LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



153 



the union of Arragon and Castile, and the 

 transfer of the seat of the government to I 

 .Madrid, the Castilian became the court lan- 

 guage, and thus received a new polish and 

 elegance. The first author of this period was ! 

 Boscan, an imitator of Petrarch, in some re- 

 spects, but a poet of much native fervor and 

 passion. Garcilaso de la Vega, the friend of | 

 Boscan, surpasses him in the sweetness of his 

 verses and in their susceptibility and imagina- 

 tion. He was a master of pastoral poetry, and j 

 his eclogues are considered models of that j 

 species of writing. His life was actively 

 devoted to the profession of arms. He fought 

 under the banner of Charles XT. in Tunis, | 

 Sicily, and Provence, and was finally killed j 

 while storming the walls of Nice. Don i 

 Diego de Mendoza, one of the most cele- 

 brated politicians and generals of that pe- 

 riod, is generally awarded a place next to 

 Garcilaso. He was a patron of classical liter- 

 ature, and the author of a history of the 

 Moorish Revolt in the Alpuxarra, and a His- j 

 tory of the War of Granada, but a man of 

 cruel and tyrannical character. Montemayor, 

 who flourished at the same time, attained 

 much celebrity from his pastoral of Diana. 

 These authors during the reign of Charles V. 

 gave Spanish poetry its most graceful and cor- 

 rect form, and have since been regarded as 

 models of classic purity. The great masters 

 of Spanish literature, however, were reserved 

 for the succeeding generation. Herrera and 

 Ponce de Leon, lyrical poets, fill the interval I 

 between the age of Garcilaso de la Vega and ; 

 Cervantes. Herrera is considered the first 

 purely lyrical poet of Spain. Ponce de Leon, 

 who was imprisoned five years by the Inquisi- j 

 tion for having translated the Song of Solo- 

 mon, was the author of several volumes of 

 religions poetry. 



Two of the brightest stars of Spanish litera- 

 lure, Cervantes and Lope de Vega, were con- 

 temporaries, and were followed in the next 

 generation by the third, Calderon. Cervantes 

 was born in 1549. He traveled throughout 

 Italy, lost a hand at the battle of Lepanto, 

 and was five years a slave in Barbary. He i 

 commenced his literary career by the writing 

 of comedies and tragedies, the first of which, i 

 Galatea, was published in 1584. Thirty of his j 

 comedies have been entirely lost. His great 

 work, Don Quixote, was published in 1605, and 

 was immediately translated into all the lan- 

 guages of Europe. From this time until his , 

 death in 1616, he wrote many novels and : 

 comedies. The tiagedy of Xumantia and the j 

 comedy of Life in Algiers are the only two of 

 his plays which have been preserved. To this 

 same period belongs Don Alonzo de Ercilla, 



whose epic of La .1 rarnnno was written during 

 the hardships of a campaign against the A ra- 

 dian iau Indians in Chile. Lope de Vega was 

 born iu 1562, and after a life of the most mar- 

 velous performances died in 1635. He was a 

 prodigy of learning, imagination, and lan- 

 guage. Out of eighteen hundred dramas 

 which he wrote, one hundred were each pro- 

 duced in the space of a single day. His 

 detached poems have been printed in twenty- 

 seven volumes in quarto. Very few of his 

 plays are now read or performed. The only 

 remaining authors of eminence during this 

 period are Quevedo, who wrote several moral 

 and religious works and three volumes of 

 lyrics, pastorals, and sonnets ; Villegas, an 

 Anacreonic poet ; and the Jesuit Mariana, 

 author of a History of Spain. The life of 

 Calderon de la Barca, the illustrious head of 

 the Spanish drama, extended from 1600 to 

 1687. His plays are of four kinds : sacred 

 dramas, from Scriptural sources ; historical 

 dramas ; classic dramas ; and pictures of 

 society and manners. The most celebrated 

 are, The Constant Prince, El Secreto a Voces 

 and El Magico Prodigioso. A number of 

 small dramatists were contemporary with Cal- 

 deron, but with his death Spanish literature 

 declined, and has since producedjew eminent 

 names. Luyando, councilor of state, pub- 

 lished two tragedies in 1750, and in 1758 

 appeared The Life of Friar Gerund, by Salazar 

 a work in the style of Don Quixote, but 

 directed against the clergy instead of the chiv- 

 alry. It abounds with wit and satire, and is 

 perhaps the best Spanish prose work of the last 

 century. Toward the close of the century 

 Huerta achieved considerable reputation by 

 his attempts to revive the Spanish drama. 

 Tomas de Yriarte published in 1782 his Lit- 

 erary Fables, and a few years later Melende/, 

 appeared as the author of two volumes of idyls 

 and pastorals. Both of these authors diplay 

 considerable lyric genius. 



The new life and health infused into litera- 

 ture in the age of Charles III. was checked by 

 the French revolutionary wars in the reign of 

 Charles IV. , and afterwards by the restoration 

 of civil despotism and the Inquisition, brought 

 again into the country by the return of the 

 Bourbon dynasty in 1814. Amidst the vio- 

 lence and confusion of the reign of Ferdinand 

 VII. (1814-1833), elegant letters could hardly 

 hope to find shelter or resting place. Nearly 

 every poet and prose writer, known as such at 

 the end of the reign of Charles IV., became 

 involved in the fierce political changes of the 

 time, changes so varied and so opposite, that 

 those who escaped from the consequences of 

 one, were often, on that very account, sure to 



