[760] It gives an account of the reception of the news at the palace, (Obras de Mendoza, Lisboa, 1690, 4to, p. 78), and may have been spoken before Calderon’s well-known play, “El Sitio de Breda.”
[761] Four persons appear in this loa,—a part of which is sung,—and, at the end, Seville enters and grants them all leave to act in her city. Viage, 1614, ff. 4-8.
[762] Lyra Poética de Vicente Sanchez, Zaragoza, 1688, 4to, p. 47.
[763] Joco-Seria, 1653, ff. 77, 82. In another he parodies some of the familiar old ballads (ff. 43, etc.) in a way that must have been very amusing to the mosqueteros: a practice not uncommon in the lighter dramas of the Spanish stage, most of which are lost. Instances of it are found in the entremes of “Melisandra,” by Lope (Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1609, p. 333); and two burlesque dramas in Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XLV., 1679,—the first entitled “Traycion en Propria Sangre,” being a parody on the ballads of the “Infantes de Lara,” and the other entitled “El Amor mas Verdadero,” a parody on the ballads of “Durandarte” and “Belerma”;—both very extravagant and dull, but showing the tendencies of the popular taste not a whit the less.
[764] These curious loas are found in a rare volume, called “Autos Sacramentales, con Quatro Comedias Nuevas y sus Loas y Entremeses,” Madrid, 1655, 4to.
[765] A loa entitled “El Cuerpo de Guardia,” by Luis Enriquez de Fonseca, and performed by an amateur company at Naples on Easter eve, 1669, in honor of the queen of Spain, is as long as a saynete, and much like one. It is—together with another loa and several curious bayles—part of a play on the subject of Viriatus, entitled “The Spanish Hannibal,” and to be found in a collection of his poems, less in the Italian manner than might be expected from a Spaniard who lived and wrote in Italy. Fonseca published the volume containing them all at Naples, in 1683, 4to, and called it “Ocios de los Estudios”; a volume not worth reading, and yet not wholly to be passed over.
[766] Roxas, Viage, ff. 189-193.
[767] Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 104 and 403. Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, f. 109. b.
[768] Sarmiento, the literary historian and critic, in a letter cited in the “Declamacion contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana,” (Madrid, 1793, 4to, p. 149), says: “I never knew what the true Castilian idiom was till I read entremeses.”
[769] The origin of entremeses is distinctly set forth in Lope’s “Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias”; and both the first and third volumes of his collection of plays contain entremeses; besides which, several are to be found in his Obras Sueltas;—almost all of them amusing. The entremeses of Cervantes are at the end of his Comedias, 1615.
[770] Novelas, 1783, Tom. II. p. 441. “Coloquio de los Perros.”
[771] A good many are to be found in the “Joco-Seria” of Quiñones de Benavente. Those by Cancer are in the Autos, etc., 1655, cited in note 44.
[772] “El Castillo de Lindabridis,” end of Act I. There is an entremes called “The Chestnut Girl,” very amusing as far as the spirited dialogue is concerned, but immoral enough in the story, to be found in Chap. 15 of the “Bachiller Trapaza.”
[773] Mad. d’Aulnoy, Tom. I. p. 56.
[774] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 277. The entremeses of Cancer are to be found in his Obras, Madrid, 1761, 4to; those of Deza y Avila, in his “Donayres de Tersicore,” 1663; and those of Benavente, in his “Joco-Seria,” 1653. The volume of Deza y Avila—marked Vol. I., but I think the only one that ever appeared—is almost filled with light, short compositions for the theatre, under the name of bayles, entremeses, saynetes, and mogigangas; the last being a sort of mumming. Some of them are good; all are characteristic of the state of the theatre in the middle of the seventeenth century.
[776] The Gaditanæ Puellæ were the most famous; but see, on the whole subject of the old Spanish dances, the notes to Juvenal, by Ruperti, Lipsiæ, 1801, 8vo, Sat. XI. vv. 162-164, and the curious discussion by Salas, “Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua,” 1633, pp. 127, 128. Gifford, in his remarks on the passage in Juvenal, (Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Philadelphia, 1803, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 159), thinks that it refers to “neither more nor less than the fandango, which still forms the delight of all ranks in Spain,” and that in the phrase “testarum crepitus” he hears “the clicking of the castanets, which accompanies the dance.”
[777] Jornada III. Every body danced. The Duke of Lerma was said to be the best dancer of his time, being premier to Philip IV., and afterwards a cardinal. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI., 1839, p. 272.
[778] “Danzas habladas” is the singular phrase applied to a pantomime with singing and dancing in Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 20. The bayles of Fonseca, referred to in a preceding note, are a fair specimen of the singing and dancing on the Spanish stage in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of them is an allegorical contest between Love and Fortune; another, a discussion on Jealousy; and the third, a wooing by Peter Crane, a peasant, carried on by shaking a purse before the damsel he would win;—all three in the ballad measure, and none of them extending beyond a hundred and twenty lines, or possessing any merit but a few jests.
[779] Some of them are very brutal, like one at the end of “Crates y Hipparchia,” Madrid, 1636, 12mo; one in the “Enano de las Musas”; and several in the “Ingeniosa Helena.” The best are in Quiñones de Benavente, “Joco-Seria,” 1653, and Solís, “Poesías,” 1716. There was originally a distinction between bayles and danzas, now no longer recognized;—the danzas being graver and more decent. See a note of Pellicer to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 48; partly discredited by one of Clemencin on the same passage.
[780] Covarrubias, ad verbum Çarabanda. Pellicer, Don Quixote, 1797, Tom. I. pp. cliii.-clvi., and Tom. V. p. 102. There is a list of many ballads that were sung with the zarabandas in a curious satire entitled “The Life and Death of La Zarabanda, Wife of Anton Pintado,” 1603;—the ballads being given as a bequest of the deceased lady. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 129-131, 136-138.) Lopez Pinciano, in his “Filosofía Antigua Poética,” 1596, pp. 418-420, partly describes the zarabanda, and expresses his great disgust at its indecency.
[781] Dorotea, Acto I. sc. 5.
[782] Other names of dances are to be found in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco I., where all of them are represented as inventions of the Devil on Two Sticks; but these are the chief. See, also, Covarrubias, Art. Zapato.
[783] Cuevas de Salamanca. There is a curious bayle entremesado of Moreto, on the subject of Don Rodrigo and La Cava, in the Autos, etc., 1655, f. 92; and another, called “El Médico,” in the “Ocios de Ignacio Alvarez Pellicer,” s. l. 1685, 4to, p. 51.
[784] See the “Gran Sultana,” as already cited, note 57.
[785] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 102.
[786] Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, f. 105. Villegas, Eróticas Najera, 1617, 4to, Tom. II. p. 29. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco V. Figueroa, Plaza Universal, Madrid, 1733, folio, Discurso 91.
[787] Mad. d’Aulnoy, fresh from the stage of Racine and Molière, then the most refined and best appointed in Europe, speaks with great admiration of the theatres in the Spanish palaces, though she ridicules those granted to the public. (Voyage, etc., ed. 1693, Tom. III. p. 7, and elsewhere.) One way, however, in which the kings patronized the drama was, probably, not very agreeable to the authors, if it were often practised; I mean that of requiring a piece to be acted nowhere but in the royal presence. This was the case with Gerónimo de Villayzan’s “Sufrir mas por querer mas.” Comedias por Diferentes Autores, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, f. 145. b.
[788] Schack’s Geschichte der dramat. Lit. in Spanien, Berlin, 1846, Tom. III. 8vo, pp. 22-24; a work of great value.
[789] Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, ed. 1693, Tom. I. p. 55.
[790] “La Carolea,” Valencia, 1560, 2 tom. 12mo. The first volume ends with accounts of the author’s birthplace, in the course of which he commemorates some of its merchants and some of its scholars, particularly Luis Vives. Notices of Sempere are to be found in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 135, in Fuster, Tom. I. p. 110, and in the notes to Polo’s “Diana,” by Cerdá, p. 380.
A poem entitled “Conquista de la Nueva Castilla,” first published at Paris in 1848, 12mo, by J. A. Sprecher de Bernegg, may, perhaps, be older than the “Carolea.” It is a short narrative poem, in two hundred and eighty-three octave stanzas, apparently written about the middle of the sixteenth century, by some unknown author of that period, and devoted to the glory of Francisco Pizarro, from the time when he left Panamá, in 1524, to the fall of Atabalipa. It was found in the Imperial Library at Vienna, among the manuscripts there, but, from a review of it in the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Band CXXI., 1848, it seems to have been edited with very little critical care. It does not, however, deserve more than it received. It is wholly worthless;—not better than we can easily suppose to have been written by one of Pizarro’s rude followers.
[791] “Carlo Famoso de Don Luis de Çapata,” Valencia, 1565, 4to. At the opening of the fiftieth canto, he congratulates himself that he has “reached the end of his thirteen years’ journey”; but, after all, is obliged to hurry over the last fourteen years of his hero’s life in that one canto. For Garcilasso, see Canto XLI.; and for Torralva’s story, which strongly illustrates the Spanish character of the sixteenth century, see Cantos XXVIII., XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., with the notes of the commentators to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 41.
[792] Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 323) gives the date and title, and little else. The only copy of the poem known to me is one printed at Alcalá de Henares, 1579, 4to, 149 leaves, double columns. It is dedicated to the great Duke of Alva, under whom its author had served, and consists chiefly of the usual traditions about the Cid, told in rather flowing, but insipid, octave stanzas.
In the Library of the Society of History at Madrid, MS. D. No. 42, is a poem in double redondillas de arte mayor, by Fray Gonzalo de Arredondo, on the achievements both of the Cid and of the Count Fernan Gonzalez, the merits of each being nicely balanced in alternate cantos. It is hardly worth notice, except from the circumstance that it was written as early as 1522, when the unused license of Charles V. to print it was given. Fray Arredondo is also the author of “El Castillo Inexpugnable y Defensorio de la Fé,” Burgos, 1528, fol.
[793] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 179, and Velazquez, Dieze, p. 385.
[794] The “Historia Parthenopea,” in eight books, by Alfonso Fernandez, was printed at Rome in 1516, says Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 23). Nicolas de Espinosa’s second part of the “Orlando Furioso” is better known, as there are editions of it in 1555, 1556, 1557, and 1559, the one of 1556 being printed at Antwerp in 4to. Juan de Coloma’s “Década de la Pasion,” in ten books, terza rima, was printed in 1579, in 8vo, at Caller (Cagliari) in Sardinia, where its author was viceroy, and on which island this has been said to be the first book ever printed. There is an edition of it, also, of 1586. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 175.) It is praised by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and is a sort of harmony of the Gospels, not without a dignified movement in its action, and interspersed with narratives from the Old Testament. The story of St. Veronica, (Lib. VII.), and the description of the Madonna as she sees her son surrounded by the rude crowd and ascending Mount Calvary under the burden of his cross, (Lib. VIII.), are passages of considerable merit. Coloma says he chose the terza rima “because it is the gravest verse in the language and the best suited to any grave subject.” In a poem in the same volume, on the Resurrection, he has, however, taken the octave rhyme; and half a century earlier, the terza rima had been rejected by Pedro Fernandez de Villegas, as quite unfitted for Castilian poetry. See ante, Vol. I. p. 486, note.
[795] In Canto XXVII. he says: “Behold the rough soil of ancient Biscay, whence it is certain comes that nobility now extended through the whole land; behold Bermeo, the head of Biscay, surrounded with thorn-woods, and above its port the old walls of the house of Ercilla, a house older than the city itself.”
[796] “Arauco,” says Ercilla, “is a small province, about twenty leagues long and twelve broad, which produces the most warlike people in the Indies, and is therefore called The Unconquered State.” Its people are still proud of their name.
[797] The accounts of himself are chiefly in Cantos XIII., XXXVI., and XXXVII.; and besides the facts I have given in the text, I find it stated (Seman. Pintoresco, 1842, p. 195) that Ercilla in 1571 received the Order of Santiago, and in 1578 was employed by Philip II. on an inconsiderable mission to Saragossa.
[798] The great praise of this speech by Voltaire, in the Essay prefixed to his “Henriade,” 1726, first made the Araucana known beyond the Pyrenees; and if Voltaire had read the poem he pretended to criticize, he might have done something in earnest for its fame. (See his Works, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo, Tom. X. pp. 394-401.) But his mistakes are so gross as to impair the value of his admiration.
[799] The best edition of the Araucana is that of Sancha, Madrid, 1776, 2 tom. 12mo; and the most exact life of its author is in Baena, Tom. I. p. 32. Hayley published an abstract of the poem, with bad translations of some of its best passages, in the notes to his third epistle on Epic Poetry (London, 1782, 4to); but there is a better and more ample examination of it in the “Caraktere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen,” Leipzig, 1793, 8vo, Band II. Theil I. pp. 140 and 349.
[800] The last edition of the continuation of the Araucana, by Diego de Sanisteban Osorio, of which I have any knowledge, was printed with the poem of Ercilla at Madrid, 1733, folio.
[801] The injustice, as it was deemed by many courtly persons, of Ercilla to Garcia de Mendoza, fourth Marquis of Cañete, who commanded the Spaniards in the war of Arauco, may have been one of the reasons why the poet was neglected by his own government after his return to Spain, and was certainly a subject of remark in the reigns of Philip III. and IV. In 1613, Christóval Suarez de Figueroa, the well-known poet, published a life of the Marquis, and dedicated it to the profligate Duke de Lerma, then the reigning favorite. It is written with some elegance and some affectation in its style, but is full of flattery to the great family of which the Marquis was a member; and when its author reaches the point of time at which Ercilla was involved in the trouble at the tournament, already noticed, he says: “There arose a difference between Don Juan de Pineda and Don Alonso de Ercilla, which went so far, that they drew their swords. Instantly a vast number of weapons sprang from the scabbards of those on foot, who, without knowing what to do, rushed together and made a scene of great confusion. A rumor was spread, that it had been done in order to cause a revolt; and from some slight circumstances it was believed that the two pretended combatants had arranged it all beforehand. They were seized by command of the general, who ordered them to be beheaded, intending to infuse terror into the rest, and knowing that severity is the most effectual way of insuring military obedience. The tumult, however, was appeased; and as it was found, on inquiry, that the whole affair was accidental, the sentence was revoked. The becoming rigor with which Don Alonso was treated caused the silence in which he endeavoured to bury the achievements of Don Garcia. He wrote the wars of Arauco, carrying them on by a body without a head;—that is, by an army, with no intimation that it had a general. Ungrateful for the many favors he had received from the same hand, he left his rude sketch without the living colors that belonged to it; as if it were possible to hide the valor, virtue, forecast, authority, and success of a nobleman whose words and deeds always went together and were alike admirable. But so far could passion prevail, that the account thus given remained in the minds of many as if it were an apocryphal one; whereas, had it been dutifully written, its truth would have stood authenticated to all. For, by the consent of all, the personage of whom the poet ought to have written was without fault, gentle, and of great humanity; and he who was silent in his praise strove in vain to dim his glory.” Hechos de Don Garcia de Mendoza, por Chr. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid, 1613, 4to, p. 103.
The theatre seemed especially anxious to make up for the deficiencies of the greatest narrative poet of the country. In 1622, a play appeared, entitled “Algunas Hazañas de las muchas de Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza”; a poor attempt at flattery, which, on its title-page, professes to be the work of Luis de Belmonte, but, in a sort of table of contents, is ascribed chiefly to eight other poets, among whom are Antonio Mira de Mescua, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Guillen de Castro. Of the “Arauco Domado” of Lope de Vega, printed in 1629, and the humble place assigned in it to Ercilla, I have spoken, ante, p. 207. To these should be added two others, namely, the “Governador Prudente” of Gaspar de Avila, in Tom. XXI. of the Comedias Escogidas, printed in 1664, in which Don Garcia arrives first on the scene of action in Chili, and distinguishes his command by acts of wisdom and clemency; and in Tom. XXII., 1665, the “Españoles en Chili,” by Francisco Gonzalez de Bustos, devoted in part to the glory of Don Garcia’s father, and ending with the impalement of Caupolican and the baptism of another of the principal Indians; each as characteristic of the age as was the homage of all to the Mendozas.
[802] “Arauco Domado, compuesto por el Licenciado Pedro de Oña, Natural de los Infantes de Engol en Chile, etc., impreso en la Ciudad de los Reyes,” (Lima), 1596, 12mo, and Madrid, 1605. Besides which, Oña wrote a poem on the earthquake at Lima in 1599. Antonio is wrong in suggesting that Oña was not a native of America.
[803] “Cortés Valeroso, por Gabriel Lasso de la Vega,” Madrid, 1588, 4to, and “La Mexicana,” Madrid, 1594, 8vo. Tragedies and other works, which I have not seen, are also attributed to him. (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 264.) “El Peregrino Indiano, por Don Antonio de Saavedra Guzman, Viznieto del Conde del Castellar, nacido en Mexico,” Madrid, 1599, 12mo. It is in twenty cantos of octave stanzas; and though we know nothing else of its author, we know, by the laudatory verses prefixed to his poem, that Lope de Vega and Vicente Espinel were among his friends. It brings the story of Cortés down to the death of Guatimozin.
[804] The poem of Castellanos is singularly enough entitled “Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias,” and we have some reason to suppose it originally consisted of four parts. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 674.) The first was printed at Madrid, 1589, 4to; but the second and third, discovered, I believe, in the National Library of that city, were not published till they appeared in the fourth volume of the Biblioteca of Aribau, Madrid, 1847, 8vo. Elegias seems to have been used by Castellanos in the sense of eulogies. Of their author the little we know is told by himself.
[805] “Argentina, Conquista del Rio de la Plata y Tucuman, y otros Sucesos del Peru,” Lisboa, 1602, 4to. There is a love-story in Canto XII., and some talk about enchantments elsewhere; but, with a few such slight exceptions, the poem is evidently pretty good geography, and the best history the author could collect on the spot. I know it only in the reprint of Barcia, who takes it into his collection entirely for its historical claims.
One thing has much struck me in this and all the poems written by Spaniards on their conquests in America, and especially by those who visited the countries they celebrate. It is, that there are no proper sketches of the peculiar scenery through which they passed, though much of it is among the most beautiful and grand that exists on the globe, and must have been filling them constantly with new wonder. The truth is, that, when they describe woods and rivers and mountains, their descriptions would as well fit the Pyrenees or the Guadalquivir as they do Mexico, the Andes, or the Amazon. Perhaps this deficiency is connected with the same causes that have prevented Spain from ever producing a great landscape painter.
[806] “La Conquista del Nuevo Mexico, por Gaspar de Villagra,” was printed at Alcalá in 1610, 8vo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 535.
[807] “Universal Redencion de Francisco Hernandez Blasco,” Toledo, 1584, 1589, 4to, Madrid, 1609, 4to. He was of Toledo, and claims that a part of his poem was a revelation to a nun.
[808] “El Cavallero Assisio, Vida de San Francisco y otros Cinco Santos, por Gabriel de Mata,” Tom. I., Bilbao, 1587, with a wood-cut of St. Francis on the title-page, as a knight on horseback and in full armour; Tom. II., 1589, 4to. A third volume was promised, but it never appeared. The five saints are St. Anthony of Padua, St. Buenaventura, St. Luis the Bishop, Sta. Bernadina, and Sta. Clara, all Minorites. St. Anthony preaching to the fishes, whom he addresses (Canto XVII.) as hermanos peces, is very quaint.
[809] In a hermitage on a mountain near Córdova, where about thirty hermits lived in stern silence and subjected to the most cruel penances, I once saw a person who had served with distinction as an officer at the battle of Trafalgar, and another who had been of the household of the first queen of Ferdinand VII. The Duke de Rivas and his brother, Don Angel,—now wearing the title himself, but more distinguished as a poet, or for his eminent merits in the diplomatic and military service of his country, than for his high rank,—who led me up that rude mountain, and filled a long and beautiful morning with strange sights and adventures and stories, such as can be found in no other country but Spain, assured me that cases like those of the Spanish officers who had become hermits were still of no infrequent occurrence in their country. This was in 1818.
[810] Of Virues a notice has been already given, (ante, p. 28), to which it is only necessary to add here that there are editions of the Monserrate of 1588, 1601, 1602, 1609, and 1805; the last (Madrid, 8vo) with a Preface written, I think, by Mayans y Siscar. A poem by Francisco de Ortega, on the same subject, appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century, in small quarto, without date, entitled “Orígen, Antiguedad é Invencion de nuestra Señora de Monserrate.” It is entirely worthless.
[811] “La Benedictina de F. Nicolas Bravo,” Salamanca, 1604, 4to. Bravo was a professor at Salamanca and Madrid, and died in 1648, the head of a rich monastery of his order in Navarre. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 151.) Of Valdivielso I have spoken, ante, p. 316. His “Vida, etc., de San Josef,” printed 1607 and 1647, makes above seven hundred pages in the edition of Lisbon, 1615, 12mo; and his “Sagrario de Toledo,” Barcelona, 1618, 12mo, fills nearly a thousand;—both in octave stanzas, as are nearly all the poems of their class.
[812] “La Christiada de Diego de Hojeda,” Sevilla, 1611, 4to. It has the merit of having only twelve cantos, and, if this were the proper place, it might well be compared with Milton’s “Paradise Regained” for its scenes with the devils, and with Klopstock’s “Messiah” for the scene of the crucifixion. Of the author we know only that he was a native of Seville, but went young to Lima, in Peru, where he wrote this poem, and where he died at the head of a Dominican convent founded by himself. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 289.) There is a rifacimento of the “Christiada,” by Juan Manuel de Berriozabal, printed Madrid, 1841, 18mo, in a small volume; not, however, an improvement on the original.
[813] “Poema Castellano de nuestra Señora de Aguas Santas, por Alonso Diaz,” Seville, 1611, cited by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 21).—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico,” Valladolid, 1613, 8vo, and “Historia de la Vírgen Madre de Dios,” 1608, afterwards published with the title of “Nueva Jerusalen María,” Valladolid, 1625, 18mo; both by Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza, and both the work of his youth, since he lived to 1668. (Ibid., p. 115.) The last of these poems, my copy of which is of the fourth edition, absurdly divides the life of the Madonna according to the twelve precious stones that form the foundations of the New Jerusalem in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation; each fundamento, as the separate portions or books are called, being subdivided into three cantos; and the whole filling above twelve thousand lines of octave stanzas, which are not always without merit, though they generally have very little.—“Creacion del Mundo de Alonso de Azevedo,” Roma, 1615. (Velazquez, Dieze, p. 395.)—“La Verdadera Hermandad de los Cinco Martires de Arabia, por Damian Rodriguez de Vargas,” Toledo, 1621, 4to. It is very short for the class to which it belongs, containing only about three thousand lines, but it is hardly possible that any of them should be worse.—“David, Poema Heróico del Doctor Jacobo Uziel,” Venetia, 1624, pp. 440; a poem in twelve cantos, on the story of the Hebrew monarch whose name it bears, written in a plain and simple style, evidently imitating the flow of Tasso’s stanzas, but without poetical spirit, and in the ninth canto absurdly bringing a Spanish navigator to the court of Jerusalem.—“La Mejor Muger Madre y Vírgen, Poema Sacro, por Sebastian de Nieva Calvo,” Madrid, 1625, 4to. It ends in the fourteenth book with the victory of Lepanto, which is attributed to the intercession of the Madonna and the virtue of the rosary.—“Grandezas Divinas, Vida y Muerte de nuestro Salvador, etc., por Fr. Duran Vivas,” found in scattered papers after his death, and arranged and modernized in its language by his grandson, who published it, (Madrid, 1643, 4to); a worthless poem, more than half of which is thrown into the form of a speech from Joseph to Pontius Pilate.—“Pasion del Hombre Dios, por el Maestro Juan Dávila,” Leon de Francia, 1661, folio, written in the Spanish décimas of Espinel, and filling about three-and-twenty thousand lines, divided into six books, which are subdivided into estancias, or resting-places, and these again into cantos.—“Sanson Nazareno, Poema Eróico, por Ant. Enriquez Gomez,” Ruan, 1656, 4to, thoroughly infected with Gongorism, as is another poem by the same author, half narrative, half lyrical, called “La Culpa del Primer Peregrino,” Ruan, 1644, 4to.—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico, escrivialo Hernando Dominguez Camargo,” 1666, 4to, a native of Santa Fé de Bogotá, whose poem, filling nearly four hundred pages of octave rhymes, is a fragment published after his death.—“La Christiada, Poema Sacro y Vida de Jesu Christo, que escrivió Juan Francisco de Encisso y Monçon,” Cadiz, 1694, 4to; deformed, like almost every thing of the period when it appeared, with the worst taste.
[814] “Segunda Parte de Orlando, etc., por Nicolas Espinosa,” Zaragoza, 1555, 4to, Anveres, 1656, 4to, etc. The Orlando of Ariosto, translated by Urrea, was published at Lyons in 1550, folio, (the same edition, no doubt, which Antonio gives to 1656), and is treated with due severity by the curate in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library, and by Clemencin in his commentary on that passage. Tom. I. p. 120.
[815] “Orlando Enamorado de Don Martin Abarca de Bolea, Conde de las Almunias, en Octava Rima,” Lerida, 1578;—“Orlando Determinado, en Octava Rima,” Zaragoza, 1578. (Latassa, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 54.)—The “Orlando Enamorado” of Boiardo, by Francisco Garrido de Villena, 1577, and the “Verdadero Suceso de la Batalla de Roncesvalles,” by the same, 1683. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 428.)—“Historia de las Hazañas y Hechos del Invencible Cavallero Bernardo del Carpio, por Agustin Alonso,” Toledo, 1585. Pellicer (Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 58, note) says he had seen one copy of this book, and Clemencin says he never saw any.—I have never met with either of those referred to in this note.
[816] “Primera Parte de la Angélica de Luis Barahona de Soto,” Granada, 1586, 4to. My copy contains a license to reprint from it, dated July 15, 1805; but, like many other projects of the sort in relation to old Spanish literature, this one was not carried through. A notice of De Soto is to be found in Sedano (Parnaso, Tom. II. p. xxxi.); but the pleasantest idea of him and of his agreeable social relations is to be gathered from a poetical epistle to him by Christóval de Mesa (Rimas, 1611, f. 200);—from several poems in Silvestre (ed. 1599, ff. 325, 333, 334);—and from the notices of him by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and in the Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 6, and Parte II. c. 1), together with the facts collected in the two last places by the commentators.—Gerónimo de Huerta, then a young man, published in 1588, at Alcalá, his “Florando de Castilla, Lauro de Cavalleros, en Ottava Rima,”—an heroic poem it is called, but still, it is said, in the manner of Ariosto. It is noticed, Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 587, and Mayans, Cartas de Varios Autores, Tom. II., 1773, p. 36; but I have never seen it.
[817] “El Bernardo, Poema Heróico del Doctor Don Bernardo de Balbuena,” Madrid, 1624, 4to, and 1808, 3 tom. 8vo, containing about forty-five thousand lines, but abridged by Quintana, in the second volume of his “Poesías Selectas, Musa Épica,” with skill and judgment, to less than one third of that length.
[818] The story of “Leander” fills a large part of the third book of Boscan and Garcilasso’s Works in the original edition of 1543.—Diego de Mendoza’s “Adonis,” which is about half as long, and on which the old statesman is said to have valued himself very much, is in his Works, 1610, pp. 48-65.—Silvestre’s poems, mentioned in the text, with two others, something like them, make up the whole of the second book of his Works, 1599.—Montemayor’s “Pyramus,” in the short ten-line stanzas, is at the end of the “Diana,” in the edition of 1614.—The “Pyramus” of Ant. de Villegas is in his “Inventario,” 1577, and is in terza rima, which, like the other Italian measures attempted by him, he manages awkwardly.—The “Daphne” of Perez is in various measures, and better deserves reading in old Bart. Yong’s version of it than it does in the original.—I might have added to the foregoing the “Pyramus and Thisbe” of Castillejo, (Obras, 1598, ff. 68, etc.), pleasantly written in the old Castilian short verse, when he was twenty-eight years old, and living in Germany; but it is so much a translation from Ovid, that it hardly belongs here.
[819] Obras de Romero de Cepeda, Sevilla, 1582, 4to. The poem alluded to is entitled “El Infelice Robo de Elena Reyna de Esparta por Paris, Infante Troyano, del qual sucedió la Sangrienta Destruycion de Troya.” It begins ab ovo Ledæ, and, going through about two thousand lines, ends with the death of six hundred thousand Trojans. The shorter poems in the volume are sometimes agreeable.
The poem of Manuel de Gallegos, entitled “Gigantomachia,” and published at Lisbon, 1628, 4to, is also, like that of Cepeda, on a classical subject, being devoted to the war of the Giants against the Gods. Its author was a Portuguese, who lived many years at Madrid in intimacy with Lope de Vega, and wrote occasionally for the Spanish stage, but returned at last to his native country, and died there in 1665. His “Gigantomachia,” in about three hundred and forty octave stanzas, divided into five short books, is written, for the period when it appeared, in a pure style, but is a very dull poem.
[820] These poems are all to be found in the works of their respective authors, elsewhere referred to, except two. The first is the “Atalanta y Hipomenes,” by Moncayo, Marques de San Felice, (Zaragoza, 1656, 4to), in octave stanzas, about eight thousand lines long, in which he manages to introduce much of the history of Aragon, his native country; a general account of its men of letters, who were his contemporaries; and, in canto fifth, all the Aragonese ladies he admired, whose number is not small. The other poem is the “Amor Enamorado,” which Jacinto de Villalpando published (Zaragoça, 1655, 12mo) under the name of “Fabio Clymente”; and which, like the last, is in octave stanzas, but only about half as long. See, also, Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom III. p. 272.
[821] “Los Amantes de Teruel, Epopeya Trágica, con la Restauracion de España por la Parte de Sobrarbe y Conquista del Reino de Valencia, por Juan Yague de Salas,” Valencia, 1616, 12mo. The latter part of it is much occupied with a certain Friar John and a certain Friar Peter, who were great saints in Teruel, and with the conquest of Valencia by Don Jaume of Aragon. The poetry of the whole, it is not necessary to add, is naught. The antiquarian investigation of the truth of the story of the lovers is in a modest pamphlet entitled “Noticias Históricas sobre los Amantes de Teruel, por Don Isidro de Antillon” (Madrid, 1806, 18mo);—a respectable Professor of History in the College of the Nobles at Madrid. (Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. VI. p. 123). It leaves no reasonable doubt about the forgery of Salas, which, moreover, is done very clumsily. Ford, in his admirable “Hand-Book of Spain,” (London, 1845, 8vo, p. 874), implies that the tomb of the lovers is still much visited. It stands now in the cloisters of St. Peter, whither, in 1709, in consequence of alterations in the church, their bodies were removed;—much decayed, says Antillon, notwithstanding the claim set up that they are imperishable. The story of the lovers of Teruel has often been resorted to, and, among others in our own time, by Juan Eugenio Harzenbusch, in his drama, “Los Amantes de Teruel,” and by an anonymous author in a tale with the same title, that appeared at Valencia, 1838, 2 tom. 18mo. In the Preface to the last, another of the certificates of Yague de Salas to the truth of the story is produced for the first time, but adds nothing to its probability. See ante, pp. 301-304.
[822] “El Macabeo, Poema Heróico de Miguel de Silveira,” Nápoles, 1638, 4to. Castro (Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 626) makes Silveira a converted Jew, and Barbosa places his death at 1636; but the Dedication of “El Sol Vencido,” a short, worthless poem, written to flatter the Vice-Queen of Naples, is dated 20 April, 1639, and was printed there that year.