[1] All these satires are found in the works of their respective authors, heretofore cited, except that of Morillo “On the Corrupted Manners of his Times,” which is in Espinosa, Flores, 1605, f. 119. The “Epístolas” of Artieda were printed the same year, under the name of “Artemidoro,” and are six in number. The best are one against the life of a sportsman, and one in ironical defence of the follies of society. A letter of Virues to his brother, also dated 1605, might have been added. It is a pleasant satirical account of a military march from Milan to the Low Countries, passing the St. Gothard.

[2] They were first printed in Sedano, Parnaso, Tom. IX., 1778.

[3] Rimas, 1618, p. 198. It is a remarkably happy union of the Italian form of verse and the Roman spirit.

[4] Rimas, 1634, pp. 56, 234, 254. It is singular, however, that, while Bartolomé imitates Horace, he expresses his preference for Juvenal.

He seems, too, to have been accounted an imitator of Juvenal by his contemporaries; for Guevara, in his “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco IX., calls him “Divino Juvenal Aragones.” But it is impossible not to see that he is full of Horatian turns of thought.

[5] It is the last poem in the “Melpomene.”

[6] The satires of all these authors are in their collected works, except those of Villegas, which were printed from manuscripts, supposed to be the originals, by Sedano (Tom. IX. pp. 3-18); or rather, two of them on bad poets were so printed, for the third seems to have been suppressed, on account of its indelicacy.

[7] Cervantes is a strong case in point. In the fourth chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus,” immediately after speaking of his Don Quixote, he disavows having ever written any thing satirical, and denounces all such compositions as low and base. Indeed, the very words sátira and satírico came at last to be used in a bad sense oftener than in a good one. Huerta, Sinónimos Castellanos, Valencia, 1807, 2 tom. 12mo, ad verb.

[8] A striking instance of this is to be found in the “Primera Parle del Parnaso Antártico,” by Diego Mexia, printed at Seville, 1608, 4to, and the only portion of it ever printed. It consists of an original poetical letter by a lady to Mexia, and a translation of twenty-one of the Epistles of Ovid and his “Ibis”; all in terza rima, and nearly all in pure and beautiful Castilian verse. In the edition in the collection of Fernandez, Tom. XIX., 1799, the epistle by the lady is omitted, which is a pity, since it contains notices of several South American poets.

[9] The best elegiac poetry in the Spanish language is, perhaps, that in the two divisions of the first eclogue of Garcilasso. Elegies, or mournful poems of any kind, are often called Endechas in Spanish, as Quevedo called his sad amatory poems; but the origin of the word is not settled, nor its meaning quite well defined. Venegas, in a vocabulary of obscure words at the end of his “Agonía del Tránsito de la Muerte,” 1574, p. 370, says he thinks it comes from inde jaces, as if the mourner addressed the dead body. But this is absurd. It may come from the Greek ἕνδεκα, for when the last verse of each stanza contained just eleven syllables, the poem was said to be written in endechas reales. See Covarrubias, and the Academy, ad verbum, who give no opinion.

[10] There are many editions of the Works of Saa de Miranda; but the second and best (s. l. 1614, 4to) is preceded by a life of him, which claims to have been composed by his personal friends, and which states the odd fact, that the lady of whom he was enamoured was so ugly, that her family declined the match until he had well considered the matter; but that he persevered, and became so fondly attached to her, that he died, at last, from grief at her loss. His merits as a poet are well discussed by Ant. das Neves Pereira, in the fifth volume of the “Memorias de Litt. Portugueza” of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisboa, 1793, pp. 99, etc. Some of his works are in the Spanish Index Expurgatorius, 1667, p. 72.

[11] Of the poets whose eclogues are found in their prose pastorals I shall speak at large when I examine this division of Spanish romantic fiction. Montemayor, however, it should be noted here, wrote other eclogues, which are in his Cancionero, 1588, ff. 111, etc.

[12] It is found in the important collection, the “Flores,” of Espinosa, f. 66, where it first appeared.

[13] “Eglogas Pastoriles de Pedro de Padilla,” Sevilla, 1582, 4to; thirteen in number, in all measures, and the last one partly in prose. Of Padilla, who was much connected with the men of letters of his time, all needful notices may be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 396-402, and in Clemencin’s Notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 147. The curate well says of his “Tesoro de Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo,) “They would be better, if they were fewer.” They fill above nine hundred pages, and are in all forms and styles. Padilla died as late as 1599.

[14] There are six of them, in terza and ottava rima, with a few lyrical poems interspersed, in other measures and in a better tone, in a volume entitled “Versos Espirituales,” Cuenca, 1596, 12mo. Their author was a monk.

[15] The eclogue of Morales is in Espinosa, f. 48, and that of Tapia occurs—where we should hardly look for it—in the “Libro de Montería, que mandó escribir el Rey Don Alfonso XI.,” edited by Argote de Molina, 1582. It is on the woods of Aranjuez, and was written after the birth of a daughter of Philip II.; but its descriptions are long and wearisome.

[16] Rimas, 1591, ff. 50-57.

[17] Espinosa includes it in his “Flores,” f. 107.

[18] The authors mentioned in this paragraph are, I believe, all more amply noticed elsewhere, except Pedro Soto de Roxas. He was a friend of Lope de Vega, and published in Madrid, 1623, 4to, his “Desengaño de Amor,”—a volume of poems in the Italian manner, the best of which are the madrigals and eclogues.

[19]

Faber found this and a few more in Salina’s treatise on Music, 1577, and placed it, with a considerable number of similar short compositions, in the first volume of his collection, pp. 303, etc.

[20]

Ubeda, 1588, was the first, I think, who paraphrased this epigram; but where he discovered it I do not know.

[21]

Camões, Rimas, Lisboa, 1598, 4to, f. 179.

Several that precede and follow, both in Spanish and Portuguese, are worth notice.

[22] “Agudezas de Juan Oven, etc., con Adiciones por Francisco de la Torre,” Madrid, 1674, 1682, 2 tom. 4to. Oven is the Owen or Audoenus of Wood’s “Athenæ Oxon.,” Tom. II. p. 320. His “Epigrammata,” printed about a dozen times between 1606 and 1795, were placed on the list of prohibited books in 1654. Index, Romæ, 1786, 8vo, p. 216.

[23]

Camoens had the same idea in some Portuguese redondillas, (Rimas, 1598, f. 159,) so that I suspect both of them took it from some old popular epigram.

[24] The poems of Boscan and Silvestre are found in their respective works, already examined; but of Francisco de Castilla and of Juan de Mendoza and their poetry it may be proper to give some notice, as their names have not occurred before.

Castilla was a gentleman apparently of the old national type, descended from an illegitimate branch of the family of Pedro el Cruel. He lived in the time of Charles V., and passed his youth near the person of that great sovereign; but, as he says in a letter to his brother, the Bishop of Calahorra, he at last “withdrew himself, disgusted alike with the abhorred rabble and senseless life of the court,” and “chose the estate of matrimony, as one more safe for his soul and better suited to his worldly condition.” How he fared in this experiment he does not tell us; but, missing, in the retirement it brought with it, those pleasures of social intercourse to which he had been accustomed, he bought, as he says, “with a small sum of money, other surer and wiser friends,” whose counsels and teachings he put into verse, that his weak memory might the better preserve them. The result of this life merely contemplative was a book, in which he gives us, first, his “Theórica de Virtudes,” or an explanation, in the old short Spanish verse, accompanied with a prose gloss, of the different Virtues, ending with the vengeful Nemesis; next, a Treatise on Friendship, in long nine-line stanzas; and then, successively, a Satire on Human Life and its vain comforts; an Allegory on Worldly Happiness; a series of Exhortations to Virtue and Holiness, which he has unsuitably called Proverbs; and a short discussion, in décimas, on the Immaculate Conception. At the end, separately paged, as if it were quite a distinct treatise, we have a counterpart to the “Theórica de Virtudes,” called the “Prática de las Virtudes de los Buenos Reyes de España”; a poem in above two hundred octave stanzas, on the Virtues of the Kings of Spain, beginning with Alaric the Goth and ending with the Emperor Charles V., to whom he dedicates it with abundance of courtly flattery. The whole volume, both in the prose and verse, is written in the strong old Castilian style, sometimes encumbered with learning, but oftener rich, pithy, and flowing. The following stanza, written, apparently, when its author was already disgusted with his court life, but had not given it up, may serve as a specimen of his best manner:—

An edition of Castilla’s very rare volume may have been printed about 1536, when it was licensed; but I have never seen it, nor any notice of it. The one of which I have a copy was printed at Zaragoza, 4to, lit. got., 1552; and I believe there is one of Alcalá, either in 1554 or 1564, 8vo.

The poetry of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, who was Regidor of Madrid, and a member of the Cortes of 1544, is, perhaps, more rare than that of Castilla, and is contained in a small volume printed at Alcalá in 1550, and entitled “Buen Placer trovado en treze discantes de quarta rima Castellana segun imitacion de trobas Francesas,” etc. It consists of thirteen discourses on a happy life, its means and motives, all written in stanzas of four lines each, which their author calls French, I suppose, because they are longer lines than those in the old national measures, and rhymed alternately,—the rhymes of one stanza running into the next. At the end is a Canto Real, as it is called, on a verse in the Psalms, composed in the same manner; and several smaller poems, one of which is a kind of religious villancico, and four of them sonnets. The tone of the whole is didactic, and its poetical value small. I cite eight lines, as a specimen of its peculiar manner and rhymes:—

Mendoza was a person of much consideration in his time, and is noticed as such by Quintana, (Historia de Madrid, Madrid, 1629, folio,) who gives one of his sonnets at f. 27, and a sketch of his character at f. 245.

[25] The “Triunfos Morales de Francisco de Guzman” (Sevilla, 1581, 12mo) are imitations of Petrarca’s “Trionfi,” but are much more didactic, giving, for instance, under the head of “The Triumph of Wisdom,” the opinions of the wise men of antiquity; and under the head of “The Triumph of Prudence,” the general rules for prudent conduct.

[26] The “Arte Poética” of Espinel is the first thing published in the “Parnaso Español” of Sedano, 1768, and was vehemently attacked by Yriarte, when, in 1777, he printed his own translation of the same work. (Obras de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. IV.) To this Sedano replied in the ninth volume of his “Parnaso,” 1778. Yriarte rejoined in a satirical dialogue, “Donde las dan las toman” (Obras, Tom. VI.); and Sedano closed the controversy with the “Coloquios de Espina,” Malaga, 1785, 2 tom. 12mo, under the name of Juan María Chavero y Eslava. It is a very pretty literary quarrel, quite in the Spanish manner.

[27] The “Egemplar Poético” of Cueva was first printed in the eighth volume of the “Parnaso Español,” 1774; and the “Inventores de las Cosas,” taken generally from Polydore Virgil, and dated 1608, was first published in the ninth volume of the same collection, 1778. How absurd the last is may be inferred from the fact, that it makes Moses the inventor of hexameter verse, and Alexander the Great the oldest of paper-makers.

[28] What remains of Céspedes’s poetry is to be found in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez’s collection. His life is well set forth in the excellent “Diccionario de los Profesores de las Bellas Artes, por A. Cean Bermudez,” Madrid, 1800, 6 tom. 12mo, Tom. I. p. 316; besides which, its learned author, at the end of Tom. V., has republished the fragments of the poem on Painting in a better order than that in which they had before appeared; adding a pleasant prose discourse, in a pure style, on Ancient and Modern Painting and Sculpture, which Céspedes wrote in 1604, when recovering from a fever, and two other of his trifles; to the whole of which is prefixed a judicious Preface by Cean himself. Céspedes had been a Greek scholar in his youth, and says, that, in his old age, when he chanced to open Pindar, he “never failed to find a well-drawn and rich picture, grand and fit for Michel Angelo to paint.” He was a friend of Carranza, the great archbishop, who, after being a leading member of the Council of Trent, and confessor of Mary of England after she married Philip II., was worried to death by the Inquisition in 1576. (See, ante, Vol. I. p. 466.) Céspedes himself came near suffering from a similar persecution, in consequence of a letter he wrote to Carranza in 1559, in which he spoke disrespectfully of the Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Office. Llorente, Hist., Tom. II. p. 440.

[29] Lope’s “Arte Nuevo” has been already noticed. The “Selva Militar y Política” of Rebolledo was first printed at Cologne, in 1652, 18mo, its author being then Spanish minister in Denmark, of whose kings he has given a sort of genealogical history in another poem, his “Selvas Dánicas.”—“La Cruz, por Albanio Ramirez de la Trapeza,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo, pp. 368, to which are added a few pages of short poems on the Cross.

[30] “Los Emblemas de Alciato, etc., añadidos de nuevos Emblemas,” Lyon, 1549, 4to,—on the Index Expurgatorius of 1790. Those of Covarrubias were printed in Spanish in 1591; and in Spanish and Latin, Agrigenti, 1601, 12mo;—the last, a thick volume, with a long and learned Latin dissertation on Emblems prefixed. Covarrubias was brother of the lexicographer of the same name. Tesoro, Art. Emblema.

[31] “Aula de Dios, Cartuxa Real de Zaragoza. Descrive la Vida de sus Monjes, acusa la Vanidad del Siglo, etc., consagrala á la Utilidad Pública Don Miguel de Mencos,” Zaragoza, 1637, 4to. They are written in silvas, and their true author’s name is indicated by puns in some of the laudatory verses that precede the work.

[32] The pleasantest, if not the most important exception to this remark, which I recollect, is to be found in an epistle by the friend of Lope de Vega, Cristóval de Virues, to his brother, dated June 17, 1600, and giving an account of his passage over the Saint Gothard with a body of troops. It is in blank verse that is not very exact, but the descriptions are very good, and marked with the feeling of that stern scenery. Obras, 1609, f. 269.

[33] The shorter poems, noticed as didactic, are found in the Cancioneros and other collections already referred to, or in the works of their respective authors.

[34] When looking through any of the large collections of ballads, especially those produced in the seventeenth century by the popularity of the whole class and the facility of their metrical structure, we find pertinent an excellent remark of Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” 1592, p. 38:—“There is nothing easier than to make a ballad, and nothing more difficult than to make it what it ought to be.”

[35] “Romances nuevamente sacados de Historias Antiguas de la Crónica de España, compuestos por Lorenço de Sepúlveda,” etc., en Anvers, 1551, 18mo. There were editions, enlarged and altered, in 1563, 1566, 1580, and 1584, mentioned by Ebert. That of 1584 contains one hundred and fifty-six ballads;—that of 1551 contains one hundred and forty-nine. Many of them are in the Romanceros Generales, and not a few in the recent collections of Depping and Duran.

[36] The “Cantos de Fuentes,” in the Epístola to which this ballad is found, were printed three times, and in the edition of Alcalá, 1587, 12mo, fill, with their tedious commentary, above eight hundred pages. Fuentes is noted by Zuñiga, in his “Annals of Seville,” 1677, p. 585, as a knight of Seville “of an illustrious lineage.” See also, ante, Vol. I. pp. 36-38.

[37] The only copy of this volume known to exist is among the rare and precious Spanish books given by Reinhart to the Imperial Library at Vienna; but an excellent account of it, followed by above sixty of the more important ballads it contains, was published at Leipzig, 1846, 12mo, under the title of “Rosa de Romances,” by Mr. Wolf, the admirable scholar, to whom the lovers of Spanish literature owe so much.

[38] “Romancero de Pedro de Padilla,” Madrid, 1583, 12mo. The ballads fill about three hundred and sixty pages. The first twenty-two are on the wars in Flanders; afterwards there are nine taken from Ariosto’s stories; then several on the story of Rodrigo de Narvaez, on Spanish traditions, etc.

[39] Cueva, whom we have found in several other departments of Spanish literature, printed his ballads with the title of “Coro Febeo de Romances Historiales,” in his native city, Seville, 1587, 12mo,—a volume of nearly seven hundred pages. Only four or five are on Spanish subjects;—that on Doña Teresa (f. 215) being obviously taken from the “Crónica General,” Parte III. c. 22. The ballad addressed to his book, “Al Libro,” is at the end of the “Melpomene,” and is of value for his personal history.

[40] Hita’s “Guerras Civiles de Granada” will be noticed when I come to speak of romantic fiction.

[41] “Romances de Germanía,” 1609; reprinted, Madrid, 1789, 8vo. The words Germanía, Germano, etc., were applied to the jargon in which the rogues talked with one another. Hidalgo, who wrote only six of the ballads he published, gives at the end of his collection a vocabulary of this dialect, which is recognized as genuine by Mayans y Siscar, and reprinted in his “Orígenes”; so that the suggestion of Clemencin, which I have followed in the text, where I speak of Juan Hidalgo as a pseudonyme, may not be well founded;—a suggestion further discountenanced by the fact, that, in Tom. XXXVIII. of the Comedias Escogidas, 1672, the play of “Los Mozárabes de Toledo” is attributed to a Juan Hidalgo. That this had nothing to do with the Gypsies, though supposed, in the last edition, to have been connected with them, is shown in Borrow’s “Zincali,” London, 1841, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 143. Sandoval (Carlos V., Lib. III. § 38) more than once calls the rebellious Comuneros of Valencia a Germanía, or combination, which can leave little doubt about the origin of the word from Hermandad, Hermano,—brotherhood and brother,—though Covarrubias does not seem sure about it, in verb. Alemania.

[42] Valdivielso’s name occurs very often in the Aprobacion of books in the sixteenth century. His “Romancero Espiritual,” Valencia, 1689, 12mo, first printed 1612, was several times reprinted, and fills above three hundred and fifty pages. It is not quite all in the ballad measure or in a grave tone.

[43] In Lope’s Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIII. and XVII.

[44] “Ramillete de Divinas Flores para el Desengaño de la Vida Humana,” Amberes, 1629, 18mo, pp. 262. “Avisos para la Muerte, por L. de Arellano,” Zaragoza, 1634, 1648, etc., 18mo, 90 leaves. See, ante, p. 341, note.

[45] The ballads of Roca y Serna, often disfigured by his Gongorism, are found in his “Luz del Alma,” Madrid, 1726, 12mo, first printed in 1634, and frequently since.

[46] It is entitled “Silva de Varios Romances,” and contains the well-known ballads of the Conde d’ Irlos, the Marquis of Mantua, Gayferos, and the Conde Claros, with others, to the number of twenty-three, that are in the Ballad-book of 1550. Those on the death of Philip II. and Doña Isabel de la Paz are, of course, not in the first edition of this Silva. They occur in that of Barcelona, 1602, 18mo.

[47] “Floresta de Varios Romances, sacados de las Historias Antiguas de los Hechos Famosos de los Doce Pares de Francia,” Madrid, 1728, 18mo, first printed 1608. See Sarmiento, § 528, for its popularity; but the later ballads in the volume do not relate to the Twelve Peers.

[48] “Romancero y Historia del muy Valeroso Cavallero, el Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar, recopilado por Juan de Escobar,” Alcalá, 1612, 18mo, and many other editions, the most complete being that of Stuttgard, 1840, 12mo.

[49] Besides the editions of 1623 and 1629, I know that of Madrid, 1659, 18mo, in two parts, containing additions of satirical ballads, letrillas, etc., by Francisco de Segura.

[50] Lopez Maldonado was a friend of Cervantes, and his Cancionero (Madrid, 1586, 4to) was among the books in Don Quixote’s library. There is a beautiful ballad by him, (f. 35,) beginning,—

The other authors referred to in the text have been before noticed.

[51] Some of Góngora’s romantic ballads, like his “Angelica and Medoro,” and some of his burlesque ballads, are good; but the best are the simplest. There is a beautiful one, giving a discussion between a little boy and girl, how they will dress up and spend a holiday.

[52] Cervantes speaks of his “numberless ballads” in his “Viage al Parnaso.” Those of Lope de Vega soon came into the popular ballad-books, if, indeed, some of the best of them were not, as I suspect, originally written for the “Flor de Romances” of Villalta, printed at Valencia in 1593, 18mo.

[53] Solís, “Poesías Sagradas y Humanas,” 1692, 1732, etc.

[54] “Vergel de Plantas Divinas, por Arcangel de Alarcon,” 1594.

[55] It is a ballad about money (Espinosa, Flores, 1605, f. 30), and is the only thing I know by Diego de la Chica. I might add ballads by other authors, which are found where they would least be looked for; like one of by Rufo, in his “Apotegmas,”—one by Jauregui, in his “Rimas,”—and a beautiful one by Camoens, (Rimas, 1598, f. 187,) worthy of Góngora, and beginning,—

[56] There is no need of authorities to prove the universal prevalence of ballads in the seventeenth century; for the literature of that century often reads like a mere monument of it. But if I wished to name any thing, it would be the Don Quixote, where Sancho is made to cite them so often; and the Novelas of Cervantes, especially “The Little Gypsy,” who sings her ballads in the houses of the nobles and the church of Santa María; and “Rinconete and Cortadillo,” where they make the coarse merriment of the thieves of Seville. Indeed, as the puppet-showman says, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 26,) “They were in the mouths of every body,—of the very boys in the streets.”

[57] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 28.

[58] The laws of the “Partidas,” about 1260, afford abundant illustrations of the extent and importance of the pastoral life in Spain at that period, and for a long time before.

[59] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Tom. X., par Salvi, pp. 87, 92.

[60] Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Tom. II. p. 809, and the Prólogo to the Diana of Perez, ed. 1614, p. 362.

[61] I have never seen any edition of the Diana cited earlier than that of Madrid, 1545; but I possess one in 4to, 112 leaves, well printed at Valencia, in 1542, without the name of the printer. The story of Narvaez, of which I shall have occasion to speak when we come to Antonio Villegas, does not stand in the fourth book of this copy, as it does in the copies of subsequent editions. The Diana of Montemayor was so popular, that at least sixteen editions of the original appeared in eighty years; six French translations, according to Gordon de Percel (Bib. de l’Usage des Romans, Paris, 1734, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 23, 24); two German, according to Ebert; and one English. The last, by Bartholomew Yong, (London, 1598, folio,) is excellent, and some of its happy versions of the poetry of Montemayor are found in “England’s Helicon,” 1600 and 1614, reprinted in the third volume of the “British Bibliographer,” London, 1810, 8vo. The story of Proteus and Julia, in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” was supposed by Mrs. Lenox and Dr. Farmer to be taken from that of Felismena, in the second book of Montemayor’s Diana, and therefore Collier has republished Yong’s translation of the last in the second volume of his “Shakspeare’s Library,” (London, s. a. 8vo,) though he doubts whether Shakspeare were really indebted to it. Malone’s Shakspeare, Boswell’s ed., London, 1821, 8vo, Vol. IV. p. 3, and Brydges, Restituta, London, 1814, 8vo, Vol. I. p. 498. Poor abridgments of the Diana of Montemayor, and of Polo’s Continuation, were published at London, 1738, 12mo.

[62] Sometimes he wrote in both languages at once; at least, he did so in his Cancionero, 1588, f. 81, where is a sonnet which may be read either as Spanish or as Portuguese.

[63] In his Argumento to the whole romance.

[64] Dorotea, Act II. Sc. 2. Obras Sueltas, Tom. VII. p. 84.

[65] The first edition cited (Ant., Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 539) is of 1564, and I know of but one other, that which I have, Barcelona, 1614, 12mo; though I have seen one without a title-page, which may be different from both. At any rate, its editions were few, and its popularity was small. It was, however, translated into French, and by Bart. Yong into English; and was printed in the original more than once with the Diana of Montemayor.

[66] Polo’s “Diana Enamorada” was first printed in 1564, and seven editions of the original appeared in half a century, with two French translations and a Latin one; the last by Caspar Barth. It is well translated by Bart. Yong, as the third part of the Diana, in the same volume with the others; but is really the second part.

[67] There is, however, a third part to the Diana of Montemayor, written by Hier. Texada, and printed at Paris, 1627, 8vo, of which a copy in the Royal Library at Paris is cited by Ebert, but I have never seen it.

[68] The best edition of Gil Polo’s Diana is that with a life of him by Cerdá, Madrid, 1802, 12mo; particularly valuable for the notes to the “Canto de Turia,” in which, imitating the “Canto de Orfeo,” where Montemayor gives an account of the famous ladies of his time, Polo gives an account of the famous poets of Valencia. For lives of Polo see, also, Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 270, and Fuster, Bib. Valentina, Tom. I. p. 150. It is singular that Polo, who had such success with his Diana, should have printed nothing else, except one or two short and trifling poems.

[69] It is the same book that Cervantes ridicules in the sixth chapter of the first part of Don Quixote, and in the third chapter of his “Journey to Parnassus”; and is curious for some specimens of Sardinian poetry which it contains. But Pedro de Pineda, a teacher of Spanish in London, taking the irony of the good curate in Don Quixote on Lo Frasso’s romance to be sincere praise, printed a new edition of it, in two very handsome volumes, (London, 1740, 8vo,) with a foolish Dedication and Prólogo, alleging the authority of Cervantes for its great merit. Hardly any other of the Spanish prose pastorals is so absurd as this, or contains so much bad verse; a great deal of which is addressed to living and known persons by their titles. The tenth book, indeed, is almost entirely made up of such poetry. I do not recollect that Cervantes is so severe on any poet, in his “Journey to Parnassus,” as he is on Lo Frasso.

[70] The best edition of the “Fílida” is the sixth, (Madrid, 1792, 8vo,) with a biographical prologue by Mayans y Siscar; ill-digested, as are all his similar prefaces, but not without valuable matter.

[71] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 66, 278, 407.

[72] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 77, and Tom. XI. p. xxviii. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 146, and Tom. III. p. 14, in the notes. The “Tears” of Tansillo enjoyed the honor of being four times translated into Spanish.

[73] Ante, Vol. II, pp. 61-64.

[74] “Desengaño de Celos, compuesto por Bartholomé Lopez de Enciso, Natural de Tendilla,” Madrid, 1586, 12mo, 321 leaves. There is, I believe, absolutely nothing known of the author, except what he tells us of himself in this romance;—an extremely rare book, of which I possess the copy that belonged to Cerdá y Rico, and which Pellicer borrowed of him to make the needful note on Enciso for his edition of Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6.

[75] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte I. Tom. I. p. 67, and ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 144.

[76] Ante, Vol. II. p. 125. Perhaps the “Enamorada Elisea” of Gerónimo de Covarrubias Herrera, printed in 1594, 8vo, should also be excepted; but I know this work only from the title of it in Antonio.