QUEVEDO VILLEGAS 



531 



place could have tempted him he might have had 

 anything in the minister's gift. He would have 

 been a valuable buttress to an unstable regime, 

 and it was desirable to silence a man who had 

 an awkward knack of telling the truth in a way 

 that brought it home to the public. But Quevedo 

 had no mind to be a favourite's favourite, and all 

 that he could be got to accept was the purely 

 honorary title of secretary to the king. In the 

 winter of 1639 another way of effecting his purpose 

 presented itself to Olivares. A memorial in verse 

 to the king, imploring him in respectful and loyal 

 language to look with his own eyes to the miserable 

 condition of his kingdom, was one day placed in 

 his napkin on the royal table. Quevedo was de- 

 nounced as the author (and no doubt he was, 

 though his biographer, Dr de Tarsia, strives to dis- 

 prove it), and was arrested at night and carried 

 oil' to the convent of San Marcos at Leon, where, 

 heavily ironed, he was lodged in a cell below the 

 level of the river that washes the convent wall. He 

 was soon struck down by an illness, brought on by 

 cold and damp, from which he never recovered. He 

 appealed to Olivares, but Olivares represented the 

 king as implacable. In 1643, however, the count- 

 duke fell from power, the ruthlessness of the king 

 disappeared, and Quevedo was free to return to 

 Madrid, broken in health and fortune ; all his 

 property within reach had been seized with his 

 books and papers. He remained a year in Madrid, 

 and then went home to La Torre to die ; but the 

 next year hU sufferings became so acute that 

 he 1 1 ii< I to move to Villanueva de los Infantes for 

 medical aid, and there death released him in Sep- 

 tember 1645. 



Quevedo was one of the most prolific Spanish 

 poets, and was ranked by hU contemporaries 

 with Juan de Mena, Garcilaso, Lope, and Gon- 

 gora; but he wrote no poetry for the world. His 

 verses were all written for his friends or for himself, 

 and, except those in the Flares of Espinosa ( 1605), 

 the few pieces published in his life-time were printed 

 without his consent. Poetry was with him a 

 recreation and a solace, ana, according to his 

 nephew, some of his gayest and brightest verses 

 were written in his cell at San Marcos. His poetry 

 therefore is for the most part of an occasional 

 character, and to a great extent made up of what 

 would now be called vers de societe ; sonnets, serious 

 and satirical, form a large portion of it, and light 

 humorous ballads and songs a still larger. His 

 more ambitious work is at times disfigured by 

 conceits, but that it is the work of a true poet no 

 one will dispute. All through life he was at war 

 with the poets of the 'Culto' school, Gongora 

 and his followers ('the scourge of silly poets' 

 Cervantes called him ), and this perhaps may have 

 made him chary of appearing in public as a poet ; 

 Imt if he took no pains to place himself upon the 

 roll of Spanish poets, lie added to it the name of 

 Francisco de la Torre, whose poems he discovered 

 .mil published in 1631. It was for a long time 

 maintained that the discovery was a pretended one ; 

 i nit it is now admitted that he could not have been 

 the author. His place as a dramatist is not so 

 well defined. Almut a dozen of his interludes 

 are extant, but of his comedies, except two of 

 which he was joint-author with Antonio de 

 Mendoza, nothing is known. His prose is even 

 more multifarious than his verse. His first book 

 was a life of St Thomas de Villanueva in 1620 and his 

 last, in 1644, a life of St Paul; and the greater part 

 of his prose is of the same character, as is indicated 

 by the titles : The Patience and Constancy of Job, 

 The Cradle and the Grave, Virtue Militant, The 

 Martyrdom of Marcelo Mastrillo, Instruction how to 

 Die, The Introduction to Devout Life, from St 

 Francis de Sales, and others of the same kind. Of 



his political works the Politico de Dios is the chief ; 

 but he also wrote a Life of Marcus Brutus, to 

 which he was adding a second part when struck 

 down by his last illness, a Letter to Louis XIII., 

 on the war of 1635, and several shorter tracts. In 

 1626, at Saragossa, his brilliant picaresque novel, 

 the Vida del Buscon Pablos, or, as it was called 

 after his death, the Gran Tacano, was printed, 

 apparently, like most of his books, without his 

 permission, and at once took its place beside 

 Guzman de Alfarache; and in 1627 his five 

 Visions, four of which had been written be- 

 tween 1607 and 1610, and the fifth in 1621, were 

 printed in the same way at Barcelona. His 

 friend, Vander Hammen, immediately printed 

 three of them at Saragossa from his own copies, 

 and added the Casa de los locos de Amor ('The 

 Madhouse of Lovers'), which has ever since been 

 wrongly attributed to Quevedo. He himself dis- 

 owned it; it bears no trace of his hand, and it 

 is not printed as his by Vander Hammen, who, 

 moreover, afterwards confessed himself the author. 

 Chiefly for the sake of the vision or apologue of 

 Hell Reformed, a sort of offshoot or sequel to 

 the Politica de Dios, he wished the Visions to 

 appear in an authorised edition at Madrid ; but 

 unluckily they were submitted for examination 

 to the Padre Niseno, a friend of Montalvan, the 

 dramatist, who had a grudge against Quevedo, and 

 to obtain a license he had to consent to barbarous 

 mutilations of his work which in some places make 

 litter nonsense of it ; and it is in this mangled shape 

 the Visions have been printed ever since 1631. He 

 added some short humorous pieces, on the affecta- 

 tions of the Culto school, the use of vulgar slang 

 phrases, silly popular beliefs, and the like ; and, the 

 better to mask the design of the others, he called 

 the volume Juguetes de la Ninez ( ' Playthings ' ), 

 and apologised for the whole as the work of his 

 youth, though the principal piece was written only 

 three years back. The vision or apologue was 

 Quevedo's favourite form of expression ; his 

 peculiar humour and satire are nowhere better 

 seen than in Fortuna con Seso ( ' Fortune Right '), 

 written in 1635, but not printed till 1650, in which 

 Fortune demonstrates by experiment that if strict 

 logic and justice took her place mankind would 

 have a great deal more to complain of. 



The edition of Quevedo's works in the Biblioteca de 

 Autorex EtpttHoles (vols. xxiii. and xlviii., prose, edited 

 by Aureliano Fernandez-Guerra ; vol. Ixix. , verse, edited 

 by Florencio Janer) is the only one that can be said to ap- 

 proach completeness. Many of the pieces in it are printed 

 for the first time The prose is edited with commendable 

 thoroughness and industry ; but Senor Fernandez-Guerra 

 has unfortunately preferred the expurgated text of the 

 Vision! to that which came direct from the hand of 

 Quevedo ; he gives, however, the most important of 

 the variations in hie notes. The volume of verse is 

 less satisfactory, and follows the stupid pedantic arrange- 

 ment of the 17th-century editors. After Quevedo's death 

 editions followed in quick succession, but most of them 

 are slovenly in the extreme as regards editing, paper, and 

 print. A handsome edition in 3 vols. 4to was issued by 

 Foppens (Brussels, 1660-71), and well printed, if not 

 critical ones by Ibarra (6 vols. 8vo, Madrid, 1772), by 

 Sancha ( 11 vols. 8vo, Madrid, 1791-94), and by Castellanos 

 (5 yols. 8vo, illustrated, Madrid, 1841-45); and an 

 admirable selection (which in Quevedo's case is not only 

 a defensible but a desirable form) was published by 

 Villalpando (6 vols. 12mp, Madrid, 1798). 



The earliest translations from Quevedo were into 

 French by the Sieur de la Geneste, who translated the 

 Vilioni in 1633, the Hell Reformed in 1634, and the Vida 

 del Jiuncon, according to Barbier in 1633, or 1C41 

 according to Brunet. His versions are by no means 

 faithful or accurate, but they have the advantage of being 

 based upon Quevedo's original text. From them most of 

 the English versions have been made e.g. Visions; or 

 ffel' I Kingdome, by R, Croshawe (1640); HeU Reformed, 



