Chapter XXVIII

NARRATIVE POEMS ON SUBJECTS FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY.--BOSCAN, MENDOZA, SILVESTRE, MONTEMAYOR, VILLEGAS, PEREZ, CEPEDA, GÓNGORA, VILLAMEDIANA, PANTALEON, AND OTHERS.--NARRATIVE POEMS ON MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS.--SALAS, SILVEIRA, ZARATE.--MOCK-HEROIC NARRATIVE POEMS.--ALDANA, CHRESPO, VILLAVICIOSA AND HIS MOSQUEA.--SERIOUS HISTORICAL POEMS.--CORTEREAL, RUFO, VEZILLA CASTELLANOS AND OTHERS, MESA, CUEVA, EL PINCIANO, MOSQUERA, VASCONCELLOS, FERREIRA, FIGUEROA, ESQUILACHE.--FAILURE OF NARRATIVE AND HEROIC POETRY ON NATIONAL SUBJECTS.

There was little tendency in Spain, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to take subjects for the long narrative and heroic poems that were so characteristic of the country from ancient history or fable. Shorter and in general more interesting tales, imbued with the old national spirit, were, however, early attempted out of classical materials. The “Leander” of Boscan, a gentle and pleasing poem, in about three thousand lines of blank verse, is to be dated as early as 1540, and is one of them. Diego de Mendoza, Boscan’s friend, followed, with his “Adonis, Hippomenes, and Atalanta,” but in the Italian octave stanza, and with less success. Silvestre’s “Daphne and Apollo” and his “Pyramus and Thisbe,” both of them written in the old Castilian verse, are of the same period and more genial, but they were unfortunate in their effects, if they provoked the poems on “Pyramus and Thisbe” by Montemayor and by Antonio Villegas, or that on “Daphne” by Perez, in the second book of his continuation of the “Diana.”[818]

[818] The story of “Leander” fills a large part of the third
book of Boscan and Garcilasso’s Works in the original edition of
1543.--Diego de Mendoza’s “Adonis,” which is about half as long,
and on which the old statesman is said to have valued himself
very much, is in his Works, 1610, pp. 48-65.--Silvestre’s poems,
mentioned in the text, with two others, something like them, make
up the whole of the second book of his Works, 1599.--Montemayor’s
“Pyramus,” in the short ten-line stanzas, is at the end of the
“Diana,” in the edition of 1614.--The “Pyramus” of Ant. de
Villegas is in his “Inventario,” 1577, and is in _terza rima_,
which, like the other Italian measures attempted by him, he
manages awkwardly.--The “Daphne” of Perez is in various measures,
and better deserves reading in old Bart. Yong’s version of
it than it does in the original.--I might have added to the
foregoing the “Pyramus and Thisbe” of Castillejo, (Obras, 1598,
ff. 68, etc.), pleasantly written in the old Castilian short
verse, when he was twenty-eight years old, and living in Germany;
but it is so much a translation from Ovid, that it hardly belongs
here.

The more formal effort of Romero de Cepeda on “The Destruction of Troy,” published in 1582, is not better than the rest. It has, however, the merit of being written more in the old national tone than almost any thing of the kind; for it is in the ancient stanza of ten short lines, and has a fluency and facility that make it sound sometimes like the elder ballad poetry. But it extends to ten cantos, and is, after all, the story to which we have always been accustomed, except that it makes Æneas--against whom the Spanish poets and chroniclers seem to have entertained a thorough ill-will--a traitor to his country and an accomplice in its ruin.[819]

[819] Obras de Romero de Cepeda, Sevilla, 1582, 4to. The poem
alluded to is entitled “El Infelice Robo de Elena Reyna de
Esparta por Paris, _Infante_ Troyano, del qual sucedió la
Sangrienta Destruycion de Troya.” It begins _ab ovo Ledæ_, and,
going through about two thousand lines, ends with the death of
six hundred thousand Trojans. The shorter poems in the volume are
sometimes agreeable.

The poem of Manuel de Gallegos, entitled “Gigantomachia,” and
published at Lisbon, 1628, 4to, is also, like that of Cepeda,
on a classical subject, being devoted to the war of the Giants
against the Gods. Its author was a Portuguese, who lived many
years at Madrid in intimacy with Lope de Vega, and wrote
occasionally for the Spanish stage, but returned at last to his
native country, and died there in 1665. His “Gigantomachia,” in
about three hundred and forty octave stanzas, divided into five
short books, is written, for the period when it appeared, in a
pure style, but is a very dull poem.

But with the appearance of Góngora, simplicity such as Cepeda’s ceased in this class of poems almost entirely. Nothing, indeed, was more characteristic of the extravagance in which this great poetical heresiarch indulged himself than his monstrous poem,--half lyrical, half narrative, and wholly absurd,--which he called “The Fable of Polyphemus”; and nothing became more characteristic of his school than the similar poems in imitation of the Polyphemus which commonly passed under the designation he gave them,--that of _Fábulas_. Such were the “Phaeton,” the “Daphne,” and the “Europa” of his great admirer, Count Villamediana. Such were several poems by Pantaleon, and, among them, his “Fábula de Eco,” which he dedicated to Góngora. Such was Moncayo’s “Atalanta,” a long heroic poem in twelve cantos, published as a separate work; and his “Venus and Adonis,” found among his miscellanies. And such, too, were Villalpando’s “Love Enamoured, or Cupid and Psyche”; Salazar’s “Eurydice”; and several more of the same class and with the same name;--all worthless, and all published between the time when Góngora appeared and the end of the century.[820]

[820] These poems are all to be found in the works of their
respective authors, elsewhere referred to, except two. The first
is the “Atalanta y Hipomenes,” by Moncayo, Marques de San Felice,
(Zaragoza, 1656, 4to), in octave stanzas, about eight thousand
lines long, in which he manages to introduce much of the history
of Aragon, his native country; a general account of its men of
letters, who were his contemporaries; and, in canto fifth, all
the Aragonese ladies he admired, whose number is not small. The
other poem is the “Amor Enamorado,” which Jacinto de Villalpando
published (Zaragoça, 1655, 12mo) under the name of “Fabio
Clymente”; and which, like the last, is in octave stanzas, but
only about half as long. See, also, Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom III.
p. 272.

* * * * *

Of heroic poems on miscellaneous subjects, a few were produced during the same period, but none of value. The first that needs to be mentioned is that of Yague de Salas, on “The Lovers of Teruel,” published in 1616, and preceded by an extraordinary array of laudatory verses, among which are sonnets by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. It is on the tragical fate of two young and faithful lovers, who, after the most cruel trials, died at almost the same moment, victims of their passion for each other,--the story on which, as we have already noticed, Montalvan founded one of his best dramas. Salas calls his poem a tragic epic, and it consists of twenty-six long cantos, comprehending, not only the sad tale of the lovers themselves, which really ends in the seventeenth canto, but a large part of the history of the kingdom of Aragon and the whole history of the little town of Teruel. He declares his story to be absolutely authentic; and in the Preface he appeals for the truth of his assertion to the traditions of Teruel, of whose municipality he had formerly been syndic and was then secretary.

But his statements were early called in question, and, to sustain them, he produced, in 1619, the copy of a paper which he professed to have found in the archives of Teruel, and which contains, under the date of 1217, a full account of the two lovers, with a notice of the discovery and reinterment of their unchanged bodies in the church of San Pedro, in 1555. This seems to have quieted the doubts that had been raised; and for a long time afterwards, poets and tragic writers resorted freely to a story so truly Spanish in its union of love and religion, as if its authenticity were no longer questionable. But since 1806, when the facts and documents in relation to it were collected and published, there seems no reasonable doubt that the whole is a fiction, founded on a tradition already used by Artieda in a dull drama, and still floating about at the time when Salas lived, to which, when urged by his skeptical neighbours, he gave a distinct form. But the popular faith was too well settled to be disturbed by antiquarian investigations, and the remains of the lovers of Teruel in the cloisters of Saint Peter are still visited by faithful and devout hearts, who look upon them with sincere awe, as mysterious witnesses left there by Heaven, that they may testify, through all generations, to the truth and beauty of a love stronger than the grave.[821]

[821] “Los Amantes de Teruel, Epopeya Trágica, con la
Restauracion de España por la Parte de Sobrarbe y Conquista del
Reino de Valencia, por Juan Yague de Salas,” Valencia, 1616,
12mo. The latter part of it is much occupied with a certain
Friar John and a certain Friar Peter, who were great saints in
Teruel, and with the conquest of Valencia by Don Jaume of Aragon.
The poetry of the whole, it is not necessary to add, is naught.
The antiquarian investigation of the truth of the story of the
lovers is in a modest pamphlet entitled “Noticias Históricas
sobre los Amantes de Teruel, por Don Isidro de Antillon” (Madrid,
1806, 18mo);--a respectable Professor of History in the College
of the Nobles at Madrid. (Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. VI. p.
123). It leaves no reasonable doubt about the forgery of Salas,
which, moreover, is done very clumsily. Ford, in his admirable
“Hand-Book of Spain,” (London, 1845, 8vo, p. 874), implies that
the tomb of the lovers is still much visited. It stands now in
the cloisters of St. Peter, whither, in 1709, in consequence
of alterations in the church, their bodies were removed;--much
decayed, says Antillon, notwithstanding the claim set up that
they are imperishable. The story of the lovers of Teruel has
often been resorted to, and, among others in our own time, by
Juan Eugenio Harzenbusch, in his drama, “Los Amantes de Teruel,”
and by an anonymous author in a tale with the same title, that
appeared at Valencia, 1838, 2 tom. 18mo. In the Preface to the
last, another of the certificates of Yague de Salas to the truth
of the story is produced for the first time, but adds nothing to
its probability. See _ante_, pp. 301-304.

The attempt of Lope de Vega, in his “Jerusalem Conquered,” to rival Tasso, turned the thoughts of other ambitious poets in the same direction, and the result was two epics that are not yet quite forgotten. The first is the “Macabeo” of Silveira, a Portuguese, who, after living long at the court of Spain, accompanied the head of the great house of the Guzmans when that nobleman was made viceroy of Naples, and published there, in 1638, this poem, to the composition of which he had given twenty-two years. The subject is the restoration of Jerusalem by Judas Maccabæus,--the same which Tasso had at one time chosen for his own epic. But Silveira had not the genius of Tasso. He has, it is true, succeeded in filling twenty cantos with octave stanzas, as Tasso did; but there the resemblance stops. The “Macabeo,” besides being written in the affected style of Góngora, is wanting in spirit, interest, and poetry throughout.[822]

[822] “El Macabeo, Poema Heróico de Miguel de Silveira,” Nápoles,
1638, 4to. Castro (Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 626) makes Silveira
a converted Jew, and Barbosa places his death at 1636; but the
Dedication of “El Sol Vencido,” a short, worthless poem, written
to flatter the Vice-Queen of Naples, is dated 20 April, 1639, and
was printed there that year.

The other contemporary poem of the same class is better, but does not rise to the dignity of success. It is by Zarate, a poet long attached to Rodrigo Calderon, the adventurer who, under the title of Marques de Siete Iglesias, rose to the first places in the state in the time of Philip the Third, and employed Zarate as one of his secretaries. Zarate, however, was gentle and wise, and, having occupied himself much with poetry in the days of his prosperity, found it a pleasant resource in the days of adversity. In 1648, he published “The Discovery of the Cross,” which, if we may trust an intimation in the “Persiles and Sigismunda” of Cervantes, he must have begun thirty years before, and which had undoubtedly been finished and licensed twenty years when it appeared in print. But Zarate mistook the nature of his subject. Instead of confining himself to the pious traditions of the Empress Helena and the ascertained achievements of Constantine against Maxentius, he has filled up his canvas with an impossible and uninteresting contest between Constantine and an imaginary king of Persia on the banks of the Euphrates, and so made out a long poem, little connected in its different parts, and, though dry and monotonous in its general tone, unequal in its execution; some portions of it being simple and dignified, while others show a taste almost as bad as that which disfigures the “Macabeo” of Silveira, and of quite the same sort.[823]

[823] “Poema Heróico de la Invencion de la Cruz, por Fr. Lopez de
Zarate,” Madrid, 1648, 4to; twenty-two cantos and four hundred
pages of octave stanzas. The infernal councils and many other
parts show it to be an imitation of Tasso. The notice of his life
by Sedano (Parnaso, Tom. VIII. p. xxiv.) is sufficient; but that
by Antonio is more touching, and reads like a tribute of personal
regard. Zarate died in 1658, above seventy years old. Semanario
Pintoresco, 1845, p. 82.

* * * * *

But there was always a tendency to a spirit of caricature in Spanish literature,--perhaps owing to its inherent stateliness and dignity; for these are qualities which, when carried to excess, almost surely provoke ridicule. At least, as we know, parody appeared early among the ballads, and was always prominent in the theatres; to say nothing of romantic fiction, where Don Quixote is the great monument of its glory for all countries and for all ages.[824]

[824] The continual parody of the _gracioso_ on the hero shows
what was the tendency of the Spanish stage in this particular.
But there are also plays that are entirely burlesque, such as
“The Death of Baldovinos,” at the end of Cancer’s Works, 1651,
which is a parody on the old ballads and traditions respecting
that paladin; and the “Cavallero de Olmedo,” a favorite play,
by Francisco Felix de Monteser, which is in the volume entitled
“Mejor Libro de las Mejores Comedias,” Madrid, 1653, and which is
a parody of a play with the same title in the Comedias de Lope de
Vega, Vol. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

That the long and multitudinous narrative poems of Spain should call forth mock-heroics was, therefore, in keeping with the rest of the national character; and though the number of such caricatures is not large, they have a merit quite equal to that of their serious prototypes. The first in the order of time seems to be lost. It was written by Cosmé de Aldana, who, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, was attached to the Grand Constable Velasco, when he was sent to govern Milan. In his capacity of poet, Aldana, it is said, plied his master with flattery and sonnets, till one day the Constable jestingly besought him to desist, and called him “an ass.” The cavalier could not draw his sword on his friend and patron, but the poet determined to avenge the affront offered to his genius. He did so in a long poem, entitled the “Asneida,” which, on every page, seemed to cry out to the governor, “You are a greater ass than I am.” But it was hardly finished when the unhappy Aldana died, and the copies of his poem were so diligently sought for and so faithfully destroyed, that it seems to be one of the few books we should be curious to see, which, after having been once printed, have entirely disappeared from the world.[825]

[825] Cosmé was editor of the poems of his brother, Francisco
de Aldana, in 1593. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 256.) He
wrote in Italian and printed at Florence as early as 1578;
but Velasco did not go as governor to Milan till after 1586.
(Salazar, Dignidades, f. 131.) The only account I have seen of
the “Asneida” is in Figueroa’s “Pasagero,” 1617, f. 127.

The next mock-heroic has also something mysterious about it. It is called “The Death, Burial, and Honors of Chrespina Maranzmana, the Cat of Juan Chrespo,” and was published at Paris in 1604, under what seems to be the pseudonyme of “Cintio Merctisso.” The first canto gives an account of Chrespina’s death; the second, of the _pésames_ or condolences offered to her children; and the third and last, of the public tributes to her memory, including the sermon preached at her interment. The whole is done in the true spirit of such a poem,--grave in form, and quaint and amusing in its details. Thus, when the children are gathered round the death-bed of their venerable mother, among other directions and commands, she tells them very solemnly:--

Up in the concave of the tiles, and near
That firm-set wall the north wind whistles by,
Close to the spot the cricket chose last year,
In a blind corner, far from every eye,
Beneath a brick that hides the treasure dear,
Five choice sardines in secret darkness lie;--
These, brethren-like, I charge you, take by shares,
And also all the rest, to which you may be heirs.

Moreover, you will find, in heaps piled fair,--
Proofs of successful toil to build a name,--
A thousand wings and legs of birds picked bare,
And cloaks of quadrupeds, both wild and tame,
All which your father had collected there,
To serve as trophies of an honest fame;--
These keep, and count them better than all prey;
Nor give them, e’en for ease, or sleep, or life, away.[826]

[826]
En la concavidad del tejadillo,
Hazia los paredones del gallego,
Junto adonde morava antaño el grillo,
En un rincon secreto, oscuro y ciego,
Escondidos debaxo de un ladrillo,
Estan cinco sardinas, lo que os ruego
Como hermanos partays, y seays hermanos
En quanto mas viniere á vuestras manos.

Hallareys, item mas, amontonadas,
De gloria y fama prosperos deseos,
Alas y patas de mil aves tragadas,
De quadrupides pieles y manteos,
Que vuestro padre alli dexo allegadas
Por victoriosas señas y tropheos;
Estas tened en mas que la comida,
Qu’el descanso, qu’el sueño, y que la vida.

p. 14.

It is probably a satire on some event notorious at the time and long since forgotten; but however its origin may be explained, it is one of the best imitations extant of the Italian mock-heroics. It has, too, the rare merit of being short.[827]

[827] “La Muerte, Entierro y Honras de Chrespina Maranzmana, Gata
de Juan Chrespo, en tres cantos de octava rima, intitulados la
Gaticida, compuesta por Cintio Merctisso, Español, Paris, por
Nicolo Molinero,” 1604, 12mo, pp. 52. I know nothing of the poem
or its author, except what is to be found in this volume, of
which I have never met even with a bibliographical notice, and of
which I have seen only one copy,--that belonging to my friend Don
Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid.

Much better known than the Chrespina is the “Mosquea,” by Villaviciosa;--a rich and fortunate ecclesiastic, who was born at Siguenza in 1589, and died at Cuenca in 1658. The Mosquea, which is the war of the flies and the ants, was printed in 1615; but though the author lived so long afterwards, he left nothing else to mark the genius of which this poem gives unquestionable proof. It is, as may be imagined, an imitation of the “Batrachomyomachia,” attributed to Homer, and the storm in the third canto is taken, with some minuteness in the spirit of its parody, from the storm in the first book of the Æneid. Still the Mosquea is as original as the nature of such a poem requires it to be. It has, besides, a simple and well-constructed fable; and notwithstanding it is protracted to twelve cantos, the curiosity of the reader is sustained to the last.

A war breaks out in the midst of the festivities of a tournament in the capital city of the flies, which the false ants had chosen as a moment when they could advantageously interrupt the peace that had long subsisted between them and their ancient enemies. The heathen gods are introduced, as they are in the Iliad,--the other insects become allies in the great quarrel, after the manner of all heroic poems,--the neighbouring chiefs come in,--there is an Achilles on one side, and an Æneas on the other,--the characters of the principal personages are skilfully drawn and sharply distinguished,--and the catastrophe is a tremendous battle, filling the last two cantos, in which the flies are defeated and their brilliant leader made the victim of his own rashness. The faults of the poem are its pedantry and length. Its merits are the richness and variety of its poetical conceptions, the ingenious delicacy with which the minutest circumstances in the condition of its insect heroes are described, and the air of reality, which, notwithstanding the secret satire that is never entirely absent, is given to the whole by the seeming earnestness of its tone. It ends, precisely where it should, with the expiring breath of the principal hero.[828]

[828] The first edition of the “Mosquea” was printed in small
12mo at Cuenca, when its author was twenty-six years old;--the
third is Sancha’s, Madrid, 1777, 12mo, with a life, from
which it appears, that, besides being a faithful officer of
the Inquisition himself, and making a good fortune out of it,
Villaviciosa exhorted his family, by his last will, to devote
themselves in all future time to its holy service with grateful
zeal. See, also, the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Sevilla,
8vo, Tom. I., 1841, p. 354.

No other mock-heroic poem followed that of Villaviciosa during this period, except “The War of the Cats,” by Lope de Vega, who, in his ambition for universal conquest, seized on this, as he did on every other department of the national literature. But the “Gatomachia,” which is one of the very best of his efforts, has already been noticed. We turn, therefore, again to the true heroic poems, devoted to national subjects, whose current flows no less amply and gravely, down to the middle of the seventeenth century, than it did when it first began, and continues through its whole course no less characteristic of the national genius and temper than we have seen it in the poems on Charles the Fifth and his achievements.

The favorite hero of the next age, Don John of Austria, son of the Emperor, was the occasion of two poems, with which we naturally resume the examination of this curious series.[829] The first of them is on the battle of Lepanto, and was published in 1578, the year of Don John’s untimely death. The author, Cortereal, was a Portuguese gentleman of rank and fortune, who distinguished himself as the commander of an expedition against the infidels on the coasts of Africa and Asia, in 1571, and died before 1593; but, being tired of fame, passed the last twenty years of his life at Evora, and devoted himself to poetry and to the kindred arts of music and painting.

[829] A vast number of tributes were paid by contemporary men
of letters to Don John of Austria; but among them none is more
curious than a Latin poem in two books, containing seventeen
or eighteen hundred hexameters and pentameters, the work of a
negro, who had been brought as an infant from Africa, and who
by his learning rose to be professor of Latin and Greek in the
school attached to the cathedral of Granada. He is the same
person noticed by Cervantes as “el negro Juan Latino,” in a poem
prefixed to the Don Quixote. His volume of Latin verses on the
birth of Ferdinand, the son of Philip II., on Pope Pius V., on
Don John of Austria, and on the city of Granada, making above
a hundred and sixty pages in small quarto, printed at Granada
in 1573, is not only one of the rarest books in the world, but
is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the intellectual
faculties and possible accomplishments of the African race. The
author himself says he was brought to Spain from Ethiopia, and
was, until his emancipation, a slave to the grandson of the
famous Gonsalvo de Córdova. His Latin verse is respectable, and,
from his singular success as a scholar, he was commonly called
Joannes Latinus, a _sobriquet_ under which he is frequently
mentioned, and which was made the title of a play, I presume
about him, by Lopez de Enciso, called “Juan Latino.” He was
respectably married to a lady of Granada, who fell in love with
him, as Eloisa did with Abelard, while he was teaching her; and
after his death, which occurred later than 1573, his wife and
children erected a monument to his memory in the church of Sta.
Ana, in that city, inscribing it with an epitaph, in which he is
styled “Filius Æthiopum, prolesque nigerrima patrum.” Antonio,
Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 716. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p.
lx., note.

It may not be amiss here to add, that another negro is celebrated
in a play, written in tolerable Castilian, and claiming, at the
end, to be founded in fact. It is called “El Valiente Negro en
Flandes,” and is found in Tom. XXXI., 1638, of the collection
of Comedias printed at Barcelona and Saragossa. The negro in
question, however, was not, like Juan Latino, a native African,
but was a slave born in Merida, and was distinguished only as a
soldier, serving with great honor under the Duke of Alva, and
enjoying the favor of that severe general.

It was amidst the beautiful and romantic nature that surrounded him during the quiet conclusion of his bustling life, that he wrote three long poems;--two in Portuguese, which were soon translated into Spanish and published; and one, originally composed in Spanish, and entitled “The Most Happy Victory granted by Heaven to the Lord Don John of Austria, in the Gulf of Lepanto, over the Mighty Ottoman Armada.” It is in fifteen cantos of blank verse, and is dedicated to Philip the Second, who, contrary to his custom, acknowledged the compliment by a flattering letter. The poem opens with a dream brought to the Sultan from the infernal regions by the goddess of war, and inciting him to make an attack on the Christians; but excepting this, and the occasional use of similar machinery afterwards, it is merely a dull historical account of the war, ending with the great sea-fight itself, which is the subject of the last three cantos.[830]

[830] “Felicissima Victoria concedida del Cielo al Señor Don
Juan d’Austria, etc., compuesta por Hierónimo de Cortereal,
Cavallero Portugues,” s. l. 1578, 8vo, with curious wood-cuts;
probably printed at Lisbon. (Life, in Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 495.)
His “Suceso do Segundo Cerco de Diu,” in twenty-one cantos, on
the siege, or rather defence, of Diu, in the East Indies, in
1546, was published in 1574, and translated into Spanish by the
well-known poet, Pedro de Padilla, who published his version in
1597. His “Naufragio y Lastimoso Suceso da Perdiçaõ de Manuel
de Souza de Sepúlveda,” etc., (Lisboa, 1594), in seventeen
cantos, was translated into Spanish by Francisco de Contreras,
with the title of “Nave Trágica de la India de Portugal,” 1624.
This Manuel de Souza, who had held a distinguished office in
Portuguese India, and who had perished miserably by shipwreck
near the Cape of Good Hope, in 1553, as he was returning home,
was a connection of Cortereal by marriage. Denis, Chroniques,
etc., Tom. II. p. 79.

The other contemporary poem on Don John of Austria was still more solemnly devoted to his memory. It was written by Juan Rufo Gutierrez, a person much trusted in the government of Córdova, and expressly sent by that city to Don John, whose service he seems never afterwards to have left. He was, as he tells us, especially charged by that prince to write his history, and received from him the materials for his task. The result, after ten years of labor, was a long chronicling poem called the “Austriada,” printed in 1584. It begins, in the first four cantos, with the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras; and then, after giving us the birth and education of Don John, as the general sent to subdue them, goes on with his subsequent life and adventures, and ends, in the twenty-fourth canto, with the battle of Lepanto and the promise of a continuation.

When it was thus far finished, which was not till after the death of the prince to whose glory it is dedicated, it was solemnly presented, both by the city of Córdova and by the Cortes of the kingdom, in separate letters, to Philip the Second, asking for it his especial favor, as for a work “that it seemed to them must last for many ages.” The king received it graciously, and gave the author five hundred ducats, regarding it, perhaps, with secret satisfaction, as a funeral monument to one whose life had been so brilliant that his death was not unwelcome. With such patronage, it soon passed through three editions; but it had no real merit, except in the skilful construction of its octave stanzas, and in some of its picturesque historical details, and was, therefore, soon forgotten.[831]

[831] “La Austriada de Juan Rufo, Jurado de la Ciudad de
Córdoba,” Madrid, 1584, 12mo, ff. 447. There are editions of 1585
and 1587, and it is extravagantly praised by Cervantes, in a
prefatory sonnet, and in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library.
Rufo, when he was to be presented to Philip II.,--probably at the
time he offered his poem and dedication,--said he had prepared
himself fully for the reception, but lost all presence of mind,
from the severity of that monarch’s appearance. (Baltasar
Porreño, Dichos y Hechos de Philipe II., Bruselas, 1666, 12mo, p.
39.) The best of Rufo’s works is his Letter to his young Son, at
the end of his “Apotegmas,” already noticed;--the same son, Luis,
who afterwards became a distinguished painter at Rome.

In the neighbourhood of the city of Leon there are,--or in the sixteenth century there were--three imperfect Roman inscriptions cut into the living rock; two of them referring to Curienus, a Spaniard, who had successfully resisted the Imperial armies in the reign of Domitian, and the third to Polma, a lady, whose marriage to her lover, Canioseco, is thus singularly recorded. On these inscriptions, Vezilla Castellanos, a native of the territory where the persons they commemorate are supposed to have lived, has constructed a romantic poem, in twenty-nine cantos, called “Leon in Spain,” which he published in 1586.

Its main subject, however, in the last fifteen cantos, is the tribute of a hundred damsels, which the usurper Mauregato covenanted by treaty to pay annually to the Moors, and which, by the assistance of the apostle Saint James, King Ramiro successfully refused to pay any longer. Castellanos, therefore, passes lightly over the long period intervening between the time of Domitian and that of the war of Pelayo, giving only a few sketches from its Christian history, and then, in the twenty-ninth canto, brings to a conclusion so much of his poem as relates to the Moorish tribute, without, however, reaching the ultimate limit he had originally proposed to himself. But it is long enough. Some parts of the Roman fiction are pleasing, but the rest of the poem shows that Castellanos is only what he calls himself in the Preface,--“A modest poetical historian, or historical poet; an imitator and apprentice of those who have employed poetry to record such memorable things as kindle the minds of men and raise them to a Christian and devout reverence for the saints, to an honorable exercise of arms, to the defence of God’s holy law, and to the loyal service of the king.”[832] If his poem have any subject, it is the history of the city of Leon.

[832] “Primera y Segunda Parte del Leon de España, por Pedro de
la Vezilla Castellanos,” Salamanca, 1586, 12mo, ff. 369. The
story of the gross tribute of the damsels has probably some
foundation in fact; one proof of which is, that the old General
Chronicle (Parte III., c. 8) seems a little unwilling to tell a
tale so discreditable to Spain. Mariana admits it, and Lobera,
in his “Historia de las Grandezas, etc., de Leon,” (Valladolid,
1596, 4to, Parte II. c. 24) gives it in full, as unquestionable.
Leon is still often called Leon de _España_, as it is in the poem
of Castellanos, to distinguish it from Lyons in France, Leon de
_Francia_.

In the course of the next four years after the appearance of this rhymed chronicle of Leon, we find no less than three other long poems connected with the national history: one by Miguel Giner, on the siege of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese, who succeeded the unfortunate Don John of Austria as generalissimo of Philip the Second in the war of the Netherlands;--another, in twenty-one cantos, by Edward or Duarte Diaz, a Portuguese, on the taking of Granada by the Catholic sovereigns;--and the third by Lorenzo de Zamora, on the history of Saguntum and of its siege by Hannibal, in which, preserving the outline of that early story so far as it was well settled, he has wildly mixed up love-scenes, tournaments, and adventures, suited only to the age of chivalry. Taken together, they show how strong was the passion for narrative verse in Spain, where, in so short a time, it produced three such poems.[833]

[833] “Sitio y Toma de Amberes, por Miguel Giner,” Zaragoza,
1587, 8vo.--“La Conquista que hicieron los Reyes Católicos en
Granada, por Edoardo Diaz,” 1590, 8vo, Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 730;
besides which, Diaz, who was long a soldier in the Spanish
service, and wrote good Castilian, published, in 1592, a volume
of verse in Spanish and Portuguese.--“De la Historia de Sagunto,
Numancia, y Cartago, compuesta por Lorencio de Zamora, Natural
de Ocaña,” Alcalá, 1589, 4to,--nineteen cantos of _ottava rima_,
and about five hundred pages, ending abruptly and promising more.
It was written, the author says, when he was eighteen years old;
but though he lived to be an old man, and died in 1614, having
printed several religious books, he never went farther with this
poem. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 11.

To a similar result we should arrive from the single example of Christóval de Mesa, who, between 1594 and 1612, published three more national heroic poems;--the first on the tradition, that the body of Saint James, after his martyrdom at Jerusalem, was miraculously carried to Spain and deposited at Compostella, where that saint has ever since been worshipped as the especial patron of the whole kingdom;--the second on Pelayo and the recovery of Spain from the Moors down to the battle of Covadonga;--and the third on the battle of Tolosa, which broke the power of Mohammedanism and made sure the emancipation of the whole Peninsula. All three, as well as Mesa’s elaborate translations of the Æneid and Georgics, which followed them, are written in _ottava rima_, and all three are dedicated to Philip the Third.

Of their author we know little, and that little is told chiefly by himself in his pleasant poetical epistles, and especially in two addressed to the Count of Lemos and one to the Count de Castro. From these we learn, that, in his youth, he was addicted to the study of Fernando de Herrera and Luis de Soto, as well as to the teachings of Sanchez, the first Spanish scholar of his time; but that, later, he lived five years in Italy, much connected with Tasso, and from this time belonged entirely to the Italian school of Spanish poetry, to which, as his works show, he had always been inclined. But, with all his efforts,--and they were not few,--he found little favor or patronage. The Count de Lemos refused to carry him to Naples as a part of his poetical court, and the king took no notice of his long poems, which, indeed, were no more worthy of favor than the rest of their class that were then jostling and crowding one another in their efforts to obtain the royal protection.[834]

[834] “Las Navas de Tolosa,” twenty cantos, Madrid, 1594,
12mo;--“La Restauracion de España,” ten cantos, Madrid, 1607,
12mo;--“El Patron de España,” six books, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, with
Rimas added. My copy of the last volume is one of the many proofs
that new title-pages with later dates were attached to Spanish
books that had been some time before the public. Mr. Southey,
to whom this copy once belonged, expresses his surprise, in a
MS. note on the fly-leaf, that the _last_ half of the volume
should be dated in 1611, while the _first_ half is dated in
1612. But the reason is, that the title-page to the Rimas comes
at p. 94, in the middle of a sheet, and could not conveniently
be cancelled and changed, as was the title-page to the “Patron
de España,” with which the volume opens. Mesa’s translations
are later;--the Æneid, Madrid, 1615, 12mo; and the Eclogues of
Virgil, to which he added a few more Rimas and the poor tragedy
of “Pompeio,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo. The _ottava rima_ seems to me
very cumbrous in both these translations, and unsuited to their
nature, though we are reconciled to it, and to the _terza rima_,
in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Viana, a Portuguese, printed at
Valladolid, in 1589, 4to; one of the happiest translations made
in the pure age of Castilian literature. The Iliad, which Mesa is
also supposed to have translated, was never printed. In one of
his epistles, (Rimas, 1611, f. 201), he says he was bred to the
law; and in another, (f. 205), that he loved to live in Castile,
though he was of Estremadura. In many places he alludes to his
poverty and to the neglect he suffered; and in a sonnet in his
last publication, (1618, f. 113), he shows a poor, craven spirit
in flattering the Count de Lemos, with whom he was offended for
not taking him to Naples.

Juan de la Cueva followed in the footsteps of Mesa. His “Bética,” printed in 1603, is an heroic poem, in twenty-four cantos, on the conquest of Seville by Saint Ferdinand. Its subject is good, and its hero, who is the king himself, is no less so. But the poem is a failure; heavy and uninteresting in its plan, and cold in its execution;--for Cueva, who took his materials chiefly from the General Chronicle of Saint Ferdinand’s son, was not able to mould them, as he strove to do, into the form of the “Jerusalem Delivered.” The task was, in fact, quite beyond his power. The most agreeable portion of his work is that which involves the character of Tarfira, a personage imitated from Tasso’s Clorinda; but, after all, the romantic episode of which she is the heroine has great defects, and is too much interwoven with the principal thread of the story. The general plan of the poem, however, is less encumbered in its movement and more epic in its structure than is common in those of its class in Spanish literature; and the versification, though careless, is fluent and generally harmonious.[835]

[835] “Conquista de la Bética, Poema Heróico de Juan de la
Cueva,” 1603, reprinted in the fourteenth and fifteenth volumes
of the collection of Fernandez, (Madrid, 1795), with a Preface,
which is, I think, by Quintana, and is very good. A notice of
Cueva occurs in the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Tom. I. p.
285; and a number of his unpublished works are said to be in
the possession of the Counts of Aguila in Seville. Semanario
Pintoresco, 1846, p. 250.

A physician and scholar of Valladolid, Alfonso Lopez,--commonly called El Pinciano, from the Roman name of his native city,--wrote in his youth a poem on the subject of Pelayo, but did not publish it till 1605, when he was already an old man. It supposes Pelayo to have been misled by a dream from Lucifer to undertake a journey to Jerusalem, and, when at the Holy Sepulchre, to have been undeceived by another dream, and sent back for the emancipation of his country. This last is the obvious and real subject of the poem, which has episodes and machinery enough to explain all the history of Spain down to the time of Philip the Third, to whom the “Pelayo” is dedicated. It is long, like the rest of its class, and, though ushered into notice with an air of much scholarship and pretension, it is written with little skill in the versification, and is one of the most wearisome poems in the language.[836]

[836] “El Pelayo del Pinciano,” Madrid, 1605, 12mo, twenty
cantos, filling above six hundred pages, with a poor attempt
at the end, after the manner of Tasso, to give an allegorical
interpretation to the whole. I notice in N. Antonio “La Iberiada,
de los Hechos de Scipion Africano, por Gaspar Savariego de Santa
Anna,” Valladolid, 1603, 8vo. I have never seen it. “La Patrona
de Madrid Restituida,” by Salas Barbadillo, an heroic poem in
honor of Our Lady of Atocha, printed in 1608, and reprinted,
Madrid, 1750, 12mo, which I possess, is worthless and does not
need to be noticed.

In 1612 two more similar epics were published. The first is “La Numantina,” which is on the siege of Numantia and the history of Soria, a town standing in the neighbourhood of Numantia, and claiming to be its successor. The author, Francisco Mosquera de Barnuevo, who belonged to an ancient and distinguished family there, not only wrote this poem of fifteen cantos in honor of the territory where he was born, but accompanied it with a prose history, as a sort of running commentary, in which whatever relates to Soria, and especially the Barnuevos, is not forgotten. It is throughout a very solemn piece of pedantry, and its metaphysical agencies, such as Europe talking to Nemesis, and Antiquity teaching the author, seem to be a good deal in the tone of the old Mysteries, and are certainly any thing but poetical. The other epic referred to is by Vasconcellos, a Portuguese, who had an important command and fought bravely against Spain when his country was emancipating itself from the Spanish yoke, but still wrote with purity, in the Castilian, seventeen cantos, nominally on the expulsion of the Moriscos, but really on the history of the whole Peninsula, from the time of the first entrance of the Moors down to the final exile of the last of their hated descendants by Philip the Third. But neither of these poems is now remembered, and neither deserves to be.[837]

[837] “La Numantina del Licenciado Don Francisco Mosquera de
Barnuevo, etc., dirigida á la nobilissima Ciudad de Soria y á
sus doce Linages y Casas á ellas agregadas,” Sevilla, 1612, 4to.
He says “it was a book of his youth, printed when his hairs were
gray”; but it shows none of the judgment of mature years.

“La Liga deshecha por la Expulsion de los Moriscos de los Reynos
de España,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo. It was printed, therefore, long
before Vasconcellos fought against Spain, and contains fulsome
compliments to Philip III., which must afterwards have given
their author no pleasure. (Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 701.) The poem
consists of about twelve hundred octave stanzas.

“La España Defendida,” by Christ. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid,
1612, 12mo, and Naples, 1644, belongs to the same date, making,
in fact, three heroic poems in one year.

From this point of time, such narrative poems, more or less approaching an epic form, and devoted to the glory of Spain, become rare;--a circumstance to be, in part, attributed to the success of Lope de Vega, which gave to the national drama a prominence so brilliant. Still, in the course of the next thirty years, two or three attempts were made that should be noticed.

The first of them is by a Portuguese lady, Bernarda Ferreira, and is called “Spain Emancipated”; a tedious poem, in two parts, the earlier of which appeared in 1618, and the latter in 1673, long after its author’s death. It is, in fact, a rhymed chronicle,--to the first part of which the dates are regularly attached,--and was intended, no doubt, to cover the whole seven centuries of Spanish history from the outbreak of Pelayo to the fall of Granada, but it is finished no farther than the reign of Alfonso the Wise, where it stops abruptly.

The second attempt is one of the most absurd known in literary history. It was made by Vera y Figueroa, Count de la Roca, long the minister of Spain at Venice, and the author of a pleasant prose treatise on the Rights and Duties of an Ambassador. He began by translating Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” but, just as his version was ready to be published, he changed his purpose, and accommodated the whole work--history, poetical ornaments, and all--to the delivery of Seville from the Moors by Saint Ferdinand. The transformation is as complete as any in Ovid, but certainly not as graceful;--a fact singularly apparent in the second book, where Tasso’s beautiful and touching story of Sophronia and Olindo is travestied by the corresponding one of Leocadia and Galindo. As if to make the whole more grotesque and give it the air of a grave caricature, the Spanish poem is composed throughout in the old Castilian _redondillas_, and carried through exactly twenty books, all running parallel to the twenty of the “Jerusalem Delivered.”

The last of the three attempts just referred to, and the last one of the period that needs to be noticed, is the “Naples Recovered” of Prince Esquilache, which, though written earlier, dates, by its publication, from 1651. It is on the conquest of Naples in the middle of the fifteenth century by Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, who seems to have been selected as its hero, in part, at least, because the Prince of Esquilache could boast his descent from that truly great monarch.

The poem, however, is little worthy of its subject. The author avowedly took great pains that it should have no more books than the Æneid; that it should violate no historical proprieties; and that, in its episodes, machinery, and style, as well as in its general fable and structure, it should be rigorously conformed to the safest epic models. He even, as he declares, had procured for it the crowning grace of a royal approbation before he ventured to give it to the world. Still it is a failure. It seems to foreshadow some of the severe and impoverishing doctrines of the next century of Spanish literature, and is written with a squeamish nicety in the versification that still further impairs its spirit; so that the last of the class to which it belongs, if it be not one of the most extravagant, is one of the most dull and uninteresting.[838]

[838] “Hespaña Libertada, Parte Primera, por Doña Bernarda
Ferreira de Lacerda, dirigida al Rey Católico de las Hespañas,
Don Felipe Tercero deste Nombre, _nuestro_ Señor,” (Lisboa, 1618,
4to), was evidently intended as a compliment to the Spanish
usurpers, and, in this point of view, is as little creditable to
its author as it is in its poetical aspect. Parte Segunda was
published by her daughter, Lisboa, 1673, 4to. Bernarda de Lacerda
was a lady variously accomplished. Lope de Vega, who dedicated
to her his eclogue entitled “Phylis,” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. X.
p. 193), compliments her on her writing Latin with purity.
She published a volume of poetry, in Portuguese, Spanish, and
Italian, in 1634, and died in 1644.

“El Fernando, ó Sevilla Restaurada, Poema Heróico, escrito con
los Versos de la Gerusalemme Liberata, etc., por Don Juan Ant. de
Vera y Figueroa, Conde de la Roca,” etc., Milan, 1632, 4to, pp.
654. He died 1658. Antonio, _ad verb._

“Nápoles Recuperada por el Rey Don Alonso, Poema Heróico de D.
Francisco de Borja, Príncipe de Esquilache,” etc. Zaragoza, 1651,
Amberes, 1658, 4to. A notice of his honorable and adventurous
life will be given, when we speak of Spanish lyrical poetry,
where he was more successful than he was in epic.

There were two or three other poems called heroic that appeared
after these; but they do not need to be recalled. One of the most
absurd of them is the “Orfeo Militar,” in two parts, by Joan de
la Victoria Ovando; the first being on the siege of Vienna by
the Turks, and the second on that of Buda, both printed in 1688,
4to, at Malaga, where their author enjoyed a military office; but
neither, I think, was much read beyond the limits of the city
that produced them.

* * * * *

It is worth while, as we finish our notice of this remarkable series of Spanish narrative and heroic poems, to recollect how long the passion for them continued in Spain, and how distinctly they retained to the last those ambitious feelings of national greatness which originally gave them birth. For a century, during the reigns of Philip the Second, Philip the Third, and Philip the Fourth, they were continually issuing from the press, and were continually received with the same kind, if not the same degree, of favor that had accompanied the old romances of chivalry, which they had helped to supersede. Nor was this unnatural, though it was extravagant. These old epic attempts were, in general, founded on some of the deepest and noblest traits in the Castilian character; and if that character had gone on rising in dignity and developing itself under the three Philips, as it had under Ferdinand and Isabella, there can be little doubt that the poetry built upon it would have taken rank by the side of that produced under similar impulses in Italy and England. But, unhappily, this was not the case. These Spanish narrative poems devoted to the glory of their country were produced when the national character was on the decline; and as they sprang more directly from the essential elements of that character, and depended more on its spirit, than did the similar poetry of any other people in modern times, so they now more visibly declined with it.

It is in vain, therefore, that the semblance of the feelings which originally gave them birth is continued till the last; for the substance is wanting. We mark, it is true, in nearly every one of them, a proud patriotism, which is just as presumptuous and exclusive under the weakest of the Philips as it was when Charles the Fifth wore half the crowns of Europe; but we feel that it is degenerating into a dreary, ungracious prejudice in favor of their own country, which prevented its poets from looking abroad into the world beyond the Pyrenees, where they could only see their cherished hopes of universal empire disappointed, and other nations rising to the state and power their own was so fast losing. We mark, too, throughout these epic attempts, the indications to which we have been accustomed of what was most peculiar in Spanish loyalty,--bold, turbulent, and encroaching against all other authority exactly in proportion as it was faithful and submissive to the highest; but we find it is now become a loyalty which, largely as it may share the spirit of military glory, has lost much of the sensitiveness of its ancient honor. And finally, though we mark in nearly every one of them that deep feeling of reverence for religion which had come down from the ages of contest with the infidel power of the Moors, yet we find it now constantly mingling the arrogant fierceness of worldly passion with the holiest of its offerings, and submitting, in the spirit of blind faith and devotion, to a bigotry whose decrees were written in blood. These multitudinous Spanish heroic poems, therefore, that were produced out of the elements of the national character when that character was falling into decay, naturally bear the marks of their origin. Instead of reaching, by the fervid enthusiasm of a true patriotism, of a proud loyalty, and of an enlightened religion, the elevation to which they aspire, they sink away, with few exceptions, into tedious, rhyming chronicles, in which the national glory fails to excite the interest that would belong to an earnest narrative of real events, without gaining in its stead any thing from the inspirations of poetical genius.