Chapter VIII: The Age of Felipe II (1)

1556-1598

In Spain, as elsewhere, the secular battle waged between classicism and romanticism. As poets sided with Boscán and Garcilaso, or with Castillejo, so dramatists declared for the _uso antiguo_ or for the _uso nuevo_. The partisans of the "old usage" put their trust in prose translations. We have already seen that the roguish Villalobos translated the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus, and Pérez de Oliva not only repeated the performance, but gave a version of Euripides' _Hecuba_. Encina's successor was found in the person of Miguel de Carvajal, whose _Josefina_ deals, in classic fashion, with the tale of Joseph and his brethren. Carvajal draws character with skill, and his dialogue lives; but he is best remembered for his division of the play into four acts. Editions of Vasco Díaz Tanco de Fregenal are of such extreme rarity as to be practically inaccessible. So are the _Vidriana_ of Jaime de Huete and the _Jacinta_ of Agustín Ortiz—two writers who are counted as followers of Torres Naharro. A farce by the brilliant reactionary, Cristóbal de Castillejo, entitled _Costanza_, is only known in extract, and is as remarkable for ribaldry as for good workmanship. The _Preteo y Tibaldo_ of Pero Álvarez de Ayllón and the _Silviana_ of Luis Hurtado are insipid pastorals. Many contemporary plays, known only by rumour, have disappeared—suppressed, no doubt, because of their coarseness. Torres Naharro's _Propaladia_ was interdicted in 1540, and, eight years later, the Cortes of Valladolid petitioned that a stop be put to the printing of immoral comedies. The prayer was heard. Scarce a play of any sort survives, and the few that reach us exist in copies that are almost unique. The time for the stage was not yet. It is possible that, had Carlos Quinto resided habitually in some Spanish capital, a national theatre might have grown up; but the lack of Court patronage and the classical superstition delayed the evolution of the Spanish drama. This comes into being during the reign of Felipe _el Prudente_.

Encina's precedence in the sacred pastoral is granted; but his eclogues were given before small, aristocratic audiences. We must look elsewhere for the first popular dramatist, and Lope de Vega, an expert on theatrical matters, identifies our man. "Comedies," says Lope, "are no older than Rueda, whom many now living have heard." The gold-beater, LOPE DE RUEDA (fl. 1558), was a native of Seville. A prefatory sonnet to his _Medora_, written by Francisco Ledesma, informs us that Rueda died at Córdoba, and Cervantes adds the detail that he was buried in the cathedral there. This would go to show that a Spanish comedian was not then a pariah; unluckily, the cathedral archives do not corroborate the story. Taking to the boards, Lope de Rueda rose to be an _autor de comedias_—an actor-manager and playwright. Cervantes, who speaks enthusiastically of Rueda's acting, describes the material conditions of the scene. "In the days of this famous Spaniard, the whole equipment of an _autor de comedias_ could be put in a bag: it consisted of four white sheepskins edged with gilt leather, four beards and wigs, and four shepherd's-staves, more or less.... No figure rose, or seemed to rise, from the bowels of the earth or from the space under the stage, which was built up by four benches placed square-wise, with four or six planks on top, about four hand's-breadths above ground. Still less were clouds lowered from the sky with angels or spirits. The theatrical scenery was an old blanket, hauled hither and thither by two cords. This formed what they called the _vestuario_, behind which were the musicians, who sang some old _romance_ without a guitar." This account is substantially correct, though official documents in the Seville archives go to prove that Cervantes unconsciously exaggerated some details—a thing natural enough in a man recalling memories fifty years old. A passage in the _Crónica del Condestable Miguel Lucas Iranzo_ implies that women appeared in the early _momos_ or _entremeses_. But Spaniards inherited the Arab notion that women are best indoors. The fact that Rueda was the first man to choose his pitch in the public place, and to appeal to the general, would explain his substitution of boys for girls in the female characters. Rueda was the first in Spain to bring the drama into the day. One of his personages in _Eufemia_—the servant Vallejo—makes a direct appeal to the public:—"Ye who listen, go and dine, and then come back to the square, if you wish to see a traitor's head cut off and a true man set free." Thenceforward the theatre becomes a popular institution.

Lope de Rueda is often called _el excelente poeta_, and his verse is exampled in the _Prendas de Amor_, as also in the _Diálogo sobre la Invención de las Calzas_. The _Farsa del Sordo_, included by the Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle in his admirable new edition of Rueda's works, is almost certainly due to another hand. Cervantes commends Rueda's _versos pastoriles_, but these only reach us in the fragment which Cervantes himself quotes in _Los Baños de Argel_. Still, it is not as a poet that Rueda lives: he is rightly remembered as the patriarch of the Spanish stage. For his time and station he was well read: López Madera will have it that he knew Theocritus, and it may be so. More manifest are the Plautine touches in the _paso_ which Moratín names _El Rufián Cobarde_, with its bully, Sigüenza, a lineal descendant of the _Miles Gloriosus_. It has been inferred that, in choosing Italian themes, Rueda followed Torres Naharro. This gives a wrong impression, for his debt to the Italians is far more direct. The _Eufemia_ takes its root in the _Decamerone_, being identical in subject with _Cymbeline_; the _Armelina_ is compounded of Antonio Francesco Ranieri's _Attilia_, with Giovanni Maria Cecchi's _Servigiale_; the _Engaños_ is a frank imitation of Niccolò Secchi's _Commedia degli Inganni_; and the _Medora_ is conveyed straight from Gigio Arthenio Giancarli's _Zingara_.[8]

Neither in his fragments of verse nor in his Italian echoes is the true Rueda revealed. His historic importance lies in his invention of the _paso_—a dramatic interlude turning on some simple episode: a quarrel between Torubio and his wife Águeda concerning the price of olives not yet planted, an invitation to dinner from the penniless licentiate Xaquima. Rueda's most spirited work is given in the _Deleitoso Compendio_ (1567) and in the _Registro de Representantes_ (1570), both published by his friend, Juan de Timoneda. In a longer flight the effect is less pleasing; the prose _Coloquio de Camila_ and its fellow, the _Coloquio de Timbria_, are long _pasos_, complicated in development and not drawn to scale. Still, even here there is a keen dramatic sense of situation; while the comic extravagance of the themes—farcical incidents in picaresque surroundings—is set off by spirited dialogue and vigorous style. Rueda had clearly read the _Celestina_ to his profit; and his prose, with its archaic savour, is of great purity and power. The patriotic Lista comes as near flat blasphemy as a good Spaniard may by mentioning Rueda in the same breath as Cervantes, and that the latter learned much from his predecessor is manifest; but the point need be pressed no further. Considerable as were Rueda's positive qualities of gay wit and inventive resource, his highest merit lies in this, that he laid the foundation-stone of the actual Spanish theatre, and that his dramatic system became a capital factor in his people's intellectual history.

He found instant imitators: one in a brother actor-manager, Alonso de la Vega (d. 1566), whose _Tolomea_ is adapted from _Medora_; the other in Luis de Miranda (fl. 1554), who dramatised the story of the Prodigal, to which, in a monstrous fit of realism, he gave a contemporary setting. Of Pedro Navarro or Naharro, whom Cervantes ranks after Rueda, naught survives. Francisco de Avendaño's verse comedy concerning Floriseo and Blancaflor had long since been forgotten were it not for the fact that here, for the first time, a Spanish play is divided into three acts—a convention which has endured, and for which later writers, like Artieda, Virués, and Cervantes, ingenuously claimed the credit. JUAN DE TIMONEDA (d. ? 1598), the Valencian bookseller who printed Rueda's _pasos_, is a sedulous mimic in every sort. He began by arranging Plautus' _Comedy of Errors_ in _Los Menecmos_; his _Cornelia_ is based upon Ariosto's _Nigromante_; and his _Oveja Perdida_ adapts an early morality on the Lost Sheep with scarcely a suggestion of original treatment. Torres Naharro is the inspiration of Timoneda's _Aurelia_; but his chief tempter was Lope de Rueda. In the volume entitled _Turiana_ (1565), issued under the anagrammatic name of Joan Diamonte, he attempts the _paso_ (which he also calls the _entremés_) to good purpose. An imitator he remains; but an imitator whose pleasant humour takes the place of invention, and whose lively prose dialogue is in excellent contrast with his futile verse. His _Patrañuelo_, a collection of some twenty traditional stories, is a well-meant attempt to satisfy the craving created by _Lazarillo de Tormes_. If Timoneda experimented in every field, it is not unjust to infer that, taking the tradesman's view of literature, he was moved less by intelligent curiosity than by the desire to supply his customers with novelties. Withal, if he be not individual, his unpolished drolleries are vastly more engaging than the ambitious triflings of many contemporaries.

Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velázquez, notes that Juan de Malara (1527-71) composed "many tragedies" both in Latin and Castilian; and Cueva, in his _Ejemplar poético_, gives the number hyperbolically:—

"_En el teatro mil tragedias puso._"

That Malara, or any one save Lope de Vega, "placed a thousand tragedies on the boards," is incredible; but by general consent his fecundity was prodigious. None of his plays survives, and we are left to gather, from a chance remark of the author's, that he wrote a tragedy entitled _Absalón_ and another drama called _Locusta_. His repute as a poet must be accepted, if at all, on authority; for his extant imitations of Virgil and renderings of Martial are mere technical exercises. For us he is best represented by his _Filosofía vulgar_ (1568), an admirable selection made from the six thousand proverbs brought together by Hernán Núñez, who thus continued what Santillana had begun. A contemporary, Blasco de Garay (fl. 1553), had striven to prove the resources of the language by printing, in his _Cartas de Refranes_, three ingenious letters wholly made up of proverbial phrases; and in our own day the incomparable wealth of Castilian proverbs has been shown in Sbarbi's _Refranero General_ and in Haller's _Altspanische Sprichtwörter_. But no later and fuller collection has supplanted Malara's learned and vivacious commentary.

His friend, JUAN DE LA CUEVA DE GAROZA of Seville (?1550-?1606), matched Malara in productiveness, and perhaps surpassed him in talent. Little is known of Cueva's life, save that he had certain love passages with Brígida Lucía de Belmonte, and that he became almost insane for a short while after her death. He distinguishes himself by his independence of the Senecan example, which he roundly declares to be at once inartistic and tedious (_cansada cosa_), and by urging the Spanish dramatists to abjure abstractions and to treat national themes without regard for Greek and Latin superstitions. Incident, character, plot, situation, variety: these are to be developed with small regard for "the unities" of the classic model. And Cueva carried out his doctrines. Ignoring Carvajal, he took a special pride in reducing plays from five acts to four, and he enriched the drama by introducing a multitude of metrical forms hitherto unknown upon the stage. The cunning fable of the people—_la ingeniosa fábula de España_—is illustrated in his _Siete Infantes de Lara_, in his _Cerco de Zamora_ (Siege of Zamora), where he utilises subjects enshrined in _romances_ which half his audience knew by heart. It is literally true that he had been preceded by Bartolomé Palau, who, as far back as 1524, had written a play on a national subject—the _Historia de la gloriosa Santa Orosia_, published in 1883 by Fernández-Guerra y Orbe; but this was an isolated, fruitless essay, whereas Cueva's was a deliberate, well-organised attempt to shape the drama anew and to quicken it into active life. Nor did Cueva's mission end with indicating the possibilities of dramatic motive afforded by heroico-popular songs and legends. His _Saco de Roma y Muerte de Borbón_ exploits an historical actuality by dramatising Carlos Quinto's Italian triumphs (1527-30); and his _El Infamador_ (The Calumniator) not merely foreshadows the _comedia de capa y espada_, but gives us in his libertine, Leucino, the first sketch of the type which Tirso de Molina was to eternalise as Don Juan.

It is certain that Cueva was often less successful in performance than in doctrine, and that his gods and devils, his saints and ruffians, too often talk in the same lofty vein—the vein of Juan de la Cueva. It is no less certain that he improvises recklessly, placing his characters in difficulties whence escape is impossible, and that he takes the first solution that offers—a murder, a supernatural interposition—with no heed for plausibility. But his bombast is the trick of his school, and, to judge by his epical _Conquista de la Bética_ (1603), he showed remarkable self-suppression in his plays. In his later years, after visiting the Western Indies, he seems to have abandoned the theatre which he had so courageously developed, and to have wasted himself upon his epic and the poor confection of old ballads which he published in the ten books entitled _Coro Febeo de Romances historiales_. Yet, despite these backslidings, he merits gratitude for his dramatic initiative.

The Galician Dominican, Gerónimo Bermúdez (1530-89), apologises for his presentation in Castilian of the _Nise Lastimosa_, which he published under the name of Antonio de Silva in 1577. Bermúdez has seemingly done little more than rearrange the _Inez de Castro_ of the distinguished Portuguese poet, Antonio Ferreira, who had died eight years earlier. Though this "correct" play has tirades of remarkable beauty in the Senecan manner, its loose construction unfits it for the stage. All that it contains of good is due to Ferreira, and its continuation—the _Nise Laureada_—is a mere collection of incoherent extravagances and brutalities, conceived in Thomas Kyd's most frenzied mood.

The Captain ANDRÉS REY DE ARTIEDA (1549-1613) is said to have been born at Valencia, and he certainly died there; yet Lope de Vega, once his friend, speaks of him as a native of Zaragoza. Artieda was a brilliant soldier, who received three wounds at Lepanto, and his conspicuous bravery was shown in the Low Countries, where he swam the Ems in mid-winter under the enemy's fire, with his sword between his teeth. He is known to have written plays entitled _Amadís de Gaula_ and _Los Encantos de Merlín_, but his one extant drama is _Los Amantes_: the first appearance on the stage of those lovers of Teruel who were destined to attract Tirso de Molina, Montalbán, and Hartzenbusch. Artieda is essentially a follower of Cueva's, and he has something of his model's clumsy manipulation; but his dramatic instinct, his pathos and tenderness, are his personal endowment. In his own day he was an innovator in his kind: his opposition to the methods of Lope made him unpopular, and condemned him to an unmerited neglect, which he bitterly resented in the miscellaneous _Discursos, epístolas y epigramas_, published by him (1605) under the name of Artemidoro.

Another dramatist and friend of Lope de Vega's was the Valencian Captain CRISTÓBAL DE VIRUÉS (1550-1610), Artieda's comrade at Lepanto and in the Low Countries. Unfortunately for himself, Virués had his share of learning, and misused it in his _Semíramis_, an absurd medley of pedantry and horror. His _Átila Furioso_, involving more slaughter than many an outpost engagement, is the maddest caricature of romanticism. He appears to think that indecency is comedy, and that the way to terror lies through massacre. It is the eternal fault of Spain, this forcing of the note; and it would seem that Virués repented him in _Elisa Dido_, where he returns to the apparatus of the Senecan school. Yet, with all their defects, his earlier attempts were better, inasmuch as they presaged a new method, and a determination to have done with a sterile formula. He essayed the epic in his _Historia del Monserrate_, and once more courted disaster by his choice of subject: the outrage and murder of the Conde de Barcelona's daughter by the hermit Juan Garín, the Roman pilgrimage of the assassin, and the miraculous resurrection of his victim. As in his plays, so in his epic, Virués is an inventor without taste, brilliant in a single page and intolerable in twenty. His tactless fluency bade for applause at any cost, and his incessant care to startle and to terrify results in a monstrous monotony. Yet, if he failed himself, his exaggerated protest encouraged others to seek a more perfect way, and, though he had no direct influence on the stage, he is interesting as an embodied remonstrance.

His mantle was caught by Joaquín Romero de Cepeda of Badajoz (fl. 1582), whose _Selvajía_ is a dramatic arrangement of the _Celestina_, with extravagant episodes suggested by the chivalresque novels; and in the opposite camp is the Aragonese LUPERCIO LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA (1559-1613), whom Cervantes esteemed almost as good a dramatist as himself—which, from Cervantes' standpoint, is saying much. Cervantes praises Argensola, not merely because his plays "delighted and amazed all who heard them," but for the practical reason that "these three alone brought in more money than thirty of the best given since their time." If it be uncharitable to conceive that this aims at Lope de Vega, we are bound to suppose that Argensola's popularity was immense. It was also fleeting. His _Filis_ has disappeared, and his _Isabela_ and _Alejandra_ were not printed till 1772, when López de Sedano included them in his _Parnaso Español_. The _Alejandra_ is a tissue of butcheries, and the _Isabela_ is scarcely better, the nine chief characters being killed out of hand. Argensola's excuse is that he was only a lad of twenty when he perpetrated these iniquities; where, for the rest, he already proves himself endowed with that lyrical gift which was to win for him the not excessive title of "the Spanish Horace." But he was never reconciled to his defeat as a dramatist, and he avenged himself in 1597 by inditing a spiteful letter to the King, praying that the prohibition of plays on the occasion of the Queen of Piedmont's death should be made permanent. The urbanity of men of letters is, it will be seen, constant everywhere.

* * * * *

The school founded by Boscán and Garcilaso spread into Portugal, and bifurcated into Spanish factions settled in Salamanca and in Seville. BALTASAR DE ALCÁZAR (1530-1606), who served under that stout sea-dog the Marqués de Santa Cruz, is technically an adherent of the Sevillan sect; but his laughing muse lends herself with an ill grace to artificial sentiment, and is happiest in stinging epigrams, in risky jests, and in gay _romances_. DIEGO GIRÓN (d. 1590), a pupil of Malara's, is an ardent Italianate: prompt to challenge comparison with Garcilaso by reproducing Corydon and Tirsis from the seventh Virgilian eclogue, to mimic Seneca—"him of Córdoba dead"—or to echo the note of Giorolamo Bosso. His verses, mostly hidden away among the annotations made by Herrera in his edition of Garcilaso, deserve to be better known for specimens of sound craftsmanship.

The greatest poet of the Sevillan group is indisputably FERNANDO DE HERRERA (1534-97), who comes into touch with England as the writer of an eulogy on Sir Thomas More. Cleric though he were, Herrera dedicated much of his verse (1582) to Leonor de Milán, Condesa de Gelves, wife of Álvaro de Portugal, himself a fashionable versifier. Herrera being a clerk in minor orders, the situation is piquant, and opinions differ as to whether his erotic songs are, or are not, platonic. It is another variant of the classic cases of Laura and Petrarch, of Catalina de Atayde and Camões. All good Sevillans contend that Herrera, as the chief of Spanish _petrarquistas_, indited sonnets to his mistress in imitation of the master:—

"_So the great Tuscan to the beauteous Laura
Breathed his sublime, his wonder-working song._"

Disguised as Eliodora, Leonor is Herrera's firmament: his _luz_, _sol_, _estrella_—light, sun, and star. And no small part of the love-sequence is passionless and even frigid. Yet not all the elegies are compact of conceit; a genuine emotion bursts forth elsewhere than in the famous line:—

"_Now sorrow passes: now at length I live._"

In view of the poet's metaphysical refinements no decisive judgment is possible, and the dispute will continue for all time; perhaps the real posture of affairs is indicated by Latour's happy phrase concerning Herrera's "innocent immorality."

Fine as are isolated passages in these "vain, amatorious" rhapsodies, the true Herrera is best revealed in his ode to Don Juan de Austria on the occasion of the Moorish revolt in the Alpujarra, in his elegy on the death of Sebastian of Portugal at Alcázar al-Kebir, in his song upon the victory of Lepanto. In patriotism Herrera found his noblest inspiration, and in these three great pieces he attains an exceptional energy and conciseness of form. He sings the triumph of the true faith with an Hebraic fervour, a stateliness derived from biblical cadences, as he mourns the overthrow of Christianity, "the weapons of war perished," in accents of profound affliction. His sincerity and his lyrical splendour place him in the foremost rank of his country's singers; and hence his title of _El divino_.

Differing in temperament from Garcilaso, Herrera may be considered as the true inheritor of his predecessor's unfulfilled renown. Two of his finest sonnets—one to Carlos Quinto, the other to Don Juan de Austria—are superior to any in Garcilaso's page. The latter may be exampled here in Archdeacon Churton's rendering:—

"_Deep sea, whose thundering waves in tumult roar,
Call forth thy troubled spirit—bid him rise,
And gaze, with terror pale, and hollow eyes,
On floods all flashing fire, and red with gore.
Lo! as in list enclosed, on battle-floor
Christian and Sarzan, life and death the prize,
Join conflict: lo! the batter'd Paynim flies;
The din, the smouldering flames, he braves no more.
Go, bid thy deep-toned bass with voice of power
Tell of this mightiest victory under sky,
This deed of peerless valour's highest strain;
And say a youth achieved the glorious hour,
Hallowing thy gulf with praise that ne'er shall die,—
The youth of Austria, and the might of Spain._"

Herrera takes up the tradition of his forerunner, perfects his form, imparts a greater sonority of expression, a deeper note of pathos and dignity. The soldier, with his languid sentiment, might be the priest; the priest, with his martial music, might be the soldier. Yet Herrera's fealty never wavers; for him there is but one model, one pattern, one perfect singer. "In our Spain," he avers, "Garcilaso stands first, beyond compare." And in this spirit, aided by suggestions from the poet's son-in-law, Puerto Carrero, aided also by illustrations from the whole Sevillan group,—Francisco de Medina, Diego Girón, Francisco Pacheco, and Cristóbal Mosquera de Figueroa,—Herrera undertook his commentary, _Anotaciones á las obras de Garcilaso de la Vega_ (1580). Its publication caused one of the bitterest quarrels in Spanish literary history.

Four years earlier Garcilaso had been edited by the learned Francisco Sánchez (1523-1601), commonly called _El Brocense_, from Las Brozas, his birthplace, in Extremadura; and an excitable admirer of the poet, Francisco de los Cobos, denounced Sánchez for exhibiting his author's debts by means of parallel passages. The partisans of Sánchez took Herrera's commentary as a challenge, and were not mollified by the fact that Herrera nowhere mentioned Sánchez by name. It had been bad enough that an Extremaduran pundit should edit a Castilian poet; that a mere Andalucían should repeat the outrage was insufferable. It was as though an Englishman edited Burns. The Clan of Clonglocketty (or of Castile) rose as one man, and Herrera was flagellated by a tribe of scurrilous, illiterate patriots. Among his more urbane opponents was Juan Fernández de Velasco, Conde de Haro, son of the Constable of Spain, who published his _Observaciones_ under the pseudonym of Prete Jacopín, and was rapturously applauded for calling Herrera an ass in a lion's skin. It is discouraging to record that Haro's impertinence went through several editions, while Herrera's commentary has never been reprinted.[9] Yet this monument of enlightened learning reveals its author, not only as the best lyrist, but as the acutest critic of his age. Cervantes knew it almost by heart, and he honoured it by writing his dedication of _Don Quixote_ to the Duque de Béjar in the very words of Medina's preface and of Herrera's epistle to the Marqués de Ayamonte. So that, since countless readers have admired a passage from the _Anotaciones_ without knowing it, Herrera the prose-writer has enjoyed a vicarious immortality.

The most eminent poet of the Salamancan school is LUIS PONCE DE LEÓN (1529-91), a native of Belmonte de Cuenca, who joined the Augustinian order in his eighteenth year, and became professor of theology at the University of Salamanca in 1561. He soon found himself in the midst of a theological squabble as to the comparative merits of the Septuagint and the Hebrew MSS. Rivals spread the legend—fatal in Spain—that he was of Jewish descent, and that he conspired with the Hebrew professors, Martínez de Cantalapiedra and Grajal, in interpreting Scripture according to Jewish traditions. His chief opponent was León de Castro, who held the Greek chair. Public discussions were the fashion, and debates waxed acrimonious, after the custom of professors at large. On one occasion Luis de León went so far as to threaten Castro with the public burning of the latter's treatise on Isaiah. Castro was not the man to flinch, and anticipated his enemy by denouncing Fray Luis to the Inquisition. The matter would doubtless have ended here, had it not been discovered that Fray Luis had translated the _Song of Solomon_ into Castilian: a grave offence in the eyes of the Holy Office, which, rejecting the Lutheran formula of "every man his own pope," forbade the circulation of Bibles in the vernacular. In March 1572 Luis de León was arrested, and was kept a prisoner by the local authorities for four and a half years, during which he was baited with questions calculated to convict him of heresy and to involve his friend Benito Arias Montano. Notwithstanding the efforts of Bartolomé Medina and his brother-Dominicans, Fray Luis was acquitted on December 7, 1576. Judged by modern standards, he was harshly treated; but toleration is a modern birth, begotten by indifference and fear. In the sixteenth century men believed what they professed, and acted on their beliefs—the Spaniards by imprisoning their own countryman, Luis de León; Calvin by burning Harvey's forerunner, the Spaniard Miguel Servet. Fray Luis was the last of men to whine and whimper: he was judged by the tribunal of his own choosing, the tribunal with which he had menaced Castro: and the result vindicated his choice.[10] _Ex forti dulcedo_. The indomitable nobility of his character is visible in the first words he uttered on his return to the chair which Salamanca had kept for him:—"Gentlemen, as we were saying the other day." In 1591 he was elected Vicar-General of Castile, was chosen Provincial of his order, and was then commanded, against his will, to publish all his writings. He died ten days later.

In prison Fray Luis wrote his celebrated treatise, the greatest of Spanish mystic books, _Los Nombres de Cristo_, a series of dissertations, in Plato's manner, on the symbolic value of such names of Christ as the Mount, the Shepherd, the Arm of God, the Prince of Peace, the Bridegroom. Published in 1583, the exposition is cast in the form of a dialogue, in which Marcelo, Sabino, and Julián examine the theological mysteries implied by the subject. With Fray Luis's theology we have no concern; nor with his learning, save in so far as it is curious to see the Hellenic-Alexandrine leaven working through in his imitation of St. Clement's _Epistle to the Corinthians_. But his concise eloquence and his classic purity of expression rank him among the best masters of Castilian prose. The like great qualities are shown in his _Exposición del libro de Job_, drawn up by request of Santa Teresa's friend, Sor Ana de Jesús, and in his rendering of and commentary on the _Song of Solomon_, which he holds for an emblematic eclogue to be interpreted as a poetic foreshadowing of the Divine Espousal of the Church with Christ. A book still held in great esteem is his _Perfecta Casada_ (The Perfect Wife), suggested, it may be, by Luis Vives' _Christian Woman_, and composed (1583) for the benefit of María Varela Osorio. It is not, indeed,

"_That hymn for which the whole world longs,
A worthy hymn in woman's praise._"

It is rather a singularly brilliant paraphrase of the thirty-first chapter of the _Book of Proverbs_, a code of practical conduct for the ideal spouse, which may be read with delight even by those who think the friar's doctrine reactionary.

Great in prose, Luis de León is no less great in verse. With San Juan de la Cruz he heads the list of Spain's lyrico-mystical poets. Yet he set no value on his poems, which he regarded as mere toys of childhood: so that their preservation is due to the accident of his collecting them late in life to amuse the leisure of the Bishop of Córdoba. We owe their publication to Quevedo, who issued them in 1631 as a counterblast to _culteranismo_. Of the three books into which they are divided, two consist of translations—from Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Euripides, and Pindar; and from the Psalms, the Book of Job, and St. Thomas of Aquin's _Pange lingua_. "I have tried," says Fray Luis of his sacred renderings, "to imitate so far as I might their simple origin and antique flavour, full of sweetness and majesty, as it seems to me;" and he succeeds as greatly in the primitive unction of the one kind as in the faultless form of the other. Still these are but inspired imitations, and the original poet is to be sought for in the first book. Some idea of his ode entitled _Noche Serena_ may be gathered from Mr. Henry Phillips' version of the opening stanzas:—

"_When to the heavenly dome my thoughts take flight,
With shimmering stars bedecked, ablaze with light,
Then sink my eyes down to the ground,
In slumber wrapped, oblivion bound,
Enveloped in the gloom of darkest night._

_With love and pain assailed, with anxious care,
A thousand troubles in my breast appear,
My eyes turn to a flowing rill,
Sore sorrow's tearful floods distil,
While saddened, mournful words my woes declare._

_Oh, dwelling fit for angels! sacred fane!
The hallowed shrine where youth and beauty reign!
Why in this dungeon, plunged in night,
The soul that's born for Heaven's delight
Should cruel Fate withhold from its domain?_"

In his _Profecía del Tajo_ (Prophecy of the Tagus) Luis de León displays a virility absent from his other pieces, and the impetuosity of the verse matches the speed which he attributes to the Saracenic invaders advancing to the overthrow of Roderic; and, if he still abide by his Horatian model, he introduces an individual treatment, a characteristic melody of his own invention. A famous devout song, _Á Cristo Crucifijado_ (To Christ Crucified), appears in all editions of Fray Luis; but as its authenticity is disputed—some ascribing it to Miguel Sánchez—its quotation must be foregone here. The ode _Al Apartamiento_ (To Retirement) exhibits the contemplative vein which distinguishes the singer, and, as in the _Ode to Salinas_, seems an early anticipation of Wordsworth's note of serene simplicity. Luis de León is not splendid in metrical resource, and his adherence to tradition, his indifference to his fame, his ecclesiastical estate, all tend to narrow his range of subject; yet, within the limits marked out for him, he is as great an artist and as rich a voice as Spain can show.

In the same year (1631) that Quevedo issued Luis de León's verses, he also published an exceedingly small volume of poems which he ascribed to a Bachelor named FRANCISCO DE LA TORRE (1534-?1594). From this arose a strange case of mistaken identity. Quevedo's own account of the matter is simple: he alleges that he found the poems—"by good luck and for the greater glory of Spain"—in the shop of a bookseller, who sold them cheap. It appears that the Portuguese, Juan de Almeida, Senhor de Couto de Avintes, saw them soon after Torre's death, that he applied for leave to print them, and that the official licence was signed by the author of _La Araucana_, Ercilla y Zúñiga, who died in 1595. For some reason Almeida's purpose miscarried, and, when Quevedo found the manuscript in 1629, Torre was generally forgotten. Quevedo solved the difficulty out of hand in the high editorial manner, evolved the facts from his inner consciousness, and assured his readers that the author of the poems was the Francisco de la Torre who wrote the _Visión deleitable_.[11]

Ticknor lays it down that "no suspicion seems to have been whispered, either at the moment of their first publication, or for a long time afterwards," of the correctness of this attribution; and he implies that the first doubter was Luis José Velázquez, Marqués de Valdeflores, who, when he reprinted the book in 1753, started the theory that the poems were Quevedo's own. This is not so. Quevedo's mistake was pointed out by Manuel de Faria y Sousa in his commentary to the _Lusiadas_, printed at Madrid in 1639. That Quevedo should make a Bachelor of a man who had no university degree, that he should call the writer of the _Visión deleitable_ Francisco when in truth his name was Alfonso, were trifles: that he should antedate his author by nearly two centuries—this was a serious matter, and Faria y Sousa took pains to make him realise it. It must have added to the editor's chagrin to learn that Torre had been friendly with Lope de Vega, who could have given accurate information about him; but Lope and Quevedo were not on speaking terms, owing to the mischief-making of the former's parasite, Pérez de Montalbán. Quevedo had made no approach to Lope; Lope saw the blunder, smiled, and said nothing in public. Through Pérez de Montalbán the facts reached Faria y Sousa, who exulted over a mistake which was, indeed, unpardonable. The discomfiture was complete: for the first and last time in his life Quevedo was dumb before an enemy. Meanwhile, Velázquez' theory has found some favour with López Sedano and with many foreign critics: as, for example, Ticknor.

What we know of Francisco de la Torre is based upon the researches of Quevedo's learned editor, Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe.[12] A native of Torrelaguna, he matriculated at Alcalá de Henares in 1556, fell in love with the "_Filis rigurosa_" whom he sings, served with Carlos Quinto in the Italian campaigns, returned to find Filis married to an elderly Toledan millionaire, remained constant to his (more or less) platonic flame, and ended by taking orders in his despair. The unadorned simplicity of his manner is at the remotest pole from Quevedo's frosty brilliancy. No small proportion of his sonnets is translated from the Italian. Thus, where Benedetto Varchi writes "_Questa e, Tirsi, quel fonte in cui solea_," Torre follows close with "_Ésta es, Tirsi, la fuente do solia_;" and when Giovanni Battista Amalteo celebrates "_La viva neve e le vermiglie rose_," the Spaniard echoes back "_La blanca nieve y la purpúrea rosa_." Schelling finds the light fantastic rapture of the Elizabethan lover expressed to perfection in the eighty-first of Spenser's _Amoretti_: line for line, and almost word for word, Torre's twenty-third sonnet is identical, and, when we at length possess a critical edition of Spenser, it will surely prove that both poems derive from a common Italian source. Such examples are numerous, and are worth noting as germane to the general question. No man in Europe was more original than Quevedo, none less disposed to lean on Italy. To conceive that he should seek to reform _culteranismo_ by translating from Italians of yesterday, or to suppose that he knowingly passed as original work imitations made by a man who—_ex hypothesi_—died before his models were born, is to believe Quevedo a clumsy trickster. That conclusion is untenable; and Torre deserves all credit for his graceful renderings, as for his more original poems—gallant, tender, and sentimental. He is one of the earliest Spanish poets to choose simple, natural themes—the ivy fallen to the ground, the widowed song-bird, the wounded hind, the charms of landscape and the enchantment of the spring. A smaller replica of Garcilaso, with a vision and personality of his own: so Francisco de la Torre appears in the perspective of Castilian song.

An allied poet of the Salamancan school is Torre's friend, FRANCISCO DE FIGUEROA (1536-?1620), a native of Alcalá de Henares, whom his townsman Cervantes introduces in the pastoral _Galatea_ under the name of Tirsi. Little is recorded of his life save that he served as a soldier in Italy, that he studied at Rome, Bologna, Siena, and perhaps Naples, that the Italians called him the _Divino_ (the title was sometimes cheaply given), and that some even ranked him next to Petrarch. He returned to Alcalá, where he married "nobly," as we are told; and he is found travelling with the Duque de Terranova in the Low Countries about 1597. On his deathbed he bethought him of Virgil's example, and ordered that all his poems should be burned; those that escaped were published at Lisbon in 1626 by the historian Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, who reports what little we know concerning the writer. That he versified much in Italian appears from Juan Verzosa's evidence:—

"_El lingua perges alterna pangere versus._"

And a vestige of the youthful practice is preserved in the elegy to Juan de Mendoza y Luna, where one Spanish line and two Italian lines compose each tercet. One admirable sonnet is that written on the death of the poet's son, Garcilaso de la Vega _el Mozo_, who, like his famous father, fell in battle. Figueroa's bent is towards the pastoral; he sings of sweet repose, of love's costly glory, of Tirsi's pangs, of Fileno's passion realised, and of _ingrata_ Fili. His points of resemblance with Torre are many; but his talent is more original, his mood more melancholy, his taste finer, his diction more exquisite. He ranks so high among his country's singers, it is not incredible that he might take his stand with the greatest if we possessed all his poems, instead of a few numbers saved from fire. And, as it is, he deserves peculiar praise as the earliest poet who, following Boscán and Garcilaso, mastered the blank verse, whose secrets had eluded them. He avoids the subtle peril of the assonant; he varies the mechanical uniformity of beat or stress; and, by skilful alternations of his cæsura, diversifies his rhythm to such harmonic purpose as no earlier experimentalist approaches. At his hands the most formidable of Castilian metres is finally vanquished, and the _verso suelto_ is established on an equality with the sonnet. That alone ensures Figueroa's fame: he sets the standard by which successors are measured.

Ariosto's vigorous epical manner is faintly suggested in twelve cantos of the _Angélica_, by a Seville doctor, LUIS BARAHONA DE SOTO (fl. 1586). Lope de Vega, in the _Laurel de Apolo_, praises

"_The doctor admirable
Whose page of gold
The story of Medora told_,"

and all contemporaries, from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza downwards, swell the chorus of applause. The priest who sacked Don Quixote's library softened at sight of Barahona's book, which he calls by its popular title, the _Lágrimas de Angélica_ (Tears of Angelica):—"I should shed tears myself were such a book burned, for its author is one of the best poets, not merely in Spain, but in all the world." Cervantes was far from strong in criticism, and he proves it in this case. The _Angélica_, which purports to continue the story of _Orlando Furioso_—itself a continuation of the _Orlando Innamorato_—looks mean beside its great original. Yet, though Barahona fails in epic narrative, his lyrical poems, given in Espinosa's _Flores de poetas ilustres_, are full of grace and melody.

The epic's fascination also seduced the Córdoban, JUAN RUFO GUTIÉRREZ. We know the date of neither his birth nor his death, but he must have lived long if his collection of anecdotes, entitled _Las seiscientas Apotegmas_, were really published in 1548. His _Austriada_, printed in 1584, takes Don Juan de Austria for its hero, and contains some good descriptive stanzas; but Rufo's invention finds no scope in dealing with contemporary matters, and what might have been a useful chronicle is distorted to a tedious poem. Great part of the _Austriada_ is but a rhymed version of Mendoza's _Guerra de Granada_, which Rufo must have seen in manuscript. When, leaving Ariosto in peace, he becomes himself, as in the verses at the end of the _Apotegmas_, he gives forth a natural old-world note, reminiscent of earlier models than Boscán and Garcilaso. Since Luis de Zapata (1523-? 1600) wrote an epic history of the Emperor, the _Carlos famoso_, he must have read it; and it is possible that Cervantes (who delighted in it) was familiar with its fifty cantos, its forty thousand lines. It is more than can be said of any later reader. Zapata wasted thirteen years upon his epic, and witnessed its failure; but he was undismayed, and lived to maltreat Horace—it sounds incredible—beyond all expectation. It is another instance of a mistaken calling. The writer knew his facts, and had a touch of the historic spirit. Yet he could not be content with prose and history.

A nearer approach to the right epical poem is the _Araucana_ of ALONSO DE ERCILLA Y ZÚÑIGA (1533-95), who appeared as Felipe II.'s page at his wedding with Mary Tudor in Winchester Cathedral. From England he sailed for Chile in 1554, to serve against the Araucanos, who had risen in revolt; and in seven pitched battles, not to speak of innumerable small engagements, he greatly distinguished himself. His career was ruined by a quarrel with a brother-officer named Juan de Pineda; he was judged to be in fault, was condemned to death, and actually mounted the scaffold. At the last moment the sentence was commuted to exile at Callao, whence Ercilla returned to Europe in 1562. With him he brought the first fifteen cantos of his poem, written by the camp-fire on stray scraps of paper, leather, and skin. The first book ever printed in America was, as we learn from Señor Icazbalceta, Juan de Zumárraga's _Breve y compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana_. The first literary work of real merit composed in either American continent was Ercilla's _Araucana_. It was published at Madrid in 1569; and continuations, amounting to thirty-seven cantos in all, followed in 1578 and 1590. Ercilla never forgave what he thought the injustice of his general, García Hurtado de Mendoza, Marqués de Cañete, and carefully omits his name throughout the _Araucana_. The omission cost him dear, for he was never employed again.

His is an exceeding stately poem on the Chilian revolt; but epic it is not, whether in spirit or design, whether in form or effect. In the Essay Prefatory to the _Henriade_, Voltaire condescends to praise the _Araucana_, the name of which has thus become familiar to many; and, though he was probably writing at second hand, he is justified in extolling the really noble speech which Ercilla gives to the aged chief, Colocolo. It is precisely in declamatory eloquence that Ercilla shines. His technical craftsmanship is sound, his spirit admirable, his diction beyond reproach, or nearly so; and yet his work, as a whole, fails to impress. Men remember isolated lines, a stanza here and there; but the general effect is blurred. To speak truly, Ercilla had the orator's temperament, not the poet's. At his worst he is debating in rhyme, at his best he is writing poetic history; and, though he has an eye for situation, an instinct for the picturesque, the historian in him vanquishes the poet. He himself was vaguely conscious of something lacking, and he strove to make it good by means of mythological episodes, visions by Bellona, magic foreshadowings of victory, digressions defending Dido from Virgil's scandalous tattle. But, since the secret of the epic lies not in machinery, this attempt at reform failed. Ercilla's first part remains his best, and is still interesting for its martial eloquence, and valuable as a picture of heroic barbarism rendered by an artist in _ottava rima_ who was also a vigilant observer and a magnanimous foe. His omission of his commander's name was made good by a copious Chilian poet, Pedro de Oña, in his _Arauco domado_ (1596), which closed with the capture of "Richerte Aquines" (as who should say Richard Hawkins); and, in the following year, Diego de Santisteban y Osorio added a fourth and fifth part to the original _Araucana_. Neither imitation is of real poetic worth, and, as versified history, they are inferior to the _Elegías de Varones ilustres de Indias_ of Juan de Castellanos (?1510-?1590), a priest who in youth had served in America, and who rhymed his reminiscences with a conscientious regard for fact more laudable in a chronicler than a poet.

But we turn from these elaborate historical failures to religious work of real beauty, and the first that offers itself is the famous sonnet "To Christ Crucified," familiar to English readers in a free version ascribed to Dryden:—

"_O God, Thou art the object of my love,
Not for the hopes of endless joys above,
Nor for the fear of endless pains below
Which those who love Thee not must undergo:
For me, and such as me, Thou once didst bear
The ignominious cross, the nails, the spear,
A thorny crown transpierced Thy sacred brow,
What bloody sweats from every member flow!
For me, in torture Thou resign'st Thy breath,
Nailed to the cross, and sav'dst me by Thy death:
Say, can these sufferings fail my heart to move?
What but Thyself can now deserve my love?
Such as then was and is Thy love to me,
Such is, and shall be still, my love to Thee.
Thy love, O Jesus, may I ever sing,
O God of love, kind Parent, dearest King._"

The authorship is referred to Ignacio Loyola, to Francisco Xavier, to Pedro de los Reyes, and to the Seraphic Mother, SANTA TERESA DE JESÚS, whose name in the world was Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-82). None of these attributions can be sustained, and _No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte_ must be classed as anonymous.[13] Yet its fervour and unction are such as to suggest its ascription to the Saint of the Flaming Heart. Santa Teresa is not only a glorious saint and a splendid figure in the annals of religious thought: she ranks as a miracle of genius, as, perhaps, the greatest woman who ever handled pen, the single one of all her sex who stands beside the world's most perfect masters. Macaulay has noted, in a famous essay, that Protestantism has gained not an inch of ground since the middle of the sixteenth century. Ignacio Loyola and Santa Teresa are the life and brain of the Catholic reaction: the former is a great party chief, the latter belongs to mankind.

Her life in all its details may be read in Mrs. Cunninghame Graham's minute and able study. Here it must suffice to note that she sallied forth to seek martyrdom at the age of seven, that she entered literature as the writer of a chivalresque romance, and that in her sixteenth year she made her profession as a nun in the Carmelite convent of her native town, Ávila. Years of spiritual aridity, of ill-health, weighed her down, aged her prematurely. But nothing could abate her natural force; and from 1558 to the day of her death she marches from one victory to another, careless of pain, misunderstanding, misery, and persecution, a wonder of valour and devotion.

"_Scarce has she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has a heart dares hope to prove
How much less strong is Death than Love....
Love touch't her heart, and lo! it beats
High, and burns with such brave heats,
Such thirst to die, as dares drink up
A thousand cold deaths in one cup._"

What Crashaw has here said of her in verse he repeats in prose, and the heading of his poem may be quoted as a concise summary of her achievement:—"Foundress of the Reformation of the Discalced Carmelites, both men and women; a woman for angelical height of speculation, for masculine courage of performance more than a woman; who, yet a child, outran maturity, and durst plot a martyrdom." And all the world has read with ever-growing admiration the burning words of Crashaw's "sweet incendiary," the "undaunted daughter of desires," the "fair sister of the seraphim," "the moon of maiden stars."

Simplicity and conciseness are Santa Teresa's distinctive qualities, and the marvel is where she acquired her perfect style. Not, we may be sure, in the numerous prose of _Amadís_. Her confessor, the worthy Gracián, took it upon him to "improve" and polish her periods; but, in a fortunate hour, her papers came into the hands of Luis de León, who gave them to the press in 1588. Himself a master in mysticism and literature, he perceived the truth embodied later in Crashaw's famous line:—

"_O 'tis not Spanish but 'tis Heaven she speaks._"

Her masterpiece is the _Castillo interior_, of which Fray Luis writes:—"Let naught be blotted out, save when she herself emended: which was seldom." And once more he commends her to her readers, saying:—"She, who had seen God face to face, now reveals Him unto you." With all her sublimity, her enraptured vision of things heavenly, her "large draughts of intellectual day," Santa Teresa illustrates the combination of the loftiest mysticism with the finest practical sense, and her style varies, takes ever its colour from its subject. Familiar and maternal in her letters, enraptured in her _Conceptos del Amor de Dios_, she handles with equal skill the trifles of our petty lives and—to use Luis de León's phrase—"the highest and most generous philosophy that was ever dreamed." And from her briefest sentence shines the vigorous soul of one born to govern, one who governed in such wise that a helpless Nuncio denounced her as "restless, disobedient, contumacious, an inventress of new doctrines tricked out with piety, a breaker of the cloister-rule, a despiser of the apostolic precept which forbiddeth a woman to teach."

Santa Teresa taught because she must, and all that she wrote was written by compulsion, under orders from her superior. She could never have understood the female novelist's desire for publicity; and, had she realised it, merry as her humour was, she would scarcely have smiled. For she was, both by descent and temperament, a gentlewoman—_de sangre muy limpia_, as she writes more than once, with a tinge of satisfaction which shows that the convent discipline had not stifled her pride of race any more than it had quenched her gaiety. She always remembers that she comes from Castile, and the fact is evidenced in her writings, with their delicious old-world savour. Boscán and Garcilaso might influence courtiers and learned poets; but they were impotent against the brave Castilian of Sor Teresa de Jesús, who wields her instrument with incomparable mastery. It were a sin to attempt a rendering of her artless songs, with their resplendent gleams of ecstasy and passion. But some idea of her general manner, when untouched by the inspiration of her mystic nuptials, may be gathered from a passage which Froude has Englished:—

"A man is directed to make a garden in a bad soil overrun with sour grasses. The Lord of the land roots out the weeds, sows seeds, and plants herbs and fruit-trees. The gardener must then care for them and water them, that they may thrive and blossom, and that the Lord may find pleasure in his garden and come to visit it. There are four ways in which the watering may be done. There is water which is drawn wearily by hand from the well. There is water drawn by the ox-wheel, more abundantly and with greater labour. There is water brought in from the river, which will saturate the whole ground; and, last and best, there is rain from heaven. Four sorts of prayer correspond to these. The first is a weary effort with small returns; the well may run dry: the gardener then must weep. The second is internal prayer and meditation upon God; the trees will then show leaves and flower-buds. The third is love of God. The virtues then become vigorous. We converse with God face to face. The flowers open and give out fragrance. The fourth kind cannot be described in words. Then there is no more toil, and the seasons no longer change; flowers are always blowing, and fruit ripens perennially. The soul enjoys undoubting certitude; the faculties work without effort and without consciousness; the heart loves and does not know that it loves; the mind perceives, yet does not know that it perceives. If the butterfly pauses to say to itself how prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, and it drops and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us."