A book entitled _Memorias para la vida del Excmo. Señor D. Gaspar
Melchor de Jovellanos_, was published, at Madrid, in 1814, by Cean
Bermudez. This gentleman, whose uninterrupted intimacy from early
youth with the subject of his Memoirs, enabled him to draw an
animated picture of one of the most interesting men that Spain has
produced in her decline, has, probably, from the habits of reserve
and false notions of decorum, still prevalent in that country,
greatly disappointed our hopes. What relates to Jovellanos himself
is confined to a few pages, containing little more than the dates of
events connected with his public life, some vague declamation, and a
few inuendos on the great intrigues which, having raised him to the
ministry, confined him soon after to the fortress of Bellver. The
second part contains a catalogue, and a slight analysis of his works.
The friends of Jovellanos, however, are indebted to the author of the
Memorias, for the help which this collection of notes on the life of
that truly excellent and amiable man will afford any future writer
who, with more settled habits of freedom, and altogether under more
favourable circumstances, shall undertake to draw the full-length
picture of which we yet scarcely possess a sketch.
For the satisfaction of such of our readers as may wish to know the
fate of Jovellanos, we subjoin a brief account of the last years of
his life.
Upon the accession of Ferdinand VII., Jovellanos was, by royal order,
released from his confinement, and subsequently elected a Member of
the Central Junta. When the French entered Seville in 1810, and the
Regency of Cadiz superseded the Junta, he wished to retire to his
native place, Gijon, in Asturias.
The popular feeling, exasperated by national misfortunes, was now
venting itself against the abdicated Government, to whose want of
energy the advantages of the French were indiscriminately attributed;
and Jovellanos, accidentally detained in the Bay of Cadiz, had the
mortification of learning that he was involved in the absurd and
shameful suspicion of having shared in the spoil of the Spanish
treasury, with which the Central Junta was charged. A dignified
appeal to the candour of the nation, which he sent to the Cadiz
papers for insertion, was not permitted to see the light--so narrow
and illiberal were the views of the Regency--and the feeling and
high-minded Castilian had to sail under the intolerable apprehension
that some of his countrymen might look upon him as a felon
endeavouring to abscond from justice.
If any one circumstance could add to the painfulness of Jovellanos’s
situation, it was that, while the thoughtlessness or the ingratitude
of his countrymen thus involved him in a suspicion of peculation,
the state of his finances was such as to have obliged him to accept
the sum of little more than one hundred pounds, the savings of many
year’s service, which his trusty valet pressed upon him, with tears,
that he might defray the expenses of their removal from Seville.
After being almost wrecked on the coast of Galicia, Jovellanos was
obliged to land at the small town of Muros. Here he had to endure a
fresh insult from the petty Junta of that province, by whose orders
his papers were minutely searched, and copies taken at the option of
an officer sent for that purpose with a military detachment.
A temporary retreat of the French from Gijon enabled Jovellanos to
revisit his native town; but an unexpected return of the invaders
obliged him soon after to take ship with the utmost precipitation.
His flight was so sudden that he was actually at sea without having
determined upon a place of refuge. Had the venerable and unhappy
fugitive listened to the repeated invitations which his intimate
friend Lord Holland sent him after the first appearance of danger
from the progress of the French, his life might have been prolonged
under the hospitable roof of Holland House. But Jovellanos’s notions
of public duty were too exalted and romantic: and he would not quit
Spain while there was a single spot in the possession of her patriots.
In attempting to reach by sea the port of Ribadeo, where there lay
a Spanish frigate, in which he hoped to find a passage to Cadiz,
another storm kept him for eight days under the peculiar hardships of
a dangerous navigation in a small and crowded ship. Exhausted both in
body and mind, and with a heart almost broken by the ill-treatment he
had met with at the close of a long life spent in the service of his
country, he landed at Vega, where, the poverty of the town offering
no better accommodations, he was placed in the same room with Valdés
Llanos, an old friend and relation, who had joined him in the flight,
and seemed so shattered by age and fatigue, as not to be able to
survive the effects of the late storm. Here Jovellanos employed his
remaining strength in nursing and comforting his fellow-sufferer,
till, Valdés being near his end, his friend was, according to the
notions of the country, removed to another room. But death had
also laid his hand on Jovellanos. Two days after completing his
sixty-sixth year, he was laid in the same grave with his friend.[69]
[69] In the Appendix No. 2, to Lord Holland’s _Life of Lope de
Vega_ are found both the originals and translations of some
eloquent passages from Jovellanos’s pen, to which I have made an
allusion in this note. His portrait also, from a marble bust
executed at Seville by Don Angel Monasterio, at his lordship’s
desire, and now in his possession, is prefixed to the second
volume of the same work.