The two coplas with which the book of Las Querellas began, are altogether superior in style, harmony, and elegance.

There seems to be a century between verse and verse, between language and language; but what is yet more remarkable, to meet with coplas de arte mayor of equal merit, as well in diction as in cadence, we must overleap almost two centuries more, and look for them in Juan de Mena.[B]

If the impulse which this great king gave to letters had been continued by his successors, Spanish literature would not only be two centuries forwarder, but would have produced more works, and those more perfect. The ferocious character of the times did not allow it. The fire of civil war began to blaze in the last years of Alfonso, with the disobedience and rebellion of his son, and continued, almost without intermission, for a whole century, till it arrived at the last pass of atrocity and horror in the tempestuous and terrible reign of Pedro. The Castilians, during this unhappy period, seem to have had no spirit but for hatred, no arms but for destruction. How was it possible, amidst the agitation of such turbulent times, for the torch of genius to shine out tranquilly, or for the songs of the muses to be heard? Thus only a very scanty number of poets can be named as flourishing then: Juan Ruiz, archpriest of Hita; the Infante Don Juan Manuel, author of Conde Lucanór; the Jew, Don Santo; and Ayala, the historiographer. The verses of these writers are some of them lost, others exist wholly unedited, and those only of the archpriest of Hita have seen the light, which, fortunately, are the most worthy, perhaps, of being known. The subject of his poems is the history of his loves, interspersed with apologues, allegories, tales, satires, proverbs, and even devotions. This author surpassed all former writers; and but few of those by whom he was succeeded, excelled him in faculty of invention, in liveliness of fancy and talent, or in abundance of jests and wit; and if he had taken care to choose or to follow more determinate and fixed metres, and had his diction been less uncouth and cumbrous, this work would have been one of the most curious monuments of the Middle Age. But the uncouthness of the style makes the reading insufferable. Of his versification and manner, let the following verses serve as specimens, in which the poet begs of Venus to interpose her influence with a lady whom he loved, who was, according to his pencil,

Venus, amongst other counsels, says to him:—

Other passages much more striking might be quoted; and amongst them the description of the power of money, which has a severity and freedom, of which it would be difficult to find examples in other writers of that time, either in or out of Spain, though the independent Dante were to enter into the comparison; or the facetious apology and praise of little women, which begins:

But the examples already quoted will suffice for our assertion. Sometimes the poet, weary perhaps of monotony and heaviness, varies from the measure which he generally uses, and introduces another combination of rhymes in songs which he mingles with his narrative; as, for instance, the following:—

Don Tomas Antonio Sanchez has published the works of almost all the authors mentioned, with illustrations, excellent, as well for the notices given of them, as for the elucidation of the text, which the antiquity and rudeness of the language, and the errors of manuscripts, by their complication, obscured. There, as in an armoury, rest these venerable antiques, precious objects of curiosity for the learned, of investigation for the grammarian, of observation for the philosopher and historian, whilst the poet, without losing time in studying them, salutes them with respect, as the cradle of his language and his art.

CHAPTER II.
OF SPANISH POETRY TO THE TIME OF GARCILASSO.

Both language and versification present themselves more fully formed and more vigorous, in the verses written by the poets of the fifteenth century; and this progress is matter of no surprise, if we attend to the multitude of circumstances which at that time concurred to favour poetry. The floral games, established at Tolosa in the middle of the former century, and introduced by the kings of Arragon into their states towards the conclusion of the same; the concourse of wits who contended for the prizes proposed at these solemnities; the ceremonies observed in them; the rank and consideration given to the art of song; the favour of princes; a more extended knowledge of ancient books; the light which now broke forth from all parts, and dispersed the dark mists of so many barbarous centuries; a growing acquaintance with Italy, which, with a happier and more mercurial genius, had been enlightened before the rest of Europe;—all contributed powerfully to the kind reception of this art, the first that becomes cultivated when nations approach their civilization. Thus, in casting our eyes upon the ancient Cancioneros wherein the poetry of this period was collected, the first thing that surprises us is the multitude of authors, and the second, their quality. Juan the Second, who found much pleasure in listening to their rhymes, and who occasionally rhymed himself, introduced this taste into his court, and thus all the grandees, in imitation of him, either protected or cultivated it. The Constable Don Alvaro made verses; the Duque de Arjona made verses; the celebrated D. Enrique de Villena made verses; the Marques de Santillana made verses; in fact, a hundred others more or less illustrious than they.

The form which had now been given to versification was much less imperfect than that of former ages. Coplas de arte mayor and octosyllabic verses prevailed over the tedious heaviness of the Alexandrine: their crossed rhymes struck upon the ear more delightfully, and stunned it not with the rude and heavy hammered sounds of the quadruplicate rhyme; whilst the poetic period, more clear and voluminous, came from time to time upon the spirit with some pretensions of elegance and grace. The writers of this period sweetened down a little the austere aspect which the art had hitherto presented, and abandoning the lengthy poems, devotional legends, and wearisome series of dry precepts and bald sentences, devoted themselves to subjects more proportioned to their powers, and the murmurs of the love-song and tone of the elegy were now most commonly felt upon their lips. Lastly, a more general reading of the Latin writers taught them sometimes the mode of imitation, and at others, furnished those allusions, similes, and ornaments, which served to embellish their verse.

Amongst the great number of poets which flourished then, the one that most excels all others for the talent, knowledge, and dignity of his writings, is Juan de Mena. He raised, in his Laberinto, the most interesting monument of Spanish poetry in that age, and with it left all cotemporary writers far behind him. The poet in this work is represented as designing to sing the vicissitudes of Fortune: whilst he dreads the difficulty of the attempt, Providence appears to him, introduces him into the palace of that divinity, and becomes his guide and tutor. There he beholds, first, the earth, of which he gives a geographical description, and afterwards the three grand wheels of Fortune, upon which revolve the present, past, and future times. Each wheel is composed of seven circles, allegorical symbols of the influence which the seven planets have upon the lot of men, in the inclinations which they give them; and in each circle are an innumerable multitude of people, who receive their temper and disposition from the planet to which the circle belongs; the chaste from the moon, the warlike from Mars, the wise from the sun, and so on of the rest. The wheel of time present is in motion, the other two at rest; whilst that of future time is covered with a veil, so that although forms and the images of men are apparent, they are but dimly distinguishable. The work, conceived upon this plan, naturally divides itself into seven divisions: and the poet in describing what he sees, or in conversing with Providence, paints all the important personages with whom he was acquainted; recounts their celebrated actions, assigns their causes, displays great information in history, mythology, natural, moral, and political philosophy, and deduces, from time to time, admirable precepts and maxims for the conduct of life, and the government of nations. Thus the Laberinto, far from being a collection of frivolous or insignificant coplas, where the most we have to look for is artifice of style and rhyme, must be regarded as the production of a man learned in all the compass of science which that epoch permitted, and as the depository of all that was then known.

If the invention of this picture, which, without doubt, is the product of a comprehensive and philosophical mind, had belonged exclusively to our poet, his merit would be infinitely greater, and we must have conceded to him, in a plan so noble, the gift of genius. But the terrible visions of Dante and the Trionfi of Petrarch being now known in Spain, the force of fancy necessary to create the plan and argument of the Laberinto, appears much less; Mena having done nothing more than imitate these writers, changing the situation of the scene in which he places his allegorical world. His sentiments are noble and grand, his views just and virtuous. We see him take advantage of his subject, and apostrophize therein the monarch of Castile, reminding him that his laws should not be like spiders' webs, but curb alike the strong and the weak: elsewhere he prays him to repress the horror of a practice that was then growing common, of poisonings between the closest connexions; now he is indignant at the barbarism which had burnt the books of D. Enrique de Villena;[C] and now he represents the slaughters and disorders in Castile, as a punishment for the repose in which the grandees were leaving the infidels, in order to attend solely to their own ambition and avarice.

Juan de Mena expresses himself generally with more fire and energy than delicacy and grace; his course is unequal; his verses at times are bold and resonant, at others, they grow weak for want of cadence and metre; his style, animated, vivid, and natural at times, occasionally borders on the turgid and the trivial: language, in fine, in his hands is a slave that he holds but to obey him, and follow willingly or by compulsion the impulse which the poet gives it. No one has manifested, in this way, either greater boldness or loftier pretension; he suppresses syllables, modifies phrases at his will, lengthens or contracts words at his pleasure, and when he does not find in his own language the expressions, or modes of expression, which he wants, he sets himself to search for them in the Latin, the French, the Italian, in short, where he can. Spanish idiom not being yet finished in its formation, gave occasion and opportunity for these licenses,—licenses which would have been converted into privileges of poetic language, if the talents of this writer had been greater, and his reputation more permanent. The poets of the following age, whilst polishing the harshnesses of diction, and making an innovation in the metres and subjects of their compositions, did not preserve the noble freedom and acquisitions which their predecessors had gained in favour of the tongue. Had they followed their example in this, the Castilian language, and, above all, the language of its poetry, so harmonious, so various, so elegant and majestic, would have had no cause to envy the richness and flexibility of any other. The Laberinto has met with the fate of all works which, departing from the common sphere, form epochs in an art. It has been several times printed and reprinted: many have imitated it, and some respectable critics have written commentaries on it, and, amongst them, Brocensis. Thus it has been transmitted to us: if it has not been read throughout with delight, from the rudeness of the language and monotony of the versification, it has at least been dipped into with pleasure, occasionally quoted, and always mentioned with esteem. The author would have conciliated greater respect, if, when he imposed on himself the task of writing on the events of the day, he had removed at a distance from the tumults and intrigues which were then passing in Castile. This would have been the way both to see them better, and to judge of them with greater freedom. Juan de Mena took upon himself a duty which a courtier could not satisfactorily fulfil; and his vigorous spirit, employing but half its power in regard to circumstances, was left far below the dignity and eminence to which, with greater boldness, it could easily have attained.

The other most distinguished poets of this century were the Marques de Santillana, one of the most generous and valiant knights that adorned it, a learned man, and an easy and sweet love poet, just and serious in sentiment; Jorge Manrique, who flourished after, and who, in his coplas on the death of his father, left a fragment of poetry, the most regular and purely written of that time; Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, who wrote verses with much fire and vivacity; and, lastly, Macías, anterior to them all, the author of only four songs, but who will never be forgotten for his amours and melancholy death.[D]

Whoever looks in the old Cancioneros for a poetry constantly animated, interesting, and agreeable, will be disappointed. After perusing one or two pieces, wherein indulgence towards the writer supplies their frequent want of merit, the book drops from our hands, and we have little inclination to stoop to resume it. It is true that we often meet with an ingenious thought, an apposite image, and a stanza well constructed; but it is equally true, that we stumble, at the same instant, upon ideas puerile, mean, and trivial, upon uncouth verses, and indeterminate rhymes. The writer is seen to struggle with the rudeness of the language, as well as with the heaviness of the versification, and, in spite of all the efforts he makes, entirely overcome by the difficulty, he neither strikes out true expression nor elegant harmony. They knew, and they handled Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and other ancient poets; but if occasionally they subjected them to their service with propriety, they more frequently drew from those sources incoherent allusions, and a learning that degenerated into inapposite and puerile pedantry.[E] They did not succeed in imitating either the simplicity of their plans, or the admirable art with which, in their compositions, they knew how to unfold a thought with vigour, and to sustain and graduate the effect from first to last. Finally,—their verses, though more tolerable than those of a more ancient period, have the great disadvantage of monotony, and inability to accommodate themselves to the variety, elevation, and grandeur which the poetic period ought to possess in correspondence with the images, affections, and sentiments it developes.

CHAPTER III.
FROM GARCILASSO TO THE ARGENSÓLAS.

To Juan Boscán is generally attributed the introduction into Spanish poetry of endecasyllables, and Italian measures. Andreas Navagero, ambassador of Venice to the court of Spain, recommended to Boscán this novelty, which, begun by him, and followed by Garcilasso, Mendoza, Acuña, Cetina, and other fine spirits, effected an entire change in the art. Not that endecasyllabic verse was unknown in Castile before. There are some specimens of it in the Conde Lucanór, written in the fourteenth century; and the Marques de Santillana in the fifteenth, composed many sonnets in the mode of the Italians. But these essays had not obtained consequence, and it was only in the time of Boscán that the poets generally devoted themselves to this species of versification. And herein, if rightly I judge, the intimate relation that now subsisted between the two nations had more influence than the authority of a second-rate poet like Boscán; it is, notwithstanding, without dispute much to his glory to have been the author of so happy a revolution, and to have contributed by his example and his talents to its establishment.

But those who were sufficiently satisfied with the old versification, instantly rose in clamour against the innovation, and treated its favourers as guilty of treason against poetry and their country. At the head of these, Christoval de Castillejo, in the satires which he wrote against the Petrarquistas (for so he called them) compared this novelty to that which Luther was then introducing in religion, and making Boscán and Garcilasso appear in the other world before the tribunal of Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other troubadours of earlier time, he puts into their mouth the judgment and condemnation of the new metres. To this end he supposes that Boscán repeats a sonnet, and Garcilasso an octave, before their judges, and presently adds:

If Juan de Mena and Manrique could then have manifested any regret, it would have been for not having had the new versification established when they wrote. The fiery and daring genius of the one, the grave and sedate spirit of the other, would have found for the expression of their thoughts and pictures, a fit instrument in endecasyllabic verse. They would instantly have known that the coplas de arte mayor, reduced to their elements, were one continued and wearying combination of verses of six syllables; that the rhymed octosyllabics serve rather for the epigram and the madrigal than for sublime poetry, and that coplas de piè quebrado,[F] essentially opposed to all harmony and pleasure, ought not to be defended. This Castillejo could not know; he wrote indeed the Castilian language with propriety, facility, and purity; but the inspiration, the invention, sublime and animated imagery, force of thought, warmth of emotion, variety, harmony,—all these qualities, without which, or without many of which, no one can be considered a poet—all were wanting in him. Hence it is nothing extraordinary, that, entrenched in his coplas, all sufficient for the acute and ingenious thoughts in which he abounds, he perceived not the need that Spanish poetry had for the new versification to issue from its infancy. The latter had more freedom and ease, gave opportunity to vary the pauses and cesuras; and the variety of combinations of which long and short verses are capable, supplied a flexible instrument for the various purposes of imitation. Such were the advantages gained by the new system, and they were all recognised by the new geniuses who adopted it; but it was an exact touchstone of the quality of a poet, and Castillejo, finding it a rigorous one, would not hold with it. This circumstance was of much more consequence to the dispute than at first sight appears; for though there had not been the great difference which there was between the two metres, that party would have borne away the palm, which could have produced in its favour the most, and the most agreeable verses and compositions. In this point of view, the single talent of Garcilasso should diminish and reduce to nothing, as he did, all the partisans of the Copla. A thing truly extraordinary, not to say admirable! A youth who died at the age of thirty-three, devoted to the bearing of arms, without any regular studies, with only his native genius, assisted by application and good taste, drew Spanish poetry suddenly forth from its infancy, guided it happily by the footsteps of the ancients, and of the most celebrated moderns then known; and coming into rivalry with each in turn, adorned it with graces and appropriate sentiments, and taught it to speak a language, pure, harmonious, sweet, and elegant! His genius, more delicate and tender than strong and sublime, inclined him by preference to the sweet images of the country, and to the native sentiments of the eclogue and elegy. He had a vivid and pleasing fancy, a mode of thought noble and decorous, an exquisite sensibility; and this happy natural disposition, assisted by the study of the ancients, and intercourse with the Italians, produced those compositions which, though so few, conciliated for him instantly an estimation and a respect, which succeeding ages have not ceased to confirm.

There are some who wish that he had given himself up more fully to his own ideas and sentiments; that, studying the ancients with equal devotedness, he had not allowed himself to be led away so much by the taste of translating them; that he had not abandoned the images and emotions which his own fine talent could suggest, for the images and emotions of others; that, as for the most part he is a model of purity and elegance, he had caused some traces which he keeps of antique rudeness and negligence to disappear; they wish, lastly, that the disposition of his eclogues had preserved more unity and connexion between the persons and the objects introduced in them. But these defects cannot counterbalance the many beauties which his poetry contains, and it is a privilege allowed to all that open a new path, to err without any great diminution of their glory. Garcilasso is the first that gave to Spanish poetry wings, gentility, and grace; and for this was needed, beyond all comparison, more talent, than to avoid the errors into which his youth, his course of life, and the imperfection of human powers, caused him to fall.

To the supreme endowments which he possesses as a poet, is added that of being the Castilian writer who managed in those times the language with the most propriety and success. Many words and phrases of his cotemporaries have grown old and disappeared: the language of Garcilasso, on the contrary, if we except some Italianisms, which his constant intercourse with that nation caused him to contract, is still alive and flourishing, and there is scarcely one of his modes of speech which cannot be appropriately used at the present day.

So many kinds of merit, united in a single man, excited the admiration of his age, which instantly gave him the title of the Prince of Castilian poets—foreigners call him the Spanish Petrarch; three celebrated writers have illustrated and written comments on him; he has been printed times innumerable, and all parties and poetical sects have respected him. His beautiful passages pass from lip to lip with all who relish tender thoughts and soothing images; and if not the greatest Castilian poet, he is at least the most classical, and the one that has conciliated the most votes and praises, who has maintained this his reputation the most inviolate, and who will probably never perish whilst Castilian language and Castilian poetry endure.

The impulse given by Garcilasso was followed by the other geniuses of his time; by D. Hernando de Acuña, Gutierre de Cetina, D. Luis de Haro, D. Diego de Mendoza, and a few others, but all very unequal to him: and to meet with a writer in whom the art made any progress, we must look for him in Fray Luis de Leon. This most learned man, versed in every kind of erudition, familiar with the ancient languages, connected by ties of friendship with all the learned of his time, was one of those writers to whom the Spanish language has owed most, for the nerve and propriety with which he wrote it; and as the one who gave to its poetry a character hitherto unknown. The songs and sonnets of Garcilasso were written in the elegiac and sentimental tone of Petrarch, and his Flor de Gnido was the only one of his compositions in which he approaches near to the character of ancient lyric poetry. Luis de Leon, full of Horace, whom he was constantly studying, took from him the march, the enthusiasm, and the fire of the ode; and in a diction natural and without ornament, he knew how to assume elevation, force, and majesty. His profession and his genius inclined him more to the moral lyric than to the epic, yet his Profecía del Tajo[2] shows what he could have accomplished in this; in that he has left some excellent odes, which very nearly approach, if they do not equal, the models which he proposed to himself for imitation. His principal merit and character in them, is that of producing majestic and forcible thoughts, grand images, and sententious maxims, without effort, and with the greatest simplicity. His style and diction are animated, pure, and copious, as though they gushed from a rich and crystal spring. He is not so fortunate in his versification; although sweet, fluent, and graceful, his verse wants stateliness, and fails not unfrequently from want of harmony and fulness. With this defect must be named another, greater yet in my estimation, which is, that no one shows less poetry when the heat abandons him: languid then and prosaic, he neither touches, nor moves, nor elevates; the merit remains alone of his diction and style, which are always sound and pure, even when they preserve neither life nor colour.

To this same epoch belongs, in my opinion, the poetry of Francisco de la Torre, published by Quevedo in 1631. No one doubted then that these were the works of a poet anterior to the editor; but in these later days, a gentleman of much merit, D. Luis Velasquez, reprinted them with a preliminary discourse, wherein he assures us they were the production of Quevedo, who wished to publish his amatory verses under a feigned name. The absolute ignorance that existed of the quality and particulars of this Francisco de la Torre; the example of Lope de Vega, who published, under the name of Burguillos, poetry known to be his own; the similarity of style which Velasquez thought he saw between these verses and those of Quevedo, with other less important reasons, were the foundation of this opinion, which at that time was followed without any contradiction.

But these proofs not only pass for mere conjectures, but being moreover unconfirmed by any positive fact, vanish the instant we examine the nature and character of the poetry. He who might not know how to distinguish the verses of Quevedo from those of Garcilasso, or any other poet of the former age, could alone confound Francisco de la Torre with him. Verses gleaned from the works of both writers, drawn from their places, and jumbled together, are not proof sufficient of similarity; nor, even taken in this manner, will they, if they are well examined, show the similarity so well as is supposed. To know if the poetry of Francisco de la Torre be, or be not that of Quevedo, it is absolutely necessary, after reading the former, to seek out in the Erato or Euterpe of the latter, the verses which he there gives for pastoral poetry: it is then that the vast difference which subsists between them becomes palpable; whether we examine the diction, the style, the verses, the images, or nature of the composition. It is not possible to mistake them, as it is impossible ever to confound women that are naturally beautiful with those who torture themselves to appear so.[G]

In fact, these poems of Francisco de la Torre are the most exquisite of the fruits which the Parnassus of Spain had then produced. All of them pastorals, his images, his thoughts, and his style, detract nothing from this character, but preserve the most rigorous keeping with it. His most eminent qualities are simplicity of expression, the liveliness and tenderness of his emotions, the luxury and smiling amenity of his fancy. No Castilian poet has known how to draw from rural objects so many tender and melancholy sentiments: a turtle-dove, a hind, an oak thrown down, a fallen ivy, strike him, agitate him, and excite his tenderness and enthusiasm. The imitations of the ancients, in which his poems abound, are recast so naturally in his character and style, as to be entirely identified with him. It is a pity that to the purity of his language was not added greater study of elegance, which suffers at times from trivial words and prosaic expressions. At times, also, the diction becomes obscure from dislocations and omissions of expression, the results perhaps of negligence, and a corruption of the manuscript. Lastly, we miss in his eclogues variety, knowledge of the art of dialogue, and opposition and contrast in his situations and interlocutors: the poet who paints and feels with so much delicacy and fire when he speaks for himself, does not succeed in making others speak, and loses himself in uniform and prolix descriptions, which at last weary and grow tiresome.

Hitherto poetry preserved the natural graces and simplicity which it had caught from Garcilasso; and Luis de Leon had succeeded in giving it some sublimity and grandeur: Francisco de la Torre inclined more to subjects that require a middle style, such as those which rural nature presents. He had ornaments of taste, but without ostentation or wealth, and his language was more pure and graceful than brilliant and majestic. The best supporters of this style were Francisco de Figueroa, who in his eclogue of Tirsi gave the first example of good blank verse in Spanish; Jorge de Montemayor, who, with his Diana, introduced the taste and love of pastoral novels; and Gil Polo, one of his imitators, who, less happy than he in invention, had much the advantage of him in versification, and almost arrived at the point of throwing him into the shade. But, passing from these writers to the Andalusians[H], the art will now be seen to take a change in taste, to assume a tone more lofty and vehement, to enrich and adorn the diction, and to manifest the intention of surprising and ravishing; in short, to aspire to the mens divinior atque os magna soniturum, by which Horace characterises true poetry.

At the head of these authors must indisputably be named Fernando de Herrera, a man to whom poetic elocution owes more than to any other. His genius was equal to his industry; and, familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he devoted himself to the imitation of the great writers of antiquity, to form a poetic language which might compete in pomp and wealth with that which they used in their verses. He was not, it is true, circumstanced like Juan de Mena; he had not the license to suppress syllables, syncopate phrases, or change terminations. This physical part of the language was now fixed by Garcilasso and his imitators, and could not suffer alteration. But the picturesque part might, and in fact, did receive from him great improvements: he made much use of the compound epithets that already existed, he introduced other new ones, he re-established many forgotten adjectives, to which he imparted new strength and freshness by the fitness with which he applied them, and used in fine more phrases and modes of speech distinct from usual and common language than any other poet. To this careful attention, he added another quality, not less essential, that of painting to the ear by means of imitative harmony, making the sounds bear analogy with the image. He breaks them; he suspends them; he drags them wearily along, he precipitates them at a stroke; he rubs them into roughness, he touches them into mildness;—in short, they sometimes roll fluently and easily along, at others they pierce the ear with a calm and quiet melody. These effects, which the verses of Herrera produce by the mechanism of their language, distinguish them from prose in such a manner, that though they may be broken up, and lose their measure and cadence, they still preserve the picturesque and poetic character which the poet stamped upon them.

If from the exterior forms we pass to the essential qualities, it may be said that no one surpasses Herrera in force and boldness of imagination, very few in warmth and vivacity of emotion, and none even equal him, if we except Rioja, in dignity and decorum. The greater part of his poems consists of elegies, songs, and sonnets, in the taste of Petrarch. It was Petrarch who first, deviating from the manner in which the ancients painted love, gave to this passion a tone more ideal and sublime. He refined it from the weakness of the senses, converting it into a species of religion; and reduced its activity to be constantly admiring and adoring the perfections of the object beloved, to please itself with its pains and martyrdom, and to reckon its sacrifices and privations as so many other pleasures. Herrera having, throughout his life, a passion for the Countess of Gelves, gave to his love the heroism of Platonic affection; and under the titles of Light, Sun, Star, Eliodora, consecrated to her a passion fiery, tender, and constant, but accompanied by so much respect and decorum, that her modesty could not be alarmed, nor her virtue offended. In all the verses which he devoted to this lady, there is more veneration and self-denial, than hope and desire. This taste has the inconvenience of running into metaphysics nothing intelligible, into a distillation of pains, griefs, and martyrdoms, very distant from truth and nature, and which, consequently, neither interests nor affects. To this error, which may occasionally be remarked in Herrera, must be added that his diction, too much studied and refined, offends, almost always, by affectation, and not seldom by obscurity. The style and language of love must flow more easy and unencumbered, to be graceful and delicate. Thus Herrera, who, no doubt, loved with vehemence and tenderness, seems, in uttering his sentiments, to be more engaged about the manner of expressing them, than with the desire of interesting by them; and to this cause must be attributed, that, of the Spanish poets, he is the one whose love-verses are the least calculated to pass from lip to lip, and from nation to nation.

But the composition in which this rich poetic diction shines equally with his ardent and vigorous imagination, is the elevated Ode, which Herrera, a happy imitator of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin poetry, knew how to fill with his fire, and thus to become the rival of the ancients. Lyric poetry, in its origin, was very distant from the range of ordinary ideas. The poet, possessed by an afflatus which it was not in his power either to moderate or to rule, chanted his verses before the altars of the temples, in the public theatres, at the head of armies, in grand national solemnities. The genius that inspired him caused him then to take flight to other regions, and to see things hidden from the ken of common mortals. Thence, in a language of fire, and through all their wonderful circumstances, in grand and forcible addresses to the people, he made Truth descend from on high, he opened the gates of destiny, and announced the future; tuned hymns of gratitude and praise to gods and heroes; or, filling with patriotic and martial fury armed squadrons, called them on to battle and to victory. In this situation of things, the lyric poet should not appear a mortal like the rest of mankind; his agitation, his language, the numbers to which he reduced it, the music with which he sang it, the boldness of his figures, the grandeur of his conceptions,—all should concur to the consideration of him, in these moments of enthusiasm, as a supernatural being, an interpreter of the Divinity, a sibyl, and a prophet.

Such, in ancient times, was the character of the ode; which modern nations have since introduced into their poetry with more or less success. But, stript of the accompaniment of song, and removed from solemnities and numerous assemblages, it has been but a weak reflection of the first inspiration. The modern poets of Spain have thought that, to restore it to the exalted and divine character which it held at its origin, it was necessary to transplant it again to the regions whence it sprung, and to fill it with antique ideas, images, and even phrases. Herrera was the first that thought so. Horace would have adopted with pleasure his ode to Don Juan of Austria; his hymn on the battle of Lepanto breathes throughout the most fervent enthusiasm, and is adorned with the rich images and daring phrases that characterise Hebrew poetry; whilst the elegiac cancion to King Don Sebastian, animated with the same spirit as the hymn, but much more beautiful, is full of the melancholy and agitation which that unhappy catastrophe should produce on a vivid imagination. Even in songs, little interesting in their subject and composition, are found flights daring and worthy of Pindar. So absolutely superior to all others is his assiduous attention to diction and the poetry of style, that never can three of his verses be possibly mistaken for those of any other poet. The following passage may serve as a specimen here, extracted from his song to San Fernando, which is not one of the best.