Chapter XXIX

LYRIC POETRY.--ITS CONDITION FROM THE TIME OF BOSCAN AND GARCILASSO DE LA VEGA.--CANTORÁL, FIGUEROA, ESPINEL, MONTEMAYOR, BARAHONA DE SOTO, RUFO, DAMIAN DE VEGAS, PADILLA, MALDONADO, LUIS DE LEON, FERNANDO DE HERRERA AND HIS POETICAL LANGUAGE, ESPINOSA’S COLLECTION, MANOEL DE PORTUGAL, MESA, LEDESMA AND THE CONCEPTISTAS.--CULTISMO, AND SIMILAR BAD TASTE IN OTHER COUNTRIES.--GÓNGORA AND HIS FOLLOWERS, VILLAMEDIANA, PARAVICINO, ROCA Y SERNA, ANTONIO DE VEGA, PANTALEON, VIOLANTE DEL CIELO, MELO, MONCAYO, LA TORRE, VERGARA, ROZAS, ULLOA, SALAZAR.--FASHION AND PREVALENCE OF THE SCHOOL OF GÓNGORA.--EFFORTS TO OVERTURN IT BY LOPE DE VEGA, QUEVEDO, AND OTHERS.--MEDRANO, ALCAZAR, ARGUIJO, BALVAS.

A decidedly lyric tendency is perceptible in Spanish literature from the first. The ballads are full of it, and occasionally we find snatches of songs that seem almost as old as the earliest ballads. All this, of course, belongs to a period so remote and rude, that what it produced was national, because Spain had as yet no intercourse with other European countries that drew after it any of their culture and refinement. Later, we have seen how the neighbouring Provençal sometimes gave its measures and tones to the Castilian; and how both, so far as Spain was concerned, were fashioned by the tastes of the different courts of the country down to the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.

But, from the next age, which was that of Boscan and Garcilasso, a new element was introduced into Spanish lyric poetry; for, from that period, not only the forms, but the genius, of the more cultivated Italian are perceptible, in a manner that does not permit us for a moment to question their great influence and final success. Still, the difference between the characters of the two nations was so great, that the poetry of Spain could not be drawn into such relations with the Italian models set before it as was at first attempted. Two currents, therefore, were at once formed; and after the first encounter between them, in which Castillejo was the most prominent, if not the earliest, of those who strove to prevent their union, the respective streams have continued to flow on, side by side, but still separate from each other, down to our own days.

At the end of the sixteenth century, the influence of such poetry as had filled the Cancioneros from the time of John the Second was still acknowledged, and Bibero Costana, Heredia, Sanchez de Badajoz, and their contemporaries, continued to be read, though they no longer enjoyed the fashionable admiration which had once waited on them. But the change that was destined to overthrow the school to which these poets belonged was rapidly advancing; and if it were not the most favorable that could have been made in Spanish lyric poetry, it was one which, as we have seen, the brilliant success of Garcilasso, and the circumstances producing and attending it, rendered inevitable.[839]

[839] See what is said in Chap. III. on Acuña, Cetina, Silvestre,
etc.

Among those who contributed avowedly to this change was Cantorál, who, in 1578, published a volume of verse, in the Preface to which he does not hesitate to say that Spain had hardly produced a poet deserving the name, except Garcilasso;--a poet, as he truly adds, formed on Italian models, and one whose footsteps he himself follows, though at a very humble distance.[840] Another of the lyric poets of the same period, and one who, with better success, took the same direction, was Francisco de Figueroa, a gentleman and a soldier, whose few Castilian poems are still acknowledged in the more choice collections of his native literature, but who lived so long in Italy, and devoted himself so earnestly to the study of its language, that he wrote Italian verse with purity, as well as Spanish.[841] To these should be added Vicente Espinel, who invented the _décimas_, or renewed the use of them, and who, in a volume of poetry printed in 1591, distinguishes the Italian forms, to which he gives precedence, from the Castilian, in which his efforts, though fewer in number, are occasionally more beautiful than any thing he wrote in the forms he preferred.[842]

[840] “Obras Poéticas de Lomas de Cantorál,” Madrid, 1578, 12mo.
It opens with a translation from Tansillo, and the lyrical
portions of the three books into which it is divided are in the
Italian manner; but the rest is often more national in its forms.

[841] Figueroa, (born 1540, died 1620), often called El Divino,
was perhaps more known and admired in Italy, during the greater
part of his life, than he was in Spain; but he died at last,
much honored, in Alcalá, his native city. His poetry is dated in
1572, and was circulated in manuscript quite as early as that
date implies; but it was not printed, I think, till it appeared
in 1626, at Lisbon, in a minute volume under the auspices of Luis
Tribaldo de Toledo, chronicler of Portugal. It is also in the
twentieth volume of the collection of Fernandez, Madrid. But,
though it is highly polished, it is not inspired by a masculine
genius.

[842] “Diversas Rimas de V. Espinel,” Madrid, 1591, 18mo. His
lines on Seeking Occasions for Jealousy (f. 78) are very happy,
and his Complaints against Past Happiness (f. 128) are better
than those on the same subject by Silvestre, Obras, 1599, f. 71.

But the disposition to follow the great masters of Italy was by no means so general as the examples of Cantorál, Figueroa, and Espinel might seem to imply. Their cases are, in fact, extreme cases, as we can see from the circumstance, that, though Montemayor in his “Diana” was a professed imitator of Sannazaro, still, among the poems scattered through that prose pastoral, and in a volume which he afterwards printed, are found many pieces--and some of them among the best he has left--that belong decidedly to the older and more national school.[843] Similar remarks may be applied to other authors of the same period. Luis Barahona de Soto, of whose lyric poems only a few have reached us, was by no means exclusively of the Italian school, though his principal work, the famous “Tears of Angelica,” is in the manner of Ariosto.[844] And Rufo, while he strove to tread in the footsteps of Petrarch, had yet within him a Castilian genius, which seems to have compelled him, as if against his will, to return to the paths of the elder poets of his own country.[845] A still larger number of the contemporary lyrics of Damian de Vegas[846] and Pedro de Padilla[847] are national in their tone; but best of all is this tone heard, at this period, from Lopez Maldonado, who, sometimes in a gay spirit, and sometimes in one full of tenderness and melancholy, is almost uniformly inspired by the popular feeling and true to the popular instincts.[848]

[843] Montemayor, as we shall see hereafter, introduced the prose
pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro, into Spanish in 1542; and a
collection of his poetry, called a “Cancionero,” was printed in
1554. In the edition of Madrid, 1588, 12mo, which I use, about
one third of the volume is in the Castilian measures and manner;
after which it is formally announced, “Here begin the sonnets,
_canciones_, and other pieces in the measures of Italian verse.”
A _cancion_ occurs in the first book of the “Diana,” on the
regrets of a shepherdess who had driven her lover to despair,
which is very sweet and natural, and is well translated by old
Bartholomew Yong in his version of the Diana (London, 1598,
folio, p. 8). Polo, who continued the Diana, pursued the same
course in the poems he inserted in his continuation, and good
translations of several of them may be found in Yong.

“The works of Montemayor touching on Devotion and
Religion”--those, I presume, in his “Cancionero”--are prohibited
in the Index of 1667, and in that of 1790.

[844] The lyric poetry of Barahona de Soto is to be sought among
the works of Silvestre, 1599, and in the “Flores de Poetas
Ilustres,” by Espinosa, Valladolid, 1605, 4to.

[845] “Las Seyscientas Apotegmas de Juan Rufo, y otras Obras
en Verso,” Toledo, 1596, 8vo. The _Apotegmas_ are, in fact,
anecdotes in prose. His sonnets and _canciones_ are not so good
as his Letter to his Son and his other more Castilian poems, such
as the one relating to the war in Flanders, where he served.

[846] “Libro de Poesía, por Fray Damian de Vegas,” Toledo, 1590,
12mo, above a thousand pages; most of it religious; most of it in
the old manner; and nearly all of it very dull.

[847] “Pedro de Padilla, Eglogas, Sonetos,” etc., Sevilla, 1582,
4to, ff. 246. There are many lyrics in this collection, _glosas_,
_villancicos_, and _letrillas_, that are quite Castilian, some of
them spirited and pleasant. Others may be found in his “Thesoro
de Varias Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo), where, however, there
are yet more in the Italian forms.

[848] The “Cancionero” of Maldonado was printed at Madrid, 1586,
in 4to, and the best parts of it are the amatory poetry, some
of which is found in the third volume of Faber’s “Floresta.”
One more poet might have been added here, as writing in the old
measures,--Joachim Romero de Çepeda,--whose works were printed
at Seville, 1582, in 4to, and contain a good many _canciones_,
_motes_, and _glosas_; among the rest, three remarkable sonnets,
presented by him to Philip II. as he passed through Badajoz,
where Çepeda lived, to take possession of Portugal, in 1580. But
the whole volume is marked with conceits and quibbles.

But it should not be forgotten that during the same period lived the two greatest lyrical poets that Spain has ever produced,--exercising little influence over each other, and still less over their own times. Of one of them, Luis de Leon, who died in 1591, after having given hardly any thing of his poetry to the world, we have already spoken. The other was Fernando de Herrera, an ecclesiastic of Seville,[849] of whom we know only that he lived in the latter part of the sixteenth century; that he died in 1597, at the age of sixty-three years; that Cervantes wrote a sonnet in his honor;[850] and that, in 1619, his friend Francisco Pacheco, the painter, published his works, with a Preface by the kindred spirit of Rioja.[851]

[849] Herrera’s praises of Seville and the Guadalquivir
sufficiently betray his origin, so constant are they. They are,
too, sometimes among the happy specimens of his verse; for
instance, in the ode in honor of St. Ferdinand, who rescued
Seville from the Moors, and in the elegy, “Bien debes asconder
sereno cielo.”

[850] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 1819, p. 447. The date of
Herrera’s death is given on the sure authority of some MS. notes
of Pacheco, his friend, published in the Semanario Pintoresco,
1845, p. 299; before which it was unknown. These notes are
taken from an interesting MS. which seems to have been the
rough and imperfect draft of the “Imágines” and “Elogia Virorum
Illustrium,” which Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 456) says
Pacheco gave to the well-known Count Duke Olivares. They are in
the Semanario Erudito, 1844, pp. 374, etc. See also Navarrete,
Vida de Cervantes, pp. 536-537. Pacheco was a good painter, and
Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p. 3) gives a life of him.
He was a man of some learning, and entered into a controversy
with Quevedo on the question of making Santa Teresa a copatroness
of Spain with Santiago, which Quevedo resisted; besides which,
in 1649, he published in 4to, at Seville, his “Arte de la
Pintura, su Antiguedad y Grandezas,” a rare work, praised by
Cean Bermudez, which I have never seen. Pacheco died in 1654.
Sedano (Parnaso Español, Tom. III. p. 117, and Tom. VII. p. 92)
gives two epigrams of Pacheco, which are connected with his art,
and which Sedano praises, I think, more than they deserve to be
praised.

[851] Pacheco’s edition is accompanied with a fine portrait of
the author from a picture by the editor, which has often been
engraved since.

That Herrera was acquainted with some of the unpublished poetry of Luis de Leon is certain, because he cites it in his learned commentary on Garcilasso, printed in 1580; but that he placed Garcilasso de la Vega above Luis de Leon is no less certain from the same commentary, where he often expresses an opinion that Garcilasso was the greatest of all Spanish poets;[852]--an opinion sufficiently obvious in the volume of his own poetry published by himself in 1582, which is altogether in the Italian manner adopted by Garcilasso, and which, increased by poems of a different character in the editions of Pacheco, in 1619, and of Fernandez, in 1808,[853] constitutes all we possess of Herrera’s verse, though certainly not all he wrote.[854]

[852] “In our Spain, beyond all comparison, Garcilasso stands
first,” he says, (p. 409), and repeats the same opinion often
elsewhere.

[853] The edition of Fernandez, the most complete of all, and
twice printed, is in the fourth and fifth volumes of his “Poesías
Castellanas.” The longer poems of Herrera, which we know only by
their unpromising titles, are “The Battle of the Giants,” “The
Rape of Proserpine,” “The Amadis,” and “The Loves of Laurino
and Cærona.” Perhaps we have reason to regret the loss of his
unpublished Eclogues and “Castilian Verses,” which last may
have been in the old Castilian measures. In 1572, he published
a descriptive account of the war of Cyprus and the battle of
Lepanto, and, in 1592, a Life of Sir Thomas More, taken from the
Latin “Lives of the Three Thomases,” by Stapleton, the obnoxious
English Papist. (Wood’s Athenæ, ed. Bliss, Tom. I. p. 671.) A
History of Spain, said by Rioja to have been finished by Herrera
about 1590, is probably lost.

[854] In some remarks by the Licentiate Enrique de Duarte,
prefixed to the edition of Herrera’s poetry printed in 1619, he
says, that, a few days after Herrera’s death, a bound volume,
containing all his poetical works, prepared by himself for
the press, was destroyed, and that his scattered manuscripts
would probably have shared the same fate, if they had not been
carefully collected by Pacheco.

Some parts of the volume published by himself have little value, such as most of the sonnets,--a form of composition on which he placed an extravagant estimate.[855] Other parts are excellent. Such are his elegies, which are in _terza rima_, and of which the one addressed to Love beseeching Repose is full of passion, while that in which he expresses his gratitude for the resource of tears is full of tenderness and the gentlest harmony.[856] But his principal success is in his _canzones_. Of these he wrote sixteen. The least fortunate of them is, perhaps, the one where he most strove to imitate Pindar;--that on the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras, which he has rendered cold by founding it on the Greek mythology. The best are one on the battle of Lepanto, gained by Herrera’s favorite hero, the young and generous Don John of Austria, and one on the overthrow of Sebastian of Portugal, in his disastrous invasion of Africa. Both were probably written when the minds of men were everywhere stirred by the great events that called them forth; and both were fortunately connected with those feelings of loyalty and religion that always seemed to spring up together in the minds of the Spanish people, and to be of kindred with all their highest poetical inspirations.

[855] In his commentary on Garcilasso he says, “The sonnet is the
most beautiful form of composition in Spanish and Italian poetry,
and the one that demands the most art in its construction and the
greatest grace.” p. 66.

[856] The lady to whom Herrera dedicated his love, in a spirit of
pure and Platonic affection, little known to Spanish poetry, is
said to have been the Countess of Gelves.

The first--that on the battle of Lepanto, which emancipated many thousand Christian captives, and stopped the second westward advance of the Crescent--is a lofty and cheerful hymn of victory, mingling, to a remarkable degree, the jubilant exultation which breaks forth in the Psalms and Prophecies on the conquests of the Jews over their unbelieving enemies, with the feelings of a devout Spaniard at the thought of so decisive an overthrow of the ancient and hated enemy of his faith and country. The other,--an ode on the death of Sebastian of Portugal,--composed, on the contrary, in a vein of despondency, is still romantic and striking, even more, perhaps, than its rival. That unfortunate monarch, who was one of the most chivalrous princes that ever sat on a throne in Christendom, undertook, in 1578, to follow up the great victory of Lepanto by rescuing the whole of the North of Africa from the Moslem yoke, under which it had so long groaned, and to restore to their homes the multitudes of Christians who were there suffering the most cruel servitude. He perished in the generous attempt; hardly fifty of his large army returning to recount the details of the fatal battle, in which he himself had disappeared among the heaps of unrecognized slain. But so fond and fervent was the popular admiration, that, for above a century afterwards, it was believed in Portugal that Don Sebastian would still return and resume the power which, for a time, had so dazzled and deluded the hearts of his subjects.[857]

[857] There is a book on this subject which should not be
entirely overlooked in a history of Spanish literature. It is an
account of a pastry-cook of Madrigal, who, seventeen years after
the rout in Africa, passed himself off in Spain as Don Sebastian,
and induced Anna of Austria, a cousin of that monarch and a nun,
to give him rich jewels, which led to the detection of the fraud.
The story is interesting and well told, and was first printed
in 1595, at Cadiz, under the title of “A History of Gabriel de
Espinosa, the Pastry-cook of Madrigal, who pretended to be King
Don Sebastian of Portugal.” Of course, Philip II. did not deal
gently with one who made such pretensions to the crown he himself
had clutched, or with any of his abettors. The pastry-cook and
a monk on whom he had imposed his fictions were both hanged,
after undergoing the usual appliances of racks and tortures; and
the poor princess was degraded from her rank, and shut up in a
conventual cell for life. There is an anonymous play of small
merit, which seems to have been written in the time of Philip
IV., and is entitled “El Pastelero de Madrigal.”

To the main facts in this melancholy disaster Herrera has happily given a religious turn. He opens his ode with a lament for the affliction of Portugal, and then goes on to show that the generous glory which should have accompanied such an effort against the common enemy of Christendom had been lost in a cruel defeat, because those who undertook the great expedition had been moved only by human ambition, forgetting the higher Christian feelings that should have carried them into a war against the infidel. In this spirit, he cries out,--

But woe to them who, trusting in the strength
Of horses and their chariots’ multitude,
Have hastened, Lybia, to thy desert sands!--
O, woe to them! for theirs is not a hope
That humbly seeks for everlasting light,
But a presumptuous pride, that claims beforehand
The uncertain victory, and ere their eyes
Have looked to Heaven for help, with confident
And hardened hearts divides the unwon spoils.
But He who holds the headstrong back from ruin,--
The God of Israel,--hath relaxed his hand,
And they have rushed--the chariot and the charioteer,
The horse and horseman--down the dread abyss
His anger has prepared for their presumption.[858]

[858]
Ai de los que passaron, confiados
En sus cavallos, y en la muchadumbre
De sus carros, en tí, Libia desierta!
Y en su vigor y fuerças engañados,
No alçaron su esperança á aquella cumbre
D’eterna luz; mas con sobervia cierta
S’ofrecieron la incierta
Victoria, y sin bolver á Dios sus ojos,
Con ierto cuello y coraçon ufano,
Solo atendieron siempre á los despojos!
Y el Santo de Israel abrió su mano,
Y los dexó;--y cayó en despeñadero
El carro, y el cavallo y cavallero.

Versos de Fern. Herrera, Sevilla, 1619, 4to, p. 350.

Complaints, not entirely without foundation, have been made against Herrera’s poetry, on the ground that he wants a sufficiently discriminating taste in the choice of his words. Quevedo, who, when he printed the poems of the Bachiller de la Torre as models of purity in style, first made this suggestion, intimates that his objections do not apply to the volume of poetry published by Herrera himself, but to the additions that were made to it after the author’s death by his friend Pacheco.[859] But, without stopping to inquire whether this intimation be strictly true or not, it is enough to say, that, when Herrera’s taste was formed and forming, the Castilian was in the state in which it was described to have been about 1540 by the wise author of the “Dialogue on Languages”;--that is, it was not, in all respects, fitted for the highest efforts of the more cultivated lyric poetry. Herrera felt this difficulty, and somewhat boldly undertook to find a remedy for it.

[859] See the address of Quevedo to his readers in the “Poesías
del Bachiller de la Torre.” Some of the words, however, to which
he objects, like _pensoso_, _infamia_, _dudanza_, etc., have been
recognized since as good Castilian, which from their nature they
were when Herrera used them.

The course he pursued is sufficiently pointed out in the acute, but pedantic, notes which he has published to his edition of Garcilasso.[860] He began by claiming the right to throw out of the higher poetry all words that gave a common or familiar air to the thought. He introduced and defended inversions and inflections approaching those in the ancient classical languages. And he adopted, and sometimes succeeded in naturalizing in the Castilian, words from the Latin, the Italian, and the Greek. A moderate and cautious use of means like these was, perhaps, desirable in his time, as the author of the “Dialogue on Languages” had already endeavoured to show. But the misfortune with Herrera was, that he carried his practice, if not his doctrines, too far, and has thus occasionally given to his poetry a stiff and formal air, and made it, not only too much an imitation of the Latin or the Italian, but a slight anticipation of the false taste of Góngora, that so soon became fashionable. This is particularly true of his sonnets and _sestinas_, which are often involved and awkward in their structure; but in his more solemn odes, and especially in those where the stanzas are regular, each consisting of thirteen or more lines, there is a “long-resounding march” and a grand lyric movement, that sweep on their triumphant way in old Castilian dignity, quite unconscious of a spirit of imitation, and quite beyond its reach.

[860] Obras de Garcilasso, 1580, pp. 75, 120, 126, 573, and other
places.

Perhaps a better idea of the lyric poetry in highest favor among the more cultivated classes of Spanish society, at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, can be obtained from the collection of Pedro Espinosa, entitled “Flowers from the Most Famous Poets of Spain,” than from any other single volume, or from any single author.[861] It was printed in 1605, and contains more or less of the works of about sixty poets of that period, including Espinosa himself, of whom we have sixteen pieces that are worthy of their place. Most of the collection consists of lyric verse in the usual forms,--chiefly Italian, but not unfrequently national,--and many of the writers are familiar to us. Among them are Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and others already noticed, together with Góngora, the Argensolas, and some of their contemporaries.

[861] “Primera Parte de las Flores de Poetas Ilustres de España,
ordenada por Pedro Espinosa, Natural de la Ciudad de Antequera,”
Valladolid, 1605, 4to, ff. 204. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p.
190) says Espinosa was attached to the great Andalusian family
of the Dukes of Medina-Sidonia, the Guzmans, and of the three
or four works he produced, two are in honor of his patrons, and
one was published by himself as late as 1644. Much of the poetry
in the “Flores” is Andalusian,--a circumstance that renders the
omission of Herrera the more striking; some of it is to be found
nowhere else; and, unhappily, the book itself is among the rarest
in Spanish poetry.

Several of the poets from whom it gives selections or contributions are to be found nowhere else,--such as two ladies named Narvaez, and another called Doña Christovalina; while, from time to time, we find poems by obscure authors, like those of Pedro de Liñan and Agustin de Texada Paez, which, from their considerable merit, it would have been a misfortune to lose.[862] But Fernando de Herrera does not appear there at all; and of more than two thirds of its authors, only one or two short pieces are given. It is to be regarded, therefore, as an exhibition of the taste of the age when it appeared, rather than as a selection of what was really best and highest in the older and more recent Spanish lyric poetry at the opening of the seventeenth century. But, whatever we may think of it in this point of view, it is certainly among the more curious materials for a history of that poetry; and before we condemn Espinosa for selecting less wisely than he might have done, we should remember, that, after all, his taste was probably more refined than that of his age, since a second part of his collection which he proposed to publish was not called for, though he continued to be known as an author many years after the appearance of the first.

[862] Of the ladies whose poems occur in Espinosa, I think one,
Doña Christovalina, is noticed by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II.
p. 349). Of the others I know nothing, nor of Pedro de Liñan.
Texada, as we are told by Antonio, died in 1635, at the age of
sixty-seven;--the five poems printed thirty years before by
Espinosa being all we have of his works.

But Herrera is not the only lyrical poet of the period who does not appear in Espinosa’s collection. Rey de Artieda, whose sonnets are among the best in the language,--Manoel de Portugal, whose numerous religious poems are often in the national forms,--and Carrillo, a soldier of promise, who died young, and who wrote sometimes with a simplicity and freshness that never fail to be attractive,--are all omitted; though their works, published at just about the same time with the collection of Espinosa, had been known in manuscript long before, as much as those of Luis de Leon and Góngora.[863]

[863] Andres Rey de Artieda, better known under his academical
name of Artemidoro, is praised by Cervantes as a well-known poet
in 1584, though his works were not printed till they appeared
at Çaragoça, 1605, 4to. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 262.) Manoel de
Portugal, one of those Portuguese who, in the time of Philip
II. and III., sought favor of the oppressors of their country
by writing in Spanish, was known from 1577; but the collection
of his poems in nearly a thousand pages, some in Portuguese,
and all of little value, did not appear till it was printed at
Lisbon, 1605, 12mo, the year before his death. (Barbosa, Tom.
III. p. 345.) Luys de Carrillo y Sotomayor’s poems were published
after his death by his brother, at Madrid, 1611, 4to, and were
reprinted in 1613; but they had been circulated in MS. from the
time he was at the University of Salamanca, where he resided six
years. He died in 1610. Pellicer, Bib., Tom. II. p. 122.

Christóval de Mesa comes a little later. His lyric poems were printed in 1611, and again, more amply, in 1618. He professes to have taken Herrera for his master, or for one of his masters; but he was long in Italy, where, as he tells us, he changed his style, and from this time, at least, he belongs with absolute strictness to the school of Boscan and Garcilasso.[864]

[864] “Rimas de Christóval de Mesa,” Madrid, 1611, 12mo; to which
add about fifty sonnets in the volume of his translation of
Virgil’s Eclogues, Madrid, 1618, 12mo. His notice of himself is
in a poetical epistle to the Count de Lemos, when he was going as
viceroy to Naples, (Rimas, f. 155), and is such as to show that
he was anxious to be a member of that poetical court, and much
disappointed at his failure.

Francisco de Ocaña and Lope de Sosa, on the contrary, are as strictly of the old Spanish school. The reason may be that their poetry is almost all religious,--such as is found among the sacred verses of Silvestre and Castillejo in the preceding century,--and that they wrote for popular effect, seeking to connect themselves with feelings that had grown old in the hearts of the multitude. The little hymns of the former, on the Approach of the Madonna to Bethlehem, vainly asking for Shelter, and one by the latter, on the Love and Grief of a Penitent Soul, are specimens of what is best in this peculiar style of Spanish poetry, which, marked as it is with some rudeness, carries back our thoughts to the spirited old _villancicos_ in which it originated.[865]

[865] The poetry of both of them was printed in 1603; but I do
not find any mention of the exact time when either of them lived,
and am not quite certain that Lope de Sosa is not the poet who
occurs often in the old Cancioneros. I might have added to the
notice of their poetry that of some of the poetry in an ascetic
work by Malon de Chaide, called “La Conversion de la Magdalena,”
consisting of sonnets, versions of the Psalms, etc., which are
very pleasing. The best, however,--an ode on the love of Mary
Magdalen to the Saviour after his resurrection,--is so grossly
amatory in its tone, that its poetical merit is quite dimmed by
it. Ed. Alcalá, 1592, 12mo, f. 336.

Alonso de Ledesma, of Segovia, who was born in 1552, and died in 1623, wrote, or rather attempted to write, in the same style, but failed; though he succeeded in what may be regarded as a corruption of it. His “Spiritual Conceits,” as he called a volume which was first printed in 1600, and which afterwards appeared six times during its author’s life, are so full of quaintnesses and exaggerations as to take from them nearly all poetical merit. They are religious, and owed their success partly to the preservation of the old familiar forms and tones, but more to the perverse ingenuity with which they abound, and which they contributed much to make fashionable. Indeed, at that time, and very much under the leading influence of Ledesma, there was a well-known party in Spanish literature called the “Conceptistas”;--a sect composed, in a considerable degree, of mystics, who expressed themselves in metaphors and puns, alike in the pulpit and in poetry, and whose influence was so extensive, that traces of it may be found in many of the principal writers of the time, including Quevedo and Lope de Vega. Of this school of the Conceptistas, though Quevedo was the more brilliant master, Ledesma was the original head. His “Monstruo Imaginado,” or Fanciful Monster, first printed in 1615, is little else than a series of allegories hidden under the quibbles that are heaped upon them; beginning with ballads, and ending with the short prose fiction that gives its name to the volume. Several of the poems it contains are on the death of Philip the Second, and sound very strangely, from the irreverence with which that important event is treated, both in its political and its religious aspects. Others, which are on secular subjects, are in a tone even more free. But the little he has left that is worth reading is to be sought in his “Spiritual Conceits,” where there are a few sonnets and a few lyrical ballads that are not likely to be forgotten.[866]

[866] Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xxxi. Lope de Vega
praises Ledesma more than once, unreasonably. His “Conceptos,” in
the first edition, Madrid, 1600, is a small volume of 258 leaves,
but I believe the subsequent editions contain more poems. His
“Juegos de la Noche Buena,” Barcelona, 1611, which I have never
seen, is strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of 1667,
p. 64.

But there was a more formidable party in Spanish literature than that of the Conceptistas; one that arose about the same time, and prevailed longer and more injuriously. It was that of the “Cultos”; or the writers who claimed for themselves a peculiarly elegant and cultivated style of composition, and who, while endeavouring to justify their claims, ran into the most ridiculous extravagances, pedantry, and affectations.

That such follies should thrive more in Spain than elsewhere was natural. The broadest and truest paths to intellectual distinction were there closed; and it was not remarkable, therefore, that men should wander into by-ways and obscure recesses. They were forbidden to struggle honestly and openly for truth, and pleased themselves with brilliant follies that were at least free from moral mischiefs. Despotic governments have sometimes sought to amuse an oppressed multitude with holiday shows of rope-dancers and fireworks. Neither the ministers of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth nor the Inquisition particularly patronized the false style of writing that prevailed in their time, and served to amuse the better educated portions of society. But they tolerated it; and that was enough. It became fashionable at court immediately, and in time struck such root in the soil of the whole country, and so flourished there, that it has not yet been completely eradicated.[867]

[867] Moro Expósito, Paris, 1834, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xvii.

It was not, however, in Spain alone that such follies were known. From the middle of the fifteenth century, when a knowledge of the great masters of antiquity had become, for the first time, common among scholars throughout the West, efforts had been made to build up and cultivate a style of writing not unworthy of their example in the languages of the principal countries of Europe. Some of these efforts were wisely made, and resulted in the production of a series of authors that now constitute the recognized poets and prose-writers of Christendom, and emulate the models on which they were more or less formed. Others, misled by pedantry and an unsound judgment, have long since fallen into oblivion. But the period when such efforts were made with the least taste and discretion was the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth; the period when the Pleiades, as they were called, prevailed in France, the Euphuists in England, and the Marinisti in Italy.

How far the bad taste that was fashionable for a time in these several countries had an effect on the contemporary tendencies of a similar kind in Spain cannot be exactly determined. Probably what was the favored literature of London or Paris was little known at Madrid, and less cared for. But that whatever was done in Italy was immediately carried to Spain, in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, we have abundant proof.[868]

[868] It is a striking and important fact, to be taken in this
connection, that Lope de Vega, though opposed to the new school
upon principle, was a correspondent and admirer of Marini, to
whom he sent his portrait and dedicated a play; and of whom, in
the extravagance of his flattery, he said that Tasso was but
as a dawn to the full glory of Marini. Through this channel,
therefore, and through many others, traces of which may be found
in the collection of Italian eulogies on Lope de Vega, we can
at once see how Marini may easily have exercised an influence
over the poets of Spain contemporary with him. See Lope’s
“Jardin,” (Obras, Tom. I. p. 486), first printed in 1622, and
his Dedication to “Virtud, Pobreza y Mujer” (Comedias, Tom. XX.,
Madrid, 1629, f. 203).

Of the influence of classical antiquity in corrupting the proper
Castilian style, I know of no instance earlier than that of Vasco
Diaz de Frexenal, who published as early as 1547. His object
seems to have been to introduce Latin words and constructions,
just as the Pleiades did in France, at the same time and a little
later. This can be seen in his “Veinte Triunfos,” chiefly devoted
to a poetical account of events in the life of Charles V.; such
as his marriage, the birth of his son Philip II., his coronation
at Bologna, etc.,--all written in the old measures, and published
without notice of the place or year, but, necessarily, after
1530, since that was the date of the Emperor’s coronation. Thus,
in the “Prohemio,” where he speaks of dedicating his “Twenty
Triumphs” to the twenty Spanish Dukes, Frexenal says, “Baste que
la ferventisima afeccion, y la observantisima veneracion, que á
vuestras dignisimas y felicisimas Señorias devo, á la dedicacion
de mis veinte triunphos me han convidado. Como quiera que mas
coronas ducales segun mi noticia en la indomita España no hay,
verdaderamente el presente es de poco precio, y las obras del de
menos valor, y el autor dellas de menos estima. Pero su apetitosa
observancia, su afeccionada fidelidad, y su optativa servidumbre,
por las nobilisimas bondades, y prestantisimas virtudes de
vuestras excelentes y dignisimas Señorias en algun precio
estimadas ser merecen.”

He Latinizes less in the poems that follow, because it is more
difficult to do it in verse, but not because he desires it less,
as the following lines from the “Triumpho Nuptial Vandalico” (f.
ix.) prove plainly:--

Al tiempo que el fulminado
Apolo muy radial
Entrava en el primer grado,
Do nasció el vello dorado
En el equinocial;
Pasado el puerto final
De la hesperica nacion,
Su machina mundanal,
Por el curso occidental
Equitando en Phelegon.

This is very different from what was attempted by Juan de Mena
a century before; he having desired only to take individual
Latin words, and knowing little of classical antiquity; whereas
Frexenal wishes, in Montaigne’s phrase, “to Latinize,” and give
to his Castilian sentences a Roman air and construction, and so
may have been, to a certain extent, the predecessor of Góngora.
Antonio mentions two or three other works of Frexenal in prose,
chiefly religious, which I have never seen; but I have some
ridiculous verses, printed at the end of his treatise entitled
“Jardin del Alma Christiana,” 1552, 4to.

The poet who introduced “the cultivated style” into Spanish literature, and whose name that style has ever since worn, was Luis de Góngora, a gentleman of Córdova, who was born in 1561, and was educated at Salamanca, where it was intended he should qualify himself for the profession of the law, of which his father was a distinguished ornament. But it was too late. The young man’s disposition for poetry was already developed, and the only permanent result of his studies at the University is to be sought in a large number of ballads and other slight compositions, often filled with bitter satire, but written with simplicity and spirit.

In 1584 he is noticed by Cervantes as a known author.[869] He was then only twenty-three years old; but he continued to live in his native city, poor and unpatronized, yet twenty years longer, when, to insure a decent subsistence for his old age, he took the tonsure and became a priest. About the same time, he resorted to the court, then at Valladolid, and was there in 1605, the year in which Espinosa published his collection of poetry, to which Góngora was the largest contributor.[870] But he was not more favored at court than he had been at Córdova; and, after waiting and watching eleven years, we do not find that he had obtained any thing more than a titular chaplaincy to the king, a pleasant note from the patronizing Count de Lemos,[871] the good-natured favor of the Duke de Lerma and the Marquis de Siete Iglesias, and the general reputation of being a wit and a poet. At last he was noticed by the all-powerful favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, and seemed on the point of obtaining the fortune for which he had waited so long. But at this moment his health failed. He returned, languishing, to his native city, and died there in peace soon afterwards, at the age of sixty-six.[872]

[869] Galatea, ed. 1784, Tom. II. p. 284.

[870] Pellicer, Vida de Cervantes, in Don Quixote, Tom. I. p.
cxiv.

[871] Mayans y Siscar, Cartas, Tom. I. p. 125.

[872] See his life, by his friend Hozes, prefixed to his Works,
Madrid, 1654, 4to.

Much of the early poetry of Góngora is in short lines, and remarkable for its simplicity. One of his lyrical ballads, beginning,--

The loveliest maiden
Our village has known,
Only yesterday wed,
To-day, widowed, alone,[873]--

[873]
La mas bella niña
De nuestro lugar;
Oy viuda, y sola,
Y ayer por casar.

Obras de Góngora, 1654, f. 84.

contains an admirably natural expression of grief, by a young bride to her mother, on the occasion of her husband’s being suddenly called to the wars. Another yet more lyrical, which begins,--

Ye fresh and soft breezes,
That now for the spring
Unfold your bright garlands,
Sweet violets bring,[874]--

[874]
Frescos ayrecillos,
Que á la primauera
Destexeis guirnaldas,
Y esparceis violetas.

Obras de Góngora, 1654. f. 89.

is, again, full of gentle tenderness. And so are some of his religious popular poems, which occasionally approach the character of the old _villancicos_.

His odes of the same period are more stately. That on the Armada, which must have been written as early as 1588, since it contains the most confident predictions of a victory over England, is one of the best; and that on Saint Hermenegild--a prince, who, in the sixth century, partly for his resistance to Arianism and partly for political rebellion, was put to death by his own father, and afterwards canonized by the Church of Rome--is full of fervor and of the spirit of Catholic devotion. Both are among the good specimens of the more formal Spanish ode.

But this poetry, all of which seems to have been written before he went to court, and while he lived neglected at Córdova, failed to give him the honors to which he aspired. It failed even to give him the means of living. Moved, perhaps, by these circumstances, and perhaps by the success of Ledesma and his conceited school, Góngora adopted another style, and one that he thought more likely to command attention. The most obvious feature in this style is, that it consists almost entirely of metaphors, so heaped one upon another, that it is sometimes as difficult to find out the meaning hidden under their grotesque mass as if it were absolutely a series of confused riddles. Thus, when his friend Luis de Bavia, in 1613, published a volume containing the history of three Popes, Góngora sent him the following words, thrown into the shape of a commendatory sonnet, to be prefixed to the book:--

“This poem, which Bavia has now offered to the world, if not tied up in numbers, yet is filed down into a good arrangement, and licked into shape by learning, is a cultivated history, whose gray-headed style, though not metrical, is well combed, and robs three pilots of the sacred bark from time and rescues them from oblivion. But the pen that thus immortalizes the heavenly turnkeys on the bronze of its history is not a pen, but the key of ages. It opens to their names, not the gates of failing memory, which stamps shadows on masses of foam, but the gates of immortality.”

The meaning of this, as it is set forth in ten pages of commentary by one of his admirers, is as follows:--

“The history which Bavia now offers to the world is not, indeed, in verse, but it is written and finished in the spirit of wise learning and of poetry. Immortalizing three Popes, it becomes the key of ages, opening to them, not the gates of memory, which often give passage to a transient and false fame, but the gates of sure and perpetual renown.”[875]

[875] A la Tercera Parte de la Historia Pontifical, que escriuió
el Doctor Bavia, Capellan de la Capilla Real de Granada.

Este que Bavia al mundo oy ha ofrecido
Poema, si no á numeros atado,
De la disposicion antes limado,
Y de la erudicion despues lamido,
Historia es culta, cuyo encanecido
Estilo, sino metrico, peinado,
Tres ya Pilotos del vagel sagrado
Hurta al tiempo, y redime del oluido.
Pluma, pues, que claueros celestiales
Eterniza en los bronces du su historia,
Llaue es ya de los siglos, y no pluma.
Ella á sus nombres puertas immortales
Abre, no de caduca no memoria,
Que sombras sella en tumulos de espuma.

Góngora, Obras, 1654, f. 5.

The commentary is in Coronel, Obras de Góngora Comentadas, Tom.
II. Parte I., Madrid, 1645, pp. 148-159; but it should be noted,
that the concluding lines are so obscure, that Luzan (Poética,
Lib. II. c. 15) gives them a different interpretation, and
understands the phrase, “stamping shadows on masses of foam,”
to refer to the art of printing, which so often praises those
who do not deserve it. The whole sonnet is cited with admiration
by Gracian, “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio,” Discurso XXXII.; a
work which we must mention hereafter as the art of poetry for
the _culto_ school; and the editors of the “Diario de los
Literatos de España”--men of better taste than was common in
their times--reproached Luzan, when they reviewed his “Poética”
in 1738, with being too severe on this extraordinary nonsense.
Lanuza, Discurso Apologético de Luzan, Pamplona, 1740, 12mo, pp.
46-78.

The extravagance of the metaphors used by Góngora was often as remarkable as their confusion and obscurity. Thus, when, in 1619, just after the appearance of two comets, one of his friends proposed to accompany Philip the Third to Lisbon,--a city founded, according to tradition, by Ulysses,--Góngora wrote to him, “Wilt thou, in a year when a plural comet cuts out mourning of evil augury to crowns, tread in the footsteps of the wily Greek?“[876] And again, in his first “Solitude,” speaking of a lady whom he admired, he calls her “a maiden so beautiful, that she might parch up Norway with her two suns and bleach Ethiopia with her two hands.” But though these are extreme cases, it is not to be denied that the later poems of Góngora are often made unintelligible by similar extravagances.[877]

[876] Obras, f. 32.

[877] In the second _coro_.

He did not, however, stop here. He introduced new words into his verse, chiefly taken from the ancient classical languages; he used old Castilian words in new and forced meanings; and he adopted involved and unnatural constructions, quite foreign from the genius of the Spanish. The consequence was, that his poetry, though not without brilliancy, soon became unintelligible. This is the case with one or two of his sonnets, printed as early as 1605;[878] and still more with his longer poems, such as his “Solitudes,” or Deserts, his “Polyphemus,” his “Panegyric on the Duke of Lerma,” and his “Pyramus and Thisbe”; none of which appeared till after his death.

[878] I suppose he changed his style about the time he went to
court; and the very first of his sonnets in Espinosa’s “Flores”
is proof that he had changed it as early as 1605.

Commentaries, therefore, were necessary to explain them, even while they still circulated only in manuscript. The earliest were prepared, at his own request, by Pellicer, a scholar of much reputation, who published them in 1630, under the title of “Solemn Discourses on the Works of Don Luis de Góngora,” expressing, at the same time, his fears that he might sometimes have failed to detect the meaning of what was often really so obscure.[879] They were followed, in 1636, by a defence and explanation of the “Pyramus and Thisbe,” from Salazar Mardones.[880] And between that year and 1646, the series was closed with an elaborate commentary of above fifteen hundred pages, by Garcia de Salcedo Coronel, himself a poet.[881] To these were added contemporary discussions, by Juan Francisco de Amaya, a jurist; by Martin Angulo, in reply to an attack of Cascales, the rhetorician; and by others, until the amount of the notes on Góngora’s poetry was tenfold greater than that of the text they were intended to elucidate.[882]

[879] Jos. Pellicer, in his “Lecciones Solemnes,” (Madrid,
1630, 4to, col. 610-612 and 684), explains his position in
relation to Góngora, and his trouble about finding the meaning
of some passages in his works; thus justifying what the Prince
of Esquilache said, probably in reference to these very
commentaries:--

Un docto comentador
(El mas presumido digo)
Es el mayor enemigo
Que tener pudo el autor.

El Príncipe á su Libro.

[880] “Ilustracion y Defensa de la Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe de
Christóval de Salazar Mardones,” Madrid, 1636, 4to.

[881] There is a notice of Coronel in Antonio, Bib. Nova. The
three volumes of his commentary (Madrid, 4to, 1636-46) contain
six or seven hundred pages each;--the second being divided into
two parts. As a poet himself, he printed in Madrid, 1650, 4to, a
volume which he called “Crystals from Helicon,” one of the worst
productions of the school of Góngora.

[882] Antonio, article “Ludovicus de Góngora,” mentions the
inferior commentators. The attack of Cascales, who seems afraid
to be thorough with it, is in his “Cartas Philológicas.”

Followers, of course, would not be wanting to one who was so famous. Of these, the most distinguished in rank, and perhaps in merit, was the Count of Villamediana,--the same unfortunate nobleman whose very bold and public assassination was attributed to the jealousy of Philip the Third, and created a sensation, at the time it happened, in all the courts of Europe. He was a man of wit and fashion, whose poetry was a part of his pretensions as a courtier, and was not printed till 1629, eight years after his death. Some of it is written without affectation,--probably the earlier portions; but, in general, both by the choice of his subjects,--such as those of Phaeton, of Daphne, and of Europa,--and by his mode of treating them, he bears witness to his imitation of the worst parts of Góngora’s works. His sonnets, of which there are two or three hundred, are in every style, satirical, religious, and sentimental; and a few of his miscellaneous poems have something of the older national air and tone. But he is rarely more intelligible than his master, and never shows his master’s talent.[883]

[883] The queen, who was a daughter of Henry IV. of France, was
one day passing through a gallery of the palace, when some one
came behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. “What is
that for, Count?” she exclaimed. But, unhappily for her, it was
not the Count;--it was the king. Soon afterwards Villamediana
received a hint to be on his guard, as his life was in danger.
He neglected the friendly notice, and was assassinated the same
evening. He had been very open in his admiration of the queen,
having, on occasion of a tournament, covered his person with
silver _reals_ and taken the punning motto,--“Mis amores son
_reales_.” (Velazquez, Dieze, Göttingen, 1796, 8vo, p. 255.) An
edition of his Works, Madrid, 1634, 4to, is a little more ample
than that of Çaragoça, 1629, 4to; but not the better for it. The
story of the Count’s unhappy presumption and fate may be found
in Mad. d’Aulnoy’s “Voyage d’Espagne,” ed. 1693, Tom. II. pp.
17-21, and in the striking ballads of the Duke of Rivas, Romances
Históricos, Paris, 1841, 8vo.

Another of those that favored and facilitated the success of the new school was Paravicino, who died in 1633, and whose position as the popular court preacher, during the last sixteen years of his life, enabled him to introduce “the cultivated style” into the pulpit, and help its currency among the higher classes of society. His poetical works were not collected and published till 1641, when they appeared under the imperfect disguise of a part of his family name,--Felix de Arteaga. They fill a small volume, which abounds in sonnets, and contains a single drama of no value. The best parts of it are the lyrical ballads, which, though mystical and obscure, are not without poetry; a remark that should be extended to the narrative ballad on the Loves of Alfonso the Eighth and the Jewess of Toledo, which Arteaga seems to have been willing to write in the older and simpler style.[884]

[884] Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 389. His entire name
was Hortensio Felix Paravicino y Arteaga. Why the whole of it
was not given with his poems, which were not printed till after
his death, it is not easy to tell. There are editions of them in
1641, 1645, and 1650; the last, Alcalá, 12mo.

These were the principal persons whose example gave currency to the new style. Its success, however, depended, in a great degree, on the tone of the higher class of society and the favor of the court, to which they all belonged, and in which their works were generally circulated in manuscript long before they were printed,--a practice always common in Spain, from the rigorous supervision exercised over the press, and the formidable obstacles thrown in the way of all who were concerned in its management, whether as authors or as publishers. Fashion was, no doubt, the great means of success for the followers of Góngora, and it was able to push their influence very widely. The inferior poets, almost without exception, bowed to it throughout the country. Roca y Serna published, in 1623, a collection of poems, called “The Light of the Soul,” which was often reprinted between that time and the end of the century.[885] Antonio Lopez de Vega, neither a kinsman nor a countryman of his great namesake, who, however, praises him much beyond his merits, printed his “Perfect Gentleman” in 1620; a political dream, to which he added a small collection of poems of a nature not more substantial.[886]

[885] Ambrosio de la Roca y Serna was a Valencian, and died in
1649. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 359, and Fuster, Tom. I. p. 249.) He
seems to have been valued little, except as a religious poet, but
he was valued long. I have a copy of his “Luz del Alma,” without
year or place, but printed as late as 1725, 12mo.

[886] “El Perfeto Señor, Poesías Varias,” etc., Madrid, 1652,
4to. He wrote _silvas_ darker than Góngora’s “Soledades.” His
madrigals and shorter poems are more intelligible, though none
are good. He was a Portuguese by birth, but lived in Madrid,
where he died after 1656. (Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 310.) There are
two editions of his works.

Anastasio Pantaleon, a young cavalier, who enjoyed great consideration at court, and was assassinated in the streets of Madrid, being mistaken for another person, had his poems collected by the affection of his friends, and published in 1634, five years after his death.[887] A nun at Lisbon, Violante del Cielo, in 1646,[888] and Manoel de Melo, in 1649,[889] gave proofs of a pride in the Castilian which we should hardly have expected just at the time when their native country was emancipating itself from the Spanish yoke; but which enabled them to claim the favor of fashion alike at home and in Madrid. In 1652, Moncayo published a volume of his own extravagant verses;[890] and, two years later, persuaded his friend Francisco de la Torre to publish a similar collection in equally bad taste.[891] Vergara followed, in 1660, under the affected title of “Ideas de Apolo,”[892] and Rozas, in 1662, under one still more affected,--“Conversation without Cards.”[893]

[887] Baena, Tom. I. p. 93. The works of Pantaleon are obvious
imitations of Góngora, as may be seen in his “Fábula de
Prosérpina,” “Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa,” etc., though perhaps
still more in his sonnets and _décimas_. They were first printed
in 1634, but appeared several times afterwards, with slight
additions. My copy is of Madrid, 1648, 18mo.

[888] Violante del Cielo (do Ceo, in Portuguese) died in 1693,
ninety-two years old, having written and published many volumes
of Portuguese poetry and prose, some of the contents of which are
too gallant to be very nun-like. Her “Rimas,” chiefly Spanish,
were printed in Ruan, 1646, 12mo. One of the few poems among
them that can be read is an ode on the death of Lope de Vega (p.
44); though it should be added, that some of her short religious
poems, scattered elsewhere in her works, are better.

[889] Melo, who died in 1666, was one of the most successful
Portuguese authors of his time. (Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 182.)
His “Tres Musas del Melodino,” a volume containing his Spanish
poetry, and consisting, in a great measure, of sonnets, ballads,
odes, and other short lyrics, much in the manner of Quevedo, as
well as of Góngora, was printed twice, in 1649 and 1665,--the
former, Lisboa, 4to.

[890] Moncayo is also known by his title of Marques de San
Felices. His poems are entitled “Rimas de Don Juan de Moncayo í
Gurrea,” (Çaragoça, 1652, 4to), and consist of sonnets, a “Fábula
de Venus í Adonis,” ballads, etc. Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. III.
p. 320.

[891] “Entretenimiento de las Musas en esta Baraxa Nueva de
Versos, dividida en Quatro Manjares, etc., por Fenix de la
Torre,” Çaragoça, 1654, 4to. The title speaks for itself. His
proper name was Francisco, and he was a Murcian.

[892] “Ydeas de Apolo y Dignas Tareas del Ocio Cortesano,”
Madrid, 1661, 4to; abounding in sonnets, religious ballads, and
courtly lyrics. A few of its poems are narrative, like one in
the ballad form on the story of Danae, and another at the end in
_ottava rima_, on the finding of the Virgin of Balvanera.

[893] “Noche de Invierno; Conversacion sin Naypes,” Madrid, 1662,
4to. The second part of this volume consists of burlesque poems,
full of miserable puns and rudenesses.

Ulloa, who prepared his poetry for the press as early as 1653, but did not print it till many years afterwards, wrote sometimes pleasantly and in a pure style, but often followed that prevailing in his time.[894] And finally, in 1677, appeared “The Harp of Apollo,” by Salazar, quite as bad as any of its predecessors, and quite worthy in all respects to close up the series.[895] More names might be added, but they would be of persons of less note; and even of those just enumerated little is now remembered, and less read. The whole mass, indeed, is of consequence chiefly to show the wide extent of the evil, and the rapidity with which it spread on all sides.

[894] “Obras de Don Luis de Ulloa, Prosas y Versos,” of which the
second edition was published by his son, at Madrid, 1674, 4to.
Some of the religious poems, in the old measures, are among the
best of the volume; but the very best is the “Raquel,” in about
eighty octave stanzas, on the story of the love of Alfonso VIII.
for the fair Jewess of Toledo.

[895] “Cythara de Apolo,”--published after its author’s death
by Vera Tassis y Villarroel, “his greatest friend”;--the same
person who collected and published the plays of Calderon. Among
his works is a Soledad, in professed imitation of Góngora, and
Fábulas or Stories of Venus and Adonis, and Orpheus and Eurydice,
in the manner of Villamediana. Aug. de Salazar was born in 1642,
and died in 1675.

The depth to which it struck its roots may, however, be better estimated, if we consider two things: the unavailing efforts made by the leading spirits of the age to resist it, and the fact, that, after all, they themselves--Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and Calderon--yielded from time to time to the popular taste, and wrote in the very style they condemned.[896]

[896] Of Quevedo and Calderon I have already spoken; and
Montalvan, Zarate, Tirso de Molina, and most of the dramatists of
note, might have been added. Cervantes, in his old age, heeded
the new school little, but he complains of the obscure style of
poetry in his “Ilustre Fregona,” 1613, giving a specimen of it,
and alludes to it again in the second part of his Don Quixote, c.
16.

Of these distinguished men, the most prominent, whether we consider the influence he exercised over his contemporaries or the interest he took in this particular discussion, was, undoubtedly, Lope de Vega. Góngora had, at some period, been personally known to him, probably when he was in Andalusia in 1599, or earlier, when he was hastening to join the Armada; and from this time Lope always retained an unaffected respect for the Cordovan poet’s genius, and always rendered full justice to his earlier merits. But he did not spare the extravagances of Góngora’s later style; attacking it in his seventh Epistle; in an amusing sonnet, where he represents Boscan and Garcilasso as unable to understand it; in the poetical contest at the canonization of San Isidro; in the verses prefixed to the “Orfeo” of Montalvan; and in many other places; but, above all, in a long letter to a friend, who had formally asked his judgment on the whole subject.[897]

[897] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. pp. 271, 342; Tom.
XII. pp. 231-234; Tom. XIX. p. 49; and Tom. IV. pp. 459-482. In
the last cited passage, Lope says he always placed Fernando de
Herrera as a model before himself.

There can be no doubt, then, as to his deliberate opinion in relation to it. Indeed, Góngora assailed him with great severity for it; and though Lope continued to praise the uneasy poet for such of his works as deserved commendation, the attack on his “cultivated style” was never forgiven by Góngora, and a small volume of his unpublished verse still shows that his bitterness continued to the last.[898] And yet Lope himself not unfrequently fell into the very fault he so sharply and wittily reprehended; as may be seen in many of his plays, particularly in his “Wise Man in his own House,” where it is singularly unsuited to the subject; and in many of his poems, especially his “Circe” and his “Festival at Denia,” in which, if they had not been addressed to courtly readers, it can hardly be doubted that he would have used the simple and flowing style most natural to him.

[898] National Library, Madrid, Estante M, Codex 132, 4to. At
least, it _was_ there in 1818, at which date I saw it.

The affected style of Góngora was attacked by others;--by Cascales, the rhetorician, in his “Poetical Tables,” printed in 1616, and in his “Philological Letters,” printed later;[899] by Jauregui, the poet, in his “Discourse on the Cultivated and Obscure Style,” in 1628;[900] and by Salas, in 1633, in his “Inquiries concerning Tragedy.”[901] But the most formidable attack sustained by this style was made by Quevedo, who, in 1631, published both his Bachiller de la Torre, and the poetry of Luis de Leon, intending to show by them what Spanish lyrical verse might become, when, with a preservation of the national spirit, it was founded on pure models, whether ancient or modern, whether Castilian or foreign. From this attack--made, it should be observed, about the time Góngora’s works and those of his most successful followers were published, rather than at the time when they were written and circulated in manuscript--his school never entirely recovered the measure of its former triumphant success.[902]

[899] Tablas Poéticas, ed. 1779, p. 103. One of Góngora’s
friends, Mardones, answered Cascales, (Cartas Philológicas, 1771,
Dec. I. Cartas 8 and 10), who rejoined, and is again answered in
Carta 9.

[900] I have never seen this book, but Antonio, in his article
on Jauregui, gives its title, and Flögel (Gesch. der Komischen
Literatur, Tom. II. p. 303) gives the date of its publication.
Jauregui, however, in his translation of the “Pharsalia” of
Lucan, falls into the false style of Góngora. Declamacion contra
los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana, 1793, p. 138.

[901] Tragedia Antigua, Madrid, 1633, 4to, pp. 84, 85.

[902] See Appendix (G).

Quite unconscious of this discussion, if we may judge by his style and manner, lived Francisco de Medrano, one of the purest and most genial of Spanish lyric poets, and one who seemed to be such without an effort to avoid the follies of his time. His poems, few in number, are better than any thing in the “Sestinas” of Venegas, to which they form a sort of supplement, and with which they were printed in 1617. Some of his religious sonnets are especially to be noticed; but his Horatian odes, and, above all, one on the Worthlessness of Human Pursuits, beginning, “We all, we all mistake,” must be regarded as the best of his graceful remains.[903]

[903] We know nothing of Medrano, except his poems, printed at
Palermo, in 1617, at the end of an imitation, rather than a
translation, of Ovid by Venegas. But Pedro Venegas de Saavedra
was a Sevilian gentleman, and Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p.
246) hints that the imprint of the volume may not show the true
place of its publication.

Another writer of the same class, who can be traced back to 1584, but who did not die till 1606, is Baltasar de Alcazar, a witty Andalusian, who has left a moderate number of short lyrical poems, most of them gay, and all of them in a better taste than was common when they appeared.[904]

[904] He is mentioned in Cervantes, “Canto de Calíope,” and there
is a life of him in the notes to Sismondi, Spanish translation
(Tom. I. p 274). His poems are found in the “Flores” of Espinosa,
and in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez.

Similar praise, if not the same, may be given to Arguijo, a Sevilian gentleman of fortune, distinguished by his patronage of letters, to whom Lope de Vega dedicated three poems, and whose verses Espinosa--apparently to attract favor for his book--placed at the opening of his selections from the poets of his time. He wrote, if we are to judge from the little that has come down to us, in the Italian forms; for his twenty-nine sonnets,--which, with a singularly antique air, are sometimes quite poetical,--a good _cancion_ on the death of a friend, and another on a religious festival at Cadiz, constitute the greater part of his known works. But his little lyric to his guitar, which he calls simply a “Silva,” is worth all the rest. It is entirely Spanish in its tone, and breathes a gentle sensibility, not unmingled with sadness, that finds its way at once to the heart.[905]

[905] Varflora, Hijos de Sevilla, No. III. p. 14; Sismondi’s Lit.
Española por Figueroa, Tom. I. p. 282; Espinosa, Flores; and
Fernandez, Coleccion, Tom. XVIII. pp. 88-124. It may, perhaps,
be noted here, that the “Hijos de Sevilla Ilustres en Santidad,
Letras, Armas, Artes ó Dignidad,” published in that city in 1791,
in 8vo, is a poor book, but one that sometimes contains facts
not elsewhere to be found, and one that is now become very rare,
from the circumstance that it was published in separate numbers.
On its title-page it is said to have been written by Don Firmin
Arana de Varflora; but Blanco White, in “Doblado’s Letters,”
1822, p. 469, says its author was Padre Valderrama.

Antonio Balvas, who died in 1629, is of more humble pretensions as a poet than either of the last, but perhaps was more distinctly opposed than either of them to the fashionable taste. When in his old age he had prepared for publication a volume of his verse, he called it, after some hesitation, “The Castilian Poet,” and Lope de Vega pronounced it to be purely written, and well fitted to a period “when,” as he added, “the ancient language of the country was beginning to sound to him like a strange tongue.” Still, in this very volume, humble in size and modest in all its pretensions, Balvas compliments Góngora and praises Ledesma: so necessary was it to conciliate the favored school.[906]

[906] “El Poeta Castellano, Antonio Balvas Barona, Natural de la
Ciudad de Segovia,” Valladolid, 1627, 12mo.