[BRARY
[HE UNIVERSITY
OF CAL [FORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
Prof. Alexander G. Fits
Short Histories of the Literatures
of the World
Edited by Edmund Gosse
A HISTORY OF
SPANISH LITERATURE
BY
JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY
C. DE LA REAL ACADEM1A ESPANOLA
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1898,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Printed in the United States of America
PQ
Tssll
PREFACE
SPANISH literature, in its broadest sense, might include
writings in every tongue existing within the Spanish
dominions ; it might, at all events, include the four chief
languages of Spain. Asturian and Galician both pos-
sess literatures which in their recent developments are
artificial. Basque, the spoiled child of philologers, has
not added greatly to the sum of the world's delight ; and
even if it had, I should be incapable of undertaking a
task which would belong of right to experts like Mr.
Wentworth Webster, M. Jules Vinson, and Professor
Schuchardt. Catalan is so singularly rich and varied
that it might well deserve separate treatment : its in-
clusion here would be as unjustifiable as the inclusion
of Provengal in a work dealing with French literature.
For the purposes of this book, minor varieties are
neglected, and Spanish literature is taken as referring
solely to Castilian — the speech of Juan Ruiz, Cervantes,
Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Quevedo, and Calderon.
At the close of the last century, Nicolas Masson de
Morvilliers raised a hubbub by asking two questions in
the Encyclopedic Methodique : — "Mais que doit-on a
1'Espagne ? Et depuis deux siecles, depuis quatre, depuis
six, qu'a-t elle fait pour 1'Europe ?" I have attempted an
SSO
i ,
VI
PREFACE
answer in this volume. The introductory chapter has been
written to remind readers that the great figures of the
Silver Age — Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian — were
Spaniards as well as Romans. It further aims at tracing
the stream of literature from its Roman fount to the
channels of the Gothic period ; at defining the limits of
Arabic and Hebrew influence on Spanish letters ; at
refuting the theory which assumes the existence of
immemorial romances, and at explaining the interaction
between Spanish on the one side and Provencal and
French on the other. It has been thought that this
treatment saves much digression.
Spanish literature, like our own, takes its root in
French and in Italian soil ; in the anonymous epics,
in the fableaux, as in Dante, Petrarch, and the Cinque
Cento poets. Excessive patriotism leads men of all lands
to magnify their literary history ; yet it may be claimed
for Spain, as for England, that she has used her models
without compromising her originality, absorbing here,
annexing there, and finally dominating her first masters.
But Spain's victorious course, splendid as it was in letters,
arts, and arms, was comparatively brief. The heroic age
of her literature extends over some hundred and fifty
years, from the accession of Carlos Quinto to the death of
Felipe IV. This period has been treated, as it deserves,
at greater length than any other. The need of com-
pression, confronting me at every page, has compelled
the omission of many writers. I can only plead that I
have used my discretion impartially, and I trust that no
really representative figure will be found missing.
PREFACE vii
My debts to predecessors will be gathered from the
bibliographical appendix. I owe a very special acknow-
ledgment to my friend Sr. D. Marcelino Menendez y
Pelayo, the most eminent of Spanish scholars and critics.
If I have sometimes dissented from him, I have done so
with much hesitation, believing that any independent view
is better than the mechanical repetition of authoritative
verdicts. I have to thank Mr. Gosse for the great care
with which he has read the proofs ; and to Mr. Henley,
whose interest in all that touches Spain is of long stand-
ing, I am indebted for much suggestive criticism. For
advice on some points of detail, I am obliged to Sr. D.
Ram6n Menendez Pidal, to Sr. D. Adolfo Bonilla y San
Martin, and to Sr. D. Rafael Altamira y Crevea.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY I
II. THE ANONYMOUS AGE (lI5O-I22O) 43
III. THE AGE OF ALFONSO THE LEARNED, AND OF SANCHO
(1220-1300) 57
IV. THE DIDACTIC AGE (1301-1400) 74
V. THE AGE OF JUAN II. (1419-1454) 93
VI. THE AGE OF ENRIQUE IV. AND THE CATHOLIC KINGS
(I454-I5I6) 109
VII. THE AGE OF CARLOS QUINTO (1516-1556) .... 129
VIII. THE AGE OF FELIPE II. (1556-1598) l6$
IX. THE AGE OF LOPE DE VEGA (1598-1621) . . . .211
X. THE AGE OF FELIPE IV. AND CARLOS THE BEWITCHED
(I62I-I700) 275
XI. THE AGE OF THE BOURBONS (l70O-l8o8) .... 343
XII. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 363
XIII. CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 383
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 399
INDEX 413
A HISTORY OF
SPANISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
THE most ancient monuments of Castilian literature
can be referred to no time later than the twelfth cen-
tury, and they have been dated earlier with some
plausibility. As with men of Spanish stock, so with
their letters : the national idiosyncrasy is emphatic —
almost violent. French literature is certainly more
exquisite, more brilliant ; English is loftier and more
varied ; but in the capital qualities of originality, force^s^/
truth, and humour, the Castilian finds no superior. *
The Basques, who have survived innumerable onsets^,
(among them, the ridicule of Rabelais and the irony
of Cervantes), are held by some to be representatives
of the Stone-age folk who peopled the east, north-east,
and south of Spain. This notion is based mainly upon
the fact that all true Basque names for cutting instru-
ments are derived from the word aitz (flint). Howbeit,
the Basques vaunt no literary history in the true sense.
The Leloaren Cantua (Song of Leld) has been accepted as
2 SPANISH LITERATURE
a contemporary hymn written in celebration of a Basque
triumph over Augustus. Its date is uncertain, and its
refrain of " Lelo" seems a distorted reminiscence of the
Arabic catchword La ildh ilia 'lldh; but the Leloaren
Cantua is assuredly no older than the sixteenth century.
A second performance in this sort is the Altobiskarko
Cantua (Song of Altobiskar). Altobiskar is a hill near
Roncesvalles, where the Basques are said to have de-
feated Charlemagne ; and the song commemorates the
victory. Written in a rhythm without fellow in the
Basque metres, it contains names like Roland and
Ganelon, which are in themselves proofs of French
origin ; but, as it has been widely received as genuine,
the facts concerning it must be told. First written in
French (circa 1833) by Fran§ois Eugene Garay de
Monglave, it was translated into very indifferent Basque
by a native of Espelette named Louis Duhalde, then
a student in Paris. The too-renowned Altobiskarko
Cantua is therefore a simple hoax : one might as well
attribute Rule Britannia to Boadicea. The conquerors
of Koncesvalles wrote no triumphing song : three
centuries later the losers immortalised their own over-
throw in the Chanson de Roland, where the disaster
is credited to the Arabs, and the Basques are merely
mentioned by the way. Early in the twelfth century
there was written a Latin Chronicle ascribed to Arch-
bishop Turpin, an historical personage who ruled the
see of Rheims some two hundred years before his false
Chronicle was written. The opening chapters of this
fictitious history are probably due to an anonymous
Spanish monk cloistered at Santiago de Compostela;
and it is barely possible that this late source was utilised
by such modern Basques as Jose" Maria Goizcueta, who
THE BASQUE FACTOR 3
retouched and " restored " the Altobiskarko Cantua in
ignorant good faith.
However that may prove, no existing Basque song is
much more than three hundred years old. One single
Basque of genius, the Chancellor Pero Lopez de Ayala,
shines a portent in the literature of the fourteenth cen-
tury ; and even so, he writes in Castilian. He stands
alone, isolated from his race. The oldest Basque book,
well named as Lingua Vasconum Primitice, is a collec-
tion of exceedingly minor verse by Bernard Dechepare,
cure of Saint-Michel, near Saint-Jean Pied de Port;
and its date is modern (1545). Pedro de Axular is the
first Basque who shows any originality in his native
tongue ; and, characteristically enough, he deals with
religious matters. Though he lived at Sare, in the Basses
Pyr£n6es, he was a Spaniard from Navarre ; and he
flourished in the seventeenth century (1643). It is true
that a small knot of second-class Basques — the epic poet
Ercilla y Zuniga, and the fabulist Iriarte — figure in
Castilian literature; but the Basque glories are to be
sought in other fields — in such heroic personages as
Ignacio Loyola, and his mightier disciple Francisco
Xavier. Setting aside devotional and didactic works,
mostly translated from other tongues, Basque litera-
ture is chiefly oral, and has but a formal connection
with the history of Spanish letters. Within narrow
geographical limits the Basque language still thrives,
and on each slope of the Pyrenees holds its own against
forces apparently irresistible. But its vitality exceeds
its reproductive force : it survives but does not multiply.
Whatever the former influence of Basque on Castilian —
an influence never great — it has now ceased ; while
Castilian daily tends to supplant (or, at least, to supple-
4 SPANISH LITERATURE
ment) Basque. Spain's later invaders — Iberians, Kelts,
Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Alani, Suevi, Goths,
and Arabs — have left but paltry traces on the prevailing
form of Spanish speech, which derives from Latin by a
descent more obvious, though not a whit more direct,
than the descent of French. So frail is the partition
which divides the Latin mother from her noblest
daughter, that late in the sixteenth century Fernando
P6rez de Oliva wrote a treatise that was at once Latin
and Spanish : a thing intelligible in either tongue and
futile in both, though held for praiseworthy in an age
when the best poets chose to string lines into a poly-
glot rosary, without any distinction save that of antic
dexterity.
For our purpose, the dawn of literature in Spain
begins with the Roman conquest. In colonies like
Pax Augusta (Badajoz), Caesar Augusta (Zaragoza), and
Emerita Augusta (M6rida), the Roman influence was
strengthened by the intermarriage of Roman soldiers
with Spanish women. All over Spain there arose the
odiosa cantio, as St. Augustine calls it, of Spanish
children learning Latin ; and every school .formed a
fresh centre of Latin authority. With their laws, the
conquerors imposed their speech upon the broken
tribes ; and these, in turn, invaded the capital of Latin
politics and letters. The breath of Spanish genius
informs the Latinity of the Silver Age. Augustus
himself had named his Spanish freedman, Gains Julius
Hyginus, the Chief Keeper of the Palatine Library.
Spanish literary aptitude, showing stronger in the pro-
digious learning of the Elder Seneca, matures in the
altisonant rhetoric and violent colouring of the Younger,
in Lucan's declamatory eloquence and metallic music,
THE SPANISH ROMANS 5
in Martial's unblushing humour and brutal cynicism,
in Quintilian's luminous judgment and wise senten-
tiousness.
All these display in germ the characteristic points
of strength and weakness which were to be developed
in the evolution of Spanish literature ; and their influence
on letters was matched by their countrymen's authority
on affairs. The Spaniard Balbus was the first barbarian
to reach the Consulship, and to receive the honour of
a public triumph ; the Spaniard Trajan was the first
barbarian named Emperor, the first Emperor to make
the Tigris the eastern boundary of his dominion, and
the only Emperor whose ashes were allowed to rest
within the Roman city- walls. And the victory of the
vanquished was complete when the Spaniard Hadrian,
the author of the famous verses —
" Animula vagula blandula,
Hospes comesque carports,
Qua nunc abtbis in loca,
Pallidula rigida nudula,
Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos?" —
himself an exquisite in art and in letters — became the
master of the world. Gibbon declares with justice that
the happiest epoch in mankind's history is " that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
Commodus " ; and the Spaniard, accounting Marcus
Aurelius as a son of C6rdoba, vaunts with reasonable
pride, that of those eighty perfect, golden years, three-
score at least were passed beneath the sceptre of the
Spanish Caesars.
Withal, individual success apart, the Spanish utterance
of Latin teased the finer ear. Cicero ridiculed the accent
6 SPANISH LITERATURE
— aliquid pingue — of even the more lettered Spaniards
who reached Rome ; Martial, retired to his native Bilbi-
lis, shuddered lest he might let fall a local idiom ; and
Quintilian, a sterner purist than a very Roman, frowned
at the intrusion of his native provincialisms upon the
everyday talk of the capital. In Rome incorrections of
speech were found where least expected. That Catullus
should jeer at Arrius — the forerunner of a London type
— in the matter of aspirates is natural enough ; but even
Augustus distressed the nice grammarian. A fortiori,
Hadrian was taunted with his Spanish solecisms. Inno-
vation won the day. The century between Livy and
Tacitus shows differences of style inexplicable by the
easy theory of varieties of temperament; and the two
centuries dividing Tacitus from St. Augustine are
marked by changes still more striking. This is but
another illustration of the old maxim, that as the speed
of falling bodies increases with distance, so literary de-
cadences increase with time.
As in Italy and Africa, so in Spain. The statelier sermo
urbanus yielded to the sermo plebeius. Spanish soldiers
had discovered " the fatal secret of empire, that emper-
ors could be made elsewhere than at Rome " ; no less fatal
was the discovery that Latin might be spoken without
regard for Roman models. As the power of classic forms
waned, that of ecclesiastical examples grew. Church
Latin of the fourth century shines at its best in the verse
of the Christian poet, the Spaniard Prudentius : with
him the classical rhythms persist — as survivals. He
clutches at, rather than grasps, the Roman verse tradi-
tion, and, though he has no rhyming stanzas, he verges
on rhyme in such performances as his Hymnus ad Galli
Cantum. Throughout the noblest period of Roman
THE GOTHIC FACTOR 7
poetry, soldiers, sailors, and illiterates had, in the versus
saturnius, preserved a native rhythmical system not quan-
titative but accentual ; and this vulgar metrical method
was to outlive its fashionable rival. It is doubtful whether
the quantitative prosody, brought from Greece by lit-
erary dandies, ever flourished without the circle of pro-
fessional men of letters. It is indisputable that the im-
ported metrical rules, depending on the power of vowels
and the position of consonants, were gradually super-
seded by looser laws of syllabic quantity wherein accent
and tonic stress were the main factors.
When the empire fell, Spain became the easy prey of *
northern barbarians, who held the country by the sword,
and intermarried but little with its people. To the Goths
Spain owes nothing but eclipse and ruin. No books, no
inscriptions of Gothic origin survive ; the Gongoristic
letters ascribed to King Sisebut are not his work, and
it is doubtful if the Goths bequeathed more than a few
words to the Spanish vocabulary. The defeat of Roderic
by Tarik and Musa laid Spain open to the Arab rush.
National sentiment was unborn. Witiza and Roderic
were regarded by Spaniards as men in Italy and Africa
regarded Totila and Galimar. The clergy were alienated
from their Gothic rulers. Gothic favourites were ap-
pointed to non-existent dioceses carrying huge revenues ;
a single Goth held two sees simultaneously ; and, by way
of balance, Toledo was misgoverned by two rival Gothic
bishops. Harassed by a severe penal code, the Jew
hailed the invading Arabs as a kindred, oriental, cir-
cumcised race ; and, with the heathen slaves, they went
over to the conquerors. So obscure is the history of
the ensuing years that it has been said that the one thing
certain is Roderic's name. Not less certain is it that,
8 SPANISH LITERATURE
within a brief space, almost the entire peninsula was
subdued. The more warlike Spaniards,
" Patient of toil, serene among alarms,
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms,"
foregathered with Pelayo by the Cave of Covadonga,
near Oviedo, among the Pyrenean chines, which they
held against the forces of the Berber Alkamah and the
renegade Archbishop, Don Opas. " Confident in the
strength of their mountains," says Gibbon, these high-
landers " were the last who submitted to the arms of
Rome, and the first who threw off the yoke of the Arabs."
While on the Asturian hillsides the spirit of Spanish
nationality was thus nurtured amid convulsions, the less
hardy inhabitants of the south accepted their defeat.
The few who embraced Islamism were despised as
Muladies ; the many, adopting all save the religion of
their masters, were called Muzarabes, just as, during
the march of the reconquest, Moors similarly placed in
Christian provinces were dubbed Mud6jares.
The literary traditions of Seneca, Lucan, and their
brethren, passed through the hands of mediocrities like
Pomponius Mela and Columella, to be delivered to Gaius
Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, who gave a rendering of the
gospels, wherein the Virgilian hexameter is aped with
a certain provincial vigour. Minor poets, not lacking
in marmoreal grace, survive in Baron Hiibner's Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinorum. Among the breed of learned
churchmen shines the name of St. Damasus, first of
Spanish popes, who shows all his race's zeal in heresy-
hunting and in fostering monkery. The saponaceous
eloquence that earned him the name of Auriscalpius
matronarum (" the Ladies' Ear-tickler ") is forgotten ; but
PRUDENTI US : OROSIUS 9
he deserves remembrance because of his achievement
as an epigraphist, and because he moved his friend, St.
Jerome, to translate the Bible. To him succeeds Hosius
of Cordoba, the mentor of Constantine, the champion
of Athanasian orthodoxy, and the presiding bishop at
the Council of Nicaea, to whom is attributed the incor-
poration in the Nicene Creed of that momentous clause,
" Genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri"
Prudentius follows next, with that savour of the terrible
and agonising which marks the Spagnoletto school of art;
but to all his strength and sternness he adds a sweeter,
tenderer tone. At once a Christian, a Spaniard, and a
Roman, to Prudentius his birthplace is everfelix Tarraco
(he came from Tarragona) ; and he thrills with pride
when he boasts that Caesar Augusta gave his Mother-
Church most martyrs. Yet, Christian though he be, the
imperial spirit in him fires at the thought of the multitu-
dinous tribes welded into a single people, and he plainly
tells you that a Roman citizen is as far above the brute
barbarian as man is above beast. Priscillian and his
fellow-sufferer Latrocinius, the first martyrs slain by
Christianity set in office, were both clerks of singular
accomplishment. As disciple of St. Augustine, and
comrade of St. Jerome, Orosius would be remembered,
even were he not the earliest historian of the world.
Like Prudentius, Orosius blends the passion of universal
empire with the fervour of local sentiment. Good,
haughty Spaniard as he is, he enregisters the battles
that his fathers gave for freedom ; he ranks Numancia's
name only below that of the world-mother, Rome ;
and his heart softens towards the blind barbarians,
their faces turned towards the light. Cold, austere,
and even a trifle cynical as he is, Orosius' pulses
io SPANISH LITERATURE
throb at memory of Caesar ; and he glows on thinking
that, a citizen of no mean city, he ranges the world
under Roman jurisdiction. And this vast union of
diverse races, all speaking one single tongue, all re-
cognising one universal law, Orosius calls by the new
name of Romania.
Licinianus follows, the Bishop of Cartagena and the
correspondent of St. Gregory the Great. A prouder
and more illustrious figure is that of St. Isidore of
Seville — " beatus et lumen nosier Isidorus." Originality
is not Isidore's distinction, and the Latin verses which
pass under his name are of doubtful authenticity. But
his encyclopaedic learning is amazing, and gives him
place beside Cassiodorus, Boetius, and Martianus
Capella, among the greatest teachers of the West.
St. Braulius, Bishop of Zaragoza, lives as the editor
of his master Isidore's posthumous writings, and as
the author of a hymn to that national saint, Millan.
Nor should we omit the names of St. Eugenius, a
realist versifier of the day, and of St. Valerius, who
had all the poetic gifts save the accomplishment of
verse. Naturalised foreigners, like the Hungarian St.
Martin of Dumi, Archbishop of Braga, lent lustre to
Spain at home. Spaniards, like Claude, Bishop of Turin
and like Prudentius Galindus, Bishop of Troyes, carried
the national fame abroad : the first in writings which
prove the permanence of Seneca's tradition, the second
in polemics against the pantheists. More rarely dowered
was Theodolphus, the Spanish Bishop of Orleans, dis-
tinguished at Charlemagne's court as a man of letters
and a poet ; nor is it likely that Theodolphus' name can
ever be forgotten, for his exultant hymn, Gloria, laus, et
honor, is sung the world over on Palm Sunday. And
THE JEWISH REVIVAL n
scarcely less notable are the composers of the noble
Latin-Gothic hymnal, the makers of the Breviarum
Gothicum of Lorenzana and of Arevalo's Hymnodia
Hispanica.
Enough has been said to show that, amid the tumult
of Gothic supremacy in Spain, literature was pursued —
though not by Goths — with results which, if not splendid,
are at least unmatched in other Western lands. Doubtless
in Spain, as elsewhere, much curious learning and inso-
lent ignorance throve jowl by jowl. Like enough, some
Spanish St. Ouen wrote down Homer, Menander, and
Virgil as three plain blackguards ; like enough, the
Spanish biographer of some local St. Bavo confounded
Tityrus with Virgil, and declared that Pisistratus' Athenian
contemporaries spoke habitually in Latin. The conceit
of ignorance is a thing eternal. Withal, from the age of
Prudentius onward, literature was sustained in one or
other shape. For a century after Tarik's landing there
is a pause, unbroken save for the Chronicle of the anony-
mous Cordoban, too rashly identified as Isidore Pacensis.
The intellectual revival appears, not among the Arabs,
but among the Jews of Cordoba and Toledo ; this last
the immemorial home of magic where the devil was
reputed to catch his own shadow. It was a devout belief
that clerks went to Paris to study " the liberal arts,"
whereas in Toledo they mastered demonology and forgot
their morals. Cordoba's fame, as the world's fine flower,
crossed the German Rhine, and even reached the cloister
of Roswitha, a nun who dabbled in Latin comedies. The
achievements of Spanish Jews and Spanish Arabs call for
separate treatises. Here it must suffice to say that the
roll contains names mighty as that of the Jewish poet
and philosopher Ibn Gebirol or Avicebron (d. ? 1070),
12 SPANISH LITERATURE
whom Duns Scotus acknowledges as his master ; and
that of Judah ben Samuel the Levite (b. 1086), whom
Heine celebrates in the Roman-zero:
" Rein und ivahrhaft, sender Makel
War sein Lied, wie seine Seele."
In one sense, if we choose to fasten on his favourite
trick of closing a Hebrew stanza with a romance line,
Judah ben Samuel the Levite may be accounted the
earliest of known experimentalists in Spanish verse ; and
an Arab poet of Spanish descent, Ibn Hazm, anticipated
the Catalan, Auzi'as March, by founding a school of
poetry, at once mystic and amorous.
But the Spanish Jews and Spanish Arabs gained their
chief distinction in philosophy. Of these are Ibn Bajjah
or Avempace (d. 1138), the opponent of al-Gazali and his
mystico-sceptical method ; and Abu Bakr ibn al-Tufail
(1116-85), the author of a neo - platonic, pantheistic
romance entitled Risdlat Haiy ibn Yaksdn, of which the
main thesis is that religious and philosophic truth are but
two forms of the same thing. Muhammad ibn Ahmad
ibn Rushd (1126-98), best known as Averroes, taught
the doctrine of the universal nature and unity of the
human intellect, accounting for individual inequalities
by a fantastic theory of stages of illumination. Arab
though he was, Averroes was more reverenced by Jews
than by men of his own race ; and his permanent vogue
is proved by the fact that Columbus cites him three
centuries afterwards, while his teachings prevailed in
the University of Padua as late as Luther's time. A
more august name is that of "the Spanish Aristotle,"
Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides (1135-1204), the
greatest of European Jews, the intellectual father, so
MAIMONIDES 13
to say, of Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas of Aquin.
Born at C6rdoba, Maimonides drifted to Cairo, whereN
he became chief rabbi of the synagogue, and served
as Saladin's physician, having refused a like post in
the household of Richard the Lion-hearted. It is
doubtful if Maimonides was a Jew at heart ; it is un-
questioned that at one time he conformed outwardly
to Muhammadanism. A stinging epigram summarises
his achievement by saying that he philosophised the
Talmud and talmudised philosophy. It is, of course,
absurd to suppose that his critical faculty could accept
the childish legends of the Haggadah, wherein rabbis
manifold report that the lion fears the cock's crow,
that the salamander quenches fire, and other incredible
puerilities. In his Yad ha-Hazakah (The Strong Hand)
Maimonides seeks to purge the Talmud of its pilpulim or
casuistic commentaries, and to make the book a sufficient
guide for practical life rather than to leave it a dust-heap
for intellectual scavengers. Hence he tends to a rational-
istic interpretation of Scriptural records. Direct com-
munion with the Deity, miracles, prophetic gifts, are
not so much denied as explained away by means of
a symbolic exegesis, infinitely subtle and imaginative.
Spanish and African rabbis received the new teaching
with docility, and in his own lifetime Maimonides'
success was absolute. A certain section of his followers
carried the cautious rationalism of the master to extremi-
ties, and thus produced the inevitable reaction of the
Kabbala with its apparatus of elaborate extravagances.
This reaction was headed by another Spaniard, the
Catalan mystic, Bonastruc de Portas or Moses ben
Nahman (1195-1270); and the relation of the two
leaders is exemplified by the rabbinical legend which
I4 SPANISH LITERATURE
tells that the soul of each sprang from Adam's head :
Maimonides, from the left curl, which typifies severity
of judgment; Moses ben Nahman from the right, which
symbolises tenderness and mercy.
On literature the pretended "Arab influence," if it
exist at all, is nowise comparable to that of the Spanish
Jews, who can boast that Judah ben Samuel the Levite
lives as one of Dante's masters. Judah ranks among
the great immortals of the world, and no Arab is fit to
loosen the thong of his sandal. But it might very well
befall a second-rate man, favoured by fortune and occa-
sion, to head a literary revolution. It was not the case
in Spain. The innumerable Spanish-Arab poets, vul-
garised by the industry of Schack and interpreted by the
genius of Valera, are not merely incomprehensible to us
here and now ; they were enigmas to most contemporary
Arabs, who were necessarily ignorant of what was, to all
purposes, a dead language — the elaborate technical
vocabulary of Arabic verse. If their own countrymen
failed to understand these poets, it would be surprising
had their stilted artifice filtered into Castilian. It is un-
scientific, and almost unreasonable, to assume that what
baffles the greatest Arabists of to-day was plain to a wan-
dering mummer a thousand, or even six hundred, years
ago. There is, however, a widespread belief that the
metrical form of the Castilian romance (a simple lyrico-
narrative poem in octosyllabic assonants) derives from
Arabic models. This theory is as untenable as that which
attributed Prove^al rhythms to Arab singers. No less
erroneous is the idea that the entire assonantic system is
an Arab invention. Not only are assonants common
to all Romance languages ; they exist in Latin hymns
composed centuries before Muhammad's birth, and
THE ARAB FALLACY 15
therefore long before any Arab reached Europe. It
is significant that no Arabist believes the legend of the
" Arab influence " ; for Arabists are not more given
than other specialists to belittling the importance of
their subject.
In sober truth, this Arab myth is but a bad dream
of yesterday, a nightmare following upon an un-
digested perusal of the Thousand and One Nights.
Thanks to Galland, Cardonne, and Herbelot, the
notion became general that the Arabs were the great
creative force of fiction. To father Spanish romances
and Provencal trobas upon them is a mere freak of
fancy. The tacit basis of this theory is that the Span-
iards took a rare interest in the intellectual side of Arab
life ; but the assumption is not justified by evidence.
Save in a casual passage, as that in the Cronica General
on the capture of Valencia, the Castilian historians
steadily ignore their Arab rivals. On the other hand,
there is a class of romances fronterizos (border ballads),
such as that on the loss of Alhama, which is based on
Arabic legends ; and at least one such ballad, that of
Abenamar, may be the work of a Spanish-speaking Moor.
But these1 are isolated cases, are exceptional solely as
regards the source of the subject, and nowise differ in
form from the two thousand other ballads of the Roman-
ceros. To find a case of real imitation we must pass to the
fifteenth century, when that learned lyrist, the Marques
de Santillana, deliberately experiments in the measures
of an Arab zajal, a performance matched by a surviving
fragment due to an anonymous poet in the Cancionero de
Linares. These are metrical audacities, resembling the
revival of French ballades and rondeaux by artificers like
Mr. Dobson, Mr. Gosse, and Mr. Henley in our own day.
1 6 SPANISH LITERATURE
On the strength of two unique modern examples in the
history of Castilian verse, it would be unjustifiable to
believe, in the teeth of all other evidence, that simple
strollers intuitively assimilated rhythms whose intricacy
bewilders the best experts. This is not to say that
Arabic popular poetry had no influence on such popular
Spanish verse as the capias, of which some are appa-
rently but translations of Arabic songs. That is an
entirely different thesis ; for we are concerned here with
literature to which the halting coplas can scarcely be said
to belong.
The " Arab influence " is to be sought elsewhere — in
the diffusion of the Eastern apologue, morality, or maxim,
deriving from the Sanskrit. M. Bedier argues with
extraordinary force, ingenuity, and learning, against the
universal Eastern descent of the French fabliaux. How-
ever that be, the immediate Arabic origin of such a col-
lection as the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsus
(printed, in part, as the Fables of Alfonce, by Caxton,
1483, in The Book of the subtyl Historyes and Fables of
Esope), is as undoubted as the source of the apologue
grafted on Castilian by Don Juan Manuel, or as the
derivation of the maxims of Rabbi Sem Tom of Carri6n.
To this extent, in common with the rest of Europe,
Spain owes the Arabs a debt which her picaresque
novels and comedies have more than paid ; but here
again the Arab acts as a mere middleman, taking the
story of Kalilah and Dimna from the Sanskrit through
the Pehlev! version, and then passing it by way of Spain
to the rest of the Continent. Nor should it be over-
looked that Spaniards, disguised as Arabs, shared in
the work of interpretation.
It is less easy to determine the extent to which col-
THE ARABIC INFLUENCE 17
loquial Arabic was used in Spain. Patriots would per-
suade you that the Arabs brought nothing to the stock
of general culture, and the more thoroughgoing insist
that the Spaniards lent more than they borrowed. But
the point may be pressed too far. It must be admitted
that Arabic had a vogue, though perhaps not a vogue
as wide as might be gathered from the testimony of
Paulus Alvarus Cordubiensis, whose Indiculus Lumi-
nosus, a work of the ninth century, taunts the writer's
countrymen with neglecting their ancient tongue for
Hebrew and Arabic technicalities. The ethnic influ-
ence of the Arabs is still obvious in Granada and
other southern towns ; and intermarriages, tending to
strengthen the sway of the victor's speech, were common
from the outset, when Roderic's widow, Egilona, wedded
Abd al-Aziz, son of Musa, her dead husband's con-
queror. An Alfonso of Le6n espoused the daughter of
Abd Allah, Emir of Toledo ; and an Alfonso of Castile
took to wife the daughter of an Emir of Seville. " The
wedding, which displeased God," of Alfonso the Fifth's
sister with an Arab (some say with al-Mansur), is sung in
a famous romance inspired by the Cronica General.
In official charters, as early as 804, Arabic words find
place. A local disuse of Latin is proved by the fact
that in this ninth century the Bishop of Seville found it
needful to render the Bible into Arabic for the use of
Muzdrabes ; and still stronger evidence of the low estate
of Latin is afforded by an Arabic version of canonical
decrees. It follows that some among the very clergy
read Arabic more easily than they read Latin. Jewish
poets, like Avicebron and Judah ben Samuel the Levite,
sometimes composed in Arabic rather than in their native
Hebrew ; and it is almost certain that the lays of the
i8 SPANISH LITERATURE
Arab rdwis radically modified the structure of Hebrew
verse. Apart from the evidence of Paulus Alvarus Cor-
dubiensis, St. Eulogius deposes that certain Christians
—he mentions Isaac the Martyr by name — spoke Arabic
to perfection. Nor can it be pleaded that this zeal was
invariably due to official pressure : on the contrary, a
caliph went the length of forbidding Spanish Jews and
Christians to learn Arabic. Neither did the fashion die
soon : long after the Arab predominance was shaken,
Arabic was the modish tongue. Alvar Faftez, the Cid's
right hand, is detected signing his name in Arabic
characters. The Christian dinar, Arabic in form and
superscription, was invented to combat the Almoravide
dinar, which rivalled the popularity of the Constanti-
nople besant ; and as late as the thirteenth century
Spanish coins were struck with Arabic symbols on the
reverse side.
Yet, even so, the rude Latin of the unconquered north
remained well-nigh intact. Save in isolated centres, it
was spoken by countless Christians and by the Spaniards
who had escaped to the African province of Tingitana.
Vast deduction must be made from the jeremiads of
Paulus Alvarus Cordubiensis. As he bewails the time
wasted on Hebrew and Arabic by Spaniards, so does
Avicebron lament the use of Arabic and Romance by
Jews. " One party speaks Idumean (Romance), the other
the tongue of Kedar (Arabic)." If the Arab flood ran
high, the ebb was no less strong. Arabs tended more
and more to ape the dress, the arms, the customs of the
Spaniards ; and the Castilian-speaking Arab — the moro
latinado — multiplied prodigiously. No small proportion
of Arab writers — Ibn Hazm, for example — was made up
of sons or grandsons of Spaniards, not unacquainted
ALJAMfA 19
with their fathers' speech. When Archbishop Raimundo
founded his College of Translators at Toledo, where
Dominicus Gundisalvi collaborated with the convert
Abraham ben David (Johannes Hispalensis), it might
have seemed that the preservation of Arabic and Hebrew
was secure. There and then, there could not have
occurred such a blunder as that immortal one of the
Capuchin, Henricus Seynensis, who lives eternal by mis-
taking the Talmud — " Rabbi Talmud " — for a man. But
no Arab work endures. And as with Arab philosophy
in Spain, so with the Arabic language : its soul was
required of it. Hebrew, indeed, was not forgotten ;
and for Arabic, a revival might be expected during the
Crusades. Yet in all Europe, outside Spain, but three
isolated Arabists of that time are known — William of
Tyre, Philip of Tripoli, and Adelard of Bath ; and in
Spain itself, when Boabdil surrendered in 1492, the tide
had run so low that not a thousand Arabs in Granada
could speak their native tongue. Nearly two centuries
before (in 1311-12) a council under Pope Clement V.
advised the establishment of Arabic chairs in the univer-
sities of Salamanca, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. Save
at Bologna, the counsel was ignored ; and in Spain,
where it had once swaggered with airs official, Arabic
almost perished out of use.
Save a group of technical words, the sole literary legacy
bequeathed to Spain by the Arabs was their alphabet.
This they used in writing Castilian, calling their transcrip-
tion aljamia (a/ami = foreign), which was the original
name of the broken Latin spoken by the Muzarabes.
First introduced in legal documents, the practice was
prudently continued during the reconquest, and, besides
its secrecy, was further recommended by the fact that a
20 SPANISH LITERATURE
special sanctity attaches to Arabic characters. But the
peculiarity of aljamia is that it begot a literature of its
own, though, naturally enough, a literature modelled on
the Spanish. Its best production is the Poema de Yusuf;
and it may be noted that this, like its much later fellow,
La Alabama de Mahoma (The Praise of Muhammad), is
in the metre of the old Spanish " clerkly poems" (pocslas
de clereda). So also the Aragonese Morisco, Muhammad
Rabadan, writes his cyclic poem in Spanish octosyllabics;
and in his successors there are hendecasyllabics mani-
festly imitated from a characteristic Galician measure
(de gaita gallega). The subjects of the textos aljamiados
are frankly conveyed from Western sources : the Com-
pilation of Alexander, an orientalised version of the
French ; the History of the Loves of Paris and Viana, a
translation from the Provencal; and the Maid of Arca-
yona, based on the Spanish poem Apolonio. In the
/Cancionero de Baena appears Mahomat-el-Xartosse, with-
/ out his turban, as a full-fledged Spanish poet ; and the
old tradition of servility is continued by an anonymous
\ refugee in Tunis, who shows himself an authority on the
\ plays and the lyric verse of Lope de Vega.
It is therefore erroneous to suppose that the northern
Spaniards on their southward march fell in with nume-
rous kinsmen, of wider culture and of a higher civilisa-
tion, whose everyday speech was unintelligible to them,
and who prayed to Christ in the tongue of Muhammad.
Such cases may have occurred, but as the rarest excep-
tions. Not less unfounded is the theory that Castilian
is a fusion of southern academic Arabic with barbarous
northern Latin. In southern Spain Latin persisted, as
Greek, Syriac, and Coptic persisted in other provinces
of the Caliphate ; and in the school founded at Cordoba
THE ARAB DECADENCE 21
by the Abbot Spera-in-Deo, Livy, Cicero, Virgil, Quin-
tilian, and Demosthenes were read as assiduously as
Sallust, Horace, and Terence were studied in the northern
provinces. Granting that Latin was for a while so much
neglected that it was necessary to translate the Bible
into Arabic, it is also true that Arabic grew so forgotten*
that Peter the Venerable was forced to translate the ^>
Ku'ran for the benefit of clerks. Lastly, it must be
borne in mind that the variety of Romance which finally
prevailed in Spain was not the speech of the northern
highlanders, but that of the Muzarabes of the south and
the centre. Long before "the sword of Pelagius had
been transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic kings,"
the linguistic triumph of the south was achieved. The
hazard of war might have yielded another issue ; and
to adopt another celebrated phrase of Gibbon's, but for
the Cid and his successors, the Ku'ran might now be
taught in the schools of Salamanca, and her pulpits
might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity
and truth of the revelation of Muhammad. As it chanced,
Arabic was rebuffed, and the Latin speech (or Romance)
survived in its principal varieties of Castilian, Galician,
Catalan, and bable (Asturian).
Gallic Latin had already bifurcated into the langue
cToni and the langue d'oc, though these names were not
applied to the varieties till near the close of the twelfth
century. Two hundred years before Roderic's over-
throw a Spanish horde raided the south-west of France,
and, in the corner south of the Adour, reimposed
a tongue which Latin had almost entirely supplanted,
and which lingered solely in the Basque Provinces and
in Navarre. In the eighth century this Basque invasion
was avenged. The Spaniards, concentrating in the
22 SPANISH LITERATURE
north, vacated the eastern provinces, which were there-
upon occupied by the Roussillonais, who, spreading as far
south as Valencia, and as far east as the Balearic Islands,
gave eastern Spain a new language. Deriving from the
langue d'oc, Catalan divides into pld Catald and Lemosi—
the common speech and the literary tongue. Vidal de
Besalu calls his own Provencal language limosina or
Umozi, and the name, taken from his popular treatise
Dreita Maneira de Trobar, was at first limited to literary
Provencal ; but endless confusion arises from the fact
that when Catalans took to composing, their poems
were likewise said to be written in lengua lemosina.
The Galician, akin to Portuguese, though free from
the nasal element grafted on the latter by Burgundians,
is held by some for the oldest — though clearly not the
most virile — form of Peninsular Romance. It was at
least the first to ripen, and, under Prove^al guidance,
Galician verse acquired the flexibility needed for metrical
effects long before Castilian ; so that Castilian court-
poets, ambitious of finer rhythmical results, were driven
to use Galician, which is strongly represented in the
Cancionero de Baena, and boasts an earlier masterpiece
in Alfonso the Learned's Cantigas de Santa Maria, re-
cently edited, as it deserved, after six centuries of wait-
ing, by that admirable scholar the Marques de Valmar.
Galician, now little more than a simple dialect, is artifici-
ally kept alive by the efforts of patriotic minor poets ;
but its literary influence is extinct, and the distinguished
figures of the province, as Dona Emilia Pardo Bazan,
naturally seek a larger audience by writing in Castilian.
So, too, bable is but another dialect of little account,
though a poet of considerable charm, Teodoro Cuesta
(1829-95), has written in it verses which his own loyal
THE TRIUMPH OF CASTILIAN 23
people will not willingly let die. The classification of
other characteristic sub-genera — Andalucian, Aragonese,
Leonese — belongs to philology, and would be, in any
event, out of place in the history of a literature to which,
unlike Catalan and unlike Galician, they have added
nothing of importance. What befell in Italy and France
befell in Spain. Partly through political causes, partly
by force of superior culture, the language of a single
centre ousted its rivals. As France takes its speech
from Paris and the lie de France, as Florence domi-
nates Italy, so Castile dictates her language to all the
Spains. The dominant type, then, of Spanish is the
Castilian, which, as the most potent form, has outlived
its brethren, and, with trifling variations, now extends,
not only over Spain, but as far west as Lima and Val-
paraiso, and as far east as the Philippine Islands : in
effect, "from China to Peru." And the Castilian of
to-day differs little from the Castilian of the earliest
monuments.
The first allusion to any distinct variety of Romance
is found in the life of a certain St. Mummolin who
was Bishop of Noyen, succeeding St. Eloi in 659.
A reference to the Spanish type of Romance is found
as far back as 734 ; but the authenticity of the docu-
ment is very doubtful. The breaking-up of Latin in
Spain is certainly observable in Bishop Odoor's will
under the date of 747. The celebrated Strasburg Oaths,
the oldest of Romance instruments, belong to the year
842 ; and, in an edict of 844, Charles the Bald mentions,
as a thing apart, " the customary language " — usitato
vocabulo — of the Spaniards. There is, however, no exist-
ing Spanish manuscript so ancient, nor is there any
monument as old, as the Italian Carta di Capua (960).
3
24 SPANISH LITERATURE
The British Museum contains a curious codex from the
Convent of Santo Domingo de Silos, on the margin of
which a contemporary has written the vernacuhr equiva-
lent of some four hundred Latin words ; but this is no
earlier than the eleventh century. The Charter called
the Fuero de Avttts of 1155 (which is in bable or Asturian,
not Castilian), has long passed for the oldest example of
Spanish, on the joint and several authority of Gonzalez
Llanos, Ticknor, and Gayangos ; but Fernandez-Guerra
y Orbe has proved it to be a forgery of much later
date.
These intricate questions of authority and ascription
may well be left unsettled, for legal documents are but
the dry bones of letters. Castilian literature dates roughly
from the twelfth century. Though no Castilian docu-
ment of extent can be referred to that period, the Misterio
de los Reyes Magos (The Mystery of the Magian Kings)
and the group of cantares called the Poema del Cid can
scarcely belong to any later time. These, probably, are
the jetsam of a cargo of literature which has foundered.
It is unlikely that the two most ancient compositions in
Castilian verse should be precisely the two preserved
to us, and it is manifest that the epic as set forth in
the Poema del Cid could not have been a first effort.
Doubtless there were other older, shorter songs or
cantares on the Cid's prowess ; there unquestionably
were songs upon Bernaldo de Carpio and upon the
Infantes de Lara which are rudely preserved in asso-
nantic prose passages of the Cronica General. An inge-
nious, deceptive theory lays it down that the epic is but
an amalgam of cantilenas, or short lyrics in the vulgar
tongue. At most this is a pious opinion.
To judge by the analogy of other literatures, it is safe
THE MYTHIC CANTILENAS 25
to say that as verse always precedes prose (just as man
feels before he reasons), so the epic everywhere precedes
the lyric form, with the possible exception of hymns.
The Poema del Cid, for instance, shows no trace of
lyrical descent ; and it is far likelier that the many
surviving romances or ballads on the Cid are detached
fragments of an epic, than that the epic should be a
+astiche of ballads put together nobody knows why,
when, where, how, or by whom. But in any case the
cantilena theory is idle ; for, since no cantilenas exist,
no evidence is — or can be — forthcoming to eke out an
attractive but unconvincing thesis. In default of testi-
mony and of intrinsic probability, the theory depends
solely on bold assertion, and it suffices to say that the
cantilena hypothesis is now abandoned by all save a
knot of fanatical partisans.
The exploits of the battle-field would, in all likeli-
hood, be the first subjects of song ; and the earliest
singers of these deeds — gesta — would appear in the
chieftain's household. They sang to cheer the free-
booters on the line of march, and a successful foray
was commemorated in some war-song like Dinas Vawr's :
"Ednyfed, King of Dyfed,
His head was borne before us;
His wine and beasts stipplied our feasts,
And his overthrow our chorus."
Soon the separation between combatants and singers
became absolute: the division has been effected in the
interval which divides the Iliad from the Odyssey.
Achilles himself sings the heroes' glories ; in the
Odyssey the aotSo? or professional singer appears, to be
succeeded by the rhapsode. Slowly there evolve in
Spain, as elsewhere, two classes of artists known as
26 SPANISH LITERATURE
trovadores and juglares. The trovadores are generally
authors ; the juglares are mere executants — singers,
declaimers, mimes, or simple mountebanks. Of these
lowlier performers one type has been immortalised in
M. Anatole France's Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, a
beautiful re-setting of the old story of El Tumbeor. But
between trovadores and juglares it is not possible to
draw a hard-and-fast line : their functions intermingled.
Some few trovadores anticipated Wagner by eight or
nine centuries, composing their own music-drama on
a lesser scale. In cases of special endowment, the
composer of words and music delivered them to the
audience.
Subdivisions abounded. There were the juglares or
singing-actors, the remendadores or mimes, the cazurros or
mutes with duties undefined, resembling those of the
intelligent "super." Gifted juglares at whiles produced
original work ; a trovador out of luck sank to delivering
the lines of his happier rivals ; and a stray remendador
struggled into success as a juglar. There were juglares
de boca (reciters) and juglares de ptftola (musicians).
Even an official label may deceive ; thus a " Gomez
trovador" is denoted in the year 1197, but the likeli-
hood is that he was a mere juglar. The normal rule
was that the juglar recited the trovador 's verses ; but,
as already said, an occasional trovador (Alfonso Alvarez
de Villasandino, at Seville, in the fifteenth century, is
a case in point) would declaim his own ballad. In
the juglar' s hands the original was cut or padded to
suit the hearers' taste. He subordinated the verses to
the music, and gave them maimed, or arabesqued with
estribillos (refrains), to fit a popular air. The mono-
tonous repetition of epithet and clause, common to all
THE JUGLAR 27
early verse, is used to lessen the strain on the juglar's
memory. The commonest arrangement was that the
juglar de boca sang the trovador's words, the juglar de
ptfiola accompanying on some simple instrument, while
the remendador gave the story in pantomime.
All the world over the history of early literatures is
identical. With the Greeks the minstrel attains at last
an important post in the chieftain's train. Seated on a
high chair inlaid with silver, he entertains the guests,
or guards the wife of Agamemnon, his patron and his
friend. Just so does Phemios sing amid the suitors of
Penelope. It was not always thus. Bentley has told us
in his pointed way that "poor Homer in those circum-
stances and early times had never such aspiring thoughts"
as mankind and everlasting fame ; and that " he wrote a
sequel of songs and rhapsodies to be sung by himself
for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals, and other
days of merriment." This rise and fall occurred in Spain
as elsewhere. For her early trovadores vrjuglares, as for
Demodokos in the Odyssey, and as for Fergus Maclvor's
sennachie, a cup of wine sufficed. " Dat nos del vino si
non tenedes dinneros," says the juglar who sang the Cid's
exploits : " Give us wine, if you have no money." Gon-
zalo de Berceo, the first Castilian writer whose name
reaches us, is likewise the first Castilian to use the word
trovador in his Loores de Nuestra Seilora (The Praises of
Our Lady) :
"Aun merced te pido par el tu trobador"
(Thy favour I irrplore for this thy troubadour.)
But, though a priest and a trovador proud of his double
office, Berceo claims his wages without a touch of false
28 SPANISH LITERATURE
shame. In his Vida del glorioso Confesor Sancto Domingo
de Silos he proves the overlapping of his functions by
styling himself the saint's juglar ; and in the opening of
the same poem he vouches for it that his song "will be
well worth, as I think, a glass of good wine " :
" Bien valdrd, comma creo, un vaso de bon vino"
As popularity grew, modesty disappeared. The tro-
vador, like the rest of the world, failed under the trials
of prosperity. He became the curled darling of kings
and nobles, and haggled over prices and salaries in the
true spirit of "our eminent tenor." In a rich land like
France he was given horses, castles, estates ; in the
poorer Spain he was fain to accept, with intermittent
grumblings, embroidered robes, couches, ornaments —
" muchos patios e sillas / guarnimientos nobres." He was
spoon-fed, dandled, pampered, and sedulously ruined
by the disastrous good-will of his ignorant betters.
These could not leave Ephraim alone : they too must
wed his idols. Alfonso the. Learned enlisted in the corps
of trovadores, as Alfonso II. of Arag6n had done before
him ; and King Diniz of Portugal followed the example.
To pose as a trovador became in certain great houses
a family tradition. The famous Constable, Alvaro de
Luna, composes because his uncle, Don Pedro, the
Archbishop of Toledo, has preceded him in the school.
Grouped round the commanding figure of the Marques
de Santillana stand the rivals of his own house-top :
his grandfather, Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza ; his father,
the Admiral Diego Furtado de Mendoza, a picaroon
poet, spiteful, brutal, and witty ; his uncle, Pedro Velez
de Guevara, who turns you a song of roguery or
devotion with equal indifference and mastery. Santi-
THE TROVADCR 29
liana's is "a numerous house, with many kinsmen gay" ;
still, in all save success, his case typifies a dominant
fashion.
In the society of clerkly magnates the trovado^s ac-
complishments developed ; and the equipped artist was
expected to be master of several instruments, to be pat
with litanies of versified tales, and to have Virgil at
his finger-tips. Schools were founded where aspirants
were taught to trobar and fazer on classic principles,
and the breed multiplied till trovador and juglar pos-
sessed the land. The world entire — tall, short, old,
young, nobles, serfs — did nought but make or hear
verses, as that trovador errant, Vidal de Besalu, records.
It may be that Poggio's anecdote of a later time is
literally true : that a poor man, absorbed in Hector's
story, paid the spouter to adjourn the catastrophe from
day to day till, his money being spent, he was forced
to hear the end with tears.
Troubadouring became at last a pestilence no less
mischievous than its successor knight-errantry, and its
net was thrown more widely. Alfonso of Aragon led
the way with a celebrated Provengal ballad, wherein
he avers that " not snow, nor ice, nor summer, but God
and love are the motives of my song " :
" Mas al meu chan neus ni glatz
No m'ajuda, ri'estaz,
Ni res, mas Dieus et amors."
Not every man could hope to be a knight ; but all ranks
and both sexes could — and did — sing of God and love.
To emperors and princes must be added the lowlier
figures of Berceo, in Spain, or — to go afield for the
extremest case — the Joculator Domini, the inspired
3o SPANISH LITERATURE
madman, Jacopone da Todi, in Italy. With the juglar
strolled the primitive actress, the juglaresa, mentioned
in the Libre del Apolonio, and branded as " infamous " in
Alfonso's code of Las Siete Partidas. At the court of
Juan II., in the fifteenth century, the eccentric Garci
Ferrandes of Jerena, a court poet, married a juglaresa,
and lived to lament the consequences in a cantica of
the Cancionero de Baena (No. 555). In northern Europe
there flourished a tribe of jovial clerics called Goliards
(after a mythical Pope Golias), who counted Catullus,
Horace, and Ovid for their masters, and blent their
anacreontics with blasphemy — as in the Confessio Golia,
wrongly ascribed to our Walter Map. The repute of
this gentry is chronicled in the Canterbury Tales :
" He was a jangler and a goliardeis,
And that -was of most sin and harlotries"
And the type, if not the name, existed in the Peninsula.
So much might be inferred from the introduction and
passage of a law forbidding the ordination of juglares ;
and, in the Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana (No.
931), Estevam da Guarda banters a juglar who, taking
orders in expectance of a prebend which he never
received, was prevented by his holy estate from re-
turning to his craft. But close at hand, in the person
of Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita — the greatest name
in early Castilian literature — is your Spanish Goliard
incarnate.
The prosperity of trovador *x\& juglar could not endure.
First of foreign trovadores to reach Spain, the Gascon
Marcabru treats Alfonso VII. (1126-57) almost as an
equal. Raimbaud de Vaquerias, in what must be among
the earliest copies of Spanish verse (not without a Galician
THE TROVADOR 31
savour), holds his head no less high ; and the apotheosis
of ihejuglar is witnessed by Vidal de Besalu at the court
of Alfonso VIII. (1158-1214).
" Unas novas vos vuelh comtar
Que auzi dir a unjoglar
En la cort del pus savi rei
Que ancfos de neguna lei"
" Fain would I give ye the verses which I heard recited
by z.juglar at the court of the most learned king that ever
any rule beheld." This was the "happier Age of Gold."
A century and a half later, Alfonso the Learned, himself,
as we have seen, a trovador, classes the juglar and his
assistants — los que son juglares, e los remendadores — with
the town pimp ; and fathers not themselves juglares
are empowered to disinherit any son who takes to the
calling against his father's will. The Villasandino,
already mentioned, a pert Galician trovador at Juan II.'s
court, was glad to speak his own pieces at Seville,
and candidly avowed that, like his early predecessors,
he "worked for bread and wine" — " labro por pan e
vino!'
The foreign singer had received the half-pence ; the
native received the kicks. And in the last decline the
executants were blind men who sang before church-
doors and in public squares, lacing old ballads with what
they were pleased to call "emendations," or, in other
words, intruding original banalities of their own. This
decline of material prosperity had a most disastrous
effect upon literature. A popular cantar or song was
written by a poor man of genius. Accordingly he sold
his copyright : that is to say, he taught his cantar to
reciters, who paid in cash, or in drink, when they had it
32 SPANISH LITERATURE
by heart, and thus the song travelled the country over-
long with no author's name attached to it. More : re-
peated by many lips during a long period of years, the
form of a very popular cantar manifestly ran the risk
of change so radical that within a few generations the
original might be transformed in such wise as to be
practically lost. This fate has, in effect, overtaken the
great body of early Spanish song.
It is beyond question that there once existed cantares
(though we cannot fix their date) in honour of Bernaldo
de Carpio, of Fernan Gonzalez, and of the Infantes de
Lara ; the point as regards the Infantes de Lara is proved
to demonstration in the masterly study of D. Ramon
Menendez Pidal. The assonants of the original songs
are found preserved in the chronicles, and no one with
the most rudimentary idea of the conditions of Spanish
prose-composition (whence assonants are banned with
•extreme severity) can suppose that any Spaniard could
write a page of assonants in a fit of absent-mindedness.
Two considerable cantares de gesta of the Cid survive as
fragments, and they owe their lives to a happy accident
— the accident of being written down. They must have
had fellows, but probably not an immense number of
them, as in France. If the formal cantar de gesta died
young, its spirit lived triumphantly in the set chronicle
and in the brief romance. In the chronicle the author
aims at closer exactitude and finer detail, in the romance
at swifter movement and at greater picturesqueness of
artistic incident. The term romanz or romance, first of all
limited to any work written in the vernacular, is used in
that sense by the earliest of all known troubadours, Count
William of Poitiers.
In the thirteenth century, romanz or romance acquires
THE ROMANCES 33
a fresh meaning in Spain, begins to be used as an equi-
valent for cat/tar, and ends by supplanting the word
completely. Hence, by slow degrees, romance comes to
have its present value, and is applied to a lyrico-narra-
tive poem in eight-syllabled assonants. The Spanish
Romancero is, beyond all cavil, the richest mine of ballad
poetry in the world, and it was once common to declare
that it embodied the oldest known examples of Castilian
verse. As the assertion is still made from time to time, it
becomes necessary to say that it is unfounded. It is true
that the rude cantar was never forgotten in Spain, and
that its persistence partly explains the survival of asso-
nance in Castilian long after its abandonment by the rest
of Europe. In his historic letter to Dom Pedro, Constable
of Portugal, the Marques de Santillana speaks with a
student's contempt of singers who, "against all order,
rule, and rhythm, invent these romances and cantares
wherein common lewd fellows do take delight." But
no specimens of the primitive age remain, and no exist-
ing romance is older than Santillana's own fifteenth
century.
The numerous Cancioncros from Baena's time to the
appearance of the Romancero General (the First Part
printed in 1602, with additions in 1604-14 ; the Second
Part issued in 1605) present a vast collection of admirable
lyrics, mostly the work of accomplished courtly versifiers.
They contain very few examples of anything that can
be justly called old popular songs. Alonso de Fuentes
published in 1550 his Libro de los Cuarenta Cantos de
Diversas y Peregrinas Historias, and in the following year
was issued Lorenzo de Sepulveda's selection. Both pro-
fess to reproduce the "rusticity" as well as the "tone
and metre" of the ancient romances ; but, in fact, these
34 SPANISH LITERATURE
songs, like those given by Escobar in the Romancero del
Cid (1612), are either written by such students as Cesareo,
who read up his subject in the chronicles, and imitated
the old manner as best he could, or they are due to
others who treated the oral traditions and pliegos sueltos
(broadsides) of Spain with the same inspired freedom
that Burns showed to the local ditties and chapbooks
of Scotland. The two oldest romances bearing any
author's name are given in Lope de Stiiftiga's Cancionero,
and are the work of Carvajal, a fifteenth-century poet.
Others may be of earlier date ; but it is impossible to
identify them, inasmuch as they have been retouched
and polished by singers of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. If they exist at all — a matter of grave un-
certainty— they must be sought in the two Antwerp
editions of Martin Nucio's Cancionero de Romances (one
undated, the other of 1550), and in Esteban de Najera's
Silva de Romances, printed at Zaragoza in 1550.
There remains to say a last word on the disputed
relation between the early Castilian and French litera-
tures. Like the auctioneer in Middlemarch, patriots
"talk wild" : as Amador de los Rios in his monu-
mental fragment, and the Comte de Puymaigre in his
essays. No fact is better established than the universal
vogue of French literature between the twelfth and
fourteenth centuries, a vogue which lasted till the real
supremacy of Dante and Boccaccio and Petrarch was
reluctantly acknowledged. It is probable that Frederic
Barbarossa wrote in Provencal ; his nephew, Frederic II.,
sedulously aped the Provencal manner in his Italian
verses called the Lodi delta donna amata. Marco Polo,
Brunetto Latini, and Mandeville wrote in French for
the same reason that almost persuaded Gibbon to wrrite
THE FRENCH INFLUENCE 35
his History in French. The substitution of the Gallic
for the Gothic character in the eleventh century ad-
vanced one stage further a process begun by the French
adventurers who shared in the reconquest.
With these last came the French jongleurs to teach
the Spaniards the gentle art of making the chanson de
geste. The very phrase, cantar de gesta, bespeaks its
French source. As the root of the Cid epic lies in
Roland, so the Mystery of the Magian Kings is but an
offshoot of the Cluny Liturgy. The earliest mention of
the Cid, in the Latin Chronicle of Almerta, joins the
national hero, significantly enough, with those two
unexampled paragons of France, Oliver and Roland.
Another French touch appears in the Poem of Ferndn
Gonzalez, where the writer speaks of Charlemagne's
defeat at Roncesvalles, and laments that the battle was
not an encounter with the Moors, in which Bernaldo
del Carpio might have scattered them. But we are not
left to conjecture and inference ; the presence of French
jongleurs is attested by irrefragable evidence.1 Sancho I.
of Portugal had at court a French jongleur who in name,
if in nothing else, somewhat resembled Guy de Maupas-
sant's creation, " Bon Amis." It is not proved that
Sordello ever reached Spain ; but, in the true manner
of your bullying parasite, he denounces St. Ferdinand
as one who " should eat for two, since he rules two
kingdoms, and is unfit to govern one " : —
" E lo Rets castelds tank qden manje per dos,
Quar dos regismes ten, ni per Pun non es pros"
1 See Mila y Fontanals, Los Trovadores en Espafta (Barcelona, 1889), and th*
same writer's Resenya hist6rica y crilica dels antichs poetas Catalans in the
third volume of his Obras completes (Barcelona, 1890).
36 SPANISH LITERATURE
Sordello, indeed, in an earlier couplet denounces St.
Louis of France as " a fool " ; but Sordello is a mere
bilk and blackmailer with the gift of song.
Among French minstrels traversing Spain are Pere
Vidal, who vaunts the largesse of Alfonso VIII., and
Guirauld de Calanson, who lickspittles the name of Pedro
II. of Arag6n. Upon them followed Guilhem Azemar,
a de'dasse' noble, who sank to earning his bread as a
common jongleur, and later on there comes a crowd of
singing-quacks and booth-spouters. It is usual to lay
stress upon the influx of French among the pilgrims of
the Milky Way on the road to the shrine of the national
St. James at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia ; and
it is a fact that the first to give us a record of this pious
journey is Aimeric Picaud in the twelfth century, who
unkindly remarks of the Basques, that "when they eat,
you would take them for hogs, and when they speak,
for dogs." This vogue was still undiminished three
hundred years later when our own William Wey (once
Fellow of Eton, and afterwards, as it seems, an Augus-
tinian monk at Edyngdon Monastery in Wiltshire) wrote
his Itinerary (1456). But though the pilgrimage to
Santiago is noted as a peculiarly " French devotion "
by Lope de Vega in his Francesilla (1620), it is by no
means clear that the French pilgrims outnumbered
those of other nations. Even if they did, this would
not explain the literary predominance of France. This
is not to be accounted for by the scampering flight of a
horde of illiterate fakirs anxious only to save their souls
and reach their homes : it is rather the natural result
of a steady immigration of clerks in the suites of French
bishops and princes, of French monks attracted by the
spoil of Spanish monasteries, of French lords and knights
INTERMEDIATE VERSE 37
and gentlemen who shared in the Crusades, and whose
jongleurs, mimes, and tumblers came with them.
Explain it as we choose, the influence of France
on Spain is puissant and enduring. One sees it best
when the Spaniard, natural or naturalised, turns crusty.
Roderic of Toledo (himself an archbishop of the Cluny
clique) protests against those Spanish juglares \vho cele-
brate the fictitious victories of Charlemagne in Spain ;
and Alfonso the Learned bears him out by deriding the
songs and fables on these mythic triumphs, since the
Emperor " at most conquered somewhat in Cantabria."
A passage in the Cronica General goes to show that some,
at least, of the early French jongleurs sang to their audi-
ences in French — clearly, as it seems, to a select, patrician
circle. And this raises, obviously, a curious question.
It seems natural to admit that in Spain (let us say in
Navarre and Upper Aragon) poems were written by
French trouveres and troubadours in a mixed hybrid
jargon ; and the very greatest of Spanish scholars,
D. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, inclines to believe in
their possible existence. There is, in L' Entree en Espagne,
a passage wherein the author declares that, besides the
sham Chronicle of Turpin, his chief authorities are
"dous dons clerges Can-gras et Gauteron,
Can de Navaire et Gaulier d'Arragon."
John of Navarre and Walter of Aragon may be, as
Seftor Menendez y Pelayo suggests, two "worthy clerks"
who once existed in the flesh, or they may be imaginings
of the author's brain. More to the point is the fact that,
unlike the typical chanson de geste, this Entree en Espagne
has two distinct types of rhythm (the Alexandrine and
the twelve-syllable line), as in the Poema del Cid ; and
38 SPANISH LITERATURE
not less significant is the foreign savour of the language.
All that can be safely said is that Senor Menendez y
Pelayo's theory is probable enough in itself, that it is
presented with great ingenuity, that it is backed by the
best authority that opinion can have, and that it is in-
capable of proof or disproof in the absence of texts.
But if Spain, unlike Italy, has no authentic poems in
an intermediate tongue, proofs of French influence are
not lacking in her earliest movements. Two of the most
ancient Castilian lyrics — Razdn feita d' Amor and the
Disputa del Alma — are mere liftings from the French ;
the Book of Apolonius teems with Provengalisms, and
the poem called the History of St. Mary of Egypt is so
gallicised in idiom that Mila y Fontanals, a ripe scholar
and a true-blue Spaniard, was half inclined to think it
one of those intermediary productions which are sought
in vain. At every point proofs of French guidance
confront us. Anxious to buffet and outrage his father's
old trovador, Pero da Ponte, Alfonso the Learned taunts
him with illiteracy, seeing that he does not compose in
the Provencal vein : —
" Vos non trovades como proenqal"
And, for our purpose, we are justified in appealing to
Portugal for testimony, remembering always that Por-
tugal exaggerates the condition of things in Spain. King
Diniz, Alfonso the Learned's nephew, plainly indicates
his model when in the Vatican Cancioneiro (No. 123) he
declares that he " would fain make a love-song in the
Provencal manner " : —
" Quer1 eu, en maneyra de proen$al,
Fazer agora um cantar (famor"
LOST CANCIONEROS 39
And Alfonso's own Cantigas, honeycombed with Galli-
cisms, are frankly Provengal in their wonderful variety
of metre. Nor should we suppose that the Provengaux
fought the battle alone : the northern trouveres bore
their part.
The French school, then, is strong in Spain, omni-
potent in Portugal, and, were the Spanish Cancioneros
as old as the Portuguese Song-book in the Vatican, we
should probably find that the foreign influence was but
a few degrees less marked in the one country than in
the other. As it is, Alfonso the Learned ranks with
any Portuguese of them all ; and it is reasonable to
think that he had fellows whose achievement and names
have not reached us. For Spanish literature and our-
selves the loss is grave ; and yet we cannot conceive
that there existed in early Castilian any examples com-
parable in elaborate lyrical beauty to the cantars d'amigo
which the Galician-Portuguese singers borrowed from
the French ballettes. In the first place, if they had
existed, it is next to incredible that no example and
no tradition of them should survive. Next, the idea is
intrinsically improbable, since the Castilian language was
not yet sufficiently ductile for the purpose. Moreover,
from the outset there is a counter-current in Castile.
The early Spanish legends are mostly concerned with
Spanish subjects. Apart from obvious foreign touches
in the early recensions of the story of Bernaldo de
Carpio (who figures as Charlemagne's nephew), the
tone of the ballads is hostile to the French, and, as is
natural, the enmity grows more pronounced with time.
That national hero, the Cid, is especially anti-French.
He casts the King of France in gaol ; he throws away
the French King's chair with insult in St. Peter's. Still
4
40 SPANISH LITERATURE
more significant is the fact that the character of French
women becomes a jest. Thus, the balladist emphasises
the fact that the faithless wife of Garci-Fernandez is
French ; and, again, when Sancho Garcia's mother, like-
wise French, appears in a romance, the singer gives her
a blackamoor — an Arab — as a lover. This is primitive
man's little way, the world over : he pays off old scores
by deriding the virtue of his enemy's wife, mother,
daughter, sister ; and in primitive Spain the French-
woman is the lightning - conductor of international
scandals, tolerable by the camp-fire, but tedious in
print.
In considering early Spanish verse it behoves us to
denote facts and to be chary in drawing inferences.
Thus, while we admit that the Poema del Cid and the
Chanson de Roland belong to the same genre, we can
go no further. It is not to be assumed that similarity
of incident necessarily implies direct imitation. The
introduction of the fighting bishop in the Cid poem is
a case in point. His presence in the field may be —
almost certainly is — an historic event, common enough
in days when a militant bishop loved to head a charge ;
and the chronicler may well have seen the exploits which
he records. It by no means follows, and it is extravagant
to suppose, that the Spanish juglar merely filches from
the Chanson de Roland. That he had heard the Chanson
is not only probable, but likely ; it is not, to say the
least, a necessary consequence that he annexed an epi-
sode as familiar in Spain as elsewhere. Nothing, if you
probe deep enough, is new, and originality is a vain
dream. But some margin must be left for personal
experience and the hazard of circumstance ; and if we
take account of the chances of coincidence, the debt of
THE CASTILIAN REACTION 41
Castilian to French literature will appear in its due
perspective. Nor must it be forgotten that from a very
early date there are traces of the reflex action of
Castilian upon French literature. They are not, indeed,
many ; but they are authentic beyond carping. In the
ancient Fragment de la Vie de Saint Fides dAgen, which
dates from the eleventh century, the Spanish origin is
frankly admitted : —
" Canson audi que bellantresca
Quefo de razon espanesca" —
" I heard a beauteous song that told of Spanish things."
Or, once more, in Adenet le Roi's Cleomades, and in its
offshoot the Meliacin of Girard d'Amiens, we meet with
the wooden horse (familiar to readers of Don Quixote)
which bestrides the spheres and curvets among the
planets. Borrowed from the East, the story is trans-
mitted to the Greeks, is annexed by the Arabs, and is
passed on through them to Spain, whence Adenet le
Roi conveys it for presentation to the western world.
More directly and more characteristically Spanish in
its origin is the royal epic entitled Ans/i's de Carthage.
Here, after the manner of your epic poet, chronology
is scattered to the winds, and we learn that Charlemagne
left in Spain a king who dishonoured the daughter of
one of his barons ; hence the invasion by the Arabs,
whom the baron lets loose upon his country as avengers.
The basis of the story is purely Spanish, being a some-
what clumsy arrangement of the legend of Roderic,
Cora, and Count Julian ; the city of Carthage standing,
it may be, for the Spanish Cartagena. Hence it is
clear that the mutual literary debt of Spain and France
is, at this early stage, unequally divided. Spain, like
42 SPANISH LITERATURE
the rest of the world, borrows freely ; but, with the
course of time, the position is reversed. Moliere, the
two Corneilles, Rotrou, Sorel, Scarron, and Le Sage, to
mention but a few eminent names at hazard, readjust
the balance in favour of Spain ; and the inexhaustible
resources of the Spanish theatre, which supply the
arrangements of scores of minor French dramatists,
are but a small part of the literature whose details are
our present concern.
CHAPTER II
THE ANONYMOUS AGE
1150-1220
IN Spain, as in all countries where it is possible to
observe the origin and the development of letters, the
earliest literature bears the stamp of influences which
are either epic or religious. These primitive pieces are
characterised by a vein of popular, unconscious poetry,
with scarce a touch of personal artistry ; and the ascrip-
tion which refers one or other of them to an individual
writer is, for the most part, arbitrary. Insufficiency of
data makes it impossible to identify the oldest literary
performance in Spanish Romance. Jews like Judah
ben Samuel the Levite, and trovadores like Rambaud de
Vaqueiras, arabesque their verses with Spanish tags and
refrains ; but these are whimsies. Our choice lies rather
between the Misterio de los Reyes Magos (Mystery of the
Magian Kings) and the so-called Poema del Cid (Poem
of the Cid). Experts differ concerning their respective
dates ; but the liturgical derivation of the Misterio inclines
one to hold it for the elder of the two. If Lidforss were
right in attributing it to the eleventh century, the play
would rank among the first in any modern language.
Amador de los Ri'os dates it still further back. As
these pretensions are excessive, the known facts may
be briefly given. The Misterio follows upon a com-
44 SPANISH LITERATURE
mentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written by
a canon of Auxerre, Gilibert 1'Universel, who died in
1134; and its existence was first denoted at the end
of the last century by Felipe Fernandez Vallejo, Arch-
bishop of Santiago de Compostela between 1798 and
1800, who correctly classified it as a dramatic scene
to be given on the Feast of the Epiphany, and con-
sidered it a version from some Latin original. Both
conjectures have proved just. Throughout Europe the
Christian theatre derives from the Church, and the early
plays are but a lay vernacular rendering of models
studied in the sanctuary. Simplified as the liturgy now
is, the Mass itself, the services of Palm Sunday and
Good Friday, are the unmistakable debris of an elabo-
rate sacred drama.
The Spanish Misterio proceeds from one of the Latin
offices used at Limoges, Rouen, Nevers, Compiegne, and
Orleans, with the legend of the Magi for a motive ; and
these, in turn, are dramatic renderings of pious tradi-
tions, partly oral, and partly amplifications of the apo-
cryphal Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris and the Historia
de Nativitate Maries et de Infantid Salvatoris.1 These
Franco-Latin liturgical plays, here mentioned in the
probable order of their composition during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, reached Spain through the Bene-
dictines of Cluny ; and as in each original redaction there
is a distinct advance upon its immediate predecessor, so
in the Spanish rendering these primitive exemplars are
developed. In the Limoges version there is no action,
the rudimentary dialogue consisting in the allotment of
liturgical phrases among the personages ; in the Rouen
1 Joannes Karl Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. Lipsiee, 1833.
Pp. 254-261, 388-393.
MISTERIO DE LOS MAGOS 45
office, the number of actors is increased, and Herod,
though he does not appear, is mentioned ; a still later
redaction brings the shepherds on the scene. The
Spanish Misterio reaches us as a fragment of some
hundred and fifty lines, ending at the moment when the
rabbis consult their sacred books upon Herod's appeal to
" the prophecies
Which Jeremiah spake"
Us provenance is proved by the inclusion of three Virgilian
lines] (sEneid, viii. 112-114), lifted by tne arranger of the
Orleans rite. The Magi are mentioned by name, and
one speech is given by Caspar : important points which
help to fix the date of writing. A passage in Bede speaks
of Melchior, senex et canus ; of Baltasar, fuscus, integre
barbatus ; of Caspar, juvenis imberbis ; but this appears
to be interpolated. The names likewise appear in the
famous sixth-century mosaic of the Church of Sant'
Apollinare della Citta at Ravenna ; and here, again,
the insertion is probably a pious afterthought. If
Hartmann be justified in his contention, that the tradi-
tional names of the Magi were not in vogue till after
the alleged discovery of their remains at Milan in 1158,
the Spanish Misterio can be, at best, no older than the
end of the twelfth century.
Enough of it remains to show that the Spanish work-
man improved upon his models. He elaborates the
dramatic action, quickens the dialogue with newer life,
and gives his scene an ampler, a more vivid atmos-
phere. Led by the heavenly star, the three Magi first
appear separately, then together ; they celebrate the
birth of Christ, whom they seek to adore, at the end
of their thirteen days' pilgrimage. Encountering Herod,
46 SPANISH LITERATURE
they confide to him their mission ; the King conjures
his "abbots" (rabbis), counsellors, and soothsayers to
search the mystic books, and to say whether the Magis'
tale be true. The passages between Herod and his
rabbis are marked by intensity and passion, far ex-
ceeding the Franco-Latin models in dramatic force ;
and there is a corresponding progress of mechanism,
distribution, and rapidity.
There is even a breath of the critical spirit wholly
absent from all other early mysteries, which accept the
miraculous sign of the star with a simple, unquestion-
ing faith. In our play, the first and third Magi wish
to observe it another night, while the second King
would fain watch it for three entire nights. Lastly,
the scale of the Misterio is larger than that of any
predecessor ; the personages are not huddled upon the
scene at once, but appear in appropriate, dramatic
order, delivering more elaborate speeches, and express-
ing at greater length more individual emotions. This
fragmentary piece, written in octosyllabics, forms the
foundation-stone of the Spanish theatre ; and from it
are evolved, in due progression, " the light and odour of
the flowery and starry Autos" which were to enrapture
Shelley. Important and venerable as is the Misterio,
its freer treatment of the liturgy, its effectual blending
of realism with devotion, and its swiftness of action
are so many arguments against its reputed antiquity.
It is still old if we adopt the conclusion that it was
written some twenty years before the Poe-ma del Cid.
This misnamed epic, no unworthy fellow to the Chan-
son de Roland, is the first great monument of Spanish
literature. Like the Misterio de los Reyes Magos, like so
many early pieces, the Poema del Cid reaches us maimed
POEMA DEL CID 47
and mutilated. The beginning is lost ; a page in the
middle, containing some fifty lines following upon verse
2338, has gone astray from our copy ; and the end has
been retouched by unskilful fingers. The unique manu-
script in which the cantar exists belongs to the four-
teenth century : so much is now settled after infinite
disputes. The original composition is thought to date
from about the middle third of the twelfth century
(1135-75), some fifty years after the Cid's death at
Valencia in 1099. Hence the Poem of the Cid stands
almost midway between the Chanson de Roland and the
Niebelungenlied. Nevertheless, in its surviving shape it
is the result of innumerable retouches which amount to
botching. Its authorship is more than doubtful, for the
Per Abbat who obtrudes in the closing lines is, like the
Turoldus of Roland, the mere transcriber of an unfaithful
copy. Our gratitude to Per Abbat is dashed with regret
for his slapdash methods. The assonants are roughly
handled, whole phrases are unintelligently repeated, are
transferred from one line to another, or are thrust out
from the text, and in some cases two lines are crushed
into one. The prevailing metre is the Alexandrine or
fourteen-syllabled verse, probably adopted in conscious
imitation of that Latin chronicle on the conquest of
Almerfa which first reveals the national champion under
his popular title —
" Ipse Rodertcus, Mio Cid semper vocatus,
De quo cantatur, quod ab hostibus haud superatus'^
However that may be, the normal measure is repro-
duced with curious infelicity. Some lines run to twenty
syllables, some halt at ten, and it cannot be doubted
that many of these irregularities are results of careless
48 SPANISH LITERATURE
copying. Still, to Per Abbat we owe the preservation of
the Cid cantar as we owe to Sanchez its issue in 1779,
more than half a century before any French chanson de
gcste was printed.
The Spanish epic has a twofold theme — the exploits
of the exiled Cid, and the marriage of his two (mythical)
daughters to the Infantes de Carri6n. Diffused through
Europe by the genius of Corneille, who conveyed his
conception from Guillen de Castro, the legendary Cid
differs hugely from the Cid of history. Uncritical scep-
ticism has denied his existence ; but Cervantes, with his
good sense, hit the white in the first part of Don Quixote
(chapter xlix.). Unquestionably the Cicl lived in the flesh :
whether or not his alleged achievements occurred is
another matter. Irony has incidentally marked him for
its own. The mercenary in the pay of Zaragozan emirs
is fabled as the model Spanish patriot ; the plunderer of
churches becomes the flower of orthodoxy ; the cunning
intriguer who rifled Jews and mocked at treaties is trans-
figured as the chivalrous paladin ; the unsentimental
trooper who never loved is delivered unto us as the
typical jeune premier. Lastly, the mirror of Spanish
nationality is best known by his Arabic title (Sidi =
lord). Yet two points must be kept in mind : the facts
which discredit him are reported by hostile Arab his-
torians ; and, again, the Cid is entitled to be judged by
the standard of his country and his time. So judged,
we may accept the verdict of his enemies, who cursed
him as " a miracle of the miracles of God and the con-
queror of banners." Ruy Diaz de Bivar— to give him
his true name — was something more than a freebooter
whose deeds struck the popular fancy : he stood for
unity, for the supremacy of Castile over Le6n, and his
THE CID AND ROLAND 49
example proved that, against almost any odds, the
Spaniards could hold their own against the Moors. In
the long night between the disaster of Alarcos and the
crowning triumph of Navas de Tolosa, the Cid's figure
grew glorious as that of the man who had never de-
spaired of his country, and in the hour of victory the
legend of his inspiration was not forgotten. From his
death at Valencia in 1099, his memory became a national
possession, embellished by popular poetic fancy.
In the Poema the treatment is obviously modelled
upon the Chanson de Roland. But there is a fixed intent
to place the Spaniard first. The Cid is pictured as more
human than Roland : he releases his prisoners without
ransom ; he gives them money so that they may reach
their homes. Charlemagne, in the Chanson, destroys the
idols in the mosques, baptizes a hundred thousand Sara-
cens by force, hangs or flays alive the recalcitrant ; the
Cid shows such humanity to a conquered province that
on his departure the Moors burst forth weeping, and
pray for his prosperous voyage. The machinery in both
cases is very similar. As the archangel Gabriel appears
to Charlemagne, he appears likewise to the Cid Cam-
peador. Bishop Turpin opens the battle in Roland, and
Bishop Jerome heads the charge for Spain. Roland and
Ruy Diaz are absolved and exhorted to the same effect,
and the resemblance of the epithet curunez applied to
the French bishop is too close to the coronado of the
Spaniard to be accidental. But allowing for the fact
that the Spanish juglar borrows his framework, his per-
formance is great by virtue of its simplicity, its strength,
its spirit and fire. Whether he deals with the hungry
loyalty of the Cid in exile, or his reception into favour
by an ingrate king ; whether he celebrates the overthrow
So SPANISH LITERATURE
of the Count of Barcelona or the surrender of Valencia ;
whether he sings the nuptials of Elvira and Sol with
the Infantes de Carri6n, or the avenging Cid who seeks
reparation from his craven son-in-law, the touch is
always happy and is commonly final.
There is an unity of conception and of language which
forbids our accepting the Poema as the work of several
hands ; and the division of the poem into separate
cantares is managed with a discretion which argues a
single artistic intelligence. The first part closes with the
marriage of the hero's daughters ; the second with the
shame of the Infantes de Carri6n, and the proud an-
nouncement that the kings of Spain are sprung from
the Cid's loins. In both the singer rises to the level
of his subject, but his chief est gust is in the recital of
some brilliant deed of arms. Judge him when, in a
famous passage well rendered by Ormsby, he sings the
charge of the Cid at Alcocer : —
" With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low,
With stooping crests and heads dent down above the saddle-bow,
All firm of hand and high of heart they roll upon the foe.
And he that in a good hour was born, his clarion "voice rings out,
And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout,
' Among them, gentlemen ! Strike home for the love of charity !
The Champion of Bivar is here — Ruy Diaz — I am hef
Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight,
Three hundred lances down they come, their pennons flickering
white;
Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow;
And, when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go.
It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day ;
The shivered shields and riven mail, to see how thick they lay;
The pennons that went in snow-white come out a gory red;
The horses running riderless, the riders lying dead;
While Moors call on Muhammad, and ' St. James / ' the Christians
cry"
THE AUTHOR OF THE POEMA 51
Indubitably this (and it were easy to match it elsewhere
in the Poemd) is the work of an original genius who re-
deems his superficial borrowings of incident from Roland
by a treatment all his own. That he knew the French
models is evident from his skilful conveyance of the bear
episode in Ider to his own pages, where the Cid encoun-
ters the beast as a lion. But the language shows no hint
of French influence, and both thought and expression
are profoundly national. The poet's name is irrecover-
able, but the internal evidence points strongly to the
conclusion that he came from the neighbourhood of
Medina Celi. The surmise that he was an Asturian rests
solely upon the absence of the diphthong uefrom his lines,
an inference on the face of it unwarrantable. Against
this is the topographical minuteness with which the poet
reports the sallies of the Cid in the districts of Castejon
and Alcocer ; his marked ignorance of the country round
Zaragoza and Valencia, his detailed description of the
central episode — the outrage upon the Cid's daughters in
the wood of Corpes, near Berlanga ; and the important
fact that the four chief itineraries in the Poema are charged
with minutiae from Molina to San Esteban de Gormaz,
while they grow vague and more confused as they extend
towards Burgos and Valencia. The most probable con-
jecture, then, is that the unknown maker of this primitive
masterpiece came from the Valle de Arbujuelo ; and it
is worth adding that this opinion is supported by the
authority of Sr. Menendez Pidal. Perhaps the greatest
testimony to the early poet's worth is to be found in
this : that his conception of his hero has outlived the true
historic Cid, and has forced the child of his imagination
upon the acceptance of mankind.
Even more fantastic is the personality of Ruy Diaz as
52 SPANISH LITERATURE
rendered by the anonymous compiler of the Cronica
Rimada (Rhymed Chronicle of Events in Spain from the
Death of King Pelayo to Ferdinand the Great, and more
especially of the Adventures of the Cid). The composi-
tion which bears this clumsy and inappropriate title is
better named the Cantar de Rodrigo, and consists of
1125 lines, preceded by a scrap of rugged prose. Not
till after digressions into other episodes, and irrelevant
stories of Miro and Bernardo, Bishops of Palencia, pro-
bably fellow-townsmen of the compiler, does the Cid
appear. He is no longer, as in the Poema, a popular
hero, idealised from historic report ; he is a purely ima-
ginary figure, incrusted with a mass of fables accumulated
in course of time. At the age of twelve he slays G6mez
G6rmaz (an almost impossible style, compounded of a
patronymic and the name of a castle belonging to the
Cid), is claimed by the dead man's daughter, weds her,
vanquishes the Moors, and leads his King's — Fernando's
— troops to the gates of Paris, defeating the Count of
Savoy upon the road. One legend is heaped upon
another, and the poem, the end of which is lost, breaks
off with the Pope's request for a year's truce, which
Fernando, acting as ever upon the Cid's advice, mag-
nanimously extends for twelve years. It is hard to say
whether the Cantar de Rodrigo as we have it is the
production of a single composer, or whether it is a
patchwork by different hands, arranged from earlier
poems, and eked out by prose stories and by oral tradi-
tions. The versification is that of the simple sixteen-
syllabled line, each hemistich of which forms a typical
romance line. This in itself is a sign of its later date,
and to this must be added the traces of deliberate imita-
tion of the Poema, and the writer's familiarity with such
CANTAR DE RODRIGO 53
modern devices as heraldic emblems. Further, the use
of a Provencal form like gensor, the unmistakable tokens
of French influence, the anticipation of the metre of
the clerkly poems, the writer's frank admission of earlier
songs on the same subject, the metamorphosis of the Cid
into a feudal baron, and, above all, the decadent spirit of
the entire work : these are tokens which imply a relative
modernity. Much of the obscurity of language, which
has been mistaken for archaism, is simply due to the
defects of the manuscript ; and the evidence goes to
show that the Rodrigo, put together in the last decade
of the twelfth century or the first of the thirteenth, was
retouched in the fourteenth by Spanish juglares humili-
ated by the recent French invasions. Even so, much
of the primitive pastiche remains, and the Rodrigo, which
is mentioned in the General Chronicle, interests us as being
the fountain-head of those romances on the Cid whose
collection we owe to that enthusiastic and most learned
investigator, Madame Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos.
Far inferior in merit and interest to the Poema, the
Rodrigo ranks with it as representative of the submerged
mass of cantares de gesta, and is rightly valued as the
venerable relic of a lost school.
To these succeed three anonymous poems, the Libra
de Apolonio (Book of Apollonius), the Vida de Santa Maria
Egipdaqua (Life of St. Mary the Egyptian), and the
Libre dels Tres Reyes dorient (Book of the Three Eastern
Kings), all discovered in one manuscript in the Escurial
Library by Pedro Jose Pidal, and first published by him
in 1844. The story of Apollonius, supposed to be a trans-
lation of a Greek romance, filters into European literature
by way of the Gesta Romanorum, is found even in Ice-
landic and Danish versions, and is familiar to English
54 SPANISH LITERATURE
readers ot Pericles. The nameless Spanish arranger of
the thirteenth century (probably a native of Arag6n)
gives the story of Apollonius' adventures with force and
clearness, anticipating in the character of Tarsiana the
type of Preciosa, the heroine of Cervantes' Gitanilla and
of Weber's opera. Unfortunately the closing tags of
moralisings on the vanity of life destroy the effect which
the writer has produced by his free translation. His
text is suffused with Provengalisms, and his mono-
rhymed quatrains of fourteen syllables are evidence of
French or Provencal origin. This metrical novelty,
extending over more than six hundred stanzas, is pro-
perly regarded by the author as his chief distinction,
and he implores God and the Virgin to guide him in the
exercise of the new mastery (nueva maestrid). It is fair
to add that his experiment has the interest of novelty,
that it succeeded beyond measure in its time, and that
its monotonous vogue endured for some two hundred
years.
To the same period belongs the Vida de Santa Maria
Egipciaqua, the earliest Castilian example of verses of
nine syllables. In substance it is a version of the Vie
de Saint Marie tEgyptienne, ascribed without much
reason to the veritable Bishop of Lincoln, Robert
Grosseteste (? 1175-1253), among whose Carmtna Anglo-
Normannica the French original is interpolated. The
Spanish version follows the French lead with almost
pedantic exactitude ; but the metre, new and well suited
to the common ear, is handled with an easy grace re-
markable in a first effort. As happens with other works
of this time, the title of the short Libre dels Tres Reyes
dorient is misleading. The visit of the Magi is briefly
dismissed in the first fifty lines, the poem turning chiefly
LOPE DE MOROS 55
upon the Flight into Egypt, the miracle wrought upon
the leprous child of the robber, and the identification
of the latter with the repentant thief of the New
Testament. Like its predecessor, this legend is given
in nine-syllabled verse, and is undoubtedly borrowed
from a French or Provencal source not yet discovered.
In the Disputa del Alma y el Cuerpo (Argument be-
twixt Body and Soul), a subject which passes into
all mediaeval literatures from a copy of Latin verses
styled Rixa Animi et Corporis, there is a recurrence,
though with innumerable variants of measure, to the
Alexandrine type. Thus it is sought to reproduce the
music of the model, an Anglo-Norman poem, written in
rhymed couplets of six syllables, and wrongly attributed
to Walter Map. With it should go the Debate entre el
Agua y el Vino (Debate between Water and Wine), and
the first Castilian lyric, Razon feita cfAmor (the Lay of
Love). Composed in verses of nine syllables, the poem
deals with the meeting of two lovers, their colloquy,
interchanges, and separation. Both pieces, discovered
within the last seventeen years by M. Morel-Fatio, are
the productions of a single mind. It is tempting to
identify the writer with the Lope de Moros mentioned
in the final line, "Lupus me fe$it de Moros" \ still the
likelihood is that, here as elsewhere, the copyist has but
signed his transcription. Whoever the author may
have been — and the internal evidence tends to show
that he was a clerk familiar with French, Provencal,
Italian, or Portuguese exemplars — he shines by virtue
of qualities which are akin to genius. His delicacy and
variety of sentiment, his finish of workmanship, his
deliberate lyrical effects, announce the arrival of the
equipped artist, the craftsman no longer content with
56 SPANISH LITERATURE
rhymed narration, the singer with a personal, distinctive
note. Here was a poet who recognised that in literature
— the least moral of the arts — the end justifies the
means ; hence he transformed the material which he
borrowed, made it his own possession, and conveyed
into Castile a new method adapted to her needs. But
time and language were not yet ripe, and the Spanish
lyric flourished solely in Galicia : it was not to be trans-
planted at a first attempt. Yet the attempt was worth
the trial ; for it closes the anonymous period with a
triumph to which, if we except the Poema del Cidt it
can show no fellow.
CHAPTER III
THE AGE OF ALFONSO THE LEARNED, AND
OF SANCHO
1220-1300
IF we reject the claim of Lope de Moros to be the
author of the Razon feita a" A mor, the first Castilian poet
whose name reaches us is GONZALO DE BERCEO (?ii98-
? 1264), a secular priest attached to the Benedictine
monastery of San Millan de la Cogolla, in the diocese of
Calahorra. A few details are known of him. He was
certainly a deacon in 1220, and his name occurs in
documents between 1237 and 1264. He speaks of his
advanced age in the Vida de Santa Oria, Virgen, his latest
and perhaps most finished work ; and his birthplace,
Berceo, is named in his Historia del Setter San Milldn
de Cogolla, as in his rhymed biography of St. Dominic of
Silas. His copiousness runs to some thirteen thousand
lines, including, besides the works already named, the
Sacrificio de la Misa (Sacrifice of the Mass), the Martirio
de San Lorenzo (Martyrdom of St. Lawrence), the Loores
de Nuestra Settora (Praises of Our Lady), the Signos que
aparscerdn ante del Juicio (Signs visible before the Judg-
ment), the Milagros de Nuestra Senora (Miracles of Our
Lady), the Duelo que hizo la Virgen Maria el dia de la
Pasidn de su hijo Jesucristo (The Virgin's Lament on the
day of her Son's Passion), and three hymns to the
57
58 SPANISH LITERATURE
Holy Ghost, the Virgin, and God the Father. In most
editions of Berceo there is appended to his verses a poem
in his praise, attributed to an unknown writer of the
fourteenth century. This poem is, in fact, conjectured
to be an invention of Tomas Antonio Sanchez, the
earliest editor of Berceo's complete works (1779). The
chances are that Berceo and his writings had passed out
of remembrance within two hundred years of his death,
and he was evidently unknown to Santillana in the
fifteenth century. But a brief extract from him is given
in the Mois/n Segundo (Second Moses) of Ambrosio
G6mez, published in 1653. With the exception of the
Martirio de San Lorenzo, of which the end is lost, all
Berceo's writings have been preserved, and he suffers
by reason of his exuberance.
He sings in the vernacular, he declares, being too
unlearned in the Latin ; but he has his little pretensions.
Though he calls himself -zjuglar, he marks the differences
between his dictados (poems) and the cantares (songs)
of a plain juglar, and he vindicates his title by that
monotonous metre — the cuaderna via — which was taken
up in the Libro de Apolonio and became the model
of all learned clerks in the next generations. Berceo
uses the rhythm with success, and if his results are not
splendid, it was not because he lacked perseverance.
On the contrary, his industry was only too formidable.
And, as a little of the mono-rhymed quatrain goes far,
he must have perished had he depended upon execution.
Beside Dante's achievement, as Puymaigre notes, the
paraphrases of Berceo in the Sacrificio de la Misa (stanzas
250-266) seem thin and pale ; but the comparison is
unfair to the earlier Castilian singer, who died in his
obscure hamlet without the advantage of Dante's splendid
BERCEO 59
literary tradition. Berceo is hampered by his lack of
imagination, by the poverty of his conditions, by the
absence of models, by the narrow circle of his sub-
jects, and by the pious scruples which hindered him
from arabesquing the original design. Yet he pos-
sesses the gifts of simplicity and of unction, and amid
his long digressions into prosy theological commonplace
there are flashes of mystic inspiration unmatched by
any other poet of his country and his time. Even
when his versification, clear but hard, is at its worst,
he accomplishes the end which he desires by popular-
ising the pious legends which were dear to him. He
was not — never could have been — a great poet. But in
his own way he was, if not an inventor, the chief of a
school, and the necessary predecessor of such devout
authors as Luis de Leon and St. Teresa. He was a
pioneer in the field of devout pastoral, with all the
defects of the inexperienced explorer ; and, for the most
part, he had nothing to guide him but his own uncul-
tured instinct. Some specimen of his work may be
given in Hookham Frere's little-known fragmentary
version of the Vida de San Milldn : —
" He walked those mountains -wild, and lived within that nook
For forty years and more, nor ever comfort took
Of offered food or alms, or human speech a lookj
No other saint in Spain did such a penance brook.
For many a painful year he pass' d the seasons there,
And many a night consumed in penitence and prayer —
In solitude and cold, with want and evil fare,
His thoughts to God-resigned, and free from human care.
Oh ! sacred is the place, the fountain and the hill,
The rocks where he reposed, in meditation still,
The solitary shades through which he roved at will ;
His presence all that place with sanctity did fill?
60 SPANISH LITERATURE
This is Berceo in a very characteristic vein, dealing
with his own special saint in his chosen way — the way
of the " new mastery " ; and he keeps to the same rhythm
in the nine hundred odd stanzas which he styles the
Milagros de Nuestra Seftora. Here his devotion inspires
him to more conscientious effort ; and it has been sought
to show that Berceo takes his tales as he finds them in
the Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, by the French trouvere,
Gautier de Coinci, Prior of Vic-sur-Aisne (1177-1236).
Certain it is that Gautier's source, the Soissons manu-
script, was known to Alfonso the Learned, who men-
tions it in the sixty-first of his Galician songs as " a
book full of miracles " : —
" En Seixons . . . un liuro a todo cheo
de miragres."
There were doubtless earlier Latin collections —
amongst others, Vincent de Beauvais' Speculum histo-
riale and Pothon's Liber de miraculis Sanct<z Dei Genitricis
Maria — which both Berceo and Alfonso used. But since
Alfonso, a middle-aged man when Berceo died, knew
the Soissons collection, it seems possible that Berceo
also handled it. A close examination of his text con-
verts the bare possibility into something approaching
certainty. Of Berceo's twenty-five Marian legends,
eighteen are given by Gautier de Coinci, whose total
reaches fifty-five. This is not by itself final, for both
writers might have selected them from a common
source. Yet there are convincing proofs of imitation in
the coincidences of thought and expression which are
apparent in Gautier and Berceo. These are too nume-
rous to be accidental ; and still more weight must be
given to the fact that in several cases where Gautier
BERCEO 6 1
invents a detail of his own wit, Berceo reproduces it.
Taken in conjunction with his known habit of strict
adherence to his text, it follows that Berceo took Gautier
for his guide. He did what all the world was doing in
borrowing from the French, and in the Virgin's Lament
he has the candour to confess the northern supremacy.
Still, it would be wrong to think that Berceo con-
tents himself with mere servile reproduction, or that he
trespasses in the manner of a vulgar plagiary. Seven
of his legends he seeks elsewhere than in Gautier,
and he takes it upon himself to condense his prede-
cessor's diffuse narration. Thus, where Gautier needs
1350 lines to tell the legend of St. Ildefonsus, or 2090
to give the miracle of Theophilus, Berceo confines him-
self to 108 and to 657 lines. Gautier will spare you
no detail ; he will have you know the why, the when,
the how, the paltriest circumstance of his pious story.
Beside him Berceo shines by his power of selection,
by his finer instinct for the essential, by his relative
sobriety of tone, by his realistic eye, by his variety of
resource in pure Castilian expression, by his richer
melody, and by the fleeter movement of his action. In
a word, with all his imperfections, Berceo approves him-
self the sounder craftsman of the two, and therefore he
finds thirty readers where the Prior of Vic-sur-Aisne
finds one. Small and few as his opportunities were, he
rarely failed to use them to an advantage ; as in the
invention of the singular rhymed octosyllabic song — with
its haunting refrain, Eya velar ! — in the Virgin's Lament
(stanzas 170-198). This argues a considerable lyrical
gift, and the pity is that the most of Berceo's editors
should have been at such pains to hide it from the
reader.
62 SPANISH LITERATURE
In the ten thousand lines of the Libra de Alexandre
are recounted the imaginary adventures of the Mace-
donian king, as told in Gautier de Lille's Alexandras and
in the versions of Lambert de Tort and Alexandre de
Bernai. Traces of the Leonese dialect negative the
ascription to Berceo, and the Juan Lorenzo Segura de
Astorga mentioned in the last verses is a mere copyist.
The Poema de Ferndn Gonzalez, due to a monk of San
Pedro de Arlanza, embodies many picturesque and
primitive legends in Berceo's manner. But the value
of both these compositions is slight.
So much for verse. Castilian prose develops on paral-
lel lines with it. A very early specimen is the didactic
treatise called the Diez Mandamientos, written by a Navar-
rese monk, at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
for the use of confessors. Somewhat later follow the
Anales Toledanos, in two separate parts (the third is much
more recent), composed between the years 1220 and 1250.
Rodrigo Jimdnez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo (1170-
1247), wrote a Latin Historia Gothica, which begins with
the Gothic invasion, and ends at the year 1 243. Under-
taken at the bidding of St. Ferdinand of Castile, this
work was summarised, and done into Castilian, probably
by Jimenez de Rada himself, under the title of the His-
toria de los Godos. Its date would be the fourth decade
of the thirteenth century, and to this same time (1241)
belongs the Fuero Juzgo (Forum Judicuni). This is a
Castilian version of a code of so-called Gothic laws, sub-
stantially Roman in origin, given by St. Ferdinand (1200-
1252) to the Spaniards settle'd in C6rdoba and other
southern cities after the reconquest; but though of ex-
treme value to the philologer, its literary interest is too
slight to detain us here. Two most brilliant specimens of
ALFONSO THE LEARNED 63
early Spanish prose are the letters supposed to have
been written by the dying Alexander to his mother ; and
the accident of their being found in the manuscript copied
by Lorenzo Segura de Astorga has led to their being
printed at the end of the Libra de Alexandre. There is
good reason for thinking that they are not by the author
of that poem ; and, in truth, they are mere transla-
tions. Both letters are taken from Hunain ibn Ishdk
al-'Ibddl's Arabic collection of moral sentences; the
first is found in the Boniunt (so called from its author, a
mythical King of Persia), and the second on the Castilian
version of the Secretum Secretorum, of which the very
title is reproduced as Poridat de las Poridades. Further
examples of progressive prose are found in the Libro de
los doce Sabios, which deals with the political education
of princes, and may have been drawn up by the direction
of St. Ferdinand. But the authorship and date of these
compilations are little better than conjectural.
These are the preliminary essays in the stuff of Spanish
prose. Its permanent form was received at the hands
of ALFONSO THE LEARNED (1226-84), who followed his
father, St. Ferdinand, to the Castilian throne in 1252. Un-
lucky in his life, balked of his ambition to wear the title
of Emperor, at war with Popes, his own brothers, his chil-
dren, and his people, Alfonso has been hardly entreated
after death. Mariana, the greatest of Spanish historians,
condenses the vulgar verdict in a Tacitean phrase : Dum
ccelum considerat terra amissit. A mountain of libellous
myth has overlaid Alfonso's fame. Of all the anecdotes
concerning him, the best known is that which reports
him as saying, " Had God consulted me at the crea-
tion of the world, He would have made it differently."
This deliberate invention is due to Pedro IV. (the Cere-
64 SPANISH LITERATURE
monious) ; and if Pedro foresaw the result, he must have
been a scoundrel of genius. Fortunately, nothing can
rob Alfonso of his right to be considered, not only as
the father of Castilian verse, but as the centre of all
Spanish intellectual life. Political disaster never caused
his intellectual activity to slacken. Like Bacon, he took
all knowledge for his province, and in every department
he shone pre-eminent. Astronomy, music, philosophy,
canon and civil law, history, poetry, the study of lan-
guages : he forced his people upon these untrodden
roads. To catalogue the series of his scientific enter-
prises, and to set down the names of his Jewish and
Arab collaborators, would give ample work to a biblio-
grapher. Both the Tablas Alfonsis and the colossal
Libros del Saber de Astronomla (Books on the Science
of Astronomy) are packed with minute corrections of
Ptolemy, in whose system the learned King seems to
have suspected an error ; but their present interest lies
in the historic fact, that with their compilation Castilian
makes its first great stride in the direction of exactitude
and clearness.
Similar qualities of precision and ease were developed
in encyclopaedic treatises like the Septenario^ which,
together with the Fuero Juzgo, Alfonso drew up in his
father's lifetime ; and in practical guides such as the
Juegos de A$edrex, Dados, et Tablas (Book of Chess, Dice,
and Chequers). This miraculous activity astounded
contemporaries, and posterity has multiplied the wonder
by attributing well-nigh every possible anonymous work
to the man whose real activity is a marvel. It has been
1 So called because it embraced the seven subjects of learning : the trivia
(grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and the quadrivio (music, astrology, physics,
and metaphysics).
ALFONSO THE LEARNED 65
sought to prove him the author of the Libra de Alex-
andre, the writer of Alexander's Letters, the compiler
of treatises on the chase, the translator of Kalilah and
Dimnah, and innumerable more pieces. Not one of
these can be brought home to him, and some belong
to a later time. Ticknor, again, foists on Alfonso two
separate works each entitled the Tesoro, and the author-
ship has been accepted upon that authority. It is
therefore necessary to state the real case. The one
Tesoro is a prose translation of Brunette Latini's Li
Livres dou Tre"sor made by Alfonso de Paredes and
Pero Gomez, respectively surgeon and secretary at the
court of Sancho, Alfonso's son and successor ; the
other Tesoro, with its prose preamble and forty-eight
stanzas, is a forgery vamped by some parasite in the
train of Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, during
the fifteenth century.
Alonso de Fuentes, writing three hundred years after
Alfonso's death, names him as author of a celebrated
romance — "/ left behind my native land" \ the rhythm
and accentuation prove the lines to belong to a fifteenth-
century maker whose attribution of them to the King is
palpably dramatic. Great authorities accept as authen-
tic the Libra de Querellas (Book of Plaints), which is
represented by two fine stanzas addressed to Diego
Sarmiento, " brother and friend and vassal leal " of
"him whose foot was kissed by kings, him from whom
queens sought alms and grace." One is sorry to lose
them, but they must be rejected. No such book is
known to any contemporary ; the twelve - syllabled
octave in which the stanzas are written was not in-
vented till a hundred years later ; and these two stanzas
are simply fabrications by Pellicer, who first published
66 SPANISH LITERATURE
them in the seventeenth century in his Memoir on the
House of Sarmiento, with a view to flattering his patron.
This to some extent clears the ground : but not
altogether. Setting aside minor legal and philosophic
treatises which Alfonso may have supervised, it remains
to speak of more important matters. A great achieve-
ment is the code called, from the number of its divisions,
the Siete Partidas (Seven Parts). This name does not
appear to have been attached to the code till a hundred
years after its compilation ; but it may be worth ob-
serving that the notion is implied in the name of the
SeptenariOj and that Alfonso, regarding the number
seven as something of mysterious potency, exhausts
himself in citing precedents — the seven days of the
week, seven metals, seven arts, seven years that Jacob
served, seven lean years in Egypt, the seven-branched
candlestick, seven sacraments, and so on. The trait is
characteristic of the time. It would be a grave mis-
take to suppose that the Siete Partidas in any way
resembles a modern book of statutes, couched in the
technical jargon of the law. Its primary object was
the unification of the various clashing systems of law
which Alfonso encountered within his unsettled king-
dom ; and this he accomplished with such success
that all subsequent Spanish legislation derives from
the Siete Partidas, which are still to some extent in
force in the republican states of Florida and Louisiana.
But the design soon outgrows mere practical purpose,
and expands into dissertations upon general principles
and the pettier details of conduct.
Sancho Panza, as Governor of Barataria, could not
have bettered the counsels of the Siete Partidas, whose
very titles force a smile : " What things men should
ALFONSO'S COLLABORATORS 67
blush to confess, and what not" " Why no monk
should study law or physics," "Why the King should
abstain from low talk," " Why the King should eat and
drink moderately," " Why the King's children should be
taught to be cleanly," " How to draw a will so that the
witnesses shall not know its tenor," with other less
prudish discussions. The reading of this code is not
merely instructive and curious ; apart from its dry
humouristic savour, the Siete Partidas rises to a noble
eloquence when the subject is the common weal, the
office of the ruler, his relations to his people, and the
interdependence of Church and State. No man, by his
single effort, could draw a code of such intricacy and
breadth, and it is established that Jacobo Ruiz and
Fernan Martinez laboured on it ; but Alfonso's is the
supreme intelligence which appoints and governs, and
his is the revising hand which leaves the text in its
perfect verbal form.
In history, too, Alfonso sought distinction ;_ and he
found it. The Crdnica or Estoria de Espanna, com-
posed between the years 1260 and 1268, the General e
grand Estoria, begun in 1270, owe to him their inspira-
tion. The latter, ranging from the Creation to Apo-
stolic times, glances at such secular events as the
Babylonian Empire and the fall of Troy ; the former
extends from the peopling of Europe by the sons of
Japhet to the death of St. Ferdinand. Rodrigo Jimenez
de Rada and Lucas de Tuy are the direct authorities,
and their testimonies are completed by elaborate refer-
ences that stretch from Pliny to the cantares de gesta.
Moreover, the Arab chronicles are avowedly utilised in
the account of the Cid's exploits : "thus says Abenfarax
in his Arabic whence this history is derived." A singular
68 SPANISH LITERATURE
circumstance is the inferiority of style in these render-
ings from the Arabic. Elsewhere a strange ignorance
of Arabs and their history is shown by the compiler's
inclusion of such fables as Muhammad's crusade in
Cordoba. The inevitable conclusion is that the Esto-
rt'as, like the Siete Partidas, are compilations by several
hands ; and the idea is supported by the fact that the
prologue to the Estoria de Espanna is scarcely more
than a translation of Jimenez de Rada's preface.
Late traditions give the names of Alfonso's colla-
borators in one or the other History as Egidio de
Zamora, Jofre de Loaysa, Martin de Cordoba, Suero
Perez, Bishop of Zamora, and Garci Fernandez de
Toledo ; and even though these attributions be (as
seems likely) a trifle fantastical, they at least indicate a
long-standing disbelief in the unity of authorship. It
is proved that Alfonso gathered from C6rdoba, Seville,
Toledo, and Paris some fifty experts to translate Ptolemy's
Quadri partitum and other astronomic treatises ; it is
natural that he should organise a similar committee to
put together the first history in the Castilian language.
Better than most of his contemporaries, he knew the
value of combination. As with astronomy so with his-
tory : in both cases he conceived the scheme, in both
cases he presided at the redaction and stamped the
crude stuff with his distinctive seal. Judged by a
modern standard, both Estorias lend themselves to a
cheap ridicule ; compared with their predecessors, they
imply a finer appreciation of the value of testimony,
and this notable evolution of the critical sense is
matched by a manner that rises to the theme. Side
by side with a greater care for chronology, there is a
keener edge of patriotism which leads the compilers to
ALFONSO'S CANTIGAS 69
embody in their text whole passages of lost cantares de
gesta. And these are no purple patches : the expression
is throughout dignified without pomp, and easy without
familiarity. Spanish prose sheds much of its uncouth-
ness, and takes its definitive form in such a passage as
that upon the Joys of Spain : " More than all, Spain
is subtle, — ay ! and terrible, right skilled in conflict,
mirthful in labour, stanch to her lord, in letters studious,
in speech courtly, fulfilled of gifts ; never a land the
earth overlong to match her excellence, to rival her
bravery ; few in the world as mighty as she." It may
be lawful to believe that here we catch the personal
accent of the King.
Compilations abound in which Alfonso is said to have
shared, but they are of less importance than his Cantigas
de Santa Maria (Canticles of the Virgin) — four hundred
and twenty pieces, written and set to music in the
Virgin's praise. Strictly speaking, these do not belong
to Castilian literature, being written in the elaborate
Galician language, which now survives as little better
than a dialect. But they must be considered if we
are to form any just idea of Alfonso's accomplishments
and versatility. At the outset a natural question suggests
itself : " Why should the King of Castile, after drawing
up his code in Castilian, write his verses in Galician ? "
The answer is simple : " For the reason that he was an
artist." Velazquez, indeed, asserts that Alfonso was
reared in Galicia ; but this is assertion, not evidence.
The real motive of the choice was the superior develop-
ment of the Galician, which so far outpassed the Castilian
in flexibility and grace as to invite comparison with the
Provengal. Troubadours in full flight from the Albi-
gensian wars found grace at Alfonso's court ; Aimeric
70 SPANISH LITERATURE
de Belenoi, Nat de Mons, Calvo, Riquier, Lunel, and
more.
That Alfonso wrote in Provencal seems probable
enough, especially as he derides the incapacity in this
respect of his father's trovador, Pero da Ponte ; still, the
two Provengal pieces which bear his name are spurious,
and are the work of Nat de Mons and Riquier. How-
beit, the Provencal spell mastered him, and drove him to
reproduce its elaborate rhythms. The first impression
given by the Cantigas is one of unusual metrical re-
source. Verses of four syllables, of five, octosyllabics,
hendecasyllabics, are among the singer's experiments.
From the popular coplas, not unlike the modern segui-
dillas, he strays to the lumbering line of seventeen
syllables ; in five strophes he commits an acrostic as
the name Maria; and half a thousand years before
Matilda's lover went to Gottingen, he anticipates Can-
ning's freak in the Anti-Jacobin by splitting up a word
to achieve a difficult rhyme ; he abuses the refrain by
insistent repetition, so as to give the echo of a litany,
or fit the ready-made melody of a juglar (clxxii.) ; —
puerilities perhaps, but characteristic of a school and
an epoch. Subjects are taken as they come, preference
being given to the more universal version, and local
legends taking a secondary place. A living English
poet has merited great praise for his Ballad of a Nun.
Six hundred years before Mr. Davidson, Alfonso gave
six splendid variants of the famous story. Two men of
genius have treated the legend of the statue and the
ring — Prosper Me'rimee in his Vtnus d'llle, and Heine in
Les Dieux en Exile — with splendid effect. Alfonso (xlii.)
anticipated them by rendering the story in verses of in-
comparable beauty, pregnant with mystery and terror.
KALILAH AND DIMNAH 71
For his part, Alfonso rifles Vincent de Beauvais, Gautier
de Coinci, Berceo, and, in his encyclopaedic way, borrows
a hint from the old Catalan Planctus Maria Virginis ;
but his touch transmutes bold hagiology to measures
of harmony and distinction. He was not — it cannot
be claimed for him — a poet of supreme excellence ; yet,
if he fail to reach the topmost peaks, he vindicates his
choice of a medium by outstripping his predecessors,
and by pointing the path to those who succeed him.
With the brain of a giant he combined the heart of
a little child, and, technique apart, this amalgam which
wrought his political ruin was his poetic salvation.
Still an artist, even when he stumbles into the ditch,
his metrical dexterity persists in such brutally erotic
and satiric verse as he contributes to the Vatican
Cancioneiro (Nos. 61-79). Withal, he survives by some-
thing better than mere virtuosity ; for his simplicity and
sincere enthusiasm, sundered from the prevalent affecta-
tion of his contemporaries, ensure him a place apart.
His example in so many fields of intellectual exercise
was followed. What part he took (if any) in preparing
Kalilah and Dimnah is not settled. The Spanish ver-
sion, probably made before Alfonso's accession to the
throne, derives straight from the Arabic, which, in its turn,
is rendered by Abd Allah ibn al-Mukaffa (754-775) from
Barzoyeh's lost PehlevI (Old Persian) translations of the
original Sanskrit. This last has disappeared, though its
substance survives in the remodelled Panchatantra, and
from it descend the variants that are found in almost all
European literatures. The period of the Spanish render-
ing is hard to determine exactly, but 1251 is the generally
accepted date, and its vogue is proved by the use made
of it by Raimond de Beziers in his Latin version (1313).
72 SPANISH LITERATURE
It does not appear to have been used by Raimond Lull
(1229-1315), the celebrated Doctor tlluminatus, in his
Catalan Beast-Romance, inserted in the Libre de Mara-
•velles about the year 1286. The value of the Spanish
lies in the excellence of the narrative manner, and in its
reduction of the oriental apologue to terms of the ver-
nacular. Alfonso's brother, Fadrique, followed the lead
in his Engannos / Assayamientos de las Mogieres (Crafts
and Wiles of Women), which is referred to 1253, and is
translated from the Arabic version of a lost Sanskrit
original, after the fashion of Kalilah and Dimnah.
Translation is continued at the court of Alfonso's son
and successor, SANCHO IV. (d. 1295), who, as already
noted, commands a version of Brunetto Latini's Tesoro ;
and the encyclopaedic mania takes shape in a work entitled
the Lu$idarto, a series of one hundred and six chapters,
which begins by discussing "What was the first thing
in heaven and earth ? " and ends with reflections on
the habits of animals and the whiteness of negroes'
teeth. The Gran Conquista de Ultramar (Great Conquest
Oversea) is a perversion of the history originally given
by Guillaume de Tyr (d. 1184), mixed with other fabu-
lous elements, derived perhaps from the French, and
certainly from the Provencal, which thus comes for
the first time in direct contact with Castilian prose.
The fragmentary Provencal Chanson dAntioche which
remains can scarcely be the original form in which
it was composed by its alleged author, Gregoire de
Bechada : at best it is a rifacimento of a previous
draught. But that it was used by the Spanish trans-
lator has been amply demonstrated by M. Gaston Paris.
The translator has been identified with King Sancho
himself ; the safer opinion is that the work was unde»
SANCHO IV. 73
taken by his order during his last days, and was finished
after his death.
With these should be classed compilations like the
Book of Good Proverbs, translated from Hunain ibn
Ishak al-'Ibadl ; the Bonium or Bocados de Oro, from
the collections of Abu '1 Wafa Mubashshir ibn Fatik, part
of which was Englished by Lord Rivers, and thence
conveyed into Caxton's Dictes and Sayings of the Philo-
sophers; and the Flowers of Philosophy, a treatise com-
posed of thirty-eight chapters of fictitious moral sentences
uttered by a tribe of thinkers, culminating — fitly enough
for a Spanish book — in Seneca of Cordoba. In dealing
with these works it is impossible to speak precisely
as to source and date : the probability is that they
were put together during the reign of Sancho, who was
his father's son in more than the literal sense. Like
Alfonso's, his ambition was to force his people into
the intellectual current of the age, and in default of
native masterpieces he supplied them with foreign models
whence the desired masterpieces might proceed ; and,
like his father, Sancho himself entered the lists with his
Castigos y Documentos (Admonitions and Exhortations),
ninety chapters designed for the guidance of his son.
This production, disfigured by the ostentatious erudition
of the Middle Ages, is saved from death by its shrewd
common-sense, by its practical counsel, and by the ad-
mirable purity and lucidity of style that formed the
most valuable asset in Sancho's heritage. With him the
literature of the thirteenth century comes to a dramatic
close : the turbulent fighter, whose rebellion cut short
his father's days, becomes the conscientious promoter
of his father's literary tradition.
CHAPTER IV
THE DIDACTIC AGE
1301-1400
ONLY the barest mention need be made of a "clerkly
poem" called the Vida de San Ildefonso (Life of St. Ilde-
phonsus), a dry narrative of over a thousand lines, pro-
bably written soon after 1313, when the saint's feast
was instituted by the Council of Penafiel. Its author
declares that he once held the prebend of tTbeda, and
that he had previously rhymed the history of the Mag-
dalen. No other information concerning him exists ;
nor is it eagerly sought, for the Prebendary's poem is a
colourless imitation of Berceo, without Berceo's visitings
of inspiration. More merit is shown in the Proverbios
en Rimo de Salomon (Solomon's Rhymed Proverbs),
moralisings on the vanity of life, written, with many
variations, in the manner of Berceo. The author of
these didactic, satiric verses is announced in the oldest
manuscript copy as one Pero G6mez, son of Juan Fer-
nandez. He has been absurdly confounded with an
ancient " G6mez, trovador" and, more plausibly, with
the Pero G6mez who collaborated with Paredes in
translating Brunetto Latini's Tesoro ; but the name is
too common to allow of precise opinion as to the real
author, whom some have taken for Pero Lopez de Ayala.
74
HISTORIA DE YUSUF 75
Whoever the writer, he possessed a pleasant gift of
satirical observation, and a knowledge of men and
affairs which he puts to good use, with few lapses upon
the merely trite and banal.
Of more singular interest is the incomplete Poema
de Jose or Historia de Yusuf, named by the writer,
Al-hadits de Jusuf. This curious monument, due doubt-
less to some unconverted Mudejar of Toledo, is the
typical example of the literature called aljamiada. The
language is correct Castilian of the time, and the
metre, sustained for 312 stanzas, is the right Bercean :
the peculiarity lies in the use of Arabic characters
in the phonetic transcription. A considerable mass
of such compositions has been discovered (and in the
discovery England has taken part) ; but of them all
the Historia de Yusuf is at once the best and earliest.
It deals with the story of Joseph in Egypt, not accord-
ing to the Old Testament narrative, but in general con-
formity with the version found in the eleventh sura of
the Ku'ran, though the writer does not hesitate to intro-
duce variants and amplifications of his own invention,
as (stanza 31) when the wolf speaks to the patriarch
whose son it is supposed to have slain. The persecution
of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, who figures asZulija (Zulei-
kah), is told with considerable spirit, and the mastery
of the cuaderna via (the Bercean metre of four fourteen-
syllabled lines rhymed together) is little short of amazing
in a foreigner. At whiles an Arabic word creeps into
the text, and the invocation of Allah, with which the
poem opens, is repeated in later stanzas ; but, taken as
a whole, apart from the oriental colouring inseparable
from the theme, there is a marked similarity of tone
between the Historia de Yusuf and its predecessors the
76 SPANISH LITERATURE
"clerkly poems." An oriental subject handled by an
Arab gave the best possible opportunity for introducing
orientalism in the treatment ; the occasion is eschewed,
and the lettered Arab studiously follows in the wake of
Berceo and the other Castilian models known to him.
There could scarcely be more striking evidence of the
irresistible progress of Castilian modes of thought and
expression. The Arabic influence, if it ever existed, was
already dead.
JUAN Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, near Guadalajara, is
the greatest name in early Castilian literature. The
dates of his birth and death are not known. A line
in his Libra de Cantares (stanza 1484) inclines us to
believe that, like Cervantes, he was a native of Alcala
de Henares ; but Guadalajara also claims him for her
own, and a certain Francisco de Torres reports him as
living there so late as 1415. This date is incompatible
with other ascertained facts in Ruiz' career. We learn
from a note at the end of his poems that " this is the book
of the Archpriest of Hita, which he wrote, being im-
prisoned by order of the Cardinal Don Gil, Archbishop
of Toledo." Now, Gil Albornoz held the see between
the years 1337 and 1367 ; and another clerk, named
Pedro Fernandez, was Archpriest of Hita in 1351. Most
likely Juan Ruiz was born at the close of the thirteenth
century, and died, very possibly in gaol, before his suc-
cessor was appointed. On the showing of his own writ-
ings, Juan Ruiz was a cleric of irregular life at a time
when disorder was at its worst, and his thirteen years in
prison proclaim him a Goliard of the loosest kind. He
testifies against himself with a splendid candour ; and
yet there have been critics who insisted on idealising
this libidinous clerk into a smug Boanerges. There was
JUAN RUIZ 77
never a more grotesque travesty, a more purblind mis-
understanding of facts and the man.
The Archpriest was a fellow of parts and of infinite
fancy. He does, indeed, allege that he supplies, "in-
centives to good conduct, injunctions towards salvation,
to be understanded of the people and to enable folk
to guard against the trickeries which some practise in
pursuit of foolish loves." He comes pat with a text from
Scripture quoted for his own purpose : — " Intellectum tibi
dabo, et instruam te in via hac, qua gradieris." He passes
from David to Solomon, and, with his tongue in his
cheek, transcribes his versicle : — " Initium sapientia timor
Domini." St. John, Job, Cato, St. Gregory, the Decretals
— he calls them all into court to witness his respectable
intention, and at a few lines' distance he unmasks in
a passage which prudish editors have suppressed : —
"Yet, since it is human to sin, if any choose the ways
of love (which I do not recommend), the modes thereof
are recounted here ; " and so forth, in detail the reverse
of edifying. Ovid's erotic verses are freely rendered,
the Archpriest's unsuccessful battle against love is told,
and the liturgy is burlesqued in the procession of
"clerks and laymen and monks and nuns and duennas
and gleemen to welcome love into Toledo." The
attempt to exhibit Ruiz as an edifying citizen is, on
the face of it, absurd.
Much that he wrote is lost, but the seventeen hundred
stanzas that remain suffice for any reputation. Juan Ruiz
strikes the personal note in Castilian literature. To dis-
tinguish the works of the clerkly masters, to declare with
certainty that this Castilian piece was written by Alfonso
and that by Sancho, is a difficult and hazardous matter.
Not so with Ruiz. The stamp of his personality is un-
78 SPANISH LITERATURE
mistakable in every line. He was bred in the old tradi-
tion, and he long abides by the rules of the mester de
clereda ; but he handles it with a freedom unknown
before, imparts to it a new flexibility, a variety, a speed,
a music beyond all precedent, and transfuses it with a
humour which anticipates Cervantes. Nay, he does
more. In his prose preface he asserts that he chiefly
sought to give examples of prosody, of rhyme and com-
position : — "Daralgunas lecciones, 2 muestra de versificar, et
rimar et trobar" And he followed the bent of his natural
genius. He had an infinitely wider culture than any of
his predecessors in verse. All that they knew he knew —
and more ; and he treated them in the true cavalier spirit of
the man who feels himself a master. His famous descrip-
tion of the tent of love is manifestly suggested by the
description of Alexander's tent in the Libro de Alexandre.
The entire episode of Dona Endrina is paraphrased
from the Liber de Amore, attributed to the Pseudo-Ovid,
the Auvergnat monk who hides beneath the name of
Pamphilus Maurilianus.
French fableaux were rifled by Ruiz without a scruple,
though he had access to their great originals in the Dis-
ciplina clericalis of Petrus Alphonsus ; for to his mind the
improved treatment was of greater worth than the mere
bald story. He was familiar with the Kalilah and Dimnah,
with Fadrique's Crafts and Wiles of Women, perhaps
with the apologues of Lull and Juan Manuel. Vast as
his reading was, it had availed him nothing without his
superb temperament, his gift of using it to effect. Vaster
still was his knowledge of men, his acquaintance with
the seamy side of life, his interest in things common and
rare, his observation of manners, and his lyrical endow-
ment. The name of " the Spanish Petronius " has been
JUAN RUIZ 79
given to him ; yet, despite a superficial resemblance be-
tween the two, it is a misnomer. Far nearer the truth,
though the Spaniard lacks the dignity of the Englishman,
is Ticknor's parallel with Chaucer. Like Chaucer, Ruiz
had an almost incomparable gust for life, an immitigable
gaiety of spirit, which penetrates his transcription of the
Human Comedy. Like Chaucer, his adventurous curio-
sity led him to burst the bonds of the prison-house and
to confer upon his country new rhythms and metres. His
four cdnticas de serrana, suggested by the Galician makers,
anticipate by a hundred years the serranillas and the
vaqueiras of Santillana, and entitle him to rank as the
first great lyric poet of Castile. Ruiz, likewise, had a
Legend of Women ; but his reading was his own, and
Chaucer's adjective cannot be applied to it. His ambi-
tion is, not to idealise, but to realise existence, and he
interprets its sensuous animalism in the spirit of pica-
resque enjoyment. Jewesses, Moorish dancers, the
procuress Trota-conventos, her finicking customers, the
loose nuns, great ladies, and brawny daughters of the
plough, — Ruiz renders them with the merciless exactitude
of Velazquez.
The arrangement of Ruiz' verse, disorderly as his life,
foreshadows the loose construction of the picaresque
novel, of which his own work may be considered the first
example. One of his greatest discoveries is the rare value
of the autobiographic form. Mingled with parodies of
hymns, with burlesques of old cantares de gesta, with glori-
fied paraphrases of both Ovids (the true and the false),
with versions of oriental fables read in books or gathered
from the lips of vagrant Arabs, with peculiar wealth of
popular refrains and proverbs — with these goes the tale
of the writer's individual life, rich in self-mockery, gross
8o SPANISH LITERATURE
in thought, abundant in incident, splendid in expression,
slyly edifying in the moral conclusion which announces
an immediate relapse. Poet, novelist, expert in observa-
tion, irony, and travesty, Ruiz had, moreover, the sense
of style in such measure as none before him and few
after him, and to this innate faculty of selection he joined
a great capacity for dramatic creation. Hence the im-
possibility of exhibiting him in elegant extracts, and
hence the permanence of his types. The most familiar
figure of Lazarillo de Tormes — the starving gentleman —
is a lineal descendant of Ruiz' Don Furon, who is scru-
pulous in observing facts so long as there is nothing to
eat ; and Ruiz' two lovers, Melon de la Uerta and Endrina
de Calatayud, are transferred as Calisto and Melibea to
Rojas' tragi-comedy, whence they pass into immortality
as Romeo and Juliet. Lastly, Ruiz' repute might be
staked upon his fables, which, by their ironic apprecia-
tion, their playful wit and humour, seem to proceed from
an earlier, ruder, more virile La Fontaine.
Contemporary with Juan Ruiz was the Infante JUAN
MANUEL (1282-1347), grandson of St. Ferdinand and
nephew of Alfonso the Learned. In his twelfth year
he served against the Moors on the Murcian frontier,
became Mayordomo to Fernando IV., and succeeded
to the regency shortly after that King's death in 1312.
Mariana's denunciation of " him who seemed born solely
to wreck the state" fits Juan Manuel so exactly that it
is commonly applied to him ; but, in truth, its author in-
tended it for another Don Juan (without the " Manuel"),
uncle of the boy-king, Alfonso XI. Upon the regency
followed a spell of wars, broils, rebellions, assassinations,
wherein King and ex-Regent were pitted against each
other. Neither King nor soldier bore malice, and the
JUAN MANUEL 81
latter shared in the decisive victory of Salado and —
perhaps with Chaucer's Gentle Knight — in the siege of
Algezir (Algeciras). Fifty years of battle would fill most
men's lives ; but the love of literature ran in the blood
of Juan Manuel's veins, and, like others of his kindred,
he proved the truth of the old Castilian adage : — " Lance
never blunted pen, nor pen lance."
He set a proper value on himself and his achievement.
In the General Introduction to his works he foresees, so
he announces, that his books must be often copied, and he
knows that this means error: — "as I have seen happen in
other copies, either because of the transcriber's dulness,
or because the letters are much alike." Wherefore Juan
Manuel prepared, so to say, a copyright edition, with
a prefatory bibliography, whose deficiencies may be
supplemented by a second list given at the beginning
of his Conde Lucanor. And he closes his General
Introduction with this prayer: — "And I beg all those
who may read any of the books I made not to blame
me for whatever ill-written thing they find, until they
see it in this volume which I myself have arranged."
His care seemed excessive : it proved really insufficient,
since the complete edition which he left to the monastery
at Penafiel has disappeared. Some of his works are lost
to us, as the Book of Chivalry f a treatise dealing with
the Engines of War, a Book of Verses, the Art of Poetic
Composition (Rpglas como se debe Trovar), and the Book
of Sages. The loss of the Book of Verses is a real
calamity ; all the more that it existed at Penafiel as
recently as the time of Argote de Molina (1549-90),
who meant to publish it. Juan Manuel's couplets and
1 The contents of this work are summarised in the author's Book of States
(chap. xci.).
82 SPANISH LITERATURE
quatrains of four, eight, eleven, twelve, and fourteen
syllables, his arrangement (Enxemplo XVI.} of the octo-
syllabic redondilla in the Conde Lucanor, prove him an
adept in the Galician form, an irreproachable virtuoso in
his art. It seems almost certain that his Book of Verses
included many remarkable exercises in political satire ;
and, in any case, his example and position must have
greatly influenced the development of the courtly school
of poets at Juan II.'s court.
A treatise like his Libra de Caza (Book of Hawking),
recently recovered by Professor Baist, needs but to
be mentioned to indicate its aim. His histories are
mere epitomes of Alfonso's chronicle. The Libra det
Caballero et del Escudero (Book of the Knight and
Squire), in fifty-one chapters, of which some thirteen
are missing, is a didacticism, a fabliella, modelled upon
Ram6n Lull's Libre del Orde de Cavalleria. A hermit
who has abandoned war instructs an ambitious squire
in the virtues of chivalry, and sends him to court, whence
he returns "with much wealth and honour." The
inquiry begins anew, and the hermit expounds to his
companion the nature of angels, paradise, hell, the
heavens, the elements, the art of posing questions, the
stuff of the planets, sea, earth, and all that is therein
— birds, fish, plants, trees, stones, and metals. In some
sort the Tratado sobre las Armas (Treatise on Arms) is
a memoir of the writer's house, containing a powerful
presentation of the death of Juan Manuel's guardian,
King Sancho, passing to eternity beneath his father's
curse.
Juan Manuel follows Sancho's example by prepar-
ing twenty - six chapters of Castigos (Exhortations),
sometimes called the Libra infinido, or Unfinished
JUAN MANUEL 83
Book, addressed to his son, a boy of nine. He repro-
duces Sancho's excellent manner and sound practical
advice without the flaunting erudition of his cousin.
The Castigos are suspended to supply the monk, Juan
Alfonso, with a treatise on the Modes of Love, fifteen in
number ; being, in fact, an ingenious discussion on friend-
ship. Juan Manuel is seen almost at his best in his Libra
de los Estados (Book of States), otherwise the Book of the
Infante, and thought by some to be the missing Book
of Sages. The allegorical didactic vein is worked to
exhaustion in one hundred and fifty chapters, which
relate the education of the pagan Morovan's son,
Johas, by a certain Turin, who, unable to satisfy his
pupil, calls to his aid the celebrated preacher Julio.
After interminable discussions and resolutions of theo-
logical difficulties, the story ends in the baptism of
father, son, and tutor. Gayangos gives us the key ;
Johas is Juan Manuel ; Morovan is his father, Manuel :
Turin is Pero L6pez de Ayala, grandfather of the future
Chancellor ; and Julio represents St. Dominic (who, as
a matter of fact, died before Juan Manuel's father was
born). This confused philosophic story, suggestive of
the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, is in truth the
vehicle for conveying the author's ideas on every sort
of question, and it might be described without injustice
as the carefully revised commonplace book of an omni-
vorous reader with a care for form. A postscript to the
Book of States is the Book of Preaching Friars, a summary
of the Dominican constitution expounded by Julio to
his pupil. A very similar dissertation is the Treatise
shoiving that the Blessed Mary is, body and soul, in Paradise,
directed to Remon Masquefa, Prior of Penafiel.
Juan Manuel's masterpiece is the Conde Lucanor (also
84 SPANISH LITERATURE
named the Book of Patronio and the Book of Examples),
in four parts, the first of which is divided into fifty-one
chapters. Like the Decamerone, like the Canterbury Tales
— but with greater directness — the Conde Lucanor is the
oriental apologue embellished in terms of the vernacular.
The convention of the " moral lesson " is maintained, and
each chapter of the First Part (the others are rather un-
finished notes) ends with a declaration to the effect
that "when Don Johan heard this example he found it
good, ordered it to be set down in this book, and added
these verses" — the verses being a concise summary of
the prose. The Conde Lucanor is the Spanish equivalent
of the Arabian Nights, with Patronio in the part of
Scheherazade, and Count Lucanor (as who should say
Juan Manuel) as the Caliph. Boccaccio used the frame-
work first in Italy, but Juan Manuel was before him by
six years, for the Conde Lucanor was written not later than
1342. The examples are taken from experience, and
are told with extraordinary narrative skill. Simplicity of
theme is matched by simplicity of expression. The story
of father and son (Enxemplo //.), of the Dean of Santiago
and the Toledan Magician {Enxemplo XI.}, of Ferrant
Gonzalez and Nufto Laynez, a model of dramatic pre-
sentation {Enxemplo XVI.}, are perfect masterpieces in
little.
Juan Manuel is an innovator in Castilian prose, as
is Juan Ruiz in Castilian verse. He lacks the merri-
ment, the genial wit of the Archpriest ; but he has the
same gift of irony, with an added note of cutting sarcasm,
and a more anxious research for the right word. He
never forgets that he has been the Regent of Castile,
that he has mingled with kings and queens, that he has
cowed emirs and barons, and led his troopers at the
ALFONSO ONCENO 85
charge ; and it is well that he never unbends, since his
unsmiling patrician humour gives each story a keener
point. In mind as in blood he is the great Alfonso's
kinsman, and the relation becomes evident in his treat-
ment of the prose sentence. He inherited it with many
another splendid tradition, and, while he preserves entire
its stately clearness, he polishes to concision ; he sets
with conscience to the work, sharpening the edges of
his instrument, exhibits its possibilities in the way of
trenchancy, and puts it to subtler uses than heretofore.
In his hands Castilian prose acquires a new ductility and
finish, and his subjects are such that dramatists of genius
have stooped to borrow from him. In him (Enxemplo
XL V.) is the germ of the Taming of the Shrew (though
it is scarcely credible that Shakespeare lifted it direct),
and from him Calder6n takes not merely the title — Count
Lucanor — of a play, but the famous apologue in the first
act of Life is a Dream, an adaptation to the stage of
one of Juan Manuel's best instances (Enxemplo XXXI?).
Pilferings by Le Sage are things of course, and Gil Bias
benefits by its author's reading. Translations apart —
and they are forthcoming — the Conde Lucanor is one of
the books of the world, and each reading of it makes
more sensible the loss of the verses which, one would
fain believe, might place the writer as high among poets
as among prose writers.
The Poem a de Alfonso Onceno, also known as his
Rhymed Chronicle, was unearthed at Granada in 1573
by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and an extract from
it, printed fifteen years later by Argote de Molina,
encouraged the idea that Alfonso XL wrote it. That
King's sole exploit in literature is a handbook on venery,
often attributed to Alfonso the Learned. The fuller,
86 SPANISH LITERATURE
but still incomplete text of the Poema, first published
in 1864, discloses (stanza 1841) the author's name as
RODRIGO YANEZ or Yannes. It is to be noted that he
speaks of rendering Merlin's prophecy in the Castilian
tongue : —
" Yo Rodrigo Yannes la nott
En lenguaje caste llano."
Everything points to his having translated from a Galician
original, being himself a Galician who hispaniolised his
name of Rodrigo Eannes. Strong arguments in favour
of this theory are advanced by great authorities — Pro-
fessor Cornu, and that most learned lady, Mme. Carolina
Michaelis de Vasconcellos. In the first place, the many
technical defects of the Poema vanish upon translation
into Galician ; and next, the verses are laced with allu-
sions to Merlin, which indicate a familiarity with Breton
legends, common enough in Galicia and Portugal, but
absolutely unknown in Spain. Be that as it prove, the
Poema interests as the last expression of the old Castilian
epic. Here we have, literally, the swan-song of the
man-at-arms, chanting the battles in which he shared,
commemorating the names of comrades foremost in the
van, reproducing the martial music of the camp juglar,
observing the set conventions of the cantares de gesta.
His last appearance on any stage is marked by a portent
— the suppression of the tedious Alexandrine, and the
resolution into two lines of the sixteen-syllabled verse.
Yanez is an excellent instance of the third-rate man,
the amateur, who embodies, if he does not initiate, a
revolution. His own system of octosyllabics in alter-
nate rhymes has a sing-song monotony which wearies
by its facile copiousness, and inspiration visits him at
SEM TOB 87
rare and distant intervals. But the step that costs is
taken, and a place is prepared for the young romance in
literature.
No precise information offers concerning Rabbi SEM
TOB of Carri6n, the first Jew who writes at length in
Castilian. His dedication to Pedro the Cruel, who
reigned from 1350 to 1369, enables us to fix his date
approximately, and to guess that he was, like others of
his race, a favourite with that maligned ruler. Written
in the early days of the new reign, Sem Tob's Proverbio?
Morales, consisting of 686 seven-syllabled quatrains, are
more than a metrical novelty. His collection of senten-
tious maxims, borrowed mainly from Arabic sources and
from the Bible, is the first instance in Castilian of the
versified epigram which was to produce the brilliant
Proverbs of Santillana, who praises the Rabbi as a writer
of "very good things," and reports his esteem as a.
" grand trovador." In Santillana's hands the maxims
are Spanish, are European ; in Sem Tob's they are
Jewish, oriental. The moral is pressed with insistence,
the presentation is haphazard ; while the extreme con-
cision of thought, the exaggerated frugality of words,
tends to obscurity. Against this is to be set the exalted
standard of the teaching, the daring figures of the writer,
his happiness of epithet, his note of austere melancholy,
and his complete triumph in naturalising a new poetic
genre.
It has been sought to father on Sem Tob three other
pieces : the Treatise of Doctrine, the Revelation of a Hermit,
and the Danza de la Muerte. The Treatise, a catechism in
octosyllabic triplets with a four-syllabled line, is by Pedro
de Berague, and is only curious for its rhythm, imitated
from the rime coute, and for being the first work of its
7
88 SPANISH LITERATURE
kind. Sem Tob was in his grave when the ancient sub-
ject of the Argument between Body and Soul was re-
introduced by the maker of the Revelation of a Hermit,
wherein the souls are figured as birds, gracious or
hideous as the case may be. The third line of this
didactic poem gives its date as 1382, and this is con-
firmed by the evidence of the metre and the presence of
an Italian savour. In the case of the anonymous Danza
de la Muerte the metre once more fixes the period of
composition at about the end of the fourteenth century.
Most European literatures possess a Danse Macabrt of
their own ; yet, though the Castilian is probably an imi-
tation of some unrecognised French original, it is the
oldest known version of the legend. It is not rash to
assume that its immediate occasion was the last terrific
outbreak of the Black Death, which lasted from 1394
to 1399. Death bids mankind to his revels, and forces
them to join his dance. The form is superficially
dramatic, and the thirty-three victims — pope, emperor,
cardinal, king, and so forth, a cleric and a layman always
alternating — reply to the summons in a series of octaves.
Whoever composed the Spanish version, he must be
accepted as an expert in the art of morbid allegory.
Odd to say, the Catalan Carbonell, constructing his
Dance of Death in the sixteenth century, rejects this fine
Castilian version for the French of Jean de Limoges,
Chancellor of Paris.
A writer who represents the stages of the literary evo-
lution of his age is the long-lived Chancellor, PERO LOPEZ
DE AYALA (1332-1407). His career is a veritable romance
of feudalism. Living under Alfonso XI., he became the
favourite of Pedro the Cruel, whom he deserted at the
psychological moment. He chronicles his own and his
AYALA 89
father's defection in such terms as Pepys or the Vicar
of Bray might use: — "They saw that Don Pedro's affairs
were all awry, so they resolved to leave him, not intend-
ing to return." Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I.,
Enrique III. — Ayala served all four with profit to his
pouch, without flagrant treason. Loyalty he held for
a vain thing compared with interest ; yet he earned his
money and his lands in fight. He ever strove to be on
the winning side, but luck was hostile when the Black
Prince captured him at Najera (1367), and when he was
taken prisoner at Aljubarrota (1385). The fifteen months
spent in an iron cage at the castle of Oviedes after the
second defeat gave Ayala one of his opportunities. He
had wasted no chance in life, nor did he now. It were
pleasant to think with Ticknor that some part of Ayala's
Rimado de Palacio " was written during his imprisonment
in England," — pleasant, but difficult. To begin with, it
is by no means sure that Ayala ever quitted the Penin-
sula. More than this : though the Rimado de Palacio was
composed at intervals, the stages can be dated approxi-
mately. The earlier part of the poem contains an allu-
sion to the schism during the pontificate of Urban VI.,
so that this passage must date from 1378 or afterwards ;
the reference to the death of the poet's father, Hernan
Perez de Ayala, brings us to the year 1385 or later ; and
the statement that the schism had lasted twenty-five
years fixes the time of composition as 1403.
Rimado de Palacio (Court Rhymes) is a chance title
that has attached itself to Ayala's poem without the
author's sanction. It gives a false impression of his
theme, which is the decadence of his age. Only within
narrow limits does Ayala deal with courts and courtiers ;
he had a wider outlook, and he scourges society at large.
90 SPANISH LITERATURE
What was a jest to Ruiz was a woe to the Chancellor.
Ruiz had a natural sympathy for a loose-living cleric ;
Ayala lashes this sort with a thong steeped in vitriol.
The one looks at life as a farce ; the other sees it as a
tragedy. Where the first finds matter for merriment, the
second burns with the white indignation of the just. The
deliberate mordancy of Ayala is impartial insomuch as
it is universal. Courtiers, statesmen, bishops, lawyers,
merchants — he brands them all with corruption, simony,
embezzlement, and exposes them as venal sons of Belial.
And, like Ruiz, he places himself in the pillory to
heighten his effects. He spares not his superstitious
belief in omens, dreams, and such-like fooleries ; he dis-
covers himself as a grinder of the poor man's face, a
libidinous perjurer, a child of perdition.
But not all Ayala's poem is given up to cursing. In
his yo5th stanza he closes what he calls his sermdn with
the confession that he had written it, "being sore
afflicted by many grievous sorrows," and in the re-
maining 904 stanzas Ayala breathes a serener air. In
both existing codices — that of Campo-Alange and that
of the Escorial — this huge postscript follows the Rimado
de Palacio with no apparent break of continuity ; yet
it differs in form and substance from what precedes.
The cuaderna via alone is used in the satiric and auto-
biographical verses ; the later hymns and songs are
metrical experiments — echoes of Galician and Provencal
measures, redondillas of seven syllables, attempts to
raise the Alexandrine from the dead, results derived
from Alfonso's Cantigas and Juan Ruiz' loores. In his
seventy-third year Ayala was still working upon his
Rimado de Palacio. It was too late for him to master
the new methods creeping into vogue, and though in the
AYALA 91
Cancionero de Baena (No. 518) Ayala answers Sanchez
Talavera's challenge in the regulation octaves, he harks
back to the cuaderna via of his youth in his paraphrase
of St. Gregory's Job. If he be the writer of the Pro-
verbios en Rimo de Salomon — a doubtful point — his pre-
ference for the old system is there undisguised. Could
that system have been saved, Ayala had saved it : not
even he could stay the world from moving.
His prose is at least as distinguished as his verse. A
treatise on falconry, rich in rarities of speech, shows
the variety of his interests, and his version of Boc-
caccio's De Casibus Virorum illustrium brings him into
touch with the conquering Italian influence. His refer-
ence to Amadis in the Rimado de Palacio (stanza 162),
the first mention of that knight-errantry of Spain, proves
acquaintance with new models. Translations of Boetius
and of St. Isidore were pastimes ; a partial rendering of
Livy, done at the King's command, was of greater value.
In person or by proxy, Alfonso the Learned had opened
up the land of history ; Juan Manuel had summarised
his uncle's work ; the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, other-
wise Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Musa, had
been translated from the Arabic ; the annals of Alfonso
XL and his three immediate predecessors were written by
some industrious mediocrity — perhaps Fernan Sanchez
de Tovar, or Juan Nunez de Villaizdn. These are not
so much absolute history as the raw material of history.
In his Chronicles of the Kings of Castile, Ayala considers
the reigns of Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I., and
Enrique III., in a modern scientific spirit. Songs,
legends, idle reports, no longer serve as evidence.
Ayala sifts his testimonies, compares, counts, weighs
them, checks them by personal knowledge. He borrows
92 SPANISH LITERATURE
Livy's framework, inserting speeches which, if not
stenographic reports of what was actually said, are
complete illustrations of dramatic motive. He deals
with events which he had witnessed : plots which his
crafty brain inspired, victories wherein he shared, battles
in which he bit the dust. The portraits in his gallery are
scarce, but every likeness, is a masterpiece rendered with
a few broad strokes. He records with cold-blooded im-
partiality as a judge ; his native austerity, his knowledge
of affairs and men, guard him from the temptations of
the pleader. With his unnatural neutrality go rare in-
stinct for the essential circumstance, unerring sagacity in
the divination and presentment of character, unerring
art in preparing climax and catastrophe, and the gift
of concise, picturesque phrase. A statesman of genius
writing personal history with the candour of Pepys :
as such the thrifty MeYimee recognised Ayala, and, in
his own confection, so revealed him to the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER V
THE AGE OF JUAN II.
1419-1454
AYALA'S verse, the conscious effort of deliberate artistry,
contrasts with those popular romances which can be
divined through the varnish of the sixteenth century.
Few, if any, of the existing ballads date from Ayala's
time ; and of the nineteen hundred printed in Duran's
Romancero General the merest handful is older than
1492, when Antonio de Nebrija examined their structure
in his Arte de la Lengua Castellana. Yet the older
romances were numerous and long-lived enough to sup-
plant the cantares de gesta, against which chronicles and
annals made war by giving the same epical themes with
more detail and accuracy. In turn these chronicles
afforded subjects for romances of a later day. An illus-
tration suffices to prove the point. Every one knows the
spirited close of the first in order of Lockhart's Ancient
Spanish Ballads : —
" Last night I was the King of Spain — to-day no King am I.
Last night fair castles held my train — to-night where shall I lie ?
Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee —
To-night not one I call my own : not one pertains to me"
The original is founded on Pedro de Corral's Cronica de
Don Rodrigo (chapters 207, 208), which was not written
93
94 SPANISH LITERATURE
till 1404, and from the same source (chapters 238-244)
comes the substance of Lockhart's second ballad : —
" // was when the King Rodrigo had lost his realm of Spain"
The modernity of almost every piece in Lockhart's col-
lection were as easily proved ; but it is more important
at this point to turn from the popular song-makers to
the new school of writers which was forming itself upon
foreign models.
Representative of these innovations is the grandson of
Enrique II., ENRIQUE DE VILLENA (1384-1434), upon
whom posterity has conferred a marquisate which he never
possessed in life.1 His first production is said to have
been a set of coplas written, as Master of the Order of
Calatrava, for the royal feasts at Zaragoza in 1414 ; his
earliest known work is his Arte de trovar (Art of Poetry),
given in the same year at the Consistory of the Gay
Science at Barcelona. Villena, of whose treatise mere
scraps survive, shows minute acquaintance with the
works of early trovadores ; of general principles he says
naught, losing himself in discursive details. Early in
1417 followed the Trabajos de Hercules (Labours of Her-
cules), first written in Catalan by request of Pero Pardo,
and done into Castilian in the autumn of the year. This
tedious allegory, crushed beneath a weight of pedantry,
is unredeemed by ingenuity or fancy, and the style is
disfigured by violent and absurd inversions which bespeak
long, tactless study of Latin texts. Juan Manuel's digni-
fied restraint is lost on his successor, itching to flaunt
i Strictly speaking, this writer should be called Enrique de Aragon ; but,
since this leads to confusion with his contemporary, the Infante Enrique de
Arag6n, it is convenient to distinguish him as Enrique de Villena. He was
not a marquis, and never uses the title.
VILLENA 95
inopportune learning with references to Aristotle, Aulus
Gellius, and St. Jerome. In 1423, at the instance of
Sancho de Jaraba, Villena wrote his twenty chapters on
carving — the Arte cisoria, an epicure's handbook to the
royal table, compact of curious counsels and recipes
expounded with horrid eloquence by a pedant who
tended to gluttony. Still odder is the Libra de Aoja-
miento (Dissertation on the Evil Eye) with its three
" preventive modes," as recommended by Avicenna and
his brethren. Translations of Dante and Cicero are lost,
and three treatises on leprosy, on consolation, and on
the Eighth Psalm are valueless. Villena piqued himself
on being the first in Spain — he might perhaps have said
the first anywhere — to translate the whole j<Eneid ; but
he marches to ruin with his mimicry of Latin idioms,
his abuse of inversion, and his graces of a cart-horse in
the lists. No contemporary was more famed for uni-
versal accomplishment ; so that, while he lived, men
held him for a wizard, and, when he died, applauded
the partial burning of his books by Lope de Barrientos,
afterwards Bishop of Segovia, who put the rest to his
private uses. Santillana and Juan de Mena assert that
Villena wrote Castilian verse, and Baena implies as much ;
if so, he was probably a common poetaster, the loss of
whose rhymes is a stroke of luck. A Castilian poem on
the labours of Hercules, ascribed to him by Pellicer, is a
rank forgery. Measured by his repute, Villena's works
are disappointing. But if we reflect that he translated
Dante, that he strove to naturalise successful foreign
methods, and that in his absurdest moments he proves
his susceptibility to new ideas, we may explain his
renown and his influence. Nor did these end with his
life ; for Lope de Vega, Alarc6n, Rojas Zorrilla, and
96 SPANISH LITERATURE
Hartzenbusch have brought him on the boards, and he
has appealed with singular force to the imaginations of
both Quevedo and Larra.
To Villena's time belong two specimens of the old
encyclopaedic school: the Libra de los Gatos, translated
from the Narrationes of the English monk, Odo of
Cheriton ; and the Libra de los Enxemplos of Clemente
Sanchez of Valderas, whose seventy-one missing stories
were brought to light in 1878 by M. Morel-Fatio. San-
chez' collection, thus completed, shows the entrance
into Spain of the legend of Buddha's life, adapted by
some Christian monk from the Sanskrit Lalita- Vistara,
and popular the world over as the Romance of Barlaam
and Josaphat. The style is carefully modelled on Juan
Manuel's manner.
The Cancionero de Baena, named after the anthologist
Juan Alfonso de Baena above mentioned, contains the
verses of some sixty poets who flourished during the reign
of Juan II., or a little earlier. This collection, first pub-
lished in 1851, mirrors two conflicting tendencies. The old
Gr.lician school is represented by Alfonso Alvarez de Villa-
sandino (sometimes called de Illescas), a copious, foul-
mouthed ruffian, with gusts of inspiration and an abiding
mastery of technique. To the same section belong the
Archdeacon of Toro, a facile versifier, and Juan Rodriguez
de la Camara, whose name is inseparable from that of
Maci'as, ElEnamorado. Mac/as has left five songs of slight
distinction, and, as a poet, ranks below Rodriguez de la
Camara. Yet he lives on the capital of his legend, the type
of the lover faithful unto death, and the circumstances
of his passing are a part of Castilian literature. The tale
is (but there are variants), that Maci'as, once a member
of Villena's household, was imprisoned at Arjonilla,
MACfAS: RODRfGUEZ 97
where a jealous husband slew the poet in the act of
singing his platonic love. Quoted times innumerable,
this more or less authentic story of Macfas' end ensured
him an immortality far beyond the worth of his verses :
it fired the popular imagination, and enters into literature
in Lope de Vega's Porfiar hasta morir and in Larra's
El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente.
A like romantic memory attaches to Macias' friend,
Juan Rodriguez de la Camara (also called Rodriguez
del Padron), the last poet of the Galician school, re-
presented in Baena's Candonero by a single cdntica.
The conjectures that make Rodriguez the lover of
Juan II.'s wife, Isabel, or of Enrique IV.'s wife, Juana,
are destroyed by chronology. None the less it is
certain that the writer was concerned in some myste-
rious, dangerous love-affair which led to his exile,
and, as some believe, to his profession as a Franciscan
monk. His seventeen surviving songs are all erotic,
with the exception of the Flama del divino Rayo, his best
performance in thanksgiving for his spiritual conversion.
His loves are also recounted in three prose books, of
which the semi-chivalresque novel, El Siervo libre de
Amor, is still readable. But Rodriguez interests most as
the last representative of the Galician verse tradition.
Save Ayala, who is exampled by one solitary poem,
the oldest singer in Baena's choir is Pero Ferrus, the
connecting link between the Galician and Italian schools.
A learned rather than an inspired poet, Ferrus is remem-
bered chiefly because of his chance allusion ioAmadis in
the stanzas dedicated to Ayala. Four poets in Baena's
song-book herald the invasion of Spain by the Italians,
and it is fitting that the first and best of these should
be a man of Italian blood, Francisco Imperial, the son
98 SPANISH LITERATURE
of a Genoese jeweller, settled in Seville. Imperial, aa
his earliest poem shows, read Arabic and English. He
may have met with Gower's Confessio Amantis before
it was done into Castilian by Juan de la Cuenca at
the beginning of the fifteenth century — being the first
translation of an English book in Spain. Howbeit, he
quotes English phrases, and offers a copy of French
verses. These are trifles : Imperial's best gift to his
adopted country was his transplanting of Dante, whom
he imitates assiduously, reproducing the Florentine note
with such happy intonation as to gain for him the style
of poet — as distinguished from trovador — from Santi-
llana, who awards him " the laurel of this western land."
Thirteen poems by Ruy Pdez de Ribera, vibrating with
the melancholy of illness, shuddering with the squalor
of want, affiliate their writer with Imperial's new expres-
sion, and vaguely suggest the realising touch of Villon.
At least one piece by Ferrant Sanchez Talavera is
memorable — the elegy on the death of the Admiral Ruy
Dfaz de Mendoza, which anticipates the mournful march,
the solemn music, some of the very phrases of Jorge
Manrique's noble coplas. In the Dantesque manner is
Gonzalo Martfnez de Medina's flagellation of the cor-
ruptions of his age. Baena, secretary to Juan II., in
eighty numbers approves himself a weak imitator of
Villasandino's insolence, and is remembered simply as
the arranger of a handbook which testifies to the defini-
tive triumph of the compiler's enemies.
A poet of greater performance than any in the Can-
cionero de Baena is the shifty politician, fsigo Lopez de
Mendoza, Marque's de SANTILLANA (1398-1458), towns-
man of Rabbi Sem Tob,the Jew of Carri6n. Oddly enough,
Baena excludes Santillana from his collection, and San<
SANTILLANA 99
tillana, in reviewing the poets of his time, ignores Baena,
whom he probably despised as a parasite. A remarkable
letter to the Constable of Portugal shows Santillana as a
pleasant prose-writer ; in his rhetorical Lamentation en
Prophe^ia de la segunda Destruygion de Espana he fails in
the grand style, though he succeeds in the familiar with
his collection of old wives' fireside proverbs, Refranes que
di^en las Viejas tras el Huego. His Centiloquio, a hundred
rhymed proverbs divided into fourteen chapters, is grace-
fully written and skilfully put together ; his Comedieta de
Ponza is reminiscent of both Dante and Boccaccio, and
its title, together with the fact that the dialogue is allotted
to different personages, has led many into the error of
taking it for a dramatic piece. Far more essentially
dramatic in spirit is the Didlogo de Bias contra Fortuna,
which embodies a doctrinal argument upon the advan-
tages of the philosophic mind in circumstances of adver-
sity ; and grouped with this goes the Doctrinal de Privados,
a fierce philippic against Alvaro de Luna, Santillana's
political foe, who is convicted of iniquities out of his own
mouth.
It is impossible to say of Santillana that he was an
original genius : it is within bounds to class him as a
highly gifted versifier with extraordinary imitative powers.
He has no " message " to deliver, no wide range of ideas :
his attraction lies not so much in what is said as in his
trick of saying it. He is one of the few poets whom
erudition has not hampered. He was familiar with
writers as diverse as Dante and Petrarch and Alain
Chartier, and he reproduces their characteristics with a
fine exactness and felicity. But he was something more
than an intelligent echo, for he filed and laboured till he
acquired a final manner of his own. Doubtless to his
ioo SPANISH LITERATURE
own taste his forty-two sonnets— -fechos al itdlico mode, as
he proudly tells you — were his best titles to glory ; and
it is true that he acclimatised the sonnet in Spain, sharing
with the Aragonese, Juan de Villapando, the honour
of being Spain's only sonneteer before Boscan's time.
Commonplace in thought, stiff in expression, the sonnets
are only historically curious. It is in his .lighter vein that
Santillana reaches his full stature. The grace and gaiety
of his decires, serranillas and vaqueiras are all his own.
If he borrowed suggestions from Provencal poets, he is
free of the Provencal artifice, and sings with the simpli-
city of Venus' doves. Here he revealed a peculiar aspect
of his many-sided temperament, and by his tact made a
living thing of primitive emotions, which were to be done
to death in the pastorals of heavy-handed bunglers. The
first-fruits of the pastoral harvest live in the house where
Santillana garnered them, and those roses, amid which
he found the milkmaid of La Finojosa, are still as sweet
in his best known — and perhaps his best — ballad as on
that spring morning, between Calateveflo and Santa
Maria, some four hundred years since. Ceasing to be
an imitator, Santillana proves inimitable.
The official court-poet of the age was JUAN DE MENA
(1411-56), known to his own generation as the "prince
of Castilian poets," and Cervantes, writing more than a
hundred and fifty years afterwards, dubs him "that great
C6rdoban poet." A true son of C6rdoba, Men a has all
the qualities of the Cordoban school — the ostentatious
embellishment of his ancestor, Lucan, and the unintel-
ligible preciosity of his descendant, G6ngora. The Italian
travels of his youth undid him, and set him on the hope-
less line of Italianising Spanish prose. A false attribution
enters the Annals of Juan II. under Mena's name : the
MENA 101
mere fact that Juan II.'s Cronica is a model of correct
prose disposes of the pretension. Mena's summary of the
Iliad, and the commentary to his poem the Coronation,
convict him of being the worst prose-writer in all Cas-
tilian literature. Simplicity and vulgarity were for him
synonyms, and he carries his doctrine to its logical ex-
treme by adopting impossible constructions, by wrench-
ing his sentences asunder by exaggerated inversions, and
by adding absurd Latinisms to his vocabulary. These
defects are less grave in his verse, but even there they
follow him. Argote de Molina would have him the
author of the political satire called the Coplas de la Pana-
dera ; but Mena lacked the lightness of touch, the wit
and sparkle of the imaginary baker's wife. If he be read
at all, he is to be studied in his Laberinto, also known as
the Trescientas, a heavy allegory whose deliberate obscu-
rity is indicated by its name. The alternative title, Tres-
cientaSj is explained by the fact that the poem consisted
of three hundred stanzas, to which sixty-five were added
by request of the King, who kept the book by him of
nights and hankered for a stanza daily, using it, maybe,
as a soporific. The poet is whisked by the dragons in
Bellona's chariot to Fortune's palace, and there begins
the inevitable imitation of Dante, with its machinery of
seven planetary circles, and its grandiose vision of past,
present, and future. The work of a learned poet taking
himself too seriously and straining after effects beyond
his reach, the Laberinto is tedious as a whole ; yet, though
Mena's imagination fails to realise his abstractions, though
he be riddled with purposeless conceits, he touches a high
level in isolated episodes. Much of his vogue may be
accounted for by the abundance with which he throws off
striking lines of somewhat hard, even marmoreal beauty,
102 SPANISH LITERATURE
and by the ardent patriotism which inspires him in his
best passages. A poet by flashes, at intervals rare and
far apart, Mena does himself injustice by too close a
devotion to aesthetic principles, that made failure a cer-
tainty. Careful, conscientious, aspiring, he had done far
more if he had attempted much less.
Meanwhile Castilian prose goes forward on Alfonso's
lines. The anonymous Crdnica of Juan II., wrongly as-
cribed to Mena and P£rez de Guzman, but more probably
due to Alvar Garcia de Santa Maria and others unknown,
is a classic example of style and accuracy, rare in official
historiography. Mingled with many chivalresque details
concerning the hidalgos of the court is the central episode
of the book, the execution of the Constable, Alvaro de
Luna. The last great scene is skilfully prepared and is
recounted with artful simplicity in a celebrated pas-
sage : — " He set to undoing his doublet-collar, making
ready his long garments of blue camlet, lined with fox-
skins ; and, the master being stretched upon the scaffold,
the executioner came to him, begged his pardon, em-
braced him, ran the poniard through his neck, cut off
his head, and hung it on a hook ; and the head stayed
there nine days, the body three." Passionate declamation
of a still higher order is found in the Cronica de Don
Alvaro de Luna, written by a most dexterous advocate,
who puts his mastery of phrase, his graphic presenta-
tion and dramatic vigour, to the service of partisanship.
Perhaps no man was ever quite so great and good as
Alvaro de Luna appears in his Cronica, but the strength
of conviction in the narrator is expressed in terms of
moving eloquence that would persuade to accept the
portrait, not merely as a masterpiece — for that it is—
P£REZ DE GUZMAN 103
but, as an authentic presentment of a misunderstood
hero.
After much violent controversy, it may now be taken
as settled that the Cronica del Cid is based upon Alfonso's
Estoria de Espanna. But it comes not direct, being
borrowed from Alfonso XL's Cronica de Castillo,, a tran-
script of the Estoria. The differences from the early
text may be classed under three heads : corruptions of
the early text, freer and exacter quotations from the
romances, and deliberate alterations made with an eye
to greater conformity with popular legends. Valuable
as containing the earliest versions of many traditions
which were to be diffused through the Romanceros, the
Cronica del Cid is of small historic authority, and Alfonso's
stately prose loses greatly in the carrying.
Ayala's nephew, FERNAN P£REZ DE GUZMAN (1378-
1460), continues his uncle's poetic tradition in the forms
borrowed from Italy, as well as i-n earlier lyrics of the
Galician school ; but his mediocre performances as a
poet are overshadowed by his brilliant exploit as a
historian. He is responsible for the Mar de Historias
(The Sea of Histories), which consists of three divisions.
The first deals with emperors and kings ranging from
Alexander to King Arthur, from Charlemagne to Godfrey
de Bouillon ; the second treats of saints and sages, their
lives and the books they wrote ; and both are arrange-
ments of some Ffench version of Guido delle Colonne's
Mare Historiarum. The third part, now known as the
Generaciones y Semblanzas (Generations and Likenesses),
is Pdrez de Guzman's own workmanship. Foreign critics
have compared him to Plutarch and to St. Simon ; and,
though the parallel seems dangerous, it can be maintained.
This amounts to saying that Perez de Guzman is one of
104 SPANISH LITERATURE
the greatest portrait-painters in the world ; and that pre-
cisely he is. He argues from the seen to the unseen with
a curious anticipation of modern psychological methods;
and it forms an integral part of his plan to draw his
personages with the audacity of truth. He does his share,
and there they stand, living as our present-day acquaint-
ances, and better known. Take a few figures at random
from his gallery : Enrique de Villena, fat, short, and fair,
a libidinous glutton, ever in the clouds, a dolt in practice,
subtle of genius so that he came by all pure knowledge
easily ; Nunez de Guzman, dissolute, of giant strength,
curt of speech, a jovial roysterer ; the King Enrique,
grave - visaged, bitter - tongued, lonely, melancholy ;
Catherine of Lancaster, tall, fair, ruddy, wine-bibbing,
ending in paralysis ; the Constable LxSpez Davalos, a
self-made man, handsome, taking, gay, amiable, strong,
a fighter, clever, prudent, but — as man must have some
fault — cunning and given to astrology. With such por-
traits P6rez de Guzman abounds. The picture costs him no
effort : the man is seized in the act and delivered to you,
with no waste of words, with no essential lacking, classified
as a museum specimen, impartially but with a tendency to
severity ; and when Perez de Guzman has spoken, there
is no more to say. He is a good hater, and lets you see
it when he deals with courtiers, whom he regards with the
true St. Simonian loathing for an upstart. But history has
confirmed the substantial justice of his verdicts, and has
thus shown that the artist in him was even stronger than
the malignant partisan. It is saying much. And to his
endowment of observation, intelligence, knowledge, and
character, Perez de Guzman joins the perfect practice of
that clear, energetic Castilian speech which his forebears
bequeathed him.
CLAVIJO: GAMEZ 105
An interesting personal narrative hides beneath the
mask of the Vida y Hasafias del gran Tamarldn (Life
and Deeds of the Mighty Timour). First published in
1582, this work is nothing less than a report of the
journey (1403-6) of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo (d. 1412),
who traversed all the space "from silken Samarcand
to cedar'd Lebanon," and more. Clavijo tells of his
wanderings with a quaint mingling of credulity and
scepticism ; still, his witness is at least as trustworthy
as Marco Polo's, and his recital is vastly more graphic
than the Venetian's. A very similar motive informs the
Cronica del Conde de Buelna, Don Pero Nino (1375-1446),
by Pero Nino's friend and pennon-bearer, Gutierre Diaz
Gamez. An alternative title — the Victorial — discloses the
author's intention of representing his leader as the hero
of countless triumphs by sea and land. A well-read
esquire, Diaz Gamez quotes from the Libra de Alex-
andre, flecks his pages with allusions, and — with a true
traveller's lust for local colouring — comes pat with tech-
nical French terms : his sanglieres, mestrieres, cursieres,
destrieres. These affectations apart, Diaz Gamez writes
with sense and force ; exalting his chief overmuch, but
giving bright glimpses of a mad, adventurous life, and
rising to altisonant eloquence in chivalresque outbursts,
one of which Cervantes has borrowed, and not bettered,
in Don Quixote's great discourse on letters and arms.
Knight-errantry was, indeed, beginning to possess the
land, and, as it chances, an account of the maddest,
hugest tourney in the world's history is written for us
by an eye-witness, Pero Rodriguez de Lena, in the Libra
del Paso Honroso (Book of the Passage of Honour).
Lena tells how the demon of chivalry entered into Suero
de Quiflones, who, seeking release from his pledge of
106 SPANISH LITERATURE
wearing in his lady's honour an iron chain each Thurs-
day, could hit on no better means than by offering, with
nine knightly brethren, to hold the bridge of San Marcos
at Orbigo against the paladins of Europe. The tilt
lasted from July 10 to August 9, 1434, and is described
with simple directness by Lena, who looks upon the
six hundred single combats as the most natural thing
in the world : but his story is important as a " human
document," and as testimony that the extravagant inci-
dents of the chivalrous romances had their counterparts
in real life.
The fifteenth century finds the chivalrous romance
established in Spain : how it arrived there must be left
for discussion till we come to deal with the best example
of the kind — Amadis de Gaula. Here and now it suffices
to say that there probably existed an early Spanish version
of this story which has disappeared ; and to note that
the dividing line between the annals, filled with impos-
sible traditions, and the chivalrous tales, is of the finest :
so fine, in fact, that several of the latter — for example,
Florisel de Niquea and Amadis de Grecia — take on his-
torical airs and call themselves cronicas. The mention
of the lost Castilian Amadis is imperative at this point
if we are to recognise one of the chief contemporary
influences. For the moment, we must be content to
note its practical manifestations in the extravagances
of Suero de Quiflones, and of other knights whose
names are given in the chronicles of Alvaro de Luna
and Juan II. The spasmodic outbursts of the craze
observable in the serious chapters of Diaz Gamez are
but the distant rumblings before the hurricane.
While Amadis de Gaula was read in courts and palaces,
three contemporary writers worked in different veins.
MARTINEZ: LUCENA 107
ALFONSO MARTINEZ DE TOLEDO (i398-?i466), Arch-
priest of Talavera, and chaplain to Juan II., is the author
of the Reprobation del Amor mundano, otherwise El
Corbacho (The Scourge). The latter title, not of the
author's choosing, has led some to say that he borrowed
from Boccaccio. The resemblance between the Repro-
bation and the Italian Corbaccio is purely superficial.
Martinez goes forth to rebuke the vices of both sexes
in his age ; but the moral purpose is dropped, and he
settles down to a deliberate invective against women and
their ways. Amador de los Ri'os suggests that Martinez
stole hints from Francisco Eximenis' Carro de la donas,
a Catalan version of Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus: as
the latter is a panegyric on the sex, the suggestion is
unacceptable. The plain fact stares us in the face that
Martinez' immediate model is the Archpriest of Hita,
and in his fourth chapter that jovial clerk is cited. In-
discriminate, unjust, and even brutal, as Martinez often
is, his slashing satire may be read with extraordinary
pleasure : that is, when we can read him at all, for his
editions are rare and his vocabulary puzzling. He falls
short of Ruiz' wicked urbanity ; but he matches him in
keenness of malicious wit, in malignant parody, in pica-
resque intention, while he surpasses him as a collector
of verbal quips and popular proverbs. The wealth of
his splenetic genius (it is nothing less) affords at least
one passage to the writer of the Celestina. Last of all —
and this is an exceeding virtue — Martinez' speech main-
tains a fine standard of purity at a time when foreign
corruptions ran riot. Hence he deserves high rank
among the models of Castilian prose.
Another chaplain of Juan II., JUAN DE LUCENA (fl. 1453),
Is the author of the Vita Beata, lacking in originality, but
108 SPANISH LITERATURE
notable for excellence of absolute style. He follows
Cicero's plan in the Definibus bonorum et malorum, intro-
ducing Santillana, Mena, and Garcia de Santa Maria
(the probable author, as we have seen, of the King's
Crdnicd). In an imaginary conversation these great per-
sonages discuss the question of mortal happiness, arriving
at the pessimist conclusion that it does not exist, or —
sorry alternative — that it is unattainable. Lucena adds
nothing to the fund of ideas upon this /-ackneyed theme,
but the perfect finish of his manner lends attraction to
his lucid commonplaces.
The last considerable writer of the time is the Bachelor
ALFONSO DE LA TORRE (fl. 1461), who returns upon the
didactic manner in his Vision deleitable de la Filosofia y
Artes liberates. Nominally, the Bachelor offers a philo-
sophic, allegorical novel ; in substance, his work is a
mediaeval encyclopaedia. It was assuredly never de-
signed for entertainment, but it must still be read by
all who are curious to catch those elaborate harmonies
and more delicate refinements of fifteenth-century Cas-
tilian prose which half tempt to indulgence for the
writer's insufferable priggishness. Alfonso de la Torre
figures by right in the anthologies, and his elegant
extracts win an admiration of which his unhappy chpice
of subject would otherwise deprive him.
CHAPTER VI
THE AGE OF ENRIQUE IV. AND THE
CATHOLIC KINGS
1454-1516
THE literary movement of Juan II.'s reign is overlapped
and continued outside Spain by poets in the train of
Alfonso V. of Aragon, who, conquering Naples in 1443,
became the patron of scholars like George of Trebizond
and jEneas Sylvius. It is notable that, despite their
new Italian environment, Alfonso's singers write by pre-
ference in Castilian rather than in their native Catalan.
Their work is to be sought in the Cancionero General, in
the Cancionero de burlas provocantes d risa, and especially
in the Cancionero de Stuniga, which derives its name from
the accident that the first two poems in the collection
are by Lope de Stuniga, cousin of that Suero de Quiftones
who held the Paso Honroso, mentioned under Lena's name
in the previous chapter. Stuniga prolongs the courtly
tradition in verses whose extreme finish is remarkable.
Juan de Tapia, Juan de Andujar, and Fernando de la
Torre practise in the same school of knightly hedonism ;
and at the opposite pole is Juan de Valladolid, son of the
public executioner, a vagabond minstrel, who passed his
life in coarse polemics with Ant6n de Montero, with
Gomez Manrique, and with Manrique's brother, the
109
no SPANISH LITERATURE
Conde de Paredes. A notorious name is that of Pero
Torrellas, whose Coplas de las calidadcs de las donas won
their author repute as a satirist of women, and begot
innumerable replies and counterpleas : the satire, to
tell the truth, is poor enough, and is little more than
violent but pointless invective. The best as well as the
most copious poet of the Neapolitan group is CARVAJAL
(or CARVAJALES), who bequeaths us the earliest known
romance, and so far succumbs to circumstances as to pro-
duce occasional verses in Italian. In Castilian, Carvajal
has the true lyrical cry, and is further distinguished by a
virile, martial note, in admirable contrast with the insipid
courtesies of his brethren.
To return to Spain, where, in accordance with the
maxim that one considerable poet begets many poet-
asters, countless rhymesters spring from Mena's loins.
The briefest mention must suffice for the too-celebrated
Coplas del Provincial, which, to judge by the extracts
printed from its hundred and forty-nine stanzas, is a
prurient lampoon against private persons. It lacks
neither vigour nor wit, and denotes a mastery of mordant
phrase: but the general effect of its obscene malignity
is to make one sympathise with the repeated attempts
at its suppression. The attribution to Rodrigo Cota
of this perverse performance is capricious : internal
evidence goes to show that the libel is the work of
several hands.
A companion piece of far greater merit is found in
thirty-two octosyllabic stanzas entitled Coplas de Mingo
Revulgo. Like the Coplas del Provincial, this satirical
eclogue has been referred to Rodrigo Cota, and, like
many other anonymous works, it has been ascribed to
Mena. Neither conjecture is supported by evidence.
MINGO REVULGO in
and Sarmiento's ascription of Mingo Revulgo to Her-
nando del Pulgar, who wrote an elaborate commentary
on it, rests on the puerile assumption that " none but the
poet could have commented himself with such clearness."
Two shepherds — Mingo Revulgo and Gil Aribato — re-
present the lower and upper class respectively, discussing
the abuses of society. Gil Aribato blames the people,
whose vices are responsible for corruption in high
places ; Mingo Revulgo contends that the dissolute King
should bear the blame for the ruin of the state, and
the argument ends by lauding the golden mean of the
burgess. The tone of Mingo Revulgo is more moderate
than that of the Provincial ; the attacks on current evils
are more general, more discreet, and therefore more
deadly ; and the aim of the later satire is infinitely
more serious and elevated. Cast in dramatic form,
but devoid of dramatic action, Mingo Revulgo leads
directly to the eclogues of Juan del Encina, so often
called the father of the Spanish theatre ; but its im-
mediate interest lies in the fact that it is the first of
effective popular satires.
Among the poets of this age, the Jewish convert,
ANT6N DE MONTORO, el Ropero (1404- 71480), holds a
place apart. A fellow of parts, Montoro combined
verse-making with tailoring, and his trade is frequently
thrown in his teeth by rivals smarting under his bitter
insolence. Save when he pleads manfully for his kins-
folk, who are persecuted and slaughtered by a blood-
thirsty mob, Montoro's serious efforts are mostly failures.
His picaresque verses, especially those addressed to Juan
de Valladolid, are replenished with a truculent gaiety
which amuses us almost as much as it amused Santillana ;
but he should be read in extracts rather than at length.
H2 SPANISH LITERATURE
He is suspected of complicity in the Coplas del Provincial,
and there is good ground for thinking that to him belong
the two most scandalous pieces in the Cancionero de burlas
provocantes d risa — namely, the Pleito del Manto (Suit of
the Coverlet), and a certain unmentionable comedy which
purports to be by Fray Montesino, and travesties Mena's
Trescientas in terms of extreme filthiness. Montoro's short
pieces are reminiscent of Juan Ruiz, and, for all his in-
decency, it is fair to credit him with much cleverness and
with uncommon technical skill. His native vulgarity
betrays him into excesses of ribaldry which mar the
proper exercise of his undeniable gifts.
A better man and a better writer is JUAN ALVAREZ
GATO (71433-96), the Madrid knight of whom G6mez
Manrique says that he "spoke pearls and silver." It is
difficult for us to judge him on his merits, for, though
his cancionero exists, it has not yet been printed ; and
we are forced to study him as he is represented in
the Cancionero General, where his love-songs show a
dignity of sentiment and an exquisiteness of expression
not frequent in any epoch, and exceptional in his own
time. His sacred lyrics, the work of his old age, lack
unction : but even here his mastery of form saves his
pious -villancicos from oblivion, and ranks him as the best
of Encina's predecessors. His friend, Hernan Mexi'a,
follows Pero Torrellas with a satire on the foibles of
women, in which he easily outdoes his model in mis-
chievous wit and in ingenious fancy.
GOMEZ MANRIQUE, Senor de Villazopeque (1412-91),
is a poet of real distinction, whose entire works have been
reprinted from two complementary cancioneros discovered
in 1885. Sprung from a family illustrious in Spanish
history, Gomez Manrique was a foremost leader in the
GOMEZ MANRIQUE 113
rebellion of the Castilian nobles against Enrique IV. In
allegorical pieces like the Batalla de amores, he frankly
imitates the Galician model, and in one instance he
replies to a certain Don Alvaro in Portuguese. Then
he joins himself to the rising Italian school, wherein his
uncle, Santillana, had preceded him ; and his experiments
extend to adaptations of Sem Tob's sententious moralis-
ings, to didactic poems in the manner of Mena, and to
coplas on Juan de Valladolid, in which he measures
himself unsuccessfully with the rude tailor, Montoro.
Humour was not Gomez Manrique's calling, and his
attention to form is an obvious preoccupation which
diminishes his vigour: but his chivalrous refinement
and noble tenderness are manifest in his answer to
Torrellas' invective. His pathos is nowhere more touch-
ing than in the elegiacs on Garcilaso de la Vega ; while
in the lines to his wife, Juana de Mendoza, Gomez Man-
rique portrays the fleetingness of life, the sting of death,
with almost incomparable beauty.
His Representation del Nadmiento de Nuestro Senor, the
earliest successor to the Misterio de los Reyes Magos, is a
liturgical drama written for and played at the convent
of Calabazanos, of which his sister was Superior. It
consists of twenty octosyllabic stanzas delivered by the
Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Gabriel, St. Michael, St. Raphael,
an angel, and three shepherds, the whole closing with a
cradle-song. Simple as the construction is, it is more
elaborate than that of a later play on the Passion, wherein
the Virgin, St. John, and the Magdalen appear (though
the last takes no part in the dialogue). The refrain or
estribillo at the end of each stanza goes to show that this
piece was intended to be sung. These primitive essays
in the hieratic drama have all the interest of what was
H4 SPANISH LITERATURE
virtually a new invention, and their historical importance
is only exceeded by that of a secular play, written by
G6mez Manrique for the birthday of Alfonso, brother of
Enrique IV., in which the Infanta Isabel played one of
the Muses. In all three experiments the action is of the
slightest, though the dialogue is as dramatic as can be
expected from a first attempt. The point to be noted
is that G6mez Manrique foreshadows both the lay and
sacred elements of the Spanish theatre.
His fame has been unjustly eclipsed by that of his
nephew, JORGE MANRIQUE, Seftor de Belmontejo (1440-
1478), a brilliant soldier and partisan of Queen Isabel's,
who perished in an encounter before the gates of Garci-
Munoz, and is renowned by reason of a single master-
piece. His verses are mostly to be found in the Cancionero
General, and a few are given in the cancioneros of Seville
and Toledo. Like that of his uncle, G6mez, his vein
of humour is thin and poor, and the satiric stanzas to
his stepmother border on vulgarity. In acrostic love-
songs and in other compositions of a like character, Jorge
Manrique is merely clever in the artificial style of many
contemporaries — is merely a careful craftsman absorbed
in the technical details of art, with small merit beyond
that of formal dexterity. The forty-three stanzas entitled
the Coplas de Jorge Manrique por la muerte de su padre,
have brought their writer an immortality which, outliving
all freaks of taste, seems as secure as Cervantes' own.
An attempt has been made to prove that Jorge Manrique's
elegiacs on his father are not original, and that the elegist
had some knowledge of Abu '1-Baka Salih ar-Rundi's
poem on the decadence of the Moslem power in Spain.
Undoubtedly Valera has so ingeniously rendered the
Arab poet as to make the resemblance seem pronounced :
JORGE MANRIQUE 115
but the theory is untenable, for it is not pretended that
Jorge Manrique could read Arabic, and lofty common-
places on death abound in all literature, from the Bible
downwards.
In this unique composition Jorge Manrique approves
himself, for once, a poet of absolute genius, an exquisite
in lyrical orchestration. The poem opens with a slow
movement, a solemn lament on the vanity of grandeur,
the frailty of life ; it modulates into resigned acceptance
of an inscrutable decree ; it closes with a superb sym-
phony, through which are heard the voices of the
seraphim and the angelic harps of Paradise. The work-
manship is of almost incomparable excellence, and in
scarcely one stanza can the severest criticism find a
technical flaw. Jorge Manrique's sincerity touched a
chord which vibrates in the universal heart, and his
poem attained a popularity as immediate as it was
imperishable. CamOes sought to imitate it ; writers
like Montemor and Silvestre glossed it ; Lope de Vega
declared that it should be written in letters of gold ; it
was done into Latin and set to music in the sixteenth
century by Venegas de Henestrosa ; and in our century
it has been admirably translated by Longfellow in a
version from which these stanzas are taken : —
" Behold of what delusive worth
The bubbles we pursue on earth,
The shapes we chase
Amid a world of treachery ;
They "vanish ere death shuts the eye,
And leave no trace.
Time steals tJtem from us, — chances strange^
Disastrous accidents, and change,
That come to all;
u6 SPANISH LITERATURE
Even in the most exalted state,
Relentless sweeps the stroke of fate;
The strongest fall.
Tell me, — the charms that lovers seek
In the clear eye and blushing cheek,
The hues that play
Oer rosy lip and brow of snow,
When hoary age approaches slow,
Ah, where are they? . . .
Tourney and joust, that charmed the eye,
And scarf, and gorgeous panoply,
And nodding plume, —
What were they but a pageant scene f
What but the garlands gay and green.
That deck the tomb ? . . .
0 Death, no more, no more delay ;
My spirit longs to flee away,
And be at rest;
The will of Heaven my will shall be,—
1 bow to the divine decree,
To God's behest. . . .
His soul to Him who gave it rose :
God lead it to its long repose,
Its glorious rest!
And though the warrior's sun has set,
Its light shall linger round us yet,
Bright, radiant, blest."
By the side of this achievement the remaining poems
of Enrique IV.'s reign seem wan and withered. But
mention is due to the Sevillan, Pedro Guillen de Segovia
(1413-74), who, beginning life under the patronage of
Alvaro de Luna, Santillana, and Mena, passes into the
household of the alchemist-archbishop Carrillo, and pro-
claims himself a disciple of G6mez Manrique. His chief
performance is his metrical version of the Seven Peni-
PALENCIA 117
tential Psalms, which is remarkable as being the first
attempt at introducing the biblical element into Spanish
literature.
Prose is represented by the Segovian, Diego Enriquez
del Castillo (fl. 1470), chaplain and privy councillor to
Enrique IV., whose official Cronica he drew up in a spirit
of candid impartiality ; but there is ground for suspecting
that he revised his manuscript after the King's death.
Charged with speeches and addresses, his history is written
with pompous correctness, and it seems probable that
the wily trimmer so chose his sonorous ambiguities of
phrase as to avoid offending either his sovereign or
the rebel magnates whose triumph he foresaw. Another
chronicle of this reign is ascribed to Alfonso Fernandez
de Palencia (1423-92), who is also rashly credited with
the authorship of the Coplas del Provincial ; but it is not
proved that Palencia wrote any other historical work
than his Latin Gesta Hispaniensia, a mordant presenta-
tion of the time's corruptions. The Castilian chronicle
which passes under his name is a rough translation
of the Gesta, made without the writer's authority.
Its involved periods, some of them a chapter long,
are very remote from the admirably vigorous style of
Palencia's allegorical Batalla campal entre los lobos y los
Perros (Pitched Battle between Wolves and Dogs), and
his patriotic Perfection del triunfo militar, wherein he
vaunts, not without reason, his countrymen as among
the best fighting men in Europe. Palencia's gravest
defect is his tendency to Latinise his construction, as in
his poor renderings of Plutarch and Josephus. But at his
best he writes with ease and force and distinction. The
Cronica de hechos del Condestable Miguel Lucas Iranzo,
possibly the work of Juan de Olid, is in no sense the
n8 SPANISH LITERATURE
history it professes to be, and is valuable mainly because
of its picturesque, yet simple and natural digressions on
the social life of Spain.
The very year of the Catholic King's accession (1474)
coincides with the introduction of the art of printing into
Spain. Ticknor dates this event as happening in 1468,
remarking that " there can be no doubt about the matter."
Unluckily, the book upon which he relies is erroneously
dated. Les Trobes en lahors de la Verge Maria — the first
volume printed in Spain — is a collection of devout verses
in Valencian, by forty-four poets, mostly Catalans. Of
these, Francisco de Castellvi, Francisco Barcelo, Pedro
de Civillar, and an anonymous singer — Hum Castelld sens
nom — write in Castilian. From 1474 onward, printing-
presses multiply, and versions of masters like Dante,
Boccaccio, and Petrarch, made by Pedro Fernandez
de Villegas, by Alvar G6mez, and by Antonio de
Obreg6n, are printed in quick succession. Hencefor-
ward the best models are available beyond a small
wealthy circle ; but the results of this popularisation
are not immediate.
Inigo de Mendoza, a gallant and a Franciscan, appears
as a disciple of Mena and G6mez Manrique in his Vita
Christiy which halts at the Massacre of the Innocents.
Fray f fiigo is too prone to digressions, and to misplaced
satire mimicked from Mingo Revulgo, yet his verses have
a pleasing, unconventional charm in their adaptation to
devout purpose of such lyric forms as the romance and
the villancico. His fellow-monk, Ambrosio Montesino,
Isabel's favourite poet, conveys to Spain the Italian
realism of Jacopone da Todi in his Visitacidn de Nuestra
Seftora, and in hymns fitted to the popular airs preserved
PADILLA 119
in Asenjo Barbieri's Cancionero Musical de los siglos xv.y
xvi. This embarrassing condition, joined to the writer's
passion for conciseness, results in hard effects ; yet, at
his best, he pipes "a simple song for thinking hearts,"
and, as Menendez y Pelayo, the chief of Spanish critics,
observes, Montesino's historic interest lies in his suffus-
ing popular verse with the spirit of mysticism, and in
his transmuting the popular forms of song into artistic
forms.
Space fails for contemporary authors of esparsas, decires>
resquestas, more or less ingenious ; but we cannot omit
the name of the Carthusian, JUAN DE PADILLA (1468-
71522), who suffers from an admirer's indiscretion in
calling him "the Spanish Homer." His Retablo de la
Vida de Cristo versifies the Saviour's life in the manner
of Juvencus, and his more elaborate poem, Los doce
triunfos de los doce Apostoles, strives to fuse Dante's
severity with Petrarch's grace. Rhetorical out of season,
and tending to abuse his sonorous vocabulary, Padilla
indulges in verbal eccentricities and in sudden drops from
altisonance to familiarity ; but in his best passages — his
journey through hell and purgatory, guided by St. Paul —
he excels by force of vision, by his realisation of the
horror of the grave, and by his vigorous transcription of
the agonies of the lost. The allegorical form is again
found in the Infierno del A -mor of Garci Sanchez de Bada-
joz, who ended life in a madhouse. His presentation
of Macias, Rodriguez del Padr6n, Santillana, and Jorge
Manrique in thrall to love's enchantments, was to the
taste of his time, and a poem with the same title, Infierno
del Amor, made the reputation of a certain Guevara,
whose scattered songs are full of picaresque and biting
wit. For the rest, Sdnchez de Badajoz depends upon
120 SPANISH LITERATURE
his daring, almost blasphemous humour, his facility in
improvising, and his mastery of popular forms.
Of the younger poetic generation, PEDRO MANUEL DE
URREA (1486-? 1530) is the most striking artist. His
Peregrinacidn d Jersuattn and his Penitencia de Amor are
practically inaccessible, but his Cancionero displays an
ingenious and versatile talent. Urrea's aristocratic spirit
revolts at the thought that in this age of printing his
songs will be read "in cellars and kitchens," and the
publication of his verses seems due to his mother. His
Fiestas de Amor, translated from Petrarch, are tedious,
but he has a perfect mastery of the popular d&ima, and
his villancicos abound in quips of fancy matched by
subtleties of expression. Urrea fails when he closes a
stanza with a Latin tag — a dubious adonic, such as
Dominus tecum. He fares better with his modification
of Jorge Manrique's stanza, approving his skill in modu-
latory effects. His most curious essay is his verse
rendering of the Celestina's first act ; for here he antici-
pates the very modes of Lope de Vega and of Tirso de
Molina. But in his own day he was not the sole prac-
titioner in dramatic verse.
A distinct progress in this direction is made by
RODRIGO COTA DE MAGUAQUE (fl. 1490), a convert Jew,
who incited the mob to massacre his brethren. Wrongly
reputed the author of the Coplas del Provincial, of Mingo
Revulgo, and of the Celestina, Cota is the parent of fifty-
eight quatrains, in the form of a burlesque wedding-song,
recently discovered by M. Foulche-Delbosc. But Cota's
place in literature is ensured by his celebrated Didlogo
entre el Amor y un Viejo. In seventy stanzas Love and
the Ancient argue the merits of love, till the latter yields
to the persuasion of the god, who then derides the hoary
ENCINA 121
amorist. The dialogue is eminently dramatic both in
form and spirit, the action convincing, clear, and rapid,
while the versification is marked by an exquisite melody.
It is not known that the Didlogo was ever played, yet it
is singularly fitted for scenic presentation.
The earliest known writer for the stage among the
moderns was, as we have already said, G6mez Man-
rique; but earlier spectacles are frequently mentioned in
fifteenth-century chronicles. These may be divided into
entremeses, a term loosely applied to balls and tourneys,
accompanied by chorus-singing ; and into momos, enter-
tainments which took on a more literary character, and
which found excuses for dramatic celebrations at Christ-
mas and Eastertide. G6mez Manrique had made a step
forward, but his pieces are primitive and fragmentary
compared to those of JUAN DEL ENCINA (1468-1534).
A story given in the scandalous Pleito del Manto reppjris
that Encina was the son of Pero TorreTfas, arid another
idle tale declares him to be Juan de Tamayo. The latter
is proved a blunder; the former is discredited by Encina's
solemn cursing of Torrellas. Encina passed from the
University of Salamanca to the household of the Duke
of Alba (1493), was present next year at the siege of
Granada, and celebrated the victory in his Triunfo^de^
fama. Leaving for Italy in 1498, he is found at Rome in
1502, a favourite with that Spanish Pope, Alexander VI.
He returned to Spain, took orders, and sang his first
mass at Jerusalem in 1519, at which date he was ap-
pointed Prior of the Monastery of Le6n. He is thought
to have died at Salamanca.
Encina began writing in his teens, and has left us over
a hundred and seventy lyrics, composd before he was
twenty-five years old. Nearly eighty pieces, with musical
122 SPANISH LITERATURE
v
settings by the author, are given in Asenjo Barbieri's
Cancionero Musical. His songs, when jundisfigured by
deliberate conceits, are full of devotional charm. Still,
Enema abides with us in virtue of his eclogues, the
first two being given in the presence of his patrons at
Alba de Tormes, probably in 1492. His plays are four-
teen in number, and were undoubtedly staged. Ticknor
would persuade us that the seventh and eighth, though
really one piece, " with a pause between," were separated
by the poet " in his simplicity." Even Encina's simpli-
city may be overstated, and Ticknor's "pause" must
have been long : for the seventh eclogue was played in
1494, and the eighth in 1495. His eclogues are eclogues
only in name, being dramatic presentations of primitive
themes, with a distinct but simple action. The occasion
is generally a feast-day, and the subject is sometimes
sacred. Yet not always so : the Egloga de Fileno dra-
matises the shepherd's passion for Lefira, and ends
with a suicide suggested by the Celestina. In like wise,
Encina's Pldcida y Vitoriano, involving two attempted
suicides and one scabrous scene, introduces Venus and
Mercury as characters. Again, the Aucto del Repelon
dramatises the adventures in the market-place of two
shepherds, Johan Paramas and Piernicurto ; while Cris-
tinoy Febea exhibits the ignominious downfall of a would-
be hermit in phrases redolent of Cota's Didlogo. Simple
as the motives are, they are skilfully treated, and the ver-
sification, especially in Pldcida y Vitoriano, is pure and
elegant. Encina elaborates the strictly liturgical drama
to its utmost point, and his younger contemporary, Lucas
Fernandez, makes no further progress, for the obvious
reason that no novelty was possible without incurring
a charge of heresy. As Sr. Cotarelo y Mori has pointed
AMADlS DE GAULA 123
out, the sacred drama remains undeveloped till the lives
of saints and the theological mysteries are exploited by
men of genius. Meanwhile, Encina has begun the move-
ment which culminates in the autos of Calderon.
In another direction, the Spanish version of Amadis de
Gaula (1508) marks an epoch. This story was known to
Ayala and three other singers in Baena's chorus ; and the
probability is that the lost original was written in Portu-
guese by Joham de Lobeira (1261-1325), who uses in the
Colocci-Brancuti Canzoniere (No. 230) the same ritour-
nelle that Oriana sings in Amadis. GARCIA ORDONEZ DE
MONTALVO (fl. 1500) admits that three-fourths of his
book is mere translation ; and it may be that he was not
the earliest Spaniard to annex the story, which, in the
first instance, derives from France. Amadis of Gaul is
a British knight, and, though the geography is bewil-
dering, "Gaul" stands for Wales, as "Bristoya" and
" Vindilisora" stand for Bristol and Windsor. The
chronology is no less puzzling, for the action occurs
"not many years after the Passion of our Redeemer."
Briefly, the book deals with the chequered love of
Amadis for Oriana, daughter of Lisuarte, King of Britain.
Spells incredible, combats with giants, miraculous inter-
positions, form the tissue of episode, till fidelity is re-
warded, and Amadis made happy.
Cervantes' Barber, classing the book as "the best in
that kind," saved it from the holocaust, and posterity
has accepted the Barber's sentence. Amadls is at least
the only chivalresque novel that man need read. The
style is excellent, and, though the tale is too long-
drawn, the adventures are interesting, the supernatural
machinery is plausibly arranged, and the plot is skil-
fully directed. Later stories are mostly burlesques of
124 SPANISH LITERATURE
Amadis : the giants grow taller, the monsters fiercer, the
lakes deeper, the torments sharper. In his Sergas de
Esplandidn, Montalvo fails when he attempts to take
up the story at the end of Amadis. One tedious sequel
followed another till, within half a century, we have
a thirteenth Amadis. The best of its successors is Luis
Hurtado's (or, perhaps, Francisco de Moraes') Palmerin
de Inglaterra, which Cervantes' Priest would have kept
in such a casket as " that which Alexander found among
Darius' spoils, intended to guard the works of Homer."
Nor is this mere irony. Burke avowed in the House of
Commons that he had spent much time over Palmerin,
and Johnson wasted a summer upon Felixmarte de Hir-
cania. Wearisome as the kind was, its popularity was so
unbounded that Hieronym Sempere, in the Caballeria
cristiana, applied the chivalresque formula to religious'
allegory, introducing Christ as the Knight of the Lion,
Satan as the Knight of the Serpent, and the Apostles as
the Twelve Knights of the Round Table. Of its class,
Amadis de Gaula is the first and best.
From an earlier version of Amadis derives the Cdrcel
de Amor of Diego San Pedro, the writer of some erotic
verses in the Cancionero de burlas. San Pedro tells the
story of the loves of Leriano and Laureola, mingled
with much allegory and chivalresque sentiment. The
construction is weak, but the style is varied, delicate,
and distinguished. Ending with a panegyric on women,
"who, no less than cardinals, bequeath us the theo-
logical virtues," the book was banned by the Inquisition.
But nothing stayed its course, and, despite all prohibi-
tions, it was reprinted times out of number. The Cdrcel
de Amor ends with a striking scene of suicide, which was
borrowed by many later novelists.
ROJAS 125
The first instance of its annexation occurs in the
Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, better known as the
Celestina. This remarkable book, first published (as it
seems) at Burgos, in 1499, has been classed as a play,
or as a novel in dialogue. Its length would make it
impossible on the boards, and its influence is most
marked on the novel. As first published, it had sixteen
acts, extended later to twenty-one, and in some editions
to twenty-two. On the authority of Rojas, anxious as
to the Inquisition, the first and longest act has been
attributed to Mena and to Cota ; but the prose is vastly
superior to Mena's, while the verse is no less inferior
to the lyrism of Cota's Didlogo. There is small doubt
but that the whole is the work of the lawyer FERNANDO
DE ROJAS, a native of Montalban, who became Alcaide
of Salamanca, and died, at a date unknown, at Talavera
de la Reina.
The tale is briefly told. Calisto, rebuffed by Melibea,
employs the procuress Celestina, who arranges a meeting
between the lovers. But destiny works a speedy expia-
tion : Celestina is murdered by Calisto's servants, Calisto
is accidentally killed, and Melibea destroys herself before
her father, whom she addresses in a set speech suggested
by the Cdrcel de Amor. Celestina is developed from
Ruiz' Trota-conventos ; Rojas' lovers, Calisto and Meli-
bea, from Ruiz' Mel6n and Endrina ; and some hints are
drawn from Alfonso Martinez de Toledo. But, despite
these borrowings, we have to deal with a completely
original masterpiece, unique in its kind. We are no
longer in an atmosphere thick with impossible monsters
in incredible circumstances : we are in the very grip of
life, in commerce with elemental, strait passions.
Rojas is the first Spanish novelist who brings a con*
126 SPANISH LITERATURE
science to his work, who aims at more than whiling
away an idle hour. He is not great in incident, his plot
is clumsily fashioned, the pedantry of his age fetters him ;
but in effects of artistry, in energy of phrasing, he is un-
matched by his coevals. Though he invented the comic
type which was to become the gracioso of Calder6n, his
humour is thin ; on the other hand, his realism and
his pessimistic fulness are above praise. Choosing for
his subject the tragedy of illicit passion, he hit on the
means of exhibiting all his powers. His purpose is to
give a transcript of life, objective and impersonal, and
he fulfils it, adding thereunto a mysterious touch of
sombre imagination. His characters are not Byzantine
emperors and queens of Cornwall : he traffics in the
passions of plain men and women, the agues of the love-
sick, the crafts of senile vice, the venality and vauntings
of picaroons, the effrontery of croshabells. Hence, from
the first hour, his book took the world by storm, was
imprinted in countless editions, was continued by Juan
Sedefto and Feliciano da Silva — the same whose " reason
of the unreasonableness" so charmed Don Quixote —
was imitated by Sancho Muft6n in Lisandro y Roselia,
was used by Lope de Vega in the Dorotea, and was
passed from the Spanish stage to be glorified as Romeo
and Juliet.
Between the years 1508-12 was composed the anony-
mous Cuestidn de Amor, a semi-historical, semi-social
novel wherein contemporaries figure under feigned
names, some of which are deciphered by the industry
of Signer Croce, who reveals Belisena, for example, as
Bona Sforza, afterwards Queen of Poland. Though
much of its first success was due to the curiosity which
commonly attaches to any roman a clef, it still interests
PULGAR: COLUMBUS 127
because of its picturesque presentation of Spanish
society in Italian surroundings, and the excellence of
its Castilian style was approved by that sternest among
critics, Juan de Valdes.
History is represented by the Historia de los Reyes
catdlicos of Andres Bernaldez (d. 1513), parish priest of
Los Palacios, near Seville, who relates with spirit and
simplicity the triumphs of the reign, waxing enthusiastic
over the exploits of his friend Columbus. A more am-
bitious historian is HERNANDO DEL PULGAR (1436-? 1492),
whose Claras Varones de Castillo, is a brilliant gallery of
portraits, drawn by an observer who took Perez de
Guzman for his master. Pulgar's Crdnica de los Reyes
catolicos is mere official historiography, the work of a
flattering partisan, the slave of flagrant prejudice ; yet
even here the charm of manner is seductive, though the
perdurable value of the annals is naught. As a portrait-
painter, as an intelligent analyst of character, as a wielder
of Castilian prose, Pulgar ranks only second to his im-
mediate model. He is to be distinguished from another
Hernando del Pulgar (1451-1531), who celebrated the
exploits of the great captain, Gonzalo de C6rdoba, at the
request of Carlos V. In this case, as in so many others,
the old is better.
One great name, that of Christopher Columbus or
CRISTOBAL COLON (1440-1506) is inseparable from those
of the Catholic kings, who astounded their enemies by
their ingratitude to the man who gave them a New
World. Mystic and adventurer, Columbus wrote letters
which are marked by sound practical sense, albeit
couched in the apocalyptic phrases of one who holds
himself for a seer and prophet. Incorrect, uncouth, and
rugged as is his syntax, he rises on occasion to heights
128 SPANISH LITERATURE
of eloquence astonishing in a foreigner. But it is per-
haps imprudent to classify such a man as Columbus
by his place of birth. An exception in most things, he
"was probably the truest Spaniard in all the Spains ; and
by virtue of his transcendent genius, visible in word as
in action, he is filed upon the bede-roll of the Spanish
glories.
.tr
CHAPTER VII
THE AGE OF CARLOS QUINTO
WITH the arrival of printing-presses in 1474 the diffusion
of foreign models became general throughout Spain.
The closing years of the reign of the Catholic Kings
were essentially an era of translation, and this movement
was favoured by high patronage. The King, Fernando,
was the pupil of Vidal de Noya; the Queen, Isabel,
studied under Beatriz Galindo, la latina ; and Luis Vives
reports that their daughter, Mad Juana, could and did,/'^)^
deliver impromptu Latin speeches to the deputies of the
Low Countries. Throughout the land Italian scholars
preached the gospel of the Renaissance. The brothers
Geraldino (Alessandro and Antonio) taught the children
of the royal house. Peter Martyr, the Lombard, boasts
that the intellectual chieftains of Castile sat, at his feet ;
and he had his present reward, for he ended as Bishop
of Granada. From the Latin chair in the University
of Salamanca, Lucio Marineo lent his aid to the good
cause ; and, in Salamanca likewise, the Portuguese,
Arias Barbosa, won repute as the earliest good Penin-
sular Hellenist. Spanish women took the fever of foreign
culture. Lucia de Medrano and Juana de Contreras
lectured to university men upon the Latin poets of the
Augustan age. So, too, Francisca de Nebrija would
1 30 SPANISH LITERATURE
serve as substitute for her father, ANTONIO DE NEBRIJA
(1444-1522), the greatest of Spanish humanists, the
author of the Arte de la Lengua Castellana and of a
Spanish-Latin dictionary, both printed in 1492. Nebrija
touched letters at almost every point, touching naught
that he did not adorn ; he expounded his principles in
the new University of Alcald de Henares, founded in
1508 by the celebrated Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de
Cisneros (1436-1517). Palencia had preceded Nebrija
by two years with the earliest Spanish-Latin diction-
ary ; but Nebrija's drove it from the field, and won
for its author a name scarce inferior to Casaubon's or
Scaliger's.
The first Greek text of the New Testament ever printed
came from Alcala de Henares in 1514. In 1520 the re-
nowned Complutensian Polyglot followed ; the Hebrew
and Chaldean texts being supervised by converted Jews
like Alfonso de Alcala, Alfonso de Zamora, and Pablo
Coronel ; the Greek by Nebrija, Juan de Vergara,
Demetrio Ducas, and Hernan Nunez, "the Greek Com-
mander." Versions of the Latin classics were in all
men's hands. Palencia rendered Plutarch and Josephus,
Francisco Vidal de Noya translated Horace, Virgil's
Eclogues were done by Encina, Caesar's Commentaries
by Diego L6pez de Toledo, Plautus by Francisco L6pez
Villalobos, Juvenal by Jer6nimo de Villegas, and Apuleius'
Golden Ass by Diego Lopez de Cartagena, Archdeacon
of Seville. Juan de Vergara was busied on the text of
Aristotle, while his brother, Francisco de Vergara, gave
Spaniards their first Greek grammar and translated
Heliodorus. Nor was activity restrained to dead lan-
guages : the Italian teachers saw to that. Dante was
translated by Pedro Fernandez de Villegas, Archdeacon
•
LEON HEBREO 131
of Burgos ; Petrarch's Trionfi by Antonio Obreg6n and
Alvar Gomez ; and the Decamerone by an anonymous
writer of high merit.
If Italians invaded Spain, Spaniards were no less ready
to settle in Italy. Long before, Dante had met with
Catalans and had branded their proverbial stinginess : —
"I'avara poverta di Catalogna." A little later, and
Boccaccio spurned Castilians as so many wild men :
" semibarbari et efferati homines." Lorenzo Valla, chief
of the Italian scholars at Alfonso V.'s Neapolitan court,
denounced the King's countrymen as illiterates : — " a
studiis hmnanitatis abhorrentes'' Benedetto Gareth of
Barcelona (1450-? 1514) plunged into the new current,
forswore his native tongue, wrote his respectable Rime
in Italian, and re-incarnated himself under the Italian
form of Chariteo. A certain Jusquin Dascanio is re-
presented by a song, half-Latin, half-Italian, in Asenjo
Barbieri's Cancionero Musical de los Siglos xv. y xvi.
(No. 68), and a few anonymous pieces in the same
collection are written wholly in Italian. The Valencian,
Bertomeu Gentil, and the Castilian, Tapia, use Italian in
the Cancionero General of 1527, the former succeeding
so far that one of his eighteen Italian sonnets has been
accepted as Tansillo's by all Tansillo's editors. The
case of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel, whom Chris-
tians call Le6n Hebreo, is exceptional. Undoubtedly
his famous Dialoghi di amore, that curious product of
neo - platonic and Semitic mysticism which charmed
Abarbanel's contemporaries no less than it charmed
Cervantes, reaches us in Italian (1535). Yet, since it
was written in 1502, its foreign dress is the chance result
of the writer's expulsion from Spain with his brethren
in 1492. It is unlikely that Judas Abarbanel should
1 32 SPANISH LITERATURE
have mastered all the secrets of Italian within ten years :
that he composed in Castilian, the language most familiar
to him, is overwhelmingly probable.
But the Italian was met on his own ground. The
Neapolitan poet, Luigi Tansillo, declares himself a
Spaniard to the core : — " Spagnuolo cPaffezione" And,
later, Panigarola asserts that Milanese fops, on the
strength of a short tour in Spain, would pretend to
forget their own speech, and would deliver themselves
of Spanish words and tags in and out of season. Mean-
while, Spanish Popes, like Calixtus III. and Alexander VI.,
helped to bring Spanish into fashion. It is unlikely that
the epical Historia Parthenopea (1516) of the Sevillan,
Alonso Hernandez, found many readers even among the
admirers of the Great Captain, Gonzalo de C6rdoba,
whose exploits are its theme ; but it merits notice as
a Spanish book issued in Rome, and as a poor imitation
of Mena's Trescientas, with faint suggestions of an Italian
environment. A Spaniard, whom Encina may have met
upon his travels, introduced Italians to the Spanish
theatre. This was KAKTOLOME TORRES NAHARRO, a
native of Torres, near Badajoz. Our sole information
concerning him comes from a Letter Prefatory to his
works, written by one Barbier of Orleans. The dates of
his birth and death are unknown, and no proof supports
the story that he was driven from Rome because of his
satires on the Papal court. Neither do we know that he
died in extreme poverty. These are baseless tales. What
is certain is this : that Torres Naharro, having taken
orders, was captured by Algerine pirates, was ransomed,
and made his way to Rome about the year 1513. Further,
we know that he lived at Naples in the service of Fabrizio
Colonna, and that his collected plays were published at
TORRES NAHARRO 133
Naples in 1517 with the title of Propaladia, dedicated
to Francisco Davalos, the Spanish husband of Vittoria
Colonna. That Torres Naharro was a favourite with
Leo X. rests on no better basis than the fact that in the
Pope's privilege to print he is styled dilectus filius.
His friendly witness, Barbier, informs us that, though
Torres Naharro was quite competent to write his plays
in Latin, he chose Castilian of set purpose that "he
might be the first to write in the vulgar tongue." This
phrase, taken by itself, implies ignorance of Encina's
work ; in any case, Torres Naharro develops his drama
on a larger scale than that of his predecessor. His
Prohemio or Preface is full of interesting doctrine. He
divides his plays into five acts, because Horace wills it
so, and these acts he calls jornadas, " because they re-
semble so many resting-points." The personages should
not be too many : not less than six, and not more than
twelve. If the writer introduces some twenty charac-
ters in his Tinellaria, he excuses himself on the ground
that " the subject needed it." He further apologises for
the introduction of Italian words in his plays : a conces-
sion to " the place where, and the persons to whom,
the plays were recited." Lastly, Torres Naharro divides
dramas into two broad classes : first, the comedia de
noticia, which treats of events really seen and noted ;
second, the comedia de fantasia, which deals with feigned
things, imaginary incidents that seem true, and might be
true, though in fact they are not so.
Of the comedia de fantasia Torres Naharro is the
earliest master. He adventures on the allegorical drama
in his Trofea, which commemorates the exploits of
Manoel of Portugal in Africa and India, and brings
Fame and Apollo upon the stage. The chivalresque
134 SPANISH LITERATURE
drama is represented by him in such pieces as the
Serafina, the Aquilana, the Himenea ; while he examples
the play of manners by the Jacinta and the Soldadesca,
Each piece begins with an in troy to or prologue, wherein
indulgence and attention are requested ; then follows
a concise summary of the plot ; last, the action opens.
The faults of Torres Naharro's theatre are patent enough:
his tendency to turn comedy to farce, his inclination to
extravagance, his want of tact in crowding his stage — as
in the Tinellaria — with half-a-dozen characters chattering
in half-a-dozen different languages at once.
Setting aside these primitive humours, it is impos-
sible to deny that Torres Naharro has a positive, as
well as an historic value. His versification, always in
the Castilian octosyllabic metre, with no trespassing on
the Italian hendecasyllabic, is neat and polished, and,
though far from splendid, lacks neither sweetness nor
speed ; his dialogue is pointed, opportune, dramatic ;
his characters are observed and are set in the proper
light. His verses entitled the Lamentaciones de Amor are
in the old, artificial manner ; his satirical couplets on the
clergy are vigorous and witty attacks on the general life
of Rome ; his devout songs are neither better nor worse
than those of his contemporaries ; and his sonnets — two
in Italian, one in a mixture of Italian and Latin — are
mere curiosities of no real worth, yet they testify to the
writer's uncommon versatility. Versatile Torres Naharro
unquestionably was, and his gift serves him in the plays
for which he is remembered. He is the first_Srjaniard
to realise his personages, to create character on the
boardsj the first to build a plot, to maintain an interest
of action by variety of incident, to polish an intrigue,,
to concentrate his powers within manageable limits, to...
GIL VICENTE 135
view stage-effects from before the curtain. In a word,
Torres Naharro knew the stage, its possibilities, and its
resources. For his own age and for his opportunities
he knew it even too well ; and his Himenea — the theme
of which is the love of Himeneo for Febea, with the
interposition of Febea's brother, petulant as to the
"point of honour" — is an isolated masterpiece, unrivalled
tilTthe time of_Lo_p_e de_Veg_a.. The accident that Torres
Naharro's Propaladia was printed in Italy ; the misfor-
tune that its Spanish reprints were tardy, and that his
plays were too complicated for the primitive resources
of the Spanish stage : these delayed the development of
the Spanish theatre by close on a century. Yet the fact
remains : to find a match for the Himenea we must pass
to the best of Lope's pieces.
Thus the Spaniard in Italy. In Portugal, likewise, he
made his way. GIL VICENTE (1470-1540), the Portuguese
dramatist, wrote forty-two pieces, of which ten are wholly
in Castilian, while fifteen are in a mixed jargon of Cas-
tilian and Portuguese which the author himself ridicules
as aravia in his Auto das Fadas. An important histori-
cal fact is that Vicente's earliest dramatic attempt, the
Monologo da Visitaqdo, is in Castilian, and that it was
actually played — the first lay piece ever given in Portu-
gal— on June 8, 1502. Its simplicity of tone and elegance
of manner are reminiscent of Encina, and it can scarce
be doubted that Vicente's imitation is deliberate. Still
more obvious is the following of Encina's eclogues in
Vicente's Auto pastoril Castelhano and the Auto dos Reis
Matgos, where the legend is treated with Encina's curious
touch of devotion and modernity, the whole closing with
a song in which all join. Once again Encina's influence
is manifest in the Auto da Sibilla Cassandra, wherein
10
I36 SPANISH LITERATURE
Cassandra, niece of Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah, is wooed
by Solomon. In Amadis de Gaula and in Dom Duardos
there is a marked advance in elaboration and finish ; and
in the Auto da F/ Vicente proves his independence by
an ingenuity and a fancy all his own. Here he displays
qualities above those of his model, and treats his subject
with such brilliancy that, a century and a half later,
Calder6n condescended to borrow from the Portuguese
the idea of his auto entitled El Lirio y la Azucena. Gil
Vicente is technically a dramatist, but he is not dra-
matic as Torres Naharro is dramatic. His action is slight,
his treatment timid and conventional, and he is more
poetic than inventive ; still, his dramatic songs are of
singular beauty, conceived in a tone of mystic lyricism
unapproached by those who went before him, and sur-
passed by few who followed. That Vicente was ever
played in Spain is not known ; but that he influenced
both Lope de Vega and Calder6n is as sure as that he
himself was a disciple of Encina.
A more immediate factor in the evolution of Spanish
letters was the Catalan Boscd, whom it is convenient to
call by his Castilian name, JUAN BoscAN ALMOGAVER
(? 1490-1542). A native of Barcelona, Boscan served
as a soldier in Italy, returned to Spain in 1519, and, as
we know from Garcilaso's Second Eclogue, was tutor
to Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, whom the world
knows as the Duque de Alba. Roseau's earliest verses
are all in the old manner ; nor does he venture on
the Italian hendecasyllabic till the year 1526, just
before resigning his guardianship of Alba. His con-
version was the work of the Venetian ambassador,
Andrea Navagiero, an accomplished courtier, ill repre-
sented by his Viaggiofatto in Spagna. Being at Granada
BOSCAN 137
in the year 1526, Navagiero met Boscan, who has left us
an account of the conversation : — "Talking of wit and
letters, especially of their varieties in different tongues,
he inquired why I did not try in Castilian the sonnets
and verse-forms favoured by distinguished Italians. He
not only suggested this, but pressed me urgently to the
attempt. Some days later, I made for home, and, be-
cause of the length and loneliness of the journey, think-
ing matters over, I returned to what Navagiero had said,
and thus I first attempted this sort of verse ; finding
it hard at the outset, since it is very intricate, with many
peculiarities, varying greatly from ours. Yet, later, I
fancied that I was progressing well, perhaps because we
all love our own essays ; hence I continued, little by
little, with increasing zeal." This passage is a locus
classicus. Ticknor justly observes that no single foreigner
ever affected a national literature more deeply and more
instantly than Navagiero, and that we have here a first-
hand account, probably unique in literary history, of the
first inception of a revolution by the earliest, if not the
most conspicuous, actor in it. We have at last reached
the parting of the ways, and Boscan presents himself as
a guide to the Promised Land. The astonishing thing
is that Boscan, a Barcelonese by birth and residence,
ignores Auzi'as March.
There were many Italianates before Boscan — as
Francisco Imperial and Santillana ; but their hour was
not propitious, and Boscan is with justice regarded as
the leader of the movement. He was not a poet of
singular gifts, and he had the disadvantage of writing
in Castilian, which was not his native language ; but
Boscan had the wit to see that Castilian was destined
to suoremacy, and he mastered it for his purpose with
138 SPANISH LITERATURE
that same dogged perseverance which led him to under-
take his more ambitious attempt unaided. He does not,
indeed, appear to have sought for disciples, nor were
his own efforts as successful as he believed : "perhaps
because we all love our own essays." His Castilian
prose is evidence of his gift of style, and his translation
of Castiglione's Cortegiano is a triumph of rendering fit
v ' to take its place beside our Thomas Hoby's version of
the same original. But, it must be said frankly, that
Boscan's most absolute success is in prose. Herrera
bitterly taunts him with decking himself in the precious
robes of Petrarch, and with remaining, spite of all that
he can do, "a foreigner in his language." And the
charge is true. In verse Boscan's defects grow very
visible: his hardness, his awkward construction, his un-
refined ear, his uncertain touch upon his instrument, his
boisterous execution. Still, it is not as an original
genius that Boscan finds place in history, but rather as
an initiator, a master-opportunist who, without persua-
sion, by the sheer force of conviction and example, led
a nation to abandon the ancient ways, and to admit
the potency and charm of exotic forms. That in itself
constitutes a title, if not to immortality at least, to
remembrance.
Boscan's influence manifested itself in diverse ways.
His friend, Garcilaso de la Vega, sent him the first
edition of Castiglione's Cortegiano, printed at Venice in
1528. This — "the best book that ever was written
upon good breeding," according to Samuel Johnson-
was triumphantly translated into Castilian by Boscan at
Garcilaso's prayer ; and, though Boscan himself held
translation to be a thing meet for " men of small
parts," his rendering is an almost perfect performance.
BOSCAN 139
Moreover, it was the single work published by him
(1534), for his poems appeared under his widow's care.
Once more, in an epistle directed to Hurtado de Men-
doza, Boscan re-echoes Horace's note of elegant sim-
plicity with a faithfulness not frequent in his work ;
and, lastly, it is known that he did into Castilian an
Euripidean play, which, though licensed for the press,
was never printed. Truly it seems that Boscan was
conscious of his very definite limitations, and that he
felt the necessity of a copy, rather than a direct model.
If it were so, this would indicate a power of conscious
selection, a faculty for self-criticism which cannot be
traced in his published verses. His earlier poems, written
in Castilian measures, show him for a man destitute
of guidance, thrown on his own resources, a perfectly
undistinguished versifier with naught to sing and with
no dexterity of vocalisation. Yet, let Boscan betake
himself to the poets of the Cinque Cento, and he flashes
forth another being : the dauntless adventurer sailing
for unknown continents, inspired by the enthusiasm of
immediate suggestion.
His Hero y Leandra is frankly based upon Musaeus,
and it is characteristic of Boscan's mode that he expands
Musaeus' three hundred odd hexameters into nigh three
thousand hendecasyllabics. Professor Flamini has de-
monstrated most convincingly that Boscan followed
Tasso's Favo/a, but he comes far short of Tasso's variety,
distinction, and grace. He annexes the Italian blank verse
—the versi sciolti — as it were by sheer force, but he never
subdues the metre to his will, and his monotony of
accent and mechanical cadence grow insufferable. Not
only so : too often the very pretence of inspiration dis-
solves, and the writer descends upon slothful prose,
140 SPANISH LITERATURE
sliced into lines of regulation length, honeycombed with
flat colloquialisms. Conspicuously better is the Octava
Rima — an allegory embodying the Court of Love and
the Court of Jealousy, with the account of an em-
bassage from the former to two fair Barcelonese rebels.
Of this performance Thomas Stanley has given an
English version (1652) from which these stanzas are
taken : —
" In the bright region of the fertile east
Where constant calms smooth Aeav'n's unclouded brow,
There lives an easy people, vovJd to rest,
Who on love only all their hours bestow :
By no unwelcome discontent opprest,
No cares save those that from this passion flow,
Here reigns, here ever uncontrolled did reign;
• The beauteous Queen sprung from the foaming main.
Her hand the sceptre bears, the crown her head,
Her willing vassals here their tribute pay :
Here is her sacred power and statutes spread,
Which all with cheerful forwardness obey :
The lover by affection hither led,
Receives relief, sent satisfied away :
Here all enjoy, to give their last flames ease,
The pliant figure of their mistresses . . .
Love every structure offers to the sight,
And every stone his soft impression wears.
The fountains, moving pity and delight,
With amorous murmurs drop persuasive tears.
The rivers in their courses love invite,
Love is the only sound their motion bears.
The winds in whispers soothe these kind desires,
And fan with their mild breath LovJs glowing fires"
Ticknor ranks this as "the most agreeable and original
of Boscan's works," and as to the correctness of the first
BOSCAN 141
adjective there can be no two opinions. But concerning
Boscan's originality there is much to say. Passage upon
passage in the Octavo. Rima is merely a literal rendering
of Bembo's Stanze, and the translation begins undis-
guised at the opening line. Where the Italian writes, " Ne
I'odorato e lucido Oriente" the Spaniard follows him with
the candid transcription, "En el lumbroso y fertil Oriente" ;
and the imitation is further tesselated with mosaics
conveyed from Claudian, from Petrarch, and Ariosto.
None the less is it just to say that the conveyance is
executed with considerable — almost with masterly — skill.
The borrowing nowise belittles Boscan ; for he was not
— did not pose as — a great spirit with an original voice.
He makes no claim whatever, he seeks for no applause —
the shy, taciturn experimentalist who published never a
line of verse, and piped for his own delight. Equipped
with the ambition, though not with the accomplishment,
of the artist, Boscan has a prouder place than he ever
dreamed of, since he is confessedly the earliest repre-
sentative of a new poetic dynasty, the victorious leader
of a desperately forlorn hope. That title is his laurel
and his garland. He led his race into the untrodden
ways, triumphing without effort where men of more
strenuous faculty had failed ; and his results have suc-
cessfully challenged time, inasmuch as there has been
no returning from his example during nigh four
hundred years. Not a great genius, not a lordly
versifier, endowed with not one supreme gift, Boscan
ranks as an unique instance in the annals of literary
adventure bj virtue of his enduring and irrevocable
victory.
His is the foremost post in point of time. In point
of absolute merit he is easily outshone by his younger
1 42 SPANISH LITERATURE
comrade, GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1503-36), the
bearer of a name renowned in Spanish chronicle and
song. Grandson of Perez de Guzman, Garcilaso entered
the Royal Body-guard in his eighteenth year. He
quitted him like the man he was in crushing domestic
rebellion, and, despite the fact that his brother, Pedro,
served in the insurgent ranks, Garcilaso grew into favour
with the Emperor.
At Pavia, where Francis lost all save honour, Gar-
cilaso distinguished himself by his intrepidity. For a
moment he fell into disgrace because of his connivance
at a secret marriage between his cousin and one of the
Empress' Maids of Honour : interned in an islet on
the Danube, — Danubio, rio divino, he calls it, — he there
composed one of his most admired pieces, richly charged
with exotic colouring. His imprisonment soon ended,
and, with intervals of service before Tunis, and with spells
of embassies between Spain and Italy, his last years were
mostly spent at Naples in the service of the Spanish
Viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, Marque's de Villafranca, father
of Garcilaso's friend, the Duque de Alba. In the Pro-
ven9al campaign the Spanish force was held in check by
a handful of yeomen gathered in the fort of Muy, between
Draguignan and Fre"jus. Muy recalls to Spanish hearts
such memories as Zutphen brings to Englishmen. In
itself the engagement was a mere skirmish : for Garci-
laso it was a great and picturesque occasion. The ac-
counts given by Navarrete and Garcfa Cerezeda vary in
detail, but their general drift is identical. The last of the
Spanish Caisars named his personal favourite, the most
dashing of Spanish soldiers and the most distinguished of
Spanish poets, to command the storm ing-party. Doffing
his breastplate and his helmet that he might be seen
GARCILASO 143
by all beholders — by the Emperor not less than by the
army — Garcilaso led the assault in person, was among
the first to climb the breach, and fell mortally wounded in
the arms of Jer6nimo de Urrea, the future translator of
Ariosto, and of his more intimate friend, the Marques de
Lombay, whom the world knows best as St. Francis
Borgia. He was buried with his ancestors in his own
Toledo, where, as even the grudging Gongora allows,
every stone within the city is his monument.
His illustrious descent, his ostentatious valour, his
splendid presence, his seductive charm, his untimely
death : all these, joined to his gift of song, combine to
make him the hero of a legend and the idol of a nation.
Like Sir Philip Sidney, Garcilaso personified all accom-
plishments and all graces. He died at thirty-three : the
fact must be borne in mind when we take account of his
life's work in literature. Yet Europe mourned for him,
and the loyal Boscan proclaimed his debt to the brilliant
soldier-poet. Pleased as the Catalan was with his novel /?
experiments, he avows he would not have persevered
" but for the encouragement of Garcilaso, whose decision
— not merely to my mind, but to the whole world's — is to
be taken as final. By praising my attempts, by showing
the surest sign of approval through his acceptance of my
example, he led me to dedicate myself wholly to the
undertaking." Boscan and Garcilaso were not divided
by death. The former's widow, Ana Giron de Rebolledo,
gave her husband's verses to the press in 1543 > an(^»
more jealous for the fame of her husband's friend than
were any of his own household, she printed Garcilaso's
poems in the Fourth Book.
Garcilaso is eminently a poet of refinement, distinction,
and cultivation. What Boscan half knew, Garcilaso knew
f-fwr vu*s*r Jr**** *~
144 SPANISH LITERATURE
to perfection, and his accomplishment was wider as well
as deeper.1 Living his last years in Naples, Garcilaso
had caught the right Renaissance spirit, and is beyond
all question the most Italianate of Spanish poets in form
and substance. He was not merely the associate of
such expatriated countrymen as Juan de Valdes : he was
the friend of Bembo and Tansillo, the first of whom
calls him the best loved and the most welcome of all
the Spaniards that ever came to Italy. To Tansillo, Gar-
cilaso was attached by bonds of closest intimacy, and
the reciprocal influence of the one upon the other is
manifest in the works of both. This association would
seem to have been the chief part of Garcilaso's literary
training. His few flights in the old Castilian metres, his
songs and villancicos, are of small importance ; his finest
efforts are cast in the exotic moulds. It is scarcely
an exaggeration to say that fundamentally he is a Nea-
politan poet.
The sum of his production is slight : the inconsider-
able villanctcos, three eclogues, two elegies, an epistle,
five highly elaborated songs, and thirty-eight Petrarchan
sonnets. Small as is his work in bulk, it cannot be
denied that it was like nothing before it in Castilian.
1 Garcilaso's forty-eight Latin stanzas, written after the Danubian imprison-
ment, are sufficiently unknown to justify a brief quotation here. They occur
in Antonius Thylesius' Opera (Naples, 1762), pp. 128-129: Garcilassi di
Vega Toletani ad Antonium Thylcsium : —
" Uxore, natis, fratribus et solo
Exul relictis, frigida per loca
Musarum alumnus, barbarorum
Ferre superbiam, et insolenles
Mores coactusjam didici, et invia
Per saxa voce in geminantia
Fletusque, sub rauco querelas
Murmure Danubii levare."
GARCILASO 145
Auzi'as March, no doubt, had earlier struck a similar
note in Catalan, and Garcilaso, who seems to have
read everything, imitates his predecessor's harmonies and
cadences. His trick of reminiscence is remarkable.
Thus, his first eclogue is plainly suggested by Tansillo ;
his second eclogue is little more than a rendering in
verse of picked passages from the Arcadia of Jacopo
Sannazaro ; while the fifth of his songs — La Flor de
Gnido — is a most masterly transplantation of Bernardo
Tasso's structure to Castilian soil. And almost every
page is touched with the deliberate, conscious elegance of
a student in the school of Horace. In simple execution
Garcilaso is impeccable. The objection most commonly
made is that he surrenders his personality, and converts
himself into the exquisite echo of an exhausted pseudo-
classic convention. And the charge is plausible.
It is undeniably true that Garcilaso's distinction lacks
the force of real simplicity, that his eternal sweetness
cloys, and that the thing said absorbs him less than the
manner of saying it. He would have met the criticism
that he was an artificial poet by pointing out that, poetry
being an art, it is of essence artificial. That he was an
imitative artist was his highest glory : by imitating foreign
models he attained his measure of originality, enriching
Spain, with not merely a number of technical forms but
a new poetic language. Without him Boscan must have
failed in his emprise, as Santillana failed before him.
Besides his technical perfection, Garcilaso owned the
poetic temperament — a temperament too effeminately
delicate for the vulgarities of life. As he tells us in his
third eclogue, he lived, " now using the sword, now the
pen : " —
" Tomando ora la espada, ora lapluma."
I46 SPANISH LITERATURE
But the clank of the sabre is never heard in the fiery
soldier's verse. His atmosphere is not that of battle, but
is rather the enchained lia/e of an Arcadia which never
was nor ever could be in a banal world. As thus, in
Wiffen's version : —
"Here ceased the youth his Doric madrigal,
And sighing, with his last laments let fall
A shower of tears ; the solemn mountains round,
Indulgent of his sorrow, tossed the sound
Melodious from romantic steep to steep,
In mild responses deep;
Sweet Echo, startingjrom her couch of moss,
Lengthened the dirge; and tenderest Philomel,
As pierced with grief and pity at his loss,
Warbled divine reply, nor seemed to trill
Less than Jove's nectar from her mournful bill.
What Nemoroso sang in sequel, tell,
Ye sweet-voiced Sirens of the sacred hill?
This is, in a sense, " unnatural " ; but if_we jrgLJto.
condemn it as such, we must even reject the whole
school of pastoral, a convention of which the six-
teenth century was enamoured. When Garcilaso intro-
duced himself as Salicio, and, under the name of
Nemoroso, presented Boscan (or, as Herrera will have
it, Antonio de Fonseca), he but took the formula as he
found it, and translated it in terms of genius. He was
'- consciously returning upon nature ; not upon the mate-
rial facts of existence as if is, but upon a figmentary
nature idealised into a languid and ethereal beauty. He
sought for effects of suavest harmony, embodying in
his song a mystic neo-platonism, the morbidezza of " love
in the abstract," set off by grace and sensibility and
elfin music. It may be permissible for the detached
critic to appreciate Garcilaso at something less than his
GARCILASO 147
secular renown, but this superior attitude were unlawful
and inexpedient for an historical reviewer.
Time and unanimity settle many questions : and, after
all, on a matter concerning Castilian poetry, the unbroken
verdict of the Castilian-speaking race must be accepted
as weighty, if not final. Garcilaso may not be a supreme
singer : he is at least one of the gi-eaieJ of the Spanish
poets. Choosing to reproduce the almost inimitable
cadences of the Virgilian eclogue, he achieves his end
with a dexterity that approaches genius. Others before
him had hit upon what seemed " pretty i' the Mantuan " :
he alone suggests the secret of Virgil's brooding, incom-
municable, and melancholy charm. What Boscan saw
to be possible, what he attempted with more good-will
than fortune, that Garcilaso did with an instant and
peremptory triumph. He naturalised the sonnet, he
enlarged the framework of the song, he invented the
ode, he so bravely arranged his lines of seven and eleven
syllables that the fascination of his harmonies has led
historians to forget Bernardo Tasso's priority in discover-
ing the resources of the lira. In rare, unwary moments,
he lets fall an Italian or French idiorn^ nor is he always
free from the pedantry of his time ; but absolute perfec-
tion is jiot of this world, and is least to be asked of one
who, writing in moments stolen from the rough life of
camps, died at thirty-three, full of immense promise and
immense possibilities. To speculate upon what Garcilaso
might have become is vanity. As it is, he survives as
the Prince of Italianates. the acknowledged master of
the Cinque Cento form. Cervantes and Lope de Vega,
agreed upon nothing else, are at one in holding him for
the first of Castilian poets. With slight reservations,
their judgment has been sustained, and even to-day the
.
148 SPANISH LITERATURE
sweet-voiced, amatorious paladin leaves an abiding im-
press upon the character of his national literature.
An early sectary of the school is discovered in the
person of the Portuguese poet, FRANCISCO DE SA DE
MIRANDA (1495-1558), who so frequently forsakes his
native tongue that of 189 pieces included in Mine. Caro-
lina Michaelis de Vasconcellos' edition, seventy-four are
in Castilian. S3. de Miranda's early poems written before
1532 — the Fdbula de Mondego, the Can-do d Virgeni, and
the eclogue entitled Aleixo — are in the old manner. His
later works, such as Nemoroso, with innumerable sonnets
and the three elegies composed between 1552 and 1555,
are all undisguised imitations of Boscan and Garcilaso, for
whom the writer professes a rapturous enthusiasm. Sa
de Miranda ranks among the six most celebrated Portu-
guese poets; and, stranger though he be, even in Castilian
literature he distinguishes himself by his correctness of
form, by his sincerity of sentiment, and by a genuine
love of natural beauty very far removed from the falsetto
admiration too current among his contemporaries.
The soldier, GUTIERRE DE CETIXA (1520-60) is an-
other partisan of the Italian school. Serving in Italy,
he pursued his studies to the best advantage, and won
friendship and aid from literary magnates like the Prince
of Ascoli, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza ; but sol-
diering was little to his taste, and, after a campaign in
Germany, Cetina retired to his native Seville, whence he
passed to Mexico about the year 1550. He is known to
have written in the dramatic form, but no specimen of
his drama survives, unless it be sepultured in some ob-
scure Central American library. Cetina is a copious
sonneteer who manages his rhyme-sequences with more
variety than his predecessors, and his songs and madri-
CETINA: ACUftA 149
gals are excellent specimens of finished workmanship.
His general theme is Arcadian love — the beauty of
Aman'ilida, the piteous passion of the shepherd Silvio,
the grief of the nymph Flora for Menalca. His treat-
ment is always ingenious, his frugality in the matter of
adjectives is edifying, though it scandalised the exuberant
Herrera, who, as a true Andalucian, esteems emphasis
and epithet and metaphor as the three things needful.
Cetina's sobriety is paid for by a certain preciosity of
utterance near akin to weakness ; but he excels in the
sonnet form, which he handles with a mastery superior
to Garcilaso's own, and he adds a touch of humour un-
common in the mannered school that he adorns. .
FERNANDO DE ACUNA (? 1500-80) comes into notice
as the translator of Olivier de la Mar6he's popular
allegorical poem, the Chevalier De'lib/re, a favourite with
Carlos Quinto. The Emperor is said to have amused
himself by translating the French poem into Spanish
prose, and to have commissioned Acuna to a poetic
version. A courtier like Van Male gives us to under-
stand that some part of Acufla's Caballero determinado is
based upon the Emperor's prose rendering, and the
insinuation is that Acuna and his master should share
the praise of the former's exploit. This pleasant tale
is scarce plausible, for we know that the Caesar never
mastered colloquial Castilian, and that he should shine
in its literary exercise is almost incredible. Be that as
it may, Acufla's Caballero determinado, a fine example
of the old quintillas, met with wide and instant appre-
ciation ; yet he never sought to follow up his triumph
in the same kind. The new influence was irresist-
ible, and Acuna succumbed to it, imitating the lira of
Garcilaso to the point of parody, singing as " Damon in
ISO SPANISH LITERATURE
absence," practising the pastoral, aspiring to Homer's
dignity in his blank verses entitled the Contienda de
Ayax Telamonio y de Ulises. Three Castilian cantos of
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato won applause in Italy ;
but Acufla's best achievements are his sonnets, which
are almost always admirable. One of them contains a
line as often quoted as any other in all Castilian verse :—
" Un Monarca, un Imperio^ y una Espada"
"One Monarch, one Empire, and one Sword." And
this pious aspiration after unity had perhaps been ful-
filled if Spain had abounded with such prudent and
accomplished figures as Fernando de Acufia.
A more powerful and splendid personality is that of
the illustrious DIEGO HURTADO DE MENDOZA (1503-
J/ I575)> one °f tne greatest figures in the history of
Spanish^ politics and letters. Educated for the Church
at the University of Salamanca, Mendoza preferred the
career of arms, and found his opportunity at Pavia and
in the Italian wars. Before he was twenty-nine he was
named Ambassador to the Venetian Republic, became
the patron of the Aldine Press, and studied the classics
with all the ardour of his temperament. One of the
few Spaniards learned in Arabic, Mendoza was a dis-
tinguished collector : he ransacked the monastery of
Mount Athos for Greek manuscripts, secured others from
Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, and had almost all
Bessarion's Greek collection transcribed for his own
library, now housed in the Escorial. The first complete
edition of Josephus was printed from Mendoza's copies.
He represented the Emperor at the Council of Trent,
and saw to it that Cardinals and Archbishops did what
Spain expected of them. In 1547 he was appointed
MENDOZA: CASTILLEJO 151
Plenipotentiary to Rome, where he treated Pope Julius:
III. as cavalierly as his Holiness was accustomed to treat
his own curates. In 1554 Mendoza returned to Spain,
and the accession of Felipe II. in 1556 brought his public
career to a close. He is alleged to have been Ambassador
to England ; and one would fain the report were true.
His wit and picaresque malice are well shown in his
old-fashioned redondillaSj which delighted so good a
judge as Lope de Vega, and his real strength lay in his
management of these forms. But his long Italian resi-
dence and his sleepless intellectual curiosity ensured his
experimenting in the high Roman manner. Tibullus,
Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Pindar, Anacreon : all
these are forced into Mendoza's service, as in his epistles
and his Fdbula de Adonis, Hipomenes y Atalanta. It
cannot be said that he is at his best in these pseudo-
classical performances, and he dares to eke out his
hendecasyllabics by using a final palabra aguda ; but
the extreme brilliancy of the humour carries off all
technical defects in the burlesque section of his poems,
which are of the loosest gaiety, most curious in a retired
proconsul. Yet, if Mendoza, who excelled in the old,
felt compelled to pen his forty odd sonnets in the new
style, how strong must have been its charm ! Whatever
his formal defects, Mendoza's authority was decisive in
the contest between the native and the foreign types of
verse : he helped to secure the latter's definitive triumph.
The greatest rebel against the invasion was CRISTOBAL
DE CASTILLEJO (? 1494-1556), who passed thirty years ^
abroad in the service of Ferdinand, King of Bohemia.
Mush, of Jiis Jife was actually spent in Italy, but he
kept his national spirit almost absolutely free from the
foreign influence. If he compromises at all, the furthest
152 SPANISH LITERATURE
he can go is in adopting the mythological machinery
favoured by all contemporaries, and even for this he
could plead respectable Castilian precedent ; _but in
the matter of form, Castillejo is cruelly intransigent.
Boscan is his especial butt.
" El mismo confesarA
Que no sabe donde vet " —
"He himself will confess that he knows not whither he
goes." That, indeed, appears to have been Castillejo's
fixed idea on the subject, and he expends an infinite deal
of sarcasm and ridicule upon the apostates who, as he
thinks, hide their poverty of thought in tawdry motley.
His own subjects are perfectly fitted to treatment in the
villancico form, and when he is not simply improper — as
in El Sermdn de los Sermones — his verses are remarkable
for their sprightly grace and bitter-sweet wit, which can,
at need, turn to rancorous invective or to devotional
demureness. Had he lived in Spain, it is probable that
Castillejo's mordant ridicule might have delayed the
Italian supremacy. As it was, his flouts and jibes arrived
too late, and the old patriot died, as he had lived, a bril-
liant, impenitent, futile Tory.
In one of his sonnets, conceived in the most mis-
chievous spirit of travesty, Castillejo singles out for
reprobation a poet named Luis de Haro, as one of the
Italian agitators. Unluckily Haro's verses have prac-
tically disappeared from the earth, and the few speci-
mens preserved in Naj era's Cancionero are banal exercises
in the old Castilian manner. A practitioner more after
p Castillejo's heart was the ingenious Antonio de Villegas
(fl. 1551), whose Inventario, apart from tedious para-
phrases of the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in the style
VILLEGAS: SILVESTRE 153
of Bottom the Weaver, contains many excellent society-
verses, touched with conceits of extreme sublety, and
a few more serious efforts in the form of d/cimas, not
without a grave urbanity and a penetration of their own.
Francisco de Castilla, a contemporary of Villegas, vies
with him in essaying the hopeless task of bringing the
old rhythms into new repute ; but his Teorica de virtudes,
dignified and elevated in style and thought, had merely
a momentary vogue, and is now unjustly considered a
mere bibliographical curiosity.
A student in both schools was the Portuguese GRE-
GORIO SILVESTRE (1520-70), choirmaster and organist
in the Cathedral of Granada, who, beginning with a boy's
admiration for Garci Sanchez and Torres Naharro, prac-
tised the redondilla with such success as to be esteemed
an expert in the art. A certain Pedro de Caceres y Espi-
nosa, in a Discurso prefixed to Silvestre's poems (1582),
tells us that his author "imitated Crist6bal de Castillejo,
in speaking ill of the Italian arrangements," and that he
cultivated the novelties for the practical reason that they
were popular. It is certain that Silvestre is as attractive
in the new as in the old kind, that his elegance never
obscures his simplicity, that he shows a rare sense of
ordered outline, an exceptional finish in the technical
details of both manners. His conversion is the last that
need be recorded here. The villancico still found its
supporters among men of letters, and, as late as the
seventeenth century, both Cervantes and Lope de Vega
profess a platonic attachment to it and kindred metres ;
but the public mind was set against a revival, and Cer-
vantes and Lope were forced to abandon any idea (if,
indeed, they ever entertained it) of breathing life into
these dead bones.
154 SPANISH LITERATURE
Didactic prose was practised, according to the old tra-
dition, by Juan L6pez de Vivero Palacios Rubios, who
published in 1524 his Tratado del esfuerzo btflico heroico, a
pseudo-philosophic inquiry into the origin and nature
of martial valour, written in a clear and forcible style.
Francisco L6pez de Villalobos (1473-1549), a Jewish
convert attached to the royal household as physician,
began by translating Pliny's Amphitruo in such fashion
as to bring down on him the thunders of Herndn
Nuftez. Villalobos works the didactic vein in his
rhymed Sumario de Medicina which Ticknor ignores,
though he mentions its late derivatives, the Trescientas
preguntas of Alonso L6pez de Corelas (1546) and the
Cuatrocientas respuestas of Luis de Escobar (1552). But
the witty physician's most praiseworthy performance is
his Tratado de las tres Grandes — namely, talkativeness,
obstinacy, and laughter — where his familiar humour, his
frolic, fantasy, and perverse acuteness far outshine the
sham philosophy and the magisterial intention of his
other work. A graver talent is that of Fernando Perez
de Oliva (1492-1530), once lecturer in the University of
Paris, and, later, Rector of Salamanca, who boasts of
having travelled three thousand leagues in pursuit of
culture. His Didlogo de la Dignidad del H ombre, written
to show that Castilian is as good a vehicle as the more
fashionable Latin for the discussion of transcendental
matters, is an excellent example of cold, stately, Cice-
ronian prose, and the continuation by his friend, Fran-
cisco Cervantes de Salazar, is worthy of the beginning ;
but the hold of ecclesiastical Latin was too fast to be
loosed at a first attempt.
Oliva's reputation is strictly Spanish : not so that
of Carlos Quinto's official chronicler, ANTONIO DE
GUEVARA 155
GUEVARA (d. 1545), a Franciscan monk who held the
bishopric of Mondonedo. His Reloj de Principes (Dial
of Princes), a didactic novel with Marcus Aurelius for
its hero, was originally composed to encourage his own
patron to imitate the virtues of the wisest ancient. Un-
luckily, however, Guevara passed his book off as authentic
history, alleging it to be a translation of a non-existent
manuscript in the Florentine collection. This brought
him into trouble with antagonists as varied as the court-
fool, Francesillo de Zuftiga, and a Sorian professor, the
Bachelor Pedro de Rhua, whose Cartas censorias un-
masked the imposture with malignant astuteness. But
this critical faculty was confined to the Peninsula,
and North's English translation, dedicated to Mary
Tudor, popularised Guevara's name in England, where
he is believed by some authorities to have exercised
considerable influence on the style of English prose.
This, however, is not the place to discuss that most
difficult question. An instance of Guevara's better
manner is offered by his D/cada de los CSsares, though
even here he interpolates his own unscrupulous inven-
tions and embellishments, as he also does in his Familiar
Epistles, Englished by Edward Hellowes, Groom of the
Leash, from whose version an illustration may be bor-
rowed:— "The property of love is to turn the rough into
plain, the cruel to gentle, the bitter to sweet, the un-
savoury to pleasant, the angry to quiet, the malicious
to simple, the gross to advised, and also the heavy to
light. He that loveth, neither can he murmur of him that
doth anger him : neither deny that they ask him : neither
resist when they take from him : neither answer when
they reprove him : neither revenge if they shame him :
neither yet will he be gone when they send him away."
156 SPANISH LITERATURE
These pompous commonplaces abound in the Familiar
Epistles, which, though still the most readable of Guevara's
performances, are tedious in their elaborate accumula-
tion of saws and instances, unimpressively collected from
the four quarters of the earth. But the rhetorical letters
went the round of the world, were translated times out
of number, and were commonly called "The Golden
Letters," to denote their unique worth.
More serious and less attractive historians are Pedro
Mexia (1496-1552), whose Historia Imperial y Cesdrea is
a careful compilation of biographies of Roman rules
from Caesar to Maximilian, and Floriin de Ocampo
(1499-1555), canon of Zamora, and an official chronicler,
who, taking the Deluge as his starting-point, naturally
enough fails to bring his dry-as-dust annals later than
Roman times, and endeavours to follow the critical
canons of his time with better intention than perform-
ance. The Comentarios de la Guerra en Alemania of
Luis de Avila y Ziifiiga are valuable as containing the
evidence of an acute, direct observer of events ; but
Avila's exaggerated esteem for his master causes him to
convert his history into an elaborate apology. Carlos
Quinto's own dry criticism of the book is final : — "Alex-
ander's achievements surpassed mine — but he was less
lucky in his chronicler." The conquest of America
begot a crowd of histories, of which but few need be
named here. Gonzalez Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes
(1478-1557), once secretary to the Great Captain, gives an
official picture of the New World in his Historia general
y natural de Indtas, and a similar study from an opposed
and higher point of view is to be found in the work of
Bartolome" de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa (1474-1566),
whose passionate eloquence on behalf of the American
CORTES: BERNAL DIAZ 157
Indians is displayed in his Brevisima relation de la de-
struction de Indias (1552) ; but here again history declines
into polemics, the offices of judge and advocate over-
lapping. The' famous HERNAN CORTES (1485-1554), El
Conquistador, was a man of action ; but his official
reports on Mexico and its affairs are drawn up with
exceeding skill, and in energy of phrase and luminous
concision may stand as models in their kind. Cortes
found his panegyrist in his chaplain, Francisco Lopez
de G6mara (1519-60), whose interesting Conquista de
Mejico is an uncritical eulogy on his chief, .whom he
extols at the expense of his brother adventurers. The
antidote was supplied by BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO
(fl. 1568), whose Historia verdadera de la conquista de la
Nueva Esparta is a first-class example of military indig-
nation. "Here the chronicler G6mara in his history
says just the opposite of what really happened. Whoso
reads him will see that he writes well, and that, with
proper information, he could have stated his facts
correctly : as it is, they are all lies." The manifest
honesty and simplicity of the old soldier, who shared in
one hundred and nineteen engagements and could not
sleep unless in armour, are extremely winning ; his
prolix ingenuousness has been admirably rendered in
our day by a descendant of the Conquistadores, M. Jose
Maria Heredia, whose French version is a triumph of
translation. V* A
Incredible tales from the Western Indies stimulated
the popular appetite for miracles in terms of fiction.
Paez de Ribera added a sixth book to Amadis, under the
title of Florisando (1510); Feliciano de Silva wrote a
seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh — Lisuarte (1510),
Amadis de Gretia (1530), Florisel de Niquea (1532), and
158 SPANISH LITERATURE
Rogcl de Grecia; and he would certainly have supplied
the eighth book had he not been anticipated by Juan
Diaz with a second Lisuarte. Parallel with Amadis ran
•the series of Palmerin de Oliva (1511), which tradition
ascribes to an anonymous lady of Augustobriga, but
which may just as well be the work of Francisco Vazquez
de Ciudad Rodrigo, as it is said to be in its first descend-
ant Primaledn (1512). Polindo (1526) continues the tale,
and an unknown author pursues it in the Cronica del
muy valiente Platir (1533), while Palmerin de Inglaterra
(1547-48) closes the cycle. Curious readers may study
this last in the English version of Anthony Munday
(1616), who commends it as an excellent and stately
history, "wherein gentlemen may find choice of sweet
inventions, and gentlewomen be satisfied in courtly ex-
pectations." These are but a few of the extravagances of
the press, and the madness spread so wide that Carlos
Quinto, admirer as he was of Don Belianis de Grecia, was
forced to protect the New World against invasion by
books of this class. Scarcely less numerous are the
continuations of the Celestina, due to the indefatigable
Feliciano de Silva, to Caspar G6mez de Toledo, to
Sancho Mufloz, and others.
A new species begins with the first picaroon novel,
Lazarillo de Tonnes y long ascribed to Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza, an attribution now commonly rejected on the
authority of that distinguished Spanish scholar, M. Alfred
Morel-Fatio. There is something to be said in favour
of Mendoza's claim which may not be said for lack of
space. As to Lazarillo de Tormes, authorship, date and
place of publication are all uncertain : the three earliest
editions known appeared at Antwerp, Burgos, and Alcala
de Henares in 1554. It is the autobiography of Lazaro,
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL 159
son of the miller, Tome Gonzalez, and the trull, Antonia
Perez. He describes his adventures as leader of a blind
man, as servant to a miserly priest, to a starving gentle-
man, to a beggar-monk, to a vendor of indulgences, to a
signboard painter, to an alguazil, ending his career in a
Government post — un oficio real — as town-crier of Toledo.
There we leave him " at the height of all good fortune."
Lazaro's experience with the hungry hidalgo may be
quoted from the admirable archaic rendering by David
Rowland, of Anglesea : —
" It pleased God to accomplish my desire and his
together, for when as I had begun my meat, as he
walked, he came near to me, saying : ' Lazaro, I pro-
mise thee thou hast the best grace in eating that ever
I did see any man have ; for there is no man that seest
thee eat, but seeing thee feed, shall have appetite, although
they be not a-hungered.' Then would I say to myself,
' The hunger which thou sustainest causeth thee to think
mine so beautiful.' Then I trusted I might help him,
seeing that he had so helped himself, and had opened
me the way thereto. Wherefore I said unto him, ' Sir,
the good tools make the workmen good : this bread hath
good taste, and this neat's-foot is so well sod, and so
cleanly dressed, that it is able, with the flavour of it only,
to entice any man to eat of it.' 'What ? is it a neat's-
foot ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' Now, I promise thee it is the best
morsel in the world : there is no pheasant that I would
like so well.' ' I pray thee, sir, prove of it better and see
how you like it.' . . . Whereupon he sitteth down by
me, and then began to eat like one that hath great need,
gnawing every one of those little bones better than any
greyhound could have done for life, saying, 'This is a
singular good meal : by God, I have eaten it with a good
160 SPANISH LITERATURE
stomach, as if I had eaten nothing all this day before.'
Then I, with a low voice, said, ' God send me to live long
as sure as that is true.' And, having ended his victuals,
he commanded me to reach him the pot of water, which
I gave him even as full as I had brought it from the
river. . . . We drank both, and went to bed, as the
night before, at that time well satisfied. And now, to
avoid long talk, we continued after this sort eight or nine
days. The poor gentleman went every day to brave it
out in the street, to content himself with his accustomed
stately pace, and always I, poor Lazaro, was fain to be
his purveyor."
Written in the most debonair, idiomatic Castilian,
Lazarillo de Tonnes condenses into nine chapters the
cynicism, the ...wit, and the resource of an observer of
genius. After three hundred years, it survives all its
rivals, and may be read with as much edification and
amusement as on the day of its first appearance. It
set a fashion, a fashion that spread to all countries, and
finds a nineteenth-century manifestation in the pages of
Pickwick ; but few of its successors match it in satirical
humour, and none approach it in pregnant concision,
where_no word is superfluous, and where every word
tells with consummate effect. Whoever wrote the book,
he fixed for ever the type of the comic prose epic as
rendered by the needy, and he did it in such wise as to
defy all competition. Yet ill-advised competitors were
found : one, who has the grace to hide his name, at
Antwerp, continuing Lazaro's adventures by exhibiting
the gay scamp as a tunny, and a certain Juan de Luna,
who, so late as 1620, converted Lazaro to a sea-monster
on show.
Mysticism finds two distinguished exponents, of whom
JUAN DE AVILA fry/vc ' 161
the earlier is the Apostle of Andalucia, the Venerable
JUAN DE AVILA (1502-69), a priest, who, educated at
the University of Alcala, is famous for his sanctity, his
evangelic missions in Granada, Cordoba, and Seville.
The merest accident prevented his sailing for the New
World in the suite of the Bishop of Tlaxcala, and his
inopportune fervour led to his imprisonment by the
Inquisition. Most of his religious treatises, beautiful as
they are, are too technical for our purpose here ; but his
Cartas Espirituales are redolent of religious unction com-
bined with the wisest practical spirit, the most sagacious
counsel, and the rarest loving-kindness. Long practice
in exhorting crowds of unlettered sinners had purged
Juan de Avila's style of the Asiatic exuberance in favour
with Guevara and other contemporaries ; and, though
he considered letters a vanity, his own practice shows
him to be a master in the accommodation of the lowliest,
most familiar language to the loftiest subject.
In the opposite camp is JUAN DE VALDES (d. 1541),
attached in some capacity to the court of Carlos Quinto,
and suspect of heterodox tendencies in the eyes of all
good Spaniards. Francisco de Encinas reports that
Valdes found it convenient to leave Spain on account
of his opinions ; but, as his twin-brother, Alfonso, con-
tinued in the service of Carlos Quinto, and as Juan
himself lived unmolested at Rome and Naples from 1531
to his death, this story cannot be accepted. None the
less is it certain that Valdes, possibly through his friend-
ship with Erasmus, was drawn into the current of the
Reformation. His earliest work, written, perhaps, in col-
laboration with his brother, is the anonymous Didlogo de
M er curio y Caron (1528), an ingenious fable in Lucian's
manner, abounding in political and religious malice,
1 62 SPANISH LITERATURE
charged with ridicule of abuses in Church and State.
Apart from its polemical value, it is indisputably the
finest prose performance of the reign. Boscdn's ver-
sion of the Cortegiano most nearly vies with it ; but
Vald£s excels Boscan in the artful construction of his
periods, in the picturesqueness and moderation of his
epithets, in the variety of his cadence, and in the re-
fined selection of his means. It is possible that Cer-
vantes, at his best, may match Valdes ; but Cervantes is
one of the most unequal writers in the world, while
Valdc's is one of the most scrupulous and vigilant.
Hence, sectarian prejudice apart, Valdes must be ac-
counted, if not absolutely the first, at least among the
very first masters of Castilian prose.
A curious fact in connection with one of Valdes' most
popular works, the Ciento y diez Consideraciones divinas,
is that it has never been printed in its original Castilian.1
Even so the book was translated into English by Nicholas
Farrer (1638), and found favour in the eyes of George
Herbert, who commends Signior lohn Valdesso as "a
true servant of God," " obscured in his own country,"
and brought by God " to flourish in this land of light
and region of the Gospel, among His chosen." It may
be expedient to give an illustration of Valdes from the
version to which Herbert stood sponsor : — " Here I will
add this. That, as liberality is so annexed to magna-
nimity that he cannot be magnanimous that is not liberal,
so hope and charity are so annexed unto faith that it is
impossible that he should have faith who hath not hope
and charity ; it being also impossible that one should be
1 Bochmer gives thirty -nine Consuieracidnes in the Tratatidos (Bonn, 1880);
for the sixty-fifth see Mene'ndez y Pelayo, Historia de los Heterodoxos Espailoles
/Madrid, 1880), vol. ii. p. 375.
JUAN DE VALDES 163
just without being holy and pious. But of these Chris-
tian virtues they are not capable who have not experience
in Christian matters, which they only have who, by the
gift of God and by the benefit of Christ, have faith, hope,
and charity, and so are pious, holy, and just in Christ.'*
The Arian flavour of this work explains its non-appear-
ance in Castilian, and we must suppose that Herbert
esteemed it for its austere doctrinal asceticism rather than
its crude anti-trinitarianism. A Quaker before his time,
Valdes owes no small part of his recent vogue to Wiffen,
who first heard of the Consideraciones through a Friend
as an "old work by a Spaniard, which represented es-
sentially the principles of George Fox." Whatever its
defects, it is the one logical presentation of the dogmas
of German mysticism, at the same time that it is a
powerful, searching psychological study of the springs
of motives and the innermost recesses of the human
heart.
In another and a less contested field, we owe to Valdes
the admirable Didlogo de la Lengua, written at Naples in
1535-36. The personages are four : two Italians, named
Marcio and Coriolano ; and two Spaniards, Vald6s him-
self, and a Spanish soldier, called indifferently Pacheco
and Torres. For all purposes this dialogue is as im-
portant a monument of literary criticism as was the
conversation in Don Quixote's library between the Priest
and the Barber. In almost every case posterity has rati-
fied the personal verdict of Valdds, who approves himself
the earliest, as well as one of the most impartial and
most penetrating among Spanish critics. Moreover, he
conducts his dialogue with extraordinary dramatic skill
in the true vein of highest comedy. The courtly grace
of the two Italians, the military swagger of Pacheco, the
1 64 SPANISH LITERATURE
unwearied sagacity, the patrician wit and disdainful
coolness of Valde"s himself, are given with incomparable
lightness of touch and felicity of accent. For the first
time in Castilian literature we have to do with a man
of letters, urbane from study, and accomplished from
commerce with a various world. Vald^s overtops all the
literary figures of Carlos Quinto's reign in natural gift
and acquired accomplishment ; nor in later times do we
easily find his match.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AGE OF FELIPE II.
1556-1598
IN Spain, as elsewhere, the secular battle waged between
classicism and romanticism. As poets sided with Boscan
and Garcilaso, or with Castillejo, so dramatists declared
for the uso antiguo or for the uso nuevo. The partisans
of the " old usage " put their trust in prose translations.
We have already seen that the roguish Villalobos trans-
lated the Amphitruo of Plautus, and Perez de Oliva not
only repeated the performance, but gave a version of
Euripides' Hecuba. Encina's successor was found in the
person of Miguel de Carvajal, whose Josefina deals, in
classic fashion, with the tale of Joseph and his brethren.
Carvajal draws character with skill, and his dialogue
lives ; but he is best remembered for his division of the
play into four acts. Editions of Vasco Diaz Tanco de
Fregenal are of such extreme rarity as to be practically
inaccessible. So are the Vidriana of Jaime de Huete
and the Jacinta of Agusti'n Ortiz — two writers who are
counted as followers of Torres Naharro. A farce by
the brilliant reactionary, Crist6bal de Castillejo, entitled
Costanza, is only known in extract, and is as remark-
able for ribaldry as for good workmanship. The Preteo y
Tibaldo of Pero Alvarez de Ayllon and the Silviana of
Luis Hurtado are insipid pastorals. Many contemporary
165
1 66 SPANISH LITERATURE
plays, known only by rumour, have disappeared — sup-
pressed, no doubt, because of their coarseness. Torres
Naharro's Propaladia was interdicted in 1540, and, eight
years later, the Cortes of Valladolid petitioned that a
stop be put to the printing of immoral comedies. The
prayer was heard. Scarce a play of any sort survives,
and the few that reach us exist in copies that are almost
unique. The time for the stage was not yet. It is
possible that, had Carlos Quinto resided habitually in
some Spanish capital, a national theatre might have
grown up ; but the lack of Court patronage and the
classical superstition delayed the evolution of the Spanish
drama. This comes into being during the reign of
Felipe el Prudente.
Encina's precedence in the sacred pastoral is granted ;
but his eclogues were given before small, aristocratic
audiences. We must look elsewhere for the first popular
dramatist, and Lope de Vega, an expert on theatrical
matters, identifies our man. "Comedies," says Lope,
" are no older than Rueda, whom many now living have
heard." The gold-beater, LOPE DE RUEDA (fl. 1558), was
a native of Seville. A prefatory sonnet to his Medora,
written by Francisco Ledesma, informs us that Rueda
died at C6rdoba, and Cervantes adds the detail that he
was buried in the cathedral there. This would go to
show that a Spanish comedian was not then a pariah ;
unluckily, the cathedral archives do not corroborate the
story. Taking to the boards, Lope de Rueda rose to be
an autor de comedias — an actor-manager and playwright.
Cervantes, who speaks enthusiastically of Rueda's acting,
describes the material conditions of the scene. " In the
days of this famous Spaniard, the whole equipment of
an autor de comedias could be put in a bag : it consisted
LOPE DE RUEDA 167
of four white sheepskins edged with gilt leather, four
beards and wigs, and four shepherd's-staves, more or
less. . . . No figure rose, or seemed to rise, from the
bowels of the earth or from the space under the stage,
which was built up by four benches placed square-wise,
with four or six planks on top, about four hand's-breadths
above ground. Still less were clouds lowered from the
sky with angels or spirits. The theatrical scenery was
an old blanket, hauled hither and thither by two cords.
This formed what they called the vestuario, behind which
were the musicians, who sang some old romance without
a guitar." This account is substantially correct, though
official documents in the Seville archives go to prove
that Cervantes unconsciously exaggerated some details —
a thing natural enough in a man recalling memories fifty
years old. A passage in the Cronica del Condestable Miguel
Lucas Iranzo implies that women appeared in the early
momos or entremeses. But Spaniards inherited the Arab
notion that women are best indoors. The fact that
Rueda was the first man to choose his pitch in the
public place, and to appeal to the general, would explain
his substitution of boys for girls in the female characters.
Rueda was the first in Spain to bring the drama into
the day. One of his personages in Eufemia — the servant
Vallejo — makes a direct appeal to the public : — "Ye who
listen, go and dine, and then come back to the square,
if you wish to see a traitor's head cut off and a true
man set free." Thenceforward the theatre becomes a
popular institution.
Lope de Rueda is often called el excelente poeta, and his
verse is exampled in the Prendas de Amor, as also in the
Didlogo sobre la Invention de las Calzas. The Farsa del
Sordot included by the Marques de la Fuensanta del
12
1 68 SPANISH LITERATURE
Valle in his admirable new edition of Rueda's works, is
almost certainly due to another hand. Cervantes com-
mends Rueda's versos pastoriles, but these only reach us
in the fragment which Cervantes himself quotes in Los
Bafios de ArgeL Still, it is not as a poet that Rueda lives :
he is rightly remembered as the patriarch of the Spanish
stage. For his time and station he was well read : Lopez
Madera will have it that he knew Theocritus, and it may
be so. More manifest are the Plautine touches in the
paso which Moratfn names El Rufidn Cobarde, with its
bully, Sigtienza, a lineal descendant of the Miles Glo-
riosus. It has been inferred that, in choosing Italian
themes, Rueda followed Torres Naharro. This gives a
wrong impression, for his debt to the Italians is far more
direct. The Eufemia takes its root in the Decamerone,
being identical in subject with Cymbeline ; the Armelina
is compounded of Antonio Francesco Ranieri's Attilia,
with Giovanni Maria Cecchi's Servigiale ; the Engaflos
is a frank imitation of Niccolo Secchi's Commedia degli
Inganni; and the Medora is conveyed straight from Gigio
Arthenio Giancarli's Zingara.1
Neither in his fragments of verse nor in his Italian
echoes is the true Rueda revealed. His historic im-
portance lies in his invention of the paso — a dramatic
1 The sources are carefully traced by L. A. Stiefel in the Zeitschrift fur
Romanischc Philologie (vol. xx. pp. 183 and 318). One specimen suffices
here : —
GlANCARLI, iii. 1 6.
Falisco. Padrone, o che la imagi-
natione m'inganna, o pur quella e la
vuestra Madonna Angelica.
Cassandra. Sarebbe gran cosa che
RUEDA, Escena iii.
Falisco. Senor, la vista 6 la imagi-
nacion me engaua 6 es aquella vuestra
muy querida Angelica.
Casandro. Gran cosa seria si la
laimaginationeinganassameanchora, imaginacion no te enganase, antes
perch' io voleva dirloti, etc. \ yo te lo queria decir, etc.
LOPE DE RUEDA 169
interlude turning on some simple episode : a quarrel
between Torubio and his wife Agueda concerning the
price of olives not yet planted, an invitation to dinner
from the penniless licentiate Xaquima. Rueda's most
spirited work is given in the Deleitoso Compendia (1567)^
and in the Registro de Representantes (1570), both pub-
lished by his friend, Juan de Timoneda. In a longer
flight the effect is less pleasing ; the prose Coloquio de
Camila and its fellow, the Coloquio de Timbrta, are long
PUSOS, complicated in development and not drawn to
scale. Still, even here there is a keen dramatic sense of
situation ; while the comic extravagance of the themes —
farcical incidents in picaresque surroundings— is set off
by spirited dialogue and vigorous style. Rueda_Jiad
clearlyread the Celestina to his profit ; and his prose,
with its archaic savour, is of great purity and power.
The patriotic Lista comes as near flat blasphemy as a
good Spaniard may by mentioning Rueda in the same
breath as Cervantes, and that the latter learned much
from his predecessor is manifest ; but the point need
be pressed no further. Considerable as were Rueda's
positive qualities of gay wit and inventive resource, his
highest merit lies in this, that he laid the foundation-
stone of the actual Spanish theatre, and that his dramatic
system became a capital factor in his people's intellectual
history.
He found instant imitators : one in a brother actor-
manager, Alonso de la Vega (d. 1566), whose Tolomea is
adapted from Medora ; the other in Luis de Miranda
(fl. 1554), who dramatised the story of the Prodigal, to
which, in a monstrous fit of realism, he gave a contem-
porary setting. Of Pedro Navarro or Naharro, whom
Cervantes ranks after Rueda, naught survives. Francisco
1 70 SPANISH LITERATURE
de Avendafto's verse comedy concerning Floriseo and
Blancaflor had long since been forgotten were it not for
the fact that here, for the first time, a Spanish play is
divided into three acts — a convention which has en-
dured, and for which later writers, like Artieda, Virues,
and Cervantes, ingenuously claimed the credit. JUAN DE
TIMONEDA (d. ? 1598), the Valencian bookseller who
printed Rueda's pasos, is a sedulous mimic in every sort.
He began by arranging Plautus' Comedy of Errors in
Los Menecmos ; his Cornelia is based upon Ariosto's
Nigromante ; and his Oveja Perdida adapts an early
morality on the Lost Sheep with scarcely a suggestion
of original treatment. Torres Naharro is the inspira-
tion of Timoneda's Aurelia; but his chief tempter \vas
Lope de Rueda. In the volume entitled Turiana (1565),
issued under the anagrammatic name of Joan Diamonte,
he attempts the paso (which he also calls the entremes)
to good purpose. An imitator he remains ; but an
imitator whose pleasant humour takes the place of
invention, and whose lively prose dialogue is in ex-
cellent contrast with his futile verse. His Patraiiuelo,
a collection of some twenty traditional stories, is a
well-meant attempt to satisfy the craving created by
Lazarillo de Tormes. If Timoneda experimented in
every field, it is not unjust to infer that, taking the
tradesman's view of literature, he was moved less
by intelligent curiosity than by the desire to supply
his customers with novelties. Withal, if he be not
individual, his unpolished drolleries are vastly more
engaging than the ambitious triflings of many con-
temporaries.
Pacheco, the father-in-law of Veldzquez, notes that
Juan de Malara (1527-71) composed "many tragedies"
MALARA: CUEVA 171
both in Latin and Castilian ; and Cueva, in his Ejemplar
poetico, gives the number hyperbolically : —
" En el teatro mil tragedias puso"
That Malara, or any one save Lope de Vega, " placed a
thousand tragedies on the boards," is incredible ; but by
general consent his fecundity was prodigious. None of
his plays survives, and we are left to gather, from a
chance remark of the author's, that he wrote a tragedy
entitled Absalon and another drama called Locusta. His
repute as a poet must be accepted, if at all, on autho-
rity ; for his extant imitations of Virgil and renderings
of Martial are mere technical exercises. For us he is
best represented by his Filosofia vulgar (1568), an ad-
mirable selection made from the six thousand proverbs
brought together by Hernan Nunez, who thus continued
what Santillana had begun. A contemporary, Blasco de
Garay (fl. 1553), had striven to prove the resources of
the language by printing, in his Cartas de Refranes, three
ingenious letters wholly made up of proverbial phrases ;
and in our own day the incomparable wealth of Cas-
tilian proverbs has been shown in Sbarbi's Refranero
General and in Haller's Altspanische SpricJitworter. But
no later and fuller collection has supplanted Malara's
learned and vivacious commentary.
His friend, JUAN DE LA CUEVA DE GAROZA of Seville
(71550-? 1606), matched Malara in productiveness, and
perhaps surpassed him in talent. Little is known of
Cueva's life, save that he had certain love passages with
Bri'gida Lucia de Belmonte, and that he became almost
insane for a short while after her death. He distin-
guishes himself by his independence of the Senecan
example, which he roundly declares to be at once in-
i;2 SPANISH LITERATURE
artistic and tedious (cansada cosa), and by urging the
Spanish dramatists to abjure abstractions and to treat
national themes without regard for Greek and Latin
superstitions. Incident, character, plot, situation, variety :
these are to be developed with small regard for " the
unities" of the classic model. And Cueva carried out
his doctrines. Ignoring Carvajal, he took a special pride
in reducing plays from five acts to four, and he enriched
the drama by introducing a multitude of metrical forms
hitherto unknown upon the stage. The cunning fable
of the people — la ingeniosa fdbula de Espafia — is illus-
trated in his Siete Infantes de Lara, in his Cerco de
Zamora (Siege of Zamora), where he utilises subjects
enshrined in romances which half his audience knew by
heart. It is literally true that he had been preceded by
Bartolome Palau, who, as far back as 1524, had written
a play on a national subject — the Historia de la gloriosa
Santa Orosia, published in 1883 by Fernandez-Guerra y
Orbe ; but this was an isolated, fruitless essay, whereas
Cueva's was a deliberate, well-organised attempt to shape
the drama anew and to quicken it into active life. Nor
did Cueva's mission end with indicating the possibilities
of dramatic motive afforded by heroico-popular songs
and legends. His Saco de Roma y Muerte de Borbon
exploits an historical actuality by dramatising Carlos
Quinto's Italian triumphs (1527-30) ; and his El In-
famador (The Calumniator) not merely foreshadows the
comedia de capa y espada, but gives us in his libertine,
Leucino, the first sketch of the type which Tirso de
Molina was to eternalise as Don Juan.
It is certain that Cueva was often less successful in per-
formance than in doctrine, and that his gods and devils,
his saints and ruffians, too often talk in the same lofty
BERMUDEZ: ARTIEDA 173
vein — the vein of Juan de la Cueva. It is no less certain
that he improvises recklessly, placing his characters in
difficulties whence escape is impossible, and that he takes
the first solution that offers — a murder, a supernatural
interposition — with no heed for plausibility. But his
bombast is the trick of his school, and, to judge by his
epical Conqiiista de la Betica (1603), he showed remark-
able self-suppression in his plays. In his later years,
after visiting the Western Indies, he seems to have
abandoned the theatre which he had so courageously
developed, and to have wasted himself upon his epic
and the poor confection of old ballads which he pub-
lished in the ten books entitled Coro Febeo de Romances
historiales. Yet, despite these backslidings, he merits
gratitude for his dramatic initiative.
The Galician Dominican, Ger6nimo Bermudez (1530-
89), apologises for his presentation in Castilian of the
Nise Lastimosa, which he published under the name of
Antonio de Silva in 1577. Bermudez has seemingly done
little more than rearrange the Inez de Castro of the dis-
tinguished Portuguese poet, Antonio Ferreira, who had
died eight years earlier. Though this " correct " play has
tirades of remarkable beauty in the Senecan manner, its
loose construction unfits it for the stage. All that it
contains of good is due to Ferreira, and its continuation
— the Nise Laureada — is a mere collection of incoherent
extravagances and brutalities, conceived in Thomas Kyd's
most frenzied mood.
The Captain ANDRES KEY DE ARTIEDA (1549-1613) is
said to have been born at Valencia, and he certainly died
there ; yet Lope de Vega, once his friend, speaks of him
as a native of Zaragoza. Artieda was a brilliant soldier,
who received three wounds at Lepanto, and his con-
i74 SPANISH LITERATURE
spicuous bravery was shown in the Low Countries,
where he swam the Ems in mid-winter under the enemy's
fire, with his sword between his teeth. 'He is known to
have written plays entitled Amadis de Gaula and Los
Encantos de Merlin, but his one extant drama is Los
Amantes : the first appearance on the stage of those
lovers of Teruel who were destined to attract Tirso
de Molina, Montalban, and Hartzenbusch. Artieda is
essentially a follower of Cueva's, and he has something
of his model's clumsy manipulation ; but his dramatic
instinct, his pathos and tenderness, are his personal en-
dowment. In his own day he was an innovator in his
kind : his opposition to the methods of Lope made him
unpopular, and condemned him to an unmerited neglect,
which he bitterly resented in the miscellaneous Discursos,
eplstolas y epigramas, published by him (1605) under the
name of Artemidoro.
Another dramatist and friend of Lope de Vega's was
the Valencian Captain CRISTOBAL DE VlRUfis (1550-1610),
Artieda's comrade at Lepanto and in the Low Countries.
Unfortunately for himself, Viru6s had his share of
learning, and misused it in his Semiramis, an absurd
medley of pedantry and horror. His Atila Furioso,
involving more slaughter than many an outpost en-
gagement, is the maddest caricature of romanticism.
He appears to think that indecency is comedy, and
that the way to terror lies through massacre. It is the
eternal fault of Spain, this forcing of the note ; and it
would seem that Virues repented him in Elisa Dido,
where he returns to the apparatus of the Senecan school.
Yet, with all their defects, his earlier attempts were
better, inasmuch as they presaged a new method, and
a determination to have done with a sterile formula. He
VIRUES: ARGENSOLA 175
essayed the epic in his Historia del Monserrate, and once
more courted disaster by his choice of subject : the
outrage and murder of the Conde de Barcelona's daughter
by the hermit Juan Gan'n, the Roman pilgrimage of the
assassin, and the miraculous resurrection of his victim.
As in his plays, so in his epic, Virues is an inventor
without taste, brilliant in a single page and intolerable
in twenty. His tactless fluency bade for applause at any
cost, and his incessant care to startle and to terrify
results in a monstrous monotony. Yet, if he failed
himself, his exaggerated protest encouraged others to
seek a more perfect way, and, though he had no direct
influence on the stage, he is interesting as an embodied
remonstrance.
His mantle was caught by Joaqum Romero de Cepeda
of Badajoz (fl. 1582), whose Selvajia is a dramatic
arrangement of the Celestina, with extravagant episodes
suggested by the chivalresque novels ; and in the oppo-
site camp is the Aragonese LUPERCIO LEONARDO DE
ARGENSOLA (1559-1613), whom Cervantes esteemed
almost as good a dramatist as himself — which, from
Cervantes' standpoint, is saying much. Cervantes praises
Argensola, not merely because his plays " delighted and
amazed all who heard them," but for the practical reason
that "these three alone brought in more money than
thirty of the best given since their time." If it be un-
charitable to conceive that this aims at Lope de Vega,
we are bound to suppose that Argensola's popularity
was immense. It was also fleeting. His Fills has dis-
appeared, and his Isabela and Alejandro, were not printed
till 1772, when Lopez de Sedano included them in his
Parnaso Espaiiol. The Alejandro, is a tissue of butcheries,
and the Isabela is scarcely better, the nine chief charac-
1 76 SPANISH LITERATURE
ters being killed out of hand. Argensola's excuse is that
he was only a lad of twenty when he perpetrated these
iniquities ; where, for the rest, he already proves him-
self endowed with that lyrical gift which was to win for
him the not excessive title of "the Spanish Horace."
But he was never reconciled to his defeat as a drama-
tist, and he avenged himself in 1597 by inditing a
spiteful letter to the King, praying that the prohibition
of plays on the occasion of the Queen of Piedmont's
death should be made permanent. The urbanity of
men of letters is, it will be seen, constant everywhere.
The school founded by Boscdn and Garcilaso spread
into Portugal, and bifurcated into Spanish factions settled
in Salamanca and in Seville. BALTASAR DE ALCAZAR
(1530-1606), who served under that stout sea-dog the
Marques de Santa Cruz, is technically an adherent of
the Sevillan sect ; but his laughing muse lends herself
with an ill grace to artificial sentiment, and is happiest
in stinging epigrams, in risky jests, and in gay romances.
DiEGO GiR6N (d. 1590), a pupil of Malara's, is an ardent
Italianate : prompt to challenge comparison with Gar-
cilaso by reproducing Corydon and Tirsis from the
seventh Virgilian eclogue, to mimic Seneca — "him of
C6rdoba dead" — or to echo the note of Giorolamo
Bosso. His verses, mostly hidden away among the
annotations made by Herrera in his edition of Garcilaso,
deserve to be better known for specimens of sound
craftsmanship.
The greatest poet of the Sevillan group is indisputably
FERNANDO DE HERRERA (1534-97), who comes into
touch with England as the writer of an eulogy on Sir
Thomas More. Cleric though he were, Herrera dedi-
HERRERA 177
cated much of his verse (1582) to Leonor de Milan,
Condesa de Gelves, wife of Alvaro de Portugal, himself
a fashionable versifier. Herrera being a clerk in minor
orders, the situation is piquant, and opinions differ as
to whether his erotic songs are, or are not, platonic.
It is another variant of the classic cases of Laura and
Petrarch, of Catalina de Atayde and Camoes. All good
Sevillans contend that Herrera, as the chief of Spanish
petrarquistas, indited sonnets to his mistress in imitation
of the master : —
" So the great Tuscan to the beauteous Laura
Breathed his sublime, his wonder-working song."
Disguised as Eliodora, Leonor is Herrera's firmament :
his luz, sol, estrella — light, sun, and star. And no small
part of the love-sequence is passionless and even frigid.
Yet not all the elegies are compact of conceit ; a genuine
emotion bursts forth elsewhere than in the famous line : —
" Now sorrow passes : now at length I live"
In view of the poet's metaphysical refinements no de-
cisive judgment is possible, and the dispute will continue
for all time ; perhaps the real posture of affairs is indi-
cated by Latour's happy phrase concerning Herrera's
"innocent immorality."
Fine as are isolated passages in these "vain, amato-
rious" rhapsodies, the true Herrera is best revealed in
his ode to Don Juan de Austria on the occasion of the
Moorish revolt in the Alpujarra, in his elegy on the
death of Sebastian of Portugal at Alcazar al-Kebir, in
his song upon the victory of Lepanto. In patriotism
Herrera found his noblest inspiration, and in these three
great pieces he attains an exceptional energy and con-
ciseness of form. He sings the triumph of the true
1 78 SPANISH LITERATURE
faith with an Hebraic fervour, a stateliness derived from
biblical cadences, as he mourns the overthrow of Chris-
tianity, "the weapons of war perished," in accents of
profound affliction. His sincerity and his lyrical splen-
dour place him in the foremost rank of his country's
singers ; and hence his title of El divino.
Differing in temperament from Garcilaso, Herrera may
be considered as the true inheritor of his predecessor's
unfulfilled renown. Two of his finest sonnets — one to
Carlos Quinto, the other to Don Juan de Austria — are
superior to any in Garcilaso's page. The latter may be
exampled here in Archdeacon Churton's rendering : —
" Deep sea, whose thundering waves in tumult roar,
Call forth thy troubled spirit — bid him rise,
And gaze, with terror pale, and hollow eyes,
On floods all flashing fire, and red with gore.
Lo ! as in list enclosed, on battle-floor
Christian and Sarzan, life and death the prize,
Join conflict : lo ! the battered Paynim flies;
The din, the smouldering flames, he braves no more.
Go, bid thy deep-toned bass with voice of power
Tell of this mightiest victory under sky,
This deed of peerless valour's highest strain;
And say a youth achieved the glorious hour,
Hallowing thy gulf with praise that n£er shall die, —
The youth of Austria, and the might of Spain"
Herrera takes up the tradition of his forerunner, per-
fects his form, imparts a greater sonority of expression,
a deeper note of pathos and dignity. The soldier, with
his languid sentiment, might be the priest ; the priest,
with his martial music, might be the soldier. Yet
Herrera's fealty never wavers ; for him there is but one
model, one pattern, one perfect singer. " In our Spain,"
he avers, "Garcilaso stands first, beyond compare." And
HERRERA 179
in this spirit, aided by suggestions from the poet's son-
in-law, Puerto Carrero, aided also by illustrations from
the whole Sevillan group, — Francisco de Medina, Diego
Giron, Francisco Pacheco, and Crist6bal Mosquera de
Figueroa, — Herrera undertook his commentary, Anota-
ciones d las obras de Garcilaso de la Vega (1580). Its
publication caused one of the bitterest quarrels in
Spanish literary history.
Four years earlier Garcilaso had been edited by the
learned Francisco Sanchez (1523-1601), commonly called
El Brocense, from Las Brozas, his birthplace, in Extre-
madura ; and an excitable admirer of the poet, Fran-
cisco de los Cobos, denounced Sanchez for exhibiting
his author's debts by means of parallel passages. The
partisans of Sanchez took Herrera's commentary as a
challenge, and were not mollified by the fact that He-
rrera nowhere mentioned Sanchez by name. It had been
bad enough that an Extremaduran pundit should edit
a Castilian poet ; that a mere Andaluci'an should repeat
the outrage was insufferable. It was as though an Eng-
lishman edited Burns. The Clan of Clonglocketty (or
of Castile) rose as one man, and Herrera was flagellated
by a tribe of scurrilous, illiterate patriots. Among his
more urbane opponents was Juan Fernandez de Velasco,
Conde de Haro, son of the Constable of Spain, who
published his Observaciones under the pseudonym of
Prete Jacopi'n, and was rapturously applauded for calling
Herrera an ass in a lion's skin. It is discouraging to
record that Haro's impertinence went through several
editions, while Herrera's commentary has never been
reprinted.1 Yet this monument of enlightened learning
1 I learn that D. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo is preparing a new edition
of the Anotaciones.
1 8o SPANISH LITERATURE
reveals its author, not only as the best lyrist, but as the
acutest critic of his age. Cervantes knew it almost by
heart, and he honoured it by writing his dedication of
Don Quixote to the Duque de Bejar in the very words
of Medina's preface and of Herrera's epistle to the
Marques de Ayamonte. So that, since countless readers
have admired a passage from the Anotaciones without
knowing it, Herrera the prose-writer has enjoyed a
vicarious immortality.
The most eminent poet of the Salamancan school is
Luis PONCE DE LE<5N (1529-91), a native of Belmonte
de Cuenca, who joined the Augustinian order in his
eighteenth year, and became professor of theology at
the University of Salamanca in 1561. He soon found
himself in the midst of a theological squabble as to the
comparative merits of the Septuagint and the Hebrew
MSS. Rivals spread the legend — fatal in Spain — that
he was of Jewish descent, and that he conspired with the
Hebrew professors, Martinet de Cantalapiedra and Grajal,
in interpreting Scripture accbrding to Jewish traditions*
His chief opponent was Le6n de Castro, who held the
Greek chair. Public discussions were the fashion, and
debates waxed acrimonious, after the custom of pro-
fessors at large. On one occasion Luis de Leon went
so far as to threaten Castro with the public burning of
the latter's treatise on Isaiah. Castro was not the man
to flinch, and anticipated his enemy by denouncing Fray
Luis to the Inquisition. The matter would doubtless
have ended here, had it not been discovered that Fray
Luis had translated the Song of Solomon into Castilian :
a grave offence in the eyes of the Holy Office, which,
rejecting the Lutheran formula of "every man his own
pope," forbade the circulation of Bibles in the verna-
LUIS DE LE6N 181
cular. In March 1572 Luis de Leon was arrested, and
was kept a prisoner by the local authorities for four and
a half years, during which he was baited with questions
calculated to convict him of heresy and to involve his
friend Benito Arias Montano. Notwithstanding the
efforts of Bartolome Medina and his brother-Domini-
cans, Fray Luis was acquitted on December 7, 1576.
Judged by modern standards, he was harshly treated ;
but toleration is a modern birth, begotten by indif-
ference and fear. In the sixteenth century men believed
what they professed, and acted on their beliefs — the
Spaniards by imprisoning their own countryman, Luis
de Leon ; Calvin by burning Harvey's forerunner, the
Spaniard Miguel Servet. Fray Luis was the last of men
to whine and whimper : he was judged by the tribunal
of his own choosing, the tribunal with which he had
menaced Castro: and the result vindicated his choice.1
Ex forti dulcedo. The indomitable nobility of his char-
acter is visible in the first words he uttered on his
return to the chair which Salamanca had kept for him : —
"Gentlemen, as we were saying the other day." In
1591 he was elected Vicar-General of Castile, was chosen
Provincial of his order, and was then commanded,
against his will, to publish all his writings. He died
ten days later.
In prison Fray Luis wrote his celebrated treatise, the
greatest of Spanish mystic books, Los Nombres de Cristo,
a series of dissertations, in Plato's manner, on the sym-
bolic value of such names of Christ as the Mount, the
Shepherd, the Arm of God, the Prince of Peace, the
Bridegroom. Published in 1583, the exposition is cast
1 For a full and very able account of the proceedings, see Alejandro Arango
y Escandon's Ensayo histArico (Mejico, 1866).
1 82 SPANISH LITERATURE
in the form of a dialogue, in which Marcelo, Sabino,
and Julian examine the theological mysteries implied
by the subject. With Fray Luis's theology we have
no concern ; nor with his learning, save in so far as
it is curious to see the Hellenic-Alexandrine leaven
working through in his imitation of St. Clement's Epistle
to the Corinthians. But his concise eloquence and his
classic purity of expression rank him among the best
masters of Castilian prose. The like great qualities are
shown in his Exposicidn del libro de Job, drawn up by
request of Santa Teresa's friend, Sor Ana de Jesus, and
in his rendering of and commentary on the Song of
Solomon, which he holds for an emblematic eclogue to
be interpreted as a poetic foreshadowing of the Divine
Espousal of the Church with Christ. A book still held
in great esteem is his Perfecta Casada (The Perfect
Wife), suggested, it may be, by Luis Vives' Christian
Woman, and composed (1583) for the benefit of Maria
Varela Osorio. It is not, indeed,
" That hymn for which the whole world longs,
A worthy hymn in woman 's praise."
It is rather a singularly brilliant paraphrase of the thirty-
first chapter of the Book of Proverbs, a code of practical
conduct for the ideal spouse, which may be read with
delight even by those who think the friar's doctrine
reactionary.
Great in prose, Luis de Le6n is no less great in verse.
With San Juan de la Cruz he heads the list of Spain's
lyrico-mystical poets. Yet he set no value on his
poems, which he regarded as mere toys of childhood :
so that their preservation is due to the accident of
his collecting them late in life to amuse the leisure
LUIS DE LE6N 183
of the Bishop of C6rdoba. We owe their publication
to Quevedo, who issued them in 1631 as a counterblast
to culteranismo. Of the three books into which they are
divided, two consist of translations — from Virgil, Horace,
Tibullus, Euripides, and Pindar ; and from the Psalms,
the Book of Job, and St. Thomas of Aquin's Pange
lingua. " I have tried," says Fray Luis of his sacred
renderings, "to imitate so far as I might their simple
origin and antique flavour, full of sweetness and majesty,
as it seems to me ; " and he succeeds as greatly in the
primitive unction of the one kind as in the faultless
form of the other. Still these are but inspired imita-
tions, and the original poet is to be sought for in the
first book. Some idea of his ode entitled Noche Serena
may be gathered from Mr. Henry Phillips' version of the
opening stanzas : —
" When to the heavenly dome my thoughts take flight,
With shimmering stars bedecked, ablaze with light)
Then sink my eyes down to the groitnd,
In slumber wrapped, oblivion bound,
Enveloped in the gloom of darkest night.
With love and pain assailed, with anxious care,
A thousand troubles in my breast appear,
My eyes turn to a flowing rill,
Sore sorrow's tearful floods distil,
While saddened, mournful words my woes declare.
Oh, dwelling fit for angels ! sacred fane /
The hallowed siirine where youth and beauty reign!
Why in this dungeon, plunged in night,
The soul thafs born for Heaven's delight
Should cruel Fate withiioldfrom its domain ? "
In his Profeda del Tajo (Prophecy of the Tagus) Luis de
Le6n displays a virility absent from his other pieces, and
'
1 84 SPANISH LITERATURE
the impetuosity of the verse matches the speed which
he attributes to the Saracenic invaders advancing to
the overthrow of Roderic ; and, if he still abide by his
Horatian model, he introduces an individual treatment,
a characteristic melody of his own invention. A famous
devout song, A Cristo Crucifijado (To Christ Crucified),
appears in all editions of Fray Luis ; but as its authen-
ticity is disputed — some ascribing it to Miguel Sanchez
— its quotation must be foregone here. The ode Al
Apartamiento (To Retirement) exhibits the contemplative
vein which distinguishes the singer, and, as in the Ode
to Salinas, seems an early anticipation of Wordsworth's
note of serene simplicity. Luis de Le6n is not splendid
in metrical resource, and his adherence to tradition,
his indifference to his fame, his ecclesiastical estate, all
tend to narrow his range of subject ; yet, within the
limits marked out for him, he is as great an artist and
as rich a voice as Spain can show.
In the same year (1631) that Quevedo issued Luis de
Le6n's verses, he also published an exceedingly small
volume of poems which he ascribed to a Bachelor named
FRANCISCO DE LA TORRE (1534-? 1594). From this arose
a strange case of mistaken identity. Quevedo's own
account of the matter is simple : he alleges that he found
the poems — " by good luck and for the greater glory of
Spain" — in the shop of a bookseller, who sold them
cheap. It appears that the Portuguese, Juan de Almeida,
Senhor de Couto de Avintes, saw them soon after Torre's
death, that he applied for leave to print them, and that
the official licence was signed by the author of La
Araucana, Ercilla y Zuftiga, who died in 1595. For
some reason Almeida's purpose miscarried, and, when
Quevedo found the manuscript in 1629, Torre was gene-
TORRE AND QUEVEDO 185
rally forgotten. Quevedo solved the difficulty out of
hand in the high editorial manner, evolved the facts
from his inner consciousness, and assured his readers
that the author of the poems was the Francisco de la
Torre who wrote the Vision deleitablel-
Ticknor lays it down that "no suspicion seems to
have been whispered, either at the moment of their
first publication, or for a long time afterwards," of the
correctness of this attribution ; and he implies that the
first doubter was Luis Jose Velazquez, Marques de
Valdeflores, who, when he reprinted the book in 1753,
started the theory that the poems were Quevedo's own.
This is not so. Quevedo's mistake was pointed out by
Manuel de Faria y Sousa in his commentary to the
LusiadaSj printed at Madrid in 1639. That Quevedo
should make a Bachelor of a man who had no uni-
versity degree, that he should call the writer of the
Vision deleitable Francisco when in truth his name was
Alfonso, were trifles : that he should antedate his author
by nearly two centuries — this was a serious matter,
and Faria y Sousa took pains to make him realise it.
It must have added to the editor's chagrin to learn that
Torre had been friendly with Lope de Vega, who could
have given accurate information about him ; but Lope
and Quevedo were not on speaking terms, owing to
the mischief-making of the former's parasite, Perez de
Montalban. Quevedo had made no approach to Lope ;
Lope saw the blunder, smiled, and said nothing in
public. Through Pe"rez de Montalban the facts reached
Faria y Sousa, who exulted over a mistake which was,
indeed, unpardonable. The discomfiture was complete :
for the first and last time in his life Quevedo was dumb
1 The Christian name of the author of the Visi6n ddeiiable was Alfonso.
1 86 SPANISH LITERATURE
before an enemy. Meanwhile, Velazquez' theory has
found some favour with L6pez Sedano and with many
foreign critics : as, for example, Ticknor.
What we know of Francisco de la Torre is based
upon the researches of Quevedo's learned editor, Aure-
liano Ferndndez-Guerra y Orbe.1 A native of Torre-
laguna, he matriculated at Alcala de Henares in 1556,
fell in love with the " Fills rigurosa" whom he sings,
served with Carlos Quinto in the Italian campaigns,
returned to find Filis married to an elderly Toledan
millionaire, remained constant to his (more or less)
platonic flame, and ended by taking orders in his
despair. The unadorned simplicity of his manner is at
the remotest pole from Quevedo's frosty brilliancy. No
small proportion of his sonnets is translated from the
Italian. Thus, where Benedetto Varchi writes " Questa
e, Tirsi, quel fonte in cut solea" Torre follows close with
" Jista es, Tirsi, la fuente do solia]" and when Giovanni
Battista Amalteo celebrates " La viva neve e le vermiglie
rose" the Spaniard echoes back " La blanca nieve y la
purpiirea rosa" Schelling finds the light fantastic rap-
ture of the Elizabethan lover expressed to perfection in
the eighty-first of Spenser's Amoretti : line for line, and
almost word for word, Torre's twenty-third sonnet is
identical, and, when we at length possess a critical
edition of Spenser, it will surely prove that both poems
derive from a common Italian source. Such examples
are numerous, and are worth noting as germane to
the general question. No man in Europe was more
original than Quevedo, none less disposed to lean on
1 See the second volume (pp. 79-104) of the Discursos leidos en las re-
cepcionts fiiblicas que ha celebrado desde 1847 la Real Academia Espafiola
(Madrid, 1861).
FIGUEROA 187
Italy. To conceive that he should seek to reform
culteranismo by translating from Italians of yesterday,
or to suppose that he knowingly passed as original
work imitations made by a man who — ex hypothesi
— died before his models were born, is to believe
Quevedo a clumsy trickster. That conclusion is un-
tenable ; and Torre deserves all credit for his graceful
renderings, as for his more original poems — gallant,
tender, and sentimental. He is one of the earliest
Spanish poets to choose simple, natural themes — the
ivy fallen to the ground, the widowed song-bird, the
wounded hind, the charms of landscape and the
enchantment of the spring. A smaller replica of
Garcilaso, with a vision and personality of his own : so
Francisco de la Torre appears in the perspective of
Castilian song.
An allied poet of the Salamancan school is Torre's
friend, FRANCISCO DE FIGUEROA (1536-? 1620), a native
of Alcala de Henares, whom his townsman Cervantes
introduces in the pastoral Galatea under the name of
Tirsi. Little is recorded of his life save that he served
as a soldier in Italy, that he studied at Rome, Bologna,
Siena, and perhaps Naples, that the Italians called him the
Divino (the title was sometimes cheaply given), and that
some even ranked him next to Petrarch. He returned
to Alcala, where he married " nobly," as we are told ;
and he is found travelling with the Duque de Terranova
in the Low Countries about 1597. On his deathbed
he bethought him of Virgil's example, and ordered
that all his poems should be burned ; those that
escaped were published at Lisbon in 1626 by the
historian Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, who reports what
little we know concerning the writer. That he versi-
1 88 SPANISH LITERATURE
fied much in Italian appears from Juan Verzosa's
evidence : —
"El lingua perges alterna pangere versus."
And a vestige of the youthful practice is preserved in
the elegy to Juan de Mendoza y Luna, where one
Spanish line and two Italian lines compose each tercet.
One admirable sonnet is that written on the death of
the poet's son, Garcilaso de la Vega el Mozo, who, like
his famous father, fell in battle. Figueroa's bent is
towards the pastoral ; he sings of sweet repose, of love's
costly glory, of Tirsi's pangs, of Fileno's passion realised,
and of ingrata Fili. His points of resemblance with
Torre are many ; but his talent is more original, his
mood more melancholy, his taste finer, his diction more
exquisite. He ranks so high among his country's
singers, it is not incredible that he might take his stand
with the greatest if we possessed all his poems, instead
of a few numbers saved from fire. And, as it is, he
deserves peculiar praise as the earliest poet who, fol-
lowing Boscan and Garcilaso, mastered the blank verse,
\vhose secrets had eluded them. He avoids the subtle
peril of the assonant ; he varies the mechanical uni-
formity of beat or stress ; and, by skilful alternations
of his caesura, diversifies his rhythm to such harmonic
purpose as no earlier experimentalist approaches. At
his hands the most formidable of Castilian metres is
finally vanquished, and the verso suelto is established
on an equality with the sonnet. That alone ensures
Figueroa's fame : he sets the standard by which suc-
cessors are measured.
Ariosto's vigorous epical manner is faintly suggested
in twelve cantos of the Angelica, by a Seville doctor, Luis
BARAHONA— RUFO 189
BARAHONA DE SOTO (fl. 1586). Lope de Vega, in the
Laurel de Afolo, praises
" The doctor admirable
Whose page of gold
The story of Medora told,"
and all contemporaries, from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza
downwards, swell the chorus of applause. The priest
who sacked Don Quixote's library softened at sight of
Barahona's book, which he calls by its popular title,
the Ldgrimas de Angelica (Tears of Angelica) : — " I should
shed tears myself were such a book burned, for its
author is one of the best poets, not merely in Spain,
but in all the world." Cervantes was far from strong
in criticism, and he proves it in this case. The Angelica,
which purports to continue the story of Orlando Furioso
— itself a continuation of the Orlando Innamorato — looks
mean beside its great original. Yet, though Barahona
fails in epic narrative, his lyrical poems, given in Espinosa's
Flores de poetas ilustres, are full of grace and melody.
The epic's fascination also seduced the C6rdoban,
JUAN RUFO GUTIERREZ. We know the date of neither
his birth nor his death, but he must have lived long if
his collection of anecdotes, entitled Las seiscientas Apo-
tegmas, were really published in 1548. His Austriada,
printed in 1584, takes Don Juan de Austria for its hero,
and contains some good descriptive stanzas ; but Rufo's
invention finds no scope in dealing with contemporary
matters, and what might have been a useful chronicle is
distorted to a tedious poem. Great part of the Austriada
is but a rhymed version of Mendoza's Guerra de Granada,
which Rufo must have seen in manuscript. When,
leaving Ariosto in peace, he becomes himself, as in the
1 90 SPANISH LITERATURE
verses at the end of the Apotegmas, he gives forth a
natural old-world note, reminiscent of earlier models
than Boscdn and Garcilaso. Since Luis de Zapata
(1523-? 1600) wrote an epic history of the Emperor,
the Carlos famoso, he must have read it ; and it is
possible that Cervantes (who delighted in it) was familiar
with its fifty cantos, its forty thousand lines. It is
more than can be said of any later reader. Zapata
wasted thirteen years upon his epic, and witnessed its
failure ; but he was undismayed, and lived to maltreat
Horace — it sounds incredible — beyond all expectation.
It is another instance of a mistaken calling. The writer
knew his facts, and had a touch of the historic spirit.
Yet he could not be content with prose and history.
A nearer approach to the right epical poem is the
Araucana of ALONSO DE ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA (1533-95),
who appeared as Felipe II.'s page at his wedding with
Mary Tudor in Winchester Cathedral. From England
he sailed for Chile in 1554, to serve against the Arau-
canos, who had risen in revolt ; and in seven pitched
battles, not to speak of innumerable small engagements,
he greatly distinguished himself. His career was ruined
by a quarrel with a brother-officer named Juan de
Pineda ; he was judged to be in fault, was condemned
to death, and actually mounted the scaffold. At the
last moment the sentence was commuted to exile at
Callao, whence Ercilla returned to Europe in 1562.
With him he brought the first fifteen cantos of his
poem, written by the camp-fire on stray scraps of
paper, leather, and skin. The first book ever printed
in America was, as we learn from Seflor Icazbalceta,
Juan de Zumdrraga's Breve y compendiosa Doctrina
Cristiana. The first literary work of real merit com-
ERCILLA 191
posed in either American continent was Ercilla's
Araucana. It was published at Madrid in 1569 ; and
continuations, amounting to thirty-seven cantos in all,
followed in 1578 and 1590. Ercilla never forgave what
he thought the injustice of his general, Garcia Hurtado
de Mendoza, Marques de Canete, and carefully omits
his name throughout the Araucana. The omission cost
him dear, for he was never employed again.
His is an exceeding stately poem on the Chilian
revolt ; but epic it is not, whether in spirit or design,
whether in form or effect. In the Essay Prefatory
to the Henriade, Voltaire condescends to praise the
Araucana, the name of which has thus become familiar
to many ; and, though he was probably writing at
second hand, he is justified in extolling the really
noble speech which Ercilla gives to the aged chief,
Colocolo. It is precisely in declamatory eloquence that
Ercilla shines. His technical craftsmanship is sound,
his spirit admirable, his diction beyond reproach, or
nearly so ; and yet his work, as a whole, fails to im-
press. Men remember isolated lines, a stanza here and
there ; but the general effect is blurred. To speak
truly, Ercilla had the orator's temperament, not the
poet's. At his worst he is debating in rhyme, at his
best he is writing poetic history ; and, though he has
an eye for situation, an instinct for the picturesque, the
historian in him vanquishes the poet. He himself was
vaguely conscious of something lacking, and he strove
to make it good by means of mythological episodes,
visions by Bellona, magic foreshadowings of victory,
digressions defending Dido from Virgil's scandalous
tattle. But, since the secret of the epic lies not in
machinery, this attempt at reform failed. Ercilla's first
192 SPANISH LITERATURE
part remains his best, and is still interesting for its
martial eloquence, and valuable as a picture of heroic
•barbarism rendered by an artist in ottava rima who was
:also a vigilant observer and a magnanimous foe. His
•omission of his commander's name was made good by
<4 copious Chilian poet, Pedro de Ona, in his Arauco
domado (1596), which closed with the capture of " Richerte
Aquines " (as who should say Richard Hawkins) ; and,
in the following year, Diego de Santisteban y Osorio
added a fourth and fifth part to the original Araucana.
Neither imitation is of real poetic worth, and, as versi-
fied history, they are inferior to the Elegias de Varones
ilustres de Indias of Juan de Castellanos (? 1510-? 1590),
a priest who in youth had served in America, and
who rhymed his reminiscences with a conscientious
regard for fact more laudable in a chronicler than a
poet.
But we turn from these elaborate historical failures
to religious work of real beauty, and the first that
offers itself is the famous sonnet "To Christ Cruci-
fied," familiar to English readers in a free version
ascribed to Dryden : —
" O God, Thou art the object of my love,
Not for the hopes of endless joys above,
Nor for the fear of endless pains below
Which those -who love Thee not must undergo :
For me, and such as me, Thou once didst bear
The ignominious cross, the nails, the spear,
A thorny crown transpierced Thy sacred brow,
IVhat bloody sweats from every member flow !
For me, in torture Thou resign* st Thy breath,
Nailed to the cross, and sav'dst me by Thy death :
Say, can these sufferings fail my heart to move?
What but Thyself can now deserve my love?
SANTA TERESA 193
Such as then was and is Thy love to me,
Such is, and shall be still, my love to Thee.
Thy love, O Jesus, may I ever sing,
O God of love, kind Parent, dearest King."
The authorship is referred to Ignacio Loyola, to Fran-
cisco Xavier, to Pedro de los Reyes, and to the Seraphic
Mother, SANTA TERESA DE JESUS, whose name in the
world was Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-82).
None of these attributions can be sustained, and No me
mueve, mi Dios, para quererte must be classed as anony-
mous.1 Yet its fervour and unction are such as to suggest
its ascription to the Saint of the Flaming Heart. Santa
Teresa is not only a glorious saint and a splendid figure
in the annals of religious thought : she ranks as a miracle
of genius, as, perhaps, the greatest woman who ever
handled pen, the single one of all her sex who stands
beside the world's most perfect masters. Macaulay has
noted, in a famous essay, that Protestantism has gained
not an inch of ground since the middle of the sixteenth
century. Ignacio Loyola and Santa Teresa are the life
and brain of the Catholic reaction : the former is a great
party chief, the latter belongs to mankind.
Her life in all its details may be read in Mrs. Cunning-
hame Graham's minute and able study. Here it must
suffice to note that she sallied forth to seek martyrdom at
the age of seven, that she entered literature as the writer
of a chivalresque romance, and that in her sixteenth year
she made her profession as a nun in the Carmelite con-
vent of her native town, Avila. Years of spiritual aridity,
of ill-health, weighed her down, aged her prematurely.
But nothing could abate her natural force ; and from
1 A very able discussion of these ascriptions is presented by M. Foulch^-
Delbosc in the Revue hispanique (1895), vo'- "• PP- 120-45.
I94 SPANISH LITERATURE
1558 to the day of her death she marches from one
victory to another, careless of pain, misunderstanding,
misery, and persecution, a wonder of valour and devotion.
" Scarce has she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has a heart dares hope to prove
How much less strong is Death than Love , . .
Love toucKt her heart, and lo ! it beats
High, and burns with such brave heats,
Such thirst to die, as dares drink up
A thousand cold deaths in one cup."
What Crashaw has here said of her in verse he repeats
in prose, and the heading of his poem may be quoted as
a concise summary of her achievement : — " Foundress of
the Reformation of the Discalced Carmelites, both men
and women ; a woman for angelical height of specula-
tion, for masculine courage of performance more than
a woman ; who, yet a child, outran maturity, and durst
plot a martyrdom." And all the world has read with
ever-growing admiration the burning words of Crashaw's
" sweet incendiary," the " undaunted daughter of desires,"
the " fair sister of the seraphim," " the moon of maiden
stars."
Simplicity and conciseness are Santa Teresa's dis-
tinctive qualities, and the marvel is where she acquired
her perfect style. Not, we may be sure, in the numerous
prose of Amadis. Her confessor, the worthy Gracian,
took it upon him to "improve" and polish her periods;
but, in a fortunate hour, her papers came into the hands
of Luis de Leon, who gave them to the press in 1588.
Himself a master in mysticism and literature, he per-
ceived the truth embodied later in Crashaw's famous
line : —
" O 'tis not Spanish but 'tis Heaven she speaks."
SANTA TERESA 195
Her masterpiece is the Castillo interior, of which Fray
Luis writes : — " Let naught be blotted out, save when
she herself emended : which was seldom." And once
more he commends her to her readers, saying : — " She,
who had seen God face to face, now reveals Him unto
you." With all her sublimity, her enraptured vision of
things heavenly, her " large draughts of intellectual day,"
Santa Teresa illustrates the combination of the loftiest
mysticism with the finest practical sense, and her style
varies, takes ever its colour from its subject. Familiar
and maternal in her letters, enraptured in her Conceptos
del Amor de Dios, she handles with equal skill the trifles
of our petty lives and — to use Luis de Le6n's phrase
— "the highest and most generous philosophy that was
ever dreamed." And from her briefest sentence shines
the vigorous soul of one born to govern, one who
governed in such wise that a helpless Nuncio denounced
her as "restless, disobedient, contumacious, an inven-
tress of new doctrines tricked out with piety, a breaker
of the cloister-rule, a despiser of the apostolic precept
which forbiddeth a woman to teach."
Santa Teresa taught because she must, and all that she
wrote was written by compulsion, under orders from her
superior. She could never have understood the female
novelist's desire for publicity ; and, had she realised it,
merry as her humour was, she would scarcely have
smiled. For she was, both by descent and temperament,
a gentlewoman — de sangre muy limpia, as she writes
more than once, with a tinge of satisfaction which
shows that the convent discipline had not stifled her
pride of race any more than it had quenched her
gaiety. She always remembers that she comes from
Castile, and the fact is evidenced in her writings, with
196 SPANISH LITERATURE
their delicious old-world savour. Boscan and Garcilaso
might influence courtiers and learned poets ; but they
were impotent against the brave Castilian of Sor Teresa
de Jesus, who wields her instrument with incomparable
mastery. It were a sin to attempt a rendering of her
artless songs, with their resplendent gleams of ecstasy
and passion. But some idea of her general manner,
when untouched by the inspiration of her mystic
nuptials, may be gathered from a passage which Froude
has Englished : —
"A man is directed to make a garden in a bad soil
overrun with sour grasses. The Lord of the land roots
out the weeds, sows seeds, and plants herbs and fruit-
trees. The gardener must then care for them and water
them, that they may thrive and blossom, and that the
Lord may find pleasure in his garden and come to visit
it. There are four ways in which the watering may be
done. There is water which is drawn wearily by hand
from the well. There is water drawn by the ox-wheel,
more abundantly and with greater labour. There is
water brought in from the river, which will saturate the
whole ground ; and, last and best, there is rain from
heaven. Four sorts of prayer correspond to these. The
first is a weary effort with small returns ; the well may
run dry : the gardener then must weep. The second
is internal prayer and meditation upon God ; the trees
will then show leaves and flower-buds. The third is
love of God. The virtues then become vigorous. We
converse with God face to face. The flowers open and
give out fragrance. The fourth kind cannot be described
in words. Then there is no more toil, and the seasons
no longer change ; flowers are always blowing, and fruit
ripens perennially. The soul enjoys undoubting certi-
SANTA TERESA 197
tude ; the faculties work without effort and without
consciousness ; the heart loves and does not know that
it loves ; the mind perceives, yet does not know that it
perceives. If the butterfly pauses to say to itself how
prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, and it
drops and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but
the life of God within us."
And, as Santa Teresa excelled in spiritual insight, so
she has the sense of affairs. Durtal, in M. Joris-Karl
Huysmans' En Route, first says of her : — " Sainte Terese
a explore plus a fond que tout autre les regions in-
connues de 1'ame ; elle en est, en quelque sorte, la
geographe; elle a surtout dress6 la carte de ses poles,
marque les latitudes contemplatives, les terres interi-
eures du ciel humain." And he shows the reverse of
the medal : — " Mais quel singulier melange elle montre
aussi, d'une mystique ardente et d'une femme d'affaires
froide ; car, enfin, elle est a double fond ; elle est
contemplative hors le monde et elle est 6galement un
homme d'etat : elle est le Colbert feminin des cloitres."
The key to Durtal's difficulties is given in the Abbe
GeVresin's remark, that the perfect balance of good sense
is one of the distinctive signs of the mystics. In Santa
Teresa's case the sign is present. An uninquiring world
may choose to think of her as a fanatic in vapours and
in ecstasies. Yet it is she who writes, in the Camino de
Perfection : — " I would not have my daughters be, or
seem to be, women in anything, but brave men." It
is she who holds that " of revelations no account should
be made " ; who calls the usual convent life " a short-
cut to hell" ; who adds that "if parents took my advice,
they would rather marry their daughters to the poorest
of men, or keep them at home under their own eyes."
I98 SPANISH LITERATURE
Her position as a spiritual force is as unique as her
place in literature. It is certain that her "own dear
books " were nothing to her ; that she regarded litera-
ture as frivolity ; and no one questions her right so to
regard it. But the world also is entitled to its judg-
ment, which is expressed in different ways. Jeremy
Taylor cites her in a sermon preached at the opening
of the Parliament of Ireland (May 8, 1661). Protestant
England, by the mouth of Froude, compares Santa
Teresa to Cervantes. Catholic Spain places her manu-
script of her own Life beside a page of St. Augustine's
writing in the Palace of the Escorial.
In some sense we may almost consider the Ecstatic
Doctor, SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ (1542-91), as one of
Santa Teresa's disciples. He changed his worldly name
of Juan de Yepes y Alvarez for that of Juan de la Cruz
on joining the Carmelite order in 1563. Shortly after-
wards he made the acquaintance of Santa Teresa, and,
fired by her enthusiasm, he undertook to carry out in
monasteries the reforms which she introduced in con-
vents. In his Obras espirituales (1618) mysticism finds
its highest expression. There are moments when his
prose style is of extreme clearness and force, but in
many cases he soars to heights where the sense reels
in the attempt to follow him. St. John of the Cross
holds, with the mystics of all time, with Plotinus and
Bohme and Swedenborg, that "by contemplation man
may become incorporated with the Deity." This is a
hard saying for some of us, not least to the present
writer, and it were idle, in the circumstances, to attempt
criticism of what for most men must remain a mystery.
Yet in his verse one seizes the sense more easily ; and
his high, amorous music has an individual melody of
SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ 199
spiritual ravishment, of daring abandonment, which is
not all lost in Mr. David Lewis' unrhymed version of
the Noche oscura del Alma (Dark Night of the Soul) : —
" In an obscure night.
With anxious love inflamed,
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I "went,
My house being now at rest. • - •
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought but myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where he was waiting forme
Whom I knew well,
And none but he appeared.
O guiding night !
O night more lovely than the dawn I
0 night that hast united
The lover with his beloved
And charged her with her love.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for him alone,
He reposed and slept :
1 kept him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned him.
Then his hair floated in the breexe
That blew from the turret;
He struck me on the neck
With his gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
14
200 SPANISH LITERATURE
/ continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
I fainted at last abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away."
St. John of the Cross has absorbed the mystic essence
of the Song of Solomon, and he introduces infinite new
harmonies in his re-setting of the ancient melody. The
worst that criticism can allege against him is that he
dwells on the very frontier line of sense, in a twilight
where music takes the place of meaning, and words are
but vague symbols of inexpressible thoughts, intolerable
raptures, too subtly sensuous for transcription. The
Unknown Eros, a volume of odes, mainly mystical and
Catholic, by Coventry Patmore, which has had so con-
siderable an influence on recent English writers, was a
deliberate attempt to transfer to our poetry the methods
of St. John of the Cross, whose influence grows ever
deeper with time.
The Dominican monk whose family name was Sarria,
but who is only known from his birthplace as Luis
DE GRANADA (1504-88), is usually accounted a mystic
writer, though he is vastly less contemplative, more
didactic and practical, than San Juan de la Cruz. He is
best known by his Guia de Pecadores, which Regnier
made the favourite reading of Macette, and which
Gorgibus recommends to Celie in Sganarelle :-
" La Guide des pe"cheurs est encore un bon livre :
Cest la qu'en peu de temps on apprend a bien vivre."
\ his
Unluckily for Granada, his Guia de Pecadores and
Tratado de la Oracion y Meditacidn were placed on the
Index, chiefly at the instigation of that hammer of
heretics, Melchor Cano, the famous theologian of the
LUIS DE GRANADA 201
Council of Trent. Certain changes were made in the
text, and the books were reprinted in their amended
form ; but the suspicion of iluminismo long hung over
Granada, whose last years were troubled by his rash
simplicity in certifying as true the sham stigmata of
a Portuguese nun, Sor Maria de la Visitaci6n. The
story that Granada was persecuted by the Inquisition
is imaginary.
His books have still an immense vogue. His sincerity,
learning, and fervour are admirable, and his forty years
spent between confessional and pulpit gave him a rare
knowledge of human weakness and a mastery of eloquent
appeal. He is not declamatory in the worst sense,
though he bears the marks of his training. He sins
by abuse of oratorical antithesis, by repetition, by a
certain mechanical see-saw of the sentence common to
those who harangue multitudes. Still, the sweetness of
his nature so flows over in his words that didacticism
becomes persuasive even when he argues against our
strongest prepossessions. It may interest to quote a
passage from the translation made by that Francis Meres
whose Palladis Tamia contains the earliest reference to
Shakespeare's " sugared sonnets " :—
"This desire which doth hold many so resolutely to
their studies, and this love of science and knowledge
under pretence to help others, is too much and super-
fluous. I call it a love too much and desire superfluous ;
for when it is moderate and according to reason, it is not
a temptation, but a laudable virtue and a very profitable
exercise which is commended in all kind of men, but
especially in young men who do exercise their youth in
that study, for by it they eschew many vices and learn
that whereby they will counsel themselves and others.
202 SPANISH LITERATURE
But unless it be moderately used it hurteth devotion. . . .
There be some that would know for this end only, that
they might know — and it is foolish curiosity. There be
some that would know, that they might be known — and it
is foolish vanity ; and there be some that would know,
that they might sell their knowledge for money or for
honours — and it is filthy lucre. There be also some that
desire to know, that they may edify — and it is charity.
And there are some that would know, that they may be
edified — and it is wisdom. All these ends may move the
desire, and, in choice of these, a man is often deceived,
when he considereth not which ought especially to move ;
and this error is very dangerous."
This distrust of profane letters is yet more marked
in the Augustinian, PEDRO MAL6N DE CHAIDE of Cas-
cante (1530-? 1590), who compares the "frivolous love-
books" of Boscdn, Garcilaso, and Montemor and the
"fabulous tales and lies" of chivalresque romance to a
knife in a madman's hand. His practice clashes with
his theory, for his Conversion de la Magdalena, written for
Beatriz Cerdan, is learned to the verge of pedantry, and
his elaborate periods betray the imitation of models
which he professed to abhor. More ascetic than mystic,
Mal6n de Chaide lacks the patrician ease, the tolerant
spirit of Juan de Avila, Granada, and Leon ; but his
austere doctrine and sumptuous colouring have ensured
him permanent popularity. His admirable verse para-
phrases of the Song of Solomon have much of the
unction, without the sensuous exaltation, of Juan de
la Cruz. A better representative of pure mysticism is
the Extremaduran Carmelite, JUAN DE LOS ANGELES
(fl. 1595), whose Triumphos del Amor de Dios is a pro-
found psychological study, written under the influence
ARIAS MONTANO 203
of Northern thinkers, and not less remarkable for beauty
of expression than for impassioned insight. With him
our notice of the Spanish mystics must close. It is
difficult to estimate their number exactly ; but since at
least three thousand survive in print, it is not surprising
that the most remain unread. A breath of mysticism is
met in the few Castilian verses of the brilliant humanist,
BEXITO ARIAS MONTANO (1527-98), who gave up to
scholarship and theology what was meant for poetry.
His achievement in the two former fields is not our
concern here, but it pleases to denote the ample inspi-
ration and the lofty simplicity of his song, which is
hidden from many readers, and overlooked even by
literary historians, in Bohl de Faber's Floresta de rimas
antiguas.
The pastoral novel, like the chivalresque romance,
reaches Spain through Portugal. The Italianised Spaniard,
Jacopo Sannazaro, had invented the first example of this
kind in his epoch-making Arcadia (1504) ; and his earliest
follower was the Portuguese, Bernardim Ribeiro (? 1475-
71524), whose Menina e mo$a transplants the prose
pastoral to the Peninsula. This remarkable book, which
derives its title from the first three words of the text, is
the undoubted model of the first Castilian prose pastoral,
the unfinished Diana Enamorada. This we owe to the
Portuguese, JORGE DE MONTEM6R (d. 1561), whose name
is hispaniolised as Montemayor. There is nothing strange
in this usage of Castilian by a Portuguese writer. We
have already recorded the names of Gil Vicente, Sa de
Miranda, and Silvestre among those of Castilian poets ;
the lyrics and comedies of Camoes, the Austriada of
Jeronimo Corte Real, continue a tradition which begins
204 SPANISH LITERATURE
as early as the General Cancioneiro of Garcia de Resende
(1516), wherein twenty-nine Portuguese poets prefer
Castilian before their own language. A Portuguese
writer, Innocencio da Silva, has gone the length of
asserting that Montemdr wrote nothing but Castilian.
This only proves that Silva had not read the Diana,
which contains two Portuguese songs, and Portuguese
prose passages spoken by the shepherd, Danteo, and
the shepherdess, Duarda. Nor is Silva alone in his
bad eminence ; the date of the earliest edition of
the Diana is commonly given as 1542. Yet, as it
contains, in the Canto de Orpheo, an allusion to the
widowhood of the Infanta Juana (1554), it must be later.
The time of publication was probably 1558-59,! some
four or five years after the printing of his Cancionero
at Antwerp.
Little is known of Montemdr's life, save that he was a
musician at the Spanish court in 1548. He accompanied
the Infanta Juana to Lisbon on her marriage to Dom
Joao, returning to Spain in 1554, when he is thought to
have visited England and the Low Countries in Felipe
II.'s train. He was murdered in 1651, apparently as the
result of some amour. Faint intimations of pastoralism
are found in such early chivalresque novels as Florisel
de Niquea, where Florisel, dressed as a shepherd, loves
the shepherdess, Sylvia. Ribeiro had introduced his
own flame in Menina e moqa in the person of Aonia,
and Montem6r follows with Diana. The identification
of Aonia with the Infanta Beatriz, and with King
Manoel's cousin, Joana de Vilhena, has been argued
with great heat: in Montemor's case the lady is said to
1 The question is discussed in the J?evue hispanique (1895), v°l- "• PP-
304-".
MONTEM6R 20$
have been a certain Ana. Her surname is withheld by
the discreet Sepiilveda, who records that she was seen
at Valderas by Felipe III. and his queen in 1603.
In all pastoral novels there is a family likeness, and
Montemor is not successful in avoiding the insipidity
of the genre. He endeavours to lighten the monotony
of his shepherds by borrowing Sannazaro's invention of
the witch whose magic draughts work miracles. This
wonder-worker is as convenient for the novelist as she
is tedious for the reader, who is forced to cry out with
Don Quixote's Priest : — " Let all that refers to the wise
Felicia and the enchanted water be omitted." The bold
Priest would further drop the verses, honouring the
book for its prose, and for being the first of its class.
Montemor accepts the convention by making his shep-
herds— Sireno, Silvano, and the rest — mouth it like
grandiloquent dukes ; but the style is correct, and pleas-
ing in its grandiose kind. The Diana's vogue was im-
mense : Shakespeare himself based the Two Gentlemen of
Verona upon the episode of the shepherdess Felismena,
which he had probably read in the manuscript of Bar-
tholomew Young, whose excellent version, although not
printed until 1598, was finished in 1583; and Sidney,
whose own pastoral is redolent of Montemor, has given
Sireno's song in this fashion : —
" Of this high grace with bliss conjoined
No further debt on me is laid,
Since that is self-same metal coin'd,
Sweet lady, you remain u< ell paid.
For, if my place give me great pleasure,
Having before me Nature's treasure,
In face and eyes unmatched being.
You have the same in my hands, seeing
What in your face mine eyes do measure.
206 SPANISH LITERATURE
Nor think the match unevenly made.
That of those beams in you do tarry ;
The glass to you but gives a shade ;
To me mine eyes the true shape carry :
For such a thought most highly prized.
Which ever hath Love 's yoke despised.
Better than one captiv'dperceiveth^
Though he the lively form receiveth,
The other sees it but disguised"
Montem6r closes with the promise of a sequel, which
never appeared. But, as his popularity continued, pub-
lishers printed new editions, containing the story of
Abindarraez and Jarifa, boldly annexed from Villegas'
Inventario, which was licensed so early as 1551. The
tempting opportunity was seized by Alonso Perez, a
Salamancan doctor, whose second Diana (1564) is ex-
tremel/dull, despite the singular boast of its author that
it contains scarcely anything "not stolen or imitated
from the best Latins and Italians." Perez alleges that
he was a friend of Montemor's ; but, as that was his
sole qualification, his third Diana — written, though " not
added here, to avoid making too large a volume " — has
fortunately vanished. In this same year, 1564, appeared
Caspar Gil Polo's Diana, a continuation which, says Cer-
vantes, should be guarded "as though it were Apollo's"
— the praise has perplexed readers who missed the pun
on the author's name. The merits of Polo's sequel,
excellent in matter and form, were recognised, as Pro-
fessor Rennert notes, by Jer6nimo de Texeda, whose
Diana (1627) is a plagiary from Polo. Though the
contents of the one and the other are almost identical,
Ticknor, considering them as independent works, finds
praise for the earlier book, and blame for the later. An
odd, mad freak is the versified Diez libros de Fortuna de
ZURITA 207
Amor (1573), wherein Frexano and Floricio woo For-
tuna and Augustina in Arcadian fashion. Its author, the
Sardinian soldier, Antonio Lo Frasso, shares with Ave-
llaneda the distinction of having drawn Cervantes' fire —
his one title to fame. Artificiality reaches its full height
in the Pastor de Filida (1582) of Luis Galvez de Mont-
alvo, who presents himself, Silvestre, and Cervantes
as the (Dresden) shepherds Siralvo, Silvano, and Tirsi.
Almost every Spanish man of letters attempted a pastoral,
but it were idle to compile a catalogue of works by
authors whose echoes of Montemor are merely mechani-
cal. The occasion of much ornate prose, the pastoral
lived partly because there was naught to set against it,
partly because born men of action found pleasure in
literary idealism and in "old Saturn's reign of sugar-
candy." Its unreality doomed it to death when Aleman
and others took to working the realistic vein first
struck in Lazarillo de Tormes. Meanwhile the spec-
tacle of love-lorn shepherds contending in song scan-
dalised the orthodox, and the monk Bartolome Ponce
produced his devout parody, the Clara Diana d lo
divino (1599) in the same edifying spirit that moved
Sebastian de Cordoba (1577) to travesty Boscan's and
Garcilaso's works — d lo divino, trasladadas en materias
cristianas.
Didactic prose is practised by the official chronicler,
JERONIMO DE ZURITA (1512-80), author of the Anales
de la Corona de Aragon, six folios published between
1562 and 1580, and ending with the death of Fernando.
Zurita is not a great literary artist, nor an historical
portrait-painter. Men's actions interest him less than
the progress of constitutional growth. His conception
of history, to give an illustration from English literature,
208 SPANISH LITERATURE
is nearer Freeman's than Froude's, and he was admirably
placed by fortune. Simancas being thrown open to him,
he was first among Spanish historians to use original
documents, first to complete his authorities by study
in foreign archives, first to perceive that travel is the
complement of research. Science and Zurita's work
gain by his determination to abandon the old plan of
beginning with Noah. He lacks movement, sympathy,
and picturesqueness ; but he excels all predecessors in
scheme, accuracy, architectonics — qualities which have
made his supersession impossible. Whatever else be
read, Zurita's Anales must be read also. His con-
temporary, AMBROSIO DE MORALES (1513-91), nephew
of PeYez de Oliva, was charged to continue Ocampo's
chronicle. His nomination is dated 1580. His authori-
tative fragment, the result of ten years' labour, combines
eloquent narrative with critical instinct in such wise as to
suggest that, with better fortune, he might have matched
Zurita.
Hurtado de Mendoza as a poet belongs to Carlos
Quinto's period. Even if he be not the author of
Lazarillo, he approves himself a master of prose in his
Guerra de Granada, first published at Lisbon by the
editor of Figueroa's poems, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo,
in 1627. Mendoza wrote his story of the Morisco rising
(1568-71) in the Alpujarra and Ronda ranges, while in
exile at Granada. On July 22, 1568 (if Fourquevaulx'
testimony be exact), a quarrel arose between Mendoza
and a young courtier, Diego de Leiva. The old soldier
— he was sixty-four — disarmed Leiva, threw his dagger
out of window, and, by some accounts, sent Leiva after
it. This, passing in the royal palace at Madrid, was flat
lese majesty to be expiated by Mendoza's exile. To this
MENDOZA 209
lucky accident we owe the Guerra de Granada, written in
the neighbourhood of the war.
Mendoza writes for the pleasure of writing, with no
polemical or didactic purpose. His plain-speaking con-
cerning the war, and the part played in it by great
personages whom he had no cause to love, accounts
for the tardy publication of his book, which should be
considered as a confidential state-paper by a diplomatist
of genius. Yet, though he wrote chiefly to pass the time,
he has the qualities of the great historian — knowledge,
impartiality, narrative power, condensation, psychological
insight, dramatic apprehension, perspective and elo-
quence. His view of a general situation is always just,
and, though he has something of the credulity of his
time, his accuracy of detail is astonishing. His style is
a thing apart. He had already shown, in a burlesque
letter addressed to Feliciano de Silva, an almost unique
capacity for reproducing that celebrity's literary manner.
In his Guerra de Granada he repeats the performance
with more serious aim. One god of his idolatry is
Sallust, whose terse rhetoric is repeatedly echoed with
unsurpassable fidelity. Another model is Tacitus, whose
famous description of Germanicus finding the unburied
corpses of Varus' legions is annexed by Mendoza in
his account of Arcos and his troops at Calalm. This is
neither plagiarism nor unconscious reminiscence ; it is
the deliberate effort of a prose connoisseur, saturated in
antiquity, to impart the gloomy splendour of the Roman
to his native tongue. To say that Mendoza succeeded
were too much, but he did not altogether fail ; and,
despite his occasional Latinised construction, his Guerra
de Granada lives not solely as a brilliant and picturesque
transcription. It is also a masterly example of idiomatic
210 SPANISH LITERATURE
Castilian prose, published without the writer's last
touches, and, as is plain, from mutilated copies.1 Men-
doza may not be a great historian : as a literary artist
he is extremely great.
1 See two very able studies in the Revue hispanique (vol. i. pp. 101-65,
and vol. ii. pp. 208-303), by M. Foulche-Delbosc, whose edition of the Guerra
de Granada is now printing.
CHAPTER IX
THE AGE OF LOPE DE VEGA
1598-1621
THE death of Felipe II. in 1598 closes an epoch in the
history of Castilian letters. Not merely has the Italian
influence triumphed definitively : the chivalresque
romance has well-nigh run its course ; while mysti-
cism and the pastoral have achieved expression and
acceptance. Moreover, the most important of all de-
velopments is the establishment of the stage at Madrid
in the Teatro de la Cruz and in the Teatro del Principe.
There is evidence to prove that theatres were also built
at Valencia, at Seville, and possibly at Granada. Nor
was a foreign impulse lacking. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy
records the invasion of England by Italian actors : —
" The Italian tragedians were so sharp of 'wit,
That in one hour's meditation
They could perform anything in action."
In like wise the famous Alberto Ganasa and his Italian
histrions revealed the art of acting to the Spains. Thence-
forth every province is overrun by mummers, as may be
read in the Viaje entretenido (1603) of Agustin de Rojas
Villandrando, who denotes, with mock-solemn precision,
the nine professional grades.
There was the solitary stroller, the bululu, tramping
212 SPANISH LITERATURE
from village to village, declaiming short plays to small
audiences, called together by the sacristan, the barber,
and the parish priest, who — pidiendo limosna en un som-
brero— passed round the hat, and sped the vagabond
with a slice of bread and a cup of broth. A pair
of strollers (such as Rojas himself and his colleague
Ri'os) was styled a Plaque, and did no more than spout
simple entremeses in the open. The cangarilla was on a
larger scale, numbering three or four actors, who gave
Timoneda's Oveja Perdida, or some comic piece wherein
a boy played the woman's part. Five men and a woman
made up the carambaleo, which performed in farmhouses
for such small wages as a loaf of bread, a bunch of grapes,
a stew of cabbage ; but higher fees were asked in larger
villages — six maravedfs, a piece of sausage, a roll of flax,
and what not. Though " a spider could carry " its pro-
perties, says Rojas, yet the carambaleo contrived to fill
the bill with a set piece, or two autos, or four entremeses.
More pretentious was the garnacha, with its six men,
its "leading lady," and a boy who played the ingenue.
With four set plays, three autos, and three entremeses
it would draw a whole village for a week. A large
choice of pieces was within the means of the seven men,
two women, and a boy that made up the bojiganga,
which journeyed from town to town on horseback.
Next in rank came the fardndula, the stepping-stone
to the lofty compania of sixteen players, with fourteen
"supers," capable of producing fifty pieces at short
notice. To such a troupe, no doubt, belonged the
Toledan Naharro, famous as an interpreter of the bully,
and as the foremost of Spanish stage-managers. " He
still further enriched theatrical adornment, substituting
chests and trunks for the costume-bag. Into the body
CERVANTES 2 i 3
of the house he brought the musicians, who had hitherto
sung behind the blanket. He did away with the false
beards which till then actors had always worn, and he
made all play without a make-up, save those who per-
formed old men's parts, or such characters as implied a
change of appearance. He introduced machinery,
clouds, thunder, lightning, duels, and battles ; but this
reached not the perfection of our day."
This is the testimony of the most renowned person-
ality in Castilian literature. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
SAAVEDRA (1547-1616) describes himself as a native of
Alcala de Henares, in a legal document signed at Madrid
on December 18, 1580 : the long dispute as to his
birthplace is thus at last settled. His stock was pure
Castilian, its solar being at Cervatos, near Reinosa:
the connection with Galicia is no older than the four-
teenth century. His family surname of Cervantes pro-
bably comes from the castle of San Cervantes, beyond
Toledo, which was named after the Christian martyr
Servandus. The additional name of Saavedra is not on
the title-page of the writer's first book, the Galatea,
However, Miguel de Cervantes uses the Saavedra in a
petition addressed to Pope Gregory XIII. and Felipe II.
in October 1578; and, as Cervantes was not then, though
it is now, an uncommon name, the addition served to
distinguish the author from contemporary clansmen.
He was the second (though not, as heretofore believed,
the youngest) son of Rodrigo de Cervantes Saavedra
and of Leonor Cortinas. Of the mother we know
nothing : garrulous as was her famous son, he nowhere
alludes to her, nor did he follow the usual Spanish prac-
tice by adding her surname to his own. The father was
a licentiate — of laws, so it is conjectured. Research only
214 SPANISH LITERATURE
yields two facts concerning him : that he was incurably
deaf, and that he was poor.
Cervantes' birthday is unknown. He was baptized at
the Church of Santa Marfa Mayor, in Alcala de Henares,
on Sunday, October 9, 1547. One Tomas Gonzalez
asserted that he had found Cervantes' name in the
matriculation lists of Salamanca University ; but the
entry has never been verified since, and its report lacks
probability. If Cervantes ever studied at any university,
we should expect to find him at that of his native town,
Alcala de Henares. His name does not appear in the
University calendar. Though he made his knowledge
go far, he was anything but learned, and college witlings
bantered him for having no degree. No information
exists concerning his youth. He is first mentioned in
1569, when a Madrid dominie, Juan L6pez de Hoyos,
speaks of him as " our dear and beloved pupil " ; and
some conjecture that he was an usher in Hoyos' school.
His earliest literary performance is discovered (1569) in
a collection of verses on the death of Felipe II.'s third
wife. The volume, edited by Hoyos, is entitled the His-
toriay relation verdadera de la enfermedad,felidsimo trdnsito
y suntuosas exequias funebres de la Serenisima Reina de
Espana, Dona Isabel de Valois. Cervantes' contributions
are an epitaph in sonnet form, five redondillas, and an
elegy of one hundred and ninety-nine lines : this last
being addressed to Cardinal Diego de Espinosa in the
name of the whole school — en nombre de todo el estudio.
These poor pieces are reproduced solely because Cer-
vantes wrote them : it is very doubtful if he ever saw
them in print. He is alleged to have been guilty of
lese-majestt in Hurtado de Mendoza's fashion ; but this
is surmise, as is also a pendant story of his love pas-
CERVANTES THE SOLDIER 215
sages with a Maid of Honour. It is certain that, on
September 15, 1569, a warrant was signed for the arrest
of one Miguel de Cervantes, who was condemned to
lose his right hand for wounding Antonio de Sigura in
the neighbourhood of the Court. There is nothing to
prove that our man was the culprit ; but if he were,
he had already got out of jurisdiction. Joining the
household of the Special Nuncio, Giulio Acquaviva, he
left Madrid for Rome as the Legate's chamberlain in
the December of 1568.
He was not the stuff of which chamberlains are made ;
and in 1570 he enlisted in the company commanded
by Diego de Urbina, captain in Miguel de Moncada's
famous infantry regiment, at that time serving under
Marc Antonio Colonna. It is worth noting that the
Galatea is dedicated to Marc Antonio's son, Ascanio
Colonna, Abbot of St. Sophia. In 1571 Cervantes fought
at Lepanto, where he was twice shot in the chest and had
his left hand maimed for life : " for the greater honour
of the right," as he loved to think and say with justifiable
vainglory. That he never tired of vaunting his share
in the great victory is shown by his frequent allusions
to it in his writings ; and it should almost seem that he
was prouder of his nickname — the Cripple of Lepanto
— than of writing Don Quixote. He served in the engage-
ments before Navarino, Corfu, Tunis, the Goletta ; and
in all he bore himself with credit. Returning to Italy,
he seems to have learned the language, for traces of
Italian idioms are not rare even in his best pages. From
Naples he sailed for Spain in September 1575, with
recommendatory letters from Don Juan de Austria and
from the Neapolitan Viceroy. On September 26, his
caravel, the Sol, was attacked by Moorish pirates, and,
15
216 SPANISH LITERATURE
after a brave resistance, all on board were carried as
prisoners into Algiers. There for five years Cervantes
abode as a slave, writing plays between the intervals of
his plots to escape, striving to organise a general rising
of the thousands of Christians. Being the most danger-
ous, because the most heroic of them all, he became, in
some sort, the chief ot his tellows, and, after the failure
of several plans for flight, was held hostage by the Dey
for the town's safety. His release was due to accident.
On September 19, 1580, the Redemptorist, Fray Juan
Gil, offered five hundred gold ducats as the ransom of
a private gentleman named Jer6nimo Palafox. The sum
was held insufficient to redeem a man of Palafox's posi-
tion ; but it sufficed to set free Cervantes, who was
already shipped on the Dey's galley bound for Con-
stantinople.1 He is found at Madrid on December 19,
1580, and it is surmised that he served in Portugal and
at the Azores. There are rumours of his holding some
small post at Oran : however that may be, he returned
to Spain, at latest, in the autumn of 1582. And hence-
forth he belongs to literature.
The plays written at Algiers are lost ; but there survive
two sonnets of the same period dedicated to Rufino de
Chamber/ (1577). A rhymed epistle to the Secretary of
State, Mateo Vazquez, also belongs to this time. We
must suppose Cervantes to have written copiously on re-
gaining his liberty, since Galvez de Montalvo speaks of
him as a poet of repute in the Pastor de Filida (1582) ;
but the earliest signs of him in Spain are his eulogistic
sonnets in Padilla's Romancero and Rufo Gutierrez' Austri-
ada, both published in 1583. Padilla repaid the debt by
1 In Felipe II. 's time the normal value of an esctido de oro was 8s. 4^d.
The actual exchange value varied between seven and eight shillings.
THE GALATEA 217
classing the sonneteer among " the most famous poets of
Castile." In December 1584, Cervantes married Catalina
de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, a native of Esquivias,
eighteen years younger than himself. It is often said
that he wrote the Galatea as a means of furthering his
suit. It may be so. But the book was not printed by
Juan Gracian of Alcala de Henares till March 1585,
though the aprobacion and the privilege are dated Feb-
ruary i and February 22, 1584. In the year after his
marriage, Cervantes' illegitimate daughter, Isabel de
Saavedra, was born. We shall have occasion to refer
to her later. Our immediate concern is with the Primera
Parte de Galatea, an unfinished pastoral novel in six books,
for which Cervantes received 1336 reales from Bias de
Robles ; a sum which, with his wife's small dowry, en-
abled him to start housekeeping.1 As a financial specula-
tion the Galatea failed : only two later editions appeared
during the writer's lifetime, one at Lisbon in 1590, the
other at Paris in 1611. Neither could have brought him
money ; but the book, if it did nothing else, served to
make him known.
He trimmed his sails to the popular breeze. Montemor
had started the pastoral fashion, Perez and Caspar Gil
Polo had followed, and Gdlvez de Montalvo maintained
the tradition. Later in life, in the Coloquio de los Perros
(Dialogue of the Dogs), Cervantes made his Berganza
say that all pastorals are "vain imaginings, void of truth,
written to amuse the idle " ; yet it may be doubted if
Cervantes ever lost the pastoral taste, though his sense of
humour forced him to see the absurdity of the convention.
1 One real de vel!6n = 34 maravedis = 2 pence, 2 farthings, and f of a
farthing. One real de plata = 2 reales de velldn. Unless otherwise stated, a
real may be taken to mean a real de plata.
2i8 SPANISH LITERATURE
It is very certain that he had a special fondness for the
Galatea: he spared it at the burning of Don Quixote's
library, praised its invention, and made the Priest exhort
the Barber to await the sequel which is foreshadowed in
the Galatea's text. This is again promised in the Dedica-
tion of the volume of plays (1615), in the Prologue to
the Second Part of Don Quixote (1615), and in the
Letter Dedicatory of Persiles y Sigismunda, signed on the
writer's deathbed, April 19, 1616. For thirty-one years
Cervantes held out the promise of the Galatea's Second
Part : five times did he repeat it. It is plain that he
thought well of the First, and that his liking for the genre
was incorrigible.
His own attempt survives chiefly because of the name
on its title-page. Pastorals differ little in essentials,
and the kind offers few openings to Cervantes' peculiar
humoristic genius. Like his fellow - practitioners, he
crowds his stage with figures : he presents his shep-
herds Elicio and Erastro warbling their love for
Galatea on Tagus bank ; he reveals Mirenio enamoured
of Silveria, Leonarda love-sick for Salercio, Lenio in the
toils of Gelasia. Hazlitt, in his harsh criticism of
Sidney's Arcadia, hits the defects of the pastoral, and his
censures may be justly applied to the Galatea. There, as
in the English book, we find the " original sin of allitera-
tion, antithesis, and metaphysical conceit " ; there, too,
is the "systematic interpolation of the wit, learning,
ingenuity, wisdom, and everlasting impertinence of the
writer." Worst of all are "the continual, uncalled-for
interruptions, analysing, dissecting, disjointing, murder-
ing everything, and reading a pragmatical, self-sufficient
lecture over the dead body of nature." But if Cervantes
sins in this wise, he sins of set purpose and in good com-
THE GALATEA 219
pany. In his Fourth Book, he interpolates a long dis-
quisition on the Beautiful which he calmly annexes from
Judas Abarbanel's Dialoghi. As Sannazaro opens his
A rcadia with Ergasto and Selvaggio, so Cervantes thrusts
his Elicio and Erastro into the foreground of the Gala-
tea ; the funeral of Meliso is a deliberate imitation of the
Feast of Pales ; and, as the Italian introduced Carmosina
Bonifacia under the name of Amaranta, the Spaniard
perforce gives Catalina de Palacios Salazar as Galatea.
Nor does he depart from the convention by placing him-
self upon the scene as Elicio, for Ribeiro and Montemdr
had preceded him in the characters of Bimnardel and
Sereno. Lastly, the idea and the form of the Canto de
Caliope, wherein the uncritical poet celebrates whole tribes
of contemporary singers, are borrowed from the Canto del
Turia, which Gil Polo had interpolated in his Diana.
Prolixity, artifice, ostentation, monotony, extravagance,
are inherent in the pastoral school ; and the Galatea
savours of these defects. Yet, for all its weakness, it
lacks neither imagination nor contrivance, and its em-
broidered rhetoric is a fine example of stately prose.
Save, perhaps, in the Persiles y Sigismunda, Cervantes
never wrote with a more conscious effort after excellence,
and, in results of absolute style, the Galatea may com-
pare with all but exceptional passages in Don Quixote.
Yet it failed to please, and the author turned to other
fields of effort. His verses in Pedro de Padilla's Jardin
Espiritual (1585) and in L6pez Maldonado's Cancionero
(1586) denote good-nature and a love of literature; and
in both volumes Cervantes may have read companion-
pieces written by a marvellous youth, Lope de Vega,
whom he had already praised — as he praised everybody —
in the Canto de Caliope. He could not foresee that in the
220 SPANISH LITERATURE
person of this boy he was to meet his match and more.
Meanwhile in 1587 he penned sonnets for Padilla's
Grandezas y Excelencias de la Virgen, and for Alonso de
Barros' Filosofia cortesana. Verse-making was his craze ;
and, in 1588, when the physician, Francisco Diaz, pub-
lished a treatise on kidney disease — Tratado nuevamente
impreso acerca de las enfermedades de los rifiones — the
unwearied poetaster was forthcoming with a sonnet pat
to the strange occasion.
Still, though he cultivated verse with as sedulous a
passion as Don Quixote spent on Knight - Errantries,
he recognised that man does not live by sonneteering
alone, and he tried his fate upon the boards. He died
with the happy conviction that he was a dramatist of
genius ; his contemporaries ruled the point against him,
and posterity has upheld the decision. He tells us that
at this time he wrote between twenty and thirty plays.
We only know the titles of a few among them — the Gran
Turquesca, the Jerusale'n, the Batalla Naval (attributed by
Morati'n to the year 1584), the Amaranta and the Basque
Amoroso (referred to 1586), the Arsinda and the Confusa (to
1587). It is like enough that the Batalla Naval was con-
cerned with Lepanto, a subject of which Cervantes never
tired ; the Arsinda existed so late as 1673, when Juan de
Matos Fragoso mentioned it as "famous" in his Corsaria
Catalana; and our author himself ranked the Confusa as
" good among the best." The touch of self-complacency
is amusing, though one might desire a better security than
Bardolph's.
Two surviving plays of the period are El Trato de
Argel and La Numancia, first printed by Antonio de
Sancha in 1784. The former deals with the life of the
<^t*w
Christian slaves in Algiers, and recounts the passion
CERVANTES THE DRAMATIST 221
of Zara the Moor for the captive Aurelio, who is en-
amoured of Silvia. We must assume that Cervantes
thought well of this invention, since he utilised it some
thirty years later in El Amante Liberal; but the play is
merely futile. The introduction of a lion, of the Devil,
and of such abstractions as Necessity and Opportunity,
is as poor a piece of machinery as theatre ever saw ; the
versification is rough and creaking, improvised without
care or conscience ; the situations are arranged with a
glaring disregard for truth and probability. Like Paolo
Veronese, Cervantes could rarely resist the temptation
of painting himself into his canvas, and in El Trato de
Argel he takes care that the prisoner Saavedra should
declaim his tirade. The piece has no dramatic interest,
and is valuable merely as an over-coloured picture of
vicissitudes by one who knew them at first-hand, and
who presented them to his countrymen with a more
or less didactic intention. Yet, even as a transcript of
manners, this luckless play is a failure.
A finer example of Cervantes' dramatic power is the
Numana'afon which Shelley has passed this generous judg-
ment : — " I have read the Numancza, and, after wading
through the singular stupidity of the First Act, began to
be greatly delighted, and at length interested in a very
high degree, by the power of the writer in awakening
pity and admiration, in which I hardly know by whom
he is excelled. There is little, I allow, to be called poetry
in this play ; but the command of language and the har-
mony of versification is so great as to deceive one into
an idea that it is poetry." Nor is Shelley alone in his ad-
miration. Goethe's avowal to Humboldt is on record: —
" Sogar habe ich . . . neulich das Trauerspiel Numancia
von Cervantes mit vielem Vergniigen gelesen;" but eight
222 SPANISH LITERATURE
years later he confided a revised judgment to Riemer.
The gushing school of German Romantics waxed deli-
rious; in praise. Thus Friedrich Schlegel surpassed him-
self by calling the play "godlike"; and August Schlegel,
not content to hold it for a dramatic masterpiece, would
persuade us to accept it for great poetry. Even Sismondi
declares that " le frisson de 1'horreur et de 1'effroi devient
presque un supplice pour le spectateur."
Raptures apart, the Numancia is Cervantes' best play.
He has a grandiose subject : the siege of Numantia, and
its capture by Scipio Africanus after fourteen years of
resistance. On the Roman side were eighty thousand
soldiers ; the Spaniards numbered four thousand or less ;
and the victors entered the fallen city to find no soul
alive. With scenes of valour is mingled the pathetic
love-story of Morandro and Lyra. But, once again,
Cervantes fails as a dramatic artist ; one doubts if he
knew what a plot was, what unity of conception meant.
He has scenes and episodes of high excellence, but they
are detached from the main composition, and produce
all the bad effect of a portrait painted in different lights.
Abstractions fill the stage — War, Sickness, Hunger,
Spain, the river Duero. But the tirades of rhetoric
are unsurpassed by anything from Cervantes' pen, and
Marquino's scene with the corpse in the Second Act
is pregnant with a suggestion of weirdness which Mr.
Gibson has well conveyed : —
Marquino. " What! Dost not answer? Dost not live again,
Or haply hast thou tasted death once more?
Then will I quicken thee anew with pain,
And for thy good t^e gift of speech restore.
Since thou art one of us, do not disdain
To speak and answer \ as I now implore; . . .
THE NUMANCIA 223
Ye spirits vile, it worketh not ye trust !
But wait, for soon the enchanted water here
Will show my will to be as strong and just
As yours is treacherous and insincere.
And though tiiis flesh were turned to very dust,
Yet being quickened by this lash austere,
Which cuts with cruel rigour like a knife, /
It will regain a new though fleeting life.
Thou rebel soul, seek now the home again
Thou leftest empty these few hours ago.
The Body. Restrain the fury of thy reckless pain ;
Suffice it, O Marquino, man of woe,
What I do suffer in the realms obscure,
Nor give me pangs more fearful to endure.
Thou errest, if thou thinkest that I crave
This painful, pinched, and narrow life I have,
Which even now is ebbing fast away, . . .
Since Death a second time, with bitter sway,
Will triumph over me in life and soul,
And gain a double palm, beyond control.
For he and others of the dismal band,
Who do thy bidding subject to thy spell,
Are raging round and round, and waiting stand,
Till I shall finish what I have to tell. . . .
The Romans ne'er shall victory obtain
O'er proud Numantia ; still less shall she
A glorious triumph o'er her foemen gain ;
^Twixt friends and foes, both have to a degree,
Think not that settled peace shall ever reign
Where rage meets rage in strife eternally.
The friendly hand, with homicidal knife,
Will slay Numantia and will give her life.
[He hurls himself into the sepulchre, and says :— •
I say no more, Marquino, time is fleet;
The Fates will grant to me no more delay,
And, though my wort's may seem to thee deceit,
Thou' It find at last the truth of what I say"
Even in translation — still more in the original — the
rhetoric of this passage is imposing ; yet we perceive
rhetoric to be contagious when Ticknor asserts that
224 SPANISH LITERATURE
"there is nothing of so much dignity in the incantation*
of Marlowe's Faustus" Still more amazing is Ticknor's
second appreciation : — " Nor does even Shakspeare de-
mand from us a sympathy so strange with the mortal
head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth's guilty
question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering
spirit, recalled to life only to endure a second time the
pangs of dissolution." The school is decently interred
which mistook critics for Civil Service Commissioners,
and Parnassus for Burlington House. It is impossible
to compare Cervantes' sonorous periods and Marlowe's
majestic eloquence, nor is it less unwise to match his
moving melodrama against one of the greatest tragedies
in the world. His great scene has its own merit as an
artificial embellishment, as a rhetorical adornment, as
an exercise in bravura ; but the episode is not only out
of place where it is found — it leads from nowhere to
nothing. More dramatic in spirit and effect is the speech
declaimed by Scipio when the last Numantian, Viriato,
hurls himself from the tower : —
" O matchless action, -worthy of the meed
Which old and -valiant soldiers love to gain /
Thou hast achieved a glory by thy deed,
Not only for Numantia, but for Spain !
Thy -valour strange, heroical in deed,
Hath robbed vie of my rights, and made them -vain;
For with thy fall thou hast upraised thy fame.
And le-uelled do-wn my victories to shame /
Oh, could Numantia gain -what she hath lost,
I would rejoice, if but to see thee there!
For thou hast reaped the gain and honour most
Of this long siege, illustrious and rare !
Bear thou, O stripling, bear away tiie boast,
Enjoy the glory which the Heavens prepare,
For thou hast conquered, by thy very fall,
Him who in rising Jalleth worst of all"
THE NUMANCIA 225
Here, once more, we are dealing with a passage which
gains by detachment from its context. To speak plainly,
the interest of the Numanda is not dramatic, and its ver-
sification, good of its kind, may easily be overpraised, as
it was by Shelley. First and last, the play is a devout
and passionate expression of patriotism ; and, as such,
the writer's countrymen have held it in esteem, never
claiming for it the qualities invented by well-meaning
foreigners. Lope de Vega and Calder6n still hold the
stage, from which Cervantes, the disciple of Viru^s, was
driven three centuries ago ; and they survive, the one as
an hundredfold more potent dramatist, the other as an
infinitely greater poet. Yet, like the ghost raised by
Marquino, Cervantes was to undergo a momentary
resurrection. When Palafox (and Byron's Maid) held
Zaragoza, during the War of Independence, against the
batteries of Mortier, Junot, and Lannes, the Numanda
was played within the besieged walls, so that Spaniards
of the nineteenth century might see that their fathers had
known how to die for freedom. The tragedy was re-
ceived with enthusiasm ; the marshals of the world's
Greatest Captain were repulsed and beaten ; and Cer-
vantes' inspiriting lines helped on the victory. In life,
he had never met with such a triumph, and in „ death
no other could have pleased him better.
He asserts, indeed, that his plays were popular, and
he may have persuaded himself into that belief. His
idolaters preach the legend that he was driven from the
boards by that " portent of genius," Lope de Vega. This
tale is a vain imagining. Cervantes failed so wretchedly
in art that in 1588 he left the Madrid stage to seek work
in Seville ; and no play of Lope's dates so early as that,
save one written while he was at school. In June 1588,
226 SPANISH LITERATURE
Cervantes became Deputy-Purveyor to the Invincible
Armada, and in May 1590 he petitioned for one of four
appointments vacant in Granada, Guatemala, Cartagena,
and La Paz. But he never quite abandoned literature.
In 1591 he wrote a romance for Andre's de Villalba's Flor
de varios y nuevos romances, and, in the following year,
he contracted with the Seville manager, Rodrigo Osorio,
to write six comedies at fifty ducats each — no money
to be paid unless Osorio should rank the plays " among
the best in Spain." No more is heard of this agreement,
and Cervantes disappears till 1594, when he was ap-
pointed tax-gatherer in Granada. Next year he com-
peted at a literary tournament held by the Dominicans
of Zaragoza in honour of St. Hyacinth, and won the
first prize — three silver spoons. His sonnet to the
famous sea-dog, Santa Cruz, is printed in Cristobal
Mosquera de Figueroa's Comentario en breve Compendia
de Disciplina militar (1596), and his bitter sonnet on
Medina Sidonia's entry into Cadiz, already sacked and
evacuated by Essex, is of the same date.
In 1597, being in Seville about the time of Herrera's
death, Cervantes wrote his sonnet in memory of the great
Andalucian. In September of this year the sonneteer
was imprisoned for irregularities in his accounts, due to
his having entrusted Government funds to one Sim6n
Freire de Lima, who absconded with the booty. Re-
leased some three months later, Cervantes was sent
packing by the Treasury, and was never more employed
in the public service. Lost, as it seemed, to hope and
fame, the ruined man lingered at Seville, where, in 1598,
he wrote two sonnets and a copy of quintillas on Felipe
II.'s death. Four years of silence were followed by the
inevitable sonnet in the second edition of Lope de
DON QUIXOTE 227
Vega's Dragontea (1602). It is certain that all this while
Cervantes was scribbling in some naked garret ; but his
name seemed almost forgotten from the earth. In 1603
he was run to ground, and served with an Exchequer
writ concerning those outstanding balances, still unpaid
after nearly eight years. He must appear in person at
Valladolid to offer what excuse he might. Light as his
baggage was, it contained one precious, immediate jewel
— the manuscript of Don Quixote. The Treasury soon
found that to squeeze money from him was harder
than to draw blood from a stone : the debt remained
unsettled. But his journey was not in vain. On his
way to Valladolid, he found a publisher for Don Quixote.
The Royal Privilege is dated September 26, 1604, and
in January 1605 the book was sold at Madrid across the
counter of Francisco de Robles, bookseller to the King.
Cervantes dedicated his volume, in terms boldly filched
from Herrera and Medina, to the Duque de Be"jar. In a
previous age the author's kinsman had anticipated the
compliment by addressing a gloss of Jorge Manrique's
Coplas to Alvaro de Stuftiga, second Duque de Bejar.
It is difficult to say when Don Quixote was written ;
later, certainly, than 1591, for it alludes to Bernardo de
la Vega's Pastor de Iberia, published in that year. Legend
says that the First Part was begun in gaol, and so Lang-
ford includes it in his Prison Books and their Authors.
The only ground for the belief is a phrase in the Pro-
logue which describes the work as "a dry, shrivelled,
whimsical offspring . . . just what might be begotten in
a prison." This may be a mere figure of speech ; yet
the tradition persists that Cervantes wrote his master-
piece in the cellar of the Casa de Medrano at Arga-
masilla de Alba. Certain it is that Argamasilla is Don
228 SPANISH LITERATURE
Quixote's native town. The burlesque verses at the end
indicate precisely that "certain village in La Mancha,
the name of which," says Cervantes dryly, " I have no
desire to recall." Quevedo witnesses that the fact was
accepted by contemporaries, and topography puts it
beyond doubt. The manuscript passed through many
hands before reaching the printer, Cuesta: whence a
double mention of it before publication. The author
of the Picara Justina, who anticipated Cervantes' poor
device of the versos de cabo roto — truncated rhymes — in
Don Quixote, ranks the book beside the Celestina, Laza-
rillo de Tormes, and Guzman de Alfarache ; yet the Picara
Justina was licensed on August 22, 1604. The title falls
from a far more illustrious pen : in a private letter
written on August 14, 1604, Lope de Vega observes that
no budding poet " is so bad as Cervantes, none so silly
as to praise Don Quixote" There will be occasion to
return presently to this much-quoted remark.
Clearly the book was discussed, and not always ap-
proved, by literary critics some months before it was in
print : but critics of all generations have been taught
that their opinions go for nothing with the public, which
persists in being amused against rules and dogmas. Don
Quixote carried everything before it : its vogue almost
equalled that of Guzman de Alfarache, and by July a
fifth edition was preparing at Valencia. Cervantes has
told us his purpose in plain words: — "to diminish the
authority and acceptance that books of chivalry have in
the world and among the vulgar." Yet his own avowal
is rejected. Defoe averred that Don Quixote was a satire
on Medina Sidonia; Landor applauded the book as "the
most dexterous attack ever made against the worship
of the Virgin " ; and such later crocheteers as Rawdon
DON QUIXOTE 229
Brown have industriously proved Sancho Panza to be
Pedro Franqueza, and the whole novel to be a burlesque
on contemporary politics.1
Cervantes was unlucky in life, nor did his misfortunes
end with his days. Posthumous idolatry seeks to atone
for contemporary neglect, and there has come into
being a tribe of ignorant fakirs, assuming the title of
" Cervantophils," and seeking to convert a man of genius
into a common Mumbo-Jumbo. A master of invention,
a humourist beyond compare, an expert in ironic ob-
servation, a fellow meet for Shakespeare's self: all that
suffices not for these fanatical dullards. Their deity
must be accepted also as a poet, a philosophic thinker,
a Puritan tub-thumper, a political reformer, a finished
scholar, a purist in language, and — not least amazing —
an ascetic in private morals. A whole shelf might be
filled with works upon Cervantes the doctor, Cervantes
the lawyer, the sailor, the geographer, and who knows
what else ? Like his contemporary Shakespeare, Cer-
vantes took a peculiar interest in cases of dementia ;
and, in England and Spain, the afflicted have shown
both authors much reciprocal attention. We must even
take Cervantes as he was : a literary artist stronger in
practice than in theory, great by natural faculty rather
than by acquired accomplishment. His learning is
naught, his reasonings are futile, his speculation is banal.
In short passages he is one of the greatest masters
of Castilian prose, clear, direct, and puissant : but he
soon tires, and is prone to lapse into Italian idioms, or
into irritating sentences packed with needless relatives.
Cervantes lives not as a great practitioner in style, a
sultan of epithet — though none could better him when
1 See The Athenaum, April 12, April 19, and May 3, 1873.
230 SPANISH LITERATURE
he chose; nor is he potent as a purely intellectual in-
fluence. He is immortal by reason of his creative power,
his imaginative resource, his wealth of invention, his
penetrating vision, his inimitable humour, his boundless
sympathy. Hence the universality of his appeal : hence
the splendour of his secular renown.
It is certain that he builded better than he knew, and
that not even he realised the full scope of his work : we
know from Goethe that the maker has to be taught his
own meaning. The contemporary allusions, the sly hits
at foes, are mostly mysteries for us, though they amuse
the laborious leisure of the commentator. Chivalresque
romances are with last year's snows : but the interest of
Don Quixote abides for ever. Cervantes set out intend-
ing to write a comic short story, and the design grew
under his hand till at length it included a whole
Human Comedy. He himself was as near akin to Don
Quixote as a man may be : he knew his chivalresque
romances by heart, and accounted Amadis de Gaula as
"the very best contrived book of all those of that kind."
Yet he has been accused by his own people of plotting
his country's ruin, and has been held up to contempt as
"the headsman and the ax of Spain's honour." Byron
repeats the ridiculous taunt : —
" Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away;
A single laugh demolished the right arm
Of his own country; seldom since that day
Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,
The world gave ground before her bright array;
And therefore have his volumes done such harm,
That all their glory, as a composition,
Was dearly purchased by his land 's perdition?
The chivalresque madness was well-nigh over when our
DON QUIXOTE 231
author made his onset : he but hastened the end. After
the publication of Don Quixote, no new chivalresque
romance was written, and only one — the Caballero del
Febo (1617) — was reprinted. And the reason is obvious.
It was not that Cervantes' work was merely destructive,
that he was simply a clever artist in travesty : it was that
he gave better than he took away, and that he revealed
himself, not only to Spain, but to the world, as a great
creative master, and an irresistible, because an universal,
humourist.
There is endless discussion as to the significance of
his masterpiece, and the acutest critics have uttered
" great argument about it and about." That an allegory
of human life was intended is incredible. Cervantes
presents the Ingenious Gentleman as the Prince of
Courtesy, affable, gallant, wise on all points save that
trifling one which annihilates Time and Space and
changes the aspect of the Universe : and he attaches to
him, Sancho, self-seeking, cautious, practical in presence
of vulgar opportunities. The types are eternal. But it
were too much to assume that there exists any conscious
symbolic or esoteric purpose in the dual presentation.
Cervantes is inspired solely by the artistic intention
which would create personages, and would divert by
abundance of ingenious fantasy, by sublimation of char-
acter, by wealth of episode and incident, and by the
genius of satiric portraiture. He tessellates with what-
soever mosaic chances to strike his fancy. It may be
that he inlays his work with such a typical sonnet
as that which Mr. Gosse has transferred from the
twenty-third chapter of Don Quixote to In Russet and
Silver — an excellent example, which shall be quoted
here : —
16
232 SPANISH LITERATURE
" When I was marked for suffering, Love forswore
All knowledge of my doom : or else at ease
Love grows a cruel tyrant, hard to please;
Or else a chastisement exceeding sore
A little sin hath brought me. Hush ! no more !
Love is a god! all things he knows and sees,
And gods are bland and mild ! Who then decrees
The dreadful woe I bear and yet adore ?
If I should say, O Phyllis, that 'twas thou,
I should speak falsely, since, being wholly good
Like Heaven itself, from thee no ill may come.
There is no hope; I must die shortly now,
Not knowing why, since sure no witch hath brewed
The drug that might avert my martyrdom"
Hereunto the writer adds reminiscences of slavery,
picaresque scenes observed during his vagabond life as
tax-gatherer, tales of Italian intrigue re-echoed from
Bandello, flouts at Lope de Vega, a treasure of adven-
tures and experience, a strain of mockery both individual
and general. Small wonder if the world received Don
Quixote with delight ! There was nothing like unto it
before : there has been nothing to eclipse it since. It
ends one epoch and begins another : it intones the
dirge of the mediaeval novel : it announces the arrival
of the new generations, and it belongs to both the past
and the coming ages. At the point where the paths
diverge, Don Quixote stands, dominating the entire land-
scape of fiction. Time has failed to wither its variety
or to lessen its force, and posterity accepts it as a
masterpiece of humoristic fancy, of complete obser-
vation and unsurpassed invention. It ceases, in effect,
to belong to Spain as a mere local possession, though
nothing can deprive her of the glory of producing it.
Cervantes ranks with Shakespeare and with Homer as a
citizen of the world, a man of all times and countries,
CERVANTES IN JAIL 233
and Don Quixote, with Hamlet and the Iliad, belongs to
universal literature, and is become an eternal pleasaunce
of the mind for all the nations.
Cervantes had his immediate reward in general
acceptance. Reprints of his book followed in Spain,
and in 1607 the original was reproduced at Brussels.
The French teacher of Spanish, Cesar Oudin, inter-
polated the tale of the Curious Impertinent between the
covers of Julio Ifriguez de Medrano's Silva Curiosa,
published for the second time at Paris in 1608 ; in the
same year Jean Baudouin did this story into French,
and in 1609 an anonymous arrangement of Marcela's
story was Gallicised as Le Meurtre de la Fid/lit/ et la
Defense de I* Honneur. This sufficed for fame : yet Cer-
vantes made no instant attempt to repeat his triumph.
For eight years he was silent, save for occasional copies
of verse. The baptism of the future Felipe IV., and the
embassy of Lord Nottingham — best known as Howard of
Effingham, the admiral in command against the Invin-
cible Armada — are recorded in courtly fashion by the
anonymous writer of a pamphlet entitled Reladon de lo
sucedido en la Ciudad de Valladolid, G6ngora, who dealt
with both subjects, flouts Cervantes as the pamphleteer ;
but the authorship is doubtful. Cervantes is next heard
of in custody on suspicion of knowing more than he
chose to tell concerning the death of Caspar de Ezpeleta,
in June 1605. Legend makes Ezpeleta the lover of Cer-
vantes' natural daughter, Isabel de Saavedra : " the point
of honour" at once suggests itself, and the incident has
inspired both dramatists and novelists. A conspiracy of
silence on the part of biographers has done Cervantes
much wrong, and is responsible for exaggerated stories
of his guilt. He was discharged after inquiry, and seems
234 SPANISH LITERATURE
to have been entirely innocent of contriving Ezpeleta's
end. Many romantic stories have gathered about the
personality of Isabel: she has been passed upon us as the
daughter of a Portuguese " lady of high quality," and the
prop of her father's declining days. These are idolatrous
inventions : we now know for certain that her mother's
name was Ana Franca de Rojas, a poor woman married
to Alonso Rodriguez, and that the girl herself (who in
1605 was unable to read and write) was indentured as
general servant to Cervantes' sister, Magdalena de Soto-
mayor, in August 1599.* Thence she passed to Cervantes'
household, and it is even alleged that she was twice
married in her father's lifetime. She has been so pic-
turesquely presented by imaginative " Cervantophils,"
that it is necessary to state the humble truth here and
now, for the first time in English. Thus the grotesque
travesty of Cervantes as a plaster saint returns to the
Father of Lies, who begat it. Confirmation of his ex-
ploits as a loose liver in gaming-houses is afforded by
the Memorias de Valladolid, now among the manuscripts
in the British Museum.2
Such diversions as these left him scant time for litera-
ture. The space between 1605 and 1608 yields the
pitiful show of three sonnets in four years : To a
Hermit, To the Conde de Saldanat To a Braggart turned
Beggar. Even this last is sometimes referred to Quevedo.
It should hardly seem that prosperity suited Cervantes.
Meanwhile, his womenfolk gained their bread by taking
in the Marques de Villafranca's sewing. Still, he
made no sign : the author of Don Quixote sank lower
1 See Cristobal Perez de Pastor's Documentor cervantinos hasta ahora
inidilos (Madrid, 1897), pp. 135-137.
J British Museum Add. MSS., 20, 812.
THE NOVELAS EXEMPLARES 235
and lower, writing letters for illiterates at a small fee.
The Letter to Don Diego de Astudillo Carrillo, the Story
of what happens in Seville Gaol (a sequel to Cristobal de
Chaves' sketch made twenty years before), the Dialogue
between Sillenia and Selanto, the three entremeses entitled
Dona Justtna y Calahorra, Los Mirones, and Los Re-
franes — all these are of doubtful authenticity. In April
1609, Cervantes took a thought and mended : he joined
Fray Alonso de la Purificaci6n's new Confraternity of
the Blessed Sacrament, and in 1610 wrote his sonnet in
memory of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. In 1611 he
entered the Academia Selvaje, founded by that Fran-
cisco de Silva whose praises were sung later in the
Viaje del Parnaso, and he prepared that unique com-
pound of fact and fancy, the rarest humour and the most
curious experience — his twelve Novelas Exemplares, which
were licensed on August 8, 1612, and appeared in 1613.
These short tales were written at long intervals of time,
as the internal evidence shows. In the forty-seventh
chapter of Don Quixote there is mention by name of
Rinconete y Cortadillo, a picaresque story of extraordinary
brilliancy and point included among the Exemplary
Novels; and a companion piece is the Coloquio de los
Perros, no less a masterpiece in little. Monipodio, master
of a school for thieves ; his pious jackal, Ganchuelo, who
never steals on Friday ; the tipsy Pipota, who reels as
she lights her votive candle — these are triumphs in the
art of portraiture. Not even Sancho Panza is wittier in
reflection than the dog Berganza, who reviews his many
masters in the light of humorous criticism. No less
distinguished is the presentation, in El Casamiento En-
ganoso, of the picaroons Campuzano and Estefania de
Caicedo ; and as an exercise in fantastic transcription
236 SPANISH LITERATURE
of mania the Licenciado Vidriera lags not behind Don
Quixote. So striking is the resemblance that some have
held the Licentiate for the first sketch of the Knight ; but
an attentive reading shows that he was not conceived
till after Don Quixote was in print. In 1814, Agustfn
Garcfa Arrieta included La Tiafingida (The Mock Aunt)
among Cervantes' novels, and, in a more complete form,
it now finds place in all editions. Admirable as the story
is, the circumstance of its late appearance throws doubt
on its authenticity ; yet who but Cervantes could have
written it ? Perhaps the surest sign of his success is
afforded by the quality and number of his northern
imitators.
" The land that cast out Philip and his God
Grew gladly subject where Cervantes trod"
Despite assertions to the contrary, his Gitanilla is no
original conception, for the character of his gipsy, Preciosa,
is developed from that of Tarsiana in the Apolonio ; yet
from Cervantes' rendering of her, which
" Gave the glad watchword of the gipsies' life,
Where fear took hope and grief took joy to wife"
and from his tale entitled La Fuerza de la Sangre, Middle-
ton's Spanish Gipsy derives. From Cervantes, too, Weber
takes his opera Preciosa, and from Cervantes comes
Hugo's Esmeralda. In Las dos Doncellas Fletcher, who
had already used Don Quixote in the Knight of the Burning
Pestle, finds the root of Love's Pilgrimage ; from El Casa-
miento Enganoso he takes his Rule a Wife and Have a Wife;
and from La Seflora Cornelia he borrows his Chances.
And, as Fielding had rejoiced to own his debt to Cer-
vantes, so Sir Walter has confessed that " the Novelas of
THE VIAJE DEL PARNASO 237
that author had first inspired him with the ambition of
excelling in fiction."
The next performance shows Cervantes tempting fate
as a poet. His Viaje del Parnaso (1614) was suggested
by the Viaggio di Parnaso (1582) of the Perugian, Cesare
Caporali, and is, in effect, a rhymed review of contem-
porary poets. Verse is scarcely a lucky medium for
Cervantic irony, and Cervantes was the least critical
of men. His poem is interesting for its autobiographic
touches, but it degenerates into a mere stream of
eulogy, and when he ventures on an attack he rarely
delivers it with force or point. He thought, perhaps,
to put down bad poets as he had put down bad prose-
writers. But there was this difference, that, though
admirable in prose, he was not admirable in verse. In
the use of the first weapon he is an expert ; in the prac-
tice of the second he is a clever amateur. Cervantes
satirising in prose and Cervantes satirising in verse are
as distinct as Samson unshorn and Samson with his hair
cut. Fortunately he appends a prose postscript, which
reveals him in his finest manner. Nor is this surprising.
Apollo's letter is dated July 22, 1614 ; and we know that,
two days earlier, Sancho Panza had dictated his famous
letter to his wife Teresa. The master had found him-
self once more. The sequel to Don Quixote, promised
in the Preface to the Novelas, was on the road at last.
Meanwhile he had busied himself with a sonnet to be
published at Naples in Juan Domingo Roncallolo's
Varias Aplicaciones, with quatrains for Barrio Angulo,
and stanzas in honour of Santa Teresa.
Moreover, the success of the Novelas induced him to
try the theatre again. In 1615 he published his Ocho
Comedias,y ocho Entremeses nuevos. The eight set pieces
238 SPANISH LITERATURE
are failures ; and when the writer tries to imitate Lope
de Vega, as in the Laberinto de Amor, the failure is con-
spicuous. Nor does the introduction of a Saavedra
among the personages of El Gallardo Espailol save a
bad play. But Cervantes believed in his eight comedias,
as he believed in the eight entremeses which are imitated
from Lope de Rueda. These are sprightly, unpreten-
tious farces, witty in intention and effect, interesting in
themselves and as realistic pictures of low life seen and
rendered at first hand. Of these farcical pieces one,
Pedro de Urdemalas, is even brilliant.
While Cervantes was writing the fifty-ninth chapter of
Don Quixote's Second Part, he learned that a spurious
continuation had appeared (1614) at Tarragona under
the name of Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda. This
has given rise to much angry writing. Avellaneda is
doubtless a pseudonym. The King's confessor, Aliaga,
has been suspected, on the ground that he was once
nicknamed Sancho Panza, and that he thus avenged
himself : the idea is absurd, and the fact that Avellaneda
makes Sancho more offensive and more vulgar than
ever puts the theory out of court. Lope de Vega is also
accused of being Avellaneda, and the charge is based on
this : that (in a private letter) he once spoke slightingly
of Don Quixote, The personal relations between the two
greatest Spanish men of letters were not cordial. Cer-
vantes had ridiculed Lope in the Prologue to Don
Quixote, had belittled him as a playwright, and had
shown hostility in other ways. Lope, secure in his high
seat, made no reply, and in 1612 (in another private
letter) he speaks kindly of Cervantes. " Cervantophils "
insist upon being too clever by half. They first assert
that the outward form of Avellaneda's book was an
AVELLANEDA 239
imitation of Don Quixote, and that the intention was " to
pass off this spurious Second Part as the true one " ;
they then contend that Avellaneda's was " a deliberate
attempt to spoil the work of Cervantes." These two
statements are mutually destructive : one must necessarily
be false. It is also argued, first, that Avellaneda's is a
worthless book ; next, that it was written by Lope, the
greatest figure, save Cervantes, in Spanish literature.
Lope had many jealous enemies, but no contemporary
hints at such a charge, and no proof is offered in sup-
port of it now. Indeed the notion, first started by
Mainez, is generally abandoned. Other ascriptions, in-
volving Blanco de Paz, Ruiz de Alarcdn, Andres Perez,
are equally futile. The most plausible conjecture, due
to D. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, is that Avellaneda
was a certain Aragonese, Alfonso Lamberto. Lamberto's
very obscurity favours this surmise. Had Avellaneda
been a figure of great importance, he had been unmasked
by Cervantes himself, who assuredly was no coward.
We owe to Avellaneda a clever, brutal, cynical, amus-
ing book, which is still reprinted. Nor is this our only
debt to him : he put an end to Cervantes' dawdling and
procured the publication of the second Don Quixote.
Cervantes left it doubtful if he meant to write the sequel ;
he even seems to invite another to undertake it. Nine
years had passed, during which Cervantes made no sign.
Avellaneda, with an eye to profit, wrote his continuation
in good faith, and his insolent Preface is explained by his
rage at seeing the bread taken out of his mouth when the
true sequel was announced in the Preface to the Novelas.
Had not his intrusion stung Cervantes to the quick, the
second Don Quixote might have met the fate of the second
Galatea — promised for thirty years and never finished.
240 SPANISH LITERATURE
As it is, the hurried close of the Second Part is below the
writer's common level, as when he rages at Avellaneda,
and wishes that the latter's book be " cast into the lowest
pit of hell." But this is its single fault, which, for the
rest, is only found in the last fourteen chapters. The
previous fifty-eight form an almost impeccable master-
piece. As an achievement in style, the Second excels
the First Part. The parody of chivalresque books is less
insistent, the interest is larger, the variety of episode is
ampler, the spirit more subtly comic, the new characters
are more convincing, the manner is more urbane, more
assured. Cervantes' First Part was an experiment in
which he himself but half believed ; in the Second he
shows the certainty of an accepted master, confident of
his intention and his popularity. So his career closed
in a blaze of triumph. He had other works in hand :
a play to be called El Engano d los Ojos, the Semanas
del Jar din, the Famoso Bernardo, and the eternal second
Galatea. These last three he promises in the Preface to
Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (1617), a pos-
thumous volume "that dares to vie with Heliodorus,"
and was to be " the best or worst book ever written in
our tongue." Ambitious in aim and in manner, the
Persiles has failed to interest, for all its adventures and
scapes. Yet it contains perhaps the finest, and cer-
tainly the most pathetic passage that Cervantes ever
penned — the noble dedication to his patron, the Conde
de Lemos, signed upon April 19, 1616. In the last grip
of dropsy, he gaily quotes from a romance remembered
from long ago : —
" Puesio ya el pit en el estribo " —
" One foot already in the stirrup." With these words he
LOPE DE VEGA 241
smilingly confronts fate, and makes him ready for the
last post down the Valley of the Shadow. He died on
April 23, nominally on the same day as Shakespeare,
whose death is dated by an unreformed calendar. They
were brethren in their lives and afterwards. Montes-
quieu, in the Lettres Persanes, makes Rica say of the
Spaniards that " le seul de leurs livres qui soit bon est
celui qui a fait voir la ridicule de tous les autres." If
he meant that Don Quixote was the one Spanish book
which has found acceptance all the world over, he
spoke with equal truth and point. A single author at
once national and universal is as much as any literature
can hope to boast.
In his own day Cervantes was shone down by the
ample, varied, magnificent gifts of LOPE FELIX DE VEGA
CARPIO (1562-1635) : a very "prodigy of nature," as his
rival confesses. A prodigy he was from his cradle. At
the age of five he lisped in numbers, and, unable to write,
would bribe his schoolmates with a share of his break-
fast to take down verses at his dictation. He came of
noble highland blood, his father, Felix de Vega, and his
mother, Francisca Fernandez, being natives of Carriedo.
Born in Madrid, he was there educated at the Jesuit
Colegio Imperial, of which he was the wonder. All the
accomplishments were his : still a child, he filled his
copy-books with verses, sang, danced, handled the foil
like a trained sworder. His father, a poet of some ac-
complishment, died early, and Lope forthwith determined
to see the world. With his comrade, Hernando Muftoz,
he ran away from school. The pair reached Astorga,
and turned back to Segovia, where, being short of money,
they tried to sell a chain to a jeweller, who, suspecting
something to be wrong, informed the local Dogberry.
242 SPANISH LITERATURE
The adventurous couple were sent home in charge of
the police. Lope's earliest surviving play, El verdadero
Amante, written in his thirteenth year, is included in
the fourteenth volume of his theatre, printed in 1620.
Nicolas de los Rfos, one of the best actor-managers of
his time, was proud to play in it later ; and, crude as it is
in phrasing, it manifests an astonishing dramatic gift.
The chronology of Lope's youth is perplexing, and the
events of this time are, as a rule, wrongly given by
his biographers, even including that admirable scholar,
Cayetano Alberto de la Barrera y Leirado, whose Nueva
Biografia is almost above praise. In a poetic epistle to
Luis de Haro, Lope asserts that he fought at Terceira
against the Portuguese: "in my third lustre" — en tres
lustros de mi edad primera : and Ticknor is puzzled to
reconcile this with facts. It cannot be done. Lope was
fifteen in 1577, and the expedition to the Azores occurred
in 1582. The obvious explanation is that Lope was in
his fourth lustre, but that, as cuatro would break the
rhythm of the line, he wrote tres instead. Some little
licence is admitted in verse, and literal interpreters are
peculiarly liable to error. At the same time, it should
be said that Lope is coquettish as regards his age.
Thus, he says that he was a child at the time of the
Armada, being really twenty-six ; and that he wrote the
Dragontea in early youth, when, in fact, he was thirty-
five. This little vanity has led to endless confusion. It
is commonly stated that, on Lope's return from the
Azores, he entered the household of GenSnimo Manrique,
Bishop of Avila, who sent him to Alcala de Henares.
That Lope studied at Alcala is certain ; but under-
graduates then matriculated earlier than they do now.
When Lope's first campaign ended he was twenty-one,
i
LOPE THE SOLDIER 243
and therefore too old for college. He was a Bachelor
before ever he went to the wars. The love-affair, re-
counted in his Dorotea, is commonly said to have pre-
vented his taking orders at Alcala : in truth, he never
saw the lady till he came back from the Azores ! He
became private secretary to Antonio Alvarez de Toledo y
Beaumont, fifth Duque de Alba, and grandson of the
great soldier ; but the date cannot be given precisely.
As far back as 1572 he had translated Claudian's Rape of
Proserpine into Castilian verse, and we have already
seen him joined with Cervantes in penning compliment-
ary sonnets for Padilla and L6pez Maldonado(i584). It
may be that, while in Alba's service, he wrote the poems
printed in Pedro de Moncayo's Flor de varios romances
(1589).
The history of these years is obscure. It is usually
asserted that, while in Alba's service, about the year
1584-5, Lope married, and that he was soon afterwards
exiled to Valencia, whence he set out for Lisbon to join
the Invincible Armada. This does not square with Lope's
statement in the Dedication of Querer la propia Desdicha
to Claudio Conde. There he alleges that Conde helped
him out of prison in Madrid, a service repaid by his
helping Conde out of the Serranos prison at Valencia,
and he goes on to say that " before the first down was
on their cheeks " they went to Lisbon to embark on the
Armada. He nowhere alleges that they started from
Valencia, or that the journey followed the banishment.
In an eclogue to the same Conde, Lope avers that he
joined the Armada to escape from Filis (otherwise
Dorotea), and he adds : — " Who could have thought that,
returning from the war, I should find a sweet wife ? "
The question would be pointless if Lope were already
244 SPANISH LITERATURE
married. Moreover, Barrera's theory that the intrigue
with Dorotea ended in 1584 is disproved by the fact that
the Dorotea contains allusions to the Conde de Melgar's
marriage, which, as we know from Cabrera, took place
in 1587. What is certain is that Lope went aboard the
San Juan, and that during the Armada expedition hz
used his manuscript verses in Filis's praise for gun-
wads.
He was a first-class fighting-man, and played his part
in the combats up the Channel, where his brother was
killed beside him during an encounter between the San
Juan and eight Dutch vessels. Disaster never quenched
his spirit nor stayed his pen ; for, when what was left of
the defeated Armada returned to Cadiz, he landed with
the greater part of his Hermosura de Angelica — eleven
thousand verses, written between storm and battle, in
continuation of the Orlando Furioso. First published in
1602, the Angelica comes short of Ariosto's epic nobility,
and is unrelieved by the Italian's touch of ironic fantasy.
Nor can it be called successful even as a sequel : its
very wealth of invention, its redundant episodes and
innumerable digressions, contribute to its failure. But
the verse is singularly brilliant and effective, while the
skill with which the writer handles proper names is
almost Miltonic.
Returned to Spain, Lope composed his pastoral novel,
the Arcadia, which, however, remained unpublished till
1598. Ticknor believed it "to have been written almost
immediately " after Cervantes' Galatea : this cannot be,
for the Arcadia refers to the death of Santa Cruz, which
occurred in 1588, and it discusses in the conventional
manner Alba's love-affairs of 1589-90. The Arcadia,
where Lope figures as Belardo, and Alba as Amfris
tnso,
THE DRAGONTEA 245
makes no pretence to be a transcript of manners or life,
and it is intolerably prolix withal. Yet it goes beyond
its fellows by virtue of its vivid landscapes, its graceful,
flowing verse, and a certain rich, poetic, Latinized prose,
here used by Lope with as much artistry as he showed
in his management of the more familiar kind in the
Dorotea. Its popularity is proved by the publication of
fifteen editions in its author's lifetime. About the year
1590 he married Isabel de Urbina, a distant connection
of Cervantes' mother, and daughter of Felipe II.'s King-
at-Arms. Hereupon followed a duel, wherein Lope
wounded his adversary, and, earlier escapades being
raked up, he was banished the capital. He spent some
time in Valencia, a considerable literary centre ; but in
1594 he signed the manuscript of his play, El Maestro de
danzar, at Tormes, Alba's estate, whence it is inferred that
he was once more in the Duke's service. A new love-
affair with Antonia Trillo de Armenta brought legal
troubles upon him in 1596. His wife apparently died
in 1597.
The first considerable work printed with Lope's name
upon the title-page was his Dragontea (1598), an epic
poem in ten cantos on the last cruise and death of
Francis Drake. We naturally love to think of the mighty
seaman as the patriot, the chiefest of Britannia's bulwarks,
as he figures in Mr. Newbolt's spirited ballad : —
"Drake lies in his hammock till the great Armadas come . . .
Slung at-ween the round shot, listeniri for the drum . . .
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trades plyirf and the oldjlagflyin\
They shall find him *ware an' waking, as they found him long ago"
Odd to say, though, Lope has been censured for not
246 SPANISH LITERATURE
viewing Drake through English Protestant spectacles.
Seeing that he was a good Catholic Spaniard whom Drake
had drummed up the Channel, it had been curious if the
Dragontea were other than it is : a savage denunciation
of that Babylonian Dragon, that son of the devil whose
piracies had tormented Spain during thirty years. The
Dragontea fails not because of its national spirit, which
is wholly admirable, but because of its excessive emphasis
and its abuse of allegory. Its author scarcely intended
it for great poetry ; but, as a patriotic screed, it fulfilled
its purpose, and, when reprinted, it drew an approving
sonnet from Cervantes.
The Dragontea was written while Lope was in the
household of the Marque's de Malpica, whence he passed
as secretary to the lettered Marque's de Sarria, best
known as Conde de Lemos, and as Cervantes' patron.
In 1599 he published his devout and graceful poem,
San Isidro, in honour of Madrid's patron saint. Popular
in subject and execution, the San Isidro enabled him to
repeat in verse the triumph which he had achieved with
the prose of the Arcadia. From this day forward he
was the admitted pontiff of Spanish literature. His
marriage with Juana de Guardo probably dates from
the year 1600. An example of Lope's art in manipulating
the sonnet-form is afforded by Longfellow's Englishing
of The Brook :—
" Laugh of the mountain ! lyre of bird and tree /
Pomp of the meadow ! mirror of the morn!
The soul of April, unto whom are born
The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee !
Although, wherever thy devious current strays,
The lap of earth with gold and silver teems,
To me thy clear proceeding brigJiter seems
Than golden sands that charm each shepherd's gaze.
LOPE'S SONNETS 247
How without guile thy bosom, all transparent
As the pure crystal, lets the curious eye
Thy secrets scan, thy smooth, round pebbles count !
How, without malice murmuring, glides thy current!
0 sweet simplicity of days gone by !
Thou shurist the haunts of man, to dwell in limpid 'fount '/"
Two hundred sonnets in Lope's Rimas are thought to
have been issued separately in 1602 : in any case, they
were published that year at the end of a reprint of the
Angelica. They include much of the writer's sincerest
work, earnest in feeling, skilful and even distinguished
as art. One sonnet of great beauty — To the Tomb of
Teodora Urbina — has led Ticknor into an amusing error
often reproduced. He cites from it a line upon the
"heavenly likeness of my Belisa," notes that this name is
an anagram of Isabel (Lope's first wife), and pronounces
the performance a lament for the poet's mother-in-law.
The Latin epitaph which follows it contains a line, —
" Exactis nondum complevit mensibus annum" —
showing that the supposed mother-in-law died in her
first year. Manifestly the sonnet refers to the writer's
daughter, and, as always happens when Lope speaks
from his paternal heart, is instinct with a passionate
tenderness.
To 1604 belong the five prose books of the Peregrino en
su patria, a prose romance of Panfilo's adventures by sea
and land, partly experienced and partly contrived ; but it
is most interesting for the four autos which it includes,
and for its bibliographical list of two hundred and thirty
plays already written by the author. His quenchless
ambition had led him to rival Ariosto in the Angelica:
in the twenty cantos of his Jerusalen Conquistada he
dares no less greatly by challenging Tasso. Written
17
248 SPANISH LITERATURE
in 1605, the Jerusalen was withheld till 1609. Styled
a " tragic epic " by its creator, it is no more than a
fluent historico-narrative poem, overlaid with embellish-
ments of somewhat cheap and obvious design. In 1612
appeared the Four Soliloquies of Lope de Vega Carpio :
his lament and tears while kneeling before a crucifix begging
pardon for his sins. These four sets of redondillas with
their prose commentaries were amplified to seven when
republished (1626) under the pseudonym of Gabriel
Padecopeo, an obvious anagram. The deaths of Lope's
wife and of his son Carlos inspired the Pastores de Bel/n,
a sacred pastoral of supreme simplicity, truth, and
beauty — as Spanish as Spain herself — which contains
one of the sweetest numbers in Castilian. The Virgin
lulls the Divine Child with a song in Verstegan's manner,
which Ticknor has rendered to this effect : —
" Holy angels and blest,
Through those palms as ye sweep
Hold their branches at rest,
For my babe is asleep.
And ye Bethlehem palm-trees^
As stormy winds rush
In tempest and fury,
Your angry noise hush;
More gently, more gently,
Restrain your wild sweep j
Hold your branches at rest,
My babe is asleep.
My babe all divine,
With earths sorrows oppressed^
Seeks in slumber an instant
His grievings to rest;
He slumbers, he slumbers,
Oh, hush, then, and keep
Your branches all still,
My babe is asleep !
LOPE THE PRIEST 249
Cold blasts wheel about kirn,
A rigorous storm,
And ye see how, in vain,
I would skelter his form.
Holy angels and blest,
As above me ye sweep,
Hold these branches at rest,
My babe is asleep ! "
Lope lived a life of gallantry, and troubled his wife's
last years by his intrigue with Marfa de Lujan. This
lady bore him the gifted son, Lope Felix, who was
drowned at sea, and the daughter Marcela, whose
admirable verses, written after her profession in the
Convent of Barefoot Trinitarians, proclaim her kinship
with the great enchanter. A relapsing, carnal sinner,
Lope was more weak than bad : his rare intellectual
gifts, his renown, his overwhelming temperament, his
seductive address, his imperial presence, led him into
temptation. Amid his follies and sins he preserved
a touching faith in the invisible, and his devotion
was always ardent. Upon the death of his wife in 1612
or later, he turned to religion with characteristic im-
petuosity, was ordained priest, and said his first mass
in 1614 at the Carmelite Church in Madrid. It was an
ill-advised move. Ticknor, indeed, speaks of a " Lope,
, no longer at an age to be deluded by his passions " ;
but no such Lope is known to history. While a
Familiar of the Inquisition the true Lope wrote love-
letters for the loose -living Duque de Sessa, till at
last his confessor threatened to deny him absolution.
Nor is this all : his intrigue with Marta de Nevares
Santoyo, wife of Roque Hernandez de Ayala, was
notorious. The pious Cervantes publicly jeered at the
fallen priest's "continuous and virtuous occupation,"
250 SPANISH LITERATURE
forgetting his own coarse pranks with Ana de Rojas ;
and G6ngora hounded his master down with a copy
of venomous verses passed from hand to hand. Those
who wish to study the abasement of an august spirit
may do so in the filtimos Amores de Lope de Vega
Carpio, forty-eight letters published by Jos6 Ibero Ribas
y Canfranc.1 If they judge by the standard of Lope's
time, they will deal gently with a miracle of genius,
unchaste but not licentious ; like that old Dumas, who,
in the matters of gaiety, energy, and strength is his
nearest modern compeer. His sin was yet to find him
out. He vanquished every enemy : the child of his old
age vanquished him.
Devotion and love-affairs served not to stay his pen.
His Triunfo de la fe en el Japdn (1618) is interesting
as an example of Lope's practice in the school of
historical prose, stately, devout, and elegant. In honour
of Isidore, beatified and then canonised, he presided
at the poetic jousts of 1620 and 1622, witnessing the
triumph of his son, Fe"lix Lope ; standing literary god-
father to the boyish Calderon ; declaiming, in the char-
acter of Tome Burguillos, the inimitable verse which
hit between wind and water. Perhaps Lope was never
happier than in this opportunity of speaking his own
witty lines before the multitude. His noble person,
his facility, his urbane condescension, his incomparable
voice, which thrilled even clowns when he intoned his
mass — all these gave him the stage as his own posses-
sion. Heretofore the common man had only read him:
1 This is taken by all English writers, and appears in the British Museum
Catalogue, as a real name. I only reveal an open secret if I point out that
it is a perfect anagram for Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, the excellent scholar to
whom we owe the Cancionero musical de lot siglos xv. y xvi. and the new
edition of Encina's theatre.
THE FILOMENA 251
once seen and heard, Lope ruled Castilian literature as
Napoleon ruled France.
His Filomena (1621) contains a poetic defence of him-
self (the Nightingale) against Pedro de Torres Ramila
(the Thrush), who, in 1617, had violently attacked Lope
in his Spongia, which seems to have vanished, and is
only known by extracts embodied in the Expostulatio
Spongicz, written by Francisco L6pez de Aguilar Coutino
under the name of Julius Columbarius. Polemics apart,
the chief interest of the Filomena volume lies in its short
prose story, Las Fortunas de Diana, an experiment which
the author repeated in the three tales — La Desdicha por
la honra, La prudente Venganza, and Guzman el Bravo
— appended to his Circe (1624), a poem, in three cantos,
on Ulysses his adventures. The five cantos of the
Triunfos divinos are pious exercises in the Petrarchan
manner, with forty-four sonnets given as a postscript.
Five cantos go to make up the Corona Trdgica (1627),
a religious epic with Mary Stuart for heroine. Lope has
been absurdly censured for styling Queen Elizabeth a
Jezebel and an Athaliah, and for regarding Mary as a
Catholic martyr. This criticism implies a strange intel-
lectual confusion ; as though a veteran of the Armada
could be expected to write in the spirit of a Clapham
Evangelical ! Religious squabbles apart, he had an old
score to settle ; for —
" Where are the galleons of Spain?"
was a question which troubled good Spaniards as
much as it delighted Mr. Dobson. Dedicated to Pope
Urban VIII., the poem won for its author the Cross
of St. John and the title of Doctor of Divinity. Three
years later he issued his Laurel de Apolo, a cloying
252 SPANISH LITERATURE
eulogy on some three hundred poets, as remarkable for
its omissions as for its flattering of nonentities. The
Dorotea (1632), a prose play fashioned after the model
of the Celestina, was one of Lope's favourites, and is
interesting, not merely for its graceful, familiar style,
retouched and polished for over thirty years, but as a
piece of self-revelation. The Rimas del licenciado Tomd
de Burguillos (1634) closes with the mock-heroic Gato-
maquia, a vigorous and brilliant travesty of the Italian
epics, replenished with such gay wit as suffices to keep it
sweet for all time.
Lope de Vega's career was drawing to its end. The
elopement, with a court gallant, of his daughter, Antonia
Clara, broke him utterly.1 He sank into melancholy,
sought to expiate by lashing himself with the discipline
till the walls of his room were flecked with his blood.
Withal he wrote to the very end. On August 23, 1635,
s he composed his last poem, El Siglo de Oro. Four days
later he was dead. Madrid followed him to his grave,
and the long procession turned from the direct path
to pass before the window of the convent where his
daughter, Sor Marcela, was a nun. A hundred and
fifty-three Spanish authors bewailed the Phoenix in the
Fama pdstuma, and fifty Italians published their laments
at Venice under the title of Essequie poetiche.
Lope left no achievement unattempted : the epic,
Homeric or Italian, the pastoral, the romantic novel,
poems narrative and historical, countless eclogues,
epistles, not to speak of short tales, of sonnets innu-
merable, of verses dashed off on the least occasion. His
1 The seducer is conjectured to be Olivares' son-in-law, the Duque de
Medina de las Torres.
LOPE'S VERSATILITY 253
voluminous private letters, full of wit and malice and
risky anecdote, are as brilliant and amusing as they are
unedifying. It is sometimes alleged that he deliberately
capped Cervantes' work ; and, as instances in this sort,
we are bid to note that the Galatea was followed by
Dorotea, the Viaje del Parnaso by the Laurel de Apolo.
In the first place, exclusive "spheres of influence" are
not recognised in literature ; in the second, the observa-
tion is pointless. The Galatea is a pastoral novel, the
Dorotea is not; the first was published in 1585, the
second in 1632. Again, the Viaje del Parnaso appeared
in 1614, the Laurel de Apolo in 1630. The first model
was the Canto del Turia of Gil Polo. It would be as
reasonable — that is to say, it would be the height of
unreason — to argue that Persiles y Sigismunda was an
attempt to cap the Peregrino en su patria. The truth
is, that Lope followed every one who made a hit :
Heliodorus, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso. A frank success
spurred him to rivalry, and the difficulty of repeating
it was for him a fresh stimulus. Obstacles existed to be
vanquished. He was ever ready to accept a challenge ;
hence such a dexterous tour deforce as his famous Sonnet
on a Sonnet ', imitated in a well-known rondeau by Voiture,
translated again and again, and by none more successfully
than by Mr. Gibson : —
" To "write a sonnet doth Juana press me,
I've never found me in such stress and pain j
A sonnet numbers fourteen lines 'tis plain,
And three are gone ere I can say, God bless me /
/ thought that spinning rhymes might sore oppress me,
Yet here Fin midway in the last quatrain;
And, if the foremost tercet I can gain,
The quatrains need not any more distress me.
254 SPANISH LITERATURE
To the first tercet I have got at last,
And travel through it with such right good-will.
That with this line I've finished it, / ween.
I'm in the second 'now ', and see how fast
The thirteenth line comes tripping from my quill —
Hurrah, 'tis done ! Count if there be fourteen / "
The foregoing list of Lope's exploits in literature, cur-
tailed as it is, suffices for fame ; but it would not suffice
to explain that matchless popularity which led to the
publication — suppressed by the Inquisition in 1647 — of a
creed beginning thus : — " I believe in Lope de Vega the
Almighty, the Poet of heaven and earth." So far we have
but reached the threshold of his temple. His unique
renown is based upon the fact that he created a national
theatre, that he did for Spain what Shakespeare did for
England. G6mez Manrique and Encina led the way
gropingly ; Torres Naharro, though he bettered all that
had been done, lived out of Spain ; Lope de Rueda and
Timoneda brought the drama to the people ; Artieda,
Virues, Argensola, and Cervantes tore their passions to
tatters in conformity with their own strange precepts,
which the last-named would have enforced by a literary
dictatorship. Moreover, Argensola and the three veterans
of Lepanto wrote to please themselves : Lope invented a
new art to enchant mankind. And he succeeded beyond
all ambition. Nor does he once take on the airs of
philosopher or pedant : rather, in a spirit of self-
mockery, he makes his confession in the Arte Nuevo de
hacer Comedias (New Mode of Playwriting), which his
English biographer, Lord Holland, translates in this
wise : —
" Who writes by rule must please himself alone,
Be damrid without remorse, and die unknown.
LOPE'S FACILITY 255
Such force has habit— for the untaught fools,
Trusting their own, despise the ancient rules.
Yet true it is, I too have written plays.
The wiser few, who judge with skill, might praise j
But when I see how show (and nonsense) draws
The crowds and — more than all — the fair's applause,
Who still are forward with indulgent rage
To sanction every master of the stage,
I, doontd to write, the public taste to hit,
Resume the barbarous taste 'twas vain to quit :
I lock up every rule before I write,
Plautus and Terence drive from out my sight, . . .
To vulgar standards then I square my play,
Writing at ease; for, since the public pay,
'Tis just, methinks, we by their compass steer,
And write the nonsense that they love to hear"
Thus Lope in his bantering avowal of 1609. Yet what
takes the form of an apology is in truth a vaunt ; for it
was Lope's task to tear off the academic swaddling-bands
of his predecessors, and to enrich his country with a
drama of her own. Nay, he did far more : by his single
effort he dowered her with an entire dramatic literature.
The very bulk of his production savours of the fabulous.
In 1603 he had already written over two hundred plays ;
in 1609 the number was four hundred and eighty-three ;
in 1620 he confesses to nine hundred ; in 1624 he reaches
one thousand and seventy ; and in 1632 the total amounted
to one thousand five hundred. According to Montalban,
editor of the Fama ptistuma, the grand total, omitting
entremeses, should be one thousand eight hundred plays,
and over four hundred autos. Of these about four hun-
dred plays and forty autos survive. If we take the figures
as they stand, Lope de Vega wrote more than all the
Elizabethan dramatists put together. Small wonder that
Charles Fox was staggered when his nephew, Lord
256 SPANISH LITERATURE
Holland, spoke of Lope's twenty million lines. Facility
and excellence are rarely found together, yet Lope com-
bined both qualities in such high degree that any one
with enough Spanish to read him need never pass a
dull moment so long as he lives.
Hazlitt protests against the story which tells that Lope
wrote a play before breakfast, and in truth it rests on no
good authority. But it is history that, not once, but an
hundred times, he wrote a whole piece within twenty-
four hours. Working in these conditions, he must needs
have the faults inseparable from haste. He repeats his
thought with small variation ; he utilises old solutions
for a dramatic impasse ; and his phrase is too often more
vigorous than finished. But it is not as a master of
artistic detail that Lope's countrymen place him beside
Cervantes. First, and last, and always, he is a great
creative genius. He incarnates the national spirit, adapts
popular poetry to dramatic effects, substitutes characters
for abstractions, and, in a word, expresses the genius of
a people. It is true that he farely finds a perfect form
for his utterance, that he constantly approaches perfection
without quite attaining unto it, that his dramatic instinct
exceeds his literary execution. Yet he survives as the
creator of an original form. His successors improved
upon him in the matter of polish, yet not one of them
made an essential departure of his own, not one invented
a radical variant upon Lope's method. Tirso de Molina
may exceed him in force of conception, as Ruiz de
Alarc6n outshines him in ethical significance, in exposi-
tion of character ; yet Tirso and Alarc6n are but develop-
ing the doctrine laid down by the master in El Castigo
sin Venganza — the lesson of truth, realism, fidelity to the
actual usages of the time. Tirso, Alarc6n, and Calder6n
LOPE'S INVENTION 257
are a most brilliant progeny ; but the father of them all
is the unrivalled Lope. He seized upon what germs of
good existed in Torres Naharro, Rueda, and Cueva ; but
his debt to them was small, and he would have found his
way without them. Without Lope we should have had
no Tirso, no Calderon.1
Producing as he produced, much of his work may be
considered as improvisation ; even so, he takes place
as the first improvisatore in the world, and compels
recognition as, so to say, "a natural force let loose."
He imagined on a Napoleonic scale ; he contrived inci-
dent with such ease and force and persuasiveness as
make the most of his followers seem poor indeed ; and
his ingenuity of diversion is miraculously fresh after
nearly three hundred years. His gift never fails him,
whether he deal with historical tragedy, with the heroic
legend, with the presentation of picaresque life, or with
the play of intrigue and manners — the comedia de capa
y espada. This last, "the cloak and sword play" is
as much his personal invention as is the gracioso — the
comic character — as is the enredo — the maze of plot — as is
the " point of honour," as is the feminine interest in his
best work. Hitherto the woman had been allotted a
secondary, an incidental part, ludicrous in the entremh,
sentimental in the set piece. Lope, the expert in gallantry,
in manners, in observation, placed her in her true
setting, as an ideal, as the mainspring of dramatic
motive and of chivalrous conduct. He professed an
abstract approval of the classic models ; but his natural
1 Lope's popularity spread as far as America. Three of his plays were
translated into the nahuatl dialect by Bartolome" Alba. See Jose Mariano
Beristain de Souza's Biblioteca Hispano- Americana (Mexico, 1816), voL L
p. 64.
258 SPANISH LITERATURE
impulse was too strong for him. An imitatoi" he
could not be, save in so far as he, in his own phrase,
" imitated men's actions, and reproduced the manners
of the age." He laid down rules which in practice he
flouted ; for he realised that the business of the scene
is to hold an audience, is to interest, to surprise, to move.
He could not thump a pulpit in an empty hall : he
perceived that a play which fails to attract is — for the
playwright's purpose — a bad play. He can be read
with infinite pleasure ; yet he rarely attempted drama
for the closet. Emotion in action was his aim, and he
achieved it with a certainty which places him among the
greatest gods of the stage.
It is difficult to fix upon the period when Lope's
dramatic genius was accepted by his public : 1592 seems
a likely date. He took no interest in publishing his
plays, though El Perseguido was issued by a Lisbpn
pirate so early as 1603. Eight volumes of his theatre
were in print before he was induced in 1617 to authorise
an edition which was called the Ninth Part, and after
1625 he printed no more dramatic pieces, despite the
fact that he produced them more abundantly than ever.
We may, perhaps, assume that the best of his work has
reached us. Among the finest of his earlier efforts is
justly placed El Acero de Madrid (The Madrid Steel), from
which Moliere has borrowed the Medecin malgrf !ut, and
the opening scene, as Ticknor renders it, admirably
illustrates Lope's power of interesting his audience from
the very outset by a situation which explains itself.
Lisardo, with his friend Riselo, enamoured of Belisa,
awaits the latter at the church-door, and, just as Riselo
declares that he will wait no more, Belisa enters with
her pious aunt, Teodora, as duena : —
LOPE'S DIALOGUE 259
Teodor^ Show more of gentleness and modesty ;
Of gentleness in walking quietly,
Of modesty in looking only down
Upon the earth you tread.
Belisa. ' Tis what I do.
Teodora, What ? When you're looking straight towards that man?
Belisa. Did you not bid me look upon the earth ?
And what is he but just a bit of it?
Teodora. / said the earth whereon you tread, my niece.
Belisa. But that whereon I tread is hidden quite
With my own petticoat and walking-dress.
Teodora. Words such as these become no well-bred maid.
But, by your mother's blessed memory,
r II put an end to all your pretty tricks; —
What ? You look back at him again.
Belisa. Who? If
Teodora. Yes, you; — and make him secret signs besides.
Belisa. Not I ! 'Tis only that you troubled me
With teasing questions and perverse replies,
So that I stumbled and looked round to see
Who would prevent my fall.
Riselo (to Lisardo). She falls again.
Be quick and help her.
Lisardo (to Belisa). Pardon me, lady,
And forgive my glove.
Teodora. Who ever saw the like ?
Belisa. / thank you, sir; you saved me from a fall.
Lisardo. An angel, lady, might have fallen so,
Or stars that shine with heaven's own blessed light.
Teodora. /, too, can fall; but 'tis upon your trick.
Good gentleman, farewell to you !
Lisardo. Madam,
Your servant. (Heaven save us from such spleen /)
Teodora. A pretty fall you made of it ; and now I hope
You'll be content, since they assisted you.
Belisa. And you no less content, since now you have
The means to tease me for a week to come.
Teodora. But why again do you turn back your head?
Belisa. Why, sure you think it wise and wary
To notice well the place I stumbled at,
Lest I should stumble there when next I pass.
260 SPANISH LITERATURE .
Teodora. Mischief befall you ! But I knoiv your ways !
You'// not deny this time you looked upon the youth ?
Belisa. Deny it? No!
Teodora. You dare confess it, then ?
Belisa. Be sure I dare. You saw him help me;
And would you have me fail to thank him for it?
Teodora. Go to ! Come home ! come home ! "
This is a fair specimen, even in its sober English
dress, of Lope's gallant dialogue and of his consummate
skill in gripping his subject. No playwright has ever
shown a more infallible tact, a more assured confidence
in his own resources. He never attempts to puzzle
his audience with a dull acrostic : complicated as his
plot may be (and he loves to introduce a double intrigue
when the chance proffers), he exposes it at the outset
with an obvious solution ; but not one in twenty can
guess precisely how the solution is to be attained. And,
till the last moment, his contagious, reckless gaiety, his
touches of perplexing irony, his vigilant invention, help
to thrill and vivify the interest.
Yet has he all the defects of his facility. In an indif-
ferent mood, besieged by managers for more and more
plays, he would set forth upon a piece, not knowing
what was to be its action, would indulge in a triple plot
of baffling complexity eked out by incredible episodes.
Even his ingenuity failed to find escape from such
unprepared situations. Still it is fair to say that such
instances are rare with him : time upon time his dra-
matic instinct saved him where a less notable inventor
must have succumbed. He could create character ; he
was an artist in construction ; he knew what could, and
could not, be done upon the stage. Like Dumas, he
needed but " four trestles, four boards, two actors, and a
passion " ; and, at his best, he rises to the greatest occa-
LOPE'S FAULTS AND VIRTUES 261
sion. In a single scene, in an act entire, you shall read
him with wonder and delight for his force and truth and
certainty. Yet the trail of carelessness is upon his last
acts, and his conscience sometimes sleeps ere his cur-
tain falls. The fact that he thought more of a listener
than of ten readers comes home to a constant student.
Lope had few theories as to style, and he rarely aims at
sheer beauty of expression, at simple felicity of phrase.
Hence his very cleverness grows wearisome at last.
But, after all, he must be judged by the true historic
standard : his achievement must be compared with what
preceded, not with what came after him. Tirso de
Molina and Calderon and Moreto grew the flower from
Lope's seed. He took the farce as Lope de Rueda left
it, and transformed its hard fun by his humane and
sparkling wit. He inherited the cold mediaeval morality,
and touched it into life by the breath of devout imagina-
tion. He re-shaped the crude collection of massacres
which Virues mistook for tragedy, and produced effects
of dread and horror with an artistry of his own devising,
a selection, a conscience, a delicate vigour all unknown
until he came. And for the comedia de capa y espada, it
springs direct from his own cunning brain, unsuggested
and even unimagined by any forerunner.
It were hopeless to analyse any part of the immense
theatre which he bequeathed to the world. But among
his best tragedies may be cited EL Castigo sin Venganza,
with its dramatic rendering of the Duke of Ferrara sen-
tencing his adulterous wife and incestuous son to death.
Among his historic dramas none surpasses El Me/or
Alcalde el Key, with its presentation of the model Spanish
heroine, Elvira ; of the feudal baron, Tello ; and of the
King as the buckler of his people, the strong man doing
262 SPANISH LITERATURE
justice in high places : a most typical piece of character,
congenial to the aristocratic democracy of Spain. A
more morbid version of the same monarchical senti-
ment is given in La Estrella de Sevilla, the argument of
which is brief enough for quotation. King Sancho el
Bravo falls enamoured of Busto Tavera's sister, Estrella,
betrothed to Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas. Having vainly
striven to win over Busto, the King follows the advice
of Arias, corrupts her slave, enters Estrella's room, is
there discovered, is challenged by Busto, and escapes
with a sound skin. The slave, confessing her share in
the scheme, is killed by the innocent heroine's brother.
Meanwhile, the King determines upon Busto's death,
summons Sancho Ortiz, and bids him slay a certain
criminal guilty of lese-majesti. Herewith the King offers
Sancho a guarantee against consequences. Sancho
Ortiz destroys it, saying that he asks for nothing better
than the King's word, and ends by begging the sovereign
to grant him the hand of an unnamed lady. To this
the King accedes, and he hands Sancho Ortiz a paper
containing the name of the doomed man. After much
hesitation and self-torment, Sancho Ortiz resolves to do
his duty to his King, slays Busto, is seized, refuses
to explain, undergoes sentence of death, and is finally
pardoned by King Sancho, who avows his own guilt,
and endeavours to promote the marriage between Sancho
Ortiz and Estrella. For an obvious reason they refuse,
and the curtain falls upon Estrella's determination to get
her to a nunnery.
Thus baldly told, the story resembles a thousand
others ; under Lope's hand it throbs with life and
movement and emotion. His dialogue is swift and
strong and appropriate, whether he personifies the blind
LOPE'S IMITATORS 263
passion of the King, the incorruptibility of Busto, the
feudal ideal of Sancho Ortiz, or the strength and
sweetness of Estrella. Of dialogue he is the first and
best master on the Spanish stage : more choice, if less
powerful, than Tirso ; more natural, if less altisonant,
than Calderon. The dramatic use of certain metrical
forms persisted as he sanctioned it : the decimas for
laments, the romance for exposition, the lira for heroic
declamation, the sonnet to mark time, the redondilla for
love-passages. His lightness of touch, his gaiety and
resourcefulness are exampled in La Dama Melindrosa
(The Languishing Lady), as good a cloak-and-sword
play as even Lope ever wrote. His gift of sombre
conception is to be seen in Dineros son Calidad (Money
is Rank), where his contrivance of the King of Naples'
statue addressing Octavio is the nearest possible
approach to Tirso's figures of the Commander and of
Don Juan.
Whether or not Tirso took the idea from Lope
cannot well be decided ; but if he did so, he was no
worse than the rest of the world. For ages dramatists
of all nations have found Lope de Vega "good to steal
from," and in many forms he has diverted other countries
than the Spains. Alexandre Hardy is said by tradition
to have exploited him vigorously, and probably we
should find the imitations among Hardy's lost plays.
Jean Mairet is reputed to have borrowed generously,
and an undoubted follower is Jean Rotrou, many of
whose pieces — from the early Occasions perdues and La
belle. Alfrede to his last effort, Don Lope de Cardonne —
are boldly annexed from Lope. D'Ouville, in Les Moris
vivants and in Aimer sans savoir qui, exploited Lope
to the profit of French playgoers. It is a rash con-
18
264 SPANISH LITERATURE
jecture which identifies the Wild Gallant with the Galdn
cscarmentado, inasmuch as the latter play is even still
" inedited," and could scarcely have reached Dryden ;
but it cannot be doubted that when the sources of our
Restoration drama are traced out, Lope will be found
to rank with Calder6n, and Moreto, and Rojas Zorrilla.
Yet his chief glory must, like Burns's, be ever local.
Cervantes, for all his national savour, might conceivably
belong to any country ; but Lope de Vega is the in-
carnate Spains. His gaiety, his suppleness, his adroit
construction, his affluence, his realism, are eminently
Spanish in their strength ; his heedless form, his jour-
nalistic emphasis, his inequality, his occasional incoher-
ence, his anxiety to please at any cost, are eminently
Spanish in their weakness. He lacks the universal note
of Shakespeare, being chiefly for his own time and not
for all the ages. Shakespeare, however, stands alone
in literature. It is no small praise to say that Lope
follows him on a lower plane. There are two great
creators in the European drama : Shakespeare founds
the English theatre, Lope de Vega the Spanish, each
interpreting the genius of his people with unmatched
supremacy. And unto both there came a period of
eclipse. That very generation which Lope had be-
wildered, dominated, and charmed by his fantasy turned
to the worship of Calder6n. Nor did he profit by the
romantic movement headed by the Schlegels and by
Tieck. For them, as for Goethe, Spanish literature
was incarnated by Cervantes and by Calder6n. The
immense bulk of Lope's production, the rarity of his
editions, the absence of any representative translation,
caused him to be overlooked. To two men — to
Augustfn Duran in Spain and to Grillparzer in Germany
LOPE'S ACHIEVEMENT 265
— he owes his revival ; l and, in more modest degree,
Lord Holland and George Henry Lewes have furthered
his due recognition. The present tendency is, perhaps,
to overrate him, and to substitute uncritical adoration
for uncritical neglect. Yet he deserves the fame which
grows from day to day ; for if he have bequeathed us
little that is exquisite in art — as Los Pastores de Betin
— the \vorld is his debtor for a new and singular form
of dramatic utterance. In so much he is not only a
great executant in the romantic drama, a virtuoso of
unexcelled resource and brilliancy. He is something
still greater : the typical representative of his race, the
founder of a great and comprehensive genre. The genius
of Cervantes was universal and unique ; Lope's was
unique but national. Cervantes had the rarer and more
perfect endowment. But they are immortals both ; and,
paradox though it may seem, a second Cervantes is a
likelier miracle than a second Lope de Vega.
In 1599, the year following upon the issue of Lope's
Dragontea, the picaresque tradition of Lazarillo de Tormes
was revived by the Sevillan MATEO ALEMAN (fl. ? 1550-
1609) in the First Part of his Atalaya de la Vida humana:
Vida del Ptcaro Guzman de Alfarache. The alternative
title — the Watch-Tower of Human Life — was rejected by
the reading public, which, to the author's annoyance,
insisted on speaking of the Picaro or Rogue. Little is
known of Aleman's life, save that he took his Bachelor's
degree at Seville in 1565. He is conjectured to have
visited Italy, perhaps as a soldier, is found serving in the
Treasury so early as 1568, and, after twenty years, left
1 See M. Farinelli's learned study, Grillparztr und Lope de Vega (Berlin,
1894).
266 SPANISH LITERATURE
the King's service as poor as he entered it. A passage
in his Ortografla Castellana, published at Mexico in 1609,
is thought to show that he was a printer ; but this is
surmise. That he emigrated to America seems certain ;
but the date of his death is unknown.
His Guzman de Alfarache is an amplified version of
Lazaro's adventures ; and, though he adds little to the
first conception, his abundant episode and interminable
moralisings hit the general taste. Twenty-six editions,
amounting to some fifty thousand copies, appeared within
six years of the first publication : not even Don Quixote
had such a vogue. Nor was it less fortunate abroad. In
1623 it was admirably translated by James Mabbe in a
version for which Ben Jonson wrote a copy of verses in
praise of
" this Spanish Proteus; who, though writ
But in one tongue, was formed with the worlds wit;
And hath the noblest mark of a good book,
That an ill man dares not securely look
Upon it, but will loathe, or let it pass,
As a deformed face doth a true glass"
It is curious to note that Mabbe's rendering appeared
in the same year as Shakespeare's First Folio, to which
Ben Jonson also contributed ; but while the Rogue
reached its fourth edition in 1656, the third edition of
the First Folio was not printed till 1664.
The pragmatical cant and the moral reflections which
weary us as much as they wearied the French trans-
lator, Le Sage, were clearly to the liking of Ben Jonson
and his contemporaries. Guzman's experiences as boots
at an inn, as a thief in Madrid, as a soldier at Genoa, as a
jester at Rome, are told with a certain impudent spirit ;
but the "moral intention" of the author obtrudes itself
MATED ALEMAN 267
with an insistence that defeats its own object, and the
subsidiary tales of Dorido and Clorinia, of Osmi'n and
Daraja — a device imitated in Don Quixote — are digres-
sions of neither interest nor relevancy. The popularity
of the book was so great as to induce imitation. While
Aleman was busied with his devout Vida de San Antonio
de Padua (1604), or perhaps with his fragmentary versions
of Horace, a spurious sequel was published (1601) by a
Valencian lawyer, Juan Marti, who took the pseudonym
of Mateo Lujan de Sayavedra. Marti had somehow man-
aged to see Aleman's manuscript of the Second Part, and,
in so much, his trick was far baser than Avellaneda's.
Aleman's self-control under greater provocation contrasts
most favourably with Cervantes' petulance. In the true
Second Part he good-humouredly acknowledges his com-
petitor's "great learning, his nimble wit, his deep judg-
ment, his pleasant conceits"; and he adds that "his
discourses throughout are of that quality and condition
that I do much envy them, and should be proud that
they were mine." And having thus put his rival in the
wrong, Aleman proceeds to introduce among his person-
ages a Sayavedra who would pass himself off as a native
of Seville : — " but all were lies that he told me ; for he
was of Valencia, whose name, for some just causes, I
conceal." Sayavedra figures as Guzman's bonnet and
jackal till he ends by suicide, and he is made to supply
whatever entertainment the book contains. Far below
Lazarillo de Tormes in caustic observation and in humour,
Guzman de Alfarache is a rapid and easy study of black-
guardism, forcible and diverting despite its unctuousness,
and written in admirable prose.
So much cannot be claimed for the Picara Justina
(1605) of Francisco Lopez de TJbeda, who is commonly
268 SPANISH LITERATURE
identified as the Dominican, ANDR£S P£REZ, author of a
Vida de San Raymundo de Peftafort and of other pious
works. His Picara Justina was long in maturing, for he
confesses to having "augmented after the publication
of the admired work of the picaro," Guzman ; whom
Justina, in fact, ends by marrying. Pe"rez has acquired a
notorious reputation for lubricity ; yet it is hard to say
how he came by it, since he is no more indecent than
most picaresque writers. He lacks wit and invention ;
his style, the most mannered of his time, is full of
pedantic turns, unnatural inversions and verbal eccen-
tricities wherewith he seeks to cover his bald imagi-
nation and his witless narrative. But his freaks of
vocabulary, his extravagant provincialisms, lend him a
certain philological importance which may account for
the reprints of his volume. It may be added that, in
his Picara, P6rez anticipates Cervantes' trifling find of
the versos de cabo roto ; and, from the angry attack upon
the monk in the Viaje del Pamaso, it seems safe to infer
that Cervantes resented being forestalled by one who
had probably read the Quixote in manuscript.1
A more successful attempt in the same kind is the
Reladones de la Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon by
Vicente Espi.nel (? 1544-1634), a poor student at Sala-
manca, a soldier in Italy and the Low Countries, and
finally a priest in Madrid. His Diversas Rimas (1591)
are correct, spirited exercises, in new metrical forms,
including versions of Horace which, in the last century,
gave rise to a bitter polemic between Iriarte and L6pez
de Sedano. Moreover, Espinel is said to have added a
1 It seems probable that Cervantes and Pe*rez were both anticipated by
Alonso Alvarez de Soria, who was finally hanged. See Bartolome Jose
Gallardo, Ensayo de una Bibliottca Espaftola (Madrid, 1863, vol. i., col. 285).
PfiREZ DE HITA 269
fifth siring to the guitar. But it is by his Marcos de
Obrezon (1618) that he is best knnwn. Voltaire alleged
that Gil Bias was a mere translation of Marcos de
Obregon, but the only foundation for this pretty exercise
in fancy is that Le Sage borrowed a few incidents from
Espinel, as he borrowed from Velez de Guevara and
others. The book is excellent of its kind, brilliantly
phrased, full of ingenious contrivance, of witty obser-
vation, and free from the long digressions which disfigure
Guzman de Alfarache. Espinel knew how to build a
story and how to tell it graphically, and his artistic
selection of incident makes the reading of his Marcos
a pleasure even after three centuries.
As the picaresque novel was to supply the substance
of Charles Sorel's Francion and of Paul Scarron's Roman
Comzque, so the Almahide of Mile. d,e Scudery and the
Zayde of Mme. de Lafayette find their root in the
Hispano-Mauresque historical novel. This invention we
owe to GINKS PEREZ DE HITA of Murcia (ft*. 1604), a
soldier who served in the expedition against the Moris-
cos during the Alpujarra rising. His Guerras civiles de
Granada was published in two parts — the first in 1595,
and the second, which is distinctly inferior, in 1604.
The author's pretence of translating from the Arabic of
a supposititious Ibn Hamin is refuted by the fact that the
authority of Spanish chroniclers is continually cited as
final, and the fact that the point of view is conspicuously
Christian. Some tittle of history there is in Perez de
Hita, but the value of his work lies in his own fantastic
transcription of life in Granada during the last weeks
before its surrender. Challenges, duels between Moorish
knights, personal encounters with Christian champions,
harem intrigues, assassinations, jousts, sports, and festivals
2/o SPANISH LITERATURE
held while the enemy is without the gates — such circum-
stances as these make the texture of the story, which is
written with extraordinary grace and ease. Archaeolo-
gists join with Arabists in censuring Perez de Hita's
detail, and historians are scandalised by his disdain for
facts ; yet to* most of us he is more Moorish than the
Moors, and his vivid rendering of a great and ancient
civilisation on the eve of ruin is more complete and
impressive than any that a pile of literal chronicles can
yield. As a literary artist he is better in his first part
than in his second, where he is embarrassed by a
knowledge of events in which he bore a part ; yet,
even so, he never fails to interest, and the beauty of
his style would alone suffice for a reputation. A story
of doubtful authority represents Scott as saying that,
if he had met with the Guerras civiles de Granada in
earlier days, he would have chosen Spain as the scene
of a Waverley Novel. Whatever be the truth of this
report, we cannot doubt that Sir Walter must have read
with delight his predecessor's brilliant performance in
the province of the historical novel.
The Rototancefo General, published at Madrid in 1600,
and amplified in the reprint of 1604, is often described
as a collection of old ballads, made in continuation of
the anthologies arranged by Nucio and Najera. Old, as
applied to romances, has a relative meaning ; but even
in the lowest sense the word can scarcely be used of the
songs in the Romancero General, which is very largely
made up of the work of contemporary poets. Another
famous volume of lyrics is Pedro Espinosa's Flares de
Poetas ilustres de Espafla (1605), which includes specimens
of Camoes, Barahona de Soto, Lope de Vega, G6ngora,
Quevedo, Salas Barbadillo, and others of less account.
ANTONIO P^REZ 271
Of minor singers, such as L6pez Maldonado, the friend
of Cervantes and of Lope, there were too many ; but
Maldonado's Cancionero (1586) reveals a combination of
sincerity and technical excellence which distinguishes
him from the crowd of fluent versifiers typified by
Pedro de Padilla. Devout songs, as simple as they are
beautiful, are found in the numbers of Juan L6pez de
tlbeda and of Francisco de Ocana, who may be studied
in their respective cancioneros (1588, 1604), or — much
more briefly, and perhaps to better purpose — in Rivade-
neyra's Romancero y Cancionero sagrados. The chief
of these pious minstrels was JOSE DE VALDIVIELSO
(? 1560-1636), the author of a long poem entitled Vida,
Excelencias y Muerte del gloriosisimo Patriarca San Jose" ;
but it is neither by this tedious sacred epic nor by his
twelve autos that Valdivielso should be judged. His
lyrical gift, scarcely less sweet and sincere than Lope's
own, is best manifested in his Romancero Espiritual, with
its romances to Our Lady, its pious villancicos on Christ's
birth, which anticipate the mingled devotion and famili-
arity of Her rick's Noble Numbers.
ANTONIO P£REZ (1540-1611), once secretary to Felipe
II., and in all probability the King's rival in love, figures
here as a letter-writer of the highest merit. No Spaniard
of his age surpasses him in clearness, vigour, and variety.
Whether he attempt the vein of high gallantry, the
flattery of " noble patrons," the terrorising of an enemy
by hints and innuendos, his phrase is always a model of
correct and spirited expression. In a graver manner are
his Relaciones and his Memorial del hecho de su causa, which
combine the dignity of a statesman with the ingenuity of
an attorney. But in all circumstances Perez never fails
to interest by the happy novelty of his thought, the
272 SPANISH LITERATURE
weighty sententiousness of his aphorisms, and by his
unblushing revelation of baseness and cupidity.
To this period belongs also the Centon Epistolario, a
series of a hundred letters purporting to be written by
Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal, physician at Juan II.'s
court. It is obviously modelled upon the Crdnica of
Juan II.'s reign, and the imitation goes so far that, when
the chronicler makes a blunder, the supposed letter-
writer follows him. The Centon Epistolario is now ad-
mitted to be a literary forgery, due, it is believed, to Gil
Gonzalez de Avila, who wrote nothing of equal excellence
under his own name. In these circumstances the Centon
loses all historic value, and what was once cited as a
monument of old prose must now be considered as a
clever mystification — perhaps the most perfect of its
kind.
Contemporary with Cervantes and Lope de Vega was
the greatest of all Spanish historians, JUAN DE MARIANA
(1537-1624). The natural son of a canon of Talavera,
Mariana distinguished himself at Alcah^de Henares, was
brought under the notice of Diego Lainez, General of
the Jesuits, and joined the order, whose importance was
*•¥
whence he passed to Sicily and Paris. In 1574 he re-
A'
^\ /growing daily. At twenty-four Mariana was appointed
professor of theology at the great Jesuit College in Rome,
V
•
turned to Spain, and was settled in the Society's house
at Toledo. He was appointed to examine into the
charges made by Leon de Castro against Arias Montano,
whose Polyglot Bible appeared at Antwerp in 1569-72.
Montano was accused of adulterating the Hebrew text,
and among the Jesuits the impression of his trickery was
general. After a careful examination, extending over
two years, Mariana pronounced in Montano's favour.
MARIANA 273
In 1599 there appeared his treatise entitled De Rege, with
official sanction by his superiors. No Spaniard raised
his voice against the book ; but its sixth chapter, which
laid it down that kings may be put to death in certain
circumstances, created a storm abroad. It was sought
to prove that, if Mariana had never written, Ravaillac
would not have assassinated Henri IV.; and, eleven years
after publication, Mariana's book was publicly burned
by the hangman. His seven Latin treatises, published
at Koln in 1609, do not concern us here ; but they must
be mentioned, since two of the essays — one on immor-
tality, the other on currency questions — led to the writer's
imprisonment.
The main work of Mariana's lifetime was his Historia
de Espanay written, as he says, to let Europe know what
Spain had accomplished. It was not unnatural that,
with a foreign audience in view, Mariana should address
it in Latin ; hence his first twenty books were published
in that language (1592). But he bethought him of his
own country, and, in a happy hour, became his own
translator. His Castilian version (1601) almost amounts
to a new work ; for, in translating, he cut, amplified,
and corrected as he saw fit. And in subsequent editions
he continued to modify and improve. The result is a
masterpiece of historic prose. Mariana was not minute
in his methods, and his contempt for literal accuracy
comes out in his answer to Lupercio de Argensola, who
had pointed out an error in detail : — " I never pretended
to verify each fact in a history of Spain ; if I had, I
should never have finished it." This is typical of the
man and his method. He makes no pretence to special
research, and he accepts a legend if he honestly can : even
as he follows a common literary convention when he
274 SPANISH LITERATURE
writes speeches in Livy's manner for his chief personages.
But while a score of writers cared more for accuracy
than did Mariana, his work survives not as a chronicle,
but as a brilliant exercise in literature. His learning is
more than enough to save him from radical blunders ;
his impartiality and his patriotism go hand in hand ; his
character-drawing is firm and convincing ; and his style,
with its faint savour of archaism, is of unsurpassed dig-
nity and clearness in his narrative. He cared more for
the spirit than for the letter, and time has justified him.
"The most remarkable union of picturesque chronicling
with sober history that the world has ever seen " — in
such words Ticknor gives his verdict ; and the praise is
not excessive.
CHAPTER X
THE AGE OF FELIPE IV. AND CARLOS THE
BEWITCHED "
./ ^3~ £• rf
1621-1700
THE reign of Felipe IV. opens with as fair a promise
of achievement as any in history. At Madrid, in the
third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century,
the court of the Grand Monarque was anticipated
and perhaps outdone. We are inclined to think of
Felipe as Velazquez has presented him, on his " Cordo-
bese barb, the proud king of horses, and the fittest
horse for a king " ; and to recall the praise which
William Cavendish, first Duke of Newcastle, lavished
on his horsemanship : — " The great King of Spain,
deceased, did not only love it and understand it, but
was absolutely the best horseman in all Spain." Yet
is it a mistake to suppose him a mere hunter. Art
and letters were his constant care ; nor was he
without a touch of individual accomplishment. He
was not content with instructing his Ministers to
buy every good picture offered in foreign markets :
his own sketches show that he had profited by seeing
Velazquez at work. It is no small point in his favour
to have divined at a glance the genius of the unknown
Sevillan master, and to have appointed him — scarcely
out of his teens — court-painter. He likewise collated
275
X
276 SPANISH LITERATURE
the artist, Alonso Cano, to a canonry at Granada, and,
when the chapter protested that Cano had small Latin
and less Greek, the King's reply was honourable to his
taste and spirit : — " With a stroke of the pen I can
make canons like you by the score ; but Alonso Cano
is a miracle of God." He would even stay the course
of justice to protect an artist. Thus, when Velazquez's
master, the half-mad Herrera, was charged with coin-
ing, the monarch intervened with the remark : " Remem-
ber his St. Hermengild." Music becalmed the King's
fever, and the plays at the Buen Retiro vied with the
masques of Whitehall. His antechambers were thronged
with men of genius. Lope de Vega still survived, his
glory waxing daily, though the best part of his life's
work was finished. Velez de Guevara was the royal
chamberlain ; Gongora, the court chaplain, hated, envied,
and admired, was the dreaded chief of a combative poetic
school ; his disciple, Villamediana, struck terror with his
vitriolic epigrams, his rancorous tongue ; the aged Maria-
na represented the best tradition of Spanish history ;
Bartolome' de Argensola was official chronicler of Arag6n;
Tirso de Molina, Ruiz de Alarc6n, and Rojas Zorrilla filled
the theatres with their brilliant and ingenious fancies ;
the incorruptible satirist, Quevedo, was private secre-
tary to the King ; the boyish Calder6n was growing into
repute and royal favour.
Of the Aragonese playwright, Lupercio Leonardo de
Argensola, we have already spoken in a previous chapter.
is brother, BARTOLOM£ LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA
(1562-1631), took orders, and, through the influence o
the Duque de Villahermosa, was named rector of the
town whence his patron took his title. His earliest work,
the Conquista de las Islas Molucas (1609), written by
THE ARGENSOLAS 277
order of the Conde de Lemos, is uncritical in conception
and design ; but the matter of its primitive, romantic,
and even sentimental legends derives fresh charm from
the author's apt and polished narrative. In 1611 he
and his brother accompanied Lemos to Naples, thereby
stirring the anger of Cervantes, who had hoped to be
among the Viceroy's suite, as appears from a passage
in the Viaje del Parnaso, which roundly insinuates that
the Argensolas were a pair of intriguers. The dis-
appointment was natural ; yet posterity is even grateful
for it, since a transfer to Naples would certainly have
lost us the second Don Quixote. Doubtless the Argen-
solas, who were of Italian descent, were better fitted than
Cervantes for commerce with Italian affairs, and Barto-
lome made friends on all sides in Naples as in Rome. On
his brother's death in 1613, he became official chronicler
of Arag6n, and, in 1631, published a sequel to Zurita,
the Angles de Arag6n, which deals so minutely with the
events of the years 1516-20 as to become wearisome^
dejscite all Argensola's grace of manner, i'he &imas
of the two brothers, published posthumously in 1634 by
Lupercio's son, Gabriel Leonardo de Albi6n, was stamped
with the approval of the dictator, Lope de Vega, who
declared that the authors "had come from Arag6n to
reform among our poets the Castilian language, which
is suffering from new horrible phrases, more puzzling
than enlightening."
This is an overstatement of a truth, due to Lope's
aversion from Gongorism in all its shapes. Horace is
the model of the Argensolas, whose renderings of the
two odes Ibam forte via sacra and Beatus ille are among
the happiest of versions. Their sobriety of thought is
austere, and their classic correctness of diction is in
278 SPANISH LITERATURE
curious contrast with the daring innovations of their
time. Lupercio has a polite, humorous fancy, which
shows through Mr. Gibson's translation of a well-known
sonnet : —
" / must confess, Don John, on due inspection,
That dame Elvira 's charming red and white,
Though fair they seem, are only hers by right,
In that her money purchased their perfection ;
But thou must grant as well, on calm reflection,
That her sweet lie hath such a lustre bright,
As fairly puts to shame the paler light,
And honest beauty of a true complexion !
And yet no wonder I distracted go
With such deceit, when 'tis within our ken
That nature blinds us with the self-same spell;
For that blue heaven above that charms us so,
Is neither heave nor blue ! Sad pity then
That so much beauty is not truth as well"
manifold interests in politics, in history,
and in the theatre left him little time for poetry, and a
large proportion of his verses were destroyed after his
/ / Jp death ; still, partially represented as he is, the pretty wit,
the pure idiom, and elegant form of his lyrical pieces
vindicate his title to rank among Castilian poets of the
second order. As for Bartolome', he resembles his brother
in natural faculty, but His fibre is stronger. A hard, dog-
matic spirit, a bigot in his reverence for convention, an
idolater of Terence, with a stern, patriotic hatred of
novelties, he was regarded as the standard-bearer of the
anti-Gongorists. Too deeply ingrained a doctrinaire to
court popularity, he was content with the applause of a
literary clique, and had practically no influence on his
•* *• -i _ _________ — •""" "* "" '" •• ' *^ — ^*«
age._ Yet his precept was valuable, and his practice,
always sound, reaches real excellence in such devout
numbers as his Sonnet to Providence.
GONGORA 279
Much meritorious academic verse is found in the
works of other contemporary writers, though most rivals
lapse into errors of taste and faults of expression from
which the younger "Argensola is honourably free. But
no great leader is formed in the school of prudent cor-
rectness, and by temperament, as well as by training, the
Rector of Villahermosa was unfit to cope with so virile and
so combative a genius as Luis DE ARGOTE Y G6NGORA>*r-"-
(1561-1627), the ideal chief of an aggressive movement..
Son of Francisco de Argote, Corregidor of Cordoba, and
of Leonora de G6ngora, he adopted his mother's name,
partly because of its nobility and partly because of its
euphony. In his sixteenth year G6ngora left his native
C6rdoba to read law at Salamanca, with a view to follow-
ing his father's profession ; but his studies were never
serious, and, though he took his bachelor's degree, he
gave most of his time to fencing and to dancing. To
the consternation of his family, he abandoned law and
announced himself as a professional poet. So early as
1585 Cervantes names him in the Canto de Caliope as
a rare and matchless genius — raro ingenio sin segundo
— and, though flattery from Cervantes is too indis-
criminating to mean much, the mention at least implies
that G6ngora's promise was already recognised. Few
details of his career are with us, though rumour tells of
platonic love-passages with a lady of Valencia, Luisa de
Cardona, who finally entered a convent in Toledo. His
repute as a poet, aided by his mother's connection with
the ducal house of Almod6var, won for him a lay canonry
in 1590, and this increase of means enabled him to visit
the capital, where he was instantly hailed as a wit and as
a brilliant poet. His fame had hitherto been local ; with
the publication of his verses in Espinosa's Floresde Poetas.
19
280 SPANISH LITERATURE
ilustres (1605), it passed through the whole of Spain. In
the same year, or at latest in 1606, G6ngora was ordained
priest. His private life was always exemplary, and this,
together with his natural harshness, perhaps explains
his intolerance for the foibles of Cervantes and of
Lope. When the favourite, the Duque de Lerma, fell
from power, G6ngora attached himself to Sandoval, who
nominated him to a small prebend at Toledo. As chap-
lain to the King, the poet's circle of friends enlarged,
and his literary influence grew correspondingly. In
1626 he had a cerebral attack, during which the phy-
sicians of the Queen attended him. The story that he
died insane is a gross exaggeration : he lingered on
a year, having lost his memory, died of apoplexy at
Cordoba on May 23, 1627, and is buried in the St.
Bartholomew Chapel of the cathedral.
An entremes entitled La destrucci6n de Troya, a play
called Las Firmezas de Isabela (written in collaboration
with his brother, Juan de Argote), and a fragment, the
Comedia Venatoria, remain to show that Gongora wrote
for the stage. Whether he was ever played is doubtful,
and, in any case, his gift is not dramatic. He was so
curiously careless of his writings that he never troubled
to print or even to keep copies of them, and a remark
which he let fall during his last illness goes to show his
artistic dissatisfaction : — " Just as I was beginning to
know something of the first letters in my alphabet does
God call me to Himself: His will be done!" His
poems circulated mostly in manuscript copies, which
underwent so many changes that the author often knew
not his own work when it returned to his hands ; and,
but for the piety of Juan L6pez de Vicuna, G6ngora
might be for us the shadow of a great name. Lopez de
'Jt&fe
GONGORA'S FIRST MANNER 281
Vicuna spent twenty years in collecting his scattered
verse, which he published in the very year of the poet's
death, under the resounding title of Works in Verse of
the Spanish Homer. A later and better edition was pro-
duced by Gonzalo de Hoces y Cordoba (1633).
G6ngora began with the lofty ode, as a strict observer
of literary tradition, a reverent imitator of Herrera's
heroics. His earliest essays are not very easy to dis-
tinguish from those of his contemporaries, save that his
tone is nobler and that his execution is more conscien-
tious. He was a craftsman from the outset, and his
technical equipment is singularly complete. So far was
he from showing any freakish originality, that he is open
to the reproach of undue devotion to his masters. His
thought is theirs as much as are his method, his form,
his ornament, his ingenuity. An example of his early
style is his Ode to the Armada, of which we may quote a
stanza from Churton's translation : —
" O Island, once so Catholic, so strong,
Fortress of Faith, now Heresy's foul shrine,
Camp of trained war, and Wisdom's sacred school ;
The time hath been, such majesty was thine,
The lustre of thy crown was first in song.
Now the dull weeds that spring by Stygian pool
Were fitting wreath for thee. Land of the rule
Of Arthurs, Edwards, Henries ! Where are they?
Their Mother where, rejoicing in their sway,
Firm in the strength of Faith f To lasting shame
Condemned, through guilty blame
Of her who rules thee now.
O hateful Queen, so hard of heart and brow,
Wanton by turns, and cruel, fierce, and lewd,
Thou distaff on the throne, true •virtues bane,
Wolf-like in every mood,
May Heaven 's just fiame on thy false tresses rain/*
282 SPANISH LITERATURE
This is excellent of its kind, and among all Herrera's
imitators none comes so near to him as Gongora in
lyrical melody, in fine workmanship, in ji certain clear
distinction of utterance. Yet already there are hints of
qualities destined to bear down their owner. Not con-
tent with simple patriotism, with denunciation of schism
and infidelity, G6ngora foreshadows his future self as
a very master of gibes and sneers. The note of alti-
sonance, already emphatic in Herrera, is still more forced
in the young Cordoban poet, who adds a taste for far-
fetched conceits and extravagant metaphor, assuredly not
learned in the Sevillan school. Rejecting experiments in
the stately ode, he for many years continued his practice
in another province of verse, and by rigorous discipline
he learned to excel in virtue of his fine simplicity, his
graceful imagery, and his urbane wit. It should seem
that intellectual self-denial cost him little, for his trans-
formations are among the most complete in literary
history. Consider, for instance, the interval between
the emphatic dignity of his Armada ode and the charm-
ing fancy, the distinguished cynicism of Love in Reason,
as Archdeacon Churton gives it : —
" / love thee, but let love be free :
I do not ask, 1 would not learn,
What scores of rival hearts for thee
Are breaking or in anguish burn.
You die to tell, but leave untold,
The story of your Red- Cross Knight,
Who proffered mountain-heaps of gold
If he for you might ride and fight;
Or how the jolly soldier gay
Would wear your colours, all and some;
But you disdain \i their trumpefs bray,
And would not hear their tuck of drum. .
GGNGORAS SECOND MANNER 283
We love ; but 'tis the simplest case :
The faith on which our hands have met
Isjix'd, as wax on deeds of grace,
To hold as grace, but not as debt.
For well I wot that nowadays
Lovers conquering bow is soonest bent
By him whose valiant hand displays
The largest roll of yearly rent. . . ,
So let us follow in the fashion,
Let love be gentle, mild, and cool :
For these are not the days of passion,
But calculation's sober rule.
Your grace will cheer me like the sun;
But I can live content in shades.
Take me : you'll find when all is done,
Plain truth, and fewer serenades."
Even in translation the humorous amenity is not alto-
gether lost, though no version can reproduce the
technical perfection of the original. For refined wit
and brilliant effect Gongora has seldom been exceeded ;
yet his fighter pieces i ailed to bring mm trie renown
and the high promotion which he expected. He feigned
to despise popularity, declaring that he " desired to
do something that would not be for the general " ; but
none was keener than he in courting applause on any
terms. He would dazzle and surprise, if he could not
enchant, his public, and forthwith he set to founding .-+
the school which bears the name of culteranismo. We ;r '
do not know precisely when he first practisecTuT this
vein ; but it seems certain that he was anticipated by
a young soldier, Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor (1583-
1610), whose posthumous verses were published by his
brother at Madrid in 1611. Carrillo had served in Italy,
where he came under the spell of Giovanni Battista
284 SPANISH LITERATURE
Marino, then at the height of his influence ; and the
Obras of Carrillo contain the first intimations of the
new manner. Many of Carrillo's poems are admirable
for their verbal melody, his eclogues being distinguished
for simple sincerity of sentiment and expression. But
these passed almost unnoticed, for Carrillo was only
doing well what Lope de Vega was doing better ; and in
fact it seems likely that the merits of the dead soldier-
poet were unjustly overlooked by a generation which
was content with two editions of his works.
He found, however, a passionate admirer in Gongora,
who perceived in such work as Carrillo's Sonnet to the
Patience of his Jealous Hope the possibilities of a revolu-
tion^ When Carrillo writes of " the proud sea bathing
the blind forehead of the deaf sky," he is merely setting
down a tasteless conceit, which gains nothing by a forced
inversion of phrase ; but, as it happened, conceit of
this sort was a novelty in Spain, and G6ngora, who had
already shown a tendency to preciosity in Espinosa's
collection, resolved to develop Carrillo's innovation.
Few questions are more debated and less understood
than this of Gongorism. So good a critic as Karl
Hillebrand gives forth this strange utterance : — " Not
only Italian and German Marinists were imitators of
Spanish Gongorists : even your English Euphuism of
Shakespeare's time had its origin in the culteranismo
of Spain." One hardly likes to accuse Hillebrand. of
writing nonsense, but he certainly comes near, perilously
near it in this case. Lyly's Euphues was published in
1579, while Gongora was still a student at Salamanca,
and Shakespeare died nearly twelve years before a line
of G6ngora's later poems was in print. Spanish scholars,
indeed, disclaim responsibility for Euphuism in any
EUPHUISM AND GONGORISM 285
shape. They refuse to admit that Lord Berners' or
North's translations of Guevara could have produced
the effects ascribed to them ; and they argue with much
reason that Gongorism is but the local form of a disease
which attacked all Europe. However that may be,
there can exist no possible connection between English
Euphuism and Spanish Gongorism, save such as comes
from a common Italian origin. Gongorism derives
directly from the Marinism propagated in Spain by
Carrillo, though it must be confessed that Marino's
extravagances pale beside those of Gongora.
This, in fact, is no more than we should expect, for
Marino's conceits were, so to say, almost natural to
him, while Gongora's are a pure effect of affectation.
He wilfully got rid of his natural directness, and g:ive
himself to cultivating artificial antithesis, violent inver-
sions of words and phrases, exaggerated metaphors
piled upon sense tropes devoid of meaning. Other
poets appealed to the vulgar : he would charm the
cultivated — los cultos. Hence the name culteranismo.1
At the same time it is fair to say that he has been
blamed for more crimes than he ever committed.
Ticknor, more than most critics, loses his head when-
ever he mentions Gongora's name, and holds the
Spaniard up to ridicule by printing a literal translation
of his more daring flights. Thus he chooses a passage
from the first of the Soledades, and asserts that G6ngora
sings the praise of " a maiden so beautiful, that she
might parch up Norway with her two suns, and bleach
Ethiopia with her two hands." Perhaps no poet that
1 According to Lope de Vega, the word culteranismo was invented by
Jimenez Paton, Villamediana's tutor.
236 SPANISH LITERATURE
ever lived would survive the test of such bald, literal
rendering as this, and a much more exact notion of the
Spanish is afforded by Churton : —
" Her twin-born sun-bright eyes
Might turn to summer Norway's wintry skies;
And the white "wonder of her snowy hand
Blanch with surprise the sons of Ethiopian land"
Another sonnet on Luis de Bavia's Historia Pontifical
is presented in this fashion : — "This poem which Bavia
has now offered to the world, if not tied up in numbers,
yet is filed down into a good arrangement, and licked
into shape by learning ; is a cultivated history, whose
grey-headed style, though not metrical, is combed out,
and robs three pilots of the sacred bark from time,
and rescues them from oblivion. But the pen that thus
immortalises the heavenly turnkeys on the bronzes of its
history is not a pen, but the key of ages. It opens to
their names, not the gates of failing memory, which
stamps shadows on masses of foam, but those of immor-
tality." This, again, is translation of a kind — of a kind
very current among fourth-form boys, and, perpetrated
by such an excellent scholar as Ticknor, is to be accepted
as intentional caricature of the original. Once more the
loyal Churton shall elucidate his author : —
" This offering to the world by Bavia brought
Is poesy, by numbers unconfined;
Such order guides the masters march of mind,
Suck skill refines the rich-drawn ore of thought.
The style, the: matter, gray experience tauglit,
Arfs rules adorn' d what metre might not bind:
The tale halh baffled time, that thief unkind,
And from Oblivion 's bonds with toil hath brought
THE SOLEDADES 287
Three helmsmen ofihe sacred barque ; the pen,
That so these heavenly wardens doth enhance, —
No pen, but rather key of 'Fame 's proud dome,
Opening her everlasting doors to men, —
Is no poor drudge recording things of chance,
Which paints her shadowy forms on trembling foam"
Still, when all allowance is made, it must be confessed
that G6ngora excels in hiding his meanings. By many
his worst faults were extolled as beauties, and there was
formed a school of disciples who agreed with Le Sage's
Fabrice in holding the master for "le plus beau g£nie
que 1'Espagne ait jamais produit." But G6ngora was
not to conquer without a struggle. One illustrious writer
was an early convert : Cervantes proclaimed himself an
admirer of the Polifemo, which is among the most diffi-
cult of G6ngora's works. Pedro de Valencia, one of
Spain's best humanists, was the first to denounce G6n-
gora's transpositions, licentious metaphors, and verbal
inventions as manifested in the Soledades (Solitary
Musings), round which the controversy Taged hottest.
Within twenty-five years of Gongora's death the first
Soledad found an English translator in the person of
Thomas Stanley (1651), who renders in this fashion: —
"'Twos now the blooming season of the year,
And in disguise Europas ravisher
{His brow arm d with a crescent, with such beams
Encompast as the sun unclouded streams
The sparkling glory of the zodiac.') led
His numerous herd along the azure mead.
When he, whose right to beauty might remove
The youth of Ida from the cup of Jove,
ShipwrecKt, rcpulJd, and absent, did complain
Of his hard fate and mistress's disdain;
With such sad sweetness that the winds, and sea,
In sighs and murmurs kept him company. . . .
288 SPANISH LITERATURE
By this time night begun fungild the skies,
/fills from the sea, seas from the hills arise,
Confusedly unequal; when once more
The unhappy youth invested in the poor
Remains of his late shipwreck, through sharp briars
And dusky shades up the high rock aspires.
The steep ascent scarce to be reacKd by aid
Of wings he climbs, less weary than afraid.
At last he gains the top ; so strong and high
As scaling dreaded not, nor battery,
An equal judge the difference to decide
' Twixt the mute load and ever-sounding tide.
His steps now move secured; a glimmering light
(The Pharos of some cottage} takes his sight."
And so on in passages where the darkness grows denser
at every line. "Cest 1'obscurite qui en fait tout le
merite," as Fabrice observes when Gil Bias fails to
understand his friend's sonnet.
Valencia's protest was followed by another from the
Sevillan, Juan de Jauregui, whose preface to his Rimas
(1618) is a literary manifesto against those poems "which
only contain an embellishment of words, being phan-
toms without soul or body." Jauregui returned to the
attack in his Discurso poetico (1623), a more formal and
elaborate indictment of the whole Gongoristic move-
ment. This treatise, of which only one copy is known
to exist, has been reprinted with some curtailments by
Sr. Menendez y Pelayo in his Histona de las Ideas Esttticas
en Espaila. It deserves study no less for its sound doc-
I trine than for the admirable style of the writer, whose
courtesy of tone makes him an exception among the
polemists of his time. As Jauregui represents the oppo-
sition of the Seville group, so Manuel Faria y Sousa, the
editor of the Lusiadas, speaks in the name of Portugal.
Faria y Sousa's theory of poetics is the simplest possible :
G6NGORA AND LOPE 289
there is but one great poet in the world, and his name is
Camoes. Faria y Sousa transforms the Lusiadas into a
dull allegory, where Mars typifies St. Peter ; he writes
down Tasso as " common, trivial, not worth mentioning,
poor in knowledge and invention " ; and, in accordance
with these principles, he accuses Gdngora of being no
allegorist, and protests that to rank him with Camoes is
to compare " Marsyas to Apollo, a fly to an eagle."
A more formidable opponent for the Gongorists was
Lope de Vega, who was himself accused of obscurity
and affectation. Bouhours, in his Maniere de bien penser
dans les ouvrages d'esprit (1687), tells that the Bishop of
Belley, Jean-Pierre Camus, meeting Lope in Madrid,
cross-examined him as to the meaning of one of his
sonnets. With his usual good-nature, the poet listened,
and " ayant left et releu plusieurs fois son sonnet, avoua
sincerement qu'il ne 1'entendoit pas luy mesme." It
must have irked his inclination to take the field against
Gongora, for whom he had a strong personal liking : — •
" He is a man whom I must esteem and love, accepting
from him with humility what I can understand, and
admiring with veneration what I cannot understand."
Yet he loved truth (as he understood it) more than he
loved Socrates. " You can make a culto poet in twenty-
four hours : a few inversions, four formulas, six Latin
words, or emphatic phrases — and the trick is done,"
he writes in his Respuesta ; and he follows up this plain
speaking with a burlesque sonnet.
Of Faria y Sousa and his like, G6ngora made small
account : he fastened upon Lope as his victim, pursuing
him with unsleeping vindictiveness. There is something
pathetic in the Dictator's endeavours to soften his perse-
cutor's heart. He courts Gongora with polite flatteries in
2QO SPANISH LITERATURE
print; he dedicates to G6ngora the play, Amor secreto ;
he writes G6ngora a private letter to remove a wrong
impression given by one Mendoza ; he repeats G6ngora's
witty sayings to his intimates ; he makes personal over-
tures to G6ngora at literary gatherings ; and, if G6ngora
be not positively rude, Lope reports the fact to the
Duque de Sessa as a personal triumph : — " Estd mas
humane conmigo, que le debo de haber parepdo mas ombre
de bien de lo que tt me ymaginava " (" He is gentler with
me, and I must seem to him a better fellow than he
thought "). Despite all his ingratiating arts, Lope failed
to conciliate his foe, who rightly regarded him as the
chief obstacle in culteranismd s road. The relentless
riddlemonger lost no opportunity of ridiculing Lope
and his court in such a sonnet as the following, which
Churton Englishes with undisguised gusto : —
" Dear Geese, whose haunt is where weak waters flow,
From rude Castilian well-head, cheap supply,
That keeps your flowery Vega never dry,
True Vega, smooth, but somewhat flat and low ;
Go ; dabble, play, and cackle as ye go
Down that old stream of gray antiquity;
And blame the waves of nobler harmony,
Where birds, whose gentle grace you cannot know,
Are sailing. Attic wit and Roman skill
Are theirs; no swans that die in feeble song,
But nursed to life by Heliconian rill,
Where Wisdom breathes in Music. Cease your wrong,
Flock of the troubled pool : your vain endeavour
Will doom you else to duck and dive for ever."
The warfare was carried on with singular ferocity, the
careless Lope offering openings at every turn. " Remove
those nineteen castles from your shield," sang G6ngora,
deriding Lope's foible in blazoning his descent. The
GONGORISM TRIUMPHANT 291
amour with Marta Nevares Santoyo was the subject of
obscene lampoons innumerable. A passage in the Filo-
mena volume arabesques the story of Perseus and Andro-
meda with a complimentary allusion to an anonymous
poet whose name Lope withheld : " so as not to cause
annoyance." G6ngora's copy of the Filomena exists with
this holograph annotation on the margin: — "If you
mean yourself, Lopillo, then you are an idiot without
art or judgment." Yet, despite a hundred brutal per-
sonalities, Lope went his way unheeding, and on G6n-
gora's death he penned a most brilliant sonnet in praise
of that " swan of Betis," for whom his affection had
never changed.
Gongora lived long enough to know that he had
triumphed. Tirso de Molina and Calder6n, with most
of the younger dramatists, show the culto influence in
many plays ; Jauregui forgot his own principles, and
accepted the new mode ; eyen_Lqpe himself^ in _ passages
of his later writings, yielded to preciosity. Quevedo
began by quoting Epictetus's aphorism : — Scholasticum
esse animal quod ab omnibus irridetur. And he renders
the Latin in his own free style : — " The culto brute is a
general laughing-stock." But the " culto brute " smiled
to see Quevedo given over to conceptismo, an affectation
not less disastrous in effect than G6ngora's own. Mean-
while enthusiastic champions declared for the Cordoban
master. Martin de Angulo y Pulgar published his Epis-
tolas satisfactorias (1635) in answer to the censures of
the learned Francisco de Cascales ; Pellicer preached
the Gongoristic gospel in his Lecciones solemnes (1630) ;
the Defence of the Fable of Pyramus and Thisbe fills a
quarto by Cris!6bal de Salazar Mardones (1636) ; Garcia
de Salcedo Coronel's huge commentaries (1636-46) are
I u.
292 SPANISH LITERATURE
perhaps, more obscure than anything in his author's
text ; and, so far away as Peru, Juan de Espinosa
Medrano, Rector of Cuzco, published an Apologetico en
favor de Don Luis de Gongora, Principe de los Poetas
Lyricos de Espana (1694). There came a day when, as
Salazar y Torres informs us, the Polifemo and the Sole-
dades were recited on Speech-Day by the boys in Jesuit
schools.
It took Spain a hundred years to rid her veins of the
Gongoristic poison, and Gongorism has now become, in
Spain itself, a synonym for all that is bad in literature.
Undoubtedly G6ngora did an infinite deal of mischief :
I rty*s tricks °f transposition were too easily learned by
tV^ those hordes of imitators who see nothing but the
obvious, and his verbal audacities were reproduced by
men without a tithe of his taste and execution. And
yet, though it be an unpopular thing to confess, one has
a secret sympathy with him in his campaign. Lope de
Vega and Cervantes are as unlike as two men may be ;
but they are twins in their slapdash methods, in their
indifference to exquisiteness of form. Their fatal faci-
lity is common to their brethren : threadbare phrase,
accepted without thought and repeated without heed, is,
as often as not, the curse of the best Spanish work.
It was, perhaps, not altogether love of notoriety which
seduced G6ngora into Carrillo's ways. He had, as his
earliest work proves, a sounder method than his fellows
and a purer artistic conscience. No trace of care-
lessness is visible in his juvenile poems, written in an
obscurity which knew no encouragement. It is just to
believe that his late ambition was not all self-seeking,
and that he aspired to renew, or rather to enlarge, the
poetic diction of his country.
<f ££«_
GONGORA'S ACHIEVEMENT 203
The aim was excellent, and, if G6ngora finally failed/ '
he failed partly because his disciples burlesqued his
theories, and partly because he strove to make words
seryejinstead_ of ideas. That his endeavour was praise-
worthy in itself is as certain as that he came at last
to regard his principles as almost sacred. He doubt-
less found some pleasure in astounding and annoy-
ing the burgess ; but he aimed at something beyond
making readers marvel. And though he failed to im-
pose his doctrines permanently, it is by no means
certain that he laboured in vain. If any later Spaniard
has worked in the conscious spirit of the artist, seeking
to avoid the commonplace, to express high thoughts
in terms of beauty — though he knows it not, he owes
a debt to G6ngora, whose hatred of the commonplace
made Castilian richer. The Soledades and the Poli-
femo have passed away, but many of the words and
phrases for which G6ngora was censured are now in
constant use ; and, culteranismo apart, G6ngora _ranks
among the best lyrists of his land. Cascales, who was
at once his friend and his opponent, said that there
were two G6ngoras — one an angel of light, the other
an angel of darkness ; and the saying was true in so far
as it implied that in all circumstances his air of distinction
never quits him. Still the earlier G6ngora is the better,
and before we leave him we should quote, as an example
of that first happy manner, inimitable in its grace and
humour, Churton's not too unsuccessful version of The
Country Bachelors Complaint: —
" Time was, ere Love play'd tricks -with met
I lived at ease, a simple squire,
And sang my praise-sang, fancy free,
At matins in the village quire. . . .
294 SPANISH LITERATURE
/ rambled by the mountain side,
Down sylvan glades where streamlets pass
Unnumbered, glancing as they glide
Like crystal serpents through the grass. . . .
And there the state I ruled from far,
And bade the winds to blow for me,
In succour to our ships of war,
That ploughed the Britorts rebel sea;
Oft boasting how the might of Spain
The world's old columns far outran,
And Hercules must come again,
And plant his barriers in Japan. . . .
' Twas on St. Luke's soft, quiet day,
A vision to my sight was borne,
Fair as the blooming almond spray,
Blue-eyed, with tresses like the morn. . . .
Ah / then I saw what love could do,
The power that bids us fall or rise,
That wounds the firm heart through and through^
And strikes, like Ccesar, at men's eyes.
I saw how dupes, that fain would run,
Are caught, their breath and courage spent ',
Chased by a foe they cannot shun,
Swift as Inquisitor on scent. . . .
Yet Pve a trick to cheat Lovers search.
And refuge find too long delayed;
ril take the vows of Holy Church,
And seek some reverend cloister 's shade"
Among G6ngora's followers none is better known
than Juan de Tassis y Peralta, the second CONDE DE
T^VlLLAMEDiANA (1582-1622), whose ancestors came from
Bergamo. His great-grandfather, Juan Bautista de
Tassis, entered the service of Carlos Quinto ; his grand-
father, Raimundo de Tassis, was the first of his race to
live in Spain, where he married into the illustrious family
of Acuna ; his father, Juan de Tassis y Acufla, rose ta
VILLAMEDIANA 295
be Ambassador in Paris and Special Envoy in London.
Villamediana's tutors were two well-known men of letters :
Bartolome Jimenez Paton, author of Mercurius Trisme-
gistusy and Tribaldos de Toledo, whom we already know
as editor of Figueroa and Mendoza. After a short stay
at Salamanca, Villamediana was appointed to the King's
household, and in 1601 married Ana de Mendoza y de
la Cerda, grand-daughter in the fifth generation of
Santillana. His reputation as a gambler was of the
worst, and his winning thirty thousand gold ducats at
a sitting led to his expulsion from court in 1608. He
joined the army in Italy, returned to Spain in 1617, and
at once launched into epigrams and satires against all
and sundry. The court favourites were his special mark
— Lerma, Osuna, Uceda, Rodrigo Calder6n. In 1618
he was again banished, but returned in 1621 as Lord-
in-Waiting to the Queen, Isabel de Bourbon, daughter
of Henry of Navarre. At her request Villamediana
wrote a masque, La Gloria de Niquea, in which the
Queen acted on April 8, 1622, before Lord Bristol.
If report speak truly, the performance led him to his
death. When the second act opened, an overturned
lamp set the theatre ablaze, and as Villamediana seized
the Queen in his arms, and carried her out of danger,
scandal declared the fire to be his doing, and gave
him out as the Queen's lover. There is a well-known
story that Felipe IV., stealing up behind the Queen
one day, placed his hands on her eyes ; whereon " Be
quiet, Count," she said, and so unwittingly doomed
Villamediana. The tale is even too well known. Bran-
tome had already told it in Les Dames galantes
before Felipe was born, and it really dates from the
sixth century. Even so, Villamediana's admiration for
20
296 SPANISH LITERATURE
the Queen was openly expressed. He appeared at a
tournament covered with silver reales, and used the
motto, "Mis amores son reales" (My love is royal). The
King's confessor, Baltasar de Zufliga, warned him that
his life was in danger, and Villamediana laughed in
his face. It was no joke, for he had contrived to make
more dangerous enemies in four months than any other
man has made in a lifetime. On August 21, 1622, as
he was alighting from his coach, a stranger ran him
through the body ; "/Jesus ! esto es hecho ! " (" My God !
done for ! ") said Villamediana, and fell dead. The word
was passed round that the assassin, Ignacio Mendez,
should go free ; tongues that had hitherto wagged were
still. It is almost certain that the murder was done by
the King's order. If it were so, Felipe IV. had more
spirit at seventeen than he ever showed afterwards.
Villamediana had many of Gongora's qualities : his
courage, his wit, his sense of form, his preciosity. In
his Fdbula de Faet6n, as in his Fdbula de la Fe'nix, he
outdoes his master in eccentricity and verbal foppery :
fish become " swimming birds of the cerulean seat,"
water is " liquid nutriment," time " gnaws statues and
digests the marble " ; and by hyperbaton and word-
juggling he proves himself as culto as he can. But it
is fair to say that when it pleases him he is as simple
and direct as the early Gongora. It must suffice here
to quote Churton's rendering of a sonnet on the pro-
posed marriage of the Infanta Dofta Maria to the Prince
of Wales : —
" By Heresy upborne, that giantess
Whose pride heaveris battlements infancy scales^
With Villiers his proud Admiral^ Charles of Wales
To Mary's heavenly sphere would boldly press.
PARAVICINO 297
A heretic he is, he must confess
Heaven 's light nfer led his knighthood's roving sails;
But the bright cause his error counter-vails,
And heavenly beauty pleads for love's excess.
So now the lamb with cub of wolf must mate;
The dove must take the raven to her nest;
Our palace, like the old ark, must shelter all :
Confusion, as of Babylon the Great,
Is round us, and the faith of Spain, oppressed
By fine State-reason, trembles to its fall"
This expresses — much more clearly than the Gloria
de Niquea — the true feeling of Gongora and his circle
towards Steenie and Baby Charles.
Less nervous and energetic, but not less fantastic
than Villamediana's worst extravagances, are the Obras
postumas divinas y humanas (1641) of HORTENSIO FELIX
PARAVICINO Y ARTEAGA (1580-1633), whose praises were
sung by Lope : —
" Divine Hortensio, whose exalted strain,
Sweet, pure, and witty, censure cannot wound,
The Cyril and the Chrysostom of Spain''
The divine Hortensio was court-preacher to Felipe IV.,
and enchanted his congregations by preaching in the
culto style. His verses exaggerate Gongora' s worst faults,
arid are" disfigured by fulsome flattery of his leader, be-
fore whom, as he says, he is dumb with admiration.
As thus : — " May my offering in gracious cloud, in equal
wealth of fragrance, bestrew thine altars." Paravicino,
whose works were published under the name of Arteaga,
was a powerful centre of Gongoristic influence, and did
more than most men tojbrce culteranismo jnto fashion.
In sermons, poems, and a masque entitled Gridonia,
he never ceases to spread the plague, which lasted for
a century, attacking writers as far apart as Ambrosio
298 SPANISH LITERATURE
Roca y Serna (whose Luz del Alma appeared in 1623),
and Agusti'n de Salazar, the author of the Citara de
Apolo (1677).
Meanwhile a few held out against the mode. The
Sevillan, Juan de Arguijo (? d. 1629), continued the tradi-
tion of Herrera, writing in Italian measures with a smooth-
ness of versification and a dignified correctness which drew
applause from one camp and hissing from the other. His
N/"townsman, JUAN DE TAuREGUi Y AGUILAR (? 1570-1650),
came into notice with his version of Tasso's Aminta (1607),
one of the best translations ever made, deserving of the
high praise which Cervantes bestows on it and on Cris-
t6bal de Figueroa's rendering of the Pastor Fido : — " They
make us doubt which is the translation and which the
original." In his Aminfa, as in his original poems,
Jauregui's style is a model of purity and refinement, as
might be expected from the Discurso portico launched
later against G6ngora ; but the tide was too strong for
him. His Orfeo (1624) shows signs of wavering, and in
his translation, the Farsalia, which was not published till
1684, he is almost as extreme a Gongorist as the worst.
Still it should be remembered that Lucan also was a
Cordoban, practising early Gongorism at Nero's court,
and a translator is prone to reproduce the defects of his
original. Jauregui has some points of resemblance with
Rossetti, was a famous artist in his day, and is said, on
the strength of a dubious passage in the prologue to the
Novelas, to have painted Cervantes.
ESTEBAN MANUEL DE VJLLEGAS>( 1596-1 669) shows rare
poetic qualities in his Eroticas 6 Amatorias (1617), in which
he announces himself as the rising sun. Sicut sol matu-
tinus is printed on his title-page, where those waning
stars, Lope, Calder6n, and Quevedo, are also supplied
CONCEPTISMO 299
with a prophetic motto: Me surgente, quid istcz? His
imitations of Anacreon and Catullus are done with amaz-
ing gusto, all the more wonderful when we remember
that his " sweet songs and suave delights " were written
at fourteen, retouched and published at twenty. But
Villegas is one of the great disappointments of Castilian
literature : he married in 1626, deserted verse for law,
and ended life a poor, embittered attorney. The Sevillan
canon and royal librarian, FRANCISCO DE RIOJA (? 1586-
1659), follows the example of Herrera, his sonnets and
silvas being distinguished for their correct form and
their philosophic melancholy. But Rioja has been un-
lucky. One poem, entitled Las Ruinas de Itdlica, has
won for him a very great reputation ; and yet, in fact, as
Fernandez-Guerra y Orbe has proved, the Ruinas is due
to Rodrigo Caro (1573-1647), the archaeologist who wrote
the Memorial de Utrera and the Antigiiedades de Sevilla.
Adolfo de Castro goes further, ascribing the Epistola
moral d Fabio to Pedro Fernandez de Andrado, author
of the Libro de la Gineta. Thus despoiled of two admir-
able pieces, Rioja is less important than he seemed thirty
years since ; yet, even so, he ranks, with the Prfncipe
de Esquihche (1581-1658) and the Conde de Rebolledo
(1597-1676), among the sounder influences of his time.
The Segovian poet, Alonso de Ledesma Buitrago
(1552-1623), founded the school of conceptismo with its
metaphysical conceits, philosophic paradoxes, and sen-
tentious moralisings, as of a Seneca gone mad. His
Concept os espirituales and Juegos de la Noche Buena (1611)
lead up to the allegorical gibberish of his Monstruo
Imaginado (1615), and to the perveriedf_jj^Qr^iity of
Alonso de Bonilla's Nuevo Jardin de Flores divinas (1617).
Conceptismo was no less an evil than culteranismo, but it
300 SPANISH LITERATURE
was less likely to spread : the latter played with words,
the former with ideas. A bizarre vocabulary was enough
for a man to pass -asculto; the conceptista must he equipped
with various learning, and must have a smattering of
philosophy. Under such chiefs as Ledesina and Bonilla
the new mania must have died ; but conceptismo was in
the air, and, as Carrillo seduced G6ngora, so Ledesma
captured FRANCIS GOMEZ DE QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS
(1580-1645): (it should be said, however, that Quevedo
nowhere mentions Ledesma by name). Like Lope, like
Calder<5n, Quevedo was a highlander. His family boasted
the punning motto : — " I am he who stopped — el que vedo
— the Moors' advance." His father (who died early) and
mother both held posts at court. At Alcali de Henares,
from 1596 onwards, Quevedo took honours in theology,
law, French, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. He
is also said to have studied medicine ; and certainly
he hated Sangrado as Dickens hated Bumble. When
scarcely out of his teens he corresponded with Justus
Lipsius, who hailed him as /xeya KvSos 'Ifirjptov, and at
Madrid he speedily became the talk of the town. Strange
stories were told of him : that he had pinked his man at
Alcala, that he ran Captain Rodrfguez through the body
rather than yield him the wall, that he put an escaped
panther to the sword, that he disarmed the famous
fencing-master, Pacheco Narvaez. This last tale is true,
and is curious in view of Quevedo's physical defects.
His reply to Vicencio Valerio in Su Espada por Santiago
is well known:— "He says I hobble, and can't see. I
should lie from head to foot if I denied it : my eyes
and my gait would contradict me."
For all his short sight and clubbed feet, he was ever
too ready with his rapier. On Maundy Thursday, 1611,
QUEVEDO 301
he witnessed a scuffle between a man and woman during
Tenebrae in St. Martin's Church. He intervened, the
argument was continued outside, swords were crossed,
and Quevedo's opponent fell mortally wounded. As the
man was a noble, Quevedo prudently escaped from
possible consequences to Sicily. He returned to his
estate, La Torre de Juan Abad, in 1612, but soon wearied
of country life, and was sent on diplomatic missions to
Genoa, Milan, Venice, and Rome. On Osuna's promotion
to Naples, Quevedo became Finance Minister, proving
himself a capable administrator. In 1618 he meddled
in the Spanish plot which forms the motive of Otway's
Venice Preserved, and, disguised as a beggar, escaped
from the bravos told off to murder him. His public
career ended at this time, for his subsequent appoint-
ment as Felipe IV.'s secretary was merely nominal. In
1627 he shared in a furious polemic. Santa Teresa was
canonised in 1622, and, at the joint instance of Carmelites
and Jesuits, was made co-patron of Spain with Santiago.
The Papal Bull (July 31, 1627) divided Spain into two
camps. Quevedo, who was of the Order of Santiago —
" red with the blood of the brave " — took up the cudgels
for St. James, was branded a " hypocritical blackguard "
by one party, and was extolled by the other as the
" Captain of Combat," " the Ensign of the Apostle." He
shamed Pope, King, Olivares, the religious, and half the
laity, and the Bull was withdrawn (June 28, 1630). The
victory cost him a year's exile, and when Olivares offered
him the embassy at Genoa, he refused it, on the ground
that he did not wish to have his mouth thus closed.
After his unlucky marriage to Esperanza de Mendoza,
widow of Juan Ferndndez de Heredia, he began a cam-
paign against the royal favourite. Olivares' turn came
302 SPANISH LITERATURE
in December 1639, when the King found by his plate
a copy of verses urging him to cease his extravagance and
to dismiss his incapable ministers. Quevedo was — per-
haps rightly — suspected of writing these lines, was arrested
at midnight, and was whisked away, half dressed, to the
monastery of St. Mark in Le6n. For four years he was
imprisoned in a cell below the level of the river, and,
when released after Olivares' fall in 1643, his health
was broken. A flash of his old humour appears in his
reply to the priest who begged him to arrange for music
at his funeral : — " Nay, let them pay that hear it."
As a prose writer he began with a Life of St. Thomas
of Villanueva (1620), and ended with a Life of St. Paul
the Apostle (1644). These, and his other moralisings —
Virtue Militant, the Cradle and the Tomb — call for no
notice here. The Politica de Dios (1618) is apparently an
abstract plea for absolutism ; in fact, it exposes the weak-
ness of Spanish administration just as the Marcus Brutus
(1644) is a vehicle for opinions on contemporary politics.
Learned and acute, these treatises show Quevedo's con-
cern for his country's future, and a passage in his sixty-
eighth sonnet forecasts the future of the Spanish colonies :
— " 'Tis likelier far, O Spain ! that what thou alone didst
take from all, all will take from thee alone "-
" Y es mdsfacil! oh Espana fen muchas modas
Que lo que d todos les quitaste sola,
Te puedan d ti sola guitar todos"
The prophecy is just being fulfilled, and the chief interest
of Quevedo's prose treatises lies in their conceptismo —
the flashy epigram, the pompous paradox, the strained
antithesis, the hairsplitting and refining in and out of
season. It was vain for Quevedo to edit Luis de Leon
THE BUSC6N : THE VISIONS 303
and Torre as a protest against Gongorism, for in his own
practice he substituted one affectation for another.
The true and simpler Quevedo is to be sought else-
where. His picaresque Historia de la Vida del Buscon,
best known by its unauthorised title, El Gran Tacano
(The Prime Scoundrel), though not published till 1626,
was probably written soon after 1608. Pablo, son of
a barber and a loose woman, follows a rich schoolfellow
to Alcali, where he shines in every kind of devilry.
Thence he passes into a gang of thieves, is imprisoned,
lives as a sham cripple, an actor, a bravo, and finally
— his author being weary of him — emigrates to America.
There is no attempt at creating character, no vulgar ob-
trusion of Alemdn's moralising tone : such amusement as
the novel contains is afforded by the invention of heartless
incident and the acrid rendering of villany. The harsh
jeering, the intense brutality, the unsympathetic wit and
art of the Buscon, make it one of the cleverest books in
the world, as it is one of the cruellest and coarsest in its
misanthropic enjoyment of baseness and pain. No less
characteristic of Quevedo are his Suenos (Visions), printed
in 1627. These fantastic pieces are really five in number,
though most collections print seven or eight ; for the
Infierno Enmendado (Hell Reformed) is not a vision, but
is rather a sequel to the Politica de Dios ; the Casa de
Locos de Amor is probably the work of Quevedo's friend,
Lorenzo van der Hammen ; and the Fortunacon Seso was
not written till 1635. Quevedo himself calls the SueHo
de la Muerte (Vision of Death) the fifth and last of the
series. Satire in Lucian's manner had already been in-
troduced into Spanish literature by Valde"s in the Didlogo
de Mercurio y Caron, in the Crotalon (which most autho-
rities ascribe to Crist6bal de Villal6n), and in the Coloquio
304 SPANISH LITERATURE
de los Perros. In witty observation and ridicule of whole
sections of society, Quevedo almost vies with Cervantes,
though his unfeeling cynicism gives his work an indi-
vidual flavour. His lost poets are doomed to hear each
other's verses for eternity, his statesmen jostle bandits,
doctors and murderers end their careers as brethren,
comic men dwell in an inferno apart lest their jokes
should damp hell's fires, — grim jests which may be read
in Roger L'Estrange's spirited amplification.
Quevedo's serious poems suffer from the conceptismo
which disfigures his ambitious prose ; his wit, his com-
plete knowledge of low life, his mastery of language
show to greater advantage in his picaroon ballads and
exercises in lighter verse. His freedom of tone has
brought upon him an undeserved reputation for ob-
scenity ; the fact being that lewd, timorous fellows have
fathered their indecencies upon him. A passage from
his Last Will of Don Quixote may be cited, as Mr. Gibson
gives it, to illustrate his natural method : —
" Up and answered Sancho Panza;
List to what he said or sung,
With an accent rough and ready
And a forty-parson tongue:
"Tt's not reason, good my master,
When thou goest forth, I wis,
To account to thy Creator,
Thou shouldst utter stuff like this}
As trustees, name thou the Curate
Who confesscth thee betimes,
And Per Anton, our good Provost,
And the goat-herd Gaffer Grimes;
Make clean sweep of the Esplandians,
Who have dinned us with their clatter;
Call thou in a ghostly hermit,
Who may aid thee in the matter}
GUILLEN DE CASTRO 305
' Well thou speakest] up and answered
Don Quixote, nowise dumb ;
' Hie thee to the Rock of Dolour ;
Bid Beltenebros to come ! ' "
Overpraised and overblamed, Quevedo attempted too
much. He had it in him to be a poet, or a theologian,
or a stoic philosopher, or a critic, or a satirist, or a
statesman : he insisted on being all of these together,
and he has paid the penalty. Though he never fails
ignominiously, he rarely achieves a genuine success, and
the bulk of his writing is now neglected because of its
local and ephemeral interest. Yet he deserves honour
as the most widely-gifted Spaniard of his time, as a
strong and honest man in a corrupt age, and as
a brilliant writer whose hatred of the commonplace
beguiled him into adopting a dull innovation. It is not
likely that his numerous inedited lyrics will do more
than increase our knowledge of Gongora's and Mont-
alban's failings ; but the two plays promised by Sr.
Menendez y Pelayo — Como ha de ser el Privado and
Pero Vazquez de Escamilla — cannot but reveal a new
aspect of a many-sided genius.
Quevedo was not, however, known as a dramatist to
the same extent as the Valencian, GUILLEN DE CASTRO Y
BELLVIS (1569-1631), an erratic soldier who has achieved
renown in and out of Spain. Castro is sometimes cre-
dited with the Prodigio de los Monies, whence Calder6n
derived his Mdgico Prodigioso, but the Prodigio is almost
certainly by Lope. Castro's fame rests on his Mocedades
del Cid(T\\& Cid's First Exploits), a dramatic adaptation of
national tradition in Lope's manner. Ximena, daughter
of Lozano, loves Rodrigo before the action begins, and,
on Lozano's death by Rodrigo's hand, her passion and
306 SPANISH LITERATURE
her duty are in conflict. Rodrigo's victories against the
Moors help to expiate his crime : on a false rumour of his
death, Ximena avows her love for him, and patriotism
combines with inclination to yield a dramatic ending.
Corneille, treating Castro's play with the freedom of a
man of genius, founded the French school of tragedy ;
but not all his changes are improvements. By limiting
the time of action he needlessly emphasises the difficulty
of the situation. Castro's device is sounder when he
prolongs the space which shall diminish Ximena's filial
grief and increase her admiration of the Cid. The strife
between love and honour exists already in the Spanish,
and Corneille's merit lies in his suppression of Castro's
superfluous third act, in his magnificent rhetoric, be-
side which the Spaniard's simplicity seems weak. But
though Castro wrote no masterpiece, he begot one
based upon his original conception, and some of Cor-
neille's most admired tirades are but amplified trans-
lations.
Less remarkable as a playwright than as a novelist,
the lawyer, TJTTIS_ .Vjjjijgz^njjt. ^TTEV^M_(T57Q-T^43); is
reputed to have written no fewer than four hundred
pieces for the stage. Of these, eighty survive, mostly on
historic themes, which — as in El Valor no tiene Edad — are
treated with tiresome extravagance ; but the most diffi-
cult critics have found praise for Mas peso, el Key que
la Sangre (King First, Blood Second). The story is that,
in the thirteenth century, Guzman the Good held Tarifa
for King Sancho ; the rebel Infante, Don Juan, called
upon him to surrender under pain of his son's death ;
for answer, Guzman threw his dagger over the battle-
ment, and saw the boy murdered before his eyes. Rarely
has the old Castilian tradition of loyalty to the King been
VELEZ DE GUEVARA 307
presented with more picturesque force, and few scenes
in any dramatic literature surpass that last one on the
raising of the siege, when Guzman points to his child's
corpse. Velez de Guevara collaborated with Rojas Zo-
rrilla and Mira de Amescua in The Devil's Suit against the
Priest of Madrilejos, a play in which a lunatic girl saves
her life by pleading demoniacal possession. The idea
is characteristic of Guevara's uncanny invention ; but the
Inquisition frowned upon stage representatives of exor-
cism, and, though the author's orthodoxy was not ques-
tioned, the play was withdrawn. He is best remembered
for his satire El Diablo Cojuelo (1641), which describes
observations taken during a flight through the air by a
student who releases the Lame Devil from a flask, and
is repaid by glimpses of life in courts and slums and
stews. Le Sage, in his Diable Boiteux, has greatly im-
proved upon the first conception ; but the original is
of excellent humour, and the style is as idiomatic as
the best Castilian can be. Felipe IV. is said to have
smiled only three times in his life — twice at quips by
Guevara, who was his chamberlain.
Of all Lope's imitators the most undisguised is the
son of the King's bookseller, Doctor JUAN PEREZ DE
MONTALBAN (1602-38), who became a priest of the Con-
gregation of St. Peter in 1625. His father was plain
Juan Perez (as who should say John Smith), and the
son was cruelly bantered for his airs and graces: — "Put
Doctor in front and Montalban behind, and plebeian
Perez shines an aristocrat." It was rumoured that his
Orfeo (1624), written to compete with Jduregui, was really
Lope's work, given by the patriarch to start his favourite
in life. The story is probably false, for the verse lacks
Lope's ease and grace ; but the Orfeo won Montalban
308 SPANISH LITERATURE
a name, and — there is no such luck for modern minor
poets — in 1625 a Peruvian merchant expressed his ad-
miration by settling a pension on the young priest.
Montalban lived in closest intimacy with Lope, who
taught his young admirer stagecraft, and helped him
with introductions to managers. Unluckily he sought
to rival his master in fecundity as well as in method,
and the effort broke him. He is often credited with
writing the Tribunal of Just Vengeance, a work which
describes Quevedo as " Master of Error, Doctor of
Impudence, Licentiate of Buffoonery, Bachelor of Filth,
Professor of Vice, and Archdevil of Mankind." Quevedo,
on his side, had a grievance, inasmuch as Perez, the
bookseller, had pirated the Buscon. He prophesied that
Montalbin would die a lunatic, and, in fact, his words
came true.
Pellicer credits Montalban with literary theories of his
own, but they are mere repetitions of Lope's precepts in
the Arte Nuevo. Like his master, Montalban has a keen
eye for a situation, for the dramatic value of a popular
story, as he shows in his Amantes de Teruel, those eternal
types of constancy ; but he writes too hurriedly, with
more ambition than power, is infected with culteratusmo,
and, though he apes Lope with superficial success in his
secular plays, fails utterly when he attempts the sacred
drama. His own age thought most highly of No hay
Vida como la Honra, one of the first pieces to have a
"run" on the Spanish stage; but the Amantes is his
best work, and its vigorous dialogue may still be read
with emotion.
These lovers of Teruel were also staged by a man of
genius whose pseudonym has completely overshadowed
his family name of Gabriel Tellez. The career of TiRSO
TIRSO DE MOLINA 309
DE MOLINA (1571-1648) is often dismissed in six lines
packed with errors ; but the publication of Sr. Cotarelo
y Mori's study has made such summary treatment im-
possible in the future. Writers whose imagination
does service for research have invented the fables that
Tirso led a scandalous, stormy life, and that the repent-
ant sinner took orders in middle age. These legends
are baseless, and are conceived on the theory that Tirso's
outspoken plays imply a deep knowledge of human
nature's weak side and of the shadiest picaresque cor-
ners. It appears to be forgotten that Tirso spent years
in the confessional : no bad position for the study of
frailty. It seems certain that he was born at Madrid,
and that he studied at Alcala is clear from Mati'as de los
Reyes' dedication of El Agravio agraviado. The date
of his profession is not known ; but he is named as a
Mercenarian monk and as " a comic poet " by the actor-
manager, Andres de Claramonte y Corroy, in his Letania
moral, written before 1610, though not printed till 1613.
His holograph of Santa Juana is dated in 1613 from
Toledo, where he also wrote his Cigarrales. Passages
in La Gallega Mari Hernandez imply a residence in
Galicia. That he lived in Seville, and visited the island
of Santo Domingo, is certain, though the dates are not
known. In 1619 he was Superior of the Mercenarian
convent at Trujillo, an appointment which implies that
he was a monk of long standing. In 1620 Lope dedi-
cated to him Lo Fingido verdadero, and in the same year
Tirso returned the compliment by dedicating his Villana
de Vallecas to Lope. Though he competed in 1622 at
the Madrid feasts in honour of St. Isidore, he failed to
receive even honourable mention. Ten years later he
became official chronicler of his order, and showed his
310 SPANISH LITERATURE
opinion of his predecessor, Alonso Rem6n — with whom
he has been confounded, even by Cervantes — by re-
writing Rem6n's history. In 1634 ne was made Definidor
General for Castile, and his name reappears as licenser
of books, or in legal documents. He died on March 21,
1648, being then Prior at Soria, renowned as a preacher
of most tranquil, virtuous life, the very opposite of what
ignorant fancy has feigned of him. He is known to
have written plays so recently as 1638, for the holograph
of his Quinas de Portugal bears that date ; but the pre-
face to the Deleitar Aprovechado shows that his popularity
was on the wane in 1635. His last years were given to
writing a Genealogia del Conde de Sdstago and the chronicle
of the Mercenarian Order.
Tirso's earliest printed volume is his Cigarralesde Toledo
(1621 or 1624), so called from a local Toledan word
for a summer country-house set down in an orchard.
The book is a collection of tales and verse, supposed to
be recited during five days of festivity which have fol-
lowed a wedding. Tirso, indeed, announces stories and
verse which shall last twenty days ; yet he breaks off at
the fifth, announcing a Second Part, which never ap-
peared. Critics profess to find in Tirso's tales some
traces of Cervantes, who is praised in the text as the
" Spanish Boccaccio " : the influence of the Italian
Boccaccio is far more obvious throughout, and — save
for a tinge of Gongorism — Los Tres Maridos burlados
might well pass as a splendid adaptation from the
Decamerone, Still, even in the Cigarrales the born play-
wright asserts himself in C6mo han de ser los Amigos, in
El Celoso prudente, and in one of Tirso's most brilliant
pieces, El Vergonsoso en Palacio. A second collection
entitled Deleitar Aprovechado (Business with Profit),
TIRSO'S THEATRE 311
issued in 1635, contains three pious tales of no great
merit, and several autos, one of which — El Colmenero
divino — is Tirso's best attempt at religious drama.
Essentially a dramatist, he is to be but partially studied
in his theatre, of which the first part appeared in 1627,
the third in 1634, the second and fourth in 1635, and
the fifth in 1637. A famous play is the Condenado por
Desconfiado (The Doubter Damned), of which some would
deprive Tirso ; yet the treatment is specially charac-
teristic of him. Paulo, who has left the world for a
hermitage, prays for light as to his future salvation,
dreams that his sins exceed his merits, and is urged by
the devil to go to Naples to seek out Enrico, \vhose
ending will be like his own. Paulo obeys, discovers
Enrico to be a rook and bully, and in despair takes to
a bandit's life. Meanwhile Enrico shows a hint of virtue
by refusing to slay an old man whose appearance re-
minds the bully of his own father, and kills the master
who taunted him with flinching from a bargain. He
escapes to where Paulo and his gang are hidden. Garbed
as a hermit, Paulo vainly exhorts Enrico to confess,
though the criminal finally repents, and is seen by
Pedrisco — Paulo's servant — passing to heaven. Duped
by the devil, Paulo refuses to believe Pedrisco's story,
and dies damned through his own distrust and pride.
The substance of this play, which is contrived with
abounding skill and theological knowledge, is the old
conflict between free-will and predestination. Some
would ascribe the play to Lope, because the pastoral
scenes are in his manner, but the notion that Lope would
publish under Tirso's name is untenable. Sr. Menendez
y Pelayo will not be suspected of a prejudice against
Lope ; and he avers, in so many words, that the only
312 SPANISH LITERATURE
playwright in Spain with enough theology to write the
Condenado was Tirso, who, had he written nothing else,
would rank among the greatest Spanish dramatists.
The piece which has won Tirso immortality is his
Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra (The Seville
Mocker and the Stone Guest), first printed at Barcelona
in 1630 as the seventh of Twelve New Plays by Lope de
Vega Carpioy and other Authors ; and the omission of
the Burlador from all authorised editions has led critics
of authority to question Tirso's authorship.1 The dis-
covery in 1878 of a new version caused Manuel de la
Revilla to declare that the play was by Calder6n, on
the ground that Calder6n's name is on the title-page,
and that Calderdn never trespassed on other men's
property. This is an overstatement : to mention but
a few instances, Calderon's A Secreto Agravio Secreta
Venganza is rearranged from Tirso's Celoso prudent e ;
his Secreto d Voces from Tirso's Amar por Arte mayor,
while the second act of Calder6n's Cabellos de Absalon
is lifted, almost word for word, from the third act of
Tirso's Venganza de Tamar. On the whole, then, Tirso
may be taken as the creator of Don Juan. No analysis
is needed of a play with which Mozart, the most Athenian
of musicians, has familiarised mankind ; nor is transla-
tion possible in the present corrupt state of the text.
Whether or not there existed an historic Don Juan at
Plasencia or at Seville is doubtful, for folklorists have
found the story as far away from Spain as Iceland is ;
but it is Tirso's glory to have so treated it that the
world has accepted it as a purely Spanish conception.
The Festin de Pierre (1659) by Dorimond, the Fils
1 See M. Farinelli's learned study, Don Giovanni: Note critiche (Torino,
1896), pp. 37-39.
DON JUAN 313
Criminel (1660) of De Villiers, the Dom Juan (1665) of
Moliere, the Nouveau Festin de Pierre (1670) of Rosi-
mond, and the arrangement of Thomas Corneille, are
but pale reflections of the Spanish type which passes
onward from Shadwell's Libertine (1676) till it reaches
the hands of Byron and Zorrilla and Barbey d'Aur6-
villy and Flaubert (whose posthumous sketch comes
closer back to the original). Of these later artists not
one has succeeded in matching the patrician dignity, the
infernal, iniquitous valour of the original. To have
created a universal type, to have imposed a character
upon the world, to have outlived all rivalry, to have
achieved in words what Mozart alone has expressed
in music, is to rank among the great creators of all
time.
If Tirso excelled in sombre force, he was likewise a
master in the lighter comedy of El Vergonzoso en Palacio,
where Mireno, the Shy Man at Court, is rendered with
rare sympathetic delicacy, and in the farcical intrigue
of Don Gil de las Calzas verdes (Don Gil of the Green
Breeches), where the changes of Juana to Elvira or
to Don Gil are such examples of subtle, gay ingenuity
as delight and bewilder the reader no less than the
comic trio of the Villana de Vallecas, or the picture of
unctuous hypocrisy in Marta la piadosa. Tirso's fate was
to be forgotten, not merely by the public, but by the
very dramatists who used his themes ; and, as in Lope's
case, the neglect is partly due to the rarity of his
editions. Yet, even so, his eclipse is unaccountable,
for his various gifts are hard to match in any litera-
ture. He has not the disconcerting cleverness of Lope,
nor has he Lope's infinite variety of resource ; more-
over, his natural frankness has won him a name for
314 SPANISH LITERATURE
indecency. Yet has he imagination, passion, individual
vision, knowledge of dramatic effect. He could create
character, and his women, if less noble, are more real
than Lope's own in their frank emotion and seductive
abandonment. At whiles his diction tends to Gongor-
ism, as when — in El Amor y la Amistad — a personage,
at sight of a mountain, babbles of " the lofty daring of
the snow, the pyramid of diamond " ; but this is ex-
ceptional, and his hostility to culteranismo inspired G6n-
gora to write more than one stinging epigram. Tirso
had not Lope's matchless facility, and, considering the
maturity of the Spanish genius, it is strange that he
should have written no play before 1606 or 1608.
Moreover, he composed by fits and starts in moments
snatched from duty, and, beginning late, he ended
early. Even in these circumstances he could boast in
1621 that he had produced three hundred plays — a
number afterwards raised to four hundred. Only some
eighty survive : in other words, four-fifths of his theatre
has vanished, and the loss is surely great for those
who would fain know every aspect of his genius. But
enough remains to justify his high position, and his
fame, like Lope's, grows from day to day.
Of such dramatists as the courtly Antonio Hurtado
de Mendoza (? 1590-1 644), and the festive Luis Belmontey
Bermudez (1587-? 1650) mere mention must suffice : the
former's Querer por sdlo querer may be read in an excel-
lent version made by Sir Richard Fanshawe during his
imprisonment " by Oliver, after the Battail of Worcester."
Antonio Mira de Amescua (? 1578-1640), chaplain of
Felipe IV., mingled the human with the divine, was
praised by all contemporaries from Cervantes onwards,
had the right lyrical note, and, if his plays were collected,
RUIZ DE ALARC6N 315
might prove himself worthy of his dramatic fame; as it
is, he is best known as a playwright from whom Calder6n,
Moreto, and Corneille have borrowed themes. A more
original talent is shown by JUAN Ruiz DE ALARCON
(? 1581-1639), whose father was administrator of the
Tlacho mines in Mexico. Ruiz de Alarcdn left Mexico
for Spain in 1600, and studied at Salamanca for five
years ; he returned to America in 1608 in the hope of
being elected to a University chair, but the deformity —
a hunched back — with which he was taunted his life long
was against him, and he made for Spain in 1611. He
entered the household of the Marques de Salinas, wrote
some laudatory decimas for the Desengano de la Forluna
in 1612, and next year produced his first play, the
Seme/ante de si mismo, founded, like Tirso's Celosa de si
misma, on the Curious Impertinent. It was no great
success, but it made him known and hated. He was
far too ready to attack others, being himself most vulner-
able. Cristobal Suarez de Figueroa, who had jeered at
Cervantes for " writing prologues and dedications when
at death's door," spoke for others besides himself when
he lampooned Alarc6n as "an ape in man's guise, an
impudent hunchback, a ludicrous deformity." Tirso
befriended the Mexican, while Mendoza, Lope, Quevedo,
and the rest scourged him mercilessly ; and when his
Antecristo (which Voltaire used in Mahomet] was played,
a band of rioters ruined the performance by squirting
oil on the spectators and firing squibs in the pit. Yet
the women always crowded the house when his name
was in the bill, and they made his fortune by contriving
that his play, Siempre aynda la Verdad — probably written
in collaboration with Tirso — should be given at court in
1623. Three years later he was named Member of
316 SPANISH LITERATURE
Council for the Indies. His collected pieces were pub-
lished in 1628 and 1634.
Ruiz de Alarc6n was never popular in the sense that
Lope and Calder6n were popular ; still, he had his
successes, and no Spanish dramatist is better reading.
Compared with his rivals he was sterile, for the total of
his plays is less than thirty, even if we accept all the
doubtful pieces ascribed to him. Lope excels him in
invention, Tirso in force and fun, Calder6n in charm ;
Ruiz de Alarc6n is less intensely national than these,
and the very individuality — the extraileza — which Mont-
alban noted with perplexity, makes him almost better
appreciated abroad than at home. Corneille has based
French tragedy upon Guillen de Castro's Mocedades del
Cid; French comedy is scarcely less influenced by his
adaptation of the Menteur from Ruiz de Alarcon's Verdad
Sospechosa (Truth Suspected). Garcia has lied all his life,
lies to his father, his friends, his betrothed, lies to him-
self, and defeats his own purpose by his ingenuity. He
would speak the truth if he could, but he has no talent
that way. Why trouble with truth when lying comes
easier ? His father, Beltrdn, perceives that the miser
enjoys money, that murder slakes vengeance, that the
drunkard grows glorious with wine ; but his son's failing
is beyond him. The noble Philistine has not the artist's
soul, and cannot understand why Garcfa should lie for
lying's sake, against his own interest. Throughout the
play Ruiz de Alarc6n is never once at fault, and the gay
ingenuity with which he enforces the old moral, that
honesty is the best policy, is equalled by his masterly
creation of character. Ethics are his preoccupation ;
yet, though almost all his plays seek to enforce a lesson,
he nowhere descends to pulpiteering or merges the dra-
ALARCCN'S THEATRE 317
matist in the teacher. While in Las Paredes Oyen (Walls
have Ears) and in El Examen de Maridos (Husbands
Proved) the triumph of the Verdad Sospechosa is re-
peated, the more national play is admirably exampled
in El Tejedor de Segovia (The Weaver of Segovia) and
Ganar Amigos (How to Win Friends).
There are greater Spanish playwrights than Ruiz de
Alarcon : there is none whose work is of such even
excellence. In so early a piece as the Cuevade Salamanca,
though there is manifest technical inexperience, the mere
writing is almost as good as in La Verdad Sospechosa.
The very infertility at which contemporaries mocked is
balanced by equality of execution. Lope and Calder6n
have written better pieces, and many worse : no line that
Ruiz de Alarcon published is unworthy of him. While his
contemporaries were content to improvise at ease, he sat
aloof, never joining in the race for money and applause,
but filing with a scrupulous conscience to such effect
that all his work endures. His chief titles to fame are
his power of creating character and his high ethical aim.
But he has other merits scarcely less rare : his versifica-
tion is of extreme finish, and his spirited dialogue, free
from any tinge of Gongorism, is a triumph of fine idiom
over perverse influences which led men of greater natural
endowment astray. His taste, indeed, is almost unerring,
and it goes to form that sober dignity, that individual
tone, that uncommon counterpoise of faculties which
place him below — and a little apart from — the two or
three best Spanish dramatists.
If there be an exotic element in the quality of Ruiz de
Alarcon's distinction as in his frugal dramatic method,
the espanolismo of the land is incarnate in the genius of
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA HENAO DE LA BARREDA
318 SPANISH LITERATURE
Y RiAfJo (1600-1681), the most representative Spaniard
of the seventeenth century. His father was Secretary to
the Treasury, and, on this side, CaldenSn was ahighlander,
like Santillana, Lope, and Quevedo ; he inherited a strain
of Flemish blood through his mother, who claimed de-
scent from the De Mons of Hainault. He was educated
at the Jesuit Colegio Imperial in Madrid, and fond bio-
graphers declare that he studied civil and canon law at
Salamanca; this is mere assertion, unsupported by any
proof. Though he is said to have written a play, El
Carro del Cielo, at thirteen, he was not very precocious
for a Spaniard, his first authentic appearances being
made at the Feast of St. Isidore in 1620 and 1622. On
the latter occasion he won the third prize, and was
praised by the good-natured Lope as one " who in his
tender years earns the laurels which time commonly
awards to grey hairs." His Boswell, Vera Tasis, reports
that he served in Milan and Flanders from 1625 to
1635 ; but there must be an error of date, for in 1629
he is found at Madrid drawing his sword upon the
actor, Pedro de Villegas, who had treacherously stabbed
Calderon's brother, and who fled for sanctuary to the
Trinitarian Church. The Gongorist preacher, Paravi-
cino, referred to the matter in public ; Calder6n replied
by scoffing at "sermons of Barbary," and was sent to
gaol for insulting the cloth. Pellicer signals another
outburst in 1640, when the dramatist whipped out his
sword at rehearsal and came off second best. These are
pleasing incidents in a career of sombre respectability,
though one half fears that the second is fiction. In 1637
Calder6n was promoted to the Order of Santiago, and
in 1640 he served with his brother knights against the
Catalan rebels, hastily finishing his Certamen de Amor
CALDERON 319
y Celos (Strife of Love and Jealousy) so as to share in
the campaign. He was sent to Madrid on some mili-
tary mission in 1641 ; received from the artillery fund
a monthly pension of thirty gold crowns ; was ordained
priest in 1651 ; was made chaplain of the New Kings at
Toledo in 1653 ; became honorary chaplain to Felipe IV.
in 1663, when he joined the Congregation of St. Peter,
which elected him its Superior in 1666. On taking orders,
Calderon's intention was to forsake the secular stage, but
he yielded to the King's command, and, so late as 1680,
celebrated Carlos II.'s wedding with Marie Louise de Bour-
bon. " He died singing, as they say of the swan," wrote
Soli's to Alonso Carnero. When death took him he was
busied with an auto, which was finished by Melchor de
Le6n — a fit ending to a happy, blameless life.
Calder6n's prose writings are small in volume and in
importance. The description (written under the name
of his colleague, Lorenzo Ramirez de Prado) of the entry
into Madrid of Felipe IV.'s second queen is an official
performance. More interest attaches to a treatise on
the dignity of painting, first printed in the fourth volume
of Francisco Mariano Nifo's Cajon de Sastre literato
(1781): — "Painting," says Calder6n, "is the art of arts,
dominating all others and using them as handmaids."
He had an admirable gift of appreciation, and he
proves it by rescuing from the oblivion of the Cancionero
General such a ballad as Escriba's, which he quotes in
Manos Blancos no ofenden, and again in El Mayor Mon-
struo de los Celos. Churton's version of the song is not
unhappy : —
" Come, death, ere step or sound I hear,
Unknown the hour, unfett the pain;
Lest the "wild joy to feel thee near,
Should thrill me back to life again.
320 SPANISH LITERATURE
Come, sudden as the lightning-ray,
When skies are calm and air is still;
E'en from the silence of its way,
More sure to strike where'er it will.
Such let thy secret coming be.
Lest -warning make thy summons vain,
And joy to find myself with thee
Call back life's ebbing tide again"
A great lyric poet, his lyrics are mostly included in his
plays. One ballad, supposed to be a description of
himself, written at a lady's request, is often quoted, and
has been well Englished by Mr. Norman MacColl ; it is,
however, unauthentic, being due to a Sevillan contem-
porary, Carlos Cepeda y Guzman.1 The earliest play
printed with Calder6n's name is El Astrologo fingido
(1632), and from 1633 onwards collected editions of his
works were published ; but he had no personal concern
in these issues, which so presented him that, as he pro-
tested, he could not recognise himself. Though he printed
a volume of autos in 1676, he was so indifferent as to the
fate of his secular plays that he never troubled to collect
them. Luckily, in 1680 he drew up a list of his pieces
for the Duque de Veragua, the descendant of Columbus,
and upon this foundation Vera Tasis constructed a
posthumous edition in nine volumes. Roughly speak-
ing, we possess one hundred and twenty formal plays,
and some seventy autos, with a few entremeses of no great
account.
Calderon has been fortunate in death as in life ; for
though his vogue never quite equalled that of his great
predecessor, Lope, it proved far more enduring. From
1 Cp. Mr. Norman MacColl's Select Plays of Calderon (London, 1888),
pp. xxvi.-xxx., and Gallardo's Ensayo de una Biblioteca Espanola (Madrid,
1866), vol. ii. col. 367, 368.
CALDER6N AND SHELLEY 321
Lope's death to the close of the seventeenth century,
Calder6n was chief of the Spanish stage ; and, though
he underwent a temporary eclipse in the eighteenth
century, his sovereignty was restored in the nineteenth
by the enthusiasm of the German Romantics. He has
suffered more than most from the indiscretion of ad-
mirers. When Sismondi pronounced him simply a
clever playwright, " the poet of the Inquisition," he
was no further from the truth than the extravagant
Friedrich Schlegel, who proclaimed that "in this great
and divine master the enigma of life is not merely
expressed, but solved " : thus placing him above
Shakespeare, who (so raved the German) only stated
life's riddle without attempting a solution. James the
First once said to the ambassador whom Ben Jonson
called " Old ^Esop Gondomar : — " I know not how, but
it seems to be the trade of a Spaniard to talk rodo-
montade." It was no less the trade of the German
Romantic, who mistook lyrism for scenic presentation.
Nor were the Germans alone in their enthusiasm.
Shelley met with Calderon's ideal dramas, read them
"with inexpressible wonder and delight," and was
tempted "to throw over their perfect and glowing
forms the grey veil of my own words." The famous
speech of the Spirit replying, in the Mdgico Prodigioso,
to Cyprian's question, " Who art thou, and whence
comest thou?" has become familiar to every reader of
English literature : —
" Since thou desires t, I will then unveil
Myself to thee ;— -for in myself I am
A world of happiness and misery;
This I have lost, and that I must lament
For ever- In my attributes I stood
322 SPANISH LITERATURE
So high and so heroically great,
In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
Which penetrated with a glance the world
Beneath my feet, that was by my high merit.
A King — whom I may call the King of kings,
Because all others tremble in their pride
Before the terrors of his countenance —
In his high palace roofed with brightest gems
Of living light — call them the stars of heaven —
Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
In mighty competition, to ascend
His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls : too mad
Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed ;
Therefore I close this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone;
And there was hope, and there may still be hope,
For many suffrages among his vassals
Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
Are mine, and many more shall be.
Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious,
I left his seat of empire"
This " grey veil " serves but to heighten the noble
poetic quality which turned a cooler head than Shelley's.
Goethe was moved to tears, and, though towards the end
he perceived the mischief wrought in Germany by the
uncritical idolatry of Calder6n, he never ceased to ad-
mire the only Spanish poet that he really knew. And in
our time men like Schack and Schmidt have dedicated
their lives to the propagation of the Calderonian gospel.
Some part of the poet's fame is due to his translators,
CALDERON'S QUALITIES 323
some also to the fact that for a long time there was
no rival in the field. To the rest of Europe he has stood
for Spain. Readers could not divine (and in default of
editions they could not contrive to learn) that Calder6n,
great as he is, comes far short of Lope's freshness, force,
and invention, far short of Tirso's creative power and
impressive conception. But Spaniards know better than
to give him the highest place among their dramatic gods.
He is too brilliant to be set aside as a mere follower of
Lope's, for he rises to heights of poetry which Lope never
reached ; yet it is simple history that he did but develop
the seed which Lope planted. He made no attempt —
and there he showed good judgment — to reform the
Spanish drama ; he was content to work upon the old
ways, borrowing hints from his predecessors, and, in
a lazy mood, incorporating entire scenes. If we are to
believe Viguier and Philarete Chasles, he went so far
as to annex Corneille's Heraclius (1647), and publish it in
1664 as En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira (In
this Life All's True and All's False) ; but, as he knew no
French, the chances are that both plays derive from a
common source — Mira de Amescua's Rueda de lafortuna
(1614). In attempts to create character he almost always
fails, and when he succeeds — as in El Alcalde de Zala-
mea — he succeeds by brilliantly retouching Lope's first
sketch. Goethe hit Calder6n's weak spot with the re-
mark that his characters are as alike as bullets or leaden
soldiers cast in the same mould ; and the constant lyrical
interruptions go to show that he knew his own strength.
Others might match and overcome him as a playwright :
there was none to approach him in such magnificent
lyrism as he allots to Justina in El Mdgico Prodigioso — to
be quoted here in FitzGerald's rendering : —
324 SPANISH LITERATURE
" Who that in his hour of glory
Walks the kingdom of the rose,
And misapprehends the story
Which through all the garden blows;
Which the southern air who brings
It touches, and the leafy strings
Lightly to the touch respond;
And nightingale to nightingale
Answering a bough beyond. . . .
Lo! the golden Girasolt,
That to hint by whom she burns,
Over heaven slowly, slowly,
As he travels, ever turns,
And beneath the wat*ry main
When he sinks, would follow fain,
Follow fain from west to east,
And then from east to west again. . . .
So for her who having lighted
In another heart the fire,
Then shall leave it unrequited
In its ashes to expire :
After her that sacrifice
Through the garden burns and cries,
In the sultry, breathing air,
In the flowers that turn and stare. . . "
Such songs as these are, perhaps, better to read than to
hear, and Calder6n is careful to supply a more popular
interest. This he finds in three sentiments which are
still most characteristic of the Spanish temperament :
personal loyalty to the King, absolute devotion to the
Church, and the "point of honour." Through good
report and evil, Spain has held by the three principles
which have made and undone her. These three sources
of inspiration find their highest expression in the theatre
of Calder6n. A favourite with Felipe IV., a courtly
poet, if ever one there were, he becomes the mouth-
piece of a nation when he deifies the King in the
THE POINT OF HONOUR 325
Principe Constante, in La Banda y la Flor (The Scarf
and the Flower), in Gudrdate de la Agua mansa (Beware
of Still Water), and in a score of plays. Ticknor
speaks of " CaldenSn's flattery of the great " : he over-
looks the social condition implied in the title of Rojas
Zorrilla's famous play, Del Rey abajo Ninguno (Nobody,
under the King). A titular aristocracy, shorn of all
power, counted for less than a foreigner can conceive
in a land where half the population was noble, and
the reverence which was centred on the person of the
Lord's anointed evolved into a profound devotion, a
fantastic passion as exaggerated as anything in Amadis.
A Church which had inspired the seven-hundred-years'
battle against the Moors, which had produced miracles
of holiness and of genius like Santa Teresa and San
Juan de la Cruz, which had stemmed the flood of the
Reformation and rolled it back from the Pyrenees, was
regarded as the one moral authority, the sole possible
form of religion, and as the symbol of Latin unity under
Spain's headship.
The "point of honour" — the vengeance wrought by
husbands, fathers, and brothers in the cases of women
found in dubious circumstances — is harder to explain,
or, at least, to justify ; yet even this was a perverted
outcome of chivalresque ideals, very acceptable to men
who esteemed life more cheaply than their neighbours.
Calder6n's treatment of such a situation may be followed
in FitzGerald's version of El Pintor de su Deshonra. The
husband, who has slain his wife and her lover, confronts
her father and friends : —
Prince. " Whoever dares
Molest him, answers it to me. Open the door.
But what is this f [Belardo unlocks the door.
326 SPANISH LITERATURE
Juan (coming out). A picture
Done by the Painter of his own Dishonour,
In blood.
I am Don Juan Roca. Such revenge
As each would have of me now let him take
As far as our life holds — Don Pedro, who
Gave me that lovely creature for a bride,
And 1 return him a bloody corpse;
Don Luis, who beholds his bosom 's son
Slain by his bosom friend; and you, my lord,
Who, for your favours, might expect apiece
In some far other style than this.
Deal with me as you list; 'twill be a mercy
To swell this complement of death with mine;
For all I had to do is done, and life
Is worse than nothing now.
Prince. Get you to horse
And leave the wind behind you.
Luis. Nay, my lord;
Whom should he fly from ? Not from me at least,
Who lotfd his honour as my own, and would
Myself have helped him in a just revenge
Et?n on an only son.
Pedro. I cannot speak,
But I bow down these miserable grey hairs
To other arbitrament than the sword,
Eitn to your Highness* justice.
Prince. Be it so.
Meanwhile
Juan. Meanwhile, my lord, let me depart '/
Free, if you will, or not. But let me go,
Nor wound these fathers with the sight of me,
Who has cut off the blossom of their age —
Yea, and his own, more miserable than them all.
They know me : that I am a gentleman,
Not cruel, nor without what seenfd due cause
Put on this bloody business of my honour;
Which having done, I will be answerable
Here and elsewhere, to all for all.
Pnnce. Depart
In peace.
Juan. In peace! Come, Leonelo?
THE EVOLUTION OF THE AUTOS 327
Similar motives are used by Lope de Vega and Tirso
de Molina, both priests and grey-beards ; but the effect
is more emphatic in Calder6n, and so early as 1683 his
"immorality" was severely censured on the occasion
of Manuel de Guerra y Ribera's eulogistic aprobacion.
In this matter, as in most others, he is satisfied to
follow and to exaggerate an existing convention. His
heroes are untouched by Othello's sublime jealousy :
they kill their victims in cold blood as something due
to the self-respect of gentlemen placed in an absurd
position. He rehandles the theme in A Secreto Agravio
Secreta Venganza and in El Medico de su Honra ; but the
right emotion is rarely felt by the reader, since Calderon
himself is seldom fired by real passion, and writes his
scene as a splendid exercise in literature.
His genius is most visible in his autos sacramentales, a
dramatic form peculiar to Spain. The word auto is first
applied to any and every play ; then, the meaning be-
coming narrower, an auto is a religious play, resembling
the mediaeval Mysteries (Gil Vicente's Auto de San
Martinho is probably the earliest piece of this type).
Finally, a far more special sense is developed, and an
auto sacramental comes to mean a dramatised exposition
of the Mystery of the Blessed Eucharist, to be played in
the open on Corpus Christi Day. The Dutch traveller,
Frans van Aarssens van Sommelsdijk, has left an account
of the spectacle as he saw it when Calder6n was in his
prime. Borne in procession through the city, the Host
was followed by sovereigns, courtiers, and the multitude,
with artificial giants and pasteboard monsters — tarascas
— at their head. Fifers, bandsmen, dancers of decorous
measures accompanied the train to the cathedral. In
the afternoon the assembly met in the public square,
328
SPANISH LITERATURE
and the auto was played before the King, who sat beneath
a canopy, the richer public, which lined the balconies, and
the general, which rilled the road. Even for an educated
Protestant nothing is easier than to confound an auto
sacramental with a comedia devota or a comedia de santos :
thus Bouterwek, in his History, and Longfellow, in his
Outre- Her, have mistaken the Devocidn de la Cruz for an
auto. The distinction is radical. The true auto has no
secondary interest, has no mundane personages : its one
subject is the Eucharistic Mystery exposed by allegorical
characters. Denis Florence M'Carthy's version of Los
Encantos de la Culpa (The Sorceries of Sin) enables English
readers to judge the genre for themselves : —
Sin. "... Smell, come here, and with thy sense
Test this bread, this substance, — tell me
Is it bread or flesh ?
The Smell. Its smell
Is the smell of bread.
Sin. Taste, enter;
Try it thou.
The Taste. Its taste
Is plainly that of bread.
Sin, Touch, come; -why tremble f
Say whafs this thou touchest.
The Touch Bread.
Sin. Sight, declare what thou discernest
In this object.
The Sight. Bread alone.
Sin. Hearing, thou, too, break in pieces
This material, 'which, as flesh,
Faith proclaims, and penance preacheth;
Let the fraction by its noise
Of their error undeceive them :
Say, is it so ?
The Hearing. Ungrateful Sin,
Though the noise in truth resembles
That of bread when broken, yet
CALDERtfN'S AUTOS 329
Faith and Penance teach us better.
It is fleshy and what they call it
I believe : that Faith asserteth
Aught, is proof enough thereof.
The Understanding. This one reason brings contentment
Unto me.
Penance. O man, why linger,
Now that Hearing hath firm fetter* d
To the Faith thy Understanding?
QuickC regain the saving vessel
Of the sovereign Church, and leave
Sin's so highly sweet excesses.
Thou, Ulysses, Circe's slave,
Fly this false and" fleeting revel,
Since, how great her power may de,
Greater is the power of Heaven^
And the true Jove's mightier magic
Will thy virtuous purpose strengthen.
The Man. Yes, thou'rt right, O Understanding;
Lead in safety hence my senses.
All. Let us to our ship; for here
All is shadowy and unsettled?
As a writer of autos Calder6n is supreme. Lope, who
outshines him at so many points, is far less dexterous
than his successor when he attempts the sacramental
play. This kind of drama would almost seem created
for the greater glory of Calderon. The personages
of his worldly plays, and even of his comedias devotas,
tend to become personifications of revenge, love, pride,
charity, and the rest. His set pieces are disfigured by
want of humour and by over-refinement — faults which
turn to virtues in the autos, where abstractions are
wedded to the noblest poetry, where the Beyond is
brought down to earth, and where doctrinal subtleties
are embellished with miraculous ingenuity. To assert
that Calderon is incomparably great in the autos is to
330 SPANISH LITERATURE
imply some censure of his art in his secular dramas.
The monotony and artifice of his sacramental plays
might be thought inherent to the species, were not
these two notes characteristic of his whole theatre. Nor
is it an explanation to say that much writing of autos
had affected his general methods ; for not merely are
the secular plays more numerous — they are also mostly
earlier than the autos, whose real defects are a lack of
dramatic interest, an appeal to a taste so local and so
temporary that they are now as extinct in Spain as are
masques in England. Still the passing fashions xvhich
produced Comus in the north, and the Encantos de la
Culpa or the Cena de Baltasar in the south, are justified
to all lovers of great poetry. The autos lingered on the
stage till 1765, but their genuine inspiration ended with
Calder6n, who, in all but a literal sense, may be held for
their creator.
Lope de Vega is the greatest of Spanish dramatists ;
Calder6n is amongst those who most nearly approach
him. Lope incarnates the genius of a nation ; Calderon
expresses the genius of an age. He is a Spaniard t;>
the marrow, but a Spaniard of the seventeenth century
— a courtier with a turn for culteranisnw, averse from
the picaresque contrasts which lend variety to Lope's
scene and to Tirso's. His interpretation of existence is
so idealised that his stage becomes in some sort the
apotheosis of his century. His characters are not so
much men and women, as allegorical types of men
and women as Calder6n conceived them. It is not
real life that he reveals, for he regarded realism as
ignoble and unclean : he offers in its place a brilliant
pageant of abstract emotions. He is not a universal
dramatist : he ranks with the greatest writers for the
THE ALCALDE DE ZALAMEA 331
Spanish stage, inasmuch as he is the greatest poet using
the dramatic form. And, leaving aside his anachronisms
and jumblings of mythology, he is a scrupulous artist,
careful of his literary form and of his construction.
The finished execution of his best passages is so irre-
sistible that FitzGerald declared Isabel's characteristic
speech in the Alcalde de Zalamea to be " worthy of the
Greek Antigone " : — " Oh, never, never might the light
of day arise and show me to myself in my shame ! O
fleeting morning star, mightest thou never yield to the
dawn that even now presses on thine azure skirts ! And
thou, great Orb of all, do thou stay down in the cold
ocean foam ; let Night for once advance her trembling
empire into thine ! For once assert thy voluntary power
to hear and pity human misery and prayer, nor hasten
up to proclaim the vilest deed that Heaven, in revenge
on man, has written on his guilty annals. Alas ! even
as I speak, thou liftest thy bright, inexorable face above
the hills." Contrast with this impassioned lament (a
little toned down in FitzGerald's version) the aphoristic
wisdom of Pedro Crespo's counsel to his son in the
same play : — " Thou com'st of honourable if of humble
stock ; bear both in mind, so as neither to be daunted
from trying to rise, nor puffed up so as to be sure
to fall. How many have done away the memory of a
defect by carrying themselves modestly, while others,
again, have gotten a blemish only by being too proud
of being born without one. There is a just humility
that will maintain thine own dignity, and yet make thee
insensible to many a rub that galls the proud spirit.
Be courteous in thy manner, and liberal of thy purse ;
for 'tis the hand to the bonnet, and in the pocket, that
makes friends in this world, of which to gain one good,
332 SPANISH LITERATURE
all the gold the sun breeds in India, or the universal
sea sucks down, were a cheap purchase. Speak no evil
of women ; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves our
respect ; for of women do we not all come ? Quarrel
with no one but with good cause. ... I trust in God
to live to see thee home again with honour and
advancement on thy back."
Had Calder6n always maintained this level, he would
be classed with the first masters of all ages and all
countries. His blood, his faith, his environment were
limitations which prevented his becoming a world-poet;
his majesty, his devout lyrism, his decorative fantasy
suffice to place him in the foremost file of national
poets. But he was not so national that foreign
adaptors left him untouched : thus D'Ouville annexed
the Dama Duende under the title of L Esprit follet,
which reappears as Killigrew's Parson's Wedding ; thus
Dryden's Evening's Love is Calder6n done from Cor-
neille's French ; thus Wycherley's Gentleman Dancing
Master derives from El Maestro de danzar. Yet, though
Calderdn's plots may be conveyed, his substance cannot
be denationalised, being, as he is, the sublimest Catholic
poet, as Catholicism and poetry were understood by the
Spaniards of the seventeenth century : a local genius of
intensely local savour, exercising his dramatic in local
forms.
Archbishop Trench has suggested that in the three
great theatres of the world the best period covers h'ttle
more than a century, and he proves his thesis by a
reference to dates. ^Eschylus was born B.C. 525, and
Euripides died B.C. 406 : Marlowe was born in 1564,
and Shirley died in 1666 : Lope was born in 1562, and
Calder6n died in 1681. With Calder6n the heroic age
ROJAS ZORRILLA 333
of the Spanish theatre reached a splendid close. He
chanced to outlive his Toledan contemporary, FRANCISCO _
DE RQJAS ZORRILLA (1607-? 1661), from whose Traicion ff"
busca el Castigo Le Sage has arranged his Trattre punt,
and Vanbrugh his False Friend. A courtly poet, and
a Commander of the Order of Santiago, Rojas Zorrilla
collaborated with fashionable writers like Velez de
Guevara, Mira de Amescua, and Calder6n, of whom he
is accounted a disciple, though his one great tragedy has
real individual power. His two volumes of plays (1640,
1645) reveal him as a most ingenious dramatist, who
carries the " point of honour " further than Calder6n in
his best known play, Del Rey abajo ninguno, a charac-
teristically Spanish piece. Garcia de Castanar, appa-
rently a peasant living near Toledo, subscribes so
generously to the funds for the expedition to Algeciras
that King Alfonso XI. resolves to visit him in disguise.
Garcia gets wind of this, and receives his guests honour-
ably, mistaking Mendo for Alfonso. Mendo conceives
a passion for Blanca, Garcfa's wife, and is discovered by
the husband at Blanca's door. As the King is inviolate
for a subject, Garcia resolves to slay Blanca, who escapes
to court. Garcia is summoned by the King, finds his
mistake, settles matters by slaying Mendo in the palace,
and explains to his sovereign (and his audience) that
none under the King can affront him with impunity.
Rojas Zorrilla's style occasionally inclines to cultera-
nismo ; but this is an obvious concession to popular
taste, his true manner being direct and energetic. His
clever construction and witty dialogue are best studied
in Lo que son Mujeres (What Women are) and in Entre
Bobos anda el Juego (The Boobies' Sport).
A very notable talent is that of AGUSTIN MORETO Y
334 SPANISH LITERATURE
CAVA&A (1618-69), whose popularity as a writer of cloak-
and-sword plays is only less than Lope's. In 1639 Moreto
graduated as a licentiate in arts at Alcala de Henares.
Thence he made his way to Madrid, where he found a
protector in Calder6n. He published a volume of plays
in 1654, and is believed to have taken orders three years
later. Moreto is not a great inventor, but so far as con-
cerns stage-craft he is above all contemporaries. In
El Desctin con el Desctin (Scorn for Scorn) he borrows
Lope's Milagros del Desprecio (Scorn works Wonders),
and it is fair to say that the rifacimento excels the ori-
ginal at every point. Diana, daughter of the Conde
de Barcelona, mocks at marriage : her father surrounds
her with the neighbouring gallants, among whom is the
Conde de Urgel. Urgel's affected coolness piques the
lady into a resolve to captivate him, and she so far
succeeds as to lead him to avow his love for her : he
escapes rejection by feigning that his declaration was
a jest, and the dramatic solution is brought about by
Diana's surrender. The plot is ordered with consum-
mate skill, the dialogue is of the gayest humour, the
characters more life-like than any but Alarcon's ; and
as evidence of the playwright's tact, it is enough to say
that when Moliere, in his Princesse (f£lide, strove to
repeat Moreto's exploit he met with ignominious disaster.
In the delicacy of touch with which Moreto handles a
humorous situation he is almost unrivalled ; and in the
broader spirit of farce, his graciosos — comic characters,
generally body-servants to the heroes — are admirable for
natural force and for gusts of spontaneous wit. In El
Undo Don Diego he has fixed the type of the fop con-
vinced that he is irresistible, and the presentation of
fatuity which leads Don Diego into marriage with a
MORETO 335
serving-wench (whom he mistakes for a countess) is
among the few masterpieces of high comedy. Moreto's
historical plays are of less universal interest ; in this kind,
El Rico Hombre de Alcald is a powerful and sympathetic
picture of Pedro the Cruel — the strong man doing justice
on the noble, Tello Garcia — from the standpoint of the
Spanish populace, which has ever respected el Rey justi-
ciero. In his later years Moreto betook him to the comedia
devota; his San Francisco de Sena is extravagantly and
almost ludicrously devout, as in the scenes where Fran-
cisco wagers his eyes, loses, is struck blind, and repents
on recovering his sight. The devout play was not
Moreto's calling : in his first and best manner, as a
master of the lighter, gayer comedy, he holds his own
against all Spain.
Among the followers of Calder6n are Antonio Cuello
(d. 1652), who is reported to have collaborated with
Felipe IV. in El Conde de Essex ; Alvaro Cubillo de
Aragon (fl. 1664), whose Perfecta Casada is a good piece
of work ; Juan Matos Fragoso (? 1614-92), who bor-
rowed and plagiarised with successful audacity ; but
these, with many others, are mere imitators, and the
Spanish theatre declines lower and lower, till in the
hands of Carlos II.'s favourite, Francisco Antonio Bances
Candamo (1662-1704), it reaches its nadir. The last
good playwright of the classic age is ANTONIO DE SOLIS
Y RIVADENEIRA (1610-86), who, by the accident of his
long life, lends a ray of renown to the deplorable reign
of Carlos II. His dramas are excellent in construction
and phrasing, and his Amor al uso was popular in France
through Thomas Corneille's adaptation.
But his title to fame rests, not on verse, but on
prose. His Historia de la Conquista de Mejico (1684) is
336 SPANISH LITERATURE
a most distinguished performance, even if we compare
it with Mariana's. Seeing that Solfs lived through the
worst periods of Gongorism, his style is a marvel of
purity, though a difficult critic might well condemn its
cloying suavity. Still, his work has never been displaced
since its first appearance, for it deals with a very pic-
turesque period, is eloquent and clear, and is almost
excessively patriotic in tone and spirit. Gibbon, in his
sixty-second chapter, mentions "an Aragonese history
which I have read with pleasure " — the Expedition de los
catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos by Francisco
de Moncada, Conde de Osuna (1586-1635). "He never
quotes his authorities," adds Gibbon ; and, in fact, Mon-
cada mostly translates from Ramon Muntaner's Catalan
Crdnica, though he translates in excellent fashion. Diego
de Saavedra Fajardo (1584-1648) writes with force and
ease in his uncritical Corona Gdtica, and in his more
interesting literary review, the Republica literaria ; his
freedom from Gongorism is explained by the fact that
he passed most of his life out of Spain. The Portuguese,
FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELO (1611-66), is ill repre-
sented by his Historia de los Movimientos, Separation y
Guerra de Cataluna (1645), where he is given over to both
Gongorism and conceptisnto : in his native tongue — as in
his Apologos Dialogaes — he writes with simplicity, strength,
and wit. Melo's life was unlucky : when he was not being
shipwrecked, he was in jail on suspicion of being a mur-
derer ; and being out of jail, he was exiled to Brazil. His
reward is posthumous : both Portuguese and Spaniards
hold him for a classic, and Sr. Menendez y Pelayo even
compares him to Quevedo.
Another man of Portuguese birth has won immortality
outside of literature ; yet there is ground for thinking that
VELAZQUEZ 337
DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELAZQUEZ (1599-1660)
had the sense for language as for paint. His Memoria de
las Pinturas (1658) exists in an unique copy published
at Rome under the name of his pupil, Juan de Alfaro,
though its substance is unscrupulously embodied in
Francisco de los Santos' Description Breve of the Escorial.
Formally, it is a catalogue ; substantially, it expresses the
artist's judgment on his great predecessors. Thus, of
Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast he writes : — " There
are admirable heads, and almost all of them seem por-
traits. Not that of the Virgin : she has more reserve,
more divinity : though very beautiful, she corresponds
fittingly to the age of Christ, who is beside her — a point
which most artists overlook, for they paint Christ as a
man, and His Mother as a girl." The great realist speaks
once more in describing Veronese's Purification: — "The
Virgin kneels . . . holding on a white cloth the Child —
naked, beautiful, and tender — with a restlessness so suited
to his age that He seems more a piece of living flesh than
something painted." And, in the same spirit, he writes
of Tintoretto's Washing of the Feet: — "It is hard to
believe that one is looking at a painting. Such is the
truth of colour, such the exactness of perspective, that
one might think to go in and walk on the pavement,
tessellated with stones of divers colours, which, diminish-
ing in size, make the room seem larger, and lead you to
believe that there is atmosphere between each figure.
The table, seats (and a dog which is worked in) are truth,
not paint. . . . Once for all, any picture placed beside it
looks like something expressed in terms of colour, and
this seems all the truer." Strangely enough, this writing
of Velazquez is ignored by most, perhaps by all, of his
biographers; yet it deserves a passing reference as a
338 SPANISH LITERATURE
model of energetic expression in a time when most pro-
fessional men of letters were Gongorists or conceptistas.
A certain directness of style is found in Ger6nimo de
Alcala Yanez y Ribera's Alonso, Mozo de muchos Amos
(1625), in Alonso de Castillo Sol6rzano's Gardufia de
Seville (the Seville Weasel, 1634), m *ne Siglo Pitagorico
(1644) of the Segovian Jew, Antonio Enn'quez G6mez,
and in the half-true, half -invented Vida y Hechos de
Estebanillo Gonzdlez (1646) — all picaresque tales, clever,
amusing, and improper, on the approved pattern. But
the pest of preciosity spread to fiction, is conspicuous in
the Espanol Gerardo of Gonzalo de Cespedes y Meneses,
and steadily degenerates till it becomes arrant nonsense
in the Varies Efectos de Amor (1641) of Alonso de Alcald y
Herrera — five stories, in each of which one of the vowels
is omitted. Alcala, however, had neither talent nor
influence. The Aragonese Jesuit, BALTASAR GRACiAn.
(1601-58), had both, and his vogue is proved by nume-
rous editions, by translations, by such references as that
in the Entretiens of Bouhours, who proclaims him " le
sublime'' Addison thrice mentions him with respect in
the Spectator, and it is suggested that Rycaut's rendering
of the Criticon may have given Defoe the idea of Man
Friday. In the present century Schopenhauer vowed
that the Criticon was " one of the best books in the
world," and Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, taking his cue
from Schopenhauer, has extolled Gracian with some
vehemence.
Gracian seems to have been indifferent to popularity,
and his works, published somewhat against his will by
his friend, Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, were mostly
issued under the name of Lorenzo Gracian. His first
work was El Hfroe (1630), an ideal rendering of the
4bJs*
f
<l V. ~
GRACIAN f 339
Happy Warrior, as El Discrete (1647) is the ideal of the
Politic Courtier ; more important than either is the
Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio (1642), a conceptista Art of
Rhetoric, of singular learning, subtlety, and catholic
taste. The three parts of the Criticdn, which appeared
between 1650 and 1653, correspond to "the spring of
childhood," "the summer of youth," and "the autumn
of manhood." In this allegory of life the shipwrecked
Critilo meets the wild man Andrenio, who finally learns
Spanish and reveals his soul to Critilo, whom he accom-
panies to Spain, where he communes with both allegorical
figures and real personages on all manner of philosophic
questions. The general tone of the Criticdn goes far
towards explaining Schopenhauer's admiration ; for the
Spaniard is no less a woman-hater, is no less bitter, sar-
castic, denunciatory, and pessimistic than the German.
Gracian, to use his own phrase, "flaunts his unhappi-
ness as a trophy" in phrases whose laboured ingenuity
begins by impressing, and ends by fatiguing, the reader.
It is difficult to believe that Gracian's attitude towards
life is more than a pose ; but the pose is dignified, and
he puts the pessimistic case with vigour and skill. His
Ordculo Manual 6 Arte de Prudencia (1653), a reduction
of his gospel to the form of maxims, has found admirers
(and even an excellent translator in the person of Mr.
Joseph Jacobs). The reflection is always acute, and
seems at whiles to anticipate the thought of La Roche-
foucauld — doubtless because both drew from common
sources ; but though the doctrine and spirit be almost
identical, Gracidn nowhere approaches La Rochefou-
cauld's metallic brilliancy and concise perfection. He is
not content to deliver his maxim, and have done with it :
he adds — so to say — elaborate postscripts and epigram-
340 SPANISH LITERATURE
matic amplifications, which debase the maxim to a plati-
tude. Mr. John Morley's remark, that " some of his
aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace," is
scarcely too severe. Yet one cannot choose but think
that Gracidn was superior to his work. He had it in
him to be as good a writer as he was a keen observer,
and in many passages, when he casts his affectations from
him, his expression is as lucid and as strong as may be ;
but he would posture, would be paradoxical to avoid
being trite, would bewilder with his conceit and learn-
ing, would try to pack more meaning into words than
words will carry. No man ever wrote with more care
and scruple, with more ambition to excel according to
the formulae of a fashionable school, with more scorn
for Gongorism and all its work. Still, though he avoided
the offence of obscure language, he sinned most griev-
ously by obscurity of thought, and he is now forgotten
by all but students, who look upon him as a chief among
the wrong-headed, misguided conceptistas.
A last faint breath of mysticism is found in the Tra-
tado de la Hermosura de Dios (1641) by the Jesuit, Juan
Eusebio Nieremberg (1590-1658), whose prose, though
elegant and relatively pure, lacks the majesty of Luis
de Leon's and the persuasiveness of Granada's. More
familiar in style, the letters of Felipe IV.'s friend, Maria
Coronel y Arana (1602-65), known in religion as Sor
MARIA DE JESUS DE AGREDA, may still be read with
pleasure. Professed at sixteen, she was elected abbess
of her convent at twenty-five, and her Mistica Ciudad de
Dios has gone through innumerable editions in almost
all languages; her Correspondencia con Felipe IV. extends
over twenty-two years, from 1643 onwards, and is as re-
markable for its profound piety as for its sound appre-
MOLINOS 341
ciation of public affairs. The common interest of King
and nun began with the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception, which both desired to have denned as an
article of faith ; domestic and foreign politics come
under discussion later, and it soon becomes plain that
the nun is the man. While Felipe IV. weakly laments
that " the Cortes are seeking places, taking no more
notice of the insurrection than if the enemy were at
the Philippines," Sor Marfa de Jesus strives to steady
him, to lend him something of her own strong will, by
urging him to "be a King," "to do his duty." There is
a curious reference to the passing of Cromwell — "the
enemy of our faith and kingdom, the only person whose
death I ever desired, or ever prayed to God for." Her
practical advice fell on deaf ears, and when she died,
no man seemed left in Spain to realise that the country
was slowly bleeding to death, becoming a cypher in
politics, in art, in letters.
One single ecclesiastic rises above his fellows during
the ruinous reign of Carlos the Bewitched, and his
renown is greater out of Spain than in it. MIGUEL DE
MOLINOS (1627-97), the founder of Quietism, was a
native of Muniesa, near Zaragoza ; was educated by the
Jesuits ; and held a living at Valencia. He journeyed
to Rome in 1665, won vast esteem as a confessor, and
there, in 1675, published his famous Spiritual Guide in
Italian. Mr. Shorthouse, an English apostle of Quietism,
mentions a Spanish rendering which "won such popu-
larity in his native country that some are still found who
declare that the Spanish version is earlier than the
Italian." It is almost certain that Molinos wrote in
Spanish, and to judge by the translations, he must have
written with admirable force. But, as a matter of fact,
342 SPANISH LITERATURE
no Spanish version was ever popular in Spain, for the
reason that none has ever existed. This is not the place
to discuss the personal character of Molinos, who stands
accused of grave crimes ; nor to weigh the value of his
teaching, nor to follow its importation into France by
Mme. de la Mothe Guyon ; nor to look into the contro-
versy which wrecked Fe"nelon's career. Still it should
be noted as characteristic of Carlos II.'s reign, that a
book by one of his subjects was influencing all Europe
without any man in Spain being aware of it.
CHAPTER XI
THE AGE OF THE BOURBONS
1700-1808
LETTERS, arts, and even rational politics, practically died
in Spain during the reign of Carlos II. Good work was
done in serious branches of study : in history by Caspar
Ibanez de Segovia Peralta y Mendoza, Marques de Mon-
dejar ; in bibliography by Nicolas Antonio ; in law by
Francisco Ramos del Manzano ; in mathematics by Hugo
de Omerique, whose analytic gifts won the applause of
Newton. But all the rest was neglected while the King
was exorcised, and was forced to swallow a quart of holy
oil as a counter-charm against the dead men's brains
given him (as it was alleged) by his mother in a cup of
chocolate. Nor did the nightmare lift with his death on
November i, 1700 : the War of the Succession lasted till
the signing of the Utrecht Treaty in 1713. The new
sovereign, Felipe V., grandson of Louis XIV., interested
himself in the progress of his people ; and being a
Frenchman of his time, he believed in the centralisation
of learning. His chief ally was that Marques de Villena
familiar to all readers of St. Simon as the major-domo
who used his wand upon Cardinal Alberoni's skull : — " II
leve son petit baton et le laisse tomber de toute sa force
dru et menu sur les oreilles du cardinal, en 1'appelant petit
coquin, petit faquin, petit impudent qui ne meritoit que
23 343
344 SPANISH LITERATURE
les etrivieres." But even St. Simon admits Villena's rare
qualities: — "II savoit beaucoup, et il etoit de toute sa
vie en commerce avec la plupart de tous les savants des
divers pays de 1'Europe. . . . C'etait un homme bon, doux,
honnete, sense . . . enfin 1'honneur, la probite, la valeur,
la vertu meme." In 1711 the Biblioteca Nacional was
founded ; in 1714 the Spanish Academy of the Lan-
guage was established, with Villena as "director," and
soon set to earnest work. The only good lexicon pub-
lished since Nebrija's was Sebastidn de Covarrubias y
Horozco's Tesoro de la Lengua castellana (1611): under
Villena's guidance the Academy issued the six folios
of its Dictionary, commonly called the Diccionario de
Autoridades (1726-39). Accustomed to his Littre, his
Grimm, to the scientific methods of MM. Arsene Dar-
mesteter, Hatzfeld, and Thomas, and to that monu-
mental work now publishing at the Clarendon Press, the
modern student is too prone to dwell on the defects —
manifest enough — of the Spanish Academy's Dictionary.
Yet it was vastly better than any other then existing in
Europe, is still of unique value to scholars, and was so
much too good for its age that, in 1780, it was cut down
to one poor volume. The foundation of the Academy of
History, under Agustfn de Montiano, in 1738, is another
symptom of French authority.
Mr. Gosse and Dr. Garnett, in previous volumes of the
present series, have justly emphasised the predominance
of French methods both in English and Italian literature
during the eighteenth century. In Germany the French
sympathies of Frederick the Great and of Wieland were to
be no less obvious. Sooner or later, it was inevitable that
Spain should undergo the French influence ; yet, though
the French nationality of the King is a factor to be taken
THE FRENCH FASHION 345
into account, his share in the literary revolution is too
often exaggerated. Long before Felipe V. was born
Spaniards had begun to interest themselves in French
literature. Thus Quevedo, who translated the Intro-
duction a la Vie Devote of St. Francois de Sales, showed
himself familiar with the writings of a certain Miguel d
Montana, more recognisable as Michel de Montaigne.
Juan Bautista Diamante, apparently ignorant of Guillen ^
de Castro's play, translated Corneille's Cid under the
title of El Honrador de su padre (1658) ; and in March
1680 an anonymous arrangement of the Bourgeois Gentil-
homme was given at the Buen Retiro under the title of
El Labrador Gentilhombre. Still more significant is an
incident recalled by Sr. Menendez y Pelayo : the staging
of Corneille's Rodogune and Moliere's Les Femmes Sa-
vantes at Lima, about the year 1710, in Castilian ver-
sions, made by Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo. Compared
with this, the Madrid translations of Corneille's Cinna
and of Racine's Iphige"nie, by Francisco de Pizarro y
Piccolomini, Marques de San Juan (1713), and by Jose
de Canizares (1716), are of small moment. The latter
performances may very well have been due in great part
to the personal influence of the celebrated Madame des
Ursins, an active French agent at the Spanish court.
Readers curious as to the Spanish poets of the eight-
eenth century may turn with confidence to the masterly
and exhaustive Historia Critica of the Marques de Valmar.
Their number may be inferred from this detail : that more
than one hundred and fifty competed at a poetic joust
held in honour of St. Aloysius Gonzaga and St. Stanislaus
Kostka in 1727. But none of all the tribe is of real im-
portance. It is enough to mention the names of Juan
Jose" de Salazar y Hontiveros, a priestly copromaniac,
346 SPANISH LITERATURE
like his contemporary, Swift ; of Jose Le6n y Mansilla,
who wrote a third Soledad in continuation of G6ngora ;
and of Sor Maria del Cielo, a mild practitioner in lyrical
mysticism. A little later there follow Gabriel Alvarez de
Toledo, a representative conceptista ; Eugenio Gerardo
Lobo, a romantic soldier with a craze for versifying ;
Diego de Torres y Villarroel, an encyclopaedic professor
at Salamanca, who, half-knowing everything from the
cedar by Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth on the
wall, showed critical insight by the contempt in which
he held his own rhymes. The Carmelite, Fray Juan de
la Concepcion, a Gongorist of the straitest sect, was the
idol of his generation, and proved his quality, when he
was elected to the Academy in 1744, by returning thanks
in a rhymed speech : an innovation which scandalised
his brethren, and has never been repeated.
A head and shoulders over these rises the figure of
. IGNACIO DE LUZAN. CLARAMUNT DE SHELVES Y GURREA
(1702-54), who, spending his youth in Italy, was — so it
is believed — a pupil of Giovanni Battista Vico at Naples,
where he remained during eighteen years. For his cen-
tury, Luzan's equipment was considerable. His Greek
and Latin were of the best ; Italian was almost his native
tongue ; he read Descartes and epitomised the Port-
Royal treatise on logic ; he was versed in German, and,
meeting with Paradise Lost — probably during his resi-
dence as Secretary to the Embassy in Paris (1747-50) —
he first revealed Milton to Spain by translating select
passages into prose. His verses, original and translated,
are insignificant, though, as an instance of his French
taste, his version of Lachaussee's Prejuge' a la Mode is
worthy of notice : not so the four books of his Po^tica
(1737). So early as 1728, Luzan prepared six Ragiona-
LUZAN
menti sopra la poesia for the Palermo Academy, and on
his return to Spain in 1733 he re-arranged his treatise
in Castilian. The Pottica avowedly aims at "subjecting
Spanish verse to the rules which obtain among cultured
nations " ; and though its basis is Lodovico Muratori's
Delia perfetta poesia, with suggestions borrowed from
Vincenzo Gravina and Giovanni Crescimbeni, the general
drift of Luzan's teaching coincides with that of French
doctrinaires like Rapin, Boileau, and Le Bossu. It seems
probable that his views became more and more French^* 7>
with time, for the posthumous reprint of the Pottica
(1789) shows an increase of anti-national spirit ; but on
this point it is hard to judge, inasmuch as his pupil and
editor, Eugenic de Llaguno y Amfrola (a strong French
partisan, who translated Racine's Athalie in 1754), is sus-
pected of tampering with this text, as he adulterated that
of Diaz Gamez' Cronica del Conde de Buelna.
Luzan's destructive criticisms are always acute, and
are generally just. Lope is for him a genius of amazing
force and variety, while Calder6n is a singer of exquisite
music. With this ingratiating prelude, he has no diffi-
culty in exposing their most obvious defects, and his
attack on Gongorism is delivered with great spirit. It is
in construction that he fails : as when he avers that the
ends of poetry and moral philosophy are identical, thut
Homer was a didactic poet expounding political and
transcendental truths to the vulgar, that epics exist for
the instruction of monarchs and military chiefs, that the
period of a play's action should correspond precisely
with the time that the play takes in acting. Luzan's
rigorous logic ends by reducing to absurdity the didac-
tic theories of the eighteenth century ; yet, for all his
logic, he had a genuine love of poetry, which induced
348 SPANISH LITERATURE
him to neglect his abstract rules. It is true that he
scarcely utters a proposition which is not contradicted
by implication in other parts of his treatise. Neverthe-
less, his book has both a literary and an historic value.
Written in excellent style and temper, with innumerable
parallels from many literatures, the Pottica served as a
manifesto which summoned Spain to fall into line with
academic Europe ; and Spain, among the least academic
because among the most original of countries, ended by
obeying. Her old inspiration had passed away with her
wide dominion, and Luzan deserves credit for lending
her a new opportune impulse.
He was not to win without a battle. The official
licensers, Manuel Gallinero and Miguel Navarro, took
public objection to the retrospective application of his
doctrines, and a louder note of opposition was sounded
in a famous quarterly, the Diario de los Literates de
Espafta, founded in 1737 by Juan Martinez Salafranca
and Leopoldo Ger6nimo Puig. Though the Diario was
patronised by Felipe V., though its judgments are now
universally accepted, it came before its time : the bad
authors whom it victimised combined against it, and,
as the public remained indifferent, the review was soon
suspended. Even among the contributors to the Diario,
Luzan found an ally in the person of the clerical lawyer,
JOSE GERARDO DE HERVAS Y COBO DE LA TORRE (d.
1742), author of the popular Sdtira contra los nialos
Escritores de su Ttemfo. Herv£s, who took the pseu-
donym of Jorge Pitillas, wrote with boldness, with critical
sense, with an ease and point and grace which engraved
his verse upon the general memory ; so that to this day
many of his lines are as familiar to Spaniards as are
Pope's to Englishmen. They err who hold with Ticknor
FEIJ6O: SARMIENTO 349
that Hervas imitated Persius and Juvenal: in style and
doctrine his immediate model was Boileau, whom he
adapts with rare skill, and without any acknowledg-
ment. He carries a step further the French doctrines,
insinuated rather than proclaimed in the Poetica, and,
though he was not an avowed propagandist, his sarcastic
epigrams perhaps did more than any formal treatise to
popularise the new doctrines.
A reformer on the same lines was the Benedictine, X^//I
BENITO GERONIMO FEIJOO Y MONTENEGRO (1675-1764),
whose Teatro crltico and Cartas eruditas y curiosas were
as successful in Spain as were the Tatler and Spectator in
England. Feij6o's style is laced with Gallicisms, and
his vain, insolent airs of infallibility are antipathetic ; /
yet though his admirers have made him ridiculous byTXt.
calling him " the Spanish Voltaire," his intellectual
curiosity, his cautious scepticism, his lucid intelligence,
his fine scent for a superstitious fallacy, place him
among the best writers of his age. A happy instance -
of his skill in exposing a paradox is his indictment ofA'^r?
Rousseau's Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts. His be*
rancorous tongue raised up crowds of enemies, who
scrupled not to circulate vague rumours as to his
heretical tendencies : in fact, his orthodoxy was as
unimpeachable as were the services which he rendered /
to his country's enlightenment. His cause, and the
cause of_learning generally, were championed by the
Galician, Pedro Jose Garcia y Balboa, best known as
MARTIN SARMIENTO (1695-1772), the name which he
bore in the Benedictine order. Sarmiento's erudition
is at least equal to Feijoo's, and his industry is matched
by the variety of his interests. As a botanist he won
the admiration and friendship of Linn6 ; Feij6o's Teatro
350 SPANISH LITERATURE
critico owes much to his unselfish supervision ; yet,
while his name was esteemed throughout Europe, he
shrank from domestic criticism, and withheld his mis-
cellaneous works from the press. He owes his place
in literature to his posthumous Memorias para la historia
de la Poesiay Poetas espafioles, which, despite its excessive
local patriotism, is not only remarkable for its shrewd
insight, but forms the point of departure for all later
studies. Not less useful was the life's work of GREGORIO
MAYANS Y SISCAR (1699-1781), who was the first to print
Juan de Valdes' Didlogo de la Lengua, who was the first
biographer of Cervantes, and who edited Luis Vives,
Luis de Le6n, Monde1 jar, and others. Though much of
Mayans' writing has grown obsolete in its methods, he
is honourably remembered as a pioneer, and his Origenes
de la Lengua castellana is full of wise suggestion and acute
divination.
P:
Prominent among Luzan's followers in the self-con-
stituted Academia del Buen Gusto is BLAS ANTONIO
NASARRE Y FERRIZ (1689-1751), an industrious, learned
polygraph who carried party spirit so far as to reproduce
Avellaneda's spurious Don Quixote (1732), on the specific
ground that it was in every way superior to the genuine
sequel. Cervantes, indeed, was an object of pitying
contempt to Nasarre, who, when he reprinted Cervantes'
plays in 1749, contended that they not only were the
worst ever written, but that they were a heap of follies
deliberately invented to burlesque Lope de Vega's
theatre. Of the same school is Lope's merciless foe,
AGUSTfN MONTIANO Y LUYANDO (1697-1765), author of
two poor tragedies, the Virginia and the Atanlfo, models
of dull academic correctness. Yet he found an illus-
trious admirer in the person of Lessing, who, by his
ISLA 351
panegyric on Montiano in the Theatralische Bibliotek,
remains as a standing example of the fallibility of the
greatest critics when they pronounce judgment on
foreign literatures. Even more exaggerated than Mon-
tiano was the Marques de Valdeflores, Luis JOSE VELAZ-
QUEZ DE VELASCO (1722-72), whom we have already
seen ascribing Torre's poems to Quevedo, an error
almost sufficient to ruin any reputation. Velazquez
expressed his general literary views in his Origenes de
la Poesia castellana (1749), which found an enthusi-
astic translator in Johann Andreas Dieze, of Gottingen.
Velazquez develops and emphasises the teaching of his
predecessors, denounces the dramatic follies of Lope
and Calder6n, and even goes so far as to regret that
Nasarre should waste his powder on two common,
discredited fellows like Lope and Cervantes. It is im-
possible for us here to record the polemics in which
Luzan's teaching was supported or combated ; defective
as it was, it had at least the merit of rousing Spain from
her intellectual torpor.
Some effect of the new criticism is seen in the works
of the Jesuit, JOSE FRANCISCO DE ISLA (1703-81), whose
finer humour is displayed in his Triunfo del Amor y de
la Lealtad (1746), which professes to describe the pro-
clamation at Pamplona of Ferdinand VI.'s accession.
The author was officially thanked by Council and
Chapter, and some expressed by gifts their gratitude
for his handsome treatment. As Basques joke with
difficulty, it was not until two months later that the
Triunfo (which bears the alternative title of A Great
Day for Navarre) was suspected to be a burlesque of
the proceedings and all concerned in them. Isla kept
his countenance while he assured his victims of his entire
352 SPANISH LITERATURE
good faith ; the latter, however, expressed their slow-
witted indignation in print, and brought such pressure
to bear that the lively Jesuit — who kept up the farce of
denial till the last day of his life — was removed from
Pamplona by his superiors. The incorrigible wag de-
parted to become a fashionable preacher; but his sense of
humour accompanied him to church, and was displayed
at the cost of his brethren. Paravicino, as we have
already observed, introduced Gongorism into the pulpit,
and his lead was followed by men of lesser faculty, who
reproduced " the contortions of the Sibyl without her
inspiration." By degrees preaching almost grew to be
a synonym for buffoonery, and by the middle of the
eighteenth century it was as often as not an occasion
for the vulgar profanity which pleases devout illiterates.
It is impossible to cite here the worst excesses ; it is
enough to note that a " cultured " congregation applauded
a preacher who dared to speak of "the divine Adonis,
Christ, enamoured of that singular Psyche, Mary ! "
Bishops in their pastorals, monks like Feijoo in his
Cartas eruditas, and laymen like Mayans in his Orador
Cristiano (1733), strove ineffectually to reform the abuse :
where exhortation failed, satire succeeded. Isla had
witnessed these pulpit extravagances at first hand, and
his six quarto volumes of sermons — none of them in-
spiring to read, however impressive when delivered —
show that he himself had begun by yielding to a mode
from which his good sense soon freed him.
His Historia del famoso Predicador Fray Gerundio de
Campazas, alias Zotes (1758), published by Isla under the
name of his friend, Francisco Lob6n de Salazar, parish
priest of Aguilar and Villagarcia del Campo, is an attempt
to do for pulpit profanity what Don Quixote had done for
FRAY GERUNDIO 353
chivalresque extravagances. It purports to be the story
of a peasant-boy, Gerundio, with a natural faculty for
clap-trap, which leads him to take orders, and gains for
him no small consideration. A passage from the sermon
which decided Gerundio's childish vocation may be
quoted as typical : — " Fire, fire, fire ! the house is a-flame !
Domus mea, domus orationis vocabitur. Now, sacristan,
peal those resounding bells : in cymbalis bene sonantibus.
That's the style : as the judicious Picinelus observed, a
death-knell and a fire-tocsin are just the same. Lazarus
amicus noster dormit. Water, sirs, water ! the earth is
consumed — quis dabit capiti meo aquam. . . . Stay ! what
do I behold ? Christians, alas ! the souls of the faithful
are a-fire \-fidelium anima. Molten pitch feeds the
hungry flames like tinder : requiescat in pace, id estt in
pice, as Vetablus puts it. How God's fire devours ! ignis
a Deo Hiatus. Tidings of great joy ! the Virgin of Mount
Carmel descends to save those who wore her holy
scapular : scapulis suis. Christ says : ' Help in the
King's name ! ' The Virgin pronounceth : ' Grace be
with me !' Ave Maria." And so forth at much length.
Isla fails in his attempt to solder fast impossibilities, to
amalgamate rhetorical doctrine with farcical burlesque ;
nor has his book the saving quality of style. Still, though
it be too long drawn out, it abounds with an emphatic,
violent humour which is almost irresistible at a first
reading. The Second Part, published in 1770, is a work
of supererogation. The First caused a furious contro-
versy in which the regulars combined to throw mud at
the Jesuits with such effect that, in 1760, the Holy Office
intervened, confiscated the volume, and forbade all argu-
ment for or against it. Ridicule, however, did its work
in surreptitious copies ; so that when the author was
354 SPANISH LITERATURE
expelled from Spain with the rest of his order in 1765,
Fray Gerundio and his like were reformed characters.
In 1787 Isla translated Gil Bias, under the impression
that he was " restoring the book to its native land." The
suggestion that Le Sage merely plagiarised a Spanish
original is due in the first place to Voltaire, who
made it, for spiteful reasons of his own, in the famous
Siecle de Louis XIV. (1751). As some fifteen or twenty
episodes are unquestionably borrowed from Espinel and
others, it was not unnatural that Spaniards should (rather
late in the day) take Voltaire at his word ; none the less,
the character of Gil Bias himself is as purely French as
may be, and Le Sage vindicates his originality by his
distinguished treatment of borrowed matter. Isla's ver-
sion is a sound, if unnecessary, piece of work, spoiled by
the inclusion of a worthless sequel due to the Italian,
Giulio Monti.
The action of French tradition is visible in NICOLAS
FERNANDEZ DE MoRATfN (1737-80), whose Hormesinda
(1770), a dramatic exercise in Racine's manner, too highly
rated by literary friends, was condemned by the public.
His prose dissertations consist of invectives against Lope
and Calderon, and of eulogies on Luzan's cold verse.
These are all forgotten, and Morati'n, who remained a
good patriot, despite his efforts to Gallicise himself, sur-
vives at his best in his brilliant panegyric on bull-fighting
— the Fiesta de Toros en Madrid — whose spirited quin-
tillas, modelled after Lope's example, are in every
Spaniard's memory.
Moratm's friend, JOSE DE CADALSO__Y VAZQUEZ (1741-
lr 1782), a colonel in the Bourbon Regiment, after passing
most of his youth in Paris, travelled through England,
Germany, and Italy, returning as free from national
CADALSO 355
prejudices as a young man can hope to be. A certain
elevation of character and personal charm made him a
force among his intimates, and even impressed strangers ;
as we may judge by the fact that, when he was killed
at the siege of Gibraltar, the English army wore
mourning for him. His more catholic taste avoided
the exaggerations of Nasarre and Moratin ; he found
praise for the national theatre, and many of his verses
imply close study of Villegas and Quevedo. Even so,
his attachment to the old school was purely theoretical.
His knowledge of English led him to translate in verse —
as Luzan had already translated in prose — passages from
Paradise Lost ; his sepulchral Noches Lugubres, written
upon the death of his mistress, the actress Maria Ignacia
Ibanez, are plainly inspired by Young's Night Thoughts ;
his Cartas Marruecas derive from the Lettres Persanes ;
his tragedy, Don Sancho Garcia, an attempt to put in
practice the canons of the French drama, transplants
to Spain the rhymed couplets of the Parisian stage.
The best example of Cadalso's cultivated talent is his
poem entitled Eruditos d la Violeta, wherein he satirises
pretentious scholarship with a light, firm touch. In
curious contrast with Cadalso's Don Sancho Garcia is the
Raquel (1778) of his friend VICENTE ANTONIO GARCIA^/
DE LA HUERTA Y MuNOZ (1734-87), whose troubles
would seem to have affected his brain. Though Huerta
brands Corneille and Racine as a pair of lunatics,
he is a strait observer of the sacred " unities " : in all
other respects — in theme, monarchical sentiment, sono-
rity of versification — Raquel is a return upon the ancient
classic models._ Its disfavour among foreign critics is
inexplicable, for no contemporary drama equals it in
national savour. Huerta's good intention exceeds his
356 SPANISH LITERATURE
performance in the Theatro Hespailol, a collection (in
seventeen volumes) of national plays, arranged without
much taste or knowledge.
This involved him in a bitter controversy, which pro-
bably shortened his life. Prominent among his enemies
was the Basque, FELIX MARIA DE SAMANIEGO (1745-
1801), whose early education was entirely French, and who
regarded Lope much as Voltaire regarded Shakespeare.
Though Huerta's intemperance lost him his cause, Sama-
niego's real triumph was in another field than that of
controversy. His Fdbulas (1781-94), mostly imitations
or renderings of Phaedrus, La Fontaine, and Gay, are
almost the best in their kind — simple, clear, and forc-
ible. A year earlier than Samaniego, the Jesuit Lasala,
of Bologna, had translated the fables of Lukman al-
Haklm into Latin, and, in 1784, Miguel Garcia Asensio
published a Castilian version. It does not appear that
Samaniego knew anything of Lasala, nor was he dis-
turbed by Garcia Asensio's translation. Before the latter
was in print, he was annoyed at finding himself rivalled by
TOMAS DE IRIARTE Y OROPESA (1750-91), who had begun
his career as a prose translator of Moliere and Voltaire,
and had charmed — or at least had drawn effusive compli-
ments from — Metastasio with a frigid poem, La Miisica
(1780). In the following year Iriarte published his
Fdbulas literarias, putting the versified apologue to doc-
trinal uses, censuring literary faults, and expounding
what he held to be true doctrine. He took most pride
in his plays, El SeHorito mimado and La Seflorita mat
criada ; yet the Spoiled Young Gentleman and the Ill-
bred Young Lady are forgotten— somewhat unjustly — by
all but students, while the wit and polish of the fables have
earned their author an excessive fame. Iriarte was, in the
f,n
JOVE-LLANOS 357
best sense, an " elegant " writer. Unluckily for himself
and us, much of his short life was, after the eighteenth-
century fashion, wasted in polemics with able, learned
ruffians, of whom Juan Pablo Forner (1756-97) is the
most extreme type. Forner's versified attack on Iriarte,
El Asno erudito, is one of the most ferocious libels ever
printed. Literary men the world over are famous for
their manners : Spain is in this respect no better than
her neighbours, and the abusive personalities which form
a great part of her literary history during the last century
are now the driest, most vacant chaff imaginable.
In pleasing contrast with these irritable mediocrities is
the figure of CASPAR MELCHOR DE JOVE-LLANOS (1744-
1811), the most eminent Spaniard of his age. Educated
for the Church, Jove- Llanos turned to law, was appointed
magistrate at Seville in his twenty-fourth year, was trans-
ferred to Madrid in 1778, became a member of the Council
of Orders in 1780, was exiled to Asturias on the fall of
Cabarriis in 1790, and seven years later was appointed
Minister of Justice. The incarnation of all that was best *£
in the liberalism of his time, he was equally odious to re-
actionaries and revolutionists. A stern moralist, he strove '
to end the intrigue between the Queen and the notorious
Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and at the latter's instance
was dismissed from office in 1798. He passed the years
1801-8 a prisoner in the Balearic Islands, returning to
find Spain under the heel of France. His prose writings,
political, economic, and didactic, do not concern us here,
though their worth is admitted by good judges. Jove-
Llanos is most interesting because of his own poetic
achievement, and because of his influence on the group
of Salamancan poets. His play, El Delincuente Honrado
(1774), is a doctrinaire exercise in the manner of Diderot's
358 SPANISH LITERATURE
Fits Naturel; it shows considerable knowledge of dramatic
effect, and its sentimental, sincere philanthropy persuaded
audiences in and out of Spain to accept Jove-Llanos for
a dramatist. At most he is a clever playwright. Yet,
though not an artist in either prose or verse, though far
from irreproachable in diction, he occasionally utters a
pure poetic note, keen and vibrating in satire, noble and
austere in that Epistle to the Duque de Veragua, which, by
common consent, best reflects the tranquil dignity of his
temperament.
Jove-Llanos' official position, his high ideals, his know-
ledge, discernment, and wise counsel were placed at the
service of JUAN MELENDEZ VALDES (1754-1817), the chief
poet of the Salamancan school, who came under his influ-
ence in or about 1777. Jove-Llanos succeeded by sheer
force of character : Mel6ndez was a weather-cock at the
mercy of every breeze. A writer of erotic verses, he
thought of taking orders ; a pastoral poet, he turned to
philosophy by Jove-Llanos' advice; unfortunate in his
marriage, discontented with his professorship at Sala-
manca, he dabbled in politics, becoming, through his
friend's patronage, a government official : and when Jove-
Llanos fell, Melendez fell with him. It is hard to decide
whether Melendez was a rogue or a weakling. Upon
the French invasion, he began by writing verses calling
his people to arms, and ended by taking office under
, * the foreign government. He fawned upon Joseph Bona-
parte, whom he vowed "to love each day," and he hailed
. the restoration of the Spanish with patriotic enthusiasm.
> Finally, the dishonoured man fled for very shame and
safety. Loving iniquity and hating justice, he died in
exile at Montpellier.
He, typifies the fluctuations of his time. His natural
t;^
MELE~NDEZ VALDES 359
bent was towards pastoralism, as his early poems,
modelled on Garcilaso and on Torre, remain to prove;
he took to liberalism at Jove-Llanos' suggestion, as he
would have taken to absolutism had that been the craze
of the moment ; he read Locke, Young, Turgot, and
Condorcet at the instance of his friends. " Obra soy tuya "
("I am thy handiwork"), he writes to Jove-Llanos. He
was ever the handiwork of the last comer : a shadow of • ,,
insincerity, of pose, is over all his verse. Yet, like his
countryman Lucan, Melendez demonstrates the truth
that a worthless creature may be, within limits, a genuine
poet. He has neither morals nor ideas; he has fancy,
ductility, clearness, music, charm, and a picturesque
vision of natural detail that have no counterpart in his
period. Compared with his brethren of the Salaman can '"55(1
school — with Diego Tadeo Gonzalez (1733-94), with
Jos6 Iglesias de la Casa (1753-91), even with Nicasio
Alvarez de Cienfuegos (1764-1809) — Melendez appears
a veritable giant. He was not quite that any more than
they were pigmies ; but he had a spark of genius, while
their faculty was no more than talent.1
His one distinct failure was when he ventured on the
boards with his Wedding1 Feast of Camacho, founded on
Cervantes' famous story, though even here the pastoral
passages are pleasing, if inappropriate. It is to his credit
that his theme is national, while his general dramatic sym-
pathies were, like those of his associates, French. Luzan
and his followers found it easier to condemn the ancient
masterpieces than to write masterpieces of their own.
Their function was negative, destructive ; yet when the
1 For two singularly acute critical studies by M. E. Merime'e on Jove- Llanos
and Melendez Valdes, see the Revue hispanique (Paris, 1894). vol. i. pp. 34-68,
and pp. 217-235.
24
?> C^_ LSI**-/
360 SPANISH LITERATURE
prohibition of az/tar was procured in 1765 by Jose
Clavijo y Fajardo (1730-1806) — whose adventure with
Louise Caron, Beaumarchais' sister, gave Goethe a sub-
ject— they hoped to force a hearing for themselves.
They overlooked the fact that there already existed a
national dramatist named RAM6N DE LA CRUZ Y CAXO
(1731-? 95), who had the merit of inventing a new
genre, which, being racy of the soil, was to the popular
taste. Convention had settled it that tragedies should
present the misfortunes of emperors and dukes ; that
comedies should deal with the middle class, their senti-
mentalities and foibles. Cruz, a government clerk, with
sufficient leisure to compose three hundred odd plays,
f became in some sort the dramatist of the needy, the
/ A . disinherited, the have-nots of the street. He might
• very well sympathise with them, for he was always
v pinched for money, and died so destitute that his
widow had not wherewith to bury him. Beginning,
like the rest of the world, with French imitations and
renderings, he turned to representing the life about him
in short farcical pieces called sainetes — a perfect develop-
ment of the oldpasos. In the prologue to the ten-volume
edition of his sainetes (1786-91), Cruz proclaims his own
merit in a just and striking phrase — " I write, and truth
dictates to me." His gaiety, his picaresque enjoyment,
his exuberant humour, his jokes and puns and quips,
lend an extraordinary vivacity to his presentation of the
most trifling incidents. He might have been — as he
began by being — a pompous prig and bore, preaching
high doctrine, and uttering the platitudes, which alone
were thought worthy of the sock and buskin. He chose
the better part in rendering what he knew and under-
stood and saw, in amusing his public for thirty years,
THE YOUNGER MORATlN 361
and in bequeathing a thousand occasions of laughter
to the world. He wrote with a reckless, contagious
humour, with a comic brio which anticipates Labiche ;
and, unambitious and light-hearted as Cruz was, we may
learn more of contemporary life from El Prado por la
Noche and Las Tertulias de Madrid than from a moun-
tain of serious records and chronicles.
In the following generation LEANDRO FERNANDEZ DE
MORATIN (1760-1828) won deserved repute as a play-
wright. His father, the author of Hormesinda, made a
jeweller's apprentice of the boy who, in 1779 and 1782,
won two accesits from the Academy. He thus attracted
the notice of Jove-Llanos, who secured his appointment
as Secretary to the Paris Embassy in 1787. His stay in
France, followed by later travels through England, the
Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, completed his educa-
tion, and obtained for him the post of official translator.
His exercises in verse are more admirable than his prose
version of Hamlet, which offended his academic theories
in every scene. Moliere, who wras his ideal, has no more
faithful follower than the younger Moratfn. His transla-
tions of LEcole des Maris and Le Medecin malgre" lui
belong to his later years ; but his theatre, including
those most striking pieces El Si de las Ninas (The
Maids' Consent) and La Mojigata (The Hypocritical
Woman), reflects the master's humour and observa-
tion. The latter comedy (1804) brought him into
trouble with the Inquisition ; the former (1806) estab-
lished his fame by its character-drawing, its grace-
ful ingenuity, and witty dialogue. His fortunes, which
seemed assured, were wrecked by the French war.
Moratfn was always timid, even in literary combats : he
now proved himself that very rare thing among Spaniards
362 SPANISH LITERATURE
— a physical coward. He neither dared declare for his
country nor against it, and went into hiding at Vitoria.
He finally accepted the post of Royal Librarian to
Joseph Bonaparte, and when the crash came he de-
camped to Peniscola. These events turned his brain.
All efforts to help him (and they were many) proved
useless. He wandered as far as Italy to escape imagi-
nary assassins, and finally settled in Bordeaux, where
he believed himself safe from the conspirators. El Si
de las Ninas is an excellent piece among the best, and
is sufficient to persuade the most difficult reader that
Leandro Moratfn was one of nature's wasted forces.
He must have won distinction in any company : in this
dreary period he achieves real eminence.
No prose-writer of the time rises to Isla's level. His
brother Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervds y Panduro (1735-1809),
is credited by Professor Max Miiller with "one of the
most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science
of language," and may be held for the father of com-
parative philology ; but his specimens and notices of
three hundred tongues, his grammars of forty languages,
his classic Catdlogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas
(1800-5) appeal more to the specialist than to the lover
of literature. Yet in his own department there is
scarcely a more splendid name.
CHAPTER XII
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
INTELLECTUAL interaction between Spain and France is
an inevitable outcome of geographical position. To the
one or to the other must belong the headship of the Latin
races ; for Portugal is, so to say, but a prolongation of
Galicia, while the unity of Italy dates from yesterday.
This hegemony was long contested. During a century
and a half, fortune declared for Spain : the balance is now
redressed in France's favour. The War of the Succes-
sion, the invasion of 1808, the expedition of 1823, the con-
trivance of the Spanish marriages show that Louis XIV.,
Napoleon I., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe dared risk
their kingdoms rather than loosen their grip on Spain.
More recent examples are not lacking. The primary
occasion of the Franco-German War in 1870-71 was the
proposal to place a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne,
and the Parisian outburst against " Alfonso the Uhlan "
was an expression of resentment against a Spanish King
who chafed under French tutelage. Since there is no
ground for believing that France will renounce a tradi-
tional diplomacy maintained, under all forms of govern-
ment, for over two centuries, it is not rash to assume
that in the future, as in the past, intellectual development
will tend to coincide with political influence. French
literary fashions affect all Europe more or less: they
affect Spain more.
363
364 SPANISH LITERATURE
It is a striking fact that the great national poet of the
War of Independence should be indisputably French in
.-; all but patriotic sentiment. MANUEL Jos£ QUINTANA
(1772-1857) was an offshoot of the Salamancan school,
a friend of Jove-Llanos and of Melendez Valdes, a fol-
lower of Raynal and Turgot and Condorcet, a " philo-
sopher" of the eighteenth-century model. Too much
stress has, perhaps, been laid on his French construc-
tions, his acceptance of neologisms : a more radical fault
is his incapacity for ideas. Had he died at forty his
fame would be even greater than it is ; for in his last
years he did nothing but repeat the echoes of his youth.
At eighty he was still perorating on the rights of man, as
though the world were a huge Jacobin Convention, as
though he had learned and forgotten nothing during
half a century He died, as he had lived, convinced
that a few changes of political machinery would ensure
a perpetual Golden Age. It is not for his Duque de
Viseo, a tragedy based on M. G. Lewis's Castle Spectre,
nor by his Ode to Juan de Padilla, that Quintana is re-
membered. The partisan of French ideas lives by his
Call to Arms against the French, by his patriotic cam-
paign against the invaders, by his prose biographies of
the Cid, the Great Captain, Pizarro, and other Spaniards
of the ancient time. We might suspect, if we did not
know, Quintana's habit of writing his first rough drafts
in prose, and of translating these into verse. Though
he proclaimed himself a pupil of Melendez, nature and
love are not his true themes, and his versification is
curiously unequal. Patriotism, politics, philanthropy
are his inspirations, and these find utterance in the lofty
rhetoric of such pieces as his Ode to Guzman the Good
and the Ode on the Invention of Printing. Unequal, un-
QUINTANA: GALLEGO 365
restrained, never exquisite, never completely admirable
for more than a few lines at a time, Quintana's pas-
sionate pride of patriotism, his virile temperament, his
individual gift of martial music have enabled him to
express with unsurpassed fidelity one very conspicuous
aspect of his people's genius.
Another patriotic singer is the priest, JUAN NlCASlO
GALLEGO (1777-1853), who, like many political liberals,'?
was so staunchly conservative in literature that he con-
demned Notre Dame de Paris in the very spirit of an
alarmed Academician. Slight as is the bulk of his writ-
ings, Gallego's high place is ensured by his combination
of extreme finish with extreme sincerity. His elegy On
the Death of the Duquesa de Frias is tremulous with the
accent of profound emotion ; but he is even better known
by El Dos de Mayo, which celebrates the historic rising
of the second of May, when the artillerymen, Jacinto
Ruiz, Luis Daoiz, and Pedro Velarte, "by their refusal
to surrender their three guns and ten cartridges to the
French army, gave the signal for the general rising of
the Spanish nation. His ode A la defensa de Buenos Aires,
against the English, is no less distinguished for its heroic
spirit. There is a touch of irony in the fact that Gallego
should be best represented by his denunciation of the
French, whom he adored, and by his denunciation of the
British, who were to assist in freeing his country.
Time has misused the work of FRANCISCO MARTINEZ
DE LA ROSA (1788-1862) who at one time was held by /
Europe as the literary representative of Spain. No small
part of his fame was due to his prominent position in
Spanish politics ; but the disdainful neglect which has
overtaken him is altogether unmerited. Not being an
original genius, his lyrics are but variations of earlier
' 366 SPANISH LITERATURE
melodies : thus the Ausencia de la patria is a metrical
exercise in Jorge Manrique's manner ; the song which
commemorates the defence of Zaragoza is inspired by
Quintana ; the elegy On the Death of the Duquesa de Frias,
far short of Gallego's in pathos and dignity, is redolent
of Melendez. His novel, Doila Isabel de So/is, is an
artless imitation of Sir Walter Scott ; nor are his de-
clamatory tragedies, La Viuda de Padilla and Moraima,
of perdurable value any more than his Moratinian plays,
such as Los Celos Infundados. Martinez de la Rosa's
exile passed in Paris led him to write the two pieces
by which he is remembered : his Conjuracion de Venecia
(1834), and his Aben-Humeya (the latter first written
f --in French, and first played at the Porte Saint-Martin
ijr in 1830) denote the earliest entry into Spain of French
romanticism, and are therefore of real historic import-
ance. Fate was rarely more freakish than in placing
this modest, timorous man at the head of a new lite-
rary movement. Still stranger it is that his two late
romantic experiments should be the best of his manifold
work.
But he was not fitted to maintain the leadership which
circumstances had allotted to him, and romanticism found
a more popular expi tent in Angel de Saavedra, DUQUE
V DE RIVAS (i79i-i865),|"he very type of the radical noble.
His exile in France and in England converted him from
a follower of Melendez and Quintana to a sectary of
Chateaubriand and Byron. His first essays in the new
vein were an admirable lyric, Al faro de Malta, and El
Moro expdsito, a narrative poem undertaken by the advice
of John Hookham Frere. Brilliant passages of poetic dic-
tion, the semi-epical presentation of picturesque national
legends, are Rivas' contribution to the new school. He
RIVAS: BLANCO 367
went still further in his famous play, Don Alvaro (1835),
an event in the history of the modern Spanish drama
corresponding to the production of Hcrnani at the
Theatre Fran§ais. The characters of Alvaro, of Leonor,
and of her brother Alfonso Vargas are, if not inhuman, all
but titanic, and the speeches are of such magniloquence
as man never spoke. But for the Spaniards of the third
decade, Rivas was the standard-bearer of revolt, and : f
Don Alvaro, by its contempt for the unities, by its
alternation of prose with lyrism, by its amalgam of the
grandiose, the comic, the sublime, and the horrible, en-
chanted a generation of Spanish play-goers surfeited
with the academic drama.
To English readers of Mr. Gladstone's essay, the Canon ,/, '
of Seville, Jos£ MARIA BLANCO (1775-1841), is familiar by
the alias of Blanco White. It were irrelevant to record
here the lamentable story of Blanco's private life, or to
follow his religious transformations from Catholicism to
Unitarianism. A sufficient idea of his poetic gifts is
afforded by an English quatorzain which has found
favour with many critics : —
" Mysterious light ! When our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue ?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
And lo ! Creation -widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun f or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou madest us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? "
368 SPANISH LITERATURE
This is as characteristic as his Oda d Carlos III. or the
remorseful Castilian lines on Resigned Desire, penned
within a year of his death. A very similar talent was
that of Blanco's friend, ALBERTO LISTA (1775-1848),
also a Canon of Seville Cathedral, a most accomplished
singer, whose golden purity of tone compensates for a
deficient volume of voice and an affected method. But,
save for such a fragment of impassioned, plangent
melody as the poem A la Muerte de Jesus, Lista is less
known as a poet than as a teacher of remarkable in-
fluence. His Lecciones de Literatura Espaiiola did for
Spain what Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
did for England, and his personal authority over some
of the best minds of his age was almost as complete in
scope as it was gentle in exercise and excellent in effect.
The most famous of his pupils was Josfi DE ESPRON-
CEDA (1810-42), who came under Lista at the Colegio
de San Mateo, in Madrid, where the boy, who was in
perpetual scrapes through idleness and general bad con-
duct, attracted the rector's notice by his extraordinary
poetic precocity. Through good and evil report Lista
held by Espronceda to the last, and was perhaps the
one person who ever persuaded him from a rash pur-
pose. At fourteen Espronceda joined a secret society
called Los Numantinos, which was supposed to work for
liberty, equality, and the rest. The young Numantine
was deported to a monastery in Guadalajara, where, on
the advice of Lista (who himself contributed some forty
octaves), he began his epical essay, El Pelayo. Like
most other boys who have begun epics, Espronceda left
his unfinished, and, though the stanzas that remain are
of a fine but unequal quality, they in no way foreshadow
the chief of the romantic school.
ESPRONCEDA 369
Returning to Madrid, Espronceda was soon con-
cerned in more conspiracies, and escaped to Gibraltar,
whence he passed to Lisbon. A suggestion of the
Byronic pose is found in the story (of his own telling)
that, before landing, he threw away his last two pesetas,
" not wishing to enter so great a town with so little
money." In Lisbon he met with that Teresa who figures
so prominently in his life ; but the Government was
once more on his track, and he fled to London, where
Byron's poems came upon him with the force of a
revelation. In England he found Teresa, now married,
and eloped with her to Paris, where, on the three
"glorious days" of July 1830, he fought behind the
barricades. The overthrow of Charles X. put such heart
into the Spanish emigrados that, under the leadership
of the once famous Chapalangarra — Joaqufn de Pablo —
they determined to raise all Spain against the monarchy.
The attempt failed, Chapalangarra was killed in Navarre,
and Espronceda did not return to Spain till the amnesty
of 1833. He obtained a commission in the royal body-
guard, and seemed on the road to fortune, when he was
cashiered because of certain verses read by him at a
political banquet. He turned to journalism, incited the
people to insurrection by articles and speeches, held the
streets against the regular army in 1835-36, shared in the
liberal triumph of 1840, and, on the morrow of the suc-
cessful revolution which he had organised, pronounced
in favour of a republic. He was appointed Secretary
to the Embassy at the Hague in 1841, returning to
Spain shortly afterwards on his election as deputy for
Almerfa. He died after four days of illness on May 23,
1842, in his thirty-third year, exhausted by his stormy
life. A most formidable journalist, a demagogue of con-
370 SPANISH LITERATURE
summate address, a man-at-arms who had rather fight
than not, Espronceda might have cut out for himself a
new career in politics — or might have died upon the
scaffold or at the barricades. But, so far as concerns
poetry, his work was done: an aged Espronceda is
as inconceivable as an elderly Byron, a venerable
Shelley.
Byron was the paramount influence of Espronceda's
life and works. The Conde de Toreno, a caustic poli-
tician and man of letters, who was once asked if he had
read Espronceda, replied : " Not much ; but then I have
read all Byron." The taunt earned Toreno — "insolent
fool with heart of slime " — a terrific invective in the first
canto of El Diablo Mundo : —
" A I necio audaz de corazdn de cieno,
A quien Human el Conde de Toreno."
The gibe was ill-natured, but Espronceda's resentment
goes to show that he felt its plausibility. If Toreno meant
that Espronceda, like Heine, Musset, Leopardi, and Push-
kin, took Byron for a model, he spoke the humble truth.
Like Byron, Espronceda became the centre of a legend,
and — so to say — he made up for the part. He advertised
his criminal repute with manifest gusto, and gave the
world his own portrait in the shape of pale, gloomy,
splendid heroes. Don Felix de Montemar, in El Estu-
diante de Salamanca, is Don Juan Tenorio in a new
environment — "fierce, insolent, irreligious, gallant,
haughty, quarrelsome, insult in his glance, irony on his
lips, fearing naught, trusting solely to his sword and
courage." Again, in the famous declamatory address
To Jarifa, there is the same disillusioned view of life, the
same lust for impossible pleasures, the same picturesque
ESPRONCEDA 371
mingling of misanthropy and aspiration. Once more,
the Fabio of the fragmentary Diablo Mundo is replen-
ished with the Byronic spirit of defiant pessimism, the
Byronic intention of epical mockery. And so through-
out all his pieces the protagonist is always, and in all
ess-jntials, Jose de Espronceda.
Whether any writer — or, at all events, any but the
very greatest — has ever succeeded completely .in shed-
ding his own personality is doubtful. Espronceda, at
least, never attempted it, and consequently his dramatic
pieces — Dofia Blanco, de Borbon, for example — were fore-
doomed to fail. But this very force of temperament,
this very element of artistic egotism, lends life and
colour to his songs. The Diablo Mundo, the Estudiante
de Salamanca, ostensibly formed upon the models of
Goethe, and Byron, and Tirso de Molina, are utterances,
of individual impressions, detached lyrics held together
by the merest thread. Scarcely a typical Spaniard in
life or in art, Espronceda is, beyond all question, the
most distinguished Spanish lyrical poet of the century.
His abandonment, his attitude of revolt, his love of
love and licence — one might even say his turn for
debauchery and anarchy — are the notes of an epoch
rather than the characteristics of a country ; and, in
so much, he is cosmopolitan rather than national.
But the merciless observation of El Verdugo (The
Executioner), the idealised conception of Elvira in El
Estudiante de Salamanca, are strictly representative of
Quevedo's and of Calderdn's tradition; while his arti-^
ficial but sympathetic rhetoric, his resonant music, his;
brilliant imagery, his uncalculating vehemence, bear,
upon them the stamp of all his race's faults and virtues.
In this sense he speaks for Spain, and Spain repays him
372 SPANISH LITERATURE
by ranking him as the most inspired, if the most unequal,
of her modern singers.
Pf His contemporary, the Catalan, MANUEL DE CABANYES
(1808-1833), died too young to reveal the full measure of
his powers, and his Preludios de mi lira (1833), though
warmly praised by Torres Amat, Joaquin Roca y Cornet,
and other critics of insight, can scarcely be said to have
won appreciation. Cabanyes is essentially a poet's poet,
inspired mainly by Luis de Leon. His felicities are those
of the accomplished student, the expert in technicalities,
the almost impeccable artist whose hendecasyllabics, A
Cintio, rival those of Leopardi in their perfect form and
intense pessimism ; but as his life was too brief, so his
production is too" frugal and too exquisite for the general,
and he is rated by his promise rather than by his actual
achievement. Mild y Fontanals and Sr. Menendez y
Pelayo have striven to spread Cabanyes' good report,
and they have so far succeeded that his genius is now
admitted on all hands ; but his chill perfection makes no
appeal to the mass of his countrymen.
Espronceda's direct successor was JOSE ZORRILLA
(1817-1893), whose life's story may be read in his own
Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (Old-time Memories). It was
his misfortune to be concerned in politics, for which he
was unfitted, and to be pinched by continuous poverty,
which drove him in 1855 to seek his fortune in Mexico,
whence he returned empty-handed in 1866. His closing
years were somewhat happier, inasmuch as a pension of
30,000 reales, obtained at last by strenuous parliamentary
effort, freed him from the pressure of actual want.
It may be that it came too late, and that Zorrilla's work
suffers from his straitened circumstances ; but this is diffi-
cult to believe. He might have produced less, might have
ZORRILLA 373
escaped the hopeless hack-work to which he was com-
pelled ; but a finished artist he could never have become,
for, by instinct as by preference, he was an improvisatore.
The tale that (like Arthur Pendennis) he wrote verses to
fit engravings is possibly an invention ; but the inventor
at least knew his man, for nothing is more intrinsically
probable. £^v*x£-»^ m-.,
His carelessness, his haste, his defective execution are
superficial faults which must always injure Zorrilla in
the esteem of foreign critics ; yet it is certain that the
charm which he has exercised over three generations of
Spaniards, and which seems likely to endure, implies the
possession of considerable powers. And Zorrilla had
three essential qualities in no common degree : national
spirit, dramatic insight, and lyrical spontaneity. He is
an inferior Sir Walter, with an added knowledge of the
theatre, to which Scott made no pretence. His Leyenda
de Alkamar, his Granada, his Leyenda del Cid were popu-
lar for the same reason that Marmion and the Lady of the
Lake were popular : for their revival of national legends
in a form both simple and picturesque. The fate that
overcame Sir Walter's poems seems to threaten Zorrilla's.
Both are read for the sake of the subject, for the brilliant
colouring of episodes, more than for the beauty of treat-
ment, construction, and form ; yet, as Sir Walter sur-
vives in his novels, Zorrilla will endure in such of his
plays as Don Juan Tenorio, in El Zapatero y el Rey, and
in Traidor, inconfeso, y mdrtir. His selection of native
themes, his vigorous appeal to those primitive sentiments
which are at least as strong in Spain as elsewhere — •
courage, patriotism, religion — have ensured him a vogue
so wide and lasting that it almost approaches immor-
tality. In the study Zorrilla's slap-dash methods are
374 SPANISH LITERATURE
often wearisome ; on the stage his impetuousness, his
geniality, his broad effects, and his natural lyrism make
him a veritable force. Two of Zorrilla's rivals among
contemporary dramatists may be mentioned : ANTONIO
GARCIA GUTIERREZ (1813-1884), the author of El Tro-
vador, and JUAN EUGENIC HARTZENBUSCH (1806-1880),
whose Amantes de Teruel broke the hearts of senti-
mental ladies in the forties. Both the Trovador and
the Amantes are still reproduced, still read, and still
praised by critics who enjoy the pleasures of memory
and association ; but a detached foreigner, though he
take his life in his hand when he ventures on the con-
fession, is inclined to associate Garcfa Gutierrez and
Hartzenbusch with Sheridan Knowles and Lytton.
A much superior talent is that of the ex-soldier,
MANUEL BRETON DE LOS HERREROS (1796-1873), whose
humour and fancy are his own, while his system is that
of the younger Moratin. His Escuela del Matrimonio is
the most ambitious, as it is the best, of those innumer-
able pieces in which he aims at presenting a picture of
average society, relieved by alternate touches of ironic
and didactic purpose. Bret6n de los Herreros wrote far
too much, and weakens his effects by the obtrusion of
a flagrant moral ; but even if we convict him as a cari-
caturist of obvious Philistinism, there is abundant re-
compense in the jovial wit and graceful versification of
his quips. To him succeeds Tomas Rodriguez Rubi
(1817-1890), who aimed at amusing a facile public in
such a trifle as El Tejado de Vidrio (The Glass Roof), or
at satirising political and social intriguers in La Rueda
de Fortuna (Fortune's Wheel).
j,^. A Cuban like GERTRUDIS GO"MEZ DE AVELLANEDA (1816-
1873), who spent most of her life in ^pain, may for our
LOPEZ DE AYALA 375
purposes be accounted a Spanish writer. The proverbial
gallantry of the nation and the sex of the writer account
for her vogue and her repute. If such a novel as Sab,
with its protest against slavery and its idealised presenta-
tion of subject races, be held for literature, then \ve must
so enlarge the scope of the word as to include Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Another novel, Espatolino, reproduces
George Sand's philippics against the injustice of social
arrangements, and re-echoes her lyrical advocacy of
freedom in the matter of marriage. The Sra. Ave-
llaneda is too passionate to be dexterous, and too
preoccupied to be impressive ; hence her novels have
fallen out of sight. That she had real gifts of fancy and
melody is shown by her early volume of poems (1841),
and by her two plays, Alfonso Munio and Baltasar ; yet,
on the boards as in her stories, she is inopportune,
or, in plainer words, is a gifted imitator, following the
changes of popular taste with some hesitation, though
with a gracefulness not devoid of charm. With her may
be mentioned Carolina Coronado (b. 1823), a refined
poetess with mystic tendencies, whose vogue has so
diminished that to the most of Spaniards she is scarcely
more than an agreeable reminiscence.
It is possible that the adroit politician, ADELARDO LOPEZ
DE AYALA (1828-1879), who passed from one party to
another, and served a monarch or a republic with equal
suppleness, might have won enduring fame as a drama-
tist and poet had he been less concerned with doctrines
and theses. He was so intent on persuasion, so mindful of
the arts of his old trade, so anxious to catch a vote, that
he rarely troubled to draw character, contenting himself
with skilful construction of plot and arrangement of
incident. His Tanto por Ciento and his Consuelo are
25
376 SPANISH LITERATURE
astute harangues in favour of high public and private
morals, composed with extraordinary care and laudable
purpose. If mere cleverness, a scrupulous eye to detail,
a fine ear for sonorous verse could make a man master
of the scene, L6pez de Ayala might stand beside the
greatest. His personages, however, are rather general
types than individual characters, and the persistent sar-
casm with which he ekes out a moral degenerates into
ponderous banter. None the less he was a force during
many years, and, though his reputation be now some-
what tarnished, he still counts admirers among the
middle-aged.
A very conspicuous figure on the Spanish scene during
the middle third of the century was MANUEL TAMAYO Y
BAUS (1829-1898), who, beginning with an imitation of
Schiller in Juana de Arco (1847), passed under the in-
fluence of Alfieri in Virginia (1853), venturing upon the
national classic drama in La Locura de Amor (1855), the
most notable achievement of his early period. The most
ambitious, and unquestionably the best, of his plays is
Un drama nuevo (1867), with which his career practically
closed. He effaced himself, was content to live on his
reputation and to yield his place as a popular favourite
to so poor a playwright as Jose Echegaray. Compared
with his successor, Tamayo shines as a veritable genius.
Sprung from a family of actors, he gauged the possi-
bilities of the theatre with greater exactness than any
rival, and by his tact he became an expert in staging a
situation. But it was not merely to inspired mechanical
dexterity that he owed the high position which was
allowed him by so shrewd a judge as Manuel de la
Revilla : to his unequalled knowledge of the scene he
joined the forces of passion and sympathy, the power of
SELGAS: B^CQUER 377
dramatic creation, and a metrical ingenuity which en-
chanted and bewildered those who heard and those who
read him. ^Ic-t
There is a feminine, if not a falsetto timbre in the
voice of JOSE SELGAS Y CARRASCO (1824-1882), a writer
on the staff of the fighting journal, El Padre Cobos, and
a government clerk till Martinez Campos transfigured
him into a Cabinet Minister. Selgas' verse in the Prima-
vera is so charged with the conventional sentiment and
with the amiable pessimism dear to ordinary readers,
that his popularity was inevitable. Yet even Spanish
indulgence has stopped short of proclaiming him a great
poet, and now that his day has gone by, he is almost as
unjustly decried as he was formerly over-praised. Though
not a great original genius, he was an accomplished ver-
sifier whose innocent prettiness was never banal, whose
simplicity was unaffected, whose faint music and caress-
ing melancholy are not lacking in individuality and
fascination.
A more powerful poetic impulse moved the Sevillan,
GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER (1836-1870). An orphan in
his tenth year, Becquer was educated by his godmother,
a well-meaning woman of some position, who would
have made him her heir had he consented to follow any
regular profession or to enter a merchant's office. At
eighteen he arrived, a penniless vagabond, in Madrid,
where he underwent such extremes of hardship as helped
to shorten his days. A small official post, which saved /^
him from actual starvation, was at last obtained for him,
but his indiscipline soon caused him to be set adrift.
He maintained himself by translating foreign novels,
by journalistic hack-work in the columns of El Contem-
poraneo and El Museo Universal, till death delivered him.
378 SPANISH LITERATURE
The three volumes by which he is represented are
made up of prose legends, and of poems modestly
entitled Rimas. Though Hoffmann is Becquer's intel-
lectual ancestor in prose, the Spaniard speaks with a
personal accent in such examples of morbid fantasy as
Los Ojos Verdes, wherein Fernando loses life for the
sake of the green-eyed mermaiden : as the tale of Man-
rique's madness in El Rayo de Luna (The Moonbeam),
as the rendering of Daniel's sacrilege in La Rosa de
Pasidn. And as Hoffmann influences Becquer's dreamy
prose, so Heine influences his Rimas. It is argued that,
since Becquer knew no German, he cannot have read
Heine — an unconvincing plea, if we remember that
Byron's example was followed in every country by
poets ignorant of English. Howbeit, it is certain that
Heine has had no more brilliant follower than Becquer,
who, however, substitutes a note of fairy mystery for
Heine's incomparable irony. His circumstances, and the
fact that he did not live to revise his work, account for
occasional inequalities of execution which mar his magical
music. To do him justice, we must read him in a few
choice pieces where his apparently simple rhythms and
suave assonantic cadences express his half-delirious visions
in terms of unsurpassable artistry. At first sight one is
deceived into thinking that the simplicity is a spontaneous
result, and there has arisen a host of imitators who have
only contrived to caricature Becquer's defects. His merits
are as purely personal as Blake's, and the imitation of
either poet results almost inevitably in mere flatness.
During the nineteenth century Spain has produced
no more brilliant master of prose than MARIANO Jos£
DE LARRA (1809-1837), son of a medical officer in the
LARRA 379
French army. It is a curious fact that, owing to his
early education in France, Larra — one of the most
idiomatic writers — should have been almost ignorant of
Spanish till his tenth year. Destined for the law, he was
sent to Valladolid, where he got entangled in some love
affair which led him to renounce his career. He took
to literature, attempting the drama in his Maa'as, the
novel in El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente : in neither
was he successful. But if he could not draw character
nor narrate incident, he could observe and satirise with
amazing force and malice. Under the name of Figaro *
and of Juan Perez de Munguia he won for himself
such prominence in journalism as no Spaniard has
ever equalled. Sp_anish politics, the weaknesses of the
national character, are exposed in a spirit of ferocious
bitterness peculiar to the writer. His is, indeed, a de-
pressing performance, overcharged with misanthropy ;
yet for unflinching courage, insight, and sombre humour,
Larra has no equal in modern Spanish literature, and
scarcely any superior in the past. In his twenty-eighth
year he blew out his brains in consequence of an amour
in which he was concerned, leaving a vacancy which
has never been filled by any successor. It is gloomy
work to learn that all men are scoundrels, and that all
evils are irremediable : these are the hopeless doctrines
which have brought Spain to her present pass. Yet it
is impossible to read Larra's pessimistic page without
admiration for his lucidity and power.
An essayist of more patriotic tone is SERAFIN ESTE-
BANEZ CALDERON (1799-1867), whose biography has
1 M. Morel-Fatio points out that Figaro, which seems so Castilian by
association, is not a Castilian name. See his Etudes stir fEspagne (Paris,
1895), vo'- i- P-76. If it be not Catalan, if Beaumarchais invented it, it is
among the most successful of his coinage.
380 SPANISH LITERATURE
been elaborately written by his nephew, Antonio
Canovas del Castillo, the late Prime Minister of Spain.
Estebanez' verses are well-nigh as forgotten as his
Conquista y Pdrdida de Portugal, and his Escenas Anda-
luzas (1847) have never been popular, partly through
fault of the author, who enamels his work with local
or obsolete words in the style of Wardour Street, and
who assumes a posture of superiority which irritates
more than it amuses. A record of Andalucfan manners
and of fading customs, the Escenas has special value as
embodying the impression of an observer who valued
picturesqueness — valued it so highly, in fact, that one
is haunted (perhaps unjustly) by the suspicion that he
heightened his tones for the sake of effect. Another
series of " documents " is afforded by RAM6N DE MESO-
NERO ROMANOS (1803-82), who is often classed as a
follower of Larra, whereas the first of his Esctnas Matri-
tenses appeared before Larra's first essays. He has no
trace of Larra's energetic condensation, tending, as he
does, to a not ungraceful diffuseness ; but he has be-
queathed us a living picture of the native Madrid before
it sank to being a poor, pale copy of Paris, and has
enabled us to reconstruct the social life of sixty years
since. Mesonero, who has none of Estebanez' airs and
graces, though he is no less observant, and is probably
more accurate, writes as a well-bred man speaks — simply,
naturally, directly ; and those qualities are seen to most
advantage in his Memorias de un Setenton, which are as
interesting as the best of reminiscences can be.
These records of customs and manners influenced a
writer of German origin on her father's side, Cecilia
Bohl de Faber, who was thrice married, and whom it
is convenient to call by her pseudonym, FERNAN CABA-
FERNAN CABALLERO ,381
LLERO (1796-1877), a village in Don Quixote's country.
Her first novel, La Gaviota (1848), has probably been
more read by foreigners than any Spanish book of the
century, and, with all its sensibility and moralisings, we
can scarcely grudge its vogue ; for it is true to common
life as common life existed in an Andalucian village, and
its style is natural, if not distinguished. Even in La
Gaviota there is an air of unreality when the scene is
shifted from the country to the drawing-room, and the
suspicion that Fernan Caballero could invent without
observing deepens in presence of such a wooden lay-figure
as Sir George Percy in dementia. Her didactic bent
increased with time, so that much of her later work is
bedevilled with sermons and gospellings ; yet so long
as she deals with the rustic episodes which were her
earliest memories, so long as she is content to report
and to describe, she produces a delightful series of pic-
tures, touched in with an almost irreproachable refine-
ment. She is not far enough from us to be a classic ;
but she is sufficiently removed to be old-fashioned, and
she suffers accordingly. Still it is safe to prophesy that
La Gaviota will survive most younger rivals.
In all likelihood PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON (1833-
1891), who, like most literary Spaniards, injured his work
by meddling in politics, will live by his shorter, more
unambitious stories. His Escdndolo (1875), after creating
a prodigious sensation as a defence of the Jesuits from
an old revolutionist, is already laid aside, and La Prddiga
is in no better case. The true Alarc6n is revealed in
El Sombrero de tres Ptcos, a picture of rustic manners,
rendered with infinite enjoyment and merry humour ; in
the rapid, various sketches entitled Historietas Nacionales;
and in that gallant, picturesque account of the Morocco
382 SPANISH LITERATURE
campaign called the Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra en
Africa — as vivid a piece of patriotic chronicling as these
latest years have shown.
Of graver prose modern Spain has little to boast.
Yet the Marques de Valdegamas, JUAN DONOSO CORT£S
(1809-1853) has written an Ensayo sobre el Catolicismo, el
Liberalismo y el Socialismo, which has been read and ap-
plauded throughout Europe. Donoso, the most intoler-
ant of Spaniards, overwhelms his readers with dogmatic
statement in place of reasoned exposition ; but he writes
with astonishing eloquence, and with a superb convic-
tion of his personal infallibility that has scarcely any
match in literature. At the opposite pole is the Vich
priest, JAIME BALMES Y USPIA (1810-48), whose Cartas
a un Esceptico and Criteria are overshadowed by his Pro-
testantismo comparado en el Catolicismot a performance of
striking ingenuity, among the finest in the list of modern
controversy. Donoso denounced man's reason as a gin
of the devil, as a faculty whose natural tendency is
towards error. Balmes appeals to reason at every step
of the road. With him, indeed, it is unsafe to allow
that two and two are four until it is ascertained what he
means to do with that proposition ; for his subtlety is
almost uncanny, and his dexterity in using an opponent's
admission is surprising. If anything, Balmes is even too
clever, for the most simple-minded reader is driven to
ask how it is possible that any rational being can hold
the opposite view. Still, from the Catholic standpoint,
Balmes is unanswerable, and — in Spain at least — he has
never been answered, while his vogue abroad has been
very great. Setting aside its doctrinal bearing, his treatise
is a most striking example of destructive criticism and of
marshalled argument.
CHAPTER XIII
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
To write an account of contemporary literature is an
undertaking not less tempting than to write the history
of contemporary politics. Its productions are likely to
be familiar to us ; its authors have probably expressed
ideas with which we are more or less in sympathy ; and
in dealing with these we are free from the burdens of
authority and tradition. On the other hand, criticism of
contemporaries is so prone to be coloured by the pre-
judice of sects and cliques, that the liberal historian of
the past is in danger of exhibiting himself as a blind
observer of the present, or as a ludicrous prophet of
the future. A book on current literature is often, like
Hansard, a melancholy register of mistaken forecasts.
Probably no critic of 1820 would have ventured to
place Keats among the greatest poets of the world.
But the risk of failing to recognise a Keats is, in the
nature of things, very slight ; and for our present
purpose we are only concerned with those who, by
general admission, are among the living influences of
the moment, the chiefs of a generation which is now
almost middle-aged.
No Spaniard would contest the title of the Asturian,
RAMON DE CAMPOAMOR Y CAMPOOSORIO (b. 1817), to be
considered as the actual doyen of Spanish literature. He
purposed entering the Society of Jesus in his youth, then
384 SPANISH LITERATURE
turned to medicine as his true vocation, and finally gave
himself up to poetry and politics. A fierce conservative,
Campoamor has served as Governor of Alicante and
Valencia, and has combated democracy by speech and
pen ; but he has never been taken seriously as a politician,
and his few philosophic essays have caused his ortho-
doxy to be questioned by writers with an imperfect sense
of humour. His controversy with Valera on metaphysics
and poetry is a manifest joke to which both writers
have lent themselves with an affectation of profound
solemnity ; and it may well be doubted if Campoamor's
professed convictions are more than occasions for
humoristic ingenuity.
He has attempted the drama without success in such
pieces as El Palacio de la Verdad and in El Honor. So
also in the eight cantos of a grandiose poem entitled El
Drama Universal (1873) he has failed to impress with
his version of the posthumous loves of Honorio and
Soledad, though in the matter of technical execution
nothing finer has been accomplished in our day. His
chief distinction, according to Peninsular critics, is that
he has invented a new poetic genre under the names of
doloras, humoradas or pequenos poemas (short poems). It
is not, however, an easy matter to distinguish any one
of these from its brethren, and Campoamor's own
explanation lacks clearness when he lays it down that
a dolora is a dramatised humorada, and that a pcqueno
poema is an amplified dolora. This is to define light in
terms of darkness. An acute critic, M. Peseux-Richard,
has noted that this definition is not only obscure, but
that it is an evident after-thought.1 The dolora is the
first in order of invention, and it is also the performance
1 See the Revue hispaniqut (Paris, 1894), vol. i. pp. 236-257.
•
CAMPOAMOR 385
upon which, to judge by his Pottica, Campoamor sets
most value. What, then, is a dolora ? It is, in fact, a
" transcendental " fable in which men and women, their
words and acts, are made to typify eternal "verities":
a poem which aims at brevity, delicacy, pathos, and
philosophy in an ironical setting. The "transcendental"
truth to be conveyed is the supreme point : exquisiteness
of form is unimportant.
M. Peseux-Richard dryly remarks that humoradas are
as old as anything in literature, and that Campoamor's
exploit consists in inventing the name, not the thing.
This is true ; and it is none the less true that the
writing of doloras (and the rest), after the recipe of
the master, has become a plague of recent Spanish
literature. Fortunately Campoamor is better than his
theories, which, if he were consistent, would lead him
straight to conceptismo. Doubtless, at whiles, he con-
descends upon the banal, mistakes sentimentalism for
sentiment, substitutes a commonplace for an aphorism,
a paradox for an epigram ; doubtless, also, he is wanting
in the right national note of exaltation and rhetorical
splendour. But for all his profession of indifference to
form, he is — at his best — a most accomplished craftsman,
an admirable artist in miniature, an expert in the art of
concise expression, and, in so much, a healthy influence
— though not without a concealed germ of evil. For if in
his own hands the ingenious antithesis often reaches the
utmost point of condensation, in the hands of imitators
it is degraded to an obscure conceit, a rhymed conun-
drum. His vogue has always been considerable, and he
is one of the few Spanish poets whose reputation extends
beyond the Pyrenees ; still, he is not in any sense a
national poet, a characteristic product of the soil, and
386 SPANISH LITERATURE
with all his distinguished scepticism, his picturesque
pessimistic pose, and his sound workmanship, he is
more likely to be remembered for a score of brilliant
apophthegms than for any essentially poetic quality.
It was as a poet that JUAN VALERA Y ALCALA GALIANO
(b. 1827) made his first appearance in literature in 1856.
Few in Europe have seen more aspects of life, or have
snatched more profit from their opportunities. Born at
C6rdoba, educated at Malaga and Granada, Valera has
so enjoyed life from the outset that his youth is now the
subject of a legend. Passing from law to diplomacy, he
learned the world in the legations at Naples, Lisbon, Rio
Janeiro, Dresden, St. Petersburg ; he helped to found
El Contemporanto, once a journal of great influence ; he
entered the Cortes, and became minister at Frankfort,
Washington, Brussels, and Vienna. His native subtlety,
his cosmopolitan tact, have served him no less in literature
than in affairs. To literature he has given the best that
is in him. He has protested, with the ironical humility
in which he excels, against the public neglect of hi&
poems ; and when one reflects upon what has found
favour in this kind, the protest is half justified. Valera's
verses, falling short as they do of inspired perfection, are
wrought with curious delicacy of technique. But his
very cultivation is against him : such poems as Sueiios or
Ultimo Adios or El Fuego divino, admirable as they are,
recall the work of predecessors. Memories of Luis de
Le6n, traces of Dante and Leopardi, are encountered on
his best page ; and yet he brings with him into modern
verse qualities which, in the actual stage of Spanish
literature, are of singular worth — repose and refinement
and dignity and metrical mastery.
As a critic his diplomatic training has been a hin-
VALERA 387
drance to him. He rarely writes without establishing
some ingenious and suggestive parallel or pronouncing
some luminous judgment ; but he is, so to say, in fear
of his own intelligence, and his instinctive courtesy, his
desire to please, often stay him from arriving at a clear
conclusion. His manifold interests, the incomparable
beauty of his style, his wide reading, his cold lucidity,
are an almost ideal equipment for critical work. Expert
in ingratiation as he is, his suave complaisance becomes
a formidable weapon in such a performance as the Cartas
Americanas, where excessive urbanity has all the effect
of commination : you set the book down with the im-
pression that the writers of the South American continent
have been complimented out of existence by a stately
courtier.
But whatever reserves may be made in praising the
poet and the critic, Valera's triumph as a novelist is in-
contestable. Mr. Gosse has so introduced him to English
readers as to make further criticism almost superfluous.
Valera, for all his polite scepticism, is a Spaniard of the
best : a mystic by intuition and inheritance, a doubter
by force of circumstances and education. He himself has
told us in the Comendador Mendoza how Pepita Jimenez
came into life as the result of much mystic reading,
which held him fascinated but not captive ; and were
we to accept his humorous confession literally, we should
take it that he became a novelist by accident. It is, how-
ever, true that when he wrote Pepita Jimenez he still had
much to learn in method. Writers with not a tithe of
his natural gift would have avoided his obvious faults —
his digressions, his episodes which check the current of
his story. But Pepita Jim/nez, whatever its defects, is of
capital importance in literary history, for from its publi-
388 SPANISH LITERATURE
cation dates the renaissance of the Spanish novel. Here
at last was a book owing nothing to France, taking its
root in native inspiration, arabesquing the motives of
Luis de Granada, Le6n, Santa Teresa, displaying once
more what Coventry Patmore has well described as
" that complete synthesis of gravity of matter and gaiety
of manner which is the glittering crown of art, and
which, out of Spanish literature, is to be found only
in Shakespeare, and even in him in a far less obvious
degree."
And Valera has continued to progress in art. In
construction, in depth, in psychological insight, Dona
Luz exceeds its predecessor, as the Comendador Mendoza
outshines both in vigour of expression, in tragic con-
ception, in pathetic sincerity. Las Ilusiones del Doctor
Faustina has found less favour with critics and with
general readers, perhaps because its humour is too re-
fined, its observation too merciless, its style too subtle.
Nor is Valera less successful in the short story, and in
the dialogue, in which sort Asclepigenia may be held for
an absolute masterpiece in little. His work lies before
us, complete for all purposes ; for though he still pub-
lishes for our delight, advancing age compels him to
dictate instead of writing — a harassing condition for an
artist whose talent is free from any touch of declamation.
It is hard for us who have undergone the spell of Prospero,
who have been fascinated by his truth and grace and
sympathy, to judge him with the impartiality of posterity.
But we may safely anticipate its general verdict. It may
be that some of his improvisations will lack durability;
but these are few. Valera, like the rest of the world, is
entitled to be judged at his best, and his best will be
read as long as Spanish literature endures ; for he is
PEREDA 389
not simply a dexterous craftsman using one of the
noblest of languages with an exquisite delicacy and
illimitable variety of means, nor a clever novelist exer-
cising a superficial talent, nor even (though he is that
in a very special sense) the leader of a national revival.
He is something far rarer and more potent than an
accomplished man of letters : a great creative artist,
and the embodiment of a people's genius.
A less cosmopolitan, but scarcely less original talent
is that of JOSE MARIA DE PEREDA (b. 1834), who comes,
like so many distinguished Spaniards, from " the moun-
tain." Born at Polanco, trained as a civil engineer in
his province of Santander, Pereda was — and, perhaps,
still is, theoretically — a stout Carlist, an intransigent
ultramontane whose social position has enabled him to
despise the politics of expediency. His earliest essays
in a local newspaper, La Abeja Montanesa, attracted no
attention ; nor was he much more fortunate with his
amazingly brilliant Escenas Montaftesas (1864). Fernan
Caballero, and a gentle sentimentalist now wholly for-
gotten, Antonio Trueba (1821-89), satisfied readers
with graceful insipidities, beside which the new-comer's
manly realism seemed almost crude. The conventional
villager, simple, Arcadian, and impossible, held the field ;
and Pereda's revelation of unveiled rusticity was esteemed
displeasing, unnecessary, inartistic. He had to educate
his public. From the outset he found a few enthusiasts
to appreciate him in his native province ; and, by slow
degrees, he succeeded in imposing himself first upon the
general audience, and then, with much more difficulty,
upon official critics. It is commonly alleged against him
that even in his more ambitious novels — in Don Gonzalo
Gonzalez de la Gonzolera, in Pedro Sanchez, where he deals
390 SPANISH LITERATURE
with town life, and in Sotileza, which is salt with the sea
• — his personages are local. The observation is intended
as a reproach ; but, in truth, Pereda's men and women
are only local as Sancho Panza and Maritornes are local
— local in particulars, universal as types of nature. His
true defects are his tendency to abuse his knowledge of
dialect, to insist on a moral aim, to caricature his villains.
These are spots on the sun. On the whole, he pictures
life as he sees it, with unblenching fidelity; his people live
and move ; and — not least — he is a master of nervous,
energetic phrase. No writer outdoes him as a landscape-
painter in rendering the fertile valleys, the cold hills, the
vexed Cantabrian sea, to which he returns with the inti-
mate passion of a lover.
The representative of a younger school is BENITO
PEREZ GALDOS (b. 1845), who left the Canary Islands in
his nineteenth year with the purpose of reading law in
Madrid. A brief trial of journalism, previous to the
revolution of 1868, led to the publication of his first
novel, La Fontana de Oro (1870), and since 1873 he has
shown a wondrous persistence and suppleness of talent.
His Episodios Nacionales alone fill twenty volumes, and as
many more exist detached from that series. He has com-
posed the modern national epic in the form of novels:
novels which have for their setting the War of Independ-
ence, and the succeeding twenty years of civil combat ;
novels in which not less than five hundred characters are
presented. Gald6s is in singular contrast with his friend
Pereda. The prejudiced Tory has educated his public ;
the Liberal reformer has been educated by his contem-
poraries. Gald6s has always had his fingers on the general
pulse ; and when the readers in the late seventies wearied
of the historico-political novel, Gald6s was ready with La
GALD6S: ALAS 391
Familia de Leon Roch, with Gloria, and with Dona Per-
fecta, in which the religious difficulty is posed ten years
before Robert Elsmere was written. His third stage of
development is exampled in Fortuna y Jacinta, a most
forcible study of contemporary life. A prolific inventor,
a minute observer of detail, Galdos combines realism
with fantasy, flat prose with poetic imagination, so that
he succeeds best in drawing psychological eccentricities
like Angel Guerra. He is perhaps too Spanish to endure
translation, too prone to assume that his readers are
familiar with the minutiae of Peninsular life and history,
and his construction, broad as it is, lacks solidity ; but
that he deserves the greater part of his fame is unques-
tionable, and if there be doubters, Fortuna y Jacinta and
Angel Guerra are at hand to vindicate the judgment.
In all the length and breadth of Spain no writer (with
the possible exception of that slashing, incorrigible,
brilliant reviewer, Antonio de Valbuena) is better known
and more feared than LEOPOLDO ALAS (b. 1852), who /
uses the pseudonym of Clarin. Alas is often accused
of fierce intolerance as a critic"; and the charge has this
much truth in it — that he is righteously, splendidly in-
tolerant of a pretender, a mountebank, or a dullard. He
may be right or wrong in judgment ; but there is some-
thing noble in the intrepidity with which he handles an
established reputation, in the infinite malice with which
he riddles an enemy. An ample knowledge of other
literatures than his own, a catholic taste, as pretty a wit
as our days have seen, and a most combative, gallant
spirit make him a critical force which, on the whole, is
used for good. He is not mentioned here, however, as
the formidable gladiator of journalism, but as the author
of one of the best contemporary novels. La Regenta
26
I ./ fi V .
392 SPANISH LITERATURE
(1884-1885) is, in the first place, a searching analysis of
criminal passion, marked by fine insight ; and the exami-
nation of false mysticism which betrays Ana Ozores is
among the subtlest, most masterly achievements in recent
literature. Gald6s is realistic and persuasive : Alas is
real and convincing. He has not the cunning of the con-
triver of situations, and as he never condescends to the
novelist's artifice, he imperils his chance of popularity.
In truth, far from enjoying a vulgar vogue, La Regenta
has had the distinction of being condemned by critic-
asters who have never read it. Su unico Hijo, and the
collection of short stories entitled Pipd, interesting and
finished in detail, are of slighter substance and value.
The duties of a law professorship at the University of
Oviedo, the tasks of journalism, have occupied Alas during
the last four years. Literature in Spain is but a poor
crutch, and even the popular Valera has told us that he
must perish did he depend upon his pen. Spanish men
of letters have to be content with fame. Meanwhile,
it is known that Alas is at work upon the long-promised
EsperaindeOj in which we may fairly hope to find a com-
panion to La Regenta.
Of ARMANDO PALACIO VALORS (b. 1853) it can hardly
be said that he has fulfilled the promise of Marta y
Maria and La Hermana de San Sulpicio. Alas, with
whom Palacio Vald^s collaborated in a critical review
of the literature of 1881, has succeeded in absorbing the
good elements of the modern French naturalistic school
without losing his Spanish savour. Palacio Valdes has
surrendered great part of his nationality in Espuma and
in La Fe, which might, with a change of names, be
taken for translations of French novels. He has abun-
dant cleverness, a sure hand in construction, a distinct
DONA EMILIA PARDO BAZAN 393
power of character-drawing, which have won him more
consideration out of Spain than in it, and he has a
fair claim to rank as the chief of the modern naturalistic
school. His most distinguished rival is the Galician, the
Sra. Quiroga, better known by her maiden name of
EMILIA PARDO BAZAN (b. 1851), the best authoress that
Spain has produced during the present century. Her
earliest effort was a prize essay on Feij6o (1876), followed
by a volume of verses which I have never seen, and
upon which the writer is satisfied that oblivion should
scatter its poppy. She pleases most in picturesque de-
scription of country life and manners in her province, of
scenes in La Coruna, which she glorifies in her writings
as Marineda. Her foundation of a critical review, the
Nuevo Teatro Critico, written entirely by herself, showed
confidence and enterprise, and enabled her to propagate
her eclectic views on life and art. Women have hitherto
been more impressionable than original, and Dona Emilia
has been drawn into the French naturalistic current in
Los Pazos de Ulloa (1886) and in La Madre Naturaleza
(1887). Both novels contain episodes of remarkable
power, and La Madre Naturaleza is an almost epical
glorification of primitive instincts. But Spain has a
native realism of her own, and it is scarcely probable
that the French variety will ever supersede it. It is as a
naturalistic novelist that the Sra. Pardo Bazan is gener-
ally known ; but the fashion of naturalism is already
passing, and it is by the rich colouring, the local know-
ledge, the patriotic enthusiasm, and the exact vision of
such transcripts of local scene and custom as abound
in De mi tierra that she best conveys the impressions of
an exuberant and even irresistible temperament. What
Pereda has accomplished for the land of the mountain
394 SPANISH LITERATURE
the Sra. Pardo Bazan has, in lesser measure, done tor
Galicia.
One must hold it against her that she should have
aided in establishing the trivial vogue of the Jesuit,
Luis COLOMA (b. 1851), whose Pequefleces (1890) caused
more sensation than any novel of the last twenty years.
Palacio Vald6s has been severely censured for writing, in
Espuma, of "society" in which he has never moved.
"What," asked Isaac Disraeli, "what does my son know
about dukes ? " The Padre Coloma's acquaintance with
dukes is extensive and peculiar. Born at Jerez de la
Frontera, he came under the influence of Fernan Caba-
llero, whom he has pictured in El Viernes de Dolores, and
with whom he collaborated in Juan Miseria. His lively
youth was spent in drawing-rooms where Alfonsist plots
were hatched ; and when, at the age of twenty-three,
he joined the Society of Jesus after receiving a mys-
terious bullet-wound which brought him to death's door,
he knew as much of Madrid "society" as any man in
Spain. His literary mission appears to be to satirise
the Spanish aristocracy, and Pequefteces is his capital
effort in that kind. An angry controversy followed, in
which Valera made one of his few mistakes by taking the
field against Coloma, who, with all his superficial smart-
ness, is a special pleader and not an artist. A roman a
clef is always sure of ephemeral success, and readers
were too intent on identifying the originals of Currita
Albornoz and Villamelon to observe that Pequeneces was a
hasty improvisation, void of plot and character and truth
and style. Certain scenes are good enough to pass as
episodical caricatures, and had the Padre Coloma the
endowment of wit and gaiety and distinction, he might
hope to develop into a clerical Gyp. As it is, he has
ECHEGARAY 395
shot his bolt, achieved a notoriety which is even now
fading, and is in a fair way to be dethroned from his
position by Vicente Blasco Ibdnez, the author of Flor de
Mayo, and by Juan Ochoa, the writer of Un Alma de Dios.
These two novelists, the rising hopes of the immediate
future, are rapidly growing in repute as in accomplish-
ment. Narcis Oiler y Moragas (b. 1846) has shown
singular gifts in such tales as L'Escanya-pobres, Vilaniu,
and Viva Espanya. But, as he writes in Catalan, we have
no immediate concern with him here.
Of the modern Spanish theatre there is little originality
to report. Tamayo's successor in popular esteem is
Josfi ECHEGARAY (1832), who first came into notice as a
mathematician, a political economist, a revolutionary
orator, and a minister of the short - lived republic.
Writing under the obvious anagram of Jorge Hayeseca,
Echegaray first attempted the drama so late as 1874, and
has since then succeeded and failed with innumerable
pieces. He is essentially a romantic, as he proves in La
Esposa del Vengador and in 0 Locura 6 Santidad ; but
there is nothing distinctively national in his work, which
continually reflects the passing fashions of the moment.
His plays are commonly well constructed, as one might
expect from a mathematician applying his science to the
scene, and he has a certain power of gloomy realisation,
as in El Gran Galeoto, which moves and impresses ; yet
he has created no character, he delights in cheap effects,
and when he betakes himself to verse, is prone to a
banality which is almost vulgar. A delightfully middle-
class writer, his appreciation by middle-class audiences
calls for no special comment. It even speaks for
itself.
The drama has also been attempted by CASPAR NUNEZ
396 SPANISH LITERATURE
DE ARCE (b. 1834), whose Haz de Lefla, in which Felipe
II. figures, is the most distinguished historical drama of
the century, written with a reserve and elegance rare on
the modern Spanish stage. Nunez de Arce, however,
though he began with a successful play in his fifteenth
year, was well advised when he forsook the scene and
gave himself to pure lyrism. His disillusioning political
experiences as Secretary of State for the Colonies have
reduced him to silence during the last few years. He
was born to sing songs of victory, to be the poet of
ordered liberty, and circumstances have cast his lot in
times of disaster and revolutionary excess. He has had
no opportunity of celebrating a national triumph, and
his hopes of a golden age, to be brought about by a
few constitutional changes, have been grievously dis-
appointed. Yet it is as a political singer that he has
won a present fame and that he will pass onward to
renown. His Idilio is a rustic love story of fine sim-
plicity, of an impressive, pure realism which lifts it
above the common level of pastoral poems, and its
sincerity, its austere finish, are characteristic of the
poet, who is always a scrupulous artist, a passionate
devotee and observer of nature, as he has proved
once more in La Pesca. In Raimundo Lulio, Nunez
de Arce's superb execution is displayed with a superb
result which almost tempts the coldest reader into
pardoning the confusion of two separate themes — alle-
gory and amorism. But a political poet he remains,
and the famous Gritos de Combate (1875), in which he
denounces anarchy, pleads for freedom and for concord,
with a civic courage beyond all praise, is a lasting monu-
ment in its kind. Modern Castilian shows no poetic
figure to compare with him, and the only promises of
V
MENENDEZ Y PELAYO 397
our time are Jacinto Verdaguer and Joan Maragall, two
Catalan singers who fall without our limit.
The present century has produced no great Spanish
historian, though there has been an active movement of
historical research, headed by scholars like Fidel Fita,
specialists like Cardenas, Azcarate, Costa, Perez Pujol,
Ribera, Jimenez de la Espada, Fernandez Duro, and
Hinojosa, all of whom have produced brilliant mono-
graphs, or have accumulated valuable materials for the
Mariana of the future. In criticism also there has been
a marked advance of scholarship and tolerance, thanks
to the example of MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO (b.
1856), whose extraordinary learning and argumentative
acuteness were first shown in his Ciencia Espanola (1878),
and his Historia de los Heterodoxos Espailoles (i 880-81).
Since then the slight touch of acerbity, of provincial
narrowness, has disappeared, the writer's talent has
matured, and, starting as the standard-bearer of an
aggressive party, anxious to recover lost ground, his
sympathies have widened as his erudition has taken
deeper root, till at the present moment he is accepted by
his ancient foes as the most sagacious and accomplished
of Spanish critics. His Odas, Epistolas y Tragedias, is a
signal instance of technical excellence in versification,
containing as good a version of the Isles of Greece as any
foreigner has achieved. But, after all, it is not as poet,
but as critic, as literary historian, that he is hailed by
his countrymen as a prodigy. He has, perhaps, under-
taken too much, and the editing of Lope de Vega may cause
the Historia de las Ideas Esteticas en Espana to remain an
unfinished torso ; but his example and influence have
been wholly exercised for good, and are evident in the
excellent work of the younger generation — the work of
398 SPANISH LITERATURE
Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, of Rafael Altamira y Crevea, of
Ramon Mene"ndez Pidal. It would be a singular thing if
the bright, improvident Spain, which to most of us stands
for the embodiment of reckless romanticism, were to
produce a race of writers of the German type, a breed
absorbed in detail and minute observation ; and as a
nation's genius is no more subject to change than is the
temperament of individuals, the development may not
come to pass. But, as the century closes, the tendency
inclines that way.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL " NOTE'
GEORGE TlCKNOR'S great History of Spanish Literature (Boston,
1872) is the widest survey of the subject ; it should be read in the
Castilian version of Pascual de Gayangos and Enrique de Vedia
(I85I-56),1 or in the German of Nikolaus Heinrich Julius (Leipzig,
1852), both of which contain valuable supplementary matter. Ludwig
Gustav Lemcke shows taste and learning and independence in his
Handbuch der spanischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1855-56). On a smaller
scale are Eugene Baret's Histoire de la literature espagnole (1863),
the volume contributed by Jacques Claude Bemogeot to Victor
Duruy's series entitled Histoire des literatures etrangtres (1880),
Licurgo Cappelletti's Letteratura spagnuola (Milan, 1882), and Mr.
H. Butler Clarke's Spanish Literature (1893). Ferdinand Wolfs
Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen und portugiesischen National-
literatur (Berlin, 1859) is a most masterly study of the early period ;
the Castilian version by D. Miguel de Unamuno, with notes by D.
Marcelino Mene"ndez y Pelayo (1895-96), corrects some of Wolfs
conclusions in the light of recent research. The Darstellung der
spanischen Literatur im Mittelalter (Mainz, 1846), by Ludwig Clarus,
whose real name was Wilhelm Volk, is learned and suggestive,
though too enthusiastic in criticism. Josd Amador de los Rfos' seven
volumes, entitled Historia critica de la literatura espanola (1861-65),
end with the reign of the Catholic Kings : an alphabetical index
would greatly increase the value of this monumental work. The
Comte Theodore Joseph Boudet de Puymaigre's two volumes, Les
•uieux auteurs castillans (1888-90), give the facts in a very agreeable,
unpretentious way.
Among current handbooks by Spanish authors, those by Antonio
Gil y Zdrate (1844), Manuel de la Revilla and Pedro de Alcantara
1 Unless otherwise stated, it is to be understood that, of the books named in
this list, the Spanish are issued at Madrid, the English at London, and the French
at Paris.
399
400 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Garcia (1884), F. Sdnchez de Castro (1890), and Prudencio Mudarra
y Pdrraga (Sevilla, 1895), are well-meant, and are, one hopes, useful
for examination purposes. Jose Ferndndez-Espino's Curso historico-
critico (Sevilla, 1871) is excellent ; but it ends with Cervantes' prose
works, and makes no reference to the Spanish theatre.
On the drama there is nothing to match Adolf Friedrich von
Schack's Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in
Spanien (Berlin, 1845-46) and his Nachtrage (Frankfurt am Main,
1854). Romualdo Alvarez Espino's Ensayo histdrico-critico del teatro
espanol (Cddiz, 1876), containing long extracts from the chief drama-
tists, is serviceable to beginners. The late Cayetano Barrera's Catd-
logo bibliogrdfico y biogrdfico del teatro antiguo espanol (1860) is in-
valuable : lack of funds causes the supplement to remain " inedited."
In bibliography Castilian is richer than English. Nicola's Antonio's
Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (1783-88) and Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus
(1788) are wonderful for their time. Bartolome" Jos£ Gallardo's
Ensayo de una Biblioteca espanola de libros raros y curiosos (1863-89)
owes much to its editors, the Marque's de la Fuensanta del Valle and
D. Jose" Sancho Raydn. For old editions Pedro Salvd y Mallen's
Catdlogo de la biblioteca de Salvd (Valencia, 1872) may be consulted.
An admirable monthly bibliography of new books is issued by D.
Rafael Altamira y Crevea in his Revista critica de historia y litera-
tura espaiiolas, portuguesas e" hispano-americanas. Murillo's monthly
Bolettn is a mere sale list.
M. Foulche"-Delbosc's Revue hispanique and Sr. Altamira's Revista
critica are specially dedicated to our subject ; the zeal and self-
sacrifice of both editors have earned the gratitude of all students of
Spanish literature. MM. Gaston Paris' and Paul Meyer's Romania
frequently contains admirable essays and reviews by MM. Morel-
Fatio, Cornu, Cuervo, and others ; as much may be said for Gustav
Grober's Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie (Halle), and for the
Giomale storico della letteratura italiana (Torino), edited by MM.
Francesco Novati and Rodolfo Renier.
Sr. Menendez y Pelayo's Historia de las Ideas esteticas en Espana
(1883-91) touches literature at many points, and abounds in acute
and suggestive reflections. Two treatises by M. Arturo Farinelli, Die
Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Deutschland in der Litteratur der
beiden Lander (Berlin, 1892), and Spanien und die spanische Litteratur
im Lichte der deutschen Kritik und Poesie (Berlin, 1892), are remark-
able for curious learning and appreciative criticism.
The best general collection of classics is Manuel Rivadeneyra's
BIBLIOGRAPHY 401
Biblioteca de Au tores espanoles (1846-80), which consists of seventy-
nine volumes. Sr. Menendez y Pelayo's Antologia de poetas Uricos
castellanos (1890-96) is supplied with very learned and elaborate
introductions.
CHAPTER I
The Leloaren Cantua and Altobiskar Cantua are given, with
English renderings, in Mr. Wentworth Webster's admirable Basque
Legends (1879); an exposure of the Altobiskar hoax by the same
great authority is printed in the Academy of History's Boletin (1883).
Rafael and Pedro Rodriguez Mohedano display much discursive, un-
critical erudition in their ten-volumed Historia literaria en Espaiia
(1768-85), which deals only with the early period. A recent study
(1888) on Prudentius by the Conde de Vinaza deserves mention.
Migne's Patrologia Latina includes the chief Spanish Fathers. In
the fourth volume of Charles Garner's and Arthur Martin's Nouveaux
Melanges d'archeologie, d'histoire, et de litterature sur le moyen dge
(1877) there is a brilliant essay on the Gothic period by the Rev.
Pere Jules Tailhan, to whom we also owe a splendid edition of the
Rhymed Chronicle, the Epitoma Imptratorum (Paris, 1885), by the
Anonymous Writer of Cordoba.
For the Spanish Jews, Hirsch Gratz' Geschichte der Juden von den
dltesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1865-90) is the best
guide. Salomon Munk's Melanges tie philosophie juivc et arabe
(1857) is not yet superseded, and Abraham Geiger's Divan des Casti-
lier Abu 'I Hassan Juda ha Levi (Breslau, 1851) contains information
not to be found elsewhere. M. Kayserling's Biblioteca Espanola —
Portugeza—Judaica (Strassburg, 1890) is extremely valuable.
Two works by Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy are authoritative as
regards the Arab period : the Histoire des Rfussulmans d'Espagne
(Leyde, 1861), and the Recherches sur thistoire politique et litte'raire
de r Espagne pendant le moyen dge (1881). The first edition of the Re-
cherches (Leyde, 1849) embodies many suggestive passages cancelled in
the reprints. Schack's Poesie und Kunst der Araber in Spanien und
Sicilien (Stuttgart, 1877) is a good general survey, a little too enthu-
siastic in tone ; it greatly gains in the Castilian version, made from ,
the first edition, by D. Juan Valera (1867-71). Nicolas Lucien
Leclerc's Histoire de la me'decine arabe (1876) is of much wider scope
than its title implies, and may be profitably consulted on Arab
achievements in other fields. Francisco Javier Simonet states the
402 BIBLIOGRAPHY
case against the predominance of Arab culture in the preface to his
Glosario de voces ibe"ricas y latinas usadas entre los Muzdrabes (1888).
D. Julian Ribera's learned Ortgenes de la justicia en Aragdn (Zara-
goza, 1897) deals with the facts in a more judicial spirit. Of special
monographs Ernest Renan:s Averroes et F Averroiisme (1866) is a
recognised classic. The greater part of the codex from the Convent
of Santo Domingo de Silos, now in the British Museum (Add. MSS.
30, 853), has been published by Dr. Joseph Priebsch in the Zeitschrijt,
vol. xix.
As regards the Provencal influence in the Peninsula, Manuel MiM
y Fontanals' 'Irovadores en Espana (Barcelona, 1887) is a definitive
work. Eugene Baret's Espagne et Provence (1857) is pleasing but
superficial. Theophilo Braga's learned introduction to the Cancioneiro
Portuguez da Vaticana (Lisbon, 1878) is brilliantly suggestive, though
inaccurate in detail. The counter-current from Northern France, as
it affects the epic, is treated in Mila y Fontanals' Poesia heroico-
popular castellana (Barcelona, 1874).
CHAPTER II
The Misterio de los Reyes Magos is most accessible in Amador de
los Rfos' Historia, vol. iii. pp. 658-60, and in K. A. Martin Hart-
mann's dissertation, Ueber das altspanische Dreikonnigsspiel { Bautzen,
1879). The Swedish scholar, Eduard Lidforss, printed the Misterio
in the Jahrbuch fiir romanische und englische Literatur (Leipzig,
1871), vol. xii., and Professor Georg Baist's diplomatic edition ap-
peared at Erlangen in 1 879. Arturo Grafs Studii drammatici (Torino,
1878) contains an interesting essay on the Magi play ; M. Morel-
Fatio's article in Romania, vol. ix., and Baist's review in the Zeii-
schrift, vol. iv., are both important. D'Ancona's Origini dd teatro
italiano (Torino, 1891) discusses the question of the play's date with
much shrewdness and caution.
The most convenient reference for the Poema del Cid is to Riva-
deneyra, vol. Ivii. D. Ramon Menendez Pidal's edition (1898) super-
sedes all others : next, in order of merit, come Karl Vollmoller's
(Halle, 1879), Eduard Lidforss', called Cantares de Myo Cid (Lund,
1895), and Mr. Archer Huntington's (New York, 1897). The Cantar
de Rodrigo is in Rivadeneyra, vol. xvi. ; vol. Ivii. contains the Apolonio,
the Vida de Santa Maria Egipciacqua, and the Tres Reyes dorient.
The sources of Santa Maria Egipciacqua are indicated by Adolf
BIBLIOGRAPHY 403
Mussafia in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy of Sciences,
vol. clxiii. For the Disputa del Alma y Cuerpo see the Zeitschrift,
vol. Ix. M. Morel-Fatio edited the Debate entre el Agua y el Vino
and the Razon feita de Amor in Romania, vol. xvi. Most of the
foregoing may be read in extract in Egidio Gorra's excellent antho-
logy, Lingua e Letteratura Spagnuola delle origini (Milan, 1898).
CHAPTER III
Most of the writers referred to in this chapter are included in
Rivadeneyra, vols. li. and Ivii. A valuable article on Berceo by D.
Francisco Fernandez y Gonzalez, now Dean of the Central Univer-
sity, was published in La Razon (1857) : a translated fragment of
Berceo is given by Longfellow in Outre-Mer. Gautier de Coinci's
Les tirades de la Sainte Vierge were edited by the Abbe Alexandre
Eusebe Poquet (1857) in a somewhat prudish spirit. M. Morel-
Fatio's study on the Libro de Alexandre, printed in the fourth volume
of Romania, is an extremely thorough performance.
Alfonso's Siete Partidas (1807) and the Fuero Juzgo (1815) have
been issued by the Spanish Academy ; his scientific work is partially
represented by Manuel Rico y Sinobas' five folios entitled Libras del
Saber de Astronomia (1863-67). There is no modern edition of his
histories, and a reprint is greatly needed : the inaugural speech of
D. Juan Facundo Riano, read before the Academy of History (1869),
traces the sources with great ability and learning. The translations
in which Alfonso shared are best read in Hermann Knust's Mittei-
lungen aus dem Eskorial (vol. cxli. of the publications issued by the
Stuttgart Literarischer Verein), and in Knust's Dos Obras diddcticas y
dos Leyendas (1878). Alfonso's Cantigas de Santa Maria have been
published by the Spanish Academy (1889) in two of the handsomest
volumes ever printed ; the Marque's de Valmar has edited the text,
and supplied an admirable introduction and apparatus.
Fadrique's Engannos e Assayamientos de las Mogieres is to be
sought in Domenico Comparetti's Ricerche intorno al libro di Sin-
dibad( Milan, 1869). The questions arising out of the Gran Conquista.
de Ultramar are discussed by M. Gaston Paris, with his usual lucidity
and learning, in Romania, vols. xvii., xix., and xxii.
404 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER IV
Most of the poems mentioned are printed in Rivadeneyra, vol. Ivii.
Solomon 's Rhymed Proverbs are included by Antonio Paz y Melia in
Opusculos literarios de los siglos XIV.-XVJ. (1892). The Poema de
/os/ has been reproduced in Arabic characters by Heinrich Morf
(Leipzig, 1883) as part of a Gratulationsschrift from the University
of Bern to that of Zurich.
Juan Manuel's writings were edited by Gayangos in Rivadeneyra,
vol. li. : we owe his Libro de Caza to Professor Georg Baist (Halle,
1880), and a valuable edition of the Libro del Caballero et del Escudero
to S. Grafenberg (Erlangen, 1883). Alfonso XL's handbook on
hunting is given by Gutierrez de la Vega in the third volume of the
Biblioteca Venatoria (Madrid, 1879). Ayala's history forms vols. i.
and ii. of Eugenic de Llaguno Amirola's Cronicas Espanolas (Madrid,
1779)-
CHAPTER V
The Comte de Puymaigre's La Cour litte"raire de Don Juan IL
(1873) is an excellent general view of the subject. D. Emilio Cotarelo
y Mori's Don Enrique de Villena (1896) is a very learned and interest-
ing study. Villena's Arte Cisoria was reprinted so recently as 1879.
The Libro de los Gatos and Clemente Sanchez' Enxemplos are in
Rivadeneyra, vol. li. ; the latter were completed by M. Morel-Fatio
in Romania^ vol. vii. Mr. Thomas Frederick Crane's Excmpla of
Jacques Vitry (published in 1890 for the Folk- Lore Society) will be
found useful by English readers.
Baena's Candonero (1851) was edited by the late Marque's de Pidal :
the large-paper copies contain a few loose pieces, omitted from the
ordinary edition which was reprinted by Brockhaus in a cheap form
at Leipzig in 1860. D. Antonio Paz y Melia's Obras de Juan Rodri-
guez de la Cdmara (1884) is a good example of this scholar's con-
scientious work. Amador de los Rfos' edition of the Obras del
Marque's de Santillana (1852) is complete and minute in detail.
There is no good edition of Juan de Mena's works ; I have found it
most convenient to use that published by Francisco Sanchez (1804).
The Coplas de la Panadera will be found in Gallardo, vol. i. cols.
613-617-
Juan II.'s Crdnica is printed by Rivadeneyra, vol. Iviii. ; the others
BIBLIOGRAPHY 405
• — those of Clavijo, Gdmez, Lena — are in Llaguno y Amirola's Crdnicas
Espanolas, already named. Llaguno also reprinted Pe"rez de Guzman's
Generaciones at Valencia in 1790.
No modern editor has had the spirit to reissue Martinez de Toledo's
Corbacho, nor did even Ticknor possess a copy. The edition of
Logrono (1529) is convenient. The Visidn deleitable is in Rivade-
neyra, vol. xxxvi. I know no later edition of Lucena's Vita Beata
than that of Zamora, 1483.
CHAPTER VI
Hernando del Castillo's Cancionero General should be read in the
fine edition (1882) published by the Sociedad de Bibliofilos Espafioles ;
the Cancionero de burlas in Luis de Usoz y Rio's reprint (London,
1841). The Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle and D. Jose Sancho
Rayon edited Lope de Stuniga's Cancionero in 1872. While the
present volume has been passing through the press, M. Foulche'-
Delbosc has, for the first time, published the entire text of the Coplas
del Provincial in the Revue hispanique, vol. v. The Coplas de Mingo
Revulgo, Cota's Didlogo, and Jorge Manrique's Coplas are best read
in D. Marcelino Mene*ndez y Pelayo's Antologia, vols. iii. and iv.
An additional piece of Cota's, discovered by M. Foulche"-Delbosc, has
been printed in the Revue hispanique, vol. i. ; and to D. Antonio Paz
y Melia is due the publication of G6mez Manrique's Cancionero (1885).
Inigo de Mendoza and Ambrosio Montesino are represented in Riva-
deneyra, vol. xxxv. Miguel del Riego y Nunez' edition of Padilla
appeared at London in 1841 in the Coleccidn de obras poSticas espanolas.
Pedro de Urrea's Cancionero (1876) forms the second volume of the
Biblioteca de Escritores Aragoneses. Encina's Teatro complete has
been admirably edited (1893) by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri : a sug-
gestive and penetrating criticism by Sr. Cotarelo y Mori appeared in
Espaiia Moderna (May 1894).
Palencia is to be studied sufficiently in his Dos Tratados (1876),
arranged by D. Antonio Maria Fable". The Cronica of Lucas Iranzo
was given by the Academy of History (1853) in the Memorial his I orico
espanol, Amadis de Gaula is most easily read in Rivadeneyra, vol.
xl., which is preceded by a very instructive preface, the work of
Gayangos. The derivation of the Amadis romance is ably discussed
from different points of view by Eugene Baret in his Etudes sur la
redaction espagnole de F Amadis de Gaule (1853); by Theophilo
Braga in his Historia das novelas portuguezas de cavalleria (Portft,
406 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1873) ; and by Luclwig Braunfels in his Kritischer Versuch iiber den
Roman Amadis von Gallien (Leipzig, 1876). The fourth volume of
Ormsby's Don Quixote (1885) contains an exhaustive bibliography of
the chivalresque novels, most of which are both costly and worth-
less. Of the Celcstina. there are innumerable editions ; the handiest
is that in Rivadeneyra, vol. iii. A reprint of Mabbe's splendid English
version (1631) was included by Mr. Henley in his Tudor Translations
(1894). D. Marcelino Mene"ndez y Pelayo's brilliant essay on Rojas
is reprinted in the second series of his Estudios de critica literaria
(1895). Bernaldez' Historia de los Reyes catolicos (Granada, 1856) has
been carefully produced by Miguel Lafuente y Alcantara. Pulgar's
Claras Varones was inserted at the end of Llaguno y Amirola's edition
of the Centon epistolario (1775). It is quite impossible to give any
notion of the immense mass of literature concerning Columbus ; but
anything bearing the names of Martin Fernandez de Navarrete or of
Mr. Henry Harrisse is entitled to the greatest respect.
CHAPTER VII
M. Morel-Fatio's DEspagne au 16' el 17' sihle (Heilbronn, 1878)
is invaluable for this period and the succeeding century. Dr. Adam
Schneider's Spaniens Anteil an der deutschen Litteratur des 16. und
17. Jahrhunderts (Strassburg, 1898) is a work of immense industry,
containing much curious information in a convenient form. English
readers will find an excellent summary of the literary history of this
time in Mr. David Hannay's Later Renaissance (1898).
Manuel Cafiete, whose Teatro espanol del siglo XVI. (1885) is
useful but ill arranged, included a single volume of Torres Naharro's
Propaladia among the Libras de Antaiio so long ago as 1880; the
second is still to come, and those who would read this dramatist must
turn to the rare sixteenth-century editions. Perhaps the best reprint
of Gil Vicente is that issued at Hamburg in 1834 by Jose" Victorino
Barreto Feio and Jose" Gomes Monteiro ; a most complete account
of Vicente, his environment and influence, is given by Theophilo
Braga in the seventh volume of his learned Historia de la littera-
tura portuguesa (Porto, 1898). Boscdn's Castilian version of the
Cortegiano was reissued in 1873 ; the completest edition of his verse
is that published by Professor Knapp (of Yale University), issued at
Madrid in 1 873. Professor Flamini's Studi di storia letteraria italiana
e straniera (Livorno, 1895) contains a very scholarly essay on the
BIBLIOGRAPHY 407
debt of Boscdn to Bernardo Tasso. The poems of Garcilaso are in
Rivadeneyra, vols. xxxii. and xlii. ; but a far pleasanter book to handle
is Azara's edition (1765). Benedetto Croce's study entitled Intorno
al soggiorno di Garcilaso de la Vega in Italia (1894) appeared origin-
ally in the Rassegna storica napoletana di lettere ed arte (a magazine
which deserves to be better known in England than it is). Croce's
researches have been printed apart, and we may look forward to
his publishing others no less important. Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen's
biography and translation of Garcilaso (1823) are defective, but
nothing better exists in English. Few poets in the world have been
so fortunate in their editors as Sa de Miranda. Mme. Carolina
Michaelis de Vasconcellos' reprint (Halle, 1881), with its very learned
apparatus of introduction, notes, and variants, is a real achievement
unsurpassed in the history of editing. A fine edition of Gutierre de
Cetina has been published (Seville, 1895) with a scholarly introduction
by D. Joaquin Hazanas y la Rua. Acuna's works appeared at Madrid
in 1804 ; his Contienda de Ayax is in the second volume of Ldpez de
Sedano's Parnaso Espaiiol (1778). Concerning Mendoza, the reader
may profitably turn to Charles Graux' Essai sur les origines du fona
grec de PEscorial (1880), published in the Bibliotheque de FEcole des
Hautes Etudes. Professor Knapp edited Mendoza's verses in 1877:
a creditable piece of work, though inferior to his edition of Boscan.
Castillejo and Silvestre are exampled in Rivadeneyra, vol. xxxii. Of
Villegas' Inventario there is no modern reprint.
Guevara is sufficiently represented in Rivadeneyra, vol. Ixv. ; the
English versions by Lord Berners, North, Fenton, Hellowes, and
others, are of exceptional merit and interest.
The most important historians of the Indies are reprinted by
Rivadeneyra, vols. xxii. and xxvi. Amador de los Rios edited Oviedo
for the Academy of History in 1851-55. Very full details con-
cerning Corte"s are given by Prescott in his classic book on Peru,
and Sir Arthur Helps' Life of Las Casas (1868) is a pleasing piece of
partisanship.
Lazarillo de Tormes should be read in Mr. Butler Clarke's beautiful
reproduction of the princeps (1897). M. Morel-Fatio's essay in the
first series of his Etudes surPEspagne (1895) is exceedingly ingenious,
but, like all negative criticism, it is somewhat unconvincing. His
guess that Lazarillo was written by some one connected with the
Valde"s clique does not seem very happy, but even a conjecture by
M. Morel-Fatio carries great weight.
Eduard Bohmer gives a very full bibliography of Juan de Valdes
27
408 BIBLIOGRAPHY
in his Biblioteca Wiffeniana (Strassburg, 1874). Benjamin Barren
Wiffen had for Valde"s a kind of cult which found partial expression
in his quarto Life and Writings of Juan Valdh^ otherwise Valdesio
(1865). But it is impossible to give more minute references to the
voluminous literature which deals with Valdes and his brother Alfonso.
An historical essay by Manuel Carrasco, published at Geneva in 1880,
is interesting as the work of a modern Spanish Protestant.
CHAPTER VIII
The Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle's edition of Lope de Rueda
(1894) lacks an introduction, but it is in other respects as good as
possible. D. Angel Lasso de la Vega y Arguelles has published a
Historia y Juicio critico de la Escuela Pottica Sevillana (1871), which
is useful, and even exhaustive, though far too eulogistic in tone. The
Argensolas may be conveniently studied in Rivadeneyra, vol. xlii., which
is supplemented by the Conde de Vinaza's collection of the Poesias
sueltas (1889). Minor dramatists still await republication. Herrera
is easiest read in Rivadeneyra, vol. xxxii. ; M. Morel- Fatio's critical
edition of the Lepanto Ode (Paris, 1893) is of great merit, and an
essay on Herrera by M. Edouard Bourciez in the Annales de la
Faculty des lettres de Bordeaux (1891) is acute and suggestive.
Vicente de la Fuente is the editor of Santa Teresa's writings in Riva-
deneyra, vols. liii. and Iv. The biography by Mrs. Cunninghame
Graham (1894), a work both learned and picturesque, presents rather
the woman of genius than the canonised saint. The text of the
remaining mystics will, with few exceptions, be found in Rivadeneyra,
vols. vi., viii., ix., xxvii., and xxxii. The lesser lights exist only in
editions of great rarity.
Torre's verses are most accessible in Velazquez* edition (1753).
Of Figueroa there is no recent reprint, though a poor selection is
offered by Rivadeneyra, vol. xlii., which also includes Rufo Gutierrez'
minor verse : his Austriada is given in vol. xxix., and Ercilla's
Araucana in vol. xvii. The Catdlogo razonado biogrdfico y biblio-
grdfico of the Portuguese authors who wrote in Spanish is due (1890)
to Domingo Garcia Peres. The Barcelona reprint (1886) of Montemor
is easily found: Professor Hugo Albert Rennert's monograph, 1 he
Spanish Pastoral Romances (Baltimore, 1892), is extremely thoroiv -h.
Zurita is best read in the princeps* A new edition of Mendoza's
BIBLIOGRAPHY 409
Guerra de Granada is urgently called for, and is now being passed
through the press by M. Foulche-Delbosc. Mendoza's burlesque of
Silva will be found in Paz y Melia's Sales Espanolas (1890).
CHAPTER IX
Henceforward the task of the bibliographer is lighter ; for, though
Cervantes, Lope, and later writers are the subjects of an enormous
mass of literature, and are reprinted in editions out of number, it will
only be necessary to name the most important. The twelve quartos
which 'form the Obras Completas (1863-64) of Cervantes are open to
much damaging criticism ; but they contain all his writings, except
the conjectural pieces gathered together by D. Adolfo de Castro in
his Varias obras ineditas de Cervantes (1874). For a most exhaustive
bibliography of Cervantes' writings (Barcelona, 1895) we are indebted
to the late D. Leopoldo Rius y Llosellas : a posthumous volume is to
follow, but even in its present incomplete state Rius' book is worth
more than all previous attempts put together. Editions of Don
Quixote abound, and of these Diego Clemencin's (1833-39) deserves
special mention for its very learned commentary. A new edition, in
course of issue by Mr. David Nutt (1898), presents a text freed from
arbitrary emendations which have crept in without authority. Fer-
n£ndez de Navarrete's biography (1819) is still unequalled. Shelton's
early English version (1612-20) has been reprinted by Mr. Henley
in his series of Tudor Translations (1896). Of later renderings John
Ormsby's (1885) is much the best, and is prefaced by a very judicious
account of Cervantes and his work. Duffield (1881) and Mr. H. E.
Watts (1894) have translated Don Quixote in a spirit of enthusiasm.
The Numantia (1885) and Viaje del Parnaso (1883) were both admir-
ably rendered by the late James Young Gibson. Sr. Mene*ndez y
Pelayo's paper on Avellaneda appeared in Los Lunes de El Impartial
(February 15, 1897).
The Obras of Lope, now printing under the editorship of D.
Marcelino Mendndez y Pelayo, will be definitive ; but as yet only eight
quartos (including Barrera's Nueva Biografia) are available. Lope's
Obras sueltas (1776-79) fill twenty-one volumes; but the best refer-
ence for readers is to Rivadeneyra, vols. xxiv., xxxv., xxxvii., xli., and
xlii., where Lope is incompletely but sufficiently exhibited. M. Arturo
Farinelli's Grillparzer und Lope de Vega (Berlin, 1894) is most excel-
410 BIBLIOGRAPHY
lent. Edmund Borer's Die Lope-de- Vega Litteratur in Deutschland
(1877) is a praiseworthy compilation. Ormsby's article in the Quarterly
Review (October 11894) is, as might be expected from him, most exact
and learned. I am especially indebted to it.
As to the picaresque novels, Guzntdn is in Rivadeneyra, vol. iii. ;
the Picara Justina in vol. xxxiii., and Marcos de Gbregdn in vol. xviii.
A thoughtful and appreciative study on Mateo Alema'n has been
privately printed at Seville (1892) by D. Joaquin Hazanas y la Rua.
Antonio Pe"rez and Gine"s Pe'rez de Hita are to be read in Rivade-
neyra, vols. xiii. and iii. : Mariana fills vols. xxx. and xxxi., but the two
noble folios of 1780 are in every way preferable.
CHAPTER X
The early editions of Gongora are named in the text ; Rivadeneyra,
vol. xxxii., reprints him in unsatisfactory fashion, but there is nothing
better. Forty-nine inedited pieces by Gongora have been recently
published by Professor Rennert in the Revue hispanique, vol. iv.
Churton's essay on Gongora (1862) is learned, spirited, and interest-
ing. Villamediana figures in Rivadeneyra's forty-second volume :
D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori's minute and judicious study (1886) is ex-
tremely important. Lasso de la Vega's monograph, already cited,
on the Sevillan school, should be consulted for the poets of that
group. Villegas and the minor poets may be read in Rivadeneyra,
vol. xlii. Rioja has been admirably edited by Barrera (1867), who
has supplied a most scholarly biography and bibliography : the
additional poems issued in 1872 are more curious than valuable.
Quevedo's prose works were edited by Aureliano Fernlndez-Guerra
y Orbe with great skill and accuracy in Rivadeneyra, vols. xxiii. and
xlviii. ; his verse has been printed in vol. Ixix. by Florencio Janer,
who was not the man for the task. The new and complete edition,
issued by the Sociedad de Bibliofilos Andaluces, and edited by D.
Marcelino Mene"ndez y Pelayo, promises to be admirable, and will
include much new matter — for instance, a pure text of the Buscon. As
yet but one volume (1898) has been issued to subscribers. M. Ernest
Merime'e, the author of an excellent monograph on Quevedo (1886),
has given us a critical edition of Castro's Mocedades del Cid (Toulouse,
1890). V&ez de Guevara and Montalbdn are exampled in Rivade-
neyra, vol. xlv. : the prose of the former is in vol. xviii.
Hartzenbusch's twelve-volume edition of Tirso de Molina (1839-42)
BIBLIOGRAPHY 411
is incomplete, but it is greatly superior to the selection in Rivade-
neyra, vol. v. D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori's monograph on Tirso
(1893) contains many new facts, stated with great precision and
lucidity. Hartzenbusch's edition of Ruiz de Alarcon in Rivadeneyra,
vo . xx., is the best and fullest.
Calderon's editions are numerous, but none are really good. Keil's
(Leipzig, 1827) is the most complete ; Hartzenbusch's, which fills
vols. vii., ix., xii., and xiv. of Rivadeneyra, is the easiest to obtain,
and is sufficient for most purposes. Mr. Norman MacColl's Select
Plays of Calderon (1888) deserves special mention for its excellent
introduction and judicious notes. M. Morel- Fatio's edition of El
MAgico Prodigioso is a model of skill and accuracy. Two small col-
lections of Calderon's verse were published at Ccidiz, 1845, and at
Madrid, 1881. Archbishop Trench's monograph (1880) and Miss
E. J. Hasell's study (1879) are deservedly well known. D. Marcelino
Mene"ndez y Pelayo's lectures, Calderon y su Teatro (1881) are full of
sound, impartial criticism. Friedrich Wilhelm Valentin Schmidt's
Die Schauspiele Calderon 's (Elberfeld, 1857) maintains its place by
virtue of its sound and sympathetic criticism. The history of the autos
is fully given by Eduardo Gonzalez Pedroso in Rivadeneyra, vol. Iviii.
Edmund Borer's Die Calderon- Litleratur in Deutschland (Leipzig,
1881) is useful and unpretending. D. Antonio Sanchez Moguel's
study (1881) of the relation between the Mdgico Prodigioso and
Goethe's Faust is learned and ingenious, and D. Antonio Rubio y
Lluch's Sentimiento del }lonor en el Teatro de Calderon (Barcelona,
1882) is a very suggestive essay.
The select plays of Rojas Zorrilla and Moreto are contained in
Rivadeneyra, vols. xxxix. and liv. There exists no good edition of
Gracian : Carl Borinski's study entitled Baltasar Gracidn und die
Hoflitteratur in Deutschland (Halle, 1894) is a very commendable
book, and M. Arturo Farinelli's criticism in the Revista critica, vol.
ii., is not only learned, but is warm in its appreciation of Gracidn's
perverse talent.
CHAPTER XI
An almost complete record of eighteenth-century literature is sup-
plied by Sr. D. Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto, Marques de Valmar, in
his Historica Critica de lapoesia caste liana en el siglo XVIII. (1893),
a revised and augmented edition of the classic preface to Rivadeneyra,
412 BIBLIOGRAPHY
vols. Ixi., Ixiii., and Ixvii. D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori's invaluable
Iriarte y su e"poca (1897) sheds much light on the literary history of
the period, and D. Marcelino Mene"ndez y Pelayo's Historia de las
Ideas esttticas en Espana (vol. iii. part ii., 1886) should be read as a
complement to all other works. Antonio Maria Alcald Galiano's
Historia de la literatura espanola, francesa, tnglesa, / italiano en el
siglo XVI I I. (1845) is acute, but somewhat obsolete. I should
recommend as an honest, useful monograph the life of Sarmiento
published under the title of El Gran Gallego (La Coruna, 1895) by
D. Antolin Lopez Pelaez.
CHAPTERS XII AND XIII
The only summary of the period is Padre Francisco Blanco Garcfa's
Literatura Espaiiola en el siglo XIX. (1891): it is extremely un-
critical, and is marred by violent personal prejudices intemperately
expressed. But it has the merit of existing, and embodies useful
information in the way of facts. Gustave Hubbard's Histoire de la
literature conttmporaine en Espagne (1876) and Boris de Tannen-
berg's La Pohie castellane contemporaine (1892) are pleasant but
slight. Pedro de Novo y Colsdn's Autores dramdticos contemporaneos
yjoyas del teatro espanol del siglo XIX. (1881-85), w'th a preface by
Antonio Canovas del Castillo, is conscientiously put together, and will
be found very serviceable.
INDEX
ABARBANEL, Judas, 131, 219
Abraham ben David, 19
Acuna, Fernando de, 149-150
Adenet le Roi, 41
Alabanza de Mahoma, 20
Alarcon, Pedro Antonio de, 381-382
Alas, Leopoldo, 391-392
Alba, Bartolome, 257
Alcala, Alfonso de, 130
Alcala y Herrera, Alonso de, 338
Alcazar, Baltasar de, 176
Aleman, Mateo, 264-267
Alexander, Letters of, 63, 65
Alexandre, Libra de, 62, 63, 65
Alfonso II. of Aragon, 28, 29
Alfonso the Learned, 28, 30, 38, 60,
63-72
Alfonso XL, 85
Aljamia, 19-20
Altamira y Crevea, Rafael, 398
Altobiskarko CantTta, 2
Al-Tufail, 12
Alvarez de Ayllon, Pero, 165
Alvarez de Cienfuegos, Nicasio, 359
Alvarez de Toledo, Gabriel, 346
Alvarez de Villasandino, Alfonso,
/ 26, 31
Alvarez Gato, Juan, 112
Amadisde Gaula, 91, 97, 106, 123-124
Amadis de Grecia, 1 06, 157
Amador de los Rios, Jose, 34, 43, 107
Amalteo, Giovanni Battista, 186
Anales Toledanos, 62
Andujar, Juan de, 109
Angeles, Juan de los, 202
Angulo y Pulgar, Martin de, 291
Ansfis de Carthage, 41
Antonio, Nicolas, 343
Apolonio, Libra de, 20, 30, 38, 53-54
Arab influence, 14-19
Arevalo, Faustino, II
Argensola. See Leonardo de Argensola
Argote, Juan de, 280
Argote y G6ngora, Luis, 143, 233, 250,
270, 276, 279-294
Arguijo, Juan de, 298
Arias Montano, Benito, 181, 202-
203, 272
Artieda. See Rey de Artieda
Asenjo Barbieri, Francisco, 19, 131,
250
Avellaneda. See Fernandez de Avel-
laneda
Avellaneda. See Gomez de Avel-
laneda
Avempace, 12
Avendano, Francisco de, 170
Averroes, 12
Avicebron, n, 17, 18
Avila, Juan de, 161
Avila y Zuniga, Luis, 156
Aviles, Fuero de, 24
Axular, Pedro de, 3
Ayala. See Lopez de Ayala
Azemar, Guilhem, 36
BAENA, Juan Alfonso de, 95, 96
Baist, Professor, 82
Balbus, 5
Balmes y Uspia, Jaime, 382
413
414
INDEX
Bances Candamo, Francisco Antonio,
335
Barahona de Soto, Luis, 189, 270
Barcelo, Francisco, 118
Barlaam and fosaphat, Legend of,
83,96
Barrera y Leirado, Cayetano Alberto
de la, 242, 244
Barrientos, Lope de, 95.
Basque influence, 3-4
Baudouin, Jean, 233
Bavia, Luis de, 286
Bechada, Gregoire de, 72
Be"cquer, Gustavo Adolfo, 377-378
Bedier, M. Joseph, 16
Belianls de Grecia, 1 58
Belmonte y Bermudez, Luis, 314
Bembo, Pietro, 144
Berague, Pedro de, 87
Berceo, Gonzalo de, 27, 28, 29,
57-6i
Beristain de Souza Fernandez de
Lara, Jose Mariano, 257
Bermudez, Geronimo, 173
Bernaldez, Andres, 127
Blanco, Jose" Maria, 367-368
Blasco Ibanez, Vicente, 395
Bocados de Oro. See Boniufn
Bohl de Faber, Cecilia. See Caba-
llero
Bohl de Faber, Johan Nikolas, 203
Bohmer, Eduard, 162
Bonilla, Alonso de, 299
Bonium, 63, 73
Boscan Almogaver, Juan, 136-141,
'43
Bouterwek, Friedrich, 289
Braulius, St., 10
Breton de los Herreros, Manuel, 374
Burke, Edmund, 124
Byron, Lord, 230, 313, 370
CABALLERO, Fernan, 380-381, 389
Cabanyes, Manuel de, 372
Cabo roto, Versos de, 228, 268
Caceres y Espinosa, Pedro de, 153
Cadalso y Vazquez, Jose de, 355
Calanson, Guirauld de, 36
Calderon de la Barca Henao de la
Barreda y Riano, Pedro, 85, 136,
225, 250, 256, 261, 276, 317-332
Camoes, Luis de, 115, 177, 203, 270
Campoamor y Campoosorio, Ramon
de, 383-386
Camus, Jean-Pierre, 289
Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana,
30, 71
Cancionero de Baena, 30, 33, 96-98
Cancionero de bur las, 109, 112, 124
Cancionero de Linares, 15
Cancionero de Lope de Stunigat 34
Cancionero General, 109
Cancionero Musical, 119, 122, 131
Canizares, Jose de, 345
Cano, Alonso, 276
Cano, Melchor, 200
Cantilenas, 24-25
Canzoniere Colocci-Brancufi, 123
Carlos Quinto, 142, 149
Caro, Rodrigo, 249
Carrillo, Alonso, 65, 114
Carrillo y Sotomayor, Luis de, 28^-*
284
Carvajal, 34, no.
Carvajal, Miguel de, 165, 172
Casas, Bartolome" de las, 156
Cascales, Francisco de, 291, 293
Castellanos, Juan de, 192
Castellvi, Francisco de, 118
Castilla, Crdnica de, 103
Castilla, Francisco de, 153
Castillejo, Cristobal de, 151-152, 165
Castillo Solorzano, Alonso de, 338
Castro, Adolfo de, 299
Castro y Bellvis, Guillen de, 305-306
Cecchi, Giovanni Maria, 168
Celestina, 107, 120, 125-126
Centon Epistolario, 272
INDEX
415
Cepeda y Guzman, Carlos, 320
Cervantes de Salazar, Francisco, 154
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 180,
215-241, 249, 253, 267, 268, 276,
278, 289, 350
Cespedes y Meneses, Gonzalo de,
338
Cetina, Gutierre de, 148-149
Chaves, Cristobal de, 235
Chivalresque novels, 157-158
Churton, Edward, 178, 281, 282-283,
286, 290, 319-320
Cid, Crdnica dd, 103
Cid, Poema del, 24, 25, 40, 46-51
Cienfuegos. See Alvarez de Cien-
fuegos
Civillar, Pedro de, 118
Claramonte y Corroy, Andres, 309
Claude, Bishop, 10
Clavijo. See Gonzalez de Clavijo
Clavijo y Fajardo, Jose, 360
Cobos, El Padre, 377
Cobos, Francisco de los, 179
Coloma, Luis, 394
Columbarius, Julius, 251
Columbus, Christopher, 12, 127-128
Columella, Lucius Junius Modera-
tus, 8
Concepcion, Juan de la, 346
Conceptismo, 299-300
Contreras, Juana de, 129
Cordoba, Martin de, 68
Cordoba, Sebastian de, 207
Corneille, Pierre, 306, 345
Corneille, Thomas, 313, 335
Cornu, Professor, 86
Coronado, Carolina, 375
Coronel, Pablo, 130
Corral, Pedro de, 93
Corte Real, Jeronimo, 203
Cortes, Hernan, 157
Cota de Maguaque, Rodrigo de, HO,
I20-I2I
Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio, 122, 309, 398
Covarrubias y Horozco, Sebastian,
344
Croce, Benedetto, 126
Crotaidn, El, 303
Cruz, San Juan de la, 182, 198-200
Cruz y Cano, Ramon de la, 360-361
Cubillo de Aragon, Alvaro, 335
Cuello, Antonio, 335
CuestiSn de Amor, 126-127
Cueva de la Garoza, Juan de la, 171-
173
Culteranismo, 283-285
Cunninghame Graham, Mrs., 193
DAM ASUS, St., 8-9
Danza de la Muerte, 87-88
Dascanio, Jusquin, 131
Davidson, Mr. John, 70
Debate entre el Agiiay el Vino, 55
Dechepare, Bernard, 3
Defoe, Daniel, 228
Diamante, Juan Bautista, 345
Diario de los Literates de Espafia,
348
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal, 157
Diaz Gamez, Gutierre, 105, 106, 347
Diaz Tanco de Fregenal, Vasco, 164
Diez Mandamientos, 62
Diniz, King of Portugal, 28, 38
Disputa del Almay el Cuerpo, 55
Dobson, Mr. Austin, 15, 251
Doce Sabios, Libra de los, 63
Dominicus Gundisalvi, 19
Donoso Cortes, Juan, 382
D'Ouville, Antoine Le Metel, 263,
332
Dryden, John, 192, 264, 332
Ducas, Demetrio, 130
Duhalde, Louis, 2
Duran, Agustin, 93, 264
ECHEGARAY, JoSC, 376, 395
Encina, Juan del, in, 121-123, I3°>
135
4i6
INDEX
Enrique IV., Cr6nica de, 117
Enriquez del Castillo, Diego, 117
Enriquez Gomez, Antonio, 338
Ercilla y Zufriga, Alonso de, 3, 184,
190-192
Ertnitaflo, Revelacion de un, 88
Escobar, Juan de, 34
Escobar, Luis de, 154
Escriba, Comendador de, 319
Espinosa, Pedro de, 189, 270, 279
Espinosa Medrano, Juan de, 291
Espronceda, Jos£ de, 368-372
Esquilache, Principe de (Francisco
de Borja), 299
Este"banez Calder6n, Serafin, 379-
38o
Estebanillo Gonzdles, Vida y Hechos
de, 338
Eugenius, St., 10
Eulogius, St., 1 8
Eximenis, Francisco, 107
FADRIQUE, the Infante, 72, 78
Fanshawe, Richard, 314
Faria y Sousa, Manuel, 185, 288-
289
Farinelli, M. Arturo, 265, 312
Feijoo y Montenegro, Benito Ger6-
ninio, 349
Ferdinand, St., 35, 62, 63
Ferndn Gonzalez, Poema de, 35
Fernandez, Lucas, 122
Fernandez de Andrado, Pedro, 299
Fernandez de Avellaneda, Alonso,
238-240, 350
Fernandez de Moratm, Leandro, 361—
362
Fernandez de Moratin, Nicolas Mar-
tin, 354
Fernandez de Oviedo y Vald£s, Gon-
zalez, 156
Fernandez de Palencia, Alfonso, 117,
Fernandez de Toledo, Garci, 68
Fernandez de Villegas, Pedro, 118,
130
Fernandez-Guerra y Orbe, Aureliano,
24, 172, 299
Fernandez Vallejo, Felipe, 44
Ferreira, Antonio, 173
Fernis, Pero, 97
Figueroa, Francisco de, 187
FitzGerald, Edward, 323, 324, 325,
326, 331, 332
Flamini, Professor, 139
Flaubert, Gustave, 313
Florisando, 157
Florisel de Niquea, 106, 157
Forner, Juan Pablo, 357
Foulche"-Delbosc, M. R., 120, 193,
210
French influence, 35-42
Frere, John Hookham, 59
Froude, James Anthony, 196-197
Fuentes, Alonso de, 33, 65
Fuero fuzgo, 62
Furtado de Mendoza, Diego, 28
GALLEGO, Juan Nicasio, 365
Gallinero, Manuel, 348
Galvez de Montalvo, Luis, 207, 216
Garay, Blasco de, 171
Garay de Monglave, Fra^ois Eugene,
2
Garcia Arrieta, Agustin, 237
Garcia Asensio, Miguel, 356
Garcia de la Huerta y Munoz, Vicente
Antonio, 355-356
Garcia de Santa Maria, Alvar, 102,
1 08
Garcia Gutierrez, Antonio, 374
Gareth, Benedetto, 131
Garnett, Dr. Richard, 344
Gatos, Libra de las, 96
Gautier de Coinci, 60, 6 1
Gayangos, Pascual de, 24, 83
INDEX
417
Gentil, Bertomeu, 131
Geraldino, Alessandro, 129
Geraldino, Antonio, 129
Giancarli, Gigio Arthenio, 168
Gibson, James Young, 222, 223, 224,
253, 278, 304
Girard d' Amiens, 41
Giron, Diego, 176, 179
Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von, 221,
230, 323
Goizcueta, Jose Maria, 2
G6mara. See Lopez de Gomara
G6mez, 26, 74
Gomez, Alvar, 118, 131
Gomez, Ambrosio, 58
Gomez, Pero, 65, 74
Gomez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis,
374-375
Gomez de Cibdareal, Fernan, 272
Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas, Fran-
cisco, 96, 183, 184, 185, 1 86, 187,
228, 270, 277, 291, 300-305, 308,
345
Gongora. See Argote y Gongora
Gonzalez, Diego Tadeo, 359
Gonzalez de Avila, Gil, 272
Gonzalez de Clavijo, Ruy, 105
Gonzalez de Mendoza, Pedro, 28
Gonzalez Llanos, Rafael, 24
Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 15, 231, 344, 387
Gower, John (the first English author
translated into Castilian), 98
Gracian, Baltasar, 338-340
Gran Cvnquit-ta de Ultramar, 72
Granada, Luis de, 200-202
Grant Duff, Sir M. E., 33-8
Grillparzer, Franz, 265
Grosseteste, Robert, 54
Guarda, Estevam del, 30
Guerra y Ribera, Manuel de, 327
Guevara, 119
Guevara, Antonio de, 154-156
Guevara, Luis. See Velez Guevara
Guillen de Segovia, Pedro, 116
HADRIAN, 5, 6
Hammen, Lorenzo van der, 303
Hardy, Alexandra, 263
Haro, Conde de, 179
Haro, Luis de, 152
Hartzenbusch, Juan Eugenic, 96, 174,
374
Hebreo, Le6n. See Abarbanel
Hellowes, Edward, 155
Henley, Mr. William Ernest, 15
Henricus Seynensis, 19
Herbert, George, 162
Heredia, Jose* Maria, 157
Hernandez, Alonso, 132
Herrera, Fernando, 138, 146, 149,
176-180, 281, 282
Hervas y Cobo de la Torre, Jose"
Gerardo de, 348-349
Hervas y Panduro, Lorenzo, 362
Hoces y Cordoba, Gonzalo de, 281
Holland, Lord, 254, 256, 265
Hosius, 9
Hiibner, Baron Emil, 8
Huete, Jaime de, 165
Hurtado, Luis, 124, 165
Hurtado de Mendoza, Antonio, 314
Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 139,
148, 150-151, 189, 208-210, 235
Hussain ibn Ishak, 63, 73
Huysmans, M. Joris-Karl, 197
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, 4
IBN HAZM, 12, 18
Icazbalceta, Joaquin Garcia, 190
Iglesias de la Casa, Jose, 359
Imperial, Francisco, 97-98, 137
Iniguez de Medrano, Julio, 233
Iranzoy Crdnica del Condestable Miguel
Lucas, 117, 167
Iriarte y Oropesa, Tomas de, 3, 268,
356-357
Isaac the Martyr, 1 8
Isidore, St., 10
INDEX
Isidore Pacensis, II
Isla, Francisco Jose1 de, 351-354
y AGUILAR, Juan de, 288,
298, 307
Jimenez de Cisneros, Francisco, 130
Jimenez de Rada, Rodrigo, 62, 67, 68
Jimenez Paton, Bartolome, 285, 295
Johnson, Samuel, 124, 138
Jose, Poema de. See Yusuf
Josephus, 150
Jove-Llanos, Caspar Melchor de, 357-
358
Juan II., Cr6nica de, 100-101
Juan Manuel, 16, 80-85
Judah ben Samuel the Levite, 12, 14,
17, 43
Juglares, 26—31
Juvencus, Vettius Aquilinus, 8
Kabbala, the, 13
Kalilah and Dimnah, 65, 71, 78
Killigrew, Thomas, 332
LAFAYETTE, Madame de, 269
Lamberto, Alfonso, 239
Landor, Walter Savage, 228
Larra, Mariano Jose de, 96, 97, 378-
379
Latini, Brunetto, 65
Latrocinius, 9
Lazarillo de Tormes, 80, 158-160
Ledesma, Francisco, 166
Ledesma Buitrago, Alonso de, 299
Leloaren Canlua, 1-2
Lena. See Rodriguez de Lena
Leon, Luis Ponce de, 180-184, I9-n
195
Le6n y Mansilla, Jose, 346
Leonardo de Albion, Gabriel, 277
Leonardo de Argensola, Bartolome,
276-279
Leonardo de Argensola, Lupercio,
175-1/6, 276-278
Lesage, 42, 85, 269, 307, 354
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 350, 351
L'Estrange, Roger, 304
Lewes, George Henry, 265
Licinianus, 10 •
Lidforss, Professor, 43
Lista, Alberto, 169, 368
Lisuarte, 157, 158
Llaguno y Amirola, Eugenio, 347
Lo Frasso, Antonio, 207
Loaysa, Jofre de, 68
Lobeira, Joham, 123, 153
Lobo, Eugenio Gerardo, 346
Lockhart, James Gibson, 93
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 115,
328
Lope de Moros, 55, 57
Lope de Vega. See Vega Carpio
Lopez de Aguilar Coutino. See
Columbarius
Lopez de Ayala, Adelardo, 375-376
L6pez de Ayala, Pero, 3, 74, 88-92
Lopez de Cartagena, Diego, 130
Lopez de Corelas, Alonso, 1 54
Lopez de Gomara, Francisco, 157
Lopez de Sedano, Jose1, 175, 187,
268
Lopez de Toledo, Diego, 130
Lopez de Ubeda, Francisco. See
Perez, Andres
Lopez de Ubeda, Juan, 271
Lopez de Vicuna, Juan, 280-281
Lopez de Villalobos, Francisco, 130,
154
Lorenzana y Buitron, Francisco An-
tonio, II
Lorenzo Segura de Astorga, Juan, 63
Loyola, St. Ignacio, 3, 193
Lucan, 4, 8
Lucena, Juan de, 107, roS
Lujan de Sayavedra, Maleo. See
Marti
Lull, Ram6n, 73, 82
Luna, Alvaro de, 28
INDEX
419
Luna, Cronica de Alvaro de, 102-
103
Luzan Claramunt de Suelves y
Gurrea, Ignacio, 346-348
M'CARTHY, Denis Florence, 328-
329
MacColl, Mr. Norman, 320
Macfas, 96-97, 119
Magos, Misterio de los Reyes, 24, 35,
43-46
Mahomet-el-Xartosse, 20
Maimonides, 12-14
Mainez, Ramon Leon, 239
Mairet, Jean, 263
Malara, Juan de, 170-171, 176
Maldonado, L6pez, 219, 243
Malon de Chaide, Pedro, 202
Manrique, Gomez, 112-114, 254
Manrique, Jorge, 114-116, 1 19, 227
Maragall, Joan, 397
Marcabrii, 30
March, Auzias, 12, 136, 145
Marche, Olivier de la, 149
Marcus Aurelius, 5
Maria de Jesus de Agreda, Sor, 340
Maria del Cielo, Sor, 346
Maria Egipciacqua, Vida de Santa,
38,54
Mariana, Juan de, 63, 272-274, 276
Marineo, Lucio, 129
Marti, Juan, 267
Martial, 5, 6
Martin of Dumi, St., 10
Martinez, Fernan, 67
Martinez de la Rosa, Francisco, 365-
366
Martinez de Medina, Gonzalo, 98
Martinez de Toledo, Alfonso, 107
Martinez Salafranca, Tuan, 348
Martyr, Peter, 128
Matos Fragoso, Juan de, 220, 335
Mayans y Siscar, Gregorio, 350, 352
Medina, Francisco, 179
Medrano, Lucia, 129
Mela, Pomponius, 8
Melendez Valdes, Juan, 358-359
Melo, Francisco Manuel de, 336
Mena, Juan de, 100-102
Mendoza, friigo de, 118
Menendez Pidal, Ramon, 32, 51, 398
Menendez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 37,
38, 117, 179, 239, 288, 311, 336,
345. 372, 397-39*
Meres, Francis, 201
Merimee, Ernest, 359
Mesonero Romanos, Ramon de, 380
Mexia, Hernan, 1 12
Mexia, Pedro, 156
Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Mme., 86,
148
Mila y Fontanals, Manuel, 35, 38,
372
Milton, John, 346, 355
Mingo Revulgo, Coplas de, in
Mira de Amescua, Antonio, 307, 314
Miranda, Luis de, 169
Moliere, 42, 258, 313, 334, 345, 361
Molina, Argote de, 81, 101
Molinos, Miguel de, 341-342
Moncada, Francisco de, 336
Mondejar, Marques de, 343
Montalban. See PeVez de Montalban
Montalvo. See Ord6nez de Montalvo
Montemor, Jorge, 115, 203-206
Montesino, Ambrosio, 118
Monti, Giulio, 354
Montiano y Luyando, Agustin, 344
Montoro, Anton de, in, 112
Moraes, Francisco de, 124
Morales, Ambrosio de, 208
Moratin. See Fernandez de Moratfn
Morel-Fatio, M. Alfred, 55, 96, 158,
378
Moreto y Cavana, Agustin, 261, 333-
335
Morley, Mr. John, 340
420
INDEX
Mosquerade Figueroa, Cristobal, 179,
226
Muhammad Rabadan, 20
Munday, Anthony, 158
Mufion, Sancho, 126
Muntaner, Ramon, 336
NAHARRO, Pedro, 169, 212
Nahman, Moses ben, 13-14
Najera, Esteban de, 34, 152, 270
Nasarre y Ferruz, Bias Antonio, 350
Navagiero, Andrea, 136, 137
Navarro, Miguel, 348
Nebrija, Antonio de, 93, 130
Nebrija, Francisca de, 129
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio, 340
Nifo, Francisco Mariano, 319
North, Thomas, 155
Nucio, Martin, 34, 270
Nunez, Hernan, 130, 154, 171
Nunez de Arce, Caspar, 395-396
Nunez de Villaizan, Juan, 91
OBREG6N, Antonio, 131
Ocampo, Florian de, 156
Ocana, Francisco de, 271
Ochoa, Juan, 395
Odo of Cheriton, 96
Olid, Juan de, 117
Oliva. See Perez de Oliva
Oiler y Moragas, Narcis, 395
Omerique, Hugo de, 343
Ona, Pedro de, 192
Ordonez de Montalvo, Garcia, 123-
124
Ormsby, John, 50
Orosius, Paulus, 9-10
Ortiz, Agustin, 165
Oudin, Cesar, 233
Oviedo. See Fernandez de Oviedo
PACHECO, Francisco, 170, 179
Padilla, Juan de, 1 19
Padilla, Pedro de, 216, 219, 243
Paez de Ribera, 157
Paez de Ribera, Ruy, 98
Palacio Valdes, Armando, 392-393
I'alacios Rubios, Juan Lopez de
Vivero, 154
Palau, Bartolome, 172
Palencia. See Fernandez de Palencia
Palmtrin de Inglaterra, 1 58
Palmerin de Oliva, 1 58
Panadera, Capias de la, 101
Paravicino y Arteaga, Hortensio
Felix, 297, 319
Pardo Bazan, Emilia, 22, 393-394
Paredes, Alfonso de, 65
Paris, M. Gaston, 72
Patmore, Coventry, 200
Paulus Alvarus Cordubiensis, 17, 18
Pellicer, Casiano, 318
Pellicer de Salas y Tobar, Jose, 65,
95, 291, 308
Per Abbat, 47
Peralta Barnuevo, Pedro de, 345
Pereda, Jose Maria de, 389-390
Pe"rez, Alonso, 206
Pe"rez, Andres, 228, 239, 268
PeVez, Antonio, 271-272
Perez, Suero, 68
Pe"rez de Guzman, Fernan, 103-104,
142
Perez de Hita, Gines, 269-270
P6rez de Montalban, Juan, 307-308
Perez de Oliva, Fernando, 4, 154
Perez Galdos, Benito, 390-391
Peseux-Richard, M. H., 384, 385
Peter the Venerable, 21
Petrus Alphonsus, 16, 78
Phillips, Mr. Henry, 183
Picaud, Aimeric, 36
Pitillas, Jorge. See Hervas y Cobo
de la Torre
Platir, Crdnica del muy valiente, 158
Pleito del Manto, 112, 121
Polindo, 158
Polo, Caspar Gil, 206
INDEX
421
Ponce, Bartolome, 207
Ponte, Pero da, 38
Poridat de las Poridades, 63
Prete Jacopin. See Haro, Conde de
Pftmaleon, 158
Priscillian, 9
Proverbs, Spanish, 171
Provincial, Capias del, IIO, 112, 117
Prudentius, Clemens Aurelius, 6, 9
Prudentius Galindus, 10
Puig, Leopoldo Geronimo, 348
Pulgar, Hernando del, in, 127
Puymaigre, Comte de, 34, 58
Querellas, Libra de, 65
Quevedo. See G6mez de Quevedo
Quintana, Manuel Jose, 364-365
Quintilian, 5, 6
RACINE, Jean, 345
Raimundo, 19
Ramirez de Prado, Lorenzo, 319
Ramos del Manzano, Francisco, 343
Ranieri, Antonio Francesco, 168
Rasis, 91
Rebolledo, Conde de, 299
Rernon, Alonso, 310
Rennert, Professor, 206
Resende, Garcia de, 205
Revilla, Manuel de la, 312, 376
Rey de Artieda, Andres, 173-174
Reyes, Matias de los, 309
Reyes, Pedro de los, 193
Rhua, Pedro de, 155
Ribas y Canfranc, Jos£ Ibero, 250
Rioja, Francisco de, 299
Rivas, Duque de, 366-367
Rivers, Lord, 73
Roca y Serna, Ambrosio, 297
Rodrigo, Cantar de, 51-53
Rodriguez de la Camara, Juan, 96,
97, "9
Rodriguez de Lena, Pero, 105
Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez,
Diego, 337-338
Rodriguez Rubi, Tomas, 374
Rogel de Grecia, 158
Rojas, Agustin de, 211
Rojas, Fernando de, 125-126
Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de, 95, 276,
307, 325, 333
Romancero General, 33, 93, 270
Romances, Spanish, 32-34
Romero de Cepeda, Joaquin, 175
Roswitha, 11
Rotrou, Jean, 263
Rowland, David, 159-160
Rueda, Lope de, 166-169, 254, 261
Rufo Gutierrez, Juan, 189-190, 216
Ruiz, Jacobo, 67
Ruiz, Juan, 30, 76-80, 84, 107
Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, Juan,
95. 239, 256, 276, 315-317
SA DE MIRANDA, Francisco de, 148
Saavedra Fajardo, Diego de, 336
Salas Barbadillo, Alonso de, 270
Salazar Mardones, Cristobal de, 291
Salazar y Hontiveros, Jose de, 345
Salazar y Torres, Agustin de, 291-
298
Salcedo Coronel, Garcia de, 291
Salom6n, Proverbios en Rimo de, 75»
91
Samaniego, Felix Maria de, 356
San Juan, Marques de, 345
Sanchez, Clemente, 96
Sanchez, Francisco, 179
Sanchez, Miguel, 184
Sanchez, Tomas Antonio, 48, 58
Sanchez de Badajoz, Garci, 119
Sanchez de Tovar, Fernan, 91
Sanchez Talavera, Ferrant, 91, 98
Sancho IV., 72-73
Sannazaro, Jacopo, 145
Santillana, Marques de, 15, 28, 33,
58, 79, 98-100, 119, 137
422
INDEX
Santisteban y Osorio, Diego, 192
Sarmiento, Martin, ill, 349
Sbarbi, Jose Maria, 171
Scarron, Paul, 42, 269
Schack, Adolf Friedrich von, 14, 323
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 338
Scott, Sir Walter, 270, 366
Scudery, Mile, de, 269
Secchi, Niccolo, 168
Sedeno, Juan, 1 26
Selgas y Carrasco, Jose, 377
Sem Tob, 16, 87, 113
Sempere, Hieronym, 124
Seneca, the Elder, 4
Seneca, the Younger, 4, 8, IO, 73>
176
Sepulveda, Lorenzo, 33
Shakespeare, William, 205
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 46, 221, 321-
322
Sidney, Philip, 143, 205
Siete Partidas, Las, 66-67
Silva, Feliciano de, 126, 157, 158
Silvestre, Gregorio, 115, 153
Sisebut, 7
Solis y Riradeneira, Antonio de,
335-33°
Sordello, 35
Sorel, Charles, 42, 269
Spera-in-Deo, 21
Stanley, Thomas, 140, 287
Stuniga, Lope de, 34, 109
Suarez de Figueroa, Cristobal, 315
TAMAYO Y BAUS, Manuel, 376-377
Tansillo, Luigi, 132, 144
Tapia, Juan de, 109
Taylor, Jeremy, 198
Tellez, Gabriel See Tirso de Molina
Teresa, Santa, 182, 193-198, 301
Tesoro, the, 65, 72
Texeda, Jeronimo de, 206
Theodolphus, Bishop, 10
Thylesius, Antonius, 144
Ticknor, George, 24, 65, 89, 118,
122, 137, 140, 154, 206, 242, 244,
247, 249, 258, 259, 274, 285, 325,
348
Timoneda, Juan de, 170
Tirso de Molina, 174, 256, 261, 263,
267, 308-314, 3'5
Todi, Jacopone da, 30, 118
Torre, Alfonso de la, 108
Torre, Francisco de la, 184-187
Torrellas, Pero, no, 112, 121
Torres Naharro, Bartolome, 132-135,
1 66, 1 68, 170, 254
Torres Ramila, Pedro de, 251
Torres y Villarroel, Diego de, 346
Trajan, 5
Tribaldos de Toledo, Luis, 187, 208,
296
Trovadores, 26-31
Trueba, Antonio, 389
Turpin, Archbishop, 2
Tuy, Lucas de, 67
URREA, Jeronimo de, 143
Urrea, Pedro Manuel de, 120
VALBUENA, Antonio de, 391
Valdes, Juan de, 126-127, 144, 161-
164, 3°3
Valdivielso, Jose de, 271
Valencia, Pedro de, 287, 288
Valera y Alcala Galiano, Juan, 14,
384, 386-389
Valerius, St., no
Valladolid, Juan de, 109, in
Valmar, Marques de, 22
Vanbrugh, John, 333
Vaqueiras, Raimbaud de, 30, 43
Varchi, Benedetto, 186
Vazquez de Ciudad Rodrigo, Fran-
cisco, 158
Vega, Alonso de, 169
Vega, Bernardo de la, 227
INDEX
423
Vega, Garcilaso de la, 136, 138, 141-
148, 178-179, 207
Vega Carpio, Lope Felix de, 20, 97,
J36, !75> !85, 189, 219, 225, 226,
238, 239, 241-265, 270, 280, 350
Velazquez. See Rodriguez de Silva y
Velazquez
Velazquez de Velasco, Luis Jose, 69,
185, 35»
Velez de Guevara, Luis, 269, 276,
306-307
Venegas de Henestrosa, Luis, 115
Verdaguer, Jacinto, 397
Vergara, Francisco de, 130
Vergara, Juan de, 130
Vicente, Gil, 135
Vidal, Pere, 36
Vidal de Besalu, Ramon, 22, 29
Vidal de Noya, Francisco, 129, 130
Vierge Maria, Trobes en lahors de
la, 118
Villalobos. See Lopez de Villalobos
Villalon, Cristobal de, 303
Villamediana, Conde de, 276
Villapando, Juan de, 100
Villasandino. See Alvarez de Villa-
sandino
Villegas, Antonio de, 152-153, 206
Villegas, Esteban Manuel de, 298-
299
Villegas, Jeronimo, 130
Villena, Enrique de, 94-96
Villena, Marques de, 343-344
Virues, Cristobal de, 170, 174-175,
254, 261
Vives, Luis, 129, 182
Voiture, Vincent de, 255
Voltaire, 191, 269, 315, 354
WEY, William, 36
Wiflfen, Benjamin Barren, 163
Wiffen, Jeremiah Holmes, 146
Wycherley, William, 332
XAVIER, St. Francisco, 3, 193
YANEZ, Rodrigo, 86
Yanez y Ribera, Ger6nimo de Alcala.
338
Young, Bartholomew, 299
Yusuf, Poema de, 20, 75
ZAMORA, Alfonso de, 130
Zamora, Egidio de, 68
Zapata, Luis de, 190
Zorrilla, Jose, 313, 372-374
Zumarraga, Juan de, 190
Zuniga, Francesillo de, 155
Zurita, Jeronimo, 207-208
(18)
THE END
. •
't
LL