^J.l HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. VOL. II. HISTORY SPANISH LITERATURE. GEORGE TICKNOR. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. StXTH AAIERICAN EDITION, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED. BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Copyriglit, 1SC3, bt ticknor and fields Copyright, UTl, By anna TICKNOH. Copyright, ISid, By anna E. ticknor. Al! rights reserved. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. SECOND PERIOD ( CONTINUED. ) CHAPTEK V Didactic Poetri AND Pki Early Didactic Poetry . 3 Luis de Escobar 4 Alonso de Corelas . 5 Gonzalez de la Torre 5 Didactic Prose . . 6 Francisco de Villalobos . 6 Eernan Perez de Oliva . 9 Juan de Sedeiio 11 Cervantes de Salazar . . 11 Luis Mexia .... 11 Pedro de XavaiTa . 12 Pedro Mexia .... 12 (Jeroninio de Urrea . 13 Palacios Rubios 15 Alexio de Vanegas . 15 .Juan de Avila 15 Antonio de Guevara .... 15 His Relox de Principes . 16 His D^cada de los Cfearcs . 18 His Epistolas 19 His other Works 20 The Dialogo de las Leufruas . 21 Its probable Author .... 22 State of the Castilian Langiiage from the Time of Juan de Mena 25 Contributions to it . 25 Dictionaries and Grammars 26 The Language formed 27 The Dialects 2S The Pure Castilian .... 28 CHAPTER VI. Historical Litkratcre. Chronicling Period gone by Antonio do Guevara Florian de Ocampo Pero Mexia -*.ccounts of the Xew World Fernando Cortes Francisco Lopez de Gomara Bemal Diaz Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo . . SS His Historia de las Indias . . 39 His Quinquagenas . . . .42 Bartolom(5 de las Casa« ... 42 His Brevlsima Relacion . . .45 His Historia de las Indias . , 46 Vaca, Xerez, and Carate . . .47 Approach to Regular Histoiy . . 48 CHAPTER VII. Theatre in the Time of Charles the Fifth, and during the First Part- OF the Reign of Philip the Second. Drama opposed by the Church Inquisition mterferes Religious Dramas continued Secular Plays, CastUlejo, Oliva 49 Juan de Paris 49 Jaume de Huete 50 ; Agostin Ortiz 51 Popular Drama attempted 62 54 55 VI CONTENTS. T.ope de RueJa .... . 56 His Two Dialogues in Verse . 63 His Four Conieduu . 57 His insufficient Apparatus 64 Los EiigaTios .... 5" He begins the Popular Drama . . 66 Medora 58 .Tuan de Timoneda . 66 Kufeinia ..... . 58 His Cornelia .... . 67 Armeliua .... 58 His Menennos .... 68 His Two Pastoral Colloquies . 59 His Blind Beggars . 68 His Ten Pasos G2 CHAPTKl! VIII. The.\ti:e, coxfLLnKi). Followers of Lope de Rneda Alonso de la Vega, Cisneros . Attempts at Seville Juaii de la Cuevsi . Romero de Zepeda Attempts at Valencia Cristoval de ^'irues Translations from the Ancients Villalobos, Oliva . Boscan, AbriL .... (Jcronimo Bermudez . Lupercio de Argensola Spanish Drama to this Time The Attempts to form it few . The Appai-atus imperfect . Connection with the Hospitals Court-yards in Madrid Dramas have no uniform Character A Xational Drama demanded 78 80 83 83 84 87 CHAPTER IX. Luis DE Leon. Religious Element in Spanish Litera- ture Luis de Leon His Birth and Training Professor at Salamanca . His Version of Solomon's Song . His Persecution for it . . . Summoned before the Inquisition Imprisoned ..... Judgment 94 Return to Salamanca . . 96 89 Work on the Canticles . 97 89 His Names of Christ . . 98 89 His Perfect Wife . 100 90 His Exposition of Job . . 100 91 His Death . . . . . 101 91 His Poetry .... . 102 92 His Translations 103 93 His Original Poetrj' . . 104 94 His Character . . . . 106 CH APT Kit X. Miguel de Cbrv^vntes Saavedra. His Family His Birth His F.ducatioJi . His first published Verses Goes to Ital}' Becomes a Soldier Fights at Lepanto And at Tunis . Is captured at Sea Is H Slave at Algiers His cniid (;;iiitivitv . 107 His Release .... 114 108 1 His desolate Condition . 115 109 Serves in Portugal. 116 10:) His Oalatea .... . 116 110 His Marriage .... 119 no His Literary P'riends . . 120 111 His First Dramas . ... 120 112 His Trato de Argel . . 122 112 His Xumantia 125 112 Character of these Dramas . 131 113 CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER XI. Cervantes, continued. He goes to Seville . 132 His Life tliere . . . . 133 Asks Employment in America . . 133 Short Poems 134 Tradition from La Manclia . 135 He goes to Valladolid . 136 First Part of Don Quixote . 137 He goes to Madrid . . . . 137 Relations with Poets there . 138 With Lope de \'ega .... 13H His Novelas I4i) His Viage al Parnaso . . . 145 His Adjunta 146 His Eight Comedias .... 148 His Eight Entrenieses . . . 151 Second Part of Don Quixote . . 154 His Sickness 155 His Death 156 CHAPTER XII. Cervantes, concluded. His Persiles y Sigismunda . . 158 His Don Quixote, First Part . 161 His Purpose in writing it . . . 162 Passion for Romances of Chivalry 164 He destroys it 165 Character of the First Part . . 166 Avellaneda's Second Part . . . 168 Its Character 169 Cervantes' s Satire on it . . . 170 His own Second Part . . . 171 Its Character 172 Don Quixote and Sancho . . . 173 Blemishes in the Don Quixote . 175 Its Merits and Fame .... 178 Claims of Cervantes . . . 178 CHAPTER XIII. Lope Felix de Vega Carpio. His Birth . 180 His Education . . . . 181 A Soldier . 183 Patronized by Manrique 183 Bachelor at Alcala . . 183 His Dorothea .... 184 Secretary to Alva . 184 His Arcadia .... 185 Marries . 187 Is exiled for a Duel 188 Life at Valencia .... . 188 Establishes himself at JIadrid 189 Death of his Wife Serves in the Armada . ]\Iarries again His Children . Death of his Sons Death of his Wife . Becomes a Priest His Poem of San Isidro His Hermosura de Angelica His Dragontea His Peregrine en su Patria His Jerusalen Conquistada 189 190 192 192 193 193 194 195 19S 201 203 204 CHAPTER XIV. Lope de Vega, continued. His Relations with the Church 207 His Pastores de Belen . 207 Various Works . . . . 209 Beatification of San Isidro . 210 Canonization of San Isidro . 214 Tome de Burguillos . . 215 His Gatomachia . . . . 215 Various Works .... . 216 His Novelas 217 He acts as an Inquisitor His Religious Poetry His Corona Tragica . His Laurel de Apolo His Dorotea His Last Works His Illness and Death His Burial His Will . 218 219 220 221 222 222 223 224 225 YlU CONTENTS. C'HAPTEU XV. Lope dk Vega, continued. ■Hi> Miscellaneous 'U'orks Their Character Hi-; earliest Dramas . At Valencia . State of the Theatre . Kl Verdadero Aniaute . El Pastoral de Jacinto His Mijral Plays The Soul's Voyage The Prodigal Son . The Marriage of the Soul The Theatre at Madrid . His published Dramas . 227 Their jireat Number . . 239 228 His Dramatic Purpose . 241 . 229 Varieties in his Plays . 243 230 Comedias de Capa y Espada . 243 . 231 Their Character • . • . 244 232 Their Number 245 . 233 El Azero de Madrid . . 245 233 La Noche de San Juan . 249 . 234 Festival of the Count Duke . 353 235 La Boba para los Otros . 254 . 236 El Premio del Bien Hablar . 255 238 Various Plays 255 . 238 CHAFTt K XVI. Comedias Heroicas . Roma Abrasada EI Principe Perfeto . El Nuevo Mundo . El Castigo sin Venganza Lope de Vega, contixued. 257 258 260 264 266 La Estrella de Sevilla . . . 270' National Subjects .... 271 Various Plays .... 271 Character of the Heroic Drama . 273 CHAPTER XVII. Lope de Vega, continued. Dramas on Common Life . El Cuerdo en Casa La Donzella Teodor . Cautivos de Argel . Three Classes of Secular Plays The Influence of the Church . Religious Plays . . . . Plays founded on the Bible . El Nacimiento de Christo . Other such Plays . Comedi.as de Santos . Several such Plays 275 San Isidro de Madrid . 290 275 Autos Sacramentales 292 277 Festival of the Corpus Christi . . 293 279 Number of Lope's Autos 295 281 Their Form .... . 296 281 Their Loas .... 297 282 Their Entremeses . 297 283 The Autos themselves . 299 283 Lope's Secular Entremeses . 301 287 Popular Tone of his Drama . 302 288 His Eclogues .... . 303 289 CHAPTER XVIII. Lope de Vega, concluded. Variety in the Forms of his Dramas Characteristics of all of them Personages Dialogue Irregular i'lots Hi'turv di-rcgarded 305 Geography. . 308 305 Morals .... 309 306 Dramatized Novelle . . 309 306 Comic Underplot . . 310 306 Graciosos .... . 311 307 Poetical Stvle 312 Various Measures Hallnd Poetry in tliem . I'opular Air of everything His Success at Home His Success abroad . CONT . 318 ENTS. U\^ large Income . IX 318 313 Still he is Poor .... . 318 . 315 Great Amount of his Works . 319 31G Spirit of Improvisation . 320 . 316 Birth anil Training . . 322 Exile 323 Public Service in Sicily . 324 In Naples . . • . 324 Persecution at Home. . 325 ]\Iarries 325 Persecution again . 325 His Sufferings and Death 327 Variety of his Works . 327 Many suppressed . 327 His Poetry . 328 CHAPTEPt XIX. Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas. Its Characteristics . Cultismo El Bachiller de la*Torre His Prose Works Paul the Sharper . Various Tracts . The Knight of the Forceps La Fortuna con Seso . Visions . Quevedo's Character CHAPTER XX. The DRAjrA of Lope's School. Madrid the Capital . Its Effect on the Drama Damian de Vegas Francisco de Tarrega His Enemiga Favorable Gaspar de Aguilar His Mercader Amante His Suerte sin Esperanza Guillen de Castro His Dramas . His Mai Casados His Don Quixote . His Piedad y .Justicia His Santa Barbara His Mocedades del Cid . 345 Corneille's Cid . . . . 346 Guillen's Cid .... . 346 Other Plays of Guillen . 347 Luis Velez de Guevara . 348 Mas pesa el Rey que la Sangi-e 349 Other Plays of Guevara . . 349 .Juan Perez de Montalvan 351 His San Patricio . 352 His Orfeo 353 His Dramas .... . 354 His Amantes de Teruel 354 His Don Carlos .... . 355 His Autos ..... 355 His Theory of the Drama . . 357 His Success CHAPTER XXI. Drama of Lope's School, concluded. Tirso del Molina His Dramas . His Burlador de Sevilla His Don Gil . His Vergonzoso en Palacio His Theory of the Drama Antonio Mira de Mescua . His Dramas and Poems Joseph de Valdivielso 379 379 380 381 383 386 386 387 His Autos His Religious Dramas Antonio de Mendoza Ruiz de Alarcon His Dramas . His Texedor de Segovia His Verdad Sospechosa . Other Plays Belmonle, Cordero X CONTEXTS. Kiiriiiuez, Villaizan . S:iiiarrios . 499 Diamante . 499 ilonteser, Cuellar . 500 Juan de la Hoz .... . 501 Juan de Matos Fragoso . 502 Sebastian de Villaviciosa Antonio de SoKs Francisco Banzes C-andamo Zarzuelas . Opera at Madrid Antonio de Zamora . Lanini, Martinez . Rosete, Villegas Joseph de Canizares Decline of the Drama Vera y Villaroel Inez de la Cruz . Tellez de Azevedo Old Drama of Lope and of Calderon 502 . 504 10 . . 500 . 508 509 . 510 511 . 511 511 . 5i:j 514 . 514 514 f Calderon 514 CHAPTER XXVI. Nationality of the Drama . The Autor of a Company Relations with the Dramatists Actors, their Number . The most distinguished Their Character and hard Life Exhibitions in the Daytime Poor Scenery and Properties The Stage .... The Audience The Mosqueteros The Gradas, and Cazuela The Aposentos . Entrance-money Rudeness of the Audiences Honors to the Authors . Play-bills .... Old Theatre. . 515 Titles of Plays 526 516 Representations .... . 527 . 516 Loa 527 518 Ballad . 528 . 519 First .Jornada 529 520 First Entremes .... . 530 . 522 Second Jornada and Entremes 531 522 Third Jornada and Sajmete . 531 . 523 Dancing .... 531 523 Ballads . 532 . 523 Xacaras .... 532 524 Zarabandas .... . 5G3 . 524 Popular Character of the Drama 534 525 Great Number of Authors . 53.3 . 525 Royal Patronage . 53? 526 Great Number of Dramas . 538 . 526 All National .... 539 CHAPTER XXVII. ISTORICAI. AND NARRATIVE POEMS. Old Epic Tendencies .... 541 Galn-iel Lasso de la Vega . . 555 Revived in the Time of Charles the Antonio de Saavedra 555 Fiftli 542 Juan de Castellanos . 555 Hieronimo Sempere 542 Centenera .... 556 Luis de Capata 543 Caspar de Villagra . 557 Diego Ximenez de Ayllon 544 Religious NaiTative Poems . 558 Hippolito Sanz 544 Hernandez Blasco . 558 Espinosa and Coloma . 545 Giibriel de Mata 558 Alonso de Ercilla .... 545 Cristoval de Virues . . 558 His Araucana .... 548 His Monserrate 559 Diego de Osorio 552 Nicholas Bravo .... . 560 Pedro de Ofia .... 554 Joseph de Valdivielso . 560 xu CONTEXTS. Diego de Hojeda . 561 Hernando Dominguez Camargo . o6a His Christiada . . . . . 561 Juan de Encisso y iIon(;on . 563 Alonso Diaz .... 562 Imaginative Epics . . . . 564 Antonio de Escobar . . 562 Orlando Fnrioso . 564 Alonso de Azevcdo 562 Nicolas Espinosa . . . . 564 Caiidivilla Santaren . . 562 Martin de Holea 567 Kodrijiuez de Vargas 563 Garrido de ^'illena 567 •Facobo L'ziel . . . . . 563 Agustin Alonso .... . 567 Sebastian de Nieva Calvo 563 Luis Harahona de Soto . 568 Diiran Vivas . . • . . 563 His Liigrimas de Angdlica . 568 •Uian Davila .... 563 Bernardo de Balbuena . 569 Autouio Enriquez Gomez . . 563 His Bernardo .... . 569 CHAPTER XXVllI. Subjects from Antiquity Boscan, Vendoza, Silvestre Montemayor, Villegas I'erez, Romero de Cepeda Fabulas, Gongora Villaniediana, Pantaleon Moucayo, Villalpando ^liscellaneous Subjects . Yague de Salas . Miguel de Silveira . Fr. Lopez de Zarate . Mock-heroic Poems Cosme de Aldana Cintio Merctisso X'illaviciosa (iatomachia . Heroic Poems . AL A>D Nai:i:ative I'oiois, concluded. , 571 Don John of Austria 582 e . 571 Hicronimo de Cortereal . 583 . 571 Juan Iiufo .... 584 572 Pedro de la Vezilla . . 585 . 573 Miguel Giner .... 586 573 Duarte Diaz .... . 586 . 573 Lorenzo de Zamora 586 574 Christovul de Jlesa . . 587 . 574 Juan de la Cueva . 588 576 Alfonso Lopez, El Pinciano . 589 . 576 Francisco Mosquera 590 577 Vasconcellos .... . 590 . 578 Bernarda Ferreira 591 579 Antonio de Vera y Figueroa . 592 . 580 Borja y Ivsquilache 592 581 Rise of Heroic Poetry . 594 . 581 Its Decline .... 595 HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. SECOND PERIOD. THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION ; OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF' THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH. (CONTINUED.) HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. SECOND PERIOD. (continued.) CHAPTEE V. niD.A.CTIC POETRY. LUIS DE ESCOBAR. COREL.A.S. TORRE. DIDACTIC PROSE. VILLALOBOS. OLIVA. .SEDENO. SALAZAE. LUIS MEXIA. PEDRO MEXIA. NAVARRA. UREEA. PALACIOS RUBIOS. VANEGAS. JUAN DE AVILA. ANTONIO DE GUEVARA. DIALOGO DE LAS LENGUAS. PROGRESS OF THE CASTILIAN FROM THE TIME OF JOHN THE SECOND TO THAT OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES THE FIFTH. While an Italian spirit, or at least an observance of Italian forms, was beginning so decidedly to prevail in Spanish lyric and pastoral poetry, what was didactic, whether in prose or verse, took directions somewhat different. In didactic poetry, among other forms, the old one of question and answer, known from the age of Juan de Mena, and found in the Cancioneros as late as Bada- joz, continued to enjoy much favor. Originall}^, such questions seem to have been riddles and witticisms; but in the sixteenth century they gradually assumed a graver character, and at last claimed to be directly and absolutely didactic, constituting a form in which two remarkable books of light and easy verse were pro- duced. The first of these books is called " The Four Hundred Answers to as many Questions of the Illus- trious Don Fadrique Enriquez, the Admiral of Castile, 4 DIDACTIC POETllY. [Pkuiod II. and other Persons." ^ It was printed three *4 times in 1545, the year * in which it first ap- peared, and had undoubtedly a great success in the class of society to which it was addressed, and whose manners and opinions it strikinglj^ illustrates. It con- tains at least twenty thousand verses, and was followed, in 1552, by another similar volume, chiefly in prose, and promising a third, which, however, was never published. Except five hundred proverbs, as they are inappropriately called, at the end of the first volume, and fifty glosses at the end of the second, the whole consists of such ingenious questions as a distinguished old nobleman in the reign of Charles the Fifth and his friends might imagine it would amuse or instruct them to have solved. They are on subjects as various as possible, — religion, morals, history, medicine, magic, — in short, whatever could occur to idle and curious minds ; but they were all sent to an acute, good-hu- mored Minorite friar, Luis de Escobar, who, being bed- ridden with the gout and other grievous maladies, had nothing better to do than to answer them. His answers form the bod}^ of the work. Some of them are wise and some foolish, syme are learned and some al)surd ; but they all bear the impression of their ao-e. Once we have a lon<»: letter of advice about a godly life, sent to the Admiral, which, no doubt, was well suii('(l to his case ; and repeatedly we get com- plaints from the old monk himself of his sufferings, and accounts of what he was doing; so that from dif- ferent parts of the two volumes it would be possible to 1 My cojiy is ciititlccl, Vol. I., Las 1.545 ; printed in folio at Zararroza, i\'. Quatroci(;ntius l{e.s]iui'sta.s a otras tantiis 122, hlk. let. two and three lolumns. PrefOi'itis '1"** •'! illustrissiino (.sic) Vol. II., La Segunda Parte de las Qua- Seftor Don Fadrifjue Enriquez, Alnii- troeientas Resjme.stas, cc. En Valla- ran tc de Ca.stilla y otras diversas perso- dolid, l.'j.52. Folio, ff. 245, blk. let. na.s enibiaron a preguntar al autoi-, ec., two (•olunins. More tlmn jialf in prose. Cii.\i>. v.] DIDxVCTIC POETKV. collect a tolerably distinct picture of the amuscnients of society, if not its occupations, about the court, at the period when they were written. The poetr}^ is in many respects not unlike that of Tusser, who was contempo- rary with Escobar, but it is better and more spirited.'-^ * The second book of questions and answers to * 5 which we have referred is graver than the first. It was printed the next year after the great success of Escobar's work, and is called " Three Hundred Questions concerning Natural Subjects, with their Answers," by Alonso Lopez de Corelas, a physician, who had more learning, perhaps, than the monk he imitated, but is less amusing, and writes in verses neither so well con- structed nor so agreeable.^ Others followed, like Gonzalez de la Torre, who in 1590 dedicated to the heir-apparent of the Spanish 2 Escobar was of the family of that name at Sahagun, but lived in the con- vent of St. Francis at Bioseco, a posses- sion of the great Admiral. This he tells ns in the Pi-eface to the Second Part. Elsewhere he complains that many of the questions sent to him were in such bad verse that it cost him a gi'eat deal of labor to put them into a proper shape ; and it must be admitted that both questions and answers gener- ally read as if they came from one hand. Sometimes a long moral dissertation occurs, especially in the prose of the second volume, but the answers are rarely tedious from their length. Those in the first volume are the best, and Nos. 280, 281, 282, are curious, from the accounts they contain of the poet himself, who must have died after 1552. In the Preface to the first volume, he says the Admiral died in 1538. If the whole work had been comjileted, ac- cording to its author's purpose, it would have contained just a thousand ques- tions and answers. For a specimen we may take No. 10 (Quatrocientas Pre- guntas, Carago^a, 1545, folio) as one of tlie more ridiculous, wliere the Admiral asks how many keys Christ gave to St. Peter ; and No. 190 as one of the better sort, wliere the Admiral asks whether it be necessary to kneel before the priest at confession, if the penitent finds it very painful ; to which the old monk answers gently and well, — He that, through suflfering sent from God above, Confessing, kneels not, still commits no sin ; But let him cherish modest, humble love, And that shall purify lii.s heart within. The fifth part of the first volume con- sists of riddles in the old style ; and, as Escobar adds, they .are sometimes truly very old riddles ; so old, that they must have been generally known. The Admiral to whom these "Respu- estas" Avere addressed was the stout old nobleman who, during one of the ab- sences of Charles V., was left Regent of Sixain, and who ventured to give his master counsels of the most plain- spoken wisdom (Salazar, Dignidades, 1618, Lib. III. c. 15; Ferrer del Kio, Decadencia de Espana, 1850, pp. 16, 17). ^ The Volume of Corelas "Trezientas Preguntas" (Valladolid, 1546, 4to) is accompanied by a learned prose com- mentary in a respectable didactic style. There seems to have been an earlier edition the sai^je year, containing only two hundred and fifty questions and answers. (See Salva's Catalogues, 1826 and 1829, Nos. 1236. 3304.) 6 DIDACTIC PROSE. [Period II. throne a volume of siicli dull religious riddles as were admired a century before.* But nobody, who wrote in this peculiar didactic sty\e of verse, equalled Escobar, and it soon jDassed out of general notice and regard.^ In prose, about the same time, a fashion appeared of imitating the Roman didactic prose-writers, just as those writers had been imitated by Castiglione, Benibo, * 6 Giovanni * della Casa, and others in Italy. The impulse seems plainly to have l)een commmiicated to Spain by the moderns, and not by the anciefits. It was because the Italians led the Avav that the Romans were imitated, and not because the example of Cicero and Seneca had. of itself, been al)le to form a prose school, of any kind, beyond the Pyrenees.*^ The fash- ion was- not one of so much importance and influence as that introduced into the poetry of the nation ; but it is worthy of notice, both on account of its results during the reign of Charles the Fifth, and on account of an effect more or less distinct which it had on the prose style of the nation afterwards. The eldest among the prominent wi'iters produced by this state of things was Francisco de Villalobos, of whom we know little except that he belonged to a family which, for several successive generations, had been devoted to the medical art ; that he was himself the physician, first of Ferdinand the Catholic,' and then of * Docu-nttus PiY'^intas, f'tc, ]>or.Iiian nan Perez dc Oliva, shows the way in Gonzalez de la Torre, Madiid, 1590, -which the change was brouglit alujiit. 4to. Some Sj)aniards, it is plain from this ^ I should rather have said, perhaps, curious document, were become ashamed that the Prcf^mtas were soon restricted to wiitc any longer in Latin, as it' their to the ffLshioiialile societies and acade- own language were unfit for practical inics of the time, as we see them wittily use in matters of grave imjiortanoe, exhibited in the first janiada of Cal- when they had, in the Italian, exam- deron's "Secreto a Voces." pies of entin? success befoie them. * The general tendency and tone of (Ohras de Oliva, Madrid, 1787, 12mo, the didactii; jirose-wriWrs in the reign Tom. I. ]ip. xvi-xlvii.) of Charles V. prove this fact ; but the ' There is a letter of Villalobos, dated Discourse of Morales, the historian, at Calatayud, OctoV)er 6, 1515, in which jirefixed to the works of his uncle, Fer- he says he was detained in that city by CnAr. v.] FUA^X'1SC0 DE VILLALOJJOS. 7 Charles the Fifth ; that he published, as early as 1498, a poem on his own science, in five hundred stanzas, founded on the rules of Avicenna ;^ and that he con- tinued to be known as an author, chiefiy on subjects connected with his profession, till 1543, before which time he had become weary of the court, and sought a voluntary retirement, in which he died, above seventy years old.^ His translation of the " Amphitryon " of Plautus belongs rather to the theatre, but, like that of Oliva, soon to be mentioned, * produced no * T effect there, and, like his scientific treatises, de- mands no especial notice. The rest of his Avorks^ including all that belong to the department of elegant literature, are to be found in a volume of moderate size> which he dedicated to the Infante Don Luis of Por- tugal. The chief of them is called "Problems," and is di- vided into two tractates : the first, which is very short, being on the Sun, the Planets, the Four Elements, and the Terrestrial Paradise ; and the last, which is longer, on Man and Morals, beginning with an essay on Satan, and ending with one on Flattery and Flatterers, which is especially addressed to the heir-apparent of the crown of Spain, afterwards Philip the Second. Each of these subdivisions, in each tractate, has eight lines of the old Spanish verse prefixed to it, as its Problem, or text, and the prose discussion which follows, like a gloss, consti- tutes the substance of the Avork. The whole is of a very miscellaneous character ; most of it grave, like the es- the king's severe illness. (Obras, (^'ara- ticed, to have been (lis))lease(l with his go(ja, 1544, folio, f. 71, h.) This was ])osition as early as 1515 ; but he must the illness of which Ferdinand died in liave continued at court above twenty- less than four months afterward. years longer, when he left it poor and ** Mendez, Typographia, ]). 249. An- disheartened. (Obras, f. 45.) From a tonio. Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. U. passage two leaves further on, I think J). 344, note. he left it after the death of the Em- ^ He seems, from the letter just no- press, in 1539. 8 FKAN'CESC'O DE VILLALOBOS. [Pkuiod II. says on Knio-lits and Prelates, but some of it amiisinii', like an essay on the Marriage of Old Men.^*^ The best portions are those that have a satirical vein in them ; suoli as the ridicule of litigious old men, and of old men that wear paint." A Dialogue on Intermittent Fevers, a Dialogue on the Natural Heat of the Body, and a Dialoofue between the Doctor and the Duke, his patient, are all quite in the manner of the contemporary didactic discussions of the Italians, except that the last contains passages of a broad and free humor, approaching more nearly to the tone of comedy, or rather of farce.^^ A treatise that follows, on the Three Great Annoyances of much talk- ing, much disputing, and much laughing,^'^ and a * 8 * grave discourse on Love, with which the volume ends, are all that remain worth notice. They have the same general characteristics with the rest of his miscellanies ; the style of some portions of them being distinguished by more purity Jind more pretensions to dignity than have been found in the earlier didactic prose-writers, and especially by greater clearness and exactness of expression. Occasionally, too, we meet with an idiomatic familiarity, frankness, and spirit, that are xery attractive, and that partly compensate us for ''' If Pogf?io's tiillc, "All Seni sit ca de AutoresEspanoles, Tom. XXXVI. I'xor daci'iida," had been published 18.5.5. uhcn Villalolios wrote, I .should not ''■^ Obra.s, f. 35. t he had seen it. A.s it is, the i-' I have translated the title of this «-.oincideiice may not be accidental, lor Treati.se " The Three Great Annoii- I'ogKio died in 1449, though his Dia- anccs." In the original it is "The logue was not, I believe, jjiiuted till Three Great ," leaving the title, the jnesciit ci'iitury. says Villalobos in his Prologo, unliii- " The Pioblemas constitute the first i.shed, .so that everybody may fill it ]iait of the Obnis de Villalobos, 1544, up as he likes. Among the M8S. of and fill thirty-four leaves. A few jioems the Academy of History at ]\Iadrid Viy Villalolios may be found in the Can- is an amusing "Coloquio" by Villalo- cionero of 1554 (noticed anlc. Vol. I. bos on a medical question, and some ]). 393, 11.); but they are of much less of his ])lea.saiit letters. See Spanish worth than his pro.se, and th(! best of translation of this History, Tom. II. Jiis works an; reiniiited in the Bibliote- p. 506. CiiAi'. v.] FERNAN PEEEZ DE OEIVA. 9 the absurdities of the old and forgotten doctrines in natural history and medicine, whicli Villalobos incul- cated because they were the received doctrines of his time. The next writer of the same class, and, on the whole, one much more worthy of consideration, is Fernan Perez de Oliva, a Cordovese, who was born about 1492, and died, still young, in 1530. His father was a lover of letters ; and the son, as he himself informs us, was educated with care from his earliest youth. At twelve years of age, he was already a student in the Univer- sity of Salamanca ; after which he went, first, to Alcala, when it was in the beginning of its glory; then to Paris, Avhose University had long attracted students from every part of Europe ; and finally to Rome, wherCy under the protection of an uncle at the court of Leo the Tenth, all the advantages to be found in the most cultivated capital of Christendom were accessible to him. On his uncle's death, it was proposed to him to take several offices left vacant by that event ; but loving letters more than courtly honors, he went back to Paris, where he taught and lectured in its University for three years. Another Pope, Adrian the Sixth, was now on the throne, and, hearing of diva's success, endeavored anew to draw him to Rome ; but the love of his coun- try and of literature continued to be stronger than the love of ecclesiastical preferment. He returned, therefore, to Salamanca ; * became one of the * 9 original members of the rich " College of the Arch- bishop," founded in 1528; and was successively chosen Professor of Ethics in the Universit}^, and its Rector. But he had hardly risen to his highest distinctions^ when he died suddenly, and at a moment when so 10 FEKXAX PEREZ DE OLIVA. [Pkimod II. inniiv hopes rested on liiin that his death was felt as a misibrtune to the cause of letters throughout Spain.^* diva's studies at Rome had taught hiui how success- fully tJic Latin writers had been imitated by the Ital- ians, and he became anxious that they should be no less successfully imitated by the Spaniards. He felt it as a wrong done to his native language, that almost all se- rious prose discussions in Spain were still carried on in Latin, rather than in Spanish.^^ Taking a hint, then, from Castiglione's " Cortigiano," and opposmg the cur- rent of opinion among the learned men with whom he lived {uid acted, he began a didactic dialogue on the Dignity of Man, formallj^ defending it as a work in the Spanish language written by a Spaniard. Besides this, he wrote several strictly didactic discourses : one on the Faculties of the Mind and their Proper Vse ; another in;uing Cordova, his native city, to improve the naviga- tion of the Guadalquivir, and so obtain a portion of the rich connnerce of the Lidies, which was then monopo- lized ))y Seville ; and another, that was delivered at Sal- amanca, when he was a candidate for the chair of moral ^* Tlu" most ainplf life of Oliva is in In an anonymous controvorsial pam- Eezalial y Ugaiie, " Bil)lioteca de los ])lilet pulilishcd at Madrid in 1789, and Escri tores, (|uc han sido individuos do entitled "Carta de I'aracuello.s," we los seis Colegios Maj'ores" (Madrid, are told (p. 29), " Los anos pasados el 180."), 4to, pp. 239, etc.). But all that C'onsejo de Ca.stilla maiuld a las Univer- we know about him, of any real inter- sidades del Reyno que, en las funciones fst, is to be found in th(! exposition he literarias, solo se hablase en Latin, made of his claims and meiits when Bien mandado, ec." And yet, the in- he contended ])ublicly for the chair judiciousness of the practice had been of Moral Philosophy at Salamanca. al)ly set forth by the well-known schol- (Obias, 1787, Tom. II. jijt. 26 -.51.) ar, Pedro Simon de Abril, in an ad- In the course of it, he says his travels dress to Philip II., as early as 1589, all over Spain .and out of it, in pursuit and tlie reasons against it .stated with of knowledge, liad amounted to more force and precision. See his "Apunta- than three thou.sand leagues. mientos de como .se deveii reformar la- '^ Obras, Tom. I. p. xxiii. l^uis de doctrinas y la manera de ansefiallas." Leon was of the .same mind at the same Editions of this sensible tra(!t were X»enod, but his opinion was not jirinted al.so printed Ln 1769 and 1817; — the until later. See pos/., ("liap. IX. note la.st, with notes and a preliminary 12. But Latin continued to be exclu- discourse by Jose Clemente Caricero, sively the language; of the. Spanish Uni- .seems to have had some ell'ect on opin- ver.iilics for ai>ove two centuries longer. ion. Chap. V.] SEDEXO, SALAZAK, LULS MEXIA, CEKIOL. 11 philosophy; * in all which his nephew, Morales, * 10 the historian, assures us it was his uncle's strong desire to furnish practical examples of the power and resources of the Spanish language.^*' The purpose of giving greater dignity to his na- tive tongue, by employing it, instead of the Latin, on all the chief subjects of human inquir}^, was cer- tainly a fortunate one in Oliva, and soon found imita- tors. Juan de Sedeno published, in 153G, two prose dialogues on Love and one on Happiness ; the former in a more graceful tone of gallantry, and the latter in a more philosophical spirit and with more terseness of manner than belong-ed to the ao:e.^' Francisco Cervan- tes de Salazar, a man of learning, completed the dia- logue of Oliva on the Dignity of Man, which had been left unfinished, and, dedicating it to Fernando Cortes, published it in 1546,^*^ together with a long prose fable by Luis Mexia, on Idleness and Labor, written in a pure and somewhat elevated style, but too much indebted to the " Vision " of the Bachiller de la Torre.^^ Fadrique Oeriol in 1559 printed, at Antwerp, an ethical and 1^ The works of Oliva have been pub- ■''' Sigaeuse dos Coh)quio.s de Amores lished at least twice ; the first time by y otro de BienaveiituraiKja, etc., per his nephew, Ambrosio de Morales, 4to, Juan de Sedeno, vezino de Arevalo, Cordova, in 1585, and again at Madrid, 1536, sm. 4to, no printer or place, pp. 1787, 2 vols, 12mo. In the Index Ex- 16. This is the same Juan de Sedeno purgatorius, (1667, 'p. 424,) they are who translated the " Celestina " hito forbidden to be read, "till they are verse in 1540, and who wrote the corrected," — a phrase which seems to " Snma de Varones Ilustres " (Areva- have left each copy of them to the lo, 1551, and Toledo, 1590, folio) ; — discretion of the spiritual director of a poor biographical dictionary, contain- its owner. In the edition of 1787, a ing lives of about two hundred dis- sheet was cancelled, in order to get rid tinguished personages, alphabetically of a note of Morales. See Index of 1790. arranged, and beginning^nth Adam. Se- In the same volume with the minor deno was a soldier, and served in Ital}'. works of Oliva, Morales published fif- ^^ The whole Dialogue — both the teen moral discourses of his own, and jiart written by Oliva and that written one by Pedro A'alles of Cordova, none by Francisco Cervantes — was pub- of which have much literary value, lished at Madrid (1772, 4to) in a new though several, like one on the Advan- edition by Cerda y Rico, with his usual tage of Teaching with Gentleness, and abundant, but awkward, prefaces and one on the Difference between Genius annotations. and Wisdom, are marked with excel- i' It is republished in the volume lent sense. That of Valles is on the mentioned in the last note ; but we Fear of Death. know nothing of its author. 12 NAVARRA, PEDRO ME XI A. [I'EpaoD II, political work entitled " Counsel and Councillors for a Prince," which was too tolerant to be successful * 11 *in Spain, but was honored and translated abroad.-^ Pedro de Navarra published, in 1567, forty Moral Dialogues, partly the result of conversations held in an Acadrmia of distinguished persons, who met, from time to time, at the house of Fernando Cortes.-^ Pedro Mexia, the chronicler, wrote a Silva, or Miscel- lany, divided, in later editions, into six books, and sub- -'^ El Coiiscjo y Consejeros del Prin- cipe, ec., Aiivers, 1559. Only tlie first part was published. This can be found in the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, Tom. XXXVl. 1855. 21 Dialogos niuy Subtiles y Notables, etc., por D. Pedro de Navarra, Obis])o de Conienge, (J'arago9a, 1567, 12ino, 118 leaves. The first five Dialogues are on the Character becoming a lioyal Chroni- cler ; the next four on the Differences between a Rustic and a Noble Life ; and the remaining thirty-one on Prep- aration for Death ; — all written in a pure, simple Castilian style, but with little either new or striking in the thoughts. Their author says, it was a rule of the Acadcmia that the person who an-ived last at each meeting should furnish a .subject for discussion, and direct another menibej- to reduce to writing tlie remarks that might be made on it, — Cardinal Poggio, Juan d' Estuniga, knight-commander of Cas- tile, and other per.son.s of note, being of the society. Navarra adds, that he had written two hundred dialogues, in which there were "few matters that had not been touched upon in that e.\- cellent Academy," and notes especially that the subject of "Preparation for Death " had been discussed after the decease of Cobos, a confidential minis- ter of Charles V., and that he himsidf had acted as secretary on the occasion. Traces of anything contemporary are, however, rare in the forty dialogues he {irinted ; — the mo.st impoi-tant that I lave noticed relating to Charles V. and his retirement at Yuste, whicli the good Bisliop seems to have bidieved was a sincere abandonment of all woi'ldly thoughts and passions. 1 find nothing to illustrate the cKaracter of Cortes, except the fact that such meetings M'ere held at his house. Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 18,) calls him — perhaps on this account, per- haps for the sake of a play upon words — " cortesissimo Cortes." Certainly I know nothing in the character or life of this ferocious to/i5'«/,s^»fo;- which should entitle him to such commendation, ex- cept the countenance he gave to this jimihimia. The fashion of writing didactic dia- logues in prose was common at this jjeriod in Spain, and indeed until after 1600, as Gayangos has wcdl noted in his translation of this Histor}^ (Tom. II. pp. 508-510,) citing in proof of it the names of a considerable number of authors, most of whom are now for- gotten, but the best of whom, that I have not elsewhere noticed, are Diego de Salazar, 1536 ; Francisco de Miranda y Villafano, 1582 ; Bernardino de Esca- lante, 1583; Franci-sco de Yaldes, 1586; Juan de Guzman, 1589 ; Diego N^inez de Alva, 1589 ; and Sancho de Lodono, 1593. Of these, I should distingui-sh Nunez de Alva, whose dialogues, in the copy I use, are entitled "Dialogos de Diego Nunez de Alva de la Vida del Soldado en que se quentan la conju- racion y pacificacion de Alamana con todas las batallas, recuentros y escara- mu^as que en ello acontecieron en los ahos dc 1546, y 7, ec. (En Salamanca, Andrea de Portinaris, Dialogo primero, 1552, Dialogo segundo, 1553." Rut the comjdete edition is Cuenca, 1589.) It is written in a ])ure and sjiirited style, and is not without value for its record of liistorical facts ; but it is chiefly in- teresting for what it tells us of a sol- dier's life in the time of Charles V., — so different from what it is in our days. Chap. V.] URREA. 13 divided into a multitude of separate essays, historical and moral ; declaring it to be the first work of the kind in Spanish, which, he says, he considers quite as suitable for such discussions as the Italian.^^ * To this, which may be regarded as an imita- * 12 tion of Macrobius or of Athenanis, and wliicli was printed in 1513, were added, in 1518, six didactic dialogues, — curious, but of little value, — in the first of which the advantages and disadvantages of having regular physicians are agreeably set forth, with a light- ness and exactness of style hardly to have been ex- pected.^'^ And finally, to complete the short list, Urrea, a fixvored soldier of the Emperor, and at one time vice- roy of Apulia, — the same person who made the poor translation of Ariosto mentioned in Don Quixote, — published, in 1566, a Dialogue on True Military Honor, which is written in a pleasant and easy style, and con- tains, mingled with the notions of one who says he trained himself for glory by reading romances of chiv- alry, not a few amusing anecdotes of duels and mili- tary adventures.^* 2^ Silva cle Varia Leccion, poi' Pedro don, 1613, fol.). It is a curious mix- Mexia. The first edition (Sevilla, 1543, ture of similar discussions by different fol.) is in only three parts. Another, authors, Spanish, Italian, and French, which I also possess, is of Madrid, 1669, Mexia's part begins at Book I. c. 8. and in six books, filling about 700 ^3 -p^^g earliest edition of the Dia- clo.sely printed (piarto pages ; but the logues, I think, is that of Seville, 1548, fifth and sixth books were first added, which I use as well as ofte of 1562, I think, in the edition of 1554, tAvo both 12mo, lit. got. The second dia- years after his death, and do not seem logue, wliichison "Inviting to Feasts," to be his. It was long very populai', is amusing ; but the last, which is on and there are many editions of it, be- subjects of physical science, such as the .sides translations into Italian, German, causes of thunder, earthquakes, and French, Flemish, and English. One comets, is nowadays only curious or English version is by Thomas For- ridiculous. At the end of the Dia- tescue, and appeared in 1571. (War- logues, and sometimes at the end of ton's Eng. Poetry, London, 1824, 8vo, old editions of the Silva, is found a free Tom. IV. p. 312.) Another, which is translation of the Exhortation to Virtue anonymous, is called "The Treasure of by Isocrates, made from the Latin of Ancient and Modern Times, etc., trans- Agricola, because Mexia did not uuder- lated out of that worthy Spanish Gen- stand Greek. It is of no value, tlemau, Pedro Mexia, and Mr. Fran- ^* Dialogo de la Verdadera Honra Cisco San.soviiio, tlie Italian," etc. (Lon- Jlilitar, por Geronimo Ximenez de Ur- 14 OLIVA. [Pfiuod ir. Both of the works of Pedro Mexia, but especially his Silva, enjoyed no little popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and, in point of style, they are certainly not without merit. None, however, of the productions of any one of the authors last men- tioned had so much force and character as the first part of the Dialogue on the Dignity of Man. And yet Oliva was certainly not a person of a * 13 connnandini*: g-enius. *IIis ima<»:ination never warms into poetry; his invention is never sufficient to give new and strong views to his subject ; and his sj'stem of imitating both the Latin and the Italian masters rather tends to debilitate than to impart vigor to his tlioughts. ])ut there is a general reasonal^leness and wisdom in what he says that win and often satisfy ns ; and these, with his stjde, Avhich, though sometimes declamatory, is yet, on the v^diole, pure and well settled, and his happy idea of defending and employing the Castilian, then coming into all its rights as a living language, have had the effect of giving him a more lasting reputation than that of any other Spanish prose-writer of his time.^^ rea. There are editions of 1.566, 1.'j75, opposition to the use of the Castilian 1661, etc. (Latassa, Bib. Arag. Nueva, in gi'ave subjects was continued. He Tom. I. p. 264.) Mine is a small (]uar- says people talked to him as if it were to volume, Zaragoza, 1642. One of tlie "a sacrilege" to discuss such matters most amusing passages in the Dialogue except in Latin (f. l.'»). But he replies, of Urrca i^ tlir- one in Part First, con- like a true Spaniard, tliat the Castilian taining a 4, (noticed ante. Vol. L p. 393, n.,) the other hand, in 1.543, a treatise and in the Library of the University of on Holy AliVitions, — " Ley de Amor Zamgoza there are, in MS., the second Sancto, — written bj' Francisco de Os- and third volumes of a Homancc of suna, witli gieat purity of style, and Chivalry by liim, entitled " Don Clari- somi-times with fervent elo<|uence, was sel de las Flores." See Spani.sh ti'ans- ]iublished witliout apology for its Cas- lation of this History, Tom. IL p. tilian, and dedicated to Francisco de 51 1 . ( 'obos, a confirlential secretary of Charles '^ As late as 1.592, when the "Con- ^ ., adverted to in note 21. I think version de la Magdalena," by Pedro O.ssuna was dead when this treatise Malon de Chaide, was published, the appeared. Chap. V.] PALACIOS UUIJIOS, VANEGAS, AVILA. 1-5 The same general tendency to a more formal and elegant style of discussion is found in a icAV other ethical and religious authors of the reign of Charles the Fifth that are still remembered ; such as Palacios iRubios, who wrote an essay on Military Courage, for the benefit of his son ; ^^ Vanegas, who, under the title of " The Agony of Passing through Death," gives us what may rather be considered an ascetic treatise on holy living ; ^' and Juan de Avila, sometimes called the Apostle * of Andalusia, * 14 whose letters are fervent exhortations to virtue and religion, composed with care and often with elo- quence, if not with entire purity of style.'^ The author in this class, however, who, during his lifetime, had the most influence, was Antonio de ' Guevara, o ne of the official chroniclers of Cliarles tlie » Fifth. He was a Biscayan by birth, and passed some \ of his earlier years at the court of Queen Isabella. 2^5 A full account of Juan Lopez de a good style, thougli not without con- Vivero Palacios Rubios, who was a ceits of thought and conceited phrases, man of consequence in his time, and But it is not, as its title might seem to ■engaged in the famous compilation of imply, a criticism on books and au- the Spanish laws called " Leyes de thor.s, but the opinion of Vanegas him- Toro," is contained in Rezabal y Ugarte self, how we should study tlie great (Biblioteca, pp. 266-271). His works books of God, nature, man, and Chris- in Latin are numerous ; but in Spanish tianity. It is, in fact, intended to dis- he published only ' ' Del Esfuevzo Belico courage the reading of most of the books Heroyco," which appeared first at Sala- then nnich in fashion, and deemed by manca in 1524, folio, but of which him bad. there is a beautiful Madrid edition, ^^ He died in 1569. In 1534 he was 1793, folio, with notes by Francisco in the prisons of the Inquisition, and Moi'ales. in 1559 one of his books was put into 2^ Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 8. the Index Expurgatorius. Neverthe- He flourished about 1531-1545. His less, he was regarded as a sort of Saint. "Agonia del Transito de la Muerte," a (Llorente, Histoire de I'lnquisition, glossary to which, by its author, is Tom. II. pp. 7 and 423.) His "Car- dated 1543, was first printed fi'om his tas Espirituales " were not piinted, I corrected manuscript many years later, believe, till the year of his death. My copy, which seems to be of the (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. ])p. 639- first edition, is dated Alcala, 1574, and 642.) His treatises on Self-knowledge, is in 12mo. The treatise called "Dife- on Prayer, and on other religious sub- rencias de Libros que ay en el Uni- jects, are equallj' well written, and in verso," by the same author, who, how- the same style of eloi^uence. A long ever, here writes his name Vcnegas, life, or rather eulogy, of him is pre- was finished in 1539, and printed at fixed to the first volume of his works, Toledo in 1540, 4to. It is written in (Madrid, 1595, 4to,) by Juan Diaz. 16 ANTONIO UK (iUEVAHA. [Pkuiod IL In 1528 he became a Franciscan monk ; but, enjoy- ing the favor of the Emperor, he seems to have been transformed into a thorough courtier, accompanj^ing his master during his jourueys and residences in Italy and other parts of Europe, and rising successively, by the royal patronage, to be court preacher. Imperial historiographer, Bisliop of Guadix, and Bishop of Mondonedo. He died in 1545.-"^ His Avorks were not very nunuMOus, Init they Avere fitted to the atmosphere in which they were produced, and enjoj^ed at once a great popularity. His '• Dial for Princes, or Marcus Aurelius," first published in 1529, and the fruit, as he tells us, of eleven years' labor,^'^ was not only often reprinted in Spanish, 1)ut was translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English ; in each of which last two languages it appeared many times before the end of tlie centiuy.^^ It is a kind of romance, founded on the life and character *15 of Marcus Aurelius, and resembles, * in some points, the " Cyropaidia " of Xenophon ; its pur- pose being to place before the Emperor Charles the Fifth the model of a prince more perfect for wisdom and virtue than any other of antiquity. But the Bishop of Mondofiedo adventured beyond his preroga- tive. He pretended that his Marcus Aurelius was genuine history, and appealed to a manuscri])t in Florence, which did not exist, as if he had done little more than make a translation ol" it. In conse(jnence 29 A life of fhievaia is prefixed to different editions and translations of the edition of his Epistolas, Madrid, the works of Guevai'a, showing their 1673, 4to ; hut tln^re is a f,'ood account great popularity all over Europe. In of liiin hy himself in the Prologo to his Frencli the nunilier of translations in " Menosjirecio de Corte." the sixteenth century was extraordi- ^' .See the argument to his "Decada nary. See La Croix du Maine et du de los Ccsares." Verdier, l'ililiothei|ues, (Paris, 1772, 31 Watt, in his " Bihliotheca Hritiiii- 4to, Tom. 111. p. 123,) and the articles nica," and l^ninet, in his "^lanuel du there referred to. Libraire," give (piite amjile lists of the I'li.vr. v.] ANTOMO I)K GUEVARA. 17 of this, Pedro de Run., a professor of ele^-ant literature in the college at Soria, addressed a letter to hiiii, in 1540, exposing the fraud. Two other letters followed, written with more IVeedoni and purity of style than anything in the works of the Bishop himself, and leav- ing him no real ground on which to stand. '^^ He, however, defended himself as well as he was able ; at first cautiously, but afterwards, when he was more closely assailed, by assuming the wholly untenable position that all ancient profane history was no more true than his romance of Marcus Aurelius, and that he had as good a right to invent for his own high pur- ]DOses as Herodotus or Livy. From this time he was severely attacked ; more so, perhaps, than he would have been if the gross frauds of Annius of Viterbo had not then been recent. But, however this may be, it was done with a bitterness that forms a strong con- trast to the applause bestowed in France, near the end of the eighteenth century, upon a somewhat similar work on the same subject by Thomas.*^ ^^ There are editions of the Cartas questions, the satirical chi'onicler says del Bachiller Rua, Burgos, 15-49, 4to, that he inquired: " Querria saber, and Madrid, 1736, 4to, and a lite of Senora Voz, si tengo de ser niejorado him in Bayle, Diet. Historique, Am- en algun obispado, e que fuese presto sterdam, 1740, folio, Tom. iV. p. 95 c si han de crcer todo lo que yo The letters of Rua, or Rhua, as his escrihoV But, setting the jests of Fran- name is often written, are respect- cesillo aside, Guevara was, no doubt, able in style, though their critical as Ferrer del Rio says of him, "hombre spirit is that of the age and country de escasissima conciencia." In his in which they were written. Tlie short youth he seems to have been a rake, reply of Guevara following the second (Decadencia de Espafaa, 1850, pp. 139, of Rua's letters is not creditable to sqq.) How shamelessly intolerant and him. cruel he afterwards became, we have There are several amusing hits at ah'eady seen, ante. Period I., Chap. Guevara in the chronicle of Fraucesillo XXIV. note 8. de Zuhiga, the witty fool of Charles V. ^^•Antonio, in his article on Guevara, Ex. gr. in Chap. LXXXIV. he says (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 125,) is very that there was a gi'eat stir at couit severe ; but his tone is gentle compared about the wonders of a deep cave near with that of Bayle, (Diet. Hist., Tom. Burgos, in which a hidden miraculous II. p. 631,) who always delights to voice would give answers to questions .show up any defects he can tind in put to it. Many persons visited it. the characters of priests and monks. Among the rest Guevara went with a There are editions of the Relo.x de party, and when his turn came to })ut Prineipes of 1529, 1532, 1537, etc. VOL. II. 2 18 ANTONIO DE GUEVAKA. [Pkkiui. II. After all, liowevm^, the "Dial for Princes" is * IG little * worth}' of the excitement it occasioned. It is filled with letters and speeches, ill-con- ceived and inappropriate, and is written in a formal and inflated style. Perhaps we are now indebted to it for nothing so mnch as for the beautifid fable of " The Peasant of the Dannbe," evidently sn^-irested to La Fontaine l)y one of the discourses through which Guevara endeavored to give life and reality to his fictions.** In the same spirit, though Avith less boldness, he wrote his " Lives of the Ten Roman Emperors " ; a v.ork Avliich, like his Dial for Princes, he dedicated to Charles the Fifth. In general, he has here followed the authorities on which he claims to foimd his narra- tive, such as Dion Cassius and the minor Latin histo- rians, showing, at the same time, a marked desire to imitate Plutarch and Suetonius, whom he announces as his models. But he has not been able entirely to resist the temptation of inserting fictitious letters, and even unfounded stories; thus giving a false view, Thos. North, the well-known English translator, translated the "Relox" in three books, adding, inappropriately, as a "fowerth," the " Despertador (k; Cortesanos," and dedicating the whole, in \iv.)l, to Qneen Mary, then wife of Philip II. It was the work of his yontli, he saj's, wlien he was a stndent of Lincoln's Inn ; bnt it contains much good ohl English idiom. Jly copy is in folio, l.'^OS. ^ La Fontaine, Fables, Lib. XL f\xb. 7, and Guevara, Kelo.\, Lil). III. c. 3. The s)»eech which tlie Spanish liisliop, the true inventor of this hapjiy iiction, gives to his Rnstico de Germania is, indeed, too long ; but it was po))ular. Tirso de Midiiia, after di-scribing a jieas- ant who appioached Xer.ves, says in the Prologue to one of his plays, In short, lit- re|irewnU'(J to the very life The Rustic that so boldly spoke Uefore the liomaii Senate. C'igarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 102. La Fontaine, howevei', did not trouble himself about the original Spanish or its popularit}'. He took his lieautiful version of the fable from an old French translation, made by a gentleman who went to Madrid in 1526 with the Car- dinal de Granimont, on the suliject of Francis the Firsl's imprisonment. It is in the rich oV\ Fn-ncli of that ]icriod, and La Fontaine often ado])ts, with his accustomed .skill, its ]iictures(jue phra- seology. I su])])o.se this translation is the one cited by Hrunet as made by Pene Bertaut, of whifh there were many editions, ^linc is of Paris, ]."j4(i, folio, by Galliot du Pre, and is entitletl " Lor- loge des Princes, traduiet Uesjtaignol en Langaige Frant;ois," but does not trive the translator's name. Chai'. v.] ANTONIO DE GUEVARA. 10 if not of the facts of liistory, at least of some of the characters he records. Ilis style, however, though it still wants purity and appropriateness, is better and more simple than it is in his romance on Marcus Aurelius.''^^ * Similar characteristics mark a large collec- *17 tion of Letters printed by him as early as 1539. Many of them are addressed to persons of great con- sideration in his time, such as the Marquis of Pescara, the Duke of Alva, Inigo de Velasco, Grand Constable of Castile, and Fadrique Enriquez, Grand Admiral. But some were evidently never sent to the persons ad- dressed, like the loyal one to Juan de Padilla, the head of the Conmneros, and two impertinent letters to the Governor Luis Bravo, who had foolishly fallen in love in his old age. Others are mere fictions, among which are a correspondence of the Emperor Trajan with Plu- tarch and the Roman Senate, which Guevara vainly protests he translated from the Greek, without saying where he found the originals;^'' and a long epistle about Lais and other courtesans of antiquity, in which he gives the details of their conversations as if he had listened to them himself Most of the letters, thouoli ^^ The " Decadade los Cesares," with The translation of the " Decada," by the other treatises of Guevara here Edward Hellowes, published 1577, anil spoken of, except his Epistles, are to dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, is not be found in a collection of his works so good as North's translation of the first printed at Valladolid in 1539, of "Relox," but it is worth having. I which I have a copy, as well as one of have Italian versions of several of the edition of 1545. Guevara seems to Guevara's works, but they seem of no have been as particular about the typo- value. graphical execution of his works as *» These very letters, however, were he was about his style of composition. thought worth translating into English Besides the above, I have his Epistolas by Sir Geoffrey Fenton, and are found 1539, 1542, 1543 ; his Oratorio de Ee- ff. 68-77 of a curious collection taken ligiosos, 1543, 1545, and his Monte from different authors and published in Calvario, 1543, 1549, — all grave black- London, (1575, 4to, black-letter,) under letter folios, printed in different cities the title of " Golden Epistles." YA- and by different ])rinters, but all with ward Hellowes had already ti'an slated an air of exactness and finish that is the whole of Gucivara's Epistles in 1574 ; quite remai-kable, and, I suspect, (juite wbicrh were again translated, l)ut not characteristic of tlie autlior. very well, by Savage, in 1G57. 20 ANTONIO DE GUEVARA. [Pkiii.-d IT. tliey are called •' Familiar Epistles," are merely essays or disputations, and a few are sermons in form, with an announcement of the occasions on which they were preached. None has the easy or natural air of a real correspondence. In fiict, they were all, no doubt, pre- pared expressly for publication and for effect; and, notwithstanding their stiffness and formality, were greatly admired. They were often printed in Spain; they were translated into all the principal languages of Europe ; and. to express the value set on them, they were generally called "The Golden Epistles." But, notwitlistanding their early success, they have long been disregarded, and only a few passages that touch the affairs of the time or the life of the Emperor can now • be read with interest or pleasure.^' * 18 * Besides these Avorks, Guevara Avrote several formal treatises. Two are strictly theological.^^ Another is on the Inventors of the Art of Navigation and its Practice ; — a subject which might be thought foreign from the Bishop's experience, but with which, he tells us, he had become familiar by having been much at sea, and visited many ports on the Mediter- ranean.'"^^ Of his two other treatises, which are all ^ Epistolas Familiares de D. Antonio 210.) It is an unpioniising sultjcct in (le Guevaia, Madrid, 1673, 4to, p. 12, any language, but in the original Gue- and elsewhere. Cervantes, en passant, vara ha.s shown some pleasantry, and give.s a blow at the letter of Guevara an easier style than is common with about Lais, in the Prologo to the first him. Much interest for the .sciences part of his Don Quixote. connected with navigation was awakened •** One of these religious treatises is at Seville by the intercouise of that city entitled " Monte f "alvario," 1542, trans- with America in the time of Charles V., lated into English in 1595 ; and the when Guevara lived there. It is be- other, "Oiatorio de Religiosos," 1543, lieved that the tii-st really useful niari- which is a series of short exhortations time charts were made there. (Have- or homilies, with a text prefixed to mann, p. 173.) The "Arte de Nave- each. The first is ordered to be ex- gar" of Pedro de Medina, jirintcd at purgated in the Index of 1(367, (p. Seville in 1545 and early translated into 67,) and both are censured in that of Italian, French, and German, is said to 1790. have been the first liook published on ^ Hellowes translated this, also, and the subject. See Literatura ICspafiola printeili Church exacted.^^ The Dialogue on Languages is supposed to be car- ried on between two Spaniards and two Itahans, at a country-house on the sea-shore, near Naples, and i.s an acute discussion on the origin and character of the Castilian. Parts of it are learned, but in these the au- thor sometimes falls into errors ;*^ other parts are lively and entertaining: ; and vet others are full of o-ood sense and sound criticism. The principal personage — the one wlio gives all the instructions and explanations — is named Valdes ; and, from this circumstance, * 20 as well as from some intimations in the * Dia- logue itself, it may be inferred that Juan de Valdes was its author, and that it was written before *i Llorcnte (Hist, ile I'lnquisition, supposed to have been an anti-Triiiita- Toin. II. pp. 281 and 478) makes some lian, but McCrie does not admit it. mistakes about Valdes, of whom ac- *- His chief enor is in supposin*:; that eounts are to be found in McCrie's the Greek hiuf^uaye once prevaih-d gen- " Hist, of the Progi-ess, etc., of the Kef- erally in Spain, and constituted the oniiation in Italy," (Kdinlmrgh, 1827, basis of an ancient Spani^il laiifjuage, 8vo, ]t\>. Kni aiid 121,) and in liis wiiicli, he thinks, Wii.s spnad tiinnij^h "Hist, of the Progiess, etc., of the the country before the Honiaus aijjjeared l{<'formation in Spain " (Edinl)urgli, in Spain. 1829, 8vo, pj). 140-140). Vakles is Chap. V.] JUAN DE VALDES. 23 1536 ;'*^ — a point which, ii' ei-;tablishe(l, would account for the suppression of the manuscript, as the work of one inclined to heresy. In any event, the Dialogue was not printed till 1737, and therefore, as a speci- men of pure and easy style, was lost on the age that produced it.** *3 The intimations alliidpd to are that the Valdes of the Dialogue had been at Rome ; that he was a jutsoii of some autliority ; and that he liad lived long at Naples, and in otliei- jiaits of Italy. He sjieaks of Garcilasso de la Vega as if he were alive, and Garcilasso died in 1536. Llorente, in a passage just cited, calls Valdes the author of the "Dia- logo de las Lenguas"; and Clemencin — a safer authority — does the same, once, in the notes to his edition of Don Quixote, (Tom. IV. ]). 285,) though in other notes lie treats it as if its author were unknown. " The "Dialogo de las Lenguas" was not printed till it appeared in Mayans y Siscar, " Origenes de la Len- gua EsjDauola," (Madrid, 1737, 2 tom. 12mo, ) where it iills the first half of the second volume, and is the best thing in the collection. Probably the maim- script had been kept out of sight, as the work of a heretic. Mayans says that it could be traced to Zurita, the historian, and that, in 1736, it was purchased for the Royal Library, of which ilayans himself was then libra- rian. Gayangos .says it is now in the British Museum, but this is a mistake. It is a modern copy that is there, num- bered "9939, 4to, Additional MSS." One leaf was wanting, — probably an ex])urgation, — which Mayans could not sujjply ; and, though he seems to have believed Valdes to have been the author of the Dialogue, he avoids saying so, — l)erhaps from an unwillingness to at- tract the notice of tlie Inquisition to it. (Origenes, Tom. I. pp. 173-180.) Iri- arte, in the ' ' Aprobacion " of the col- lection, treats the "Dialogo" as if its author were (piite unknown. Since the preceding ])art of this note, and wliat relates to the same subject in the text, were published, in 1840, more lias become known about it, and I will, therefore, give the result as it stands in 1864. There were two brotlicrs Valdes, — Juan and Alfonso, — twins, and so le- markably alike in character as well as in e.xternal appearance that Erasiims, speaking of them in a letter dated March 1, 1528, says they did not .sx'eni to be twins, but to be absolutely one person, — "non duo gemelli, sed idem prorsus lioino." They weie both secre- taries to Charles V. ; both went with him to Germany and Italy ; and they both wei-e men of talent and ]iowei-, who wrote and taught in a liberal and wise spirit, rare always, and e.spei:ially in a period like the troubled one in which they lived. From such a re- markable series of resemblances, and from the fact that opinions such as they entertained could not, in tlieii' own times, be very frankly and fully set forth, the two twin bi'others have not infre(p.iently been confounded as to the events of their lives aifil as to the au- thorship of their respective works. That Juan wrote the remarkable Dia- logue on the Language there can be no just doubt. Since the account given of it in the text was published in 1849, a much better edition of the work has been published with the imprint of Madrid, 1860, pre])ared from the man- uscript preserved in the National Li- brary there, which is the one used by Mayans in 1737, and the only old one known to exist. It settles this question of the authorship, and renders it ])ro!i- able that the work itself was oiiginally entitled, as it ought to be, "Dialogo de la Lengua," in the singular number, and not "Dialogo de las Lenguas," in the plural, — relating, as it really does, to the Spanish language alone, although reference is necessarily made in its dis- cussions to other languages. But, be- sides the well-considered examination of these points in the jneface of this edition, it contains above a thousand different readings, important and unim- portant, all noteii in the margin, ami 24 JFAX DE YALDES. [PEiUOD II. *21 *For us it is important, because it shows, with more distinctness than any other literary monmnent of its time, what was the state of the Span- ish language in the reign of the Emperor Charles the showing, as does everytliiiig in ivlation to the preparation of the woik, gieat care and patience. Juan de Vahies wrote other works that are chiefly or wholly, like his ex- positions of .St. Paul, religious and the- ological. Of these, the most important, 1 .suppo.se, an; his "Alfaheto (.'liris- tiano " and his " t'iento y Diez Conside- raciones," both intended for Chri.stian ■edifii.'ation, and the last very comj)re- liensive in its chai-acter. But uuhap- pily we possess neither of them as their author wrote them in his pure C!a.stilian ; for having been prepared <'.specially for the benefit of Italian friends, the fii-st was published in Ital- ian, without date of place, in l.')46, and the last at Basle in 1550, from which they have pa.ssed successively into the other modern languages, and, among the rest, into the Spanish. His " Con- sideraciones, " in the English version of 2>Ji]i. "127-133. The author of the Dialogo urges tht: introduction of a con- -siderable number of words from the Italian, such as discvrsn, facilitnr, ftm- tiisio, voir hi, etc., which have long ,sini;i' been ailopted and fully recognized liy the .\i'ademy. Diego de Mendoza, though iiartly of the Italian school, ob- jected to th<* word ccidinfla as a need- less Italianism ; but it was .soon fully received into the language. (Guerra de Granada, ed. 177f), Lib. III. c. 7, p. 176.) A little later, Luis Velez de Guevara, in Tranco X. of his "Diablo Cojuelo," denied citizeu.ship to fuhfor, jnirpureur, 2)ompa, and other words now in good use. So, too, Figueroa (in his Pasagero, 1617, f. 8.5. b) complains of the additions to the Spanish of his time : "Se han ido poco a poco con- virtiendo en propios muchos meramente Latinos, como rcjndsa, idonen, Iitstro, prole, postcriddd, astro, y otros sin nu- mero." But all he enumerates are now recognized Castilian. (Jayangos cites Francisco Nunez de Velasco, in his "Dialogos de Contencion entre la mili- cia y la cieneia," as eoni))laiuing that Italian woids and jihrases were intro- dtieed needlessly into the Castilian. But Nunez reckons Estala (stable) and Estival ^hoot) among them, not know- ing they are Teutonic. (Spani.sh Trans- lation, 11. 513.) *« Mendez, Typographia, \k 17.'). An- tonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 333. CiiAi-. v.] TIIK SPANISH LANGUAGE. 27 tonio do Lebrixa, who had Ijcfore puljUshed a l^atiu Grainiuar in the Latin hmgiiage, and transhited it for the benefit, as he tells us, of the ladies of the court.'^'^ Other similar and equally successful attempts followed. A purely Spanish Dictionar}^ by Lebrixa, the first of its kind, appeared in 1492, and a Dictionary for ecclesias- tical purposes, in both Latin and Spanish, by Santa Ella, succeeded it in 1499 ; both often reprinted after- wards, and long regarded as standard authorities.'^^ All these works, so important for the consolidation of the language, and so well constructed that successors to them were not found till above a century later,''^ were, it should be observed, produced under the direct and personal patronage of Queen Isabella, who, in this, as in so many other ways, gave proof at once of her far-sightedness in affairs of * state, and * 23 of her wise tastes and preferences in whatever regarded the intellectual cultivation of her subjects.^^ The language thus formed was now fast spreading throughout the kingdom, and displacing dialects some of which, as old as itself, had seemed, at one period, destined to surpass it in cultivation and general preva- lence. The ancient Galician, in which Alfonso the Wise was educated, and in which he sometimes wrote, was now known as a polite language only in Portugal, where it had risen to be so independent of the stock from which it sprang as almost to disavow its origin. The Valencian and Catalonian, those kindred dialects of the ProveiK^al race, whose influences in the thir- ^^ Meudez, Typog., pp. 239-242. ^"■^ The Grammar of Juan de Navi- For the great merits of Antonio de Le- dad, 1567, is not an exception to this brixa, in relation to the Spanish Ian- remark, because it was intended to guage, see "Specimen Bibliothecaj His- teach Spanish to Italians, and not to na- pano-MayansianiB ex Museo D. Clemen- tives. tis," Hannoverte, 1753, 4to, pp. 4-39. ^^ Clemencin, in Mem. de la Aca- 61 Mendez, ^ip. 243 and 212, and An- demia de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 472, tonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. 11. p. 266. notes. 28 THE CAfeTILlAN. [Pi:ku)D II, teenth century were felt through the whole Peninsula^ claimed, at this period, something of their earlier dig- nity only below the last range of hills on the coast of the Mediterranean. The Biscayan alone, unchanged as tlie mountains which sheltered it, still preserved for itself the same separate character it had at the earliest dawnings of tradition, — a character which has con- tinued essentially the same down to our own times. But, though the Castilian, advancing with the whole authority of the government, which at this time spoke to the f)eople of all Spain in no other language, was heard and acknowledged throughout the country as the language of the state and of all political power, still the popular and local habits of four centuries could not be at once or entirely broken up. The Gali- cian, the Valencian, and the Catalonian continued to be spoken in the age of Charles the Fifth, and are spoken now by the masses of the people in their re- spective provinces, and to some extent in tlie refined society of each. Even Andalusia and Aragon have not yet emancipated themselves completely from their original idioms ; and, in the same way, each of the other grand divisions of the country, several of which were at one time independent kingdoms, are still, like Estremadura and La Mancha, distinguished by ])ecu- liarities of ^phraseology and accent.^^ * 24 * Castile, alone, and especially Old Castile, claims, as of inlierited right, from the l)egin- ning of the fifteenth century, the prerogative of speak- ing absolutely pure Spanish. Villalobos, it is true, who was always a flatterer of ro3'al authority, insisted that ^ It is curious to observe that tlie Sarniicnto, (Mcuiorias, ]). 04,) who wrote aiitlior of tlic, "Di;ih)g0(le las Lciiguas," ahout 1760, all sjjcak of the charac- (On'geiies, Tom. II. p. 31,) who wrote tcr of the Castiliau and the ytreva- about 153.5, — Mayans, (Origiiies, Tom. lence of the dialcets in nearly the same I. p. 8,) who wrote in 1737, — and terms. Chap, v.] THE CA.STIHAN OF TOLEDO. 29 this prerogative followed the residences of the sov- ereign and the court ; '^ but the better opinion has been that the purest form of the Castilian must be sought at Toledo, — the Imi^erial Toledo, as it was called, — peculiarly favored when it was the political capital of the ancient monarchy in the time of the Goths, and consecrated anew as the ecclesiastical head of all Christian Spain, the moment it was rescued from the hands of the Moors.^*^ It has even been said that the supremacy of this venerable city in the purity of its dialect was so fully settled, from the first appear- ance of the language, as the language of the state in the thirteenth century, that Alfonso the Wise, in a Cortes held there, directed the meaning of any dis- puted word to be settled by its use at Toledo.^'^ But, however this may be, there is no question that, from the time of Charles the Fifth to the present day, the Toledan has been considered, on the whole, the normal form of the national * language, and * 25 that, from the same period, the Castilian dia- ** De las Fiebres Interpoladas, Metro (Francisco de Pisa, Descripcion de la I., Obras, 1543, f. 27. Imperial C'iudad de Toledo, ed. Thomas ^ See Maiiana's account of the glo- Tamaio de Vargas, Toledo, 1617, fol., ries of Toledo, Historia, Lib. XVI. c. Lib. L c. 36, f. 56.) The Cortes here 15, and elsewhere. He was himself referred to is said by Pisa to have been from the kingdom of Toledo, and often held in 1253 ; in which year the Chron- boasts of its renown. Cervantes, in icle of Alfonso X. (Valladolid, 1554, Don Qui.xote, (Parte II. c. 19,) implies fol., c. 2) represents the king to have that the Toledan was accounted the been there. (See, also, Paton, Elo- purest Spanish of his time. It still quencia Espanola, 1604, f. 12.) claims to be so in ours. A similar legal as well as traditional ^^ " Also, at the same Cortes, the claim for the supremacy of the Toledan same King, Don Alfonso X., ordered, dialect is set up in the "Historia de if thereafter there should be a doubt Tobias," a poem b3'Cau(li\'illaSantaren, in any part of his kingdom about the 1615, Canto XL, where, speaking of meaning of any Castilian word, that ref- Toledo, he says : — erence thereof should be had to this Entre otros muchos bienes y favores city as to the standard of the Castilian Q"''' soberano Dios hizo a"est;i gente tongue, [como i metro de la lenglia De hablar su Castellano castamente. Lastellana,J and that they should \ mnApnr justahy rie EmiHnolorcs, adopt the meaning and definition here Seordeui, qut', si aia:un<),i'standoausente, given to sucli word, because our tongue ^"'^'i'-' ••"•''l^'^'' vocablo porfiasso, V f . 1 ji , i""o"'' Quel que so usaun Toledo guarcla.sso. IS more jwrlect here than elsewhere. f. 1.90, a. 30 THE CASTILIAN OF TOLEDO. [Period H. lect, having vindicated for itself an absolute suprem- acy over all the other dialects of the monarchy, has been the only one recognized as the language of the classical poetry and prose of the whole country .^^ ^ From the time of Cliarles V., too, ami as a natural result of his conquests and inlluenee throughout Europe, the Spanish language hecanie known and adniiied alnoad, as it had never been before. Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis 1., who went, in 1525, to Ma- drid and consoled her brother in his captivity there, says : Le Langage Cas- tillan est sans comparaison mieux de- clarant cette passion d'amour que n'est le Francois (Heptameron, Journee III., Nouvelie 24, ed. Paris, 1615, p. 263). And Donienichi, in Ulloa's translation of his Piazonamiento de Empresas Mill- tares, (Leon, de Francia, 1561, 4to, p. 175,) says of the Spanish, "Eslengua mil 3" comun a todas naciones," — a striking fact for an Italian to mention. Richelieu liked to write in Spanish (Haveniann, p. 312). The marriage of Pliilip II. with Mary Tudor carried the Spanish to the English Court, where for a time it had some vogue, and Charles himself, as Emperor, spread it through Germany, as he did, in other ways and from other similar inilueuce.s, through Flanders and Ital)'. Other cnriou.s facts of the same sort, showing the spread of Spanish in Italy and France about the middle of the sixteenth centmy, may be found in the Prologo to Paton's Eloc^uencia Espanola, 1604, pp. 7, sqq. *CHAPTEE VI. *26 CHRONICLING PERIOD GONE BY. — CHARLES THE FIFTH. — GUEVARA. — OCAM- PO. SEPULVEDA. MEXIA. ACCOUNTS OF THE NEW WORLD. CORTES. GOMARA. — BERNAL DIAZ. OVIEDO. LAS CASAS. VACA. XEREZ. CARATE. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, it is i^bvious that the age for chronicles had gone by in Spain. ^ Still it was thought for the dignity of the monarchy that the stately forms of the elder time should, in this as in other particulars, be kept up by public authority. Charles the Fifth, therefore, as if his ambitious projects as a conqueror were to find their counterpart in his arrangements for recording their success, had several authorized chroniclers, all men of consideration and learning. But the shadow on the dial would not go back at the royal command. The greatest monarch of his time could appoint chron- iclers, but he could not give them the spirit of an age that was past. The chronicles he demanded at their hands were either never undertaken or never finished. Antonio de Guevara, one of the persons to whom these duties were assigned, seems to have been singularly conscientious in the devotion of his time to them ; for we are told that, by his will, he ordered the ^ One proof that the age of chroiii- lioteca de Autores Espanoles, 1855. It cling was gone by may be found in the was no fool that wrote it, nor the few burlesque chronicle of a court-fool, in letters that follow, though he bore that the early part of the reign of Charles title at court, and enjoyed its privi- V., entitled "Cronica de Don Fran- leges. The style is easy and the lan- •cesillo de Zuhiga, criado privado bien- guage pure, but there is less finish than '£uisto y predicador del Emperador Car- wit in it, and more sense than histoi'i- los v. dirigida a su Majestad por el cal facts. It is what its title implies, mismo Don Frances." It was first a caricature of the chronicling style published in Vol. XXX VI. of the Bib- then going out of fashion. 32 FLOIUAN DE OCAMrO. |1'kilimi> II. salary of one year, during wliicli he had written noth- ing of In's task, to be returned to the Imperial trea.s- ury. This, however, did not imply that he was * 27 a successful * chronicler.^ What he wrote was not thought worthy of being published by his contemporaries, and would probably be judged no more favorabl}- by the present generation, mdess it discovered a greater regard for historical truth, and a simpler style, than are found in his discussions on the life and character of the Emjjeror Marcus Aurelius/^ Florian de Ocampo, another of the more distin- guished of the chroniclers, showed a wide ambition in the plan he proposed to himself; beginning his chroni- cles of Charles the Fifth as for back as the days of Noah's flood. As might have been foreseen, he lived only so long as to finish a small fragment of his vast undertaking; — hardly a quarter part of the first of its four grand divisions."^ But he Avent for enough to show how completely the age for such writing was passed away.^ Not that he failed in credulity ; for of that he had more than enough. It Avas not, however, the poetical credulity of his predecessors, trusting to the old national traditions, but an easy faith, that believed in the Mearisome foro-eries called the works of Berosus and Manetho,*' which had been discredited from their first appearance half a centurj^ before, and - Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. 1. p. 127, ])uljlishe(l at Zanuna, ir)44, in a licau- and Preface to Epistolas Familiares of tiful black-lettei folio, and was In! lowed Guevara, ed. 1G73. by an edition ol' the whole at Medina ^ See the vituperative article Giic- del Cainpo, looS, folio. The liest, I vara, in Bayle. suppose, is tlie one ])ublished at Ma- * The best life of Oeanipo is to be diid, 17!*!, in 2 vols. 4to. found in the " Biblioteca de los Escri- *' For this miserable forgery see Nice- tores ((ue fian sido Individuuos de los ron (llommes Illustres, Paris, 1730, Seis Colegios Mayores," etc., ])or Don Tom. XI. pp. 1-11; Tom. XX. 1732, .T(jsef de Kezabal y Ugarte (pji. 233- ]tp. 1-6); and for the simplicity of 238) ; but there is one ])refixed to the Ocampo in tru.sting to it, see the last edit.iou of his Criinica, 1791. chapter of his first book, and all the ^ Tlie first edition of the first four passages where he cites Juan de ViterbO' books of the Chronicle of Ocampo was y su Beroso, etc. €iiAP. XL] SEPUJA'EDA, MEXIA. OO yet were now used l)y Oeampo as if they were the probable, if not the sufticient records of an nninter- rnpted succession of Spanisli kings from Tubal, a grandson of Noah. Such a credulity has no charm about it. But, besides this, the work of Oeampo, in its very structure, is dry and absurd ; and, being written in a formal and heavy style, it is all but impossible to read it. He died in 1555, the year the Emperor abdicated, leaving us little occasion to regret that *he had brought his annals of Spain no * 28 lower down than the age of the Scipios.' Juan Ginez de Sepulveda was also charged hy the Emperor fitly to record the events of his reign ;^ and so was Pero Mexia ; ^ but the history of the former, which was first published by the Academy in 1780, is in Latin, while that of Mexia, written, apparently, after 1545, and coming down to the coronation at Bologna, has been published only in part.^*^ A larger " The Cortes of Valladolid, 1555, in He was not appointed Historiographer their "Peticiones" cxxviii and exxix, till 1548. See notices of him by Pa- ask a pension for Oeampo, and say that checo, in the Senianario Pintoresco, he was then fifty-five years old, and 1844, p. 406. He died in 1552. The had been chronicler from 1539. (See History of the Emperor, which breaks "Capitulos y Leyes," Valladolid, folio, oft' with Book V., is among the MSS. 1558, f. Ixi.) in the National Library at Madrid, and ^ Pero Mexia, in the concluding words the second Book of it, relating to the of his "Historia Imperial y Cesarea." war of the Comimidades in Castile, may Sepulveda, who lived twenty-two years be found in the Bib. de Autores Es- in Italy, and was almost as much of an paiioles (Tom. XXL, 1852). The whole Italian as a Spaniard, died in 1573, iet. is much praised by Ferrer del Rio for 83, at a country house in the Sierra its skilful arrangement and i)ure and Morena, which he describes very pleas- dignified style, and ought to be pub- antly in one of his unpublished letters. lished ; but the portion given to us is (See Alcedo, Biblioteca Americana, ad outrageously loyal. verb. Gines de Sepiilveda, MS.) It From the time of Charles V. there may not be amiss to add that Sepul- seem generally to have been chroniclers veda's Latin style is very agreeable. of the kingdom and occasionally chron- ^ Capmar.y, Eloquencia Es[)anola, iclers of the personal history of its Tom. 11. p. 295. kings. At any rate, that monarch had ^™ I say "apparently," because, in Oeampo and Garibay for the first pur- his "Historia Imperial y Cesarea," he pose, and Guevara, Sepulveda, and declares, speaking of the achievements Mexia for the .second. Lorencjo de of Charles V., "I never was .so pre- Padilla, Archdeacon of Malaga, is also sumptuous as to deem myself sufticient mentioned by Dormer (Progresos, Lib. to record them." This was in 1545. II. c. 2) as one of his chroniclers. In- 34 FERNANDO CORTES. [Vi:nu,i, IL history, however, by the last author, consisting of the hves of all the Roman Emperors from Julius Ciesar to ]\hiximilian of xVustria, the jDreclecessor of Charles the Fifth, which was printed several times, and is spoken of as an introduction to his Chronicle, shows, notwith- standing its many imperfections of style, that his pur- j^ose was to write a true and well-digested history, since he generally refers, under each reign, to the authorities on which he relies.^^ Such works as these prove to us that Ave have reached the final limit of the old chronicling style, and that we must now look for the apj^earance * 29 of the difterent forms of * regular historical composition in Spanish literature. But, before we approach them, we must pause a moment on a few histories and accounts of the New World, Avhich, dur- ino- the reio;n of Charles the Fifth, were of more im- portance than the im})cifcct chronicles we have ju.st noticed of the Sj)anish empire in Europe. For as soon as the adventurers that followed Columbus were landed on the western shores of the Atlantic, we begin to find narratives, more or less ample, of their discoveries and settlements : some written Avitli spirit, and even in good taste ; others quite unattractive in their style ; but nearly all interesting from their subject and their materials, if from nothing else. In the foreground of this picturesque group stands, as the most brilliant of its figures, Fernando Cortes, called, by way of eminence, £Ji Couqnhtador, the Con- queror. He was born of noble parentage, and carefully bled ; and though his fiery spirit drove him from ilwd, it (Iocs not seem e^sy to deter- '^ Tlie first editiuii apjyeaied in 1545. inine how many enjoyed the honor of Tlie one I use is of Anveis, 1561, fol. that tith'. Porrefto'says Pliilip II. The best notice of liis life, jierhaps, is was too modest to have a eiironidcr. tlie article about liiiu jn the Bio<(raphie Diehos, etc., l<)(i(), y. 130. ITuivcrs.-llc. Chap. VI. ] FERNANDO CORTES. 35 Salamanca before his education could be completed, and brought him to the New World, in 1504, when he was hardly nineteen years old,^'-^ still the nurture of his youth, so much better than that of most of the other American adventurers, is ap])arent in his voluminous documents and letters, both published and unpul)lished. Of these, the most remarkable were, no doubt, four or five long and detailed Eeports to the Emperor on the affairs of Mexico ; the first of which was dated, it is said, in 1519, and the last in 1526.^3 The four known to be his are well written, and * have a * 30 business-like air about them, as well as a clear- ness and good taste, which remind us sometimes of the "Relazioni" of Machiavelli, and sometimes of Ccesar's Commentaries. His letters, on the other hand, are occasionally more ornamented. In an unpublished one, written about 1533, and in which, when his for- tunes were waning, he sets forth his services and his *'^ He left Salamanca two or three years before he came to the New World ; but old Denial Diaz, who knew him well, says : ' ' He was a scholar, and I have heard it said he was a Bachelor of Laws ; and when he talked with law- yers and scholars, he answered in Latin. He was somewhat of a poet, and made coplas in metre and in prose, [en metro y en prosa,]" etc. (Concpiista, 1632, c. 203.) It would be amusing to see poems by Cortes, and especially what the rude old chronicler calls coplas e>i prosa ; but he knew about as much concerning such matters as Mons. Jour- dain. Cortes, however, was always fond of the society of cultivated men. In his house at Madrid, (see ante, ]>. 11, n. 21,) after his return from America, was held one of those Academias which were then beginning to be imitated from Italy. ^^ The printer! "Relaciones" maybe found in Barcia, " Historiadores Prinii- tivos de las Indias Occiden tales," (Ma- drid, 1749, 3 toiii., folio,)— a collec- tion i)nl)li.slu'd after its editor's death, and very ill arranged. Barcia was a man of literary distinction, much em- jjloyed in affairs of state, and one of the founders of the Spanish Academy. He died in 1743. ( Baena, Hijos de Ma- drid, Tom. L p. 106.) For tlie last and unpublished " Relacion " of Cortes* as well as for his unpublished letters, I am indebted to my friend Mi\ Prescott, who has so well used them in his "Con- quest of Mexico." Since this note was first published, (1849,) the last Relacion has been print- ed, (Ijib. de Autores Espaholes, Tom. XXII. 1852,) and is found to be dated September 3, 1526. A letter from the ".lusticia y Regimiento" of Vera Cruz, dated July 10, 1519, is prefixed to this series of four, as if it were itself the first Relacion; and perhaps it may thus have given lise originally to the idea that a Relacion of Cortes was lost, when it was never written. It seems to me likely that there never were but four by Cortes himself, although the one by the Ji/s/icia, 1519, is of similar charac- ter and authority. 36 GOMAEA. [PKKinij II. wrongs, he pleases himself "with telling the Emperor that he '-keeps two of his Majesty's letters like holy relics," adding that "the favors of his Majesty towards him had been quite too ample for so small a vase " ; — courtly and graceful phrases, such as are not found in the documents of his later years, when, disappointed and disgusted with affairs and with the court, he re- tired to a morose solitude, where he died in 1554, little consoled by his rank, his wealth, or his glor}^. The marvellous achievements of Cortes in Mexico, however, were more fully, if not more accurately, recorded by Francisco Lopez de Gomara, — the oldest of the regular historians of the New World,^* — wlio was born at Seville in 1510, and was, for some time, Professor of Rhetoric at Alcala. His early life, spent in the great mart of American adventurers, seems to have o'iven him an interest in them and a knowledo-e of their affairs, Avhicli led him to write their history ; and a residence in Italy, to which he refers more than once, and during which, in Venice and Bologna, he became familiar with such remarkable men as Saxo Grannnaticus and Olaus Magnus, enlarged his knowl- edge beyond the common reach of Spanish scholars of his time, and fitted him better for his task than he could have been fitted at home. The works he pro- duced, besides one or two of less consequence, * 31 *were, first, his ''History of the Indies," which, after the Spanish fashion, begins with the crea- tion of the world, and ends with the glories of Spain, though it is chiefly devoted to Columbus and the dis- covery and conquest of Peru ; and, second, his " Chron- icle of New Spain," which is, in truth, merely the His- '•• "Tlie first worthy of being so called," says Munoz, Hist, del Xuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1793, folio, ]>. xviii. Chai'. XL] GOMAEA, BERNAL DIAZ. O/ tory «ind Life of Cortes, and Avliicli, with this more appropriate title, was reprinted by Bustamante, in Mexico, in 1826.^'^ As the earhest records that were published concerning affairs which already stirred the whole of Christendom, these works had, at once, a great success, passing through two editions almost immediately, and being soon translated into French, English, and Italian. But, though Gomara's style is easy and flowing, both in his mere narration and in those parts of his ^vorks wdiieh so amply describe the resources of the newly discovered countries, he did not succeed in producing anything of pennanent authority. He was the secretary of Cortes, and w^as misled by information received from him, and from other persons, who w^ere too much a part of the story they undertook to relate to tell it fairly .^*^ His mistakes, in consequence, are great and frequent, and were exposed with much zeal by Bernal Diaz, an old soldier, wdio, having already been twice to the New World, w^ent wdth Cortes to Mexico in 1519,^^ and fought there so often and ^5 The two works of GoiDara may he his chaplain and servant, after he was well consulted in Barcia, " Historia- made Marquis and returned to Spain dores Primitives," Tom. II., which they the last time." Las Casas, (Historia till, and in Vol. XXII. of the Biblio- de las Indias, Parte III. c. 113, MS.,) teca of Ribadeneyra. They were first a prejudiced witness, but, on a point of printed in 1552, 1553, and 1554 ; and fact within his own knowledge, one to though, as Antonio says, (Rib. Nov., be believed. Tom. I. p. 437, ) they were at once for- ^"^ See "Historia Verdadera de la bidden to be either reprinted or read, Conquista de la Nueva Espana, per el four editions of them appeared before Capitan Bernal Diaz del Castillo, uno the end of the century. They were de los Conquistadores," Madrid, 1632, also translated into English, Italian, folio, cap. 211. It was prepared for and French, and ]n-inted several times publication l)y Alfonso Ramon, or Re- in each language. mon, who wrote the History of the ^^ "About this first going of Cortes Order of Mercy and many other works, as captain on this expedition, the eccle- including dramas. Conf. N. Ant., Bib. siastic Gomara tells many things grossly Nov., Tom. I. p. 42. But his edition untrue in his history, as might be ex- (1632) does not seem to have been pected from a man who neither saw nor printed from a complete manuscript, heard anything about them, except and the more recent one of Cano, in what Fernando Cortes told him and four volumes, is mutilated from that gave him in writing; Gomara being of 1632. But it is reprinted in Riba- 38 BEEXAL DIAZ, OVIEDO. [rEinuD II. * 32 so * long, that, many years afterwards, he de- clared he could not sleep in any tolerable com- fort without his arinor.^^ As soon as he read the accounts of Gomara, which, in his opinion, gave too much honor to Cortes and too little to Cortes's com- panions and captains, he set himself sturdily at work to answer them, and in 1568 completed his task.^^ The book he thus produced is written with much gar- rulity, and runs, in a rude style, into wearisome details ; but it is full of the zealous and honest nationality of the old chronicles, so that while we are reading it we seem to be carried back into the preceding ages, and to be again in the midst of a sort of fervor and faith which, in writers like Gomara and Cortes, we feel sure we are ftist leaving behind us. Among the persons who early came to America, and have left important records of their adventures and times, one of the most considerable was Gonzalo Fer- nandez de Oviedo y Valdes. He was born at Madrid, in 1478,^ and, having been well educated at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, as one of the mozos de camara of Prince John, was sent out in 1513 as a super- visor of gold-smeltings, to Tierra Finne^^ where, except denejTa's Bibliotoca, Vol. XXVI., 1853, charger as carefully as he does those with a good jircfatory notice by Don of his rider. His accuracy, however, Enri([ue ih; Vedia, doing justice to the — hating accidents from tlie lapse of brave old chronicler, who never re- time, — is remarkable. Sayas ^Anah-s turned to Spain, and died very old at de Aragon, 1667, c. 30, p. 218) bears Guatemala. witness to it, and is a good authority. 1" He says he was in one hundied '•'*' "Yo naci anode 1478," he says, and nineteen battles, (f. 254, b, ) — that in his "Quinquagenas," when noticing is, I suppose, fights of all kinds, — Pedro Fernandez de Cordoba ; and he and that, of the five hundred and fifty moic than once speaks of himself as a who went witli him to Mexico in 1519, native of Madrid. He says, too, ex- five were living when he WTote at Gua- pressly, tliat he was present at the sur- temala, in 1568, f. 250, a. render of Granada, and that he saw ^^ It was dedicated to Philip IV. Columbus at liaicelona, on his first Some of its details are quite amusing. return from America, in 1493. Quin- He gives even a list of the individual (jua-jcnas, MS. hor.ses that were used on the gicat ex- ^r " Yeedor de las Fundiciones de pedition of Coiles, and often describes Oro,'" he describes himself in the Proe- the se]»arate qualities of a favorite miu of hi.^ work presented to Charles Chai'. VI.] GONZALO FEIJXANDEZ I)E OVIEDO. 39 occasional visits to Spain and to difterent Spanish pos- sessions in America, he lived nearly forty ^-ears, de- voted to the affairs of the New World. Oviedo seems, from his youth, to liave had a passion for knowing remarkable persons as well as for writing about them ; and, besides several less considera- ble *W'Orks, among which were imperfect chron- * 33 icles of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth, and a life of Cardinal Ximenes,^ he prepared two of no small value. ^ The most important of these two is the "General and Natural History of the Indies," filling fifty books^ of which the first portions, embracing twenty-one, were published in 1535. As early as 1525, when he was at Toledo, and offered Cliarles the Fifth a summary of the History of the Spanish Conquests in the New A¥orld, which was published three years later, he speaks of his desire to have his larger work printed. But it appears, from the beginning of the thirty- third book and the end of the thirty-fourth, that he was still employed upon it in 1547 and 1548; and it is not unlikely, from the words with which he concludes the thirty-seventh, that he kept each of its larger divis- ions open, and continued to make additions to them nearly to the time of his death.-'^ v., in 1525 (Bavcia, Tom. I.); and Emperor, at the end of the " Suinaiio," lonj; afterwards, in the opening of Book in 1525, "La General y NaC\iral Hi.s- XLVII. of his Historias, MS., lie still toria de las Indias, ()ue de mi niano •Speaks of himself as holding tlie same tengo escrita"; — in the Introduction office. to Lib. XXXIII. he says, "En treinta -- 1 do not feel sure that Antonio is y quatro anos que ha que estoy en estas not mistaken in ascribing to Oviedo a partes"; — and in the ninth chapter, scparati' life of Cardinal Ximenes, be- which ends Lib. XXXIV., we have au cau.se the life contained in the " Quin- event recorded with the date of 1548 ; •piagenas " is so ample ; but the Chron- — so that, for these tliree-and-twenty icles of Ferdinand and Isabella, and years, he was certainly employed, more Charles V., are alluded to by Oviedo or les.s, on this great woik. But at the liimself in the Proemio to Charles V. end of Book XXXVII. he says, "Y Neither has ever been ])rinte(l. csto baste quanto a este l)reve libro del *^ He calls it, in his letter to the nuiiicro treinta y siefe, hasta (pie el 40 GOXZALO FERXAXDEZ DE OVIEDO. [Pekiod II. He tells US that he had the Emperor's authority to demand, from the different governors of Spanish America, the documents he might need for his work ; -^ and, as his divisions of the sujjject are those which naturally arise from its geography, he appears to have gone judiciously ahout his task. But the materials lie was to use were in too crude a state to be * 34 easily manageable, and the whole * subject w\as too wide and various for his powers. He falls, therefore, into a loose, rambling style, instead of aim- ing at philosophical condensation ; and, far from an abridgment, which his work ought to have been, he gives us chronicling, documentary accounts of an im- mense extent of newly discovered country, and of the extraordinary events that had been passing there, — sometimes too short and slight to be satisfactory- or interesting, and sometimes too detailed for the reader's patience. He was evidently a learned man, and main- tained a correspondence with Ramusio, the Italian geographer, which could not fail to be useful to both parties.'^'' And he was desirous to write in a good and eloquent style, in which he sometimes succeeded. He has, therefore, on the whole, pioduced a series of accounts of the natural condition, the aboriginal inhab- tiempo nos aviso, de otras cosas que en times, by Herrera, Taniayo, Soli's, and el se acn-scieutan " ; from whidi I in- other writers of (listinction. It ceased, fer that he kept each l)ook, or each I believe, with the creation of tlie Acad- large division of his work, open for ad- eniy of History. . -ld at ditferent MS.) CiiAi'. VI.| GOXZALO FERNANDEZ J)E OVIEDO. 41 itants, and the political affairs, of the wide-spread Spanish possessions in America, as they stood in the middle of the sixteenth century, wliicli is of great value as a vast repository of facts, and not wholly without merit as a composition.^*' * The other considerable work of Oviedo, the * 35 ■■'*' As a specimen of his manner I add tlie following account of Almagro, one of the early adventurers in Peru, whom the Pizarros put to death in Cuzco, after they had obtained uncontrolled ]>ower there. ' ' Therefore hear and read all the authors you may, and compare, one by one, whatever they relate, that all men, not kings, liave freely given away, and you shall surely see how there is none that can eipial Almagro in this matter, and how none can be compared to him ; for kings, indeed, may give and know how to give what- ever pleaseth them, both cities and lands, and lordships) and other great gifts ; but that a man whom yesterday we saw so ]wor that all he possessed was a very small matter should have a spirit sufficient for what I have related, — 1 liold it to be so great a thing that I know not the like of it in our own or any other time. For I myself saw, when his companion, PizaiTO, came from Spain, and brought with him that body 01 three hundred men to Panama, that, if Almagro had not received them, and shown them so much free hospi- tality with so generous a spirit, few or none of them could have escaped alive ; for the land was tilled with disease, and the means of living were so dear that a bushel of maize was worth two or three pesos, and an arroba of wine six or seven gold pieces. To all of them he was a father, and a brother, and a true friend ; for, inasmuch as it is pleasant and grateful to some men to make gain, and to heaji up and to gather together moneys and estates, even so much and more pleasant was it to him to share with others and to give away ; so that the day when he gave nothing he accounted it for a day lost. And in his very face you might see the pleasure and true delight he felt when lie found occasion to help him who had need. And since, after so long a fel- lowship and friendship as there was be- tween these two gi'cat leaders, from the days when their com])anions were few and their means small, till they saw themselves full of wealth and strength, there hath at last come foith so much discord, scandal, and death, well must it appear matter of wonder even to those who shall but hear of it, and much more to us, who knew them in their low estate, and have no less borne witness to their greatness and prospei'- ity." (General y Natural Historia de las Indias, Lib. XLVIL, MS.) Much of it is, like the preceding passage, in the true, old, rambling, moializing, chronicling vein. Since the preceding account of the- "Historia General" of Oviedo was printed, (1849,) the whole work has been published by the Spanish Acad- emy of History, in four rich folio vol- imies, Madrid, 1851-1855, edited by Don Jose Amador de los Rios. The Prefatory notice contains a Life of Ovi- edo, with an account of his works, among which are two that have been published, and should be at least men- tioned. The lirst is " Claribalte," com- posed during a period when Oviedo was out of favor at court, and printed at Valencia in 1519 ; — a book which it is singular he should have written, be- cause it is a Romance of Chivalry, and, in the latter part of his life, when such fictions were at the height of their favoi', nobody treated them with more seveiity than he did. Tiie other is an ascetic work, entitled " Reglas de la Vida," which, he says, he translated from the Tuscan, and which was printed at Se- ville in 1548, but which is now become so rare that Sr. Amador has never seen it, and does not determine precisely what it was, nor who was its original author. Of the works in manuscript, which, besides the two Quimiuagenas, amount to six, we should, 1 suppose, be most curious to see tlie account Oviedo prepared of the occui rences and gossip at the conit of l^Tacbid during the cap- tivity of Kiiinuis I., in ]r>2'). 42 BAUTOLEMK DE LAS C'ASAS. [Piiuop IT. fruit of his old age, is devoted to fond recollee- tioiis of his native country, and of the disting-uished men he had known there. He calls it " Batallas y Quinquagenas," and it consists of a series of dialogues, in which, with httle method or order, he gives gossip- ing accounts of the principal families that figured in Spain during the times of Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles the Fifth, mingled with anecdotes and recol- lections, such as — not without a simple-hearted exhi- bition of his own vanity — the memory of his long and busy life could furnish. It apjDcars from the Dia- lo50 " ; hundred and fifty stanzas of fifty lines and in the Dialogue on Mendoza, Duke each, or seven thousand five hundreil of Ld'antado, he uses the same words, lines in all; — an error into which I as he does again in tliat on Pedro Fer- fell in tiie first edition of this work, nandez de ('(irdova. There is an exc(d- owing (diieily to an oliscurity in the lent note on Oviedo in Vol. I. j). 112 account of the two Quinquagenas by of the American edition of "Ferdinand ("lemencin, in his Elogin on Queen I.sa- and Isabel'a," hy my friend Mr. I'res- hella. It is mucli to he desired that cott, to whom I am indebted for tlie both .should be publi.shed, anil we can manu.scri[)t of the Batallas y Quinqua- have no accurate idea of them till they gena.s, as well as of the Historia. The are. CiiAi'. VI.] BAltTOLEME DE LAS CASA.S. 43 ican Indians,-^ — a m-an "vvlio would have been remfirk- able in any age of the worhl, and who does not seem yet to have gathered m the fidl harvest of his honors. He was born in Seville, probably in 1474 ; and, in 1502, havino- gone throuo-h a course of studies at Sala- manca, embarked for the Indies, where his father, who had been there with Columbus nine years earlier, had already accumulated a decent fortune. The attention of the young man was at once drawn to the condition of the natives, from the circumstance that one of them, given to his father by Columbus, had been attached to his own person as a slave, while he was still at the University; and he was not slow to learn, on his arrival in Hispaniola, that their gentle na- tures and slight frames had already been subjected, in the mines and in other forms of toil, to a servitude so harsh that the original inhabitants of the island were rapidly wasting away under the severity of their la- bors. From this moment he devoted his life to their emancipation. In 1510 he took holy orders, and con- tinued as a priest, and, for a short time, as Bishop of Chiapa, nearly forty years, to teach, strengthen, and console, the suffering flock committed to his charge. Six times, at least, he crossed the Atlantic, in order to persuade the government of Charles the Fifth to ameliorate their condition, and always with more or less * success. At last, but not until * 37 1547, when he was above seventy years old, he established himself at Valladolid, in Spain, where he passed the remainder of his serene old age, giving it freely to the great cause to which he had devoted the ^ The family was originally French, Chronicle of John II. its descendants spelling its name Casaus ; but it appeals are called Las Casas, and Fr. Bartolome in Spanish history as early as 1253, in wrote his name both ways. Later they the Repartimiento of Seville. (Zuhimi, reverted to the original spelling. Gu- Anales de Sevilla, 1677, p. 75.) In tiie diel, Faniilia de los Girones, 1577, f. 98. 44 BAllTOLEME DE LAS CASAS. [Pehiod II. freshness of his 3'oiith. He died, while on a visit of business, at Madrid, in 1566, at the advanced age, as is commonly supposed, of ninety-two.^^ Among the principal opponents of his benevolence were Sepulveda, — one of the leading men of letters and casuists of the time in Spain, — and Oviedo, who, from his connection ^vith the mines and his share in the government of different parts of the newly discovered countries, had an interest directly opposite to the one Las Casas defended. These two persons, with large means and a wide influence to sustain them, intrigued, wa^ote, and toiled against him, in every w^ay in their power. But his was not a spirit to be daunted by opposition or deluded by sophistry and intrigue ; and when, in 1519, in a discussion with Sepulveda concern- ing the Indians, held in the presence of the young and proud Emperor Charles the Fifth, Las Casas said, '• It is quite certain that, speaking with all the respect and reverence due to so great a sovereign, I would not, save in the way of duty and obedience as a subject, go from the place where I now stand to the op^DOsite cor- ner of this room, to serve your Majesty, unless I believed I should at the same time serve God,"^^ ^ There is a valuable life of Las Casas taken by the Portuguese in war ami inQuintana, "ViJas de Espanoles Ci'le- nghtful slaves. But afterwards be bres" (Madrid, 1833, 12nio, Tom. III. chauj^'fil bis mind on the subject. He pp. 255-510). The seventh article in declared "the captivity of the negroes the Apjjendix, concerning the conn(;c- to be as unjust as that of the Indians," tion of Las Casas with the slave-trade, — "ser tan injusto el cautiverio de los will be read with ]>articular interest; negros como el de los Indios," — and becau.se, by materials drawn from un- even expres.sed a fear that, though he published documents of unquestionable hail fallen into the eiTor of favoring the authenticity, it makes it certain that, importation of black slaves into Amer- although at one time Las Casas favored ica from ignorance and good-will, he what had been begun earlier, — the might, after all, fail to stand excused transportation, I mean, of negi'oes to for it In^fore the Divine Justice. Quin- the West Indies, in order to relieve the tana, Tom. HI. ]>. 471. Indian.s, — as other good men in his ^i Quintana, EspauolesCelebres, Tom. time favored it, he diil so under the 111. ]). 321. 1 think, but am not sure, im[iression tliat, according to the law that (^uintana dix-s not .say La.s Casas of nations, the negroes thus brought was made a chajilain of Cliarles V. out to America were both rightful captives of personal regard ; — a circumstance (MAP. VI.] IJAUTOLK^n': 1)E LAS TASAS. 45 — when he said this, he uttered a sentiment *that really governed his life, and constituted * 38 the basis of the great power he exercised. His works are pervaded by it. The earliest of them, called •' A very Short Account of the Ruin of the Indies," was written in l-542;^-^ and dedicated to the Prince, after- wards Philip the Second ; — a tract in which, no doubt, the sufterings and wrongs of the Indians are much overstated by the mdignant zeal of its author, but still one whose expositions are founded in truth, Jind b}- their fervor awakened all Europe to a sense of the in- justice they set forth. Other short treatises followed, written with similar spirit and power, especially those in reply to Sepulveda ; but none was so often re- printed, either at home or abroad, as the first,^ and none ever produced so deep and solemn an effect on the world. They were all collected and published in 1552 ; and, besides being translated into other lan- guages at the time, an edition in Sj^anish, and a French version of the wdiole, with two more treatises than were contained in the first collection, appeared at Paris in 1822, prepared by Llorente. mentioned by Argensola, who, it should Las Casas by Llorente, which appeared be added, gives a fair and interesting at Paris in 1822, in 2 vols., 8vo, in tlie account of the Apostle to the Indians, original Spanish, almost at the same so far as his History of Aragon comes time with his translation of tliem into down. Anales de Aragon, Tom. L French. It should be noticed, jjcr- 1630, p. .547. haps, that Llorente's version is not al- ^^ Quintana (p. 413, note) doubts ways strict, and that the two new trea- wlieii this famous treatise was written ; tises he imputes to Las Casas, as well but Las Casas himself says, in the as tlie one on the Authoritj' of Kings, opening of his " Brevisiina Relacion," are not absolutely proved to be his. that it was written in 1542, and at The translation referred to above ap- the end it is noted as finished at Va- peared, in fact, the same year, and at lencia, December 8, 1542; an "Adi- the end of it an " Apologie de Las cion" or postscript following, which is Casas," by Gregoire, with letters of dated 1546 in tlia copy I use. Funes and ]\Iier, and notes of Llorente ^ This important tract continued to sustain it, — all to defend Las Casas long to be printed separately, both at on the subject of the slave-trade ; but home and abroad. I use a copy of it Quintana, as we have seen, has gone to in double columns, Spanish and Italian, the original documents, and leaves no Venice, 1643, 12ino ; but, like the rest, doubt, both that Las Casas once favored the " Brevisima Relacion" mayl)econ- it, and that he altered liis mind after- suited in an edition of the AVorks of wards. 46 BAKTOLEME DE LAS CASAS. [Pkkioi) II. Tlic great work of Las Casas, liowever, still remains inedited, — a General History of the Indies from 1492 to 1520, begun by him in 1-327 and finished in 1561, but of Avhicli he oi-dered that no portion shoidd be ]niblished within forty ^-ears of his death. * 39 * Like his other works, it shows marks of haste and carelessness, and is written in a ramblincr o stj'le ; but its value, notwithstanding his too fervent zeal for the Lidians, is great. He had l)een personally acquainted with many of the early discoverers and conquerors, and at one time possessed the papers of Columbus, and a large mass of other important docu- ments, which are now lost. He says he had known Cortes "when he was so low and humble, that he be- sought favor from the meanest servant of Dieo-o A'^elas- quez " ; and he knew him afterwards, he tells us, when, in his pride of place at the court of the Emperor, he ventured to jest jdjout the pretty corsairs part lie liad played in the affairs of Montezuma.^* He knew, too, Gomara and Oviedo. and gives at large his reasons for differing from them. In short, his book, divided into three parts, is a great repository, to which Herrera, and through him all the historians of the Indies since, have resorted for materials ; and without which the history of the earliest period of the Spanish settle- ments in America cannot even now be properlj^ writ- ten.^ But it is not necessary to go further into an examina- ^* "Todof'sto me (lixo p1 mismoror- MS.) It may be woitli noting, that tes con oti-as cosas ccrca dello, despues 1.542, the year when Cortes made this de Mar<|UPs, en la villa de Momjon, es- srandalous sjieech, was the year in tando alU celebrando cortes el Empera- whieh Las Casas wrote his Brevisima dor, afio de mil y In.liMs. Ml,, III. ,. 11.5, Chai'. VI. J VACA, XEKEZ, CAKATE. 47 tion of the old accounts of the discovery and conquest of Spanish America, though there are many more ■\vhich, Uke those we have ah^eady considered, are partly books of travel through countries fidl of won- ders, i^artly chronicles of adventures as strange as those of romance ; frequently running into idle and loose details, but as frequently fresh, picturesque, and manly, in their tone and coloring, and almost always striking from the facts tliey record and the glimpses they give of manners and character. Among those that might be added are the stories b}^ Yaca of his shipwreck and ten years' captivity in Florida, from 1527 to 1537, and his subsequent government * for three years of the Rio de la Plata ; ^"^^ the * 40 short account of the conquest of Peru, written by Francisco de Xerez, Secretary of Francisco de Pi- zarro,"" and the amjoler one, of the same wild achieve- ments, which Augustin de Carate began on the spot, and was prevented by Carvajal, an officer of Gonzalo de Pizarro, from finishing till after his return home."^ ^ The two works of Alvar Nunez Tom. III.,) and in Barcia's collection Cabeza de Vaca, namely, his " Naufra- (Tom. III.). It ends in Baicia with gios," and his "Comentarios y Suce- some poor verses in defence of Xerez, SOS de su Gobierno en el Rio de la by a friend, which are ampler and more Plata," were first printed in 1555, and important in the original edition, and are to be found in Barcia, Historiadores contain notices of his life. They are Primitivos, Tom. I., and in the Biblio- reprinted in the Biblioteca de Autorcs tecade AutoresEspanoles, Tom. XXII., Espafioles, Tom. XXVI., 1853, and 1852. They are wild and romantic ac- Gayangos conjectures them to have • ■ounts of extraordinary adventures and been written by Oviedo. sufferings, particularly the JVaufracfios, ^ " Hi.storia del Desciibrimiento y where (Chap. XXII.) the author .seems Conquista del Peru," first printed in TO think he not only cui-ed the sick by 1555, and several times since. It is in divine interpo.sition, but that, in one Barcia, Tom. III., and in the Biblio- instance, he rai.sed the dead. But, tecade AutoresEspanoles, Tom. XXVI., however this may be, he was evidently 1853, and was translated into Italian by a man of gi'eat courage and constancy, Ulloa. ^arate was sent out by Charles and of an elevated and generous na- V. to examine into the state of the Ture. revenues of Peru, and biings down his ^" The work of Francisco de Xerez, accounts as late as the overthrow of "Conquista del Peru," written by order Gonzalo Pizarro. See an excellent no- of Francisco Pizarro, was firet published tice of Carate at the end of Mr. Pres- in 1534 and 1547, and is to be found in cott's last chapter on the Conquest of Ramusio, (Venezia, ed. Giunti, folio, Peru. 48 EAKLY ACCOUNTS OF AMEKICA. [I'l.iMoi, IL But tliey may all be passed over, as of less conse- quence than those we have noticed, which are quite sufficient to give an idea, both of the nature of their class and the course it followed, — a class much resem- blinii' the old chronicles, but ^'et one that announces the approach of those more regular forms of historv for which it furnishes abundant materials. Pedro Cieza de Leon, also, who lived above seventeen years in Peru, pub- lished at Seville, in 1553, an important work on that country,' entitled " Pri- niera Parte de la Chronica del Peru," intending to conii)lete and publish it in three other parts ; but died in 1560, re i/ifcda, at the age of forty-two. The lirst part is reprinted in the Biblioteca de Autores Espafioles, Tom. XXVI., and the MS. of the third ]nivt is said to- be in the possession of James Lenox, Esq., New York. Gayangos notices, also, a small publication in eight leaves, in the British Museum, entitled La Cnnquisf.d, del Peru, which he thinks is like a gazette, and may have been the lirst publication on the subject. *CHArTErt VII. *41 THEATRE. INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH AND THE INQUISITION MTSTERJES. — 'CASTILLEJO, OLIVA, JUAN DE PARIS, AND OTHERS. --POPULAR DEMANDS FOR DRAMATIC LITERATURE. LOPE DE RUEDA. HIS LIFE, COMEDIAS, COLOQUIOS, PASOS, AND DIALOGUES IN VERSK. HIS CHARACTER AS FOUND- ER OF THE POPULAR DRAMA IN SPAIN. JUAN DE TIMONEDA. The theatre in Spain, as in most other countries of modern Europe, was early called to contend with for- midable difficulties. Dramatic representations there, perhaps more than elsewhere, had been for centuries in the hands of the Church ; and the Church was not will- ing to give them up, especially for such secular and irreligious purposes as we have seen were apparent in the plays of Naharro. The Inquisition, therefore, al- ready arrogating to itself powers not granted by the state, but yielded by a sort of general consent, inter- fered betimes. After the publication of the Seville edition of the " Propaladia/' in 1520, — but how soon afterward we do not know, — the representation of its dramas was forbidden, and the interdict was continued till 1573.^ Of the few pieces written in the early part of the reign of Charles the Fifth, nearly all, except those on strictly religious subjects, were laid under the ban of the Church ; several, like the " Orfea," 1534, and the " Custodia," 1541, being now known to have 1 In the edition of Madrid, 1573, 1573. The period i.s important ; but I ISmo, we are told, "La Propaladia .suspect the authority of Martinez de la estava prohihida en estos reynos, ahos Rosa, for its termination is merely the avia " ; and Martinez de la Rosa (0bra.s. permission to print an edition, which Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 382) says is dated 21st August, 1573; an edi- that this prohibition was laid soon after tion, too, which is, after all, expurgated 1520, and not removed till August, severely. VOL. II. 4 50 THE TlIEATItE. [Pkuiud II. existed only because their names appear in the * 42 Index Expurgatoiius ; ^ and others, * like the "Aniadis de Gauhi " of Gil Vicente, though printed a-nd i)ul)lished, being subsequently forbidden to be represented.^ The old religious drama, meantime, was still upheld hy ecclesiastical power. Of this we have sufficient ])roof in the titles of the Mysteries that were from time to time performed, and in the well-known fact that, when, with all the magnificence of the court of Charles the Fifth, the infant heir to the crown, afterwards Philip the Second, was bajDtized at Yidlado- lid, in 1-527, five religious plajs, one of which was on the Baptism of Saint John, constituted a part of the gorgeous ceremony.^ Such compositions, however, did not advance the drama, though perhaps some of them, like that of Pedro de Altamira, on the Supper at Em- maus, are not without poetical merit.'' On the con- trary, their tendency must lia\e been to keep back 2 Those are in the " Catalogo " of L. F. Monitiii, Nos. 57 and 63, Obras, ibulrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. Parte I. '^ Tlie fate of this long, heroic, and romantic drama of Gil Vicente, in Span- ish, is somewhat singular. It was for- bidden by the liujuisition, we are told, as early as the Index Expiirgatorius of 1549 [1559?]; but it was not ])rinted at all till 1562, and not separately till 1586. By the Index of Lisbon, 1624, it is permitted, if ex])urgated, and thei-e is an edition of it of that year at Lisbon. As it was never printed in Sj)ain, the jn'ohibition there must have related chiefly to its representation. Barbcsa, Bib. Lu.sitana, Tom. 11. p. 384. * The account of this ceremony, and the facts concerning the dramas in ques- tion, are given by Sandoval, "Ilistoi'ia de Carlos V.," (.Viivers, 1681, fol., Tom. I. i». 619, Lib. XVI. § 13,) and are of some con.sei|uence in the liistory of the Spanish drama. It may also be worth notice that when Maximilian II., of Germanj^ was married to Marv. eldest daughter of Charles V., at" Valladolid, in 1548, Philij) being present at the festivities, and 5laxiinilian having been educateil in Sjjain, tlie theatrical entertainment thouglit proper for the occasion was yet one of the comedies of Ariosto, in the original, which, we are told, was repre- .sentod "con todo a(|uel aparato de the- atro y scenas que los Komanos las solian rejM'esentar, que fue cosa mny real y sumptuosa." (( 'alvete de Estrejla, Viage de Phelipe, Hijo del Emperador Carlos v., ec. Anveres, folio, 1552, f. 2, b. ) Tiiere can be no doubt, I suppose, that a Spanish play would liave been se- lecteil, if one suitable could have been found for so biiliiant a Sjianish audi- ence, collected on an occasion ajtjieal- ing so strongly to national fe(dings. ^ It was ])rinted in 1523, ami a suffi- cient extract from it is to be found in Moratin, '"atalogo, No. 36. Chap. VI F.] VAKIOUS I)RA]N[AS. 51 theatrical representations within their old religious purposes and limits.-' * Nor were the efforts made to advance them in * 43 other directions marked l)y good judgment or permanent success. We pass over the " Costanza " 1)V Castillejo, which seems to have heen in the manner of Naharro, and is assigned to the year l')22,' Init which, from its indecency, was never jiublished in full, and is now probably lost ; and we pass over the free versions made about 1530, by Perez de Oliva, Rector of the University of Salamanca, from the '' Amphitryon " of •" A specimen of the Mysteries of the age of Charles V. may be found in an extremely lare volume, without date, entitled, in its three parts, " Triaca del Alma," "Triaca de Amor," and "Tri- aca de Tristes " ; — or. Medley for the Soul, for Love, and for Sadness. Its author was Marcelo de Lebrixa, son of the famous scholar Antonio ; and the dedication and conclusion of the first part imply that it was composed when the author was forty years old, — after the death of his father, which happened in 1522, and during the reign of the Emperor, which ended in 1556. The first part, to which I particularly al- lude, consists of a "Mj'stery" on the Incarnation, in above eight thousand short verses. It has no other action than such as consists in the a])pearance of the angel Gabriel to the Madonna, bringing Reason with him in the shape of a woman, and followed by another angel, who leads in the Seven Virtues ; — the whole piece being made up out of their successive discourses and ex- hortations, and ending M'itli a sort of summary, by Reason and by the Au- thor, in favor of a pious life. Certain- ly, so slight a structure, with little merit in its verses, could do nothing to advance the drama of the sixteenth century. It was, however, intended for representation. " It was written," says its author, "for the praise and solemnization of the Festival of Our Lady's Incarnation ; so that it may be acted as a play [la puedan por fai(;a representar] by devout nuns in their convents, since no men a]>pear in it, but only angels and young damsels." It should be noted that the word ^flJfi^ tcry, as here used, has sometimes been thought to indicate its origin from mi- nisterium, because it was jierformed by the ministers of tin? church, and not because it set forth the mysteries of re- ligion, according to its accustomed use in France, where we have " Le Mistere de la Passion," etc. The second part of this singular vol- ume, which is moi'e poetical than the first, is against human and in favor of Divine love ; and the third, which is very long, consists of a series of conso- lations, deemed suitable for the differ- ent forms of human sorrow and care ; — these two parts being necessarily di- dactic in their character. Each of the three is addressed to a member of the great family of Alva, to which tlieir au- thor was attached ; and the whole is called by him Triaca ; a word which means Treacle, or Antidote, but which Lebrixa says he uses in the sense of Ensalacld, — Salad, or Medlc\i. The volume, taken as a whole, is as strongly marked with the spirit of the age that produced it as the contemporary Cau- cionerosGenerales, and its poetical merit is much like theirs. ■^ Moratin, Catiilogo, No. 35, MxAante, Vol. I. p. 463, n. 6. A short extract from it is given by Moratin ; and Wolf, in his tract on Castillejo, (1849, p. 10,) says that still more was published in 1542, under the pseudonyme of Fraj' Nidel ; but Gallai-do gives the best ac- count of the whole in a letter to Ga- yangos, to be found in the Spanish translation of this work, Tom. II- p. 500. 52 JUAX DE PAKIS. [PKKini) II. Plaiitns, the " Electra " of Sophocles, and the " Hecuba " of Euripides^, because they fell, for the time, powerless on the early attempts of the national theatre, which had nothing in connnon with the spirit of anti(iuity.^ But a single play, printed in 1536, should be noticed, as showing how slowly the drama made progress in Spain. It is called '• An Eclogue," and is written by Juan de Paris, in versos do arte mayor, or long verses divided into stanzas of eight lines each, which show, in their * 44 careful * construction, not a little labor and art.^ It has five interlocutors : an esquire, a hermit, a young damsel, a demon, and two shepherds. The hermit enters first. He seems to be in a meadow, musing on the vanity of human life ; and, after praying devoutly, determines to go and visit another hermit But he is prevented by the esquire, who conies in weeping and complaining of ill treatment from Cupid, whose cruel character he illustrates by his conduct in the cases of Medea, the flill of Troy, Priam, David, and Hercules ; ending with his own determination to aban- don the world and live in a "nook merely monastical." He accosts the hermit, who discourses to him on the follies of love, and advises him to take religion and works of devotion for a remedy in his sorrows. The young man determines to follow counsel so wise, and they enter the hermitage together. But they are no * Oliva (lied in 1533 ; but his trans- posta por Juan dc Paris, en la qual se lations wci'i' not printed till l."i8r». iutrodiicen ciueo personas : un Eseude- Those from Soi)hoeles, Euripides, and ro llainado Estaeio, y un Herinitano, y Plautus are too free. Montiano ])rais* "Comerlia llama Tliis l;isl is ;i direct imiliilion of Xjiliiiiro; li;is ;iii inlroilo : is dixidcd '\\\\n \\\r ionitnhis : and is wiillcii in short \crscs. Indeed, al tlie end. Naliaiio is nu'n- li(ine(| l)\ nam*', with nineh iinphed athniration on the part of the anthor, who in the t it h'-pau'e annonnces liiniscdi" as an Arau'onese. hnt ol" whom we know nothinii; (dse. And. linallv. wc have ;i i»la\ in live ads. and in the same si \ h'. with an lulroHo al llio heii'iniiiu^ and a rll/aiiclco at the end. hv Aiioslin Orti/J " h'a\ im:' no * donht that the manner and *I7 sNstein of Naharro had at hist louiid imitators in Spam, and were I'airlv reeov^ni/ed theic. Hill the popular \ein had not^ v»'t heen struck. V,\- eept (hamatic exhihitions of a reliiiioiis character, and mi(h'i' ecclesiastical anthorily, nothing had been a<- teiiiple(l in wiiicli ihe peopio, ui^ .sncli, luid any .shar<'. The attempt. howcNcr, was now made, and made siio iniiiU'i. It liiis Irii iiili'rloriiloiN, Mild Iiik kv'nimiil. .'!, A .slmrl, ilnli iMivr, IS lliinii^^hiiiil nil iiiiilMtiiiii of XiiliHiio, ciilit.h'il ".IjifiiitM," ii, lilijuk-lcl- ti.ni, 155-2, of a very simiii.' Co lin. i.T. '1. All <'<.' \h n coiirNi' wooilcnt, lo oiir kiiowl<>(l^.' of IIk' llicnln' of tint ..I lli.' iiimi'MT. with It.'llil.'li.'in in 111.' liiii.'. ■56 LOl'K DK JtUKDA. [Pkui.dII. cessfully. Its author was a mechanic of Seville, Lope de lluedn, a goldbeater ])y trade, Avho, from motives now entirely unknown, became both a dramatic writer and a ])iibnc actor. The })erio(l in Avliich lie tiourished has l)een supposed to be between 1544 and loOT. in which last year he is spoken of as dead ; and the scene of his adventures is believed to have extended to Seville, Cordova, Valencia, Segovia, and probably other places, where his plays and farces could be rep- resented with profit. At Segovia, we know he acted in the new cathedral, during the week of its consecra- tion, in 1558; and Cervantes and the unhappy Antonio Perez both speak with admiration of his powers as an actor, — the first having been twenty years old in 1567, the period commonly assumed as that of Rueda's death,^*^ and the last having been eighteen. Rueda's success, therefore, even during his lifetime, seems to have been remarkable ; and when he died, though he belonged to the despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honor among the mazy pillars in the nave of the great cathedral at Cordova.^' * 48 * His works were collected after his death bv - 1*' It is known that lie was certainly Oayaiiiros saA's that Tinioiieda alludes dead as early as that year, because the to the death of Lope de Ixueda, in ]5t)ti. edition of his "Oouiedias" then puh- I sujiijosc he refers, in this remark, to lished at Valencia, by his friend Tinio- the " Kpistola" preiixed to the edition iieda, contains, at the end of the " Kn- of the Eufeinia and Armelina dated ganos," a sonnet on his death by Fian- 15(57, but with the Censura of October, cisco de Ledesnia. The last, and, 1566. indeed, almost the only date we have i" The well-known passage about iil)Out him, is that of his acting in the Lo])e de Rue(la, in Cervantes's Prologo •cathedral at Segovia in 1558 ; of which to his own plays, (see post, j). 55,) is of "we liave a distinct account in the learneil more consequeiice than all the rest that and elaborate History of Segovia, by remains concerning him. Everything, Diego de Colmenares, (Segovia, 1627, however, is collected in Navarrete, fol., p. 516,) where he says that, on a " Vida de Cervantes," pp. 255-260 ; stage erected between tin; (dioirs, "Lope and in Casiano Pelli(;er, " Origen de la de Rueda, a well-known actor [fainoso Comedia y del Histrionismo en Kspaha" comediante] of that age rejintsented an (Madriil, 1804, r2mo, Tom. II. pp. entertaining play [gusto.sa comedia]." 72-84). KT Cum: VII.] LOPE DE KUEDA. 0/ his friend Juan de Tinioncda, and published in difTfer- ent editions, between lOiiT and 1588.'** They consist of foiu' Coniedias, two Pastoral Colloquies, and ten Pasos, or dialogues, all in prose; besides two dia- logues in verse. They were all evidently written for representation, and were unquestionably acted before public audiences, by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about. The four Coniedias are merely divided into scenes, ,'ind extend to the length of a common farce, whose spirit they generally share. The first of them, " Los Engafios," ^^ — Frauds, — contains the story of a daugh- ter of Verginio, who has escaped from the convent where she was to be educated, and is serving as a page to Marcelo, who had once Ijcen her lover, and who had left her because he believed himself to have been ill treated. ClaveLa, the lady to whom Marcelo now devotes himself, falls in love with the fair page, some- what as Olivia does in " Twelfth Night," and this brings in several effective scenes and situations. But a twin brother of the lady-page returns home, after a considerable absence, so like her, that he proves the other Sosia, who, first producing great confusion and trouble, at last m.nTies Clavela, and leaves his sister to her original lover. This is at least a plot; and some of its details and portions of the dialogue are ingenious, and managed with dramatic skill. . 1^ " Las Quatro Comedias y Dos Colo- nmeli couscqiu'iR-c. Of the " Deley- quios Pastorales del exceleute poeta y toso," j)rinted at Valencia, 1567, I graciosorepresentante, Lope de Rueda," have never be(!n abh; to see more than etc., iinpresas en Sevilla, L576, 8vo, — the veiy ample extracts given by Mora- contains his principal works, with the tin, aiiioiinting to six Pasos and a C'olo- " Dialogo sobre la Invencion de las quio. The first edition of the Quatro Calzas que se iisan agora." From the Comedia.s, etc., wiis ].')67, at Valencia; Epistola prefixed to it by Juan de Timo- the last at Logrono, 1 588. neda, 1 infer that he made alterations ^^ In the edition of Valencia by Joan in the maiiuscri]>ts, as Lo])e de Rueda Mey, 8vo, L567, this play is entitled left them; but not, probiilily, any of "Los Enganados,"— •'*;''.'•'' f'"<^''|'" ,"^" ™ SS**' \'';? 1 1 'i ■ . I- i • 11. ( omediaa, Madnd, 1615, 4to, Tom. VL an unlucky day is not unirequeut in \ Y\:i, a. --"^""i « "■ ^ ■ the old Spanish drama : — Cii.vi'. YIL] LOPE DE IIUEDA. Gl Troico. Then wliat is it ? Can't you tell me witliout so many circumlocutions ? What is all this preamble about ? 'Lcno. When my poor mother died, he that brought me the news, before he told me of it, diagged me round through more turn-abouts than there are wind- ings in the Pisueiga and Zapardiel.-* Troico. But I have got no mother, and never knew one. I don't comprehend what you mean. Leno. Then smell of this napkin. Troico. Very well, 1 have smelt of it. Leno. What does it smell of ? Troico. Something like butter. Leno. Then you may truly say, " Here Troy was." Troico. What do you mean, Leno ? Leno. For you it was given to me ; for yon Madam Timbria sent it, all stuck over with nuts ; — but, as I have (and Heaven and everybody else knows it) a sort of natural relationshii) for whatever is good, my eyes watched and followed her just as a hawk follows chickens. Troico. Followed whom, villain ? Timbria ? Leno. Heaven forbid ! But how nicely she sent it, all made up with butter and sugar 1 Troico. And what was that ? * Leno. The pancake, to be sure, — don't you understand ? * 52 Troico. And who sent a pancake to me ? Leno. Why, Madam Timbria. Troico. Then what became of it ? Leno. It was consumed. Troico. How ? • Leno. By looking at it. Troico. Who looked at it ? Leno. I, by ill-luck. Troico. In what fashion ? Leno. Why, I sat down by the wayside. Troico. Well, what next ? Leiw. I took it in my hand. Troico. And then ? Leno. Then I tried how it ta.sted ; and what between taking and leaving all around the edges of it, when I tried to think what had become of it, I found 1 had no sort of recollection. Troico. The upshot is that you ate it ? Leno. It is not impossible. Troico. In faith, you are a trusty fellow ! Leno. Indeed ! do you think so ? Hereafter, if I bring two, I will eat tliem both, and so be better yet. Troico. The business goes on well. Leno. And well advised, and at small cost, and to my content. But now, go to ; suppose we have a little jest with Timbria. Troico. Of what sort ? 2* Rivers in the north of Spain, often mentioned in Sjiniiisli poetry, especially the first of them. 62 LOPE DE KUEDA. [Pkkiod II. Leno. Suppose j'ou make her believe you ate the pancake j^ourself, and when she thinks it is true, 3-ou and I can laugh at the trick till you sjilit your sides. Can you ask for anything better '\ Trolco. You counsel well. Leno. "Well, Heaven bless the men that listen to reason ! I'ut till me, Troico, do you think you can carry out the jest with a grave face ? Troico. I ? "What have I to laugh about ? LcH'). Wliy, don't you think it is a laughing matter to make her believe you ate it, when all the time it was your own good Leno that did it ? Troico. Wisely said. But now liold your tongue, and go about your busi- ness. * The ten Pasos are miicli like this dialogue, — shoi't and lively, without plot or results, and 25 Len. Ah, Troico I estisaca? Tro. iSi, lierniano: tu no loves? Lm. ilus valiera que no. Tro. Porqiie, I.eno? Len. Porquc no sujiicra.-; una flc.-'gracia, que ha succdido harto poco ha. Tro. Y que ha Siiilo la de.ii 8eriora Timliria. Tro. Pues que la heeiste? Lfn. Consurci .se. Tni. Dc qvie? LiH. De DJo. Tro. Quicii la ojeo? Len. Yomalpuutol Tro. Dc qvie uianera? Len. Asentenie en el camino. Tro. Y fiue mas .' Lett. 'J'omela en la m.mo. Trii. Y luego .' Li^n. Prove a que sabia, y como por una Tanda y por otra estaba de dar y tomar, quaudo por ella acorde, ya no habia memoria. Tro. "En fin, te ]a comiste ? Len. Podria sfc-. Tro, Por cierto, que eres honibre de buen recado. Len. A fc? que te parezco ? De aqui ade- lante si tnigere dos, me las comere juntas, para hacello m<'jor. Tro. liueno va el negocio. lA-n. Y bien regido, y con pnca costa, y a mi contento. !Mas ven aci, si quies que riauios un rato con Timbria ? Tro De que su(!7te ? Len. Puedes le hacer en creyente,que la co- miste tu, y como ella jjiense que es verdad, po- dremos de.«pues tu y yo reir aca de la burla ; (jiie robentar'.s riyendol Que mas quies? Tro. lUen me aconsejas. Len. Agora V)ien : Dios bcndiga los hombres acogidos a razon ! Pi-ro dime, Troico, sabrJs disimular con ella sin rcirte? Tro. Yo ? de ([ue me habia de reir ? Len. No te paresee, que es manera de reir, hacelle en creyentc, que tu te la comiste, ha- bit'-ndosela comido tu amigo I^eno ? Tro Dices sabianiente; mas calla, vete en buen hora. (r.as Quatro Oomedias, etc. , de Lope de Rueda, Sevilla, 1676, 8vo.) The learned allusion to Troy by a man as humble as Leno might seem in- apiiro])iiatc ; but it is a plirase that was in jiopular use. Don Quixote eni])loyed it, when, leaving Barcelona, he looked back uj)on tliat city as tlie .scene of his final discomfiture and disgrace. It oc- cui-s often in the old dramatists. CHA1-. VII.] LOPE DE KUEDA. 60 merely intended to amuse an idle audience for a few moments. Two of them are on glutton tricks, like that practised by Leno ; others are between thieves and cowards; and all are drawn from common life, and written with spirit. It is very possible that some of them were taken out of larger and more foi-mal dramatic compositions, which it was not thought worth while to print entire.^^ The two dialogues in verse are curious, as the only specimens of Lojje de Rueda's poetry that are now ex- tant, except some songs, and a fragment preserved by Cervantes."" One is called " Proofs of Love," and is a sort * of pastoral discussion between * 54 two shepherds, on the question which was most favored, the one who had received a finger-ring as a present, or the one who had received an ear-ring. It is written in easy and flowing qidnUWm^ and is not longer than one of the slight dialogues in prose. The other is called " A Dialogue on the Breeches now in Fashion," and is in the same easy measure, but has more of its author's peculiar spirit and manner. It is between two lackeys, and begins thus abruptly : — Peraltcc. Master Fuentes, wliat 's the change, I jiray, I notice in your hosiery and shape ? You seem so very swollen as you walk. Fuentes. Sir, 't is the breeches fashion now piescribes. Pcraltn. 1 thought it was an under-petticoat. Fuentes. I 'm not ashamed of what I have put on. Why must I wear my breeches made like yours ? Good friend, j'^our own are wholly out of vogue. 26 This I infer from the fact that, at and were not called cnlremcses till Timo- the end of the edition of the Comedias neda gave them the name. Still, they and Colo(|uios, 1576, there is a "Tabla may have been earlier used as such, or de los pasos graciosos que se pueden as introductions to the longer dramas, sacar de las presentes Comedias y Colo- -^ There is a (ilosd ))rintcos deben de tener De bestias quiz i ajfiun quarto. Fitent. Pondrase qual<|uier alliaja Por traer calzii pillarda. Per. Cierto yo no S(5 que aguarda. Quien va vestido de paja De hacerse alguna albarda. 1 do not know that this dialogue is printed anywhere but at the end of the edition of the Comedias, 1 576. It refers evidently to tlie broad-bottomed stulfed hose or boots, then coming into fasliion ; such as the daughter of Sancho, in lier vanity, wlien she heard her fatlier was governor of Barrataria, wanted to see liim wear ; and such a.s Don Carlo.s, ac- cording to the account of 'J'liuanus, wore. when he used to hide in their strange recesses the ])ist()ls that alarmed Philip II.; — " caligis, (ju;e amplissimie de nion; gentis in usu sunt." They were- forbidilen by a royal ordinance in 1623. See I). Quixote, (Parte II. c. 50,) with two amusing stories told in the notes of Pellicer and Thnani Historiarum, Lib. XLl., at tlie beginning. Tliev became iashionable in other parts of Europe, as tlie wliole Spanish costume, liat, f(>athers, cloak, etc., did from the spread of Spanish ](Ower and prestige : that is, jirecisely for the .same reasons that the French dress and fa.shions have si)read since the time of Louis XIV. Figueroa ( Plaga Universal, 161;'), ff. 226, 227) has an amusing article about tailors, in which he claims ]irecedence for the skill and taste of those in Ma- diid, and shows liow theii' supremacy was acknowledged in France and Italy. Tiiat it was ai'knowledged in England in the time of Elizabeth and James \. we very W(dl know. Roger Ascliam, ill his "Schoolmaster," talks of the very "luige hose" here referied to, as an "outrage" to be rebuked and re- pressed, like that of the "monstrous hats," etc., — all Spanish. €hai'. VII.] TI1EATKI-: 1\ 'I'lIK TIMK t)F J.OPE DE KUEDA. G5 recalling the gay season of his own youth,-^ " the whole apparatus of a manager was contained in a large sack, and consisted of foin- white shepherd's jackets, turned up with leather, gilt and stamped ; four Ijenrds and Mse sets of hanging locks ; and four shepherd's crooks, more or less. The plays were colloquies, like eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, fitted up and extended with two or three interludes, whose personages were sometimes a negress, some- times a bully, sometimes a fool, and sometimes a Bis- €ayan ; — for all these four parts, and many others. Lope himself performed with the greatest excellence and skill that can be imagined. .... The theatre was composed of four benches, arranged in a square, with five or six boards laid across them, that were thus raised about four palms from the ground The furniture of the theatre was an old blanket drawn aside by two cords, making what they call the tiring- room, behind which w^ere the musicians, who sang old ballads without a guitar." The place where this rude theatre was set up was a public square, and the performances occurred when- ever an audience could be collected ; apparently both forenoon and afternoon, for, at the end of one of his plays, Lope de Rueda invites his " hearers only to eat their dinner and return to the square," ^'^ and witness another. His four longer dramas have some resem- blance to portions * of the earlier English com- * 56 edy, which, at precisely the same period, was beginning to show itself in pieces such as "Ralph Royster Doyster," and " Gammer Gurton's Needle." 2^ Comedias, Prologo. ^'' "Auditores, no hagais siiio coiner, y dad la vuelta a la plaza." 66 JUAX DE XmONEDA. [rnvAoD 11. They are divided into what are called scenes, — the shortest of them consisting of six, and the longest of ten ; but in these scenes the place sometimes changes, and the persons often, — a eircuuistance of little conse- (juence, where the whole arrangements implied no real attempt at scenic illusion .'^^ Much of the success of all depended on the part played by the fools, or ■simples, Avho, in most of his di-amas, are important per- sonages, almost constantly on the stage ; '^'^ while some- thing is done by mistakes in language, arising from vuliJ:ar ii>:norance or from foreiirn dialects, like those of negroes and Moors. Each piece opens with a brief explanatorj' prologue, and ends with a word of jest and apology to the audience. Naturalness of thought, the most ■ easy, idiomatic, purely Castilian turns of expres- sion, a good-humored, free gayety, a strong sense of the ridiculous, and a happy imitation of the manners and tone of connnon life, are the pi-ominent character- istics of these, as tliey are of all the rest of his shorter efforts. He was, therefore, on the right road, and was, in consequence, afterwards justlj^ reckoned, both by Cervantes ;ind Lope de Vega, to be the true founder of the popular national theatre.^ The earliest follower of Lope de Rueda was his friend and editor, Juan de Timoneda, a l)Ookseller of A'ak'ucia, who certainly nourished dining the niiddk' and latter })ai"t of the sixteenth century, and ])r()l)ably 31 In the fifth escena of the "Eufe- da," ami, wlieu .siieakiiigof the SjKiiii.sli mia," the place changes, when Valiaiio eonieilias, treats lii»i as "el juiuiero comes in. Indeed, it is evident that i[ue en Espaua las sacu de mantillas y Lope de Rueda did not know the mean- his jjuso en toldo y vistio de gala y ing of the word *■««<", or did not employ apaiiencia." This was in lei.'i ; and it aright. Cervantes sjwke from his own knowl- 32 The first traces of these simplex, edge and memory. In l(i2(l, in the who weie afterwards expanded into the Prologo to the thirti'cnth volume of his graciosiis, is to be found in the p'(rvos Comedias, (Ma " >' '^•• And for scrofula working within. *CA ^CHAPTER YTTT. THEATRE. FOLLOWEUS OF LOPE HE Rt'EDA. ALON'SO DE LA VEGA. CISNE- ROS. .SEVILLE. MALAUA. CLEVA. ZEl'EDA. VALENCIA. VIRUES. TRANSLATIONS ANH IMITATIONS OF THE AN( lENT CLASSICAL DRAMA. — VILLALOHOS. OLIVA. BOSCAN. — AUUIL. ISEKMl DEZ. ARGENSOLA. — STATE OF THE THEATRE. Two of the persons attached to Lope de Rueda's company were, like himself, authors as well as actors. One of them, Alonso de la Vega, died at Valencia as early as 1566, in which 3'ear three of his dramas, all in prose', and one of them directly imitated from his mas- ter, were published by Timoneda.^ The other, Alonso Cisneros, lived as late as 1570. l)ut it does not seem certain that any dramatic work of his now exists.^ Neither of them was equal to Lope de Rueda or Juan de Timoneda ; but the four taken together produced an impression on the theatrical taste of their times which was never afterwards wholly Ibrgotten or lost, — a fact of which the shorter dramatic compositions that have been favorites on the Spanish stage ever .since give decisive proof. But dramatic representations in Spain between 1560 and 1 •")!)() were by 110 means confined to what was done by Lope de Rueda, his IViends. and his strolling com- pany of actors. Other efforts were made in various places, and upon other principles ; sometimes with more success than theirs, sometimes with less. In Seville, a irood deal seems I0 liave l)een done. It is 1 C. IVllifcr, 0n<,'(-ii de la C'onifdia, Tom. I. p. Ill ; Tom. II. p. 18 ; with L. F. Moratin, Ohias, Tom. I. Parte 11. p. 638, and liis ("ataloRo, No.s. 100, 104, and 105. ^ C. l'<-lliici-, Uii'f,' II. about Philijt 11., Ferdinand Columbus, at Seville in May, 1570, when Philip Lebrixa, etc. ; but oftener from the visited that city after the war of the j^jeneral description of the city or the Moriscos. Mai Lara prepared the in- particular accounts of the ceremonies of scriptions, Latin and S[)anish, used to the occasion, — all in choice Castilian. exjjlain tlie multitudinous allegoricnl ■* L. K. iMoratin, Obras, Tom. I. Parte figures that constituted a great jiart of I., Catalogo, Nos. 132-139, 142-145, the show on the occasion, and printed 147, and 150. Martinez de la Kosa, them, and everything else that could Obras, Paris, 1827, ]2mo, Tom. IL illustrate the occasion, in liis " Kecivi- pp. 167, etc. Y4 .lUAX I)E LA CUEVA. [I'l.uni, H. forth the progress of the Imperial arms, from the siege of Rome in May, 1527, to the coronation of Charles the Filth at Bologna, in February, 1530 ; and though the picture of the outrages at Rome is not without an air of truth, there is little truth in other respects ; the Spaniards being made to carry off all the glory. ^ " El Infamador," or The Calumniator, sets forth, in a different tone, the story of a young lady whu * 63 refuses the * love of a dissolute young man, and is, in consequence, accused by him of mur- der and other crimes, and condemned to death, but is rescued by preternatural power, while her accuser suf- fers in her stead. It is almost throuo-hout a revolting: picture ; the fathers of the hero and heroine being each made to desire the death of his own child, while the whole is rendered absurd by the not unusual mixture of heathen mythology and modern manners. Of poetry, which is occasionally found in Cueva's other dramas, there is in this play no trace, though there are passages of comic spirit ; and so carelessly is it written, that there is no division of the acts into scenes.^ In- deed, it seems difficult to understand how several of his twelve or fourteen dramas should have been brought into practical shape and represented at all. It is prob- aljle they were merely spoken as consecutive dia- logues, to bring out their respective stories, without any attempt at theatrical illusion ; a conjecture which receives confirmation from the fact that nearly all of them are anuoiniced, on their titles, as having been '• "El Saco (Ic Koniii" is rt'iniiitcd of Leucino, in this "Comedia," issome- iii Ochoa, IVatro Es^iafiol, I'iiris, 1838, tiiiics sujjposed to have sugj^osted that 8vo, Tom. I. |>. 2.'jl. of Don .luan to Tirso de Molina; but ' "El Infaniaflor" is n;j)iinti;d in tin- n*s«;nil)lan(;c, I think, does not jus- Ochoa, Tom. J. ji. 2'J4. 'I'hc chaructur tify tiic tunj(;i;tiire. Chap. VIII.] ROMERO I)E ZEPEDA. 75 represented in tlie u'ardeii of a certain Dona Elvirn at Seville.' The two plaj.s of Joaquin Romero de Zepeda, of Badajoz, which were printed at Seville in 1-582, are somewhat different from those of Cueva. One, " The Metamorfosea," is in the nature of the old dra- matic pastorals, but is divided into three short joniadas, or acts. It is a trial of wits and love, between three shepherds and three shepherdesses, who are constantly at cross purposes with each other, but are at last recon- ciled and united ; -7— all except one shepherd, who had originally refused to love anybody, and one shepherd- ess, Belisena, who, after being cruel to one of her lov- ers, and slighted by another, is finally rejected by the rejected of all. The other play, called '' La Comedia Salvage," is taken in its first two acts from the well-known dramatic novel of * " Celes- * 64 tina " ; the last act being filled with atrocities of Zepeda's own invention. It obtains its name from the Salvages or wild men, who figure in it, as such per- sonages did in the old romances of chivalry and the old English drama, and is as strange and rude as its title implies. Neither of these pieces, however, can have done anything of consequence for the advancement of the drama at Seville, though each contains passages of flowing and apt verse, and occasional turns of thought that deserve to be called graceful.^ ^ One of the plays, not rpproseiited in Tlie Metamorfosea may be cited for its the Hiierta de Doha Elvira, is repre- pleasant and graceful tone of poetry, — sented "en el Corral de Don Juan," lyrical, however, rather than dramatic, and another in the Atarazanas, — Arse- — and its air of the olden time. An- nal, or Ropewalks. None of them, I other play found by Schack in MS. is suppose, appeared on a public theatre. dated 1626, and implies that Zepeda •* These two pieces are in " Obras de was long a writer for the theatre. Joachim Romero de Zepeda, Vezino de (Nachtrage, 18,54, p. 59. ) Other au- Badajoz," (Sevilla, 1582, 4to, ff. 130 thors living in Seville at about the and 118,) and are reprinted by Oehoa. same period are mentioned by La Cu- The opening of the imcouii. jo nunhi of eva in his "Exemplar Foetico" (Se- 76 CRIST(JVAL DE VIKUES. [Pkkiui, II. During the same period, there was at Valencia, as well as at Seville, a poetical movement in which the drama shared, and in w hich. I think, Lope de Vega, an exile in \"alencia for several years, about 1585, took part. At any rate, his friend, Cristoval de A"i- rues, of whom he often speaks, and who was born there in 1550, was among those who then gave an hn- pulse to the theatrical taste of his native city. He claims to have first divided Spanish dramas into three jonmdus or acts, and Lope de Vega assents to the claim; but they were, both mistaken, for we now know that such a division was made by Francisco de Avendaiio, not later than 1553, when Virues was but three years old.^ Only five of the plays of Virues, all in verse, are extant ; and these, though supposed to have been written as early as 1579-1581, were not printed till 1609, when Lope de Vega had already given its full development and character to the popular theatre ; so that it is not improbable some of the dramas of Vi- rues, as printed, may have been more or less al- * 65 tered and accommodated to *the standard then considered as settled by the genius of his friend. Two of them, the " Cassandra " and the " Marcela," are on subjects apparently of the A^ilencian poet's own invention, and are extremely wild and extravagant ; in " El Atila Furioso " abo\e [\'L\y persons come to an untimely end, without reckoning the crew of a galley who perish in the fianies for the diversion of the ty- rant and his followers; and in the " Semiramis," ^'' the (lano, Parnaso Espanol, Tom. VIII. Some of tlniii, from Lis account, Mroto p. 60) : — in the maniiei- of the ancients ; and Ix)H PevillanoBcomiooR, Guevara, lieihajis Malaia aiul iMegia are the per- Guticrre ile Cetina, Coziir, Fut-nteH, sons lie refers to. El ingfuioso Ortiz;- 9 4^,.^ L. ]?. Moratin, Catalogo, Ko. who adds that tliere were otros vutcJws, 84. many more; — but they are all lost. '" The "Semiramis" was jtrinted at L"iiAi>. VIll.J CIIRlSToVAL 1)K VIRUES. 77 subject is .so handled that when Calderon used it ajraiu in his two phiys entitled "La Ilija del Aire," he eould not help casting the cruel light oi' his own poetical genius on the clumsy work oi' his predecessor. All four of them are absurd. The "■ Elisa Dido " is better, and may be regarded as an effort to elevate the drama. It is divided into five acts, and observes the unities, though ^'irues can hardly have comprehended what was afterwards con- sidered as their technical meaning. Its plot, invented b}^ himself, and little connected with the stories found in Virgil or the old Spanish chronicles, supposes the Queen of Carthage to have died by her own hand for a faithful attachment to the memory of Sichoeus, and to avoid a marriage with larbas. It has no division into scenes, and each act is burdened with a chorus. In short, it is an imitation of the ancient Greek mas- ters ; and as some of the lyrical portions, as well as ■parts of the dialogue, are not unworthy the talent of the author of the '' Monserrate," * it * GG is, for the age in which it appeared, a remark- able composition. But it lacks a good development of the characters, as well as life and poetical warmth in Leipzig in 1858, but published in Lon- capital letter, as Virues did, he would don by Williams and Norgate. Its have found that it was the river " Is," editor, whose name is not given, has or the city "Is" on its banks, botli in this rendered good service to early mentioned by Herodotus, (Lili. I. c. Spanish literature ; but if, by his cita- 179,) near which was the abundance of tiou of Schack's authority in the pref- asphalt referred to l)y Virues, and so ace, he desires to have it understood the passage would have ceased to be that that eminent critic concurs with "unintelligible" to him; and if he him in regarding this wild play as had read carefully the passage, (Jorn. a work of "extraordinary merit "and III. v. 632, etc.,) he would not have value," I think he can hardly have un- found "a line evidently wanting." I der.stood Schack's critici.sm on it (Dra- ratiier think, too, that the editor of the mat. Lit., Vol. 1. p. 296). Certainly "Semiramis" is wrong in supposing he had not seen the original and only (Preface, ]). xi) that Virues "got his edition of Virues, 1609 ; and, from the learning at se(;ond hand" ; and tliat he note at the end of his list of errata, he will Hnd he was wrong, if he will turn does not appear always to comprehend to the pas.sage iu Herodotus from wliich the text he publishes. For, if he had the Spanish })()ct seems to me to have printed "is" (Jorn. III. v. 690) with a takciu his description of Babylon. 78 CLASSICAL DIIAMA ATTEMPTED. [I'icnioi) [1. the action ; and being, in fact, an attempt to carry the Spanish drama in a direction exactly opj^osite to that of its destiny, it did not sncceed.^^ Such an attempt, however, was not unlikely to be made more tlian once ; and this was certainly an age favorable for it. The theatre of the ancients Avas now known in Spain. The translations, already noticed, of Villalobos in 1-515, and of Oliva before 1530, had been followed, as early as 1510, ))y one from Euripides by Boscan ; ^^ in 1555, by two from Plautus, the work of an unknown author ;^^ and in 1570- 1577, by the '•Plutus" of Aristophanes, the "Medea" of Euripides, and the six comedies of Terence, by Pedro Simon de Abril.^^ The efforts of Timoneda in his " Menennos," and of Virues in his " Elisa Dido," were among the consequences of this state of things, and were suc- ceeded by others, two of which should be noticed. The first is by Geronimo Bermudez, a native of Ga- licia, who is supposed to have been born about 1530; and to have lived as late as 1589. He was a learned Professor of Theology at Salamanca, and pul)lished. ' 15 at Madrid, in 1577, two dramas, which he some what boldly called " the first Spanish tragedies.' 11 In tlie address to the " Disi-reto Euriindcs was never ]ml)lishc'd, though Letor" prefixed to the only edition of it is inehided in the permission to i)rint the "Ohras tragicas y liiicas del Capi- that jjoet's works, given by ("iiarles V. tan Cristoval de Virnes," (that of ila- to Hoscan's widow, 18th Febrnary, 1543, drid, 1609, 12nio, 11'. 278,) we are told ])rclixed to the first edition of his Works, that h(! had endeavored in the tirst fbui- whicii appeared that year at Barcelona, tragedies "to unite what was best in Boscan died in 154(1. ancient art and modern customs"; but i* L. F. Moratin, Catalogo, Nos. 86 the Dido, he .says, " va escrita toda por and 87. el e-stilo de Griegos i Latinos con cui- i* Pellicer, Biblioteca de Traductores dado y estudio." See, also, L. F. Mo- Espaholes, Tom. II. 145, etc. The ratin, Catalogo, Xos. 140, 141, 146, translations from Terence by Aliril, 148, 148; with MartiiK^z de la Rosa, 1577, are accompanied liy Ww. Latin Obras, Tom. II. ])p. 153-167. The text, and .shouhl .seem, from the " Pro- play of Andres Key de Aitieda, on the logo," to have been made in the hope "Lovers of Ternel," 1581, belongs to ihat they wouhl directly tend to reform this period and ])lace. Ximeno, Tom. the Spanish theatre ; — perhaps even L p. 263 ; Fiister, Tom. I. p. 212. that tliey would be publicly acted. 12 The translation of Boscan from 15 Sedano's "Parnaso Espanol" (Tom. Chap. VllL] GEKjXI.MO IJEKMl'DEZ. 79 They are both on * the subject of Inez de * G7 Castro ; both are in live acts, and in various verse ; and both have choruses in the manner of the ancients. But there is a great difference in tlieir re- spective merits. The first " Nise Lastimosa," or Inez to be Compassionated, — Nise being a poor anagram of Inez, — is hardly more than a skilful translation of the Portuguese tragedy of "Inez de Castro," by Ferreira, which, with considerable defects in its structure, is yet full of tenderness and poetical beauty. The last. ^' Nise Laureada," or Inez Triumphant, takes up the tradition where the first left it, after the violent and cruel death of the princess, and gives an account of the coronation of her ghastly remains above twenty years after their interment, and of the renewed mar- riage of the prince to them ; — the closing scene ex- hibiting the execution of her murderers with a coarse- ness, both in the incidents and in the language, as re- volting as can well be conceived. Neither probably produced any perceptible effect on the Spanish drama ; and yet the " Nise Lastimosa " contains passages of no little poetical merit; such as the beautiful chorus on Love at the end of the first act, the dream of Inez in the third, arid the truly Greek dialogue between the princess and the women of Coimbra ; for the last two VI., 1772) contains both the dramas of esthig that thoy "will lose sleep by Berniudez, with notices of his life. it." Being a Galician, he hints, in the I think we have nothing else of Ber- Dedication of his "Nise La.stiniosa," mudez, except his " Hesperodia," a that Castilian was not easy to him. I panegyric on the great Duke of Alva, find, however, no traces of awkward- written in 1589, after its author had ness in his manner, and his Gallego travelled much, as he says, in Frances helped him in managing Fei'reini's Por- and Africa. It is a cold elegy, origi- tugaese. The two tragedies, it should iially composed in Latin, and not be noted, were published under the as- printed till it appeared in Sedano, Par- sumed name of Antonio de Silva ; — naso (Tom. VII., 1773, p. 149). Parts perliaps because he was a Dominican of it ar* somewhat obscure ; and of the monk. The volume (Madrid, Sanchez, whole, tran.slated into Spani.sh to please 1577) is a mean one, and the tvjie a a friend anil that friend's wife, the an- jioor sort of Italics, thor trulv savs that it is not so inter- so LurEiicio LE().\Ai;i)() i)i: ai;(;e.\s()la. [I'ikkm. ii. of which, however, Beniiiulez was directly indebted to Ferreira.^*^ Three tragedies b}^ Liipercio Leonardo de Argensola, the accomphshed lyric poet, who Avill hereafter be am- ply noticed, produced a much more considerable sensa- tion when the}^ first appeared, though they * 68 were soon afterwards * as much neglected as their predecessors. He Avrote them wlien he was hardly more tlian twenty years old, and they w^ere acted about the year 1585. " Do \ou not re- member," says the canon in Don Quixote, '■ that, a few years ago, there were represented in Spain three trage- dies composed hy a flimous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they delighted and astonished all who heard them ; the ignorant as well as the judi- cious, the multitude as well as the few ; and that these three alone brought more profit to the actors than the thirty best phiys that liave been written since?" — ''No- doubt," replied the manager of the theatre, w^ith whom the canon was conversing, — "no doubt you mean the ' Isabehi,' the ' Philis,' and the 'Alexandra.' " ^" This statement of Cervantes is certainly extraordi- nary, and the more so from being put into the month of the wise canon of Toledo. But, notwithstanding the flush of immediate success which it implies, all trace of these plays was soon so completely lost that,, for a long period, the name ol' the famous ])()et Cer- vantes had referred to was not known, and it was even suspected that lie liad intended to comphment himself. At last, between 1700 and 1770, two of them — the "Alexandra" and " IsabeLa " — were accidentally dis- IG 'phc "Castro" of Antonio FiTiciia, ]-Jino, 'I'uin. II. pp. 123, etc). Its au- onc of the most jinii! ami beautiful com- tiior died of the pla<(ue at Li.sbon, ii; jiositioiis in the Portugue.se language, is If)*)!), only forty-one years old. found in his "Poema.s" (Lisboa, 1771, ^" Don (Quixote, Parte 1. e. 48. ViiAi'. VI] 1. J LUPEIICIO LlX).\Ai;l)0 DE AKCENSOLA. 81 covered, and all douht roased. Tlioy were found to be the work of Lupereio Jjeonardo de Argensola."* But, unlia])|)ily, they quite failed to satisfy the ex- pectations that had been excited by the good-natured praise of Cervantes. They are in various verse, fluent and f)i^ii'e ; and were intended to be imitations of the Greek style of tragedy, called forth, pei'haps, by the recent attempts of I5«rmudez. Each, however, is di- vided into three acts ; and the choruses, origi- nally prepared for them, are * omitted. The *' 69 Alexandra is the worse of the two. Its scene is laid in Egypt ; and the story, which is fictitious, is full of loathsome horrors. Every one of its person- ages, except perhaps a messenger, perishes in the course of the action ; children's heads are cut off and thrown at their parents on the stage ; and the f;ilse queen, after being invited to wash her hands in the blood of the person to whom she was unworthily at- tached, bites off her own tongue, and spits it at her monstrous husband. Treason and rebellion form the lights in a picture composed mainly of such atrocities. The Isabela is better ; but still is not to be praised. The story relates to one of the early Moorish Kings of Saragossa, who exiles the Christians from his kingdom in a vain attempt to oljtain possession of Isabela, a Christian maiden with whom he is desperately in love, but who is herself already attached to a noble Moor whom she has converted, and with whom, at last, she 1^ They first appeared in Scilauo's they were deposited by the heir of L. " Paruaso Espanol," Tom. VI., 1772. Leonardo de Argensola. They are said All the needful explanations about them to eontaiu a better text than the MSS. are in Sedano, Moratin, and Martinez used by Sedano, and ought, therefore, de la Rosa. The " Philis" has not been for the honor of the author, to be in- found. The MS. originals of the two quired after. Sebastian de Latre, En- published plays were, in 1772, in tlie sayo sobre el Teatro Espahol, folio, Archives of the " Escuelas Pias " of the 1773, Prologo. citj' of Ballwstro, in Aragon, where vol.. 11. 6 82 LUPERCIO LEOXAKDO DE ARGEXSOLA. [Peuiod II. suffers a triumphant inartyrdom. Tlie incidents are numerous, and sometimes well imagined; but no dra- matic skill is shown in their management and combina- tion, and there is little easy or livinij: dialo^aie to u-ive them effect. Like the Alexandra, it is full of horrors. The nine most prominent personages it represents come to an untimely end, and the bodies, or at least the heads, of most of them are CKliibited on the stage, thouo:h some reluctance is shown, at the conclusion, about committing a supernumerary suicide before the audience. Fame opens the piece with a prologue, in which complaints are made of the low state of the theatre: and the srhost of Isabela, who is hardly dead, comes back at the end with an epilogue very Hat and qttite needless. With all this, however, a few passages of poetical eloquence, rather than of absolute poetry, are scattered through the long and tedious speeches of which the piece is principally composed ; and once or twice there is a touch of passion truly tragic, as in the discussion between Isabela and her family on the threatened exile and ruin of their Avhole race, and in that be- tween Adulce, her lover, and Aja, the king's * TO sister, who disinterestedly loves * Adulce, not- withstanding she knows his passion for her fair Christian riyal. But still it seems inc()iu])reliensible how such a piece should have ])r()duced the jiopular dra- matic effect attributed to it. unless we suppose that the Spaniards had from the first a passion for theatrical exhi- bitions, which, down to this period, had been so imper- fectly gratified, that anything dramatic, produced under favorable circumstances, was run alter aud admired.^^ 1^ Tln-n? arc several old liallads on " I'ljer eine Samiiiluiif; Spaiiisclier Ro- the suliject of this play. See Wolf, iiiaiizen " (Wieii, IS.jO, jip. 33, 34); Chap. VIII. ] STATE OF THE THEATRE. 83 The dramas of Argcnsola, b\' their date, though not by their character and spii-it, bring us at once within the period which opens with the great and ])revalent names of Cervantes and Lope de \'ega. The\', there- fore, mark the extreme limits of the history of the early Spanish theatre ; and if .we now look back and consider its condition and character during the long period we have just gone over, we shall easily come to three conclusions of some consequence.-'^ The first is, that the attempts to form and develop a national drama in Spain have been few and rare. During the two centuries following the first notice of it, ahout 12-5U, we cannot learn distinctly that anj^- thing was undertaken but rude exhibitions in panto- mime ; though it is not unlikely dialogues may some- times have been added, such as we find in the more imperfect religious jD^geants produi^ed at the same period in England and France. During the next century, which brings us down to the time of Lope de Kueda, we have nothing better than " Mingo Revulgo," which is rather a spirited political satire than a drama, Enzina's and Vicente's dramatic eclogues, and Naharro's more dramatic " Propaladia," * with a * 71 few translations from the ancients which were little noticed or known. And during the half-centiuy which Lope de Rueda opened with an attempt to but the historical trailition is in tlie Aribau, Biblioteca, Tom. II. pp. 163, "Cronica General," Parte III. c. 22, 225, notes. The names of many such ed. 1604, ff. 83, 84. — ])arl of them in Spanish, part in 2^ It seems probable that a consider- Latin, and ]iart in both languages, but able number of dramas belonging to all akin to the old Mysteries and Autos the period between Lope de Rueda and — may be found in the Spanish trnns- Lope de Vega, or between 1560 and latioii of this History, Tom. II. pp. 1590, could even now be collected, 543-550. A con.siderable number of who.se names have not yet been given them seem to have been represented in to the public ; but it is not likely tliat religious houses, where, as we know, a they would add anything important to more secular drama afterwards intruded our knowledge of the real charact/<'r or and found much favor, progress of the drama at that time. 84 STATE OF THE THEATRE. [Pkiiiod II. create a popular di'ama, Ave have obtained only a few farces from himself and his followers, the little that was done at Seville and A^alencia, and the countervailing tragedies of Bermudez and Argensola, who intended, no doubt, to follow what they considered the safer and more respectable traces of the ancient Greek masters. Three centuries and a half, therefore, or four centuries, furnished less dramatic literature to Spain than the last half-century of the same portion of time had fur- nished to Franc^e and Italy ; and near the end of tlie whole period, or about 1585, it is apparent that the national genius was not so much turned towards the drama as it was at the same period in England, where Greene and Peele w^ere just preparing the way for Marlowe and Shakespeare. In the next place, the apparatus of the stage, includ- ing scenery and dresses, was very imperfect. During the greater part of the period we have gone over, dramatic exhibitions in Spain were either religious jiantomimes shown off in the churclies to the people, or private entertainments given at court and in the houses of the nobility. Lope de Rueda brought them out into the piil)lic squares, and adapted them to the comprehension, the taste, and the humors of the mul- tiliide. But he had no theatre anywhere, and his gay farces were represented on temporary scaffolds, by his own company of strolling players, who stayed but a few days at a time in even the largest cities, and were sought, when there, chiefly l)y the lower classes of the people. The first notice, therefore, we have of anything approaching to a regular establishment — and this is far removed from what that phrase generally implies — is in 1508. when an an-angement or coiuprouiise between CuAP. VIII.] STATE OF THE THEATRE. 85 the Cliurcli and the theatre was begun, traces of which have subsisted at Madrid and elsewhere down to our own times. Recollecting, no d()ul)t, the origin of dra- matic representations in Spain for religious edification, the government ordered, in form, thtit no actors should make an * exhibition in Madrid, except *' 72 in some place to be appointed by two religious brotherhoods designated in the decree, and for a rent to be paid to them; — an order in which, after 1-383, the general hospital of the city was included.-^ Under this order, as it was originally made, we find plays acted from 1508 ; but only in the open area of a court- yard, corral, without roof, seats, or other apparatus, ex- cept such as is humorously described by Cervantes to have been packed, with all the dresses of the company, in a few large sacks. In this state things continued several years. None but strolling companies of actors were known, and they remained but a few days at a time even in Madrid. No fixed place was prepared for their reception ; but sometimes they w^ere sent by the pious brotherhoods to one court-yard, and sometimes to another. They acted in the daytime, on Sundays and other holidays, and then only if the weather permitted a performance in the open air ; — the women separated from the men,^^ and the entire audience so small, that the profit yielded by the exhibitions to the religious societies and the hospital rose only to eight or ten dollars each time.^^ At last, in 1579 and 1583, two court-yards were permanently fitted up for them, belonging to 21 The two brotlievhoods wore the hy C. Pellicer in his "Ori'gen de la Cofradia de la Sagrada Pasion, estab- Comedia en Esjiana." But they can lished 1565, and the Cofradia de la So- he found so well nowhere else. See ledad, established 1567. The accounts Tom. 1. pp. 43-77. of the early beginnings of the theatre ^'^ C. Pellic'ci-, Origen, Tom. I. p. 8.3. at Madrid are awkwardly enough given ^^ Ibid., p. 56. 86 STATE OF THE THEATRE. [Pkuiod II. houses in the streets of the ''Principe" and " Cruz." Butj though a rude stage and benches were provided in each, a roof was still wanting; the spectators all sat in the open air, or at the windows of the house whose court-yard was used for the representation ; and the actors performed under a slight and poor awning, with- out anything that deserved to be called scenery. Tlie theatres, therefore, at Madrid, as late as 1586, could not be said to be in a condition materially to further any efforts that might be made to produce a respecta- ble national drama. In the last place, the pieces that had been writ- ten had not the decided, common character * To on which a national * drama coidd be fairly founded, even if their number had been greater. Juan de la Enzina's eclogues, which were the first dramatic compositions rej)resented in Spain by actors who were neither priests nor cavaliers, were really what they were called, though somewhat modified in their bucolic character by religious and political feelings and events ; — two or three of Naharro's plays, and several of those of Cueva, give more absolute intimations of the intriguing and historical character of the stao-e, though the effect of the first at home was delayed, from their being for a -long time pub- lished only in Italy; — the translations from the ancients l)y Yillalol)os, Oliva, Abril, and others, seem hardly to have been intended for repi'esentation, and certainly not for popular effect ; — and Bermudez, with one of his pieces stolen from the Portuguese and the other full of horrors of his own, was, it is plain, little thought of at his first appearance, and soon quite neglected. There were, tlieielbre, hcluic 1-jSG, only two persons CiiAi>. Vlll.] TENDENCY TO A BETTER DRAMA. 87 to whom it was possible to look lor tlie estahlisluneiit of a popular and pennaiieiit drama. The hrst ot" tliem was Argensola, whose three tragedies enjoyed a degree of success before luiknown ; but tliey were so little in the national spirit, that they were early overlooked, and soon completely forgotten. The other was Lope de Rueda, who, himself an actor, wrote such fsirces as he found would amuse the common audiences he served^ and thus created a school in which other actors, like Alonso de la Vega and Cisneros, wrote the same kind of farces, chiefly in prose, and intended so completely for temporary effect, that hardly one of them has come down to our own times. Of course, the few and rare efforts made before 1586 to produce a drama in Spain had been made upon such various or contradictory principles, that they could not be combined so as to constitute the safe foundation for a national theatre. But, though the proper foundation was not yet laid, all w^as tending to it and preparing for it. The stage, rude as it was, had still the great advantage of being confined to two spots, which, it is worth notice, have * continued to be the sites of the two * 74 principal theatres of Madrid ever since. The number of authors, though small, was yet sufficient to create so general a taste for theatrical representations that Lopez Pinciano, a learned man, and one of a tem- per little likely to be pleased with a rude drama, said, " When I see that Cisneros or Galvez is going to act, I run all risks to hear him ; and, when I am in the the- atre, winter does not freeze me, nor summer make me hot." -* And finally, the public, who resorted to the -* Philosopliia Antigua Poetica de A. ('alircni, Felipe II., Madrid, 1619, folio, L. Pinciano, Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 128. ]>. 470. This quarrel is a part of tlie Cisneros was a famous actor of the time drama of Pedro Ximiniez de Aneiso of Philip II., ahout whom Don Carlos (sie), entitled El Piineipe Don Carlos, luid a ijuai-.el with Cardinal Kspinosa. wliei-e it i.s .set fortli in .lornada 11. 88 TK.NDKNCY TO A JJKT'l'KK DIJAMA. [I'mm..). II. imperfect entertjiiiimeiits offered tlieiii, if they had not determined what kind of drama should become na- tional, had yet decided that a national drama should be formed, and that it should .1)6 founded on the na- tional character and manners. (Parte XXVIII. de ('oim'ilia.s de vario.s automs, Huesea, 1634, f. 183, a). Ci.s- nero.s Houri.shwl lo7y-ir)86. C. Pcl- licer, On'gcii, Tom. I. pp. 00, 61. Lope de. Vega .sjx'aks of liiiii 'vith great ad- iiiiiatiou, as an actor "beyond compare since i)lay.s were known." Teregrino en .su I'atria, ed. 1604, f. 263. During the period ju.st gone over — that between the death of Lope de Kueda and the succe.ss of Lope de Vega — the traee.s of whatever regiirds the theatre are to be l)est found in Mora- tin'.s "Catalogo" (Obra.s, 1830, Tom. I. pp. 192 - 300). lUit there were many more rude efi'ort.s made than he has olironicled, though none of consequcaice. Gayangos, in the Spanish translation of this History, (.see note 20 of this chap.,) Las collected the titles of a good many, and could, no doubt, easily have collected more, if they had been worth the trouble. Some of those he records have been printed, but more are in manuscript ; some are in Latin, .some iuS[)anisli, and some in lioth lan- guages ; some aie religious, and .some seculai'. J\lan}' of them were pi'obably i'epre.sented in religious houses, in tiie colleges of the Jesuits, and in convents, on occasions of ceremony, like the elec- tion of a Bishoi), or the canonization of a Saint. Of others no account can be given. But all of them taken together give no intimation of a difierent state of th(^ drama from that already suiii- cicaitly described. AVe see, indeed, from them very plainly that it was a period of change ; but we sec nothing el.se, except that the change was very slow. * CHAPTER IX. *?.'> LUIS DE LEOX. EAKLY LIFE. PERSECimONS. — THANSLATION OF THE CAX- TICLES. XAMIiS OF CHRIST. PEKFECT WIFE AND OTHER I'ROSE WORK-^. HIS DEATH. HIS POEilS. HIS CHARACTER. It should not be forgotten that, while we have gone over the beginnings of the Italian school and of the existing theatre, we have had little occasion lo notice one distinctive element of the Spanish character, which is yet almost constantly present in the great mass of the national literature : 1 mean the reliji-ious element. A reverence for the Church, or, more prop- erly, for the religion of the Church, and a deep senti- ment of devotion, however mistaken in the forms it wore, or in the direction it took, had been developed in the old Castilian character by the wars against Islamism, as much as the sy)irit of loyalty and knight- hood, and had, from the first, found no less fitting poetical forms of expression. That no change took place in this respect in the sixteenth century, we find striking proof in the character of a distinguished Spaniard, who lived about twenty years later than Diego de Mendoza, but one whose gentler and graver genius easily took the direction which that of the elder cavalier so decidedly refused. I refer, of course, to Luis Ponce de Leon, called, from his early and unbroken connection with the Church, " Brother Luis de Leon," — Fray Luis de Leon. He was born in Belmonte, in Lj2(S, and lived there un- til he was five or six years old. when his father, wlio 90 LUIS DE LEOX. [Peiiiod II. Avas a '• king's advocate." removed his familv first to Madrid, and then to Yalhidolid. The young poet's advantages for education were such as were enjoyed at that time only by persons whose position in society was a favored one ; and, at fourteen, he was * 76 sent to the neighboring * University of Sala- manca, where, following the strong religious tendencies of his nature, he entered a monastery of the order of Saint Augustin. From this moment the final direction was iriven to his life. He never ceased to be a monk ; and he never ceased to be attached to the University where he was bred. In 1560 he became a Licentiate in Theulogy, and immediately afterwards was made a Doctor of Divinity. The next year, at the age of thirty-four, he obtained the chair of Saint Thonuis Aquinas, which he won after a public compe- tition against several opponents, four of wliom were already professors ; and to these honors he added, ten y^ears later, that of the chair of Sacred Literature. By this time, however, his influence and considera- tion had gathered round him a body of enemies, who diligently sought means of disturbing his position.^ The chief of them were either leading monks of the rival order of Saint Dominick at Salamanca, with whom he seems to have liad, from time to time, warm discus- 1 Obias (1(;1 Maestro Fray Luis de foniiitlalile tiiliuiial, and probably the Leon, (Madrid, 1804-1816, 6 torn. most curious and iinj)ortant one in ex- 8vo,) Tom. v. p. 292. Hut in the istence, whether in MS. or in print, very rich and important " Colecciou Its nniltitudinous documents fill inore \>. 26, 31, his translation of Solomon's Song had 74, 78, 81, 92. Later, tliey sent for wandered, p. 505. testimony to C'uzco, in Peru, whither t-'iiAr. IX.] LUIS DE LEON. 9^ at all times, to cherish and defend all the doctrines and dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church.* At this point in the inquiry, — and after this full declaration of the accused, — if there had l)een no motives for the investigation but such as were avowed, the whole all'air would, no doubt, have been stopped, and nothing more would have been heard of it. But this was far from the case. His enemies were personal, bitter, and unscrupulous ; and they had spread wide the suspicion — as was done in relation to his friend Arias Montano — that his great biblical learning was fast leading him to heresy ; if, indeed, he were not already at heart a Protestant. His examination, there- fore, was pushed on with imrelenting severity. His cause was removed from Salamanca to the higher tribunal at Valladolid ; and, on the twenty-seventh of March, 1572, he was arrested and confined in the secret prisons [cwceles secret a>i'] of the Inquisition, where, for a time, he was denied the use of a knife to cut his food, and Avhere he at no period obtained a sheet of paper or a book, except on the especial, re- corded permission of the judges before whom he was on trial. The other accusations, too, were now urged against him by his persecutors, though, at last, none were relied upon for his conviction save those regard- ing the Song of Solomon and the Vulgate. But to all the charges, and to all the insinuations against him, as they were successively brought up, he replied with * sincerity, distinctness, and *" 79 power. Above fifty times he was summoned in person before his judges, and the various defences which he read on these occasions, and which are still * Docuraentos, Tom. X. p]). 9 -101. to be "a divine? pastoral ilrama." So Milton, also, (Cliun^hOovcninient, Book have many others, both learned and II., Introd.,) eon.siders Solomon's Song religious. '04 LUIS DE LEOX. [I'kuiud II. extant in his own handwriting, make above two hundred printed pages, — not, indeed, marked with the rich eloquence which elsewhere flows so easily from his pen, l)ut still written in the purest Castilian, and with extraordinary acuteness and perspicacity;^ At last, when all the resources of ecclesiastical ino;e- nuity had been employed, in vain, for nearly five years, to break his firm though gentle spirit, the judgment of his seven judges was pronounced on the twenty- eighth of September, 1570. It was a very strange one. Four of their number voted that " he should be put to the rack \_qiddion de tormento'j, to ascertain his intentions in relation to whatever had been indicated and testified against him ; Init," they added, '• that the rack should be applied moderately, from regard to the delicate health of the accused, and that, jifterwards, further order should be taken in the case." Two more of his judges were of opinion that he should be rebuked in the Halls of the Holy Office, for having ventured, at such a time, to move matters tending to danger and scandal ; — that, in presence of all persons belonging to the University, he should confess certain proposi- tions gathered out of his papers to be " suspicious and ambiguous"; — and, finally, that he should be forbid- den from all public teaching whatsoever. One of the judges asked leave to give his opinion separately; but whether he ever did or not, and, if he did, whether it w^as more or less severe than the opinions of his coadju- tors, does not appear. ^ In all cases of trial before tlic tri- ing them sometimes with no little se- bunal of the Inquisition, though the verity for their injustice and falsehood, written statements of the witnesses Throughout the trial he showed a gen- might be given to the party accused, nine simplicity of heart, a careful, wise their names never were. Luis de Leon logic, and an unshaken resolution, had the anonymous testimony of his Documentos, Tom. X. pp. 317, 326, enemies before him, and, from internal 357, 368-371, 423, 495, and other evi:ues and two of the Georo;ics of Virgil, about thirty Odes of Horace, about forty Psalms, and a few passages from the Greek and Italian poets ; all executed w^ith freedom and spirit, and all in a genuinely Castilian style. His translations, however., seem to have been only in the nature of exercises and amusements. But, though he thus acquired great * facility and exactness in his versifica- * 87 tion, he wrote little. His original poems fill no more than about a hundred pages ; but there is hardly a line of them which has not its value ; and the whole, when taken together, are to be placed at iha head of I'' The poems of Luis de Leon fill the his works in prose, together with the last volume of his Works ; but there most important part of the docnioents an; several among them that are proha- concerning his trial by the Inijuisition. bly spurious. Per contra, a few more The volume of his |)or'try jiublished by translations by his hand, and especial- Quevedo in 1(531 at Madrid, it maybe ly an ode to a religious life, — A la worth notiee, was rc^jn'iiited the same vida religiosa, — may be found in Vol. year at Milan by order of tlu; Duke of XXXVII. of the Riblioteca de Autores Feria, Grand Chancellor there, in a Espaholes, lSf)5, which consists of all neat duodecimo, his poetical works, and a selection of 104 LUIS DE LEOX. [I'kimod II. Spanish lyilc poetry. They are chiefly rehgioiis, and the source of their inspiration is not to be mistaken. Luis dc Leon had a Hebrew soul, and kindles his en- thusiasm almost al\va}'s from the Jewish Scriptures. Still he preserved his nationality luiinipaired. Nearly all the l)est of his poetical comjiositions are odes written in tlie old Castilian measures, with a classical purity and rigorous finish before unknown in Spanish poetry, and hardly attained since. ^^ This is eminently the case, for instance, with what the Spaniards have esteemed the best of his poetical works ; his ode, called '" The Prophecy of the Tagus," in which the river-god predicts to Roderic the Moorish conqu.est of his country, as the result of that monarch's violence to Cava, the daughter of one of his principal nobles. It is an imitation of the Ode of Horace in which Nereus rises from the waves and predicts the overthrow of Troy to Paris, who, under circumstances not entirely dissimilar, is transporting the stolen wife of Menelaus to the scene of the fated conflict between the two nations. But the Ode of Luis de Leon is writ- ten in the old Spanish qimdilla^, his favorite measure, and is as natural, fresh, and flowing as one of the * 88 national l)allads.^'* * Foreignei-s, however, less 1* In iioHciiiff tlie Hohrow tempera- ])ieces, generally in tlje Italian manner, Trient of Luis de Leon, 1 am reminded was publislied at Rouen in France, and of one of his contemporaries, who pos- dedi<'ated to t'ardiiial Richelieu, then sessed in some r(!Si)ee.ts a kindred spirit, the all-powerful minister of Louis XIII. and whose fate was even morc^ strange They an; full of the Litter and sOrrow- and unhappy. I refer to Juan Pinto ful feedings of his exile, and parts of Delgado, a I'ortuguese Jew, who lived them ai'e written, not only with tender- long in Sjjain, emhraced the Christian ness, hut in a sweet and pure versifica- religion, was reconverted to the faith tion. The Hebrew spirit of the authoi', of his fathers, fled from the terrors of whose projjer name is Moseh Delgado, the Inquisition to Fiance, and died breaks through constantly, as ndght be there al)out the year T.'iftO. In 1627, expected. I>arbosa, Rililioteca, Tom. a volume of his works, containing nar- II. p. 722. Amador de los Rios, Ju- rative' poems on (Jueen Ksther and on dios de Espafia, Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. Ruth, free veisions from the Lamenta- 500. tions of Jeremiah in the old 7iational '^ It is the (deventh of Luis de Leon's quiiUiUas, and sonnets and other short Odes, and may well bear a conipaiison CiiAi'. 1\.] LUiiS DE LEON. 105 interested in wliut is so peculiarly Spanish, and so full of allusions to Spanish history, may sometimes ])refer the sercner ode •' On a Life of Retirement," that '' On Immortality," or perhaps the still more beautiful one ''On the Starry Heavens"; all written with the same purity and elevation of spirit, and all in the same national measure and manner. A truer specimen of his prevalent lyrical tone, and, indeed, of his tone in nuieh else of what he wrote, is perhaps to be found in liis " Hymn on tlie Ascen- sion." It is both very original and very natural in its principal idea, being supposed to express the disap- pointed feelings of the disciples as they see theit Master passing out of their siglit into the opening heavens above them. And dost thou, lioly Shepherd, leave Thine uiiin'otected flock alone. Here, in this darksome vale, to grieve. While thou as:jend'st thy glorious throne? 0, where can they their hopes now turn, Who never lived but on thy love ? Where rest the hearts for thee that burn. When thou art lost in light above ? How shall those eyes now find repose That turn, in vain, thy smile to see ? What can they hear save mortal woes, Who lose thy voice's melody ? And who shall lay his tran(|uil hand ' Upon the troubled ocean's might ? with that of Horace (Lib. I. Carin. 15) riras de Lui.s de Leon, Madrid, 1816, Tom. ii. p. 42. A translation of Luis de Leon's poems by (". T5. Schliiter and W. Storck, Miin- ster, 1853, is worth reading by those who are familiar with the German. The version of this ode is at p. 130, and is in the ineasure of the original. Another similar ver.sion of it may be found in Diepenbrock's Ocistliidier l-Jlu- menstraus, 1852, p. 157. •^1 In 1837, D. Jo.se de Castro y Oroz- co produced on the stage at Madrid a diama, entithul " Fray Liiisde Leon," in which the hero, whose name it bears, is represented as renouncing tiie world and entering a cloLster, in conseijuence of a disap})ointnient in love. Diego de Mendoza is also one of the principal jiersonages in the same drama, which is written in a pleasing style, and has some poetical merit, notwithstanding its unha])2>y subject and plot. * CHAPTEE X. *00 CEUVAXTES. — HIS FAMILY. KDUCATION. FIRST VERSES. LIFE IN ITALY. A SOLDIER IN THE BATTLE OF LEI'ANTO. A CAPTIVE IN ALGIERS. RETURNS HOME. SERVICE IN PORTUGAL. LIFE IN MADRID. HIS GALA- TEA, AND ITS CHARACTER. HIS MARRIAGE. WRITES FOR THE STAGE. HIS I-IFE IN ALGIERS. HIS NUMANCIA. POETICAL TENDENCIES OF HIS DRAMA. The fkniily of Cervantes was originally Galician, and, at the time of his birth, not only numbered five hundred years of nobility and public service, bkut was spread throughout Spain, and had been extended to Mexico and other jDarts of America.^ The Castilian 1 Many lives of Cervantes have been written, of which four need to be men- tioned. 1. That of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, first prefixed to the edition of Don Quixote in the original publi-shed in London in 1738 (4 torn. 4to) under the auspices of Lord Carteret, and af- terwards to several other editions ; a work of learning, and the first proper attempt to collect materials for a life of Cervantes, but ill arranged and ill written, and of little value now, except for some of its incidental discussions. 2. The Life of Cervantes, with the Analysis of his Don Quixote, by Vi- cente de los Eios, ])refixed to the sump- tuous edition of Don Quixote by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 torn, fol.,) and often printed since ; — better written than the preceding, and con- taining some new facts, but with criti- cisms full of pedantry and of extrava- gant eulogy. 3. Noticias para la Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, by J. Ant. Pellicer, first printed in his " Ensayo de una Biblioteca de Traduc- tores," 1778, but much enlarged after- wards, and prefixed to his edition of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1797-1798, 5 tom. Svo) ; poorly digested, and con- taining a great deal of extraneous, though sometimes curious matter ; but more complete than anj^ life that had ji receded it. 4. Vida de Miguel de Cervantes, etc., i)or D. Martin Fernan- dez de Navarreti!, published b}^ the Sjianish Academy (Madrid, 1819, Svo) ; — the best of all, and indeed one of the most judicious and best arranged l)iograplucal works that have been pub- lished in any country. Navariete has used in it, with great eff"ect, many new documents ; and especially the lai-ge collection of papers found in the ar- chives of the Indies at Seville, in 1808, which comprehend the voluminous In- formacimi sent by Cervantes himself, in 1590, to Philip II., when asking for an office in one of the American colo- nies ; — a mass of well-authenticated certificates and depositions, setting forth the trials and sufl(!rings of tlie author of Don Quixote, from the; time he entered the service of his country, in 1571 ; through his captivity in Algiers ; and, in fact, till he rea,ched the Azores in 1582. Tliis tliorough and careful life is skilfully abridged by L. Viaidot, in his French translation of Don Quixote, (Paris, 1836. 2 tom. Svo,) and forms 108 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDltA. [rEuioD II. hrnnch, wliich, in the fifteenth centnry, became * 91 connected * ])y niamage with the Saavedras, seems, early in tlie sixteenth, to have flillen off in its fortunes ; and we know that the parents of Miguel, who has given to the race a splendor wliich has saved its old nobility from oblivion, Avere poor inhabitants of Alcala de Ilenares, a small l)ut flourish- ing citv. a])out twentv miles from Madrid. There he wjis boi'ii, the youngest of four children, on one of the early days of October, 1547.^ No doubt, he received his early education in the place of his nativity, then in the flush of its prosperity and fjiiiie from the success of the University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before. At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts of his works ; as in his JDon Quixote, where he alludes to the luii-ial and I'licliaiit- nients of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of Zulema,^ just as he had proliably heard them in some nursery story; and in his piodcpastonil,. "Ga- latea," where he arranges the scene of some of its most graceful adventures "on the banks," as he fondly calls it, "of the famous Henares."^ But concerning tlie substance of the " Life and AVritiiigs note to this passage in liis transhition of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra," hy of this history, suggests very ingenious- Thomas Koseoe, Lon(h)n, 1839, ISnio. ly that Cervantes may have T>een lioru In the notiee whieh follows in the on St. Miehael'.s day, September 29, as text, 1 have relied for my facts on the it was common in Spain to name chil- work of Navarrete, whenever no other dren after the Saint on \vho.se festival authoiity is referred to ; but in tlie lit- they were born, and as the feast of St. erary criticisms Navarrete can hardly Michael was but lecently jjassed when afford aid, for he hardly indulges him- he was baptized, self in them at all. '^ Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 29. 2 Th(; date of the baptism of Cervan- * "En las riberas del famoso He- tes is October 9, l.')47 ; and as it is the nares." (Galatea, ]\Iadrid, 1784, 8vo, practice in the Catholic Church to per- Tom. I. p. 66.) Elsewhej-e he .speaks form this i-ite soon afterbirth, we may of " nuestro Henares"; the "/(ivwso a-ssume, with sufficient probability, that Conijduto" (p. 121); and " mtesira Cervantes was born on that very day, or fresco Heuares," p. 108. the day preceding. But Julius, in a ^ Chap. X] CERVANTES AT SCHOOL. 100 his youth Ave know only whnt he incidentally tells us himself; — that he took great pleasure in attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;'' that he wrote Acrses when very young ; '' and that lie alwa\s read everything * within his reach, even, * 92 . »/ O 7 7 as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he picked up in the })ublic streetsJ It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid, and there is some probability, not- withstanding the poverty of his fjimily, that he passed two years at the U niversity of Sal amanca. But what is certain is, that he obtained a public Tind decisive mark of respect, Ijefore he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers; for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos pul)lished, by autliority, on the death of the mihappy Isabelle de Valois, Avife of Philip the Second, a volume of verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his "• dear and well-beloved disciple." This was, no doubt, Cervantes's first appearance in print as an author; and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied, and the circmn- stance that one of his elegies was written m the name of the wdiole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of • his teacher and the good-will of his fellow-students.*^ ^ Coraedias, Madrid, 1749, 4to, Tom. ote. Parte I. c. 9, cd. Clenieiicin, Ala- I., Prologo. drid, 1833, 4to, Tom. I. j). 198,) when '' Galatea, Tom. I. p. x, Prologo ; giving an account of his taking up the and in the well-known fourth chapter waste jiaper at the silkmcrcer's, which, of the " Viage al Parnaso," (Madrid, " as he pn^tends, turned out to be the 1784, 8vo, p. 53,) he says : — Life of Don Quixote in Arabic. Desde mi.-? tiernos anos am^ el arte ^_ The verses of Cervantes on this oc- Dulce de la agradable poe.sia, caslon may be found partlv in Kios, Y en ella procur(5 siempre agradarte. " Pruebas ' de la Vida de Cervantes," ■? " Como soy aficionado a leer aun([ue ed. Academia, Nos. 2-5, and partly in sean los papeles rotos de las calles, lie- Navarrete, Vida, pp. 262, 2()3. They vado desta mi natural inclinacion, tome are poor, and tlie mdy circumstance that un cartapacio," etc., he says, (Don Quix- makes it wortli while to refer to tlieni i-;. 110 CERVAXTF..S IX ITALY. [Pkkk.d h. The next year, 1570, we find him, without any no- tice of the cause, removed from all his early connec- tions, and servino; at Eome as chamherlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards a cardinal; the same person who had heen sent, in 1568, on a special mission from the Pope to * 93 Philip the Second, * and who, as he seems to have had a regard for literatiu"e and for men of letters, may, on his return to Itid}', have taken Cer- vantes with him from interest in his talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and iiad too proud a spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that, too, at a period when the Avorld Avas full of solicitations to adventure and military glory. But, W'hatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome, and its court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice concluded what was called a " Holy League " against the Turks, and set on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chiv- alrous Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancieiit oji- pressor of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom, were more than Cervantes,, at the age of twenty-three, could resist; and the next tliino; we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it that Hoyos, who was a professor of ele- prove the pleasant relations in which gant literature, calls Cervantes repeated- Cervantes stood with some of the pi in- ly "euro discipulo," and " amado dis- cij)al poets of his day, such as Padilla, cipulo " ; and says that the Elegy is Maldonado, Banos, Vague de Salas, written "en nombre de *^ bearing his part in_that great battle, which first decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the * West of Europe. The galley in which he * 94 served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty to his country and to Christen- dom he carried proud tuid painful proof to his grave ; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm dur- ing the rest of his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the hospital at Messina, wdiere he remained till April, 1572; and then, under Marco Antonio Colonna, w^ent on the expedition to the Levant, to which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the " Galatea," and which he has so well described in the story of the Captive in Don Quixote. The next year, 1573, he was in the affliir of the Go- ^ " Xo hay mejores soldados, (jue los do, que no lo fuese por estrerao," etc. que se trasplantan de la tierra de los Persiles y Sigismuiida, Lib. III. e. estudios en los campo.s de la gueiTa ; 10, Madrid, 1802, 8vo, Tom. II. p. iiinguno salio de estudiante para solda- 128. 112 CERVANTES A SLAVE IN ALGIEKS. [Tkimou J I. leta at Tunis, under Don John of Austria^ and after- wards, Avitli the regiment to which he was attached,^*^ returned to Sicily and Italy, man}- parts of wdiich, m different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited, remaining at one time in Naples above a year." -^lis period of his life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems jiever to have been regarded by him with regret. On the conti-ary, al)ove forty years afterward, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he declared that, if the alter- native were again offered him, he shoidd account his w^ounds a cheap exchange for the glorj^ of having been pi-esent in that great enterprise.^^ * 95 *When he was discharged, in loTo, he took with him letters from the Duke of 8esa and Don John, connnending him earnestly to the king, and em- baiked for Spain. But on the twenty-sixth of Septem- ber he was captured ^'^ and carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served suc- cessively three cruel masters, — a Greek and a Vene- tian, both renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; 1'' The rcginu'iit in which he served seiiucntly contiinu-d in the same spirit was one of tlie most t'amoiis in the ar- by Luis de IJavia and others, mies of I'hilii) II. It was the "Tercio ^^ All liis works uontaiii allusions to de Flandes," and at the head of it was the experiences of his life, and especially Lope de Figneroa, who acts a distin- to his travels. When he sees Naples in gui.shed part in two of the plays of Cal- his imaginary Viage del Parnaso (c. 8, deron, — "Amar despnesde la Mnerte," p. 126), he exclaims, — and "El Alcalde de Zalaniea." Cer- Ksta ciudiul es Napoles la ilustre, vantes probably joined this favorite UuH), by Oonzalo ^-^ His Algerine captoj-, Arnaute, fig- delllesca.s; — the same ])erson who pub- nres in the ballads of the time. See lished, in 1. 574, the beginning of a very Duran, Homancero General, Tom. L dull Pontifical History, which was sub- ])]>. xiv and 147. liiAP. X.] CKllVANTES A SLAVE IN ALGIERS. 113 the first two tonneiitliig him with that peculiar ha- tred against Christians wliieh naturally helonged to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined them- selves to the enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for his slave, and treat- ing him with great severity, hecause he had fled from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain libeity for himself and his fellow- captives. Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and strengthened by it. On one oc- casion he attempted to escape by land to Gran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea- shore, where, at the constant risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily wants, while waiting for rescue by sea ; but at last, after he iiad joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole punishment of the conspiracy on him- self. Once he sent for help to break forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted ; and once he had ma- tured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen, — a scheme of which, when it was de- feated by treachery, he again announced himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in Algiers, which was, perha])s, not unlikely to succeed, as their nuitiber was full twen- ty-five thousand, and which was certainly so * alarming to the Dey, that he declared that, * 90 ^' If he could but keep that lame Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves, and 114 CEKVAXTES A tSLAVE IN ALGIERS. [Pkiuod IL his galleys safe." ^* On each of these occasions, se- vere, but not clegrading,^^ punishments Avere inflicted upon him. Four times he expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire ; and the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomjDlices. At last, the moment of release came. His elder l)rother, who was captured with him, had Ijeen ran- somed three years before ; and now his widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son's freedom, all the pittance that remained to lier in the world, including the dowry of her daughters. But even this was not enough ; and the remainder of the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his liberty was made up partly by small bor- rowings, and partly by the contributioiis~"or're- * 97 ligious charity .^"^ In this way he * was ransomed l* One of the most trustwoitliy and curious sources for tliis jjart of the iife of Cervantes is "La Ilistoria y Topo- gratia de Argel," por D. Diego de Hae- do, (Valhidolid, 1(512, folio,) in whieh Cervantes is often mentioned, but which seems to have been overlooked in all in- (piiries relating to him, till Sarmiento stumbled upon it, in 1752. It is in this work that occur the; words cited in the text, and wliicli ])rove how fonnida- ble Cervantes had become to the Dey, — " Decia Asan Ikja, Key de Argel, que como el tuviese guardado al estro- ])eado Espauol tenia seguros sus cris- tianos, sus baxeles y aun toda la ciu- dad." (f. 18,5.) And just before this, referring to the bold project of Cervan- tes to take the city by an insurrection of the slaves, Haedo says, "Y si a su animo, indu.stria, y traza.s, corresiion- iliera la ventura, hoi fuera el dia, i[ue Argel fuera de cristianos ; poirpie no aspiraban a menos sus intentos." All this, it sliould be lecollectcd, was jiuVilislied four years before Cervante.s's death. The whole book, including not oidy the liistoiy, Imt the dialogues at the end on the sufferings and martyr- dom of the Christians in Algiers, is very cuiious, and often throws a strong light on passages of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, which so often refer to tlie Moors and their Christian slaves on the coasts of Barbary. 15 With true Spanish ])ride, Cervan- tes, when alluding to liimself in the story of the Captive, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40,) says of the Dey, "Solo libro bien con el un sohlaclo Espa- nol Uaniado tal de Saavedra, al ijual con haber hecho cosas que quedaran en la memoria de aijuellas gentes por muchosanos, y todos poralcanzar liber- tad, jdmna In dio palo, ni se lo mando dar, ni le dixo mala palalira, y por la menor cosa de n)uchas (jue hizo, temia- mos todos que habia de ser empalado, y asi lo temid el vma dr. una vez." 1^ A lieautiful tribute is paid by Cer- vantes, in his tale of the " Espanola Inglesa," (Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. I. jip. :}o8, :5.5i». ) to the zeal and disinterestedness of the poor piiests and monks, who went, sometimes at the Cjiap. X.] CERVANTES KETUKXS HOME. 11-3 on the ninetoontli of September, 1580, just at the moment Avhen he had embarked with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue woukl liave been all but hopeless. A short time afterward he left, Algiers, where we have abundant proof that, by his disinterestedness, his courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained the affec- tion aud res])ect of the multitude of Christian captives with which that city of anathemas was then crowded.^' But, though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of freedom,^* still it should be remembered that he re- turned after an al^sence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon as he left it. His father w\as dead. His famil}', risk of theii- lives, to Algiers to redeevii deservcul all tlic reverence they r(;- the Christians, and one of whom re- ceived. mained there, giving his person in ^~ Cervantes was evidently a ]k'1'soii pledge for fonr thousand ducats whiidi of great kindliness and generosity of he had borrowed to send home captives. disposition ; but he never overcame a Of Father Juan Gil, who effected the strong feeling of hatred against the redemption of Cervantes himself from Moors, inherited from his ancestors and slavery, Cervantes speaks expressly, in exasperated by his own captivity. Tliis his "Trato de Argel," as feeling appears in both his ])lays, writ- UnfrayleTrinitario, Christiani.simo, teil at distant periods, on the subject Amigo lie hacer bien y conociao of his life in Algiers ; in the tiftv-fourth Porque ha estado otra vez en esta tierra chai)ter of the second Tiart of Don C)uix- Reseatando Christianos ; v di ) exemplo i • xi it -i o- • i i -i De una gran Ohristiandad y gran prSdencia ; - ^^e ; m the Persi es y Mglsmunda, Lib. SunombreesFrayJuauGil. III. cap. 10; and elsewhere. But ex- Jornada V. cept this, and an- occasional toucii of A friar of the blessed Trinity, satire against duennas, — in which C)ue- A truly Christian man, known as the friend ^^^^^ ^^^^ Luis Velez de Guevara are as Ofall good chanties, who once before v mw Came to Algiers to ransom Oliristian slaves, severe as lie is, — and a little bitterness And gave example in himself, and proof about p)rivate chaplains that exercised Of a most wise and Chri.stian faithfulness. .^ cunning influence in the houses of the His name IS Fnar Juan Gil. ^ i i ^i ■ • ii i • i great, 1 know nothing, in all his works, Haedo gives a similar account of Friar to impeach his universal good-nature. Juan Gil in his "Topogratia de Argel" Sei! Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Vol. (1612, ff. 144, sqrp). Indeed, not a few V. p. 260, note, and p. 138, note, of the "padres de la liniosna," as they 18 For a beautiful pa.ssage on Liberty, were called, appear to great advantage see Don Quixote, Parte if, opening of in this interesting work, and, no doiil)t, cliaiiter 58. 116 THE GALATEA. [Pkuiud II. poor before, had been reduced to a still more bitter povert}- by his own ransom and that of his brother. He was imfriended and unknown, and must have suf- fered naturally anci deeply from ar"sort~Tof-^ grief and disappointment which he had felt neither as a * 98 soldier nor * as a slave. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his country, — joining his brother, prob- ably in the same regiment to which he had formerly belon":ed, and which was now sent to maintain the Spanish authority in the newly acqiured kingdom of Portugal. How Ion*;- he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1-381, as well as in the more important one of the year following, to re- duce the Azores, which still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period, therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the third book of "Persiles and Sigismunda," as well as in other parts of his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the Second.-^'' It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the first direction of his more serious ef- forts as an author, whi( h, soon after his return to Spain, ended in the' pastoral romance of '' Galatea." For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal from the days of the '' Menina e Mo(j'a " 20 19 " Well ilotli the .Spanish hind the difTcreiice have found at ailV tilllf for two liuiulicd ''"""' vear.s l)('foif 'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the -^ on'mi ^. ■ -.r .1 • 1 low";— llie "JMenina e Mo^a is tlie gi'ace- an opinion which Cliilde Harold found ('il li"l<; fragment of a prose pastoral, by in S].ain when lie was there, an(i ('ould IVrnanhiio h'll.cyro, which dates.from Chap. X.] THE CJALATKA. 117 down to our own times ; and had already been intro- duced into Spanish literature by George of Monte- mayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, Avhose " Diana Enamorada" and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books with Cervantes. But, whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which Avas licensed on the first of February, 1584, and printed in the * December following. He him- * 90 self calls it "An Eclogue," and dedicates it, as '■' the first fruits of his poor genius," ^^ to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo's ; and, as he intimates in the Preface, " its shepherds and shep- herdesses are many of them such only in their dress." ^'^ Indeed, it has always been understood that .Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon after- wards married ; that he himself is Elicio, the hero ; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.^^ about 1500, and has always been ad- of the Galatea were published as early mired, as indeed it deserves to be. It as 1618. gets its name from the two words with '-^'^ " Muchos de los disfrazados pas- whieh it begins, "Small and young" ; tores della lo eran solo en el luibito." a quaint circumstance, showing its ex- '-^ " Cuyas razones y argunu'ntos mas treme popularity with those classes that i)arecen de ingenios eutre libros y las were little in the habit of referring to aulas criados qu(i no de aquellos" que books by their formal titles. entre pagizas cabanas son crecidos." 21 "Estas primicias de mi corto in- (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This was genio." Dedicatoria. Seven editions intended, no doubt, at the same time, 118 THE GALATEA. [Peiiioi. II. Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an affectjition which can never be success- ful; and which, in tliis particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it is disfigured, and from the })Oor poetry profusely scat- tered through it, is more than usually imfortunate. Perlia])s no one of the many pastoral tales produced in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fails so much in the tone it should maintain. Yet there are traces both of Cervantes's experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third books, are intere.sting ; others, like Timbrio's capture by the Moors, in the fifth book, remind us of his own adven- tures and sufferings ; while yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book, is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. * 100 In all * we have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never, perhaps, with Avhat is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology, almost inevitable in such a A\'ork, are its most obvious defects ; though nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately deceased shepherd.-^ as a c:oin]ilini('nt to Figvieroa, etc. See ccntuiv, ami icpiodiKcd, with an a|i- post, ("hap. XXXIII. note 8. jnopriate coiichision, in a prose pa.sto- 2* The chief actors in the Galatea lal, which, in the days when Gessner visit the tomb of Mendoza, in the sixth was so ])0]iiilar, was irequently reprint- hook, umler tin- ^iiidanee of a wise and ('(1. In this form it is by no means gentle Christian priest ; and when there, without grace. Certainly the attempt Calliope stiangdy appears to them and of Florian is more successful than a jironounces a tedious poetical eulogium similar one made by Don Candido on a vast number of the contemporary Maria de Tiigueros, who followed and Spanish poets, most of whom are now used him in Los Knamorados o Galatea, forgotten. The Galatea was aliridged ec, Madiid, 17^8. bv Florian, at the end of the eighteenth f'liAP. X.] CEUVANTKS MAKIIIKI). 119 But, when speaking thus shglitingly of the Gahitea, we oun'ht to remember that, though it extends to two vohunes, it is unfinished , and that ])assages which now seem out of proportion or iniintelhgible might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second part, which Cervantes liad perlKvps written, and which he continued to talk of pubhshing till a few days before his death,^^ had ever appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we are bound to bear in mind his own touching words,, when he represents it as found by the barber and curate in Boii Quixote's library.^-' ""-But what book is the next one ? " said the curate. 'The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,' replied the barber. ' This Cervantes,' said the curate, ' has been a great friend of mine these many years ; and I know that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not without happiness in the invention ; it proposes some- thing, but finishes nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises ; for perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him ; and, in the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.' " If the story be true that he wrote the Galatea to win * the favor of his lady, his success may * 101 have been the reason why he was less inter- ested to finish it ; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first part, he was married, Decem- ber 12, 1584, to a lady of a good family in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.^' The pecuniary arrangements ^ In tlu! Dedication to " Pcisilcs y tiln(^s it is to i)r;ii.s(' its wines. Tlii' first Sigismunda," 1616, April 19, only four is in tlu; "(Uicvadc Salanianca" (t'onie- days before his death. - fond of dramatic representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, howtever, in the time of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already noticed, that he had wit- nessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de ^102 Rueda and * Naharro,*^ which must have Ijeen before he went to Italy, and when, irom his . ccv). Tlieie oiers. .seems to have heen an (earlier eonnec- -'" At the end of the .sixth book, tion between the family of Clervaiites *' I'l^iloRo al Leetov, ]>refi.\ed to Ids and that of his bride ; for the lady's eii^ht ])lays and eight Knticmese.s, Mu- ijiother had been named executrix of drid, 1015, 4to. C'liAi'. X.] CEltVANTE.S WHITES FOR THE STA(;E. llii that tlie theatre was not 80 well understood and iiian- a'ood enouiih to be used ai-ain. both in one of his later plays and in one of his tales ;'"^ and then trusts the main success of the piece to its episodical sketches. *^ They arc in tlu' same voliiiin' with ** AdjuntaalParnaso, p. 139, ed. 1784. till- " yi:if,'(; al Panuiso," Madrid, 1784, ^ In tin- " Hafios di! Argel," and tho Svo. "Aniantc Liberal." Chap. X.j THE TILVTO DE AlIGEL. 123 Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are jeered at as slaves and Christians by tha Moors, and in wliich they give an account of the niiirtyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was subsequent!}- used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas, and which was founded in ffict. Next, we have the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt, taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of a drawing from life. *And, in dif- * 104 ferent places, we have two or three painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de Vega thought worth borrow- ing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls it, to the monarchy of the scene. ^^ The whole play is divided into five Jornada s, or acts, and written in octaves, redon- dUIaSy terza riuia, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish poetry ; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered, as prom- inent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon. ^ The "Esclavos en Argel" of Lope by Cervantes, (pp. 298-305,) is made is found in his Comedias, Tom. XXV., a principal dramatic point in the third ((^aragocja, 1647, 4to, pp. 231 -260,) and Jornada of Lope's play, where the exe- ,shows that he borrowed much too freely cution occurs, in the most revolting from the play of Cervantes, which, it form, on the stage (p. 263). The truth should be remembered, had not then is, that this execution really occurred been printed, so that he must have used at Algiers in 1577, while Cervantes was a manuscript. The scenes of the sale there, and that he first used it and then of the Christian children, (pp. 249, 250,) Lope copied from him. A full account and the scenes between the same chil- of it may be found in Haedo, (Topo- dren after one of them had become a gi-afia, ft". 179atol83a,)and isoneof the Mohammedan, (pp. 259, 260,) as they most curious illustrations extant of the stand in Lope, are taken from the cor- relations subsisting between the Span- responding scenes in Cervantes (pp. iards and 'their hated enemies. The 316-323, and 364-366, ed. 1784). borrowings of Lope from the play of Much of th(^ story, and passages in Cervantes are, however, more plain else- other parts of the play, are also bor- where in his " E.sclavos de Argel " tlian rowed. The martyrdom of the Valen- in the case of this shocking martyr- cian priest, wliich is merely described dom. 124 THE TEATO DE AIIGEL. [I'evaod U. Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are highly poetical. Aurelio, the hero, — who is a Christian captive affianced to another captive named Sylvia, — is loved by Zara, a Moorish lad}^ whose confidante, Fa'tima, makes a wild incantation, in order to obtain means to secure the gratification of her mistress's love ; the result of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Neces- sity and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her upon the stage, and — invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the spectators — tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions of the fair unbeliever.^^ AVlien they are gone, he thus ex- presses, in soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of hav- ing nearly yielded : — * 105 * Aurelio, whither goest tlioii ? Where, where, Now tend thine erring steps ? Who guides thee on Is, then, thy fear of God so small that thus, To satisfy mad fantasy's desires, Thou rushest headlong ? Can light and easy Opportunity, with loose solicitation, Persuade thee thus, and overcome thy soul. Yielding thee up to love a prisoner ? Is this tlie lofty thought and firm resolve ' In which thou once wast rooted, to resist Offence and sin, although in torments shai-j) Tliy days should end and earthly martyrdom ? So soon hast thou offended, to the winds Thy true and loving hopes cast forth, And j'ielded up thy soul to low desire ? Away with such wild thoughts, of basest birth And basest lineage sprung ! Such witchery Of foul, unworthy love shall by a love 86 Cervantes, no .loubt, valued him- liciircspntaiulo los dos _ If .1 • ,. • 1 ,,• , I)c su liiic'i) Oenio V nial Genio self U])on these iinmatenal agencies; KxtcTiunncnte la lid, and, after his time, tliey became com- Que arde interior en su pecho. 7non on the Spanish stage. Calderon, , . , ,. ;.. v,;,. «.r.Q His (rood and evil genius bodied forth, in his Gran I nncipe de Fe/, (Come- ^^ ^f;^^ ^ j^j^ ^^^ ^^ ^p^,„ ^^^^^ dias, Madrid, 1760, 4tO, lom. 111. J). The hot encounter hiiMen in his heart. .389,) thus explains two, whom he in- tro(luces, in words that may be applied to those of Cervantes : — '"•VI'. X.] THE NUMANCIA. 12-J All imrc 111' broke 1 A ClH-i.sti;\ii soul is mine, And as a Christian's shall my life be marked ; — Nor gifts, nor iiromises, nor cunning art, Shall from the God 1 serve my spiiit turn. Although the path I trace lead on to death ! ^^ The conception of this passage, and of the scene preceding- it, is certainly not dramatic, though it is one of those on which, from the introduction of spirit- ual agencies, Cervantes valued himself But neither is it without stirring poetry. Like the rest of the piece, it is a mixture of personal feelings and fancies, struggling with an ignorance of the projjer principles of the drama, and with the rude elements of the thea- tre in its author's time. He calls the whole a Conie- cUa ; but it is neither a comedy nor a tragedy. Like the old Mysteries, it is rather an attempt to exhi):»it, in living show, a series of unconnected incidents ; for it has no properly constructed plot, and, as he honestly confesses afterwards, it comes to no proper conclu- sion.'^^ The other play of Cervantes, that has reached us from * this period of his life, is founded on * 106 the trao-ical fate of Numantia, which ha vino; re- sisted the Roman arms fourteen years,^^ was reduced by famine ; the Roman forces consisting of eighty thousand men, and the Numantian of less than four thousand, not one of whom was found alive when the 37 Aurelio, donde vas? para do nineves it worthy of him. But the inference is ^ir^'Z-F"Z' '^"n^ ^%^'''^' not a fair one, for Cervantes Ii enemijro tendri doblada )ialma, Tesc la fiiria del ripor violento El cual, ccm otros del escuro bando Tuyo. Marquino, tiaste, tri( vida. Y^o me ofrezco de .saltar El foso y el muro fiiert«, Y entrar jior la inisina niuerte Para la tu\ a (\scusar. EI pan que el Komano toca, Sin que el temor me destruya, Lo quitare de la suya I'ai-a ponerlo en tu boca. Con mi brazo hare earrera A tu vida y a mi niuerte, Porque mas me mata el verte, Seiiora, de e.sii manem. Yo te traere de comer A pesar de los Konianos, Si ya son estas mis nianos Las misnias que solian ser. Lira. Ilablas como enamorado, Mowndro, iiei-o no es justo, Que ya tome jrusto el gusto Con tu peligid coni|>rado. Poco ])odiM siistentarme (iiial(iuier robo (|ue haras, .\miqiic mas cicrto hallaras Kl peiilcrte -amiento, Que yo no quier(> sustento Oanado con tu sudor. Que aun(|iu! jmedes alargar Mi niuerte por aljru i dia, Ksta hambre que po.-fia En tin nos ha de aca jar. Mnranilro. En vano tralKy.-uj, Lira, De impidinne este cnniino, Do mi volunt.-id y signo All.i me convida y lira. CiiAT. X.] THE NUMANCIA. 131 * lie persists, and, accompanied hy a fiiitliful * 111 friend, penetrates into the Roman camp and obtains bread. In the contest lie is wounded ; but still, forcing his way back to the city, by the mere energy of despair, he gives to Lira the food he has won, wet with his own blood, and then falls dead at her feet. A very high authority in dramatic criticism sj^ieaks of the Niunancia as if it were not merely one of the more distinguished efforts of the early Spanish thea- tre, but one of the most striking exhibitions of mod- ern poetry.*^ It is not probable that this opinion will prevail. Yet the whole piece has the merit of great originality, and, in several of its parts, succeeds in awakenino: strouir emotions ; so that, notwithstandino- ~ <-J 7 7 C5 the want of dramatic skill and adaptation, it may still be cited as a proof of its author's high poetical talent, and, in the actual conditio^ of the Spanish stage wdien he wrote, as a bold and noble effort to raise it. T.-. ro^rarAs entre tanto of it llimself ; but still COUples it with rolr d^S ^U: S:.S" well-co.si.l.red plays of Lope de Vega, Tu iiiiscria y mi quebranto. Gaspar ds Avila, and i raiicisco Tan-ega. Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 48. Lira. There is a very curious contract be- Morandro, mi dulce amigo, tween Cervantes and Rodrigo de Osorio No vayas, que se me antoja, an " Autor de Coniedias," dated at Se- ^esplda rfnlmir^'^ -^le. 5 September, 1592, in which Cer- No hagas esta Jornada, vantes engages to write SIX plays, tor each Morandro, bien de mi vida, of which he is to receive fifty ducats, pro- Q.ue si es mala la salida, vided it should be " una de las mcjores Ez muy peer la tornada. , . < . i ^ i . Jem. III. Sc. 1. coniedias que se han representado en Ls- paiia " ; otherwise nothing. Whether There is, in this scene, a tone of these jdays were ever written, or wheth- geiitle, broken-hearted self-devotion on er, if they were written, they wen; the the part of Lira, awakening a fierce six mentioned in the " Adjunta al Par- despair in her lover, that seems to me naso" in 1614, we shall probal)ly never very true to nature. The last words of know. (Nuevos Documento.s, Sevilla, Lira, in the passage translated, have, I 1864, pp. 26-29.) The pcn-iod referred think, much beauty in the original. to — 1592— was apparently the one ** A. W. von Schlegel, Vorlesungen when he was much occupied and vexed liber dramatische Kuiist und Literatur, with collecting provisions for the gov- Heidelberg, 1811, Tom. II. Abt. ii. p. ernment in Andalusia, and with other 345. Cervantes speaks more modestly jjoor labors of a similar sort. *112 *CHAPTER XI. CERVANTES KEGLECTED. AT SEVILLE. HIS FAILURE. — ASKS EMPLOYMENT IN AMEKICA. AT VALLADOLIP. HIS TROUBLES. ITBLISIIES THE FIRST PART OF DON QUIXOTE. — HE REMOVES TO MADRID. HIS LIFE THERE. HIS RELATIONS WITH LOPE DE VEGA. HIS TALES AND THEIR CHAR- ACTER. — HIS JOURNEY TO PARNASSUS, AND DEFENCE OF HIS DRAMAS. PUBLISHES HIS PLAYS AND ENTREMESES. THEIR CHARACTER. SECOND PART OF DON QUIXOTE. HIS DEATH. The low coiiflition of the theatre in his time was a serious misfortune to Cervantes. It prevented him from obtaining, as a dramatic author, a suitable remu- neration for his efforts, even though they were, as he tells us, successful in winning public favor. If we add to this that he was now n>arried, that one of his sis- ters was dependent on him, and that he was maimed in his person and a neglected man, it will not seem remarkable that, after struggling on for three years at Esquivias and Madrid, he found liimself obliged to seek elsewhere the means of subsistence. In 1588, therefore, he went to Seville, then the great mart for the vast wealth coming in from America, and, as he afterwards called it, " a slielter for the poor and a refug-e for the unfortimate." ^ There he acted for some time as one of the agents of Antonio de Guevara, a royal commissary for the American fleets, and after- wards as a collector of moneys due to the government 1 "Volvi'iiie ;i Si-villa," .says Bergan- 1590, l.'>92, ami 1593 is proved beyond za, iu the "Colotiuio de los Pen-os," all peradventiiie by documents piib- "que es am])aro de j)obres y refugio de lished at Seville in 1864, by Don Jose de-sdichados." Novelas, Madrid, 1783, Maria A.sen.sio y Toledo, referred to in 8vo, Tom. II. 1.. 362. That Cervantes note ii of the last chapter, was at Seville iu the years 1588, 1589, Chai". XL] CERVANTES AT SEVILLI-:. 133 and to private iiulividLials ; an ]iinnl)le coiKlit ion, cer- tainly, and full of cares, but still one that gave him the ))read he h.ul vritTTt^^o ugHr~iir~DthTn^ u r- suits. The chief advantage, perhaps, of these employ- ments to a genius like that of Cervantes was, that they led him to * travel much for ten years * 113 in different parts of Andalusia and Granada, and made him familiar with life and manners in these pic- turesque parts of his native country. During the latr .ter portion of the time, indeed, partly owing to the failure of a person to whose care he had intrusted some of the moneys he had received, and partly, it is to be feared, owing to his own negligence, he became indebted to the government, and was imprisoned at Seville, as a defaulter, for a sum so small that it seems to mark a more severe degree of poverty than he had yet suffered. After a strong application to the gov- ernment, he was released from prison under an order of December 1, 1597, when he had been confined, apparently, about three months ; but the claims of the public treasury on him were not adjusted in 1608, nor do we know Avhat was the final result of his improvi- dence in relation to them, except that he does not seem to have been molested on the subject after that date. During his residence at Seville, which, with some interruptions, extended from 1588 to 1598, or perhaps somewhat longer, Cervantes made an ineffectual appli- cation to the king for an appoliTtrrreiTt in America ; setting forth by exact documents — which now consti- tute the most valuabl^-materittlt^lbr-lus biography — a general account of his adventures, services, and sufferings, while a soldier in the Levant, and of the 134 SHORT OCCASIOXAL POEMS. [Pf.kiodIV miseries of his life while he was a slave in Algiers.^ This was in 1590. Bnt no other than a formal answer seems ever toUave been returned to the application ; and tlie whole affair only leaves ns to infer the severit}- of that distress which should induce him to * 114 seek relief in exile to a colony * of which he has elsewhere spoken as the great resort of roijues.^ As an author, his residence at Seville has left few distinct traces of him. In 1595, he sent some trifling verses to Saragossa, which gained one of the prizes. offered at the canonization of San Jacinto;^ in 1596, he wrote a sonnet in ridicule of a great display of courage made in Andalusia after all danger was over and the EuQ-lish had evacuated Cadiz. Avliich, mider Essex, Elizabeth's favorite, they had for a short time occupied;" and in 1598 he wrote another sonnet, in ridicule of an unseemly uproar that took place in the cathedral at Seville, from a pitiful jealousy between the municipality and the Inquisition, on occasion of the reliu'ious ceremonies observed there after the death of Philip the Second.*' But, except these trifles, we - This extraordinary mass of docu- ^ " Vieiulose ])ues tan falto de dine- ments is pn^scrvcd in the " Anhivos ros y aun no con nnudios amigos, se de las Indias," which are adniiraldy ar- acogio al reniedio a ijue otros nuichos ranged in tJie old and Ijeautilur Ex- ^•''I'Ji'^lo'' '''^ ''^V^'^l'i ""'l^^^^ ,[^'^^'ill"] *>« change, built by Herrera in Seville, acogcn ; que es, el pasarse a las Indias, when Seville was the great cntrepOt be- I'efugio y aniparo de los desesperados de tween Spain and her colonies. The Espaua, iglesia de los alzados, salvo jjapers referred to may be found in Es- conducto de los homicidas, pala y cu- tante, II. Cajon 5, Legajo 1, and were l)ierta de los jugadores, anagaza general discovered V)y the venerable Cean lier- de mugeres libres, engaho comun de mudez in 1808, who showed them to niuchos y reniedio particular de pocos." me in 181 S. The most important of El Zeloso Estremeno, Xovelas, Tom. them are published entire, and the rest II. p. 1. are well abridged, in the Life of Cer- * These verses may be found in Xa- vantes by NavaiTete (pp. 311-388). vanete, Vida, ])p. 444, 445. Cervantes petitioned in them for one of ^ Pelli(;er, Vida, ed. Don Quixote, four offices, —the Auditurship of New (Jladrid, 1797, 8vo, Tom. I. p. Ixxxv,', Granada ; that of th(t galleys of Car- gives the sonnet. thagena ; theOovernorshipof the I'rov- *^ Sedano, Parnaso Espanol, Tom. ince of Soconu.sco ; or the place of Cor- l.X. ]). 193. In the " Viage al Parnaso," regidor of the city of Paz. c. 4, he calls it " Honra principal de Chap. XL] CErtVANTES AT AKGAMASILLA. lo-J know of nothing tliat he wrote, during this active period of his Hfe, indess we are to assign to it some of his tales, which, like the " Espanola Inglesa," are con- nected with known contemporary events, or, like " Rinconete y Cortadillo," savor so much of the man- ners of Seville, that it seems as if they could have been written nowhere else. * Of the next period of his life, — and it is "^115 the imjDortant one immediately preceding the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote, — we know even less than of the last. A uniform tradi- tion, however, declares that he was emploj^ed by the Grand Prior of the Order of Saint John in La Mancha to collect rents due to his monastery in the village of Aro-amasilla ; that he went there on this humble agency and made the attempt, but that the debtors refused payment, and, after persecuting him in dif- \/ ferent w^ays, ended by throwing him into prison, w^here, in a spirit of indignation, he began to write the Don Quixote, making his hero a native of the village that tre. 45t). tes was visited by different jiersons, D. Quixote, ed. Pellicer, 1797, Tom. I. " por ser hombre (jue escribe y tratit p. cxv. ) It has also been suggested jiegocios." that Cervautes, in the same year, 1605, 138 CERVAXTES AND LOPE I)E VEGA. [Pekiod II. sities. In 1009, he joined the brotherhood of the Hoi}' Sacranient^^— one of those reHgious associations which were then fasEToVTable , aTidT the same of which Queve(U), Lope de Vega, and other distinguished men of letters of the time, were members. About the same period, too, he seems to have become known to most of these persons, as well as to others of the favored poets round the court, among whom, were Espinel and the two Argensolas ; though wliat were his relations Avith them, beyond those implied in the conmiendatory verses they prefixed to each other's works, we do not know. Concerning his relations with Lope de Yega there has been much discussion to little purpose. Certain it is that Cervantes often praises this great literary idol of his age, and that four or five times Lope stoops from his pride of place and compliments Cervantes, though never Ijeyond the measure of praise he bestows on many whose claims were greatly inferior. But in his stately flight it is plain that he soared much above the author of Don Quixote, to whose highest merits he seemed carefully to avoid all homage ; ^" and though I find no sufficient reason to suppose their relation to each other was marked by any personal jealousy or ill-will, as has been sometimes supposed, yet I can find no proof that it was either intimate or kindly. On the contrary, when we consider the good-natiiie ol' Cervantes, which made him praise to excess nearly all his other literary contempoiaries, as well as the great- est of them all, and when we allow for the frequency of hyperbole in such i)raises at that time, which pre- vented tlu'iii fiom l>eing what they would now ))e, we may percei\e an occasional coolness in his manner, 1'' Lauiel tltr AjkjIo, Silva 8, where he Is praised onlij as a poet. Chap. XI. | CERVANTES AND LOPE DE VEGA. 139 when he speaks of Lope, which shows that, without overrating his own merits and claims, he was not in- sensi))le to the (Uflerence in their respective positions, or to the injustice tow'ards himself implied by it. In- deed, his whole tone, wdienever he notices Lope, * seems to be marked Avith much personal dig- *118 nity, and to be singularly lionorable to him.^^ 11 Mo.st of tlic materials for foi'iiiing a judgment on thi.s point in Cervante.s'.s character are to he found in Navarrete (Vida, 457-475), who maintains that ( 'ervantiis and Lope were sincere friends, and in Huerta (Leccion Critica, Madrid, 1785, ISnio, p. 43 to the end), who maintains that Cervantes was an en- vious rival of Lope. As I cannot adopt either of these results, and think the last particularly unjust, I will venture to add one or two considerations. Lope was fifteen years younger than Cervantes, and was forty-three years old when the First Part of the Don Quixote was puhlished ; but from that time till the death of Cervantes, a pe- riod of eleven years, he does not, that I am aware, once allude to him. The five passages in tlu; immense mass of Lope's works, in which alone, so far as I know, he speaks of Cervantes, are, — 1. In the "Dorothea," 1598, twice slightly and without ])raise. 2. In the Preface to his own Tales, 1621, still more slightly, and even, I think, cold- ly. 3. In the " Laurel de Apolo," 1630, wlune there are twelve lines of cold punning eulogy of him, fourteen years after his (hiatli. 4. In his i)lay, " Kl Premio del Bien Hablar," printed in Madrid, 1635, where Cervantes is liarcdy mentioned (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XXI. f. 162). And 5. In "Amar sin Saber a Quien" (Comedias, Madrid, Tom. XXII., 1635), where (Jornada l)rimei-a) Leonarda, one of the princi- j)al ladies, says to her maid, who had just cited a ballad of Audalla and Xa.rifa to her, — Inez, take care ; your common reading is, I know, the Ballad-hook ; and, after all, Your case may prove, like . that of the poor knight — to which Inez replies, interrn])ting her mistress, — Don Quixote of La Mancha, if you please, — May Crod Cervantes pardon 1 — was a knight Of that wild, erriuK sort the (Chronicle So uia^uities. For uie, 1 only read The Lallad-book, and find myself from day To day the better for it. All this looks very reserved ; but, when we add to it that there were numbei'less occasions on which Lo))e could have gracefully noticcnl the merit to which he could never have been insensible, — especially when he makes so fi'ee and unjustifiable a use of Cervantes's " Trato de Argel" in his own "Esclavos de Argel," absolutely introducing him by name on the .stage, and giving him a prominent part in the action (Comedi- as, Qarag0(;a, 1647, 4to, Tom. XXV. ])p. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of those kindly or respect- ful feelings which it was easy ami com- mon to show to friends on the Sjianish stage, and which Calderon, for instance, so fr(;c[uently shows to Cervantes (e. g. Casa con Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.), — we can hardly doulit that Lojie will- ingly overlooked and neglected Cer- vantes, at least from the; time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605, till after its author's death, in 1616. On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the " Canto de Caliope " in the "Galatea," 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all contnmporar)) doubt or rivalshi]i, was at the head of Si)anish literature ; and, among other proofs of .such eh^ vated and generous feelings, prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Loi)e's "Dragontea." But, at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully, there is a dignified reserve and caution in some j)arts of his remark.s about Lope that show he was not im- pelled by any warm, personal regard ; 140 THE NOVEL AS EXEMPLAEES. [Peuiod II. *119 * In 1613 he published his "Novelas Exera- plares," Instructive or Moral Tales,^^ twelve in number, and making one volume. Some of them were written several years before, as was '' The Impertinent a caution whii'h is so obvious, that Avcllauctla, iu the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it into env)'. It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion, tliat the relations between the two great Spanish authors of this jieriod were such as might be ex])ected, where one was, to an extraor- dinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about tlie wliole matter is the generous jus- tice Cervantes never fails to render to Lope's merits. But, since the preceding account, both in the text and note, was pub- lislied, (1849,) more evidence has been discovered on the .subject of the per- sonal I'elations of Cervantes and Lope ; — unliapjjily, such as leaves no doubt of Lope's ungenerous feelings towards liis great contein])orary. It is pub- lished in the " NachtrJige zur Ges- chichte der dramatischen Litei-atur und Kunst in Spanien von A. F. von Schack," (Frankfurt am Main, 1854, 8vo, pp. 31-34,) and consists of ex- tracts, made by Duran, from autograph letters of Lope, found among the papers of Lope's great patron and friend, the Duke de Sessa, who jiaid the (ixpenses of Ids funeral, and inheritei. H. ])uilt and rigg'ed with dilU'ronl kinds ol" verses, to Cer- vantes, who. beini;- confidentially consulted about the Spanisli poets tliat ean l)e trusted as allies in the war against bad taste, has an opportunity of speaking his opinion on wliatever relates to the poetry of his time. The most interesting part is the fourth cliapter. in which he slightly notices the works he has himself written.^'' and com])lains. with a gayety that at * 124 least proves *' his good-humor, of the poverty and neglect with which they have been re- warded.-" It may be dilhcult, perhaps, to draw a line between such feelings as Cervantes here very strongly expresses, and the kindred ones of vanity and pre- sumption ; but yet, when his genius, his Avants, and his manlv strui2:o:les against the gravest evils of life are considered, and when to this are added the light- heartedness and simplicity with which he always speaks of himself, and the indulgence he always shows to others, fcAV will complain of him for claiming with some boldness honors that had been coldly withheld, and to whic-h he felt that he was entitled. At the end he has added a humorous jn-ose dialogue, called the " Adjunta," defending his dramas, and attack- ing the actoi's who refused to represent them. He says that he had prepared six full-length plays, and six Entremeses, or farces; l)ut that the theatre liad its ^^ .Vmonp thoni he sjicaks of many FcniinKU'z, Madrid, 179(5, Svo, Tom. ballads tliat lie had written : — XVI. j). 17.'). Jlayans, Vida ;to Uonianres infinitos, vantes, I\0. ](>4. Y <-l deIosZc"losoKa(nicl (lueeftinio 20 ^jioHo tidls llim, (Viagc, cd. 1784, Entre otros, (jue los U;ngo por nialditos. ^ 55 ) All these are lost, except such as may " Mas si (|iiieres salinle tu iiucrclla. l)c found scattered througli his longer AU'^^r.. v n.. ronfuso y consolaa.. , , 1-111 Dohia tu i-apa v sifiitate sobrc clla. works, and some Whicil have been SUS- Que U.l vo/. sudeun venturoso estado, )ie.cted to be his in tin- Koniancero Gen- Qimndo le niejiii sin razon la suerte, eral. ("lemencin, notes to his e(l. of , Honnir mas memido quf alcanzado " r. ,-1 • . rp Til — 1 ri- .-t-i I ' Bicn parcce, Soiior, (lue no se adricrto, ' Don Quixote, Tom. III. pp. 15b, 214. I... r...!.pnn,li, " ,,uc J" noten^'ocnpa - Colecciou de Poesuus dc Don lianion El dixo: "Aunquu sea a«i, gusto de verte.'' LiiAP. XL] THE yiAGE DEL PARXASO. 147 pensioned poets, und so took no note of liiin. The next _ve;ir, liowever, when their lunnher had become eight phiys and eight Entrenieses, he fonnd a ])ul)hsher, thongh not without diliicnlty ; for the bookseller, as he saj^s in the Preface, had been warned by a noble anthor, that from his prose nineli might l)e hoped, but from his poetry nothing. And truly his position in relation to the theatre was not one to be desired. Thirty years had passed since lie liad himself been a successful writer for it ; and the twenty or more pieces he had then produced, some of which he men- tions anew with great complacency,"^ were, no doubt, long since forgotten. * In the interval, * 125 as he tells us, " that great prodigy of nature, Lope de Vega, had raised himself to the monarchy of the theatre, subjected it to his control, and placed all its actors under his jurisdiction ; filled the world with becoming plays, happily and well written ; . . . . and if any persons (and in truth there are not a few such) have desired to enter into competition with him and share the glory of his labors, all they have done, when put together, would not equal the half of what has been done by him alone." ^^ 21 The "Confu.sa" was eviik'iitly his talla Naval," which, from its name, favorite among these eailiei- pieces. In contained, I think, his personal ex- the Viage he says of it, — periences at the fight of Lepanto, as Soj' por quicn La Confusa nada fea the " Trato de Argel " contained those Pareci J en los teatros admirable ; q^ Algiers, and in the "Adjunta" he says, "De -^ After alluding to his earlier efforts la f^ue mas me precio fue ?/ es, de una on the stage, Cervantes goes on in the llamada La Confusa, la qual, con paz Prologo to his new plays : "Tuveotras sea dieho, de quantas comedias de capa cosas en que ocuparme ; dexe la pluma y espada hasta hoy se han representado, y las comedias, y entro luego el mon- bien pucde tener lugar senalado jior struo de naturaleza, el gran Lope de buena entre las mejores." This boast, Vega, y alzose con la monarquia comica ; it should ))e remembered, was made in avasallo y pnso debaxo de su juris- 1614, when Cervantes had i)rinted the diccion a todos los Farsantes, lleno el First Part of the Don Quixote, and mundo de Comedias proprias, felices y when Lope and his school were at the bien razonadas ; y tantas que ])a,ssan de height of their glory. It is ])robable, diez mil jiliegos los que tiene escritos, however, tliat we, at the present tlay, y todas (que es una de las mayores should be more curious to see the " Ba- cosas que puedc decii'se) las ha visto 148 THE COMEDIAS OF CERYAXTES. [Pkkiod II. The number of these writers for the stage in 1G15 was. as Cervantes intimates, very considerable ; and when he goes on to enumerate, an.ong the more suc- cessful, Mira de Mescna, Guillen de Castro, Aguilar, Luis Velez de Guevara, Caspar de Avila, and several others, we perceive, at once, that the essential dh^ection and character of the Spanish drama were at last determmed. Of course, the free field open to liiui when he composed the plays of his j'outh was now closed ; aiid as he wrote from the pressure of w^ant, he conld venture to write onl^^ according to the models triumphantly established by Lope de Vega and his imitators. The -eight plays or Comedias he now produced w^ere, therefore, all composed in the style and in the forms of verse already fashionable and settled. Their subjects are as various as the subjects of his tales. One of them is a rifacimento of his " Trato de Argel," and is curious, because it contains some of the materials, and even occasionally the very phraseology, * 126 of the story * of the Captive in Don Quixote, and l)ecause Lope de Vega thought fit after- wards to use it somewhat too freely in the composition of his own " Esclavos en x\rgel."^^ Much of it seems to be founded in fi\ct ; among the rest, the deplorable martyrdom of a child in the third act, and the repre- representar, u oido decir (por lo menos) of othei-s aftei-ward ; and ends with a que se han reprcseiitado ; y si algunos, Moorish wedding and a Christian mar- (((ue hay nmcli(js) han querido entrar tyi'dom. (See ante. Chap. X.) He a la parte y .i^loria th- sus trabajos, todos says of it himself : — juntos no llegan en lo que han escrito No de la jmaginacion a la mitad de lo que el solo," etc. Este trato f-e i^acj •M mi • 1 1 ■ 1 / > i. 11 Q"<-' la vcnlad lo fraeuo ^ This play, which ( ervantes calls gj^,, 1pj„, j^, i,^ ^^^-^^^ " Los Baiios de Argel," (Coinedia.s, p. 186. 1749, Tom. I. p. 125,) opens with the tJj^, y(.^\^j,\ resemblances between the landing of a I^Ioorish corsair on the ^i^^ .^,,,1 ^j^^. j^^i-y ^f the Captive are coast of Valencia ; gives an account of ehietlv in the first jormida of the play, the suffei-ings of the captives taken in ^s colnpared with Don Quixote, Parte this descent, as well as the sufleiings j_ ^ ^q^ CiiAf. XI] THE COMEDIAS OF CEKNANTES. 149 seiitatioii of one of the Coloquios or farces of Lope de Rueda by the slaves in their prison-yard. Another of the plays, the story of which is also said to be true, is " El Gallardo Espanol," or The Bold Span- iard.^^ Its hero, named Saavedra, and therefore, per- haps, of the old family into which that of Cervantes had long before intermarried, goes over to the Moors for a time, from a point of honor about a lady, but turns out at last a true Spaniard in everything else, as well as in the exaggeration of his gallantry. " The Sultana" is founded on the history of a Spanish cap- tive, who rose so high in the favor of the Grand Turk, that she is represented in the play as having become, not merely a favorite, but absolutely the Sultana, and yet as continuing to be a Christian, — a story which was readily believed in Spain, though only the first part of it is true, as Cervantes must have known, since Catharine of Oviedo, who is the heroine, was his con- temporary.^^ The " Rufian Dichoso " is a Don * Juan in licentiousness and crime, who is con- * 127 verted and becomes so extraordinary a saint, that, to redeem the soul of a dying sinner. Dona Ana de Trevino, he formally surrenders to her his own virtues and good works, and assumes her sins, be- -* The part we should least willingly Que mi peligro es notorio, suppose to be true — that of a droll, ?i ya no estais en estas horas .' ^ . ... , , , ,, ', Durmienao en el aormitono. roistering soldier, who gets a shameiul Tom. I. p- 34. subsistence by begging for souls in Pur- , , , , , , , . ■ ■ ^ ■ ,_ ,_ gatory, and spending on his own glut- f^^\''^ "^'''l}' -^^^^ ^^i« principal intent tony the alms he receives — is particu- ^'^''"' Mezxlar verdades larly vouched for by Cervantes. ' ' Esto con fabulosos inten'tor de i)edir para las animas es cuento ver- mi r. ■ i -i ^ ■ r ,i ^ n dadero, qiie yo lo vl." How so indecent Jhe Spanish doctrine of the play - all an exhibition on the stage could be per- f°' ,\°^« /'"^ / ,°''^~ ^\ •''*'" V'V^'''^'^^ mitted is the wonder. Once, for in- ^"^ *^^ .*^'° following lines from the stance, when in great personal danger, ^'^'^^"^ ■^^^'^^^'^ • " he prays thus, as if he had read the Que por reynar y por amor no hay culpa, ' ' Clouds " of Aristophanes : — ^""^ °° *^"^'' P'^'"''"" ' ^ ''^"^ '^'^^"'"^- 2= Se vino A Constantinopla, Animas de Purgatorio 1 Creo el aiio de seiscientos. Favoreced me, Senoras 1 Jor. III. 150 THE COMKDIAS OF CKUVANTES. [rKKioD II. filming anew, through inc're(hhlo siin'erhigs, the career of penitence and reformation ; all of which, or at least M'hat is the most o-ross and revoltino- in it. is declared by Cervantes, as an e^'e-witness, to be true.-'' The remaining four pla\'s are no less various in their subjects, and no less lawless in the modes of treating them ; and all the eight are divided into three j'ornadas, Avhich Cervantes uses as strictly synonymous with acts.-' All preserve the character of the Fool, who in one instance is an ecclesiastic,^ and all extend over any amount of time and space that is foimd convenient to the action; the " Rufian Dichoso," for instance, beginning in Seville and Toledo, during the youth of the hero, and ending in Mexico in his old age. The personages represented are extravagant in their num- ber, — once amounting to above thirtv. — and among them, besides every variety of human existences, are Demons, Souls in Purgatory, Lucifer, Fear, Despair, Jealousy, and other similar phantasms. The truth is, Cervantes had renounced all the principles of the drama which his discreet canon had so gravely set forth ten years earlier in the First Part of Don Quixote; and noAV, wdiether with the consent of his will, or only with that of his poverty, we cannot tell, but, as may be seen, not merely in the plays themselves, but in a sort of induction to the second act of the Kufian -'' The f'huicli prayers on tlie sta^e '^^ He uses the words as convertil)li'. ill this play, and esjiecially in Jornada Tom. I. i)p. 21, 22; Tom. II. p. 2.5, II., and the sort of legal contract used etc. to ti-ansfer the merits of the healthy "■* In the " Banos de Argel," where saint to the dying sinner, are among he is sometimes indecorous enough, as the revolting exhihitions of the Span- when, (Tom. I. ]>. 151,) giving the ish drama which at first seem inexpli- Moors the reason why his old general, eahle, but which any one who reads far Don John of Austria, does not come to ill it easily understands. Cervantes, in .subdue A]gier.s, he sa3^s : — many parts of this strange play, avers the truth of what he thus represents. Sin du.la que, en el cielo, <ht Entrenieses are better than the ei^-ht full- length plays. They are short farces, generally in j prose, with a slight plot, and sometimes with none, and were intended merely to amuse an audience in the intervals between the acts of the longer pieces. "^ The Spectacle of Wonders," for instance, is only a series of practical tricks to frighten the persons attending a. \ puppet-show^, so as to persuade them that they see ' wdiat is reallv not on the staije. '" The Watchful Guard" interests us, because he seems to have drawni the character of the soldier from his own ; and the date of 1611, which is contained in it, may indicate the time when it was written. " The Jealous Old Man " is a reproduction of the tale of " The Jealous Estremadu- rian," with a different and more spirited conclusion. And the " Cueva de Salamanca " is one of those jests at the expense of husbands which are common enough on the Spanish stage, and were, no doubt, equally common in Spanish life and manners. All, indeed, have ;in air of truth and reality, wdiich, whether they were founded in fact or not, it was evidently the author's purpose to give them. But there was an insuperable difficulty in the way of all his efforts on the stage. Cervantes had not , dramatic talent, nor a clear perception how dramatic I efiects were to be produced. From the time when he wrote the " Trato de Argel," which was an exhibition of the sufferings he had himself witnessed and shared in Algiers, he seemed to suppose that whatever was both absolutely true and absolutely striking could be produced with effect on the theatre ; thus confounding the province of romantic fiction any Cervantes to parody and caricature the theatre of Lope de Vega ; -^ though, setting aside all ■^ Sec tlio early jwit of tlu' " Prologo , l-2iiio. Tom. I. ]>. 34.) Now, the Jidcio, or Preface, from wliich these opinions art- taken, and which is really the work of Na.sarre, is announced by him, not as liis own, lint as tlnr work of an anony- mous friend, jirecisely as if he were not willing to avow such opinions under his own name. (Pellicer's Vida de Cer- vantes, ed. Don Quixote, I. |). clxvi.) In this way a disingenuous look is given to what would otherwise have been only an al)siirdity ; and what, taken in con- nection with this rejirint of Cervantes's poor dramas and the Preface to tlieni, seems like a willingness to let down tin; reputation of a genius that Nasarn; could not comjireliend. It is intimated, in an anonymous pamphlet, called " Examen Critico di-l Tomo Primero del Anti(iuixote," (Ma- drid, ISOii, l-2mo,) that Nasarre had sviiioatliies with AvclJaiicda as an Ara- Chap. XI.] THE COMEDIAS OF CERVANTES. 1. ).> tluit at oiico presents itself iVoin the personal relations of the parties, nothing ean be more serious than the interest Cervantes took in the fate of his plays, and the confidence he expressed in their dranuitic merit ; while, at the same time, not a line has ever been pointed out as a paiody in any one of them.''" *This position being untenable, Lani])illas, * 130 who, in the latter part of the last century, wrote ii lonu' defence of Spanish literature ai2:ainst the sui»-o'es- tions of Tiraboschi and Bettinelli in Italy, gravely main- tains that Cervantes sent, indeed, eight plays and eight Entremeses to the booksellers, but that the booksellers took the liberty to change them, and printed eight others with his name and Preface. It should not, how^ever, be forgotten that Cervantes lived to prepare two works after this, and if such an insult had been ojffered him, the country, judging from the way in which he treated the less gross oflence of Avellaneda, would have been tilled with his reproaches and remonstrances;^^ ^oiiese ; and tlie pamphlet in uncstion being mulevstood to be the work of J. A. Pellieer, the editor of Don Quixote, this intimation deserves notice. It may be a(Uled, that Nasan'e belonged to the French school of the eighteenth centnry in Sjiain, — a school that saw little merit in the older Spanish drama. His remarks o!i it, in his preface to Cer- vantes, nnd on the contemporary Eng- lish school of comedy, show this plainly enough, and leave no donbt that his knowledge upon the whole sul)ject was inconsiderable, and his taste as bad as it well could be. 3'^ The extravagant opinion, that these ])lays of Cervantes were written to dis- credit the plays then in ftishion on the stage, just as the Don Quixote was writ- ten to discredit the fashionable books of chivalry, did not pass uncontradicted at the time. The year after it was published, a pamphlet appeared, enti- tled "La Sinrazon imj)ugnada y Beata de Lavapies, Colocpiio (Jritico apuntado al disparatado Prologo ([ue sirve de de- lantal (segun nos dice su Autoi') a las Coniedias de Miguel de Cervantes, com- puesto poi' Don Josej)!! Carrillo " (Ma- drid, 17.50, -ito, pp. 25). It is a spir- ited little tract, chiefly devoted to a defenci! of Lope and of Calderon, though the point about Cervantes is not for- gotten (pp. 13-15). But in the same year a longer work appeared on the same side, called " Discur.so Critico sobre el Origen, Calidad, y Estado pre- sente de las Comedias de Espana, con- tra el Dictamen que las supone cor- rompidas, etc., por un Ingenio de (!sta Corte" (Madrid, 1750, 4to, p]). 285). The author was a lawyer in Madrid, I). Thomas Zabaleta, and he writes with a.s little jdiilosophy and judgment as the other Spanish critics of his time ; but he treats Bias de Nasarre with small ceremony. ^1 " Ensayo Historico-apologetico de la Literatura Espailola," Madrid, 1789, 8vo, Tom. VI. pp. 170, etc. "Supri- miendo las (|ue verdaderamcnte eran de el," are the bold words of the critic. 1~A SICKNESS AND DEATH OF CEKVAXTES. [Periud II. Nothing remains, tliereibre, but to coniess — what seems, indeed, to be quite incontestable — that Cer- vantes wrote several phiys which fell seriously below -what might have been hoped from him. Passages, indeed, may l)e found in them where his o-enius asserts itself '• The Labyrinth of Love," for instance, has a chivalrous air and plot that make it interesting ; ;ind the Entremes of ''The Pretended Bisca3'an " contains ."Specimens of the peculiar humor with which we always associate the name of its author. Others are marked with the poetical genius that never deserted him. But it is quite too probable that he had made u\) his mind to sacrifice liis own opinions respecting the drama to the popular taste ; and if the constraint he thus laid upon himself was one of tlie causes of his fail- ure, it only affords another groimd for our inter- * 131 est in the fate of one whose * whole career was so deeply marked with trials and calamity .*- But the life of Cervantes, w^th all its troubles and sufferings, was now fast drawing to a close. In Octo- ber of the same year, 1615, he published the Second Part of his Don Quixote ; and in its Dedication to the Coimt de Lemos, who had for some time flivored him.*^ he alludes to his failing health, and intimates that he hardly looked for the continuance of life bej'ond a few months. Ilis spirits, however, which had survived his sufferings in the Levant, at Algiers, and in prisons at ■« Tlioro arbadillo, in the Dedication of that die Count de Lemos and the Arch- the " Estafeta del Dios Momo," Ma- bishop of Toledo r.v..' I I i^>i-,tc-d drid, 1G27, \2u\o. CiiAP. XI. J SICKXESS A.NL) DEATH OF CEKVAXTES. 100 home, and which, as he approached his seventieth year, had been sufficient to produce a work hke the Second Part of Don Quixote, did not forsake him, now that his strength was wasting away under the inlhience of disease and okl n^e. On the contrary, with unabated vivacity he urged forward his I'omance of " Persiles and Siu'ismunda" : anxious onh' that hfe enougrh shouhl ))e allowed him to finish it, as the last offering of his gratitude to his generous patron. In the spring he went to Esquivias, where was the little estate he had received with his wife, and after his re- turn wrote a Preface to his unpublished romance, full of a delightfid and simple humor, in which he tells a pleasant story of being overtaken in his ride back to Madrid by a medical student, who gave him much good advice about the dropsy, under which he was suffering ; to which he replied that his pulse had al- ready warned him that he was not to live beyond the next Sunday. " And so," says he, at the conclusion of this remarkaljle Preface, '' farewell to jesting, farewell my merry humors, farewell my gay friends, for I feel that I am dying, and have no desire but soon to see you happy in the other life." * In this temper he prejjared to meet death, * 132 „ .„ A',1 1 ' . u-1 1 4.1 4,1 "IS friends asked hhn to imt on the Allonho \ aides — it he be the author i,„k;4- ,f uj. t? • i 1 ..i f>f +I10 ..a..,..,.i-oKi„ "r^- 1 1 i\r • nabit 01 St. 1< rancis, he answered them : 01 tne remarkable " Uialogo di^ Meruurio ,(Tr i, • i. 1 y Caron," about 1.530 (s"e ant,-., Chap. • H«-"'a»os, ya sabeis quanto me guardc. v., note 42) - had notions on this sub- '''""l^.^'" '^' '''^«^"'"- '' ""'«^"^° ' l''"'^ '1"'= ject such as Milton had, and much elonging to the Koyal Spanish Academy, who prefixed an en- graving of it to their magnificent edi- tion of the Don Quixote in 1780 and ga\-e their rea.sons for it in the Prologo to that work (Sect, xvii-xx). Navar- rete, who went with his accustomed exactness and fidelity over the whole ground again, in his Life of Cervaiites, (Madrid, 1819, yi^. 196, 536-539,) was satisfied with this decision of the Acad- emy. Several other ])ortraits, however, have since been brought forward, but no one of them, I think, lias been found, in the judgment of the curious, to rest on sulJicient autliority. The la.st of thiiu, mid the one which, from the discussions that accompany it, comes ClIAI'. XI.] POUTKAITS OF CEKV ANTES. !-■ il with soiuf ])n'ti'ii.sii)ii lidoi'c tlic world, i.s one prclixi'd to a collection of " Docu- nicutos Nuevos para ilustrar la Vida de Cervantes," published in 18(54 at Seville by Don Jose ^laria Asensio y Toletlo. The facts in tlie case, as he gives them, are these : — In 1850, Don Jose read an anonymous manuscript, whose date he does not intiniat(>, but which belonged to Don Rafael Monti of Siiville, and which was entitled " Relacion de Cosas de Se villa de 1591) a 1640." In this MS. he found a notice that, in ^ne of .six j)ictures painted by Francisco Paclieeo and Alon- so Vazijuez for the "C'asa (Jiaude de la Merced," there was a portrait of Cer- vantes with that of other persons who had been in Algiers, and that the pic- ture in question represented "los Pa- dres de la Redencion con cautivos." In 1864 Don Jose thinks that he found this statement comj)letely contirmed in a M.S. on the " Verdaderos Retratos de ilustres y memorables Varones por Fran- cisco Pacheco," setting forth that he had painted a picture of Father Juan Bernal, an eminent ecclesiastic (see aiife, p. 114, note) who had been in Africa. Don Jose then informs ns that these six pictures are in the " Musbo Pro- vincial" of Seville, and that one of them, "No. 19, San Pedro de Nolasco en lino de los pasos de su Vida," is, as he ])elieves, the one referred to, because he thinks that it sets forth the scene of an embarkation from Africa of Padres Redentores with ransomed captives, and that one of them, the barquiuv, or boat- man, with a boat-hook in his hand, is the figure of Cervantes and a true like- ness of him. Docunientos, pp. i, ii, iv, X, xi, 68-82. Setting aside all minor difficulties and objections to this theory, of which there are several, there are two others that seem to me to be decisive. 1. There is no reason to snppo.se that this "No. 19" contains a likeness of Padre Ber- nal, who is not claimed to have been painted by Pacheco as part of this or of any other historical picture, but only as a portrait, — Pacheco's phrase being, "Yo le retrate." 2. Thfere is no rea- son to suppose that any picture which might contain a i)ortrait of Bernal would also contain a portrait of Cervantes, the two having never before been mentioned together. Now, as the I'ailure of cither of these po.stulates is fatal to the con- jecture of Don Jose, it does not seem needful to go further. Ilartzenbusidi, in a letter jirefixed to the " Documentos," (p. xvii,) thinks that the head of the ljii.rqiitror cima deste lecho, y entraos deba.xo de este tapiz, y entraos en un hueco que aqui hallareis, y no OS movais, que si la justicia vi- niere, me tendni respeto, y creera lo (|ue yo quisiere decides." Persiles, Lib. ill. cap. 6. In Fletcher we have it as follows : — Giiioninr. \re you a Ciu«tilian ? Hiitilin Xo, Miidiini : Italy cUiims my birtli. (riii. I a.^ik not With piirpiisi' to betray you. If you were Ten thousand times a .Spaniard, the nation AVe I'ortujfals most hate, 1 yet would save you, If it lay in my power. Lift up these hanpngs; Reliind my beil's head there 's a hollow place, Into whicii enter. [Kutilio retires behind the bed. CnAi'. XII.] TIIK I'KKSILKS AND SKJiyMUNDA. 159 to write a serious romance, which should l)e to this species of composition what the Don Quixote is to comic I'omance. So much, at least, may be inferred from the manner in which it is spoken of In' himself and by his friends. For in the Dedication of the Sec- ond Part of Don (Quixote he says, '• It will Ije either the worst or the l)est book of amusement in the lan- iTuao'e " : addino-, tliat his friends thouo-ht it a(hni- rable ; and Valdivielso,'"^ after his death, said he had equalled or surpassed in it all his former efforts. But serious romantic fiction, which is peculiarly the offspring of modern civilization, was not 3et far enough developed to enable one like Cervantes to obtain a high degree of success in it, especially as the natural bent of his genius was to humorous fiction. The imaginary travels of Lucian, three or four Greek romances, and the romaTices of chivalry, were all he had to guide him ; for anj'thing approaching nearer to the proper modern novel than some of his own tales had not yet been imagined. Perhaps his first impulse was to write a romance of chivalry, modified by the spirit of the age, and free from the absurdities which abound in the romances that had been written before his time.* But if he had such a thought, the So; — but from this stir not. 8vo, Vol. XI. p. 239. The earlie.st If the officers come, as you expect they will do, trniislation T TPinVrnViPV to lvivt> '^I'cii o)' I knowthev owe such reverence to my lodgings, "ai'^iation 1 lemeniDtl to liaM S( ( 11 01 That they will easily give credit to me the Peisile.s and blgismunda is 111 I" reiicll And .-iearch no further. hy Fmii(;ois de Ro.ssot, Paris, It!] S ; hut Act II. So. 4. ^jjg ^pg|- jg j^jj anoii_vmou.s one in tlie Other parallel passages might he pure.st English, (London, 1854,) under- cited ; but it should not be forgotten, stood to be by Miss L. D. Stanley ; but that there is one striking difference be- in which a good many passages, are tween the two ; for that, whcn^a-s the omitted, ex. gr. Book III. Chaps. VI., Persiles is a l)ook of great purity of VI 1., VI II., etc. I have also an Ital- thought and feeling, "The Custom of ian one by Francesco Ella, ijrinted at the Country" is one of the most inde- Venice, 1626. cent plays in the language ; so inde- ^ In the A|irobacion, dated Septein- eent, indeed, that Diyden rather boldly ber 9, 1616, ed. 1802, Tom. I. p. vii. says it is worse in this particular than * This may be fairly suspected from all his own jilays put together. Dry- the beginning of the 48th chapter of den's Works, Scott's ed., l^ondon, 1808, the First I'art of Don Quixote. 160 THE PERSILES AXD SIGISMUNDA. [PEiaoD IL success of his own Don Quixote almost necessarily prevented him from attempting to put it in execution. He therefore looked rather to the Greek romances, and. as I'ai' as he used any model, took the '* Theage- nes and Chariclea " of Ileliodorus/' He calls * 135 what he produced "A * Northern Romance." and makes its princi])al storv consist of the sufferinjxs of Persiles and Sio'isnnnida. — the lirst the son of a king of Iceland ; the second the daughter of a king of Friesland, — laying the scene of one half of his fiction in the North of Europe, and that of tlic^ other half in the South. lie has some faint ideas of the sea-kings and pirates of the Northern Ocean, hut very little of the geography of the countries that pro- duced them ; and as for his savage men and frozen islands, and the wild and strange adventures he ima- gines to have passed among them, nothing can he more fantastic and incredi))le. In Portugal, Spain, and Italy, through which his hero and heroine — disguised as thev are from first ta last . under the names of Periandro and Auristela — make a pilgrimage to Rome, we get rid of most of the extravagances which deform the earlier portion of the romance. The whole, however, consists of a lahyrinth of tales, sliowing, indeed, an imagination quite aston- ^ Once lu' intimates that it is a trans- soon appeared in Spain. The iirst is lation, but does not say from what Ian- the " llistoiia >\v Uiixilito y Aniinta " {(uage. (See opening of Book II.) An of Franeisco de (i)uintana, (Madrid, acute and elegant critic of our own 1627, 4to, ) divith^d into eight books, time says, " Des naufrages, des deserts, witli a good deal of ])oetry intermixed, des descentes par mer, et des ravi.sse- Tlie otlier is " Eustorgio y Cloiilene, nients, c'e.st done toujours jjIus ou llistoria Mositovica," by Enri(|ue Sua- inoins I'ancien ronian d'Heliodore." rez ile .Mendoza y Figueroa, (n)29,) in (Sainte Beuve, C'nti(|ue.s, Paiis, 1839, thirteen book.s, with a hint of a con- 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 173.) These words tiiniatioii ; Init my copy was printed describe more than half of the Pensiles f"arago(;a, 166.5, 4to. Both are writ- and Sigisnuinda. Two imitations of ten in bad taste, and have no value the Persiles, or, at any rate, two imi- as fictions. The latter seems to have tations of the Greek romance which been plainly suggested by the Per- wa.s the chief model of the, Persiles, siles. I'uAr. XII. J Till-: DOX QUIXOTE. 161 ishiiig in an old man like Cervantes, already past his grand climacteric, — a man, too, who might be snp- posed to be ])i-oken down by sore calamities and in- cnrable disease ; l)iit it is a laljyrintli from which we are glad to be extricated, and we feel relieved when the labors and trials of his Persiles and Sigisnumda are over, and when, the obstacles to their love being re- moved, they are happily united at Rome. No doubt, amidst the multitude of separate stories with which this wild work is crowded, several are graceful in them- selves, and others are interesting because they con- tain traces of Cervantes's experience of life,*^ while, * through the whole, his style is more * 136 carefully finished, perhaps, than in any other of his works. But, after all, it is fjir from being what he and his friends fimcied it was, — a model of this peculiar style of fiction, and the best of his efforts. This honor, if we may trust the uniform testimony of two centuries, belongs, beyond question, to his Don Quixote, — the work which, above all others, not merely of his own age, but of all modern times, bears most deeply the impression of the national character it represents, and has, therefore, in return, enjoyed a de- gree and extent of national favor never granted to any other." When Cervantes began to write it is wholly ^ From the begimiiug of Book III., tiling else he wrote, we meet iiitima- we find that the action of Persiles and tions and passages from his own life. Sigisnumda is laid in the time of Philip Persiles and Sigisnumda, after all, was II. or Philip III., when there was a the most immediately snccessful of any Spanish viceroy in Lisbon, and the of the works of Cervantes. Kight edi"- travels of the hero and heroine in the tions of it appeared in two years, and Sonth of Spain and Italy seem to he, it was translated into Italian, French, in fact, Cervantes's own recollections of and Knglish, between 1618 and 1(526. the join-ney he made throngh the same '^ My own experience in Sjiain fully countries in his youth ; while CHiapters corroborates the suggestion of Inglis, in 10 and 11 of P>ook III. show bitter his very pleasant book, (Kamliles in the traces of his Algerine captivity. His Footstejisof Don Qui.xote, London, 18:37, familiarity with Portugal, as .seen in 8 vo, p. 26, ) that "no Spaniard is entirely this work, should also be noticed. ignorant of Cervantes." At least, none Frequently, indeed, as in almost every- I ever questioned on the subject — and vol.. 11. 11 162 WHY CEKYANTES WKOTE DON QUIXOTE. [I'iiuiuD II. uncertain. For twenty years precedin«j: the a])])ear- an;e of the First Part he printed ahnost nothing;^ and the little we know ol' him dnring that long and dreary period of his life shows only how he obtained a hard subsistence for himself and his family by common business agencies, which, we have reason to suppose, were generally of trilling importance, and which, we are sure, were sometimes distressing in their conse- C[uences. The tradition, thercfoic. of his ptM'secutions in La Mancha, and his own averment that the Don Quixote was begun in a prison, are all the hints we have received concerning the circumstances under which it was first imagined ; and that such circum- stances should have tended to such a result is a strik- ing fact in the history, not only of Cervantes, * 137 but of * the human mind, juid shows how difter- ent was his temperament from that commonly found in men of genius. His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has some- times been enlarged by the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic m our natures, — between lierolsm and generosity on one side, as if the}^ were mere illu- sions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were the truth and reality of life.^ But this is a meta- physical conclusion drawn from views of the work t]i(.'ir iimiiljcr was great in the lower scciiis to have Ikhmi wliolly occu])ieil in comlitions of society — seemed to be iiainful struggles to secure a subsist- entirely ignorant what sort of persons ence. were Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. ^ 'I'his idea is found jiavtly developed ** He felt this himself as a dreary in- by Houteiwek, (('esehichte der Poesie terval in his life, for he says in his und IJercdsanikeit, (iottingen, 1S03, Prologo : "Al cabo de tantos anos co- 8vo, Tom. HI. ])p. ;}3.t - 337,) :inil fully mo lia, (jue dueiino en el silencio del set forth and defeuih'(l by Sismondi, olvido," etc. In fact, from l.')84 till with liis accustomeil elfxiuence. Lit- 1605 he liad printed nothing ex(;ept a teratun- du Midi dc 1' Europe, Paris, few short poems of little value, and 1S13, Svo, Tom. HI. i)}). 331) -343. LiiAP. XII.] WIIV CEP.VANTES WROTE DON QUIXOTE. 163 iit once inipcM't'cct ami exaggeratcHl ; contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of " Persiles and Sigismunda " to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a con- tradiction to that discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies.^*^ Nor does he himself permit us to give to his ro- mance any such secret meaning ; for, at the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole purpose to break down the vogue and authority of~ books or~chivairy^ and, at the end of the whole, he declares anew, in his own person, that "he had had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry " ; ^^ exulting * in his success, as an * 138 1° Many other interpretations have y en el vulgo tienen los libros de Cabal- been given to the Don Quixote. One lerias " ; and he end.s the Second Part, of the most ab.surd i.s that of Daniel ten year.s afterwards, with these I'e- De Foe, who declares it to be "an em- markable words : "iVo Im sido ot.ro vri blematic history of, and a just satire deseo, que poner en aborrecimiento de upon, the Duke de Medina Sidonia, a los hombres las fingidas y disparatadas person very remarkable at that time in historias de los libros de Caballerias, Spain." (Wilson's Life of De Foe, que por las de mi verdadero Don Quix- London, 1830, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 437, ote van ya tropezando, y han de caer rote.) The "Buscapie" — if there ever del todo sin duda alguna. Vale." It was such a publication — pretended that seems really hard that a gi-ear man's it set forth "some of the undertakings word of honor should thus be called in and gallantries of the Emperor Charles ([uestion by the spirit of an over-refined V." See Appendix (D). criticism, two centuries after his death. 11 In the Prologo to the First Part, D. Vicente Salva has partly, but not he says, "No ■mira d mas que a deshacer wholly, avoided this difficulty in an in- la autoridad y cabida, que en el niundo genions and pleasant essay on the ques- 104 WITY CERVANTES WROTE DON QUIXOTE. [Peuiod II, achicvi'iiicnt of no siiiiill inoineiit. And siicli. in Diet, it was, for we lia\e al)Lindant proof that tlie fanaticism i'or these romances was so great in Sj^ain, (luring the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of ahirm to the more judicious. Many of the distinguished contemporary authors speak of its miscliiefs and anujng the rest Fernandez de Oviedo, the venerable Luis de Granada, Luis de Leon, Luis Vives, the great scholar, and Malon de Chaide, who wrote the eloquent '• Conversion of Mary Magdalen." ^ Guevara, the learned and fortunate courtier of Charles the Fifth, declares that " men did read nothing in his time Init such shameful books as " Amadis de Gaula,' ' Tristan,' ' Primaleon,' and the like " ; ^^ the acute author of '^ The I)ialoo;ue on Languages " says that " the ten years he passed at court he wasted in studying ' Florisando,' ' Lisuarte,' ^ The Knight of the Cross,' and other such books, more than he can name " ; ^^ and from different tion, "Wliether the Don Quixote has yet been jiidgedacconling to its nieiits" ; — in wliich he maintains that Cervan- tes did not intend to satirize the sub- stance and essence of books of cliivah-y, but only to puif(e away their alisurdi- ties and iiiijiiobabilities ; and tliat, after all, he has given us substantially only another romance of the same class, which has ruined the fortunes of all its predecessors bj' being itself immensely in advance of them all. Ochoa, Ajmn- tes para una liiblioteca, Paris, 1S42, 8vo, Tom. n. ].p. 723-740. ^ See Oviedo, Hist. Ceneral y Natu- ral de la.s India.s, Eil. Kios, Torn. I. 1851, p. xxix. Simbolu de la Fe, Parte II. cap. 17, near the end. J. P. For- ner, Keflexiones, etc., 1786, ])]•. 32-3.'). Conversion de la Magy * 139 gather from Cervantes hhnself, that many who read these fictions took them for true histo- ries.^^ At last they were deemed so noxious, that, in 1553, they were prohibited by hiw from being printed or sold in the American colonies, and in 15^55" the same prohibition, and even the burning of all copies of them extant in Spain itself, was earnestly asked for by the Cortes.^*^ The evil, in fjxct, had become formidable, and the wise began to see it. To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the character of all classes of men,^' to break up the only reading which at that time could be con- sidered widely popular and fashionable,^*^ was certainly- See Mcayans v Siscar, Origenes, Tom. II. pp. 157, 158. 15 See ante. Vol. I. pp. 223-226. But, besides what is .said there, Fran- cisecf de Portugal, who died in 1632, tells us in his "Arte de Galanteria," (Lisboa, 1670, 4to, p. 96,) that Simon de Silveira (I suppo.se the Portuguese poet who lived about 1500, Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 722) once swore upon the Evangelists, tliat he believed the whole of the Amadis to be true his- tory. I'' Clemencin, in the Preface to his edition of Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. xi-xvi, cites many other proofs of the ])assiou for books of chivalry at that jjcriod in Spain ; adding a reference to the " Recopilacion de Leyes de las In- dias," Lib. I. Tit. 24, Ley 4, for the law of 1553, and printing at length the very curious petition of the Cortes of 1555, which I have not .seen anywhere else, except in the official publication of the "Capitulos y Leyes," (Vallado- lid, 1558, fol. Iv, b, ) and which would probably have produced the law it de- manded, if the abdication of the Em- peror, the same year, had not prevented all action upon the matter. 1'' Allusions to the fanaticism of the lower classes on the subjci't of liooks of chivalry are happily introduced into Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 32, and in other places. It extended, too, to thos(! better bred and informed. Francisco de Portugal, in the "Arte de Galante- ria," cited in a preceding note, and written before 1632, tells the following anecdote : " A knight came home on(; day from the chase and found his wife and daughters and their women crying. Surprised and grieved, he asked them if any child or relation were dead. ' No,' they answered, suttbcated with tears. ' Why, then, do you weep so ? ' he re- joined, still more amazed. 'Sir,' they replied, 'Amadis is dead.' They had read .so far." p. 96. ^^ Cervantes himself, as his Don Quixote amply proves, must, at some period of his life, have been a devoted reader of the romances of chivalry. How minute and exact his knowledge of them was may be seen, among other passages, from one at the end of the twentieth chapter of Part First, where, S[>eaking of Ga.sabal, the esipiire of Ga- laor, he observes that his name is men- tioned but once in the history of Amadis of Gaul ; — a fact which the indefatiga- ble Mr. Bowie took the pains to verify, when reading that huge romance. See his "Letter to Dr. I'ercy, on a New and Classical Edition of Don Quixote," London, 1777, 4to, p. 25. 166 FIRST PART OF THE DON QUIXOTE. [Peiiiod II. u bold uiulertakiuci^, and one that marks anvthino; rather than a scoi-iii"id oi- l)roken spirit, or a want of faith in wliat is most to be valued in our common iTature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes * 140 succeeded. But that he did, there is no * ques- tion. JS^o bo ok of chivalry was written after the appearance of Don Quixote,, in 160-3; and from the same date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted ; ^^ so that, from that time to the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now among the rarest of literary curiosities ; — a solitary instance of the power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the litera- ture of a great and proud nation. The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, was simple as well as original. In 160-3,-^' he pu])lislied the First Part of Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha — full of o-enuinc Castilian honor and enthu- siasm, gentle and dignified in his character, trusted by ^^ In tlie comjueiitary of Faria y iiiaik of Ck-moiicin, liowevcv, there are Sousa on the Lusiad, 1637, (Canto VI. exceptions. For instance, the " Genea- fol. 138,) he says already that in conse- logia tie la Toledana Discreta, Priniera (|U(.'nce of the pnlilication of the Don Parte," por Eugenio Maitinez, a tale of Qnixote, books of chivalry "no .son chivalry in octave stanzas, not ill writ- tan leidos"; and in a dedication to the ten, was reprinted in 1608; and "HI Madrid edition of that work, 1668, we ('a])allero del Fcbo," and " Claridiano." are told that its ])revious repeated ini- his son, are extant in editions of 1617. ])ressions " han (ksfermdo los libros de Tiie period of the passion for .such books caballerias tan perjudiciales a las cos- in Spain can be leadily seen in the Bib- tunibres." Navarrete, jjp. 500, 502. liograjihical Catalogue, and notices of' Cleniencin, moreover, and finally in his them by Salvd, in the Kepertorio Amer- Preface, 1833, notes "I). Folicisiie de icano, "(London, 1827, Tom. IV. pp. Boecia," i)rinted in 1602, as the last 29-74,) and .still better in the Cata- book of cliivaliy that was written in logue ])retixc(l by Gayangos to Riva- Sfjain, anil adds, that, after 160."), "vw deneyra's I'iblioteca, Tom. XL. 1857. .sc piiblic6 de nuevo libro alguno de It was eminently tlie sixteenth cen- <;aballerifus, y (lejaron (h reiTuprimirse tury. los anteriores" (p. xxi). To this re- ^ See Appendix (E), (•hai>. XJI.] FIKST TAKT OF THE DON QUIXOTE. 1G7 his friends, and loved by his dependants — is repr-e- sented as so completely crazed by long reading the most famons books of chivalry, that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become the impossible knight-errant they describe, — nay, actually goes forth into the world to defend the op])ressed and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances. To complete his chivalrous equipment — which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armor strange to his century — he took an esquire out of his neighborhood; a middle-aged peasant, ignorant and\^^ credulous to excess, but oF^great good-nai^crre ; a glut- ton a nd ajiar; selfish and grosSj^yet attached to his master; shrewd enough occasionally to see the folly of their position, but always * amusing, * 141 and sometimes mischievous, in his interpreta- tions of it. These two sally forth from their native village in search of adventures, of which the excited imagination of the knig-ht, turnins; windmills into giants, solitary inns into castles, and galley-slaves into K oppressed gentlemen, finds abundance, wherever he goes ; while the esquire translates them all into the plain prose of truth with an admirable simplicity, quite unconscious of its own humor, and rendered the more striking by its contrast with the lofty and courteous dignity and magnificent illusions of the superior per- sonage. There could, of course, be but one consistent termination to adventures like these. The knight and his esquire suffer a series of ridiculous discomfitures, and are at last brought home, like madmen, to their native village, where Cervantes leaves them, with an. intimation that the story of their adventures is by no means ended. From this time we hear little of Cervantes and 168 CEllVANTES A\D A's'KLLANEDA. [Pkiimd 11. iiothiii<»; of his hero, till eight years tifterwards^ in July, IGlo, when he wrote the Prefjice to his Tales, where lie distinctly annomices a Second Tart of Don Quixote* But hefore this Second Part could be pu))- lished, and, indeed, before it was finished, a pei^son calling; himself Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, who seems, from some provnicialisms in his style, to have been an Aragonese, and who, from other internal evidence, was a Dominican monk, came out, in the summer of 1614, with what he impertinently called ^' The Second Volume of the Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha."-^ * 142 * Two things are remarkable in relation to ■ this book. The first is, that, though it is hardly possible its author's name should not have been known to many, and especially to Cervantes himself, still it is only by strong conjecture that it has been often assigned to Luis de Aliaga, the king's confessor, a person whom, from his influence at court, it might not have been deemed expedient openly to attack ; ])ut sometimes also to Juan Blanco de Paz. a Dominican friar, who had l)een an enemy of Cervantes in Algiers. The second is, that the author ■•^1 Cervantes leproadies Avellaneda I have. There are editions of it, Ma- with being au Aragonese, because he ilrid, 1732, 180.'), and 1851 ; and a sometinies omits the article where a translation by Le Sage, 1704, in which Oastilian would insert it. (Don Quix- — after his niann(a' of translating — he ote, I'arte II. e. .lit.) The rest of tli(^ alters and enlarges the original work . 14,4-l.'il ; in Clemen- that, when Pope, in Ids " Es.say on <;in's Don Quixote, I'arte II. c. ,^>9, Criticism," (267, etc., beginning, "Once notes; and in Adolfo de (Jastro's " Con- on a time La Mancha's knight, they •i>. 11, etc. This Avellaneda, lie refcn-s, not to the work of Cervantes, •A^hoever he was, called his book " Sr- l>ut to that of Avellaneda, and of Avel- {/viidfi Toiuo del I ngenioso Hidalgo Don laneda in the rifn^ime^itrt of Le Sage, ■Quixote de la Mancha," etc;., (Tarrago- I>iv. III. chap. 29. Persons familiar iia, 1614, 12ino,)and |)rinted it .so that with Orvantes are oftAi di.saj)point(!d it matches very well with the Valencian that they do not recollect it, thinking •'•ditioii, 1<)(t.'j, f»f (he Fir.^t Part of tin' tliat the reference must be to his Don ^genuine Don Quixote ; - both of which Quixote. CiiAi-. XII.] CERVANTES AND AVELLANEDA. 1G9 seems to have had liints of the plan Cervantes was pursuing in his Second Part, then unfinished, and to have used them in an unworthy manner, especially in making Don Alvaro Tarfe play substantially the same part that is played by the Duke and Duchess towards Don Quixote, and in carrying the knight through an adventure at an inn with play-actors rehearsing one of Lope de Vega's di-amas, almost exactly like the adventure with the puppet-show man so admirably imagined by Cervantes.^'^ But this is all that can interest us about the Ijook, which, if not without merit in some respects, is gen- erally low and dull, and would now be forgotten, if it were not connected with the fame of Don Quixote. In its Prefoce, Cervantes is treated Avith coarse indig- nity, his age, his sufferings, and even his honorable wounds being sneered at;" and in the body of the book, the character of Don Quixote, who appears as a vulgar madman, fancying himself to be Achilles, or any other character that happened to occur to the author,^^ is so comj^letely without dignity or consistency, * that it is clear the writer did * 143 not possess the power of comprehending the '^^ Avellanetla, c. 26. There is a much 2* Chapter 8; — just as he makes ViettertraiLslation than Le Sage's, by Ger- Don Quixote fancy a j)oor ])easant iu mond de Lavigne, (Paris, 1853, 8vo, ) his melon -garden to be Orlando Furio.so with an acute pref ice and notes, partly (c. 6); — a little village to be Ronu; intended to rehabilitate Avellaneda. (c 7); — and its decent priest alter- Fr. Luis de Aliaga was, at one time, nately Lirgando and the Archbishop Inrjui-sitor-General, andaper.sonof great Tnrpin. Perhaps the most oV)vious politi(;al considei'ation ; but he resigned comparison, and the fairest that cau his i)lace or was disgraced in the reign be made, between the two Don Quix- of Philip IV., and died in exile shortly otes is in the story of the goats, told afterward.s, December 3, 162(3. He fig- by Sancho in the twentieth chapter of ures in Quevedo's "Grandes Anales de the First Part in Cervantes, and the Quince Dias." Ample notices of him story of the geese, by Sancho in Avel- may be found in the Kevista de ("iencias, laneda's twenty-first chaptei', because etc., Sevilla, 1856, Tom. III. pj). 6, 74, the latter profes.ses to improve upon etc. SeealsoLata.ssa, Piib.Nov., III.376. the former. The failure to do so, how- 23 "Tiene mas lengua que mauos," ever, is obvious enough, says Avellaneda, coarsely. 170 CERVANTES AND AVELLANEDA. [PEUim. II. genius he at once basely libelled and meanly at- tempted to supplant. The best parts of the work -^■L^are those in which Sancho is introduced ; the worst •' are its indecent stories and the adventures of Bar- bara, who is a sort of brutal caricature of the grace- ful Dorothea, and whom the knio-lit mistakes for Queen Zenobia.^^ But it is almost always Aveari- .^ome, and comes to a poor conclusion by the con- iinement of Don Quixote in a madhouse."*' Cervantes evidently did not receive this affront- ing production mitil he was ftir advanced in the composition of his Second Part ; but in the fifty- ninth chapter, written apparently when it first reached him, he breaks out upon it. and from that moment never ceases to persecute it. in every form of ingenious torture, initil, with the seventy-fourth, he brino^s his own work to its conclusion. Even Sancho, with his accustomed humor and simplicity, is let loose upon the unhappy Aragonese; for, hav-- ing understood from a chance traveller, who first brings the book to their knowledge, that his wife is called in it Mary Gutierrez, instead of Teresa Pan- za, — " ' A pretty sort of a history-writer.' cried Sancho. * and a deal must he know of our afftiirs, if he calls Teresa Panza, my wife, Mary Gutierrez. Take the book again. Sir, and see if I am put into it, and if he has changed my name, too.' ' By what I hear you say, my friend,' replied the stranger, ' 3'ou are, no douljt, Sancho Panza, the esquire of Don Quixote.' ■^ The wIioIp story of Barbara, be- man, to add two cha])tprs more to Don giuiiiiig with C'liaptiT 22, and going Quixote, as if they liad been suppressed nearly through the remainder of the when the Second Part was published, work, is miserably coarse antl dull. But they were not thought worth print- ^ In 1824, a curious attemj)! was ing by the Spanish Academy. See Don made, probably by some ingenious Ger- Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI. p. 296. Chap. XIl] CERVANTES AND AVELLANEDA. 171 • To be sure 1 tun,' * answered Sanclio, ' and * 1-1-i proud of it too.' • Then, in truth,' said the gentleman, *= this new author does not treat you with the propriety shown in your own person ; he makes you a ghitton and a fool ; not at all amusinii:, and quite another thing from the Sancho described in the first part of your master's history.' 'Well, Heaven foroive him ! ' said Sancho : ' but I think he mio'lit have left me in my corner, without troubling himself about me ; for, Let him pla// thai Jcnows the ii:ay ; and Saint Peter at Rome is well of at home' " ^" Stimulated by the appearance of this rival w^ork, as well as offended Avitli its personalities, Cervantes ui-ged forward his own, and, if we may judge by its somewhat hurried air, brought it to a conclusion sooner than he had intended.^^ At any rate, as early as February, 1615, it w\as finished, and w^as published in the following autumn ; after which we hear nothing more of Avellaneda, though he had in- timated his purpose to exhibit Don Quixote in an- other series of adventures at Avila, Valladolid, and Salamanca.^''' This, indeed, Cervantes took some pains to prevent; for — besides a little changing his plan, and avoiding the jousts at Saragossa, because Avel- laneda had carried his hero there ^*^ — he finally re- stores Don Quixote, through a severe illness, to his right mind, and makes him renounce all the follies of knight-errantry, and die, like a peaceful Christian, in his own bed; — thus cutting off the po.ssibility of another continuation with the pretensions of the first. This latter half of Don Quixote is a contradiction of 27 Parte II. c. 59. of his being at Saragossa, he exclaim.s, ** See Appemlix (E). " Por el mismo caso, no pondre los pies "^ At the end of Cap. 36. en Zaragoza, y asi sacare a la plaza del ^ When Don Quixote understands nnindo la mentira de.se historiador mo- that Avellaneda has given an account derno." Parte II. c. 59. 172 SECOND J>AKT OF THE DOX QUIXOTE. [Period II. the proverb Cervantes cites in it, — that second parts were never yet good for niuch.'^^ It is, in fact, better than the first. It shows more freedom and vigor; and if the caricature is sometimes pushed to the very verge of what is permitted, the inven- * 145 tion, the style of * thought, and, indeed, the materials throughout, are richer and the finish is more exact. The character of Sanson Carrasco, for instance,^^ is a very happ^', though somewhat })old, addition to the original persons of the drama ; and the adventures at the castle of the Duke and Duchess, where Don Quixote is fooled to the top of his bent ; the managements of Sancho as governor of his .island; the visions and dreams of the cave of Montesinos ; the scenes with Roque Guinart, the freebooter, and with Gines de Passamonte, the galley- slave and puppet-show man ; together with the mock- heroic hospitalities of Don Antonio Moreno at Barce- lona, and the final defeat of the knight there, are all admirable. In truth, everything in this Second Part, especially its general outline and tone, shows that time and a degree of success he had not before known had ripened and perfected the strong manly sense and sure insight into human nature which are visible in nearlv all his works, and which here be- come a part, as it were, of his peculiar genius, whose foundations had been laid, dark and deep, amidst the trials and sufferings of his various life. ^1 It isoneofthe mischievous remarks blemishes. Garces, in his " Fuerza y • of theBachelor Samson Carra.sco. Parte Vigor de la Lengua Castellana," Tom. II. c. 4. II. Prologo, as \V(^11 as throughout that ^ Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 4. The excellent work, has given it, perhajis, style of both parts of the genuine Don more unifonu ]>raise than it deserves ; Quixote is, as might be anticipated, ^ while ( 'Icmencin, in his notes, is verj free, fresh, and careless; — genial, like rigorous and unpardoning to its occa- the author's character, full of idiomatic sional defects, beauties, and by no means without Chap. Xll.] SKCOND ]\VKT OF THE DON QUIXOTE. 1/3 But tlu'oiit^lioiit both parts, Cervantes shows the impulses and instincts of an original power with most distinctness in his development of the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho, in whose fortunate contrast and opposition is hidden the full spirit of his peculiar humor, and no small part of what is most effective in the entire fiction. They are his prominent personages. He delights, therefore, to have them as much as possi- ble in the front of his scene. They grow visibly upon his favor as he advances, and the fondness of his liking for them makes him constantly produce them in lights and relations as little foreseen by himself as they are by his readers. The knight, who seems to have been * originally intended for aj^arody of the * 14G Amadis, becomes gradually a detached, sepa- rate, and wholly independent personage, into whom is infused so much of a generous and elevated nature, such gentleness and delicacy, such a pure sense of honor, and such a warm love for whatever is noble and good, that we feel almost the same attachment to him that the barber and the curate did, and are almost as ready as his familj^ was to mourn over his death.^ The case of Sancho is again very similar, and per- haps in some respects stronger. At first, he is intro- duced as the opjDosite of Don Quixote, and used merel}' to bring out his master's peculiarities in a more strik- ing relief It is not until we have gone through nearly half of the First Part that he utters one of those proverbs which form afterwards the staple of his conversation and humor ; ^^ and it is not till the open- ^ Wordsworth in his "Prelude" And thought that, in the Wind and awful lair Book v., says of Don Quixote, very Of such a u.adness, rea.son did lie couched, strikingly :— 34 jj^ ^jof;, Qucvedo, in his " Cuento Nor have I pitied him, but rather fell de Cuentos," ridiiulcd the free use of Reverence was due to a being thus employed ; proverbs, not, however, 1 think, direct- 174 SECOND PART OF THE DOX QUIXOTE. [l'i:i:ini) H. . ing of the Second Part, and, indeed, not till he comes fortli. in all his mingled shrewdness and crednlit}^, as governor of Barataria, that his character is quite devel- oped and completed to the full measure of its grotesque, 3'et congruous, proportions. Cervantes, m truth, came at hist to love these crea- tions of his marvellous power, as if they were real, familiar personages, and to speak of them and treat them with an earnestness and interest that tend nmch to the illusion of his readers. "R oth Don-Q jgj-x.Qtj'. and Sanclio are thus l)rouuix- ote," accompanied with a map ; as if 176 DEFECTS OF THE DON QUIXOTE. [Pekiod J I. Thus, in the First Part, Don Quixote is geuerally represented us helonging to a remote age, and his liistory is sujoposed to liave been written by an ancient Arabian author r"^ while, in the examination * 149 of his hbrary, he is * plainly contemporary with Cervantes himself, and, after his defeats, is some of Cervantes's geo^ra])hy were not iinijossible, and as if half his localities were to be found anywhere but in the imaginations of liis readers. On the ground of such irregularities in his geograjihy, and on other gi'ounds e([ual- ly absurd, Xieholas Perez, a Valencian, attacked Cervantes in the " Auti-(^)uix- ote," the tirst volume of which was published in 1805, but was followed by none of the five that were intended to complete it ; and received an answer, (piite satisfactory, but more severe than was needful, in a pamphlet, publishetl at Madrid in 180C, 12mo, by J. A. Pellicer, without his name, entitled " Exanien Critico del Tomo Primero de el Anti-Quixote." And finally, Don Antonio Eximeno, in his "Apologia de Miguel de Cervantes," (Madrid, 1806, 12mo, ) excuses or defends everything in th(> Don Quixote, giving us a new chronologic'al plan, (p. 60,) with exact astronomic'al reckonings, (j). 129,) and maintaining, among other wise posi- tions, that Cervantes i atcntionall ij rep- resented Don Quixote to have lived both in an earlier age and in his own time, in order that curious readers might lie confounded, and, after all, m\\\ some imaginary period be; a.ssigned to his hei-o's a('hievements (p]). 19, (!tc.). All this, I think, is eminently absurd ; but it is the consequence of the blind admi- ration with which Cei-vaiit(^s was idol- ized in Spain during the latter ])art of the last centuiy and the beginning of the present ; — itself partly a result of the coldness with which he had been overlooked by the learnecl of his coun- trymen for nearly a century previous to that period. Don Quixote, Madrid, 1819, 8vo, Pr61ogo de la Academia, P-J3]- ^ Conde, the author of the " Domi- nacion de los Arabes en Kspaha," uniler- takes, in a pamphlet published in con- junction with J. A. I^'llicer, to .show ^hat the name of this pretended Arabic author, Cid Uametc Bcncngcli, is a com- bination of Arabic words, meaning //-/- hlc, satirical, and unluippij. (Carta en Ca.stellano, etc., IMadrid, ' 1 800, 12mo, pp. 16-27.) It may be so ; but it is not in character for Cervantes to .seek such refinements, or to make such a display of his little learning, which does not seem to have extended beyond a knowledge of the Anilgar Arabic sjioken in Barbary, the Latin, the Italian, and the Portuguese. Like Shakes]>eare, however, Cervantes had read and re- membered nearly all that had been ])rinted in his own language, and con- stantly makes the most felicitous allu- .sions to the large stoi-es of his knowl- edge of this soit. Clemencin, howevei', sometimes seems willing to extenil the learned reading of Cervantes further than is neces.saiT. Thus (Don Quixote, Tom. III. p. l:32^ he Ihinks the Discourse of the Knight on Arms and Letters (Parte II. c. 37 and 38) may be traced to an obscure Latin treatise on the same subject print- ed in 1.549. It does not .seem to be needful to refer to anj' particular source for a mattei' .so obviou.s, especially to a Sjianiard of the time of Cervantes ; but if it be worth while to do so, a nearer one, and one much more probable, may be found in the Dedication of the " Flo- res de Seneca traducidas ])or Juan Cor- dero," (Anver.s, 1555, 12mo,) a person much distinguished and honored in his time, as we see from Xinicno and Fus- ter. There was an answer to Conde's "Carta en CastcIIano," entitled " Res- puesta a la Carta en Castellano, etc., per Don Juan Fran. Perez de Cacegas" (Madrid, 1800, 18mo, pp. 60). It was hardly needed, I think, and its temper is not better than that of such contro- versial tracts generally among the Span- iards. But some of its hits at the notes of Pellicer to Don Quixote are well deserved. liiAi'. Xll.l DKFKC'TS OF THE DON QUIXOTE. 1T7 broil <>'lit liomo coiifossodly in the year 1G04. To add further to this coiiriision, when we reach the Second Part, which opens only a month after the conchision of the First, and continues only a few weeks, we have, at the .side of the same chiims of an ancient Arabian nnthor, a conversjition about the expulsion of the Moors,'^-* which happened after 1609, and much criticism on Avellaneda, wdiose work was published in 1614.'^*^ But this is not all. As if still further to accumulate contradictions and incongruities, the very details of the story he has invented are often in whimsical conflict Avith each other, as well as with the historical facts to which they allude. Thus, on one occasion, the ^scenes which he had represented as having occurred in the course of a single evening and the following morn- ing are said to have occupied two days ; " on another, he sets a company down to a late supper, and after conversations and stories that must have carried them nearly through the night, he says, " It began to draw towards evening."*"^ In different places he calls the same individual by different names, and — what is rather amusing — once reproaches Avellaneda with a mistake which was, after all, his own.*^ And finally, having discovered the mconseqnence of -saying seven times that Sancho was on his ass after Gines de Passa- monte had stolen it, he took painsTnT'tTie only edition of the First Part that he ever * revised, * 150 to correct two of his blunders, — heedlessly 39 Don Quixote, Parte TI. c. .54. ''^ Cervantes calls Sancho's Avife by *** The criticism on Avellaneda be- three or four different names (Parte 1. gins, as we have said, Parte II. c. 59. c. 7 and 52, and Parte II. c. 5 and 59) ; *i Parte I. c. 46. and Avellaneda liaAang, in some degree, *^ " Llegaba ya la noche," he says in imitated him, Cervantes makes himself c. 42 of Parte I., when all that had oc- very merry at the confusion ; not no- curred from the middle of c. 37 had ticing that the mistake was really his happened after they were set down to own. supper. , VOL. II. 12 178 MERITS OF THE DON QUIXOTE. [Pei:i.)I. 11. overlooking" llio rest; and wlien he pul)lishe(l the Second Part, Uuighed heartily at the whole, — the errors, the corrections, and all, — as tlnngs of little consequence to himself or anyljody else.'^ The romance, however, which he threw so carelessly from him, and wdiich, I am persuaded, he regarded rather as a bold effort to break up the a])surd taste of his time for the fancies of chivalry than as anything of more serious import, has been established l)y an unin- terrupted, and, it may be said, an unquestioned, suc- cess ever since, both as the oldest classical specimen of romantic fiction, and as one of the most remarkable monuments of modern genius. But though this may be enough to fill the measure of human fame and glory, it is not all to which Cervantes is entitled ; for, if we would do him the justice that would have been most welcome to his own spirit, and even if we would onrselves fully comprehend and enjoy the whole of his Don Quixote, w^e should, as w^e read it, bear in mind, that this delightful romance was not the result of a youthful exuberance of feeling and a hapj)y external condition, nor composed in his best years, wdien the spirits of its author Avere liglit and his hopes high; but that — with all its imquenchable and irresistible hu- mor, with its bright views of the world, and its cheer- ful trust in goodness and virtue — it w^as written in his old age, at the conclu§im] of .a life nearly every step of which had been marked wntli disappointed'^irxpecta- tions, disheartening struggles, and sore ctdamities ; ■•* Tlie facts roferrcd to are tliesc. tho edition of 1(308, Cervantes corrected Oines de Passamonte, in the 23d chap- two of tliesc careh^ss mistakes on leaves ter of Part First, (ed. 1605, f. 108,) 109 and 112; bnt left the five others steals Saiudio's ass. l^ut liardly three jnst as they stood before ; and in Chaj)- leavcs further on, in the same edition, ters 3 and 27 of the Second Part, (ed. we find Sancho riding again, as usual, 161.'j,) jests about the whole matter, on the poor beast, which i'eap]>eiirs yet but shows no disjjosition to attempt B^-i-x other times out of all reason. In further corrections. CllAl'. Xll. MKIHTS OF TIIK DOX QUIXOTE. 179 tlitit he began it in a ])ris()n, and tliat it was finished when he felt the hand ol" death [)ressiiig lieavy and cold npon his heart. If tliis ])e remembered as we read, we may feel, as we onglit to feel, Avhat admira- tion and reverence are dne, not only to the living power of Don * Quixote, but to the char- * lol acter and genius of Cervantes ; — if it be for- gotten or underrated, we shall fail in regard to both."*" *^ Having exjn'cssed so strong an opinion of (Jervantes's merits, 1 cannot refuse myself the pleasure of citing the words of the modest and wise Sir Wil- liam Temple, who, when speaking of works of satire, and rebuking Rabelais for his indecency and profaneness, says : "The matchless wiiter of Don Quixote is much more to be admired for having made up so excellent a composition of satire or ridicule without those ingredi- ents ; and seems to be the best and highest strain that ever has been or will be reach(!(l by that vein." Works, Lon- don, 1814, 8vo, Vol. 111. p. 43G. To this may ijot inappropriately be added the opinion of Dr. Johnson, who "con- fessed that the work of Cervantes was the greatest in the world after Homer's Hiad, .speaking of it, I mean," says Mrs. Piozzi, "as a book of entertainment." Boswell's Johnson, Ci'oker's edition, 1831, Vol. IV. pp. 377, 378. See Ap- peudix (E). *l.i2 * CHAPTER XTTT. l.OPi: DK VKCA. — ins KAI!I.V I, IKK. A SOLDIKK. HE WRITES THE ARCA- DIA. MAKUIE?'. HAS .V DIEI.. KI.IES TO VALE\riest ; but 1 fell blindly in love, God forgive it ; I am married now, and he that is so ill off fears nothing." Elsewhere he si)eaks of his obligations to Mani'ique more warmly ; for instance, in his Dedi- cation of "Pobreza no es Vil(!za," (Co- .meilias, 4to, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629,) where his language is veiy sti'ong. 184 l.OPE I)E VEGA AM) THE DUKE OF ALAW. [Pkkk.i) II. the tales he tells of luuiseH' in his "Dorothea." Avhieli Avas written in his vouth and })rinte(l with the sanc- tion ol' his old age, he suffered great extremity from that passion when lie was only seventeen. Some of the stones of that remarkahle dramatic romance, in Avhicli he fignres under the name of Fernando, are, i^ may he hoped, fictitious;'' though it must he ad- mitted that others, like the scene l)etween the hero and Dorothea, in the first act, the account of his Aveeping hehind the door with Marfisa, on the da\' >;he Avas to he married to another, and most of the narrative parts in the fourth act, liaAc an air of reality ahout them that hardly permits us to douht they Avere true.^" Taken together. hoAvever, they do him little credit as a young man of honor and a caA'- alier. * 1-jG * From Alcala, Lope came to Madrid, and attached himself to the Duke of Alva ; not, as it has heen generally supposed, the remorseless favorite of Philip the Second, but Antonio, the great Duke's o-randson, Avho had succeeded to his ancestor's fortunes Avituout inheriting his Ibrmidahle spirit.^^ ^ See DorotfM, Acto I. sc. fi, in which, giving to oiif poison tho lotter intended having loolly niiidc iiji his mind to aban- for another, are (juite too iniiirobahle, . 2) undertakes to show that it could <{ue no lo .seria hablando las pei-sonas be no other ; while Nicolas Antonio •en verso." (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 74) speaks as 1° Act I. .sc. 5, and Act IV. .sc. 1, if he were doubtful, thongh he inclines liave a gieat air of reality about them. to think it was the elder. But there But otiier parts, like tliat of the dis- is no doubt about it. Lope repeatedly courses and tl()^ble^ ili;it i-.um- frDUi speaks ol' Antonio, i(/(t' r/i of hi.-: in the Cancionc^ro C!en- iifth books of the "Arcadia," giving in eral of 1573, f. 178. 186 TIIK ARCADIA. [Piikiud II. Jaiieous poems, tells us expressly, "' The Arcudiu is a true history." ^"^ l>ur whether it be throughout a true history or not, it is a very unsatisfactory one. It is commonly re- garded as an imitation of its popular namesake, the -Arcadia'' of Sanua/aro, of ^vhieh a Spanish translation had api)eared in l-)47 ; hut it much more resend)les the similar works of Montemayor and Cervantes, lioth in story and style. Metaphysics and magic, as in the "Diana" and - Galatea," are strangely mixed up with the shows of a pastoral life ; and, as in them, we listen with little interest to the perplexities and sorrows of a lo\ er who, from mistaking the feelings of his mistress, treats her in such a way that she marries another, and then, by a series of enchantments, is saved from the effects of his own despair, and his heart is washed so clean, that, like Orlando's, there is not one spot of love left in it. All this, of course, is unnatural ; for the personages it represents are such as can never have existed, and they talk in a language strained above the tone becoming prose ; all propriety of costume and manners is neglected ; so much learning is crowded into it, that a dictionary is placed at the end to make it intelligible ; and it is drawn out to a length wdiich now seems quite absurd, though the edition;? it soon passed through show that it was not too long for the 1- Tlif truth of tlip stones, or some also, Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX. of tin- stories, in tlie Arcadia, may l>e \\. xxii, and Tom. II. p. 4r)6. That it inferred from the mysterious iiitima- was believed to be true in France is ap- tions of Lojie in the Pr<)]of(o to the fiist ])arent from the Preface to old Lance- edition ; in th(^ " Egloga a riaudio"; lot's translation, under the title of and in tiie Preface to the " Iiimas," " Delices de la Vie Pastorale" (1624). (I