OF LITERATURE. 



liii 



ancient classics which she had recalled from the 

 tomb. It is said that the advice of a Venetian 

 ambassador first drew the famous BOSCAN * to an 

 acquaintance with the Italian taste. His friend 

 GARCILASO DK LA VEGA f shared with him the 

 task of refining Spanish poetry according to the 

 standard he had set up. DIEGO DE MENDOZA $ 

 " the great historian, poet, soldier, and states- 

 man," as he is styled by the vigorous pen of Mr 

 Lockhart, took the same side ; and the opposi- 

 tion offered, the scornful reproaches showered 

 upon them, by the disciples of the old Gastilian 

 school, were unable to defeat an enterprise thus 

 begun and thus seconded. Let us bestow a few 

 sentences on this triumvirate. 



Boscan was a bold innovator. He availed 

 himself, indeed, although born in Catalonia, of 

 the Castilian dialect, which the union of Castile 

 and Aragon had made the language of all 

 Spain. But forsaking the national style of his 

 earliest compositions, he introduced into the 

 second book of his poems, consisting of those 

 songs and sonnets, by which he became renowned, 

 the Italian versification, in the whole compass of 

 its rhythm, rhyme, and metres. The Italian 

 spirit he sought to imbibe by imitating Petrarch : 

 and, in point of expression, the imitation is very 

 successful ; yet the Spaniard has more heat and 

 force, more of the struggle of passion against 

 reason, than we find in the melodious reveries of 

 the Tuscan poet. 



The few but exquisite poems of Garcilaso were 

 well entitled to appear in the same volume with 

 those of Boscan. For he, likewise, emulated 

 Petrarch ; and his sensibility, his delicacy, per- 

 haps also his false wit, bring him nearer than his 

 friendly rival to their common model. Garcilaso 

 is even better known as having taught his country- 

 men the soft and melancholy notes of the pastoral 

 reed. Here, too, he followed, or wished to 

 follow, at once Virgil and Sannazaro ; and was 

 himself followed, but not overtaken, by a host of 

 Spanish bucolics. 



Diego de Mendoza should rank above his 

 brother triumvirs. The Spaniards, in assigning 

 him the lowest place, regard only the inferior 

 sweetness of his sonnets : but Mendoza carried 

 into other branches of literature the forcible and 

 various talents which empowered him to play so 

 prominent a part in public life. Among other 

 things, he polished and perfected the old Castilian 

 redondilla : he composed, in old age and retire- 

 ment, a history of the Moorish re volt, || whose 



A. D. 1500-1544. t A. D. 15001536. 



J A. D. 15001575. Notes to Don Quixote, Vol. I. 3C3. 

 || A. D. 1568. 



consummate elegance hardly atoned, in the eyes 

 of the Spanish court, for the boldness of its de- 

 tails : and, better than all, while yet a student 

 at Salamanca, he founded by his comic romance, 

 Lazarillo de Tormes, a species of fiction that has 

 been subsequently enriched by some of the first 

 writers of Europe. In classical literature, Lu- 

 cian and Petronius may be said just to graze the 

 edge of this domain ; but neither of them exhibits 

 such an intimate knowledge of man, and of a 

 peculiar people, as is here revealed by a Spanish 

 youth before emerging from the precincts of an 

 university. This extraordinary precocity of 

 Mendoza was an omen of the future statesman : 

 we fear we must add, in his case, of the future 

 knave. 



The Spaniards dwell with complacency upon 

 other literary names, pertaining to the same 

 period with the three which have been now 

 singled out. They boast of their divine lyric, 

 for so they term him, Ferdinand de Herrera ;* 

 of the harmonious, religious, and withal Horatian 

 Ponce de Leon ;f of Miranda's $ Castilian ec- 

 logues ; of Montemayor's pastoral romance, 

 a work as much admired and copied, at its first 

 appearance, as the Amadis had been before, of 

 Ercilla's || Araucana, an epic whose merits were 

 wildly exaggerated by Voltaire. But an Eu- 

 ropean reputation, a place in the memories and 

 hearts of many different races, was reserved for 

 a genius of loftier grade than these. The year 

 1549 was made memorable, in Spanish story, by 

 the birth of CERVANTES. 



Few readers need to be told that the author 

 of Don Quixote wrote many other books, in a 

 variety of styles, and with various degrees of 

 success. But with that great production it would 

 be as absurd to compare the other fruits of the 

 same pen, as it would be to comment at large 

 upon a work familiar to every school-boy. We 

 believe, moreover, that the real aim and merits 

 of Don Quixote are very generally appreciated. 

 If it be read once for the mere adventures, so 

 delightfully combining the romantic with the 

 humorous, further perusals, (and who is content 

 with only one ?) seldom fail to beget veneration 

 for that genius, which could unite with the finest 

 and most exterminating satire upon books of 

 chivalry a manly and loyal sense of all that is 

 generous, sublime, and wise, in the character of 

 the true cavalier ; which could expand the 

 rambles of a crazy gentleman and his attendant 

 into a picture of Spain and its inhabitants, so 



* A. D. 15001578, t A. D. 1527 '591. 



t A. D. 14941598. A. D. 1520-1561. 



li A. D. 15331583. 



