Note 813 — Chapter XXVII

“Poema Castellano de nuestra Señora de Aguas Santas, por Alonso Diaz,” Seville, 1611, cited by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 21).—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico,” Valladolid, 1613, 8vo, and “Historia de la Vírgen Madre de Dios,” 1608, afterwards published with the title of “Nueva Jerusalen María,” Valladolid, 1625, 18mo; both by Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza, and both the work of his youth, since he lived to 1668. (Ibid., p. 115.) The last of these poems, my copy of which is of the fourth edition, absurdly divides the life of the Madonna according to the twelve precious stones that form the foundations of the New Jerusalem in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation; each fundamento, as the separate portions or books are called, being subdivided into three cantos; and the whole filling above twelve thousand lines of octave stanzas, which are not always without merit, though they generally have very little.—“Creacion del Mundo de Alonso de Azevedo,” Roma, 1615. (Velazquez, Dieze, p. 395.)—“La Verdadera Hermandad de los Cinco Martires de Arabia, por Damian Rodriguez de Vargas,” Toledo, 1621, 4to. It is very short for the class to which it belongs, containing only about three thousand lines, but it is hardly possible that any of them should be worse.—“David, Poema Heróico del Doctor Jacobo Uziel,” Venetia, 1624, pp. 440; a poem in twelve cantos, on the story of the Hebrew monarch whose name it bears, written in a plain and simple style, evidently imitating the flow of Tasso’s stanzas, but without poetical spirit, and in the ninth canto absurdly bringing a Spanish navigator to the court of Jerusalem.—“La Mejor Muger Madre y Vírgen, Poema Sacro, por Sebastian de Nieva Calvo,” Madrid, 1625, 4to. It ends in the fourteenth book with the victory of Lepanto, which is attributed to the intercession of the Madonna and the virtue of the rosary.—“Grandezas Divinas, Vida y Muerte de nuestro Salvador, etc., por Fr. Duran Vivas,” found in scattered papers after his death, and arranged and modernized in its language by his grandson, who published it, (Madrid, 1643, 4to); a worthless poem, more than half of which is thrown into the form of a speech from Joseph to Pontius Pilate.—“Pasion del Hombre Dios, por el Maestro Juan Dávila,” Leon de Francia, 1661, folio, written in the Spanish décimas of Espinel, and filling about three-and-twenty thousand lines, divided into six books, which are subdivided into estancias, or resting-places, and these again into cantos.—“Sanson Nazareno, Poema Eróico, por Ant. Enriquez Gomez,” Ruan, 1656, 4to, thoroughly infected with Gongorism, as is another poem by the same author, half narrative, half lyrical, called “La Culpa del Primer Peregrino,” Ruan, 1644, 4to.—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico, escrivialo Hernando Dominguez Camargo,” 1666, 4to, a native of Santa Fé de Bogotá, whose poem, filling nearly four hundred pages of octave rhymes, is a fragment published after his death.—“La Christiada, Poema Sacro y Vida de Jesu Christo, que escrivió Juan Francisco de Encisso y Monçon,” Cadiz, 1694, 4to; deformed, like almost every thing of the period when it appeared, with the worst taste.