[Transcriber's note]

[Table of Contents]

History of Spanish Literature (vol. 2 of 3)

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

VOL. II.

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

BY

GEORGE TICKNOR.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOLUME II.

NEW YORK:

HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET.

M DCCC XLIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by
George Ticknor,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME SECOND.

SECOND PERIOD.
(Continued.)

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

The Literature that existed in Spain from the Accession of the Austrian Family to its Extinction, or from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the End of the Seventeenth.

(CONTINUED.)

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

(CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER VII.

Theatre. — Influence of the Church and the Inquisition. — Mysteries. — Castillejo, Oliva, Juan de Paris, and Others. — Popular Demands for Dramatic Literature. — Lope de Rueda. — His Life, Comedias, Coloquios, Pasos, and Dialogues in Verse. — His Character as Founder of the Popular Drama in Spain. — Juan de Timoneda.

The theatre in Spain, as in most other countries of modern Europe, was early called to contend with formidable difficulties. Dramatic representations there, perhaps more than elsewhere, had been for centuries in the hands of the Church; and the Church was not willing to give them up, especially for such secular and irreligious purposes as we have seen were apparent in the plays of Naharro. The Inquisition, therefore, already arrogating to itself powers not granted by the state, but yielded by a sort of general consent, interfered betimes. After the publication of the Seville edition of the “Propaladia” in 1520,—but how soon afterward we do not know,—the representation of its dramas was forbidden, and the interdict was continued till 1573.[1] Of the few pieces written in the early part of the reign of Charles the Fifth, nearly all, except those on strictly religious subjects, were laid under the ban of the Church; several, like the “Orfea,” 1534, and the “Custodia,” 1541, being now known to have existed only because their names appear in the Index Expurgatorius;[2] and others, like the “Amadis de Gaula” of Gil Vicente, though printed and published, being subsequently forbidden to be represented.[3]

The old religious drama, meantime, was still upheld by ecclesiastical power. Of this we have sufficient proof in the titles of the Mysteries that were from time to time performed, and in the well-known fact, that, when, with all the magnificence of the court of Charles the Fifth, the infant heir to the crown, afterwards Philip the Second, was baptized at Valladolid, in 1527, five religious plays, one of which was on the Baptism of Saint John, constituted a part of the gorgeous ceremony.[4] Such compositions, however, did not advance the drama; though perhaps some of them, like that of Pedro de Altamira, on the Supper at Emmaus, are not without poetical merit.[5] On the contrary, their tendency must have been to keep back theatrical representations within their old religious purposes and limits.[6]

Nor were the efforts made to advance them in other directions marked by good judgment or permanent success. We pass over the “Costanza” by Castillejo, which seems to have been in the manner of Naharro, and is assigned to the year 1522,[7] but which, from its indecency, was never published, and is now probably lost; and we pass over the free versions, made about 1530, by Perez de Oliva, Rector of the University of Salamanca, from the “Amphitryon” of Plautus, the “Electra” of Sophocles, and the “Hecuba” of Euripides, because they fell, for the time, powerless on the early attempts of the national theatre, which had nothing in common with the spirit of antiquity.[8] But a single play, printed in 1536, should be noticed, as showing how slowly the drama made progress in Spain.

It is called “An Eclogue,” and is written by Juan de Paris, in versos de arte mayor, or long verses divided into stanzas of eight lines each, which show, in their careful construction, not a little labor and art.[9] It has five interlocutors: an esquire, a hermit, a young damsel, a demon, and two shepherds. The hermit enters first. He seems to be in a meadow, musing on the vanity of human life; and, after praying devoutly, determines to go and visit another hermit. But he is prevented by the esquire, who comes in weeping and complaining of ill treatment from Cupid, whose cruel character he illustrates by his conduct in the cases of Medea, the fall of Troy, Priam, David, and Hercules; ending with his own determination to abandon the world and live in a “nook merely monastical.” He accosts the hermit, who discourses to him on the follies of love, and advises him to take religion and works of devotion for a remedy in his sorrows. The young man determines to follow counsel so wise, and they enter the hermitage together. But they are no sooner gone than the demon appears, complaining bitterly that the esquire is likely to escape him, and determining to do all in his power to prevent it. One of the shepherds, whose name is Vicente, now comes in, and is much shocked by the glimpse he has caught of the retiring spirit, who, indeed, from his description, and from the wood-cut on the title-page, seems to have been a truly fantastic and hideous personage. Vicente thereupon hides himself; but the damsel, who is the lady-love of the esquire, enters, and, after drawing him from his concealment, holds with him a somewhat metaphysical dialogue about love. The other shepherd, Cremon, at this difficult point interrupts the discussion, and has a rude quarrel with Vicente, which the damsel composes; and then Cremon tells her where the hermit and the lover she has come to seek are to be found. All now go towards the hermitage. The esquire, overjoyed, receives the lady with open arms, and cries out,—

But now I abjure this friardom poor,

And will neither be hermit nor friar any more.[10]

The hermit marries them, and determines to go with them to their house in the town; and then the whole ends somewhat strangely with a villancico, which has for its burden,—

Let us fly, I say, from Love’s power away;

’T is a vassalage hard,

Which gives grief for reward.[11]

The piece is curious, because it is a wild mixture of the spirit of the old Mysteries with that of Juan de la Enzina’s Eclogues and the Comedies of Naharro, and shows by what awkward means it was attempted to conciliate the Church, and yet amuse an audience which had little sympathy with monks and hermits. But it has no poetry in it, and very little dramatic movement. Of its manner and measure the opening stanza is quite a fair specimen. The hermit enters, saying to himself,—

The suffering life we mortal men below,

Upon this terrene world, are bound to spend,

If we but carefully regard its end,

We find it very full of grief and woe:

Torments so multiplied, so great, and ever such,

That but to count an endless reckoning brings,

While, like the rose that from the rose-tree springs,

Our life itself fades quickly at their touch.[12]

Other attempts followed this, or appeared at just about the same time, which approach nearer to the example set by Naharro. One of them is called “La Vidriana,” by Jaume de Huete, on the loves of a gentleman and lady of Aragon, who desired the author to represent them dramatically;[13] and another, by the same hand, is called “La Tesorina,” and was afterwards forbidden by the Inquisition.[14] This last is a direct imitation of Naharro; has an intróito; is divided into five jornadas; and is written in short verses. Indeed, at the end, Naharro is mentioned by name, with much implied admiration on the part of the author, who in the title-page announces himself as an Aragonese, but of whom we know nothing else. And, finally, we have a play in five acts, and in the same style, with an intróito at the beginning and a villancico at the end, by Agostin Ortiz,[15] leaving no doubt that the manner and system of Naharro had at last found imitators in Spain, and were fairly recognized there.

But the popular vein had not yet been struck. Except dramatic exhibitions of a religious character, and under ecclesiastical authority, nothing had been attempted in which the people, as such, had any share. The attempt, however, was now made, and made successfully. Its author was a mechanic of Seville, Lope de Rueda, a goldbeater by trade, who, from motives now entirely unknown, became both a dramatic writer and a public actor. The period in which he flourished has been supposed to be between 1544 and 1567, in which year he is spoken of as dead; and the scene of his adventures is believed to have extended to Seville, Córdova, Valencia, Segovia, and probably other places, where his plays and farces could be represented with profit. At Segovia, we know he acted in the new cathedral, during the week of its consecration, in 1558; and Cervantes and the unhappy Antonio Perez both speak with admiration of his powers as an actor; the first having been twenty years old in 1567, the period commonly assumed as that of Rueda’s death,[16] and the last having been eighteen. Rueda’s success, therefore, even during his lifetime, seems to have been remarkable; and when he died, though he belonged to the despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honor among the mazy pillars in the nave of the great cathedral at Córdova.[17]

His works were collected after his death by his friend Juan de Timoneda, and published in different editions, between 1567 and 1588.[18] They consist of four Comedias, two Pastoral Colloquies, and ten Pasos, or dialogues, all in prose; besides two dialogues in verse. They were all evidently written for representation, and were unquestionably acted before popular audiences, by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about.

The four Comedias are merely divided into scenes, and extend to the length of a common farce, whose spirit they generally share. The first of them, “Los Engaños,”—Frauds,—contains the story of a daughter of Verginio, who has escaped from the convent where she was to be educated, and is serving as a page to Marcelo, who had once been her lover, and who had left her because he believed himself to have been ill treated. Clavela, the lady to whom Marcelo now devotes himself, falls in love with the fair page, somewhat as Olivia does in “Twelfth Night,” and this brings in several effective scenes and situations. But a twin brother of the lady-page returns home, after a considerable absence, so like her, that he proves the other Sosia, who, first producing great confusion and trouble, at last marries Clavela, and leaves his sister to her original lover. This is at least a plot; and some of its details and portions of the dialogue are ingenious, and managed with dramatic skill.

The next, the “Medora,” is, also, not without a sense of what belongs to theatrical composition and effect. The interest of the action depends, in a considerable degree, on the confusion produced by the resemblance between a young woman stolen when a child by Gypsies, and the heroine, who is her twin sister. But there are well-drawn characters in it, that stand out in excellent relief, especially two: Gargullo,—the “miles gloriosus,” or Captain Bobadil, of the story,—who, by an admirable touch of nature, is made to boast of his courage when quite alone, as well as when he is in company; and a Gypsy woman, who overreaches and robs him at the very moment he intends to overreach and rob her.[19]

The story of the “Eufemia” is not unlike that of the slandered Imogen, and the character of Melchior Ortiz is almost exactly that of the fool in the old English drama,—a well-sustained and amusing mixture of simplicity and shrewdness.

The “Armelina,” which is the fourth and last of the longer pieces of Lope de Rueda, is more bold in its dramatic incidents than either of the others.[20] The heroine, a foundling from Hungary, after a series of strange incidents, is left in a Spanish village, where she is kindly and even delicately brought up by the village blacksmith; while her father, to supply her place, has no less kindly brought up in Hungary a natural son of this same blacksmith, who had been carried there by his unworthy mother. The father of the lady, having some intimation of where his daughter is to be found, comes to the Spanish village, bringing his adopted son with him. There he advises with a Moorish necromancer how he is to proceed in order to regain his lost child. The Moor, by a fearful incantation, invokes Medea, who actually appears on the stage, fresh from the infernal regions, and informs him that his daughter is living in the very village where they all are. Meanwhile the daughter has seen the youth from Hungary, and they are at once in love with each other;—the blacksmith, at the same time, having decided, with the aid of his wife, to compel her to marry a shoemaker, to whom he had before promised her. Here, of course, come troubles and despair. The young lady undertakes to cut them short, at once, by throwing herself into the sea, but is prevented by Neptune, who quietly carries her down to his abodes under the roots of the ocean, and brings her back at the right moment to solve all the difficulties, explain the relationships, and end the whole with a wedding and a dance. This is, no doubt, very wild and extravagant, especially in the part containing the incantation and in the part played by Neptune; but, after all, the dialogue is pleasant and easy, and the style natural and spirited.

The two Pastoral Colloquies differ from the four Comedias, partly in having even less carefully constructed plots, and partly in affecting, through their more bucolic portions, a stately and pedantic air, which is any thing but agreeable. They belong, however, substantially to the same class of dramas, and received a different name, perhaps, only from the circumstance, that a pastoral tone was always popular in Spanish poetry, and that, from the time of Enzina, it had been considered peculiarly fitted for public exhibition. The comic parts of the colloquies are the only portions of them that have merit; and the following passage from that of “Timbria” is as characteristic of Lope de Rueda’s light and natural manner as any thing, perhaps, that can be selected from what we have of his dramas. It is a discussion between Leno, the shrewd fool of the piece, and Troico,[21] in which Leno ingeniously contrives to get rid of all blame for having eaten up a nice cake which Timbria, the lady in love with Troico, had sent to him by the faithless glutton.

Leno. Ah, Troico, are you there?

Troico. Yes, my good fellow, don’t you see I am?

Leno. It would be better if I did not see it.

Troico. Why so, Leno?

Leno. Why then you would not know a piece of ill-luck that has just happened.

Troico. What ill-luck?

Leno. What day is it to-day?

Troico. Thursday.

Leno. Thursday? How soon will Tuesday come, then?

Troico. Tuesday is passed two days ago.

Leno. Well, that’s something;—but tell me, are there not other days of ill-luck as well as Tuesdays?[22]

Troico. What do you ask that for?

Leno. I ask, because there may be unlucky pancakes, if there are unlucky Thursdays.

Troico. I suppose so.

Leno. Now stop there;—suppose one of yours had been eaten of a Thursday; on whom would the ill-luck have fallen? on the pancake or on you?

Troico. No doubt, on me.

Leno. Then, my good Troico, comfort yourself, and begin to suffer and be patient; for men, as the saying is, are born to misfortunes, and there are matters, in fine, that come from God; and in the order of time you must die yourself, and, as the saying is, your last hour will then be come and arrived. Take it, then, patiently, and remember that we are here to-morrow and gone to-day.

Troico. For heaven’s sake, Leno, is any body in the family dead? Or else why do you console me so?

Leno. Would to heaven that were all, Troico!

Troico. Then what is it? Can’t you tell me, without so many circumlocutions? What is all this preamble about?

Leno. When my poor mother died, he that brought me the news, before he told me of it, dragged me round through more turn-abouts than there are windings in the Pisuerga and Zapardiel.[23]

Troico. But I have got no mother, and never knew one. I don’t comprehend what you mean.

Leno. Then smell of this napkin.

Troico. Very well, I have smelt of it.

Leno. What does it smell of?

Troico. Something like butter.

Leno. Then you may truly say, “Here Troy was.”

Troico. What do you mean, Leno?

Leno. For you it was given to me; for you Madam Timbria sent it, all stuck over with nuts;—but as I have (and Heaven and every body else knows it) a sort of natural relationship to whatever is good, my eyes watched and followed it just as a hawk follows chickens.

Troico. Followed whom, villain? Timbria?

Leno. Heaven forbid! But how nicely she sent it, all made up with butter and sugar!

Troico. And what was that?

Leno. The pancake, to be sure,—don’t you understand?

Troico. And who sent a pancake to me?

Leno. Why, Madam Timbria.

Troico. Then what became of it?

Leno. It was consumed.

Troico. How?

Leno. By looking at it.

Troico. Who looked at it?

Leno. I, by ill-luck.

Troico. In what fashion?

Leno. Why, I sat down by the way-side.

Troico. Well, what next?

Leno. I took it in my hand.

Troico. And then?

Leno. Then I tried how it tasted; and what between taking and leaving all round the edges of it, when I tried to think what had become of it, I found I had no sort of recollection.

Troico. The upshot is, that you ate it?

Leno. It is not impossible.

Troico. In faith, you are a trusty fellow!

Leno. Indeed! do you think so? Hereafter, if I bring two, I will eat them both, and so be better yet.

Troico. The business goes on well.

Leno. And well advised, and at small cost; and to my content. But now, go to; suppose we have a little jest with Timbria.

Troico. Of what sort?

Leno. Suppose you make her believe you ate the pancake yourself, and, when she thinks it is true, you and I can laugh at the trick till you split your sides. Can you ask for any thing better?

Troico. You counsel well.

Leno. Well, Heaven bless the men that listen to reason! But tell me, Troico, do you think you can carry out the jest with a grave face?

Troico. I? What have I to laugh about?

Leno. Why, don’t you think it is a laughing matter to make her believe you ate it, when all the time it was your own good Leno that did it?

Troico. Wisely said. But now hold your tongue, and go about your business.[24]

The ten Pasos are much like this dialogue,—short and lively, without plot or results, and merely intended to amuse an idle audience for a few moments. Two of them are on glutton tricks, like that practised by Leno; others are between thieves and cowards; and all are drawn from common life, and written with spirit. It is very possible that some of them were taken out of larger and more formal dramatic compositions, which it was not thought worth while to print entire.[25]

The two dialogues in verse are curious, as the only specimens of Lope de Rueda’s poetry that are now extant, except some songs and a fragment preserved by Cervantes.[26] One is called “Proofs of Love,” and is a sort of pastoral discussion between two shepherds, on the question, which was most favored, the one who had received a finger-ring as a present, or the one who had received an ear-ring. It is written in easy and flowing quintillas, and is not longer than one of the slight dialogues in prose. The other is called “A Dialogue on the Breeches now in Fashion,” and is in the same easy measure, but has more of its author’s peculiar spirit and manner. It is between two lackeys, and begins thus abruptly:—

Peralta.

Master Fuentes, what’s the change, I pray,

I notice in your hosiery and shape?

You seem so very swollen as you walk.

Fuentes.

Sir, ’t is the breeches fashion now prescribes.

Peralta.

I thought it was an under-petticoat!

Fuentes.

I’m not ashamed of what I have put on.

Why must I wear my breeches made like yours?

Good friend, your own are wholly out of vogue.

Peralta.

But what are yours so lined and stuffed withal,

That thus they seem so very smooth and tight?

Fuentes.

Of that we’ll say but little. An old mantle,

And a cloak still older and more spoiled,

Do vainly struggle from my hose t’ escape.

Peralta.

To my mind, they were used to better ends,

If sewed up for a horse’s blanket, Sir.

Fuentes.

But others stuff in plenty of clean straw

And rushes to make out a shapely form——

Peralta.

Proving that they are more or less akin

To beasts of burden.

Fuentes.

But they wear, at least,

Such gallant hosiery, that things of taste

May well be added to fit out their dress.

Peralta.

No doubt, the man that dresses thus in straw

May tastefully put on a saddle too.[27]

In all the forms of the drama attempted by Lope de Rueda, the main purpose is evidently to amuse a popular audience. But to do this, his theatrical resources were very small and humble. “In the time of this celebrated Spaniard,” says Cervantes, recalling the gay season of his youth,[28] “the whole apparatus of a manager was contained in a large sack, and consisted of four white shepherd’s jackets, turned up with leather, gilt and stamped; four beards and false sets of hanging locks; and four shepherd’s crooks, more or less. The plays were colloquies, like eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, fitted up and extended with two or three interludes, whose personages were sometimes a negress, sometimes a bully, sometimes a fool, and sometimes a Biscayan;—for all these four parts, and many others, Lope himself performed with the greatest excellence and skill that can be imagined.... The theatre was composed of four benches, arranged in a square, with five or six boards laid across them, that were thus raised about four palms from the ground.... The furniture of the theatre was an old blanket drawn aside by two cords, making what they call a tiring-room, behind which were the musicians, who sang old ballads without a guitar.”

The place where this rude theatre was set up was a public square, and the performances occurred whenever an audience could be collected; apparently both forenoon and afternoon, for, at the end of one of his plays, Lope de Rueda invites his “hearers only to eat their dinner and return to the square,”[29] and witness another.

His four longer dramas have some resemblance to portions of the earlier English comedy, which, at precisely the same period, was beginning to show itself in pieces such as “Ralph Royster Doyster,” and “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” They are divided into what are called scenes,—the shortest of them consisting of six, and the longest of ten; but in these scenes the place sometimes changes, and the persons often,—a circumstance of little consequence, where the whole arrangements implied no real attempt at scenic illusion.[30] Much of the success of all depended on the part played by the fools, or simples, who, in most of his dramas, are important personages, almost constantly on the stage;[31] while something is done by mistakes in language, arising from vulgar ignorance or from foreign dialects, like those of negroes and Moors. Each piece opens with a brief explanatory prologue, and ends with a word of jest and apology to the audience. Naturalness of thought, the most easy, idiomatic Castilian turns of expression, a good-humored, free gayety, a strong sense of the ridiculous, and a happy imitation of the manners and tone of common life, are the prominent characteristics of these, as they are of all the rest of his shorter efforts. He was, therefore, on the right road, and was, in consequence, afterwards justly reckoned, both by Cervantes and Lope de Vega, to be the true founder of the popular national theatre.[32]

The earliest follower of Lope de Rueda was his friend and editor, Juan de Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia, who certainly flourished during the middle and latter part of the sixteenth century, and probably died in extreme old age, soon after the year 1597.[33] His thirteen or fourteen pieces that were printed pass under various names, and have a considerable variety in their character; the most popular in their tone being the best. Four are called “Pasos,” and four “Farsas,”—all much alike. Two are called “Comedias,” one of which, the “Aurelia,” written in short verses, is divided into five jornadas, and has an intróito, after the manner of Naharro; while the other, the “Cornelia,” is merely divided into seven scenes, and written in prose, after the manner of Lope de Rueda. Besides these, we have what, in the present sense of the word, is for the first time called an “Entremes”; a Tragicomedia, which is a mixture of mythology and modern history; a religious Auto, on the subject of the Lost Sheep; and a translation, or rather an imitation, of the “Menæchmi” of Plautus. In all of them, however, he seems to have relied for success on a spirited, farcical dialogue, like that of Lope de Rueda; and all were, no doubt, written to be acted in the public squares, to which, more than once, they make allusion.[34]

The “Cornelia,” first printed in 1559, is somewhat confused in its story. We have in it a young lady, taken, when a child, by the Moors, and returned, when grown up, to the neighbourhood of her friends, without knowing who she is; a foolish fellow, deceived by his wife, and yet not without shrewdness enough to make much merriment; and Pasquin, partly a quack doctor, partly a magician, and wholly a rogue; who, with five or six other characters, make rather a superabundance of materials for so short a drama. Some of the dialogues are full of life; and the development of two or three of the characters is good, especially that of Cornalla, the clown; but the most prominent personage, perhaps,—the magician,—is taken, in a considerable degree, from the “Negromante” of Ariosto, which was represented at Ferrara about thirty years earlier, and proves that Timoneda had some scholarship, if not always a ready invention.[35]

The “Menennos,” published in the same year with the Cornelia, is further proof of his learning. It is in prose, and taken from Plautus; but with large changes. The plot is laid in Seville; the play is divided into fourteen scenes, after the example of Lope de Rueda; and the manners are altogether Spanish. There is even a talk of Lazarillo de Tórmes, when speaking of an unprincipled young servant.[36] But it shows frequently the same free and natural dialogue, fresh from common life, that is found in his master’s dramas; and it can be read with pleasure throughout, as an amusing rifacimento.[37]

The Paso, however, of “The Blind Beggars and the Boy” is, like the other short pieces, more characteristic of the author and of the little school to which he belonged. It is written in short, familiar verses, and opens with an address to the audience by Palillos, the boy, asking for employment, and setting forth his own good qualities, which he illustrates by showing how ingeniously he had robbed a blind beggar who had been his master. At this instant, Martin Alvarez, the blind beggar in question, approaches on one side of a square where the scene passes, chanting his prayers, as is still the wont of such persons in the streets of Spanish cities; while on the other side of the same square approaches another of the same class, called Pero Gomez, similarly employed. Both offer their prayers in exchange for alms, and are particularly earnest to obtain custom, as it is Christmas eve. Martin Alvarez begins:—

What pious Christian here

Will bid me pray

A blessed prayer,

Quite singular

And new, I say,

In honor of our Lady dear?

On hearing the well-known voice, Palillos, the boy, is alarmed, and, at first, talks of escaping; but recollecting that there is no need of this, as the beggar is blind, he merely stands still, and his old master goes on:—

O, bid me pray! O, bid me pray!—

The very night is holy time,—

O, bid me pray the blessed prayer,

The birth of Christ in rhyme!

But as nobody offers an alms, he breaks out again:—

Good heavens! the like was never known!

The thing is truly fearful grown;

For I have cried,

Till my throat is dried,

At every corner on my way,

And not a soul heeds what I say!

The people, I begin to fear,

Are grown too careful of their gear,

For honest prayers to pay.

The other blind beggar, Pero Gomez, now comes up and strikes in:—

Who will ask for the blind man’s prayer?—

O gentle souls that hear my word!

Give but an humble alms,

And I will sing the holy psalms

For which Pope Clement’s bulls afford

Indulgence full, indulgence rare,

· · · · · ·

And add, besides, the blessed prayer

For the birth of our blessed Lord.[38]

The two blind men, hearing each other, enter into conversation, and, believing themselves to be alone, Alvarez relates how he had been robbed by his unprincipled attendant, and Gomez explains how he avoids such misfortunes by always carrying the ducats he begs sewed into his cap. Palillos, learning this, and not well pleased with the character he has just received, comes very quietly up to Gomez, knocks off his cap, and escapes with it. Gomez thinks it is his blind friend who has played him the trick, and asks civilly to have his cap back again. The friend denies, of course, all knowledge of it; Gomez insists; and the dialogue ends, as many of its class do, with a quarrel and a fight, to the great amusement, no doubt, of audiences such as were collected in the public squares of Valencia or Seville.[39]

CHAPTER VIII.

Theatre. — Followers of Lope de Rueda. — Alonso de la Vega. — Cisneros. — Seville. — Malara. — Cueva. — Zepeda. — Valencia. — Virues. — Translations and Imitations of the Ancient Classical Drama. — Villalobos. — Oliva. — Boscan. — Abril. — Bermudez. — Argensola. — State of the Theatre.

Two of the persons attached to Lope de Rueda’s company were, like himself, authors as well as actors. One of them, Alonso de la Vega, died at Valencia as early as 1566, in which year three of his dramas, all in prose, and one of them directly imitated from his master, were published by Timoneda.[40] The other, Antonio Cisneros, lived as late as 1579, but it does not seem certain that any dramatic work of his now exists.[41] Neither of them was equal to Lope de Rueda or Juan de Timoneda; but the four taken together produced an impression on the theatrical taste of their times, which was never afterwards wholly forgotten or lost,—a fact of which the shorter dramatic compositions that have been favorites on the Spanish stage ever since give decisive proof.

But dramatic representations in Spain between 1560 and 1590 were by no means confined to what was done by Lope de Rueda, his friends, and his strolling company of actors. Other efforts were made in various places, and upon other principles; sometimes with more success than theirs, sometimes with less. In Seville, a good deal seems to have been done. It is probable the plays of Malara, a native of that city, were represented there during this period; but they are now all lost.[42] Those of Juan de la Cueva, on the contrary, have been partly preserved, and merit notice for many reasons, but especially because most of them are historical. They were represented—at least, the few that still remain—in 1579, and the years immediately subsequent; but were not printed till 1588, and then only a single volume appeared.[43] Each of them is divided into four jornadas, or acts, and they are written in various measures, including terza rima, blank verse, and sonnets, but chiefly in redondillas and octave stanzas. Several are on national subjects, like “The Children of Lara,” “Bernardo del Carpio,” and “The Siege of Zamora”; others are on subjects from ancient history, such as Ajax, Virginia, and Mutius Scævola; some are on fictitious stories, like “The Old Man in Love,” and “The Decapitated,” which last is founded on a Moorish adventure; and one, at least, is on a great event of times then recent, “The Sack of Rome” by the Constable Bourbon. All, however, are crude in their structure, and unequal in their execution. The Sack of Rome, for instance, is merely a succession of dialogues thrown together in the loosest manner, to set forth the progress of the Imperial arms, from the siege of Rome in May, 1527, to the coronation of Charles the Fifth, at Bologna, in February, 1530; and though the picture of the outrages at Rome is not without an air of truth, there is little truth in other respects; the Spaniards being made to carry off all the glory.[44]

“El Infamador,” or The Calumniator, sets forth, in a different tone, the story of a young lady who refuses the love of a dissolute young man, and is, in consequence, accused by him of murder and other crimes, and condemned to death, but is rescued by preternatural power, while her accuser suffers in her stead. It is almost throughout a revolting picture; the fathers of the hero and heroine being each made to desire the death of his own child, while the whole is rendered absurd by the not unusual mixture of heathen mythology and modern manners. Of poetry, which is occasionally found in Cueva’s other dramas, there is in this play no trace; and so carelessly is it written, that there is no division of the acts into scenes.[45] Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how several of his twelve or fourteen dramas should have been brought into practical shape and represented at all. It is probable they were merely spoken as consecutive dialogues, to bring out their respective stories, without any attempt at theatrical illusion; a conjecture which receives confirmation from the fact, that nearly all of them are announced, on their titles, as having been represented in the garden of a certain Doña Elvira at Seville.[46]

The two plays of Joaquin Romero de Zepeda, of Badajoz, which were printed at Seville in 1582, are somewhat different from those of Cueva. One, “The Metamorfosea,” is in the nature of the old dramatic pastorals, but is divided into three short jornadas, or acts. It is a trial of wits and love, between three shepherds and three shepherdesses, who are constantly at cross purposes with each other, but are at last reconciled and united;—all except one shepherd, who had originally refused to love any body, and one shepherdess, Belisena, who, after being cruel to one of her lovers, and slighted by another, is finally rejected by the rejected of all. The other play, called “La Comedia Salvage,” is taken, in its first two acts, from the well-known dramatic novel of “Celestina”; the last act being filled with atrocities of Zepeda’s own invention. It obtains its name from the Salvages or wild men, who figure in it, as such personages did in the old romances of chivalry and the old English drama, and is as strange and rude as its title implies. Neither of these pieces, however, can have done any thing of consequence for the advancement of the drama at Seville, though each contains passages of flowing and apt verse, and occasional turns of thought that deserve to be called graceful.[47]

During the same period, there was at Valencia, as well as at Seville, a poetical movement in which the drama shared, and in which, perhaps, Lope de Vega, an exile in Valencia for several years, about 1585, took part. At any rate, his friend Cristóval de Virues, of whom he often speaks, and who was born there in 1550, was among those who then gave an impulse to the theatrical taste of his native city. He claims to have first divided Spanish dramas into three jornadas or acts, and Lope de Vega assents to the claim; but they were both mistaken, for we now know that such a division was made by Francisco de Avendaño, not later than 1553, when Virues was but three years old.[48]

Only five of the plays of Virues, all in verse, are extant; and these, though supposed to have been written as early as 1579-1581, were not printed till 1609, when Lope de Vega had already given its full development and character to the popular theatre; so that it is not improbable some of the dramas of Virues, as printed, may have been more or less altered and accommodated to the standard then considered as settled by the genius of his friend. Two of them, the “Cassandra” and the “Marcela,” are on subjects apparently of the Valencian poet’s own invention, and are extremely wild and extravagant; in “El Átila Furioso” above fifty persons come to an untimely end, without reckoning the crew of a galley who perish in the flames for the diversion of the tyrant and his followers; and in the “Semíramis,” the action extends to twenty or thirty years. All four of them are absurd.

The “Elisa Dido” is better, and may be regarded as an effort to elevate the drama. It is divided into five acts, and observes the unities, though Virues can hardly have comprehended what was afterwards considered as their technical meaning. Its plot, invented by himself, and little connected with the stories found in Virgil or the old Spanish chronicles, supposes the Queen of Carthage to have died by her own hand for a faithful attachment to the memory of Sichæus, and to avoid a marriage with Iarbas. It has no division into scenes, and each act is burdened with a chorus. In short, it is an imitation of the ancient Greek masters; and as some of the lyrical portions, as well as parts of the dialogue, are not unworthy the talent of the author of the “Monserrate,” it is, for the age in which it appeared, a remarkable composition. But it lacks a good development of the characters, as well as life and poetical warmth in the action; and being, in fact, an attempt to carry the Spanish drama in a direction exactly opposite to that of its destiny, it did not succeed.[49]

Such an attempt, however, was not unlikely to be made more than once; and this was certainly an age favorable for it. The theatre of the ancients was now known in Spain. The translations already noticed, of Villalobos in 1515, and of Oliva before 1536, had been followed, as early as 1543, by one from Euripides by Boscan;[50] in 1555, by two from Plautus, the work of an unknown author;[51] and in 1570-1577, by the “Plutus” of Aristophanes, the “Medea” of Euripides, and the six comedies of Terence, by Pedro Simon de Abril.[52] The efforts of Timoneda in his “Menennos” and of Virues in his “Elisa Dido” were among the consequences of this state of things, and were succeeded by others, two of which should be noticed.

The first is by Gerónimo Bermudez, a native of Galicia, who is supposed to have been born about 1530, and to have lived as late as 1589. He was a learned Professor of Theology at Salamanca, and published, at Madrid, in 1577, two dramas which he somewhat boldly called “the first Spanish tragedies.”[53] They are both on the subject of Inez de Castro; both are in five acts, and in various verse; and both have choruses in the manner of the ancients. But there is a great difference in their respective merits. The first, “Nise Lastimosa,” or Inez to be Compassionated,—Nise being a poor anagram of Inez,—is hardly more than a skilful translation of the Portuguese tragedy of “Inez de Castro,” by Ferreira, which, with considerable defects in its structure, is yet full of tenderness and poetical beauty. The last, “Nise Laureada,” or Inez Triumphant, takes up the tradition where the first left it, after the violent and cruel death of the princess, and gives an account of the coronation of her ghastly remains above twenty years after their interment, and of the renewed marriage of the prince to them;—the closing scene exhibiting the execution of her murderers with a coarseness, both in the incidents and in the language, as revolting as can well be conceived. Neither probably produced any perceptible effect on the Spanish drama; and yet the “Nise Lastimosa” contains passages of no little poetical merit; such as the beautiful chorus on Love at the end of the first act, the dream of Inez in the third, and the truly Greek dialogue between the princess and the women of Coimbra; for the last two of which, however, Bermudez was directly indebted to Ferreira.[54]

Three tragedies by Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, the accomplished lyric poet, who will hereafter be amply noticed, produced a much more considerable sensation, when they first appeared, though they were soon afterwards as much neglected as their predecessors. He wrote them when he was hardly more than twenty years old, and they were acted about the year 1585. “Do you not remember,” says the canon in Don Quixote, “that, a few years ago, there were represented in Spain three tragedies composed by a famous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they delighted and astonished all who heard them; the ignorant as well as the judicious, the multitude as well as the few; and that these three alone brought more profit to the actors than the thirty best plays that have been written since?” “No doubt,” replied the manager of the theatre, with whom the canon was conversing, “no doubt you mean the ‘Isabela,’ the ‘Philis,’ and the ‘Alexandra.’“[55]

This statement of Cervantes is certainly extraordinary, and the more so from being put into the mouth of the wise canon of Toledo. But notwithstanding the flush of immediate success which it implies, all trace of these plays was soon so completely lost, that, for a long period, the name of the famous poet Cervantes had referred to was not known, and it was even suspected that he had intended to compliment himself. At last, between 1760 and 1770, two of them—the “Alexandra” and “Isabela”—were accidentally discovered, and all doubt ceased. They were found to be the work of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola.[56]

But, unhappily, they quite failed to satisfy the expectations that had been excited by the good-natured praise of Cervantes. They are in various verse, fluent and pure, and were intended to be imitations of the Greek style of tragedy, called forth, perhaps, by the recent attempts of Bermudez. Each, however, is divided into three acts; and the choruses, originally prepared for them, are omitted. The Alexandra is the worse of the two. Its scene is laid in Egypt; and the story, which is fictitious, is full of loathsome horrors. Every one of its personages, except perhaps a messenger, perishes in the course of the action; children’s heads are cut off and thrown at their parents on the stage; and the false queen, after being invited to wash her hands in the blood of the person to whom she was unworthily attached, bites off her own tongue and spits it at her monstrous husband. Treason and rebellion form the lights in a picture composed mainly of such atrocities.

The Isabela is better; but still is not to be praised. The story relates to one of the early Moorish kings of Saragossa, who exiles the Christians from his kingdom in a vain attempt to obtain possession of Isabela, a Christian maiden with whom he is desperately in love, but who is herself already attached to a noble Moor whom she has converted, and with whom, at last, she suffers a triumphant martyrdom. The incidents are numerous, and sometimes well imagined; but no dramatic skill is shown in their management and combination, and there is little easy or living dialogue to give them effect. Like the Alexandra, it is full of horrors. The nine most prominent personages it represents come to an untimely end, and the bodies, or at least the heads, of most of them are exhibited on the stage, though some reluctance is shown at the conclusion about committing a supernumerary suicide before the audience. Fame opens the piece with a prologue, in which complaints are made of the low state of the theatre; and the ghost of Isabela, who is hardly dead, comes back at the end, with an epilogue very flat and quite needless.

With all this, however, a few passages of poetical eloquence, rather than of absolute poetry, are scattered through the long and tedious speeches of which the piece is principally composed; and once or twice there is a touch of passion truly tragic, as in the discussion between Isabela and her family on the threatened exile and ruin of their whole race, and in that between Adulce, her lover, and Aja, the king’s sister, who disinterestedly loves Adulce, notwithstanding she knows his passion for her fair Christian rival. But still it seems incomprehensible how such a piece should have produced the popular dramatic effect attributed to it, unless we suppose that the Spaniards had from the first a passion for theatrical exhibitions, which, down to this period, had been so imperfectly gratified, that any thing dramatic, produced under favorable circumstances, was run after and admired.

The dramas of Argensola, by their date, though not by their character and spirit, bring us at once within the period which opens with the great and prevalent names of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. They, therefore, mark the extreme limits of the history of the early Spanish theatre; and if we now look back and consider its condition and character during the long period we have just gone over, we shall easily come to three conclusions of some consequence.[57]

The first is, that the attempts to form and develop a national drama in Spain have been few and rare. During the two centuries following the first notice of it, about 1250, we cannot learn distinctly that any thing was undertaken but rude exhibitions in pantomime; though it is not unlikely dialogues may sometimes have been added, such as we find in the more imperfect religious pageants produced at the same period in England and France. During the next century, which brings us down to the time of Lope de Rueda, we have nothing better than “Mingo Revulgo,” which is rather a spirited political satire than a drama, Enzina’s and Vicente’s dramatic eclogues, and Naharro’s more dramatic “Propaladia,” with a few translations from the ancients which were little noticed or known. And during the half-century which Lope de Rueda opened with an attempt to create a popular drama, we have obtained only a few farces from himself and his followers, the little that was done at Seville and Valencia, and the countervailing tragedies of Bermudez and Argensola, who intended, no doubt, to follow what they considered the safer and more respectable traces of the ancient Greek masters. Three centuries and a half, therefore, or four centuries, furnished less dramatic literature to Spain, than the last half-century of the same portion of time had furnished to France and Italy; and near the end of the whole period, or about 1585, it is apparent that the national genius was not more turned towards the drama than it was at the same period in England, where Greene and Peele were just preparing the way for Marlowe and Shakspeare.

In the next place, the apparatus of the stage, including scenery and dresses, was very imperfect. During the greater part of the period we have gone over, dramatic exhibitions in Spain were either religious pantomimes shown off in the churches to the people, or private entertainments given at court and in the houses of the nobility. Lope de Rueda brought them out into the public squares, and adapted them to the comprehension, the taste, and the humors of the multitude. But he had no theatre anywhere, and his genial farces were represented on temporary scaffolds, by his own company of strolling players, who stayed but a few days at a time in even the largest cities, and were sought, when there, chiefly by the lower classes of the people.

The first notice, therefore, we have of any thing approaching to a regular establishment—and this is far removed from what that phrase generally implies—is in 1568, when an arrangement or compromise between the Church and the theatre was begun, traces of which have subsisted at Madrid and elsewhere down to our own times. Recollecting, no doubt, the origin of dramatic representations in Spain for religious edification, the government ordered, in form, that no actors should make an exhibition in Madrid, except in some place to be appointed by two religious brotherhoods designated in the decree, and for a rent to be paid to them;—an order in which, after 1583, the general hospital of the city was included.[58] Under this order, as it was originally made, we find plays acted from 1568; but only in the open area of a court-yard, without roof, seats, or other apparatus, except such as is humorously described by Cervantes to have been packed, with all the dresses of the company, in a few large sacks.

In this state things continued several years. None but strolling companies of actors were known, and they remained but a few days at a time even in Madrid. No fixed place was prepared for their reception; but sometimes they were sent by the pious brotherhoods to one court-yard, and sometimes to another. They acted in the day-time, on Sundays and other holidays, and then only if the weather permitted a performance in the open air;—the women separated from the men,[59] and the entire audience so small, that the profit yielded by the exhibitions to the religious societies and the hospital rose only to eight or ten dollars each time.[60] At last, in 1579 and 1583, two court-yards were permanently fitted up for them, belonging to houses in the streets of the “Príncipe” and “Cruz.” But though a rude stage and benches were provided in each, a roof was still wanting; the spectators all sat in the open air, or at the windows of the house whose court-yard was used for the representation; and the actors performed under a slight and poor awning, without any thing that deserved to be called scenery. The theatres, therefore, at Madrid, as late as 1586, could not be said to be in a condition materially to further any efforts that might be made to produce a respectable national drama.

In the last place, the pieces that had been written had not the decided, common character on which a national drama could be fairly founded, even if their number had been greater. Juan de la Enzina’s eclogues, which were the first dramatic compositions represented in Spain by actors who were neither priests nor cavaliers, were really what they were called, though somewhat modified in their bucolic character by religious and political feelings and events;—two or three of Naharro’s plays, and several of those of Cueva, give more absolute intimations of the intriguing and historical character of the stage, though the effect of the first at home was delayed, from their being for a long time published only in Italy;—the translations from the ancients by Villalobos, Oliva, Abril, and others, seem hardly to have been intended for representation, and certainly not for popular effect;—and Bermudez, with one of his pieces stolen from the Portuguese and the other full of horrors of his own, was, it is plain, little thought of at his first appearance, and soon quite neglected.

There were, therefore, before 1586, only two persons to whom it was possible to look for the establishment of a popular and permanent drama. The first of them was Argensola, whose three tragedies enjoyed a degree of success before unknown; but they were so little in the national spirit, that they were early overlooked, and soon completely forgotten. The other was Lope de Rueda, who, himself an actor, wrote such farces as he found would amuse the common audiences he served, and thus created a school in which other actors, like Alonso de la Vega and Cisneros, wrote the same kind of farces, chiefly in prose, and intended so completely for temporary effect, that hardly one of them has come down to our own times. Of course, the few and rare efforts made before 1586 to produce a drama in Spain had been made upon such various or contradictory principles, that they could not be combined so as to constitute the safe foundation for a national theatre.

But though the proper foundation was not yet laid, all was tending to it and preparing for it. The stage, rude as it was, had still the great advantage of being confined to two spots, which, it is worth notice, have continued to be the sites of the two principal theatres of Madrid ever since. The number of authors, though small, was yet sufficient to create so general a taste for theatrical representations, that Lopez Pinciano, a learned man, and one of a temper little likely to be pleased with a rude drama, said, “When I see that Cisneros or Galvez is going to act, I run all risks to hear him; and when I am in the theatre, winter does not freeze me, nor summer make me hot.”[61] And finally, the public, who resorted to the imperfect entertainments offered them, if they had not determined what kind of drama should become national, had yet decided that a national drama should be formed, and that it should be founded on the national character and manners.

CHAPTER IX.

Luis de Leon. — Early Life. — Persecutions. — Translation of the Canticles. — Names of Christ. — Perfect Wife and other Prose Works. — His Death. — His Poems. — His Character.

It should not be forgotten, that, while we have gone over the beginnings of the Italian school and of the existing theatre, we have had little occasion to notice one distinctive element of the Spanish character, which is yet almost constantly present in the great mass of the national literature: I mean, the religious element. A reverence for the Church, or, more properly, for the religion of the Church, and a deep sentiment of devotion, however mistaken in the forms it wore or in the direction it took, had been developed in the old Castilian character by the wars against Islamism, as much as the spirit of loyalty and knighthood, and had, from the first, found no less fitting poetical forms of expression. That no change took place in this respect in the sixteenth century, we find striking proof in the character of a noble Spaniard born in the city of Granada about twenty years later than Diego de Mendoza; but one whose gentler and graver genius easily took the direction which that of the elder cavalier so decidedly refused.

Luis Ponce de Leon, called, from his early and unbroken connection with the Church, “Brother Luis de Leon,” was born in 1528, and enjoyed advantages for education which, in his time, were almost exclusively confined to the children of noble and distinguished families. He was early sent to Salamanca, and there, when only sixteen years old, voluntarily entered the order of Saint Augustin. From this moment, the final direction was given to his life. He never ceased to be a monk; and he never ceased to be attached to the University where he was bred. In 1560, he became a Licentiate in Theology, and immediately afterwards was made a Doctor of Divinity. The next year, at the age of thirty-four, he obtained the chair of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which he won after a public competition against several opponents, four of whom were already professors; and to these honors he added, ten years later, that of the chair of Sacred Literature.

By this time, however, his influence and success had gathered round him a body of enemies, who soon found means to disturb his peace.[62] A friend, who did not understand the ancient languages, had desired him to translate “The Song of Solomon” into Castilian, and explain its character and purposes. This he had done; and the version which he thus made is commonly regarded as the earliest, or one of the earliest, among his known works. But in making it, he had treated the whole poem as a pastoral eclogue, in which the different personages converse together like shepherds.[63] This opinion, of course, was not agreeable to the doctrines of his Church and its principles of interpretation; but what he had done had been done only as an act of private friendship, and he had taken some pains to have his version known only to the individual at whose request it had been made. His manuscript, however, was copied and circulated by the treachery of a servant. One of the copies thus obtained fell into the hands of an enemy, and its author, in 1572, was brought before the Inquisition of Valladolid, charged with Lutheranism and with making a vernacular translation from the Scriptures, contrary to the decree of the Council of Trent. It was easy to answer the first part of the complaint, for Luis de Leon was no Protestant; but it was not possible to give a sufficient answer to the last. He had, however, powerful friends, and by their influence escaped the final terrors of the Inquisition, though not until he had been almost five years imprisoned in a way that seriously impaired his health and broke down his spirits.[64]

But the University remained faithful to him. He was reinstated in all his offices, with marks of the sincerest respect, on the 30th of December, 1576; and it is a beautiful circumstance attending his restoration, that, when, for the first time, he rose before a crowded audience, eager to hear what allusion he would make to his persecutions, he began by simply saying, “As we remarked when we last met,” and then went on, as if the five bitter years of his imprisonment had been a blank in his memory, bearing no record of the cruel treatment he had suffered.[65]

It seems, however, to have been thought advisable that he should vindicate his reputation from the suspicions that had been cast upon it; and therefore, in 1580, at the request of his friends, he published, in Latin, an extended commentary on the Canticles, interpreting each part in three different ways,—directly, symbolically, and mystically,—and giving the whole as theological and obscure a character as the most orthodox could desire, though still without concealing his opinion that it was originally intended to be a pastoral eclogue.

Another work on the same subject, but in Spanish, and in some respects like the one that had caused his imprisonment, was also prepared by him and found among his manuscripts after his death. But it was not thought advisable to print it till 1798. Even then a version of the Canticles, in Spanish octaves, as an eclogue, intended originally to accompany it, was not added, and did not appear till 1806;—a beautiful translation, which discovers, not only its author’s power as a poet, but the remarkable freedom of his theological inquiries, in a country where such freedom was, in that age, not tolerated for an instant.[66] The fragment of a defence of this version, or of some parts of it, is dated from his prison, in 1573, and was found long afterwards among the state papers of the kingdom in the archives of Simancas.[67]

While in prison he prepared a long prose work, which he entitled “The Names of Christ.” It is a singular specimen at once of Spanish theological learning, eloquence, and devotion. Of this, between 1583 and 1585, he published three books, but he never completed it.[68] It is thrown into the form of a dialogue, like the “Tusculan Questions,” which it was probably intended to imitate; and its purpose is, by means of successive discussions of the character of the Saviour, as set forth under the names of Son, Prince, Shepherd, King, etc., to excite devout feelings in those who read it. The form, however, is not adhered to with great strictness. The dialogue, instead of being a discussion, is, in fact, a series of speeches; and once, at least, we have a regular sermon, of as much merit, perhaps, as any in the language;[69] so that, taken together, the entire work may be regarded as a series of declamations on the character of Christ, as that character was regarded by the more devout portions of the Spanish Church in its author’s time. Many parts of it are eloquent, and its eloquence has not unfrequently the gorgeous coloring of the elder Spanish literature; such, for instance, as is found in the following passage, illustrating the title of Christ as the Prince of Peace, and proving the beauty of all harmony in the moral world from its analogies with the physical:—

“Even if reason should not prove it, and even if we could in no other way understand how gracious a thing is peace, yet would this fair show of the heavens over our heads and this harmony in all their manifold fires sufficiently bear witness to it. For what is it but peace, or, indeed, a perfect image of peace, that we now behold, and that fills us with such deep joy? Since if peace is, as Saint Augustin, with the brevity of truth, declares it to be, a quiet order, or the maintenance of a well-regulated tranquillity in whatever order demands,—then what we now witness is surely its true and faithful image. For while these hosts of stars, arranged and divided into their several bands, shine with such surpassing splendor, and while each one of their multitude inviolably maintains its separate station, neither pressing into the place of that next to it, nor disturbing the movements of any other, nor forgetting its own; none breaking the eternal and holy law God has imposed on it; but all rather bound in one brotherhood, ministering one to another, and reflecting their light one to another,—they do surely show forth a mutual love, and, as it were, a mutual reverence, tempering each other’s brightness and strength into a peaceful unity and power, whereby all their different influences are combined into one holy and mighty harmony, universal and everlasting. And therefore may it be most truly said, not only that they do all form a fair and perfect model of peace, but that they all set forth and announce, in clear and gracious words, what excellent things peace contains within herself and carries abroad whithersoever her power extends.”[70]

The eloquent treatise on the Names of Christ was not, however, the most popular of the prose works of Luis de Leon. This distinction belongs to his “Perfecta Casada,” or Perfect Wife; a treatise which he composed, in the form of a commentary on some portions of Solomon’s Proverbs, for the use of a lady newly married, and which was first published in 1583.[71] But it is not necessary specially to notice either this work, or his Exposition of Job, in two volumes, accompanied with a poetical version, which he began in prison for his own consolation, and finished the year of his death, but which none ventured to publish till 1779.[72] Both are marked with the same humble faith, the same strong enthusiasm, and the same rich eloquence, that appear, from time to time, in the work on the Names of Christ; though perhaps the last, which received the careful corrections of its author’s matured genius, has a serious and settled power greater than he has shown anywhere else. But the characteristics of his prose compositions—even those which from their nature are the most strictly didactic—are the same everywhere; and the rich language and imagery of the passage already cited afford a fair specimen of the style towards which he constantly directed his efforts.

Luis de Leon’s health never recovered from the shock it suffered in the cells of the Inquisition. He lived, indeed, nearly fourteen years after his release; but most of his works, whether in Castilian or in Latin, were written before his imprisonment or during its continuance, while those he undertook afterwards, as his account of Santa Teresa and some others, were never finished. His life was always, from choice, very retired, and his austere manners were announced by his habitual reserve and silence. In a letter that he sent with his poems to his friend Puertocarrero, a statesman at the court of Philip the Second and a member of the principal council of the Inquisition, he says, that, in the kingdom of Old Castile, where he had lived from his youth, he could hardly claim to be familiarly acquainted with ten persons.[73] Still he was extensively known, and was held in great honor. In the latter part of his life especially, his talents and sufferings, his religious patience and his sincere faith, had consecrated him in the eyes alike of his friends and his enemies. Nothing relating to the monastic brotherhood of which he was a member, or to the University where he taught, was undertaken without his concurrence and support; and when he died, in 1591, he was in the exercise of a constantly increasing influence, having just been chosen the head of his Order, and being engaged in the preparation of new regulations for its reform.[74]

But besides the character in which we have thus far considered him, Luis de Leon was a poet, and a poet of no common genius. He seems, it is true, to have been little conscious, or, at least, little careful, of his poetical talent; for he made hardly an effort to cultivate it, and never took pains to print any thing, in order to prove its existence to the world. Perhaps, too, he showed more deference than was due to the opinion of many persons of his time, who thought poetry an occupation not becoming one in his position; for, in the prefatory notice to his sacred odes, he says, in a deprecating tone: “Let none regard verse as any thing new and unworthy to be applied to Scriptural subjects, for it is rather appropriate to them; and so old is it in this application, that, from the earliest ages of the Church to the present day, men of great learning and holiness have thus employed it. And would to God that no other poetry were ever sounded in our ears; that only these sacred tones were sweet to us; that none else were heard at night in the streets and public squares; that the child might still lisp it, the retired damsel find in it her best solace, and the industrious tradesman make it the relief of his toil! But the Christian name is now sunk to such immodest and reckless degradation, that we set our sins to music, and, not content with indulging them in secret, shout them joyfully forth to all who will listen.”

But whatever may have been his own feelings on the suitableness of such an occupation to his profession, it is certain, that, while most of the poems he has left us were written in his youth, they were not collected by him till the latter part of his life, and then only to please a personal friend, who never thought of publishing them; so that they were not printed at all till forty years after his death, when Quevedo gave them to the public, in the hope that they might help to reform the corrupted taste of the age. But from this time they have gone through many editions, though still they never appeared properly collated and arranged till 1816.[75]

They are, however, of great value. They consist of versions of all the Eclogues and two of the Georgics of Virgil, about thirty Odes of Horace, about forty Psalms, and a few passages from the Greek and Italian poets; all executed with freedom and spirit, and all in a genuinely Castilian style. His translations, however, seem to have been only in the nature of exercises and amusements. But though he thus acquired great facility and exactness in his versification, he wrote little. His original poems fill no more than about a hundred pages; but there is hardly a line of them which has not its value; and the whole, when taken together, are to be placed at the head of Spanish lyric poetry. They are chiefly religious, and the source of their inspiration is not to be mistaken. Luis de Leon had a Hebrew soul, and kindles his enthusiasm almost always from the Jewish Scriptures. Still he preserved his nationality unimpaired. Nearly all the best of his poetical compositions are odes written in the old Castilian measures, with a classical purity and rigorous finish before unknown in Spanish poetry, and hardly attained since.[76]

This is eminently the case, for instance, with what the Spaniards have esteemed the best of his poetical works: his ode, called “The Prophecy of the Tagus,” in which the river-god predicts to Roderic the Moorish conquest of his country, as the result of that monarch’s violence to Cava, the daughter of one of his principal nobles. It is an imitation of the Ode of Horace in which Nereus rises from the waves and predicts the overthrow of Troy to Paris, who, under circumstances not entirely dissimilar, is transporting the stolen wife of Menelaus to the scene of the fated conflict between the two nations. But the Ode of Luis de Leon is written in the old Spanish quintillas, his favorite measure, and is as natural, fresh, and flowing as one of the national ballads.[77] Foreigners, however, less interested in what is so peculiarly Spanish, and so full of allusions to Spanish history, may sometimes prefer the serener ode “On a Life of Retirement,” that “On Immortality,” or perhaps the still more beautiful one “On the Starry Heavens”; all written with the same purity and elevation of spirit, and all in the same national measure and manner.

A truer specimen of his prevalent lyrical tone, and, indeed, of his tone in much else of what he wrote, is perhaps to be found in his “Hymn on the Ascension.” It is both very original and very natural in its principal idea, being supposed to express the disappointed feelings of the disciples as they see their Master passing out of their sight into the opening heavens above them.

And dost them, holy Shepherd, leave

Thine unprotected flock alone,

Here, in this darksome vale, to grieve,

While thou ascend’st thy glorious throne?

O, where can they their hopes now turn,

Who never lived but on thy love?

Where rest the hearts for thee that burn,

When thou art lost in light above?

How shall those eyes now find repose

That turn, in vain, thy smile to see?

What can they hear save mortal woes,

Who lose thy voice’s melody?

And who shall lay his tranquil hand

Upon the troubled ocean’s might?

Who hush the winds by his command?

Who guide us through this starless night?

For Thou art gone!—that cloud so bright,

That bears thee from our love away,

Springs upward through the dazzling light,

And leaves us here to weep and pray![78]

In order, however, to comprehend aright the genius and spirit of Luis de Leon, we must study, not only his lyrical poetry, but much of his prose; for, while his religious odes and hymns, beautiful in their severe exactness of style, rank him before Klopstock and Filicaja, his prose, more rich and no less idiomatic, places him at once among the greatest masters of eloquence in his native Castilian.[79]

CHAPTER X.

Cervantes. — His Family. — Education. — First Verses. — Life in Italy. — A Soldier in the Battle of Lepanto. — A Captive in Algiers. — Returns Home. — Service in Portugal. — Life in Madrid. — His Galatea, and its Character. — His Marriage. — Writes for the Stage. — His Life in Algiers. — His Numancia. — Poetical Tendencies of his Drama.

The family of Cervantes was originally Galician, and, at the time of his birth, not only numbered five hundred years of nobility and public service, but was spread throughout Spain, and had been extended to Mexico and other parts of America.[80] The Castilian branch, which, in the fifteenth century, became connected by marriage with the Saavedras, seems, early in the sixteenth, to have fallen off in its fortunes; and we know that the parents of Miguel, who has given to the race a splendor which has saved its old nobility from oblivion, were poor inhabitants of Alcalá de Henares, a small, but nourishing city, about twenty miles from Madrid. There he was born, the youngest of four children, on one of the early days of October, 1547.[81]

No doubt, he received his early education in the place of his nativity, then in the flush of its prosperity and fame from the success of the University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before. At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts of his works; as in his Don Quixote, where he alludes to the burial and enchantments of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of Zulema,[82] just as he had probably heard them in some nursery story; and in his prose pastoral, “Galatea,” where he arranges the scene of some of its most graceful adventures “on the banks,” as he fondly calls it, “of the famous Henares.”[83] But concerning his youth we know only what he incidentally tells us himself;—that he took great pleasure in attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;[84] that he wrote verses when very young;[85] and that he always read every thing within his reach, even, as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he picked up in the public streets.[86]

It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid, and there is some probability, notwithstanding the poverty of his family, that he passed two years at the University of Salamanca. But what is certain is, that he obtained a public and decisive mark of respect, before he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers; for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos published, by authority, on the death of the unhappy Isabelle de Valois, wife of Philip the Second, a volume of verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his “dear and well-beloved disciple.” This was, no doubt, Cervantes’s first appearance in print as an author; and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied, and the circumstance, that one of his elegies was written in the name of the whole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of his teacher and the good-will of his fellow-students.[87]

The next year, 1570, we find him, without any notice of the cause, removed from all his early connections, and serving at Rome as chamberlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards a cardinal; the same person who had been sent, in 1568, on a special mission from the Pope to Philip the Second, and who, as he seems to have had a regard for literature and for men of letters, may, on his return to Italy, have taken Cervantes with him from interest in his talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and had too proud a spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that, too, at a period when the world was full of solicitations to adventure and military glory.

But whatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome and its court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice, concluded what was called a “Holy League” against the Turks, and set on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chivalrous Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancient oppressor of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom, were more than Cervantes, at the age of twenty-three, could resist; and the next thing we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it as a common soldier. For, as he says in a work written just before his death, he had always observed “that none make better soldiers than those who are transplanted from the region of letters to the fields of war, and that never scholar became soldier that was not a good and brave one.”[88] Animated with this spirit, he entered the service of his country among the troops with which Spain then filled a large part of Italy, and continued in it till he was honorably discharged in 1575.

During these four or five years he learned many of the hardest lessons of life. He was present in the sea-fight of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and, though suffering at the time under a fever, insisted on bearing his part in that great battle, which first decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe. The galley in which he served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty to his country and to Christendom he carried proud and painful proof to his grave; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm during the rest of his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the hospital at Messina, where he remained till April, 1572; and then, under Mark Antonio Colonna, went on the expedition to the Levant, to which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the “Galatea,” and which he has so well described in the story of the Captive, in Don Quixote.

The next year, 1573, he was in the affair of the Goleta at Tunis, under Don John of Austria, and afterwards, with the regiment to which he was attached,[89] returned to Sicily and Italy, many parts of which, in different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited, remaining at one time in Naples above a year.[90] This period of his life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems never to have been regarded by him with regret. On the contrary, above forty years afterwards, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he declared, that, if the alternative were again offered him, he should account his wounds a cheap exchange for the glory of having been present in that great enterprise.[91]

When he was discharged, in 1575, he took with him letters from the Duke of Sessa and Don John, commending him earnestly to the king, and embarked for Spain. But on the 26th of September he was captured and carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served successively three cruel masters,—a Greek and a Venetian, both renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; the first two tormenting him with that peculiar hatred against Christians which naturally belonged to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined themselves to the enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for his slave, and treating him with great severity, because he had fled from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain liberty for himself and his fellow-captives.

Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and strengthened by it. On one occasion he attempted to escape by land to Oran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea-shore, where, at the constant risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily wants, while waiting for rescue by sea; but at last, after he had joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole punishment of the conspiracy on himself. Once he sent for help to break forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted; and once he had matured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen,—a scheme of which, when it was defeated by treachery, he again announced himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in Algiers, which was, perhaps, not unlikely to succeed, as their number was full twenty-five thousand, and which was certainly so alarming to the Dey, that he declared, that, “if he could but keep that lame Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves, and his galleys safe.”[92] On each of these occasions, severe, but not degrading,[93] punishments were inflicted upon him. Four times he expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire; and the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomplices.

At last, the moment of release came. His elder brother, who was captured with him, had been ransomed three years before; and now his widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son’s freedom, all the pittance that remained to her in the world, including the dowry of her daughters. But even this was not enough; and the remainder of the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his liberty was made up partly by small borrowings, and partly by the contributions of religious charity.[94] In this way he was ransomed on the 19th of September, 1580, just at the moment when he had embarked with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue would have been all but hopeless. A short time afterwards he left Algiers, where we have abundant proof, that, by his disinterestedness, his courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained the affection and respect of the multitude of Christian captives with which that city of anathemas was then crowded.[95]

But though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of freedom,[96] still it should be remembered that he returned after an absence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon as he left it. His father was dead. His family, poor before, had been reduced to a still more bitter poverty by his own ransom and that of his brother. He was unfriended and unknown, and must have suffered naturally and deeply from a sort of grief and disappointment which he had felt neither as a soldier nor as a slave. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his country,—joining his brother, probably in the same regiment to which he had formerly belonged, and which was now sent to maintain the Spanish authority in the newly acquired kingdom of Portugal. How long he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1581, as well as in the more important one of the year following, to reduce the Azores, which still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period, therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda,” as well as in other parts of his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the Second.[97]

It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the first direction of his more serious efforts as an author, which, soon after his return to Spain, ended in the pastoral romance of “Galatea.” For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal from the days of the “Menina e Moça”[98] down to our own times; and had already been introduced into Spanish literature by George of Montemayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, whose “Diana Enamorada” and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books with Cervantes.

But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February, 1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it “An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101]

Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an affectation which can never be successful; and which, in this particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it is disfigured, and from the poor poetry profusely scattered through it, is more than usually unfortunate. Yet there are traces both of Cervantes’s experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third books, are interesting; others, like Timbrio’s capture by the Moors, in the fifth book, remind us of his own adventures and sufferings; while yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book, is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. In all, we have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never, perhaps, with what is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology, almost inevitable in such a work, are its most obvious defects; though nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately deceased shepherd.[102]

But when speaking thus slightingly of the Galatea, we ought to remember, that, though it extends to two volumes, it is unfinished, and that passages which now seem out of proportion or unintelligible might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second part, which Cervantes had perhaps written, and which he continued to talk of publishing till a few days before his death,[103] had ever appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we are bound to bear in mind his own touching words, when he represents it as found by the barber and curate in Don Quixote’s library.[104] “‘But what book is the next one?’ said the curate. ‘The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,’ replied the barber. ‘This Cervantes,’ said the curate, ‘has been a great friend of mine these many years; and I know that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not without happiness in the invention; it proposes something, but finishes nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises; for perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him; and in the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.’”

If the story be true, that he wrote the Galatea to win the favor of his lady, his success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first part, he was married, December 12th, 1584, to a lady of a good family in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.[105] The pecuniary arrangements consequent on the marriage, which have been published,[106] show that both parties were poor; and the Galatea intimates that Cervantes had a formidable Portuguese rival, who was, at one time, nearly successful in winning his bride.[107] But whether the course of his love ran smooth before marriage or not, his wedded life, for above thirty years, seems to have been happy, and his widow, at her death, desired to be buried by his side.

In order to support his family, he probably lived much at Madrid, where, we know, he was familiar with several contemporary poets, such as Juan Rufo, Pedro de Padilla, and others, whom, with his inherent good-nature, he praises constantly in his later works, and often unreasonably. From the same motive, too, and perhaps partly in consequence of these intimacies, he now undertook to gain some portion of his subsistence by authorship, turning away from the life of adventure to which he had earlier been attracted.

His first efforts in this way were for the stage, which naturally presented strong attractions to one who was early fond of dramatic representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, however, in the time of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already noticed, that he had witnessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de Rueda and Naharro,[108] which must have been before he went to Italy, and when, from his description of its dresses and apparatus, we plainly see that the theatre was not so well understood and managed as it is now by strolling companies and in puppet-shows. From this humble condition, which the efforts made by Bermudez and Argensola, Virues, La Cueva, and their contemporaries, had not much ameliorated, Cervantes undertook to raise it; and he succeeded so far, that, thirty years afterwards, he thought his success of sufficient consequence frankly to boast of it.[109]

But it is curious to see the methods he deemed it expedient to adopt for such a purpose. He reduced, he says, the number of acts from five to three; but this is a slight matter, and, though he does not seem to be aware of the fact, it had been done long before by Avendaño. He claims to have introduced phantasms of the imagination, or allegorical personages, like War, Disease, and Famine; but, besides that Juan de la Cueva had already done this, it was, at best, nothing more in either of them than reviving the forms of the old religious shows. And finally, though this is not one of the grounds on which he himself places his dramatic merits, he seems to have endeavoured in his plays, as in his other works, to turn his personal travels and sufferings to account, and thus, unconsciously, became an imitator of some of those who were among the earliest inventors of such representations in modern Europe.

But, with a genius like that of Cervantes, even changes or attempts as crude as these were not without results. He wrote, as he tells us with characteristic carelessness, twenty or thirty pieces, which were received with applause;—a number greater than can be with certainty attributed to any preceding Spanish author, and a success before quite unknown. None of these pieces were printed at the time, but he has given us the names of nine of them, two of which were discovered in 1782, and printed, for the first time, in 1784.[110] The rest, it is to be feared, are irrecoverably lost, and among them is “La Confusa,” which, long after Lope de Vega had given its final character to the proper national drama, Cervantes fondly declared was still one of the very best of the class to which it belonged;[111] a judgment which the present age might perhaps confirm, if the proportions and finish of the drama he preferred were equal to the strength and originality of the two that have been rescued.

The first of these is “El Trato de Argel,” or, as he elsewhere calls it, “Los Tratos de Argel,” which may be translated Life, or Manners, in Algiers. It is a drama slight in its plot, and so imperfect in its dialogue, that, in these respects, it is little better than some of the old eclogues on which the earlier theatre was founded. His purpose, indeed, seems to have been simply to set before a Spanish audience such a picture of the sufferings of the Christian captives at Algiers as his own experience would justify, and such as might well awaken sympathy in a country which had furnished a deplorable number of the victims. He, therefore, is little careful to construct a regular plot, if, after all, he were aware that such a plot was important; but, instead of it, he gives us a stiff and unnatural love-story, which he thought good enough to be used again, both in one of his later plays and in one of his tales;[112] and then trusts the main success of the piece to its episodical sketches.

Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are jeered at as slaves and Christians by the Moors, and in which they give an account of the martyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was subsequently used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas. Next, we have the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt, taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of a drawing from life. And, in different places, we have two or three painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de Vega thought worth borrowing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls it, to the monarchy of the scene.[113] The whole play is divided into five jornadas or acts, and written in octaves, redondillas, terza rima, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish poetry; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered, as prominent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon.

Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are poetical. Aurelio, the hero,—who is a Christian captive, affianced to another captive named Sylvia,—is loved by Zara, a Moorish lady, whose confidante, Fatima, makes a wild incantation in order to obtain means to secure the gratification of her mistress’s love; the result of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Necessity and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her upon the stage, and—invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the spectators—tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions of the fair unbeliever.[114] When they are gone, he thus expresses, in soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of having nearly yielded:—

Aurelio, whither goest thou? Where, O where,

Now tend thine erring steps? Who guides thee on?

Is, then, thy fear of God so small, that thus,

To satisfy mad fantasy’s desires,

Thou rushest headlong? Can light and easy

Opportunity, with loose solicitation,

Thus persuade and overcome thy soul,