THE DIDACTIC AGE
1301-1400
Only the barest mention need be made of a "clerkly poem" called the
_Vida de San Ildefonso_ (Life of St. Ildephonsus), a dry narrative
of over a thousand lines, probably written soon after 1313, when the
saint's feast was instituted by the Council of Peñafiel. Its author
declares that he once held the prebend of Úbeda, and that he had
previously rhymed the history of the Magdalen. No other information
concerning him exists; nor is it eagerly sought, for the Prebendary's
poem is a colourless imitation of Berceo, without Berceo's visitings of
inspiration. More merit is shown in the _Proverbios en Rimo de Salomón_
(Solomon's Rhymed Proverbs), moralisings on the vanity of life,
written, with many variations, in the manner of Berceo. The author of
these didactic, satiric verses is announced in the oldest manuscript
copy as one Pero Gómez, son of Juan Fernández. He has been absurdly
confounded with an ancient "Gómez, _trovador_," and, more plausibly,
with the Pero Gómez who collaborated with Paredes in translating
Brunetto Latini's _Tesoro_; but the name is too common to allow of
precise opinion as to the real author, whom some have taken for Pero
López de Ayala. Whoever the writer, he possessed a pleasant gift of
satirical observation, and a knowledge of men and affairs which he puts
to good use, with few lapses upon the merely trite and banal.
Of more singular interest is the incomplete _Poema de José_ or
_Historia de Yusuf_, named by the writer, _Al-hadits de Jusuf_. This
curious monument, due doubtless to some unconverted Mudéjar of Toledo,
is the typical example of the literature called _aljamiada_. The
language is correct Castilian of the time, and the metre, sustained for
312 stanzas, is the right Bercean: the peculiarity lies in the use of
Arabic characters in the phonetic transcription. A considerable mass
of such compositions has been discovered (and in the discovery England
has taken part); but of them all the _Historia de Yusuf_ is at once
the best and earliest. It deals with the story of Joseph in Egypt, not
according to the Old Testament narrative, but in general conformity
with the version found in the eleventh _sura_ of the Ku'rān, though
the writer does not hesitate to introduce variants and amplifications
of his own invention, as (stanza 31) when the wolf speaks to the
patriarch whose son it is supposed to have slain. The persecution
of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, who figures as Zulija (Zuleikah), is
told with considerable spirit, and the mastery of the _cuaderna vía_
(the Bercean metre of four fourteen-syllabled lines rhymed together)
is little short of amazing in a foreigner. At whiles an Arabic word
creeps into the text, and the invocation of Allah, with which the poem
opens, is repeated in later stanzas; but, taken as a whole, apart from
the oriental colouring inseparable from the theme, there is a marked
similarity of tone between the _Historia de Yusuf_ and its predecessors
the "clerkly poems." An oriental subject handled by an Arab gave the
best possible opportunity for introducing orientalism in the treatment;
the occasion is eschewed, and the lettered Arab studiously follows in
the wake of Berceo and the other Castilian models known to him. There
could scarcely be more striking evidence of the irresistible progress
of Castilian modes of thought and expression. The Arabic influence, if
it ever existed, was already dead.
JUAN RUIZ, Archpriest of Hita, near Guadalajara, is the greatest name
in early Castilian literature. The dates of his birth and death are
not known. A line in his _Libro de Cantares_ (stanza 1484) inclines us
to believe that, like Cervantes, he was a native of Alcalá de Henares;
but Guadalajara also claims him for her own, and a certain Francisco
de Torres reports him as living there so late as 1415. This date is
incompatible with other ascertained facts in Ruiz' career. We learn
from a note at the end of his poems that "this is the book of the
Archpriest of Hita, which he wrote, being imprisoned by order of the
Cardinal Don Gil, Archbishop of Toledo." Now, Gil Albornoz held the
see between the years 1337 and 1367; and another clerk, named Pedro
Fernández, was Archpriest of Hita in 1351. Most likely Juan Ruiz was
born at the close of the thirteenth century, and died, very possibly
in gaol, before his successor was appointed. On the showing of his
own writings, Juan Ruiz was a cleric of irregular life at a time when
disorder was at its worst, and his thirteen years in prison proclaim
him a Goliard of the loosest kind. He testifies against himself with
a splendid candour; and yet there have been critics who insisted on
idealising this libidinous clerk into a smug Boanerges. There was
never a more grotesque travesty, a more purblind misunderstanding of
facts and the man.
The Archpriest was a fellow of parts and of infinite fancy. He
does, indeed, allege that he supplies, "incentives to good conduct,
injunctions towards salvation, to be understanded of the people and
to enable folk to guard against the trickeries which some practise in
pursuit of foolish loves." He comes pat with a text from Scripture
quoted for his own purpose:—"_Intellectum tibi dabo, et instruam te in
via hac, qua gradieris._" He passes from David to Solomon, and, with
his tongue in his cheek, transcribes his versicle:—"_Initium sapientiæ
timor Domini._" St. John, Job, Cato, St. Gregory, the Decretals—he
calls them all into court to witness his respectable intention, and at
a few lines' distance he unmasks in a passage which prudish editors
have suppressed:—"Yet, since it is human to sin, if any choose
the ways of love (which I do not recommend), the modes thereof are
recounted here;" and so forth, in detail the reverse of edifying.
Ovid's erotic verses are freely rendered, the Archpriest's unsuccessful
battle against love is told, and the liturgy is burlesqued in the
procession of "clerks and laymen and monks and nuns and duennas and
gleemen to welcome love into Toledo." The attempt to exhibit Ruiz as an
edifying citizen is, on the face of it, absurd.
Much that he wrote is lost, but the seventeen hundred stanzas that
remain suffice for any reputation. Juan Ruiz strikes the personal
note in Castilian literature. To distinguish the works of the clerkly
masters, to declare with certainty that this Castilian piece was
written by Alfonso and that by Sancho, is a difficult and hazardous
matter. Not so with Ruiz. The stamp of his personality is unmistakable
in every line. He was bred in the old tradition, and he long abides
by the rules of the _mester de clerecía_; but he handles it with a
freedom unknown before, imparts to it a new flexibility, a variety, a
speed, a music beyond all precedent, and transfuses it with a humour
which anticipates Cervantes. Nay, he does more. In his prose preface he
asserts that he chiefly sought to give examples of prosody, of rhyme
and composition:—"_Dar algunas lecciones, é muestra de versificar,
et rimar et trobar._" And he followed the bent of his natural genius.
He had an infinitely wider culture than any of his predecessors in
verse. All that they knew he knew—and more; and he treated them in
the true cavalier spirit of the man who feels himself a master. His
famous description of the tent of love is manifestly suggested by the
description of Alexander's tent in the _Libro de Alexandre_. The entire
episode of Doña Endrina is paraphrased from the _Liber de Amore_,
attributed to the Pseudo-Ovid, the Auvergnat monk who hides beneath the
name of Pamphilus Maurilianus.
French _fableaux_ were rifled by Ruiz without a scruple, though he
had access to their great originals in the _Disciplina clericalis_ of
Petrus Alphonsus; for to his mind the improved treatment was of greater
worth than the mere bald story. He was familiar with the _Kalilah and
Dimnah_, with Fadrique's _Crafts and Wiles of Women_, perhaps with the
apologues of Lull and Juan Manuel. Vast as his reading was, it had
availed him nothing without his superb temperament, his gift of using
it to effect. Vaster still was his knowledge of men, his acquaintance
with the seamy side of life, his interest in things common and rare,
his observation of manners, and his lyrical endowment. The name of "the
Spanish Petronius" has been given to him; yet, despite a superficial
resemblance between the two, it is a misnomer. Far nearer the truth,
though the Spaniard lacks the dignity of the Englishman, is Ticknor's
parallel with Chaucer. Like Chaucer, Ruiz had an almost incomparable
gust for life, an immitigable gaiety of spirit, which penetrates his
transcription of the Human Comedy. Like Chaucer, his adventurous
curiosity led him to burst the bonds of the prison-house and to
confer upon his country new rhythms and metres. His four _cánticas de
serrana_, suggested by the Galician makers, anticipate by a hundred
years the _serranillas_ and the _vaqueiras_ of Santillana, and entitle
him to rank as the first great lyric poet of Castile. Ruiz, likewise,
had a Legend of Women; but his reading was his own, and Chaucer's
adjective cannot be applied to it. His ambition is, not to idealise,
but to realise existence, and he interprets its sensuous animalism in
the spirit of picaresque enjoyment. Jewesses, Moorish dancers, the
procuress _Trota-conventos_, her finicking customers, the loose nuns,
great ladies, and brawny daughters of the plough,—Ruiz renders them
with the merciless exactitude of Velázquez.
The arrangement of Ruiz' verse, disorderly as his life, foreshadows the
loose construction of the picaresque novel, of which his own work may
be considered the first example. One of his greatest discoveries is the
rare value of the autobiographic form. Mingled with parodies of hymns,
with burlesques of old _cantares de gesta_, with glorified paraphrases
of both Ovids (the true and the false), with versions of oriental
fables read in books or gathered from the lips of vagrant Arabs, with
peculiar wealth of popular refrains and proverbs—with these goes the
tale of the writer's individual life, rich in self-mockery, gross in
thought, abundant in incident, splendid in expression, slyly edifying
in the moral conclusion which announces an immediate relapse. Poet,
novelist, expert in observation, irony, and travesty, Ruiz had,
moreover, the sense of style in such measure as none before him and
few after him, and to this innate faculty of selection he joined a
great capacity for dramatic creation. Hence the impossibility of
exhibiting him in elegant extracts, and hence the permanence of his
types. The most familiar figure of _Lazarillo de Tormes_—the starving
gentleman—is a lineal descendant of Ruiz' Don Furón, who is scrupulous
in observing facts so long as there is nothing to eat; and Ruiz' two
lovers, Melón de la Uerta and Endrina de Calatayud, are transferred
as Calisto and Melibea to Rojas' tragi-comedy, whence they pass into
immortality as Romeo and Juliet. Lastly, Ruiz' repute might be staked
upon his fables, which, by their ironic appreciation, their playful
wit and humour, seem to proceed from an earlier, ruder, more virile La
Fontaine.
Contemporary with Juan Ruiz was the Infante JUAN MANUEL (1282-1347),
grandson of St. Ferdinand and nephew of Alfonso the Learned. In his
twelfth year he served against the Moors on the Murcian frontier,
became Mayordomo to Fernando IV., and succeeded to the regency
shortly after that King's death in 1312. Mariana's denunciation of
"him who seemed born solely to wreck the state" fits Juan Manuel so
exactly that it is commonly applied to him; but, in truth, its author
intended it for another Don Juan (without the "Manuel"), uncle of
the boy-king, Alfonso XI. Upon the regency followed a spell of wars,
broils, rebellions, assassinations, wherein King and ex-Regent were
pitted against each other. Neither King nor soldier bore malice, and
the latter shared in the decisive victory of Salado and—perhaps with
Chaucer's Gentle Knight—in the siege of Algezir (_Algeciras_). Fifty
years of battle would fill most men's lives; but the love of literature
ran in the blood of Juan Manuel's veins, and, like others of his
kindred, he proved the truth of the old Castilian adage:—"Lance never
blunted pen, nor pen lance."
He set a proper value on himself and his achievement. In the General
Introduction to his works he foresees, so he announces, that his books
must be often copied, and he knows that this means error:—"as I have
seen happen in other copies, either because of the transcriber's
dulness, or because the letters are much alike." Wherefore Juan
Manuel prepared, so to say, a copyright edition, with a prefatory
bibliography, whose deficiencies may be supplemented by a second list
given at the beginning of his _Conde Lucanor_. And he closes his
General Introduction with this prayer:—"And I beg all those who may
read any of the books I made not to blame me for whatever ill-written
thing they find, until they see it in this volume which I myself have
arranged." His care seemed excessive: it proved really insufficient,
since the complete edition which he left to the monastery at Peñafiel
has disappeared. Some of his works are lost to us, as the _Book of
Chivalry_,[4] a treatise dealing with the _Engines of War_, a _Book
of Verses_, the _Art of Poetic Composition_ (_Reglas como se debe
Trovar_), and the _Book of Sages_. The loss of the _Book of Verses_ is
a real calamity; all the more that it existed at Peñafiel as recently
as the time of Argote de Molina (1549-90), who meant to publish it.
Juan Manuel's couplets and quatrains of four, eight, eleven, twelve,
and fourteen syllables, his arrangement (_Enxemplo XVI._) of the
octosyllabic _redondilla_ in the _Conde Lucanor_, prove him an adept
in the Galician form, an irreproachable virtuoso in his art. It seems
almost certain that his _Book of Verses_ included many remarkable
exercises in political satire; and, in any case, his example and
position must have greatly influenced the development of the courtly
school of poets at Juan II.'s court.
A treatise like his _Libro de Caza_ (Book of Hawking), recently
recovered by Professor Baist, needs but to be mentioned to indicate
its aim. His histories are mere epitomes of Alfonso's chronicle. The
_Libro del Caballero et del Escudero_ (Book of the Knight and Squire),
in fifty-one chapters, of which some thirteen are missing, is a
didacticism, a _fabliella_, modelled upon Ramón Lull's _Libre del Orde
de Cavallería_. A hermit who has abandoned war instructs an ambitious
squire in the virtues of chivalry, and sends him to court, whence he
returns "with much wealth and honour." The inquiry begins anew, and the
hermit expounds to his companion the nature of angels, paradise, hell,
the heavens, the elements, the art of posing questions, the stuff of
the planets, sea, earth, and all that is therein—birds, fish, plants,
trees, stones, and metals. In some sort the _Tratado sobre las Armas_
(Treatise on Arms) is a memoir of the writer's house, containing a
powerful presentation of the death of Juan Manuel's guardian, King
Sancho, passing to eternity beneath his father's curse.
Juan Manuel follows Sancho's example by preparing twenty-six chapters
of _Castigos_ (Exhortations), sometimes called the _Libro infinido_, or
Unfinished Book, addressed to his son, a boy of nine. He reproduces
Sancho's excellent manner and sound practical advice without the
flaunting erudition of his cousin. The _Castigos_ are suspended to
supply the monk, Juan Alfonso, with a treatise on the _Modes of
Love_, fifteen in number; being, in fact, an ingenious discussion on
friendship. Juan Manuel is seen almost at his best in his _Libro de
los Estados_ (Book of States), otherwise the _Book of the Infante_,
and thought by some to be the missing _Book of Sages_. The allegorical
didactic vein is worked to exhaustion in one hundred and fifty
chapters, which relate the education of the pagan Morován's son, Johas,
by a certain Turín, who, unable to satisfy his pupil, calls to his
aid the celebrated preacher Julio. After interminable discussions and
resolutions of theological difficulties, the story ends in the baptism
of father, son, and tutor. Gayangos gives us the key; Johas is Juan
Manuel; Morován is his father, Manuel; Turín is Pero López de Ayala,
grandfather of the future Chancellor; and Julio represents St. Dominic
(who, as a matter of fact, died before Juan Manuel's father was born).
This confused philosophic story, suggestive of the legend of Barlaam
and Josaphat, is in truth the vehicle for conveying the author's ideas
on every sort of question, and it might be described without injustice
as the carefully revised commonplace book of an omnivorous reader with
a care for form. A postscript to the _Book of States_ is the _Book of
Preaching Friars_, a summary of the Dominican constitution expounded
by Julio to his pupil. A very similar dissertation is the _Treatise
showing that the Blessed Mary is, body and soul, in Paradise_, directed
to Remón Masquefa, Prior of Peñafiel.
Juan Manuel's masterpiece is the _Conde Lucanor_ (also named the _Book
of Patronio_ and the _Book of Examples_), in four parts, the first
of which is divided into fifty-one chapters. Like the _Decamerone_,
like the _Canterbury Tales_—but with greater directness—the _Conde
Lucanor_ is the oriental apologue embellished in terms of the
vernacular. The convention of the "moral lesson" is maintained, and
each chapter of the First Part (the others are rather unfinished notes)
ends with a declaration to the effect that "when Don Johan heard this
example he found it good, ordered it to be set down in this book,
and added these verses"—the verses being a concise summary of the
prose. The _Conde Lucanor_ is the Spanish equivalent of the _Arabian
Nights_, with Patronio in the part of Scheherazade, and Count Lucanor
(as who should say Juan Manuel) as the Caliph. Boccaccio used the
framework first in Italy, but Juan Manuel was before him by six years,
for the _Conde Lucanor_ was written not later than 1342. The examples
are taken from experience, and are told with extraordinary narrative
skill. Simplicity of theme is matched by simplicity of expression. The
story of father and son (_Enxemplo II._), of the Dean of Santiago and
the Toledan Magician (_Enxemplo XI._), of Ferrant González and Nuño
Laynez, a model of dramatic presentation (_Enxemplo XVI._), are perfect
masterpieces in little.
Juan Manuel is an innovator in Castilian prose, as is Juan Ruiz
in Castilian verse. He lacks the merriment, the genial wit of the
Archpriest; but he has the same gift of irony, with an added note of
cutting sarcasm, and a more anxious research for the right word. He
never forgets that he has been the Regent of Castile, that he has
mingled with kings and queens, that he has cowed emirs and barons, and
led his troopers at the charge; and it is well that he never unbends,
since his unsmiling patrician humour gives each story a keener point.
In mind as in blood he is the great Alfonso's kinsman, and the relation
becomes evident in his treatment of the prose sentence. He inherited
it with many another splendid tradition, and, while he preserves
entire its stately clearness, he polishes to concision; he sets with
conscience to the work, sharpening the edges of his instrument,
exhibits its possibilities in the way of trenchancy, and puts it to
subtler uses than heretofore. In his hands Castilian prose acquires a
new ductility and finish, and his subjects are such that dramatists of
genius have stooped to borrow from him. In him (_Enxemplo XLV._) is the
germ of the _Taming of the Shrew_ (though it is scarcely credible that
Shakespeare lifted it direct), and from him Calderón takes not merely
the title—_Count Lucanor_—of a play, but the famous apologue in the
first act of _Life is a Dream_, an adaptation to the stage of one of
Juan Manuel's best instances (_Enxemplo XXXI._). Pilferings by Le Sage
are things of course, and _Gil Blas_ benefits by its author's reading.
Translations apart—and they are forthcoming—the _Conde Lucanor_
is one of the books of the world, and each reading of it makes more
sensible the loss of the verses which, one would fain believe, might
place the writer as high among poets as among prose writers.
The _Poema de Alfonso Onceno_, also known as his _Rhymed Chronicle_,
was unearthed at Granada in 1573 by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and an
extract from it, printed fifteen years later by Argote de Molina,
encouraged the idea that Alfonso XI. wrote it. That King's sole exploit
in literature is a handbook on venery, often attributed to Alfonso the
Learned. The fuller, but still incomplete text of the _Poema_, first
published in 1864, discloses (stanza 1841) the author's name as RODRIGO
YAÑEZ or Yannes. It is to be noted that he speaks of rendering Merlin's
prophecy in the Castilian tongue:—
"_Yo Rodrigo Yannes la noté
En lenguaje castellano._"
Everything points to his having translated from a Galician original,
being himself a Galician who hispaniolised his name of Rodrigo Eannes.
Strong arguments in favour of this theory are advanced by great
authorities—Professor Cornu, and that most learned lady, Mme. Carolina
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. In the first place, the many technical
defects of the _Poema_ vanish upon translation into Galician; and
next, the verses are laced with allusions to Merlin, which indicate a
familiarity with Breton legends, common enough in Galicia and Portugal,
but absolutely unknown in Spain. Be that as it prove, the _Poema_
interests as the last expression of the old Castilian epic. Here we
have, literally, the swan-song of the man-at-arms, chanting the battles
in which he shared, commemorating the names of comrades foremost in
the van, reproducing the martial music of the camp _juglar_, observing
the set conventions of the _cantares de gesta_. His last appearance
on any stage is marked by a portent—the suppression of the tedious
Alexandrine, and the resolution into two lines of the sixteen-syllabled
verse. Yañez is an excellent instance of the third-rate man, the
amateur, who embodies, if he does not initiate, a revolution. His own
system of octosyllabics in alternate rhymes has a sing-song monotony
which wearies by its facile copiousness, and inspiration visits him at
rare and distant intervals. But the step that costs is taken, and a
place is prepared for the young _romance_ in literature.
No precise information offers concerning Rabbi SEM TOB of Carrión,
the first Jew who writes at length in Castilian. His dedication to
Pedro the Cruel, who reigned from 1350 to 1369, enables us to fix
his date approximately, and to guess that he was, like others of his
race, a favourite with that maligned ruler. Written in the early
days of the new reign, Sem Tob's _Proverbios Morales_, consisting of
686 seven-syllabled quatrains, are more than a metrical novelty. His
collection of sententious maxims, borrowed mainly from Arabic sources
and from the Bible, is the first instance in Castilian of the versified
epigram which was to produce the brilliant _Proverbs_ of Santillana,
who praises the Rabbi as a writer of "very good things," and reports
his esteem as a "_grand trovador_." In Santillana's hands the maxims
are Spanish, are European; in Sem Tob's they are Jewish, oriental. The
moral is pressed with insistence, the presentation is haphazard; while
the extreme concision of thought, the exaggerated frugality of words,
tends to obscurity. Against this is to be set the exalted standard
of the teaching, the daring figures of the writer, his happiness of
epithet, his note of austere melancholy, and his complete triumph in
naturalising a new poetic _genre_.
It has been sought to father on Sem Tob three other pieces: the
_Treatise of Doctrine_, the _Revelation of a Hermit_, and the _Danza de
la Muerte_. The _Treatise_, a catechism in octosyllabic triplets with
a four-syllabled line, is by Pedro de Berague, and is only curious for
its rhythm, imitated from the _rime couée_, and for being the first
work of its kind. Sem Tob was in his grave when the ancient subject
of the _Argument between Body and Soul_ was reintroduced by the maker
of the _Revelation of a Hermit_, wherein the souls are figured as
birds, gracious or hideous as the case may be. The third line of this
didactic poem gives its date as 1382, and this is confirmed by the
evidence of the metre and the presence of an Italian savour. In the
case of the anonymous _Danza de la Muerte_ the metre once more fixes
the period of composition at about the end of the fourteenth century.
Most European literatures possess a _Danse Macabré_ of their own; yet,
though the Castilian is probably an imitation of some unrecognised
French original, it is the oldest known version of the legend. It is
not rash to assume that its immediate occasion was the last terrific
outbreak of the Black Death, which lasted from 1394 to 1399. Death
bids mankind to his revels, and forces them to join his dance. The
form is superficially dramatic, and the thirty-three victims—pope,
emperor, cardinal, king, and so forth, a cleric and a layman always
alternating—reply to the summons in a series of octaves. Whoever
composed the Spanish version, he must be accepted as an expert in the
art of morbid allegory. Odd to say, the Catalan Carbonell, constructing
his _Dance of Death_ in the sixteenth century, rejects this fine
Castilian version for the French of Jean de Limoges, Chancellor of
Paris.
A writer who represents the stages of the literary evolution of his
age is the long-lived Chancellor, PERO LÓPEZ DE AYALA (1332-1407). His
career is a veritable romance of feudalism. Living under Alfonso XI.,
he became the favourite of Pedro the Cruel, whom he deserted at the
psychological moment. He chronicles his own and his father's defection
in such terms as Pepys or the Vicar of Bray might use:—"They saw that
Don Pedro's affairs were all awry, so they resolved to leave him, not
intending to return." Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I., Enrique
III.—Ayala served all four with profit to his pouch, without flagrant
treason. Loyalty he held for a vain thing compared with interest; yet
he earned his money and his lands in fight. He ever strove to be on the
winning side, but luck was hostile when the Black Prince captured him
at Nájera (1367), and when he was taken prisoner at Aljubarrota (1385).
The fifteen months spent in an iron cage at the castle of Oviedes after
the second defeat gave Ayala one of his opportunities. He had wasted no
chance in life, nor did he now. It were pleasant to think with Ticknor
that some part of Ayala's _Rimado de Palacio_ "was written during his
imprisonment in England,"—pleasant, but difficult. To begin with,
it is by no means sure that Ayala ever quitted the Peninsula. More
than this: though the _Rimado de Palacio_ was composed at intervals,
the stages can be dated approximately. The earlier part of the poem
contains an allusion to the schism during the pontificate of Urban VI.,
so that this passage must date from 1378 or afterwards; the reference
to the death of the poet's father, Hernán Pérez de Ayala, brings us to
the year 1385 or later; and the statement that the schism had lasted
twenty-five years fixes the time of composition as 1403.
_Rimado de Palacio_ (Court Rhymes) is a chance title that has attached
itself to Ayala's poem without the author's sanction. It gives a false
impression of his theme, which is the decadence of his age. Only within
narrow limits does Ayala deal with courts and courtiers; he had a wider
outlook, and he scourges society at large. What was a jest to Ruiz was
a woe to the Chancellor. Ruiz had a natural sympathy for a loose-living
cleric; Ayala lashes this sort with a thong steeped in vitriol. The
one looks at life as a farce; the other sees it as a tragedy. Where
the first finds matter for merriment, the second burns with the white
indignation of the just. The deliberate mordancy of Ayala is impartial
insomuch as it is universal. Courtiers, statesmen, bishops, lawyers,
merchants—he brands them all with corruption, simony, embezzlement,
and exposes them as venal sons of Belial. And, like Ruiz, he places
himself in the pillory to heighten his effects. He spares not his
superstitious belief in omens, dreams, and such-like fooleries; he
discovers himself as a grinder of the poor man's face, a libidinous
perjurer, a child of perdition.
But not all Ayala's poem is given up to cursing. In his 705th stanza
he closes what he calls his _sermón_ with the confession that he had
written it, "being sore afflicted by many grievous sorrows," and in the
remaining 904 stanzas Ayala breathes a serener air. In both existing
codices—that of Campo-Alange and that of the Escorial—this huge
postscript follows the _Rimado de Palacio_ with no apparent break of
continuity; yet it differs in form and substance from what precedes.
The _cuaderna vía_ alone is used in the satiric and autobiographical
verses; the later hymns and songs are metrical experiments—echoes of
Galician and Provençal measures, _redondillas_ of seven syllables,
attempts to raise the Alexandrine from the dead, results derived from
Alfonso's _Cantigas_ and Juan Ruiz' _loores_. In his seventy-third
year Ayala was still working upon his _Rimado de Palacio_. It was
too late for him to master the new methods creeping into vogue, and
though in the _Cancionero de Baena_ (No. 518) Ayala answers Sánchez
Talavera's challenge in the regulation octaves, he harks back to the
_cuaderna vía_ of his youth in his paraphrase of St. Gregory's _Job_.
If he be the writer of the _Proverbios en Rimo de Salomón_—a doubtful
point—his preference for the old system is there undisguised. Could
that system have been saved, Ayala had saved it: not even he could stay
the world from moving.
His prose is at least as distinguished as his verse. A treatise
on falconry, rich in rarities of speech, shows the variety of his
interests, and his version of Boccaccio's _De Casibus Virorum
illustrium_ brings him into touch with the conquering Italian
influence. His reference to _Amadís_ in the _Rimado de Palacio_ (stanza
162), the first mention of that knight-errantry of Spain, proves
acquaintance with new models. Translations of Boëtius and of St.
Isidore were pastimes; a partial rendering of Livy, done at the King's
command, was of greater value. In person or by proxy, Alfonso the
Learned had opened up the land of history; Juan Manuel had summarised
his uncle's work; the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, otherwise Abu Bakr
Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Mūsā, had been translated from the Arabic;
the annals of Alfonso XI. and his three immediate predecessors were
written by some industrious mediocrity perhaps Fernán Sánchez de Tovar,
or Juan Núñez de Villaizán. These are not so much absolute history
as the raw material of history. In his _Chronicles of the Kings of
Castile_, Ayala considers the reigns of Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II.,
Juan I., and Enrique III., in a modern scientific spirit. Songs,
legends, idle reports, no longer serve as evidence. Ayala sifts his
testimonies, compares, counts, weighs them, checks them by personal
knowledge. He borrows Livy's framework, inserting speeches which,
if not stenographic reports of what was actually said, are complete
illustrations of dramatic motive. He deals with events which he had
witnessed: plots which his crafty brain inspired, victories wherein
he shared, battles in which he bit the dust. The portraits in his
gallery are scarce, but every likeness, is a masterpiece rendered with
a few broad strokes. He records with cold-blooded impartiality as a
judge; his native austerity, his knowledge of affairs and men, guard
him from the temptations of the pleader. With his unnatural neutrality
go rare instinct for the essential circumstance, unerring sagacity in
the divination and presentment of character, unerring art in preparing
climax and catastrophe, and the gift of concise, picturesque phrase.
A statesman of genius writing personal history with the candour of
Pepys: as such the thrifty Mérimée recognised Ayala, and, in his own
confection, so revealed him to the nineteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The contents of this work are summarised in the author's _Book of
States_ (chap. xci.).