SATIRICAL POETRY: THE ARGENSOLAS, QUEVEDO, AND OTHERS.--ELEGIAC POETRY
AND EPISTLES: GARCILASSO, HERRERA, AND OTHERS.--PASTORAL POETRY: SAA
DE MIRANDA, BALBUENA, ESQUILACHE, AND OTHERS.--EPIGRAMS: VILLEGAS,
REBOLLEDO, AND OTHERS.--DIDACTIC POETRY: RUFO, CUEVA, CÉSPEDES, AND
OTHERS.--EMBLEMS: DAZA, COVARRUBIAS.--DESCRIPTIVE POETRY: DICASTILLO.
Satirical poetry, whether in the form of regular satires, or in the
more familiar guise of epistles, has never enjoyed a wide success
in Spain. Its spirit, indeed, was known there from the times of the
Archpriest of Hita and Rodrigo Cota, both of whom seem to have been
thoroughly imbued with it. Torres Naharro, too, in the early part of
the sixteenth century, and Silvestre and Castillejo a little later,
still sustained it, and wrote satires in the short national verse, with
much of the earlier freedom, and all the bitterness, that originally
accompanied it.
But after Mendoza and Boscan, in the middle of that century, had sent
poetical epistles to one another written in the manner of Horace,
though in the Italian _terza rima_, the fashion was changed. A rich,
strong invective, such as Castillejo dared to use when he wrote the
“Satire on Women,” which was often reprinted and greatly relished, was
almost entirely laid aside; and a more cultivated and philosophical
tone, suited to the stately times of Charles the Fifth and Philip the
Second, took its place. Montemayor, it is true, and Padilla, with
a few wits of less note, wrote in both manners; but Cantorál with
little talent, Gregorio Murillo with a good deal, and Rey de Artieda
in a familiar style that was more winning than either, took the new
direction so decidedly, that, from the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the change may be considered as substantially settled.[1]
[1] All these satires are found in the works of their respective
authors, heretofore cited, except that of Morillo “On the
Corrupted Manners of his Times,” which is in Espinosa, Flores,
1605, f. 119. The “Epístolas” of Artieda were printed the same
year, under the name of “Artemidoro,” and are six in number. The
best are one against the life of a sportsman, and one in ironical
defence of the follies of society. A letter of Virues to his
brother, also dated 1605, might have been added. It is a pleasant
satirical account of a military march from Milan to the Low
Countries, passing the St. Gothard.
Barahona de Soto was among the earliest that wrote in this new form,
which was a union of the Roman with the Italian. We have four of his
satires, composed after he had served in the Morisco wars; the first
and the last of which, assailing all bad poets, show plainly the school
to which he belonged and the direction he wished to follow. But his
efforts, though seriously made, did not raise him above an untolerated
mediocrity.[2]
[2] They were first printed in Sedano, Parnaso, Tom. IX., 1778.
A single satire of Jauregui, addressed to Lydia, as if she might have
been the Lydia of Horace, is better.[3] But in the particular style
and manner of the philosophical Horatian satire, none succeeded so well
as the two Argensolas. Their discussions are, it is true, sometimes
too grave and too long; but they give us spirited pictures of the
manners of their times. The sketch of a profligate lady of fashion, for
instance, in the one to Flora, by Lupercio, is excellent, and so are
long passages in two others against a court life, by Bartolomé. All
three, however, are too much protracted, and the last contains a poor
repetition of the fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, in
which, as almost everywhere else, its author’s relations to Horace are
apparent.[4]
[3] Rimas, 1618, p. 198. It is a remarkably happy union of the
Italian form of verse and the Roman spirit.
[4] Rimas, 1634, pp. 56, 234, 254. It is singular, however, that,
while Bartolomé imitates Horace, he expresses his preference for
Juvenal.
Pero quando á escribir sátiras llegues,
A ningun irritado cartapacio,
Sino al del cauto Juvenal, te entregues.
He seems, too, to have been accounted an imitator of Juvenal by
his contemporaries; for Guevara, in his “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco
IX., calls him “Divino Juvenal Aragones.” But it is impossible
not to see that he is full of Horatian turns of thought.
Quevedo, on the other hand, followed Juvenal, whose hard, unsparing
temper was better suited to his own tastes, and to a disposition
embittered by cruel persecutions. But Quevedo is often free and
indecorous, as well as harsh, and offends that sensibility to virtue
which a satirist ought carefully to cultivate. It should, however, be
remembered in his favor, that, though living under the despotism of the
Philips, and crushed by it, no Spanish poet stands before him in the
spirit of an independent and vigorous satire. Góngora approaches him
on some occasions, but Góngora rarely dealt with grave subjects, and
confined his satire almost entirely to burlesque ballads and sonnets,
which he wrote in the fervor of his youth. At no period of his life,
and certainly not after he went to court, would he have hazarded a
satirical epistle like the one on the decay of Castilian spirit and
the corruption of Castilian manners, which Quevedo had the courage
to send to the Count Duke Olivares, when he was at the height of his
influence.[5]
[5] It is the last poem in the “Melpomene.”
The greatest contemporaries of both of them hardly turned their
thoughts in this direction; for as to Cervantes, his “Journey to
Parnassus” is quite too good-natured an imitation of Caporali to be
classed among satires, even if its form permitted it to be placed
there; and as to Lope de Vega, though some of his sonnets and other
shorter poems are full of spirit and severity, especially those that
pass under the name of Burguillos, still his whole course, and the
popular favor that followed it, naturally prevented him from seeking
occasions to do or say any thing ungracious.
Nor did the state of society at this period favor the advancement,
or even the continuance, of any such spirit. The epistles of Espinel
and Arguijo are, therefore, absolutely grave and solemn; and those of
Rioja, Salcedo, Ulloa, and Melo are not only grave, but are almost
entirely destitute of poetical merit, except one by the first of them,
addressed to Fabio, which, if neither gay nor witty, is an admirably
wise moral rebuke of the folly and irksomeness of depending on royal
favor. Borja is more free, as became his high station, and speaks out
more plainly; but the best of his epistles--the one against a court
life--is not so good as the youthful _tercetos_ on the same subject by
Góngora, nor equal to his own jesting address to his collected poems.
Rebolledo, his only successor of any note at the time, is moral, but
tiresome; and Solís, like the few that followed him, is too dull to be
remembered. Indeed, if Villegas in his old age, when, perhaps, he had
been soured by disappointment, had not written three satires which he
did not venture to publish, we should have nothing worth notice as we
approach the disheartening close of this long period.[6]
[6] The satires of all these authors are in their collected
works, except those of Villegas, which were printed from
manuscripts, supposed to be the originals, by Sedano (Tom. IX.
pp. 3-18); or rather, two of them on bad poets were so printed,
for the third seems to have been suppressed, on account of its
indelicacy.
Nearly all the didactic satires and nearly all the satirical epistles
of the best age of Spanish literature are Horatian in their tone, and
written in the Italian _terza rima_. In general, their spirit is light,
though philosophical,--sometimes it is courtly,--and, taken together,
they have less poetical force and a less decided coloring than we might
claim from the class to which they belong. But they are frequently
graceful and agreeable, and some of them will be oftener read, for
the mere pleasure they bestow, than many in other languages which are
distinguished for greater wit and severity.
The truth, however, is, that wit and severity of this kind and in this
form were never heartily encouraged in Spain. The nation itself has
always been too grave and dignified to ask or endure the censure they
imply; and if such a character as the Spanish has its ridiculous side,
it must be approached by any thing rather than personal satire. Books
like the romances of chivalry may, indeed, be assailed with effect, as
they were by Cervantes; men in classes may be caricatured, as they are
in the Spanish _picaresque_ novels and in the old drama; and bad poetry
may be ridiculed, as it was by half the poets who did not write it, and
by some who did. But the characters of individuals, and especially
of those in high station and of much notoriety, are protected, under
such circumstances, by all the social influences that can be brought to
their defence, and cannot safely be assailed.
Such, at least, was the case in Spain. Poetical satire came there to
be looked upon with distrust, so that it was thought to be hardly in
good taste, or according to the conventions of good society, to indulge
in its composition.[7] And if, with all this, we remember the anxious
nature of the political tyranny which long ruled the country, and the
noiseless, sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition,--both of which
are apparent in the certificates and licenses that usher in whatever
succeeded in finding its way through the press,--we shall have no
difficulty in accounting for the fact, that poetical satire never had
a vigorous and healthy existence in Spain, and that, after the latter
part of the seventeenth century, it almost entirely disappeared till
better times revived it.
[7] Cervantes is a strong case in point. In the fourth chapter
of his “Journey to Parnassus,” immediately after speaking of his
Don Quixote, he disavows having ever written any thing satirical,
and denounces _all_ such compositions as low and base. Indeed,
the very words _sátira_ and _satírico_ came at last to be used
in a bad sense oftener than in a good one. Huerta, Sinónimos
Castellanos, Valencia, 1807, 2 tom. 12mo, _ad verb._
* * * * *
Elegies, though from their subjects little connected with satire,
are yet, by their measure and manner, connected with it in Spanish
poetry; for both are generally written in the Italian _terza rima_,
and both are often thrown into the form of epistles.[8] Garcilasso
could write elegies in their true spirit; but the second that passes
under that name in his works is merely a familiar epistle to a friend.
So is the first by Figueroa, which is followed by others in a tone
more appropriate to their titles. But all are in the Italian verse
and manner, and two of them in the Italian language. The eleven
“Lamentations,” as he calls them, of Silvestre, are elegiac epistles
to his lady-love, written in the old Castilian measures, and not
without the old Castilian poetical spirit. Cantorál fails; nor can the
Argensolas and Borja be said to have succeeded, though they wrote in
different manners, some of which were scarcely elegiac. Herrera is too
lyric--too lofty, perhaps, from the very nature of his genius--to write
good elegies; but some of those on his love, and one in which he mourns
over the passions that survive the decay of his youth, have certainly
both beauty and tenderness.
[8] A striking instance of this is to be found in the “Primera
Parle del Parnaso Antártico,” by Diego Mexia, printed at
Seville, 1608, 4to, and the only portion of it ever printed.
It consists of an original poetical letter by a lady to Mexia,
and a translation of twenty-one of the Epistles of Ovid and his
“Ibis”; all in _terza rima_, and nearly all in pure and beautiful
Castilian verse. In the edition in the collection of Fernandez,
Tom. XIX., 1799, the epistle by the lady is omitted, which is a
pity, since it contains notices of several South American poets.
Rioja, on the contrary, seems to have been of the true temperament,
and to have written elegies from instinct, though he called them
_Silvas_; while Quevedo, if he were the author of the poems that pass
under the name of the Bachiller de la Torre, must have done violence
to his genius in the composition of ten short pieces, which he calls
_Endechas_, in Adonian verse, but which read much like imitations of
some of the gentler among the old ballads. If to these we add the
thirteen elegies of Villegas, nearly all of which are epistles, and
one or two of them light and amusing epistles, we shall have what is
most worthy of notice in this small division of Spanish poetry during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that has not been already
considered. From the whole, we should naturally infer that the Spanish
temperament was little fitted to the subdued, simple, and gentle
tone of the proper elegy; a conclusion that is undoubtedly true,
notwithstanding the examples of Garcilasso and Rioja, the best and most
elegiac portions of whose poetry do not even bear its name.[9]
[9] The best elegiac poetry in the Spanish language is, perhaps,
that in the two divisions of the first eclogue of Garcilasso.
Elegies, or mournful poems of any kind, are often called
_Endechas_ in Spanish, as Quevedo called his sad amatory poems;
but the origin of the word is not settled, nor its meaning quite
well defined. Venegas, in a vocabulary of obscure words at the
end of his “Agonía del Tránsito de la Muerte,” 1574, p. 370, says
he thinks it comes from _inde jaces_, as if the mourner addressed
the dead body. But this is absurd. It may come from the Greek
ἕνδεκα, for when the last verse of each stanza contained just
eleven syllables, the poem was said to be written in _endechas
reales_. See Covarrubias, and the Academy, _ad verbum_, who give
no opinion.
* * * * *
Pastoral poetry in Spain is directly connected with elegiac, through
the eclogues of Garcilasso, which unite the attributes of both. To his
school, indeed, including Boscan and Mendoza, we trace the earliest
successful specimens of the more formal Spanish pastoral, with the
characteristics still recognized. But its origin is much earlier. The
climate and condition of the Peninsula, which from a very remote period
had favored the shepherd’s life and his pursuits, facilitated, no
doubt, if they did not occasion, the first introduction into Spanish
poetry of a pastoral tone, whose echoes are heard far back among the
old ballads. But the Italian forms of pastoral verse were naturalized
as soon as they were introduced. Figueroa, Cantorál, Montemayor, and
Saa de Miranda--the last two of whom were Portuguese, and all of whom
visited Italy and lived there--contributed their efforts to those of
Garcilasso and Boscan, by writing Spanish eclogues in the Italian
manner. All had a good degree of success, but none so much as Saa de
Miranda, who was born in 1495, and died in 1558, and who, from the
promptings of his own genius, renounced the profession of the law, to
which he was bred, and the favor of the court, where his prospects were
high, in order to devote himself to poetry.
He was the first of the Portuguese who wrote in the forms introduced by
Boscan and Garcilasso, and none, perhaps, since his time has appeared
in them with more grace and power,--certainly none in the particular
form of eclogues. His pastorals, however, are not all in the new
manner. On the contrary, some of them are in the ancient short verse,
and seem to have been written before he was acquainted with the change
that had just been effected in Spanish poetry. But all of them are in
one spirit, and are marked by a simplicity that well becomes the class
of compositions to which they belong, though it may rarely be found in
them. This is true, both when he writes his beautiful pastoral story
of “The Mondego,” which is in the manner of Garcilasso, and contains
an account of himself addressed to the king; and when he writes his
seventh eclogue, which is in the forms of Enzina and Vicente, and
seems to have been acted amidst the rejoicings of the noble family of
Pereira, after one of their number had returned from military service
against the Turks.
But a love of the country, of country scenery and country occupations,
pervades nearly every thing Saa de Miranda wrote. The very animals
seem to be treated by him with more naturalness and familiarity than
they are elsewhere; and throughout the whole of his poetry, there is
an ease and amenity that show it comes from the heart. Why he wrote
so much in Spanish, it is not now easy to tell. Perhaps he thought
the language more poetical than his native Portuguese, or perhaps he
had merely personal reasons for his preference. But whatever may have
been the cause, six out of his eight eclogues are composed in natural,
flowing Castilian; and the result of the whole is, that, while, on all
accounts, he is placed among the four or five principal poets of his
own country, he occupies a position of enviable distinction among those
of the prouder nation that soon became, for a time, its masters.[10]
[10] There are many editions of the Works of Saa de Miranda; but
the second and best (s. l. 1614, 4to) is preceded by a life of
him, which claims to have been composed by his personal friends,
and which states the odd fact, that the lady of whom he was
enamoured was so ugly, that her family declined the match until
he had well considered the matter; but that he persevered, and
became so fondly attached to her, that he died, at last, from
grief at her loss. His merits as a poet are well discussed by
Ant. das Neves Pereira, in the fifth volume of the “Memorias
de Litt. Portugueza” of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisboa,
1793, pp. 99, etc. Some of his works are in the Spanish Index
Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 72.
Montemayor, Polo, and their followers in prose pastorals, scattered
bucolic verse of all kinds freely through their fictions; and
sometimes, though seldom, they added to the interest and merit of their
stories by this sort of ornament. One of those who had least success
in it was Cervantes; and of those who had most, Balbuena stands in
the first rank. His “Golden Age” contains some of the best and most
original eclogues in the language; written, indeed, rather in the free,
rustic tone of Theocritus, than with the careful finish of Virgil, but
not on that account the less attractive.[11]
[11] Of the poets whose eclogues are found in their prose
pastorals I shall speak at large when I examine this division of
Spanish romantic fiction. Montemayor, however, it should be noted
here, wrote other eclogues, which are in his Cancionero, 1588,
ff. 111, etc.
Of Luis Barahona de Soto, we possess an eclogue better than any
thing else he has left us;[12] and of Pedro de Padilla, the friend
of Cervantes and of Silvestre, a remarkable improvisator and a much
loved man, we have a number of pastoral poems which carry with them a
picturesque, antique air, from being made up in part of ballads and
_villancicos_.[13] Pedro de Enzinas attempted to write religious
eclogues, and failed;[14] but, in the established forms, Juan de
Morales and Gomez Tapia, who are hardly known except for single
attempts of this kind,[15] and Vicente Espinel,--among whose eclogues,
that in which a Soldier and a Shepherd discuss the Spanish wars in
Italy is both original and poetical,[16]--were all successful.
[12] It is found in the important collection, the “Flores,” of
Espinosa, f. 66, where it first appeared.
[13] “Eglogas Pastoriles de Pedro de Padilla,” Sevilla, 1582,
4to; thirteen in number, in all measures, and the last one
partly in prose. Of Padilla, who was much connected with the
men of letters of his time, all needful notices may be found in
Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 396-402, and in Clemencin’s
Notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 147. The curate well says of his
“Tesoro de Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo,) “They would be better,
if they were fewer.” They fill above nine hundred pages, and are
in all forms and styles. Padilla died as late as 1599.
[14] There are six of them, in _terza_ and _ottava rima_, with a
few lyrical poems interspersed, in other measures and in a better
tone, in a volume entitled “Versos Espirituales,” Cuenca, 1596,
12mo. Their author was a monk.
[15] The eclogue of Morales is in Espinosa, f. 48, and that of
Tapia occurs--where we should hardly look for it--in the “Libro
de Montería, que mandó escribir el Rey Don Alfonso XI.,” edited
by Argote de Molina, 1582. It is on the woods of Aranjuez, and
was written after the birth of a daughter of Philip II.; but its
descriptions are long and wearisome.
[16] Rimas, 1591, ff. 50-57.
The eclogues of Lope de Vega, of which we have already spoken, drew
after them a train of imitations, like his other popular poetry.
But neither Balvas, nor Villegas, nor Carrillo, nor the Prince of
Esquilache equalled him. Quevedo alone among his compeers, and he only
if he is the author of the poems of the Bachiller de la Torre, proved
himself a rival of the great master, unless we must give an equal
place to Pedro de Espinosa, whose story of “The Genil,” half elegiac
and half pastoral, is the happiest and most original specimen of that
peculiar form of which Boscan in his “Hero and Leander” gave the first
imperfect example.[17] Pedro Soto de Roxas,--who wrote short lyric
poems with spirit, as well as eclogues,--Zarate, and Ulloa, belong to
the same school, which was continued, by Texada Gomes de los Reyes,
Barrios the Jew, and Inez de la Cruz the Mexican nun, down to the end
of the century. But in all its forms, whether tending to become too
lyrical, as it does in Figueroa, or too narrative, as in Espinosa,
Spanish pastoral poetry shows fewer of the defects that accompany such
poetry everywhere, and more of the merits that render it a gentle and
idealized representation of nature and country life, than can perhaps
be found in any other literature of modern times. The reason is, that
there was more of a true pastoral character in Spain on which to build
it.[18]
[17] Espinosa includes it in his “Flores,” f. 107.
[18] The authors mentioned in this paragraph are, I believe, all
more amply noticed elsewhere, except Pedro Soto de Roxas. He was
a friend of Lope de Vega, and published in Madrid, 1623, 4to, his
“Desengaño de Amor,”--a volume of poems in the Italian manner,
the best of which are the madrigals and eclogues.
* * * * *
Quite as characteristic of the Spanish national genius as its pastorals
were short poems in different forms, but in an epigrammatic spirit,
which appeared through the whole of the best age of its literature.
They are of two kinds. The first are generally amorous, and always
sentimental. Of these, not a few are very short and pointed. They
are found in the old Cancioneros and Romanceros, among the works of
Maldonado, Silvestre, Villegas, Góngora, and others of less merit,
to the end of the century. They are generally in the truest tone of
popular verse. One, which was set to music, was in these few simple
words:--
To what ear shall I tell my griefs,
Gentle love mine?
To what ear shall I tell my griefs,
If not to thine?[19]
[19]
Á quien contaré yo mis quejas,
Mi lindo amor;
Á quien contaré mis quejas,
Si á vos no?
Faber found this and a few more in Salina’s treatise on Music,
1577, and placed it, with a considerable number of similar short
compositions, in the first volume of his collection, pp. 303, etc.
And another, of the same period, which was on a Sigh, and became the
subject of more than one gloss, was hardly less simple:--
O gentle sigh! O gentle sigh!
For no more happiness I pray,
Than, every time thou goest to God,
To follow where thou lead’st the way.[20]
[20]
O dulce suspiro mio!
No quisiera dicha mas,
Que las veces que á Dios vas
Hallarme donde te envio.
Ubeda, 1588, was the first, I think, who paraphrased this
epigram; but where he discovered it I do not know.
But of those a little longer and more elaborate a favorable specimen
may be found in Camoens, who wrote such with tenderness and beauty, not
only in his own language, but sometimes in Spanish, as in the following
lines on a concealed and unhappy passion, the first two of which are
probably a snatch of some old song, and the rest his own gloss upon
them:--
Within, within, my sorrow lives,
But outwardly no token gives.
All young and gentle in the soul,
All hidden from men’s eyes,
Deep, deep within it lies,
And scorns the body’s low control.
As in the flint the hidden spark
Gives outwardly no sign or mark,
Within, within, my sorrow lives.[21]
[21]
De dentro tengo mi mal,
Que de fora no ay señal.
Mi nueva y dulce querella
Es invisible á la gente:
El alma sola la siente,
Qu’ el cuerpo no es dino della:
Como la viva sentella
S’ encubre en el pedernal,
De dentro tengo mi mal.
Camões, Rimas, Lisboa, 1598, 4to, f. 179.
Several that precede and follow, both in Spanish and Portuguese,
are worth notice.
The number of such compositions, in their different serious forms,
is great; but the number of the second kind--those in a lighter and
livelier tone--is still greater. The Argensolas, Villegas, Lope de
Vega, Quevedo, the Prince Esquilache, Rebolledo, and not a few others,
wrote them with spirit and effect. Of all, however, who indulged in
them, nobody devoted to their composition so much zeal, and on the
whole obtained so much success, as Francisco de la Torre, who, though
of the _culto_ school, seemed able to shake off much of its influence,
when he remembered that he was a fellow-countryman of Martial.
He took for the foundation of his humor the remarkable Latin epigrams
of John Owen, the English Protestant, who died in 1622, and whose witty
volume has been often translated and printed at home and abroad down
to our own times;--a volume, it should be noted, so offensive to the
Romish Church as to have been early placed on its Index Expurgatorius.
But La Torre avoided whatever could give umbrage to the ecclesiastical
authorities of his time, and, adding a great number of original
epigrams quite as good as those he translated, made a collection that
fills two volumes, the last of which was printed in 1682, after its
author’s death.[22]
[22] “Agudezas de Juan Oven, etc., con Adiciones por Francisco
de la Torre,” Madrid, 1674, 1682, 2 tom. 4to. _Oven_ is the
Owen or Audoenus of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxon.,” Tom. II. p. 320. His
“Epigrammata,” printed about a dozen times between 1606 and 1795,
were placed on the list of prohibited books in 1654. Index, Romæ,
1786, 8vo, p. 216.
But though he wrote more good epigrams, and in a greater variety of
forms, than any other individual Spaniard, he did not, perhaps, write
the best or the most national; for a few of those that still remain
anonymous, and a still smaller number by Rebolledo, seem to claim this
distinction. Of the sort of wit frequently affected in these slight
compositions the following is an example:--
Fair lady, when your beads you take,
I never doubt you pray;
Perhaps for my poor murdered sake,
Perhaps for yours, that slay.[23]
Rebolledo was sometimes happier than he is in this epigram, though
rarely more national.
[23]
Pues el rosario tomais,
No dudo que le receis
Por mí, que muerto me habeis,
O por vos, que me matais.
Obras, 1778, Tom. I. p. 337.
Camoens had the same idea in some Portuguese _redondillas_,
(Rimas, 1598, f. 159,) so that I suspect both of them took it
from some old popular epigram.
* * * * *
Didactic poetry in unsettled and uncertain forms appeared early in
Spain, and took, from time to time, the air both of moral philosophy
and of religious instruction. Specimens of it in the old long-line
stanza are found from the age of Berceo to that of the chancellor
Ayala; few, indeed, in number, but sufficiently marked in character
to show their purpose. Later, examples become more numerous, and
present themselves in forms somewhat improved. Several such occur in
the Cancioneros, among the best of which are Ludueña’s “Rules for
Good-Breeding”; “The Complaint of Fortune,” in imitation of Bias, by
Diego de San Pedro; and the “Coplas” of Don Juan Manuel of Portugal,
on the Seven Deadly Sins;--all of them authors known at the court of
Ferdinand and Isabella. Boscan’s poem on his own Conversion, that of
Silvestre on “Self-knowledge,” that of Castilla on “The Virtues,” and
that of Juan de Mendoza on “A Happy Life,” continue the series through
the reign of Charles the Fifth, but without materially advancing its
claims or its character.[24]
[24] The poems of Boscan and Silvestre are found in their
respective works, already examined; but of Francisco de Castilla
and of Juan de Mendoza and their poetry it may be proper to give
some notice, as their names have not occurred before.
Castilla was a gentleman apparently of the old national type,
descended from an illegitimate branch of the family of Pedro
el Cruel. He lived in the time of Charles V., and passed his
youth near the person of that great sovereign; but, as he says
in a letter to his brother, the Bishop of Calahorra, he at last
“withdrew himself, disgusted alike with the abhorred rabble and
senseless life of the court,” and “chose the estate of matrimony,
as one more safe for his soul and better suited to his worldly
condition.” How he fared in this experiment he does not tell
us; but, missing, in the retirement it brought with it, those
pleasures of social intercourse to which he had been accustomed,
he bought, as he says, “with a small sum of money, other surer
and wiser friends,” whose counsels and teachings he put into
verse, that his weak memory might the better preserve them. The
result of this life merely contemplative was a book, in which he
gives us, first, his “Theórica de Virtudes,” or an explanation,
in the old short Spanish verse, accompanied with a prose gloss,
of the different Virtues, ending with the vengeful Nemesis; next,
a Treatise on Friendship, in long nine-line stanzas; and then,
successively, a Satire on Human Life and its vain comforts; an
Allegory on Worldly Happiness; a series of Exhortations to Virtue
and Holiness, which he has unsuitably called Proverbs; and a
short discussion, in _décimas_, on the Immaculate Conception.
At the end, separately paged, as if it were quite a distinct
treatise, we have a counterpart to the “Theórica de Virtudes,”
called the “Prática de las Virtudes de los Buenos Reyes de
España”; a poem in above two hundred octave stanzas, on the
Virtues of the Kings of Spain, beginning with Alaric the Goth
and ending with the Emperor Charles V., to whom he dedicates it
with abundance of courtly flattery. The whole volume, both in the
prose and verse, is written in the strong old Castilian style,
sometimes encumbered with learning, but oftener rich, pithy, and
flowing. The following stanza, written, apparently, when its
author was already disgusted with his court life, but had not
given it up, may serve as a specimen of his best manner:--
Nunca tanto el marinero
Desseo llegar al puerto
Con fortuna;
Ni en batalla el buen guerrero
Ser de su victoria cierto
Quando puña;
Ni madre al ausente hijo
Por mar con tanta aficion
Le desseo,
Como haver un escondrijo
Sin contienda en un rincon
Desseo yo.
f. 45. b.
Never did mariner desire
To reach his destined port
With happy fate;
Ne’er did good warrior, in the fire
Of battle, victory court,
With hopes elate;
Nor mother for her child’s dear life,
Tossed on the stormy wave
So earnest pray,
As I for some safe cave
To hide me from this restless strife
In peace away.
An edition of Castilla’s very rare volume may have been printed
about 1536, when it was licensed; but I have never seen it, nor
any notice of it. The one of which I have a copy was printed at
Zaragoza, 4to, lit. got., 1552; and I believe there is one of
Alcalá, either in 1554 or 1564, 8vo.
The poetry of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, who was Regidor of Madrid,
and a member of the Cortes of 1544, is, perhaps, more rare than
that of Castilla, and is contained in a small volume printed
at Alcalá in 1550, and entitled “Buen Placer trovado en treze
discantes de quarta rima Castellana segun imitacion de trobas
Francesas,” etc. It consists of thirteen discourses on a happy
life, its means and motives, all written in stanzas of four lines
each, which their author calls _French_, I suppose, because they
are longer lines than those in the old national measures, and
rhymed alternately,--the rhymes of one stanza running into the
next. At the end is a _Canto Real_, as it is called, on a verse
in the Psalms, composed in the same manner; and several smaller
poems, one of which is a kind of religious _villancico_, and
four of them sonnets. The tone of the whole is didactic, and its
poetical value small. I cite eight lines, as a specimen of its
peculiar manner and rhymes:--
Errado va quien busca ser contento
En mal plazer mortal, que como heno
Se seca y passa como humo en viento,
De vanos tragos de ayre muy relleno.
Quando las negras velas van en lleno
Del mal plazer, villano peligroso,
De buen principio y de buen fin ageno,
No halla en esta vida su reposo.
Mendoza was a person of much consideration in his time, and is
noticed as such by Quintana, (Historia de Madrid, Madrid, 1629,
folio,) who gives one of his sonnets at f. 27, and a sketch of
his character at f. 245.
In the age of Philip the Second, the didactic, like most of the other
branches of Spanish poetry, spreads out more broadly. Francisco de
Guzman’s “Opinions of Wise Men,” and especially his dull allegory of
“Moral Triumphs,” in imitation of Petrarch, are, for their length,
the most important of the different didactic poems which that period
produced.[25] But more characteristic than either is the deeply
religious letter of Francisco de Aldana to Montano, in 1573; and much
more beautiful and touching than either is one written at about the
same time by Juan Rufo to his infant son, filled with gentle affection
and wise counsels.
[25] The “Triunfos Morales de Francisco de Guzman” (Sevilla,
1581, 12mo) are imitations of Petrarca’s “Trionfi,” but are much
more didactic, giving, for instance, under the head of “The
Triumph of Wisdom,” the opinions of the wise men of antiquity;
and under the head of “The Triumph of Prudence,” the general
rules for prudent conduct.
Neither should a call made by Aldana, in the name of military glory,
to Philip himself, urging him to defend the suffering Church, be
overlooked. It breathes the very spirit of its subject, and may
well be put in direct contrast with the earnest and sad persuasions
to peace by Virues, who was yet a soldier by profession, and with
Cantorál’s winning invitation to the quietness of a country life. Some
of the religious poetry of Diego de Morillo and Pedro de Salas, in
the next reigns, with several of the wise epistles of the Argensolas,
Artieda, and Mesa, should be added; but they are all comparatively
short poems, except those by Morillo on the Words of Christ upon the
Cross, which extend to several hundred lines on each word, and which,
though disfigured by antithesis and exaggeration, are strongly marked
specimens of the Catholic didactic spirit.
In the mean time, and in the midst of this group,--partly because the
way had been already prepared for it by the publication, in 1591, of a
good translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry” by Espinel, and partly
from other causes,[26]--we have, at last, a proper didactic poem,
or rather an attempt at one. It is by Juan de la Cueva, who in 1605
wrote in _terza rima_ three epistles, which he entitled “Egemplar
Poético,” and which constitute the oldest formal and original effort
of the kind in the Spanish language. Regarded as a whole, they are,
indeed, far from being a complete Art of Poetry, and in some parts
they are injudicious and inconsequent; but they not unfrequently
contain passages of acute criticism in flowing verse, and they have,
besides, the merit of nationality in their tone. In all respects,
they are better than an absurd didactic poem, by the same author,
on “The Inventors of Things,” which he wrote three years later, and
which shows, as he showed elsewhere, that he adventured in too many
departments.[27]
[26] The “Arte Poética” of Espinel is the first thing published
in the “Parnaso Español” of Sedano, 1768, and was vehemently
attacked by Yriarte, when, in 1777, he printed his own
translation of the same work. (Obras de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805,
12mo, Tom. IV.) To this Sedano replied in the ninth volume of his
“Parnaso,” 1778. Yriarte rejoined in a satirical dialogue, “Donde
las dan las toman” (Obras, Tom. VI.); and Sedano closed the
controversy with the “Coloquios de Espina,” Malaga, 1785, 2 tom.
12mo, under the name of Juan María Chavero y Eslava. It is a very
pretty literary quarrel, quite in the Spanish manner.
[27] The “Egemplar Poético” of Cueva was first printed in the
eighth volume of the “Parnaso Español,” 1774; and the “Inventores
de las Cosas,” taken generally from Polydore Virgil, and dated
1608, was first published in the ninth volume of the same
collection, 1778. How absurd the last is may be inferred from the
fact, that it makes Moses the inventor of hexameter verse, and
Alexander the Great the oldest of paper-makers.
Pablo de Céspedes, a sculptor and painter of the same period,--now
better known as a man of learning and a poet,--came nearer to success
than Cueva. He was born in 1538, at Córdova, and died there, a minor
canon of its magnificent cathedral, at the age of seventy; but he
spent a part of his life in Italy and at Seville, and devoted much
of his leisure to letters. Among other works, he began a poem, in
_ottava rima_, on “The Art of Painting.” Whether it was ever finished
is uncertain; but all we possess of it is a series of fragments,
amounting, when taken together, to six or seven hundred lines, which
were inserted in a prose treatise on the same subject by his friend
Francisco Pacheco, and printed above forty years after their author’s
death. They are, however, such as to make us regret that we have
received no more. Their versification is excellent, and their poetical
energy and compactness are uniform. Perhaps the best passage that has
been preserved is the description of a horse,--the animal of whose
race the poet’s native city has always been proud,--and of which, it
is evident, a single noble individual was pictured before his mind
as he wrote. But other portions show much talent,--perhaps more than
this does; especially one in which he explains the modes of acquiring
practical skill in his art, and that more poetical one in which he
discusses color.[28]
[28] What remains of Céspedes’s poetry is to be found in the
eighteenth volume of Fernandez’s collection. His life is well
set forth in the excellent “Diccionario de los Profesores de las
Bellas Artes, por A. Cean Bermudez,” Madrid, 1800, 6 tom. 12mo,
Tom. I. p. 316; besides which, its learned author, at the end of
Tom. V., has republished the fragments of the poem on Painting
in a better order than that in which they had before appeared;
adding a pleasant prose discourse, in a pure style, on Ancient
and Modern Painting and Sculpture, which Céspedes wrote in 1604,
when recovering from a fever, and two other of his trifles;
to the whole of which is prefixed a judicious Preface by Cean
himself. Céspedes had been a Greek scholar in his youth, and
says, that, in his old age, when he chanced to open Pindar, he
“never failed to find a well-drawn and rich picture, grand and
fit for Michel Angelo to paint.” He was a friend of Carranza,
the great archbishop, who, after being a leading member of the
Council of Trent, and confessor of Mary of England after she
married Philip II., was worried to death by the Inquisition in
1576. (See, _ante_, Vol. I. p. 466.) Céspedes himself came near
suffering from a similar persecution, in consequence of a letter
he wrote to Carranza in 1559, in which he spoke disrespectfully
of the Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Office. Llorente, Hist.,
Tom. II. p. 440.
But the poems of Cueva and Céspedes were not printed till long after
the death of their authors; and none of their contemporaries was
inspired by like influences. The best that was done in didactic
poetry, at about the same time, was the slight, but pleasant, sort
of defence of his own irregularities produced by Lope de Vega, under
the name of “The New Art of Writing Plays”; and the best, written
later in the century, were the “Selvas,” as he called them, or poems
in irregular verse, by Count Rebolledo, on the Arts of War and Civil
Government, which date from 1652, but which are little more than rhymed
prose. A long poem in ten cantos, and in the old _quintilla_ verse, by
Trapeza, published in 1612, and entitled “The Cross,” because it is a
sort of exposition of all the theological virtues attributed to that
holy emblem, is too dull to be noticed, even if it were more strictly
didactic in its form.[29]
[29] Lope’s “Arte Nuevo” has been already noticed. The “Selva
Militar y Política” of Rebolledo was first printed at Cologne, in
1652, 18mo, its author being then Spanish minister in Denmark,
of whose kings he has given a sort of genealogical history in
another poem, his “Selvas Dánicas.”--“La Cruz, por Albanio
Ramirez de la Trapeza,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo, pp. 368, to which are
added a few pages of short poems on the Cross.
Some other kindred attempts should, however, be remembered, of which
the oldest, made in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries throughout Europe, were in the form called “Emblems,” or
explanations in verse for hieroglyphical devices. The most successful
of these were probably the Emblems of Daza, in 1549, imitated from
the more famous Latin ones of Alciatus; and those of Covarrubias,
published originally in Spanish by their author in 1591, and afterwards
translated by him into Latin;--both of them curious specimens of this
peculiar style of composition, and as agreeable, perhaps, as any which
the age of Emblems produced.[30]
[30] “Los Emblemas de Alciato, etc., añadidos de nuevos
Emblemas,” Lyon, 1549, 4to,--on the Index Expurgatorius of 1790.
Those of Covarrubias were printed in Spanish in 1591; and in
Spanish and Latin, Agrigenti, 1601, 12mo;--the last, a thick
volume, with a long and learned Latin dissertation on Emblems
prefixed. Covarrubias was brother of the lexicographer of the
same name. Tesoro, Art. _Emblema_.
The other form was that in which the didactic runs into the
descriptive. Of this the most poetical example in Spanish is by
Dicastillo, a Carthusian monk, at Saragossa, who published, in
1637, under the auspices of his friend Mencos, a long poetical
correspondence, intended to teach the vanity of human things, and the
happiness and merit to be found in a life of penitential seclusion. The
parts that relate to the author himself are sometimes touching; but
the rest is of very unequal worth,--the better portions being devoted
to a description of the grand and sombre monastery of which he was an
inmate, and of the observances to which his life there was devoted.[31]
Castilian verse, however, did not often take a descriptive character,
except when it appeared in the form of eclogues and idyls; and even
then it is almost always marked by an ingenuity and brilliancy far
from the healthy tone inspired by a sincere love of what is grand or
beautiful in nature;--a remark which finds ample illustration in the
poems devoted to the Spanish conquests in America, where the marvellous
tropical vegetation of the valleys through which the wild adventurers
wound their way, and the snow-capped volcanoes that crowned the
_sierras_ above their heads, seem to have failed alike to stir their
imaginations or overawe their courage.[32]
[31] “Aula de Dios, Cartuxa Real de Zaragoza. Descrive la Vida
de sus Monjes, acusa la Vanidad del Siglo, etc., consagrala á
la Utilidad Pública Don Miguel de Mencos,” Zaragoza, 1637, 4to.
They are written in _silvas_, and their true author’s name is
indicated by _puns_ in some of the laudatory verses that precede
the work.
[32] The pleasantest, if not the most important exception to
this remark, which I recollect, is to be found in an epistle by
the friend of Lope de Vega, Cristóval de Virues, to his brother,
dated June 17, 1600, and giving an account of his passage over
the Saint Gothard with a body of troops. It is in blank verse
that is not very exact, but the descriptions are very good, and
marked with the feeling of that stern scenery. Obras, 1609, f.
269.
But except these irregular varieties of didactic poetry, we have,
for the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nothing
to add to what we have already noticed, beyond a repetition of the
old forms of epistles and _silvas_, which so frequently occur in the
works of Castillejo, Ledesma, Lope de Vega, Jauregui, Zarate, and
their contemporaries. Nor could we reasonably expect more. Neither
the popular character of Spanish poetry, nor the severe nature of the
Spanish ecclesiastical and political constitutions of government,
was favorable to the development of this particular form of verse,
or likely to tolerate it on any important subject. Didactic poetry
remained, therefore, at the end of the period, as it was at the
beginning, one of the feeblest and least successful departments of the
national literature.[33]
[33] The shorter poems, noticed as didactic, are found in the
Cancioneros and other collections already referred to, or in the
works of their respective authors.