History of Spanish Literature (vol. 1 of 3)

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In the year eighteen hundred and eighteen I travelled through a large part of Spain, and spent several months in Madrid. My object was to increase a very imperfect knowledge of the language and literature of the country, and to purchase Spanish books, always so rare in the great book-marts of the rest of Europe. In some respects, the time of my visit was favorable to the purposes for which I made it; in others, it was not. Such books as I wanted were then, it is true, less valued in Spain than they are now, but it was chiefly because the country was in a depressed and unnatural state; and, if its men of letters were more than commonly at leisure to gratify the curiosity of a stranger, their number had been materially diminished by political persecution, and intercourse with them was difficult because they had so little connection with each other, and were so much shut out from the world around them.

It was, in fact, one of the darkest periods of the reign of Ferdinand the Seventh, when the desponding seemed to think that the eclipse was not only total,[p. vi] but “beyond all hope of day.” The absolute power of the monarch had been as yet nowhere publicly questioned; and his government, which had revived the Inquisition and was not wanting in its spirit, had, from the first, silenced the press, and, wherever its influence extended, now threatened the extinction of all generous culture. Hardly four years had elapsed since the old order of things had been restored at Madrid, and already most of the leading men of letters, whose home was naturally in the capital, were in prison or in exile. Melendez Valdes, the first Spanish poet of the age, had just died in misery on the unfriendly soil of France. Quintana, in many respects the heir to his honors, was confined in the fortress of Pamplona. Martinez de la Rosa, who has since been one of the leaders of the nation as well as of its literature, was shut up in Peñon on the coast of Barbary. Moratin was languishing in Paris, while his comedies were applauded to the very echo by his enemies at home. The Duke de Rivas, who, like the old nobles of the proudest days of the monarchy, has distinguished himself alike in arms, in letters, and in the civil government and foreign diplomacy of his country, was living retired on the estates of his great house in Andalusia. Others of less mark and note shared a fate as rigorous; and, if Clemencin, Navarrete, and Marina were permitted still to linger in the capital from which their friends had been driven, their footsteps were watched and their lives were unquiet.

[p. vii]Among the men of letters whom I earliest knew in Madrid was Don José Antonio Conde, a retired, gentle, modest scholar, rarely occupied with events of a later date than the times of the Spanish Arabs, whose history he afterwards illustrated. But, far as his character and studies removed him from political turbulence, he had already tasted the bitterness of a political exile; and now, in the honorable poverty to which he had been reduced, he not unwillingly consented to pass several hours of each day with me, and direct my studies in the literature of his country. In this I was very fortunate. We read together the early Castilian poetry, of which he knew more than he did of the most recent, and to which his thoughts and tastes were much nearer akin. He assisted me, too, in collecting the books I needed;—never an easy task where bookselling, in the sense elsewhere given to the word, was unknown, and where the Inquisition and the confessional had often made what was most desirable most rare. But Don José knew the lurking-places where such books and their owners were to be sought; and to him I am indebted for the foundation of a collection in Spanish literature, which, without help like his, I should have failed to make. I owe him, therefore, much; and, though the grave has long since closed over my friend and his persecutors, it is still a pleasure to me to acknowledge obligations which I have never ceased to feel.

Many circumstances, since the period of my visit to[p. viii] Spain, have favored my successive attempts to increase the Spanish library I then began. The residence in Madrid of my friend, the late Mr. Alexander Hill Everett, who ably represented his country for several years at the court of Spain; and the subsequent residence there, in the same high position, of my friend, Mr. Washington Irving, equally honored on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially cherished by Spaniards for the enduring monument he has erected to the history of their early adventures, and for the charming fictions, whose scene he has laid in their romantic country;—these fortunate circumstances naturally opened to me whatever facilities for collecting books could be afforded by the kindness of persons in places so distinguished, or by their desire to spread among their countrymen at home a literature they knew so well and loved so much.

But to two other persons, not unconnected with these statesmen and men of letters, it is no less my duty and my pleasure to make known my obligations. The first of them is Mr. O. Rich, formerly a Consul of the United States in Spain; the same bibliographer to whom Mr. Irving and Mr. Prescott have avowed similar obligations, and to whose personal regard I owe hardly less than I do to his extraordinary knowledge of rare and curious books, and his extraordinary success in collecting them. The other is Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University of Madrid,—certainly in his peculiar department among[p. ix] the most eminent scholars now living, and one to whose familiarity with whatever regards the literature of his own country, the frequent references in my notes bear a testimony not to be mistaken. With the former of these gentlemen I have been in constant communication for many years, and have received from him valuable contributions of books and manuscripts collected in Spain, England, and France for my library. With the latter, to whom I am not less largely indebted, I first became personally acquainted when I passed in Europe the period between 1835 and 1838, seeking to know scholars such as he is, and consulting, not only the principal public libraries of the Continent, but such rich private collections as those of Lord Holland in England, of M. Ternaux-Compans in France, and of the venerated and much-loved Tieck in Germany; all of which were made accessible to me by the frank kindness of their owners.

The natural result of such a long-continued interest in Spanish literature, and of so many pleasant inducements to study it, has been—I speak in a spirit of extenuation and self-defence—a book. In the interval between my two residences in Europe I delivered lectures upon its principal topics to successive classes in Harvard College; and, on my return home from the second, I endeavoured to arrange these lectures for publication. But when I had already employed much labor and time on them, I found—or thought I found—that the tone of discussion which I had adopted for[p. x] my academical audiences was not suited to the purposes of a regular history. Destroying, therefore, what I had written, I began afresh my never unwelcome task, and so have prepared the present work, as little connected with all I had previously done as it, perhaps, can be, and yet cover so much of the same ground.

In correcting my manuscript for the press I have enjoyed the counsels of two of my more intimate friends; of Mr. Francis C. Gray, a scholar who should permit the world to profit more than it does by the large resources of his accurate and tasteful learning, and of Mr. William H. Prescott, the historian of both hemispheres, whose name will not be forgotten in either, but whose honors will always be dearest to those who have best known the discouragements under which they have been won, and the modesty and gentleness with which they are worn. To these faithful friends, whose unchanging regard has entered into the happiness of all the active years of my life, I make my affectionate acknowledgments, as I now part from a work in which they have always taken an interest, and which, wherever it goes, will carry on its pages the silent proofs of their kindness and taste.

Park Street, Boston, 1849.

I cannot dismiss the last sheet of this History, without offering my sincere thanks to the conductors of the University Press at Cambridge, and to Mr. George[p. xi] Nichols, its scholarlike corrector, for the practised skill and conscientious fidelity with which, after it was in type, my work has been revised and prepared for publication.

FIRST PERIOD.

The Literature that existed in Spain between the First Appearance of the Present Written Language and the Early Part of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, or from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Beginning of the Sixteenth.

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.

In the earliest ages of every literature that has vindicated for itself a permanent character in modern Europe, much of what constituted its foundations was the result of local situation and of circumstances seemingly accidental. Sometimes, as in Provence, where the climate was mild and the soil luxuriant, a premature refinement started forth, which was suddenly blighted by the influences of the surrounding barbarism. Sometimes, as in Lombardy and in a few portions of France, the institutions of antiquity were so long preserved by the old municipalities, that, in occasional intervals of peace, it seemed as if the ancient forms of civilization might be revived and prevail;—hopes kindled only to be extinguished by the violence amidst which the first modern communities, with the policy they needed, were brought forth and[p. 4] established. And sometimes both these causes were combined with others, and gave promise of a poetry full of freshness and originality, which, however, as it advanced, was met by a spirit more vigorous than its own, beneath whose predominance its language was forbidden to rise above the condition of a local dialect, or became merged in that of its more fortunate rival;—a result which we early recognize alike in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, where the authority of the great Tuscan masters was, from the first, as loyally acknowledged as it was in Florence or Pisa.

Like much of the rest of Europe, the southwestern portion, now comprising the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, was affected by nearly all these different influences. Favored by a happy climate and soil, by the remains of Roman culture, which had lingered long in its mountains, and by the earnest and passionate spirit which has marked its people through their many revolutions down to the present day, the first signs of a revived poetical feeling are perceptible in the Spanish peninsula even before they are to be found, with their distinctive characteristics, in that of Italy. But this earliest literature of modern Spain, a part of which is Provençal and the rest absolutely Castilian or Spanish, appeared in troubled times, when it was all but impossible that it should be advanced freely or rapidly in the forms it was destined at last to wear. For the masses of the Christian Spaniards filling the separate states, into which their country was most unhappily divided, were then involved in that tremendous warfare with their Arab invaders, which, for twenty generations, so consumed their strength, that, long before the cross was planted on the towers of the Alhambra, and peace had given opportunity[p. 5] for the ornaments of life, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had appeared in the comparative quiet of Lombardy and Tuscany, and Italy had again taken her accustomed place at the head of the elegant literature of the world.

Under such circumstances, a large portion of the Spaniards, who had been so long engaged in this solemn contest, as the forlorn hope of Christendom, against the intrusion of Mohammedanism[1] and its imperfect civilization into Europe, and who, amidst all their sufferings, had constantly looked to Rome, as to the capital seat of their faith, for consolation and encouragement, did not hesitate again to acknowledge the Italian supremacy in letters,—a supremacy to which, in the days of the Empire, their allegiance had been complete. A school formed on Italian models naturally followed; and though the rich and original genius of Spanish poetry received less from its influence ultimately than might have been anticipated, still, from the time of its first appearance, its effects are too important and distinct to be overlooked.

Of the period, therefore, in which the history of Spanish literature opens upon us, we must make two divisions. The first will contain the genuinely national poetry and prose produced from the earliest times down to the reign of Charles the Fifth; while the second will contain that portion which, by imitating the refinement of Provence or of Italy, was, during the same interval, more or less separated from the popular spirit and genius. Both, when taken together, will fill up the period in which the main elements and characteristics of Spanish literature were[p. 6] developed, such as they have existed down to our own age.

In the first division of the first period, we are to consider the origin and character of that literature which sprang, as it were, from the very soil of Spain, and was almost entirely untouched by foreign influences.

And here, at the outset, we are struck with a remarkable circumstance, which announces something at least of the genius of the coming literature,—the circumstance of its appearance in times of great confusion and violence. For, in other portions of Europe, during those disastrous troubles that accompanied the overthrow of the Roman power and civilization, and the establishment of new forms of social order, if the inspirations of poetry came at all, they came in some fortunate period of comparative quietness and security, when the minds of men were less engrossed than they were wont to be by the necessity of providing for their personal safety and for their most pressing physical wants. But in Spain it was not so. There, the first utterance of that popular feeling which became the foundation of the national literature was heard in the midst of the extraordinary contest which the Christian Spaniards, for above seven centuries, urged against their Moorish invaders; so that the earliest Spanish poetry seems but a breathing of the energy and heroism which, at the time it appeared, animated the great mass of the Spanish Christians throughout the Peninsula.

Indeed, if we look at the condition of Spain, in the centuries that preceded and followed the formation of its present language and poetry, we shall find the mere[p. 7] historical dates full of instruction. In 711, Roderic rashly hazarded the fate of his Gothic and Christian empire on the result of a single battle against the Arabs, then just forcing their way into the western part of Europe from Africa. He failed; and the wild enthusiasm which marked the earliest age of the Mohammedan power achieved almost immediately the conquest of the whole of the country that was worth the price of a victory. The Christians, however, though overwhelmed, did not entirely yield. On the contrary, many of them retreated before the fiery pursuit of their enemies, and established themselves in the extreme northwestern portion of their native land, amidst the mountains and fastnesses of Biscay and Asturias. There, indeed, the purity of the Latin tongue, which they had spoken for so many ages, was finally lost, through that neglect of its cultivation which was a necessary consequence of the miseries that oppressed them. But still, with the spirit which so long sustained their forefathers against the power of Rome, and which has carried their descendants through a hardly less fierce contest against the power of France, they maintained, to a remarkable degree, their ancient manners and feelings, their religion, their laws, and their institutions; and, separating themselves by an implacable hatred from their Moorish invaders, they there, in those rude mountains, laid deep the foundations of a national character,—of that character which has subsisted to our own times.[2]

[p. 8]

As, however, they gradually grew inured to adversity, and understood the few hard advantages which their situation afforded them, they began to make incursions into the territories of their conquerors, and to seize for themselves some part of the fair possessions, once entirely their own. But every inch of ground was defended by the same fervid valor by which it had originally been won. The Christians, indeed, though occasionally defeated, generally gained something by each of their more considerable struggles; but what they gained could be preserved only by an exertion of bravery and military power hardly less painful than that by which it had been acquired. In 801, we find them already possessing a considerable part of Old Castile; but the very name now given to that country, from the multitude of castles with which it was studded, shows plainly the tenure by which the Christians from the mountains were compelled to hold these early fruits of their courage and constancy.[3] A century later, or in 914, they had pushed the outposts of their conquests to the chain of the Guadarrama, separating New from Old Castile, and they may, therefore, at this date, be regarded as having again obtained a firm foothold in their own country, whose capital they established at Leon.

From this period, the Christians seem to have felt assured of final success. In 1085, Toledo, the venerated head of the old monarchy, was wrested from the Moors, who had then possessed it three hundred and sixty-three years; and in 1118, Saragossa was recovered: so that, from the beginning of the twelfth[p. 9] century, the whole Peninsula, down to the Sierra of Toledo, was again occupied by its former masters; and the Moors were pushed back into the southern and western provinces, by which they had originally entered. Their power, however, though thus reduced within limits comprising scarcely more than one third of its extent when it was greatest, seems still to have been rather consolidated than broken; and after three centuries of success, more than three other centuries of conflict were necessary before the fall of Granada finally emancipated the entire country from the loathed dominion of its misbelieving conquerors.

But it was in the midst of this desolating contest, and at a period, too, when the Christians were hardly less distracted by divisions among themselves than worn out and exasperated by the common warfare against the common enemy, that the elements of the Spanish language and poetry, as they have substantially existed ever since, were first developed. For it is precisely between the capture of Saragossa, which insured to the Christians the possession of all the eastern part of Spain, and their great victory on the plains of Tolosa, which so broke the power of the Moors, that they never afterwards recovered the full measure of their former strength,[4]—it is precisely in this century of confusion and violence, when the Chris[p. 10]tian population of the country may be said, with the old chronicle, to have been kept constantly in battle array, that we hear the first notes of their wild, national poetry, which come to us mingled with their war-shouts, and breathing the very spirit of their victories.[5]

The oldest document in the Spanish language with an ascertained date is a confirmation by Alfonso the Seventh, in the year 1155, of a charter of regulations and privileges granted to the city of Avilés in Asturias.[6] It is important, not only because it exhibits the new dialect just emerging from the corrupted Latin, little or not at all affected by the Arabic infused into it in the southern provinces, but because it is believed to be among the very oldest documents ever written in Spanish, since there is no good reason to suppose that language to have existed in a written form even half a century earlier.

How far we can go back towards the first appearance of poetry in this Spanish, or, as it was oftener called, Castilian, dialect is not so precisely ascertained; but we know that we can trace Castilian verse to a period surprisingly near the date of the document of Avilés. It is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of[p. 12] popular poetry, by which we mark indistinctly the beginning of almost every other literature, are abundant in the Spanish, we are not obliged to resort to them, at the outset of our inquiries, since other obvious and decisive monuments present themselves at once.

The first of these monuments in age, and the first in importance, is the poem commonly called, with primitive simplicity and directness, “The Poem of the Cid.” It consists of above three thousand lines, and can hardly have been composed later than the year 1200. Its subject, as its name implies, is taken from among the adventures of the Cid, the great popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain; and the whole tone of its manners and feelings is in sympathy with the contest between the Moors and the Christians, in which the Cid bore so great a part, and which was still going on with undiminished violence at the period when the poem was written. It has, therefore, a national bearing and a national character throughout.[7]

[p. 13]

The Cid himself, who is to be found constantly commemorated in Spanish poetry, was born in the northwestern part of Spain, about the year 1040, and died in 1099, at Valencia, which he had rescued from the Moors.[8] His original name was Ruy Diaz,[p. 14] or Rodrigo Diaz; and he was by birth one of the considerable barons of his country. The title of Cid, by which he is almost always known, is believed to have come to him from the remarkable circumstance, that five Moorish kings or chiefs acknowledged him in one battle as their Seid, or their lord and conqueror;[9] and the title of Campeador, or Champion, by which he is hardly less known, though it is commonly supposed to have been given to him as a leader of the armies of Sancho the Second, has long since been used almost exclusively as a popular expression of the admiration of his countrymen for his exploits against the Moors.[10] At any rate, from a very early period, he has been called El Cid Campeador, or The Lord Champion. And he well deserved the honorable title; for he passed almost the whole of his life in the field against the oppressors of his country, suffering, so far as we know, scarcely a single defeat from the common enemy, though, on more than one occasion, he was exiled and sacrificed by the Christian princes to whose interests he had attached himself.

But, whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a deep shadow,[11] he comes to us in modern times as the great defender of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen, that, centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry and tradition[p. 15] have delighted to attach to his name a long series of fabulous achievements, which connect him with the mythological fictions of the Middle Ages, and remind us almost as often of Amadis and Arthur as they do of the sober heroes of genuine history.[12]

The Poem of the Cid partakes of both these characters. It has sometimes been regarded as wholly, or almost wholly, historical.[13] But there is too free and romantic a spirit in it for history. It contains, indeed, few of the bolder fictions found in the subsequent chronicles and in the popular ballads. Still, it is essentially a poem; and in the spirited scenes at the siege of Alcocer and at the Cortes, as well as in those relating to the Counts of Carrion, it is plain that the author felt his license as a poet. In fact, the very marriage of the daughters of the Cid has been shown to be all but impossible; and thus any real historical foundation seems to be taken away from the chief event which the poem records.[14] This, however, does not at[p. 16] all touch the proper value of the work, which is simple, heroic, and national. Unfortunately, the only ancient manuscript of it known to exist is imperfect, and nowhere informs us who was its author. But what has been lost is not much. It is only a few leaves in the beginning, one leaf in the middle, and some scattered lines in other parts. The conclusion is perfect. Of course, there can be no doubt about the subject or purpose of the whole. It is the development of the character and glory of the Cid, as shown in his achievements in the kingdoms of Saragossa and Valencia, in his triumph over his unworthy sons-in-law, the Counts of Carrion, and their disgrace before the king and Cortes, and, finally, in the second marriage of his two daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon; the whole ending with a slight allusion to the hero’s death, and a notice of the date of the manuscript.[15]

But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so remote from our own experience, that, where[p. 17] they are attempted in formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology. We read it because it is a contemporary and spirited exhibition of the chivalrous times of Spain, given occasionally with an Homeric simplicity altogether admirable. For the story it tells is not only that of the most romantic achievements, attributed to the most romantic hero of Spanish tradition, but it is mingled continually with domestic and personal details, that bring the character of the Cid and his age near to our own sympathies and interests.[16] The very language in which it is told is the language he himself spoke, still only half developed; disencumbering itself with difficulty from the characteristics of the Latin; its new constructions by no means established; imperfect in its forms, and ill furnished with the connecting particles in which resides so much of the power and grace of all languages; but still breathing the bold, sincere, and original spirit of its times, and showing plainly that it is struggling with success for a place among the other wild elements of the national genius. And, finally, the metre and rhyme into which the whole poem is cast are rude and unsettled: the verse claiming to be of fourteen syllables, divided by an abrupt cæsural pause after the eighth, yet often running out to sixteen or twenty, and sometimes[p. 18] falling back to twelve;[17] but always bearing the impress of a free and fearless spirit, which harmonizes alike with the poet’s language, subject, and age, and so gives to the story a stir and interest, which, though we are separated from it by so many centuries, bring some of its scenes before us like those of a drama.

The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and stood looking at them. He saw his doors open and his household chests unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks, and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee, Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have done this thing unto me.’”

He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his time, to win lands and fortunes from the common enemy, and providing for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him in their turn, so that he can save himself[p. 19] only by a bold sally, in which he overthrows their whole array. The rescue of his standard, endangered in the onslaught by the rashness of Bermuez, who bore it, is described in the very spirit of knighthood.[18]

[p. 20]The poem afterwards relates the Cid’s contest with the Count of Barcelona; the taking of Valencia; the reconcilement of the Cid to the king, who had treated him so ill; and the marriage of the Cid’s two daughters, at the king’s request, to the two Counts of Carrion, who were among the first nobles of the kingdom. At this point, however, there is a somewhat formal division of the poem,[20] and the remainder is devoted to what is its principal subject, the dissolution of this marriage in consequence of the baseness and brutality of the Counts; the Cid’s public triumph over them; their no less public disgrace; and the announcement of the second marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon, which, of course, raised the Cid himself to the highest pitch of his honors, by connecting him with the royal houses of Spain. With this, therefore, the poem virtually ends.

The most spirited part of it consists of the scenes at the Cortes, summoned, on demand of the Cid, in consequence of the misconduct of the Counts of Carrion. In one of them, three followers of the Cid challenge three followers of the Counts, and the challenge of Munio Gustioz to Assur Gonzalez is thus characteristically given:—

The opening of the lists for the six combatants, in the presence of the king, is another passage of much spirit and effect.

[p. 22]These are among the most picturesque passages in the poem. But it is throughout striking and original. It is, too, no less national, Christian, and loyal. It breathes everywhere the true Castilian spirit, such as the old chronicles represent it amidst the achievements and disasters of the Moorish wars; and has very few traces of an Arabic influence in its language, and none at all in its imagery or fancies. The whole of it, therefore, deserves to be read, and to be read in the original; for it is there only that we can obtain the fresh impressions it is fitted to give us of the rude but heroic period it represents: of the simplicity of the governments, and the loyalty and true-heartedness of the people; of the wide force of a primitive religious enthusiasm; of the picturesque state of manners and daily life in an age of trouble and confusion; and of the bold outlines of the national genius, which are often struck out where we should least think to find them. It is, indeed, a work which, as we read it, stirs us with the spirit of the times it describes; and as we lay it down and recollect the intellectual condition of Europe when it was written, and for a long period before, it seems certain, that, during the thousand years which elapsed from the time of the decay of Greek and Roman culture, down to the appearance of the “Divina Commedia,[p. 23]” no poetry was produced so original in its tone, or so full of natural feeling, picturesqueness, and energy.[23]

[p. 24]

Three other poems, anonymous like that of the Cid, have been placed immediately after it, because they are found together in a single manuscript assigned to the thirteenth century, and because the language and style of at least the first of them seem to justify the conjecture that carries it so far back.[24]

The poem with which this manuscript opens is called “The Book of Apollonius,” and is the reproduction of a story whose origin is obscure, but which is itself familiar to us in the eighth book of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and in the play of “Pericles,” that has sometimes been attributed to Shakspeare. It is found in Greek rhyme very early, but is here taken, almost without alteration of incident, from that great repository of popular fiction in the Middle Ages, the “Gesta Romanorum.” It consists of about twenty-six hundred lines,[p. 25] divided into stanzas of four verses, all terminating with the same rhyme. At the beginning, the author says, in his own person,—

The new mastery or method—nueva maestría—here claimed may be the structure of the stanza and its rhyme; for, in other respects, the versification is like that of the Poem of the Cid; showing, however, more skill and exactness in the mere measure, and a slight improvement in the language. But the merit of the poem is small. It contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it was produced,—among the rest, some sketches of a female jongleur, of the class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Alfonso the Wise,—that are curious and interesting. Its chief attraction, however, is its story, and this, unhappily, is not original.[25]

The next poem in the collection is called “The Life of our Lady, Saint Mary of Egypt,”—a saint formerly much more famous than she is now, and one whose history is so coarse and indecent, that it has often been rejected by the wiser members of the church that canonized her. Such as it appears in the old traditions, however, with all its sins upon its head, it is here set[p. 26] forth. But we notice at once a considerable difference between the composition of its verse and that of any Castilian poetry assigned to the same or an earlier period. It is written in short lines, generally of eight syllables, and in couplets; but sometimes a single line carelessly runs out to the number of ten or eleven syllables; and, in a few instances, three or even four lines are included in one rhyme. It has a light air, quite unlike the stateliness of the Poem of the Cid, and seems, from its verse and tone, as well as from a few French words scattered through it, to have been borrowed from some of the earlier French Fabliaux, or, at any rate, to have been written in imitation of their easy and garrulous style. It opens thus, showing that it was intended for recitation:—

It consists of fourteen hundred such meagre, monkish verses, and is hardly of importance, except as a monument of the language at the period when it was written.[26]

The last of the three poems is in the same irregular measure and manner. It is called “The Adoration of the Three Holy Kings,” and begins with the old tradition about the wise men that came from the East; but its chief subject is an arrest of the Holy Family, during[p. 27] their flight to Egypt, by robbers, the child of one of whom is cured of a hideous leprosy by being bathed in water previously used for bathing the Saviour; this same child afterwards turning out to be the penitent thief of the crucifixion. It is a rhymed legend of only two hundred and fifty lines, and belongs to the large class of such compositions that were long popular in Western Europe.[27]

Thus far, the poetry of the first century of Spanish literature, like the earliest poetry of other modern countries, is anonymous; for authorship was a distinction rarely coveted or thought of by those who wrote in any of the dialects then forming throughout Europe, among the common people. It is even impossible to tell from what part of the Christian conquests in Spain the poems of which we have spoken have come to us. We may infer, indeed, from their language and tone, that the Poem of the Cid belongs to the border country of the Moorish war in the direction of Catalonia and Valencia, and that the earliest ballads, of which we shall speak hereafter, came originally from the midst of the contest, with whose very spirit they are often imbued. In the same way, too, we may be persuaded that the poems of a more religious temper were produced in the quieter kingdoms of the North, where monasteries had been founded and Christianity had already struck its roots deeply into the soil of the national character. Still, we have no evidence to show where any one of the poems we have thus far noticed was written.

[p. 28]But as we advance, this state of things is changed. The next poetry we meet is by a known author, and, comes from a known locality. It was written by Gonzalo, a secular priest who belonged to the monastery of San Millan or Saint Emilianus, in the territory of Calahorra, far within the borders of the Moorish war, and who is commonly called Berceo, from the place of his birth. Of the poet himself we know little, except that he flourished from 1220 to 1246, and that, as he once speaks of suffering from the weariness of old age,[28] he probably died after 1260, in the reign of Alfonso the Wise.[29]

His works amount to above thirteen thousand lines, and fill an octavo volume.[30] They are all on religious subjects, and consist of rhymed Lives of San Domingo de Silos, Santa Oria, and San Millan; poems on the Mass, the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, the Merits of the Madonna, the Signs that are to precede the Last Judgment, and the Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross, with a few Hymns, and especially a poem of more than three thousand six hundred lines on the Miracles of the Virgin Mary. With one inconsiderable exception, the whole of this formidable mass of verse is divided into stanzas of four lines each, like those in the poem of Apollonius of Tyre; and though in the language there is a perceptible advance since the days when the Poem of the Cid was written, still the power and movement[p. 29] of that remarkable legend are entirely wanting in the verses of the careful ecclesiastic.[31]

[p. 30]“The Life of San Domingo de Silos,” with which his volume opens, begins, like a homily, with these words: “In the name of the Father, who made all things, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the glorious Virgin, and of the Holy Spirit, who is equal with them, I intend to tell a story of a holy confessor. I intend to tell a story in the plain Romance, in which the common man is wont to talk to his neighbour; for I am not so learned as to use the other Latin. It will be well worth, as I think, a cup of good wine.”[32] Of course, there is no poetry in thoughts like these; and much of what Berceo has left us does not rise higher.

Occasionally, however, we find better things. In some portions of his work, there is a simple-hearted piety that is very attractive, and in some, a story-telling spirit that is occasionally picturesque. The best passages are to be found in his long poem on the “Miracles of the Virgin,” which consists of a series of twenty-five tales of her intervention in human affairs, composed evidently for the purpose of increasing the spirit of devotion in the worship particularly paid to her. The opening or induction to these tales contains, perhaps, the most poetical passage in Berceo’s works; and in the following version the measure and system of rhyme in the original have been preserved, so as to give something of its air and manner:—

[p. 31]

This induction, which is continued through forty stanzas more, of unequal merit, is little connected with the stories that follow; the stories, again, are not at all connected among themselves; and the whole ends abruptly with a few lines of homage to the Madonna. It is, therefore, inartificial in its structure throughout. But in the narrative parts there is often naturalness and spirit, and sometimes, though rarely, poetry. The tales themselves belong to the religious fictions of the Middle Ages, and were no doubt intended to excite de[p. 32]vout feelings in those to whom they were addressed; but, like the old Mysteries, and much else that passed under the name of religion at the same period, they often betray a very doubtful morality.[34]

“The Miracles of the Virgin” is not only the longest, but the most curious, of the poems of Berceo. The rest, however, should not be entirely neglected. The poem on the “Signs which shall precede the Judgment” is often solemn, and once or twice rises to poetry; the story of María de Cisneros, in the “Life of San Domingo,” is well told, and so is that of the wild appearance in the heavens of Saint James and Saint Millan fighting for the Christians at the battle of Simancas, much as it is found in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” But perhaps nothing is more characteristic of the author or of his age than the spirit of childlike simplicity and religious tenderness that breathes through several parts of the “Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross,”—a spirit of gentle, faithful, credulous devotion, with which the Spanish people in their wars against the Moors were as naturally marked as they were with the ignorance that belonged to the Christian world generally in those dark and troubled times.[35]

I cannot pass farther without offering the tribute of my homage to two persons who have done more than any others in the nineteenth century to make Spanish literature known, and to obtain for it the honors to which it is entitled beyond the limits of the country that gave it birth.

The first of them, and one whose name I have already cited, is Friedrich Bouterwek, who was born at Oker in the kingdom of Hanover, in 1766, and passed nearly all the more active portion of his life at Göttingen, where he died in 1828, widely respected as one of the most distinguished professors of that long favored University. A project for preparing by the most competent hands a full history of the arts and sciences from the period of their revival in modern Europe was first suggested at Göttingen by another of its well-known professors, John Gottfried Eichhorn, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. But though that remarkable scholar published, in 1796-9, two volumes of a learned Introduction to the whole work which he had projected, he went no farther, and most of his coadjutors stopped when he did, or soon afterwards. The portion of it assigned to Bouterwek, however, which was the entire history of elegant literature in modern times, was happily achieved by him between 1801 and 1819, in twelve volumes octavo. Of this division, “The History of Spanish Literature” fills the third volume, and was published in 1804;—a work remarkable for its general philosophical views, and by far the best extant on the subject it discusses; but imperfect in many particulars, because its author was unable to procure a large number of Spanish books needful for his task, and knew many considerable Spanish authors only by insufficient extracts. In 1812, a translation of it into French was printed, in two volumes, by Madame Streck, with a judicious preface by the venerable M. Stapfer;—in 1823, it came out, together with its author’s brief “History of Portuguese Literature,” in an English translation, made with taste and skill, by Miss Thomasina Ross;—and in 1829, a Spanish version of the first and smallest part of it, with important notes, sufficient with the text to fill a volume in octavo, was prepared by two excellent Spanish scholars, José Gomez de la Cortina, and Nicolás Hugalde y Mollinedo,—a work which all lovers of Spanish literature would gladly see completed.

Since the time of Bouterwek, no foreigner has done so much to promote a knowledge of Spanish literature as M. Simonde de Sismondi, who was born at Geneva in 1773, and died there in 1842, honored and loved by all who knew his wise and generous spirit, as it exhibited itself either in his personal intercourse, or in his great works on the history of France and Italy,—two countries, to which, by a line of time-honored ancestors, he seemed almost equally to belong. In 1811, he delivered in his native city a course of brilliant lectures on the literature of the South of Europe, and in 1813, published them at Paris. They involved an account of the Provençal and the Portuguese, as well as of the Italian and the Spanish;—but in whatever relates to the Spanish Sismondi was even less well provided with the original authors than Bouterwek had been, and was, in consequence, under obligations to his predecessor, which, while he takes no pains to conceal them, diminish the authority of a work that will yet always be read for the beauty of its style and the richness and wisdom of its reflections. The entire series of these lectures was translated into German by L. Hain in 1815, and into English with notes by T. Roscoe in 1823. The part relating to Spanish literature was published in Spanish, with occasional alterations and copious and important additions by José Lorenzo Figueroa and José Amador de los Rios, at Seville, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1841-2,—the notes relating to Andalusian authors being particularly valuable.

None but those who have gone over the whole ground occupied by Spanish literature can know how great are the merits of scholars like Bouterwek and Sismondi,—acute, philosophical, and thoughtful,—who, with an apparatus of authors so incomplete, have yet done so much for the illustration of their subject.

The second known author in Castilian literature bears a name much more distinguished than the first. It is Alfonso the Tenth, who, from his great advancement in various branches of human knowledge, has been called Alfonso the Wise, or the Learned. He was the son of Ferdinand the Third, a saint in the Roman calendar, who, uniting anew the crowns of Castile and Leon, and enlarging the limits of his power by important conquests from the Moors, settled more firmly than they had before been settled the foundations of a Christian empire in the Peninsula.[36]

Alfonso was born in 1221, and ascended the throne in 1252. He was a poet, much connected with the Provençal Troubadours of his time,[37] and was besides so greatly skilled in geometry, astronomy, and the occult sciences then so much valued, that his reputation was[p. 36] early spread throughout Europe, on account of his general science. But, as Mariana quaintly says of him, “He was more fit for letters than for the government of his subjects; he studied the heavens, and watched the stars, but forgot the earth, and lost his kingdom.”[38]

His character is still an interesting one. He appears to have had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any other man of his time; to have reasoned more wisely in matters of legislation; and to have made further advances in some of the exact sciences;—accomplishments that he seems to have resorted to in the latter part of his life for consolation amidst unsuccessful wars with foreign enemies and a rebellious son. The following letter from him to one of the Guzmans, who was then in great favor at the court of the king of Fez, shows at once how low the fortunes of the Christian monarch were sunk before he died, and with how much simplicity he could speak of their bitterness. It is dated in 1282, and is a favorable specimen of Castilian prose at a period so early in the history of the language.[39]

“Cousin Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman: My affliction is great, because it has fallen from such a height that it will be seen afar; and as it has fallen on me, who was the friend of all the world, so in all the world will men know this my misfortune, and its[p. 37] sharpness, which I suffer unjustly from my son, assisted by my friends and by my prelates, who, instead of setting peace between us, have put mischief, not under secret pretences or covertly, but with bold openness. And thus I find no protection in mine own land, neither defender nor champion; and yet have I not deserved it at their hands, unless it were for the good I have done them. And now, since in mine own land they deceive, who should have served and assisted me, needful is it that I should seek abroad those who will kindly care for me; and since they of Castile have been false to me, none can think it ill that I ask help among those of Benamarin.[40] For if my sons are mine enemies, it will not then be wrong that I take mine enemies to be my sons; enemies according to the law, but not of free choice. And such is the good king Aben Jusaf; for I love and value him much, and he will not despise me or fail me; for we are at truce. I know also how much you are his, and how much he loves you, and with good cause, and how much he will do through your good counsel. Therefore look not at the things past, but at the things present. Consider of what lineage you are come, and that at some time hereafter I may do you good, and if I do it not, that your own good deed shall be its own good reward. Therefore, my cousin, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, do so much for me with my lord and your friend, that, on pledge of the most precious crown that I have, and the jewels thereof, he should lend me so much as he may hold to be just. And if you can obtain his aid, let it not be hindered of coming quickly; but rather think how the good friendship that may[p. 38] come to me from your lord will be through your hands. And so may God’s friendship be with you. Done in Seville, my only loyal city, in the thirtieth year of my reign, and in the first of these my troubles.

Signed, The King.”[41]

The unhappy monarch survived the date of this very striking letter but two years, and died in 1284. At one period of his life, his consideration throughout Christendom was so great, that he was elected Emperor of Germany; but this was only another source of sorrow to him, for his claims were contested, and after some time were silently set aside by the election of Rodolph of Hapsburg, upon whose dynasty the glories of the House of Austria rested so long. The life of Alfonso, therefore, was on the whole unfortunate, and full of painful vicissitudes, that might well have broken the spirit of most men, and that were certainly not without an effect on his.[42]

So much the more remarkable is it, that he should be distinguished among the chief founders of his country’s intellectual fame,—a distinction which again becomes more extraordinary when we recollect that he enjoys it not in letters alone, or in a single department, but in many; since he is to be remembered alike for the great advancement which Castilian prose composition made in his hands, for his poetry, for his astronomical[p. 39] tables, which all the progress of science since has not deprived of their value; and for his great work on legislation, which is at this moment an authority in both hemispheres.[43]

Of his poetry, we possess, besides works of very doubtful genuineness, two, about one of which there has been little question, and about the other none; his “Cántigas,” or Chants, in honor of the Madonna, and his “Tesoro,” a treatise on the transmutation of the baser metals into gold.

Of the Cántigas, there are extant no less than four hundred and one, composed in lines of from six to twelve syllables, and rhymed with a considerable degree of exactness.[44] Their measure and manner are Provençal. They are devoted to the praises and the miracles of the Madonna, in whose honor the king founded in 1279 a religious and military order;[45] and in devotion[p. 40] to whom, by his last will, he directed these poems to be perpetually chanted in the church of Saint Mary of Murcia, where he desired his body might be buried.[46] Only a few of them have been printed; but we have enough to show what they are, and especially that they are written, not in the Castilian, like the rest of his works, but in the Galician; an extraordinary circumstance, for which it does not seem easy to give a satisfactory reason.

The Galician, however, was originally an important language in Spain, and for some time seemed as likely to prevail throughout the country as any other of the dialects spoken in it. It was probably the first that was developed in the northwestern part of the Peninsula, and the second that was reduced to writing. For in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, just at the period when the struggling elements of the modern Spanish were disencumbering themselves from the forms of the corrupted Latin, Galicia, by the wars and troubles of the times, was repeatedly separated from Castile, so that distinct dialects appeared in the two different territories almost at the same moment. Of these, the Northern is likely to have been the older, though the Southern proved ultimately the more fortunate. At any rate, even without a court, which was the surest centre of culture in such rude ages, and without any of the reasons for the development of a dialect which always accompany political power, we know that the Galician was already sufficiently formed to pass with the conquering arms of Alfonso the Sixth, and[p. 41] establish itself firmly between the Douro and the Minho; that country which became the nucleus of the independent kingdom of Portugal.

This was between the years 1095 and 1109; and though the establishment of a Burgundian dynasty on the throne erected there naturally brought into the dialect of Portugal an infusion of the French, which never appeared in the dialect of Galicia,[47] still the language spoken in the two territories under different sovereigns and different influences continued substantially the same for a long period; perhaps down to the time of Charles the Fifth.[48] But it was only in Portugal that there was a court, or that means and motives were found sufficient for forming and cultivating a regular language. It is therefore only in Portugal that this common dialect of both the territories appears with a separate and proper literature;[49] the first intimation of which, with an exact date, is found as early as 1192. This is a document in prose.[50] The oldest poetry is to be sought in three curious fragments, originally published by Faria y Sousa, which can hardly be placed much later than the year 1200.[51] Both show that the Galician in Portugal, under less favorable circumstances than those which accompanied the Castilian in Spain, rose at the[p. 42] same period to be a written language, and possessed, perhaps, quite as early, the materials for forming an independent literature.

We may fairly infer, therefore, from these facts, indicating the vigor of the Galician in Portugal before the year 1200, that, in its native province in Spain, it is somewhat older. But we have no monuments by which to establish such antiquity. Castro, it is true, notices a manuscript translation of the history of Servandus, as if made in 1150 by Seguino, in the Galician dialect; but he gives no specimen of it, and his own authority in such a matter is not sufficient.[52] And in the well-known letter sent to the Constable of Portugal by the Marquis of Santillana, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we are told that all Spanish poetry was written for a long time in Galician or Portuguese;[53] but this is so obviously either a mistake in fact, or a mere compliment to the Portuguese prince to whom it was addressed, that Sarmiento, full of prejudices in favor of his native province, and desirous to arrive at the same conclusion, is obliged to give it up as wholly unwarranted.[54]

We must come back, therefore, to the “Cántigas” or Chants of Alfonso, as to the oldest specimen extant in the Galician dialect distinct from the Portuguese; and since, from internal evidence, one of them was written after he had conquered Xerez, we may place them between 1263, when that event occurred, and 1284, when[p. 43] he died.[55] Why he should have chosen this particular dialect for this particular form of poetry, when he had, as we know, an admirable mastery of the Castilian, and when these Cántigas, according to his last will, were to be chanted over his tomb, in a part of the kingdom where the Galician dialect never prevailed, we cannot now decide.[56] His father, Saint Ferdinand, was from the North, and his own early nurture there may have given Alfonso himself a strong affection for its language; or, what perhaps is more probable, there may have been something in the dialect itself, its origin or its gravity, which, at a period when no dialect in Spain had obtained an acknowledged supremacy, made it seem to him better suited than the Castilian or Valencian to religious purposes.

But however this may be, all the rest of his works are in the language spoken in the centre of the Peninsula, while his Cántigas are in the Galician. Some of them have considerable poetical merit; but in general they are to be remarked only for the variety of their metres, for an occasional tendency to the form of ballads, for a lyrical tone, which does not seem to have been earlier established in the Castilian, and for a kind of Doric simplicity, which belongs partly to the dialect he adopted and partly to the character of the author himself;—the whole bearing the impress of the Provençal poets, with whom he was much connected, and whom through life he patronized and maintained at his court.[57]

[p. 44]The other poetry attributed to Alfonso—except two stanzas that remain of his “Complaints” against the hard fortune of the last years of his life[58]—is to be sought in the treatise called “Del Tesoro,” which is divided into two short books, and dated in 1272. It is on the Philosopher’s Stone, and the greater portion of it is concealed in an unexplained cipher; the remainder being partly in prose and partly in octave stanzas, which are the oldest extant in Castilian verse. But the whole is worthless, and its genuineness doubtful.[59]

[p. 45]Alfonso claims his chief distinction in letters as a writer of prose. In this his merit is great. He first made the Castilian a national language by causing the Bible to be translated into it, and by requiring it to be used in all legal proceedings;[60] and he first, by his great Code and other works, gave specimens of prose composition which left a free and disencumbered course for all that has been done since,—a service perhaps greater than it has been permitted any other Spaniard to render the prose literature of his country. To this, therefore, we now turn.

And here the first work we meet with is one that was rather compiled under his direction, than written by himself. It is called “The Great Conquest beyond Sea,” and is an account of the wars in the Holy Land, which then so much agitated the minds of men throughout Europe, and which were intimately connected with the fate of the Christian Spaniards still struggling for their own existence in a perpetual crusade against misbelief at home. It begins with the history of Mohammed, and comes down to the year 1270; much of it being taken from an old French version of the work of William of Tyre, on the same general subject, and the rest from other less trustworthy sources. But parts of it are not historical. The grandfather of Godfrey of Bouillon, its hero, is the wild and fanciful Knight of the Swan, who is almost as much a representative of the spirit of chivalry as Amadis de Gaul, and goes through adventures no less marvellous; fighting on the Rhine like a knight[p. 46]-errant, and miraculously warned by a swallow how to rescue his lady, who has been made prisoner. Unhappily, in the only edition of this curious work,—printed in 1503,—the text has received additions that make us doubtful how much of it may be certainly ascribed to the time of Alfonso the Tenth, in whose reign and by whose order the greater part of it seems to have been prepared. It is chiefly valuable as a specimen of early Spanish prose.[61]

Castilian prose, in fact, can hardly be said to have existed earlier, unless we are willing to reckon as specimens of it the few meagre documents, generally grants in hard legal forms, that begin with the one concerning[p. 47] Avilés in 1155, already noticed, and come down, half bad Latin and half unformed Spanish, to the time of Alfonso.[62] The first monument, therefore, that can be properly cited for this purpose, though it dates from the reign of Saint Ferdinand, the father of Alfonso, is one in preparing which, it has always been supposed, Alfonso himself was personally concerned. It is the “Fuero Juzgo,” or “Forum Judicum,” a collection of Visigoth laws, which, in 1241, after his conquest of Córdova, Saint Ferdinand sent to that city in Latin, with directions that it should be translated into the vulgar dialect, and observed there as the law of the territory he had then newly rescued from the Moors.[63]

The precise time when this translation was made has[p. 48] not been decided. Marina, whose opinion should have weight, thinks it was not till the reign of Alfonso; but, from the early authority we know it possessed, it is perhaps more probable that it is to be dated from the latter years of Saint Ferdinand. In either case, however, considering the peculiar character and position of Alfonso, there can be little doubt that he was consulted and concerned in its preparation. It is a regular code, divided into twelve books, which are subdivided into titles and laws, and is of an extent so considerable and of a character so free and discursive, that we can fairly judge from it the condition of the prose language of the time, and ascertain that it was already as far advanced as the contemporaneous poetry.[64]

But the wise forecast of Saint Ferdinand soon extended beyond the purpose with which he originally commanded the translation of the old Visigoth laws, and he undertook to prepare a code for the whole of Christian Spain that was under his sceptre, which, in its different cities and provinces, was distracted by different and often contradictory fueros or privileges and laws given to each as it was won from the common enemy. But he did not live to execute his beneficent[p. 49] project, and the fragment that still remains to us of what he undertook, commonly known by the name of the “Setenario,” plainly implies that it is, in part at least, the work of his son Alfonso.[65]

Still, though Alfonso had been employed in preparing this code, he did not see fit to finish it. He, however, felt charged with the general undertaking, and seemed determined that his kingdom should not continue to suffer from the uncertainty or the conflict of its different systems of legislation. But he proceeded with great caution. His first body of laws, called the “Espejo,” or “Mirror of all Rights,” filling five books, was prepared before 1255; but though it contains within itself directions for its own distribution and enforcement, it does not seem ever to have gone into practical use. His “Fuero Real,” a shorter code, divided into four books, was completed in 1255 for Valladolid, and perhaps was subsequently given to other cities of his kingdom. Both were followed by different laws, as occasion called for them, down nearly to the end of his reign. But all of them, taken together, were far from constituting a code such as had been projected by Saint Ferdinand.[66]

This last great work was undertaken by Alfonso in 1256, and finished either in 1263 or 1265. It was originally called by Alfonso himself “El Setenario,” from the title of the code undertaken by his father; but it is now always called “Las Siete Partidas,” or[p. 50] The Seven Parts, from the seven divisions of the work itself. That Alfonso was assisted by others in the great task of compiling it out of the Decretals, and the Digest and Code of Justinian, as well as out of the Fuero Juzgo and other sources of legislation, both Spanish and foreign, is not to be doubted; but the general air and finish of the whole, its style and literary execution, must be more or less his own, so much are they in harmony with whatever else we know of his works and character.[67]

The Partidas, however, though by far the most important legislative monument of its age, did not become at once the law of the land.[68] On the contrary, the great cities, with their separate privileges, long resisted any thing like a uniform system of legislation for the whole country; and it was not till 1348, two years before the death of Alfonso the Eleventh, and above sixty after that of their author, that the Partidas were finally proclaimed as of binding authority in all the territories held by the kings of Castile and Leon. But from that period the great code of Alfonso has been uniformly respected.[69] It is, in fact, a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since; and becoming in this way a part of the constitution of the state in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time when Louisiana and Florida were added to the United[p. 51] States, become in some cases the law in our own country;—so wide may be the influence of a wise legislation.[70]

The Partidas, however, read very little like a collection of statutes, or even like a code such as that of Justinian or Napoleon. They seem rather to be a series of treatises on legislation, morals, and religion, divided with great formality, according to their subjects, into Parts, Titles, and Laws; the last of which, instead of being merely imperative ordinances, enter into arguments and investigations of various sorts, often discussing the moral principles they lay down, and often containing intimations of the manners and opinions of the age, that make them a curious mine of Spanish antiquities. They are, in short, a kind of digested result of the opinions and reading of a learned monarch, and his coadjutors, in the thirteenth century, on the relative duties of a king and his subjects, and on the entire legislation and police, ecclesiastical, civil, and moral, to which, in their judgment, Spain should be subjected; the whole interspersed with discussions, sometimes more quaint than grave, concerning the customs and principles on which the work itself, or some particular part of it, is founded.

As a specimen of the style of the Partidas, an ex[p. 52]tract may be made from a law entitled “What meaneth a Tyrant, and how he useth his power in a kingdom when he hath obtained it.”

“A tyrant,” says this law, “doth signify a cruel lord, who by force, or by craft, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or country; and such men be of such nature, that, when once they have grown strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit, though it be in harm of the land, than the common profit of all, for they always live in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to fulfil this their purpose unencumbered, the wise of old have said that they use their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous, because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that they be not kindly and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one another, for, while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm, that it may never come into their hearts to devise any thing against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from oppression. And, moreover, we say, that, though any man may have[p. 53] gained mastery of a kingdom by any of the lawful means whereof we have spoken in the laws going before this, yet, if he use his power ill, in the ways whereof we speak in this law, him may the people still call tyrant; for he turneth his mastery which was rightful into wrongful, as Aristotle hath said in the book which treateth of the rule and government of kingdoms.”[71]

In other laws, reasons are given why kings and their sons should be taught to read;[72] and in a law about the governesses of king’s daughters, it is declared:—

“They are to endeavour, as much as may be, that the king’s daughters be moderate and seemly in eating and in drinking, and also in their carriage and dress, and of good manners in all things, and especially that they be not given to anger; for, besides the wickedness that lieth in it, it is the thing in the world that most easily leadeth women to do ill. And they ought to teach them to be handy in performing those works that belong to noble ladies; for this is a matter that becometh them much, since they obtain by it cheerfulness and a quiet spirit; and besides, it taketh away bad thoughts, which it is not convenient they should have.”[73]

Many of the laws concerning knights, like one on their loyalty, and one on the meaning of the ceremonies used when they are armed,[74] and all the laws on the establishment and conduct of great public schools, which he was endeavouring, at the same time, to encourage, by the privileges he granted to Salamanca,[75] are[p. 54] written with even more skill and selectness of idiom. Indeed, the Partidas, in whatever relates to manner and style, are not only superior to any thing that had preceded them, but to any thing that for a long time followed. The poems of Berceo, hardly twenty years older, seem to belong to another age, and to a much ruder state of society; and, on the other hand, Marina, whose opinion on such a subject few are entitled to call in question, says, that, during the two or even three centuries subsequent, nothing was produced in Spanish prose equal to the Partidas for purity and elevation of style.[76]

But however this may be, there is no doubt, that, mingled with something of the rudeness and more of the ungraceful repetitions common in the period to which they belong, there is a richness, an appropriateness, and sometimes even an elegance, in their turns of expression, truly remarkable. They show that the great effort of their author to make the Castilian the living and real language of his country, by making it that of the laws and the tribunals of justice, had been successful, or was destined speedily to become so. Their grave and measured movement, and the solemnity of their tone, which have remained among the characteristics of Spanish prose ever since, show this success beyond all reasonable question. They show, too, the character of Alfonso himself, giving token of a far-reaching wisdom and philosophy, and proving how much a single great mind happily placed can do towards imparting their final direction to the language and literature of a country, even so early as the first century of their separate existence.[77]

The proof that the “Partidas” were in advance of their age, both as to style and language, is plain, not only from the examination we have made of what preceded them, but from a comparison of them, which we must now make, with the poetry of Juan Lorenzo Segura, who lived at the time they were compiled, and probably somewhat later. Like Berceo, he was a secular priest, and he belonged to Astorga; but this is all we know of him, except that he lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and has left a poem of above ten thousand lines on the life of Alexander the Great, drawn from such sources as were then accessible to a Spanish ecclesiastic, and written in the four-line stanza used by Berceo.[78]

What is most obvious in this long poem is its confounding the manners of a well-known age of Grecian antiquity with those of the Catholic religion, and of knighthood, as they existed in the days of its author. Similar confusion is found in some portion of the early[p. 57] literature of every country in modern Europe. In all, there was a period when the striking facts of ancient history, and the picturesque fictions of ancient fable, floating about among the traditions of the Middle Ages, were seized upon as materials for poetry and romance; and when, to fill up and finish the picture presented by their imaginations to those who thus misapplied an imperfect knowledge of antiquity, the manners and feelings of their own times were incongruously thrown in, either from an ignorant persuasion that none other had ever existed, or from a wilful carelessness concerning every thing but poetical effect. This was the case in Italy, from the first dawning of letters till after the time of Dante; the sublime and tender poetry of whose “Divina Commedia” is full of such absurdities and anachronisms. It was the case, too, in France; examples singularly in point being found in the Latin poem of Walter de Chatillon, and the French one by Alexandre de Paris, on this same subject of Alexander the Great; both of which were written nearly a century before Juan Lorenzo lived, and both of which were used by him.[79] And it was the case in England, till after the time of Shakspeare, whose “Midsummer Night’s Dream” does all that genius can do to justify it. We must not, therefore, be surprised to find it in Spain, where, derived from such monstrous repositories of fiction as the works of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, Guido de Colonna and Walter de Chatillon, some of the histories and fancies of ancient times already filled the thoughts of those men who were unconsciously begin[p. 58]ning the fabric of their country’s literature on foundations essentially different.

Among the most attractive subjects that offered themselves to such persons was that of Alexander the Great. The East—Persia, Arabia, and India—had long been full of stories of his adventures;[80] and now, in the West, as a hero more nearly approaching the spirit of knighthood than any other of antiquity, he was adopted into the poetical fictions of almost every nation that could boast the beginning of a literature, so that the Monk in the “Canterbury Tales” said truly,—

Juan Lorenzo took this story substantially as he had read it in the “Alexandreïs” of Walter de Chatillon, whom he repeatedly cites;[81] but he has added whatever he found elsewhere, or in his own imagination, that seemed suited to his purpose, which was by no means that of becoming a mere translator. After a short introduction, he comes at once to his subject thus, in the fifth stanza:—

Then comes the history of Alexander, mingled with the fables and extravagances of the times; given generally with the dulness of a chronicle, but sometimes showing a poetical spirit. Before setting out on his grand expedition to the East, he is knighted, and receives an enchanted sword made by Don Vulcan, a girdle made by Doña Philosophy, and a shirt made by two sea fairies,—duas fadas enna mar.[83] The conquest of Asia follows soon afterwards, in the course of which the Bishop of Jerusalem orders mass to be said to stay the conqueror, as he approaches the Jewish capital.[84]

In general, the known outline of Alexander’s adventures is followed, but there are a good many whimsical digressions; and when the Macedonian forces pass the site of Troy, the poet cannot resist the temptation of making an abstract of the fortunes and fate of that city, which he represents as told by Don Alexander himself to his followers, and especially to the Twelve Peers, who accompanied him in his expedition.[85] Homer is vouched as authority for the extraordinary narrative that is given;[86] but how little the poet of Astorga[p. 60] cared for the Iliad and Odyssey may be inferred from the fact, that, instead of sending Achilles, or Don Achilles, as he is called, to the court of Lycomedes of Scyros, to be concealed in woman’s clothes, he is sent, by the enchantments of his mother, in female attire, to a convent of nuns, and the crafty Don Ulysses goes there as a peddler, with a pack of female ornaments and martial weapons on his back, to detect the fraud.[87] But, with all its defects and incongruities, the “Alexandro” is a curious and important landmark in early Spanish literature; and if it is written with less purity and dignity than the “Partidas” of Alfonso, it has still a truly Castilian air, in both its language and its versification.[88]

A poem called “Los Votos del Pavon,” The Vows of the Peacock, which was a continuation of the “Alexandro,” is lost. If we may judge from an old French poem on the vows made over a peacock that had been a favorite bird of Alexander, and was served accidentally at table after that hero’s death, we have no reason to complain of our loss as a misfortune.[89][p. 61] Nor have we probably great occasion to regret that we possess only extracts from a prose book of advice, prepared for his heir and successor by Sancho, the son of Alfonso the Tenth; for though, from the chapter warning the young prince against fools, we see that it wanted neither sense nor spirit, still it is not to be compared to the “Partidas” for precision, grace, or dignity of style.[90] We come, therefore, at once to a remarkable writer, who flourished a little later,—the Prince Don Juan Manuel.

Lorenzo was an ecclesiastic,—bon clérigo é ondrado,—and his home was at Astorga, in the northwestern portion of Spain, on the borders of Leon and Galicia. Berceo belonged to the same territory, and, though there may be half a century between them, they are of a similar spirit. We are glad, therefore, that the next author we meet, Don John Manuel, takes us from the mountains of the North to the chivalry of the South, and to the state of society, the conflicts, manners, and interests, that gave us the “Poem of the Cid,” and the code of the “Partidas.”

Don John was of the blood royal of Castile and Leon; grandson of Saint Ferdinand, nephew of Alfonso the Wise, and one of the most turbulent and dangerous of the Spanish barons of his time. He was born in Escalona, on the 5th of May, 1282, and was the son of Don Pedro Manuel, an Infante of Spain,[91] brother of[p. 62] Alfonso the Wise, with whom he always had his officers and household in common. Before Don John was two years old, his father died, and he was educated by his cousin, Sancho the Fourth, living with him on a footing like that on which his father had lived with Alfonso.[92] When twelve years old he was already in the field against the Moors, and in 1310, at the age of twenty-eight, he had reached the most considerable offices in the state; but Ferdinand the Fourth dying two years afterwards, and leaving Alfonso the Eleventh, his successor, only thirteen months old, great disturbances followed till 1320, when Don John Manuel became joint regent of the realm; a place which he suffered none to share with him, but such of his near relations as were most involved in his interests.[93]

The affairs of the kingdom during the administration of Prince John seem to have been managed with talent and spirit; but at the end of the regency the young monarch was not sufficiently contented with the state of things to continue his grand-uncle in any considerable employment. Don John, however, was not of a temper to submit quietly to affront or neglect.[94] He left the court at Valladolid, and prepared himself, with all his great resources, for the armed opposition which the politics of the time regarded as a justifiable mode of obtaining redress. The king was alarmed,[p. 63] “for he saw,” says the old chronicler, “that they were the most powerful men in his kingdom, and that they could do grievous battle with him, and great mischief to the land.” He entered, therefore, into an arrangement with Prince John, who did not hesitate to abandon his friends, and go back to his allegiance, on the condition that the king should marry his daughter Constantia, then a mere child, and create him governor of the provinces bordering on the Moors, and commander-in-chief of the Moorish war; thus placing him, in fact, again at the head of the kingdom.[95]

From this time we find him actively engaged on the frontiers in a succession of military operations, till 1327, when he gained over the Moors the important victory of Guadalhorra. But the same year was marked by the bloody treachery of the king against Prince John’s uncle, who was murdered in the palace under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.[96] The Prince immediately retired in disgust to his estates, and began again to muster his friends and forces for a contest, into which he rushed the more eagerly, as the king had now refused to consummate his union with Constantia, and had married a Portuguese princess. The war which followed was carried on with various success till 1335, when Prince John was finally subdued, and, entering anew into the king’s service, with fresh reputation, as it seemed, from a spirited rebellion, and marrying his daughter Constantia, now grown up, to the heir-apparent of Portugal, went on, as commander-in-chief, with an uninterrupted succession of victories over the Moors, until almost the moment of his death, which happened in 1347.[97]

[p. 64]In a life like this, full of intrigues and violence,—from a prince like this, who married the sisters of two kings, who had two other kings for his sons-in-law, and who disturbed his country by his rebellions and military enterprises for above thirty years,—we should hardly look for a successful attempt in letters.[98] Yet so it is. Spanish poetry, we know, first appeared in the midst of turbulence and danger; and now we find Spanish prose fiction springing forth from the same soil, and under similar circumstances. Down to this time we have seen no prose of much value in the prevailing Castilian dialect, except in the works of Alfonso the Tenth, and in one or two chronicles that will hereafter be noticed. But in most of these the fervor which seems to be an essential element of the early Spanish genius was kept in check, either by the nature of their subjects, or by circumstances of which we can now have no knowledge; and it is not until a fresh attempt is made, in the midst of the wars and tumults that for centuries seem to have been as the principle of life to the whole Peninsula, that we discover in Spanish prose a decided development of such forms as afterwards became national and characteristic.

Don John, to whom belongs the distinction of producing one of these forms, showed himself worthy of a family in which, for above a century, letters had been honored and cultivated. He is known to have written twelve works; and so anxious was he about their fate, that he caused them to be carefully transcribed in a large volume, and bequeathed them to a monastery he had founded on his estates at Peñafiel, as a burial-place[p. 65] for himself and his descendants.[99] How many of these works are now in existence is not known. Some are certainly among the treasures of the National Library at Madrid, in a manuscript which seems to be an imperfect and injured copy of the one originally deposited at Peñafiel. Two others may, perhaps, yet be recovered; for one of them, the “Chronicle of Spain,” abridged by Don John from that of his uncle, Alfonso the Wise, was in the possession of the Marquis of Mondejar in the middle of the eighteenth century;[100] and the other, a treatise on Hunting, was seen by Pellicer somewhat later.[101] A collection of Don John’s poems, which Argote de Molina intended to publish in the time of Philip the Second, is probably lost, since the diligent Sanchez sought for it in vain;[102] and his “Conde Lucanor” alone has been placed beyond the reach of accident by being printed.[103]

[p. 66]All that we possess of Don John Manuel is important. The imperfect manuscript at Madrid opens with an account of the reasons why he had caused his works to be transcribed; reasons which he illustrates by the following story, very characteristic of his age.

“In the time of King Jayme the First of Majorca,” says he, “there was a knight of Perpignan, who was a great Troubadour, and made brave songs wonderfully well. But one that he made was better than the rest, and, moreover, was set to good music. And people were so delighted with that song, that, for a long time, they would sing no other. And so the knight that made it was well pleased. But one day, going through the streets, he heard a shoemaker singing this song, and he sang it so ill, both in words and tune, that any man who had not heard it before would have held it to be a very poor song, and very ill made. Now when the knight heard that shoemaker spoil his good work, he was full of grief and anger, and got down from his beast, and sat down by him. But the shoemaker gave no heed to the knight, and did not cease from singing; and the further he sang, the worse he spoiled the song that knight had made. And when the knight heard his good work so spoiled by the foolishness of the shoe[p. 67]maker, he took up very gently some shears that lay there, and cut all the shoemaker’s shoes in pieces, and mounted his beast and rode away.

“Now, when the shoemaker saw his shoes, and beheld how they were cut in pieces, and that he had lost all his labor, he was much troubled, and went shouting after the knight that had done it. And the knight answered: ‘My friend, our lord the king, as you well know, is a good king and a just. Let us, then, go to him, and let him determine, as may seem right, the difference between us.’ And they were agreed to do so. And when they came before the king, the shoemaker told him how all his shoes had been cut in pieces and much harm done to him. And the king was wroth at it, and asked the knight if this were truth. And the knight said that it was; but that he would like to say why he did it. And the king told him to say on. And the knight answered, that the king well knew that he had made a song,—the one that was very good and had good music,—and he said, that the shoemaker had spoiled it in singing; in proof whereof, he prayed the king to command him now to sing it. And the king did so, and saw how he spoiled it. Then the knight said, that, since the shoemaker had spoiled the good work he had made with great pains and labor, so he might spoil the works of the shoemaker. And the king and all they that were there with him were very merry at this and laughed; and the king commanded the shoemaker never to sing that song again, nor trouble the good work of the knight; but the king paid the shoemaker for the harm that was done him, and commanded the knight not to vex the shoemaker any more.[104]

[p. 68]

“And now, knowing that I cannot hinder the books I have made from being copied many times, and seeing that in copies one thing is put for another, either because he who copies is ignorant, or because one word looks so much like another, and so the meaning and sense are changed without any fault in him who first wrote it; therefore, I, Don John Manuel, to avoid this wrong as much as I may, have caused this volume to be made, in which are written out all the works I have composed, and they are twelve.”

Of the twelve works here referred to, the Madrid manuscript contains only three. One is a long letter to his brother, the Archbishop of Toledo, and Chancellor of the kingdom, in which he gives, first, an account of his family arms; then the reason why he and his right heirs male could make knights without having received any order of knighthood, as he himself had done when he was not yet two years old; and lastly, the report of a solemn conversation he had held with Sancho the Fourth[p. 69] on his death-bed, in which the king bemoaned himself bitterly, that, having for his rebellion justly received the curse of his father, Alfonso the Wise, he had now no power to give a dying man’s blessing to Don John.

Another of the works in the Madrid manuscript is a treatise in twenty-six chapters, called “Counsels to his Son Ferdinand”; which is, in fact, an essay on the Christian and moral duties of one destined by his rank to the highest places in the state, referring sometimes to the more ample discussions on similar subjects in Don John’s treatise on the Different Estates or Conditions of Men, apparently a longer work, not now known to exist.

But the third and longest is the most interesting. It is “The Book of the Knight and the Esquire,” “written,” says the author, “in the manner called in Castile fabliella,” (a little fable,) and sent to his brother, the Archbishop, that he might translate it into Latin; a proof, and not the only one, that Don John placed small value upon the language to which he now owes all his honors. The book itself contains an account of a young man who, encouraged by the good condition of his country under a king that called his Cortes together often, and gave his people good teachings and good laws, determines to seek advancement in the state. On his way to a meeting of the Cortes, where he intends to be knighted, he meets a retired cavalier, who in his hermitage explains to him all the duties and honors of chivalry, and thus prepares him for the distinction to which he aspires. On his return, he again visits his aged friend, and is so delighted with his instructions, that he remains with him, ministering to his infirmities and profiting by his wisdom, till his death, after which the young knight goes to his own[p. 70] land, and lives there in great honor the rest of his life. The story, or little fable, is, however, a very slight thread, serving only to hold together a long series of instructions on the moral duties of men, and on the different branches of human knowledge, given with earnestness and spirit, in the fashion of the times.[105]

The “Conde Lucanor,” the best known of its author’s works, bears some resemblance to the fable of the Knight and the Esquire. It is a collection of forty-nine tales,[106] anecdotes, and apologues, clearly in the Oriental manner; the first hint for which was probably taken from the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Petrus Alphonsus, a collection of Latin stories made in Spain about two centuries earlier. The occasion on which the tales of Don John are supposed to be related is, like the fictions themselves, invented with Eastern simplicity, and reminds us constantly of the “Thousand and One Nights,” and their multitudinous imitations.[107]

[p. 71]The Count Lucanor—a personage of power and consideration, intended probably to represent those early Christian counts in Spain, who, like Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, were, in fact, independent princes—finds himself occasionally perplexed with questions of morals and public policy. These questions, as they occur, he proposes to Patronio, his minister or counsellor, and Patronio replies to each by a tale or a fable, which is ended with a rhyme in the nature of a moral. The stories are various in their character.[108] Sometimes it is an anecdote in Spanish history to which Don John resorts, like that of the three knights of his grandfather, Saint Ferdinand, at the siege of Seville.[109] More frequently, it is a sketch of some striking trait in the national manners, like the story of “Rodrigo el Franco and his three Faithful Followers.”[110] Sometimes, again, it is a fiction of chivalry, like that of the “Hermit and Richard the Lion-Hearted.”[111] And sometimes it is an apologue, like that of the “Old Man, his Son, and the Ass,” or that of the “Crow persuaded by the Fox to sing,” which, with his many successors, he must in some[p. 72] way or other have obtained from Æsop.[112] They are all curious, but probably the most interesting is the “Moorish Marriage,” partly because it points distinctly to an Arabic origin, and partly because it remarkably resembles the story Shakspeare has used in his “Taming of the Shrew.”[113] It is, however, too long to be given here; and therefore a shorter specimen will be taken from the twenty-second chapter, entitled “Of what happened to Count Fernan Gonzalez, and of the answer he gave to his vassals.”

“On one occasion, Count Lucanor came from a foray, much wearied and worn, and poorly off; and before he could refresh or rest himself, there came a sudden message about another matter then newly moved. And the greater part of his people counselled him, that he should refresh himself a little, and then do whatever should be thought most wise. And the Count asked Patronio what he should do in that matter; and Patronio replied, ‘Sire, that you may choose what is best, it would please me that you should know the answer which Count Fernan Gonzalez once gave to his vassals.

[p. 73]“‘The story.—Count Fernan Gonzalez conquered Almanzor in Hazinas,[114] but many of his people fell there, and he and the rest that remained alive were sorely wounded. And before they were sound and well, he heard that the king of Navarre had broken into his lands, and so he commanded his people to make ready to fight against them of Navarre. And all his people told him, that their horses were aweary, and that they were aweary themselves; and although for this cause they might not forsake this thing, yet that, since both he and his people were sore wounded, they ought to leave it, and that he ought to wait till he and they should be sound again. And when the Count saw that they all wanted to leave that road, then his honor grieved him more than his body, and he said, “My friends, let us not shun this battle on account of the wounds that we now have; for the fresh wounds they will presently give us will make us forget those we received in the other fight.” And when they of his party saw that he was not troubled concerning his own person, but only how to defend his lands and his honor, they went with him, and they won that battle, and things went right well afterwards.

“‘And you, my Lord Count Lucanor, if you desire to do what you ought, when you see that it should be achieved for the defence of your own rights and of your own people and of your own honor, then you must not be grieved by weariness, nor by toil, nor by danger, but rather so act that the new danger shall make you forget that which is past.’

“And the Count held this for a good history[115] and[p. 74] a good counsel; and he acted accordingly, and found himself well by it. And Don John also understood this to be a good history, and he had it written in this book, and moreover made these verses, which say thus:—

It is not easy to imagine any thing more simple and direct than this story, either in the matter or the style. Others of the tales have an air of more knightly dignity, and some have a little of the gallantry that might be expected from a court like that of Alfonso the Eleventh. In a very few of them, Don John gives intimations that he had risen above the feelings and opinions of his age: as, in one, he laughs at the monks and their pretensions;[116] in another, he introduces a pilgrim under no respectable circumstances;[117] and in a third, he ridicules his uncle Alfonso for believing in the follies of alchemy,[118] and trusting a man who pretended to turn the baser metals into gold. But in almost all we see the large experience of a man of the world, as the world then existed, and the cool observation of one who knew too much of mankind, and had suffered too much from[p. 75] them, to have a great deal of the romance of youth still lingering in his character. For we know, from himself, that Prince John wrote the Conde Lucanor when he had already reached his highest honors and authority; probably after he had passed through his severest defeats. It should be remembered, therefore, to his credit, that we find in it no traces of the arrogance of power, or of the bitterness of mortified ambition; nothing of the wrongs he had suffered from others, and nothing of those he had inflicted. It seems, indeed, to have been written in some happy interval, stolen from the bustle of camps, the intrigues of government, and the crimes of rebellion, when the experience of his past life, its adventures, and its passions, were so remote as to awaken little personal feeling, and yet so familiar that he could give us their results, with great simplicity, in this series of tales and anecdotes, which are marked with an originality that belongs to their age, and with a kind of chivalrous philosophy and wise honesty that would not be discreditable to one more advanced.[119]

The reign of Alfonso the Eleventh was full of troubles, and the unhappy monarch himself died at last of the plague, while he was besieging Gibraltar, in 1350. Still, that letters were not forgotten in it we know, not only from the example of Don John Manuel, already cited, but from several others which should not be passed over.

The first is a prose treatise on Hunting, in three books, written under the king’s direction, by his Chief-huntsmen, who were then among the principal persons of the court. It consists of little more than an account of the sort of hounds to be used, their diseases and training, with a description of the different places where game was abundant, and where sport for the royal amusement was to be had. It is of small consequence in itself, but was published by Argote de Molina, in the time of Philip the Second, with a pleasant addition by the editor, containing curious stories of lion-hunts and bull-fights, fitting it to the taste of his own age. In style, the original work is as good as the somewhat similar treatise of the Marquis of Villena,[p. 77] on the Art of Carving, written a hundred years later; and, from the nature of the subject, it is more interesting.[120]

The next literary monument attributed to this reign would be important, if we had the whole of it. It is a chronicle, in the ballad style, of events which happened in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh, and commonly passes under his name. It was found, hidden in a mass of Arabic manuscripts, by Diego de Mendoza, who attributed it, with little ceremony, to “a secretary of the king”; and it was first publicly made known by Argote de Molina, who thought it written by some poet contemporary with the history he relates. But only thirty-four stanzas of it are now known to exist; and these, though admitted by Sanchez to be probably anterior to the fifteenth century, are shown by him not to be the work of the king, and seem, in fact, to be less ancient in style and language than that critic supposes them to be.[121] They are in very flowing Castilian, and their tone is as spirited as that of most of the old ballads.

[p. 78]Two other poems, written during the reign of one of the Alfonsos, as their author declares,—and therefore almost certainly during that of Alfonso the Eleventh, who was the last of his name,—are also now known in print only by a few stanzas, and by the office of their writer, who styles himself “a Beneficiary of Ubeda.” The first, which consists, in the manuscript, of five hundred and five strophes in the manner of Berceo, is a life of Saint Ildefonso; the last is on the subject of Saint Mary Magdalen. Both would probably detain us little, even if they had been published entire.[122]

We turn, therefore, without further delay, to Juan Ruiz, commonly called the Archpriest of Hita; a poet who is known to have lived at the same period, and whose works, both from their character and amount, deserve especial notice. Their date can be ascertained[p. 79] with a good degree of exactness. In one of the three early manuscripts in which they are extant, some of the poems are fixed at the year 1330, and some, by the two others, at 1343. Their author, who seems to have been born at Alcalá de Henares, lived much at Guadalaxara and Hita, places only five leagues apart, and was imprisoned by order of the Archbishop of Toledo between 1337 and 1350; from all which it may be inferred, that his principal residence was Castile, and that he flourished in the reign of Alfonso the Eleventh; that is, in the time of Don John Manuel, and a very little later.[123]

His works consist of nearly seven thousand verses; and although, in general, they are written in the four-line stanza of Berceo, we find occasionally a variety of measure, tone, and spirit, before unknown in Castilian poetry; the number of their metrical forms, some of which are taken from the Provençal, being reckoned not less than sixteen.[124] The poems, as they have come to us, open with a prayer to God, composed apparently at the time of the Archpriest’s imprisonment; when, as one of the manuscripts sets forth, most of his works were written.[125] Next comes a curious prose prologue, explaining the moral purpose of the whole collection, or rather endeavouring to conceal the immoral tendency of the greater part of it. And then, after somewhat more of prefatory matter, follow, in quick succession, the poems themselves, very miscellaneous in their subjects, but ingeniously connected. The entire mass, when taken together, fills a volume of respectable size.[126]

[p. 80]It is a series of stories, that seem to be sketches of real events in the Archpriest’s own life; sometimes mingled with fictions and allegories, that may, after all, be only veils for other facts; and sometimes speaking out plainly, and announcing themselves as parts of his personal history.[127] In the foreground of this busy scene figures the very equivocal character of his female messenger, the chief agent in his love affairs, whom he boldly calls Trota-conventos, because the messages she carries are so often to or from monasteries and nunneries.[128] The first lady-love to whom the poet sends her is, he says, well taught,—mucho letrada,—and her story is illustrated by the fables of the Sick Lion visited by the other Animals, and of the Mountain bringing forth a Mouse. All, however, is unavailing. The lady refuses to favor his suit; and he consoles himself, as well as he can, with the saying of Solomon, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.[129]

In the next of his adventures, a false friend deceives him and carries off his lady. But still he is not discouraged.[130] He feels himself to be drawn on by his fate, like the son of a Moorish king, whose history he then relates; and, after some astrological ruminations,[p. 81] declares himself to be born under the star of Venus, and inevitably subject to her control. Another failure follows; and then Love comes in person to visit him and counsels him in a series of fables, which are told with great ease and spirit. The poet answers gravely. He is offended with Don Amor for his falsehood, charges him with being guilty, either by implication or directly, of all the seven deadly sins, and fortifies each of his positions with an appropriate apologue.[131]

The Archpriest now goes to Doña Venus, who, though he knew Ovid, is represented as the wife of Don Amor; and, taking counsel of her, is successful. But the story he relates is evidently a fiction, though it may be accommodated to the facts of the poet’s own case. It is borrowed from a dialogue or play, written before the year 1300, by Pamphylus Maurianus or Maurilianus, and long attributed to Ovid; but the Castilian poet has successfully given to what he adopted the coloring of his own national manners. All this portion, which fills above a thousand lines, is somewhat free in its tone; and the Archpriest, alarmed at himself, turns suddenly round and adds a series of severe moral warnings and teachings to the sex, which he as suddenly breaks off, and, without any assigned reason, goes to the mountains near Segovia. But the month in which he makes his journey is March; the season is rough; and several of his adventures are any thing but agreeable. Still he preserves the same light and thoughtless air; and this part of his history is mingled with spirited pastoral songs in the Provençal manner, called “Cántigas de[p. 82] Serrana,” as the preceding portions had been mingled with fables, which he calls “Enxiemplos,” or stories.[132]

A shrine, much frequented by the devout, is near that part of the Sierra where his journeyings lay; and he makes a pilgrimage to it, which he illustrates with sacred hymns, just as he had before illustrated his love-adventures with apologues and songs. But Lent approaches, and he hurries home. He is hardly arrived, however, when he receives a summons in form from Doña Quaresma (Madam Lent) to attend her in arms, with all her other archpriests and clergy, in order to make a foray, like a foray into the territory of the Moors, against Don Carnaval and his adherents. One of these allegorical battles, which were in great favor with the Trouveurs and other metre-mongers of the Middle Ages, then follows, in which figure Don Tocino (Mr. Bacon) and Doña Cecina (Mrs. Hung-Beef), with other similar personages. The result, of course, since it is now the season of Lent, is the defeat and imprisonment of Don Carnaval; but when that season closes, the allegorical prisoner necessarily escapes, and, raising anew such followers as Mr. Lunch and Mr. Breakfast, again takes the field, and is again triumphant.[133]

[p. 83]

Don Carnaval now unites himself to Don Amor, and both appear in state as emperors. Don Amor is received with especial jubilee; clergy and laity, friars, nuns, and jongleurs, going out in wild procession to meet and welcome him.[134] But the honor of formally receiving his Majesty, though claimed by all, and foremost by the nuns, is granted only to the poet. To the poet, too, Don Amor relates his adventures of the preceding winter at Seville and Toledo, and then leaves him to go in search of others. Meanwhile, the Archpriest, with the assistance of his cunning agent, Trota-conventos, begins a new series of love intrigues, even more freely mingled with fables than the first, and ends them only by the death of Trota-conventos herself, with whose epitaph the more carefully connected portion of the Archpriest’s works is brought to a conclusion. The volume contains, however, besides this portion, several smaller poems on subjects as widely different as the “Christian’s Armour” and the “Praise of Little Women,” some of which seem related to the main series, though none of them have any apparent connection with each other.[135]

The tone of the Archpriest’s poetry is very various. In general, a satirical spirit prevails in it, not unmingled with a quiet humor. This spirit often extends into the gravest portions; and how fearless he was, when he indulged himself in it, a passage on the influence of money and corruption at the court of Rome leaves no doubt.[136] Other parts, like the verses on Death, are[p. 84] solemn, and even sometimes tender; while yet others, like the hymns to the Madonna, breathe the purest spirit of Catholic devotion; so that, perhaps, it would not be easy, in the whole body of Spanish literature, to find a volume showing a greater variety in its subjects, or in the modes of managing and exhibiting them.[137]

The happiest success of the Archpriest of Hita is to be found in the many tales and apologues which he has scattered on all sides to illustrate the adventures that constitute a framework for his poetry, like that of the “Conde Lucanor” or the “Canterbury Tales.” Most of them are familiar to us, being taken from the old store-houses of Æsop and Phædrus, or rather from the versions of these fabulists common in the earliest Northern French poetry.[138] Among the more fortunate of his very free imitations is the fable of the Frogs who asked for a King from Jupiter, that of the Dog who lost by his Greediness the Meat he carried in his Mouth, and that of the Hares who took Courage when they saw the Frogs were more timid than themselves.[139] A few of them have a truth, a simplicity, and even[p. 85] a grace, which have rarely been surpassed in the same form of composition; as, for instance, that of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse, which, if we follow it from Æsop through Horace to La Fontaine, we shall nowhere find better told than it is by the Archpriest.[140]

What strikes us most, however, and remains with us longest after reading his poetry, is the natural and spirited tone that prevails over every other. In this he is like Chaucer, who wrote a little later in the same century. Indeed, the resemblance between the two poets is remarkable in some other particulars. Both often sought their materials in the Northern French poetry; both have that mixture of devotion and a licentious immorality, much of which belonged to their age, but some of it to their personal character; and both show a wide knowledge of human nature, and a great happiness in sketching the details of individual manners. The original temper of each made him satirical and humorous; and each, in his own country, became the founder of some of the forms of its popular poetry, introducing new metres and combinations, and carrying them out in a versification which, though generally rude and irregular, is often flowing and nervous, and always natural. The Archpriest has not, indeed, the tenderness, the elevation, or the general power of Chaucer; but his genius has a compass, and his verse a skill and success, that show him to be more nearly akin to the great English master than will be believed,[p. 86] except by those who have carefully read the works of both.

The Archpriest of Hita lived in the last years of Alfonso the Eleventh, and perhaps somewhat later. At the very beginning of the next reign, or in 1350, we find a curious poem addressed by a Jew of Carrion to Peter the Cruel, on his accession to the throne. In the manuscript found in the National Library at Madrid, it is called the “Book of the Rabi de Santob,” or “Rabbi Don Santob,” and consists of four hundred and seventy-six stanzas.[141] The measure is the old redondilla, uncommonly easy and flowing for the age; and the purpose of the poem is to give wise moral counsels to the new king, which the poet more than once begs him not to undervalue because they come from a Jew.

After a longer introduction than is needful, the moral counsels begin, at the fifty-third stanza, and continue through the rest of the work, which, in its general tone, is not unlike other didactic poetry of the period, although it is written with more ease and more poetical spirit. Indeed, it is little to say, that few Rabbins of any country have given us such quaint and pleasant verses as are contained in several parts of these curious counsels of the Jew of Carrion.

In the Escurial manuscript, containing the verses of[p. 88] the Jew, are other poems, which were at one time attributed to him, but which it seems probable belong to other, though unknown, authors.[143] One of them is a didactic essay, called “La Doctrina Christiana,” or Christian Doctrine. It consists of a prose prologue, setting forth the writer’s penitence, and of one hundred and fifty-seven stanzas of four lines each; the first three containing eight syllables, rhymed together, and the last containing four syllables unrhymed,—a metrical form not without something of the air of the Sapphic and Adonic. The body of the work contains an explanation of the creed, the ten commandments, the seven moral virtues, the fourteen works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the five senses, and the holy sacraments, with discussions concerning Christian conduct and character.

Another of these poems is called a Revelation, and is a vision, in twenty-five octave stanzas, of a holy hermit, who is supposed to have witnessed a contest between a soul and its body; the soul complaining that the excesses of the body had brought upon it all the punishments of the unseen world, and the body retort[p. 89]ing, that it was condemned to these same torments because the soul had neglected to keep it in due subjection.[144] The whole is an imitation of some of the many similar poems current at that period, one of which is extant in English in a manuscript placed by Warton about the year 1304.[145] But both the Castilian poems are of little worth.

We come, then, to one of more value, “La Dança General,” or the Dance of Death, consisting of seventy-nine regular octave stanzas, preceded by a few words of introduction in prose, that do not seem to be by the same author.[146] It is founded on the well-known fiction, so often illustrated both in painting and in verse during the Middle Ages, that all men, of all conditions, are summoned to the Dance of Death; a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which the different ranks of society, from the Pope to the young child, appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is striking and picturesque,—more so, perhaps, than in any other,—the ghastly nature of the subject being[p. 90] brought into a very lively contrast with the festive tone of the verses, which frequently recalls some of the better parts of those flowing stories that now and then occur in the “Mirror for Magistrates.”[147]

The first seven stanzas of the Spanish poem constitute a prologue, in which Death issues his summons partly in his own person, and partly in that of a preaching friar, ending thus:—

Death now proceeds, as in the old pictures and poems, to summon, first, the Pope, then cardinals, kings, bishops, and so on, down to day-laborers; all of whom are forced to join his mortal dance, though each first makes some remonstrance, that indicates surprise, horror, or reluctance. The call to youth and beauty is spirited:—

The fiction is, no doubt, a grim one; but for several centuries it had great success throughout Europe, and it is presented quite as much according to its true spirit in this old Castilian poem as it is anywhere.

A chronicling poem, found in the same manuscript volume with the last, but very unskilfully copied in a different handwriting, belongs probably to the same period. It is on the half-fabulous, half-historical achievements of Count Fernan Gonzalez, a hero of the earlier period of the Christian conflict with the Moors, who is to the North of Spain what the Cid became somewhat later to Aragon and Valencia. To him is attributed the rescue of much of Castile from Mohammedan control; and his achievements, so far as they are matter of historical rather than poetical record, fall between 934, when the battle of Osma was fought, and his death, which occurred in 970.

The poem in question is almost wholly devoted to his glory.[149] It begins with a notice of the invasion[p. 92] of Spain by the Goths, and comes down to the battle of Moret, in 967, when the manuscript suddenly breaks off, leaving untouched the adventures of its hero during the three remaining years of his life. It is essentially prosaic and monotonous in its style, yet not without something of that freshness and simplicity which are in themselves allied to all early poetry. Its language is rude, and its measure, which strives to be like that in Berceo and the poem of Apollonius, is often in stanzas of three lines instead of four, sometimes of five, and once at least of nine. Like Berceo’s poem on San Domingo de Silos, it opens with an invocation, and, what is singular, this invocation is in the very words used by Berceo: “In the name of the Father, who made all things,” etc. After this, the history, beginning in the days of the Goths, follows the popular traditions of the country, with few exceptions, the most remarkable of which occurs in the notice of the Moorish invasion. There the account is quite anomalous. No intimation is given of the story of the fair Cava, whose fate has furnished materials for so much poetry; but Count Julian is represented as having, without any private injury, volunteered his treason to the king of Morocco, and then carried it into effect by persuading Don Roderic, in full Cortes, to turn all the military weapons of the land into implements of agriculture, so that, when the Moorish invasion occurred, the country was overrun without difficulty.

The death of the Count of Toulouse, on the other[p. 93] hand, is described as it is in the “General Chronicle” of Alfonso the Wise; and so are the vision of Saint Millan, and the Count’s personal fights with a Moorish king and the King of Navarre. In truth, many passages in the poem so much resemble the corresponding passages in the Chronicle, that it seems certain one was used in the composition of the other; and as the poem has more the air of being an amplification of the Chronicle than the Chronicle has of being an abridgment of the poem, it seems probable that the prose account is, in this case, the older, and furnished the materials of the poem, which, from internal evidence, was prepared for public recitation.[150]

The meeting of Fernan Gonzalez with the King of Navarre at the battle of Valparé, which occurs in both, is thus described in the poem:—

This is certainly not poetry of a high order. Invention and dignified ornament are wanting in it; but still it is not without spirit, and, at any rate, it would be difficult to find in the whole poem a passage more worthy of regard.

In the National Library at Madrid is a poem of twelve hundred and twenty lines, composed in the same system of quaternion rhymes that we have already noticed as settled in the old Castilian literature, and with irregularities like those found in the whole class of poems to which it belongs. Its subject is Joseph, the son of Jacob; but there are two circumstances which distinguish it from all the other narrative poetry of the period, and render it curious and important. The first[p. 95] is, that, though composed in the Spanish language, it is written wholly in the Arabic character, and has, therefore, all the appearance of an Arabic manuscript; to which should be added the fact, that the metre and spelling are accommodated to the force of the Arabic vowels, so that, if the only manuscript of it now known to exist be not the original, it must still have been originally written in the same manner. The other singular circumstance is, that the story of the poem, which is the familiar one of Joseph and his brethren, is not told according to the original in our Hebrew Scriptures, but according to the shorter and less interesting version in the eleventh chapter of the Koran, with occasional variations and additions, some of which are due to the fanciful expounders of the Koran, while others seem to be of the author’s own invention. These two circumstances taken together leave no reasonable doubt that the writer of the poem was one of the many Moriscos who, remaining at the North after the body of the nation had been driven southward, had forgotten their native language and adopted that of their conquerors, though their religion and culture still continued to be Arabic.[152]

The manuscript of the “Poem of Joseph” is imperfect, both at the beginning and at the end. Not much of it, however, seems to be lost. It opens with the jealousy of the brothers of Joseph at his dream, and[p. 96] their solicitation of their father to let him go with them to the field.

When the brothers have consummated their treason, and sold Joseph to a caravan of Egyptian merchants, the story goes on much as it does in the Koran. The fair Zuleikha, or Zuleia, who answers to Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who figures largely in Mohammedan poetry, fills a space more ample than usual in the fancies of the present poem. Joseph, too, is a more considerable personage. He is adopted as the king’s son, and made a king in the land; and the dreams of the real king, the years of plenty and famine, the journeyings of the brothers to Egypt, their recognition by Joseph, and his message to Jacob, with the grief of the latter that Benjamin did not return, at which the manuscript breaks off, are much amplified, in the Oriental manner, and made to sound like passages[p. 97] from “Antar,” or the “Arabian Nights,” rather than from the touching and beautiful story to which we have been accustomed from our childhood.

Among the inventions of the author is a conversation which the wolf—who is brought in by his false brethren, as the animal that had killed Joseph—holds with Jacob.[154] Another is the Eastern fancy, that the measure by which Joseph distributed the corn, and which was made of gold and precious stones, would, when put to his ear, inform him whether the persons present were guilty of falsehood to him.[155] But the following incident, which, like that of Joseph’s parting in a spirit of tender forgiveness from his brethren[156] when they sold him, is added to the narrative of the Koran, will better illustrate the general tone of the poem, as well as the general powers of the poet.

On the first night after the outrage, Jusuf, as he is called in the poem, when travelling along in charge of a negro, passes a cemetery on a hill-side where his mother lies buried.

[p. 99]The age and origin of this remarkable poem can be settled only by internal evidence. From this it seems probable that it was written in Aragon, because it contains many words and phrases peculiar to the border country of the Provençals,[158] and that it dates from the latter half of the fourteenth century, because the four-fold rhyme is hardly found later in such verses, and because the rudeness of the language might indicate even an earlier period, if the tale had come from Castile. But in whatever period we may place it, it is a curious and interesting production. It has the directness and simplicity of the age to which it is attributed, mingled sometimes with a tenderness rarely found in ages so violent. Its pastoral air, too, and its preservation of Oriental manners, harmonize well with the Arabian feelings that prevail throughout the work; while in its spirit, and occasionally in its moral tone, it shows the confusion of the two religions which then prevailed in Spain, and that mixture of the Eastern and Western forms of civilization which afterwards gives somewhat of its coloring to Spanish poetry.[159]

The last poem belonging to these earliest specimens of Castilian literature is the “Rimado de Palacio,” on the duties of kings and nobles in the government of the state, with sketches of the manners and vices of the times, which, as the poem maintains, it is the duty of the great to rebuke and reform. It is chiefly written in the four-line stanzas of the period to which it belongs; and, beginning with a penitential confession of its author, goes on with a discussion of the ten command[p. 100]ments, the seven deadly sins, the seven works of mercy, and other religious subjects; after which it treats of the government of a state, of royal counsellors, of merchants, of men of learning, tax-gatherers, and others; and then ends, as it began, with exercises of devotion. Its author is Pedro Lopez de Ayala, the chronicler, of whom it is enough to say here, that he was among the most distinguished Spaniards of his time, that he held some of the highest offices of the kingdom under Peter the Cruel, Henry the Second, John the First, and Henry the Third, and that he died in 1407, at the age of seventy-five.[160]

The “Rimado de Palacio,” which may be translated “Court Rhymes,” was the production of different periods of Ayala’s life. Twice he marks the year in which he was writing, and from these dates we know that parts of it were certainly composed in 1398 and 1404, while yet another part seems to have been written during his imprisonment in England, which followed the defeat of Henry of Trastamara by the Duke of Lancaster, in 1367. On the whole, therefore, the Rimado de Palacio is to be placed near the conclusion of the fourteenth century, and, by its author’s sufferings in an English prison, reminds us both of the Duke of Orleans and of James the First of Scotland, who, at the same time and under similar circumstances, showed a poetical spirit not unlike that of the great Chancellor of Castile.

In some of its subdivisions, particularly in those that have a lyrical tendency, the Rimado resembles some of the lighter poems of the Archpriest of Hita. Others are composed with care and gravity, and express the[p. 101] solemn thoughts that filled him during his captivity. But, in general, it has a quiet, didactic tone, such as beseems its subject and its age; one, however, in which we occasionally find a satirical spirit that could not be suppressed, when the old statesman discusses the manners that offended him. Thus, speaking of the Letrados, or lawyers, he says:[161]—

Somewhat farther on, when he speaks of justice, whose administration had been so lamentably neglected in the civil wars during which he lived, he takes his graver tone, and speaks with a wisdom and gentleness we should hardly have expected:—

There is naturally a good deal in the Rimado de Palacio that savors of statesmanship; as, for instance, nearly all that relates to royal favorites, to war, and to the manners of the palace; but the general air of the poem, or rather of the different short poems that make it up, is fairly represented in the preceding passages. It is grave, gentle, and didactic, with now and then a few lines of a simple and earnest poetical feeling, which seem to belong quite as much to their age as to their author.

We have now gone over a considerable portion of the earliest Castilian literature, and quite completed an examination of that part of it which, at first epic, and afterwards didactic, in its tone, is found in long, irregular verses, with quadruple rhymes. It is all curious. Much of it is picturesque and interesting; and when, to what has been already examined, we shall have added the ballads and chronicles, the romances of chivalry and the drama, the whole will be found to constitute a broad basis, on which the genuine literary culture of Spain has rested ever since.

But, before we go farther, we must pause an instant, and notice some of the peculiarities of the period we have just considered. It extends from a little before the year 1200 to a little after the year 1400; and, both in[p. 103] its poetry and prose, is marked by features not to be mistaken. Some of these features were peculiar and national; others were not. Thus, in Provence, which was long united with Aragon, and exercised an influence throughout the whole Peninsula, the popular poetry, from its light-heartedness, was called the Gaya Sciencia, and was essentially unlike the grave and measured tone, heard over every other, on the Spanish side of the mountains; in the more northern parts of France, a garrulous, story-telling spirit was paramount; and in Italy, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had just appeared, unlike all that had preceded them, and all that was anywhere contemporary with their glory. On the other hand, however, several of the characteristics of the earliest Castilian literature, such as the chronicling and didactic spirit of most of its long poems, its protracted, irregular verses, and its redoubled rhymes, belong to the old Spanish bards in common with those of the countries we have just enumerated, where, at the same period, a poetical spirit was struggling for a place in the elements of their unsettled civilization.

But there are two traits of the earliest Spanish literature which are so separate and peculiar, that they must be noticed from the outset,—religious faith and knightly loyalty,—traits which are hardly less apparent in the “Partidas” of Alfonso the Wise, in the stories of Don John Manuel, in the loose wit of the Archpriest of Hita, and in the worldly wisdom of the Chancellor Ayala, than in the professedly devout poems of Berceo and in the professedly chivalrous chronicles of the Cid and Fernan Gonzalez. They are, therefore, from the earliest period, to be marked among the prominent features in Spanish literature.

Nor should we be surprised at this. The Spanish[p. 104] national character, as it has existed from its first development down to our own days, was mainly formed in the earlier part of that solemn contest which began the moment the Moors landed beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, and which cannot be said to have ended, until, in the time of Philip the Third, the last remnants of their unhappy race were cruelly driven from the shores which their fathers, nine centuries before, had so unjustifiably invaded. During this contest, and especially during the two or three dark centuries when the earliest Spanish poetry appeared, nothing but an invincible religious faith, and a no less invincible loyalty to their own princes, could have sustained the Christian Spaniards in their disheartening struggle against their infidel oppressors. It was, therefore, a stern necessity which made these two high qualities elements of the Spanish national character,—a character all whose energies were for ages devoted to the one grand object of their prayers as Christians and their hopes as patriots, the expulsion of their hated invaders.

But Castilian poetry was, from the first, to an extraordinary degree, an outpouring of the popular feeling and character. Tokens of religious submission and knightly fidelity, akin to each other in their birth and often relying on each other for strength in their trials, are, therefore, among its earliest attributes. We must not, then, be surprised, if we hereafter find, that submission to the Church and loyalty to the king constantly break through the mass of Spanish literature, and breathe their spirit from nearly every portion of it,—not, indeed, without such changes in the mode of expression as the changed condition of the country in successive ages demanded, but still always so strong in their original attributes as to show that they survive[p. 105] every convulsion of the state and never cease to move onward by their first impulse. In truth, while their very early development leaves no doubt that they are national, their nationality makes it all but inevitable that they should become permanent.

Everywhere in Europe, during the period we have just gone over, the courts of the different sovereigns were the principal centres of refinement and civilization. From accidental circumstances, this was peculiarly the case in Spain, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise, Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala, to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who, perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of Spain and at the North.[164]

But the literature produced or encouraged by these[p. 107] and other distinguished men, or by the higher clergy, who, with them, were the leaders of the state, was by no means the only literature that then existed within the barrier of the Pyrenees. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry was, to an extraordinary degree, abroad throughout the whole Peninsula, so far as it had been rescued from the Moors, animating and elevating all classes of its Christian population. Their own romantic history, whose great events had been singularly the results of popular impulse, and bore everywhere the bold impress of the popular character, had breathed into the Spanish people this spirit; a spirit which, beginning with Pelayo, had been sustained by the appearance, from time to time, of such heroic forms as Fernan Gonzalez, Bernardo del Carpio, and the Cid. At the point of time, therefore, at which we are now arrived, a more popular literature, growing directly out of the enthusiasm which had so long pervaded the whole mass of the Spanish people, began naturally to appear in the country, and to assert for itself a place, which, in some of its forms, it has successfully maintained ever since.

What, however, is thus essentially popular in its sources and character,—what, instead of going out from the more elevated classes of the nation, was neglected or discountenanced by them,—is, from its very wildness, little likely to take well-defined forms, or to be traced, from its origin, by the dates and other proofs which accompany such portions of the national literature as fell earlier under the protection of the higher orders of society. But though we may not be able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be distributed into four different classes,[p. 108] and will afford tolerable materials for a notice of its progress and condition under each.

These four classes are, first, the Ballads, or the poetry, both narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times; second, the Chronicles, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued with the popular feelings and character; third, the Romances of Chivalry, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the Drama, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France.

These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very nature, were opposed to the Provençal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be subsequently examined.

The Ballads.—We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote than that of[p. 109] the origin of the present Spanish language itself;[165] that such a tendency may, perhaps, be traced back to those indigenous bards of whom only a doubtful tradition remained in the time of Strabo;[166] and that it may be seen to emerge again in the Leonine and other rhymed Latin verses of the Gothic period,[167] or in that more ancient and obscure Basque poetry, of which the little that has been preserved to us is thought to breathe a spirit countenancing such conjectures.[168] But these and similar suggestions have so slight a foundation in recorded facts, that they can be little relied on. The one more frequently advanced is, that the Spanish ballads, such as we now have them, are imitations from the narrative and lyrical poetry of the Arabs, with which the whole southern part of Spain for ages resounded; and that, in fact, the very form in which Spanish ballads still appear is Arabic, and is to be traced to the Arabs in the East, at a period not only anterior to the invasion of Spain, but anterior to the age of the Prophet. This is the theory of Conde.[169]

[p. 110]But though, from the air of historical pretension with which it presents itself, there is something in this theory that bespeaks our favor, yet there are strong reasons that forbid our assent to it. For the earliest of the Spanish ballads, concerning which alone the question can arise, have not at all the characteristics of an imitated literature. Not a single Arabic original has been found for any one of them; nor, so far as we know, has a single passage of Arabic poetry, or a single phrase from any Arabic writer, entered directly into their composition. On the contrary, their freedom, their energy, their Christian tone and chivalrous loyalty, announce an originality and independence of character that prevent us from believing they could have been in any way materially indebted to the brilliant, but effeminate, literature of the nation to whose spirit every thing Spanish had, when they first appeared, been for ages implacably opposed. It seems, therefore, that they must, of their own nature, be as original as any poetry of modern times; containing, as they do, within themselves proofs that they are Spanish by their birth, natives of the soil, and stained with all its variations. For a long time, too, subsequent to that of their first appearance, they continued to exhibit the same elements of nationality; so that, until we approach the fall of Granada, we find in them neither a Moorish tone, nor Moorish subjects, nor Moorish adventures; nothing, in short, to justify us in supposing them to have been more indebted to the culture of the Arabs than was any other portion of the early Spanish literature.

[p. 111]Indeed, it does not seem reasonable to seek, in the East or elsewhere, a foreign origin for the mere form of the Spanish ballads. Their metrical structure is so simple, that we can readily believe it to have presented itself as soon as verse of any sort was felt to be a popular want. They consist merely of those eight-syllable lines which are composed with great facility in other languages as well as the Castilian, and which in the old ballads are the more easy, as the number of feet prescribed for each verse is little regarded.[170] Sometimes, though rarely, they are broken into stanzas of four lines, thence called redondillas or roundelays; and some of them have rhymes in the second and fourth lines of each stanza, or in the first and fourth, as in the similar stanzas of other modern languages. Their prominent peculiarity, however, and one which they have succeeded in impressing upon a very large portion of all the national poetry, is one which, being found to prevail[p. 112] in no other literature, may be claimed to have its origin in Spain, and becomes, therefore, an important circumstance in the history of Spanish poetical culture.[171]

The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the asonante,—an imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the consonante, or full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore, just what rhyme is in English.[172] Thus, feróz and furór, cása and abárca, infámia and contrária, are good asonantes in the first and third ballads of the Cid, just as mál and desleál, voláre and caçáre, are good consonantes in the old ballad of the Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The asonante, therefore, is something be[p. 113]tween our blank verse and our rhyme, and the art of using it is easily acquired in a language like the Castilian, abounding in vowels, and always giving to the same vowel the same value.[173] In the old ballads, it generally recurs with every other line; and, from the facility with which it can be found, the same asonante is frequently continued through the whole of the poem in which it occurs, whether the poem be longer or shorter. But even with this embarrassment, the structure of the ballad is so simple, that, while Sarmiento has undertaken to show how Spanish prose from the twelfth century downwards is often written unconsciously in eight-syllable asonantes,[174] Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century actually converted large portions of the old chronicles into the same ballad measure, with little change of their original phraseology;[175] two circumstances which, taken together, show indisputably that there can be no wide interval between the common structure of Spanish prose and this earliest form of Spanish verse. If to[p. 114] all this we add the national recitatives in which the ballads have been sung down to our own days, and the national dances by which they have been accompanied,[176] we shall probably be persuaded, not only that the form of the Spanish ballad is as purely national in its origin as the asonante, which is its prominent characteristic, but that this form is more happily fitted to its especial purposes, and more easy in its practical application to them, than any other into which popular poetry has fallen in ancient or modern times.[177]

A metrical form so natural and obvious became a favorite at once, and continued so. From the ballads it soon passed into other departments of the national poetry, especially the lyrical. At a later period, the great[p. 115] mass of the true Spanish drama came to rest upon it; and before the end of the seventeenth century more verses had probably been written in it than in all the other measures used by Spanish poets. Lope de Vega declared it to be fitted for all styles of composition, even the gravest; and his judgment was sanctioned in his own time, and has been justified in ours, by the application of this peculiar form of verse to long epic stories.[178] The eight-syllable asonante, therefore, may be considered as now known and used in every department of Spanish poetry; and since it has, from the first, been a chief element in that poetry, we may well believe it will continue such as long as what is most original in the national genius continues to be cultivated.

Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are, no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest times, their very name, Romances, may intimate; since it seems to imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the Romance language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other than the one immediately following the formation of the language itself. Popular poetry of some sort—and more probably ballad poetry than any other—was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as early as 1147.[179] A century later than this,[p. 116] but earlier than the prose of the “Fuero Juzgo,” Saint Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville in 1248, gave allotments or repartimientos to two poets who had been with him during the siege, Nicolas de los Romances, and Domingo Abad de los Romances, the first of whom continued for some time afterwards to inhabit the rescued city and exercise his vocation as a poet.[180] In the next reign, or between 1252 and 1280, such poets are again mentioned. A joglaressa, or female ballad-singer, is introduced into the poem of “Apollonius,” which is supposed to have been written soon after the year 1250;[181] and in the Code of Laws of Alfonso the Tenth, prepared about 1260, good knights are commanded to listen to no poetical tales of the ballad-singers except such as relate to feats of arms.[182] In the “General Chronicle,” also, compiled soon afterwards by the same prince, mention is made more than once of poetical gestes or tales; of “what the ballad-singers (juglares) sing in their chants, and tell in their tales”; and “of what we hear the ballad-singers tell in their[p. 117] chants”;—implying that the achievements of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, to which these phrases refer, were as familiar in the popular poetry used in the composition of this fine old chronicle as we know they have been since to the whole Spanish people through the very ballads we still possess.[183]

It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics, arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now, merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185]

One more fact will conclude what we know of their early history. It is, that ballads were found among the poetry of Don John Manuel, the nephew of Alfonso the Tenth, which Argote de Molina possessed, and intended to publish, but which is now lost.[186] This brings our slight knowledge of the whole subject down to the death of Don John in 1347. But from this period—the same with that of the Archpriest of Hita—we almost lose sight, not only of the ballads, but of all genuine Spanish poetry, whose strains seem hardly to have been heard during the horrors of the reign of Peter the Cruel, the contested succession of Henry of Trastamara,[p. 118] and the Portuguese wars of John the First. And even when its echoes come to us again in the weak reign of John the Second, which stretches down to the middle of the fifteenth century, it presents itself with few of the attributes of the old national character.[187] It is become of the court, courtly; and therefore, though the old and true-hearted ballads may have lost none of the popular favor, and were certainly preserved by the fidelity of popular tradition, we find no further distinct record of them until the end of this century and the beginning of the one that followed, when the mass of the people, whose feelings they embodied, rose to such a degree of consideration, that their peculiar poetry came into the place to which it was entitled, and which it has maintained ever since. This was in the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth.

But these few historical notices of ballad poetry are, except those which point to its early origin, too slight to be of much value. Indeed, until after the middle of the sixteenth century, it is difficult to find ballads written by known authors; so that, when we speak of the Old Spanish Ballads, we do not refer to the few whose period can be settled with some accuracy, but to the great mass found in the “Romanceros Generales” and elsewhere, whose authors and dates are alike unknown. This mass consists of above a thousand old poems, unequal in length and still more unequal in merit, composed between the period when verse first appeared in Spain and the time when such verse as that of the ballads was thought worthy to be written down; the whole bearing to the mass of the Spanish people, their[p. 119] feelings, passions, and character, the same relations that a single ballad bears to the character of the individual author who produced it.

For a long time, of course, these primitive national ballads existed only in the memories of the common people, from whom they sprang, and were preserved through successive ages and long traditions only by the interests and feelings that originally gave them birth. We cannot, therefore, reasonably hope that we now read any of them exactly as they were first composed and sung, or that there are many to which we can assign a definite age with any good degree of probability. No doubt, we may still possess some which, with little change in their simple thoughts and melody, were among the earliest breathings of that popular enthusiasm which, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, was carrying the Christian Spaniards onward to the emancipation of their country; ballads which were heard amidst the valleys of the Sierra Morena, or on the banks of the Turia and the Guadalquivir, with the first tones of the language that has since spread itself through the whole Peninsula. But the idle minstrel, who, in such troubled times, sought a precarious subsistence from cottage to cottage, or the thoughtless soldier, who, when the battle was over, sung its achievements to his guitar at the door of his tent, could not be expected to look beyond the passing moment; so that, if their unskilled verses were preserved at all, they must have been preserved by those who repeated them from memory, changing their tone and language with the changed feelings of the times and events that chanced to recall them. Whatever, then, belongs to this earliest period belongs, at the same time, to the unchronicled popular life and character of which it was a part; and[p. 120] although many of the ballads thus produced may have survived to our own day, many more, undoubtedly, lie buried with the poetical hearts that gave them birth.

This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down. Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were, of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed. But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special “Cancioneros”—which were collections of whatever verses the person who formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]—began to come in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked, that not a single ballad occurs in either of them.

The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and 1500, or[p. 121] who, like Lope de Sosa, appear so often in the collections of that age, that they may be fairly assumed to have belonged to it. Of the remainder, several seem much more ancient, and are, therefore, more curious and important.

The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the Provençal manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop, on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true lover, pass almost into a proverb.

The next is also a fragment, and relates, with great simplicity, an incident which belongs to the state of society that existed in Spain between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the two races were much mingled together and always in conflict.

[p. 123]The next is complete, and, from its early imitations and glosses, it must probably be quite ancient. It begins “Fonte frida, Fonte frida,” and is, perhaps, itself an imitation of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” another of the early and very graceful lyrical ballads which were always so popular.

The parallel ballad of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” is[p. 124] no less simple and characteristic; Rosa being the name of the lady-love.

[p. 125]Several of the other anonymous ballads in this little collection are not less curious and ancient, among which may be noted those beginning, “Decidme vos pensamiento,”—“Que por Mayo era por Mayo,”—and “Durandarte, Durandarte,”—together with parts of those beginning, “Triste estaba el caballero,” and “Amara yo una Señora.”[192] Most of the rest, and all whose authors are known, are of less value and belong to a later period.

The Cancionero of Castillo, where they appeared, was enlarged and altered in eight subsequent editions, the last of which was published in 1573; but in all of them this little collection of ballads, as originally printed in the first edition, remained by itself, unchanged, though in the additions of newer poetry a modern ballad is occasionally inserted.[193] It may, therefore, be doubted whether the General Cancioneros did much to attract attention to the ballad poetry of the country, especially when we bear in mind that they are almost entirely filled with the works of the conceited school of the period that produced them, and were probably little known except among the courtly classes, who placed small value on what was old and national in their poetical literature.[194]

But while the Cancioneros were still in course of publication, a separate effort was made in the right direction to preserve the old ballads, and proved successful.[p. 126] In 1550, Stevan G. de Nagera printed, at Saragossa, in two successive parts, what he called a “Silva de Romances,” the errors of which he partly excuses in his Preface, on the ground that the memories of those from whom he gathered the ballads he publishes were often imperfect. Here, then, is the oldest of the proper ballad-books; one obviously taken from the traditions of the country. It is, therefore, the most curious and important of them all. A considerable number of the short poems it contains must, however, be regarded only as fragments of popular ballads already lost; while, on the contrary, that on the Count Claros is the complete one, of which the Cancionero, published forty years earlier, had given only such small portions as its editor had been able to pick up; both striking facts, which show, in opposite ways, that the ballads here collected were obtained, as the Preface says they were, from the memories of the people.

As might be anticipated from such an origin, their character and tone are very various. Some are connected with the fictions of chivalry, and the story of Charlemagne; the most remarkable of which are those on Gayferos and Melisendra, on the Marquis of Mantua and on Count Irlos.[195] Others, like that of the cross miraculously made for Alfonso the Chaste, and that on the all of Valencia, belong to the early history of Spain,[196] and may well have been among those[p. 127] old Castilian ballads which Argote de Molina says were used in compiling the “General Chronicle.” And finally, we have that deep, domestic tragedy of Count Alarcos, which goes back to some period in the national history or traditions of which we have no other early record.[197] Few among them, even the shortest and least perfect, are without interest; as, for instance, the obviously old one in which Virgil figures as a person punished for seducing the affections of a king’s daughter.[198] As specimens, however, of the national tone which prevails in most of the collection, it is better to read such ballads as that upon the rout of Roderic on the eighth day of the battle that surrendered Spain to the Moors,[199] or that on Garci Perez de Vargas, taken, probably, from the “General Chronicle,” and founded on a fact of so much consequence as to be recorded by Mariana, and so popular as to be referred to for its notoriety by Cervantes.[200]

The genuine ballad-book thus published was so suc[p. 128]cessful, that, in less than five years, three editions or recensions of it appeared; that of 1555, commonly called the Cancionero of Antwerp, being the last, the amplest, and the best known. Other similar collections followed; particularly, one in nine parts, which, between 1593 and 1597, were separately published at Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid; a variety of sources, to which we no doubt owe, not only the preservation of so great a number of old ballads, but much of the richness and diversity we find in their subjects and tone;—all the great divisions of the kingdom, except the southwest, having sent in their long-accumulated wealth to fill this first great treasure-house of the national popular poetry. Like its humbler predecessor, it had great success. Large as it was originally, it was still further increased in four subsequent recensions, that appeared in the course of about fifteen years; the last being that of 1605-1614, in thirteen parts, constituting the great repository called the “Romancero General,” from which, and from the smaller and earlier ballad-books, we still draw nearly all that is curious and interesting in the old popular poetry of Spain. The whole number of ballads found in these several volumes is considerably over a thousand.[201]

But since the appearance of these collections, above two centuries ago, little has been done to increase our stock of old Spanish ballads. Small ballad-books on particular subjects, like those of the Twelve Peers and of the Cid, were, indeed, early selected from the larger ones, and have since been frequently called for by the general favor; but still it should be understood, that, from the middle and latter part of the seventeenth cen[p. 129]tury, the true popular ballads, drawn from the hearts and traditions of the common people, were thought little worthy of regard, and remained until lately floating about among the humbler classes that gave them birth. There, however, as if in their native homes, they have always been no less cherished and cultivated than they were at their first appearance, and there the old ballad-books themselves were oftenest found, until they were brought forth anew, to enjoy the favor of all, by Quintana, Depping, and Duran, who, in this, have but obeyed the feeling of the age in which we live.

The old collections of the sixteenth century, however, are still the only safe and sufficient sources in which to seek the true old ballads. That of 1593-1597 is particularly valuable, as we have already intimated, from the circumstance, that its materials were gathered so widely out of different parts of Spain; and if to the multitude of ballads it contains we add those found in the Cancionero of 1511, and in the ballad-book of 1550, we shall have the great body of the anonymous ancient Spanish ballads, more near to that popular tradition which was the common source of what is best in them than we can find it anywhere else.

But, from whatever source we may now draw them, we must give up, at once, all hope of arranging them in chronological order. They were originally printed in small volumes, or on separate sheets, as they chanced, from time to time, to be composed or found,—those that were taken from the memories of the blind ballad-singers in the streets by the side of those that were taken from the works of Lope de Vega and Góngora; and just as they were first collected, so they were afterwards heaped together in the General Romanceros, without affixing to them the names of their authors, or[p. 130] attempting to distinguish the ancient ballads from the recent, or even to group together such as belonged to the same subject. Indeed, they seem to have been published at all merely to furnish amusement to the less cultivated classes at home, or to solace the armies that were fighting the battles of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, in Italy, Germany, and Flanders; so that an orderly arrangement of any kind was a matter of small consequence. Nothing remains for us, therefore, but to consider them by their subjects; and for this purpose the most convenient distribution will be, first, into such as relate to fictions of chivalry, and especially to Charlemagne and his peers; next, such as regard Spanish history and traditions, with a few relating to classical antiquity; then such as are founded on Moorish adventures; and lastly, such as belong to the private life and manners of the Spaniards themselves. What do not fall naturally under one of these divisions are not, probably, ancient ballads; or, if they are such, are not of consequence enough to be separately noticed.

Ballads of Chivalry.—The first thing that strikes us, on opening any one of the old Spanish ballad-books, is the national air and spirit that prevail throughout them. But we look in vain for many of the fictions found in the popular poetry of other countries at the same period, some of which we might well expect to find here. Even that chivalry, which was so akin to the character and condition of Spain when the ballads appeared, fails to sweep by us with the train of its accustomed personages. Of Arthur and his Round Table the old ballads tell us nothing at all, nor of the “Mervaile of the Graal,” nor of Perceval, nor of the Palmerins, nor of many other well-known and famous heroes of the shadow land of chivalry. Later, indeed, some of these personages figure largely in the Spanish prose romances. But, for a long time, the history of Spain itself furnished materials enough for its more popular poetry; and therefore, though Amadis, Lancelot du Lac, Tristan de Leonnais, and their compeers, present themselves now and then in the ballads, it is not till after the prose romances, filled with their adventures,[p. 132] had made them familiar. Even then, they are somewhat awkwardly introduced, and never occupy any well-defined place; for the stories of the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio were much nearer to the hearts of the Spanish people, and had left little space for such comparatively cold and unsubstantial fancies.

The only considerable exception to this remark is to be found in the stories connected with Charlemagne and his peers. That great sovereign—who, in the darkest period of Europe since the days of the Roman republic, roused up the nations, not only by the glory of his military conquests, but by the magnificence of his civil institutions—crossed the Pyrenees in the latter part of the eighth century, at the solicitation of one of his Moorish allies, and ravaged the Spanish marches as far as the Ebro, taking Pamplona and Saragossa.[202] The impression he made there seems to have been the same he made everywhere; and from this time the splendor of his great name and deeds was connected in the minds of the Spanish people with wild imaginations of their own achievements, and gave birth to that series of fictions which is embraced in the story of Bernardo del Carpio, and ends with the great rout, when, according to the persuasions of the national vanity,

These picturesque adventures, chiefly without countenance from history, in which the French paladins appear associated with fabulous Spanish heroes, such as Montesinos and Durandarte,[203] and once with the noble Moor[p. 133] Calaynos, are represented with some minuteness in the old Spanish ballads. The largest number, including the longest and the best, are to be found in the ballad-book of 1550-1555, to which may be added a few from that of 1593-1597, making together somewhat more than fifty, of which only twenty occur in the collection expressly devoted to the Twelve Peers, and first published in 1608. Some of them are evidently very old; as, for instance, that on the Conde d’ Irlos, that on the Marquis of Mantua, two on Claros of Montalban, and both the fragments on Durandarte, the last of which can be traced back to the Cancionero of 1511.[204]

The ballads of this class are occasionally quite long, and approach the character of the old French and English metrical romances; that of the Conde d’ Irlos extending to about thirteen hundred lines. The longer ballads, too, are generally the best; and those, through large portions of which the same asonante, and sometimes, even, the same consonante or full rhyme, is continued to the end, have a solemn harmony in their protracted cadences, that produces an effect on the feelings like the chanting of a rich and well-sustained recitative.

Taken as a body, they have a grave tone, combined with the spirit of a picturesque narrative, and entirely different from the extravagant and romantic air afterwards given to the same class of fictions in Italy, and even from that of the few Spanish ballads which, at a[p. 134] later period, were constructed out of the imaginative and fantastic materials found in the poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. But in all ages and in all forms, they have been favorites with the Spanish people. They were alluded to as such above five hundred years ago, in the oldest of the national chronicles; and when, at the end of the last century, Sarmiento notices the ballad-book of the Twelve Peers, he speaks of it as one which the peasantry and the children of Spain still knew by heart.[205]

Historical Ballads.—The most important and the largest division of the Spanish ballads is, however, the historical. Nor is this surprising. The early heroes in Spanish history grew so directly out of the popular character, and the early achievements of the national arms so nearly touched the personal condition of every Christian in the Peninsula, that they naturally became the first and chief subjects of a poetry which has always, to a remarkable degree, been the breathing of the popular feelings and passions. It would be easy, therefore, to collect a series of ballads,—few in number as far as respects the Gothic and Roman periods, but ample from the time of Roderic and the Moorish conquest of Spain down to the moment when its restoration was gloriously fulfilled in the fall of Granada,—a series which would constitute such a poetical illustration of Spanish history as can be brought in aid of the history of no other country. But, for our present purpose, it is enough to select a few sketches from these remarkable ballads devoted to the greater heroes,—personages half-shadowy, half-historical,—who, between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the twelfth century, occupy a wide space in all the old traditions, and[p. 135] serve alike to illustrate the early popular character in Spain, and the poetry to which that character gave birth.

The first of these, in the order of time, is Bernardo del Carpio, concerning whom we have about forty ballads, which, with the accounts in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, have constituted the foundations for many a drama and tale, and at least three long heroic poems. According to these early narratives, Bernardo flourished about the year 800, and was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de Saldaña and the sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was so much offended, that he kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment, and sent the Infanta to a convent; educating Bernardo as his own son, and keeping him ignorant of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo, ending with the victory of Roncesvalles,—his efforts to procure the release of his father, when he learns who his father is,—the falsehood of the king, who promises repeatedly to give up the Count de Saldaña and as often breaks his word,—with the despair of Bernardo, and his final rebellion, after the Count’s death in prison,—are all as fully represented in the ballads as they are in the chronicles, and constitute some of the most romantic and interesting portions of each.[206]

Of the ballads which contain this story, and which generally suppose the whole of it to have passed in one reign, though the Chronicle spreads it over three, none, perhaps, is finer than the one in which the Count de Saldaña, in his solitary prison, complains of his son, who, he supposes, must know his descent, and of his wife, the Infanta, who, he presumes, must be in league[p. 136] with her royal brother. After a description of the castle in which he is confined, the Count says:—

[p. 137]The old Spanish ballads have often a resemblance to each other in their tone and phraseology; and occasionally several seem imitated from some common original. Thus, in another, on this same subject of the Count de Saldaña’s imprisonment, we find the length of time he had suffered, and the idea of his relationship and blood, enforced in the following words, not of the Count himself, but of Bernardo, when addressing the king:—

In reading the ballads relating to Bernardo del Carpio, it is impossible not to be often struck with their resemblance to the corresponding passages of the “General Chronicle.” Some of them are undoubtedly copied from it; others possibly may have been, in more ancient forms, among the poetical materials out of which we know that Chronicle was in part composed.[209] The best[p. 138] are those which are least strictly conformed to the history itself; but all, taken together, form a curious and interesting series, that serves strikingly to exhibit the manners and feelings of the people in the wild times of which they speak, as well as in the later periods when many of them must have been written.

The next series is that on Fernan Gonzalez, a popular chieftain, whom we have already mentioned, when noticing his metrical chronicle; and one who, in the middle of the tenth century, recovered Castile anew from the Moors, and became its first sovereign Count. The number of ballads relating to him is not large; probably not twenty. The most poetical are those which describe his being twice rescued from prison by his courageous wife, and those which relate his contest with King Sancho, where he displayed all the turbulence and cunning of a robber baron, in the Middle Ages. Nearly all their facts may be found in the Third Part of the “General Chronicle”; and though only a few of the ballads themselves appear to be derived from it as distinctly as some of those on Bernardo del Carpio, still two or three are evidently indebted to[p. 139] that Chronicle for their materials and phraseology, while yet others may possibly, in some ruder shape, have preceded it, and contributed to its composition.[210]

The ballads which naturally form the next group are those on the Seven Lords of Lara, who lived in the time of Garcia Ferrandez, the son of Fernan Gonzalez. Some of them are beautiful, and the story they contain is one of the most romantic in Spanish history. The seven Lords of Lara, in consequence of a family quarrel, are betrayed by their uncle into the hands of the Moors, and put to death; while their father, by the basest treason, is confined in a Moorish prison, where, by a noble Moorish lady, he has an eighth son, the famous Mudarra, who at last avenges all the wrongs of his race. On this story there are about thirty ballads; some very old, and exhibiting either inventions or traditions not elsewhere recorded, while others seem to have come directly from the “General Chronicle.” The following is a part of one of the last, and a good specimen of the whole:—[211]

But, as might be anticipated, the Cid was seized upon with the first formation of the language as the subject of popular poetry, and has been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of Spanish history or fable.[212] They were first collected in a separate ballad-book as early as 1612, and have continued[p. 141] to be published and republished at home and abroad down to our own times.[213] It would be easy to find a hundred and sixty; some of them very ancient; some poetical; many prosaic and poor. The chronicles seem to have been little resorted to in their composition.[214] The circumstances of the Cid’s history, whether true or fictitious, were too well settled in the popular faith, and too familiar to all Christian Spaniards, to render the use of such materials necessary. No portion of the old ballads, therefore, is more strongly marked with the spirit of their age and country; and none constitutes a series so complete. They give us apparently the whole of the Cid’s history, which we find nowhere else entire; neither in the ancient poem, which does not pretend to be a life of him; nor in the prose chronicle, which does not begin so early in his story; nor in the Latin document, which is too brief and condensed. At the very outset, we have the following minute and living picture of the mortification and sufferings of Diego Laynez, the Cid’s father, in consequence of the blow he had received from Count Lozano, which his age rendered it impossible for him to avenge:—

In this state of his father’s feelings, Roderic, a mere stripling, determines to avenge the insult by challenging Count Lozano, then the most dangerous knight and the first nobleman in the kingdom. The result is the death of his proud and injurious enemy; but the daughter of the fallen Count, the fair Ximena, demands vengeance of the king, and the whole is adjusted, after the rude fashion of those times, by a marriage between the parties, which necessarily ends the feud.

The ballads, thus far, relate only to the early youth of the Cid in the reign of Ferdinand the Great, and constitute a separate series, that gave to Guillen de Castro, and after him to Corneille, the best materials[p. 143] for their respective tragedies on this part of the Cid’s story. But at the death of Ferdinand, his kingdom was divided, according to his will, among his four children; and then we have another series of ballads on the part taken by the Cid in the wars almost necessarily produced by such a division, and in the siege of Zamora, which fell to the share of Queen Urraca, and was assailed by her brother, Sancho the Brave. In one of these ballads, the Cid, sent by Sancho to summon the city, is thus reproached and taunted by Urraca, who is represented as standing on one of its towers, and answering him as he addressed her from below:—

[p. 144]Alfonso the Sixth succeeded on the death of Sancho, who perished miserably by treason before the walls of Zamora; but the Cid quarrelled with his new master, and was exiled. At this moment begins the old poem already mentioned; but even here and afterwards the ballads form a more continuous account of his life, carrying us, often with great minuteness of detail, through his conquest of Valencia, his restoration to the king’s favor, his triumph over the Counts of Carrion, his old age, death, and burial, and giving us, when taken together, what Müller the historian and Herder the philosopher consider, in its main circumstances, a trustworthy history, but what can hardly be more than a poetical version of traditions current at the different times when its different portions were composed.

Indeed, in the earlier part of the period when historical ballads were written, their subjects seem rather to have been chosen among the traditional heroes of the country, than among the known and ascertained events in its annals. Much fiction, of course, was mingled with whatever related to such personages by the willing credulity of patriotism, and portions of the ballads about them are incredible to any modern faith; so that we can hardly fail to agree with the good sense[p. 145] of the canon in Don Quixote, when he says, “There is no doubt there was such a man as the Cid and such a man as Bernardo del Carpio, but much doubt whether they achieved what is imputed to them”;[217] while, at the same time, we must admit there is no less truth in the shrewd intimation of Sancho, that, after all, the old ballads are too old to tell lies. At least, some of them are so.

At a later period, all sorts of subjects were introduced into the ballads; ancient subjects as well as modern, sacred as well as profane. Even the Greek and Roman fables were laid under contribution, as if they were historically true; but more ballads are connected with Spanish history than with any other, and, in general, they are better. The most striking peculiarity of the whole mass is, perhaps, to be found in the degree in which it expresses the national character. Loyalty is constantly prominent. The Lord of Buitrago sacrifices his own life to save that of his sovereign.[218] The Cid sends rich spoils from his conquests in Valencia to the ungrateful king who had driven him thither as an exile.[219] Bernardo del Carpio bows in submission to the uncle who basely and brutally outrages[p. 146] his filial affections;[220] and when, driven to despair, he rebels, the ballads and the chronicles absolutely forsake him. In short, this and the other strong traits of the national character are constantly appearing in the old historical ballads, and constitute a chief part of the peculiar charm that invests them.

Ballads on Moorish Subjects.—The Moorish ballads form a brilliant and large class by themselves, but none of them are as old as the earliest historical ballads. Indeed, their very subjects intimate their later origin. Few can be found alluding to known events or personages that occur before the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and even in these few the proofs of a more recent and Christian character are abundant. The truth appears to be, that, after the final overthrow of the Moorish power, when the conquerors for the first time came into full possession of whatever was most luxurious in the civilization of their enemies, the tempting subjects their situation suggested were at once seized upon by the spirit of their popular poetry. The sweet South, with its picturesque, though effeminate, refinement; the foreign, yet not absolutely stranger, manners of its people; its magnificent and fantastic architecture; the stories of the warlike achievements and disasters at Baza, at Ronda, and at Alhama, with the romantic adventures and fierce feuds of the Zegris and Abencerrages, the Gomeles and the Aliatares;—all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada, its rich plain and snow[p. 147]capped mountains, that fairy land which the elder and sterner ballad poetry of the North had failed to create. From this time, therefore, we find a new class of subjects, such as the loves of Gazul and Abindarraez, with games and tournaments in the Bivarrambla, and tales of Arabian nights in the Generalife; in short, whatever was matter of Moorish tradition or manners, or might by the popular imagination be deemed such, was wrought into Spanish ballad poetry, until the very excess became ridiculous, and the ballads themselves laughed at one another for deserting their own proper subjects, and becoming, as it were, renegades to nationality and patriotism.[221]

The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century that elapsed after the fall of Granada; the same in which all classes of the ballads were first written down and printed. The early collections give full proof of this. Those of 1511 and 1550 contain several Moorish ballads, and that of 1593 contains above two hundred. But though their subjects involve known occurrences, they are hardly ever really historical; as, for instance, the well-known ballad on the tournament in Toledo, which is supposed to have happened before the year 1085, while its names belong to the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and the ballad of King Belchite, which, like many others, has[p. 148] a subject purely imaginary. Indeed, this romantic character is the prevalent one in the ballads of this class, and gives them much of their interest; a fact well illustrated by that beginning “The star of Venus rises now,” which is one of the best and most consistent in the “Romancero General,” and yet, by its allusions to Venus and to Rodamonte, and its mistake in supposing a Moor to have been Alcayde of Seville, a century after Seville had become a Christian city, shows that there was, in its composition, no serious thought of any thing but poetical effect.[222]

These, with some of the ballads on the famous Gazul, occur in the popular story of the “Wars of Granada,” where they are treated as if contemporary with the facts they record, and are beautiful specimens of the poetry which the Spanish imagination delighted to connect with that most glorious event in the national history.[223] Others can be found in a similar tone on the stories, partly or wholly fabulous, of Muça, Xarifé, Lisaro, and Tarfé; while yet others, in greater number, belong to the treasons and rivalries, the plots and adventures, of the more famous Zegris and Abencerrages, which, as far as they are founded in fact, show how internal dissensions, no less than external disasters, prepared the way for the final overthrow of the Moorish empire. Some of them were probably written in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; many more in the time of Charles the Fifth; the most brilliant, but not the best, somewhat later.

Ballads on Manners and Private Life.—But the bal[p. 149]lad poetry of Spain was not confined to heroic subjects drawn from romance or history, or to subjects depending on Moorish traditions and manners; and therefore, though these are the three largest classes into which it is divided, there is yet a fourth, which may be called miscellaneous, and which is of no little moment. For, in truth, the poetical feelings even of the lower portions of the Spanish people were spread out over more subjects than we should anticipate; and their genius, which, from the first, had a charter as free as the wind, has thus left us a vast number of records, that prove at least the variety of the popular perceptions, and the quickness and tenderness of the popular sensibility. Many of the miscellaneous ballads thus produced—perhaps most of them—are effusions of love; but many are pastoral, many are burlesque, satirical, and picaresque; many are called Letrillas, but have nothing epistolary about them except the name; many are lyrical in their tone, if not in their form; and many are descriptive of the manners and amusements of the people at large. But one characteristic runs through the whole of them. They are true representations of Spanish life. Some of those first printed have already been referred to; but there is a considerable class marked by an attractive simplicity of thought and expression, united to a sort of mischievous shrewdness, that should be particularly noticed. No such popular poetry exists in any other language. A number of these ballads occur in the peculiarly valuable Sixth Part of the Romancero, that appeared in 1594, and was gathered by Pedro Flores, as he himself tells us, in part least, from the memories of the common people.[224][p. 150] They remind us not unfrequently of the lighter poetry of the Archpriest of Hita in the middle of the fourteenth century, and may, probably, be traced back in their tone and spirit to a yet earlier period. Indeed, they are quite a prominent and charming part of all the earliest Romanceros, not a few of them being as simple, and yet as shrewd and humorous, as the following, in which an elder sister is represented lecturing a younger one, on first noticing in her the symptoms of love:—

A single specimen like this, however, can give no idea of the great variety in the class of ballads to which it belongs, nor of their poetical beauty. To feel their true value and power, we must read large numbers of[p. 153] them, and read them, too, in their native language; for there is a winning freshness in the originals, as they lie imbedded in the old Romanceros, that escapes in translations, however free or however strict;—a remark that should be extended to the historical as well as the miscellaneous portions of that great mass of popular poetry which is found in the early ballad-books, and which, though it is all nearly three centuries old, and some of it older, has been much less carefully considered than it deserves to be.

Yet there are certainly few portions of the literature of any country that will better reward a spirit of adventurous inquiry than these ancient Spanish ballads, in all their forms. In many respects, they are unlike the earliest narrative poetry of any other part of the world; in some, they are better. The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal coarseness and violence prevailed, which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness, but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty; a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons or the gross maraudings of a border warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio; or if we compare the deep tragedy of Edom o’ Gordon with that of the Conde Alarcos; or what would be better than either,[p. 154] if we would sit down to the “Romancero General,” with its poetical confusion of Moorish splendors and Christian loyalty, just when we have come fresh from Percy’s “Reliques,” or Scott’s “Minstrelsy.”[226]

But, besides what the Spanish ballads possess different from the popular poetry of the rest of Europe, they exhibit, as no others exhibit it, that nationality which is the truest element of such poetry everywhere. They seem, indeed, as we read them, to be often little more than the great traits of the old Spanish character brought out by the force of poetical enthusiasm; so that, if their nationality were taken away from them, they would cease to exist. This, in its turn, has preserved them down to the present day, and will continue to preserve them hereafter. The great Castilian heroes, such as the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith and poetry of the common people of Spain; and are still, in some degree, honored as they were honored in the age of the Great Captain, or, farther back, in that of Saint Ferdinand. The stories of Guarinos, too, and of the defeat of Roncesvalles are still sung by the wayfaring muleteers, as they were when Don Quixote heard them in his journeying to Toboso; and the showmen still rehearse the adventures of Gayferos and Melisendra, in the streets of Seville, as they did at the solitary inn of Montesinos, when he encountered them there. In short, the ancient Spanish ballads are so truly national in their spirit, that they became at once identified with the popular char[p. 155]acter that had produced them, and with that same character will go onward, we doubt not, till the Spanish people shall cease to have a separate and independent existence.[227]

Chronicles.—Ballad poetry constituted, no doubt, originally, the amusement and solace of the whole mass of the Spanish people; for, during a long period of their early history, there was little division of the nation into strongly marked classes, little distinction in manners, little variety or progress in refinement. The wars going on with unappeased violence from century to century, though by their character not without an elevating and poetical influence upon all, yet oppressed and crushed all by the sufferings that followed in their train, and kept the tone and condition of the body of the Spanish nation more nearly at the same level than the national character was probably ever kept, for so long a period, in any other Christian country. But as the great Moorish contest was transferred to the South, Leon, Castile, and indeed the whole North, became comparatively quiet and settled. Wealth began to be accumulated in the monasteries, and leisure followed. The castles, instead of being constantly in a state of anxious preparation against the common enemy, were converted into abodes of a crude, but free, hospitality; and those distinctions of society that come from differ[p. 157]ent degrees of power, wealth, and cultivation grew more and more apparent. From this time, then, the ballads, though not really neglected, began to subside into the lower portions of society, where for so long a period they remained; while the more advanced and educated sought, or created for themselves, forms of literature better suited, in some respects, to their altered condition, and marking at once more leisure and knowledge, and a more settled system of social life.

The oldest of these forms was that of the Spanish prose chronicles, which, besides being called for by the changed condition of things, were the proper successors of the monkish Latin chronicles and legends, long before known in the country, and were of a nature to win favor with men who themselves were every day engaged in achievements such as these very stories celebrated, and who consequently looked on the whole class of works to which they belonged as the pledge and promise of their own future fame. The chronicles were, therefore, not only the natural offspring of the times, but were fostered and favored by the men who controlled the times.[228]

I. General Chronicles and Royal Chronicles.—Under such circumstances, we might well anticipate that the proper style of the Spanish chronicle would first appear at the court, or in the neighbourhood of the throne; because at court were to be found the spirit and the materials most likely to give it birth. But it is still to be considered remarkable, that the first of the[p. 158] chronicles in the order of time, and the first in merit, comes directly from a royal hand. It is called in the printed copies “The Chronicle of Spain,” or “The General Chronicle of Spain,” and is, no doubt, the same work earlier cited in manuscript as “The History of Spain.”[229] In its characteristic Prologue, after solemnly giving the reasons why such a work ought to be compiled, we are told: “And therefore we, Don Alfonso, ... son of the very noble King Don Fernando, and of the Queen Doña Beatrice, have ordered to be collected as many books as we could have of histories that relate any thing of the deeds done aforetime in Spain, and have taken the chronicle of the Archbishop Don Rodrigo, ... and of Master Lucas, Bishop of Tuy, ... and composed this book”; words which give us the declaration of Alfonso the Wise, that he himself composed this Chronicle,[230] and which thus carry it back[p. 159] certainly to a period before the year 1284, in which he died. From internal evidence, however, it is probable that it was written in the early part of his reign, which began in 1252; and that he was assisted in its composition by persons familiar with Arabic literature and with whatever there was of other refinement in the age.[231]

It is divided, perhaps not by its author, into four parts: the first opening with the creation of the world, and giving a large space to Roman history, but hastening over every thing else till it comes to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths; the second comprehending the Gothic empire of the country and its conquest by the Moors; the third coming down to the reign of Ferdinand the Great, early in the eleventh century; and the fourth closing in 1252, with the death of Saint Ferdinand, the conqueror of Andalusia and father of Alfonso himself.

Its earliest portions are the least interesting. They contain such notions and accounts of antiquity, and especially of the Roman empire, as were current among the common writers of the Middle Ages, though occasionally, as in the case of Dido,—whose memory has[p. 160] always been defended by the more popular chroniclers and poets of Spain against the imputations of Virgil,[232]—we have a glimpse of feelings and opinions which may be considered more national. Such passages naturally become more frequent in the Second Part, which relates to the empire of the Visigoths in Spain; though here, as the ecclesiastical writers are almost the only authority that could be resorted to, their peculiar tone prevails too much. But the Third Part is quite free and genial in its spirit, and truly Spanish; setting forth the rich old traditions of the country about the first outbreak of Pelayo from the mountains;[233] the stories of Bernardo del Carpio,[234] Fernan Gonzalez,[235] and the Seven Children of Lara;[236] with spirited sketches of Charlemagne,[237] and accounts of miracles like those of the cross made by angels for Alfonso the Chaste,[238] and of Santiago fighting against the infidels in the glorious battles of Clavijo and Hazinas.[239]

The last part, though less carefully compiled and elaborated, is in the same general tone. It opens with the well-known history of the Cid,[240] to whom, as to the great hero of the popular admiration, a disproportion[p. 161]ate space is assigned. After this, being already within a hundred and fifty years of the writer’s own time, we, of course, approach the confines of more sober history, and finally, in the reign of his father, Saint Ferdinand, fairly settle upon its sure and solid foundations.

The striking characteristic of this remarkable Chronicle is, that, especially in its Third Part, and in a portion of the Fourth, it is a translation, if we may so speak, of the old poetical fables and traditions of the country into a simple, but picturesque, prose, intended to be sober history. What were the sources of those purely national passages, which we should be most curious to trace back and authenticate, we can never know. Sometimes, as in the case of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, the ballads and gestes of the olden time[241] are distinctly appealed to. Sometimes, as in the case of the Children of Lara, an early Latin chronicle, or perhaps some poetical legend, of which all trace is now lost, may have constituted the foundations of the narrative.[242] And once at least, if not oftener, an entire and separate history, that of the Cid, is inserted without being well fitted into its place. Throughout all these portions, the poetical character predominates much oftener than it does in the rest; for while, in the earlier parts, what had been rescued of ancient history is given with a grave sort of exactness, that renders it dry and uninteresting, we have in the concluding portion a simple narrative, where, as in the account of the death of[p. 162] Saint Ferdinand, we feel persuaded that we read touching details sketched by a faithful and affectionate eyewitness.

Among the more poetical passages are two at the end of the Second Part, which are introduced, as contrasts to each other, with a degree of art and skill rare in these simple-hearted old chronicles. They relate to what was long called “the Ruin of Spain,”[243] or its conquest by the Moors, and consist of two picturesque presentments of its condition before and after that event, which the Spaniards long seemed to regard as dividing the history of the world into its two great constituent portions. In the first of these passages, entitled “Of the Good Things of Spain,”[244] after a few general remarks, the fervent old chronicler goes on: “For this Spain, whereof we have spoken, is like the very Paradise of God; for it is watered by five noble rivers, which are the Duero, and the Ebro, and the Tagus, and the Guadalquivir, and the Guadiana; and each of these hath, between itself and the others, lofty mountains and sierras;[245] and their valleys and plains are great and broad, and, through the richness of the soil and the watering of the rivers, they bear many fruits and are full of abundance. And Spain, above all other things, is skilled in war, feared and very bold in battle; light of heart, loyal to her lord, diligent in learning, courtly in speech, accomplished in all good things. Nor is there land in the world that may be accounted like her in abundance, nor may any equal her in strength, and few there be in[p. 163] the world so great. And above all doth Spain abound in magnificence, and more than all is she famous for her loyalty. O Spain! there is no man can tell of all thy worthiness!”

But now reverse the medal, and look on the other picture, entitled “The Mourning of Spain,” when, as the Chronicle tells us, after the victory of the Moors, “all the land remained empty of people, bathed in tears, a byword, nourishing strangers, deceived of her own people, widowed and deserted of her sons, confounded among barbarians, worn out with weeping and wounds, decayed in strength, weakened, uncomforted, abandoned of all her own.... Forgotten are her songs, and her very language is become foreign and her words strange.”

The more attractive passages of the Chronicle, however, are its long narratives. They are also the most poetical;—so poetical, indeed, that large portions of them, with little change in their phraseology, have since been converted into popular ballads;[246] while other portions, hardly less considerable, are probably derived from similar, but older, popular poetry, now either wholly lost, or so much changed by successive oral traditions, that it has ceased to show its relationship with the chronicling stories to which it originally gave birth.[p. 164] Among these narrative passages, one of the most happy is the history of Bernardo del Carpio, for parts of which the Chronicle appeals to ballads more ancient than itself, while to the whole, as it stands in the Chronicle, ballads more modern have, in their turn, been much indebted. It is founded on the idea of a poetical contest between Bernardo’s loyalty to his king, on the one side, and his attachment to his imprisoned father, on the other. For he was, as we have already learned from the old ballads and traditions, the son of a secret marriage between the king’s sister and the Count de Sandias de Saldaña, which had so offended the king, that he kept the Count in prison from the time he discovered it, and concealed whatever related to Bernardo’s birth; educating him meantime as his own son. When, however, Bernardo grew up, he became the great hero of his age, rendering important military services to his king and country. “But yet,” according to the admirably strong expression of the old Chronicle,[247] “when he knew all this, and that it was his own father that was in prison, it grieved him to the heart, and his blood turned in his body, and he went to his house, making the greatest moan that could be, and put on raiment of mourning, and went to the King, Don Alfonso. And the king, when he saw it, said to him, ‘Bernardo, do you desire my death?’ for Bernardo until that time had held himself to be the son of the King, Don Alfonso. And Bernardo said, ‘Sire, I do not wish for your death, but I have great grief, because my father, the Count of Sandias, lieth in prison, and I beseech you of your grace that you would command him to be given up to me.’ And the King, Don Alfonso, when he heard this, said to him, ‘Bernardo, begone from before me, and never[p. 165] be so bold as to speak to me again of this matter; for I swear to you, that, in all the days that I shall live, you shall never see your father out of his prison.’ And Bernardo said to him, ‘Sire, you are my king, and may do whatsoever you shall hold for good, but I pray God that he will put it into your heart to take him thence; nevertheless, I, Sire, shall in no wise cease to serve you in all that I may.’”

Notwithstanding this refusal, however, when great services are wanted from Bernardo in troubled times, his father’s liberty is promised him as a reward; but these promises are constantly broken, until he renounces his allegiance, and makes war upon his false uncle, and on one of his successors, Alfonso the Great.[248] At last, Bernardo succeeds in reducing the royal authority so low, that the king again, and more solemnly, promises to give up his prisoner, if Bernardo, on his part, will give up the great castle of Carpio, which had rendered him really formidable. The faithful son does not hesitate, and the king sends for the Count, but finds him dead, probably by the royal procurement. The Count’s death, however, does not prevent the base monarch from determining to keep the castle, which was the stipulated price of his prisoner’s release. He therefore directs the dead body to be brought, as if alive, on horseback, and, in company with Bernardo, who has no suspicion of the cruel mockery, goes out to meet it.

“And when they were all about to meet,” the old Chronicle goes on, “Bernardo began to shout aloud with great joy, and to say, ‘Cometh indeed the Count Don Sandias de Saldaña!’ And the King, Don Alfonso, said to him, ‘Behold where he cometh! Go, therefore, and[p. 166] salute him whom you have sought so much to behold.’ And Bernardo went towards him, and kissed his hand; but when he found it cold, and saw that all his color was black, he knew that he was dead; and with the grief he had from it, he began to cry aloud and to make great moan, saying, ‘Alas! Count Sandias, in an evil hour was I born, for never was man so lost as I am now for you; for, since you are dead, and my castle is gone, I know no counsel by which I may do aught.’ And some say in their ballads (cantares de gesta) that the king then said, ‘Bernardo, now is not the time for much talking, and therefore I bid you go straightway forth from my land,’” etc.

This constitutes one of the most interesting parts of the old General Chronicle: but the whole is curious, and much of it is rich and picturesque. It is written with more freedom and less exactness of style than some of the other works of its noble author; and in the last division shows a want of finish, which in the first two parts is not perceptible, and in the third only slightly so. But everywhere it breathes the spirit of its age, and, when taken together, is not only the most interesting of the Spanish chronicles, but the most interesting of all that, in any country, mark the transition from its poetical and romantic traditions to the grave exactness of historical truth.

The next of the early chronicles that claims our notice is the one called, with primitive simplicity, “The Chronicle of the Cid”; in some respects as important as the one we have just examined; in others, less so. The first thing that strikes us, when we open it, is, that, although it has much of the appearance and arrangement of a separate and independent work, it is substantially the same with the two hundred and eighty pages which[p. 167] constitute the first portion of the Fourth Book of the General Chronicle of Spain; so that one must certainly have been taken from the other, or both from some common source. The latter is, perhaps, the more obvious conclusion, and has sometimes been adopted;[249] but, on a careful examination, it will probably be found that the Chronicle of the Cid is rather taken from that of Alfonso the Wise, than from any materials common to both and older than both. For, in the first place, each, in the same words, often claims to be a translation from the same authors; yet, as the language of both is frequently identical for pages together, this cannot be true, unless one copied from the other. And, secondly, the Chronicle of the Cid, in some instances, corrects the errors of the General Chronicle, and in one instance at least makes an addition to it of a date later than that of the Chronicle itself.[250] But, passing over the details of[p. 168] this obscure, but not unimportant, point, it is sufficient for our present purpose to say, that the Chronicle of the Cid is the same in substance with the history of the Cid in the General Chronicle, and was probably taken from it.

When it was arranged in its present form, or by whom this was done, we have no notice.[251] But it was[p. 169] found, as we now read it, at Cardenas, in the very monastery where the Cid lies buried, and was seen there by the youthful Ferdinand, great-grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was afterwards emperor of Germany, and who was induced to give the abbot an order to have it printed.[252] This was done accordingly in 1512, since which time there have been but two editions of it, those of 1552 and of 1593, until it was reprinted in 1844, at Marburg, in Germany, with an excellent critical preface in Spanish, by Huber.

As a part of the General Chronicle of Spain,[253] we must, with a little hesitation, pronounce the Chronicle of the Cid less interesting than several of the portions that immediately precede it. But still, it is the great[p. 170] national version of the achievements of the great national hero who freed the fourth part of his native land from the loathed intrusion of the Moors, and who stands to this day connected with the proudest recollections of Spanish glory. It begins with the Cid’s first victories under Ferdinand the Great, and therefore only alludes to his early youth, and to the extraordinary circumstances on which Corneille, following the old Spanish play and ballads, has founded his tragedy; but it gives afterwards, with great minuteness, nearly every one of the adventures that in the older traditions are ascribed to him, down to his death, which happened in 1099, or rather down to the death of Alfonso the Sixth, ten years later.

Much of it is as fabulous[254] as the accounts of Bernardo del Carpio and the Children of Lara, though perhaps not more so than might be expected in a work of such a period and such pretensions. Its style, too, is suited to its romantic character, and is more diffuse and grave than that of the best narrative portions of the General Chronicle. But then, on the other hand, it is overflowing with the very spirit of the times when it was written, and offers us so true a picture of their generous virtues, as well as their stern violence, that it may well be regarded as one of the best books in the world, if not the very best, for studying the real character and manners of the ages of chivalry. Occasionally there are passages in it like the following description of the Cid’s feelings and conduct, when he left his good castle of Bivar, unjustly and cruelly exiled by the king,[p. 171] which, whether invented or not, are as true to the spirit of the period they represent, as if the minutest of their details were ascertained facts.

“And when he saw his courts deserted and without people, and the perches without falcons, and the gateway without its judgment-seats, he turned himself toward the East and knelt down and said, ‘Saint Mary, Mother, and all other Saints, graciously beseech God that he would grant me might to overcome all these pagans, and that I may gain from them wherewith to do good to my friends, and to all those that may follow and help me.’ And then he went on and asked for Alvar Fañez, and said to him, ‘Cousin, what fault have the poor in the wrong that the king has done us? Warn all my people, then, that they harm none, wheresoever we may go.’ And he called for his horse to mount. Then spake up an old woman standing at her door and said, ‘Go on with good luck, for you shall make spoil of whatsoever you may find or desire.’ And the Cid, when he heard that saying, rode on, for he would tarry no longer; and as he went out of Bivar, he said, ‘Now do I desire you should know, my friends, that it is the will of God that we should return to Castile with great honor and great gain.’”[255]

Some of the touches of manners in this little passage,[p. 172] such as the allusion to the judgment-seats at his gate, where the Cid in patriarchal simplicity had administered justice to his vassals, and the hint of the poor augury gathered from the old woman’s wish, which seems to be of more power with him than the prayer he had just uttered, or the bold hopes that were driving him to the Moorish frontiers,—such touches give life and truth to this old chronicle, and bring its times and feelings, as it were, sensibly before us. Adding its peculiar treasures to those contained in the rest of the General Chronicle, we shall find, in the whole, nearly all the romantic and poetical fables and adventures that belong to the earliest portions of Spanish history. At the same time, we shall obtain a living picture of the state of manners in that dark period, when the elements of modern society were just beginning to be separated from the chaos in which they had long struggled, and out of which, by the action of successive ages, they have been gradually wrought into those forms of policy which now give stability to governments and peace to the intercourse of men.

The idea of Alfonso the Wise, simply and nobly expressed in the opening of his Chronicle, that he was desirous to leave for posterity a record of what Spain had been and had done in all past time,[256] was not without influence upon the nation, even in the state in which it then was, and in which, for above a century afterwards, it continued. But, as in the case of that great king’s project for a uniform administration of justice by a settled code, his example was too much in advance of his age to be immediately followed; though, as in that memorable case, when it was once adopted, its fruits became abundant. The two next kings, Sancho the Brave and Ferdinand the Fourth, took no measures, so far as we know, to keep up and publish the history of their reigns. But Alfonso the Eleventh, the same monarch, it should be remembered, under whom the[p. 174] “Partidas” became the law of the land, recurred to the example of his wise ancestor, and ordered the annals of the kingdom to be continued, from the time when those of the General Chronicle ceased down to his own; embracing, of course, the reigns of Alfonso the Wise, Sancho the Brave, and Ferdinand the Fourth, or the period from 1252 to 1312.[257] This is the first instance of the appointment of a royal chronicler, and may, therefore, be regarded as the creation of an office of consequence in all that regards the history of the country, and which, however much it may have been neglected in later times, furnished important documents down to the reign of Charles the Fifth, and was continued, in form at least, till the establishment of the Academy of History in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

By whom this office was first filled does not appear; but the Chronicle itself seems to have been prepared about the year 1320. Formerly it was attributed to Fernan Sanchez de Tovar; but Fernan Sanchez was a personage of great consideration and power in the state, practised in public affairs, and familiar with their history, so that we can hardly attribute to him the mistakes with which this Chronicle abounds, especially in the part relating to Alfonso the Wise.[258] But, whoever may have been its author, the Chronicle, which, it may be noticed, is so distinctly divided into the three reigns, that it is rather three chronicles than one, has little value as a composition. Its narrative is given with a[p. 175] rude and dry formality, and whatever interest it awakens depends, not upon its style and manner, but upon the character of the events recorded, which sometimes have an air of adventure about them belonging to the elder times, and, like them, are picturesque.

The example of regular chronicling, having now been fairly set at the court of Castile, was followed by Henry the Second, who commanded his Chancellor and Chief-Justiciary, Juan Nuñez de Villaizan, to prepare, as we are told in the Preface, in imitation of the ancients, an account of his father’s reign. In this way, the series goes on unbroken, and now gives us the “Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh,”[259] beginning with his birth and education, of which the notices are slight, but relating amply the events from the time he came to the throne, in 1312, till his death in 1350. How much of it was actually written by the chancellor of the kingdom cannot be ascertained.[260] From different passages, it seems that an older chronicle was used freely in its composition;[261] and the whole should, therefore, probably be regarded as a compilation made under the responsibility of the highest personages of the realm. Its opening will show at once the grave and measured tone it takes, and the accuracy it claims for its dates and statements.

“God is the beginning and the means and the end of all things; and without him they cannot subsist. For by his power they are made, and by his wisdom ordered, and by his goodness maintained. And he is the Lord; and, in all things, almighty, and conqueror in[p. 176] all battles. Wherefore, whosoever would begin any good work should first name the name of God, and place him before all things, asking and beseeching of his mercy to give him knowledge and will and power, whereby he may bring it to a good end. Therefore will this pious chronicle henceforward relate whatsoever happened to the noble King, Don Alfonso, of Castile and Leon, and the battles and conquests and victories that he had and did in his life against Moors and against Christians. And it will begin in the fifteenth year of the reign of the most noble King, Don Fernando, his father.”[262]

The reign of the father, however, occupies only three short chapters; after which, the rest of the Chronicle, containing in all three hundred and forty-two chapters, comes down to the death of Alfonso, who perished of the plague before Gibraltar, and then abruptly closes. Its general tone is grave and decisive, like that of a person speaking with authority upon matters of importance, and it is rare that we find in it a sketch of manners like the following account of the young king at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

“And as long as he remained in the city of Valladolid, there were with him knights and esquires, and his tutor, Martin Fernandez de Toledo, that brought him up, and that had been with him a long time, even before the queen died, and other men, who had long been used to palaces, and to the courts of kings; and all these gave him an ensample of good manners. And, moreover, he had been brought up with the children of men of note, and with noble knights. But the king, of his own condition, was well-mannered in eating, and[p. 177] drank little, and was clad as became his estate; and in all other his customs he was well conditioned, for his speech was true Castilian, and he hesitated not in what he had to say. And so long as he was in Valladolid, he sat three days in the week to hear the complaints and suits that came before him; and he was shrewd in understanding the facts thereof, and he was faithful in secret matters, and loved them that served him, each after his place, and trusted truly and entirely those whom he ought to trust. And he began to be much given to horsemanship, and pleased himself with arms, and loved to have in his household strong men, that were bold and of good conditions. And he loved much all his own people, and was sore grieved at the great mischief and great harm there were in the land through failure of justice, and he had indignation against evil-doers.”[263]

But though there are few sketches in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh like the preceding, we find in general a well-ordered account of the affairs of that monarch’s long and active reign, given with a simplicity and apparent sincerity which, in spite of the formal plainness of its style, make it almost always interesting, and sometimes amusing.

The next considerable attempt approaches somewhat nearer to proper history. It is the series of chronicles relating to the troublesome reigns of Peter the Cruel and Henry the Second, to the hardly less unsettled times of John the First, and to the more quiet and prosperous reign of Henry the Third. They were written by Pedro Lopez de Ayala, in some respects the first Spaniard of his age; distinguished, as we have seen,[p. 178] among the poets of the latter part of the fourteenth century, and now to be noticed as the best prose-writer of the same period. He was born in 1332,[264] and, though only eighteen years old when Peter ascended the throne, was soon observed and employed by that acute monarch. But when troubles arose in the kingdom, Ayala left his tyrannical master, who had already shown himself capable of almost any degree of guilt, and joined his fortunes to those of Henry of Trastamara, the king’s illegitimate brother, who had, of course, no claim to the throne but such as was laid in the crimes of its possessor, and the good-will of the suffering nobles and people.

At first, the cause of Henry was successful. But Peter addressed himself for help to Edward the Black Prince, then in his duchy of Aquitaine, who, as Froissart relates, thinking it would be a great prejudice against the estate royal[265] to have a usurper succeed, entered Spain, and, with a strong hand, replaced the fallen monarch on his throne. At the decisive battle of Naxera, by which this was achieved, in 1367, Ayala, who bore his prince’s standard, was taken prisoner[266] and carried to England, where he wrote a part at least of his poems on a courtly life. Somewhat later, Peter, no longer supported by the Black Prince, was dethroned; and Ayala, who was then released from his tedious imprisonment, returned home, and afterwards became Grand-Chancellor to Henry the Second, in whose service he gained so much consideration and influence, that he seems to have descended as a sort of traditionary[p. 179] minister of state through the reign of John the First, and far into that of Henry the Third. Sometimes, indeed, like other grave personages, ecclesiastical as well as civil, he appeared as a military leader, and once again, in the disastrous battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, he was taken prisoner. But his Portuguese captivity does not seem to have been so long or so cruel as his English one; and, at any rate, the last years of his life were passed quietly in Spain. He died at Calahorra in 1407, seventy-five years old.

“He was,” says his nephew, the noble Fernan Perez de Guzman, in the striking gallery of portraits he has left us,[267] “He was a man of very gentle qualities and of good conversation; had a great conscience and feared God much. He loved knowledge, also, and gave himself much to reading books and histories; and though he was as goodly a knight as any, and of great discretion in the practices of the world, yet he was by nature bent on learning, and spent a great part of his time in reading and studying, not books of law, but of philosophy and history. Through his means some books are now known in Castile that were not known aforetime; such as Titus Livius, who is the most notable of the Roman historians; the ‘Fall of Princes’; the ‘Ethics’ of Saint Gregory; Isidorus ‘De Summo Bono’; Boethius; and the ‘History of Troy.’ He prepared the History of Castile from the King Don Pedro to the King Don Henry; and made a good book on Hunting, which he greatly affected, and another called ‘Rimado de Palacio.’”

We should not, perhaps, at the present day, claim so much reputation as his kinsman does for the Chancellor[p. 180] Ayala, in consequence of the interest he took in books of such doubtful value as Guido de Colonna’s “Trojan War,” and Boccaccio “De Casibus Principum,” but, in translating Livy,[268] he unquestionably rendered his country an important service. He rendered, too, a no less important service to himself; since a familiarity with Livy tended to fit him for the task of preparing the Chronicle, which now constitutes his chief distinction and merit.[269] It begins in 1350, where that of Alfonso the Eleventh ends, and comes down to the sixth year of Henry the Third, or to 1396, embracing that portion of the author’s own life which was between his eighteenth year and his sixty-fourth, and constituting the first safe materials for the history of his native country.

For such an undertaking Ayala was singularly well fitted. Spanish prose was already well advanced in his time; for Don John Manuel, the last of the elder school of good writers, did not die till Ayala was fifteen years old. He was, moreover, as we have seen, a scholar, and, for the age in which he lived, a remarkable one; and, what is of more importance than either of these circumstances, he was personally familiar with the course of public affairs during the forty-six years embraced by his Chronicle. Of all this traces are to be found in[p. 181] his work. His style is not, like that of the oldest chroniclers, full of a rich vivacity and freedom; but, without being over-carefully elaborated, it is simple and business-like; while, to give a more earnest air, if not an air of more truth to the whole, he has, in imitation of Livy, introduced into the course of his narrative set speeches and epistles intended to express the feelings and opinions of his principal actors more distinctly than they could be expressed by the mere facts and current of the story. Compared with the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, which preceded it by above a century, it lacks the charm of that poetical credulity which loves to deal in doubtful traditions of glory, rather than in those ascertained facts which are often little honorable either to the national fame or to the spirit of humanity. Compared with the Chronicle of Froissart, with which it was contemporary, we miss the honest-hearted, but somewhat childlike, enthusiasm that looks with unmingled delight and admiration upon all the gorgeous phantasmagoria of chivalry, and find, instead of it, the penetrating sagacity of an experienced statesman, who looks quite through the deeds of men, and, like Comines, thinks it not at all worth while to conceal the great crimes with which he has been familiar, if they can be but wisely and successfully set forth. When, therefore, we read Ayala’s Chronicle, we do not doubt that we have made an important step in the progress of the species of writing to which it belongs, and that we are beginning to approach the period when history is to teach with sterner exactness the lesson it has learned from the hard experience of the past.

Among the many curious and striking passages in Ayala’s Chronicle, the most interesting are, perhaps, those that relate to the unfortunate Blanche of Bour[p. 182]bon, the young and beautiful wife of Peter the Cruel, who, for the sake of María de Padilla, forsook her two days after his marriage, and, when he had kept her long in prison, at last sacrificed her to his base passion for his mistress; an event which excited, as we learn from Froissart’s Chronicle, a sensation of horror, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe, and became an attractive subject for the popular poetry of the old national ballads, several of which we find were devoted to it.[270] But it may well be doubted whether even the best of the ballads give us so near and moving a picture of her cruel sufferings as Ayala does, when, going on step by step in his passionless manner, he shows us the queen first solemnly wedded in the church at Toledo, and then pining in her prison at Medina Sidonia; the excitement of the nobles, and the indignation of the king’s own mother and family; carrying us all the time with painful exactness through the long series of murders and atrocities by which Pedro at last reaches the final crime which, during eight years, he had hesitated to commit. For there is, in the succession of scenes he thus exhibits to us, a circumstantial minuteness which is above all power of generalization, and brings the guilty monarch’s character more vividly before us than it could be brought by the most fervent spirit of poetry or of eloquence.[271] And it is precisely this cool and patient minuteness of the chronicler, founded on his personal knowledge, that gives its peculiar character to Ayala’s record of the four wild reigns in which he lived; pre[p. 183]senting them to us in a style less spirited and vigorous, indeed, than that of some of the older chronicles of the monarchy, but certainly in one more simple, more judicious, and more effective for the true purposes of history.[272]

The last of the royal chronicles that it is necessary to notice with much particularity is that of John the Second, which begins with the death of Henry the Third, and comes down to the death of John himself, in 1454.[273] It was the work of several hands, and contains[p. 184] internal evidence of having been written at different periods. Alvar Garcia de Santa María, no doubt, prepared the account of the first fourteen years, or to 1420, constituting about one third of the whole work;[274] after which, in consequence perhaps of his attachment to the Infante Ferdinand, who was regent during the minority of the king, and subsequently much disliked by him, his labors ceased.[275] Who wrote the next portion is not known;[276] but from about 1429 to 1445, John de Mena, the leading poet of his time, was the royal annalist, and, if we are to trust the letters of one of his friends, seems to have been diligent in collecting materials for his task, if not earnest in all its duties.[277] Other parts have been attributed to Juan Rodriguez del Padron, a poet, and Diego de Valera,[278] a knight and gentleman often men[p. 185]tioned in the Chronicle itself, and afterwards himself employed as a chronicler by Queen Isabella.

But whoever may have been at first concerned in it, the whole work was ultimately committed to Fernan Perez de Guzman, a scholar, a courtier, and an acute as well as a witty observer of manners, who survived John the Second, and probably arranged and completed the Chronicle of his master’s reign, as it was published by order of the Emperor Charles the Fifth;[279] some passages having been added as late as the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are more than once alluded to in it as reigning sovereigns.[280] It is divided, like the Chronicle of Ayala, which may naturally have been its model, into the different years of the king’s reign, each year being subdivided into chapters; and it contains a great number of important original letters and other curious contemporary documents,[281] from which, as well as from the care used in its compilation, it has been considered more absolutely trustworthy than any Castilian chronicle that preceded it.[282]

In its general air, there is a good deal to mark the manners of the age, such as accounts of the court ceremonies, festivals, and tournaments that were so much loved by John; and its style, though, on the whole, un[p. 186]ornamented and unpretending, is not wanting in variety, spirit, and solemnity. Once, on occasion of the fall and ignominious death of the Great Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose commanding spirit had, for many years, impressed itself on the affairs of the kingdom, the honest chronicler, though little favorable to that haughty minister, seems unable to repress his feelings, and, recollecting the treatise on the “Fall of Princes,” which Ayala had made known in Spain, breaks out, saying: “O John Boccaccio, if thou wert now alive, thy pen surely would not fail to record the fall of this strenuous and bold gentleman among those of the mighty princes whose fate thou hast set forth. For what greater example could there be to every estate? what greater warning? what greater teaching to show the revolutions and movements of deceitful and changing fortune? O blindness of the whole race of man! O unexpected fall in the affairs of this our world!” And so on through a chapter of some length.[283] But this is the only instance of such an outbreak in the Chronicle. On the contrary, its general tone shows, that historical composition in Spain was about to undergo a permanent change; for, at its very outset, we have regular speeches attributed to the principal personages it records,[284] such as had been introduced by Ayala; and, through the whole, a well-ordered and documentary record of affairs, tinged, no doubt, with some of the prejudices and passions of the troublesome times to which it relates, but still claiming to have the exactness of regular annals, and striving to reach the grave and dignified style suited to the higher purposes of history.[285]

[p. 187]Of the disturbed and corrupt reign of Henry the Fourth, who, at one period, was nearly driven from his throne by his younger brother, Alfonso, we have two chronicles: the first by Diego Enriquez de Castillo, who was attached, both as chaplain and historiographer, to the person of the legitimate sovereign; and the other by Alonso de Palencia, chronicler to the unfortunate pretender, whose claims were sustained only three years, though the Chronicle of Palencia, like that of Castillo, extends over the whole period of the regular sovereign’s reign, from 1454 to 1474. They are as unlike each other as the fates of the princes they record. The Chronicle of Castillo is written with great plainness of manner, and, except in a few moral reflections, chiefly at the beginning and the end, seems to aim at nothing but the simplest and even the driest narrative;[286] while[p. 188] the Chronicle of Palencia, who had been educated in Italy under the Greeks recently arrived there from the ruins of the Eastern Empire, is in a false and cumbrous style; a single sentence frequently stretching through a chapter, and the whole work showing that he had gained little but affectation and bad taste under the teachings of John Lascaris and George of Trebizond.[287] Both works, however, are too strictly annals to be read for any thing but the facts they contain.

Similar remarks must be made about the chronicles of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, extending from 1474 to 1504-16. There are several of them, but only two need be noticed. One is by Andres Bernaldez, often called “El Cura de los Palacios,” because he was curate in the small town of that name, though the materials for his Chronicle were, no doubt, gathered chiefly in Seville, the neighbouring splendid capital of Andalusia, to whose princely Archbishop he was chaplain. His Chronicle, written, it should seem, chiefly to please his own taste, extends from 1488 to 1513. It is honest and sincere, reflecting faithfully the physiognomy of his age; its credulity, its bigotry, and its love of show. It is, in truth, such an account of passing events as would be given by one who was rather curious about them than a part of them; but who, from accident, was familiar with whatever was going on[p. 189] among the leading spirits of his time and country.[288] No portion of it is more valuable and interesting than that which relates to Columbus, to whom he devotes thirteen chapters, and for whose history he must have had excellent materials, since not only was Deza, the Archbishop, to whose service he was attached, one of the friends and patrons of Columbus, but Columbus himself, in 1496, was a guest at the house of Bernaldez, and intrusted to him manuscripts which, he says, he has employed in this very account; thus placing his Chronicle among the documents important alike in the history of America and of Spain.[289]

The other chronicle of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella is that of Fernando del Pulgar, their Councillor of State, their Secretary, and their authorized Annalist. He was a person of much note in his time, but it is not known when he was born or where he died.[290] That he was a man of wit and letters, and an acute observer of life, we know from his notices of the Famous Men of Castile; from his Commentary on the Coplas of Mingo Revulgo; and from a few spirited and[p. 190] pleasant letters to his friends that have been spared to us. But as a chronicler his merit is inconsiderable.[291] The early part of his work is not trustworthy, and the latter part, beginning in 1482 and ending in 1490, is brief in its narrative, and tedious in the somewhat showy speeches with which it is burdened. The best of it is its style, which is often dignified; but it is the style of history, rather than that of a chronicle; and, indeed, the formal division of the work, according to its subjects, into three parts, as well as the philosophical reflections with which it is adorned, show that the ancients had been studied by its author, and that he was desirous to imitate them.[292] Why he did not continue his account beyond 1490, we cannot tell. It has been conjectured that he died then.[293] But this is a mistake, for we have a well-written and curious report, made by him to the queen, on the whole Moorish history of Granada, after the capture of the city in 1492.[294]

The Chronicle of Ferdinand and Isabella by Pulgar is the last instance of the old style of chronicling that should now be noticed; for though, as we have already observed, it was long thought for the dignity of the[p. 191] monarchy that the stately forms of authorized annals should be kept up, the free and picturesque spirit that gave them life was no longer there. Chroniclers were appointed, like Fernan de Ocampo and Mexia; but the true chronicling style was gone by, not to return.

Chronicles of Particular Events.—It should be borne in mind, that we have thus far traced only the succession of what may be called the general Spanish chronicles, which, prepared by royal hands or under royal authority, have set forth the history of the whole country, from its earliest beginnings and most fabulous traditions, down through its fierce wars and divisions, to the time when it had, by the final overthrow of the Moorish power, been settled into a quiet and compact monarchy. From their subject and character, they are, of course, the most important, and, generally, the most interesting, works of the class to which they belong. But, as might be expected from the influence they exercised and the popularity they enjoyed, they were often imitated. Many chronicles were written on a great variety of subjects, and many works in a chronicling style which yet never bore the name. Most of them are of no value. But to the few that, from their manner or style, deserve notice we must now turn for a moment, beginning with those that refer to particular events.

[p. 193]Two of these special chronicles relate to occurrences in the reign of John the Second, and are not only curious in themselves and for their style, but valuable, as illustrating the manners of the time. The first, according to the date of its events, is the “Passo Honroso,” or the Passage of Honor, and is a formal account of a passage at arms which was held against all comers in 1434, at the bridge of Orbigo, near the city of Leon, during thirty days, at a moment when the road was thronged with knights passing for a solemn festival to the neighbouring shrine of Santiago. The challenger was Suero de Quiñones, a gentleman of rank, who claimed to be thus emancipated from the service of wearing for a noble lady’s sake a chain of iron around his neck every Thursday. The arrangements for this extraordinary tournament were all made under the king’s authority. Nine champions, mantenedores, we are told, stood with Quiñones, and at the end of the thirty days it was found that sixty-eight knights had adventured themselves against his claim; that six hundred and twenty-seven encounters had taken place; and that sixty-six lances had been broken;—one knight, an Aragonese, having been killed, and many wounded, among whom were Quiñones and eight out of his nine fellow-champions.[295]

[p. 194]Strange as all this may sound, and seeming to carry us back to the fabulous days when the knights of romance

and Rodamont maintained the bridge of Montpellier, for the sake of the lady of his love, it is yet all plain matter of fact, spread out in becoming style, by an eyewitness, with a full account of the ceremonies, both of chivalry and of religion, that accompanied it. The theory of the whole is, that Quiñones, in acknowledgment of being prisoner to a noble lady, had, for some time, weekly worn her chains; and that he was now to ransom himself from this fanciful imprisonment by the payment of a certain number of real spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. All this, to be sure, is fantastic enough. But the ideas of love, honor, and religion displayed in the proceedings of the champions,[296] who hear mass devoutly every day, and yet cannot obtain Christian burial for the Aragonese knight who is killed, and in the conduct of Quiñones himself, who fasts each Thursday, partly, it should seem, in honor of the Madonna, and partly in honor of his lady,—these and other whimsical incongruities are still more fantastic. They seem, indeed, as we read their record, to be quite worthy of the admiration expressed for them by Don Quixote in his argument with the wise canon,[297] but hardly worthy of any other; so that we are surprised, at first, when we find them specially recorded in[p. 195] the contemporary Chronicle of King John, and filling, long afterwards, a separate chapter in the graver Annals of Zurita. And yet such a grand tournament was an important event in the age when it happened, and is highly illustrative of the contemporary manners.[298] History and chronicle, therefore, alike did well to give it a place; and, indeed, down to the present time, the curious and elaborate record of the details and ceremonies of the Passo Honroso is of no little value as one of the best exhibitions that remain to us of the genius of chivalry, and as quite the best exhibition of what has been considered the most characteristic of all the knightly institutions.

The other work of the same period to which we have referred gives us, also, a striking view of the spirit of the times; one less picturesque, indeed, but not less instructive. It is called “El Seguro de Tordesillas,” the Pledge or the Truce of Tordesillas, and relates to a series of conferences held in 1439, between John the Second and a body of his nobles, headed by his own son, who, in a seditious and violent manner, interfered in the affairs of the kingdom, in order to break down the influence of the Constable de Luna.[299] It receives its peculiar name from the revolting circumstance, that, even in the days of the Passo Honroso, and with some of the knights who figured in that gorgeous show for the parties, true honor was yet sunk so low in Spain, that none could be found on either side of this great quarrel,—not even the King or the Prince,—whose[p. 196] word would be taken as a pledge for the mere personal safety of those who should be engaged in the discussions at Tordesillas. It was necessary, therefore, to find some one not strictly belonging to either party, who, invested with higher powers and even with supreme military control, should become the depositary of the general faith, and, exercising an authority limited only by his own sense of honor, be obeyed alike by the exasperated sovereign and his rebellious subjects.[300]

This proud distinction was given to Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, commonly called the Good or Faithful Count Haro; and the “Seguro de Tordesillas,” prepared by him some time afterwards, shows how honorably he executed the extraordinary trust. Few historical works can challenge such absolute authenticity. The documents of the case, constituting the chief part of it, are spread out before the reader; and what does not rest on their foundation rests on that word of the Good Count to which the lives of whatever was most distinguished in the kingdom had just been fearlessly trusted. As might be expected, its characteristics are simplicity and plainness, not elegance or eloquence. It is, in fact, a collection of documents, but it is an interesting and a melancholy record. The compact that was made led to no permanent good. The Count soon withdrew, ill at ease, to his own estates; and in less than two years his unhappy and weak master was assailed anew, and besieged in Medina del Campo, by his rebellious family and their adherents.[301] After this, we hear little of[p. 197] Count Haro, except that he continued to assist the king from time to time, in his increasing troubles, until, worn out with fatigue of body and mind, he retired from the world, and passed the last ten years of his life in a monastery, which he had himself founded, and where he died at the age of threescore and ten.[302]

Chronicles of Particular Persons.—But while remarkable events, like the Passage of Arms at Orbigo and the Pledge of Tordesillas, were thus appropriately recorded, the remarkable men of the time could hardly fail occasionally to find fit chroniclers.

Pero Niño, Count de Buelna, who flourished between 1379 and 1453, is the first of them. He was a distinguished naval and military commander in the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second; and his Chronicle is the work of Gutierre Diez de Gamez, who was attached to his person from the time Pero Niño was twenty-three years old, and boasted the distinction of being his standard-bearer in many a rash and bloody fight. A more faithful chronicler, or one more imbued with knightly qualities, can hardly be found. He may be well compared to the “Loyal Serviteur,” the biographer of the Chevalier Bayard; and, like him, not only enjoyed the confidence of his master, but shared his spirit.[303] His accounts of the education of Pero Niño,[p. 198] and of the counsels given him by his tutor;[304] of Pero’s marriage to his first wife, the lady Constance de Guebara;[305] of his cruises against the corsairs and Bey of Tunis;[306] of the part he took in the war against England, after the death of Richard the Second, when he commanded an expedition that made a descent on Cornwall, and, according to his chronicler, burnt the town of Poole and took Jersey and Guernsey;[307] and finally, of his share in the common war against Granada, which happened in the latter part of his life and under the leading of the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[308] are all interesting and curious, and told with simplicity and spirit. But the most characteristic and amusing passages of the Chronicle are, perhaps, those that relate, one to Pero Niño’s gallant visit at Girfontaine, near Rouen, the residence of the old Admiral of France, and his gay young wife,[309] and another to the course of his true love for Beatrice, daughter of the Infante Don John, the lady who, after much opposition and many romantic dangers, became his second wife.[310] Unfortunately, we know nothing about the author of all this entertaining history except what he modestly tells us in the work itself; but we cannot doubt that he was as loyal in his life as he claims to be in his true-hearted account of his master’s adventures and achievements.

Next after Pero Niño’s Chronicle comes that of the Constable Don Alvaro de Luna, the leading spirit of the reign of John the Second, almost from the moment[p. 199] when, yet a child, he appeared as a page at court, in 1408, down to 1453, when he perished on the scaffold, a victim to his own haughty ambition, to the jealousy of the nobles nearest the throne, and to the guilty weakness of the king. Who was the author of the Chronicle is unknown.[311] But, from internal evidence, he was probably an ecclesiastic of some learning, and certainly a retainer of the Constable, much about his person, and sincerely attached to him. It reminds us, at once, of the fine old Life of Wolsey by his Gentleman Usher, Cavendish; for both works were written after the fall of the great men whose lives they record, by persons who had served and loved them in their prosperity, and who now vindicated their memories with a grateful and trusting affection, which often renders even their style of writing beautiful by its earnestness, and sometimes eloquent. The Chronicle of the Constable is, of course, the oldest. It was composed between 1453 and 1460, or about a century before Cavendish’s Wolsey. It is grave and stately, sometimes too stately; but there is a great air of reality about it. The account of the siege of Palenzuela,[312] the striking description of the Constable’s person and bearing,[313] the scene of the royal visit to the favorite in his castle at Escalona, with the festivities that followed,[314] and, above all, the minute and painful details of the Constable’s fall from power, his arrest,[p. 200] and death,[315] show the freedom and spirit of an eyewitness, or, at least, of a person entirely familiar with the whole matter about which he writes. It is, therefore, among the richest and most interesting of the old Spanish chronicles, and quite indispensable to one who would comprehend the troubled spirit of the period to which it relates; the period known as that of the bandos, or armed feuds, when the whole country was broken into parties, each in warlike array, fighting for its own head, but none fully submitting to the royal authority.

The last of the chronicles of individuals written in the spirit of the elder times, that it is necessary to notice, is that of Gonzalvo de Córdova, “the Great Captain,” who flourished from the period immediately preceding the war of Granada to that which begins the reign of Charles the Fifth; and who produced an impression on the Spanish nation hardly equalled since the earlier days of that great Moorish contest, the cyclus of whose heroes Gonzalvo seems appropriately to close up. It was about 1526 that the Emperor Charles the Fifth desired one of the favorite followers of Gonzalvo, Hernan Perez del Pulgar, to prepare an account of his great captain’s life. A better person could not easily have been selected. For he is not, as was long supposed, Fernando del Pulgar, the wit and courtier of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.[316] Nor is the work he[p. 201] produced the poor and dull Chronicle of the life of Gonzalvo first printed in 1580, or earlier, and often attributed to him.[317] But he is that bold knight who, with a few followers, penetrated to the very centre of Granada, then all in arms, and, affixing an Ave Maria, with the sign of the cross, to the doors of the principal mosque, consecrated its massive pile to the service of Christianity, while Ferdinand and Isabella were still beleaguering the city without; an heroic adventure, with which his country rang from side to side at the time, and which has not since been forgotten either in its ballads or in its popular drama.[318]

As might be expected from the character of its author,—who, to distinguish him from the courtly and peaceful Pulgar, was well called “He of the Achievements,” El de las Hazañas,—the book he offered to his monarch is not a regular life of Gonzalvo, but rath[p. 202]er a rude and vigorous sketch of him, entitled “A Small Part of the Achievements of that Excellent Person called the Great Captain,” or, as is elsewhere yet more characteristically said, “of the achievements and solemn virtues of the Great Captain, both in peace and war.”[319] The modesty of the author is as remarkable as his adventurous spirit. He is hardly seen at all in his narrative, while his love and devotion to his great leader give a fervor to his style, which, notwithstanding a frequent display of very unprofitable learning, renders his work both curious and striking, and brings out his hero in the sort of bold relief in which he appeared to the admiration of his contemporaries. Some parts of it, notwithstanding its brevity, are remarkable even for the details they afford; and some of the speeches, like that of the Alfaquí to the distracted parties in Granada,[320] and that of Gonzalvo to the population of the Abbaycin,[321] savor of eloquence as well as wisdom. Regarded as the outline of a great man’s character, few sketches have more an air of truth; though, perhaps, considering the adventurous and warlike lives both of the author and his subject, nothing in the book is more remarkable than the spirit of humanity that pervades it.[322]

Chronicles of Travels.—In the same style with the histories of their kings and great men, a few works should be noticed in the nature of travels, or histories[p. 203] of travellers, though not always bearing the name of Chronicles.

The oldest of them, which has any value, is an account of a Spanish embassy to Tamerlane, the great Tartar potentate and conqueror. Its origin is curious. Henry the Third of Castile, whose affairs, partly in consequence of his marriage with Catherine, daughter of Shakspeare’s “time-honored Lancaster,” were in a more fortunate and quiet condition than those of his immediate predecessors, seems to have been smitten in his prosperity with a desire to extend his fame to the remotest countries of the earth; and for this purpose, we are told, sought to establish friendly relations with the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, with the Sultan of Babylon, with Tamerlane or Timour Bec the Tartar, and even with the fabulous Prester John of that shadowy India which was then the subject of so much speculation.

What was the result of all this widely spread diplomacy, so extraordinary at the end of the fourteenth century, we do not know, except that the first ambassadors sent to Tamerlane and Bajazet chanced actually to be present at the great and decisive battle between those two preponderating powers of the East, and that Tamerlane sent a splendid embassy in return, with some of the spoils of his victory, among which were two fair captives, who figure in the Spanish poetry of the time.[323] King Henry was not ungrateful for such a tribute of respect, and, to acknowledge it, despatched to Tamerlane three persons of his court, one of whom, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, has left us a minute account of the whole embassy, its adventures and its results.[p. 204] This account was first published by Argote de Molina, the careful antiquary of the time of Philip the Second,[324] and was then called, probably in order to give it a more winning title, “The Life of the Great Tamerlane,”—Vida del Gran Tamurlan,—though it is, in fact, a diary of the voyagings and residences of the ambassadors of Henry the Third, beginning in May, 1403, when they embarked at Puerto Santa María, near Cadiz, and ending in March, 1406, when they landed there on their return.

In the course of it, we have a description of Constantinople, which is the more curious because it is given at the moment when it tottered to its fall;[325] of Trebizond, with its Greek churches and clergy;[326] of Teheran, now the capital of Persia;[327] and of Samarcand, where they found the great Conqueror himself, and were entertained by him with a series of magnificent festivals continuing almost to the moment of his death,[328] which happened while they were at his court, and was followed by troubles embarrassing to their homeward journey.[329] The honest Clavijo seems to have been well pleased to lay down his commission at the feet of his sovereign, whom he found at Alcalá; and though he lingered about the court for a year, and was one of the witnesses of the king’s will at Christmas, yet on the death of Henry he retired to Madrid, his native place, where he spent the last four or five years of his life,[p. 205] and where, in 1412, he was buried in the convent of Saint Francis, with his fathers, whose chapel he had piously rebuilt.[330]

His travels will not, on the whole, suffer by a comparison with those of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville; for, though his discoveries are much less in extent than those of the Venetian merchant, they are, perhaps, as remarkable as those of the English adventurer, while the manner in which he has presented them is superior to that of either. His Spanish loyalty and his Catholic faith are everywhere apparent. He plainly believes that his modest embassy is making an impression of his king’s power and importance, on the countless and careless multitudes of Asia, which will not be effaced; while, in the luxurious capital of the Greek empire, he seems to look for little but the apocryphal relics of saints and apostles which then burdened the shrines of its churches. With all this, however, we may be content, because it is national; but when we find him filling the island of Ponza with buildings erected by Virgil,[331] and afterwards, as he passes Amalfi, taking note of it only because it contained the head of Saint Andrew,[332] we are obliged to recall his frankness, his zeal, and all his other good qualities, before we can be quite reconciled to his ignorance. Mariana, indeed, intimates, that, after all, his stories are not to be wholly believed. But, as in the case of other early travellers, whose accounts were often discredited[p. 206] merely because they were so strange, more recent and careful inquiries have confirmed Clavijo’s narrative; and we may now trust to his faithfulness as much as to the vigilant and penetrating spirit he shows constantly, except when his religious faith, or his hardly less religious loyalty, interferes with its exercise.[333]

But the great voyagings of the Spaniards were not destined to be in the East. The Portuguese, led on originally by Prince Henry, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, had, as it were, already appropriated to themselves that quarter of the world by discovering the easy route of the Cape of Good Hope; and, both by the right of discovery and by the provisions of the well-known Papal bull and the equally well-known treaty of 1479, had cautiously cut off their great rivals, the Spaniards, from all adventure in that direction; leaving open to them only the wearisome waters that were stretched out unmeasured towards the West. Happily, however, there was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the height to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true, Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national[p. 207] character, when he became a part of its glory. His own eyes, he tells us, had watched the silver cross, as it slowly rose, for the first time, above the towers of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final and absolute overthrow of the infidel power in Spain;[334] and from that period,—or one even earlier, when some poor monks from Jerusalem had been at the camp of the two sovereigns before Granada, praying for help and protection against the unbelievers in Palestine,—he had conceived the grand project of consecrating the untold wealth he trusted to find in his westward discoveries, by devoting it to the rescue of the Holy City and sepulchre of Christ; thus achieving, by his single power and resources, what all Christendom and its ages of crusades had failed to accomplish.[335]

Gradually these and other kindred ideas took firm possession of his mind, and are found occasionally in his later journals, letters, and speculations, giving to his otherwise quiet and dignified style a tone elevated and impassioned like that of prophecy. It is true, that his adventurous spirit, when the mighty mission of his life was upon him, rose above all this, and, with a purged vision and through a clearer atmosphere, saw, from[p. 208] the outset, what he at last so gloriously accomplished; but still, as he presses onward, there not unfrequently break from him words which leave no doubt, that, in his secret heart, the foundations of his great hopes and purposes were laid in some of the most magnificent illusions that are ever permitted to fill the human mind. He believed himself to be, in some degree at least, inspired; and to be chosen of Heaven to fulfil certain of the solemn and grand prophecies of the Old Testament.[336] He wrote to his sovereigns in 1501, that he had been induced to undertake his voyages to the Indies, not by virtue of human knowledge, but by a Divine impulse, and by the force of Scriptural prediction.[337] He declared, that the world could not continue to exist more than a hundred and fifty-five years longer, and that, many a year before that period, he counted the recovery of the Holy City to be sure.[338] He expressed his belief, that the terrestrial paradise, about which he cites the fanciful speculations of Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustin, would be found in the southern regions of[p. 209] those newly discovered lands, which he describes with so charming an amenity, and that the Orinoco was one of the mystical rivers issuing from it; intimating, at the same time, that, perchance, he alone of mortal men would, by the Divine will, be enabled to reach and enjoy it.[339] In a remarkable letter of sixteen pages, addressed to his sovereigns from Jamaica in 1503, and written with a force of style hardly to be found in any thing similar at the same period, he gives a moving account of a miraculous vision, which he believed had been vouchsafed to him for his consolation, when at Veragua, a few months before, a body of his men, sent to obtain salt and water, had been cut off by the natives, thus leaving him outside the mouth of the river in great peril.

“My brother and the rest of the people,” he says, “were in a vessel that remained within, and I was left solitary on a coast so dangerous, with a strong fever and grievously worn down. Hope of escape was dead within me. I climbed aloft with difficulty, calling anxiously and not without many tears for help upon your Majesties’ captains from all the four winds of heaven. But none made me answer. Wearied and still moaning, I fell asleep, and heard a pitiful voice which said: ‘O fool, and slow to trust and serve thy God, the God of all! What did He more for Moses, or for David his servant? Ever since thou wast born, thou[p. 210] hast been His especial charge. When He saw thee at the age wherewith He was content, He made thy name to sound marvellously on the earth. The Indies, which are a part of the world, and so rich, He gave them to thee for thine own, and thou hast divided them unto others as seemed good to thyself, for He granted thee power to do so. Of the barriers of the great ocean, which were bound up with such mighty chains, He hath given unto thee the keys. Thou hast been obeyed in many lands, and thou hast gained an honored name among Christian men. What did He more for the people of Israel when He led them forth from Egypt? or for David, whom from a shepherd He made king in Judea? Turn thou, then, again unto Him, and confess thy sin. His mercy is infinite. Thine old age shall not hinder thee of any great thing. Many inheritances hath He, and very great. Abraham was above a hundred years old when he begat Isaac; and Sarah, was she young? Thou callest for uncertain help; answer, Who hath afflicted thee so much and so often? God or the world? The privileges and promises that God giveth, He breaketh not, nor, after he hath received service, doth He say that thus was not his mind, and that His meaning was other. Neither punisheth He, in order to hide a refusal of justice. What He promiseth, that He fulfilleth, and yet more. And doth the world thus? I have told thee what thy Maker hath done for thee, and what He doth for all. Even now He in part showeth thee the reward of the sorrows and dangers thou hast gone through in serving others.’ All this heard I, as one half dead; but answer had I none to words so true, save tears for my sins. And whosoever it might be that thus spake, he ended, saying, ‘Fear not; be of good cheer; all these[p. 211] thy griefs are written in marble, and not without cause.’ And I arose as soon as I might, and at the end of nine days the weather became calm.”[340]

Three years afterwards, in 1506, Columbus died at Valladolid, a disappointed, broken-hearted old man; little comprehending what he had done for mankind, and still less the glory and homage that through all future generations awaited his name.[341]

But the mantle of his devout and heroic spirit fell on none of his successors. The discoveries of the new continent, which was soon ascertained to be no part of Asia, were indeed prosecuted with spirit and success by Balboa, by Vespucci, by Hojeda, by Pedrárias Dávila, by the Portuguese Magellanes, by Loaisa, by Saavedra, and by many more; so that in twenty-seven[p. 212] years the general outline and form of the New World were, through their reports, fairly presented to the Old. But though some of these early adventurers, like Hojeda, were men apparently of honest principles, who suffered much, and died in poverty and sorrow, yet none had the lofty spirit of the original discoverer, and none spoke or wrote with the tone of dignity and authority that came naturally from a man whose character was so elevated, and whose convictions and purposes were founded in some of the deepest and most mysterious feelings of our religious nature.[342]

Romantic Chronicles.—It only remains now to speak of one other class of the old chronicles; a class hardly represented in this period by more than a single specimen, but that a very curious one, and one which, by its date and character, brings us to the end of our present inquiries, and marks the transition to those that are to follow. The Chronicle referred to is that called “The Chronicle of Don Roderic, with the Destruction of Spain,” and is an account, chiefly fabulous, of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. An edition is cited as early as 1511, and six in all may be enumerated, including the last, which is of 1587; thus showing a good degree of popularity, if we consider the number of readers in Spain in the sixteenth century.[343][p. 213] Its author is quite unknown. According to the fashion of the times, it professes to have been written by Eliastras, one of the personages who figures in it; but he is killed in battle just before we reach the end of the book; and the remainder, which looks as if it might really be an addition by another hand, is in the same way ascribed to Carestes, a knight of Alfonso the Catholic.[344]

Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346] Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress wander[p. 214] from country to country,[348] as they do in “Palmerin of England,” while, on all sides, we encounter fantastic personages, who were never heard of anywhere but in this apocryphal Chronicle.[349]

The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written, was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction, just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least, were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350]

[p. 215]

This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements. In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and[p. 216] nourished in the long periods of national trial and suffering, are constantly coming out; hardly less in Columbus and his followers, or even amidst the atrocities of the conquests in the New World, than in the half-miraculous accounts of the battles of Hazinas and Tolosa, or in the grand and glorious drama of the fall of Granada. Indeed, wherever we go under their leading, whether to the court of Tamerlane, or to that of Saint Ferdinand, we find the heroic elements of the national genius gathered around us; and thus, in this vast, rich mass of chronicles, containing such a body of antiquities, traditions, and fables as has been offered to no other people, we are constantly discovering, not only the materials from which were drawn a multitude of the old Spanish ballads, plays, and romances, but a mine which has been unceasingly wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and still remains unexhausted.[351]

Romances of Chivalry.—The ballads of Spain belonged originally to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads, and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we can easily see, but a single step be[p. 219]tween large portions of several of the old chronicles, especially that of Don Roderic, and proper romances of chivalry.[352]

Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity. Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings, tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne by Adenés in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief scenes of which[p. 220] are laid either in Spain or in Fairy Land.[356] These, and similar poetical inventions, constructed out of them by the Trouveurs of the North, became, in the next age, materials for the famous romances of chivalry in prose, which, during three centuries, constituted no mean part of the vernacular literature of France, and, down to our own times, have been the great mine of wild fables for Ariosto, Spenser, Wieland, and the other poets of chivalry, whose fictions are connected either with the stories of Arthur and his Round Table, or with those of Charlemagne and his Peers.[357]

At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed, at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors.

This extraordinary family of romances, whose de[p. 221]scendants, as Cervantes says, were innumerable,[358] is the family of which Amadis is the poetical head and type. Our first notice of it in Spain is from a grave statesman, Ayala, the Chronicler and Chancellor of Castile, who, as we have already seen, died in 1407.[359] But the Amadis is of an earlier date than this fact necessarily implies, though not perhaps earlier known in Spain. Gomez Eannes de Zurara, Keeper of the Archives of Portugal in 1454, who wrote three striking chronicles relating to the affairs of his own country, leaves no substantial doubt that the author of the Amadis of Gaul was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who was attached to the court of John the First of Portugal, was armed as a knight by that monarch just before the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, and died in 1403.[360] The words of the honest and careful annalist are quite distinct on this point. He says he is unwilling to have his true and faithful book, the “Chronicle of Count Pedro de Meneses,” confounded with such stories as “the book of Amadis, which was made entirely at the pleasure of one man, called Vasco de Lobeira, in the time of the King Don Ferdinand; all the things in the said book being invented by its author.”[361]

[p. 222]Whether Lobeira had any older popular tradition or fancies about Amadis, to quicken his imagination and marshal him the way he should go, we cannot now tell. He certainly had a knowledge of some of the old French romances, such as that of the Saint Graal, or Holy Cup,—the crowning fiction of the Knights of the Round Table,[362]—and distinctly acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the Infante Alfonso, who was born in 1370, for an alteration made in the character of Amadis.[363] But that he was aided, as has been suggested, in any considerable degree, by fictions known to have been in Picardy in the eighteenth century, and claimed, without the slightest proof, to have been there in the twelfth, is an assumption made on too slight grounds to be seriously considered.[364] We must therefore conclude, from the few, but plain, facts known in[p. 223] the case, that the Amadis was originally a Portuguese fiction produced before the year 1400, and that Vasco de Lobeira was its author.

But the Portuguese original can no longer be found. At the end of the sixteenth century, we are assured, it was extant in manuscript in the archives of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon; and the same assertion is renewed, on good authority, about the year 1750. From this time, however, we lose all trace of it; and the most careful inquiries render it probable that this curious manuscript, about which there has been so much discussion, perished in the terrible earthquake and conflagration of 1755, when the palace occupied by the ducal family of Arveiro was destroyed with all its precious contents.[365]

The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist, nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest[p. 224] now accessible to us dating from 1519. Twelve more followed in the course of half a century, so that the Amadis succeeded, at once, in placing the fortunes of its family on the sure foundations of popular favor in Spain. It was translated into Italian in 1546, and was again successful; six editions of it appearing in that language in less than thirty years.[368] In France, beginning with the first attempt in 1540, it became such a favorite, that its reputation there has not yet wholly faded away;[369] while, elsewhere in Europe, a multitude of translations and imitations have followed, that seem to stretch out the line of the family, as Don Quixote declares, from the age immediately after the introduction of Christianity down almost to that in which he himself lived.[370]

The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal. It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and[p. 225] tone of the whole fiction are original, and much more free than those of the French romances that had preceded it. The story of Arthur and the Holy Cup is essentially religious; the story of Charlemagne is essentially military; and both are involved in a series of adventures previously ascribed to their respective heroes by chronicles and traditions, which, whether true or false, were so far recognized as to prescribe limits to the invention of all who subsequently adopted them. But the Amadis is of imagination all compact. No period of time is assigned to its events, except that they begin to occur soon after the very commencement of the Christian era; and its geography is generally as unsettled and uncertain as the age when its hero lived. It has no purpose, indeed, but to set forth the character of a perfect knight, and to illustrate the virtues of courage and chastity as the only proper foundations of such a character.

Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate, and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child, exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions and amidst enchantments,—sometimes under the favor of their ladies, and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island,[p. 226] under their frowns,—fill up the book, which, after the broad journeyings of the principal knights, and an incredible number of combats between them and other knights, magicians, and giants, ends, at last, in the marriage of Amadis and Oriana, and the overthrow of all the enchantments that had so long opposed their love.

The Amadis is admitted, by general consent, to be the best of all the old romances of chivalry. One reason of this is, that it is more true to the manners and spirit of the age of knighthood; but the principal reason is, no doubt, that it is written with a more free invention, and takes a greater variety in its tones than is found in other similar works. It even contains, sometimes,—what we should hardly expect in this class of wild fictions,—passages of natural tenderness and beauty, such as the following description of the young loves of Amadis and Oriana.

“Now Lisuarte brought with him to Scotland Brisena, his wife, and a daughter that he had by her when he dwelt in Denmark, named Oriana, about ten years old, and the fairest creature that ever was seen; so fair, that she was called ‘Without Peer,’ since in her time there was none equal to her. And because she suffered much from the sea, he consented to leave her there, asking the King, Languines, and his Queen, that they would have care of her. And they were made very glad therewith, and the Queen said, ‘Trust me that I will have such a care of her as her mother would.’ And Lisuarte, entering into his ships, made haste back into Great Britain, and found there some who had made disturbances, such as are wont to be in such cases. And for this cause, he remembered him not of his daughter, for some space of time. But at last, with much toil that he took, he obtained his kingdom, and he was the[p. 227] best king that ever was before his time, nor did any afterwards better maintain knighthood in its rights, till King Arthur reigned, who surpassed all the kings before him in goodness, though the number that reigned between these two was great.

“And now the author leaves Lisuarte reigning in peace and quietness in Great Britain, and turns to the Child of the Sea, [Amadis,] who was twelve years old, but in size and limbs seemed to be fifteen. He served before the Queen, and was much loved of her, as he was of all ladies and damsels. But as soon as Oriana, the daughter of King Lisuarte, came there, she gave to her the Child of the Sea, that he should serve her, saying, ‘This is a child who shall serve you.’ And she answered, that it pleased her. And the child kept this word in his heart, in such wise that it never afterwards left it; and, as this history truly says, he was never, in all the days of his life, wearied with serving her. And this their love lasted as long as they lasted; but the Child of the Sea, who knew not at all how she loved him, held himself to be very bold, in that he had placed his thoughts on her, considering both her greatness and her beauty, and never so much as dared to speak any word to her concerning it. And she, though she loved him in her heart, took heed that she should not speak with him more than with another; but her eyes took great solace in showing to her heart what thing in the world she most loved.

“Thus lived they silently together, neither saying aught to the other of their estate. Then came, at last, the time when the Child of the Sea, as I now tell you, understood within himself that he might take arms, if any there were that would make him a knight. And this he desired, because he considered that he should[p. 228] thus become such a man and should do such things, as that either he should perish in them, or, if he lived, then his lady should deal gently with him. And with this desire he went to the King, who was in his garden, and, kneeling before him, said, ‘Sire, if it please you, it is now time that I should be made a knight.’ And the king said, ‘How, Child of the Sea, do you already adventure to maintain knighthood? Know that it is a light matter to come by it, but a weighty thing to maintain it. And whoso seeks to get this name of knighthood and maintain it in its honor, he hath to do so many and such grievous things, that often his heart is wearied out; and if he should be such a knight, that, from faint-heartedness or cowardice, he should fail to do what is beseeming, then it would be better for him to die than to live in his shame. Therefore I hold it good that you wait yet a little.’ But the Child of the Sea said to him, ‘Neither for all this will I fail to be a knight; for, if I had not already thought to fulfil this that you have said, my heart would not so have striven to be a knight.’”[372]

Other passages of quite a different character are no less striking, as, for instance, that in which the fairy Urganda comes in her fire-galleys,[373] and that in which the venerable Nasciano visits Oriana;[374] but the most characteristic are those that illustrate the spirit of chivalry, and inculcate the duties of princes and knights. In these portions of the work, there is sometimes a lofty tone that rises to eloquence,[375] and sometimes a sad one full of earnestness and truth.[376] The general story,[p. 229] too, is more simple and effective than the stories of the old French romances of chivalry. Instead of distracting our attention by the adventures of a great number of knights, whose claims are nearly equal, it is kept fastened on two, whose characters are well preserved;—Amadis, the model of all chivalrous virtues, and his brother, Don Galaor, hardly less perfect as a knight in the field, but by no means so faithful in his loves;—and, in this way, it has a more epic proportion in its several parts, and keeps up our interest to the end more successfully than any of its followers or rivals.

The great objection to the Amadis is one that must be made to all of its class. We are wearied by its length, and by the constant recurrence of similar adventures and dangers, in which, as we foresee, the hero is certain to come off victorious. But this length and these repetitions seemed no fault when it first appeared, or for a long time afterwards. For romantic fiction, the only form of elegant literature which modern times have added to the marvellous inventions of Greek genius, was then recent and fresh; and the few who read for amusement rejoiced even in the least graceful of its creations, as vastly nearer to the hearts and thoughts of men educated in the institutions of knighthood than any glimpses they had thus far caught of the severe glories of antiquity. The Amadis, therefore,—as we may easily learn by the notices of it from the time when the great Chancellor of Castile mourned that he had wasted his leisure over its idle fancies, down to the time when the whole sect disappeared before the avenging satire of Cervantes,—was a work of extraordinary popularity in Spain; and one which, during the two[p. 230] centuries of its greatest favor, was more read than any other book in the language.

Nor should it be forgotten that Cervantes himself was not insensible to its merits. The first book that, as he tells us, was taken from the shelves of Don Quixote, when the curate, the barber, and the housekeeper began the expurgation of his library, was the Amadis de Gaula. “‘There is something mysterious about this matter,’ said the curate; ‘for, as I have heard, this was the first book of knight-errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others have had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch-heretic of so mischievous a sect, I think he should, without a hearing, be condemned to the fire.’ ‘No, Sir,’ said the barber, ‘for I, too, have heard that it is the best of all the books of its kind that have been written, and therefore, for its singularity, it ought to be forgiven.’ ‘That is the truth,’ answered the curate, ‘and so let us spare it for the present’”;—a decision which, on the whole, has been confirmed by posterity, and precisely for the reason Cervantes has assigned.[377]

[p. 231]

But before Montalvo published his translation of the Amadis, and perhaps before he had made it, he had written a continuation, which he announced in the Preface to the Amadis as its fifth book. It is an original work, about one third part as long as the Amadis, and contains the story of the son of that hero and Oriana, named Esplandian, whose birth and education had already been given in the story of his father’s adventures, and constitute one of its pleasantest episodes. But, as the curate says, when he comes to this romance in Don Quixote’s library, “the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son.” The story of Esplandian has neither freshness, spirit, nor dignity in it. It opens at the point where he is left in the original fiction, just armed as a knight, and is filled with his adventures as he wanders about the world, and with the supernumerary achievements of his father Amadis, who survives to the end of the whole, and sees his son made Emperor of Constantinople; he himself having long before become King of Great Britain by the death of Lisuarte.[378]

But, from the beginning, we find two mistakes committed, which run through the whole work. Amadis, represented as still alive, fills a large part of the can[p. 232]vas; while, at the same time, Esplandian is made to perform achievements intended to be more brilliant than his father’s, but which, in fact, are only more extravagant. From this sort of emulation, the work becomes a succession of absurd and frigid impossibilities. Many of the characters of the Amadis are preserved in it, like Lisuarte, who is rescued out of a mysterious imprisonment by Esplandian as his first adventure; Urganda, who, from a graceful fairy, becomes a savage enchantress; and “the great master Elisabad,” a man of learning and a priest, whom we first knew as the leech of Amadis, and who is now the pretended biographer of his son, writing, as he says, in Greek. But none of them, and none of the characters invented for the occasion, are managed with skill.

The scene of the whole work is laid chiefly in the East, amidst battles with Turks and Mohammedans; thus showing to what quarter the minds of men were turned when it was written, and what were the dangers apprehended to the peace of Europe, even in its westernmost borders, during the century after the fall of Constantinople. But all reference to real history or real geography was apparently thought inappropriate, as may be inferred from the circumstances, that a certain Calafria, queen of the island of California, is made a formidable enemy of Christendom through a large part of the story; and that Constantinople is said at one time to have been besieged by three millions of heathen. Nor is the style better than the story. The eloquence which is found in many passages of the Amadis is not found at all in Esplandian. On the contrary, large portions of it are written in a low and meagre style, and the rhymed arguments prefixed to many of the chapters are any thing but poetry, and[p. 233] quite inferior to the few passages of verse scattered through the Amadis.[379]

The oldest edition of the Esplandian now known to exist was printed in 1526, and five others appeared before the end of the century; so that it seems to have enjoyed its full share of popular favor. At any rate, the example it set was quickly followed. Its principal personages were made to figure again in a series of connected romances, each having a hero descended from Amadis, who passes through adventures more incredible than any of his predecessors, and then gives place, we know not why, to a son still more extravagant, and, if the phrase may be used, still more impossible, than his father. Thus, in the same year 1526, we have the sixth book of Amadis de Gaula, called “The History of Florisando,” his nephew, which is followed by the still more wonderful “Lisuarte of Greece, Son of Esplandian,” and the most wonderful “Amadis of Greece,” making respectively the seventh and eighth books. To these succeeded “Don Florisel de Niquea,” and “Anaxartes, Son of Lisuarte,” whose history, with that of the children of the last, fills three books; and finally we have the twelfth book, or “The Great Deeds in Arms of that Bold Knight, Don Silves de la Selva,” which was printed in 1549; thus giving proof how extraordinary was the success of the whole series, since its date allows hardly half a century for the production in Spanish of all these vast romances, most of which, during the same period, appeared in several, and some of them in many editions.

[p. 234]Nor did the effects of the passion thus awakened stop here. Other romances appeared, belonging to the same family, though not coming into the regular line of succession, such as a duplicate of the seventh book on Lisuarte, by the Canon Diaz, in 1526, and “Leandro the Fair,” in 1563, by Pedro de Luxan, which has sometimes been called the thirteenth; while in France, where they were all translated successively, as they appeared in Spain, and became instantly famous, the proper series of the Amadis romances was stretched out into twenty-four books; after all which, a certain Sieur Duverdier, grieved that many of them came to no regular catastrophe, collected the scattered and broken threads of their multitudinous stories and brought them all to an orderly sequence of conclusions, in seven large volumes, under the comprehensive and appropriate name of the “Roman des Romans.” And so ends the history of the Portuguese type of Amadis of Gaul, as it was originally presented to the world in the Spanish romances of chivalry; a fiction which, considering the passionate admiration it so long excited, and the influence it has, with little merit of its own, exercised on the poetry and romance of modern Europe ever since, is a phenomenon that has no parallel in literary history.[380]

[p. 235]The state of manners and opinion in Spain, however, which produced this extraordinary series of romances, could hardly fail to be fertile in other fictitious heroes, less brilliant, perhaps, in their fame than was Amadis, but with the same general qualities and attributes. And such, indeed, was the case. Many romances of chivalry appeared in Spain, soon after the success of this their great leader; and others followed a little later. The first of all of them in consequence, if not in date, is “Palmerin de Oliva”; a personage the more important, because he had a train of descendants that place him, beyond all doubt, next in dignity to Amadis.

The Palmerin has often, perhaps generally, been regarded as Portuguese in its origin, and as the work of a lady; though the proof of each of these allegations is somewhat imperfect. If, however, the facts be really as they have been stated, not the least curious circumstance in relation to them is, that, as in the case of the Amadis, the Portuguese original of the Palmerin is lost, and the first and only knowledge we have of its story is from the Spanish version. Even in this version, we can trace it up no higher than to the edition printed at Seville in 1525, which was certainly not the first.

But whenever it may have been first published, it was successful. Several editions were soon printed in Spanish, and translations followed in Italian and French. A continuation, too, appeared, called, in form, “The Second Book of Palmerin,” which treats of the achievements of his sons, Primaleon and Polendos, and of[p. 236] which we have an edition in Spanish, dated in 1524. The external appearances of the Palmerin, therefore, announce at once an imitation of the Amadis. The internal are no less decisive. Its hero, we are told, was grandson to a Greek emperor in Constantinople, but, being illegitimate, was exposed by his mother, immediately after his birth, on a mountain, where he was found, in an osier cradle among olive and palm trees, by a rich cultivator of bees, who carried him home and named him Palmerin de Oliva, from the place where he was discovered. He soon gives token of his high birth; and, making himself famous by numberless exploits, in Germany, England, and the East, against heathen and enchanters, he at last reaches Constantinople, where he is recognized by his mother, marries the daughter of the Emperor of Germany, who is the heroine of the story, and inherits the crown of Byzantium. The adventures of Primaleon and Polendos, which seem to be by the same unknown author, are in the same vein, and were succeeded by those of Platir, grandson of Palmerin, which were printed as early as 1533. All, taken together, therefore, leave no doubt that the Amadis was their model, however much they may have fallen short of its merits.[381]

The next in the series, “Palmerin of England,” son of Don Duarde, or Edward, King of England, and Flerida, a daughter of Palmerin de Oliva, is a more formidable rival to the Amadis than either of its predecessors. For a long time it was supposed to have been first writ[p. 237]ten in Portuguese, and was generally attributed to Francisco Moraes, who certainly published it in that language at Evora, in 1567, and whose allegation that he had translated it from the French, though now known to be true, was supposed to be only a modest concealment of his own merits. But a copy of the Spanish original, printed at Toledo, in two parts, in 1547 and 1548, has been discovered, and at the end of its dedication are a few verses addressed by the author to the reader, announcing it, in an acrostic, to be the work of Luis Hurtado, known to have been, at that time, a poet in Toledo.[382]

Regarded as a work of art, Palmerin of England is second only to the Amadis of Gaul, among the romances of chivalry. Like that great prototype of the whole class, it has among its actors two brothers,—Palmerin, the faithful knight, and Florian, the free gallant,—and, like that, it has its great magician, Deliante, and its perilous isle, where occur not a few of the most agreeable adventures of its heroes. In some respects, it may be favorably distinguished from its model. There is[p. 238] more sensibility to the beauties of natural scenery in it, and often an easier dialogue, with quite as good a drawing of individual characters. But it has greater faults; for its movement is less natural and spirited, and it is crowded with an unreasonable number of knights, and an interminable series of duels, battles, and exploits, all of which claim to be founded on authentic English chronicles and to be true history, thus affording new proof of the connection between the old chronicles and the oldest romances. Cervantes admired it excessively. “Let this Palm of England,” says his curate, “be cared for and preserved, as a thing singular in its kind, and let a casket be made for it, like that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, and destined to keep in it the works of the poet Homer”; praise, no doubt, much stronger than can now seem reasonable, but marking, at least, the sort of estimation in which the romance itself must have been generally held, when the Don Quixote appeared.

But the family of Palmerin had no further success in Spain. A third and fourth part, indeed, containing “The Adventures of Duardos the Second,” appeared in Portuguese, written by Diogo Fernandez, in 1587; and a fifth and sixth are said to have been written by Alvarez do Oriente, a contemporary poet of no mean reputation. But the last two do not seem to have been printed, and none of them were much known beyond the limits of their native country.[383] The Palmerins, therefore, notwithstanding the merits of one of them, failed to obtain a fame or a succession that could enter into competition with those of Amadis and his descendants.

The “Bibliotheca Hispana” has already been referred to more than once in this chapter, and must so often be relied on as an authority hereafter that some noticeof its claims should be given before we proceed farther. Its author, Nicolas Antonio, was born at Seville, in 1617. He was educated, first by the care of Francisco Jimenez, a blind teacher, of singular merit, attached to the College of St. Thomas in that city; and afterwards at Salamanca, where he devoted himself with success to the study of history and canon law. When he had completed an honorable career at the University, he returned home, and lived chiefly in the Convent of the Benedictines, where he had been bred, and where an abundant and curious library furnished him with means for study, which he used with eagerness and assiduity.

He was not, however, in haste to be known. He published nothing till 1659, when, at the age of forty-two, he printed a Latin treatise on the Punishment of Exile, and, the same year, was appointed to the honorable and important post of General Agent of Philip IV. at Rome. But from this time to the end of his life he was in the public service, and filled places of no little responsibility. In Rome he lived twenty years, collecting about him a library said to have been second in importance only to that of the Vatican, and devoting all his leisure to the studies he loved. At the end of that period, he returned to Madrid, and continued there in honorable employments till his death, which occurred in 1684. He left behind him several works in manuscript, of which his “Censura de Historias Fabulosas”—an examination and exposure of several forged chronicles which had appeared in the preceding century—was first published by Mayans y Siscar, and must be noticed hereafter.

But his great labor—the labor of his life and of his fondest preference—was his literary history of his own country. He began it in his youth, while he was still living with the Benedictines,—an order in the Romish Church honorably distinguished by its zeal in the history of letters,—and he continued it, employing on his task all the resources which his own large library and the libraries of the capitals of Spain and of the Christian world could furnish him, down to the moment of his death. He divided it into two parts. The first, beginning with the age of Augustus, and coming down to the year 1500, was found, after his death, digested into the form of a regular history; but as his pecuniary means, during his lifetime, had been entirely devoted to the purchase of books, it was published by his friend Cardinal Aguirre, at Rome, in 1696. The second part, which had been already printed there, in 1672, is thrown into the form of a dictionary, whose separate articles are arranged, like those in most other Spanish works of the same sort, under the baptismal names of their subjects,—an honor shown to the saints, which renders the use of such dictionaries somewhat inconvenient, even when, as in the case of Antonio’s, full indexes are added, which facilitate a reference to the respective articles by the more common arrangement, according to the surnames.

Of both parts an excellent edition was published in the original Latin, at Madrid, in 1787 and 1788, in four volumes, folio, commonly known as the “Bibliotheca Vetus et Nova of Nicolas Antonio”; the first being enriched with notes by Perez Bayer, a learned Valencian, long the head of the Royal Library at Madrid; and the last receiving additions from Antonio’s own manuscripts that bring down his notices of Spanish writers to the time of his death in 1684. In the earlier portion, embracing the names of about thirteen hundred authors, little remains to be desired, so far as the Roman or the ecclesiastical literary history of Spain is concerned; but for the Arabic we must go to Casiri and Gayangos, and for the Jewish to Castro and Amador de los Rios; while, for the proper Spanish literature that existed before the reign of Charles V., manuscripts discovered since the careful labors of Bayer furnish important additions. In the latter portion, which contains notices of nearly eight thousand writers of the best period of Spanish literature, we have—notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies and oversights inevitable in a work so vast and so various—a monument of industry, fairness, and fidelity, for which those who most use it will always be most grateful. The two, taken together, constitute their author, beyond all reasonable question, the father and founder of the literary history of his country.

See the lives of Antonio prefixed by Mayans to the “Historias Fabulosas,” (Valencia, 1742, fol.,) and by Bayer to the “Bibliotheca Vetus,” in 1787.

Although the Palmerins failed as rivals of the great family of Amadis, they were not without their influence and consideration. Like the other works of their class, and more than most of them, they helped to increase the passion for fictions of chivalry in general, which, overbearing every other in the Peninsula, was now busily at work producing romances, both original and translated, that astonish us alike by their number, their length, and their absurdities. Of those originally Spanish, it would not be difficult, after setting aside the two series belonging to the families of Amadis and Palmerin, to collect the names of about forty; all produced in the course of the sixteenth century. Some of them are still more or less familiar to us, by their names at least, such as “Belianis of Greece” and “Olivante de Laura,” which are found in Don Quixote’s library, and “Felixmarte of Hircania,” which was once, we are told, the summer reading of Dr. Johnson.[384] But, in general, like “The Renowned[p. 242] Knight Cifar” and “The Bold Knight Claribalte,” their very titles sound strangely to our ears, and excite no interest when we hear them repeated. Most of them, it may be added,—perhaps all,—deserve the oblivion into which they have fallen; though some have merits which, in the days of their popularity, placed them near the best of those already noticed.

Among the latter is “The Invincible Knight Lepolemo, called the Knight of the Cross and Son of the Emperor of Germany”; a romance, which was published as early as 1525, and, besides drawing a continuation after it, was reprinted thrice in the course of the century, and translated into French and Italian.[385] It is a striking book among those of its class, not only from the variety of fortunes through which the hero passes, but, in some degree, from its general tone and purpose. In his infancy Lepolemo is stolen from the shelter of the throne to which he is heir, and completely lost for a long period. During this time he lives among the heathen; at first in slavery, and afterwards as an honorable knight-adventurer at the court of the Soldan. By his courage and merit he rises to great distinction, and, while on a journey through France, is recognized by his own family, who happen to be there. Of course he is restored, amidst a general jubilee, to his imperial estate.

In all this, and especially in the wearisome series of its knightly adventures, the Lepolemo has a sufficient resemblance to the other romances of chivalry. But in two points it differs from them. In the first place, it[p. 243] pretends to be translated by Pedro de Luxan, its real author, from the Arabic of a wise magician attached to the person of the Sultan; and yet it represents its hero throughout as a most Christian knight, and his father and mother, the Emperor and Empress, as giving the force of their example to encourage pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre; making the whole story subserve the projects of the Church, in the same way, if not to the same degree, that Turpin’s Chronicle had done. And in the next place, it attracts our attention, from time to time, by a picturesque air and touches of the national manners, as, for instance, in the love passages between the Knight of the Cross and the Infanta of France, in one of which he talks to her at her grated balcony in the night, as if he were a cavalier of one of Calderon’s comedies.[386] Except in these points, however, the Lepolemo is much like its predecessors and followers, and quite as tedious.

Spain, however, not only gave romances of chivalry to the rest of Europe in large numbers, but received also from abroad in some good proportion to what she gave. From the first, the early French fictions were known in Spain, as we have seen by the allusions to them in the “Amadis de Gaula”; a circumstance that may have been owing either to the old connection with France through the Burgundian family, a branch of which filled the throne of Portugal, or to some strange accident, like the one that carried “Palmerin de Inglaterra” to Portugal from France rather than from Spain, its native country. At any rate, somewhat later, when the passion for such fictions was more developed, the French stories were translated or imitated in Spanish,[p. 244] and became a part, and a favored part, of the literature of the country. “The Romance of Merlin” was printed very early,—as early as 1498,—and “The Romance of Tristan de Leonnais,” and that of the Holy Cup, “La Demanda del Sancto Grial,” followed it as a sort of natural sequence.[387]

The rival story of Charlemagne, however,—perhaps from the greatness of his name,—seems to have been, at last, more successful. It is a translation directly from the French, and therefore gives none of those accounts of his defeat at Roncesvalles by Bernardo del Carpio, which, in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, so gratified the national vanity; and contains only the accustomed stories of Oliver and Fierabras the Giant; of Orlando and the False Ganelon; relying, of course, on the fabulous Chronicle of Turpin as its chief authority. But, such as it was, it found great favor at the time it appeared; and such, in fact, as Nicolas de Piamonte gave it to the world, in 1528, under the title of “The History of the Emperor Charlemagne,” it has been constantly reprinted down to our own times, and has done more than any other tale of chivalry to keep alive in Spain a taste for such reading.[388] During a considerable period, however, a few other romances shared its popularity. “Reynaldos de Montalban,” for[p. 245] instance, always a favorite hero in Spain, was one of them;[389] and a little later we find another, the story of “Cleomadez,” an invention of a French queen in the thirteenth century, which first gave to Froissart the love for adventure that made him a chronicler.[390]

In most of the imitations and translations just noticed, the influence of the Church is more visible than it is in the class of the original Spanish romances. This is the case, from its very subject, with the story of the Saint Graal, and with that of Charlemagne, which, so far as it is taken from the pretended Archbishop Turpin’s Chronicle, goes mainly to encourage founding religious houses and making pious pilgrimages. But the Church was not satisfied with this indirect and accidental influence. Romantic fiction, though overlooked in its earliest beginnings, or perhaps even punished by ecclesiastical authority in the person of the Greek Bishop to whom we owe the first proper romance,[391] was now become important, and might be made directly useful. Religious romances, therefore, were written. In general, they were cast into the form of allegories, like “The Celestial Chivalry,” “The Christian Chivalry[p. 246],” “The Knight of the Bright Star,” and “The Christian History and Warfare of the Stranger Knight, the Conqueror of Heaven”;—all printed after the middle of the sixteenth century, and during the period when the passion for romances of chivalry was at its height.[392]

One of the oldest of them is probably the most curious and remarkable of the whole number. It is appropriately called “The Celestial Chivalry,” and was written by Hierónimo de San Pedro, at Valencia, and printed in 1554, in two thin folio volumes.[393] In his Preface, the author declares it to be his object to drive out of the world the profane books of chivalry; the mischief of which he illustrates by a reference to Dante’s account of Francesca da Rimini. In pursuance of this purpose, the First Part is entitled “The Root of the Fragrant Rose”; which, instead of chapters, is divided into “Wonders,” Maravillas, and contains an allegorical version of the most striking stories in the Old Testament, down to the time of the good King Hezekiah, told as the adventures of a succession of knights-errant. The Second Part is divided, according to a similar conceit, into “The Leaves of the Rose”; and, beginning where the preceding one ends, comes down,[p. 247] with the same kind of knightly adventures, to the Saviour’s death and ascension. The Third, which is promised under the name of “The Flower of the Rose,” never appeared, nor is it now easy to understand where consistent materials could have been found for its composition; the Bible having been nearly exhausted in the two former parts. But we have enough without it.

Its chief allegory, from the nature of its subject, relates to the Saviour, and fills seventy-four out of the one hundred and one “Leaves,” or chapters, that constitute the Second Part. Christ is represented in it as the Knight of the Lion; his twelve Apostles as the twelve Knights of his Round Table; John the Baptist as the Knight of the Desert; and Lucifer as the Knight of the Serpent;—the main history being a warfare between the Knight of the Lion and the Knight of the Serpent. It begins at the manger of Bethlehem, and ends on Mount Calvary, involving in its progress almost every detail of the Gospel history, and often using the very words of Scripture. Every thing, however, is forced into the forms of a strange and revolting allegory. Thus, for the temptation, the Saviour wears the shield of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and rides on the steed of Penitence, given to him by Adam. He then takes leave of his mother, the daughter of the Celestial Emperor, like a youthful knight going out to his first passage at arms, and proceeds to the waste and desert country, where he is sure to find adventures. On his approach, the Knight of the Desert prepares himself to do battle; but, perceiving who it is, humbles himself before his coming prince and master. The baptism of course follows; that is, the Knight of the Lion is received into the order of the Knighthood of Baptism, in the presence of an old man, who turns out to be the[p. 248] Anagogic Master, or the Interpreter of all Mysteries, and two women, one young and the other old. All three of them enter directly into a spirited discussion concerning the nature of the rite they have just witnessed. The old man speaks at large, and explains it as a heavenly allegory. The old woman, who proves to be Sinagoga, or the representation of Judaism, prefers the ancient ordinance provided by Abraham, and authorized, as she says, by “that celebrated Doctor, Moses,” rather than this new rite of baptism. The younger woman replies, and defends the new institution. She is the Church Militant; and the Knight of the Desert, deciding the point in her favor, Sinagoga goes off full of anger, ending thus the first part of the action.

The great Anagogic Master, according to an understanding previously had with the Church Militant, now follows the Knight of the Lion to the desert, and there explains to him the true mystery and efficacy of Christian baptism. After this preparation, the Knight enters on his first adventure and battle with the Knight of the Serpent, which, in all its details, is represented as a duel,—one of the parties coming into the lists accompanied by Abel, Moses, and David, and the other by Cain, Goliath, and Haman. Each of the speeches recorded in the Evangelists is here made an arrow-shot or a sword-thrust; the scene on the pinnacle of the temple, and the promises made there, are brought in as far as their incongruous nature will permit; and then the whole of this part of the long romance is abruptly ended by the precipitate and disgraceful flight of the Knight of the Serpent.

This scene of the temptation, strange as it now seems to us, is, nevertheless, not an unfavorable specimen of the entire fiction. The allegory is almost everywhere[p. 249] quite as awkward and unmanageable as it is here, and often leads to equally painful and disgusting absurdities. On the other hand, we have occasionally proofs of an imagination that is not ungraceful; just as the formal and extravagant style in which it is written now and then gives token that its author was not insensible to the resources of a language he, in general, so much abuses.[394]

There is, no doubt, a wide space between such a fiction as this of the Celestial Chivalry and the comparatively simple and direct story of the Amadis de Gaula; and when we recollect that only half a century elapsed between the dates of these romances in Spain,[395] we shall be struck with the fact that this space was very quickly passed over, and that all the varieties of the romances of chivalry are crowded into a comparatively short period of time. But we must not forget that the success of these fictions, thus suddenly obtained, is spread afterwards over a much longer period. The earliest of them were familiarly known in Spain during the fifteenth century, the sixteenth is thronged with them, and, far into the seventeenth, they were still much read; so that their influence over the Spanish character extends through quite two hundred years. Their number, too, during the latter part of the time when they prevailed, was large. It exceeded seventy, nearly all of them in folio; each often in more than one volume, and still oftener repeated in successive editions;—circumstances which, at a period when books were comparatively rare and not frequently reprinted, show that[p. 250] their popularity must have been widely spread, as well as long continued.

This might, perhaps, have been, in some degree, expected in a country where the institutions and feelings of chivalry had struck such firm root as they had in Spain. For Spain, when the romances of chivalry first appeared, had long been peculiarly the land of knighthood. The Moorish wars, which had made every gentleman a soldier, necessarily tended to this result; and so did the free spirit of the communities, led on as they were, during the next period, by barons, who long continued almost as independent in their castles as the king was on his throne. Such a state of things, in fact, is to be recognized as far back as the thirteenth century, when the Partidas, by the most minute and painstaking legislation, provided for a condition of society not easily to be distinguished from that set forth in the Amadis or the Palmerin.[396] The poem and history of the Cid bear witness yet earlier, indirectly indeed, but very strongly, to a similar state of the country; and so do many of the old ballads and other records of the national feelings and traditions that had come from the fourteenth century.

But in the fifteenth, the chronicles are full of it, and exhibit it in forms the most grave and imposing. Dangerous tournaments, in some of which the chief men of the time, and even the kings themselves, took part, occur constantly, and are recorded among the important events of the age.[397] At the passage of arms[p. 251] near Orbigo, in the reign of John the Second, eighty knights, as we have seen, were found ready to risk their lives for as fantastic a fiction of gallantry as is recorded in any of the romances of chivalry; a folly, of which this was by no means the only instance.[398] Nor did they confine their extravagances to their own country. In the same reign, two Spanish knights went as far as Burgundy, professedly in search of adventures, which they strangely mingled with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; seeming to regard both as religious exercises.[399] And as late as the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, Fernando del Pulgar, their wise secretary, gives us the names of several distinguished noblemen personally known to himself, who had gone into foreign countries, “in order,” as he says, “to try the fortune of arms with any cavalier that might be pleased to adventure it with them, and so gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and bold knights for the gentlemen of Castile.”[400]

A state of society like this was the natural result of the extraordinary development which the institutions of chivalry had then received in Spain. Some of it was suited to the age, and salutary; the rest was knight-errantry, and knight-errantry in its wildest extravagance. When, however, the imaginations of men were so excited as to tolerate and maintain, in their daily life, such manners and institutions as these, they[p. 252] would not fail to enjoy the boldest and most free representations of a corresponding state of society in works of romantic fiction. But they went farther. Extravagant and even impossible as are many of the adventures recorded in the books of chivalry, they still seemed so little to exceed the absurdities frequently witnessed or told of known and living men, that many persons took the romances themselves to be true histories, and believed them. Thus, Mexia, the trustworthy historiographer of Charles the Fifth, says, in 1545, when speaking of “the Amadises, Lisuartes, and Clarions,” that “their authors do waste their time and weary their faculties in writing such books, which are read by all and believed by many. For,” he goes on, “there be men who think all these things really happened, just as they read or hear them, though the greater part of the things themselves are sinful, profane, and unbecoming.”[401] And Castillo, another chronicler, tells us gravely, in 1587, that Philip the Second, when he married Mary of England, only forty years earlier, promised, that, if King Arthur should return to claim the throne, he would peaceably yield to that prince all his rights; thus implying, at least in Castillo himself, and probably in many of his readers, a full faith in the stories of Arthur and his Round Table.[402]

Such credulity, it is true, now seems impossible, even if we suppose it was confined to a moderate number of intelligent persons; and hardly less so, when, as in the admirable sketch of an easy faith in the stories of chivalry by the innkeeper and Maritornes in Don Quixote, we are shown that it extended to the[p. 253] mass of the people.[403] But before we refuse our assent to the statements of such faithful chroniclers as Mexia, on the ground that what they relate is impossible, we should recollect, that, in the age when they lived, men were in the habit of believing and asserting every day things no less incredible than those recited in the old romances. The Spanish Church then countenanced a trust in miracles, as of constant recurrence, which required of those who believed them more credulity than the fictions of chivalry; and yet how few were found wanting in faith! And how few doubted the tales that had come down to them of the impossible achievements of their fathers during the seven centuries of their warfare against the Moors, or the glorious traditions of all sorts, that still constitute the charm of their brave old chronicles, though we now see at a glance that many of them are as fabulous as any thing told of Palmerin or Launcelot!

But whatever we may think of this belief in the romances of chivalry, there is no question that in Spain, during the sixteenth century, there prevailed a passion for them such as was never known elsewhere. The proof of it comes to us from all sides. The poetry of the country is full of it, from the romantic ballads that still live in the memory of the people, up to the old plays that have ceased to be acted and the old epics that have ceased to be read. The national manners and the national dress, more peculiar and picturesque than in other countries, long bore its sure impress. The old laws, too, speak no less plainly. Indeed, the passion for such fictions was so strong, and seemed so dangerous, that in 1553 they were prohibited from being[p. 254] printed, sold, or read in the American colonies; and in 1555 the Cortes earnestly asked that the same prohibition might be extended to Spain itself, and that all the extant copies of romances of chivalry might be publicly burned.[404] And finally, half a century later, the happiest work of the greatest genius Spain has produced bears witness on every page to the prevalence of an absolute fanaticism for books of chivalry, and becomes at once the seal of their vast popularity and the monument of their fate.

The Drama.—The ancient theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued under some of its grosser and more popular forms at Constantinople, in Italy, and in many other parts of the falling and fallen empire, far into the Middle Ages. But, under whatever disguise it appeared, it was essentially heathenish; for, from first to last, it was mythological, both in tone and in substance. As such, of course, it was rebuked and opposed by the Christian Church, which, favored by the confusion and ignorance of the times, succeeded in overthrowing it, though not without a long contest, and not until its degradation and impurity had rendered it worthy of its fate and of the anathemas pronounced against it by Tertullian and Saint Augustin.[405]

A love for theatrical exhibitions, however, survived the extinction of these poor remains of the classical drama; and the priesthood, careful neither to make itself needlessly odious, nor to neglect any suitable[p. 256] method of increasing its own influence, seems early to have been willing to provide a substitute for the popular amusement it had destroyed. At any rate, a substitute soon appeared; and, coming as it did out of the ceremonies and commemorations of the religion of the times, its appearance was natural and easy. The greater festivals of the Church had for centuries been celebrated with whatever of pomp the rude luxury of ages so troubled could afford, and they now everywhere, from London to Rome, added a dramatic element to their former attractions. Thus, the manger at Bethlehem, with the worship of the shepherds and Magi, was, at a very early period, solemnly exhibited every year by a visible show before the altars of the churches at Christmas, as were the tragical events of the last days of the Saviour’s life during Lent and at the approach of Easter.

Gross abuses, dishonoring alike the priesthood and religion, were, no doubt, afterwards mingled with these representations, both while they were given in dumb show, and when, by the addition of dialogue, they became what were called Mysteries; but, in many parts of Europe, the representations themselves, down to a comparatively late period, were found so well suited to the spirit of the times, that different Popes granted especial indulgences to the persons who frequented them, and they were in fact used openly and successfully, not only as means of amusement, but for the religious edification of an ignorant multitude. In England such shows prevailed for above four hundred years,—a longer period than can be assigned to the English national drama, as we now recognize it; while in Italy and other countries still under the influence of the See of Rome, they have, in some of their forms,[p. 257] been continued, for the edification and amusement of the populace, quite down to our own times.[406]

That all traces of the ancient Roman theatre, except the architectural remains which still bear witness to its splendor,[407] disappeared from Spain in consequence of the occupation of the country by the Arabs, whose national spirit rejected the drama altogether, cannot be reasonably doubted. But the time when the more modern representations were begun on religious subjects, and under ecclesiastical patronage, can no longer be determined. It must, however, have been very early; for, in the middle of the thirteenth century, such performances were not only known, but had been so long practised, that they had already taken various forms, and become disgraced by various abuses. This is apparent from the code of Alfonso the Tenth, which was prepared about 1260; and in which, after forbidding the clergy certain gross indulgences, the law goes on to say: “Neither ought they to be makers of buffoon plays,[408] that people may come to see them; and if other men make them, clergymen should not come to see them, for such men do many things low and unsuitable. Nor, moreover, should such things be done in the churches; but rather we say that they should be cast[p. 258] out in dishonor, without punishment to those engaged in them. For the church of God was made for prayer, and not for buffoonery; as our Lord Jesus Christ declared in the Gospel, that his house was called the House of Prayer, and ought not to be made a den of thieves. But exhibitions there be, that clergymen may make, such as that of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows how the angel came to the shepherds and how he told them Jesus Christ was born, and, moreover, of his appearance when the Three Kings came to worship him, and of his resurrection, which shows how he was crucified and rose the third day. Such things as these, which move men to do well, may the clergy make, as well as to the end that men may have in remembrance that such things did truly happen. But this must they do decently, and in devotion, and in the great cities where there is an archbishop or bishop, and under their authority, or that of others by them deputed, and not in villages, nor in small places, nor to gain money thereby.”[409]

But though these earliest religious representations in Spain, whether pantomimic or in dialogue, were thus given, not only by churchmen, but by others, certainly before the middle of the thirteenth century, and probably much sooner, and though they were continued for several centuries afterwards, still no fragment of them and no distinct account of them now remain to us. Nor is any thing properly dramatic found even amongst the secular poetry of Spain, till the latter part of the fifteenth century, though it may have existed somewhat earlier, as we may infer from a passage in the Marquis of Santillana’s letter to the Constable of Portugal;[410] from[p. 259] the notice of a moral play by the Marquis of Villena, now lost, which is said to have been represented in 1414, before Ferdinand of Aragon;[411] and from the hint left by the picturesque chronicler of the Constable de Luna concerning the Entremeses[412] or Interludes, which were sometimes arranged by that proud favorite a little later in the same century. These indications, however, are very slight and uncertain.[413]

[p. 260]A nearer approach to the spirit of the drama, and particularly to the form which the secular drama first took in Spain, is to be found in the curious dialogue called “The Couplets of Mingo Revulgo”; a satire thrown into the shape of an eclogue, and given in the free and spirited language of the lower classes of the people, on the deplorable state of public affairs, as they existed in the latter part of the weak reign of Henry the Fourth. It seems to have been written about the year 1472.[414] The interlocutors are two shepherds; one of whom, called Mingo Revulgo,—a name corrupted from Domingo Vulgus,—represents the common people; and the other, called Gil Arribato, or Gil the Elevated, represents the higher classes, and speaks with the authority of a prophet, who, while complaining of the ruinous condition of the state, yet lays no small portion of the blame on the common people, for having, as he says, by their weakness and guilt, brought upon themselves so dissolute and careless a shepherd. It opens with the shouts of Arribato, who sees Revulgo at a distance, on a Sunday morning, ill dressed and with a dispirited air:—

[p. 261]Revulgo replies, that the state of the flock, governed by so unfit a shepherd, is the cause of his squalid condition; and then, under this allegory, they urge a coarse, but efficient, satire against the measures of the government, against the base, cowardly character of the king and his scandalous, passion for his Portuguese mistress, and against the ruinous carelessness and indifference of the people, ending with praises of the contentment found in a middle condition of life. The whole dialogue consists of only thirty-two stanzas of nine lines each; but it produced a great effect at the time, was often printed in the next century, and was twice elucidated by a grave commentary.[416]

Its author wisely concealed his name, and has never been absolutely ascertained.[417] The earlier editions generally suppose him to have been Rodrigo Cota, the elder, of Toledo, to whom also is attributed “A Dialogue between Love and an Old Man,” which dates from the same period, and is no less spirited and even more dramatic. It opens with a representation of an old man retired into a poor hut, which stands in the midst of a neglected and decayed garden. Suddenly Love appears[p. 262] before him, and he exclaims, “My door is shut; what do you want? Where did you enter? Tell me how, robber-like, you leaped the walls of my garden. Age and reason had freed me from you; leave, therefore, my heart, retired into its poor corner, to think only of the past.” He goes on giving a sad account of his own condition, and a still more sad description of Love; to which Love replies, with great coolness, “Your discourse shows that you have not been well acquainted with me.” A discussion follows, in which Love, of course, gains the advantage. The old man is promised that his garden shall be restored and his youth renewed; but when he has surrendered at discretion, he is only treated with the gayest ridicule by his conqueror, for thinking that at his age he can again make himself attractive in the ways of love. The whole is in a light tone and managed with a good deal of ingenuity; but though susceptible, like other poetical eclogues, of being represented, it is not certain that it ever was. It is, however, as well as the Couplets of Revulgo, so much like the pastorals which we know were publicly exhibited as dramas a few years later, that we may reasonably suppose it had some influence in preparing the way for them.[418]

The next contribution to the foundations of the Spanish theatre is the “Celestina,” a dramatic story, con[p. 263]temporary with the poems just noticed, and probably, in part, the work of the same hands. It is a prose composition, in twenty-one acts, or parts, originally called, “The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibœa”; and though, from its length, and, indeed, from its very structure, it can never have been represented, its dramatic spirit and movement have left traces, that are not to to be mistaken,[419] of their influence on the national drama ever since.

The first act, which is much the longest, was probably written by Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo, and in that case we may safely assume that it was produced about 1480.[420] It opens in the environs of a city, which is not named,[421] with a scene between Calisto, a young[p. 264] man of rank, and Melibœa, a maiden of birth and qualities still more noble than his own. He finds her in her father’s garden, where he had accidentally followed his bird in hawking, and she receives him as a Spanish lady of condition in that age would be likely to receive a stranger who begins his acquaintance by making love to her. The result is, that the presumptuous young man goes home full of mortification and despair, and shuts himself up in his darkened chamber. Sempronio, a confidential servant, understanding the cause of his master’s trouble, advises him to apply to an old woman, with whom the unprincipled valet is secretly in league, and who is half a pretender to witchcraft and half a dealer in love philters. This personage is Celestina. Her character, the first hint of which may have been taken from the Archpriest of Hita’s sketch of one with not dissimilar pretensions, is at once revealed in all its power. She boldly promises Calisto that he shall obtain possession of Melibœa, and from that moment secures to herself a complete control over him, and over all who are about him.[422]

Thus far Cota had proceeded in his outline, when, from some unknown reason, he stopped short. The fragment he had written was, however, circulated and admired, and Fernando de Rojas of Montalvan, a bachelor of laws living at Salamanca, took it up, at the request of some of his friends, and, as he himself tells us, wrote the remainder in a fortnight of his vacations; the twenty acts or scenes which he added for this purpose constituting about seven eighths of[p. 265] the whole composition.[423] That the conclusion he thus arranged was such as the original inventor of the story intended is not to be imagined. Rojas was even uncertain who this first author was, and evidently knew nothing about his plans or purposes; besides which, he says, the portion that came into his hands was a comedy, while the remainder is so violent and bloody in its course, that he calls his completed work a tragicomedy; a name which it has generally borne since, and which he perhaps invented to suit this particular case. One circumstance, however, connected with it should not be overlooked. It is, that the different portions attributed to the two authors are so similar in style and finish, as to have led to the conjecture, that, after all, the whole might have been the work of Rojas, who, for reasons, perhaps, arising out of his ecclesiastical position in society, was unwilling to take the responsibility of being the sole author of it.[424]

But this is not the account given by Rojas himself. He says that he found the first act already written; and he begins the second with the impatience of Calisto, in urging Celestina to obtain access to the high-born and high-bred Melibœa. The low and vulgar woman succeeds, by presenting herself at the house of Mel[p. 266]ibœa’s father with lady-like trifles to sell, and, having once obtained an entrance, easily finds the means of establishing her right to return. Intrigues of the grossest kind amongst the servants and subordinates follow; and the machinations and contrivances of the mover of the whole mischief advance through the midst of them with great rapidity,—all managed by herself, and all contributing to her power and purposes. Nothing, indeed, seems to be beyond the reach of her unprincipled activity and talent. She talks like a saint or a philosopher, as it suits her purpose. She flatters; she threatens; she overawes; her unscrupulous ingenuity is never at fault; her main object is never forgotten or overlooked.

Meantime, the unhappy Melibœa, urged by whatever insinuation and seduction can suggest, is made to confess her love for Calisto. From this moment, her fate is sealed. Calisto visits her secretly in the night, after the fashion of the old Spanish gallants; and then the conspiracy hurries onward to its consummation. At the same time, however, the retribution begins. The persons who had assisted Calisto to bring about his first interview with her quarrel for the reward he had given them; and Celestina, at the moment of her triumph, is murdered by her own base agents and associates, two of whom, attempting to escape, are in their turn summarily put to death by the officers of justice. Great confusion ensues. Calisto is regarded as the indirect cause of Celestina’s death, since she perished in his service; and some of those who had been dependent upon her are roused to such indignation, that they track him to the place of his assignation, seeking for revenge. There they fall into a quarrel with the servants he had posted in the streets for his protection. He hastens to the[p. 267] rescue, is precipitated from a ladder, and is killed on the spot. Melibœa confesses her guilt and shame, and throws herself headlong from a high tower; immediately upon which the whole melancholy and atrocious story ends with the lament of the broken-hearted father over her dead body.

As has been intimated, the Celestina is rather a dramatized romance than a proper drama, or even a well-considered attempt to produce a strictly dramatic effect. Such as it is, however, Europe can show nothing on its theatres, at the same period, of equal literary merit. It is full of life and movement throughout. Its characters, from Celestina down to her insolent and lying valets, and her brutal female associates, are developed with a skill and truth rarely found in the best periods of the Spanish drama. Its style is easy and pure, sometimes brilliant, and always full of the idiomatic resources of the old and true Castilian; such a style, unquestionably, as had not yet been approached in Spanish prose, and was not often reached afterwards. Occasionally, indeed, we are offended by an idle and cold display of learning; but, like the gross manners of the piece, this poor vanity is a fault that belonged to the age.

The great offence of the Celestina, however, is, that large portions of it are foul with a shameless libertinism of thought and language. Why the authority of church and state did not at once interfere to prevent its circulation seems now hardly intelligible. Probably it was, in part, because the Celestina claimed to be written for the purpose of warning the young against the seductions and crimes it so loosely unveils; or, in other words, because it claimed to be a book whose tendency was good. Certainly, strange as the fact may now seem to us, many so received it. It was dedicated to rever[p. 268]end ecclesiastics, and to ladies of rank and modesty in Spain and out of it, and seems to have been read generally, and perhaps by the wise, the gentle, and the good, without a blush. When, therefore, those who had the power were called to exercise it, they shrank from the task; only slight changes were required; and the Celestina was then left to run its course of popular favor unchecked.[425] In the century that followed its first appearance from the press in 1499, a century in which the number of readers was comparatively very small, it is easy to enumerate above thirty editions of the original. Probably there were more. At that time, too, or soon afterwards, it was made known in English, in German, and in Dutch; and, that none of the learned at least might be beyond its reach, it appeared in the universal Latin. Thrice it was translated into Italian, and thrice into French. The cautious and severe author of the “Dialogue on Languages,” the Protestant Valdés, gave it the highest praise.[426] So did Cervantes.[427] The very name of Celestina became a proverb, like the thousand bywords and adages she[p. 269] herself pours out, with such wit and fluency;[428] and it is not too much to add, that, down to the days of the Don Quixote, no Spanish book was so much known and read at home and abroad.

Such success insured for it a long series of imitations; most of them yet more offensive to morals and public decency than the Celestina itself, and all of them, as might be anticipated, of inferior literary merit to their model. One, called “The Second Comedia of Celestina,” in which she is raised from the dead, was published in 1530, by Feliciano de Silva, the author of the old romance of “Florisel de Niquea,” and went through four editions. Another, by Domingo de Castega, was sometimes added to the successive reprints of the original work after 1534. A third, by Gaspar Gomez de Toledo, appeared in 1537; a fourth, ten years later, by an unknown author, called “The Tragedy of Policiana,” in twenty-nine acts; a fifth, in 1554, by Joan Rodrigues Florian, in forty-three scenes, called “The Comedia of Florinea”; and a sixth, “The Selvagia,” in five acts, also in 1554, by Alonso de Villegas. In 1513, Pedro de Urrea, of the same family with the translator of Ariosto, rendered the first act of the original Celestina into good Castilian verse, dedicating it to his mother; and in 1540, Juan Sedeño, the translator of Tasso, performed a similar service for the whole of it. Tales and romances followed, somewhat later, in large numbers; some, like “The Ingenious Helen,” and “The Cunning Flora,” not without merit; while others, like “The Eufrosina,” praised more than it deserves by Quevedo, were little regarded from the first.[429]

[p. 270]

At last, it came upon the stage, for which its original character had so nearly fitted it. Cepeda, in 1582, formed out of it one half of his “Comedia Selvage[p. 271],” which is only the four first acts of the Celestina, thrown into easy verse;[430] and Alfonso Vaz de Velasco, as early as 1602, published a drama in prose, called “The Jealous Man,” founded entirely on the Celestina, whose character, under the name of Lena, is given with nearly all its original spirit and effect.[431] How far either the play of Velasco or that of Cepeda succeeded, we are not told; but the coarseness and indecency of both are so great, that they can hardly have been long tolerated by the public, if they were by the Church. The essential type of Celestina, however, the character as originally conceived by Cota and Rojas, was continued on the stage in such plays as the “Celestina” of Mendoza, “The Second Celestina” of Agustin de Salazar, and “The School of Celestina” by Salas Barbadillo, all produced soon after the year 1600, as well as in others that have been produced since. Even in our own days, a drama containing so much of her story as a modern audience will listen to has been received with favor; while, at the same time, the original tragicomedy itself has been thought worthy of being reprinted at Madrid, with various readings to settle its text, and of being rendered anew by fresh and vigorous translations into the French and the German.[432]

[p. 272]The influence, therefore, of the Celestina seems not yet at an end, little as it deserves regard, except for its lifelike exhibition of the most unworthy forms of human character, and its singularly pure, rich, and idiomatic Castilian style.

The “Celestina,” as has been intimated, produced little or no immediate effect on the rude beginnings of the Spanish drama; perhaps not so much as the dialogues of “Mingo Revulgo,” and “Love and the Old Man.” But the three taken together unquestionably lead us to the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain, Juan de la Enzina,[433] who was probably born in the village whose name he bears, in 1468 or 1469, and was educated at the neighbouring University of Salamanca, where he had the good fortune to enjoy the patronage of its chancellor, then one of the rising family of Alva. Soon afterwards he was at court; and at the age of twenty-five, we find him in the household of Fadrique de Toledo, first Duke of Alva, to whom and to his duchess Enzina addressed much of his poetry. In 1496, he published the earliest edition of his works, divided into four parts, which are successively dedicated to Ferdinand and Isabella, to the Duke and Duchess of Alva, to Prince John, and to Don Garcia de Toledo, son of his patron.

[p. 274]Somewhat later, Enzina went to Rome, where he became a priest, and, from his skill in music, rose to be head of Leo the Tenth’s chapel; the highest honor the world then offered to his art. In the course of the year 1519, he made a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem with Fadrique Afan de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa; and on his return, published, in 1521, a poor poetical account of his devout adventures, accompanied with great praises of the Marquis, and ending with an expression of his happiness at living in Rome.[434] At a more advanced age, however, having received a priory in Leon as a reward for his services, he returned to his native country, and died, in 1534, at Salamanca, in whose cathedral his monument is probably still to be seen.[435]

Of his collected works six editions at least were published between 1496 and 1516; showing, that, for the period in which he lived, he enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity. They contain a good deal of pleasant lyrical poetry, songs, and villancicos, in the old popular Spanish style; and two or three descriptive[p. 275] poems, particularly “A Vision of the Temple of Fame and the Glories of Castile,” in which Ferdinand and Isabella receive great eulogy and are treated as if they were his patrons. But most of his shorter poems were slight contributions of his talent offered on particular occasions; and by far the most important works he has left us are the dramatic compositions which fill the fourth division of his Cancionero.

These compositions are called by Enzina himself “Representaciones”; and in the edition of 1496 there are nine of them, while in the last two editions there are eleven, one of which contains the date of 1498. They are in the nature of eclogues, though one of them, it is difficult to tell why, is called an “Auto”;[436] and they were represented before the Duke and Duchess of Alva, the Prince Don John, the Duke of Infantado, and other distinguished personages enumerated in the notices prefixed to them. All are in some form of the old Spanish verse; in all there is singing; and in one there is a dance. They have, therefore, several of the elements of the proper secular Spanish drama, whose origin we can trace no farther back by any authentic monument now existing.

Two things, however, should be noted, when considering these dramatic efforts of Juan de la Enzina as the foundation of the Spanish drama. The first is[p. 276] their internal structure and essential character. They are eclogues only in form and name, not in substance and spirit. Enzina, whose poetical account of his travels in Palestine proves him to have had scholarlike knowledge, began by translating, or rather paraphrasing, the ten Eclogues of Virgil, accommodating some of them to events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, or to passages in the fortunes of the house of Alva.[437] From these, he easily passed to the preparation of eclogues to be represented before his patrons and their courtly friends. But, in doing this, he was naturally reminded of the religious exhibitions, which had been popular in Spain from the time of Alfonso the Tenth, and had always been given at the great festivals of the Church. Six, therefore, of his eclogues, to meet the demands of ancient custom, are, in fact, dialogues of the simplest kind, represented at Christmas and Easter, or during Carnival and Lent; in one of which the manger at Bethlehem is introduced, and in another a sepulchral monument, setting forth the burial of the Saviour, while all of them seem to have been enacted in the chapel of the Duke of Alva, though two certainly are not very religious in their tone and character.

The remaining five are altogether secular; three of them having a sort of romantic story, the fourth introducing a shepherd so desperate with love that he kills himself, and the fifth exhibiting a market-day farce and riot between sundry country people and students, the materials for which Enzina may well enough have gathered during his own life at Salamanca. These five eclogues, therefore, connect themselves with the[p. 277] coming secular drama of Spain in a manner not to be mistaken, just as the first six look back towards the old religious exhibitions of the country.

The other circumstance that should be noted in relation to them, as proof that they constitute the commencement of the Spanish secular drama, is, that they were really acted. Nearly all of them speak in their titles of this fact, mentioning sometimes the personages who were present, and in more than one instance alluding to Enzina himself, as if he had performed some of the parts in person. Rojas, a great authority in whatever relates to the theatre, declares the same thing expressly, coupling the fall of Granada and the achievements of Columbus with the establishment of the theatre in Spain by Enzina; events which, in the true spirit of his profession as an actor, he seems to consider of nearly equal importance.[438] The precise year when this happened is given by a learned antiquary of the time of Philip the Fourth, who says, “In 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan de la Enzina.”[439] From this year, then, the great year of the discovery of America, we may safely date the foundation of the Spanish secular theatre.

It must not, however, be supposed that the “Representations,” as he calls them, of Juan de la Enzina have much dramatic merit. On the contrary, they are rude[p. 278] and slight. Some have only two or three interlocutors, and no pretension to a plot; and none has more than six personages, nor any thing that can be considered a proper dramatic structure. In one of those prepared for the Nativity, the four shepherds are, in fact, the four Evangelists;—Saint John, at the same time, shadowing forth the person of the poet. He enters first, and discourses, in rather a vainglorious way, of himself as a poet; not forgetting, however, to compliment the Duke of Alva, his patron, as a person feared in France and in Portugal, with which countries the political relations of Spain were then unsettled. Matthew, who follows, rebukes John for this vanity, telling him that “all his works are not worth two straws”; to which John replies, that, in pastorals and graver poetry, he defies competition, and intimates, that, in the course of the next May, he shall publish what will prove him to be something even more than bucolic. They both agree that the Duke and Duchess are excellent masters, and Matthew wishes that he, too, were in their service. At this point of the dialogue, Luke and Mark come in, and, with slight preface, announce the birth of the Saviour as the last news. All four then talk upon that event at large, alluding to John’s Gospel as if already known, and end with a determination to go to Bethlehem, after singing a villancico or rustic song, which is much too light in its tone to be religious.[440] The whole eclogue is short and comprised in less than forty rhymed stanzas of nine lines each, including a wild lyric at the end, which[p. 279] has a chorus to every stanza, and is not without the spirit of poetry.[441]

This belongs to the class of Enzina’s religious dramas. One, on the other hand, which was represented at the conclusion of the Carnival, during the period then called popularly at Salamanca Antruejo, seems rather to savor of heathenism, as the festival itself did.[442] It is merely a rude dialogue between four shepherds. It begins with a description of one of those mummings, common at the period when Enzina lived, which, in this case, consisted of a mock battle in the village between Carnival and Lent, ending with the discomfiture of Carnival; but the general matter of the scene presented is a somewhat free frolic of eating and drinking among the four shepherds, ending, like the rest of the eclogues, with a villancico, in which Antruejo, it is not easy to tell why, is treated as a saint.[443]

Quite opposite to both of the pieces already noticed is the Representation for Good Friday, between two hermits, Saint Veronica, and an angel. It opens with the meeting and salutation of the two hermits, the elder of[p. 280] whom, as they walk along, tells the younger, with great grief, that the Saviour has been crucified that very day, and agrees with him to visit the sepulchre. In the midst of their talk, Saint Veronica joins them, and gives an account of the crucifixion, not without touches of a simple pathos; showing, at the same time, the napkin on which the portrait of the Saviour had been miraculously impressed, as she wiped from his face the sweat of his agony. Arrived at the sepulchre,—which was some kind of a monument for the Corpus Christi in the Duke of Alva’s chapel, where the representation took place,—they kneel; an angel whom they find there explains to them the mystery of the Saviour’s death; and then, in a villancico in which all join, they praise God, and take comfort with the promise of the resurrection.[444]

But the nearest approach to a dramatic composition made by Juan de la Enzina is to be found in two eclogues between “The Esquire that turns Shepherd,” and “The Shepherds that turn Courtiers”; both of which should be taken together and examined as one whole, though, in his simplicity, the poet makes them separate and independent of each other.[445] In the first, a shepherdess, who is a coquette, shows herself well disposed to receive Mingo, one of the shepherds, for her lover, till a certain gay esquire presents himself, whom, after a fair discussion, she prefers to accept, on condition he will turn shepherd;—an unceremonious transformation, with which, and the customary villancico, the piece[p. 281] concludes. The second eclogue, however, at its opening, shows the esquire already tired of his pastoral life, and busy in persuading all the shepherds, somewhat in the tone of Touchstone in “As you like it,” to go to court, and become courtly. In the dialogue that follows, an opportunity occurs, which is not neglected, for a satire on court manners, and for natural and graceful praise of life in the country. But the esquire carries his point. They change their dresses, and set forth gayly upon their adventures, singing, by way of finale, a spirited villancico in honor of the power of Love, that can thus transform shepherds to courtiers, and courtiers to shepherds.

The most poetical passage in the two eclogues is one in which Mingo, the best of the shepherds, still unpersuaded to give up his accustomed happy life in the country, describes its cheerful pleasures and resources, with more of natural feeling, and more of a pastoral air, than are found anywhere else in these singular dialogues.

Both pieces, like the preceding translation, are in double redondillas forming octave stanzas of eight-syllable verses; and as the two together contain about four hundred and fifty lines, their amount is sufficient to show the direction Enzina’s talent naturally took, as well as the height to which it rose.

Enzina, however, is to be regarded not only as the founder of the Spanish theatre, but as the founder of the Portuguese, whose first attempts were so completely imitated from his, and had in their turn so considerable an effect on the Spanish stage, that they necessarily become a part of its history. These attempts were made by Gil Vicente, a gentleman of good family, who was bred to the law, but left that profession early and devoted himself to dramatic compositions, chiefly for the entertainment of the families of Manuel the Great and John the Third. When he was born is not known, but he died in 1557. As a writer for the stage he flourished from 1502 to 1536,[447] and produced, in all, forty-two pieces, arranged as works of devotion, comedies, tragi[p. 283]comedies, and farces; but most of them, whatever be their names, are in fact short, lively dramas, or religious pastorals. Taken together, they are better than any thing else in Portuguese dramatic literature.

The first thing, however, that strikes us in relation to them is, that their air is so Spanish, and that so many of them are written in the Spanish language. Of the whole number, ten are in Castilian, fifteen partly or chiefly so, and seventeen entirely in Portuguese. Why this is the case, it is not easy to determine. The languages are, no doubt, very nearly akin to each other; and the writers of each nation, but especially those of Portugal, have not unfrequently distinguished themselves in the use of both. But the Portuguese have never, at any period, admitted their language to be less rich or less fitted for all kinds of composition than that of their prouder rivals. Perhaps, therefore, in the case of Vicente, it was, that the courts of the two countries had been lately much connected by intermarriages; that King Manuel had been accustomed to have Castilians about his person to amuse him;[448] that the queen was a Spaniard;[449] or that, in language as in other things, he found it convenient thus to follow the leading of his master, Juan de la Enzina;—but, whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that Vicente, though he was born and lived in Portugal, is to be numbered among Spanish authors as well as among Portuguese.

[p. 284]His earliest effort was made in 1502, on occasion of the birth of Prince John, afterwards John the Third.[450] It is a monologue in Spanish, a little more than a hundred lines long, spoken before the king, the king’s mother, and the Duchess of Braganza, probably by Vicente himself, in the person of a herdsman, who enters the royal chambers, and, after addressing the queen mother, is followed by a number of shepherds, bringing presents to the new-born prince. The poetry is simple, fresh, and spirited, and expresses the feelings of wonder and admiration that would naturally rise in the mind of such a rustic, on first entering a royal residence. Regarded as a courtly compliment, the attempt succeeded. In a modest notice, attached to it by the son of Vicente, we are told, that, being the first of his father’s compositions, and the first dramatic representation ever made in Portugal, it pleased the queen mother so much, as to lead her to ask its author to repeat it at Christmas, adapting it to the birth of the Saviour.

Vicente, however, understood that the queen desired to have such an entertainment as she had been accus[p. 285]tomed to enjoy at the court of Castile, when John de la Enzina brought his contributions to the Christmas festivities. He therefore prepared for Christmas morning what he called an “Auto Pastoril,” or Pastoral Act;—a dialogue in which four shepherds with Luke and Matthew are the interlocutors, and in which not only the eclogue forms of Enzina are used, and the manger of Bethlehem is introduced, just as that poet had introduced it, but in which his verses are freely imitated. This effort, too, pleased the queen, and again, on the authority of his son, we are told she asked Vicente for another composition, to be represented on Twelfth Night, 1503. Her request was not one to be slighted; and in the same way four other pastorals followed for similar devout occasions, making, when taken together, six; all of which being in Spanish, and all religious pastorals, represented with singing and dancing before King Manuel, his queen, and other distinguished personages, they are to be regarded throughout as imitations of Juan de la Enzina’s eclogues.[451]

Of these six pieces, three of which, we know, were written in 1502 and 1503, and the rest, probably, soon afterwards, the most curious and characteristic is the one called “The Auto of the Sibyl Cassandra,” which was represented in the rich old monastery of Enxobregas, on a Christmas morning, before the queen mother. It is an eclogue in Spanish, above eight hundred lines[p. 286] long, and is written in the stanzas most used by Enzina. Cassandra, the heroine, devoted to a pastoral life, yet supposed to be a sort of lay prophetess who has had intimations of the approaching birth of the Saviour, enters at once on the scene, where she remains to the end, the central point, round which the other seven personages are not inartificially grouped. She has hardly avowed her resolution not to be married, when Solomon appears making love to her, and telling her, with great simplicity, that he has arranged every thing with her aunts, to marry her in three days. Cassandra, nothing daunted at the annunciation, persists in the purpose of celibacy; and he, in consequence, goes out to summon these aunts to his assistance. During his absence, she sings the following song:

[p. 287]The aunts, named Cimeria, Peresica, and Erutea, who are, in fact, the Cumæan, Persian, and Erythræan Sibyls, now come in with King Solomon and endeavour to persuade Cassandra to consent to his love; setting forth his merits and pretensions, his good looks, his good temper, and his good estate. But, as they do not succeed, Solomon, in despair, goes for her three uncles, Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah, with whom he instantly returns, all four dancing a sort of mad dance as they enter, and singing,—

The three uncles first endeavour to bribe their niece into a more teachable temper; but, failing in that, Moses undertakes to show her, from his own history of the creation, that marriage is an honorable sacrament and that she ought to enter into it. Cassandra replies, and, in the course of a rather jesting discussion with Abraham about good-tempered husbands, intimates that she is aware the Saviour is soon to be born of a virgin; an[p. 288] augury which the three Sibyls, her aunts, prophetically confirm, and to which Cassandra then adds that she herself has hopes to be this Saviour’s mother. The uncles, shocked at the intimation, treat her as a crazed woman, and a theological and mystical discussion follows, which is carried on by all present, till a curtain is suddenly withdrawn, and the manger of Bethlehem and the child are discovered, with four angels, who sing a hymn in honor of his birth. The rest of the drama is taken up with devotions suited to the occasion, and it ends with the following graceful cancion to the Madonna, sung and danced by the author, as well as the other performers:—

And so ends this incongruous drama;[455] a strange[p. 289] union of the spirit of an ancient mystery and of a modern vaudeville, but not without poetry, and not more incongruous or more indecorous than the similar dramas which, at the same period, and in other countries, found a place in the princely halls of the most cultivated, and were listened to with edification in monasteries and cathedrals by the most religious.

Vicente, however, did not stop here. He took counsel of his success, and wrote dramas which, without skill in the construction of their plots, and without any idea of conforming to rules of propriety or taste, are yet quite in advance of what was known on the Spanish or Portuguese theatre at the time. Such is the “Comedia,” as it is called, of “The Widower,”—O Viudo,—which was acted before the court in 1514.[456] It opens with the grief of the widower, a merchant of Burgos, on the loss of an affectionate and faithful wife, for which he is consoled, first by a friar, who uses religious considerations, and afterwards by a gossiping neighbour, who, being married to a shrew, assures his friend, that, after all, it is not probable his loss is very great.[p. 290] The two daughters of the disconsolate widower, however, join earnestly with their father in his mourning; but their sorrows are mitigated by the appearance of a noble lover who conceals himself in the disguise of a herdsman, in order to be able to approach them. His love is very sincere and loyal; but, unhappily, he loves them both, and hardly addresses either separately. His trouble is much increased and brought to a crisis by the father, who comes in and announces that one of his daughters is to be married immediately, and the other probably in the course of a week. In his despair, the noble lover calls on death; but insists, that, as long as he lives, he will continue to serve them both faithfully and truly. At this juncture, and without any warning, as it is impossible that he should marry both, he proposes to the two ladies to draw lots for him; a proposition which they modify by begging the Prince John, then a child twelve years old and among the audience, to make a decision on their behalf. The prince decides in favor of the elder, which seems to threaten new anxieties and troubles, till a brother of the disguised lover appears and consents to marry the remaining lady. Their father, at first disconcerted, soon gladly accedes to the double arrangement, and the drama ends with the two weddings and the exhortations of the priest who performs the ceremony.

This, indeed, is not a plot, but it is an approach to one. The “Rubena,” acted in 1521, comes still nearer,[457] and so do “Don Duardos,” founded on the romance of “Palmerin,” and “Amadis of Gaul,”[458] founded on the[p. 291] romance of the same name, both of which bring a large number of personages on the stage, and, if they have not a proper dramatic action, yet give, in much of their structure, intimations of the Spanish heroic drama, as it was arranged half a century later. On the other hand, the “Templo d’ Apollo,”[459] acted in 1526, in honor of the marriage of the Portuguese princess to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, belongs to the same class with the allegorical plays subsequently produced in Spain; the three Autos on the three ships that carried souls to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, evidently gave Lope de Vega the idea and some of the materials for one of his early moral plays;[460] and the Auto in which Faith explains to the shepherds the origin and mysteries of Christianity[461] might, with slight alterations, have served[p. 292] for one of the processions of the Corpus Christi at Madrid, in the time of Calderon. All of them, it is true, are extremely rude; but nearly all contain elements of the coming drama, and some of them, like “Don Duardos,” which is longer than a full-length play ordinarily is, are quite long enough to show what was their dramatic tendency. But the real power of Gil Vicente does not lie in the structure or the interest of his stories. It lies in his poetry, of which, especially in the lyrical portions of his dramas, there is much.[462]

While Vicente, in Portugal, was thus giving an impulse to Spanish dramatic literature, which, considering the intimate connection of the two countries and their courts, can hardly have been unfelt in Spain at the time, and was certainly recognized there afterwards, scarcely any thing was done in Spain itself. During the five-and-twenty years that followed the first appearance of Juan de la Enzina, no other dramatic poet seems to have been encouraged or demanded. He was sufficient to satisfy the rare wants of his royal and princely patrons; and, as we have seen, in both countries, the drama continued to be a courtly amusement, confined to a few persons of the highest rank. The commander Escriva, who lived at this time and is the author of a few beautiful verses found in the oldest Cancioneros,[463] wrote, indeed, a dialogue, partly[p. 294] in prose and partly in verse, in which he introduces several interlocutors and brings a complaint to the god of Love against his lady. But the whole is an allegory, occasionally graceful and winning from its style, but obviously not susceptible of representation; so that there is no reason to suppose it had any influence on a class of compositions already somewhat advanced. A similar remark may be added about a translation of the “Amphitryon” of Plautus, made into terse Spanish prose by Francisco de Villalobos, physician to Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles the Fifth, which was first printed in 1515, but which it is not at all probable was ever acted.[464] These, however, are the only attempts made in Spain or Portugal before 1517, except those of Enzina and Vicente, which need to be referred to at all.

But in 1517, or a little earlier, a new movement was felt in the difficult beginnings of the Spanish drama; and it is somewhat singular, that, as the last came from Portugal, the present one came from Italy. It came, however, from two Spaniards. The first of them is the anonymous author of the “Question of Love,” a fiction to be noticed hereafter, which was finished at Ferrara in 1512, and which contains an eclogue of respectable poetical merit, that seems[p. 295] undoubtedly to have been represented before the court of Naples.[465]

The other, a person of more consequence in the history of the Spanish drama, is Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, born at Torres, near Badajoz, on the borders of Portugal, who, after he had been for some time a captive in Algiers, was redeemed, and visited Rome, hoping to find favor at the court of Leo the Tenth. This must have been after 1513, and was, of course, at the time when Juan de la Enzina resided there. But Naharro, by a satire against the vices of the court, made himself obnoxious at Rome, and fled to Naples, where he lived for some time under the protection of the noble-minded Fabricio Colonna, and where, at last, we lose sight of him. He died in poverty.[466]

His works, first published by himself at Naples in 1517, and dedicated to a noble Spaniard, Don Fernando Davalos, a lover of letters,[467] who had married Victoria Colonna, the poetess, are entitled “Propaladia,” or “The Firstlings of his Genius.”[468] They consist of satires, epistles, ballads, a Lamentation for King Ferdinand, who died in 1516, and some other miscellaneous poetry; but chiefly of eight plays, which he calls “Comedias,” and which fill almost the whole volume.[469] He was well situated for making an at[p. 296]tempt to advance the drama, and partly succeeded in it. There was, at the time he wrote, a great literary movement in Italy, especially at the court of Rome. The representations of plays, he tells us, were much resorted to,[470] and, though he may not have known it, Trissino had, in 1515, written the first regular tragedy in the Italian language, and thus given an impulse to dramatic literature, which it never afterwards entirely lost.[471]

The eight plays of Naharro, however, do not afford much proof of a familiarity with antiquity, or of a desire to follow ancient rules or examples; but their author gives us a little theory of his own upon the subject of the drama, which is not without good sense. Horace, he says, requires five acts to a play, and he thinks this reasonable; though he looks upon the pauses they make rather as convenient resting-places than any thing else, and calls them, not acts, but “Jornadas,” or days.[472] As to the number of persons, he would have not less than six, nor more than twelve; and as to that sense of propriety which refuses to introduce materials into the subject that do not belong[p. 297] to it, or to permit the characters to talk and act inconsistently, he holds it to be as indispensable as the rudder to a ship. This is all very well.

Besides this, his plays are all in verse, and all open with a sort of prologue, which he calls “Introyto,” generally written in a rustic and amusing style, asking the favor and attention of the audience, and giving hints concerning the subject of the piece that is to follow.

But when we come to the dramas themselves, though we find a decided advance, in some respects, beyond any thing that had preceded them, in others we find great rudeness and extravagance. Their subjects are very various. One of them, the “Soldadesca,” is on the Papal recruiting service at Rome. Another, the “Tinelaria,” or Servants’ Dining-Hall, is on such riots as were likely to happen in the disorderly service of a cardinal’s household; full of revelry and low life. Another, “La Jacinta,” gives us the story of a lady who lives at her castle on the road to Rome, where she violently detains sundry passengers and chooses a husband among them. And of two others, one is on the adventures of a disguised prince, who comes to the court of a fabulous king of Leon, and wins his daughter after the fashion of the old romances of chivalry;[473] and the other on the adventures of a child stolen in infancy, which involve disguises in more humble life.[474]

How various were the modes in which these subjects were thrown into action and verse, and, indeed, how different was the character of his different dramas, may be best understood by a somewhat ampler notice of the two not yet mentioned.

[p. 298]The first of these, the “Trofea,” is in honor of King Manuel of Portugal, and the discoveries and conquests that were made in India and Africa, under his auspices; but it is very meagre and poor. After the prologue, which fills above three hundred verses, Fame enters in the first act and announces, that the great king has, in his most holy wars, gained more lands than are described by Ptolemy; whereupon Ptolemy appears instantly, by especial permission of Pluto, from the regions of torment, and denies the fact; but, after a discussion, is compelled to admit it, though with a saving clause for his own honor. In the second act, two shepherds come upon the stage to sweep it for the king’s appearance. They make themselves quite merry, at first, with the splendor about them, and one of them sits on the throne, and imitates grotesquely the curate of his village; but they soon quarrel, and continue in bad humor, till a royal page interferes and compels them to go on and arrange the apartment. The whole of the third act is taken up with the single speech of an interpreter, bringing in twenty Eastern and African kings who are unable to speak for themselves, but avow, through his very tedious harangue, their allegiance to the crown of Portugal; to all which the king makes no word of reply. The next act is absurdly filled with a royal reception of four shepherds, who bring him presents of a fox, a lamb, an eagle, and a cock, which they explain with some humor and abundance of allegory; but to all which he makes as little reply as he did to the proffered fealty of the twenty heathen kings. In the fifth and last act, Apollo gives verses, in praise of the king, queen, and prince, to Fame, who distributes copies to the audience; but, refusing them to one of the shepherds, has a riotous dispute with him. The shepherd tauntingly[p. 299] offers Fame to spread the praises of King Manuel through the world as well as she does, if she will but lend him her wings. The goddess consents. He puts them on and attempts to fly, but falls headlong on the stage, with which poor practical jest and a villancico the piece ends.

The other drama, called “Hymenea,” is better, and gives intimations of what became later the foundations of the national theatre. Its “Introyto,” or prologue, is coarse, but not without wit, especially in those parts which, according to the peculiar toleration of the times, were allowed to make free with religion, if they but showed sufficient reverence for the Church. The story is entirely invented, and may be supposed to have passed in any city of Spain. The scene opens in front of the house of Febea, the heroine, before daylight, where Hymeneo, the hero, after making known his love for the lady, arranges with his two servants to give her a serenade the next night. When he is gone, the servants discuss their own position, and Boreas, one of them, avows his desperate love for Doresta, the heroine’s maid; a passion which, through the rest of the piece, becomes the running caricature of his master’s. But at this moment the Marquis, a brother of Febea, comes with his servants into the street, and, by the escape of the others, who fly immediately, has little doubt that there has been love-making about the house, and goes away determined to watch more carefully. Thus ends the first act, which might furnish materials for many a Spanish comedy of the seventeenth century.

In the second act, Hymeneo enters with his servants and musicians, and they sing a cancion which reminds us of the sonnet in Molière’s “Misantrope,” and a villancico which is but little better. Febea then appears[p. 300] in the balcony, and after a conversation, which, for its substance and often for its graceful manner, might have been in Calderon’s “Dar la Vida por su Dama,” she promises to receive her lover the next night. When she is gone, the servants and the master confer a little together, the master showing himself very generous in his happiness; but they all escape at the approach of the Marquis, whose suspicions are thus fully confirmed, and who is with difficulty restrained by his page from attacking the offenders at once.

The next act is devoted entirely to the loves of the servants. It is amusing, from its caricature of the troubles and trials of their masters, but does not advance the action at all, The fourth, however, brings the hero and lover into the lady’s house, leaving his attendants in the street, who confess their cowardice to one another, and agree to run away, if the Marquis appears. This happens immediately. They escape, but leave a cloak, which betrays who they are, and the Marquis remains undisputed master of the ground at the end of the act.

The last act opens without delay. The Marquis, offended in the nicest point of Castilian honor,—the very point on which the plots of so many later Spanish dramas turn,—resolves at once to put both of the guilty parties to death, though their offence is no greater than that of having been secretly in the same house together. The lady does not deny her brother’s right, but enters into a long discussion with him about it, part of which is touching and effective, but most of it very tedious; in the midst of all which Hymeneo presents himself, and after explaining who he is and what are his intentions, and especially after admitting, that, under the circumstances of the case, the Marquis might justly have[p. 301] killed his sister, the whole is arranged for a double wedding of masters and servants, and closes with a spirited villancico in honor of Love and his victories.

The two pieces are very different, and mark the extremes of the various experiments Naharro tried in order to produce a dramatic effect. “As to the kinds of dramas,” he says, “it seems to me that two are sufficient for our Castilian language: dramas founded on knowledge, and dramas founded on fancy.”[475] The “Trofea,” no doubt, was intended by him to belong to the first class. Its tone is that of compliment to Manuel, the really great king then reigning in Portugal; and from a passage in the third act it is not unlikely that it was represented in Rome before the Portuguese ambassador, the venerable Tristan d’ Acuña. But the rude and buffoon shepherds, whose dialogue fills so much of the slight and poor action, show plainly that he was neither unacquainted with Enzina and Vicente, nor unwilling to imitate them; while the rest of the drama—the part that is supposed to contain historical facts—is, as we have seen, still worse. The “Hymenea,” on the other hand, has a story of considerable interest, announcing the intriguing plot which became a principal characteristic of the Spanish theatre afterwards. It has even the “Gracioso,” or Droll Servant, who makes love to the heroine’s maid; a character which is also found in Naharro’s “Serafina,” but which Lope de Vega above a century afterwards claimed, as if invented by himself.[476]

[p. 302]What is more singular, this drama approaches to a fulfilment of the requisitions of the unities, for it has but one proper action, which is the marriage of Febea; it does not extend beyond the period of twenty-four hours; and the whole passes in the street before the house of the lady, unless, indeed, the fifth act passes within the house, which is doubtful.[477] The whole, too, is founded on the national manners, and preserves the national costume and character. The best parts, in general, are the humorous; but there are graceful passages between the lovers, and touching passages between the brother and sister. The parody of the servants, Boreas and Doresta, on the passion of the hero and heroine is spirited; and in the first scene between them we have the following dialogue, which might be transferred with effect to many a play of Calderon:—

And so she continues till she comes to a plenary confession of being no less hurt, or in love, herself, than he is.[479]

All the plays of Naharro have a versification remarkably fluent and harmonious for the period in which he wrote,[480] and nearly all of them have passages of easy and natural dialogue, and of spirited lyrical poetry. But several are very gross; two are absurdly composed in different languages,—one of them in four, and the other in six;[481] and all contain abundant proof, in[p. 304] their structure and tone, of the rudeness of the age that produced them. In consequence of their little respect for the Church, they were soon forbidden by the Inquisition in Spain.[482]

That they were represented in Italy before they were printed,[483] and that they were so far circulated before their author gave them to the press,[484] as to be already in some degree beyond his own control, we know on his own authority. He intimates, too, that a good many of the clergy were present at the representation of at least one of them.[485] But it is not likely that any of his plays were acted, except in the same way with Vicente’s and Enzina’s; that is, before a moderate number of persons in some great man’s house,[486] at Naples,[p. 305] and perhaps at Rome. They, therefore, did not probably produce much effect at first on the condition of the drama, so far as it was then developed in Spain. Their influence came in later, and through the press, when three editions, beginning with that of 1520, appeared in Seville alone in twenty-five years, curtailed indeed, and expurgated in the last, but still giving specimens of dramatic composition much in advance of any thing then produced in the country.

But though men like Juan de la Enzina, Gil Vicente, and Naharro had turned their thoughts towards dramatic composition, they seem to have had no idea of founding a popular national drama. For this we must look to the next period; since, as late as the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, there is no trace of such a theatre in Spain.

Provençal literature appeared in Spain as early as any portion of the Castilian, with which we have thus far been exclusively occupied. Its introduction was natural, and, being intimately connected with the history of political power in both Provence and Spain, can be at once explained, at least so far as to account for its prevalence in the quarter of the Peninsula where, during three centuries, it predominated, and for its large influence throughout the rest of the country, both at that time and afterwards.

Provence—or, in other words, that part of the South of France which extends from Italy to Spain, and which originally obtained its name in consequence of the consideration it enjoyed as an early and most important province of Rome—was singularly fortunate, during the latter period of the Middle Ages, in its exemption from many of the troubles of those troubled times.[487] While the great movement of the North[p. 307]ern nations lasted, Provence was disturbed chiefly by the Visigoths, who soon passed onward to Spain, leaving few traces of their character behind them, and by the Burgundians, the mildest of all the Teutonic invaders, who did not reach the South of France till they had been long resident in Italy, and, when they came, established themselves at once as the permanent masters of that tempting country.

Greatly favored in this comparative quiet, which, though sometimes broken by internal dissension, or by the ineffectual incursions of their new Arab neighbours, was nevertheless such as was hardly known elsewhere, and favored no less by a soil and climate almost without rivals in the world, the civilization and refinement of Provence advanced faster than those of any other portion of Europe. From the year 879, a large part of it was fortunately constituted into an independent government; and, what was very remarkable, it continued under the same family till 1092, two hundred and thirteen years.[488] During this second period, its territories were again much spared from the confusion that almost constantly pressed their borders and threatened their tranquillity; for the troubles that then shook the North of Italy did not cross the Alps and the Var; the Moorish power, so far from making new aggressions, maintained itself with difficulty in Catalonia; and the wars and convulsions in the North of France, from the time of the first successors of Charlemagne to that of Philip Augustus, flowed rather in the opposite direction, and furnished, at a safe distance, occupation for tempers too fierce to endure idleness.

In the course of these two centuries, a language[p. 308] sprang up in the South and along the Mediterranean, compounded, according to the proportions of their power and refinement, from that spoken by the Burgundians and from the degraded Latin of the country, and slowly and quietly took the place of both. With this new language appeared, as noiselessly, about the middle of the tenth century, a new literature, suited to the climate, the age, and the manners that produced it, and one which, for nearly three hundred years, seemed to be advancing towards a grace and refinement such as had not been known since the fall of the Romans.

Thus things continued under twelve princes of the Burgundian race, who make little show in the wars of their times, but who seem to have governed their states with a moderation and gentleness not to have been expected amidst the general disturbance of the world. This family became extinct, in the male branch, in 1092; and in 1113, the crown of Provence was transferred, by the marriage of its heir, to Raymond Berenger, the third Count of Barcelona.[489] The Provençal poets, many of whom were noble by birth, and all of whom, as a class, were attached to the court and its aristocracy, naturally followed their liege lady, in considerable numbers, from Arles to Barcelona, and willingly established themselves in her new capital, under a prince full of knightly accomplishments and yet not disinclined to the arts of peace.

Nor was the change for them a great one. The Pyrenees made then, as they make now, no very serious difference between the languages spoken on their opposite declivities; similarity of pursuits had long before induced a similarity of manners in the population of[p. 309] Barcelona and Marseilles; and if the Provençals had somewhat more of gentleness and culture, the Catalonians, from the share they had taken in the Moorish wars, possessed a more strongly marked character, and one developed in more manly proportions.[490] At the very commencement of the twelfth century, therefore, we may fairly consider a Provençal refinement to have been introduced into the northeastern corner of Spain; and it is worth notice, that this is just about the period when, as we have already seen, the ultimately national school of poetry began to show itself in quite the opposite corner of the Peninsula, amidst the mountains of Biscay and Asturias.[491]

Political causes, however, similar to those which first brought the spirit of Provence from Arles and Marseilles to Barcelona, soon carried it farther onward towards the centre of Spain. In 1137, the Counts of Barcelona obtained by marriage the kingdom of Aragon; and though they did not, at once, remove the seat of their government to Saragossa, they early spread through their new territories some of the refinement for which they were indebted to Provence. This remarkable family, whose power was now so fast stretching up to the North, possessed, at different times, during nearly three centuries, different portions of territory on both sides of the Pyrenees, generally maintaining a control over a large part of the Northeast of Spain and of the South of France. Between 1229 and 1253, the[p. 310] most distinguished of its members gave the widest extent to its empire by broad conquests from the Moors; but later the power of the kings of Aragon became gradually circumscribed, and their territory diminished, by marriages, successions, and military disasters. Under eleven princes, however, in the direct line, and three more in the indirect, they maintained their right to the kingdom, down to the year 1479, when, in the person of Ferdinand, it was united to Castile, and the solid foundations were laid on which the Spanish monarchy has ever since rested.

With this slight outline of the course of political power in the northeastern part of Spain, it will be easy to trace the origin and history of the literature that prevailed there from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century; a literature which was introduced from Provence, and retained the Provençal character, till it came in contact with that more vigorous spirit which, during the same period, had been advancing from the northwest, and afterwards succeeded in giving its tone to the literature of the consolidated monarchy.[492]

The character of the old Provençal poetry is the same on both sides of the Pyrenees. In general, it is[p. 311] graceful and devoted to love; but sometimes it becomes involved in the politics of the time, and sometimes it runs into a severe and unbecoming satire. In Catalonia, as well as in its native home, it belonged much to the court; and the highest in rank and power are the earliest and foremost on its lists. Thus, both the princes who first wore the united crowns of Barcelona and Provence, and who reigned from 1113 to 1162, are often set down as Limousin or Provençal poets, though with slight claims to the honor, since not a verse has been published that can be attributed to either of them.[493]

Alfonso the Second, however, who received the crown of Aragon in 1162, and wore it till 1196, is admitted by all to have been a Troubadour. Of him we still possess a few not inelegant coblas, or stanzas, addressed to his lady, which are curious from the circumstance that they constitute the oldest poem in the modern dialects of Spain, whose author is known to us; and one that is probably as old, or nearly as old, as any of the anonymous poetry of Castile and the North.[494] Like the other sovereigns of his age, who loved and practised the art of the gai saber, Alfonso collected poets about his person. Pierre Rogiers was at his court, and so were Pierre Raimond de Toulouse, and Aiméric de Péguilain,[p. 312] who mourned his patron’s death in verse,—all three famous Troubadours in their time, and all three honored and favored at Barcelona.[495] There can be no doubt, therefore, that a Provençal spirit was already established and spreading in that part of Spain before the end of the twelfth century.

In the beginning of the next century, external circumstances imparted a great impulse to this spirit in Aragon. From 1209 to 1229, the shameful war which gave birth to the Inquisition was carried on with extraordinary cruelty and fury against the Albigenses; a religious sect in Provence accused of heresy, but persecuted rather by an implacable political ambition. To this sect—which, in some points, opposed the pretensions of the See of Rome, and was at last exterminated by a crusade under the Papal authority—belonged nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, whose poetry is full of their sufferings and remonstrances.[496] In their great distress, the principal ally of the Albigenses and Troubadours was Peter the Second of Aragon, who, in 1213, perished nobly fighting in their cause at the disastrous battle of Muret. When, therefore, the Troubadours of Provence were compelled to escape from the[p. 313] burnt and bloody ruins of their homes, not a few of them hastened to the friendly court of Aragon, sure of finding themselves protected, and their art held in honor, by princes who were, at the same time, poets.

Among those who thus appeared in Spain in the time of Peter the Second were Hugues de Saint Cyr;[497] Azémar le Noir;[498] Pons Barba;[499] Raimond de Miraval, who joined in the cry urging the king to the defence of the Albigenses, in which he perished;[500] and Perdigon,[501] who, after being munificently entertained at his court, became, like Folquet de Marseille,[502] a traitor to the cause he had espoused, and openly exulted in the king’s untimely fate. But none of the poetical followers of Peter the Second did him such honor as the author of the curious and long poem of “The War of the Albigenses,” in which much of the king of Aragon’s life is recorded, and a minute account given of his disastrous death.[503] All, however, except Perdigon and Folquet, regarded him with gratitude, as their patron, and as a poet,[504] who, to use the language of one of them,[p. 314] made himself “their head and the head of their honors.”[505]

The glorious reign of Jayme or James the Conqueror, which followed, and extended from 1213 to 1276, exhibits the same poetical character with that of the less fortunate reign of his immediate predecessor. He protected the Troubadours, and the Troubadours, in return, praised and honored him. Guillaume Anélier addressed a sirvente to him as “the young king of Aragon, who defends mercy and discountenances wrong.”[506] Nat de Mons sent him two poetical letters, one of which gives him advice concerning the composition of his court and government.[507] Arnaud Plagnés offered a chanso to his fair queen, Eleanor of Castile;[508] and Mathieu de Querci, who survived the great conqueror, poured forth at his grave the sorrows of his Christian compatriots at the loss of the great champion on whom they had depended in their struggle with the Moors.[509] At the same period, too, Hugues de Mataplana, a noble Catalan, held at his castle courts of love and poetical contests, in which he himself bore a large part;[510] while one of his neighbours, Guillaume de Bergédan, no less distinguished by poetical talent and ancient descent, but of a less honorable nature, indulged himself in a style of verse more gross than can easily be found elsewhere in the Troubadour poetry.[511] All, however, the bad and the good,—those who, like Sordel[512] and Bernard de[p. 315] Rovenac,[513] satirized the king, and those who, like Pierre Cardenal, enjoyed his favor and praised him,[514]—all show that the Troubadours, in his reign, continued to seek protection in Catalonia and Aragon, where they had so long been accustomed to find it, and that their poetry was constantly taking deeper root in a soil where its nourishment was now become so sure.

James himself has sometimes been reckoned among the poets of his age.[515] It is possible, though none of his poetry has been preserved, that he really was such; for metrical composition was easy in the flowing language he spoke, and it had evidently grown common at his court, where the examples of his father and grandfather, as Troubadours, would hardly be without their effect. But however this may be, he loved letters, and left behind him a large prose work, more in keeping than any poetry with his character as a wise monarch and successful conqueror, whose legislation and government were far in advance of the condition of his subjects.[516]

The work here referred to is a chronicle or commentary on the principal events of his reign, divided into four parts;—the first of which is on the troubles that followed his accession to the throne, after a long minority, with the rescue of Majorca and Minorca from the[p. 316] Moors, between 1229 and 1233; the second is on the greater conquest of the kingdom of Valencia, which was substantially ended in 1239, so that the hated misbelievers never again obtained any firm foothold in all the northeastern part of the Peninsula; the third is on the war James prosecuted in Murcia, till 1266, for the benefit of his kinsman, Alfonso the Wise, of Castile; and the last is on the embassies he received from the Khan of Tartary, and Michael Palæologus of Constantinople, and on his own attempt, in 1268, to lead an expedition to Palestine, which was defeated by storms. The story, however, is continued to the end of his reign by slight notices, which, except the last, preserve throughout the character of an autobiography; the very last, which, in a few words, records his death at Valencia, being the only portion written in the third person.

From this Chronicle of James the Conqueror there was early taken an account of the conquest of Valencia, beginning in the most simple-hearted manner with the conversation the king held at Alcañiç (Alcañizas) with Don Blasco de Alagon and the Master of the Hospitallers, Nuch de Follalquer, who urge him, by his successes in Minorca, to undertake the greater achievement of the conquest of Valencia; and ending with the troubles that followed the partition of the spoils after the fall of that rich kingdom and its capital. This last work was printed in 1515, in a magnificent volume, where it serves for an appropriate introduction to the Foros, or privileges, granted to the city of Valencia from the time of its conquest down to the end of the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic;[517] but the com[p. 317]plete work, the Chronicle, did not appear till 1557, when it was published to satisfy a requisition of Philip the Second.[518]

It is written in a simple and manly style, which, without making pretensions to elegance, often sets before us the events it records with a living air of reality, and sometimes shows a happiness in manner and phraseology which effort seldom reaches. Whether it was undertaken in consequence of the impulse given to such vernacular histories by Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, in his “General Chronicle of Spain,” or whether the intimations which gave birth to that remarkable Chronicle came rather from Aragon, we cannot now determine. Probably both works were produced in obedience to the demands of their age; but still, as both must have been written at nearly the same time, and as the two kings were united by a family alliance and constant intercourse, a full knowledge of whatever relates to these two curious records of different parts of the Peninsula would hardly fail to show us some connection between them. In that case, it is by no means im[p. 318]possible that the precedence in point of time would be found to belong to the Chronicle of the king of Aragon, who was not only older than Alfonso, but was frequently his wise and efficient counsellor.[519]

But James of Aragon was fortunate in having yet another chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, born at Peralada, nine years before the death of that monarch; a Catalan gentleman, who in his old age, after a life of great adventure, felt himself to be specially summoned to write an account of his own times.[520] “For one day,” he says, “being in my country-house, called Xilvella, in the garden plain of Valencia, and sleeping in my bed, there came unto me in vision a venerable old man, clad in white raiment, who said unto me, ‘Arise, and stand on thy feet, Muntaner, and think how to declare[p. 319] the great wonders thou hast seen, which God hath brought to pass in the wars where thou wast; for it hath seemed well pleasing to Him that through thee should all these things be made manifest.’” At first, he tells us, he was disobedient to the heavenly vision, and unmoved by the somewhat flattering reasons vouchsafed him, why he was elected to chronicle matters so notable. “But another day, in that same place,” he goes on, “I beheld again that venerable man, who said unto me, ‘O my son, what doest thou? Why dost thou despise my commandment? Arise, and do even as I have bidden thee! And know of a truth, if thou so doest, that thou and thy children and thy kinsfolk and thy friends shall find favor in the sight of God.’” Being thus warned a second time, he undertook the work. It was, he tells us, the fifteenth day of May, 1325, when he began it; and when it was completed, as it notices events which happened in April, 1328, it is plain that its composition must have occupied at least three years.

It opens, with much simplicity, with a record of the earliest important event he remembered, a visit of the great conqueror of Valencia at the house of his father, when he was himself a mere child.[521] The impression of such a visit on a boyish imagination would naturally be deep;—in the case of Muntaner it seems to have[p. 320] been peculiarly so. From that moment the king became to him, not only the hero he really was, but something more; one whose very birth was miraculous, and whose entire life was filled with more grace and favor than God had ever before shown to living man; for, as the fond old chronicler will have it, “He was the goodliest prince in the world, and the wisest and the most gracious and the most upright, and one that was more loved than any king ever was of all men; both of his own subjects and strangers, and of noble gentlemen everywhere.”[522]

The life of the Conqueror, however, serves merely as an introduction to the work; for Muntaner announces his purpose to speak of little that was not within his own knowledge; and of the Conqueror’s reign he could remember only the concluding glories. His Chronicle, therefore, consists chiefly of what happened in the time of four princes of the same house, and especially of Peter the Third, his chief hero. He ornaments his story, however, once with a poem two hundred and forty lines long, which he gave to James the Second, and his son Alfonso, by way of advice and caution, when the latter was about to embark for the conquest of Sardinia and Corsica.[523]

[p. 321]The whole work is curious, and strongly marked with the character of its author;—a man brave, loving adventure and show; courteous and loyal; not without intellectual training, yet no scholar; and, though faithful and disinterested, either quite unable to conceal, or quite willing, at every turn, to exhibit, his good-natured personal vanity. His fidelity to the family of Aragon was admirable. He was always in their service; often in captivity for them; and engaged at different times in no less than thirty-two battles in defence of their rights, or in furtherance of their conquests from the Moors. His life, indeed, was a life of knightly loyalty, and nearly all the two hundred and ninety-eight chapters of his Chronicle are as full of its spirit as his heart was.

In relating what he himself saw and did, his statements seem to be accurate, and are certainly lively and fresh; but elsewhere he sometimes falls into errors of date, and sometimes exhibits a good-natured credulity that makes him believe many of the impossibilities that were related to him. In his gay spirit and love of show, as well as in his simple, but not careless, style, he reminds us of Froissart, especially at the conclusion of the whole Chronicle, which he ends, evidently to his own satisfaction, with an elaborate account of the ceremonies observed at the coronation of Alfonso the Fourth at Saragossa, which he attended in state as syndic of the city of Valencia; the last event recorded in the work, and the last we hear of its knightly old author, who was then near his grand climacteric.

During the latter part of the period recorded by this Chronicle, a change was taking place in the literature of which it is an important part. The troubles and confusion that prevailed in Provence, from the time of the cruel persecution of the Albigenses and the en[p. 322]croaching spirit of the North, which, from the reign of Philip Augustus, was constantly pressing down towards the Mediterranean, were more than the genial, but not hardy, spirit of the Troubadours could resist. Many of them, therefore, fled; others yielded in despair; and all were discouraged. From the end of the thirteenth century, their songs are rarely heard on the soil that gave them birth three hundred years before. With the beginning of the fourteenth, the purity of their dialect disappears. A little later, the dialect itself ceases to be cultivated.[524]

As might be expected, the delicate plant, whose flower was not permitted to expand on its native soil, did not long continue to flourish in that to which it was transplanted. For a time, indeed, the exiled Troubadours, who resorted to the court of James the Conqueror and his father, gave to Saragossa and Barcelona something of the poetical grace that had been so attractive at Arles and Marseilles. But both these princes were obliged to protect themselves from the suspicion of sharing the heresy with which so many of the Troubadours they sheltered were infected; and James, in 1233, among other severe ordinances, forbade to the laity the Limousin Bible, which had been recently prepared for them, and the use of which would have tended so much to confirm their language and form their literature.[525] His successors, however, continued to favor the spirit of the minstrels of Provence. Peter the Third was numbered amongst them;[526] and if Alfonso the Third[p. 323] and James the Second were not themselves poets, a poetical spirit was found about their persons and in their court;[527] and when Alfonso the Fourth, the next in succession, was crowned at Saragossa in 1328, we are told that several poems of Peter, the king’s brother, were recited in honor of the occasion, one of which consisted of seven hundred verses.[528]

But these are among the later notices of Provençal literature in the northeastern part of Spain, where it began now to be displaced by one taking its hue rather from the more popular and peculiar dialect of the country. What this dialect was has already been intimated. It was commonly called the Catalan or Catalonian, from the name of the country, but probably, at the time of the conquest of Barcelona from the Moors in 985, differed very little from the Provençal spoken at Perpignan, on the other side of the Pyrenees.[529] As, however, the Provençal became more cultivated and gentle, the neglected Catalan grew stronger and ruder; and when the Christian power was extended, in 1118, to Saragossa, and in 1239 to Valencia, the modifications which[p. 324] the indigenous vocabularies underwent, in order to suit the character and condition of the people, tended rather to confirm the local dialects than to accommodate them to the more advanced language of the Troubadours.

Perhaps, if the Troubadours had maintained their ascendency in Provence, their influence would not easily have been overcome in Spain. At least, there are indications that it would not have disappeared so soon. Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, who had some of the more distinguished of them about him, imitated the Provençal poetry, if he did not write it; and even earlier, in the time of Alfonso the Ninth, who died in 1214, there are traces of its progress in the heart of the country, that are not to be mistaken.[530] But failing in its strength at home, it failed abroad. The engrafted fruit perished with the stock from which it was originally taken. After the opening of the fourteenth century we find no genuinely Provençal poetry in Castile, and after the middle of that century it begins to recede from Catalonia and Aragon, or rather to be corrupted by the harsher, but hardier, dialect spoken there by the mass of the people. Peter the Fourth, who reigned in Aragon from 1336 to 1387, shows the conflict and admixture of the two influences in such portions of his poetry as have been published, as well as in a letter he addressed to his son;[531]—a confusion, or transition, which we should probably be able to trace with some distinctness, if we had before us the curious dictionary of rhymes, still extant in its original manuscript, which[p. 325] was made at this king’s command, in 1371, by Jacme March, a member of the poetical family that was afterwards so much distinguished.[532] In any event, there can be no reasonable doubt, that, soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, if not earlier, the proper Catalan dialect began to be perceptible in the poetry and prose of its native country.[533]

The failure of the Provençal language, and especially the failure of the Provençal culture, were not looked upon with indifference in the countries on either side of the Pyrenees, where they had so long prevailed. On the contrary, efforts were made to restore both, first in France, and afterwards in Spain. At Toulouse, on the Garonne, not far from the foot of the mountains, the magistrates of the city determined, in 1323, to form a company or guild for this purpose; and, after some deliberation, constituted it under the name of the “Sobregaya Companhia dels Sept Trobadors de Tolosa,” or the Very Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse. This company immediately sent forth a letter, partly in prose and partly in verse, summoning all poets to come to Toulouse on the first day of May in 1324, and there “with joy of heart contend for the prize of a golden violet,” which should be adjudged to him who should offer the best poem, suited to the occasion. The concourse was great, and the first prize was given to a poem in honor of the Madonna by Ramon Vidal de Besalú, a Catalan gentleman, who seems to have been[p. 327] the author of the regulations for the festival, and to have been declared a doctor of the Gay Saber on the occasion. In 1355, this company formed for itself a more ample body of laws, partly in prose and partly in verse, under the title of “Ordenanzas dels Sept Senhors Mantenedors del Gay Saber,” or Ordinances of the Seven Lords Conservators of the Gay Saber, which, with the needful modifications, have been observed down to our own times, and still regulate the festival annually celebrated at Toulouse, on the first day of May, under the name of the Floral Games.[534]

Toulouse was separated from Aragon only by the picturesque range of the Pyrenees; and similarity of language and old political connections prevented even the mountains from being a serious obstacle to intercourse. What was done at Toulouse, therefore, was soon known at Barcelona, where the court of Aragon generally resided, and where circumstances soon favored a formal introduction of the poetical institutions of the Troubadours. John the First, who, in 1387, succeeded Peter the Fourth, was a prince of more gentle manners than were common in his time, and more given to festivity and shows than was, perhaps, consistent with the good of his kingdom, and certainly more than was suited to the fierce and turbulent spirit of his nobility.[535] Among his other attributes was a love of poetry; and in 1388, he despatched a solemn embassy, as if for an affair of state, to Charles the Sixth of France, praying him to cause certain poets of the company at Toulouse[p. 328] to visit Barcelona, in order that they might found there an institution like their own, for the Gay Saber. In consequence of this mission, two of the seven conservators of the Floral Games came to Barcelona in 1390, and established what was called a “Consistory of the Gaya Sciencia,” with laws and usages not unlike those of the institution they represented. Martin, who followed John on the throne, increased the privileges of the new Consistory, and added to its resources; but at his death, in 1409, it was removed to Tortosa, and its meetings were suspended by troubles that prevailed through the country, in consequence of a disputed succession.

At length, when Ferdinand the Just was declared king, their meetings were resumed. Enrique de Villena—whom we must speedily notice as a nobleman of the first rank in the state, nearly allied to the blood royal, both of Castile and Aragon—came with the new king to Barcelona in 1412, and, being a lover of poetry, busied himself while there in reëstablishing and reforming the Consistory, of which he became, for some time, the principal head and manager. This was, no doubt, the period of its greatest glory. The king himself frequently attended its meetings. Many poems were read by their authors before the judges appointed to examine them, and prizes and other distinctions were awarded to the successful competitors.[536] From this time, therefore, poetry in the native dialects of the country was held in[p. 329] honor in the capitals of Catalonia and Aragon. Public poetical contests were, from time to time, celebrated, and many poets called forth under their influence during the reign of Alfonso the Fifth and that of John the Second, which, ending in 1479, was followed by the consolidation of the whole Spanish monarchy, and the predominance of the Castilian power and language.[537]

During the period, however, of which we have been speaking, and which embraces the century before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catalan modification of Provençal poetry had its chief success, and produced all the authors that deserve notice. At its opening, Zurita, the faithful annalist of Aragon, speaking of the reign of John the First, says, that, “in place of arms and warlike exercises, which had formerly been the pastime of princes, now succeeded trobas and poetry in the mother tongue, with its art, called the ‘Gaya Sciencia,’ whereof schools began to be instituted”;—schools which, as he intimates, were so thronged, that the dignity of the art they taught was impaired by the very numbers devoted to it.[538] Who these poets were the grave historian does not stop to inform us, but we learn something of them from another and better source; for, according to the fashion of the time, a collection of poetry was made a little after the middle of the fifteenth century, which includes the whole period, and contains the names, and more or less of the works, of those who were then best known and most considered. It begins with a grant of assistance to the Consistory of Barcelona, by Ferdinand the Just, in 1413; and then, going[p. 330] back as far as to the time of Jacme March, who, as we have seen, flourished in 1371, presents a series of more than three hundred poems, by about thirty authors, down to the time of Ausias March, who certainly lived in 1460, and whose works are, as they well deserve to be, prominent in the collection.

Among the poets here brought together are Luis de Vilarasa, who lived in 1416;[539] Berenguer de Masdovelles, who seems to have flourished soon after 1453;[540] Jordi, about whom there has been much discussion, but whom reasonable critics must place as late as 1450-1460;[541] and Antonio Vallmanya, some of whose poems are dated in 1457 and 1458.[542] Besides these, Juan Rocaberti, Fogaçot, and Guerau, with others apparently of the same period, are contributors to the collection, so that its whole air is that of the Catalan[p. 331] and Valencian imitations of the Provençal Troubadours in the fifteenth century.[543] If, therefore, to this curious Cancionero we add the translation of the “Divina Commedia” made into Catalan by Andres Febrer in 1428,[544] and the romance of “Tirante the White,” translated into Valencian by its author, Joannot Martorell,—which Cervantes calls “a treasure of contentment and a mine of pleasure,”[545]—we shall have all that is needful of the peculiar literature of the northeastern part of Spain during the greater part of the century in which it flourished. Two authors, however, who most illustrated it, deserve more particular notice.

The first of them is Ausias or Augustin March. His family, originally Catalan, went to Valencia at the time of the conquest, in 1238, and was distinguished, in suc[p. 332]cessive generations, for the love of letters. He himself was of noble rank, possessed the seigniory of the town of Beniarjó and its neighbouring villages, and served in the Cortes of Valencia in 1446. But, beyond these few facts, we know little of his life, except that he was an intimate personal friend of the accomplished and unhappy Prince Carlos of Viana, and that he died, probably, in 1460,—certainly before 1462,—well deserving the record made by his contemporary, the Grand Constable of Castile, that “he was a great Troubadour and a man of a very lofty spirit.”[546]

So much of his poetry as has been preserved is dedicated to the honor of a lady, whom he loved and served in life and in death, and whom, if we are literally to believe his account, he first saw on a Good Friday in church, exactly as Petrarch first saw Laura. But this is probably only an imitation of the great Italian master, whose fame then overshadowed whatever there was of literature in the world. At any rate, the poems of March leave no doubt that he was a follower of Petrarch. They are in form what he calls cants; each of which generally consists of from five to ten stanzas. The whole collection, amounting to one hundred and sixteen of these short poems, is divided into four parts, and comprises ninety-three cants or canzones of Love, in which he complains much of the falsehood of his mistress, fourteen moral and didactic canzones, a single spiritual one, and eight on Death. But[p. 333] though March, in the framework of his poetry, is an imitator of Petrarch, his manner is his own. It is grave, simple, and direct, with few conceits, and much real feeling; besides which, he has a truth and freshness in his expressions, resulting partly from the dialect he uses, and partly from the tenderness of his own nature, which are very attractive. No doubt, he is the most successful of all the Valencian and Catalan poets whose works have come down to us; but what distinguishes him from all of them, and indeed from the Provençal school generally, is the sensibility and moral feeling that pervade so much of what he wrote. By these qualities his reputation and honors have been preserved in his own country down to the present time. His works passed through four editions in the sixteenth century, and enjoyed the honor of being read to Philip the Second, when a youth, by his tutor; they were translated into Latin and Italian, and in the proud Castilian were versified by a poet of no less consequence than Montemayor.[547]

The other poet who should be mentioned in the same relations was a contemporary of March, and, like him, a native of Valencia. His name is Jaume or James Roig, and he was physician to Mary, queen[p. 334] of Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon. If his own authority is not to be accounted rather poetical than historical, he was a man of much distinction in his time, and respected in other countries as well as at home. But if that be set aside, we know little of him, except that he was one of the persons who contended for a poetical prize at Valencia in 1474, and that he died there of apoplexy on the 4th of April, 1478.[548] His works are not much better known than his life, though, in some respects, they are well worthy of notice. Hardly any thing, indeed, remains to us of them, except the principal one, a poem of three hundred pages, sometimes called the “Book of Advice,” and sometimes the “Book of the Ladies.”[549] It is chiefly a satire on women, but the conclusion is devoted to the praise and glory of the Madonna, and the whole is interspersed with sketches of himself and his times, and advice to his nephew, Balthazar Bou, for whose especial benefit the poem seems to have been written.

It is divided into four books, which are subdivided into parts, little connected with each other, and often little in harmony with the general subject of the whole. Some of it is full of learning and learned names, and some of it would seem to be devout, but its prevailing air is certainly not at all religious. It is written in short rhymed verses, consisting of from two to five syllables,—an irregular measure, which has been called cudolada, and one which, as here used, has been much praised for its sweetness by those who are familiar[p. 335] enough with the principles of its structure to make the necessary elisions and abbreviations; though to others it can hardly appear better than whimsical and spirited.[550] The following sketch of himself may be taken as a specimen of it; and shows that he had as little of the spirit of a poet as Skelton, with whom, in many respects, he may be compared. Roig represents himself to have been ill of a fever, when a boy, and to have hastened from his sick bed into the service of a Catalan freebooting gentleman, like Roque Guinart or Rocha Guinarda, an historical personage of the same Catalonia, and of nearly the same period, who figures in the Second Part of Don Quixote.

The poem, its author tells us, was written in 1460, and we know that it continued popular long enough to pass through five editions before 1562. But portions of it are so indecent, that, when, in 1735, it was thought worth while to print it anew, its editor, in order to account for the large omissions he was obliged to make, resorted to the amusing expedient of pretending he could find no copy of the old editions which was not deficient in the passages he left out of his own.[552] Of course, Roig is not much read now. His indecency and the obscurity of his idiom alike cut him off from the polished portions of Spanish society; though out of his free and spirited satire much may be gleaned to illustrate the tone of manners and the modes of living and thinking in his time.

The death of Roig brings us to the period when the[p. 337] literature of the eastern part of Spain, along the shores of the Mediterranean, began to decline. Its decay was the natural, but melancholy, result of the character of the literature itself, and of the circumstances in which it was accidentally placed. It was originally Provençal in its spirit and elements, and had therefore been of quick, rather than of firm growth;—a gay vegetation, which sprang forth spontaneously with the first warmth of the spring, and which could hardly thrive in any other season than the gentle one that gave it birth. As it gradually advanced, carried by the removal of the seat of political power, from Aix to Barcelona, and from Barcelona to Saragossa, it was constantly approaching the literature that had first appeared in the mountains of the Northwest, whose more vigorous and grave character it was ill fitted to resist. When, therefore, the two came in contact, there was but a short struggle for the supremacy. The victory was almost immediately decided in favor of that which, springing from the elements of a strong and proud character, destined to vindicate for itself the political sway of the whole country, was armed with a power to which its more gay and gracious rival could offer no effective opposition.

The period, when these two literatures, advancing from opposite corners of the Peninsula, finally met, cannot, from its nature, be determined with much precision. But, like the progress of each, it was the result of political causes and tendencies which are obvious and easily traced. The family that ruled in Aragon had, from the time of James the Conqueror, been connected with that established in Castile and the North; and Ferdinand the Just, who was crowned in Saragossa in 1412, was a Castilian prince; so that, from this period, both thrones were absolutely filled by members of the[p. 338] same royal house; and Valencia and Burgos, as far as their courts touched and controlled the literature of either, were to a great degree under the same influences. And this control was neither slight nor inefficient. Poetry, in that age, everywhere sought shelter under courtly favor, and in Spain easily found it. John the Second was a professed and successful patron of letters; and when Ferdinand came to assume the crown of Aragon, he was accompanied by the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman whose great fiefs lay on the borders of Valencia, but who, notwithstanding his interest in the Southern literature and in the Consistory of Barcelona, yet spoke the Castilian as his native language, and wrote in no other. We may, therefore, well believe, that, in the reigns of Ferdinand the Just and Alfonso the Fifth, between 1412 and 1458, the influence of the North began to make inroads on the poetry of the South, though it does not appear that either March or Roig, or any one of their immediate school, proved habitually unfaithful to his native dialect.

At length, forty years after the death of Villena, we find a decided proof that the Castilian was beginning to be known and cultivated on the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1474, a poetical contest was publicly held at Valencia, in honor of the Madonna;—a sort of literary jousting, like those so common afterwards in the time of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. Forty poets contended for the prize. The Viceroy was present. It was a solemn and showy occasion; and all the poems offered were printed the same year by Bernardo Fenollar, Secretary of the meeting, in a volume which is valued as the first book known to have been printed in Spain.[553] Four of these poems are in Castilian. This[p. 339] leaves no doubt that Castilian verse was now deemed a suitable entertainment for a popular audience at Valencia. Fenollar, too, who wrote, besides what appears in this contest, a small volume of poetry on the Passion of our Saviour, has left us at least one cancion in Castilian, though his works were otherwise in his native dialect, and were composed apparently for the amusement of his friends in Valencia, where he was a person of consideration, and in whose University, founded in 1499, he was a professor.[554]

Probably Castilian poetry was rarely written in Valencia during the fifteenth century, while, on the other hand, Valencian was written constantly. “The Suit of the Olives,” for instance, wholly in that dialect, was composed by Jaume Gazull, Fenollar, and Juan Moreno, who seem to have been personal friends, and who united their poetical resources to produce this satire, in which, under the allegory of olive-trees, and in language not always so modest as good taste requires, they discuss together the dangers to which the young and the old are respectively exposed from the solicitations of worldly pleasure.[555] Another dialogue, by the same three poets, in the same dialect, soon followed, dated in 1497, which is supposed to have occurred in the bed-chamber of a lady just recovering from the birth of a child, in which is examined the question whether young men or old make the best husbands; an inquiry decid[p. 340]ed by Venus in favor of the young, and ended, most inappropriately, by a religious hymn.[556] Other poets were equally faithful to their vernacular; among whom were Juan Escriva, ambassador of the Catholic sovereigns to the Pope, in 1497, who was probably the last person of high rank that wrote in it;[557] and Vincent Ferrandis, concerned in a poetical contest in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena, at Valencia, in 1511, whose poems seem, on other occasions, to have carried off public honors, and to have been, from their sweetness and power, worthy of the distinction they won.[558]

Meantime, Valencian poets are not wanting who wrote more or less in Castilian. Francisco Castelví, a friend of Fenollar, is one of them.[559] Another is Narcis Viñoles, who flourished in 1500, who wrote in Tuscan as well as in Castilian and Valencian, and who evidently thought his native dialect somewhat barbarous.[560] A third is Juan Tallante, whose religious poems[p. 341] are found at the opening of the old General Cancionero.[561] A fourth is Luis Crespi, member of the ancient family of Valdaura, and in 1506 head of the University of Valencia.[562] And among the latest, if not the very last, was Fernandez de Heredia, who died in 1549, of whom we have hardly any thing in Valencian, but much in Castilian.[563] Indeed, that the Castilian, in the early part of the century, had obtained a real supremacy in whatever there was of poetry and elegant literature along the shores of the Mediterranean cannot be doubted; for, before the death of Heredia, Boscan had already deserted his native Catalonian, and begun to form a school in Spanish literature that has never since disappeared; and shortly afterwards, Timoneda and his followers showed, by their successful representation of Castilian farces in the public squares of Valencia, that the ancient dialect had ceased to be insisted upon in its own capital. The language of the court of Castile had, for such purposes, become the prevailing language of all the South.

This, in fact, was the circumstance that determined the fate of all that remained in Spain on the foundations of the Provençal refinement. The crowns of Aragon and Castile had been united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; the court had been removed from Saragossa, though that city still claimed the dignity of being regarded as an independent capital; and[p. 342] with the tide of empire, that of cultivation gradually flowed down from the West and the North. Some of the poets of the South have, it is true, in later times, ventured to write in their native dialects. The most remarkable of them is Vicent Garcia, who was a friend of Lope de Vega, and died in 1623.[564] But his poetry, in all its various phases, is a mixture of several dialects, and shows, notwithstanding its provincial air, the influence of the court of Philip the Fourth, where its author for a time lived; while the poetry printed later, or heard in our own days on the popular theatres of Barcelona and Valencia, is in a dialect so grossly corrupted, that it is no longer easy to acknowledge it as that of the descendants of Muntaner and March.[565]

[p. 343]The degradation of the two more refined dialects in the southern and eastern parts of Spain, which was begun in the time of the Catholic sovereigns, may be considered as completed when the seat of the national government was settled, first in Old and afterwards in New Castile; since, by this circumstance, the prevalent authority of the Castilian was finally recognized and insured. The change was certainly neither unreasonable nor ill-timed. The language of the North was already more ample, more vigorous, and more rich in idiomatic constructions; indeed, in almost every respect, better fitted to become national than that of the South. And yet we can hardly follow and witness the results of such a revolution but with feelings of a natural regret; for the slow decay and final disappearance of any language bring with them melancholy thoughts, which are, in some sort, peculiar to the occasion. We feel[p. 344] as if a portion of the world’s intelligence were extinguished; as if we were ourselves cut off from a part of the intellectual inheritance, to which we had in many respects an equal right with those who destroyed it, and which they were bound to pass down to us unimpaired as they themselves had received it. The same feeling pursues us even when, as in the case of the Greek or Latin, the people that spoke it had risen to the full height of their refinement, and left behind them monuments by which all future times can measure and share their glory. But our regret is deeper when the language of a people is cut off in its youth, before its character is fully developed; when its poetical attributes are just beginning to appear, and when all is bright with promise and hope.[566]

This was singularly the misfortune and the fate of the Provençal and of the two principal dialects into which it was modified and moulded. For the Provençal started forth in the darkest period Europe had seen since Grecian civilization had first dawned on the world. It kindled, at once, all the South of France with its brightness, and spread its influence, not only into the neighbouring countries, but even to the courts of the cold and unfriendly North. It flourished long, with a tropical rapidity and luxuriance, and gave token, from the first, of a light-hearted spirit, that promised, in the fulness of its strength, to produce a poetry, different, no doubt, from that of antiquity, with which it had no real connection, but yet a poetry as fresh as the soil from which it sprang, and as genial as the climate[p. 345] by which it was quickened. But the cruel and shameful war of the Albigenses drove the Troubadours over the Pyrenees, and the revolutions of political power and the prevalence of the spirit of the North crushed them on the Spanish shores of the Mediterranean. We follow, therefore, with a natural and inevitable regret, their long and wearisome retreat, marked as it is everywhere with the wrecks and fragments of their peculiar poetry and cultivation, from Aix to Barcelona, and from Barcelona to Saragossa and Valencia, where, oppressed by the prouder and more powerful Castilian, what remained of the language that gave the first impulse to poetical feeling in modern times sinks into a neglected dialect, and, without having attained the refinement that would preserve its name and its glory to future times, becomes as much a dead language as the Greek or the Latin.[567]

The Provençal literature, which appeared so early in Spain, and which, during the greater part of the period when it prevailed there, was in advance of the poetical culture of nearly all the rest of Europe, could not fail to exercise an influence on the Castilian, springing up and flourishing at its side. But, as we proceed, we must notice the influence of another literature over the Spanish, less visible and important at first than that of the Provençal, but destined subsequently to become much wider and more lasting;—I mean, of course, the Italian.

The origin of this influence is to be traced far back in the history of the Spanish character and civilization. Long, indeed, before a poetical spirit had been reawakened anywhere in the South of Europe, the Spanish Christians, through the wearisome centuries of their contest with the Moors, had been accustomed to look towards Italy as to the seat of a power whose foundations were laid in faith and hopes extending[p. 347] far beyond the mortal struggle in which they were engaged; not because the Papal See, in its political capacity, had then obtained any wide authority in Spain, but because, from the peculiar exigencies and trials of their condition, the religion of the Romish Church had nowhere found such implicit and faithful followers as the body of the Spanish Christians.

In truth, from the time of the great Arab invasion down to the fall of Granada, this devoted people had rarely come into political relations with the rest of Europe. Engrossed and exhausted by their wars at home, they had, on the one hand, hardly been at all the subjects of foreign cupidity or ambition; and, on the other, they had been little able, even when they most desired it, to connect themselves with the stirring interests of the world beyond their mountains, or attract the sympathy of those more favored countries which, with Italy at their head, were coming up to constitute the civilized power of Christendom. But the Spaniards always felt their warfare to be peculiarly that of soldiers of the Cross; they always felt themselves, beyond every thing else and above every thing else, to be Christian men contending against misbelief. Their religious sympathies were, therefore, constantly apparent, and often predominated over all others; so that, while they were little connected with the Church of Rome by those political ties that were bringing half Europe into bondage, they were more connected with its religious spirit than any other people of modern times; more even than the armies of the Crusaders whom that same Church had summoned out of all Christendom, and to whom it had given whatever of its own resources and character it was able to impart.

To these religious influences of Italy upon Spain[p. 348] were early added those of a higher intellectual culture. Before the year 1300, Italy possessed at least five universities; some of them famous throughout Europe, and attracting students from its most distant countries. Spain, at the same period, possessed not one, except that of Salamanca, which was in a very unsettled state.[568] Even during the next century, those established at Huesca and Valladolid produced comparatively little effect. The whole Peninsula was still in too disturbed a state for any proper encouragement of letters; and those persons, therefore, who wished to be taught, resorted, some of them, to Paris, but more to Italy. At Bologna, which was probably the oldest, and for a long time the most distinguished, of the Italian universities, we know Spaniards were received and honored, during the thirteenth century, both as students and as professors.[569] At Padua, the next in rank, a Spaniard, in 1260, was made the Rector, or presiding officer.[570] And, no doubt, in all the great Italian places of education, which were easily accessible, especially in those of Rome and Naples, Spaniards early sought the culture that was either not then to be obtained in their own country, or to be had only with difficulty or by accident.

In the next century, the instruction of Spaniards in Italy was put upon a more permanent foundation, by Cardinal Carillo de Albornoz; a prelate, a statesman, and a soldier, who, as Archbishop of Toledo, was head of the Spanish Church in the reign of Alfonso the Elev[p. 349]enth, and who afterwards, as regent for the Pope, conquered and governed a large part of the Roman States, which, in the time of Rienzi, had fallen off from their allegiance. This distinguished personage, during his residence in Italy, felt the necessity of better means for the education of his countrymen, and founded, for their especial benefit, at Bologna, in 1364, the College of Saint Clement,—a munificent institution, which has subsisted down to our own age.[571] From the middle of the fourteenth century, therefore, it cannot be doubted that the most direct means existed for the transmission of culture from Italy to Spain; one of the most striking proofs of which is to be found in the case of Antonio de Lebrixa, commonly called Nebrissensis, who was educated at this college in the century following its first foundation, and who, on his return home, did more to advance the cause of letters in Spain than any other scholar of his time.[572]

Commercial and political relations still further promoted a free communication of the manners and literature of Italy to Spain. Barcelona, long the seat of a cultivated court,—a city whose liberal institutions had given birth to the first bank of exchange, and demanded the first commercial code of modern times,—had, from the days of James the Conqueror, exercised a sensible influence round the shores of the Mediterranean, and come into successful competition with the enterprise of Pisa and Genoa, even in the ports of Italy. The knowledge and refinement its ships brought back, joined to the spirit of commercial adventure that sent them out, rendered Barcelona, therefore, in the thirteenth,[p. 350] fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, one of the most magnificent cities in Europe, and carried its influence not only quite through the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, of which it was in many respects the capital, but into the neighbouring kingdom of Castile, with which that of Aragon was, during much of this period, intimately connected.[573]

The political relations between Spain and Sicily were, however, earlier and more close than those between Spain and Italy, and tended to the same results. Giovanni da Procida, after long preparing his beautiful island to shake off the hated yoke of the French, hastened, in 1282, as soon as the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers were fulfilled, to lay the allegiance of Sicily at the feet of Peter the Third of Aragon, who, in right of his wife, claimed Sicily to be a part of his inheritance, as heir of Conradin, the last male descendant of the imperial family of the Hohenstauffen.[574] The revolution thus begun by a fiery patriotism was successful; but from that time Sicily was either a fief of the Aragonese crown, or was possessed, as a separate kingdom, by a branch of the Aragonese family, down to the period when, with the other possessions of Ferdinand the Catholic, it became a part of the consolidated monarchy of Spain.

The connection with Naples, which was of the same sort, followed later, but was no less intimate. Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, a prince of rare wisdom and much[p. 351] literary cultivation, acquired Naples by conquest in 1441, after a long struggle;[575] but the crown he had thus won was passed down separately in an indirect line through four of his descendants, till 1503, when, by a shameful treaty with France, and by the genius and arms of Gonzalvo of Córdova, it was again conquered and made a direct dependence of the Spanish throne.[576] In this condition, as fiefs of the crown of Spain, both Sicily and Naples continued subject kingdoms until after the Bourbon accession; both affording, from the very nature of their relations to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, constant means and opportunities for the transmission of Italian cultivation and Italian literature to Spain itself.

But the language of Italy, from its affinity to the Spanish, constituted a medium of communication perhaps more important and effectual than any or all of the others. The Latin was the mother of both; and the resemblance between them was such, that neither could claim to have features entirely its own: Facies non una, nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum. It cost little labor to the Spaniard to make himself master of the Italian. Translations, therefore, were less common from the few Italian authors that then existed, worth translating, than they would otherwise have been; but enough are found, and early enough, to show that Italian authors and Italian literature were not neglected in Spain. Ayala, the chronicler, who died in 1407, was, as we have already observed, acquainted with the works of Boccaccio.[577] A little later, we are struck by[p. 352] the fact that the “Divina Commedia” of Dante was twice translated in the same year, 1428; once by Febrer into the Catalan dialect, and once by Don Enrique de Villena into the Castilian. Twenty years afterwards, the Marquis of Santillana is complimented as a person capable of correcting or surpassing that great poet, and speaks himself of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Boccaccio as if he were familiar with them all.[578] But the name of this great nobleman brings us at once to the times of John the Second, when the influences of Italian literature and the attempt to form an Italian school in Spain are not to be mistaken. To this period, therefore, we now turn.

The long reign of John the Second, extending from 1407 to 1454, unhappy as it was for himself and for his country, was not unfavorable to the progress of some of the forms of elegant literature. During nearly the whole of it, the weak king himself was subjected to the commanding genius of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose control, though he sometimes felt it to be oppressive, he always regretted, when any accident in the troubles of the times threw it off, and left him to bear alone the burden which belonged to his position in the state. It seems, indeed, to have been a part of the Constable’s policy to give up the king to his natural indolence, and encourage his effeminacy by filling his time with amusements that would make business more unwelcome to him than the hard tyranny of the minister who relieved him from it.[579]

[p. 353]Among these amusements, none better suited the humor of the idle king than letters. He was by no means without talent. He sometimes wrote verses. He kept the poets of the time much about his person, and more in his confidence and favor than was wise. He had, perhaps, even a partial perception of the advantage of intellectual refinement to his country, or at least to his court. One of his private secretaries, to please his master and those nearest to the royal influence, made, about the year 1449, an ample collection of the Spanish poetry then most in favor, comprising the works of about fifty authors.[580] Juan de Mena, the most distinguished poet of the time, was his official chronicler, and the king sent him documents and directions, with great minuteness and an amusing personal vanity, respecting the manner in which the history of his reign should be written; while Juan de Mena, on his part, like a true courtier, sent his verses to the king to be corrected.[581] His physician, too, who seems to have been always in attendance on his person, was the gay and good-humored Ferdinand Gomez, who has left us, if we are to believe them genuine, a pleasing and characteristic collection of letters; and who, after having served and followed his royal master above forty years, sleeping, as he tells us, at his feet and eating at his table, mourned his death, as that of one whose kindness to him had been constant and generous.[582]

Surrounded by persons such as these, in continual intercourse with others like them, and often given up[p. 354] to letters to avoid the solicitation of state affairs and to gratify his constitutional indolence, John the Second made his reign, though discreditable to himself as a prince, and disastrous to Castile as an independent state, still interesting by a sort of poetical court which he gathered about him, and important as it gave an impulse to refinement perceptible afterwards through several generations.

There has been a period like this in the history of nearly all the modern European nations,—one in which a taste for poetical composition was common at court, and among those higher classes of society within whose limits intellectual cultivation was then much confined. In Germany, such a period is found as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the unhappy young Conradin, who perished in 1268 and is commemorated by Dante, being one of the last of the princely company that illustrates it. For Italy, it begins at about the same time, in the Sicilian court; and though discountenanced both by the spirit of the Church, and by the spirit of such commercial republics as Pisa, Genoa, and Florence,—no one of which had then the chivalrous tone that animated, and indeed gave birth, to this early refinement throughout Europe,—it can still be traced down as far as the age of Petrarch.

Of the appearance of such a taste in the South of France, in Catalonia, and in Aragon, with its spread to Castile under the patronage of Alfonso the Wise, notice has already been taken. But now we find it in the heart and in the North of the country, extending, too, into Andalusia and Portugal, full of love and knighthood; and though not without the conceits that distinguished it wherever it appeared, yet sometimes showing touches of nature, and still oftener a graceful ingenuity[p. 355] of art, that have not lost their interest down to our own times. Under its influence was formed that school of poetry which, marked by its most prominent attribute, has been sometimes called the school of the Minnesingers, or the poets of love and gallantry;[583] a school which either owed its existence everywhere to the Troubadours of Provence, or took, as it advanced, much of their character. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, its spirit is already perceptible in the Castilian; and, from that time, we have occasionally caught glimpses of it, down to the point at which we are now arrived,—the first years of the reign of John the Second,—when we find it beginning to be colored by an infusion of the Italian, and spreading out into such importance as to require a separate examination.

And the first person in the group to whom our notice is attracted, as its proper, central figure, is King John himself. Of him his chronicler said, with much truth, though not quite without flattery, that “he drew all men to him, was very free and gracious, very devout and very bold, and gave himself much to the reading of philosophy and poetry. He was skilled in matters of the Church, tolerably learned in Latin, and a great respecter of such men as had knowledge. He had many natural gifts. He was a lover of music; he played, sung, and made verses; and he danced well.”[584] One who knew him better describes him more skilfully.[p. 356] “He was,” says Fernan Perez de Guzman, “a man who talked with judgment and discretion. He knew other men, and understood who conversed well, wisely, and graciously; and he loved to listen to men of sense, and noted what they said. He spoke and understood Latin. He read well, and liked books and histories, and loved to hear witty rhymes, and knew when they were not well made. He took great solace in gay and shrewd conversation, and could bear his part in it. He loved the chase, and hunting of fierce animals, and was well skilled in all the arts of it. Music, too, he understood, and sung and played; was good in jousting, and bore himself well in tilting with reeds.”[585]

How much poetry he wrote we do not know. His physician says, “The king recreates himself with writing verses”;[586] and others repeat the fact. But the chief proof of his skill that has come down to our times is to be found in the following lines, in the Provençal manner, on the falsehood of his lady.[587]

Among those who most interested themselves in the progress of poetry in Spain, and labored most directly to introduce it at the court of Castile, the person first in rank after the king was his near kinsman, Henry, Marquis of Villena, born in 1384, and descended in the paternal line from the royal house of Aragon, and in the maternal from that of Castile.[588] “In early youth,” says one who knew him well, “he was inclined to the sciences and the arts, rather than to knightly exercises, or even to affairs, whether of the state or the Church; for, without any master, and none constraining him to learn, but rather hindered by his grandfather, who would have had him for a knight, he did, in childhood, when others are wont to be carried to their schools by force, turn himself to learning against the good-will of all; and so high and so subtile a wit had he, that he learned any science or art to which he addicted himself, in such wise, that it seemed as if it were done by force of nature.”[589]

But his rank and position brought him into the af[p. 358]fairs of the world and the troubles of the times, however little he might be fitted to play a part in them. He was made Master of the great military and monastic Order of Calatrava, but, owing to irregularities in his election, was ultimately ejected from his place, and left in a worse condition than if he had never received it.[590] In the mean time, he resided chiefly at the court of Castile; but from 1412 to 1414 he was at that of his kinsman, Ferdinand the Just, of Aragon, in honor of whose coronation at Saragossa he composed an allegorical drama, which is unhappily lost. Afterwards, he accompanied that monarch to Barcelona, where, as we have seen, he did much to restore and sustain the poetical school called the Consistory of the Gaya Sciencia. When, however, he lost his place as Master of the Order of Calatrava, he sunk into obscurity. The Regency of Castile, willing to make him some amends for his losses, gave him the poor lordship of Iniesta in the bishopric of Cuenca; and there he spent the last twenty years of his life in comparative poverty, earnestly devoted to such studies as were known and fashionable in his time. He died while on a visit at Madrid, in 1434; the last of his great family.[591]

[p. 359]Among his favorite studies, besides poetry, history, and elegant literature, were philosophy and the mathematics, astrology, and alchemy. But in an age of great ignorance and superstition, such pursuits were not indulged in without rebuke. Don Enrique, therefore, like others, was accounted a necromancer; and so deeply did this belief strike its roots, that a popular tradition of his guilt has survived in Spain nearly or quite down to our own age.[592] The effects, at the time, were yet more unhappy and absurd. A large and rare collection of books that he left behind him excited alarm, immediately after his death. “Two cart-loads of them,” says one claimed to have been his contemporary and friend, “were carried to the king, and because it was said they related to magic and unlawful arts, the king sent them to Friar Lope de Barrientos;[593] and Friar Lope, who cares more to be about the Prince than to examine matters of necromancy, burnt above a hundred volumes, of which he saw no more than the king of Morocco did, and knew no more than the Dean of Ciudad Rodrigo; for many men now-a-days make themselves the name of learned by calling others ignorant; but[p. 360] it is worse yet when men make themselves holy by calling others necromancers.”[594] Juan de Mena, to whom the letter containing this statement was addressed, offered a not ungraceful tribute to the memory of Villena in three of his three hundred coplas;[595] and the Marquis of Santillana, distinguished for his love of letters, wrote a separate poem on the occasion of his noble friend’s death, placing him, after the fashion of his age and country, above all Greek, above all Roman fame.[596]

But though the unhappy Marquis of Villena may have been in advance of his age, as far as his studies and knowledge were concerned, still the few of his works now known to us are far from justifying the whole of the reputation his contemporaries gave him. His “Arte Cisoria,” or Art of Carving, is proof of this. It was written in 1423, at the request of his friend, the chief carver of John the Second, and begins, in the most formal and pedantic manner, with the creation of the world and the invention of all the arts, among which the art of carving is made early to assume a high place. Then follows an account of what is necessary to make a good carver; after which we have, in detail, the whole mystery of the art, as it ought to be practised at the royal table. It is obvious from sundry passages of the work, that the Marquis himself was by no means without a love for the good cheer he so carefully explains,—a circumstance, perhaps, to which he owed the gout that we are told severely tormented his latter years. But in its style and composition this specimen of the didactic prose of the age has little value, and can be[p. 361] really curious only to those who are interested in the history of manners.[597]

Similar remarks might probably be made about his treatise on the “Arte de Trobar,” or the “Gaya Sciencia”; a sort of Art of Poetry, addressed to the Marquis of Santillana, in order to carry into his native Castile some of the poetical skill possessed by the Troubadours of the South. But we have only an imperfect abstract of it, accompanied, indeed, with portions of the original work, which are interesting as being the oldest on its subject in the language.[598] More interesting, however, than either would be his translations of the Rhetorica of Cicero, the Divina Commedia of Dante, and the Æneid of Virgil. But of the first we have lost all trace. Of the second we know only that it was in prose, and addressed to his friend and kinsman the Marquis of Santillana. And of the Æneid there remain but seven books, with a commentary to three of them, from which a few extracts have been published.[599]

Villena’s reputation, therefore, must rest chiefly on[p. 362] his “Trabajos de Hercules,” or The Labors of Hercules, written to please one of his Catalonian friends, Pero Pardo, who asked to have an explanation of the virtues and achievements of Hercules; always a great national hero in Spain. The work seems to have been much admired and read in manuscript, and, after printing was introduced into Spain, it went through two editions before the year 1500; but all knowledge of it was so completely lost soon afterwards, that the most intelligent authors of Spanish literary history down to our own times have generally spoken of it as a poem. It is, however, in fact, a short prose treatise, filling, in the first edition—that of 1483—thirty large leaves. It is divided into twelve chapters, each devoted to one of the twelve great labors of Hercules, and each subdivided into four parts: the first part containing the common mythological story of the labor under consideration; the second, an explanation of this story as if it were an allegory; the third, the historical facts upon which it is conjectured to have been founded; and the fourth, a moral application of the whole to some one of twelve conditions, into which the author very arbitrarily divides the human race, beginning with princes and ending with women.

Thus, in the fourth chapter, after telling the commonly received tale, or, as he calls it, “the naked story,” of the Garden of the Hesperides, he gives us an allegory of it, showing that Libya, where the fair garden is placed, is human nature, dry and sandy; that Atlas, its lord, is the wise man, who knows how to cultivate his poor desert; that the garden is the garden of knowledge, divided according to the sciences; that the tree in the midst is philosophy; that the dragon watching the tree is the difficulty of study; and that[p. 363] the three Hesperides are Intelligence, Memory, and Eloquence. All this and more he explains under the third head, by giving the facts which he would have us suppose constituted the foundation of the first two; telling us that King Atlas was a wise king of the olden time, who first arranged and divided all the sciences; and that Hercules went to him and acquired them, after which he returned and imparted his acquisitions to King Eurystheus. And, finally, in the fourth part of the chapter, he applies it all to the Christian priesthood and the duty of this priesthood to become learned and explain the Scriptures to the ignorant laity; as if there were any possible analogy between them and Hercules and his fables.[600]

The book, however, is worth the trouble of reading. It is, no doubt, full of the faults peculiar to its age, and abounds in awkward citations from Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and other Latin authors, then so rarely found and so little known in Spain, that they added materially to the interest and value of the treatise.[601] But the allegory is sometimes amusing; the language is[p. 364] almost always good, and occasionally striking by fine archaisms; and the whole has a dignity about it which is not without its appropriate power and grace.[602]

From the Marquis of Villena himself, it is natural for us to turn to one of his followers, known only as “Macias el Enamorado,” or Macias the Lover; a name which constantly recurs in Spanish literature with a peculiar meaning, given by the tragical history of the poet who bore it. He was a Galician gentleman, who served the Marquis of Villena as one of his esquires, and became enamoured of a maiden attached to the same princely household with himself. But the lady, though he won her love, was married, under the authority that controlled both of them, to a knight of Porcuna. Still Macias in no degree restrained his passion, but continued to express it to her in his verses, as he had done before. The husband was naturally offended, and complained to the Marquis, who, after in vain rebuking his follower, used his full power as Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, and cast Macias into prison. But there he only devoted himself more passionately to the thoughts of his lady, and, by his persevering love, still more provoked her husband, who, secretly following him to his prison at Arjonilla, and watching him one day as he chanced to be singing of his love and his sufferings, was so stung by jealousy, that he cast a dart through the gratings of the window, and killed the unfortunate poet with the name of his lady still trembling on his lips.

[p. 365]The sensation produced by the death of Macias was such as belongs only to an imaginative age, and to the sympathy felt for one who perished because he was both a Troubadour and a lover. All men who desired to be thought cultivated mourned his fate. His few poems in his native Galician—only one of which, and that of moderate merit, is preserved entire—became generally known, and were generally admired. His master, the Marquis of Villena, Rodriguez del Padron, who was his countryman, Juan de Mena, the great court poet, and the still greater Marquis of Santillana, all bore testimony, at the time or immediately afterwards, to the general sorrow. Others followed their example; and the custom of referring constantly to him and to his melancholy fate was continued in ballads and popular songs, until, in the poetry of Lope de Vega, Calderon, and Quevedo, the name of Macias passed into a proverb, and became synonymous with the highest and tenderest love.[603]

Next after the king and Villena in rank, and much before them in merit, stands, at the head of the courtiers and poets of the reign of John the Second, Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana; one of the most distinguished members of that great family which has sometimes claimed the Cid for its founder,[604] and which certainly, with a long succession of honors, reaches down to our own times.[605] He was born in 1398, but was left an orphan in early youth; so that, though his father, the Grand Admiral of Castile, had, at the time of his death, larger possessions than any other nobleman in the kingdom, the son, when he was old enough to know their value, found them chiefly wrested from him by the bold barons who in the most lawless manner then divided among themselves the power and resources of the crown.

[p. 367]But the young Mendoza was not of a temper to submit patiently to such wrongs. At the age of sixteen he already figures in the chronicles of the time, as one of the dignitaries of state who honored the coronation of Ferdinand of Aragon;[606] and at the age of eighteen, we are told, he boldly reclaimed his possessions, which, partly through the forms of law and partly by force of arms, he recovered.[607] From this period we find him, during the reign of John the Second, busy in the affairs of the kingdom, both civil and military; always a personage of great consideration, and apparently one who, in difficult circumstances and wild times, acted from manly motives. When only thirty years old, he was distinguished at court as one of the persons concerned in arranging the marriage of the Infanta of Aragon;[608] and, soon afterwards, had a separate command against the Navarrese, in which, though he suffered a defeat from greatly superior numbers, he acquired lasting honor by his personal bravery and firmness.[609] Against the Moors he commanded long, and was often successful; and after the battle of Olmedo, in 1445, he was raised to the very high rank of Marquis; none in Castile having preceded him in that title except the family of Villena, already extinct.[610]

He was early, but not violently, opposed to the great favorite, the Constable Alvaro de Luna. In 1432, some[p. 368] of his friends and kinsmen, the good Count Haro and the Bishop of Palencia, with their adherents, having been seized by order of the Constable, Mendoza shut himself up in his strongholds till he was fully assured of his own safety.[611] From this time, therefore, the relations between two such personages could not be considered friendly; but still appearances were kept up, and the next year, at a grand jousting before the king in Madrid, where Mendoza offered himself against all comers, the Constable was one of his opponents; and after the encounter, they feasted together merrily and in all honor.[612] Indeed, the troubles between them were inconsiderable till 1448 and 1449, when the hard proceedings of the Constable against others of the friends and relations of Mendoza led him into a more formal opposition,[613] which in 1452 brought on a regular conspiracy between himself and two more of the leading nobles of the kingdom. The next year the favorite was sacrificed.[614] In the last scenes, however, of this extraordinary tragedy, the Marquis of Santillana seems to have had little share.

The king, disheartened by the loss of the minister on whose commanding genius he had so long relied, died in 1454. But Henry the Fourth, who followed on the throne of Castile, seemed even more willing to favor the great family of the Mendozas than his father had been. The Marquis, however, was little disposed to take advantage of his position. His wife died in 1455, and the pilgrimage he made on that occasion to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the religious poetry he wrote the same year, show the direction his[p. 369] thoughts had now taken. In this state of mind he seems to have continued; and though he once afterwards joined effectively with others to urge upon the king’s notice the disordered and ruinous state of the kingdom, yet, from the fall of the Constable to the time of his own death, which happened in 1458, the Marquis was chiefly busied with letters, and with such other occupations and thoughts as were consistent with a retired life.[615]

It is remarkable, that one, who, from his birth and position, was so much involved in the affairs of state at a period of great confusion and violence, should yet have cultivated elegant literature with earnestness. But the Marquis of Santillana, as he wrote to a friend and repeated to Prince Henry, believed that knowledge neither blunts the point of the lance, nor weakens the arm that wields a knightly sword.[616] He therefore gave himself freely to poetry and other graceful accomplishments; encouraged, perhaps, by the thought, that he was thus on the road to please the wayward monarch he served, if not the stern favorite who governed them all. One who was bred at the court, of which the Marquis was so distinguished an ornament, says, “He had great store of books, and gave himself to study, especially the study of moral philosophy and of things foreign and old. And he had always in his house doctors and masters, with whom he discoursed concerning the knowledge and the books he studied. Likewise, he himself made[p. 370] other books in verse and in prose, profitable to provoke to virtue and to restrain from vice. And in such wise did he pass the greater part of his leisure. Much fame and renown, also, he had in many kingdoms out of Spain; but he thought it a greater matter to have esteem among the wise than name and fame with the many.”[617]

The works of the Marquis of Santillana show, with sufficient distinctness, the relations in which he stood to his times and the direction he was disposed to take. From his social position, he could easily gratify any reasonable literary curiosity or taste he might possess; for the resources of the kingdom were open to him, and he could, therefore, not only obtain for his private study the poetry then abroad in the world, but often command to his presence the poets themselves. He was born in the Asturias, where his great family fiefs lay, and was educated in Castile; so that, on this side, he belonged to the genuinely indigenous school of Spanish poetry. But then he was also intimate with the Marquis of Villena, the head of the poetical Consistory of Barcelona, who, to encourage his poetical studies, addressed to him, in 1433, his curious letter on the art of the Troubadours, which Villena thus proposed to introduce into Castile.[618] And, after all, he lived chiefly at the court of John the Second, and was the friend and patron of the poets there, through whom and through his love of foreign letters it was natural he should come in contact with the great Italian masters, now exercising a wide sway within their own peninsula. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find that his own works belong more or less to each of these schools, and define his position[p. 371] as that of one who stands connected with the Provençal literature in Spain, which we have just examined; with the Italian, whose influences were now beginning to appear; and with the genuinely Spanish, which, though it often bears traces of each of the others, prevails at last over both of them.

Of his familiarity with the Provençal poetry abundant proof may be found in the Preface to his Proverbs, which he wrote when young, and in his letter to the Constable of Portugal, which belongs to the latter period of his life. In both, he treats the rules of that poetry as well founded, explaining them much as his friend and kinsman, the Marquis of Villena, did; and of some of the principal of its votaries in Spain, such as Bergédan, and Pedro and Ausias March, he speaks with great respect.[619] To Jordi, his contemporary, he elsewhere devotes an allegorical poem of some length and merit, intended to do him the highest honor as a Troubadour.[620]

But besides this, he directly imitated the Provençal poets. By far the most beautiful of his works, and one which may well be compared with the most graceful of the smaller poems in the Spanish language, is entirely in the Provençal manner. It is called “Una Serranilla,” or A Little Mountain Song, and was composed on a little girl, whom, when following his military duty, he found tending her father’s herds on the hills. Many such short songs occur in the later Provençal poets, under the name of “Pastoretas,” and “Vaqueiras,” one of which, by Giraud Riquier,—the same person who wrote verses on the death of Alfonso the Wise,—might[p. 372] have served as the very prototype of the present one; so strong is the resemblance between them. But none of them, either in the Provençal or in the Spanish, has ever equalled this “Serranilla” of the soldier; which, besides its inherent simplicity and liquid sweetness, has such grace and lightness in its movement, that it bears no marks of an unbecoming imitation, but, on the contrary, is rather to be regarded as a model of the natural old Castilian song, never to be transferred to another language, and hardly to be imitated with success in its own.[621]

The traces of Italian culture in the poetry of the Marquis of Santillana are no less obvious and important. Besides praising Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio,[622] he imitates the opening of the “Inferno” in a long poem, in octave stanzas, on the death of the Marquis of Villena;[623] while, in the “Coronation of Jordi,” he shows that he was sensible to the power of more than one passage in the “Purgatorio.”[624] Moreover, he has the merit—if it be one—of introducing the peculiarly Italian form of the Sonnet into Spain; and with the differ[p. 373]ent specimens of it that still remain among his works begins the ample series which, since the time of Boscan, has won for itself so large a space in Spanish literature. Seventeen sonnets of the Marquis of Santillana have been published, which he himself declares to be written in “the Italian fashion,” and appeals to Cavalcante, Guido d’Ascoli, Dante, and especially Petrarch, as his predecessors and models; an appeal hardly necessary to one who has read them, so plain is his desire to imitate the greatest of his masters. The sonnets of the Marquis of Santillana, however, have little merit, except in their careful versification, and were soon forgotten.[625]

But his principal works were more in the manner then prevalent at the Spanish court. Most of them are in verse, and, like a short poem to the queen, several riddles, and a few religious compositions, are generally full of conceits and affectation, and have little value of any sort.[626] Two or three, however, are of consequence. One called “The Complaint of Love,” and referring apparently to the story of Macias, is written with fluency and sweetness, and is curious as containing lines in Galician, which, with other similar verses and his letter to the Constable of Portugal, show he extended his thoughts to this ancient dialect, where are found some of the earliest intimations of Spanish literature.[627] Another of his[p. 374] poems, which has been called “The Ages of the World,” is a compendium of universal history, beginning at the creation and coming down to the time of John the Second, with a gross compliment to whom it ends. It was written in 1426, and fills three hundred and thirty-two stanzas of double redondillas, dull and prosaic throughout.[628] The third is a moral poem, thrown into the shape of a dialogue between Bias and Fortune, setting forth the Stoical doctrine of the worthlessness of all outward good. It consists of a hundred and eighty octave stanzas in the short Spanish measure, and was written for the consolation of a cousin and much loved friend of the Toledo family, whose imprisonment in 1448, by order of the Constable, caused great troubles in the kingdom, and contributed to the final alienation of the Marquis from the favorite.[629] The fourth is on the kindred subject of the fall and death of the Constable himself, in 1453; a poem in fifty-three octave stanzas, each of two redondillas, containing a confession supposed to have been made by the victim on the scaffold, partly to the multitude and partly to his priest.[630] In both of the last two poems, and especially in the dialogue between Bias and Fortune, passages of merit are found, which are not only fluent, but strong; not only terse and pointed, but graceful.[631]

[p. 375]But the most important of the poetical works of the Marquis of Santillana is one approaching the form of a drama, and called the “Comedieta de Ponza,” or The Little Comedy of Ponza. It is founded on the story of a great sea-fight near the island of Ponza in 1435, where the kings of Aragon and Navarre, and the Infante Don Henry of Castile, with many noblemen and knights, were taken prisoners by the Genoese,—a disaster to Spain, which fills a large space in the old national chronicles.[632] The poem of Santillana, written immediately after the occurrence of the calamity it commemorates, is called a Comedy, because its conclusion is happy, and Dante is cited as authority for this use of the word.[633] But in fact it is a dream or vision; and one of the early passages in the “Inferno,” imitated at the very opening, leaves no doubt as to what was in the author’s mind when he wrote it.[634] The queens of Navarre and Aragon, and the Infante Doña Catalina, as the persons most interested in the unhappy battle, are the chief speakers. But Boccaccio is also a principal personage, though seemingly for no better reason than that he wrote the treatise on the Disasters of Princes; and after being addressed very solemnly in this capacity by the three royal ladies and by the Marquis of Santillana himself, he answers no less solemnly in his native Italian. Queen Leonora then gives him an account of the glories and grandeur of her house, accompanied with auguries of misfortune, which are hardly uttered before a letter comes announcing their fulfilment in the calamities of the battle of Ponza. The queen mother, after hearing[p. 376] the contents of this letter quite through, falls as one dead. Fortune, in a female form, richly attired, enters, and consoles them all; first showing a magnificent perspective of past times, with promises of still greater glory to their descendants, and then fairly presenting to them in person the very princes whose captivity had just filled them with such fear and grief. And this ends the Comedieta.

It fills a hundred and twenty of the old Italian octave stanzas,—such stanzas as are used in the “Filostrato” of Boccaccio,—and much of it is written in easy verse. There is a great deal of ancient learning introduced into it awkwardly and in bad taste; but there is one passage in which a description of Fortune is skilfully borrowed from the seventh canto of the “Inferno,” and another in which is a pleasing paraphrase of the Beatus ille of Horace.[635] The machinery and management of the story, it is obvious, could hardly be worse; and yet when it was written, and perhaps still more when it was declaimed, as it probably was before some of the sufferers in the disaster it records, it may well have been felt as an effective exhibition of a very grave passage in the history of the time. On this account, too, it is still interesting.

The Comedieta, however, was not the most popular, if it was the most important, of the works of Santillana. That distinction belongs to a collection of Proverbs,[p. 377] which he made at the request of John the Second, for the education of his son Henry, afterwards Henry the Fourth. It consists of a hundred rhymed sentences, each generally containing one proverb, and so sometimes passes under the name of the “Centiloquio.” The proverbs themselves are, no doubt, mostly taken from that unwritten wisdom of the common people, for which, in this form, Spain has always been more famous than any other country; but, in the general tone he has adopted, and in many of his separate instructions, the Marquis is rather indebted to King Solomon and the New Testament. Such as they are, however, they had—perhaps from their connection with the service of the heir-apparent—a remarkable success, to which many old manuscripts, still extant, bear witness. They were printed, too, as early as 1496; and in the course of the next century nine or ten editions of them may be reckoned, generally encumbered with a learned commentary by Doctor Pedro Diaz of Toledo. They have, however, no poetical value, and interest us only from the circumstances attending their composition, and from the fact that they form the oldest collection of proverbs made in modern times.[636]

[p. 378]In the latter part of his life, the fame of the Marquis of Santillana was spread very widely. Juan de Mena says, that men came from foreign countries merely to see him;[637] and the young Constable of Portugal—the same prince who afterwards entered into the Catalonian troubles, and claimed to be king of Aragon—formally asked him for his poems, which the Marquis sent with a letter on the poetic art, by way of introduction, written about 1455, and containing notices of such Spanish poets as were his predecessors or contemporaries; a letter which is, in fact, the most important single document we now possess touching the early literature of Spain. It is one, too, which contrasts favorably with the curious epistle he himself received on a similar subject, twenty years before, from the Marquis of Villena, and shows how much he was in advance of his age in the spirit of criticism and in a well-considered love of letters.[638]

Indeed, in all respects we can see that he was a remarkable man; one thoroughly connected with his age and strong in its spirit. His conduct in affairs, from his youth upwards, shows this. So does the tone of his Proverbs, that of his letter to his imprisoned cousin, and that of his poem on the death of Alvaro[p. 379] de Luna. He was a poet also, though not of a high order; a man of much reading, when reading was rare;[639] and a critic, who showed judgment, when judgment and the art of criticism hardly went together. And, finally, he was the founder of an Italian and courtly school in Spanish poetry; one, on the whole, adverse to the national spirit, and finally overcome by it, and yet one that long exercised a considerable sway, and at last contributed something to the materials which, in the sixteenth century, went to build up and constitute the proper literature of the country.

There lived, however, during the reign of John the Second, and in the midst of his court, another poet, whose general influence at the time was less felt than that of his patron, the Marquis of Santillana, but who has since been oftener mentioned and remembered,—Juan de Mena, sometimes, but inappropriately, called the Ennius of Spanish poetry. He was born in Córdova, about the year 1411, the child of parents respected, but not noble.[640] He was early left an orphan, and from the age of three-and-twenty, of his own free choice, devoted himself wholly to letters; going through a regular course of studies, first at Salamanca, and afterwards at Rome. On his return home, he became a[p. 380] Veinte-quatro of Córdova, or one of the twenty-four persons who constituted the government of the city; but we early find him at court on a footing of familiarity as a poet, and we know he was soon afterwards Latin secretary to John the Second, and historiographer of Castile.[641] This brought him into relations with the king and the Constable; relations important in themselves, and of which we have by accident a few singular intimations. The king, if we can trust the witness, was desirous to be well regarded in history; and, to make sure of it, directed his confidential physician to instruct his historiographer, from time to time, how he ought to treat different parts of his subject. In one letter, for instance, he is told with much gravity, “The king is very desirous of praise”; and then follows a statement of facts, as they ought to be represented, in a somewhat delicate case of the neglect of the Count de Castro to obey the royal commands.[642] In another letter he is told, “The king expects much glory from you”; a remark which is followed by another narrative of facts as they should be set forth.[643] But though Juan de Mena was employed on this important work as late as 1445, and apparently was favored in it, both by the king and the Constable, still there is no reason to suppose that any part of what he did is preserved in the Chronicle of John the Second exactly as it came from his hands.

The chronicler, however, who seems to have been happy in possessing a temperament proper for courtly success, has left proofs enough of the means by which he reached it. He was a sort of poet-laureate without the title, writing verses on the battle of Olmedo in[p. 381] 1445, on the pacification between the king and his son in 1446, on the affair of Peñafiel in 1449, and on the slight wound the Constable received at Palencia in 1452; in all which, as well as in other and larger poems, he shows a great devotion to the reigning powers of the state.[644]

He stood well, too, in Portugal. The Infante Don Pedro—a verse-writer of some name, who travelled much in different parts of the world—became personally acquainted with Juan de Mena in Spain, and, on his return to Lisbon, addressed a few verses to him, better than the answer they called forth; besides which, he imitated, with no mean skill, Mena’s “Labyrinth,” in a Spanish poem of a hundred and twenty-five stanzas.[645] With such connections and habits, with a wit that made him agreeable in personal intercourse,[646] and with an even good-humor which rendered him welcome to the opposite parties in the kingdom,[647] he seems to have led a contented life; and at his death, which happened suddenly in 1456, in consequence of a fall from his mule, the Marquis of Santillana, always his friend and patron, wrote his epitaph, and erected a monument to his memory in Torrelaguna, both of which are still to be seen.[648]

[p. 382]The works of Juan de Mena evidently enjoyed the sunshine of courtly favor from their first appearance. While still young, if we can trust the simple-hearted letters that pass under the name of the royal physician, they were already the subject of gossip at the palace;[649] and the collections of poetry made by Baena and Estuñiga, for the amusement of the king and the court, about 1450, contain abundant proofs that his favor was not worn out by time; for as many of his verses as could be found seem to have been put into each of them. But though this circumstance, and that of their appearance before the end of the century in two or three of the very earliest printed collections of poetry, leave no doubt that they enjoyed, from the first, a sort of fashionable success, still it can hardly be said they were at any time really popular. Two or three of his shorter effusions, indeed, like the verses addressed to his lady to show her how formidable she is in every way, and those on a vicious mule he had bought from a friar, have a spirit that would make them amusing anywhere.[650] But most of his minor poems, of which about twenty may be found scattered in rare books,[651] belong only to the fashionable style of the society in which he lived, and, from their affectation, conceits, and obscure allusions, can have had little value, even when they were first circulated, except to[p. 383] the persons to whom they were addressed, or the narrow circle in which those persons moved.

His poem on the Seven Deadly Sins, in nearly eight hundred short verses, divided into double redondillas, is a work of graver pretensions. But it is a dull allegory, full of pedantry and metaphysical fancies on the subject of a war between Reason and the Will of Man. Notwithstanding its length, however, it was left unfinished; and a certain friar, named Gerónimo de Olivares, added four hundred more verses to it, in order to bring the discussion to what he conceived a suitable conclusion. Both parts, however, are as tedious as the theology of the age could make them.

His “Coronation” is better, and fills about five hundred lines, arranged in double quintillas. Its name comes from its subject, which is an imaginary journey of Juan de Mena to Mount Parnassus, in order to witness the coronation of the Marquis of Santillana, both as a poet and a hero, by the Muses and the Virtues. It is, therefore, strictly a poem in honor of his great patron; and being such, it is somewhat singular that it should be written in a light and almost satirical vein. At the opening, as well as in other parts, it has the appearance of a parody on the “Divina Commedia”; for it begins with the wanderings of the author in an obscure wood, after which he passes through regions of misery, where he beholds the punishments of the dead; visits the abodes of the blessed, where he sees the great of former ages; and, at last, comes to Mount Parnassus, where he is present at a sort of apotheosis of the yet living object of his reverence and admiration. The versification of the poem is easy, and some passages in it are amusing; but, in general, it is rendered dull by unprofitable learning. The best portions are those merely descriptive.

[p. 384]But whether Juan de Mena, in his “Coronation,” intended deliberately to be the parodist of Dante or not, it is quite plain that in his principal work, called “The Labyrinth,” he became Dante’s serious imitator. This long poem—which he seems to have begun very early, and which, though he occupied himself much with its composition, he left unfinished at the time of his sudden death—consists of about twenty-five hundred lines, divided into stanzas; each stanza being composed of two redondillas in those long lines which were then called “versos de arte mayor,” or verses of higher art, because they were supposed to demand a greater degree of skill than the shorter verses used in the old national measures. The poem itself is sometimes called “The Labyrinth,” probably from the intricacy of its plan, and sometimes “The Three Hundred,” because that was originally the number of its coplas or stanzas. Its purpose is nothing less than to teach, by vision and allegory, whatever relates to the duties or the destiny of man; and the rules by which its author was governed in its composition are evidently gathered from the example of Dante in his “Divina Commedia,” and from Dante’s precepts in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentia.”

After the dedication of the Labyrinth to John the Second, and some other preparatory and formal parts, the poem opens with the author’s wanderings in a wood, like Dante, exposed to beasts of prey. While there, he is met by Providence, who comes to him in the form of a beautiful woman, and offers to lead him, by a sure path, through the dangers that beset him, and to explain, “as far as they are palpable to human understanding,” the dark mysteries of life that oppress his spirit. This promise she fulfils by carrying him to what she calls the spherical centre of the five zones; or, in other[p. 385] words, to a point where the poet is supposed to see at once all the countries and nations of the earth. There she shows him three vast mystical wheels,—the wheels of Destiny,—two representing the past and the future, in constant rest, and the third representing the present, in constant motion. Each contains its appropriate portion of the human race, and through each are extended the seven circles of the seven planetary influences that govern the fates of mortal men; the characters of the most distinguished of whom are explained to the poet by his divine guide, as their shadows rise before him in these mysterious circles.

From this point, therefore, the poem becomes a confused gallery of mythological and historical portraits, arranged, as in the “Paradiso” of Dante, according to the order of the seven planets.[652] They have generally little merit, and are often shadowed forth very indistinctly. The best sketches are those of personages who lived in the poet’s own time or country; some drawn with courtly flattery, like the king’s and the Constable’s; others with more truth, as well as more skill, like those of the Marquis of Villena, Juan de Merlo, and the young Dávalos, whose premature fate is recorded in a few lines of unwonted power and tenderness.[653]

[p. 386]The story told most in detail is that of the Count de Niebla, who, in 1436, at the siege of Gibraltar, sacrificed his own life in a noble attempt to save that of one of his dependants; the boat in which the Count might have been rescued being too small to save the whole of the party, who thus all perished together in a flood-tide. This disastrous event, and especially the self-devotion of Niebla, who was one of the principal nobles of the kingdom, and at that moment employed on a daring expedition against the Moors, are recorded in the chronicles of the age, and introduced by Juan de Mena in the following characteristic stanzas:[654]—

Too much honor is not to be claimed for such poetry; but there is little in Juan de Mena’s works equal to this specimen, which has at least the merit of being free from the pedantry and conceits that disfigure most of his writings.

Such as it was, however, the Labyrinth received great admiration from the court of John the Second, and, above all, from the king himself, whose physician, we are told, wrote to the poet: “Your polished and erudite work, called ‘The Second Order of Mercury,’ hath much pleased his Majesty, who carries it with him when he journeys about or goes a-hunting.”[655] And again: “The end of the ‘third circle’ pleased the king much. I read it to his Majesty, who keeps it on his table with his prayer-book, and takes it up often.”[656] Indeed, the whole poem was, it seems, submitted to the king, piece by piece, as it was composed; and we are told, that, in one instance, at least, it received a royal correction, which still stands unaltered.[657] His Majesty even advised that it should be extended from three hundred stanzas to three hundred and sixty-five, though for no better reason than to make their number correspond exactly with that of the days in the year; and the twenty-four stanzas commonly printed at the end of it are supposed to have been an attempt to fulfil the monarch’s command. But whether this be so or not, nobody now wishes the poem to be longer than it is.[658]

In one point of view, all the works of Juan de Mena are of consequence. They mark the progress of the Castilian language, which, in his hands, advanced more than it had for a long period before. From the time of Alfonso the Wise, nearly two centuries had elapsed, in which, though this fortunate dialect had almost completely asserted its supremacy over its rivals, and by the force of political circumstances had been spread through a large part of Spain, still, little had been done to enrich and nothing to raise or purify it. The grave and stately tone of the “Partidas” and the “General Chronicle” had not again been reached; the lighter air of the “Conde Lucanor” had not been attempted. Indeed, such wild and troubled times, as those of Peter the Cruel and the three monarchs who had followed him on the throne, permitted men to think of little except their personal safety and their immediate well-being.

But now, in the time of John the Second, though the affairs of the country were hardly more composed, they had taken the character rather of feuds between the great nobles than of wars with the throne; while, at the same time, knowledge and literary culture, from acci[p. 390]dental circumstances, were not only held in honor, but had become a courtly fashion. Style, therefore, began to be regarded as a matter of consequence, and the choice of words, as the first step towards elevating and improving it, was attempted by those who wished to enjoy the favor of the highest class, that then gave its tone alike to letters and to manners. But a serious obstacle was at once found to such a choice of phraseology as was demanded. The language of Castile had, from the first, been dignified and picturesque, but it had never been rich. Juan de Mena, therefore, looked round to see how he could enlarge his poetical vocabulary; and if he had adopted means more discreet, or shown more judgment in the use of those to which he resorted, he might almost have modelled the Spanish into such forms as he chose.

As it was, he rendered it good service. He took boldly such words as he thought suitable to his purpose, wherever he found them, chiefly from the Latin, but sometimes from other languages.[659] Unhappily, he exercised no proper skill in the selection. Some of the many he adopted were low and trivial, and his example[p. 391] failed to give them dignity; others were not better than those for which they were substituted, and so were not afterwards used; and yet others were quite too foreign in their structure and sound to strike root where they should never have been transplanted. Much, therefore, of what Juan de Mena did in this respect was unsuccessful. But there is no doubt that the language of Spanish poetry was strengthened and its versification ennobled by his efforts, and that the example he set, followed, as it was, by Lucena, Diego de San Pedro, Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, the Manriques, and others, laid the true foundations for the greater and more judicious enlargement of the whole Castilian vocabulary in the age that followed.

Another poet, who, in the reign of John the Second, enjoyed a reputation which has faded away much more than that of Juan de Mena, is Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino, sometimes called De Illescas. His earliest verses seem to have been written in the time of John the First; but the greater part fall within the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second, and especially within that of the last. A few of them are addressed to this monarch, and many more to his queen, to the Constable, to the Infante Don Ferdinand, afterwards king of Aragon, and to other distinguished personages of the time. From different parts of them, we learn that their author was a soldier and a courtier; that he was married twice, and repented heartily of his second match; and that he was generally poor, and often sent bold solicitations to every body, from the king downwards, asking for places, for money, and even for clothes.

As a poet, his merits are small. He speaks of Dante, but gives no proof of familiarity with Italian[p. 392] literature. In fact, his verses are rather in the Provençal forms, though their courtly tone and personal claims predominate to such a degree as to prevent any thing else from being distinctly heard. Puns, conceits, and quibbles, to please the taste of his great friends, are intruded everywhere; yet perhaps he gained his chief favor by his versification, which is sometimes uncommonly easy and flowing, and by his rhymes, which are singularly abundant and almost uniformly exact.[660]

At any rate, he was much regarded by his contemporaries. The Marquis of Santillana speaks of him as one of the leading poets of his age, and says that he wrote a great number of songs and other short poems, or decires, which were well liked and widely spread.[661] It is not remarkable, therefore, when Baena, for the amusement of John the Second and his court, made the collection of poetry which now passes under his name, that he filled much of it with verses by Villasandino, who is declared by the courtly secretary to be “the light, and mirror, and crown, and monarch of all the poets that, till that time, had lived in Spain.” But the poems Baena admired are almost all of them so short and so personal, that they were soon forgotten, with the circumstances that gave them birth. Several are curious, because they were written to be used, by persons of distinction in the state, such as the Adelantado Manrique, the Count de Buelna, and the Great Constable, all of whom were among Villasandino’s admirers, and employed him to write verses which passed afterwards un[p. 393]der their own names. Of one short poem, a Hymn to the Madonna, the author himself thought so well, that he often said it would surely clear him, in the other world, from the power of the Arch-enemy.[662]

Francisco Imperial, born in Genoa, but in fact a Spaniard, whose home was at Seville, is also among the poets who were favored at this period, and who belonged to the same artificial school with Villasandino. The principal of his longer poems is on the birth of King John, in 1405, and most of the others are on subjects connected, like this, with transient interests. One, however, from its tone and singular subject, is still curious. It is on the fate of a lady, who, having been taken among the spoils of a great victory in the far East, by Tamerlane, was sent by him as a present to Henry the Third of Castile; and it must be admitted that the Genoese touches the peculiar misfortune of her condition with poetical tenderness.[663]

Of the remaining poets who were more or less valued in Spain, in the middle of the fifteenth century, it is not necessary to speak at all. Most of them are now known only to antiquarian curiosity. Of by far the[p. 394] greater part very little remains; and in most cases it is uncertain whether the persons whose names the poems bear were their real authors or not. Juan Alfonso de Baena, the editor of the collection in which most of them are found, wrote a good deal,[664] and so did Ferrant Manuel de Lando,[665] Juan Rodriguez del Padron,[666] Pedro Velez de Guevara, and Gerena and Calavera.[667] Probably, however, nothing remains of the inferior authors more interesting than a Vision composed by Diego de Castillo, the chronicler, on the death of Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon,[668] and a sketch of the life and character of Henry the Third of Castile, given in the person of the monarch himself, by Pero Ferrus;[669]—poems which remind us strongly of the similar sketches found in the old English “Mirror for Magistrates.”

But while verse was so much cultivated, prose, though less regarded and not coming properly into the fashionable literature of the age, made some progress. We turn, therefore, now to two writers who flourished in the reign of John the Second, and who seem to furnish, with the contemporary chronicles and other similar works already noticed, the true character of the better prose literature of their time.

[p. 395]The first of them is Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal, who, if there ever were such a person, was the king’s physician, and, in some respects, his confidential and familiar friend. He was born, according to the Letters that pass under his name, about 1386,[670] and, though not of a distinguished family, had for his godfather Pedro Lopez de Ayala, the great chronicler and chancellor of Castile. When he was not yet four-and-twenty years old, John the Second being still a child, Cibdareal entered the royal service and remained attached to the king’s person till the death of his master, when we lose sight of him altogether. During this long period of above forty years, he maintained a correspondence, to which we have already alluded more than once, with many of the principal persons in the state; with the king himself, with several of the archbishops and bishops, and with a considerable number of noblemen and men of letters, among the last of whom were Alfonso de Cartagena and Juan de Mena. A part of this correspondence, amounting to one hundred and five letters, written between 1425 and 1454, has been published, in two editions; the first claiming to be of 1499, and the last prepared in 1775, with some care, by Amirola, the Secretary of the Spanish Academy of History. Most of the subjects discussed by the honest physician and courtier in these letters are still interesting; and some of them, like the death of the Constable, which he describes minutely to the Archbishop of Toledo, are important, if they can be trusted as genuine. In almost[p. 396] all he wrote, he shows the good-nature and good sense which preserved for him the favor of leading persons in the opposite factions of the time, and which, though he belonged to the party of the Constable, yet prevented him from being blind to that great man’s faults, or becoming involved in his fate. The tone of the correspondence is simple and natural, always quite Castilian, and sometimes very amusing; as, for instance, when he is repeating court gossip to the Grand Justiciary of Castile, or telling stories to Juan de Mena. But a very interesting letter to the Bishop of Orense, containing an account of John the Second’s death, will perhaps give a better idea of its author’s general spirit and manner, and, at the same time, exhibit somewhat of his personal character.

“I foresee very plainly,” he says to the Bishop, “that you will read with tears this letter, which I write to you in anguish. We are both become orphans; and so has all Spain. For the good and noble and just King John, our sovereign lord, is dead. And I, miserable man that I am,—who was not yet twenty-four years old when I entered his service with the Bachelor Arrevalo, and have, till I am now sixty-eight, lived in his palace, or, I might almost say, in his bed-chamber and next his bed, always in his confidence, and yet never thinking of myself,—I should now have but a poor pension of thirty thousand maravedís for my long service, if, just at his death, he had not ordered the government of Cibdareal to be given to my son, who I pray may be happier than his father has been. But, in truth, I had always thought to die before his Highness; whereas he died in my presence, on the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen, a blessed saint, whom he greatly resembled in sorrowing over his sins. It was a sharp fever that destroyed him. He was[p. 397] much wearied with travelling about hither and thither; and he had always the death of Don Alvaro de Luna before him, grieving about it secretly, and seeing that the nobles were never the more quiet for it, but, on the contrary, that the king of Navarre had persuaded the king of Portugal to think he had grounds of complaint concerning the wars in Barbary, and that the king had answered him with a crafty letter. All this wore his heart out. And so, travelling along from Avila to Medina, a paroxysm came upon him with a sharp fever, that seemed at first as if it would kill him straightway. And the Prior of Guadalupe sent directly for Prince Henry; for he was afraid some of the nobles would gather for the Infante Don Alfonso; but it pleased God that the king recovered his faculties by means of a medicine I gave him. And so he went on to Valladolid; but as soon as he entered the city, he was struck with death, as I said before the Bachelor Frias, who held it to be a small matter, and before the Bachelor Beteta, who held what I said to be an idle tale.... The consolation that remains to me is, that he died like a Christian king, faithful and loyal to his Maker. Three hours before he gave up the ghost, he said to me: ‘Bachelor Cibdareal, I ought to have been born the son of a tradesman, and then I should have been a friar of Abrojo, and not a king of Castile.’ And then he asked pardon of all about him, if he had done them any wrong; and bade me ask it for him of those of whom he could not ask it himself. I followed him to his grave in Saint Paul’s, and then came to this lonely room in the suburbs; for I am now so weary of life, that I do not think it will be a difficult matter to loosen me from it, much as men commonly fear death. Two days ago, I went to see the queen; but I found the palace from the top to the bottom so empty,[p. 398] that the house of the Admiral and that of Count Benevente are better served. King Henry keeps all King John’s servants; but I am too old to begin to follow another master about, and, if God so pleases, I shall go to Cibdareal with my son, where I hope the king will give me enough to die upon.” This is the last we hear of the sorrowing old man, who probably died soon after the date of this letter, which seems to have been written in July, 1454.[671]

The other person who was most successful as a prose-writer in the age of John the Second was Fernan Perez de Guzman,—like many distinguished Spaniards, a soldier and a man of letters, belonging to the high aristocracy of the country, and occupied in its affairs. His mother was sister to the great Chancellor Ayala, and his father was a brother of the Marquis of Santillana, so that his connections were as proud and noble as the monarchy could afford; while, on the other hand, Garcilasso de la Vega being one of his lineal descendants, we may add that his honors were reflected back from succeeding generations as brightly as he received them.

He was born about the year 1400, and was bred a knight. At the battle of the Higueruela, near Granada, in 1431, led on by the Bishop of Palencia,—who, as the honest Cibdareal says, “fought that day like an armed Joshua,”—he was so unwise in his courage, that, after the fight was over, the king, who had been an eyewitness of his indiscretion, caused him to be put under arrest, and released him only at the intercession of one of his powerful friends.[672] In general, Perez de Guzman was among the opponents of the Constable, as were[p. 399] most of his family; but he does not seem to have shown a factious or violent spirit, and, after being once unreasonably thrown into prison, found his position so false and disagreeable, that he retired from affairs altogether.

Among his more cultivated and intellectual friends was the family of Santa María, two of whom, having been Bishops of Cartagena, are better known by the name of the see they filled than they are by their own. The oldest of them all was a Jew by birth,—Selomo Halevi,—who, in 1390, when he was forty years old, was baptized as Pablo de Santa María, and rose, subsequently, by his great learning and force of character, to some of the highest places in the Spanish Church, of which he continued a distinguished ornament till his death in 1432. His brother, Alvar Garcia de Santa María, and his three sons, Gonzalo, Alonso, and Pedro, the last of whom lived as late as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, were, like the head of the family, marked by literary accomplishments, of which the old Cancioneros afford abundant proof, and of which, it is evident, the court of John the Second was not a little proud. The connection of Perez de Guzman, however, was chiefly with Alonso, long Bishop of Cartagena, who wrote for the use of his friend a religious treatise, and who, when he died, in 1435, was mourned by Perez de Guzman in a poem comparing the venerable Bishop to Seneca and Plato.[673]

[p. 400]

The occupations of Perez de Guzman, in his retirement on his estates at Batres, where he passed the latter part of his life, and where he died, about 1470, were suited to his own character and to the spirit of his age. He wrote a good deal of poetry, such as was then fashionable among persons of the class to which he belonged, and his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, admired what he wrote. Some of it may be found in the collection of Baena, showing that it was in favor at the court of John the Second. Yet more was printed in 1492, and in the Cancioneros that began to appear a few years later; so that it seems to have been still valued by the limited public interested in letters in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

But the longest poem he wrote, and perhaps the most important, is his “Praise of the Great Men of Spain,” a kind of chronicle, filling four hundred and nine octave stanzas; to which should be added a hundred and two rhymed Proverbs, mentioned by the Marquis of Santillana, but probably prepared later than the collection made by the Marquis himself for the education of Prince Henry. After these, the two poems of Perez de Guzman that make most pretensions from their length are an allegory on the Four Cardinal Virtues, in sixty-three stanzas, and another on the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, in a hundred. The best verses he wrote are in his short hymns. But all are forgotten, and deserve to be so.[674]

[p. 401]His prose is much better. Of the part he bore in the Chronicle of John the Second notice has already been taken. But at different times, both before he was engaged in that work and afterwards, he was employed on another, more original in its character and of higher literary merit. It is called “Genealogies and Portraits,” and contains, under thirty-four heads, sketches, rather than connected narratives, of the lives, characters, and families of thirty-four of the principal persons of his time, such as Henry the Third, John the Second, the Constable Alvaro de Luna, and the Marquis of Villena.[675] A part of this genial work seems, from internal evidence, to have been written in 1430, while other portions must be dated after 1454; but none of it can have been much known till all the principal persons to whom it relates had died, and not, therefore, till the reign of Henry the Fourth, in the course of which the death of Perez de Guzman himself must have happened. It is manly in its tone, and is occasionally marked with vigorous and original thought. Some of its sketches are, indeed, brief and dry, like that of Queen Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt. But others are long and elaborate, like that of the Infante Don Ferdinand. Sometimes he discovers a spirit in advance of[p. 402] his age, such as he shows when he defends the newly converted Jews from the cruel suspicions with which they were then persecuted. But he oftener discovers a willingness to rebuke its vices, as when, discussing the character of Gonzalo Nuñez de Guzman, he turns aside from his subject and says solemnly,—

“And no doubt it is a noble thing and worthy of praise to preserve the memory of noble families and of the services they have rendered to their kings and to the commonwealth; but here, in Castile, this is now held of small account. And, to say truth, it is really little necessary; for now-a-days he is noblest who is richest. Why, then, should we look into books to learn what relates to families, since we can find their nobility in their possessions? Nor is it needful to keep a record of the services they render; for kings now give rewards, not to him who serves them most faithfully, nor to him who strives for what is most worthy, but to him who most follows their will and pleases them most.”[676]

In this and other passages, there is something of the tone of a disappointed statesman, perhaps of a disappointed courtier. But more frequently, as, for instance, when he speaks of the Great Constable, there is an air of good faith and justice that do him much honor. Some of his portraits, among which we may notice those of Villena and John the Second, are drawn with skill and spirit; and everywhere he writes in that rich, grave, Castilian style, with now and then a happy and pointed phrase to relieve its dignity, of which we can find no earlier example without going quite back to Alfonso the Wise and Don Juan Manuel.

Contemporary with all the authors we have just examined, and connected by ties of blood with several of them, was the family of the Manriques,—poets, statesmen, and soldiers,—men suited to the age in which they lived, and marked with its strong characteristics. They belonged to one of the oldest and noblest races of Castile; a race beginning with the Laras of the ballads and chronicles.[677] Pedro, the father of the first two to be noticed, was among the sturdiest opponents of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, and filled so large a space in the troubles of the time, that his violent imprisonment, just before he died, shook the country to its very foundations. At his death, however, in 1440, the injustice he had suffered was so strongly felt by all parties, that the whole court went into mourning for him, and the good Count Haro—the same in whose hands the honor and faith of the country had been put in pledge a year before at Tordesillas—came into the king’s presence, and, in a solemn scene well described by the chronicler of John the Second, obtained for the children of the deceased[p. 404] Manrique a confirmation of all the honors and rights of which their father had been wrongfully deprived.[678]

One of these children was Rodrigo Manrique, Count of Paredes, a bold captain, well known by the signal advantages he gained for his country over the Moors. He was born in 1416, and his name occurs constantly in the history of his time; for he was much involved, not only in the wars against the common enemy in Andalusia and Granada, but in the no less absorbing contests of the factions which then rent Castile and all the North. But, notwithstanding the active life he led, we are told that he found time for poetry, and one of his songs, by no means without merit, which has been preserved to us, bears witness to it. He died in 1476.[679]

His brother, Gomez Manrique, of whose life we have less distinct accounts, but whom we know to have been both a soldier and a lover of letters, has left us more proofs of his poetical studies and talent. One of his shorter pieces belongs to the reign of John the Second, and one of more pretensions comes into the period of the Catholic sovereigns; so that he lived in three different reigns.[680] At the request of Count Benevente, he at one time collected what he had written into a volume, which may still be extant, but has never been published.[681] The longest of his works, now known to exist, is an allegorical poem of twelve hundred lines on the death of his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, in which the Seven Cardinal Virtues, together with Poetry and[p. 405] Gomez Manrique himself, appear and mourn over the great loss their age and country had sustained. It was written soon after 1458, and sent, with an amusingly pedantic letter, to his cousin, the Bishop of Calahorra, son of the Marquis of Santillana.[682] Another poem, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, which is necessarily to be dated as late as the year 1474, is a little more than half as long as the last, but, like that, is allegorical, and resorts to the same poor machinery of the Seven Virtues, who come this time to give counsel to the Catholic sovereigns on the art of government. It was originally preceded by a prose epistle, and was printed in 1482, so that it is among the earliest books that came from the Spanish press.[683]

These two somewhat long poems, with a few that are much shorter,—the best of which is on the bad government of a town where he lived,—fill up the list of what remain to us of their author’s works. They are found in the Cancioneros printed from time to time during the sixteenth century, and thus bear witness to the continuance of the regard in which he was long held. But, except a few passages, where he speaks in a natural tone, moved by feelings of personal affection, none of his poetry can now be read with pleasure; and, in some instances, the Latinisms in which he indulges, misled probably by Juan de Mena, render the lines where they occur quite ridiculous.[684]

[p. 406]Jorge Manrique is the last of this chivalrous family that comes into the literary history of his country. He was the son of Rodrigo, Count of Paredes, and seems to have been a young man of an uncommonly gentle cast of character, yet not without the spirit of adventure that belonged to his ancestors,—a poet full of natural feeling, when the best of those about him were almost wholly given to metaphysical conceits, and to what was then thought a curious elegance of style. We have, indeed, a considerable number of his lighter verses, chiefly addressed to the lady of his love, which are not without the coloring of his time, and remind us of the poetry on similar subjects produced a century later in England, after the Italian taste had been introduced at the court of Henry the Eighth.[685] But the principal poem of Manrique the younger is almost entirely free from affectation. It was written on the death of his father, which occurred in 1476, and is in the genuinely old Spanish measure and manner. It fills about five hundred lines, divided into forty-two coplas or stanzas, and is called, with a simplicity and directness worthy of its own character, “The Coplas of Manrique,” as if it needed no more distinctive name.

Nor does it. Instead of being a loud exhibition of his sorrows, or, what would have been more in the spirit of the age, a conceited exhibition of his learning, it is a simple and natural complaint of the mutability of all earthly happiness; the mere overflowing of a heart filled with despondency at being brought suddenly to feel the worthlessness of what it has most valued and pursued. His father occupies hardly half the canvas of[p. 407] the poem, and some of the stanzas devoted more directly to him are the only portion of it we could wish away. But we everywhere feel—before its proper subject is announced quite as much as afterwards—that its author has just sustained some loss, which has crushed his hopes, and brought him to look only on the dark and discouraging side of life. In the earlier stanzas he seems to be in the first moments of his great affliction, when he does not trust himself to speak out concerning its cause; when his mind, still brooding in solitude over his sorrows, does not even look round for consolation. He says, in his grief,—

The same tone is heard, though somewhat softened, when he touches on the days of his youth and of the court of John the Second, already passed away; and it is felt the more deeply, because the festive scenes he describes come into such strong contrast with the dark and solemn thoughts to which they lead him. In this respect his verses fall upon our hearts like the sound of a heavy bell, struck by a light and gentle hand, which continues long afterwards to give forth tones that grow sadder and more solemn, till at last they come to us like a wailing for those we have ourselves loved and lost. But gradually the movement changes.[p. 408] After his father’s death is distinctly announced, his tone becomes religious and submissive. The light of a blessed future breaks upon his reconciled spirit; and then the whole ends like a mild and radiant sunset, as the noble old warrior sinks peacefully to his rest, surrounded by his children and rejoicing in his release.[686]

No earlier poem in the Spanish language, if we except, perhaps, some of the early ballads, is to be compared with the Coplas of Manrique for depth and truth of feeling; and few of any subsequent period have reached the beauty or power of its best portions. Its versification, too, is excellent; free and flowing, with occasionally an antique air and turn, that are true to the character of the age that produced it, and increase its picturesqueness and effect. But its great charm is to be sought in a beautiful simplicity, which, belonging to no age, is the seal of genius in all.

The Coplas, as might be anticipated, produced a[p. 409] strong impression from the first. They were printed in 1492, within sixteen years after they were written, and are found in several of the old collections a little later. Separate editions followed. One, with a very dull and moralizing prose commentary by Luis de Aranda, was published in 1552. Another, with a poetical gloss in the measure of the original, by Luis Perez, appeared in 1561; yet another, by Rodrigo de Valdepeñas, in 1588; and another, by Gregorio Silvestre, in 1589;—all of which have been reprinted more than once, and the first two many times. But in this way the modest Coplas themselves became so burdened and obscured, that they almost disappeared from general circulation, till the middle of the last century, since which time, however, they have been often reprinted, both in Spain and in other countries, until they seem at last to have taken that permanent place among the most admired portions of the elder Spanish literature, to which their merit unquestionably entitles them.[687]

[p. 410]The death of the younger Manrique was not unbecoming his ancestry and his life. In an insurrection which occurred in 1479, he served on the loyal side, and pushing a skirmish too adventurously, was wounded and fell. In his bosom were found some verses, still unfinished, on the uncertainty of all human hopes; and an old ballad records his fate and appropriately seals up, with its simple poetry, the chronicle of this portion, at least, of his time-honored race.[688]

Another family that flourished in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and one that continued to be distinguished in that of Charles the Fifth, was marked with similar characteristics, serving in high places in[p. 411] the state and in the army, and honored for its success in letters. It was the family of the Urreas. The first of the name who rose to eminence was Lope, created Count of Aranda in 1488; the last was Gerónimo de Urrea, who must be noticed hereafter as the translator of Ariosto, and as the author of a treatise on Military Honor, which was published in 1566.

Both the sons of the first Count of Aranda, Miguel and Pedro, were lovers of letters; but Pedro only was imbued with a poetical spirit beyond that of his age, and emancipated from its affectations and follies. His poems, which he published in 1513, are dedicated to his widowed mother, and are partly religious and partly secular. Some of them show that he was acquainted with the Italian masters. Others are quite untouched by any but national influences; and among the latter is the following ballad, recording the first love of his youth, when a deep distrust of himself seemed to be too strong for a passion which was yet evidently one of great tenderness:—

The last person who wrote a poem of any considerable length, and yet is properly to be included within the old school, is one who, by his imitations of Dante, reminds us of the beginnings of that school in the days[p. 413] of the Marquis of Santillana. It is Juan de Padilla, commonly called “El Cartuxano,” or The Carthusian, because he chose thus modestly to conceal his own name, and announce himself only as a monk of Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville.[690] Before he entered into that severe monastery, he wrote a poem, in a hundred and fifty coplas, called “The Labyrinth of the Duke of Cadiz,” which was printed in 1493; but his two chief works were composed afterwards. The first of them is called “Retablo de la Vida de Christo,” or A Picture of the Life of Christ; a long poem, generally in octave stanzas of versos de arte mayor, containing a history of the Saviour’s life, as given by the Prophets and Evangelists, but interspersed with prayers, sermons, and exhortations; all very devout and very dull, and all finished, as he tells us, on Christmas eve in the year 1500.

The other is entitled “The Twelve Triumphs of the Twelve Apostles,” which, as we are informed, with the same accuracy and in the same way, was completed on the 14th of February, 1518; again a poem formidable for its length, since it fills above a thousand stanzas of nine lines each. It is partly an allegory, but wholly religious in its character, and is composed with more care than any thing else its author wrote. The action passes in the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which the poet is successively carried by Saint Paul, who shows him, in each of them, first, the marvels of one of the twelve Apostles; next, an opening of one of the twelve mouths of the infernal regions; and lastly, a glimpse of the corresponding division of Purgatory. Dante is evidently the model of the good monk, however unsuc[p. 414]cessful he may be as a follower. Indeed, he begins with a direct imitation of the opening of the “Divina Commedia,” from which, in other parts of the poem, phrases and lines are not unfrequently borrowed. But he has thrown together what relates to earth and heaven, to the infernal regions and to Purgatory, in such an unhappy confusion, and he so mingles allegory, mythology, astrology, and known history, that his work turns out, at last, a mere succession of wild inconsistencies and vague, unmeaning descriptions. Of poetry there is rarely a trace; but the language, which has a decided air of yet elder times about it, is free and strong, and the versification, considering the period, is uncommonly rich and easy.[691]

The reign of Henry the Fourth, was more favorable to the advancement of prose composition than that of John the Second. This we have already seen when speaking of the contemporary chronicles, and of Perez de Guzman and the author of the “Celestina.” In other cases, we observe its advancement in an inferior degree, but, encumbered as they are with more or less of the bad taste and pedantry of the time, they still deserve notice, because they were so much valued in their own age.

Regarded from this point of view, one of the most prominent prose-writers of the century was Juan de Lucena; a personage distinguished both as a private counsellor of John the Second and as that monarch’s foreign ambassador. We know, however, little of his history; and of his works only one remains to us,—if, indeed, he wrote any more. It is a didactic prose dialogue “On a Happy Life,” carried on between some of the most eminent persons of the age: the great Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, the poet, Alonso de Cartagena, the bishop and statesman, and Lucena himself, who acts in part as an umpire in the discussion, though the Bishop at last ends it by deciding that true happiness consists in loving and serving God.

[p. 416]The dialogue itself is represented as having passed chiefly in a hall of the palace, and in presence of several of the nobles of the court; but it was not written till after the death of the Constable, in 1453; that event being alluded to in it. It is plainly an imitation of the treatise of Boëthius “On the Consolation of Philosophy,” then a favorite classic; but it is more spirited and effective than its model. It is frequently written in a pointed, and even a dignified style; and parts of it are interesting and striking. Thus, the lament of Santillana over the death of his son is beautiful and touching, and so is the final summing up of the trials and sorrows of this life by the Bishop. In the midst of their discussions, there is a pleasant description of a collation with which they were refreshed by the Marquis, and which recalls, at once,—as it was probably intended to do,—the Greek Symposia and the dialogues that record them. Indeed, the allusions to antiquity with which it abounds, and the citations of ancient authors, which are still more frequent, are almost always apt, and often free from the awkwardness and pedantry which mark most of the didactic prose of the period; so that, taken together, it may be regarded, notwithstanding the use of many strange words, and an occasional indulgence in conceits, as one of the most remarkable literary monuments of the age from which it has come down to us.[692]

[p. 417]To this period, also, we must refer the “Vision Deleytable,” or Delectable Vision, which we are sure was written before 1463. Its author was Alfonso de la Torre, commonly called “The Bachelor,” who seems to have been a native of the bishopric of Burgos, and who was, from 1437 till the time of his death, a member of the College of Saint Bartholomew at Salamanca; a noble institution, founded in imitation of that established at Bologna by Cardinal Albornoz. It is an allegorical vision, in which the author supposes himself to see the Understanding of Man in the form of an infant brought into a world full of ignorance and sin, and educated by a succession of such figures as Grammar, Logic, Music, Astrology, Truth, Reason, and Nature. He intended it, he says, to be a compendium of all human knowledge, especially of all that touches moral science and man’s duty, the soul and its immortality; intimating, at the end, that it is a bold thing in him to have discussed such subjects in the vernacular, and begging the noble Juan de Beamonte, at whose request he had undertaken it, not to permit a work so slight to be seen by others.

It shows a good deal of the learning of its time, and still more of the acuteness of the scholastic metaphysics then in favor. But it is awkward and uninteresting in the general structure of its fiction, and meagre in its style and illustrations. This, however, did not prevent it from being much read and admired. There is one edition of it without date, which probably appeared[p. 418] about 1480, showing that the wish of its author to keep it from the public was not long respected; and there were other editions in 1489, 1526, and 1538, besides a translation into Catalan, printed as early as 1484. But the taste for such works passed away in Spain as it did elsewhere; and the Bachiller de la Torre was soon so completely forgotten, that his Vision was not only published by Dominico Delphino in Italian, as a work of his own, but was translated back into its native Spanish by Francisco de Caceres, a converted Jew, and printed in 1663, as if it had been an original Italian work till then quite unknown in Spain.[693]

An injustice not unlike the one that occurred to Alfonso de la Torre happened to his contemporary, Diego de Almela, and for some time deprived him of the honor, to which he was entitled, of being regarded as the author of “The Valerius of Stories,”—a book long[p. 419] popular and still interesting. He wrote it after the death of his patron, the wise Bishop of Cartagena, who had projected such a work himself, and as early as 1472 it was sent to one of the Manrique family. But though the letter which then accompanied it is still extant, and though, in four editions, beginning with that of 1487, the book is ascribed to its true author, yet in the fifth, which appeared in 1541, it is announced to be by the well-known Fernan Perez de Guzman;—a mistake which was discovered and announced by Tamayo de Vargas, in the time of Philip the Third, but does not seem to have been generally corrected till the work itself was edited anew by Moreno, in 1793.

It is thrown into the form of a discussion on Morals, in which, after a short explanation of the different virtues and vices of men, as they were then understood, we have all the illustrations the author could collect under each head from the Scriptures and the history of Spain. It is, therefore, rather a series of stories than a regular didactic treatise, and its merit consists in the grave, yet simple and pleasing, style in which they are told,—a style particularly fitted to most of them, which are taken from the old national chronicles. Originally, it was accompanied by “An Account of Pitched Battles”; but this, and his Chronicles of Spain, his collection of the Miracles of Santiago, and several discussions of less consequence, are long since forgotten. Almela, who enjoyed the favor of Ferdinand and Isabella, accompanied those sovereigns to the siege of Granada, in 1491, as a chaplain, carrying with him, as was not uncommon at that time among the higher ecclesiastics, a military retinue to serve in the wars.[694]

[p. 420]In 1493, another distinguished ecclesiastic, Alonso Ortiz, a canon of Toledo, published, in a volume of moderate size, two small works which should not be entirely overlooked. The first is a treatise, in twenty-seven chapters, addressed, through the queen, Isabella, to her daughter, the Princess of Portugal, on the death of that princess’s husband, filled with such consolation as the courtly Canon deemed suitable to her bereavement and his own dignity. The other is an oration, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, after the fall of Granada, in 1492, rejoicing in that great event, and glorying almost equally in the cruel expulsion of all Jews and heretics from Spain. Both are written in too rhetorical a style, but neither is without merit; and in the oration there are one or two beautiful and even touching passages on the tranquillity to be enjoyed in Spain, now that a foreign and hated enemy, after a contest of eight centuries, had been expelled from its borders,—passages which evidently came from the writer’s heart, and no doubt found an echo wherever his words were heard by Spaniards.[695]

Another of the prose-writers of the fifteenth century, and one that deserves to be mentioned with more respect than either of the last, is Fernando del Pulgar.[p. 421] He was born in Madrid, and was educated, as he himself tells us, at the court of John the Second. During the reign of Henry the Fourth, he had employments which show him to have been a person of consequence; and during a large part of that of Ferdinand and Isabella, he was one of their counsellors of state, their secretary, and their chronicler.[696] Of his historical writings notice has already been taken; but in the course of his inquiries after what related to the annals of Castile, he collected materials for another work, more interesting, if not more important. For he found, as he says, many famous men whose names and characters had not been so preserved and celebrated as their merits demanded; and, moved by his patriotism, and taking for his example the portraits of Perez de Guzman and the biographies of the ancients, he carefully prepared sketches of the lives of the principal persons of his own age, beginning with Henry the Fourth, and confining himself chiefly within the limits of that monarch’s reign and court.

Some of these sketches, to which he has given the general title of “Claros Varones de Castilla,” like those of the good Count Haro[697] and of Rodrigo Manrique,[698] are important for their subjects, while others, like those of the great ecclesiastics of the kingdom, are now interesting only for the skill with which they are drawn. The style in which they are written is forcible and generally concise, showing a greater tendency to formal elegance than any thing by either Cibdareal or Guzman, with[p. 422] whom we should most readily compare him; but we miss the confiding naturalness of the warm-hearted physician and the severe judgments of the retired statesman. The whole series is addressed to his great patroness, Queen Isabella, to whom, no doubt, he thought a tone of composed dignity more appropriate than any other.

As a specimen of his best manner, we may take the following passage, in which, after having alluded to some of the most remarkable personages in Roman history, he turns, as it were, suddenly round to the queen, and thus boldly confronts the great men of antiquity with the great men of Castile, whom he had already discussed more at large:—

“True, indeed, it is, that these great men,—Castilian knights and gentlemen,—of whom memory is here made for fair cause, and also those of the elder time, who, fighting for Spain, gained it from the power of its enemies, did neither slay their own sons, as did those consuls, Brutus and Torquatus; nor burn their own flesh, as did Scævola; nor commit against their own blood cruelties which nature abhors and reason forbids; but rather, with fortitude and perseverance, with wise forbearance and prudent energy, with justice and clemency, gaining the love of their own countrymen, and becoming a terror to strangers, they disciplined their armies, ordered their battles, overcame their enemies, conquered hostile lands, and protected their own.... So that, most excellent Queen, these knights and prelates, and many others born within your realm, whereof here leisure fails me to speak, did, by the praiseworthy labors they fulfilled, and by the virtues they strove to attain, achieve unto themselves the name of Famous Men, whereof their descendants should be above others emulous; while, at the same[p. 423] time, all the gentlemen of your kingdoms should feel themselves called to the same pureness of life, that they may at last end their days in unspotted success, even as these great men also lived and died.”[699]

This is certainly remarkable, both for its style and for the tone of its thought, when regarded as part of a work written at the conclusion of the fifteenth century. Pulgar’s Chronicle, and his commentary on “Mingo Revulgo,” as we have already seen, are not so good as such sketches.

The same spirit, however, reappears in his letters. They are thirty-two in number; all written during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the earliest being dated in 1473, and the latest only ten years afterwards. Nearly all of them were addressed to persons of honorable distinction in his time, such as the queen herself, Henry the king’s uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and the Count of Tendilla. Sometimes, as in the case of one to the king of Portugal, exhorting him not to make war on Castile, they are evidently letters of state. But in other cases, like that of a letter to his physician, complaining pleasantly of the evils of old age, and one to his daughter, who was a nun, they seem to be familiar, if not confidential.[700] On the whole, therefore, taking all his different works together, we have a very gratifying exhibition of the character of this ancient servant and counsellor of Queen Isabella, who, if he gave no considerable impulse to his age as a writer, was yet in advance of it by the dignity and elevation of his thoughts and the careless richness of his style. He died after 1492, and probably before 1500.

[p. 424]We must not, however, go beyond the limits of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, without noticing two remarkable attempts to enlarge, or at least to change, the forms of romantic fiction, as they had been thus far settled in the books of chivalry.

The first of these attempts was made by Diego de San Pedro, a senator of Valladolid, whose poetry is found in all the Cancioneros Generales.[701] He was evidently known at the court of the Catholic sovereigns, and seems to have been favored there; but, if we may judge from his principal poem, entitled “Contempt of Fortune,” his old age was unhappy, and filled with regrets at the follies of his youth.[702] Among these follies, however, he reckons the work of prose fiction which now constitutes his only real claim to be remembered. It is called the Prison of Love, “Carcel de Amor,” and was written at the request of Diego Hernandez, a governor of the pages in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.

It opens with an allegory. The author supposes himself to walk out on a winter’s morning, and to find in a wood a fierce, savage-looking person, who drags along an unhappy prisoner bound by a chain. This savage is Desire, and his victim is Leriano, the hero of the fiction. San Pedro, from natural sympathy, follows them to the castle or prison of Love, where, after groping through sundry mystical passages and troubles, he sees the victim fastened to a fiery seat and enduring[p. 425] the most cruel torments. Leriano tells him that they are in the kingdom of Macedonia, that he is enamoured of Laureola, daughter of its king, and that for his love he is thus cruelly imprisoned; all which he illustrates and explains allegorically, and begs the author to carry a message to the lady Laureola. The request is kindly granted, and a correspondence takes place, immediately upon which Leriano is released from his prison, and the allegorical part of the work is brought to an end.

From this time the story is much like an episode in one of the tales of chivalry. A rival discovers the attachment between Leriano and Laureola, and making it appear to the king, her father, as a criminal one, the lady is cast into prison. Leriano challenges her accuser and defeats him in the lists; but the accusation is renewed, and, being fully sustained by false witnesses, Laureola is condemned to death. Leriano rescues her with an armed force and delivers her to the protection of her uncle, that there may exist no further pretext for malicious interference. The king, exasperated anew, besieges Leriano in his city of Susa. In the course of the siege, Leriano captures one of the false witnesses, and compels him to confess his guilt. The king, on learning this, joyfully receives his daughter again, and shows all favor to her faithful lover. But Laureola, for her own honor’s sake, now refuses to hold further intercourse with him; in consequence of which he takes to his bed and with sorrow and fasting dies. Here the original work ends; but there is a poor continuation of it by Nicolas Nuñez, which gives an account of the grief of Laureola and the return of the author to Spain.[703]

[p. 426]The style, so far as Diego de San Pedro is concerned, is good for the age; very pithy, and full of rich aphorisms and antitheses. But there is no skill in the construction of the fable; and the whole work only shows how little romantic fiction was advanced in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Carcel de Amor was, however, very successful. The first edition appeared in 1492; two others followed in less than eight years; and before a century was completed, it is easy to reckon ten, beside many translations.[704]

Among the consequences of the popularity enjoyed by the Carcel de Amor was probably the appearance of the “Question de Amor,” an anonymous tale, which is dated at the end, 17 April, 1512. It is a discussion of the question, so often agitated from the age of the Courts of Love to the days of Garcilasso de la Vega, who suffers most, the lover whose mistress has been taken from him by death, or the lover who serves a living mistress without hope. The controversy is here carried on between Vasquiran, whose lady-love is dead, and Flamiano, who is rejected and in despair. The scene is laid at Naples and in other parts of Italy, beginning in 1508, and ending with the battle of Ravenna and its disastrous consequences, four years later. It is full of the spirit of the times. Chivalrous games[p. 427] and shows at the court of Naples, a hunting scene, jousts and tournaments, and a tilting-match with reeds, are all minutely described, with the dresses and armour, the devices and mottoes, of the principal personages who took part in them. Poetry, too, is freely scattered through it,—villancicos, motes, and invenciones, such as are found in the Cancioneros; and, on one occasion, an entire eclogue is set forth, as it was recited or played before the court, and, on another, a poetical vision, in which the lover who had lost his lady sees her again as if in life. The greater part of the work claims to be true, and some portions of it are known to be so; but the metaphysical discussion between the two sufferers, sometimes angrily borne in letters, and sometimes tenderly carried on in dialogue, constitutes the chain on which the whole is hung, and was originally, no doubt, regarded as its chief merit. The story ends with the death of Flamiano from wounds received in the battle of Ravenna; but the question discussed is as little decided as it is at the beginning.

The style is that of its age; sometimes picturesque, but generally dull; and the interest of the whole is small, in consequence both of the inherent insipidity of such a fine-spun discussion, and of the too minute details given of the festivals and fights with which it is crowded. It is, therefore, chiefly interesting as a very early attempt to write historical romance; just as the “Carcel de Amor,” which called it forth, is an attempt to write sentimental romance.[705]

The reigns of John the Second and of his children, Henry the Fourth and Isabella the Catholic, over which we have now passed, extend from 1407 to 1504, and therefore fill almost a complete century, though they comprise only two generations of sovereigns. Of the principal writers who flourished while they sat on the throne of Castile we have already spoken, whether they were chroniclers or dramatists, whether they were poets or prose-writers, whether they belonged to the Provençal school or to the Castilian. But, after all, a more distinct idea of the poetical culture of Spain during this century, than can be readily obtained in any other way, is to be gathered from the old Cancioneros; those ample magazines, filled almost entirely with the poetry of the age that preceded their formation.

Nothing, indeed, that belonged to the literature of the fifteenth century in Spain marks its character more plainly than these large and ill-digested collections. The oldest of them, to which we have more than once referred, was the work of Juan Alfonso de Baena, a converted Jew, and one of the secretaries of John the Second. It dates, from internal evidence, between the years 1449 and 1454, and was made, as the compiler[p. 429] tells us in his preface, chiefly to please the king, but also, as he adds, in the persuasion that it would not be disregarded by the queen, the heir-apparent, and the court and nobility in general. For this purpose, he says, he had brought together the works of all the Spanish poets who, in his own or any preceding age, had done honor to what he calls “the very gracious art of the Gaya Ciencia.”

On examining the Cancionero of Baena, however, we find that quite one third of the three hundred and eighty-four manuscript pages it fills are given to Villasandino,—who died about 1424, and whom Baena pronounces “the prince of all Spanish poets,”—and that nearly the whole of the remaining two thirds is divided among Diego de Valencia, Francisco Imperial, Baena himself, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and Ferrant Manuel de Lando; while the names of about fifty other persons, some of them reaching back to the reign of Henry the Third, are affixed to a multitude of short poems, of which, probably, they were not in all cases the authors. A little of it, like what is attributed to Macias, is in the Galician dialect; but by far the greater part was written by Castilians, who valued themselves upon their fashionable tone more than upon any thing else, and who, in obedience to the taste of their time, generally took the light and easy forms of Provençal verse, and as much of the Italian spirit as they comprehended and knew how to appropriate. Of poetry, except in some of the shorter pieces of Ferrant Lando, Alvarez Gato, and Perez de Guzman, the Cancionero of Baena contains hardly a trace.[706]

[p. 430]Many similar collections were made about the same time, enough of which remain to show that they were among the fashionable wants of the age, and that there was little variety in their character. Among them was the Cancionero in the Limousin dialect already mentioned;[707] that called Lope de Estuñiga’s, which comprises works of about forty authors;[708] that collected in 1464 by Fernan Martinez de Burgos; and no less than seven others, preserved in the National Library at Paris, all containing poetry of the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century, often the same authors, and sometimes the same poems, that are found in Baena and in Estuñiga.[709] They all belong to a state of society in which[p. 431] the great nobility, imitating the king, maintained poetical courts about them, such as that of the Marquis of Villena at Barcelona, or the more brilliant one, perhaps, of the Duke Fadrique de Castro, who had constantly in his household Puerto Carrero, Gayoso, Manuel de Lando, and others then accounted great poets. That the prevailing tone of all this was Provençal we cannot doubt; but that it was somewhat influenced by a knowledge of the Italian we know from many of the poems that have been published, and from the intimations of the Marquis of Santillana in his letter to the Constable of Portugal.[710]

Thus far, more had been done in collecting the poetry of the time than might have been anticipated from the troubled state of public affairs; but it had been done only in one direction, and even in that with little judgment. The king and the more powerful of the nobility might indulge in the luxury of such Cancioneros and such poetical courts, but a general poetical culture could not be expected to follow influences so partial and inadequate. A new order of things, however, soon arose. In 1474, the art of printing was fairly established in Spain; and it is a striking fact, that the first book ascertained to have come from the Spanish press is a collection of poems recited that year by forty different poets contending for a public prize.[711] No doubt, such a volume was not compiled on the principle of the elder manuscript Cancioneros. Still, in some respects, it resembles them, and in others seems to have been the result of their example. But however this may be, a collection of poetry was printed at Saragossa, in 1492, con[p. 432]taining the works of nine authors, among whom were Juan de Mena, the younger Manrique, and Fernan Perez de Guzman; the whole evidently made on the same principle and for the same purpose as the Cancioneros of Baena and Estuñiga, and dedicated to Queen Isabella, as the great patroness of whatever tended to the advancement of letters.[712]

It was a remarkable book to appear within eighteen years after the introduction of printing into Spain, when little but the most worthless Latin treatises had come from the national press; but it was far from containing all the Spanish poetry that was soon demanded. In 1511, therefore, Fernando del Castillo printed at Valencia what he called a “Cancionero General,” or General Collection of Poetry; the first book to which this well-known title was ever given. It professes to contain “many and divers works of all or of the most notable Troubadours of Spain, the ancient as well as the modern, in devotion, in morality, in love, in jests, ballads, villancicos, songs, devices, mottoes, glosses, questions, and answers.” It, in fact, contains poems attributed to about a hundred different persons, from the time of the Marquis of Santillana down to the period in which it was made; most of the separate pieces being placed under the names of those who were their authors, or were assumed to be so, while the rest are collected under the respective titles or divisions just enumerated, which then constituted the favorite subjects and forms of verse at court. Of proper order or arrangement, of critical judgment, or tasteful selection, there seems to have been little thought.

The work, however, was successful. In 1514, a new[p. 433] edition of it appeared; and before 1540, six others had followed, at Toledo and Seville, making, when taken together, eight in less than thirty years; a number which, if the peculiar nature and large size of the work are considered, can hardly find its parallel, at the same period, in any other European literature. Later,—in 1557 and 1573,—yet two other editions, somewhat enlarged, appeared at Antwerp, whither the inherited rights and military power of Charles the Fifth had carried a familiar knowledge of the Spanish language and a love for its cultivation. In each of the ten editions of this remarkable book, it should be borne in mind, that we may look for the body of poetry most in favor at court and in the more refined society of Spain during the whole of the fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth; the last and amplest of them comprising the names of one hundred and thirty-six authors, some of whom go back to the beginning of the reign of John the Second, while others come down to the time of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.[713]

Taking this Cancionero, then, as a true poetical representative of the period it embraces, the first thing we observe, on opening it, is a mass of devotional verse, evidently intended as a vestibule to conciliate favor for the more secular and free portions that follow. But it is itself very poor and gross; so poor and so gross, that we can hardly understand how, at any period, it can have been deemed religious. Indeed, within a century from the time when the Cancionero was published, this part of it was already become so offensive to the Church it had originally served to propitiate, that the whole of[p. 434] it was cut out of such printed copies as came within the reach of the ecclesiastical powers.[714]

There can be no doubt, however, about the devotional purposes for which it was first destined; some of the separate compositions being by the Marquis of Santillana, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and other well-known authors of the fifteenth century, who thus intended to give an odor of sanctity to their works and lives. A few poems in this division of the Cancionero, as well as a few scattered in other parts of it, are in the Limousin dialect; a circumstance which is probably to be attributed to the fact, that the whole was first collected and published in Valencia. But nothing in this portion can be accounted truly poetical, and very little of it religious. The best of its shorter poems is, perhaps, the following address of Mossen Juan Tallante to a figure of the Saviour expiring on the cross:—

[p. 435]Next after the division of devotional poetry comes the series of authors upon whom the whole collection relied for its character and success when it was first published; a series, to form which, the editor says, in the original dedication to the Count of Oliva, he had employed himself during twenty years. Of such of them as are worthy a separate notice—the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and the three Manriques—we have already spoken. The rest are the Viscount of Altamira, Diego Lopez de Haro,[716] Antonio de Velasco, Luis de Vivero, Hernan Mexia, Suarez, Cartagena, Rodriguez del Padron, Pedro Torellas, Dávalos,[717] Guivara, Alvarez Gato,[718] the Marquis of Astorga, Diego[p. 436] de San Pedro, and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz,—the last a poet whose versification is his chief merit, but who was long remembered by succeeding poets from the circumstance that he went mad for love.[719] They all belong to the courtly school; and we know little of any of them except from hints in their own poems, nearly all of which are so wearisome from their heavy sameness, that it is a task to read them.

Thus, the Viscount Altamira has a long, dull dialogue between Feeling and Knowledge; Diego Lopez de Haro has another between Reason and Thought; Hernan Mexia, one between Sense and Thought; and Costana, one between Affection and Hope;—all belonging to the fashionable class of poems called moralities or moral discussions, all in one measure and manner, and all counterparts to each other in grave, metaphysical refinements and poor conceits. On the other hand, we have light, amatory poetry, some of which, like that of Garci Sanchez de Badajoz on the Book of Job, that of Rodriguez del Padron on the Ten Commandments, and that[p. 437] of the younger Manrique on the forms of a monastic profession, irreverently applied to the profession of love, are, one would think, essentially irreligious, whatever they may have been deemed at the time they were written. But in all of them, and, indeed, in the whole series of works of the twenty different authors filling this important division of the Cancionero, hardly a poetical thought is to be found, except in the poems of a few who have already been noticed, and of whom the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, and the younger Manrique are the chief.[720]

Next after the series of authors just mentioned, we have a collection of a hundred and twenty-six “Canciones,” or Songs, bearing the names of a large number of the most distinguished Spanish poets and gentlemen of the fifteenth century. Nearly all of them are regularly constructed, each consisting of two stanzas, the first with four and the second with eight lines,—the first expressing the principal idea, and the second repeating and amplifying it. They remind us, in some respects, of Italian sonnets, but are more constrained in their movement, and fall into a more natural alliance with conceits. Hardly one in the large collection of the Cancionero is easy or flowing, and the following, by Cartagena, whose name occurs often, and who was one of the Jewish family that rose so high in the Church after its conversion, is above the average merit of its class.[721]

This was thought to be a tender compliment to the lady whose coldness had made her lover desire a death that would not obey his summons.

Thirty-seven Ballads succeed; a charming collection of wild-flowers, which have already been sufficiently examined when speaking of the ballad poetry of the earliest age of Spanish literature.[723]

After the Ballads we come to the “Invenciones,” a form of verse peculiarly characteristic of the period, and of which we have here two hundred and twenty specimens. They belong to the institutions of chivalry, and especially to the arrangements for tourneys and joustings, which were the most gorgeous of the public amusements known in the reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth. Each knight, on such occasions, had a device, or drew one for himself by lot; and to this device or crest a poetical explanation was to be affixed by himself, which was called an invencion. Some of these posies are very ingenious; for conceits are here in their place. King John, for instance, drew a prisoner’s cage for his crest, and furnished for its motto,—

[p. 439]

The well-known Count Haro drew a noria, or a wheel over which passes a rope, with a series of buckets attached to it, that descend empty into a well and come up full of water. He gave, for his invencion,—

On another occasion, he drew, like the king, an emblem of a prisoner’s cage, and answered to it by an imperfect rhyme,—

Akin to the Invenciones were the “Motes con sus Glosas”; mottoes or short apophthegms, which we find here to the number of above forty, each accompanied by a heavy, rhymed gloss. The mottoes themselves are generally proverbs, and have a national and sometimes a spirited air. Thus, the lady Catalina Manrique took “Never mickle cost but little,” referring to the difficulty of obtaining her regard, to which Cartagena answered, with another proverb, “Merit pays all,” and then explained or mystified both with a tedious gloss. The rest[p. 440] are not better, and all were valued, at the time they were composed, for precisely what now seems most worthless in them.[725]

The “Villancicos” that follow—songs in the old Spanish measure, with a refrain and occasionally short verses broken in—are more agreeable, and sometimes are not without merit. They received their name from their rustic character, and were believed to have been first composed by the villanos, or peasants, for the Nativity and other festivals of the Church. Imitations of these rude roundelays are found, as we have seen, in Juan de la Enzina, and occur in a multitude of poets since; but the fifty-four in the Cancionero, many of which bear the names of leading poets in the preceding century, are too courtly in their tone, and approach the character of the Canciones.[726] In other respects, they remind us of the earliest French madrigals, or, still more, of the Provençal poems, that are nearly in the same measures.[727]

The last division of this conceited kind of poetry collected into the first Cancioneros Generales is that called “Preguntas,” or Questions; more properly, Questions and Answers; since it is merely a series of riddles, with[p. 441] their solutions in verse. Childish as such trifles may seem now, they were admired in the fifteenth century. Baena, in the Preface to his collection, mentions them among its most considerable attractions; and the series here given, consisting of fifty-five, begins with such authors as the Marquis of Santillana and Juan de Mena, and ends with Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, and other poets of note who lived in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Probably it was an easy exercise of the wits in extemporaneous verse practised at the court of John the Second, as we find it practised, above a century later, by the shepherds in the “Galatea” of Cervantes.[728] But the specimens of it in the Cancioneros are painfully constrained; the answers being required to correspond in every particular of measure, number, and the succession of rhymes with those of the precedent question. On the other hand, the riddles themselves are sometimes very simple, and sometimes very familiar; Juan de Mena, for instance, gravely proposing that of the Sphinx of Œdipus to the Marquis of Santillana, as if it were possible the Marquis had never before heard of it.[729]

Thus far the contents of the Cancionero General date from the fifteenth century, and chiefly from the middle and latter part of it. Subsequently, we have a series of poets who belong rather to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, such as Puerto Carrero, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Don Juan Manuel of Portugal, Heredia, and a few others; after which follows, in the early editions, a collection of what are called “Jests provoking Laughter,”—really, a number of very gross poems which constitute part of an indecent Cancionero printed separately at Valencia, several years afterwards, but which were[p. 442] soon excluded from the editions of the Cancionero General, where a few trifles, sometimes in the Valencian dialect, are inserted, to fill up the space they had occupied.[730] The air of this second grand division of the collection is, however, like the air of that which precedes it, and the poetical merit is less. At last, near the conclusion of the editions of 1557 and 1573, we meet with compositions belonging to the time of Charles the Fifth, among which are two by Boscan, a few in the Italian language, and still more in the Italian manner; all indicating a new state of things, and a new development of the forms of Spanish poetry.[731]

But this change belongs to another period of the literature of Castile, before entering on which we must notice a few circumstances in the Cancioneros characteristic of the one we have just gone over. And here the first thing that strikes us is the large number of[p. 443] persons whose verses are thus collected. In that of 1535, which may be taken as the average of the whole series, there are not less than a hundred and twenty. But out of this multitude, the number really claiming any careful notice is small. Many persons appear only as the contributors of single trifles, such as a device or a cancion, and sometimes, probably, never wrote even these. Others contributed only two or three short poems, which their social position, rather than their taste or talents, led them to adventure. So that the number of those appearing in the proper character of authors in the Cancionero General is only about forty, and of these not more than four or five deserve to be remembered.

But the rank and personal consideration of those that throng it are, perhaps, more remarkable than their number, and certainly more so than their merit. John the Second is there, and Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Fourth; the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[732] the Count Haro, and the Count of Plasencia; the Dukes of Alva, Albuquerque, and Medina Sidonia; the Count of Tendilla and Don Juan Manuel; the Marquises of Santillana, Astorga, and Villa Franca; the Viscount Altamira, and other leading personages of their time; so that, as Lope de Vega once said, “most of the poets of that age were great lords, admirals, constables, dukes, counts, and kings”;[733] or, in other words, verse-writing was a fashion at the court of Castile in the fifteenth century.

[p. 444]This, in fact, is the character that is indelibly impressed on the collections found in the old Cancioneros Generales. Of the earliest poetry of the country, such as it is found in the legend of the Cid, in Berceo, and in the Archpriest of Hita, they afford not a trace; and if a few ballads are inserted, it is for the sake of the poor glosses with which they are encumbered. But the Provençal spirit of the Troubadours is everywhere present, if not everywhere strongly marked; and occasionally we find imitations of the earlier Italian school of Dante and his immediate followers, which are more apparent than successful. The mass is wearisome and monotonous. Nearly every one of the longer poems contained in it is composed in lines of eight syllables, divided into redondillas, almost always easy in their movement, but rarely graceful; sometimes broken by a regularly recurring verse of only four or five syllables, and hence called quebrado, but more frequently arranged in stanzas of eight or ten uniform lines. It is nearly all amatory, and the amatory portions are nearly all metaphysical and affected. It is of the court, courtly; overstrained, formal, and cold. What is not written by persons of rank is written for their pleasure; and though the spirit of a chivalrous age is thus sometimes brought out, yet what is best in that spirit is concealed by a prevalent desire to fall in with the superficial fashions and fantastic fancies that at last destroyed it.

But it was impossible such a wearisome state of poetical culture should become permanent in a country so full of stirring interests as Spain was in the age that followed the fall of Granada and the discovery of America. Poetry, or at least the love of poetry, made progress with the great advancement of the nation under Ferdinand and Isabella; though the taste of the court in whatever[p. 445] regarded Spanish literature continued low and false. Other circumstances, too, favored the great and beneficial change that was everywhere becoming apparent. The language of Castile had already asserted its supremacy, and, with the old Castilian spirit and cultivation, it was spreading into Andalusia and Aragon, and planting itself amidst the ruins of the Moorish power on the shores of the Mediterranean. Chronicle-writing was become frequent, and had begun to take the forms of regular history. The drama was advanced as far as the “Celestina” in prose, and the more strictly scenic efforts of Torres Naharro in verse. Romance-writing was at the height of its success. And the old ballad spirit—the true foundation of Spanish poetry—had received a new impulse and richer materials from the contests in which all Christian Spain had borne a part amidst the mountains of Granada, and from the wild tales of the feuds and adventures of rival factions within the walls of that devoted city. Every thing, indeed, announced a decided movement in the literature of the nation, and almost every thing seemed to favor and facilitate it.

The condition of things in Spain at the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella seemed, as we have intimated, to announce a long period of national prosperity. But one institution, destined soon to discourage and check that intellectual freedom without which there can be no wise and generous advancement in any people, was already beginning to give token of its great and blighting power.

The Christian Spaniards had, from an early period, been essentially intolerant. To their perpetual wars with the Moors had been added, from the end of the fourteenth century, an exasperated feeling against the Jews, which the government had vainly endeavoured to control, and which had shown itself, at different times, in the plunder and murder of multitudes of that devoted race throughout the country. Both races were hated by the mass of the Spanish people with a bitter hatred: the first as their conquerors; the last for the oppressive claims their wealth had given them on great numbers of the Christian inhabitants. In relation to both, it was never forgotten that they were the enemies of that cross under which all true Spaniards had for centuries gone to battle; and of both it was taught by the priesthood,[p. 447] and willingly believed by the laity, that their opposition to the faith of Christ was an offence against God, which it was a merit in his people to punish.[734] Columbus wearing the cord of Saint Francis in the streets of Seville, and consecrating to wars against misbelief in Asia the wealth he was seeking in the New World, whose soil he earnestly desired should never be trodden by any foot save that of a Roman Catholic Christian, was but a type of the Spanish character in the age when he adopted it.[735]

When, therefore, it was proposed to establish in Spain the Inquisition, which had been so efficiently used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses, and which had even followed its victims in their flight from Provence to Aragon, little serious opposition was made to the undertaking. Ferdinand, perhaps, was not unwil[p. 448]ling to see a power grow up near his throne with which the political government of the country could hardly fail to be in alliance, while the piety of the wiser Isabella, which, as we can see from her correspondence with her confessor, was little enlightened, led her conscience so completely astray, that she finally asked for the introduction of the Holy Office into her own dominions as a Christian benefit to her people.[736] After a negotiation with the court of Rome, and some changes in the original project, it was therefore established in the city of Seville in 1481; the first Grand Inquisitors being Dominicans and their first meeting being held in a convent of their order, on the 2d of January. Its earliest victims were Jews. Six were burned within four days from the time when the tribunal first sat, and Mariana states the whole number of those who suffered in Andalusia alone during the first year of its existence at two thousand, besides seventeen thousand who underwent some form of punishment less severe than that of the stake;[737] all, it should be remembered, being done with the rejoicing assent of the mass of the people, whose shouts followed the exile of the whole body of the Jewish race from Spain in 1492, and whose persecution of the Hebrew blood, wherever found, and however hidden under the disguises of conversion and baptism, has hardly ceased down to our own days.[738]

[p. 449]The fall of Granada, which preceded by a few months this cruel expulsion of the Jews, placed the remains of the Moorish nation no less at the mercy of their conquerors. It is true, that, by the treaty which surrendered the city to the Catholic sovereigns, the property of the vanquished, their religious privileges, their mosques, and their worship were solemnly secured to them; but in Spain, whatever portion of the soil the Christians had wrested from their ancient enemies had always been regarded only as so much territory restored to its rightful owners, and any stipulations that might accompany its recovery were rarely respected. The spirit and even the terms of the capitulation of Granada were, therefore, soon violated. The Christian laws of Spain were introduced there; the Inquisition followed; and a persecution of the descendants of the old Arab invaders was begun by their new masters, which, after being carried on above a century with constantly increasing crimes, was ended in 1609, like the persecution of the Jews, by the forcible expulsion of the whole race.[739]

Such severity brought with it, of course, a great amount of fraud and falsehood. Multitudes of the followers of Mohammed—beginning with four thousand whom Cardinal Ximenes baptized on the day when, contrary to the provisions of the capitulation of Granada, he consecrated the great mosque of the Albaycin as a Christian temple—were forced to enter the fold of the Church, without either understanding its doctrines or desiring to receive its instructions. With these, as with the converted Jews, the Inquisition was permitted to deal unchecked by the power of the state. They[p. 450] were, therefore, from the first, watched; soon they were imprisoned; and then they were tortured, to obtain proof that their conversion was not genuine. But it was all done in secrecy and in darkness. From the moment when the Inquisition laid its grasp on the object of its suspicions to that of his execution, no voice was heard to issue from its cells. The very witnesses it summoned were punished with death or perpetual imprisonment, if they revealed what they had seen or heard before its dread tribunals; and often of the victim nothing was known, but that he had disappeared from his accustomed haunts in society, never again to be seen.

The effect was appalling. The imaginations of men were filled with horror at the idea of a power so vast and so noiseless; one which was constantly, but invisibly, around them; whose blow was death, but whose steps could neither be heard nor followed amidst the gloom into which it retreated farther and farther as efforts were made to pursue it. From its first establishment, therefore, while the great body of the Spanish Christians rejoiced in the purity and orthodoxy of their faith, and not unwillingly saw its enemies called to expiate their unbelief by the most terrible of mortal punishments, the intellectual and cultivated portions of society felt the sense of their personal security gradually shaken, until, at last, it became an anxious object of their lives to avoid the suspicions of a tribunal which infused into their minds a terror deeper and more effectual in proportion as it was accompanied by a misgiving how far they might conscientiously oppose its authority. Many of the nobler and more enlightened, especially on the comparatively free soil of Aragon, struggled against an invasion of their rights whose consequences they partly foresaw. But the powers of the[p. 451] government and the Church, united in measures which were sustained by the passions and religion of the lower classes of society, became irresistible. The fires of the Inquisition were gradually lighted over the whole country, and the people everywhere thronged to witness its sacrifices, as acts of faith and devotion.

From this moment, Spanish intolerance, which through the Moorish wars had accompanied the contest and shared its chivalrous spirit, took that air of sombre fanaticism which it never afterwards lost. Soon, its warfare was turned against the opinions and thoughts of men, even more than against their external conduct or their crimes. The Inquisition, which was its true exponent and appropriate instrument, gradually enlarged its own jurisdiction by means of crafty abuses, as well as by the regular forms of law, until none found himself too humble to escape its notice, or too high to be reached by its power. The whole land bent under its influence, and the few who comprehended the mischief that must follow bowed, like the rest, to its authority, or were subjected to its punishments.

From an inquiry into the private opinions of individuals to an interference with the press and with printed books there was but a step. It was a step, however, that was not taken at once; partly because books were still few and of little comparative importance anywhere, and partly because, in Spain, they had already been subjected to the censorship of the civil authority, which, in this particular, seemed unwilling to surrender its jurisdiction. But such scruples were quickly removed by the appearance and progress of the Reformation of Luther; a revolution which comes within the next period of the history of Spanish literature, when we shall find displayed in their broad practical results[p. 452] the influence of the spirit of intolerance and the power of the Church and the Inquisition on the character of the Spanish people.

If, however, before we enter upon this new and more varied period, we cast our eyes back towards the one over which we have just passed, we shall find much that is original and striking, and much that gives promise of further progress and success. It extends through nearly four complete centuries, from the first breathings of the poetical enthusiasm of the mass of the people down to the decay of the courtly literature in the latter part of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is filled with materials destined, at last, to produce such a school of poetry and elegant prose as, in the sober judgment of the nation itself, still constitutes the proper body of the national literature. The old ballads, the old historical poems, the old chronicles, the old theatre,—all these, if only elements, are yet elements of a vigor and promise not to be mistaken. They constitute a mine of more various wealth than had been offered, under similar circumstances and at so early a period, to any other people. They breathe a more lofty and a more heroic temper. We feel, as we listen to their tones, that we are amidst the stir of extraordinary passions, which give the character an elevation not elsewhere to be found in the same unsettled state of society. We feel, though the grosser elements of life are strong around us, that imagination is yet stronger; imparting to them its manifold hues, and giving them a power and a grace that form a striking contrast with what is wild or rude in their original nature. In short, we feel that we are called to witness the first efforts of a generous people to emancipate themselves from the cold restraints of a[p. 453] merely material existence, and watch with confidence and sympathy the movement of their secret feelings and prevalent energies, as they are struggling upwards into the poetry of a native and earnest enthusiasm; persuaded that they must, at last, work out for themselves a literature, bold, fervent, and original, marked with the features and impulses of the national character, and able to vindicate for itself a place among the permanent monuments of modern civilization.[740]

In every country that has yet obtained a rank among those nations whose intellectual cultivation is the highest, the period in which it has produced the permanent body of its literature has been that of its glory as a state. The reason is obvious. There is then a spirit and activity abroad among the elements that constitute the national character, which naturally express themselves in such poetry and eloquence as, being the result of the excited condition of the people and bearing its impress, become for all future exertions a model and standard that can be approached only when the popular character is again stirred by a similar enthusiasm. Thus, the age of Pericles naturally followed the great Persian war; the age of Augustus was that of a uni[p. 458]versal tranquillity produced by universal conquest; the age of Molière and La Fontaine was that in which Louis the Fourteenth was carrying the outposts of his consolidated monarchy far into Germany; and the ages of Elizabeth and Anne were the ages of the Armada and of Marlborough.

Just so it was in Spain. The central point in Spanish history is the capture of Granada. During nearly eight centuries before that decisive event, the Christians of the Peninsula were occupied with conflicts at home, that gradually developed their energies, amidst the sternest trials and struggles, till the whole land was filled to overflowing with a power which had hardly yet been felt in the rest of Europe. But no sooner was the last Moorish fortress yielded up, than this accumulated flood broke loose from the mountains behind which it had so long been hidden, and threatened, at once, to overspread the best portions of the civilized world. In less than thirty years, Charles the Fifth, who had inherited, not only Spain, but Naples, Sicily, and the Low Countries, and into whose treasury the untold wealth of the Indies was already beginning to pour, was elected Emperor of Germany, and undertook a career of foreign conquest such as had not been imagined since the days of Charlemagne. Success and glory seemed to wait for him as he advanced. In Europe, he extended his empire, till it checked the hated power of Islamism in Turkey; in Africa, he garrisoned Tunis and overawed the whole coast of Barbary; in America, Cortés and Pizarro were his bloody lieutenants, and achieved for him conquests more vast than were conceived in the dreams of Alexander; while, beyond the wastes of the Pacific, he stretched his discoveries to the Philippines, and so completed the circuit of the globe.

[p. 459]This was the brilliant aspect which the fortunes of his country offered to an intelligent and imaginative Spaniard in the first half of the sixteenth century.[741] For, as we well know, such men then looked forward with confidence to the time when Spain would be the head of an empire more extensive than the Roman, and seem sometimes to have trusted that they themselves should live to witness and share its glory. But their forecast was imperfect. A moral power was at work, destined to divide Europe anew, and place the domestic policy and the external relations of its principal countries upon unwonted foundations. The monk Luther was already become a counterpoise to the military master of so many kingdoms; and from 1552, when Moritz of Saxony deserted the Imperial standard, and the convention of Passau asserted for the Protestants the free exercise of their religion, the clear-sighted conqueror may himself have understood, that his ambitious hopes of a universal empire, whose seat should be in the South of Europe and whose foundations should be laid in the religion of the Church of Rome, were at an end.

But the question, where the line should be drawn between the great contending parties, was long the subject of fierce wars. The struggle began with the enunciation of Luther’s ninety-five propositions, and his burning the Pope’s bulls at Wittenberg. It was ended, as far as it is yet ended, by the peace of Westphalia.[p. 460] During the hundred and thirty years that elapsed between these two points, Spain was indeed far removed from the fields where the most cruel battles of the religious wars were fought; but how deep was the interest the Spanish people took in the contest is plain from the bitterness of their struggle against the Protestant princes of Germany; from the vast efforts they made to crush the Protestant rebellion in the Netherlands; from the expedition of the Armada against Protestant England; and from the interference of Philip the Second in the affairs of Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth, when, during the League, Protestantism seemed to be gaining ground in France;—in short, it may be seen from the presence of Spain and her armies in every part of Europe, where it was possible to reach and assail the great movement of the Reformation.

Those, however, who were so eager to check the power of Protestantism when it was afar off would not be idle when the danger drew near to their own homes.[742] The first alarm seems to have come from Rome. In March, 1521, Papal briefs were sent to Spain, warning the Spanish government to prevent the further introduction of books written by Luther and his followers, which, it was believed, had been secretly penetrating into the country for about a year. These briefs, it should be observed, were addressed to the civil administration, which still, in form at least, kept an entire control over such subjects. But it was more natural, and more according to the ideas then prevalent in other countries as well as in Spain, to look to the ecclesias[p. 461]tical power for remedies in a matter connected with religion; and the great body of the Spanish people seems willingly to have done so. In less than a month, therefore, from the date of the briefs in question, and perhaps even before they were received in Spain, the Grand Inquisitor addressed an order to the tribunals under his jurisdiction, requiring them to search for and seize all books supposed to contain the doctrines of the new heresy. It was a bold measure, but it was a successful one.[743] The government gladly countenanced it; for, in whatever form Protestantism appeared, it came with more or less of the spirit of resistance to all the favorite projects of the Emperor; and the people countenanced it, because, except a few scattered individuals, all true Spaniards regarded Luther and his followers with hardly more favor than they did Mohammed or the Jews.

Meantime, the Supreme Council, as the highest body in the Inquisition was called, proceeded in their work with a firm and equal step. By successive decrees, between 1521 and 1535, it was ordained, that all persons who kept in their possession books infected with the doctrines of Luther, and even all who failed to denounce such persons, should be excommunicated and subjected[p. 462] to degrading punishments. This gave the Inquisition a right to inquire into the contents and character of whatever books were already printed. Next, they arrogated to themselves the power to determine what books might be sent to the press; claiming it gradually and with little noise, but effectually,[744] and if, at first, without any direct grant of authority from the Pope or from the king of Spain, still necessarily with the implied assent of both, and generally with means furnished by one or the other. At last, a sure expedient was found, which left no doubt of the process to be used, and very little as to the results that would follow.

In 1539, Charles the Fifth obtained a Papal bull authorizing him to procure from the University of Louvain, in Flanders, where the Lutheran controversy would naturally be better understood than in Spain, a list of books dangerous to be introduced into his dominions. It was printed in 1546, and was the first “Index Expurgatorius” published in Spain, and the second in the world. Subsequently it was submitted by the Emperor to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, under whose authority additions were made to it; after which it was promulgated anew in 1550, thus consummating the Inquisitorial jurisdiction over this great lever of modern progress and civilization,—a jurisdiction, it[p. 463] should be noted, which was confirmed and enforced by the most tremendous of all human penalties, when, in 1558, Philip the Second ordained the punishments of confiscation and death against any person who should sell, buy, or keep in his possession any book prohibited by the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition.[745]

The contest with Protestantism in Spain, under such auspices, was short. It began in earnest and in blood about 1559, and was substantially ended in 1570. At one period, the new doctrine had made some progress in the monasteries and among the clergy; and though it never became formidable from the numbers it enlisted, yet many of those who joined its standard were distinguished by their learning, their rank, or their general intelligence. But the higher and more shining the mark, the more it attracted notice and the more surely it was reached. The Inquisition had already existed seventy years and was at the height of its power and favor. Cardinal Ximenes, one of the boldest and most far-sighted statesmen, and one of the sternest bigots the world ever saw, had for a long period united in his own person the office of Civil Administrator of Spain with that of Grand Inquisitor, and had used the extraordi[p. 464]nary powers such a position gave him to confirm the Inquisition at home and to spread it over the newly discovered continent of America.[746] His successor was Cardinal Adrien, the favored preceptor of Charles the Fifth, who filled nearly two years the places of Grand Inquisitor and of Pope; so that, for a season, the highest ecclesiastical authority was made to minister to the power of the Inquisition in Spain, as the highest political authority had done before.[747] And now, after an interval of twenty years, had come Philip the Second, wary, inflexible, unscrupulous, at the head of an empire on which, it was boasted, the sun never set, consecrating all his own great energies and all the resources of his vast dominions to the paramount object of extirpating every form of heresy from the countries under his control, and consolidating the whole into one grand religious empire.

[p. 465]Still, the Inquisition, regarded as the chief outward means of driving the Lutheran doctrines from Spain, might have failed to achieve its work, if the people, as well as the government, had not been its earnest allies. But, on all such subjects, the current in Spain had, from the first, taken only one direction. Spaniards had contended against misbelief with so implacable a hatred, for centuries, that the spirit of that old contest had become one of the elements of their national existence; and now, having expelled the Jews and reduced the Moors to submission, they turned themselves, with the same fervent zeal, to purify their soil from what they trusted would prove the last trace of heretical pollution. To achieve this great object, Pope Paul the Fourth, in 1558,—the same year in which Philip the Second had decreed the most odious and awful penalties of the civil government in aid of the Inquisition,—granted a brief, by which all the preceding dispositions of the Church against heretics were confirmed, and the tribunals of the Inquisition were authorized and required to proceed against all persons supposed to be infected with the new belief, even though such persons might be bishops, archbishops, or cardinals, dukes, princes, kings, or emperors;—a power which, taken in all its relations, was more formidable to the progress of intellectual improvement than had ever before been granted to any body of men, civil or ecclesiastical.[748]

The portentous authority thus given was at once freely exercised. The first public auto da fé of Protestants was held at Valladolid in 1559, and others followed, both there and elsewhere.[749] The royal family was occasionally present; several persons of rank suffered; and[p. 466] a general popular favor evidently followed the horrors that were perpetrated. The number of victims was not large when compared with earlier periods, seldom exceeding twenty burned at one time, and fifty or sixty subjected to cruel and degrading punishments; but many of those who suffered were, as the nature of the crimes alleged against them implied, among the leading and active minds of their age. Men of learning were particularly obnoxious to suspicion, since the cause of Protestantism appealed directly to learning for its support. Sanchez, the best classical scholar of his time in Spain, Luis de Leon, the best Hebrew critic and the most eloquent preacher, and Mariana, the chief Spanish historian, with other men of letters of inferior name and consideration, were summoned before the tribunals of the Inquisition, in order that they might at least avow their submission to its authority, even if they were not subjected to its censures.

Nor were persons of the holiest lives and the most ascetic tempers beyond the reach of its mistrust, if they but showed a tendency to inquiry. Thus, Juan de Avila, known under the title of the Apostle of Andalusia, and Luis de Granada, the devout mystic, with Teresa de Jesus and Juan de la Cruz, both of whom were afterwards canonized by the Church of Rome, all passed through its cells, or in some shape underwent its discipline. So did some of the ecclesiastics most distinguished by their rank and authority. Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, after being tormented eighteen years by its persecutions, died, at last, in craven submission to its power; and Cazella, who had been a favorite chaplain of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, perished in its fires. Even the faith of the principal personages of the kingdom was inquired into, and, at different times,[p. 467] proceedings, sufficient, at least, to assert its authority, were instituted in relation to Don John of Austria, and the formidable Duke of Alva;[750] proceedings, however, which must be regarded rather as matters of show than of substance, since the whole institution was connected with the government from the first, and became more and more subservient to the policy of the successive masters of the state, as its tendencies were developed in successive reigns.

The great purpose, therefore, of the government and the Inquisition may be considered as having been fulfilled in the latter part of the reign of Philip the Second,—farther, at least, than such a purpose was ever fulfilled in any other Christian country, and farther than it is ever likely to be again fulfilled elsewhere. The Spanish nation was then become, in the sense they themselves gave to the term, the most thoroughly religious nation in Europe; a fact signally illustrated in their own eyes a few years afterward, when it was deemed desirable to expel the remains of the Moorish race from the Peninsula, and six hundred thousand peaceable and industrious subjects were, from religious bigotry, cruelly driven out of their native country, amidst the devout exultation of the whole kingdom,—Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and others of the principal men of genius then alive, joining in the general jubilee.[751] From this time, the voice of religious dissent can hardly be said to have been heard in the land; and the Inquisition, therefore, down to its overthrow in 1808, was chiefly a political engine, much occupied about cases connected with the policy of the state, though under the pretence that they were cases of heresy or unbelief. The great body[p. 468] of the Spanish people rejoiced alike in their loyalty and their orthodoxy; and the few who differed in faith from the mass of their fellow-subjects were either held in silence by their fears, or else sunk away from the surface of society the moment their disaffection was suspected.

The results of such extraordinary traits in the national character could not fail to be impressed upon the literature of any country, and particularly upon a literature which, like that of Spain, had always been strongly marked by the popular temperament and peculiarities. But the period was not one in which such traits could be produced with poetical effect. The ancient loyalty, which had once been so generous an element in the Spanish character and cultivation, was now infected with the ambition of universal empire, and was lavished upon princes and nobles who, like the later Philips and their ministers, were unworthy of its homage; so that, in the Spanish historians and epic poets of this period, and even in more popular writers, like Quevedo and Calderon, we find a vainglorious admiration of their country, and a poor flattery of royalty and rank, that remind us of the old Castilian pride and deference only by showing how both had lost their dignity. And so it is with the ancient religious feeling that was so nearly akin to this loyalty. The Christian spirit, which gave an air of duty to the wildest forms of adventure throughout the country, during its long contest with the power of misbelief, was now fallen away into a low and anxious bigotry, fierce and intolerant towards every thing that differed from its own sharply defined faith, and yet so pervading and so popular, that the romances and tales of the time are full of it, and the national theatre, in more than one form, becomes its strange and grotesque monument.

Of course, the body of Spanish poetry and eloquent[p. 469] prose produced during this interval—the earlier part of which was the period of the greatest glory Spain ever enjoyed—was injuriously affected by so diseased a condition of the national character. That generous and manly spirit which is the breath of intellectual life to any people was restrained and stifled. Some departments of literature, such as forensic eloquence and eloquence of the pulpit, satirical poetry, and elegant didactic prose, hardly appeared at all; others, like epic poetry, were strangely perverted and misdirected; while yet others, like the drama, the ballads, and the lighter forms of lyrical verse, seemed to grow exuberant and lawless, from the very restraints imposed on the rest; restraints which, in fact, forced poetical genius into channels where it would otherwise have flowed much more scantily and with much less luxuriant results.

The books that were published during the whole period on which we are now entering, and indeed for a century later, bore everywhere marks of the subjection to which the press and those who wrote for it were alike reduced. From the abject title-pages and dedications of the authors themselves, through the crowd of certificates collected from their friends to establish the orthodoxy of works that were often as little connected with religion as fairy tales, down to the colophon, supplicating pardon for any unconscious neglect of the authority of the Church or any too free use of classical mythology, we are continually oppressed with painful proofs, not only how completely the human mind was enslaved in Spain, but how grievously it had become cramped and crippled by the chains it had so long worn.

But we shall be greatly in error, if, as we notice these deep marks and strange peculiarities in Spanish literature, we suppose they were produced by the direct ac[p. 470]tion either of the Inquisition or of the civil government of the country, compressing, as if with a physical power, the whole circle of society. This would have been impossible. No nation would have submitted to it; much less so high-spirited and chivalrous a nation as the Spanish in the reign of Charles the Fifth and in the greater part of that of Philip the Second. This dark work was done earlier. Its foundations were laid deep and sure in the old Castilian character. It was the result of the excess and misdirection of that very Christian zeal which fought so fervently and gloriously against the intrusion of Mohammedanism into Europe, and of that military loyalty which sustained the Spanish princes so faithfully through the whole of that terrible contest;—both of them high and ennobling principles, which in Spain were more wrought into the popular character than they ever were in any other country.

Spanish submission to an unworthy despotism, and Spanish bigotry, were, therefore, not the results of the Inquisition and the modern appliances of a corrupting monarchy; but the Inquisition and the despotism were rather the results of a misdirection of the old religious faith and loyalty. The civilization that recognized such elements presented, no doubt, much that was brilliant, picturesque, and ennobling; but it was not without its darker side; for it failed to excite and cherish many of the most elevating qualities of our common nature,—those qualities which are produced in domestic life, and result in the cultivation of the arts of peace.

As we proceed, therefore, we shall find, in the full development of the Spanish character and literature, seeming contradictions, which can be reconciled only by looking back to the foundations on which they both rest. We shall find the Inquisition at the height of its power,[p. 471] and a free and immoral drama at the height of its popularity,—Philip the Second and his two immediate successors governing the country with the severest and most jealous despotism, while Quevedo was writing his witty and dangerous satires, and Cervantes his genial and wise Don Quixote. But the more carefully we consider such a state of things, the more we shall see that these are moral contradictions which draw after them grave moral mischiefs. The Spanish nation, and the men of genius who illustrated its best days, might be light-hearted because they did not perceive the limits within which they were confined, or did not, for a time, feel the restraints that were imposed upon them. What they gave up might be given up with cheerful hearts, and not with a sense of discouragement and degradation; it might be done in the spirit of loyalty and with the fervor of religious zeal; but it is not at all the less true that the hard limits were there, and that great sacrifices of the best elements of the national character must follow.

Of this time gave abundant proof. Only a little more than a century elapsed before the government that had threatened the world with a universal empire was hardly able to repel invasion from abroad, or maintain the allegiance of its own subjects at home. Life—the vigorous, poetical life which had been kindled through the country in its ages of trial and adversity—was evidently passing out of the whole Spanish character. As a people, they sunk away from being a first-rate power in Europe, till they became one of altogether inferior importance and consideration; and then, drawing back haughtily behind their mountains, rejected all equal intercourse with the rest of the world, in a spirit almost as exclusive and intolerant as that in which they had[p. 472] formerly refused intercourse with their Arab conquerors. The crude and gross wealth poured in from their American possessions sustained, indeed, for yet another century the forms of a miserable political existence in their government; but the earnest faith, the loyalty, the dignity of the Spanish people were gone; and little remained in their place, but a weak subserviency to the unworthy masters of the state, and a low, timid bigotry in whatever related to religion. The old enthusiasm, rarely directed by wisdom from the first, and often misdirected afterwards, faded away; and the poetry of the country, which had always depended more on the state of the popular feeling than any other poetry of modern times, faded and failed with it.

There was, no doubt, a great decay of letters and good taste in Spain during the latter part of the troubled reign of John the Second and the whole of the still more disturbed period when his successor, Henry the Fourth, sat upon the throne of Castile. The Provençal school had passed away, and its imitations in Castilian had not been successful. The earlier Italian influences, less fertile in good results than might have been anticipated, were almost forgotten. The fashion of the court, therefore, in the absence of better or more powerful impulses, ruled over every thing, and a monotonous poetry, full of conceits and artifices, was all that its own artificial character could produce.

Nor was there much improvement in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The introduction of the art of printing and the revival of a regard for classical antiquity were, indeed, foundations for a national culture such as had not before been laid; while, at the same time, the establishment of the University of Alcalá, by Cardinal Ximenes, and the revival of that of Salamanca, with the labors of such scholars as Peter Martyr, Lucio Marineo, Antonio de Lebrija, and Arias Barbosa, could[p. 474] hardly fail to exercise a favorable influence on the intellectual cultivation, if not on the poetical taste, of the country. Occasionally, as we have seen, proofs of the old energy appeared in such works as the “Celestina” and the “Coplas” of Manrique. The old ballads, too, and the other forms of the early popular poetry, no doubt, maintained their place in the hearts of the common people. But it is not to be concealed, that, among the cultivated classes,—as the Cancioneros and nearly every thing else that came from the press in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella sufficiently prove,—taste was at a very low ebb.

The first impulse to a better state of things came from Italy. In some respects this was unhappy; but there can be little doubt that it was inevitable. The intercourse between Italy and Spain, shortly before the accession of Charles the Fifth, had been much increased, chiefly by the conquest of Naples, but partly by other causes. Regular interchanges of ambassadors took place between the See of Rome and the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and one of them was a son of the poetical Marquis of Santillana, and another the father of Garcilasso de la Vega. The universities of Italy continued to receive large numbers of Spanish students, who still regarded the means of a generous education at home as inadequate to their wants; and Spanish poets, among whom were Juan de la Enzina and Torres Naharro, resorted there freely, and lived with consideration at Rome and Naples. In the latter city, the old Spanish family of Dávalos—one of whom was the husband of that Vittoria Colonna whose poetry ranks with the Italian classics—were among the chief patrons of letters during their time, and kept alive an intellectual union be[p. 475]tween the two countries, by which they were equally claimed and on which they reflected equal honor.[752]

But besides these individual instances of connection between Spain and Italy, the gravest events were now drawing together the greater interests of the mass of the people in both countries, and fastening their thoughts intently upon each other. Naples, after the treaty of 1503 and the brilliant successes of Gonzalvo de Córdova, was delivered over to Spain, bound hand and foot, and was governed, above a century, by a succession of Spanish viceroys, each accompanied by a train of Spanish officers and dependants, among whom, not unfrequently, we find men of letters and poets, like the Argensolas and Quevedo. When Charles the Fifth ascended the throne, in 1516, it was apparent that he would at once make an effort to extend his political and military power throughout Italy. The tempting plains of Lombardy became, therefore, the theatre of the first great European contest entered into by Spain,—a grand arena, in which, as it proved, much of the fate of Europe, as well as of Italy, was to be decided by two young and passionate monarchs, burning with personal rivalship and the love of glory. In this way, from 1522, when the first war broke out between Francis the First and Charles the Fifth, to the disastrous battle of Pavia, in 1525, we may consider the whole disposable force of Spain to have been transferred to Italy, and subjected, in a remarkable degree, to the influences of Italian culture and civilization.

[p. 476]Nor did the connection between the two countries stop here. In 1527, Rome itself was, for a moment, added to the conquests of the Spanish crown, and the Pope became the prisoner of the Emperor, as the king of France had been before. In 1530, Charles appeared again in Italy, surrounded by a splendid Spanish court, and at the head of a military power that left no doubt of his mastery. He at once crushed the liberties of Florence and restored the aristocracy of the Medici. He made peace with the outraged Pope. By his wisdom and moderation, he confirmed his friendly relations with the other states of Italy; and, as the seal of all his successes, he caused himself, in the presence of whatever was most august in both countries, to be solemnly crowned King of Lombardy and Emperor of the Romans, by the same Pope whom, three years before, he had counted among his captives.[753] Such a state of things necessarily implied a most intimate connection between Spain and Italy; and this connection was maintained down to the abdication of the Emperor, in 1555, and, indeed, long afterwards.[754]

On the other hand, it should be remembered that Italy was now in a condition to act with all the power[p. 477] of a superior civilization and refinement on this large body of Spaniards, many of them the leading spirits of the Empire, who, by successive wars and negotiations, were thus kept for half a century travelling in Italy and living at Genoa, Milan, and Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. The age of Lorenzo de’ Medici was already past, leaving behind it the memorials of Poliziano, Boiardo, Pulci, and Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Leo the Tenth and Clement the Seventh was contemporary, and had brought with it the yet more prevalent influences of Michel Angelo, Raffaelle, and Titian, of Machiavelli, of Berni, of Ariosto, of Bembo, and of Sannazaro; the last of whom, it is not unworthy of notice, was himself a descendant of one of those very Spanish families whom the political interests of the two countries had originally carried to Naples. It was, therefore, when Rome and Naples, Florence and the North of Italy, were in the maturity of their glory, as seats of the arts and letters, that no small part of what was most noble and cultivated in Spain was led across the Alps and awakened to a perception of such forms and creations of genius and taste as had not been attempted beyond the Pyrenees, and such as could not fail to produce their full effect on minds excited, like those of the whole Spanish people, by the glorious results of their long struggle against the Moors, and their present magnificent successes both in America and Europe.

Visible traces of the influence of Italian literature might, therefore, from general causes, soon be looked for in the Spanish; but an accident brings them to our notice somewhat earlier, perhaps, than might have been anticipated. Juan Boscan, a patrician of Barcelona, was, as he himself tells us, devoted to poetry from his[p. 478] youth. The city to which he belonged had early been distinguished for the number of Provençal and Catalonian Troubadours who had flourished in it. But Boscan preferred to write in the Castilian; and his defection from his native dialect became, in some sort, the seal of its fate. His earlier efforts, a few of which remain to us, are in the style of the preceding century; but at last, when, from the most distinct accounts we can obtain, he was about twenty-five years old, and when, we are assured, he had been received at court, had served in the army, and had visited foreign countries, he was induced, by an accident, to attempt the proper Italian measures, as they were then practised.[755]

He became, at that period, acquainted with Andrea Navagiero, who was sent, in 1524, as ambassador from Venice to Charles the Fifth, and returned home in 1528, carrying with him a dry, but valuable, itinerary, which was afterwards published as an account of his travels. He was a man of learning and a poet, an orator and a statesman of no mean name.[756] While in Spain, he spent, during the year 1526, six months at Granada.[757] “Being with Navagiero there one day,” says Boscan, “and discoursing with him about matters of wit and letters, and especially about the different forms they take in different languages, he asked me why I did not make an experiment in Castilian of sonnets and the other forms of verse used by good Italian authors; and not only spoke to me of it thus slightly, but urged me much to do it. A[p. 479] few days afterwards, I set off for my own home; and whether it were the length and solitariness of the way I know not, but, turning over different things in my mind, I came often back upon what Navagiero had said to me. And thus I began to try this kind of verse. At first, I found it somewhat difficult; for it is of a very artful construction, and in many particulars different from ours. But afterwards it seemed to me,—perhaps from the love we naturally bear to what is our own,—that I began to succeed very well, and so I went on, little by little, with increasing zeal.”[758]

This account is interesting and important. It is rare that any one individual has been able to exercise such an influence on the literature of a foreign nation as was exercised by Navagiero. It is still more rare,—indeed, perhaps, wholly unknown, in any case where it may have occurred,—that the precise mode in which it was exercised can be so exactly explained. Boscan tells us not only what he did, but what led him to do it, and how he began his work, which we find him, from this moment, following up, till he devoted himself to it entirely, and wrote in all the favorite Italian measures and forms with boldness and success. He was resisted, but he tells us Garcilasso sustained him; and from this small beginning in a slight conversation with Navagiero at Granada, a new school was introduced into Spanish poetry, which has prevailed in it ever since, and materially influenced its character and destinies.

Boscan felt his success. This we can see from his own account of it. But he made little effort to press his example on others; for he was a man of fortune and consideration, who led a happy life with his family at Bar[p. 480]celona, and hardly cared for popular reputation or influence. Occasionally, we are told, he was seen at court; and at one period he had some charge of the education of that Duke of Alva whose name, in the next reign, became so formidable. But in general he preferred a life of retirement to any of the prizes offered to ambition.

Letters were his amusement. “In what I have written,” he says, “the mere writing was never my object; but rather to solace such faculties as I have, and to go less heavily through certain heavy passages of my life.”[759] The range of his studies, however, was wider than this remark might seem to imply, and wider than was common in Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century, even among scholars. He translated a tragedy of Euripides, which was licensed to be published, but which never appeared in print, and is, no doubt, lost.[760] On the basis of the “Hero and Leander” of Musæus, and following the example of Bernardo Tasso, he wrote, in the versi sciolti, or blank verse, of the Italians, a tale nearly three thousand lines long, which may still be read with pleasure, for the gentle and sweet passages it contains.[761] And in general, throughout his poetry, he shows[p. 481] that he was familiar with the Greek and Latin classics, and imbued, to a considerable degree, with the spirit of antiquity.

His longest work was a translation of the Italian “Courtier” of Balthazar Castiglione,—the best book on good-breeding, as Dr. Johnson thought two centuries afterwards, that was ever written.[762] Boscan, however, frankly says, that he did not like the business of translating, which he regarded as “a low vanity, beseeming men of little knowledge”; but Garcilasso de la Vega had sent him a copy of the original soon after it was published, and he made this Spanish version of it, he tells us, “at his friend’s earnest request.”[763] Either or both of them may have known its author in the same way Boscan knew Navagiero; for Castiglione was sent as ambassador of Clement the Seventh to Spain in 1525, and remained there till his death, which happened at Toledo, in 1529.

But however this may have been, the Italian original of the Courtier was prepared for the press in Spain and first printed in 1528;[764] soon after which Boscan[p. 482] must have made his translation, though it did not appear till 1540. As a version, it does not profess to be very strict, for Boscan says he thought an exact fidelity to be unworthy of him;[765] but, as a Spanish composition, it is uncommonly flowing and easy. Garcilasso declares that it reads like an original work;[766] and Morales, the historian, says, “The Courtier discourseth not better in Italy, where he was born, than here in Spain, where Boscan hath exhibited him so admirably well.”[767] Perhaps nothing in Castilian prose, of an earlier date, is written in so classical and finished a style as this translation by Boscan.

With such occupations Boscan filled up his unostentatious life. He published nothing, or very little, and we have no single date to record concerning him. But, from the few facts that can be collected, it seems probable he was born before 1500, and we know that he died as early as 1543; for in that year his works were published at Barcelona, by his widow, under a license from the Emperor Charles the Fifth, with a Preface, in which she says her husband had partly prepared them for the press, because he feared they would be printed from some of the many imperfect copies that had gone into circulation without his consent.

They are divided into four books. The first consists of a small number of poems in what are called coplas Españolas, or what he himself elsewhere terms “the[p. 483] Castilian manner.” These are his early efforts, made before his acquaintance with Navagiero. They are villancicos, canciones, and coplas, in the short national verses, and seem as if they might have come out of the old Cancioneros, in which, indeed, two of them are to be found.[768] Their merit is not great; but, amidst their ingenious conceits, there is sometimes a happiness and grace of expression rarely granted to the poets of the same school in that or the preceding century.

The second and third books, constituting by far the larger part of the volume, are composed entirely of poems in the Italian measure. They consist of ninety-three sonnets and nine canzones; the long poem on Hero and Leander, in blank verse, already mentioned; an elegy and two didactic epistles, in terza rima; and a half-narrative, half-allegorical poem, in one hundred and thirty-five octave stanzas. It is not necessary to go beyond such a mere enumeration of the contents of these two books to learn, that, at least so far as their forms are concerned, they have nothing to do with the elder national Castilian poetry. The sonnets and the canzones especially are obvious imitations of Petrarch, as we can see in the case of the two beginning, “Gentil Señora mia,” and “Claros y frescos rios,” which are largely indebted to two of the most beautiful and best-known canzones of the lover of Laura.[769] In most of these poems, however, and amidst a good deal of hardness of manner, a Spanish tone and spirit are perceptible, which rescue them, in a great degree, from the imputation of being copies. Boscan’s colors are here laid[p. 484] on with a bolder hand than those of his Italian master, and there is an absence of that delicate and exact finish, both in language and style, which, however charming in his models, would hardly be possible in the most skilful Spanish imitations.

The elegy, which is merely entitled “Capitolo,” has more conceits and learning in it than become its subject, and approaches nearer to Boscan’s first manner than any of his later poems. It is addressed to his lady-love; but, notwithstanding its defects, it contains long passages of tenderness and simple beauty that will always be read with pleasure. Of the two epistles, the first is poor and affected; but that addressed to the old statesman, poet, and soldier, Diego de Mendoza, is much in the tone and manner of Horace,—acute, genial, and full of philosophy.

But the most agreeable and original of Boscan’s works is the last of them all,—“The Allegory.” It opens with a gorgeous description of the Court of Love, and with the truly Spanish idea of a corresponding and opposing Court of Jealousy; but almost the whole of the rest consists of an account of the embassy of two messengers from the first of these courts to two ladies of Barcelona who had refused to come beneath its empire, and to persuade whom to submission a speech of the ambassador is given that fills nearly half the poem, and ends it somewhat abruptly. No doubt, the whole was intended as a compliment to the two ladies, in which the story is of little consequence. But it is a pleasing and airy trifle, in which its author has sometimes happily hit the tone of Ariosto, and at other times reminds us of the Island of Love in the “Lusiad,” though Boscan preceded Camoens by many years. Occasionally, too, he has a moral delicacy, more refined than Petrarch’s, though[p. 485] perhaps suggested by that of the great Italian; such a delicacy as he shows in the following stanza, and two or three preceding and following it, in which the ambassador of Love exhorts the two ladies of Barcelona to submit to his authority, by urging on them the happiness of a union founded in a genuine sympathy of tastes and feeling:—

Boscan might, probably, have done more for the literature of his country than he did. His poetical talents were not, indeed, of the highest order; but he perceived the degradation into which Spanish poetry had fallen, and was persuaded that the way to raise it again was to give it an ideal character and classical forms such as it had not yet known. But to accomplish this, he adopted a standard not formed on the intimations of the national genius. He took for his models foreign masters, who, though more advanced than any he could find at home, were yet entitled to supremacy in no literature but their own, and could never constitute a safe foundation whereon to build a great and permanent school of Spanish poetry. Entire success, therefore, was impossible to him. He was able to establish in Spain the Italian eleven-syllable and iambic versification; the sonnet[p. 486] and canzone, as settled by Petrarch; Dante’s terza rima;[771] and Boccaccio’s and Ariosto’s flowing octaves;—all in better taste than any thing among the poets of his time and country, and all of them important additions to the forms of verse before known in Spain. But he could go no farther. The original and essential spirit of Italian poetry could no more be transplanted to Castile or Catalonia than to Germany or England.

But whatever were his purposes and plans for the advancement of the literature of his country, Boscan lived long enough to see them fulfilled, so far as they were ever destined to be; for he had a friend who cooperated with him in all of them from the first, and who, with a happier genius, easily surpassed him, and carried the best forms of Italian verse to a height they never afterwards reached in Spanish poetry. This friend was Garcilasso de la Vega, who yet died so young, that Boscan survived him several years.

Garcilasso was descended from an ancient family in the North of Spain, who traced back their ancestry to the age of the Cid, and who, from century to century, had been distinguished by holding some of the highest places in the government of Castile.[772] A poetical tradition says, that one of his forefathers obtained the name of “Vega” or Plain, and the motto of “Ave Maria” for[p. 487] his family arms, from the circumstance, that, during one of the sieges of Granada, he slew outright, before the face of both armies, a Moorish champion who had publicly insulted the Christian faith by dragging a banner inscribed with “Ave Maria” at his horse’s heels,—a tradition faithfully preserved in a fine old ballad, and forming the catastrophe of one of Lope de Vega’s plays.[773] But whether all this be true or not, Garcilasso bore a name honored on both sides of his house; for his mother was daughter and sole heir of Fernan Perez de Guzman, and his father was the ambassador of the Catholic sovereigns at Rome in relation to the troublesome affairs of Naples.

He was born at Toledo in 1503, and was educated there till he reached an age suitable for bearing arms. Then, as became his rank and pretensions, he was sent to court, and received his place in the armies that were already gaining so much glory for their country. When he was about twenty-seven years old, he married an Aragonese lady attached to the court of Eleanor, widow of the king of Portugal, who, in 1530, was in Spain on her way to become queen of France. From this time he seems to have been constantly in the wars which the Emperor was carrying on in all directions, and to have been much trusted by him, though his elder brother, Pedro, had been implicated in the trou[p. 488]bles of the Comunidades, and compelled to escape from Spain as an outlawed rebel.[774]

In 1532 Garcilasso was at Vienna, and among those who distinguished themselves in the defeat of the Turkish expedition of Soliman, which that great sultan pushed to the very gates of the city. But while he was there, he was himself involved in trouble. He undertook to promote the marriage of one of his nephews with a lady of the Imperial household; and, urging his project against the pleasure of the Empress, not only failed, but was cast into prison on an island in the Danube, where he wrote the melancholy lines on his own desolation and on the beauty of the adjacent country, which pass as the third Cancion in his works.[775] The progress of events, however, not only soon brought his release, but raised him into higher favor than ever. In 1535 he was at the siege of Tunis,—when Charles the Fifth attempted to crush the Barbary powers by a single blow,—and there received two severe wounds, one on his head and the other in his arm.[776] His return to Spain is recorded in an elegy, written at the foot of Mount Ætna, and indicating that he came back by the way of Naples; a city which, from another poem addressed to Boscan, he seems to have visited once before.[777] At any rate, we know, though his present visit to Italy was a short one, that he was there, at some period, long enough to win the personal esteem and regard of Bembo and Tansillo.[778]

The very next year, however,—the last of his short life,—we find him again at the court of the Emperor,[p. 489] and engaged in the disastrous expedition into Provence. The army had already passed through the difficulties and dangers of the siege of Marseilles, and was fortunate enough not to be pursued by the cautious Constable de Montmorenci. But as they approached the town of Frejus, a small castle, on a commanding hill, defended by only fifty of the neighbouring peasantry, offered a serious annoyance to their farther passage. The Emperor ordered the slight obstacle to be swept from his path. Garcilasso, who had now a considerable command, advanced gladly to execute the Imperial requisition. He knew that the eyes of the Emperor, and indeed those of the whole army, were upon him; and, in the true spirit of knighthood, he was the first to mount the wall. But a well-directed stone precipitated him into the ditch beneath. The wound, which was on his head, proved mortal, and he died a few days afterwards, at Nice, in 1536, only thirty-three years old. His fate is recorded by Mariana, Sandoval, and the other national historians, among the important events of the time; and the Emperor, we are told, basely avenged it by putting to death all the survivors of the fifty peasantry, who had done no more than bravely defend their homes against a foreign invader.[779]

In a life so short and so crowded with cares and adventures we should hardly expect to find leisure for poetry. But, as he describes himself in his third Eclogue, Garcilasso seems to have hurried through the world,

[p. 490]

so that he still left a small collection of poems, which the faithful widow of Boscan, finding among her husband’s papers, published at the end of his works as a Fourth Book, and has thus rescued what would otherwise probably have been lost. Their character is singular, considering the circumstances under which they were written; for, instead of betraying any of the spirit that governed the main course of their author’s adventurous life and brought him to an early grave, they are remarkable for their gentleness and melancholy, and their best portions are in a pastoral tone breathing the very sweetness of the fabulous ages of Arcadia. When he wrote most of them we have no means of determining with exactness. But with the exception of three or four trifles that appear mingled with other similar trifles in the first book of Boscan’s works, all Garcilasso’s poems are in the Italian forms, which we know were first adopted, with his coöperation, in 1526; so that we must, at any rate, place them in the ten years between this date and that of his death.

They consist of thirty-seven sonnets, five canzones, two elegies, an epistle in versi sciolti less grave than the rest of his poetry, and three pastorals; the pastorals constituting more than half of all the verse he wrote. The air of the whole is Italian. He has imitated Petrarch, Bembo, Ariosto, and especially Sannazaro, to whom he has once or twice been indebted for pages together; turning, however, from time to time, reverently to the greater ancient masters, Virgil and Theocritus, and acknowledging their supremacy. Where the Italian tone most prevails, something of the poetical spirit which[p. 491] should sustain him is lost. But, after all, Garcilasso was a poet of no common genius. We see it sometimes even in the strictest of his imitations; but it reveals itself much more distinctly when, as in the first Eclogue, he uses as servants the masters to whom he elsewhere devotes himself, and writes only like a Spaniard, warm with the peculiar national spirit of his country.

This first Eclogue is, in truth, the best of his works. It is beautiful in the simplicity of its structure, and beautiful in its poetical execution. It was probably written at Naples. It opens with an address to the father of the famous Duke of Alva, then viceroy of that principality, calling upon him, in the most artless manner, to listen to the complaints of two shepherds, the first mourning the faithlessness of a mistress, and the other the death of one. Salicio, who represents Garcilasso, then begins; and when he has entirely finished, but not before, he is answered by Nemoroso, whose name indicates that he represents Boscan.[781] The whole closes naturally and gracefully with a description of the approach of evening. It is, therefore, not properly a dialogue, any more than the eighth Eclogue of Virgil. On the contrary, except the lines at the opening and the conclusion, it might be regarded as two separate elegies, in which the pastoral tone is uncommonly well preserved, and each of which, by its divisions and arrangements, is made to resemble an Italian canzone. An air of freshness and even originality is thus given to the structure of the entire pastoral, while, at the same time, the melancholy, but glowing, passion that breathes through it renders it in a high degree poetical.

[p. 492]In the first part, where Salicio laments the unfaithfulness of his mistress, there is a happy preservation of the air of pastoral life by a constant, and yet not forced, allusion to natural scenery and rural objects, as in the following passage:—

The other division of the Eclogue contains passages that remind us both of Milton’s “Lycidas” and of the ancients whom Milton imitated. Thus, in the following lines, where the opening idea is taken from a well-known passage in the Odyssey, the conclusion is not unworthy of the thought that precedes it, and adds a new charm to what so many poets since Homer had rendered familiar:[783]—

Garcilasso’s versification is uncommonly sweet, and well suited to the tender and sad character of his poetry. In his second Eclogue, he has tried the singular experiment of making the rhyme often, not between the ends of two lines, but between the end of one and the middle of the next. It was not, however, successful. Cervantes has imitated it, and so have one or two others; but wherever the rhyme is quite obvious, the effect is not good, and where it is little noticed, the lines take rather the character of blank verse.[785] In general, however, Garcilasso’s harmony can hardly be improved; at least, not without injuring his versification in particulars yet more important.

[p. 494]His poems had a great success from the moment they appeared. There was a grace and an elegance about them of which Boscan may in part have set the example, but which Boscan was never able to reach. The Spaniards who came back from Rome and Naples were delighted to find at home what had so much charmed them in their campaigns and wanderings in Italy; and Garcilasso’s poems were proudly reprinted wherever the Spanish arms and influence extended. They received, too, other honors. In less than half a century from their first appearance, Francisco Sanchez, commonly called “El Brocense,” the most learned Spaniard of his age, added a commentary to them, which has still some value. A little later, Herrera, the lyric poet, published them, with a series of notes yet more ample, in which, amidst much that is useless, interesting details may be found, for which he was indebted to Puerto Carrero, the poet’s son-in-law. And early in the next century, Tamayo de Vargas again encumbered the whole with a new mass of unprofitable learning.[786] Such distinctions, however, constituted, even when they were fresh, little of[p. 495] Garcilasso’s real glory, which rested on the safer foundations of a genuine and general regard. His poetry, from the first, sunk deep into the hearts of his countrymen. His sonnets were heard everywhere; his eclogues were acted like popular dramas.[787] The greatest geniuses of his nation express for him a reverence they show to none of their predecessors. Lope de Vega imitates him in every possible way; Cervantes praises him more than he does any other poet, and cites him oftener.[788] And thus Garcilasso has come down to us enjoying a general national admiration, such as is given to hardly any other Spanish poet, and to none that lived before his time.

That it would have been better for himself and for the literature of his country, if he had drawn more from the elements of the earlier national character, and imitated less the great Italian masters he justly admired, can hardly be doubted. It would have given a freer and more generous movement to his poetical genius, and opened to him a range of subjects and forms of composition, from which, by rejecting the example of the national poets that had gone before him, he excluded himself.[789] But he deliberately decided otherwise; and[p. 496] his great success, added to that of Boscan, introduced into Spain an Italian school of poetry which has been an important part of Spanish literature ever since.[790]

The example set by Boscan and Garcilasso was so well suited to the spirit and demands of the age, that it became as much a fashion, at the court of Charles the Fifth, to write in the Italian manner as it did to travel in Italy or make a military campaign there. Among those who earliest adopted the forms of Italian verse was Fernando de Acuña, a gentleman belonging to a noble Portuguese family, but born in Madrid and writing only in Spanish. He served in Flanders, in Italy, and in Africa; and after the conquest of Tunis, in 1535, a mutiny having occurred in its garrison, he was sent there by the Emperor, with unlimited authority to punish or to pardon those implicated in it; a difficult mission, whose duties he fulfilled with great discretion and with an honorable generosity.

In other respects, too, Acuña was treated with peculiar confidence. Charles the Fifth—as we learn from the familiar correspondence of Van Male, a poor scholar and gentleman who slept often in his bed-chamber and nursed him in his infirmities—amused the fretfulness of a premature old age, under which his proud spirit constantly chafed, by making a translation into Spanish[p. 498] prose of a French poem then much in vogue and favor,—the “Chevalier Délibéré.” Its author, Olivier de la Marche, was long attached to the service of Mary of Burgundy, the Emperor’s grandmother, and had made, in the Chevalier Délibéré, an allegorical show of the events in the life of her father, so flattering as to render his picture an object of general admiration at the time when Charles was educated at her brilliant court.[791] But the great Emperor, though his prose version of the pleasant reading of his youth is said to have been prepared with more skill and success than might have been anticipated from his imperfect training for such a task, felt that he was unable to give it the easy dress he desired it should wear in Castilian verse. This labor, therefore, in the plenitude of his authority, he assigned to Acuña; confiding to him the manuscript he had prepared in great secrecy, and requiring him to cast it into a more appropriate and agreeable form.

Acuña was well fitted for the delicate duty assigned to him. As a courtier, skilled in the humors of the palace, he omitted several passages that would be little interesting to his master, and inserted others that would be more so,—particularly several relating to Ferdinand and Isabella, and to Philip, Charles’s father. As a poet, he turned the Emperor’s prose into the old double quintillas with a purity and richness of idiom rare in any period of Spanish literature, and some portion of the merit of which has, perhaps justly, been attributed by Van Male to the Imperial version out of which it was constructed. The poem thus prepared—making three hundred and seventy-nine stanzas of ten short lines each—was then secretly given by Charles, as if it were a[p. 499] present worthy of a munificent sovereign, to Van Male, the poor servant, who records the facts relating to it, and then, forbidding all notice of himself in the Preface, the Emperor ordered an edition of it, so large, that the unhappy scholar trembled at the pecuniary risks he was to run on account of the bounty he had received. The “Cavallero Determinado,” as it was called in the version of Acuña, was, however, more successful than Van Male supposed it would be; and, partly from the interest the master of so many kingdoms must have felt in a work in which his secret share was considerable; partly from the ingenuity of the allegory, which is due in general to La Marche; and partly from the fluency and grace of the versification, which must be wholly Acuña’s, it became very popular; seven editions of it being called for in the course of half a century.[792]

[p. 500]But notwithstanding the success of the Cavallero Determinado, Acuña wrote hardly any thing else in the old national style and manner. His shorter poems, filling a small volume, are, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions, in the Italian measures, and sometimes are direct imitations of Boscan and Garcilasso. They are almost all written in good taste, and with a classical finish, especially “The Contest of Ajax with Ulysses,” where, in tolerable blank verse, Acuña has imitated the severe simplicity of Homer. He was known, too, in Italy, and his translation of a part of Boiardo’s “Orlando Innamorato” was praised there; but his miscellanies and his sonnets found more favor at home. He died at Granada, it is said, in 1580, while prosecuting a claim he had inherited to a Spanish title; but his poems were not printed till 1591, when, like those of Boscan, with which they may be fairly ranked, they were published by the pious care of his widow.[793]

Less fortunate in this respect than Acuña was Gutierre de Cetina, another Spaniard of the same period and school, since no attempt has ever been made to collect his poems. The few that remain to us, however,—his madrigals, sonnets, and other short pieces,—have much merit. Sometimes they take an Anacreontic tone; but the better specimens are rather marked by sweetness, like the following madrigal:—

[p. 501]

Like many others of his countrymen, Cetina was a soldier, and fought bravely in Italy. Afterwards he visited Mexico, where he had a brother in an important public office; but he died, at last, in Seville, his native city, about the year 1560. He was an imitator of Garcilasso, even more than of the Italians who were Garcilasso’s models.[795]

But an Italian school was not introduced into Spanish literature without a contest. We cannot, perhaps, tell who first broke ground against it, as an unprofitable and unjustifiable innovation; but Christóval de Castillejo, a gentleman of Ciudad Rodrigo, was the most efficient of its early opponents. He was attached, from the age of fifteen, to the person of Ferdinand, the younger brother of Charles the Fifth, and subsequently Emperor of Germany; passing a part of his life in Austria, as secretary to that prince, and ending it, in extreme old age,[p. 502] as a Carthusian monk, at the convent of Val de Iglesias, near Toledo. But wherever he lived, Castillejo wrote verses, and showed no favor to the new school. He attacked it in many ways, but chiefly by imitating the old masters in their villancicos, canciones, glosas, and the other forms and measures they adopted, though with a purer and better taste than they had generally shown.

Some of his poetry was written as early as 1540 and 1541; and, except the religious portion, which fills the latter part of the third and last of the three books into which his works are divided, it has generally a fresh and youthful air. Facility and gayety are, perhaps, its most prominent, though certainly not its highest, characteristics. Some of his love-verses are remarkable for their tenderness and grace, especially those addressed to Anna; but he shows the force and bent of his talent rather when he deals with practical life, as he does in his bitter discussion concerning the court; in a dialogue between his pen and himself; in a poem on Woman; and in a letter to a friend, asking counsel about a love affair;—all of which are full of living sketches of the national manners and feelings. Next to these, perhaps, some of his more fanciful pieces, such as his “Transformation of a Drunkard into a Mosquito,” are the most characteristic of his light-hearted nature.

But on every occasion where he finds an opening, or can make one, he attacks the imitators of the Italians, whom he contemptuously calls “Petrarquistas.” Once, he devotes to them a regular satire, which he addresses “to those who give up the Castilian measures and follow the Italian,” calling out Boscan and Garcilasso by name, and summoning Juan de Mena, Sanchez de Badajoz, Naharro, and others of the elder poets, to make merry[p. 503] with him, at the expense of the innovators. Almost everywhere he shows a genial temperament, and sometimes indulges himself in a freer tone than was thought beseeming at the time when he lived; in consequence of which, his poetry, though much circulated in manuscript, was forbidden by the Inquisition; so that all we now possess of it is a selection, which, by a sort of special favor, was exempted from censure, and permitted to be printed in 1573.[796]

Another of those who maintained the doctrines and wrote in the measures of the old school was Antonio de Villegas, whose poems, though written before 1551, were not printed till 1565. The Prólogo, addressed to the book, with instructions how it should bear itself in the world, reminds us sometimes of “The Soul’s Errand,” but is more easy and less poetical. The best poems of the volume are, indeed, of this sort, light and gay; rather running into pretty quaintnesses than giving token of deep feeling. The longer among them, like those on Pyramus and Thisbe, and on the quarrel between Ulysses and Ajax, are the least interesting. But the shorter pieces are many of them very agreeable. One to the Duke of Sesa, the descendant of Gonzalvo of Córdova, and addressed to him as he was going to Italy, where Cervantes served under his leading, is fortunate, from its allusion to his great ancestor. It begins thus:—

[p. 504]

More characteristic than this, however, because less heroic and grave, are eighteen décimas, or ten-line poems, called “Comparaciones,” because each ends with a comparison; the whole being preceded by a longer composition in the same style, addressing them all to his lady-love. The following may serve as a specimen of their peculiar tone and measure:—

[p. 505]Gregorio Silvestre, a Portuguese, who came in his childhood to Spain, and died there in 1570, was another of those who wrote according to the earlier modes of composition. He was a friend of Torres de Naharro, of Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, and of Heredia; and, for some time, imitated Castillejo in speaking lightly of Boscan and Garcilasso. But, as the Italian manner prevailed more and more, he yielded somewhat to the fashion; and, in his latter years, wrote sonnets, and ottava and terza rima, adding to their forms a careful finish not then enough valued in Spain.[798] All his poetry, notwithstanding the accident of his foreign birth, is written in pure and idiomatic Castilian; but the best of it is in the older style,—“the old rhymes,” as he called them,—in which, apparently, he felt more freedom than he did in the manner he subsequently adopted. His Glosses seem to have been most regarded by himself and his friends; and if the nature of the composition itself had been more elevated, they might still deserve the praise they at first received, for he shows great facility and ingenuity in their construction.[799]

His longer narrative poems—those on Daphne and Apollo, and on Pyramus and Thisbe, as well as one he called “The Residence of Love”—are not without merit, though they are among the less fortunate of his efforts. But his canciones are to be ranked with the very best in the language; full of the old true-hearted simplicity of feeling, and yet not without an artifice in their turns of expression, which, far from interfering[p. 506] with their point and effect, adds to both. Thus, one of them begins:—

While a little farther on he gives to the same idea a quaint turn, or answer, such as he delighted to make:—

Each is followed by a sort of gloss, or variation of the original air, which again is not without its appropriate merit.

Silvestre was much connected with the poets of his time; not only those of the old school, but those of the Italian, like Diego de Mendoza, Hernando de Acuña, George of Montemayor, and Luis Barahona de Soto. Their poems, in fact, are sometimes found mingled with his own, and their spirit, we see, had a controlling influence over his. But whether, in return, he produced much effect on them, or on his times, may be doubted. He seems to have passed his life quietly in Granada, of whose noble cathedral he was the principal musician, and where he was much valued as a member of society, for his wit and kindly nature. But when he died, at the age of fifty, his poetry was known only in manuscript; and after it was collected and published by his friend Pedro de Caceres, twelve years later, it produced little sensation. He belonged, in truth, to both[p. 507] schools, and was therefore thoroughly admired by neither.[801]

The discussion between the two, however, soon became a formal one. Argote de Molina naturally brought it into his Discourse on Spanish Poetry in 1575,[802] and Montalvo introduced it into his Pastoral, where it little belongs, but where, under assumed names, Cervantes, Ercilla, Castillejo, Silvestre, and Montalvo[803] himself, give their opinions in favor of the old school. This was in 1582. In 1599, Lope de Vega defended the same side in the Preface to his “San Isidro.”[804] But the question was then substantially decided. Five or six long epics, including the “Araucana,” had already been written in the Italian ottava rima; as many pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro’s; and thousands of verses in the shape of sonnets, canzoni, and the other forms of Italian poetry, a large portion of which had found much favor. Even Lope de Vega, therefore, who is quite decided in his opinion, and wrote his poem of “San Isidro” in the old popular redondillas, fell in with the prevailing fashion, so that, perhaps, in the end, nobody did more than himself to confirm the Italian measures and manner. From this time, there[p. 508]fore, the success of the new school may be considered certain and settled; nor has it ever since been displaced or superseded, as an important division of Spanish literature.

Among those who did most to decide the question in favor of the introduction and establishment of the Italian measures in Spanish literature was one whose rank and social position gave him great authority, and whose genius, cultivation, and adventures point alike to his connection with the period we have just gone over and with that on which we are now entering. This person was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a scholar and a soldier, a poet and a diplomatist, a statesman and an historian,—a man who rose to great consideration in whatever he undertook, and one who was not of a temper to be satisfied with moderate success, wherever he might choose to make an effort.[805]

He was born in Granada in 1503, and his ancestry was perhaps the most illustrious in Spain, if we except the descendants of those who had sat on the thrones of its different kingdoms. Lope de Vega, who turns aside in one of his plays to boast that it was so, adds, that, in[p. 510] his time, the Mendozas counted three-and-twenty generations of the highest nobility and public service.[806] But it is more important for our present purpose to notice that the three immediate ancestors of the distinguished statesman now before us might well have served as examples to form his young character; for he was the third in direct descent from the Marquis of Santillana, the poet and wit of the court of John the Second; his grandfather was the able ambassador of Ferdinand and Isabella, in their troublesome affairs with the See of Rome; and his father, after commanding with distinguished honor in the last great overthrow of the Moors, was made governor of the unquiet city of Granada not long after its surrender.

Diego, however, had five brothers older than himself; and therefore, notwithstanding the power of his family, he was originally destined for the Church, in order to give him more easily the position and income that should sustain his great name with becoming dignity. But his character could not be bent in that direction. He acquired, indeed, much knowledge suited to further his ecclesiastical advancement, both at home, where he learned to speak the Arabic with fluency, and at Sala[p. 511]manca, where he studied Latin, Greek, philosophy, and canon and civil law, with success. But it is evident that he indulged a decided preference for what was more intimately connected with political affairs and elegant literature; and if, as is commonly supposed, he wrote while at the University, or soon afterwards, his “Lazarillo de Tórmes,” it is equally plain that he preferred such a literature as had no relation to theology or the Church.

The Lazarillo is a work of genius, unlike any thing that had preceded it. It is the autobiography of a boy—“little Lazarus”—born in a mill on the banks of the Tórmes, near Salamanca, and sent out by his base and brutal mother as the leader of a blind beggar; the lowest place in the social condition, perhaps, that could then be found in Spain. But such as it is, Lazarillo makes the best or the worst of it. With an inexhaustible fund of good-humor and great quickness of parts, he learns, at once, the cunning and profligacy that qualify him to rise to still greater frauds and a yet wider range of adventures and crimes in the service successively of a priest, a gentleman starving on his own pride, a friar, a seller of indulgences, a chaplain, and an alguazil, until, at last, from the most disgraceful motives, he settles down as a married man; and then the story terminates without reaching any proper conclusion, and without intimating that any is to follow.

Its object is—under the character of a servant with an acuteness that is never at fault, and so small a stock of honesty and truth, that neither of them stands in the way of his success—to give a pungent satire on all classes of society, whose condition Lazarillo well comprehends, because he sees them in undress and behind the scenes. It is written in a very bold, rich, and idio[p. 512]matic Castilian style, that reminds us of the “Celestina”; and some of its sketches are among the most fresh and spirited that can be found in the whole class of prose works of fiction; so spirited, indeed, and so free, that two of them—those of the friar and the seller of dispensations—were soon put under the ban of the Church, and cut out of the editions that were permitted to be printed under its authority. The whole work is short; but its easy, genial temper, its happy adaptation to Spanish life and manners, and the contrast of the light, good-humored, flexible audacity of Lazarillo himself—a perfectly original conception—with the solemn and unyielding dignity of the old Castilian character, gave it from the first a great popularity. From 1553, when the earliest edition appeared of which we have any knowledge, it was often reprinted, both at home and abroad, and has been more or less a favorite in all languages, down to our own time; becoming the foundation for a class of fictions essentially national, which, under the name of the gusto picaresco, or the style of the rogues, is as well known as any other department of Spanish literature, and one which the “Gil Blas” of Le Sage has made famous throughout the world.[807]

Like other books enjoying a wide reputation, the Lazarillo provoked many imitations. A continuation of[p. 513] it, under the title of “The Second Part of Lazarillo de Tórmes,” soon appeared, longer than the original, and beginning where the fiction of Mendoza leaves off. But it is without merit, except for an occasional quaintness or witticism. It represents Lazarillo as going upon the expedition undertaken by Charles the Fifth against Algiers, in 1541, and as being in one of the vessels that foundered in a storm, which did much towards disconcerting the whole enterprise. From this point, however, Lazarillo’s story becomes a tissue of absurdities. He sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and there creeps into a cave, where he is metamorphosed into a tunny-fish; and the greater part of the work consists of an account of his glory and happiness in the kingdom of the tunnies. At last, he is caught in a seine, and, in the agony of his fear of death, returns, by an effort of his own will, to the human form; after which he finds his way back to Salamanca, and is living there when he prepares this strange account of his adventures.[808]

A further imitation, but not a proper continuation, under the name of “The Lazarillo of the Manzanares,” in which the state of society at Madrid is satirized, was attempted by Juan Cortés de Tolosa, and was first printed in 1620. But it produced no effect at the time, and has been long forgotten. Nor was a much better fate reserved for yet another Second Part of the genuine Lazarillo, which was written by Juan de Luna, a teacher of Spanish at Paris, and appeared there the same year the Lazarillo de Manzanares appeared at Madrid. It is, however, more in the spirit of the original work. It exhibits Lazarillo again as a servant to different kinds of masters, and as gentleman-usher of a poor, proud lady[p. 514] of rank; after which he retires from the world, and, becoming a religious recluse, writes this account of himself, which, though not equal to the free and vigorous sketches of the work it professes to complete, is by no means without value, especially for its style.[809]

The author of the Lazarillo de Tórmes, who, we are told, took the “Amadis” and the “Celestina” for his travelling companions and by-reading,[810] was, as we have intimated, not a person to devote himself to the Church; and we soon hear of him serving as a soldier in the great Spanish armies in Italy; a circumstance to which, in his old age, he alludes with evident pride and pleasure. At those seasons, however, when the troops were unoccupied, we know that he gladly listened to the lectures of the famous professors of Bologna, Padua, and Rome, and added largely to his already large stores of elegant knowledge.

A character so strongly marked would naturally attract the notice of a monarch, vigilant and clear-sighted, like Charles the Fifth; and as early as 1538, Mendoza was made his ambassador to the republic of Venice, then one of the leading powers of Europe. But there, too, though much busied with grave negotiations, he loved to be familiar with men of letters. The Aldi were then at the height of their reputation, and he assisted and patronized them. Paulus Manutius dedicated to him an edition of the philosophical works of Cicero, acknowledging his skill as a critic and praising his Latinity, though, at the same time, he says that Mendoza rather exhorted the young to study philosophy and science in[p. 515] their native languages;—a proof of liberality rare in an age when the admiration for the ancients led a great number of classical scholars to treat whatever was modern and vernacular with contempt. At one period, he gave himself up to the pursuit of Greek and Latin literature with a zeal such as Petrarch had shown long before him. He sent to Thessaly and the famous convent of Mount Athos, to collect Greek manuscripts. Josephus was first printed complete from his library, and so were some of the Fathers of the Church. And when, on one occasion, he had done so great a favor to the Sultan Soliman that he was invited to demand any return from that monarch’s gratitude, the only reward he would consent to receive for himself was a present of some Greek manuscripts, which, as he said, amply repaid all his services.

But, in the midst of studies so well suited to his taste and character, the Emperor called him away to more important duties. He was made military governor of Siena, and required to hold both the Pope and the Florentines in check; a duty which he fulfilled, though not without peril to his life. Somewhat later he was sent to the great Council of Trent, known as a political no less than an ecclesiastical congress, in order to sustain the Imperial interests there, and succeeded, by the exercise of a degree of firmness, address, and eloquence which would alone have made him one of the most considerable persons in the Spanish monarchy. While at the Council, however, in consequence of the urgency of affairs, he was despatched, as a special Imperial plenipotentiary to Rome, in 1547, for the bold purpose of confronting and overawing the Pope in his own capital. And in this, too, he succeeded; rebuking Julius the Third in open council, and so establishing his[p. 516] own consideration, as well as that of his country, that for six years afterwards he is to be looked upon as the head of the Imperial party throughout Italy, and almost as a viceroy governing that country, or a large part of it, for the Emperor, by his talents and firmness. But at last he grew weary of this great labor and burden; and the Emperor himself having changed his system and determined to conciliate Europe before he should abdicate, Mendoza returned to Spain in 1554.[811]

The next year, Philip the Second ascended the throne. His policy, however, little resembled that of his father, and Mendoza was not one of those who were well suited to the changed state of things. In consequence of this, he seldom came to court, and was not at all favored by the severe master who now ruled him, as he ruled all the other great men of his kingdom, with a hard and anxious tyranny.[812] One instance of his displeasure against Mendoza, and of the harsh treatment that followed it, is sufficiently remarkable. The ambassador, who, though sixty-four years of age when the event occurred, had lost little of the fire of his youth, fell into a passionate dispute with a courtier in the palace itself. The latter drew a dagger, and Mendoza wrested it from him and threw it out of the balcony where they were standing;—some accounts adding, that he afterwards threw out the courtier himself. Such a quarrel would certainly be accounted an affront to the royal dignity anywhere; but in the eyes of the formal and strict Philip the Sec[p. 517]ond it was all but a mortal offence. He chose to have Mendoza regarded as a madman, and as such exiled him from his court;—an injustice against which the old man struggled in vain for some time, and then yielded himself up to it with loyal dignity.

His amusement during some portion of his exile was—singular as it may seem in one so old—to write poetry.[813] But the occupation had long been familiar to him. In the first edition of the works of Boscan we have an epistle from Mendoza to that poet, evidently written when he was young; besides which, several of his shorter pieces contain internal proof that they were composed in Italy. But, notwithstanding he had been so long in Venice and Rome, and notwithstanding Boscan must have been among his earliest friends, he does not belong entirely to the Italian school of poetry; for, though he has often imitated and fully sanctioned the Italian measures, he often gave himself up to the old redondillas and quintillas, and to the national tone of feeling and reflection appropriate to these ancient forms of Castilian verse.[814]

The truth is, Mendoza had studied the ancients with a zeal and success that had so far imbued his mind with their character and temper, as in some measure to keep out all undue modern influences. The first part of the Epistle to Boscan, already alluded to, though written[p. 518] in flowing terza rima, sounds almost like a translation of the Epistle of Horace to Numicius, and yet it is not even a servile imitation; while the latter part is absolutely Spanish, and gives such a description of domestic life as never entered the imagination of antiquity.[815] The Hymn in honor of Cardinal Espinosa, one of the most finished of his poems, is said to have been written after five days’ constant reading of Pindar, but is nevertheless full of the old Castilian spirit;[816] and his second cancion, though quite in the Italian measure, shows the turns of Horace more than of Petrarch.[817] Still, it is not to be concealed that Mendoza gave the decisive influence of his example to the new forms introduced by Boscan and Garcilasso;—a fact plain from the manner in which that example is appealed to by many of the poets of his time, and especially by Gregorio Silvestre and Christóval de Mesa.[818] In both styles, however, he succeeded. There is, perhaps, more richness of thought in the specimens he has given us in the Italian measures than in the others; yet it can hardly be doubted that his heart was in what he wrote upon the old popular foundations. Some of his letrillas, as they would now be called, though they bore different names in his time, are quite charming;[819] and in many parts of the second[p. 519] division of his poems, which is larger than that devoted to the Italian measures, there is a light and idle humor, well fitted to his subjects, and such as might have been anticipated from the author of the “Lazarillo” rather than from the Imperial representative at the Council of Trent and the Papal court. Indeed, some of his verses were so free, that it was thought inexpedient to print them.

The same spirit is apparent in two prose letters, or rather essays thrown into the shape of letters. The first professes to come from a person seeking employment at court, and gives an account of the whole class of Catariberas, or low courtiers, who, in soiled clothes and with base, fawning manners, daily besieged the doors and walks of the President of the Council of Castile, in order to solicit some one of the multitudinous humble offices in his gift. The other is addressed to Pedro de Salazar, ridiculing a book he had published on the wars of the Emperor in Germany, in which, as Mendoza declares, the author took more credit to himself personally than he deserved. Both are written with idiomatic humor, and a native buoyancy and gayety of spirit which seem to have lain at the bottom of his character, and to have broken forth, from time to time, during his whole life, notwithstanding the severe employments which for so many years filled and burdened his thoughts.[820]

The tendency of his mind, however, as he grew old,[p. 520] was naturally to graver subjects; and finding there was no hope of his being recalled to court, he established himself in unambitious retirement at Granada, his native city. But his spirit was not one that would easily sink into inactivity; and if it had been, he had not chosen a home that would encourage such a disposition. For it was a spot, not only full of romantic recollections, but intimately associated with the glory of his own family,—one where he had spent much of his youth, and become familiar with those remains and ruins of the Moorish power which bore witness to days when the plain of Granada was the seat of one of the most luxurious and splendid of the Mohammedan dynasties. Here, therefore, he naturally turned to the early studies of his half-Arabian education, and, arranging his library of curious Moorish manuscripts, devoted himself to the literature and history of his native city, until, at last, apparently from want of other occupation, he determined to write a part of its annals.

The portion he chose was one very recent; that of the rebellion raised by the Moors in 1568-1570, when they were no longer able to endure the oppression of Philip the Second; and it is much to Mendoza’s honor, that, with sympathies entirely Spanish, he has yet done the hated enemies of his faith and people such generous justice, that his book could not be published till many years after his own death,—not, indeed, till the unhappy Moors themselves had been finally expelled from Spain. His means for writing such a work were remarkable. His father, as we have noticed, had been a general in the conquering army of 1492, to which the story of this rebellion necessarily often recurs, and had afterward been governor of Granada. One of his nephews had commanded the troops in this very war. And[p. 521] now, after peace was restored by the submission of the rebels, the old statesman, as he stood amidst the trophies and ruins of the conflict, soon learned from eyewitnesses and partisans whatever of interest had happened on either side that he had not himself seen. Familiar, therefore, with every thing of which he speaks, there is a freshness and power in his sketches that carry us at once into the midst of the scenes and events he describes, and make us sympathize in details too minute to be always interesting, if they were not always marked with the impress of a living reality.[821]

But though his history springs, as it were, vigorously from the very soil to which it relates, it is a sedulous and well-considered imitation of the ancient masters, and entirely unlike the chronicling spirit of the preceding period. The genius of antiquity, indeed, is announced in its first sentence.

“My purpose,” says the old soldier, “is to record that war of Granada which the Catholic King of Spain, Don Philip the Second, son of the unconquered Emperor Don Charles, maintained in the kingdom of Granada, against the newly converted rebels; a part whereof I saw, and a part heard from persons who carried it on by their arms and by their counsels.”

Sallust was undoubtedly Mendoza’s model. Like the War against Catiline, the War of the Moorish Insurrection is a small work, and like that, too, its style is generally rich and bold. But sometimes long passages are evidently imitated from Tacitus, whose vigor and severity the wise diplomatist seems to approach as nearly as he does the more exuberant style of his prevalent master.[p. 522] Some of these imitations are as happy, perhaps, as any that can be produced from the class to which they belong; for they are often no less unconstrained than if they were quite original. Take, for instance, the following passage, which has often been noticed for its spirit and feeling, but which is partly a translation from the account given by Tacitus, in his most picturesque and condensed manner, of the visit made by Germanicus and his army to the spot where lay, unburied, the remains of the three legions of Varus, in the forests of Germany, and of the funeral honors that army paid to the memory of their fallen and almost forgotten countrymen;—the circumstance described by the Spanish historian being so remarkably similar to that given in the Annals of Tacitus, that the imitation is perfectly natural.[822]

During a rebellion of the Moors in 1500-1501, it was thought of consequence to destroy a fort in the mountains that lay towards Málaga. The service was dangerous, and none came forward to undertake it, until Alonso de Aguilar, one of the principal nobles in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella, offered himself for the enterprise. His attempt, as had been foreseen, failed, and hardly a man survived to relate the details of the disaster; but Aguilar’s enthusiasm and self-devotion created a great sensation at the time, and were afterwards recorded in more than one of the old ballads of the country.[823]

At the period, however, when Mendoza touches on this unhappy defeat, nearly seventy years had elapsed, and the bones of both Spaniards and Moors still lay[p. 523] whitening on the spot where they had fallen. The war between the two races was again renewed by the insurrection of the conquered; a military expedition was again undertaken into the same mountains; and the Duke of Arcos, its leader, was a lineal descendant of some who had fallen there, and intimately connected with the family of Alonso de Aguilar himself. While, therefore, the troops for this expedition were collecting, the Duke, from a natural curiosity and interest in what so nearly concerned him, took a small body of soldiers and visited the melancholy spot.

“The Duke left Casares,” says Mendoza, “examining and securing the passes of the mountains as he went; a needful providence, on account of the little certainty there is of success in all military adventures. They then began to ascend the range of heights where it was said the bodies had remained unburied, melancholy and loathsome alike to the sight and the memory.[824] For there were among those who now visited it both kinsmen and descendants of the slain, or men who knew by report whatever related to the sad scene. And first they came to the spot where the vanguard had stopped with its leader, in consequence of the darkness of the night; a broad opening between the foot of the mountain and the Moorish fortress, without defence of any sort but such as was afforded by the nature of the place. Here lay human skulls and the bones of horses, heaped confusedly together or scattered about, just as they had chanced to fall, mingled with fragments of arms and bridles and the rich trappings of the cavalry.[825] Farther on, they found the fort of the enemy, of which there[p. 524] were now only a few low remains, nearly levelled with the surface of the soil. And then they went forward, talking about the places where officers, leaders, and common soldiers had perished together; relating how and where those who survived had been saved, among whom were the Count of Ureña and Pedro de Aguilar, elder son of Don Alonso; speaking of the spot where Don Alonso had retired and defended himself between two rocks; the wound the Moorish captain first gave him on the head, and then another in the breast as he fell; the words he uttered as they closed in the fight, ‘I am Don Alonso,’ and the answer of the chieftain as he struck him down, ‘You are Don Alonso, but I am the chieftain of Benastepár’; and of the wounds Don Alonso gave, which were not fatal, as were those he received. They remembered, too, how friends and enemies had alike mourned his fate; and now, on that same spot, the same sorrow was renewed by the soldiers,—a race sparing of its gratitude, except in tears. The general commanded a service to be performed for the dead; and the soldiers present offered up prayers that they might rest in peace, uncertain whether they interceded for their kinsmen or for their enemies,—a feeling which increased their rage and the eagerness they felt for finding those upon whom they could now take vengeance.”[826]

There are several instances like this, in the course of the work, that show how well pleased Mendoza was to step aside into an episode and indulge himself in appropriate ornaments of his subject. The main direction of his story, however, is never unnaturally deviated from; and wherever he goes, he is almost always powerful and[p. 525] effective. Take, for example, the following speech of El Zaguer, one of the principal conspirators, exciting his countrymen to break out into open rebellion, by exposing to them the long series of affronts and cruelties they had suffered from their Spanish oppressors. It reminds us of the speeches of the indignant Carthaginian leaders in Livy.

“Seeing,” says the historian, “that the greatness of the undertaking brought with it hesitation, delays, and exposure to accident and change of opinion, this conspirator collected the principal men together in the house of Zinzan in the Albaycin, and addressed them, setting forth the oppression they had constantly endured, at the hands both of public officers and private persons, till they were become, he said, no less slaves than if they had been formally made such,—their wives, children, estates, and even their own persons, being in the power and at the mercy of their enemies, without the hope of seeing themselves freed from such servitude for centuries,—exposed to as many tyrants as they had neighbours, and suffering constantly new impositions and new taxes,—deprived of the right of sanctuary in places where those take refuge who, through accident or (what is deemed among them the more justifiable cause) through revenge, commit crime,—thrust out from the protection of the very churches at whose religious rites we are yet required, under severe penalties, to be present,—subjected to the priests to enrich them, and yet held to be unworthy of favor from God or men,—treated and regarded as Moors among Christians, that we may be despised, and as Christians among Moors, that we may neither be believed nor consoled. ‘They have excluded us, too,’ he went on, ‘from life and human intercourse; for they forbid us to speak our own[p. 526] language, and we do not understand theirs. In what way, then, are we to communicate with others, or ask or give what life requires,—cut off from the conversation of men, and denied what is not denied even to the brutes? And yet may not he who speaks Castilian still hold to the law of the Prophet, and may not he who speaks Moorish hold to the law of Jesus? They force our children into their religious houses and schools, and teach them arts which our fathers forbade us to learn, lest the purity of our own law should be corrupted, and its very truth be made a subject of doubt and quarrels. They threaten, too, to tear these our children from the arms of their mothers and the protection of their fathers, and send them into foreign lands, where they shall forget our manners, and become the enemies of those to whom they owe their existence. They command us to change our dress and wear clothes like the Castilians. Yet among themselves the Germans dress in one fashion, the French in another, and the Greeks in another; their friars, too, and their young men, and their old men, have all separate costumes; each nation, each profession, each class, has its own peculiar dress, and still all are Christians;—while we—we Moors—are not to be allowed to dress like Moors, as if we wore our faith in our raiment and not in our hearts.’”[827]

This is certainly picturesque; and so is the greater part of the whole history, both from its subject and from the manner in which it is treated. Nor is it lacking in dignity and elevation. Its style is bold and abrupt, but true to the idiom of the language; and the current of thought is deep and strong, easily carrying the reader onward with its flood. Nothing in the old chronicling[p. 527] style of the earlier period is to be compared to it, and little in any subsequent period is equal to it for manliness, vigor, and truth.[828]

The War of Granada is the last literary labor its author undertook. He was, indeed, above seventy years old when he finished it; and, perhaps to signify that he now renounced the career of letters, he collected his library, both the classics and manuscripts he had procured with so much trouble in Italy and Greece, and the curious Arabic works he had found in Granada, and presented the whole to his severe sovereign for his favorite establishment of the Escurial, among whose untold treasures they still hold a prominent place. At any rate, after this, we hear nothing of the old statesman, except that, for some reason or other, Philip the Second permitted him to come to court again; and that, a few days after he arrived at Madrid, he was seized with a violent illness, of which he died in April, 1575, seventy-two years old.[829]

On whatever side we regard the character of Mendoza, we feel sure that he was an extraordinary man; but[p. 528] the combination of his powers is, after all, what is most to be wondered at. In all of them, however, and especially in the union of a life of military adventure and active interest in affairs with a sincere love of learning and elegant letters, he showed himself to be a genuine Spaniard;—the elements of greatness which his various fortunes had thus unfolded within him being all among the elements of Spanish national poetry and eloquence, in their best age and most generous development. The loyal old knight, therefore, may well stand forward with those who, first in the order of time, as well as of merit, are to constitute that final school of Spanish literature which was built on the safe foundations of the national genius and character, and can, therefore, never be shaken by the floods or convulsions of the ages that may come after it.

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 Badajoz, continued to enjoy much favor. Originally, 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 produced. The first of these books is called “The Four Hundred Answers to as many Questions of the Illustrious Don Fadrique Enriquez, the Admiral of Castile, and other Persons.” It was printed three times in 1545, the year in which it first appeared, and had undoubtedly a great success in the class of society to which it was addressed, and whose manners and opin[p. 530]ions it strikingly illustrates. It contains at least twenty thousand verses, and was followed, in 1552, by another similar volume, partly 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-humored 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 body of the work. Some of them are wise and some foolish, some are learned and some absurd; but they all bear the impression of their age. Once we have a long letter of advice about a godly life, sent to the Admiral, which, no doubt, was well suited to his case; and repeatedly we get complaints from the old monk himself of his sufferings, and accounts of what he was doing; so that from different parts of the two volumes it would be possible to collect a tolerably distinct picture of the amusements of society, if not its occupations, about the court, at the period when they were written. The poetry is in many respects not unlike that of Tusser, who was contemporary with Escobar, but it is better and more spirited.[830]

[p. 531]The second book of questions and answers to 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 constructed nor so agreeable.[831]

Others followed, like Gonzalez de la Torre, who in 1590 dedicated to the heir-apparent of the Spanish throne a volume of such dull religious riddles as were admired a century before.[832] But nobody, who wrote in this peculiar didactic style of verse, equalled Escobar, and it soon passed out of general notice and regard.[833]

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, Bembo,[p. 532] Giovanni della Casa, and others in Italy. The impulse seems plainly to have been communicated to Spain by the moderns, and not by the ancients. It was because the Italians led the way that the Romans were imitated, and not because the example of Cicero and Seneca had, of itself, been able to form a prose school, of any kind, beyond the Pyrenees.[834] The fashion 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 writers 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,[835] and then of 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;[836] and that he continued to be known as an author, chiefly on subjects connected with his profession, till 1543, before which time he had become weary of the court, and sought a volun[p. 533]tary retirement, where he died, above seventy years old.[837] His translation of the “Amphitryon” of Plautus belongs rather to the theatre, but, like that of Oliva, soon to be mentioned, produced no effect there, and, like his scientific treatises, demands no especial notice. The rest of his works, 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 Portugal.

The chief of them is called “Problems,” and is divided 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, constitutes the substance of the work. The whole is of a very miscellaneous character; most of it grave, like the essays on Knights and Prelates, but some of it amusing, like an essay on the Marriage of Old Men.[838] The best portions are those that have a satirical vein in them; such as the ridicule of litigious old men, and of old men that wear paint.[839]

[p. 534]A Dialogue on Intermittent Fevers, a Dialogue on the Natural Heat of the Body, and a Dialogue 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.[840] A treatise that follows, on the Three Great Annoyances of much talking, much disputing, and much laughing,[841] and a 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 and 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 very attractive, and that partly compensate us for the absurdities of the old and forgotten doctrines in natural history and medicine, which Villalobos inculcated 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 University of Salamanca; after which he went, first, to Alcalá, when it was in the beginning of its glory; then to Paris,[p. 535] whose University had long attracted students from every part of Europe; and finally to Rome, where, 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 the 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 Oliva’s success, endeavoured anew to draw him to Rome; but the love of his country and of literature continued to be stronger than the love of ecclesiastical preferment. He returned, therefore, to Salamanca; became one of the original members of the rich “College of the Archbishop,” founded in 1528; and was successively chosen Professor of Ethics in the University, and its Rector. But he had hardly risen to his highest distinctions, when he died suddenly, and at a moment when so many hopes rested on him, that his death was felt as a misfortune to the cause of letters throughout Spain.[842]

Oliva’s studies at Rome had taught him how successfully the Latin writers had been imitated by the Italians, 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 serious prose discussions in Spain were still carried on in Latin rather than in Spanish.[843] Taking a hint, then,[p. 536] from Castiglione’s “Cortigiano,” and opposing the current of opinion among the learned men with whom he lived and acted, he began a didactic dialogue on the Dignity of Man, formally 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 Use; another urging Córdova, his native city, to improve the navigation of the Guadalquivir, and so obtain a portion of the rich commerce of the Indies, which was then monopolized by Seville; and another, that was delivered at Salamanca, when he was a candidate for the chair of moral philosophy;—in all which his nephew, Morales, the historian, assures us it was his uncle’s strong desire to furnish practical examples of the power and resources of the Spanish language.[844]

The purpose of giving greater dignity to his native tongue, by employing it, instead of the Latin, on all the chief subjects of human inquiry, was certainly a fortunate one in Oliva, and soon found imitators. Juan de Sedeño published, in 1536, 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 belonged to the age.[845] Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, a man of[p. 537] learning, completed the dialogue of Oliva on the Dignity of Man, which had been left unfinished, and, dedicating it to Fernando Cortés, published it in 1546,[846] 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.[847] Pedro de Navarra published, in 1567, forty Moral Dialogues, partly the result of conversations held in an Academia of distinguished persons, who met, from time to time, at the house of Fernando Cortés.[848] Pedro Mexia, the chronicler, wrote a Silva, or Miscellany, divided, in the later editions, into six books, and subdivided into a multitude of separate essays, historical and moral; declaring it to be the first work of the kind[p. 538] in Spanish, which, he says, he considers quite as suitable for such discussions as the Italian.[849] To this, which may be regarded as an imitation of Macrobius or of Athenæus, and which was printed in 1543, he added, in 1547, 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 lightness and exactness of style hardly to have been expected.[850] And finally, to complete the short list, Urrea, a favored soldier of the Emperor, and at one time viceroy 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 contains, mingled with the notions of one who says he trained himself for glory by reading romances of chivalry, not a few amusing anecdotes of duels and military adventures.[851]

[p. 539]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 mentioned 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 commanding genius. His imagination never warms into poetry; his invention is never sufficient to give new and strong views to his subject; and his system of imitating both the Latin and the Italian masters rather tends to debilitate than to impart vigor to his thoughts. But there is a general reasonableness and wisdom in what he says that win and often satisfy us, and these, with his style, which, though sometimes declamatory, is yet, on the whole, 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.[852]

The same general tendency to a more formal and elegant style of discussion is found in a few other ethical and religious authors of the reign of Charles the Fifth that are still remembered; such as Palacios Rubios, who wrote an essay on Military Courage, for the benefit of his son;[853] Vanegas, who, under the title of “The[p. 540] Agony of Passing through Death,” gives us what may rather be considered an ascetic treatise on holy living;[854] and Juan de Avila, sometimes called the Apostle of Andalusia, whose letters are fervent exhortations to virtue and religion, composed with care and often with eloquence, if not with entire purity of style.[855]

The author in this class, however, who during his lifetime had the most influence was Antonio de Guevara, one of the official chroniclers of Charles the Fifth. He was a Biscayan by birth, and passed some of his earlier years at the court of Queen Isabella. In 1528 he became a Franciscan monk, but, enjoying the favor of the Emperor, he seems to have been transformed into a thorough courtier, accompanying his master during his journeys and residences in Italy and other parts of Europe, and rising successively, by the royal patronage, to be court preacher, Imperial historiographer, Bishop[p. 541] of Guadix, and Bishop of Mondoñedo. He died in 1545.[856]

His works were not numerous, but they were fitted to the atmosphere in which they were produced and enjoyed 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,[857] was not only often reprinted in Spanish, but was translated into Latin, Italian, French, and English; in each of which last two languages it appeared many times before the end of the century.[858] It is a kind of romance, founded on the life and character of Marcus Aurelius, and resembles, in some points, the “Cyropædia” of Xenophon; its purpose 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 Mondoñedo adventured beyond his prerogative. He pretended that his Marcus Aurelius was genuine history, and appealed to a manuscript in Florence, which did not exist, as if he had done little more than make a translation of it. In consequence of this, Pedro de Rua, a professor of elegant literature in the college at Soria, addressed a letter to him, in 1540, exposing the fraud. Two other letters followed, written with more freedom and purity of style than any thing in the works of the Bishop himself, and leaving him no real ground on which to stand.[859] He, however, defended himself as[p. 542] 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 purposes 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 contrast to the applause bestowed in France, near the end of the eighteenth century, upon a somewhat similar work on the same subject by Thomas.[860]

After all, however, the “Dial for Princes” is little worthy of the excitement it occasioned. It is filled with letters and speeches ill conceived and inappropriate; and is written in a formal and inflated style. Perhaps we are now indebted to it for nothing so much as for the beautiful fable of “The Peasant of the Danube,” evidently suggested to La Fontaine by one of the discourses through which Guevara endeavoured to give life and reality to his fictions.[861]

[p. 543]In the same spirit, though with less boldness, he wrote his “Lives of the Ten Roman Emperors”; a work which, like his Dial for Princes, he dedicated to Charles the Fifth. In general, he has here followed the authorities on which he claims to found his narrative, such as Dion Cassius and the minor Latin historians, 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, if not of the facts of history, at least of some of the characters he records. His style, however, though it still wants purity and appropriateness, is better and more simple than it is in his romance on Marcus Aurelius.[862]

Similar characteristics mark a large collection of Letters printed by him as early as 1539. Many of them are addressed to persons of great consideration in his time, such as the Marquis of Pescara, the Duke of Alva, Iñigo de Velasco, Grand Constable of Castile, and Fadrique Enriquez, Grand Admiral. But some were evidently never sent to the persons addressed, like the loyal one to Juan de Padilla, the head of the Comuneros, 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[p. 544] of the Emperor Trajan with Plutarch and the Roman Senate, which Guevara vainly protests he translated from the Greek, without saying where he found the originals,[863] and a long epistle about Laïs 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, though they 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 fact, they were all, no doubt, prepared 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 notwithstanding 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.[864]

Besides these works, Guevara wrote several formal treatises. Two are strictly theological.[865] Another is on the Inventors of the Art of Navigation and its Practice;—a subject which might be thought foreign from the[p. 545] 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 Mediterranean.[866] Of his two other treatises, which are all that remain to be noticed, one is called “Contempt of Court Life and Praise of the Country”; and the other, “Counsels for Favorites, and Teachings for Courtiers.” They are moral discussions, suggested by Castiglione’s “Courtier,” then at the height of its popularity, and are written with great elaborateness, in a solemn and stiff style, bearing the same relations to truth and wisdom that Arcadian pastorals do to nature.[867]

All the works of Guevara show the impress of their age, and mark their author’s position at court. They are burdened with learning, yet not without proofs of experience in the ways of the world;—they often show good sense, but they are monotonous from the stately dignity he thinks it necessary to assume on his own account, and from the rhetorical ornament by which he hopes to commend them to the regard of his readers. Such as they are, however, they illustrate and exemplify, more truly, perhaps, than any thing else of their age, the style of writing most in favor at the court of Charles the Fifth, especially during the latter part of that monarch’s reign.

But by far the best didactic prose work of this period, though unknown and unpublished till two centuries afterwards, is that commonly cited under the simple title[p. 546] of “The Dialogue on Languages”;—a work which, at any time, would be deemed remarkable for the naturalness and purity of its style, and is peculiarly so at this period of formal and elaborate eloquence. “I write,” says its author, “as I speak; only I take more pains to think what I have to say, and then I say it as simply as I can; for, to my mind, affectation is out of place in all languages.” Who it was that entertained an opinion so true, but in his time so uncommon, is not certain. Probably it was Juan Valdés, a person who enjoys the distinction of being one of the first Spaniards that embraced the opinions of the Reformation, and the very first who made an effort to spread them. He was educated at the University of Alcalá, and during a part of his life possessed not a little political consequence, being much about the person of the Emperor, and sent by him to act as secretary and adviser to Toledo, the great viceroy of Naples. It is not known what became of him afterwards; but he died in 1540, six years before Charles the Fifth attempted to establish the Inquisition in Naples; and therefore it is not likely that he was seriously molested while he was in office there.[868]

The Dialogue on Languages is supposed to be carried on between two Spaniards and two Italians, at a country-house on the sea-shore, near Naples, and is an acute discussion on the origin and character of the Castilian. Parts of it are learned, but in these the author sometimes falls into errors;[869] other parts are lively and enter[p. 547]taining; and yet others are full of good sense and sound criticism. The principal personage—the one who gives all the instructions and explanations—is named Valdés; and from this circumstance, as well as from some intimations in the Dialogue itself, it may be inferred that the reformer was its author, and that it was written before 1536;[870]—a point which, if established, would account for the suppression of the manuscript, as the work of an adherent of Luther. In any event, the Dialogue was not printed till 1737, and therefore, as a specimen of pure and easy style, was lost on the age that produced it.[871]

For us it is important, because it shows, with more distinctness than any other literary monument of its time, what was the state of the Spanish language in the reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth; a circumstance of consequence to the condition of the literature, and one to which we therefore turn with interest.

As might be expected, we find, when we look back, that the language of letters in Spain has made material progress since we last noticed it in the reign of John the Second. The example of Juan de Mena had been[p. 548] followed, and the national vocabulary enriched during the interval of a century, by successive poets, from the languages of classical antiquity. From other sources, too, and through other channels, important contributions had flowed in. From America and its commerce had come the names of those productions which half a century of intercourse had brought to Spain, and rendered familiar there,—terms few, indeed, in number, but of daily use.[872] From Germany and the Low Countries still more had been introduced by the accession of Charles the Fifth,[873] who, to the great annoyance of his Spanish subjects, arrived in Spain surrounded by foreign courtiers, and speaking with a stranger accent the language of the country he was called to govern.[874] A few words, too, had come accidentally from France; and now, in the reign of Philip the Second, a great number, amounting to the most considerable infusion the language had received since the time of the Arabs, were brought in through the intimate connection of Spain with Italy and the increasing influence of Italian letters and Italian culture.[875]

We may therefore consider that the Spanish language at this period was not only formed, but that it had reached substantially its full proportions, and had re[p. 549]ceived all its essential characteristics. Indeed, it had already for half a century been regularly cared for and cultivated. Alonso de Palencia, who had long been in the service of his country as an ambassador, and was afterwards its chronicler, published a Latin and Spanish Dictionary in 1490; the oldest in which a Castilian vocabulary is to be found.[876] This was succeeded, two years later, by the first Castilian Grammar, the work of Antonio de Lebrixa, who had before published a Latin Grammar in the Latin language, and translated it for the benefit, as he tells us, of the ladies of the court.[877] Other similar and equally successful attempts followed. A purely Spanish Dictionary by Lebrixa, the first of its kind, appeared in 1492, and a Dictionary for ecclesiastical purposes, in both Latin and Spanish, by Santa Ella, succeeded it in 1499; both often reprinted afterwards, and long regarded as standard authorities.[878] 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,[879] 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 of her wise tastes and preferences in whatever regarded the intellectual cultivation of her subjects.[880]

[p. 550]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 prevalence. 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 Provençal race, whose influences in the thirteenth century were felt through the whole Peninsula, claimed, at this period, something of their earlier dignity only below the last range of hills on the coast of the Mediterranean. The Biscayan alone, unchanged as the mountains which sheltered it, still preserved for itself the same separate character it had at the earliest dawnings of tradition,—a character which has continued 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 people 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 Galician, 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 respective provinces, and to some extent in the 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 king[p. 551]doms, are still, like Estremadura and La Mancha, distinguished by peculiarities of phraseology and accent.[881]

Castile alone, and especially Old Castile, claims, as of inherited right, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, the prerogative of speaking absolutely pure Spanish. Villalobos, it is true, who was always a flatterer of royal authority, insisted that this prerogative followed the residences of the sovereign and the court;[882] but the better opinion has been, that the purest form of the Castilian must be sought at Toledo,—the Imperial 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.[883] 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 appearance 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 disputed word to be settled by its use at Toledo.[884] But however this may be,[p. 552] 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 that, from the same period, the Castilian dialect, having vindicated for itself an absolute supremacy 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.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, it is obvious 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 chroniclers, 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 salary of one year, during which he had written nothing of his task, to be returned to the Imperial treasury. This, however, did not imply that he was a[p. 554] successful chronicler.[885] What he wrote was not thought worthy of being published by his contemporaries, and would probably be judged no more favorably by the present generation, unless it discovered a greater regard for historical truth, and a better style, than are found in his discussions on the life and character of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.[886]

Florian de Ocampo, another of the more distinguished of the chroniclers, showed a wide ambition in the plan he proposed to himself; beginning his chronicles of Charles the Fifth as far 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.[887] But he went far enough to show how completely the age for such writing was passed away.[888] Not that he failed in credulity; for of that he had more than enough. It was not, however, the poetical credulity of his predecessors, trusting to the old national traditions, but an easy faith, that believed in the wearisome forgeries called the works of Berosus and Manetho,[889] which had been discredited from their first appearance half a century before, and yet were now used by Ocampo as if they were the probable, if not the sufficient, records of an uninterrupted succession of Spanish kings[p. 555] from Tubal, a grandson of Noah. Such a credulity has no charm about it. But besides this, the work of Ocampo, 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 lower down than the age of the Scipios.

Juan Ginez de Sepúlveda was also charged by the Emperor fitly to record the events of his reign;[890] and so was Pero Mexia;[891] 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, was never published at all.[892] A larger history, however, by the last author, consisting of the lives of all the Roman emperors from Julius Cæsar to Maximilian of Austria, the predecessor of Charles the Fifth, which was printed several times, and is spoken of as an introduction to his Chronicle, shows, notwithstanding its many imperfections of style, that his purpose was to write a true and well-digested history, since he generally refers, under each reign, to the authorities on which he relies.[893]

[p. 556]Such works as these prove to us that we have reached the final limit of the old chronicling style; and that we must now look for the appearance of the different 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, which, during the reign of Charles the Fifth, were of more importance than the imperfect chronicles we have just noticed of the Spanish 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 with 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 Cortés, called, by way of eminence, El Conquistador, the Conqueror. He was born of noble parentage, and carefully bred; and though his fiery spirit drove him from Salamanca before his education could be completed, and brought him to the New World, in 1504, when he was hardly nineteen years old,[894] still the nurture of his youth, so much better than that of most of the other American adventurers, is apparent in his voluminous documents and letters, both published and unpublished. Of these,[p. 557] the most remarkable were, no doubt, five long and detailed Reports to the Emperor on the affairs of Mexico; the first of which, and probably the most curious, dated in 1519, seems to be lost, and the last, belonging, probably, to 1527, exists only in manuscript.[895] The four that remain are well written and have a business-like air about them, as well as a clearness and good taste which remind us sometimes, though rarely, of the “Relazioni” of Machiavelli, and sometimes of Cæsar’s Commentaries. His letters, on the other hand, are occasionally more ornamented. In an unpublished one, written about 1533, and in which, when his fortunes were waning, he sets forth his services and his 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 retired to a morose solitude, where he died in 1554, little consoled by his rank, his wealth, or his glory.

The marvellous achievements of Cortés 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,[896]—who was born at Seville in 1510, and was, for some time, Professor of[p. 558] Rhetoric at Alcalá. His early life, spent in the great mart of the American adventurers, seems to have given him an interest in them and a knowledge of their affairs which led him to write their history. The works he produced, besides one or two of less consequence, were, first, his “History of the Indies,” which, after the Spanish fashion, begins with the creation of the world, and ends with the glories of Spain, though it is chiefly devoted to Columbus and the discovery and conquest of Peru; and, second, his “Chronicle of New Spain,” which is, in truth, merely the History and Life of Cortés, and which, with this more appropriate title, was reprinted by Bustamente, in Mexico, in 1826.[897] As the earliest 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 and Italian.

But though Gomara’s style is easy and flowing, both in his mere narration and in those parts of his works which so amply describe the resources of the newly discovered countries, he did not succeed in producing any thing of permanent authority. He was the secretary of Cortés, and was misled by information received from him, and from other persons, who were too much a part of the story they undertook to relate to tell it fairly.[898][p. 559] His mistakes, in consequence, are great and frequent, and were exposed with much zeal by Bernal Diaz, an old soldier, who, having already been twice to the New World, went with Cortés to Mexico in 1519,[899] and fought there so often and so long, that, many years afterwards, he declared he could sleep with comfort only when his armour was on.[900] As soon as he read the accounts of Gomara, he set himself sturdily at work to answer them, and in 1558 completed his task.[901] The book he thus produced is written with much personal vanity, 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 Cortés, we feel sure we are fast 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 Fernandez de Oviedo. He was born at Madrid, in 1478,[902] and, having been well educated at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, as one of the pages of Prince John, was sent out, in 1513, as a supervisor of gold-smeltings, to San Domingo,[903] where, except occasional visits to Spain[p. 560] and to different Spanish possessions in America, he lived nearly forty years, devoted to the affairs of the New World. Oviedo seems, from his youth, to have had a passion for writing; and, besides several less considerable works, among which were imperfect chronicles of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Charles the Fifth, and a life of Cardinal Ximenes,[904] he prepared two of no small value.

The most important of these two is “The Natural and General History of the Indies,” filling fifty books, of which the first portions, embracing twenty-one, were published in 1535, while the rest are still found only in manuscript. As early as 1525, when he was at Toledo, and offered Charles the Fifth a summary of the History of Hispaniola, 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 divisions open, and continued to make additions to them nearly to the time of his death.[905]

[p. 561]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;[906] and as his divisions of the subject are those which naturally arise from its geography, he appears to have gone judiciously about his task. But the materials he was to use were in too crude a state to be easily manageable, and the whole subject was too wide and various for his powers. He falls, therefore, into a loose, rambling style, instead of aiming at philosophical condensation; and, far from an abridgment, which his work ought to have been, he gives us chronicling, documentary accounts of an immense extent of newly discovered country, and of the extraordinary events that had been passing there,—sometimes too short and slight to be interesting, and sometimes too detailed for the reader’s patience. He was evidently a learned man, and maintained a correspondence with Ramusio, the Italian geographer, which could not fail to be useful to both parties.[907] And he was desirous to write in a good and eloquent style, in which he sometimes succeeded. He has, therefore, on the whole, produced a series of accounts of the natural condition, the aboriginal inhabitants, and the political affairs of the wide-spread Spanish possessions in America, as they stood in the middle of the sixteenth century, which[p. 562] is of great value as a vast repository of facts, and not wholly without merit as a composition.[908]

The other considerable work of Oviedo, the fruit of his old age, is devoted to fond recollections of his native country and of the distinguished men he had known there. He calls it “Las Quinquagenas,” and it consists of a series of dialogues, in which, with little method or order, he gives gossiping accounts of the principal families that figured in Spain during the times of Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles the Fifth, mingled with anecdotes and recollections, such as—not without a simple-hearted exhibition of his own vanity—the memory of his long and busy life could furnish. It appears from[p. 563] the Dialogue on Cardinal Ximenes, and elsewhere, that he was employed on it as early as 1545;[909] but the year 1550 occurs yet more frequently among the dates of its imaginary conversations,[910] and at the conclusion he very distinctly declares that it was finished on the 23d of May, 1556, when he was seventy-nine years old. He died in Valladolid, the next year.

But both during his life and after his death, Oviedo had a formidable adversary, who, pursuing nearly the same course of inquiries respecting the New World, came almost constantly to conclusions quite opposite. This was no less a person than Bartolomé de las Casas, or Casaus, the apostle and defender of the American Indians,—a man who would have been remarkable in any age of the world, and who does not seem yet to have gathered in the full harvest of his honors. He was born in Seville, probably in 1474; and in 1502, having gone through a course of studies at Salamanca, 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 early 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 natures and slight frames had already been subjected, in the mines and in[p. 564] other forms of toil, to a servitude so harsh, that the original inhabitants of the island were beginning to waste away under the severity of their labors. From this moment he devoted his life to their emancipation. In 1510 he took holy orders, and continued 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 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 freshness of his youth. He died, while on a visit of business, at Madrid, in 1566, at the advanced age, as is commonly supposed, of ninety-two.[911]

Among the principal opponents of his benevolence were Sepúlveda,—one of the leading men of letters and casuists of the time in Spain,—and Oviedo, who, from his connection with the mines and his share in the government of different parts of the newly discovered coun[p. 565]tries, 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, wrote, and toiled against him, in every way 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 Sepúlveda concerning 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 opposite corner of this room, to serve your Majesty, unless I believed I should at the same time serve God,”[912]—when he said this, he uttered a sentiment that really governed his life and constituted 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 1542,[913] and dedicated to the prince, afterwards Philip the Second;—a tract in which, no doubt, the sufferings and wrongs of the Indians are much overstated by the indignant zeal of its author, but still one whose expositions are founded in truth, and by their fervor awakened all Europe to a sense of the injustice they set forth. Other short treatises followed, written with similar spirit and power, especially those in reply to Sepúlveda; but none was so often reprinted, either at home or abroad, as the first,[914] and none ever produced[p. 566] so deep and solemn an effect on the world. They were all collected and published in 1552; and, besides being translated into other languages at the time, an edition in Spanish, and a French version of the whole, with two more treatises than were contained in the first collection, appeared at Paris in 1822, prepared by Llorente.

The great work of Las Casas, however, still remains inedited,—a General History of the Indies from 1492 to 1520, begun by him in 1527 and finished in 1561, but of which he ordered that no portion should be published within forty years of his death. Like his other works, it shows marks of haste and carelessness, and is written in a rambling style; but its value, notwithstanding his too fervent zeal for the Indians, is great. He had been 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 documents, which are now lost. He says he had known Cortés “when he was so low and humble, that he besought favor from the meanest servant of Diego Velasquez”; and he knew him afterwards, he tells us, when, in his pride of place at the court of the Emperor, he ventured to jest about the pretty corsair’s part he had played in the affairs of Montezuma.[915] He knew, too, Gomara and Oviedo, and gives[p. 567] 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 settlements in America cannot, even now, be properly written.[916]

But it is not necessary to go farther into an examination of the old accounts of the discovery and conquest of Spanish America, though there are many more which, like those we have already considered, are partly books of travel through countries full of wonders, partly 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 curious from the facts they record and the glimpses they give of manners and character. Among those that might be added are the stories by Vaca 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;[917] the short account of the conquest of Peru written by Francisco de Xerez,[918] and the ampler one, of the same wild achievements, which Augustin de Çarate began on the spot, and was prevented by an officer of Gonzalo de Pizarro from[p. 568] finishing till after his return home.[919] But they may all be passed over, as of less consequence 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 resembling the old chronicles, but yet one that announces the approach of those more regular forms of history for which it furnishes abundant materials.

END OF VOL. I.