Spain in the preceding century, and to place it as high as that of the rest of Europe, or higher. But he was ill fitted for his task. A selection, designed to illustrate the great masters of the Spanish stage, which, to say nothing of other mistakes, wholly omitted Lope de Vega, began with a capital defect; and this circumstance, together with the The discussions it provoked were of more direct importance, and tended to infuse new life into the theatre itself. Such discussions had been begun immediately after the publication of the first tragedy by Montiano, in 1750,—a date which may be regarded as the dividing point in the history of the Spanish stage during the eighteenth century,—and they were now resumed with great activity, partly in consequence of the increasing interest in the national drama generally, and partly in consequence of the personal temper of La Huerta himself. One immediate result of this state of things was a great increase in the number of plays, of which at least ten times more were written in the last half of the century than in the first; and if there were less improvement in the condition of the theatre than The great obstacle to the success of better dramas lay in a number of writers, who pandered to the bad taste of the low and vulgar audiences of their time. Among the more prominent and successful of these were Valladares and Zavala. The first wrote above a hundred dramas on all kinds of subjects, tragic and comic, prefixing to his “Emperor Albert” a discourse in the spirit of Huerta, to defend the Spanish drama from the attacks of its French neighbours. The other, Zavala, wrote about half as many, some of which, like his “Victims of Love,” are in the sentimental style, while others, like three on the history of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, are as extravagant as any thing in the worst of the dramatists he sought to imitate. Both used the old versification, and intended to humor the public taste in its demands for a vulgar and extravagant drama; though occasionally, as in “The Triumphs of Love and Friendship,” by Zavala, they wrote in prose; and occasionally, as in “The Defence of Virtue,” they showed themselves Somewhat better than either of these last, and certainly more successful than either with the better classes of his contemporaries, was Comella. Like Valladares, his fertility was great; and the ease with which he wrote, and the ingenuity with which he invented new and striking situations, seemed to have the same charm for his audiences which they had had for the audiences of Lope and Calderon. But, unhappily, Comella had not the genius of the old masters. His plots are as involved, and sometimes as interesting, as theirs; but, generally, they are, to a most extravagant degree, wild and absurd. Even when he deals with subjects as well known as Christina of Sweden, Louis the Fourteenth, and Frederic the Great, he seems to have no regard for truth, probability, or consistency. His versification, too, is unfortunate. In form it is, indeed, such as had always been insisted on where the popular voice of Castile has borne sway; but it lacks variety, as well as richness and strength. Still, his romances in dialogue were found so interesting, and there was so much of tender and honorable feeling in the tone of his sentiments and the incidents of his plots, that above a hundred of his wild dramas—some of them in prose, but more in verse, some on historical subjects, but many made out of love-stories of his own invention—were received with applause, and proved more profitable to the theatres of Madrid than any thing else they could offer to the multitude on whom they depended for their existence.[384] But while Comella was at the height of his reputation, a formidable antagonist, both to himself and to the whole class of writers he represented, appeared in the person of Moratin the younger, son of that poet who first produced on the Spanish stage an original drama written according to the French doctrines. He was born in 1760. To insure for the child a subsistence he had with difficulty earned for himself, his father placed him as an apprentice to a jeweller, at whose trade the young man continued to work till he was twenty-three years old,—the latter part of the time in order to support his mother, who had been left a widow. But his natural disposition for poetry was too strong to be controlled by the hard circumstances of his situation. When seven years old he had written verses, and at eighteen he obtained the second prize offered by the Royal Spanish Academy for a poem to commemorate the taking of Granada,—a circumstance which astonished nobody more than it did his own family, for he had written it secretly, and presented it under a feigned name. Another success of the same sort, two years later, attracted more attention to the poor young jeweller; and at last, in 1787, by the kind intervention of Jovellanos, he was made secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris, and accompanied the ambassador, Count Cabarrus, to that capital. There he remained two years, and, during that time, became acquainted with Goldoni, and entered into relations with other men of letters, that determined the direction of his life and the character of his drama. On his return to Madrid, he obtained the patronage of Don Manuel Godoy, afterwards the all-powerful Prince of the Peace; and from this moment his fortune seemed certain. He was sent, at the public charge, to study the theatres of Germany and England, as well as those of Italy and France; he had pensions and places given him at home; and, while an honorable occupation in the department of Foreign Affairs, which awaited his return, insured him a distinguished position in society, he had still leisure left for that cultivation of letters which he prized above all his prosperity and all his official honors. This happy state of things continued till the French invasion of 1808. His public relations then became a misfortune. The flood of events swept him from his place, as it did his patron; and, without becoming in any degree false to the interests of his country, he was so far implicated in those of the new government, that, when Ferdinand the Seventh was restored to the throne, Moratin was treated for a time with great rigor. But this, too, passed away, and he was again protected and favored. Still he suffered. His friends were in exile, and he felt solitary without them. He went back to France, and, though once afterwards he returned with a fond longing to the land of his birth, he found every thing so changed by the triumphant despotism, that it was no longer Spain to him, and he established himself finally at Paris, where he died in 1828. He was buried near MoliÈre, whom in life he had honored and imitated. When Moratin began his career as a dramatic poet, he found obstacles to his success on every side. His father’s tragedy of “Hormesinda” had been produced on the stage only in consequence of the ministerial pro This was the condition of the stage, when the younger Moratin appeared as a candidate before the audiences of Madrid. The new school had gained some ground, and the living representatives of the old one were none of them more distinguished than Comella; but the taste of the public was not changed, and the managers of the theatre were obliged, as well as inclined, to yield to its authority and humor its fancies. Moratin determined, however, to tread in the footsteps of his father, for whose example and memory he always felt the sincerest reverence. He therefore wrote his first comedy, “The Old Husband and the Young Wife,” quite within the rules, finishing every part of it with the greatest exactness, but dividing it, as the old Spanish plays were divided, into three acts, and using throughout the old short verse which was always popular. But when, in 1786, he offered his comedy for representation, the simplicity of the action, so unlike the involved plots on which the common people still loved to exercise their extraordinary ingenuity, and the But, whatever may have been the effect on the public, the effect on its author was decisive. He had been heard. His merit had been, in part at least, acknowledged; and he now determined to bring the pretensions of the popular dramatists, who were disgracing the stage, to the test of a public trial on the stage itself. For this purpose, he wrote his “New Play,” as he called it, which is an exposition of the motives of a penniless author for composing one of the noisy, extravagant dramas then constantly acted with applause, and an account of its first representation;—the whole related by the author himself and his friends, in a coffee-house contiguous to the theatre, at the very moment the fatal representation is supposed to be going on. It is in two acts; and the catastrophe—which consists of the confusion of the author and his family at the failure of his performance—is brought on with skill, and with an effect much greater than the simplicity of the action had promised. The piece, therefore, was received with a favor which even Moratin and his friends had not anticipated. The poet, who is its victim, was recognized at once to be Comella. Some of the inferior characters, whether justly or not, were ap “The Baron,” which is in two acts and in verse, was at first prepared to be sung; and, without the permission of the author, was altered to an acting drama and performed in public during his absence from Spain. On his return, he improved it by material additions, and produced it again in 1803. It is the least effective of his theatrical performances; but it triumphed over a cabal, which supported a drama written on the same subject and represented at the same time, in order to interfere with its success. At the moment Moratin was making arrangements for bringing out “The Baron,” he was occupied with the careful preparation of another comedy in verse, that was destined still further to increase his reputation. This was “The Female Hypocrite,” which was written as early as 1791, and was soon afterwards represented in private, but which was not finished and acted publicly till 1804. It is an excellent specimen of character Moratin’s last original effort on the stage was a full-length prose comedy in three acts, which he called the “Little Girl’s Consent,” and which was acted in 1806. Its general movement is extremely natural, and yet it is enlivened with a little of the intrigue and bustle that were always so much liked on the Spanish theatre. A young girl, while in the course of her education at a convent, becomes attached to a handsome officer of dragoons. Her mother, ignorant of this, undertakes to bring her home and marry her to an excellent, benevolent old gentleman, whom the daughter has never seen, but whom, out of mere weakness, she has been unable to refuse. At an inn on the road, where the younger lover falls in with them on purpose to break up this match, they all meet; and he discovers, to his dismay, that his rival is an uncle to whom he is sincerely attached, and to whom he owes many obligations. The mistakes and intrigues of the night they pass together at this inn give great life to the action, and are full of humor; while the disinterested attachment of the young lovers Nothing on the Spanish stage had been so well received for a long period. It was acted twenty-six nights successively to audiences who were in the habit of demanding novelties constantly; and then it was stopped only because Lent came to shut up the theatres. No criticism appeared except to praise it. The triumph of Moratin was complete. But he was not destined long to enjoy it. The troubles of his country were already begun, and in three years the French were its temporary masters. He prepared, indeed, afterwards two spirited translations from MoliÈre, with alterations that made them more attractive to his countrymen; one from the “École des Maris,” which was acted in 1812, and the other from the “MÉdecin MalgrÉ Lui,” which was acted in 1814; but, except these and an unfortunate prose version of Shakspeare’s “Hamlet,” which was printed in 1798, but never performed, he wrote nothing for the theatre except the five comedies already noticed. These, if they form no very broad foundation for his fame, seem yet to constitute one on which it may rest safely; and, if they have failed to educate a school strong enough to drive out the bad imitations of the old masters that have constantly pressed upon them, have yet been able to keep their own place, little disturbed by the changes of the times.[387] That the Spanish drama, during the century which elapsed between the establishment of the House of Bourbon on the throne and the temporary expulsion of that house from Spain by the arms of Bonaparte, had, in some respects, made progress, cannot be doubted. More convenient and suitable structures for its exhibitions had been erected, not only in the capital, but in all the principal cities of the kingdom. New and various forms of dramatic composition had been introduced, which, if not always consistent with the demands of the national genius, nor often encouraged by the general favor, had still been welcome to the greater part of the more cultivated classes, and served both to excite attention to the fallen state of the theatre generally, and to stir the thoughts of men for its restoration. Actors, too, of extraordinary merit had from time to time appeared, like Damian de Castro, for whom Zamora and CaÑizares wrote parts; Maria L’ Advenant, who delighted Signorelli in the higher characters of Calderon and Moreto; the Tirana, whose tragic powers astonished the practised taste of Cumberland, the English dramatist; and Maiquez, who enjoyed the friendship and admiration of nearly all the Spanish men of letters in his time.[388] But still the old spirit and life of the drama of the CHAPTER VII.Reign of Charles the Fourth. — French Revolution. — Inquisition. — Plot of the Escurial. — Ferdinand the Seventh. — Bonaparte. — The French Invasion and Occupation of the Country. — Restoration of Ferdinand the Seventh. — His Despotism. — An Interregnum in Letters. — Reaction. — Conclusion. The reign of Charles the Fourth was not one in which a literary contest could be carried on with the freedom that alone can render such contests the means of intellectual progress. His profligate favorite, the Prince of the Peace, during a long administration of the affairs of the country, overshadowed every thing with an influence hardly less fatal to what he patronized than to what he oppressed. The revolution in France, first resisted, as it was elsewhere, and then corruptly conciliated, struck the same terror at Madrid that it did at Rome and Naples; and, while its open defiance of every thing Christian filled the hearts of a large majority of the Spanish people with a horror greater than it inspired even in Italy, not a few were led away by it from their time-honored feelings of religion and loyalty, and prepared for changes like those that were already overturning the thrones of half Europe. Amidst this confusion, and taking advantage of it, the Inquisition, grown flexible in the hands of the government as a political machine, but still renouncing none of its religious pretensions, came forth with its last “Index Expurgatorius” to meet the invasion of French At last the convulsion came. In 1807, the heir apparent was brought into direct collision with the Prince of the Peace, and took measures to defend his personal rights. The affair of the Escurial followed; darker than the dark cells in which it was conceived. Ferdinand was accused, under the influence of the favorite, with a design to dethrone and murder his own father and mother; and, for a moment, Europe seemed threat It was all the work of a few short weeks; and the fate of Spain seemed to be sealed with a seal that no human power would be permitted to break. But the people of that land of faith and chivalry were not forgetful of their ancient honor in this the day of their great trial. They boldly refused to ratify the treaty to which father and son had alike put their dishonored names, and sprang to arms to prevent its provisions from being fulfilled by foreign intervention. It was a fierce struggle. For nearly six years, the forces of France were spread over the country, sometimes seeming to cover the whole of it, and sometimes only small portions, but seldom exerting any real control beyond the camps they occupied and the cities they from time He was received by his people with a loyalty that seemed to belong to the earliest ages of the monarchy. But it was lost on him. He returned untaught by the misfortunes he had suffered, and unmoved by a fidelity which had showed itself ready to sacrifice a whole generation and its hopes to his honor and rights. As far as was possible, he restored all the forms and appliances of the old despotism, and thrust from his confidence the very men who had brought him home on their shields, and who only claimed for their country the exercise of a salutary freedom, without which he himself could not be maintained on the throne where their courage and constancy had seated him.[391] Even the Inquisition, which it had been one of the most popular acts of the French invaders to abolish, and one of the wisest acts of the national Cortes to declare incompatible with the constitution of the monarchy, was solemnly reinstated; and if, during a reign protracted through twenty sad and troubled years, any proper freedom was for a moment granted to thought, to speech, or to the press, it was only in consequence of changes over Amidst such violence and confusion,—when men slept in armour, as they had during the Moorish contest, and knew not whether they should be waked amidst their households or amidst their enemies,—elegant letters, of course, could hardly hope to find shelter or resting-place. The grave political questions, that agitated the country and shook the foundations of society, were precisely those in which it might be foreseen, that intellectual men would take the deepest interest and expose themselves to sufferings and ruin, like the less favored masses around them. And so, in fact, it proved. Nearly every poet and prose-writer, known as such at the end of the reign of Charles the Fourth, became involved in the fierce political changes of the time;—changes so various and so opposite, that those who escaped from the consequences of one were often, on that very account, sure to suffer in the next that followed. The young men who, during this disastrous period, were just beginning to unfold their promise, were checked at the outset of their career. Martinez de la Rosa, five years a prisoner of state on a rock in Africa before he had reached the age of thirty; Angel de Rivas, still younger, left for dead on the bloody field of OcaÑa; Galiano, sentenced to the scaffold while he was earning his daily bread by daily labor as a teacher in London; Torreno, brought home on his bier, as he Those who were older, and had been before marked by success and public favor, fared still worse. The eyes of men had already been fastened upon them, and in the conflict and crush of the contending factions they were sure to suffer, as one or another prevailed in the long-protracted struggle. Jovellanos and Cienfuegos, as we have seen, were almost instantly martyrs to their patriotism. Melendez Valdes sunk a later and more miserable victim. Conde and Escoiquiz were exiled for opposite reasons. Moratin, after having faced death in the frightful form of want in his own country, survived to a fate in France hardly less to be dreaded. Quintana was cast by his ungrateful sovereign into the Bastile of Pamplona, with an apparent intention that he should perish there. To all of them the happiness of success in letters, to which they had been accustomed amidst the encouragement of their friends and countrymen, was denied;—from all, the hopes of fame seemed to be cut off. Most of them, and most of the small class to which they belonged, passed, as voluntary or involuntary exiles, beyond the limits of a country which they But it was not possible that such a state of things should become permanent and normal. Even while Ferdinand the Seventh was living, a movement was begun, the first traces of which are to be found among the emigrated Spaniards, who cheered with letters their exile in England and France, and whose subsequent progress, from the time when the death of that unfaithful monarch permitted them to return home, is distinctly perceptible in their own country.[393] What precise direction this movement may hereafter take, or where it may end, it is not given us to foresee. Perhaps too much of foreign influence, and too great a tendency to infuse the spirit of the North into a poetry whose nature is peculiarly Southern, may, for a time, divert it from its true course. Or perhaps the national genius, springing forward through all that opposes its instincts, and shaking off whatever encumbers it with ill-considered help, may press directly onward, and complete the canon of a literature whose forms, often only sketched by the great masters of its age of glory, remain yet to be filled out and finished in the grandeur and grace of their proper proportions. But, whether a great advancement may soon be hoped for or not, one thing is certain. The law of progress is on Spain for good or for evil, as it is on the other na Nor, I trust, will such a people—still proud and faithful in its less favored masses, if not in those portions whose names dimly shadow forth the glory they have inherited—fail to create a literature appropriate to a character in its nature so poetical. The old ballads will not indeed return; for the feelings that produced them are with by-gone things. The old drama will not be revived;—society, even in Spain, would not now endure its excesses. The old chroniclers themselves, if they should come back, would find no miracles of valor or superstition to record, and no credulity fond enough to believe them. Their poets will not again be monks and soldiers, as they were in the days when the influences of the old religious wars and hatreds gave both their brightest and darkest colors to the elements of social life; for the civilization that struck its roots into |
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