And their accumulated headlong course
We call Duero. Thus might these enforce
Each his own claim to stand the noblest knight,
If brave Niebla came not with his blaze
Of glory to eclipse their humbler praise.
Too much honor is not to be claimed for such poetry; but there is
little in Juan de Mena’s works equal to this specimen, which has at
least the merit of being free from the pedantry and conceits that
disfigure most of his writings.
Such as it was, however, the Labyrinth received great admiration from
the court of John the Second, and, above all, from the king himself,
whose physician, we are told, wrote to the poet: “Your polished and
erudite work, called ‘The Second Order of Mercury,’ hath much pleased
his Majesty, who carries it with him when he journeys about or goes
a-hunting.”[655] And again: “The end of the ‘third circle’ pleased
the king much. I read it to his Majesty, who keeps it on his table
with his prayer-book, and takes it up often.”[656] Indeed, the whole
poem was, it seems, submitted to the king, piece by piece, as it was
composed; and we are told, that, in one instance, at least, it received
a royal correction, which still stands unaltered.[657] His Majesty even
advised that it should be extended from three hundred stanzas to three
hundred and sixty-five, though for no better reason than to make their
number correspond exactly with that of the days in the year; and the
twenty-four stanzas commonly printed at the end of it are supposed to
have been an attempt to fulfil the monarch’s command. But whether this
be so or not, nobody now wishes the poem to be longer than it is.[658]
[655] Cibdareal, Epist. XX.
[656] Ibid., Epist. XLIX.
[657] Ibid., Epist. XX.
[658] They are printed separately in the Cancionero General of
1573; but do not appear at all in the edition of the Works of the
poet in 1566, and were not commented upon by Hernan Nuñez. It
is, indeed, doubtful whether they were really written by Juan de
Mena. If they were, they must probably have been produced after
the king’s death, for they are far from being flattering to him.
On this account, I am disposed to think they are not genuine; for
the poet seems to have permitted his great eulogies of the king
and of the Constable to stand after the death of both of them.
CHAPTER XX.
PROGRESS OF THE CASTILIAN LANGUAGE.--POETS OF THE TIME OF JOHN THE
SECOND.--VILLASANDINO.--FRANCISCO IMPERIAL.--BAENA.--RODRIGUEZ DEL
PADRON.--PROSE-WRITERS.--CIBDAREAL AND FERNAN PEREZ DE GUZMAN.
In one point of view, all the works of Juan de Mena are of consequence.
They mark the progress of the Castilian language, which, in his hands,
advanced more than it had for a long period before. From the time of
Alfonso the Wise, nearly two centuries had elapsed, in which, though
this fortunate dialect had almost completely asserted its supremacy
over its rivals, and by the force of political circumstances had been
spread through a large part of Spain, still, little had been done to
enrich and nothing to raise or purify it. The grave and stately tone of
the “Partidas” and the “General Chronicle” had not again been reached;
the lighter air of the “Conde Lucanor” had not been attempted. Indeed,
such wild and troubled times, as those of Peter the Cruel and the three
monarchs who had followed him on the throne, permitted men to think of
little except their personal safety and their immediate well-being.
But now, in the time of John the Second, though the affairs of the
country were hardly more composed, they had taken the character
rather of feuds between the great nobles than of wars with the
throne; while, at the same time, knowledge and literary culture,
from accidental circumstances, were not only held in honor, but had
become a courtly fashion. Style, therefore, began to be regarded as
a matter of consequence, and the choice of words, as the first step
towards elevating and improving it, was attempted by those who wished
to enjoy the favor of the highest class, that then gave its tone alike
to letters and to manners. But a serious obstacle was at once found
to such a choice of phraseology as was demanded. The language of
Castile had, from the first, been dignified and picturesque, but it
had never been rich. Juan de Mena, therefore, looked round to see how
he could enlarge his poetical vocabulary; and if he had adopted means
more discreet, or shown more judgment in the use of those to which he
resorted, he might almost have modelled the Spanish into such forms as
he chose.
As it was, he rendered it good service. He took boldly such words as
he thought suitable to his purpose, wherever he found them, chiefly
from the Latin, but sometimes from other languages.[659] Unhappily, he
exercised no proper skill in the selection. Some of the many he adopted
were low and trivial, and his example failed to give them dignity;
others were not better than those for which they were substituted, and
so were not afterwards used; and yet others were quite too foreign in
their structure and sound to strike root where they should never have
been transplanted. Much, therefore, of what Juan de Mena did in this
respect was unsuccessful. But there is no doubt that the language of
Spanish poetry was strengthened and its versification ennobled by his
efforts, and that the example he set, followed, as it was, by Lucena,
Diego de San Pedro, Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, the Manriques, and
others, laid the true foundations for the greater and more judicious
enlargement of the whole Castilian vocabulary in the age that followed.
[659] Thus _fi_, Valencian or Provençal for _hijo_, in the
“Trescientas,” Copla 37, and _trinquete_ for _foresail_, in Copla
165, may serve as specimens. Lope de Vega (Obras Sueltas, Tom.
IV. p. 474) complains of Juan de Mena’s Latinisms, which are
indeed very awkward and abundant, and cites the following line:--
El amor es ficto, vaniloco, pigro.
I do not remember it; but it is as bad as some of the worst
verses of the same sort for which Ronsard has been ridiculed.
It should be observed, however, that, in the earliest periods
of the Castilian language, there was a greater connection with
the French than there was in the time of Juan de Mena. Thus,
in the “Poem of the Cid,” we have _cuer_ for _heart_, _tiesta_
for _head_, etc.; in Berceo, we have _asemblar_, _to meet_;
_sopear_, _to sup_, etc. (See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, 1835,
Tom. IV. p. 56.) If, therefore, we find a few French words in
Juan de Mena that are no longer used, like _sage_, which he
makes a dissyllable guttural to rhyme with _viage_ in Copla
167, we may presume he found them already in the language, from
which they have since been dropped. But Juan de Mena was, in all
respects, too bold; and, as the learned Sarmiento says of him in
a manuscript which I possess, “Many of his words are not at all
Castilian, and were never used either before his time or after
it.”
Another poet, who, in the reign of John the Second, enjoyed a
reputation which has faded away much more than that of Juan de Mena,
is Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino, sometimes called De Illescas. His
earliest verses seem to have been written in the time of John the
First; but the greater part fall within the reigns of Henry the Third
and John the Second, and especially within that of the last. A few of
them are addressed to this monarch, and many more to his queen, to the
Constable, to the Infante Don Ferdinand, afterwards king of Aragon, and
to other distinguished personages of the time. From different parts of
them, we learn that their author was a soldier and a courtier; that he
was married twice, and repented heartily of his second match; and that
he was generally poor, and often sent bold solicitations to every body,
from the king downwards, asking for places, for money, and even for
clothes.
As a poet, his merits are small. He speaks of Dante, but gives no proof
of familiarity with Italian literature. In fact, his verses are rather
in the Provençal forms, though their courtly tone and personal claims
predominate to such a degree as to prevent any thing else from being
distinctly heard. Puns, conceits, and quibbles, to please the taste
of his great friends, are intruded everywhere; yet perhaps he gained
his chief favor by his versification, which is sometimes uncommonly
easy and flowing, and by his rhymes, which are singularly abundant and
almost uniformly exact.[660]
[660] The accounts of Villasandino are found in Antonio,
Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 341; and Sanchez, Poesías
Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 200, etc. His earlier poems are in the
Academy’s edition of the Chronicles of Ayala, Tom. II. pp. 604,
615, 621, 626, 646; but the mass of his works as yet printed
is in the Cancionero of Baena, extracted by Castro, Biblioteca
Española, Tom. I. pp. 268-296, etc.
At any rate, he was much regarded by his contemporaries. The Marquis
of Santillana speaks of him as one of the leading poets of his age,
and says that he wrote a great number of songs and other short poems,
or _decires_, which were well liked and widely spread.[661] It is not
remarkable, therefore, when Baena, for the amusement of John the Second
and his court, made the collection of poetry which now passes under
his name, that he filled much of it with verses by Villasandino, who
is declared by the courtly secretary to be “the light, and mirror, and
crown, and monarch of all the poets that, till that time, had lived in
Spain.” But the poems Baena admired are almost all of them so short and
so personal, that they were soon forgotten, with the circumstances that
gave them birth. Several are curious, because they were written to be
used, by persons of distinction in the state, such as the Adelantado
Manrique, the Count de Buelna, and the Great Constable, all of whom
were among Villasandino’s admirers, and employed him to write verses
which passed afterwards under their own names. Of one short poem, a
Hymn to the Madonna, the author himself thought so well, that he often
said it would surely clear him, in the other world, from the power of
the Arch-enemy.[662]
[661] Sanchez, Tom. I. p. lx.
[662] The Hymn in question is in Castro, Tom. I. p. 269; but,
as a specimen of Villasandino’s easiest manner, I prefer the
following verses, which he wrote for Count Pero Niño, to be given
to the Lady Beatrice, of whom, as was noticed when speaking of
his Chronicle, the Count was enamoured:--
La que siempre obedecí,
E obedezco todavia,
Mal pecado, solo un dia
Non se le membra de mi.
Perdí
Meu tempo en servir
A la que me fas vevir
Coidoso desque la ví, etc.
But as the editor of the Chronicle says, (Madrid, 1782, 4to, p.
223,) “They are verses that might be attributed to any other
gallant or any other lady, so that it seems as if Villasandino
prepared such couplets to be given to the first person that
should ask for them”;--words cited here, because they apply to
a great deal of the poetry of the time of John II., which deals
often in the coldest commonplaces, and some of which was used, no
doubt, as this was.
Francisco Imperial, born in Genoa, but in fact a Spaniard, whose
home was at Seville, is also among the poets who were favored at
this period, and who belonged to the same artificial school with
Villasandino. The principal of his longer poems is on the birth of
King John, in 1405, and most of the others are on subjects connected,
like this, with transient interests. One, however, from its tone and
singular subject, is still curious. It is on the fate of a lady, who,
having been taken among the spoils of a great victory in the far East,
by Tamerlane, was sent by him as a present to Henry the Third of
Castile; and it must be admitted that the Genoese touches the peculiar
misfortune of her condition with poetical tenderness.[663]
[663] The notices of Francisco Imperial are in Sanchez (Tom.
I. pp. lx., 205, etc.); in Argote de Molina’s “Nobleza del
Andaluzia” (1588, ff. 244, 260); and his Discourse prefixed to
the “Vida del Gran Tamorlan” (Madrid, 1782, 4to, p. 3). His poems
are in Castro, Tom. I. pp. 296, 301, etc.
Of the remaining poets who were more or less valued in Spain, in
the middle of the fifteenth century, it is not necessary to speak
at all. Most of them are now known only to antiquarian curiosity.
Of by far the greater part very little remains; and in most cases
it is uncertain whether the persons whose names the poems bear were
their real authors or not. Juan Alfonso de Baena, the editor of the
collection in which most of them are found, wrote a good deal,[664] and
so did Ferrant Manuel de Lando,[665] Juan Rodriguez del Padron,[666]
Pedro Velez de Guevara, and Gerena and Calavera.[667] Probably,
however, nothing remains of the inferior authors more interesting
than a Vision composed by Diego de Castillo, the chronicler, on the
death of Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon,[668] and a sketch of the life
and character of Henry the Third of Castile, given in the person of
the monarch himself, by Pero Ferrus;[669]--poems which remind us
strongly of the similar sketches found in the old English “Mirror for
Magistrates.”
[664] Castro, Tom. I. pp. 319-330, etc.
[665] Ferrant Manuel de Lando is noted as a page of John II.
in Argote de Molina’s “Sucesion de los Manueles,” prefixed to
the “Conde Lucanor,” 1575; and his poems are said to have been
“agradables para aquel siglo.”
[666] That is, if the Juan Rodriguez del Padron, whose poems
occur in Castro, (Tom. I. p. 331, etc.,) and in the manuscript
Cancionero called Estuñiga’s, (f. 18,) be the same, as he is
commonly supposed to be, with the Juan Rodriguez del Padron of
the “Cancionero General,” 1573 (ff. 121-124 and elsewhere). But
of this I entertain doubts.
[667] Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. 199, 207, 208.
[668] It is published by Ochoa, in the same volume with the
inedited poems of the Marquis of Santillana, where it is followed
by poems of Suero de Ribera, (who occurs also in Baena’s
Cancionero, and that of Estuñiga,) Juan de Dueñas, (who occurs in
Estuñiga’s,) and one or two others of no value,--all of the age
of John II.
[669] Castro, Tom. I. pp. 310-312.
* * * * *
But while verse was so much cultivated, prose, though less regarded and
not coming properly into the fashionable literature of the age, made
some progress. We turn, therefore, now to two writers who flourished
in the reign of John the Second, and who seem to furnish, with the
contemporary chronicles and other similar works already noticed, the
true character of the better prose literature of their time.
The first of them is Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal, who, if there ever
were such a person, was the king’s physician, and, in some respects,
his confidential and familiar friend. He was born, according to the
Letters that pass under his name, about 1386,[670] and, though not of
a distinguished family, had for his godfather Pedro Lopez de Ayala,
the great chronicler and chancellor of Castile. When he was not yet
four-and-twenty years old, John the Second being still a child,
Cibdareal entered the royal service and remained attached to the
king’s person till the death of his master, when we lose sight of him
altogether. During this long period of above forty years, he maintained
a correspondence, to which we have already alluded more than once, with
many of the principal persons in the state; with the king himself, with
several of the archbishops and bishops, and with a considerable number
of noblemen and men of letters, among the last of whom were Alfonso de
Cartagena and Juan de Mena. A part of this correspondence, amounting to
one hundred and five letters, written between 1425 and 1454, has been
published, in two editions; the first claiming to be of 1499, and the
last prepared in 1775, with some care, by Amirola, the Secretary of
the Spanish Academy of History. Most of the subjects discussed by the
honest physician and courtier in these letters are still interesting;
and some of them, like the death of the Constable, which he describes
minutely to the Archbishop of Toledo, are important, if they can be
trusted as genuine. In almost all he wrote, he shows the good-nature
and good sense which preserved for him the favor of leading persons
in the opposite factions of the time, and which, though he belonged
to the party of the Constable, yet prevented him from being blind to
that great man’s faults, or becoming involved in his fate. The tone
of the correspondence is simple and natural, always quite Castilian,
and sometimes very amusing; as, for instance, when he is repeating
court gossip to the Grand Justiciary of Castile, or telling stories to
Juan de Mena. But a very interesting letter to the Bishop of Orense,
containing an account of John the Second’s death, will perhaps give a
better idea of its author’s general spirit and manner, and, at the same
time, exhibit somewhat of his personal character.
[670] The best life of Cibdareal is prefixed to his Letters
(Madrid, ed. 1775, 4to). But his birth is there placed about
1388, though he himself (Ep. 105) says he was sixty-eight years
old in 1454, which gives 1386 as the true date. But we know
absolutely nothing of him beyond what we find in the letters that
pass under his name. The Noticia prefixed to the edition referred
to was--as we are told in the Preface to the Chronicle of Alvaro
de Luna (Madrid, 1784, 4to)--prepared by Llaguno Amirola.
“I foresee very plainly,” he says to the Bishop, “that you will read
with tears this letter, which I write to you in anguish. We are both
become orphans; and so has all Spain. For the good and noble and just
King John, our sovereign lord, is dead. And I, miserable man that I
am,--who was not yet twenty-four years old when I entered his service
with the Bachelor Arrevalo, and have, till I am now sixty-eight, lived
in his palace, or, I might almost say, in his bed-chamber and next his
bed, always in his confidence, and yet never thinking of myself,--I
should now have but a poor pension of thirty thousand maravedís for my
long service, if, just at his death, he had not ordered the government
of Cibdareal to be given to my son, who I pray may be happier than his
father has been. But, in truth, I had always thought to die before his
Highness; whereas he died in my presence, on the eve of Saint Mary
Magdalen, a blessed saint, whom he greatly resembled in sorrowing over
his sins. It was a sharp fever that destroyed him. He was much wearied
with travelling about hither and thither; and he had always the death
of Don Alvaro de Luna before him, grieving about it secretly, and
seeing that the nobles were never the more quiet for it, but, on the
contrary, that the king of Navarre had persuaded the king of Portugal
to think he had grounds of complaint concerning the wars in Barbary,
and that the king had answered him with a crafty letter. All this
wore his heart out. And so, travelling along from Avila to Medina, a
paroxysm came upon him with a sharp fever, that seemed at first as if
it would kill him straightway. And the Prior of Guadalupe sent directly
for Prince Henry; for he was afraid some of the nobles would gather for
the Infante Don Alfonso; but it pleased God that the king recovered
his faculties by means of a medicine I gave him. And so he went on to
Valladolid; but as soon as he entered the city, he was struck with
death, as I said before the Bachelor Frias, who held it to be a small
matter, and before the Bachelor Beteta, who held what I said to be an
idle tale.... The consolation that remains to me is, that he died like
a Christian king, faithful and loyal to his Maker. Three hours before
he gave up the ghost, he said to me: ‘Bachelor Cibdareal, I ought to
have been born the son of a tradesman, and then I should have been a
friar of Abrojo, and not a king of Castile.’ And then he asked pardon
of all about him, if he had done them any wrong; and bade me ask it
for him of those of whom he could not ask it himself. I followed him
to his grave in Saint Paul’s, and then came to this lonely room in the
suburbs; for I am now so weary of life, that I do not think it will
be a difficult matter to loosen me from it, much as men commonly fear
death. Two days ago, I went to see the queen; but I found the palace
from the top to the bottom so empty, that the house of the Admiral and
that of Count Benevente are better served. King Henry keeps all King
John’s servants; but I am too old to begin to follow another master
about, and, if God so pleases, I shall go to Cibdareal with my son,
where I hope the king will give me enough to die upon.” This is the
last we hear of the sorrowing old man, who probably died soon after
the date of this letter, which seems to have been written in July,
1454.[671]
[671] It is the last letter in the collection. See Appendix (C),
on the genuineness of the whole.
The other person who was most successful as a prose-writer in the age
of John the Second was Fernan Perez de Guzman,--like many distinguished
Spaniards, a soldier and a man of letters, belonging to the high
aristocracy of the country, and occupied in its affairs. His mother
was sister to the great Chancellor Ayala, and his father was a brother
of the Marquis of Santillana, so that his connections were as proud
and noble as the monarchy could afford; while, on the other hand,
Garcilasso de la Vega being one of his lineal descendants, we may add
that his honors were reflected back from succeeding generations as
brightly as he received them.
He was born about the year 1400, and was bred a knight. At the battle
of the Higueruela, near Granada, in 1431, led on by the Bishop of
Palencia,--who, as the honest Cibdareal says, “fought that day like an
armed Joshua,”--he was so unwise in his courage, that, after the fight
was over, the king, who had been an eyewitness of his indiscretion,
caused him to be put under arrest, and released him only at the
intercession of one of his powerful friends.[672] In general, Perez
de Guzman was among the opponents of the Constable, as were most of
his family; but he does not seem to have shown a factious or violent
spirit, and, after being once unreasonably thrown into prison, found
his position so false and disagreeable, that he retired from affairs
altogether.
[672] Cibdareal, Epist. 51.
Among his more cultivated and intellectual friends was the family of
Santa María, two of whom, having been Bishops of Cartagena, are better
known by the name of the see they filled than they are by their own.
The oldest of them all was a Jew by birth,--Selomo Halevi,--who, in
1390, when he was forty years old, was baptized as Pablo de Santa
María, and rose, subsequently, by his great learning and force of
character, to some of the highest places in the Spanish Church, of
which he continued a distinguished ornament till his death in 1432.
His brother, Alvar Garcia de Santa María, and his three sons, Gonzalo,
Alonso, and Pedro, the last of whom lived as late as the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella, were, like the head of the family, marked by
literary accomplishments, of which the old Cancioneros afford abundant
proof, and of which, it is evident, the court of John the Second was
not a little proud. The connection of Perez de Guzman, however, was
chiefly with Alonso, long Bishop of Cartagena, who wrote for the use of
his friend a religious treatise, and who, when he died, in 1435, was
mourned by Perez de Guzman in a poem comparing the venerable Bishop to
Seneca and Plato.[673]
[673] The longest extracts from the works of this remarkable
family of Jews, and the best accounts of them, are to be found in
Castro, “Biblioteca Española,” (Tom. I. p. 235, etc.,) and Amador
de los Rios, “Estudios sobre los Judios de España” (Madrid,
1848, 8vo, pp. 339-398, 458, etc.). Much of their poetry, which
is found in the Cancioneros Generales, is amatory, and is as
good as the poetry of those old collections generally is. Two
of the treatises of Alonso were printed;--the “Oracional,” or
Book of Devotion, mentioned in the text as written for Perez de
Guzman, which appeared at Murcia in 1487, and the “Doctrinal de
Cavalleros,” which appeared the same year at Burgos. (Diosdado,
De Prima Typographiæ Hispan. Ætate, Romæ, 1793, 4to, pp. 22, 26,
64.) Both are curious; but much of the last is taken from the
“Partidas” of Alfonso the Wise.
The occupations of Perez de Guzman, in his retirement on his estates at
Batres, where he passed the latter part of his life, and where he died,
about 1470, were suited to his own character and to the spirit of his
age. He wrote a good deal of poetry, such as was then fashionable among
persons of the class to which he belonged, and his uncle, the Marquis
of Santillana, admired what he wrote. Some of it may be found in the
collection of Baena, showing that it was in favor at the court of John
the Second. Yet more was printed in 1492, and in the Cancioneros that
began to appear a few years later; so that it seems to have been still
valued by the limited public interested in letters in the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella.
But the longest poem he wrote, and perhaps the most important, is his
“Praise of the Great Men of Spain,” a kind of chronicle, filling four
hundred and nine octave stanzas; to which should be added a hundred
and two rhymed Proverbs, mentioned by the Marquis of Santillana, but
probably prepared later than the collection made by the Marquis himself
for the education of Prince Henry. After these, the two poems of Perez
de Guzman that make most pretensions from their length are an allegory
on the Four Cardinal Virtues, in sixty-three stanzas, and another on
the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, in a hundred. The
best verses he wrote are in his short hymns. But all are forgotten, and
deserve to be so.[674]
[674] The manuscript I have used is a copy from one, apparently
of the fifteenth century, in the magnificent collection of Sir
Thomas Phillips, Middle Hill, Worcestershire, England. The
printed poems are found in the “Cancionero General,” 1535, ff.
28, etc.; in the “Obras de Juan de Mena,” ed. 1566, at the end;
in Castro, Tom. I. pp. 298, 340-342; and at the end of Ochoa’s
“Rimas Ineditas de Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza,” Paris, 1844, 8vo,
pp. 269-356. See also Mendez, Typog. Esp., p. 383; and Cancionero
General, 1573, ff. 14, 15, 20-22.
His prose is much better. Of the part he bore in the Chronicle of John
the Second notice has already been taken. But at different times, both
before he was engaged in that work and afterwards, he was employed
on another, more original in its character and of higher literary
merit. It is called “Genealogies and Portraits,” and contains, under
thirty-four heads, sketches, rather than connected narratives, of the
lives, characters, and families of thirty-four of the principal persons
of his time, such as Henry the Third, John the Second, the Constable
Alvaro de Luna, and the Marquis of Villena.[675] A part of this genial
work seems, from internal evidence, to have been written in 1430, while
other portions must be dated after 1454; but none of it can have been
much known till all the principal persons to whom it relates had died,
and not, therefore, till the reign of Henry the Fourth, in the course
of which the death of Perez de Guzman himself must have happened. It
is manly in its tone, and is occasionally marked with vigorous and
original thought. Some of its sketches are, indeed, brief and dry, like
that of Queen Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt. But others are
long and elaborate, like that of the Infante Don Ferdinand. Sometimes
he discovers a spirit in advance of his age, such as he shows when he
defends the newly converted Jews from the cruel suspicions with which
they were then persecuted. But he oftener discovers a willingness to
rebuke its vices, as when, discussing the character of Gonzalo Nuñez de
Guzman, he turns aside from his subject and says solemnly,--
[675] The “Generaciones y Semblanzas” first appeared in 1512, as
part of a _rifacimento_ in Spanish of Giovanni Colonna’s “Mare
Historiarum,” which may have been the work of Perez de Guzman.
They begin, in this edition, at Cap. 137, after long accounts of
Trojans, Greeks, Romans, Fathers of the Church, and others, taken
from Colonna. (Mem. de la Acad. de Historia, Tom. VI. pp. 452,
453, note.) The first edition of the Generaciones y Semblanzas
separated from this connection occurs at the end of the Chronicle
of John II., 1517. They are also found in the edition of that
Chronicle of 1779, and with the “Centon Epistolario,” in the
edition of Llaguno Amirola, Madrid, 1775, 4to, where they are
preceded by a life of Fernan Perez de Guzman, containing the
little we know of him. The suggestion made in the Preface to
the Chronicle of John II., (1779, p. xi.,) that the two very
important chapters at the end of the Generaciones y Semblanzas
are not the work of Fernan Perez de Guzman is, I think,
sufficiently answered by the editor of the Chronicle of Alvaro de
Luna, Madrid, 1784, 4to, Prólogo, p. xxiii.
“And no doubt it is a noble thing and worthy of praise to preserve
the memory of noble families and of the services they have rendered
to their kings and to the commonwealth; but here, in Castile, this
is now held of small account. And, to say truth, it is really little
necessary; for now-a-days he is noblest who is richest. Why, then,
should we look into books to learn what relates to families, since we
can find their nobility in their possessions? Nor is it needful to keep
a record of the services they render; for kings now give rewards, not
to him who serves them most faithfully, nor to him who strives for what
is most worthy, but to him who most follows their will and pleases them
most.”[676]
[676] Generaciones y Semblanzas, c. 10. A similar harshness is
shown in Chapters 5 and 30.
In this and other passages, there is something of the tone of a
disappointed statesman, perhaps of a disappointed courtier. But more
frequently, as, for instance, when he speaks of the Great Constable,
there is an air of good faith and justice that do him much honor. Some
of his portraits, among which we may notice those of Villena and John
the Second, are drawn with skill and spirit; and everywhere he writes
in that rich, grave, Castilian style, with now and then a happy and
pointed phrase to relieve its dignity, of which we can find no earlier
example without going quite back to Alfonso the Wise and Don Juan
Manuel.
CHAPTER XXI.
FAMILY OF THE MANRIQUES.--PEDRO, RODRIGO, GOMEZ, AND JORGE.--THE COPLAS
OF THE LAST.--THE URREAS.--JUAN DE PADILLA.
Contemporary with all the authors we have just examined, and connected
by ties of blood with several of them, was the family of the
Manriques,--poets, statesmen, and soldiers,--men suited to the age in
which they lived, and marked with its strong characteristics. They
belonged to one of the oldest and noblest races of Castile; a race
beginning with the Laras of the ballads and chronicles.[677] Pedro,
the father of the first two to be noticed, was among the sturdiest
opponents of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, and filled so large a space
in the troubles of the time, that his violent imprisonment, just before
he died, shook the country to its very foundations. At his death,
however, in 1440, the injustice he had suffered was so strongly felt
by all parties, that the whole court went into mourning for him, and
the good Count Haro--the same in whose hands the honor and faith of
the country had been put in pledge a year before at Tordesillas--came
into the king’s presence, and, in a solemn scene well described by
the chronicler of John the Second, obtained for the children of the
deceased Manrique a confirmation of all the honors and rights of which
their father had been wrongfully deprived.[678]
[677] Generaciones, etc., c. 11, 15, and 24.
[678] Chrónica de Don Juan el II., Año 1437, c. 4; 1438, c. 6;
1440, c. 18.
One of these children was Rodrigo Manrique, Count of Paredes, a bold
captain, well known by the signal advantages he gained for his country
over the Moors. He was born in 1416, and his name occurs constantly in
the history of his time; for he was much involved, not only in the wars
against the common enemy in Andalusia and Granada, but in the no less
absorbing contests of the factions which then rent Castile and all the
North. But, notwithstanding the active life he led, we are told that
he found time for poetry, and one of his songs, by no means without
merit, which has been preserved to us, bears witness to it. He died in
1476.[679]
[679] Pulgar, Claros Varones, Tít. 13. Cancionero General, 1573,
f. 183. Mariana, Hist., Lib. XXIV. c. 14.
His brother, Gomez Manrique, of whose life we have less distinct
accounts, but whom we know to have been both a soldier and a lover of
letters, has left us more proofs of his poetical studies and talent.
One of his shorter pieces belongs to the reign of John the Second,
and one of more pretensions comes into the period of the Catholic
sovereigns; so that he lived in three different reigns.[680] At the
request of Count Benevente, he at one time collected what he had
written into a volume, which may still be extant, but has never been
published.[681] The longest of his works, now known to exist, is an
allegorical poem of twelve hundred lines on the death of his uncle, the
Marquis of Santillana, in which the Seven Cardinal Virtues, together
with Poetry and Gomez Manrique himself, appear and mourn over the
great loss their age and country had sustained. It was written soon
after 1458, and sent, with an amusingly pedantic letter, to his cousin,
the Bishop of Calahorra, son of the Marquis of Santillana.[682] Another
poem, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, which is necessarily to be
dated as late as the year 1474, is a little more than half as long as
the last, but, like that, is allegorical, and resorts to the same poor
machinery of the Seven Virtues, who come this time to give counsel to
the Catholic sovereigns on the art of government. It was originally
preceded by a prose epistle, and was printed in 1482, so that it is
among the earliest books that came from the Spanish press.[683]
[680] The poetry of Gomez Manrique is in the Cancionero General,
1573, ff. 57-77, and 243.
[681] Adiciones á Pulgar, ed. 1775, p. 239.
[682] Adiciones á Pulgar, p. 223.
[683] Mendez, Typog. Esp., p. 265. To these poems, when speaking
of Gomez Manrique, should be added,--1. his poetical letter to
his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, asking for a copy of his
works, with the reply of his uncle, both of which are in the
Cancioneros Generales; and 2. some of his smaller trifles, which
occur in a manuscript of the poems of Alvarez Gato, belonging
to the Library of the Academy of History at Madrid and numbered
114,--trifles, however, which ought to be published.
These two somewhat long poems, with a few that are much shorter,--the
best of which is on the bad government of a town where he lived,--fill
up the list of what remain to us of their author’s works. They are
found in the Cancioneros printed from time to time during the sixteenth
century, and thus bear witness to the continuance of the regard in
which he was long held. But, except a few passages, where he speaks
in a natural tone, moved by feelings of personal affection, none of
his poetry can now be read with pleasure; and, in some instances, the
Latinisms in which he indulges, misled probably by Juan de Mena, render
the lines where they occur quite ridiculous.[684]
[684] Such as the word _definicion_ for _death_, and other
similar euphuisms. For a notice of Gomez Manrique, see Antonio,
Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 342.
Jorge Manrique is the last of this chivalrous family that comes into
the literary history of his country. He was the son of Rodrigo, Count
of Paredes, and seems to have been a young man of an uncommonly
gentle cast of character, yet not without the spirit of adventure
that belonged to his ancestors,--a poet full of natural feeling, when
the best of those about him were almost wholly given to metaphysical
conceits, and to what was then thought a curious elegance of style.
We have, indeed, a considerable number of his lighter verses, chiefly
addressed to the lady of his love, which are not without the coloring
of his time, and remind us of the poetry on similar subjects produced a
century later in England, after the Italian taste had been introduced
at the court of Henry the Eighth.[685] But the principal poem of
Manrique the younger is almost entirely free from affectation. It was
written on the death of his father, which occurred in 1476, and is
in the genuinely old Spanish measure and manner. It fills about five
hundred lines, divided into forty-two _coplas_ or stanzas, and is
called, with a simplicity and directness worthy of its own character,
“The Coplas of Manrique,” as if it needed no more distinctive name.
[685] These poems, some of them too free for the notions of his
Church, are in the Cancioneros Generales; for example, in that of
1535, ff. 72-76, etc., and in that of 1573, at ff. 131-139, 176,
180, 187, 189, 221, 243, 245. A few are also in the “Cancionero
de Burlas,” 1519.
Nor does it. Instead of being a loud exhibition of his sorrows, or,
what would have been more in the spirit of the age, a conceited
exhibition of his learning, it is a simple and natural complaint of
the mutability of all earthly happiness; the mere overflowing of a
heart filled with despondency at being brought suddenly to feel the
worthlessness of what it has most valued and pursued. His father
occupies hardly half the canvas of the poem, and some of the stanzas
devoted more directly to him are the only portion of it we could wish
away. But we everywhere feel--before its proper subject is announced
quite as much as afterwards--that its author has just sustained some
loss, which has crushed his hopes, and brought him to look only on the
dark and discouraging side of life. In the earlier stanzas he seems
to be in the first moments of his great affliction, when he does not
trust himself to speak out concerning its cause; when his mind, still
brooding in solitude over his sorrows, does not even look round for
consolation. He says, in his grief,--
Our lives are rivers, gliding free
To that unfathomed, boundless sea,
The silent grave;
Thither all earthly pomp and boast
Roll, to be swallowed up and lost
In one dark wave.
Thither the mighty torrents stray,
Thither the brook pursues its way,
And tinkling rill.
There all are equal. Side by side
The poor man and the son of pride
Lie calm and still.
The same tone is heard, though somewhat softened, when he touches on
the days of his youth and of the court of John the Second, already
passed away; and it is felt the more deeply, because the festive scenes
he describes come into such strong contrast with the dark and solemn
thoughts to which they lead him. In this respect his verses fall upon
our hearts like the sound of a heavy bell, struck by a light and gentle
hand, which continues long afterwards to give forth tones that grow
sadder and more solemn, till at last they come to us like a wailing
for those we have ourselves loved and lost. But gradually the movement
changes. After his father’s death is distinctly announced, his tone
becomes religious and submissive. The light of a blessed future breaks
upon his reconciled spirit; and then the whole ends like a mild and
radiant sunset, as the noble old warrior sinks peacefully to his rest,
surrounded by his children and rejoicing in his release.[686]
[686] The lines on the court of John II. are among the most
beautiful in the poem:--
Where is the King, Don Juan? where
Each royal prince and noble heir
Of Aragon?
Where are the courtly gallantries?
The deeds of love and high emprise,
In battle done?
Tourney and joust, that charmed the eye,
And scarf, and gorgeous panoply,
And nodding plume,--
What were they but a pageant scene?
What but the garlands, gay and green,
That deck the tomb?
Where are the high-born dames, and where
Their gay attire, and jewelled hair,
And odors sweet?
Where are the gentle knights, that came
To kneel, and breathe love’s ardent flame,
Low at their feet?
Where is the song of the Troubadour?
Where are the lute and gay tambour
They loved of yore?
Where is the mazy dance of old,
The flowing robes, inwrought with gold,
The dancers wore?
These two stanzas, as well as the one in the text, are from
Mr. H. W. Longfellow’s beautiful translation of the Coplas,
first printed, Boston, 1833, 12mo, and often since. They may be
compared with a passage in the verses on Edward IV. attributed
to Skelton, and found in the “Mirror for Magistrates,” (London,
1815, 4to, Tom. II. p. 246,) in which that prince is made to say,
as if speaking from his grave,--
“Where is now my conquest and victory?
Where is my riches and royall array?
Where be my coursers and my horses hye?
Where is my myrth, my solace, and my play?”
Indeed, the tone of the two poems is not unlike, though, of
course, the old English laureate never heard of Manrique and
never imagined any thing half so good as the Coplas. The Coplas
were often imitated;--among the rest, as Lope de Vega tells
us, (Obras Sueltas, Madrid, 1777, 4to, Tom. XI. p. xxix.,) by
Camoens; but I do not know the Redondillas of Camoens to which he
refers. Lope admired the Coplas very much. He says they should be
written in letters of gold.
No earlier poem in the Spanish language, if we except, perhaps, some
of the early ballads, is to be compared with the Coplas of Manrique
for depth and truth of feeling; and few of any subsequent period have
reached the beauty or power of its best portions. Its versification,
too, is excellent; free and flowing, with occasionally an antique air
and turn, that are true to the character of the age that produced it,
and increase its picturesqueness and effect. But its great charm is to
be sought in a beautiful simplicity, which, belonging to no age, is the
seal of genius in all.
The Coplas, as might be anticipated, produced a strong impression
from the first. They were printed in 1492, within sixteen years after
they were written, and are found in several of the old collections a
little later. Separate editions followed. One, with a very dull and
moralizing prose commentary by Luis de Aranda, was published in 1552.
Another, with a poetical gloss in the measure of the original, by Luis
Perez, appeared in 1561; yet another, by Rodrigo de Valdepeñas, in
1588; and another, by Gregorio Silvestre, in 1589;--all of which have
been reprinted more than once, and the first two many times. But in
this way the modest Coplas themselves became so burdened and obscured,
that they almost disappeared from general circulation, till the middle
of the last century, since which time, however, they have been often
reprinted, both in Spain and in other countries, until they seem at
last to have taken that permanent place among the most admired portions
of the elder Spanish literature, to which their merit unquestionably
entitles them.[687]
[687] For the earliest editions of the Coplas, 1492, 1494, and
1501, see Mendez, Typog. Española, p. 136. I possess ten or
twelve copies of other editions, one of which was printed at
Boston, 1833, with Mr. Longfellow’s translation. My copies, dated
1574, 1588, 1614, 1632, and 1799, all have Glosas in verse. That
of Aranda is in folio, 1552, black letter, and in prose.
At the end of a translation of the “Inferno” of Dante, made by
Pero Fernandez de Villegas, Archdeacon of Burgos, published at
Burgos in 1515, folio, with an elaborate commentary, chiefly
from that of Landino,--a very rare book, and one of considerable
merit,--is found, in a few copies, a poem on the “Vanity of
Life,” by the translator, which, though not equal to the Coplas
of Manrique, reminds me of them. It is called “Aversion del Mundo
y Conversion á Dios,” and is divided, with too much formality,
into twenty stanzas on the contempt of the world, and twenty in
honor of a religious life; but the verses, which are in the old
national manner, are very flowing, and their style is that of the
purest and richest Castilian. It opens thus:--
Away, malignant, cruel world,
With sin and sorrow rife!
I seek the meeker, wiser way
That leads to heavenly life.
Your fatal poisons here we drink,
Lured by their savors sweet,
Though, lurking in our flowery path,
The serpent wounds our feet.
Away with thy deceitful snares,
Which all too late I fly!--
I, who, a coward, followed thee
Till my last years are nigh;
Till thy most strange, revolting sins
Force me to turn from thee,
And drive me forth to seek repose,
Thy service hard to flee.
Away with all thy wickedness,
And all thy heartless toil,
Where brother, to his brother false,
In treachery seeks for spoil!--
Dead is all charity in thee,
All good in thee is dead;
I seek a port where from thy storm
To hide my weary head.
I add the original, for the sake of its flowing sweetness and
power:--
Quedate, mundo malino,
Lleno de mal y dolor,
Que me vo tras el dulçor
Del bien eterno divino.
Tu tosigo, tu venino,
Vevemos açucarado,
Y la sierpe esta en el prado
De tu tan falso camino.
Quedate con tus engaños,
Maguera te dexo tarde,
Que te segui de cobarde
Fasta mis postreros años.
Mas ya tus males estraños
De ti me alançan forçoso,
Vome a buscar el reposo
De tus trabajosos daños.
Quedate con tu maldad,
Con tu trabajo inhumano,
Donde el hermano al hermano
No guarda fe ni verdad.
Muerta es toda caridad;
Todo bien en ti es ya muerto;--
Acojome para el puerto,
Fuyendo tu tempestad.
After the forty stanzas to which the preceding lines belong,
follow two more poems, the first entitled “The Complaint of
Faith,” partly by Diego de Burgos and partly by Pero Fernandez
de Villegas, and the second, a free translation of the Tenth
Satire of Juvenal, by Gerónimo de Villegas, brother of Pero
Fernandez,--each poem in about seventy or eighty octave stanzas,
of _arte mayor_, but neither of them as good as the “Vanity of
Life.” Gerónimo also translated the Sixth Satire of Juvenal into
_coplas de arte mayor_, and published it at Valladolid in 1519,
in 4to.
The death of the younger Manrique was not unbecoming his ancestry and
his life. In an insurrection which occurred in 1479, he served on the
loyal side, and pushing a skirmish too adventurously, was wounded and
fell. In his bosom were found some verses, still unfinished, on the
uncertainty of all human hopes; and an old ballad records his fate and
appropriately seals up, with its simple poetry, the chronicle of this
portion, at least, of his time-honored race.[688]
[688] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XXIV. c. 19, noticing his death, says,
“He died in his best years,”--“en lo mejor de su edad”; but we do
not know how old he was. On three other occasions, at least, Don
Jorge is mentioned in the great Spanish historian as a personage
important in the affairs of his time; but on yet a fourth,--that
of the death of his father, Rodrigo,--the words of Mariana are
so beautiful and apt, that I transcribe them in the original.
“Su hijo D. Jorge Manrique, en unas trovas muy elegantes, en que
hay virtudes poeticas y ricas esmaltes de ingenio, y sentencias
graves, a manera de endecha, lloró la muerte de su padre.” Lib.
XXIV. c. 14. It is seldom History goes out of its bloody course
to render such a tribute to Poetry, and still more seldom that
it does it so gracefully. The old ballad on Jorge Manrique is in
Fuentes, Libro de los Quarenta Cantos, Alcalá, 1587, 12mo, p. 374.
Another family that flourished in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella,
and one that continued to be distinguished in that of Charles the
Fifth, was marked with similar characteristics, serving in high places
in the state and in the army, and honored for its success in letters.
It was the family of the Urreas. The first of the name who rose to
eminence was Lope, created Count of Aranda in 1488; the last was
Gerónimo de Urrea, who must be noticed hereafter as the translator of
Ariosto, and as the author of a treatise on Military Honor, which was
published in 1566.
Both the sons of the first Count of Aranda, Miguel and Pedro, were
lovers of letters; but Pedro only was imbued with a poetical spirit
beyond that of his age, and emancipated from its affectations and
follies. His poems, which he published in 1513, are dedicated to his
widowed mother, and are partly religious and partly secular. Some of
them show that he was acquainted with the Italian masters. Others are
quite untouched by any but national influences; and among the latter
is the following ballad, recording the first love of his youth, when a
deep distrust of himself seemed to be too strong for a passion which
was yet evidently one of great tenderness:--
In the soft and joyous summer-time,
When the days stretch out their span,
It was then my peace was ended all,
It was then my griefs began.
When the earth is clad with springing grass,
When the trees with flowers are clad;
When the birds are building up their nests,
When the nightingale sings sad;
When the stormy sea is hushed and still,
And the sailors spread their sail;
When the rose and lily lift their heads,
And with fragrance fill the gale;
When, burdened with the coming heat,
Men cast their cloaks aside,
And turn themselves to the cooling shade,
From the sultry sun to hide;
When no hour like that of night is sweet,
Save the gentle twilight hour;--
In a tempting, gracious time like this,
I felt love’s earliest power.
But the lady that then I first beheld
Is a lady so fair to see,
That, of all who witness her blooming charms,
None fails to bend the knee.
And her beauty, and all its glory and grace,
By so many hearts are sought,
That as many pains and sorrows, I know,
Must fall to my hapless lot;--
A lot that grants me the hope of death
As my only sure relief,
And while it denies the love I seek,
Announces the end of my grief.
Still, still, these bitterest sweets of life
I never will ask to forget;
For the lover’s truest glory is found
When unshaken his fate is met.[689]
[689] Cancionero de las Obras de Don Pedro Manuel de Urrea,
Logroño, fol., 1513, apud Ig. de Asso, De Libris quibusdam
Hispanorum Rarioribus, Cæsaraugustæ, 1794, 4to, pp. 89-92.
En el placiente verano,
Dó son los dias mayores,
Acabaron mis placeres,
Comenzaron mis dolores.
Quando la tierra da yerva
Y los arboles dan flores,
Quando aves hacen nidos
Y cantan los ruiseñores;
Quando en la mar sosegada
Entran los navegadores,
Quando los lirios y rosas
Nos dan buenos olores;
Y quando toda la gente,
Ocupados de calores,
Van aliviando las ropas,
Y buscando los frescores;
Dó son las mejores oras
La noches y los albores;--
En este tiempo que digo,
Comenzaron mis amores.
De una dama que yo ví,
Dama de tantos primores,
De quantos es conocida
De tantos tiene loores:
Su gracia por hermosura
Tiene tantos servidores,
Quanto yo por desdichado
Tengo penas y dolores:
Donde se me otorga muerte
Y se me niegan favores.
Mas nunca olvidaré
Estos amargos dulzores,
Porque en la mucha firmeza
Se muestran los amadores.
The last person who wrote a poem of any considerable length, and yet
is properly to be included within the old school, is one who, by his
imitations of Dante, reminds us of the beginnings of that school
in the days of the Marquis of Santillana. It is Juan de Padilla,
commonly called “El Cartuxano,” or The Carthusian, because he chose
thus modestly to conceal his own name, and announce himself only as a
monk of Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville.[690] Before he entered
into that severe monastery, he wrote a poem, in a hundred and fifty
_coplas_, called “The Labyrinth of the Duke of Cadiz,” which was
printed in 1493; but his two chief works were composed afterwards. The
first of them is called “Retablo de la Vida de Christo,” or A Picture
of the Life of Christ; a long poem, generally in octave stanzas of
_versos de arte mayor_, containing a history of the Saviour’s life, as
given by the Prophets and Evangelists, but interspersed with prayers,
sermons, and exhortations; all very devout and very dull, and all
finished, as he tells us, on Christmas eve in the year 1500.
[690] The monk, however, finds it impossible to keep his secret,
and fairly lets it out in a sort of acrostic at the end of the
“Retablo.” He was born in 1468, and died after 1518.
The other is entitled “The Twelve Triumphs of the Twelve Apostles,”
which, as we are informed, with the same accuracy and in the same way,
was completed on the 14th of February, 1518; again a poem formidable
for its length, since it fills above a thousand stanzas of nine lines
each. It is partly an allegory, but wholly religious in its character,
and is composed with more care than any thing else its author wrote.
The action passes in the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which
the poet is successively carried by Saint Paul, who shows him, in
each of them, first, the marvels of one of the twelve Apostles; next,
an opening of one of the twelve mouths of the infernal regions; and
lastly, a glimpse of the corresponding division of Purgatory. Dante is
evidently the model of the good monk, however unsuccessful he may be
as a follower. Indeed, he begins with a direct imitation of the opening
of the “Divina Commedia,” from which, in other parts of the poem,
phrases and lines are not unfrequently borrowed. But he has thrown
together what relates to earth and heaven, to the infernal regions and
to Purgatory, in such an unhappy confusion, and he so mingles allegory,
mythology, astrology, and known history, that his work turns out, at
last, a mere succession of wild inconsistencies and vague, unmeaning
descriptions. Of poetry there is rarely a trace; but the language,
which has a decided air of yet elder times about it, is free and
strong, and the versification, considering the period, is uncommonly
rich and easy.[691]
[691] The “Doze Triumfos de los Doze Apóstolos was printed
entire in London, 1843, 4to, by Don Miguel del Riego, Canon of
Oviedo, and brother of the Spanish patriot and martyr of the
same name. In the volume containing the Triumfos, the Canon has
given large extracts from the “Retablo de la Vida de Christo,”
omitting Cantos VII., VIII., IX., and X. For notices of Juan de
Padilla, see Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 751, and Tom. II. p.
332; Mendez, Typog. Esp., p. 193; and Sarmiento, Memorias, Sect.
844-847. From the last, it appears that he rose to important
ecclesiastical authority under the crown, as well as in his own
order. The Doze Triumfos was first printed in 1512, the Retablo
in 1505. There is a contemporary Spanish book, with a title
something resembling that of the Retablo de la Vida de Christo
del Cartuxano;--I mean the “Vita Christi Cartuxano,” which is
a translation of the “Vita Christi” of Ludolphus of Saxony, a
Carthusian monk who died about 1370, made into Castilian by
Ambrosio Montesino, and first published at Seville, in 1502. It
is, in fact, a Life of Christ, compiled out of the Evangelists,
with ample commentaries and reflections from the Fathers of
the Church,--the whole filling four folio volumes,--and in the
version of Montesino it appears in a grave, pure Castilian prose.
It was translated by him at the command, he says, of Ferdinand
and Isabella.
CHAPTER XXII.
PROSE-WRITERS.--JUAN DE LUCENA.--ALFONSO DE LA TORRE.--DIEGO DE
ALMELA.--ALONSO ORTIZ.--FERNANDO DEL PULGAR.--DIEGO DE SAN PEDRO.
The reign of Henry the Fourth, was more favorable to the advancement of
prose composition than that of John the Second. This we have already
seen when speaking of the contemporary chronicles, and of Perez de
Guzman and the author of the “Celestina.” In other cases, we observe
its advancement in an inferior degree, but, encumbered as they are with
more or less of the bad taste and pedantry of the time, they still
deserve notice, because they were so much valued in their own age.
Regarded from this point of view, one of the most prominent
prose-writers of the century was Juan de Lucena; a personage
distinguished both as a private counsellor of John the Second and as
that monarch’s foreign ambassador. We know, however, little of his
history; and of his works only one remains to us,--if, indeed, he wrote
any more. It is a didactic prose dialogue “On a Happy Life,” carried on
between some of the most eminent persons of the age: the great Marquis
of Santillana, Juan de Mena, the poet, Alonso de Cartagena, the bishop
and statesman, and Lucena himself, who acts in part as an umpire in the
discussion, though the Bishop at last ends it by deciding that true
happiness consists in loving and serving God.
The dialogue itself is represented as having passed chiefly in a hall
of the palace, and in presence of several of the nobles of the court;
but it was not written till after the death of the Constable, in
1453; that event being alluded to in it. It is plainly an imitation
of the treatise of Boëthius “On the Consolation of Philosophy,” then
a favorite classic; but it is more spirited and effective than its
model. It is frequently written in a pointed, and even a dignified
style; and parts of it are interesting and striking. Thus, the lament
of Santillana over the death of his son is beautiful and touching,
and so is the final summing up of the trials and sorrows of this life
by the Bishop. In the midst of their discussions, there is a pleasant
description of a collation with which they were refreshed by the
Marquis, and which recalls, at once,--as it was probably intended to
do,--the Greek Symposia and the dialogues that record them. Indeed,
the allusions to antiquity with which it abounds, and the citations
of ancient authors, which are still more frequent, are almost always
apt, and often free from the awkwardness and pedantry which mark most
of the didactic prose of the period; so that, taken together, it
may be regarded, notwithstanding the use of many strange words, and
an occasional indulgence in conceits, as one of the most remarkable
literary monuments of the age from which it has come down to us.[692]
[692] My copy is of the first edition, of Çamora, Centenera,
1483, folio, 23 leaves, double columns, black letter. It begins
with these singular words, instead of a title-page: “Aqui comença
un tratado en estillo breve, en sentencias no solo largo mas
hondo y prolixo, el qual ha nombre Vita Beata, hecho y compuesto
por el honrado y muy discreto Juan de Lucena,” etc. There are
also editions of 1499 and 1541, and, I believe, yet another of
1501. (Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 250; and
Mendez, Typog., p. 267.) The following short passage--with an
allusion to the opening of Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, in better
taste than is common in similar works of the same period--will
well illustrate its style. It is from the remarks of the Bishop,
in reply both to the poet and to the man of the world. “Resta,
pues, Señor Marques y tu Juan de Mena, mi sentencia primera
verdadera, que ninguno en esta vida vive beato. Desde Cadiz
hasta Ganges si toda la tierra expiamos [espiamos?] a ningund
mortal contenta su suerte. El caballero entre las puntas se
codicia mercader; y el mercader cavallero entre las brumas del
mar, si los vientos australes enpreñian las velas. Al parir de
las lombardas desea hallarse el pastor en el poblado; en campo
el cibdadano; fuera religion los de dentro como peçes y dentro
querrian estar los de fuera,” etc. (fol. xviii. a.) The treatise
contains many Latinisms and Latin words, after the absurd example
of Juan de Mena; but it also contains many good old words that we
are sorry have become obsolete.
To this period, also, we must refer the “Vision Deleytable,” or
Delectable Vision, which we are sure was written before 1463. Its
author was Alfonso de la Torre, commonly called “The Bachelor,” who
seems to have been a native of the bishopric of Burgos, and who was,
from 1437 till the time of his death, a member of the College of Saint
Bartholomew at Salamanca; a noble institution, founded in imitation of
that established at Bologna by Cardinal Albornoz. It is an allegorical
vision, in which the author supposes himself to see the Understanding
of Man in the form of an infant brought into a world full of ignorance
and sin, and educated by a succession of such figures as Grammar,
Logic, Music, Astrology, Truth, Reason, and Nature. He intended it, he
says, to be a compendium of all human knowledge, especially of all that
touches moral science and man’s duty, the soul and its immortality;
intimating, at the end, that it is a bold thing in him to have
discussed such subjects in the vernacular, and begging the noble Juan
de Beamonte, at whose request he had undertaken it, not to permit a
work so slight to be seen by others.
It shows a good deal of the learning of its time, and still more of
the acuteness of the scholastic metaphysics then in favor. But it is
awkward and uninteresting in the general structure of its fiction, and
meagre in its style and illustrations. This, however, did not prevent
it from being much read and admired. There is one edition of it without
date, which probably appeared about 1480, showing that the wish of its
author to keep it from the public was not long respected; and there
were other editions in 1489, 1526, and 1538, besides a translation into
Catalan, printed as early as 1484. But the taste for such works passed
away in Spain as it did elsewhere; and the Bachiller de la Torre was
soon so completely forgotten, that his Vision was not only published by
Dominico Delphino in Italian, as a work of his own, but was translated
back into its native Spanish by Francisco de Caceres, a converted Jew,
and printed in 1663, as if it had been an original Italian work till
then quite unknown in Spain.[693]
[693] The oldest edition, which is without date, seems, from
its type and paper, to have come from the press of Centenera at
Çamora, in which case it was printed about 1480-1483. It begins
thus: “Comença el tratado llamado Vision Deleytable, compuesto
por Alfonso de la Torre, bachiller, endereçado al muy noble Don
Juan de Beamonte, Prior de San Juan en Navarra.” It is not paged,
but fills 71 leaves in folio, double columns, black letter. The
little known of the different manuscripts and printed editions
of the Vision is to be found in Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer,
Tom. II. pp. 328, 329, with the note; Mendez, Typog., pp. 100 and
380, with the Appendix, p. 402; and Castro, Biblioteca Española,
Tom. I. pp. 630-635. The Vision was written for the instruction
of the Prince of Viana, who is spoken of near the end as if still
alive; and since this well-known prince, the son of John, king of
Navarre and Aragon, was born in 1421 and died in 1461, we know
the limits between which the Vision must have been produced.
Indeed, being addressed to Beamonte, the Prince’s tutor, it was
probably written about 1430-1440, during the Prince’s nonage. One
of the old manuscripts of it says, “It was held in great esteem,
and, as such, was carefully kept in the chamber of the said king
of Aragon.” There is a life of the author in Rezabal y Ugarte,
“Biblioteca de los Autores, que han sido individuos de los seis
colegios mayores” (Madrid, 1805, 4to, p. 359). The best passage
in the Vision Deleytable is at the end; the address of Truth to
Reason. There is a poem of Alfonso de la Torre in MS. 7826, in
the National Library, Paris (Ochoa, Manuscritos, Paris, 1844,
4to, p. 479); and the poems of the Bachiller Francisco de la
Torre in the Cancionero, 1573, (ff. 124-127,) and elsewhere, so
much talked about in connection with Quevedo, have sometimes been
thought to be his, though the names differ.
An injustice not unlike the one that occurred to Alfonso de la Torre
happened to his contemporary, Diego de Almela, and for some time
deprived him of the honor, to which he was entitled, of being regarded
as the author of “The Valerius of Stories,”--a book long popular and
still interesting. He wrote it after the death of his patron, the wise
Bishop of Cartagena, who had projected such a work himself, and as
early as 1472 it was sent to one of the Manrique family. But though
the letter which then accompanied it is still extant, and though, in
four editions, beginning with that of 1487, the book is ascribed to its
true author, yet in the fifth, which appeared in 1541, it is announced
to be by the well-known Fernan Perez de Guzman;--a mistake which was
discovered and announced by Tamayo de Vargas, in the time of Philip the
Third, but does not seem to have been generally corrected till the work
itself was edited anew by Moreno, in 1793.
It is thrown into the form of a discussion on Morals, in which, after
a short explanation of the different virtues and vices of men, as they
were then understood, we have all the illustrations the author could
collect under each head from the Scriptures and the history of Spain.
It is, therefore, rather a series of stories than a regular didactic
treatise, and its merit consists in the grave, yet simple and pleasing,
style in which they are told,--a style particularly fitted to most of
them, which are taken from the old national chronicles. Originally,
it was accompanied by “An Account of Pitched Battles”; but this, and
his Chronicles of Spain, his collection of the Miracles of Santiago,
and several discussions of less consequence, are long since forgotten.
Almela, who enjoyed the favor of Ferdinand and Isabella, accompanied
those sovereigns to the siege of Granada, in 1491, as a chaplain,
carrying with him, as was not uncommon at that time among the higher
ecclesiastics, a military retinue to serve in the wars.[694]
[694] Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 325. Mendez,
Typog., p. 315. It is singular that the edition of the “Valerio
de las Historias” printed at Toledo, 1541, folio, which bears on
its title-page the name of Fern. Perez de Guzman, yet contains,
at f. 2, the very letter of Almela, dated 1472, which leaves no
doubt that its writer is the author of the book.
In 1493, another distinguished ecclesiastic, Alonso Ortiz, a canon
of Toledo, published, in a volume of moderate size, two small works
which should not be entirely overlooked. The first is a treatise,
in twenty-seven chapters, addressed, through the queen, Isabella,
to her daughter, the Princess of Portugal, on the death of that
princess’s husband, filled with such consolation as the courtly Canon
deemed suitable to her bereavement and his own dignity. The other is
an oration, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, after the fall of
Granada, in 1492, rejoicing in that great event, and glorying almost
equally in the cruel expulsion of all Jews and heretics from Spain.
Both are written in too rhetorical a style, but neither is without
merit; and in the oration there are one or two beautiful and even
touching passages on the tranquillity to be enjoyed in Spain, now that
a foreign and hated enemy, after a contest of eight centuries, had
been expelled from its borders,--passages which evidently came from
the writer’s heart, and no doubt found an echo wherever his words were
heard by Spaniards.[695]
[695] The volume of the learned Alonso Ortiz is a curious one,
printed at Seville, 1493, folio, 100 leaves. It is noticed by
Mendez, (p. 194,) and by Antonio, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 39,)
who seems to have known nothing about its author, except that he
bequeathed his library to the University of Salamanca. Besides
the two treatises mentioned in the text, this volume contains an
account of the wound received by Ferdinand the Catholic, from the
hand of an assassin, at Barcelona, December 7, 1492; two letters
from the city and cathedral of Toledo, praying that the name of
the newly conquered Granada may not be placed before that of
Toledo in the royal title; and an attack on the Prothonotary Juan
de Lucena,--probably not the author lately mentioned,--who had
ventured to assail the Inquisition, then in the freshness of its
holy pretensions. The whole volume is full of bigotry, and the
spirit of a triumphant priesthood.
Another of the prose-writers of the fifteenth century, and one that
deserves to be mentioned with more respect than either of the last, is
Fernando del Pulgar. He was born in Madrid, and was educated, as he
himself tells us, at the court of John the Second. During the reign
of Henry the Fourth, he had employments which show him to have been a
person of consequence; and during a large part of that of Ferdinand and
Isabella, he was one of their counsellors of state, their secretary,
and their chronicler.[696] Of his historical writings notice has
already been taken; but in the course of his inquiries after what
related to the annals of Castile, he collected materials for another
work, more interesting, if not more important. For he found, as he
says, many famous men whose names and characters had not been so
preserved and celebrated as their merits demanded; and, moved by his
patriotism, and taking for his example the portraits of Perez de Guzman
and the biographies of the ancients, he carefully prepared sketches of
the lives of the principal persons of his own age, beginning with Henry
the Fourth, and confining himself chiefly within the limits of that
monarch’s reign and court.
[696] The notices of the life of Pulgar are from the edition of
his “Claros Varones,” Madrid, 1775, 4to; but there, as elsewhere,
he is said to be a native of the kingdom of Toledo. This,
however, is probably a mistake. Oviedo, who knew him personally,
says, in his Dialogue on Mendoza, Duke of Infantado, that Pulgar
was “de Madrid _natural_.” Quinquagenas, MS.
Some of these sketches, to which he has given the general title of
“Claros Varones de Castilla,” like those of the good Count Haro[697]
and of Rodrigo Manrique,[698] are important for their subjects, while
others, like those of the great ecclesiastics of the kingdom, are now
interesting only for the skill with which they are drawn. The style in
which they are written is forcible and generally concise, showing a
greater tendency to formal elegance than any thing by either Cibdareal
or Guzman, with whom we should most readily compare him; but we miss
the confiding naturalness of the warm-hearted physician and the severe
judgments of the retired statesman. The whole series is addressed to
his great patroness, Queen Isabella, to whom, no doubt, he thought a
tone of composed dignity more appropriate than any other.
[697] Claros Varones, Tít. 3.
[698] Ibid., Tít. 13.
As a specimen of his best manner, we may take the following passage, in
which, after having alluded to some of the most remarkable personages
in Roman history, he turns, as it were, suddenly round to the queen,
and thus boldly confronts the great men of antiquity with the great men
of Castile, whom he had already discussed more at large:--
“True, indeed, it is, that these great men,--Castilian knights and
gentlemen,--of whom memory is here made for fair cause, and also those
of the elder time, who, fighting for Spain, gained it from the power
of its enemies, did neither slay their own sons, as did those consuls,
Brutus and Torquatus; nor burn their own flesh, as did Scævola; nor
commit against their own blood cruelties which nature abhors and
reason forbids; but rather, with fortitude and perseverance, with wise
forbearance and prudent energy, with justice and clemency, gaining
the love of their own countrymen, and becoming a terror to strangers,
they disciplined their armies, ordered their battles, overcame their
enemies, conquered hostile lands, and protected their own.... So that,
most excellent Queen, these knights and prelates, and many others born
within your realm, whereof here leisure fails me to speak, did, by the
praiseworthy labors they fulfilled, and by the virtues they strove to
attain, achieve unto themselves the name of Famous Men, whereof their
descendants should be above others emulous; while, at the same time,
all the gentlemen of your kingdoms should feel themselves called to
the same pureness of life, that they may at last end their days in
unspotted success, even as these great men also lived and died.”[699]
[699] Claros Varones, Tít. 17.
This is certainly remarkable, both for its style and for the tone of
its thought, when regarded as part of a work written at the conclusion
of the fifteenth century. Pulgar’s Chronicle, and his commentary on
“Mingo Revulgo,” as we have already seen, are not so good as such
sketches.
The same spirit, however, reappears in his letters. They are thirty-two
in number; all written during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the
earliest being dated in 1473, and the latest only ten years afterwards.
Nearly all of them were addressed to persons of honorable distinction
in his time, such as the queen herself, Henry the king’s uncle, the
Archbishop of Toledo, and the Count of Tendilla. Sometimes, as in the
case of one to the king of Portugal, exhorting him not to make war on
Castile, they are evidently letters of state. But in other cases, like
that of a letter to his physician, complaining pleasantly of the evils
of old age, and one to his daughter, who was a nun, they seem to be
familiar, if not confidential.[700] On the whole, therefore, taking all
his different works together, we have a very gratifying exhibition of
the character of this ancient servant and counsellor of Queen Isabella,
who, if he gave no considerable impulse to his age as a writer, was yet
in advance of it by the dignity and elevation of his thoughts and the
careless richness of his style. He died after 1492, and probably before
1500.
[700] The letters are at the end of the Claros Varones (Madrid,
1775, 4to); which was first printed in 1500.
We must not, however, go beyond the limits of the reign of Ferdinand
and Isabella, without noticing two remarkable attempts to enlarge, or
at least to change, the forms of romantic fiction, as they had been
thus far settled in the books of chivalry.
The first of these attempts was made by Diego de San Pedro, a
senator of Valladolid, whose poetry is found in all the Cancioneros
Generales.[701] He was evidently known at the court of the Catholic
sovereigns, and seems to have been favored there; but, if we may judge
from his principal poem, entitled “Contempt of Fortune,” his old age
was unhappy, and filled with regrets at the follies of his youth.[702]
Among these follies, however, he reckons the work of prose fiction
which now constitutes his only real claim to be remembered. It is
called the Prison of Love, “Carcel de Amor,” and was written at the
request of Diego Hernandez, a governor of the pages in the time of
Ferdinand and Isabella.
[701] The Coplas of San Pedro on the Passion of Christ and the
Sorrows of the Madonna are in the Cancionero of 1492, (Mendez,
p. 135,) and many of his other poems are in the Cancioneros
Generales, 1511-1573; for example, in the last, at ff. 155-161,
176, 177, 180, etc.
[702] “El Desprecio de la Fortuna”--with a curious dedication to
the Count Urueña, whom he says he served twenty-nine years--is at
the end of Juan de Mena’s Works, ed. 1566.
It opens with an allegory. The author supposes himself to walk out on
a winter’s morning, and to find in a wood a fierce, savage-looking
person, who drags along an unhappy prisoner bound by a chain. This
savage is Desire, and his victim is Leriano, the hero of the fiction.
San Pedro, from natural sympathy, follows them to the castle or prison
of Love, where, after groping through sundry mystical passages and
troubles, he sees the victim fastened to a fiery seat and enduring the
most cruel torments. Leriano tells him that they are in the kingdom
of Macedonia, that he is enamoured of Laureola, daughter of its king,
and that for his love he is thus cruelly imprisoned; all which he
illustrates and explains allegorically, and begs the author to carry
a message to the lady Laureola. The request is kindly granted, and a
correspondence takes place, immediately upon which Leriano is released
from his prison, and the allegorical part of the work is brought to an
end.
From this time the story is much like an episode in one of the tales
of chivalry. A rival discovers the attachment between Leriano and
Laureola, and making it appear to the king, her father, as a criminal
one, the lady is cast into prison. Leriano challenges her accuser
and defeats him in the lists; but the accusation is renewed, and,
being fully sustained by false witnesses, Laureola is condemned to
death. Leriano rescues her with an armed force and delivers her to the
protection of her uncle, that there may exist no further pretext for
malicious interference. The king, exasperated anew, besieges Leriano in
his city of Susa. In the course of the siege, Leriano captures one of
the false witnesses, and compels him to confess his guilt. The king,
on learning this, joyfully receives his daughter again, and shows all
favor to her faithful lover. But Laureola, for her own honor’s sake,
now refuses to hold further intercourse with him; in consequence of
which he takes to his bed and with sorrow and fasting dies. Here the
original work ends; but there is a poor continuation of it by Nicolas
Nuñez, which gives an account of the grief of Laureola and the return
of the author to Spain.[703]
[703] Of Nicolas Nuñez I know only a few poems in the Cancionero
General of 1573, (ff. 17, 23, 176, etc.,) one or two of which are
not without merit.
The style, so far as Diego de San Pedro is concerned, is good for the
age; very pithy, and full of rich aphorisms and antitheses. But there
is no skill in the construction of the fable; and the whole work only
shows how little romantic fiction was advanced in the time of Ferdinand
and Isabella. The Carcel de Amor was, however, very successful. The
first edition appeared in 1492; two others followed in less than eight
years; and before a century was completed, it is easy to reckon ten,
beside many translations.[704]
[704] Mendez, pp. 185, 283; Brunet, etc. There is a translation
of the Carcel into English by good old Lord Berners. (Walpole’s
Royal and Noble Authors, London, 1806, 8vo, Vol. I. p. 241.
Dibdin’s Ames, London, 1810, 4to, Vol. III. p. 195; Vol. IV.
p. 339.) To Diego de San Pedro is also attributed the “Tratado
de Arnalte y Lucenda,” of which an edition, apparently not the
first, was printed at Burgos in 1522, and another in 1527. (Asso,
De Libris Hisp. Rarioribus, Cæsaraugustæ, 1794, 4to, p. 44.) From
a phrase in his “Contempt of Fortune,” (Cancionero General, 1573,
f. 158,) where he speaks of “aquellas cartas de Amores, escriptas
de dos en dos,” I suspect he wrote the “Proceso de Cartas de
Amores, que entre dos amantes pasaron,”--a series of extravagant
love-letters, full of the conceits of the times; in which last
case, he may also be the author of the “Quexa y Aviso contra
Amor,” or the story of Luzindaro and Medusina, alluded to in the
last of these letters. But as I know no edition of this story
earlier than that of 1553, I prefer to consider it in the next
period.
Among the consequences of the popularity enjoyed by the Carcel de Amor
was probably the appearance of the “Question de Amor,” an anonymous
tale, which is dated at the end, 17 April, 1512. It is a discussion
of the question, so often agitated from the age of the Courts of Love
to the days of Garcilasso de la Vega, who suffers most, the lover
whose mistress has been taken from him by death, or the lover who
serves a living mistress without hope. The controversy is here carried
on between Vasquiran, whose lady-love is dead, and Flamiano, who is
rejected and in despair. The scene is laid at Naples and in other parts
of Italy, beginning in 1508, and ending with the battle of Ravenna and
its disastrous consequences, four years later. It is full of the spirit
of the times. Chivalrous games and shows at the court of Naples,
a hunting scene, jousts and tournaments, and a tilting-match with
reeds, are all minutely described, with the dresses and armour, the
devices and mottoes, of the principal personages who took part in them.
Poetry, too, is freely scattered through it,--_villancicos_, _motes_,
and _invenciones_, such as are found in the Cancioneros; and, on one
occasion, an entire eclogue is set forth, as it was recited or played
before the court, and, on another, a poetical vision, in which the
lover who had lost his lady sees her again as if in life. The greater
part of the work claims to be true, and some portions of it are known
to be so; but the metaphysical discussion between the two sufferers,
sometimes angrily borne in letters, and sometimes tenderly carried on
in dialogue, constitutes the chain on which the whole is hung, and was
originally, no doubt, regarded as its chief merit. The story ends with
the death of Flamiano from wounds received in the battle of Ravenna;
but the question discussed is as little decided as it is at the
beginning.
The style is that of its age; sometimes picturesque, but generally
dull; and the interest of the whole is small, in consequence both of
the inherent insipidity of such a fine-spun discussion, and of the
too minute details given of the festivals and fights with which it is
crowded. It is, therefore, chiefly interesting as a very early attempt
to write historical romance; just as the “Carcel de Amor,” which called
it forth, is an attempt to write sentimental romance.[705]
[705] The “Question de Amor” was printed as early as 1527, and,
besides several editions of it that appeared separately, it
often occurs in the same volume with the Carcel. Both are among
the few books criticized by the author of the “Diálogo de las
Lenguas,” who praises both moderately; the Carcel for its style
more than the Question de Amor. (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom.
II. p. 167.) Both are in the Index Expurgatorius, 1667, pp. 323,
864; the last with a seeming ignorance, that regards it as a
Portuguese book.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CANCIONEROS OF BAENA, ESTUÑIGA, AND MARTINEZ DE BURGOS.--THE
CANCIONERO GENERAL OF CASTILLO.--ITS EDITIONS.--ITS DIVISIONS,
CONTENTS, AND CHARACTER.
The reigns of John the Second and of his children, Henry the Fourth
and Isabella the Catholic, over which we have now passed, extend from
1407 to 1504, and therefore fill almost a complete century, though they
comprise only two generations of sovereigns. Of the principal writers
who flourished while they sat on the throne of Castile we have already
spoken, whether they were chroniclers or dramatists, whether they
were poets or prose-writers, whether they belonged to the Provençal
school or to the Castilian. But, after all, a more distinct idea of
the poetical culture of Spain during this century, than can be readily
obtained in any other way, is to be gathered from the old Cancioneros;
those ample magazines, filled almost entirely with the poetry of the
age that preceded their formation.
Nothing, indeed, that belonged to the literature of the fifteenth
century in Spain marks its character more plainly than these large and
ill-digested collections. The oldest of them, to which we have more
than once referred, was the work of Juan Alfonso de Baena, a converted
Jew, and one of the secretaries of John the Second. It dates, from
internal evidence, between the years 1449 and 1454, and was made, as
the compiler tells us in his preface, chiefly to please the king, but
also, as he adds, in the persuasion that it would not be disregarded by
the queen, the heir-apparent, and the court and nobility in general.
For this purpose, he says, he had brought together the works of all the
Spanish poets who, in his own or any preceding age, had done honor to
what he calls “the very gracious art of the _Gaya Ciencia_.”
On examining the Cancionero of Baena, however, we find that quite
one third of the three hundred and eighty-four manuscript pages it
fills are given to Villasandino,--who died about 1424, and whom Baena
pronounces “the prince of all Spanish poets,”--and that nearly the
whole of the remaining two thirds is divided among Diego de Valencia,
Francisco Imperial, Baena himself, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and Ferrant
Manuel de Lando; while the names of about fifty other persons, some
of them reaching back to the reign of Henry the Third, are affixed to
a multitude of short poems, of which, probably, they were not in all
cases the authors. A little of it, like what is attributed to Macias,
is in the Galician dialect; but by far the greater part was written by
Castilians, who valued themselves upon their fashionable tone more than
upon any thing else, and who, in obedience to the taste of their time,
generally took the light and easy forms of Provençal verse, and as much
of the Italian spirit as they comprehended and knew how to appropriate.
Of poetry, except in some of the shorter pieces of Ferrant Lando,
Alvarez Gato, and Perez de Guzman, the Cancionero of Baena contains
hardly a trace.[706]
[706] Accounts of the Cancionero of Baena are found in Castro,
“Biblioteca Española” (Madrid, 1785, folio, Tom. I. pp. 265-346);
in Puybusque, “Histoire Comparée des Littératures Espagnole et
Française” (Paris, 1843, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 393-397); in Ochoa,
“Manuscritos” (Paris, 1844, 4to, pp. 281-286); and in Amador de
los Rios, “Estudios sobre los Judios” (Madrid, 1848, 8vo, pp.
408-419). The copy used by Castro was probably from the library
of Queen Isabella, (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 458,
note,) and is now in the National Library, Paris. Its collector,
Baena, is sneered at in the Cancionero of Fernan Martinez de
Burgos, (Memorias de Alfonso VIII. por Mondexar, Madrid, 1783,
4to, App. cxxxix.,) as a Jew who wrote vulgar verses.
The poems in this Cancionero that are probably not by the persons
whose names they bear are short and trifling,--such as might be
furnished to men of distinction by humble versifiers, who sought
their protection or formed a part of their courts. Thus, a poem
already noticed, that bears the name of Count Pero Niño, was, as
we are expressly told in a note to it, written by Villasandino,
in order that the Count might present himself before the lady
Blanche more gracefully than such a rough old soldier would
be likely to do, unless he were helped to a little poetical
gallantry.
Many similar collections were made about the same time, enough of
which remain to show that they were among the fashionable wants of the
age, and that there was little variety in their character. Among them
was the Cancionero in the Limousin dialect already mentioned;[707]
that called Lope de Estuñiga’s, which comprises works of about forty
authors;[708] that collected in 1464 by Fernan Martinez de Burgos; and
no less than seven others, preserved in the National Library at Paris,
all containing poetry of the middle and latter part of the fifteenth
century, often the same authors, and sometimes the same poems, that
are found in Baena and in Estuñiga.[709] They all belong to a state of
society in which the great nobility, imitating the king, maintained
poetical courts about them, such as that of the Marquis of Villena at
Barcelona, or the more brilliant one, perhaps, of the Duke Fadrique de
Castro, who had constantly in his household Puerto Carrero, Gayoso,
Manuel de Lando, and others then accounted great poets. That the
prevailing tone of all this was Provençal we cannot doubt; but that it
was somewhat influenced by a knowledge of the Italian we know from many
of the poems that have been published, and from the intimations of the
Marquis of Santillana in his letter to the Constable of Portugal.[710]
[707] See _ante_, Chapter XVII. note 543.
[708] The Cancionero of Lope de Estuñiga is, or was lately, in
the National Library at Madrid, among the folio MSS., marked M.
48, well written and filling 163 leaves.
[709] The fashion of making such collections of poetry, generally
called “Cancioneros,” was very common in Spain in the fifteenth
century, just before and just after the introduction of the art
of printing.
One of them, compiled in 1464, with additions of a later date,
by Fernan Martinez de Burgos, begins with poems by his father,
and goes on with others by Villasandino, who is greatly praised
both as a soldier and a writer; by Fernan Sanchez de Talavera,
some of which are dated 1408; by Pero Velez de Guevara, 1422; by
Gomez Manrique; by Santillana; by Fernan Perez de Guzman; and, in
short, by the authors then best known at court. Mem. de Alfonso
VIII., Madrid, 1783, 4to, App. cxxxiv.-cxl.
Several other Cancioneros of the same period are in the National
Library, Paris, and contain almost exclusively the known
fashionable authors of that century; such as Santillana, Juan de
Mena, Lopez de Çuñiga [Estuñiga?], Juan Rodriguez del Padron,
Juan de Villalpando, Suero de Ribera, Fernan Perez de Guzman,
Gomez Manrique, Diego del Castillo, Alvaro Garcia de Santa María,
Alonso Alvarez de Toledo, etc. There are no less than seven
such Cancioneros in all, notices of which are found in Ochoa,
“Catálogo de MSS. Españoles en la Biblioteca Real de Paris,”
Paris, 1844, 4to, pp. 378-525.
[710] Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. p. lxi., with the
notes on the passage relating to the Duke Fadrique.
Thus far, more had been done in collecting the poetry of the time
than might have been anticipated from the troubled state of public
affairs; but it had been done only in one direction, and even in that
with little judgment. The king and the more powerful of the nobility
might indulge in the luxury of such Cancioneros and such poetical
courts, but a general poetical culture could not be expected to follow
influences so partial and inadequate. A new order of things, however,
soon arose. In 1474, the art of printing was fairly established in
Spain; and it is a striking fact, that the first book ascertained to
have come from the Spanish press is a collection of poems recited that
year by forty different poets contending for a public prize.[711] No
doubt, such a volume was not compiled on the principle of the elder
manuscript Cancioneros. Still, in some respects, it resembles them, and
in others seems to have been the result of their example. But however
this may be, a collection of poetry was printed at Saragossa, in 1492,
containing the works of nine authors, among whom were Juan de Mena,
the younger Manrique, and Fernan Perez de Guzman; the whole evidently
made on the same principle and for the same purpose as the Cancioneros
of Baena and Estuñiga, and dedicated to Queen Isabella, as the great
patroness of whatever tended to the advancement of letters.[712]
[711] Fuster, Bib. Valenciana, Tom. I. p. 52. All the Cancioneros
mentioned before 1474 are still in MS.
[712] Mendez, Typog., pp. 134-137 and 383.
It was a remarkable book to appear within eighteen years after the
introduction of printing into Spain, when little but the most worthless
Latin treatises had come from the national press; but it was far from
containing all the Spanish poetry that was soon demanded. In 1511,
therefore, Fernando del Castillo printed at Valencia what he called a
“Cancionero General,” or General Collection of Poetry; the first book
to which this well-known title was ever given. It professes to contain
“many and divers works of all or of the most notable Troubadours of
Spain, the ancient as well as the modern, in devotion, in morality,
in love, in jests, ballads, _villancicos_, songs, devices, mottoes,
glosses, questions, and answers.” It, in fact, contains poems
attributed to about a hundred different persons, from the time of the
Marquis of Santillana down to the period in which it was made; most
of the separate pieces being placed under the names of those who were
their authors, or were assumed to be so, while the rest are collected
under the respective titles or divisions just enumerated, which
then constituted the favorite subjects and forms of verse at court.
Of proper order or arrangement, of critical judgment, or tasteful
selection, there seems to have been little thought.
The work, however, was successful. In 1514, a new edition of it
appeared; and before 1540, six others had followed, at Toledo and
Seville, making, when taken together, eight in less than thirty years;
a number which, if the peculiar nature and large size of the work are
considered, can hardly find its parallel, at the same period, in any
other European literature. Later,--in 1557 and 1573,--yet two other
editions, somewhat enlarged, appeared at Antwerp, whither the inherited
rights and military power of Charles the Fifth had carried a familiar
knowledge of the Spanish language and a love for its cultivation. In
each of the ten editions of this remarkable book, it should be borne
in mind, that we may look for the body of poetry most in favor at
court and in the more refined society of Spain during the whole of the
fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth; the last and
amplest of them comprising the names of one hundred and thirty-six
authors, some of whom go back to the beginning of the reign of John the
Second, while others come down to the time of the Emperor Charles the
Fifth.[713]
[713] For the bibliography of these excessively rare and curious
books, see Ebert, Bibliographisches Lexicon; and Brunet, Manuel,
in verb. _Cancionero_, and _Castillo_. I have, I believe, seen
copies of eight of the editions. Those which I possess are of
1535 and 1573.
Taking this Cancionero, then, as a true poetical representative of
the period it embraces, the first thing we observe, on opening it,
is a mass of devotional verse, evidently intended as a vestibule to
conciliate favor for the more secular and free portions that follow.
But it is itself very poor and gross; so poor and so gross, that we
can hardly understand how, at any period, it can have been deemed
religious. Indeed, within a century from the time when the Cancionero
was published, this part of it was already become so offensive to the
Church it had originally served to propitiate, that the whole of it
was cut out of such printed copies as came within the reach of the
ecclesiastical powers.[714]
[714] A copy of the edition of 1535, ruthlessly cut to pieces,
bears this memorandum:--
“Este libro esta expurgado por el Expurgatorio del Santo Oficio,
con licencia.
F. Baptista Martinez.”
The whole of the religious poetry at the beginning is torn out of
it.
There can be no doubt, however, about the devotional purposes for which
it was first destined; some of the separate compositions being by the
Marquis of Santillana, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and other well-known
authors of the fifteenth century, who thus intended to give an odor of
sanctity to their works and lives. A few poems in this division of the
Cancionero, as well as a few scattered in other parts of it, are in the
Limousin dialect; a circumstance which is probably to be attributed to
the fact, that the whole was first collected and published in Valencia.
But nothing in this portion can be accounted truly poetical, and very
little of it religious. The best of its shorter poems is, perhaps, the
following address of Mossen Juan Tallante to a figure of the Saviour
expiring on the cross:--
O God! the infinitely great,
That didst this ample world outspread,--
The true! the high!
And, in thy grace compassionate,
Upon the tree didst bow thy head,
For us to die!
O! since it pleased thy love to bear
Such bitter suffering for our sake,
O Agnus Dei!
Save us with him whom thou didst spare,
Because that single word he spake,--
Memento mei![715]
[715]
Imenso Dios, perdurable,
Que el mundo todo criaste,
Verdadero,
Y con amor entrañable
Por nosotros espiraste
En el madero:
Pues te plugo tal passion
Por nuestras culpas sufrir,
O Agnus Dei,
Llevanos do está el ladron,
Que salvaste por decir,
Memento mei.
Cancionero General, Anvers, 1573, f. 5.
Fuster, Bib. Valenciana, (Tom. I. p. 81,) tries to make out
something concerning the author of this little poem; but does
not, I think, succeed.
Next after the division of devotional poetry comes the series of
authors upon whom the whole collection relied for its character and
success when it was first published; a series, to form which, the
editor says, in the original dedication to the Count of Oliva, he had
employed himself during twenty years. Of such of them as are worthy a
separate notice--the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, Fernan Perez
de Guzman, and the three Manriques--we have already spoken. The rest
are the Viscount of Altamira, Diego Lopez de Haro,[716] Antonio de
Velasco, Luis de Vivero, Hernan Mexia, Suarez, Cartagena, Rodriguez
del Padron, Pedro Torellas, Dávalos,[717] Guivara, Alvarez Gato,[718]
the Marquis of Astorga, Diego de San Pedro, and Garci Sanchez de
Badajoz,--the last a poet whose versification is his chief merit, but
who was long remembered by succeeding poets from the circumstance that
he went mad for love.[719] They all belong to the courtly school; and
we know little of any of them except from hints in their own poems,
nearly all of which are so wearisome from their heavy sameness, that it
is a task to read them.
[716] In the Library of the Academy of History at Madrid (Misc.
Hist., MS., Tom. III., No. 2) is a poem by Diego Lopez de Haro,
of about a thousand lines, in a manuscript apparently of the
end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century, of
which I have a copy. It is entitled “Aviso para Cuerdos,”--A Word
for the Wise,--and is arranged as a dialogue, with a few verses
spoken in the character of some distinguished personage, human
or superhuman, allegorical, historical, or from Scripture, and
then an answer to each, by the author himself. In this way above
sixty persons are introduced, among whom are Adam and Eve, with
the Angel that drove them from Paradise, Troy, Priam, Jerusalem,
Christ, Julius Cæsar, and so on down to King Bamba and Mahomet.
The whole is in the old Spanish verse, and has little poetical
thought in it, as may be seen by the following words of Saul and
the answer by Don Diego, which I give as a favorable specimen of
the entire poem:--
SAUL.
En mi pena es de mirar,
Que peligro es para vos
El glosar u el mudar
Lo que manda el alto Dios;
Porque el manda obedecelle;
No juzgalle, mas creelle.
A quien a Dios a de entender,
Lo que el sabe a de saber.
AUTOR.
Pienso yo que en tal defecto
Cae presto el coraçon
Del no sabio en rreligion,
Creyendo que a lo perfecto
Puede dar mas perficion.
Este mal tiene el glosar;
Luego a Dios quiere enmendar.
Oviedo, in his “Quinquagenas,” says that Diego Lopez de Haro was
“the mirror of gallantry among the youth of his time”; and he is
known to history for his services in the war of Granada, and as
Spanish ambassador at Rome. (See Clemencin, in Mem. de la Acad.
de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 404.) He figures in the “Inferno de Amor”
of Sanchez de Badajoz; and his poems are found in the Cancionero
General, 1573, ff. 82-90, and a few other places.
[717] He founded the fortunes of the family of which the Marquis
of Pescara was so distinguished a member in the time of Charles
V.; his first achievement having been to kill a Portuguese in
fair fight, after public challenge, and in presence of both the
armies. The poet rose to be Constable of Castile. Historia de D.
Hernando Dávalos, Marques de Pescara, Anvers, 1558, 12mo, Lib.
I., c. 1.
[718] Besides what are to be found in the Cancioneros
Generales,--for example, in that of 1573, at ff. 148-152, 189,
etc.,--there is a MS. in possession of the Royal Academy at
Madrid, (Codex No. 114,) which contains a large number of poems
by Alvarez Gato. Their author was a person of consequence in his
time, and served John II., Henry IV., and Ferdinand and Isabella,
in affairs of state. With John he was on terms of friendship. One
day, when the king missed him from his hunting-party and was told
he was indisposed, he replied, “Let us, then, go and see him; he
is my friend,”--and returned to make the kindly visit. Gato died
after 1495. Gerónimo Quintana, Historia de Madrid, Madrid, 1629,
folio, f. 221.
The poetry of Gato is sometimes connected with public affairs;
but, in general, like the rest of that which marks the period
when it was written, it is in a courtly and affected tone, and
devoted to love and gallantry. Some of it is more lively and
natural than most of its doubtful class. Thus, when his lady-love
told him “he must talk sense,” he replied, that he had lost the
little he ever had from the time when he first saw her, ending
his poetical answer with these words:--
But if, in good faith, you require
That sense should come back to me,
Show the kindness to which I aspire,
Give the freedom you know I desire,
And pay me my service fee.
Si queres que de verdad
Torné a mi seso y sentido,
Usad agora bondad,
Torname mi libertad,
E pagame lo servido.
[719] Memorias de la Acad. de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 404. The
“Lecciones de Job,” by Badajoz, were early put into the Index
Expurgatorius, and kept there to the last.
Thus, the Viscount Altamira has a long, dull dialogue between Feeling
and Knowledge; Diego Lopez de Haro has another between Reason and
Thought; Hernan Mexia, one between Sense and Thought; and Costana,
one between Affection and Hope;--all belonging to the fashionable
class of poems called moralities or moral discussions, all in one
measure and manner, and all counterparts to each other in grave,
metaphysical refinements and poor conceits. On the other hand, we have
light, amatory poetry, some of which, like that of Garci Sanchez de
Badajoz on the Book of Job, that of Rodriguez del Padron on the Ten
Commandments, and that of the younger Manrique on the forms of a
monastic profession, irreverently applied to the profession of love,
are, one would think, essentially irreligious, whatever they may have
been deemed at the time they were written. But in all of them, and,
indeed, in the whole series of works of the twenty different authors
filling this important division of the Cancionero, hardly a poetical
thought is to be found, except in the poems of a few who have already
been noticed, and of whom the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, and
the younger Manrique are the chief.[720]
[720] The Cancionero of 1535 consists of 191 leaves, in large
folio, Gothic letters, and triple columns. Of these, the
devotional poetry fills eighteen leaves, and the series of
authors mentioned above extends from f. 18 to f. 97. It is worth
notice, that the beautiful Coplas of Manrique do not occur in any
one of these courtly Cancioneros.
Next after the series of authors just mentioned, we have a collection
of a hundred and twenty-six “Canciones,” or Songs, bearing the names of
a large number of the most distinguished Spanish poets and gentlemen of
the fifteenth century. Nearly all of them are regularly constructed,
each consisting of two stanzas, the first with four and the second with
eight lines,--the first expressing the principal idea, and the second
repeating and amplifying it. They remind us, in some respects, of
Italian sonnets, but are more constrained in their movement, and fall
into a more natural alliance with conceits. Hardly one in the large
collection of the Cancionero is easy or flowing, and the following,
by Cartagena, whose name occurs often, and who was one of the Jewish
family that rose so high in the Church after its conversion, is above
the average merit of its class.[721]
[721] The Canciones are found, ff. 98-106.
I know not why first I drew breath,
Since living is only a strife,
Where I am rejected of Death,
And would gladly reject my own life.
For all the days I may live
Can only be filled with grief;
With Death I must ever strive,
And never from Death find relief.
So that Hope must desert me at last,
Since Death has not failed to see
That life will revive in me
The moment his arrow is cast.[722]
[722]
No se para que nasci,
Pues en tal estremo esto
Que el morir no quiere a mi,
Y el viuir no quiero yo.
Todo el tiempo que viviere
Terne muy justa querella
De la muerte, pues no quiere
A mi, queriendo yo a ella.
Que fin espero daqui,
Pues la muerte me negó,
Pues que claramente vió
Quera vida para mi.
f. 98. b.
This was thought to be a tender compliment to the lady whose coldness
had made her lover desire a death that would not obey his summons.
Thirty-seven Ballads succeed; a charming collection of wild-flowers,
which have already been sufficiently examined when speaking of the
ballad poetry of the earliest age of Spanish literature.[723]
[723] These ballads, already noticed, _ante_, Chap. VI., are in
the Cancionero of 1535, ff. 106-115.
After the Ballads we come to the “Invenciones,” a form of verse
peculiarly characteristic of the period, and of which we have here
two hundred and twenty specimens. They belong to the institutions
of chivalry, and especially to the arrangements for tourneys and
joustings, which were the most gorgeous of the public amusements known
in the reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth. Each knight,
on such occasions, had a device, or drew one for himself by lot; and
to this device or crest a poetical explanation was to be affixed by
himself, which was called an _invencion_. Some of these posies are
very ingenious; for conceits are here in their place. King John, for
instance, drew a prisoner’s cage for his crest, and furnished for its
motto,--
Even imprisonment still is confessed,
Though heavy its sorrows may fall,
To be but a righteous behest,
When it comes from the fairest and best
Whom the earth its mistress can call.
The well-known Count Haro drew a _noria_, or a wheel over which passes
a rope, with a series of buckets attached to it, that descend empty
into a well and come up full of water. He gave, for his _invencion_,--
The full show my griefs running o’er;
The empty, the hopes I deplore.
On another occasion, he drew, like the king, an emblem of a prisoner’s
cage, and answered to it by an imperfect rhyme,--
In the gaol which you here behold--
Whence escape there is none, as you see--
I must live. What a life must it be![724]
[724] “Saco el Rey nuestro señor una red de carcel, y decia la
letra:--
Qualquier prision y dolor
Que se sufra, es justa cosa,
Pues se sufre por amor
De la mayor y mejor
Del mundo, y la mas hermosa.
“El conde de Haro saco una noria, y dixo:--
Los llenos, de males mios;
D’ esperança, los vazios.
“El mismo por cimera una carcel y el en ella, y dixo:--
En esta carcel que veys,
Que no se halla salida,
Viuire, mas ved que vida!”
The _Invenciones_, though so numerous, fill only three leaves,
115 to 117. They occur, also, constantly in the old chronicles
and books of chivalry. The “Question de Amor” contains many of
them.
Akin to the _Invenciones_ were the “Motes con sus Glosas”; mottoes or
short apophthegms, which we find here to the number of above forty,
each accompanied by a heavy, rhymed gloss. The mottoes themselves are
generally proverbs, and have a national and sometimes a spirited air.
Thus, the lady Catalina Manrique took “Never mickle cost but little,”
referring to the difficulty of obtaining her regard, to which Cartagena
answered, with another proverb, “Merit pays all,” and then explained
or mystified both with a tedious gloss. The rest are not better, and
all were valued, at the time they were composed, for precisely what now
seems most worthless in them.[725]
[725] Though Lope de Vega, in his “Justa Poética de San Isidro,”
(Madrid, 1620, 4to, f. 76,) declares the _Glosas_ to be “a most
ancient and peculiarly Spanish composition, never used in any
other nation,” they were, in fact, an invention of the Provençal
poets, and, no doubt, came to Spain with their original authors.
(Raynouard, Troub., Tom. II. pp. 248-254.) The rules for their
composition in Spain were, as we see also from Cervantes, (Don
Quixote, Parte II. c. 18,) very strict and rarely observed; and
I cannot help agreeing with the friend of the mad knight, that
the poetical results obtained were little worth the trouble they
cost. The _Glosas_ of the Cancionero of 1535 are at ff. 118-120.
The “Villancicos” that follow--songs in the old Spanish measure, with
a refrain and occasionally short verses broken in--are more agreeable,
and sometimes are not without merit. They received their name from
their rustic character, and were believed to have been first composed
by the _villanos_, or peasants, for the Nativity and other festivals of
the Church. Imitations of these rude roundelays are found, as we have
seen, in Juan de la Enzina, and occur in a multitude of poets since;
but the fifty-four in the Cancionero, many of which bear the names of
leading poets in the preceding century, are too courtly in their tone,
and approach the character of the _Canciones_.[726] In other respects,
they remind us of the earliest French madrigals, or, still more, of the
Provençal poems, that are nearly in the same measures.[727]
[726] The author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas” (Mayans y
Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. p. 151) gives the _refrain_ or
_ritornello_ of a _Villancico_, which, he says, was sung by every
body in Spain in his time, and is the happiest specimen I know of
the genus, conceit and all.
Since I have seen thy blessed face,
Lady, my love is not amiss;
But, had I never known that grace,
How could I have deserved such bliss?
[727] The _Villancicos_ are in the Cancionero of 1535 at ff.
120-125. See also Covarrubias, Tesoro, in verb. _Villancico_.
The last division of this conceited kind of poetry collected into the
first Cancioneros Generales is that called “Preguntas,” or Questions;
more properly, Questions and Answers; since it is merely a series of
riddles, with their solutions in verse. Childish as such trifles may
seem now, they were admired in the fifteenth century. Baena, in the
Preface to his collection, mentions them among its most considerable
attractions; and the series here given, consisting of fifty-five,
begins with such authors as the Marquis of Santillana and Juan de Mena,
and ends with Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, and other poets of note who
lived in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Probably it was an easy
exercise of the wits in extemporaneous verse practised at the court of
John the Second, as we find it practised, above a century later, by
the shepherds in the “Galatea” of Cervantes.[728] But the specimens
of it in the Cancioneros are painfully constrained; the answers being
required to correspond in every particular of measure, number, and the
succession of rhymes with those of the precedent question. On the other
hand, the riddles themselves are sometimes very simple, and sometimes
very familiar; Juan de Mena, for instance, gravely proposing that
of the Sphinx of Œdipus to the Marquis of Santillana, as if it were
possible the Marquis had never before heard of it.[729]
[728] Galatea, Lib. VI.
[729] The _Preguntas_ extend from f. 126 to f. 134.
Thus far the contents of the Cancionero General date from the
fifteenth century, and chiefly from the middle and latter part of it.
Subsequently, we have a series of poets who belong rather to the reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella, such as Puerto Carrero, the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, Don Juan Manuel of Portugal, Heredia, and a few others; after
which follows, in the early editions, a collection of what are called
“Jests provoking Laughter,”--really, a number of very gross poems
which constitute part of an indecent Cancionero printed separately at
Valencia, several years afterwards, but which were soon excluded from
the editions of the Cancionero General, where a few trifles, sometimes
in the Valencian dialect, are inserted, to fill up the space they had
occupied.[730] The air of this second grand division of the collection
is, however, like the air of that which precedes it, and the poetical
merit is less. At last, near the conclusion of the editions of 1557 and
1573, we meet with compositions belonging to the time of Charles the
Fifth, among which are two by Boscan, a few in the Italian language,
and still more in the Italian manner; all indicating a new state of
things, and a new development of the forms of Spanish poetry.[731]
[730] The complete list of the authors in this part of the
Cancionero is as follows:--Costana, Puerto Carrero, Avila, the
Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Count Castro, Luis de Tovar, Don Juan
Manuel, Tapia, Nicolas Nuñez, Soria, Pinar, Ayllon, Badajoz el
Músico, the Count of Oliva, Cardona, Frances Carroz, Heredia,
Artes, Quiros, Coronel, Escriva, Vazquez, and Ludueña. Of most
of them only a few trifles are given. The “Burlas provocantes
a Risa” follow, in the edition of 1514, after the poems of
Ludueña, but do not appear in that of 1526, or in any subsequent
edition. Most of them, however, are found in the collection
referred to, entitled “Cancionero de Obras de Burlas provocantes
a Risa” (Valencia, 1519, 4to). It begins with one rather long
poem, and ends with another,--the last being a brutal parody of
the “Trescientas” of Juan de Mena. The shorter poems are often
by well-known names, such as Jorge Manrique, and Diego de San
Pedro, and are not always liable to objection on the score of
decency. But the general tone of the work, which is attributed to
ecclesiastical hands, is as coarse as possible. A small edition
of it was printed at London, in 1841, marked on its title-page
“Cum Privilegio, en Madrid, por Luis Sanchez.” It has a curious
and well-written Preface, and a short, but learned, Glossary.
From p. 203 to the end, p. 246, are a few poems not found in the
original Cancionero de Burlas; one by Garci Sanchez de Badajoz,
one by Rodrigo de Reynosa, etc.
[731] This part of the Cancionero of 1535, which is of very
little value, fills ff. 134-191. The whole volume contains
about 49,000 verses. The Antwerp editions of 1557 and 1573 are
larger, and contain about 58,000; but the last part of each is
the worst part. One of the pieces near the end is a ballad on
the renunciation of empire made by Charles V. at Brussels, in
October, 1555; the most recent date, so far as I have observed,
that can be assigned to any poem in any of the collections.
But this change belongs to another period of the literature of Castile,
before entering on which we must notice a few circumstances in the
Cancioneros characteristic of the one we have just gone over. And
here the first thing that strikes us is the large number of persons
whose verses are thus collected. In that of 1535, which may be taken
as the average of the whole series, there are not less than a hundred
and twenty. But out of this multitude, the number really claiming any
careful notice is small. Many persons appear only as the contributors
of single trifles, such as a device or a _cancion_, and sometimes,
probably, never wrote even these. Others contributed only two or three
short poems, which their social position, rather than their taste or
talents, led them to adventure. So that the number of those appearing
in the proper character of authors in the Cancionero General is only
about forty, and of these not more than four or five deserve to be
remembered.
But the rank and personal consideration of those that throng it are,
perhaps, more remarkable than their number, and certainly more so than
their merit. John the Second is there, and Prince Henry, afterwards
Henry the Fourth; the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[732] the Count Haro,
and the Count of Plasencia; the Dukes of Alva, Albuquerque, and Medina
Sidonia; the Count of Tendilla and Don Juan Manuel; the Marquises of
Santillana, Astorga, and Villa Franca; the Viscount Altamira, and other
leading personages of their time; so that, as Lope de Vega once said,
“most of the poets of that age were great lords, admirals, constables,
dukes, counts, and kings”;[733] or, in other words, verse-writing was a
fashion at the court of Castile in the fifteenth century.
[732] There is a short poem by the Constable in the Commentary
of Fernan Nuñez to the 265th Copla of Juan de Mena; and in the
fine old Chronicle of the Constable’s life, we are told of him,
(Título LXVIII.,) “Fue muy inventivo e mucho dado a fallar
_invenciones_ y sacar entremeses, o en justas o en guerra; en las
quales invenciones muy agudamente significaba lo que queria.”
He is also the author of an unpublished prose work, dated 1446,
“On Virtuous and Famous Women,” to which Juan de Mena wrote a
Preface; the Constable, at that time, being at the height of his
power. It is not, as its title might seem to indicate, translated
from a work by Boccaccio, with nearly the same name; but an
original production of the great Castilian minister of state.
Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 464, note.
[733] Obras Sueltas, Madrid, 1777, 4to, Tom. XI. p. 358.