FROM THE ARGENSÓLAS AND OTHER POETS TO GONGÓRA.
None of the authors of this time equalled the Argensólas in severity of
sentiment, facility of rhyme, or correctness and propriety of language.
They are so paramount in this last quality, that Lope de Vega says of
them, that they came to Castile from Arragon to teach the Castilian
language. Their learning, the dignity of their maxims, their connexions,
and the great protection extended to them by the Count de Lemus, were
the causes of that kind of sovereignty which they exercised over their
cotemporaries, and of that authority recognised and confirmed by the
praises that were lavished on them from all quarters. They have been
entitled the Horaces of Spain, and have ever been regarded as poets of
the first rank, preserving a reputation almost as inviolate as
Garcilasso himself.
Without intending to diminish the just esteem which is their due, or to
contend with their many admirers, we may observe, that their fame
appears to us much greater than their merit; and that if language owes
them much for the exact attention and propriety with which they wrote
it, poetry is indebted to them less, and that their reputation appears
to rest more on their freedom from the vices, than on any great display
of the virtues of composition. In lyric poetry they are easy, pure, and
ingenious; but generally devoid of enthusiasm, majesty, and fancy. As
little have they in their love pieces the grace and tenderness which
erotic poetry requires; and if we except some sonnets of Lupercio, not
one of their compositions in this class can be quoted as deserving to
arrest the attention, or be recommended to the memory of lovers. I will
not speak of the _Isabella_ and the _Alexandra_, as it is evident to
all, even without the necessity of a profound acquaintance with the
subject, that these compositions have nothing of the tragedy in them but
the name, and the coolly atrocious deaths with which they end. Their
severe character, the bias of their disposition, more ingenious and neat
than florid and expansive, the wit and mirth which at times they knew
how to fling forth, were more fit for moral and satiric poetry, in which
they have succeeded best. There are in them an infinite number of
strokes, some valuable for their depth and boldness, and many for that
ingenuity of thought, that facility and propriety of expression, which
has rendered them proverbial.
"Well say the vulgar, that the man's an ass,
Who, having his own villa roofed with glass,
Wreaks or his hate or spleen, from all aloof,
In flinging stones upon his neighbour's roof.
* * * * *
The grave authority of gold,
Never provoked by harsh asperity,
Because it never heard a harsh reply.
* * * * *
The nuptial bed your industry profanes
With lawless tires, and even the cradle stains;
Into the winepress throws, ere half matured,
The virgin grapes; delay is not endured;
Picks locks, breaks bars, climbs walls however steep,
And drugs the total family with sleep.
* * * * *
So the genteel adult'ress, on her charms
Relying, with feigned warmth and false alarms,
Stands sure of her soothed consort; now she faints,
Now, agitated, pours forth wild complaints;
From her disloyal bosom breathes deep sighs,
And for a flood of tears prepares her eyes;
Storms at the servants for their lawful zeal,
And acts the indignant rage she does not feel:
Her honest husband, credulous, beholds,
And growing tenderer as she louder scolds,
Gives useless satisfaction to his wife,
Embraces, kneels to her to end the strife,
Drinks with warm kiss the atrocious tears that rise
To his dear Portia's well commanded eyes:
But, though her protestations more renew,
Her escritoire will tell thee if they are true;
Search but the desk, and, gracious Gods! what schemes
Must be found out, in what perfidious reams!
* * * * *
And if the jug's of plate, engraved with cost,
Or with a Satyr's laughing face embossed,
'Twill more, forsooth, assuage thy thirst than e'er
Did the plain jug of horrid earthenware!
When from plain vessels, filled with water pure,
I wet the thirsty lip, I drink secure:
Say, would a vase whereon rich sculptures live,
Filled in a palace, like assurance give?
No! the Greek tyrants for their guests of old,
Mixed poison always in a vase of gold."
These passages, extracted from various satires of Bartolomé, and many
others of equal or superior merit, which might be quoted as well from
him as from Lupercio, prove their happy genius for this kind of poetry.
They have been compared to Horace, and undoubtedly bear most similarity
to him, notwithstanding the preference that Bartolomé gave to
Juvenal.[J] But at what a distance do they stand from him! The vivacity,
the freedom, the variety, the conciseness, the exquisite and delicate
mixture of praise and censure, the amiable disdain, and spirit of
friendship, which enchant and despond in that ancient model, are all
wanting in them, and condemn the excessive condescension or want of
taste which led their cotemporaries to give them the title of Horaces.
Facility of rhyming led them to string tercetos together without end, in
which, if we meet with no unnecessary words, we find plenty of
unnecessary thoughts. This causes their satires and epistles frequently
to appear prolix, and even at times wearisome. Horace would have
counselled Lupercio to shorten the introduction of his satire on the
Marquesilla, and many of the tales that occur in it; and Bartolomé to
suppress, in his fable of the Eagle and Swallow, the long enumeration of
birds, useless and unseasonable for a poet, superficial and scanty for
a naturalist; he would have reminded both, in short, that strokes of
satire, like arrows, should carry feathers and fly, to wound with
certainty and force. It is painful, on the other hand, to find that they
never leave the tone of ill-temper and suspicion which they once assume;
and that neither indignation against vice, nor friendship, nor
admiration, can draw from them one warm sentiment or gleam of
enthusiasm. We choose friends amongst the authors we read, as amongst
the men we have to deal with: I confess that I am not for those poets
who, to judge by their verses, never appear to have loved nor esteemed
any body.
Villegas was a disciple of the younger Argensóla, and if to the native
talent he had joined some portion of the judgment and good sense of his
master, he would have left nothing to desire in the department which he
cultivated. He was the first that introduced Anacreontics in Spanish
poetry, and, in spite of their defects, his Cantilenas and Monostrophes
are read with delight, and remain imprinted on the minds of youth. The
cause of this is, that there is vivacity in them, playfulness, grace,
and cadence, which are the qualities that characterise this class of
compositions, charming alike the imagination and the ear. His longer
verses have not had equal success, because their ease, their harmony,
and learning, do not compensate for the dissatisfaction caused by
affectation, pedantry, and want of enthusiasm, for the violent
transpositions, vicious modes of speech, and, lastly, the ringing
changes and puerile antitheses in which they abound.[K]
He attempted another innovation, which required for its establishment
greater powers than his. He set himself to compose Castilian sapphics,
hexameters, and distichs; and although the specimens he published are
not altogether unsuccessful, especially the sapphic, from its analogy to
endecasyllabic verse,[L] he has had no successor in this enterprise.
The hexameter demands a prosody more determinate and fixed than the
Spanish language possesses, to satisfy the ear; and therefore the
imitation of it is so much the more difficult, not to say impossible. He
would, doubtless, however, have enriched the art by establishing this
novelty, had it not been necessary, for this purpose, that the art were
then in its infancy, in order that the docile and flexible language
might accommodate itself to the will of the poet, and had he been the
colossal genius that could subjugate others, and dictate to them a law
of like versification. It was an unfortunate time to introduce fresh
measures, when the fine endecasyllabics of Garcilasso, Leon, and Herrera
were known, and when the consistency and fixedness of the language and
poetry did not permit them to retrocede to their infancy, which was
absolutely necessary to exercise them in the manège of Latin
versification.
The reputation of this poet did not then correspond to the proud hopes
he cherished when he published his book. In this, he insulted Cervantes,
scoffed at Góngora, jested with Lope de Vega; and, fancying himself some
superior star about to eclipse his cotemporaries, he represented himself
at the head of his _Eroticas_, as a rising sun extinguishing the stars
with its rays, and raised the arrogant note,--_Sicut sol matutinus: me
surgente, quid istæ?_ Even if he had united in himself the talents of
Horace, Pindar, and Anacreon, in all their extent and purity, from which
he was yet far distant, this would have been an unpardonable boast,
which not even his youth could excuse. The public is always greater than
any writer, how great soever he may be; and it is necessary for him to
present himself before it with modesty, unless he wishes to pass for a
madman or a fool. Villegas, after impertinently irritating his equals,
caused no sensation on the public, but attracted the rude and biting
sarcasms of Góngora, and the just and moderate reprehension of Lope.[M]
He was consigned to oblivion till the appearance of the Parnaso
Español, in which collection he had an eminent place; from that time, he
was again printed, with a prefatory discourse, in which Don Vincente de
los Rios, a man of vast learning and exquisite taste, but on this
occasion too good-natured, assigned to him the palm of lyric poetry,
which no subsequent critic has confirmed.
The Spanish poets had cultivated up to this time almost every species of
Italian versification. The harmonious and rounded octave, the exact and
laborious terza, the artificial sonnet, the trifling sextine, the
canzone in its infinite combinations, and blank verse, although for the
most part extremely ill managed[N]--were the forms of all their
compositions, which came to be reflections, more or less luminous, of
ancient, and of Tuscan poetry. Some coplas and trobas were made, though
very few, in which the taste prior to Garcilasso prevailed; but when
the use of the _asonante_[O] became general in the last third division
of this sixteenth century, the taste and inclination for _Romances_
became equally in vogue, and in them were continued, and, as it were,
perpetuated, the old Castilian poesies.
Utterly stript of the complexity and force, to which imitation in other
kinds of writing obliged them to have recourse, their authors little
caring for a resemblance with the odes of Horace, or the canzone of
Petrarch, and composing them more happily by instinct than by art, the
_Romances_ could not have the pomp and loftiness of the odes of Leon,
Herrera, and Rioja. Yet were they peculiarly the lyric poetry of Spain:
in them music employed its accents; they were heard at night in the
halls and gardens to the sound of the harp or guitar; they served as the
vehicle and the incentive of love, as well as shafts for satire and
revenge; they painted most happily Moorish customs and pastoral manners,
and preserved in the memory of the vulgar the prowess of the Cid and
other champions. In fine, more flexible than other kinds of composition,
they accommodated themselves to all kinds of subjects, made use of a
language rich and natural, clothed themselves with a mezzo-tinto soft
and sweet, and presented on every hand that facility and freshness
which rise from originality, and which flow without effort and without
study.
There are in them more fine and energetic expressions, more delicate and
ingenious passages, than in the whole range of Spanish poetry besides.
The Morisco ballads, in particular, are written with a vigour and a
sprightliness of style that absolutely enchant. Those customs in which
prowess and love are so beautifully blended, those Moors so gallant and
so tender, that so romantic and delicious country, those names so sweet
and so sonorous, each and all contribute to give novelty and poetry to
the compositions wherein they are portrayed. The poets afterwards grew
weary of disguising gallantries under the Morisco dress, and had
recourse to the pastoral. Then to challenges, tournaments, and devices,
succeeded green meads, brooks, flowers, and ciphers carved on trees; and
what the Romances lost in vigour by the change, they gained in sweetness
and simplicity.
The invention in both kinds was beautiful, and it is wonderful to see
with how little effort, and with what conciseness, they describe the
scenery, the hero, and the feelings that agitate him. Now, it is the
alcayde of Molina, who, entering the town, alarms the Moors by the
report that the Christians are ravaging their fields; now, it is the
unfortunate Aliatar, borne bloody and lifeless to his grave in
melancholy pomp through the very gate whence the day before he was seen
to issue, full of gaiety and life: there it is a simple beauty, who
having lost her earrings, the keepsake of her lover, is in great
affliction, dreading the reproaches that await her; and here it is the
solitary and rejected shepherd, who, indignant at the sight of two
turtles billing in a poplar, scares them away with stones.
The defects of these compositions spring from the same source as their
beauties, or, to speak more correctly, are the excess or abuse of those
very beauties. Their facility and freedom often degenerated into
negligence and slovenliness, their ingenuity into affectation; puns,
conceits, and false ornaments were introduced with so much the more
liberty, as they more assisted those flights of gallantry which passed
for refinements of speech, and as they appeared more excusable in works
written merely for self-amusement. The principal authors of this poetry
cannot be decidedly ascertained; but the golden epoch of the _Romances_
was before Lope de Vega, Liaño, and a thousand others, not even
remembered, introduced the bad taste which afterwards corrupted the
whole literature of Spain; it comprises the youth of Góngora and
Quevedo, and terminates in the Prince de Esquilache, the only one after
them that succeeded in giving to the _Romances_ the colouring, grace,
and lightness, which they formerly possessed. But this taste, if on the
one hand it tended to popularize poetry, to give it greater ease and
sweetness, and to remove it from the bounds of imitation, to which
former poets had restricted it, had an equal influence in making it
incorrect and careless, the same facility of composition inviting to
this looseness. Thus it is that the poets who flourished at the end of
the sixteenth, and commencement of the succeeding century, more
harmonious, more easy, more delightful, and above all, more original
than their predecessors, will be found at the same time more negligent,
and to exhibit less artifice and polish, less purity and correction in
their style and diction.
At this period lived the three poets whose verses have possessed most
amenity, richness, and facility. The first is Balbuena, born in La
Mancha, educated in Mexico, and author of _El Siglo de Oro_ and of
_Bernardo_. No one, since Garcilasso, has had such command over the
language, versification, and rhyme; and no one, at the same time, is
more slovenly and unequal. His poem, like that New World in which the
author lived, is a country spacious and immense, as fruitful as
uncultivated, where briers and thorns are mingled in confusion with
flowers, treasures with scarcity, deserts and morasses with hills and
forests more sublime and shady. If at times he surprises by the freedom
of his verse, by the novelty and vividness of his expression, by his
great talent for description, in which he knows no equal, and even
occasionally by his boldness and profundity of thought, he yet more
frequently offends by his unseasonable prodigality, and inconceivable
carelessness. The greatest defect of the _Bernardo_, is its excessive
length; it being morally impossible to give to a work of five thousand
octaves the sustained and continued elegance necessary to give pleasure.
The eclogues of the _Siglo de Oro_ have not the same defects of
composition as the poem, and in the public estimation enjoy the nearest
place to those of Garcilasso. They undoubtedly deserve it, considering
the propriety of style, the ease of the verse, the suitableness and
freshness of the images, and the simplicity of the invention. If his
shepherds were not at times so rude, if he had had a more constant eye
to elegance in diction, and beauty in the incidents; if, in short, he
had thrown more variety into his versification, reduced almost entirely
to tercetos,--there is no doubt but that good taste would have conceded
to him in this branch of the art an absolute supremacy.
The second of these poets is Jauregui, celebrated for his translation of
the Aminta, a florid poet, an elegant and harmonious versifier. He is
the one who expressed his thoughts in verse with the most ease and
elegance; but he had little nerve and spirit, and was, besides, poor of
invention. His taste in early life was very pure, as his _Rimas_ show.
But after having been one of the sharpest assailants of _Purism_, he
ended in suffering himself to glide with the current, and in his
translation of the Pharsalia, and in his _Orpheus_, he has abandoned
himself to all the extravagances he had before burlesqued.
But the man who received from nature the most poetical endowments, and
who most abused them, was, without doubt, Lope de Vega. The gift of
writing his language with purity, elegance, and the deepest clearness;
the gift of inventing, the gift of painting, the gift of versifying in
whatever measure he desired; flexibility of fancy and talent to
accommodate himself to all sorts of writing, and to all sorts of
colouring; a richness that never knows impediment or dearth; a memory
enriched by a vast range of reading; and an indefatigable application,
which augmented the facility he inherited from nature: with these arms
he presented himself in the arena, knowing in his bold ambition neither
curb nor limit. From the madrigal to the ode, from the eclogue to the
comedy, from the novel to the epic--he ran through all, he cultivated
all, and has left in all signs of devastation and of talent.
He brought the theatre under his subjection, and fixed upon him
universal attention,--the poets of his time were nothing compared to
him. His name was the seal of approbation for all; the people followed
him in the streets; strangers sought him out as an extraordinary object;
monarchs arrested their attention to regard him. He had critics who
raised the cry against his culpable carelessness, enviers who murmured
at him, detractors who calumniated him,--a mournful example, in addition
to the many other instances which prove that envy and calumny are born
with merit and celebrity; for neither the amiable courtesy of the poet,
nor the placidity of his genius, nor the pleasure with which he lent
himself to commend others, could either disarm his slanderers or temper
their malignity. But none of them could snatch away the sceptre from his
hands, nor abrogate the consideration which so many and such celebrated
works had acquired for him. His death was mourned as a public calamity;
his funeral drew an universal attendance. A volume of Spanish poetry was
composed upon his death, another of Italian; and, living and dying, he
was always hearing praises, always gathering laurels; admired as a
prodigy, and proclaimed "the Phoenix of Wits."
What, at the end of two centuries, remains of all that pomp, of all the
loud applauses which then fatigued the echoes of fame? When we see that,
of all the poetry and poems he composed, there are few, perhaps none,
which can be read through without our being shocked at every step by
their repugnance; when we see that his most studied and favourite work,
the _Jerusalem_,[P] is a compound of absurdities, wherein the little
excellence we meet with, makes the abuse of his talent but the more
deplored; when we see that of so many hundreds of comedies, there is
scarcely one that can be called good; and finally, that of the many
thousands of verses which his inexhaustible vein produced, there are so
few that remain engraved on the tablets of good taste,--can we do less
than exclaim, where are now the foundations of that edifice of glory
raised in homage of a single man by the age in which he lived, and which
still surprises and excites the envy of those who contemplate it from
afar?
It was not possible for works written with so much precipitation to have
any other result, with his utter forgetfulness of all rules, and neglect
of all great models; without plan, without preparation, without study,
or attention to nature. The necessity of writing hastily for the
theatre, when he had accustomed the public to almost daily novelties,
unsettled, and, as it were, relaxed all the springs of his genius,
carrying the same hurry and negligence into all his other writings.[Q]
Hence it is that, with the exception of some short poems in which he
improved the happy inspiration of the moment, there are, in all his
others, unpardonable faults of invention, of composition, and of style.
Fatal facility! which corrupted all his excellencies, which led him to
obscure the clearness, the harmony, the elegance, the freedom, the
affluence, and even the strength with which he was alike gifted; giving
place to unappropriate figures, to historic or fabulous allusions
pedantic and ill-timed; to frigid and prolix explanations of the very
thing he had said before; to weakness in short, to shallowness, to an
insufferable tone, into which the rich abundance and amiable purity of
his diction and versification degenerated.
The age then, it will be said, was barbarous, that tolerated such
errantries, and that gave so much applause to a writer so defective. It
was not barbarous, but excessively compliant. There were many men of
talent who deplored this abuse; but they could not resist the popular
approbation which the nature of Lope's writings carried with it, and
which in some degree his genius authorized. The general sweetness and
fluency of his verse; the lucidness of his expression, intelligible
almost always to the most illiterate; the fine and polished language of
gallantry which he invented, and brought into use in his comedies; the
decorum and ornament with which he invested the stage;[R] the vivid and
delicate touches of sensibility which he from time to time presents;
the eminent and brilliant parts which the women generally sustain in his
works; in short, his absolute dominion in the theatre, where
acclamations have most solemnity and force; are all circumstances which
concur to excuse the public of that day, who were not unjust in admiring
most the individual that gave them most delight.[S]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote J:
"But when to lash loose vices you aspire,
And seek to catch the true satiric fire,
All others' leaves pass over, all neglect,
But Juvenal's, the shrewd and circumspect;
None to the high court-taste with such success
Feels the town's pulse--ev'n Horace's is less."]
[Footnote K:
"What of the swain Anchises shall I say,
But ask Idalian Venus by the way
Who is the gardener of those flowers of hers,
Or Ida's pencil who her fancy stirs?
Did not Ulysses farm the watery waste?
How then could he Calypso's fruitage taste?"
What ridiculous nonsense! Will any one believe that these are by the
same author, and found in the same piece as the following?--
"Come, then, fair mountaineer, hide not nor flee,
Thou, by thy marriage with this stream, shalt be
Queen of the sweetest waves that in their sweep
Love to give lustre to the shady deep.
'Tis just that thou respond to love's light pain,
With kind acknowledgment, not coy disdain."]
[Footnote L: One of his sapphics is written with so much delicacy and
beauty that I cannot resist the temptation of translating it.
_To the Zephyr._
"Sweet neighbour of the green, leaf-shaking grove,
Eternal guest of April, frolic child
Of a sad sire, life-breath of mother Love,
Favonius, zephyr mild!
If thou hast learned like me to love--away!
Thou who hast borne the murmurs of my cry;
Hence--no demur--and to my Flora say,
Say that 'I die!'
'Flora once knew what bitter tears I shed;
Flora once wept to see my sorrows flow;
Flora once loved me, but I dread, I dread
Her anger now.'
So may the Gods, so may the calm blue sky,
For the fair time that thou, in gentle mirth,
Sport'st in the air, with love benign deny
Snows to the earth!
So never may the grey cloud's cumbrous sail,
When from on high the rosy daybreak springs,
Beat on thy shoulders, nor its evil hail
Wound thy fine wings!"]
[Footnote M:
"Spanish Anacreon! none your Highness meets,
But says most courteously, that though your lines
Move elegiacally sad, your sweets
Have all the tasty syrup of new wines!
They say that they should like to see each song
With scrupulous exactness, for a freak,
Translated well into Anacreon's tongue,
Your honest eyes not having seen the Greek."
GÓNGORA.
"Although he said that all would hide from shame,
When the fine splendours of his genius came."
LOPE.]
[Footnote N: The eclogue of Tirsi of Figueroa, and the translation of
the Aminta by Jauregui, are the only exceptions to this general
decision, and the only examples that can be quoted among the ancient
Spanish poets, of blank verse well constructed.]
[Footnote O: The Asonante is a sort of imperfect rhyme peculiar to the
Spaniards; it consists in the uniformity of the two last vowels,
counting from the accent, as for example:
Tras una mariposa
Qual zagalejo _símple_
Corriendo por el valle
La senda á perder _víne_.
Their perfect rhymes are termed _Consonantes_.]
[Footnote P:
Until the surety comes whom I oblige
With my _Jerusalem_, which I indite,
Prune, polish, and correct from morn till night.
_Epistle to Gaspar de Barrionuevo._
What ideas of taste, correctness, elegance, and order, must the writer
have had, who with such diligence and study, produced so wild a work!]
[Footnote Q:
If my free neck had not been broke
To strict necessity's hard yoke,
I should have seen around my head
Some honour due to merit shed,
That would have given, as honour goes,
Green lustre to its hoary snows.
I ever have invoked the laugh
Of the vile vulgar on behalf
Of love-intrigues, meet or unmeet,
Oft dashed off at a single heat;
So--but far less impolitic,
Great painters daub their canvass quick.
LOPE; _Eclogue to Claudio_.]
[Footnote R:
Achilles' pictured wrath to Greece,
In gold-illumined palaces
Decorum kept, vile flatterers shamed,
The headstrong youth with love inflamed,
The beauteous lady under ban
Of some stern sire, the rich old man
Shrewd and sententious as a Jew,
To whom are these creations due?]
[Footnote S: After his death, Calderon, Moreto, and others, who in his
lifetime were contented with the title of his pupils, eclipsed him in
the scene, though his name was always respected as a writer. This
respect was, however, daily diminishing under a more attentive
observation of the principles of taste and of good models, till the
representation in later days of some of his comedies with general
applause served to re-establish his tottering reputation. In France, a
very good translation of some of his poems, has within these few years
been made by the Marquis d'Aguilar; and in England, a man respectable as
well for rank and character as for learning, philosophy, and taste (Lord
Holland), has published an excellent essay and criticism on his life and
writings. A vicissitude sufficiently singular; and which at least
proves, that although Lope may be a very faulty writer, he is yet very
far from being an object of but little interest in the history of
Spanish literature.]