CHAPTER XVIII

.

THE PROVENÇAL AND COURTLY SCHOOL IN CASTILIAN LITERATURE.--PARTLY INFLUENCED BY THE LITERATURE OF ITALY.--CONNECTION OF SPAIN WITH ITALY, RELIGIOUS, INTELLECTUAL, AND POLITICAL.--SIMILARITY OF LANGUAGE IN THE TWO COUNTRIES.--TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN.--REIGN OF JOHN THE SECOND.--TROUBADOURS AND MINNESINGERS THROUGHOUT EUROPE.--COURT OF CASTILE.--THE KING.--THE MARQUIS OF VILLENA.--HIS ART OF CARVING.--HIS ART OF POETRY.--HIS LABORS OF HERCULES.

The Provençal literature, which appeared so early in Spain, and which, during the greater part of the period when it prevailed there, was in advance of the poetical culture of nearly all the rest of Europe, could not fail to exercise an influence on the Castilian, springing up and flourishing at its side. But, as we proceed, we must notice the influence of another literature over the Spanish, less visible and important at first than that of the Provençal, but destined subsequently to become much wider and more lasting;--I mean, of course, the Italian.

The origin of this influence is to be traced far back in the history of the Spanish character and civilization. Long, indeed, before a poetical spirit had been reawakened anywhere in the South of Europe, the Spanish Christians, through the wearisome centuries of their contest with the Moors, had been accustomed to look towards Italy as to the seat of a power whose foundations were laid in faith and hopes extending far beyond the mortal struggle in which they were engaged; not because the Papal See, in its political capacity, had then obtained any wide authority in Spain, but because, from the peculiar exigencies and trials of their condition, the religion of the Romish Church had nowhere found such implicit and faithful followers as the body of the Spanish Christians.

In truth, from the time of the great Arab invasion down to the fall of Granada, this devoted people had rarely come into political relations with the rest of Europe. Engrossed and exhausted by their wars at home, they had, on the one hand, hardly been at all the subjects of foreign cupidity or ambition; and, on the other, they had been little able, even when they most desired it, to connect themselves with the stirring interests of the world beyond their mountains, or attract the sympathy of those more favored countries which, with Italy at their head, were coming up to constitute the civilized power of Christendom. But the Spaniards always felt their warfare to be peculiarly that of soldiers of the Cross; they always felt themselves, beyond every thing else and above every thing else, to be Christian men contending against misbelief. Their religious sympathies were, therefore, constantly apparent, and often predominated over all others; so that, while they were little connected with the Church of Rome by those political ties that were bringing half Europe into bondage, they were more connected with its religious spirit than any other people of modern times; more even than the armies of the Crusaders whom that same Church had summoned out of all Christendom, and to whom it had given whatever of its own resources and character it was able to impart.

To these religious influences of Italy upon Spain were early added those of a higher intellectual culture. Before the year 1300, Italy possessed at least five universities; some of them famous throughout Europe, and attracting students from its most distant countries. Spain, at the same period, possessed not one, except that of Salamanca, which was in a very unsettled state.[568] Even during the next century, those established at Huesca and Valladolid produced comparatively little effect. The whole Peninsula was still in too disturbed a state for any proper encouragement of letters; and those persons, therefore, who wished to be taught, resorted, some of them, to Paris, but more to Italy. At Bologna, which was probably the oldest, and for a long time the most distinguished, of the Italian universities, we know Spaniards were received and honored, during the thirteenth century, both as students and as professors.[569] At Padua, the next in rank, a Spaniard, in 1260, was made the Rector, or presiding officer.[570] And, no doubt, in all the great Italian places of education, which were easily accessible, especially in those of Rome and Naples, Spaniards early sought the culture that was either not then to be obtained in their own country, or to be had only with difficulty or by accident.

[568] The University of Salamanca owes its first endowment to Alfonso X., 1254; but in 1310 it had already fallen into great decay, and did not become an efficient and frequented university till some time afterwards. Hist. de la Universidad de Salamanca, por Pedro Chacon. Seminario Erudito, Madrid, 1789, 4to, Tom. XVIII. pp. 13, 21, etc.

[569] Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Roma, 1782, 4to, Tom. IV. Lib. I. c. 3; and Fuster, Biblioteca Valenciana, Tom. I. pp. 2, 9.

[570] Tiraboschi, ut sup.

In the next century, the instruction of Spaniards in Italy was put upon a more permanent foundation, by Cardinal Carillo de Albornoz; a prelate, a statesman, and a soldier, who, as Archbishop of Toledo, was head of the Spanish Church in the reign of Alfonso the Eleventh, and who afterwards, as regent for the Pope, conquered and governed a large part of the Roman States, which, in the time of Rienzi, had fallen off from their allegiance. This distinguished personage, during his residence in Italy, felt the necessity of better means for the education of his countrymen, and founded, for their especial benefit, at Bologna, in 1364, the College of Saint Clement,--a munificent institution, which has subsisted down to our own age.[571] From the middle of the fourteenth century, therefore, it cannot be doubted that the most direct means existed for the transmission of culture from Italy to Spain; one of the most striking proofs of which is to be found in the case of Antonio de Lebrixa, commonly called Nebrissensis, who was educated at this college in the century following its first foundation, and who, on his return home, did more to advance the cause of letters in Spain than any other scholar of his time.[572]

[571] Tiraboschi, Tom. IV. Lib. I. c. 3, sect. 8. Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. pp. 169, 170.

[572] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. pp. 132-138.

Commercial and political relations still further promoted a free communication of the manners and literature of Italy to Spain. Barcelona, long the seat of a cultivated court,--a city whose liberal institutions had given birth to the first bank of exchange, and demanded the first commercial code of modern times,--had, from the days of James the Conqueror, exercised a sensible influence round the shores of the Mediterranean, and come into successful competition with the enterprise of Pisa and Genoa, even in the ports of Italy. The knowledge and refinement its ships brought back, joined to the spirit of commercial adventure that sent them out, rendered Barcelona, therefore, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, one of the most magnificent cities in Europe, and carried its influence not only quite through the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, of which it was in many respects the capital, but into the neighbouring kingdom of Castile, with which that of Aragon was, during much of this period, intimately connected.[573]

[573] Prescott’s Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, Introd., Section 2; to which add the account of the residence in Barcelona of Carlos de Viana, in Quintana’s Life of that unhappy prince, (Vidas de Españoles Célebres, Tom. I.,) and the very curious notice of Barcelona in Leo Von Rözmital’s Ritter-Hof-und-Pilger-Reise, 1465-67, Stuttgard, 1844, 8vo, p. 111.

The political relations between Spain and Sicily were, however, earlier and more close than those between Spain and Italy, and tended to the same results. Giovanni da Procida, after long preparing his beautiful island to shake off the hated yoke of the French, hastened, in 1282, as soon as the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers were fulfilled, to lay the allegiance of Sicily at the feet of Peter the Third of Aragon, who, in right of his wife, claimed Sicily to be a part of his inheritance, as heir of Conradin, the last male descendant of the imperial family of the Hohenstauffen.[574] The revolution thus begun by a fiery patriotism was successful; but from that time Sicily was either a fief of the Aragonese crown, or was possessed, as a separate kingdom, by a branch of the Aragonese family, down to the period when, with the other possessions of Ferdinand the Catholic, it became a part of the consolidated monarchy of Spain.

[574] Zurita, Anales de Aragon, Zaragoza, 1604, folio, Lib. IV. c. 13, etc.; Mariana, Historia, Lib. XIV. c. 6;--both important, but especially the first, as giving the Spanish view of a case which we are more in the habit of considering either in its Italian or its French relations.

The connection with Naples, which was of the same sort, followed later, but was no less intimate. Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, a prince of rare wisdom and much literary cultivation, acquired Naples by conquest in 1441, after a long struggle;[575] but the crown he had thus won was passed down separately in an indirect line through four of his descendants, till 1503, when, by a shameful treaty with France, and by the genius and arms of Gonzalvo of Córdova, it was again conquered and made a direct dependence of the Spanish throne.[576] In this condition, as fiefs of the crown of Spain, both Sicily and Naples continued subject kingdoms until after the Bourbon accession; both affording, from the very nature of their relations to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, constant means and opportunities for the transmission of Italian cultivation and Italian literature to Spain itself.

[575] Schmidt, Geschichte Aragoniens im Mittelalter, pp. 337-354. Heeren, Geschichte des Studiums der Classischen Litteratur, Göttingen, 1797, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 109-111.

[576] Prescott’s Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. III.

But the language of Italy, from its affinity to the Spanish, constituted a medium of communication perhaps more important and effectual than any or all of the others. The Latin was the mother of both; and the resemblance between them was such, that neither could claim to have features entirely its own: _Facies non una, nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum_. It cost little labor to the Spaniard to make himself master of the Italian. Translations, therefore, were less common from the few Italian authors that then existed, worth translating, than they would otherwise have been; but enough are found, and early enough, to show that Italian authors and Italian literature were not neglected in Spain. Ayala, the chronicler, who died in 1407, was, as we have already observed, acquainted with the works of Boccaccio.[577] A little later, we are struck by the fact that the “Divina Commedia” of Dante was twice translated in the same year, 1428; once by Febrer into the Catalan dialect, and once by Don Enrique de Villena into the Castilian. Twenty years afterwards, the Marquis of Santillana is complimented as a person capable of correcting or surpassing that great poet, and speaks himself of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Boccaccio as if he were familiar with them all.[578] But the name of this great nobleman brings us at once to the times of John the Second, when the influences of Italian literature and the attempt to form an Italian school in Spain are not to be mistaken. To this period, therefore, we now turn.

[577] See _ante_, p. 180.

[578] “Con vos que emendays las Obras de Dante,” says Gomez Manrique, in a poem addressed to his uncle, the great Marquis, and found in the “Cancionero General,” 1573, f. 76. b;--words which, however we may interpret them, imply a familiar knowledge of Dante, which the Marquis himself yet more directly announces in his well-known letter to the Constable of Portugal. Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. p. liv.

The long reign of John the Second, extending from 1407 to 1454, unhappy as it was for himself and for his country, was not unfavorable to the progress of some of the forms of elegant literature. During nearly the whole of it, the weak king himself was subjected to the commanding genius of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose control, though he sometimes felt it to be oppressive, he always regretted, when any accident in the troubles of the times threw it off, and left him to bear alone the burden which belonged to his position in the state. It seems, indeed, to have been a part of the Constable’s policy to give up the king to his natural indolence, and encourage his effeminacy by filling his time with amusements that would make business more unwelcome to him than the hard tyranny of the minister who relieved him from it.[579]

[579] Mariana, Historia, Madrid, 1780, fol., Tom. II. pp. 236-407. See also the very remarkable details given by Fernan Perez de Guzman, in his “Generaciones y Semblanzas,” c. 33.

Among these amusements, none better suited the humor of the idle king than letters. He was by no means without talent. He sometimes wrote verses. He kept the poets of the time much about his person, and more in his confidence and favor than was wise. He had, perhaps, even a

## partial perception of the advantage of intellectual refinement to his

country, or at least to his court. One of his private secretaries, to please his master and those nearest to the royal influence, made, about the year 1449, an ample collection of the Spanish poetry then most in favor, comprising the works of about fifty authors.[580] Juan de Mena, the most distinguished poet of the time, was his official chronicler, and the king sent him documents and directions, with great minuteness and an amusing personal vanity, respecting the manner in which the history of his reign should be written; while Juan de Mena, on his part, like a true courtier, sent his verses to the king to be corrected.[581] His physician, too, who seems to have been always in attendance on his person, was the gay and good-humored Ferdinand Gomez, who has left us, if we are to believe them genuine, a pleasing and characteristic collection of letters; and who, after having served and followed his royal master above forty years, sleeping, as he tells us, at his feet and eating at his table, mourned his death, as that of one whose kindness to him had been constant and generous.[582]

[580] Castro, Bib. Española, Tom. I. pp. 265-346.

[581] See the amusing letters in the “Centon Epistolario” of Fern. Gomez de Cibdareal, Nos. 47, 49, 56, and 76;--a work, however, whose authority will hereafter be called in question.

[582] Ibid., Epístola 105.

Surrounded by persons such as these, in continual intercourse with others like them, and often given up to letters to avoid the solicitation of state affairs and to gratify his constitutional indolence, John the Second made his reign, though discreditable to himself as a prince, and disastrous to Castile as an independent state, still interesting by a sort of poetical court which he gathered about him, and important as it gave an impulse to refinement perceptible afterwards through several generations.

There has been a period like this in the history of nearly all the modern European nations,--one in which a taste for poetical composition was common at court, and among those higher classes of society within whose limits intellectual cultivation was then much confined. In Germany, such a period is found as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the unhappy young Conradin, who perished in 1268 and is commemorated by Dante, being one of the last of the princely company that illustrates it. For Italy, it begins at about the same time, in the Sicilian court; and though discountenanced both by the spirit of the Church, and by the spirit of such commercial republics as Pisa, Genoa, and Florence,--no one of which had then the chivalrous tone that animated, and indeed gave birth, to this early refinement throughout Europe,--it can still be traced down as far as the age of Petrarch.

Of the appearance of such a taste in the South of France, in Catalonia, and in Aragon, with its spread to Castile under the patronage of Alfonso the Wise, notice has already been taken. But now we find it in the heart and in the North of the country, extending, too, into Andalusia and Portugal, full of love and knighthood; and though not without the conceits that distinguished it wherever it appeared, yet sometimes showing touches of nature, and still oftener a graceful ingenuity of art, that have not lost their interest down to our own times. Under its influence was formed that school of poetry which, marked by its most prominent attribute, has been sometimes called the school of the _Minnesingers_, or the poets of love and gallantry;[583] a school which either owed its existence everywhere to the Troubadours of Provence, or took, as it advanced, much of their character. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, its spirit is already perceptible in the Castilian; and, from that time, we have occasionally caught glimpses of it, down to the point at which we are now arrived,--the first years of the reign of John the Second,--when we find it beginning to be colored by an infusion of the Italian, and spreading out into such importance as to require a separate examination.

[583] _Minne_ is the word for _love_ in the “Nibelungenlied” and in the oldest German poetry generally, and is applied occasionally to spiritual and religious affections, but almost always to the love connected with gallantry. There has been a great deal of discussion about its etymology and primitive meanings in the Lexicons of Wachter, Ménage, Adelung, etc.; but it is enough for our purpose to know that the word itself is peculiarly appropriate to the fanciful and more or less conceited school of poetry that everywhere appeared under the influences of chivalry. It is the word that gave birth to the French _mignon_, the English _minion_, etc.

And the first person in the group to whom our notice is attracted, as its proper, central figure, is King John himself. Of him his chronicler said, with much truth, though not quite without flattery, that “he drew all men to him, was very free and gracious, very devout and very bold, and gave himself much to the reading of philosophy and poetry. He was skilled in matters of the Church, tolerably learned in Latin, and a great respecter of such men as had knowledge. He had many natural gifts. He was a lover of music; he played, sung, and made verses; and he danced well.”[584] One who knew him better describes him more skilfully. “He was,” says Fernan Perez de Guzman, “a man who talked with judgment and discretion. He knew other men, and understood who conversed well, wisely, and graciously; and he loved to listen to men of sense, and noted what they said. He spoke and understood Latin. He read well, and liked books and histories, and loved to hear witty rhymes, and knew when they were not well made. He took great solace in gay and shrewd conversation, and could bear his part in it. He loved the chase, and hunting of fierce animals, and was well skilled in all the arts of it. Music, too, he understood, and sung and played; was good in jousting, and bore himself well in tilting with reeds.”[585]

[584] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, Año 1454, c. 2.

[585] Generaciones y Semblanzas, Cap. 33. Diego de Valera, who, like Guzman, just cited, had much personal intercourse with the king, gives a similar account of him, in a style no less natural and striking. “He was,” says that chronicler, “devout and humane; liberal and gentle; tolerably well taught in the Latin tongue; bold, gracious, and of winning ways. He was tall of stature, and his bearing was regal, with much natural ease. Moreover, he was a good musician; sang, played, and danced; and wrote good verses [_trobaua muy bien_]. Hunting pleased him much; he read gladly books of philosophy and poetry, and was learned in matters belonging to the Church.” Crónica de Hyspaña, Salamanca, 1495, folio, f. 89.

How much poetry he wrote we do not know. His physician says, “The king recreates himself with writing verses”;[586] and others repeat the fact. But the chief proof of his skill that has come down to our times is to be found in the following lines, in the Provençal manner, on the falsehood of his lady.[587]

[586] Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, Ep. 20.

[587] They are commonly printed with the Works of Juan de Mena, as in the edition of Seville, 1534, folio, f. 104, but are often found elsewhere.

Amor, yo nunca pensé, Que tan poderoso eras, Que podrias tener maneras Para trastornar la fé, Fasta agora que lo sé.

Pensaba que conocido Te debiera yo tener, Mas no pudiera creer Que fueras tan mal sabido.

Ni jamas no lo pensé, Aunque poderoso eras, Que podrias tener maneras Para trastornar la fé, Fasta agora que lo sé.

O Love, I never, never thought Thy power had been so great, That thou couldst change my fate, By changes in another wrought, Till now, alas! I know it.

I thought I knew thee well, For I had known thee long; But though I felt thee strong, I felt not all thy spell.

Nor ever, ever had I thought Thy power had been so great, That thou couldst change my fate, By changes in another wrought, Till now, alas! I know it.

Among those who most interested themselves in the progress of poetry in Spain, and labored most directly to introduce it at the court of Castile, the person first in rank after the king was his near kinsman, Henry, Marquis of Villena, born in 1384, and descended in the paternal line from the royal house of Aragon, and in the maternal from that of Castile.[588] “In early youth,” says one who knew him well, “he was inclined to the sciences and the arts, rather than to knightly exercises, or even to affairs, whether of the state or the Church; for, without any master, and none constraining him to learn, but rather hindered by his grandfather, who would have had him for a knight, he did, in childhood, when others are wont to be carried to their schools by force, turn himself to learning against the good-will of all; and so high and so subtile a wit had he, that he learned any science or art to which he addicted himself, in such wise, that it seemed as if it were done by force of nature.”[589]

[588] His family, at the time of his birth, possessed the only marquisate in the kingdom. Salazar de Mendoza, Orígen de las Dignidades Seglares de Castilla y Leon, Toledo, 1618, folio, Lib. III. c. xii.

[589] Fernan Perez de Guzman, Gen. y Semblanzas, Cap. 28.

But his rank and position brought him into the affairs of the world and the troubles of the times, however little he might be fitted to play a part in them. He was made Master of the great military and monastic Order of Calatrava, but, owing to irregularities in his election, was ultimately ejected from his place, and left in a worse condition than if he had never received it.[590] In the mean time, he resided chiefly at the court of Castile; but from 1412 to 1414 he was at that of his kinsman, Ferdinand the Just, of Aragon, in honor of whose coronation at Saragossa he composed an allegorical drama, which is unhappily lost. Afterwards, he accompanied that monarch to Barcelona, where, as we have seen, he did much to restore and sustain the poetical school called the Consistory of the Gaya Sciencia. When, however, he lost his place as Master of the Order of Calatrava, he sunk into obscurity. The Regency of Castile, willing to make him some amends for his losses, gave him the poor lordship of Iniesta in the bishopric of Cuenca; and there he spent the last twenty years of his life in comparative poverty, earnestly devoted to such studies as were known and fashionable in his time. He died while on a visit at Madrid, in 1434; the last of his great family.[591]

[590] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, Año 1407, Cap. 4, and 1434, Cap. 8, where his character is pithily given in the following words: “Este caballero fue muy grande letrado é supo muy poco en lo que le cumplia.” In the “Comedias Escogidas” (Madrid, 4to, Tom. IX., 1657) is a poor play entitled “El Rey Enrique el Enfermo, de seis Ingenios,” in which that unhappy king, contrary to the truth of history, is represented as making the Marquis of Villena Master of Calatrava, in order to dissolve his marriage and obtain his wife. Who were the six wits that invented this calumny does not appear.

[591] Zurita, Anales de Aragon, Lib. XIV. c. 22. The best notice of the Marquis of Villena is in Juan Antonio Pellicer, “Biblioteca de Traductores Españoles,” (Madrid, 1778, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 58-76,) to which, however, the accounts in Antonio (Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Lib. X. c. 3) and Mariana (Hist., Lib. XX. c. 6) should be added. The character of a bold, unscrupulous, ambitious man, given to Villena by Larra, in his novel entitled “El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente,” published at Madrid, about 1835, has no proper foundation in history.

Among his favorite studies, besides poetry, history, and elegant literature, were philosophy and the mathematics, astrology, and alchemy. But in an age of great ignorance and superstition, such pursuits were not indulged in without rebuke. Don Enrique, therefore, like others, was accounted a necromancer; and so deeply did this belief strike its roots, that a popular tradition of his guilt has survived in Spain nearly or quite down to our own age.[592] The effects, at the time, were yet more unhappy and absurd. A large and rare collection of books that he left behind him excited alarm, immediately after his death. “Two cart-loads of them,” says one claimed to have been his contemporary and friend, “were carried to the king, and because it was said they related to magic and unlawful arts, the king sent them to Friar Lope de Barrientos;[593] and Friar Lope, who cares more to be about the Prince than to examine matters of necromancy, burnt above a hundred volumes, of which he saw no more than the king of Morocco did, and knew no more than the Dean of Ciudad Rodrigo; for many men now-a-days make themselves the name of learned by calling others ignorant; but it is worse yet when men make themselves holy by calling others necromancers.”[594] Juan de Mena, to whom the letter containing this statement was addressed, offered a not ungraceful tribute to the memory of Villena in three of his three hundred _coplas_;[595] and the Marquis of Santillana, distinguished for his love of letters, wrote a separate poem on the occasion of his noble friend’s death, placing him, after the fashion of his age and country, above all Greek, above all Roman fame.[596]

[592] Pellicer speaks of the traditions of Villena’s necromancy as if still current in his time (loc. cit. p. 65). How absurd some of them were may be seen in a note of Pellicer to his edition of Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 49,) and in the Dissertation of Feyjoó, “Teatro Crítico” (Madrid, 1751, 8vo, Tom. VI. Disc. ii. sect. 9). Mariana evidently regarded the Marquis as a dealer in the black arts, (Hist., Lib. XIX. c. 8,) or, at least, chose to have it thought he did.

[593] Lope de Barrientos was confessor to John II., and perhaps his knowledge of these very books led him to compose a treatise against Divination, which has never been printed. (Antonio, Bib. Vetus, Lib. X. c. 11,) but of which I have ample extracts, through the kindness of D. Pascual de Gayangos, and in which the author says that among the books burned was the one called “Raziel,” from the name of one of the angels who guarded the entrance to Paradise, and taught the art of divination to a son of Adam, from whose traditions the book in question was compiled. It may be worth while to add, that this Barrientos was a Dominican, one of the order of monks to whom, thirty years afterwards, Spain was chiefly indebted for the Inquisition, which soon bettered his example by burning, not only books, but men. He died in 1469, having filled, at different times, some of the principal offices in the kingdom.

[594] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, Epist. lxvi.

[595] Coplas 126-128.

[596] It is found in the “Cancionero General,” 1573, (ff. 34-37,) and is a Vision in imitation of Dante’s.

But though the unhappy Marquis of Villena may have been in advance of his age, as far as his studies and knowledge were concerned, still the few of his works now known to us are far from justifying the whole of the reputation his contemporaries gave him. His “Arte Cisoria,” or Art of Carving, is proof of this. It was written in 1423, at the request of his friend, the chief carver of John the Second, and begins, in the most formal and pedantic manner, with the creation of the world and the invention of all the arts, among which the art of carving is made early to assume a high place. Then follows an account of what is necessary to make a good carver; after which we have, in detail, the whole mystery of the art, as it ought to be practised at the royal table. It is obvious from sundry passages of the work, that the Marquis himself was by no means without a love for the good cheer he so carefully explains,--a circumstance, perhaps, to which he owed the gout that we are told severely tormented his latter years. But in its style and composition this specimen of the didactic prose of the age has little value, and can be really curious only to those who are interested in the history of manners.[597]

[597] The “Arte Cisoria ó Tratado del Arte de cortar del Cuchillo” was first printed under the auspices of the Library of the Escurial, (Madrid, 1766, 4to,) from a manuscript in that precious collection marked with the fire of 1671. It is not likely soon to come to a second edition. If I were to compare it with any contemporary work, it would be with the old English “Treatyse on Fyshynge with an Angle,” sometimes attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, but it lacks the few literary merits found in that little work.

Similar remarks might probably be made about his treatise on the “Arte de Trobar,” or the “Gaya Sciencia”; a sort of Art of Poetry, addressed to the Marquis of Santillana, in order to carry into his native Castile some of the poetical skill possessed by the Troubadours of the South. But we have only an imperfect abstract of it, accompanied, indeed, with portions of the original work, which are interesting as being the oldest on its subject in the language.[598] More interesting, however, than either would be his translations of the Rhetorica of Cicero, the Divina Commedia of Dante, and the Æneid of Virgil. But of the first we have lost all trace. Of the second we know only that it was in prose, and addressed to his friend and kinsman the Marquis of Santillana. And of the Æneid there remain but seven books, with a commentary to three of them, from which a few extracts have been published.[599]

[598] All we have of this “Arte de Trobar” is in Mayans y Siscar, “Orígenes de la Lengua Española” (Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 321-342). It seems to have been written in 1433.

[599] The best account of them is in Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, loc. cit. I am sorry to add, that the specimen given of the translation from Virgil, though short, affords some reason to doubt whether the Marquis was a good Latin scholar. It is in prose, and the Preface sets forth that it was written at the earnest request of John, King of Navarre, whose curiosity about Virgil had been excited by the reverential notices of him in Dante’s “Divina Commedia.” See, also, Memorias de la Academia de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 455, note. In the King’s Library at Paris is a prose translation of the _last_ nine books of Virgil’s Æneid, made, in 1430, by a Juan de Villena, who qualifies himself as a “_servant_ of Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza.” (Ochoa, Catálogo de Manuscritos, Paris, 1844, 4to, p. 375.) It would be curious to ascertain whether the two have any connection, as both seem to be connected with the Marquis of Santillana.

Villena’s reputation, therefore, must rest chiefly on his “Trabajos de Hercules,” or The Labors of Hercules, written to please one of his Catalonian friends, Pero Pardo, who asked to have an explanation of the virtues and achievements of Hercules; always a great national hero in Spain. The work seems to have been much admired and read in manuscript, and, after printing was introduced into Spain, it went through two editions before the year 1500; but all knowledge of it was so completely lost soon afterwards, that the most intelligent authors of Spanish literary history down to our own times have generally spoken of it as a poem. It is, however, in fact, a short prose treatise, filling, in the first edition--that of 1483--thirty large leaves. It is divided into twelve chapters, each devoted to one of the twelve great labors of Hercules, and each subdivided into four parts: the first part containing the common mythological story of the labor under consideration; the second, an explanation of this story as if it were an allegory; the third, the historical facts upon which it is conjectured to have been founded; and the fourth, a moral application of the whole to some one of twelve conditions, into which the author very arbitrarily divides the human race, beginning with princes and ending with women.

Thus, in the fourth chapter, after telling the commonly received tale, or, as he calls it, “the naked story,” of the Garden of the Hesperides, he gives us an allegory of it, showing that Libya, where the fair garden is placed, is human nature, dry and sandy; that Atlas, its lord, is the wise man, who knows how to cultivate his poor desert; that the garden is the garden of knowledge, divided according to the sciences; that the tree in the midst is philosophy; that the dragon watching the tree is the difficulty of study; and that the three Hesperides are Intelligence, Memory, and Eloquence. All this and more he explains under the third head, by giving the facts which he would have us suppose constituted the foundation of the first two; telling us that King Atlas was a wise king of the olden time, who first arranged and divided all the sciences; and that Hercules went to him and acquired them, after which he returned and imparted his acquisitions to King Eurystheus. And, finally, in the fourth part of the chapter, he applies it all to the Christian priesthood and the duty of this priesthood to become learned and explain the Scriptures to the ignorant laity; as if there were any possible analogy between them and Hercules and his fables.[600]

[600] The “Trabajos de Hercules” is one of the rarest books in the world, though there are editions of it of 1483 and 1499, and perhaps one of 1502. The copy which I use is of the first edition, and belongs to Don Pascual de Gayangos. It was printed at Çamora, by Centenera, having been completed, as the colophon tells us, on the 15th of January, 1483. It fills thirty leaves in folio, double columns, and is illustrated by eleven curious woodcuts, well done for the period and country. The mistakes made about it are remarkable, and render the details I have given of some consequence. Antonio, (Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 222,) Velasquez, (Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana, 4to, Málaga, 1754, p. 49,) L. F. Moratin, (Obras, ed. de la Academia, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 114,) and even Torres Amat, in his “Memorias,” (Barcelona, 1836, 8vo, p. 669,) all speak of it _as a poem_. Of the edition printed at Burgos, in 1499, and mentioned in Mendez, Typog. Esp., (p. 289,) I have never seen a copy, and, except the above-mentioned copy of the first edition and an imperfect one in the Royal Library at Paris, I know of none of any edition;--so rare is it become.

The book, however, is worth the trouble of reading. It is, no doubt, full of the faults peculiar to its age, and abounds in awkward citations from Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and other Latin authors, then so rarely found and so little known in Spain, that they added materially to the interest and value of the treatise.[601] But the allegory is sometimes amusing; the language is almost always good, and occasionally striking by fine archaisms; and the whole has a dignity about it which is not without its appropriate power and grace.[602]

[601] See Heeren, Geschichte der Class. Litteratur im Mittelalter, Göttingen, 8vo, Tom. II., 1801, pp. 126-131. From the Advertencia to the Marquis of Villena’s translation of Virgil, it would seem that even Virgil was hardly known in Spain in the beginning of the fifteenth century.

[602] Another work of the Marquis of Villena is mentioned in Sempere y Guarinos, “Historia del Luxo de España,” (Madrid, 1788, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 176-179,) called “El Triunfo de las Donas,” and is said to have been found by him in a manuscript of the fifteenth century, “with other works of the same wise author.” The extract given by Sempere is on the fops of the time, and is written with spirit.

From the Marquis of Villena himself, it is natural for us to turn to one of his followers, known only as “Macias el Enamorado,” or Macias the Lover; a name which constantly recurs in Spanish literature with a peculiar meaning, given by the tragical history of the poet who bore it. He was a Galician gentleman, who served the Marquis of Villena as one of his esquires, and became enamoured of a maiden attached to the same princely household with himself. But the lady, though he won her love, was married, under the authority that controlled both of them, to a knight of Porcuna. Still Macias in no degree restrained his passion, but continued to express it to her in his verses, as he had done before. The husband was naturally offended, and complained to the Marquis, who, after in vain rebuking his follower, used his full power as Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, and cast Macias into prison. But there he only devoted himself more passionately to the thoughts of his lady, and, by his persevering love, still more provoked her husband, who, secretly following him to his prison at Arjonilla, and watching him one day as he chanced to be singing of his love and his sufferings, was so stung by jealousy, that he cast a dart through the gratings of the window, and killed the unfortunate poet with the name of his lady still trembling on his lips.

The sensation produced by the death of Macias was such as belongs only to an imaginative age, and to the sympathy felt for one who perished because he was both a Troubadour and a lover. All men who desired to be thought cultivated mourned his fate. His few poems in his native Galician--only one of which, and that of moderate merit, is preserved entire--became generally known, and were generally admired. His master, the Marquis of Villena, Rodriguez del Padron, who was his countryman, Juan de Mena, the great court poet, and the still greater Marquis of Santillana, all bore testimony, at the time or immediately afterwards, to the general sorrow. Others followed their example; and the custom of referring constantly to him and to his melancholy fate was continued in ballads and popular songs, until, in the poetry of Lope de Vega, Calderon, and Quevedo, the name of Macias passed into a proverb, and became synonymous with the highest and tenderest love.[603]

[603] The best account of Macias and of his verses is in Bellermann’s “Alte Liederbücher der Portuguiesen” (Berlin, 1840, 4to, pp. 24-26); to which may well be added, Argote de Molina, “Nobleza del Andaluzia,” (Sevilla, 1588, folio, Lib. II. c. 148, f. 272,) Castro, “Biblioteca Española,” (Tom. I. p. 312,) and Cortina’s notes to Bouterwek (p. 195). But the proofs of his early and wide-spread fame are to be sought in Sanchez, “Poesías Anteriores” (Tom. I. p. 138); in the “Cancionero General,” 1535 (ff. 67, 91); in Juan de Mena, Copla 105, with the notes on it in the edition of Mena’s Works, 1566; in “Celestina,” Act II.; in several plays of Calderon, such as “Para vencer Amor querer vencerlo,” and “Qual es mayor Perfeccion”; in Góngora’s ballads; and in many passages of Lope de Vega and Cervantes. There are notices of Macias also in Ochoa, “Manuscritos Españoles,” Paris, 1844, 4to, p. 505. In Vol. XLVIII. of “Comedias Escogidas,” (1704, 4to,) is an anonymous play on his adventures and death, entitled “El Español mas Amante,” in which the unhappy Macias is killed at the moment the Marquis of Villena arrives to release him from prison;--and in our own times, Larra has made him the hero of his “Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente,” already referred to, and of a tragedy that bears his name, “Macias,” neither of them true to the facts of history.

##