Chapter XXVII

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE POEMS.--SEMPERE.--ÇAPATA.--AYLLON.--SANZ.-- FERNANDEZ.--ESPINOSA.--COLOMA.--ERCILLA AND HIS ARAUCANA, WITH OSORIO’S CONTINUATION.--OÑA.--GABRIEL LASSO DE LA VEGA.--SAAVEDRA.--CASTELLANOS.-- CENTENERA.--VILLAGRA.--RELIGIOUS NARRATIVE POEMS.--BLASCO.--MATA.--VIRUES AND HIS MONSERRATE.--BRAVO.--VALDIVIELSO.--HOJEDA.--DIAZ AND OTHERS.-- IMAGINATIVE NARRATIVE POEMS.--ESPINOSA AND OTHERS.--BARAHONA DE SOTO.-- BALBUENA AND HIS BERNARDO.

Epic poetry, from its general dignity and pretensions, is almost uniformly placed at the head of the different divisions of a nation’s literature. But in Spain, though the series of efforts in that direction begins early and boldly, and has been continued with diligence down to our own times, little has been achieved that is worthy of memory. The Poem of the Cid is, indeed, the oldest attempt at narrative poetry in the languages of modern Europe that deserves the name; and, composed, as it must have been, above a century before the appearance of Dante and two centuries before the time of Chaucer, it is to be regarded as one of the most remarkable outbreaks of poetical and national enthusiasm on record. But the few similar attempts that were made at long intervals in the periods immediately subsequent, like those we witness in “The Chronicle of Fernan Gonzalez,” in “The Life of Alexander,” and in “The Labyrinth” of Juan de Mena, deserve to be mentioned chiefly in order to mark the progress of Spanish culture during the lapse of three centuries. No one of them showed the power of the old half-epic Poem of the Cid.

At last, when we reach the reign of Charles the Fifth, or rather, when we come to the immediate results of that reign, it seems as if the national genius had been inspired with a poetical ambition no less extravagant than the ambition for military glory which their foreign successes had stirred up in the masters of the state. The poets of the time, or those who regarded themselves as such, evidently imagined that to them was assigned the task of worthily celebrating the achievements, in the Old World and in the New, which had really raised their country to the first place among the powers of Europe, and which it was then thought not presumptuous to hope would lay the foundation for a universal monarchy.

In the reign of Philip the Second, therefore, we have an extraordinary number of epic and narrative poems,--in all above twenty,--full of the feelings which then animated the nation, and devoted to subjects connected with Spanish glory, both ancient and recent,--poems in which their authors endeavoured to imitate the great Italian epics, already at the height of their reputation, and fondly believed they had succeeded. But the works they thus produced, with hardly more than a single exception, belong rather to patriotism than to poetry; the best of them being so closely confined to matters of fact, that they come with nearly equal pretensions into the province of history, while the rest fall into a dull, chronicling style, which makes it of little consequence under what class they may chance to be arranged.

The first of these historical epics is the “Carolea” of Hierónimo Sempere, published in 1560, and devoted to the victories and glories of Charles the Fifth, whose name, in fact, it bears. The author was a merchant,--a circumstance strange in Spanish literature,--and it is written in the Italian _ottava rima_; the first part, which consists of eleven cantos, being devoted to the first wars in Italy, and ending with the captivity of Francis the First; while the second, which consists of nineteen more, contains the contest in Germany, the Emperor’s visit to Flanders, and his coronation at Bologna. The whole fills two volumes, and ends abruptly with the promise of another, devoted to the capture of Tunis; a promise which, happily, was never redeemed.[790]

[790] “La Carolea,” Valencia, 1560, 2 tom. 12mo. The first volume
ends with accounts of the author’s birthplace, in the course
of which he commemorates some of its merchants and some of its
scholars, particularly Luis Vives. Notices of Sempere are to be
found in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 135, in Fuster, Tom. I. p. 110, and
in the notes to Polo’s “Diana,” by Cerdá, p. 380.

A poem entitled “Conquista de la Nueva Castilla,” first published
at Paris in 1848, 12mo, by J. A. Sprecher de Bernegg, _may_,
perhaps, be older than the “Carolea.” It is a short narrative
poem, in two hundred and eighty-three octave stanzas, apparently
written about the middle of the sixteenth century, by some
unknown author of that period, and devoted to the glory of
Francisco Pizarro, from the time when he left Panamá, in 1524, to
the fall of Atabalipa. It was found in the Imperial Library at
Vienna, among the manuscripts there, but, from a review of it in
the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Band CXXI., 1848, it seems to have
been edited with very little critical care. It does not, however,
deserve more than it received. It is wholly worthless;--not
better than we can easily suppose to have been written by one of
Pizarro’s rude followers.

The next narrative poem in the order of time was published by Luis de Çapata, only five years later. It is the “Carlo Famoso,” devoted, like the last, to the fame of Charles the Fifth, and, like that, more praised than it deserves to be by Cervantes, when he places both of them among the best poetry in Don Quixote’s library. Its author declares that he was thirteen years in writing it; and it fills fifty cantos, comprehending above forty thousand lines in octave stanzas. But never was poem avowedly written in a spirit so prosaic. It gives year by year the life of the Emperor, from 1522 to his death at San Yuste in 1558; and, to prevent the possibility of mistake, the date is placed at the top of each page, and every thing of an imaginative nature or of doubtful authority is distinguished by asterisks from the chronicle of ascertained facts. Two passages in it are interesting, one of which gives the circumstances of the death of Garcilasso, and the other an ample account of Torralva, the great magician of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella;--the same person who is commemorated by Don Quixote when he rides among the stars. Such, however, as the poem is, Çapata had great confidence in its merits, and boastfully published it at his own expense. But it was unsuccessful, and he died regretting his folly.[791]

[791] “Carlo Famoso de Don Luis de Çapata,” Valencia, 1565, 4to.
At the opening of the fiftieth canto, he congratulates himself
that he has “reached the end of his thirteen years’ journey”;
but, after all, is obliged to hurry over the last fourteen years
of his hero’s life in that one canto. For Garcilasso, see Canto
XLI.; and for Torralva’s story, which strongly illustrates the
Spanish character of the sixteenth century, see Cantos XXVIII.,
XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., with the notes of the commentators to
Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 41.

Diego Ximenez de Ayllon, of Arcos de la Frontera, who served as a soldier under the Duke of Alva, wrote a poem on the history of the Cid, and of some other of the early Spanish heroes, and dedicated it, in 1579, to his great leader. But this, too, was little regarded at the time, and is now hardly remembered.[792] Nor was more favor shown to Hippólito Sanz, a knight of the Order of Saint John, in Malta, who shared in the brave defence of that island against the Turks in 1565, and wrote a poetical history of that defence, under the name of “La Maltea,” which was published in 1582.[793]

[792] Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 323) gives the date and
title, and little else. The only copy of the poem known to me
is one printed at Alcalá de Henares, 1579, 4to, 149 leaves,
double columns. It is dedicated to the great Duke of Alva, under
whom its author had served, and consists chiefly of the usual
traditions about the Cid, told in rather flowing, but insipid,
octave stanzas.

In the Library of the Society of History at Madrid, MS. D. No.
42, is a poem in double _redondillas de arte mayor_, by Fray
Gonzalo de Arredondo, on the achievements both of the Cid and
of the Count Fernan Gonzalez, the merits of each being nicely
balanced in alternate cantos. It is hardly worth notice, except
from the circumstance that it was written as early as 1522, when
the unused license of Charles V. to print it was given. Fray
Arredondo is also the author of “El Castillo Inexpugnable y
Defensorio de la Fé,” Burgos, 1528, fol.

[793] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 179, and Velazquez, Dieze, p. 385.

Other poems were produced during the same period, not unlike those we have just noticed;--such as the “Historia Parthenopea” of Alfonso Fernandez, whose hero is Gonzalvo de Córdova; Espinosa’s continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” which is not entirely without merit; “The Decade on the Passion of Christ,” by Coloma, which is grave and dignified, if nothing else;--all in the manner of the contemporary Italian heroic and narrative poems. But no one of them obtained much regard when it first appeared, and none of them can now be said to be remembered. Indeed, there is but one long poem of the age of Philip the Second which obtained an acknowledged reputation from the first, and has preserved it ever since, both at home and abroad;--I mean the “Araucana.”[794]

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

Its author, whose personal character is impressed on every part of his poem, was Alonso de Ercilla, third son of a gentleman of Biscayan origin,--a proud circumstance, to which the poet himself alludes more than once.[795] He was born in 1533, at Madrid, and his father, a member of the council of Charles the Fifth, was able, from his influence at court, to have his son educated as one of the pages of the prince who was afterwards Philip the Second, and whom the young Ercilla accompanied in his journeys to different parts of Europe between 1547 and 1551. In 1554, he was with Philip in England, when that prince married Queen Mary; and news having arrived there, as he tells us in his poem, of an outbreak of the natives in Chili which threatened to give trouble to their conquerors, many noble Spaniards then at the English court volunteered, in the old spirit of their country, to serve against the infidels.

[795] In Canto XXVII. he says: “Behold the rough soil of ancient
Biscay, whence it is certain comes that nobility now extended
through the whole land; behold Bermeo, the head of Biscay,
surrounded with thorn-woods, and above its port the old walls of
the house of Ercilla, a house older than the city itself.”

Among those who presented themselves to join in this romantic expedition was Ercilla, then twenty-one years old. By permission of the prince, he says, he exchanged his civil for military service, and for the first time girded on his sword in earnest. But the beginning of the expedition was not auspicious. Aldrete, a person of military experience, who was in the suite of Philip, and under whose standard they had embarked in the enterprise, died on the way; and after their arrival, Ercilla and his friends were sent, under the less competent leading of a son of the viceroy of Peru, to achieve the subjugation of the territory of Arauco,--an inconsiderable spot of earth, but one which had been so bravely defended by its inhabitants against the Spaniards as to excite respect for their heroism in many parts of Europe.[796] The contest was a bloody one; for the Araucans were desperate and the Spaniards cruel. Ercilla went through his part of it with honor, meeting the enemy in seven severe battles, and suffering still more severely from wanderings in the wilderness, and from long exposure to the harassing warfare of savages.

[796] “Arauco,” says Ercilla, “is a small province, about twenty
leagues long and twelve broad, which produces the most warlike
people in the Indies, and is therefore called The Unconquered
State.” Its people are still proud of their name.

Once he was in greater danger from his countrymen and from his own fiery temper than he was, perhaps, at any moment from the common enemy. In an interval of the war, when a public tournament was held in honor of the accession of Philip the Second to the throne, some cause of offence occurred during the jousting between Ercilla and another of the cavaliers. The mimic fight, as had not unfrequently happened on similar occasions in the mother country, was changed into a real one; and, in the confusion that followed, the young commander, who presided at the festival, rashly ordered both the principal offenders to be put to death,--a sentence which he reluctantly changed into imprisonment and exile, though not until after Ercilla had been actually placed on the scaffold for execution.

When he was released he seems to have engaged in the romantic enterprise of hunting down the cruel and savage adventurer, Lope de Aguirre, but he did not arrive in the monster’s neighbourhood till the moment when his career of blood was ended. From this time we know only, that, after suffering from a long illness, Ercilla returned to Spain in 1562, at the age of twenty-nine, having been eight years in America. At first, his unsettled habits made him restless, and he visited Italy and other parts of Europe; but in 1570 he married a lady connected with the great family of Santa Cruz, Doña María de Bazan, whom he celebrates at the end of the eighteenth canto of his poem. About 1576, he was made gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Emperor of Germany,--perhaps a merely titular office; and about 1580, he was again in Madrid and in poverty, complaining loudly of the neglect and ingratitude of the king whom he had so long served, and who seemed now to have forgotten him. During the latter part of his life, however, we almost entirely lose sight of him, and know only that he began a poem in honor of the family of Santa Cruz, and that he died as early as 1595.

Ercilla is to be counted among the many instances in which Spanish poetical genius and heroism were one feeling. He wrote in the spirit in which he fought; and his principal work is as military as any portion of his adventurous life. Its subject is the very expedition against Arauco which occupied eight or nine years of his youth; and he has simply called it “La Araucana,” making it a long heroic poem in thirty-seven cantos, which, with the exception of two or three trifles of no value, is all that remains of his works. Fortunately, it has proved a sufficient foundation for his fame. But though it is unquestionably a poem that discovers much of the sensibility of genius, it has great defects; for it was written when the elements of epic poetry were singularly misunderstood in Spain, and Ercilla, misled by such models as the “Carolea” and “Carlo Famoso,” fell easily into serious mistakes.

The first division of the Araucana is, in fact, a versified history of the early part of the war. It is geographically and statistically accurate. It is a poem, thus far, that should be read with a map, and one whose connecting principle is merely the succession of events. Of this rigid accuracy he more than once boasts; and, to observe it, he begins with a description of Arauco and its people, amidst whom he lays his scene, and then goes on through fifteen cantos of consecutive battles, negotiations, conspiracies, and adventures, just as they occurred. He composed this part of his poem, he tells us, in the wilderness, where he fought and suffered; taking the night to describe what the day had brought to pass, and writing his verses on fragments of paper, or, when these failed, on scraps of skins; so that it is, in truth, a poetical journal, in octave rhymes, of the expedition in which he was engaged. These fifteen cantos, written between 1555 and 1563, constitute the first part, which ends abruptly in the midst of a violent tempest, and which was printed by itself in 1569.

Ercilla intimates that he soon discovered such a description of successive events to be monotonous; and he determined to intersperse it with incidents more interesting and poetical. In his second part, therefore, which was not printed till 1578, we have, it is true, the same historical fidelity in the main thread of the narrative, but it is broken with something like epic machinery; such as a vision of Bellona, in the seventeenth and eighteenth cantos, where the poet witnesses in South America the victory of Philip the Second at Saint Quentin, the day it was won in France;--the cave of the magician Fiton, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth cantos, where he sees the battle of Lepanto, which happened long afterwards, fought by anticipation;--the romantic story of Tegualda in the twentieth, and that of Glaura in the twenty-fourth: so that, when we come to the end of the second part,--which concludes, again, with needless abruptness, we find that we have enjoyed more poetry than we had in the first, if we have made less rapid progress in the history.

In the third part, which appeared in 1590, we have again a continuation of the events of the war, though with episodes such as that in the thirty-second and thirty-third cantos,--which the poet strangely devotes to a defence, after the manner of the old Spanish chronicles, of the character of Queen Dido from the imputations cast on it by Virgil,--and that in the thirty-sixth, in which he pleasantly gives us much of what little we know concerning his own personal history.[797] In the thirty-seventh and last, he leaves all his previous subjects, and discusses the right of public and private war, and the claims of Philip the Second to the crown of Portugal; ending the whole poem, as far as he himself ended it, with touching complaints of his own miserable condition and disappointed hopes, and his determination to give the rest of his life to penitence and devotion.

[797] The accounts of himself are chiefly in Cantos XIII.,
XXXVI., and XXXVII.; and besides the facts I have given in the
text, I find it stated (Seman. Pintoresco, 1842, p. 195) that
Ercilla in 1571 received the Order of Santiago, and in 1578 was
employed by Philip II. on an inconsiderable mission to Saragossa.

This can hardly be called an epic. It is an historical poem, partly in the manner of Silius Italicus, yet seeking to imitate the sudden transitions and easy style of the Italian masters, and struggling awkwardly to incorporate with different parts of its structure some of the supernatural machinery of Homer and Virgil. But this is the unfortunate side of the work. In other respects Ercilla is more successful. His descriptive powers, except in relation to natural scenery, are remarkable, and, whether devoted to battles or to the wild manners of the unfortunate Indians, have not been exceeded by any other Spanish poet. His speeches, too, are often excellent, especially the remarkable one in the second canto, given to Colócolo, the eldest of the Caciques, where the poet has been willing to place himself in direct rivalship with the speech which Homer, under similar circumstances, has given to Ulysses in the first book of the Iliad.[798] And his characters, so far as the Araucan chiefs are concerned, are drawn with force and distinctness, and lead us to sympathize with the cause of the Indians rather than with that of the invading Spaniards. Besides all this, his genius and sensibility often break through, where we should least expect it, and his Castilian feelings and character still oftener; the whole poem being pervaded with that deep sense of loyalty which was always a chief ingredient in Spanish honor and heroism, and which, in Ercilla, seems never to have been chilled by the ingratitude of the master to whom he devoted his life, and to whose glory he consecrated this poem.[799]

[798] The great praise of this speech by Voltaire, in the Essay
prefixed to his “Henriade,” 1726, first made the Araucana known
beyond the Pyrenees; and if Voltaire had read the poem he
pretended to criticize, he might have done something in earnest
for its fame. (See his Works, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo,
Tom. X. pp. 394-401.) But his mistakes are so gross as to impair
the value of his admiration.

[799] The best edition of the Araucana is that of Sancha, Madrid,
1776, 2 tom. 12mo; and the most exact life of its author is in
Baena, Tom. I. p. 32. Hayley published an abstract of the poem,
with bad translations of some of its best passages, in the
notes to his third epistle on Epic Poetry (London, 1782, 4to);
but there is a better and more ample examination of it in the
“Caraktere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen,” Leipzig,
1793, 8vo, Band II. Theil I. pp. 140 and 349.

The Araucana, though one third longer than the Iliad, is a fragment; but, as far as the war of Arauco is concerned, it was soon completed by the addition of two more parts, embracing thirty-three additional cantos,--the work of a poet by the name of Osorio, who published it in 1597. Of its author, a native of Leon, we know only that he describes himself to have been young when he wrote it, and that in 1598 he gave the world another poem, on the wars of the knights of Malta and the capture of Rhodes. His continuation of the Araucana was several times printed, but has long since ceased to be read. Its more interesting portions are those in which the poet relates, with apparent accuracy, many of the exploits of Ercilla among the Indians;--the more absurd are those in which, under the pretext of visions of Bellona, an account is given of the conquest of Oran by Cardinal Ximenes, and that of Peru by the Pizarros, neither of which has any thing to do with the main subject of the poem. Taken as a whole, it is nearly as dull and chronicling as any thing of its class that preceded it.[800]

[800] The last edition of the continuation of the Araucana, by
Diego de Sanisteban Osorio, of which I have any knowledge, was
printed with the poem of Ercilla at Madrid, 1733, folio.

But there is one difficulty about both parts of this poem, which must have been very obvious at the time. Neither shows any purpose of doing honor to the commander in the war of Arauco, who was yet a representative of the great Mendoza family, and a leading personage at the courts of Philip the Second and Philip the Third. Why Osorio should have passed him over so slightly is not apparent; but Ercilla was evidently offended by the punishment inflicted on him after the unfortunate tournament, and took this mode of expressing his displeasure.[801] A poet of Chili, therefore, Pedro de Oña, attempted, so far as Ercilla was concerned, to repair the wrong, and, in 1596, published his “Arauco Subjugated,” in nineteen cantos, which he devoted expressly to the honor of the neglected commander. Oña’s success was inconsiderable, but was quite as much as he deserved. His poem was once reprinted; but, though it contains sixteen thousand lines, it stops in the middle of the events it undertakes to record, and has never been finished. It contains consultations of the infernal powers, like those in Tasso, and a love-story, in imitation of the one in Ercilla; but it is mainly historical, and ends at last with an account of the capture of “that English pirate Richerte Aquines,”--no doubt Sir Richard Hawkins, who was taken in the Pacific in 1594, under circumstances not more unlike those which Oña describes than might be expected in a poetical version of them by a Spaniard.[802]

[801] The injustice, as it was deemed by many courtly persons,
of Ercilla to Garcia de Mendoza, fourth Marquis of Cañete, who
commanded the Spaniards in the war of Arauco, may have been one
of the reasons why the poet was neglected by his own government
after his return to Spain, and was certainly a subject of remark
in the reigns of Philip III. and IV. In 1613, Christóval Suarez
de Figueroa, the well-known poet, published a life of the
Marquis, and dedicated it to the profligate Duke de Lerma, then
the reigning favorite. It is written with some elegance and some
affectation in its style, but is full of flattery to the great
family of which the Marquis was a member; and when its author
reaches the point of time at which Ercilla was involved in the
trouble at the tournament, already noticed, he says: “There
arose a difference between Don Juan de Pineda and Don Alonso
de Ercilla, which went so far, that they drew their swords.
Instantly a vast number of weapons sprang from the scabbards of
those on foot, who, without knowing what to do, rushed together
and made a scene of great confusion. A rumor was spread, that it
had been done in order to cause a revolt; and from some slight
circumstances it was believed that the two pretended combatants
had arranged it all beforehand. They were seized by command
of the general, who ordered them to be beheaded, intending to
infuse terror into the rest, and knowing that severity is the
most effectual way of insuring military obedience. The tumult,
however, was appeased; and as it was found, on inquiry, that
the whole affair was accidental, the sentence was revoked. The
becoming rigor with which Don Alonso was treated caused the
silence in which he endeavoured to bury the achievements of
Don Garcia. He wrote the wars of Arauco, carrying them on by a
body without a head;--that is, by an army, with no intimation
that it had a general. Ungrateful for the many favors he had
received from the same hand, he left his rude sketch without
the living colors that belonged to it; as if it were possible
to hide the valor, virtue, forecast, authority, and success of
a nobleman whose words and deeds always went together and were
alike admirable. But so far could passion prevail, that the
account thus given remained in the minds of many as if it were
an apocryphal one; whereas, had it been dutifully written, its
truth would have stood authenticated to all. For, by the consent
of all, the personage of whom the poet ought to have written was
without fault, gentle, and of great humanity; and he who was
silent in his praise strove in vain to dim his glory.” Hechos de
Don Garcia de Mendoza, por Chr. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid, 1613,
4to, p. 103.

The theatre seemed especially anxious to make up for the
deficiencies of the greatest narrative poet of the country. In
1622, a play appeared, entitled “Algunas Hazañas de las muchas
de Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza”; a poor attempt at flattery,
which, on its title-page, professes to be the work of Luis de
Belmonte, but, in a sort of table of contents, is ascribed
chiefly to eight other poets, among whom are Antonio Mira de
Mescua, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Guillen de Castro. Of the
“Arauco Domado” of Lope de Vega, printed in 1629, and the humble
place assigned in it to Ercilla, I have spoken, _ante_, p. 207.
To these should be added two others, namely, the “Governador
Prudente” of Gaspar de Avila, in Tom. XXI. of the Comedias
Escogidas, printed in 1664, in which Don Garcia arrives first
on the scene of action in Chili, and distinguishes his command
by acts of wisdom and clemency; and in Tom. XXII., 1665, the
“Españoles en Chili,” by Francisco Gonzalez de Bustos, devoted
in part to the glory of Don Garcia’s father, and ending with
the impalement of Caupolican and the baptism of another of the
principal Indians; each as characteristic of the age as was the
homage of all to the Mendozas.

[802] “Arauco Domado, compuesto por el Licenciado Pedro de Oña,
Natural de los Infantes de Engol en Chile, etc., impreso en la
Ciudad de los Reyes,” (Lima), 1596, 12mo, and Madrid, 1605.
Besides which, Oña wrote a poem on the earthquake at Lima in
1599. Antonio is wrong in suggesting that Oña was not a native of
America.

But as the marvellous discoveries of the conquerors of America continued to fill the world with their fame, and to claim at home no small part of the interest that had so long been given to the national achievements in the Moorish wars, it was natural that the greatest of all the adventurers, Hernando Cortés, should come in for his share of the poetical honors that were lavishly scattered on all sides. In fact, as early as 1588, Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, a young cavalier of Madrid, stirred up by the example of Ercilla, published a poem, entitled “The Valiant Cortés,” which six years later he enlarged and printed anew under the name of “La Mexicana”; and in 1599, Antonio de Saavedra, a native of Mexico, published his “Indian Pilgrim,” which contains a regular life of Cortés in above sixteen thousand lines, written, as the author assures us, on the ocean, and in seventy days. Both are mere chronicling histories; but the last is not without freshness and truth, from the circumstance that it was the work of one familiar with the scenes he describes, and with the manners of the unhappy race of men whose disastrous fate he records.[803]

[803] “Cortés Valeroso, por Gabriel Lasso de la Vega,” Madrid,
1588, 4to, and “La Mexicana,” Madrid, 1594, 8vo. Tragedies and
other works, which I have not seen, are also attributed to him.
(Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 264.) “El Peregrino Indiano, por
Don Antonio de Saavedra Guzman, Viznieto del Conde del Castellar,
nacido en Mexico,” Madrid, 1599, 12mo. It is in twenty cantos of
octave stanzas; and though we know nothing else of its author, we
know, by the laudatory verses prefixed to his poem, that Lope de
Vega and Vicente Espinel were among his friends. It brings the
story of Cortés down to the death of Guatimozin.

In the same year with the “Valiant Cortés” appeared the first volume of the lives of some of the early discoverers and adventurers in America, by Juan de Castellanos, an ecclesiastic of Tunja in the kingdom of New Granada; but one who, like many others that entered the Church in their old age, had been a soldier in his youth, and had visited many of the countries, and shared in many of the battles, he describes. It begins with an account of Columbus, and ends, about 1560, with the expedition of Orsua and the crimes of Aguirre, which Humboldt has called the most dramatic episode in the history of the Spanish conquests, and of which Southey has made an interesting, though painful, story. Why no more of the poem of Castellanos was published does not appear. More was known to exist; and at last, the second and third parts were found, and, with the testimony of Ercilla to the truth of their narratives, were published in 1847, bringing their broken accounts of the Spanish conquests in America, and especially in that part of it since known as Colombia, down to about 1588. The whole, except the conclusion, is written in the Italian octave stanza, and extends to nearly ninety thousand lines, in pure, fluent Castilian, which soon afterwards became rare, but in a chronicling spirit, which, though it adds to its value as history, takes from it all the best characteristics of poetry.[804]

[804] The poem of Castellanos is singularly enough entitled
“_Elegias_ de Varones Ilustres de Indias,” and we have some
reason to suppose it originally consisted of four parts.
(Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 674.) The first was printed
at Madrid, 1589, 4to; but the second and third, discovered, I
believe, in the National Library of that city, were not published
till they appeared in the fourth volume of the Biblioteca of
Aribau, Madrid, 1847, 8vo. _Elegias_ seems to have been used
by Castellanos in the sense of _eulogies_. Of their author the
little we know is told by himself.

Other poems of the same general character followed. One on the discovery and settlement of La Plata is by Centenera, who shared in the trials and sufferings of the original conquest,--a long, dull poem, in twenty-eight cantos, full of credulity, and yet not without value as a record of what its author saw and learned in his wild adventures. It contains, in the earlier parts, much irrelevant matter concerning Peru, and is throughout a strange mixture of history and geography, ending with three cantos devoted to “Captain Thomas Candis, captain-general of the queen of England,”--in other words, Thomas Cavendish, half gentleman, half pirate, whose overthrow in Brazil, in 1592, Centenera thinks a sufficiently glorious catastrophe for his long poem.[805] Another similar work on an expedition into New Mexico was written by Gaspar de Villagra, a captain of infantry, who served in the adventures he describes, and published his account in 1610, after his return to Spain. But both belong to the domain of history rather than to that of poetry.[806]

[805] “Argentina, Conquista del Rio de la Plata y Tucuman, y
otros Sucesos del Peru,” Lisboa, 1602, 4to. There is a love-story
in Canto XII., and some talk about enchantments elsewhere; but,
with a few such slight exceptions, the poem is evidently pretty
good geography, and the best history the author could collect on
the spot. I know it only in the reprint of Barcia, who takes it
into his collection entirely for its historical claims.

One thing has much struck me in this and all the poems written
by Spaniards on their conquests in America, and especially by
those who visited the countries they celebrate. It is, that
there are no proper sketches of the peculiar scenery through
which they passed, though much of it is among the most beautiful
and grand that exists on the globe, and must have been filling
them constantly with new wonder. The truth is, that, when they
describe woods and rivers and mountains, their descriptions
would as well fit the Pyrenees or the Guadalquivir as they do
Mexico, the Andes, or the Amazon. Perhaps this deficiency is
connected with the same causes that have prevented Spain from
ever producing a great landscape painter.

[806] “La Conquista del Nuevo Mexico, por Gaspar de Villagra,”
was printed at Alcalá in 1610, 8vo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I.
p. 535.

No less characteristic of the national temper and genius than these historical and heroic poems were the long religious narratives in verse produced during the same period and later. To one of these--that of Coloma on “The Passion of Christ,” printed in 1576--we have already alluded. Another, “The Universal Redemption,” by Blasco, first printed in 1584, should also be mentioned. It fills fifty-six cantos, and contains nearly thirty thousand lines, embracing the history of man from the creation to the descent of the Holy Spirit, and reading in many parts like one of the old Mysteries.[807] A third poem, by Mata, not unlike the last, extends through two volumes, and is devoted to the glories of Saint Francis and five of his followers; a collection of legends in octave stanzas, put together without order or picturesqueness, the first of which sets forth the meek Saint Francis in the disguise of a knight-errant. None of the three has any value.[808]

[807] “Universal Redencion de Francisco Hernandez Blasco,”
Toledo, 1584, 1589, 4to, Madrid, 1609, 4to. He was of Toledo, and
claims that a part of his poem was a revelation to a nun.

[808] “El Cavallero Assisio, Vida de San Francisco y otros
Cinco Santos, por Gabriel de Mata,” Tom. I., Bilbao, 1587, with
a wood-cut of St. Francis on the title-page, as a knight on
horseback and in full armour; Tom. II., 1589, 4to. A third volume
was promised, but it never appeared. The five saints are St.
Anthony of Padua, St. Buenaventura, St. Luis the Bishop, Sta.
Bernadina, and Sta. Clara, all Minorites. St. Anthony preaching
to the fishes, whom he addresses (Canto XVII.) as _hermanos
peces_, is very quaint.

The next in the list, as we descend, is one of the best of its class, if not the very best. It is the “Monserrate” of Virues, the dramatic and lyric poet, so much praised by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. The subject is taken from the legends of the Spanish Church in the ninth century. Garin, a hermit living on the desolate mountain of Monserrate, in Catalonia, is guilty of one of the grossest and most atrocious crimes of which human nature is capable. Remorse seizes him. He goes to Rome for absolution, and obtains it only on the most degrading conditions. His penitence, however, is sincere and complete. In proof of it, the person he has murdered is restored to life, and the Madonna, appearing on the wild mountain where the unhappy man had committed his crime, consecrates its deep solitudes by founding there the magnificent sanctuary which has ever since made the Monserrate holy ground to all devout Spaniards.

That such a legend should be taken by a soldier and a man of the world as the subject of an epic would hardly have been possible in the sixteenth century in any country except Spain. But many a soldier there, even in our own times, has ended a life of excesses in a hermitage as rude and solitary as that of Garin;[809] and in the time of Philip the Second, it seemed nothing marvellous that one who had fought at the battle of Lepanto, and who, by way of distinction, was commonly called “the Captain Virues,” should yet devote the leisure of his best years to a poem on Garin’s deplorable life and revolting adventures. Such, at least, was the fact. The “Monserrate,” from the moment of its appearance, was successful. Nor has its success been materially diminished at any period since. It has more of the proper arrangement and proportions of an epic than any other of the serious poems of its class in the language; and in the richness and finish of its versification, it is not surpassed, if it is equalled, by any of those of its age. The difficulties Virues had to encounter lay in the nature of his subject and the low character of his hero; but in the course of twenty cantos, interspersed with occasional episodes, like those on the battle of Lepanto and the glories of Monserrate, these disadvantages are not always felt as blemishes, and, as we know, have not prevented the “Monserrate” from being read and admired in an age little inclined to believe the legend on which it is founded.[810]

[809] In a hermitage on a mountain near Córdova, where about
thirty hermits lived in stern silence and subjected to the
most cruel penances, I once saw a person who had served with
distinction as an officer at the battle of Trafalgar, and another
who had been of the household of the first queen of Ferdinand
VII. The Duke de Rivas and his brother, Don Angel,--now wearing
the title himself, but more distinguished as a poet, or for
his eminent merits in the diplomatic and military service of
his country, than for his high rank,--who led me up that rude
mountain, and filled a long and beautiful morning with strange
sights and adventures and stories, such as can be found in no
other country but Spain, assured me that cases like those of
the Spanish officers who had become hermits were still of no
infrequent occurrence in their country. This was in 1818.

[810] Of Virues a notice has been already given, (_ante_, p.
28), to which it is only necessary to add here that there are
editions of the Monserrate of 1588, 1601, 1602, 1609, and 1805;
the last (Madrid, 8vo) with a Preface written, I think, by Mayans
y Siscar. A poem by Francisco de Ortega, on the same subject,
appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century, in small
quarto, without date, entitled “Orígen, Antiguedad é Invencion de
nuestra Señora de Monserrate.” It is entirely worthless.

The “Benedictina,” by Nicholas Bravo, was published in 1604, and seems to have been intended to give the lives of Saint Benedict and his principal followers, in the way in which Castellanos had given the lives of Columbus and the early American adventurers, but was probably regarded rather as a book of devotion for the monks of the brotherhood, in which the author held a high place, than as a book of poetry. Certainly, to the worldly that is its true character. Nor can any other than a similar merit be assigned to two poems for which the social position of their author, Valdivielso, insured a wider temporary reputation. The first is on the history of Joseph, the husband of Mary, written, apparently, because Valdivielso himself had received in baptism the name of that saint. The other is on the peculiarly sacred image of the Madonna, preserved by a series of miracles from contamination during the subjugation of Spain by the Moors, and ever since venerated in the cathedral of Toledo, to whose princely archbishop Valdivielso was attached as a chaplain. Both of these poems are full of learning and of dulness, enormously long, and comprehend together a large part of the history, not only of the Spanish Church, but of the kingdom of Spain.[811]

[811] “La Benedictina de F. Nicolas Bravo,” Salamanca, 1604, 4to.
Bravo was a professor at Salamanca and Madrid, and died in 1648,
the head of a rich monastery of his order in Navarre. (Antonio,
Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 151.) Of Valdivielso I have spoken,
_ante_, p. 316. His “Vida, etc., de San Josef,” printed 1607 and
1647, makes above seven hundred pages in the edition of Lisbon,
1615, 12mo; and his “Sagrario de Toledo,” Barcelona, 1618, 12mo,
fills nearly a thousand;--both in octave stanzas, as are nearly
all the poems of their class.

Lope’s religious epic and narrative poems, of which we have already spoken, appeared at about the same time with those of Valdivielso, and enjoyed the success that attended whatever bore the name of the great popular author of his age. But better than any thing of this class produced by him was the “Christiada” of Diego de Hojeda, printed in 1611, and taken in a slight degree from the Latin poem with the same title by Vida, but not enough indebted to it to impair the author’s claims to originality. Its subject is very simple. It opens with the Last Supper, and it closes with the Crucifixion. The episodes are few and appropriate, except one,--that in which the dress of the Saviour in the garden is made an occasion for describing all human sins, whose allegorical history is represented as if woven with curses into the seven ample folds of the mantle laid on the shoulders of the expiatory victim, who thus bears them for our sake. The vision of the future glories of his Church granted to the sufferer is, on the contrary, happily conceived and well suited to its place; and still better are the gentle and touching consolations offered him in prophecy. Indeed, not a little skill is shown, in the general epic structure of the poem, and its verse is uncommonly sweet and graceful. If the characters were drawn with a firmer hand, and if the language were always sustained with the dignity its subject demands, the “Christiada” would stand deservedly at the side of the “Monserrate” of Virues. Even after making this deduction from its merits, no other religious poem in the language is to be placed before it.[812]

[812] “La Christiada de Diego de Hojeda,” Sevilla, 1611, 4to. It
has the merit of having only twelve cantos, and, if this were the
proper place, it might well be compared with Milton’s “Paradise
Regained” for its scenes with the devils, and with Klopstock’s
“Messiah” for the scene of the crucifixion. Of the author we know
only that he was a native of Seville, but went young to Lima, in
Peru, where he wrote this poem, and where he died at the head of
a Dominican convent founded by himself. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom.
I. p. 289.) There is a _rifacimento_ of the “Christiada,” by Juan
Manuel de Berriozabal, printed Madrid, 1841, 18mo, in a small
volume; not, however, an improvement on the original.

In the same year, Alonso Diaz, of Seville, published a pious poem on another of the consecrated images of the Madonna; and afterwards, in rapid succession, we have heroic poems, as they are called, on Loyola, and on the Madonna, both by Antonio de Escobar;--one on the creation of the world, by Azevedo, but no more an epic than the “Week” of Du Bartas, from which it is imitated;--and one on “The Brotherhood of the Five Martyrs of Arabia,” by Rodriguez de Vargas; the last being the result of a vow to two of their number, through whose intercession the author believed himself to have been cured of a mortal disease. But all these, and all of the same class that followed them,--the “David” of Uziel,--Calvo’s poem on “The Virgin,”--Vivas’s “Life of Christ,”--Juan Dávila’s “Passion of the Man-God,”--the “Samson” of Enriquez Gomez,--another heroic poem on Loyola, by Camargo,--and another “Christiad,” by Encisso,--which bring the list down to the end of the century,--add nothing to the claims or character of Spanish religious narrative poetry, though they add much to its cumbersome amount.[813]

[813] “Poema Castellano de nuestra Señora de Aguas Santas, por
Alonso Diaz,” Seville, 1611, cited by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom.
I. p. 21).--“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico,” Valladolid,
1613, 8vo, and “Historia de la Vírgen Madre de Dios,” 1608,
afterwards published with the title of “Nueva Jerusalen María,”
Valladolid, 1625, 18mo; both by Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza, and
both the work of his youth, since he lived to 1668. (Ibid., p.
115.) The last of these poems, my copy of which is of the fourth
edition, absurdly divides the life of the Madonna according to
the twelve precious stones that form the foundations of the New
Jerusalem in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation; each
_fundamento_, as the separate portions or books are called, being
subdivided into three cantos; and the whole filling above twelve
thousand lines of octave stanzas, which are not always without
merit, though they generally have very little.--“Creacion del
Mundo de Alonso de Azevedo,” Roma, 1615. (Velazquez, Dieze, p.
395.)--“La Verdadera Hermandad de los Cinco Martires de Arabia,
por Damian Rodriguez de Vargas,” Toledo, 1621, 4to. It is very
short for the class to which it belongs, containing only about
three thousand lines, but it is hardly possible that any of them
should be worse.--“David, Poema Heróico del Doctor Jacobo Uziel,”
Venetia, 1624, pp. 440; a poem in twelve cantos, on the story of
the Hebrew monarch whose name it bears, written in a plain and
simple style, evidently imitating the flow of Tasso’s stanzas,
but without poetical spirit, and in the ninth canto absurdly
bringing a Spanish navigator to the court of Jerusalem.--“La
Mejor Muger Madre y Vírgen, Poema Sacro, por Sebastian de Nieva
Calvo,” Madrid, 1625, 4to. It ends in the fourteenth book with
the victory of Lepanto, which is attributed to the intercession
of the Madonna and the virtue of the rosary.--“Grandezas Divinas,
Vida y Muerte de nuestro Salvador, etc., por Fr. Duran Vivas,”
found in scattered papers after his death, and arranged and
modernized in its language by his grandson, who published it,
(Madrid, 1643, 4to); a worthless poem, more than half of which
is thrown into the form of a speech from Joseph to Pontius
Pilate.--“Pasion del Hombre Dios, por el Maestro Juan Dávila,”
Leon de Francia, 1661, folio, written in the Spanish _décimas_
of Espinel, and filling about three-and-twenty thousand lines,
divided into six books, which are subdivided into _estancias_,
or resting-places, and these again into cantos.--“Sanson
Nazareno, Poema Eróico, por Ant. Enriquez Gomez,” Ruan, 1656,
4to, thoroughly infected with Gongorism, as is another poem by
the same author, half narrative, half lyrical, called “La Culpa
del Primer Peregrino,” Ruan, 1644, 4to.--“San Ignacio de Loyola,
Poema Heróico, escrivialo Hernando Dominguez Camargo,” 1666, 4to,
a native of Santa Fé de Bogotá, whose poem, filling nearly four
hundred pages of octave rhymes, is a fragment published after his
death.--“La Christiada, Poema Sacro y Vida de Jesu Christo, que
escrivió Juan Francisco de Encisso y Monçon,” Cadiz, 1694, 4to;
deformed, like almost every thing of the period when it appeared,
with the worst taste.

* * * * *

Of an opposite character to these religious poems are the purely, or almost purely, imaginative epics of the same period, whose form yet brings them into the same class. Their number is not large, and nearly all of them are connected more or less with the fictions which Ariosto, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had thrown up like brilliant fireworks into the Italian sky, and which had drawn to them the admiration of all Europe, and especially of all Spain. There a translation of the “Orlando Furioso,” poor, indeed, but popular, had been published by Urrea as early as 1550. An imitation soon followed,--the one already alluded to, as made by Espinosa in 1555. It is called “The Second Part of the Orlando, with the True Event of the Famous Battle of Roncesvalles, and the End and Death of the Twelve Peers of France.” But at the very outset, its author tells us that “he sings the great glory of Spaniards and the overthrow of Charlemagne and his followers,” adding significantly, “This history will relate the truth, and not give the story as it is told by that Frenchman, Turpin.” Of course, we have, instead of the fictions to which we are accustomed in Ariosto, the Spanish fictions of Bernardo del Carpio and the rout of the Twelve Peers at Roncesvalles,--all very little to the credit of Charlemagne, who, at the end, retreats, disgraced, to Germany. But still, the whole is ingeniously connected with the stories of the “Orlando Furioso,” and carries on, to a considerable extent, the adventures of the personages who are its heroes and heroines.

Some of the fictions of Espinosa, however, are very extravagant and absurd. Thus, in the twenty-second canto, Bernardo goes to Paris and overthrows several of the paladins; and in the thirty-third, whose scene is laid in Ireland, he disenchants Olympia and becomes king of the island;--both of them needless and worthless innovations on the story of Bernardo, as it comes to us in the old Spanish ballads and chronicles. But in general, though it is certainly not wanting in giants and enchantments, Espinosa’s continuation of the Orlando is less encumbered with impossibilities and absurdities than the similar poem of Lope de Vega; and, in some parts, is very easy and graceful in its story-telling spirit. It ends with the thirty-fifth canto, after going through above fourteen thousand lines in _ottava rima_; and yet, after all, the conclusion is abrupt, and we have an intimation that more may follow.[814]

[814] “Segunda Parte de Orlando, etc., por Nicolas Espinosa,”
Zaragoza, 1555, 4to, Anveres, 1656, 4to, etc. The Orlando of
Ariosto, translated by Urrea, was published at Lyons in 1550,
folio, (the same edition, no doubt, which Antonio gives to 1656),
and is treated with due severity by the curate in the scrutiny of
Don Quixote’s library, and by Clemencin in his commentary on that
passage. Tom. I. p. 120.

But no more came from the pen of Espinosa. Others, however, continued the same series of fictions, if they did not take up the thread where he left it. An Aragonese nobleman, Abarca de Bolea, wrote two different poems,--“Orlando the Lover” and “Orlando the Bold”;--and Garrido de Villena of Alcalá, who, in 1577, had made known to his countrymen the “Orlando Innamorato” of Boiardo, in a Spanish dress, published, six years afterwards, his “Battle of Roncesvalles”; a poem which was followed, in 1585, by one of Augustin Alonso, on substantially the same subject. But all of them are now neglected or forgotten.[815]

[815] “Orlando Enamorado de Don Martin Abarca de Bolea, Conde
de las Almunias, en Octava Rima,” Lerida, 1578;--“Orlando
Determinado, en Octava Rima,” Zaragoza, 1578. (Latassa, Bib.
Nov., Tom. II. p. 54.)--The “Orlando Enamorado” of Boiardo, by
Francisco Garrido de Villena, 1577, and the “Verdadero Suceso de
la Batalla de Roncesvalles,” by the same, 1683. (Antonio, Bib.
Nov., Tom. I. p. 428.)--“Historia de las Hazañas y Hechos del
Invencible Cavallero Bernardo del Carpio, por Agustin Alonso,”
Toledo, 1585. Pellicer (Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 58, note) says he
had seen one copy of this book, and Clemencin says he never saw
any.--I have never met with either of those referred to in this
note.

Not so the “Angelica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, or, as it is commonly called, “The Tears of Angelica.” The first twelve cantos were published in 1586, and received by the men of letters of that age with an extraordinary applause, which has continued to be echoed and reëchoed down to our own times. Its author was a physician in an obscure village near Seville, but he was known as a poet throughout Spain, and praised alike by Diego de Mendoza, Silvestre, Herrera, Cetina, Mesa, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes,--the last of whom makes the curate hasten to save “The Tears of Angelica” from the flames, when Don Quixote’s library was carried to the court-yard, crying out, “Truly, I should shed tears myself, if such a book had been burnt; for its author was one of the most famous poets, not only of Spain, but of the whole world.” All this admiration, however, was extravagant; and in Cervantes, who more than once steps aside from the subject on which he happens to be engaged to praise Soto, it seems to have been the result of a sincere personal friendship.

The truth is, that the Angelica, although so much praised, was never finished or reprinted, and is now rarely seen and more rarely read. It is a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” and relates the story of the heroine after her marriage, down to the time when she recovers her kingdom of Cathay, which had been violently wrested from her by a rival queen. It is extravagant in its adventures, and awkward in its machinery, especially in whatever relates to Demogorgon and the agencies under his control. But its chief fault is its dulness. Its whole movement is as far as possible removed from the life and gayety of its great prototype; and, as if to add to the wearisomeness of its uninteresting characters and languid style, one of De Soto’s friends has added to each canto a prose explanation of its imagined moral meanings and tendency, which, in a great majority of cases, it seems impossible should have been in the author’s mind when he wrote the poem.[816]

[816] “Primera Parte de la Angélica de Luis Barahona de Soto,”
Granada, 1586, 4to. My copy contains a license to reprint from
it, dated July 15, 1805; but, like many other projects of the
sort in relation to old Spanish literature, this one was not
carried through. A notice of De Soto is to be found in Sedano
(Parnaso, Tom. II. p. xxxi.); but the pleasantest idea of him
and of his agreeable social relations is to be gathered from a
poetical epistle to him by Christóval de Mesa (Rimas, 1611, f.
200);--from several poems in Silvestre (ed. 1599, ff. 325, 333,
334);--and from the notices of him by Cervantes in his “Galatea,”
and in the Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 6, and Parte II. c. 1),
together with the facts collected in the two last places by the
commentators.--Gerónimo de Huerta, then a young man, published in
1588, at Alcalá, his “Florando de Castilla, Lauro de Cavalleros,
en Ottava Rima,”--an heroic poem it is called, but still, it is
said, in the manner of Ariosto. It is noticed, Antonio, Bib.
Nov., Tom. I. p. 587, and Mayans, Cartas de Varios Autores, Tom.
II., 1773, p. 36; but I have never seen it.

Of the still more extravagant continuation of the “Orlando” by Lope de Vega we have already spoken; and of the fragment on the same subject by Quevedo it is not necessary to speak at all. But the “Bernardo” of Balbuena, which belongs to the same period, must not be overlooked. It is one of the two or three favored poems of its class in the language; written in the fervor of the author’s youth, and published in 1624, when his age and ecclesiastical honors made him doubt whether his dignity would permit him any longer to claim it as his own.

It is on the constantly recurring subject of Bernardo del Carpio; but it takes from the old traditions only the slight outline of that hero’s history, and then fills up the space between his first presentation at the court of his uncle, Alfonso the Chaste, and the death of Roland at Roncesvalles, with enchantments and giants, travels through the air and over the sea, in countries known and in countries impossible, amidst adventures as wild as the fancies of Ariosto, and more akin to his free and joyous spirit than any thing else of the sort in the language. Many of the descriptions are rich and beautiful; worthy of the author of “The Age of Gold” and “The Grandeur of Mexico.” Some of the episodes are full of interest in themselves, and happy in their position. Its general structure is suited to the rules of its class,--if rules there be for such a poem as the “Orlando Furioso.” And the versification is almost always good;--easy where facility is required, and grave or solemn, as the subject changes and becomes more lofty. But it has one capital defect. It is fatally long;--thrice as long as the Iliad. There seems, in truth, as we read on, no end to its episodes, which are involved in each other till we entirely lose the thread that connects them; and as for its crowds of characters, they come like shadows, and so depart, leaving often no trace behind them, except a most indistinct recollection of their wild adventures.[817]

[817] “El Bernardo, Poema Heróico del Doctor Don Bernardo de
Balbuena,” Madrid, 1624, 4to, and 1808, 3 tom. 8vo, containing
about forty-five thousand lines, but abridged by Quintana, in the
second volume of his “Poesías Selectas, Musa Épica,” with skill
and judgment, to less than one third of that length.