Note 193 — Chapter XXXVII

For Paravicino and his school, see Sedano, (Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xlviii.,) Baena, (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 389,) and Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 612,) who speaks as if he had often heard Paravicino’s eloquence, and witnessed its effects. E contra is Figueroa, who, in his “Pasagero,” (1617, Alivio IV.,) is severe upon the preachers and audiences of Madrid. The fact, however, that Capmany, in his five important volumes devoted to Spanish eloquence, has been able to find nothing in the seventeenth century, either in the way of forensic orations or popular pulpit eloquence, with which to fill his pages, but is obliged to resort to the eloquent prose of history and philosophy, of ethics and religious asceticism, tells at once, in a way not to be mistaken, the tale of the deficiencies in Castilian eloquence, as the word eloquence is understood in English.