MOSEN JORDI.--CANCIONERO.--ALPHONSO X. AND HIS
COURT.--ALPHONSO XI. AND HIS COURT.--JUAN DE
MENA.
In every other country, to treat of its literary men is at the same time
to give a history of its literature. In Spain it is otherwise. We have
no trace of who the poets were who produced that vast collection of
ballads and romances, which, full of chivalry and adventure, love and
war, fascinate the imagination, and bestow immortality on heroes--some
real, some fictitious--who otherwise had never been known. To understand
the merits of the later writers, to know on what their style and spirit
was formed, it is necessary to give some account of the early, and also
of the anonymous, poetry of Spain. Nor will it be foreign to the
subject, nor uninteresting, slightly to trace the progress of literature
in the Peninsula from its earliest date. From a thousand causes Spain is
the land of romance. There never was any one who has travelled in that
country, whatever might be his political opinions, or his view of human
nature and society, but admired and loved the Spaniards. There is an
originality, an independence, an enthusiasm, in the Spanish character
that distinguishes them from every other people. Despotism and the
Inquisition, ignorance and superstition, have been unable to level the
noble altitude of their souls; and even while the manifestations of
genius have been crushed, genius has survived.
From early times Spain was the birthplace of men of eminence in
literature. We know little of the aborigines, and nothing of their
language, except that from the earliest times they appear to have been
gifted with that love of song that survives to this day. Silius Italicus
hears testimony to this taste, when with all the arrogance of assumed
superiority he speaks of the verses sung by the Gallicians in their
native dialect, "barbara nunc patriis ululantem carmina linguis," and
Strabo alludes to immemorial ballads sung by the inhabitants of Betica.
When the Spaniards shared the refinements and learning of the capital,
several names became distinguished. Lucan was a native of Cordova. We
can fancy that we trace the genuine Spanish spirit in this
poet--earnestness, enthusiasm, gaudiness, and an inveterate tendency to
diffuseness. The two Senecas were natives, also, of the same town.[1]
The Spaniards with fond pride collect other names which the tide of time
sweeping by, has cast on the shore, too obscure for fame, but
sufficiently known to prove that the Spanish nation was always prolific
in men who sought to distinguish themselves in literature.
These recollections, however, belong to another race. The Visigoths
swept over the land, annihilated the Roman power, and, as far as any
traces that have come down to us avouch, absorbed the aboriginal Iberian
in their invasion. Yet, though they conquered and reigned over the land,
it is to be doubted how far they actually amalgamated with the natives.
And it is conjectured that one of the causes why the Moors, after
conquering Don Roderick in battle, so soon possessed themselves of city
and district, and founded what at first was a sway as peaceful as
universal, was occasioned by the distinction still subsisting between
Iberian and Goth, which led the former the more readily to submit to new
masters.
The Goths were an illiterate people. There is an anecdote recorded in
proof of their barbarism on this point. Queen Amalasunta, who appears to
have possessed a more refined and exalted mind than the men of her time,
was eager to confer on her son Alaric the graces and accomplishments of
literature. The warriors of the land opposed her purpose,--"No," they
cried, "the idleness of study is unworthy of the Goth: high thoughts of
glory are not fed by books, but by deeds of valour. He is to be a king
whom all should dread. He shall not be compelled to fear his
instructors."[2]
Another proof of the ignorance and small influence of the Goths is their
having adopted the language of the conquered country. All that has come
down to us from them, with the exception of a few inscriptions, is in
the Latin language, and several poems were written in that tongue. Still
the Goths loved warlike songs and music. To their days some would trace
the redondilla, while it has also been conjectured that the peculiar
rhythm of these national ballads had its origin in the camp songs of the
Roman soldiers.[3]
At length the Gothic power fell--the Moors entered, overran, and
conquered Spain. At first the resistance they met was not at all
proportionate to what we should consider to have been the resources of
the Spanish nation. But a noble spirit of resistance was awakened.
Difference of religion kept alive what difference of language and habits
originated. The enthusiastic patriotism which had gathered as waters in
a mountain tarn, overflowed from the heights to which it had retreated,
and finally poured over the whole land. From the struggle that ensued a
thousand deeds of heroism had birth, and those circumstances were
developed, which became the subjects to be consecrated by those
beautiful ballads and songs, "in which," to use the appropriate language
of a modern critic, "truth wears the graceful garb of romance, and
romance appears the honest handmaid of truth."
Spain owed much to the Moor, however, from other causes. The Arabs were
a learned and refined race. They built cities, palaces, and mosques;
they founded universities, they encouraged learning. The most eminent
scholars came from the East to grace their schools, and introduced a
spirit of inquiry and a love of knowledge which survived their power.
Abdorrhaman III. founded the university at Cordova. He established
schools and collected a library, it is said, to the extent of six
hundred thousand volumes. The blessings of civilisation was fostered by
the Omajad dynasty. Mahometanism never flourished with such true glory
as under the Spanish caliphs.
One of the most remarkable circumstances of this era is, the prosperity
and learning of the Jews settled in Spain. Persecuted by the Goths[4],
this hapless nation doubtless welcomed the Moors gladly; and finding
toleration under their rule, and their schools open to them, they
flocked to the universities of Cordova and Toledo in such numbers, that
one Jewish writer tells us that there were twelve thousand Israelitish
students at Toledo; and they gave evidence of the perseverance,
sagacity, and talent which belong to that people, and which, fostered by
the blessed spirit of toleration, bore worthy fruit.
A succession of Hebrew scholars may be traced from the tenth to the
fifteenth centuries. De Castro gives an account of seven hundred
different works. Every Jew could read. The higher classes flourished in
glory and prosperity, so that many of the noblest Spanish families
include Jewish sprouts in the tree of their genealogy. Even to this day
the Jews' sons of those driven from Spain to this country remember their
Spanish renown, and have preserved a recollection of its language.
Of the Arabic authors of Spain the greater portion were natives of
Andalusia. The number of their poets was very considerable. Of the
_Romances Moriscos_ doubtless many originated in Arabic poetry. The old
Roman rhythm, the Gothic love of music, the Arab chivalry, and the noble
spirit generated by a generous love of freedom, were the sources of
these romances. Before we recur to them however, we will mention the
connection between the troubadour and Provençal poetry with the
Valentian. It is a singular anomaly, we may almost call it, in
literature, that a dialect become a written one, adorned by poets and
spoken through extensive provinces, should have become the dead tongue
of modern times. The French, Italian, and Castillian absorbed the genius
that once took form in a tongue which, whether it be called Provençal,
Limousin, or Valentian, is still the same, and in it were written the
earliest modern verses. Petrarch and Dante raised their native tongue in
opposition; but the poetry they studied as anterior to their own was the
Provençal. The peculiar tone of troubadour poetry; the refined and
somewhat abstract mode in which love is treated, was adopted by
Petrarch, and by Dante also, in his sonnets and canzoni. The rhythm and
the subjects were more artful and scientific than the songs of Castille,
and thus at one time it was held in higher regard by the Spanish
sovereigns who wished to introduce learning and poetry among their
subjects. John I. of Arragon invited many Provençal and Narbonne poets
to settle at Barcelona and Tortosa. He established an academy in the
former city for the cultivation of poetry. The Spanish troubadours
became celebrated; Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi is one of the first and
best-known. Petrarch read and, perhaps, imitated him.[5]
Though protected and encouraged by the sovereigns of Arragon, and read
and lauded, and even imitated, by the nobles of their courts, the
Valentian never became the national poetry of Spain, and we turn from
poets who will find better place among the early French writers to the
genuine productions of Castille.
We have seen that it was during the Moorish wars, under the successors
of Don Pelayo, that these romances had birth. The kings of the various
provinces of Spain, ever at war with the Moors, were, of course, in a
state of great dependence on their warrior nobles. They needed their
subjects to form expeditions against the enemy or to resist their
encroachments. Often, also, the Spanish princes were at enmity with each
other; and civil discord, or the war of one Christian kingdom against
the other, caused temporary alliance with the Mahometans. This brought
the chivalry of the two nations into contact. The Spaniards learned the
arts of civilisation from their conquerors--they learned also the
language of love.
In the midst of these romantic wars, there sprung up a species of poetry
which in its simplicity and truth resembles the old English ballads, but
which, from the nature of the events it commemorates, is conceived in a
loftier and more chivalrous tone. The most ancient of these is a poem on
the Cid, written an hundred and fifty years before the time of Dante:
its versification is barbarous. It was written in the infancy of
language; but it displays touches of nature, and a vivacity of action,
that show it to have been the work of men of an heroic and virile age.
By degrees the romances or ballads of Spain assumed a lighter and more
tripping rhythm, fitter to be easily remembered and to be accompanied by
music. These metrical compositions were called _redondillas._[6]
Boutervek imagines that they may be considered as a relic of the songs
of the Roman soldiers. There was something singularly popular in their
freedom from constraint, and catching in their effect on the ear. The
sonorous harmony of the Spanish language gave them dignity; they were
easy to compose, easy to remember; they required only a subject, and the
words flowed, as it were, with the facility of a running stream.
There are several volumes, called the Cancionero general and Romancero
general, filled with these compositions. The most singular circumstance
is, that they are nearly all anonymous. No doubt, as language improved,
they were altered and amended from oral tradition, and no one had a
right to claim undivided authorship. Their subjects were love and war,
and came home to the heart of every Spaniard: the sentiments were
simple, yet heroic; the action was always impassioned, and sometimes
tragic.
Doctor Bowring, who has a happy facility in rendering the poetry of
foreign nations into our own, has been more felicitous than any other
author in translating these compositions. His volume is well known, and
we will not quote largely from it, as we are tempted. One poem, which
Boutervek pronounces to be untranslatable through its airiness and
lightness, we present as a specimen of that talent, so peculiar to the
redondilla, of catching and portraying a sentiment, as it were, by
sketches and hints, where the reader fills up the picture from his own
imagination, and is pleased by the very vagueness which incites him to
exert that faculty.
"'Lovely flow'ret, lovely flow'ret--
Oh! what thoughts your beauties move!
When I pressed thee to my bosom,
Little did I know of love;
Now that I have learnt to love thee.
Seeking thee in vain I rove.'
'But the fault was thine, young warrior,
Thine it was--it was not mine;
He who brought thy earliest letter,
Was a messenger of thine;
And he told me--graceless traitor--
Yes! he told me--lying one--
That thou wert already married
In the province of Leon;
Where thou hadst a lovely lady,
And, like flowers too, many a son.'
'Lady! he was but a traitor.
And his tale was all untrue,
In Castille I never entered--
From Leon too, I withdrew
When I was in early boyhood,
And of love I nothing knew.'"[7]
In addition to these ballads we must mention the romances of chivalry.
There is an undying discussion as to the nation in which these works
originated. According to Spanish writers, the real author of the first
or genuine Amadis was Vasco Lobeira, a native of Portugal, who
flourished at the end of the thirteenth century, and lived till the year
1325. Perverted as history and geography are in this and other similar
works, they are full of invention, and alive with human feeling. Heroic
deeds are blended with fairy machinery, borrowed from Arabian tales;
every thing is brought in to adorn and to exalt the character of the
knight, in war and in love. Even now Amadis preserves its charm; hew
great must have been its influence among nobles whose lives were
dedicated to the hardships of war, and whose own hearts were the
birthplace of passion, as sincere and vehement as any that warmed the
heart of fictitious cavalier.
Already, however, had various kings and nobles of Spain cultivated
letters. The first authors whose names appear were less of poets than
many whose works appear in the various Cancioneros. Elevated in rank,
they addicted themselves to study from a love of knowledge. Eagerly
curious about the secrets of nature, or observant of the philosophy of
life, they were desirous of instructing their countrymen. They deserve
infinite praise for their exertions, and the motives that animated them;
but their productions cannot have the same interest for us as the
genuine emanations of the feelings. The heart of man, its passions and
its emotions, endures for ever the same, and the poet who touches with
truth the simplest of its chords remains immortal; but our heads change
their fashion and furniture. We disregard obsolete knowledge as a ruin,
out of proportion and fallen to pieces; while the language of the
passions, like vegetation for ever growing, is always fresh. Alphonso
X., surnamed the Wise, loved learning. He rendered a great service to
his country by the cultivation he bestowed on the Castillian language.
His verses bear the marks of the attention he paid to correctness, and
by his command the Spanish language was substituted for Latin in public
instruments. Through him the Bible was translated into Castillian, and a
Chronicle of Spain was commenced under his directions. He favoured the
troubadours, and himself aspired to write verses. There is an entire
book of Cantigas or Letras, composed in the Gallician dialect, by him.
El Teroso is his principal work; it detailed his alchymical secrets, and
is written in Castillian, in versos de arte mayor: much of this work
remains still undeciphered. To him also is attributed a poem called Las
Querellas, of which two stanzas only are preserved, and those so
superior in versification to the Tesoro, that it is doubted whether they
can be the production of the same man and age. The most useful work that
owed its existence to his superintendence was the Alphonsine Tables,
containing calculations truly extraordinary for that period.
Alphonso XI. followed in his footsteps in the cultivation of the
Castillian language. He is said to have composed a General Chronicle of
Redondillas, which is lost.
It was in the time of Alphonso XI. that Don Juan Manuel wrote his Count
Lucanor, a series of tales put together somewhat in the style of the
"Seven Wise Masters." An inexperienced prince, when in any difficulty,
applies to his minister for advice, who replies by relating some tale or
fable, concluded by a maxim in verse, as the moral of the story. These
show his knowledge of the world; and one, in opposition to that of the
Grecian sage, who said, men were to treat their friends as if they were
one day to become their enemies, deserves to be recorded in honour of
the more noble-minded Castilian;
"Quien te conseja encobrir de tus amigos,
engañarte quiera assaz, y sin testigos."
"Whoever counsels you to be reserved with your friends, wishes to betray
you without witnesses." Count Lucanor is praised for the artless
simplicity of its style, joined to acuteness of observation. In
addition, Manuel composed a Chronicle of Spain, and other prose works,
as well as several poems.
The civil wars and rebellions that desolated Spain at this time checked
the literary spirit, and prevented the cultivation of learning. Juan
Ruiz, arch-priest of Hita, and Ayala, the historiographer, are almost
the only names we find in addition to those already mentioned. Juan Ruiz
wrote an allegorical satire in Castillian Alexandrines.
With John II., who reigned from 1407 to 1454, began a brighter æra.
Politically, his reign was disastrous and stormy. The monarchy was
threatened with destruction, and the king had not sufficient firmness to
make himself respected. His love of poetry and learning, sympathised in
by many of his nobles, secured him, however, the affections of his
adherents; and in the midst of civil commotion, despite his deficiency
of resolution, there gathered round him a court faithful to his cause,
and civilised by its love of letters. The marquess of Villena had
already distinguished himself; he was so celebrated for his acquirements
in natural and metaphysical knowledge that he came to be looked on as a
magician. He was admired also as a poet. He wrote an allegorical drama,
which was represented at court. He translated the Æneid, and extended
his patronage and protection to other poets by instituting floral games.
To instruct them, he wrote a sort of Art of Poetry, termed La Gaya
Ciencia. In it he praises, as Petrarch had done at the Neapolitan court,
the uses of poetry. "So great," he says, "are the benefits derived from
this science on civil life, banishing indolence and employing noble
minds in useful inquiries, that other nations have sought and
established among themselves schools for this art, so that it became
spread through various parts of the world." The zeal of this noble
elevated the art he protected; he inspired others, as well born as
himself, with equal enthusiasm, and was the patron of those less
fortunate in worldly advantages. He died at Madrid in 1434.
His friend and pupil, the marquess of Santillana, was a better poet.
Quintana remarks of him that "he was one of the most generous and
valiant knights that adorned his age. A learned man, an easy and sweet
love poet, just and serious in sentiment." His elegy on the death of the
marquess of Villena is the most celebrated of his poems. Other names
occur of less note. Jorge Manrique, who has left a fragment of poetry
more purely written than belongs to his age. Garci Sanchez of Badajos,
and Marcias. This last is less known for his poetry, of which we possess
only four songs, than for his melancholy death. He loved one who refused
to, or, disdaining, him, married another. But still he was unable to
conquer his fatal attachment. The husband obtained that he should be
thrown into prison; but this did not suffice for his vengeance, nor are
we surprised when we know the delicate sense of connubial honour
entertained by the Spaniards. He, the husband, concerted with the
alcaide of the tower in which Marcias was imprisoned, and found means to
throw his lance at him as he stood at a window. Marcias was at this
moment singing one of the songs he had composed upon the lady of his
love; the lance pierced him to the heart, and he died with the tale of
passion still hovering on his lips. These circumstances, and probably
the enthusiastic and amiable qualities of the poet, rendered him an
object of reverence and regret to his countrymen. He was surnamed the
Enemorado, and his name, grown into a proverb, is still the synonyme in
Spain for a martyr to devoted love. His contemporary, Juan de Mena, has
commemorated his death in some of the sweetest and most poetic verses of
his Labyrinto.
Juan de Mena is often called the Ennius of Spain. He is the most
renowned of the writers of that early age. He was born at Cordova in
about the year 1412. Cordova, the seat of the most famous Moorish
university, had just been recovered by the Christians. Juan de Mena was
sprung from a respectable though not noble family; at the age of
twenty-three he fulfilled some civil office in his native city, of which
in after times he spoke with affection, as we find these lines in one of
his poems:--
"Thou flower of wisdom and of chivalry,
Cordova, mother mine! forgive thy son,
If in the music of my lyre, no tone
Be sweet and loud enough to honour thee.
Models of wisdom and of bravery
I see reflected through thy annals bright.
I will not praise thee, praise thee though I might.
Lest I of flattery should suspected be."[8]
Juan de Mena studied, however, at the university of Salamanca, and,
induced by a love of inquiry and desire to gain knowledge, made a
journey to Rome. Sismondi says, "On becoming acquainted with the poetry
of Dante, his imagination received no inspiration, and his taste was
spoilt. His greatest work is called El Labyrinto, or Las Trescients
Coplas; it is an allegory, in tetradactyls, of human life." A man is
more likely to be incited by the spirit of his age than a single poem.
Dante and his contemporaries had most at heart the instructing of their
fellow-creatures. The great Tuscan poet, in his Divina Commedia, had the
design of comprehending all human knowledge; and the literary men of
those days considered visions the proper poetical mode of conveying the
secrets of nature and of morals. It is no wonder that Juan de Mena,
whose poetic genius was certainly not of the highest description (it
might be compared to that of Bruno Latini, the master of Dante), was
more led away by the theories and tenets he must have heard continually
discussed in conversation in Italy, and endeavoured, as his highest aim,
rather to instruct his countrymen in the mysteries of life and death,
nature and philosophy, than to express actions and feelings in such
harmonious numbers as he heard frequently carolled among the hills, or
sung at night beneath some beauty's window. The romances we now prize,
as the genuine and poetic expression of the passions of man, could not
in his eyes aspire to the height of the muse, whom he sought to gift
with the power of penetrating and explaining the mysteries of life and
death--the globe and all that it contains.
In this manner, however, he excited the respect of the patrons of
learning. King John and the marquess of Santillana both honoured and
loved him; he was named one of the king's historiographers, an
institution originating with Alphonso X., and those appointed to it were
expected to continue the national chronicles down to their own time.
Juan de Mena lived in high favour at the court of John II., and
constantly adhered to him. He died in 1456, at Guadalaxara in New
Castille, and the marquess of Santillana erected a monument to him.
Quintana speaks of the _Labyrinto_ as "the most interesting monument of
Spanish poetry in that age, which left all contemporary writers far
behind him." But after all, it is a mere specimen of the poetic art of
those days: not like Dante, could be put a human soul into his allegory,
which wins and enchants with ever renewing interest, nor adorn visible
objects with that truth and delicacy, and vividness of description, in
which art Dante has been unsurpassed by any poet of any age or country.
Juan de Mena's allegory is heavy, his details tiresome, the interest
absolutely null, and his poetical invention, such as it was, subordinate
to false learning.
He intends to sing of the vicissitudes of fortune, ruled, as they are,
by the seven planets, to whom Providence gives such power. He invokes
Apollo and Calliope, and then apostrophises Fortune, asking leave to
blame her when she may deserve censure. He then, in imitation of all
vision-writers, loses himself, when a lady of wonderful beauty appears,
and presents herself to him as his guide. The lady is Providence: she
bids him look, and he goes on to describe what he saw:--
Turning my eyes to where she bade me gaze,
Behold, three ponderous wheels I saw within;
And two were still--nor even moved their place;
The other swiftly, round and round, did spin.
Below them on the ground I saw the space
O'erspread by nations vast, who once had been,
And each upon the brow engraven wore
The name and fate the which on earth they bore.
And in one wheel that stood immoveable
I saw the gatherings of a future race;
And that, which to the ground was doomed to fall,
A dark veil cast upon the hideous place,
Covered with all her dead.--I was not able
The meaning of the sight I saw to trace;
So I implored my guide that she would show
The meaning of the vision there below.[9]
The wheels of course represent the past, present, and future, each
governed by the seven planets. Providence points out the various
personages distinguished in the wheel of the past and the present; and
the poet has thus occasion to make great display of knowledge on every
subject, and deduces from time to time maxims upon the conduct of life
and the government of nations; and thus, as Dante intended in his
Commedia, does Juan de Mena introduce instruction on all the sciences
then known. In common with every writer of his class, he thinks more of
what he has to say, than of the melody of his versification; sometimes
his subject suggests lines at once animated and sonorous; at other times
they are tame or turgid. He is not backward in giving moral lessons,
either to prince or people; yet Quintana regards this work probably with
too much partiality when he says that we shall always dip into it with
pleasure. We regard it with some curiosity, and more respect, and with
but little liking.
One other name we will mention, since it is connected with the Spanish
theatre; and dramatic writing became in progress of time the most truly
national as well as original and perfect form in which the genius of
Spanish poetry embodied itself. Juan de Enzina wrote the first Spanish
plays. It is true that Villena wrote an allegorical drama, which is
lost, and other compositions took the form of dialogue; but Enzina, who
was a musical composer, converted mere pastoral eclogues into real
dramas. He was born at Salamanca, in the reign of Isabella. He travelled
to Jerusalem, in company with the marquis de Tarifa, and he lived some
time at Rome, as maestro da capella, or director of music, to pope Leo
X. These travels and residences at a distance from his native country,
must have stored his mind with ideas; but though Italy had reached the
zenith of her poetic glory at that time, he became no pupil of hers.
Perhaps he found Spanish metres, and the Spanish poetic diction did not
lend itself to any but the Spanish style; and he never dreamt, as Boscan
afterwards so admirably succeeded in doing, of enlarging the sphere of
Spanish poetry by introducing Italian modes of rhythm: his songs and
lyrics are in the style of the cancioneros; and the very quips and
cranks in which he indulged have the rough humour and extravagant
imagination of Castile, not the pointed wit or airy lightness of Italy.
Among other things, he published a song of contraries, or absurdities,
(_disparates_,) which has made his name proverbial in Spain. He
converted Virgil's eclogues into ballads, and applied to the sovereigns
and nobles of Spain the compliments Virgil addressed to the emperor
Augustus. His sacred and profane eclogues were acted at court at
Christmas-eve and carnival: these are lost. Some of his songs,
calculated to become popular from their spirit, and the tone they
seized, which was suited to the hour, remain. There is one translated by
Dr. Bowring, which is a Farewell to the Carnival (Antruejo), which, in
the Spanish at least, has all the zest and animation of a drinking
song:--
"Come let us eat and drink to-day.
And sing, and laugh, and banish sorrow,
For we must part to-morrow.
In Antruejo's honour--fill
The laughing cup with wine and glee,
And feast and dance with eager will,
And crowd the hours with revelry,
For that is wisdom's counsel still--
To day be gay, and banish sorrow,
For we must part to-morrow.
Honour the saint--the morning ray
Will introduce the monster death;
There's breathing space for joy to-day,
To-morrow ye shall gasp for breath;
So now be frolicsome and gay,
And tread joy's round and banish sorrow,
For we must part to-morrow."[10]
Meanwhile the state of Spain had wholly changed. The struggle with the
Moors had ended, and its civil dissentions were no more. The union of
the crowns of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella placed the
country under one sovereign; and the conquest of Granada put an end to
the last Moorish kingdom. The Spaniards, with their constitutional
Cortes, made a noble struggle for civil liberty at the beginning of the
reign of Charles V.; but they failed, and an absolute monarchy, guarded
by the most nefarious of all institutions, the inquisition, was
established; the vaunted privileges of the grandees of Spain became
matters of court etiquette, instead of lofty manifestations of their
equality with their sovereign; the conquest of America brought money to
the country, which was quickly drained from it by the wars in Italy;
while the Lutheran heresy again set alight those cruel fires which were
at first destined for aliens,--such Jews and Moors might be termed.
Liberty of thought, as well as of action, was destroyed; and though the
terrors of the inquisition were displayed more in Flanders than in the
Peninsula itself, that arose from the circumstance that in the one
country it was resisted, while in the other it was submitted to with a
prostration of soul unknown to any other country or age.
For a time, however, the energies of the nation were rather turned aside
than checked by these events. The noble spirit of Padilla existed in the
Spanish bosom, though turned from its elevated patriotism. The
achievements of Charles V. awoke enthusiastic loyalty; while his
enterprises gave birth to a series of warriors and heroes. Their vast
acquisitions in what they named the Indies, added to the splendour of
the Spanish name. Glory, if not liberty; pride, though not independence,
awoke in them a courageous and daring, though stern and cruel spirit,
which led to those successes which spread a lustre over their name and
age. But at the same time it must be observed, that these very wars and
conquests drained Spain of those ardent and enterprising spirits, who,
if they had not been so employed, had probably exerted themselves to
free their country, and to withstand those encroachments of royalty, and
the church, which, after the lapse of a few years, acted so
detrimentally on the prosperity of Spain.
The crown of Castile also rose in eminence over that of Aragon, and the
Castilian became the language of the court. Writers, in whatever
province their birthplace might be cast, adopted Castilian as the
classic language of the country.
Juan de Enzina, though he had sojourned in Italy, became imbued by none
of its spirit. It could not always be thus. The Neapolitan wars in the
time of Ferdinand caused numbers of Spaniards to visit Italy. From the
very beginning of the reign of Charles V., these wars increased in
importance, and the intercourse between the two countries became more
frequent and intimate. The time therefore was at hand when Spain would
learn from Italy that poetic art in which she was yet a child, though a
child of genius. At this epoch we commence the lives of the literary men
of Spain. They came out many at once, like a constellation. The first in
the list were born either quite at the end of the fifteenth, or at the
very commencement of the sixteenth century, and accordingly were
contemporaries of Charles V.
[Footnote 1: "Duosque Senecas, unicumque Lucanum,
Facunda loquitur Corduba."
_Martial_, ep. LXII. lib. I.