Chapter X: The Age of Felipe IV. and Carlos the Bewitched (3)

Another man of Portuguese birth has won immortality outside of literature; yet there is ground for thinking that DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELÁZQUEZ (1599-1660) had the sense for language as for paint. His _Memoria de las Pinturas_ (1658) exists in an unique copy published at Rome under the name of his pupil, Juan de Alfaro, though its substance is unscrupulously embodied in Francisco de los Santos' _Descripción Breve_ of the Escorial. Formally, it is a catalogue; substantially, it expresses the artist's judgment on his great predecessors. Thus, of Paolo Veronese's _Wedding Feast_ he writes:—"There are admirable heads, and almost all of them seem portraits. Not that of the Virgin: she has more reserve, more divinity: though very beautiful, she corresponds fittingly to the age of Christ, who is beside her—a point which most artists overlook, for they paint Christ as a man, and His Mother as a girl." The great realist speaks once more in describing Veronese's _Purification_:—"The Virgin kneels ... holding on a white cloth the Child—naked, beautiful, and tender—with a restlessness so suited to his age that He seems more a piece of living flesh than something painted." And, in the same spirit, he writes of Tintoretto's _Washing of the Feet_:—"It is hard to believe that one is looking at a painting. Such is the truth of colour, such the exactness of perspective, that one might think to go in and walk on the pavement, tessellated with stones of divers colours, which, diminishing in size, make the room seem larger, and lead you to believe that there is atmosphere between each figure. The table, seats (and a dog which is worked in) are truth, not paint.... Once for all, any picture placed beside it looks like something expressed in terms of colour, and this seems all the truer." Strangely enough, this writing of Velázquez is ignored by most, perhaps by all, of his biographers; yet it deserves a passing reference as a model of energetic expression in a time when most professional men of letters were Gongorists or _conceptistas_.

A certain directness of style is found in Gerónimo de Alcalá Yañez y Ribera's _Alonso, Mozo de muchos Amos_ (1625), in Alonso de Castillo Solórzano's _Garduña de Seville_ (the Seville Weasel, 1634), in the _Siglo Pitagórico_ (1644) of the Segovian Jew, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, and in the half-true, half-invented _Vida y Hechos de Estebanillo González_ (1646)—all picaresque tales, clever, amusing, and improper, on the approved pattern. But the pest of preciosity spread to fiction, is conspicuous in the _Español Gerardo_ of Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, and steadily degenerates till it becomes arrant nonsense in the _Varios Efectos de Amor_ (1641) of Alonso de Alcalá y Herrera—five stories, in each of which one of the vowels is omitted. Alcalá, however, had neither talent nor influence. The Aragonese Jesuit, BALTASAR GRACIÁN (1601-58), had both, and his vogue is proved by numerous editions, by translations, by such references as that in the _Entretiens_ of Bouhours, who proclaims him "_le sublime_." Addison thrice mentions him with respect in the _Spectator_, and it is suggested that Rycaut's rendering of the _Criticón_ may have given Defoe the idea of Man Friday. In the present century Schopenhauer vowed that the _Criticón_ was "one of the best books in the world," and Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, taking his cue from Schopenhauer, has extolled Gracián with some vehemence.

Gracián seems to have been indifferent to popularity, and his works, published somewhat against his will by his friend, Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, were mostly issued under the name of Lorenzo Gracián. His first work was _El Héroe_ (1630), an ideal rendering of the Happy Warrior, as _El Discreto_ (1647) is the ideal of the Politic Courtier; more important than either is the _Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio_ (1642), a _conceptista_ Art of Rhetoric, of singular learning, subtlety, and catholic taste. The three parts of the _Criticón_, which appeared between 1650 and 1653, correspond to "the spring of childhood," "the summer of youth," and "the autumn of manhood." In this allegory of life the shipwrecked Critilo meets the wild man Andrenio, who finally learns Spanish and reveals his soul to Critilo, whom he accompanies to Spain, where he communes with both allegorical figures and real personages on all manner of philosophic questions. The general tone of the _Criticón_ goes far towards explaining Schopenhauer's admiration; for the Spaniard is no less a woman-hater, is no less bitter, sarcastic, denunciatory, and pessimistic than the German. Gracián, to use his own phrase, "flaunts his unhappiness as a trophy" in phrases whose laboured ingenuity begins by impressing, and ends by fatiguing, the reader.

It is difficult to believe that Gracián's attitude towards life is more than a pose; but the pose is dignified, and he puts the pessimistic case with vigour and skill. His _Oráculo Manual ó Arte de Prudencia_ (1653), a reduction of his gospel to the form of maxims, has found admirers (and even an excellent translator in the person of Mr. Joseph Jacobs). The reflection is always acute, and seems at whiles to anticipate the thought of La Rochefoucauld—doubtless because both drew from common sources; but though the doctrine and spirit be almost identical, Gracián nowhere approaches La Rochefoucauld's metallic brilliancy and concise perfection. He is not content to deliver his maxim, and have done with it: he adds—so to say—elaborate postscripts and epigrammatic amplifications, which debase the maxim to a platitude. Mr. John Morley's remark, that "some of his aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace," is scarcely too severe. Yet one cannot choose but think that Gracián was superior to his work. He had it in him to be as good a writer as he was a keen observer, and in many passages, when he casts his affectations from him, his expression is as lucid and as strong as may be; but he would posture, would be paradoxical to avoid being trite, would bewilder with his conceit and learning, would try to pack more meaning into words than words will carry. No man ever wrote with more care and scruple, with more ambition to excel according to the formulæ of a fashionable school, with more scorn for Gongorism and all its work. Still, though he avoided the offence of obscure language, he sinned most grievously by obscurity of thought, and he is now forgotten by all but students, who look upon him as a chief among the wrong-headed, misguided _conceptistas_.

A last faint breath of mysticism is found in the _Tratado de la Hermosura de Dios_ (1641) by the Jesuit, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1590-1658), whose prose, though elegant and relatively pure, lacks the majesty of Luis de León's and the persuasiveness of Granada's. More familiar in style, the letters of Felipe IV.'s friend, María Coronel y Arana (1602-65), known in religion as Sor MARÍA DE JESÚS DE ÁGREDA, may still be read with pleasure. Professed at sixteen, she was elected abbess of her convent at twenty-five, and her _Mística Ciudad de Dios_ has gone through innumerable editions in almost all languages; her _Correspondencia con Felipe IV._ extends over twenty-two years, from 1643 onwards, and is as remarkable for its profound piety as for its sound appreciation of public affairs. The common interest of King and nun began with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which both desired to have defined as an article of faith; domestic and foreign politics come under discussion later, and it soon becomes plain that the nun is the man. While Felipe IV. weakly laments that "the Cortes are seeking places, taking no more notice of the insurrection than if the enemy were at the Philippines," Sor María de Jesús strives to steady him, to lend him something of her own strong will, by urging him to "be a King," "to do his duty." There is a curious reference to the passing of Cromwell—"the enemy of our faith and kingdom, the only person whose death I ever desired, or ever prayed to God for." Her practical advice fell on deaf ears, and when she died, no man seemed left in Spain to realise that the country was slowly bleeding to death, becoming a cypher in politics, in art, in letters.

One single ecclesiastic rises above his fellows during the ruinous reign of Carlos the Bewitched, and his renown is greater out of Spain than in it. MIGUEL DE MOLINOS (1627-97), the founder of Quietism, was a native of Muniesa, near Zaragoza; was educated by the Jesuits; and held a living at Valencia. He journeyed to Rome in 1665, won vast esteem as a confessor, and there, in 1675, published his famous _Spiritual Guide_ in Italian. Mr. Shorthouse, an English apostle of Quietism, mentions a Spanish rendering which "won such popularity in his native country that some are still found who declare that the Spanish version is earlier than the Italian." It is almost certain that Molinos wrote in Spanish, and to judge by the translations, he must have written with admirable force. But, as a matter of fact, no Spanish version was ever popular in Spain, for the reason that none has ever existed. This is not the place to discuss the personal character of Molinos, who stands accused of grave crimes; nor to weigh the value of his teaching, nor to follow its importation into France by Mme. de la Mothe Guyon; nor to look into the controversy which wrecked Fénelon's career. Still it should be noted as characteristic of Carlos II.'s reign, that a book by one of his subjects was influencing all Europe without any man in Spain being aware of it.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] According to Lope de Vega, the word _culteranismo_ was invented by Jiménez Patón, Villamediana's tutor.

[27] See M. Farinelli's learned study, _Don Giovanni: Note critiche_ (Torino, 1896), pp. 37-39.

[28] Cp. Mr. Norman MacColl's _Select Plays of Calderón_ (London, 1888), pp. xxvi.-xxx., and Gallardo's _Ensayo de una Biblioteca Española_ (Madrid, 1866), vol. ii. col. 367, 368.