Chapter XI (7)

All this strange medley of a story is told in dialogue, much of which is spirited and natural, but much, very much, pedantic, and beyond expression tedious. By some means, despite her misconduct, we are interested in Dorothea; she is so frank, so beautiful, so generous; while Fernando is, on the contrary, an object of contempt. He takes the money of Dorothea, and then angry at the first mention she makes of her mother's interference, he flies from her rather in revenge than in grief: throughout he is selfish and ungenerous.

Whether Lope shadowed forth himself is very doubtful. There is a sort of dwelling upon trifles, and a reality in the situations, that makes the whole look as if it were founded on fact; yet the facts do not accord with the circumstances known of his life. If it be himself that he portrays, it is himself at two or three and twenty, in the first inexperienced dawn of life, in all the heyday of the passions, when love was life, and moral considerations and the softer affections still lingered far behind in the background. To this period he often alludes in his epistles, when he mentions the troubled sea of love in which he was lost before his second marriage; from which period he dates his peace and felicity. And all this together proves to us that his allusions to an unfortunate attachment have no reference to that happier time. We deduce also from this various evidence that his taking up the life of a soldier, and joining the Armada, arose from his desire to fly from the adversity he had fallen into, "to change clime and element," to begin a new career, in the hope of becoming a new man. Montalvan strengthens this view, when he says that this enterprise was undertaken in a fit of desperation, when he was desirous of finishing life and its sorrows at the same time; and thus driven by adversity, he enlisted under the banners of the duke of Medina Sidonia. Leaving Madrid, he traversed Spain to Cadiz, and thence repaired to Lisbon, where he embarked with a brother, who was an alferez de marina, a title probably answering to our midshipman, unless it be that he was ensign in a marine corps. Lope was a simple volunteer.[91]

It is well known with what sanguine expectations of glorious victory the Invincible Armada sailed. The privateering or piratical expeditions of Drake and Hawkins though in accordance with the manners of the times, and, indeed, disgracefully imitated in late years, had excited feelings full of burning animosity and fierce vengeance in the hearts of the Spaniards. Added to these natural feelings, was the odium of English heresy, which, deep rooted and rankling in Philip II.'s heart, was participated in by his subjects; they considered the expedition of the Armada as holy, as well as patriotic. Lope felt the full force of these sentiments; he bade the invincible fleet go forth and burn the world; wind would not be wanting to the sails, nor fire to the artillery, for his breast, he said, would supply the one, and his sorrow the other. Such was his ardour and such his sighs.

Twelve of the largest vessels, according to the favourite Spanish custom, were named after the twelve apostles. Lope's brother had a commission in the galleon San Juan, and he embarked on board the same vessel. In accordance with the crusading spirit of the expedition, all persons sailing in it were called upon to be duly shriven, and receive the sacrament with humility and repentance; and the general order went on to forbid all blasphemy against God, our Lady, and the saints; all gambling, all quarrels, all duels. Lope felt the enthusiasm of such an hour, and of such a character: a soldier of God going to relieve many contrite spirits oppressed by heretics,--a patriot about to avenge the disasters brought on his country by her enemies.

Lope gives an animated description of the setting forth of the Armada,--its drums and clarions, its gay pendants, the ploughing up of the waves by the keels, and the gathering together of the busy crews.[92] Of himself, he says that Aristotle slept, with matter, forms, causes, and accidents; but he was not idle; and in another work, he mentions that in this expedition, in which, for a few years, he followed the career of arms, "my inclination prompted me to use my pen, and the general finished his enterprise when I did mine; for there, on the waters upon the deck of the San Juan, beneath the banners of the Catholic king, I wrote, 'The Beauty of Angelica.'" Thus, amidst storms and disasters, when his brother died in his arms, struck by a ball in a skirmish with the Dutch at the very commencement of the expedition; while the ships around them were a prey to winds, and waves, and the enemy; and the fury of the violent tempests spread destruction around, Lope wrapped himself in his imagination, and beguiled his sorrows and anxieties by the pleasures of composition. "The Beauty of Angelica" is a continuation of Ariosto's poem. The Italian leaves the heroine on her road to Cathay, and Lope brings them to Spain. His tale is unconnected. Carried away by Spanish diffuseness, he frames neither plot nor story, but rambles on as his fancy leads. It opens with the marriage of Lido, a king of Andalusia with Clorinarda, a daughter of the king of Fez, who, meanwhile, loves Cardiloro, a son of Mandricardo and Doralice; a pair familiar to all the readers of Ariosto. The unhappy bride dies of grief, and her husband follows her to the tomb, leaving his kingdom to the most beautiful, be that either man or woman. The judges sit in judgment, and give their stupid opinions, on which Lope exclaims--

"O dotards! through your spectacles who pry, And ask the measure of a lovely face; Measure the influence of a woman's eye, And ye may then I ween compute the space; That intervenes between the earth and sky."[93]

Many candidates arrive,--the old and ugly and decrepit, leaving their homes, and braving every danger,--to claim the reward of beauty. Among them, but surpassing all in charms, Angelica and Medoro appear. Angelica is described with the greatest minuteness,--brow, eyes, nose, ears, and teeth are all depicted. But more beautiful than this sort of Mosaic portraiture are the verses that portray her companion.

"Scarce twenty years had seen the lovely boy, As ringlet locks and yellow down proclaim; Fair was his height, and grave to gazers seemed Those eyes, which where they turned with love and softness beamed."

The judges decide in favour of Angelica, and she and her husband are crowned. But their beauty gives rise to many a passion in the bosoms of others; and various are the incidents, brought about by enchantments and other means, which for a time disunite the beautiful pair, who, at last, discover their mistakes, and the poem ends with their happiness. This work possesses little merit, except here and there in short passages; but it is a singular specimen of Lope's power of composition, amidst circumstances so foreign to the subject in hand.

[Sidenote: 1590. Ætat. 28.]

On his return from the Armada, he quitted the career of arms, and entered the service, first, of the marquis de Malpica, and soon after of the count of Lemos, leaving him only on occasion of his second marriage to donna Juana de Guardio, a lady of Madrid, of whom he thus speaks:--

"Who could have thought that I should find a wife, When from that war I reached my native shore, Sweet for the love which ruled her life, Dear for the sorrows which she bore? Such love which could endure through cold and hot, Could only have been mine or Jacob's lot."[94]

The sorrows to which Lope alludes, we conjecture to have arisen from straitened means. He brought out a vast quantity of plays at this time, and received no scanty remuneration; still he was not risen to the zenith of his fame, when on every side he received donations and pensions. He was extravagant we know, and prodigality might easily produce a gap between his expenses and his chance receipts as an author. This view is strengthened by his dedication of his play "El Verdadero Amante," The True Lover, to his little son Carlos. This was not published till 1620, but must have been written long previous, as Carlos died before (how long, we know not) 1609, and is dedicated to him _while he was learning the rudiments of the Latin language._ He bids him follow his studies without impeding them with poetry, because he who had addicted himself to it was ill rewarded. He continues--"I possess only, as you know, a poor house, with table and establishment in proportion, and a small garden, whose flowers divert my cares and inspire me with ideas. I have written 900 plays, and twelve volumes on various subjects in prose and verse, so that the printed will never equal in quantity the unprinted; and I have acquired enemies, critics, quarrels, envy, reprehension, and cares; having lost precious time, and arrived nearly at old age without leaving you any thing but this useless advice." Notwithstanding this repining. Lord Holland is probably right in supposing that the years of Lope's second marriage were the happiest of his life, though, perhaps, he felt at the commencement some pecuniary embarrassments. Through life he was extravagant, and on first setting out as an author might easily be in debt; yet, as he rose in fame his fortunes mended, and affection and content enshrined the family circle.

The period of his domestic happiness did not last long. At six years old, his little son died; his wife soon followed her child to the tomb, and Lope was left with two daughters.[95] From his own pen we give an account of his wedded happiness, and his grief when his home again became desolate. In the Eclogue to Claudio, he says:--

"I saw a group my board surround, And sure to me, though poorly spread, 'T was rich with such fair objects crowned-- Dear bitter presents of my bed! I saw them pay their tribute to the tomb, And scenes so cheerful change to mourning and to gloom."

In addition to this affecting picture, he makes frequent mention of these circumstances in his epistles, and we subjoin extracts, which we are sure must interest the reader.

One of these epistles is addressed to doctor Mathias de Porras, who had been appointed corregidor of the province of Canta in Peru. These epistles are in verse; but as their length is great, the abstract made from them might as well be in prose:--

Since you left me, Señor Doctor, and without dying went to the other world, I have passed my life in melancholy solitude; the evils of my lot increasing in proportion to the blessings of which you saw me deprived. Did not my new office (of priest) give me breath, the prop of my years would fall to the ground. O vain hopes! How strange are the roads that life passes through, as each day we acquire new delusions!" He then goes on to speak of his early loves and sorrows, and of the power of beauty, and continues, "But the vicissitudes of a life of passion were then over, and my heart was liberated from its importuning annoyances, when each morning I saw the dear and sincere face of my sweet wife at my side, and when Carlos--his cheeks all lilies and roses--won my soul by his charming prattle. The boy gambolled about me as a young lamb in a meadow at the morning hour. The half-formed words of his little tongue were sentences for us, interpreted by our kisses. I gave thanks to Eternal Wisdom, and content with such mornings after such dark nights, I sometimes wept my vain hopes, and believed myself secure--not of life--but of reserving this felicity. I then went to write a few lines, having consulted my books. They called me to eat, but I often bade them leave me, such was the attraction of study. Then bright as flowers and pearls, Carlos entered to call me, and gave light to my eyes and embraces to my heart. Sometimes he took me by the hand, and drew me to the table beside his mother. There, doctor, without pomp, an honest and liberal mediocrity gave us sufficing sustenance. But fierce Death deprived me of this ease, this cure, this hope. I lived no longer to behold that dear society which I imagined mine for ever. Then I disposed my mind for the priesthood, that asylum might shelter and guard me. The Muses were idle for a time, and I refrained from all things worldly, and humbly attained the sacred stole."

Another epistle is written under the feigned name of Belardo, the appellation he had assumed in his "Arcadia," to Amaryllis.[96] In this he gives a sketch of portions of his life. He speaks of his early turn for poetry and his predilection for study, and continues:--"Love, and love ever speaks false, bade me incline to follow him. What then befell me I now feel; but as I loved a beauty never to be mine, I had recourse to study, and thus the poet destroyed the love that destroyed him. Favoured by my stars, I learned several languages, and enriched my own by the knowledge I gained through them. Twice I married; from which you may gather that I was happy--for no one tries twice a painful thing. I had a son whom my soul lived in. You will know by my elegy that this light of my eyes was called Carlos. Six times did the sun retrocede, equalling day and night, counting thus the time of his birth, when this my sun lost its light. Then expired life that was the life of Jacinta. How much better it had been that I had died, than that Carlos in his very morning should encounter so long a night! Lope remained, if it be Lope who now lives. Marcella at fifteen obliged me to offer her to God, although, and you may believe me, though a father's love might be supposed blind, she was neither foolish nor ugly. Feliciana showed me in her words and eyes the image of her lost mother, who died in giving her birth. Her virtues enforce tears, and time does not cure my sorrow. I left the gaieties of secular life; I was ordained. Such is my life; and my desires aspire to a good end only, without extravagant pretensions."

In his epistle to don Francisco de Herrera he enlarges on the vocation of Marcella. "Marcella," he says, "the first care of my heart, thought of marrying, and one evening she spoke freely to me of her betrothed. I, seeing that it was prudent to examine her wish, since accident might have swayed it, grew attentive; at the same time that I desired to avoid shaking her intention if it were founded in the truth of her heart. But her anxiety increasing each day, I resolved to give her the husband to whom she aspired with so much love." He then explains the Son of God to be her bridegroom--vows of chastity her nuptial benediction. He describes the whole ceremony of her taking the veil. The marchioness de la Tela was her godmother; the duke of Sesa and many other nobles being present. Hortensio preached the sermon. "She asked me," he says, "leave to conclude the marriage, and she whom I had loved, and whose lovely person I had adorned more like a lover than a father, in gold and silk--like a rose that fades and falls to pieces at the close of day, losing the pomp of her crimson leaves--now sleeps upon rough straw, and barefoot and ill clad sits at a poor table."

The dates of the various events of Lope's life are very uncertain, and none more so than that of his second marriage. He mentions it as happening soon after his return from the expedition to England. Yet he speaks of taking orders soon after his wife's death, and he took orders 1609. The term of his second marriage, however, endured only for eight years. It would therefore appear that several years elapsed after his return to Madrid before he married a second time. As diligent a researcher as M. Viardôt in old parish books and official documents, would clear up this obscurity. As it is, we can only give the facts, as we find them stated, obscurely.

The effect of his bereaved condition was, as has been mentioned, to induce him to take vows, and be ordained. He prepared himself, by retiring from gay society, assumed a priestly dress, served in hospitals, and performed many acts of charity; and finally, visiting Toledo, took orders, and said his first mass in a Carmelite church. He entered a fraternity of priests dedicated to the performance of good works and the assistance of the poor, and fulfilled his duties zealously, so that he became named head chaplain, and was as generous as conscientious in the exercise of his office. To his other sacred employments he added that of being a familiar of the inquisition. His piety, which was catholic and excessive, led to this; but it is a painful circumstance, in our times especially, when we are told that he presided over the procession of the confraternity of familiars of the holy office, on the occasion of an _auto da fé_, when a relapsed Lutheran was burned alive. We feel sure that Cervantes would never have been led to a similar act.

Meanwhile his reputation as an author was rising to that height which it afterwards reached. In 1598, the canonisation of St. Isidro, a native of Madrid, was the occasion of prizes being given to the authors of verses written in his honour. Each style of poetry gained its reward, but above one could not be gained by the same person. Lope succeeded in the hymns; but he had tried in all. He wrote a poem of ten cantos in short verse, numberless sonnets and ballads, and two comedies. These were published under the feigned name of Tomé de Burguillos, and are among the best of Lope's compositions. Already his dramas were in vogue, and the public were astonished by their number and excellence. In this year also he published the "Arcadia," written long before. Afterwards he published others of his younger productions; for it is singular that he printed nothing while a very young man, and that he had established his reputation by his plays before he deluged the world with his lyric and epic poetry. The "Hermosura de Angelica" did not see light till 1604; and thus was it with many other of his productions, which he wrote probably at Valencia during his exile, and which when he found profit by so doing, he bestowed on the public.

The reputation he attained awakened the enmity of rivals and critics. When Cervantes published "Don Quixote," in 1605, Lope was risen high in popular estimation; he was generally applauded--almost adored. The abundance and facility of his verses, and the amiableness of his character, were in part the occasion of this; but the eminent cause was his theatre, which we delay considering, not too much to interrupt the thread of his history, but whose originality, novelty, vivacity, and adaptation to the Spanish taste, secured unparalleled success. Cervantes did not feel the merits of his innovations, and he considered himself also the unacknowledged originator of many of the improvements attributed to Lope. We have seen in what Cervantes's dramatic pretensions consisted--high wrought and impassioned scenes connected, not by the intricacies of a methodical plot, but by the simple texture of their causes and effects, such as we find in life itself. He felt that he had written well; he was unwilling to acknowledge that Lope wrote better, nor did he, as a master of the human heart, and as presenting more affecting situations; but he did, as comprehending and representing more to the life the manners and feelings of his day. Cervantes easily perceived the faults of his rival; he discovered his incongruities, and noted the vanity or cupidity which made him more abundant than correct, and the currying to the depraved taste of the times, through a desire of popularity. In short, Lope was not perfect, but he had something that while he lived stood in the stead of perfection--he hit the public taste; he supplied it with ever fresh and ever delightful food; he pleased, he interested, he fascinated. To act posterity, and judge coolly of his works, was an invidious task; and though it was natural that a man so profound and sagacious as Cervantes should be impelled so to do, yet, by attacking him and proving him in the wrong, he could not weaken his influence, while he made an enemy. There is a sonnet against Lope attributed to him, of which the point is not acute; but it displays contempt for his pastorals and epics, and sarcastically alludes to his superabundant fertility. However, it is more than probable that Cervantes did not write this sonnet; for he wrote in praise of Lope in other works, and it was unlike the noble disposition of that single-hearted and excellent man to have contradicted himself. Still less likely is it that Lope wrote the answer. It is vulgarly abusive and ridiculously assuming: he calls Cervantes the horse to Lope's carriage; bids him do Lope honour, or evil will betide him; and sums up by saying that "Don Quixote" went about the world in wrappers to parcels of spices. It looks more like the spurt of an over-zealous disciple than of a man of Lope's judgment and character.[97]

His war with Gongora was of a more grave description, and we defer farther mention of it till in the life of Gongora we give some account of his poetic system.

Meanwhile Lope rose higher and higher in the estimation of the public. There is scarcely an example on record of similar popularity. Grandees, nobles, ministers, prelates, scholars--all solicited his acquaintance. Men came from distant lands to see him; women stood at their balconies as he passed, to behold and applaud him. On all sides he received presents; and we are even told that when he made a purchase, if he were recognised, the seller refused payment. His name passed into a proverb; it became a synonyme for the superlative degree,--a Lope diamond, a Lope dinner, a Lope woman, a Lope dress, was the expression used to express perfection in its kind. All this might well compensate for attacks; yet as these were founded in truth, and he must sometimes have dreaded a reaction of popularity, he felt at times nettled and uneasy. [Sidenote: 1616. Ætat. 54.] His part was, however, warmly taken by his adherents. Their intolerance was such that they gravely asserted that the author of the "Spongia," who had severely censured his works and accused him of ignorance of the Latin language, deserved death for his heresy.[98]

His works were more numerous than can be imagined. Each year he gave some new poem to the press; each month, and sometimes every week, he brought out a play; and these at least were of recent composition, though the former consisted frequently in the productions of his early years, corrected and finished. He tried every species of writing, and became celebrated in all. His hymns and sacred poems secured him the respect of the clergy, and showed his zeal in the profession he had embraced. When Philip IV. came to the crown, he immediately heaped new honours on Lope; for Philip was a patron of the stage; and several plays of considerable-merit, published as written "By a Wit of the Court" (Por un Ingenio de esta Corte), are ascribed to him. [Sidenote: 1621. Ætat. 59.] Lope published at this time his novels, imitated from Cervantes--whom he graciously acknowledges to have displayed some grace and ease of style, and whom he by no means succeeds in rivalling--and several poems--which that they were ever read is a sort of miracle; and the Lope mania must have been vehement indeed that could gift readers with patience for his diffuseness.

Still the taste was genuine, (though it seems to us perverted), as is proved by a rather dangerous experiment which he made. He published a poem without his name, for the sake of trying the public taste. It succeeded; and the favour with which his unacknowledged "Soliloquies on God," were received must have inspired him with great reliance on his own powers. The death of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots at this time spread a very general sensation of pity for her and hatred for her rival through Spain. Lope made it the subject of a poem, which he called the Corona Tragica, which he dedicated to pope Urban VIII.; who thanked him by a letter written in his own hand, and by the degree of doctor of theology. This was the period of his greatest glory. Cardinal Barberini followed him in the streets; the king stopped to look at him as he passed; and crowds gathered round him whenever he appeared.

The quantity of his writings is incredible. It is calculated that he printed one million three hundred thousand lines, and this, he says, is a small part of what he wrote.

"The printed part, though far too large, is less Than that which yet unprinted still remains."[99]

Among these it is asserted that 1800 plays and 400 sacramental dramas have been printed. This account long passed as true. Lord Holland detected its fallacy; and the author of the article in the Quarterly follows up his calculations, and proves the absurdity of the account. He himself says, in the preface to the "Arte de Hacer Comedias," that he had brought out 483. There are extant 497. Some may be lost certainly, but not so many as this computation would assume. Many of his pieces for the theatre, indeed, consist of loas and entremeses, small pieces in single acts, which may have been taken in to make up this number, but which do not deserve to rank among plays.

With regard to the number of verses he wrote there is also exaggeration. He says he often wrote five sheets a day; and the most extravagant calculations have been made on this, as if he had written at this rate from the day of his birth, till a month or two after his death. It is evident, however, that the period when he wrote five sheets a day, and a play in the twenty-four hours, was limited to a few years. With all this he is doubtless, even in prolific Spain, the most prolific of writers, and the most facile. Montalvan tells us, that when he was at Toledo, he wrote fifteen acts in fifteen days, making five plays in a fortnight; and he adds an anecdote that fell under his own experience. Roque de Figueroa, a writer for the theatre of Madrid, found himself on an occasion without any new play, and the doors of his theatre were obliged to be shut--a circumstance which shows the vast appetite for novelty that had arisen, and the cause wherefore Lope was induced to write so much, since the public rather desired what was new than what was good. But to return to Montalvan's story. Being carnival, Figueroa was eager to open his theatre, and Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a play together; and they brought out the "Tercera Orden de San Francisco," dividing the labour. Lope took the first act and Montalvan the second, which they completed in two days; and the third they partitioned between them, eight pages for each; and as the weather was bad, Montalvan remained all night in Lope's house. The scholar finding that he could not equal his master in readiness, wished to surpass him by force of industry, and rising at two in the morning, finished his part by eleven. He then went to seek Lope, and found him in the garden, occupied by an orange-tree, which had been frost-bitten in the night. Montalvan asked how his verses speeded? Lope replied, "I began to write at five, and finished the act an hour ago. I breakfasted on some rashers of bacon, and wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and having watered ray garden, I am not a little tired." On this he read his act and his triplets, to the wonder and admiration of his hearer.

He gained considerable profit by his writings. The presents made him by various nobles amounted to a large sum. His plays and autos, and his various publications, brought him vast receipts. He had received a dowry with each wife. The king bestowed several pensions and chaplaincies. The pope gifted him with various preferments. With all this he was not rich; his absolute income apparently amounted to only 1500 ducats, and profuse charities and prodigal generosity emptied his purse as fast as it was filled. He spent much on church festivals; he was hospitable to his friends, extravagant in his purchase of books and pictures, and munificent in his charities, so that when he died he left little behind him. We cannot censure this disposition; indeed it is inherent in property gained as Lope gained it, to be lost as soon as won; for being received irregularly, it superinduces irregular habits of expense. That Lope, the observed of all, he to whom nature and fortune had been so prodigal, should have been grasping and avaricious would have grated on our feelings. We hear of his profusion with pleasure: the well-watered soil, if generous in its nature, gives forth abundant vegetation; the receiver of so much showed the nobility of his mind in freely imparting to others the wealth so liberally bestowed on him.

In his epistles and other poems, Lope gives very pleasing pictures of the tranquillity of his life as he advanced in age. Addressing don Fray Placido de Tosantos, he says: "I write you these verses, from where no annoyance troubles me. My little garden inspires fancies drawn from fruits and flowers, and the contemplation of natural objects." In the epistle before quoted to Amaryllis, he says, "My books are my life, and humble content my actions--unenvious of the riches of others. The confusion sometimes annoys me; but, though I live in Madrid, I am farther from the court than if I were in Muscovy or Numidia. Sometimes I look upon myself as a dwarf, sometimes as a giant, and I regard both views with indifference; and am neither sad when I lose, nor joyful when I gain. The man who governs himself well, despises the praise or blame of this short though vile captivity. I esteem the sincere and pure friendship of those who are virtuous and wise; for without virtue, no friendship is secure; and if sometimes my lips complain of ingratitude, this is no crime." To Francisco de Rioja he writes: "My garden is small; it contains a few trees, and more flowers, a trained vine, an orange tree, and a rose hush. Two young nightingales dwell in it, and two buckets of water form a fountain, playing among stones and coloured shells." "My hopes are fallen," he says in another place, "and my fortune shuts herself up with me in a nook, filled with books and flowers, and is neither favourable nor inimical to me." In the "Huerto Deshecho," or Destroyed Garden, he gives further testimony of his love for his garden, which had just been laid waste by a tempest. He thus addresses his fair retreat:--

"Dear solace of my weary sorrow, Unhappy garden, thou who slept, Foreseeing not the stormy morrow, The while the tears that night had wept, Morning drank up, and all the flowers awoke, And I the pen that told my thoughts up took."

and he goes on bitterly to grieve over the desolation the storm had made.

If there is a touch of melancholy, and a half-checked repining in any of these quotations, I do not see that he is to be reprehended. Covered with renown and gifted with riches--it is said, who can be happy, if Lope de Vega were not? But we must remember that neither wealth nor fame are in themselves happiness. Lope had through death lost the dearest objects of life; in a spirit of piety he had shut himself out from forming others. His heart was the source of his disquiet--but he had recourse to natural objects for its cure, and often found repose among them. That his disposition was amiable and his temper placid, there is ample proof. He says of himself, "I naturally love those who love me, and I cannot hate those who hate me:" and we may believe him: for this is a virtue a man never boasts of without possessing it; to a nature formed to hate and to revenge, hatred and revenge seem natural and noble. That he was vain is evident: his sort of character, vivacious, kindly and expansive, tends to vanity. He would have been more than man not to have been vain, flattered as he was. Lord Holland mentions his complaints of poverty, obscurity, and neglect, in the preface to the "Peregrino," but they do not amount to much. He certainly writes in a very ill temper, nettled, it would appear, by some plays having appeared with his name, which were not written by him. There is more of complaint in his poem of the "Huerto Deshecho," one of the most elegant and pleasing of his poems. Alluding to his love of study, he says, "Though that be a work of praise, it was but the fatal prelude of the unhappy result of my hopes, since, in conclusion, my verses were given to the winds. Strong philosophy, and retired, but contented old age animate me on my way. If I do not sing, it is enough that others sing what I deplore--devouring time destroys towers of vanity and mountains of gold; one only thing, divine grace, suffers no change."

It is strange, indeed, that he should say that he had given his verses to the winds--but he says himself,

"No he visto alegre de su bien ninguno--" I ne'er saw man content with what he had.

Thus he passed many years, living according to the dictates of his conscience, with moderation and virtue; unmindful of life, but deeply mindful of death, so that he was ever prepared to meet it. His piety indeed was tinged with superstition; but he was a catholic and a Spaniard, and dwelt fervently on the means of satisfying the justice of God in this world, so as to secure a greater stock of happiness in the next. Charitable he was to prodigality; and as he grew old he used his pen on religious subjects only, repenting somewhat of his labours for the stage.

[Sidenote: 1635. Ætat. 73.]

His health was good, till, within a very short time before he died, he fell into a state of hypochondria, which clouded the close of his existence.[100] His friend, Alonzo Perez de Montalvan, seeing him thus melancholy, asked him to dine with him and a relation, on the day of Transfiguration, which was the 6th of August. After dinner, as all three were conversing on several subjects, he said, that such was the depression of spirits by which he was afflicted that his heart failed him in his body, and that he prayed God to ease him by shortening his life. On which, Juan Perez de Montalvan (his biographer, friend, and pupil) remarked, "Do not feel thus, I trust in God and in your healthy looks, that this indisposition will pass away, and that we shall see you again in the health you enjoyed twenty years ago." To which Lope replied with some emotion, "Ah, doctor, would to God, I were well over it!"

His presentiments were verified: Lope was soon to die; this his feelings foretold, and so prepared him for the event. On the 18th of the same month he rose very early, recited the divine service, said mass in his oratory, watered his garden, and then shut himself up in his study. At mid-day he felt chilled, either from his work among his flowers, or from having, as his servants averred, used the discipline on himself with severity, as was proved by the recent marks of blood being found on the discipline, and staining the walls of the room. Lope was indeed a rigid catholic, as this circumstance proves, and also his refusing to eat any thing but fish, though he had a dispensation to eat meat, and it was ordered him during his indisposition. In the evening he attended a scientific meeting, but being suddenly taken ill, he was obliged to return home. The physicians now gathered round with their prescriptions; and it happened that doctor Juan de Negrete, the king's physician, passed through the street, and he was told that Lope de Vega was indisposed, on which he visited him, not as a doctor, as he had not been called in, but as a friend. He soon perceived his danger, and intimated that it were better that he should take the sacrament, with the usual excuse, that it was a relief to any one in danger, and could only benefit him if he lived. "If you advise this," said Lope "there must be a necessity;" and that same night he received the sacrament. Extreme unction followed but two hours after. He then called for his daughter, and blessed her, and took leave of his friends as one about to make so long a journey; conversing concerning the interests of those left behind, with kindness and piety. He told Montalvan, that virtue was true fame, and that he would exchange all the applause he had received, for the consciousness of having fulfilled one more virtuous deed; and followed up these counsels with prayers and acts of catholic piety. He passed the night uneasily, and expired the next day, weak and worn, but alive to a sense of religion and friendship to the last.

His funeral took place the third day after his death, and was conducted with splendour by the duke of Sesa, the most munificent of his patrons, whom he had named his executor. Don Luis de Usategui, his son-in-law, and a nephew, went as mourners, accompanied by the duke of Sesa and many other grandees and nobles. The clergy of all classes flocked in crowds. The procession attracted a multitude; the windows and balconies were thronged, and the magnificence was such, that a woman going by, exclaimed, "This is a Lope funeral!" ignorant that it was the funeral of Lope himself, and so applying his name as expressive of the excess of all that was splendid. The church was filled with lamentation when at last he was deposited in the tomb. For eight days the religious ceremonies were kept up, and on the ninth, a sermon was preached in his honour, when the church was again crowded with the first people of Spain.

By his will, his daughter, donna Feliciana de Vega, married to don Luis de Usategui, inherited the moderate fortune he left behind. He added in his will a few legacies of pictures, books, and reliques to his friends.

In person Lope de Vega was tall, thin, and well made; dark complexioned, and of a prepossessing countenance; his nose aquiline; his eyes lively and clear; his beard black and thick. He had acquired much agility, and was capable of great personal exertion. He always enjoyed excellent health, being moderate in his tastes, and regular in his habits.

To gather Lope's character from the events of his life, and his accounts of himself, it may be assumed that while young his disposition had all the vivacity of the south--that his passions were ardent, his feelings enthusiastic--that he was heedless and imprudent perhaps, but always amiable and true. Generous to prodigality--pious to bigotry--patriotic to injustice, he was given to extremes, yet he did not possess the higher qualities, the cheerful fortitude, and fearless temper of Cervantes. Time and sorrow softened in after times some portions of his character; but still in his garden, among his flowers and books, he was vivacious, perhaps petulant (for his complaints of neglect are to be attributed to petulancy rather than to a repining temper); warm-hearted, charitable and social, vain he might also be, for that we all are. The activity of his mind resembled more a spontaneous fertility of soil, than the exertion of labour: "plays and poetry were the flowers of his plain," as he says: and this seems an unexaggerated picture of the ease with which he composed. We need scarcely allude to the hypochondria that darkened his last hours, as Montalvan seems to mention it as a mere precursor of death. If it were more, it is only another proof that the mind must not work too hard, while it has this fragile body for its instrument and prop.

In drawing up Lope's character, Montalvan[101] praises him as agreeable and unpresuming in conversation. He was zealous in the affairs of others, careless of his own; kind to his servants, courteous, gallant and hospitable, and exceedingly well bred. His temper, he says, was never ruffled but by those who took snuff before company; with the grey who dyed their locks; with men who, born of women, spoke ill of the sex; with priests who believed in gipsies; and with persons who without intentions of marriage asked others their age. Good taste as well as good feeling is displayed in most of these slight intimations of character: it is to be cleanly to dislike to see snuff taken; it is being unusually just always to speak well of women.

As no writer ever surpassed him in quantity, so it will be impossible to give a full account of his works. We have already mentioned several:--His "Arcadia," the production of his youth, which may be considered the best of such of his writings as are not dramas;--"The Beauty of Angelica," is chiefly remarkable as showing how superior the Italian romantic poets are to any that Spain has produced. The "Dragontea" is another poem of which Sir Francis Drake is the hero, and the poet has not been sparing of vituperation. It is founded on the last expedition of Drake, when, to revenge the armada, and to inflict a deep blow on the Spanish power, injured by the destruction of its fleet, he scoured the Spanish coast, and did immense injury to the shipping. The poem of Lope is very patriotic; the hatred felt in Spain for the English queen was furious and personal; the marriage of Philip II. with bloody queen Mary, having caused much intercourse between the two nations, and the accession of Elizabeth being the signal of our island again falling off from the Roman Catholic faith; all therefore that could be imagined of horror for her heresy and wickedness, and that of her ministers, animated the soul, and directed the pen of Lope.

The "Jerusalem" was his next attempt at an epic; of this Richard Cœur de Lion is the hero, though the English of course are rendered subordinate to the Spaniards. We have not read it. Lord Holland pronounces it a failure; and the critic of the Quarterly observes, "A failure indeed it is, and a total one; the plan, when compared to that of the 'Angelica' is as 'confusion worse confounded,'--it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; neither method, nor purpose, nor proportion; and many of the parts might be extirpated, or, what is more extraordinary, might change places without any injury to the whole. But there is more vigour of thought in it, and more felicity of expression than in any other of his longer poems." And thus Spaniards alone write; with them a poem resembles a pathless jungle: you come to a magnificent tree, a wild and balmy breathing flower, a mossy pathway, and clear bubbling fountain; and beside these objects you linger a moment, but soon you plunge again among tangled underwood and uncultivated interminable wilds. When Lope takes a subject in hand he does not follow it up as a traveller who has a bourne in view; but he scrambles up every mountain, visits every waterfall, and plunges into every cavern; and like a tourist without a guide in an unknown country, he often loses his way, and often leads his reader a wild chase after objects, which, when reached, were not worth visiting.

This prodigality of verse, which caused him to be named the Potosi of rhymes, was indulged in to the utmost, when, on the canonisation of St. Isidro, he entered into the lists to win the prize instituted for poems in celebration of the event. Isidro had been elevated into a saint at the solicitation of Philip III., who had been cured of a fever by the body of the defunct miracle-maker being brought to him. Every Spanish poet of the age, and they were all but innumerable, entered the lists. There are two volumes of Lope's productions, some in his own name, consisting of a sort of epic, composed in quintillas, or stanzas of five short lines each, a measure more suited to the genius of the Spanish language than longer ones; and a play, and a vast quantity of lyrics given under the name of Burguillos. These were all burlesque; but subsequently Lope continued to adopt the name, and published several poems under it, among others, the "Gatomaquia, or War of Cats," a mock heroic, which is a great favourite in Spain. The "Corona Tragica," a poem written on the death of Mary, queen of Scots, brought him an increase of reputation: it is bigoted to the excess of blind Spanish inquisitorial bigotry, and, except in a few passages, does not rise above mediocrity. It is impossible to give even a cursory account of Lope's lyrics and sacred poems. The best of the former are to be found in the "Arcadia" and the "Dorotea."

But it is not on any of these productions that the reputation of Lope really rests. That was founded on his theatre, and on that it must continue to subsist. There he showed himself master of his art: original, fecund, national, universal, true and spirited, he produced a form of dramatic writing that, to this day, rules the stage of every country of the world.

It was with considerable difficulty that the theatre established itself at all in Spain, the church setting itself against theatrical representations. This prejudice has continued even to modern days. No Spanish monarch since Philip IV. has entered a theatre; and Philip V., when he found in Farinelli the solace of his painful distemper, not only never heard him in a theatre, but caused him to give up the public stage, when he was admitted to sing privately before him. In the early day of which we are writing, the clerical outcry was furious, and the drama only became tolerated by making over the theatres to two religious corporations, one a hospital, and the other of flagellants; and the wickedness of the stage was permitted[102] for the sake of the benefits to charity and religion to result therefrom. The sites of the theatres then consisted of two open court yards, _corrales_--corral is the Spanish term for farmyard, or any enclosure for cattle, and long continued to be synonymous with a theatre. The representations took place at first in the open air. Alberto Gavasa, an Italian, who brought over a company of buffoons, was enabled by the greatness of his success to cover his corral with an awning, the court yard itself was paved and provided with movable benches, and called the _patio_, or pit, which no women ever entered. The grandees sat looking out of the windows of the houses that looked into the court yard, which government appropriated and distributed on this occasion. A prince or very great man having a room allotted to him, and minor gentlemen a single window, and this primitive arrangement was we are told the origin of our boxes. In addition, there were several galleries, into some of which women only were admitted. It was called the _cazuela_, and open to all classes.

Yet even this pious dedication of the proceeds of the theatre did not silence the clergy. In 1600, Philip III. ordered the subject to be referred to a junta of theologians. This council established certain conditions on which the performances were to be tolerated, the principal being that women were not to act, nor to mingle with the audience. It was at this time, and with this licence that Lope's career was run. He alone furnished all Spain with plays; and so great a favourite was he, that none but his were received with any approbation. On the accession of Philip IV., a man of pleasure, the theatre was more frequented than ever. Yet still, it maybe observed, the clergy nourished a prejudice against it, censured Lope for being the occasion of much sin, and caused him on his death bed to express his regret at having written for the stage, and to promise that if he recovered he would do so no more.

Cervantes boasts of the improvements he occasioned in theatrical representations. Still his plays, though they have great merit from the passion and poetry they display, are inartificial in their construction, while Lope on the contrary, became popular from the admirable nature of his plots. His dramas are praised by a Spanish critic for "the purity and sweetness of his language, for the vivacity of his dialogue, for the propriety of many of the characters, for his invention, his exact description of national manners, for his serious passages, his merriment and his wit." There is often something barbaric in his carelessness of time and place, and also in the hinging on of his incidents: still the plot was preserved carefully throughout, and the catastrophe showed the intention of the author to have been always in his mind, even when he most seemed to swerve from it. The number of plays that Lope wrote has been alluded to, and is really astonishing: there is something of sameness, perhaps, at the bottom of all, but this is joined to prodigious variety and novelty within the circle by which his invention is circumscribed. He says himself--

"Should I the titles now relate Of plays my endless labour bore, Well might you doubt, the list so great, Such reams of paper scribbled o'er; Plots, imitations, scenes, and all the rest, To verse reduced, in flowers of rhetoric drest.

The number of my fables told Would seem the greatest of them all; For strange, of dramas you behold Full fifteen hundred mine I call, And full an hundred times--within a day, Passed from my muse, upon the stage, a play."

And so entirely did he possess the ear and favour of the audience, that many a play of which he was innocent was brought out under his name, and thus obtained applause.

The causes of his success are easily discovered. The Spaniards had hitherto wanted a national literature. Their poetry and their pastorals did not express the heroism, the bigotry, the tenacious honour and violent prejudices that formed their character. Their ballads did, and so did the romances of chivalry; but the latter had become mere imitations, and while they echoed some of the sentiments they entertained, did not mirror their manners. It was like a new creation when the poetic genius of Spain embodied itself in the drama, and under the guise of tragedy and comedy, each romantic, made visible to an audience the ideal of their prejudices and passions, their virtues and vices; and these, in connection with a story that engaged their interest and warmed their hearts with sympathy.

The plays of Lope were either romantic tragedies, or plays of la Capa y Espada, of the sword and cloak, sometimes tragic and sometimes comic, but which were founded on the manners of the day. Of course there is a great deal of killing and slaying, but none of the horrors that startle the reader of Titus Andronicus, and other English tragedies of that period.