Volume 1 / Book 2 — FIRST SECTION. History of Spanish Poetry and Eloquence, from the Introduction of the Italian Style to the Age of Cervantes and Lope de Vega.

OCCASION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ITALIAN STYLE.

After the complete consolidation of the monarchies of Castile and Arragon by the accession of Charles of Austria, the grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, there appears to have been, for a short time, a suspension of all literary activity in Spain. The political convulsions which then agitated the interior of the two united kingdoms, occupied the public mind too powerfully to allow any interest to be felt in calmer and more agreeable objects. But as soon as the civil contests were terminated by the success of the Austrian party, and the enterprising Charles, incited by Francis I. employed the force of his Spanish states to win new dominions in Italy, the poetic genius of Spain revived in all its pristine vigour. In the meantime, the ancient dialect of the Arragonian provinces began to be supplanted by the Castilian, which became the language of the state and of public business throughout Spain. Castile was then considered the heart of the whole monarchy. Madrid rose to the rank of the capital of Spain, and Saragossa sunk into the condition of a provincial town. It was therefore no very extraordinary event, that a Catalonian, whose maternal language still possessed a certain degree of poetic consideration, should, in connection with a Castilian, produce a revolution in Castilian poetry.

BOSCAN.

Juan Boscan Almogavèr, who, in concert with his friend Garcilaso de la Vega, introduced the Italian style into Castilian poetry, was born in Barcelona, towards the close of the fifteenth century. He belonged to one of the Patrician families of that city, of equal rank with the nobility of the country. Though possessing a liberal education, and sufficient fortune to enable him to gratify his inclination for literary studies, without regard to any secondary views, he embarked, notwithstanding, on his first outset in life for a short period in the profession of arms. He afterwards travelled, but the countries he visited are not mentioned in the brief notices which remain of him. If, however, it be supposed that he went at this time to Italy, and rendered himself intimately acquainted with the literature of that country, it appears that he was still far from entertaining the idea of transplanting the forms and manner of Italian poetry into Spain; for the Castilian verses, which he wrote in his youth, were all in the ancient lyric style, which, since the time of Juan de Mena no one had thought it necessary to try to improve. It was not until 1526, when, after having flourished at the court of Charles V. he had made a happy marriage, and was settled in his native city, that a Venetian induced him to imitate the Italian poetry in the Castilian language. The emperor resided for some time in Granada; and, among the foreign ministers who repaired to his court, was Andrea Navagero, the envoy from Venice, a man of great literary and historical knowledge, and, like every well-educated Italian of that age, a writer of canzoni and sonnets. Boscan, having formed an intimate friendship with this minister, was taught by him to view the Italian poetry and also the classical latin in quite a new light. The Spanish lyric poetry, which with all its gothic excrescences was still pleasing to the nation, if not so barbarous in his eyes as in those of his Italian friend, appeared to him, when compared with a sonnet of Petrarch, at least, in the point of good taste greatly inferior. He now readily perceived the nature and felt the value of the precision and correctness of the great works of antiquity. Animated by his new ideas, he fearlessly ventured to follow the counsel of Navagero, in spite of the menacing clamour of the friends of the old national forms. He took upon himself the character of a reformer of the lyric poetry of his nation, and commenced his labours by writing sonnets in the manner of Petrarch.

The metrical structure of the sonnet had long been known in Spain;148 but the genius of Castilian poetry was adverse to that form, and the Spaniards had manifested very little predilection for any thing like the elegant correctness of Petrarch. Boscan had therefore elevated himself above the literature of his country, when he perceived that it was necessary to infuse a new spirit into Castilian poetry before it could be reconciled to the Italian forms. His friend Garcilaso de la Vega participated in this opinion. But thousands of voices were raised against the reformers. Some insisted that preference was to be given to the old Castilian verse on the ground of euphony. Others went further, and asserted that the ear could perceive no distinction between the new verse and prose. Finally, a third party discovered that Italian poetry was effeminate, and was fit only for Italians and women. Boscan relates that this violent opposition made him reflect seriously on the propriety of proceeding with his design; but as he was soon convinced of the futility of the reasons urged against him, he persisted in his undertaking. His party rapidly increased and soon obtained the superiority, not indeed throughout the whole mass of the public, but in that portion of society which was most enlightened and refined.149

The other circumstances of Boscan’s life, in so far as they are known, have little interest for the literary historian. The mature part of his age was chiefly spent in his native city Barcelona, or in the neighbouring country. The urbanity of his manners and his talents recommended him to the family of Alba, which was then one of the most brilliant of the noble houses of Castile, and to which the homage of the Spanish poets was from that time constantly paid. Boscan was for some time Ayo, or first governor of the young Don Fernando de Alba, who was afterwards the terror of the enemies of the Spanish monarchy. He appears, however, to have soon resigned this employment, in order to divide his time between study and the society of literary friends. The year in which he died is not exactly known; it is only ascertained that his death happened before the year 1544.150 He prepared for the press a collection of his poems, to which he added those of his friend Garcilaso; but the work was not published until after his death.151

From the point at which Boscan found Castilian poetry, to that in which it was necessary it should be placed before he could open for himself a new path, the distance was considerable, and the transition was to be accomplished by a single bound. That he succeeded in this undertaking was owing not so much to his genius, as to a natural susceptibility for the real beauties of Italian and ancient poetry, accidentally excited at the favourable moment, and to a talent for the imitation of classical models, without altogether discarding that tone of feeling which was properly his own. To estimate, however, the full value of Boscan’s talent, it is not only necessary to examine the works by which he introduced a new style into Spanish poetry, but to take a retrospective view of the productions of the Castilian muse in the ancient manner. It is only by this comparison that a just conception can be formed of the surprise with which the Spaniards must have regarded the bold attempt of Boscan. He was the first among his countrymen who had an idea of classical perfection in works of imagination; and though the greater part of his poems fall below that standard, they all afford evidence of his endeavours to reach it. An aspiration so entirely unaffected and unembarrassed, had never been manifested by any previous Spanish poet. Between the kind of poetry which he introduced into his native land and that which he abandoned, there was no visible passage. But lest the merits of Boscan should be too highly rated, it is proper to observe, that at this time a reform of the Spanish poetry, precisely such as that to which his efforts gave birth, was, notwithstanding the clamour of his opponents, desired by the more cultivated part of the Spanish public, though, perhaps, there no where existed any distinct perception of the wished-for object. Had it been otherwise, Boscan must have stood alone, and the numerous poets of his nation, who have equalled or surpassed him in the new style, never would have followed his example.

The early productions of Boscan, which form the first book of his works, are scarcely distinguishable by any trace of superior delicacy or correctness from the poems of the same descriptions contained in the Cancionero general. The very title of the longest of these youthful essays, namely, Mar de Amor (the Sea of Love) excites an anticipation of the fantastic flights of the old Spanish muse; and it is impossible to read the first strophe without being convinced that the author still adhered to the original character of Castilian song.152 It was, however, only at the request of his friend Garcilaso de la Vega, who said that he received from these poems the same sort of pleasure as from pretty children, that Boscan renounced his intention of entirely suppressing them.

The second book of Boscan’s poems, contains sonetos and canciones, in the style of the Italian sonetti and canzoni. They all betray, in a greater or less degree, the disciple of the school of Petrarch; but the spirit of Spanish poetry still displays itself throughout the whole. The language, though it successfully imitates the precision of Petrarch, seldom attains the sweetly flowing melody of its model. In painting the feelings, the shadows are charged with stronger colours than the Italian Petrarchists of the sixteenth century permitted themselves to employ. Impetuous passion, which, with higher pretensions, was, on account of its very violence, less capable of commanding sympathy than a mild enthusiasm, strikingly distinguished Boscan’s poetry from that which was the object of his imitation. The contrast was farther increased by the constantly recurring picture of a struggle between passion and reason. But these were precisely the traits which disclosed the true Spanish character. It was not individual feeling that prevented Boscan from equalling the delicacy and softness of the Italian sonetto and canzone, for as his biography, and still more his other poems, shew he was a man of a very mild disposition. But it was necessary that the language of love, to appear natural and true to a Spaniard, should burn and rage. At the same time, to satisfy Spanish taste, reason was to be introduced to deliver her precepts amidst the storm of passion, to prove its force by her feebleness, and to give to lyric composition a moral gravity which was not desired by the Italians. In so far however as the Spanish character permitted the experiment to go, the fascinating tone of Petrarch was very happily seized by Boscan;153 and in the expression of tender passion he has even sometimes surpassed the Italian poet.154

The greater part of the third book of these poems is occupied by a paraphrastic translation of the Greek poem of Hero and Leander. Nothing of the kind had been previously known in the Spanish language. The metrical form which Boscan chose for his translation, was that of rhymeless iambics, or an imitation of the blank verse of the Italians. The language is so pure and elegant, the versification so natural, and the tone of the narrative so soft, and at the same time so elevated, that it is impossible not to be pleased even with the prolixity which the influence of the taste for romantic poetry has introduced into this free translation. To this translation succeeds a poem in the Italian style, entitled a Capitulo, and some epistles in tercets. The Capitulo, as it is called, is a love elegy, abounding in pleasing ideas and images, but on the whole too much spun out, like most Italian poems of the same kind. It has also its full share of genuine Spanish hyperbole and amorous despair.155 The best of his epistles is, “The Answer to Diego Mendoza,” who was himself the first epistolary poet among the Spaniards, and whom it will soon be necessary to notice more at length. After the new poetical career was opened, these authors vied in imitating the epistles of Horace; but it is plain that the elegiac tenderness of Tibullus was constantly present to the mind of Boscan. In his Answer to Mendoza, the descriptions of domestic and rural life charm by their exquisite delicacy, and possess a still more powerful interest than the moral reflections, though these are unaffected and noble, and conceived in the true spirit of didactic poetry.156

Boscan’s works conclude with a narrative poem in the Italian style, which has no other title than that which denotes the structure of the verse, namely, octava rima. Some ideas and images are borrowed from the Italian poets; but the whole invention and the execution of the greater part of the details belong to Boscan. The merit of the fable, however, is not great. A mythological allegory, describing the empire of love, forms the introduction to a poetical relation of a festal meeting of Venus, Cupid, and the other inhabitants of that imaginary region. Little Cupids are dispatched all over the world by Venus to defend her against the reproaches of unreasonable men, and to make known the real blessings of love. One of those winged envoys directs his course towards Barcelona, the natal city of the poet, gives a particular account of his mission to the fair ladies of that town, and takes the opportunity of saying many gallant things to them. As to the construction of the fable of this poem, Boscan certainly gave himself very little trouble. His object appears merely to have been to compose a romantic picture of greater extent than a sonnet or a cancion, and to make his countrymen sensible of the charm of descriptive poetry in the Italian manner. It is impossible not to admire the grace and facility with which Boscan has accomplished this purpose. The descriptions are so animated,157 and all the details so elegant and engaging, that the tediousness of some of the parts is amply compensated by the happy execution of the whole. Light plays of fancy embellish the lyric and romantic passages; and, upon the whole, this is a work which no other of the same kind by later Spanish poets has excelled.158

If a comprehensive view be taken of the merits of Boscan, it will be impossible, notwithstanding the striking faults which appear in his works, and particularly in his sonnets, to withhold from him the title of the first classical poet of Spain. Some of his expressions are now antiquated, but upon the whole his language has continued a model for succeeding ages. Simplicity and dignity had never, in the same degree, and under a form so correct, been united with poetic truth and feeling by any previous Spanish author. The partizans of the old national poetry reproached him with being an imitator; but without the kind of imitation by which he naturalized in his language a taste for the literature of Italy and the ancient classics, it would have been impossible for Spanish poetry to have gained that field in which it afterwards competed with the Italian. That he did not obtrude upon his countrymen a kind of poetry irreconcilable with the genius of the language and the national character, is evident from the rapidity with which the new taste spread over the whole of Spain, and extended into Portugal, and from its duration in both kingdoms. The poetic innovators, at whose head Boscan stood, were certainly blameable, in so far as they wished to banish entirely the ancient Spanish style, which was also, in its own manner, susceptible of classical improvement. But it is doubtful whether the partizans of that style would have thought of perfecting it after classical models, had not the disciples of the Italian school unexpectedly shewn the high cultivation of which Spanish poetry was capable under new forms. This Boscan first made manifest, not by critical reasoning, but by example; and his modesty contributed not a little to attract to his party the more liberal minded of his countrymen. Had he commenced his reform by trying to beat down the old style with theoretical argument, or egotistical declamation, he would only have rendered himself an object of ridicule; for the public he had to deal with was not indisposed to improvement, but would not submit to have lessons read to it magisterially.

After Boscan, his friends, who participated in the fame of that reform to which he shewed the way, are justly entitled to the next place in the history of Spanish poetry.

GARCILASO DE LA VEGA.

The first Spanish poet who followed the example of Boscan was Garcilaso de la Vega, a young Castilian, descended from a family of consideration in Toledo, and born, according to the statements of different authors, either in 1500 or 1503. His poetic talent was early developed, and he had written several lyric pieces in the old Spanish style, when his acquaintance with Boscan, which soon grew into friendship, commenced. The character of the poetry of the ancients and of Italy was then seen by him in a new light. He proceeded with ardour to the study of classical models, and of Petrarch and Virgil in particular. The improvement of pastoral poetry in his native tongue, appears to have been his first object. But it was his lot to follow the restless profession of arms; and the wars of Charles V. carried him abroad, and dragged him from country to country. In the year 1529, he distinguished himself in the Spanish corps, which was attached to the imperial army opposed to the Turks. While in Vienna he was involved in a romantic intrigue, between a near relation of his own and a lady of the court. The imperial dignity, it appears, was conceived to be compromised by this intrigue, and Garcilaso was punished for his interference by imprisonment in an Island of the Danube. There he composed one of his canciones, in which he bewails his destiny, but at the same time celebrates the Danube and the countries through which it flows.159 His imprisonment probably was not of long duration. In the year 1535, he served in the adventurous expedition of Charles V. against Tunis, in which he acquired both glory and wounds. In Naples and Sicily, he devoted, as far as circumstances would permit, his moments of relaxation to poetry. He execrated war, and exerted all the powers of his imagination in painting an Arcadian pastoral life, but still remained a soldier.160 It may be presumed, however, that his military talents were not inconsiderable, for when the imperial army in the year 1536, penetrated into the South of France, Garcilaso de la Vega, who could then be only thirty-three, or at most thirty-six years of age, commanded eleven companies of infantry. That campaign, which did not terminate so fortunately as it commenced, was the last to Garcilaso, and tore him from the world in the bloom of life. The emperor in person ordered him to take by assault, a fort, the garrison of which harrassed the army in its retreat. Garcilaso executed this command with more gallantry than prudence. He wished to be the first to scale the walls. He attained his object, but was struck with a stone on the head, and thrown down from the ramparts. Being mortally wounded, he was removed to Nice, where, a few weeks after, he died.

It would be difficult to discover from the works of Garcilaso, that the author had spent a considerable portion of his short life in camps, and had died in the bed of military honour, the victim of his courage; for he approaches even more closely than Boscan to the tenderness of Petrarch. The general tone of his poetry is so soft and melancholy, that it is only by occasional characteristic traits, that the Spaniard is recognized; but it must be confessed that when such passages do occur, the exaggeration is striking enough.161 In his sonnets, which are not numerous, the imitation of Petrarch is obvious; but he sometimes betrays that affectation of wit, which was still in Spain regarded as an ingenious manner of expressing vehement and profound passion.162 One however exhibits throughout a delicacy of style and sweetness of manner, equalled by few pieces of the same kind, in the Spanish language.163 He was not equally successful in seizing the character of the Italian canzone, of which he, as well as Boscan, was an imitator; and his reputation rests chiefly on his pastoral poems, which therefore deserve to be more particularly noticed.

Since the rude dramatic eclogues of Juan de la Enzina pastoral poetry had made no progress in Spain. But Garcilaso de la Vega imitated Virgil and Sanazzar, and so happily united the romantic character with the correctness of the ancients, that his eclogues, though only one of them can be regarded as a masterpiece, surpass all Italian poems of the kind, those in the Arcadia of Sanazzar alone excepted. The fine Neapolitan sky appears to have had the same influence on Garcilaso as on Virgil and Sanazzar; and he seems to have regarded Naples as his poetical country. The first of his eclogues is by far the most beautiful, and marks an epoch in Spanish pastoral poetry. The whole composition has the metrical form of an Italian canzone. The invention is very simple. In the four introductory strophes, in which is interwoven a dedication to the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, the author describes, with all the simplicity which belongs to true pastoral poetry, the meeting of two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, who alternately give vent to their feelings in melancholy strains. These elegiac songs reply to each other without interruption, and the relation subsisting between them gives to the whole lyric composition a proper consistence and unity. This is all the plan of the eclogue. But the glow of enthusiastic feeling, the happy choice of expression, and the harmony of versification so completely satisfactory to the ear, to be found in almost every line of these songs of sorrow, cannot fail to give delight to every mind susceptible of elegiac and beauty. Accordingly the Spanish critics are nearly unanimous in pronouncing this eclogue one of the finest works in their language. The subject of the first song is the infidelity—of the second, the death of a mistress; and the latter complaint appears to be founded in fact. But Garcilaso would have better secured the sympathy of the more scrupulous Spanish reader, had he entirely passed over the cause of the lamented fair one’s decease. The lady whom he describes as a pastoral nymph, lost her life it seems in childbed; for an apostrophe of the complaining shepherd to Lucina, indicates plainly enough the nature of her death. But is the affected delicacy which takes offence at a trait so truly natural and pathetic, worthy of the attention of an author? In the first strain in which the shepherd Salicio deplores the infidelity of his mistress, the interest appears to be raised as far as it is possible to carry it.164 Passion is here elevated to the highest pitch, and then lost in a most affecting self sacrifice.165 But the song in which Nemoroso laments the death of his mistress, even surpasses the former in elegiac force, perhaps because it possesses greater softness. In retracing his recollections the mourner draws a series of melancholy pictures which have an indescribable charm. The beauty of the poem rises with the description of the beauty of the departed shepherdess.166 The passage in which Nemoroso relates how he carries in his bosom a lock of his Eliza’s hair, from which he is never separated—how when alone he spreads it out, weeps over it, dries it with his sighs, and then examines and counts every single hair—is unexampled either in ancient or modern literature.167 Occasional imitations of Virgil have been pointed out, but they harmonize so completely with the romantic spirit of the poem, that were it not for the particular references which critics have made, they would in general escape the notice of even the most erudite. The poem, as a whole, is evidently the genuine offspring of the author’s soul. Materials of an affecting but prosaic nature are, by his art, converted into the most graceful and impressive poetry.

As Garcilaso only imitated the ancients by the introduction of certain ideas and images, and not in the structure of his eclogues, he considered himself at liberty to vary their form at pleasure. But here his good taste abandoned him. The second and longest of his eclogues is an unnatural mixture of heterogeneous styles. An unfortunate shepherd deplores his unsuccessful love. Another shepherd joins him, and their conversation proceeds unconstrained in a romantic pastoral tone; but it is impossible to discover any reason for the changes which take place in the verse. Tercets are succeeded by rhymeless iambics, after which the tercets re-appear and are followed by the syllabic measure of a canzone. The simple dialogue suddenly becomes dramatic. The fair huntress, whose indifference is the subject of the first shepherd’s lament, appears upon the scene. The lover seizes and refuses to let her go, until she swears to listen to his addresses. She makes the required vow, and when at liberty flies. The despair of the shepherd then becomes frenzy; and a third shepherd, who has in the mean time arrived, enters into conversation with the one who first joined the unhappy lover, on the means of restoring him to reason. The author seizes this opportunity to convert his eclogue into a most unseasonable eulogium on the house of Alba. One of the shepherds proposes that medical assistance should be obtained, and mentions a physician named Severo; but this name is assigned to a learned friend of Garcilaso and the Alba family. Nothing more is necessary, according to the critical conception of the author, to warrant the making a poetical digression from his account of the merits of the physician, whose miraculous skill is to recover the frantic shepherd, to the history of the house of Alba, which he details in iambic blank verse.

In the third and last of Garcilaso’s eclogues, the genuine pastoral character is resumed. The lyric dialogue in octaves, or Italian stanzas, pleasingly harmonizes with the soft description of amatory sorrows given in this poem.

Garcilaso made essays in other kinds of poetry, but with less success. An elegy written to console the Duke of Alba for the death of his brother, is an imitation, or rather a translation of an Italian poem by Frascatoro, and is at once cold and verbose. More of interest belongs to another elegy which is addressed to Boscan, and which the author wrote at the foot of Mount Etna. Mythological recollections excited by that classic ground, melancholy complaints of the miseries of war, and tender anxieties for a loved object in the poet’s native land, diffuse a charm over the whole of this elegant poem, which is besides remarkable for comparisons and images full of novelty and truth.168

Garcilaso is also the author of a small epistle in which he has endeavoured to seize the true horatian tone. It is not sufficiently important to deserve particular notice, but it is easy to recognize in it the fine tact of this author, to whom the critic, however severely he may judge his faults, cannot deny the title of the second classic poet of Spain.

DIEGO DE MENDOZA.

The third classic poet, and at the same time the first classic prose writer of Spain, is Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,169 a native of Granada, where he was born in the beginning of the sixteenth century, but in what year is not known. Descended from one of the first familes of the country, he had before him the prospect of high honours, which, as he was one of five children, his parents destined him to reach through the church. Being educated for the clerical profession, he received what was then considered a learned education. Besides the classical languages of antiquity, he acquired the Hebrew and Arabic. At the university of Salamanca, he studied scholastic philosophy, theology, and ecclesiastical law. While yet a student he was the inventor of the comic romance or novel, for it was at Salamanca that he wrote his celebrated work, the Life of Lazarillo de Tormes. Having become as conspicuous for a vigorous and sound understanding as for his wit and learning, the Emperor Charles V. who perceived that his talents might be employed with advantage in public business, drew him from his studies. He had not long left the university when he was appointed imperial envoy to Venice. He availed himself of the opportunities which this situation afforded to cultivate an intercourse with learned Italians, and to obtain an intimate knowledge of the spirit of Italian literature. Before his departure for Italy, he appears to have formed an acquaintance with Boscan; but he was patriot enough not to despise the old Spanish poetry. Though he loved the Italian poets, he preferred the ancients, and in particular Horace, who, like himself a man of the world, might occasionally assist him in his journey through the slippery path of political life; and certainly few poets could have divided themselves between literature and politics with as much dexterity as Mendoza. He was, however, far from being a cringing courtier. His low opinion of diplomatic dignity is stated frankly, and even somewhat coarsely, in one of his epistles, in which he exclaims:—“O these ambassadors, the perfect ninnies! when kings wish to cheat they begin with us. Our best business is to take care that we do no harm, and indeed never to do or say any thing that we may not run the risk of making ourselves understood.”170 The ambassador of a prince of such deep dissimulation as Charles V. might naturally enough form an unfavourable opinion of his office; but he who could speak his mind in this manner, even when at his post, must have retained some of the spirit of old Spanish freedom.

The emperor made no mistake in the choice of his ambassador, of whose turn of thinking he doubtless was not ignorant, but on the exercise of whose talents he knew he could rely. He considered him the fittest person that could be selected to go to the council of Trent, and recommend, by an elegant manner, the truths he wished to be told to the assembled fathers in the name of the Spanish nation. This commission Mendoza executed to the satisfaction of the emperor. The speech which he delivered before the council in 1545 was highly admired, and Charles was convinced that it was impossible to confide the affairs of Italy to better hands. In the year 1547, Mendoza appeared at the papal court, then the centre of all political intrigues, as imperial ambassador, and invested with powers which rendered him the terror of the French party in Italy. The emperor at the same time appointed him captain-general and governor of Sienna, and other strong places in Tuscany. He was ordered to humble the pope, Paul III. even in his own court; and to repress, by force, the movements of the restless Florentines, who still hoped, under the protection of France, to shake off the yoke of the Medicis. A man of less firmness of character would have been totally unfit for such a task; but the terrible energy with which Mendoza performed it, exasperated in the highest degree the opposite party, and more particularly the Florentines. The repeated insurrections in Tuscany could not be suppressed without measures of great severity, and Mendoza was consequently detested as a tyrant by all Italians who were not reconciled to the introduction of Spanish garrisons. In Sienna he was constantly exposed to assassination; and on one occasion, a musket ball directed against him killed the horse on which he rode. His intrepidity, however, was not to be shaken, and he continued to administer his difficult government until Paul III. died, and was succeeded by Julius III. a pope inclined to the Spanish party. The new pope wishing to bestow on Mendoza a particular mark of respect, appointed him Gonfalonier, or Standard-bearer to the church. In this character, Mendoza marched against the rebels in the ecclesiastical territories, and made them submit to the pope.

Thus did a Spanish poet, alike feared and admired, govern Italy for the space of six years. During this stormy period of his life, Mendoza composed verses, visited the Italian universities, purchased Greek manuscripts, and collected a large library. Since the days of Petrarch no friend of literature had shewn so much zeal for the acquisition of Greek manuscripts. He spared no pains nor expense to procure them even from Greece, and sent special messengers for that purpose to the convent of Mount Athos. He availed himself of a service he had rendered to the Ottoman sultan, to obtain supplies of corn for the empty granaries of Venice, and of manuscripts for his own library. Many a Greek work came first to the press from his valuable collection. Whoever wished to promote the study of ancient literature, found in him a friend and protector; and to him the learned bookseller, Paulus Manutius, dedicated his edition of the philosophic writings of Cicero, to the study of which Mendoza was particularly attached, and for the correct publication of which he even made critical observations on the manuscripts.

Literature and politics, it appears, did not afford sufficient occupation for this extraordinary man. He chose also to engage in affairs of gallantry; and, according to the manners of the age, gave to such pursuits, at least in verse, the character of romantic passion. His looks, however, were not calculated to recommend him to the fair sex; for his biographers state that he was far from handsome, and that the glance of his fiery eye was more repulsive than inviting. But Mendoza was active, accomplished, and in the possession of power; and the favour which these advantages obtained for him with some Roman ladies, was numbered among the offences with which his enemies loudly reproached him. The repeated charges brought against him made at last an impression on the emperor; and that monarch, who had begun to contemplate the resignation of his crown, and who was now desirous of establishing tranquillity in his states, thought fit, in the year 1554, to recall this too rigid governor to Spain.

The latter part of the history of Mendoza’s life is not uniformly related by his biographers. According to some he retired to the country, devoted himself to poetry and philosophy, and appeared very seldom at the court of Philip II. Others assert that, though he no longer retained his former influence, he continued a member of the council of state under Philip II. and was present with that monarch at the great battle of St. Quintin, fought in the year 1557. This much is certain, that he was soon after engaged in an adventure at the court, which, for a man of his age and knowledge of the world, was of a very singular nature. An altercation arose in the palace between him and a courtier, who, according to Mendoza’s own declaration, was his rival in the affections of a lady. This man, whose name is not mentioned, in a fit of violent exasperation, drew a dagger; upon which Mendoza seized him, and threw him from a balcony into the street. What afterwards became of his antagonist is not recorded; but the transaction was the subject of serious observation, and the grave Philip regarded it as a high offence against the dignity of his person and his court. He was, however, content to inflict a moderate punishment, and merely condemned Mendoza to a short imprisonment. The old statesman occupied the period of his imprisonment in the ancient Spanish style, namely, in composing lamentations on the unkindness of his mistress:171 and these romantic effusions do not appear to have been considered by his contemporaries as absurd and ridiculous at his time of life. But the sorrows expressed in his amatory ditties did not drive the venerable lover to despair; for when he was soon after set at liberty, though still exiled from court, he observed with the eye of a politician the insurrection of the Moriscoes, or converted Arabs of Granada; and when the insurrection broke out into a formal war, he noted down all the remarkable events, and afterwards detailed them in an historical work, which has obtained for him the name of the Spanish Sallust. He profited of this opportunity to collect a great number of Arabic manuscripts. Observations on the works of Aristotle, a translation of the Mechanics of that philosopher, and some political treatises, were, it appears, the last of his literary labours. He was thus actively and usefully employed until his death, which happened when he was upwards of seventy, at Valladolid, in the year 1575. He bequeathed his collection of books and manuscripts to the king, and it still forms one of the most valuable portions of the library of the Escurial.172

A detailed account of the life of this distinguished man, cannot be regarded as a biographical excrescence in a history of Spanish Literature; for in no other poet’s life and works is the real Castilian spirit of the age of Charles V. so clearly displayed as in those of Diego de Mendoza. The universality of his literary talent will be best understood, when it is known with what energy, precision, and facility he accommodated himself to, and controuled the circumstances in which he happened to be placed in all the practical relations of life. That trait too in the portrait of his mind, which is most worthy of observation, namely, the constancy with which, instead of abandoning one species of mental activity for another, he continued throughout the different periods of his life, from youth to extreme old age, always to unite in his person the poet, the man of letters, and the statesman, gives reason to expect that his works, however differing in kind, will be found to possess a certain common character.

Diego de Mendoza did more for the poetic literature of his country than his countrymen seem to have acknowledged. Spanish writers, it is true, place him next in rank to Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega, among the poets who introduced the Italian style into Castilian poetry. But they cannot pardon the harshness of his versification in those poems in which he adopted the metrical forms of Italy. Rendered fastidious by the rhythmical harmony which a Castilian ear can never dispense with, the Spaniards have held in very trifling estimation the epistles of Mendoza; though those compositions, in a striking manner, extended the boundaries of Castilian poetry. As an epistolary poet, he might justly be styled the Spanish Horace, if his tercets flowed as smoothly as the hexameters of the latin poet. Making allowance, however, for the want of that pure harmony and that didactic delicacy in which Horace is inimitable, Mendoza’s epistles may rank among the best productions of the kind in modern literature. With the exception of Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega, no Spanish poet had evinced any traces of that horatian spirit with which this author was endowed. In the collection of Mendoza’s poems, these epistles are merely called cartas (letters.) Some of them are of a romantic cast, and overloaded with tedious love complaints. But the rest, like Horace’s epistles, are didactic, full of agreeable but sound philosophy, precise and yet unconstrained in expression, and rescued from the monotonous effect of moral instruction, by a happy interchange of precepts, images, and characters. A masculine understanding, which clearly penetrates all social relations, and a noble spirit, which estimates the blessings of life according to their real value, diffuse over these epistles a charm at once serene and attractive. Some of the most beautiful, for example, that addressed to Boscan, which is best known, and which on account of the answer is printed among Boscan’s poems, were composed in Italy during the more early part of the author’s life. But in estimating the poetical works of Mendoza, chronological arrangement is of little importance, for as a poet he preserved equality from the commencement to the close of his career. His epistle to Boscan is in part an imitation of that of Horace to Numicius.173 The latter half, however, belongs exclusively to Mendoza. In this portion of the epistle he presents to his friend the outline of the charming picture of domestic happiness, to which Boscan himself, in the answer already mentioned, has given a higher finish; and the taste which can overlook the beauty of this picture on account of want of smoothness in the versification, must be depraved by the affectation of refinement.174 Another epistle, addressed to Don Luis de Zuñiga, contains an ingenious and striking comparison of the character of two heterogeneous and equally foolish classes of men. The one wholly attached to the vulgar pleasures of the moment, and stupidly indifferent to the affairs of the world;175 while the other, on the contrary, is cheated by restless cares and anxieties out of the enjoyment of the present.176 In these epistles, Mendoza unfolded the result of his experience, as the Infante Juan Manuel did a century and a half earlier, in his Count Lucanor, though in a totally different manner. Mendoza’s style is that of an accomplished man of the world, formed in the school of the latin poets.

Mendoza’s sonnets possess neither the grace nor the harmony essential to that species of composition. They owe their existence to the amatory spirit of the age rather than to the poetic inspiration of the author. Though he composed in the Italian manner with less facility than Boscan and Garcilaso, he felt more correctly than they or any other of his countrymen, the difference between the Spanish and Italian languages, with respect to their capabilities for versification. The Spanish admits of none of those pleasing elisions, which, particularly when terminating vowels are omitted, render the mechanism of Italian versification so easy, and enable the poet to augment or diminish the number of syllables according to his pleasure; and this difference in the two languages renders the composition of a Spanish sonnet a difficult task. Still more does the Spanish language seem hostile to the soft termination of a succession of feminine rhymes, for the Spanish poet, who adopts this rule of the Italian sonnet, is compelled to banish from his rhymes, all infinitives of verbs, together with a whole host of sonorous substantives and adjectives.177 Mendoza, therefore, availed himself of the use of masculine rhymes in his sonnets; but this metrical license was strongly censured by all partizans of the Italian style. Nevertheless had he given to his sonnets more of the tenderness of Petrarch, it is probable that they would have found imitators. Some of them, indeed, may be considered as successful productions, and throughout all the language is correct and noble.178

Mendoza’s canciones have nearly the same character as his sonnets, except that they more obviously mark the influence of the horatian ode on the lyric fancy of the author. The versification, which is sonorous, though deficient in harmony, is occasionally united with a degree of obscurity from which the other productions of Mendoza are totally exempt.179 The least successful of his poems in the Italian style is a mythological tale in octave verse, founded on the history of Adonis, but along with which the author has interwoven the history of Atalanta. The story is, however, related in a very pleasing manner.

The Spaniards give the preference, not to this first class of the poetic works of Mendoza, but to the second, which consists of lyric poems in the old national style, the origin of which it is, however, easy to perceive must be referred to a more highly cultivated age. The similarity between these poems and others of the same sort in the Romancero general, clearly proves that many of the poets of the age of Charles V. had tacitly agreed to improve the old national poetry, without, like the impetuous Castillejo, (of whom further mention will soon be made) waging open war against the reformers of the school of Boscan. Many of Mendoza’s lyric pieces are inserted in the Romancero general without the author’s name. In these compositions the syllabic measure seems to have been the chief object of improvement. But this improvement, however successful, was at the same time necessarily limited; and the beautiful forms of the Italian canzone possessed too striking a superiority over the most cultivated forms of rhyme in the old redondillas, to yield to the latter in any collision. All Mendoza’s lyric compositions are in stanzas of four lines; and the pieces of this description now obtained, by way of distinction, the name of redondillas, which seems originally to have been applied to all trochaic verses in lines of four feet.180 But songs in stanzas of five lines, though in other respects similar to those just mentioned, are called in Mendoza’s collection quintas or quintillas. The trochaic stanza in four lines of three feet,181 of which the Romancero general also contains several specimens, was found to be most suitable to endechas, or funeral songs, in the old national style, and to compositions of that class Mendoza applied it. He wrote many romantic epistles in the redondilla stanza of four lines; and did not neglect the other old lyric forms, such as the Villancicos, &c. The improvement of style, which is an essential feature of all these poems, was limited by Mendoza to accuracy of expression, and to softening the quaintness of the old subtilties: to these, however, he himself sometimes resorted; and he seems to have been of opinion, that the character of this kind of poetry rendered their occasional introduction indispensable. In compositions of a tender and melancholy character,182 he is less successful than in those of a comic cast.183

Considering Mendoza’s wit and knowledge of mankind, it may naturally be presumed that his satyrical poems, which however exist only in manuscript, mark a great advancement in this species of poetry in Spain. These poems are mentioned by all Mendoza’s biographers; one is called La Pulga (the Flea,) another La Caña (the Reed), and a third bears the comical title of Elogio de la Zanahoria (Eulogy on the Parsnip.) None, however, have yet passed the ordeal of the inquisition. Their titles seem to indicate a kind of coarse humour in the style of the burlesque satyres of the Italians.

Some of Mendoza’s prose compositions have, however, obtained greater celebrity than his poems; and they unquestionably form an epoch in the history of Spanish prose. The comic romance of Lazarillo de Tormes, which Mendoza wrote while he was a student at Salamanca, is either the very first production of its kind, or at least the first that obtained any thing like literary consideration. Soon after its publication it was translated into Italian, and subsequently into French, and by the means of this French translation it has been read throughout all Europe. Relations of interesting tricks of roguery, probably formed at a more early period a favourite amusement with the Spaniards; for that adroit feats of cunning and deception have had for them a charm of a peculiar kind, the whole history of their comic literature sufficiently proves. Mendoza, therefore, gave to his humorous fancy a direction conformable to the spirit of his country, when he chose, as the subject of his work, the Adventures of a Beggar Lad, who makes a kind of fortune by dint of cheating and roguery; and the comic interest of the production was enhanced by its contrast with the pompous romances of chivalry. In the perusal of such a tale, the Spanish reader willingly descended from the romantic ideal world to the sphere of common life. The skill with which Mendoza has sketched the vices of avarice and selfishness in the persons into whose service Lazarillo enters, is no less remarkable than the bold regard for truth which led him to include priests in the number of his odious characters. The inquisition of course could not expect that the Spaniards should regard the ecclesiastic profession as a security against every vice; and Lazarillo de Tormes sufficiently proves that in Mendoza’s time the priesthood was not guaranteed against public satire in Spain. Under the reign of Philip II. however, satires of this kind became subject to a certain degree of restraint; and since that period Mendoza’s romance has only been suffered to escape because its free circulation was once permitted by the inquisition. No critic has hitherto called in question the truth and accuracy of the pictures of vulgar life in Lazarillo de Tormes; but an author named de Luna, who styles himself an interpreter of the Castilian language, published a new edition of the romance with the view of correcting the diction. De Luna likewise added a second part to the story, for Mendoza in his maturer years never felt inclined to finish the comic work which he had commenced in his youth.184

A very different spirit animates the historical work in which Mendoza traces the history of the rebellion of Granada.185 Mendoza formed his style, as a historian, principally on that of Sallust, and only occasionally imitated Tacitus for the sake of variety. Were it not that he sometimes oversteps the bounds of true elegance and falls into an overstudied and artificial manner, this work might be ranked, without reserve, among the best historical models; and notwithstanding the affectation with which it is here and there disfigured,186 it is, unquestionably, after the works of Machiavell and Guicciardini, the first production of modern literature that deserves to be compared with the classic histories of antiquity.

However carefully Mendoza polished the rhetorical form of his history, still the importance of the materials and a true philosophic spirit are every where prominent throughout his representation of facts. Being himself a native of Granada, his power of rightly viewing the events, and the impression he received from them, must have been much the same as if he had been an eye witness of all that passed. Besides, he derived his information from the most authentic sources; for at the period in question he was residing on his estate in the vicinity of the theatre of the war. His nephew, the Marquis de Mondejar, was for some time commander in chief of the army against the rebels; and Mendoza himself had long been so intimately connected with the government at Madrid, that no individual in Spain had better opportunities of obtaining that knowledge of the secret as well as of the ostensible springs of transactions which is necessary for a just historical representation of events. The atrocious measures adopted by Phillip II. to suppress the insurrection in Granada, were, however, no less opposed to the sound political views of Mendoza, than the fanatic cruelty and glaring injustice by which the unhappy Moriscos had been driven into rebellion appear, however good a catholic he may have been, to have revolted his feelings. But neither his opinion nor his compassion could be openly avowed. He therefore availed himself of all the subtle windings of the historical art, to render his representation of events easily intelligible to those who thought as he did, and at the same time to secure himself against any literal interpretation which spiritual or temporal despotism might have employed to his disadvantage. Wherever undeniable facts, which the government according to its own maxims could not venture to conceal, clearly expose the folly and inhumanity by which the Moors were reduced to despair, Mendoza apparently refrains from pronouncing any judgment, while the poignant manner in which he relates the facts, is in itself a sufficient condemnation.187

When the fault rests rather with the agents of the government than with the government itself, he seems to attack only the former. In order that the just cause of the Moriscos might be, for once, powerfully vindicated, he puts, after the manner of the ancients, a speech into the mouth of one of the chiefs of the conspirators.188 This is the only speech in the work which seems sufficient to shew that at least it was not inserted from a spirit of servile imitation; but he occasionally ventures, contrary to the practice of modern languages, to approximate his narrative style to that of the writers of antiquity; as for example, where he employs a succession of verbs in the infinitive mood.189 The Spaniards, however, seem to have regarded the grammatical freedom used by Mendoza as perfectly conformable to the genius of their language. During the gloomy and suspicious government of Philip II. this excellent work was only to be read in manuscript. It was first published at Madrid, in the year 1610, five-and-thirty years after the death of the author, and was reprinted at Lisbon in 1617; but both editions were purposely mutilated.190 The text was at last given complete in the edition of the work, which appeared in 1776.

SAA DE MIRANDA.

The fame of the great reform of the Castilian poetry having penetrated into Portugal, a similar reform took place in the poetry of that nation. At this time the Castilian language was held in such high consideration in Portugal, that even Portuguese poets, without undervaluing their national tongue, thought themselves bound occasionally to write verses in Castilian, to entitle them to be regarded as perfect masters of the poetic art. In the first half of the sixteenth century, two of the most celebrated of these Portuguese poets laboured with such success to extend the dominion of Castilian pastoral poetry, that the thread of the history of Spanish literature would be broken, were a notice of the poetic merits of these two celebrated men confined solely to the history of the literature of Portugal. One of them, Francisco de Saa de Miranda, who was born in 1494, and died in 1558, belongs, however, in so eminent a degree, to his own nation, and the circumstances of his life are so closely connected with the history of Portuguese poetry, that it would be an injustice to Portuguese literature to rank him exclusively among the poets of Spain. Besides, most of his poetic works, with the exception of his pastoral poems, are written in the Portuguese language.191 The other Portuguese poet, who claims attention in the history of Spanish poetry, is Jorge de Montemayor. He, through his residence in Spain, became wholly a Spaniard:—the work to which he chiefly owes his celebrity is written in Spanish; and he had so decided an influence on Spanish literature, that this would be the proper place for introducing an account of his short life and of his poetry, did not Saa de Miranda’s Castilian pastorals, which are of older date, demand a previous notice.192

The bucolic effusions of Saa de Miranda exhibit in their general tone more traits of resemblance to Theocritus, than are to be found in the writings of Garcilaso de la Vega. Garcilaso’s pastoral style, with all its simplicity, was not sufficiently rural for Saa de Miranda. Like Theocritus his feelings seem to have dictated to him pure rural ideas; and he transferred this characteristic of his Portuguese eclogues to those which he wrote in Spanish, which are the most numerous. Nevertheless, even in his rural poems he did not wish to renounce the attributes of the loftier style of poetry. He was, however, heedless of all critical distinction of the different kinds of poetry, and would, without scruple, commence a poem, in the metre of an Italian canzone, as an ode, proceed with it in epic metaphors,193 and conclude it in the simplest idyllic style. With equal indifference he chose sometimes octave verse, sometimes tercets for his pastoral poems, which thus alternately assume a lyric and a dramatic tone. This capricious mixture of poetic genera and styles deteriorates in no slight degree the quality of Saa de Miranda’s poetry. The elevated tone of the ode forms a singular contrast when introduced in the same composition along with the easy familiar style, which, in the opinion of Saa de Miranda, the pure pastoral character of his poetry required. But no modern poet has succeeded so well in the union of simplicity and grace; and in this respect the eclogues of Saa de Miranda are unequalled. When he describes the gambols of the nymphs, with whom his fancy animates his native woodland scenes;194—when he sketches impetuous storms of passion, softened by the charm of his colouring, yet kept true to nature;195—when he introduces nymphs discoursing;196—or, when he abandons himself to a tone of elegiac melancholy;197—one knows not whether most to admire, the delicate truth and penetrating depth of his ideas, or the artless precision and facility of his expression. In such cases he often abandons the natural style of Theocritus for a more lofty or ideal manner. When, in some of his other eclogues, his shepherds converse on their occupations or superstitions,198 he likewise departs from the prosaic nature of real pastoral life, such as he had the opportunity of observing in his native country, and gradually elevates it to romantic ideality. It happened, however, that he occasionally found the prosaic truth of his pictures sufficiently interesting, and then to be truly natural he avoided all embellishment.199

Some of Saa de Miranda’s popular songs, called Cantigas, a term which in Portuguese corresponds with Villancicos in Spanish, are inimitable for grace and simplicity.200

MONTEMAYOR.

The poet who is celebrated in Spanish literature by the name of Jorge de Montemayor, was born in the year 1520, at Montemor, a little town of Portugal, not far from Coimbra. He took for his name that of his native city, spelt and pronounced in the Spanish way, probably because his own family name was not deemed sufficiently sonorous; and thus the latter has been entirely lost. The talent of this young Portuguese developed itself without the aid of a previous literary cultivation. At an early period of life he served in the Portuguese army, and, as there is reason to believe, in the rank of a common soldier. His taste for music, and the reputation he had acquired as a singer, induced him to visit Spain, where the Infant Don Philip, afterwards Philip II. had formed a company of court musicians, who were to accompany him on his travels through Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Jorge de Montemayor, being admitted as a vocal member of this travelling musical company, gained an opportunity of seeing the world, and at the same time making himself master of the Castilian language, which became to him a second mother tongue. He was, however, attached to Spain by a still closer link, namely, his love for a beautiful Castilian lady, whom he occasionally introduces in his poems under the name of Marfida. This Marfida became the deity of his poetry; and when, on his return to Spain, he found her wedded to another, he endeavoured to divert his sorrow by poetic effusions, in which he represented the faithless beauty as a romantic shepherdess; and, uniting these with several of his other compositions, he formed the whole into a romance. This romance, which he entitled Diana, was received by the Spanish public with a degree of favour never before extended to any Spanish book, Amadis de Gaul excepted; and it speedily found no fewer imitators than Amadis itself. The Queen of Portugal was desirous that the celebrated author of Diana should return to his native country. She recalled him, and he obeyed the honourable mandate. No further particulars of his history are known. He died by some violent means, either in 1561 or 1562. He was upwards of forty at the period of his death, which, according to some accounts, took place in Portugal, and according to others in Italy.201

The Diana of Montemayor is one of the few romantic works which belong entirely to the soul of the inventor, which are embued throughout with individual interest, and which on that very account exercise the more influence over unsophisticated minds, because the author possessed sufficient poetic genius successfully to convey the joys and sorrows of his own heart under the forms of a general interest. But this romance can never be to any other cultivated people what it was to the Spaniards of the sixteenth century. Still less can it be regarded as a classical fragment, even though judged according to the lenient rules by which every fragment is estimated; unless, indeed, after the manner of some modern critics, new rules of art be deduced from defective examples, for the sake of admiring as incomparable the grossest absurdities, under the title of romantic complexity. But with all its faults, this unfinished pastoral romance (for it was not brought to a conclusion by Montemayor) possesses a poetic merit, which entitles it to the esteem of all ages.

The design of the work, so far as Montemayor’s ideas render his intention obvious, sometimes charms by its graceful simplicity, and at others becomes grotesque, through an illegitimate romantic combination of heterogeneous species of composition. The shepherd Sireno, who represents the poet himself, on his return to his native country, visits the scene of the innocent joys which the inconstant shepherdess Diana once shared along with him. Overwhelmed with grief, he draws out first a lock of hair belonging to his mistress; and then one of her letters, which he reads. While he is thus communing with himself, he is joined by another romantic adorer of the beautiful Diana. This shepherd, whose love had always been unrequited, now joins his lamentations to those of the once happy Sireno, and each vies with the other in claiming to himself the heaviest load of misery. They are joined by a shepherdess, named Selvagia, who has been no less unfortunate in love than themselves. She relates her history very circumstantially, and thus terminates the first book. In the second, the conversation of these lovers is continued, until three nymphs appear, one of whom relates Sireno’s history in a song of some length. Up to the conclusion of this song, the pastoral simplicity of the story is preserved uninterrupted by any incident approximating to the terrible; but suddenly a party of savage robbers completely armed appears. The nymphs are about to fly, but are detained by the robbers. A battle then ensues between the robbers and the shepherds, the latter attacking the former with stones. The robbers are on the point of overcoming their rustic antagonists, when a heroine, habited as a huntress, rushes from a wood, and bending her bow, pierces the robbers with her arrows, and liberates the nymphs. The fair huntress then joins the party of nymphs and shepherds, and in her turn also relates her history. This narrative, together with the conversations and songs to which it gives rise, concludes the second book. In the third book the story assumes the character of a fairy tale. The nymphs lead their protectress, together with the rest of the party, through a thick forest to the castle of the wise Felicia, who is represented as a kind of priestess to the goddess Diana. The description of the wonders and magnificence of the castle occupies a great portion of the third book. The wise Felicia conducts the party to a superb hall of state, where they behold a numerous collection of majestic statues, representing Roman emperors, Castilian knights, and Castilian ladies. Even a place is found for the statue of a Moorish knight, of whose conflicts with the Christians a long history is related in this sanctuary of the goddess Diana. By means of enchantment Felicia cures Sireno of the torments of love. At length, in the sixth book, the poet releases his shepherds and shepherdesses from Felicia’s palace, and the reader for the first time becomes acquainted with the shepherdess Diana. She attaches the blame of her infidelity to her parents, by whom, during the absence of Sireno, she was forced to give her hand to another. In the following scenes, to the conclusion of the seventh book, where Montemayor’s labour terminates, the history of the principal characters makes no further progress. Some of the other lovers in the romance are, however, united according to their wishes.

This composition, in which it is easy to recognize the uncultivated genius of a poet, who, to give vent to the emotions of his soul, deemed it necessary to wander through the whole region of romance, can only be regarded by the unprejudiced critic as a fantastical frame-work, serving to display pictures of the feelings and a philosophy of the heart, which constitute the prominent features of the whole poem. To paint romantic fidelity under the most fascinating and various forms, and at the same time to exhibit in a poetic point of view the theory of that fidelity, which even in a poem could only be verified by facts, was the idea which guided Montemayor’s inventive fancy, and the execution of which bears the full impression of his genius. The versified portion of the romance is the soul of the whole composition. A series of lyric poems, partly in the Italian and partly in the old Castilian style, are introduced; but these compositions are strikingly distinguished from the eclogues of Saa de Miranda by an epigrammatic poignancy, which frequently degenerates into antiquated subtlety.202 But this epigrammatic turn usually imparts a more pointed precision to the lyrical expression, and a degree of consistency to the whole composition, which in no way injures its pastoral simplicity;203 and when judged according to the characteristic form of the popular songs, called Villancicos, it by no means presents, to Spaniards in particular, the idea of too much refinement or incongruity with rustic nature.204 In order to judge candidly of the pastoral truth of these compositions, it is necessary to have the Spanish romantic ideas of nature present to the mind. Montemayor is inexhaustible in new turns and images for the expression of tenderness. In depth of feeling he vies with Saa de Miranda; and, though his poetry is occasionally deficient in rhythmical polish, it in general presents so exquisite a union of the grace of language, with a happy concordance of ideas, that the reader must soon become warmed by the spirit of the poet, even though he should begin to peruse the work with indifference.205

Montemayor’s style of romantic prose has been a model for all writers of pastoral romances in the Spanish language. How far he himself imitated the prose of Sanazzar, cannot easily be ascertained, as it is not known whether or not Sanazzar’s Arcadia206 was the prototype of his Diana. Though it is certain that Montemayor carefully endeavoured to give precision and dignity of expression, and to impart harmony to every line of his composition, his language nevertheless appears neither laboured nor affected. His taste seems to have been in only a few instances seduced by the influence of that ostentatious solemnity, which distinguished the common chivalrous romances, written in imitation of Amadis de Gaul. In general he remained faithful to the dignified simplicity, which the author of the Amadis appears to have regarded as the genuine characteristic of the lofty style of romantic prose. To this style his protracted but rhythmically pleasing sentences may justly be said to belong.207 It is but seldom that a low expression escapes him.208 His descriptions are never deficient in vividness and force.209 It is only in the didactic passages in which he propounds his philosophy of love, that his language becomes tinged with the scholastic formality, which at the period in which he wrote, was considered indispensable when any scholastic ideas were to be expressed; for though Montemayor had not received that kind of education, which in his age was considered learned, he had picked up some notions of the scholastic philosophy, which, when they interested him, he was fond of introducing into the romance of his heart.210

The other works of Montemayor, which are not so celebrated as his Diana, are to be found in a collection of his poems, which, according to the old custom, is entitled a Cancionero.211

HERRERA.

Fernando de Herrera, a poet very different in character from Montemayor, must next be included among the authors who chiefly contributed to reform Castilian poetry, during the first half of the sixteenth century. Of the history of his life but little is known. He was a native of Seville, and was born, according to the conjectures of his Spanish biographers, about the commencement of the sixteenth century. Thus he flourished at the same time as Diego de Mendoza, and afforded another instance of the light of poetical improvement being directed from the south of Spain. It appears that he did not enter into the ecclesiastical state, to which he finally devoted himself, until he attained a mature age; but he must have received a literary education, as he possessed no ordinary knowledge of the ancient and modern languages, geography, mathematics, and scholastic philosophy. According to a portrait which has been preserved of him, he appears to have been a handsome man; and some of the editors of his works alledge that the lady whom he has celebrated in his verses under various names, was not merely an ideal object of the poet’s tenderness. The admirers of his poetry have applied to him, after the Italian manner, the surname of the divine; and this epithet, rendered so equivocal by its application to Pietro Aretino, was never bestowed on any other Spanish poet. These few particulars are all that are known relative to the life of Fernando de Herrera. He died at an advanced age, probably soon after the year 1578.212

Why Herrera should have obtained the title of divine, in preference to all the other poets of his nation, would appear almost incomprehensible, were it not known that two opposite parties vied with each other in exalting him; and, to avoid the appearance of yielding on either side, considered themselves reciprocally bound to pronounce compositions sublime which neither could regard as natural. Herrera was, notwithstanding, a poet of powerful talent, and one who evinced undaunted resolution in pursuing the new path which he had struck out for himself. The novel style, however, which he wished to introduce into Spanish poetry, was not the result of a spontaneous essay, flowing from immediate inspiration, but was theoretically constructed on artificial principles. Thus, amidst traits of real beauty, his poetry every where presents marks of affectation. The great fault of his language is too much singularity; and his expression, where it ought to be elevated, is merely far-fetched.

Herrera fancied he had discovered that the diction of the Spanish poets, even in their best works, was too common, too nearly allied to the language of prose, and consequently very far removed from the classical dignity which distinguishes the Greek and Roman poetry. This opinion induced him to form for himself a new style. He classed words according to his fancy, into elegant and inelegant, and was careful to employ in his verse only those to which he attributed the former character. He connected words, under significations which they do not bear in common language; and in contradistinction to the spirit of prose, he regarded certain repetitions, for example, the conjunction and as very appropriate to poetry. He also introduced into his verse, a free arrangement of words, after the model of the latin construction. Finally, he thought he could enrich the language of poetry by new words, which he formed by analogy from existing Castilian words, or adopted immediately from the latin.213 This peculiarity of style was regarded as the perfection of poetry, by the party who idolized Fernando de Herrera.214

Those, however, who have no inclination to confound pompous with poetic language, or diction with the essence of poetry, must still allow to Herrera the possession of poetic ideas and precision of manner, as well as a true dignity of expression, and an elegant harmony of versification. His language is not always affected, and his thoughts and descriptions, though frequently overstrained, are never trivial.215 Notwithstanding all the faults of his style, he must be accounted the first classical ode writer in modern literature, for the attempts of the Italian poet Chiabrera to emulate Pindar, are of more recent date; and here it is worthy of remark, that the Spanish odes of Herrera and the Italian odes of Chiabrera resemble each other in a mixture of the style of the Pindaric ode, with the style of the canzone. Through the medium of that lyric form only, was the spirit of Pindar felt by these imitators; and both were the more easily deceived, as the genius of the Spanish and Italian languages has a relation to the metrical structure of the canzone, somewhat similar to that which the genius of the Greek language bears to Pindaric verse. But the rapid and bold succession of thoughts and images, which animates the odes of Pindar, could not be imitated by poets, who, even in their boldest flights of fancy were bound down by the laws of the Italian canzone, to the luxurious harmony of its protracted verbose periods. Thus Herrera’s odes, like those of Chiabrera, bear only a remote resemblance to their prototypes. Odes, however, they must be termed, though Herrera himself has classed them, under the general title of canciones, along with imitations of the Italian style, purely romantic, but versified according to similar rules. In his celebrated odes on the battle of Lepanto, in which the Spaniards under Don John of Austria, the natural son of Charles V. obtained a brilliant victory over the Turks, the magnificence of the rhythm would be sufficiently attractive, though the ideas conveyed in the torrent of sonorous syllables possessed less poetic beauty than really belong to them.216 Occasionally, however, Herrera’s ideas degenerate into fantastical hyperboles; for instance, when boasting of his hero, he says, that Don John of Austria, that glorious conqueror of the infidels and the elements, combines within himself “whatever of heavenly power animates terrestrial bodies;” and that therefore “the fixed earth, the extended waters, the circumambent air, and the ever glowing flames depend on him, so that through the secret control which he exercises over earth, water, air, and fire, all these elements are his works.”217 But passages of real beauty occur in Herrera’s odes, which afford a sufficient compensation for this sort of bombast.218 Among the odes for which Herrera has chosen a softer theme, the prize of superiority has been justly awarded to the Ode to Sleep. It is one of those compositions which may be said to be single in their kind. The graceful choice of language, the picturesque effect, the delicate keeping in the composition, and the finish given to all the details in strict conformity with the true spirit of the theme, impart to this ode or cancion a lyric beauty which must render it in all ages an object of admiration, not only to the lover, but to the critic of poetry.219

The other poems of Herrera, though extremely numerous, require only a slight notice.220 His best sonnets, which are among the happiest imitations of Petrarch in the Spanish language, are characterized by the recurrence of some of the author’s favourite images, as for example, the comparison of his mistress to light, or the evening star,221 &c. He is frequently very successful in the management of these similes; but at other times he falls into strange absurdities, such as making the “curling waves of gold of his sweet light float in the wind.”222 But extravagant tropes of this kind could not be very offensive to Spanish taste, which had been accustomed to indulge the orientalisms of the old national style, and they were indeed not only tolerated but esteemed. It might have been expected that a writer possessing so much critical judgment as Herrera, would, as an imitator of Petrarch, have endeavoured to naturalize in his native tongue, the simplicity of the Italian poet; but he was too much a Spaniard to be pleased with such simplicity. His elegies, and other lyric compositions in the Italian syllabic measure, have all the same character.

Herrera endeavoured, by other means than poetical composition, to give to the national taste of the Spaniards a direction conformable to his own principles. He wrote a “Critical Commentary on the Poems of Garcilaso de la Vega.”223 This commentary has served as a model for many similar works, which have been the means of circulating various kinds of useful knowledge without having contributed in any remarkable degree to the advancement of taste. Herrera, as a theorist, failed to establish any fixed point or station from which he might have taken a clear and consistent view of the whole region of poetry. His criticism everlastingly turns on detached ideas and words; and whenever opportunities for displaying his learning occur, he digresses into all the regions of philosophy and literature. Of the indistinctness of his notions, relative to the different species of poetry, some idea may be formed from his definition of the elegy. He says—“an elegy should be simple, soft, tender, amiable, terse, clear, and if it may be so called, noble; affecting to the feelings, and moving them in every way; neither very inflated nor very humble, nor obscured by affected phrases or far-fetched fables.”224

LUIS DE LEON.

Luis Ponce de Leon, the next lyric poet to be noticed, pursued a course very different from that of Herrera, whose contemporary he was. He is usually called, by abbreviation, merely Luis de Leon, and did not obtain the surname of divine, to which, however, he might have laid claim with infinitely more justice than Herrera, if his pious humility would have permitted him to entertain the idea of maintaining any competition for earthly honours.225

This poet, who for classical purity of style and moral dignity of ideas, had never been surpassed in Spanish literature, was, like Herrera and Mendoza, a native of the south of Spain. He was born at Granada, in the year 1527, where the family of the Ponces de Leon, which was connected with the most distinguished of the Spanish nobility, flourished. At an early period of life, Luis de Leon felt a poetic inspiration, and cherished a love of retirement, which rendered him indifferent to outward show, and all the pleasures of the great world. He found only in poetry and in the contemplation of a superior existence that food for which his soul longed. His tranquil and gentle mind exhibited none of the gloomy features of monkish fanaticism, but was devoted to moral and religious meditation. As soon as he had finished his scholastic studies, he entered, of his own free choice, into the ecclesiastical state. He was sixteen years of age when he made his profession in the order of St. Augustine at Salamanca. Theology now became his proper occupation. In Spain, especially at that period, a man of the character of Luis de Leon, even if he possessed a mind capable of divesting itself of prejudice, could scarcely be expected to doubt the dogmas of the catholic faith; but his poetic imagination, which was not to be satisfied with their dry and scholastic interpretation, irresistibly impelled him to adorn them. Luis transferred the mild enthusiasm of his pious feelings into the theological studies, to which his vocation devoted him. On religious subjects he was a learned and diligent author; but his heart found, at least during the first years of his monastic life, only in poetry, the faithful interpreter of his love for that pure truth, to the attainment of which all his arduous efforts were directed. Though invested in his thirty-third year with the dignity of doctor of theology, he maintained, even within the cloister, his intimacy with the classic writers of antiquity. The Hebrew poetry also worked powerfully on his imagination; and on one occasion he nearly fell a martyr to an attempt to translate and comment on the Song of Solomon. He was very far from wishing to give a too liberal interpretation of the amatory language of the original. He explained the sacred poem in perfect accordance with the sense attributed to it by the church. But the inquisition had, at that time, strictly prohibited the translation of any part of the bible into the vulgar tongue. Luis de Leon, therefore, ventured to communicate his version in confidence to one friend only; but that friend was not faithful to his trust, and the translation found its way into the hands of several individuals. It was soon denounced to the inquisition, and the author was immediately thrown into prison by that terrible tribunal. He himself mentions, in one of his letters, that for the space of five years he was deprived of all communication with mankind, and was not even permitted to see the light of day.226 Conscious of his innocence, he enjoyed during his captivity, according to his own testimony, a tranquillity and satisfaction of mind which he never afterwards so fully experienced, when restored to freedom, and the society of his friends.227 At length justice was done to him, he returned in triumph to his monastery, and was reinstated in his ecclesiastical dignities. From that period, he appears to have been wholly devoted to the duties of his order and the study of theology. He died in 1591, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, being at that time general and provincial vicar of Salamanca.

The poems of this amiable enthusiast are, according to his own testimony,228 for the most part the productions of his youth; but no other Spanish poet has succeeded in expressing the intense feelings of the heart under the control of so sound a judgment. It is only by reference to the pious tranquillity of a cultivated mind wrapt up in self communion, that the extraordinary correctness of this author’s style can be explained, for Luis de Leon is, without exception, the most correct of all the Spanish poets, though he constantly regarded the metrical clothing of his ideas as a very secondary object. To use his own language, he wrote poetry rather in fulfilment of his destiny, than purposely and by dint of study. At an early age he became intimately acquainted with the odes of Horace, and the elegance and purity of style which distinguish those compositions made a deep impression on his imagination. Classical simplicity and dignity were the models constantly present to his creative fancy. He, however, appropriated to himself the character of Horace’s poetry, too naturally ever to incur the danger of servile imitation. He discarded the prolix style of the canzone, and imitated the brevity of the strophes of Horace, in romantic syllabic measures and rhymes. More just feeling for the imitation of the ancients was never evinced by any modern poet. His odes have, however, a character totally different from those of Horace, though the sententious air which marks the style of both authors, imparts to them a deceptive resemblance. The religious austerity of Luis de Leon’s life was not to be reconciled with the epicurism of the latin poet; but, notwithstanding this very different disposition of the mind, it is not surprising that they should have adopted the same form of poetic expression, for each possessed a fine imagination, subordinate to the control of a sound understanding. Which of the two is the superior poet, in the most extended sense of the word, it would be difficult to determine, as each formed his style by free imitation, and neither overstepped the boundaries of a certain sphere of practical observation. Horace’s odes exhibit a superior style of art, and from the relationship between the thoughts and images, possess a degree of attraction which is wanting in those of Luis de Leon; but on the other hand, the latter are the more rich in that natural kind of poetry, which may be regarded as the overflowing of a pure soul, elevated to the loftiest regions of moral and religious idealism.229

Luis de Leon himself published a collection of his poetic works, divided into three books. The first, contains his original poems—the second, translations from some of the ancient classics—and the third, metrical versions of several of the psalms, and some parts of the book of Job.

The reader who peruses the poems of Luis de Leon, which are all odes, in the spirit in which the author wrote them, will fancy himself transported to a better world. No furious zeal disturbs the gentle piety that pervades them; no extravagant metaphor destroys the harmony of the ideas and expression; and no discordant accent breaks the pleasing melody of the rhythm. The idea of the perishableness of all earthly things,230 is united with smiling pictures of nature.231 The imitations of Horace are only introduced to aid the poetic light in which the poet views those objects which were peculiarly interesting to his contemporaries.232 One of Luis de Leon’s most celebrated odes is the Noche Serena, but the concluding stanzas do not correspond with the beauty of the commencement.233 In the ode to Felipe Ruiz, the ardent aspiration for heavenly truth is very picturesquely expressed.234 But the exalted inspiration and tender enthusiasm in which Luis de Leon so widely departs from Horace, are most prominently evinced in his ode on Heavenly Life (De la Vida del Cielo). Here his fancy is bold without launching into extravagant metaphors. What an etherial effulgence glows through his lyric picture of “the soft bright region, the meadow of holiness, never blighted by frost, nor withered by the sun’s rays;—where the good shepherd, his head crowned with blossoms of purple and white, without either sling or staff, leads his beloved flock to the sweet pasture covered with everblooming roses;—where the shepherd, reclining in the shade at noon, blows his heavenly pipe, whose feeblest tone, should it descend on the ear of the poet, would transform his whole soul to love.”235 The ode in which the genius of the Tagus prophecies to King Roderick the misfortunes of Spain, is more in Horace’s style, and possesses a very happy uniformity of character. In some other imitations of a similar kind, the fancy of the pious poet willingly descends from the heavenly regions. The poems contained in the first part of the collection are few in number. Those which Luis de Leon himself inserted, amount only to twenty-seven, and among them is an indifferent elegy, and a cancion in the Italian style of not much greater merit. Several other compositions, which he seems to have rejected, have been recently printed from manuscripts.236

The greater portion of the poetic works of Luis de Leon consists of translations; but these translations form an epoch in the department of literature to which they belong. Those in the second book of the collection are the first classical specimens, in modern literature, of the art of renewing the ancient poetry in modern forms. Luis de Leon has himself explained the principles by which he was guided in bringing the ancient poetry within the sphere of the romantic. He endeavoured to make the ancient poets speak, “as they would have expressed themselves, had they been born in his own age in Castile, and had they written in Castilian.”237 However bold this attempt may appear, and whatever defects a translation of this kind may present to the eye of the connoisseur who wishes for a faithful resemblance of the original, and not a flowery imitation, yet if the validity of the principle be once admitted, Luis de Leon will be found to have fulfilled all that the most rigid critic can desire. Besides, it must be considered that translations of a more literal character would scarcely have found readers in Spain at that period. Luis de Leon translated Virgil’s eclogues, partly in tercets, and partly in coplas;238 a considerable series of Horace’s odes in the same romantic syllabic measure which he chose for his own odes;239—and a portion of Virgil’s georgics in stanzas. But the easy flowing style of his Spanish version of Pindar’s first ode, excels all the rest.240 To these translations are also added two imitations of Italian sonnets, which prove that he succeeded very well in that species of composition, though among his own original poems there is not a single sonnet. He translated the psalms of David, according to the rule he had prescribed to himself. His translations speedily obtained the rank in Spanish literature to which they were entitled; and they have served as models for all succeeding versions of Greek and Latin poetry in the Spanish language. Luis de Leon may indeed be blamed for having thwarted, by the style of translation which he introduced, all the attempts made to form Spanish poetry on the model of that of the ancients. But on the other hand, to his example the Spaniards are indebted for numerous translations of Greek and Latin poetry, which have all the air of Spanish originals.

If Luis de Leon had not confined his prose writings exclusively to spiritual subjects, he would doubtless have also exercised a very decided influence on the rhetorical cultivation of Spain. His sermons (oraciones) are, however, invariably mentioned in terms of praise by Spanish writers, whenever they allude to the theological literature of their country.241 Among his other works intended for edification, The Woman as she should be, or The Perfect Wife, (La Perfecta Casada), will perhaps be found the most interesting to the untheological class of readers; though it constantly turns on the positive morality of Catholicism, and therefore, like every mixed treatise of theology and morals, is no legitimate specimen of the developement of ideas in the didactic style.242

Luis de Leon terminates the series of distinguished Spanish authors, who during the first half of the sixteenth century, composed after the model of the great poets of Italy, or the ancient classics, and who, by the superiority of their genius, mainly contributed to give a new character to Spanish poetry. There are, however others, whose poetic works ought not to be passed over in silence; but to follow the example of those writers, who have hitherto related the history of Spanish poetry, without separating subordinate from eminent talent, would be to prolong an act of injustice. At the same time to the continuation which must be made of the history of the lyric and pastoral poetry of Spain, during the first half of the sixteenth century, may be very properly added some account of a few unsuccessful efforts in epic composition, and a notice of the further progress of the old national poetry during the same period.

MINOR SPANISH POETS DURING THE PERIOD OF THIS SECTION, VIZ. ACUÑA—CETINA—PADILLA—GIL POLO.

Fernando de Acuña, one of the first of the distinguished men who became the disciples of Boscan and Garcilaso, was of Portuguese extraction, but born in Madrid, probably about the beginning of the sixteenth century.243 He signalized himself in the campaigns of Charles V. and was also a person of consideration at the court of that monarch. He lived on terms of intimate friendship with Garcilaso de la Vega, whom he survived for a considerable period, for it appears that his death did not take place until the year 1580. He proved his taste for classical literature by translations and imitations. He paraphrased in iambic blank verse, several passages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and among the rest, the dispute between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles, in very correct and harmonious language. He likewise translated some of the Heroides of the same author in tercets. In his own sonnets, cancions, and elegies, which are replete with sentiment and grace, it is easy to recognise a poet who successfully laboured to attain classical elegance of style.244 He was also one of the first poets, who, by composing in short strophes, endeavoured to form an intermediate style between the Italian canzone and the Spanish cancion.245

Gutierre de Cetina is less known, though there is no doubt of his having lived about the same period, as he is mentioned by Herrera in his Commentary on the Works of Garcilaso. He was, like Herrera, a native of Seville; and having removed to Madrid, was there invested with an ecclesiastical dignity. Few of his poems have been printed;246 but from those few it is obvious that he had a fair chance of becoming the Anacreon of Spain. That glory, however, was reserved for Villegas. Still Gutierre de Cetina’s imitations of the anacreontic style are not without their share of sweetness and grace; and they are moreover remarkable as being the first productions in the class to which they belong.247 His madrigals also seem to have had no prototype in Spanish literature.248 In his canciones, however, the romantic enthusiasm occasionally degenerates into absurdity.249

Pedro do Padilla, a knight of the spiritual order of St. Jago, must be ranked in the same class with Gutierre. He vied with Garcilaso in pastoral poetry; and in order to conciliate the partizans of both the old and the new styles, he introduced alternately in the same eclogue the Italian and the ancient Spanish metres.250 His poetry is still esteemed in Spain. He followed the old national custom by making the events connected with the war in the Netherlands serve as subjects for romances.251

But a poet still more celebrated, and in a great degree indebted for his fame to the immoderate encomium bestowed upon him by the pen of Cervantes, is Gaspar Gil Polo, a native of Valencia, who continued and concluded Montemayor’s Diana under the title of La Diana enamorada.252 A continuation of this pastoral romance had previously been undertaken by a writer named Perez; but without success. Gil Polo in one respect effected more than did Montemayor himself; but in point of invention he is inferior, notwithstanding the faults of the original plan. After Sireno has been cured of his love by the sage Felicia, Gil Polo makes the passion of Diana revive, and renders her more unhappy for Sireno’s sake, than he had previously been for hers. Thus the romantic story is reversed; but the new relations under which it now appears are few. In the sequel the aid of the sage Felicia is again obtained, and she finally unites the long separated lovers. The narrative style in the prose portion of the romance presents a very correct imitation of Montemayor; but neither the merit of this imitation, nor the continuation of the metaphysical reflections on love, with which the romance is interspersed, would have gained for Gil Polo the approbation of the critic. What must have raised him higher than Montemayor in the estimation of such a judge as Cervantes, is the precision and clearness of the ideas, and the perfect polish of style in the poetic part of the romance. Montemayor has often indulged in too subtle or sophistical plays of wit. Gil Polo in painting the feelings has exercised a sounder judgment, without, however, descending to the coldness of prose. His sonnets may be regarded as models; for he has succeeded in combining the unity of ideas, which ought to distinguish that species of composition, with the most elegant rounding and regularity of structure.253 In his canciones he has occasionally, for the sake of variety, imitated the Provençal rhymes (rimas Provenzales) with such happy dexterity, that the reader might fancy himself perusing some of the best opera songs, though no such thing as an opera then existed.254 In like manner, he endeavoured to naturalize the metrical structure of French verse (rimas Franceses) in the Spanish language, upon which the burthen of alexandrines had already been inflicted.255 In compliment to the old Spanish taste, he bedecked his romance with a profusion of versified riddles (preguntas,) which are, for the most part, so exceedingly dull, that it is difficult to conceive how they could be endured by a man of Gil Polo’s talent.256 In honour of Valencia, his native city, he composed a poem, in which the genius of the little river Turia is made to sing the praises of the celebrated men to whom Valencia had given birth. This song of Turia (Canto de Turia) has found patriotic commentators, without whose laborious explanations it would have been unintelligible to foreign readers.257