CHAPTER VII

THE AGE OF CARLOS QUINTO

1516-1556

With the arrival of printing-presses in 1474 the diffusion of foreign models became general throughout Spain. The closing years of the reign of the Catholic Kings were essentially an era of translation, and this movement was favoured by high patronage. The King, Fernando, was the pupil of Vidal de Noya; the Queen, Isabel, studied under Beatriz Galindo, _la latina_; and Luis Vives reports that their daughter, Mad Juana, could and did deliver impromptu Latin speeches to the deputies of the Low Countries. Throughout the land Italian scholars preached the gospel of the Renaissance. The brothers Geraldino (Alessandro and Antonio) taught the children of the royal house. Peter Martyr, the Lombard, boasts that the intellectual chieftains of Castile sat at his feet; and he had his present reward, for he ended as Bishop of Granada. From the Latin chair in the University of Salamanca, Lucio Marineo lent his aid to the good cause; and, in Salamanca likewise, the Portuguese, Arias Barbosa, won repute as the earliest good Peninsular Hellenist. Spanish women took the fever of foreign culture. Lucía de Medrano and Juana de Contreras lectured to university men upon the Latin poets of the Augustan age. So, too, Francisca de Nebrija would serve as substitute for her father, ANTONIO DE NEBRIJA (1444-1522), the greatest of Spanish humanists, the author of the _Arte de la Lengua Castellana_ and of a Spanish-Latin dictionary, both printed in 1492. Nebrija touched letters at almost every point, touching naught that he did not adorn; he expounded his principles in the new University of Alcalá de Henares, founded in 1508 by the celebrated Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517). Palencia had preceded Nebrija by two years with the earliest Spanish-Latin dictionary; but Nebrija's drove it from the field, and won for its author a name scarce inferior to Casaubon's or Scaliger's.

The first Greek text of the New Testament ever printed came from Alcalá de Henares in 1514. In 1520 the renowned Complutensian Polyglot followed; the Hebrew and Chaldean texts being supervised by converted Jews like Alfonso de Alcalá, Alfonso de Zamora, and Pablo Coronel; the Greek by Nebrija, Juan de Vergara, Demetrio Ducas, and Hernán Núñez, "the Greek Commander." Versions of the Latin classics were in all men's hands. Palencia rendered Plutarch and Josephus, Francisco Vidal de Noya translated Horace, Virgil's _Eclogues_ were done by Encina, Cæsar's _Commentaries_ by Diego López de Toledo, Plautus by Francisco López Villalobos, Juvenal by Jerónimo de Villegas, and Apuleius' _Golden Ass_ by Diego López de Cartagena, Archdeacon of Seville. Juan de Vergara was busied on the text of Aristotle, while his brother, Francisco de Vergara, gave Spaniards their first Greek grammar and translated Heliodorus. Nor was activity restrained to dead languages: the Italian teachers saw to that. Dante was translated by Pedro Fernández de Villegas, Archdeacon of Burgos; Petrarch's _Trionfi_ by Antonio Obregón and Álvar Gómez; and the _Decamerone_ by an anonymous writer of high merit.

If Italians invaded Spain, Spaniards were no less ready to settle in Italy. Long before, Dante had met with Catalans and had branded their proverbial stinginess:—"_l'avara povertà di Catalogna_." A little later, and Boccaccio spurned Castilians as so many wild men: "_semibarbari et efferati homines_." Lorenzo Valla, chief of the Italian scholars at Alfonso V.'s Neapolitan court, denounced the King's countrymen as illiterates:—"_a studiis humanitatis abhorrentes_." Benedetto Gareth of Barcelona (1450-?1514) plunged into the new current, forswore his native tongue, wrote his respectable _Rime_ in Italian, and re-incarnated himself under the Italian form of Chariteo. A certain Jusquin Dascanio is represented by a song, half-Latin, half-Italian, in Asenjo Barbieri's _Cancionero Musical de los Siglos xv. y xvi._ (No. 68), and a few anonymous pieces in the same collection are written wholly in Italian. The Valencian, Bertomeu Gentil, and the Castilian, Tapia, use Italian in the _Cancionero General_ of 1527, the former succeeding so far that one of his eighteen Italian sonnets has been accepted as Tansillo's by all Tansillo's editors. The case of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel, whom Christians call León Hebreo, is exceptional. Undoubtedly his famous _Dialoghi di amore_, that curious product of neo-platonic and Semitic mysticism which charmed Abarbanel's contemporaries no less than it charmed Cervantes, reaches us in Italian (1535). Yet, since it was written in 1502, its foreign dress is the chance result of the writer's expulsion from Spain with his brethren in 1492. It is unlikely that Judas Abarbanel should have mastered all the secrets of Italian within ten years: that he composed in Castilian, the language most familiar to him, is overwhelmingly probable.

But the Italian was met on his own ground. The Neapolitan poet, Luigi Tansillo, declares himself a Spaniard to the core:—"_Spagnuolo d'affezione_." And, later, Panigarola asserts that Milanese fops, on the strength of a short tour in Spain, would pretend to forget their own speech, and would deliver themselves of Spanish words and tags in and out of season. Meanwhile, Spanish Popes, like Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., helped to bring Spanish into fashion. It is unlikely that the epical _Historia Parthenopea_ (1516) of the Sevillan, Alonso Hernández, found many readers even among the admirers of the Great Captain, Gonzalo de Córdoba, whose exploits are its theme; but it merits notice as a Spanish book issued in Rome, and as a poor imitation of Mena's _Trescientas_, with faint suggestions of an Italian environment. A Spaniard, whom Encina may have met upon his travels, introduced Italians to the Spanish theatre. This was BARTOLOMÉ TORRES NAHARRO, a native of Torres, near Badajoz. Our sole information concerning him comes from a Letter Prefatory to his works, written by one Barbier of Orleans. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, and no proof supports the story that he was driven from Rome because of his satires on the Papal court. Neither do we know that he died in extreme poverty. These are baseless tales. What is certain is this: that Torres Naharro, having taken orders, was captured by Algerine pirates, was ransomed, and made his way to Rome about the year 1513. Further, we know that he lived at Naples in the service of Fabrizio Colonna, and that his collected plays were published at Naples in 1517 with the title of _Propaladia_, dedicated to Francisco Dávalos, the Spanish husband of Vittoria Colonna. That Torres Naharro was a favourite with Leo X. rests on no better basis than the fact that in the Pope's privilege to print he is styled _dilectus filius_.

His friendly witness, Barbier, informs us that, though Torres Naharro was quite competent to write his plays in Latin, he chose Castilian of set purpose that "he might be the first to write in the vulgar tongue." This phrase, taken by itself, implies ignorance of Encina's work; in any case, Torres Naharro develops his drama on a larger scale than that of his predecessor. His _Prohemio_ or Preface is full of interesting doctrine. He divides his plays into five acts, because Horace wills it so, and these acts he calls _jornadas_, "because they resemble so many resting-points." The personages should not be too many: not less than six, and not more than twelve. If the writer introduces some twenty characters in his _Tinellaria_, he excuses himself on the ground that "the subject needed it." He further apologises for the introduction of Italian words in his plays: a concession to "the place where, and the persons to whom, the plays were recited." Lastly, Torres Naharro divides dramas into two broad classes: first, the _comedia de noticia_, which treats of events really seen and noted; second, the _comedia de fantasía_, which deals with feigned things, imaginary incidents that seem true, and might be true, though in fact they are not so.

Of the _comedia de fantasía_ Torres Naharro is the earliest master. He adventures on the allegorical drama in his _Trofea_, which commemorates the exploits of Manoel of Portugal in Africa and India, and brings Fame and Apollo upon the stage. The chivalresque drama is represented by him in such pieces as the _Serafina_, the _Aquilana_, the _Himenea_; while he examples the play of manners by the _Jacinta_ and the _Soldadesca_. Each piece begins with an _introyto_ or prologue, wherein indulgence and attention are requested; then follows a concise summary of the plot; last, the action opens. The faults of Torres Naharro's theatre are patent enough: his tendency to turn comedy to farce, his inclination to extravagance, his want of tact in crowding his stage—as in the _Tinellaria_—with half-a-dozen characters chattering in half-a-dozen different languages at once.

Setting aside these primitive humours, it is impossible to deny that Torres Naharro has a positive, as well as an historic value. His versification, always in the Castilian octosyllabic metre, with no trespassing on the Italian hendecasyllabic, is neat and polished, and, though far from splendid, lacks neither sweetness nor speed; his dialogue is pointed, opportune, dramatic; his characters are observed and are set in the proper light. His verses entitled the _Lamentaciones de Amor_ are in the old, artificial manner; his satirical couplets on the clergy are vigorous and witty attacks on the general life of Rome; his devout songs are neither better nor worse than those of his contemporaries; and his sonnets—two in Italian, one in a mixture of Italian and Latin—are mere curiosities of no real worth, yet they testify to the writer's uncommon versatility. Versatile Torres Naharro unquestionably was, and his gift serves him in the plays for which he is remembered. He is the first Spaniard to realise his personages, to create character on the boards; the first to build a plot, to maintain an interest of action by variety of incident, to polish an intrigue, to concentrate his powers within manageable limits, to view stage-effects from before the curtain. In a word, Torres Naharro knew the stage, its possibilities, and its resources. For his own age and for his opportunities he knew it even too well; and his _Himenea_—the theme of which is the love of Himeneo for Febea, with the interposition of Febea's brother, petulant as to the "point of honour"—is an isolated masterpiece, unrivalled till the time of Lope de Vega. The accident that Torres Naharro's _Propaladia_ was printed in Italy; the misfortune that its Spanish reprints were tardy, and that his plays were too complicated for the primitive resources of the Spanish stage: these delayed the development of the Spanish theatre by close on a century. Yet the fact remains: to find a match for the _Himenea_ we must pass to the best of Lope's pieces.

Thus the Spaniard in Italy. In Portugal, likewise, he made his way. GIL VICENTE (1470-1540), the Portuguese dramatist, wrote forty-two pieces, of which ten are wholly in Castilian, while fifteen are in a mixed jargon of Castilian and Portuguese which the author himself ridicules as _aravia_ in his _Auto das Fadas_. An important historical fact is that Vicente's earliest dramatic attempt, the _Monologo da Visitação_, is in Castilian, and that it was actually played—the first lay piece ever given in Portugal—on June 8, 1502. Its simplicity of tone and elegance of manner are reminiscent of Encina, and it can scarce be doubted that Vicente's imitation is deliberate. Still more obvious is the following of Encina's eclogues in Vicente's _Auto pastoril Castelhano_ and the _Auto dos Reis Magos_, where the legend is treated with Encina's curious touch of devotion and modernity, the whole closing with a song in which all join. Once again Encina's influence is manifest in the _Auto da Sibilla Cassandra_, wherein Cassandra, niece of Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah, is wooed by Solomon. In _Amadís de Gaula_ and in _Dom Duardos_ there is a marked advance in elaboration and finish; and in the _Auto da Fé_ Vicente proves his independence by an ingenuity and a fancy all his own. Here he displays qualities above those of his model, and treats his subject with such brilliancy that, a century and a half later, Calderón condescended to borrow from the Portuguese the idea of his _auto_ entitled _El Lirio y la Azucena_. Gil Vicente is technically a dramatist, but he is not dramatic as Torres Naharro is dramatic. His action is slight, his treatment timid and conventional, and he is more poetic than inventive; still, his dramatic songs are of singular beauty, conceived in a tone of mystic lyricism unapproached by those who went before him, and surpassed by few who followed. That Vicente was ever played in Spain is not known; but that he influenced both Lope de Vega and Calderón is as sure as that he himself was a disciple of Encina.

A more immediate factor in the evolution of Spanish letters was the Catalan Boscá, whom it is convenient to call by his Castilian name, JUAN BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER (?1490-1542). A native of Barcelona, Boscán served as a soldier in Italy, returned to Spain in 1519, and, as we know from Garcilaso's Second Eclogue, was tutor to Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, whom the world knows as the Duque de Alba. Boscán's earliest verses are all in the old manner; nor does he venture on the Italian hendecasyllabic till the year 1526, just before resigning his guardianship of Alba. His conversion was the work of the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, an accomplished courtier, ill represented by his _Viaggio fatto in Spagna_. Being at Granada in the year 1526, Navagiero met Boscán, who has left us an account of the conversation:—"Talking of wit and letters, especially of their varieties in different tongues, he inquired why I did not try in Castilian the sonnets and verse-forms favoured by distinguished Italians. He not only suggested this, but pressed me urgently to the attempt. Some days later, I made for home, and, because of the length and loneliness of the journey, thinking matters over, I returned to what Navagiero had said, and thus I first attempted this sort of verse; finding it hard at the outset, since it is very intricate, with many peculiarities, varying greatly from ours. Yet, later, I fancied that I was progressing well, perhaps because we all love our own essays; hence I continued, little by little, with increasing zeal." This passage is a _locus classicus_. Ticknor justly observes that no single foreigner ever affected a national literature more deeply and more instantly than Navagiero, and that we have here a first-hand account, probably unique in literary history, of the first inception of a revolution by the earliest, if not the most conspicuous, actor in it. We have at last reached the parting of the ways, and Boscán presents himself as a guide to the Promised Land. The astonishing thing is that Boscán, a Barcelonese by birth and residence, ignores Auzías March.

There were many Italianates before Boscán—as Francisco Imperial and Santillana; but their hour was not propitious, and Boscán is with justice regarded as the leader of the movement. He was not a poet of singular gifts, and he had the disadvantage of writing in Castilian, which was not his native language; but Boscán had the wit to see that Castilian was destined to supremacy, and he mastered it for his purpose with that same dogged perseverance which led him to undertake his more ambitious attempt unaided. He does not, indeed, appear to have sought for disciples, nor were his own efforts as successful as he believed: "perhaps because we all love our own essays." His Castilian prose is evidence of his gift of style, and his translation of Castiglione's _Cortegiano_ is a triumph of rendering fit to take its place beside our Thomas Hoby's version of the same original. But, it must be said frankly, that Boscán's most absolute success is in prose. Herrera bitterly taunts him with decking himself in the precious robes of Petrarch, and with remaining, spite of all that he can do, "a foreigner in his language." And the charge is true. In verse Boscán's defects grow very visible: his hardness, his awkward construction, his unrefined ear, his uncertain touch upon his instrument, his boisterous execution. Still, it is not as an original genius that Boscán finds place in history, but rather as an initiator, a master-opportunist who, without persuasion, by the sheer force of conviction and example, led a nation to abandon the ancient ways, and to admit the potency and charm of exotic forms. That in itself constitutes a title, if not to immortality, at least to remembrance.

Boscán's influence manifested itself in diverse ways. His friend, Garcilaso de la Vega, sent him the first edition of Castiglione's _Cortegiano_, printed at Venice in 1528. This—"the best book that ever was written upon good breeding," according to Samuel Johnson—was triumphantly translated into Castilian by Boscán at Garcilaso's prayer; and, though Boscán himself held translation to be a thing meet for "men of small parts," his rendering is an almost perfect performance. Moreover, it was the single work published by him (1534), for his poems appeared under his widow's care. Once more, in an epistle directed to Hurtado de Mendoza, Boscán re-echoes Horace's note of elegant simplicity with a faithfulness not frequent in his work; and, lastly, it is known that he did into Castilian an Euripidean play, which, though licensed for the press, was never printed. Truly it seems that Boscán was conscious of his very definite limitations, and that he felt the necessity of a copy, rather than a direct model. If it were so, this would indicate a power of conscious selection, a faculty for self-criticism which cannot be traced in his published verses. His earlier poems, written in Castilian measures, show him for a man destitute of guidance, thrown on his own resources, a perfectly undistinguished versifier with naught to sing and with no dexterity of vocalisation. Yet, let Boscán betake himself to the poets of the Cinque Cento, and he flashes forth another being: the dauntless adventurer sailing for unknown continents, inspired by the enthusiasm of immediate suggestion.

His _Hero y Leandra_ is frankly based upon Musæus, and it is characteristic of Boscán's mode that he expands Musæus' three hundred odd hexameters into nigh three thousand hendecasyllabics. Professor Flamini has demonstrated most convincingly that Boscán followed Tasso's _Favola_, but he comes far short of Tasso's variety, distinction, and grace. He annexes the Italian blank verse—the _versi sciolti_—as it were by sheer force, but he never subdues the metre to his will, and his monotony of accent and mechanical cadence grow insufferable. Not only so: too often the very pretence of inspiration dissolves, and the writer descends upon slothful prose, sliced into lines of regulation length, honeycombed with flat colloquialisms. Conspicuously better is the _Octava Rima_—an allegory embodying the Court of Love and the Court of Jealousy, with the account of an embassage from the former to two fair Barcelonese rebels. Of this performance Thomas Stanley has given an English version (1652) from which these stanzas are taken:—

"_In the bright region of the fertile east Where constant calms smooth heav'n's unclouded brow, There lives an easy people, vow'd to rest, Who on love only all their hours bestow: By no unwelcome discontent opprest, No cares save those that from this passion flow, Here reigns, here ever uncontroll'd did reign; The beauteous Queen sprung from the foaming main._

_Her hand the sceptre bears, the crown her head, Her willing vassals here their tribute pay: Here is her sacred power and statutes spread, Which all with cheerful forwardness obey: The lover by affection hither led, Receives relief, sent satisfied away: Here all enjoy, to give their last flames ease, The pliant figure of their mistresses ..._

_Love every structure offers to the sight, And every stone his soft impression wears. The fountains, moving pity and delight, With amorous murmurs drop persuasive tears. The rivers in their courses love invite, Love is the only sound their motion bears. The winds in whispers soothe these kind desires, And fan with their mild breath Love's glowing fires._"

Ticknor ranks this as "the most agreeable and original of Boscán's works," and as to the correctness of the first adjective there can be no two opinions. But concerning Boscán's originality there is much to say. Passage upon passage in the _Octava Rima_ is merely a literal rendering of Bembo's _Stanze_, and the translation begins undisguised at the opening line. Where the Italian writes, "_Ne l'odorato e lucido Oriente_," the Spaniard follows him with the candid transcription, "_En el lumbroso y fértil Oriente_"; and the imitation is further tesselated with mosaics conveyed from Claudian, from Petrarch, and Ariosto. None the less is it just to say that the conveyance is executed with considerable—almost with masterly—skill. The borrowing nowise belittles Boscán; for he was not—did not pose as—a great spirit with an original voice. He makes no claim whatever, he seeks for no applause—the shy, taciturn experimentalist who published never a line of verse, and piped for his own delight. Equipped with the ambition, though not with the accomplishment, of the artist, Boscán has a prouder place than he ever dreamed of, since he is confessedly the earliest representative of a new poetic dynasty, the victorious leader of a desperately forlorn hope. That title is his laurel and his garland. He led his race into the untrodden ways, triumphing without effort where men of more strenuous faculty had failed; and his results have successfully challenged time, inasmuch as there has been no returning from his example during nigh four hundred years. Not a great genius, not a lordly versifier, endowed with not one supreme gift, Boscán ranks as an unique instance in the annals of literary adventure by virtue of his enduring and irrevocable victory.

His is the foremost post in point of time. In point of absolute merit he is easily outshone by his younger comrade, GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1503-36), the bearer of a name renowned in Spanish chronicle and song. Grandson of Pérez de Guzmán, Garcilaso entered the Royal Body-guard in his eighteenth year. He quitted him like the man he was in crushing domestic rebellion, and, despite the fact that his brother, Pedro, served in the insurgent ranks, Garcilaso grew into favour with the Emperor.

At Pavia, where Francis lost all save honour, Garcilaso distinguished himself by his intrepidity. For a moment he fell into disgrace because of his connivance at a secret marriage between his cousin and one of the Empress' Maids of Honour: interned in an islet on the Danube,—_Danubio, rio divino_, he calls it,—he there composed one of his most admired pieces, richly charged with exotic colouring. His imprisonment soon ended, and, with intervals of service before Tunis, and with spells of embassies between Spain and Italy, his last years were mostly spent at Naples in the service of the Spanish Viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, Marqués de Villafranca, father of Garcilaso's friend, the Duque de Alba. In the Provençal campaign the Spanish force was held in check by a handful of yeomen gathered in the fort of Muy, between Draguignan and Fréjus. Muy recalls to Spanish hearts such memories as Zutphen brings to Englishmen. In itself the engagement was a mere skirmish: for Garcilaso it was a great and picturesque occasion. The accounts given by Navarrete and García Cerezeda vary in detail, but their general drift is identical. The last of the Spanish Cæsars named his personal favourite, the most dashing of Spanish soldiers and the most distinguished of Spanish poets, to command the storming-party. Doffing his breastplate and his helmet that he might be seen by all beholders—by the Emperor not less than by the army—Garcilaso led the assault in person, was among the first to climb the breach, and fell mortally wounded in the arms of Jerónimo de Urrea, the future translator of Ariosto, and of his more intimate friend, the Marqués de Lombay, whom the world knows best as St. Francis Borgia. He was buried with his ancestors in his own Toledo, where, as even the grudging Góngora allows, every stone within the city is his monument.

His illustrious descent, his ostentatious valour, his splendid presence, his seductive charm, his untimely death: all these, joined to his gift of song, combine to make him the hero of a legend and the idol of a nation. Like Sir Philip Sidney, Garcilaso personified all accomplishments and all graces. He died at thirty-three: the fact must be borne in mind when we take account of his life's work in literature. Yet Europe mourned for him, and the loyal Boscán proclaimed his debt to the brilliant soldier-poet. Pleased as the Catalan was with his novel experiments, he avows he would not have persevered "but for the encouragement of Garcilaso, whose decision—not merely to my mind, but to the whole world's—is to be taken as final. By praising my attempts, by showing the surest sign of approval through his acceptance of my example, he led me to dedicate myself wholly to the undertaking." Boscán and Garcilaso were not divided by death. The former's widow, Ana Girón de Rebolledo, gave her husband's verses to the press in 1543; and, more jealous for the fame of her husband's friend than were any of his own household, she printed Garcilaso's poems in the Fourth Book.

Garcilaso is eminently a poet of refinement, distinction, and cultivation. What Boscán half knew, Garcilaso knew to perfection, and his accomplishment was wider as well as deeper.[6] Living his last years in Naples, Garcilaso had caught the right Renaissance spirit, and is beyond all question the most Italianate of Spanish poets in form and substance. He was not merely the associate of such expatriated countrymen as Juan de Valdés: he was the friend of Bembo and Tansillo, the first of whom calls him the best loved and the most welcome of all the Spaniards that ever came to Italy. To Tansillo, Garcilaso was attached by bonds of closest intimacy, and the reciprocal influence of the one upon the other is manifest in the works of both. This association would seem to have been the chief part of Garcilaso's literary training. His few flights in the old Castilian metres, his songs and _villancicos_, are of small importance; his finest efforts are cast in the exotic moulds. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that fundamentally he is a Neapolitan poet.

The sum of his production is slight: the inconsiderable _villancicos_, three eclogues, two elegies, an epistle, five highly elaborated songs, and thirty-eight Petrarchan sonnets. Small as is his work in bulk, it cannot be denied that it was like nothing before it in Castilian. Auzías March, no doubt, had earlier struck a similar note in Catalan, and Garcilaso, who seems to have read everything, imitates his predecessor's harmonies and cadences. His trick of reminiscence is remarkable. Thus, his first eclogue is plainly suggested by Tansillo; his second eclogue is little more than a rendering in verse of picked passages from the _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sannazaro; while the fifth of his songs—_La Flor de Gnido_—is a most masterly transplantation of Bernardo Tasso's structure to Castilian soil. And almost every page is touched with the deliberate, conscious elegance of a student in the school of Horace. In simple execution Garcilaso is impeccable. The objection most commonly made is that he surrenders his personality, and converts himself into the exquisite echo of an exhausted pseudo-classic convention. And the charge is plausible.

It is undeniably true that Garcilaso's distinction lacks the force of real simplicity, that his eternal sweetness cloys, and that the thing said absorbs him less than the manner of saying it. He would have met the criticism that he was an artificial poet by pointing out that, poetry being an art, it is of essence artificial. That he was an imitative artist was his highest glory: by imitating foreign models he attained his measure of originality, enriching Spain, with not merely a number of technical forms but a new poetic language. Without him Boscán must have failed in his emprise, as Santillana failed before him. Besides his technical perfection, Garcilaso owned the poetic temperament—a temperament too effeminately delicate for the vulgarities of life. As he tells us in his third eclogue, he lived, "now using the sword, now the pen:"—

"_Tomando ora la espada, ora la pluma._"

But the clank of the sabre is never heard in the fiery soldier's verse. His atmosphere is not that of battle, but is rather the enchanted haze of an Arcadia which never was nor ever could be in a banal world. As thus, in Wiffen's version:—

"_Here ceased the youth his Doric madrigal, And sighing, with his last laments let fall A shower of tears; the solemn mountains round, Indulgent of his sorrow, tossed the sound Melodious from romantic steep to steep, In mild responses deep; Sweet Echo, starting from her couch of moss, Lengthened the dirge; and tenderest Philomel, As pierced with grief and pity at his loss, Warbled divine reply, nor seemed to trill Less than Jove's nectar from her mournful bill. What Nemoroso sang in sequel, tell, Ye sweet-voiced Sirens of the sacred hill._"

This is, in a sense, "unnatural"; but if we are to condemn it as such, we must even reject the whole school of pastoral, a convention of which the sixteenth century was enamoured. When Garcilaso introduced himself as Salicio, and, under the name of Nemoroso, presented Boscán (or, as Herrera will have it, Antonio de Fonseca), he but took the formula as he found it, and translated it in terms of genius. He was consciously returning upon nature; not upon the material facts of existence as it is, but upon a figmentary nature idealised into a languid and ethereal beauty. He sought for effects of suavest harmony, embodying in his song a mystic neo-platonism, the _morbidezza_ of "love in the abstract," set off by grace and sensibility and elfin music. It may be permissible for the detached critic to appreciate Garcilaso at something less than his secular renown, but this superior attitude were unlawful and inexpedient for an historical reviewer.

Time and unanimity settle many questions: and, after all, on a matter concerning Castilian poetry, the unbroken verdict of the Castilian-speaking race must be accepted as weighty, if not final. Garcilaso may not be a supreme singer; he is at least one of the greatest of the Spanish poets. Choosing to reproduce the almost inimitable cadences of the Virgilian eclogue, he achieves his end with a dexterity that approaches genius. Others before him had hit upon what seemed "pretty i' the Mantuan": he alone suggests the secret of Virgil's brooding, incommunicable, and melancholy charm. What Boscán saw to be possible, what he attempted with more good-will than fortune, that Garcilaso did with an instant and peremptory triumph. He naturalised the sonnet, he enlarged the framework of the song, he invented the ode, he so bravely arranged his lines of seven and eleven syllables that the fascination of his harmonies has led historians to forget Bernardo Tasso's priority in discovering the resources of the _lira_. In rare, unwary moments he lets fall an Italian or French idiom, nor is he always free from the pedantry of his time; but absolute perfection is not of this world, and is least to be asked of one who, writing in moments stolen from the rough life of camps, died at thirty-three, full of immense promise and immense possibilities. To speculate upon what Garcilaso might have become is vanity. As it is, he survives as the Prince of Italianates, the acknowledged master of the Cinque Cento form. Cervantes and Lope de Vega, agreed upon nothing else, are at one in holding him for the first of Castilian poets. With slight reservations, their judgment has been sustained, and even to-day the sweet-voiced, amatorious paladin leaves an abiding impress upon the character of his national literature.

An early sectary of the school is discovered in the person of the Portuguese poet, FRANCISCO DE SÂ DE MIRANDA (1495-1558), who so frequently forsakes his native tongue that of 189 pieces included in Mme. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos' edition, seventy-four are in Castilian. Sâ de Miranda's early poems written before 1532—the _Fábula de Mondego_, the _Canção á Virgem_, and the eclogue entitled _Aleixo_—are in the old manner. His later works, such as _Nemoroso_, with innumerable sonnets and the three elegies composed between 1552 and 1555, are all undisguised imitations of Boscán and Garcilaso, for whom the writer professes a rapturous enthusiasm. Sâ de Miranda ranks among the six most celebrated Portuguese poets; and, stranger though he be, even in Castilian literature he distinguishes himself by his correctness of form, by his sincerity of sentiment, and by a genuine love of natural beauty very far removed from the falsetto admiration too current among his contemporaries.

The soldier, GUTIERRE DE CETINA (1520-60) is another partisan of the Italian school. Serving in Italy, he pursued his studies to the best advantage, and won friendship and aid from literary magnates like the Prince of Ascoli, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza; but soldiering was little to his taste, and, after a campaign in Germany, Cetina retired to his native Seville, whence he passed to Mexico about the year 1550. He is known to have written in the dramatic form, but no specimen of his drama survives, unless it be sepultured in some obscure Central American library. Cetina is a copious sonneteer who manages his rhyme-sequences with more variety than his predecessors, and his songs and madrigals are excellent specimens of finished workmanship. His general theme is Arcadian love—the beauty of Amaríllida, the piteous passion of the shepherd Silvio, the grief of the nymph Flora for Menalca. His treatment is always ingenious, his frugality in the matter of adjectives is edifying, though it scandalised the exuberant Herrera, who, as a true Andalucían, esteems emphasis and epithet and metaphor as the three things needful. Cetina's sobriety is paid for by a certain preciosity of utterance near akin to weakness; but he excels in the sonnet form, which he handles with a mastery superior to Garcilaso's own, and he adds a touch of humour uncommon in the mannered school that he adorns.

FERNANDO DE ACUÑA (? 1500-80) comes into notice as the translator of Olivier de la Marche's popular allegorical poem, the _Chevalier Délibéré_, a favourite with Carlos Quinto. The Emperor is said to have amused himself by translating the French poem into Spanish prose, and to have commissioned Acuña to a poetic version. A courtier like Van Male gives us to understand that some part of Acuña's _Caballero determinado_ is based upon the Emperor's prose rendering, and the insinuation is that Acuña and his master should share the praise of the former's exploit. This pleasant tale is scarce plausible, for we know that the Cæsar never mastered colloquial Castilian, and that he should shine in its literary exercise is almost incredible. Be that as it may, Acuña's _Caballero determinado_, a fine example of the old _quintillas_, met with wide and instant appreciation; yet he never sought to follow up his triumph in the same kind. The new influence was irresistible, and Acuña succumbed to it, imitating the _lira_ of Garcilaso to the point of parody, singing as "Damon in absence," practising the pastoral, aspiring to Homer's dignity in his blank verses entitled the _Contienda de Ayax Telamonio y de Ulises_. Three Castilian cantos of Boiardo's _Orlando Innamorato_ won applause in Italy; but Acuña's best achievements are his sonnets, which are almost always admirable. One of them contains a line as often quoted as any other in all Castilian verse:—

"_Un Monarca, un Imperio, y una Espada,_"

"One Monarch, one Empire, and one Sword." And this pious aspiration after unity had perhaps been fulfilled if Spain had abounded with such prudent and accomplished figures as Fernando de Acuña.

A more powerful and splendid personality is that of the illustrious DIEGO HURTADO DE MENDOZA (1503-1575), one of the greatest figures in the history of Spanish politics and letters. Educated for the Church at the University of Salamanca, Mendoza preferred the career of arms, and found his opportunity at Pavia and in the Italian wars. Before he was twenty-nine he was named Ambassador to the Venetian Republic, became the patron of the Aldine Press, and studied the classics with all the ardour of his temperament. One of the few Spaniards learned in Arabic, Mendoza was a distinguished collector: he ransacked the monastery of Mount Athos for Greek manuscripts, secured others from Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, and had almost all Bessarion's Greek collection transcribed for his own library, now housed in the Escorial. The first complete edition of Josephus was printed from Mendoza's copies. He represented the Emperor at the Council of Trent, and saw to it that Cardinals and Archbishops did what Spain expected of them. In 1547 he was appointed Plenipotentiary to Rome, where he treated Pope Julius III. as cavalierly as his Holiness was accustomed to treat his own curates. In 1554 Mendoza returned to Spain, and the accession of Felipe II. in 1556 brought his public career to a close. He is alleged to have been Ambassador to England; and one would fain the report were true.

His wit and picaresque malice are well shown in his old-fashioned _redondillas_; which delighted so good a judge as Lope de Vega, and his real strength lay in his management of these forms. But his long Italian residence and his sleepless intellectual curiosity ensured his experimenting in the high Roman manner. Tibullus, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Pindar, Anacreon: all these are forced into Mendoza's service, as in his epistles and his _Fábula de Adonis, Hipómenes y Atalanta_. It cannot be said that he is at his best in these pseudo-classical performances, and he dares to eke out his hendecasyllabics by using a final _palabra aguda_; but the extreme brilliancy of the humour carries off all technical defects in the burlesque section of his poems, which are of the loosest gaiety, most curious in a retired proconsul. Yet, if Mendoza, who excelled in the old, felt compelled to pen his forty odd sonnets in the new style, how strong must have been its charm! Whatever his formal defects, Mendoza's authority was decisive in the contest between the native and the foreign types of verse: he helped to secure the latter's definitive triumph.

The greatest rebel against the invasion was CRISTÓBAL DE CASTILLEJO (? 1494-1556), who passed thirty years abroad in the service of Ferdinand, King of Bohemia. Much of his life was actually spent in Italy, but he kept his national spirit almost absolutely free from the foreign influence. If he compromises at all, the furthest he can go is in adopting the mythological machinery favoured by all contemporaries, and even for this he could plead respectable Castilian precedent; but in the matter of form, Castillejo is cruelly intransigent. Boscán is his especial butt.

"_Él mismo confesará Que no sabe donde va_"—

"He himself will confess that he knows not whither he goes." That, indeed, appears to have been Castillejo's fixed idea on the subject, and he expends an infinite deal of sarcasm and ridicule upon the apostates who, as he thinks, hide their poverty of thought in tawdry motley. His own subjects are perfectly fitted to treatment in the _villancico_ form, and when he is not simply improper—as in _El Sermón de los Sermones_—his verses are remarkable for their sprightly grace and bitter-sweet wit, which can, at need, turn to rancorous invective or to devotional demureness. Had he lived in Spain, it is probable that Castillejo's mordant ridicule might have delayed the Italian supremacy. As it was, his flouts and jibes arrived too late, and the old patriot died, as he had lived, a brilliant, impenitent, futile Tory.

In one of his sonnets, conceived in the most mischievous spirit of travesty, Castillejo singles out for reprobation a poet named Luis de Haro, as one of the Italian agitators. Unluckily Haro's verses have practically disappeared from the earth, and the few specimens preserved in Nájera's _Cancionero_ are banal exercises in the old Castilian manner. A practitioner more after Castillejo's heart was the ingenious Antonio de Villegas (fl. 1551), whose _Inventario_, apart from tedious paraphrases of the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in the style of Bottom the Weaver, contains many excellent society-verses, touched with conceits of extreme sublety, and a few more serious efforts in the form of _décimas_, not without a grave urbanity and a penetration of their own. Francisco de Castilla, a contemporary of Villegas, vies with him in essaying the hopeless task of bringing the old rhythms into new repute; but his _Teórica de virtudes_, dignified and elevated in style and thought, had merely a momentary vogue, and is now unjustly considered a mere bibliographical curiosity.

A student in both schools was the Portuguese GREGORIO SILVESTRE (1520-70), choirmaster and organist in the Cathedral of Granada, who, beginning with a boy's admiration for Garci Sánchez and Torres Naharro, practised the _redondilla_ with such success as to be esteemed an expert in the art. A certain Pedro de Cáceres y Espinosa, in a _Discurso_ prefixed to Silvestre's poems (1582), tells us that his author "imitated Cristóbal de Castillejo, in speaking ill of the Italian arrangements," and that he cultivated the novelties for the practical reason that they were popular. It is certain that Silvestre is as attractive in the new as in the old kind, that his elegance never obscures his simplicity, that he shows a rare sense of ordered outline, an exceptional finish in the technical details of both manners. His conversion is the last that need be recorded here. The _villancico_ still found its supporters among men of letters, and, as late as the seventeenth century, both Cervantes and Lope de Vega profess a platonic attachment to it and kindred metres; but the public mind was set against a revival, and Cervantes and Lope were forced to abandon any idea (if, indeed, they ever entertained it) of breathing life into these dead bones.

Didactic prose was practised, according to the old tradition, by Juan López de Vivero Palacios Rubios, who published in 1524 his _Tratado del esfuerzo bélico heróico_, a pseudo-philosophic inquiry into the origin and nature of martial valour, written in a clear and forcible style. Francisco López de Villalobos (1473-1549), a Jewish convert attached to the royal household as physician, began by translating Pliny's _Amphitruo_ in such fashion as to bring down on him the thunders of Hernán Núñez. Villalobos works the didactic vein in his rhymed _Sumario de Medicina_ which Ticknor ignores, though he mentions its late derivatives, the _Trescientas preguntas_ of Alonso López de Corelas (1546) and the _Cuatrocientas respuestas_ of Luis de Escobar (1552). But the witty physician's most praiseworthy performance is his _Tratado de las tres Grandes_—namely, talkativeness, obstinacy, and laughter—where his familiar humour, his frolic, fantasy, and perverse acuteness far outshine the sham philosophy and the magisterial intention of his other work. A graver talent is that of Fernando Pérez de Oliva (1492-1530), once lecturer in the University of Paris, and, later, Rector of Salamanca, who boasts of having travelled three thousand leagues in pursuit of culture. His _Diálogo de la Dignidad del Hombre_, written to show that Castilian is as good a vehicle as the more fashionable Latin for the discussion of transcendental matters, is an excellent example of cold, stately, Ciceronian prose, and the continuation by his friend, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, is worthy of the beginning; but the hold of ecclesiastical Latin was too fast to be loosed at a first attempt.

Oliva's reputation is strictly Spanish: not so that of Carlos Quinto's official chronicler, ANTONIO DE GUEVARA (d. 1545), a Franciscan monk who held the bishopric of Mondoñedo. His _Reloj de Príncipes_ (Dial of Princes), a didactic novel with Marcus Aurelius for its hero, was originally composed to encourage his own patron to imitate the virtues of the wisest ancient. Unluckily, however, Guevara passed his book off as authentic history, alleging it to be a translation of a non-existent manuscript in the Florentine collection. This brought him into trouble with antagonists as varied as the court-fool, Francesillo de Zúñiga, and a Sorian professor, the Bachelor Pedro de Rhua, whose _Cartas censorias_ unmasked the imposture with malignant astuteness. But this critical faculty was confined to the Peninsula, and North's English translation, dedicated to Mary Tudor, popularised Guevara's name in England, where he is believed by some authorities to have exercised considerable influence on the style of English prose. This, however, is not the place to discuss that most difficult question. An instance of Guevara's better manner is offered by his _Década de los Césares_, though even here he interpolates his own unscrupulous inventions and embellishments, as he also does in his _Familiar Epistles_, Englished by Edward Hellowes, Groom of the Leash, from whose version an illustration may be borrowed:—"The property of love is to turn the rough into plain, the cruel to gentle, the bitter to sweet, the unsavoury to pleasant, the angry to quiet, the malicious to simple, the gross to advised, and also the heavy to light. He that loveth, neither can he murmur of him that doth anger him: neither deny that they ask him: neither resist when they take from him: neither answer when they reprove him: neither revenge if they shame him: neither yet will he be gone when they send him away." These pompous commonplaces abound in the _Familiar Epistles_, which, though still the most readable of Guevara's performances, are tedious in their elaborate accumulation of saws and instances, unimpressively collected from the four quarters of the earth. But the rhetorical letters went the round of the world, were translated times out of number, and were commonly called "The Golden Letters," to denote their unique worth.

More serious and less attractive historians are Pedro Mexía (1496-1552), whose _Historia Imperial y Cesárea_ is a careful compilation of biographies of Roman rules from Cæsar to Maximilian, and Florián de Ocampo (1499-1555), canon of Zamora, and an official chronicler, who, taking the Deluge as his starting-point, naturally enough fails to bring his dry-as-dust annals later than Roman times, and endeavours to follow the critical canons of his time with better intention than performance. The _Comentarios de la Guerra en Alemania_ of Luis de Ávila y Zúñiga are valuable as containing the evidence of an acute, direct observer of events; but Ávila's exaggerated esteem for his master causes him to convert his history into an elaborate apology. Carlos Quinto's own dry criticism of the book is final:—"Alexander's achievements surpassed mine—but he was less lucky in his chronicler." The conquest of America begot a crowd of histories, of which but few need be named here. González Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478-1557), once secretary to the Great Captain, gives an official picture of the New World in his _Historia general y natural de Indias_, and a similar study from an opposed and higher point of view is to be found in the work of Bartolomé de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa (1474-1566), whose passionate eloquence on behalf of the American Indians is displayed in his _Brevísima relación de la destrucción de Indias_ (1552); but here again history declines into polemics, the offices of judge and advocate overlapping. The famous HERNÁN CORTÉS (1485-1554), _El Conquistador_, was a man of action; but his official reports on Mexico and its affairs are drawn up with exceeding skill, and in energy of phrase and luminous concision may stand as models in their kind. Cortés found his panegyrist in his chaplain, Francisco López de Gómara (1519-60), whose interesting _Conquista de Méjico_ is an uncritical eulogy on his chief, whom he extols at the expense of his brother adventurers. The antidote was supplied by BERNAL DÍAZ DEL CASTILLO (fl. 1568), whose _Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España_ is a first-class example of military indignation. "Here the chronicler Gómara in his history says just the opposite of what really happened. Whoso reads him will see that he writes well, and that, with proper information, he could have stated his facts correctly: as it is, they are all lies." The manifest honesty and simplicity of the old soldier, who shared in one hundred and nineteen engagements and could not sleep unless in armour, are extremely winning; his prolix ingenuousness has been admirably rendered in our day by a descendant of the Conquistadores, M. José María Heredia, whose French version is a triumph of translation.

Incredible tales from the Western Indies stimulated the popular appetite for miracles in terms of fiction. Paez de Ribera added a sixth book to _Amadís_, under the title of _Florisando_ (1510); Feliciano de Silva wrote a seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh—_Lisuarte_ (1510), _Amadís de Grecia_ (1530), _Florisel de Niquea_ (1532), and _Rogel de Grecia_; and he would certainly have supplied the eighth book had he not been anticipated by Juan Díaz with a second _Lisuarte_. Parallel with _Amadís_ ran the series of _Palmerín de Oliva_ (1511), which tradition ascribes to an anonymous lady of Augustobriga, but which may just as well be the work of Francisco Vázquez de Ciudad Rodrigo, as it is said to be in its first descendant _Primaleón_ (1512). _Polindo_ (1526) continues the tale, and an unknown author pursues it in the _Crónica del muy valiente Platir_ (1533), while _Palmerín de Inglaterra_ (1547-48) closes the cycle. Curious readers may study this last in the English version of Anthony Munday (1616), who commends it as an excellent and stately history, "wherein gentlemen may find choice of sweet inventions, and gentlewomen be satisfied in courtly expectations." These are but a few of the extravagances of the press, and the madness spread so wide that Carlos Quinto, admirer as he was of _Don Belianís de Grecia_, was forced to protect the New World against invasion by books of this class. Scarcely less numerous are the continuations of the _Celestina_, due to the indefatigable Feliciano de Silva, to Gaspar Gómez de Toledo, to Sancho Muñoz, and others.

A new species begins with the first picaroon novel, _Lazarillo de Tormes_, long ascribed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, an attribution now commonly rejected on the authority of that distinguished Spanish scholar, M. Alfred Morel-Fatio. There is something to be said in favour of Mendoza's claim which may not be said for lack of space. As to _Lazarillo de Tormes_, authorship, date and place of publication are all uncertain: the three earliest editions known appeared at Antwerp, Burgos, and Alcalá de Henares in 1554. It is the autobiography of Lázaro, son of the miller, Tomé González, and the trull, Antonia Pérez. He describes his adventures as leader of a blind man, as servant to a miserly priest, to a starving gentleman, to a beggar-monk, to a vendor of indulgences, to a signboard painter, to an alguazil, ending his career in a Government post—_un oficio real_—as town-crier of Toledo. There we leave him "at the height of all good fortune." Lázaro's experience with the hungry hidalgo may be quoted from the admirable archaic rendering by David Rowland, of Anglesea:—

"It pleased God to accomplish my desire and his together, for when as I had begun my meat, as he walked, he came near to me, saying: 'Lázaro, I promise thee thou hast the best grace in eating that ever I did see any man have; for there is no man that seest thee eat, but seeing thee feed, shall have appetite, although they be not a-hungered.' Then would I say to myself, 'The hunger which thou sustainest causeth thee to think mine so beautiful.' Then I trusted I might help him, seeing that he had so helped himself, and had opened me the way thereto. Wherefore I said unto him, 'Sir, the good tools make the workmen good: this bread hath good taste, and this neat's-foot is so well sod, and so cleanly dressed, that it is able, with the flavour of it only, to entice any man to eat of it.' 'What? is it a neat's-foot?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Now, I promise thee it is the best morsel in the world: there is no pheasant that I would like so well.' 'I pray thee, sir, prove of it better and see how you like it.'... Whereupon he sitteth down by me, and then began to eat like one that hath great need, gnawing every one of those little bones better than any greyhound could have done for life, saying, 'This is a singular good meal: by God, I have eaten it with a good stomach, as if I had eaten nothing all this day before.' Then I, with a low voice, said, 'God send me to live long as sure as that is true.' And, having ended his victuals, he commanded me to reach him the pot of water, which I gave him even as full as I had brought it from the river.... We drank both, and went to bed, as the night before, at that time well satisfied. And now, to avoid long talk, we continued after this sort eight or nine days. The poor gentleman went every day to brave it out in the street, to content himself with his accustomed stately pace, and always I, poor Lázaro, was fain to be his purveyor."

Written in the most debonair, idiomatic Castilian, _Lazarillo de Tormes_ condenses into nine chapters the cynicism, the wit, and the resource of an observer of genius. After three hundred years, it survives all its rivals, and may be read with as much edification and amusement as on the day of its first appearance. It set a fashion, a fashion that spread to all countries, and finds a nineteenth-century manifestation in the pages of _Pickwick_; but few of its successors match it in satirical humour, and none approach it in pregnant concision, where no word is superfluous, and where every word tells with consummate effect. Whoever wrote the book, he fixed for ever the type of the comic prose epic as rendered by the needy, and he did it in such wise as to defy all competition. Yet ill-advised competitors were found: one, who has the grace to hide his name, at Antwerp, continuing Lázaro's adventures by exhibiting the gay scamp as a tunny, and a certain Juan de Luna, who, so late as 1620, converted Lázaro to a sea-monster on show.

Mysticism finds two distinguished exponents, of whom the earlier is the Apostle of Andalucía, the Venerable JUAN DE ÁVILA (1502-69), a priest, who, educated at the University of Alcalá, is famous for his sanctity, his evangelic missions in Granada, Córdoba, and Seville. The merest accident prevented his sailing for the New World in the suite of the Bishop of Tlaxcala, and his inopportune fervour led to his imprisonment by the Inquisition. Most of his religious treatises, beautiful as they are, are too technical for our purpose here; but his _Cartas Espirituales_ are redolent of religious unction combined with the wisest practical spirit, the most sagacious counsel, and the rarest loving-kindness. Long practice in exhorting crowds of unlettered sinners had purged Juan de Ávila's style of the Asiatic exuberance in favour with Guevara and other contemporaries; and, though he considered letters a vanity, his own practice shows him to be a master in the accommodation of the lowliest, most familiar language to the loftiest subject.

In the opposite camp is JUAN DE VALDÉS (d. 1541), attached in some capacity to the court of Carlos Quinto, and suspect of heterodox tendencies in the eyes of all good Spaniards. Francisco de Encinas reports that Valdés found it convenient to leave Spain on account of his opinions; but, as his twin-brother, Alfonso, continued in the service of Carlos Quinto, and as Juan himself lived unmolested at Rome and Naples from 1531 to his death, this story cannot be accepted. None the less is it certain that Valdés, possibly through his friendship with Erasmus, was drawn into the current of the Reformation. His earliest work, written, perhaps, in collaboration with his brother, is the anonymous _Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón_ (1528), an ingenious fable in Lucian's manner, abounding in political and religious malice, charged with ridicule of abuses in Church and State. Apart from its polemical value, it is indisputably the finest prose performance of the reign. Boscán's version of the _Cortegiano_ most nearly vies with it; but Valdés excels Boscán in the artful construction of his periods, in the picturesqueness and moderation of his epithets, in the variety of his cadence, and in the refined selection of his means. It is possible that Cervantes, at his best, may match Valdés; but Cervantes is one of the most unequal writers in the world, while Valdés is one of the most scrupulous and vigilant. Hence, sectarian prejudice apart, Valdés must be accounted, if not absolutely the first, at least among the very first masters of Castilian prose.

A curious fact in connection with one of Valdés' most popular works, the _Ciento y diez Consideraciones divinas_, is that it has never been printed in its original Castilian.[7] Even so the book was translated into English by Nicholas Farrer (1638), and found favour in the eyes of George Herbert, who commends Signior Iohn Valdesso as "a true servant of God," "obscured in his own country," and brought by God "to flourish in this land of light and region of the Gospel, among His chosen." It may be expedient to give an illustration of Valdés from the version to which Herbert stood sponsor:—"Here I will add this. That, as liberality is so annexed to magnanimity that he cannot be magnanimous that is not liberal, so hope and charity are so annexed unto faith that it is impossible that he should have faith who hath not hope and charity; it being also impossible that one should be just without being holy and pious. But of these Christian virtues they are not capable who have not experience in Christian matters, which they only have who, by the gift of God and by the benefit of Christ, have faith, hope, and charity, and so are pious, holy, and just in Christ." The Arian flavour of this work explains its non-appearance in Castilian, and we must suppose that Herbert esteemed it for its austere doctrinal asceticism rather than its crude anti-trinitarianism. A Quaker before his time, Valdés owes no small part of his recent vogue to Wiffen, who first heard of the _Consideraciones_ through a friend as an "old work by a Spaniard, which represented essentially the principles of George Fox." Whatever its defects, it is the one logical presentation of the dogmas of German mysticism, at the same time that it is a powerful, searching psychological study of the springs of motives and the innermost recesses of the human heart.

In another and a less contested field, we owe to Valdés the admirable _Diálogo de la Lengua_, written at Naples in 1535-36. The personages are four: two Italians, named Marcio and Coriolano; and two Spaniards, Valdés himself, and a Spanish soldier, called indifferently Pacheco and Torres. For all purposes this dialogue is as important a monument of literary criticism as was the conversation in Don Quixote's library between the Priest and the Barber. In almost every case posterity has ratified the personal verdict of Valdés, who approves himself the earliest, as well as one of the most impartial and most penetrating among Spanish critics. Moreover, he conducts his dialogue with extraordinary dramatic skill in the true vein of highest comedy. The courtly grace of the two Italians, the military swagger of Pacheco, the unwearied sagacity, the patrician wit and disdainful coolness of Valdés himself, are given with incomparable lightness of touch and felicity of accent. For the first time in Castilian literature we have to do with a man of letters, urbane from study, and accomplished from commerce with a various world. Valdés overtops all the literary figures of Carlos Quinto's reign in natural gift and acquired accomplishment; nor in later times do we easily find his match.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Garcilaso's forty-eight Latin stanzas, written after the Danubian imprisonment, are sufficiently unknown to justify a brief quotation here. They occur in Antonius Thylesius' _Opera_ (Naples, 1762), pp. 128-129: _Garcilassi di Vega Toletani ad Antonium Thylesium_:—

"_Uxore, natis, fratribus et solo Exul relictis, frigida per loca Musarum alumnus, barbarorum Ferre superbiam, et insolentes Mores coactus jam didici, et invia Per saxa voce in geminantia Fletusque, sub rauco querelas Murmure Danubii levare._"

[7] Boehmer gives thirty-nine _Consideraciones_ in the _Tratatidos_ (Bonn, 1880); for the sixty-fifth see Menéndez y Pelayo, _Historia de los Heterodoxos Españoles_ (Madrid, 1880), vol. ii. p. 375.