[823] “Poema Heróico de la Invencion de la Cruz, por Fr. Lopez de Zarate,” Madrid, 1648, 4to; twenty-two cantos and four hundred pages of octave stanzas. The infernal councils and many other parts show it to be an imitation of Tasso. The notice of his life by Sedano (Parnaso, Tom. VIII. p. xxiv.) is sufficient; but that by Antonio is more touching, and reads like a tribute of personal regard. Zarate died in 1658, above seventy years old. Semanario Pintoresco, 1845, p. 82.

[824] The continual parody of the gracioso on the hero shows what was the tendency of the Spanish stage in this particular. But there are also plays that are entirely burlesque, such as “The Death of Baldovinos,” at the end of Cancer’s Works, 1651, which is a parody on the old ballads and traditions respecting that paladin; and the “Cavallero de Olmedo,” a favorite play, by Francisco Felix de Monteser, which is in the volume entitled “Mejor Libro de las Mejores Comedias,” Madrid, 1653, and which is a parody of a play with the same title in the Comedias de Lope de Vega, Vol. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

[825] Cosmé was editor of the poems of his brother, Francisco de Aldana, in 1593. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 256.) He wrote in Italian and printed at Florence as early as 1578; but Velasco did not go as governor to Milan till after 1586. (Salazar, Dignidades, f. 131.) The only account I have seen of the “Asneida” is in Figueroa’s “Pasagero,” 1617, f. 127.

[826]

[827] “La Muerte, Entierro y Honras de Chrespina Maranzmana, Gata de Juan Chrespo, en tres cantos de octava rima, intitulados la Gaticida, compuesta por Cintio Merctisso, Español, Paris, por Nicolo Molinero,” 1604, 12mo, pp. 52. I know nothing of the poem or its author, except what is to be found in this volume, of which I have never met even with a bibliographical notice, and of which I have seen only one copy,—that belonging to my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid.

[828] The first edition of the “Mosquea” was printed in small 12mo at Cuenca, when its author was twenty-six years old;—the third is Sancha’s, Madrid, 1777, 12mo, with a life, from which it appears, that, besides being a faithful officer of the Inquisition himself, and making a good fortune out of it, Villaviciosa exhorted his family, by his last will, to devote themselves in all future time to its holy service with grateful zeal. See, also, the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Sevilla, 8vo, Tom. I., 1841, p. 354.

[829] A vast number of tributes were paid by contemporary men of letters to Don John of Austria; but among them none is more curious than a Latin poem in two books, containing seventeen or eighteen hundred hexameters and pentameters, the work of a negro, who had been brought as an infant from Africa, and who by his learning rose to be professor of Latin and Greek in the school attached to the cathedral of Granada. He is the same person noticed by Cervantes as “el negro Juan Latino,” in a poem prefixed to the Don Quixote. His volume of Latin verses on the birth of Ferdinand, the son of Philip II., on Pope Pius V., on Don John of Austria, and on the city of Granada, making above a hundred and sixty pages in small quarto, printed at Granada in 1573, is not only one of the rarest books in the world, but is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the intellectual faculties and possible accomplishments of the African race. The author himself says he was brought to Spain from Ethiopia, and was, until his emancipation, a slave to the grandson of the famous Gonsalvo de Córdova. His Latin verse is respectable, and, from his singular success as a scholar, he was commonly called Joannes Latinus, a sobriquet under which he is frequently mentioned, and which was made the title of a play, I presume about him, by Lopez de Enciso, called “Juan Latino.” He was respectably married to a lady of Granada, who fell in love with him, as Eloisa did with Abelard, while he was teaching her; and after his death, which occurred later than 1573, his wife and children erected a monument to his memory in the church of Sta. Ana, in that city, inscribing it with an epitaph, in which he is styled “Filius Æthiopum, prolesque nigerrima patrum.” Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 716. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. lx., note.

It may not be amiss here to add, that another negro is celebrated in a play, written in tolerable Castilian, and claiming, at the end, to be founded in fact. It is called “El Valiente Negro en Flandes,” and is found in Tom. XXXI., 1638, of the collection of Comedias printed at Barcelona and Saragossa. The negro in question, however, was not, like Juan Latino, a native African, but was a slave born in Merida, and was distinguished only as a soldier, serving with great honor under the Duke of Alva, and enjoying the favor of that severe general.

[830] “Felicissima Victoria concedida del Cielo al Señor Don Juan d’Austria, etc., compuesta por Hierónimo de Cortereal, Cavallero Portugues,” s. l. 1578, 8vo, with curious wood-cuts; probably printed at Lisbon. (Life, in Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 495.) His “Suceso do Segundo Cerco de Diu,” in twenty-one cantos, on the siege, or rather defence, of Diu, in the East Indies, in 1546, was published in 1574, and translated into Spanish by the well-known poet, Pedro de Padilla, who published his version in 1597. His “Naufragio y Lastimoso Suceso da Perdiçaõ de Manuel de Souza de Sepúlveda,” etc., (Lisboa, 1594), in seventeen cantos, was translated into Spanish by Francisco de Contreras, with the title of “Nave Trágica de la India de Portugal,” 1624. This Manuel de Souza, who had held a distinguished office in Portuguese India, and who had perished miserably by shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope, in 1553, as he was returning home, was a connection of Cortereal by marriage. Denis, Chroniques, etc., Tom. II. p. 79.

[831] “La Austriada de Juan Rufo, Jurado de la Ciudad de Córdoba,” Madrid, 1584, 12mo, ff. 447. There are editions of 1585 and 1587, and it is extravagantly praised by Cervantes, in a prefatory sonnet, and in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library. Rufo, when he was to be presented to Philip II.,—probably at the time he offered his poem and dedication,—said he had prepared himself fully for the reception, but lost all presence of mind, from the severity of that monarch’s appearance. (Baltasar Porreño, Dichos y Hechos de Philipe II., Bruselas, 1666, 12mo, p. 39.) The best of Rufo’s works is his Letter to his young Son, at the end of his “Apotegmas,” already noticed;—the same son, Luis, who afterwards became a distinguished painter at Rome.

[832] “Primera y Segunda Parte del Leon de España, por Pedro de la Vezilla Castellanos,” Salamanca, 1586, 12mo, ff. 369. The story of the gross tribute of the damsels has probably some foundation in fact; one proof of which is, that the old General Chronicle (Parte III., c. 8) seems a little unwilling to tell a tale so discreditable to Spain. Mariana admits it, and Lobera, in his “Historia de las Grandezas, etc., de Leon,” (Valladolid, 1596, 4to, Parte II. c. 24) gives it in full, as unquestionable. Leon is still often called Leon de España, as it is in the poem of Castellanos, to distinguish it from Lyons in France, Leon de Francia.

[833] “Sitio y Toma de Amberes, por Miguel Giner,” Zaragoza, 1587, 8vo.—“La Conquista que hicieron los Reyes Católicos en Granada, por Edoardo Diaz,” 1590, 8vo, Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 730; besides which, Diaz, who was long a soldier in the Spanish service, and wrote good Castilian, published, in 1592, a volume of verse in Spanish and Portuguese.—“De la Historia de Sagunto, Numancia, y Cartago, compuesta por Lorencio de Zamora, Natural de Ocaña,” Alcalá, 1589, 4to,—nineteen cantos of ottava rima, and about five hundred pages, ending abruptly and promising more. It was written, the author says, when he was eighteen years old; but though he lived to be an old man, and died in 1614, having printed several religious books, he never went farther with this poem. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 11.

[834] “Las Navas de Tolosa,” twenty cantos, Madrid, 1594, 12mo;—“La Restauracion de España,” ten cantos, Madrid, 1607, 12mo;—“El Patron de España,” six books, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, with Rimas added. My copy of the last volume is one of the many proofs that new title-pages with later dates were attached to Spanish books that had been some time before the public. Mr. Southey, to whom this copy once belonged, expresses his surprise, in a MS. note on the fly-leaf, that the last half of the volume should be dated in 1611, while the first half is dated in 1612. But the reason is, that the title-page to the Rimas comes at p. 94, in the middle of a sheet, and could not conveniently be cancelled and changed, as was the title-page to the “Patron de España,” with which the volume opens. Mesa’s translations are later;—the Æneid, Madrid, 1615, 12mo; and the Eclogues of Virgil, to which he added a few more Rimas and the poor tragedy of “Pompeio,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo. The ottava rima seems to me very cumbrous in both these translations, and unsuited to their nature, though we are reconciled to it, and to the terza rima, in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Viana, a Portuguese, printed at Valladolid, in 1589, 4to; one of the happiest translations made in the pure age of Castilian literature. The Iliad, which Mesa is also supposed to have translated, was never printed. In one of his epistles, (Rimas, 1611, f. 201), he says he was bred to the law; and in another, (f. 205), that he loved to live in Castile, though he was of Estremadura. In many places he alludes to his poverty and to the neglect he suffered; and in a sonnet in his last publication, (1618, f. 113), he shows a poor, craven spirit in flattering the Count de Lemos, with whom he was offended for not taking him to Naples.

[835] “Conquista de la Bética, Poema Heróico de Juan de la Cueva,” 1603, reprinted in the fourteenth and fifteenth volumes of the collection of Fernandez, (Madrid, 1795), with a Preface, which is, I think, by Quintana, and is very good. A notice of Cueva occurs in the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Tom. I. p. 285; and a number of his unpublished works are said to be in the possession of the Counts of Aguila in Seville. Semanario Pintoresco, 1846, p. 250.

[836] “El Pelayo del Pinciano,” Madrid, 1605, 12mo, twenty cantos, filling above six hundred pages, with a poor attempt at the end, after the manner of Tasso, to give an allegorical interpretation to the whole. I notice in N. Antonio “La Iberiada, de los Hechos de Scipion Africano, por Gaspar Savariego de Santa Anna,” Valladolid, 1603, 8vo. I have never seen it. “La Patrona de Madrid Restituida,” by Salas Barbadillo, an heroic poem in honor of Our Lady of Atocha, printed in 1608, and reprinted, Madrid, 1750, 12mo, which I possess, is worthless and does not need to be noticed.

[837] “La Numantina del Licenciado Don Francisco Mosquera de Barnuevo, etc., dirigida á la nobilissima Ciudad de Soria y á sus doce Linages y Casas á ellas agregadas,” Sevilla, 1612, 4to. He says “it was a book of his youth, printed when his hairs were gray”; but it shows none of the judgment of mature years.

“La Liga deshecha por la Expulsion de los Moriscos de los Reynos de España,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo. It was printed, therefore, long before Vasconcellos fought against Spain, and contains fulsome compliments to Philip III., which must afterwards have given their author no pleasure. (Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 701.) The poem consists of about twelve hundred octave stanzas.

“La España Defendida,” by Christ. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid, 1612, 12mo, and Naples, 1644, belongs to the same date, making, in fact, three heroic poems in one year.

[838] “Hespaña Libertada, Parte Primera, por Doña Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda, dirigida al Rey Católico de las Hespañas, Don Felipe Tercero deste Nombre, nuestro Señor,” (Lisboa, 1618, 4to), was evidently intended as a compliment to the Spanish usurpers, and, in this point of view, is as little creditable to its author as it is in its poetical aspect. Parte Segunda was published by her daughter, Lisboa, 1673, 4to. Bernarda de Lacerda was a lady variously accomplished. Lope de Vega, who dedicated to her his eclogue entitled “Phylis,” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. X. p. 193), compliments her on her writing Latin with purity. She published a volume of poetry, in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, in 1634, and died in 1644.

“El Fernando, ó Sevilla Restaurada, Poema Heróico, escrito con los Versos de la Gerusalemme Liberata, etc., por Don Juan Ant. de Vera y Figueroa, Conde de la Roca,” etc., Milan, 1632, 4to, pp. 654. He died 1658. Antonio, ad verb.

“Nápoles Recuperada por el Rey Don Alonso, Poema Heróico de D. Francisco de Borja, Príncipe de Esquilache,” etc. Zaragoza, 1651, Amberes, 1658, 4to. A notice of his honorable and adventurous life will be given, when we speak of Spanish lyrical poetry, where he was more successful than he was in epic.

There were two or three other poems called heroic that appeared after these; but they do not need to be recalled. One of the most absurd of them is the “Orfeo Militar,” in two parts, by Joan de la Victoria Ovando; the first being on the siege of Vienna by the Turks, and the second on that of Buda, both printed in 1688, 4to, at Malaga, where their author enjoyed a military office; but neither, I think, was much read beyond the limits of the city that produced them.

[839] See what is said in Chap. III. on Acuña, Cetina, Silvestre, etc.

[840] “Obras Poéticas de Lomas de Cantorál,” Madrid, 1578, 12mo. It opens with a translation from Tansillo, and the lyrical portions of the three books into which it is divided are in the Italian manner; but the rest is often more national in its forms.

[841] Figueroa, (born 1540, died 1620), often called El Divino, was perhaps more known and admired in Italy, during the greater part of his life, than he was in Spain; but he died at last, much honored, in Alcalá, his native city. His poetry is dated in 1572, and was circulated in manuscript quite as early as that date implies; but it was not printed, I think, till it appeared in 1626, at Lisbon, in a minute volume under the auspices of Luis Tribaldo de Toledo, chronicler of Portugal. It is also in the twentieth volume of the collection of Fernandez, Madrid. But, though it is highly polished, it is not inspired by a masculine genius.

[842] “Diversas Rimas de V. Espinel,” Madrid, 1591, 18mo. His lines on Seeking Occasions for Jealousy (f. 78) are very happy, and his Complaints against Past Happiness (f. 128) are better than those on the same subject by Silvestre, Obras, 1599, f. 71.

[843] Montemayor, as we shall see hereafter, introduced the prose pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro, into Spanish in 1542; and a collection of his poetry, called a “Cancionero,” was printed in 1554. In the edition of Madrid, 1588, 12mo, which I use, about one third of the volume is in the Castilian measures and manner; after which it is formally announced, “Here begin the sonnets, canciones, and other pieces in the measures of Italian verse.” A cancion occurs in the first book of the “Diana,” on the regrets of a shepherdess who had driven her lover to despair, which is very sweet and natural, and is well translated by old Bartholomew Yong in his version of the Diana (London, 1598, folio, p. 8). Polo, who continued the Diana, pursued the same course in the poems he inserted in his continuation, and good translations of several of them may be found in Yong.

“The works of Montemayor touching on Devotion and Religion”—those, I presume, in his “Cancionero”—are prohibited in the Index of 1667, and in that of 1790.

[844] The lyric poetry of Barahona de Soto is to be sought among the works of Silvestre, 1599, and in the “Flores de Poetas Ilustres,” by Espinosa, Valladolid, 1605, 4to.

[845] “Las Seyscientas Apotegmas de Juan Rufo, y otras Obras en Verso,” Toledo, 1596, 8vo. The Apotegmas are, in fact, anecdotes in prose. His sonnets and canciones are not so good as his Letter to his Son and his other more Castilian poems, such as the one relating to the war in Flanders, where he served.

[846] “Libro de Poesía, por Fray Damian de Vegas,” Toledo, 1590, 12mo, above a thousand pages; most of it religious; most of it in the old manner; and nearly all of it very dull.

[847] “Pedro de Padilla, Eglogas, Sonetos,” etc., Sevilla, 1582, 4to, ff. 246. There are many lyrics in this collection, glosas, villancicos, and letrillas, that are quite Castilian, some of them spirited and pleasant. Others may be found in his “Thesoro de Varias Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo), where, however, there are yet more in the Italian forms.

[848] The “Cancionero” of Maldonado was printed at Madrid, 1586, in 4to, and the best parts of it are the amatory poetry, some of which is found in the third volume of Faber’s “Floresta.” One more poet might have been added here, as writing in the old measures,—Joachim Romero de Çepeda,—whose works were printed at Seville, 1582, in 4to, and contain a good many canciones, motes, and glosas; among the rest, three remarkable sonnets, presented by him to Philip II. as he passed through Badajoz, where Çepeda lived, to take possession of Portugal, in 1580. But the whole volume is marked with conceits and quibbles.

[849] Herrera’s praises of Seville and the Guadalquivir sufficiently betray his origin, so constant are they. They are, too, sometimes among the happy specimens of his verse; for instance, in the ode in honor of St. Ferdinand, who rescued Seville from the Moors, and in the elegy, “Bien debes asconder sereno cielo.”

[850] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 1819, p. 447. The date of Herrera’s death is given on the sure authority of some MS. notes of Pacheco, his friend, published in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1845, p. 299; before which it was unknown. These notes are taken from an interesting MS. which seems to have been the rough and imperfect draft of the “Imágines” and “Elogia Virorum Illustrium,” which Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 456) says Pacheco gave to the well-known Count Duke Olivares. They are in the Semanario Erudito, 1844, pp. 374, etc. See also Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 536-537. Pacheco was a good painter, and Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p. 3) gives a life of him. He was a man of some learning, and entered into a controversy with Quevedo on the question of making Santa Teresa a copatroness of Spain with Santiago, which Quevedo resisted; besides which, in 1649, he published in 4to, at Seville, his “Arte de la Pintura, su Antiguedad y Grandezas,” a rare work, praised by Cean Bermudez, which I have never seen. Pacheco died in 1654. Sedano (Parnaso Español, Tom. III. p. 117, and Tom. VII. p. 92) gives two epigrams of Pacheco, which are connected with his art, and which Sedano praises, I think, more than they deserve to be praised.

[851] Pacheco’s edition is accompanied with a fine portrait of the author from a picture by the editor, which has often been engraved since.

[852] “In our Spain, beyond all comparison, Garcilasso stands first,” he says, (p. 409), and repeats the same opinion often elsewhere.

[853] The edition of Fernandez, the most complete of all, and twice printed, is in the fourth and fifth volumes of his “Poesías Castellanas.” The longer poems of Herrera, which we know only by their unpromising titles, are “The Battle of the Giants,” “The Rape of Proserpine,” “The Amadis,” and “The Loves of Laurino and Cærona.” Perhaps we have reason to regret the loss of his unpublished Eclogues and “Castilian Verses,” which last may have been in the old Castilian measures. In 1572, he published a descriptive account of the war of Cyprus and the battle of Lepanto, and, in 1592, a Life of Sir Thomas More, taken from the Latin “Lives of the Three Thomases,” by Stapleton, the obnoxious English Papist. (Wood’s Athenæ, ed. Bliss, Tom. I. p. 671.) A History of Spain, said by Rioja to have been finished by Herrera about 1590, is probably lost.

[854] In some remarks by the Licentiate Enrique de Duarte, prefixed to the edition of Herrera’s poetry printed in 1619, he says, that, a few days after Herrera’s death, a bound volume, containing all his poetical works, prepared by himself for the press, was destroyed, and that his scattered manuscripts would probably have shared the same fate, if they had not been carefully collected by Pacheco.

[855] In his commentary on Garcilasso he says, “The sonnet is the most beautiful form of composition in Spanish and Italian poetry, and the one that demands the most art in its construction and the greatest grace.” p. 66.

[856] The lady to whom Herrera dedicated his love, in a spirit of pure and Platonic affection, little known to Spanish poetry, is said to have been the Countess of Gelves.

[857] There is a book on this subject which should not be entirely overlooked in a history of Spanish literature. It is an account of a pastry-cook of Madrigal, who, seventeen years after the rout in Africa, passed himself off in Spain as Don Sebastian, and induced Anna of Austria, a cousin of that monarch and a nun, to give him rich jewels, which led to the detection of the fraud. The story is interesting and well told, and was first printed in 1595, at Cadiz, under the title of “A History of Gabriel de Espinosa, the Pastry-cook of Madrigal, who pretended to be King Don Sebastian of Portugal.” Of course, Philip II. did not deal gently with one who made such pretensions to the crown he himself had clutched, or with any of his abettors. The pastry-cook and a monk on whom he had imposed his fictions were both hanged, after undergoing the usual appliances of racks and tortures; and the poor princess was degraded from her rank, and shut up in a conventual cell for life. There is an anonymous play of small merit, which seems to have been written in the time of Philip IV., and is entitled “El Pastelero de Madrigal.”

[858]

Versos de Fern. Herrera, Sevilla, 1619, 4to, p. 350.

[859] See the address of Quevedo to his readers in the “Poesías del Bachiller de la Torre.” Some of the words, however, to which he objects, like pensoso, infamia, dudanza, etc., have been recognized since as good Castilian, which from their nature they were when Herrera used them.

[860] Obras de Garcilasso, 1580, pp. 75, 120, 126, 573, and other places.

[861] “Primera Parte de las Flores de Poetas Ilustres de España, ordenada por Pedro Espinosa, Natural de la Ciudad de Antequera,” Valladolid, 1605, 4to, ff. 204. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 190) says Espinosa was attached to the great Andalusian family of the Dukes of Medina-Sidonia, the Guzmans, and of the three or four works he produced, two are in honor of his patrons, and one was published by himself as late as 1644. Much of the poetry in the “Flores” is Andalusian,—a circumstance that renders the omission of Herrera the more striking; some of it is to be found nowhere else; and, unhappily, the book itself is among the rarest in Spanish poetry.

[862] Of the ladies whose poems occur in Espinosa, I think one, Doña Christovalina, is noticed by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 349). Of the others I know nothing, nor of Pedro de Liñan. Texada, as we are told by Antonio, died in 1635, at the age of sixty-seven;—the five poems printed thirty years before by Espinosa being all we have of his works.

[863] Andres Rey de Artieda, better known under his academical name of Artemidoro, is praised by Cervantes as a well-known poet in 1584, though his works were not printed till they appeared at Çaragoça, 1605, 4to. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 262.) Manoel de Portugal, one of those Portuguese who, in the time of Philip II. and III., sought favor of the oppressors of their country by writing in Spanish, was known from 1577; but the collection of his poems in nearly a thousand pages, some in Portuguese, and all of little value, did not appear till it was printed at Lisbon, 1605, 12mo, the year before his death. (Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 345.) Luys de Carrillo y Sotomayor’s poems were published after his death by his brother, at Madrid, 1611, 4to, and were reprinted in 1613; but they had been circulated in MS. from the time he was at the University of Salamanca, where he resided six years. He died in 1610. Pellicer, Bib., Tom. II. p. 122.

[864] “Rimas de Christóval de Mesa,” Madrid, 1611, 12mo; to which add about fifty sonnets in the volume of his translation of Virgil’s Eclogues, Madrid, 1618, 12mo. His notice of himself is in a poetical epistle to the Count de Lemos, when he was going as viceroy to Naples, (Rimas, f. 155), and is such as to show that he was anxious to be a member of that poetical court, and much disappointed at his failure.

[865] The poetry of both of them was printed in 1603; but I do not find any mention of the exact time when either of them lived, and am not quite certain that Lope de Sosa is not the poet who occurs often in the old Cancioneros. I might have added to the notice of their poetry that of some of the poetry in an ascetic work by Malon de Chaide, called “La Conversion de la Magdalena,” consisting of sonnets, versions of the Psalms, etc., which are very pleasing. The best, however,—an ode on the love of Mary Magdalen to the Saviour after his resurrection,—is so grossly amatory in its tone, that its poetical merit is quite dimmed by it. Ed. Alcalá, 1592, 12mo, f. 336.

[866] Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xxxi. Lope de Vega praises Ledesma more than once, unreasonably. His “Conceptos,” in the first edition, Madrid, 1600, is a small volume of 258 leaves, but I believe the subsequent editions contain more poems. His “Juegos de la Noche Buena,” Barcelona, 1611, which I have never seen, is strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 64.

[867] Moro Expósito, Paris, 1834, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xvii.

[868] It is a striking and important fact, to be taken in this connection, that Lope de Vega, though opposed to the new school upon principle, was a correspondent and admirer of Marini, to whom he sent his portrait and dedicated a play; and of whom, in the extravagance of his flattery, he said that Tasso was but as a dawn to the full glory of Marini. Through this channel, therefore, and through many others, traces of which may be found in the collection of Italian eulogies on Lope de Vega, we can at once see how Marini may easily have exercised an influence over the poets of Spain contemporary with him. See Lope’s “Jardin,” (Obras, Tom. I. p. 486), first printed in 1622, and his Dedication to “Virtud, Pobreza y Mujer” (Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, f. 203).

Of the influence of classical antiquity in corrupting the proper Castilian style, I know of no instance earlier than that of Vasco Diaz de Frexenal, who published as early as 1547. His object seems to have been to introduce Latin words and constructions, just as the Pleiades did in France, at the same time and a little later. This can be seen in his “Veinte Triunfos,” chiefly devoted to a poetical account of events in the life of Charles V.; such as his marriage, the birth of his son Philip II., his coronation at Bologna, etc.,—all written in the old measures, and published without notice of the place or year, but, necessarily, after 1530, since that was the date of the Emperor’s coronation. Thus, in the “Prohemio,” where he speaks of dedicating his “Twenty Triumphs” to the twenty Spanish Dukes, Frexenal says, “Baste que la ferventisima afeccion, y la observantisima veneracion, que á vuestras dignisimas y felicisimas Señorias devo, á la dedicacion de mis veinte triunphos me han convidado. Como quiera que mas coronas ducales segun mi noticia en la indomita España no hay, verdaderamente el presente es de poco precio, y las obras del de menos valor, y el autor dellas de menos estima. Pero su apetitosa observancia, su afeccionada fidelidad, y su optativa servidumbre, por las nobilisimas bondades, y prestantisimas virtudes de vuestras excelentes y dignisimas Señorias en algun precio estimadas ser merecen.”

He Latinizes less in the poems that follow, because it is more difficult to do it in verse, but not because he desires it less, as the following lines from the “Triumpho Nuptial Vandalico” (f. ix.) prove plainly:—

This is very different from what was attempted by Juan de Mena a century before; he having desired only to take individual Latin words, and knowing little of classical antiquity; whereas Frexenal wishes, in Montaigne’s phrase, “to Latinize,” and give to his Castilian sentences a Roman air and construction, and so may have been, to a certain extent, the predecessor of Góngora. Antonio mentions two or three other works of Frexenal in prose, chiefly religious, which I have never seen; but I have some ridiculous verses, printed at the end of his treatise entitled “Jardin del Alma Christiana,” 1552, 4to.

[869] Galatea, ed. 1784, Tom. II. p. 284.

[870] Pellicer, Vida de Cervantes, in Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. cxiv.

[871] Mayans y Siscar, Cartas, Tom. I. p. 125.

[872] See his life, by his friend Hozes, prefixed to his Works, Madrid, 1654, 4to.

[873]

Obras de Góngora, 1654, f. 84.

[874]

Obras de Góngora, 1654. f. 89.

[875] A la Tercera Parte de la Historia Pontifical, que escriuió el Doctor Bavia, Capellan de la Capilla Real de Granada.

Góngora, Obras, 1654, f. 5.

The commentary is in Coronel, Obras de Góngora Comentadas, Tom. II. Parte I., Madrid, 1645, pp. 148-159; but it should be noted, that the concluding lines are so obscure, that Luzan (Poética, Lib. II. c. 15) gives them a different interpretation, and understands the phrase, “stamping shadows on masses of foam,” to refer to the art of printing, which so often praises those who do not deserve it. The whole sonnet is cited with admiration by Gracian, “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio,” Discurso XXXII.; a work which we must mention hereafter as the art of poetry for the culto school; and the editors of the “Diario de los Literatos de España”—men of better taste than was common in their times—reproached Luzan, when they reviewed his “Poética” in 1738, with being too severe on this extraordinary nonsense. Lanuza, Discurso Apologético de Luzan, Pamplona, 1740, 12mo, pp. 46-78.

[876] Obras, f. 32.

[877] In the second coro.

[878] I suppose he changed his style about the time he went to court; and the very first of his sonnets in Espinosa’s “Flores” is proof that he had changed it as early as 1605.

[879] Jos. Pellicer, in his “Lecciones Solemnes,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, col. 610-612 and 684), explains his position in relation to Góngora, and his trouble about finding the meaning of some passages in his works; thus justifying what the Prince of Esquilache said, probably in reference to these very commentaries:—

El Príncipe á su Libro.

[880] “Ilustracion y Defensa de la Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe de Christóval de Salazar Mardones,” Madrid, 1636, 4to.

[881] There is a notice of Coronel in Antonio, Bib. Nova. The three volumes of his commentary (Madrid, 4to, 1636-46) contain six or seven hundred pages each;—the second being divided into two parts. As a poet himself, he printed in Madrid, 1650, 4to, a volume which he called “Crystals from Helicon,” one of the worst productions of the school of Góngora.

[882] Antonio, article “Ludovicus de Góngora,” mentions the inferior commentators. The attack of Cascales, who seems afraid to be thorough with it, is in his “Cartas Philológicas.”

[883] The queen, who was a daughter of Henry IV. of France, was one day passing through a gallery of the palace, when some one came behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. “What is that for, Count?” she exclaimed. But, unhappily for her, it was not the Count;—it was the king. Soon afterwards Villamediana received a hint to be on his guard, as his life was in danger. He neglected the friendly notice, and was assassinated the same evening. He had been very open in his admiration of the queen, having, on occasion of a tournament, covered his person with silver reals and taken the punning motto,—“Mis amores son reales.” (Velazquez, Dieze, Göttingen, 1796, 8vo, p. 255.) An edition of his Works, Madrid, 1634, 4to, is a little more ample than that of Çaragoça, 1629, 4to; but not the better for it. The story of the Count’s unhappy presumption and fate may be found in Mad. d’Aulnoy’s “Voyage d’Espagne,” ed. 1693, Tom. II. pp. 17-21, and in the striking ballads of the Duke of Rivas, Romances Históricos, Paris, 1841, 8vo.