CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE SECOND PERIOD.--DECAY OF THE NATIONAL
CHARACTER.--DIMINISHED NUMBER OF WRITERS AND DIMINISHED INTEREST OF THE
PUBLIC IN LETTERS.--RUIN OF THE STATE BEGUN IN THE TIME OF PHILIP THE
SECOND, AND CONTINUED IN THE REIGNS OF PHILIP THE THIRD, PHILIP THE
FOURTH, AND CHARLES THE SECOND.--EFFECTS OF THIS CONDITION OF THINGS ON
LITERARY CULTURE.--FALSE INFLUENCES OF RELIGION.--FALSE INFLUENCES OF
LOYALTY.
It is impossible to study with care the Spanish literature of the
seventeenth century, and not feel that we are in the presence of a
general decay of the national character. At every step, as we advance,
the number of writers that surround us is diminished. In what crowds
they were gathered together during the reigns of Philip the Second
and Philip the Third, we may see in the long lists of poets given by
Cervantes in his “Galatea” and his “Journey to Parnassus,” and by Lope
de Vega in his “Laurel of Apollo.” But in the reign of Philip the
Fourth, though the theatre, from accidental circumstances, flourished
more than ever, the other departments showed symptoms of decline; and
in the reign of Charles the Second, wherever we turn, the number of
authors sinks away, till it is obvious that some great change must take
place, or elegant literature in Spain will speedily become extinct.
The public interest, too, in the few writers that remained, was gone.
At least, that general, national interest, which alone can sustain the
life it alone can give to the literature of any country, was no longer
there; and all the favor, that Spanish poets and men of letters enjoyed
at the end of the century, came from the court and the superficial
fashion of the time, which patronized the affected style of those
followers of Góngora, whose bad taste seemed to go on increasing in
extravagance, as talent among them grew more rare.
Every thing, meanwhile, announced, that the great foundations of the
national character were giving way on all sides; and that the failing
literature of the country was only one of the phases and signs of the
coming overthrow of its institutions. The decay which was so visible
on the surface of things had, however, long mined unseen beneath what
had been thought a period of extraordinary security and glory. Charles
the Fifth, while, on the one side, by the war of the _Comuneros_, he
had crushed nearly all of political liberty that Cardinal Ximenes had
left in the old constitutions of Castile, had given, on the other, by
his magnificent foreign conquests, a false direction to the character
of his people at home;--both tending alike to waste away that vigor
and independence which the Moorish wars had nourished in the hearts
of the nation, and which had so long constituted its real strength.
Philip the Second had been less successful than his father in his
great labors to advance the permanent prosperity of the monarchy. He
had, indeed, added Portugal and the Philippine Islands to his empire,
which now comprehended above a hundred millions of human beings, and
seemed to threaten the interests of all the rest of Europe. But such
doubtful benefits were heavily overbalanced by the religious rebellion
of the Netherlands, the fatal source of unnumbered mischiefs; by the
exhausting wars with Elizabeth of England and Henry the Fourth of
France; by the contempt for labor, that followed the extraordinary
prevalence of a spirit of military adventure, and broke down the
industry of the country; by the vast increase of the ecclesiastical
institutions, which created a ruinous amount of pensioned idleness;
and by the wasteful luxury brought in with the gold of America,
which seemed to corrupt whatever it touched; so that, when that wary
prince died, he left an impoverished people, whose energies he had
overstrained and impaired by his despotism, and whose character he had
warped and misdirected by his unrelenting and unscrupulous bigotry.[262]
[262] There is a remarkable paper, in the sixth volume of
the “Seminario Erudito,” on the causes of the decline of
Spain;--remarkable because, though written in the reign of
Philip IV., by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, an ecclesiastic of
rank, whom Charles III. afterwards asked to have canonized, it
yet attributes the origin of the prostration under which Spain
suffered in his time mainly to the war with the Netherlands.
His successor, feeble-minded and superstitious, was neither able
to repair the results of such mischiefs, nor to contend with the
difficulties they entailed upon his country. The power of the clergy,
grown enormous by the favor of Philip the Second and the consolidated
influence of the Jesuits, continued to gain strength, as it were of
itself; and, under the direct persuasions of this mighty hierarchy,
nearly six hundred thousand descendants of Moors--who, though
preserving, as their fathers had done for a century, the external
appearances of Christianity, were yet suspected of being Mohammedans at
heart--were now, by a great crime of state, expelled from the land of
their birth; a crime followed by injuries to the agriculture and wealth
of the South of Spain, and indeed of the whole country, from which they
have never recovered.[263]
[263] There is a great discrepancy in the accounts of the number
of Moriscos expelled from Spain, 1609-11,--several making it
a million, and one reducing it so low as a hundred and sixty
thousand. But, whatever may have been the number expelled,
all accounts agree as to the disastrous effects produced on a
population already decaying by the loss of so many persons, who
had long been the most skilful manufacturers and agriculturists
in the kingdom; effects to which the many _despoblados_ noted
on our recent maps of Spain still bear melancholy testimony.
(Clemencin, Notes to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 54.) In stating
six hundred thousand to have been the number driven out, I have
taken the reckoning of Circourt, (Tom. III. p. 103,) which seems
made with care.
These unhappy persons had among them a good deal of Castilian
culture, whose traces still remain in manuscripts, which, like
that of the old poem of Joseph, already described, (Period I.
chap. 5,) are composed in Spanish, but are written throughout
in the Arabic character. Of parts of two such manuscripts I
possess copies, through the kindness of Don Pascual de Gayangos.
The first is a poem written in 1603, and entitled, “Discourse
on the Light, and Descent, and Lineage of our Chief and Blessed
Prophet, Mohammed Çalam, composed and compiled by his Servant,
who most needs his Pardon, Mohammed Rabadan, a Native of Rueda,
on the River Xalon.” It is divided into eight Histories, of which
I possess the fourth, entitled, “History of Hexim,” who was one
of the ancestors of the Prophet. It contains above two thousand
lines in the short, Castilian ballad measure, and is remarkably
Arabic and Mohammedan in its general tone, though with occasional
allusions to the Greek mythology. It is, too, not without
poetical merit, as in the following lines, which open the second
canto, and describe the auspicious morning of Hexim’s marriage.
Al tiempo que el alba bella
Enseña su rostro alegre,
Y, rompiendo las tinieblas,
Su clara luz resplandece,
Dando las nuevas que el dia
En su seguimiento viene,
Y el roxo Apolo tras ella,
Dexando los campos verdes;
Quando las aves nocturnas
Se recogen en su albergue,
Y las que la luz gobiernan
El delgado viento hienden;
Quando los hombres despiertan
Y el pesado sueño vencen,
Para dar á su Hacedor
El debito que le deben;--
En este tiempo la compañia
Del hijo de Abdulmunef
Se levantan y aperciben
Al casamiento solemne.
In the preface to the whole poem, the author says Allah alone
knows how much labor it has cost him to collect the manuscripts
necessary for his task, “scattered,” he adds, “as they were, all
over Spain, and lost and hidden through fear of the Inquisition.”
The other work to which I refer is chiefly in prose, and is
anonymous. Its author says he was driven from Spain in 1610,
and was landed at Tunis with above three thousand of his
unhappy countrymen, who, through the long abode of their race
in a Christian land and under the fierce persecutions of the
Inquisition, had not only so lost a knowledge of the rites
and ceremonies of their religion, that it was necessary to
indoctrinate them like children, but had so lost all proper
knowledge of the Arabic, that it was necessary to do it through
the Castilian. The Bashaw of Tunis, therefore, sent for the
author, and commanded him to write a book in Castilian, for the
instruction of these singular neophytes. He did so, and produced
the present work, which he called “Mumin,” or the Believer in
Allah; a word which he uses to signify a city populous and
fortified, which is attacked by the Vices and defended by the
Virtues of the Mohammedan religion, and in which one of the
personages relates a history of his own life, adventures, and
sufferings; all so given as to instruct, sometimes by direct
precept and sometimes by example, the newly arrived Moriscos in
their duties and faith. It is, of course, partly allegorical
and romantic. Its air is often Arabic, and so is its style
occasionally; but some of its scenes are between lovers at grated
windows, as if in a Castilian city, and it is interspersed with
Castilian poems by Montemayor, Góngora, and the Argensolas, with,
perhaps, some by the author himself, who seems to have been a man
of cultivation and of a gentle spirit. Of this manuscript I have
eighty pages,--about a fifth of the whole.
Further notices on the Morisco-Spanish literature may be
found in an account by the Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, of
two manuscripts in France, like those just described (Ochoa,
Manuscritos Españoles, 1844, pp. 6-21); but a more ample and
satisfactory discussion of it occurs in a learned article in the
British and Foreign Review, January, 1839.
It should be remembered that _Morisco_ was substituted for
_Moro_, after the overthrow of the Moorish power in Spain, as an
expression of the contempt with which the Christian Spaniards
have never ceased to pursue their old conquerors and hated
enemies, from the time of the fall of Granada to the present day.
Encouraged by the expulsion of the Jews, in 1492, and by that
of the Moors, in 1609-11, Don Sancho de Moncada, a professor in
the University of Toledo, addressed Philip III., in a discourse
published in 1619, urging that monarch to drive out the Gypsies.
But he failed. His discourse is in Hidalgo, “Romances de
Germania,” (Madrid, 1779, 8vo,) and is translated by Borrow, in
his remarkable work on the Gypsies (London, 1841, 8vo, Vol. I.
chap. xi.). Salazar de Mendoza, at the end of his “Dignidades
de Castilla,” published in 1618, says he had himself prepared a
memorial to the same effect, for driving out the Gypsies; and he
adds, in a true Castilian spirit, that “it is being over-nice to
tolerate such a pernicious and perverse race.”
The easy, gay selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and the open profligacy
of his ministers, gave increased activity to the causes that were
hastening on the threatened ruin. Catalonia broke out into rebellion;
Jamaica was seized by the English; Roussillon was ceded to France;
Portugal, which had never been heartily incorporated into the
monarchy, resumed her ancient place among the independent nations of
the earth;--every thing, in short, showed how the external relations
of the state were disturbed and endangered. Its internal condition,
meanwhile, was no less shaken. The coin, notwithstanding the wise
warnings of Mariana, had been adulterated anew; the taxes had been
shamelessly increased, while the interest on the ever-growing public
debt was dishonestly diminished. Men, everywhere, began to be alarmed
at the signs of the times. The timid took shelter in celibacy and
the institutions of the Church. The bolder emigrated. At last, the
universal pressure began to be visible in the state of the population.
Whole towns and villages were deserted. Seville, the ancient capital
of the monarchy, lost three quarters of its inhabitants; Toledo one
third; Segovia, Medina del Campo, and others of the large cities, fell
off still more, not only in their numbers and opulence, but in whatever
goes to make up the great aggregate of civilization. The whole land, in
fact, was impoverished, and was falling into a premature decay.
The necessary results of such a deplorable state of things are yet
more apparent in the next reign,--the unhappy reign of Charles the
Second,--which began with the troubles incident to a long minority, and
ended with a failure in the regular line of succession, and a contest
for the throne. It was a dreary period, with marks of dilapidation and
ruin on all sides. Beginning at the southern borders of France, and
following the coast by Barcelona and Gibraltar round to Cadiz, not one
of the great fortresses, which were the keys of the kingdom, was in
a state to defend itself against the most moderate force by which it
might be assailed. On the Atlantic, the old arsenals, from which the
Armada had gone forth, were empty; and the art of ship-building had
been so long neglected, that it was almost, or quite lost.[264] And,
in the capital and at court, the revenues of the country, which had
long been exhausted and anticipated, were at last unable to provide
for the common wants of the government, and sometimes even failed to
furnish forth the royal table with its accustomed propriety; so that
the envoy of Austria expressed his regret at having accepted the place
of ambassador at a court where he was compelled to witness a misery so
discreditable.[265]
[264] Comentario de la Guerra de España, por el Marques de San
Phelipe, Genova, s. a., 4to, Tom. I. Lib. II., año 1701.
[265] Tapia, Hist. de la Civilizacion Española, Madrid, 1840,
12mo, Tom. III. p. 167.
It was a new lesson to the world in the vicissitudes of empire. No
country in Christendom had, from such a height of power as that which
Spain occupied in the time of Charles the Fifth, fallen into such an
abyss of degradation as that in which every proud Spaniard felt Spain
to be sunk, when the last of the great House of Austria approached the
grave, believing himself to be under the influence of sorcery, and
seeking relief by exorcisms which would have disgraced the credulity
of the Middle Ages;--all, too, at the time when France was jubilant
with the victories of Condé, and England preparing for the age of
Marlborough.[266]
[266] The details--disgusting enough--are given by L. F. Moratin,
in the notes to his edition of the “Auto da Fé de Logroño, del
Año 1610,” a work originally published for general edification,
by one of the persons concerned in the _auto_ itself, and
certified to be true by others; but reprinted (Cadiz, 1812, 12mo)
by Moratin, the comic poet, to show the ignorance and brutality
of all who had a hand in it. There is a play on the subject by
Gil y Zarate, 1837; but it does not respect the truth of history.
In any country, such a decay in the national character and power would
be accompanied by a corresponding, if not an equal, decay in its
literature; but in Spain, where both had always been so intimately
connected, and where both had rested, in such a remarkable degree,
on the same foundations, the wise who looked on from a distance
could not fail to anticipate a rapid and disastrous decline of all
that was intellectual and elegant. And so, in fact, it proved. The
old religion of the country,--the most prominent of all the national
characteristics,--the mighty impulse which, in the days of the Moors,
had done every thing but work miracles,--was now so perverted from
its true character by the enormous growth of the intolerance which
sprang up originally almost as a virtue, that it had become a means of
oppression such as Europe had never before witnessed. Through the whole
period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which we have just
gone over,--from the fall of Granada to the extinction of the Austrian
dynasty,--the Inquisition, as the grand exponent of the power of
religion in Spain, had maintained, not only an uninterrupted authority,
but, by constantly increasing its relations to the state, and lending
itself more and more freely to the punishment of whatever was obnoxious
to the government, had effectually broken down all that remained, from
earlier days, of intellectual independence and manly freedom. But this
was not done, and could not be done, without the assent of the great
body of the people, or without such an active coöperation on the part
of the government and the higher classes as brought degradation and
ruin to all who shared in its spirit.
Unhappily, this spirit, mistaken for the religion that had sustained
them through their long-protracted contest with their infidel invaders,
was all but universal in Spain during this whole period. The first and
the last of the House of Austria,--Charles the Fifth and the feeblest
of his descendants,--if alike in nothing else, were alike in the zeal
with which they sustained the Holy Office while they lived, and with
which, by their testaments, they commended it to the support and
veneration of their respective successors.[267] Nor did the intervening
kings show less deference to its authority. The first royal act of
Philip the Second, when he came from the Low Countries to assume the
crown of Spain, was to celebrate an _auto da fé_ at Valladolid.[268]
When the young and gay daughter of Henry the Second of France arrived
at Toledo, in 1560, that city offered an _auto da fé_ as part of the
rejoicings deemed appropriate to her wedding; and the same thing was
done by Madrid, in 1632, for another French princess, when she gave
birth to an heir to the crown;[269]--odious proofs of the degree to
which bigotry had stifled both the dictates of an enlightened reason
and the common feelings of humanity.
[267] Tapia, Hist. de la Civilizacion, Tom. III. p. 77 and p.
168. Sandoval, Hist., Tom. II. p. 657.
[268] Llorente, Hist., Tom. II., 1817, p. 239.
[269] Ibid., Tom. II. p. 385, Tom. IV. p. 3.
But in all this the people and their leaders rejoiced. When a nobleman,
about to die for adherence to the Protestant faith, passed the balcony
where Philip the Second sat in state, and appealed to him not to see
his innocent subjects thus cruelly put to death, the monarch replied,
that, if it were his own son, he would gladly carry the fagots for
his execution; and the answer was received at the time, and recorded
afterwards, as one worthy of the head of the mightiest empire in the
world.[270] And again, in 1680, when Charles the Second was induced
to signify his desire to enjoy, with his young bride, the spectacle
of an _auto da fé_, the artisans of Madrid volunteered in a body to
erect the needful amphitheatre, and labored with such enthusiasm, that
they completed the vast structure in an incredibly short space of
time; cheering one another at their work with devout exhortations, and
declaring that, if the materials furnished them should fail, they would
pull down their own houses in order to obtain what might be wanting to
complete the holy task.[271]
[270] Tapia, Hist., Tom. III. p. 88.
[271] One of the most remarkable books that can be consulted,
to illustrate the character and feelings of all classes of
society in Spain at the end of the seventeenth century, is the
“Relacion,” etc., of this “Auto General” of 1680, published
immediately afterwards at Madrid, by Joseph del Olmo, one of
the persons who had been most busy in its arrangements. It is
a small quarto of 308 pages, and gives, as if describing a
magnificent theatrical pageant, the details of the scene, which
began at seven o’clock in the morning of June 30th, and was not
over till nine o’clock of the following morning, the king and
queen sitting in their box or balcony, to witness it, fourteen
hours of that time. Eighty-five grandees entered themselves as
especial _familiares_, or servants, of the Holy Office, to do
honor to the occasion; and the king sent from his own hand the
first faggot to the accursed pile. The whole number of victims
exhibited was one hundred and twenty, of whom twenty-one were
burnt alive; but it does not appear that the royal party actually
witnessed this portion of the atrocities. From the whole account,
however, there can be no doubt that devout Spaniards generally
regarded the exhibition with favor, and most of them with a much
stronger feeling. Madame d’Aulnoy (Voyage, Tom. III. p. 154) had
a description of the ceremonies intended for this _auto da fé_
given to her, as if it were to be an honor to the monarchy, by
one of the Counsellors of the Inquisition; but I think she left
Madrid before it occurred.
Nor had the principle of loyalty, always so prominent in the Spanish
character, become less perverted and mischievous than the religious
principle. It offered its sincere homage alike to the cold severity
of Philip the Second, to the weak bigotry of Philip the Third, to
the luxurious selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and to the miserable
imbecility of Charles the Second. The waste and profligacy of such
royal favorites as the Duke of Lerma and the Count Duke Olivares,
which ended in national bankruptcy and disgrace, failed seriously to
affect the sentiments of the people towards the person of the monarch,
or to change their persuasions that their earthly sovereign was to
be addressed in words and with feelings similar to those with which
they approached the Majesty of Heaven.[272] The king--merely because
he was the king--was looked upon substantially as he had been in the
days of Saint Ferdinand and the “Partidas,” when he was accounted the
direct vicegerent of Heaven, and the personal proprietor of all those
portions of the globe which he had inherited with his crown.[273]
The Duc de Vendôme, therefore, showed his thorough knowledge of the
Spanish character, when, in the War of the Succession,--Madrid being in
possession of the enemy, and every thing seeming to be lost,--he still
declared, that, if the persons of the king, the queen, and the prince
were but safe, he would himself answer for final success.[274] In fact,
the old principle of loyalty, sunk into a submission--voluntary, it is
true, and not without grace, but still an unhesitating submission--to
the mere authority of the king, seemed to have become the only
efficient bond of connection between the crown and its subjects, and
the main resource of the state for the preservation of social order.
The nation ceased to claim its most important rights, if they came in
conflict with the rights claimed by the royal prerogative; so that
the resistance of Aragon in the case of Perez, and that of Catalonia
against the oppressive administration of the Count Duke Olivares, were
easily put down by the zeal of the very descendants of the _Comuneros_
of Castile.
[272] See the first of Doblado’s remarkable Letters, where he
says, “You hear from the pulpit the duties that men owe to ‘both
their Majesties’; and a foreigner is often surprised at the hopes
expressed by Spaniards, that ‘his Majesty’ will be pleased to
grant them life and health for some years more.” The Dict. of the
Academy, 1736, verb. _Magestad_, illustrates this still further.
[273] Partida Segunda, Tit. XIII.
[274] Tapia, Hist., Tom. IV. p. 19.
It is this degradation of the loyalty and religion of the country,
infecting as it did every part of the national character, which we
have felt to be undermining the general culture of Spain during the
seventeenth century; its workings being sometimes visible on the
surface, and sometimes hidden by the vast and showy apparatus of
despotism and superstition under which it was often concealed even
from its victims. But it is a most melancholy fact in the case, that
whatever of Spanish literature survived at the end of this period found
its nourishment in such feelings of religion and loyalty as still
sustained the forms of the monarchy,--an imperfect and unhealthy life,
wasting away in an atmosphere of death. At last, as we approach the
conclusion of the century, the Inquisition and the despotism seem to be
everywhere present, and to have cast their blight over every thing.
All the writers of the time yield to their influences, but none in a
manner more painful to witness, than Calderon and Solís; the two whose
names close up the period, and leave so little to hope for the future.
For the “Autos” of Calderon and the “History” of Solís were undoubtedly
regarded, both by their authors and by the public, as works eminently
religious in their nature; and the respect, and even reverence, with
which each of these great men treated the wretched and imbecile
Charles the Second, were as undoubtedly accounted to them by their
contemporaries for religious loyalty and patriotism. At the present
day, we cannot doubt that a literature which rests in any considerable
degree on such foundations must be near to its fall.[275]
[275] See the end of “El Segundo Scipion,” and that of “El
Segundo Blason de Austria,” by Calderon; and the Dedication of
his History to Charles II., by Solís, in which, with a slight
touch of the affectations of _cultismo_, which Solís did not
always avoid, he tells this “king of shreds and patches”: “I
find, in the _shadow_ of your Majesty, the _splendor_ that
is wanting in my own works.” In the same spirit, Lupercio
de Argensola made the canonization of San Diego a sort of
prophetical canonization of Philip II., in a _cancion_ of no mean
merit as a poem, but one that shocks all religious feeling, by
recalling the apotheosis of the Roman emperors.
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.
THIRD PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE ACCESSION OF
THE BOURBON FAMILY AND THE INVASION OF BONAPARTE; OR FROM THE
BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EARLY PART OF THE
NINETEENTH.
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE
THIRD PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
WAR OF THE SUCCESSION.--BOURBON FAMILY.--PHILIP THE FIFTH.--ACADEMY
OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE: ITS DICTIONARY, ORTHOGRAPHY, GRAMMAR, AND
OTHER WORKS.--ACADEMY OF BARCELONA.--ACADEMY OF HISTORY.--STATE OF
LETTERS.--POETRY: MORAES, BARNUEVO, REYNOSA, ZEVALLOS, LOBO, BENEGASI,
PITILLAS.
Charles the Second was gathered to his fathers on the first day of
November, in the year 1700. How low he left the intellectual culture
of his country, and how completely the old national literature had
died out in his reign, we have already seen. But, before there could
be any serious thought of a revival from this disastrous state of
things, a civil war was destined to sweep over the land, and still
further exhaust its resources. Austria and France, it had been long
understood, would make pretensions to the throne of Spain, so soon as
it should be left vacant by the extinction of the reigning dynasty; and
the partisans of each of these great powers were numerous and confident
of success, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe. At this moment,
while standing on the verge of the grave,--and knowing that he stood
there,--the last, unhappy descendant of the House of Austria, with
many misgivings and a heart-felt reluctance, finally announced his
preference; and, by a secret political testament, declared the Duke of
Anjou, second son of the Dauphin and grandson of Louis the Fourteenth
of France, to be sole heir to his throne and dominions.
The decision was not unexpected, and was, perhaps, as wise as a wiser
king would have made under similar circumstances. But it was not the
more likely, on either account, to be acquiesced in. Austria declared
war against the new dynasty, as soon as the will of the deceased
monarch was divulged; and England and Holland, outraged by the bad
faith of Louis the Fourteenth, who, hardly two years before, had made
an arrangement with them for a wholly different settlement of the
Spanish question, soon joined her. The war, known as “the War of the
Succession,” became general in its character; Spain was invaded by the
allied powers; and the contest for its throne was kept up on the soil
of that unfortunate country, partly by foreign troops, and partly by
divisions among its own people, until 1713, when the treaty of Utrecht
confirmed the claims of the Bourbon family, and gave peace to Europe,
wearied with blood.
As far as Spain was concerned, the results of this war were most
important. On the one hand, she lost by it nearly half of her European
dominions, and fell, if not in proportion to such a loss, yet very
greatly, in the scale of nations. But, on the other hand, the vast
resources of her American colonies still remained untouched; her people
had been roused to new energy by their exertions in defence of their
homes; and their ancient loyalty had been, to an extraordinary degree,
concentrated on a young and adventurous prince, who, though himself
a foreigner, stood before them as their defender against foreign
invasion. It seemed, therefore, as if still there were life in Spain,
and as if something remained of the old national character, on which to
build a new culture.[276]
[276] Lord Mahon’s excellent “History of the War of the
Succession in Spain” (London, 1832, 8vo) leaves the same general
impression on the mind of the reader, as to the effect of that
war on the Spanish character, that is left by the contemporary
accounts of it. It is, no doubt, the true one.
That Philip the Fifth should desire to restore the intellectual dignity
of the country, that had so generously adopted him, was natural. But
while the war lasted, it demanded all the care of his government; and
when it was over, and he turned himself to the task, it was plain that,
in his personal relations and dispositions, he was but imperfectly
fitted for it. Notwithstanding the sincerest efforts to assimilate
himself to the people he governed, he was still a foreigner, little
acquainted with their condition, and unable to sympathize with their
peculiar nationality. He had been educated at the court of Louis the
Fourteenth; the most brilliant court in Europe, and that in which,
more than in any other, letters were regarded as a part of the pageant
of empire. His character was not strongly marked; and he expressed
no decided love for any definite form of intellectual cultivation,
though he had good taste enough to enjoy the elegance to which he had
always been accustomed, and which had been an important part of his
breeding. He was, in fact, a Frenchman; and never could forget,--what
his grandfather had unwisely told him always to remember,--that he was
such. When, therefore, he desired to encourage elegant literature, it
was natural that he should first recur to the means by which he had
seen it encouraged where, more than in any other country, it had been
successfully fostered by royal patronage; and if, in some respects, his
position was little favorable to such a use of his power, in one, at
least, it was eminently fortunate; for the earlier literature of Spain
had so nearly disappeared, that it could offer little resistance to any
attempt that might be made to introduce new forms or to infuse a new
character into the old.
At this moment, the idea of patronizing and controlling the literature
of a country by academies, established under the authority of
its government, and composed of the principal men of letters of
the time, was generally favored;--the French Academy, founded by
Cardinal Richelieu, and always the model of its class, being now at
the height of its success and fame. To establish a Spanish Academy,
which should have similar objects and reach similar results, was,
therefore, naturally the great literary project of the reign of Philip
the Fifth.[277] Probably the king himself had early entertained
it. Certainly it was formally brought to his notice, in 1713, by
the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman, who, amidst the cares of five
successive viceroyalties, had found leisure to devote himself, not only
to letters, but to some of the more severe branches of the physical
and exact sciences. His first purpose seems to have been, to form
an academy whose empire should extend, on all sides, to the limits
of human knowledge, and whose subdivisions should be substantially
made according to the system of Lord Bacon. This, however, was soon
abandoned as too vast an undertaking; and it was determined to begin
by confining the duties of the new association principally to “the
cultivation and establishment of the purity of the Castilian language.”
An Academy for this object went into operation, by virtue of a royal
decree dated the 3d of November, 1714.[278]
[277] The Royal Library, now the National Library, at Madrid,
which was strictly the earliest literary project of the reign of
Philip V., was founded in 1711; but for several years it was an
institution of little importance. El Bibliotecario y el Trovador,
Madrid, 1841, folio, p. 3.
[278] “Historia de la Academia,” in the Preface to the
“Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana, por la Real Academia
Española,” Madrid, Tom. I. 1726, folio. Sempere y Guarinos,
Biblioteca, 1785, Discurso Preliminar, and Tom. I. p. 55.
As it was modelled almost exactly after the form of the French Academy,
the first project of its members was that of making a Dictionary. The
work was much needed. From the time of Fernando de Herrera the language
had not received large additions, but it had received some that were
of value. Mendoza and Coloma had introduced a few military terms, that
have since passed into common use; and both of them, with Ercilla,
Urrea, and many others, had been so familiar with the Italian, as
to seize some of its wealth for their own. Cervantes, however, had,
perhaps, done more than any body else. That he was insensible neither
to the danger of a too free intermixture of foreign words, nor to the
true principles that should govern their introduction when needed, he
has shown in the conversations of Don Quixote with the printers at
Barcelona, and with Sancho at the Duke’s castle; but still he felt the
rights of genius within him, and exercised them in this respect as
boldly as he did in most others. His new compounds, his Latinisms, his
restoration of old and neglected phrases, and his occasional recourse
to the Italian, have all been noted; and, in nearly every instance,
the words he adopted now enter into the recognized vocabulary of the
language. Other writers ventured in the same direction, with less
success; but still, from the glossaries added to the poems of Blasco in
1584, and of Lopez Pinciano in 1605, there can be no doubt that many
words, which were then thought to need explanation, have long since
become familiar, and that the old Castilian stock, during the reigns
of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, was receiving additions,
which ought, in some way, to be recognized as an important part of its
permanent resources.[279]
[279] Garcés, Vigor y Elegancia de la Lengua Castellana,
Madrid, 1791, 2 tom. 8vo, Prólogo to each volume. Mendoza used
reluctantly such words as _centinela_, and Coloma introduced
_dique_, etc., from his Dutch experience. Navarrete (Vida de
Cervantes, pp. 163-169) and Garcés (loc. cit.) show the value of
what Cervantes did, and Clemencin (ed. D. Quixote, Tom. V. pp.
99, 292, and 357) gives a list of the Latin, Italian, and other
words used by Cervantes, but not always naturalized, on which, in
various notes elsewhere, he seems to look with less favor than
Garcés does. Quite as curious as either are the words, which
Blasco (Universal Redencion, 1584) and Lopez Pinciano (El Pelayo,
1605) thought it necessary to put into vocabularies at the end
of their respective poems, and to define for their readers,
among which are _fatal_, _natal_, _fugaz_, _gruta_, _abandonar_,
_adular_, _anhelo_, _aplauso_, _arrojarse_, _assedio_, etc.,--all
now familiar Castilian.
But, on the other hand, during the seventeenth century, the old
language had been much abused. From the appearance of Góngora no
proper regard had been paid to the preservation of its purity or of
its original characteristics, by many of the most popular authors that
employed it. The _Latiniparla_, as Quevedo called the affectation of
his time, had brought in many Latin words and many strange phrases,
wholly repugnant to the genius of the Spanish. Such words and
constructions, too, had enjoyed much favor; and Lope de Vega, Calderon,
and the other leading spirits, who pronounced them to be affectations
and refused directly to countenance them, yet occasionally yielded to
the fashion of their time, in order to obtain the applause which was
sure to follow.[280]
[280] It is impossible to open the works of Count Villamediana,
and the other followers of Góngora, without finding proofs of
their willingness to change the language of Spanish literature;
but there is a small and very imperfect list of the words and
phrases these innovators favored, to be found in the “Declamacion
contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana,” by Vargas y Ponce, p.
150, which will at once illustrate their general purpose.
Both to receive the words that had been rightfully naturalized in the
language, and to place a mark of disapprobation on those that were
unworthy to be adopted, a Dictionary resting on authority was wanted.
None such had been attempted in Spain. Indeed, during the whole of
the preceding century, only one Spanish Dictionary of any kind had
been produced that received, or deserved, the notice of the Academy.
This was the work of Covarrubias, whose “Tesoro,” first printed in
1611, is a curious book, full of learning, and, in the etymological
part, valuable, but often conceited, and rarely showing philosophical
acuteness in its definitions.[281] The new Academy, therefore, could
obtain little help from the labors of their predecessors, and, for
such as was worth having, were obliged to go back to Lebrixa and
his editors. But they were in earnest. They labored diligently,
and between 1726 and 1739 produced their grand work, in six folio
volumes. On the whole, it did them honor. No doubt, it shows, in
several parts, a want of mature consideration and good judgment.
Many words were omitted, that should have been inserted; many were
inserted, which were afterwards stricken out; and many were given on
unsatisfactory authorities. But its definitions are generally good; its
etymologies--though this part of the work was little regarded by its
authors--are respectable; and its citations are ample and pertinent.
In fact, all that had been done for the language, in the way of
dictionaries, since its origin, was not equal to what was now done in
this single work.
[281] There is an edition of the Tesoro of Covarrubias, by Benito
Remigio Noydens, (Madrid, 1674, folio,) which is better and
ampler than the original work.
But the Academicians were not slow to perceive, that a Dictionary so
large could exercise little popular influence. They began, therefore,
soon afterwards, to prepare an abridgment, in a single folio volume,
for more general use, and published the first edition of it in 1780.
The project was judicious, and its execution skilful. It omitted the
discussions, citations, and formal etymologies of the larger work;
but it established a better vocabulary, and improved many of the
old definitions. It had, therefore, from its first appearance, a
decided authority; and, by the persevering labors of the Academy, has
continued, in its successive editions, to be the proper standard of
the language,--labors which, since the latter part of the eighteenth
century, have been always heavy, and sometimes disagreeable, from the
constant tendency of even the better writers, like Melendez and his
school, to fall into Gallicisms, which the increasing intercourse with
France had rendered fashionable in the society of their time.
Another difficulty, however, soon presented itself to the Academy,
quite as serious as the size of their Dictionary. It was that of the
orthography they had adopted. The spelling of the Castilian--partly,
perhaps, from the very various elements of which it was composed, and
partly from the popular character of its literature--had always been
more unsettled than that of the other modern languages. Lebrixa, the
great scholar of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, first attempted to
reduce it to order, and the simplicity of his system, which appeared in
1517, seemed at first likely to secure general favor and acceptance.
But thirty treatises, that at different times followed, had--with the
exception of the acute and pleasant one printed by Aleman when he was
in Mexico, in 1609--served rather to unsettle and confuse the whole
matter, than to determine any thing in relation to it.[282]
[282] The “Ortografía de la Lengua Castellana,” (Mexico, 1609,
4to, ff. 83) is a pleasant and important treatise, which, as the
novelist intimates, he began to write in Castile and finished in
Mexico. It proposes to reverse the letter ↄ in order to express
the soft _ch_ as in _mucho_, to be printed _muↄo_; uses two forms
of the letter _r_; writes the conjunction _y_ always _i_, as
Salvá now insists it should be; and claims _j_, _ll_, and _ñ_ to
be separate letters, as they have long been admitted to be.
In speaking of Aleman, I am reminded of his “San Antonio de
Padua,” printed in 12mo, at Valencia, in 1607, ff. 309. It
belongs to the same class of books with the “San Patricio” of
Montalvan, (see, _ante_, Vol. II. p. 298,) but is more elaborate
and more devout. The number of the Saint’s miracles that it
records is very great. Whether he invented any of them for the
occasion, I do not know; but they sometimes read as much like
_novelas_ as some of his stories in the “Guzman” do, and are
always written in the same idiomatic and unadulterated Castilian.
It is introduced by a _cancion_ in honor of it by Lope de Vega;
but I cannot find that it was ever reprinted;--why, it is
difficult to say, for it is an uncommonly attractive book of its
class.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the first attempt of the
Academy, made in the form of a short discourse, prefixed to its larger
Dictionary, produced little effect. A separate work, which appeared in
1742, did something more, but not much; and the successive editions
of it which were called for by the public rather showed the uneasy
state of opinion in relation to the points under discussion, than any
thing else. At last, in 1815, the Academy, in the eighth recension of
its treatise on Orthography, and in 1817, in the fifth of its smaller
Dictionary, began a series of important changes, which have been
generally adopted by subsequent writers of authority, and appear to
have nearly settled the spelling of the Castilian, though still it
seems open to a few further modifications, and even to invite them.[283]
[283] The difficulties in Castilian orthography are set forth in
the “Diálogo de las Lenguas” (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom.
II. pp. 47-65); but the ingenious author of that discussion is
more severe than was necessary on Lebrixa. An anonymous writer of
an excellent essay on the same subject, in the first volume of
the Repertorio Americano, (Tom. I. p. 27,) is a great deal more
judicious. But how unsettled much still remains in practice may
be seen in the “Manual del Cajista, por José María Palacios,”
Madrid, 1845, 18mo, where (pp. 134-154) is a “Prontuario de las
Voces de dudosa Ortografía,” containing above 1800 words.
A Grammar, like a Dictionary, was provided for in the statutes of the
Academy. But the original members of that body, few of whom were men
of note and authority, showed a marked unwillingness to approach the
difficult discussions involved in such a work, and did not undertake
them at all till 1740. Even then, they went on slowly and with anxiety;
so that the result of their labors did not appear till 1771. For this
delay they were not wholly in fault. They had little to guide them,
except the rival Grammars of Gayoso and San Pedro, which were published
while the Academy was preparing its own, and the original attempt of
Lebrixa, which had long been forgotten. But, after so protracted a
labor, the Academicians should have produced something more worthy
of their claims; for what they gave to the world, at last, was an
unphilosophical and unpractical work, which, though subjected to
frequent revision since, is hardly an outline of what it ought to be,
and quite inferior to the Grammar of Salvá.[284]
[284] Of Lebrixa’s Grammar I have already spoken, (Vol. I.
p. 549,) and the memory of it was now so much revived that a
counterfeit edition of it was published, about 1775, in small
folio, hardly, I should judge from its appearance, with the
intention of deceiving. But such things were not uncommon about
that time, as Mendez says, who thinks the edition in question had
been printed about twenty years when he published his work in
1796. (See Typog., p. 242.) It is, however, already so rare, that
I obtained a copy of it with difficulty.
That of Gayoso was first printed at Madrid, in 1745, 12mo, and
that of San Pedro in Valencia, 1769, 12mo, which last Gayoso,
disguising himself under a sort of anagram, attacked, in his
“Conversaciones Críticas, por Don Antonio Gobeyos,” (Madrid,
1780, 12mo,) where he shows that San Pedro was not so original as
he ought to have been, but treats his Grammar with more harshness
than it deserved. Salvá’s “Gramática de la Lengua Castellana como
ahora se halla” was first printed in 1831, and the sixth edition
appeared at Madrid in 1844, 12mo; a striking proof of the want of
such a book.
A History of the Castilian Language, and an Art of Poetry, which were
also expressly prescribed by the statutes of the Academy, have never
been prepared under their authority; but, instead of these tasks, they
have sometimes performed duties not originally imposed upon them. Thus
they have published careful editions of different works of recognized
authority, particularly a magnificent one of “Don Quixote,” in 1780-84.
Since 1777, they have, from time to time, offered prizes for poetical
compositions, though, as is usual in such cases, with less important
results than had been hoped. And occasionally they have printed, with
funds granted to them by the government, works deemed of sufficient
merit to deserve such patronage, and, among others, the excellent
treatise of Garcés on “The Vigor and Beauty of the Spanish Language,”
which appeared under their auspices in 1791.[285] During the whole
century, therefore, the Spanish Academy, occupied in these various
ways, continued to be a useful institution, carefully abstaining from
such claims to control the public taste as were at first made by its
model in France, and, though not always very active and efficient,
still never deserving the reproach of neglecting the duties and tasks
for which it was originally instituted.
[285] Gregorio Garcés, whose “Fundamento del Vigor y Elegancia
de la Lengua Castellana” was printed at Madrid, 1791, 2 tom.
8vo, was a Jesuit, and prepared this excellent work in exile at
Ferrara, in which city he lived above thirty years, and from
which he returned home in 1798, under the decree of Charles IV.
abrogating that of his father for the expulsion of the Order from
Spain, in 1767.
One good effect that followed from the foundation of the Spanish
Academy was the establishment of other academies for kindred purposes.
These academies were entirely different from the social meetings, under
the same name, that were imitated from the Italian academies in the
time of Charles the Fifth,--one of the earliest of which was held in
the house of Cortés,[286] the conqueror of Mexico;--though still the
elder associations seem sometimes to have furnished materials, out of
which the institutions that succeeded them were constructed. At least,
this was the case with the Academy of Barcelona, which has rendered
good service to the cause of letters since 1751, after having long
existed as an idle affectation, under the title of the “Academy of the
Diffident.” The only one, however, of any consequence to the general
literature of the country, was established during the reign of Philip
the Fifth,--the Academy for Spanish History, founded in 1738; the
character and amount of whose labors, both published and unpublished,
do its members much honor.[287]
[286] See, _ante_, Part II. c. 5, and note, Vol. I. p. 537.
[287] For an account of these Academies, see Guarinos,
“Biblioteca”; and for a notice of the origin of the Royal
Academy of History, see the first volume of its Memoirs. The old
_Academias_, in imitation of the Italian,--such as are ridiculed
in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco IX.,--had much gone out of
fashion and been displaced by the modern _Tertulias_, where both
sexes meet, and which in their turn have been ridiculed in the
_Saynetes_ of Ramon de la Cruz and Castillo.
But such associations everywhere, though they may be useful and
even important in their proper relations, can neither create a new
literature for a country, nor, where the old literature is seriously
decayed, do much to revive it. The Spanish academies were no exceptions
to this remark. All elegant culture had so nearly disappeared before
the accession of the Bourbons, and there was such an insensibility to
its value in those classes of society where it should have been most
cherished, that it was plain the resuscitation must be the work of
time, and that the land must long lie fallow before another harvest
could be gathered in. During the entire reign of Philip the Fifth,
therefore,--a reign which, including the few months of his nominal
abdication in favor of his son, extends to forty-six years,--we shall
find undeniable traces of this unhappy state of things; few authors
appearing who deserve to be named at all, and still fewer who demand a
careful notice.
Poetry, indeed, or what passed under that name, continued to be
written; and some of it, though little encouraged by the general
regard of the nation, was printed. Moraes, a Portuguese gentleman of
rank, who had lived in Spain from his youth, wrote two heroic poems
in Spanish; the first on the discovery of “The New World,” which he
published in 1701, and the other on the foundation of the kingdom of
Portugal, which was printed in 1712; both appearing originally in an
unfinished state, in consequence of the author’s impatience for fame,
and the earlier of them still remaining so. But they have been long
forgotten. Indeed, the first, which is full of extravagant allegories,
soon found the fate which its author felt it deserved; and the other,
though written with great deference for the rules of art, and more than
once reprinted, has not at last enjoyed a better fortune.
The most amusing work of Moraes is a prose satire, printed in 1734,
called “The Caves of Salamanca,” where, in certain grottos, which a
popular tradition supposed to exist, sealed up by magic, within the
banks of the Tórmes, he finds Amadis of Gaul, Oriana, and Celestina,
and discourses with them and other fanciful personages on such subjects
as his humor happens to suggest. Parts of it are very wild; parts of it
are both amusing and wise, especially what is said about the Spanish
language and academies, and about the “Telemachus” of Fénelon, then
at the height of its fame. The whole shows few of the affectations
of style that still deformed and degraded whatever there was of
literature in the country, and which, though ridiculed in “The Caves of
Salamanca,” are abundant in the other works of the same author.[288]
[288] There is an edition of the “Nuevo Mundo,” printed at
Barcelona, 1701, 4to, containing many blanks, which the author
announces his intention to fill up. Of the “Alfonso, ó la
Fundacion del Reyno de Portugal,” there are editions of 1712,
1716, 1731, and 1737. There is a notice of the author--Francisco
Botelho Moraes e Vasconcellos--in Barbosa, (Tom. II. p. 119,)
and at the end of the edition of the Alfonso, Salamanca, 1731,
4to, is a defence of a few peculiarities in its orthography. “Las
Cuevas de Salamanca” (s. l. 1734) is a small volume, divided into
seven books, written, perhaps, at Salamanca itself, which Moraes
loved, and where he retired in his old age. He published one or
two works in Spanish, besides those already mentioned, and one or
two in Latin, but no others of consequence.
A long heroic poem, in two parts, in honor of the conquest of Peru by
the Pizarros, was printed at Lima in 1732. It is founded principally on
the prose History of the Inca Garcilasso, but is rarely so interesting
as the gossip out of which it was constructed. The author, Pedro de
Barnuevo, was an officer of the Spanish government in South America;
and he gives in the Preface a long list of his works, published
and unpublished. He was, undoubtedly, a man of learning, but not a
poet. Like Moraes, he has arranged a mystical interpretation to his
story; some parts of which, such as that where America comes before
God, and prays to be conquered that she may be converted, are really
allegorical; while, in general, the interpretation he gives is merely
an after-thought, forced and unnatural. But his work is dull and in bad
taste, and the octave stanzas in which it is written are managed with
less skill than usual.[289]
[289] “Lima Fundada, Poema Heróico de Don Pedro de Peralta
Barnuevo,” Lima, 1732, 4to, about 700 pages; but so ill paged
that it is not easy to determine.
Several religious poems belong to the same period. One by Pedro de
Reynosa, printed in 1727, is on “Santa Casilda,” the converted daughter
of a Moorish king of Toledo, who figures in the history of Spain during
the eleventh century. Another, called “The Eloquence of Silence,” by
Miguel de Zevallos, in 1738, is devoted to the honor of Saint John of
Nepomuck, who, in the fourteenth century, was thrown into the Moldau,
by order of a king of Bohemia, because the holy man would not reveal
to the jealous monarch what the queen had intrusted to him under the
seal of the confessional. Both are in the octave stanzas common to
such poems, and are full of the faults of their times. Two mock-heroic
poems, that naturally followed such attempts, are not better than the
serious poems which provoked them.[290]
[290] “Santa Casilda, Poema en Octavas Reales, por el R. P.
Fr. Pedro de Reynosa,” Madrid, 1727, 4to. It is in seven
cantos, and each canto has a sort of codicil to it, affectedly
called a _Contrapunto_.--“La Eloquencia del Silencio, Poema
Heróico, por Miguel de la Reyna Zevallos,” Madrid, 1738, 4to.
Of the mock-heroic poems mentioned in the text, one is “La
Prosérpina, Poema Heróico, por D. Pedro Silvestre,” Madrid,
1721, 4to,--twelve mortal cantos. The other is “La Burromaquia,”
which is better, but still not amusing. It is unfinished, and is
found in the “Obras Póstumas de Gabriel Alvarez de Toledo.” The
divisions are not called “Cantos,” but “_Brayings_.” I have seen
very ridiculous extracts from a poem by Father Butron on Santa
Teresa, printed in 1722, and from one on St. Jerome, by P. M.
Lara, 1726, but I have never happened to fall in with the poems
themselves, which seem to be as bad as any of their class.
No account more favorable can be given of the lyric and miscellaneous
poetry of the period, than of the narrative. The best that appeared, or
at least what was thought to be the best at the time, is to be found
in the poetical works of Eugenio Lobo, first printed in 1738. He was a
soldier, who wrote verses only for his amusement; but his friends, who
admired them much beyond their merit, printed portions of them, from
time to time, until, at last, he himself thought it better to permit
a religious congregation to publish the whole in a volume. They are
very various in form, from fragments of two epics down to sonnets,
and equally various in tone, from that appropriate to religious
_villancicos_ to that of the freest satire. But they are in very bad
taste; and, if any thing like poetry appears in them, it is at rare
intervals. Benegasi y Luxan, who, in 1743, published a volume of such
light verses as were called for by the gay society in which he lived,
wrote in a simpler style than Lobo, though, on the whole, he succeeded
no better. But, except these two, and a few who imitated them, such as
Alvarez de Toledo and Antonio Muñoz, we have nothing from the reign of
the first of the Bourbons, that can claim notice in either of the forms
of poetry we have thus far examined.[291]
[291] “Obras Poéticas Lýricas, por el Coronel D. Eugenio Gerardo
Lobo,” Madrid, 1738, 4to.--“Poesías Lýricas, y Joco-Serias,
su Autor D. Joseph Joachim Benegasi y Luxan,” Madrid, 1743,
4to.--Gab. Alvarez de Toledo, _ut ante_.--Antonio Muñoz,
“Aventuras en Verso y en Prossa,” (_sic_,) no date, but licensed
1739.
More characteristic than either, however, were two collections of
verse, written, as their titles profess, by the poets of most note at
the time, in honor of the king and queen, who, in 1722, meeting the
Host, as it was passing to a dying man, gave their own carriage to the
priest who bore it, and then, according to the fashion of the country,
followed reverently on foot. The names of Zamora the dramatist, of
Diego de Torres, well known for his various accomplishments in science
and letters, and of a few other poets, who are still remembered, occur
in the first collection; but, in general, the obscurity of the authors
who contributed to it is such as we might anticipate from reading
their poetry; while, at the same time, the occasion of the whole
shows how low was the culture which could attribute any value to such
publications.[292]
[292] “Sagradas Flores del Parnaso, Consonancias Métricas de la
bien Templada Lyra de Apolo, que á la reverente Católica Accion
de haver ido accompañando sus Magestades el Ssmo Sacramento que
iba á Darse por viatico á una Enferma el Dia 28 de Novembre,
1722, cantaron los mejores Cisnes de España,” 4to. I give the
title of the first collection in full, as an indication of the
bad taste of its contents. Both collections, taken together,
make about 200 pages, and contain poems by about fifty authors,
generally in the worst and most affected style,--the very dregs
of Gongorism.
A single bright spot in the poetical history of this period is only
the more remarkable from the gloom that surrounds it. It is a satire
attributed to Herbas, a person otherwise unknown, who disguised himself
under the name of Jorge de Pitillas, and printed it in a literary
journal. It was singularly successful for the time when it appeared;
a circumstance the more to be noticed, as this success seems not to
have inspired any similar attempt, or even to have encouraged the
author to venture again before the public. The subject he chose was
fortunate,--the bad writers of his age,--and in discussing it he
has spoken out boldly and manfully; sometimes calling by name those
whom he ridicules, and at other times indicating them so that they
cannot be mistaken. His chief merits are the ease and simplicity of
his style, the pungency and justness of his satire, and his agreeable
imitations of the old masters, especially Persius and Juvenal, whom
he further resembled in the commendable qualities of brevity and
sententiousness.[293]
[293] The “Sátira contra los Malos Escritores de su Tiempo”
is commonly attributed to José Gerardo de Herbas; but Tapia
(Civilisacion, Tom. IV. p. 266) says it was written by José
Cobo de la Torre, besides which it is inserted in the “Rebusco
de las Obras Literarias de J. F. de Isla,” (Madrid, 1790,
12mo,) as if it were unquestionably Isla’s. It first appeared
in the second edition of the sixth volume of the “Diario de los
Literatos”;--the earliest periodical work in the spirit of modern
criticism that was published in Spain, and one so much in advance
of the age that it did not survive its second year, having been
begun in 1737, and gone on one year and nine months, till it made
seven small volumes. It was in vain that it was countenanced by
the king, and favored by the leading persons at court. It was too
large a work; it was a new thing, which Spaniards rarely like;
and it was severe in its criticisms, so that the authors of the
time generally took the field against it, and broke it down.
To the same period with the Satire of Pitillas belongs the
poem on “Deucalion,” by Alonso Verdugo de Castilla, Count of
Torrepalma. It is an imitation of Ovid, in about sixty octave
stanzas, somewhat remarkable for its versification. But in a
better period it would not be noticed.
CHAPTER II.
MARQUIS OF SAN PHELIPE.--INFLUENCE OF FRANCE ON SPANISH
LITERATURE.--LUZAN.--HIS PREDECESSORS AND HIS DOCTRINES.--LOW STATE OF
ALL INTELLECTUAL CULTURE IN SPAIN.--FEYJOÓ.
One historical work of some consequence belongs entirely to the reign
of Philip the Fifth,--the commentaries on the War of the Succession,
and the history of the country from 1701 to 1725, by the Marquis of
San Phelipe. Its author, a gentleman of Spanish descent, was born in
Sardinia, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and early
filled several offices of consequence under the government of Spain;
but, when his native island was conquered by the Austrian party, he
remained faithful to the French family, under whom he had thus far
served, and made his escape to Madrid. There Philip the Fifth received
him with great favor. He was created Marquis of San Phelipe,--a title
chosen by himself in compliment to the king,--and, besides being much
employed during the war in military affairs, he was sent afterwards as
ambassador, first to Genoa, and then to the Hague, where he died, on
the 1st of July, 1726.
In his youth the Marquis of San Phelipe had been educated with care,
and therefore, during the active portions of his life, found an
agreeable resource in intellectual occupations. He wrote a poem in
octave stanzas on the story in the “Book of Tobit,” which was printed
in 1709, and a history of “The Hebrew Monarchy,” taken from the Bible
and Josephus, which did not appear till 1727, the year after his
death. But his chief work was on the War of the Succession. The great
interest he took in the Bourbon cause induced him to write it, and the
position he had occupied in the affairs of his time gave him ample
materials, quite beyond the reach of others less favored. He called
it “Commentaries on the War of Spain, and History of its King, Philip
the Fifth, the Courageous, from the Beginning of his Reign to the Year
1725”; but, although the compliment to his sovereign implied on the
title-page is faithfully carried through the whole narrative, the book
was not published without difficulty. The first volume, in folio, after
being printed at Madrid, was suppressed by order of the king, out of
regard to the honor of certain Spanish families that show to little
advantage in the troublesome times it records; so that the earliest
complete edition appeared at Genoa without date, but probably in 1729.
It is a spirited book, earnest in the cause of Castile against
Catalonia; but still, notwithstanding its partisan character, it is,
the most valuable of the contemporary accounts of the events to which
it relates; and, notwithstanding it has a good deal of the lively air
of the French memoirs, then so much in fashion, it is strongly marked
with the old Spanish feelings of religion and loyalty,--feelings which
this very book proves to have partly survived the general decay of the
national character during the seventeenth century, and the convulsions
that had shaken it at the opening of the eighteenth. In style it is not
perfectly pure. Perhaps tokens of its author’s Sardinian education are
seen in his choice of words; and certainly his pointed epigrammatic
phrases and sentences often show, that he leaned to the rhetorical
doctrines of Gracian, of whom, in his narrative poem, we see that he
had once been a thorough disciple. But the Commentaries are, after
all, a pleasant book, and abound in details, given with much modesty
where their author is personally concerned, and with a picturesqueness
which belongs only to the narrative of one who has been an actor in the
scenes he describes.[294]
[294] “Los Tobias, su Vida escrita en Octavas, por D. Vicente
Bacallar y Sanna, Marques de San Phelipe,” etc., 4to, pp. 178,
without date, but licensed 1709.--“Monarchia Hebrea,” Madrid,
1727, 2 tom. 4to.--“Comentarios de la Guerra de España hasta el
Año 1725,” Genoa, no date, 2 tom. 4to. Of the last there is a
poor continuation, bringing the history down to 1742, entitled,
“Continuacion á los Comentarios, etc., por D. Joséph del Campo
Raso,” Madrid, 1756-63, 2 tom. 4to.
But, when we speak of Spanish literature in the reign of Philip the
Fifth, we must never forget that the influence of France was gradually
becoming felt in all the culture of the country. The mass of the
people, it is true, either took no cognizance of the coming change, or
resisted it; and the new government willingly avoided whatever might
seem to offend or undervalue the old Castilian spirit. But Paris was
then, as it had long been, the most refined capital in Europe; and the
courts of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth, necessarily
in intimate relations with that of Philip the Fifth, could not fail
to carry to Madrid a tone which was already spreading of itself into
Germany and the extreme North.
French, in fact, soon began to be spoken in the elegant society of the
capital and the court;--a thing before unknown in Spain, though French
princesses had more than once sat on the Spanish throne. But now it
was a compliment to the reigning monarch himself, and courtiers strove
to indulge in it. Pitillas, under pretence of laughing at himself for
following the fashion, ridicules the awkwardness of those who did so,
when he says,
And French I talk; at least enough to know
That neither I nor other men more shrewd
Can comprehend my words, though still endued
With power to raise my heavy Spanish dough.
And Father Isla makes himself merry with the idea of a man who fancies
he has married an Andalusian or Castilian wife, and finds out that she
proves little better than a Frenchwoman after all.[295]
[295] Pitillas, Sátira. Isla, Á los que degenerando del Carácter
Español, afectan ser Estrangeros. Rebusco, p. 178.
Translations from the French followed this state of things; and, at
last, an attempt was made to introduce formally into Spain a poetical
system founded on the critical doctrines prevalent in France. Its
author, Ignacio de Luzan, a gentleman of Aragon, was born in 1702; and,
while still a child, went to Italy and received a learned education in
the schools of Milan, Palermo, and Naples; remaining abroad eighteen
years, and enjoying the society of several of the most distinguished
Italian poets of the time, among whom were Maffei and Metastasio. At
last, in 1733, he returned to Spain, a well-bred scholar, according to
the ideas of scholarship then prevalent in Italy, and with a singular
facility in writing and speaking French and Italian.
His personal affairs and his native modesty kept him for some time
in retirement on the estates of his family in Aragon. But, in the
condition to which Spanish literature was then reduced, a man of so
many accomplishments could hardly fail, in any position, to make his
influence felt. That of Luzan soon became perceptible, because he
loved to write, and wrote a great deal. In Italy and Sicily he had
published, not only Italian poetry of his own, but French. In his
native language and at home, he naturally went further. He translated
from Anacreon, Sappho, and Musæus; he fitted dramas of Maffei,
La Chaussée, and Metastasio to the Spanish stage; and he wrote a
considerable number of short poems, and one original drama, “Virtue
Honored,” which was privately represented in Saragossa.
Whatever he did was well received, but little of it was published at
the time, and not much has appeared since. His “Odes on the Conquest of
Oran” were particularly admired by his friends, and, though somewhat
cold, may still be read with pleasure. These and other compositions
made him known to the government at Madrid, and procured for him, in
1747, the appointment of Secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris.
There he remained three years, and, from the absence of the ambassador,
acted, for a large part of the time, as the only representative of his
country at the French court. On his return home, he continued to enjoy
the confidence of the king; and when he died suddenly, in 1754, he was
in great favor, and about to receive a place of more consequence than
any he had yet held.[296]
[296] Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. V. p. 12, and Preface to the
edition of Luzan’s Poética, by his son, 1789. His poetry has
never been collected and published, but portions of it are
found in Sedano, Quintana, etc. The octaves he recited at the
opening of the Academy of Fine Arts, in 1752, and published at
p. 21 of the “Abertura Solemne,” etc., printed in honor of the
occasion (Madrid, folio); and the similar poems recited by him
at a distribution of prizes by the same Academy, in 1754, and
published in their “Relacion,” etc., (Madrid, folio, pp. 51-61,)
prove rather the dignity of his social position than any thing
else. Latassa gives a long account of his unpublished works.
The circumstances of the country, and those of his own education,
position, and tastes, opened to Luzan, as a critic, a career of almost
assured success. Every thing was so enfeebled and degraded, that it
could offer no effectual resistance to what he might teach. The
political importance of his country among the nations of Europe had
been crushed. Its moral dignity was impaired. Its school of poetry had
disappeared. The old system of things in Spain, as far as poetical
culture was concerned, had passed away, no less than the Austrian
dynasty, with which it had come in; and no attempt deserving the
name had yet been made to determine what should be the intellectual
character of the system that should follow it. A small effort, under
such circumstances, would go far towards imparting a decisive movement;
and, in literary taste and criticism, Luzan was certainly well
fitted to give the guiding impulse. He had been educated with great
thoroughness in the principles of the classical French school, and he
possessed all the learning necessary to make known and support its
peculiar doctrines. In 1728, he had offered to the Academy at Palermo,
of which he was a member, six critical discussions on poetry, written
in Italian; so that, when he returned to Spain, he had only to take
these papers and work them into a formal treatise, suited to what he
deemed the pressing wants of the country. He did so;--and the result
was his “Art of Poetry,” the first edition of which appeared in 1737.
The attempt was by no means a new one. The rules and doctrines of the
ancients, in matters of taste and rhetoric, had frequently before been
announced and defended in Spain. Even Enzina, the oldest of those who
regarded Castilian poetry as an art, was not ignorant of Quintilian and
Cicero, though, in his short treatise, which shows more good sense and
good taste than can be claimed from the age, he takes substantially
the same view of his subject that the Marquis of Villena and the
Provençals had taken before him,--considering all poetry chiefly with
reference to its mechanical forms.[297] Rengifo, a teacher of grammar
and rhetoric, whose “Spanish Art of Poetry” dates from 1592, confines
himself almost entirely to the structure of the verse and the technical
forms known both to the elder Castilian style of composition and to
the Italian introduced by Boscan;--a curious discussion, in which the
authority of the ancients is by no means forgotten, but one whose chief
value consists in what it contains relating to the national school and
its peculiar measures.[298]
[297] It is prefixed to the edition of Enzina’s Cancionero, 1496,
folio, and, I suppose, to the other editions; and fills nine
short chapters.
[298] “Arte Poética Española, su Autor Juan Diaz Rengifo,”
Salamanca, 1592, 4to, enlarged, but not improved, in the editions
of 1700, 1737, etc., by Joseph Vicens.
Alonso Lopez, commonly called El Pinciano,--the same person who
wrote the dull epic on Pelayo,--went further, and in 1596 published
his “Ancient Poetical Philosophy,” in which, under the disguise of
a friendly correspondence, he gives, with much learning and some
acuteness, his own views of the opinions of the ancient masters on
all the modes of poetical composition.[299] Cascales followed him, in
1616, with a series of dialogues, somewhat more familiar than the grave
letters of Lopez, and resting more on the doctrines of Horace, whose
epistle to the Pisos he afterwards published, with a well-written Latin
commentary.[300] Salas, on the contrary, in his “New Idea of Ancient
Tragedy,” which appeared in 1633, followed Aristotle rather than any
other authority, and illustrated his discussion--which is the ablest
in Spanish literature on the side it sustains--by a translation of the
“Trojanæ” of Seneca, and an address of the theatre of all ages to its
various audiences.[301]
[299] “Philosophía Antigua Poética del Doctor Alonso Lopez
Pinciano, Médico Cesareo,” Madrid, 1596, 4to.
[300] “Tablas Poéticas del Licenciado Francisco Cascales,” 1616.
An edition of Madrid, 1779, 8vo, contains a Life of the author
by Mayans y Siscar. Cascales is presumptuous enough to rearrange
Horace’s “Ars Poetica” in what he regards as a better order.
[301] “Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua, ó Illustracion Ultima
al libro Singular de Poética de Aristóteles, por Don Jusepe Ant.
Gonçalez de Salas,” Madrid, 1633, 4to.
All these works, however, and three or four others of less consequence,
assumed, so far as they attempted to lay their foundations in
philosophy, to be built on the rules laid down by Aristotle or the
Roman rhetoricians.[302] In this they committed a serious error.
Ancient rhetoric can be applied, in all its strictness, to no modern
poetry, and least of all to the poetry of Spain. The school of Lope de
Vega, therefore, passed over them like an irresistible flood, leaving
behind it hardly a trace of the structures that had been raised to
oppose its progress. But Luzan took a different ground. His more
immediate predecessors had been Gracian, who defended the Gongorism of
the preceding period, and Artiga, who, in a long treatise “On Spanish
Eloquence,” written in the ballad measures, had seemed willing to
encourage all the bad taste that prevailed in the beginning of the
eighteenth century.[303]
[302] Of the treatise of Argote de Molina, prefixed to his
edition of the “Conde Lucanor,” 1575, and of the poem of Cueva,
I have spoken (I. 507, II. 569). A small tract, called “Libro
de Erudicion Poética,” published in the works of Luis Carrillo,
1611, and several of the epistles of Christóval de Mesa, 1618,
might be added; but the last are of little consequence, and the
tract of Carrillo is in very bad taste.
[303] Gracian has been noticed in this volume (p. 192). The
“Epítome de la Eloquencia Española, por D. Francisco Joseph
Artiga, olim Artieda,” was licensed in 1725, and contains above
thirteen thousand lines;--a truly ridiculous book, but of some
consequence as showing the taste of the age, especially in pulpit
oratory.
Luzan took no notice of either of them. He followed the poetical
system of Boileau and Lebossu, not, indeed, forgetting the masters of
antiquity, but everywhere accommodating his doctrines to the demands
of modern poetry, as Muratori had done just before him, and enforcing
them by the example of the French school, then more admired than any
other in Europe.[304] His object, as he afterwards explained it, was
“to bring Spanish poetry under the control of those precepts which
are observed among polished nations”; and his work is arranged with
judgment to effect his purpose. The first book treats of the origin and
nature of poetry, and the second, of the pleasure and advantage poetry
brings with it. These two books constitute one half of the work, and
having gone through in them what he thinks it necessary to say of the
less important divisions of the art,--such as lyric poetry, satire, and
pastorals,--he devotes the two remaining books entirely to a discussion
of the drama and of epic poetry,--the forms in which Spanish genius
had long been more ambitious of excellence than in any other. A strict
method reigns through the whole; and the style, if less rich than is
found in the older prose-writers, and less so than the genius of the
language demands, is clear, simple, and effective. In explaining and
defending his system of opinions, he shows judgment, and a temperate
philosophy; and his abundant illustrations, drawn not only from the
Castilian, the French, the Greek, and the Latin, but from the Italian
and the Portuguese, are selected with excellent taste, and applied
skilfully to strengthen his general argument and design. For its
purpose, a better treatise could hardly have been produced.
[304] Blanco White (Life by Thom, 1845, 8vo, Vol. I. p. 21) says
Luzan borrowed so freely from Muratori, “Della Perfetta Poesia,”
that the Spanish treatise helped him (Mr. White) materially in
learning to read the Italian one. But Luzan has not in fact
copied from Muratori with the unjustifiable freedom this remark
implies, though he has adopted Muratori’s general system, with
abundant acknowledgment and references.
The effect was immediate and great. It seemed to offer a remedy for
the bad taste which had accompanied, and in no small degree hastened,
the decline of the national literature from the time of Góngora. It
was seized on, therefore, with eagerness, as the book that was wanted;
and when to this we add that the literature of the age of Louis the
Fourteenth, which it held up as the model literature of Christendom,
was then regarded throughout Europe with almost unmingled admiration,
we shall not be surprised that the “Poética” of Luzan exercised, from
its first appearance, a controlling authority over opinion at the court
of Spain, and over the few writers of reputation then to be found in
the country.[305]
[305] The first edition of the “Poética” of Luzan was printed
in folio at Saragossa, in 1737, with long and extraordinary
certificates of approbation by Navarro and Gallinero, two of the
author’s friends. The second edition, materially improved by
additions from the manuscripts of Luzan, after his death, was
printed at Madrid, in 2 tom. 8vo, in 1789. When the first edition
appeared, it was much praised in the “Diario de los Literatos”
(Tom. VII., 1738); but, as one of the reviewers, Juan de Iriarte,
who wrote the latter part of the article, made a few exceptions
to his general commendations, Luzan, who was more sensitive than
he needed to be, replied in a small bitter tract, under the
name of Iñigo de Lanuza, Pamplona, [1740,] 12mo, pp. 144, with
cumbrous and learned notes by Colmenares, to whom the tract is
dedicated.
Something more, however, than a reformation in taste was wanted in
Spain before a sufficient foundation could be laid for advancement
in elegant literature. The commonest forms of truth had been so long
excluded from the country, that the human mind there seemed to have
pined away, and to have become dwarfed, for want of its appropriate
nourishment. All the great sciences, both moral and physical, that had
been for a hundred years advancing with an accelerated speed everywhere
else throughout Europe, had been unable to force their way through
the jealous guard which ecclesiastical and political despotism had
joined to keep for ever watching the passes of the Pyrenees. From the
days of the _Comuneros_ and the Reformation of Luther, when religious
sects began to discuss the authority of princes and the rights of the
people, and when the punishment of opinion became the settled policy of
the Spanish state, every thing in the shape of instruction that was not
approved by the Church was treated as dangerous. At the universities,
which from their foundation had been entirely ecclesiastical
corporations, and were used constantly to build up ecclesiastical
influences, no elegant learning was fostered, and very little
tolerated, except such as furnished means to form scholastic Churchmen
and faithful Catholics; the physical and exact sciences were carefully
excluded and forbidden, except so far as they could be taught on the
authority of Aristotle; and, as Jovellanos said boldly in a memorial
on the subject to Charles the Fourth, “even medicine and jurisprudence
would have been neglected, if the instincts of men had permitted them
to forget the means by which life and property are protected.”[306]
[306] Cean Bermudez, Memorias de Jovellanos, Madrid, 1814, 12mo,
cap. x. p. 221.
The Spanish universities, in fact, still taught from the same books
they had used in the time of Cardinal Ximenes, and by the same methods.
The scholastic philosophy was still regarded as the highest form of
merely intellectual culture. Diego de Torres, afterwards distinguished
for his knowledge in the physical sciences,--a man born and educated at
Salamanca in the first half of the century,--says, that, after he had
been five years in one of the schools of the University there, it was
by accident he learned the existence of the mathematical sciences.[307]
And, fifty years later, Blanco White declares, that, like most of
his countrymen, he should have completed his studies in theology at
the University of Seville without so much as hearing of elegant
literature, if he had not chanced to make the acquaintance of a person
who introduced him to a partial knowledge of Spanish poetry.[308]
[307] Vida, Ascendencia, etc., del Doctor Diego de Torres
Villaroel, Madrid, 1789, 4to;--an autobiography, written in the
worst taste of the time, i. e. about 1743. He says of a treatise
on the Sphere, by Padre Clavio: “Creo que fue la primera noticia
que habia llegado á mis oidos de que habia ciencias matemáticas
en el mundo.” (p. 34.)
[308] Doblado’s Letters, 1822, p. 113.
Thus far, therefore, the old system of things was triumphant, and
the common forms of advancing knowledge were, to an extraordinary
and almost incredible degree, kept out of the country. On the other
hand, errors, follies, and absurdities sprang up and abounded, just
as surely as darkness follows the exclusion of light. Few persons in
Spain in the beginning of the eighteenth century were so well informed
as not to believe in astrology, and fewer still doubted the disastrous
influence of comets and eclipses. The system of Copernicus was not
only discouraged, but forbidden to be taught, on the ground that it
was contrary to Scripture. The philosophy of Bacon, with all the
consequences that had followed it, was unknown. It was not, perhaps,
true, that the healing waters of knowledge had been rolled backward
to their fountain, but no spirit of power had descended to trouble
them, and they had now been kept stagnant till life was no longer in
them and life could no longer be supported by them. It seemed as if
the faculties of thinking and reasoning, in the better sense of these
words, were either about to be entirely lost in Spain, or to be partly
preserved only in a few scattered individuals, who, by the civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny that oppressed them, would be prevented from
diffusing even the imperfect light which they themselves enjoyed.
But it could not be so. The human mind cannot be permanently
imprisoned; and it is an obvious proof of this consoling fact, that
the intellectual emancipation of Spain was begun by a man of no
extraordinary gifts, and one whose position gave him no extraordinary
advantages for the undertaking to which he devoted his life,--the quiet
monk, Benito Feyjoó. He was born in 1676, the eldest son of respectable
parents in the northwestern part of Spain, who, contrary to the
opinions of their time, did not think the law of primogeniture required
them to devote their first-born wholly to the duty of sustaining the
honors of his family and enjoying the income of the estates he was to
inherit. At the age of fourteen, his destination to the Church was
determined upon; but he loved study of all kinds, and applied himself,
not only to theology, but to the physical sciences and to medicine,
so far as means were allowed him in the low state to which all
intellectual culture was then sunk. As early as 1717, he established
himself in a Benedictine convent at Oviedo, and lived there forty-seven
years in as strict a retirement as his duties permitted, occupied only
with his studies, and relying almost entirely on the press as the means
of enlightening his countrymen.
His personal character and resources, in some respects, fitted him well
for the great task he had undertaken. He was a sincere Catholic, and
therefore felt no disposition to interfere even with abuses that were
protected by the authority of his Church; a circumstance without which
he would have been stopped at the very threshold of his enterprise.
His mind was strong and patient of labor; and if, on the one hand, his
researches were restrained by the embarrassments of his ecclesiastical
position, he had, on the other, obtained, what few Spaniards then
enjoyed, the means of knowing much of what had been done in Italy, in
France, and even in England, for the advancement of science during
the century preceding that in which he was educated. Above all, he was
honest, and seriously devoted to his work. But, as he advanced, he was
shocked to find how wide a gulf separated his own country from the
rest of Europe. Truth, he saw, had, on many important subjects, been
so completely excluded from Spain, that its very existence was hardly
suspected; and that, while Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Calderon and
Quevedo, had been rioting unrestrained in the world of imagination, the
solemn world of reality,--the world of moral and physical truth,--had
been as much closed against inquiry as if his country had been no part
of civilized Europe.
At times he seems to have been anxious concerning the result of his
labors; but, on the whole, his courage did not fail him. He was not,
indeed, a man of genius. He was not a man to invent new systems of
metaphysics or philosophy. But he was a learned man, with a cautious
judgment, somewhat obscured, but not really impaired, by religious
prejudices, from which he could not be expected to emancipate himself;
he was a man who understood the real importance of the labors of
Galileo, Bacon, and Newton, of Leibnitz, Pascal, and Gassendi; and,
what was of vastly more consequence, he was determined that his own
countrymen should no longer remain ignorant of the advancement already
made by the rest of Christendom under the influence of master-spirits
like these.
So far as the War of the Succession had served to rouse the national
character from its lethargy, and to direct the thoughts of Spaniards
to what had been done beyond the Pyrenees, it was favorable to his
purpose. But in other respects, as we have seen, it had effected
nothing for the national culture. Still, when, in 1726, Feyjoó printed
a volume of essays connected with his main purpose, he was able to
command public attention, and was encouraged to go on. He called
it “The Critical Theatre”; and in its different dissertations,--as
separate as the papers in “The Spectator,” but longer and on graver
subjects,--he boldly attacked the dialectics and metaphysics then
taught everywhere in Spain; maintained Bacon’s system of induction in
the physical sciences; ridiculed the general opinion in relation to
comets, eclipses, and the arts of magic and divination; laid down rules
for historical faith, which would exclude most of the early traditions
of the country; showed a greater deference for woman, and claimed for
her a higher place in society, than the influence of the Spanish Church
willingly permitted her to occupy; and, in all respects, came forth
to his countrymen as one urging earnestly the pursuit of truth and
the improvement of social life. Eight volumes of this stirring work
were published before 1739, and then it stopped, without any apparent
reason. But in 1742 Feyjoó began a similar series of discussions, under
the name of “Learned and Inquiring Letters,” which he finished in 1760,
with the fifth volume, thus closing up the long series of his truly
philanthropical, as well as philosophical, labors.
Of course he was assailed. A work, called the “Antiteatro Crítico,”
appeared early, and was soon followed by another, with nearly the same
title, and by not a few scattered tracts and volumes, directed against
different portions of what he had published. But he was quite able
to defend himself. He wrote with clearness and good taste in an age
when the prevailing style was obscure and affected; and, if he fell
occasionally into Gallicisms, from relying much on French writers for
his materials, his mistakes of this sort were rare; and, in general,
he presented himself in a Castilian costume, that was respectable and
attractive. Nor was he without wit, which his prudence taught him to
use sparingly, and he had always the energy which belongs to good sense
and practical wisdom; a union of qualities not often found anywhere,
and certainly of most rare occurrence in cloisters like those in which
Feyjoó passed his long life.
The attacks made on him, therefore, served chiefly to draw to his works
the attention he solicited, and in the end advanced his cause, instead
of retarding it. Even the Inquisition, to which he was more than once
denounced, summoned him in vain before its tribunals.[309] His faith
could not be questioned, and his cause was stronger than they were.
Fifteen editions of his principal work, large as it was, were printed
in half a century. The excitement it produced went on increasing as
long as he lived; and when he died, in 1764, he could look back and
see that he had imparted a movement to the human mind in Spain, which,
though it was far from raising Spanish philosophy to a level with that
of France and England, had yet given it a right direction, and done
more for the intellectual life of his country than had been done for a
century.[310]
[309] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inq., Tom. II. p. 446. It may
be deemed worthy of notice, that Oliver Goldsmith pays an
appropriate tribute to the merits of Father Feyjoó, and relates
an anecdote of his showing the people of a village through which
he happened to pass that what they esteemed a miracle was, in
truth, only a natural effect of reflected light; thus exposing
himself to a summons from the Inquisition. (“The Bee,” No. III.,
Oct. 20, 1759, Miscellaneous Works, London, 1812, 8vo, Vol. IV.
p. 193.) But after Feyjoó’s death, the Inquisition ordered only
a trifling expurgation of his “Teatro Crítico,” in one passage.
Index, 1790.
[310] The “Teatro Crítico” and “Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas,” with
the discussions they provoked, fill fifteen and sometimes sixteen
volumes. The edition of 1778 has a Life of Feyjoó prefixed to
it, written by Campomanes, the distinguished minister of state
under Charles III.; the same person who, on the nomination of
Franklin, was made a member of the American Philosophical Society
at Philadelphia. Clemencin says truly of Feyjoó, that “to his
enlightened and religious mind is due the overthrow of many
vulgar errors, and a great part of the progress in civilization
made by Spain in the eighteenth century.” Note to Don Quixote,
Tom. V., 1836, p. 35.
CHAPTER III.
INTOLERANCE, CREDULITY, AND BIGOTRY.--REIGN OF FERDINAND THE
SIXTH.--SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT.--LITERATURE.--SALADUEÑA.--MORALEJA.--
ACADEMY OF GOOD TASTE.--VELAZQUEZ.--MAYANS.--NASARRE.
It can hardly be said, that, during the forty-six years of the reign
of Philip the Fifth, the intolerance which had so long blighted the
land relaxed its grasp. The progress of knowledge might, indeed, be
gradually and silently accumulating means to resist it, but its power
was still unbroken, and its activity as formidable as ever. Louis
the Fourteenth, in whom an old age of bigotry naturally ended a life
of selfish indulgence, had counselled his grandson to sustain the
Inquisition, as one of the means for insuring tranquillity to the
political government of the country; and this advice, not given without
a knowledge of the Spanish character, was, on the whole, acted upon
with success, if not with entire consistency.
At first, indeed, the personal dispositions of the king in relation
to this mighty engine of state seemed somewhat unsettled. When it was
proposed to him to celebrate an _auto da fé_, as a part of the pageant
suitable to the coming in of a new dynasty, the young monarch, fresh
from the elegance of the court of Versailles, refused to sanction its
barbarities by his presence. Even later he encouraged Macanaz, a person
high in office, to publish a work in defence of the crown against the
overgrown pretensions of the Church, and at one time he went so far as
to entertain a project for suspending the Holy Office, or suppressing
it altogether.[311]
[311] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. IV., 1818, pp. 29,
43. The “Papel” of Macanaz is on the Index of the Inquisition,
1790.
But these dispositions were transient. The Spanish priesthood early
obtained control of the king’s mind. In one of the sieges of Barcelona,
during the War of the Succession, he was induced to consult an image
of the Virgin, and to avow afterwards, very solemnly, that she had
given him a miraculous promise of the fidelity of the Catalonians,--a
promise, it should be added, such as would be likely to insure its own
fulfilment. The death of the queen, in 1714, which plunged him into a
deep melancholy, further contributed to give power to the clergy who
surrounded him; and, a year afterwards, when the Inquisition took firm
ground against Macanaz and the royal prerogative, the king yielded, and
Macanaz fled to France. And finally, when, in 1724, after a few months
of abdication, Philip resumed the reins of government, which he should
never have laid down, no small part of the increased energy, with
which he fulfilled the duties of his high place, was inspired by the
influence of the Church. As he grew older, he grew more bigoted; and in
his last years, when the accumulated power placed in his hands by the
destruction of the few remaining privileges of Aragon and Catalonia had
made him a more absolute monarch than ever before sat on the Spanish
throne, he seemed to rejoice, as much as any of his predecessors, in
devoting the whole of his prerogatives to advance the interests of the
priesthood.[312]
[312] Mahon, War of the Succession, 1832, p. 180. Tapia,
Historia, Tom. IV. p. 32. San Phelipe, Comentarios, Lib. XIV.
But, from first to last, there was no real relaxation in the
intolerance of the Church. The fires of the Inquisition had burnt as
if Philip the Second were on the throne. At least one _auto da fé_
was celebrated annually in each of the seventeen tribunals into which
the country was divided; so that the entire number of these atrocious
popular exhibitions of bigotry during the reign of Philip the Fifth
exceeded seven hundred and eighty. How many persons were burnt alive
in them is not exactly known; but it is believed, that there were more
than a thousand, and that at least twelve times that number were, in
different ways, subjected to public punishments and disgrace. Judaism,
which had penetrated anew into Spain, from the period of the conquest
of Portugal, was the great crime, to be hunted down with all the
ingenuity of persecution; and undoubtedly all that could be found of
the Hebrew nation or faith was now for the second time extirpated, as
nearly as it is possible to extirpate what conscience refuses to give
up, and fear and hatred have so many ways to hide. But some men of
letters--like Belando, who wrote a civil history of part of the reign
of Philip the Fifth, which he dedicated to that monarch, and which bore
on its pages all the regular permissions to be printed--were punished
without the pretence of being guilty of heresy or unbelief; and many
more disappeared from society, who, like Macanaz, were known to
entertain political opinions offensive to the Church or the government,
but of whom nothing else was known that could render them obnoxious
to censure. On the whole, therefore, down to the death of Philip the
Fifth, the old alliance between the government of the state and the
power of the Church--an alliance supported by the general assent of
the people--must still be assumed to have continued unbroken, and
its authority must still be felt to have been sufficient to control
all freedom of discussion, and effectually to check and silence such
intellectual activity as it deemed dangerous.[313]
[313] Llorente, Hist., Tom. II. pp. 420, 424, Tom. IV. p. 31.
The _data_ of Llorente are not so precise as they ought to be,
but any thing approaching his results is of most fearful import.
In a pamphlet, however, printed in 1817, (as he declares in
his Autobiography, p. 170,) he asserts that, between 1680 and
1808, there perished in the fires of the Inquisition fifteen
hundred and seventy-eight persons, and that eleven thousand
nine hundred and ninety-eight more were subjected to degrading
punishments, making a grand total of fourteen thousand three
hundred and sixty-four victims, of which the fifteen hundred and
seventy-eight burnt alive must all have perished between 1680 and
1781, when, as we shall see in the next chapter, the last victim
was immolated.
In the reign of Ferdinand the Sixth, which lasted thirteen years, and
ended in 1759, there is evidently an improvement in this state of
things. The seeds sown in the time of his father, if less cared for and
cultivated than they should have been, were beginning to germinate and
disencumber themselves from the cold and hard soil into which they had
been cast. Foreign intercourse, especially that with France, brought in
new ideas. Ferreras, the careful, but dull, annalist of his country’s
history; Juan de Yriarte, the active head of the Royal Library; Bayer,
his learned successor; Mayans, who had a passion for collecting and
editing books; and, above all, the wise and modest Father Feyjoó, had
not labored in vain, and still survived to see the results of their
toils.
The Church itself began slowly to acknowledge the irresistible power
of advancing intelligence, and the Inquisition, without acknowledging
it, felt its influence. Not more than ten persons were burnt alive
in the time of Ferdinand the Sixth, and these were obscure relapsed
Jews;--men whose fate is as heavy a reproach to the Inquisition as if
they had been more intelligent and distinguished, but the example of
whose punishment did not strike a terror such as that of the dying
Protestants and patriots of Aragon had once done. The persecutions of
the Holy Office, in fact, not only grew less frequent and cruel, but
became more than ever subservient to the political authority of the
country, and were now chiefly exercised in relation to Freemasonry,
which was known at this period in Spain for the first time, and caused
much uneasiness to the government. But the policy of the state,
during the reign of Ferdinand the Sixth, was in the main peaceful and
healing. Efforts, not without success, were made to collect materials
for a history of the country from the earliest times. Spaniards were
sent abroad to be educated at the public expense, and foreigners
were encouraged to establish themselves in Spain, and to diffuse the
knowledge they had acquired in their own more favored homes. Every
thing, in short, indicated a spirit of change, if it did not give proof
of much absolute progress.[314]
[314] Noticia del Viage de España hecha de Orden del Rey, por L.
J. Velazquez, Madrid, 1765, 4to, _passim_. Llorente, Tom. IV. p.
51. Tapia, Tom. IV. p. 73.
The direction of the literature of the country, however, was the
same it had taken from the beginning of the century. Slight, but
unsatisfactory, attempts continued to be made to adhere to the forms of
the elder time;--such attempts as are to be seen in a long narrative
poem by the Count Saldueña on the subject of Pelayo, and two very
poor imitations of the “Para Todos” of Montalvan, one of which was by
Moraleja, and the other by Ortiz. But the amount of what was undertaken
in this way was very small, and the impulse was constantly diminishing;
for the French school enjoyed now all the favor that was given to any
form of elegant literature.[315]
[315] “El Pelayo, Poema de D. Alonso de Solís Folch de Cardona
Rodriguez de las Varillas, Conde de Saldueña,” etc., (Madrid,
1754, 4to,) twelve cantos in octave stanzas, written in the
most affected style.--Joseph Moraleja, “El Entretenido, Segunda
Parte” (Madrid, 1741, 4to); a continuation of the Entretenido
of Sanchez Tortoles, containing the amusements of a society of
friends for four days; _entremeses_, stories, odds and ends of
poetry, astronomical calculations, etc., a strange and absurd
mixture. Baena (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. p. 81) has a life of
the author. The “Noches Alegres” of Isidro Fr. Ortiz Gallardo de
Villaroel, (Salamanca, 1758, 4to,) is a shorter book, and nearly
all in verse. Both are worthless.
In this respect, a fashionable society, called The Academy of Good
Taste, and connected with the court of Madrid, exercised some
influence. It dates from 1749, and was intended, perhaps, to resemble
those French _coteries_, which began in the reign of Louis the
Thirteenth, at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and were long so important
both in the literary and political history of France. The Countess of
Lemos, at whose house it met, was its founder, and it gradually ranked
among its members several of the more cultivated nobility and most of
the leading men of letters, such as Luzan, Montiano, Blas Nasarre,
and Velazquez, each of whom was known, either at that time or soon
afterwards, by his published works.[316]
[316] Luzan, Arte Poética, ed. 1789, Tom. I. pp. xix., etc.
Except Luzan, of whom we have already spoken, Velazquez was the most
distinguished of their number. He was descended from an old and noble
family, in the South of Spain, and was born in 1722; but, from his
position in society, he passed most of his life at court. There he
became involved in the political troubles of the reign of Charles the
Third, in consequence of which he suffered a long imprisonment from
1766 to 1772, and died of apoplexy the same year he was released.
Velazquez was a man of talent and industry, rather than a man of
genius. He was a member, not only of the principal Spanish academies,
but of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, and wrote
several works of learning relating to the literature and antiquities
of his country. The only one of them now much valued was published
in 1754, under the title of “Sources of Castilian Poetry,” of which
it is, in fact, a history, coming down to his own times, or near to
them. It is a slight work, confused in its arrangement, and too short
to develope its subject satisfactorily; but it is written in a good
style, and occasionally shows acuteness in its criticism of individual
authors. Its chief fault is, that it is devoted to the French school,
and is an attempt to carry out, by means of an historical discussion,
the doctrines laid down nearly twenty years before by Luzan, in his
theory of poetical composition.[317]
[317] Luis Joseph Velazquez, “Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana,”
Málaga, 1754, 4to, pp. 175. J. A. Dieze, who was a Professor at
Göttingen, and died in 1785, published a German translation of
it in 1769, with copious and excellent notes, which more than
double, not only the size of the original work, but its value.
The Life of Velazquez, who was Marquis of Valdeflores, though he
does not generally allude to his title in his printed works, is
to be found in Sempere y Guarinos, Bib., Tom. VI. p. 139.
Mayans, a Valencian gentleman of learning, and another of those who
had a considerable influence on Spanish literature at this period,
followed a similar course in his “Retórica,” which appeared in 1757,
and is founded rather on the philosophical opinions of the Roman
rhetoricians than on the modification of those opinions by Boileau and
his followers. It is a long and very cumbrous work, less fitted to the
wants of the times than that of Luzan, and even more opposed to the
old Castilian spirit, which submitted so unwillingly to rules of any
sort. But it is a storehouse of curious extracts from authors belonging
to the best period of Spanish literature, almost always selected with
good judgment, if not always skilfully applied to the matter under
discussion.[318]
[318] Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, who wrote and edited a great many
books in Latin and Spanish, was born in 1699, and died in 1782.
His life and a list of his works may be made out from the united
accounts of Ximeno, Tom. II. p. 324, and Fuster, Tom. II. p. 98.
To these works of Mayans, Velazquez, and Luzan should be added the
Preface by Nasarre to the plays of Cervantes, in 1749, where an attempt
is made to take the authority of his great name from the school that
prevailed in his time, by showing that these unsuccessful efforts of
the author of “Don Quixote” were only caricatures ridiculing Lope de
Vega; not dramatic compositions intended for serious success in the
extravagant career which Lope’s versatile genius had opened to his
contemporaries. But this attempt was a failure, and was only one of a
long series of efforts made to discountenance the old theatre, that
must be noticed hereafter.[319]
[319] There was a severe answer made at once to Blas Nasarre,
by Don Joseph Carrillo, entitled “Sin Razon impugnada,” 4to,
1750, pp. 25; besides which, his Preface was attacked by Don T.
Zabaleta, in his “Discurso Crítico,” etc., (4to, 1750, pp. 258,)
which is a general, loose defence of Lope and his school. But
neither was needed. The theory of Nasarre was too absurd to win
adherents.
CHAPTER IV.
SLOW PROGRESS OF CULTURE.--CHARLES THE THIRD AND HIS
POLICY.--ISLA.--HIS FRIAR GERUND.--HIS CICERO.--HIS
GIL BLAS.--EFFORTS TO RESTORE THE OLD SCHOOL OF
POETRY.--HUERTA.--SEDANO.--SANCHEZ.--SARMIENTO.--EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE
THE FRENCH SCHOOL.--MORATIN THE ELDER AND HIS CLUB.--CADAHALSO,
YRIARTE, SAMANIEGO, ARROYAL, MONTENGON, SALAS, MERAS, NOROÑA.
The reign of Ferdinand the Sixth, which had been marked with little
political energy during its continuance, was saddened, at its close,
by the death of the monarch from grief at the loss of his queen. But
it had not been without beneficial influences on the country. A wise
economy had been introduced, for the first time since the discovery of
America, into the administration of the state; the abused powers of the
Church had been diminished by a _concordat_ with the Pope; the progress
of knowledge had been furthered; and Father Feyjoó, vigorous, though
old, was still permitted, if not encouraged, to go on with his great
task, and create a school that should rest on the broad principles of
philosophy recognized in England and in France.
We must not, however, be misled by such general statements. Spain,
notwithstanding half a century of advancement, was still deplorably
behind the other countries of Western Europe in that intellectual
cultivation, without which no nation in modern times can be prosperous,
strong, or honored. “There is not,” says the Marquis of Enseñada, in
a report made to the king, as minister of state,--“there is not a
professorship of public law, of experimental science, of anatomy, or
of botany, in the kingdom. We have no exact geographical maps of the
country or its provinces, nor any body who can make them; so that we
depend on the very imperfect maps we receive from France and Holland,
and are shamefully ignorant of the true relations and distances of our
own towns.”[320]
[320] Tapia, Historia, Tom. IV. c. 15.
Many of the best materials for the state of culture in Spain,
during the reign of Charles III., are to be found in the
“Biblioteca de los Mejores Escritores del Reynado de Carlos
III., por Juan Sempere y Guarinos,” Madrid, 1785-89, 6 tom.
8vo. When the author published it, he was about thirty-five
years old, having been born in 1754; but he was afterwards much
more distinguished as a political writer, by his “Observaciones
sobre las Cortes,” (1810,) his “Historia de las Cortes,” (1815,)
and other labors of the same kind. His first acknowledged
work was a free translation, from Muratori, of an essay, with
additions, which he printed at Madrid, in 1782, in 12mo, with
the title, “Sobre el Buen Gusto,” and which he accompanied by
an original tract, “Sobre el Buen Gusto actual de los Españoles
en la Literatura,”--the last being afterwards prefixed, with
alterations, to his “Biblioteca.” He was a diligent and useful
writer, and died, I believe, in 1824. A small volume, containing
notices of his life to the time when it appeared, probably
derived from materials furnished by himself, was printed at
Madrid, by Amarita, in 1821, 12mo.
Under these circumstances, the accession of a prince like Charles the
Third was eminently fortunate for the country. He was a man of energy
and discernment, a Spaniard by birth and character, but one whom
political connections had placed early on the throne of Naples, where,
during a reign of twenty-four years, he had done much to restore the
dignity of a decayed monarchy, and had learned much of the condition
of Europe outside of the Pyrenees. When, therefore, the death of his
half-brother called him to the throne of Spain, he came with a kind and
degree of experience in affairs which fitted him well for his duties in
the more important and more unfortunate kingdom, whose destinies he was
to control for above a quarter of a century. Happily, he seems to have
comprehended his position from the first, and to have understood that
he was called to a great work of reform and regeneration, where his
chief contest was to be with ecclesiastical abuses.
In some respects he was successful. His ministers, Roda,
Florida-Blanca, Aranda, and Campomanes, were men of ability. By their
suggestions and assistance, he abridged the Papal power so far, that
no rescript or edict from Rome could have force in Spain without the
expressed assent of the throne; he restrained the Inquisition from
exercising any authority whatever, except in cases of obstinate heresy
or apostasy; he forbade the condemnation of any book, till its author,
or those interested in it, had had an opportunity to be heard in its
defence; and, finally, deeming the Jesuits the most active opponents of
the reforms he endeavoured to introduce, he, in one day, expelled their
whole body from his dominions all over the world, breaking up their
schools and confiscating their great revenues.[321] At the same time,
he caused improved plans of study to be suggested; he made arrangements
for popular education, such as were before unknown in Spain; and he
raised the tone of instruction and the modes of teaching in the few
higher institutions over which he could lawfully extend his control.
[321] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. IV. Doblado’s
Letters, 1822, Appendix to Letters III. and VII.
But many abuses were beyond his reach. When he appealed to the
Universities, urging them to change their ancient habits, and teach
the truths of the physical and exact sciences, Salamanca answered,
in 1771, “Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or
metaphysician, and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with
revealed truth as Aristotle does.” And the other Universities showed
little more of the spirit of advancement.
With the Inquisition his success was far from being complete. His
authority was resisted, as far as resistance was possible; but the
progress of intelligence made all bigotry every year less active and
formidable; and, whether it be an honor to his reign, or whether it be
a disgrace, it is to be recorded, that the last person who perished at
the stake in Spain, by ecclesiastical authority, was an unfortunate
woman, who was burnt at Seville for witchcraft in 1781.[322]
[322] Sempere y Guarinos, Bibliot., Tom. IV., Art. _Planes de
Estudios_. Tapia, Tom. IV. c. 16. Llorente, Tom. IV. p. 270. The
Marquis de Langle, in his “Voyage d’Espagne,” (s. l. 1785, 12mo,
p. 45,) says the poor woman burnt at Seville was “jeune et belle.”
Under the influence of a spirit like that of Charles the Third,
during a reign protracted to twenty-nine years, there was a new and
considerable advancement in whatever tends to make life desirable, of
which the country on all sides gave token. The population, which had
fled or died away, seemed to spring up afresh in places that oppression
had made desert, and having regained something under the first of the
Bourbons, it now, under the third, recovered rapidly the numbers it had
lost in the days of the House of Austria, by wars all over the world,
by emigration, by the persecution of the Jews and the expulsion of the
Moriscos, by bad legislation, and by the cruel spirit of religious
intolerance. The revenues in the same period were increased threefold,
without adding to the burdens of the people; and the country seemed to
be brought from a state of absolute bankruptcy to one of comparative
ease and prosperity. It was certain, therefore, that Spain was not
falling to ruin, as it had been in the time of Charles the Second.[323]
[323] Tapia, Tom. IV. pp. 124, etc. When the Emperor Charles V.
came to the throne, Spain counted ten and a half millions of
souls; at the time of the treaty of Utrecht, it counted but seven
millions and a half; a monstrous falling off, if we consider the
advancement of the rest of Europe during the same period.
But all intellectual cultivation is slow of growth, and all
intellectual reform still slower. The life and health infused into the
country were, no doubt, felt in every part of its physical system,
reviving and renewing the powers that had been so long wasted away,
and that at one period had seemed near to speedy dissolution. But it
was obvious, that much time must still elapse before such healthful
circulations could reach the national culture generally, and a still
longer time before they could revive that elegant literature, which is
the bright, consummate flower of all true civilization. Yet life was
beginning to be seen. It was a dawn, if it was nothing more.
The first striking effect produced by this movement in the reigns of
Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third was one quite in sympathy
with the spirit of the nation, then resisting the ecclesiastical
abuses that had so long oppressed it. It was an attack on the style
of popular preaching, which, originally corrupted by Paravicino, the
distinguished follower of Góngora, had been constantly falling lower
and lower, until, at last, it seemed to have reached the lowest point
of degradation and vulgarity. The assailant was Father Isla, who was
born in 1703 and died in 1781, at Bologna, where, being a Jesuit, he
had retired, on the general expulsion of his Order from Spain.[324] His
earliest published work is his “Triumph of Youth,” printed in 1727,
to give the nation an account of a festival, celebrated that year
during eleven days at Salamanca, in honor of two very youthful saints
who had been Jesuits, and who had just been canonized by Benedict the
Thirteenth; a gay tract, full of poems, farces, and accounts of the
maskings and bull-fights to which the occasion had given rise, and
coming as near as possible to open satire of the whole matter, but yet
with great adroitness avoiding it.
[324] Vida de J. F. de Isla, por J. I. de Salas, Madrid, 1803,
12mo.
In a work somewhat similar, he afterwards went further. It was a
description of the proclamation made in 1746, at Pamplona, on the
accession of Ferdinand the Sixth, which was attended with such
extravagant and idle ceremonies, that, being required to give some
account of them to the public, he could not refrain from indulging in
his love of ridicule. But he did it with a satire so delicate and so
crafty, that those who were its subjects failed at first to apprehend
his real purpose. On the contrary, the Council of the proud capital
of Navarre thanked him for the honor he had done them; the Bishop
and Archbishop complimented him for it; several persons whom he had
particularly noticed sent him presents; and, when the irony began to be
suspected, it became a subject of public controversy, as in the case
of De Foe’s “Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” whether the praise
bestowed were in jest or in earnest;--Isla all the time defending
himself with admirable ingenuity and wit, as if he were personally
aggrieved at the unfavorable construction put upon his compliments. The
discussion ended with his retreat or exile from Pamplona.[325]
[325] Juventud Triunfante, Salamanca, 1727, 4to. Dia Grande de
Navarra, 2a ed., Madrid, 1746, 4to. Semanario Pintoresco, 1840,
p. 130.
He was, however, at this period of his life occupied with more serious
duties, and soon found among them a higher mark for his wit. From the
age of twenty-four he had been a successful preacher, and continued
such until he was cruelly expelled from his own country. But he
perceived how little worthy of its great subjects was the prevalent
style of Spanish pulpit oratory,--how much it was degraded by bad
taste, by tricks of composition, by conceits and puns, and even by
a low buffoonery, in which the vulgar monks, sent to preach in the
churches or in the public streets and squares, indulged themselves
merely to win applause from equally vulgar audiences, and increase
the contributions they solicited by arts so discreditable. It is said
that at first Father Isla was swept away by the current of his times,
which ran with extraordinary force, and that he wrote, in some degree,
as others did. But he soon recognized his mistake, and his numerous
published sermons, written between 1729 and 1754, are marked with a
purity and directness of style which had long been unknown, and which,
though wanting the richness and fervor of the exhortations of Luis de
Leon and Luis de Granada, would not have dishonored the Spanish pulpit
even in their days.[326]
[326] Vida de Isla, § 3. Sermones, Madrid, 1792-93, 6 tom. 8vo.
Vulgar preaching in the streets was common as early as 1680, when
Madame d’Aulnoy was in Spain. Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. II. p. 168.
Isla, however, was not satisfied with merely setting a good example.
He determined to make a direct attack on the abuse itself. For this
purpose, he wrote what he called “The History of the Famous Preacher,
Friar Gerund”; a satirical romance, in which he describes the life of
one of these popular orators, from his birth in an obscure village,
through his education in a fashionable convent, and his adventures
as a missionary about the country; the fiction ending abruptly with
his preparation to deliver a course of sermons in a city that seems
intended to represent Madrid. It is written throughout with great
spirit; and not only are the national manners and character everywhere
present, but, in the episodes and in the occasional sketches Isla has
given of conventual and religious life in his time, there is an air
of reality which leaves no doubt that the author drew freely on the
resources of his personal experience. Its plan resembles slightly that
of “Don Quixote,” but its execution reminds us oftener of Rabelais and
his discursive and redundant reflections, though of Rabelais without
his coarseness. It is serious, as becomes the Spanish character,
and conceals under its gravity a spirit of sarcasm, which, in other
countries, seems inconsistent with the idea of dignity, but which, in
Spain, has been more than once happily united with it, and made more
effective by the union.
The sketches of character and specimens of fashionable pulpit oratory
given in the “Friar Gerund” are the best parts of it, and are agreeable
illustrations for the literary history of the eighteenth century. Of
the preacher whom the Friar took for his model we have the following
carefully drawn portrait:--
“He was in the full perfection of his strength, just about
three-and-thirty years old; tall, robust, and stout; his limbs well set
and well proportioned; manly in gait, inclining to corpulence, with an
erect carriage of his head, and the circle of hair round his tonsure
studiously and exactly combed and shaven. His clerical dress was always
neat, and fell round his person in ample and regular folds. His shoes
fitted him with the greatest nicety, and, above all, his silken cap
was adorned with much curious embroidery and a fanciful tassel,--the
work of certain female devotees who were dying with admiration of
their favorite preacher. In short, he had a very youthful, gallant
look; and, adding to this a clear, rich voice, a slight fashionable
lisp, a peculiar grace in telling a story, a talent at mimicry, an
easy action, a taking manner, a high-sounding style, and not a little
effrontery,--never forgetting to sprinkle jests, proverbs, and homely
phrases along his discourses with a most agreeable aptness,--he won
golden opinions in his public discourses, and carried every thing
before him in the drawing-rooms he frequented.”[327]
[327] “Historia del Famoso Predicador, Fray Gerundio de
Campazas,” Madrid, 1813, 4 tom. 12mo, Tom. I. p. 307. In the
first edition, as well as in several other editions, it is said
to be written by Francisco Lobon de Salazar, a name which has
generally been supposed to be a fictitious one; but which is, in
fact, that of a friend, who was a parish priest at Villagarcia,
where Father Isla, who mentions him often in his letters, wrote
his Friar Gerund.
The style of eloquence of this vulgar ecclesiastical fop, a specimen of
which follows, is no less faithfully and characteristically given; and
was taken, as Father Isla intimates was his custom, from a discourse
that had really been preached.[328]
[328] Cartas Familiares, 1790, Tom. VI. p. 313.
“It was well known, that he always began his sermons with some proverb,
some jest, some pot-house witticism, or some strange fragment, which,
taken from its proper connections and relations, would seem, at first
blush, to be an inconsequence, a blasphemy, or an impiety; until, at
last, having kept his audience waiting a moment in wonder, he finished
the clause, or came out with an explanation which reduced the whole to
a sort of miserable trifling. Thus, preaching one day on the mystery
of the Trinity, he began his sermon by saying, ‘I deny that God exists
a Unity in essence and a Trinity in person,’ and then stopped short
for an instant. The hearers, of course, looked round on one another,
scandalized, or, at least, wondering what would be the end of this
heretical blasphemy. At length, when the preacher thought he had fairly
caught them, he went on,--‘Thus says the Ebionite, the Marcionite, the
Arian, the Manichean, the Socinian; but I prove it against them all
from the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Fathers.’
“In another sermon, which was on the Incarnation, he began by crying
out, ‘Your health, cavaliers!’ and, as the audience burst into a broad
laugh at the free manner in which he had said it, he went on:--‘This
is no joking matter, however; for it was for your health and for mine,
and for that of all men, that Christ descended from heaven and became
incarnate in the Virgin Mary. It is an article of faith, and I prove it
thus: “Propter nos, homines, et nostram _salutem_ descendit de cœlo et
incarnatus est,”’--whereat they all remained in delighted astonishment,
and such a murmur of applause ran round the church, that it wanted
little of breaking out into open acclamation.”[329]
[329] Fray Gerundio, Tom. I. p. 309.
The first volume of the “Friar Gerund” was printed in 1758, without the
knowledge of the author, and in twenty-four hours eight hundred copies
of it were sold.[330] Such an extraordinary popularity, however, proved
any thing but a benefit. The priests, and especially the preaching
friars, assailed it from all quarters, as the most formidable attack
yet made in Spain on their peculiar craft. The consequence was, that,
though the king and the court expressed their delight in its satire,
the license to publish it further was withdrawn, its author was
summoned before the Inquisition, and his book was condemned in 1760.
But Isla was too strong in public favor and in the respect of the
Jesuits to be personally punished, and the Friar Gerund was too true
and too widely scattered to be more than nominally suppressed.[331]
[330] Cartas Familiares, Tom. II. p. 170.
[331] Vida de Isla, p. 63. Llorente, Hist., Tom. II. p. 450.
Cartas Familiares de Isla, Tom. II. pp. 168, etc., and Tom. III.
p. 213. There are several amusing letters about Fray Gerundio
in the second volume of the Cartas Familiares. The Inquisition
(Index, 1790) not only forbade the work itself, but forbade any
body to publish any thing for or _against_ it.
The second volume did not fare so well. After the censure passed on
the first, it could not, of course, be licensed, and so remained for a
long time in manuscript, a forbidden book. In fact, it first appeared
in England, and in the English language, in 1772, through the agency of
Baretti, to whom the original had been sent after its author had gone
to Italy. But an edition of the whole work in Spanish soon appeared at
Bayonne, followed by other editions in other places; and, though it
was never licensed at home till 1813,--and then only to be forbidden
anew the next year, on the return of Ferdinand the Seventh,--still few
books have been better known, all over Spain, to the more intelligent
classes of the Spanish people, than Friar Gerund, from the day of its
first publication to the present time. What is of more consequence, it
was, from the first, successful in its main purpose. The _sobriquet_
of Friar Gerund was given at once to those who indulged in the vulgar
style of preaching it was intended to discountenance, and any one who
was admitted to deserve the appellation could no longer collect an
audience, except such as was gathered from the populace of the public
squares.[332]
[332] Watt, Bibliotheca, art. _Isla._ Wieland, Teutsche Merkur,
1773, Tom. III. p. 196. Baretti’s Proposals for Printing the
Translation of Friar Gerund, prefixed to that work, London, 1772,
2 tom. 8vo.
In consequence of the alarm and anxieties that accompanied his sudden
and violent expulsion from Spain, in 1767, Father Isla suffered on the
road an attack of paralysis, which made his health uncertain for the
remaining fourteen years of his life. Still, after his death, it was
found that in these sad years he had not been idle. Among his papers
was a poem in sixteen cantos, containing above twelve thousand lines
in octave stanzas. It is called “Cicero,” and claims to be a life of
the great Roman orator. But it is no such thing. It is a satire on
the vices and follies of the author’s own time, begun in Spain, but
chiefly written during his exile in Italy; and, though it contains
occasional sketches of an imaginary life of Cicero’s mother, they are
very inconsiderable, and, as for Cicero himself, the poem leaves him in
his cradle, only eighteen months old.
One of the subjects of its satire is the whole class of Spanish
narrative poems, of which, and especially of those devoted to the lives
of the saints, it may be regarded as a sort of parody; but its main
purpose is to ridicule the lives of modern fine ladies, and the modes
of early education then prevalent. The whole, however, is mingled with
inappropriate discussions about Italy, poetry, and a country life, and
hardly less inappropriate satire of professed musicians, theatres,
and poets who praise one another; in short, with whatever occurred to
Father Isla’s wayward humor as he was writing. From internal evidence,
it seems to have been read, from time to time as it was written, to a
society of friends,--probably some of the numerous exiles who, like
himself, had resorted to Bologna, and subsisted there on the miserable
pittance the Spanish government promised them, but often failed to pay.
For such a purpose it was not ill adapted by its clear, flowing style,
and occasionally by its pungent satire; but its cumbrous length and
endless digressions, often trifling both in matter and manner, render
it quite unfit for publication. It was, however, offered to the public
censor, and permission to print it was refused, though for reasons so
frivolous, that it seems certain the real objection was not to the
poem, but to the author.[333]
[333] The autograph manuscript of “El Ciceron,” neatly written
out in 219 folio pages, double columns, with the corrections
of the author and the erasures of the censor, is in the Boston
Athenæum. It is accompanied by three autograph letters of Father
Isla; by the opinion of the censor, that the poem ought not to be
published; and by an answer to that opinion;--the last two being
anonymous. These curious and valuable manuscripts were procured
in Madrid by E. Weston, Esq., and presented by him to the Library
of the Athenæum, in 1844.
Others of Father Isla’s works were more fortunate. Six volumes of his
sermons were collected and published, and six volumes of his letters,
chiefly addressed to his sister and her husband, and written in a very
affectionate and gay spirit. To these, at different times, were added
a few minor works of a trifling character, and one or two that are
religious.[334]
[334] The works alluded to are,--“El Mercurio General,” (Madrid,
1784, 18mo,) being extracts from accounts claimed to have been
written by Father Isla for that journal, in 1758, of the European
events of the year, but not certainly his;--“Cartas de Juan de la
Enzina,” (Madrid, 1784, 18mo,) a satirical work on the follies of
Spanish medicine;--“Cartas Familiares,” written between 1744 and
1781; published, 1785-86, also in a second edition, Madrid, 1790,
6 tom. 12mo;--“Coleccion de Papeles Crítico-Apologéticos,” (1788,
2 tom. 18mo,) in defence of Feyjoó;--“Sermones,” Madrid, 1792, 6
tom. 8vo;--“Rebusco,” etc., (Madrid, 1790, 18mo,) a collection
of miscellanies, some of which are probably not by Father
Isla;--“Los Aldeanos Críticos”; again in defence of Feyjoó;--and
various papers in the Seminario Erudito, Tom. XVI., XX., and
XXXIV., and in the supplementary volume of the “Fray Gerundio.”
A poem, entitled “Sueño Político,” (Madrid, 1785, 18mo,) on the
accession of Charles III., is also attributed to him; and so are
“Cartas atrasadas del Parnaso,” a satire which is not supposed to
have been written by him, though it reminds one sometimes of the
“Ciceron.”
But what most surprised the world was his translation of “Gil Blas,”
printed in 1787, claiming the work, on which the fame of Le Sage must
always principally rest, as “stolen from the Spanish, and now,” in the
words of Father Isla’s title-page, “restored to its country and native
language by a Spaniard, who does not choose to have his nation trifled
with.”[335] The external grounds for this extraordinary charge are
slight. The first suggestion occurs in 1752, and is made by Voltaire,
who, in his “Age of Louis the Fourteenth,” declares the Gil Blas “to
be entirely taken from Espinel’s ‘Marcos de Obregon.’” This charge,
as we have seen, is not true, and we have reason to believe that it
was the result of personal ill-will on the part of Voltaire, who had
himself been attacked in the Gil Blas, and who had, in some way or
other, heard that Le Sage was indebted to Espinel. Afterwards, similar
declarations are made in two or three books of no authority, and
especially in a Biographical Dictionary printed at Amsterdam in 1771.
But this is all.
[335] “Aventuras de Gil Blas de Santillana, robadas á España,
adoptadas en Francia por Mons. Le Sage, restituidas á su Patria
y á su Lengua nativa, por un Español zeloso, que no sufre que se
burlen de su Nacion,” Madrid, 1787, 6 tom. 8vo, and often since.
Though in great poverty himself, Isla gave any profit that might
come from his version of the Gil Blas to assist a poor Spanish
knight.
Roused by such suggestions, however, Father Isla amused himself
with making a translation of Gil Blas, adding to it a long and not
successful continuation,[336] and declaring, without ceremony or
proof, that it was the work of an Andalusian advocate, who gave his
manuscript to Le Sage, when Le Sage was in Spain, either as a secretary
of the French embassy, or as a friend of the French ambassador. But
all this seems to be without any foundation, for the manuscript has
never been produced; the advocate has never been named; and Le Sage
was never in Spain. Still, the Spanish claim has not been abandoned.
On the contrary, Llorente, in two ingenious and learned works on the
subject, one in French and the other in Spanish, but both printed in
1822, reasserts it, with great earnestness, resting his proofs on
internal evidence, and insisting that Gil Blas is certainly of Spanish
origin, and that it is probably the work, not indeed of Father Isla’s
Andalusian advocate, but of Solís, the historian;--a suggestion, for
which Llorente produces no better reason, than that nobody else of the
period to which he assigns the Gil Blas was able, in his judgment, to
write such a romance.[337]
[336] Another continuation of Gil Blas, less happy even than
that of Father Isla, appeared, in 2 tom. 8vo, at Madrid, in
1792, entitled “Genealogia de Gil Blas, Continuacion de la Vida
de este famoso Sujeto, por su Hijo Don Alfonso Blas de Liria.”
Its author was Don Bernardo Maria de Calzada, a person who, a
little earlier, had translated much from the French. (Sempere,
Biblioteca, Tom. VI. p. 231.) This work, too, the author declared
to be a translation, and, like Isla, set forth on his title-page
that it was “restored to the language in which it was originally
written.” But the whole is a worthless fiction, title-page and
all, though the attempt to make out for Gil Blas a clear and
noble genealogy on the side of his mother must be admitted to
be a truly Spanish fancy. (See Libros III. y IV.) The story is
unfinished.
[337] Voltaire, Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Tom. XX. p. 155. Le
Sage, Œuvres, Paris, 1810, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xxxix., where Voltaire
is said to have been attacked by Le Sage, in one of his dramas;
besides which it is supposed Le Sage ridiculed him under the name
of Triaquero, in Gil Blas, Lib. X. c. 5. But the most important
and curious discussion concerning the authorship of Gil Blas is
the one that was carried on, between 1818 and 1822, by François
de Neufchâteau and Antonio de Llorente, the author of the History
of the Inquisition. It began with a memoir, by the first, read
to the French Academy, (1818,) and an edition of Gil Blas,
(Paris, 1820, 3 tom. 8vo,) in both of which he maintains Le Sage
to be the true author of that romance. To both Llorente replied
by a counter memoir, addressed to the French Academy, and by
his “Observations sur Gil Blas,” (Paris, 1822, 12mo,) and his
“Observaciones sobre Gil Blas” (Madrid, 1822, 12mo); two works
not exactly alike, but substantially so, and equally maintaining
that Gil Blas is Spanish in its origin, and probably the work of
Solís, the historian, who, as Llorente _conjectures_, wrote a
romance in Spanish, entitled, “El Bachiller de Salamanca,” the
manuscript of which coming into the possession of Le Sage, he
first plundered from it the materials for his Gil Blas, which he
published in 1715-35, and then gave the world the remainder as
the “Bachelier de Salamanque,” in 1738. This theory of Llorente
is explained, with more skill than is shown in its original
framing, by the late accomplished scholar, Mr. A. H. Everett, in
an article which first appeared in the North American Review,
for October, 1827, when its author was Minister of the United
States in Spain, and afterwards in his pleasant “Critical and
Miscellaneous Essays,” published in Boston, 1845, 12mo.
But there is a ready answer to all such merely conjectural criticism.
Le Sage proceeded, as an author in romantic fiction, just as he had
done when he wrote for the public theatre; and the results at which he
arrived in both cases are remarkably similar. In the drama, he began
with translations and imitations from the Spanish, such as his “Point
of Honor,” which is taken from Roxas, and his “Don Cesar Ursino,”
which is from Calderon; but afterwards, when he better understood his
own talent and had acquired confidence from success, he came out with
his “Turcaret,” a wholly original comedy, which, far surpassed all he
had before attempted, and showed how much he had been wasting his
strength as an imitator. Just so he did in romance-writing. He began
with translating the “Don Quixote” of Avellaneda, and remodelling
and enlarging the “Diablo Cojuelo” of Guevara. But the “Gil Blas,”
the greatest of all his works of prose fiction, is the result of his
confirmed strength; and, in its characteristic merits, is as much his
own as the “Turcaret.”
On this point, the internal evidence is as decisive as the external.
The frequent errors of this remarkable romance in Spanish geography and
history show, that it could hardly have been the work of a Spaniard,
and certainly not of a Spaniard so well informed as Solís; its private
anecdotes of society in the time of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis
the Fifteenth prove it to have been almost necessarily written by a
Frenchman; while, at the same time, the freedom with which, as we go
on, we find that every thing Spanish is plundered,--now a tale taken
from “Marcos de Obregon,” now an intrigue or a story from a play of
Mendoza, of Roxas, or of Figueroa,--points directly to Le Sage’s old
habits, and to his practised skill in turning to account every thing
that he deemed fitted to his purpose. The result is, that he has,
by the force of his genius, produced a work of great brilliancy; in
which, from his entire familiarity with Spanish literature and his
unscrupulous use of it, he has preserved the national character with
such fidelity, that a Spaniard is almost always unwilling to believe
that the Gil Blas, especially now that he has it in the excellent
version of Father Isla, could have been written by any body but one of
his own countrymen.[338]
[338] “Le Point d’Honneur” is from “No hay Amigo para Amigo,”
which is the first play in the Comedias de Roxas, 1680;--and
“Don Cesar Ursino” is from “Peor esta que estaba,” in Calderon,
Comedias, 1763, Tom. III. The errors of Gil Blas in Spanish
geography and history are constantly pointed out by Llorente as
blunders of Le Sage in the careless use of his original; while,
on the other hand, Fr. de Neufchâteau points out its allusions to
Parisian society in the time of Le Sage. But of his free use of
Spanish fictions, which he took no pains to conceal, the proof
is abundant. I have already noticed, when speaking of Espinel,
(_ante_, pp. 67-70,) how much Le Sage took from “Marcos de
Obregon”; but, besides this, the adventures of Don Rafael with
the Seigneur de Moyadas in Gil Blas (Lib. V. c. 1) are taken from
“Los Empeños del Mentir” of Mendoza (Fenix Castellano, 1690, p.
254);--the story of the Marriage de Vengeance in Gil Blas (Lib.
IV. c. 4) is from the play of Roxas, “Casarse por Vengarse”;--the
story of Aurora de Guzman in Gil Blas (Lib. IV. c. 5 and 6) is
from “Todo es enredos Amor,” by Diego de Córdoba y Figueroa;--and
so on. See Tieck’s _Vorrede_ to his translation of Marcos de
Obregon (1827); Adolfo de Castro’s Poesías de Calderon y Plagios
de Le Sage, (Cadiz, 1845, 18mo, a curious little pamphlet); and
the fourth book of the same author’s “Conde Duque de Olivares”
(Cadiz, 1846, 8vo). In his “Bachelier de Salamanque,” Le Sage
goes one step further. On the title-page of this romance, first
printed three years after the last volume of Gil Blas appeared,
he says expressly, that “it is translated from a Spanish
manuscript,” and yet the story of Doña Cintia de la Carrera, in
the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth chapters, is taken from Moreto’s
“Desden con el Desden”; a play as well known as any in Spanish
literature.
The chief talent of Father Isla was in satire, and the great service
he performed for his country was that of driving from its respectable
churches the low and vulgar style of preaching with which they had
long been infested;--a work which the “Friar Gerund” achieved almost
as completely as the “Don Quixote” did that of destroying the insane
passion for books of chivalry which prevailed in the seventeenth
century.
But, meanwhile, other attempts were making in other directions to
revive the literature of the country; some by restoring a taste for the
old national poetry, some by attempting to accommodate every thing to
the French doctrines of the age of Louis the Fourteenth, and some by an
ill-defined and often, perhaps, unconscious struggle to unite the two
opinions, and to form a school whose character should be unlike that of
either and yet in advance of both.
In the direction of the earlier national poetry little was done by
original efforts, but something was attempted in other ways. Huerta,
a fierce, but inconsistent, adversary of the French innovations,
printed, in 1778, a volume of poems almost entirely in the old manner;
but it was too much marked with the bad taste of the preceding century
to enjoy even a temporary success, and its author, therefore, could
boast of no follower of any note in a path which was constantly less
and less trodden.[339]
[339] “Poesías de Don Vicente Garcia de la Huerta,” Madrid, 1778,
12mo, and a second edition, 1786. “La Perromachia,” a mock-heroic
on the loves and quarrels of sundry dogs, by Francisco Nieto
Molina, (Madrid, 1765, 12mo,) is too poor to deserve notice,
though it is an attempt to give greater currency to the earlier
national verse,--the _redondillas_.
On the other hand, more was done with effect to recall the memory of
the old masters themselves. Lopez de Sedano, between 1768 and 1778,
published his “Spanish Parnassus,” in nine volumes; a work which,
though ill digested and not always showing good taste in its selections
and criticisms, is still a rich mine of the poetry of the country in
its best days, and contains important materials for the history of
Spanish literature from the period of Boscan and Garcilasso.[340]
Sanchez went further back, and in 1779 offered, to his countrymen, for
the first time, the greater legendary treasures of their heroic ages,
beginning with the noble old poem of the Cid, but unhappily leaving
incomplete a task for which he had proved himself so well fitted by
his learning and zeal, if not by his acuteness.[341] And finally,
Sarmiento, a friend of Feyjoó, and one of his ablest public defenders,
undertook an elaborate history of Spanish poetry, which contains
important discussions relating to the period embraced by the inquiries
of Sanchez, but which was broken off by the death of its venerable
author in 1770, and remained unpublished till five years later.[342]
These three works, though they excited too little attention at first,
were still works of importance, and have served as the foundation for a
better state of things since.
[340] J. J. Lopez de Sedano, “Parnaso Español,” (Madrid,
Sancha, 1768-78, 9 tom. 12mo,) was the subject, of a good deal
of criticism soon after it appeared. The club of the elder
Moratin--to be noticed immediately--was much dissatisfied with
it (Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, Londres, 1825, 12mo, p.
xxv.);--Yriarte in 1778 printed a dialogue on it, “Donde las
dan las toman,” full of severity (Obras, 1805, Tom. VI.);--and
in 1785 Sedano replied, under the name of Juan Maria Chavero y
Eslava de Ronda, in four volumes, 12mo, published at Málaga and
called the “Colóquios de Espina.”
[341] T. A. Sanchez (born 1732, died 1798) published his “Poesías
Anteriores al Siglo XV.” at Madrid, in 4 tom. 8vo, 1779-90, but
printed very little else.
[342] Martin Sarmiento, “Memorias para la Historia de la Poesía
y Poetas Españoles,” Madrid, 1775, 4to. He was born in 1692,
and wrote a great deal, but published little. His defence of
his master, Feyjoó, (1732,) generally goes with the “Teatro
Crítico”; and some of his tracts are to be found in the Seminario
Erudito, Tom. V., VI., XIX., and XX. His “Historia de la Poesía,”
printed as the first volume of his Works, which were not further
continued, is the more valuable, because, making his inquiries
quite independently of Sanchez, he often comes to the same
results.
The doctrines of the French school, somewhat modified, perhaps, by the
reproduction of the elder Spanish literature, but still substantially
unchanged, found followers more numerous and active. During the reign
of Charles the Third, Moratin the elder, a gentleman of an old Biscayan
family, who was born in 1737, and died in 1780, succeeded, in a great
degree, to the inheritance of Luzan’s opinions, and devoted himself
to the reform of the taste of his countrymen. He was the friend of
Montiano, who had himself endeavoured to introduce classical tragedy
upon the Spanish stage, and who had, probably, some share in forming
the literary character of the young poet. But the court, as usual, was
an element in the movement. Moratin was received with flattering regard
by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, the head of the great house of the
Guzmans; by the Duke of Ossuna, long ambassador in France; by Aranda,
the wise minister of state, who rarely forgot the cause of intellectual
culture; and by the Infante Don Gabriel de Bourbon, the accomplished
translator of Sallust; and each of these persons was thus able,
through Moratin, to exercise an influence on the state of letters in
Spain.
His first public effort of any consequence, except a drama that will be
noticed hereafter, was his “Poeta,” which appeared in 1764. It consists
entirely of his own shorter poems, and is among the many proofs how
small was the interest then felt in literature, since, though the
whole collection fills only a hundred and sixty pages, it was found
expedient to publish it in ten successive numbers, in order to give
it a fair opportunity to be circulated and read. This was followed,
the next year, by the “Diana,” a short didactic poem, in six books, on
the Chase, and in 1765 by a narrative poem on the Destruction of his
Ships by Cortés, to which if we add a volume published by the piety of
his son in 1821, and containing, with a modest and beautiful life of
their author, a collection of poems, most of which had not before been
published, we shall have all of the elder Moratin that can now interest
us.
Its value is not great; and yet portions of it are not likely to
be soon forgotten. The “Epic Canto,” as he calls it, on the bold
adventure of Cortés in burning his ships, is the noblest poem of its
class produced in Spain during the eighteenth century, and gives more
pleasure than almost any of the historical epics that preceded it in
such large numbers. Some of his shorter pieces, like his ballads on
Moorish subjects, and an ode to a champion in the bull-fights,--which
Moratin constantly frequented, and of which he printed a pleasant
historical sketch,--are full of spirit. All he wrote, indeed, is marked
by purity and exactness of language and harmony of versification;
showing that, though he possessed to an extraordinary degree the power
of an improvisator, he composed carefully and finished with patience.
But his chief success was as a public teacher; laboring faithfully
in the chair of the Imperial College, where he took the place of his
friend Ayala, and rebuking the bad taste of his times by the strength
of his own modest example.[343]
[343] Besides the poems noted in the text, I have, by Moratin the
elder, an Ode on account of an act of mercy and pardon by Charles
III., in 1762, and the “Egloga á Velasco y Gonzalez,” printed
on occasion of their portraits being placed in the Academy, in
1770; both of little consequence, but not, I believe, noticed
elsewhere. His “Obras Póstumas” were printed at Barcelona, in
1821, 4to, and reprinted at London, in 1825, 12mo. Moratin’s
“Carta Sobre las Fiestas de Toros,” (Madrid, 1777, 12mo,) which
is a slight prose tract, is intended to prove historically that
the amusement of bull-fighting is Spanish in its origin and
character;--a point concerning which those who have read the
Chronicles of Muntaner and the Cid can have little doubt. Moratin
had the power of improvisating with great effect. Obras, 1825,
pp. xxxiv.-xxxix.
Moratin was an amiable man, and gathered the men of letters of the
Spanish capital in a friendly circle about him. They met in one of
the better class of taverns,--the Fonda de San Sebastian,--where they
maintained a club-room that was always open and ready to receive them.
Ayala, the tragic writer; Cerdá, the literary antiquarian; Rios, who
wrote the analysis of “Don Quixote” prefixed to the magnificent edition
of the Academy; Ortega, the botanist and scholar; Pizzi, the Professor
of Arabic Literature; Cadahalso, the poet and essayist; Muñoz, the
historian of the New World; Yriarte, the fabulist; Conti, the Italian
translator of a collection of Spanish poetry; Signorelli, the author
of the general history of theatres; and others,--were members of this
pleasant association, and resorted continually to its cheerful saloon.
How truly Spanish was the tone of their intercourse may be gathered
from the fact, that they had but one law to govern all their
proceedings, and that was, never to speak on any subject except the
Theatre, Bull-fights, Love, and Poetry. But in every thing they
undertook they were much in earnest. They read their works to each
other for mutual, friendly criticism, and discussed freely whatever was
written at the time, and whatever they thought would tend to revive
the decayed spirit of their country. They read, too, and examined the
literature of other nations; and, if their tendencies were more towards
the school of Boileau and the great masters of Italy, than might have
been anticipated from the spirit of their association, it should be
borne in mind, that two of their most active members were Italian men
of letters, that the court had recently come from Naples, and that the
spirit of the times much favored all that was French, and especially
the French theatre.[344]
[344] N. F. Moratin, Obras Póstumas, 1821, pp. xxiv.-xxxi.
Among the most interesting members of this agreeable society was José
de Cadahalso, a gentleman descended from one of the old mountain
families of the North of Spain, but born at Cadiz in 1741. His
education was conducted from early youth in Paris, but before he was
twenty years old he had visited Italy, Germany, England, and Portugal,
and obtained a knowledge of the language and literature of each, and
especially of England, sufficient to emancipate him from many national
prejudices, and make him more useful to the cause of letters at home
than he would otherwise have been.
On his return to Spain he took the military dress of Santiago, and
entered the army. There he rose rapidly, till he reached the rank of
colonel; but, in all the different places to which his own choice or
the service of his regiment carried him,--Saragossa, Madrid, Alcalá de
Henares, and Salamanca,--he sought occasion to continue his earlier
pursuits, and succeeded in connecting himself with the leading spirits
of the time, such as Moratin, Iglesias, Yriarte, the wise Jovellanos,
and the young and promising Melendez Valdes. But his career, though
successful, was short. He perished at the siege of Gibraltar, struck by
a bomb, on the 27th of February, 1782, and the governor of the besieged
fortress joined in the general sorrow over the grave of an honorable
enemy who had been distinguished alike in letters and in arms.[345]
[345] Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 21. Puybusque, Tom. II.
p. 493. His name, I believe, was originally spelt _Cadalso_; but
as that is a recognized word, meaning “scaffold,” it is softened
in the recent Madrid editions of his Works into _Cadahalso_,
which means “cottage” or “shanty.” Both these words, however,
are regarded as one and the same, in the first edition of the
Dictionary of the Academy, so that perhaps not much is gained by
the change.
In 1772 Cadahalso published his “Eruditos á la Violeta,” or Fashionable
Learning, to which, from its considerable success, he added a
supplement the same year. The original work is a pleasant satire on
the superficial scholarship of his times, and is thrown into the form
of directions how to teach the whole circle of human knowledge in a
course of lectures, that shall just fill the seven days of the week;
the supplement giving a few further illustrations of the same subject,
and some of the results of such teachings on the unhappy scholars who
had been its victims. This, with a volume of poems printed the next
year, and containing several careful translations from the ancients,
a few satirical trifles after the manner of Quevedo, and a good many
Anacreontic songs and tales in the manner of Villegas, are all of his
works that were published during his lifetime.
But after his death there was found among his papers a collection of
letters, supposed to have been written by a person connected with an
embassy to Spain from Morocco, and addressed to his friends at home.
They belong to the large family of works of fiction, begun by Marana’s
“Turkish Spy,” and are commonly set down as imitations of Montesquieu’s
“Persian Letters,” but, in fact, show a nearer relationship with
Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World.” The whole work, however, is more
occupied with literary discussions and temporary satire, than either
of those just referred to; and therefore, though it is written in a
pure and pleasant style, with wit and good sense, it has been far from
obtaining a place, like theirs, in the general regard of the world.
Still, like the rest of his posthumous works, which comprise a few more
compositions in prose satire and a few more poems, the best of which
are in the old short verses always so popular in Spain, “The Moorish
Letters” of Cadahalso have been often reprinted, and probably are not
destined to be forgotten.[346]
[346] His “Eruditos á la Violeta,” and his poetry, “Ocios de mi
Juventud,” were printed at Madrid, 1772 and 1773, 4to, under the
assumed name of Joseph Vasquez. An edition of his Works, with an
excellent Life by Navarrete, appeared at Madrid, in 1818, in 3
tom. 12mo, and has been reprinted more than once since. For the
contemporary opinion of Cadahalso, see Sempere, _loc. cit._
Another member of the society founded by Moratin, and one of the most
prominent of them, was Thomas de Yriarte, a gentleman who was born
on the island of Teneriffe in 1750, but received that part of his
education which decided the course of his life at Madrid, under the
auspices of his uncle, Don Juan de Yriarte, the learned head of the
King’s Library. The young man was known as a dramatic writer, and as
a translator of French plays for the royal theatres, from the age of
eighteen; and from the age of twenty-one, when he printed some good
Latin verses on the birth of the Infante, afterwards Charles the
Fourth, he was distinguished at court for his accomplishments both in
ancient and modern literature. Soon after this period he received a
place under the government; and, though his employments, both in the
Office of Foreign Affairs and in that of the Department of War, were
of an intellectual nature, still his time was much occupied by them,
and his opportunities for the indulgence of a poetical taste were much
diminished. Besides this, he had rivalries and troubles with Sedano,
Melendez, Forner, and some others of his contemporaries, and was
summoned before the Inquisition in 1786, as one tainted with the new
French philosophy. The result of all these trials and interruptions
was, that when, after his death, which occurred in 1791, his works were
collected and published, more than half of the eight small volumes
through which they were spread was found to consist of translations
and personal controversies; the translations made with skill, and the
quarrels managed with spirit and wit, but neither of them important
enough to be now remembered.
His original poetry is better. It is marked by purity of style,
regularity, and elegance, but not by power or elevation. The best of
what is merely miscellaneous is to be found in eleven Epistles, with
one of which, addressed to his friend Cadahalso, he dedicates to him
a translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry.” But in two departments,
where his natural taste led him to labor with a decided preference, he
apparently made more effort than in any other, and had greater success.
The first of these was didactic poetry. His poem “On Music,”--a subject
which he chose from his considerable proficiency in that art,--appeared
in 1780, and was soon favorably known, not only at home, but in Italy
and France. It consists of five books, in which he discusses with
philosophical precision the elements of music; musical expression
of different kinds, but especially martial and sacred; the music of
the theatre; that of society; and that of man in solitude. The poem
is written in the free, national _silva_, irregular, but flowing,
and no want of skill is shown in its management. But, as a whole, it
has too little richness and vigor to give life to the cold forms of
instruction, in which it is throughout rigorously cast.[347]
[347] As a sort of counterpart to the poem on Music, by Yriarte,
may be mentioned one of less merit, published soon afterwards by
Don Diego Antonio Rejon de Silva, “La Pintura, Poema Didáctico
en Tres Cantos,” (Segovia, 1786, 8vo,) the first canto being on
Design, the second on Composition, and the third on Coloring,
with notes and a defence of Spanish artists. He was a gentleman
of Murcia, who indulged himself in poetry and painting as an
amateur, but whose serious occupations were in the Office of
Foreign Affairs at Madrid. He died about 1796. Sempere y Guarinos
(Biblioteca, Tom. V. pp. 1-6) gives an account of his few and
unimportant works, and Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p.
164) has a short notice of his life.
The other department, in which Yriarte was more successful, was that
of fables. Here he, in some degree, struck out a new path; for he not
only invented all his fictions, which no other fabulist in modern
times had done, but restricted them all, in their moral purpose, to
the correction of the faults and follies of men of learning,--an
application which had not before been thought of. Their whole number,
including a few that are posthumous, is nearly eighty, above sixty
of which appeared in 1782. They are written with great care, in no
less than forty different measures, and show an extraordinary degree
of ingenuity in adapting the attributes and instincts of animals to
the instruction, not of mankind at large, as had always been done
before, but to that of a separate and small class, between whom and
the inferior creation the resemblance is rarely obvious. The task was
certainly a difficult one. Perhaps, on this account, they are too
narrative in their structure, and fail somewhat in the genial spirit
which distinguishes Æsop and La Fontaine, the greatest masters of
Apologue and Fable. But their influence was so much needed in the age
of bad writing when they appeared, and they are besides so graceful in
their versification, that they were not only received with great favor
at first, but have never lost it since. Their author’s reputation, in
fact, now rests on them almost exclusively.[348]
[348] Obras de Thomas de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 8 tom. 12mo.
Villanueva, Memorias, Londres, 1825, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 27. Sempere,
Biblioteca, Tom. VI. p. 190. Llorente, Histoire, Tom. II. p. 449.
Yriarte, however, had a rival, who shared these honors with him, and
in some respects obtained them even earlier. This was Samaniego, a
Biscayan gentleman of rank and fortune, who was born in 1745, and died
in 1801; having devoted his life, in the most disinterested manner,
to the welfare of his native province. He was one of the earliest
and most active members of the first of those societies sometimes
called “Friends of the Country,” and sometimes “Societies for Public
Improvement,” which began in the reign of Charles the Third, and
soon spread through Spain, exercising an important influence on the
education and public economy of the kingdom, and laboring to raise the
arts of life from the degraded condition into which they had fallen
during the latter period of the dominion of the House of Austria.
The Biscayan Society, founded in 1765, devoted itself much to the
education of the people; and, to favor this great cause, Samaniego
undertook to write fables suited to the capacity of the children taught
in the Society’s seminary. How early he began to prepare them is not
known; but in the first portion, published in 1781, and therefore
one year before those of Yriarte appeared, he speaks of Yriarte as
his model, and leaves no doubt that the fables of that poet had been
seen by him. The second part of Samaniego’s collection was published
in 1784, when that of his rival had been admired by the public long
enough to change the relations of the two authors, and bring up a
quarrel of pamphlets between them, little creditable to either. Both
parts, taken together, contain a hundred and fifty-seven fables, the
last nineteen of which and a few others are original, while the rest
are taken, partly from Æsop, Phædrus, and the Oriental fabulists, but
chiefly from La Fontaine and Gay. They succeeded at once. The children
learned them by heart, and the teachers of the children found in them
subjects for pleasant reading and reflection. They were, no doubt, less
carefully written than the fables of Yriarte, less original and less
exactly adapted to their purpose; but they were more free-hearted, more
natural, and adapted to a larger class of readers; in short, there is
a more easy poetical genius about them, and therefore, even if they
cannot claim a higher merit than those of Yriarte, they have taken a
stronger hold on the national regard.[349]
[349] Felix María de Samaniego, “Fábulas en Verso Castellano para
el Uso del Real Seminario Vascongado,” Nueva York, 1826, 18mo.
There is a Life of the author, by Navarrete, in the fourth volume
of Quintana’s “Coleccion,” and a reply to his attack on Yriarte
in the sixth volume of Yriarte’s Works. For an account of the
“patriotic societies,” see Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. V. p. 135,
and Tom. VI. p. 1.
The best of them are the shortest and simplest, like the following,
entitled “The Scrupulous Cats,” which was well suited to the time when
it appeared, and can hardly be amiss at any other.
Two cats, old Tortoise-back and Kate,
Once from its spit a capon ate.
It was a giddy thing, be sure,
And one they could not hide or cure.
They licked themselves, however, clean,
And then sat down behind a screen,
And talked it over. Quite precise,
They took each other’s best advice,
Whether to eat the spit or no?
“And _did_ they eat it?” “Sir, I trow,
_They did not_! They were honest things,
Who had a conscience, and knew how it stings.”[350]
[350] Parte II. Lib. II. Fab. 9. He gives, also, an expanded
version of the same fable, but the shortest is much the best,
Πλέον ἥμισυ παντός.
Samaniego was not the only person who, without belonging to the society
of Moratin and his friends, coöperated with them in their efforts to
encourage a better tone in the literature of their country. Among
those who, from a similar impulse, but with less success, took the
same direction, were Arroyal, who, in 1784, published a collection
of poems, which he calls Odes, but which are oftener epigrams; and
Montengon, a Jesuit, who, after the expulsion of his Order from Spain,
began, in 1786, with his “Eusebio,” a work on education, partly in
imitation of the “Télémaque,” and then went on rapidly with a prose
epic called “Rodrigo,” a volume of Odes, and several other works,
written with little talent, and showing by their inaccuracies of style
that their author had been an exile in Italy till his mother tongue
had become strange to him. To these should be added Gregorio de Salas,
a quiet ecclesiastic, who wrote odes, fables, and other trifles, that
were several times printed after 1790; Ignacio de Meras, a courtier
of the worst days of Charles the Fourth, whose worthless dramas and
miscellaneous poetry appeared in 1792; and the Count de Noroña, a
soldier and diplomatist, who, besides a dull epic on the separation
of the Arabian empire in Spain from that of the East, printed, in
1799-1800, two volumes of verse so light, that they procured for him
sometimes the title of the Spanish Dorat. But all these writers only
showed a constantly increasing disposition to fall more and more into
the feebler French school of the eighteenth century; and while none of
them had the talent of the few active spirits collected at the Fonda de
San Sebastian in Madrid, none certainly exercised the sort of influence
they did on the poetry of their time.[351]
[351] A few words should be added, on each of these last five
authors.
1. “Las Odas de Leon de Arroyal,” Madrid, 1784, 12mo. At the
end are a few worthless Anacreontics by a lady, whose name is
not given; and at the beginning is a truly Spanish definition
of lyrical poetry, namely, that “whose verses can be properly
played, sung, or _danced_.”
2. Pedro de Montengon, “Eusebio,” Madrid, 1786-87, 4 tom. 8vo.
The first two volumes gave great offence by the absence of all
injunctions to make religious instruction a part of education;
and, though the remaining two made up for this deficiency, there
is reason to believe that Montengon intended originally to follow
the theory of the “Emile.” “El Antenor” (Madrid, 1788, 2 tom.
8vo) is a prose poem on the tradition of the founding of Padua
by the Trojans. “El Rodrigo” (Madrid, 1793, 8vo) is another
prose epic, in one volume and twelve books, on the “Last of the
Goths.” “Eudoxia,” Madrid, 1793, 8vo; again, a work on education;
but on the education of women. “Odas,” Madrid, 1794, 8vo; very
poor. Montengon, of whom these are not all the works, was born
at Alicante, in 1745, and was alive in 1815. He was very young
when he entered the Church, and lived chiefly at Naples, where he
threw off his ecclesiastical robes and devoted himself to secular
occupations.
3. Francisco Gregorio de Salas, “Coleccion de Epigramas,” etc.,
1792, 4th edition, Madrid, 1797, 2 tom. 12mo. His “Observatorio
Rústico” (1770, tenth edition 1830) is a long dull eclogue,
divided into six parts, which has enjoyed an unreasonable
popularity. L. F. Moratin (Obras, 1830, Tom. IV. pp. 287 and
351) gives an epitaph for Salas, with a pleasing prose account
of his personal character, which he well says was much more
interesting than his poetry; and Sempere (Biblioteca, Tom. V. pp.
69, etc.) gives a list of his works, all of which, I believe, are
in the collection printed at Madrid in 1797, _ut sup._ A small
volume entitled “Parabolas Morales,” etc., (Madrid, 1803, 12mo,)
consisting of prose apologues, somewhat better than any thing of
Salas that preceded it, is, I suppose, later, and probably the
last of his works.
4. Ignacio de Meras, “Obras Poéticas,” (Madrid, 1797, 2 tom.
12mo,) contain a stiff tragedy, called “Teonea,” in blank verse,
and within the rules; a comedy called “The Ward of Madrid,” in
the old _figuron_ style, but burlesque and dull; an epic canto on
“The Conquest of Minorca,” in 1782, to imitate Moratin’s “Ships
of Cortés”; a poem “On the Death of Barbarossa, in 1518”; and
a number of sonnets and odes, some of the last of which should
rather be called ballads, and some of them satires;--the whole
very meagre.
5. Gaspar de Noroña, whose family was of Portuguese origin, was
bred a soldier and served at the siege of Gibraltar, where he
wrote an elegy on the death of Cadahalso (Poesías de Noroña,
Madrid, 1799-1800, 2 tom. 12mo, Tom. II. p. 190). He rose in
the army to be a lieutenant-general, and, while holding that
rank, published his Ode on the Peace of 1795, (Tom. I. p. 172,)
by which he was first publicly known as a poet, and which,
except, perhaps, a few of his shorter and lighter poems, is
the best of his works. Afterwards he was sent as ambassador to
Russia, but returned to defend his country when it was invaded
by the French, and was made governor of Cadiz. He died in 1815,
(Fuster, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 381,) and in 1816 his epic,
entitled “Ommiada,” was published at Madrid, in two volumes,
12mo, containing above fifteen thousand verses; as dull, perhaps,
as any of the similar poems that abound in Spanish literature,
but less offensive to good taste than most of them. In 1833,
there appeared at Paris his “Poesías Asiáticas puestas en Verso
Castellano,” translations from the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish,
made, as he says in the Preface, to give him poetical materials
for his epic. His “Quicaida,” a heroi-comic poem, in eight
cantos, filled with parodies, is very tedious. It is in his
Poesías, printed in 1800.
CHAPTER V.
SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA.--MELENDEZ VALDES.--GONZALEZ.--FORNER.--IGLESIAS.--
CIENFUEGOS.--JOVELLANOS.--MUÑOZ.--ESCOIQUIZ.--MORATIN THE
YOUNGER.--QUINTANA.
Both the parties, into which Spanish literature was divided about the
middle of the eighteenth century, erred by running into those extremes
of opinion which are rarely right in any thing and never in matters of
taste. Moratin was wrong in speaking with contempt of such poetry as
the fine old ballad of “Calaynos,” and Huerta was equally wrong when he
said, that the “Athalie” of Racine might be fit to be represented by
boarding-school misses, but was fit for nothing else. It was natural,
therefore, that another party, or school, should be formed, which
should endeavour to avoid the excesses of both its predecessors, and
unite their merits; one that should not be insensible to the power
and richness of the old writers of the time of the Philips, and yet,
escaping from their extravagances and bad taste, should mould itself
in some degree according to the severe state of literary opinion
then prevailing on the Continent. Such a school in fact appeared at
Salamanca in the latter part of the reign of Charles the Third and the
beginning of that of Charles the Fourth.
Its proper founder was Melendez Valdes, who was born in Estremadura,
in 1754, and at the age of eighteen was sent to study at Salamanca,
where, if he did not pass the larger remaining portion of his life, he
passed at least its happiest and best years.[352] As a versifier, he
began early, and in a bad school; writing at first in the manner of
Lobo, who was still read and admired. But he soon fell indirectly under
the influence of Moratin and his friends at Madrid, who were in every
way opposed to the bad taste of their time. By a fortunate accident
Cadahalso was carried fresh from the meetings of the club of the Fonda
de San Sebastian to Salamanca. His discerning kindness detected at
once the talent its possessor had not yet discovered. He took Melendez
into his house; showed him the merit of the elder literature of his
country, as well as that of the other cultivated nations of Europe; and
devoted himself so earnestly and so affectionately to the development
of his young friend’s genius, that it was afterwards said, with some
truth, that, among all the works of Cadahalso, the best was Melendez.
At the same period, too, Melendez became acquainted with Iglesias and
Gonzalez; and through the latter was placed in relations of friendship
with the commanding mind of Jovellanos, who exercised from the first
moment of their intercourse an obvious and salutary influence over him.
[352] Considerable improvement took place at Salamanca in some
departments of study while Melendez was there. But still things
remained in a very torpid state.
His earliest public success was in 1780, when he obtained a prize
offered by the Spanish Academy for the best eclogue. Yriarte, who was
some years older, and had already become favorably known at court and
in the capital, was his most formidable rival. But the poem Yriarte
offered, which is on the pleasures of a country life, as set forth
by one disgusted with that of the city, is somewhat in the formal,
declamatory style of the less fortunate portions of the older Spanish
pastorals; while that of Melendez is fresh from the fields, and as one
of the judges said, in the discussion that followed its reading, seems
absolutely to smell of their wild flowers. It was, indeed, in sweetness
and gentleness, if not in originality and strength, such a return to
the tones of Garcilasso, as had not been heard in Spain for above a
century. Yriarte received the second honors of the contest, but was
not satisfied with such a decision, and made known his feelings by an
ill-judged attack upon the successful eclogue of his rival. The popular
favor, however, fully sustained the Academy, and its vote on that
occasion has never been reversed.
The next year Melendez came to Madrid. He was received with great
kindness by Jovellanos and his friends; and obtained new honors at
the Academy of San Fernando, by an ode “On the Glory of the Arts,”
which that Academy had been founded to foster. But his preference was
still for his old poetical haunts on the banks of the Tórmes, and,
having obtained the chair of Professor of the Humanities or Philology,
at Salamanca, he gladly returned thither, and devoted himself to its
unostentatious duties.
In 1784, at the suggestion of Jovellanos, he became a competitor for
the prize offered by the city of Madrid for a comedy, and wrote “The
Marriage of Camacho.” But his talent was not dramatic; and therefore,
though he obtained the votes of the judges, he did not, to the great
disappointment of his patron, obtain those of the public when his drama
was brought to the test of a free representation.