TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_, and small caps
are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.
* Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made
consistent when a predominant usage was found.
* Footnotes have been renumbered into a single series and placed at
the end of the paragraph that includes each anchor.
* Footnotes inside a footnote are not numbered, but marked with [*]
and placed at the end of the main footnote. They are found at
footnotes [23], [142], [154] and [251].
* The anchor placements for footnote [543] (p. 331) and footnote
[696] (p. 421) are conjectured. No anchors were found in the
printed original.
* Caesuras in split verses have been marked as “ · ”.
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.
VOL. I.
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.
BY
GEORGE TICKNOR.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOLUME I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET
M DCCC XLIX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by
GEORGE TICKNOR,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
In the year eighteen hundred and eighteen I travelled through a large
part of Spain, and spent several months in Madrid. My object was to
increase a very imperfect knowledge of the language and literature
of the country, and to purchase Spanish books, always so rare in the
great book-marts of the rest of Europe. In some respects, the time of
my visit was favorable to the purposes for which I made it; in others,
it was not. Such books as I wanted were then, it is true, less valued
in Spain than they are now, but it was chiefly because the country was
in a depressed and unnatural state; and, if its men of letters were
more than commonly at leisure to gratify the curiosity of a stranger,
their number had been materially diminished by political persecution,
and intercourse with them was difficult because they had so little
connection with each other, and were so much shut out from the world
around them.
It was, in fact, one of the darkest periods of the reign of Ferdinand
the Seventh, when the desponding seemed to think that the eclipse was
not only total, but “beyond all hope of day.” The absolute power
of the monarch had been as yet nowhere publicly questioned; and his
government, which had revived the Inquisition and was not wanting in
its spirit, had, from the first, silenced the press, and, wherever
its influence extended, now threatened the extinction of all generous
culture. Hardly four years had elapsed since the old order of things
had been restored at Madrid, and already most of the leading men of
letters, whose home was naturally in the capital, were in prison or
in exile. Melendez Valdes, the first Spanish poet of the age, had
just died in misery on the unfriendly soil of France. Quintana, in
many respects the heir to his honors, was confined in the fortress of
Pamplona. Martinez de la Rosa, who has since been one of the leaders of
the nation as well as of its literature, was shut up in Peñon on the
coast of Barbary. Moratin was languishing in Paris, while his comedies
were applauded to the very echo by his enemies at home. The Duke de
Rivas, who, like the old nobles of the proudest days of the monarchy,
has distinguished himself alike in arms, in letters, and in the civil
government and foreign diplomacy of his country, was living retired
on the estates of his great house in Andalusia. Others of less mark
and note shared a fate as rigorous; and, if Clemencin, Navarrete, and
Marina were permitted still to linger in the capital from which their
friends had been driven, their footsteps were watched and their lives
were unquiet.
Among the men of letters whom I earliest knew in Madrid was Don José
Antonio Conde, a retired, gentle, modest scholar, rarely occupied
with events of a later date than the times of the Spanish Arabs,
whose history he afterwards illustrated. But, far as his character
and studies removed him from political turbulence, he had already
tasted the bitterness of a political exile; and now, in the honorable
poverty to which he had been reduced, he not unwillingly consented
to pass several hours of each day with me, and direct my studies in
the literature of his country. In this I was very fortunate. We read
together the early Castilian poetry, of which he knew more than he
did of the most recent, and to which his thoughts and tastes were
much nearer akin. He assisted me, too, in collecting the books I
needed;--never an easy task where bookselling, in the sense elsewhere
given to the word, was unknown, and where the Inquisition and the
confessional had often made what was most desirable most rare. But Don
José knew the lurking-places where such books and their owners were to
be sought; and to him I am indebted for the foundation of a collection
in Spanish literature, which, without help like his, I should have
failed to make. I owe him, therefore, much; and, though the grave has
long since closed over my friend and his persecutors, it is still a
pleasure to me to acknowledge obligations which I have never ceased to
feel.
Many circumstances, since the period of my visit to Spain, have
favored my successive attempts to increase the Spanish library I then
began. The residence in Madrid of my friend, the late Mr. Alexander
Hill Everett, who ably represented his country for several years at
the court of Spain; and the subsequent residence there, in the same
high position, of my friend, Mr. Washington Irving, equally honored
on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially cherished by Spaniards
for the enduring monument he has erected to the history of their early
adventures, and for the charming fictions, whose scene he has laid in
their romantic country;--these fortunate circumstances naturally opened
to me whatever facilities for collecting books could be afforded by the
kindness of persons in places so distinguished, or by their desire to
spread among their countrymen at home a literature they knew so well
and loved so much.
But to two other persons, not unconnected with these statesmen and men
of letters, it is no less my duty and my pleasure to make known my
obligations. The first of them is Mr. O. Rich, formerly a Consul of the
United States in Spain; the same bibliographer to whom Mr. Irving and
Mr. Prescott have avowed similar obligations, and to whose personal
regard I owe hardly less than I do to his extraordinary knowledge of
rare and curious books, and his extraordinary success in collecting
them. The other is Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the
University of Madrid,--certainly in his peculiar department among
the most eminent scholars now living, and one to whose familiarity
with whatever regards the literature of his own country, the frequent
references in my notes bear a testimony not to be mistaken. With the
former of these gentlemen I have been in constant communication for
many years, and have received from him valuable contributions of books
and manuscripts collected in Spain, England, and France for my library.
With the latter, to whom I am not less largely indebted, I first became
personally acquainted when I passed in Europe the period between 1835
and 1838, seeking to know scholars such as he is, and consulting,
not only the principal public libraries of the Continent, but such
rich private collections as those of Lord Holland in England, of M.
Ternaux-Compans in France, and of the venerated and much-loved Tieck in
Germany; all of which were made accessible to me by the frank kindness
of their owners.
The natural result of such a long-continued interest in Spanish
literature, and of so many pleasant inducements to study it, has
been--I speak in a spirit of extenuation and self-defence--_a book_. In
the interval between my two residences in Europe I delivered lectures
upon its principal topics to successive classes in Harvard College;
and, on my return home from the second, I endeavoured to arrange
these lectures for publication. But when I had already employed much
labor and time on them, I found--or thought I found--that the tone of
discussion which I had adopted for my academical audiences was not
suited to the purposes of a regular history. Destroying, therefore,
what I had written, I began afresh my never unwelcome task, and so
have prepared the present work, as little connected with all I had
previously done as it, perhaps, can be, and yet cover so much of the
same ground.
In correcting my manuscript for the press I have enjoyed the counsels
of two of my more intimate friends; of Mr. Francis C. Gray, a scholar
who should permit the world to profit more than it does by the large
resources of his accurate and tasteful learning, and of Mr. William
H. Prescott, the historian of both hemispheres, whose name will not
be forgotten in either, but whose honors will always be dearest to
those who have best known the discouragements under which they have
been won, and the modesty and gentleness with which they are worn. To
these faithful friends, whose unchanging regard has entered into the
happiness of all the active years of my life, I make my affectionate
acknowledgments, as I now part from a work in which they have always
taken an interest, and which, wherever it goes, will carry on its pages
the silent proofs of their kindness and taste.
Park Street, Boston, 1849.
I cannot dismiss the last sheet of this History, without offering my
sincere thanks to the conductors of the University Press at Cambridge,
and to Mr. George Nichols, its scholarlike corrector, for the
practised skill and conscientious fidelity with which, after it was in
type, my work has been revised and prepared for publication.
CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME FIRST.
FIRST PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE FIRST APPEARANCE
OF THE PRESENT WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND THE EARLY PART OF THE REIGN
OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES THE FIFTH, OR FROM THE END OF THE TWELFTH
CENTURY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Origin of Modern Literature 3
Its Origin in Spain 4
Its earliest Appearance there 5
Two Schools 5
The National School 6
It appears in troubled Times 6
The Arab Invasion 7
Christian Resistance 8
Christian Successes 8
Battle of Navas de Tolosa 9
Earliest National Poetry 10