Chapter XXXIII

ROMANTIC FICTION.--CHANGE OF MANNERS PRODUCES A CHANGE OF THE FICTIONS FOUNDED UPON THEM.--PASTORAL ROMANCE AND ITS ORIGIN: MONTEMAYOR AND HIS DIANA, WITH ITS CONTINUATIONS BY PEREZ AND POLO: LO FRASSO, MONTALVO, CERVANTES, ENCISO, BOVADILLA, BERNARDO DE LA VEGA, LOPE DE VEGA, BALBUENA, FIGUEROA, ADORNO, BOTELHO, QUINTANA, CORRAL, SAAVEDRA.--CHARACTERISTICS OF PASTORAL FICTION.

The romances of chivalry, like the institutions on which they were founded, lingered long in Spain. Their grave fictions were suited to the air of the stern old castles with which the Moorish contest had studded large portions of the country, while their general tone harmonized no less happily with the stately manners which the spirit of knighthood had helped to impress on the higher classes of society, from the mountains of Biscay to the shores of the Mediterranean. Their influence, therefore, was great; and, as one natural result of its long continuance, other and better forms of prose fiction were discountenanced in Spain, or appeared later than they might have done under different circumstances;--a fact to which Cervantes alludes, when, even at the opening of the seventeenth century, he complains that Spanish books of the latter character were still rarely to be found.[57]

[57] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 28.

Fifty years, however, before that period, signs of a coming change are perceptible. The magnificent successes of Charles the Fifth had already filled the minds of men with a spirit of adventure very different from that of Amadis and his descendants, though sometimes hardly less wild and extravagant. The cruel wars unceasingly kept up with the Barbary powers, and the miseries of the thousands of captives who returned from Africa, to amaze their countrymen with tragical stories of their own trials and those of their fellow-sufferers, were full of that bitter romance of real life which outruns all fiction. Manners, too,--the old, formal, knightly manners of the nobility,--were beginning to be modified by intercourse with the rest of the world, and especially with Italy, then the most refined and least military country of Christendom; so that romantic fiction--the department of elegant literature, which, above every other, depends on the state of society--was naturally modified in Spain by the great changes going on in the external relations and general culture of the kingdom. Of this state of things, and of its workings in the new forms of fiction produced by it, we shall find frequent proofs as we advance.

* * * * *

The first form, however, in which a change in the national taste manifested itself with well-defined success--that of _prose pastorals_--is perhaps not one which would have been anticipated even by the more sagacious; though, when we now look back upon its history, we can easily discover some of the foundations on which it was originally built.

From the Middle Ages the occupations of a shepherd’s life had prevailed in Spain and Portugal to a greater extent than elsewhere in Europe;[58] and, probably in consequence of this circumstance, eclogues and bucolics were early known in the poetry of both countries, and became connected in both with the origin of the popular drama. On the other hand, the military spirit of such a civilization as existed in Spain down to the sixteenth century may have gladly turned away from such a monotonous exaggeration of its own character as is found in the romances of chivalry, and sought refreshment and repose in the peace and simplicity of a fabulous Arcadia. At least, these are the two obvious circumstances in the condition and culture of Spain, that favored the appearance of so singular a form of fiction as that of prose pastorals, though how much influence either exercised it may now be impossible to determine.

[58] The laws of the “Partidas,” about 1260, afford abundant
illustrations of the extent and importance of the pastoral life
in Spain at that period, and for a long time before.

On one point, however, we are not left in doubt. We know whence the impulse came that called forth such a work for the first time in Castilian literature, and when it appeared there. It was Sannazaro,--a Neapolitan gentleman, whose family had been carried from Spain to Naples by the political revolutions of the preceding century,--who is the true father of the modern prose pastoral, which, from him, passed directly to Spain, and, during a long period of success in that country, never entirely lost the character its author had originally impressed upon it. His “Arcadia”--written, probably, without any reference to the Greek pastoral of Longus, but hardly without a knowledge of the “Ameto” of Boccaccio and the Eclogues of Bembo--was first published entire, at Naples, in 1504.[59] It is a genuine pastoral romance in prose and verse, in which, with a slight connecting narrative, and under the disguise of the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses, Sannazaro relates adventures that really occurred to him and to some of his friends;--he himself appearing under the name of Sincero, who is its principal personage. Such a work, of course, is somewhat fantastic from its very nature; but the fiction of Sannazaro was written in the purest and most graceful Italian, and had a great success;--a success which, perhaps, from the Spanish connections of his family, was early extended to Spain. At any rate, Spain was the first foreign country where the Arcadia was imitated, and was afterwards the only one where such works appeared in large numbers, and established a lasting influence.

[59] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Tom. X., par Salvi, pp. 87,
92.

It is singular, however, that, like the romances of chivalry, pastoral romance was first introduced into Spain by a Portuguese,--by George of Montemayor, a native of the town of that name, near Coimbra. When he was born we are not told; probably it was before 1520. In his youth he was a soldier; but later, from his skill in music, he became attached to the travelling chapel of the prince of Spain, afterwards Philip the Second, and thus enjoyed an opportunity of visiting foreign countries, especially Italy and Flanders. But his mind was little cultivated by study. He knew no Latin, which even those of the humblest literary attainments were wont to acquire, in the age when he lived; so that his success is due to his own genius and to the promptings of that passion which gave its color to his life. Probably he left Spain from disappointment in love; probably, too, he perished in a duel at Turin, in 1561. But we know nothing more of him with any tolerable certainty.[60]

[60] Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Tom. II. p. 809, and the Prólogo to
the Diana of Perez, ed. 1614, p. 362.

His “Diana Enamorada,” the chief of his works, was first printed at Valencia, in 1542.[61] It is written in good Castilian, like his poetry, which is published separately, though, like that, with some intermixture of his native Portuguese;[62] and it contains, as he tells us, stories of adventures which really occurred.[63] We know, too, that, under the name of Sereno, he was himself its hero; and Lope de Vega adds, that Diana, its heroine, was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, a town near the city of Leon.[64] Montemayor’s purpose, therefore, like that of Sannazaro, is to give, in the forms of a pastoral romance, an account of some events in his own life and in the lives of a few of his friends. To effect this, he brings together on the banks of the Ezla, at the foot of the mountains of Leon, a number of shepherds and shepherdesses, who relate their respective stories through seven books of prose, intermingled with verse. But the two principal personages, Sereno and Diana, who are introduced at first as lovers, are separated by magic; and the romance is brought to an abrupt conclusion, little conformable to all the previous intimations, by the marriage of Diana to Delio, the unworthy rival of Sereno.

[61] I have never seen any edition of the Diana cited earlier
than that of Madrid, 1545; but I possess one in 4to, 112 leaves,
well printed at Valencia, in 1542, without the name of the
printer. The story of Narvaez, of which I shall have occasion to
speak when we come to Antonio Villegas, does not stand in the
fourth book of this copy, as it does in the copies of subsequent
editions. The Diana of Montemayor was so popular, that at least
sixteen editions of the original appeared in eighty years; six
French translations, according to Gordon de Percel (Bib. de
l’Usage des Romans, Paris, 1734, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 23, 24);
two German, according to Ebert; and one English. The last, by
Bartholomew Yong, (London, 1598, folio,) is excellent, and some
of its happy versions of the poetry of Montemayor are found in
“England’s Helicon,” 1600 and 1614, reprinted in the third volume
of the “British Bibliographer,” London, 1810, 8vo. The story of
Proteus and Julia, in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” was supposed
by Mrs. Lenox and Dr. Farmer to be taken from that of Felismena,
in the second book of Montemayor’s Diana, and therefore Collier
has republished Yong’s translation of the last in the second
volume of his “Shakspeare’s Library,” (London, s. a. 8vo,)
though he doubts whether Shakspeare were really indebted to it.
Malone’s Shakspeare, Boswell’s ed., London, 1821, 8vo, Vol. IV.
p. 3, and Brydges, Restituta, London, 1814, 8vo, Vol. I. p.
498. Poor abridgments of the Diana of Montemayor, and of Polo’s
Continuation, were published at London, 1738, 12mo.

[62] Sometimes he wrote in both languages at once; at least, he
did so in his Cancionero, 1588, f. 81, where is a sonnet which
may be read either as Spanish or as Portuguese.

[63] In his _Argumento_ to the whole romance.

[64] Dorotea, Act II. Sc. 2. Obras Sueltas, Tom. VII. p. 84.

On first reading the Diana of Montemayor, it is not easy to understand it. The separate stories of which it is composed are so involved with each other, and so inartificially united, that we are constantly losing the thread of the principal narration;--a difficulty which is much increased by the mixture of true and false geography, heathenism, magic, Christianity, and all the various contradictory impossibilities that naturally follow an attempt to place in the heart of Spain, and near one of its best-known cities, a poetical Arcadia, that never existed anywhere. The Diana, however, better merits the name of a romance than the Arcadia, which served for its model. Its principal fiction is ampler and more ingeniously constructed. Its episodes are more interesting. Much of it is warm with the tenderness of a disappointed attachment, which, no doubt, caused the whole to be written. Some of the poetry is beautiful, especially the lyric poetry; and if its prose style is not so pure as that of Sannazaro, it is still to be remarked for its grace and richness. Notwithstanding its many defects, therefore, the Diana is not without an interest for us even at this remote period, when the whole class of fictions to which it belongs is discountenanced and almost forgotten; and we feel that only poetical justice was done to it when it was saved, by the good taste of the curate, in the destruction of Don Quixote’s library.

The Diana, as has been intimated, was left unfinished by its author; but in 1564, three years after his death, Alonso Perez, a physician of Salamanca, to whom Montemayor, before he finally left Spain, had communicated his plan for completing it, published a second part, which opens in the enchanted palace of Felicia, where the first ends, and gives us the adventures and stories of several shepherds and shepherdesses, not introduced before, as well as a continuation of the original fiction. But this second part, like the first, fails to complete the romance. It advances no farther than to the death of Delio, the husband of Diana,--which, according to the purpose of Montemayor, was to have been followed by her union with Sereno, her first and true lover,--and then stops abruptly, with the promise of yet a third part, which never appeared. Nor was it, probably, demanded with any earnestness; for the second, protracted through seven books, and considerably longer than its predecessor, is much inferior to it in merit. It lacks, in all its many stories, the tenderness which the disappointment of Montemayor had given to the first portion of the work; and, what perhaps is of no less consequence in this kind of composition, the prose is heavy and monotonous, and the verse worse.[65]

[65] The first edition cited (Ant., Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p.
539) is of 1564, and I know of but one other, that which I
have, Barcelona, 1614, 12mo; though I have seen one without a
title-page, which may be different from both. At any rate, its
editions were few, and its popularity was small. It was, however,
translated into French, and by Bart. Yong into English; and
was printed in the original more than once with the Diana of
Montemayor.

But this unfortunate attempt was not the only consequence of Montemayor’s success. The same year with that in which the work of Perez was published, another continuation appeared at Valencia, by Gaspar Gil Polo, a gentleman of that city, who was a Professor of Greek in its University.[66] The Diana of Polo has the merit of being shorter than either of its predecessors. It is divided into five books, and contains an account of the falsehood and death of Delio, and the marriage of Diana to Sereno, whom she finds when she is seeking the husband who had basely abandoned her for another shepherdess. Several episodes and much pastoral poetry of different kinds are skilfully inserted; but though the original plan of Montemayor seems to be completed, the book ends with the promise of a still further continuation, which, though the author lived nearly thirty years after he made it, seems never to have been written.[67] His work, however, was successful. Its prose has always found favor, and so have some portions of its verse; especially the _cancion_ of Nerea in the third book, and several of the shorter poems in the last.[68]

[66] Polo’s “Diana Enamorada” was first printed in 1564, and
seven editions of the original appeared in half a century, with
two French translations and a Latin one; the last by Caspar
Barth. It is well translated by Bart. Yong, as the _third_ part
of the Diana, in the same volume with the others; but is really
the _second_ part.

[67] There is, however, a third part to the Diana of Montemayor,
written by Hier. Texada, and printed at Paris, 1627, 8vo, of
which a copy in the Royal Library at Paris is cited by Ebert, but
I have never seen it.

[68] The best edition of Gil Polo’s Diana is that with a life of
him by Cerdá, Madrid, 1802, 12mo; particularly valuable for the
notes to the “Canto de Turia,” in which, imitating the “Canto de
Orfeo,” where Montemayor gives an account of the famous _ladies_
of his time, Polo gives an account of the famous _poets_ of
Valencia. For lives of Polo see, also, Ximeno, Escritores de
Valencia, Tom. I. p. 270, and Fuster, Bib. Valentina, Tom. I.
p. 150. It is singular that Polo, who had such success with his
Diana, should have printed nothing else, except one or two short
and trifling poems.

The “Ten Books of Fortune and Love,” by Antonio de Lo Frasso, a Sardinian and a soldier, published in 1573, is the next Spanish romance of the same class with the Diana; but it is without merit, and was forgotten soon after it appeared.[69] Nine years later, in 1582, a better one was published,--the “Fílida,”--which passed early through five editions, and is still valued and read.[70] Its author, Luis Galvez de Montalvo, was born in Guadalaxara, a town near Alcalá, the birthplace of Cervantes; and, perhaps from this circumstance, they soon became acquainted, for they were long friends, and often praised each other in their respective works.[71] They seem, however, to have had very different characters; for, instead of the life of adventure led by Cervantes, Montalvo attached himself to the great family of Infantado, descended from the Marquis of Santillana, and passed most of his life as a sort of idle courtier and retainer in their ducal halls, near the place of his nativity. Subsequently he went to Italy, where he translated and published, in 1587, “The Tears of Saint Peter,” by Tansillo, and had begun a translation of the “Jerusalem Delivered” of Tasso, when he was cut off in the midst of his labors by an accidental death, in Sicily, about the year 1591.[72]

[69] It is the same book that Cervantes ridicules in the sixth
chapter of the first part of Don Quixote, and in the third
chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus”; and is curious for some
specimens of Sardinian poetry which it contains. But Pedro de
Pineda, a teacher of Spanish in London, taking the irony of the
good curate in Don Quixote on Lo Frasso’s romance to be sincere
praise, printed a new edition of it, in two very handsome
volumes, (London, 1740, 8vo,) with a foolish Dedication and
Prólogo, alleging the authority of Cervantes for its great merit.
Hardly any other of the Spanish prose pastorals is so absurd as
this, or contains so much bad verse; a great deal of which is
addressed to living and known persons by their titles. The tenth
book, indeed, is almost entirely made up of such poetry. I do
not recollect that Cervantes is so severe on any poet, in his
“Journey to Parnassus,” as he is on Lo Frasso.

[70] The best edition of the “Fílida” is the sixth, (Madrid,
1792, 8vo,) with a biographical prologue by Mayans y Siscar;
ill-digested, as are all his similar prefaces, but not without
valuable matter.

[71] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 66, 278, 407.

[72] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 77, and Tom. XI. p.
xxviii. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 146, and Tom. III.
p. 14, in the notes. The “Tears” of Tansillo enjoyed the honor of
being four times translated into Spanish.

His “Fílida,” in seven parts, was written while he was attached to the Duke of Infantado; for he announces himself on the title-page as “a gentleman and a courtier,” and, in his Dedication to one of the family, says that “his greatest labor is to live idle, contented, and honored as one of the servants of their house.” The romance contains, as was usual in such works, the adventures of living and known personages, among whom were Montalvo himself, Cervantes, and the nobleman to whom it is dedicated. But the tone of pastoral life is not better preserved than it is in the other fictions of the same class. Indeed, in the sixth part, there is a most inappropriate critical discussion on the merits of the two schools of Spanish poetry then contending for fashionable mastery; and in the seventh is a courtly festival, with running at the ring, in which the shepherds appear on horseback with lances and armorial bearings, like knights. The prose style of the whole is pure and good; and among the poems with which it abounds, a few in the old Spanish measure may be selected that are nearly, if not quite, equal to the similar poems of Montemayor.

Cervantes, too, as we have already noticed, was led by the spirit of the times, rather, perhaps, than by his own taste, to begin--as an offering to the lady of his love--the “Galatea,” of which the first six books, published in 1584, were all that ever appeared.[73] This was followed, in 1586, by “Truth for the Jealous”; again a romance in six books, and, like the last, unfinished. It was written by Bartolomé Lopez de Enciso, of whom we know from himself that he was a young man when he wrote it, and that it was his purpose to publish a second part, of which, however, nothing more was heard. Nor can we regret that he failed to fulfil his promise. His fictions, which are occupied chiefly with the nymphs and shepherds of the Tagus, are among the most confused and unmeaning that have ever been attempted. His scene is laid, from its opening, in the days of the most ancient Greek mythology; but the Genius of Spain, in the fifth book, carries the same shepherds who thus figure in the first to a magnificent temple, and shows them the statues of Charles the Fifth, of Philip the Second, and even of Philip the Third, who was not yet on the throne;--thus confounding the earliest times of classical antiquity with an age which, at the end of the sixteenth century, was yet to come. Other inconsequences follow, in great numbers, as matters of course, while nothing in either the prose or the poetry is of value enough to compensate for the absurdities in the story. Indeed, few portions of Spanish literature show any thing more stiff and wearisome than the long declamations and discussions in this dull fiction.[74]

[73] _Ante_, Vol. II, pp. 61-64.

[74] “Desengaño de Celos, compuesto por Bartholomé Lopez de
Enciso, Natural de Tendilla,” Madrid, 1586, 12mo, 321 leaves.
There is, I believe, absolutely nothing known of the author,
except what he tells us of himself in this romance;--an extremely
rare book, of which I possess the copy that belonged to Cerdá y
Rico, and which Pellicer borrowed of him to make the needful note
on Enciso for his edition of Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6.

Another pastoral romance in six books, entitled “The Nymphs of the Henares,” by Bernardo Gonzalez de Bovadilla, was printed in 1587. The author, who was a native of the Canary Islands, confesses that he has placed the scene of his story on the banks of the Henares without having ever seen them; but both he and his romance have long since been forgotten. So has “The Shepherds of Iberia,” in four books, by Bernardo de la Vega, supposed to have been a native of Madrid, and certainly a canon of Tucuman, in Peru, whose ill-written story appeared in 1591. But that these, and all that preceded them, enjoyed for a time the public favor is made plain by the fact, that they are all found in the library of Don Quixote, and that three of them receive high praise from Cervantes;--much higher than has been confirmed by the decision of subsequent generations.[75]

[75] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte I. Tom. I. p. 67, and ed.
Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 144.

Some time, however, elapsed before another came to continue the series, except the “Arcadia” of Lope de Vega, which, though written long before, was not printed till 1598.[76] At last, “The Age of Gold,” by Bernardo de Balbuena, appeared. Its author, born on the vine-clad declivities of the Val de Peñas, in 1568, early accompanied his family to Mexico, where he was educated, and where, when only seventeen years old, he was already known as a poet. Once, at least, he visited his native country, and perhaps oftener; but he seems to have spent most of his life, either in Jamaica, where he enjoyed an ecclesiastical benefice, or in Puerto Rico, of which he was afterwards bishop, and where he died in 1627.

[76] _Ante_, Vol. II. p. 125. Perhaps the “Enamorada Elisea” of
Gerónimo de Covarrubias Herrera, printed in 1594, 8vo, should
also be excepted; but I know this work only from the title of it
in Antonio.

Of the manners of the New World, however, or of its magnificent scenery, his “Age of Gold in the Woods of Eriphile” shows no trace. It was printed at Madrid, in 1608, and might have been written, if its author had never been in any other city. But it is not without merit. The poetry with which it abounds is generally of the Italian school, but is much better than can be found in most of these doubtful romances; and its prose, though sometimes affected, is oftener sweet and flowing. Probably nothing in the nine eclogues--as its divisions are unsuitably called--is connected with either the history or the scandal of the times; and if this be the case, we have, perhaps, an explanation of the fact that it was less regarded by those contemporary with its publication than were similar works of inferior merit. But whatever may have been the cause, it was long overlooked; no second edition of it being demanded till 1821, when it received the rare honor of being published anew by the Spanish Academy.[77]

[77] The prefatory notice to this edition contains all that is
known of Balbuena.

The very next year after the first appearance of “The Age of Gold,” Christóval Suarez de Figueroa, a native of Valladolid, a jurist and a soldier, published his “Constant Amaryllis, in Four Discourses,” crowded, like all its predecessors, with short poems, and, like most of them, claiming to tell a tale not a little of which was true.[78] Its author, who lived a great deal in Italy, was already known by an excellent translation of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido,”[79] and published, at different times afterwards, several original works which enjoyed much reputation.[80]

[78] There was an edition with a French translation in 1614, but
the best is that of Madrid, 1781, 8vo.

[79] It was first printed, I believe, at Naples, in 1602, but was
improved in the edition at Valencia, 1609, 12mo, pp. 278, from
which I transcribe the opening of Act III.:--

O primavera, juventud del año,
Nueva madre de flores,
De nuevas yervezillas y d’ amores,
Tu buelves, mas contigo
No buelven los serenos
Y aventurosos dias de mis gustos;
Tu buelves, sí, tu buelves,
Mas contigo no torna
Sino la remembrança
Miserable y doliente
De mi caro tesoro ya perdido.
p. 94.

This passage is so nearly word for word, that it is not worth
while to copy the Italian, and yet its fluency and ease are
admirable.

There is a translation of the “Pastor Fido,” by a Jewess, Doña
Isabel de Correa, of which I know only the third edition, that
of Antwerp, 1694, 12mo. It is one of the few trophies in poetry
claimed by the fair sex of its author’s faith; but it is not
worthy of much praise. Ginguené complains of the original, which
extends to seven thousand lines, for being too long. It is so;
but this translation of Doña Isabel is much longer, containing, I
think, above eleven thousand lines. Its worst fault, however, is
its bad taste. There is a drama with the same title, “El Pastor
Fido,” in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. VIII., 1657, f. 106;--but,
though it is said to be written by three poets no less famous
than Solís, Coello, and Calderon, it has very little value.

[80] Antonio (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 251) gives a list of nine of
the works of Figueroa, some of which must be noticed under their
respective heads; but it is probably not complete, for Figueroa
himself, in 1617, (Pasagero, f. 377,) says he had already
published seven books, and Antonio gives only six before that
date; besides which, a friend, in the Preface to Figueroa’s Life
of the Marquis of Cañete, 1613, says he had written eight works
in the ten years _then_ preceding.

But he seems to have been a man of an unkind and unfaithful character. In a curious account of his own life which appeared in his “Traveller,” he speaks harshly and insidiously of many of his contemporaries; and towards Cervantes--who had just died, after praising every body most generously during his whole life--he is absolutely malignant.[81] His last work is dated in 1621, and this is the last fact we know in relation to him. His “Amaryllis,” which, as he intimates, was composed to please a person of great consideration, did not satisfy its author.[82] It is, however, written in an easy and tolerably pure style; and though it contains formal and wearisome discussions, like that in the first part on Poetry, and awkward machinery, such as a vision of Venus and her court in the second, it is the only one of his works that has been reprinted or much read within the last century.

[81] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 179-181, and elsewhere.
The very curious notices given by Figueroa of his own life, which
have never been used for his biography, are in his “Pasagero,”
from f. 286 to f. 392, and are, like many other passages of that
singular book, full of bitterness towards his contemporaries,
Lope de Vega, Villegas, Espinosa, etc.

[82] Pasagero, f. 96. b.

A few pastoral romances appeared in Spain after the Amaryllis, but none of so much merit, and none that enjoyed any considerable degree of favor. Espinel Adorno;[83] Botelho, a Portuguese;[84] Quintana, who assumed the name of Cuevas;[85] Corral;[86] and Saavedra,[87] close up the series;--the last bringing us down to just about a century from the first appearance of such fictions in the time of Montemayor, and all of them infected with the false taste of the period. Taken together, they leave no doubt that pastoral romance was the first substitute in Spain for the romances of chivalry, and that it inherited no small degree of their popularity. Most of the works we have noticed were several times reprinted, and the “Diana” of Montemayor, the first and best of them all, was probably more read in Spain during the sixteenth century than any Spanish work of amusement except the “Celestina.”

[83] “El Premio de la Constancia y Pastores de Sierra Bermeja,
por Jacinto de Espinel Adorno,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo, 162 leaves.
I find no notice of it, except the slight one in Antonio, Bib.
Nov., Tom. I. p. 613; but it is not worse than some that were
more valued.

[84] “El Pastor de Clenarda de Miguel Botelho de Cavalho,”
Madrid, 1622, 8vo. He wrote, also, several other works; all in
Castilian, except his “Filis,” a poem in octave stanzas. Barbosa,
Bib. Lus., Tom. III. p. 466.

[85] “Experiencias de Amor y Fortuna, por el Licenciado Francisco
de las Cuevas de Madrid,” Barcelona, 1649, 12mo. See, also,
Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. pp. 172 and 189. Francisco de
Quintana dedicated this pastoral to Lope de Vega, who wrote him a
complimentary reply, in which he treats Quintana as a young man,
and this as his first work. There were editions of it in 1626,
1646, 1654, as well as the one at Barcelona, above noted, and one
at Madrid, 1666, 12mo; and in the nineteenth volume of Lope’s
Obras Sueltas, pp. 353-400, is a sermon which Quintana delivered
at the obsequies of Lope, in the title of which he is called
Lope’s “intimate friend.”

[86] “La Cintia de Aranjuez, Prosas y Versos, por Don Gabriel de
Corral, Natural de Valladolid,” Madrid, 1629, 12mo, 208 leaves.
I know of no other edition. He lived in Rome from 1630 to 1632,
and probably longer. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 505.) He is
Gongoresque in his style, as is Quintana.

[87] “Los Pastores del Betis, por Gonzalvo de Saavedra,” Trani,
1633, 4to, pp. 289. It seems to have been written in Italy; but
we know nothing of its author, except that he was a Veintiquatro
of Córdova. His style is affected. In my copy, which in the
colophon is dated 1634, there are, as a separate tract, four
leaves of religious and moral advice to the author’s son, when he
was going as governor to one of the provinces of Naples; better
written than the romance that precedes it.

All this seems remarkable and strange, when we consider only the absurdities and inconsequences with which such fictions necessarily abound. But there is another side to the question, which should not be overlooked. Pastoral romance, after all, has its foundation in one of the truest and deepest principles of our common nature,--that love of rural beauty, of rural peace, in short, of whatever goes to constitute a country life, as distinguished from the constrained life of a city, which few are too dull to feel, and fewer still so artificial as wholly to reject. It has, therefore, prevailed more or less in all modern countries, as we may see in Italy, from the success that followed Sannazaro; in France, from the “Astrea” of Durfé; and in England, from the “Arcadia” of Sir Philip Sidney;--the two latter being pastoral romances of enormous length, compared with any in Spanish; and the very last enjoying for above a century a popularity which may well be compared with that of the “Diana” of Montemayor, if, indeed, it did not equal it.[88]

[88] Portugal might have been added. The “Menina é Moça” of
Bernardino Ribeyro, printed 1557, is a beautiful fragment; and
the “Primaveira” of Francisco Rodriguez de Lobo, in three long
parts, printed between 1601 and 1614,--the first of which was
translated into Spanish by Juan Bart. Morales, 1629,--is among
the best full-length pastoral romances extant. Both for a long
time were favorites in Portugal, and are still read there.
Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. I. p. 518, Tom. II. p. 242.

No doubt, in Spain, as elsewhere, the incongruities of such fictions were soon perceived. Even some of those who most indulged in them showed that it was not entirely from a misapprehension of their nature. Cervantes, who died regretting that he should leave his “Galatea” unfinished, still makes himself merry more than once in his “Don Quixote” with all such fancies; and, in his “Colloquy of the Dogs,” permits one of them, who had been in shepherd service, to satirize the false exhibition of life in the best pastorals of his time, not forgetting his own among the rest.[89] Lope de Vega, too, though he published his “Arcadia” under circumstances which show that he set a permanent value upon its gentle tales, could still, in a play where shepherds are introduced, make one of them--who found a real life among flocks and herds in rough weather much less agreeable than the life he had read of in the pastorals--say, when suffering in a storm,--

[89] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, in the examination of the
library, where his niece begs that the pastorals may be burnt as
well as the books of chivalry, lest, if her uncle were cured of
knight-errantry, he should go mad as a shepherd;--and Parte II.
c. 67 and 73, where her fears are very nigh being realized.

And I should like just now to see those men
Who write such books about a shepherd’s life,
Where all is spring and flowers and trees and brooks.[90]

[90] Comedias, Parte VI., Madrid, 1615, 4to, f. 102. El Cuerdo en
su Casa, Act. I.

Still, neither Cervantes, nor Lope, nor any body else in their time, thought seriously of discountenancing pastoral fictions. On the contrary, there was in their very style--which was generally an imitation of the Italian, that gave birth to them all--something attractive to a cultivated Castilian ear, at a time when the school of Garcilasso was at the height of its popularity and favor. Besides this, the real events they recorded, and the love-stories of persons in high life that they were known to conceal, made them sometimes riddles and sometimes masquerades, which engaged the curiosity of those who moved in the circles either of their authors or of their heroes and heroines.[91] But more than all, the glimpses they afforded of nature and truth--such genuine and deep tenderness as is shown by Montemayor, and such graceful descriptions of natural scenery as abound in Balbuena--were, no doubt, refreshing in a state of society stiff and formal as was that at the Spanish court in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, and in the midst of a culture more founded on military virtues and the spirit of knighthood than any other of modern times. As long, therefore, as this state of things continued, pastoral fictions and fancies, filled with the dreams of a poetical Arcadia, enjoyed a degree of favor in Spain which they never enjoyed anywhere else. But when this disappeared, they disappeared with it.

[91] “The Diana of Montemayor,” says Lope de Vega, in the
passage from his “Dorotea” already cited, (n. [64],) “was a lady of
Valencia de Don Juan, near Leon, and he has made both her and
the river Ezla immortal. So the Fílida of Montalvo, the Galatea
of Cervantes, and the Filis of Figueroa, were real personages.”
Others might be added, on the authority of their authors, such
as “Los Diez Libros de Fortuna y Amor,” “La Cintia de Aranjuez,”
etc. See a note of Clemencin, Don Quixote, Tom. VI. p. 440.