Madrid, —— 1807.

In giving you a sketch of private life at Madrid, I shall begin by a character quite peculiar to the country, and well known all over Spain by the name of Pretendientes, or place-hunters. Very different ideas, however, are attached to these denominations in the two languages. Young men of the proudest families are regularly sent to Court on that errand, and few gentlemen destine their sons either for the church or the law, without calculating the means of supporting them three or four years at Madrid, as regular and professed place-hunters. The fact is, that, with the exception of three stalls in every cathedral, and in some collegiate churches, that are obtained by literary competition, there is not a single place of rank and emolument to which Court interest is not the exclusive road. Hence the necessity for all who do not possess an independent fortune, in other words, for more than two thirds of the Spanish gentry, to repair to the capital, there to procure that interest, by whatever means their circumstances may afford.

The Pretendientes may be divided into four classes. Clergymen, who aspire to any preferment not inferior to a prebend; lawyers, who wish to obtain a place on the bench of judges in one of our numerous courts, both of Spain and Spanish America; men of business, who desire to be employed in the collection of the revenue; and advocates, whose views do not extend beyond a Corregimiento—a kind of Recordership, with very limited judicial powers, which exists in every town of any note where there is not an Audiencia, or superior tribunal. I shall dispatch the last two classes in a few words.

Between our advocates or barristers, and the superior judges, called Oidores, there is such a line of distinction as to be almost an insuperable barrier. A young man, who, having studied Roman law at the University, attends three or four years at an acting advocate’s chambers, is, after an examination on Spanish law, qualified to plead at the courts of justice. But once engaged in this branch of the law, he must give up all hopes of rising above that doubtful rank which his profession gives him in society. Success may make him rich, but he must be contented with drudging for life at the bar of a provincial court, and bear the slighting and insolent tone with which the judges consider themselves at liberty to treat the advocates. It is, therefore, not uncommon among young lawyers, who cannot command interest enough to be placed on the bench, to offer themselves as candidates for a Corregimiento. Having scraped together a little money, and procured a few letters of recommendation, they repair to Madrid, where they are seen almost daily in the minister’s waiting-room with a petition, and a printed list of their university degrees and literary qualifications, called PapÉl de MÉritos, which, after two or three hours attendance, they think themselves happy if his excellency will take from their hands. Such as can obtain an introduction to some of the grandees who have the right to appoint magistrates on their estates, confine themselves to the easier, though rather more humiliating task, of toad-eating to their patron.

The Pretendientes for the higher branches of finance, must be able to make a more decent appearance at Court, if they hope for success. It is not, however, the minister for that department, who is most to be courted in order to obtain these lucrative places. A recommendation from the Queen, or from the Prince of the Peace, generally interferes with his views, if he allows himself to have any of his own. To obtain the first, a handsome figure, or some pleasing accomplishment, such as singing to the guitar in the Spanish style, are the most likely means, either by engaging her Majesty’s attention, or the affections of some of her favourite maids of honour. The no less powerful recommendation of the Prince of the Peace is, I must say in justice to him, not always made the reward of flattery, or of more degrading servility. Justice and a due regard for merit, are, it is true, far from regulating the distribution of his patronage: yet, very different from the ministers who tremble before him, he can be approached by every individual in the kingdom, without an introduction, and in the certainty of receiving a civil, if not a favourable answer. His great failing, however, being the love of pleasure, none are so sure of a gracious reception as those who appear at his public levees, attended by a handsome wife or blooming daughter. The fact is so well known all over the country, and—I blush to say it—the national character is so far sinking under the influence of this profligate government, that beauties flock from every province for the chance of being noticed by the favourite. His public levee presents every week a collection of the handsomest women in the country, attended by their fathers or husbands. A suit thus supported is never known to fail.

The young aspirants to a toga, or judge’s gown, often succeed through some indirect influence of this kind. The strange notion that an advocate—one that has pleaded causes at the bar—has, in a manner, disqualified himself for the bench, leaves the administration of justice open to inexperienced young men, who, having taken a degree in Roman law, and nominally attached themselves for a short time to an advocate, as practitioners, are suddenly raised to the important station of judges, either by marrying any of the Queen’s maids of honour, or some more humble beauty on whom the Prince of the Peace has cast a transient gleam of favour. I have known such a reward extended to the sister of a temporary favourite, who, being poor, and in love with a young man of family, poor himself, and hopeless of otherwise obtaining a place, enabled him to marry, by bringing a judge’s gown for her portion. Yet so perfectly can circumstances alter the connexion which some moral feelings have between themselves under certain forms and modifications of society, that the man I allude to, as having owed his promotion to such objectionable influence, is an example of justice and impartiality in the difficult station in which he has been placed. I do not mean, however, that a person who degrades his character with a view to promotion, gives a fair promise of honourable principles when called to discharge the duties of a public office: the growing venality of our judges is too sad and clear a proof of the reverse. But when a Government becomes so perfectly abandoned as to block up with filth and pollution every avenue to wealth, power, and even bare subsistence, men who, in a happier country, would have looked upon the contaminated path with abhorrence, or, had they ventured a single step upon it, would have been confirmed in their degradation by the indelible brand of public censure; are seen to yield for a moment to the combined influence of want and example, and recover themselves so far, as almost to deserve the thanks of the people for having snatched a portion of authority from the grasp of the absolutely worthless.

Before I proceed to the remaining class of Pretendientes, allow me, as a relief from the contemplation of this scene of vice and corruption, to acquaint you with a man in power who, unwarped by any undue influence, has uniformly employed his patronage in the encouragement of modest and retiring merit. His name is Don Manuel Sixto Espinosa. His father was a musician, who having had the good fortune to please the King by his tasteful performances on the piano, was appointed teacher of that instrument to the Royal Family. His son, a young man of great natural abilities, which he had applied to the study of finance and political economy, (branches of knowledge little attended to in Spain,) had been gradually raised to a place of considerable influence in that department, when his well-known talents made the Prince of the Peace fix upon him as the fittest man to direct the establishment for the consolidation of the public debt. Espinosa, as Director of the Sinking Fund, has been accused of impiety by the clergy, for trespassing on their overgrown privileges; and blamed, by such as allow themselves to canvass state matters in whispers, for not opposing the misapplication of the funds he enables Government to collect. It would be needless to answer the first charge. As to the second, common candour will allow that it is unfair to confound the duties of a collector with those of a trustee of the national revenue.

Without, however, entering upon the only remaining question, whether, in the unfortunate circumstances of this country, it is an honest man’s duty to refuse his services to a Government whose object is to fleece the subject in order to pamper its own vices—a doctrine doubtful in theory, and almost inapplicable in practice,—Espinosa has qualities acknowledged by all who know him, and even undenied by his enemies, which, without raising him into an heroic model of public virtue, make him a striking instance of the power of virtuous and honourable principle, in the midst of every allurement and temptation which profligacy, armed with supreme power, can employ. Inaccessible to influence, his patronage has uniformly been extended to men of undoubted merit. A manuscript Essay on Political Economy, written by a friendless young man and presented to Espinosa, was enough to obtain the author a valuable appointment. A decided enemy to the custom of receiving presents, so prevalent in Spain, as to have become a matter of course in every suit, either for justice or favour; I positively know, that when a commercial transaction, to the amount of millions, between this Government and a mercantile house in London had received his approbation, Espinosa sent back a hamper of wine, which one of the partners had hoped, from its trifling value, he would have received as a token of gratitude. His private conduct is exemplary, and his manners perfectly free from “the insolence of office,” which he might assume from the high honours to which he has been raised. His parents, now very old, and living in the modest, unassuming style which becomes their original rank, are visited by Espinosa every Sunday, (the only day which leaves him a moment of rest) and treated with the utmost kindness and deference. Always mild and modest in his deportment, it is on these occasions that he seems quite to forget his honours, and carry himself back to the time when he looked for love and protection from those two, now, helpless beings. It is there, and only there, that I once met Espinosa, and he has ever since possessed my respect. If I have dwelt too long on the subject of a man perfectly unknown to you, I trust you will not attribute it to any of the motives which generally prompt the praises of men in power. These, indeed, can never reach the ear of him they commend, nor has he the means to serve the eulogist. But the daily sickening sight of this infamous Court makes the mind cling to the few objects which still bear the impress of virtue: and having to proceed with the disgusting picture in which I have engaged, I gladly seized the opportunity of dispelling the impression which my subject might leave, either that I take pleasure in vilifying my country, or that every seed of honour has died away from the land.

I do not know how it happens that in going through the description of the different classes of Pretendientes, I have inverted the order which they hold in my enumeration, so that I still find myself with the Reverend Stall-hunters upon my hands. These, as you may suppose, are, by the decencies of their profession, compelled to take quite a different course from those already described; for Hymen, in this country, expects nothing from the clergy but disturbance; and Love, accustomed, at Court, to the glitter of lace and embroidery, is, usually, frightened at the approach of their black cloaks, and the flapping brims of their enormous hats.

During the last reign, and the early part of the present, the King seldom disposed of his patronage without the advice of his Privy Council. The Camaristas de Castilla received the petitions of the candidates, accompanied by documental proofs of their merits and qualifications, and reported thereon to the King through the Minister of the home department. Such was the established practice till the Queen took to herself the patronage of the Crown, and finally shared it with her favourite. The houses of the Privy Counsellors were, accordingly, the great resort of the Clerical Pretendientes. Letters of introduction to some of the Camaristas were considered the most indispensable provision for the Madrid journey; and no West Indian slave was ever so dependent on the nod of his master, as these parasites were on the humours of the whole family of the Privy Counsellor, where each had the happiness to be received as a constant visiter. There he might be seen in the morning relieving the ennui of the lady of the house; who, from the late period of life at which judges are promoted to a place in the King’s Council, are themselves of the age which we call canonical; and there he was sure to be found in the evening making one at the game of MediatÓr, without which her ladyship would be more restless and unhappy than if she had missed her supper. In this Egyptian bondage the clerical aspirant would pass three or four years of his life, till his patron was willing and able to obtain for him the first place in the list of three candidates presented to the King at each vacancy, when the happy man quitted the Court for some cathedral, there quietly to enjoy the fruits of his patience and perseverance.

The road to preferment is, at present, more intricate and uncertain. I know a few who have been promoted in consequence of having assisted the Government with their pens. Such is the case of a clergyman, whose work against the privileges of the province of Biscay was the prelude to the repeal of its ancient charters under the Prince of the Peace: such is that of a learned sycophant who has lately given us a National Cathechism, in imitation of one published by Napoleon after his accession to the throne of France, setting forth the divine right of Kings, and the duty of passive obedience. But the despotism which crushes us, is too pampered and overgrown to require the assistance of pensioned scribblers. There was a period when the Prince of the Peace was pleased to see his name in verse; but crowds of sonnetteers showered so profusely their praises upon him, that he has grown insensible to the voice of the Muses. He, now and then, rewards some of his clerical courtiers, with a recommendation to the minister, which amounts to a positive order; but seems rather shy of meddling with such paltry concerns. It is the Queen who has, of late, taken possession of the keys of the church, which she commits into the hands of her first lady of the bed-chamber, allowing her to levy a toll on such as apply for admittance to the snug corners of the establishment. I do not report from hearsay. The son of a very respectable Seville tradesman, whom I have known all my life, having taken orders, became acquainted with a person thoroughly conversant with the state of the Court, who put him in possession of the secret springs which might promote him at once to a prebendal stall in the cathedral of his own town. The young man had no qualifications but a handsome person, and a pretty long purse, of which, however, his father had still the strings in his own hands. Four thousand dollars, or two years income of the prebend, was the market-price then fixed by the lady of the bed-chamber; and though the good dull man, the father, was not unwilling to lay out the money so evidently to the advantage of his son, he had heard something about simony,—a word which, together with his natural reluctance to part with his bullion, gave him such qualms of conscience as threatened to quash the young man’s hopes. The latter possessed but a very scanty stock of learning, but was not easily driven to his wit’s end; and, knowing too well the versatile nature of casuistry, proposed a consultation of three reverend divines, in order to take their opinion as to the lawfulness of the transaction. The point being duly debated, it appeared that, since the essence of simony is the purchase of spiritual things for money, and the interest of the Queen’s confidant was perfectly wordly and temporal, it might conscientiously be bought for the sum at which she valued it. The young man, furnished with his gold credentials, was a short time ago properly introduced to the Queen’s female favourite. Having attended her evening parties for a short time, he has, without farther trouble, been presented to the vacant stall at Seville.

The hardships of a Pretendiente’s life, especially such as do not centre their views in the church, have often furnished the theatre with amusing scenes. The Spanish proverbial imprecation—“May you be dragged about as a Pretendiente,” cannot be felt in its full force but by such as, like myself, have lived on terms of intimacy with some of that unfortunate race. A scanty supply of money from their families is the only fund on which a young man, in pursuit of a judge’s gown, must draw for subsistence, for three or four journeys a year to the Sitios, in order to attend the Court; for the court-dress which he is obliged to wear almost daily; and the turns of ill-luck at the card-table of his lady patroness. What a notion would an Englishman form of our degree of refinement, if he was to enter one of the lodging-houses at Aranjuez, for instance, and find a large paved court surrounded by apartments, each filled by a different set of lodgers, with three or four wretched beds, and not so many chairs for all furniture; here one of the party blacking his shoes; there another darning his stockings; a third brushing the court-dress he is to wear at the minister’s levee; while a fourth lies still in bed, resting, as well as he can, from the last night’s ball! As hackney coaches are not known either at Madrid or the Sitios, there is something both pitiable and ludicrous in the appearance of these judges, intendants, and governors in embryo, sallying forth in full dress, after their laborious toilet, to pick their way through the mud, often casting an anxious look on the lace frills and ruffles which, artfully attached to the sleeves and waistcoat, might by some untoward accident, betray the coarse and discoloured shirt which they meant to conceal. Thus they trudge to the palace, to walk up and down the galleries for hours, till they have succeeded in making a bow to the minister, or any other great personage, on whom their hopes depend. Having performed this important piece of duty, they retire to a very scanty dinner, unless their good stars should put them in the way of an invitation. In the afternoon they must make their appearance in the public walk, where the royal family take a daily airing; after which, the day is closed by the attendance at the Tertulia of some great lady, if they be fortunate enough to have obtained her leave to pay her this daily tribute of respect.

Such as visit Madrid and the Sitios, independent of Court favour, may, for a few weeks, find amusement in the strangeness of the scene. The Court of Spain is, otherwise, too dull, stiff, and formal, to become an interesting residence. The only good society in the upper ranks is to be found among the Corps Diplomatique. The King, wholly occupied in the chase, and the Queen in her boudoir, are, of late, extremely averse to the theatres. Two Spanish play-houses are still allowed to be open every night; but the opera has been discontinued for several years, merely because it was a daily rendezvous for the higher classes. So jealous is the Queen of fashionable assemblies, that the grandees do not venture to admit more than four or five individuals to their tertulias; and scarcely a ball is given at Madrid in the course of the year. This, however, is never attempted without asking the Queen’s permission. The Marchioness of Santiago, whose evening parties were numerous, and attended by the most agreeable and accomplished people in the capital, was, a short time since, obliged, by an intimation communicated through the police, to deny her house to her friends.

Even bull-fights have been forbidden, and the idle population of the metropolis of Spain have been left no other source of amusement than collecting every evening in the extensive walk called El Prado, after having lounged away the morning about the streets, or basked in the sun, during the winter, at the Puerta del Sol, a large space, almost surrounded by public buildings. The coffee-rooms are, in the cold season, crowded for about an hour after dinner, i. e. from three to four in the afternoon, and in the early part of the evening; but the noise, and the smoke of the cigars, make these places as close and disagreeable as any tap-room in London. It would be absurd to expect any kind of rational conversation in such places. The most interesting topics must be carefully avoided, for fear of the combined powers of the police and the Inquisition, whose spies are dreaded in all public places. Hence the depraved taste which degrades our intercourse to an eternal giggling and bantering.

Our daily resource for society is the house of Don Manuel Josef Quintana, a young lawyer, whose poetical talents, select reading, and various information, place him among the first of our men of letters; while the kindness of his heart, and the lofty and honourable principles of his conduct, make him an invaluable friend and most agreeable companion. After our evening walk in the Prado, we retire to that gentleman’s study, where four or five others, of similar taste and opinions, meet to converse with freedom upon whatever subjects are started. The political principles of Quintana and his best friends consist in a rooted hatred of the existing tyranny, and a great dislike of the prevailing influence of the French Emperor over the Spanish Court.

It was in this knot of literary friends that an attempt to establish a Monthly Magazine originated, a short time before my arrival at Madrid. But such is the listlessness of the country on every thing relating to literature, such the trammels in which the Censors confine the invention of the writers, that the publication of the Miscelanea was given up in a few months. Few, besides, as our men of taste are in number, they have split into two parties, who pursue each other with the weapons of satire and ridicule.

Moratin, the first of our comic writers—a man whose genius, were he free from the prejudices of strict adherence to the Unities, and extreme servility to the Aristotelic rules of the drama, might have raised our theatre to a decided superiority over the rest of Europe, and who, notwithstanding the trammels in which he exerts his talents, has given us six plays, which for the elegance, the liveliness, and the refined graces of the dialogue, as well as the variety, the truth, the interest, and comic power of the characters, do not yield, in my opinion, to the best modern pieces of the French, or the English stage—Moratin, I say, may be considered as the centre of one of the small literary parties of this capital, while Quintana is the leader of the other. Difference of opinion on literary subjects is not, however, the source of this division. Moratin and his friends have courted the favour of the Prince of the Peace, while Quintana has never addressed a line to the favourite. This tacit reproach, embittered, very probably, by others rather too explicit, dropped by the independent party, has kindled a spirit of enmity among the Court literati, which, besides producing a total separation, breaks out in satire and invective on the appearance of any composition from the pen of Quintana.

I have been insensibly led where I cannot avoid entering upon the subject of literature, though from the nature of these letters, as well as the limits to which I am forced to confine them, it was my intention to pass it over in silence. I shall not, however, give you any speculations on so extensive a topic, but content myself with making you acquainted with the names which form the scanty list of our living poets.

I have already mentioned Moratin and Quintana. I do not know that the former has published any thing besides his plays, or that he has, as yet, given a collection of them to the public. I conceive that some fears of the Inquisitorial censures are the cause of this delay. There has, indeed, been a time when his play, La Mogigata, or Female Devotee, was scarcely allowed to be acted, it being believed that, but for the patronage of the Prince of the Peace, it would long before have been placed in the list of forbidden works.

Quintana has published a small collection of short poems, which deservedly classes him among those Spaniards who are just allowed to give a specimen of their powers, and shew us the waste of talents for which our oppressive system of government is answerable to civilized Europe. He has embellished the title-page of his book with an emblematical vignette, where a winged human figure is seen chained to the threshold of a gloomy Gothic structure, looking up to the Temple of the Muses in the attitude of resigned despondency. I should not have mentioned this trifling circumstance, were it not a fresh proof of the pervading feeling under which every aspiring mind among us is doomed hopelessly to linger.

It is not, however, the Gothic structure of our national system alone which confines the poetic genius of Spain. There is (if I may venture some vague conjectures upon a difficult and not yet fairly tried subject) a want of flexibility in the Spanish language, arising from the great length of most of its words, the little variety of its terminations, and the bulkiness of its adverbs, which must for ever, I fear, clog its verse. The sound of our best poetry is grand and majestic indeed; but it requires an uncommon skill to subdue and modify that sound, so as to relieve the ear and satisfy the mind. Since the introduction of the Italian measures by Boscan and Garcilaso, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, our best poets have been servile imitators of Petrarch, and the writers of that school. Every Spanish poet has, like the knight of La Mancha, thought it his bounden duty to be desperately in love, deriving both his subject and his inspiration from a minute dissection of his lady. The language, in the mean time, condemned for centuries, from the unexampled slavery of our press, to be employed almost exclusively in the daily and familiar intercourse of life, has had its richest ornaments tarnished and soiled, by the powerful influence of mental association. Scarcely one third of its copious dictionary can be used in dignified prose, while a very scanty list of words composes the whole stock which poetry can use without producing either a sense of disgust or ridicule. In spite of these fetters, Quintana’s poetical compositions convey much deep thought and real feeling; and should an unexpected revolution in politics allow his mind that freedom, without which the most vigorous shoots of genius soon sicken and perish, his powerful numbers might well inspire his countrymen with that ardent and disinterested love of liberty which adds dignity to the amiableness of his character.

The poet who has obtained most popularity in our days is Melendez, a lawyer, who, having for some time been a professor of polite literature at Salamanca, was raised by the Prince of the Peace to a place in the Council of Castile, and, not long after, rusticated to his former residence, where he remains to this day. Melendez is a man of great natural talents, improved by more reading and information than is commonly found among our men of taste. His popularity as a poet, however, was at first raised on the very slight and doubtful foundation of a collection of Anacreontics, and a few love-poems, possessing little more merit than an harmonious language, and a certain elegant simplicity. Melendez, in his youth, was deeply infected with the mawkish sensibility of the school of Gessner; and had he not by degrees aimed at nobler subjects than his Dove, and his Phyllis, a slender progress in the national taste of Spain would have been sufficient to consign his early poems to the toilettes of our town shepherdesses. He has, however, in his maturer age, added a collection of odes to his pastorals, where he shows himself a great master of Spanish verse, though still deficient in boldness and originality. That he ranks little above the degree of a sweet versifier, is more to be attributed to that want of freedom which clips the wings of thought in every Spaniard, than to the absence of real genius. It is reported that Melendez is employed in a translation of Virgil: should he live to complete it, I have no doubt it will do honour to our country.

During the attempt to awaken the Spanish Muse, which has been made for the last fifty years, none has struck out a fairer path towards her emancipation from the affected, stiff, and cumbrous style in which she was dressed by our Petrarchists of the sixteenth century than a naval officer named Arriaza. If his admirable command of language, and liveliness of fancy, were supported by any depth of thought, acquired knowledge, or the least degree of real feeling; the Spaniards would have an original poet to boast of.

Few as the names of note are in the poetical department, I fear I must be completely silent in regard to the branch of eloquence. Years pass with us without the publication of any original work. A few translations from the French, with now and then a sermon, is all the Madrid Gazette can muster to fill up its page of advertisements. A compilation, entitled El Viagero Universal, and the translation of Guthrie’s Grammar of Geography, are looked upon as efforts both of literary industry and commercial enterprise.

There exist two Royal Academies—one for the improvement of the Spanish Language, the other for the advancement of National History. We owe to the former an ill-digested dictionary, with a very bad grammar; and to the latter some valuable discourses, and an incomplete geographical and historical dictionary. Had the Spanish Academy continued their early labours, and called in the aid of real talent, instead of filling up the list of members with titled names, which have made it ridiculous; their Dictionary might, without great difficulty, have been improved into a splendid display of one of the richest among modern languages; and the philosophical spirit of the age would have been applied to the elucidation of its elements. That Academy has published a volume of prize essays and poems, the fruits of a very feeble competition, in which the poetry partakes largely of the servility of imitation to which I have already alluded, and the prose is generally stiff and affected. Our style, in fact, is, at present, quite unsettled—fluctuating between the wordy pomposity of our old writers, without their ease, and the epigrammatic conciseness of second-rate French writers, stripped of their sprightliness and graces. As long, however, as we are condemned to the dead silence in which the nation has been kept for centuries, there is little chance of fixing any standard of taste for Spanish eloquence. Capmany, probably our best living philologist and prose writer, insists upon our borrowing every word and phrase from the authors of the sixteenth century, the golden age (as it is called) of our literature; while the Madrid translators seem determined to make the Spanish language a dialect of the French—a sort of Patois, unintelligible to either nation. The true path certainly lies between both. The greatest part of our language has been allowed to become vulgar or obsolete. The languages which, during the mental progress of Europe, have been made the vehicles and instruments of thought, have left ours far behind in the powers of abstraction and precision; and the rich treasure which has been allowed to lie buried so long, must be re-coined and burnished, before it can be recognised for sterling currency. It is neither by rejecting as foreign whatever expressions cannot be found in the writers under the Austrian dynasty, nor by disfiguring our idiom with Gallicisms, that we can expect to shape it to our present wants and fashions. Our aim should be to think for ourselves in our own language—to think, I say, and express our thoughts with clearness, force, and precision; not to imitate the mere sound of the empty periods which generally swell the pages of the old Spanish writers.

I do not mean, however, to pester you with a dissertation. Wretched as is the present state of Spanish literature, it would require a distinct series of letters to trace the causes of its decay, to relate the vicissitudes it has suffered, and to weigh the comparative merits of such as, under the deadening influence of the most absolute despotism, are still endeavouring to feed the smouldering fire, which, but for their efforts, would have long since been extinguished.

You will, I trust, excuse this short digression, in the sure hope that I shall resume the usual gossip in my next letter.