CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 129.S7H92 
 
 Spanish influence on English literature, 
 
 3 1924 013 348 044 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013348044 
 
SPANISH INFLUENCE 
 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 MARTIN HUME 
 
 v.. UE LA REAL ACADEMIA ES?ANOLA Y DE LA REAL ACADEMIA DE LA HISTORIA 
 
 EXAMINER IN SPANISH, AND EXTENSION LECTURER IN SPANISH 
 
 LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 EVELEIGH NASH 
 
 1905 
 
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 
TO 
 JAMES FITZMAURICE KELLY 
 
 BEST OF FRIENDS 
 
 AND MOST UNSELFISH OF SCHOLARS 
 
 TO WHOM THIS BOOK 
 
 OWES MUCH 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It has always appeared to me as impossible adequately 
 to study the history of a literature as an isolated 
 entity, as it is to follow intelligently the political 
 progress of a country without regard to the con- 
 current events and actions of other nations in relation 
 to it. Literatures, whilst in their origin the outcome 
 of distinct national and racial circumstances, never- 
 theless act and react strongly upon each other at 
 certain periods ; and the student who seeks to un- 
 ravel the literary history of his own country with 
 real understanding, should possess, at least, some 
 knowledge of the foreign literatures that have influ- 
 enced his own, and of the reasons why their influence 
 has been exerted at the periods, and in the directions, 
 that it has. 
 
 It is, therefore, not with the idea of presenting 
 another history of Spanish Literature that this little 
 work has been written : that has been admirably done 
 in English already ; and the subject, moreover, is 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 one that could only be treated properly in a book 
 of much greater dimensions than the present. My 
 object has been rather to provide for English 
 readers, what I venture to call a comparative study 
 of Spanish literature, in special relation to its 
 points of contact with the literature of our own 
 country. Such a study cannot, of course, pretend 
 to be exhaustive, since the ground covered includes 
 generally the productions, over centuries, of two 
 of the most fertile literatures in Europe ; but the 
 line of study indicated, and the broad principles laid 
 down, it is hoped, may stimulate English readers to 
 resort to the original Spanish texts referred to, as a 
 means of gaining a fuller appreciation of some of 
 the influences which have helped to make our own 
 literature what it has become. 
 
 These views, with regard to the utility of a com- 
 parative study of literature, have found a ready 
 response from the University Extension Board of 
 the University of London, by whose commission a 
 Central Course of ten lectures on the subject of 
 Spanish Literature and its Influence in England was 
 delivered early in the present year. Since the con- 
 clusion of the course many inquiries have reached 
 the writer, with regard to the publication of the 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 lectures in book-form. The result of these inquiries 
 has been to encourage me to rearrange and partially 
 rewrite the substance of the lectures, and to offer 
 it in its present form, in the hope that it may thus 
 reach a larger number of students than I could 
 possibly address verbally, in the scant leisure allowed 
 to me by my other literary work. 
 
 MARTIN HUME. 
 
 London, December 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SPAIN UPON EUROPEAN CULTURE IN 
 THE MIDDLE AGES; AND THE BIRTH OF CASTILIAN 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 The Decadence of Roman Spain (250-400 A.D.). The influence of the 
 Spanish character on Latin letters. Persistence of the Latin traditions 
 during the Gothic domination of Spain (466-711 A.D.). The Moorish 
 Conquest. The preservation of classical. Oriental, and scientific learn- 
 ing in Moslem Spain. The Libraries and Universities frequented 
 by European scholars. The dissemination of learning through 
 Christendom by means of the Jewish, Arabic, and Mozarabic writers 
 of Spain. 
 
 Cordova the Home of the Earliest Renascence 
 
 Averroes, the Aristotelian philosopher (1116-1198). Ramon Lull, the Chris- 
 tian Majorcan (1235-1315). Their rival systems of philosophy divide 
 European scholars. The Reconquest. Influence of the Provenfal 
 troubadours in Spain. The battle of the tongues. The Conquest of 
 Toledo (1085) and of Seville (1248) causes the Mozarabic dialect of 
 Latii^ to become the literary language. The advantages and dis- 
 advantages of this. 
 
 Alfonso the Learned (1252). — His enormous literary activity. The creation 
 of a national Castilian literature. Services of Jews, Arabs, and Moriscos 
 therein. The compilation of scientiflc works. Estoria de Espanna and 
 the Estoria General. The Sieie Partidas. The impress of its origin, 
 and of the Spanish character stamped permanently upon the literature 
 of the country. The earliest specimens of Castilian, . . Paget 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DIDACTIC SENTENCES, PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY, AND 
 EXEMPLARY APOLOGUES 
 
 The sententiousness of Hebrew and Oriental wisdom. The introduction 
 of the apophthegm into modern European literature from Spain, and its 
 continued existence as a fashionable form until tl e eighteenth century. 
 KaHla i Dimna. The Book of Sindahad. Engannos V Assayamientos 
 de las Mogieres, by Prince Fadrique of Castile. Poriaad de Poridades. 
 El LUro de Buenos Proverbios. Bocados de Oro, translated by Lord 
 Rivers. Proverbios Morales, by Sem Tob. 
 
 Moral Apologues destined for the Education of 
 Young Princes 
 
 The spread of this form of political literature from Spain. El Libro de los 
 doce Sabios. Castigos i Documentos, by Sancho iv. of Castile. The 
 Castigos of Don Juan Manuel. El Libro de los Eslados, by the same 
 author. Its Buddhistic origin. El Libro de Patronio (Count Lucanor) 
 (1342). Precedes Boccaccio. Both writers draw from similar sources. 
 Debt of later writers to Don Juan Manuel. The origin -of the story of 
 The Taming of the Shrew. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are expanded 
 apologues, with the moral less obtrusive. Libro de los Enjemplos, by 
 Clemente Sanchez. El Libro de los Gatos, adapted from the Latin of 
 the English monk, Odo of Cheriton. Mfndoza, Marquis de Santillana. 
 Refranes que dicen las viejas tras el Huego, and Proverbios. The 
 persistence of the Glosa. Gower's Confessio Amaniis translated into 
 Spanish. 
 
 Antonio de Guevara (d. 1545). — His great vogue in England. Reloj de 
 Princifes, translated into English, 1554 and 1557. El Libro de Marco 
 Aurelio. The translations of Lord Berners and others. Lyly and his 
 Euphues. The influence of Euphuism in Spain and in England. The 
 influence of Guevara upon English literary form during the sixteenth 
 century. Antonio Perez and his aphorisms. Their influence upon 
 thought and literary form in England and France, . . Page 30 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CRONICAS, HISTORIES, AND RECORDS OF 
 PERSONAL ADVENTURE 
 
 The character of the Spanish people, as seen in the form and evolution of 
 the Kingly Chronicle. Comparison of the Spanish with the Anglo- 
 Saxon and Anglo-Norman Chronicles. Alfonso the Learned (x.) and 
 the writing of history. Chronicles written under Alfonso XI. by Sanchez 
 de Tobar. 
 
 Pero Lopez de Ayala (1332-1407). — The first great Spanish Cronista. His 
 chronicle of Peter the Cruel and his successors. The Black Prince 
 and John of Gaunt in Spain. The anonymous chronicle of Juan 11. 
 Fernan Perez de Guzman. Mar de Historias and Generaciones y Sem- 
 blanzas. Froissart and Fabian. The Kingly Chronicle in England. 
 The degeneration of the Spanish chronicles into extravagant personal 
 histories and voyages. Vida y Hazafias del Gran Tamarlan of Ruy 
 Gonzalez de Clavija. Cronica del Conde de Buelna ai Diez Gamez. 
 El Libra del Paso Honroso of Rodriguez de Lena. The descent thence 
 to the romance of chivalry. 
 
 A glance at the contemporary progress of historical writing in Eng- 
 land, Page 63 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY AND PASTORALS 
 
 History and Romance. The Arthurian legends in England and France. The 
 Chansons de Geste, and their early imitations in England. Charlfmagne, 
 Roland, Lancelot. The Poem of the Cid in Spain. The transmission 
 of the Breton tales to Spain. 
 
 Amadis o/Gaitl.— Its Celtic origin and Porluguese parentage. First printed 
 in 1508, but well known in MS., many years before. Its extraordinary 
 hold upon the Spanish people, and the reason for it. Its small direct 
 influence in England, notwithstanding the deliberate encouragement of 
 the Arthurian tradition by the Tudor Kings. Anthony Munday's trans- 
 lation. A comparison between the Spanish and English forms of 
 chivalric romance. The numerous imitations of Amadis : Palmerin de 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 Inglaterra, OHveros de Castilla, Carcel de Amor, etc. The pastoral 
 • variant of chivalric romance. Early eclogues in Spain. 
 Diana of Jorge de Montemayor {d. 1561). Its popularity throughout 
 
 Europe. Traces of its influence in England. Young's translation of it. 
 
 Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney. Decline of the pastoral in England. 
 
 Ambrose Phillips, ■P«£'« 9^ 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SPANISH NOVEL : ITS ORIGIN, TENDENCY, AND 
 INFLUENCE 
 
 The two progenitors of the novel in Spain : viz. (i) the Kingly Chronicle, 
 degenerating into extravagant records of adventure, and thence into 
 the romance of chivalry ; and (2) the didactic apologue, or tale with 
 a direct moral. Both forms originated in Jewish and Oriental tradi- 
 tions. But other qualities of the root-races of Spain also deeply tinged 
 the Spanish evolution of the novel. The Archpriest of Hita (1337). Pero 
 Lopez de Ayala {1332-1407). His Rimado de Palacio. Other satirists 
 of society. Their influence on the Novel. 
 
 The Dramatic Novel of ' Celestina ' (1499), by Fernando de Rojas. The 
 forerunner of the modern novel and the modern play. Largely inspired 
 by the invention of the Archpriest of Hita. The extraordinary success 
 of Celestina throughout Europe. J. Luis Vives denounces it at Oxford. 
 Two translations of the work into English. The evolution of the rogue 
 novel. Til Owl-glass, Jack Wilton, by Nash. Greene, Borde, and 
 other writers of roguish tricks. The first complete picaresque novel. 
 
 Lazarillo de Tormes (iSS4)' — Question of its authorship. The predominant 
 Spanish characteristics of the time represented in it : poverty, pretension, 
 and idleness. The victory of realism and the formation of a national 
 prose style. 
 
 Cervantes' ' Novelas Ejemf lares'- — A professed reversion to the didactic form, 
 but exemplary mainly in name. Galatea, an experiment in the expiring 
 pastoral taste. The coping-stone of the Spanish Novel. 
 
 Don Quixote (1605). — Essentially Spanish. The wide popularity of Don 
 Quixote as a story in countries where its main satire was pointless. 
 Its early arrival in England. The reasons for its influence, apart from 
 its vast humour Page 122 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PICARESQUE AND PERIPATETIC NOVELS 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 Reaction from the Romances of Chivalry. Birth of the Picaresque School. 
 Skoggin's Gests, etc. Lyly's Euphues. Jack Wilton of Thomas Nash 
 (1594). Translation of Lazarillo by David Rowland of Anglesey (1586), 
 which Shakespeare must have read. Juan de Luna's sequel to Lazarillo, 
 translated by W. Phiston (1596). The Witty Spaniard (1688) and other 
 English rogue novels inspired by Lazarillo. 
 
 Guzmm de Alfarache, by Mateo Aleman (1599). Description of the work. 
 Mabbe's translation of it (1622). Other English editions. La Picara 
 Justina, by Ubeda. The English versions. The Spanish Libertines, 
 by Captain John Stevens, includes adaptations of Justina, Celestina, and 
 Estevanillo Gonzalez. Marcos de Obregon, by Vicente Espinel (1618). 
 T"he attempt in it to combine a direct moral lesson with the story of the 
 wandering rogue. Bl Diablo Copielo, by Velez de Guevara (1574-1646) : 
 a. new phase of the picaresque novel. Le Sage's imitations of the 
 picaresque novels. Gil Bias de Santillana, a political satire. Le Diable 
 Boiteux, a social satire. Swift's employment of the same satirical 
 machinery in England. 
 
 Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. — La Vida del Buscon (1626), and other 
 satires by Quevedo. The influence of the satirical picaresque and 
 peripatetic novels on English fiction. Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, 
 Dickens, etc Page 156 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL AND OF VS^AR 
 
 The discovery and conquest of America. The copious literature relating 
 thereto. The beginning of England's expansion. Need for information 
 respecting voyages and navigation, Peter Martyr's Decades. Lopez de 
 Gomara s Historia de las Indias. Monarde's account of the medicinal 
 botany, etc., of America (1569), translated by Frampton. Escalante's 
 Discourse on the Portuguese Voyages (1579). Pedro de Medina's Arte de 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 _ Navegar, translated by Frampton (1581). Martin Cortes' Arte de 
 Navegar, translated by Eden (1581). Marco Polo's travels, translated 
 from the Spanish by Frampton (1579). Edward Hellowes. Many other 
 books of travel from Spanish sources current in London in the sixteenth 
 and early seventeenth centuries. Historia de las Indias, by Lopez de 
 Gomara, and Conquista de Peru, by Zarate ; both utilised by Nicholas 
 in England. Spanish influences upon Raleigh's writings. 
 
 Richard Hakluyt. — His efforts to popularise the literature of travel. His 
 employment of Spanish texts. 
 
 Military Science and History 
 
 Spanish military pre-eminence in the sixteenth century. Mendoza's Guerra 
 de Granada. Perez de Hita's Guerras Civiles de Granada. Avila y 
 Zuniga's Guerra de Alemania, translated into English (1555). Litch- 
 field's translation of Nuevo Tratado y Compendia de re Miliiari, by 
 Gutierrez de la Vega. Descriptions in English from Spanish sources of 
 the naval battles off Terceira (1587, etc.). Military Discipline, from 
 the Spanish of Londoiio (1587). The Sergeant- Major, from the same 
 author (1589). Sandoval's Guerras Civiles de Carlos V., translated 
 by Wadsworth (1652). English translations of Spanish relations of 
 Philip IV. 's campaigns, etc. 
 
 Th! Armada (1588) Literature. — Broadsides, pamphlets, and descriptions 
 from Spanish sources Page 184 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DEVOTIONAL, MYSTICAL, AND POLEMICAL LITERATURE 
 
 The Mystical School in Spain in the sixteenth century. Political causes of 
 the spiritual exaltation that gave rise to it. Luis de Granada introduced 
 to the English public by Hopkins and Heigham. J. Osorio y Fonseca. 
 His attacks upon Protestantism refuted by Walter Haddon. The con- 
 troversy translated into English by Shackblock, Hartwell, Fenne, and 
 Mabbe. Foxe's attack upon Osorio's contentions (1598). Queen Eliza- 
 beth's irritation against Osorio. The Spanish writings of Father Persons 
 (Dolman) and his followers. The Mysterie of the Rosarie, by Loarte 
 translated by Fenne. Santa Teresa, the great mystic and religious 
 reformer. Her influence upon European thought. The salutary effect 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 of Spanish mysticism in elevating religious ideals, and reacting upon the 
 semi-pagan sensuousness of the Italian renascence. 
 
 Juan Luis Vives. — His residence in England. His Latin writings. Their 
 great vogue in England. The Instruction of Christian Women, trans- 
 lated by Hyrde (1540). An Introduction to Wisdom, translated by Sir 
 Richard Moryson (1540). Aristotle's Philosophy. Christian Prayers 
 and Meditations, by Vives, translated by Bishop Bradford and R. Day 
 {1578, etc.), and called Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. 
 
 The Spanish Reformers 
 
 Their reception in England. Antonio de Corro at Oxford. His religious and 
 polemical works published in England. Cipriano de Valera. Perez de 
 Pineda. Translations of his works by John Daniel (1S76). Gonzalez 
 Montano. His attack upon the Inquisition, translated by Vincent Skinner 
 (1568). The religious and political writings of Juan de Valdes [d, 1541). 
 Their tardy appearance in England (1638). The political works of 
 Guevara, Antonio Perez, Furio de Ceriol (translated by Blunderville, 
 1570), and other contemporary Spaniards. The group of English His- 
 panophils in the seventeenth century : Lord Bristol, Godolphin, Endymion 
 Porter, James Howell. Their efforts to popularise Spanish letters in 
 England, .... Page 214 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SPANISH THEATRE AND THE ENGLISH DRAMATISTS 
 
 The dramatic instinct of the Spanish people. The early Spanish dramatists. 
 The strength and weakness of the Spanish drama. Fertility of plot, 
 ingenuity of intrigue, splendour of language, but a lack of psychological 
 subtlety. The Elizabethan English drama compared with that of Spain 
 at its best period. Spanish drama is mainly the telling of a story by 
 action ; English, the study of human character and motive by means of a 
 story. Instances of this in Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Lope 
 de Vega, and Calderon. Shakespeare: his frequent use of Spanish 
 expressions. Was Don Adriano Armado intended as a skit on Antonio 
 Perez ? Shylock and Dr. Ruy Lopez. Was the Ancient Pistol a. bur- 
 lesque on the Spanish swashbuckler? The Two Gentlemen of Verona 
 and The Taming of the Shrew of Spanish origin. Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 * Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Shirley, Rowley, Webster, and other;;, borrow 
 plots or intrigue from Spanish authors, either directly or through the 
 French. Beaumont and Fletcher's heavy debt to Cervantes' Novelas 
 Ejemplares . • Page 246 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SPANISH THEATRE AND THE ENGLISH STAGE AFTER 
 THE REFORMATION— CONCLUSION 
 
 Wholesale borrowing of plots and incidents from Spanish plays by Corneille, 
 Molifere, and other French dramatists. The transference of these plots 
 to England, especially after the Restoration. Tuke's Five Hours. 
 Dryden, Killigrew, Vanbrugh, Wycherley, Fielding, and CoUey Gibber, 
 all borrow plots thus. Corneille's treatment of the Spanish drama 
 compared with that of Molifere. 
 
 Decadence of Spanish Literature in the Eighteenth 
 Century 
 
 A reversion to the French classic traditions foreign to the Spanish nature. 
 Its disastrous effect upon Spanish letters. The revival of Romanticism 
 in France and England, and renewed employment of Spanish forms in 
 the nineteenth century. The popularity of the Cape and Sword school 
 promoted by Hugo, Dumas, etc., reflected in England, and aided by 
 sympathy with the Spanish political exiles. The present outlook of 
 Spanish Literature, . . . ... Page 280 
 
 Index, . . .... . Page 313 
 
SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SPAIN UPON EUROPEAN CULTURE 
 IN THE MIDDLE AGES ; AND THE BIRTH OF CAS- 
 TILIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 The literary form in which facts and fancies are pre- 
 sented may be defined as a revelation of the individual 
 intellect which the writer has by descent derived from 
 the mingled idiosyncrasies of countless progenitors, 
 broadly controlled by racial and national influences. 
 Just as no two persons are facially so much alike as 
 to be undistinguishable, and as the convolutions on 
 the epidermis of all the thumbs in the world vary in 
 pattern, so two human minds never work exactly in 
 the same groove, though thumbs and minds may both 
 be classified into large characteristic groups. Nations 
 and races are but aggregates of individuals. All 
 Chinamen, and for matter of that all Englishmen, bear 
 the natural physical resemblance to each other that 
 distinguishes them from other races, yet each individual 
 possesses characteristics that distinguish him from 
 other members of the same ethnical group. A similar 
 
 A 
 
2 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 rule may be applied to racial or national intellects, 
 which, owing to antecedent circumstances, differ in 
 the aggregate as much from one another as do the 
 more superficial physical peculiarities ; and thus the 
 evolutionary study of a national literature can only 
 be satisfactorily pursued simultaneously with a con- 
 sideration of the various influences, racial and political, 
 which have operated upon the people who produced 
 it. This is doubtless a truism, but the need for thus 
 widening the scope of literary study is frequently lost 
 sight of by superficial readers who are content to 
 regard each literary masterpiece of any nation as the 
 spontaneous production of an isolated individuality. 
 It is true that the great work appears to the unthink- 
 ing to have burst upon the world mature and splendid 
 from the brain of one genius. But such is never the 
 case. The genius who produces the work does but 
 focus and mould the elements from within and without 
 which have been working silently, and perhaps un- 
 noticed, for many years before the culminating point 
 of fruition has been reached. All literature is but 
 evolution, and to understand and enjoy any literature 
 fully it is necessary to adopt the same methods as 
 those employed by the philosophical historian. He is 
 not content to tell the blank facts of what happened 
 in the past ; he needs to trace the reasons why they 
 happened by searching for their genesis in previous 
 happenings. So in the study of a literature, or indeed 
 of any one important work of literature, it is necessary 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 3 
 
 to understand how and why, historically considered, 
 it took the form it did. 
 
 Broadly speaking, there are three sets of influences 
 which may act upon the literary development of a 
 nation : first, and most fundamental, is the dominant 
 character of the race that produces it, springing from 
 natural conditions and racial vicissitudes ; second, the 
 influences exercised by other nations or by foreign in- 
 vasion ; and third, the individual genius of some great 
 master. It may be safely predicated that, whenever 
 the second of these influences is exercised upon a 
 literature, the first influence, namely, that of the 
 dominant character of the native race, rapidly trans- 
 forms the foreign element introduced, and, whilst 
 receiving influence from it, colours it in accordance 
 with the native character. 
 
 I am anxious to make these primary principles 
 clear, because I shall attempt to apply them in trac- 
 ing the development of Castilian literature (especially 
 prose literature, for reasons which I will explain later), 
 and to mark how, and where, and why the literature 
 of our own country received at certain periods im- 
 pregnations from that of Spain. This will necessitate 
 a progressive consideration of the natural and political 
 causes which gave to Spanish literature its peculiar 
 characteristics, its strength and its weakness, and 
 enabled it only to exert appreciable influence upon 
 our own literature at certain distinctly specific points 
 of contact. 
 
4 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 The Iberian peninsula has undergone perhaps greater 
 racial and social changes than any other country in 
 Europe. Wave after wave of human inundation has 
 swept into and over it, Iberian, Celt, Phoenician, Cartha- 
 ginian, Greek, Roman, Afro-Semite, Goth, Frank, and 
 Vandal, and the mixed hordes of Islam have left deep 
 traces upon the race we call Spaniards, and have 
 profoundly modified thought and literary form. But 
 though languages might change, masters come and go, 
 and cultures from other lands introduce new features 
 into Spanish letters, the native spontaneous character 
 of Spanish literature, derived from the sturdy root- 
 races of prehistoric times, has retained always certain 
 qualities which have distinguished it from all others. 
 These qualities may be summed up as being a vivid, 
 exuberant invention, florid verbosity, mocking satire ; 
 and, above all, the keynote of the racial character, 
 that overpowering sense of individuality that leads 
 each man to look upon himself as the centre of the 
 universe, in some sort in mystic communion with the 
 higher powers. As Rome grew more corrupt and 
 splendid, and the dependencies richer and more cul- 
 tured, the provincial influence in the metropolis grew 
 greater, and imperial Rome thenceforward was doomed 
 to decay. Spain, one of the richest of the provinces, 
 with a population which had seized almost fiercely 
 upon Latin civilisation, and was now largely mixed 
 with Roman blood, after centuries of domination, con- 
 tributed perhaps more than any other to the apparent 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE S 
 
 grandeur but inevitable decay of the empire. In the 
 purer days of the later Republic the Roman ex- 
 quisites, Cicero amongst them, whilst praising the 
 irrepressible literary skill of Spaniards, scoffed at their 
 strange provincial pronunciation of Latin. But in later 
 days the best of the Cassars were Spaniards. Trajan, 
 Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, though they spoke 
 with the Spanish brogue, ruled the world. Spanish 
 authors infused their peculiar spirit into Latin litera- 
 ture, and set the fashion of exuberant preciosity that 
 led it to decay. The elder Seneca {b. 54 B.C., d. 39 
 A.D.), profoundly imbued with the tradition of the best 
 period of Latin literature, was a pure Spaniard, and 
 wrote his critical collection of gems of oratory before 
 the florid tendency of his countrymen had corrupted 
 Latin letters. Of his more famous son, the younger 
 Seneca (5 B.C. — 65 A.D.), Mr. John Morley says : ' There 
 is none of the ancient moralists to whom moderns, 
 from Montaigne downwards, owe more than to Seneca. 
 He touches the great and eternal commonplaces of 
 human occasion — friendship, health, bereavement, 
 riches, poverty, and death — with a hand that places 
 him high among the divine masters of life. Men have 
 found more abundantly in his essays and letters than 
 in any other secular writer words of good counsel and 
 import.' This is true, but already in the beautiful 
 ornate and polished periods of the younger Seneca 
 the Iberian love of fine words to clothe didactic 
 thought began to assert itself. In his nephew Lucan 
 
6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 *(l>. 39 A.D., d. 65 A.D.) (especially in the Pharsalia) the 
 tendency to oratorical ornament is still more marked. 
 Martial (43-104 A.D.), like many a Spaniard after him, 
 set off all the world into scandalised laughter at 
 the wit and shameless effrontery of his vehement 
 satires. Quintilian, of Calahorra, gave to the world 
 one of its noblest pieces of literature. All of these 
 were Spaniards born, living in the first century of the 
 Christian era. All of them, except the first, showed 
 the ineradicable qualities of the race, and though in 
 them their genius gilded their exuberance, their hosts 
 of imitators, possessing all their floridness without 
 their genius, piled ornament upon ornament, one far- 
 fetched conceit upon another, and one eccentric new- 
 coined word upon another, until the Latin literary 
 style was debased to the pompous flatulence by which 
 it was distinguished when the imperial city fell a prey 
 to the Gothic invaders (400 A.D.). The splendour of 
 the Roman empire, the glittering and showy character 
 of Latin civilisation, and the rotund magniloquence 
 of the Latin tongue, had captured the inmost heart of 
 the Romanised race that populated the Peninsula, and 
 the pervading Iberian spirit aided the empire's fall. 
 
 The newcomers to Spain, the all-conquering Goths, 
 a military autocracy that for generations had fought 
 their way from east to west, were the very antipodes 
 of the native Spaniards. They were not a literary 
 race ; they had little poetry or imagination ; their 
 satire was administered with a sharp sword rather 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 7 
 
 than a stinging tongue ; and they were boorish men 
 of few words. They formed an aristocracy whose 
 hereditary lands were inalienable, and they were for- 
 bidden to marry native Spaniards. So, though they 
 lived and ruled in Spain for wellnigh three hundred 
 years, they left little trace upon the literature of the 
 land. So far from influencing Spaniards, they them- 
 selves long before they finally fell were obliged to 
 adopt the Latin tongue of their subjects, and to 
 submit to the Athanasian form of Christianity, which 
 the Spaniards had fiercely seized upon at the bidding 
 of the orthodox priests. There are few instances in 
 history that show more strongly than this the absorb- 
 ing and assimilative power of even a conquered and 
 vassal majority, when the latter are mentally the more 
 subtle, as the Spaniards unquestionably were, than 
 the Goths. So the Goths passed in Spain and left 
 little trace, other than a code of laws adapted in 
 Latin from the great code of Theodosius. Spaniards, 
 with their irrepressible love of written speech, con- 
 tinued during the whole of the Gothic domination to 
 write in florid, over-loaded Latin. They had a higher 
 inspiration than ever now. Christianity had appealed 
 to them with a force greater than to any other people. 
 That each man was equal in the sight of God, and 
 that the Almighty took an interest in the humblest 
 of His creatures, was a revelation of the truth of 
 their strongest racial instinct, their self-conscious 
 individualism, and the first Christian Latin poet to 
 
8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 •write upon sacred themes was Juvencus, a Spaniard 
 (330 A.D.). Prudentius, a still nobler poet of Christian- 
 ity, a Spaniard of the Spaniards, wrote his glowing re- 
 ligious verse, and thirsted for Christian martyrdom, 
 whilst full of love and yearning for the beautiful forms 
 and sweet indulgence that paganism had taught 
 him to admire. Orosius, too, a Spaniard, was the 
 first writer of history who brought into his writings 
 the general note of universality that came with the 
 Christian doctrine of human equality. These, and 
 such as these, kept still flickering the light of Latin 
 literature in Spain, whilst the Teuton kings held their 
 barbaric court at Toledo. 
 
 Perhaps the Spaniard whose influence upon Euro- 
 pean culture was greatest at this period of decadence 
 was Saint Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 600 to 636 A.D., 
 the last of the great Latin writers before the dark 
 curtain fell. His principal work, in addition to his 
 History of the Gothic Kings} -^s.^ a sort of encyclopaedic 
 dictionary called the Etymologies, summarising an 
 enormous mass of learning upon every known subject, 
 taken from previous authors, many of them now 
 unknown. Christian bishop as he was, he was obliged 
 austerely to condemn in words the delight of the 
 eye and the senses — ' the vain fictions of the poets, 
 who with fables move the soul to levity ' ; to thunder 
 against showy, empty eloquence of the pagan authors, 
 in comparison with the staid simplicity of the Gospels, 
 ^ Historia Gothorum, Wandalorum, etc. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 9 
 
 But Isidore was a Spaniard after all, and could be 
 as florid an admirer of beauty in the abstract as any 
 of his pagan forefathers. The work of Isidore, did- 
 actic above all things, profoundly influenced thought 
 outside the Peninsula, especially in France. Men 
 began dimly to understand, that much as beauty, and 
 harmony, and elegance might be condemned officially, 
 as leading minds to revere other things than the true 
 God, yet that, properly and humbly regarded, they 
 might serve as handmaids to religion itself; and, 
 indeed, might be recognised as good gifts of God to 
 His creatures. This idea, or a development of it, 
 spread from Spain to France and Italy, and made 
 itself felt later in the Italian renaissance. But not in 
 Spain. There an event happened in 711 that swept 
 the stage clear and turned Spanish culture into other 
 channels. 
 
 From across the narrow strait there swarmed the 
 Moslem conqueror — the savage Berbers, themselves 
 but recently won to the faith of the prophet, and 
 like all converts frantic in their zeal, the cultured 
 Syrian, and philosophical Persian. Men of all the 
 Eastern races, sons of Shem for the most part, close 
 kinsmen, many of those from Africa with the root 
 stock of Spain ; they spread northward without resist- 
 ance, and in a few short months looked from the 
 slopes of the Pyrenees upon a country over the whole 
 of which the green flag of Islam waved, and the 
 Crescent had abased the Cross. 
 
lo SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 • Thenceforward for centuries the Christian ideal in 
 Spain was changed. From the extreme Celtic north- 
 west, the reconquest of the country began ; and a 
 tiny band of irreconcilables pushed forward, foot by 
 foot, the territories of the Christian king. Most of 
 the Spaniards were content to live in peace and 
 safety, at first, under their Moslem overlords; for 
 there was no intolerance. Human arms alone would 
 never have sufficed for the little band in Asturias, to 
 have conquered the conquerors. Religious fervour, 
 mystic communion with divine powers, voices in the 
 air, and guiding stars ; fasting, penance, and austerity, 
 combined with the inborn belief of every Spaniard in a 
 special selection of himself as one of God's favourites : 
 these were the sources from which the Christian 
 reconquest obtained its impetus. AH that was clean 
 and sweet and beautiful was odious, because the 
 infidel revelled in cleanliness and luxury and beauty. 
 Christian Spain was too busy and too austere during 
 the first three centuries of the reconquest to do any- 
 thing for literature, except to write a few priestly 
 lives of saints and the like. And so, in Christian 
 Spain, as in the rest of Europe, overrun by the rough 
 Teutons, all culture slept where it had not been 
 deliberately destroyed. 
 
 But not so in Moorish Spain. There one caliph 
 of Cordova after another, polished, enlightened, and 
 learned, gathered around them all that money, taste, 
 and knowledge could obtain of the culture of the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE ii 
 
 ancient peoples. From the first caliph, Abd-er- 
 Rahman, late in the eighth century, through his son, 
 Al Hishdm, his grandson, Al Hakam, his great- 
 grandson, Abd-er-Rahman ll. ; and later still the 
 greatest of the caliphs, Abd-er-Rahman III., and his 
 son for two hundred years down to the end of the 
 tenth century, Cordova alone of European cities it 
 was that kept the ancient learning alive. Palaces 
 more splendid than a poet's dream ; a mosque that 
 stands to-day almost peerless amongst the beauteous 
 buildings of the world ; luxury and fastidiousness 
 that ultimately led to enervation and decay — all 
 these had Cordova under the caliphs. But this was 
 not all. Cordova, in Roman times the patrician 
 colony, had been the home of literature and the 
 birthplace of poets and writers without number. But 
 under the caliphs it became the centre of the learn- 
 ing of the world. Students from all parts of Europe 
 flocked to her private schools, and sat at the feet 
 of the learned men who taught in them : not Arabs 
 alone, but Jews and Mozarabic Christians too. Duns 
 Scotus came to learn and spread through Europe the 
 philosophy of the great Jew poet and philosopher 
 Avicebron {d. 1070). Literature, philosophy, and 
 rhetoric were mainly taught at first, and later every 
 branch of science was studied, especially medicine 
 and surgery. Astronomy, geography, chemistry, 
 natural history, horticulture, and the fine arts all 
 had their literature, their teachers, and their devotees. 
 
12 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 • The great library of the caliph Al Hakdm was the 
 wonder of the world. In every city of the East his 
 agents were vigilantly seeking and collecting for him 
 rare manuscripts in the Oriental tongues, in Persian, 
 Hebrew, and in Greek. Bagdad, Damascus, and 
 Cairo were ransacked for treasures to send to Cor- 
 dova ; and copyists in the pay of the Spanish caliphs 
 transcribed, in the libraries of the East, those texts 
 which money could not buy; and before the learned 
 Hakdm died in 961, over 400,000 precious manu- 
 scripts were at the service of the scholars of Cordova. 
 Though the over-luxury brought disaster to the 
 caliphate, and the Moslem fanatics destroyed much 
 of the precious library, yet the tradition of culture 
 clung still to Cordova. Even the Christian Spaniards 
 there, for the first two centuries at least, spoke and 
 wrote Arabic as often as the Latin dialect which 
 had descended to them from their fathers ; and the 
 Hebrews, who had followed the Moors in vast 
 numbers, were in danger also of losing their ancient 
 speech through the cultivation of the courtly Arabic, 
 when the caliphate fell and the reaction came. 
 
 As the Christian conquest gradually advanced, and 
 religious fervour on both sides grew, each people 
 in Moslem Spain resumed the use of their own speech 
 whilst mostly speaking Arabic as well. The pro- 
 vincial cities of Moslem Spain, now capitals of petty 
 kingdoms, Toledo, Saragossa, Seville, Murcia, Badajoz 
 and others, became in their turn centres of culture ; 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 13 
 
 and from them, and especially from Cordova, with 
 its learned traditions, there sprang the first Greek 
 renaissance in the twelfth century, before that of 
 Italy was dreamt of. During the caliphate Cordova 
 had especially been the home of poets and of poetry, 
 for the fatalistic creed of the Arabs did not encourage 
 them at first to study the exact sciences. It was not 
 therefore primarily to the Arabs that the Spanish 
 renaissance was due. To the Jews of Spain must 
 be given the credit of opening the way, though 
 Mozarabes and Arabs followed them usefully after- 
 wards. Astronomy had slumbered from the times 
 of ancient Greece until the discoveries of the Spanish 
 Jews and Arabs carried it to a height never attained 
 before. Averroes, one of the greatest philosophers of 
 all time, was a Cordovese (1116-1198). He trans- 
 lated Aristotle's works, not from Greek, but from 
 Hebrew into Arabic. Oxford, Padua, and Paris 
 eagerly sent copyists to turn the revived text into 
 Latin, and all the schoolmen in Europe, in the 
 thirteenth century, were discussing the doctrines which 
 Averroes had deduced from Aristotle. The doctrine, 
 when applied to Christianity, was in favour of the 
 idea of natural or revealed religion, which needed 
 no justification by reason ; and it unquestionably in- 
 culcated a more implicit acceptance of religious dogma 
 than that formulated from Spain some years after 
 Averroes's death by another Spaniard, Ramon Lull 
 the Majorcan. He travelled the world over, teach- 
 
14 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 • ing and preaching his philosophic theory that the 
 truths of Christianity were to be demonstrated by 
 reason and logic. His influence upon the. mediaeval 
 universities was enormous, and to him is due primarily 
 the study of the Oriental languages at Oxford and 
 elsewhere. What is now called rational Christianity, 
 and appeals so strongly to the modern mind, is first 
 due to the Spaniard Ramon Lull, whom the Roman 
 Church has alternately banned and blessed, and who, 
 notwithstanding the Inquisition, has already been 
 placed upon the step that leads up to full sainthood. 
 
 Poetry as well as the sciences also spread up north 
 from Moorish Cordova and Toledo, thanks mainly 
 to the Jews. Other Spaniards besides the writers 
 and teachers carried to the world echoes of the lore 
 which the Spanish cities had preserved. These were 
 the Hebrew physicians, necromancers, and poisoners, 
 who for centuries were to be found in every cou'rt in 
 Europe. Toledo especially was regarded as the home 
 of their occult and esoteric science ; and the secrets 
 of the ancient peoples were carried by them to the 
 world, until the new learning ousted the old in the 
 sixteenth century. Moses Ben Maimon (Maimonides), 
 the greatest of European Jews, was offered the post 
 of physician to Richard I. of England, but preferred 
 the service of Saladin. He sought in his famous 
 book Yad-ha-Hazakah ('The Strong Hand'), and in 
 his Guide to those who are travelling perplexed as to 
 the right road, to give a rational interpretation to the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE iS 
 
 Talmud, much as Lull did for the Christian gospel. 
 A dozen other great names of Spanish Jews might 
 be mentioned to show how they spread learning in 
 the world : less in Spain than elsewhere, be it said, in 
 consequence of the religious fanaticism by which zealots 
 kept the Spanish peoples apart ; but I have written 
 enough to show that but for Moslem Spain much of 
 the knowledge of the ancients would have perished. 
 The Greek, Persian, and Coptic manuscripts gathered 
 from all quarters by the enlightened liberality of the 
 caliphs and kings were turned into Arabic at Cordova 
 and Toledo, and by the Jews and Mozarabes trans- 
 lated into Hebrew and Latin. After the fall of the 
 caliphate, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 Philosophy was studied in all the smaller capitals, the 
 petty kings of which competed with each other as 
 patrons of art and letters. Medicine and surgery were 
 carried to a perfection unknown before, by the most 
 famous professors of the age, Abd el Kami'n and 
 Aben Zoar of Seville. Botany was the province of 
 Aben Abaithar of Malaga, who wrote a book called 
 Collection of Simple Remedies, anticipating many dis- 
 coveries of later medicine, and describing scientifi- 
 cally two hundred new species of plants. Mathematics 
 and astronomy were eagerly pursued, and observa- 
 tories were to be seen in all the centres of culture 
 where the heavens might be studied. The most 
 important observatory then in Europe was that 
 famous tower that still stands unrivalled in beauty 
 
i6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 after eight centuries, the Giralda of Seville. Travel 
 and descriptions of far countries claimed many Arabic 
 and Jewish professors. Tales abu Hamid Algarnati 
 of Granada, and Aben Chobair of Valencia, travelled 
 through the East and described what they saw. El 
 Abdari of Valencia visited and wrote of Egypt, Arabia, 
 and Chaldea, and Benjamin of Tudela's travels are 
 still quoted. Philosophy, the earliest manifestation of 
 the culture of Cordova, continued to divide scholars 
 throughout the world long after Cordova fell. Avem- 
 pace {d. 1 1 38), who preceded the great Averroes, 
 wrote his Regime of the Solitary on the lines of Plato's 
 Republic, and no mediaeval school was without a copy 
 of the book. The Fountain of Life of the Spanish 
 Jew Solomon Ben Gabirol (1021-1070) produced a 
 profound influence throughout Europe. Abraham 
 Ben David of Toledo wrote works on astronomy ; and 
 his philosophical attempt {Exalted Faith) to reconcile 
 philosophy with revealed religion claimed followers 
 by hundreds in Italy, France, and England. Litera- 
 ture, and especially poetry, flourished exceedingly, 
 as the numerous original texts of poems and tales in 
 Hebrew and Arabic now in the Escorial Library 
 testify, and the printed works of Gabirol, Judah Ben 
 Levi, and others further prove. 
 
 And so from the eighth to the twelfth century 
 Moslem Spain remained the home of learning and 
 literature, whilst the Christian kings from the north 
 pushed onward and ever onward the frontiers, too 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 17 
 
 busy in fighting, too fervid in their religious 
 faith of special selection to seek to learn much from 
 infidels ; or to adopt, to any great extent, the tongue 
 of their enemies. The conquest had developed into 
 two main branches : one of Prankish and Provencal 
 origin in the north-east of the Peninsula ; the other, 
 Gothic and priestly as to leadership, had drawn to 
 the Celtic north-west all those Romanised Spaniards 
 whose attachment to their masters, or their love of 
 independence, had led them to refuse Moorish domi- 
 nation. The realm of the north-east, Aragon and 
 Cataluna, continuing the ancient connection with the 
 peoples of the same blood and sovereignty on the 
 Gulf of Lyons and in the south of France, spoke 
 the dialect of Latin which we call Provencal ; whilst 
 the kingdoms of Galicia and Leon spoke a cognate 
 tongue akin to the Portuguese. As for the Christian 
 Mozarabes who, as we have seen, in the earlier years 
 of the Moslem domination, had to a great extent 
 adopted Arabic as their language, bigots on both 
 sides had influenced race and religious hatred to such 
 an extent by the eleventh century that, as the Christian 
 kingdoms were pushed forward, and the Cross sup- 
 planted the Crescent in province after province, the 
 men of Spanish descent again took up universally 
 the peculiar dialect of Latin that the Romanised 
 Spaniards of Cordova had spoken, greatly modified 
 now, as may be supposed, by two or three centuries 
 of Arabic propinquity. With each advance of the 
 
 B 
 
18 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Christian frontiers a larger number of people who spoke 
 this dialect were included in Christian Spain, and these 
 were people, for the most part, much more advanced 
 in civilisation and accomplishments than the other 
 inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms. In the mean- 
 while the more settled condition of the northern part 
 of the Peninsula, distant from the fighting frontiers, 
 was causing poetry and dramatic interludes to be 
 cultivated even there. But the impetus in this case 
 came from the Provengal troubadours and juglars, 
 who lived in the courts of kings and nobles, and 
 travelled from house to house, ever welcome guests to 
 sing and recite their epic verse and dramatic dialogues ; 
 to chant and jeist and tell stories in the Provengal 
 tongue, which most could understand. Out of these, 
 and the imitations from them in the Galician tongue 
 (the court language of Castile), grew Spain's poetry. 
 But the influence was less native than French even in 
 the earliest specimen of Castilian poetry, the famous 
 Poem of the Cid clearly owing its form to the Chansons 
 de Geste which had been carried across the Pyrenees 
 by the troubadours. 
 
 Here, then, we have no less than three, if not four, 
 distinct dialects of Latin spoken in Spain ; as, in- 
 deed, is the case even to this day. Two of these, the 
 Langue d'Oc or Romance and the Galician, were, 
 and are, tongues capable of much poetical expression 
 and with a considerable poetical literature ; but they 
 were languages in which, for political reasons that I 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 19 
 
 have pointed out, little scientific or philosophical learn- 
 ing had been written. Their sound, moreover, was less 
 sonorous and majestic to the ear than was the dialect 
 that had grown grave by being spoken for centuries 
 side by side with guttural, emphatic Arabic. This 
 dialect was richer too, and more flexible, for many 
 Arabic words had crept into it, and its grammatical 
 construction had grown far less rigid than the Low- 
 Latin forms of Galicia or Provence. With the con- 
 quest of the imperial city of Toledo by Alfonso VI., 
 in 1085, the first step towards the generalisation of 
 the Mozarabic dialect was taken. The severities of 
 Moslem fanatic sects that had seized power in the 
 Mohammedan districts, had already driven vast num- 
 bers of Christian and wavering Mozarabes to settle 
 within the territories of Castile; and the establish- 
 ment of the court of Alfonso VI. at Toledo surrounded 
 him and his nobles with people who spoke that 
 dialect, which thus became familiar to the ear. It 
 was only fifty years afterwards, in the middle of the 
 twelfth century, that the first and greatest Gastilian 
 epic poem was written, the Poem of the Cid; but, as 
 the epic and lyric poetry of Spain exercised little or 
 no influence upon our literature, I purpose to speak at 
 present only of the development of Castilian prose. 
 
 When Cordova was conquered by St. Ferdinand 
 in 1 241, he found it necessary to promulgate the code 
 of laws that had grown out of the Gothic code during 
 the four centuries of the re-conquest, not in Latin or 
 
2b SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 in Galician, but in the dialect that the Mozarabes of 
 Cordova spoke; and, though doubtless many charters 
 to newly occupied Moorish towns had been drawn up 
 in the same language before this, only two fragments 
 are known to exist in prose undoubtedly earlier.^ In 
 Seville, again, in 1248, when St. Ferdinand established 
 his capital there, the same thing happened ; and the 
 conqueror's edicts were couched in the dialect of 
 the Mozarabes. Thenceforward even some of the 
 chronicles and history began to be written in the same 
 tongue, for the information of the newly conquered 
 people. Rodrigo Ximenez de la Rada, Archbishop of 
 Toledo, had written in Latin a History of the Gothic 
 Kings, and so anxious was St. Ferdinand to remind 
 the Christian Mozarabes of their pre-Moorish descent, 
 that he ordered the bishop to translate his own book 
 into their dialect. 
 
 ^ The first of these is the Disptita del Alma y el Cuerpo, in which 
 the soul of a man recently dead upbraids his body for the troubles into 
 which it had led the imperishable part of him. The fragment begins 
 thus : 
 
 ' Si quereedes oir lo que uos quiero dezir 
 dizre uos lo que ui, nol uos i quedo fallir,' 
 
 by which it will be seen that early as the text is — probably the middle of 
 the twelfth century — the language was already fully formed. 
 
 The second fragment is part of a sacred auto representing the visit of 
 the three kings of the East to the Infant Saviour, and is of similar date. 
 The first lines, which are a soliloquy of the first king, Caspar, when he 
 sees the star of Bethlehem, begins thus : 
 
 ' Dios Criador ! qual maravila 
 No se qual es achesta strela ! 
 Agora primas la e ueida 
 Poco timpo a que es nacida.' 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 21 
 
 But with the death of St, Ferdinand in 1252 the 
 great change came that decided the battle of the 
 Peninsular tongues, and made what we now call 
 Castilian the predominant language of Spain. The 
 new king, Alfonso X., was one of the most bookish 
 kings that ever lived, a born litterateur, with an insati- 
 able thirst for knowledge. He had heard at his father's 
 court, from Jewish, Mozarabic, and Mudejar sages, of 
 the past glories of the caliph Al Hakim's great library 
 at Cordova, of the hoarded wisdom of centuries that 
 had formerly made the city of the caliphs the intel- 
 lectual capital of the world. He saw now how the 
 fairy palaces, the imperial libraries, and the busy 
 schools had been cast down by ignorance and fanati- 
 cism. He was himself a sweet poet, in his own familiar 
 tongue of Galicia, as well as in the Mozarabic dialect, 
 which he wrote as well as his own. He had two 
 languages to choose from at least, if not three ; and in 
 his vast project to form a national literature he must 
 have been guided in his choice by many considerations. 
 The Mozarabic dialect was unquestionably the richer 
 in words, and more facile in the adaptation of com- 
 pounds than Galician. It was the dialect of the most 
 lettered men of his realm, as well as of the larger 
 number of his Castilian subjects ; and, above all, it was 
 a pure Spanish speech evolved on Spanish soil, and 
 owing nothing to Provence. When the giant Edward 
 Plantagenet, with his crowd of English and French 
 nobles, came to Burgos in 1254 to wed his beloved 
 
22 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Blanche of Castile, Alfonso's sister ; and when in the 
 splendid entertainments that accompanied the wedding 
 and the knighting of the English prince in ancient form, 
 the princes and nobles of both countries forgathered, 
 there can have been little difficulty in their understand- 
 ing each other's speech, for the Low-Latin of Galicia and 
 the Low-Latin of Aquitaine were akin. But consider for 
 a moment if, instead of Provengal or Galician, Alfonso 
 and his courtiers had spoken the Mozarabic dialect, 
 with its many Arabic and other exotic elements, how 
 unintelligible they would have been to their Anglo- 
 French guests. It is clear then that Alfonso X., when 
 he chose the Mozarabic form of the language as the 
 vehicle for the formation of a new national literature, 
 must have been conscious that, with all the advantages 
 of sound and flexibility it possessed, it would shut 
 off Castile from the main current of European culture 
 much more than would have been the case if he had 
 adopted Galician or Provengal, which were more closely 
 allied to the other literary Latin tongues. Why, then, 
 did he deliberately choose it ? 
 
 In the first place, it was the common speech of 
 most of his people in the richest part of his realms, 
 now that Toledo, Cordova, and Seville and most of 
 Andalusia had been added to Castile. This is made 
 clear by the introduction to one of the crude prose 
 poems on sacred subjects written by Gonzalo de Berceo, 
 one of the earliest known writers in Castilian. He 
 was a Benedictine monk living at Calahorra, and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 23 
 
 begins thus a sacred poem evidently intended for 
 recitation, and written before 1260 : — 
 
 ' Quiero far una prosa in Roman paladino, 
 En qual suele el pueblo fablar d su vecino 
 Ca non so tan letrado d far otro Latino 
 Bien valdra como creo, un vaso de bon vino.' 
 
 ' Such prose I wish to make in common speech, 
 As friends and neighbours use in talk and trade. 
 No other Latin, 'faith, did they me teach ; 
 A cup of wine for it may well be paid.' 
 
 But a more important reason than the general use 
 of the dialect, probably, was that Alfonso's great pro- 
 ject depended mainly upon the translation, adaptation, 
 and utilisation of the Hebrew and Arabic texts, which 
 had survived the Berber fanaticism in Moorish Spain. 
 Gonzalo de Berceo, in his many rough verses, the 
 writer of the Libra de Alexandre, and the author of 
 the Poem of Jusuf Qose^h. and Potiphar), the writer 
 of the Poem of the Cid, and many others, had been 
 writing popular Castilian poetry for recitation, sacred 
 and profane, for many years before the accession of 
 Alfonso X., though the treatment and subjects of all 
 this crude verse were derived from French or Pro- 
 vencal sources. The History of the Gothic Kings had 
 been translated from Latin into Castilian, and during 
 the latter years of Alfonso's father, St. Ferdinand 
 (1252), many Arabic and Jewish translators had been 
 busy adapting to Castilian the moral works which the 
 Jews and Arabs had originally derived from the 
 
24 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Sanskrit (which will be the principal theme of the 
 next chapter). It will thus be seen that the way was 
 prepared on the accession of Alfonso X. for a great 
 forward literary movement, such as he had in view. 
 Perhaps no other king that ever lived conceived so 
 vast a scheme as Alfonso X. To extend mere 
 dominion is a vulgar dream, for dominion passes 
 away as it comes ; but the creation on a fixed plan of 
 a new national literature, and deliberately to choose 
 the dialect in which it shall be written, is a work 
 that may set its mark upon civilisation for all time 
 to come ; and this is what Alfonso did. 
 
 To the natural inherited tendencies of this new 
 literature, and to its influence in England, I shall 
 devote the greater portion of this book. My concern, 
 however, for the moment, is to show how the literature 
 itsdf was created. In the first place, it was clear that 
 a native Spanish literature should not be drawn from 
 France, which had hitherto influenced Spanish poetical 
 form so greatly. Alfonso was therefore obliged to turn 
 to the rich mine of Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek texts, 
 which had been studied and written in Spain under 
 the Moslem domination. To aid him in his immense 
 task, ignorant clerics like Berceo, writing but one 
 language, were of no use. So to him he called, as he 
 was obliged to do, a host of learned Jews, Arabs, and 
 Mozarabes, to compile and arrange for him, in the 
 only Spanish tongue with which they were familiar, 
 the learning which was enshrined in the Eastern 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 25 
 
 tongues of their forefathers. No branch of literature 
 was neglected by Alfonso the Learned. No social 
 narrowness or religious prejudice stood in the way of 
 his great project. The plan of a universal history of 
 the world had never been conceived before. The 
 learned king now set about writing such a work, aided 
 by scholars who searched the writings of the ancients 
 and the lore of the Bible. La Grande et General Historia 
 reaches only down to the dawn of the Christian era, 
 and would fail to satisfy a modern historian, but it is 
 a high achievement nevertheless, and a still greater 
 idea. I had the delight of discovering perhaps the most 
 ancient known text of it, in the Duke of Wellington's 
 library at Strathfieldsaye, dated not many years after 
 Alfonso's death, and what strikes the intelligent 
 reader, besides the catholicity of the text, is its 
 curious modernity. This is seen also in La Estoria de 
 Espanna, written undoubtedly by Alfonso himself. 
 An example of the style may be of interest. Taken 
 unquestionably from the seventeenth chapter of the 
 Koran, this extract will be understood by any one 
 who can read modern Spanish. Recollect that it was 
 written in 1260 or 1270, and then try a passage from 
 the original of Chaucer, who wrote more than a century 
 later, and you will see how much more English has 
 changed in 650 years than Castilian has. The .extract 
 relates Mohammed's dream. 
 
 'Tom6 me el angel Gabriel (decia Mahoma) et 
 leuome suso fasta el'primero cielo, et los angeles que 
 
26 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 y estavan, venieron contra mi, et recisbieronme muy 
 bien, et fueron mui alegres conmigo. Et con el gran 
 plazer, que ende ouieron, cataronse unos i. otros et 
 decian. Ay que bien ! Ay que bien es este ! Et 
 orauame todos, todo el bien et toda salud. Synon 
 uno que estava ahy, que non se alegrava conmigo nin 
 se reya como los otros. Et yo preguntd entonze al 
 angel Gabriel, qu6 quien era aquel 6 porque se fazie 
 aquello. Et Gabriel me dixo. Sepas q'ueste angel 
 nunca se reyo, nin se reyera. Que este es el angel 
 guardador del fuego.' 
 
 If Alfonso's historical ideas were before his age, 
 so too were his services as a legislator. I have 
 already spoken of the great Gothic Roman code of 
 laws drawn up in Gothic Latin, and promulgated in 
 the seventh century in Spain. Six hundred years had 
 passed, and the Moslem domination had altered the 
 whole country ethnologically and socially. Alfonso 
 set to work to recast in Castilian this code in seven 
 parts, called the Siete Partidas, dealing exhaustively 
 with the duties and rights of every class of citizens 
 of Castile, from sovereign to serfs. This tremendous 
 work was begun in 1255 and finished in 1263, and 
 remained the basis of all Spanish law until the great 
 Napoleonic upheaval. Nothing can exceed the free- 
 dom, and yet the correctness and beauty, of the 
 language of this code. This will be seen by the fol- 
 lowing specimen of it, dealing with the rules with 
 regard to the places where high schools or universities 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 27 
 
 might be established. It is so clear that any modern 
 Spaniard could understand it without difficulty. 
 
 'Las escuelas del estudio general, deben seer en 
 logor appartado de la villa, las unas cerca de las otras, 
 porque los escolares que hobiessen sabor de aprender 
 aina, puedan tomar dos liciones, 6 mas si quisieren, 
 en diversas oras del dia, et puedan los unos preguntar 
 a los otros en las cosas que dubdaren ; pero deben las 
 Unas escuelas seer tan acredradas de las otras que los 
 maestros no se embarguen oyendo los unos lo que 
 leen los otros. 
 
 ' De buen ayre et de fermosas salidas debe seer la 
 villa do quieren establescer el estudio, porque los 
 maestros que muestran los saberes, et los escolares 
 que los aprenden, vivan sanos, et en 6\ puedan folgar 
 et rescibir placer a la tarde quando se levantasen 
 cansados del estudio : et otro si debe seer abondada de 
 pan et de vino, et de buenas posadas en que puedan 
 morar et pasar su tiempo sin grant costa. Et otro si 
 decimos que los cibdadanos de aquel logar do fuere 
 fecho el estudio deben mucho honrar et guardar los 
 maestros et los escolares,' and so on for many pages, no 
 point being missed. Besides this code, Alfonso wrote 
 another juridical book, called Tke Mirror of Laws. 
 
 But great as all this is, it was a mere tithe of 
 Alfonso's vast literary activity. With the aid of Jews 
 and Mudejares he compiled a multitude of scientific 
 works. The Alfonsine Tables were a complete recal- 
 culation and correction of the astronomical tables of 
 
28 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Ptolemy, and were in use until the late eighteenth 
 century ; La Sphera Redonda, the Astrolabe, and a 
 dozen other works, translated or adapted from the 
 Eastern languages, placed in the hands of Spanish 
 speaking people — and through them the rest of the 
 world — the cosmographical, astronomical, and philo- 
 sophical knowledge that had been hidden in the 
 libraries of Moslem Spain. Most curious of all are 
 Alfonso's books upon the properties of minerals, adapted 
 from the Lapidarios of the Jew Abolays, and of the 
 Arab Mahomed aben Quich. Alfonso tells us, indeed, 
 in one of his poems ( Versos de Arte Mayor), that he had 
 actually learned and successfully practised alchemy, 
 and gives the secret as it was taught to him by an 
 Egyptian philosopher. Another direction in which 
 Alfonso's literary activity was employed, was in guide- 
 books of various sports and games, chess, dice, and 
 draughts, books on hunting, and others of the same 
 sort ; and to crown his services to posterity he 
 collected a mass of poetry, the first Romancero, some 
 of the poems by himself and some by others, all of a 
 religious and mystic tendency, which is beyond price in 
 showing the development of Spanish verse {Cantigas de 
 Sancta Maria). Here, then, was a national literature in 
 a practically new language, created during the lifetime 
 and by the efforts of a single man. Even in these, its 
 first days, the indelible stamp of the race is upon it; a 
 stamp which, as we shall see later, remained until our 
 own times, and left its impress upon the later literature 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 29 
 
 of Europe. These qualities of race were exuberant 
 fertility of expression and devotional personal mysti- 
 cism, derived from the Romanised Celt-Iberian, sup- 
 plemented now by the sententious didacticism which 
 had been the tradition of the Hebrew and Oriental 
 letters that had given birth to the new Castilian litera- 
 ture. From the specimens of early prose given above, 
 it will have been recognised that before Alfonso's 
 death Castilian had become practically the same fine 
 language that it has remained ever since, although 
 doubtless the pronunciation was different, probably 
 the guttural j and x being later developments, and 
 certainly the lisping of the c and z. 
 
 In this first chapter I have confined myself to the 
 circumstances that underlay the first appearance of 
 Castilian literature. This has been necessary in order 
 that the direction in which its influence was sub- 
 sequently felt upon English literature might be under- 
 stood. In the following chapters I shall dwell not 
 only upon the development of the literature itself, but 
 upon its influence on the prose and dramatic writings 
 of our own country. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 DIDACTIC SENTENCES, PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 AND EXEMPLARY APOLOGUES 
 
 The preceding chapter traced the origin and birth of 
 Castilian prose literature in the thirteenth century, 
 and showed that the character of the root-race of the 
 Peninsula had set its stamp upon its previous literary 
 product. This was seen in a tendency for any chosen 
 literary form to degenerate into extravagance of im- 
 agination and over-floridness and affectation of diction. 
 This tendency was traced in the decadence of Latin 
 letters under Spanish influence, and in later chapters 
 we shall witness exactly the same process of degenera- 
 tion of the Castilian letters, at whose birth we have 
 assisted, and whose development we are now to follow. 
 Under Alfonso the Learned, Castilian prose literature 
 was born pure, terse, and simple. But there was one 
 great and remarkable characteristic both of its matter 
 and its manner to which I must direct very care- 
 ful attention. I mean its sententious didacticism. 
 Every one of Alfonso x.'s books had for its one 
 object the teaching of something by short, authoritative 
 pronouncements, which were sometimes glossed or 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 31 
 
 expounded, as texts might be in brief sermons. It 
 was always the sage or elder instructing youth or in- 
 experience. Long before the coming of the Moors, 
 Seneca the younger, and many other Latin and Greek 
 authors before him, had written in didactic aphorisms 
 in this way. The classical forms which had dominated 
 all cultured Europe before the Roman empire 
 crumbled, had of course been derived originally from 
 the East, where the didactic sentence, proverb, or 
 short parable was the traditional form taken for the 
 conveyance of wisdom and experience; and it was one 
 of the few traditions that still existed in Europe in 
 the dark ages that succeeded the disappearance of the 
 Roman power. But, as was seen when the Italian 
 renaissance began, the austerity and direct simplicity 
 of the parable or apologue had been lost during the 
 many centuries that had passed since it had left its 
 Oriental home. In Spain it was otherwise. There, as 
 we have seen, when Christian culture was at a stand- 
 still, and old forms had been lost, the Arabs and Jews" 
 introduced straight from the Orient again, pure and 
 strong, the simple tradition of the conveyance of 
 wisdom and experience by means of authoritative 
 sentences, or parables, each containing a separate 
 moral lesson. The new Castilian prose literature 
 created by Alfonso, therefore, at once took a much 
 more didactic and sententious form than did any other 
 European literature, because the king was obliged to 
 turn for models and originals to the only learning his 
 
32 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 subjects knew, namely the Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit 
 and Persian texts that had for four centuries been the 
 intellectual food of the southern Spanish scholars of 
 various races. This, consequently, was a fresh intro- 
 duction of Oriental influence into European literature 
 through Spain, and, as we shall see later, it vastly 
 strengthened the didactic proverbial form throughout 
 the civilised world, and not least in England. 
 
 We will trace how a few of the earliest of these 
 works came from the East to Spain, and thence carried 
 the taste for proverbial wisdom to the rest of the 
 world. In early ages a collection of Eastern fables, 
 written in Sanskrit and called the Fables of Pilpay (or 
 Sindabad), was carried to Persia and translated into 
 old Persian. Thence it found its way to Syria, and 
 throughout the near East, and became a popular book. 
 Hebrew and Arabic, versions of it existed in Cordova 
 in the time of the caliphs, and in 125 1 Alfonso the 
 Learned, whilst he was a prince, ordered the Arabic 
 version of Abdallah ben Al Mocaffd to be translated 
 into Castilian. I may say that two centuries previous 
 to this the book had been translated into Greek, and 
 many years afterwards the Greek version was made 
 use of by Italian and other scholars to reintroduce the 
 stories into Europe. But the Spanish translation, 
 which was called Kalila and Dimna, the names of the 
 persons who alternate in telling the story, was the first 
 in any modern language, and at once became a popular 
 book both in Spain and abroad. Each story, as usual. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 33 
 
 -is used to enforce a particular moral or lesson, and the 
 Spanish version is extremely brilliant and interesting-. 
 If any one will take the trouble to read the Spanish 
 tales in it, and will then turn to Mr. Keith Falconer's 
 English version of them, taken straight from the 
 Syriac text (Cambridge, 1885), it will be seen how un- 
 mistakably the Spanish spirit had infused itself into 
 the Oriental body of the work in its Kalila and Dimna 
 form. The tales are mostly too long for quotation here, 
 but sometimes little subsidiary anecdotes are intro- 
 duced to enforce some secondary moral. The following 
 is a specimen : — ' Once there was a young man beloved 
 by the wife of another man, and the woman, the better 
 to be able to entertain her lover, made a subterranean 
 passage from her house to the street, near the well 
 whence they drew their water, so that, if her husband 
 surprised them, the young man might go into the 
 passage and the door be shut upon him whilst he 
 made his way into the street. One day when her 
 lover was with her the woman heard her husband 
 coming. "Run," she said to her lover, "and get into 
 the passage by the well." He went to the well, and 
 found it broken down, and so turned back to the 
 woman and said, " I went to the well, and I see it is 
 broken down." " I did not tell you the well," she said, 
 " but the passage by the well, I only mentioned the 
 well incidentally to guide you. Make haste, for 
 Heaven's sake, and go, or we shall get into trouble." 
 " Well, then, you ought not to talk about wells when 
 
 C 
 
34 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 f ou mean passages," said the lover. "If you want me 
 to go into a passage, why not say so plainly ? " " Go, 
 go," she cried ; " don't stay talking nonsense there, we 
 shall be discovered." " I can't go now that I have 
 upset you so about the well," he replied ; and so the 
 simple fellow continued talking until the husband 
 came in and took them both for punishment before 
 the king.' The lesson here is, in matters of import- 
 ance, not to dispute about details, but to go to the 
 main point. 
 
 Many of the apologues are fables of animals, not 
 unlike those of Esop, whose fables also are originally 
 Oriental ; and throughout the Spanish version of 
 Kalila and Dimna the Eastern influence is undis- 
 guised. Almost contemporary with this collection 
 was another which became even more popular. This 
 was the adaptation by Prince Fadrique, Alfonso the 
 Learned's brother, of a set of moral stories from the 
 Sanskrit through Arabic, called the Book of Sindabad, 
 or the Seven Sages. Fadrique gave to his collection 
 the ungallant name of Tricks and Wiles of Women 
 (of which a translation in English has been published 
 by the English Folklore Society). The fashion for 
 proverbial philosophy and moral examples thereafter 
 became a perfect craze throughout Europe. This Book 
 of the Seven Sages, for instance, was translated into 
 every modern language, and the stories, transformed to 
 suit the manners and views of various peoples, became 
 part of the lore of every country. The same may be 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 35 
 
 said of the books which grew out of these moral tales. 
 Such books took the form of collections of the tit-bits 
 and aphorisms, culled from the discourses contained in 
 the larger books, and in many cases also of collections 
 of original didactic proverbs from the Hebrew. Within 
 a few years of the death of Alfonso the Learned, Pori- 
 dad de Poridades, El libra de Buenos Proverbios, Flares 
 de Filosofia, and Bocados de Ora, appeared, and Bocadas 
 de Ora was afterwards translated into English by 
 Lord Rivers, who was in Spain during the long siege 
 of Granada. When Caxton began printing, one of 
 the first books he published was a collection of 
 these proverbs, called Dictes and Sayings of the 
 Philosophers, many of which were taken from Lord 
 Rivers's translation of the Spanish, and many more 
 from the Spanish Oriental books already mentioned 
 translated into French. Thus these Oriental pearls of 
 wisdom, easy to learn and easy to recollect, became a 
 part of the common knowledge of life possessed by 
 all educated persons ; and until the end of the seven- 
 teenth century, as we shall see later, it was considered 
 a fashionable accomplishment for a gentleman to be 
 able to compile a collection of sentences, as they were 
 called, either original or extracted from the works of 
 some stated author. Indeed there has been a revival 
 of the fashion quite recently in England, where it is 
 now common to see ' Birthday ' books, or 'Beauties' 
 from modern authors. But it was mainly from Spain, 
 in renewed touch with the Orient, that the impetus 
 
36 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 •or the sententious form came. So strong was the 
 hold of the sententious proverb upon Spaniards, that 
 even their florid satirical poetry was embroidered with 
 it. The great satires of Lopez de Ayala (Rimado de 
 Palacio) and of the Archpriest of Hita, an earlier 
 Rabelais, were full of wise saws to enforce their 
 moral. Perhaps the two most notable instances of 
 the rhymed proverb are the world-famous collection 
 of Moral Proverbs of the Spanish Jew, the Rabbi 
 Sem Tob of Carrion, whose six hundred and eighty 
 verses were written for Alfonso XI. in the fourteenth 
 century, and the collection of Proverbios of the Marquis 
 de Santillana written fifty years later. 
 
 A specimen or two of each set may be quoted, and 
 it will be seen how, either directly or indirectly, the 
 moral has become familiar to us. A thought, how- 
 ever trite and obvious it may seem to us from our 
 familiarity with it, was not trite when it was first put 
 into circulation. Read, for instance, this quatrain of 
 Sem Tob's : — 
 
 ' Quien los vientos guardare ' Who fears the winds, howe'er they 
 Todos, non sembrara. blow, 
 
 Quien los nubes catare Can never hope his grain to sow ; 
 
 Jamas non segara. And if he watches for the rain. 
 
 His sickle ne'er will reap the 
 grain. 
 
 El oficio al hombre Our rank is but a jewel light 
 Es joya prestada. Borrowed from day to day ; 
 
 Costumbre buena y nombre Good actions and a record bright 
 Es suya apropiada. Possessions are ours for aye. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 37 
 
 Al Rey solo conviene Only the king should dare 
 
 Usar de franquesa, His mind to speak to all, 
 
 Que seguranga tiene For he is free from care 
 
 De non venir en pobreza. Lest poverty befall. 
 
 El fino acero sano Forth from a broken case 
 Sale de rota vayna Leaps there a shining blade ; 
 
 Y del fino del gusano Out of the maggot base 
 
 Se fase seda fina.' The glittering silk is made.' 
 
 More confessedly didactic in object were the other 
 
 set of rhymed proverbs mentioned. They were by a 
 
 great noble and poet who lived fifty or sixty years 
 
 after Sem Tob, and died in 1458, Inigo Lopez de 
 
 Mendoza, Marquis de Santillana, who also came from 
 
 Carrion. Of his lyrics, inspired as they were by 
 
 Italian models, it is not necessary to speak here ; but 
 
 he shows himself in his folk-tales, Rhymes that old 
 
 women tell in the Chimney-corner, and in his Rhymed 
 
 Proverbs, a true Spaniard with the old traditions still 
 
 strong upon him. These proverbs were written for 
 
 the instruction of the Castilian prince, who afterwards 
 
 became Henry IV. the Infirm ; and, like all the others 
 
 that I have quoted, each verse inculcates a lesson. 
 
 There is one point in connection with them, which 
 
 shows how persistent was the Oriental tradition of 
 
 instruction conveyed by maxims. It will be noticed 
 
 in the Book of Examples, in Kalila and Dimna and 
 
 others, that the mere enunciation of the example was 
 
 not sufficient to enforce its own lesson ; there must 
 
 always follow (or, as in the Book of Patronio, precede) 
 
 the illustration or text, a sort of sermon enlarging 
 
38 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ^pon the lesson conveyed. It is the same here in 
 Santillana's proverbs. 
 
 One would think, for instance, that this little verse 
 carried its lesson clearly enough for anything — 
 
 ' No rebuses recibir ' Spurn not contrition 
 
 al contrito. with a frown. 
 
 Ni te plega al aflito Beat not those down 
 
 Afligir. in sore condition. 
 
 Que flaqueza es perseguir, A coward chases 
 
 al que huye. foes that fly. 
 
 y animo al que destruye True courage high 
 
 resistir.' Mercy graces.' — 
 
 and yet the writing of half a dozen classic philoso- 
 phers, not to say holy writ, is ransacked for pages of 
 ' gloss ' or exposition of the simple, sufficient lesson. 
 
 The example of the bookish king — not a very 
 encouraging one, for politically he was most unfortu- 
 nate — was of course followed by his successors. As 
 usual in such cases, it became in the late thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries the fashion amongst gentle- 
 men to write something, and that something had of 
 course for the most part to be imitations of existing 
 models. Alfonso's son, Sancho the Brave, busy as he 
 was all his life fighting, yet found time to write books. 
 Besides the translation of some Latin and French 
 works that he ordered, he himself wrote two books 
 which will illustrate the trend of Spanish culture soon 
 after the death of Alfonso the Learned. The first 
 book of Sancho the Brave is called Lucidario, and the 
 object of it is to compare divine and human instruc- 
 tion. The plan of the work supposes a scholar living 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 39 
 
 in a place where there are many schools of various 
 branches of learning, desiring to investigate the 
 questions and doubts that occur in the classes. This 
 he seeks to do by discussing the points with his tutor, 
 who endeavours to elucidate what the scholar finds 
 difficult or obscure to understand. Every science and 
 art, from theology to rhetoric, is brought under review 
 by the curious scholar, and expounded by the omnis- 
 cient tutor, and the type of this and many other such 
 books written in Spain from the thirteenth to the 
 fifteenth century may be seen with little change in our 
 Sandford and Merton and similar works. Sancho the 
 Brave wrote another book, notable as the forerunner of a 
 school of didactic literature which afterwards flourished 
 exceedingly, not only in Spain but also in Italy, 
 though never to any very great extent in England. I 
 refer to the books intended specially to teach morality, 
 statesmanship, and perspicuity to young princes and 
 nobles. They were often given as a rule of life by 
 old or dying sovereigns or high ministers to their sons. 
 Sancho the Brave's book, which is called El Libra de 
 los Castigos y Documentos, or Book of Punishments 
 and Proofs, was written three years before his death 
 in 1292, for the guidance of his son Prince Ferdinand. 
 It contains fifty chapters, in which is unfolded a 
 complete moral and religious guide of conduct in all 
 relations of life, public and private, rules for the 
 guidance of political affairs, for management of men, 
 and for behaviour in peace and war. As a specimen 
 
40 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 of the tone of these counsels I will quote, in Spanish 
 and English, one of Don Sancho's chapters : — 
 
 ' Quefabla quant buena cosa es cordura, / como es 
 fija del buen entendimiento.' 
 
 " Mio fijo : mete mientes en quant buena cosa es 
 cordura. La cordura es fija del buen entendimiento ; ca 
 ningund home non puede ser cuerdo si entendido no es. 
 Por cordura es el home guardado de muchos peligros,en 
 que podria caer a su gran danno. Cordura da al home 
 grant a50siego : primeramente en su corazon € en los 
 movimientos que face en su cuerpo, d en sus manos, 6 
 en los fechos de su facienda. Asi como la cobdicia es 
 raiz de todos los males, asi el contrario desto, la 
 cordura es la raiz 6 aumento de todos los bienes. Por 
 cordura enriquesece el home : ca ninguno non puede 
 ser rico si asosiego de cordura non ha en si, € en la su 
 facenda. Pues por ende la cordura en si mesma da 
 asosiego al home con su verdat d non anda con ella 
 bulliendo. Por cordura se da el home por firme en las 
 cosas que ha de decir 6 de facer, 6 extrdmase por ella 
 del arrebatadizo et movedizo que se mueve liviana- 
 mente con mal seso. La cordura es peso de balanza, 
 en que pesan al que la su pro 6 su dano trae. La 
 cordura tuelle las cosas peligrosas, 6 de gran ventura, 
 € da las provechosas. La cordura da al home buena 
 fama y tuelle le de la mala. La cordura endereza la 
 facienda del home en esto mundo i la pro desu alma 
 para el otro mundo que muera en buen estado. La 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 41 
 
 cordura tuelle los malos pensamientos, 6 desvia los 
 males que dellos podrian nascer," — and more to the 
 same effect. In English it may be rendered thus : — 
 
 ' Chapter telling how good a thing moderation is, and 
 how it is the daughter of good sense! 
 
 " My son, take heed how good a thing is moderation ! 
 Moderation is the child of good sense, for no man can be 
 moderate unless he be of good understanding. Moder- 
 ation shields a man from many dangers, which may 
 otherwise bring him to grave trouble. Moderation 
 gives to a man great peace, first in his heart and the 
 movements of his body and hands, and secondly in his 
 estate. Just as greed is the root of all evil, so is its 
 opposite, moderation, the root and enlarger of all 
 good ; for no man can be rich unless the peace which 
 comes with moderation be with his body and estate. 
 Besides, moderation itself gives peace to a man, 
 and prevents him from giving way to excitement. 
 Moderation gives a man confidence in what he has to 
 say or do, and holds him aloof from the rash and 
 fickle who are moved by levity and foolishness. 
 Moderation is the weight on the balance that weighs 
 the effect that good and bad bring to a man. 
 Moderation averts risky and dangerous things, and 
 brings profitable ones. Moderation gives a man good 
 repute, and banishes evil repute. Moderation sets 
 straight a man's goods in this world, and his soul in 
 the next. Moderation stops bad thoughts and the 
 
42 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 evils they bring." Here you see that upon one moral 
 proposition a series of separate aphorisms is hung, 
 and the whole of Don Sancho's fifty chapters are 
 worked out in the same way. First a truth is 
 enunciated, and then it is set forth sententiously in 
 its various phases. Any one of these aphorisms is 
 such as you may see in intricate Arabic characters 
 inscribed on Eastern doorways, or ornamental friezes, 
 and even upon Oriental pottery or brass ware, to this 
 day ; whilst the best and most epigrammatic of such 
 aphorisms have been crystallised into the proverbial 
 philosophy that has been fashionable in Europe from 
 the time of the caliphs of Cordova to Martin Farquhar 
 Tupper. 
 
 From Spain these didactic aphorisms, and a little 
 later, as we shall see, the short moral tale or fable, 
 extended to every corner of Europe. 
 
 I have spoken of Alfonso the Learned, his son 
 Sancho the Brave, and his brother Prince Fadrique, and 
 their literary activity. There was, however, another 
 member of his family whose pure literary genius far 
 exceeded that of any of them — Alfonso's nephew, the 
 Prince Don Juan Manuel, who, following the example 
 set to him, or rather improving upon it, wrote a series 
 of didactic books of the highest importance, and one 
 which must always be held as marking a great epoch 
 in literary history. I refer to the Libra de Patronio, or, 
 as it is usually called. Count Lucanor. Before deal- 
 ing with this book at length, however, I wish to refer 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 43 
 
 to some others of Don Juan Manuel's works, which 
 exercised a far-reaching influence outside Spain. The 
 author was born in 1282, and, although he was 
 plunged in turbulent intrigue, war, and politics all his 
 life, yet he managed to write fourteen books, of which 
 nine still are known to exist ; namely, the Book of the 
 Chase, the Book of the Knight and Squire, the Book of the 
 Assumption, the Book of Three Reasons, two chronicles, 
 the Book of the States, the Book of Punishments, or 
 Castigos, and, of course, the never to be forgotten Count 
 Lucanor. It will be evident by the titles that they are 
 all didactic, though freer in manner than the undis- 
 guised Oriental adaptations that had preceded them. 
 
 I wish to direct attention mainly to the three last 
 books I have mentioned — the Book of States, Castigos, 
 and Count Lucanor — the last two written for the in- 
 struction and amusement of his son. Don Juan 
 Manuel's Book of States offers us several very interest- 
 ing points. The book is, of course, didactic ; and 
 is supposed to represent the education of a pagan 
 prince by his tutor, who, being unable to answer the 
 boy's questions satisfactorily, begs the aid of a 
 Christian priest. In the discussion and settlement 
 of the various doubts suggested by the pupil, every 
 possible point of political and religious ethics is dealt 
 with ; and the book was held to be a monument of 
 wisdom both in Spain and abroad. But the most 
 interesting thing about it is this : most of the illus- 
 trations are taken naturally from Oriental sources. 
 
44 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 which had filtered through the Jews and Moors of 
 Spain, and amongst others is the famous legend of 
 Barlaam and Josaphat. The book of Juan Manuel's 
 was popular throughout Europe. The story was held 
 to be true, and the Holy Saints and Martyrs Barlaam 
 and Josaphat of India were canonised. Don Juan 
 Manuel, in common with another author of his day, 
 appears to have borrowed the idea of this legend 
 from an Arabic version of a Sanskrit Buddhistic 
 work. Josaphat (or rather Yudasatf) is the Arabic 
 form of Buddha. This gives an idea of the extra- 
 ordinary way in which these Oriental legends spread 
 through Europe, and the strange mutations they 
 underwent in changing from Buddhistic to Moham- 
 medan, Jewish, or Christian mediums. Before passing 
 to the consideration of Don Juan Manuel's famous Book 
 of Patronio, reference may be made to another author 
 who wrote in a similar vein to Don Juan Manuel 
 somewhat later, and who also utilised this Arab 
 Buddhistic version of Barlaam and Josaphat more 
 unmistakably even than Juan Manuel. I refer to 
 Clemente Sanchez in his Book of Examples {Libra de 
 Enjemplos). This Book of Examples is perhaps the 
 most interesting of the series. Many of the stories, 
 most of them perhaps, are taken from a book in 
 Latin called Disciplina Clericalis, by Petrus Alfonsus, 
 who was really a converted Jew of Huesca, in Spain, 
 named Rabbi Moses Sephardi, whose book Caxton 
 printed in English. The Libra de Enjemplos contains 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 45 
 
 an immense number of short tales, mostly religious ; 
 and in it may be found the germ of many tales of 
 Boccaccio, the French fabulists, and Chaucer, though 
 perhaps in most cases they came to us through the 
 French and Italian rather than the Spanish version. 
 Each tale is preceded by a little rhymed couplet, 
 setting forth the moral which the story illustrates. 
 One of the shortest may be chosen to give an idea 
 of the style : — 
 
 ' La limosna da gran crescemiento, 
 Que por una cosa trae ciento.' 
 
 ' Charity doth increase our store, 
 For it returneth a hundred more.' 
 
 ' There was a woman in England so sorely poor 
 that all the gear she had in the wide world was one 
 cow. One day she was in church, and the priest 
 preached that God had promised to repay a hundred- 
 fold what was given in charity. So she sold her cow 
 and gave to the poor all it fetched, being covetous 
 of the increase that was promised to her. One day, 
 whilst she was standing with many other poor people 
 at the bishop's door waiting for alms to be given to 
 them, the bishop himself stopped for a moment and 
 gazed upon them. And he noticed that this woman 
 was carrying a lighted candle, which made him marvel 
 greatly, thinking that perhaps she did so out of some 
 special saintliness. He had her brought to him, and 
 he questioned her as to who she was. " Alas ! " she 
 said, " I am a poor sinful woman, and I have no pro- 
 
46 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 p|rty at all but a herd of cows that are coming to 
 me." " How is that ? " asked the bishop. " I heard 
 a priest in church say that God would return a hun- 
 dred-fold that which was given in charity, so I sold 
 my cow and gave its price to the poor, for I knew that 
 God would keep His promise, so I am sure of my 
 hundred cows soon." The bishop marvelled much at 
 her simple faith, and judged that God's will had led 
 him to notice this poor woman, in order that by a 
 miracle the Scriptures might be fulfilled. So he called 
 his steward, and, to the great delight of the woman, 
 ordered him to give her a hundred cows.' 
 
 We may now return to the Castilian prince, Don 
 Juan Manuel, and to his great book El Libra de 
 Patronio. It will have been remarked that up to this 
 time the Oriental apologue or moral tale, in inferior 
 hands, did not change very greatly when it was 
 turned into Spanish. It was simple, direct, and 
 biblical. But Don Juan Manuel was one of the great 
 literary geniuses of his age, and this book of his, 
 written, be it recollected, at the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, is one of the epoch-making 
 books of the world. Apart from the brilliant, racy 
 Spanish in which it is written, the tales themselves 
 have in many cases taken a Spanish garb; the mind 
 behind them is no longer that of the simple, patriarchal 
 sage who speaks his words of wisdom in figura- 
 tive parable, but of a man of the world, who has done 
 and seen much, a keen intellect with a Spaniard's 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 47 
 
 characteristics of satire, subtlety, and floridness. The 
 first, or completed, part of the book, consists of fifty- 
 one stories, supposed to be told by the philosopher 
 Patronio to a prince (or Count Lucanor). The stories 
 afford the germs of many later ones that have become 
 popular.^ Boccaccio, who wrote only a few years later, 
 probably did not borrow directly from Juan Manuel ; 
 but the honour of being the forerunner of the real 
 modern short story must be awarded to the Spanish 
 prince. The book was enormously popular, and ver- 
 sions of it soon found their way to France and Italy, 
 and thence many of the tales drifted to England. In 
 more than one of the Canterbury Tales the influence 
 of Don Juan Manuel may be seen. Calderon, the 
 Spanish dramatist, borrowed plots from him, and of 
 course Le Sage and other similar Frenchmen told the 
 tales as their own. But the instance of most interest 
 to us is the germ of the story of Shakespeare's Taming 
 of the Shrew. It is extremely unlikely that Shake- 
 speare can have had the story direct, but long before 
 his time the tales of Juan Manuel had been trans- 
 lated, adapted, and copied extensively in France and 
 Italy; and there is no difficulty whatever in believing 
 that the following story from Count Lucanor is the 
 
 ' Don Juan Manuel's tales are clearly all from Oriental sources, 
 though many of them cannot now be traced to the originals. Four of 
 them are evidently taken from Kalila and Dimna, two from Disciplina 
 Clericalis, by the converted Jew of Huesca, Rabbi Moses Sephardi, 
 several from Al Makkari, and one from the Book of Punishments by 
 Sancho the Brave. 
 
48 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Origin, indirectly at least, of the Taming of the 
 Shrew. 
 
 After detailing the circumstances that led up to the 
 marriage of the young Moor with the termagant, the 
 story continues thus : — 
 
 ' Now, being left alone, the young couple sat down 
 to supper, when the bridegroom, looking behind him, 
 saw his mastiff, and said to him, "Bring me water 
 wherein to wash my hands." The dog, of course, 
 took no notice of this command, so the young man 
 became angry and ordered the dog, more harshly 
 than before, to bring him water for his hands» But 
 still the dog heeded not, and his master rose in a 
 great fury, drawing his sword and attacking the dog 
 cruelly. The poor animal tried to escape, but find- 
 ing no retreat, jumped upon the table and then to the 
 hearth, his master still pursuing him until at last he 
 caught him, hacked off his head and paws, and 
 slashed the body into strips, covering everything with 
 blood. Then, raging and bloodstained, the bride- 
 groom returned to the table, and looking round saw a 
 cat. "Bring me water for my hands," he cried loudly 
 to the cat, who heeded him not. " What, false caitiff," 
 he cried, "do you not see how I treated the mastiff 
 for disobeying me? If you do not do as I tell you 
 immediately, I will serve you the same." The poor 
 cat stared innocently, taking no notice, and the 
 master seizing him dashed him against the wall and 
 killed him. Still roaring with fury he again took 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 49 
 
 his seat at table, looking about him as if to find 
 some other creature to attack, whilst his wife, think- 
 ing he had taken leave of his senses, held her peace. 
 Soon ■ his eyes caught his horse, the only one he 
 had, and he called fiercely to him an order to bring 
 water for his hands. The animal did not obey him, 
 and he called out in a rage, " How is this ? Think 
 you that because I have no other horse you can 
 dare to disobey me? Your fate shall be the same 
 as that of the others : no creature living shall dis- 
 regard my commands and escape my vengeance." 
 Saying this he struck off the horse's head and hacked 
 the body to pieces. 
 
 ' When the wife saw this, knowing he had no other 
 horse, she felt that he was really in earnest, and 
 was dreadfully frightened. He again sat down to 
 table raging and dripping with blood as he was, 
 swearing that he would kill a thousand horses, or 
 even men or women, if they dared to disobey him. 
 Holding his bloody sword in his hand he glared 
 around until, fixing his eyes upon his wife, he ordered 
 her to bring him water to wash his hands. She, ex- 
 pecting no other fate than to be cut to pieces if she 
 demurred, immediately rose and brought him the 
 water. " Ha ! thank God, you have brought it," he 
 said ; " if not, I was so irritated by these senseless 
 brutes, I should have served you the same." He 
 afterwards ordered her to serve him with meat. 
 She complained ; but he warned her in a threatening 
 
 D 
 
so SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ftjne of voice to take care, as he felt as if he was 
 going mad. Thus passed the night, she not daring 
 to speak, but meekly obeying all his orders. After 
 letting her sleep for a short time he said to her, 
 " Get up ; I have been so much annoyed that I can- 
 not sleep ; take care that nothing is allowed to 
 disturb me, and in the meantime prepare for me a 
 good meal." 
 
 ' While it was yet early the following morning, the 
 fathers and mothers and other relatives came stealthily 
 to the door of the bride and bridegroom, and hear- 
 ing no movement feared that the young man was 
 either dead or badly wounded ; and they became 
 still more alarmed when the bride came to the door 
 alone. She, seeing them, went tremblingly on tip- 
 toe towards them, and exclaimed in accents of fear, 
 "What do ye, ye traitors? Dare not approach the 
 gate ; hold your peace and make no sound, for if 
 you wake him we are all as good as dead ! " When 
 they heard this they marvelled greatly, and on learn- 
 ing what had passed the night before, they esteemed 
 highly the young man who had made so good a 
 beginning in the management of his house. The 
 wife from that day grew docile and complaisant, and 
 they led a very happy life.' 
 
 Although the machinery of these tales is similar 
 to that of the other collections I have mentioned — 
 namely, the didactic sage that teaches a young prince 
 by fables, it is plain that here the story rather than 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 51 
 
 the applicatron that follows it is the main point, the 
 moral being confined to a note at the end saying 
 that Count Lucanor was pleased with the lesson read 
 to him by Patronio ; and as Don Juan found the 
 example a good one he had set it down in his book 
 with this verse, and then follows a couplet enshrin- 
 ing the moral. It will be useful to compare the 
 manner of Don Juan Manuel with that of Chaucer. 
 It will be noticed that in each case the presentation 
 is racy and pergonal, and though the works differ as 
 widely as the personalities of the authors, it is evident 
 throughout that the fashion of the story had reached 
 Chaucer from a source where the influence of Don 
 Juan Manuel had been strong. The Spanish Oriental 
 apologue with its applied lesson was the indirect in- 
 spiration, rather than the Italian story without a 
 moral, which had come down from the classic authors, 
 and had been shorn of its application in the descent. 
 
 Another curious instance of the international ex- 
 change of these stories, and the prevailing fashion 
 for them in all countries at the time, is the case of a 
 book called El Libra de los Gates, a most popular book 
 of moral apologues which was produced in Spanish 
 in the early fourteenth century, but is a transla- 
 tion of a certain collection written in Latin by an 
 English monk named Odo of Cheriton. Where he 
 found his inspiration one knows not, but it is pro- 
 bable that it was from the Latin. Anyhow, the 
 Book of the Cats, which is the name of the Spanish 
 
52 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 version, is extremely Spanish, though quite Oriental 
 in the insistence upon the moral of each story. One 
 story relates how a man came upon another who 
 was ploughing and had yoked some beetles to his 
 plough as well as the oxen. In reply to the surprise 
 expressed at this, the ploughman says that every 
 little helps. But the moral is that when the plough- 
 ing was done and the beetles unyoked they obstin- 
 ately refused to return home to the comfort of the 
 farmhouse with the man and his oxen, but preferred 
 to stay in the field. Just, so the moral runs, like some 
 men who, though they may have been chastised by 
 God, prefer to remain in their sin rather than return to 
 goodness. As a specimen of this class of story, which 
 formed a large part of the reading of the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, one other short apologue from 
 this Book of the Cats may be quoted, showing the 
 transformation of the Oriental apologue after it had 
 passed through a Spanish as well as an English 
 medium. ' In a certain convent there was a cat 
 which had killed all the mice in the house but one, 
 which was a very big one she never could get hold 
 of The cat mused in what manner she might be- 
 guile the mouse and kill him ; and she thought so long 
 and deeply that at last she made up her mind that 
 she must take the veil, and, clothed in a nun's garb, 
 take her seat at the table with the rest. So she 
 did as she had thought, and the mouse when he saw 
 the cat demurely eating with the nuns rejoiced greatly. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 53 
 
 thinking that since the cat had now become a 
 religious sister she would do him no harm. Mr. 
 Mouse came and frolicked about where the nuns 
 were eating; and the cat turned up the whites of 
 her eyes as one who had abandoned all earthly 
 vanities and follies. When the mouse saw how peace- 
 ful and pious her countenance looked, he ventured 
 nearer and nearer in his play ; but once when the 
 cat saw him near enough she pounced upon him with 
 her claws and began to choke him. So the mouse 
 cried out : " Fie ! thou a nun, to be so cruel as to 
 want to kill me." Whereupon the cat replied : " Think 
 not thy cries will make me let thee go ; for know, my 
 son, that when it suits me I am a nun, and when I 
 like I am a lay sister." ' 
 
 Odo of Cheriton was not the only Englishman 
 whose works were turned into Spanish in these early 
 times. There was one Roger Hoveden in the 
 twelfth century who wrote in Latin a book of 
 didactic form, and of this book there is in the Escorial 
 Library a Spanish translation -of the fourteenth 
 century called El Espejo de Legos {The Layman's 
 Mirror), and in the chapter upon pastoral literature 
 it will be shown that John Gower's famous Confessio 
 Amantis in English was also translated late in the 
 fourteenth century into Spanish. 
 
 Thus we have in Spain, and percolating thence 
 through Europe, from the thirteenth century onward, 
 a great mass of didactic and proverbial literature in 
 
54 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 moire immediate touch with the original Oriental 
 sources than was the similar literature of the Italian 
 renaissance, which drew its inspiration through earlier 
 Greek and Latin adaptations. But even the Italian 
 forms were partly coloured by Spanish Orientalism. 
 The Prince of Machiavelli, the Cortegiano of Cas- 
 tiglione, the Maxims of. State of Botero, and many 
 other similar works intended for the instruction of 
 young Italian princes, and popular throughout Europe 
 as the quintessence of wisdom, are clearly inspired 
 by the similar works in Spanish already mentioned. 
 All this, of course indirectly, influenced English 
 literature, in common with others. But there came 
 a time in the sixteenth century when the influence 
 of Spanish thought and form over English letters was 
 direct and extensive. 
 
 The coming of Catharine of Aragon to England 
 brought hither Spanish bishops, professors, and 
 courtiers with Spanish books and modes of thought, 
 though Latin was the tongue in which they mostly 
 wrote and spoke in England. One of them, the 
 famous Latinist Luis Vives, who was the great friend 
 of Sir Thomas More, a professor at Oxford and tutor 
 to Mary, Queen of England, wrote all his books in 
 Latin, and two of them particularly had an immense 
 popularity when they were translated into English by 
 Sir Richard Moryson and Richard Hyrde. The most 
 famous of them was called Instruction of a Christian 
 Woman, which was published in English by Hyrde in 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 55 
 
 1540, and ran through at least four editions before the 
 end of the century. The Introduction to Wisdom, 
 translated by Moryson, was also very popular in Eng- 
 land ; and together these books, and above all Vives's 
 direct personal influence on English scholars, did 
 much to introduce the fashion of Spanish didacticism 
 into the courts of the Tudors. But there was another 
 man whose influence was much greater everywhere, 
 and especially so in England, even than that of Vives. 
 This was Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of Mondonedo, 
 the Confessor of the Emperor Charles V. To modern 
 readers that influence appears to be quite inexplicable 
 at first sight, for the books of his which were such a 
 rage in England are certainly not wiser than the long 
 series of didactic works that we have already noticed. 
 After saying something of the books themselves, it 
 may be possible, however, to suggest a reason for their 
 popularity other than the subject-matter they contain. 
 The most famous of these books was in the form of 
 a literary mystification, and was called The Dial of 
 Princes, though subsequently it became better known 
 as The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius. Guevara 
 pretended to have found certain manuscripts of the 
 Spanish Caesar, and upon them he bases his book — a 
 set of moral apologues, infinitely tedious they seem 
 to us now, in which Marcus Aurelius is made to show 
 his wisdom, by improving the occasion whenever 
 possible, and reading a lesson suggested by events. 
 The book was considered in England as the fine 
 
56 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 (j^intessence of political subtlety, and its maxims were 
 collected and repeated in the court of Elizabeth by 
 every one who aspired to literary taste. The first man 
 of note to set the fashion of Guevara in England was 
 Lord Berners, who translated the Book of Marcus 
 Aurelius through a French version in 1534. Then Sir 
 Francis Bryan, Henry Vlll.'s favourite, translated 
 another of Guevara's books called Dispraise of the 
 Life of a Courtier (Menosprecio de la Corte y Alabama 
 de la Aided), which was afterwards republished as Look- 
 ing Glassefor the Court. Thenceforward edition after 
 edition of Guevara's works was published in England. 
 The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius especially caught 
 on, and allusions to it, and extracts from it, abound in 
 Elizabethan literature. One of the stories in it, refer- 
 ring to the Serf of the Danube, was so familiar that 
 everybody in Elizabethan England was supposed to 
 understand it. For instance, in the curious Chronicle 
 of Henry VIII., written by a Spanish merchant then 
 resident in London, the author tells how a London 
 butcher came to complain to the Privy Council of the 
 enclosures of common land by the nobles, and says 
 that he evidently intended to imitate the Serf of the 
 Danube when he addressed the Senate. Casaubon, in 
 his prologue to Marcus Aurelius, truly says : ' Hardly 
 another book in the world except the Bible has been 
 so often translated and into so many tongues, or has 
 been so frequently reprinted.' It may be interesting 
 to tell in a few words what this famous story was. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 57 
 
 The plan of the Serf of the Danube part of the book 
 is to bring a noble barbarian from the banks of the 
 Danube to Rome, to complain of the oppression and 
 cruelty with which his native land is being ruled by 
 the Roman officers ; and into his mouth is put an 
 address to the Senate containing all the subtlety, 
 eloquence, boldness, and philosophy of which Guevara 
 was master. It is in its substance a great oration in 
 favour of liberty. The scene is supposed to take 
 place in the tenth year of the reign of Marcus 
 Aurelius. The emperor was ill and surrounded by 
 doctors and sages, who were deploring the decay and 
 degeneration of Rome, which they attributed to the 
 hosts of idle flatterers who surrounded the governors. 
 Marcus Aurelius then tells his tale of how the Dan- 
 ubian serf had come to Rome some years before. This 
 is how the emperor is made to describe the eloquent 
 serf: — ' His face was small, with thick lips and deeply 
 sunken dark eyes. His hair was rough and stubborn, 
 his head uncovered. He wore sandals of porcupine 
 skin, and a tunic of goat's hide, and a girdle of sedge 
 rushes confined his waist. His beard was long and 
 thick ; and his neck and chest as hairy as those of a 
 bear; and in his hand he carried an olive staff. Surely 
 when I saw him enter, I thought him to be some 
 animal in the guise of man, but when I heard him 
 speak it seemed to me that he must be one of the 
 gods.' The discourse, in the highest and most 
 pompous style of eloquence, pleads the old, old cause 
 
58 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 oS the contented peasant against the great conquering 
 empire. ' I ask you, O Romans ! what had you, bred 
 upon the banks of the Tiber, to do with us who lived 
 in humble peace by the rushing Danube? Did you 
 see us join your foes or declare our enmity to you? 
 Did the lying rumour reach you here in Rome that 
 we were seeking conquest ? Did you hear that we 
 had dared to raise our hands against our lords, and 
 bend our necks to the unvanquished barbarian ? Did 
 you send any envoy to us to ask for our love, or did 
 we send defiance unto you?' and so, after exhausting 
 possible reasons for the Roman conquest and oppres- 
 sion of his native land, the serf breaks out into an 
 impassioned appeal for freedom, his eloquence being 
 rewarded by his being given full Roman citizenship 
 and the oppression he complained of remedied. 
 
 Other chapters of this famous book tell how Marcus 
 Aurelius's wife Faustina asks him for the key of his 
 study, and the emperor improves the occasion. No 
 woman or child had ever been allowed to enter. ' I 
 would with a lighter heart,' he said, 'be robbed of 
 my treasure-chest than have my books disturbed.' 
 Faustina had set her mind upon going in, and wept, 
 and prayed, and railed in vain. The emperor replies 
 in a tremendous speech, crammed with philosophy 
 and epigrams, which, unless Roman women were 
 different from those of to-day, Faustina must have 
 thought quite inapplicable to the case, and he winds 
 up with a set of eighteen rules by which wives may 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 59 
 
 live happily with their husbands. The first is : ' A 
 husband should be patient and tolerant when his wife 
 is angry, for there is no serpent so poisonous as an 
 affronted woman.' The fourteenth is : ' The husband 
 should take care that, even if his wife is ugly, he 
 should pretend that she is beautiful ; for there is 
 nothing more likely to raise strife between them than 
 for her to think that the husband disregards her for 
 want of comeliness.' But it is to be noted that after 
 he has laid down in seventeen rules how much the 
 husband is to consider his wife, he ends rather 
 ungallantly. ' The husband ought to give way in 
 things of no importance and grant his wife her way 
 even if she is wrong, for a woman would rather be 
 acknowledged right even in a lie than have a revenue 
 of six thousand a year.' But after all this philosophy 
 Faustina had to go without the key. 
 
 Guevara's Familiar Letters was also much admired 
 and read in England. Wh^t was the reason that 
 caused this great fashion for Guevara's turgid, inferior 
 philosophy throughout Europe? It always happens, 
 and particularly in Spain, because of the vehement 
 literary floridness of the race, that any given literary 
 form becomes by familiarity trite to readers. The 
 constantly recurring commonplace phrases to describe 
 the same things become wearisome and conventional, 
 and then extravagance of diction, eccentric expres- 
 sions, compound, manufactured words, and strange 
 preciosity take the place of direct simplicity, and 
 
6o SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 are hailed as the highest of literary excellences by 
 the thoughtless. Then, unless stern good sense 
 prevails, and a pure standard is maintained by 
 some, the literature becomes artificial, overloaded, 
 and top-heavy, and falls into ridiculous bathos. 
 This is what had begun to happen in sixteenth- 
 century Spain, and Guevara's far-fetched images, and 
 platitudes clothed in extravagant language, appealed 
 to a jaded literary taste. There was really in 
 England no natural tendency that way yet, because, 
 far from being decadent, we were just entering upon 
 the most vigorous and splendid of our literary 
 epochs ; but there are always some exquisites who 
 love eccentricity and can set the fashion. This 
 is exactly what happened in Elizabeth's court with 
 regard to Guevara. The proverbial philosophy in 
 terse maxims or epigrams, culled from his writings 
 and those of others, appealed to a large class in 
 England and elsewhere, and kept alive the fashion 
 of proverbial philosophy so conspicuous in Shakespeare 
 and his contemporaries. But there was another class 
 to whom Guevara's extravagant and artificial style 
 was the principal attraction ; and the result was the 
 formation of a school which found its first expression 
 in the famous novel by John Lilly called Euphues. 
 The affected style of this book attracted disciples, 
 and euphuism was one of the literary bogies of the 
 sixteenth century. But this strange eccentricity, 
 which ran its affected course without great harm in 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 6i 
 
 England, found a firmer footing in Spain. There 
 Gongora, a poet of high rank, carried affectation to 
 an absurd length. Quevedo, whilst laughing and 
 sneering at the fashion, followed what he called the 
 Latiniparla as much as anybody. Lope de Vega 
 himself fell into the bad habit ; and by and by the 
 fertile orchard of Spanish literature was choked with 
 the weeds of affected pomposity. 
 
 Guevara's influence in England in the direction of 
 obscurity and involution of style was great, as any 
 one who reads the letters of Queen Elizabeth and 
 her imitators may see ; but it was still more remark- 
 able in fixing the fashion of the proverbial form of 
 philosophy. Bacon's Apophthegms, Lord Burghley's 
 Maxims for the Guidance of his Son, Sir Walter 
 Raleigh's Maxims of State, Sir Francis Walsingham's 
 Legacy, and a dozen other similar works of the period 
 which will occur to the reader, prove how universally 
 the minds of scholars and statesmen at the time 
 ran upon the Spanish form of thought derived from 
 the sententious learning of Hebrews and Arabs re- 
 introduced to modern Europe through Moslem Spain. 
 Perhaps a more direct influence even than Guevara 
 upon English literary fashion in the same direction, was 
 that of the exiled minister of Philip II., Antonio Perez, 
 who wrote his books and letters in his extravagantly 
 affected style at Essex House in the Strand. He 
 too was so much in love with his own gems of 
 wisdom that he culled them himself from his various 
 
62 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Dooks and letters, and printed them as an addenda 
 to his Relations. Perez was the pet for a time of 
 the greatest literary set in England, that which sat 
 under the shade of Essex and the Bacons, and his 
 affected wit and preciosity, as well as his sententious 
 philosophy, set its mark upon most of the English 
 writing of the end of the sixteenth century, side by 
 side with the similar impress produced by the books 
 of his countryman Antonio de Guevara. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CRONICAS, HISTORIES, AND RECORDS OF 
 PERSONAL ADVENTURE 
 
 The Spaniard is, and always has been, personally the 
 most independent of all Europeans. The accident 
 of poverty or lowly station does not, in the mind 
 of the average Spaniard affected by it, connote any 
 personal inferiority on his own part; and whatever 
 political or social changes may have been effected 
 in the country, the base principle of Spanish ethics 
 never has changed, and never will change, to any 
 great degree ; namely, that one free man is as good 
 as another under a supreme power, great and sacred 
 enough to dwarf all minor distinctions, whilst each 
 individual, high or low, rich or poor, in some sort 
 focusses upon himself the admiring regards of his 
 Maker. This proud mysticism, and the conviction 
 of individual centralisation natural to the Celt- 
 Iberians, was greatly strengthened by the long 
 centuries of the reconquest over the Moors, which 
 owed its principal impetus and strength to priestly 
 incentive, urging the Christians ever forward with 
 the idea they were the chosen people to vanquish 
 
64 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 trie enemies of God and of His evangel. When the 
 learned King Alfonso X. in the thirteenth century 
 summoned to him the sages and scribes of the land 
 to form a literature in the Castilian language, and 
 when thereafter the Spanish people was seized with 
 a fever of literary production, in imitation of their 
 king, it is not so surprising as it looks at first sight, 
 that history in the Castilian language should assume 
 a form more closely connected with the doings and 
 personality of the sovereign, than was the case in 
 any other European country. Even before the time 
 of Alfonso the Learned, his father had ordered 
 Ximenez de la Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, to write 
 in Castilian his History of the Gothic Kings ; and the 
 material for the book was drawn doubtless from the 
 official records kept by order of the kings themselves 
 by churchmen. But when Alfonso the Learned set 
 about his task of compiling a History of Spain down 
 to his own accession, he broke through a tradition 
 that had up to that time been universal ; namely, 
 that records of events should be written by clergy- 
 men, mostly monks. Thenceforward the chroniclers 
 of the Spanish kings were high palace officials, with 
 the rank of chancellors, knights and nobles, who 
 themselves took active part in the stirring scenes 
 they recorded. 
 
 How differently would such a man, a literary noble 
 layman, in a bookish court, record the history of his 
 time than would a monk in his cell, depending upon 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 65 
 
 old charters, oflScial diaries, and personal recollections 
 for his information. Glance for a moment at the 
 chronicles and early histories of our own land, and 
 see how great is the difference between the two 
 classes of historians. Take the Saxon Chronicle, as 
 it is called, of which the main portion was written 
 in the tenth century. There the king, of course, is 
 mentioned incidentally, for he was the most important 
 person in the realm ; but the events in the Chronicle 
 are not grouped around the personality of the king 
 in any way. At random I have translated from the 
 Saxon Chronicle, the entries for five successive years, 
 which will explain the distinction : — 
 
 829. This year died Archbishop Wulfred ; and 
 Abbot Fologild was afterwards chosen to the See 
 on the 25th April, and consecrated on Sunday the 
 nth June. On the 13th of August he was dead. 
 
 830. This year Coelnoth was chosen Archbishop on 
 the death of Abbot Fologild. 
 
 831. This year Archbishop Coelnoth received the 
 pall. 
 
 832. This year the heathen men overran the Isle 
 of Sheppy. 
 
 833. This year fought King Egbert with thirty- 
 five pirates at Chartmouth, where a great slaughter 
 was made, and the Danes remained masters of the 
 field. Two bishops, Hereford and Wigan, and two 
 aldermen, Dudda and Omond, died in this year. 
 
 Anyone can tell at a glance that a churchman must 
 
 E 
 
66 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 have written this, and that the personal actions of the 
 king are not the central point of the history. Take 
 two other very early English monkish chroniclers, 
 Gildas and Bede. Although the latter was in advance 
 of his age, and really had an idea of writing a broader 
 narrative than could be gathered from his monas- 
 tery records, and sets down the acts of kings when 
 they come into his story, his chronicle is far more 
 concerned with religious affairs than with royal 
 adventures ; whilst that of Gildas is almost confined 
 to ecclesiastical matters. It is true that two chroniclers 
 in the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth and 
 William of Malmesbury, wrote professedly chronicles 
 of kings. But Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia 
 Britonum was merely a translation of an ancient 
 Welsh or Celtic book, written under the Roman 
 domination of Britain ; and the character of the native 
 Britons was like that of the Spaniards, with whom 
 they were akin, mystically devoted to a sovereign 
 religiously sanctified, quite different from the Saxon 
 and Norman idea of a military chief ruling by consent 
 of armed nobles. William of Malmesbury, who wrote 
 his Gesta Regum Anglorum about 1135, and depended 
 for most of his facts of early times upon previous 
 narrators, was a man of genius who tried, like Bede 
 (whom he copied), to write a real history of the times ; 
 and it was obviously the most convenient way to tell 
 his national events by reigns of kings. But even he 
 does not make the personal adventures or movements 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 67 
 
 of the king his central point, and constantly strays 
 far away from the king altogether to tell some 
 legendary tale or old prophecy, to give an account of 
 St. Dunstan, to describe the great abbey of Glaston- 
 bury, or to copy old monastic charters. These 
 chroniclers bring us down almost to the time when 
 the real kingly chronicle took root in Spain. Later 
 on we shall see how English chroniclers of the four- 
 teenth century and after were influenced, as I believe, 
 by the more directly personal heroic chronicle of the 
 acts of sovereigns as the central point of historical 
 narrative, which was so fashionable in Spain for two 
 centuries after the days of Alfonso the Learned. 
 
 Alfonso's grandiose but impracticable plan of 
 writing a universal history from the Creation to his 
 own times, remains mainly as a monument of the 
 vastness of his ambition, for no trustworthy material 
 existed for its realisation ; but his History of Spain 
 was a really creditable attempt to produce a faithful 
 record of events. In the compilation of such a book 
 at the instance of a sovereign, the authors would 
 naturally seek their information from palace records, 
 either in the original or in the writings of previous 
 compilers who had had access to them. We have it 
 on the authority of another chronicler who lived some 
 years afterwards, and of whom I shall speak at length 
 presently, that ' King Alfonso X., wishing that the 
 deeds of the kings before him should be set down, 
 ordered the records to be searched, and found that 
 
68 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the acts of the kings from the coming of the Goths to 
 the fall of Don Rodrigo, the last Gothic king, and 
 from Don Pelayo to Don Ferdinand, had been written 
 in the books of the Privy Chamber.' These sources, 
 together with court traditions and juglars' recitations, 
 furnished Alfonso X. with the material of his first 
 chronicle or History of Spain. It is obvious that a 
 history drawn from such founts must necessarily 
 develop on heroic personal lines with the monarch as 
 the central figure; quite different from the history 
 growing out of a churchman's records, where ecclesi- 
 astical personages and affairs would loom large, and 
 where battles, invasions, famines, and pageants would 
 probably be mentioned, with the sovereign as an actor 
 in them ; but where the king would not be followed 
 from day to day, as the centre from which events 
 radiated. At the very birth, therefore, of Spanish 
 historical writing, it assumed a knightly and heroic 
 personal form quite different from that of other 
 countries. It was another instance where the influ- 
 ence of the mystical and devotional Celt-Iberian 
 character was seen ; and another new cast back to the 
 Hebrew, Persian, and early classical tradition, which 
 made the king the centre of all movement, as you may 
 see it was by the Book of Kings in the Bible, and by 
 the works of Herodotus and Josephus. The example 
 of the learned king made culture fashionable in Spain ; 
 and princes and nobles vied with each other during 
 the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in writing 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 69 
 
 verses, didactic treatises, and sets of apologues, pro- 
 verbs, and sentences, such as those mentioned in the 
 previous chapter. Don Juan Manuel, the nephew of 
 the king, was the greatest litterateur of his time ; the 
 king's brother, Don Fadrique, wrote several books ; 
 the learned king's son, Don Sancho the Brave, wrote 
 and inspired the important works I have mentioned ; 
 and at a period when, in England at least, a knight or 
 a noble scorned the art of reading and writing as only 
 fit for a shaveling monk, the gentlemen of Spain — not 
 ecclesiastics — were busy creating a national literature. 
 Even in the other Spanish kingdom of Aragon the 
 nephew of Alfonso the Learned, the great James the 
 Conqueror, was caught by the infection of the kingly 
 chronicle, and wrote a vigorous and heroic record of 
 his own reign. 
 
 Don Juan Manuel's chronicles are merely summaries 
 or abbreviations of Alfonso's /fw^orj/ o/5/fl:/«; and it 
 was left to the initiative of Alfonso XI. (1297-1350), 
 the learned king's great-grandson, to continue the 
 compilation of the kingly chronicles. He for the first 
 time appointed a regular royal chronicler, a high state 
 oiificial and noble with the rank of chancellor. The 
 man appointed was in all probability Fernan Sanchez 
 de Tobar, and at the command of the king he under- 
 took to write a history of the kings from the death of 
 St. Ferdinand (1252), when Alfonso X.'s chronicle had 
 ended, down to his own day ; namely, the reigns of 
 Alfonso the Learned, King Sancho, his son. King 
 
70 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Ferdinand IV., his grandson, and Alfonso XI. himself 
 — in all, about eighty years. Some short chapters of 
 this and succeeding chronicles may be quoted in order 
 that we may follow the development, or rather the 
 degeneration, of the style. The chronicle written by 
 Alfonso the Learned had been terse, and evidently 
 sincere, with a desire to record the deeds of the kings 
 plainly from official sources or from trustworthy 
 knowledge. That this was still the influence under 
 which Sanchez de Tobar began his work at the 
 instance of Alfonso xi. is evident from the preamble 
 of his chronicle: — 
 
 " By many means the ancient sages thought well 
 that the things which were said and done in bygone 
 times should be made known, both because they were 
 important in themselves, and that they might serve as 
 examples for those who came afterwards, for all time 
 to come. This was done also for the science of 
 astronomy and other sciences, to relate the stories of 
 the prophets, the coming of Christ, and the laws of 
 God. It is therefore desirable that the deeds of the 
 kings who are the lieutenants of God on earth should 
 also be written down, especially those of the kings of 
 Castile and Leon, who by the decrees of the Almighty, 
 and for the increase of the Holy Catholic Faith, strove 
 so worthily and faced so many perils in the struggle 
 against the Moors. The most noble King Alfonso X., 
 wishing that the deeds of the kings before him should 
 be set down, ordered the old records to be searched. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 71 
 
 and found that the deeds of the kings from the time 
 of the Goths to the fall of Don Roderick, and those 
 from Don Pelayo to St. Ferdinand, had been written 
 in the books of the Privy Chamber. As many deeds 
 have been done by the kings since then which have 
 not been chronicled, and as Don Alfonso XI. thought 
 that these worthy deeds were falling into oblivion, 
 he determined that the things that befell in the time 
 of his great-grandfather, the learned king, his grand- 
 father King Sancho, and his father Don Ferdinand, 
 should be written down in this book so that posterity 
 should know what had happened in those reigns." 
 
 When Alfonso the Learned endeavoured to get 
 himself elected Emperor of the West in 1275 he left 
 his second son, Sancho, as his regent during his 
 absence from Spain. The eldest son, Ferdinand, had 
 died, leaving two sons, the Infantes of La Cerda, as 
 they were called. According to the Roman law these 
 children were the heirs to the crown, but the Gothic 
 elective principle, and the Oriental tradition of the 
 rights of the oldest surviving member of the 
 family, were still strong ; and Sancho during his 
 father's absence got the nobles around him to fight 
 the Moors, and obtained their support to his claim to 
 the heirship. This is how Sanchez de Tobar tells 
 what happened thereupon : — 
 
 ^ How the king (i.e. Alfonso X.) returned from the 
 Empire, and how he mustered his people to consider 
 the demands of Don Sancho. 
 
72 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 " In the twenty- fourth year of the reign of this king 
 {i.e. 1276), the King Don Alfonso arrived at Requena, 
 having come through the realm of Valencia, and so 
 passed by Cuenca to Alcald de Henares. There he 
 learnt that the Infante Don Sancho, his son, and the 
 nobles, had defended the country well in his absence, 
 and he much rejoiced at what Don Sancho had done. 
 He had always cherished him as a son, but thence- 
 forward he loved him more than ever. He departed 
 towards Camarena, near Toledo, where he remained 
 for the greater part of the year, as he did not choose 
 to enter the city, but sent word to Don Sancho that 
 he had come. As he had no means of making war 
 and was ignorant of the state of his realm, he tried to 
 make peace with Aben Yusuf, and with the King of 
 Granada. Aben Yusuf rejoiced thereat, for the 
 Christian fleet that Don Sancho had sent to the coast 
 had cut off the Moor's supplies and his people were 
 nearly starving, and also because he coveted the ports 
 of Algeciras and Tarifa, which he then held and 
 wished to keep, to enable him to take ship whenever 
 it pleased him. He also induced him to join in the 
 two years' truce which he signed with Don Alfonso. 
 Thereupon the Infante Don Sancho and the nobles 
 who were with him went to Toledo 'to see the king, 
 and when they were all assembled, Don Lope Diaz 
 spoke to them all frankly in the name of Don Sancho, 
 asking them to demand of the king that Don Sancho 
 should inherit the crown after his father's death. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 73 
 
 as they were all satisfied with what the son had 
 done during the king's absence. And as Don Sancho 
 was the eldest (living) son, they agreed to this; and 
 Don Lope Diaz spoke to the king, saying how well 
 Don Sancho had acted in his absence in defending 
 the honour of the realm and protecting it from the 
 Moors, after the Infante Don Ferdinand had died. 
 He said that Don Sancho was now the eldest son 
 living, and that all the assembly were agreed in 
 praying the king to make him his heir. He prayed 
 that the king would send to all the cities, ordering 
 them to send representatives with powers to agree 
 to this. It would be, said he, a favour to Don 
 Sancho, but a greater favour to his own state . and 
 authority, as well as filling the hearts of his people 
 with joy at Don Sancho's elevation. The king 
 replied that he dearly loved and esteemed Don 
 Sancho, who was well fitted to be a king, but he 
 must take time to consider their petition, and would 
 give them an answer later. So he summoned the 
 Infante Don Manuel and the rest of his council, to 
 tell them what Don Lope had said, and ask their 
 advice thereupon. All the councillors present mur- 
 mured, and doubted much what advice to give. 
 Then up and spake Don Manuel thus : Senor, the 
 tree of kingship may not be blighted by arrange- 
 ments thus, nor can he be disinherited who by 
 Nature's self is chosen for the crown. If the first- 
 born die, the inheritance must pass to his children 
 
74 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 tone by one. There are three things that no com- 
 promise can change : the law, the king, and the state ; 
 and if in any of them an alteration be made, the 
 act is illegal and may not be respected. And in 
 the accounts that exist of this council, there is no 
 record of more words than these having been spoken. 
 As soon as the king learned that the truce had 
 been signed with the Moors, he travelled to Segovia 
 accompanied by his nobles. From thence he sent 
 orders to the towns to send their representatives to 
 Segovia fully authorised to pay homage to Don 
 Sancho as heir to the crown." 
 
 The next chapter tells ,jn a similar direct style the 
 story of the famous Cortes of Segovia, in which 
 Sancho's usurpation was confirmed by the conni- 
 vance of the feeble king ; the escape of Alfonso's wife, 
 Violante of Aragon, with the rightful child heirs and 
 their mother, Blanche of France ; and the execution 
 of some of the Castilian nobles who had conspired 
 in their favour. But the chapter already given will 
 suffice as a specimen of the arid simplicity of the 
 narrative. Yet compared with the more impersonal 
 chronicle of Alfonso x. himself, written three-quarters 
 of a century earlier, the development in individual 
 interest is remarkable. The intensely individual 
 character of the Spaniard was already manifesting 
 itself, and the court chronicler, a layman and an 
 aristocrat, was even thus early developing the 
 chivalric, romantic element in history, which differ- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 75 
 
 entiated the Spanish form from that which grew out 
 of monastic records in other countries. 
 
 The lines in which the same chronicler tells of the 
 death of King Sancho, demonstrate how personal 
 and vivid the relation became when the events related 
 happened within the observation of the writer : — 
 
 "And Don Nuno Gonzalez, son of Don Juan Nunez, 
 who was there, and other nobles, with all the gentry 
 and people of Toledo, made very great lamentation ; 
 and you or any other man could not think how 
 great it was. And the Archbishop Don Gonzalo 
 with all the clergy, and with the priestly knights and 
 all the nobles, took the body on the same day in 
 the morning, and they carried it to the church of 
 Santa Maria in Toledo, and the Infante Don Enrique 
 and Don Nuno, with the queen, made very great 
 lamentation. And the Archbishop straightway said 
 mass, and when it was finished, they interred the 
 body in a stone monument which he had ordered to 
 be made during his lifetime." 
 
 This, artless as it is, plainly discloses the spectator 
 and courtier, to whom the person of the sovereign 
 is the centre of interest. In the later chronicle by 
 the same writer, written after the death of Alfonso xi. 
 (1350) by the order of Henry II., the personal note 
 is carried still further. The chronicler is telling how 
 the young king Alfonso XI., at the age of fourteen, threw 
 off the tutelage of his uncle Don Manuel by a coup 
 d'etat, and took the government into his own hands : — 
 
76 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ' How the king set up his household, and what men 
 he took for his councillors, and what he did after- 
 wards! 
 
 "In the realm there were two gentlemen who have 
 already been mentioned in this history. One of 
 them was a Castilian called Garcilaso de la Vega, 
 and the other a Leonese whose name was Alvar 
 Nunez de Osorio. Both of them were able and 
 worthy men in all things. Before the king had 
 reached his fourteenth year, and had left Valladolid, 
 these two gentlemen had caused him to be spoken 
 to on their behalf, and they also sought some plan 
 by which they might gain audience of the king. 
 They agreed when the king should leave Valladolid 
 they would meet him on the borders of their lord- 
 ships. As soon as the king attained his fourteenth 
 year and left Valladolid, they did as they had agreed ; 
 and, although the king knew that they and their 
 bands had harried the land, their wisdom was great, 
 and he admitted them to his council. And inasmuch 
 as for many years it had been the custom for kings 
 of Castile to have in their households Jews as 
 treasurers, the king at the instance of his uncle, Don 
 Felipe, took for his almajar (treasurer) one Yusuf 
 de Ecija, who had a great place in the household 
 and much power in the kingdom by the king's favour 
 to him." Then follows an account of the organisation 
 of the council, and Alfonso's speech to the nobles and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 77 
 
 representatives, saying that he would take the govern- 
 ment in his own hands, reduce taxes, reinforce the 
 border castles, and go through the realm on a justice 
 assize. — Chronicle of Alfonso XI. 
 
 These chronicles, you will observe, were so far un- 
 adorned records of royal adventure, but abounding 
 in personal interest, and quite different in tone from 
 the monkish and priestly chronicles that at the same 
 time were being produced in England. But a genius 
 was at hand who was able to make the kingly 
 chronicle interesting as history, whilst still retaining 
 its heroic and personal character. I shall dwell upon 
 this historian at some length, because I conceive 
 that his example, or at least the same spirit that 
 animated him, was soon afterwards felt in the writing 
 of English and French history. 
 
 The man to whom I refer was the chancellor and 
 official chronicler of Peter the Cruel and Henry 11., 
 Pedro Lopez de Ayala (i 332-1407). He was a noble 
 of very high lineage, of great powers of observation, 
 a keen satirist, and a charming writer in prose and 
 verse. He had studied classic models, especially Livy, 
 and was learned in other tongues than his own. 
 His career was as extraordinary as his talent. A 
 friend and favourite of Peter the Cruel, he deserted 
 him in the great civil war which ended in the triumph 
 of the king's bastard brother, Henry of Trastamare. 
 He was in the thick of the fighting when the Black 
 Prince and all the chivalry of England were battling 
 
78 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 on the plains of Castile for the evil cause of Peter 
 the Murderer. It was said, indeed, that when Lopez 
 de Ayala was taken prisoner by our Plantagenet 
 he was carried to England, where he wrote some of 
 his works. This I do not believe ; but that he was 
 held prisoner by the English in Gascony is fairly 
 well established. Under four kings Lopez de Ayala 
 served, and he saw all that two eyes with a big brain 
 behind them could see through a long life in courts 
 and on battlefields. He witnessed and recorded not 
 only the war of Peter the Cruel against his brothers, 
 but the marriage of Peter the Cruel's daughter to John 
 of Gaunt, and the long series of wars which followed 
 the Duke of Lancaster's claim to the crowns of 
 Castile in the right of his wife. He saw the final 
 settlement of the struggle by the marriage of an 
 English princess, Catharine of Lancaster, to the king 
 of Castile, and English knights and nobles received 
 at her court with open arms. This was the man who 
 gilded the kingly Chronicle of Spain with his own 
 genius, making of the records of four monarchs not 
 dry statements of royal movements, but vivid repre- 
 sentations of the events that passed around the king. 
 A few specimens of Lopez de Ayala's prose may be 
 quoted, in order that we may see, first, how it 
 influenced the writing of history outside Spain, and 
 secondly how, by its very brilliance, it marks in one 
 direction a decline. This is how Lopez de Ayala 
 tells of the marriage of faithless Peter the Cruel with 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 79 
 
 his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, and his prompt desertion 
 of her for his mistress Maria de Padilla : — 
 
 " When these things had passed, the King Don Pedro 
 celebrated his nuptials with Dona Bla^ca at St. Mary's 
 at Valladolid. There was much rejoicing, with brave 
 jousts and tournaments. And on that day Don Pedro 
 and his bride were dressed in garments of gold and silver 
 tissue lined with ermine, and they were mounted on 
 white chargers. The best man to the king was Don 
 Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque, and the queen was given 
 away by Queen Leonora of Aragon, who rode upon a 
 mule and was dressed in white woollen cloth with grey 
 feathers. By the side of Queen Blanca there walked, 
 holding the reins of her palfrey. Count Enrique [here 
 there follows a long list of nobles]. The Infante Don 
 Ferdinand of Aragon held the reins of Queen Dona 
 Leonora, his mother, whilst the king's mother, the 
 Queen Dona Maria, rode on a mule led by the Infante 
 Don Juan of Aragon, she being dressed in white silk 
 brocade trimmed with fur and feathers," — and so on, 
 with a description of the dress, or some characteristic 
 touch of all the members of the court. 
 
 "On the Wednesday after the wedding, the king 
 dined in his palace, which was the house of the Abbot 
 of Santander, where he was staying, near to the 
 monastery that is now called the Huelgas. He was 
 alone and in private, seated at table, when his 
 mother, Dona Maria, and his aunt. Queen Dona 
 Leonora, entered the chamber weeping bitterly. The 
 
8o SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 king rose, and the queens took him aside and said : 
 Sir, to our grief we have been told that you are going 
 away at once to join Dona Maria de Padilla, and we 
 beseech you not to do so." Here follows a long 
 speech, setting forth how wrong such a course would 
 be, and how it would offend everybody, and especially 
 the king of France ; and the narrative continues : " The 
 king assured them that he had no such intention, and 
 would not go away. So the two queens left him, 
 though they did not believe what he said ; and they 
 knew he was going away, though they were powerless 
 to stop him." 
 
 More spirited still is the story told by Lopez de 
 Ayala of Peter the Cruel's murder by his brother, the 
 bastard pretender, Henry of Trastamare. 
 
 ' How Don Pedro sallied from Montiel and died! 
 
 " When Don Enrique had defeated the enemy at 
 Montiel and saw that Don Pedro had taken refuge in 
 the castle of Montiel, he took great care to surround 
 the castle with stone parapets, and posted guards by 
 night and day all about, in order to prevent the escape 
 of Don Pedro. In the castle with Don Pedro there 
 was a gentleman called Rodriguez de Sanabria. And 
 Rodriguez came out in the night to Mosen Beltran, 
 who commanded the guard on the side of the camp 
 where Rodriguez and his band were stationed,and spoke 
 to him thus: "Seflor Beltran, Don Pedro, my master, 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 8i 
 
 ordered me to speak to you, and to say that you were 
 always a noble gentleman, who prided yourself upon 
 doing great deeds and worthy. You see the sore strait 
 in which he is, and he bids me tell you that, if you 
 will get him away from here and place him in safety 
 and you will keep faithful to him, he will give you the 
 towns of Saria, Almazan, Atienza, Monteagudo, Deza, 
 and Seron for you and your heirs for ever, and he will 
 also give you 200,000 gold Castilian doubloons as 
 well. I, on my own part, pray you heartily to do this, 
 for the honour that will redound to you in having 
 succoured so great a king, and all Christendom 
 shall know that from your hand he has recovered 
 his realm and his life. Mosen Beltran replied to 
 Rodriguez : Friend, well you know who I am, and that 
 I owe allegiance to my native sovereign the King of 
 France, and by his orders I came hither to Spain to 
 serve King Enrique, since our enemies, the English, 
 have espoused the cause of King Pedro. I am there- 
 fore in the service of King Enrique, and am paid by 
 him, and I cannot, in honour, do anything against him 
 or his interests ; and you, on your part, ought not to 
 ask me to do such a thing. If you have ever received 
 any kindness or courtesy at my hands, I pray you not 
 to press me further. And Rodriguez answered Mosen 
 Beltran : I well understand that my proposal to you 
 may not be altogether honourable, and I can only beg 
 you now to give me your counsel on the matter. And 
 so together they went to the lodging of Mosen 
 
 F 
 
82 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Beltran, where Rodriguez dismounted from his jennet, 
 and, after a few minutes, the latter said : Come, 
 mount, it is time we were gone ; but Beltran replied 
 not a word. Don Pedro himself was hidden in the 
 lodging of Mosen Beltran, as King Enrique had been 
 told, and when Don Pedro heard that Beltran made no 
 reply, he began to doubt and to fear that the plan had 
 gone awry. So he tried to mount the jennet upon 
 which Rodriguez had come and escape, but one of 
 Mosen Beltran's men held him, and said : Wait a bit," 
 and so they prevented him from going. . . . When the 
 king, Don Enrique, learnt that Don Pedro had been 
 stopped in the lodging of Mosen Beltran, he was all 
 ready armed from head to foot, with his helmet on his 
 head, awaiting the news. And so he came to the 
 lodging of Mosen Beltran, and as soon as he entered 
 he came up close to Don Pedro, whom he did not 
 know, for he had not seen him for a long time. And one 
 of Mosen Beltran's men cried out to him : Take care, 
 that is your enemy. But King Enrique still doubted 
 that this was true; and it is said that King Pedro 
 himself cried out twice. It is I ! it is I ! And then 
 Don Enrique knew him, and he wounded him in the 
 face with a dagger, and they say that both kings in 
 the struggle fell to the ground, and whilst they 
 wrestled on the ground King Enrique struck other 
 wounds in his brother. And so Don Pedro, the king, 
 died thus on the 23rd March of this year (1369). And 
 soon there was a great outcry in the camp that the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 83 
 
 king, Don Pedro, had escaped from Montiel ; but soon 
 we learnt that he was dead." 
 
 It will be remarked how much more vivid this 
 presentation is than the earlier chronicles I have 
 quoted before. Here the king, or kings, are the centre, 
 it is true ; but you get the background as well. You 
 can see the camp outside the castle, the French gentle- 
 man in King Henry's army in command of one side of 
 the besieging forces. You can see first the Spanish 
 gentleman approaching him with offers of a bribe, and 
 whilst he was thus talking, the despairing King Pedro 
 and his faithful band of nobles themselves leaving the 
 castle, and, as a last hope, going to the Frenchman's 
 tent. Then the murderous struggle between the two 
 brothers, and Peter the Cruel lying dead, whilst the 
 fratricide bastard of Trastamare is hailed as the 
 puppet king of Castile by the nobles who have decided 
 to make him pay them for his shadowy kingship to 
 the utmost farthing. But something else you can see 
 besides the vividness in all this. You can see the 
 Spaniard's all-pervading love for telling tales of 
 personal adventure, to make the world gape at the 
 story of how one king killed another, and the proudest 
 crown of Christendom was won by a fratricide. 
 
 But the next development in the hands of an 
 inferior artist shows this tendency even more strongly. 
 This is in the anonymous Chronicle of Juan II. 
 Juan II. was the son of Catharine of Lancaster and 
 Henry III. of Castile. His was the most chivalrous 
 
8^4 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 and luxurious court in Europe in his time. The craze 
 for writing, for poetry, pageantry, and high-flown 
 adventure had once more in Spain become wellnigh a 
 disease. Everybody of position wrote something. It 
 is clear they could not all write about the king, so 
 they had of necessity to write about other important 
 personages in the same strain of heroic personal 
 record. The more marvellous were the stories told, 
 the more overwhelming the valour, the more splendid 
 the hero, the greater would be the attention given to 
 the work ; and so rapidly downhill the kingly 
 chronicle went towards stories of inflated adventure. 
 
 Take this instance of the Chronicle of Juan II. — an 
 official chronicle, be it recollected : — 
 
 ' What happened to certain Cavaliers of Carmona and 
 Marchena with the Moors, 
 
 ' At this time there sallied from Carmona and 
 Marchena forty-two horsemen and twenty-eight foot- 
 men to raid the tower of Al Hakem and Ayamonte^ 
 And when they were near to the Sierra of Agrazalema 
 they were discovered ; and forth from Ronda and 
 Setenil there rode to encounter them two hundred and 
 forty Moorish horsemen. As the Christians beheld 
 them approaching they posted their footmen on a 
 steep hillside, which the Moors endeavoured to cap- 
 ture. But as Paynims stormed up the slope, the 
 Christian horsemen fell upon them so doughtily that 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 85 
 
 forty Moors fell at the first onslaught; whereupon 
 they began to fly, the Christians following in pursuit, 
 wounding and killing them as they went until they 
 were within the walls of Al Hakem. Seventy Moors 
 were slain in the fight, amongst whom was the Al- 
 guacil of Ronda, whilst eight of the best gentlemen of 
 Ronda were captured. The Christians also captured 
 a great booty and eighty horses, and so returned 
 rejoicing and triumphant to their town of Olivera. 
 And as they rode along they asked one of the Moorish 
 prisoners how it had come to pass that so large a 
 band of Moors had allowed themselves to be defeated 
 by so few Christians. The Moor replied that he 
 would swear by the Prophet that the Christians who 
 had fought them numbered at least four hundred 
 horsemen. It is evident, he said, that forty-two horse- 
 men could not have vanquished two hundred and 
 forty; and he was sure that God had sent succour 
 to the Christians, or that the apostle Santiago had 
 come and joined them. The Christians bore before 
 them two pennons they had captured in the fight, 
 one white, the other red, and these were hung in the 
 church of Olivera ; and six Christian horsemen and 
 one footman alone perished in this battle.' 
 
 Throughout this Chronicle of Juan II., which was 
 written in the middle of the fifteenth century, the 
 tendency already indicated for chronicle to degener- 
 ate into heroic narrative is plainly discernible. The 
 contrast between the staid record drawn from official 
 
86 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 documents set down by Alfonso X. and the marvel- 
 lous tales of personal adventure which overlie the 
 Chronicle of Juan II., two hundred years later, is very 
 great ; but history once started upon this steep decline 
 was forced to degenerate still further, since each fresh 
 chronicler, being a Spaniard, found it necessary, in 
 order to centre attention upon himself or his hero, 
 to go beyond his predecessors in the wondrous deeds 
 he recorded. New heroes, too, had to be found or 
 invented, since there were not enough kings to go 
 round, and the central individual hero was primarily 
 necessary. Prominent personages in the State or in 
 warfare were eagerly seized upon, either to bulk largely 
 in the general kingly chronicle or to be made subjects 
 of separate chronicles of their own. The greatness 
 and power, as well as the dramatic fall, of the famous 
 favourite of Juan II., Don Alvaro de Luna, was made 
 the theme of numberless moralisings, to which refer- 
 ence will be made in a later chapter ; but chroniclers 
 also recorded his doings in prose so florid as almost 
 to recall the ancient Chansons de Geste, in which the 
 Proven5al juglars sang the prowess of their legendary 
 champions. The following extracts from the later 
 portion of the Chronicle of Juan II. with reference to 
 Don Alvaro de Luna will show how the personal note 
 was already dominating even official history, to the 
 extent of placing national affairs in a secondary 
 position after the doings of a royal favourite : — 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 87 
 
 ' Of a Joust that was celebrated at Valladolid on the 
 1st May of that year {i^2>A)-' 
 
 "The king departed from Medina in April, and 
 travelled to Valladolid, where the Constable Don 
 Alvaro de Luna ordered a great joust to be held on 
 the 1st May. He himself entered the lists with thirty 
 gentlemen of the king's household and his own — 
 fifteen being dressed in garments of green and fifteen 
 in yellow. And albeit the whole thirty rode into 
 the lists with him, the green band tilted against the 
 yellow band. The king himself entered the lists as 
 an adventurer, and broke a lance on Diego Manrique, 
 son of the Adelantado Pedro Manrique, who was one 
 of the challengers, and another lance on Juan de 
 Merlo. This was a very fine joust in which many 
 notable encounters took place. The feast was given 
 by the Constable, and the whole of the tilters and 
 many other gentlemen of the court supped with him 
 that day. From there the king went to Medina, 
 where, by the advice of his nobles and the repre- 
 sentatives of the towns, he issued the following 
 decree." 
 
 The decree was an extremely important one for the 
 suppression of lawless disorder ; and yet it and the 
 parliament that passed it were evidently in the eyes 
 of the chronicler much less interesting than the 
 chivalrous entertainments of Don Alvaro. 
 
 The last lines of this chronicle recount the disgrace 
 
88 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ^and execution of the favourite, and thus moralise upon 
 his fall :— 
 
 " Oh ! John Boccaccio, if you were alive to-day, I 
 cannot believe your pen would fail to set forth in 
 writing the thunderous fall of this valiant man, as 
 famous as any prince whose life you tell. What 
 greater example than this was ever presented in any 
 State before? What greater warning was ever dis- 
 played before our eyes ? What greater proof of the 
 changes and chances of tricky fortune ? Oh ! blind- 
 ness of the human race ! Oh ! the unforeseen happen- 
 ings of this world ! Who could believe that a man, 
 basely born of a mother of low degree, though of 
 virtuous and noble sire, a son unrecognised as such 
 until his father's death ; without inheritance, without 
 influence, and without worldly prospects, a foreigner 
 in a strange land, far away from his kin, abandoned 
 in his early youth, could have arrived at such a pitch 
 of grandeur as this ? " 
 
 And here follows a magniloquent statement of the 
 Constable's titles, offices, and possessions. The in- 
 sistence upon the personality of the actors in the 
 chronicles is seen also in this writer's almost photo- 
 graphic description of Don Alvaro : — 
 
 " The Grand Master," he says, " was very short of 
 stature, with a thin face. His limbs were well pro- 
 portioned. He was bald, his eyes small but very 
 keen ; he had a cavernous mouth and bad teeth. His 
 heart was great, his courage high, and he was ener- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 89 
 
 getic, astute, and suspicious. He was much given to 
 his pleasures ; was a fine rider in all kinds of horse- 
 manship, a dexterous swordsman and tilter, and sang 
 and danced well." 
 
 The same tendency of a desire to emphasise the 
 personality of history is seen in the works of the 
 nephew of Lopez de Ayala, Fernan Perez de Guzman 
 (1378-1460), whose attempt to compile a great uni- 
 versal history — Mar de Historias — may be placed in 
 the same category as that of Alfonso the Learned. 
 But when he comes to describe the great personages 
 of the court of Spain who had been known to him, 
 he shows how good an artist he was. People in his 
 day were fond of comparing him with Petrarch, and 
 certainly he must have been conscious of Italian 
 models; but his keen satirical touch, his crispness — 
 I may say his waggishness — mark him for the true 
 Spaniard that he was. 
 
 That Fernan Perez de Guzman, literary artist as 
 he was, fully recognised the evil tendency that was 
 dragging history in Castile down to the level of bom- 
 bastic fable, may be seen in the first page of his 
 celebrated book Generaciones y Semblanzas, which 
 contains some marvellously vigorous word portraits 
 of the principal personages of the Castilian court in 
 his time. ' It very often happens,' he says, ' that the 
 chronicles and histories telling of the memorable 
 deeds of powerful kings, noble princes, and great 
 cities, are held in suspicion and doubt, little belief 
 
90 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 being given to them. The reasons for this are prin- 
 cipally two : first, because some of the men who 
 undertake to write about bygone times are impudent 
 rascals, who prefer to write about strange and mar- 
 vellous things rather than to tell true and well- 
 authenticated events. They think that no history 
 will be considered remarkable unless it contains some 
 prodigious stories hard to believe. These writers care 
 not, so long as the things they relate move people 
 to wonder rather than to belief. In our own times a 
 presumptuous knave called Pedro de Corral has done 
 this in a chronicle that he calls The Saracen Chronicle, 
 but which should more properly be entitled a book 
 of lies and frauds.' 
 
 But this growing tendency to the marvellous, 
 although to some extent arising from the character 
 of the root-races of Spain, was, as I have endeavoured 
 to show, mainly fostered at this time by the per- 
 sistent introduction of the personal note in history ; 
 and of this love for personal and satirical detail 
 Perez de Guzman himself is an excellent specimen. 
 He hits off in Generaciones y Semblanzas one person- 
 age after the other, biting in the likeness with little 
 touches of acid that show up the truth unmistakably. 
 This, for instance, is how he describes the Queen- 
 mother Catharine Plantagenet, daughter of John of 
 Gaunt : ' This Queen was tall and very fat, with an 
 exceedingly fair red -and -white complexion. From 
 her height and the movements of her body she looked 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 91 
 
 more like a man than a woman. She was very vir- 
 tuous and discreet, jealous of her good fame, besides 
 being very liberal and open-handed. But unfortun- 
 ately she was much given to allow her favourites to 
 rule her, which is a common failing of monarchs. 
 She was careless of her person, and she had a bad 
 attack of paralysis which prevented her from speaking 
 plainly afterwards and affected her body. She died 
 in Valladolid, aged fifty, in 141 8 on the 2nd June, and 
 she is buried in Toledo in the chapel of the kings by 
 the side of her husband Don Henry.' 
 
 Although Perez de Guzman in his own history 
 does his best to correct the abuses that had crept into 
 the chronicles, in inferior hands to his the degeneracy 
 continued. Men were so eager to attract attention by 
 writing wonders, that truth and even verisimilitude 
 were of secondary importance. Pages and followers 
 began to write accounts of the romantic adventures 
 and gallant deeds of their lords and of each other. A 
 good specimen of this vicious development of the 
 courtly chronicle is the chronicle of Don Pedro Nino, 
 Count de Buelna, a great noble who rejoiced in 
 the services of a literary standard-bearer who must 
 have been a veritable Boswell. Whilst John of Gaunt 
 was struggling for the crown of Spain, and Castile 
 was at war with England, the Count de Buelna went 
 to the wars both by land and sea, and his standard- 
 bearer recorded his deeds. No one ever could have 
 been so brave, so wise, and so good as the Count is 
 
92 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 represented to have been by his admiring scribe. 
 This Gutierre Diaz de Gatnez, the standard-bearer, 
 amongst other things describes the wonderful inva- 
 sion of England by his master, his capture of a town 
 in Cornwall he calls Chita, his unsuccessful attack 
 upon Plymouth, his sacking of Portland against tre- 
 mendous odds, his great battle at Poole ; and finally 
 his entrance into Southampton Water, and his visit 
 to Southampton, which he seems to confuse with 
 London. All this and much more is told by Gamez, 
 in a style so romantic and .pompous, as to make his 
 chronicle resemble already the latest stage of de- 
 generation which the courtly chronicle reached, 
 namely, the purely imaginary tales of chivalry which 
 soon afterwards swamped Spain. 
 
 The account of the famous embassy of Gonzales de 
 Clavijo to Persia, called The Life and Deeds of the 
 Great Tamerlane, of the same period (1412), is a 
 similar book. The great effort is to surprise. And a 
 further drop still towards the inflated and completely 
 fictitious romances of chivalry, to which I shall refer 
 in my next chapter, is the Libra del Paso Honroso, by 
 Rodriguez de Lena, who held a bridge with nine 
 knights against all comers for a month in 1434, and 
 fought six hundred combats, apparently for no reason 
 at all but to satisfy his personal vanity. 
 
 It will be seen thus that the personal note of the 
 kingly chronicle in Spain had, by the middle of the 
 fifteenth century, degenerated in one direction to 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 93 
 
 almost fictitious tales of marvels which were soon to 
 end in inflated and foolish romances. 
 
 Before we pass to its development in another 
 direction, we will consider what influence this exu- 
 berant fashion had outside Spain. In the same wars 
 that Lopez de Ayala took part in and recorded, there 
 was another recorder of genius, mixing with Spanish 
 nobles and writers, hearing their romantic style 
 of recounting events, and doubtless reading the 
 chronicles which in that literary court passed from 
 hand to hand. He was a Frenchman named Froissart, 
 whose chronicle telling of these wars between Eng- 
 land and Spain, of which he was a spectator, is 
 written on the Spanish lines of personal interest, 
 romantic adventure, and vivacious characterisation. 
 
 Froissart's chronicle has been popular from the 
 days in which it was written until the present hour, 
 and did much to introduce into the rest of Europe the 
 knightly personal, or heroic, chronicle form of history, 
 rather than the ecclesiastical form that had previ- 
 ously been dominant. During all the war period, 
 with English armies in Spain, sometimes as friends, 
 sometimes as foes, the Spanish chronicles must have 
 been familiar to such English knights as could read. 
 When Constance of Castile, daughter of Peter the 
 Cruel, became Duchess of Lancaster, Spanish manu- 
 script chronicles, telling of the deeds of her fore- 
 fathers, must have gone with her to England ; and the 
 nobles who went backwards and forwards during the 
 
94 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 I time that Catharine of Lancaster was Queen of Spain 
 must have known such chronicles. In these circum- 
 stances, it is not surprising that from the end of the 
 fourteenth century onward, a change came over the 
 form in which history was written in England. From 
 time immemorial, monks like Gildas and Bede had 
 written chronicles of their times; and other church- 
 men in later days, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
 William of Malmesbury, Matthew of Westminster, 
 and Richard of Cirencester, had collected and con- 
 tinued them. Those that had been produced before 
 the coming of the Saxons, like the chronicles trans- 
 lated by Geoffrey of Monmouth, were to some extent 
 imbued with the Celtic spirit of the sacredness sur- 
 rounding the sovereign, and the British chiefs and 
 Roman commanders usually took the centre of the 
 stage, but there was no attempt at attractive descrip- 
 tion or at characterisation. The first conspicuous 
 change of manner is found at the end of the four- 
 teenth century, in the so-called Chronicle of St. Albans. 
 Here the public and warlike events, like the pillage 
 of Roxburgh by the Scots, and its recapture by the 
 Earl of Northumberland ; the riots in London, the 
 entrance of the mob into the Tower ; the destruction 
 of the Hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, and the like, 
 are related clearly and vigorously, and the first note 
 of modern history is struck. But there is in this case 
 no hero-worship, no centralisation of events around a 
 personage in a way that would disfigure the events 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 95 
 
 themselves, such as was taking place in the develop- 
 ment of Spanish chronicles. But, withal, the broader 
 view, the satirical touch, the gaiety, that the lay 
 chroniclers had introduced were already influencing 
 English historical writing. Froissart had caught the 
 trick and passed it on ; and a further development of 
 the chronicle in the direction of picturesque narrative, 
 to some extent grouped around the person of the 
 hero, was rapidly seen both in France and England. 
 With Fabian in the fifteenth century, the fashion of 
 thus writing history may be said to have become 
 permanently acclimatised in England. The English 
 form varied from the Spanish, as the national 
 characters varied. There was less striving after the 
 marvellous, for the stolid Saxon had to some extent 
 swamped the Celtic element in our race ; there was 
 less assertion of the individuality of the sovereign 
 around whom the national events revolved, because 
 he was a feudal king held in check by barons, and 
 was not sacerdotal ; but thenceforward it was the 
 layman, the student, the courtier, the soldier who 
 wrote history, instead of the churchman in a monkish 
 cell, and the purview was broader, the style more 
 virile, and the grouping of events more attractive. The 
 fashion of picturesque historical narrative had thus 
 been, more or less directly, set to us from Spain, and 
 our countrymen had adopted the fashion whilst 
 avoiding its abuse. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY AND PASTORALS 
 
 The Kingly Chronicle in Spain, written by knights or 
 palace officials, may be traced in two directions : first 
 to the serious modern history continued by scholars 
 and churchmen like Zuritaand Mariana ; and secondly, 
 to the far-fetched and marvellous adventures which 
 were grouped around the figure of the hero of the 
 personal chronicle. From this latter development to 
 entirely imaginary stories, unfettered by any pretence 
 of truth, or even of probability, was only a step. As 
 we have seen, the character of the people had always 
 led them to develop their literary forms in the direction 
 of the marvellous. Their imagination was as fertile 
 as their language was florid. Their Celtic admixture 
 had filled them with a mystical and sacrificial de- 
 votion towards any exalted abstraction which appealed 
 to them, and by the fifteenth century, when the power 
 of the Moslems had been reduced to a mere shadow 
 in one corner of the Peninsula, and the romantic 
 episodes of border warfare failed, the Christian 
 Spaniard turned, with the avidity of a famished man 
 to a meal, towards the heroic fables which had already 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 97 
 
 become trite and tiresome to the rest of Europe. 
 These marvellous adventures of impossible prowess by- 
 impossible knights, for equally impossible princesses, 
 were not very much more extreme than the Spaniard's 
 own later personal chronicles had been ; and they 
 gave infinitely greater scope for imagination, because 
 they re-introduced the paraphernalia of sorcery and 
 enchantment, of pure-hearted, self-sacrificing Chris- 
 tians, battling undaunted against the supernatural 
 powers of evil ; and for the most part they were 
 located in vague foreign countries, where anything 
 extraordinary might presumably happen. We have 
 already seen that previous to the fifteenth century 
 Spain had been too busy in real romantic adventures 
 with the Moors to pay much attention to the purely 
 fictitious tales of knight-errantry. The juglars and 
 reciters had introduced from France the epic poems 
 about Roland and Charlemagne ; and the heroic poem 
 of The Cid, in which marvellous adventures are 
 grouped around a real person, had been a close imita- 
 tion of them. But of native Spanish forms, as I have 
 shown in earlier pages, the main outcome of literary 
 activity had been the didactic apologue, the sententious 
 aphorism, and the kingly chronicle. We will for the 
 moment postpone the consideration of the development 
 of the romances of chivalry in Spain, and the extra- 
 ordinary influence they exerted in reviving the dying 
 cult in the rest of Europe, and will endeavour to trace 
 how the germ of the stories came to Spain at all. 
 
 G 
 
98 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 (|There always has been much difference of opinion 
 with regard to the origin of the magic element in 
 these tales. Many authorities have urged that the 
 dragons, and magic rings and amulets, and en- 
 chanters, did not make an appearance in Europe until 
 after the Christian warriors had returned from the 
 Crusade in the twelfth century; whilst from the 
 earliest known form of Eastern story, they had been 
 part of the regular machinery, as you may see in 
 The Arabian Nights. The dragon, they say, was only 
 the winged horse of the ancient Persians, which had 
 been carried by the Moors to Spain as an element 
 of fiction, and through France had reached the rest 
 of Europe. With this opinion I, for one, cannot 
 agree, for reasons which I shall state later. Others 
 allege that the tales of magic, in connection with 
 self-sacrificing knightly heroes, are the direct descen- 
 dants of the sagas sung by the pagan northmen 
 around their heroes dead and alive, which songs, 
 they say, were carried into Normandy and Brittany 
 by the Normans when they came south. For cen- 
 turies previous to the Crusades the Norsemen sang 
 of fairies and of dragons, and of the intervention of 
 their pagan deities in the daily affairs of men. On 
 the other hand, the institution of knighthood, as 
 a chosen order of proved self-sacrificing warriors, 
 was undoubtedly Germanic, arising naturally out of 
 the circumstances of a race organised on military 
 lines pushing its way for centuries through opposing 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 99 
 
 peoples, and consequently calling frequently for 
 individual sacrifice to the common weal. By far the 
 most probable source of the magic element in the 
 tales is prehistoric Celtic tradition. This is not 
 quite incompatible, however, with the Norse con- 
 tention, because many believe that the Norsemen were 
 of Celtic origin. In any case, the stories, both of 
 magic elements and of heroic knights, were told in 
 Celtic Ireland, and also probably in Celtic Britain, 
 centuries before the Crusades or the Norman in- 
 vasion of Britain, as may be seen by Lady Gregory's 
 two fine collections of such stories recently published, 
 Cuchulain and Gods and Fighting Men. 
 
 Out of these traditional fables, whatever their 
 origin, repeated from father to child over untold 
 centuries, there grew in the twelfth century onward 
 in England a concrete connected set of legends, set 
 down in Latin and later in French, by Anglo-Norman 
 scribes. Whether there ever was really a King 
 Arthur of Britain is even yet uncertain. The Chronicle 
 of Britain, adapted or translated by Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth in the twelfth century from an older British 
 book, builds up a regular history of a certain wonder- 
 ful King Arthur, with the magician Merlin as his 
 adviser ; and so does Richard Wace the Norman in 
 the previous century in his Roman de Brute. Both 
 of them had introduced into their story of the king the 
 strange legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea, who was 
 supposed to have possessed, and lost, the holy cup 
 
lOO SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 filled with Christ's blood, called the Sangreal or 
 Holy Grail. The saint was said to fall into a 
 trance at the end of each century, and to awake re- 
 juvenated ; and, indeed, it was asserted that thirteen 
 centuries after the Crucifixion, at which he had been 
 present, St. Joseph appeared in England and dined 
 at the table of a bishop. The Glastonbury thorn is 
 said to have been his walking staff, which he struck 
 into the ground where he founded the first Christian 
 church in England. Anyhow, he is inextricably 
 mixed up in the legends with the more or less real 
 King Arthur and his minister Merlin ; and Arthur 
 is said to have kept a space vacant at his table for 
 the Holy Grail when it should be found and re- 
 covered. This legend, or set of legends, first popular- 
 ised in writing by the Anglo-Norman and French 
 scribes of the twelfth century, was made the subject 
 of a regular Life of Merlin in the thirteenth, written 
 in French prose by one Barron. He tells how the 
 devil, being alarmed at the great number of Christian 
 converts being made by St. Joseph in Britain, calls 
 a congress of his diabolical fellows to discuss the 
 situation. They decide to send one of their number 
 to England to marry a Christian maiden and become 
 the father of a child that shall in time destroy the 
 human race. The devil is represented as staying in 
 the house of a noble Briton, with three lovely 
 daughters, and after much ingenious but ineffectual 
 strategy, he manages to obtain possession surrepti- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE loi 
 
 tiously of the eldest. The girl is shut up in prison for 
 her supposed unchastity, and there her babe is born, 
 and christened by the priest with the not inappropriate 
 name of Blaise. When the child Merlin is a month 
 old the mother is condemned to die for her supposed 
 offence ; but the child consoles her with the promise 
 that he will save her ; and goes himself before the 
 judges, and in an eloquent harangue, for a child of a 
 month old, confounds the court with the proofs that the 
 Chief Justice's own birth is not beyond reproach ; the 
 result being that the Chief Justice, unwilling to bring 
 his own mother in question, lets Merlin's mother off. 
 A civil war is raging between Britons and Saxons at 
 the time; and the British usurper, Voltigern, who has 
 ousted the two native princes, builds a high tower 
 for his defence; but time after time, just as the last 
 stone is being placed on the top, the tower falls down. 
 Instead of leaving it without the top stone, Volti- 
 gern summoned a meeting of astrologers, who tell 
 him that the tower is bewitched by a child engendered 
 by no mortal man ; and unless this child be found and 
 his blood used to mix the mortar the tower would 
 never stand. Orders are sent that the child must be 
 searched for throughout Britain, and Merlin, hearing 
 this, presents himself unbidden, and informs the 
 usurper that the reason for the instability of his tower 
 is that two dragons, one white and the other red, are 
 engaged in deadly combat in the earth underneath. 
 On digging this was found to be true ; and the 
 
102 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 te|rible combat of the mythical beasts is interpreted 
 by Merlin as signifying the rivalry of the two brother 
 claimants to the throne, the Princes Pendragon and 
 Uther. Soon afterwards these two princes land in 
 England from Brittany, where they had taken refuge, 
 conquer Voltigern, and burn him in the ruins of his 
 tower. Pendragon mounts the throne, but is soon 
 killed in battle with the Saxons ; and Uther becomes 
 king, with Merlin the enchanter as his prime minister, 
 the Christian birth and baptism softening somewhat 
 his diabolical tendencies, so that he is represented as 
 a personification of the powers of evil weakened by 
 Christianity, By his advice, King Uther founds the 
 society of the Round Table, where are seated with the 
 king fifty or sixty knights, with a space left for the 
 Holy Grail when it shall be found. When Uther dies, 
 Arthur, his illegitimate son, seizes the throne, to the 
 great discontent of the people. But he shows himself 
 so doughty a knight as to be able to wrench from the 
 solid rock the sword which the magician Scalibur had 
 embedded in it, though two hundred and one of the 
 best knights of Britain had previously tried to extract 
 it in vain, and he is greeted by the British people as 
 the hero king worthy to reign over them. Merlin 
 becomes Arthur's prime minister, changing his shape 
 at will to suit his purposes, now a dwarf, now a 
 harpy, now an animal, employing his magic powers 
 in the service of Arthur, and to defeat his enemies. 
 Merlin's wife Bibiana has been let into some of the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 103 
 
 secrets of his sorcery, that she may use them in 
 case of emergency ; and, apparently because she is 
 anxious to see how the thing works, she practises 
 one of the incantations ; but by means of some 
 mistake she consigns Merlin himself to the inside 
 of a whitethorn tree in the midst of a deep wood, 
 where his terrible cries and wails resound for leagues 
 around thenceforward, without any one being able to 
 locate him. This was the Frenchman Barron's first 
 connected version of Merlin's life, written in the 
 thirteenth century ; and I have told the story in 
 detail, that we may see how it was growing by 
 imagination and be able to trace its further de- 
 velopment. Up to this time there was not much 
 chivalrous element in the story. Arthur here was 
 a strong figure, like a Norse demi-god ; but the 
 ideas of heroic righting of wrongs, and pure self- 
 sacrifice, were not yet a special feature. That was to 
 come a century later, and was perhaps more Germanic 
 or Prankish than Celtic. 
 
 In the fourteenth century, Thomas Lonelich, later a 
 scribe at the court of Henry IV. of England — a con- 
 temporary of Chaucer — wrote in verse, which was 
 afterwards put into French prose, the first of the 
 real Arthurian cycle of tales, called The Sangreal. 
 There the legend begins by telling how St. Joseph 
 of Arimathea had obtained the holy cup from the 
 hands of the Saviour and had filled it with the blood 
 that gushed from His wounds. The Jews were so 
 
I04 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 much incensed at this that they shut St. Joseph up 
 in prison, where Christ appears to him and restores 
 the cup. On the capture of Jerusalem by Titus 
 Vespasian forty -two years afterwards, St. Joseph 
 regains his liberty, and travels through the world 
 preaching the Gospel. The powers of evil plot 
 against him, and obtain possession of the cup ; and 
 Merlin advises King Arthur to found a society of 
 knights, who shall sit with him round his table, 
 their purpose being the recovery of the cup, each one 
 swearing to spend his life, if necessary, in filling the 
 vacant space that is left at their table for the Holy 
 Grail. The history of Arthur and the knights of 
 the Round Table consists mainly of the heroic deeds 
 of the knights to regain the cup. Here we see the 
 purely knightly and self-sacrificing element added 
 to the marvels and magic of the Celtic legends. The 
 story appealed strongly to the English mind of the 
 fourteenth century, and was followed by sequels by 
 various writers ; the most important of which is 
 Sir Lancelot of the Lake and his son Sir Galahad. 
 Sir Lancelot of the Lake is supposed to be the son 
 of a king of Britain, who being besieged in his 
 castle flies with his wife Helen and his child 
 Lancelot. Turning when he reaches a hill-top to 
 look upon the realm he has lost, he drops dead 
 with grief; and his wife, laying the infant on the 
 border of a lake, runs to her husband's aid. The 
 moment the mother's back is turned the Lady of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 105 
 
 the Lake, Bibiana, the wife of Merlin, whose mishap 
 with her magic has resulted in enclosing her husband 
 in the whitethorn, rises from the waters of the lake, 
 wherein she lives, and seizing the child, dives into 
 the lake with him. When Helen turns she finds 
 her child has disappeared. Lancelot is brought up 
 tenderly and well by the Lady of the Lake, and 
 at the age of eighteen is taken to King Arthur's 
 court to enter into the order of knighthood. When 
 he has been knighted, Arthur's wife, Queen Guinevere, 
 falls in love with him : and their loves and intrigues 
 fill a large space of the book. The Queen sets to 
 Lancelot all sorts of seemingly impossible tasks and 
 perilous deeds, as the price of her love ; and he 
 faces a thousand perils, human and supernatural, to 
 please her, conquering kingdoms and seizing crowns 
 to lay at her feet. 
 
 Here we have first clearly set as a motive, heroic 
 sacrifice of a man, simply to comply with the 
 caprice of the lady to whom he has devoted his , 
 life. Guinevere certainly does not appear to us 
 either an amiable or a worthy heroine, to demand 
 such sacrifices ; but that probably heightens the 
 sacrifice of the man, who is not bound by duty to 
 serve her at all, and only does so for her love. 
 Guinevere invades Northumberland, and captures the 
 castle of Berwick ; but learning that Arthur suspects 
 her fidelity, she and Lancelot decide to dethrone 
 Arthur, and crown Guinevere Queen. Guinevere's 
 
io6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 falf ity is disclosed to Arthur by Morgana his sister, 
 through a knight of the Round Table called Sir 
 Gawain. Arthur in his rage musters his forces and 
 marches against Lancelot at Berwick. Whilst he 
 is fighting his rival, Arthur learns that Mordred his 
 son has risen in rebellion against him, aided by the 
 Spanish Saracens. He hurries back, but is met on 
 Salisbury Plain by his son and the rebels. Here 
 he falls, and his body is never found : Lancelot in 
 revenge of him killing Mordred the son ; and, instead 
 of crowning Guinevere, he raises to the throne a 
 kinsman of Arthur. Lancelot then becomes a hermit, 
 and is joined by the last surviving knight of the 
 Round Table, whilst Guinevere becomes a nun, and 
 finally Sir Galahad, son of Lancelot, with Sir Percival, 
 recovers the Holy Grail. 
 
 This is the second development in which chivalric 
 love is made the main motive for self-sacrifice. In 
 French, and later than Sir Lancelot, there came 
 Tristan de Lyonesse, much the best of the series, 
 considered as literature. Most of the action passes 
 in Cornwall ; and again Merlin's enchantments, faith- 
 less wives, and tremendous adventures of their loves 
 to please them or rescue them from peril are repeated. 
 These are the principal Arthurian stories^ which in 
 
 ' It is true that at a later period (1450) Malory's beautiful story Morte 
 d' Arthur was written in English ; but before that time chivalry as a 
 living force was disappearing in England, and discipline and the reign of 
 law had taken its place as a means of social restraint. Malory's book 
 was read, as it still is, but as a story, not a gospel. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 107 
 
 the thirteenth and fourteenth- centuries absorbed the 
 minds of such readers as existed in Europe, with 
 the exception perhaps of Spain. Others there were 
 of purely French origin founded upon the apocryphal 
 chronicle attributed wrongly to Bishop Turpin, relat- 
 ing to the deeds of Charlemagne and the twelve 
 peers of France, especially the knight Roland : but 
 this series is concerned with the supposed deeds of 
 the French in forcing Christianity upon Spain at the 
 sword's point, and the stories are evidently inspired 
 by, or descendants of, the Chansons de Geste or 
 recitative epics relating to the same events, rather 
 than real tales of altruistic individual heroism. I 
 will consequently not dwell upon them ; but will keep 
 to the theme of the true chivalric magic romance, 
 which grew up, as I have explained, mainly in 
 England from mixed Celtic aud Germanic ele- 
 ments. 
 
 These absorbing, but utterly unreal romances, satis- 
 fied a need in stimulating imagination, and provided, 
 so long as it was necessary, an altruistic incentive 
 to action, and an exalted or spiritual reason for 
 attachment to a leader, both of which were very 
 necessary in the wars, such as the crusades, where 
 each knight led an almost independent band into 
 battle, and where there was little organised cohesion 
 in an army. But this was not the case for very long 
 in England. The battles of the Black Prince in 
 France, and even more so those of Henry v., were 
 
io8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 gajped mainly by disciplined and combined move- 
 ments, rather than by heroic personal encounter; and, 
 as discipline and law became stronger, the sense of 
 duty replaced the idea of chivalry as a motive for 
 action. Although, therefore, the Arthurian romances 
 of chivalry continued to be read as literature, and 
 especially Malory's Morte d' Arthur, chivalry itself, 
 as a living force, declined in England before the 
 fifteenth century had far advanced.^ In Spain, how- 
 ever, it was quite different. Wonders always appealed 
 to the people. They had been starved of literature 
 until the end of the thirteenth century, and, as I 
 have pointed out, they promptly thereafter showed 
 their irrepressible bent by turning their history into 
 romance in the course of a century and a half; and 
 when the moment came, they seized upon the 
 chivalric idea more strongly than any other country 
 had done. 
 
 How did these Celtic tales reach Spain to begin 
 
 ' This is seen by the contemptuous way in which the Host interrupts 
 Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, when, in answer to the invitation to 
 add to the entertainment of the company by telling a story, the poet 
 begins the chivalric rhyme of Sir Thopas. The Host soon loses patience 
 with the absurdity of the tale, and breaks in with — 
 
 ' No more of this, fur Godde's dignitee, 
 Quod our hoste, for thou makest me 
 So weary of thy very lewedeness 
 That also wisly God my soule bless, 
 Myn earfe achen at thy drasly speech, 
 Now such a rhym the devil I beteech.' 
 
 and he continues by bidding the unfortunate reciter to tell the company 
 something sensible ' in which there shall be some mirth or doctrine.' 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 109 
 
 with ? There was no printing, recollect, but somehow 
 the English legends that I have described were current 
 in Spain in the fourteenth century, and probably long 
 before. Perhaps the Cluny monks who flocked into 
 Spain in the thirteenth century brought them from 
 France ; perhaps the crowds of pilgrims to Santiago 
 told them to each other and to their hosts in Spain ; 
 perhaps the English knights and soldiers who came 
 with Edward I. and his great-grandson the Black 
 Prince spread them ; or, finally, perhaps they had also 
 clung unforgotten from prehistoric times to the Celtic 
 peoples of the west of the peninsula, to be revived by 
 the echoes of the tales that had been woven out of 
 them by their far-away kinsmen in Brittany, in Wales, 
 and in Ireland. In any case, they came; and the 
 dissolute poet-priest, the Archpriest of Hita, mentions 
 these British tales in the middle of the fourteenth 
 century. About the same time, a poet named Ferrus, 
 writing a jocose rhyming letter to the famous Pero 
 Lopez de Ayala, the chronicler and satirist, mentions 
 Arthur, Lancelot, and Tristan of Lionesse. The 
 History of Merlin, we know, was translated into 
 French, Italian, and Latin, perhaps into Spanish, in 
 the fourteenth century ; and Lancelot of the Lake was 
 certainly turned into French or Spanish at about the 
 same time, because Lopez de Ayala, in his famous 
 rhymed satire Rimado de Palacio, mentions it by 
 name. All this argues that the Arthurian tales had, 
 by the middle of the fourteenth century, become well 
 
no SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 kt^wn to people who could read in Spain, and formed 
 the intellectual attraction of the day. 
 
 Whether there was a French or English tale, now 
 lost, called Amadis, we do not know. But what is 
 certain is that, some time early in the fourteenth 
 century, there was a book called Amadis of Gaul {or 
 Wales) current in Spain, which is usually mentioned in 
 conjunction with the Arthurian books, and which 
 appears to have been written in Spanish. Who wrote 
 it, or when, nobody knows, or perhaps ever will know ; 
 but the book, or rather series of books, for there were 
 nine in all, were evidently inspired by the Arthurian 
 series, which I have described. The first copy of 
 Amadis known to us is in Portuguese, adapted or 
 prepared for a Portuguese prince late in the fourteenth 
 century, by one Vasco de Lobeyra, who, in all prob- 
 ability, must have had before him a Spanish version, 
 now lost, since Lopez de Ayala in his old age deplored 
 the time he had wasted over reading Amadis in his 
 youth, and it is improbable that Lobeyra's version can 
 have been written so early as that. All we know of 
 the matter is, that Amadis of Gaul in the fifteenth 
 century became a perfect craze in Spain ; and, as had 
 been the case with the Arthur series in England, 
 sequels were added to it by various hands, until 
 a regular literature of Amadis grew up, and imita- 
 tions by the dozen followed rapidly one after the 
 other. 
 
 Here was a form which gave to Spanish writers full 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE iii 
 
 scope for their love of the marvellous, and their over- 
 flowing imagination. Neither probability of incident, 
 unity of action, nor precision of locality bound them. 
 But to these recommendations there came late in the 
 fifteenth century, and almost simultaneously, two 
 great factors, which operated more than any others in 
 fixing firmly upon Spain the chivalric idea which 
 thenceforward was so powerfully to sway the fate of 
 the Spanish people. These factors were, first, the 
 invention of printing, and secondly, the deliberate 
 policy of Ferdinand and Isabel of unifying the loosely 
 connected kingdoms which went to make up Spain, by 
 fostering the pride of exclusive religious orthodoxy, 
 by arousing in the breasts of all Spaniards, from the 
 Celtic Gallego to the half African Murcian, that 
 spiritual exaltation and thirst for personal distinction 
 by sacrifice, which was already deeply ingrained in the 
 national character. 
 
 So when Amadis of Gaul vi&s first printed in 1508 it 
 fell on fruitful soil. The last Moorish ruler had been 
 expelled from Spain, and throughout the kingdom the 
 fires of the Inquisition were burning Jews and heretics. 
 With the condemnation of every backslider from the 
 true faith the spiritual pride of each individual 
 Spaniard of the majority grew. All men but himself 
 were suspect. He was of the true aristocracy of God, 
 anxious to distinguish himself in the sight of the 
 Almighty by sacrifice and suffering. Hermits, seers, 
 and dreamers macerated their flesh and rejoiced in the 
 
112 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 m^ery, cold, and squalor by which they sought to 
 draw the notice of God upon themselves. Self- 
 sacrifice was the national note. Personal distinction 
 by patient suffering in the cause of good against evil 
 was the heart-beat that sent the blood coursing 
 throughout the nation's members. The literature of 
 chivalry, issuing from the printing press at the moment 
 that it did, sounded a note to which every soul found 
 an echo. Here was set forth, in the form of marvellous 
 story of personal adventure, the lesson that faith and 
 steadfastness to divine or human love was in the end 
 irresistible, that patient and undaunted valour ensured 
 the pure-minded battler for the right against all the 
 wiles of the devil and his host of evil sorcerers. Here 
 was mental food which satisfied to the full the love for 
 marvels; here was spiritual food that made every 
 Spanish heart glow with the knowledge that though 
 the way of heroic sacrifice was hard, yet in the end it 
 was sure to bring happiness and distinction to those 
 who suffered bravely and strongly. It was a pure, a 
 beautiful, and a noble ideal. But it was an ideal, and 
 never could be real, because each man was left to be 
 judge of what was good, and conduct in life was 
 divorced from religion. An exalted devotion, mystical 
 assurance of divine favour, the faithful acceptance of a 
 fixed doctrine and ritual, were held to cover all sorts of 
 evil, or what we should judge evil, conduct. And so 
 Spain became for the next hundred and fifty years a 
 country where religion was a thing apart, and not 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 113 
 
 closely connected with worldly behaviour; and high 
 professions, perfectly sincere, were constantly accom- 
 panied by low morality. 
 
 Amadis of Gaul itself, and its eight or nine sequels, 
 were modelled almost exactly on the lines of the 
 Arthurian legends, so far as regards locality and 
 incident, but with certain alterations of spirit which I 
 shall point out presently. The story of Amadis is as 
 follows. Perion, King of Gaul, or Wales, is married to 
 Elisene, Princess of England. He has an illegitimate 
 son named Amadis, who, upon the king's marriage, is 
 abandoned by the seashore, an infant, where he is 
 rescued by a knight and carried to Scotland. On 
 growing up he calls himself the Knight of the Sea, and 
 enters the service of Lisuarte, King of Britain, with 
 whose beautiful daughter Oriana he falls in love. 
 Fate brings him into contact with his- half-brother 
 Galaor, Prince of Gaul, with whom, after fighting, he 
 becomes the fast friend and learns his relationship. 
 Thenceforward they seek adventure together, fighting 
 enchanters, rescuing their lady-loves from countless 
 perils ; and finally Amadis becomes King of Gaul, and 
 marries the peerless Oriana. The text, as it has come 
 down to us in the Spanish of Montalvan, is rich in 
 incident and overflowing in imagination. To the 
 readers of the present day the adventures will appear 
 tedious and childish, and they will wonder how the 
 book and its many imitations should have seized upon 
 Europe as it did. 
 
 H 
 
114 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 % Of the sequels and imitations oiAmadis I need not say 
 much. Palmerin de Oliva and Palmerin de Inglaterra 
 are perhaps the most famous. Sergas de Espalandrin, 
 and Artus de Algarve, are hardly less so. But the 
 machinery was always the same : wandering knights, 
 usually princes, went through countless adventures, 
 and finally killed all the giants and sorcerers opposed 
 to them and their lady-loves whom they married, and 
 with whom they lived happily ever after. It is incred- 
 ible with what force these tales fixed themselves upon 
 the imagination of Spain in the sixteenth century. 
 
 When Philip II. came to England to marry Queen 
 Mary, several of his courtiers wrote accounts of what 
 they saw, and the main delight of these Spaniards 
 was to identify the scenes of Amadis's and Arthur's 
 imaginary adventures. At Winchester the principal 
 object of interest with them was the so-called Round 
 Table of the knights, which still hangs on the wall of 
 the castle. When the Spanish ambassador in Eng- 
 land wished to say something excessively bitter about 
 Elizabeth and her government, he could think of 
 nothing more effective than to compare them with 
 some of the characters in Amadis. The constant 
 reference to these books in the correspondence of the 
 time shows that a knowledge of the stories was con- 
 sidered to be a polite literary accomplishment. You 
 have only to look at the first book of Don Quixote, 
 which finally pricked the over-inflated bubble and 
 'laughed Spain's chivalry away," to see how deeply 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 115 
 
 they had entered into the national life. The whole 
 of the sixteenth century saw Spain dominated by an 
 impracticable idea. The search was not so much 
 for worldly gain, although that was not lost sight 
 of as an accompaniment of glory ; but the source 
 of Spain's greatness, a temporary and a fleeting one, 
 was the pride of special selection and distinction by 
 fidelity to an exalted mystic ideal, religious or amor- 
 ous; and all the nation went'helter skelter after an 
 illusive Will-o'-the-Wisp, which, though they bore all 
 before them in their rush, landed them finally into the 
 bog of idleness, ostentation, high-faluting profession 
 and low moral standard, to national ruin and decay. 
 
 It is now time to turn to the influence exerted in 
 England by this curious craze. It has been pointed 
 out that chivalric idea (as apart from the mere literary 
 recreation of such books as the Morte d' Arthur) had 
 lost its potency in England by the middle of the 
 fifteenth century. English life had by that time be- 
 come practical. The feudal powers of the nobles had 
 decayed, the middle class had grown rich and strong, 
 and the visionary attachment to an abstraction did 
 not appeal strongly to the pervading Saxon racial 
 character. But almost simultaneously with the popu- 
 larisation of the chivalric romances in Spain, there 
 mounted the English throne a king of Welsh blood, 
 whose hereditary rights to the crown were weak or 
 non-existent. Henry Vll., conscious that this was the 
 case, promoted the assertion that he was descended 
 
ii6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 f^pm the ancient British kings. Elaborate genealogies 
 were constructed for him, and to strengthen his hold 
 upon the imagination of the people he did his best to 
 revive the ancient British tradition, and, above all, 
 the stories of the heroic King Arthur, from whom he 
 claimed descent. In pursuance of this he had made 
 that great wooden table at Winchester, with the names 
 of the king and his knights painted thereon. He 
 called his eldest son Arthur, Prince of Wales, and such 
 patronage as he could give to literature was given to 
 the revival and spread of the chivalric idea. In this, 
 to some extent, he was followed by his son Henry 
 VIII. ; but it was too late for the heroic chivalric idea 
 to catch on. In Elizabeth's reign Anthony Munday, a 
 most industrious mediocrity, translated some of the 
 Spanish chivalric romances, and the characters in 
 Amadis, and even more so Palmerin de Inglaterra, 
 were well known in England by name ; but their effect 
 upon national thought was almost nothing, for English 
 life had become too real for such visions. 
 
 But there was a variant of the chivalric, altruistic 
 romances that came from Spain to England, and arti- 
 ficial though it was, had a considerable influence upon 
 English literature. I mean the pastoral romance. At 
 first sight nothing would appear more incongruous than 
 the mixing up of shepherds and shepherdesses with 
 the stories of heroic knights, fair ladies, and fearsome 
 demons. The impetus was unquestionably not of 
 native Spanish origin, but classical ; for the Eclogues of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 117 
 
 Virgil and his school had been fashionable centuries 
 before, and had in the hands of Sannazaro become 
 popular in Italy by the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century. There was in Spain before this a slight trend 
 towards the pastoral form in a most popular book 
 written by San Pedro called La Carcel de Amor, which 
 tells the story of a youth being led in chains through 
 the deserts of the Sierra Morena by an enchanter of 
 evil aspect, who is supposed to represent ' desire.' The 
 youth is led by Desire to the Castle of Love, where 
 he is made to suffer cruel tortures. At last, softened by 
 his sorrowful tales of true love for the shepherdess of 
 his thoughts, his jailer releases him ; and after under- 
 going much adventure he dies of love at the feet of 
 his lady. This Carcel de Amor was translated into 
 English by Lord Berners, and published in London 
 in 1540, becoming a favourite book. But the true 
 pastoral romance did not appear until the middle of 
 the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese Monte- 
 mayor produced a book called Diana. To modern 
 readers it will seem more artificial than even the 
 knightly romance ; but, false as it was, it kept a high 
 place for nearly two centuries, and set the fashion, 
 jointly with the Italian works of the same tendency, 
 until the middle of the eighteenth century, at least in 
 France, where the simpering beribboned and satin- 
 clad shepherdesses of the Watteau period perpetuated 
 the imaginary loves of Chloe and Strephon. 
 
 This Diana of George Montemayor was a distinct 
 
ii8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 improvement on the insipid Italian models he copied. It 
 is partly in prose and partly in verse, and mixes magic 
 and sorcery with the tales of the love-lorn shepherds. 
 Why the style should have caught on in England is 
 not far to seek. Knights in search of adventure were 
 quite out of date in the England of Elizabeth, and some 
 quite fanciful vehicle was needed to convey works 
 of pure imagination. Shepherds and shepherdesses 
 in impossible Arcadian conditions were an ancient 
 classical tradition. They might be made to undergo 
 any adventures without offending probability, since 
 they themselves were improbable, and yet they carried 
 more conviction than did wandering knights with 
 altruistic ideas that no one could understand in 
 strenuous England. So when Bartholomew Young 
 wrote his translation of Diana in English in 1583, 
 it at once attracted attention, though it was not 
 published until 1598, when it became exceedingly 
 popular. The second book of Diana was made up 
 of an interpolated story called ' The History of the 
 Shepherdess Felismena,' which sets forth how a love- 
 sick lady deserted by her fickle sweetheart follows 
 him to foreign lands in the guise of a page, and 
 sacrifices herself to him to the extent of serving as 
 his messenger to woo his new flame. The latter falls 
 in love with the lady, who is dressed as a youth; and 
 the complications that ensue are numerous and in- 
 tricate. In the chapter on the Drama I shall point 
 out the indebtedness of Shakespeare for his plot of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 119 
 
 the Two Gentlemen of Verona to this incident, which 
 you will see is identical with it. 
 
 Shakespeare must have seen Young's manuscript, 
 or have heard the tale told, for the book was not 
 printed in English until after the Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona had been written. But others than Shake- 
 speare were stricken with the pastoral craze by reading 
 Diana. The Shepherd's Calendar, where Colin Clout 
 and his pastoral mates go the round of the months 
 with their stories in verse, is clearly inspired by it ; 
 and in France and Spain, as well as in England, the 
 writing of poems and stories around imaginary shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses became universal. When 
 Sir Philip Sidney went abroad to die, he left instruc- 
 tions that his pastoral story called Arcadia, written 
 for the amusement of his sister the Countess of Pem- 
 broke, should be destroyed. Fortunately his com- 
 mand was disobeyed, and one of the gems of English 
 literature was preserved. It is written deliberately in 
 what is called the euphuistic or affected, obscure, and 
 precious style which had become fashionable in Eng- 
 land, as I mentioned in the last chapter, through the 
 popularity of Guevara's writings. This style, which 
 is also that of Montemayor himself, is suited to the 
 completely artificial pastoral tales, though probably 
 Sidney's correct taste and judgment had no desire to 
 link his fame for ever with a style which sins against 
 simplicity. He has, however, written enough beauti- 
 ful pure English for us to look with indulgence upon 
 
I20 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Arcadia. If you will read Bartholomew Young's 
 translation of Diana, and then read Sidney's Arcadia, 
 you will see that he copies closely. Indeed, in the 
 lyrics with which the text is interspersed, he much 
 improves upon the Spanish book, which, it must be 
 understood, he did not translate, but imitated. These 
 two verses of Sidney's, for instance, are better than 
 anything Montemayor could write : — 
 
 ' Of this high grace with bliss conjoined. 
 No further debt on me is laid. 
 Since that is selfsame metal coined, 
 Sweet Lady, you remain well paid. 
 For if my place give me great pleasure. 
 Having before me nature's treasure ; 
 In face and eyes, unmatched being, 
 You have the same in my hands, seeing 
 What in your face mine eyes do measure. 
 
 Nor think the match unevenly made 
 That of those beams in you do tarry. 
 The glass to you but gives a shade. 
 To me mine eyes the true shape carry : 
 For such a thought, most highly prized. 
 Which ever hath Love's yoke despised, 
 Better than one captiv' perceiveth ; 
 Though he the lively form receiveth, 
 The other sees it but disguised.' 
 
 Throughout the later sixteenth, and all the seven- 
 teenth, century in England and France, the pastoral 
 form of romance and poetry continued in vogue. 
 Quite divorced from truth or probability, it yet 
 allowed the sentiment of love, which is always real 
 to be set forth with such ideal surroundings as lent 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 121 
 
 glamour to it on paper. But, as the strong realist 
 school of writing in England gained ground in the 
 early eighteenth century ; when the age of Queen 
 Anne brought us writers of strong, natural, English 
 prose ; when Swift scoffed at shams ; when Addison, 
 Steele, and Fielding looked at life as it was, with 
 open, seeing eyes ; then feeble imitations of what, at 
 best, was an artificial style, only earned derision ; 
 and Ambrose Phillips, whose ridiculous nickname has 
 added an expression to the English language, wrote 
 of the ideal loves of wooden shepherds, and rag-doll 
 shepherdesses,. and the line of pastoral writers ended 
 in Namby Pamby and deservedly died. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SPANISH NOVEL: ITS ORIGIN, TENDENCY, 
 AND INFLUENCE 
 
 In previous chapters I have led the reader gradually 
 along two different paths to the point where they con- 
 verge. First the Oriental apologue, or short story to 
 enforce a moral lesson, was traced onward to where 
 (and especially under the influence of Boccaccio and 
 the Italian renaissance) the anecdote was told for its 
 own sake, and the moral suppressed or placed in 
 the background ; and secondly the kingly chronicle, 
 which, when we left it, had in Spain degenerated 
 through bombastic narratives of heroic adventures 
 into the unreal and over-inflated romance of chivalry. 
 Each successive romance of this sort, if it was to claim 
 attention, had to make its giants bigger and more 
 terrible than ever before, its sorceries more dia,bolical, 
 its knights more altruistically heroic, and its aflflicted 
 maidens more ineffably beautiful. But for the aljsence 
 of humour displayed in these stories, they must have 
 burst with laughing at their own absurdity. And yet 
 the Spaniards were in their very nature more apt to 
 satirise by ridicule than any other people in Europe. 
 
 122 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 123 
 
 The only way to explain their having for a whole 
 century overlooked the vulnerability of the romances 
 of chivalry to the darts of their malicious wit, is to 
 acknowledge that the gust of spiritual self-sacrificing 
 exaltation that swept over the nation in the sixteenth 
 century swamped for the time even their keen sense 
 of humour. But the racial trait could not be hidden 
 entirely for very long, and was to assert itself, at first 
 tentatively and rarely, and later boldly, until out of 
 the amusing short anecdote on the one hand, and the 
 top-heavy chivalric romance of wandering knights- 
 errant on the other, there was to spring a new form of 
 fictional literature, the effects of which have remained 
 upon the novels of the whole world until to-day. 
 
 But though, as I shall presently point out, the 
 Spanish novel of movement sprang from these 
 sources, yet there were other side influences, both 
 Spanish and universal, that contributed to make the 
 new form of fiction what it was, and added to the vast 
 power that it subsequently possessed in Europe. Side 
 by side with the growth of the chivalric romance there 
 had never ceased to exist in Spain a fashion for 
 satirical verse, whose subjects for flagellation were not 
 imaginary, but were drawn from the observation of 
 the author. It would have been odd, indeed, if the 
 countrymen of Seneca the younger, and of Martial, 
 had forgotten the love of biting mockery of real 
 things and persons that lay so deep in the national 
 character. So, whilst cultured Spain in the fourteenth 
 
124 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 cgntury was beginning to weep over the troubles of 
 Oriana, and working itself into heroic ecstasies at the 
 valour of Amadis, a dissolute priest, a very Rabelais, 
 called Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, was spinning 
 facile verses by the hundred, lashing the vices and 
 weaknesses of his countrymen and countrywomen, 
 and showing himself suspiciously familiar with the 
 dissolute life he pretended to condemn, whilst gloat- 
 ing over its unedifying details. He gathered his 
 illustrations and his tales wherever he found them : in 
 the old books of apologues, in the French fables, in 
 the classical satires. But he applied all their teaching 
 to the foibles of the people who surrounded him. 
 Hypocritical nuns, canting, dissolute priests, thieving 
 servants, poor, proud, pompous hidalgos, cheating 
 gamblers, and mumping beggars pass through his 
 verse, to be lashed and laughed at in the Libra de 
 Cantares, by the Archpriest of Hita, who confesses 
 himself to have been as bad as any of them. The 
 book of which I speak must have been written about 
 the middle of the fourteenth century ; and some 
 twenty or thirty years later the Rimado de Palacio of 
 Pedro Lopez de Ayala, of whom I have so often made 
 mention, presents before us another set of types of 
 Spanish society to be made the whipping-blocks of 
 their times ; and later there were other satires of the 
 same sort, which endeavoured in rhyme to present 
 real figures drawn from observation, instead of heroic 
 abstractions. This shows that the eye to see things 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 125 
 
 as they were was in Spain never entirely blinded by 
 the craze for high-faluting heroics, such as never could 
 exist whilst mankind is as it has always been. 
 
 The next step towards the creation of a literature 
 of real life was a great, a very great, one. More than 
 a hundred years after the shocking Archpriest of 
 Hita was in his grave, there was printed at Burgos 
 (in 1499), a few years before the first printing of 
 Amadis of Gaul, a little anonymous book, which 
 to students of literary evolution must ever remain 
 one of the beacons which guide us from headland to 
 headland across the seas of time. It was a story in 
 dialogue, or dramatic form, called La Comedia de 
 Calisto y Melibea. Though written as if for the stage, 
 it was too long (twenty-one acts) and otherwise im- 
 possible of presentation, entire as a drama. It must 
 not be forgotten that writers were groping in the 
 dark. No one had as yet learned to present a com- 
 plete connected long story in prose, for the tales 
 of chivalry were only collections of episodes lightly 
 strung together, and the development of character by 
 means of fiction had not been heard of in modern 
 times ; so that, although this story of Calisto y Melibea 
 (or Celestina, as it became known throughout the 
 world afterwards) may appear crude and childish to 
 us, we must not forget that it was the first connected 
 long story with a complete plot written in modern 
 literature. 
 
 The plot is a sad one of lovers pursued by evil fate, 
 
126 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 %nd sensuality meeting with a dire punishment. If 
 we did not know of the Italian origin of Romeo and 
 Juliet, we might think that Shakespeare had been 
 inspired by Celestina; and, indeed, it is likely that he 
 knew of Mabbe's translation of it in manuscript from 
 Mabbe's friend Ben Jonson. The types are taken 
 mainly from the Archpriest of Hita. A young noble- 
 man named Calisto, of good repute and disposition, 
 falls violently in love with a young lady of high 
 station named Melibea. Finding the lady unassail- 
 able to his approaches, Calisto is persuaded by a 
 roguish valet to appeal to an infamous old woman, 
 a procuress named Celestina, evidently inspired by 
 the archpriest's convent trotter, and by her intrigues 
 with servants, and her hypocritical arts with Melibea 
 herself, she contrives to bring about a meeting of the 
 lovers, and the ruin of Melibea. Celestina is killed 
 by Calisto's servants because she refuses to give them 
 a due share of Calisto's reward ; and Celestina's in- 
 famous friends kill Calisto in revenge, which causes 
 Melibea to commit suicide. 
 
 This story is told so vigorously, and with so 
 much humour and observation, and with such a 
 sense of character, as to mark an epoch in fiction. 
 It was almost immediately translated into Italian 
 and French, and in the former language came to 
 England, to be denounced by the grave Oxford pro- 
 fessor Luis Vives as being a source of levity to be 
 avoided. In 1530 Celestina was translated into Eng- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 127 
 
 lish anonymously, and before the end of the sixteenth 
 century the book was in the hands of every cultured 
 reader in Europe. There had rarely been a book so 
 popular as this in all lands. It told in vivid language 
 what might be an experience of any of those who 
 read it. This was life itself, not an abstraction. The 
 quaint translator James Mabbe ('Don Diego Puede- 
 Ser') translated Celestina again in that fine Eliza- 
 bethan English of his, and the recent republication 
 of it in the ' Tudor Reprints ' brings it within reach of 
 all English readers. There is no mincing matters 
 about Celestina. The infamous old woman and the 
 crowd of immoral rogues that surround her are 
 taken straight from the low quarters of a Spanish city. 
 Vice is not gilded, as it is in the chivalric romances ; 
 it is not in words flagellated, and yet gloated over, as 
 it is by the Archpriest. It is simply presented as it 
 is, and its evil consequences naturally brought out 
 by the development of the story. The following few - 
 words of Mabbe's translation will show how here, for 
 the first time in modern literature, the character of 
 the individual is developed by what he says, instead 
 of only guessed at by what he does. The speaker is 
 one of the dissolute women in Celestina's house, and 
 she indicates her recklessness by enunciating the 
 principle of a short life and a merry one. ' As long 
 as we have meat for to-day, let us not think of to- 
 morrow. Let to-morrow care for itself. As well dies 
 he' that gathers much, as he that lives but poorly. 
 
128 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 We are not to live for ever, and therefore let us laugh 
 and be merry, for few are they that come to see old 
 age, and they who doe see it seldom dye of hunger. 
 I want nothing in this world but meat, drink, and 
 clothing, and my share of pleasure. And, though 
 rich men have better means to attain this glory than 
 he that hath little, yet there is not one of them that 
 is contented ; not one that sayes to himselfe, I have 
 enough. There is not one of them with whom I 
 would exchange my pleasures for their riches.' 
 
 Thus, even when the artificial romance of chivalry 
 was at its highest vogue in the sixteenth century, 
 there arose in Spain a realistic fiction, in which the 
 habits of low life and vicious people were set down 
 as they existed, without any heroism at all. A 
 siniilar process was taking place in other countries 
 of Europe at the time, which doubtless, to some 
 extent, influenced the subsequent production of the 
 Spanish rogue novel. From the earliest classical 
 times one of the standing elements of the Greek and 
 Latin dramas was the roguish tricks of servants who 
 were used as a foil, or what we now call 'comic 
 relief,' to the heroes. Petronius in the Satyricon 
 even went beyond this, and presented a type who 
 lived by the exercise of his ingenuity in getting the 
 better of his fellow-creatures. Then, side by side 
 with this element in classical writing, was another 
 that told of the vicissitudes of a man in the guise 
 of an animal passing through the service of many 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 129 
 
 masters, such as the Golden Ass of Apuleius. And 
 yet another development had arisen in Europe in 
 the form of a collection of smart tricks or ingenious 
 swindles that had clustered around some favoured 
 jester, or some well-known buffoon or rogue fool. 
 Such, for instance, was the German collection of 
 cheating anecdotes first published in 15 19, under the 
 name of Tz/ Eulenspiegel, by Thomas Murner, which 
 was soon Englished under the title of Til Owl-glass, 
 and was very popular in England. Therefrom sprang 
 quite a list of English collections of similar tales, in 
 which separate roguish anecdotes were strung together 
 on some well-known name:— 772« Gestes of Skoggin 
 (1565), by Andrew Borde ; The Twelve Merry Gestes 
 of the Widow Edyth (i $7 2),'hy Smith; The Conceited 
 Gestes of George Peek {iSoy); Skelton's Merry Tales, 
 and others ; all of which I shall have to refer to at 
 greater length in the next chapter, when I speak of 
 the rogue tale in England. Tales of beggar life were 
 also not uncommon in the sixteenth century all over 
 Europe, giving accounts of ways and subterfuges of 
 vagabonds, their slang, and their haunts. But, be it 
 recollected, none of these were connected tales, nor 
 was any attempt made in them to develop character 
 or analyse motives. They were simply the apologues 
 and classical stories of rogues' tricks, the deceits of 
 servants, and the practical jokes of court jesters, 
 collected together and threaded upon the string of 
 a notorious name. 
 
 I 
 
I30 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 We have thus brought matters down to the middle 
 of the sixteenth century in Spain. There existed, 
 as I have shown, a small literature of satire in verse, 
 upon real live types ; Celestina with a few imitations, 
 dealing with the life of the vicious classes, actually 
 copied from existing society, without romance, the 
 Oriental and classical short stories derived from the 
 apologues ; and overwhelming everything, the top- 
 heavy, unnatural and inflated romance of chivalry, 
 without humour and without reality, growing every 
 year more extravagant. From such a monstrosity 
 as this latter no healthy direct offspring could be 
 derived. The short story, such as those of Count 
 Lucanor, or Boccaccio, or like the collections of rogue 
 stories I have mentioned, could go no further except 
 to become more polished, more witty, more pungent. 
 For the essence of these was that each one consisted 
 of a single incident ; and a single incident could not 
 be spun out indefinitely. So with the exception of 
 Celestina, which told, in more or less dramatic form, a 
 single story consisting of several interlaced incidents 
 and their developments, Spanish fiction had reached 
 an impasse by the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 I have said that no healthy offspring could be 
 expected from so monstrous an artificiality as the 
 romance of chivalry had become. But what happens 
 when that is the case ? When degeneracy stops de- 
 velopment an entire reaction takes place, and the effete 
 type is not gradually reformed, but is convulsively 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 131 
 
 reversed. This is what took place in Spanish fiction. 
 Amadis, Arthur, Palmerin, and all the rest of them, 
 were artificial from top to bottom. The incidents, 
 crammed with giants and sorcerers, with maidens 
 too lovely to live, with knights too self-sacrificing and 
 brave ever to have been sons of men ; with shepherds 
 having no work to do but to lie on the grass and 
 sigh, or tell long-winded stories of their loves and 
 sufferings ; with shepherdesses who in real life would 
 not have known a sheep from a calf: these folk had 
 no relation whatever with real life. They were 
 abstractions, who had fulfilled an important and 
 influential part in purifying aims and elevating 
 altruism to a cult in a rough and violent age ; but 
 even in Spain the real need for them was passing 
 rapidly, and since a gradual reform of the stories 
 to a more reasonable and convincing tone was no 
 longer possible, the next development took the place 
 of an entire reaction. Celestina and the collections 
 of smart stories gave the clue. Realism, unmitigated, 
 must replace florid fancy. Instead of verdant lawns, 
 jewelled with starry flowers, the gutter of a slum must 
 be the scene; instead of languishing princesses, too 
 lovely for words, and with none of the ordinary cares 
 of humanity (for which indeed her constant tribula- 
 tions with ogres, sorcerers, and lovers would give her 
 no time), the woman of the story must be the labour- 
 ing peasant, or the trull of the streets ; instead of 
 jewelled palaces, soft music, and heavenly perfumes. 
 
132 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 • the beggar's hovel, the thieves' den, the blatant sounds 
 and pungent odours of the streets, must be reproduced 
 upon the page. Nothing must be pardoned in the 
 way of inversion. The smart rogue must be the hero, 
 instead of the knight; and altruistic self-sacrifice must 
 give place to dishonest and immoral selfishness. But, 
 withal, nothing is ever invented in the world entire 
 and new, and one part of the machinery of the chival- 
 ric romance was adopted for the framework of the 
 new fiction. All the adventures of the knights of 
 chivalry had been encountered on the way. The heroes 
 were always wandering from one place to another, 
 knights-errant rightly called, to right wrongs, rescue 
 their lady-loves, or conquer kingdoms. But move- 
 ment from one place to another was always essential 
 to the story. This, then, was taken as the framework 
 of the picaresque or rogue novel, when it was evolved 
 as a reaction from Amadis. The other ingredients 
 were the collections of stories I have already de- 
 scribed, dealing with practical jokes or rogues' devices 
 to get the better of other people ; partly derived from 
 the classical cunning servant, and partly from the 
 Oriental Spanish apologue. 
 
 This was the genesis of the rogue novel. Let us 
 now look at what the novel itself became. To do 
 this we can find no better way than consider the first, 
 and in many respects the best, of the class — Lazarillo 
 de Tormes. Who wrote the book, nobody knows ; but 
 it has generally been ascribed to a great noble and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 133 
 
 statesman and a sound historian, to whose works I 
 shall have to refer later — Don Diego Hurtado de Men- 
 doza, who was the emperor's ambassador in Venice, 
 and his representative at the Council of Trent in 1546. 
 Having had the opportunity of studying and trans- 
 lating very many of his manuscript writings, and of 
 considering those in print, I am quite convinced that 
 Mendoza was not the author of Lazarillo. And yet, 
 from the time of its appearance, there have always 
 been traditions that connected it somehow with the 
 Council of Trent ; and it has been asserted that it 
 was composed ' ambulando ' by some of the Spanish 
 prelates as they slowly rode on their long journey 
 thither. This is possible, but unlikely ; for anything 
 less clerical than Lazarillo it is difficult to imagine. 
 It is far more likely to have been written piecemeal 
 by one of the clever Spanish literary men sent to 
 Trent in the trains of bishops and ambassadors, and 
 read perhaps on the way to amuse these great per- 
 sonages. In any case, it must have been written 
 at that period, and it was first published very 
 modestly in Burgos in 1554 ; the only copy of the first 
 edition known being now in the Duke of Devonshire's 
 library at Chatsworth. 
 
 The book is called La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes : 
 y de sus fortunas y adversidades, and tells the story of 
 a young scamp, who says that his father was foreman 
 in a mill on the river Tormes, near Salamanca, and 
 that he was born in the mill. The father is sent 
 
134 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 • to prison for pilfering the meal, and, afterwards going 
 as muleteer to an officer, was killed in the wars 
 against the Moors. The widow then opens a cook- 
 shop at Salamanca, and enters into relations with a 
 negro groom, who steals his master's fodder to regale 
 his mistress, and gets into trouble with the authorities. 
 ' One can hardly wonder,' says Lazarillo, ' at a priest 
 or a friar, the one robbing the poor, the other his 
 convent, for the sake of their fair and devout believers, 
 when love can stimulate a poor slave to do the like. 
 All this was fully proved ; for when they came to me, 
 I, like the child I was, and fearful of the threats of 
 punishment, told them all I knew, even about the 
 very horse-shoes that my mother had sent me to 
 the farrier's to sell. My poor stepfather was soundly 
 flogged, and his flesh tickled with drops of scalding 
 fat, whilst my mother was commanded under the 
 severest penalties never to receive Zaide again.' A 
 blind beggar comes to lodge at the house where 
 Lazarillo's mother is a servant, and the boy is engaged 
 to lead him about. Thenceforward the adventures 
 of the hero fill the book. There is but little subtlety 
 of character. The lad is represented as being schooled 
 gradually into cunning and vice ; sometimes in good 
 places, where he prospers, sometimes with beggars, 
 thieves, and rogues, where he starves till he steals. 
 But, whether up or down, he never appears either 
 despondent or elated. The hero, in short, although 
 a real hero and the legitimate centre of interest of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 135 
 
 the story, is only there for the things that happen 
 to him during his life, not to show how character 
 and effort may mould events. That development 
 came later. 
 
 The adventures of Lazarillo are probably adapta- 
 tions of roguish tales current at the time, and drawn 
 from a multitude of such sources as these I have 
 mentioned. But, even so, Lazarillo is a great advance 
 upon anything else before it. It tells in elegant, 
 copious, and nervous Castilian, the ups and downs, the 
 trials, perils, and adventures of a boy living by his 
 wits, sharpened by adversity; and it enables the 
 writer to portray, in the persons of Lazarillo's com- 
 panions and employers, the various types that went 
 to make up Spanish society of the day. The broken 
 soldier, the out-at-elbows hidalgo, the hypocritical 
 priest, the pickpocket jostling the overdressed crowd 
 in the Calle Mayor, and the beggars and mumpers 
 living hideously in squalid abundance on the proceeds 
 of their afflictions, real and assumed. The work was 
 a great one, and it first started a school of fiction 
 which is not yet dead. It is difficult in a book of such 
 a length to choose an adequate specimen. Here, 
 however, are a few passages where the lad tells his 
 first adventures with the blind man after they left 
 Salamanca to take to the road : — 
 
 " With all this, however, I am sorry to say that I 
 never met with so avaricious and so wicked an old 
 curmudgeon : he allowed me almost to die daily of 
 
136 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 hunger without troubling himself about my neces- 
 sities ; and, to say the truth, if I had not helped my- 
 self by means of a ready wit and nimble fingers, I 
 should have closed my account from sheer starvation. 
 Notwithstanding all my master's astuteness and 
 cunning, I contrived so to outwit him, that generally 
 the best half came to my share. But to accomplish 
 this, I was obliged to tax my powers of invention to 
 the uttermost. Of this I will recount a few specimens, 
 although they may not perhaps tell much to my 
 credit. The old man was accustomed to carry his 
 bread, meat, and other things in a sort of linen knap- 
 sack which was closed at the mouth by an iron ring, 
 and secured also by a padlock ; but in adding to his 
 store, or taking from it, he used such vigilance that 
 it was almost impossible to cheat him of a single 
 morsel. However, when he had given me my pittance, 
 which I found no difficulty in despatching in about 
 two mouthfuls, and had closed his budget thinking 
 himself quite secure from depredation, I began my 
 tactics, and by means of a small rent which I slyly 
 effected in one of the seams of the bag, I used to help 
 myself to the choicest pieces of meat, bacon, and 
 sausage, taking care to close the seam as opportunity 
 occurred. But in addition to this, all I could collect 
 together either by fraud or otherwise, I carried about 
 with me in half-farthings ; so that when the old man 
 was sent for to pray, and the people gave him 
 farthings, all of which passed through my hands, he 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 137 
 
 being blind, I contrived to slip them into my mouth, 
 by which process so quick an alteration was effected, 
 that when they reached his hands they were invari- 
 ably reduced to half their original value. The cunning 
 old fellow, however, suspected me ; for he used to say, 
 How the deuce is this ? Ever since you have been 
 with me, they give me nothing but half-farthings, 
 whereas before it was no unusual thing to be paid with 
 halfpence, and never less than with farthings. I must 
 be sharp with you, I find. Whenever we ate, the old 
 man took care to keep a small jar of wine near him, 
 which was reserved for his own special service. But 
 I soon adopted the practice of bestowing on this 
 favourite jar sundry loving though stolen embraces. 
 Such pleasures were but short lived, for the fervency 
 of my attachment was soon discovered by the 
 deficiency of the wine ; and the old man afterwards, 
 to secure his draught, never let the jar go without tying 
 it to him by the handle. But I was a match for him 
 even there ; for I procured a large straw, and, dipping 
 it into the mouth of the jar, renewed my intimacy 
 with such effect that but a small share was left for him 
 who came after me. The old traitor was not long in 
 finding me out : I think he must have heard me suck- 
 ing in the wine, for he quickly changed his plan, and 
 placed the jar between his knees, keeping the mouth 
 covered by his hand, and thus he thought himself 
 quite secure against pilfering." 
 
 In a tale constructed on such lines as I have 
 
138 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ^escribed, there was no reason why it ever should 
 stop, and several sequels and continuations of the story 
 appeared. The Inquisition came down upon Lazarillo 
 and purged it of much of its anti-clerical ribaldry; 
 yet not only was edition after edition issued in Spain, 
 but the book was almost at once published in French 
 and Italian. In English the first version appeared 
 anonymously in 1 568, The Marvelus Dedes and Lyf of 
 Lazaro de Tormes ; but this edition I have never seen. 
 Another came out in 1^76, 'The Pleasant History of 
 Lazarillo de Tormes, a Spaniard. Imprinted at London 
 by Henry Binneman, dwelling at Knightrider Street, 
 at the Sign of the Mermaid.' But the best-known 
 edition is that of David Rowland of Anglesey, 
 published in London in 1586. Of all these, and other 
 English editions and imitations, I shall speak in the 
 next chapter. 
 
 I must now pass to the consideration of the 
 development of the novel of movement in Spain itself, 
 leaving for the present the detailed description of the 
 picaresque novels in general, which sprang from the 
 example of Lazarillo de Tormes; especially Guzman 
 de Alfarache of Mateo Aleman, Marcos de Obregon 
 of Espinel, El Gran Tacano of Quevedo, and their 
 many imitations in France and England. 
 
 The uncompromising realism of Lazarillo and its 
 school struck a popular note, which swelled as time 
 passed on, and as the vapid romances of chivalry 
 became more and more extravagant. But the victory 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 139 
 
 was not gained all at once. Public taste and literary 
 traditions were slow to change, and the artificial, fanci- 
 ful romance still had its votaries. In the last chapter 
 I referred to the grafting of the pastoral form of 
 fiction upon the stock of chivalric romance. The 
 loves of shepherds and shepherdesses were no more 
 real than were those of knights-errant and distressed 
 ladies ; but at the end of the sixteenth century they 
 demanded a less copious draft upon the reader's 
 imagination to realise their possibility. They became, 
 in England and France particularly, for over a century 
 a favourite vehicle of fancy ; but in Spain their vogue 
 was not long. When the great literary genius 
 Cervantes was groping for a vehicle for his abounding 
 wit, it was natural that he should tentatively choose 
 the form which seemed at the moment that most in 
 favour with readers who prided themselves upon their 
 culture. But the pastoral form was not purely 
 Spanish. Neither the climate nor the configuration of 
 the country lent itself to the formation of the sparkling 
 green pastoral lawns and rippling rills that form the 
 background of the pastoral romance. Spain is a lean 
 country ; and fatness, not to say stodginess, is the 
 essence of the pastoral romance. The form originally 
 came from classic Italy, and though it spread to 
 France and England mainly through Spain, it was 
 never native to stern Castile. 
 
 If ever a true representative Spanish mind existed, 
 it was that of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra. Keen, 
 
I40 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 s|tirical, in his Iberian heart irreverent towards all 
 things but abstract sentiment, when he elected to 
 embody his thoughts early in his career in the pastoral 
 form of Galatea^ he must have felt its artificiality and 
 have secretly laughed at it. That Cervantes was 
 consciously following a prevailing fashion when he 
 'elected to try his first flight with pastoral wings, is 
 seen by the knowledge he shows of the fashionable 
 pastoral romances when the discussion is going on 
 about the destruction of Don Quixote's library. More 
 than a hundred stately folios of chivalric romances 
 were condemned to be burnt, in order that they might 
 not encourage the poor gentleman in his mad ideas. 
 The niece then suggests the few thin little books of 
 pastorals should also be sacrificed ; for, she says, it 
 would be no wonder if, after being cured of his 
 chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a 
 fancy to turn shepherd, and ranged the woods and 
 fields singing and piping. The curate is inclined to 
 agree with her, but pleads that the Diana of Monte- 
 mayor, of which I spoke in the last chapter, should be 
 spared from the flames ; only that it should be purged 
 of all that nonsense about the sage Felicia and the 
 magic water, and of almost all the long pieces of 
 verse. Let it keep its prose and welcome, and the 
 honour of being the first book of its kind ; and then, 
 one after the other, all the fashionable pastoral 
 romances of the day are passed in review and keenly 
 criticised by the curate, some being spared, and some 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 141 
 
 burnt. That which is praised most highly is the 
 Pastor de Filida, by Cervantes' friend Galvez de 
 Montalvan, which, with the Arcadia of the Italian 
 Sannazaro, inspired his own Galatea. 
 
 It seems strange at first sight that so consummate a 
 realist as Cervantes should, even temporarily, have 
 clothed his ideas in the languid, insipid artificiality of 
 the pastoral. But he was a child of his age. The quiet, 
 placid simplicity of the idyllic shepherds was as much 
 a natural revulsion in form from the noisy clashing of 
 knights and giants, as was the vulgar picaresque 
 novel a revulsion in ethics from the superfine altruistic 
 virtue of heroes of chivalry ; and Cervantes correctly 
 hit the taste of 1585 when Galatea was published — 
 fleeting in Spain as that taste was. In any case, the 
 form is utterly dead now ; and even the genius of 
 Cervantes cannot make these seventy odd shepherds 
 and .shepherdesses, and dozens of nymphs, otherwise 
 than mawkish lay figures manufactured to spout 
 interminable verse. They were abstractions never 
 meant to be taken for reality. But though the vehicle 
 was a poor one, of which even Cervantes could not 
 make much, the Spanish in which Galatea is written, 
 especially the prose portions, are as nearly perfect . 
 Castilian as ever was written. What is more remark- 
 able than anything about it is that, though Galatea 
 itself did not attract much attention, it was to the 
 hour of his death a favourite with the author; arid 
 from the day it was published in 1585, until thirty 
 
142 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 jjears later, on the last day of his life, the author of 
 Don Quixote never ceased to promise a second part. 
 For, by an irony of nature, Cervantes loved best, and 
 yearned for praise for, those things that the public did 
 not want of him : his dramas and his dear Galatea. I 
 will quote a short passage, chosen at random from 
 Galatea, in order that it may be seen how foreign the 
 whole tone is to the taste of to-day. Two shepherd- 
 esses, Galatea and Florisa, overhear another shep- 
 herdess, a stranger, singing a despairing love-song, 
 and bewailing cruel fate. They come forward and in 
 tears of sympathy offer her their help. After an 
 infinite length of florid compliment and high-flown 
 language, the new shepherdess of course tells the 
 story of her grief It is too intolerably long to be 
 quoted at length, but this is how it begins : — 
 
 ' Let us retire, then, said the shepherdess, from this 
 spot, and seek another, where, without being seen or 
 disturbed, I may be able to tell you what it grieves me 
 to have promised you, for I foresee that it will cost 
 more to lose the good opinion I have gained with you 
 than to reveal my thoughts to you, however late, if 
 perhaps yours have not been touched by the afflic- 
 tion I am suffering. 
 
 ' Desirous that the shepherdess should fulfil her 
 promise, straightway the three arose, and betook 
 themselves to a secret and retired place known 
 already to Galatea and Florisa, where beneath the 
 pleasant shade of some leafy myrtles, without being 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 143 
 
 seen by anybody, all three could be seated. Forth- 
 with, with exquisite grace and charm, the strange 
 shepherdess began to speak in this wise. 
 
 ' On the banks of the famous Henares, which ever 
 yields fresh and pleasant tribute to your golden 
 Tagus, most beauteous shepherdesses, was I born and 
 nurtured in a station not so lowly that I might count 
 myself the meanest of the village. My parents are 
 farmers and accustomed to field labour, in which 
 occupation I followed them, leading a flock of simple 
 sheep over the common pastures of our village. So 
 well did I adapt my thoughts to the condition in 
 which my lot had placed me, that nothing gave me 
 more joy than to see my flock multiply and increase, 
 and I had no other thought than how to gain for them 
 the richest and most fertile pastures, the clearest and 
 freshest waters.' 
 
 This artificiality leaves us cold, as probably it did 
 the mass of the Spanish public of the time in which 
 it was written. It was the affected cultured few, 
 influenced by Italian residence and travel, and proud 
 of classical taste, that, in Spain at least, liked to read 
 of shepherds and shepherdesses. The true Spaniards, 
 ardent and satirical, intensely realistic now, as a 
 reaction from the abstract transcendentalism of the 
 past hundred years, wished to read and to laugh 
 bitterly at the tricks of rogues ; to follow, as in a mirror 
 passing, the daily life around them, with its mean- 
 ness, its vice, its devotion, its hollow splendour, and 
 
144 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 its sordid shifts. The short Italian novel of real life, 
 free from an obtrusive moral, had become popular in 
 Europe from the hands of Boccaccio and his followers ; 
 but in Spain nothing native of the sort yet existed, 
 except the apologues, or moral anecdotes, I have so 
 often mentioned, and the few incidental tales intro- 
 duced into the romances of roguery — Lazarillo de 
 Tormes, Guzman de Alfarache, and the like. So, 
 as Cervantes himself says, he became the ' first to 
 essay novels in the Spanish tongue.' 
 
 The first of his short novels was probably written 
 between 1592 and 1600, and the other eleven or 
 (according to some writers) twelve were written at 
 various times up to 161 3, when they were published 
 for the first time under the name of The Exemplary 
 Novels. The first edition of Don Quixote had been 
 published eight years before ; but as the Exemplary 
 Novels, for the most part, represent an earlier mani- 
 festation of the author's genius, though published 
 later, I propose to speak first of the Exemplary Novels, 
 of which a good English edition has just been pub- 
 lished in two volumes by a Scottish firm. To speak 
 adequately of these wonderful tales would need, not 
 the few pages I have at my disposal in a general 
 review, but a volume by itself. They are throbbing 
 with vitality and colour, veritable reflections of life, 
 full of satire and observation. They are : The Little 
 Gipsy, The Liberal Lover, Rinconete and Cortadillo, 
 The Spanish Englishwoman, The Licentiate of Glass, 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 145 
 
 The Force of Blood, The Jealous Estremetian, The Illus- 
 trious Scrubbing-Maid, The Lady Cornelia, The Deceit- 
 ful Marriage, The Dogs' Colloquy, and, perhaps, The 
 Feigned Aunt. 
 
 The author was already famous when they were 
 published, and the merit of the stories was seen the 
 moment they issued from the press. Before a year 
 had passed they were translated into French, and the 
 French dramatists seized upon the plots at once. 
 La Fuerza de la Sangre became a French play called 
 La Force du Sang; The Little Gipsy {La Gitanilld) 
 became La Belle Agyptienne. As I shall point out 
 more at length in the chapter on the Drama, the 
 English playwrights also soon found the Exemplary 
 Novels fertile of material. Tlie Illustrious Scrubbing- 
 Maid (La Ilustre Fregona) was made into a play by 
 Fletcher, and called The Fair Maid of the Inn ; Rule 
 a Wife and Have a Wife, by the same dramatist, 
 is an adaptation of El Casamiento Enganoso ; and 
 his The Chances is adapted from The Lady Cornelia. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's A Very Woman is taken 
 from The Liberal Lover {El Amante Liberal). Mas- 
 singer and Rowley adapted The Force of Blood {La 
 Fuerza de la Sangre), and called it The Queen of 
 Corinth ; and The Spanish Gipsy of Middleton and 
 Rowley was taken from La Giianilla ; whilst several 
 other plays in English were derived more or less 
 directly from these novels, as I shall have the 
 opportunity of showing in a later chapter. 
 
 K 
 
146 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 If the dramatists and story-tellers of England and 
 France thus seized upon the substance of these tales, 
 in Spain itself the same process was even more con- 
 spicuous. Not only did the great dramatists of 
 Spain's golden age, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, 
 and Calderon, copy and adapt them for the stage, 
 but writers innumerable imitated them in the form 
 of novels. Their vogue was wonderful and wide- 
 spread : Sir Walter Scott told Lockhart that it was 
 by reading them that he was first led to write fiction, 
 and Goethe called them 'a very treasure of delight.' 
 But the popularity of the short story modelled on 
 the lines of the Exemplary Novels, the title of 
 which was, indeed, the last surviving tradition of the 
 Spanish-Oriental didactic apologue, was surpassed, 
 and overwhelmed, by the triumph of Don Quixote and 
 the continued story of peripatetic adventure, which 
 was a new development of them. The Exemplary 
 Novels nevertheless will remain one of our undying 
 literary treasures, and now that they have for the 
 first time been worthily translated into English by 
 Mr. Maccoll they deserve a new lease of prosperity. 
 The following specimen of his version will show the 
 freedom and vigour of Cervantes' style. It describes 
 the first meeting of the two young vagabonds, 
 Rinconeteand Cortadillo, whose adventures with a 
 band of thieves form the story : — 
 
 " On one of the hot days of summer, two lads 
 chanced to find themselves in the Venta of the Little 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 14; 
 
 Mill, which is situated on the borders of the famous 
 plains of Alcudia. The one was between fourteen 
 and fifteen years of age, and the other not over 
 seventeen, Both were engaging youths, but were 
 very tattered, ragged, and ill clad. Neither wore a 
 cloak, their breeches were of linen, and their stockings 
 were bare flesh. It is true that their shoes redeemed 
 the matter, because those of the one were sandals, as 
 worn as they were old, and those of the other rotten 
 and without soles, so that they served him rather 
 as fetters than as shoes. The one wore a green 
 sportsman's cap, the other a hat that had no band, 
 low in the crown and with a broad flap. At the 
 shoulder, and girt by the breast, the one had on a 
 shirt of the colour of chamois leather, short, and 
 gathered into one sleeve. The other was free from 
 encumbrances and baggage, except that in his bosom 
 was to be seen a great bundle which, as afterwards 
 appeared, was a collar of the kind called a starched 
 Walloon, stiffened with grease and so wholly thread- 
 bare that it seemed all threads. In it were wrapped 
 up and preserved sundry playing-cards of an oval 
 shape, for by use they had become worn out, and 
 that they might last the longer they had been pared. 
 Both the boys were sunburnt, their nails were edged 
 with dirt, and their hands were far from clean. The 
 one had half a sword, and the other a knife with a 
 yellow handle. The two stepped out to rest at a 
 porch in front of the inn, and, sitting down opposite 
 
148 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 each other, he who appeared to be the elder said to 
 the smaller, To what district does your worship 
 Sir Knight belong, and whither, pray, is your worship 
 bound? My country, noble sir, replied the stripling 
 to whom the question was addressed, I do not 
 know, nor do I know either whither I am going. 
 Marry ! replied the elder, your worship does not 
 make his appearance from heaven, and this is not a 
 place where one can take up one's abode, but per- 
 force must pass onwards. So it is, retorted the 
 other; yet I said the truth in what I said, for my 
 country is not mine, since I have nothing in it, more 
 than a father who does not hold me to be his son, 
 and a stepmother who treats me as a stepson." 
 And so these delicious young rascals make friends 
 and proceed on their predatory travels together. 
 Nothing could exceed the naturalness, the modernity, 
 of the prose of these novels, in conspicuous contrast 
 with the pastoral writing by the same author, of which 
 a specimen has been quoted in a previous page. 
 
 The following short extract from the preface of 
 the Exemplary Novels, in which Cervantes draws 
 his own portrait, will show how unerring was the 
 artistry of his pen, and how characteristically Spanish 
 in its vanity and yet in keen satiric observation, 
 even at his own expense. ' He whom you here 
 behold with aquiline visage, with chestnut hair, 
 smooth unrufided brow, with sparkling eyes, and a 
 nose arched, although well proportioned, a silver 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 149 
 
 beard, although not twenty years ago it was golden, 
 large moustache, small mouth, teeth not important, 
 for he has but six of them, and those in ill condition 
 and worse placed, because they do not correspond 
 one with the other ; the body between two extremes, 
 neither large nor small ; the complexion bright, rather 
 white than brown, somewhat heavy-shouldered, and 
 not very nimble on his feet : this, I say, is the portrait 
 of the author of the Galatea and of Don Quixote de 
 la Mancha' His claim in the same preface to be 
 the originator of the Spanish short story of real 
 life, told for its own sake and without didactic object, 
 is emphatic. ' I am,' he says, ' the first to essay 
 novels in the Castilian tongue, for the many novels 
 which go about in print in Spanish are translated 
 from foreign languages, whilst these are mine own, 
 neither imitated nor stolen. My genius begat them, 
 my pen gave them birth, and they go on growing in 
 the arms of the press.' 
 
 But, fine as these short novels are in themselves, 
 they led to something infinitely greater. The 
 Exemplary Novels were, in all essentials of form, 
 extended apologues, without the moral. Some of 
 them in all probability were written before Don 
 Quixote, and the great work, in its first inception, 
 was intended to be another short story in comic 
 vein like them. The thought was to show up the 
 absurdities of the chivalric romances. The subject 
 was crying aloud for mockery. The bubble was 
 
I50 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ft 
 
 swelled ready for bursting. ■ The native Spanish, 
 
 mocking humour was once more asserting itself, and 
 overcoming the exalted spiritual pride that had been 
 for a century the nation's strength, and was now to 
 be the nation's ruin. For over a century all literature 
 had been saturated with this artificial obsession. It 
 had coloured men's thoughts, it had ruled men's 
 lives ; but it was not true to nature, and it was 
 doomed to fall, as all false things must. So Miguel 
 Cervantes, unconscious that he was beginning a 
 world's masterpiece, wrote the first lines of what he 
 thought was going to be a slight skit on the already 
 waning craze of chivalry. A mad country gentleman, 
 full of the altruistic and exalted gallantry that much 
 conning of chivalrous books had taught him to believe 
 the highest nobleness, starts out in search of such 
 adventures as had befallen Amadis and his imitators. 
 What he meets are sights and sounds of everyday 
 life in Spain, and his disordered brain makes wind- 
 mills into giants, kitchen wenches into princesses, 
 barbers into magicians, flocks of sheep into Moors ; 
 and him, a poor, lean, elderly squireling, into a 
 splendid warrior, whose heroism shall conquer the 
 world for the right. Truly it was too big a subject to 
 be contained in a short story, and it overcame its 
 author. This fact must also be ascribed in part to 
 the particular framework which the burlesque de- 
 manded. The romances of chivalry, as I pointed out 
 in a previous chapter, had depended — like the subse- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 151 
 
 quent romances of roguery — upon the continual 
 movement of the hero, and his encounter with various 
 adventures and persons on the way. This form 
 encouraged continuation, because, as I have already 
 observed, there was practically no reason, except the 
 death of the hero, why it should ever stop. In any 
 case, Don Quixote was carried on from adventure to 
 adventure, from one crazy fancy to another, until, 
 instead of a short novel, one of the great books of 
 the world came to be written ; and the chivalric 
 romance was silenced for ever by universal shouts of 
 laughter. 
 
 To see how Don Quixote thus grew from small 
 beginnings, we will glance at the first inception of the 
 story. The gentleman, doubtless a caricature of some 
 small local magnate named Quijada, known to Cer- 
 vantes, belonged to Argamasilla de Alba, in La Mancha, 
 and starts out on his first journey alone. Sancho 
 Panza himself was an afterthought, for it was not 
 until the middle of the third chapter that the chance 
 mention by the innkeeper who was to knight Don 
 Quixote, that knights-errant were accompanied by 
 squires, that any squire at all seemed to enter the 
 author's head, and not until chapter seven, when the 
 knight starts on his second journey, that Sancho 
 is brought into the story. Even then he was not the 
 Sancho he afterwards became, for even in chapter 
 nine he is referred to as having long shanks. But, as 
 the satire proceeds, the author's hand becomes surer. 
 
152 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 "Jhe people he described he knew in the flesh ; and 
 one by one they pass before us in their habits as they 
 lived. For years he had ridden across those tawny 
 plains, and lodged in those squalid inns, as the king's 
 tithe-collector. With those stolid boors, full of sen- 
 tentious speech and sage proverbs, culled from the 
 sources of ancient Hebrew and Arabic lore, to which 
 I have directed attention in earlier chapters, he had 
 lived. His wide travels in Spain and abroad, his vast 
 memory and his abounding wit, gave him material 
 enough to write a library. A true Spaniard, if ever such 
 lived, he was a compound of the qualities, good and 
 bad, which made the Spaniard of his day, or shortly 
 before it, better and worse than other men. Better, 
 because saturated still with essential nobleness of 
 sacrifice and the sanctity of purity of aim ; worse, 
 because with an impossible high ideal ever before him 
 he was content in most cases to let it remain an ideal, 
 and to separate daily conduct from abstract pro- 
 fessions. To him nothing real was sacred ; his 
 mocking laugh stopped at no barriers, so long as the 
 ideal abstraction, quite apart from his life, was set 
 upon a pedestal afar off for mystic worship. 
 
 The salient point of the whole work is its uncon- 
 trollable humour. The sage saws put into the mouth 
 of Sancho are the current maxims of the unlearned 
 Spaniards who, as I have explained in former chapters, 
 had inherited from their forefathers the tradition of 
 crystallising wisdom in sententious speech that passed 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 153 
 
 from father to son for centuries, as guides to ideal 
 perfection in life. But as a stylist in Castilian prose 
 Cervantes is supreme. His style is quite unstudied, 
 as spontaneous as his humour. He writes with point 
 and piquancy, because he thinks and sees clearly. 
 But, besides his gaiety, you see beneath his lines a 
 tolerance, and an easy-going optimism, an almost 
 contemptuous avoidance of condemnation, that shows 
 his heart to have been as sound as his brain. It has 
 been said well by a learned Cervantist, that there 
 are six hundred and sixty-nine personages in Don 
 Quixote, and yet not one in this motley multitude of 
 characters is wholly bad or despicable. It is this 
 deep humanity, this wise tenderness, this intimate 
 appreciation of the better side of inferior natures, 
 which have endeared Cervantes to generation after 
 generation, to a degree unequalled by any other 
 writer in literary history. The wonderful work seized 
 irresistibly upon the hearts of the world, as soon as it 
 issued from the press. The book first appeared in 
 Spain in 1605, though probably many people had seen 
 it in manuscript some time before ; and less than 
 two years afterwards an edition appeared in Brussels. 
 Then in every country in the world, at short intervals, 
 translations were eagerly read. The fame of the book 
 soon reached England. In 1607 George Wilkins in 
 his play called The Miseries of Infant Marriage makes 
 one of the characters speak of fighting a windmill, 
 and Middleton's Your Five Gallants, of a similar date, 
 
154 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Opntains a reference also to fighting a windmill. In 
 1609 Ben Jonson mentions Don Quixote in The Silent 
 Woman, and in 1610 in the Alchymist. An English 
 translation of the first part, by Shelton, was published 
 in London in 1612; and even then Shelton says he 
 wrote it ' long ago,' and that he knocked it off in 
 forty days, which is difficult to believe. Fletcher 
 wrote his Knight of the Burning Pestle, suggested by 
 Don Quixote, as he says, in 161 1, before Shelton 's 
 translation appeared. Thereafter allusions to Don 
 Quixote abound in England, and I shall refer to many 
 of them in the chapter on the Drama, One more 
 subject for consideration in connection with Don 
 Quixote, is the reason why it attracted such trium- 
 phant popularity in countries like England, where 
 the chivalric romance had not any hold upon the 
 public mind for centuries before, and where, one would 
 think, the satire would fall flat. It was not read in 
 such countries for its satire. It was read because it 
 touched the eternal primitive springs of human feel- 
 ing; because its humour was universal and for all time, 
 just as Shakespeare's philosophy is. No local limita- 
 tions can circumscribe such excellence as this, either 
 in humour or in philosophy. There is, perhaps, 
 another reason that may explain the instantaneous 
 popularity and abiding vogue of the book. Europe 
 had been pervaded, in the process I have endea- 
 voured to describe, by the fashion of the maxim and 
 apophthegm, which Spaniards had derived from the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 15s 
 
 Hebrews and Arabs of the Peninsula. In England, 
 especially late in the sixteenth and early seventeenth 
 centuries, the sententious form was considered the 
 best literary fashion of the day. The wisdom and wit 
 of Sancho in sparkling epigram, added to the humour 
 and humanity that pervaded the whole book, marked 
 Don Quixote as being good literary form ; and this, 
 with its many other excellences, gave to the work in 
 England the admiration that it more than deserved, 
 but which, perhaps, might have been less pronounced 
 if the sententious wisdom in it had not been so rich 
 and abundant. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PICARESQUE AND PERIPATETIC NOVELS 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 In the last chapter the evolution of the novel in 
 Spain was followed, showing that the framework or 
 machinery, consisting of the movement of the hero 
 from place to place, and the encounter of many per- 
 sons and adventures on the way, had been taken 
 from the Romances of Chivalry, which had inherited 
 the form from the personal chronicle. The special 
 reason why the Spanish new realistic fiction should 
 have been forced to adopt for its medium the repre- 
 sentation of squalid scenes and thievish, cunning 
 adventurers, is to be found in the invariable rule of 
 reaction or revulsion when anything is carried to an 
 undue extreme. The tone of the Spanish romances 
 of chivalry had been so ineffably heroic, the person- 
 ages so unselfishly noble, the surroundings so invari- 
 ably regal, that the reaction had necessarily to be 
 exactly the opposite. I shall point out to you pre- 
 sently that, as the romances of chivalry had not in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries caught hold of 
 French and English readers to the same extent as 
 
 150 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE iS7 
 
 Spanish, the picaresque and peripatetic novels, which 
 afterwards became so fashionable in England and 
 France, whilst adopting the same machinery as that 
 used in Spain, had no need to mark reaction by in- 
 sisting so much upon the background of the stories 
 being squalid and the character of the hero dishonest. 
 This point must be borne in mind, as marking the 
 main difference between the Spanish and English 
 forms. 
 
 In the last chapter there is a full account of the 
 first Spanish realistic novel, Lazarillo de Tonnes, the 
 autobiography of a penniless lad who lived by his 
 wits. It was written in 1546, and first published in 
 1554, and immediately became popular both in Spain 
 and abroad, French and Italian translations appearing 
 soon after. We shall have to consider here to what 
 extent this book and its followers, of which I shall 
 speak presently, influenced the development of English 
 fiction. Up to this time English fiction had consisted 
 mainly of the Arthurian romances, Malory's Morte 
 d'Arthur, and adaptations from the Italian and 
 French short stories, some in prose and some in verse, 
 such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The stories of 
 Bandello and other Italian writers especially were 
 translated by Painter, and furnished plots for the 
 playwrights of Elizabeth's reign. But there was in 
 addition to these a fugitive form of fiction, which, 
 although it had always existed in one form or another, 
 suddenly became popular in England about ten or 
 
IS8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 l^welve years after Lazarillo was published in Spain ; 
 which seems to argue that, at least, one London 
 publisher even thus early had gained some know- 
 ledge of Lazarillo' s popularity. 
 
 The quips and cranks of professional buffoons had 
 always been repeated, and, as happens to this day, 
 such stories of smart answers, practical jokes, and 
 ready shifts are apt to cluster round the name of 
 any droll personage known to the public. Such col- 
 lections of quips, as I say, had existed from time 
 immemorial in some form or another, and it ifbelieved 
 that one collection, at least, had been published in 
 England before Lazarillo appeared in Spain. But 
 no copy of such early edition is known to exist ; and 
 it was not until 1565, eteven years after Lazarillo 
 had appeared, that this book in a chronological form 
 became very popular. It is called The First and best 
 part of S hoggin's Gests,full of witty mirth and pleasant 
 shifts, done by him in France and other places, being 
 a preservative against melancholy. Gathered by Andrew 
 Borde, Doctor of Physic. Whether Dr. Borde, who had 
 died in 1549, really did collect these stories is now 
 uncertain. But there is no doubt that Skoggin was 
 a real person. He was a gentleman, poor but learned, 
 an M.A. of Oxford, and jester to Edward iv. ; and 
 his name throughout the sixteenth century was one 
 upon which to hang tales. Shakespeare makes Mr. 
 Justice Shallow, when talking of his and FalstafiT's 
 hot youth, say : ' I saw him break Skogan's head at 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 159 
 
 the court gate when I was a crack not thus high.' 
 The point to which I am desirous of directing atten- 
 tion is that in the arrangement of these practical 
 jokes of Skoggin, pubh'shed in 1565, a regular chrono- 
 logical sequence is followed, I believe, for the first 
 time, and the book thus assumes the form of a con- 
 tinuous roguish biography of its hero. It begins 
 when he is a student at Oxford, and follows him 
 through his pranks at court, his banishment to France, 
 his return to England., his tricks to force himself into 
 favour again, and, finally, his death and burial. I am 
 inclined to regard this little collection of jester's jokes 
 as the first manifestation in England of the picaresque 
 taste in fiction which had a few years before appeared 
 in Spain in the form oi Lazarillo. 
 
 In order to explain my reference to the chrono- 
 logical arrangement of Skoggin! s Gests in the later 
 edition, I will compare the book presently with 
 another collection published in 1566, the year after 
 the second edition of Skoggin, and tacked upon the 
 name of Skelton, the priest-jester and poet laureate 
 of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. Before doing so, a 
 specimen or two of Skoggin may be given, in order 
 that a comparison of them may be made with the 
 complete peripatetic stories in England, to which I 
 shall later direct attention. The artless nature of the 
 tricks narrated shows the probable antiquity of their 
 origin. Skoggin's first story, for instance, is en- 
 titled 'What shift Skoggin and his chamber-fellow 
 
i6o SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 I made to fare well in Lent,' and the device was simply 
 that one of them should pretend to fall ill of the 
 plague and the other should tend him, being entrusted 
 with the key of the cellar and pantry, in order to 
 secure isolation. Another story tells ' What shift 
 Skoggin and his fellow made when they lacked 
 money.' This shift was for the accomplices to separ- 
 ate, and for one to go towards Thame Market, and 
 overtake a grazier on. the way, driving a flock of 
 sheep. After saluting the grazier Skoggin was to 
 refer incidentally to the sheep as hogs, and so to 
 lead the man to make a bet that they were sheep, 
 the first person encountered to be the referee. This 
 of course was the accomplice, and the mystified drover 
 had to pay up. This story is a very ancient one, and 
 was known in Spain, and probably elsewhere, ages 
 before Skoggin lived. 
 
 The most famous of any of Skoggin's stories, and 
 one which gave rise to a common saying to denote 
 the search for an object in an unlikely place, was 
 ' The Hare on the Housetop.' The story runs that 
 Skoggin introduced his wife to the queen (Elizabeth 
 Woodville), and told each of them separately that the 
 other was very deaf. The consequence was that the 
 two ladies bawled at each other until inquiry led to 
 the discovery of the trick. The queen was so much 
 offended that she asked the king to banish the jester ; 
 and the king warned Skoggin that if he came near 
 the court again the hounds should be set upon him. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE i6i 
 
 A few days afterwards Skoggin, having concealed 
 beneath his coat a fleet hare, came to court ; and the 
 king, being informed of this, ordered the hounds to 
 be let loose and set upon him. Just when the hounds 
 were at his tail the jester slipped the hare, after which 
 the dogs went helter-skelter, leaving Skoggin alone 
 and safe. Being summoned before the king, the latter 
 said : ' Thou didst cast a hare before the dogs when 
 they were set upon thee ; go and look out the saine 
 hare, or thou shalt suffer death.' Then said Skoggin : 
 ' I can get you another quick hare, but it will be hard 
 to find the self-same one.' ' I will have the self-same 
 hare,' said the king. ' Why,' said Skoggin, ' I cannot 
 tell where I shall go and look for him.' ' Thou must 
 look for him as well where he is as where he is not,' 
 said the king. 'Well,' said Skoggin, 'I trust I shall 
 find him.' The sequel is that Skoggin, taking the 
 king at his word, gets on to the roof and wellnigh 
 brings the king's house down about his ears, tearing 
 up the leads with a pickaxe, and knocking over the 
 battlements ; and when remonstrated with, the jester 
 tells the courtiers that he is obeying the king's orders. 
 When brought again before the king, Skoggin in 
 exculpation quotes the king's words that he is to 
 look for the hare ' as well where he is as where he is 
 not ' ; and he is thereupon banished from England. 
 He offends the King of France by similar tricks, and 
 steals back to England, where he recommences his 
 old life. 
 
 L 
 
i62 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 The success of this edition of Skoggin doubtless 
 led to the publication in the following year, 1566, of 
 the Skelton collection — 'Merry Tales, newly invented 
 and made by Master Skelton, Poet Laureat. Imprinted 
 in London, in Fleet Street beneath the Conduit, at the 
 sign of Saint John the Evangelist' Skelton died in 
 1529, so that these tales, of which there are only 
 fifteen, must have been merely traditionally connected 
 with him. There is no attempt in this case to arrange 
 them in chronological or biographical form, and the 
 book is doubtless the compilation of an inferior hack, 
 who just hustled the tales together as he got them. 
 That the success of the previous year's Skoggin was 
 that which inspired the book, is seen in the first story 
 of ' How Skelton came late home to Oxford from 
 Abingdon,' which begins thus : ' Skelton was an Eng- 
 lishman born, as Skogyn was, and brought up in 
 Oxford.' Most of Skelton's stories have a distinctly 
 priestly flavour, giving his sharp answers to friars and 
 the like. They are mentioned here mainly for the 
 purpose of contrasting the arrangement with that of 
 Skoggin — they being, in my opinion, a hasty com- 
 pilation in the old manner;.^ whilst in Skoggin the 
 adoption of the quasi-biographical arrangement marks 
 the advance in England towards the connected bio- 
 graphical rogue-tale originated in Lazarillo de Tormes. 
 
 ^ Collections of unconnected jests in this old manner continued to be 
 published under various names long afterwards — Tarleion's Jesis, 1600; 
 Merry Conceited Gestes of George Peek, 1607 ; Jests of Jack of Dover (which 
 has some attempt at a connecting plot), 1604, etc. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 163 
 
 Before passing to the consideration of the full de- 
 velopment of the picaresque fiction in England, I will 
 refer again to a novel which had an extraordinary 
 popularity and a marked effect upon the fashion in 
 language in England. It may be called the first 
 attempt at a modern novel which appeared in this 
 country, and was called Euphues, by John Lyly. The 
 first part was published in 1579, and it merits our 
 attention here, in the first place, because its affected 
 preciosity of language and far-fetched imagery was 
 confessedly copied from the Spanish style of Guevara 
 (of whom I spoke in a former chapter, and to whom I 
 shall refer again), and secondly, because Lyly adopted 
 the framework of travel upon which to hang his satires 
 and criticisms of society. Lyly, of all things, is 
 didactic. He makes his hero — indeed, all his charac- 
 ters — sermonise continually. His plot is to take a 
 young classical Greek on his travels to Naples and 
 afterwards to England, and everything he sees every- 
 where is made the text of a discourse. He teaches us 
 some strange things about animals, philosophises 
 endlessly about love and marriage, and denounces the 
 extravagance of modern ladies' dress. This is what 
 his imaginary Athenian has to say about the English 
 ladies of Elizabeth's day: — 
 
 "Take from them their periwigs, their paintings, 
 their jewels, their rolls, their boulstrings, and thou 
 shalt soon perceive that a woman is the least part of 
 herself. When they be once robbed of their robes 
 
i64 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 §then will they appear so odious, so ugly, so monstrous, 
 thou wilt rather think them serpents than saints, and 
 so like hags that thou wilt fear rather to be enchanted 
 than enamoured. Look at their closets, and there 
 thou shalt find an apothecary's shop of sweet confec- 
 tions, a surgeon's box of sundry salves, a pedlar's pack 
 of new fangles. Besides all this, their shadows, their 
 spots, their lawns, their leafkins, their ruffs, their rings, 
 show them to be anything but modest matrons." 
 
 It will be seen by this that Euphues and its many 
 imitators were rather satires, built on the framework 
 of the peripatetic novel, than novels themselves. To 
 see the full effect upon English style of Lyly's affected 
 obscure preciosity, or Euphuism, which he imitated 
 from Guevara, we have only to read any of Queen 
 Elizabeth's letters. Euphuism is there carried to its 
 extreme of absurdity. What the queen did lesser people 
 copied, and the correspondence of the time is often so 
 full of obscure conceits as to be almost unintelligible 
 to the readers of to-day. 
 
 We now come, in chronological sequence, to the first 
 real national peripatetic novel in English, evidently 
 inspired by Lazarillo and its school — namely, Jack 
 Wilton, by Thomas Nash. This brilliant young 
 satirist, a follower and friend of Greene, who knew 
 Spanish literature well, and took many of his dramatic 
 plots from Spanish sources, must have had ample 
 opportunity for reading David Rowland's translation 
 of Lazarillo, which was a popular book in England at 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 165 
 
 the time. He travelled abroad, and was one of the 
 young men of Shakespeare's day who struggled hard 
 to make a living by literature. He wrote anything 
 and everything, from political satires to a treatise in 
 praise of red herrings. In 1594, when Nash was 
 twenty-seven. Jack Wilton appeared. I wish to direct 
 attention here to what I have already remarked as to 
 the difference between the two forms of picaresque 
 novel, Spanish and English. We have seen that 
 Lazarillo was a ragamuiifin, as was Guzman de 
 Alfarache, Pablo el Buscon, and the rest of them. But 
 not so Jack Wilton. He is represented, it is true, as 
 being very hard up at first, but a gentleman by birth, 
 and a page at the court of Henry vill. He starts his 
 autobiography when he was quite a boy, in attendance 
 on the king at the siege of Tournay in 1512, and 
 carries his adventures down to the time when he has 
 gained fame, fortune, and a beautiful wife. The 
 scenes are not generally sordid or squalid, but there is 
 all through the book the effort to show how keen- 
 witted and smart Jack Wilton is. For instance, his 
 very first adventure as a boy is when — he being short 
 of money and wanting refreshment — he goes to an old 
 miserly Flemish innkeeper, near the camp, who serves 
 the English army with wine and provisions. After 
 flattering and befooling the innkeeper by representing 
 to him that he has come to do him a great service, he 
 tells the poor man that he is suspected of giving in- 
 formation to the enemy. Jack Wilton assures him 
 
i66 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Tihit he has done the best he can for him, and will con- 
 tinue to do so, but nearly every one is against him, 
 because he is so stingy of his provisions. The poor 
 man, whose conscience pricks him, falls into a panic, 
 and not only feasts Jack Wilton bountifully, but 
 regales all the English soldiers who come near him 
 with free wine and good cheer. Henry Vlll., being 
 informed of this great change in him, sends for the 
 innkeeper and asks him the reason. He tells him the 
 truth, and Jack Wilton gets a good whipping. This is 
 purely picaresque, but it is not squalid. Jack Wilton 
 is a true realistic novel of movement, but this and 
 other similar novels in English approximate more to 
 Gil Bias than to Lazarillo and Guzman de Alfaractie, 
 because both in France and England the violent re- 
 action against the romances of chivalry was not felt, and 
 sordidness of the anti-hero and of his surroundings was 
 not needed. Altogether, Jack Wilton is an extremely 
 interesting specimen of writing, the best picaresque 
 tale in English until Defoe wrote Moll Flanders and 
 Colonel Jack. It is here and there touched with wilful 
 euphuistic eccentricity of language, and marred by the 
 liberal introduction of invented words, but it deserves 
 to be read as the first specimen of such work in 
 English derived straight from Lazarillo. How popular 
 Rowland's translation oi Lazarillo vi as at the end of the 
 sixteenth century in England is seen by the numerous 
 references to incidents of it in the Elizabethan 
 dramatists. Shakespeare, amongst others, shows that 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 167 
 
 he had read it. In Much Ado about Nothing (Act ii. 
 Scene i) he makes Benedict say, ' Ho ! now, you strike, 
 like the blind man : 'twas the boy that stole your meat 
 and you'll beat the post' — this being one of the 
 incidents of the tale. It was inevitable that so 
 popular a work as Lazarillo de Tonnes should at once 
 give rise to a flock of continuations, sequels, and 
 imitations. The very year after its first publication in 
 1554, it was followed by a second part issued anony- 
 mously in Antwerp, but not in Spain. It was a 
 wretched thing and deservedly failed, with the excep- 
 tion of the first chapter, which tells of Lazarillo's 
 meeting with certain Germans in Toledo, and how he 
 accompanied them to sea, where he is wrecked and 
 turned into a tunny-fish. This chapter is good, and is 
 often printed as part of the original work. The con- 
 tinuation was translated by William Phiston, and 
 published in England in 1596, ten years after Row- 
 lands's translation of the original Lazarillo. The best 
 continuation of Lazarillo, however, and one which is 
 usually incorporated with it, was written in Paris by 
 the Aragonese exile, Juan de Luna, and published 
 there in 1620 in Spanish. It is called Vidade Lazarillo 
 de Tonnes, corregida y enmendada, and La Segunda 
 parte de la Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, sacada de las 
 Cronicas antiguas de Toledo. Luna was a teacher of 
 Spanish in Paris, and modernised the original text ; 
 and he says, shocked by the silly addition about 
 turning Lazarillo into a tunny-fish, he will tell the 
 
i68 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ^rue adventures of Lazarillo on his expedition against 
 the Algerines, as he has heard it told by his great- 
 grandmother in his youth. Instead of being turned 
 into a fish, Lazarillo is, in this version, rescued by 
 some fishermen, wrho determine to turn a dishonest 
 penny by showing him in a penny show as a merman ; 
 and so his adventures are continued in true picaresque 
 style. Luna's continuation is almost as good as the 
 original, and was immediately translated into English 
 by James Wadsworth, and ran through numerous 
 editions under the name of The Pursuit of the History 
 of Lazarillo de Tormes, and Blakeston also translated 
 it. It was published again, 1688 (both parts) under the 
 name of The Witty Spaniard, with the fish incident, 
 as well as Luna's continuation, and with a further 
 sequel called the Life and Death of Young Lazarillo, 
 which is a hash-up of all the picaresque novels, 
 English and Spanish, that had ever appeared. But 
 the original Lazarillo still remains to this day the 
 masterpiece, and I only mention these sequels with 
 their English translations to show how great a hold 
 this form of fiction had gained in this country. 
 
 But Lazarillo was by no means the only Spanish 
 picaresque novel that caught on in England. Guzman 
 de Alfarache of Mateo Aleman was, if anything, more 
 famous still. Of all the brood of Lazarillo none 
 approached Guzman de Alfarache in popularity. It 
 was first published as Vida del Picaro Guzman de 
 Alfarache in Madrid in 1599. The author was, like 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 169 
 
 Cervantes, a small government official, and, although 
 his essay in fiction gained for him at once a world- 
 wide fame, he remained poor, and emigrated to 
 Mexico to better his position, where he wrote much 
 and prosily, especially a second part of Guzman. 
 Guzman de Alfarache, like Lazarillo before him, 
 begins his story at, or rather before, his birth, which is 
 a disgraceful one. At fourteen he leaves his mother, 
 and starts life on his own account, and soon becomes 
 convinced that if he is to live at all he must cheat 
 rather than be cheated. He is led through Spain and 
 Italy, changing his service often — now a buffoon to a 
 cardinal, now a beggar in Italy, now a page to a 
 French ambassador ; satirising society, burlesquing 
 types, showing up frauds, living in inns, or in the 
 kitchens of the rich from hand to mouth, but, gene- 
 rally speaking, in better circumstances than Lazarillo. 
 Forged and genuine sequels were published, and 
 imitations innumerable, but, as they were all on the 
 same lines, we need not further consider them. The 
 industrious James Mabbe, ' Don Diego Puede-ser,' pub- 
 lished a translation of both the genuine parts in 
 London in 1622 as The Rogue, or the Life of Guzman 
 de Alfarache, and numerous other editions appeared 
 in English, French, Italian, Dutch, and German. To 
 modern readers Guzman will appear tedious and dis- 
 cursive, notwithstanding the entertaining character of 
 many of the incidents narrated, for the old didactic 
 tradition still died hard in Spanish literature, and the 
 
I/O SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ^mptation to draw a moral lesson from the iniquities 
 of the anti-hero was rarely resisted. That this is 
 more conspicuous in Guzman and other similar books 
 that I shall mention presently than in Ldzarillo, the 
 first of the series by many years, is probably owing to 
 the fact that Lazarillo really consisted of separate 
 tales, strung together originally without the intention 
 of presenting it to the public as a connected story ; 
 whilst Guzman and others were, from their first incep- 
 tion, intended to be complete and symmetrical works, 
 and, that being so, they had of course to adopt the 
 traditional form, which, moreover, commended itself to 
 the ecclesiastical censors and the authorities, who 
 were able to make the fortune of a book or ban it. 
 
 Of the many other less famous Spanish novels of 
 roguery little need be said in detail, since they are all 
 founded on the same model. As a change there was a 
 girl rogue called La Picara Justina, published in 1605. 
 This became part of a book which in English became 
 very popular under the name of The Spanish Libertines, 
 translated by Captain John Stevens, and published in 
 London in 1707. This book con'sisted of Justina, 
 the Country Jilt ; Celestina, the Bawd of Madrid; 
 Estevanillo Gonzales, the most arch and comical of 
 scoundrels : to which is added a play caltd An 
 Evenings Adventures. The most characteristic of 
 these items is the picaro Estevanillo Gonzales, who, 
 tatterdemalion as he was, always claimed to be a 
 gentleman. He certainly was a most entertaining 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 171 
 
 rogue. The following account of one of his escapades 
 will give an idea of his quality. " When I had been 
 there five weeks {i.e. in the Cardinal's service), to 
 reward my good service, I was preferred to be under- 
 sweeper below stairs. Thus men rise who conduct 
 themselves well in their employment, and are solicitous 
 to please their superiors. I was barefoot, half naked, 
 and as black as a collier when I entered upon my new 
 office, where I fared not so well as in the kitchen : for 
 places of honour are often not so profitable as those of 
 less dignity, and now nothing could stick to me but 
 the dust of the house, whereas before I never lacked 
 a sop in the pan or other perquisites. But fortune so 
 ordered it that the Cardinal's servants undertook to 
 act a play on his Eminence's birthday ; and in dis- 
 tributing the parts, they pitched upon me to represent 
 a young king of Leon, either because I was young or 
 for being descended from the renowned Fernan 
 Gonzales, who as I said before was an ancestor of 
 mine and Count of Castile, before there were kings in 
 that country. I took care to learn my part, and per- 
 suaded him that took the management of it to give 
 me half a pound of raisins and a couple of oranges 
 every day, that I might eat a small collation every 
 night, and rub my temples with the orange-peel in the 
 morning fasting, telling him that it would help my 
 memory, which was very weak, or else I should never 
 get it by heart, though the whole was not above 
 twenty lines ; and assuring him that I had seen this 
 
172 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 done by the most celebrated comedians in Spain, 
 when they acted their greatest parts. When the day 
 of the solemnity came a stately theatre was erected in 
 the largest room in the palace, making a wood of 
 green boughs at the end next to the attiring room 
 where I was to lye asleep and Moors to come and 
 carry me away captive. My lord the Cardinal invited 
 all the men of quality and ladies of the court to this 
 diversion. Our Merry Andrew actors dressed them- 
 selves up like so many Jack Puddings, and all the 
 palace was richly hung and adorned. They put me 
 on a very fine cloth suit, half covered with rich silver 
 loops and laced down the seams, which was good as 
 giving me wings to take flight and be gone. Seeing 
 myself in such guise as I had never known before, I 
 thought not fit to return to my rags again, but resolved 
 to shift for myself. The play began at three in the 
 afternoon, the audience consisting of all the flower of 
 the city. The manager of the representation was so 
 active and watchful because he had hired my clothes, 
 and was bound to see them forthcoming, that he never 
 suffered me to go out of his sight. But when they 
 came to the part where I was to appear as if I had 
 been hunting, and then to lye down in the wood pre- 
 tending weariness aid sleep; I had to repeat a few 
 verses, and those who came with me upon the stage 
 having left me, I turned into that green copse where 
 it cannot be said that I was caught napping, for, going 
 in at one end, I followed a narrow path between the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 173 
 
 boughs to the other end of the stage, whence I slipped 
 down, and creeping under it to the door of the great 
 hall, bade those who stood about it make way, for I 
 was about to shift my clothes. Upon this they let me 
 pass. I made but two leaps downstairs, and flew along 
 the street like an arrow from a bow, till I came to the 
 sea-shore, whither I had steered my course in hopes of 
 some conveniency to carry me off." This, of course, 
 he finds, and begins life afresh as a gentleman of rank 
 on the strength of his stolen clothes. 
 
 Another famous book of this sort was the Life of 
 the Squire Marcos de Obregon, by Vicente de Espinel, 
 first published in 1618. Here the moral didacticism 
 is undisguised, though the adventures themselves are 
 very diverting, the hero being on a somewhat higher 
 plane than Lazarillo, Guzman, or Estevanillo. Espinel 
 was a pious priest in Madrid, and represents himself 
 as writing the book in his old age with a moral object 
 in view ; and promises, ' With the help of God, I will 
 endeavour to make the style fitting to the general 
 taste, and so little tedious to individuals that they will 
 not cast my book aside as tiresome, nor condemn it as 
 ridiculous.' The story is, to my mind, much more 
 interesting than Guzman, when you get at it; but the 
 good priest is so desirous of enforcing the lesson, that 
 it must be confessed that there is a good deal of chaff 
 to his grain. The book was at once translated into 
 French, and was very popular ; but, so far as I know, 
 there was no English translation until 1816. The 
 
174 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 grincipal reason why I have dwelt upon The Squire 
 Marcos de Obregon, is that Gil Bias, of which I shall 
 speak directly, appears to have been largely inspired 
 by it : so that if Marcos de Obregon did not immedi- 
 ately affect English literature, its influence upon it, 
 through Gil Bias, was very great. 
 
 Before I refer, however, to Gil Bias, I am anxious to 
 speak of a previous work in Spanish, which Le Sage 
 plagiarised so successfully as to have superseded the 
 original work. The work itself is an inspiration, and, 
 through Le Sage, has become one of the permanent 
 treasures of the world. We have seen hitherto that 
 the framework, of the wandering servant or adventurer 
 going into many households, enabled the author to 
 describe and satirise a great variety of persons and 
 places. But, withal, this machinery had its limita- 
 tions. The picaro could only describe what he would 
 be likely to see and hear ; he could not portray the 
 thoughts of his subject, nor could he be present at 
 scenes from which a servant would be excluded. So 
 Luis Velez de Guevara, a lawyer and favourite of the 
 literary court of Philip IV., had the happy idea of 
 presenting a new form in 1641. It is called El Diablo 
 Cojuelo, ' The Limping Devil.' The story runs thus. 
 Don Cleofas, an out-at-elbows student, is escaping 
 over the roofs, from his attic window, from the bailiffs, 
 who are hunting him. To evade them he enters the 
 window of another attic, which happens to be the 
 laboratory of a sorcerer. Whilst he is getting into 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 17s 
 
 the window he knocks over a bottle and breaks it. 
 From it there comes a small lame demon, whom the 
 sorcerer had confined in it, and out of gratitude for his 
 liberation he (Asmodeus) helps Don Cleofas to fly 
 over Madrid ; and, to amuse him, he lifts the roofs 
 from house after house, in order that the student may 
 see what is going on within. From beggars' stews to 
 palaces, the inner secrets, the vices, the shams, the 
 wickedness of the city are exposed ; and the result is 
 a satire so bitter, so keen, and apparently so true, as 
 to make this a book of the highest sociological interest. 
 The pity is that the language is marred by the affected 
 and tedious preciosity which had become the fashion. 
 It will be seen that there was no limit to this satirical 
 machinery. Every rank and every person might be 
 scourged, if magic were called in to expose the inner- 
 most secrets of their hearts. 
 
 And so the clever Frenchman Le Sage, keenly 
 alive to the possibilities, and saturated with Spanish 
 feeling and tradition by residence in Spain and 
 study of its literature, seized upon El Diablo Cojuelo ; 
 and by and by all Europe, and France particularly, 
 was tittering in scandalised whispers over Le Diable 
 Boiteux, by'Le Sage; and in England at The Devil 
 on Two Sticks, by Swift, or some other writer still 
 uncertain. Le Sage's adaptation of El Diablo Cojuelo 
 was only one of his efforts to popularise and improve 
 upon the picaresque novel. To him is owing the 
 greatest and best picaresque novel of them all, 
 
176 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Spanish in tone and feeling, with the added keen 
 lucidity of the French mind ; and Gil Bias de San- 
 tillana it was, more than Lazarillo, or Guzman de 
 Alfarache, directly, that struck the note which made 
 the peripatetic adventurer a permanent feature of 
 English fiction. How much of his great book was 
 owing to Le Sage himself, it is difificult to say. The 
 author lived in the French embassy in Madrid for 
 some years at the end of the seventeenth and 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, and translated 
 Guzman de Alfarache, and, as we have seen, adapted 
 the Diablo Cojuelo, besides writing a poor sequel of 
 Don Quixote, and another picaresque book called 
 the Bachelor of Salamanca. It has been urged by 
 Spaniards, and especially by Father Isla, that a 
 Frenchman writing about 1700 would certainly not 
 take the trouble to pen an elaborate political satire 
 upon events and personages that had passed away 
 sixty years before. But it must not be forgotten 
 that French writers and readers always leant to the 
 romantic idea of Spain presented before their eyes 
 at the court of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria. Le 
 Sage wrote Gil Bias when the old Spanish traditions, 
 manners, and customs looked as if they were passing 
 away for ever, before a new French dynasty and new 
 French ideas in Spain. He had before him the 
 Spanish picaresque books I have mentioned, par- 
 ticularly Marcos de Obregon, where the local colour 
 was ready to his hand ; and it would obviously be 
 
ENGLISH. LITERATURE 177 
 
 more attractive to him to place his hero in the 
 romantic surroundings of sixty years before, than to 
 make him a contemporary personage. It is, in my 
 mind, at least, very doubtful whether Le Sage really 
 cared anything about the political satire. I think 
 he aimed simply at producing, what he did, in fact, 
 produce, an intensely interesting picaresque novel, 
 more amusing, because less discursive and stilted, 
 than the Spanish books of the same sort. It is 
 extremely likely, indeed, that a manuscript may have 
 fallen into his hands, which supplied him with so 
 much political gossip and detail about the person 
 and times of Olivares, that he was tempted thus to 
 utilise it as the background of his novel. This is 
 the more likely, since the times of Olivares were 
 essentially a self-conscious and memoir-writing age ; 
 and all Spaniards were, secretly or openly, writing 
 malicious descriptions of each other. I have myself 
 had occasion to copy some dozens of documents in 
 various languages crammed full of local colour about 
 the reigns of Philip in. and Philip iv., which of 
 themselves would have sufficed to give Le Sage all 
 the political detail he needed for his book. That 
 Le Sage should have made use of such material for 
 Gil Bias is no more extraordinary than that Victor 
 Hugo should have utilised the Travels of Madame 
 D'Aulnoy for the local colour — which, by the way, 
 is mostly wrong — in Ruy Bias. However, the great 
 point is that Gil Bias is one of the most amusing 
 
 M 
 
178 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 %)ooks in the world, almost as full of proverbial 
 wisdom as Don Quixote itself ; and as it presents 
 a view not confined to squalor and dishonesty, it 
 agreed with the native English form of picaresque 
 and peripatetic fiction, which by the end of the 
 seventeenth century was languishing, but took a new 
 lease of life from Le Sage's book. 
 
 Before passing to the consideration of the direct 
 effect of Gil Bias in reviving and perpetuating the 
 peripatetic rogue tradition in English fiction, I must 
 mention one more of the many such books that 
 appeared in Spain, written by one of the greatest 
 satirical geniuses that the Spanish race has produced 
 — I mean Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. The book 
 was first published in Saragossa in 1626, and was 
 called on the title-page Historia de la Vida del 
 Buscon, llamado Don Pablos. Exemplo de Vagamundos 
 y espejo de TacaHos {History of the Pilferer, called 
 Don Pablo, Pattern of Vagabonds and Mirror of 
 Mumpers). The book is a true picaresque novel. 
 It is not, perhaps, so fresh as Lazarillo, but it is 
 infinitely more subtle, and it is in every way superior 
 to Guzman de Alfarache and Marcos de Obregon. The 
 movement is more rapid, the narrative is closer, and 
 the satire with which, of course, it abounds is savage 
 in its ferocity ; whilst its humour is unequalled by 
 anything but Don Quixote. Quevedo's lash spared 
 no one, not even priests ; but the fun is so rapid and 
 so boisterous that all Spain was set laughing at El 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 179 
 
 Gran Tacaiio, as the book soon came to be called, 
 notwithstanding its satire. The book was promptly 
 translated into French and called L'aventurter Buscon, 
 and became very popular in France with the rest of 
 Quevedo's works, especially the Visions, Scarron 
 and his school scrupulously imitating the malicious 
 spirit that runs through all Quevedo's works. In 
 England they were almost as popular on the impetus 
 of Sir Roger L'Estrange, and numberless editions 
 of the Visions came out all over Europe. The first 
 edition of the Buscon in English was published in 
 London in 1657, and called The Life and Adventures 
 of Buscon the witty Spaniard, put into English by a 
 person of Honour. Another edition was printed in 
 1683 and called The Pleasant Story of Paul of Segovia 
 (the name by which the book is still best known in 
 England, and used in Mr. Watts's handsome edition, 
 with Vierge's illustrations, published a few years 
 ago). Captain Stevens also translated it in 1707, 
 and called it The Life of Paul the Spanish Sharper, 
 and evidently some of Swift's most scathing satires 
 are inspired by this and others of Quevedo's works. 
 
 Here, then, we see that from the middle of the 
 sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, 
 there was a constant stream of this class of fiction 
 passing from Spain to England. Lazarillo, El 
 Picaro Guzman de Alfarache, Don Quixote, Marcos de 
 O.bregon, La Picara Justina, Estevanillo Gonzales, Gil 
 Bias, and -iCa Vida del Buscon, became part of 
 
i8o SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the ordinary reading of an English household. It 
 was inevitable that the form which satirised society 
 by exhibiting types encountered on a journey should 
 be naturalised in England. It was a simple and 
 flexible form, which lent itself to infinite variations, 
 and to compression or extension as might be desired. 
 Thus we are led from the chronologically consecutive 
 smart tricks of famous buffoons like Skoggtn, through 
 Jack Wilton at the end of the sixteenth century, to 
 the many translations and adaptations of the Spanish 
 novels that amused English readers during the 
 seventeenth century. But until quite at the end of 
 the seventeenth century, little or no influence is seen 
 to have been exerted by these stories upon native 
 English novels, partly owing, no doubt, to the con- 
 tinued fashion for the pastoral form of romance. 
 When, however, satire wished to strike with a 
 bludgeon, and party feeling in England was stirred 
 by polemics, then the wishy-washy pastoral was 
 too weak for the purpose, the political pamphlet 
 was insufficient, and realism in its most savage form 
 was needed. Then came ready to hand the flexible 
 and adaptable framework I have mentioned, and 
 English fiction took a new flight as an aid to con- 
 troversy. First in order, although it is not in prose 
 but in macaronic verse, we must take Samuel Butler's 
 Hudibras, which is closely modelled on Don Quixote. 
 It is a satire upon the rigid Presbyterians of 
 Cromwell's time. The burlesque knight Hudibras 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE i8i 
 
 is the Don Quixote of Puritanism, the redresser of 
 imaginary wrongs done to his Dulcinea, and he has 
 his Rozinante, and his Sancho, all complete, like his 
 Spanish progenitor. It was, however, the polemical 
 pamphleteer Defoe who first saw the full possibilities 
 of the Spanish form as a satirical vehicle in prose. 
 I am not inclined to class Robinson Crusoe as an 
 indication of this, as some commentators are inclined 
 to do. I regard that as a story inspired by fact, 
 just as Defoe's journal of the plague year was. It 
 simply described the incidents of travel, and made 
 no attempt to describe types, as all the picaresque 
 novels did. In my view, the first real picaresque 
 and peripatetic novels purely English, after Jack 
 Wilton, were Moll Flanders, evidently inspired by the 
 Picara Justina, and Colonel Jack, in which probably 
 Gil Bias was influential. Thenceforward the lineage 
 is direct. Fielding's Joseph Andrews, originally a 
 literary satire on Richardson's insipid Pamela, is 
 picaresque and peripatetic in form and substance. 
 Fielding called it a comic epic, and reminds his 
 readers of Telemachus and the Odyssey. But you 
 can guess what was at the back of his mind when 
 he says that he is ready to call it anything but a 
 romance. As we have seen, the picaresque novel 
 was by its very birth a reaction from romance. 
 Fielding also wrote a poor female Quixote which 
 showed that he was well versed in Spanish fiction. 
 Smollett was a Spanish scholar, and admirably trans- 
 
i82 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 lated Don Quixote. But before he did that he wrote 
 Koderick Random, a novel that was avowedly derived 
 from the Spanish models and purely picaresque, in 
 the English and French sense ; that is to say, that 
 it did not necessarily deal with dishonest persons 
 or squalid scenes, but with the adventures of a poor 
 young man, whose wits had to supply the leanness 
 of his purse. Humphry Clinker and Peregrine Pickle 
 were inspired by the same tradition, namely, the 
 presentation of types encountered in travel. So, 
 indeed, was Tristram Shandy of Sterne, and The 
 Sentimental Journey, though deeply tinged by the 
 peculiar genius of the author. Dickens was con- 
 fessedly inspired by Fielding, as Captain Marryat 
 obviously was _by Smollett ; and we have in Pickwick 
 and Sam Weller the early nineteenth century reflec- 
 tions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; in David 
 Copperfield, a sentimental and honest picaro, whose 
 principal adventures through life are devised not 
 so much to exhibit his own qualities as to show up 
 the types which he meets. When one mentions the 
 book David Copperfield, David Copperfield is the 
 last person of whom you think. You think of Uriah 
 Heep, of Micawber, of Traddles, of Betsy Trotwood, 
 of Mr. Dick; and similarly with Sir Walter Scott. 
 Guy Mannering or Waverley are merely lay figures 
 in comparison with the persons they meet and 
 describe ; and so are Guzman de Alfarache and Gil 
 Bias. Midshipman Easy and Japhet in Search of a 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 183 
 
 Father are purely picaresque peripatetic tales, that 
 would never have assumed their present form, if 
 the Spanish novel of movement had not led the 
 way. The same may be said of Michael Scott's 
 Tom Cringle's Log, and dozens of other similar works ; 
 and one sees in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn a 
 transparent intention to experiment with an American 
 picaro, as near as circumstances could make him 
 to Lazarillo, Guzman de Alfarache, and the rest 
 of the goodly company of sharp-witted youngsters 
 with pockets as light as their hearts, who sprang from 
 the Spanish genius as a reaction from the wandering 
 knights of chivalry. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL AND OF WAR 
 
 When the centre of sea power shifted from the 
 Mediterranean, where it had remained for three 
 thousand years, to the Atlantic, the. problems of 
 maritime supremacy in Europe were altered, and the 
 sceptre of the sea was at the bidding of that power 
 which should first recognise and provide successfully 
 for the new conditions which had arisen. Galleys 
 with the large number of hands necessary for oar 
 propulsion, and the limited cargo and provision space 
 possible, could not remain long enough at sea to make 
 profitable ocean voyages without touching land, nor 
 were they able to live in the big Atlantic rollers. 
 This had been recognised by Prince Henry of 
 Portugal, who in the first third of the fifteenth century 
 inaugurated systematic Atlantic exploration, and the 
 colonisation of the African coasts on the way to India. 
 The type of vessel he evolved, the caravel, depending 
 mainly upon easily trimmed small sails, and only in 
 time of need upon oars, to some extent solved the 
 problem, so far as the coast of Africa was concerned. 
 But the discovery and exploration of America, 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 185 
 
 although effected with similar vessels to these, demon- 
 strated that, though they might do for discovery, 
 they were insufficient for carrying the cargoes of 
 stores and materials needed by new colonies from 
 the mother country, or the return freight of gold and 
 silver, spices and drugs, that alone made discovery 
 and colonisation profitable. 
 
 The Spaniards had to solve the problem alone, 
 for they jealously attempted to prevent the intrusion 
 of any other powers into the western world which they 
 claimed as their own. The solution arrived at was 
 not a particularly successful one, so far as the evolu- 
 tion of a new type of vessel was concerned. It 
 was mainly to develop, strengthen, and arm the 
 great, slow, lumbering store-ships, or hulks, which 
 had always attended on galleys as supply ships. 
 The type so evolved was heavily armed, especially 
 fore and aft, but it was unwieldy and top hampered ; 
 and although such great armed cargo galleons and 
 carracks were usually convoyed by galleasses, and 
 other smaller and quicker armed vessels, they were 
 often practically at the mercy of any rapid, fine- 
 built, and handy pirates or privateers which cared 
 to attack them ; as they presented a great exposed 
 freeboard to the enemies' fire, and were so unhandy 
 that much smaller ships with finer lines, lower free- 
 boards, and quicker helms, could sail round them and 
 cripple them, whilst escaping harm them-^^elves. There 
 were no sailors in the world who had always had to 
 
i86 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 face heavier seas than the English west-countryman ; 
 and his craft, a fisher or a trader as occasion served, 
 was the result of centuries of experience. At dealing 
 with the dangers and the glorious struggle of ocean 
 sailing, the Englishman felt that he might cope 
 successfully with any man. What a Spaniard might 
 do and dare, so might he ; and there entered into 
 the heart of England the proud claim for equal 
 opportunity at sea with Spaniards ; that the race 
 might be for the swift and the battle for the strong. 
 And out of this thirst for adventure grew Britain's 
 empire. 
 
 The discoveries and conquests of Columbus and 
 his successors were followed in England as eagerly 
 as they were elsewhere, and the numerous letters and 
 pamphlets giving accounts of the earlier discoveries 
 were translated in the form of broadsides in English 
 almost as soon as they appeared in other languages. 
 But it was not until the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, sixty years after Columbus's first voyage, 
 that public curiosity in England was satisfied by 
 a full account of the explorations, so far as they had 
 up to that time been published in Spain. Richard 
 Eden it was who took the first step. He was an 
 English scholar, who had been appointed to the 
 household of King Philip when he married Mary 
 Tudor in 15S4; and doubtless, for the purpose of 
 giving to Englishmen an idea of the greatness of 
 their new king consort, Eden translated from the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 187 
 
 Latin, in which it was written, that famous account 
 of Columbus's voyages written by one who had known 
 the great discoverer personally, the famous Peter 
 Martyr Angleria, who, although an Italian by birth, 
 was a Spaniard by adoption. The Decades of the 
 New World, as Peter Martyr's book was called, first 
 published complete in Spain in 1516, was, however, 
 not the only book from which Richard Eden drew 
 the material for his own Decades. He also utilised 
 the books of subsequent historians of the conquest : 
 Oviedo's Historia General de las Indias, and F. 
 Lopez de Gomara's Historia General de las Indias, con 
 todo el descubrimiento y cosas notables, que han acaecido 
 dende que se ganaron hasta el ano 1551. Zaragoza, 
 1553. Eden thus brought his story well up to date 
 as things were managed then, by publishing his 
 Decades in 1555, in England. Eden's book, although 
 strongly in favour of Spaniards, was nevertheless 
 considered by Bishop Gardiner to smack of heresy 
 in some places, and the author was charged and lost 
 his office under government. 
 
 The book, however, was seized upon and read with 
 avidity by a public positively thirsting to have their 
 share in the vast golden regions of the new world, 
 which Spaniards were claiming for their own. But 
 with Mary upon the throne, and Philip sternly 
 controlling the English Privy Council, no public 
 suggestion was possible that Englishmen had as much 
 right as any others to seek for new unsettled lands 
 
i88 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 l^eyond the western ocean. With the coining of 
 Elizabeth all was changed. From- the first year of 
 her reign to the day of her death, the great queen 
 never faltered in her demand that, at least, her 
 people were not to be shut out of the new world, 
 and that lands unsettled by Christian princes were 
 to be the property of those whose subjects brought 
 them under subjection. Thenceforward not curiosity 
 alone, not love of exciting reading, but the determin- 
 ation of Englishmen to have their full share of ocean 
 trade and undiscovered lands, led the adventurous 
 spirits to scour the seas in search of plunder, trade, 
 and discovery. Up to the time that John Hawkins, 
 in 1562, made his first slave-dealing trip down the 
 west coast of Africa, and across to the Spanish 
 settlements in the West Indies to trade by force, if 
 persuasion would not do, English voyages, with the 
 exception of William Hawkins's run to Brazil in 
 1530, had not extended much beyond the coasts of 
 Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, with a rare trip to 
 the Levant. But from that time (1562) forward, the 
 demand for information about the route to the west 
 was so strong in England that authors had trouble to 
 keep pace with it. The details of navigation west of 
 the Azores were still practically unknown in England. 
 Spain not only threatened to treat as pirates all 
 foreign vessels in the West Atlantic, but jealously 
 guarded the secrets of the currents, winds, tides, 
 coasts, soundings, and land-lay. But the greed of the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 189 
 
 English would brook no obstacles. Knowledge they 
 needed and would have. And so there came from 
 the press in London a shoal of books reproduced 
 from the Spanish that might stir up English hearts 
 and help Englishmen to the knowledge needed for 
 traversing the Atlantic, and to find the golden west 
 for themselves. 
 
 The translators sprang usually not from men of 
 letters and learning, but from English merchants, who 
 from residence or trading in Spain had not only 
 become familiar with the language, but had also 
 gained a notion of the enormous advantage that 
 colonies, such as those of Spain, might bring to Eng- 
 land. There were a large number of these English 
 merchants resident in the Spanish ports, who, although 
 professedly devout Catholics, were yet proud of their 
 country, and ever willing to serve her interests. These 
 were for the most part the men who now provided 
 what their countrymen yearned for, a knowledge of 
 the western route ; although it must be admitted that, 
 as a rule, they were careful to put the sea between 
 themselves and the Inquisition before their English 
 translations came out. There was no lack of Spanish 
 material for them, though it must be confessed that 
 the majority of the books translated do not seem to 
 us to convey much useful guidance for practical 
 explorers, however interesting they may have been 
 as books of travel. The earliest and busiest of these 
 merchant translators was one John Frampton, who 
 
190 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 •had been long a prisoner in the dungeons of the 
 Inquisition at Seville, but had contrived to obtain 
 his release and came to England in 1577. He began 
 his literary labour by issuing immediately a trans- 
 lation of a famous book by a Spanish physician who 
 had visited America, called Historia Medicinal de las 
 cosas que traen de nuestras Indias occidentales que 
 sirven • para medicina ; con un tratado de la piedra 
 Bezar : Las grandezas del Hierro y de la Nieve y del 
 beber frio Por Nicolas Monardes, which had been 
 published in Seville in 1569 and 1574. Of this book, 
 which contains not a little quackery mixed with 
 science, Frampton issued an English version in 1577 
 under the title of Joyfull Newes out of the Newe 
 founde Worlde; wherein is declared the virtues of 
 divers plaimts, herbes, oils, stones, etc. In 1579 
 Frampton published another book, a translation of 
 Bernardo de Escalante's accounts of the Portuguese 
 voyages to the East Indies, which Frampton called 
 A Discourse of the Navigation that the Portingales doe 
 make to the Eastern parte of the Worlde, and soon 
 afterwards the same industrious translator introduced 
 the travels of Ser Marco Polo to English readers from 
 a Spanish version. All these books were eagerly read 
 by an England aflame with the stories of Spanish 
 tyranny and her effective weakness on the high seas, 
 and of the vast treasures in the holds of her lumbering 
 unhandy ships, to be had by bold men for the grasp- 
 ing. Other merchant translators followed Frampton 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 191 
 
 in trying to foster this spirit by producing books 
 of exploration and travel from Spanish originals. 
 Thomas Nicholas, a merchant in the Canaries, had, 
 like Frampton, fallen foul of the Inquisition, and had 
 put the high seas between him and the dominions 
 of King Philip as soon as he could. He began to 
 publish in England at the same time as Frampton. 
 His first translation was a little tract from the 
 Spanish, called Strange and Marvellous Newes lately 
 come from the great Kingdom of China, in a Letter sent 
 from Mexico to Spain. But in 1578 he issued a more 
 important book, which is practically a translation of 
 Lopez de Gomara's Historia de las Indias, which I 
 have already mentioned that Eden . in 1555 had 
 partly utilised in his Decades of the New World. But 
 this book of Nicholas's was published at a more 
 favourable season than that of Eden, and the popu- 
 larity of it was great. It is called A Pleasant History 
 of the Conquest of the West Indies. Sometime after- 
 wards Nicholas undertook to translate another famous 
 book by one of the Conquistadores, whom he had 
 himself met in Spain. It was the Conquista del 
 Peru, by Agustin de Zarate; and Nicholas only 
 translated the first four books, but added thereto the 
 final book of Zarate, giving an account of the dis- 
 covery of the rich silver mines of Potosi. 
 
 There was another English merchant from the 
 Canaries who translated similar books from Spanish 
 originals to satisfy the desire of his countrymen for 
 
192 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 information respecting foreign lands. His name was 
 Nichols, and several books came from his hands. 
 When the hatred to the Spaniards grew stronger, 
 after Drake's successful plundering voyage, and the 
 seizure in England of the Spanish treasure, another 
 book was published in London that caused a pro- 
 found sensation. This was the famous indictment 
 against the Spanish treatment of the native American 
 Indians, written first by the Apostle of the Indies, 
 the saintly Father Las Casas, whose scathing denun- 
 ciation of the inhumanity of his own countrymen 
 remains to this day one of the most powerful pieces 
 of pleading in the world. The Spanish version was 
 called Brevisima Relacion de la Destruccion de las 
 Indias ; and the English book, which was translated 
 by an unknown author, was published under the name 
 of The Spanish Colony, in 1583. To a public already 
 incensed bitterly against Spain, this book supplied 
 fresh pabulum for hatred, and was made use of to 
 the full by the war party in Elizabeth's court. 
 All these books, nevertheless, were but histories and 
 narratives of past adventures, with slight descriptions 
 of the new-found lands. Pleasant and exciting read- 
 ing, no doubt, and likely to incite the reader to 
 adventure his life or his money in the pursuit of 
 similar ends. 
 
 The adventurous spirit thus spurred on, but lacking 
 corresponding knowledge of the details of Atlantic 
 voyaging, might undertake expeditions, but could 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 193 
 
 hardly lead them to a successful issue. Drake and 
 Hawkins, Cumberland, Winter, Frobisher, and the 
 rest of the grand seamen of the Elizabethan age, did 
 not launch on to the trackless Atlantic led by the 
 adventurous instinct alone. They had carefully 
 collected, by fair means and by foul, every scrap of 
 information that could be obtained from Spaniards 
 who had made the western voyage. Mariners 
 captured at sea were by bribes, cajolery, and threats 
 of torture, made to tell all they knew of the winds, 
 currents, tides, soundings, and coasts of the New 
 World. The State papers abound in such declara- 
 tions, and some of Drake's own memoranda have 
 passed through my hands, showing how patiently 
 he gathered and set down every item of information 
 that might be useful to him in his voyages. Pilots, 
 especially disaffected Portuguese, were heavily bribed 
 to conduct English expeditions. But for every big 
 expedition, such as those of Drake, Cumberland, or 
 Raleigh, there were a score of smaller adventurers, 
 with one little cockleshell of a boat, or two, who, 
 taking their lives and fortunes in their hands, set 
 forth to find the golden land that should give to 
 them and theirs luxury and ease, or a miserable death. 
 These men, too, not only wanted to learn something 
 of the perils they had to face, but the science by 
 which they might overcome them. The Spaniards 
 almost alone, as I have pointed out, possessed the 
 science of Atlantic navigation ; and every Spanish 
 
 N 
 
194 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 book written on the subject was eagerly translated 
 and largely sold in England. It was only two years 
 after Elizabeth's accession (1561) that Richard Eden 
 published his translation of the Arte de Navegar, by 
 Martin Cortes of Seville, which had originally come 
 out ten years previously in Spain. It was reprinted 
 again and again in England, with fresh information, 
 and every shipmaster who dreamed of steering his 
 bark to the new world sought to possess it as 
 his vade mecum. The^ book is now rare, and the 
 earliest edition known to me personally is that of 
 1596, revised and enlarged by the publisher, John 
 Tapp, who subsequently for many years periodically 
 issued fresh and revised editions. The book in 
 English is called ' The Arte of Navigation, first written 
 in the Spanish tongue by that excellent Mariner 
 and Mathematician of these times, Martin Cortes. 
 From thence translated into English by Richard 
 Eden. Enlarged and Revised by John Tapp, and to 
 be sold at his Shoppe at Saint Magnus his corner, 
 London Bridge.' Tapp himself writes a prologue 
 which will give an idea of the popularity enjoyed 
 by the work. 'Courteous and friendly reader,' he 
 says, 'you have here presented to your view The 
 Arte of Navigation, being the gathering and practice 
 of Martin Cortes, a Spaniard of whose dexterity and 
 perfection in marine causes the work itself is sufficient 
 to witness: for that there is no book extant in the 
 English tongue that in so briefe and easie a method 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 19S 
 
 doth discover so many and rare secrets both of 
 philosophy, astronomy, cosmography, and generally 
 whatsoever doth belong to good and sure navigation : 
 but because it hath been so often imprinted, some 
 faults have crept into it, through want of overseeing 
 and good heedtaking.' Tapp therefore boasts that 
 he has thoroughly revised it, and provided it with 
 new tables. The book contains minute descriptions 
 and rules for the use of nautical instruments — the 
 astrolabe and the compass — calendars, the names of 
 the principal stars, much weather lore, the theory of 
 the tides, the variations of the compass, and tables for 
 the calculation of latitudes. There is even a descrip- 
 tion of an instrument which, so far as a landsman can 
 understand, seems to anticipate to some extent the 
 quadrant and sextant, which have since quite super- 
 seded the astrolabe. 
 
 Nor was Eden's version of Martin Cort6s's Navi- 
 gation the only book of its sort published in England. 
 Pedro de Medina had published in Spain, in 1545, 
 another : Arte de Navegar, en que se contienen todas las 
 Reglas, Dedaraciones, Secretos y Avisos que en la buena 
 navegacion son necesarios, y se deven saber. Fue visto 
 y aprobado en la insigne Casa de Contratacion de las 
 Indias por el Piloto mayor, y cosmografos de Su 
 Majestad. This book, which is now rare, like that 
 of Cortes, contains a map of the Atlantic from the 
 west coast of Africa to the West Indies and Central 
 America, which shows how extremely hazy the 
 
196 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 fiotions still were of the conformation of the American 
 coasts. Medina's book found a translator also in 
 Frampton. In 1578 there came out in London 
 another book on the same subject, a translation 
 by the industrious translator from the Spanish, 
 Edward Hellowes, Groom of the Leash, of Antonio 
 de Guevara's Account of the Magnetic Needle and its 
 Inventors (1539). Hellowes called his little book 
 A Book of the Invention of the Art of Naviga- 
 tion. 
 
 There came, indeed, from the press in England for 
 the last half of the sixteeth century, a perfect flood 
 of books, either directly translated or inspired by 
 Spanish texts, dealing with exploration and navi- 
 gation, in which Englishmen were now so deeply 
 and permanently interested. Travels to the East and 
 to the West, of Spaniards and Portuguese, descrip- 
 tions of marvels beyond human belief, of men with 
 heads in their stomachs, of palaces of gold, of vast 
 cities leagues in length, wild stories of half-crazed 
 shipmen, who for years had been lost to civilisation, 
 and had come back, dazed and confused, between 
 imagination and fact. All were seized upon by an 
 English public hungry for wonders, and burning with 
 thoughts of boundless wealth easily earned in the 
 mysterious lands afar off. A perusal of the little 
 book of one of the greatest minds of England of 
 the day — Sir Walter Raleigh's account of his voyage 
 to Guiana — will prove to the reader how deeply had 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE I97 
 
 sunk into the mind of the nation these tales of wonder 
 from the Spanish. Without them who knows if 
 English imagination would have carried men away 
 on those apparently desperate voyages in tiny, frail 
 craft to breast Atlantic billows, and to die nobly, 
 as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and hundreds of others 
 did, in a hopeless quest, which, though it failed in 
 discovering a land of El Dorado, founded the greatest 
 empire the world has ever seen. 
 
 If Raleigh, from reading Lopez de Gomara and the 
 other narrators of discovery, could be led to think, 
 as he did, of the fabled land of Manoa and its 
 mountains of gold ; if these stories could lead him 
 to risk his last penny, to pawn his wife's jewels, and 
 stake his liberty and life, judge what effect they must 
 have had upon ignorant, unlettered people of the 
 same period. There need be no wonder at the 
 enthusiasm, nay, almost the frenzy, with which 
 Englishmen of all ranks yearned for adventure be- 
 yond the sea, as the Spaniards had done before 
 them. A few lines from Raleigh's Discovery of 
 Guiana will prove how deeply the Spanish relations 
 had moved him. After describing in glowing words 
 the greatness and splendour of the supposed Manoa, 
 he continues : — ' And if we compare it to that of Peru 
 and but read the report of Francisco Lopez and 
 others, it will seem the more credible : and, because 
 we may judge of the one by the other, I thought 
 good to insert part of the 120th chapter of Lopez his 
 
rgS SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 General History of the Indies, wherein he describeth 
 the court and magnificence of Guaynacapa, ancestor 
 to the Emperor of Guiana, whose very words are 
 these : " All the service of his house, table, and 
 kitchen was of silver and gold, or at least of copper 
 and silver for the things where strength was needed. 
 In his antechamber he had hollow statues of gold 
 as great as giants, and the figures resembling in 
 their natural size, of all the animals, birds, trees, 
 and plants that the country produces, and of all 
 the fishes that grow in the seas and rivers that 
 wash it. He had' also ropes, baskets, sacks, and 
 wallets of gold and silver, and even logs and branches 
 of gold made to look like wood cut for fuel. In fact, 
 there was nothing in his realm of which he had not 
 an imitation in gold. It is further asserted that the 
 Incas had an enclosed garden on an island near 
 Puna where they went to enjoy the sea air, and in 
 it all the plants, flowers, and trees were of pure gold, 
 an invention such as never was seen before. In 
 addition to all this, he possessed at Cuzco an infinite 
 quantity of rough gold and silver, which was lost at 
 Guascar's death because the Indians hid it, seeing 
 that the Spaniards took their treasure to send 
 to Spain." And in the 117th chapter he says: 
 " Francisco Pizarro caused the gold and silver of 
 Atahualpa to be weighed after he had taken it, which 
 Lopez setteth down in these words following : ' They 
 found fifty- two thousand marks of good silver, and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 199 
 
 one million three hundred and twenty-six thousand 
 and five hundred pesos of gold.'" ^ 
 
 ' Now although all these reports may seem strange, 
 yet if we consider the many millions which are daily 
 brought out of Peru into Spain, we may easily believe 
 the same, for we find that by the abundant treasure of 
 that country the Spanish King vexeth all the princes 
 of Europe, and is become in a few years, from the 
 poor King of Castile, the greatest monarch of this 
 part of the world, and likely every day to increase 
 if other princes forslow the good occasions offered, 
 and suffer him to add this empire to the rest, which 
 far exceedeth the rest. If his gold now endanger us, 
 he will then be irresistible.' 
 
 Throughout the whole of this book and others by 
 the same writer Raleigh shows how profoundly he 
 had studied the Spanish accounts of America and the 
 Atlantic navigation. He was perhaps the leading mind 
 of his time, and the books which confessedly inspired 
 and taught him must have appealed in original and 
 translations to thousands of his fellow-countrymen 
 animated by a similar spirit of adventure and ambition. 
 
 All the translations of Spanish accounts of ex- 
 ploration I have mentioned, great as was their 
 effect -upon English minds, were, as we have seen, 
 produced by isolated publishers and translators to 
 supply a demand. There was but little attempt at 
 
 ' Raleigh quotes the whole of the above in the original Spanish, but 
 it has been considered well to translate the passages here. 
 
200 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 correlation, and evidently there could be few men, 
 at least until the end of the century, able to sift 
 authorities or check statements, because previously 
 there was scant material in English hands for testing 
 the truth of statements made by Spaniards, who 
 spoke as eye-witnesses of what they described. But 
 after Drake and the hosts of privateers had harried the 
 Spaniards nearly to death on their own seas, and 
 Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen were doing 
 pretty much as they liked in the oceans which the 
 Spaniards had endeavoured to close, the mass of 
 knowledge grew ; and a man appeared in England 
 with a mind big enough, and an imagination strong 
 enough, to see the importance for the future of 
 England, that all the information obtainable about 
 exploration and colonisation should be rendered 
 available, and that knowledge of scientific sea-craft 
 was as necessary as bold hearts for the foundation 
 of a colonial empire. 
 
 Curiously enough this young clergyman, Hakluyt, 
 whose ambition was so great and wise for England, 
 was not of English, but of pure Dutch parentage. 
 His services to the science of navigation and ex- 
 ploration are such as can never be repaid. He had 
 published whilst very young, in 1585, a new edition 
 of Peter Martyr's Orde Novo. But by the end of the 
 century he had matured his great project of collecting 
 together from all sources, printed, manuscript, and 
 verbal, descriptions of voyages in all parts of the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 201 
 
 world. The three noble volumes, as they eventually 
 came out, presented, indeed, a complete history of 
 exploration from the earliest times to the period of 
 publication. From Dutch and Latin, from French 
 and English, as well as from Spanish, Hakluyt 
 obtained his narratives. From the lips of seamen 
 who had returned from adventurous wanderings, 
 from ships' log-books and captains' letters home, the 
 learned and industrious Anglo-Dutchman got together 
 his travellers' tales, which to this day are as valuable 
 as they are amusing to read. But the point I am 
 anxious to impress upon my readers is that Hakluyt's 
 ambitious project was not entirely a literary venture. 
 He had seen Spain outstrip the rest of the world in 
 obtaining colonial expansion. He had seen how 
 Englishmen, though they were born seamen, had been 
 obliged to turn to Spanish texts and depend upon 
 Spanish experience to learn the scientific navigation 
 of the Atlantic ; how they had been obliged to fight 
 for forty years, doggedly and persistently, for the 
 right to sail their ships upon the open sea and visit 
 lands unknown to civilisation. And Hakluyt was 
 animated by a desire to urge his adopted countrymen 
 to rest their future claims and action upon knowledge 
 at first hand, rather than upon violence. That Spanish 
 example it was that inspired his project is seen in the 
 separate dedications of his three volumes. The dedica- 
 tion to Lord Admiral Howard of the first volume of 
 the Principal Navigations {\i)(^ has for its object the 
 
202 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 enforcement of the need for the systematic teaching 
 of seamanship ' if England is to do her part in the 
 maritime world.' ' When I call to mind,' writes Hak- 
 luyt, 'how many noble ships have been lost, how 
 many worthy persons have been drenched in the sea, 
 and how greatly this realm hath been impoverished 
 by the loss of great ordnance and other rich com- 
 modities through ignorance of our seamen, I have 
 greatly wished that there was a lecture of navigation 
 read in this city for the banishing of our former gross 
 ignorance in maritime causes, and for the increase and 
 general multiplying of the sea knowledge of this age, 
 wherein God hath raised so general a desire in the 
 youth of this realm to discover all parts of the face 
 of the earth, to this realm in former ages not known. 
 And that it may appear that this is no vain fancy nor 
 device of mine, it may please your lordship to under- 
 stand that the late Emperor Charles v., considering 
 the rawness of his seamen, and the manifold ship- 
 wrecks they sustained in passing and repassing 
 between Spain and the West Indies, with high reach 
 and foresight established not only a pilot major for 
 the examination of such as sought to take charge of 
 ships in that voyage, but also founded a notable 
 lecture of the Art of Navigation which is read to this 
 day in the Contractation House in Seville. The 
 readers of which lecture have not only taught and 
 instructed Spanish mariners by word of mouth, but 
 also have published sundry exact and worthy treatises 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 203 
 
 concerning maritime causes for the direction and 
 encouragement of posterity. The learned works of 
 such readers, namely Alonso de Chaves, Jeronimo de 
 Chaves, and Rodrigo Zamorano, came long ago very 
 happily into my hands, together with the great and 
 severe examining of all such masters as desire to take 
 charge for the West Indies. When I first read and 
 duly considered, it seemed to me so excellent and 
 exact a course, as I greatly wished that I might be so 
 happy as to see the like order established here with us.' 
 This proves beyond doubt that the very first idea of 
 Hakluyt's work, and the priceless services he rendered 
 to English seamanship and literature, were due to the 
 Spanish books he had read. The continuation of his 
 labours to their conclusion was, moreover, made possible 
 only by the fresh Spanish material that came to his 
 hands. Many of his narratives are direct and acknow- 
 ledged translations from Spanish texts, and others 
 relate experiences gained with Spaniards and in 
 Spanish countries. In the dedication of his second 
 volume Hakluyt again makes clear that the main 
 object of his work is to provide Englishmen with the 
 maritime knowledge possessed by Spaniards, in order 
 that the latter might be beaten with their own weapons. 
 After praising the seafaring career, and colonisation as 
 a worthy outlet for the ardent energy of young English- 
 men, he continues : — ' There is under our very noses, in 
 the great and ample country of Virginia, the inland of 
 which is lately found to be so sweet and wholesome in 
 
204 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 .climate, so rich and abundant in silver mines, so apt 
 and capable of all commodities which Italy, France, 
 and Spain can afford, that the Spaniards themselves in 
 their own writings printed in Madrid in 1586, and within 
 a few months afterwards reprinted by me in Paris ; and 
 in a secret map of those parts, made in Mexico in the 
 year before for the King of Spain — which original, with 
 many others, is in the custody of the excellent mathe- 
 matician Thomas Hariot — as also in the Spanish in- 
 tercepted letters come into my hand bearing date 
 1595, they acknowledge the inland (i.e. of Virginia) to 
 be a better and richer country than Mexico or New 
 Spain itself. And on the other side their chiefest 
 writers, as Peter Martyr Angleria, and Francisco 
 Lopez de Gomara and others, acknowledge with one 
 consent that all that mighty tract of land from sixty- 
 seven degrees N. to the latitude almost of Florida was 
 first discovered by England, by commandment of King 
 Henry Vll., and the south part thereof, before any 
 other Christian people, of late hath been planted with 
 divers English colonies by the royal consent of her 
 Sacred Majesty.' 
 
 The same insistence upon his Spanish inspiration 
 and his dependence upon Spanish originals are seen 
 in the dedication of the third volume to Sir Robert 
 Cecil. ' Since,' he says, ' our wars with Spain, by the 
 taking of their ships and sacking of their towns and 
 cities, most of all their secrets of the West Indies and 
 every part thereof are fallen into our peoples' hands — 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 205 
 
 which in former times were for the most part unknown 
 to us — I have used the uttermost of my best en- 
 deavours to get, and having gotten to translate out 
 of the Spanish, and here in this present volume to 
 publish, such secrets of theirs as may any way avail 
 us or annoy them if they drive us by their sullen 
 insolences to continue our course of hostility against 
 them.' He then goes on to expatiate upon the value 
 of the information collected. There is no town, port, 
 or river of importance in the West Indies of which 
 good descriptions are not given from Spanish sources, 
 several of which he mentions. Thus it is clear that 
 to Spanish literary texts the first idea of a scientific 
 school of English seamanship is largely owing, and 
 that the first literary apostle of an extended English 
 empire beyond the seas was inspired to undertake his 
 propaganda through the influence of Spanish books. 
 
 There was another science in which Spaniards in 
 the sixteenth century excelled all other nations : the 
 science of military warfare on land. There was ample 
 reason for this. Standing armies were unknown. 
 Troops were levied for a campaign, and dismissed 
 when peace was made. But the Spaniards had been 
 fighting, practically without intermission, for centuries, 
 first against the Moors, and then, after the accession 
 of the Emperor Charles, in the constant wars in Italy, 
 and subsequently in the wars of religion in Germany, 
 and the campaigns on the French Flemish frontiers. 
 So superior was the knowledge of Spaniards in land 
 
2o6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 warfare, that when Henry Vlll., in alliance with the 
 Emperor, crossed the Channel with his army to besiege 
 Boulogne, and, it was hoped, to march on to Paris, he 
 had to have attached to him as an adviser a famous 
 Spanish general, the Duke of Albuquerque, and also 
 a strong body of Spanish mercenaries to stiffen his 
 own inexperienced Englishmen. I have related else- 
 where the desperate efforts made by Henry VIII., and 
 even by the Protestant protector Somerset, to keep in 
 his pay a large body of the redoubtable Spanish men- 
 at-arms, who were, in fact, the flower of the soldiers of 
 Europe in the sixteenth century.^ Military fashions 
 were adopted by other nations from Spain at the 
 period as naturally as the fashion of ladies' dress is 
 now taken from Paris, and as London dictates how 
 man, the civilised world over, shall attire himself. For 
 many centuries, with but few brief breaks, England 
 and Spain had been friends, and English fighting-men 
 
 • Brant&me voices the admiration of all Europe for these fine, dashing 
 troops. We may see in his pages how the gallant bearing of the tra- 
 ditional Spaniard imposed itself upon the dress, the language, the 
 behaviour, and manners of France, England, and Italy. When Brant6me 
 heard that the musketeers of the Duke of Alba were marching through 
 France to attack the Protestants in Holland, he tells us that he took post 
 for a long journey, only to have the pleasure of looking upon ' that hand- 
 some troop of brave and gallant soldiers, well chosen from the tercios of 
 Lombardy, of Naples, of Sicily, of Sardinia, and some of the Goleta regi- 
 ment: all old veterans, so well equipped in arms and accoutrements, 
 most of their armour damascened, and the rest chased and engraved, so 
 that you might take each trooper for a captain rather than what he was ; 
 whilst, from their arrogant and noble grace, you would have taken them 
 for princes.' 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 207 
 
 had had no opportunity of meeting Spanish men-at- 
 arms in land combat. But the records of their prowess 
 were read in Spanish, French, Italian, and occasionally 
 in English translations. Diego de Mendoza's Guerra 
 de Granada, giving an account of the war of Philip 11. 
 against the Andalusian Moriscos, was a popular and 
 fashionable book, as were Perez de Hita's Guerras 
 Civiles de Granada and Bernardino de Mendoza's 
 Comentarios de la Guerra de Flandes, and Avila y 
 Zuniga's Guerra de Alemania, an account of the 
 Lutheran wars translated by John Wilkinson into 
 English in the reign of Philip and Mary, 1555. 
 
 \n books about military affairs the same thing 
 happened as I have pointed out in the literature of 
 maritime exploration. The first books were historical 
 and literary, for the purpose of conveying informa- 
 tion with regard to the exploits of those redoubtable 
 tercios of infantry which had marched victorious 
 through Europe. But after the accession of Elizabeth, 
 and especially after the patronage of the Nether- 
 landers in their revolt, had sent English captains and 
 soldiers by the thousand across the North Sea to meet 
 those grim warriors of the school of Alba ; then the 
 need of actual knowledge of their tactics, and of the 
 discipline and organisation that had made them what 
 they were, came home to the Englishmen who had to 
 do battle with them. Thereafter there came from the 
 press in England many translations of the Spanish 
 books that treated on military matters. The English 
 
208 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 versions are now all rare, and I have not been able 
 to see many of them. But such as I have read are 
 extremely suggestive, as showing how carefully 
 military ideas in England were modelled on the 
 Spanish teaching. Curiously enough, these books, 
 which, as I shall point out, contain a complete system 
 of organisation, as fully matured as our own King's 
 regulations for the army, are presented in the form of 
 dialogues, in which a famous general, either dead or 
 alive, is supposed to be the person imparting the 
 information to another person, who is seeking it One 
 of the principal books of this sort published in 
 England was The Office of Sergeant-Major, translated 
 anonymously from General Sancho de Londono's 
 book, called Un Discurso sobre la forma de reducir la 
 disciplina militar a mejor estado, and it was issued in 
 London in 1589, when, as will be recollected, the 
 gallant Vere and his Englishmen were fighting the 
 Spaniards in Flanders. The Spanish original was 
 dedicated to the great Duke of Alba. 
 
 But a more important book was one that came out 
 in London in the following year, 1590, called also 
 The Sergeant-Major, which was a translation by John 
 Thorius of Francisco de Vald^s' Espejo y Disciplina 
 Militar, and contains an exact description of the 
 organisation of a regiment, which, in fact, was the 
 system adopted in the English service, as a conse- 
 quence of the publication of these books. There are 
 two points which specially strike a modern military 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 209 
 
 reader in these books, namely the supreme importance 
 given to the office of sergeant-major, who occupied a 
 position similar to that now filled by the senior major 
 of a regiment and the adjutant combined, the sergeant- 
 major having been always selected for his knowledge 
 and experience, and never for his rank, wealth, or 
 influence, as was very often the case with the com- 
 manding officers ; the second point being the close 
 squadron or square formation in marching and 
 manoeuvring, and the dependence upon weight and 
 impact rather than mobility in attack and defence. 
 This persistence in old ideals, notwithstanding the 
 change effected in the possibilities of warfare by 
 the improvement in artillery, was characteristically 
 Spanish, and through the translation of Spanish 
 books upon military science set its mark upon tactics 
 for two centuries longer. In naval science the 
 appearance in England of an original genius like 
 Drake, and the impetus given to shipbuilding by the 
 demand for privateers, caused the recognition of the 
 efficacy of mobility as against weight long before 
 soldiers shook off the shackles of the Spanish tradition. 
 In the military books to which I am referring the 
 most minute instructions for the management and 
 manoeuvring of a regiment are given, especially in 
 Ksca.lante's ArU Mtlt(ar{iS9S) a.nd in Bernardino de 
 Mendoza's Teorica y Practica de la Guerra, which was 
 translated into English by Sir Edward Hoby and 
 published in 1597. 
 
 O 
 
2IO SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 As time went on and engagements took place 
 between Spaniards and Englishmen ashore as well as 
 afloat, during the long irregular warfare that for 
 forty-five years pretended to be peace, an extensive 
 literature sprang up in England dealing with such 
 encounters. It would be impossible to mention a 
 tithe of the narratives translated from the Spanish, 
 sometimes for information but oftener for refutation, 
 that issued from the English press during the last 
 twenty years of Elizabeth's reign. Hakluyt published 
 several, such as that fine piece of vivid prose giving 
 an account of the stubborn fight between the little 
 Revenge and the great Spanish warships which Sir 
 Richard Grenville obstinately and unnecessarily 
 insisted upon fighting. This is called A Report of the 
 Truth of the fight about the Isles of Azores, the last of 
 August 1591, between the Revenge, one of her Majesty's 
 Ships, and the Armada of Spain, Penned by Sir Walter 
 Ralegh, Knt. 'Because the rumours are diversely 
 spread, as well in England as in the Low Countries 
 and elsewhere, of this late encounter between her 
 Majesty's ships and the Armada of Spain, and that 
 the Spaniards, according to their usual manner, fill the 
 world with their vainglorious vaunts, making great 
 appearance of victories, when, on the contrary, them- 
 selves are most commonly and shamefully beaten and 
 dishonoured ; thereby hoping to possess the ignorant 
 multitude by false reports; it is agreeable with all 
 good reason, for the manifestation of the truth, to 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 211 
 
 overcome falsehood and untruth, that the beginning, 
 continuance, and success of this late honourable 
 encounter should be truly set down.' 
 
 In 1583 there came out in English two translations 
 of the Admiral Alvaro de Bazan's account of the 
 defeat of the Portuguese pretender's fleets, aided 
 unofficially by England and France, by the Spaniards 
 off Terceira ; and almost every military action 
 described by Spaniards or waged against them 
 thenceforward claimed the attention of English 
 readers. To mention only a few of them : there was 
 the English attack on Lisbon in 1589, that upon Cadiz 
 in 1596, the conquest of Portugal by Spain from the 
 Italian of Conestaggio, and a host of others. But, as 
 may be supposed, the defeat of the Armada gave rise 
 to the greatest mass of this sort of literature, fugitive 
 and polemical for the most part. It was an age when 
 there were no newspapers, and pamphlets and broad- 
 sides gave to the reading public the only substitute 
 for them. The accounts of the defeat from original 
 English sources were, of course, numerous, but do not 
 here concern us. What does come within our purview 
 is the mass of controversial literature that sprang up 
 at the time. The books usually took the form of real 
 or pretended intercepted Spanish letters, from or to 
 ambassadors of Spain, and a violent refutation of 
 their contents. They were often called by such 
 names as A Pack of Spanish Lies ; first printed in 
 Spain, now ripped up, unfolded, and condemned (i ^88). 
 
212 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Another was An Answer to the untruths published and 
 printed in Spain, against our English Navy (1589), 
 translated by J. Lea. Another was A Copy of a Letter 
 lately written by a Spanish Gentleman to his friend in 
 England in refutation of sundry calumnies here falsely 
 bruited and spread amongst the people' 
 
 Most of these were merely squibs, for the purpose 
 of misrepresenting an enemy. Don Bernardino de 
 Mendoza, who up to 1584 had been ambassador in 
 England, and was very unpopular here, was then 
 ambassador in France, and his letters were especially 
 attacked and held up to ridicule, as being mendacious. 
 There is a letter of this sort which purported to have 
 been sent to him from an English Catholic partisan of 
 Spain, who, although professing sympathy with the 
 objects of the Armada, condemns the untruths against 
 England that had been set afloat with regard to it, 
 and to the detriment of the English. It is repre- 
 sented as being written by one Richard Leigh, a 
 seminary priest ; but in all probability it was simply 
 another of the polemical attacks with which, in most 
 wars, one combatant endeavours to injure another. 
 There are, indeed, scores of such fugitive pieces as 
 these, in the form of pamphlets and broadsides, but 
 they are of little importance from a literary point of 
 view. What is important is that we have to thank 
 Spanish inspiration for the texts intended to teach 
 Englishmen scientific seamanship and the art of war ; 
 and also for a great mass of valuable histories of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 213 
 
 exploration and warfare. Nor did these sources cease 
 when the countries became more harmonious. During 
 most of the seventeenth century there flourished in 
 England a school of Hispanophil writers who followed 
 the fashion of the day when Spanish was the modish 
 language, and translated amongst other books 
 histories of wars in which Spain had been engaged. 
 Such were The Wars of the Commoners, translated into 
 English by James Wadsworth ; The Wars of Flanders, 
 originally written in Italian by Cardinal Bentivoglio, 
 translated by the Earl of Monmouth ; The Wars of 
 Philip IV., by Malvezzi, translated by Robert Gentllis 
 under the name of The Chief Events of the Monarchy 
 of Spain, and several others. It is thus established 
 beyond doubt that the influence of Spanish literature 
 in England, in matters of exploration, seamanship, 
 and war, was powerful and enduring. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DEVOTIONAL, MYSTICAL, AND POLEMICAL 
 LITERATURE 
 
 In the present chapter we have to deal with one 
 of the strongest manifestations that occurred of the 
 Spanish influence upon European thought. For the 
 full significance of it we shall have to look to the racial 
 character of the Peninsular peoples. From the first 
 dawn of their history we have seen them personally 
 self-centred as no other people were. Each soul was 
 for himself the point around which the universe re- 
 volved. His God and himself in communion shut 
 out from his view other considerations ; and, at some 
 periods of the history of his country, this feeling 
 justified in his eyes acts that a more human view 
 than his would have condemned. The spiritual exal- 
 tation which sprang from these conditions was cleverly 
 made use of by kings and statesmen for the purpose 
 of forging the weapon that was to make Spain tem- 
 porarily irresistible in the world. And it did so. 
 There was no defeat possible for men who, in their 
 heart of hearts, believed that they were fighting the 
 enemies of God Himself; that suffering, that priva- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 215 
 
 tion, that death itself were only special marks of 
 distinction, conferred upon them by the Most High, 
 to be repaid by bliss a thousandfold in the world 
 to come. 
 
 The soft luxury of the cultured infidels, whom they 
 had fought for centuries, and at last conquered, had 
 by mere reaction given to the Christian idea iq Spain 
 at the end of the great struggle in the last years of 
 the fifteenth century an austerity and simplicity un- 
 known in other Christian lands. The sensuous beauty, 
 pagan in its origin, that Italian art had called into 
 the service of religion, had no attraction for a people 
 who had only seen beauty and luxury in connection 
 with a civilisation which denied the truth of the Chris- 
 tian faith. In Spain, therefore, Christianity did not 
 seek to please the senses. The spirit of sacrifice that 
 had led Christians in the later years of the Moorish 
 domination to insist upon voluntary martyrdom — the 
 same altruistic spirit of self-immolation which had 
 seized like a vice upon Spain in the novels of chivalry, 
 made Spaniards for the first three-quarters of the 
 sixteenth century yearn for the maceration and 
 humiliation of the flesh, for the suffering incurred by 
 the self-denial of all that made life pleasant in a 
 corporeal sense, in order to realise the ecstatic com- 
 munion with God, incomprehensible to grosser souls, 
 which seemed to lift them personally to the earthly 
 foretaste of the heaven to come. Such a feeling, 
 extended over a whole Christian people, would exalt 
 
2i6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 and purify with unselfishness their idea of Christ's 
 teaching. When every hillside had its hermit, living, 
 almost starving, on herbs and roots, denying himself 
 comfort, warmth, and fellowship ; when every monas- 
 tery and nunnery — and there were many thousands 
 of them — held those within who, rapt in the ecstasy 
 of divine contemplation, lost all sight of worldly 
 things, and who, blameless themselves, yet lived in 
 such self-inflicted suffering for imaginary sins, as 
 almost to pass our understanding, — with such a leaven 
 as this it is easy to see how ecstatic, how almost 
 frantic, would be the form that devotion would 
 assume. 
 
 Out of this feeling, unmatched elsewhere in Europe 
 at the time, there arose a school of thought and a 
 literature that powerfully appealed at different times 
 to all Christian peoples. What is called the mystic 
 school of religious writing, especially as applied to 
 Spain in the sixteenth century, was not really con- 
 fined either to that period or even to Spain itself. 
 At a considerably earlier period Italian mystics had 
 been many. Such men as the saintly Francis of 
 Assisi and Thomas a Kempis were mystic writers, 
 and the Spanish Jew poet, Ben Gabirol, was as pure 
 a mystic as any of his Christian successors. The 
 peculiarity of Spanish religious mysticism especially 
 is, that it has little to do with theology or doctrine, 
 and the works of Fray Luis de Granada can be read 
 with as much edification by a Puritan as by a Roman 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 217 
 
 Catholic if once the spirit can be exalted to the level 
 necessary to understand them. As the greatest of 
 living Spanish critics, Menendez Pelayo, says: 'To 
 reach the mystical inspiration it is not sufficient to 
 be a Christian, nor a devotee, nor a great theologian, 
 nor a saint. What is necessary is the attainment of 
 a special psychological condition, an effervescence of 
 the will and imagination, an intense and profound 
 contemplation of divine things. ... It is true that 
 the mystic, if he happen to be orthodox, accepts the 
 theology of his faith, and tacitly takes it as the basis 
 of all his speculations, but at a later stage he aspires 
 to the possession of God by the bond of divine love, 
 and proceeds as if God and the soul were alone in 
 the world.' This is as true as it is important. 
 
 To name but a tithe of the three hundred mystic 
 writers who enriched Castilian literature with their 
 rhapsodies in the sixteenth century would be of little 
 service, and I prefer to limit myself to the mention 
 of a few representative writers of the school, and then 
 to consider which of them, and to what extent, and 
 why, they exerted influence upon English thought 
 at a period when in Spain itself the spiritual exalta- 
 tion which led to mysticism was rapidly losing its 
 power. Most of the great Spanish mystics were born 
 between 1500 and 1550, and perhaps the first to make 
 his mark upon the reading public was the Venerable 
 Juan de Avila, the Apostle, as he is called, of Anda- 
 lusia, who was born in 1502. When he was first 
 
2i8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ordained at Alcald he realised his great inheritance, 
 for he belonged to a rich family, and distributed all 
 amongst the poor, and thenceforward in poverty 
 lived only to save souls according to his lights.. 
 Preaching with burning eloquence from town to town, 
 and himself living a life of rigid self-denial, his teach- 
 ing from the first centred around the contemplation 
 of the divine mystery. The teaching of the mystics 
 had little relation with good works, or, indeed, with 
 the possibilities of worldly life. There was no attempt, 
 as has now become the fashion, to strike a compro- 
 mise, and make the best of both worlds. The scorn 
 of the flesh and of mundane things, and the uplifting 
 the spirit to a stage of ecstasy that shut out the 
 taste for worldly pleasures, was the end they sought. 
 This passage, for instance, from a letter from Juan 
 de Avila to a student at Salamanca sets forth the 
 doctrine : — 
 
 ' Profit to the soul must be sought more in denying 
 our own will, and with a firm heart doing that we 
 feel to be agreeable to the Lord, than in having a 
 tender heart and sweet devotion : for in the former 
 we show the true love we bear to God, which is really 
 the perfection of Christianity ; and the latter may 
 well conceal our own personal pride, which sullies us 
 so much. You must not, therefore, be dismayed at 
 the dryness of heart that you say you feel ; but must 
 rejoice in having to travel through the desert where 
 no green tree refreshes the sight, no foliage tempers 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 219 
 
 the glare, and no brook enlivens the land. If in prayer 
 you find no help, read for a space, pondering the 
 while upon that which you read, mingling thus medi- 
 tation and vocal prayer with your reading, — having 
 before you the while some image of our Lord's 
 passion, or a crucifix. Persevere in this, however arid 
 your heart may feel, offering yourself to the Lord 
 without cease, and He will receive you at length.' 
 
 Here is seen the invariable tendency of the mystic 
 writers. The student is not told to go out into the 
 highways and byways to help human trouble or 
 assuage human suffering ; not told to go and face the 
 world of wickedness to bring it into Christ's fold, but 
 to shut himself up until he had worked himself into 
 a state of devotional rapture. The sweetest mystic 
 writers, especially in devotional poetry, were the 
 famous San Juan de la Cruz, and Fray Luis de Leon, 
 whose fame still lingers around the University of 
 Salamanca, where he lived and worked so long. San 
 Juan de la Cruz, the friend and co-worker with Santa 
 Teresa, the greatest of all mystic writers, though she 
 was much more as well as a mystic, was called the 
 ' ecstatic doctor ' ; and although he was, like Santa 
 Teresa, a great religious reformer, he is known best 
 as a mystic writer. His poems are said by a com- 
 petent Spanish critic to be ' so angelic, celestial, and 
 divine as to defy the possibility of literary criticism. 
 More ardent in passion than any profane poetry, they 
 are nevertheless so elegant and exquisite in form, so 
 
220 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 plastic, and yet so imaginative, as to be amongst the 
 sweetest fruit of the renaissance.' Nothing, indeed, 
 in devotional poetry is finer than some of the verses 
 of San Juan de la Cruz. 
 
 As poetry, however, is not to be dealt with in the 
 present volume, except in special cases where that 
 form of Spanish writing powerfully influenced English 
 letters, the subject of the mystical poetry is only 
 mentioned here as evidence of the literary capacity 
 gfenerally of the authors, and of their power to move 
 their contemporary countrymen. 
 
 The other sweet singer of mysticism. Fray Luis de 
 Leon, like Juan de la Cruz, suffered persecution from 
 the narrow-minded men, who failed to understand 
 the exalted, all-embracing charity with which these 
 mystics regarded religion. For translating the Song 
 of Songs into Castilian, he was for four years shut 
 up in the dungeons of the Inquisition ; but for him 
 truly could it be said that 'stone walls do not a 
 prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' Serene and 
 secure in his saintly philosophy, no earthly evil could 
 distress such as him. The Names of Christ, by him, 
 is perhaps the finest of all the Spanish mystical 
 works, and this he wrote in the prison of the Holy 
 Office at Valladolid. He thanks God in his prologue 
 for laying the affliction of prison upon him, for with- 
 out it, he says, he could not have found time to write 
 the book he had in his heart to write. He sees things 
 clearer, he says, in the gloom of his prison, than he 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 221 
 
 did outside. Here are a few lines of the beautiful 
 description he gives of the place on the banks of the 
 Tormes, still reverently regarded in Salamanca, where 
 he so often sought solitude, and where he represents 
 the colloquy, which forms the Names of Christ, to 
 have been held : — ' The garden was large, and at that 
 season, St. John's tide in June, well wooded, though 
 the trees were scattered without formal order. This, 
 indeed, added delight to the view, and the hour and 
 the season completed the charm. When they had 
 entered the garden, they walked for a little space, 
 enjoying the freshness, and then they sat together 
 on some benches in the shade, under a climbing 
 trellis, by the side of a clear little spring that gushes 
 from the verdant hillside, behind the rest-house, 
 and runs gambolling through the garden, with a 
 sound like the rippling laughter of children. Before 
 them, and at no great distance, was a stately and 
 beautiful avenue of trees ; and beyond it, but not 
 far away, ran the river Tormes, which even in that 
 hot season of the year filled well its banks, and 
 stretched across the smiling plain. The day was 
 calm and pure, the hour was fresh and cool. And 
 when they had been silently sitting for a little while, 
 Sabino, which is the name I give to the youngest 
 of the students, smiling spoke thus.' The Names of 
 Christ, as fine a specimen of devotional mystic writing 
 as any in the world, has, so far as I know, not been 
 translated into English. 
 
222 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Before passing on to the other mystic Spanish 
 writer who had so great a vogue in England, a word 
 or two must be said about Santa Teresa, one of the 
 noblest figures of the sixteenth century. Her life 
 was not like those of many mystics, immersed in 
 cloistered contemplation alone. She was a great 
 lady, a great reformer, and a great woman of affairs, 
 as well as a mystic. To show how firmly the idea of 
 sacrifice had seized upon the Spanish people in her 
 youth, it will be interesting to repeat a story which 
 she tells herself. When she was a child of seven, in 
 1522, she says: 'When I saw the martyrdom which 
 the saints had suffered for God, it seemed to me 
 that they had bought the enjoyment of God very 
 cheaply, and I longed much to die like them, not 
 for the love I thought I bore Him, but to enjoy as 
 soon as possible the great treasures which I read 
 were stored up in Heaven. Together with my brother 
 (who was three or four years older), I discoursed how 
 it would be possible to accomplish this. We agreed 
 to go to the land of the Moors, begging our way 
 for the love of God, there to be beheaded ; and it 
 seemed to me that the Lord gave us courage, even 
 at that tender age, if we could have found means 
 to accomplish it.' Needless to say that the children 
 were followed and brought back home, before they had 
 gone very far on their road to martyrdom. I cannot 
 follow the career of this marvellous woman, who in 
 the face of even terrible Philip and the Inquisition 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 223 
 
 had her way, and purified and reformed the Carmelite 
 order, and, through that, the whole of the conven- 
 tual orders in Spain. Persistent, enduring, patient, 
 and wise, she turned her ecstatic exaltation — hysteria 
 some called it, even then — to the service of mankind 
 and the church she served through good report and 
 evil. She conquered in the end, and left religious 
 life in Spain purer than she found it. And her 
 teachings reached far beyond the Pyrenees ; for not 
 only was the example of her life a reproach to the 
 cloistered religious in all countries who had fallen into 
 laxity, but her mystic works, especially the Road 
 to Perfection, has been, and still remains, a specimen 
 of exalted religious detachment which has brought 
 solace to thousands. 
 
 But, curiously enough, none of these mystics that 
 I have mentioned exerted any very great or direct 
 influence upon English thought. In the first place, 
 when they were in greatest esteem in Spain, England 
 for political as well as religious reasons, looked upon 
 everything Spanish with hatred and distrust. The 
 England of the last half of the sixteenth century, 
 moreover, was fermenting with the new, vigorous 
 life that the foreign policy of Elizabeth had infused 
 into it. It was a practical, eager age, an age of 
 discovery, of effort, and of self-seeking ; and the 
 rapt, hysterical contemplation of the divinity, without 
 works to back the devotional intoxication which 
 mysticism induced, would hardly of itself appeal to 
 
224 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the Englishman of that strenuous age. But there 
 was one mystic writer who, for special reasons which 
 I shall mention, appealed to Englishmen, even before 
 mysticism itself found a public ready to receive it 
 in England. This was Fray Luis de Granada. He 
 was born of poor people of Granada in 1504, and, 
 being an orphan, was educated by Count de Tendilla. 
 Like other mystics, his life was one long tale of self- 
 sacrifice. As a sacred orator he had no equal, and 
 his florid eloquence captured Spain completely. His 
 rigid asceticism, his sweet reasonableness, and his 
 all-embracing charity, as usual offended the In- 
 quisition, and he, like other churchmen who did not 
 stick to doctrine alone, suffered persecution. But, 
 great as Fray Luis was, his gifts were, in their essence, 
 oratorical, and his writings, instead of being like 
 those of Juan de Avila and Santa Teresa, simple, 
 austere, and direct, are modelled more upon the style 
 of that famous Antonio de Guevara, of whom I have 
 spoken so often, where one far-fetched conceit follows 
 another, florid ornament is piled upon endless digres- 
 sion, and affectation runs riot through the printed 
 pages. Lyly's novel Euphues was the first English 
 literary outcome of this vicious taste that Guevara's 
 writings had done so much to promote ; and when 
 Euphuism became the fashion, as it promptly did, 
 then writing of any sort that was obscure and 
 affected was readily accepted and admired. Luis 
 de Granada's mystic writings therefore were welcomed 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 225 
 
 in England, in the first place, because they were 
 written in the affected style then considered good. 
 
 In 1582, just when Euphuism was getting fashion- 
 able, Granada's two principal books of devotion, 
 Meditaciones and Memorial de la Vida Cristiana, 
 were translated and published in Paris by one of 
 the English Catholic refugees on the Continent, 
 Richard Hopkins. The first of these books was 
 called On Prayer and Meditation, wherein are con- 
 tained fourteen devout Meditations for the seven days 
 of the week. There was nothing that could offend a 
 non-Catholic in either of them ; but although they 
 passed through at least half a dozen English editions 
 in France, and were introduced thence in numbers to 
 England, and became very popular, they were not 
 actually printed in England till 1592. The Medita- 
 tions was then called Granada's Devotion ; and thence- 
 forward, for the next fifty years, Granada's mystical 
 books were published again and again in England, 
 and were, indeed, among the most popular devotional 
 books in England at the time. There were various 
 translators, and several different titles given to the 
 books. On Prayers and Meditation (1599) ; Granada's 
 Spiritual and Heavenly Exercise, divided into seven 
 pithy and brief Meditations, one for every day in the 
 week, by Waldegrave, 1600; An Excellent Treatise 
 of Consideration and Prayer, by E. Alldee, 1634; 
 Memorial of a Christian Life, by J. Heigham, 1625 ; 
 and as recently as 1867, and again in 1880, new 
 
 P 
 
226 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 versions of some of Granada's works have appeared 
 in England. 
 
 The reason for their first popularity in England 
 may have been, as I have pointed out, their euphuistic 
 style, but the great favour they enjoyed in the seven- 
 teenth century came from another cause. Their main 
 tendency, like all the Spanish mystic work, was to 
 enforce simplicity of life, scorn of human pleasure, 
 and direct communion with God ; and this was the 
 feeling which became paramount in England as 
 Puritanism grew. There was nothing specially 
 Catholic in Granada's works. They are exhortations 
 to patience, self-denial, and direct communion with 
 God, stirring the instinct of devotional fervour deeper 
 than creeds and rituals ; and it is a curious thought 
 that the mass of exalted devotional literature that 
 heralded and accompanied . the Puritan revival in 
 England owed much of its inspiration to the writings 
 of a Spanish friar whose doctrinal faith was the very 
 antithesis of Puritanism. Most of the old translations 
 of Granada's devotional works are now difficult to 
 read, owing to their turgid style, and in retranslating 
 the few following lines of his, I have suppressed some 
 of the obscurity to make them intelligible. The main 
 idea that underlies it all is the holy ecstasy of calm, 
 resigned communion with God, and a renunciation of 
 the world, which renders innocuous all earthly afflic- 
 tions and sorrows. Looking at such a doctrine by our 
 present light, it appears a somewhat selfish one, since 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 227 
 
 the bliss of the devotee is held out as the object to be 
 gained, and an abandonment of mundane duties is 
 apparently the only road to it. Speaking of the need 
 for abandoning everything for the rapt delight of 
 heavenly communion, Granada in his Guia de Peca- 
 ^or^j, called in English 'Counsels of Holiness,' repeats 
 the words of Christ quoted by St. Mark : ' There is no 
 man that hath left houses and brethren or sisters, or 
 father and mother, or wife or children, or lands, for 
 My sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a 
 hundredfold now in this time, and in the world to 
 come eternal life ' ; and then proceeds to meet the 
 objections that may be offered to them : — 
 
 'Tell me, then, what is this hundredfold more that 
 is given to the righteous in this life ? For we do not 
 usually see great estates or riches, or temporal dig- 
 nities or worldly pomp given to them. On the 
 contrary, many of them live neglected and forgotten 
 by the world, in great poverty, affliction, and sickness. 
 How can we reconcile this with the infallible truth of 
 this declaration, but by confessing that God provides 
 them with so many and so great spiritual treasures as 
 suffice without any worldly glory to give them greater 
 happiness, greater joy, greater contentment, and 
 greater rest than all the possessions of the world? 
 Nor -is this very wonderful, for, as we know, God is 
 not limited to giving men substance in bread alone, 
 but has other means of preserving them : so neither 
 is He restricted to giving satisfaction or contentment 
 
228 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 to their souls with temporal gifts alone, but can do it 
 well without them. And so, in truth, has He dealt 
 with all the Saints whose prayers, whose exercises, 
 whose tears, and whose delights, have greatly exceeded 
 all consolations, worldly joys, and pleasures. And 
 thus it is most true, that they receive a hundredfold 
 more than what they left. For false and counterfeit 
 good things they receive true ones ; for doubtful, 
 certain ; for material, spiritual ; for cares, repose ; for 
 heartaches, tranquillity ; for a vicious life, one that 
 is virtuous and full of joy. If thou hast despised 
 worldly things for the love of Christ, thou wilt find in 
 Him inestimable treasures. If thou hast rejected 
 false honours, in Him thou shalt find true. If thou 
 hast renounced the love of thy parents, the Eternal 
 Father will gladden thee with more tender caresses. 
 If thou hast put from thee pestilential and poisonous 
 pleasures, thou wilt find in Him sweeter and more 
 exalted joys. And when thou hast attained this, thou 
 wilt find that all the things that once pleased thee, 
 not only please thee no longer, but are objects of 
 loathing to thee. For when the heavenly light has 
 once shone in our eyes, all things seem new to us and 
 changed. That which before seemed sweet is now 
 bitter'; that which terrified now delights thee ; what 
 seemed beautiful is now unlovely. It was so before, 
 but thou knewest it not. Thus is Christ's promise 
 fulfilled. For temporal good of the body He sub- 
 stitutes spiritual good for the soul. For what are 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 229 
 
 called gifts of fortune, He gives us gifts of grace, 
 incomparably greater, and more sustaining to the 
 heart of man.' Again and again, in Granada's writ- 
 ings, is this thought repeated in various forms. In the 
 Oraciones, called in English ' On prayers and medita- 
 tions for the seven days of the week,' for instance, the 
 contents are as follows, all tending to the one central 
 thought of self-surrender: 'Of Death. Of the Day 
 of Judgment. Of the Pains of Hell. Of the Bliss of 
 Heaven. Of the Divine Blessing. Of a Knowledge 
 of Ourselves. Of the Miseries of Human Life.' 
 
 The whole tendency of the teaching was not to 
 inculcate good work, or indeed any work in the world, 
 not active practical religion as it is usually understood 
 nowadays, but to recommend a state of rapt ecstasy, 
 self-centred, cloistered contemplation, which in certain 
 conditions and characters might lead, as it did, to 
 cataleptic madness, or to slothful, self-neglecting 
 imbecility. But yet it had its uses, at a time when 
 religion threatened to become too luxurious or too 
 complex ; and when that was the case in any country, 
 the natural reaction seized upon the pure devotional 
 spirit, clear of dogma, to purify and simplify forms of 
 faith. In dissimilar circumstances the tendency was 
 useful both in Spain and in England, when dogma and 
 ritual seemed to be swamping devotion. 
 
 I have mentioned that Luis de Granada's works 
 were first translated into English by Hopkins and 
 Heigham, two of the very numerous English Catholics 
 
230 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 in the continental seminaries ; and in the bitter con- 
 troversy of creeds that took place in England during 
 the reign of Elizabeth, many of these Catholic exiles, 
 educated and maintained as they often were by 
 Spanish endowments at Louvain, Douai, St. Omer, 
 Valladolid, or elsewhere, busied themselves in the 
 translation and dissemination in English of devotional 
 or controversial works which had been produced in 
 Spanish. No works of the sort produced more excite- 
 ment or controversy in England in the latter half of 
 the sixteenth century than those initiated by the 
 Portuguese bishop Osorio- Perhaps they hardly come 
 into our subject, as the author was a Portuguese, and 
 he wrote in Latin. But the cause and thought were 
 Spanish, and the theological disputes aroused by his 
 attacks upon Elizabeth and England, as translated by 
 the English Catholic exiles, profoundly stirred reli- 
 gious circles in this country. Osorio's reputation as 
 a scholar was as great as had been that of Juan Luis 
 Vives in the previous generation ; and when his Latin 
 work called Epistles to Elizabeth Queen of England 
 concerning Religion appeared at Paris and Louvain in 
 1561, in which he exhorted the queen to renounce her 
 errors, it may easily be supposed that the numerous 
 English Catholics at home and abroad read it with 
 avidity. So dangerous was the work considered by 
 Elizabeth and Burghley, that Dr. Walter Haddon, 
 Master of Requests, was deputed to answer it in 
 another Latin epistle. Haddon lost no time, and in 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 231 
 
 1562 his answer, called Apologetic Epistle to Jeronimo 
 Osorio, was issued in Paris, in order that it might 
 reach more easily those who had so eagerly read the 
 original attack. But the controversy could not be 
 kept for long in Latin, and in a year or two the 
 English seminaries translated Osorio's epistles, whilst 
 Protestant scribes turned into English Haddon's 
 reply. Osorio answered Haddon, and Haddon 
 retorted to Osorio's reply ; and for twenty years the 
 controversy was kept up busily, the main contributions 
 being translated into English almost as soon as they 
 appeared in Latin. 
 
 In addition to this, a perfect library of controversial 
 pamphlets on side issues appeared in England. That 
 Queen Elizabeth herself was deeply concerned in the 
 polfemic is seen by a remark she made to the Spanish, 
 ambassador in 1568, first published in the Spanish 
 State Paper Calendars under my editorship. King 
 Henry the Cardinal, of Portugal, she complained, 
 had addressed a letter to her couched in disrespectful 
 terms. ' She knew,' she said, ' whom she had to thank 
 for this. She recognised the style of the letter to be 
 that of Osorio's, who had written a scurrilous book 
 about her, which Dr. Haddon had replied to.' 
 
 The English seminary exiles were not exclusively 
 occupied in the translation of Osorio's polemics. 
 Shacklock and Fenne, both of whom were English 
 Catholics at Louvain, were especially busy in trans- 
 lating the religious and devotional works of Spanish 
 
232 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Jesuits — The Mystery of the Rosary, by Fenne, from 
 the Spanish of Gaspar de Loarte, being in its time a 
 favourite mystical book amongst English Catholics. 
 But when, under the guidance of the famous Father 
 Persons, the English Jesuits (about 1580) began their 
 disloyal plotting to deliver England to the Spanish 
 power, religious Spanish works were to some extent 
 put aside for political propaganda. Writing safely 
 from his retreat on Spanish soil, as Rector of the 
 English College of Valladolid, and afterwards in 
 Rome as Rector of the English College, Robert 
 Persons, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, 
 directed a series of attacks so bitter and cruel, and so 
 false, against England and Elizabeth, as to have dis- 
 gusted even many Catholics who wished naturally for 
 the restoration of the ancient faith. Father Allen's 
 attacks upon Elizabeth had been severe, and, having 
 been written in the interests, and by the orders, of the 
 King of Spain against the writer's own country, were 
 unworthy of a great ecclesiastic ; but Robert Persons, 
 under various pseudonyms, surpassed in scurrility all 
 that had gone before or came afterwards. Many of 
 his letters to the King of Spain, whose prime adviser 
 on English affairs he was, have passed through my 
 hands, and the virulent bitterness against his own 
 country, and his eager suggestions that he should use 
 his pen in writing ever fresh books in English to 
 forward Spanish ends, are characteristic of the man. 
 Whether he really wrote the scurrilous Leicester's 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 233 
 
 Commonwealth (1584) is not certain, although it is 
 usually attributed to him ; but even if he did not, his 
 other writings in English are sufficient to condemn 
 him in the eyes of all loyal Englishmen, Catholic or 
 Protestant. Needless to say that his pupils followed 
 his own disloyal course, and, for a time at least, until 
 the secular priests of English birth (1597) resented the 
 bitter Jesuit rancour that prevented religious compro- 
 mise and peace, the Spanish party on the Continent 
 were busy sending into England literature for the 
 purpose of enforcing their own views. 
 
 Before I pass to another branch of my subject, I 
 must refer to a Spanish influence in England that 
 preceded the period of which I have been speaking. 
 In my remarks upon the popularity in England of the 
 didactic philosophy of Spanish origin, I mentioned 
 the famous Latinist Vives, who came to England as 
 preceptor to Princess Mary, and who, until the divorce 
 of Catharine of Aragon, was Professor of Philosophy 
 at Oxford. His works were to a great extent of a 
 religious character, and were for many years very 
 popular in England. The Instruction of Christian 
 Women, which Vives had written in England about 
 1523, was first published in English by Richard 
 Hyrde in 1540, and continued to be read by English 
 ladies as an aid to devotion long after Catholicism had 
 given way to Elizabeth's regime. In its freedom from 
 doctrinal bias it resembled the books of the Spanish 
 mystics, only that it laid down practical guides to 
 
334 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 daily conduct, which, although of impossible perfec- 
 tion, had nothing mystical about them. In the In- 
 struction of Christian Women, for instance, Vives 
 makes a list of books which women should not read, 
 amongst which is included the famous Celestina, of 
 which I had much to say in a previous chapter on the 
 Spanish novel. 
 
 The same may be said for Vives's Introduction to 
 Wisdom, translated into English by the Puritan Sir 
 Richard Morison, and published in London in 1540. 
 
 Another instance of the freedom from dogmatic 
 theology of Vives's works is to be found in the fact 
 that the collection of prayers compiled by Bishop Day 
 and John Bradford, called Queen Elizabeth's Prayer 
 Book, which is still common, contains several prayers 
 from Vives's book, as well as others from the Spanish 
 mystics. 
 
 In passing in review- the influence of Spanish 
 devotional writings in England, we have seen that, 
 apart from those of the Portuguese Osorio, and the 
 polemical literature disseminated by the English 
 Catholic refugees, the work of the Spanish mystics 
 had to a large extent owed its acceptance in Pro- 
 testant England to its avoidance of dogmatic theo- 
 logy, and to its visionary, unpractical sweetness. But 
 there was another sort of Spanish religious writing at 
 the time, which, although it exercised but little per- 
 manent influence in England, for reasons which I 
 shall explain presently, bulked largely in the eyes of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 235 
 
 contemporaries. This was the writings of the Spanish 
 reformers, who had taken refuge in England and 
 Geneva from the rigours of the Inquisition in Spain. 
 Putting aside the two Vald^ses, Juan and Alonso, the 
 pioneers of Spanish Protestantism, whose influence 
 hardly reached England, the principal Spanish re- 
 formers who carried on their propaganda from this 
 country were Cipriano de Valera, Juan Perez de 
 Pineda, and Antonio Corro. They were successively 
 received in England with two sorts of welcome. 
 Elizabeth herself cared nothing for Spanish Pro- 
 testantism, but was glad to welcome Spaniards who 
 had quarrelled with their own king, her mortal enemy. 
 Anything to wound Philip was a delight for her, and 
 the Spanish Protestants in her realm were, at all events, 
 pawns in her hands, over which she might make a 
 bargain some day if it suited her. But very different 
 were the views of the more rigid school of the 
 Protestant bishops and clergy. To them the presence 
 of a Spaniard, who acknowledged fervently the truth 
 of Protestantism, was a confirmation of their own 
 doctrines ; and accordingly both Valera and Cbrro, as 
 well as other reformers who did not write, were wel- 
 comed in English universities and in English pulpits, 
 and were made much of by Protestant church- 
 men. Cipriano de Valera wrote almost entirely in 
 Spanish, and his works were smuggled from England 
 extensively into Spain for many years, greatly to 
 King Philip's indignation. Valera commenced his 
 
236 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 published works with a book in Spanish called Two 
 Treatises: One of the Pope, and the other of the Mass, 
 in 1588 ; and from then until 1602 his works in Spanish 
 issued constantly from the press, at first in London, 
 and afterwards in Geneva. There is no mincing 
 matters with Valera. He is a Puritan of the most pro- 
 nounced views, who attacked the Mass and the Papacy 
 with vigour and effect. He showed up mercilessly, 
 for instance, the imposture of a famous stigmatised 
 nun, called Maria de la Visitacion, who imposed upon 
 the saintly Luis de Granada, and was punished severely 
 for her fraud ; and Valera's vigorous polemical works 
 generally were welcomed by English Protestants as so 
 much material for controversy. His Two Treatises 
 were published in English in 1600 by John Gol- 
 bourne, under the name of Two Treatises: the first 
 of the Lives of the Popes and their doctrine, and the 
 second of the Mass. Also a swarm of false miracles, 
 wherein Maria de la Visitacion deceived many. 
 Cipriano de Valera, however, did not aim at English- 
 men but at his own countrymen, and his fame rests 
 not so much upon these polemical works as upon his 
 fine translation, or rather revision of Casiodoro Reina's 
 translation, of the Bible into Castilian. 
 
 Perez de Pineda, on the other hand, was a purely 
 devotional writer who, although a Protestant and a 
 Calvinist, avoided mere controversy and kept, as the 
 mystical writers had done, to fundamental religion. 
 His book called Epistola Consolatoria was translated 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 237 
 
 by John Daniel, and published in English in 1576, 
 under the name of Excellent Comfort to all Christians ; 
 and in the same year his Jehova, a Free Pardon for all 
 Sinners, was issued in London, and these books were 
 both very popular devotional reading with all classes. 
 Antonio Corro, who was an Oxford professor and a 
 popular London preacher, lived here for some years, 
 and was the busiest of all the Spanish reformers. His 
 writings, however, were mostly in Latin ; and although 
 some of them were polemical, like his Address to the 
 Protestant Pastors at Antwerp, and his Supplication to 
 the most mighty Prince Philip, King of Spain, translated 
 into English by Feiiton in 1 569, most of his work was 
 in the nature of sermons, or exegesis of passages in 
 the Bible. Several of these were published in London, 
 such as, in 1575, his Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, 
 his Sermons on Ecclesiastes, his Solomon's Sermons, etc. 
 Generally speaking, however, the influence of the 
 writing of the Spanish Protestants upon the English 
 Reformation was not large. With the exception of 
 Corro and Valera, they did not stay long in England, 
 where Spaniards, from their nationality, were not 
 popular; and the fact that Corro was a Lutheran, 
 whilst Valera was a Calvinist of the Genevan school, 
 divided such small force as they might have exercised. 
 They both arrived in England too late, moreover, to 
 convert English people, and were used more to wound 
 Philip by facilitating the dissemination of Spanish 
 Protestant literature in Spain, than to aid the move- 
 
238 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ment in England, which was already strong enough, 
 without their help. 
 
 One writer there was who did not come to England, 
 but whose attack and exposition of the methods and 
 procedure of the Inquisition, when translated into 
 English by Vincent Skinner in 1568, was seized upon 
 by those whose main grievance was the persecution of 
 Protestants in Spain by the Holy Office. The writer 
 was Ramon Gonzales Monies, or Gonzales Montano, 
 as he is usually called, whose attack upon the Inquisi- 
 tion written in Heidelberg attained much popularity 
 in England, and was the foundation upon which many 
 other attacks against the institution were based. No 
 less than four editions of this work appeared between 
 1 568 and 1625. It is called ' Full, Ample, and Punctual 
 Discovery of the Barbarous, Bloody, and Inhuman 
 Practices of the Spanish Inquisition against Protestants. 
 With the original thereof. Manifested in their pro- 
 ceedings against sundry particular persons, as well 
 English as others, upon whom they have executed 
 their diabolical tyranny. A work fit for these times, 
 serving to withdraw the affections of all good Chris- 
 tians from that Religion, which cannot be maintained 
 without these Props of Hell. Printed for John 
 Bellamy, and are to be sold at the 3 Golden Lions in 
 Corn Hill, near the Royal Exchange, 1625,' The 
 work commences thus : — 
 
 ' Whensoever any denunciation, as they term it, or 
 rather information, is given against any person, be it 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 239 
 
 only for matters of no great importance, as nothing 
 cometh into this court so small or simple but the 
 parties accused are greatly damaged thereby, the 
 Inquisitors customably use this kind of practice. 
 First they suborn some one, out of a number such as 
 have learned their lesson for the nonce, commonly 
 called familiars, who of purpose shall cast himself to 
 meet one, and being provided aforehand what to say, 
 shall greet him on this wise : " Sir, yesterday it was 
 my chance to be with my lords the Inquisitors, and as 
 they happened to have speech of you, they said they 
 had to talk with you about certain of their affairs, and 
 so gave me charge to summon you to appear before 
 them at such an hour." Now, the party may not 
 (being once warned) either refuse or defer to come, 
 but at his very great peril. Whereupon the next day 
 he repaireth to the place where the Commissioners sit, 
 and requireth the porter to signify unto the lords that 
 he is come. Whereof, as soon as they have intelli- 
 gence, all three, if they be present, or at least two of 
 them, meet in a council chamber where the court is 
 commonly kept, as at Seville in the Castle of Triana, 
 and such-like places in other cities, and, calling the 
 party in before them, they demand of him what his 
 suit is. He answereth that he was warned yesterday, 
 under their precept, to come and speak with them. 
 They then inquire his name, which being known, they 
 ask what he wants. "For, as for us," say they, "we 
 wot not whether you be the same man we commanded 
 
240 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 to be here with us. Yea or nay ? Marry ! since thou 
 hast come, if you have anything to inform us of, in 
 this Holy Court, either of yourself or of any other in 
 discharge of your conscience, let us hear it." Where- 
 upon, the party either answereth that he hath no such 
 matter to inform them (as, indeed, to stand upon 
 that point to the end with them, who seek nothing 
 else but his undoing and such as he shall impeach, is 
 the wisest and safest way that may be taken), or else 
 out of mere simplicity, not knowing how he entangleth 
 himself, rashly and unadvisedly uttereth something of 
 himself or of some other. Then my lords the In- 
 quisitors, glad that they have caught him, to the 
 intent more easily to afear and amaze him that thus 
 foolishly hath made himself so fit a morsel for them to 
 prey upon, cast looks one upon another, and rejoicing 
 as though they had smelt the rat, all at once fix their 
 eyes upon him and behold him earnestly, and whisper- 
 ing together a little while, I wot not whether they say 
 ought or nought, at last either award him to prison if 
 the matter that he discloseth seemeth in any way 
 weighty, or if he chance to confess nothing at all they 
 will let him depart, pretending they know not, without 
 better information, whether he be the same party they 
 commanded to appear before them or not.' The 
 author then continues to narrate that the informer and 
 a familiar are hidden behind the arras during this 
 interview, and that the victim is thenceforward closely 
 watched day and night. 'Jolly mates,' he says, 'are 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 241 
 
 always near him, to spy and listen and worm them- 
 selves into his confidence, and then, perhaps after 
 years of observation, the suspected person is suddenly 
 pounced upon and is known to the outer world no 
 more.' The book abounds in tales of horrible cruelty, 
 and, in its original and translated forms, was evidently 
 designed to arouse hatred of the papacy and the 
 Roman Catholic form of Christianity. This work, 
 which was popular in England and Protestant 
 countries, and undoubtedly fed the irritation in this 
 country against Spain and its religion, almost as soon 
 as it appeared in Latin in Germany, was only trans- 
 lated into Spanish in 185 1. An edition of it in 
 English was reprinted in 1857 by Mr. Wiffen. 
 
 I have already mentioned that the works of Juan 
 de Vald^s, the first of the Spanish reformers, and the 
 finest Castilian prosodist of his day, did not reach 
 England until a century after his time. His most 
 famous religious book is Ciento y Diez Conside- 
 raciones divinas, and it was not translated into English 
 until 1638, by Nicolas Ferrar. Notwithstanding its 
 fame in foreign countries, it has never to this day 
 been published entire in Spanish. The reason for its 
 tardy appearance even in England is to be sought in 
 its rigid puritanic tone, which tends not a little to 
 unitarianism. It was not until the Puritan reaction 
 that such a tone was welcome in England. The 
 gentle Puritan poet, George Herbert, it was who in 
 the seventeenth century stood sponsor to the work 
 
 Q 
 
242 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 and made it popular, and in our own day Mr. Wiffen, 
 that industrious and enlightened Quaker, who made 
 Spanish protestantism his especial province, has re- 
 vived the vogue for the works of Juan de Valdds. 
 
 The mention of Juan de Vald^s brings me to another 
 school of writing in which Spaniards of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries influenced English letters 
 and English taste. I mean the political works, which 
 hid grown out of those instructions for young princes 
 to which in an earlier chapter I called attention as 
 b^ing specially a Spanish form of sententious didac- 
 ticism in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
 centuries. In the form of a dialogue Juan de Vald^s 
 wrote in 1528 a supposed conversation between Mer- 
 cury and Charon, in which the methods of government 
 are bitterly and brilliantly satirised. This form of 
 attack, in which reform is suggested in a way which 
 carries with it the condemnation of existing methods, 
 became for the next hundred years a favourite 
 vehicle for the attack and criticism of political 
 affairs. Guevara in his Dial of Princes and his 
 Familiar Epistles, both translated, as I have already 
 said, by Edward Hellowes, and extremely popular 
 in England, had previously adopted this form to 
 some extent, and he was followed, with scathing 
 effect, by the persecuted and exiled secretary of 
 Philip II., Antonio Perez, who, in the safe retreat of 
 Essex House, and in Paris, indited his venomous 
 sugar-coated aphorisms and political letters, which 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 243 
 
 pretended to give good counsel, but really attacked 
 the system and the person for whose ostensible 
 benefit the advice was given. . Perez's witty sayings 
 and bitter-sweet epigrams, euphuistic as they were, 
 were the fashion in England and France from 1591 
 to 1598; and all the young bloods who followed the 
 footsteps of the splendid Earl of Essex, sought to 
 imitate the quips and obscurities of ' Master Antonio,' 
 whose affected manners they laughed at. I point 
 out in the next chapter that Shakespeare himself 
 was not oblivious of the mingled charm and absurdity 
 of Antonio Perez. How insidious were the political 
 books I refer to, and how difficult to suppress without 
 seeming injustice, is seen in Furio de Ceriol's book 
 El Consejo y Consejeros de un Principe, which is 
 addressed Al gran Catolico de Espana D. Felipe II. , 
 and is, to all appearance, intended to be effusively 
 loyal. But just a little beneath the surface its malice 
 is apparent. If it were not, it would certainly not 
 have been welcomed in English dress, as it was in 
 1570, translated by Thomas Blundeville. If Ceriol's 
 advice had been adopted, Philip would have found 
 himself a cipher in his own government. He is told, 
 moreover, in words plainly to be understood, that his 
 court is corrupt, that his favourites are bought and sold, 
 and that ineptitude rules supreme in his government. 
 
 It must have been dangerous, nevertheless, for any 
 Spaniard to have written this in the realm of Philip 11., 
 advocating toleration : — 
 
244 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ' It is a very certain sign of a torpid genius to speak 
 ill or with prejudice against an adversary, or against 
 the enemies of one's prince, or of those who belong 
 to a different sect, or foreigners, be they Moors, 
 Heathens, or Christians ; for true genius finds in all 
 countries seven leagues of bad road : in all parts 
 there are good and bad : the good he lauds, and 
 cordially receives ; the bad he denounces and rejects, 
 but it is foolish of him if he abuse the nation in which 
 the bad are found.' 
 
 The accession of James l., and the renewed political 
 friendship with Spain in the first quarter of the 
 seventeenth century, introduced a new element in 
 the connection between the two countries. James 
 Stuart's idea had always been to curry favour with 
 the power which he, like the rest of the world, over- 
 rated. His subservience to Gondomar, and his plans 
 to marry his son to a Spanish princess, drew to him 
 a school of courtiers who had always been well 
 affected towards Spain. Sir Francis Godolphin, 
 Digby, Earl of Bristol, and for a time, even the 
 powerful Buckingham himself, were strongly Spanish 
 in sympathy, and with the hair-brained trip of the 
 Prince of Wales to Madrid, the fashion for Spanish 
 things, Spanish language, and Spanish literature 
 reached its height in England. Charles's friend, 
 Endymion Porter, was half a Spaniard, and he, like 
 the courtiers already mentioned, industriously turned 
 Spanish verses and songs into English. James Howell, 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 245 
 
 too, was a busy propagator of Spanish books and 
 letters. But with the failure of the Spanish match, 
 and the marriage of Charles I. with a French princess, 
 the direct Spanish courtly influence in England de- 
 clined, and we must seek for Spanish influence upon 
 English letters in another direction. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SPANISH THEATRE AND THE 
 ENGLISH DRAMATISTS 
 
 In Spain, as in the rest of the world, the profane 
 drama largely derived from the ecclesiastical miracle 
 plays, and it happens that the earliest specimen of 
 Castilian literature now known is a dramatic frag- 
 ment to which I directed attention in the opening 
 chapter of this book. This fragment is called El 
 Auto de los Reyes Magos, and already in it the vivid 
 dramatic instinct of the Spanish race is conspicuous. 
 The language is lilting but terse ; the story of 
 the Kings of the East and their visit to the Child 
 Christ, their first incredulity, and subsequent con- 
 version, being developed quite naturally on dramatic 
 lines, although the little drama cannot have been 
 written later than the twelfth century, and is known 
 to have been represented at Toledo Cathedral early 
 in the thirteenth. The Provencal troubadours at 
 that time were flocking into Spain, partly in conse- 
 quence of the Albigensian wars ; and the juglars, 
 in competition with each other, naturally tried to. 
 give dramatic value to their songs by added appro- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 247 
 
 priate music and action. The famous code of laws, 
 the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X., to which I referred 
 in my first chapter, contains a set of regulations which 
 show how soon the juglars and buffoons had intro- 
 duced profane elements even in the sacred mystery 
 plays, Judas and the devil being usually treated 
 as characters would be in an old-fashioned knock- 
 about farce. Speaking of the clergy, the thirteenth 
 century code says : ' Nor must they be performers 
 in scurrilous plays for people to go and see, as they 
 do ; and if other men should perform such, priests 
 may not attend them, because the performers do 
 many lewd and scandalous acts in them. Nor should 
 any person whatever do such things in churches. 
 On the contrary, we declare that they must be 
 cast out with reprobation, for the church belongs to 
 God.' In Catalonia, as being more directly under 
 the French and Italian influence, the confessedly 
 profane drama appeared earlier than in Castile ; and 
 at the poetical court of John I. of Aragon, late in 
 the fourteenth century, the king's brother. Prince 
 Henry, a great patron of letters, founded a regular 
 academy or corporation for the promotion of all 
 sorts of poetic compositions, one result of which, at 
 least, we know to have been a regular tragedy, per- 
 formed before the king in 1394, called The Man in Love 
 and the Contented Woman. The first really dramatic 
 secular piece that we know of in Castile was written 
 by a converted Toledan Jew called Rodrigo de Cota, 
 
248 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 about 1470. It is in the form of a dialogue between 
 love and an old man. The latter, frightened by Cupid, 
 retires into a neglected garden, where a palace of 
 pleasure lies in ruins. Here he shuts himself up 
 in a poor hut, to escape the pursuit of love. But 
 Cupid comes in such humble guise to reason with 
 him, that a conversation ensues, with the result, of 
 course, that love conquers, and the old man is sub- 
 dued. The dialogue was adapted for representation, 
 but probably it was recited by one person only with 
 changes of voice and action. The same may be said 
 of the contemporary satirical poem in eclogue form 
 called Mingo Revulgo, in which a courtier and a 
 rustic discuss the abuses of the court and the mis- 
 government of the country. But these dialogue 
 poems were mere harbingers, and, if they were re- 
 presented scenically at all, they had little of the 
 characteristics of the modern drama. 
 
 But it was quite otherwise when that great work 
 which I mentioned at some length in my remarks 
 on the novel appeared — I mean Celestina, or, to give 
 it its original name, The tragi-comedy of Calisto and 
 Melibea, which was written late in the fifteenth century, 
 probably by another Jew, Fernando de Rojas. It was, 
 to all intents and purposes, a novel in dramatic form ; 
 and, as it consisted of twenty-two acts, it was im- 
 possible of representation in its entirety. But it was 
 a true dramatic work for all that, telling the tragic tale 
 with the inevitable moral, of how desires attained by 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 249 
 
 licentious and vicious means turn to dust and ashes 
 in the mouth. At the same period as Celestina, the 
 poet Juan de Encina wrote numerous eclogues, or 
 pastoral dialogues for recitation, full of dramatic 
 spirit ; and we have details of frequent representa- 
 tions of these little pastoral plays. For instance, 
 in the year 1495, there was represented one of Juan 
 de Encina's eclogues with the following elaborate 
 title : — ' Eclogue represented on the last night of the 
 Carnival, where there are introduced four shepherds 
 called Benito, Bias, Pedruelo, and Llorente, First 
 Benito enters into the saloon where the duke and 
 duchess are, and begins to lament very much, because 
 it is rumoured that the Duke (of Alba), his lord, 
 has to go to the war in France. Then Bias enters 
 and asks him the cause of his grief, which they discuss 
 together. Then they call Pedruelo in, and he brings 
 the glad news of peace ; Llorente then comes in, and 
 joins in the final song of rejoicing.' This, it will be 
 remarked, is a little drama of simple motive, with- 
 out any of the complicated characterisation and 
 action of Celestina ; so that probably we shall be 
 correct in assuming that at this period (the end of 
 the fifteenth century) the dramas actually intended 
 for representation on a stage only dealt thus with 
 very simple themes easily followed by unlearned 
 persons. 
 
 The next step forward was taken by one Bartolom^ 
 de Torres Naharro, a Spanish soldier of fortune, who 
 
250 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 lived mostly in Italy. Copying from the Italian 
 dramatic works he saw, he wrote eight comedies, 
 which were not only really adapted for stage produc- 
 tion, but were divided into five regular divisions, which 
 he called 'journeys,' and developed an intelligible tale 
 by the action of several personages. These plays 
 were at first represented at Naples (which belonged 
 to Spain), and soon found their way to Spain it- 
 self. This was in the first third of the sixteenth 
 century, when the fiscal and commercial policy of 
 Ferdinand and Isabel, together with the discovery 
 of America and the final conquest of Granada, had 
 sown the seed of luxury and idle self-indulgence in 
 the Spanish people. Soon there spread a perfect 
 craze for comedies. Those of Torres Naharro led 
 the way ; and then came the licentious farces of 
 Castillejo, which wittily laughed and scoffed at the 
 Italian innovations. The plays were performed be- 
 fore a blanket in a courtyard, and without any 
 attempt at appropriate costume until late in the 
 sixteenth century, and every village in Spain thence- 
 forward was constantly visited by strolling players, 
 with comedies adapted for the ignorant and the rude, 
 for as yet the court stood aloof from such frivolity. 
 Out of the ruck of leaders of such wandering 
 troops of players there arose one Lope de Rueda, 
 a silversmith's hammerman of Seville, who wrote 
 his own plays, and, like Shakespeare, acted in them 
 himself. He was in his way a genius ; a keen ob- 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 251 
 
 server of life, with the true Spanish malicious, satirical 
 wit, and he invented what afterwards became in the 
 hands, or rather heads, of his greatest successors, a 
 characteristic vehicle for the manifestation of the 
 Spanish literary genius, and remains to this day a 
 popular dramatic form, namely, those bustling farces 
 which are called pasos or entremeses. One, for in- 
 stance, La Caratula, recounts the story of a silly rustic 
 servant finding a mask, and his master making him 
 believe that it is the face of a hermit named Diego 
 Sanchez that has been cut off by murderous thieves. 
 The poor servant, in a fright, lest he should be pro- 
 secuted for the murder, becomes a hermit himself in 
 the cell and garb of the one who has been murdered, 
 and his master frightens him into all sorts of absur- 
 dities and simple talk by pretending to be the hermit's 
 ghost. 
 
 Lope de Rueda's plays were very popular, and he 
 had many imitators, one in particular — Juan de la 
 Cueva, who, in the third quarter of the sixteenth 
 century, introduced into Spanish plays that which 
 afterwards became so characteristic of them generally : 
 the dashing, soldierly element that we call ' capa y 
 espadal ' cape and sword ' — a natural result of the spirit 
 engendered by the long wars of the emperor through- 
 out Europe, and the elevation of arms and adventure 
 as the most honourable professional means of liveli- 
 hood. The drama was thenceforward popular and 
 prosperous all over Spain. In 1582 two permanent 
 
252 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 companies of players were established in Madrid, 
 playing in courtyards specially leased and kept for 
 the purpose, Twenty years before this, there had 
 been born a boy in Madrid, the child of a basket- 
 maker, who later became one of the most extra- 
 ordinary literary geniuses the world has ever seen : 
 a man whose facility of production was so marvellous 
 as to be almost incredible, whose most rapid trifles 
 are so crammed with -invention, wit, and verbal 
 felicity, that a week of his work would suffice to make 
 the lifelong reputation of another man, as in fact 
 three sonnets stolen from him do mainly make the 
 poetical fame of the Frenchman Scarron. I refer to 
 him whom his friend Cervantes called the 'prodigy 
 of Nature,' Lope de Vega Carpio. The life of this 
 genius, whose brain without effort wove intrigue which 
 amused all Europe for a century and a half, and left 
 deep traces upon the drama down to our own day, was 
 as full of adventure as that of Gil Bias or Guzman de 
 Alfarache. Dissolute in his youth and prime ; im- 
 moral, even in his age ; a brawler and a debauchee ; 
 in and out of prison ; banished and proscribed, only 
 to come back insolent in the knowledge of his genius, 
 that he knew no man could withstand; a soldier in 
 the Spanish Armada against England, and, during 
 even that catastrophe in the rough seas of the north, 
 able to write verses by the hundred — a great epic 
 amongst other things : his life was, until old age 
 made him outwardly decent, as became a familiar 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 253 
 
 of the Inquisition and a priest, one tale of unblush- 
 ing vice and indulgence. But for twenty years or 
 more before the end his genius conquered. The 
 dramatic pieces which he looked upon as mere play- 
 things, and of which he confessed to have written 
 fifteen hundred, carried him from triumph to triumph, 
 and all Spain, very soon all Europe, was dazzled by 
 his boundless invention and his brilliant wit. He was 
 one of the sights of Madrid. As he returned from 
 his priestly duties in the hospital of charity, men and 
 women clustered around him to crave his blessing, 
 and admiring crowds followed him. His daily walk 
 was a procession, and prints of his portrait adorned 
 almost every dwelling in the capital.^ In his old 
 age, from 1625 to 1635, when he was between sixty 
 and seventy. Lope de Vega produced on an average 
 seventy plays a year. 
 
 To say that they were all masterpieces would be 
 absurd, for not more than five hundred are now known 
 to exist, and most of these are no more than names 
 to us ; but we can judge of the man's excellence by 
 those few of his plays which are still household words, 
 and we can understand by them the qualities that 
 made their author the supreme master of the Spanish 
 stage for at least forty-five years, and before whose 
 dramatic ability the great Cervantes himself was obliged 
 to retire abashed and defeated. Lope wrote a book 
 that professed to instruct people ' how to do it.' But, 
 
 ' J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Taylorian Oxford Lecture, 1902. 
 
254 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 whilst he lays down his rules, he coolly confesses that 
 he does not follow them. In fact, Lope was in his 
 very essence creative, and was no critic in any sense. 
 He wrote by instinct, as all true writers must, and 
 not by rule. He pictured contemporary modes and 
 humours with unflagging vivacity and unshrinking 
 truth ; his characters were no longer mere gramo- 
 phones to repeat speeches, but men and women to 
 do things that forwarded the story he had to tell. 
 For the telling of the story was Lope's object, and 
 in this both he and his successors, as I shall point 
 out later, differed from Shakespeare and his school, 
 whose object was the dramatic exposition of passion 
 and character. 
 
 The Spanish drama and the contemporary drama 
 in English had this in common, if nothing else, namely, 
 that they broke with the classical tradition, and 
 adopted a modern and more colloquial presentation ; 
 but in most other points they were dissimilar, because 
 the national character is dissimilar. Reverie and 
 speculation, cogitation with oneself, musing on things 
 seen, are the natural bent of the English nature. An 
 Englishman wants to get at the springs that turn the 
 human wheels of life round ; he wants to understand 
 the works, to sound the reasons for action. The 
 Spaniards, like most semi-Latin peoples, care little for 
 that. They wish to see and participate in the move- 
 ment itself; to talk, to enjoy the surface of things 
 whilst they may : in short, to follow the story, to weep 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 255 
 
 with the afflicted heroine, to see themselves reflected 
 in the unselfish bravery of the hero, to laugh at the 
 buffoon, and to curse the villain. 
 
 As an instance of this we will take one of Lope's 
 most famous quasi-historical plays. La Estrella de 
 Sevilla {The Star of Seville). The story, though con- 
 taining many strong situations, is very simple. 
 Sancho IV. of Castile is visiting Seville for the first 
 time, and falls in love with a lady named Estrella, the 
 sister of Bustos Tavera, a young noble of the city.^ 
 The lady is in love with, and is loved by, a gentleman 
 named Sancho Ortiz, her brother's inseparable friend. 
 When the king's chaniberlain. Arias, hears that his 
 master is in love with Estrella, he suggests that the 
 lady's brother, Bustos Tavera, should be brought to 
 the palace and flattered as a means of gaining his 
 sister for the king. 
 
 When Bustos Tavera arrives before the king, 
 
 ignorant of the reason for his summons, he throws 
 
 himself at his sovereign's feet, and, when bidden to 
 
 rise, says : — 
 
 ' Que si el Rey se ha de tratar 
 Como &. Santo en el altar. 
 Digno lugar escogi.' 
 
 ' If sacred kings, like saints upon a shrine, 
 Ador'd should be, this place is surely mine.' 
 
 The king, pretending to be struck by his loyalty, tells 
 him he will make him Alcalde of Seville, a post which 
 
 ' The digest of the story given here is partly condensed from G. H. 
 Lewes's Spanish Drama. 
 
2S6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 is just vacant, and is much sought. Bustos Tavera 
 says that others are more deserving of the post than 
 he, and refuses it. The king, loud still in his praises, 
 offers to procure a splendid match for his (Bustos') 
 sister, and gives to Bustos Tavera himself the privilege 
 of access at all hours to the royal chamber. But 
 Bustos Tavera is ill at ease. What can this royal 
 favour mean ? — 
 
 ' Sospechoso voy. Quererme ; 
 Y sin conocerme honrarme, 
 Mas parece sobornar mi 
 Honor, que favorecerme.' 
 
 ' These sudden favours with mistrust I view : 
 Why should he love a man he never knew ? 
 Such honours savour more of bribes than meeds, 
 To gain my virtue, not reward my deeds.' ' 
 
 Arias, the king's evil counsellor, persuades the king 
 to allow him to bribe Estrella's servant to give him 
 access to her chamber, and the king is at length 
 admitted incognito into the house. Just as he is 
 parleying with the false servant, Bustos Tavera comes 
 home and overhears the plot to compromise his sister. 
 He at once draws his sword, and the king, to save his 
 own life, reveals who he is. Bustos Tavera, in a fine 
 scene, pretends to disbelieve him, but with scathing 
 words lashes his dishonourable course. He allows 
 the king to escape, and in deep shame and anger 
 Sancho returns to his palace, telling the chamberlain 
 1 G. H. Lewes. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 257 
 
 Arias how he has been foiled. Arias instigates him 
 to have Bustos Tavera executed ; but the king dares 
 not do this openly, for Bustos is popular, and has 
 committed no crime. Arias then advises him to kill 
 two birds with one stone, and to order Sancho Ortiz, 
 the betrothed -of Estrella, to murder her brother 
 Bustos Tavera, his dearest friend. Ortiz is summoned, 
 and told to kill a person unnamed for an offence 
 against the sovereign. With much repugnance and 
 remonstrance he consents to do so, and then, to his 
 dismay, reads in the secret paper given to him that 
 the man he is to murder is his friend, the brother of 
 his betrothed. Compelled by his promise to the king, 
 but in an anguish of despair, he commits the crime, 
 and at once proclaims his guilt. Before he can kill 
 himself, as he intended, he is seized, but refuses to 
 save himself by avowing the king's orders. The king, 
 in remorse, learns this, and commands him to divulge 
 it on pain of death. Estrella demands of the king 
 the ancient right to dispose of her brother's murderer, 
 and the weak king, struck by her grief and beauty, 
 hands to her the pass-key of the prison. Instead of 
 at once wreaking vengeance upon Ortiz, she offers the 
 latter his liberty, which he refuses to accept; and 
 when the judges condemn him to death, notwith- 
 standing the king's efforts in his favour, the king 
 orders the prisoner to be brought to him. He appears 
 with Estrella, and throws himself at the king's feet. 
 Then follows this striking dialogue, which I have 
 
 R 
 
258 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 translated almost literally, and without any attempt 
 at rhyme : — 
 
 ' Ortiz. Great Lord. Why finish not the tale of my distress ? 
 
 By death wipe out the blackness of my crime ? 
 
 I killed Bustos Tavera ; kill thou me ! 
 
 For he who kills, 'tis meet that he should die. 
 
 My liege ! do justice, for 'twill mercy be. 
 King. Wait ! Wait ! Who ordered thee the deed to do ? 
 Ortiz. A paper. 
 King. From whom ? 
 Ortiz. If paper spake, the paper should ye tell. 
 
 But since a crumpled leaf is hard of speech, 
 
 Enough that with this hand I killed my friend, 
 
 To keep my word ; and kneeling here I pray 
 
 To thee, dear heart, Estrella, end my life : 
 
 A little vengeance for so dire a sin. 
 King. Estrella ! thee have I betrothed 
 
 To one, a noble, of my royal house, 
 
 As young and handsome as in all Castile 
 
 There be. Powerful and rich. 
 
 I crave for payment of the boon 1 give, 
 
 Mercy and pardon for the evil done 
 
 By this poor soul, who pity well deserves. 
 Estrella. My liege ! since thou hast bidden me to wed. 
 
 Let Sancho Ortiz go. I seek no life, 
 
 No vengeance, for my brother's loss. 
 Ortiz {to Estrella). The pardon givest thou because the king 
 
 Hath married thee so nobly and so high. 
 Estrella. 'Tis true : for that I pardon thee. 
 Ortiz. And is my sin for this condoned .' 
 Estrella. It is, and pardoned quite. 
 Ortiz. Thy hopes I will not break. 
 
 If by living I can them fulfil. 
 
 Much as I wished to die. 
 King. Then thou mayest go ! farewell. 
 Judges. But, sire, Seville will not forgive ! 
 
 The man must die. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 259 
 
 King i^aside, to Arias). What shall I do ? 
 
 These people frighten me. 
 
 Arias. Speak 
 
 King. Seville ! 'Tis I whom thou must kill ! 
 
 I was the cause of this foul deed. 
 
 I it was who ordered it, and this 
 
 Should free the man from blame. 
 Ortiz. I only prayed for this discharge. 
 
 The king it was who gave me the command 
 
 To kill my friend : for no behest 
 
 On earth but his would I have done the deed.' 
 
 The king, struck by such loyalty, offers to allow 
 Estrella and Ortiz to marry; but the lady shrinks, 
 naturally, at being tied for life to the murderer of her 
 brother, and declines. Ortiz then goes to the Moorish 
 wars in the hope of being killed, and Estrella to her 
 loveless marriage, hoping soon to die of grief. 
 
 Although I have not been able to give more than 
 a small scrap of one play of Lope's, this is a fairly 
 representative one of its class. It will be observed that 
 the characters in the play are not so much persons as 
 personified qualities. They are ticketed unmistak- 
 ably with their characteristics the moment they 
 appear on the stage, and they are invariable through- 
 out. The king is weak and impressionable, Bustos 
 Tavera is magnanimity personified, Sancho Ortiz is 
 steadfast loyalty. Arias is temptation, and Estrella is 
 gentle love. The story is developed by these primal 
 passions personified. As we know, persons are swayed 
 in real life by many circumstances that complicate 
 their primal passions; and the varying phases of a 
 
26o SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 story should develop fresh manifestations of character. 
 But this needs introspection, patient thought and study- 
 on the part of the author, which neither Lope nor 
 Calderon, his successor — and, as some think, a greater 
 than he — could give, or indeed their public desired. 
 
 Calderon, who died in 1681 at- a great age, is 
 certainly more subtle and introspective than Lope. 
 This more especially is seen in La Vida es Sueiio, 
 where the mystery and philosophy of human life are 
 touched ; the plot of the play being the drugging of 
 a prince, imprisoned since his birth, and testing him 
 by putting him into his proper place on the throne, 
 telling him that his life-long solitary imprisonment 
 has been a dream. When he turns out to be a cruel 
 tyrant he is drugged again, and wakes once more in 
 prison, to be told that his regal state was a dream. 
 This machinery, it will be recollected, is like the 
 Christopher Sly incident in The Taming of the 
 Shrew; but it was not an uncommon device in 
 ancient Oriental tales. Perhaps the most character- 
 istic of Calderon's plays is the fine Alcalde de Zalamea, 
 which, with several other of his plays, was so elo- 
 quently translated by Edward FitzGerald. Crespo, 
 the peasant head-man of the village of Zalamea, has 
 to welcome a company of the king's soldiers to his 
 village, and lodges the captain, Don Alvaro, in his own 
 house. His son, Juan, is indignant that his rich 
 peasant father should submit to have soldiers billeted 
 upon him. 'How should I avoid it?' asks Crespo. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 261 
 
 ' By purchasing a patent of nobility,' says the son. 
 Crespo, with rough dignity, says : 'Is there any one 
 ignorant of what I am? That I am an honest man, 
 sprung from an honest stock. No. Then what should 
 I gain by letters of nobility, if I could not also pur- 
 chase noble blood ? Should I be thought better than I 
 am ? No. People would point at me and say that I was 
 ennobled for six hundred reals. That would prove me 
 rich — not honourable. Honour, my son, is neither 
 bought nor sold. I want none that is not mine by 
 nature. My father was a peasant — my grandfather 
 was a peasant — and my children shall be peasants too.' 
 The captain, Alvaro, repays the peasant's hospitality 
 by inventing a ruse to get a sight of his pretty 
 daughter ; and the mayor and his son find the captain 
 in the girl's room paying her high-flown compliments. 
 The son understands the intent, and is indignant ; he 
 quarrels with the captain, who spurns him as a 
 peasant, and the general, Don Lope, appears greatly 
 angry that peasants should dare to quarrel with the 
 king's officer. The captain's servant, however, blurts 
 out the whole story of the ruse, and the captain is sent 
 to lodge elsewhere, the general himself staying in 
 Crespo's house. Here a vigorous conversation takes 
 place in which Crespo shows that he is a match in 
 pride for any noble. In the next act the captain, 
 Alvaro, abducts Isabel, Crespo's daughter, after tying 
 her father to a tree and gagging him. The captain 
 is wounded by Crespo's son, and the outraged 
 
262 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 daughter returns to her despairing father, now sternly 
 resolved on vengeance for his wounded honour. 
 News is brought him that he has been appointed 
 Alcalde, and that the king will enter the village next 
 day. In the meanwhile he, as mayor, has to sit in 
 judgment on his son for the attempted murder of the 
 captain. Here, too, is his opportunity for vengeance. 
 He goes to the wounded captain, and in a magnificent 
 speech appeals to his chivalry. Eloquently, and with 
 beautiful dignity, he says that he is only a peasant ; 
 but an honest man, and rich. He will give all he 
 possesses, and leave his home a beggar, if only the 
 captain will marry the daughter whose honour he has 
 compromised. The captain scornfully treats it as a 
 joke that he, a noble, should marry a peasant's 
 daughter ; and then Crespo, rising in his wrath, 
 exercises his duty as a magistrate, arid orders the 
 captain's arrest for the abduction of his daughter. 
 Whilst he is about to judge the man who has ruined 
 his happiness, the general, Don Lope, arrives, and is 
 indignant that a king's officer should be submitted to 
 a village judge. But Crespo is obdurate; and when 
 the king himself arrives the case is submitted to him, 
 and he decides that, although the captain is guilty, the 
 Alcalde must not sentence one of the royal officers, 
 a noble. This is a truly dramatic situation. The 
 peasant-mayor, firm as a rock, and as dignified, bows 
 his head to his sovereign ; and, turning round, tears 
 aside a curtain to show the strangled body of the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 263 
 
 captain, and that the peasant-mayor of Zalamea, with 
 his own hands, has already done justice to his injurer. 
 What matters it who executes the sentence, he asks, if 
 the crime is admitted and proved ? And the king, 
 struck with his strength of character, makes him 
 Alcalde for life. 
 
 Although Crespo is one of the best-developed 
 characters of the Spanish drama, here again the 
 same tendency is observed. The characters are all 
 personifications of fixed qualities, not human beings 
 swayed by complex emotions. Crespo is innate 
 nobleness in a rustic garb ; Don Alvaro, the captain, 
 is dissolute privilege ; Juan, Crespo's son, is rash 
 hot-headedness ; Isabel is rustic innocence, and so on. 
 They all do what they are bound to do, seeing their 
 fixed characters, and the story is worked out, not by 
 the development of character, but by the operation of 
 primal passions dressed like human beings. Compare 
 this treatment v/ith that adopted by Shakespeare and 
 his English contemporaries. Take what is called the 
 comic relief first. The graciosos in all the Spanish 
 dramas of the best period, of which I am speaking, 
 are roguish servants, brought in to serve as foils to 
 their masters by their shrewd, vulgar wit. There is no 
 differentiation of them. They are all turned out of 
 the same mould, and from the beginning of the play 
 to the end, whatever happens, they never change. 
 They come on when required, and say their boorish 
 smart things, and that is all. But, take some of 
 
264 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Shakespeare's comic relief, and see the difference. 
 Look how infinite are the moods of Falstaff. How 
 different the tone with which he humours Master 
 Shallow from that he uses to his boon companions at 
 the ' Boar's Head.' How dignified, withal, when the 
 new king dashes all his hopes by turning his back 
 upon him, and sending him to prison. He does not 
 go out with a wry-mouthed quip, as a common clown 
 would do, but puts a brave face upon it to Justice 
 Shallow, and bears himself like a gentleman. And, 
 again, look at the drunken, vicious roisterers at the 
 ' Boar's Head,' when Falstaff dies. How tenderly 
 they tell of Falstaff's death ! Surely one of the most 
 moving passages in English writing is the hostess's 
 reference to her dead customer. The cap and bells are 
 hidden, and a sigh shows the clown is human. Take 
 Bottom, the stage-struck weaver; his bemused surprise, 
 and unwillingness to tell of his temporary bewitchment 
 into an ass by the fairies. No verbal smartness is this, 
 but the development of a man's character. His quaint 
 simplicity in the play scenes would be meaningless 
 without our seeing how muddle-brained the man 
 naturally was. Even more clearly, because more 
 directly bearing upon the story told, is to be seen 
 the personality of Shakespeare's heroes. Hamlet, for 
 instance, is a creature of moods, and each new mood 
 he shows has its influence upon the development of 
 the story. He is not ticketed beforehand with a 
 permanent character, like Calderon's Sigismundo in 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 265 
 
 La Vida es SueHo, or like Sancho Ortiz in Lope's 
 Estrella de Sevilla, but is moved by circumstances as 
 live men are ; and his changes react upon the story 
 that surrounds him. Look at Macbeth. We know the 
 Thane to be a weakly ambitious man, easily led and 
 uxorious. See how his character develops with the 
 urging of his stronger wife. See how his fears and his 
 hopes, alternately, rule him ; how he sways from side 
 to side in his instability, whilst you feel that the issue 
 of the story depends upon the irresolute will, which is 
 being unfolded before you. Then, after the crime is 
 done, the remorse, and how his native courage flickers 
 up, and he becomes momentarily great, when manly 
 deeds are to be done in facing the English and his 
 foes. So is it, too, in the comedies. The timid, 
 shrinking Portia, under the influence of her love for 
 Bassanio, sways the whole tale to its dramatic end, by 
 casting aside her maidenly reserve and appearing as a 
 young advocate, with all the outward attributes of a 
 young man, not a woman in disguise. What is true of 
 Shakespeare is true, in a degree, of his contemporaries 
 and followers — Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
 Ben Jonson, and the rest of them. They wrote for a 
 public which desired to watch the springs of action, as 
 well as to see the action itself; and human character 
 is utilised to develop the story they have to tell. 
 
 It was inevitable that, when Spain, the most 
 powerful and fashionable country in the sixteenth 
 century, produced a drama so fresh, so abundant, 
 
266 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 and so witty, Europe should turn to Spain for 
 dramatic material. For the last ten years of the 
 sixteenth, and first forty years of the seventeenth 
 century, all Spain was stage-struck, poetry was an 
 obsession. The king, Philip IV., was one of the 
 greatest patrons of the drama that ever lived ; and, 
 in his court, literature, and particularly dramatic 
 literature, was the fashionable pursuit. It is true that 
 the direct influence of Spanish drama upon France 
 was greater than upon England, where the Italian 
 novelle ruled, although I shall show later that at a sub- 
 sequent period the influence was passed from France 
 to England through Moliere and his contemporaries. 
 But at present I wish more particularly to direct at- 
 tention to the considerable use made by the English 
 dramatists of Shakespeare's day of the stories 
 invented or adapted by Spaniards. As I halve 
 already pointed out, the debt was mainly for stories 
 and plots, or pieces of intrigue ; for the characterisa- 
 tion was much stronger in the English plays than 
 in Spanish originals, although Englishmen could not 
 weave the plots. It is impossible to point out more 
 than a few of the instances of such indebtedness, even 
 of those we know, and a diligent study of the 
 immense mass of material in both languages would 
 certainly reveal many others — especially at the later 
 period of which I shall speak presently. Perhaps 
 of all the great English playwrights of the Elizabethan 
 and Jacobean period, Shakespeare has borrowed least. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 267 
 
 directly, from the Spaniards. In two instances, to 
 which I referred in a former chapter, he took his 
 plots from Spanish sources : The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona from the Felismena incident in the Diana 
 of Montemayor, and the Taming of the Shrew from 
 one of the tales of Count Lucanor, which I have 
 given almost at length in a previous chapter. But 
 it has no doubt struck readers how often he intro- 
 duces personages of Spanish name, and with Spanish 
 characteristics, in his plays, which, if it does nothing 
 else, shows the influence of Spanish upon literary 
 production generally. But, more than this, although 
 there is no reason to believe that Shakespeare had 
 more than the fashionable smattering of a few phrases 
 in Spanish, it is curious to see how frequently he 
 introduces such phrases into his plays. To take 
 only one instance, that of the Ancient (or Ensign) 
 Pistol, the swashbuckling soldier who had picked 
 up Spanish in the wars, and interlards his boastful 
 vaunts with it. Indeed, it is more than probable 
 that the whole character of Pistol was an intentional 
 burlesque upon a type that was considered to represent 
 Spaniards at the time, and was known throughout 
 Europe, both in real life and in the grandiose 
 Spanish drama — namely, the ostentatious Spanish 
 captain, loud in his claims for personal distinction, 
 vain and showy, pompous and grandiloquent. When 
 Shakespeare wrote Henry V., such a burlesque could 
 not fail to be popular in England, for the feeling 
 
258 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 against Spain was still very bitter, and the Spanish 
 swashbuckler was an accepted type of boastfulness. 
 He is made to pile quotation upon quotation, to 
 indulge in outlandish oaths and strange threats ; but, 
 of course, is represented as an abject coward, and 
 eats Fluellen's leek like a babe, for England was 
 still at war with Spain, and enemies are rarely 
 represented as heroes. 
 
 But, to my mind, at least, another character in 
 Shakespeare bears signs not only of being a carica- 
 ture upon the heroic pretensions, the chivalrous pose, 
 and the extravagant language, which were supposed 
 to mark Spaniards in general, but of being intended 
 for a burlesque upon a particular person. I mean 
 the character of the Spaniard, Don Adriano Armado, 
 in Love's Labour's Lost. I wish to dwell upon this 
 point with some little attention, because, so far as I 
 know, my theory is a new one, and I have formed 
 it because I have had perhaps as good opportunities 
 for studying the details of the person who, I think, 
 was caricatured, as I suppose any Englishman. I 
 mean Antonio Perez, the exiled Spanish Secretary 
 of State. Love's Labour's Lost cannot originally have 
 been written later than 1591, and Perez did not 
 escape from Spain into France until November of 
 that year ; so that, if I am correct in my supposition, 
 the points upon which I rely cannot have been intro- 
 duced into the play until it was enlarged and partially 
 rewritten for a court performance in 1597. Perez 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 269 
 
 arrived in England in the autumn of 1593 ; and 
 whilst he was, of course, made much of by the war 
 party of Essex, he was greatly disliked and distrusted 
 by Burghley and the moderates, as well as at first by 
 Elizabeth herself. By all he was laughed at for his 
 affectation, and envied for his malicious wit. Lady 
 Bacon was violently angry that her son Francis 
 should be so friendly with him : ' A proud, profane, 
 costly fellow, whose being about him I verily believe 
 the Lord God doth mislike ' ; and one of Anthony 
 Bacon's agents writes of him in 1 594 : ' Surely he 
 is, as we say, an odd man, and hath his full sight 
 everywhere. ... I have hardly heard of him, and 
 yet, I know not how, I begin to admire him already.' 
 He lived on the bounty of the Earl of Essex until 
 Henry IV. became jealous, and insisted upon his com- 
 ing back to him in the summer of 1595. In France 
 and in England, as in Spain, he betrayed and sold 
 every one who trusted him. He had been spoilt and 
 pampered to such an extent by Henry IV. and by 
 his English friends, that his presumption and caprice 
 became unbearable. When he met Essex at Dover 
 in 1596 he finally disgusted and offended the earl, 
 and thenceforward his star in England had set. In 
 France he was still endured, though he finally tired 
 out even Henry IV., who had treated him with 
 almost royal honours. So that if we assume that 
 the special touches of caricature that identify Don 
 Antonio Armado with Perez were introduced into 
 
270 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the play when it was recast for the court performance 
 in 1597, the reason for the skit upon Essex's fallen 
 favourite becomes at once apparent. The court, and 
 the court only, would see the joke, which no one 
 would have dared to make when Perez was in 
 favour three years before, for then Perez would have 
 struck back with the sharp claws beneath his velvet 
 paw. 
 
 No one can read Perez's many published letters, 
 and the famous Relaciones written whilst he was in 
 England, without identifying numerous affected turns 
 of speech with those put into the mouth of Don 
 Adriano Armado ; and the description given of Don 
 Adriano by the King of Navarre, in the play, tallies 
 exactly with the word-portraits remaining to us of 
 Antonio Perez drawn from his own writings and 
 those of his contemporaries. ' Our court, you know, 
 is haunted,' says the king, 
 
 ' With a refined traveller of Spain, 
 A man in all the world's new fashion planted. 
 That hath a mint of phrases in his brain : 
 One whom the music of his own vain tongue 
 Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony ; 
 A man of complements, whom right and wrong 
 Have chose as umpire of their mutiny : 
 This child of fancy, that Armado hight. 
 For interim to our studies, shall relate, 
 In high-born words, the worth of many a knight 
 From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate. 
 How you delight, my lords, I know not, I ; 
 But, I protest, I love to hear him lie, 
 And I will use him for my minstrelsy.' 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 271 
 
 The Constable then hands to the king Don Adri- 
 ano's letter, giving an account of the clown Costard's 
 violation of the king's order that there is to be no 
 love-making in his court. Leaving out the inter- 
 jections of the clown, the Spaniard's letter runs 
 thus : ' Great deputy, the welkin's vice-regent and 
 sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's God, 
 and body's fostering patron. So it is, besieged by 
 sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black- 
 oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic 
 of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, 
 betook myself to walk. The time when ? About the 
 sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, 
 and men sit down to that nourishment which is 
 called supper. So much for the time when. Now 
 for the ground which ; which, I mean, I walked upon : 
 it is yclept thy park. Then for the place where ; 
 where, I mean, I did encounter that most obscene 
 and preposterous event, that draweth from my snow- 
 white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou 
 viewest, beholdest, seest.' . . . And then follows, in 
 equally bombastic strain, his account bf his appre- 
 hension of the clown Costard, for flirting with 
 Jaquenetta. This letter, absurd as its diction is, is 
 hardly an exaggeration of Perez's usual epistolary 
 style. For instance, this is a short extract taken at 
 random from . one of his letters written to Henry iv. 
 of France from England, saying he will return to 
 France because he has left his soul behind him 
 
272 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 with the king, and without it he cannot live : — ' Pardon 
 me, sire,' he says, 'for the boldness of the compli- 
 ment ; but the soul, sire, has its loves, and uses 
 compliments as the body does — compliments which 
 break and pass all bounds of earthly respect. I write, 
 too, that your Majesty may entertain yourself with 
 the Spanish language, of which you say that I am 
 to be your master. Surely, sire, you have chosen a 
 pretty barbarian for a master, barbarous in idea, 
 in word, in all things. I understand, rather, sire, 
 that you will be my master ; and from your sweet 
 hand this rough pebble will marvellously receive 
 polish ; for great artificers thus show their cunning 
 on the coarsest materials ; even as royal souls imitate 
 the acts of God in repairing that which is destroyed 
 by others, who dare to show their sinister power by 
 usurping the functions of the omnipotent.' To 
 Essex's sister. Lady Rich, Perez sends a pair of 
 gloves, with this letter : — ' I have been so troubled 
 not to have the dog's skin gloves your ladyship 
 desires, that, pending the time when they shall arrive, 
 I have resolved to sacrifice myself to your service, 
 and flay a piece of my own skin from the most tender 
 part of my body, if such an uncouth carcass as 
 mine can have any tender skin. To this length can 
 love and wish to serve a lady be carried, that a man 
 should flay himself to make gloves for his lady. But 
 in my case this is as nothing, for even the soul will 
 skin itself for the person it loves.' . . . And then Perez 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 273 
 
 for two or three pages continues to ring the weari- 
 some changes upon dogs and skins and souls, in a 
 way that Don Adriano Armado himself could not 
 have bettered. But there is another reason besides 
 similarity of epistolary style that seems to support 
 my belief that Shakespeare was personally carica- 
 turing Perez in Don Adriano Armado. Perez gave 
 himself several nicknames ; but he had one favourite, 
 one that he never tired of from first to last, and 
 under which he wrote his book. This name was 
 ' Peregrino,' ' El Peregrino,' or ' Rafael Peregrino.' 
 He signed himself thus in countless letters, and his 
 affected play upon the word was ceaseless. Pere- 
 grinate is, and always has been, an extremely rarely 
 used English word, so that its introduction by Shake- 
 speare, especially applied to Don Adriano Armado, 
 is significant. The two pedantic scholars are dis- 
 cussing Armado, and between them they describe 
 Antonio Perez to the life thus : — 
 
 ' Sir Nathaniel. I did converse this quondam 
 day with a companion of the king's, who is in- 
 tituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de 
 Armado. 
 
 ' HOLOFERNES. Novi hominein tanquam te : his 
 humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue 
 filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and 
 his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. 
 He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, 
 as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. 
 
 s 
 
274 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 ' Sir Nathaniel. A most singular and choice 
 epithet' 
 
 When Armado enters, and boasts to the pedants 
 of his intimacy with the King of Navarre,^ he says, 
 ' I must tell thee, it will please his grace, by the 
 world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, 
 and with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excre- 
 ment — my moustachio — but let that pass. By the 
 world, I recount no fable : some certain special 
 honour it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, 
 a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world ; 
 but let that pass.' 
 
 At the period that the play was represented at 
 court (1597), Antonio Perez was so much favoured by 
 Henry IV., that the king would hardly let him out 
 of his sight, and Essex had been deeply offended 
 with the ingratitude of Perez in preferring to remain 
 in France; so that it is easily understood that a 
 burlesque upon Henry's affection for him would not 
 be displeasing to Shakespeare's patron at the time. 
 It has already been suggested by Shakespearian 
 scholars, that the character of the Jew Shylock may 
 have been taken from that celebrated Jew, Dr. Ruy 
 Lopez, Queen Elizabeth's physician, who after many 
 years of favour entangled himself in politics, and 
 was executed for a supposed design to poison the 
 queen in the interests of Spain. The Earl of Essex 
 
 1 It must not be forgotten that Henry iv. of France was King of. 
 Navarre, and had been so called until the death of Henry iii. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 275 
 
 was his bitter enemy, and the cause of his death in 
 1594; anything that presented a Jew like Lopez 
 in an odious light would please the earl and his 
 set. Lopez certainly figured in other plays soon 
 after his death — in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, and Dr. 
 Faustus; in Dekker's Lady of Babylon, and in Middle- 
 ton's Game at Chess. The Merchant of Venice was 
 first seen on the stage two months after Lopez's 
 execution (7th June 1594), when all the country was 
 ringing with the news of the unpopular Jew's fate. 
 Everybody had known that Lopez was an avaricious, 
 greedy man, and a poisoner by profession, and that 
 he had outwardly conformed to Christianity. It will 
 be recollected that, when Portia in the trial scene 
 demands that Shylock shall become a Christian, he 
 makes no demur whatever. Lopez, indeed, was fond 
 of dwelling upon his Christianity, and constantly 
 speaks in his letters to the Spanish agents of the 
 ' great remedy for Christendom ' that is to be effected 
 by his means. On the scaffold, even, he made a 
 despairing reference to his love of Christ. Probably 
 Shakespeare had this in his mind when he puts these 
 words into Antonio's mouth : — 
 
 'The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 
 An evil soul producing holy witness 
 Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 
 A goodly apple rotten at the heart.' 
 
 But, however much or little Shakespeare himself 
 may have been influenced by Spanish thought or 
 
2/6 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Spanish models, there is no question that the other 
 playwrights of his time depended very largely upon 
 Spain for their plots. This was especially the case 
 with Fletcher and Ben Jonson. To show how rapidly 
 Spanish literature reached England at the time, 
 Don Quixote was first printed in Spain in 1605, and 
 in Brussels in 1607. In that same year, 1607, George 
 Wilkins the dramatist produced in London a play 
 called The Miseries of Infant Marriage, in which the 
 fighting of a windmill is mentioned, and Middleton's 
 Five Gallants, in the same year, also refers to it. Ben 
 Jonson, who knew Spanish well, constantly refers to 
 Quixote before Shelton's translation was published in 
 1612. The Silent Woman, for instance, was written 
 in 1609, and in it Dauphin asks Truewit how he 
 knows so well the secrets of ladies' wiles, and begs 
 him to tell him how to learn. Truewit replies : ' Yes, 
 but you must leave to live in your chamber, then, a 
 month together upon Amadis of Gaul and Don 
 Quixote, as you are wont to, and come abroad, where 
 matter is frequent ; to court, to tiltings, to public 
 shows, and to church sometimes.' In the Alchymist, 
 again, reference is made to Don Quixote. Fletcher, 
 of course, knew of Don Quixote as soon as any one, 
 for he was a good Spanish scholar. He burlesqued it, 
 indeed, in his play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
 which was written before Shelton's translation ap- 
 peared in London. Fletcher depended very largely 
 for his plots upon Cervantes' Novelas Ejemplares. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 277 
 
 His Fair Maid of the Inn was from the Ilustre 
 Fregona ; The Chances from La SeHora Cordelia ; Rule 
 a Wife and Have a Wife, from El Casamiento 
 Engatioso. A Very Woman, by Fletcher and Mas- 
 singer, was taken from El Amante Liberal. Love's 
 Pilgrimage is a dramatisation of Las dos Doncellas. 
 With Middleton and Rowley, they turned La Fuerza 
 de la Sangre into The Queen of Corinth. Middleton 
 and Rowley, again, dramatised Cervantes' Gitanilla 
 as The Spanish Gipsy. Shirley's Young Admiral is 
 taken from Lope de Vega's Don Lope de Cardona ; and 
 Webster's gloomy play The Duchess of Amalfi was 
 either taken direct from Bandello's Italian novel of the 
 same name, or from Lope de Vega's dramatisation of it. 
 One is struck, too, by the very frequent use of 
 Spanish scenes and personages in plays of the English 
 Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, which, although 
 they are not always traceable to a known source — 
 for at least a thousand plays of Lope de Vega alone 
 have been lost — suggest a Spanish origin. Kyd's 
 Geronimo and Spanish Tragedy are both saturated 
 with Spanish feeling ; so is Fletcher's Spanish Curate. 
 Ben Jonson in his Alchymist introduces a scene where 
 one of the characters, a member of a gang of swindlers, 
 is made up as a Spanish nobleman, for the purpose 
 of imposing upon a foolish young man and his 
 widowed sister, who is to be married to the supposed 
 Spaniard for the sake of her fortune. The scene is 
 played half in Spanish, and very good Spanish it 
 
278 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 is, considering ; and when the pretended count is 
 introduced, the poor, innocent lady who is to be 
 deluded, asks, when she is told that she is to be a 
 Spanish countess, ' Why ! is it better than an English 
 countess ? ' After an expression of indignant surprise 
 at so foolish a question, the led captain who is 
 carrying through the swindle replies: 'Ask from 
 your courtier, from your Inns of Court man, from 
 your mere milliner ; they will tell you all. . . . Your 
 Spanish jennet is the best horse, your Spanish stoup 
 the best garb, your Spanish beard the best cut, your 
 Spanish ruffs the best wear, your Spanish pavan 
 the best dance, your Spanish titillation in a glove 
 the best perfume ; and as for your Spanish pike and 
 Spanish blade, let your poor captain speak.' This 
 will give an idea of the extent to which the fashion 
 for things Spanish had pervaded the English court 
 in the early part of the seventeenth century, and 
 how dramatists, amongst others, took their inspiration 
 from Spain. To such an extent must this have been 
 done, that they were sometimes inclined to apologise to 
 English audiences for pilfering so largely from a nation 
 then so unpopular as Spain ; or, as an alternative, 
 they were fond of making the most markedly Spanish 
 characters despicable, and of flattering English vanity 
 by showing how much superior English morality 
 was to Spanish. For instance, in Fletcher's Rule a 
 Wife and Have a Wife, the prologue thus excuses 
 the origin of the play and its tendency : — 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 279 
 
 ' Pleasure attend ye, and about ye sit 
 The springs of mirth, of fancy, delight, and wit. 
 To stir you up : do not your looks let fall. 
 Nor to remembrance our late errors call. 
 Because to-day we 're Spaniards all again, 
 The story of our play, our scene, in Spain. 
 The errors, too, do not for this cause hate. 
 Now we present their wit, and not their State. 
 Nor, ladies, be not angry if you see 
 A young, fresh beauty, wanton and too free. 
 Seek to abuse her husband : — still 'tis Spain — 
 No such gross errors in joz^r kingdom reign.' 
 
 Thus it is clear that in the palmiest days of the 
 English drama, the plots were almost as frequently- 
 taken from Spanish as from Italian sources, and 
 especially from the former in cases where a drama was 
 the origin instead of a tale. The tradition, founded, 
 it must be admitted, on solid fact, that the Spanish 
 writers were unrivalled as inventors of intrigues and 
 imbroglios for the stage, lingered long after the craze 
 for things Spanish in general had disappeared from 
 England. Navarro's company of Spanish players 
 visited and represented in England during the reign 
 of Charles I., and the Hispanophil writers of his court, 
 some of whom I have mentioned in a. former chapter, 
 and shall refer to again, kept alive the literary cult 
 of Spanish until the flood of the great rebellion 
 swept away for a time all such vanities as stage 
 plays, and darkness fell upon the Spanish stories of 
 amorous intrigue that had amused Englishmen for 
 sixty years. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SPANISH THEATRE AND THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 AFTER THE RESTORATION — CONCLUSION 
 
 In the previous chapters I have traced the evolution 
 of Spanish letters, showing the marvellous fecundity 
 of idea and invention, the proud, almost disdainful, 
 abundance of literary resouice, which at certain 
 periods possessed this interesting people. From the 
 circumstances of their history and topography, they 
 had been more isolated from outside influences than 
 other European peoples. They had retained old 
 characteristics longer than most continental nations ; 
 the chivalric idea which in the fourteenth, fifteenth, 
 and sixteenth centuries seized upon their imaginations, 
 and the long wars and moving adventures in far 
 countries, had made Spaniards in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries pompous, proud, and self- 
 centred, with higher ideals of honour and religion, 
 though with lower real standards of personal conduct, 
 than others. Their costume matched their profes- 
 sions. After the death of Philip IL in 1598, their 
 dress, which before had been splendid, became ex- 
 travagant and bizarre in its exaggerated magnificence. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 281 
 
 No court, perhaps, was ever more sumptuously attired 
 than that of Phih'p III. under Lerma. Great spreading 
 lace ruflFs, enormous extended trunk-hose, velvets, 
 satins, cloth of bullion, and glittering gew-gaws on 
 every available spot ; enormous rapiers, with damas- 
 cened hilts and jewelled scabbards : all this, added 
 to natural stateliness of gait and pompous self- 
 assertion, made the Spaniard in the palmy days of 
 his dramatic literary period, when Lope de Vega, 
 Calderon, Alarcon, and Tirso de Molina wrote, 
 different from other Europeans, both in appearance 
 and manners. 
 
 Spain was already in full decline, but men as yet 
 hardly recognised the fact. The assertion of superi- 
 ority, and the tradition of overwhelming strength, were 
 still so constant and strong that they carried convic- 
 tion, in the face of the obvious fact that Spain was 
 an overgrown giant with no stamina of its own. 
 James I., in one of his fits of constitutional self- 
 abasement, told Gondomar, in 1618, that he well 
 knew that the King of Spain was greater than all 
 the rest of the Christian princes put together ; but 
 yet at that very time Philip III., at the end of his 
 resources, had to send round officers to beg from door 
 to door in the capital for contributions, over and 
 above the oppressive and squandered taxes, to keep 
 him and his household in food. We have seen how 
 this tradition of Spanish preponderance had produced 
 throughout Europe an idea that everything Spanish 
 
282 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 was better than that of other countries. In 1612 and 
 161 5 events occurred that gave an enormous impetus 
 to the fashion in Europe for Spain and Spanish 
 things. The betrothal and marriage of the heir of 
 Spain, afterwards Philip iv., with the daughter of 
 Henry iv. of France, and the simultaneous marriage 
 of Louis XIII., King of France, with Anne of Austria, 
 daughter of Philip iii., brought scores of the French 
 nobles to the frontier and into Spain, and sent Spanish 
 grandees to Paris. Anne of Austria throughout her 
 life kept a Spanish court, with Spanish actors and 
 authors ; and for the next forty years at least, until 
 the predominance of French influence in Europe was 
 gained under Louis XIV., everything Spanish was 
 the rage in France — Spanish dress was the fashion. 
 The Spanish gallant air was not only adopted, but 
 its name, and dozens of other Spanish terms, were 
 naturalised in France. The games, the dances, the 
 terms of endearment, the favourite dishes, all had 
 Spanish names. Cervantes, writing in 1616, says : 
 ' No man or woman in France fails to learn Castilian.' 
 In fact, Spaniards were regarded in France in the 
 seventeenth century much as Englishmen in the nine- 
 teenth ; that is to say, they were derided, their dress 
 and appearance were caricatured, and their demeanour 
 lampooned ; but they were imitated both in garb and 
 manners as nearly as the Frenchmen could manage 
 to do it. 
 
 It was pointed out in the last chapter how the plots 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 283 
 
 of the Spaniards had been utilised by the Elizabethan 
 and Jacobean dramatists, and how, under the in- 
 fluence of the proposed marriage of Charles, Prince 
 of Wales, with the Infanta, the English Hispanophils 
 had translated many works into English, and had, 
 to some extent, introduced Spanish fashions and 
 manners. But this direct influence upon England 
 was of no long duration. Lord Bristol, who had been 
 ambassador in Spain when the marriage treaty fell 
 through, translated Calderon's Mejor estd que estaba, 
 under the name of Better 'tis than it Was, and Peor 
 esta que estaba, under the name of Worse and Worse ; 
 but both English plays have disappeared. Lord 
 Bristol's very amusing play Elvira remains with us, 
 and that is an adaptation of Calderon's No sienipre 
 lo peor es cierlo. Sir Richard Fanshawe, a great 
 Spanish scholar and an adherent of Charles l., trans- 
 lated Antonio de Mendoza's Querer por solo querer 
 {Love for Love's Sake) when he was in prison after 
 the battle of Worcester ; and several other transla- 
 tions and adaptations of this sort were made direct 
 in Charles l.'s time from the Spanish drama. The 
 main characteristic of all such dramas, and what 
 really was the Spanish invention, was the machinery 
 of the intrigue — rooms with hidden doors, secret 
 staircases with facilities for the exchange of one per- 
 sonality for another, the ringing of changes on two 
 or more pairs of lovers. All this was unknown to the 
 classic drama; and to this day, when we see what 
 
284 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 is called a bustling farce — now rather out of fashion — 
 which depends upon the fortuitous appearance and 
 disappearance of the personages through many door- 
 ways, and the hiding .of characters in incongruous 
 places, it may with confidence be said that the original 
 initiative of it came from Spain. I mentioned in a 
 former chapter that Juan Navarro and his company 
 of Spanish players were popular in London in 1635, 
 and on the 23rd December of that year received 
 ;£'io for playing before the king. But all the efforts 
 of English sympathisers of Spain, to introduce the 
 Spanish drama directly to England, were swamped by 
 the blood of the great rebellion and the prohibition 
 of all stage plays and such like vanities for the next 
 twenty years and more. 
 
 In the meanwhile, during that period, France was 
 saturated with Spanish fashions. Under Richelieu, dur- 
 ing the regency of Anne of Austria, and during the youth 
 of Louis XIV., especially after he, in his turn, married 
 a Spanish princess, the swaggering espadachin, with his 
 great trunk-hose extended with cotton, his vast ruff, 
 and his plumed hat, was the model copied by soldiers 
 and young bloods, such as may be recognised now in 
 Dumas' revival of the taste in The Three Musketeers, 
 and in Stanley Weyman's novels of the same period. 
 It was no wonder that the stilted aloofness of the 
 classical drama should be to some extent supplanted 
 in France by the lively drama of intrigue, and by the 
 tragic historical plays, which were pouring out of 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 285 
 
 Spanish writers of the time with the inexhaustible 
 abundance and freshness of a mountain spring. 
 
 The pioneer in France to popularise the new taste 
 was a playwright of a fertility of production almost 
 rivalling that of Lope himself, Hardy, who borrowed 
 plots wholesale from Spanish dramas. But it was 
 not until a man of genuine genius in France, Pierre 
 Corneille, cast his eye upon the Spanish plays and 
 transformed them somewhat to suit French taste and 
 tradition, that the movement became powerful enough 
 to penetrate all Europe, through France. So long as 
 Spanish plays had been simply translated, or their 
 intrigues copied, they remained necessarily exotic, 
 because the Spanish view of honour, of love, of con- 
 duct, of morality, of religion, was different from that 
 of France or of England ; and many of the points and 
 scruples upon which the action turned were incom- 
 prehensible to people of other nationalities. But in 
 1636 Pierre Corneille, already a famous dramatist of 
 the classical school, presented his great drama Le Cid. 
 His writings were already deeply imbued with the 
 prevailing Spanish taste for bombastic and inflated 
 language, especially in tragedy. He had, moreover, 
 introduced in others of his plays two characters taken 
 straight from the Spanish drama — the swashbuckling 
 mercenary Captain Matamore, and the Picaro. He 
 was therefore a fit man to blend in his own writing the 
 romantic, chivalrous spirit of Spain with the classical 
 traditions which were still strong in France. Cor- 
 
286 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 neille was recommended by a Spanish officer in the 
 suite of Anne of Austria to read a play by a second- 
 rate Spanish writer, Guillem de Castro, called Las 
 Mocedades del Cid, a semi-historical play, founded on 
 an ancient poem. The result was one of the highest 
 importance to the future of dramatic art, for Cor- 
 neille's Le Cid proved that Spanish dramas in the 
 hands of a writer of genius might, without losing their 
 vigour, be naturalised to the tastes of other countries. 
 Corneille's Cid is known to every one, and is still acted 
 by the Com6die Fran^aise. At its first appearance 
 in the last days of 1636 it was an astounding triumph, 
 and its popularity in France has never ceased. To 
 Spaniards, and indeed to Englishmen, it appears 
 artificial and stilted to the last degree, but that was 
 a concession to the old French taste. The language 
 is less terse and natural than it is in Spanish, but, 
 when all is said, it is a grand historical drama, 
 bristling with strong situations ; and not even the 
 barbarous transformation of Spanish names to French 
 like Shimene for Ximena, and Don Diegue for Diego, 
 can mar its splendour. 
 
 Corneille, of course, was attacked bitterly by his 
 contemporaries for departing, even to the extent he 
 did, from the classical traditions, and grafting the 
 modern romanticism upon the machinery of the Greek 
 and Roman drama ; but Spanish romanticism was in 
 the air; and, although purists might protest, the 
 public wished for some degree of naturalness, and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 287 
 
 Corneille triumphed. He took another step forward 
 in 1644, and wrote a comedy which took Paris by 
 storm. It was called Le Menteur {The Liar); and 
 in the prologue to it he says that, having scaled the 
 heights of tragedy, he would not attempt to descend to 
 comedy without a hand to guide him, so he has taken 
 as his model the famous Lope de Vega. The curious 
 fact, however, is that he really did not follow Lope 
 de Vega at all. The comedy from which Le Menteur 
 is taken is called La Verdad Sospechosa, and tells of 
 a young man just returned from college to his home, 
 who is so much given to lying, that when he tells 
 the truth no one will believe him. The complica- 
 tions that he brings upon himself by his infirmity 
 are infinite : he is engaged to be married, first to 
 one lady and then to the other ; misunderstand- 
 ings, scrapes, and all sorts of troubles and intrigues 
 are the result, and it is one of the most perplexing, 
 as well as the most amusing, of any of the Spanish 
 comedies. It is not by Lope de Vega, however, but 
 by Alarcon. In the book that Corneille took it from, 
 it was bound up with Lope's works, and it was not 
 until 1660, when Corneille saw it ascribed correctly 
 to Alarcon, that he corrected his error, which he did 
 carefully in later editions. The amusing part of it 
 is that when in the eighteenth century Sir Richard 
 Steele translated the play into English under the 
 name of The Lying Lover, he ascribes it to Lope de 
 Vega (Sire de Vega, as he calls him), oblivious of 
 
288 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the fact that eighty years previously its real author- 
 ship had been known. Corneille's adaptation of La 
 Verdad Sospechosa makes the personages French, and 
 the scene Paris, and suppresses some scenes which 
 would have clashed with his traditions. But he 
 weakens the play considerably thereby as a drama, 
 and particularly by his altering of the end. The 
 Spanish drama, written mostly, you will recall, by 
 churchmen, shared with all other Spanish writing that 
 tendency to didacticism which I have traced from the 
 very earliest birth of the literature, and when vice 
 is represented it is almost invariably punished. In 
 Alarcon's play the Liar is married to the wrong girl, 
 and the one he loves is married before his eyes to 
 another man, as a result of his falsehoods. But the 
 French tradition was that only tragedies must end 
 unhappily, and all comedies must finish happily, so 
 Corneille makes his fibber triumph in the end. 
 
 Corneille wrote another play from the Spanish, 
 called Don Sanche d'Aragon; but on the Cid and Le 
 ' Menteur his fame rests, and to these two emanations 
 of his genius we owe the perpetuation of the Spanish 
 spirit into the modern theatre. But it was a greater 
 than Corneille that was the conductor through whom 
 the current ran. Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere 
 himself tells us that he decided to write plays, and 
 become an actor, owing to his reading Le Cid. 
 Already, when he was in his prime, the Spanish 
 force in literature was on the wane. Like a maple 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 289 
 
 forest in the autumn, Spanish letters were dying in 
 a blaze of glory, Calderon and Quevedo were still 
 writing, and a half-hundred other poets and play- 
 wrights, headed by King Philip himself, kept all 
 Madrid in idle amusement, as witty as it was profit- 
 less. But Moliere, bettering the instruction of 
 Corneille, threw aside both the worn-out classical 
 traditions, and the remaining exotic traces in the 
 personages and plots of Spanish dramas; adapted 
 the intrigues to French surroundings, and founded a 
 modern drama in which the language and personages 
 were those of everyday Parisian life. He, like most 
 geniuses, borrowed where he pleased ; and the origin 
 of every part of his plays is difficult to trace. He 
 was not content, like other inferior men, to adapt a 
 Spanish play entire, but took a situation here, a 
 character there, and an intrigue somewhere else ; 
 but, withal, his great comedies, upon which his fame 
 mainly rests, are all more or less founded on Spanish 
 originals. Tartuffe, for instance, which Colley Cibber 
 turned into the Nonjuror in England, would not 
 have been written as it was unless the author had 
 seen Lope's Perro de Hortelano {Dog in the Manger), 
 in which a lady was in love with her secretary, and 
 was too proud to marry him, and yet too jealous to 
 let him marry any one else. 
 
 Le Medecin malgri Lui (The Mock Doctor, as 
 Fielding's version is called) owes its origin to Lope's 
 Acero de Madrid, where a lover assumes the garb of 
 
 T 
 
290 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 a physician to forward his amorous aims. L' Amour 
 MMecin, another of Moliere's plays, is generally be- 
 ~ lieved to have been taken from Cyrano de Bergerac's 
 Pidant Joue; but probably Moliere did not know 
 that the famous poet with the prodigious nose, Cyrano 
 de Bergerac, himself had plundered the plot from 
 Lope's Robo de Elena. 
 
 What Moliere did in the way of borrowing, his 
 rivals and followers imitated. It would be profitless 
 for me to enumerate the many known imitations by 
 French dramatists of the late seventeenth century of 
 Spanish authors ; and, of course, there are immense 
 numbers of instances that are untraced. It will suffice 
 to point out a few instances of how, and in what form, 
 the influence was transmitted to England. On the 
 return of Charles II, to England from his long exile 
 in 1660, he found a people ready once more for gaiety. 
 The reaction from Puritan dulness and austerity was 
 bound to occur, and Charles II. came in, at the top 
 of the wave. With him, and around him, were 
 courtiers, many of whom had, like himself, lived in 
 foreign countries for years. Foreign mistresses 
 accompanied him ; he himself was half a French- 
 man, with a love for frivolous amusements as great 
 as that of Philip IV. himself. It was no wonder, 
 therefore, that a public, hungry for stage-plays, should 
 have greeted his coming with a great outcry for the 
 restoration of the theatre. They did not have to 
 wait long ; nor was fashion tardy in taking to the 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 291 
 
 play, as may be seen by the vivacious confessions of 
 Mr. Pepys. 
 
 The English exiles who had lived in Paris had 
 come back full of Moliere and his charming comedies, 
 but alas ! the art of writing blank verse had been lost 
 in England. There were no more Beaumont and 
 Fletchers, no more Shakespeares, and the facile versifi- 
 cation of the Spanish drama, and of Moliere, had 
 to be replaced in England by dramas in prose, with 
 lyrics and poems introduced. Before the indirect 
 adaptation of Spanish intrigue through the French 
 had become the fashion under Charles 11. — for it 
 took some time for Dryden and his followers to get 
 to work and hit the taste of the court and public — 
 a direct adaptation from the Spanish was made of 
 one play, which attained a success, as it seems to us 
 now, out of all proportion to its merits. But, how- 
 ever that may be, it was practically a reintroduction 
 to the eager English public of that Spanish comedy 
 of intrigue which, from that day to this, has never 
 left the English stage: the comedy of contrary pur- 
 poses, of mistaken personalities, and of mixed-up 
 lovers, ultimately sorted out to everybody's satis- 
 faction. This play, which was hailed by all men as 
 a work of genius, was called The Adventures of Five 
 Hours. The author was an Essex gentleman, named 
 Samuel Tuke, who had been a Royalist leader during 
 the Civil War, and had afterwards lived abroad. He 
 evidently understood Spanish, and to judge by the 
 
292 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 prologue, which I shall quote presently, the king 
 appears to have told him how much he enjoyed the 
 Spanish play upon which the Adventures of Five 
 Hours was founded, and recommended Tuke to trans- 
 late it. Tuke was at this time (1662) elderly, and 
 had intended to retire to live quietly in the country ; 
 but in obedience to the king's hint he adapted the 
 play from the Spanish — it is said with the assistance 
 of the Earl of Bristol, who, as I have already said, 
 had himself translated three of Lope's plays. Tuke's 
 Adventures of Five Hours was first represented at the 
 court of Whitehall in 1663, and afterwards in the 
 Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where it had 
 then the unheard-of run of thirteen consecutive nights. 
 Pepys, of course, went to see it ; and the first time he 
 read it he declares that ' it is the best play that ever 
 I read in my life ' ; and a few days afterwards he 
 gives the astounding judgment that 'the Adventures 
 of Five Hours makes Othello seem a mean thing.' 
 Others, and perhaps more competent critics than 
 Samuel Pepys, pronounced the play to be the best 
 specimen of the comedy of intrigue that had ever 
 been seen in England. 
 
 It is complicated enough, in all conscience. Broadly 
 it tells the story of a rough, passionate, young Spanish 
 noble, burdened by the guardianship of a marriage- 
 able sister, whom he has betrothed to a Spanish noble 
 officer, who has long been absent in the Flemish wars, 
 and has never seen his future bride. She, being 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 293 
 
 secretly promised to another man, bewails her fate 
 to her girl-friend, who says that her trouble is greater 
 still, since she has fallen desperately in love with a 
 man whose name she does not know, and only saw 
 for a moment, when he rescued her from an ambush 
 and capture by brigands in Flanders. By a series 
 of most complicated misunderstandings, the two young 
 ladies are taken for each other; and after an infinity 
 of adventure and intrigue each eventually gets the 
 husband she wants. Reading it now in English, the 
 play seems not much better, if no worse, than dozens 
 of Lope's and Calderon's plays, and far behind the 
 best of them ; but the London public at the time 
 was unjaded, perhaps uncritical, and the play was 
 accepted as a work of genius. I must confess that 
 personally I have not been able to satisfy myself as 
 to the Spanish original of this famous successful play. 
 Every text-book and authority that has been written 
 on the subject, says that Tuke's'play is an adaptation 
 of Coello's Empenos de Sets Horas ( The Undertakings 
 of Six Hours). Authorities and text-books, however, 
 have a somewhat misleading habit of copying each 
 other on minor points without much investigation, 
 and so one mistake may make many. I have myself 
 been unable to obtain Coello's Einpeilos de Seis Horas, 
 so that I do not know if Tuke's play resembles it ; 
 but I do know that Tuke himself repeats, more than 
 once, that he translated the play from one of Calderon's 
 comedies. I see, moreover, that the British Museum 
 
294 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 Catalogue, as if to make confusion worse confounded, 
 says that the Adventures of Five Hours is adapted 
 from Calderon's El Escondido y la Tapada ; but a 
 careful perusal of both plays does not suggest, to my 
 mind, any connection between them. This is what 
 Sir Samuel Take (he was made a baronet soon after 
 the play was produced) wrote in his preface to the 
 third printed edition of the play. After apologising 
 for the garb in which the work is presented, he con- 
 tinues : ' This refers to the dress only ; for certainly 
 the plot needs no apology. It was taken out of Don 
 Pedro Calderon, a celebrated Spanish author ; the 
 nation in the world who are happiest in the force 
 and delicacy of their inventions ; and recommended 
 to me by his sacred Majesty as an excellent design, 
 whose judgment is no more to be doubted than his 
 commands are to be disobeyed ; and therefore it might 
 seem a great presumption in me to enter my senti- 
 ments with his Majesty's royal suffrage. But as 
 Secretaries of State sign their names to the mandates 
 of their prince, so at the bottom of the leaf I take 
 the boldness to subscribe my opinion that this is in- 
 comparably the best play I ever met with.' 
 
 In the spoken prologue, when the play was pro- 
 duced at the Duke's Theatre, the author makes a 
 similar declaration after apologising for the novelty 
 of the style of writing : — 
 
 ' They're in the right, for I make bold to say, 
 The English stage ne'er had so new a play. 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 295 
 
 The dress, the author, and the scene are new. 
 
 This ye have seen before, ye say ! 'tis true. 
 
 But tell me, gentlemen, who ever saw 
 
 A deep intrigue confined to five hours' law? 
 
 Such as for close contrivance yields to none, 
 
 A modest man may praise what's not his own. 
 
 'Tis true the dress is his, which he submits 
 
 To those who are, and those who would be, wits. 
 
 Ne'er spare him, gentlemen, to speak the truth. 
 
 He has a per'lous censurer been in 's youth ; 
 
 And now grown bald with age, doting on praise, 
 
 He thinks to get a periwig of bays. 
 
 Teach him what 'tis in this discerning age. 
 
 To bring his heavy genius on the stage, 
 
 Where you have seen such nimble wits appear. 
 
 That passed so soon, one scarce can say they're here. 
 
 Yet, after our discoveries of late. 
 
 Of their designs, who would subvert the State. 
 
 You'll wonder much, if it should prove his lot, 
 
 To take all England with a Spanish plot. 
 
 But, if through his ill-conduct or hard fate, 
 
 This foreign plot, like that of eighty-eight. 
 
 Should suffer shipwreck in your ijarrow seas, 
 
 You '11 give your modern poet writ of ease. 
 
 For, by th' example of the King of Spain, 
 
 He resolves ne'er to trouble you again.' 
 
 Tuke's success spurred others on in the same field ; 
 but not many could obtain Spanish plays direct, or 
 could understand them if they did. Probably Dryden 
 read Spanish, and almost certainly several of his plays 
 were inspired by Lope de Vega, either directly or 
 through some French translator. Dryden's Evening 
 Love, for instance, is certainly taken from Calderon's 
 Astrologo Fingido, through the translation of Cor- 
 neille's brother Thomas. To please the licentious 
 
296 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 court of Charles ll., Dryden produced plays on the 
 Spanish lines, in which the bombastic and impossible 
 heroism of the principal personage, the valour and 
 prowess, the high-faluting grandiloquence of the char- 
 acters, outdid the originals, and became supremely 
 ridiculous; whilst his coarseness was quite bereft of 
 the satirical fun that gilded suggestiveness, both in 
 Spanish and in French. Dryden could, and did, do 
 infinitely better things than write pot-boiling comedies 
 in prose, which he produced to please a vicious king 
 and court. But, badly or well written, the frame- 
 work of these comedies of Dryden and his followers is 
 purely Spanish. The absurdity of the inflated style, 
 natural in Spain, when turned into English was evi- 
 dent even then to men with a keen sense of humour ; 
 and Buckingham's famous parody of Dryden 's attempts 
 to acclimatise Spanish diction, as well as Spanish 
 intrigue, set all the court laughing. It is called The 
 Rehearsal, and the poet himself is brought upon the 
 stage to superintend the rehearsal of his piece. He 
 is made to appear prodigiously vain and fatuous, and 
 to commit himself to the opinion that the more extra- 
 vagant a piece is, the better it is. Every resource of 
 Buckingham's malicious wit is used to pour ridicule 
 upon a style which only Corneille's genius and the 
 staid classical tradition of the French stage had made 
 tolerable even in France. 
 
 But, when Dryden was content to take his cue from 
 Miliere, as Wycherley did, then things were better 
 
ENGLISp LITERATURE 297 
 
 and more natural ; and with Dryden's Sir Martin 
 Mar-all, taken from L'Atourdi, and Wycherley's 
 Plain Dealer, taken from Le Misanthrope, the modern 
 English comedy of manners may be said to have 
 commenced. It is impossible to trace every play from 
 the Restoration to the age of Anne to distinct Spanish 
 sources, but it is not too much to say that hardly one 
 of them was free from signs of Spanish inspiration. 
 Many, of course, are traceable, such as those I have 
 mentioned : Wycherley's Gentleman Dancing- Master to 
 Calderon's Maestro de Danzar; The Parson's Wedding, of 
 Killigrew, was Calderon's Dama Duende ; Sir Richard 
 Steele's Lying Lover is La Verdad Sospechosa, through 
 Corneille's Menteur. Indeed, at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century, French power and French culture, 
 French fashion and French literature, had triumphed 
 over the Spanish. The inexhaustible ingenuity of the 
 Spanish plots was taken wholesale, but the plays that 
 resulted were French now, and not Spanish. 
 
 The death, in 1700, of the last Spanish king of the 
 house of Austria, and the accession of a French king, 
 after years of civil war and foreign invasion had swept 
 over Spain, finally revealed to the world the utter 
 decadence of native Spanish letters. The English 
 stage, flourishing and excellent, took its impetus from 
 France, in ignorance that the invention that animated 
 it was Spanish, divested of Spanish exaggeration and 
 the verbal heroism that had grown out of the develop- 
 ment of Spanish letters, as I have tried to lay it before 
 
298 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 the reader. The immortal Don Quixote, and the 
 picaresque novels — especially Gil Bias — still kept alive 
 in England the recollection of the Spanish tradition, 
 and permanently left their mark upon the form of 
 English fiction ; but with this exception, the dawn of 
 the eighteenth century saw the disappearance of the 
 conscious influence of Spanish models and modes of 
 thought in England. The tradition of the apophthegm, 
 or moral sentence, survived strongly, and was Spanish 
 to the core, though few now recognised the fact ; the 
 comedy of intrigue in English dress depended more 
 than ever upon the substitution of one person for 
 another, the mixing and re-sorting of lovers, and upon 
 the existence of a multiplicity of doors and convenient 
 hiding-places. The public laughed and applauded at 
 the amusing tangle, without dreaming that it was 
 all as Spanish as could be, though it had reached 
 England in a French garb. 
 
 It is said that a sound uttered echoes for all eternity 
 through space. Certain it is that a literary influence, 
 like an hereditary taint, lasts ages after the memory of 
 its origin has passed from the minds of men. The 
 philosophical literary historian seeks to trace back to 
 their birth the varying currents which, combined, 
 make the mighty river of a national literature. But 
 the historian can do no more than convey hints and 
 point directions. There is no possibility of a student 
 gaining a real knowledge of the influences that have 
 dominated the literature of his own country, unless he 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 299 
 
 reads for himself the masterpieces of it, and then 
 studies, so far as his circumstances permit, the great 
 literatures that have grown up before and simultane- 
 ously with it. I have sometimes been tempted to 
 think that text-books are the bane of precise know- 
 ledge. I will not, however, say so much as that, 
 because text-books, used as they should be used, 
 simply as finger-posts, are useful ; but the misuse of 
 text-books, and particularly literary text-books, by 
 students who think that they are a substitute for the 
 study of originals, is an unmixed evil, and does more 
 than anything I know to produce the shallow super- 
 ficiality which is the hall-mark of modern so-called 
 scholarship. 
 
 Once more in the history of Spain, a period of 
 social and political decadence had been marked by 
 an irresistible flood of over-florid literary production. 
 In the poetical, artistic, and theatrical court of 
 Philip IV., the arts ran riot in their rank luxuriance. 
 Every man who aspired to culture at all, wrote verses, 
 satires, political squibs, novels, or dramas, born one 
 day to die the next. The out-at-elbows, famished man 
 of letters, real or pretended ; the sham student, who 
 with his wooden spoon stuck in his cap lived upon 
 doles of soup and bread given at the monastery gates ; 
 the gangs of idlers, who flocked into the church and 
 crowded the religious houses; and the mixed multitude 
 of copper-captains, adventurers, bullies, swindlers, and 
 lackeys, who sauntered up and down the Calle Mayor 
 
300 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 of Madrid the livelong day, and thronged Liars' 
 Parade on the steps of St. Philip : all these, as well as 
 great nobles, sought to attract attention to themselves 
 by writing something. In these circumstances, of 
 course, ' Conceptism,' or Euphuism, as it was called in 
 English, was rampant; affectation and extravagance 
 reigned supreme again, as it had done in the later 
 romances of chivalry, and with a similar result. If 
 a man had not the soaring wit to excel his fellows 
 in his writings, at least he could make people stare 
 and wonder what he meant by far-fetched obscurity. 
 Gongora, a really great poet, had followed Guevara, 
 and had made what was called the cultured style 
 fashionable. Lope de Vega declaimed against the 
 absurdity savagely, and himself sinned as badly as 
 any one. Quevedo sneered and scoffed at it, called it 
 by the barbarous names of Latiniparla, Cultigracia, 
 and the like ; but if an endeavour be made to read 
 in the original any of Quevedo's social satires, the 
 reader will find himself entangled in a net of preciosity 
 almost impossible to follow lucidly. And so, as 
 Velasquez and Murillo dwindled first to Manzanedo 
 and Claudio Coello, and then to crowds of daubers 
 who simply spoilt good canvas, so did the literary 
 Spanish giants, with their over-facility and fertility, 
 bring Spanish letters to utter contempt ; and what had 
 b^en a finely cultured garden was, by the end of the 
 seventeenth century, a dense jungle of dying weeds. 
 For years the War of Succession raged in Spain, and 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 301 
 
 when at last the French king, Philip v., found himself 
 established upon the throne (1713), he looked over 
 a land in which industry, literature, and art were 
 apparently dead. Social and political decadence and 
 corruption had rendered the upper classes powerless 
 to regenerate institutions ; and in all departments of 
 life the impetus towards renascence had to come from 
 abroad. Whence could it come but from France, the 
 native land of the new dynasty? French finance 
 ministers and administrators took in hand the nation's 
 exchequer, French engineers planned and started pro- 
 ductive public works, and French enterprises and 
 capital re-established flourishing industries, worked by 
 French labour. When the king and court dressed in 
 French garb and read French books, it is not to be 
 wondered at that Spanish literature, which once more 
 began to raise its drooping head, looked across the 
 Pyrenees for the inspiration which was to give it fresh 
 life. For in the struggle of civilisations, that long 
 series of wars between Spain and France under 
 Louis XIV., in which, at length, the inflated Spanish 
 claims of supremacy had been faced and destroyed, 
 French culture had conquered the Spanish form, just 
 as the French military power had triumphed over the 
 once invincible armies of Spain ; and not Spain alone, 
 but all Christendom, was now receiving its civilisation 
 coloured by French influence. 
 
 We have seen how, at an earlier period, French 
 writers had borrowed much, especially in plot and 
 
302 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 incident, from Spanish novels and plays. We have 
 seen how, for the first forty years of the seventeenth 
 century, the traditional Spanish bearing and tone had 
 dominated society and literature in France ; but we 
 have also seen how, first, in the hands of Corneille, the 
 classical French traditions had somewhat modified 
 the Spanish plots and their treatment, and how, 
 secondly, under the modernising genius of Moliere, 
 the plots and personages themselves had been 
 naturalised and had become French. The impetus 
 that now reached Spain from France had therefore 
 lost nearly all traces of Spanish origin, and was still 
 impregnated with the classical Greek traditions which, 
 in consequence of the more recent Oriental antecedents 
 of Spanish literature which I have described, were 
 quite foreign and antagonistic to Spanish tastes. 
 Philip V. did his best to make the new Spanish litera- 
 ture a native one. He founded the Royal Spanish 
 Academy, in imitation of the Acad^mie Frangaise, 
 and the Royal Academy of History, and other similar 
 corporations followed. But the very constitution of 
 these Academies, following that of their French 
 originals, made it inevitable that the standard of 
 excellence erected by them should be the classical 
 one. 
 
 There were, it is true, Spaniards who struggled 
 against the tide in literature, as others did against the 
 introduction of French fashions in dress and manners ; 
 but the great mass of the Spanish people now did not 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 303 
 
 read at all, and culture was almost entirely confined 
 to the upper classes, who naturally followed the 
 ofificial Academies and the court, and adopted readily 
 the new tone introduced from France. But, withal, 
 the Spanish literary bent was naturally too strong to 
 be destroyed permanently, and before the end of the 
 eighteenth century the old traditions had begun to 
 show head again, with new force behind them now, 
 because they embodied the resistance offered by the 
 Church and all the conservative elements of the 
 nation to the iconoclastic ideas of the French Revolu- 
 tion. The first name that stands out distinctly in 
 this Spanish revival is that of the elder Moratin 
 (Nicolas Moratin), a lyric and epic poet whose works 
 are really more Spanish in their spirit than French. 
 His comedies are inferior to those of his son ; but 
 Guzman el Bueno and La Petimetra, and especially his 
 epic Fiesta de Toros en Madrid, mark the first awaken- 
 ing of Spanish letters from the classical French night- 
 mare. Tomas Yriarte, the poet, shortly afterwards 
 made another step forward with a revival of the old 
 Spanish didacticism in verse in his famous Fabulas 
 Literarias, which, although evidently owing for their 
 existence much to the immediate inspiration of La 
 Fontaine, are quite Spanish in treatment and subject. 
 His famous fable of The Donkey Flautist {El Burro 
 Flautistd), which inculcates the moral that a writer 
 may succeed by chance once, but can only succeed 
 permanently by patient work, may be quoted here 
 
304 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 entire to show how distinct the stjle is in the hards 
 of an original Spaniard from that of the French 
 fabulists : — 
 
 ' Este fabulilla, 
 Saiga bien 6 mal, 
 Me ha ocurrido ahora 
 Por casualidad. 
 
 Cerca de unos prados 
 Que hay en mi lugar, 
 Pasaba un borrico 
 Por casualidad. 
 
 Una flauta en ellos, 
 Hallo, que un zagal 
 Se dej6 olvidado, 
 Por casualidad. 
 
 Acerc6-se S. olerla, 
 El dicho animal, 
 
 Y di6 un resoplido 
 Por casualidad. 
 
 En la flauta el aire 
 Se hubo de colar, 
 
 Y sono la flauta 
 Por casualidad. 
 
 Oh ! dijo el borrico, 
 Que bien se tocar. 
 
 Y dican que as mala. 
 La musica asnal. 
 
 Sin reglas del arte, 
 Borriquitos hay, 
 Que una vez aciertan 
 Por casualidad.' 
 
 In the last third of the eighteenth century-, and the 
 first few years of the nineteenth, Spain produced a 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 305 
 
 worthy group of serious writers who, though Spanish 
 in manner, were all more or less impregnated with 
 French spirit, and most of them imbued with the 
 speculative tendency of the French Revolution, and 
 consequently frowned upon by the Church and con- 
 servative Spaniards : — Mayans y Siscar, a great critic 
 and editor of Spanish masterpieces ; Father Florez, 
 the historian of the Catholic queens ; Forner, another 
 notable critic and editor ; Sempere, the political 
 economist ; Father Feijoo, the critic ; the great 
 Jovellanos; and, above all, Father Isla, the humorist 
 and reformer, abounding with wit which stuck at 
 nothing ; and the reviver of the Spanish stage, 
 Leandro Moratin. 
 
 But once more Spain was swept clean of the arts of 
 peace, by a scourge of war so terrible as to throw in 
 the shade all other visitations that had afflicted her. 
 For five years hostile armies made Spanish land the 
 battlefield upon which the fate of the world was to be 
 decided for a hundred years. Not this alone ; but 
 what we in England call the Peninsular War (1808- 
 1813) set Spaniard against Spaniard in bitter hate. 
 With one party, and that the largest, all that was 
 French in the slightest degree was anathema, Afran- 
 cesado was a term of opprobrium worse than that of 
 murderer, and, however great the merits of literary 
 men, if they sided with the invader or the ideas he 
 represented to the public mind, obloquy, exile, or 
 persecution was their lot when the French domination 
 
 U 
 
306 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 fell. This is what happened to Moratin. His Origines 
 del Teatro esfaftol, a work of immense research and 
 sound criticism, reproducing the principal plays in 
 the Spanish language, has been of incalculable value 
 to students. His famous comedies, El Si de las 
 NiHas {The Maids Consent) and La Mojigata {The 
 Hypocrite), still hold the stage, but Moratin was, not- 
 withstanding his purely Spanish nature, sullied with 
 the name of Afrancesado, and he died in poverty and 
 exile. Far different at first was the fate of those 
 literary lights who opposed the French and advocated 
 parliamentary and liberal institutions, like Jovellanos 
 and Father Isla. They were the idols of the populace, 
 and their writings were applauded not alone by their 
 own countrymen, but in England, where they were 
 largely read. With the restoration of Ferdinand Vll. 
 and the flight of all men of progressive ideas a new 
 Spanish influence was introduced into England and 
 France, whither most of the reformers fled, an influence 
 which subsequently had for its complement a curious 
 reaction upon Spain itself For years, with short 
 intervals until the death of Ferdinand and the dis- 
 appearance for ever of the old order, the best minds of 
 Spain were in exile. Count Toreno, the historian of 
 the Revolution ; Quintana and Espronceda, the poets ; 
 the Duke of Rivas, Zorilla, and a score of others passed 
 their exile in the pursuit or practice of literature in 
 the country of their adoption. When the death of the 
 tyrant at length allowed these men to return to their 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 307 
 
 own land, and the government of the new queen was 
 forced to look to the progressive party alone to 
 support her against Carlism, the literary views of the 
 liberal leaders became the fashion in Spain. The 
 regime of Ferdinand had crushed out literature in the 
 country, and the exiles had brought back with them 
 the spirit they had imbibed through their study of 
 Byron, Scott, Hugo, and Schiller. The result was 
 that for years to come the literature of Spain was 
 mainly imitative. Espronceda copied Byron almost 
 slavishly. Sir Walter Scott was the model for the 
 national historical novel that now became popular in 
 Spain. Victor Hugo, in his prologue to Hernani, 
 remarks that romanticism is ' liberalism in literature ' ; 
 and it is possible to reverse the dictum by saying that 
 for nearly forty years, from 1830 to 1868, liberalism in 
 politics in Spain meant romanticism in literature, the 
 old Spanish romanticism filtered through a foreign 
 medium, and so much transformed as to be almost 
 unrecognisable, reintroduced from abroad to the 
 country of its birth. As usual in Spain, the finest and 
 most characteristic results were seen in the theatre. 
 The Duke of Rivas produced some historical dramas 
 worthy of the great times of the Spanish stage, such 
 as La Fuerza del Sino and the Faro de Malta. Breton 
 de los Herreros still holds the stage with his Marcela, 
 Un Tercero en Discordia, Muerete ! y verds, and other 
 romantic dramas ; whilst Zorilla, with El Zapatero y el 
 Rey {Cobbler and King) and Don Juan Tenorio, both 
 
3o8 SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 powerful but gloomy, romantic melodramas, exhibited 
 unmistakably his own literary genius, his knowledge 
 of old Spanish legends, and his faithful study of the 
 French modern romancist school of Dumas. 
 
 But the presence of the Spanish liberals in England 
 and France for so many years had effects in literature 
 of a wider character than the introduction on their 
 return to Spain of a taste for Byronic poetry and 
 Scott's national romance. The interest and sympathy 
 excited in Europe by the dramatic events in Spain in 
 the first third of the nineteenth century, added to the 
 writings of the exiles in England and France, revived 
 the chivalric idea of Spain that had predominated in 
 Europe in the seventeenth century. Romances with a 
 Spanish setting, tales of impossible love adventures, 
 and soul-moving tragedies, in an equally impossible 
 land, where men wore doublets and trunks, and 
 serenaded their lady-loves in the intervals of stabbing 
 their rivals, were fashionable in England. But it was 
 in France where the great romantic revival really 
 struck strong root. Victor Hugo's father had been a 
 general in Spain, and there the poet was born. Hugo 
 was saturated with the Spanish literary tradition, and 
 there came from his pen in the days of his greatest 
 power play after play, in which picturesque Spanish 
 local colour was laid on lavishly. Spanish legends 
 and romantic historical episodes were placed under 
 contribution, and the characteristics which had been 
 traditionally those of Spaniards two hundred years 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 309 
 
 before were again presented as being true to life. The 
 consequence is seen even to the present day, when 
 many untravelled Englishmen, and more especially 
 Frenchmen, persist in the superstition that modern 
 dress and manners stop at the Pyrenees, and that in 
 crossing the frontier the traveller steps into the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 The flood-time came with Alexandre Dumas. He 
 was half a negro, with Spanish blood in his veins, 
 flamboyant as a Spaniard of old himself, and the 
 romantic school of fiction and drama under his vivid 
 pen seized hold of France, and thence spread to 
 England. The Three Musketeers, Monte Crista, and 
 the whole series of slashing, vaunting, florid stories, 
 and the plays made from them, are old Spanish to the 
 core, and entirely untrue to French nature in general, 
 for even the Gascon, although a great talker, really 
 loves his ease better than swashbuckling adventure* 
 But the school served its turn. It was exciting, it was 
 rapid and full of invention, and from France it spread 
 to England. The numerous tales of G. P. R. James 
 that amused our fathers in their youth are turned out 
 of the same mould, and, though infinitely superior to 
 these. The Fortunes of Nigel and Quentin Durward have 
 as direct a Spanish descent as they, through a French 
 medium. Not only were England and France thus 
 dominated, but the influence was carried back to Spain 
 again by the writings of Dumas and his school, and a 
 revival of the old French view of Spanish character 
 
3IO SPANISH INFLUENCE ON 
 
 was made fashionable in Spain itself. There was no- 
 thing natural in the taste. The extravagant, boastful 
 posturer which the French adopted as the Spanish 
 type was never true to nature, except perhaps in the 
 case of the Spanish soldiers of fortune in the sixteenth 
 century, and certainly for the last two hundred years 
 is absurdly wide of the mark. 
 
 Like all artificial things, the French conception of 
 Spain is ephemeral, especially in Spain where its 
 falsity was felt ; but it dies hard because of the per- 
 sistence of travellers in keeping up the fiction, and 
 repeating what other people have told them, instead 
 of judging for themselves. In Spain itself the 
 romantic school of fiction is, for the present, dead. 
 The works of fiction most in demand, apart from 
 the somewhat slight, but interesting, political his- 
 torical novels, made popular by Seflor Perez Galdos, 
 are the provincial novels of manners, representing 
 the surviving provincial life of a few years ago; the 
 reproduction of local and provincial legends, tales, 
 and poetry, and, indeed, provincialism generally. 
 But the tendency most recently discernible is that 
 towards 3olid didacticism in the form, mostly, of trans- 
 lations of English and German scientific and philo- 
 sophical works. Spain has once more entered upon 
 one of its periods of sober reticence. Florid eccen- 
 tricity and volubility, for the moment, are not the 
 fashion in literature ; and, to judge from the past 
 literary history of the country, we may look for an 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 311 
 
 improving and increasing production of solid, good 
 work in history, science, and the serious drama ; to 
 be succeeded gradually by mordant satire, fertility of 
 invention, over-production, exuberance, and after- 
 wards, decay. But that is not yet, for the revival 
 of good literature is only yet commencing, and it 
 will take years to teach its apogee. At the present 
 moment Spanish literature cannot be said to exert 
 any influence whatever in England. 
 
 I have briefly traced Castilian letters in these 
 pages from their very birth, and have tried my best 
 to show that at certain stages of their history they 
 exerted powerful and salutary influence upon our own 
 literature. The didactic proverb and sententious 
 maxim from the Jews of Cordova have left their mark 
 for good upon the thought and literary form of the 
 whole civilised world ; the literatures of history and of 
 travel bear upon them to-day the indelible traces of 
 the Spanish chronicles and stories of personal adventure 
 which sprang therefrom. The poetry of the whole 
 world still carries upon it the tint of knightly sacrifice 
 and of pastoral simplicity, as a revolt against the 
 sordid struggle for daily existence and the blight- 
 ing corruption of great cities ; and this spirit, when 
 it was dying elsewhere, received new birth in Spain 
 by the altruistic romances of Aniadis of Gaul and 
 its hundred imitators. The novels of Fielding, of 
 Smollett, and of Dickens, remain to show us that 
 the picaresque tales born in Spain have left their 
 
312 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 progeny in our own land ; and the costume drama 
 imitated from the French, with the swashbuckling 
 stories of adventure, to which so many English novel- 
 ists are now devoting their energies, proves that the 
 traditional Spanish type of the sixteenth century still 
 survives, thanks to the boisterous gaiety and vitality 
 which always appeals to youth. 
 
 Spanish literature, in its higher sense, may be dead 
 beyond resurrection, as some critics say, though I, 
 for one, do not believe that it is ; but even if it be, 
 it may still claim to have stamped indelibly its seal 
 upon all the living European literatures of the present 
 and the future. The object of this brief review has 
 been to trace its influence especially upon the 
 development of English letters, and to point out the 
 marks of it that still survive. If I have been success- 
 ful in interesting any number of my readers to the 
 extent of leading them to study in the original the 
 masterpieces of this fine and forceful literature, so long 
 neglected by my countrymen, my efforts will have 
 been richly rewarded. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abdallah ben Al MocafFa, 32. 
 
 Abd el Kamin, 15. 
 
 Abd-er-Rahman i., 11. 
 
 Abd-er- Rahman 11., 11. 
 
 Abd-er-Rahman 111., ii. 
 
 Aben Abaithar, 15. 
 
 Aben Chobair, 16. 
 
 Aben Zoar of Seville, 15. 
 
 Abolays, 28. 
 
 Abraham Ben David, 16. 
 
 Acero de Madrid (of Lope de Vega), 
 
 289. 
 Address to the Protestant Pastors at 
 
 Antwerp (of A. Corro), 237. 
 'Adriano Armado, Don,' in Love's 
 
 Labour 's Lost, 268-74. 
 Adventures of Five Hours (of Tuke), 
 
 29I-95- 
 Alarcon, 287. 
 Alcalde de Zalamea (of Calderon), 
 
 260-63. 
 Alchymist, The, 276-78. 
 Aleman, Mateo, 138, 165, 166, 168-70. 
 Alfonsine Tables (of Alfonso the 
 
 Learned), 27. 
 Alfonso VI., 19. 
 Alfonso the Learned, 21-38, 64, 67, 
 
 68, 69, 70. 
 Alfonso XI., 69, 70. 
 Al Hakam, Caliph, 11, 12, 21. 
 Al Hisham, Caliph, 11. 
 Alldee, E. , his translation of Luis de 
 
 Granada's Meditations, 2.z<i. 
 
 Allen, Cardinal, 232. 
 
 Alvaro de Luna, 86-88. 
 
 Amadis of Gaul, 109-15. 
 
 Answer to the untruths published in 
 
 Spain (of J. Lea), 212. 
 A Pack of Spanish Lies, 211. 
 Apologetic Epistle to Jtronimo Osorio 
 
 {ofW. Haddon), 231. 
 Apophthegms (of Bacon), 61. 
 Arcadia (pi Philip Sidney), 119, 120. 
 Archpriest of Hita (see Ruiz, Juan). 
 Aristotle, 13. 
 Arte de Nav^ar (of Pedro Medina), 
 
 I9S, 196. 
 Arte of Navigation (of R. Eden), 
 
 194, 195- 
 Arte Militar (of Escalante), 209. 
 Arthur, King, 99-107, 116. 
 Artus de Algarve, 114. 
 Astrolabe, The, 28. 
 Astrologo Fingido (of Calderon), 295. 
 Auto de los Reyes Magos, 20 n. , 246. 
 Avempace, 16. 
 Averroes, 13, 16. 
 Avicebron, 11. 
 Avila y Zufiiga, 207. 
 
 Barlaam and Josaphat, 44. 
 Bachelor of Salatnanca (of Le Sage), 
 
 176. 
 Bazan, Alvaro de, Admiral, 211. 
 Beaumont, 265. 
 Bede, 66, 94. 
 
 313 
 
314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Benjamin of Tudela, i6. 
 
 Berceo, Gonzalo de, 23, 24. 
 
 Berners, Lord, 56, 117. 
 
 Better 'tis than it was (of Lord Bris- 
 tol), 283. 
 
 Bibiana, 102, 104, 105. 
 
 Black Prince in Spain, 77-78. 
 
 Blundeville, T., translator of Furio 
 de Ceriol, 243. 
 
 Bocados de Oro, 35. 
 
 Book of Examples (of Clemente San- 
 chez), 37, 44-46. 
 
 Book of Punishments (of Juan 
 Manuel), 43. 
 
 Book of States (of Juan Manuel), 
 
 43-44- 
 Book of the Assumption (of Juan 
 
 Manuel), 43. 
 Book of the Chase (of Juan Manuel), 
 
 43- 
 Book of the Knight and Squire (of 
 
 Juan Manuel), 43. 
 Book of the Three Reasons (of Juan 
 
 Manuel), 45. 
 Bradford, John, 234. 
 Brant6me, 106 n. 
 Breton de los Herreros, 307. 
 Bristol, Earl of, 244, 283. 
 Bryan, Sir Francis, 56. 
 Buenos Proverbios, Libra de, 35. 
 Butler, Samuel, 180. 
 Byron, 307. 
 
 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 260- 
 
 63, 281, 283, 289, 293, 294, 295, 
 
 297. 
 Calistoy Melibea (see Celestina). 
 Canterbury Tales, 25, 37, 47, 51, 
 
 108. 
 Cantigas de Santa Maria (of Alfonso 
 
 the Learned), 28. 
 Cardlula, La (of Lope de Rueda), 
 
 251. 
 
 Carcelde Amor (of San Pedro), 117. 
 Castigos y Documentos (of Sancho the 
 
 Brave), 39-42. 
 Castilian, earliest specimens of, 20, 
 
 23, 25, 26, 27. 
 Castro, Guillem de, 286. 
 Catharine of Aragon, 54, 233. 
 Catharine of Lancaster, Queen of 
 
 Spain, 78, 83, 90, 91. 
 Caxton, 35. 
 
 Celestina, 125-28, 131, 248, 249. 
 Cervantes, Miguel, 139, 140-44, 252, 
 
 253, 276-77, 282. 
 Charles I., 244-45, 279, 283. 
 Charles II., 290. 
 Chaucer, 25, 37, 47, 51, 108. 
 Chief Events of the Monarchy of Spain 
 
 (of Robert Gentilis), 213. 
 Chronicle of Alfonso XL (of Sanchez 
 
 de Tobar), 70-77. 
 Chronicle of Henry IL (of Lopez de 
 
 Ayala), 77-83. 
 Chronicle of Henry VII L, 56. 
 Chronicle of St. Albans, 94. 
 Gibber, Colley, 289. 
 Cicero, 5. 
 
 Cid, The Poem of the, 18, 19, 97. 
 Cid, Le (of Corneille), 285-86, 288. 
 Cientoy Diez Consideraciones (of Juan 
 
 de Vald^s), 241. 
 Coello, 293. 
 Colin Clout, 119. 
 Collection of Simple Remedies (of Aben 
 
 Abaithar), 15. 
 Colonel Jack {oiTitios), 166, 181. 
 Comentarios de las Guerras de Flandes 
 
 (of B. Mendoza), 207. 
 Confessio Amantis (of John Cower), 
 
 S3- 
 Conquista del Peru (of A. de Zarate), 
 
 191. 
 Consejeros de un Principe (of Furio de 
 
 Ceriol), 243. 
 
INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 Constance of Castile, Duchess of Lan- 
 caster, 93. 
 
 Copy of a Letter lately written by a 
 Spanish Gentleman, 212. 
 
 Cordova, learning of, 11-19. 
 
 Corneille, Pierre, 285-89, 296. 
 
 Corral, Pedro de, 90. 
 
 Corro, Antonio, 235, 237. 
 
 Cortegiano, II (of Castiglione), 54. 
 
 Cortes, Martin, 194, 195. 
 
 Cota, Rodrigo de, 247. 
 
 Cueva, Juan de la, 251. 
 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, 290I 
 
 Daniel, John, 237. 
 
 D'Aulnoy, Madame, Travels of, 177. 
 
 David Copperfield, 182. 
 
 Decades, The (of Peter Martyr), 187, 
 191. 
 
 Deceitful Marriage (see Exemplary 
 Novels). 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, 166, i8i. 
 
 Dekker, 275. 
 
 Diablo Cojuelo, El (of Velez de Gue- 
 vara), 174-76. 
 
 Diable, Boiteux Le (of Le Sage), 
 
 175- 
 Dial of Princes (of Guevara), 55, 
 
 242. 
 Diana (of Montemayor), 117, 118, 
 
 267. 
 Dickens, Charles, 182, 311. 
 Dictes and Sayings of the Philoso- 
 phers, 35. 
 Diez de Gamez, Gutierre (his 
 
 chronicle of Don Pedro Nino), 
 
 91-92. 
 Disciplina Clericalis (of Petrus Alfon- 
 
 sus), 44, 47. 
 Discourse of the Navigation, etc. (of 
 
 Frampton), 190. 
 Discovery of Guiana (of Sir Walter 
 
 Raleigh), I97-99- 
 
 Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier (of 
 
 Guevara), 56, 
 Dispuia del Alma y el Cuerpo, 20 n. 
 Dogs' Colloquy (see Exe^nplary 
 
 Novels). 
 Don Lope de Cardona (of Lope de 
 
 Vega), 277. 
 Don Quixote, 178, 180, 181, 182, 276, 
 
 299. 
 Don Sanche d'Aragon (of Corneille), 
 
 288. 
 Dr. Faustus, 275. 
 Dryden, 291, 294, 295, 296, 297. 
 Duchess of Amalfi (of Webster), 277. 
 Dumas, Alexander, 284. 
 Duns Scotus, u. 
 
 Eclogue (of Juan de Encina), 249. 
 Eden, Richard, 186, 187, 191, 194, 
 
 I9S- 
 Edward I. of England, 21. 
 Encina, Juan de, 249. 
 Epistola Consolatoria (of Perez de 
 
 Pineda), 236. 
 Epistles to Elizabeth, Queen of England 
 
 (of Osorio), 230. 
 Escalante, Bernardo, 190, 209. 
 Escondido y la Tapada (of Calderon), 
 
 294. 
 Espejo de Legos, 53. 
 Espejo y Disciplina Militar (of F. de 
 
 Vald&), 208. 
 Espinel, Vicente, 138, 173. 
 Espronceda, 306. 
 Estevanillo Gonzales, i7o-73> I79' 
 Estoria de Espanna (of Alfonso the 
 
 Learned), 25, 64, 67, 68, 69. 
 Estrella de Sevilla, La (of Lope de 
 
 Vega), 2S3-S9, 265. 
 Etymologies, The (of St. Isidore), 8. 
 Euphues, 163, 164, 224. 
 Euphuism, 59, 60, 119, 163, 164, 224, 
 
 225, 226. 
 
3i6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Evening Love (of Dryden), 295. 
 Excellent Comfort for all Christians 
 
 (of J. Daniel), 237. 
 Exemplary Novels (of Cervantes), 
 
 144. 145-51. 276-77- 
 Exalted Faith (of Abraham Ben 
 David), 16. 
 
 Fabian, 95. 
 
 Fabulas Literarias (of T. Yriarte), 
 
 303-4- 
 Fadrique, Prince, 34, 42. 
 Falstafif, 264. 
 Familiar Epistles (of Guevara), 59, 
 
 242. 
 Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 283. 
 Faro de Malta (of Duke of Rivas), 307. 
 Feigned Aunt (see Exemplary Novels). 
 Feijoo, Father, 305. 
 Fenne, 232. 
 Fenton, 237. 
 Ferdinand iv. , 70. 
 Ferdinand, Prince, 39. 
 Fernan Sanchez de Tobar, 69, 70-77. 
 Ferrar, Nicolas, translator of J. 
 
 Vald&, 241. 
 Fielding, 311. 
 
 Fletcher, 265, 276, 277, 278. 
 Force of Blood (see Exemplary 
 
 Novels). 
 Fountain of Life (of Solomon Ben 
 
 Gabirol), 16. 
 Frampton, John, 189-90, 191, 196. 
 Froissart, 93-95. 
 Fuerza del Sino (of the Duke of 
 
 Rivas), 307. 
 Furio de Ceriol, 243. 
 
 Ca/fl/«a (of Cervantes), 140-44. 
 
 Galvez de Montalvan, 141. 
 
 Game of Chess (of Middleton), 275. 
 
 Gardiner, Bishop, 187, 
 Generaciones y Semblanzas (of Perez 
 
 de Guzman), 89. 
 Gentilis, Robert, 213. 
 Gentleman Dancing-Master(oiySlycYi- 
 
 ejley), 297. 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, ^6, 94, 99. 
 George Peek, The Conceited Gestes of, 
 
 129. 
 Geronimo (of Kyd), 277. 
 Gil Bias (of Le Sage), 166, 173-76, 
 
 181, 298. 
 Gilda, 66, 94. 
 
 Godolphin, Sir Francis, 244. 
 Golbourne, John, 236, 
 Golden Ass (of Apuleius), 129. 
 Gonzales de Clavijo, 92. 
 Gothic Kings, History of (by St. 
 
 Isidore), 8. 
 Gothic Kings, History of (of Ximenez 
 
 de la Rada), 20, 23, 64. 
 Goths, the, 5-9. 
 Gower, John, 53. 
 Grande i General Estoria (of Alfonso 
 
 the Learned), 25. 
 Gran TacaHo (of Quevedo), 138, 165, 
 
 178, 179. 
 Great Tamerlane, Life and Deeds of 
 
 (of Gonzales de Clavijo), 92. 
 Grenville, Sir Richard, 210. 
 Guerra de Alemania (of Avila y 
 
 Zuniga), 207. 
 Guerra de Granada (of Diego Hur- 
 
 tado de Mendoza), 207. 
 Guerras Civiles de Granada (of Perez 
 
 de Hita), 207. 
 Guevara, Antonio de, SS-62, 119, 
 
 163, 196, 224, 242. 
 Guia de Pecadores (of Fray Luis de 
 
 Granada), 227-29. 
 Guide to those perplexed, etc. (of 
 
 Maimonides), 14. 
 Guinevere, Queen, 105, 106. 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Guzman de Alfarache (of Mateo Ale- 
 man), 138, 144, 165, 166, 168-70, 
 173. 176, 179. 182. 
 
 Guzman el Bueno (of Moratin), 303. 
 
 Haddon, Dr. Walter, 230, 231. 
 
 Hadrian, 5. 
 
 Hakluyt, 201-5, 
 
 Hardy, 285. 
 
 Heigham, J. (his translation of Luis 
 
 de Granada's Mtditations), iz% 
 
 229. 
 Hellowes, Edward, 196, 242. 
 Henry 11. (of Trastaraara), 77-83. 
 Henry in., 83. 
 
 Henry V. of Shakespeare, 267. 
 Henry vil., 115. 
 Herbert, George, 241. 
 Hernani (of V. Hugo), 307. 
 Historia de las Indias (of Lopez de 
 
 Gomara), 191, 197-99, 204. 
 Historia General de las Indias (of 
 
 Oviedo), 187. 
 Historia Medicinal, etc. (of Monar- 
 
 des), 190. 
 Hoby, Sir Edward, 209. 
 Holy Grail, the, 99-107. 
 Hopkins, Richard, 225, 229. 
 Httckleberry Finn, 183. 
 Htidibras (of Samuel Butler), 180. 
 Humphry C/««/5«r (of Smollett), 182. 
 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 132, 
 
 207. 
 Hyrde, Richard, 54, 233. 
 
 Illustrious Scrubbing-Maid (see Ex- 
 emplary Novels'). 
 
 Inquisition, attacks upon, by Gonzales 
 Montano, 238. 
 
 Instruction of Christian Women (of 
 J. Luis Vives), S4, 233. 234- 
 
 Introduction to Wisdom (of J. Luis 
 Vives), ss, 234. 
 
 Isidore, Saint, Archbishop of Seville, 
 
 8,9. 
 Isla, Father, 305. 
 
 Jack Wilton (of T. Nash), 164-66, 
 180, 181. 
 
 James, G. P. R., 309. 
 
 Japhet in Search of a Father, 182. 
 
 Jealous Estremenean (see Exemplary 
 Novels). 
 
 Jehova, a Free Pardon for all Sin- 
 ners (of J. Daniel), 237. 
 
 Jew of Malta (of Marlowe), 275. • 
 
 John of Gaunt, 78, 90, 91. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 154, 265, 276, 277-7S. 
 
 Josaphat= Buddha, 44. 
 
 Joseph Andrews (of Fielding), 181. 
 
 Jovellanos, 305. 
 
 Joyfull Newes out of the Newefounde 
 W(!?-/i^(of Frampton), 190. 
 
 J^uan II., Chronicle of, S3-88. 
 
 Juan de Avila, 217-19, 224. 
 
 Juan de la Cruz, 219, 220. 
 
 Juan Manuel, Prince, 42-51, 69. 
 
 Judah Ben Levi, 16. 
 
 Jusuf, Poem of, 23. 
 
 Juvencus, 8. 
 
 Kalila and Dimna, 32, 33, 34, 37, 47. 
 Keith Falconer, Mr. ,33. 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle, 276. 
 Kyd, 277. 
 
 Lady Cornelia(steExemplary Novels). 
 Lady of Babylon, 275. 
 L' Amour Midecin (of Moliere), 290. 
 La Petimetra (of N. Moratin), 303. 
 Lapidarios (of Arbolays, adapted by 
 
 Alfonso the Learned), 28. 
 Las Casas, Bishop, 192. 
 La Sphera Redonda, 28. 
 Lazarillo de Tormes, 132-38, 144, 
 
 157, 164, 166-68, 169, 170, 173, 
 
 176, 179. ■ 
 
3i8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Legacy (of Sir Francis Walsingham), 
 
 6i. 
 Leicester's Commonwealth, 233. 
 Le Misanthrope, 297. 
 Le Sage, 166, 173-81. 
 L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 179. 
 Liberal Lover (iet Exemplary Novels). 
 Libro de Alexandre, 23. 
 Lihro de Cantares (of Juan Ruiz, 
 
 Archpriest of Hita), 124. 
 Libro de los Gates (of Odo of Clieri- 
 
 ton), SI-S3- 
 Libro del Paso Honroso, 92. 
 Licentiate of Glass (see Exemplary 
 
 Novels). 
 Little Gipsy (see Exemplary Novels). 
 Loarte, Gaspar de (his Mystery of the 
 
 Sosary), 232. 
 Lobeyra, Vasco de, 1 10. 
 Londoflo, Sancho de, 208. 
 Lonelich, Thomas, 103. 
 Looking Glasse of the Court, 56. 
 Lope de Rueda, 250, 251. 
 Lopez de Ayala, 36, 77-83, 89, 93. 
 Lopez de Gomara, 191, 197, 198, 
 
 199, 204. 
 Lopez de Mendoza Ifligo (see Santil- 
 
 lana. Marquis). 
 Lopez, Dr. Ruy, 274, 275. 
 Louis XIII., 282. 
 Louis XIV., 282. 
 Love for Lovers Sake (of Sir R. Fan- 
 
 shawe), 283. 
 Love's Labour 's Lost, 268-74. 
 Lucan, 5-6. 
 Lucanor, Count, 37, 42, 44, 46-51, 
 
 130, 267. 
 Lucidario (of Sancho the Brave), 
 
 38. 
 Luis de Granada, Fray, 216, 224, 
 
 225-29, 236. 
 Luis de Leon, Fray, 219, 220, 221. 
 Lull, Ramon, 13, 14, 15. 
 
 Luna, Juan de, his sequel to Lazar- 
 
 illo, 167, 168. 
 L.ying Lover, The (of Steele), 287-88, 
 
 297. 
 Lyly, John, 60, 163, 164, 224. 
 
 Mabbe, James, 127, 169. 
 
 Macbeth, 265. 
 
 Maestro de Danzar (of Calderon), 
 297. 
 
 Magnetic Needle, Account of {of Gvie- 
 vara), 196. 
 
 Mahomed aben Quich, 28. 
 
 Malory, T., 106, 108, 157. 
 
 Man in Love and the Contented 
 Woman, early Spanish drama, 247. 
 
 Marcos de Obregon (of Vicente Espi- 
 nel), 138, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 5. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, Golden Book of(oi 
 Guevara), 55-62. 
 
 Mar de Historias (of Perez de Guz- 
 man), 89. 
 
 Mark Twain, 183. 
 
 Marlowe, 275. 
 
 Marryat, Captain, 182. 
 
 Martial, 6. 
 
 Massinger, 265, 277. 
 
 Matthew of Westminster, 94. 
 
 Maxims for the Guidance of his Son 
 (of Lord Burghley), 61. 
 
 Maxims of State (of Botero), 54. 
 
 Maxims of State (of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh), 61. 
 
 Mayans y Siscar, 305. 
 
 Mldecin malgri Lui (of MoliJre), 289. 
 
 Medina, Pedro, 195, 196. 
 
 Meditaciones (of Fray Luis de Gran- 
 ada), 225-29. 
 
 Mejor esid que estaba (of Calderon), 
 283. 
 
 Memorial de la Vida Cristiana (of 
 Fray Luis de Granada), 225. 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Mendoza, Bernardino, 207, 209, 212. 
 
 Menendez Pelayo, 217. 
 
 Afenteur, Le (of CorneiUe), 287-88. 
 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 274, 275. 
 
 Merlin, 99-107, 109. 
 
 Merry Tales (of Skelton), 129. 
 
 Middleton, 275, 277. 
 
 Midshipman Easy, 182. 
 
 Mingo Revulgo, 248. 
 
 Mirror of Laws, The (of Alfonso the 
 
 Learned), 27. 
 Miseries of Infant Marriage (of G. 
 
 Wilkins), 153, 276. 
 Mocedades del Cid(oi Castro), 286. 
 Mojigata, La (of L. Moratin), 306. 
 Moliere, 288-96. 
 
 Moll Flanders (oi Tl&he), 166, 181. 
 Monardes, N., 190. 
 Montano, Gonzales, 238-40. 
 Monte Crista, 309. 
 Montemayor, George de, 117, 118, 
 
 119, 120. 
 Moral Proverbs (of Sem Tob), 36. 
 Moratin, Leandro, 305, 306. 
 Moratin, Nicolas, 303. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 54. 
 Morte d^ Arthur (of Malory), 106 «., 
 
 108, IIS, IS7- 
 Moryson, Sir Richard, 54, 55, 234. 
 Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), 
 
 14. 
 Much Ado about Nothing, 167. 
 Munday, Anthony, 116. 
 Mystery of the Rosary (of Fenne), 232. 
 
 Names of Christ, The (of Fray Luis 
 
 de Leon), 220, 221. 
 Nash, T., 164, 165. 
 Navarro's company of players visit 
 
 England in 1635, 279, 284. 
 Nicholas, Thomas, 191. 
 Nichols, 192. 
 
 Niiio, Don Pedro, Count de Buelna, 
 
 chronicle of, 91-92. 
 Nonjuror, The, 289. 
 
 Odo of Cheriton, Si-53- 
 
 Office of Sergeant-Major, The, 208. 
 
 Olivares, Count Duke of, 177. 
 
 Orbe Novo (of Peter Martyr), 200. 
 
 Orosius, 8. 
 
 Osorio, Bishop, 230, 231, 234. 
 
 Oviedo, 187. 
 
 Pablo el Buscon (see Gran TacaRo). 
 Palmerin de Inglaterra, 114, 116. 
 Palmerin de Oliva, 1 14. 
 Pamela (of Richardson), 181. 
 Pastor de Filida (of Montalvan), 141. 
 Patronio, Book a/' (see Lucanor). 
 Paul of Segovia, 179. 
 Pidantjoui, 290. 
 Pendragon, 102. 
 Peor estd que estaba (of Calderon) 
 
 283. 
 Peregrine Pickle, \ 82. 
 Perez, Antonio, 61, 62, 241, 268-74. 
 Perez de Guzman, Fernan, 89-91. 
 Perez de Hita, 207. 
 Perez de Pineda, Juan, 235, 236. 
 Perez Galdos, B., 310. 
 Perro de Hortelano, 289. 
 Persons, Dr. Robert, 232. 
 Peter Martyr Angleria, 187, 191, 
 
 200, 204. 
 Peter the Cruel, 77-83, 93. 
 Petrus Alfonsus (Rabbi Moses Se- 
 
 phardi), 44. 
 Pharsalia of Lucan, 6. 
 Philip II., 114, 186, 187, 207, 235, 
 
 237, 243' 
 Philip III., 281. 
 Philip IV., 266, 282, 289, 290. 
 Phillips, Ambrose, 121. 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Picara Justina, La, 170, 179. 
 
 Picaro (see Guzman de Alfarache). 
 
 Pickwick, 182. 
 
 Pilpay, Fables of, 32. 
 
 Pistol, the Ancient, 267. 
 
 Plain Dealer (of Wycherley), 297. 
 
 Pleasant History of the Conquest of 
 
 the fTfj^ /«(f2« (of Nicholas), 191. 
 Poridad de Poridades, 35. 
 Porter, Endymion, 244. 
 Portia, 265. 
 
 Prince, The (of Machiavelli), 54. 
 Principal Navigations (of Hakluyt), 
 
 201-5. 
 Proverbios (of Santillana), 36, 37. 
 Prudentius, 8. 
 Ptolemy's tables, 28. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book, 234. 
 Queen of Corinth (see Exemplary 
 
 Novels). 
 Quentin Durward, 309. 
 Querer por solo querer (of Antonio 
 
 de Mendoza), 283. 
 Quevedo, 61, 138, 178-79, 289, yaa. 
 Quintana, 306. 
 Quintilian, 6. 
 Quixote, Don, 114, 140, 144, 146, 
 
 I49-SS- 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 196-200. 
 Rigime of the Solitary (of Avempace), 
 
 16. 
 Rehearsal, The, 296. 
 Reina Casiodoro, 236. 
 Revenge, fight of the, 2io. 
 Rhymes that old women tell in the 
 
 Chimney -corner {ol Santillana), 37. 
 Richard of Cirencester, 94. 
 Rimado de Palacio (Lopez de Ayala), 
 
 36, 109, 124. 
 Rinconetey Cortadillo {ssi Exemplary 
 
 Novels). 
 
 Rivas, Duke of, 306, 307. 
 
 Rivers, Lord, 35. 
 
 Road to Perfection (of Santa Teresa), 
 
 223. 
 Robinson Crusoe, 181. 
 Roderick Random (of Smollett), 182. 
 Rodriguez de Lena, 92. 
 Rojas, Fernando de, 248. 
 Roman de Brute, 99. 
 Romans, the, 4-7. 
 Round Table, 114. 
 Rowland, David, of Anglesey, 138, 
 
 164, 166, 167. 
 Rowley, 277. 
 Ruiz, Juan (Archpriest of Hita), 36, 
 
 109, 124, 125, 126. 
 Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (of 
 
 Fletcher), 278. See also Exemplary 
 
 Novels. 
 Ruy Bias, 177. 
 
 St. Ferdinand, King, 19, 20, 23. 
 St. Joseph of Arimathea, 99, 100, 
 
 103. 
 Sanazzaro's Arcadia, 141. 
 Sanchez, Clemente, 44. 
 Sancho the Brave, 38, 39, 42, 69-75. 
 Sandford and Merton, 39. 
 Sangreal, The (of Thomas Lonelich), 
 
 103. 
 Santa Teresa, 219, 222. 
 Santillana, Marquis de, 36, 37, 38. 
 Saracen Chronicle, 90. 
 Satyricon (oi Vetioniyxs), 128. 
 Saxon Chronicles, 65-67, 94. 
 Scarron, 252. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 182, 307, 309. 
 Sem Tob, Rabbi, 36, 37. 
 Seneca the elder, 5. 
 Seneca the younger, 5, 31. 
 Sentimental Journey , 182. 
 Serf of the Danube, 57. 
 Sergas de Espalandrin, 114. 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 Sergeant - Major, The (of John 
 
 Thorius), 208. 
 Seven Sages, Book of, 34. - 
 Shakespeare, 118, 119, 166, 167, 
 
 263, 264, 266, 267-74. 
 Shelton's translation of Quixote, 154, 
 
 276. 
 Shepherdess Felisinena (of Monte- 
 mayor), 118, 267. 
 Shepherds Calendar, 119. 
 Shirley, 277. 
 Shylock, 274. 
 
 Si de las Ninas (of L. Moratin), 306. 
 Sidney, Philip, 119, 120. 
 Siete Partidas, the (of Alfonso the 
 
 Learned), 26-27, 247. 
 Silent Woman, 276. 
 Sindabad, 32, 34. 
 Sir Galahad, 106. 
 Sir Lancelot, 104, 105, 106. 
 Sir Martin Mar-all (of Dryden), 
 
 297. 
 Skinner, Vincent, translator of 
 
 Montano, 238. 
 Skoggin's Gestes (of Andrew Borde), 
 
 129, 158-61. 
 Smollett, T., 181-82. 
 Solomon Ben Gabirol, 16, 216. 
 Spanish Colony, The (of Nichols), 
 
 192, 
 Spanish Curate, The (of Fletcher), 
 
 277. 
 Spanish Englishzvoman (see Ex- 
 emplary Novels). 
 Spanish Gipsy (see Exemplary 
 
 Novels). 
 Spanish Libertines, The, 170. 
 Spanish Sharper, The (of Captain 
 
 Stevens), 179. 
 Spanish Tragedy (of Kyd), 277. 
 Stanley Weyman, 284. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 287, 297, 
 Stevens, Captain John, 170, 179. 
 
 Strange and Marvellous News (of 
 
 Nicholas), 191. 
 Supplication to . . . Prince Philip, 
 
 King of Spain (of A. Corro), 237. 
 Swift, Dean, 179. 
 
 Tales abu Hamid Algarnati, 16. 
 
 Talmud, I J. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, The, 47-50, 
 
 260, 267. .• 
 Tapp, John, London publisher, 194, 
 
 195- 
 Tartuffe, 289. 
 Teorica y Practica de la Guerra (of 
 
 B. Mendoza), 209. 
 The Chances (see Exemplary Novels). 
 Three Musketeers (of Dumas), 284, 
 
 309- 
 Til Eulenspiegel (oiT . Murner), 129. 
 Til Owl-glass, 129. 
 Tom Cringles Log, 183. 
 Toreno, Count, 306. 
 Torres Naharro, B., 249, 250. 
 Tricks and Wiles of Women, 34. 
 Tristan de Lyonesse,' fo6, 109. 
 Tristram Shandy, 182. 
 Tuke, Sir Samuel, 291-95. 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 119, 267. 
 Two Treatises (of C. de Valera), 
 
 236. 
 
 Valdes, Antonio, 235. 
 Valdfe, Francisco de, 208. 
 Valdes, Juan, 235, 241, 242. 
 Valera, Cipriano de, 235, 236, 237. 
 Vega Carpio, Lope de, 252-59, 277, 
 
 281, 285, 287, 293, 300. 
 Velez de Guevara, Luis, 1 74-76. 
 Verdad Sospechosa, La (of Alarcon), 
 
 287-88. 
 Versos de Arte Mayor (of Alfonso the 
 
 Learned), 28. 
 Victor Hugo, 177, 307-9. 
 
 X 
 
322 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ^ Vida es Suena, La, 260, 265. 
 Visions, 7',4« (of Quevedo), 179. 
 Vives, J. Luis, 54, 55, 230, 233, 
 234- 
 
 Wace, Richard, 99. 
 
 Wadsworth, James, 168, 212. 
 
 Waldegrave, his translation of Luis 
 de Granada's Meditations, 225. 
 
 Walter of Malmesbury, 66, 94. 
 
 Wars of Philip IV. (of Malvezzi)> 
 213. 
 
 Wars of the Commoners (of J. Wads- 
 worth), 213. 
 
 Widow Edyth, The Twelve Merry 
 Gestes of {ai ^mifCa), 129. 
 
 WifTen, Mr., 241, 242. 
 
 Wilkinson, John, 207. 
 
 Worse and Worse (of Lord Bristol), 
 
 283. 
 Wycherley, 296, 297. 
 
 XiMENEZ de la Rada, Rodrigo, 20, 
 23, 64. 
 
 Yad-ha-Hazakah (of Maimonides), 
 
 14- 
 Young Admiral, The (of Shirley), 
 
 277. 
 Young, Bartholomew, 118, 119, 120. 
 Your Five Gallants (of Middleton), 
 
 153. 276. 
 Yriarte, T., 303. 
 
 Zapaiero y el Rey (of Zorilla), 307. 
 Zarate, A. de, 191. 
 Zorilla, Ruiz, 307. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at tile Edinburgll University Press