CABINET OF BIOGRAPHY. (continued 6)

He gained considerable profit by his writings. The presents made him by various nobles amounted to a large sum. His plays and autos, and his various publications, brought him vast receipts. He had received a dowry with each wife. The king bestowed several pensions and chaplaincies. The pope gifted him with various preferments. With all this he was not rich; his absolute income apparently amounted to only 1500 ducats, and profuse charities and prodigal generosity emptied his purse as fast as it was filled. He spent much on church festivals; he was hospitable to his friends, extravagant in his purchase of books and pictures, and munificent in his charities, so that when he died he left little behind him. We cannot censure this disposition; indeed it is inherent in property gained as Lope gained it, to be lost as soon as won; for being received irregularly, it superinduces irregular habits of expense. That Lope, the observed of all, he to whom nature and fortune had been so prodigal, should have been grasping and avaricious would have grated on our feelings. We hear of his profusion with pleasure: the well-watered soil, if generous in its nature, gives forth abundant vegetation; the receiver of so much showed the nobility of his mind in freely imparting to others the wealth so liberally bestowed on him.

In his epistles and other poems, Lope gives very pleasing pictures of the tranquillity of his life as he advanced in age. Addressing don Fray Placido de Tosantos, he says: "I write you these verses, from where no annoyance troubles me. My little garden inspires fancies drawn from fruits and flowers, and the contemplation of natural objects." In the epistle before quoted to Amaryllis, he says, "My books are my life, and humble content my actions—unenvious of the riches of others. The confusion sometimes annoys me; but, though I live in Madrid, I am farther from the court than if I were in Muscovy or Numidia. Sometimes I look upon myself as a dwarf, sometimes as a giant, and I regard both views with indifference; and am neither sad when I lose, nor joyful when I gain. The man who governs himself well, despises the praise or blame of this short though vile captivity. I esteem the sincere and pure friendship of those who are virtuous and wise; for without virtue, no friendship is secure; and if sometimes my lips complain of ingratitude, this is no crime." To Francisco de Rioja he writes: "My garden is small; it contains a few trees, and more flowers, a trained vine, an orange tree, and a rose hush. Two young nightingales dwell in it, and two buckets of water form a fountain, playing among stones and coloured shells." "My hopes are fallen," he says in another place, "and my fortune shuts herself up with me in a nook, filled with books and flowers, and is neither favourable nor inimical to me." In the "Huerto Deshecho," or Destroyed Garden, he gives further testimony of his love for his garden, which had just been laid waste by a tempest. He thus addresses his fair retreat:—

and he goes on bitterly to grieve over the desolation the storm had made.

If there is a touch of melancholy, and a half-checked repining in any of these quotations, I do not see that he is to be reprehended. Covered with renown and gifted with riches—it is said, who can be happy, if Lope de Vega were not? But we must remember that neither wealth nor fame are in themselves happiness. Lope had through death lost the dearest objects of life; in a spirit of piety he had shut himself out from forming others. His heart was the source of his disquiet—but he had recourse to natural objects for its cure, and often found repose among them. That his disposition was amiable and his temper placid, there is ample proof. He says of himself, "I naturally love those who love me, and I cannot hate those who hate me:" and we may believe him: for this is a virtue a man never boasts of without possessing it; to a nature formed to hate and to revenge, hatred and revenge seem natural and noble. That he was vain is evident: his sort of character, vivacious, kindly and expansive, tends to vanity. He would have been more than man not to have been vain, flattered as he was. Lord Holland mentions his complaints of poverty, obscurity, and neglect, in the preface to the "Peregrino," but they do not amount to much. He certainly writes in a very ill temper, nettled, it would appear, by some plays having appeared with his name, which were not written by him. There is more of complaint in his poem of the "Huerto Deshecho," one of the most elegant and pleasing of his poems. Alluding to his love of study, he says, "Though that be a work of praise, it was but the fatal prelude of the unhappy result of my hopes, since, in conclusion, my verses were given to the winds. Strong philosophy, and retired, but contented old age animate me on my way. If I do not sing, it is enough that others sing what I deplore—devouring time destroys towers of vanity and mountains of gold; one only thing, divine grace, suffers no change."

It is strange, indeed, that he should say that he had given his verses to the winds—but he says himself,

Thus he passed many years, living according to the dictates of his conscience, with moderation and virtue; unmindful of life, but deeply mindful of death, so that he was ever prepared to meet it. His piety indeed was tinged with superstition; but he was a catholic and a Spaniard, and dwelt fervently on the means of satisfying the justice of God in this world, so as to secure a greater stock of happiness in the next. Charitable he was to prodigality; and as he grew old he used his pen on religious subjects only, repenting somewhat of his labours for the stage.

1635. Ætat. 73.

His health was good, till, within a very short time before he died, he fell into a state of hypochondria, which clouded the close of his existence.[100] His friend, Alonzo Perez de Montalvan, seeing him thus melancholy, asked him to dine with him and a relation, on the day of Transfiguration, which was the 6th of August. After dinner, as all three were conversing on several subjects, he said, that such was the depression of spirits by which he was afflicted that his heart failed him in his body, and that he prayed God to ease him by shortening his life. On which, Juan Perez de Montalvan (his biographer, friend, and pupil) remarked, "Do not feel thus, I trust in God and in your healthy looks, that this indisposition will pass away, and that we shall see you again in the health you enjoyed twenty years ago." To which Lope replied with some emotion, "Ah, doctor, would to God, I were well over it!"

His presentiments were verified: Lope was soon to die; this his feelings foretold, and so prepared him for the event. On the 18th of the same month he rose very early, recited the divine service, said mass in his oratory, watered his garden, and then shut himself up in his study. At mid-day he felt chilled, either from his work among his flowers, or from having, as his servants averred, used the discipline on himself with severity, as was proved by the recent marks of blood being found on the discipline, and staining the walls of the room. Lope was indeed a rigid catholic, as this circumstance proves, and also his refusing to eat any thing but fish, though he had a dispensation to eat meat, and it was ordered him during his indisposition. In the evening he attended a scientific meeting, but being suddenly taken ill, he was obliged to return home. The physicians now gathered round with their prescriptions; and it happened that doctor Juan de Negrete, the king's physician, passed through the street, and he was told that Lope de Vega was indisposed, on which he visited him, not as a doctor, as he had not been called in, but as a friend. He soon perceived his danger, and intimated that it were better that he should take the sacrament, with the usual excuse, that it was a relief to any one in danger, and could only benefit him if he lived. "If you advise this," said Lope "there must be a necessity;" and that same night he received the sacrament. Extreme unction followed but two hours after. He then called for his daughter, and blessed her, and took leave of his friends as one about to make so long a journey; conversing concerning the interests of those left behind, with kindness and piety. He told Montalvan, that virtue was true fame, and that he would exchange all the applause he had received, for the consciousness of having fulfilled one more virtuous deed; and followed up these counsels with prayers and acts of catholic piety. He passed the night uneasily, and expired the next day, weak and worn, but alive to a sense of religion and friendship to the last.

His funeral took place the third day after his death, and was conducted with splendour by the duke of Sesa, the most munificent of his patrons, whom he had named his executor. Don Luis de Usategui, his son-in-law, and a nephew, went as mourners, accompanied by the duke of Sesa and many other grandees and nobles. The clergy of all classes flocked in crowds. The procession attracted a multitude; the windows and balconies were thronged, and the magnificence was such, that a woman going by, exclaimed, "This is a Lope funeral!" ignorant that it was the funeral of Lope himself, and so applying his name as expressive of the excess of all that was splendid. The church was filled with lamentation when at last he was deposited in the tomb. For eight days the religious ceremonies were kept up, and on the ninth, a sermon was preached in his honour, when the church was again crowded with the first people of Spain.

By his will, his daughter, donna Feliciana de Vega, married to don Luis de Usategui, inherited the moderate fortune he left behind. He added in his will a few legacies of pictures, books, and reliques to his friends.

In person Lope de Vega was tall, thin, and well made; dark complexioned, and of a prepossessing countenance; his nose aquiline; his eyes lively and clear; his beard black and thick. He had acquired much agility, and was capable of great personal exertion. He always enjoyed excellent health, being moderate in his tastes, and regular in his habits.

To gather Lope's character from the events of his life, and his accounts of himself, it may be assumed that while young his disposition had all the vivacity of the south—that his passions were ardent, his feelings enthusiastic—that he was heedless and imprudent perhaps, but always amiable and true. Generous to prodigality—pious to bigotry—patriotic to injustice, he was given to extremes, yet he did not possess the higher qualities, the cheerful fortitude, and fearless temper of Cervantes. Time and sorrow softened in after times some portions of his character; but still in his garden, among his flowers and books, he was vivacious, perhaps petulant (for his complaints of neglect are to be attributed to petulancy rather than to a repining temper); warm-hearted, charitable and social, vain he might also be, for that we all are. The activity of his mind resembled more a spontaneous fertility of soil, than the exertion of labour: "plays and poetry were the flowers of his plain," as he says: and this seems an unexaggerated picture of the ease with which he composed. We need scarcely allude to the hypochondria that darkened his last hours, as Montalvan seems to mention it as a mere precursor of death. If it were more, it is only another proof that the mind must not work too hard, while it has this fragile body for its instrument and prop.

In drawing up Lope's character, Montalvan[101] praises him as agreeable and unpresuming in conversation. He was zealous in the affairs of others, careless of his own; kind to his servants, courteous, gallant and hospitable, and exceedingly well bred. His temper, he says, was never ruffled but by those who took snuff before company; with the grey who dyed their locks; with men who, born of women, spoke ill of the sex; with priests who believed in gipsies; and with persons who without intentions of marriage asked others their age. Good taste as well as good feeling is displayed in most of these slight intimations of character: it is to be cleanly to dislike to see snuff taken; it is being unusually just always to speak well of women.

As no writer ever surpassed him in quantity, so it will be impossible to give a full account of his works. We have already mentioned several:—His "Arcadia," the production of his youth, which may be considered the best of such of his writings as are not dramas;—"The Beauty of Angelica," is chiefly remarkable as showing how superior the Italian romantic poets are to any that Spain has produced. The "Dragontea" is another poem of which Sir Francis Drake is the hero, and the poet has not been sparing of vituperation. It is founded on the last expedition of Drake, when, to revenge the armada, and to inflict a deep blow on the Spanish power, injured by the destruction of its fleet, he scoured the Spanish coast, and did immense injury to the shipping. The poem of Lope is very patriotic; the hatred felt in Spain for the English queen was furious and personal; the marriage of Philip II. with bloody queen Mary, having caused much intercourse between the two nations, and the accession of Elizabeth being the signal of our island again falling off from the Roman Catholic faith; all therefore that could be imagined of horror for her heresy and wickedness, and that of her ministers, animated the soul, and directed the pen of Lope.

The "Jerusalem" was his next attempt at an epic; of this Richard Cœur de Lion is the hero, though the English of course are rendered subordinate to the Spaniards. We have not read it. Lord Holland pronounces it a failure; and the critic of the Quarterly observes, "A failure indeed it is, and a total one; the plan, when compared to that of the 'Angelica' is as 'confusion worse confounded,'—it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; neither method, nor purpose, nor proportion; and many of the parts might be extirpated, or, what is more extraordinary, might change places without any injury to the whole. But there is more vigour of thought in it, and more felicity of expression than in any other of his longer poems." And thus Spaniards alone write; with them a poem resembles a pathless jungle: you come to a magnificent tree, a wild and balmy breathing flower, a mossy pathway, and clear bubbling fountain; and beside these objects you linger a moment, but soon you plunge again among tangled underwood and uncultivated interminable wilds. When Lope takes a subject in hand he does not follow it up as a traveller who has a bourne in view; but he scrambles up every mountain, visits every waterfall, and plunges into every cavern; and like a tourist without a guide in an unknown country, he often loses his way, and often leads his reader a wild chase after objects, which, when reached, were not worth visiting.

This prodigality of verse, which caused him to be named the Potosi of rhymes, was indulged in to the utmost, when, on the canonisation of St. Isidro, he entered into the lists to win the prize instituted for poems in celebration of the event. Isidro had been elevated into a saint at the solicitation of Philip III., who had been cured of a fever by the body of the defunct miracle-maker being brought to him. Every Spanish poet of the age, and they were all but innumerable, entered the lists. There are two volumes of Lope's productions, some in his own name, consisting of a sort of epic, composed in quintillas, or stanzas of five short lines each, a measure more suited to the genius of the Spanish language than longer ones; and a play, and a vast quantity of lyrics given under the name of Burguillos. These were all burlesque; but subsequently Lope continued to adopt the name, and published several poems under it, among others, the "Gatomaquia, or War of Cats," a mock heroic, which is a great favourite in Spain. The "Corona Tragica," a poem written on the death of Mary, queen of Scots, brought him an increase of reputation: it is bigoted to the excess of blind Spanish inquisitorial bigotry, and, except in a few passages, does not rise above mediocrity. It is impossible to give even a cursory account of Lope's lyrics and sacred poems. The best of the former are to be found in the "Arcadia" and the "Dorotea."

But it is not on any of these productions that the reputation of Lope really rests. That was founded on his theatre, and on that it must continue to subsist. There he showed himself master of his art: original, fecund, national, universal, true and spirited, he produced a form of dramatic writing that, to this day, rules the stage of every country of the world.

It was with considerable difficulty that the theatre established itself at all in Spain, the church setting itself against theatrical representations. This prejudice has continued even to modern days. No Spanish monarch since Philip IV. has entered a theatre; and Philip V., when he found in Farinelli the solace of his painful distemper, not only never heard him in a theatre, but caused him to give up the public stage, when he was admitted to sing privately before him. In the early day of which we are writing, the clerical outcry was furious, and the drama only became tolerated by making over the theatres to two religious corporations, one a hospital, and the other of flagellants; and the wickedness of the stage was permitted[102] for the sake of the benefits to charity and religion to result therefrom. The sites of the theatres then consisted of two open court yards, corrales—corral is the Spanish term for farmyard, or any enclosure for cattle, and long continued to be synonymous with a theatre. The representations took place at first in the open air. Alberto Gavasa, an Italian, who brought over a company of buffoons, was enabled by the greatness of his success to cover his corral with an awning, the court yard itself was paved and provided with movable benches, and called the patio, or pit, which no women ever entered. The grandees sat looking out of the windows of the houses that looked into the court yard, which government appropriated and distributed on this occasion. A prince or very great man having a room allotted to him, and minor gentlemen a single window, and this primitive arrangement was we are told the origin of our boxes. In addition, there were several galleries, into some of which women only were admitted. It was called the cazuela, and open to all classes.

Yet even this pious dedication of the proceeds of the theatre did not silence the clergy. In 1600, Philip III. ordered the subject to be referred to a junta of theologians. This council established certain conditions on which the performances were to be tolerated, the principal being that women were not to act, nor to mingle with the audience. It was at this time, and with this licence that Lope's career was run. He alone furnished all Spain with plays; and so great a favourite was he, that none but his were received with any approbation. On the accession of Philip IV., a man of pleasure, the theatre was more frequented than ever. Yet still, it maybe observed, the clergy nourished a prejudice against it, censured Lope for being the occasion of much sin, and caused him on his death bed to express his regret at having written for the stage, and to promise that if he recovered he would do so no more.

Cervantes boasts of the improvements he occasioned in theatrical representations. Still his plays, though they have great merit from the passion and poetry they display, are inartificial in their construction, while Lope on the contrary, became popular from the admirable nature of his plots. His dramas are praised by a Spanish critic for "the purity and sweetness of his language, for the vivacity of his dialogue, for the propriety of many of the characters, for his invention, his exact description of national manners, for his serious passages, his merriment and his wit." There is often something barbaric in his carelessness of time and place, and also in the hinging on of his incidents: still the plot was preserved carefully throughout, and the catastrophe showed the intention of the author to have been always in his mind, even when he most seemed to swerve from it. The number of plays that Lope wrote has been alluded to, and is really astonishing: there is something of sameness, perhaps, at the bottom of all, but this is joined to prodigious variety and novelty within the circle by which his invention is circumscribed. He says himself—

And so entirely did he possess the ear and favour of the audience, that many a play of which he was innocent was brought out under his name, and thus obtained applause.

The causes of his success are easily discovered. The Spaniards had hitherto wanted a national literature. Their poetry and their pastorals did not express the heroism, the bigotry, the tenacious honour and violent prejudices that formed their character. Their ballads did, and so did the romances of chivalry; but the latter had become mere imitations, and while they echoed some of the sentiments they entertained, did not mirror their manners. It was like a new creation when the poetic genius of Spain embodied itself in the drama, and under the guise of tragedy and comedy, each romantic, made visible to an audience the ideal of their prejudices and passions, their virtues and vices; and these, in connection with a story that engaged their interest and warmed their hearts with sympathy.

The plays of Lope were either romantic tragedies, or plays of la Capa y Espada, of the sword and cloak, sometimes tragic and sometimes comic, but which were founded on the manners of the day. Of course there is a great deal of killing and slaying, but none of the horrors that startle the reader of Titus Andronicus, and other English tragedies of that period.

The point of honour, loyalty, love, and jealousy, form the standard groundwork of the dramas of Lope. Lord Holland has analysed the "Star of Seville," in which the interest depends on an affianced lover killing the brother of his betrothed at the instance of the king, and then refusing to betray his royal master's secret. Love and jealousy take singular forms. It was the custom of the lover to watch beneath the barred windows of the house of his lady, and she, if she favoured him, descended and conversed with him from her casement. They never hesitate to acknowledge their love, but it must never be suspected by others. Were it known that a cavalier were thus favoured, the relations of the lady would at once assassinate him, and stab her or shut her up in a convent. Yet when the lovers have escaped these dangers, they marry, and at the sound of wedlock the honour of the family is secured; the injury, to be so mortally avenged, is no longer an injury, and all is well and happy. If a husband is jealous, it is not that he doubts the fidelity of his wife, or even her attachment, but that she has been placed in a situation which might have led to dishonour. Others know this, and she must expiate the fault with her life. In the "Certain for the Doubtful," a lady wishing to dissuade the king from marrying her, confesses that his brother, who is his rival, had once kissed her without her permission. The king instantly resolves to have him assassinated, since he cannot marry the lady till his brother's death has freed her from the dishonour that must accrue, while the perpetrator of such an act lives. He says at the same time "I know that there is no reality in what you tell me, but, although this strange incident be a falsehood invented for the purpose of inducing me not to marry you, it suffices that it has been said, to force me to revenge it. If love makes me in any manner give credit to your story—Henriquez shall die, and I marry his widow; for then, if what you tell me shall be discovered, we shall neither of us be dishonoured; for you will be the widow of this kiss, as others are of a husband." Accordingly assassins are commissioned to waylay his brother. Meanwhile Henriquez and the lady marry, and the king seeing the evil without remedy, and his honour safe, pardons the lovers.

Schlegel observes, "Honour, love, and jealousy are uniformly the motives: the plot arises out of their daring and noble collision, and is not purposely instigated by knavish deception. Honour is always an ideal principle, for it rests, as I have elsewhere shown, on that higher morality which consecrates principles without regard to consequences: the honour of the women consists in loving only one man, of pure, unspotted honour, and loving him with perfect purity: inviolable secrecy is required till a lawful union permits it to be publicly declared. The power of jealousy, always alive, and always breaking out in a dreadful manner,—not like that of eastern countries, a jealousy of possession, but of the slightest emotions of the heart, and its most imperceptible demonstrations, serves to ennoble love. In tragedies, this jealousy causes honour to become a hostile destiny for him who cannot satisfy it, without either annihilating his own felicity, or becoming even a criminal."

Schlegel, in his hatred of the French, espouses with too much warmth, and elevates too highly the nobleness of the passions on which the interest of the Spanish drama is founded. Where jealousy is the main spring of every action, there is little tenderness; however, it is in the comedies that this passion displays itself in the worst light. In tragedies, death, hovering over the scene, gives dignity and elevation to that which otherwise must seem the excess of self-love. The comedies present a tissue of intrigues and embroglios; but these are arranged with so much art, carried on with so much spirit, and aided by sparkling and natural dialogue, that it is impossible not to be amused, and even interested.

To these subjects are added plays in which religion is the master passion, where Catholicism is raised to the height which makes its assumed truth a justification for the worst crimes; and the vengeance which Moor or Jew pursue for infinite injuries, be considered a crime to be expiated by a cruel death. In the same way, the point of honour led to falsehood and dishonourable actions, all of which were considered venial, as founded on, or tending to, a lofty aim. Even in the lighter comedies, there is a dangerous and ticklish sense of honour always on the alert to create danger, and enliven the interest.

Lope also wrote many sacred dramas and Autos Sacramentales. Some of these are allegorical; others founded on the lives of the saints. God Almighty, the Virgin, the Saviour, and Satan are among his dramatis personæ. But in this species of writing he was far surpassed by Calderon. It required sublimity to give a proper tone to such subjects, and to this quality Lope cannot pretend. His entremeses or interludes, farces they may be called, are full of merriment; his vast facility in inventing plots enabled him to bestow a subject that might easily be drawn out into a comedy of five, on a piece of one act. French and English writers have consulted him as a mine. In him originated also the introduction of the Grazioso, or jester—a clown who makes ludicrous observations on what is going on, and turning tragic sentiment into burlesque, acts as censor upon the motives and actions of the personages, and often disturbs the current of interest excited; but often also the sprightly wit he thus introduces, relieves the monotony of passion on stilts, and he is always a convenient personage in explaining away a difficulty, and disclosing a secret.

Lope, of course, wholly disregards unity of time and place. The incongruities of his plots are manifold. Success, popular success, was what he aimed at, and he gained it; but he was aware of the barbarism of many of his dramas, and has himself warmly censured his plays. In his "Arte de hacer Comedias" he says[103]:—

And again in the same poem:—

And in his eclogue to Claudio:—

To this severe censure of his own works was joined considerable study of the dramatic art. It had engaged his attention, he says, since he was ten years old; and in the "Dramatic Art" from which we have just quoted, he shows great good taste and penetration in his observations.

His plays are not now acted in Madrid. The theatre, indeed, has declined in Spain, and melodrames and vaudevilles have taken place of the higher species of drama. Still Lope's works are a mine of wealth for any dramatist, whence to draw situations, plots, and dialogue. Dryden borrowed much from him; and, notwithstanding his faults, there may be found in his plays a richness of invention, a freshness and variety of ideas, and a vivacity of dialogue unsurpassed by any author.

VICENTE ESPINEL

1544-1634.

ESTEBAN DE VILLEGAS

1595-1669.

The vast number of poets who flourished in Spain at this epoch renders the task of furnishing the biography of even a selection from among them, hopeless. When we turn to the "Laurel de Apolo" of Lope de Vega, and see stanza after stanza devoted to different poets; and when, in the "Voyage to Parnassus" of Cervantes we find poets rain in showers, we give up the task as hopeless—especially when we are told that, although many of those so brought forward are unknown, many there are, who wrote well, who are not mentioned at all in these works.

Poetry was then the fashion; and it was easy to spin many hundred lines with few ideas, and those few common-place, though pretty and graceful. Despotism and the inquisition gave the creative or literary spirit of Spain no other outlet. Thought was forbidden. Description, moral reflection, where no originality nor boldness was admitted, and love and sentiment,—these were all the subjects that Spanish poets rung the changes on, till we wonder where they found fresh words for the same thoughts. In any longer poems they wholly failed: and the only compositions we read with pleasure are songs, madrigals, redondillas, and romances, which are often fresh and sparkling—warm from the heart, either dancing with animal spirits or soft with pathetic tenderness. Among the writers of such, none excelled Vicente Espinel. The following is a specimen, and may be taken as an example of that style of Spanish poetry, simple, feeling and elegant, which preceded the innovations of the refined school. It is taken from Dr. Bowring's translation, and is good, though not comparable to the charming simplicity of the original:—

Vicente Espinel was born at Ronda, a city of Granada, in the year 1544. He was of poor parentage, and left his native town early to seek his fortunes. A countryman, don Francisco Pacheco, bishop of Malaga, so far favoured as to ordain him, and he became a beneficiary of the church at Ronda. He sought better preferment at court, but met with no success, either in his own native place nor out of it. In Ronda itself he had enemies, who pursued him with such calumnies and malignity that he withdrew into a sort of voluntary exile, which, loving Granada as he did, he bitterly lamented. He was at first a friend, and then an attacker, of Cervantes, which circumstance does not redound to his credit.[105] Lope de Vega speaks of his poetry with the approbation it deserved. He was a musician as well as a poet, and added a fifth string to the Spanish guitar. He died poor and in obscurity at Madrid, in 1634, in the ninetieth year of his age. He describes himself in some spirited and comic verses, as singularly ugly—a tub with a priest's cap at top, a monster of fat;—large face, short neck, short arms, each hand looking like a tortoise, slow of foot: "whoever sees me," he says, "so fat and reverend-looking, might think that I were a rich and idle epicure.—What a pretty figure for a poet!"

Another writer of the natural school; named the Anacreon of Spain, more easy, sweet and spirited even than Vicente Espinel, was Estévan Manuel de Villegas. He was born in the city of Nagera of Naxera, in the province or Rioja, in Old Castile, in the year 1595. He was of a noble and distinguished family. He spent his boyish years at Madrid. At fourteen he was entered in the university of Salamanca, and studied the law. His tastes inclined him, however, to the more agreeable parts of literature: he was a proficient in Latin and Greek; and, at fourteen, translated from Anacreon and Horace; and at the same time wrote original anacreontics, which he published in 1618, in his twenty-third year.

On the death of his father, he returned to Nagera, to assist his widowed mother, and attend to the interests of his estate. Here, in retirement and peace, he dedicated himself to the acquirement of knowledge and the cultivation of poetry. He married, in the year 1626, donna Antonia de Leyva Villodas, a beautiful and distinguished lady. Having six children, he endeavoured, by means of powerful friends, to obtain some employment that might add to his scanty income, and give him leisure at the same time to prosecute various designs in literature and poetry which he projected on a large scale, but he only succeeded in being appointed to a place of slight importance and emolument "Thus," says Sedano, "this great man was, in common with almost every other person of eminence, pursued by adversity, which was the cause that his talents did not shine as brilliantly as they might have done, and that his name has not come down with due celebrity to our days." At last, giving up hope of worldly advancement, he retired to his estate, where he died in 1669, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

Although the conceits, the fashion of the age, sometimes deteriorate from Villegas's poetry, he has more natural facility, added to classical correctness, than almost any other Spanish poet. His verses flow on with elegance and softness, joined to a nature and feeling quite enchanting. His translations of Anacreon have the simplicity and pure unencumbered expression of the original; that of the "Dove" breathes Anacreon himself. For the sake of the Spanish reader it is appended at the bottom of the page[106], and he can compare it with the Greek, and perceive that Anacreon never found poet so capable of transfusing into another language the vivacity, and grace of his lyrics.

His original Anacreontics may almost be said to deserve a place beside the immortal Greek. We copy from Mr. Wiffen's pages one of his sapphics, rendered pre-eminent by its delicacy and beauty:—

GONGORA

1561-1627.

Don Luis de Gongora y Argote was born at Cordova on the 11th July 1561. His father was don Francisco de Argote, corregidor of Cordova, his mother was donna Leonor de Gongora, both of ancient and distinguished noble families; and, as the name of his father was equally patrician with that of his mother, his having given preference to the latter has excited surprise among his Spanish biographers. At the age of fifteen he entered the university of Salamanca, and studied the law; but his inclination led him rather to the cultivation of poetry and general literature; and while at Salamanca, he wrote many amatory, satirical, and burlesque poems. At this time he had so severe an illness, that for three days he was believed to be dead, and his resuscitation was regarded almost as a miracle.

He passed his early life at Cordova, known and esteemed as a poet and a man of talent. His spirit was high, his character ardent and penetrating, and his pen ready, so that he was induced to indulge in personal satire, a circumstance which in after years he deeply regretted; and he changed so much that a friend of his writes, "he became the most ingenuous, candid, and unoffending man in conversation and writing that Spain ever saw." At the age of forty-five he took holy orders, and soon after visited Madrid, invited by several nobles who, esteeming his worth, and regretting his slender means, believed that he would there be enabled to increase them. But though he frequented the society of the great, he was but slightly benefited. However, through the patronage of the duke of Lerma and the marques de Siete Iglesias, he was named honorary chaplain to Philip III. He was held in much esteem by those nobles who cultivated literature, on account of his great talents; and he founded a sort of school of literature whose disciples were bigoted, zealous, and intolerant.

He thus wasted eleven years at court, not deceived by vain hopes, for his experienced understanding prevented his entertaining any such illusions, but forced by necessity. He was then taken suddenly and dangerously ill, while attending on the king in a journey to Valentia, away from all his friends; the queen, however, hearing of his illness, sent a physician to attend him. His head was attacked in a manner not so much to destroy reason, as to take from him all memory; and in this manner he continued lost to the end of his life. At one time, during a short interval of comparative health, he returned to Cordova that he might be buried in his native place. Not long after he died, on the 24th May, 1627, at the age of sixty-six.

In person Gongora was tall and robust, his face large, his eyes penetrating and lively, his whole appearance venerable, though severe and adust, hearing marks of the causticity and satire of his disposition, which however softened as he grew older. He was a disappointed man. His talents, his understanding, the grasp of mind of which he felt himself capable, nourished an internal ambition, which being ungratified, turned to discontent. It was some satisfaction to his imperious disposition to found a school of poetry, and attack the chief writers of the day, Cervantes and Lope de Vega, the Argensolas and Quevedo, in reply to their just criticisms on his inflated and tortuous style; and it was balm to his pride to hear the applause of his followers. But it is greatly to his discredit that, while heretofore the disputes of the Spanish poets with regard to literature were conducted with temper, and for the most part with urbanity, Gongora indulged in scurrility and abuse. His excuse, Sedano tells us, is, that this sort of insolence was the fruit of youthful arrogance: yet, as he was a year older than Lope, and contemporary with most of the others, he could not have been so very young when he entered the lists against them. However, as he grew older, visited Madrid, went to court, and took orders, he threw off the presumption he nourished in his native town, and became gentle, humane, and modest, and regretted his former excesses of temper.

The terms in which his friends speak of him, prove that the honesty and integrity of his disposition, and his great understanding, inspired them with love and veneration; for, though their language be exaggerated, still it bears marks of sincerity. A friend and disciple writing his life, soon after his death, speaks of him as "the greatest man that not only Spain, but the world ever saw." He laments his brief career, as he names sixty-six years; but his praises being written in the excess of the culto style, it is impossible almost to understand—quite impossible to translate them. In this style the literal translation only offers nonsense: there is a hidden meaning which is to be guessed at, and that, so metaphoric and obscure, that it very much resembles a Chinese puzzle—difficult to put together, and, when, discovered and arranged, not worth the trouble. The cultoristos themselves nourished unbounded contempt for any thing that was at all explicable to common understandings in a common manner.

It is remarkable that in the early poetry of Gongora there is no trace of this style which he afterwards invented (as his followers called it), and insisted upon as a prodigy of good taste and poetic genius. His early poetry is peculiarly simple and plain. He wrote redondillas or seguidillas in the old Spanish style, on the most common-place topics, which yet he treats with spirit and power; others of his poems are softly pathetic; but all are written without inflation—without conceits, but with all that fire and brilliancy—that gaiety and poignancy which characterised his vivid imagination. Of the first mentioned, those that even verge on the common-place, we may mention the "Child's Address to his Sister," as to how they should amuse themselves on a holiday; in which he describes the pleasures of Spanish children, with infinite vivacity and nature. The subject of another, is the story of Hero and Leander. He transforms the hero and heroine of this romantic love story, into two poor peasants—she too poor to buy a lantern, he to hire a boat. The catastrophe, the last swimming of Leander, his coming to the dreary, stormy sea beach, and his throwing himself in—though tarnished by vulgarisms, is lively and picturesque. In all that he wrote there was fire and spirit, facility and a diction truly poetic. One of his sweetest lyrics is the "Song of Catherine of Arragon," lamenting her sad destiny; it will prepossess the reader in favour of Gongora's pure style, and we therefore quote the translation of Dr. Bowring:—

The following song, sent with flowers, and asking from his lady a kiss for every sting he received while gathering them, is tender and elegant:—

His poems in Spanish metres, his letrillas and romances, have the same brilliancy of expression, warmth of emotion, and vivid colouring. The "Ballad of Angelica and Medora" is particularly airy and fresh, but rich and strong as a deep clear inland river that reflects the gorgeous tints of the sky. Gongora surpasses every other Spanish lyrist, in the brilliant colouring of his poetry, and the vivacity of his expression.

But all this he voluntarily set at nought. Instead of writing as a poet, he adopted the crabbed critic's art, and, extreme in all things, gave no quarter even to the beauties of his own compositions. He might reprove the diluted interminable poems of Lope, and the unpoetic style of Cervantes; he might have been displeased with the poverty of ideas and enervated conceptions of many of his contemporaries; but he might have been satisfied with his own ease, purity, and strength: he, however, rejected even these, and instituted a system: a new dialect was invented, a new construction adopted,—new words, a dislocated construction, a profusion and exaggeration of figures were introduced. "He rose," one of his disciples writes, "to the sublime height of refinement (cultura), which ignorance holds in distaste, and accomplished the greatness off 'Polyphemus,' the 'Soledades,' and other shorter, but not less, poems." He grew almost frantic in the dissemination of his system; and in his vehemence against its opponents, he became lost to poetry, and lives, even to this day, more remembered as a fantastic and ill-judging innovator, than as one of the most natural, brilliant, and imaginative poets that Spain ever produced.

Lope de Vega has written a letter, or rather essay, upon Gongora and his system, and gives the following account of both:

"I have known this gentleman for eight-and-twenty years, and I hold him to be possessed of the rarest and most excellent talent of any in Cordova, so that he need not yield even to Seneca or Lucan, who were natives of the same town. Pedro Linan de Riaza, his contemporary at Salamanca, told me much of his proficiency in study, so that I cultivated his acquaintance, and improved it by the intercourse we had when I visited Andalusia; and it always appeared as if he liked and esteemed me more than my poor merits deserve. Many other distinguished men of letters at that time competed with him:—Herrera, Vicente Espinel, the two Argensolas, and others, among whom this gentleman held such place, that Fame said the same of him as the Delphic oracle did of Socrates.

"He wrote in all styles with elegance, and in gay and festive compositions his wit was not less celebrated than Martial's, while it was far more decent. We have several of his works composed in a pure style, which he continued for the greater part of his life. But, not content with having reached the highest step of fame in sweetness and softness, he sought (I have always believed with good and sincere intentions, and not with presumption, as his enemies have asserted), to enrich the art, and even language, with such ornaments and figures as were never before imagined nor seen. In my opinion he fulfilled his aim, if this was his intent; the difficulty rests in receiving his system: and so many obstacles have arisen, that I doubt they will never cease, except with their cause; for I think the obscurity and ambiguity of his expressions must be disagreeable to many. By some he is said to have raised this new style into a peculiar class of poetry; and they are not mistaken: for, as in the old manner of writing, it took a life to become a poet, in this new one it requires but a day: for, with these transpositions, four rules, and six Latin words or emphatic phrases, they rise so high that they do not know—far less understand themselves. Lipsius wrote a new Latin, which those who are learned in such things say Cicero and Quintilian laugh at in the other world; and those who have imitated him are so wise that they lose themselves. And I know others who have invented a language and style so different from Lipsius that they require a new dictionary. And thus those who imitate this gentleman produce monstrous births—and fancy that, by imitating his style, they inherit his genius. Would to God they imitated him in that part which is worthy of adoption; for every one must be aware that there is much that is deserving of admiration, while the rest is wrapt in the darkness of such ambiguity as I have found the cleverest men at fault when they tried to understand it. The foundation of this edifice is transposition, rendered the more harsh by the disjoining of substantives from adjectives, where no parenthesis is possible, so that even to pronounce it is difficult: tropes and figures are the ornaments, so little to the purpose, that it is as if a woman, when painting herself, instead of putting the rouge on her cheeks, should apply it to her nose, forehead and ears. Transpositions may be allowed, and there are common examples, but they must be appropriate. Boscan, Garcilaso, and Herrera use them. Look at the elegance, softness, and beauty of the divine Herrera, worthy of imitation and admiration! for, it is not to enrich a language, to reject its natural idiom, and adopt instead phrases borrowed from a foreign tongue; but, now, they write in the style of the curate who asked his servant for the "anserine reed," telling her that "the Ethiopian licour was wanting in the cornelian vase." These people do not attend to clearness or dignity of style, but to the novelty of these exquisite modes of expression, in which there is neither truth nor propriety, nor enlargement of the powers of language; but an odious invention that renders it barbarous, imitated from one who might have been an object of just admiration to us all."[108]

In addition to these grave and reasonable arguments, Lope attacked the culto style with ridicule, better suited to explode the would-be invention of the unintelligible. In several plays he alludes to it with good humoured raillery. In one of them, a cavalier desirous of making use of the talents of a poet to write for him, asks—

Cav.A plain or polished bard?[109]

Poet.Refined my style.

Cav.My secrets then remain with me to write.

Poet.Your secrets? Why?

Cav.For, with refinement penned. Their meaning sure no soul shall comprehend.[110]

In another play, a lady describing her rival, ridicules her as,

In addition to these quotations, there are many more chance arrows let fly at the absurdity, in his volume of burlesque poetry, written under the name of Tomé de Burguillos, in the shape of parodies on this style. We select one which however ridiculous it reads, is a very moderate representation of the bombast Gongora brought into fashion.

While Lope on these occasions, and on many others, takes occasion to reprehend and satirise this new system, his disciples held it up as the wonder of the world; they called it the estilo culto, or refined style, and themselves cultoristos: each phrase was to be twisted, each word to receive a new and deeper meaning, while mythology, and all sorts of phantastic imagery, gave a bombastic gilding to the whole; and when they had written verses high in sound, but obscure and simple in meaning, they fancied they had arrived at sublimity. Thus, a petty hill assumes the proportions of a mountain in the evening mist. We may look at it with wonder, we may lose our way or tumble into a ditch in endeavouring to reach it; but; once at its summit, and we find ourselves scarcely elevated above the plain.

The "Polyphemus" and the "Solitudes" of Gongora, are, as has been mentioned, the poems written in his most exaggerated style. The "Polyphemus" begins with a description of the giant, who "was a mountain of members eminent." His dark hair was a "knotty imitation of the turbid waves of Lethe; and, as the wind combs them stormily, they fly dishevelled, or hang down disordered: his beard is a torrent, the dried-up offspring of this Pyrenees! Trinacria has no wild beast in its mountains armed with such cruelty, shod with such wind, whose ferocity can defend, nor whose speed may save! Their skins, spotted with a hundred colours, are his cloak; and thus he drives in his oxen to their stall, treading the doubtful light of morn." His "Soledades" or "Solitudes," commence even more in the estilo culto, and with such very refined phrases and images that no one can make any thing of it. We give a short passage with Sismondi's translation, and the Spanish, that the reader may judge in what a jungle of interminable words, and heterogeneous ideas, this mistaken poet lost himself:—

Sismondi only gives half this sentence, but the latter part is the most intelligible; and besides it was difficult to refrain from presenting the reader with the refined image (culta figura) of the manner in which the shipwrecked boy's clothes were dried. In a hurried translation of this sort, the harmony of verse is not preserved; and that, it must be remarked, is great, and one of Gongora's chief beauties. There is, indeed, a sort of dusky gorgeousness throughout; but it makes the reader smile, to be told that this style of poetry was new and unknown, and "superior to aught that man ever before imagined or composed:" that it was to supersede Garcilaso, Herrera, and Gongora himself in his better days. Such was the faith of the cultoristos, such their hope in the estilo culto.

Sismondi's translation of the first part of this sentence runs thus:—"C'était la saison fleurie de l'année dans laquelle le ravisseur déguisé d'Europe, portant sur son front pour armes une demie-lune, et tous les rayons du soleil disséminés sur son front, devenu un honneur brillant du ciel, menait paître des étoiles dans des champs de saphir; lorsque celui qui était bien plus fait pour présenter la coupe à Jupiter que le jeune homme d'Ida, fit naufrage, et confia à la mer de douces plaintes et des larmes d'amour; celle-ci pleine de compassion les transmit aux feuilles qui répétant le triste gémissement du vent comme le doux instrument d'Arion——" Here Sismondi breaks off, for here Gongora becomes particularly obscure. We guess (it is all guessing with the cultoristos), that the poet intends to say, that the pitying waves repeated to the winds the complaints of the wrecked youth, which in compassion tore from the pine the limb that served him as a skiff to save him. Whether the instrument, soft as Arion's, typifies the voice of the youth, or the waves, or the wind, or the pine tree, is an enigma beyond our solving.

QUEVEDO

1580-1645.

Spaniards may look back with pride to this epoch, so fertile in genius, so prolific of the talent and high character that germinates in the Spanish soul, and which it required unexampled despotism and cruelty to crush and efface. Not that the inborn greatness of that people is lost, but its outward demonstration, after this period, became the unheard and sightless prey of political oppression. The words of Gray, wherein he speaks of the heroes and poets who may have been born and died without achieving distinction, or performing any act capable of winning it, is so true, perhaps, in no country as in Spain: but with them it cannot be said, that

It was the stake and the dungeon, a system of misrule, and the aspect of the merciless deeds committed by their governors on helpless multitudes, that destroyed the energies, and blighted the genius, of the people. When we read of such acts as the banishment of the Moriscos, and the history of all that high-hearted people suffered—torn from their native vales and hills, and cast out upon the stranger—we wonder what manner of men lived in Spain, and feel that these inhuman and impious deeds must have poisoned the very air. But, politically speaking, it is not the act, but its effects, that are so baneful; national crime influences by causing the degeneracy of the race. The youth may live a life of sin; it is the man that is the sufferer. And thus the heroes of Spain of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, might glory in their children of the sixteenth; but the infection of evil had touched these, and their descendants made good the awful denunciation,—that the children are to suffer for their parents' crimes—an annunciation of divine will, so carried out in the vast system of the world, though often omitted in particular instances, as to demonstrate that it is one of the laws bestowed by heaven to govern the human race.

Among the men who, last of the Spaniards of renown, flourished at that epoch, Quevedo deserves particular mention. He was a man of genius—a man who acted as well as wrote, and displayed in both originality, penetration and rectitude; whose character was as admirable as his intellect. He was the victim, also, of the most frightful misrule; and the fate of Quevedo alone might be brought forward as an example of the infamy of the political institutions of Spain.

Don Francisco Gomez de Quevedo Villegas, was born at Madrid in September 1580. His father, Pedro Gomez de Quevedo, was a courtier. He had been secretary to the empress Mary, and afterwards filled the same situation to queen Anne, wife of Philip II. His mother, donna Maria de Santibanez, also was attached to the court, and was a lady of the bedchamber to the queen. They were both of noble family, and descended from the most ancient landed proprietors of the Montana, in the Valle de Toranzo.

His father died when he was a child; and he was brought up in the royal palace by his mother, but she also died when he was young[114], as we gather from one of his ballads, in which he gives a jocosely bitter account of the ill luck that pursued him through life. He went early to the university of Alcalà, and there his passion for study developed itself in all its intensity, so that we are told that he took his degree in theology, to the wonder of every body, at fifteen. This seems almost incredible; but it is plain he took it with credit, and a the expense of great labour.

This science and success, however, did not satisfy him. He gave himself eagerly up to the acquirement of other knowledge: civil and canon law, medicine and natural history, the learned languages, and the various systems of philosophy, were in the number of his studies and acquirements: poetry was added to the list. His grasping and clear mind became informed by all the learning of the times; it converted it all to nutriment, and acquired power from the various intellectual weapons he taught himself to wield.

His career was checked by a circumstance that may rather be looked on as fortunate, since it forced him to quit the immediate atmosphere of the court, and to make his way elsewhere, through his own exertions and merits. He was, though so young, held in high esteem for his conduct, and, as the most accomplished cavalier of his time, was often made the arbitrator of quarrels: in which character he displayed his good sense and good feeling by the care he at once took, to watch over the point of honour and to reconcile adversaries. He himself wielded all weapons of defence with singular dexterity; though, being born with both his feet turned in, this deformity must have impeded the full developement of his powers, which, nevertheless, exceeded those of most men in strength and skill, and were aided by his bravery and greatness of mind. These qualifications had brought him off the conqueror in several unexpected and inevitable rencontres, where he had been obliged to defend or assert himself. On one occasion a man, calling himself a gentleman, entirely unknown to him, took advantage of the darkness in which churches are plunged during the evening of Holy Thursday, to insult a lady (equally unknown to Quevedo), in the church of St. Martin, at Madrid. Quevedo came forward to her assistance, forced the insulter into the street, and, reproving him for his brutality, they drew on each other, and Quevedo ran his adversary through the body. The friends of the cavalier endeavoured to seize him, and he was obliged to fly: he took refuge in Italy, and thence, invited by the viceroy, repaired to Sicily.

At this time Don Pedro Giron, duke of Osuna and grandee of Spain, was viceroy of Sicily. He was a man of singular character; and the career he ran, in which Quevedo was involved, was as strange and various as was his disposition and designs.[115] The character of the Spanish, under the gloomy influence of Philip II., had become dignified, grave and ceremonious. His son Philip III. was of a different character. His father had taken pains to inculcate all his own bigotry in matters of religion, and, at the same time, to inspire him with application, judgment, and a knowledge of the arts of government. In the first part of his education he succeeded; in the latter he wholly failed. Philip III. was a weak prince and as such given up to favouritism. On coming to the crown, he devolved all the labours of government on the marquis of Denia whom he made duke of Lerma, who again entrusted much of the royal patronage and power to Don Rodrigo de Calderon, a man of low birth, but of high and haughty mind, who became count of Oliva and marquis de Siete Iglesias. The court of Philip III., however, preserved much of the dignity, the severe etiquette and solemn gravity brought in by Philip II. In this serious and ceremonious circle the duke of Osuna was almost regarded as a madman. He displayed the fervour and spirit of youth in a gaiety and recklessness of manner and behaviour, wholly at war with courtly decorum and seriousness. His wit was brilliant, his understanding penetrating, his imagination full of fire and extravagance; his temper ardent and joyous. He was often called insane, and the sober tried to bring him into disesteem. His high birth and vast fortunes, however, gave him rank and weight, and he had distinguished himself in the wars of the Low Countries, not only by his bravery but by his military skill. His disposition prompted him to love the trade of war; and he made such use of his experience during the struggle carried on in that disturbed country, that he became reputed fit to command an army. His valour was undoubted; on one occasion he had three horses killed under him, and the success that attended his enterprises surrounded them with still greater lustre. He was licentious in his habits, but so grossly so, that he was never the slave of love. His ambition was unbounded; his designs vast: his imagination suggested a thousand strange modes of satisfying it, and engendered schemes so wild and daring that, while the world was amazed, and its repose disturbed, their very singularity, in many instances, commanded success. His military reputation was the cause, joined to the influence of Uzeda, son of the duke of Lerma, who was his friend, that, notwithstanding his indiscretions and levity, he came to be named viceroy of Sicily.

Quevedo was an invaluable acquisition to such a man. His gaiety and wit recommended him as a companion: his understanding, his integrity, his elevated character, his resolution, his capacity for labour, and his great knowledge, caused him to be a useful servant to one, whose vast designs required instruments of power and skill. The duke showed his great confidence in his talents and fidelity by sending him as his ambassador to Madrid, to recount his exploits and explain his designs. Quevedo succeeded so well that, the king and council bestowed a pension on him, and the duke of Osuna was advanced to the viceroyalty of Naples—which opened a new scene for his schemes and a wide field for his towering ambition. Osuna's first acts were directed against the Turkish power, and he obtained several splendid victories in the Mediterranean and on the coasts of Africa, but he had designs more at heart than a victory over the Turks. The war of the Low Countries was concluded, and there was peace between France and Spain. The Spanish power, possessed of Sicily and Naples and Milan, threatened to become omnipotent in Italy. Charles Emanuel, duke of Savoy, a gallant and patriotic prince in vain endeavoured to make head against it: he was forced to submit. Still in heart he was at war; and this sovereign and the republic of Venice made a quiet but determined stand against the encroachments of Spain in Italy. The Duke of Osuna set himself in opposition to them, and, in particular, used every means he could command, to weaken and injure the Venetians.

The methods he took were lawless and dishonourable, but they shewed his despotic and daring spirit. He encouraged the Uscocchi, a tribe of pirates who inhabited Istria, and infested the Mediterranean. A Spanish fleet protected their attacks on the Venetians, intercepted the forces of the republic sent against them, and seized upon their merchantmen in the Adriatic. Corsairs and pirates of all nations brought their prizes to the ports of Naples, and found shelter and protection: they were permitted to trade; and Osuna thus gathered together a number of desperate men whom he could use in the execution of any daring enterprise. The fair traders and merchants of Naples however, finding commerce decline, complained at the court of Madrid; the French also made representations against the nefarious acts of the pirates protected by Osuna; and the court, which had entered on a treaty of peace with Savoy, and was negotiating one between Venice and Ferdinand of Austria, sent an order to the viceroy to suspend all hostilities.

Osuna would not obey. He sent a fleet into the Adriatic, and threatened with death any one who should dare carry complaints to Madrid. His pretence was the alarm of an intended invasion by the Turks, while at the same time he was endeavouring to induce the Porte to attack Candia. This fleet was driven into port by a storm: but he had a number of privateers which, notwithstanding Spain was at peace with Venice, captured the vessels of that state; and, when he was ordered to restore them, he obeyed by sending back the vessels and keeping the cargoes. In vain did the Venetians complain. Osuna declared that he would persist while he detected latent enmity to Spain in the councils of the republic, and the Spanish ambassador was forced to allow that the viceroy was beyond royal control.

But his designs did not end here; his heart was set on the destruction of Venice: and, his daring and uncontrolled imagination suggesting the wildest schemes, he set on foot another attempt even less venial than his encouragement of the Uscocchi. It is true that Spanish historians, and, among them, Ortiz, deny the complicity of Spain in the conspiracy formed against Venice, and throw upon the Venetian senate the accusation of trumping up a plot, for the sake of getting rid of the Spanish ambassador: but all other nations concur in believing the conspiracy to have been real, and in affirming that the interesting account Saint Real gives, is, in the main, founded on undoubted facts.

The name of the Bedmar conspiracy against Venice is familiar to us through Otway's play. This is not the place to go into minute detail. The marquis of Bedmar was a man of great talent and acquirements. The Spanish government held him in high esteem; he was sagacious and discerning, and he had that zeal for the glory of his country, which in that day distinguished the Spaniards: and it was of the first importance to the prosperity of Spain to weaken, how much more to destroy the state of Venice. His design was to introduce foreign troops surreptitiously into the town—to fire the arsenal and other parts of the city, and to seize on its places of strength. The senators were to be massacred; and if the citizens offered resistance, artillery was to be turned on them, and the city laid in ruins. The plot was discovered: it is not known exactly how. It seems probable, that a conspirator, a Venetian, a Jaffier, betrayed it through the suggestions of fear or humanity, and Venice was preserved.

Bedmar, it is said, communicated his plot to Osuna, and they acted in concert. There can be no doubt, but that both ministers were zealously bent on weakening the power of Venice; and, as there appears ample proof that this conspiracy originated in the marquis of Bedmar, so is it also probable that he associated in it a spirit so lawless, a man so bold and resolute as Osuna. Quevedo was the emissary that passed between them, and if Osuna was privy to the plot, it seems certain that Quevedo also was. 1618. Ætat. 38. This is a painful circumstance. We hear so much of the integrity and excellence of Quevedo's character, that we are averse to believe his complicity in the nefarious attempt to destroy a rival state, not by the fair advantages of war, but by conspiracy, incendiarism, and massacre; that state also not only being at peace, but the plot originating in, and carried on by one who bore the sacred character of an ambassador. But, nurtured under the poisonous influence of the Inquisition, fraught with a zeal, which does not deserve the name of patriotic, since the true honour of their country was not consulted, the Spaniards nourished a false conscience; and the men who could serve God by the murder of the innocent and helpless, could serve their king by perjury and assassination. During his various political services the life of Quevedo had been several times attempted, and this also might tend to blunt his sense of right: he might fancy that it was but fair retaliation to use towards others the secret weapon levelled against himself. However this may be, whether or not he were acquainted with the secret of the conspiracy, and took a part in it, it is certain that he was in Venice at the time that the plot was discovered. Many of his intimate friends were seized and perished by the hands of the executioner; but he contrived to elude the vigilance of the senate, and finally made his escape in the guise of a mendicant.

Osuna continued viceroy of Naples, and it began to be suspected that he intended to arrogate power independent of the king his master. His success at sea against Venice raised him many enemies, as he gained it through the destruction of all fair trade, and also by the imposition of vast and burthensome taxes. The Neapolitan nobility were, in a body, inimical to him; and all those disaffected to the Spanish rule made him the apparent object of their hatred and complaints. He, aware of their aversion, endeavoured to crush them; he visited all those crimes severely which they had hitherto, under shadow of their rank, committed unpunished. He excluded them from all offices of power and trust, and took occasion when he could, to confiscate their property. He encouraged a spirit of sedition among the common people; he surrounded himself by foreign troops; he encouraged men of desperate fortunes—he commanded the sea—and his power became unbounded. He utterly despised the king his master, calling him the great drum of the monarchy, as if he had been a mere tool and instrument, and possessed no real authority.

With all this it is not probable that he really conspired to seize on Naples. He wished to rule absolutely and unquestioned, but did not go beyond into forming designs of putting his power on a new and independent foundation. His wild projecting brain was well known, and caused many of his acts to pass unnoticed; but his enemies increased, and their complaints at court were frequent. They fabricated accusations to his dishonour, exaggerated his weaknesses and faults, and combined together for his overthrow. Finding that he became aware of their attempts, they, fearful of his revenge, renewed them with increased fervour. Men of the highest rank in Naples visited Madrid, and put themselves forward to misinterpret his actions. They art-fully represented that the ruin of commerce, and the desolation of the kingdom arose from his dissolute life and misrule. The king and his ministers gave ear to these representations, and commanded Osuna to return to Madrid. This was a great blow to the duke: though he received it with apparent constancy, he neither liked to lose his place, nor, above all, to lose it under dishonourable imputations, and he delayed obedience. Thus colour was given to the idea that he meant to assert his independence. The court of Madrid, therefore, proceeded more warily: they contrived to get possession of his galleys and other vessels of war; and orders were despatched to cardinal don Gaspar de Borgia, who was named his successor, to proceed instantly from Rome, where he was residing, to Naples, and to seize on the government. Borgia arrived at Gaëta, but still Osuna protracted his stay under various pretences. The nobles represented that he was endeavouring to raise an insurrection among the populace and soldiers; and Borgia, to put an end to the struggle, having gained the support of the governor of the Castel Nuovo, introduced himself into that fortress by night. The following morning the discharge of artillery proclaimed his arrival, and Osuna was obliged to submit. He returned by slow journies to Spain. He presented himself at court, and the king turned his back on him. Osuna eyed his sovereign with contempt, muttering, "The king treats me not as a man, but as a child." Not long after, Philip III. died. The enemies of Osuna were not idle; fresh accusations of his treasonable intents at Naples were perpetually made; and one of the first acts of the reign of Philip IV. was to throw him into prison. The distress of his mind increased the disease of which he was the victim, and he died in prison of a dropsy, in the year 1624.

1620. Ætat. 40.

Quevedo was enveloped in his ruin. He had been a zealous and laborious servant to Osuna and to his government. He had, by his attention to the finances discovered various frauds, and brought large sums into the treasury. He crossed the sea seven times as ambassador to the court of Madrid, and fulfilled the same employment at Rome. He had been rewarded by the gift of the habit of Santiago. He loved and revered Osuna, and testified his attachment by writing several sonnets in his honour. One is on his death, in which he says, "The fields of Flanders are his monument—the blood-stained Crescent his epitaph: Spain gave him a prison and death; but though his country failed him, his deeds were his defence."[116] He wrote three other sonnets as epitaphs[117]: Ortiz mentions them as containing an epitome of the duke's life. He says of him that he was "The terror of Asia, the fear of Europe, and the thunder-bolt of Africa. His name alone was victory, there where the Crescent ruled. He divorced Venice and the Sea." In another he sums up his achievements against the Turks:—"He liberated a thousand Christians from the galleys; he assaulted and sacked Goletta, Chicheri, and Calivia: the Danube, and Moselle and the Rhine paled before his armies." The fall of Osuna included his own. There can be no doubt that he was innocent of all participation in any treasonable designs of the viceroy, but innocence was a slight resource in Spain against powerful accusers. He was arrested and carried to his villa of Torre de Juan Abad, and imprisoned there for three years and a half. He was confined with such rigour, that in default of medical aid he fell severely ill, so that he wrote to the president of the council, to represent the miserable state of his health, and obtained leave to attend to his cure in the neighbouring city of Villa Nueva de los Infantes. A few months after he was liberated, under the restriction that he was not to appear at court. But the total absence of all proof against him, caused this sentence to be taken off soon after. Unfortunately he was not satisfied with freedom from persecution. His fortunes had suffered during his imprisonment, and he sought to mend them by claiming the arrears of his pension, the payment of which had been suspended during his disgrace. This lighted again the fire of persecution, and he was again exiled, and retired to his villa of Torre Juan Abad, till after the lapse of another year he was allowed to return to Madrid. No longer persecuted, and restored to his proper place in society, he resided for some time at court, where he enjoyed the reputation his talents, prudence, and conduct commanded, so that the king, to reward his services, and compensate for his sufferings, named him one of his secretaries.

1632. Ætat. 52.

But such honours had ceased to charm Quevedo. Misfortune and disgrace had taught him to look with aversion on public employments; his long imprisonment had accustomed him to study, and engendered a love of tranquillity. Several places were offered him by the count-duke Olivarez, minister and favourite of Philip IV., such as minister for state despatches, and the embassy to Genoa, but he declined them and gave himself up to study and philosophy. His writings were many, and gained for him a high reputation; he was in correspondence with all the most learned men of Europe, and was enriched by the revenue of several benefices; thus for several years he enjoyed reputation and prosperity. 1634. Ætat. 54. He gave up, however, his church preferments for the sake of marrying. His wife was donna Esperanza de Aragon y la Cabra, Señora of Cetina, and she belonged to one of the highest families in the kingdom. With her he retired to Cetina; but he was not long allowed to enjoy the happiness he promised himself: his wife died within a few months, and this last misfortune, destroying the fabric of felicity he had erected, and counted upon possessing to the end of his life, was the heaviest blow of all. His resource and consolation was retirement and study. He took up his abode at Torre Juan Abad, and gave himself up to the cultivation of literature and poetry.

Several of his poems are expressive of the delight he felt at leaving Madrid for the solitude of his villa which was placed in the Sierra of La Mancha. One of his romances describes his progress from Madrid through Toledo, la Mancha, and the Sierra, to his estate: the poem is burlesque, and in ridicule of all he sees; but there are others in which he dwells with satisfaction on his tranquil occupations. "Retired to the solitude of these deserts," he writes, "with few but wise books, I enjoy the conversation of the dead, and with my eyes listen to those who are no more. The press gives into our hands those great souls whom death has freed from injury. The hour takes its irrevocable Sight, but that is spent best which improves us by reading and study."[118]

He was an excellent landlord, and a kind master; he exerted himself in acts of charity towards his vassals, and conducted himself with Christian humility and mercy. For a few years he was permitted to enjoy this tranquillity; it was a sort of calm after storm, where the absence of sorrow is called happiness. His active mind furnished him with occupation, while his piety and philosophy taught him content. He might now hope that he was assured of such a state of peace to the end of his life,—for he had relinquished every ambitious project, and limited his views to the narrowed sphere immediately around him. But Quevedo was one of those men marked by destiny for misfortune. He playfully, and yet with some bitterness, alludes to his evil fate, in a poem before quoted. He says: "My fortunes are so black, they might serve me for ink: I might be used as an image of a saint;—for, if the country people want rain, they have but to turn me out naked, and they are sure of a deluge; if they want sun, let me be covered by a mantle, and it will shine at night; I am always mistaken for some object of vengeance, and receive the blows intended for another. If a tile is to fall, it waits till I pass under. If I wish to borrow from any one, he replies so rudely, that, instead of borrowing, I am obliged to lend my patience. Every fool prates to me; every old woman makes love; every poor person begs; every prosperous one takes offence. When I travel, I always miss my road; when I play, I always lose; every friend deceives, every enemy sticks to me; water fails me at sea,—in taverns I find it in plenty, mingled with my wine. I have given up all employments, for I know that if I turned hosier, people would go bare-legged; if physician, no one would fall ill. If I am gallant towards a woman, she listens to or refuses me,—both are equally disastrous. If a man wished to die neither by poison nor pestilence, he has but to intend to benefit me, and he will not live an hour. Such is the adverseness of my star, that I submit and try to propitiate its pride by my adoration."[119]

1641. Ætat. 61.

But worse luck was in store for him, and a misfortune so heavy, as to put an end to his life, after exhausting him by suffering. He was suspected of being the author of certain libels against the court, and to the injury of public morals;—and an accusation was brought against him, either by some malicious enemy, or officious and mistaken medler. Happening to visit Madrid for some cause, and being in the house of a grandee, his friend, he was arrested at eleven at night, in the month of December 1641, and imprisoned in a dungeon of the royal Casa de San Marcos de Leon, and his possessions seized on. His confinement was cruel as well as rigorous,—his dungeon was damp;—a stream flowed through it close to his pillow. He was allowed no money, and lived by charity; his clothes became rags, and he could not renew them. This frightful situation produced sores on his body, and not being allowed medical aid, he was forced to dress them himself.

There are two letters of his extant, written in prison,—one addressed to a friend,—the other, a memorial to the count-duke Olivarez, soliciting inquiry into his case.[120] These letters are far less interesting than might have been expected from so vivid a writer as Quevedo, describing the squalid wretchedness of a dungeon, and the horrors of his lot; but they are curious monuments of the manners of the day, shewing how men endured the evils of misrule, and evincing the resignation and dignity Quevedo could preserve throughout.

The first is addressed to a gentleman whom his biographers name his intimate friend, don Diego de Villagomez, a cavalier of the city of Leon; but the style is as cold and ceremonious as if written to an archbishop. It begins by saying:—"I who am a warning write to you who are an example to the world,—but different as we are, we both travel to the same end,—and adversity has this of good, that it serves as a lesson to others. Even in learning the military profession, you have shewn yourself a good captain. For you have not left it, but attained preferment. War endures to all men through life, for life is war; and to live and to struggle is the same thing."—He then makes a religious application of this maxim, saying, that to leave a worldly service for that of Jesus, is to follow a better banner and to be assured of the pay; and, after a long disquisition on this subject, and in praise of St. Ignatius, he concludes by saying: "I can count, señor don Diego, fourteen years and a half of imprisonment, and may add to this the misery of this last dungeon, in which, I count the wages of my sins. Give me pity in exchange for the envy I bear you; and since God gives you better society, enjoy it, far from the solitude of your friend, who lies in the grasp of persecution, far short in his account, though he pays much less than he owes. And may God give you his grace and benediction. From prison, the 8th of June, 1643."

The memorial to the count-duke is far more to the purpose, but, even that is very diffuse and pedantic, though the facts he details were impressive enough to obtain compassion without quotations from the ancients; but such was the tone of that age.

"My lord," he writes, "a year and ten months have passed since I was thrown into prison, on the seventh of December, on the eve of the Conception of our Lady, at half-past ten at night; when I was dragged in the depth of winter, without a cloak, and without a shirt, in my sixty-first year, to this royal convent of San Marcos de Leon; where I have remained all the time mentioned, in most rigorous confinement; sick with three wounds, which have festered through the effects of cold, and the vicinity of a stream that flow's near my pillow; and not being allowed a surgeon, it has been a sight of pity to see me cauterise them with my own hands. I am so poor that I have been clothed, and my life supported by charity. The horror of my hardships has struck every one with dread. I have only one sister, a nun among the barefooted Carmelites, from whom I can hope nothing, but that she should recommend me to God. I acknowledge (for so my sins persuade) mercy in this cruelty. For I am myself the voice of my conscience, and I accuse my life. If your Excellency found me well off, mine would be the praise. To find me miserable, and to do me good, makes the praise yours; and if I am unworthy of pity, your Excellency is worthy to feel it, and it is the appropriate virtue of so great a noble and minister. 'There is nothing,' says Seneca, when consoling Marcia, 'that I consider so meritorious in those who hold a high station, as the pardoning many things, and seeking pardon for none.' What worse crime can I commit, than persuading myself that my misfortunes are to be the limit of your magnanimity? I ask time from your Excellency to revenge myself on myself. The world has already heard what my enemies can say against me; I desire now that they should hear me against myself, and my accusations will be the more true from being exempt from hatred. I protest, before God, our Lord, that in all that is said of me, I am guilty of no other crime, than not having lived an exemplary life, so that my sins may be attributed to my folly. Those who see me, do not believe that I am a prisoner on suspicion, but under a most rigorous sentence; wherefore I do not expect death, but live in communion with it. I exist only through its generosity,—and I am a corpse in all except the sepulture, which is the repose of the dead. I have lost every thing. My possessions, which were always trifling, are reduced to nothing, between the great expenses of my imprisonment, and the losses it has occasioned. My friends are frightened by my calamity, and nothing remains to me but my trust in you. No mercy can bestow many years on me, nor any cruelty deprive me of many. I do not, my lord, seek this interval, naturally so short, for the sake of living longer, but of living well for a little while."