CHAPTER XI

.

THIRD CLASS.--ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--ARTHUR.--CHARLEMAGNE.--AMADIS DE GAULA.--ITS DATE, AUTHOR, TRANSLATION INTO CASTILIAN, SUCCESS, AND CHARACTER.--ESPLANDIAN.--FLORISANDO.--LISUARTE DE GRECIA.--AMADIS DE GRECIA.--FLORISEL DE NIQUEA.--ANAXARTES.--SILVES DE LA SELVA.--FRENCH CONTINUATION.--INFLUENCE OF THE FICTION.--PALMERIN DE OLIVA.--PRIMALEON.--PLATIR.--PALMERIN DE INGLATERRA.

ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--The ballads of Spain belonged originally to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads, and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we can easily see, but a single step between large portions of several of the old chronicles, especially that of Don Roderic, and proper romances of chivalry.[352]

[352] An edition of the “Chronicle of Don Roderic” is cited as early as 1511; none of “Amadis de Gaula” earlier than 1510, and this one uncertain. But “Tirant lo Blanch” was printed in 1490, in the Valencian dialect, and the Amadis appeared perhaps soon afterwards, in the Castilian; so that it is not improbable the “Chronicle of Don Roderic” may mark, by the time of its appearance, as well as by its contents and spirit, the change, of which it is certainly a very curious monument.

Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity. Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings, tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne by Adenés in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief scenes of which are laid either in Spain or in Fairy Land.[356] These, and similar poetical inventions, constructed out of them by the Trouveurs of the North, became, in the next age, materials for the famous romances of chivalry in prose, which, during three centuries, constituted no mean part of the vernacular literature of France, and, down to our own times, have been the great mine of wild fables for Ariosto, Spenser, Wieland, and the other poets of chivalry, whose fictions are connected either with the stories of Arthur and his Round Table, or with those of Charlemagne and his Peers.[357]

[353] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, first Dissertation, with the notes of Price, London, 1824, 4 vols. 8vo. Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romance, London, 1811, 8vo, Vol. I. Turner’s Vindication of Ancient British Poems, London, 1803, 8vo.

[354] Turpin, J., De Vitâ Caroli Magni et Rolandi, ed. S. Ciampi, Florentiæ, 1822, 8vo.

[355] Preface to the “Roman de Rou,” by Robert Wace, ed. F. Pluquet, Paris, 1827, 8vo, Vol. I.

[356] Letter to M. de Monmerqué, by Paulin Paris, prefixed to “Li Romans de Berte aux Grans Piés,” Paris, 1836, 8vo.

[357] See, on the whole subject, the Essays of F. W. Valentine Schmidt; Jahrbücher der Literatur, Vienna, 1824-26, Bände XXVI. p. 20, XXIX. p. 71, XXXI. p. 99, and XXXIII. p. 16. I shall have occasion to use the last of these discussions, when speaking of the Spanish romances belonging to the family of Amadis.

At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed, at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors.

This extraordinary family of romances, whose descendants, as Cervantes says, were innumerable,[358] is the family of which Amadis is the poetical head and type. Our first notice of it in Spain is from a grave statesman, Ayala, the Chronicler and Chancellor of Castile, who, as we have already seen, died in 1407.[359] But the Amadis is of an earlier date than this fact necessarily implies, though not perhaps earlier known in Spain. Gomez Eannes de Zurara, Keeper of the Archives of Portugal in 1454, who wrote three striking chronicles relating to the affairs of his own country, leaves no substantial doubt that the author of the Amadis of Gaul was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who was attached to the court of John the First of Portugal, was armed as a knight by that monarch just before the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, and died in 1403.[360] The words of the honest and careful annalist are quite distinct on this point. He says he is unwilling to have his true and faithful book, the “Chronicle of Count Pedro de Meneses,” confounded with such stories as “the book of Amadis, which was made entirely at the pleasure of one man, called Vasco de Lobeira, in the time of the King Don Ferdinand; all the things in the said book being invented by its author.”[361]

[358] Don Quixote, in his conversation with the curate, (Parte II. c. 1,) says, that, to defeat any army of two hundred thousand men, it would only be necessary to have living “alguno de los del inumerable linage de Amadis de Gaula,”--“any one of the numberless descendants of Amadis de Gaul.”

[359] Ayala, in his “Rimado de Palacio,” already cited, says:--

Plegomi otrosi oir muchas vegadas Libros de devaneos e mentiras probadas, Amadis e Lanzarote, e burlas a sacadas, En que perdi mi tiempo á mui malas jornadas.

[360] Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Lisboa, 1752, fol., Tom. III. p. 775, and the many authorities there cited, none of which, perhaps, is of much consequence except that of João de Barros, who, being a careful historian, born in 1496, and citing an older author than himself, adds something to the testimony in favor of Lobeira.

[361] Gomez de Zurara, in the outset of his “Chronicle of the Conde Don Pedro de Meneses,” says that he wishes to write an account only of “the things that happened in his own times, or of those which happened so near to his own times that he could have true knowledge of them.” This strengthens what he says concerning Lobeira, in the passage cited in the text from the opening of Chap. 63 of the Chronicle. The Ferdinand to whom Zurara there refers was the father of John I. and died in 1383. The Chronicle of Zurara is published by the Academy of Lisbon, in their “Colecção de Libros Ineditos de Historia Portuguesa,” Lisboa, 1792, fol., Tom. II. I have a curious manuscript “Dissertation on the Authorship of the Amadis de Gaula,” by Father Sarmiento, who wrote the valuable fragment of a History of Spanish Poetry to which I have often referred. This learned Galician is much confused and vexed by the question;--first denying that there is any authority at all for saying Lobeira wrote the Amadis; then asserting, that, _if_ Lobeira wrote it, he was a Galician; then successively suggesting that it may have been written by Vasco Perez de Camões, by the Chancellor Ayala, by Montalvo, or by the Bishop of Cartagena;--all absurd conjectures, much connected with his prevailing passion to refer the origin of all Spanish poetry to Galicia. He does not seem to have been aware of the passage in Gomez de Zurara.

Whether Lobeira had any older popular tradition or fancies about Amadis, to quicken his imagination and marshal him the way he should go, we cannot now tell. He certainly had a knowledge of some of the old French romances, such as that of the Saint Graal, or Holy Cup,--the crowning fiction of the Knights of the Round Table,[362]--and distinctly acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the Infante Alfonso, who was born in 1370, for an alteration made in the character of Amadis.[363] But that he was aided, as has been suggested, in any considerable degree, by fictions known to have been in Picardy in the eighteenth century, and claimed, without the slightest proof, to have been there in the twelfth, is an assumption made on too slight grounds to be seriously considered.[364] We must therefore conclude, from the few, but plain, facts known in the case, that the Amadis was originally a Portuguese fiction produced before the year 1400, and that Vasco de Lobeira was its author.

[362] The Saint Graal, or the Holy Cup which the Saviour used for the wine of the Last Supper, and which, in the story of Arthur, is supposed to have been brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea, is alluded to in Amadis de Gaula (Lib. IV. c. 48). Arthur himself--“El muy virtuoso rey Artur”--is spoken of in Lib. I. c. 1, and in Lib. IV. c. 49, where “the Book of Don Tristan and Launcelot” is also mentioned. Other passages might be cited, but there can be no doubt the author of Amadis knew some of the French fictions.

[363] See the end of Chap. 40, Book I., in which he says, “The Infante Don Alfonso of Portugal, having pity on the fair damsel, [the Lady Briolana,] ordered it to be otherwise set down, and in this was done what was his good pleasure.”

[364] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Paris, 1812, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 62, note (4), answering the Preface of the Conte de Tressan to his too free abridgment of the Amadis de Gaula, Œuvres, Paris, 1787, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xxii.

But the Portuguese original can no longer be found. At the end of the sixteenth century, we are assured, it was extant in manuscript in the archives of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon; and the same assertion is renewed, on good authority, about the year 1750. From this time, however, we lose all trace of it; and the most careful inquiries render it probable that this curious manuscript, about which there has been so much discussion, perished in the terrible earthquake and conflagration of 1755, when the palace occupied by the ducal family of Arveiro was destroyed with all its precious contents.[365]

[365] The fact that it was in the Arveiro collection is stated in Ferreira, “Poemas Lusitanas,” (Lisboa, 1598, 4to,) where is the sonnet, No. 33, by Ferreira in honor of Vasco de Lobeira, which Southey, in his Preface to his “Amadis of Gaul,” (London, 1803, 12mo, Vol. I. p. vii.,) erroneously attributes to the Infante Antonio of Portugal, and thus would make it of consequence in the present discussion. Nic. Antonio, who leaves no doubt as to the authorship of the sonnet in question, refers to the same note in Ferreira to prove the deposit of the manuscript of the Amadis; so that the two constitute only _one_ authority, and not _two_ authorities, as Southey supposes. (Bib. Vetus, Lib. VIII. cap. vii. sect. 291.) Barbosa is more distinct. (Bib. Lusitana, Tom. III. p. 775.) But there is a careful summing up of the matter in Clemencin’s notes to Don Quixote, (Tom. I. pp. 105, 106,) beyond which it is not likely we shall advance in our knowledge concerning the fate of the Portuguese original.

The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist, nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest now accessible to us dating from 1519. Twelve more followed in the course of half a century, so that the Amadis succeeded, at once, in placing the fortunes of its family on the sure foundations of popular favor in Spain. It was translated into Italian in 1546, and was again successful; six editions of it appearing in that language in less than thirty years.[368] In France, beginning with the first attempt in 1540, it became such a favorite, that its reputation there has not yet wholly faded away;[369] while, elsewhere in Europe, a multitude of translations and imitations have followed, that seem to stretch out the line of the family, as Don Quixote declares, from the age immediately after the introduction of Christianity down almost to that in which he himself lived.[370]

[366] In his Prólogo, Montalvo alludes to the conquest of Granada in 1492, and to _both_ the Catholic sovereigns as still alive, one of whom, Isabella, died in 1504.

[367] I doubt whether the _Salamanca_ edition of 1510, mentioned by Barbosa, (article _Vasco de Lobeira_,) is not, after all, the edition of 1519 mentioned in Brunet as printed by _Antonio de Salamanca_. The error in printing, or copying, would be small, and nobody but Barbosa seems to have heard of the one he notices. When the first edition appeared is quite uncertain.

[368] Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria, (Milano, 1829, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 242,) and Brunet’s Manuel; to all which should be added the “Amadigi” of Bernardo Tasso, 1560, constructed almost entirely from the Spanish romance; a poem which, though no longer popular, had much reputation in its time, and is still much praised by Ginguené.

[369] For the old French version, see Brunet’s “Manuel du Libraire”; but Count Tressan’s _rifacimento_, first printed in 1779, has kept it familiar to French readers down to our own times. In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619; but the abridgment of it by Southey (London, 1803, 4 vols. 12mo) is the only form of it in English that can now be read. It was also translated into Dutch; and Castro, somewhere in his “Biblioteca,” speaks of a Hebrew translation of it.

[370] “Casi que _en nuestros dias_ vimos y comunicamos y oimos al invencible y valeroso caballero D. Belianis de Grecia,” says the mad knight, when he gets to be maddest, and follows out the consequence of making Amadis live above two hundred years and have descendants innumerable. Parte I. c. 13.

The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal. It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and tone of the whole fiction are original, and much more free than those of the French romances that had preceded it. The story of Arthur and the Holy Cup is essentially religious; the story of Charlemagne is essentially military; and both are involved in a series of adventures previously ascribed to their respective heroes by chronicles and traditions, which, whether true or false, were so far recognized as to prescribe limits to the invention of all who subsequently adopted them. But the Amadis is of imagination all compact. No period of time is assigned to its events, except that they begin to occur soon after the very commencement of the Christian era; and its geography is generally as unsettled and uncertain as the age when its hero lived. It has no purpose, indeed, but to set forth the character of a perfect knight, and to illustrate the virtues of courage and chastity as the only proper foundations of such a character.

[371] Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 107, note.

Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate, and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child, exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions and amidst enchantments,--sometimes under the favor of their ladies, and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island, under their frowns,--fill up the book, which, after the broad journeyings of the principal knights, and an incredible number of combats between them and other knights, magicians, and giants, ends, at last, in the marriage of Amadis and Oriana, and the overthrow of all the enchantments that had so long opposed their love.

The Amadis is admitted, by general consent, to be the best of all the old romances of chivalry. One reason of this is, that it is more true to the manners and spirit of the age of knighthood; but the principal reason is, no doubt, that it is written with a more free invention, and takes a greater variety in its tones than is found in other similar works. It even contains, sometimes,--what we should hardly expect in this class of wild fictions,--passages of natural tenderness and beauty, such as the following description of the young loves of Amadis and Oriana.

“Now Lisuarte brought with him to Scotland Brisena, his wife, and a daughter that he had by her when he dwelt in Denmark, named Oriana, about ten years old, and the fairest creature that ever was seen; so fair, that she was called ‘Without Peer,’ since in her time there was none equal to her. And because she suffered much from the sea, he consented to leave her there, asking the King, Languines, and his Queen, that they would have care of her. And they were made very glad therewith, and the Queen said, ‘Trust me that I will have such a care of her as her mother would.’ And Lisuarte, entering into his ships, made haste back into Great Britain, and found there some who had made disturbances, such as are wont to be in such cases. And for this cause, he remembered him not of his daughter, for some space of time. But at last, with much toil that he took, he obtained his kingdom, and he was the best king that ever was before his time, nor did any afterwards better maintain knighthood in its rights, till King Arthur reigned, who surpassed all the kings before him in goodness, though the number that reigned between these two was great.

“And now the author leaves Lisuarte reigning in peace and quietness in Great Britain, and turns to the Child of the Sea, [Amadis,] who was twelve years old, but in size and limbs seemed to be fifteen. He served before the Queen, and was much loved of her, as he was of all ladies and damsels. But as soon as Oriana, the daughter of King Lisuarte, came there, she gave to her the Child of the Sea, that he should serve her, saying, ‘This is a child who shall serve you.’ And she answered, that it pleased her. And the child kept this word in his heart, in such wise that it never afterwards left it; and, as this history truly says, he was never, in all the days of his life, wearied with serving her. And this their love lasted as long as they lasted; but the Child of the Sea, who knew not at all how she loved him, held himself to be very bold, in that he had placed his thoughts on her, considering both her greatness and her beauty, and never so much as dared to speak any word to her concerning it. And she, though she loved him in her heart, took heed that she should not speak with him more than with another; but her eyes took great solace in showing to her heart what thing in the world she most loved.

“Thus lived they silently together, neither saying aught to the other of their estate. Then came, at last, the time when the Child of the Sea, as I now tell you, understood within himself that he might take arms, if any there were that would make him a knight. And this he desired, because he considered that he should thus become such a man and should do such things, as that either he should perish in them, or, if he lived, then his lady should deal gently with him. And with this desire he went to the King, who was in his garden, and, kneeling before him, said, ‘Sire, if it please you, it is now time that I should be made a knight.’ And the king said, ‘How, Child of the Sea, do you already adventure to maintain knighthood? Know that it is a light matter to come by it, but a weighty thing to maintain it. And whoso seeks to get this name of knighthood and maintain it in its honor, he hath to do so many and such grievous things, that often his heart is wearied out; and if he should be such a knight, that, from faint-heartedness or cowardice, he should fail to do what is beseeming, then it would be better for him to die than to live in his shame. Therefore I hold it good that you wait yet a little.’ But the Child of the Sea said to him, ‘Neither for all this will I fail to be a knight; for, if I had not already thought to fulfil this that you have said, my heart would not so have striven to be a knight.’”[372]

[372] Amadis de Gaula, Lib. I. c. 4.

Other passages of quite a different character are no less striking, as, for instance, that in which the fairy Urganda comes in her fire-galleys,[373] and that in which the venerable Nasciano visits Oriana;[374] but the most characteristic are those that illustrate the spirit of chivalry, and inculcate the duties of princes and knights. In these portions of the work, there is sometimes a lofty tone that rises to eloquence,[375] and sometimes a sad one full of earnestness and truth.[376] The general story, too, is more simple and effective than the stories of the old French romances of chivalry. Instead of distracting our attention by the adventures of a great number of knights, whose claims are nearly equal, it is kept fastened on two, whose characters are well preserved;--Amadis, the model of all chivalrous virtues, and his brother, Don Galaor, hardly less perfect as a knight in the field, but by no means so faithful in his loves;--and, in this way, it has a more epic proportion in its several parts, and keeps up our interest to the end more successfully than any of its followers or rivals.

[373] Lib. II. c. 17.

[374] Lib. IV. c. 32.

[375] See Lib. II. c. 13, Lib. IV. c. 14, and in many other places, exhortations to knightly and princely virtues.

[376] See the mourning about his own time, as a period of great suffering (Lib. IV. c. 53). This could not have been a just description of any part of the reign of the Catholic kings in Spain; and must therefore, I suppose, have been in the original work of Lobeira, and have referred to troubles in Portugal.

The great objection to the Amadis is one that must be made to all of its class. We are wearied by its length, and by the constant recurrence of similar adventures and dangers, in which, as we foresee, the hero is certain to come off victorious. But this length and these repetitions seemed no fault when it first appeared, or for a long time afterwards. For romantic fiction, the only form of elegant literature which modern times have added to the marvellous inventions of Greek genius, was then recent and fresh; and the few who read for amusement rejoiced even in the least graceful of its creations, as vastly nearer to the hearts and thoughts of men educated in the institutions of knighthood than any glimpses they had thus far caught of the severe glories of antiquity. The Amadis, therefore,--as we may easily learn by the notices of it from the time when the great Chancellor of Castile mourned that he had wasted his leisure over its idle fancies, down to the time when the whole sect disappeared before the avenging satire of Cervantes,--was a work of extraordinary popularity in Spain; and one which, during the two centuries of its greatest favor, was more read than any other book in the language.

Nor should it be forgotten that Cervantes himself was not insensible to its merits. The first book that, as he tells us, was taken from the shelves of Don Quixote, when the curate, the barber, and the housekeeper began the expurgation of his library, was the Amadis de Gaula. “‘There is something mysterious about this matter,’ said the curate; ‘for, as I have heard, this was the first book of knight-errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others have had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch-heretic of so mischievous a sect, I think he should, without a hearing, be condemned to the fire.’ ‘No, Sir,’ said the barber, ‘for I, too, have heard that it is the best of all the books of its kind that have been written, and therefore, for its singularity, it ought to be forgiven.’ ‘That is the truth,’ answered the curate, ‘and so let us spare it for the present’”;--a decision which, on the whole, has been confirmed by posterity, and precisely for the reason Cervantes has assigned.[377]

[377] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6. Cervantes, however, is mistaken in his bibliography, when he says that the Amadis was the _first_ book of chivalry printed in Spain. It has often been noted that this distinction belongs to “Tirant lo Blanch,” 1490; though Southey (Omniana, London, 1812, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 219) thinks “there is a total want of the spirit of chivalry” in it; and it should further be noted now, as curious facts, that “Tirant lo Blanch,” though it appeared in Valencian in 1490, in Castilian in 1511, and in Italian in 1538, was yet, like the Amadis, originally written in Portuguese, to please a Portuguese prince, and that this Portuguese original is now lost;--all remarkable coincidences. See note on Chap. XVII. of this Period. On the point of the general merits of the Amadis, two opinions are worth citing. The first, on its style, is by the severe anonymous author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas,” temp. Charles V., who, after discussing the general character of the book, adds, “It should be read by those who wish to learn our language.” (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 163.) The other, on its invention and story, is by Torquato Tasso, who says of the Amadis, “In the opinion of many, and particularly in my own opinion, it is the most beautiful, and perhaps the most profitable, story of its kind that can be read, because, in its sentiment and tone, it leaves all others behind it, and, in the variety of its incidents, yields to none written before or since.” Apologia della Gerusalemme, Opere, Pisa, 1824, 8vo, Tom. X. p. 7.

But before Montalvo published his translation of the Amadis, and perhaps before he had made it, he had written a continuation, which he announced in the Preface to the Amadis as its fifth book. It is an original work, about one third part as long as the Amadis, and contains the story of the son of that hero and Oriana, named Esplandian, whose birth and education had already been given in the story of his father’s adventures, and constitute one of its pleasantest episodes. But, as the curate says, when he comes to this romance in Don Quixote’s library, “the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son.” The story of Esplandian has neither freshness, spirit, nor dignity in it. It opens at the point where he is left in the original fiction, just armed as a knight, and is filled with his adventures as he wanders about the world, and with the supernumerary achievements of his father Amadis, who survives to the end of the whole, and sees his son made Emperor of Constantinople; he himself having long before become King of Great Britain by the death of Lisuarte.[378]

[378] I possess of “Esplandian” the curious edition printed at Burgos, in folio, double columns, 1587, by Simon de Aguaya. It fills 136 leaves, and is divided into 184 chapters. As in the other editions I have seen mentioned or have noticed in public libraries, it is called “_Las Sergas_ del muy Esforçado Cavallero Esplandian,” in order to give it the learned appearance of having really been translated, as it pretends to be, from the Greek of Master Elisabad;--“Sergas” being evidently an awkward corruption of the Greek Ἔργα, _works_ or _achievements_. Allusions are made to it, as to a continuation, in the Amadis, Lib. IV.; besides which, in Lib. III. cap. 4, we have the birth and baptism of Esplandian; in Lib. III. c. 8, his marvellous growth and progress; and so on, till, in the last chapter of the romance, he is armed as a knight. So that the Esplandian is, in the strictest manner, a continuation of the Amadis. Southey (Omniana, Vol. I. p. 145) thinks there is some error about the authorship of the Esplandian. If there is, I think it is merely typographical.

But, from the beginning, we find two mistakes committed, which run through the whole work. Amadis, represented as still alive, fills a large part of the canvas; while, at the same time, Esplandian is made to perform achievements intended to be more brilliant than his father’s, but which, in fact, are only more extravagant. From this sort of emulation, the work becomes a succession of absurd and frigid impossibilities. Many of the characters of the Amadis are preserved in it, like Lisuarte, who is rescued out of a mysterious imprisonment by Esplandian as his first adventure; Urganda, who, from a graceful fairy, becomes a savage enchantress; and “the great master Elisabad,” a man of learning and a priest, whom we first knew as the leech of Amadis, and who is now the pretended biographer of his son, writing, as he says, in Greek. But none of them, and none of the characters invented for the occasion, are managed with skill.

The scene of the whole work is laid chiefly in the East, amidst battles with Turks and Mohammedans; thus showing to what quarter the minds of men were turned when it was written, and what were the dangers apprehended to the peace of Europe, even in its westernmost borders, during the century after the fall of Constantinople. But all reference to real history or real geography was apparently thought inappropriate, as may be inferred from the circumstances, that a certain Calafria, queen of the island of California, is made a formidable enemy of Christendom through a large part of the story; and that Constantinople is said at one time to have been besieged by three millions of heathen. Nor is the style better than the story. The eloquence which is found in many passages of the Amadis is not found at all in Esplandian. On the contrary, large portions of it are written in a low and meagre style, and the rhymed arguments prefixed to many of the chapters are any thing but poetry, and quite inferior to the few passages of verse scattered through the Amadis.[379]

[379] There are two _Canciones_ in Amadis, (Lib. II. c. 8 and c. 11,) which, notwithstanding something of the conceits of their time, in the Provençal manner, are quite charming, and ought to be placed among the similar _Canciones_ in the “Floresta” of Bohl de Faber. The last begins,--

Leonoreta, fin roseta, Blanca sobre toda flor; Fin roseta, no me meta En tal cuyta vuestro amor.

The oldest edition of the Esplandian now known to exist was printed in 1526, and five others appeared before the end of the century; so that it seems to have enjoyed its full share of popular favor. At any rate, the example it set was quickly followed. Its principal personages were made to figure again in a series of connected romances, each having a hero descended from Amadis, who passes through adventures more incredible than any of his predecessors, and then gives place, we know not why, to a son still more extravagant, and, if the phrase may be used, still more impossible, than his father. Thus, in the same year 1526, we have the sixth book of Amadis de Gaula, called “The History of Florisando,” his nephew, which is followed by the still more wonderful “Lisuarte of Greece, Son of Esplandian,” and the most wonderful “Amadis of Greece,” making respectively the seventh and eighth books. To these succeeded “Don Florisel de Niquea,” and “Anaxartes, Son of Lisuarte,” whose history, with that of the children of the last, fills three books; and finally we have the twelfth book, or “The Great Deeds in Arms of that Bold Knight, Don Silves de la Selva,” which was printed in 1549; thus giving proof how extraordinary was the success of the whole series, since its date allows hardly half a century for the production in Spanish of all these vast romances, most of which, during the same period, appeared in several, and some of them in many editions.

Nor did the effects of the passion thus awakened stop here. Other romances appeared, belonging to the same family, though not coming into the regular line of succession, such as a duplicate of the seventh book on Lisuarte, by the Canon Diaz, in 1526, and “Leandro the Fair,” in 1563, by Pedro de Luxan, which has sometimes been called the thirteenth; while in France, where they were all translated successively, as they appeared in Spain, and became instantly famous, the proper series of the Amadis romances was stretched out into twenty-four books; after all which, a certain Sieur Duverdier, grieved that many of them came to no regular catastrophe, collected the scattered and broken threads of their multitudinous stories and brought them all to an orderly sequence of conclusions, in seven large volumes, under the comprehensive and appropriate name of the “Roman des Romans.” And so ends the history of the Portuguese type of Amadis of Gaul, as it was originally presented to the world in the Spanish romances of chivalry; a fiction which, considering the passionate admiration it so long excited, and the influence it has, with little merit of its own, exercised on the poetry and romance of modern Europe ever since, is a phenomenon that has no parallel in literary history.[380]

[380] The whole subject of these twelve books of Amadis in Spanish and the twenty-four in French belongs rather to bibliography than to literary history, and is among the most obscure points in both. The twelve Spanish books are said by Brunet never to have been all seen by any one bibliographer. I have seen, I believe, seven or eight of them, and own the only two for which any real value has ever been claimed,--the Amadis de Gaula, in the rare and well-printed edition of Venice, 1533, folio, and the Esplandian in the more rare, but very coarse, edition already referred to. When the earliest edition of either of them, or of most of the others, was printed cannot, I presume, be determined. One of Esplandian, of 1510, is mentioned by N. Antonio, but by nobody else in the century and a half that have since elapsed; and he is so inaccurate in such matters, that his authority is not sufficient. In the same way, he is the only authority for an edition in 1525 of the seventh book,--“Lisuarte of Greece.” But, as the twelfth book was certainly printed in 1549, the only fact of much importance is settled; viz., that the whole twelve were published in Spain in the course of about half a century. For all the curious learning on the subject, however, see an article by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, Lóndres, Agosto de 1827, pp. 29-39; F. A. Ebert, Lexicon, Leipzig, 1821, 4to, Nos. 479-489; Brunet, article _Amadis_; and, especially, the remarkable discussion, already referred to, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher, Band XXXIII. 1826.

The state of manners and opinion in Spain, however, which produced this extraordinary series of romances, could hardly fail to be fertile in other fictitious heroes, less brilliant, perhaps, in their fame than was Amadis, but with the same general qualities and attributes. And such, indeed, was the case. Many romances of chivalry appeared in Spain, soon after the success of this their great leader; and others followed a little later. The first of all of them in consequence, if not in date, is “Palmerin de Oliva”; a personage the more important, because he had a train of descendants that place him, beyond all doubt, next in dignity to Amadis.

The Palmerin has often, perhaps generally, been regarded as Portuguese in its origin, and as the work of a lady; though the proof of each of these allegations is somewhat imperfect. If, however, the facts be really as they have been stated, not the least curious circumstance in relation to them is, that, as in the case of the Amadis, the Portuguese original of the Palmerin is lost, and the first and only knowledge we have of its story is from the Spanish version. Even in this version, we can trace it up no higher than to the edition printed at Seville in 1525, which was certainly not the first.

But whenever it may have been first published, it was successful. Several editions were soon printed in Spanish, and translations followed in Italian and French. A continuation, too, appeared, called, in form, “The Second Book of Palmerin,” which treats of the achievements of his sons, Primaleon and Polendos, and of which we have an edition in Spanish, dated in 1524. The external appearances of the Palmerin, therefore, announce at once an imitation of the Amadis. The internal are no less decisive. Its hero, we are told, was grandson to a Greek emperor in Constantinople, but, being illegitimate, was exposed by his mother, immediately after his birth, on a mountain, where he was found, in an osier cradle among olive and palm trees, by a rich cultivator of bees, who carried him home and named him Palmerin de Oliva, from the place where he was discovered. He soon gives token of his high birth; and, making himself famous by numberless exploits, in Germany, England, and the East, against heathen and enchanters, he at last reaches Constantinople, where he is recognized by his mother, marries the daughter of the Emperor of Germany, who is the heroine of the story, and inherits the crown of Byzantium. The adventures of Primaleon and Polendos, which seem to be by the same unknown author, are in the same vein, and were succeeded by those of Platir, grandson of Palmerin, which were printed as early as 1533. All, taken together, therefore, leave no doubt that the Amadis was their model, however much they may have fallen short of its merits.[381]

[381] Like whatever relates to the series of the Amadis, the account of the Palmerins is very obscure. Materials for it are to be found in N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Nova, Tom. II. p. 393; in Salvá, Repertorio Americano, Tom. IV. pp. 39, etc.; Brunet, article _Palmerin_; Ferrario, Romanzi di Cavalleria, Tom. IV. pp. 256, etc.: and Clemencin, notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. 124, 125.

The next in the series, “Palmerin of England,” son of Don Duarde, or Edward, King of England, and Flerida, a daughter of Palmerin de Oliva, is a more formidable rival to the Amadis than either of its predecessors. For a long time it was supposed to have been first written in Portuguese, and was generally attributed to Francisco Moraes, who certainly published it in that language at Evora, in 1567, and whose allegation that he had translated it from the French, though now known to be true, was supposed to be only a modest concealment of his own merits. But a copy of the Spanish original, printed at Toledo, in two parts, in 1547 and 1548, has been discovered, and at the end of its dedication are a few verses addressed by the author to the reader, announcing it, in an acrostic, to be the work of Luis Hurtado, known to have been, at that time, a poet in Toledo.[382]

[382] The fate of Palmerin of England has been a very strange one. Until a few years since, the only question was, whether it were originally French or Portuguese; for the oldest forms in which it was then known to exist were, 1. the French by Jacques Vicent, 1553, and the Italian by Mambrino Roseo, 1555, both of which claimed to be translations from the Spanish; and, 2. the Portuguese by Moraes, 1567, which claimed to be translated from the French. In general, it was supposed to be the work of Moraes, who, having long lived in France, was thought to have furnished his manuscript to the French translator, (Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. II. p. 209,) and, under this persuasion, it was published as his, in Portuguese, at Lisbon, in three handsome volumes, small 4to, 1786, and in English, by Southey, London, 1807, 4 vols. 12mo. Even Clemencin, (ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. 125, 126,) if he did not think it to be the work of Moraes, had no doubt that it was originally Portuguese. At last, however, Salvá found a copy of the lost Spanish original, which settles the question, and places the date of the work in 1547-48, Toledo, 3 tom. folio. (Repertorio Americano, Tom. IV. pp. 42-46.) The little we know of its author, Luis Hurtado, is to be found in Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 44, where one of his works, “Cortes del Casto Amor y de la Muerte,” is said to have been printed in 1557. He also translated the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid.

Regarded as a work of art, Palmerin of England is second only to the Amadis of Gaul, among the romances of chivalry. Like that great prototype of the whole class, it has among its actors two brothers,--Palmerin, the faithful knight, and Florian, the free gallant,--and, like that, it has its great magician, Deliante, and its perilous isle, where occur not a few of the most agreeable adventures of its heroes. In some respects, it may be favorably distinguished from its model. There is more sensibility to the beauties of natural scenery in it, and often an easier dialogue, with quite as good a drawing of individual characters. But it has greater faults; for its movement is less natural and spirited, and it is crowded with an unreasonable number of knights, and an interminable series of duels, battles, and exploits, all of which claim to be founded on authentic English chronicles and to be true history, thus affording new proof of the connection between the old chronicles and the oldest romances. Cervantes admired it excessively. “Let this Palm of England,” says his curate, “be cared for and preserved, as a thing singular in its kind, and let a casket be made for it, like that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, and destined to keep in it the works of the poet Homer”; praise, no doubt, much stronger than can now seem reasonable, but marking, at least, the sort of estimation in which the romance itself must have been generally held, when the Don Quixote appeared.

But the family of Palmerin had no further success in Spain. A third and fourth part, indeed, containing “The Adventures of Duardos the Second,” appeared in Portuguese, written by Diogo Fernandez, in 1587; and a fifth and sixth are said to have been written by Alvarez do Oriente, a contemporary poet of no mean reputation. But the last two do not seem to have been printed, and none of them were much known beyond the limits of their native country.[383] The Palmerins, therefore, notwithstanding the merits of one of them, failed to obtain a fame or a succession that could enter into competition with those of Amadis and his descendants.

[383] Barbosa, Bib. Lusit., Tom. I. p. 652, Tom. II. p. 17.

* * * * *

The “Bibliotheca Hispana” has already been referred to more than once in this chapter, and must so often be relied on as an authority hereafter that some notice of its claims should be given before we proceed farther. Its author, Nicolas Antonio, was born at Seville, in 1617. He was educated, first by the care of Francisco Jimenez, a blind teacher, of singular merit, attached to the College of St. Thomas in that city; and afterwards at Salamanca, where he devoted himself with success to the study of history and canon law. When he had completed an honorable career at the University, he returned home, and lived chiefly in the Convent of the Benedictines, where he had been bred, and where an abundant and curious library furnished him with means for study, which he used with eagerness and assiduity.

He was not, however, in haste to be known. He published nothing till 1659, when, at the age of forty-two, he printed a Latin treatise on the Punishment of Exile, and, the same year, was appointed to the honorable and important post of General Agent of Philip IV. at Rome. But from this time to the end of his life he was in the public service, and filled places of no little responsibility. In Rome he lived twenty years, collecting about him a library said to have been second in importance only to that of the Vatican, and devoting all his leisure to the studies he loved. At the end of that period, he returned to Madrid, and continued there in honorable employments till his death, which occurred in 1684. He left behind him several works in manuscript, of which his “Censura de Historias Fabulosas”--an examination and exposure of several forged chronicles which had appeared in the preceding century--was first published by Mayans y Siscar, and must be noticed hereafter.

But his great labor--the labor of his life and of his fondest preference--was his literary history of his own country. He began it in his youth, while he was still living with the Benedictines,--an order in the Romish Church honorably distinguished by its zeal in the history of letters,--and he continued it, employing on his task all the resources which his own large library and the libraries of the capitals of Spain and of the Christian world could furnish him, down to the moment of his death. He divided it into two parts. The first, beginning with the age of Augustus, and coming down to the year 1500, was found, after his death, digested into the form of a regular history; but as his pecuniary means, during his lifetime, had been entirely devoted to the purchase of books, it was published by his friend Cardinal Aguirre, at Rome, in 1696. The second part, which had been already printed there, in 1672, is thrown into the form of a dictionary, whose separate articles are arranged, like those in most other Spanish works of the same sort, under the baptismal names of their subjects,--an honor shown to the saints, which renders the use of such dictionaries somewhat inconvenient, even when, as in the case of Antonio’s, full indexes are added, which facilitate a reference to the respective articles by the more common arrangement, according to the surnames.

Of both parts an excellent edition was published in the original Latin, at Madrid, in 1787 and 1788, in four volumes, folio, commonly known as the “Bibliotheca Vetus et Nova of Nicolas Antonio”; the first being enriched with notes by Perez Bayer, a learned Valencian, long the head of the Royal Library at Madrid; and the last receiving additions from Antonio’s own manuscripts that bring down his notices of Spanish writers to the time of his death in 1684. In the earlier portion, embracing the names of about thirteen hundred authors, little remains to be desired, so far as the Roman or the ecclesiastical literary history of Spain is concerned; but for the Arabic we must go to Casiri and Gayangos, and for the Jewish to Castro and Amador de los Rios; while, for the proper Spanish literature that existed before the reign of Charles V., manuscripts discovered since the careful labors of Bayer furnish important additions. In the latter portion, which contains notices of nearly eight thousand writers of the best period of Spanish literature, we have--notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies and oversights inevitable in a work so vast and so various--a monument of industry, fairness, and fidelity, for which those who most use it will always be most grateful. The two, taken together, constitute their author, beyond all reasonable question, the father and founder of the literary history of his country.

See the lives of Antonio prefixed by Mayans to the “Historias Fabulosas,” (Valencia, 1742, fol.,) and by Bayer to the “Bibliotheca Vetus,” in 1787.

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