CHAPTER XVII

.

ENDEAVOURS TO REVIVE THE PROVENÇAL SPIRIT.--FLORAL GAMES AT TOULOUSE.--CONSISTORY OF THE GAYA SCIENCIA AT BARCELONA.--CATALAN AND VALENCIAN POETRY.--AUSIAS MARCH.--JAUME ROIG.--DECLINE OF THIS POETRY.--INFLUENCE OF CASTILE.--POETICAL CONTEST AT VALENCIA.--VALENCIAN POETS WHO WROTE IN CASTILIAN.--PREVALENCE OF THE CASTILIAN.

The failure of the Provençal language, and especially the failure of the Provençal culture, were not looked upon with indifference in the countries on either side of the Pyrenees, where they had so long prevailed. On the contrary, efforts were made to restore both, first in France, and afterwards in Spain. At Toulouse, on the Garonne, not far from the foot of the mountains, the magistrates of the city determined, in 1323, to form a company or guild for this purpose; and, after some deliberation, constituted it under the name of the “Sobregaya Companhia dels Sept Trobadors de Tolosa,” or the Very Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse. This company immediately sent forth a letter,

## partly in prose and partly in verse, summoning all poets to come to

Toulouse on the first day of May in 1324, and there “with joy of heart contend for the prize of a golden violet,” which should be adjudged to him who should offer the best poem, suited to the occasion. The concourse was great, and the first prize was given to a poem in honor of the Madonna by Ramon Vidal de Besalú, a Catalan gentleman, who seems to have been the author of the regulations for the festival, and to have been declared a doctor of the _Gay Saber_ on the occasion. In 1355, this company formed for itself a more ample body of laws, partly in prose and partly in verse, under the title of “Ordenanzas dels Sept Senhors Mantenedors del Gay Saber,” or Ordinances of the Seven Lords Conservators of the Gay Saber, which, with the needful modifications, have been observed down to our own times, and still regulate the festival annually celebrated at Toulouse, on the first day of May, under the name of the Floral Games.[534]

[534] Sarmiento, Memorias, Sect. 759-768. Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 651, article _Vidal de Besalú_. Santillana, Proverbios, Madrid, 1799, 18mo, Introduccion, p. xxiii. Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 5-9. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi, Paris, 1813, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 227-230. Andres, Storia d’ Ogni Letteratura, Roma, 1808, 4to, Tom. II. Lib. I. c. 1, sect. 23, where the remarks are important at pp. 49, 50.

Toulouse was separated from Aragon only by the picturesque range of the Pyrenees; and similarity of language and old political connections prevented even the mountains from being a serious obstacle to intercourse. What was done at Toulouse, therefore, was soon known at Barcelona, where the court of Aragon generally resided, and where circumstances soon favored a formal introduction of the poetical institutions of the Troubadours. John the First, who, in 1387, succeeded Peter the Fourth, was a prince of more gentle manners than were common in his time, and more given to festivity and shows than was, perhaps, consistent with the good of his kingdom, and certainly more than was suited to the fierce and turbulent spirit of his nobility.[535] Among his other attributes was a love of poetry; and in 1388, he despatched a solemn embassy, as if for an affair of state, to Charles the Sixth of France, praying him to cause certain poets of the company at Toulouse to visit Barcelona, in order that they might found there an institution like their own, for the Gay Saber. In consequence of this mission, two of the seven conservators of the Floral Games came to Barcelona in 1390, and established what was called a “Consistory of the Gaya Sciencia,” with laws and usages not unlike those of the institution they represented. Martin, who followed John on the throne, increased the privileges of the new Consistory, and added to its resources; but at his death, in 1409, it was removed to Tortosa, and its meetings were suspended by troubles that prevailed through the country, in consequence of a disputed succession.

[535] Mariana, Hist. de España, Lib. XVIII. c. 14.

At length, when Ferdinand the Just was declared king, their meetings were resumed. Enrique de Villena--whom we must speedily notice as a nobleman of the first rank in the state, nearly allied to the blood royal, both of Castile and Aragon--came with the new king to Barcelona in 1412, and, being a lover of poetry, busied himself while there in reëstablishing and reforming the Consistory, of which he became, for some time, the principal head and manager. This was, no doubt, the period of its greatest glory. The king himself frequently attended its meetings. Many poems were read by their authors before the judges appointed to examine them, and prizes and other distinctions were awarded to the successful competitors.[536] From this time, therefore, poetry in the native dialects of the country was held in honor in the capitals of Catalonia and Aragon. Public poetical contests were, from time to time, celebrated, and many poets called forth under their influence during the reign of Alfonso the Fifth and that of John the Second, which, ending in 1479, was followed by the consolidation of the whole Spanish monarchy, and the predominance of the Castilian power and language.[537]

[536] “El Arte de Trobar,” or the “Gaya Sciencia,”--a treatise on the Art of Poetry, which, in 1433, Henry, Marquis of Villena, sent to his kinsman, the famous Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, in order to facilitate the introduction of such poetical institutions into Castile as then existed in Barcelona,--contains the best account of the establishment of the Consistory of Barcelona, which was a matter of such consequence as to be mentioned by Mariana, Zurita, and other grave historians. The treatise of Villena has never been printed entire; but a poor abstract of its contents, with valuable extracts, is to be found in Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes de la Lengua Española, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II.

[537] See Zurita, passim, and Eichhorn, Allg. Geschichte der Cultur, Göttingen, 1796, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 127-131, with the authorities he cites in his notes.

During the period, however, of which we have been speaking, and which embraces the century before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catalan modification of Provençal poetry had its chief success, and produced all the authors that deserve notice. At its opening, Zurita, the faithful annalist of Aragon, speaking of the reign of John the First, says, that, “in place of arms and warlike exercises, which had formerly been the pastime of princes, now succeeded _trobas_ and poetry in the mother tongue, with its art, called the ‘Gaya Sciencia,’ whereof schools began to be instituted”;--schools which, as he intimates, were so thronged, that the dignity of the art they taught was impaired by the very numbers devoted to it.[538] Who these poets were the grave historian does not stop to inform us, but we learn something of them from another and better source; for, according to the fashion of the time, a collection of poetry was made a little after the middle of the fifteenth century, which includes the whole period, and contains the names, and more or less of the works, of those who were then best known and most considered. It begins with a grant of assistance to the Consistory of Barcelona, by Ferdinand the Just, in 1413; and then, going back as far as to the time of Jacme March, who, as we have seen, flourished in 1371, presents a series of more than three hundred poems, by about thirty authors, down to the time of Ausias March, who certainly lived in 1460, and whose works are, as they well deserve to be, prominent in the collection.

[538] Anales de la Corona de Aragon, Lib. X. c. 43, ed. 1610, folio, Tom. II. f. 393.

Among the poets here brought together are Luis de Vilarasa, who lived in 1416;[539] Berenguer de Masdovelles, who seems to have flourished soon after 1453;[540] Jordi, about whom there has been much discussion, but whom reasonable critics must place as late as 1450-1460;[541] and Antonio Vallmanya, some of whose poems are dated in 1457 and 1458.[542] Besides these, Juan Rocaberti, Fogaçot, and Guerau, with others apparently of the same period, are contributors to the collection, so that its whole air is that of the Catalan and Valencian imitations of the Provençal Troubadours in the fifteenth century.[543] If, therefore, to this curious Cancionero we add the translation of the “Divina Commedia” made into Catalan by Andres Febrer in 1428,[544] and the romance of “Tirante the White,” translated into Valencian by its author, Joannot Martorell,--which Cervantes calls “a treasure of contentment and a mine of pleasure,”[545]--we shall have all that is needful of the peculiar literature of the northeastern part of Spain during the greater part of the century in which it flourished. Two authors, however, who most illustrated it, deserve more particular notice.

[539] Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 666.

[540] Ibid., p. 408.

[541] The discussion makes out two points quite clearly, viz.: 1st. There was a person named Jordi, who lived in the thirteenth century and in the time of Jayme the Conqueror, was much with that monarch, and wrote, as an eyewitness, an account of the storm from which the royal fleet suffered at sea, near Majorca, in September, 1269 (Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 1; and Fuster, Biblioteca Valentiana, Tom. I. p. 1); and, 2d. There was a person named Jordi, a poet in the fifteenth century; because the Marquis of Santillana, in his well-known letter, written between 1454 and 1458, speaks of such a person as having lived in _his_ time. (See the letter in Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. lvi. and lvii., and the notes on it, pp. 81-85.) Now the question is, to which of these two persons belong the poems bearing the name of Jordi in the various Cancioneros; for example, in the “Cancionero General,” 1573, f. 301, and in the MS. Cancionero in the King’s Library at Paris, which is of the fifteenth century. (Torres Amat, pp. 328-333.) This question is of some consequence, because a passage attributed to Jordi is so very like one in the 103d sonnet of Petrarch, (Parte I.,) that one of them must be taken quite unceremoniously from the other. The Spaniards, and especially the Catalans, have generally claimed the lines referred to as the work of the _elder_ Jordi, and so would make Petrarch the copyist;--a claim in which foreigners have sometimes concurred. (Retrospective Review, Vol. IV. pp. 46, 47, and Foscolo’s Essay on Petrarch, London, 1823, 8vo, p. 65.) But it seems to me difficult for an impartial person to read the verses printed by Torres Amat with the name of Jordi from the _Paris_ MS. Cancionero, and not believe that they belong to the same century with the other poems in the same manuscript, and that thus the Jordi in question lived after 1400, and is the copyist of Petrarch. Indeed, the very position of these verses in such a manuscript seems to prove it, as well as their tone and character.

[542] Torres Amat, pp. 636-643.

[543] Of this remarkable manuscript, which is in the Royal Library at Paris, M. Tastu, in 1834, gave an account to Torres Amat, who was then preparing his “Memorias para un Diccionario de Autores Catalanes” (Barcelona, 1836, 8vo). It is numbered 7699, and consists of 260 leaves. See the Memorias, pp. xviii. and xli., and the many poetical passages from it scattered through other parts of that work. It is much to be desired that the whole should be published; but, in the mean time, the ample extracts from it given by Torres Amat leave no doubt of its general character. Another, and in some respects even more ample, account of it, with extracts, is to be found in Ochoa’s “Catálogo de Manuscritos” (4to, Paris, 1844, pp. 286-374). From this last description of the manuscript we learn that it contains works of thirty-one poets.

[544] Torres Amat, p. 237. Febrer says expressly, that it is translated “en rims vulgars Cathalans.” The first verses are as follows, word for word from the Italian:--

En lo mig del cami de nostra vida Me retrobe per una selva oscura, etc.,

and the last is--

L’amor qui mou lo sol e les stelles.

It was done at Barcelona, and finished August 1, 1428, according to the MS. copy in the Escurial.

[545] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, where Tirante is saved in the conflagration of the mad knight’s library. But Southey is of quite a different opinion. See _ante_, note to Chap. XI. The best accounts of it are those by Clemencin in his edition of Don Quixote, (Tom. I. pp. 132-134,) by Diosdado, “De Prima Typographiæ Hispanicæ Ætate,” (Romæ, 1794, 4to, p. 32,) and by Mendez, “Typographía Española” (Madrid, 1796, 4to, pp. 72-75). What is in Ximeno (Tom. I. p. 12) and Fuster (Tom. I. p. 10) goes on the false supposition that the Tirante was written in Spanish before 1383, and printed in 1480. It was, in fact, originally written in Portuguese, but was printed first in the Valencian dialect, in 1490. Of this edition only two copies are known to exist, for one of which £300 was paid in 1825. Repertorio Americano, Lóndres, 1827, 8vo, Tom. IV. pp. 57-60.

The first of them is Ausias or Augustin March. His family, originally Catalan, went to Valencia at the time of the conquest, in 1238, and was distinguished, in successive generations, for the love of letters. He himself was of noble rank, possessed the seigniory of the town of Beniarjó and its neighbouring villages, and served in the Cortes of Valencia in 1446. But, beyond these few facts, we know little of his life, except that he was an intimate personal friend of the accomplished and unhappy Prince Carlos of Viana, and that he died, probably, in 1460,--certainly before 1462,--well deserving the record made by his contemporary, the Grand Constable of Castile, that “he was a great Troubadour and a man of a very lofty spirit.”[546]

[546] The Life of Ausias March is found in Ximeno, “Escritores de Valencia,” (Tom. I. p. 41,) and Fuster’s continuation of it, (Tom. I. pp. 12, 15, 24,) and in the ample notes of Cerdá y Rico to the “Diana” of Gil Polo (1802, pp. 290, 293, 486). For his connection with the Prince of Viana,--“Mozo,” as Mariana beautifully says of him, “dignisimo de mejor fortuna, y de padre mas manso,”--see Zurita, Anales, (Lib. XVII. c. 24,) and the graceful Life of the unfortunate prince by Quintana, in the first volume of his “Españoles Célebres,” Madrid, Tom. I. 1807, 12mo.

So much of his poetry as has been preserved is dedicated to the honor of a lady, whom he loved and served in life and in death, and whom, if we are literally to believe his account, he first saw on a Good Friday in church, exactly as Petrarch first saw Laura. But this is probably only an imitation of the great Italian master, whose fame then overshadowed whatever there was of literature in the world. At any rate, the poems of March leave no doubt that he was a follower of Petrarch. They are in form what he calls _cants_; each of which generally consists of from five to ten stanzas. The whole collection, amounting to one hundred and sixteen of these short poems, is divided into four parts, and comprises ninety-three _cants_ or _canzones_ of Love, in which he complains much of the falsehood of his mistress, fourteen moral and didactic _canzones_, a single spiritual one, and eight on Death. But though March, in the framework of his poetry, is an imitator of Petrarch, his manner is his own. It is grave, simple, and direct, with few conceits, and much real feeling; besides which, he has a truth and freshness in his expressions, resulting partly from the dialect he uses, and partly from the tenderness of his own nature, which are very attractive. No doubt, he is the most successful of all the Valencian and Catalan poets whose works have come down to us; but what distinguishes him from all of them, and indeed from the Provençal school generally, is the sensibility and moral feeling that pervade so much of what he wrote. By these qualities his reputation and honors have been preserved in his own country down to the present time. His works passed through four editions in the sixteenth century, and enjoyed the honor of being read to Philip the Second, when a youth, by his tutor; they were translated into Latin and Italian, and in the proud Castilian were versified by a poet of no less consequence than Montemayor.[547]

[547] There are editions of his Works of 1543, 1545, 1555, and 1560, in the original Catalan, and translations of parts of them into Castilian by Romani, 1539, and Montemayor, 1562, which are united in the edition of 1579, besides one quite complete, but unpublished, by Arano y Oñate. Vicente Mariner translated March into Latin, and wrote his life. (Opera, Turnoni, 1633, 8vo, pp. 497-856.) Who was his Italian translator I do not find. See (besides Ximeno and others, cited in the last note) Rodriguez, Bib. Val., p. 68, etc. The edition of March’s Works, 1560, Barcelona, 12mo, is a neat volume, and has at the end a very short and imperfect list of obscure terms, with the corresponding Spanish, supposed to have been made by the tutor of Philip II., the Bishop of Osma, when, as we are told, he used to delight that young prince and his courtiers by reading the works of March aloud to them. I have seen none of the translations, except those of Montemayor and Mariner, both good, but the last not entire.

The other poet who should be mentioned in the same relations was a contemporary of March, and, like him, a native of Valencia. His name is Jaume or James Roig, and he was physician to Mary, queen of Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon. If his own authority is not to be accounted rather poetical than historical, he was a man of much distinction in his time, and respected in other countries as well as at home. But if that be set aside, we know little of him, except that he was one of the persons who contended for a poetical prize at Valencia in 1474, and that he died there of apoplexy on the 4th of April, 1478.[548] His works are not much better known than his life, though, in some respects, they are well worthy of notice. Hardly any thing, indeed, remains to us of them, except the principal one, a poem of three hundred pages, sometimes called the “Book of Advice,” and sometimes the “Book of the Ladies.”[549] It is chiefly a satire on women, but the conclusion is devoted to the praise and glory of the Madonna, and the whole is interspersed with sketches of himself and his times, and advice to his nephew, Balthazar Bou, for whose especial benefit the poem seems to have been written.

[548] Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 50, with Fuster’s continuation, Tom. I. p. 30. Rodriguez, p. 196; and Cerdá’s notes to Polo’s Diana, pp. 300, 302, etc.

[549] “Libre de Consells fet per lo Magnifich Mestre Jaume Roig” is the title in the edition of 1531, as given by Ximeno, and in that of 1561, (Valencia, 12mo, 149 leaves,) which I use. In that of Valencia, 1735, (4to,) which is also before me, it is called according to its subject, “Lo Libre de les Dones e de Concells,” etc.

It is divided into four books, which are subdivided into parts, little connected with each other, and often little in harmony with the general subject of the whole. Some of it is full of learning and learned names, and some of it would seem to be devout, but its prevailing air is certainly not at all religious. It is written in short rhymed verses, consisting of from two to five syllables,--an irregular measure, which has been called _cudolada_, and one which, as here used, has been much praised for its sweetness by those who are familiar enough with the principles of its structure to make the necessary elisions and abbreviations; though to others it can hardly appear better than whimsical and spirited.[550] The following sketch of himself may be taken as a specimen of it; and shows that he had as little of the spirit of a poet as Skelton, with whom, in many respects, he may be compared. Roig represents himself to have been ill of a fever, when a boy, and to have hastened from his sick bed into the service of a Catalan freebooting gentleman, like Roque Guinart or Rocha Guinarda, an historical personage of the same Catalonia, and of nearly the same period, who figures in the Second Part of Don Quixote.

[550] Orígenes de la Lengua Española de Mayans y Siscar, Tom. I. p. 57.

Bed I abjured, Though hardly cured, And then went straight To seek my fate. A Catalan, A nobleman, A highway knight, Of ancient right, Gave me, in grace, A page’s place. With him I lived, And with him thrived, Till I came out Man grown and stout; For he was wise, Taught me to prize My time, and learn My bread to earn, By service hard At watch and ward, To hunt the game, Wild hawks to tame, On horse to prance, In hall to dance, To carve, to play, And make my way.[551]

[551] Sorti del llit, E mig guarit, Yo men partì, A peu anì Seguint fortuna. En Catalunya, Un Cavaller, Gran vandoler, Dantitch llinatge, Me près per patge. Ab ell vixquì, Fins quem ixquì, Ja home fet. Ab lhom discret Temps no hi perdì, Dell aprenguì, De ben servir, Armes seguir, Fuy caçador, Cavalcador, De Cetrerìa, Menescalia, Sonar, ballar, Fins à tallar Ell men mostrà.

Libre de les Dones, Primera Part del Primer Libre, ed. 1561, 4to, f. xv. b.

The “Cavaller, gran vandoler, dantitch llinatge,” whom I have called, in the translation, “a highway knight, of ancient right,” was one of the successors of the marauding knights of the Middle Ages, who were not always without generosity or a sense of justice, and whose character is well set forth in the accounts of Roque Guinart or Rocha Guinarda, the personage referred to in the text, and found in the Second Part of Don Quixote (Capp. 60 and 61). He and his followers are all called by Cervantes _Bandoleros_, and are the “banished men” of “Robin Hood” and “The Nut-Brown Maid.” They took their name of _Bandoleros_ from the shoulder-belts they wore. Calderon’s “Luis Perez, el Gallego” is founded on the history of a Bandolero supposed to have lived in the time of the Armada, 1588.

The poem, its author tells us, was written in 1460, and we know that it continued popular long enough to pass through five editions before 1562. But portions of it are so indecent, that, when, in 1735, it was thought worth while to print it anew, its editor, in order to account for the large omissions he was obliged to make, resorted to the amusing expedient of pretending he could find no copy of the old editions which was not deficient in the passages he left out of his own.[552] Of course, Roig is not much read now. His indecency and the obscurity of his idiom alike cut him off from the polished portions of Spanish society; though out of his free and spirited satire much may be gleaned to illustrate the tone of manners and the modes of living and thinking in his time.

[552] The editor of the last edition that has appeared is Carlos Ros, a curious collection of Valencian proverbs by whom (in 12mo, Valencia, 1733) I have seen, and who, I believe, the year previous, printed a work on the Valencian and Castilian orthography.

The death of Roig brings us to the period when the literature of the eastern part of Spain, along the shores of the Mediterranean, began to decline. Its decay was the natural, but melancholy, result of the character of the literature itself, and of the circumstances in which it was accidentally placed. It was originally Provençal in its spirit and elements, and had therefore been of quick, rather than of firm growth;--a gay vegetation, which sprang forth spontaneously with the first warmth of the spring, and which could hardly thrive in any other season than the gentle one that gave it birth. As it gradually advanced, carried by the removal of the seat of political power, from Aix to Barcelona, and from Barcelona to Saragossa, it was constantly approaching the literature that had first appeared in the mountains of the Northwest, whose more vigorous and grave character it was ill fitted to resist. When, therefore, the two came in contact, there was but a short struggle for the supremacy. The victory was almost immediately decided in favor of that which, springing from the elements of a strong and proud character, destined to vindicate for itself the political sway of the whole country, was armed with a power to which its more gay and gracious rival could offer no effective opposition.

The period, when these two literatures, advancing from opposite corners of the Peninsula, finally met, cannot, from its nature, be determined with much precision. But, like the progress of each, it was the result of political causes and tendencies which are obvious and easily traced. The family that ruled in Aragon had, from the time of James the Conqueror, been connected with that established in Castile and the North; and Ferdinand the Just, who was crowned in Saragossa in 1412, was a Castilian prince; so that, from this period, both thrones were absolutely filled by members of the same royal house; and Valencia and Burgos, as far as their courts touched and controlled the literature of either, were to a great degree under the same influences. And this control was neither slight nor inefficient. Poetry, in that age, everywhere sought shelter under courtly favor, and in Spain easily found it. John the Second was a professed and successful patron of letters; and when Ferdinand came to assume the crown of Aragon, he was accompanied by the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman whose great fiefs lay on the borders of Valencia, but who, notwithstanding his interest in the Southern literature and in the Consistory of Barcelona, yet spoke the Castilian as his native language, and wrote in no other. We may, therefore, well believe, that, in the reigns of Ferdinand the Just and Alfonso the Fifth, between 1412 and 1458, the influence of the North began to make inroads on the poetry of the South, though it does not appear that either March or Roig, or any one of their immediate school, proved habitually unfaithful to his native dialect.

At length, forty years after the death of Villena, we find a decided proof that the Castilian was beginning to be known and cultivated on the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1474, a poetical contest was publicly held at Valencia, in honor of the Madonna;--a sort of literary jousting, like those so common afterwards in the time of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. Forty poets contended for the prize. The Viceroy was present. It was a solemn and showy occasion; and all the poems offered were printed the same year by Bernardo Fenollar, Secretary of the meeting, in a volume which is valued as the first book known to have been printed in Spain.[553] Four of these poems are in Castilian. This leaves no doubt that Castilian verse was now deemed a suitable entertainment for a popular audience at Valencia. Fenollar, too, who wrote, besides what appears in this contest, a small volume of poetry on the Passion of our Saviour, has left us at least one _cancion_ in Castilian, though his works were otherwise in his native dialect, and were composed apparently for the amusement of his friends in Valencia, where he was a person of consideration, and in whose University, founded in 1499, he was a professor.[554]

[553] Fuster. Tom. I. p. 52, and Mendez, Typographía Española, p. 56. Roig is one of the competitors.

[554] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 59; Fuster, Tom. I. p. 51; and the Diana of Polo, ed. Cerdá y Rico, p. 317. His poems are in the “Cancionero General,” 1573, (leaves 240, 251, 307,) in the “Obras de Ausias March,” (1560, f. 134,) and in the “Process de les Olives,” mentioned in the next note. The “Historia de la Passio de Nostre Senyor” was printed at Valencia, in 1493 and 1564.

Probably Castilian poetry was rarely written in Valencia during the fifteenth century, while, on the other hand, Valencian was written constantly. “The Suit of the Olives,” for instance, wholly in that dialect, was composed by Jaume Gazull, Fenollar, and Juan Moreno, who seem to have been personal friends, and who united their poetical resources to produce this satire, in which, under the allegory of olive-trees, and in language not always so modest as good taste requires, they discuss together the dangers to which the young and the old are respectively exposed from the solicitations of worldly pleasure.[555] Another dialogue, by the same three poets, in the same dialect, soon followed, dated in 1497, which is supposed to have occurred in the bed-chamber of a lady just recovering from the birth of a child, in which is examined the question whether young men or old make the best husbands; an inquiry decided by Venus in favor of the young, and ended, most inappropriately, by a religious hymn.[556] Other poets were equally faithful to their vernacular; among whom were Juan Escriva, ambassador of the Catholic sovereigns to the Pope, in 1497, who was probably the last person of high rank that wrote in it;[557] and Vincent Ferrandis, concerned in a poetical contest in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena, at Valencia, in 1511, whose poems seem, on other occasions, to have carried off public honors, and to have been, from their sweetness and power, worthy of the distinction they won.[558]

[555] “Lo Process de les Olives è Disputa del Jovens hi del Vels” was first printed in Barcelona, 1532. But the copy I use is of Valencia, printed by Joan de Arcos, 1561 (18mo, 40 leaves). One or two other poets took part in the discussion, and the whole seems to have grown under their hands, by successive additions, to its present state and size.

[556] There is an edition of 1497, (Mendez, p. 88,) but I use one with this title: “Comença lo Somni de Joan Ioan ordenat per lo Magnifich Mossen Jaume Gaçull, Cavaller, Natural de Valencia, en Valencia, 1561” (18mo). At the end is a humorous poem by Gaçull in reply to Fenollar, who had spoken slightingly of many words used in Valencian, which Gaçull defends. It is called “La Brama dels Llauradors del Orto de Valencia.” Gaçull also occurs in the “Process de les Olives,” and in the poetical contest of 1474. See his Life in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 59, and Fuster, Tom I. p. 37.

[557] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 64.

[558] The poems of Ferrandis are in the Cancionero General of Seville, 1535, ff. 17, 18, and in the Cancionero of Antwerp, 1573, ff. 31-34. The notice of the _certamen_ of 1511 is in Fuster, Tom. I. pp. 56-58.

Some other poets in the ancient Valencian have been mentioned, as Juan Roiz de Corella, (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 62,) a friend of the unhappy Prince Carlos de Viana; two or three, by no means without merit, who remain anonymous (Fuster, Tom. I. pp. 284-293); and several who joined in a _certamen_ at Valencia, in 1498, in honor of St. Christopher (Ibid., pp. 296, 297). But the attempt to press into the service and to place in the thirteenth century the manuscript in the Escurial containing the poems of Sta. María Egypciaca and King Apollonius, already referred to (_ante_, p. 24) among the earliest Castilian poems, is necessarily a failure. Ibid., p. 284.

Meantime, Valencian poets are not wanting who wrote more or less in Castilian. Francisco Castelví, a friend of Fenollar, is one of them.[559] Another is Narcis Viñoles, who flourished in 1500, who wrote in Tuscan as well as in Castilian and Valencian, and who evidently thought his native dialect somewhat barbarous.[560] A third is Juan Tallante, whose religious poems are found at the opening of the old General Cancionero.[561] A fourth is Luis Crespi, member of the ancient family of Valdaura, and in 1506 head of the University of Valencia.[562] And among the latest, if not the very last, was Fernandez de Heredia, who died in 1549, of whom we have hardly any thing in Valencian, but much in Castilian.[563] Indeed, that the Castilian, in the early part of the century, had obtained a real supremacy in whatever there was of poetry and elegant literature along the shores of the Mediterranean cannot be doubted; for, before the death of Heredia, Boscan had already deserted his native Catalonian, and begun to form a school in Spanish literature that has never since disappeared; and shortly afterwards, Timoneda and his followers showed, by their successful representation of Castilian farces in the public squares of Valencia, that the ancient dialect had ceased to be insisted upon in its own capital. The language of the court of Castile had, for such purposes, become the prevailing language of all the South.

[559] Cancionero General, 1573, f. 251, and elsewhere.

[560] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 61. Fuster, Tom. I. p. 54. Cancionero General, 1573, ff. 241, 251, 316, 318. Cerdá’s notes to Polo’s Diana, 1802, p. 304. Viñoles, in the Prólogo to the translation of the Latin Chronicle noticed on p. 216, says, “He has ventured to stretch out his rash hand and put it into the pure, elegant, and gracious Castilian, which, without falsehood or flattery, may, among the many barbarous and savage dialects of our own Spain, be called Latin-sounding and most elegant.” Suma de Todas las Crónicas, Valencia, 1510, folio, f. 2.

[561] The religious poems of Tallante begin, I believe, all the Cancioneros Generales, from 1511 to 1573.

[562] Cancionero General, 1573, ff. 238, 248, 300, 301. Fuster, Tom. I. p. 65; and Cerdá’s notes to Gil Polo’s Diana, p. 306.

[563] Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 102. Fuster, Tom. I. p. 87. Diana de Polo, ed. Cerdá, 326. Cancionero General, 1573, ff. 185, 222, 225, 228, 230, 305-307.

This, in fact, was the circumstance that determined the fate of all that remained in Spain on the foundations of the Provençal refinement. The crowns of Aragon and Castile had been united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; the court had been removed from Saragossa, though that city still claimed the dignity of being regarded as an independent capital; and with the tide of empire, that of cultivation gradually flowed down from the West and the North. Some of the poets of the South have, it is true, in later times, ventured to write in their native dialects. The most remarkable of them is Vicent Garcia, who was a friend of Lope de Vega, and died in 1623.[564] But his poetry, in all its various phases, is a mixture of several dialects, and shows, notwithstanding its provincial air, the influence of the court of Philip the Fourth, where its author for a time lived; while the poetry printed later, or heard in our own days on the popular theatres of Barcelona and Valencia, is in a dialect so grossly corrupted, that it is no longer easy to acknowledge it as that of the descendants of Muntaner and March.[565]

[564] His Works were first printed with the following title: “La Armonía del Parnas mes numerosa en las Poesías varias del Atlant del Cel Poétic, lo Dr. Vicent Garcia” (Barcelona, 1700, 4to, 201 pp.). There has been some question about the proper date of this edition, and therefore I give it as it is in my copy. (See Torres Amat, Memorias, pp. 271-274.) It consists chiefly of lyrical poetry, sonnets, _décimas_, _redondillas_, ballads, etc.; but at the end is a drama called “Santa Barbara,” in three short _jornadas_, with forty or fifty personages, some allegorical and some supernatural, and the whole as fantastic as any thing of the age that produced it. Another edition of Garcia’s Works was printed at Barcelona in 1840, and a notice of him occurs in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1843, p. 84.

[565] The Valencian has always remained a sweet dialect. Cervantes praises it for its “honeyed grace” more than once. See the second act of the “Gran Sultana,” and the opening of the twelfth chapter in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda.” Mayans y Siscar loses no occasion of honoring it; but he was a native of Valencia, and full of Valencian prejudices.

The literary history of the kingdom of Valencia--both that of the period when its native dialect prevailed, and that of the more recent period during which the Castilian has enjoyed the supremacy--has been illustrated with remarkable diligence and success. The first person who devoted himself to it was Josef Rodriguez, a learned ecclesiastic, who was born in its capital in 1630, and died there in 1703, just at the moment when his “Biblioteca Valentina” was about to be issued from the press, and when, in fact, all but a few pages of it had been printed. But though it was so near to publication, a long time elapsed before it finally appeared; for his friend, Ignacio Savalls, to whom the duty of completing it was intrusted, and who at once busied himself with his task, died, at last, in 1746, without having quite accomplished it.

Meanwhile, however, copies of the imperfect work had got abroad, and one of them came into the hands of Vicente Ximeno, a Valencian, as well as Rodriguez, and, like him, interested in the literary history of his native kingdom. At first, Ximeno conceived the project of completing the work of his predecessor; but soon determined rather to use its materials in preparing on the same subject another and a larger one of his own, whose notices should come down to his own time. This he soon completed, and published it at Valencia, in 1747-49, in two volumes, folio, with the title of “Escritores de Valencia,”--not, however, so quickly that the Biblioteca of Rodriguez had not been fairly launched into the world, in the same city, in 1747, a few months before the first volume of Ximeno’s appeared.

The dictionary of Ximeno, who died in 1764, brings down the literary history of Valencia to 1748, from which date to 1829 it is continued by the “Biblioteca Valenciana” of Justo Pastor Fuster, (Valencia, 1827-30, 2 tom., folio,) a valuable work, containing a great number of new articles for the earlier period embraced by the labors of Rodriguez and Ximeno, and making additions to many which they had left imperfect.

In the five volumes, folio, of which the whole series consists, there are 2841 articles. How many of those in Ximeno relate to authors noticed by Rodriguez, and how many of those in Fuster relate to authors noticed by either or both of his predecessors, I have not examined; but the number is, I think, smaller than might be anticipated; while, on the other hand, the new articles and the additions to the old ones are more considerable and important. Perhaps, taking the whole together, no portion of Europe equally large has had its intellectual history more carefully investigated than the kingdom of Valencia;--a circumstance the more remarkable, if we bear in mind that Rodriguez, the first person who undertook the work, was, as he says, the first who attempted such a labor in any modern language, and that Fuster, the last of them, though evidently a man of curious learning, was by occupation a bookbinder, and was led to his investigations, in a considerable degree, by his interest in the rare books that were, from time to time, intrusted to his mechanical skill.

The degradation of the two more refined dialects in the southern and eastern parts of Spain, which was begun in the time of the Catholic sovereigns, may be considered as completed when the seat of the national government was settled, first in Old and afterwards in New Castile; since, by this circumstance, the prevalent authority of the Castilian was finally recognized and insured. The change was certainly neither unreasonable nor ill-timed. The language of the North was already more ample, more vigorous, and more rich in idiomatic constructions; indeed, in almost every respect, better fitted to become national than that of the South. And yet we can hardly follow and witness the results of such a revolution but with feelings of a natural regret; for the slow decay and final disappearance of any language bring with them melancholy thoughts, which are, in some sort, peculiar to the occasion. We feel as if a portion of the world’s intelligence were extinguished; as if we were ourselves cut off from a part of the intellectual inheritance, to which we had in many respects an equal right with those who destroyed it, and which they were bound to pass down to us unimpaired as they themselves had received it. The same feeling pursues us even when, as in the case of the Greek or Latin, the people that spoke it had risen to the full height of their refinement, and left behind them monuments by which all future times can measure and share their glory. But our regret is deeper when the language of a people is cut off in its youth, before its character is fully developed; when its poetical attributes are just beginning to appear, and when all is bright with promise and hope.[566]

[566] The Catalans have always felt this regret, and have never reconciled themselves heartily to the use of the Castilian; holding their own dialect to have been, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, more abundant and harmonious than the prouder one that has so far displaced it. Villanueva, Viage á las Iglesias, Valencia, 1821, 8vo, Tom. VII. p. 202.

This was singularly the misfortune and the fate of the Provençal and of the two principal dialects into which it was modified and moulded. For the Provençal started forth in the darkest period Europe had seen since Grecian civilization had first dawned on the world. It kindled, at once, all the South of France with its brightness, and spread its influence, not only into the neighbouring countries, but even to the courts of the cold and unfriendly North. It flourished long, with a tropical rapidity and luxuriance, and gave token, from the first, of a light-hearted spirit, that promised, in the fulness of its strength, to produce a poetry, different, no doubt, from that of antiquity, with which it had no real connection, but yet a poetry as fresh as the soil from which it sprang, and as genial as the climate by which it was quickened. But the cruel and shameful war of the Albigenses drove the Troubadours over the Pyrenees, and the revolutions of political power and the prevalence of the spirit of the North crushed them on the Spanish shores of the Mediterranean. We follow, therefore, with a natural and inevitable regret, their long and wearisome retreat, marked as it is everywhere with the wrecks and fragments of their peculiar poetry and cultivation, from Aix to Barcelona, and from Barcelona to Saragossa and Valencia, where, oppressed by the prouder and more powerful Castilian, what remained of the language that gave the first impulse to poetical feeling in modern times sinks into a neglected dialect, and, without having attained the refinement that would preserve its name and its glory to future times, becomes as much a dead language as the Greek or the Latin.[567]

[567] One of the most valuable monuments of the old dialects of Spain is a translation of the Bible into Catalan, made by Bonifacio Ferrer, who died in 1477, and was the brother of St. Vincent Ferrer. It was printed at Valencia, in 1478, (folio,) but the Inquisition came so soon to suppress it, that it never exercised much influence on the literature or language of the country; nearly every copy of it having been destroyed. Extracts from it and sufficient accounts of it may be found in Castro, Bib. Española, (Tom. I. pp. 444-448,) and McCrie’s “Reformation in Spain” (Edinburgh, 1829, 8vo, pp. 191 and 414). Sismondi, at the end of his discussion of the Provençal literature, in his “Littérature du Midi de l’Europe,” has some remarks on its decay, which in their tone are not entirely unlike those in the last pages of this chapter, and to which I would refer both to illustrate and to justify my own.

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