Note 794 — Chapter XXVII

The “Historia Parthenopea,” in eight books, by Alfonso Fernandez, was printed at Rome in 1516, says Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 23). Nicolas de Espinosa’s second part of the “Orlando Furioso” is better known, as there are editions of it in 1555, 1556, 1557, and 1559, the one of 1556 being printed at Antwerp in 4to. Juan de Coloma’s “Década de la Pasion,” in ten books, terza rima, was printed in 1579, in 8vo, at Caller (Cagliari) in Sardinia, where its author was viceroy, and on which island this has been said to be the first book ever printed. There is an edition of it, also, of 1586. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 175.) It is praised by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and is a sort of harmony of the Gospels, not without a dignified movement in its action, and interspersed with narratives from the Old Testament. The story of St. Veronica, (Lib. VII.), and the description of the Madonna as she sees her son surrounded by the rude crowd and ascending Mount Calvary under the burden of his cross, (Lib. VIII.), are passages of considerable merit. Coloma says he chose the terza rima “because it is the gravest verse in the language and the best suited to any grave subject.” In a poem in the same volume, on the Resurrection, he has, however, taken the octave rhyme; and half a century earlier, the terza rima had been rejected by Pedro Fernandez de Villegas, as quite unfitted for Castilian poetry. See ante, Vol. I. p. 486, note.