THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Intellectual interaction between Spain and France is an inevitable
outcome of geographical position. To the one or to the other must
belong the headship of the Latin races; for Portugal is, so to say,
but a prolongation of Galicia, while the unity of Italy dates from
yesterday. This hegemony was long contested. During a century and a
half, fortune declared for Spain: the balance is now redressed in
France's favour. The War of the Succession, the invasion of 1808, the
expedition of 1823, the contrivance of the Spanish marriages show that
Louis XIV., Napoleon I., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe dared risk
their kingdoms rather than loosen their grip on Spain. More recent
examples are not lacking. The primary occasion of the Franco-German
War in 1870-71 was the proposal to place a Hohenzollern on the Spanish
throne, and the Parisian outburst against "Alfonso the Uhlan" was
an expression of resentment against a Spanish King who chafed under
French tutelage. Since there is no ground for believing that France
will renounce a traditional diplomacy maintained, under all forms of
government, for over two centuries, it is not rash to assume that in
the future, as in the past, intellectual development will tend to
coincide with political influence. French literary fashions affect all
Europe more or less: they affect Spain more.
It is a striking fact that the great national poet of the War of
Independence should be indisputably French in all but patriotic
sentiment. MANUEL JOSÉ QUINTANA (1772-1857) was an offshoot of the
Salamancan school, a friend of Jove-Llanos and of Meléndez Valdés, a
follower of Raynal and Turgot and Condorcet, a "philosopher" of the
eighteenth-century model. Too much stress has, perhaps, been laid on
his French constructions, his acceptance of neologisms: a more radical
fault is his incapacity for ideas. Had he died at forty his fame would
be even greater than it is; for in his last years he did nothing but
repeat the echoes of his youth. At eighty he was still perorating on
the rights of man, as though the world were a huge Jacobin Convention,
as though he had learned and forgotten nothing during half a century
He died, as he had lived, convinced that a few changes of political
machinery would ensure a perpetual Golden Age. It is not for his _Duque
de Viseo_, a tragedy based on M. G. Lewis's _Castle Spectre_, nor by
his _Ode to Juan de Padilla_, that Quintana is remembered. The partisan
of French ideas lives by his _Call to Arms against the French_, by his
patriotic campaign against the invaders, by his prose biographies of
the Cid, the Great Captain, Pizarro, and other Spaniards of the ancient
time. We might suspect, if we did not know, Quintana's habit of writing
his first rough drafts in prose, and of translating these into verse.
Though he proclaimed himself a pupil of Meléndez, nature and love
are not his true themes, and his versification is curiously unequal.
Patriotism, politics, philanthropy are his inspirations, and these
find utterance in the lofty rhetoric of such pieces as his _Ode to
Guzmán the Good_ and the _Ode on the Invention of Printing_. Unequal,
unrestrained, never exquisite, never completely admirable for more
than a few lines at a time, Quintana's passionate pride of patriotism,
his virile temperament, his individual gift of martial music have
enabled him to express with unsurpassed fidelity one very conspicuous
aspect of his people's genius.
Another patriotic singer is the priest, JUAN NICASIO GALLEGO
(1777-1853), who, like many political liberals, was so staunchly
conservative in literature that he condemned _Notre Dame de Paris_ in
the very spirit of an alarmed Academician. Slight as is the bulk of his
writings, Gallego's high place is ensured by his combination of extreme
finish with extreme sincerity. His elegy _On the Death of the Duquesa
de Frias_ is tremulous with the accent of profound emotion; but he is
even better known by _El Dos de Mayo_, which celebrates the historic
rising of the second of May, when the artillerymen, Jacinto Ruiz, Luis
Daoiz, and Pedro Velarte, by their refusal to surrender their three
guns and ten cartridges to the French army, gave the signal for the
general rising of the Spanish nation. His ode _Á la defensa de Buenos
Aires_, against the English, is no less distinguished for its heroic
spirit. There is a touch of irony in the fact that Gallego should be
best represented by his denunciation of the French, whom he adored, and
by his denunciation of the British, who were to assist in freeing his
country.
Time has misused the work of FRANCISCO MARTÍNEZ DE LA ROSA (1788-1862)
who at one time was held by Europe as the literary representative of
Spain. No small part of his fame was due to his prominent position in
Spanish politics; but the disdainful neglect which has overtaken him
is altogether unmerited. Not being an original genius, his lyrics are
but variations of earlier melodies: thus the _Ausencia de la patria_
is a metrical exercise in Jorge Manrique's manner; the song which
commemorates the defence of Zaragoza is inspired by Quintana; the
elegy _On the Death of the Duquesa de Frias_, far short of Gallego's
in pathos and dignity, is redolent of Meléndez. His novel, _Doña
Isabel de Solís_, is an artless imitation of Sir Walter Scott; nor
are his declamatory tragedies, _La Viuda de Padilla_ and _Moraima_,
of perdurable value any more than his Moratinian plays, such as _Los
Celos Infundados_. Martínez de la Rosa's exile passed in Paris led him
to write the two pieces by which he is remembered: his _Conjuración de
Venecia_ (1834), and his _Aben-Humeya_ (the latter first written in
French, and first played at the Porte Saint-Martin in 1830) denote the
earliest entry into Spain of French romanticism, and are therefore of
real historic importance. Fate was rarely more freakish than in placing
this modest, timorous man at the head of a new literary movement. Still
stranger it is that his two late romantic experiments should be the
best of his manifold work.
But he was not fitted to maintain the leadership which circumstances
had allotted to him, and romanticism found a more popular exponent in
Ángel de Saavedra, DUQUE DE RIVAS (1791-1865), the very type of the
radical noble. His exile in France and in England converted him from
a follower of Meléndez and Quintana to a sectary of Chateaubriand and
Byron. His first essays in the new vein were an admirable lyric, _Al
faro de Malta_, and _El Moro expósito_, a narrative poem undertaken
by the advice of John Hookham Frere. Brilliant passages of poetic
diction, the semi-epical presentation of picturesque national legends,
are Rivas' contribution to the new school. He went still further in
his famous play, _Don Álvaro_ (1835), an event in the history of the
modern Spanish drama corresponding to the production of _Hernani_ at
the Théâtre Français. The characters of Álvaro, of Leonor, and of her
brother Alfonso Vargas are, if not inhuman, all but titanic, and the
speeches are of such magniloquence as man never spoke. But for the
Spaniards of the third decade, Rivas was the standard-bearer of revolt,
and _Don Álvaro_, by its contempt for the unities, by its alternation
of prose with lyrism, by its amalgam of the grandiose, the comic, the
sublime, and the horrible, enchanted a generation of Spanish playgoers
surfeited with the academic drama.
To English readers of Mr. Gladstone's essay, the Canon of Seville, JOSÉ
MARÍA BLANCO (1775-1841), is familiar by the alias of Blanco White. It
were irrelevant to record here the lamentable story of Blanco's private
life, or to follow his religious transformations from Catholicism to
Unitarianism. A sufficient idea of his poetic gifts is afforded by an
English quatorzain which has found favour with many critics:—
"_Mysterious night! When our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou madest us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?_"
This is as characteristic as his _Oda á Carlos III._ or the remorseful
Castilian lines on _Resigned Desire_, penned within a year of his
death. A very similar talent was that of Blanco's friend, ALBERTO LISTA
(1775-1848), also a Canon of Seville Cathedral, a most accomplished
singer, whose golden purity of tone compensates for a deficient volume
of voice and an affected method. But, save for such a fragment of
impassioned, plangent melody as the poem _Á la Muerte de Jesús_, Lista
is less known as a poet than as a teacher of remarkable influence. His
_Lecciones de Literatura Española_ did for Spain what Lamb's _Specimens
of English Dramatic Poets_ did for England, and his personal authority
over some of the best minds of his age was almost as complete in scope
as it was gentle in exercise and excellent in effect.
The most famous of his pupils was JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA (1810-42), who
came under Lista at the Colegio de San Mateo, in Madrid, where the boy,
who was in perpetual scrapes through idleness and general bad conduct,
attracted the rector's notice by his extraordinary poetic precocity.
Through good and evil report Lista held by Espronceda to the last,
and was perhaps the one person who ever persuaded him from a rash
purpose. At fourteen Espronceda joined a secret society called _Los
Numantinos_, which was supposed to work for liberty, equality, and the
rest. The young Numantine was deported to a monastery in Guadalajara,
where, on the advice of Lista (who himself contributed some forty
octaves), he began his epical essay, _El Pelayo_. Like most other boys
who have begun epics, Espronceda left his unfinished, and, though the
stanzas that remain are of a fine but unequal quality, they in no way
foreshadow the chief of the romantic school.
Returning to Madrid, Espronceda was soon concerned in more
conspiracies, and escaped to Gibraltar, whence he passed to Lisbon.
A suggestion of the Byronic pose is found in the story (of his own
telling) that, before landing, he threw away his last two _pesetas_,
"not wishing to enter so great a town with so little money." In Lisbon
he met with that Teresa who figures so prominently in his life; but
the Government was once more on his track, and he fled to London,
where Byron's poems came upon him with the force of a revelation. In
England he found Teresa, now married, and eloped with her to Paris,
where, on the three "glorious days" of July 1830, he fought behind
the barricades. The overthrow of Charles X. put such heart into the
Spanish _emigrados_ that, under the leadership of the once famous
Chapalangarra—Joaquín de Pablo—they determined to raise all Spain
against the monarchy. The attempt failed, Chapalangarra was killed in
Navarre, and Espronceda did not return to Spain till the amnesty of
1833. He obtained a commission in the royal bodyguard, and seemed on
the road to fortune, when he was cashiered because of certain verses
read by him at a political banquet. He turned to journalism, incited
the people to insurrection by articles and speeches, held the streets
against the regular army in 1835-36, shared in the liberal triumph
of 1840, and, on the morrow of the successful revolution which he
had organised, pronounced in favour of a republic. He was appointed
Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague in 1841, returning to Spain
shortly afterwards on his election as deputy for Almería. He died
after four days of illness on May 23, 1842, in his thirty-third year,
exhausted by his stormy life. A most formidable journalist, a demagogue
of consummate address, a man-at-arms who had rather fight than not,
Espronceda might have cut out for himself a new career in politics—or
might have died upon the scaffold or at the barricades. But, so far
as concerns poetry, his work was done: an aged Espronceda is as
inconceivable as an elderly Byron, a venerable Shelley.
Byron was the paramount influence of Espronceda's life and works. The
Conde de Toreno, a caustic politician and man of letters, who was once
asked if he had read Espronceda, replied: "Not much; but then I have
read all Byron." The taunt earned Toreno—"insolent fool with heart of
slime"—a terrific invective in the first canto of _El Diablo Mundo_:—
"_Al necio audaz de corazón de cieno,
Á quien llaman el Conde de Toreno._"
The gibe was ill-natured, but Espronceda's resentment goes to show
that he felt its plausibility. If Toreno meant that Espronceda,
like Heine, Musset, Leopardi, and Pushkin, took Byron for a model,
he spoke the humble truth. Like Byron, Espronceda became the centre
of a legend, and—so to say—he made up for the part. He advertised
his criminal repute with manifest gusto, and gave the world his own
portrait in the shape of pale, gloomy, splendid heroes. Don Félix de
Montemar, in _El Estudiante de Salamanca_, is Don Juan Tenorio in a
new environment—"fierce, insolent, irreligious, gallant, haughty,
quarrelsome, insult in his glance, irony on his lips, fearing naught,
trusting solely to his sword and courage." Again, in the famous
declamatory address _To Jarifa_, there is the same disillusioned view
of life, the same lust for impossible pleasures, the same picturesque
mingling of misanthropy and aspiration. Once more, the Fabio of the
fragmentary _Diablo Mundo_ is replenished with the Byronic spirit
of defiant pessimism, the Byronic intention of epical mockery. And
so throughout all his pieces the protagonist is always, and in all
essentials, José de Espronceda.
Whether any writer—or, at all events, any but the very greatest—has
ever succeeded completely in shedding his own personality is doubtful.
Espronceda, at least, never attempted it, and consequently his dramatic
pieces—_Doña Blanca de Borbón_, for example—were foredoomed to fail.
But this very force of temperament, this very element of artistic
egotism, lends life and colour to his songs. The _Diablo Mundo_,
the _Estudiante de Salamanca_, ostensibly formed upon the models of
Goethe, and Byron, and Tirso de Molina, are utterances of individual
impressions, detached lyrics held together by the merest thread.
Scarcely a typical Spaniard in life or in art, Espronceda is, beyond
all question, the most distinguished Spanish lyrical poet of the
century. His abandonment, his attitude of revolt, his love of love and
licence—one might even say his turn for debauchery and anarchy—are
the notes of an epoch rather than the characteristics of a country;
and, in so much, he is cosmopolitan rather than national. But the
merciless observation of _El Verdugo_ (The Executioner), the idealised
conception of Elvira in _El Estudiante de Salamanca_, are strictly
representative of Quevedo's and of Calderón's tradition; while his
artificial but sympathetic rhetoric, his resonant music, his brilliant
imagery, his uncalculating vehemence, bear upon them the stamp of all
his race's faults and virtues. In this sense he speaks for Spain, and
Spain repays him by ranking him as the most inspired, if the most
unequal, of her modern singers.
His contemporary, the Catalan, MANUEL DE CABANYES (1808-1833), died
too young to reveal the full measure of his powers, and his _Preludios
de mi lira_ (1833), though warmly praised by Torres Amat, Joaquín Roca
y Cornet, and other critics of insight, can scarcely be said to have
won appreciation. Cabanyes is essentially a poet's poet, inspired
mainly by Luis de León. His felicities are those of the accomplished
student, the expert in technicalities, the almost impeccable artist
whose hendecasyllabics, _Á Cintio_, rival those of Leopardi in their
perfect form and intense pessimism; but as his life was too brief, so
his production is too frugal and too exquisite for the general, and he
is rated by his promise rather than by his actual achievement. Milá y
Fontanals and Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo have striven to spread Cabanyes'
good report, and they have so far succeeded that his genius is now
admitted on all hands; but his chill perfection makes no appeal to the
mass of his countrymen.
Espronceda's direct successor was JOSÉ ZORRILLA (1817-1893), whose
life's story may be read in his own _Recuerdos del tiempo viejo_
(Old-time Memories). It was his misfortune to be concerned in politics,
for which he was unfitted, and to be pinched by continuous poverty,
which drove him in 1855 to seek his fortune in Mexico, whence he
returned empty-handed in 1866. His closing years were somewhat happier,
inasmuch as a pension of 30,000 _reales_, obtained at last by strenuous
parliamentary effort, freed him from the pressure of actual want. It
may be that it came too late, and that Zorrilla's work suffers from
his straitened circumstances; but this is difficult to believe. He
might have produced less, might have escaped the hopeless hack-work
to which he was compelled; but a finished artist he could never have
become, for, by instinct as by preference, he was an improvisatore. The
tale that (like Arthur Pendennis) he wrote verses to fit engravings
is possibly an invention; but the inventor at least knew his man, for
nothing is more intrinsically probable.
His carelessness, his haste, his defective execution are superficial
faults which must always injure Zorrilla in the esteem of foreign
critics; yet it is certain that the charm which he has exercised over
three generations of Spaniards, and which seems likely to endure,
implies the possession of considerable powers. And Zorrilla had three
essential qualities in no common degree: national spirit, dramatic
insight, and lyrical spontaneity. He is an inferior Sir Walter, with
an added knowledge of the theatre, to which Scott made no pretence.
His _Leyenda de Alhamar_, his _Granada_, his _Leyenda del Cid_ were
popular for the same reason that _Marmion_ and the _Lady of the Lake_
were popular: for their revival of national legends in a form both
simple and picturesque. The fate that overcame Sir Walter's poems seems
to threaten Zorrilla's. Both are read for the sake of the subject,
for the brilliant colouring of episodes, more than for the beauty of
treatment, construction, and form; yet, as Sir Walter survives in
his novels, Zorrilla will endure in such of his plays as _Don Juan
Tenorio_, in _El Zapatero y el Rey_, and in _Traidor, inconfeso,
y mártir_. His selection of native themes, his vigorous appeal to
those primitive sentiments which are at least as strong in Spain as
elsewhere—courage, patriotism, religion—have ensured him a vogue so
wide and lasting that it almost approaches immortality. In the study
Zorrilla's slapdash methods are often wearisome; on the stage his
impetuousness, his geniality, his broad effects, and his natural lyrism
make him a veritable force. Two of Zorrilla's rivals among contemporary
dramatists may be mentioned: ANTONIO GARCÍA GUTIÉRREZ (1813-1884), the
author of _El Trovador_, and JUAN EUGENIO HARTZENBUSCH (1806-1880),
whose _Amantes de Teruel_ broke the hearts of sentimental ladies in the
forties. Both the _Trovador_ and the _Amantes_ are still reproduced,
still read, and still praised by critics who enjoy the pleasures of
memory and association; but a detached foreigner, though he take his
life in his hand when he ventures on the confession, is inclined to
associate García Gutiérrez and Hartzenbusch with Sheridan Knowles and
Lytton.
A much superior talent is that of the ex-soldier, MANUEL BRETÓN DE LOS
HERREROS (1796-1873), whose humour and fancy are his own, while his
system is that of the younger Moratín. His _Escuela del Matrimonio_
is the most ambitious, as it is the best, of those innumerable pieces
in which he aims at presenting a picture of average society, relieved
by alternate touches of ironic and didactic purpose. Bretón de los
Herreros wrote far too much, and weakens his effects by the obtrusion
of a flagrant moral; but even if we convict him as a caricaturist
of obvious Philistinism, there is abundant recompense in the jovial
wit and graceful versification of his quips. To him succeeds Tomás
Rodríguez Rubí (1817-1890), who aimed at amusing a facile public
in such a trifle as _El Tejado de Vidrio_ (The Glass Roof), or at
satirising political and social intriguers in _La Rueda de Fortuna_
(Fortune's Wheel).
A Cuban like GERTRUDIS GÓMEZ DE AVELLANEDA (1816-1873), who spent most
of her life in Spain, may for our purposes be accounted a Spanish
writer. The proverbial gallantry of the nation and the sex of the
writer account for her vogue and her repute. If such a novel as _Sab_,
with its protest against slavery and its idealised presentation of
subject races, be held for literature, then we must so enlarge the
scope of the word as to include _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Another novel,
_Espatolino_, reproduces George Sand's philippics against the injustice
of social arrangements, and re-echoes her lyrical advocacy of freedom
in the matter of marriage. The Sra. Avellaneda is too passionate to
be dexterous, and too preoccupied to be impressive; hence her novels
have fallen out of sight. That she had real gifts of fancy and melody
is shown by her early volume of poems (1841), and by her two plays,
_Alfonso Munio_ and _Baltasar_; yet, on the boards as in her stories,
she is inopportune, or, in plainer words, is a gifted imitator,
following the changes of popular taste with some hesitation, though
with a gracefulness not devoid of charm. With her may be mentioned
Carolina Coronado (b. 1823), a refined poetess with mystic tendencies,
whose vogue has so diminished that to the most of Spaniards she is
scarcely more than an agreeable reminiscence.
It is possible that the adroit politician, ADELARDO LÓPEZ DE AYALA
(1828-1879), who passed from one party to another, and served a monarch
or a republic with equal suppleness, might have won enduring fame as
a dramatist and poet had he been less concerned with doctrines and
theses. He was so intent on persuasion, so mindful of the arts of
his old trade, so anxious to catch a vote, that he rarely troubled
to draw character, contenting himself with skilful construction of
plot and arrangement of incident. His _Tanto por Ciento_ and his
_Consuelo_ are astute harangues in favour of high public and private
morals, composed with extraordinary care and laudable purpose. If mere
cleverness, a scrupulous eye to detail, a fine ear for sonorous verse
could make a man master of the scene, López de Ayala might stand beside
the greatest. His personages, however, are rather general types than
individual characters, and the persistent sarcasm with which he ekes
out a moral degenerates into ponderous banter. None the less he was a
force during many years, and, though his reputation be now somewhat
tarnished, he still counts admirers among the middle-aged.
A very conspicuous figure on the Spanish scene during the middle third
of the century was MANUEL TAMAYO Y BAUS (1829-1898), who, beginning
with an imitation of Schiller in _Juana de Arco_ (1847), passed under
the influence of Alfieri in _Virginia_ (1853), venturing upon the
national classic drama in _La Locura de Amor_ (1855), the most notable
achievement of his early period. The most ambitious, and unquestionably
the best, of his plays is _Un drama nuevo_ (1867), with which his
career practically closed. He effaced himself, was content to live
on his reputation and to yield his place as a popular favourite to
so poor a playwright as José Echegaray. Compared with his successor,
Tamayo shines as a veritable genius. Sprung from a family of actors,
he gauged the possibilities of the theatre with greater exactness than
any rival, and by his tact he became an expert in staging a situation.
But it was not merely to inspired mechanical dexterity that he owed
the high position which was allowed him by so shrewd a judge as Manuel
de la Revilla: to his unequalled knowledge of the scene he joined the
forces of passion and sympathy, the power of dramatic creation, and a
metrical ingenuity which enchanted and bewildered those who heard and
those who read him.
There is a feminine, if not a falsetto timbre in the voice of JOSÉ
SELGAS Y CARRASCO (1824-1882), a writer on the staff of the fighting
journal, _El Padre Cobos_, and a government clerk till Martínez
Campos transfigured him into a Cabinet Minister. Selgas' verse in the
_Primavera_ is so charged with the conventional sentiment and with
the amiable pessimism dear to ordinary readers, that his popularity
was inevitable. Yet even Spanish indulgence has stopped short of
proclaiming him a great poet, and now that his day has gone by, he is
almost as unjustly decried as he was formerly overpraised. Though not a
great original genius, he was an accomplished versifier whose innocent
prettiness was never banal, whose simplicity was unaffected, whose
faint music and caressing melancholy are not lacking in individuality
and fascination.
A more powerful poetic impulse moved the Sevillan, GUSTAVO ADOLFO
BÉCQUER (1836-1870). An orphan in his tenth year, Bécquer was educated
by his godmother, a well-meaning woman of some position, who would have
made him her heir had he consented to follow any regular profession
or to enter a merchant's office. At eighteen he arrived, a penniless
vagabond, in Madrid, where he underwent such extremes of hardship as
helped to shorten his days. A small official post, which saved him from
actual starvation, was at last obtained for him, but his indiscipline
soon caused him to be set adrift. He maintained himself by translating
foreign novels, by journalistic hack-work in the columns of _El
Contemporaneo_ and _El Museo Universal_, till death delivered him.
The three volumes by which he is represented are made up of prose
legends, and of poems modestly entitled _Rimas_. Though Hoffmann is
Bécquer's intellectual ancestor in prose, the Spaniard speaks with
a personal accent in such examples of morbid fantasy as _Los Ojos
Verdes_, wherein Fernando loses life for the sake of the green-eyed
mermaiden: as the tale of Manrique's madness in _El Rayo de Luna_
(The Moonbeam), as the rendering of Daniel's sacrilege in _La Rosa de
Pasión_. And as Hoffmann influences Bécquer's dreamy prose, so Heine
influences his _Rimas_. It is argued that, since Bécquer knew no
German, he cannot have read Heine—an unconvincing plea, if we remember
that Byron's example was followed in every country by poets ignorant of
English. Howbeit, it is certain that Heine has had no more brilliant
follower than Bécquer, who, however, substitutes a note of fairy
mystery for Heine's incomparable irony. His circumstances, and the
fact that he did not live to revise his work, account for occasional
inequalities of execution which mar his magical music. To do him
justice, we must read him in a few choice pieces where his apparently
simple rhythms and suave assonantic cadences express his half-delirious
visions in terms of unsurpassable artistry. At first sight one is
deceived into thinking that the simplicity is a spontaneous result,
and there has arisen a host of imitators who have only contrived to
caricature Bécquer's defects. His merits are as purely personal as
Blake's, and the imitation of either poet results almost inevitably in
mere flatness.
* * * * *
During the nineteenth century Spain has produced no more brilliant
master of prose than MARIANO JOSÉ DE LARRA (1809-1837), son of a
medical officer in the French army. It is a curious fact that, owing
to his early education in France, Larra—one of the most idiomatic
writers—should have been almost ignorant of Spanish till his tenth
year. Destined for the law, he was sent to Valladolid, where he got
entangled in some love affair which led him to renounce his career. He
took to literature, attempting the drama in his _Macías_, the novel in
_El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente_: in neither was he successful.
But if he could not draw character nor narrate incident, he could
observe and satirise with amazing force and malice. Under the name
of Fígaro[30] and of Juan Pérez de Munguia he won for himself such
prominence in journalism as no Spaniard has ever equalled. Spanish
politics, the weaknesses of the national character, are exposed in a
spirit of ferocious bitterness peculiar to the writer. His is, indeed,
a depressing performance, overcharged with misanthropy; yet for
unflinching courage, insight, and sombre humour, Larra has no equal
in modern Spanish literature, and scarcely any superior in the past.
In his twenty-eighth year he blew out his brains in consequence of an
amour in which he was concerned, leaving a vacancy which has never been
filled by any successor. It is gloomy work to learn that all men are
scoundrels, and that all evils are irremediable: these are the hopeless
doctrines which have brought Spain to her present pass. Yet it is
impossible to read Larra's pessimistic page without admiration for his
lucidity and power.
An essayist of more patriotic tone is SERAFÍN ESTÉBANEZ CALDERÓN
(1799-1867), whose biography has been elaborately written by his
nephew, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the late Prime Minister of
Spain. Estébanez' verses are well-nigh as forgotten as his _Conquista
y Pérdida de Portugal_, and his _Escenas Andaluzas_ (1847) have never
been popular, partly through fault of the author, who enamels his work
with local or obsolete words in the style of Wardour Street, and who
assumes a posture of superiority which irritates more than it amuses. A
record of Andalucían manners and of fading customs, the _Escenas_ has
special value as embodying the impression of an observer who valued
picturesqueness—valued it so highly, in fact, that one is haunted
(perhaps unjustly) by the suspicion that he heightened his tones for
the sake of effect. Another series of "documents" is afforded by RAMÓN
DE MESONERO ROMANOS (1803-82), who is often classed as a follower
of Larra, whereas the first of his _Escenas Matritenses_ appeared
before Larra's first essays. He has no trace of Larra's energetic
condensation, tending, as he does, to a not ungraceful diffuseness;
but he has bequeathed us a living picture of the native Madrid before
it sank to being a poor, pale copy of Paris, and has enabled us to
reconstruct the social life of sixty years since. Mesonero, who has
none of Estébanez' airs and graces, though he is no less observant, and
is probably more accurate, writes as a well-bred man speaks—simply,
naturally, directly; and those qualities are seen to most advantage in
his _Memorias de un Setentón_, which are as interesting as the best of
reminiscences can be.
These records of customs and manners influenced a writer of German
origin on her father's side, Cecilia Böhl de Faber, who was thrice
married, and whom it is convenient to call by her pseudonym, FERNÁN
CABALLERO (1796-1877), a village in Don Quixote's country. Her first
novel, _La Gaviota_ (1848), has probably been more read by foreigners
than any Spanish book of the century, and, with all its sensibility
and moralisings, we can scarcely grudge its vogue; for it is true to
common life as common life existed in an Andalucían village, and its
style is natural, if not distinguished. Even in _La Gaviota_ there is
an air of unreality when the scene is shifted from the country to the
drawing-room, and the suspicion that Fernán Caballero could invent
without observing deepens in presence of such a wooden lay-figure as
Sir George Percy in _Clemencia_. Her didactic bent increased with
time, so that much of her later work is bedevilled with sermons and
gospellings; yet so long as she deals with the rustic episodes which
were her earliest memories, so long as she is content to report and to
describe, she produces a delightful series of pictures, touched in with
an almost irreproachable refinement. She is not far enough from us to
be a classic; but she is sufficiently removed to be old-fashioned, and
she suffers accordingly. Still it is safe to prophesy that _La Gaviota_
will survive most younger rivals.
In all likelihood PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCÓN (1833-1891), who, like most
literary Spaniards, injured his work by meddling in politics, will
live by his shorter, more unambitious stories. His _Escándalo_ (1875),
after creating a prodigious sensation as a defence of the Jesuits from
an old revolutionist, is already laid aside, and _La Pródiga_ is in
no better case. The true Alarcón is revealed in _El Sombrero de tres
Picos_, a picture of rustic manners, rendered with infinite enjoyment
and merry humour; in the rapid, various sketches entitled _Historietas
Nacionales_; and in that gallant, picturesque account of the Morocco
campaign called the _Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra en África_—as
vivid a piece of patriotic chronicling as these latest years have shown.
Of graver prose modern Spain has little to boast. Yet the Marqués de
Valdegamas, JUAN DONOSO CORTÉS (1809-1853) has written an _Ensayo
sobre el Catolicismo, el Liberalismo y el Socialismo_, which has been
read and applauded throughout Europe. Donoso, the most intolerant of
Spaniards, overwhelms his readers with dogmatic statement in place
of reasoned exposition; but he writes with astonishing eloquence,
and with a superb conviction of his personal infallibility that has
scarcely any match in literature. At the opposite pole is the Vich
priest, JAIME BALMES Y USPIA (1810-48), whose _Cartas á un Escéptico_
and _Criterio_ are overshadowed by his _Protestantismo comparado en el
Catolicismo_, a performance of striking ingenuity, among the finest
in the list of modern controversy. Donoso denounced man's reason as
a gin of the devil, as a faculty whose natural tendency is towards
error. Balmes appeals to reason at every step of the road. With him,
indeed, it is unsafe to allow that two and two are four until it is
ascertained what he means to do with that proposition; for his subtlety
is almost uncanny, and his dexterity in using an opponent's admission
is surprising. If anything, Balmes is even too clever, for the most
simple-minded reader is driven to ask how it is possible that any
rational being can hold the opposite view. Still, from the Catholic
standpoint, Balmes is unanswerable, and—in Spain at least—he has
never been answered, while his vogue abroad has been very great.
Setting aside its doctrinal bearing, his treatise is a most striking
example of destructive criticism and of marshalled argument.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] M. Morel-Fatio points out that Fígaro, which seems so Castilian by
association, is not a Castilian name. See his _Études sur l'Espagne_
(Paris, 1895), vol. i. p. 76. If it be not Catalan, if Beaumarchais
invented it, it is among the most successful of his coinage.