482 Sc^i^evill — Studies in Cervantes. 



jKTuiiez de Toledo, was frequently printed in tlie early sixteenth cen- 

 tury.^ Some of the stanzas have obscure references to the Aeneid, 

 which are generally elucidated at length by !N^unez in glosses giving 

 partial resumes of the story of Aeneas, as for example stanzas 

 xxviii and xxxi, in which some of his voyages and the descent into 

 the lower world are described; or Ixxxviii with its allusion to the 

 contest at archery of the fifth book of the Aeneid; or clxvi, which 

 speaks of Aeneas's departure from Carthage and of some of his 

 subsequent wanderings. In the Coronacion of the same poet Mena, 

 also printed frequently with glosses, there are similar references, 

 as in stanza xlviii, where the romance of Aeneas and Dido is told. 

 In fact, in the fifteenth century, when Yirgil was not yet known 

 so widely as in the following age, the fourth book of the Aeneid 

 left the most apparent trace. A volume of Opusculos literarios- 

 contains, among other productions of the fifteenth century, a poem 

 by Juan Rodriguez del Padron, also a poet of the reign of John II. 

 Its title is Decir contra el amor del mundo (probably written about 

 1464), and one of its stanzas tells of Dido's tragic end.^ But Rod- 

 riguez del Padron was probably not a student of Virgil, or he was 

 not acquainted with his epic outside of this story, for the poem, 

 short as it is, has a reference to Virgil the Magician,* which may 

 imply that he did not know the difference between the latter per- 

 sonage and the author of the romance of Dido.^ 



With the spread of humanism, however, a deeper appreciation 

 followed, and the influence of classic literature on the Spanish poets 

 of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is everywhere 

 apparent. Virgil is still in the lead, but with Ovid almost as 

 prominent. Fray Luis de Leon's love for the former is well known : 

 how he translated with characteristic charm the Eclogues and one 



^I have before me an edition of Sevilla, 1517 (No. 3008 of Gallard. s 

 Ensayo de una Bihlioteca espafiola), first rdition Sevilla, 1499. 



''Printed in Vol. XXIX of the "Sociedad de Bibliufilos EspaSoles"; 

 on the poet, of. Rennert, in the Zeitschrift fiir Romanische Pliilologie, Vol. 

 XVII, "Lieder des Juan Rodriguez del Padrun"; and Men^ndez y Pelayo, 

 Origenes, op. cit., p. cccv on el Siervo libre de amor. 



' Cf. Opusculos, etc., op. cit., p. 369. 



*Cf. op. cit., p. 3G8. 



■^This confusion is manifest in many writers and may be an explanation 

 of that peculiar i)opular attitude toward the Aeneid, which held it to 

 be a magic book capable of deciding one's fate. On the "sors Virgilianes" 

 cf. p. 477, n. 2, above. 



