Chapter I

WAR OF THE SUCCESSION.--BOURBON FAMILY.--PHILIP THE FIFTH.--ACADEMY OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE: ITS DICTIONARY, ORTHOGRAPHY, GRAMMAR, AND OTHER WORKS.--ACADEMY OF BARCELONA.--ACADEMY OF HISTORY.--STATE OF LETTERS.--POETRY: MORAES, BARNUEVO, REYNOSA, ZEVALLOS, LOBO, BENEGASI, PITILLAS.

Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers on the first day of November, in the year 1700. How low he left the intellectual culture of his country, and how completely the old national literature had died out in his reign, we have already seen. But, before there could be any serious thought of a revival from this disastrous state of things, a civil war was destined to sweep over the land, and still further exhaust its resources. Austria and France, it had been long understood, would make pretensions to the throne of Spain, so soon as it should be left vacant by the extinction of the reigning dynasty; and the partisans of each of these great powers were numerous and confident of success, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe. At this moment, while standing on the verge of the grave,--and knowing that he stood there,--the last, unhappy descendant of the House of Austria, with many misgivings and a heart-felt reluctance, finally announced his preference; and, by a secret political testament, declared the Duke of Anjou, second son of the Dauphin and grandson of Louis the Fourteenth of France, to be sole heir to his throne and dominions.

The decision was not unexpected, and was, perhaps, as wise as a wiser king would have made under similar circumstances. But it was not the more likely, on either account, to be acquiesced in. Austria declared war against the new dynasty, as soon as the will of the deceased monarch was divulged; and England and Holland, outraged by the bad faith of Louis the Fourteenth, who, hardly two years before, had made an arrangement with them for a wholly different settlement of the Spanish question, soon joined her. The war, known as “the War of the Succession,” became general in its character; Spain was invaded by the allied powers; and the contest for its throne was kept up on the soil of that unfortunate country, partly by foreign troops, and partly by divisions among its own people, until 1713, when the treaty of Utrecht confirmed the claims of the Bourbon family, and gave peace to Europe, wearied with blood.

As far as Spain was concerned, the results of this war were most important. On the one hand, she lost by it nearly half of her European dominions, and fell, if not in proportion to such a loss, yet very greatly, in the scale of nations. But, on the other hand, the vast resources of her American colonies still remained untouched; her people had been roused to new energy by their exertions in defence of their homes; and their ancient loyalty had been, to an extraordinary degree, concentrated on a young and adventurous prince, who, though himself a foreigner, stood before them as their defender against foreign invasion. It seemed, therefore, as if still there were life in Spain, and as if something remained of the old national character, on which to build a new culture.[276]

[276] Lord Mahon’s excellent “History of the War of the
Succession in Spain” (London, 1832, 8vo) leaves the same general
impression on the mind of the reader, as to the effect of that
war on the Spanish character, that is left by the contemporary
accounts of it. It is, no doubt, the true one.

That Philip the Fifth should desire to restore the intellectual dignity of the country, that had so generously adopted him, was natural. But while the war lasted, it demanded all the care of his government; and when it was over, and he turned himself to the task, it was plain that, in his personal relations and dispositions, he was but imperfectly fitted for it. Notwithstanding the sincerest efforts to assimilate himself to the people he governed, he was still a foreigner, little acquainted with their condition, and unable to sympathize with their peculiar nationality. He had been educated at the court of Louis the Fourteenth; the most brilliant court in Europe, and that in which, more than in any other, letters were regarded as a part of the pageant of empire. His character was not strongly marked; and he expressed no decided love for any definite form of intellectual cultivation, though he had good taste enough to enjoy the elegance to which he had always been accustomed, and which had been an important part of his breeding. He was, in fact, a Frenchman; and never could forget,--what his grandfather had unwisely told him always to remember,--that he was such. When, therefore, he desired to encourage elegant literature, it was natural that he should first recur to the means by which he had seen it encouraged where, more than in any other country, it had been successfully fostered by royal patronage; and if, in some respects, his position was little favorable to such a use of his power, in one, at least, it was eminently fortunate; for the earlier literature of Spain had so nearly disappeared, that it could offer little resistance to any attempt that might be made to introduce new forms or to infuse a new character into the old.

At this moment, the idea of patronizing and controlling the literature of a country by academies, established under the authority of its government, and composed of the principal men of letters of the time, was generally favored;--the French Academy, founded by Cardinal Richelieu, and always the model of its class, being now at the height of its success and fame. To establish a Spanish Academy, which should have similar objects and reach similar results, was, therefore, naturally the great literary project of the reign of Philip the Fifth.[277] Probably the king himself had early entertained it. Certainly it was formally brought to his notice, in 1713, by the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman, who, amidst the cares of five successive viceroyalties, had found leisure to devote himself, not only to letters, but to some of the more severe branches of the physical and exact sciences. His first purpose seems to have been, to form an academy whose empire should extend, on all sides, to the limits of human knowledge, and whose subdivisions should be substantially made according to the system of Lord Bacon. This, however, was soon abandoned as too vast an undertaking; and it was determined to begin by confining the duties of the new association principally to “the cultivation and establishment of the purity of the Castilian language.” An Academy for this object went into operation, by virtue of a royal decree dated the 3d of November, 1714.[278]

[277] The Royal Library, now the National Library, at Madrid,
which was strictly the earliest literary project of the reign of
Philip V., was founded in 1711; but for several years it was an
institution of little importance. El Bibliotecario y el Trovador,
Madrid, 1841, folio, p. 3.

[278] “Historia de la Academia,” in the Preface to the
“Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana, por la Real Academia
Española,” Madrid, Tom. I. 1726, folio. Sempere y Guarinos,
Biblioteca, 1785, Discurso Preliminar, and Tom. I. p. 55.

As it was modelled almost exactly after the form of the French Academy, the first project of its members was that of making a Dictionary. The work was much needed. From the time of Fernando de Herrera the language had not received large additions, but it had received some that were of value. Mendoza and Coloma had introduced a few military terms, that have since passed into common use; and both of them, with Ercilla, Urrea, and many others, had been so familiar with the Italian, as to seize some of its wealth for their own. Cervantes, however, had, perhaps, done more than any body else. That he was insensible neither to the danger of a too free intermixture of foreign words, nor to the true principles that should govern their introduction when needed, he has shown in the conversations of Don Quixote with the printers at Barcelona, and with Sancho at the Duke’s castle; but still he felt the rights of genius within him, and exercised them in this respect as boldly as he did in most others. His new compounds, his Latinisms, his restoration of old and neglected phrases, and his occasional recourse to the Italian, have all been noted; and, in nearly every instance, the words he adopted now enter into the recognized vocabulary of the language. Other writers ventured in the same direction, with less success; but still, from the glossaries added to the poems of Blasco in 1584, and of Lopez Pinciano in 1605, there can be no doubt that many words, which were then thought to need explanation, have long since become familiar, and that the old Castilian stock, during the reigns of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, was receiving additions, which ought, in some way, to be recognized as an important part of its permanent resources.[279]

[279] Garcés, Vigor y Elegancia de la Lengua Castellana,
Madrid, 1791, 2 tom. 8vo, Prólogo to each volume. Mendoza used
reluctantly such words as _centinela_, and Coloma introduced
_dique_, etc., from his Dutch experience. Navarrete (Vida de
Cervantes, pp. 163-169) and Garcés (loc. cit.) show the value of
what Cervantes did, and Clemencin (ed. D. Quixote, Tom. V. pp.
99, 292, and 357) gives a list of the Latin, Italian, and other
words used by Cervantes, but not always naturalized, on which, in
various notes elsewhere, he seems to look with less favor than
Garcés does. Quite as curious as either are the words, which
Blasco (Universal Redencion, 1584) and Lopez Pinciano (El Pelayo,
1605) thought it necessary to put into vocabularies at the end
of their respective poems, and to define for their readers,
among which are _fatal_, _natal_, _fugaz_, _gruta_, _abandonar_,
_adular_, _anhelo_, _aplauso_, _arrojarse_, _assedio_, etc.,--all
now familiar Castilian.

But, on the other hand, during the seventeenth century, the old language had been much abused. From the appearance of Góngora no proper regard had been paid to the preservation of its purity or of its original characteristics, by many of the most popular authors that employed it. The _Latiniparla_, as Quevedo called the affectation of his time, had brought in many Latin words and many strange phrases, wholly repugnant to the genius of the Spanish. Such words and constructions, too, had enjoyed much favor; and Lope de Vega, Calderon, and the other leading spirits, who pronounced them to be affectations and refused directly to countenance them, yet occasionally yielded to the fashion of their time, in order to obtain the applause which was sure to follow.[280]

[280] It is impossible to open the works of Count Villamediana,
and the other followers of Góngora, without finding proofs of
their willingness to change the language of Spanish literature;
but there is a small and very imperfect list of the words and
phrases these innovators favored, to be found in the “Declamacion
contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana,” by Vargas y Ponce, p.
150, which will at once illustrate their general purpose.

Both to receive the words that had been rightfully naturalized in the language, and to place a mark of disapprobation on those that were unworthy to be adopted, a Dictionary resting on authority was wanted. None such had been attempted in Spain. Indeed, during the whole of the preceding century, only one Spanish Dictionary of any kind had been produced that received, or deserved, the notice of the Academy. This was the work of Covarrubias, whose “Tesoro,” first printed in 1611, is a curious book, full of learning, and, in the etymological part, valuable, but often conceited, and rarely showing philosophical acuteness in its definitions.[281] The new Academy, therefore, could obtain little help from the labors of their predecessors, and, for such as was worth having, were obliged to go back to Lebrixa and his editors. But they were in earnest. They labored diligently, and between 1726 and 1739 produced their grand work, in six folio volumes. On the whole, it did them honor. No doubt, it shows, in several parts, a want of mature consideration and good judgment. Many words were omitted, that should have been inserted; many were inserted, which were afterwards stricken out; and many were given on unsatisfactory authorities. But its definitions are generally good; its etymologies--though this part of the work was little regarded by its authors--are respectable; and its citations are ample and pertinent. In fact, all that had been done for the language, in the way of dictionaries, since its origin, was not equal to what was now done in this single work.

[281] There is an edition of the Tesoro of Covarrubias, by Benito
Remigio Noydens, (Madrid, 1674, folio,) which is better and
ampler than the original work.

But the Academicians were not slow to perceive, that a Dictionary so large could exercise little popular influence. They began, therefore, soon afterwards, to prepare an abridgment, in a single folio volume, for more general use, and published the first edition of it in 1780. The project was judicious, and its execution skilful. It omitted the discussions, citations, and formal etymologies of the larger work; but it established a better vocabulary, and improved many of the old definitions. It had, therefore, from its first appearance, a decided authority; and, by the persevering labors of the Academy, has continued, in its successive editions, to be the proper standard of the language,--labors which, since the latter part of the eighteenth century, have been always heavy, and sometimes disagreeable, from the constant tendency of even the better writers, like Melendez and his school, to fall into Gallicisms, which the increasing intercourse with France had rendered fashionable in the society of their time.

Another difficulty, however, soon presented itself to the Academy, quite as serious as the size of their Dictionary. It was that of the orthography they had adopted. The spelling of the Castilian--partly, perhaps, from the very various elements of which it was composed, and partly from the popular character of its literature--had always been more unsettled than that of the other modern languages. Lebrixa, the great scholar of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, first attempted to reduce it to order, and the simplicity of his system, which appeared in 1517, seemed at first likely to secure general favor and acceptance. But thirty treatises, that at different times followed, had--with the exception of the acute and pleasant one printed by Aleman when he was in Mexico, in 1609--served rather to unsettle and confuse the whole matter, than to determine any thing in relation to it.[282]

[282] The “Ortografía de la Lengua Castellana,” (Mexico, 1609,
4to, ff. 83) is a pleasant and important treatise, which, as the
novelist intimates, he began to write in Castile and finished in
Mexico. It proposes to reverse the letter ↄ in order to express
the soft _ch_ as in _mucho_, to be printed _muↄo_; uses two forms
of the letter _r_; writes the conjunction _y_ always _i_, as
Salvá now insists it should be; and claims _j_, _ll_, and _ñ_ to
be separate letters, as they have long been admitted to be.

In speaking of Aleman, I am reminded of his “San Antonio de
Padua,” printed in 12mo, at Valencia, in 1607, ff. 309. It
belongs to the same class of books with the “San Patricio” of
Montalvan, (see, _ante_, Vol. II. p. 298,) but is more elaborate
and more devout. The number of the Saint’s miracles that it
records is very great. Whether he invented any of them for the
occasion, I do not know; but they sometimes read as much like
_novelas_ as some of his stories in the “Guzman” do, and are
always written in the same idiomatic and unadulterated Castilian.
It is introduced by a _cancion_ in honor of it by Lope de Vega;
but I cannot find that it was ever reprinted;--why, it is
difficult to say, for it is an uncommonly attractive book of its
class.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the first attempt of the Academy, made in the form of a short discourse, prefixed to its larger Dictionary, produced little effect. A separate work, which appeared in 1742, did something more, but not much; and the successive editions of it which were called for by the public rather showed the uneasy state of opinion in relation to the points under discussion, than any thing else. At last, in 1815, the Academy, in the eighth recension of its treatise on Orthography, and in 1817, in the fifth of its smaller Dictionary, began a series of important changes, which have been generally adopted by subsequent writers of authority, and appear to have nearly settled the spelling of the Castilian, though still it seems open to a few further modifications, and even to invite them.[283]

[283] The difficulties in Castilian orthography are set forth in
the “Diálogo de las Lenguas” (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom.
II. pp. 47-65); but the ingenious author of that discussion is
more severe than was necessary on Lebrixa. An anonymous writer of
an excellent essay on the same subject, in the first volume of
the Repertorio Americano, (Tom. I. p. 27,) is a great deal more
judicious. But how unsettled much still remains in practice may
be seen in the “Manual del Cajista, por José María Palacios,”
Madrid, 1845, 18mo, where (pp. 134-154) is a “Prontuario de las
Voces de dudosa Ortografía,” containing above 1800 words.

A Grammar, like a Dictionary, was provided for in the statutes of the Academy. But the original members of that body, few of whom were men of note and authority, showed a marked unwillingness to approach the difficult discussions involved in such a work, and did not undertake them at all till 1740. Even then, they went on slowly and with anxiety; so that the result of their labors did not appear till 1771. For this delay they were not wholly in fault. They had little to guide them, except the rival Grammars of Gayoso and San Pedro, which were published while the Academy was preparing its own, and the original attempt of Lebrixa, which had long been forgotten. But, after so protracted a labor, the Academicians should have produced something more worthy of their claims; for what they gave to the world, at last, was an unphilosophical and unpractical work, which, though subjected to frequent revision since, is hardly an outline of what it ought to be, and quite inferior to the Grammar of Salvá.[284]

[284] Of Lebrixa’s Grammar I have already spoken, (Vol. I.
p. 549,) and the memory of it was now so much revived that a
counterfeit edition of it was published, about 1775, in small
folio, hardly, I should judge from its appearance, with the
intention of deceiving. But such things were not uncommon about
that time, as Mendez says, who thinks the edition in question had
been printed about twenty years when he published his work in
1796. (See Typog., p. 242.) It is, however, already so rare, that
I obtained a copy of it with difficulty.

That of Gayoso was first printed at Madrid, in 1745, 12mo, and
that of San Pedro in Valencia, 1769, 12mo, which last Gayoso,
disguising himself under a sort of anagram, attacked, in his
“Conversaciones Críticas, por Don Antonio Gobeyos,” (Madrid,
1780, 12mo,) where he shows that San Pedro was not so original as
he ought to have been, but treats his Grammar with more harshness
than it deserved. Salvá’s “Gramática de la Lengua Castellana como
ahora se halla” was first printed in 1831, and the sixth edition
appeared at Madrid in 1844, 12mo; a striking proof of the want of
such a book.

A History of the Castilian Language, and an Art of Poetry, which were also expressly prescribed by the statutes of the Academy, have never been prepared under their authority; but, instead of these tasks, they have sometimes performed duties not originally imposed upon them. Thus they have published careful editions of different works of recognized authority, particularly a magnificent one of “Don Quixote,” in 1780-84. Since 1777, they have, from time to time, offered prizes for poetical compositions, though, as is usual in such cases, with less important results than had been hoped. And occasionally they have printed, with funds granted to them by the government, works deemed of sufficient merit to deserve such patronage, and, among others, the excellent treatise of Garcés on “The Vigor and Beauty of the Spanish Language,” which appeared under their auspices in 1791.[285] During the whole century, therefore, the Spanish Academy, occupied in these various ways, continued to be a useful institution, carefully abstaining from such claims to control the public taste as were at first made by its model in France, and, though not always very active and efficient, still never deserving the reproach of neglecting the duties and tasks for which it was originally instituted.

[285] Gregorio Garcés, whose “Fundamento del Vigor y Elegancia
de la Lengua Castellana” was printed at Madrid, 1791, 2 tom.
8vo, was a Jesuit, and prepared this excellent work in exile at
Ferrara, in which city he lived above thirty years, and from
which he returned home in 1798, under the decree of Charles IV.
abrogating that of his father for the expulsion of the Order from
Spain, in 1767.

One good effect that followed from the foundation of the Spanish Academy was the establishment of other academies for kindred purposes. These academies were entirely different from the social meetings, under the same name, that were imitated from the Italian academies in the time of Charles the Fifth,--one of the earliest of which was held in the house of Cortés,[286] the conqueror of Mexico;--though still the elder associations seem sometimes to have furnished materials, out of which the institutions that succeeded them were constructed. At least, this was the case with the Academy of Barcelona, which has rendered good service to the cause of letters since 1751, after having long existed as an idle affectation, under the title of the “Academy of the Diffident.” The only one, however, of any consequence to the general literature of the country, was established during the reign of Philip the Fifth,--the Academy for Spanish History, founded in 1738; the character and amount of whose labors, both published and unpublished, do its members much honor.[287]

[286] See, _ante_, Part II. c. 5, and note, Vol. I. p. 537.

[287] For an account of these Academies, see Guarinos,
“Biblioteca”; and for a notice of the origin of the Royal
Academy of History, see the first volume of its Memoirs. The old
_Academias_, in imitation of the Italian,--such as are ridiculed
in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco IX.,--had much gone out of
fashion and been displaced by the modern _Tertulias_, where both
sexes meet, and which in their turn have been ridiculed in the
_Saynetes_ of Ramon de la Cruz and Castillo.

But such associations everywhere, though they may be useful and even important in their proper relations, can neither create a new literature for a country, nor, where the old literature is seriously decayed, do much to revive it. The Spanish academies were no exceptions to this remark. All elegant culture had so nearly disappeared before the accession of the Bourbons, and there was such an insensibility to its value in those classes of society where it should have been most cherished, that it was plain the resuscitation must be the work of time, and that the land must long lie fallow before another harvest could be gathered in. During the entire reign of Philip the Fifth, therefore,--a reign which, including the few months of his nominal abdication in favor of his son, extends to forty-six years,--we shall find undeniable traces of this unhappy state of things; few authors appearing who deserve to be named at all, and still fewer who demand a careful notice.

Poetry, indeed, or what passed under that name, continued to be written; and some of it, though little encouraged by the general regard of the nation, was printed. Moraes, a Portuguese gentleman of rank, who had lived in Spain from his youth, wrote two heroic poems in Spanish; the first on the discovery of “The New World,” which he published in 1701, and the other on the foundation of the kingdom of Portugal, which was printed in 1712; both appearing originally in an unfinished state, in consequence of the author’s impatience for fame, and the earlier of them still remaining so. But they have been long forgotten. Indeed, the first, which is full of extravagant allegories, soon found the fate which its author felt it deserved; and the other, though written with great deference for the rules of art, and more than once reprinted, has not at last enjoyed a better fortune.

The most amusing work of Moraes is a prose satire, printed in 1734, called “The Caves of Salamanca,” where, in certain grottos, which a popular tradition supposed to exist, sealed up by magic, within the banks of the Tórmes, he finds Amadis of Gaul, Oriana, and Celestina, and discourses with them and other fanciful personages on such subjects as his humor happens to suggest. Parts of it are very wild; parts of it are both amusing and wise, especially what is said about the Spanish language and academies, and about the “Telemachus” of Fénelon, then at the height of its fame. The whole shows few of the affectations of style that still deformed and degraded whatever there was of literature in the country, and which, though ridiculed in “The Caves of Salamanca,” are abundant in the other works of the same author.[288]

[288] There is an edition of the “Nuevo Mundo,” printed at
Barcelona, 1701, 4to, containing many blanks, which the author
announces his intention to fill up. Of the “Alfonso, ó la
Fundacion del Reyno de Portugal,” there are editions of 1712,
1716, 1731, and 1737. There is a notice of the author--Francisco
Botelho Moraes e Vasconcellos--in Barbosa, (Tom. II. p. 119,)
and at the end of the edition of the Alfonso, Salamanca, 1731,
4to, is a defence of a few peculiarities in its orthography. “Las
Cuevas de Salamanca” (s. l. 1734) is a small volume, divided into
seven books, written, perhaps, at Salamanca itself, which Moraes
loved, and where he retired in his old age. He published one or
two works in Spanish, besides those already mentioned, and one or
two in Latin, but no others of consequence.

A long heroic poem, in two parts, in honor of the conquest of Peru by the Pizarros, was printed at Lima in 1732. It is founded principally on the prose History of the Inca Garcilasso, but is rarely so interesting as the gossip out of which it was constructed. The author, Pedro de Barnuevo, was an officer of the Spanish government in South America; and he gives in the Preface a long list of his works, published and unpublished. He was, undoubtedly, a man of learning, but not a poet. Like Moraes, he has arranged a mystical interpretation to his story; some parts of which, such as that where America comes before God, and prays to be conquered that she may be converted, are really allegorical; while, in general, the interpretation he gives is merely an after-thought, forced and unnatural. But his work is dull and in bad taste, and the octave stanzas in which it is written are managed with less skill than usual.[289]

[289] “Lima Fundada, Poema Heróico de Don Pedro de Peralta
Barnuevo,” Lima, 1732, 4to, about 700 pages; but so ill paged
that it is not easy to determine.

Several religious poems belong to the same period. One by Pedro de Reynosa, printed in 1727, is on “Santa Casilda,” the converted daughter of a Moorish king of Toledo, who figures in the history of Spain during the eleventh century. Another, called “The Eloquence of Silence,” by Miguel de Zevallos, in 1738, is devoted to the honor of Saint John of Nepomuck, who, in the fourteenth century, was thrown into the Moldau, by order of a king of Bohemia, because the holy man would not reveal to the jealous monarch what the queen had intrusted to him under the seal of the confessional. Both are in the octave stanzas common to such poems, and are full of the faults of their times. Two mock-heroic poems, that naturally followed such attempts, are not better than the serious poems which provoked them.[290]

[290] “Santa Casilda, Poema en Octavas Reales, por el R. P.
Fr. Pedro de Reynosa,” Madrid, 1727, 4to. It is in seven
cantos, and each canto has a sort of codicil to it, affectedly
called a _Contrapunto_.--“La Eloquencia del Silencio, Poema
Heróico, por Miguel de la Reyna Zevallos,” Madrid, 1738, 4to.
Of the mock-heroic poems mentioned in the text, one is “La
Prosérpina, Poema Heróico, por D. Pedro Silvestre,” Madrid,
1721, 4to,--twelve mortal cantos. The other is “La Burromaquia,”
which is better, but still not amusing. It is unfinished, and is
found in the “Obras Póstumas de Gabriel Alvarez de Toledo.” The
divisions are not called “Cantos,” but “_Brayings_.” I have seen
very ridiculous extracts from a poem by Father Butron on Santa
Teresa, printed in 1722, and from one on St. Jerome, by P. M.
Lara, 1726, but I have never happened to fall in with the poems
themselves, which seem to be as bad as any of their class.

No account more favorable can be given of the lyric and miscellaneous poetry of the period, than of the narrative. The best that appeared, or at least what was thought to be the best at the time, is to be found in the poetical works of Eugenio Lobo, first printed in 1738. He was a soldier, who wrote verses only for his amusement; but his friends, who admired them much beyond their merit, printed portions of them, from time to time, until, at last, he himself thought it better to permit a religious congregation to publish the whole in a volume. They are very various in form, from fragments of two epics down to sonnets, and equally various in tone, from that appropriate to religious _villancicos_ to that of the freest satire. But they are in very bad taste; and, if any thing like poetry appears in them, it is at rare intervals. Benegasi y Luxan, who, in 1743, published a volume of such light verses as were called for by the gay society in which he lived, wrote in a simpler style than Lobo, though, on the whole, he succeeded no better. But, except these two, and a few who imitated them, such as Alvarez de Toledo and Antonio Muñoz, we have nothing from the reign of the first of the Bourbons, that can claim notice in either of the forms of poetry we have thus far examined.[291]

[291] “Obras Poéticas Lýricas, por el Coronel D. Eugenio Gerardo
Lobo,” Madrid, 1738, 4to.--“Poesías Lýricas, y Joco-Serias,
su Autor D. Joseph Joachim Benegasi y Luxan,” Madrid, 1743,
4to.--Gab. Alvarez de Toledo, _ut ante_.--Antonio Muñoz,
“Aventuras en Verso y en Prossa,” (_sic_,) no date, but licensed
1739.

More characteristic than either, however, were two collections of verse, written, as their titles profess, by the poets of most note at the time, in honor of the king and queen, who, in 1722, meeting the Host, as it was passing to a dying man, gave their own carriage to the priest who bore it, and then, according to the fashion of the country, followed reverently on foot. The names of Zamora the dramatist, of Diego de Torres, well known for his various accomplishments in science and letters, and of a few other poets, who are still remembered, occur in the first collection; but, in general, the obscurity of the authors who contributed to it is such as we might anticipate from reading their poetry; while, at the same time, the occasion of the whole shows how low was the culture which could attribute any value to such publications.[292]

[292] “Sagradas Flores del Parnaso, Consonancias Métricas de la
bien Templada Lyra de Apolo, que á la reverente Católica Accion
de haver ido accompañando sus Magestades el Ssmo Sacramento que
iba á Darse por viatico á una Enferma el Dia 28 de Novembre,
1722, cantaron los mejores Cisnes de España,” 4to. I give the
title of the first collection in full, as an indication of the
bad taste of its contents. Both collections, taken together,
make about 200 pages, and contain poems by about fifty authors,
generally in the worst and most affected style,--the very dregs
of Gongorism.

A single bright spot in the poetical history of this period is only the more remarkable from the gloom that surrounds it. It is a satire attributed to Herbas, a person otherwise unknown, who disguised himself under the name of Jorge de Pitillas, and printed it in a literary journal. It was singularly successful for the time when it appeared; a circumstance the more to be noticed, as this success seems not to have inspired any similar attempt, or even to have encouraged the author to venture again before the public. The subject he chose was fortunate,--the bad writers of his age,--and in discussing it he has spoken out boldly and manfully; sometimes calling by name those whom he ridicules, and at other times indicating them so that they cannot be mistaken. His chief merits are the ease and simplicity of his style, the pungency and justness of his satire, and his agreeable imitations of the old masters, especially Persius and Juvenal, whom he further resembled in the commendable qualities of brevity and sententiousness.[293]

[293] The “Sátira contra los Malos Escritores de su Tiempo”
is commonly attributed to José Gerardo de Herbas; but Tapia
(Civilisacion, Tom. IV. p. 266) says it was written by José
Cobo de la Torre, besides which it is inserted in the “Rebusco
de las Obras Literarias de J. F. de Isla,” (Madrid, 1790,
12mo,) as if it were unquestionably Isla’s. It first appeared
in the second edition of the sixth volume of the “Diario de los
Literatos”;--the earliest periodical work in the spirit of modern
criticism that was published in Spain, and one so much in advance
of the age that it did not survive its second year, having been
begun in 1737, and gone on one year and nine months, till it made
seven small volumes. It was in vain that it was countenanced by
the king, and favored by the leading persons at court. It was too
large a work; it was a new thing, which Spaniards rarely like;
and it was severe in its criticisms, so that the authors of the
time generally took the field against it, and broke it down.

To the same period with the Satire of Pitillas belongs the
poem on “Deucalion,” by Alonso Verdugo de Castilla, Count of
Torrepalma. It is an imitation of Ovid, in about sixty octave
stanzas, somewhat remarkable for its versification. But in a
better period it would not be noticed.