Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities Part 23

Juan Ruiz, arch-priest of Hita (1292-1351), was a contemporary of Don Manuel. His works consist of nearly seven thousand verses, forming a series of stories which appear to be sketches from his own history, mingled with fictions and allegories. The most curious is "The Battle of Don Carnival with Madame Lent," in which Don Bacon, Madame Hungbeef, and a train of other savory personages, are marshaled in mortal combat. The cause of Madame Lent triumphs, and Don Carnival is condemned to solitary imprisonment and one spare meal each day. At the end of forty days the allegorical prisoner escapes, raises new followers, Don Breakfast and others, and re-appears in alliance with Don Amor. The poetry of the arch- priest is very various in tone. In general, it is satirical and pervaded by a quiet humor. His happiest success is in the tales and apologues which ill.u.s.trate the adventures that const.i.tute a framework for his poetry, which is natural and spirited; and in this, as in other points, he strikingly resembles Chaucer. Both often sought their materials in Northern French poetry, and both have that mixture of devotion and of licentiousness belonging to their age, as well as to the personal character of each.

Rabbi Santob, a Jew of Carrion (fl. 1350), was the author of many poems, the most important of which is "The Dance of Death," a favorite subject of the painters and poets of the Middle Ages, representing a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which persons of every rank and age appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is perhaps more striking and picturesque than in any other--the ghastly nature of the subject being brought into very lively contrast with the festive tone of the verses. This grim fiction had for several centuries great success throughout Europe.

Pedro Lopez Ayala (1332-1407), grand chancellor of Castile under four successive sovereigns, was both a poet and a historian. His poem, "Court Rhymes," is the most remarkable of his productions. His style is grave, gentle, and didactic, with occasional expressions of poetic feeling, which seem, however, to belong as much to their age as to their author.

2. OLD BALLADS.--From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the period we have just gone over, the courts of the different sovereigns of Europe were the princ.i.p.al centres of refinement and civilization, and this was peculiarly the case in Spain during this period, when literature was produced or encouraged by the sovereigns and other distinguished men. But this was not the only literature of Spain. The spirit of poetry diffused throughout the peninsula, excited by the romantic events of Spanish history, now began to a.s.sume the form of a popular literature, and to a.s.sert for itself a place which in some particulars it has maintained ever since. This popular literature may be distributed into four different cla.s.ses. The first contains the _Ballads_, or the narrative and lyrical poetry of the common people from the earliest times; the second, the _Chronicles_, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals; the third cla.s.s comprises the _Romances of Chivalry_, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as pa.s.sionately admired by the whole nation; and the fourth includes the _Drama_, which in its origin has always been a popular and religious amus.e.m.e.nt, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France. These four cla.s.ses compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore by their very nature were opposed to the Provencal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period.

The metrical structure of the old Spanish ballad was extremely simple, consisting of eight-syllable lines, which are composed with great facility in other languages as well as the Castilian. Sometimes they were broken into stanzas of four lines each, thence called _redondillas_, or roundelays, but their prominent peculiarity is that of the _asonante_, an imperfect rhyme that echoes the same vowel, but not the same final consonant in the terminating syllables. This metrical form was at a later period adopted by the dramatists, and is now used in every department of Spanish poetry.

The old Spanish ballads comprise more than a thousand poems, first collected in the sixteenth century, whose authors and dates are alike unknown. Indeed, until after the middle of that century, it is difficult to find ballads written by known authors. These collections, arranged without regard to chronological order, relate to the fictions of chivalry, especially to Charlemagne and his peers, to the traditions and history of Spain, to Moorish adventures, and to the private life and manners of the Spaniards themselves; they belong to the unchronicled popular life and character of the age which gave them birth. The ballads of chivalry, with the exception of those relating to Charlemagne, occupy a less important place than those founded on national subjects. The historical ballads are by far the most numerous and the most interesting; and of those the first in the order of time are those relating to Bernardo del Carpio, concerning whom there are about forty. Bernardo (fl. 800) was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de Saldana and a sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was so much offended that he sent the Infanta to a convent, and kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment, educating Bernardo as his own son, and keeping him in ignorance of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo ending with the victory of Roncesvalles, his efforts to procure the release of his father, the falsehood of the king, and the despair and rebellion of Bernardo after the death of the Count in prison, const.i.tute the romantic incidents of these ballads.

The next series is that on Fernan Gonzalez, a chieftain who, in the middle of the tenth century, recovered Castile from the Moors and became its first sovereign count. The most romantic are those which describe his being twice rescued from prison by his heroic wife, and his contest with King Sancho, in which he displayed all the turbulence and cunning of a robber baron of the Middle Ages.

The Seven Lords of Lara form the next group; some of them are beautiful, and the story they contain is one of the most romantic in Spanish history.

The Seven Lords of Lara are betrayed by their uncle into the hands of the Moors, and put to death, while their father, by the basest treason, is confined in a Moorish prison. An eighth son, the famous Mudarra, whose mother is a n.o.ble Moorish lady, at last avenges all the wrongs of his race.

But from the earliest period, the Cid has been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of Spanish history or fable.

They were first collected in 1612, and have been continually republished to the present day. There are at least a hundred and sixty of them, forming a more complete series than any other, all strongly marked with the spirit of their age and country.

The Moorish ballads form a large and brilliant cla.s.s by themselves. The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century after the fall of Granada, when the south, with its refinement and effeminacy, its magnificent and fantastic architecture, the foreign yet not strange manners of its people, and the stories of their warlike achievements, all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada a fairy land.

Of the ballads relating to private life, most of them are effusions of love, others are satirical, pastoral, and burlesque, and many descriptive of the manners and amus.e.m.e.nts of the people at large; but all of them are true representations of Spanish life. They are marked by an attractive simplicity of thought and expression, united to a sort of mischievous shrewdness. No such popular poetry exists in any other language, and no other exhibits in so great a degree that nationality which is the truest element of such poetry everywhere. The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, which gave to the poetry less dignity and elevation than belong to a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest enn.o.bled by a sense of religion and loyalty, and which could not fail to raise the minds of those engaged in it far above the atmosphere that settled around the b.l.o.o.d.y feuds of rival barons, or the gross maraudings of border warfare. The great Castilian heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith and poetry of the common people of Spain, and are still honored as they were centuries ago. The stories of Guarinos and of the defeat at Roncesvalles are still sung by the wayfaring muleteers, as they were when Don Quixote heard them on his journey to Toboso, and the showmen still rehea.r.s.e the same adventures in the streets of Seville, that they did at the solitary inn of Montesinos when he encountered them there.

3. THE CHRONICLES.--As the great Moorish contest was transferred to the south of Spain, the north became comparatively quiet. Wealth and leisure followed; the castles became the abodes of a crude but free hospitality, and the distinctions of society grew more apparent. The ballads from this time began to subside into the lower portions of society; the educated sought forms of literature more in accordance with their increased knowledge and leisure, and their more settled system of social life. The oldest of these forms was that of the Spanish prose chronicles, of which there are general and royal chronicles, chronicles of particular events, chronicles of particular persons, chronicles of travels, and romantic chronicles.

The first of these chronicles in the order of time as well as that of merit, comes from the royal hand of Alfonso the Wise, and is ent.i.tled "The Chronicle of Spain." It begins with the creation of the world, and concludes with the death of St. Ferdinand, the father of Alfonso. The last part, relating to the history of Spain, is by far the most attractive, and sets forth in a truly national spirit all the rich old traditions of the country. This is not only the most interesting of the Spanish chronicles, but the most interesting of all that in any country mark the transition from its poetical and romantic traditions to the grave exactness of historical truth. The chronicle of the Cid was probably taken from this work.

Alfonso XI. ordered the annals of the kingdom to be continued down to his own reign, or through the period from 1252 to 1312. During many succeeding reigns the royal chronicles were continued,--that of Ferdinand and Isabella, by Pulgar, is the last instance of the old style; but though the annals were still kept up, the free and picturesque spirit that gave them life was no longer there.

The chronicles of particular events and persons are most of them of little value.

Among the chronicles of travels, the oldest one of any value is an account of a Spanish emba.s.sy to Tamerlane, the great Tartar potentate.

Of the romantic chronicles, the princ.i.p.al specimen is that of Don Roderic, a fabulous account of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. The style is heavy and verbose, although upon it Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of "Roderic, the last of the Goths." This chronicle of Don Roderic, which was little more than a romance of chivalry, marks the transition to those romantic fictions that had already begun to inundate Spain. But the series which it concludes extends over a period of two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles V. (1221-1516), and is unrivaled in the richness and variety of its poetic elements. In truth, these old Spanish chronicles cannot be compared with those of any other nation, and whether they have their foundation in truth or in fable, they strike their strong roots further down into the deep soil of popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and nourished in long periods of national trial and suffering, everywhere appear; and they contain such a body of antiquities, traditions, and fables as has been offered to no other people; furnishing not only materials from which a mult.i.tude of old Spanish plays, ballads, and romances have been drawn, but a mine which has unceasingly been wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and which still remains unexhausted.

4. ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--The ballads originally belonged to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the knightly cla.s.ses, who sought in these picturesque records of their fathers a stimulus to their own virtue. But as the nation advanced in refinement, books of less grave character were demanded, and the spirit of poetical invention soon turned to the national traditions, and produced from these new and attractive forms of fiction.

Before the middle of the fourteenth century, the romances of chivalry connected with the stories of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and Charlemagne and his peers, which had appeared in France two centuries before, were scarcely known in Spain; but after that time they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which soon spread through the world, and became more famous than, either of its predecessors.

This extraordinary family of romances is that of which "Amadis" is the poetical head and type, and this was probably produced before the year 1400, by Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese. The structure and tone of this fiction are original, and much more free than those of the French romances that had preceded it. The stories of Arthur and Charlemagne are both somewhat limited in invention by the adventures ascribed to them in the traditions and chronicles, while that of Amadis belongs purely to the imagination, and its sole purpose is to set forth the character of a perfect knight. Amadis is admitted by general consent to be the best of all the old romances of chivalry. The series which followed, founded upon the Amadis, reached the number of twenty-four. They were successively translated into French, and at once became famous. Considering the pa.s.sionate admiration which this work so long excited, and the influence that, with little merit of its own, it has ever since exercised on the poetry and romance of modern Europe, it is a phenomenon without parallel in literary history.

Many other series of romances followed, numbering more than seventy volumes, most of them in folio, and their influence over the Spanish character extended through two hundred years. Their extraordinary popularity may be accounted for, if we remember that, when they first appeared in Spain, it had long been peculiarly the land of knighthood.

Extravagant and impossible as are many of the adventures recorded in these books of chivalry, they so little exceeded the absurdities of living men that many persons took the romances themselves to be true histories, and believed them. The happiest work of the greatest genius Spain has produced bears witness on every page to the prevalence of an absolute fanaticism for these books of chivalry, and becomes at once the seal of their vast popularity and the monument of their fate.

5. THE DRAMA.--The ancient theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued in some of its grosser forms in Constantinople and in other parts of the fallen empire far into the Middle Ages. But it was essentially mythological or heathenish, and, as such, it was opposed by the Christian church, which, however, provided a subst.i.tute for what it thus opposed, by adding a dramatic element to its festivals. Thus the manger at Bethlehem, with the worship of the shepherds and magi, was at a very early period solemnly exhibited every year before the altars of the churches, at Christmas, as were the tragical events of the last days of the Saviour's life, during Lent and at the approach of Easter. To these spectacles, dialogue was afterwards added, and they were called, as we have seen, _Mysteries_; they were used successfully not only as a means of amus.e.m.e.nt, but for the religious edification of an ignorant mult.i.tude, and in some countries they have been continued quite down to our own times. The period when these representations were first made in Spain cannot now be determined, though it was certainly before the middle of the thirteenth century, and no distinct account of them now remains.

A singular combination of pastoral and satirical poetry indicates the first origin of the Spanish secular drama. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, these pastoral dialogues were converted into real dramas by Enzina, and were publicly represented. But the most important of these early productions is the "Tragi-comedy of Calisto and Meliboea," or "Celestina." Though it can never have been represented, it has left unmistakable traces of its influence on the national drama ever since. It was translated into various languages, and few works ever had a more brilliant success. The great fault of the Celestina is its shameless libertinism of thought and language; and its chief merits are its life- like exhibition of the most unworthy forms of human character, and its singularly pure, rich, and idiomatic Castilian style.

The dramatic writers of this period seem to have had no idea of founding a popular national drama, of which there is no trace as late as the close of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

6. PROVENcAL LITERATURE IN SPAIN.--When the crown of Provence was transferred, by the marriage of its heir, in 1113, to Berenger, Count of Barcelona, numbers of the Provencal poets followed their liege lady from Arles to Barcelona, and established themselves in her new capital. At the very commencement, therefore, of the twelfth century, Provencal refinement was introduced into the northeastern corner of Spain. Political causes soon carried it farther towards the centre of the country. The Counts of Barcelona obtained, by marriage, the kingdom of Aragon, and soon spread through their new territories many of the refinements of Provence. The literature thus introduced retained its Provencal character till it came in contact with that more vigorous spirit which had been advancing from the northwest, and which afterwards gave its tone to the consolidated monarchy.

The poetry of the troubadours in Catalonia, as well as in its native home, belonged much to the court, and the highest in rank and power were earliest and foremost on its lists. From 1209 to 1229, the war against the Albigenses was carried on with extraordinary cruelty and fury. To this sect nearly all the contemporary troubadours belonged, and when they were compelled to escape from the burnt and b.l.o.o.d.y ruins of their homes, many of them hastened to the friendly court of Aragon, sure of being protected and honored by princes who were at the same time poets.

From the close of the thirteenth century, the songs of the troubadours were rarely heard in the land that gave them birth three hundred years before; and the plant that was not permitted to expand in its native soil, soon perished in that to which it had been transplanted. After the opening of the fourteenth century, no genuinely Provencal poetry appears in Castile, and from the middle of that century it begins to recede from Catalonia and Aragon; or rather, to be corrupted by the hardier dialect spoken there by the ma.s.s of the people. The retreat of the troubadours over the Pyrenees, from Aix to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Saragossa and Valencia, is everywhere marked by the wrecks and fragments of their peculiar poetry and cultivation. At length, oppressed by the more powerful Castilian, what remained of the language, that gave the first impulse to poetic feeling in modern times, sank into a neglected dialect.

7. THE INFLUENCE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE IN SPAIN.--The influence of the Italian literature over the Spanish, though less apparent at first, was more deep and lasting than that of the Provencal. The long wars that the Christians of Spain waged against the Moors brought them into closer spiritual connection with the Church of Rome than any other people of modern times. Spanish students repaired to the famous universities of Italy, and returned to Spain, bringing with them the influence of Italian culture; and commercial and political relations still further promoted a free communication of the manners and literature of Italy to Spain. The language, also, from its affinity with the Spanish, const.i.tuted a still more important and effectual medium of intercourse. In the reign of John II. (1407-1454), the attempt to form an Italian school in Spain became apparent. This sovereign gathered about him a sort of poetical court, and gave an impulse to refinement that was perceptible for several generations.

Among those who interested themselves most directly in the progress of poetry in Spain, the first in rank, after the king himself, was the Marquis of Villena (1384-1434), whose fame rests chiefly on the "Labors of Hercules," a short prose treatise or allegory.

First of all the courtiers and poets of this reign, in point of merit, stands the Marquis of Santillana (1398-1458), whose works belong more or less to the Provencal, Italian, and Spanish schools. He was the founder of an Italian and courtly school in Spanish poetry--one adverse to the national school and finally overcome by it, but one that long exercised a considerable sway. Another poet of the court of John II. is Juan de Mena, historiographer of Castile. His princ.i.p.al works are, "The Coronation" and "The Labyrinth," both imitations of Dante. They are of consequence as marking the progress of the language. The princ.i.p.al poem of Manrique the younger, one of an ill.u.s.trious family of that name, who were poets, statesmen, and soldiers, on the death of his father, is remarkable for depth and truth of feeling. Its greatest charm is its beautiful simplicity, and its merit ent.i.tles it to the place it has taken among the most admired portions of the elder Spanish literature.

8. THE CANCIONEROS AND PROSE WRITINGS.--The most distinct idea of the poetical culture of Spain, during the fifteenth century, may he obtained from the "Cancioneros," or collections of poetry, sometimes all by one author, sometimes by many. The oldest of these dates from about 1450, and was the work of Baena. Many similar collections followed, and they were among the fashionable wants of the age. In 1511, Castillo printed at Valencia the "Cancionero General," which contained poems attributed to about a hundred different poets, from the time of Santillana to the period in which it was made. Ten editions of this remarkable book followed, and in it we find the poetry most in favor at the court and with the refined society of Spain. It contains no trace of the earliest poetry of the country, but the spirit of the troubadours is everywhere present; the occasional imitations from the Italian are more apparent than successful, and in general it is wearisome and monotonous, overstrained, formal, and cold. But it was impossible that such a state of poetical culture should become permanent in a country so full of stirring events as Spain was in the age that followed the fall of Granada and the discovery of America; everything announced a decided movement in the literature of the nation, and almost everything seemed to favor and facilitate it.

The prose writers of the fifteenth century deserve mention chiefly because they were so much valued in their own age. Their writings are enc.u.mbered with the bad taste and pedantry of the time. Among them are Lucena, Alfonso de la Torre, Pulgar, and a few others.

9. THE INQUISITION.--The first period of the history of Spanish literature, now concluded, extends through nearly four centuries, from the first breathings of the poetical enthusiasm of the ma.s.s of the people, down to the decay of the courtly literature in the latter part of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. The elements of a national literature which it contains--the old ballads, the old chronicles, the old theatre-- are of a vigor and promise not to be mistaken. They const.i.tute a mine of more various wealth than had been offered under similar circ.u.mstances, at so early a period, to any other people; and they give indications of a subsequent literature that must vindicate for itself a place among the permanent monuments of modern civilization.

The condition of things in Spain, at the close of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, seemed to promise a long period of national prosperity. But one inst.i.tution, destined to check and discourage all intellectual freedom, was already beginning to give token of its great and blighting power. The Christian Spaniards had from an early period been essentially intolerant. The Moors and the Jews were regarded by them with an intense and bitter hatred; the first as their conquerors, and the last for the oppressive claims which their wealth gave them on numbers of the Christian inhabitants; and as enemies of the Cross, it was regarded as a merit to punish them. The establishment of the Inquisition, therefore, in 1481, which had been so effectually used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses, met with little opposition. The Jews and the Moors were its first victims, and with them it was permitted to deal unchecked by the power of the state. But the movements of this power were in darkness and secrecy. From the moment when the Inquisition laid its grasp on the object of its suspicions to that of his execution, no voice was heard to issue from its cells. The very witnesses it summoned were punished with death if they revealed the secrets of its dread tribunals; and often of the victim nothing was known but that he had disappeared from his accustomed haunts never again to be seen. The effect was appalling. The imaginations of men were filled with horror at the idea of a power so vast, so noiseless, constantly and invisibly around them, whose blow was death, but whose step could neither be heard nor followed amidst the gloom into which it retreated. From this time, Spanish intolerance took that air of sombre fanaticism which it never afterwards lost. The Inquisition gradually enlarged its jurisdiction, until none was too humble to escape its notice, or too high to be reached by its power. From an inquiry into the private opinions of individuals to an interference with books and the press was but a step, and this was soon taken, hastened by the appearance and progress of the Reformation of Luther.

PERIOD SECOND.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION (1500-1700).

1. THE EFFECT OF INTOLERANCE ON LETTERS.--The central point in Spanish history is the capture of Granada. During nearly eight centuries before that event, the Christians of Spain were occupied with conflicts that developed extraordinary energies, till the whole land was filled to overflowing with a power which had hardly yet been felt in Europe. But no sooner was the last Moorish fortress yielded up, than this acc.u.mulated flood broke loose and threatened to overspread the best portions of the civilized world. Charles the Fifth, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, inherited not only Spain, but Naples, Sicily, and the Low Countries. The untold wealth of the Indies was already beginning to pour into his treasury. He was elected Emperor of Germany, and he soon began a career of conquest such as had not been imagined since the days of Charlemagne.

Success and glory ever waited for him as he advanced, and this brilliant aspect seemed to promise that Spain would erelong be at the head of an empire more extensive than the Roman. But a moral power was at work, destined to divide Europe anew, and the monk Luther was already become a counterpoise to the military master of so many kingdoms. During the hundred and thirty years of struggle, that terminated with the peace of Westphalia, though Spain was far removed from the fields where the most cruel battles of the religious wars were fought, the interest she took in the contest may be seen from the presence of her armies in every part of Europe where it was possible to a.s.sail the great movement of the Reformation.

In Spain, the contest with Protestantism was of short duration. By successive decrees the church ordained that all persons who kept in their possession books infected with the doctrines of Luther, and even all who failed to denounce such persons, should be excommunicated, and subjected to cruel and degrading punishments. The power of the Inquisition was consummated in 1546, when the first "Index Expurgatorius" was published in Spain. This was a list of the books that all persons were forbidden to buy, sell, or keep possession of, under penalty of confiscation and death.

The tribunals were authorized and required to proceed against all persons supposed to be infected with the new belief, even though they were cardinals, dukes, kings, or emperors,--a power more formidable to the progress of intellectual improvement, than had ever before been granted to any body of men, civil or ecclesiastical.

The portentous authority thus given was freely exercised. The first public _auto da fe_ of Protestants was held in 1559, and many others followed.

The number of victims seldom exceeded twenty burned at one time, and fifty or sixty subjected to the severest punishments; but many of those who suffered were among the active and leading minds of the age. Men of learning were particularly obnoxious to suspicion, nor were persons of the holiest lives beyond its reach if they showed a tendency to inquiry. So effectually did the Inquisition accomplish its purpose, that, from the latter part of the reign of Philip II., the voice of religious dissent was scarcely heard in the land. The great body of the Spanish people rejoiced alike in their loyalty and their orthodoxy, and the few who differed from the ma.s.s of their fellow-subjects were either silenced by their fears, or sunk away from the surface of society. From that time down to its overthrow, in 1808, this inst.i.tution was chiefly a political engine.

The result of such extraordinary traits in the national character could not fail to be impressed upon the literature. Loyalty, which had once been so generous an element in the Spanish character and cultivation, was now infected with the ambition of universal empire, and the Christian spirit which gave an air of duty to the wildest forms of adventure in its long contest with misbelief, was now fallen into a bigotry so pervading that the romances of the time are full of it, and the national theatre becomes its grotesque monument.

Of course the literature of Spain produced during this interval--the earlier part of which was the period of the greatest glory the country ever enjoyed--was injuriously affected by so diseased a condition of the national mind. Some departments hardly appeared at all, others were strangely perverted, while yet others, like the drama, ballads, and lyrical verse, grew exuberant and lawless, from the very restraints imposed on the rest. But it would be an error to suppose that these peculiarities in Spanish literature were produced by the direct action either of the Inquisition or of the government. The foundations of this dark work were laid deep and sure in the old Castilian character. It was the result of the excess and misdirection of that very Christian zeal which fought so gloriously against the intrusion of Mohammedanism into Spain, and of that loyalty which sustained the Spanish princes so faithfully through the whole of that terrible contest. This state of things, however, involved the ultimate sacrifice of the best elements of the national character. Only a little more than a century elapsed, before the government that had threatened the world with a universal empire, was hardly able to repel invasion from abroad or maintain its subjects at home. The vigorous poetical life which had been kindled through the country in its ages of trial and adversity, was evidently pa.s.sing out of the whole Spanish character. The crude wealth from their American possessions sustained, for a century longer, the forms of a miserable political existence; but the earnest faith, the loyalty, the dignity of the Spanish people were gone, and little remained in their place but a weak subserviency to unworthy masters of state, and a low, timid bigotry in whatever related to religion. The old enthusiasm faded away, and the poetry of the country, which had always depended more on the state of the popular feeling than any other poetry of modern times, faded and failed with it.

2. INFLUENCE OF ITALY ON SPANISH LITERATURE.--The political connection between Spain and Italy in the early part of the sixteenth century, and the superior civilization and refinement of the latter country, could not fail to influence Spanish literature. Juan Boscan (d. 1543) was the first to attempt the proper Italian measures as they were then practiced. He established in Spain the Italian iambic, the sonnet, and canzone of Petrarch, the _terza rima_ of Dante, and the flowing octaves of Ariosto.

As an original poet, the talents of Boscan were not of the highest order.

Garcila.s.so de la Vega (1503-1536), the contemporary and friend of Boscan, united with him in introducing an Italian school of poetry, which has been an important part of Spanish literature ever since. The poems of Garcila.s.so are remarkable for their gentleness and melancholy, and his versification is uncommonly sweet, and well adapted to the tender and sad character of his poetry.

The example set by Boscan and Garcila.s.so so well suited the demands of the age, that it became as much a fashion at the court of Charles V. to write in the Italian manner, as it did to travel in Italy, or make a military campaign there. Among those who did most to establish the Italian influence in Spanish literature was Diego de Mendoza (1503-1575), a scholar, a soldier, a poet, a diplomatist, a statesman, a historian, and a man who rose to great consideration in whatever he undertook. One of his earliest works, "Lazarillo de Tormes," the auto-biography of a boy, little Lazarus, was written with the object of satirizing all cla.s.ses of society under the character of a servant, who sees them in undress behind the scenes. The style of this work is bold, rich, and idiomatic, and some of its sketches are among the most fresh and spirited that can be found in the whole cla.s.s of prose works of fiction. It has been more or less a favorite in all languages, down to the present day, and was the foundation of a cla.s.s of fictions which the "Gil Blas" of Le Sage has made famous throughout the world. Mendoza, after having filled many high offices under Charles V., when Philip ascended the throne, was, for some slight offense, banished from the court as a madman. In the poems which he occasionally wrote during his exile, he gave the influence of his example to the new form introduced by Boscan and Garcila.s.so. At a later period he occupied himself in writing some portions of the history of his native city, Granada, relating to the rebellion of the Moors (1568-1570). Familiar with everything of which he speaks, there is a freshness and power in his sketches that carry us at once into the midst of the scenes and events he describes. "The War of Granada" is an imitation of Sall.u.s.t. Nothing in the style of the old chronicles is to be compared to it, and little in any subsequent period is equal to it for manliness, vigor, and truth.

3. HISTORY.--The imperfect chronicles of the age of Charles V. were surpa.s.sed in importance by the histories or narratives, more or less ample, of the discoverers of the western world, all of which were interesting from their subject and their materials. First in the foreground of this picturesque group stands Fernando Cortes (1485-1554), of whose voluminous doc.u.ments the most remarkable were five long reports to the Emperor on the affairs of Mexico.

The marvelous achievements of Cortes, however, were more fully recorded by Gomara (b. 1510), the oldest of the regular historians of the New World.

His princ.i.p.al works are the "History of the Indies," chiefly devoted to Columbus and the conquest of Peru, and the "Chronicle of New Spain," which is merely the history and life of Cortes, under which t.i.tle it has since been republished. The style of Gomara is easy and flowing, but his work was of no permanent authority, in consequence of the great and frequent mistakes into which he was led by those who were too much a part of the story to relate it fairly. These mistakes Bernal Diaz, an old soldier who had been long in the New World, set himself at work to correct, and the book he thus produced, with many faults, has something of the honest nationality, and the fervor and faith of the old chronicles.