SPAIN (POETRY AND LITERATURE.) 



345 



larly inimical to thrs classic Italian school. Al 

 attempts to imitate the romantic epic of the Italians 

 in Spanish literature failed ; and, in fact, even the 

 later attempts of the Spaniards in the epic have 

 been unsuccessful, if we except the Araucana of 

 Alonzo de Ercilla y Zuniga (ahout 1556), which 

 celebrates the conquest of a brave tribe of American 

 Indians. But the fairest flower of the Spanish 

 Parnassus now opened. We mean its drama. The 

 history of this, henceforth, embraces nearly all the 

 history of Spanish poetry. The drama of Spain 

 first became independent in the time of John II. 

 It originally proceeded from the religious specta- 

 cles ; and a great part of its productions has always 

 remained of a religious character. 



In connexion with the Spanish drama, the old 

 Art of Poetry of Juan de Cueva is particularly de- 

 serving of attention. This drama does not recog- 

 nize the Grecian distinction of comedy and tragedy, 

 but its peculiar divisions are the comedias divinas 

 and comedias humanas. The former have been di- 

 vided, since Lope de Vega, into histories of the lives 

 of the saints (vidas de santos); and autos sacramen- 

 tales, plays which were performed upon Corpus 

 Christi days, and had for their object the comme- 

 moration of the sacrament. The comedias humanas 

 consist of three classes : 1. The heroic, more pro- 

 perly historical in their nature; 2. pieces of the 

 cloak and the sword {comedias de capa y espada); 

 drawn from high life, and full of the most compli- 

 cated intrigue; 3. the comedias defiguron, in which 

 vain adventurers or ladies play the chief parts. 

 With these arose, too, the preludes (loos'), and the 

 interludes, mostly comic (entremeses), and usually ac- 

 companied with music and dancing (saynetes}. If 

 we estimate the modern dramatic art according to 

 its true romantic character, we soon see that two 

 nations have reached the highest excellence in it, 

 each in its own way .the English in Shakspeare, 

 and the Spanish in Lope de Vega and Calderon. 

 The religious comedy is peculiar to the Spaniards; 

 and Calderon's Devotion to the Cross proves of 

 what elevation it is capable. This grave people, 

 too, has produced the most original comedies; and 

 its theatre has become a fund of comic intrigues for 

 the writers of the rest of Europe. In the first half 

 of the sixteenth century, after a learned party had 

 attempted, without success, to imitate the Grecian 

 and Roman drama, Torres Naharro appeared, and 

 laid the foundation of true Spanish comedy; and 

 Lope de Rueda, called, by Cervantes, the great, fol- 

 lowed, with pieces in prose. The theatres of Spain 

 at that time consisted, according to Cervantes, of 

 some boards and benches; and the wardrobe of the 

 actors, with the decorations, could be packed into 

 a bag. - From rude beginnings, among which we 



must not omit the two tragedies in the history of 

 Ines de Castro, by the dominican Bermudez, the 

 drama unfolded itself, until the time of Cervantes, 

 the rival of Lope de Vega. Lope de Vega (born 

 1562) held the highest rank before the appearance of 

 Calderon. In all the above-mentioned kinds of 

 Spanish comedy, he obtained unbounded applause; 

 and his celebrated plays, with the exception of the 

 autos, and the preludes and interludes, fill alone 

 twenty-five volumes. He possessed an inexhausti- 

 ble power of inventing complicated intrigues, but 

 wanted the highest kind of refinement. A crowd 

 of imitators surrounded him (among whom we may 

 mention Mira de Mescua) ; but the drama was car- 

 ried to its highest perfection by the immortal Pedro 

 Calderon de la Barca, who was born in 1660. He 



was the friend and poet of Philip IV., who had a 

 great fondness for the stage, and wrote himself for 

 it. (See Calderon.') His example also allured a 

 swarm of imitators; but Sob's, Moreto, Molina, 

 Roxas de Castro, and others, should be mentioned 

 with respect. With the monarchy sank the poetic 

 standard. With the French race of sovereigns the 

 French taste also was introduced into the Spanish 

 theatre ; and it was not till the second half of the 

 eighteenth century that Vincente Garcia de la 

 Huerta attempted to revive the old Spanish theatre. 

 He published his Teatro Espanol (16 vols.) in 1785 

 a collection of the best old plays of Spain . Among 

 the late tragic poets are De Moratin and Quintana ; 

 among the comic, Ramon de la Cerucycano and 

 Commella. 



In one of the finest departments of works of fic- 

 tion the romance Spain has accomplished much. 

 The romance of chivalry early received a peculiar 

 character in the Amadis (probably by Vasco Lo- 

 beira, in the fourteenth century), and flourished for 

 a long time. Its principal productions we may best 

 learn from the judgment passed on them by the 

 curate and barber in Don Quixote. Diego de Men- 

 doza, in his Lazarillo de Tormes, furnished the 

 model of the romances of low life (del gusto picar- 

 esco), which afterwards became so numerous, and 

 of which Don Guzman de Alfarache, by Mattheo 

 Aleman (1599), is one of the most distinguished. 

 A flood of other tales appeared about the same time, 

 among which must be mentioned those of Timoneda 

 and Perez de Montalvan. But the immortal Mi- 

 guel de Cervantes Saavedra (born in 1547), in his 

 Don Quixote, surpasses all his predecessors and 

 followers. In this, Spanish prose found its per- 

 ? ection; and the work makes an epoch in the his- 

 tory of romance a circumstance which would not 

 have been so much overlooked had it not been cus- 

 tomary to consider the knight of La Mancha only 

 as a subject of jest, and to put out of sight the fact 

 that the work affords the most vivid picture of hu- 

 man life. With the addition of the other works of 

 Cervantes, the circle of poetic creation in Spain 

 may be said to be completed. The continual de- 

 cline of Spanish literature, with the decline of the 

 state, has been already mentioned. The brothers 

 Argensola, with the title of the Spanish Horaces, 

 many writers of epic, pastoral and lyric poetry, of 

 moderate merit, Espinel, Morales, the Figueroas, 

 Sousa, Virues, Montalvan, can scarcely be distin- 

 guished above the increasing deluge. The usual 

 appearances of a declining poetry and literature are 

 observed here. The ingenious, but affected, Louis 

 de Gongora de Argote (after 1600) soon carried a 

 bombastic and strained mode of writing to a great 

 height, and found many followers both in poetry 

 and prose. Spain had, likewise, at this time, as 



Italy at an earlier period, her Marinists, or concet- 

 tists, and a peculiar class, called culturists, who 

 veiled their want of genius in turgidity and affecta- 

 tion. They were not, indeed, without opponents. 

 The celebrated satirist Francis de Quevedo Ville- 

 gas (at the beginning of the seventeenth century) 

 bitterly assailed the Marinists ; and he, as well as 

 the Spanish Anacreon, Stephen Manuel de Ville- 

 gas, upheld, in some measure, the old Spanish sim- 

 plicity. But the time of decline had come; and 

 the introduction of the French style, under the 

 Bourbons, could only add to the degradation. In 

 the department of criticism, we must mention the 

 Poetica of Ignatius de Luzan (1737, folio,) the 

 founder of the French school. In philosophy, the- 



