XV111 NOTES. 



composed between 1555 and 1563, and were published in 1569 ; the late? 

 cantos were first printed in 1590, only six years before the miserable poem of 

 Pedro de Ona, which bears the same title as one of the master works of Lope 

 de Vega, in which the Cacique Caupolican is the principal personage. Ercilla 

 is naive and true-hearted ; especially in those parts of his composition which 

 he wrote in the field, mostly on bark of trees and skins of beasts for want of 

 paper. The description of his poverty, and of the ingratitude which he expe- 

 rienced at the court of King Philip, is extremely touching, particularly at the 

 close of the 37th canto : 



" Climas passe, mude constelacione9> 



Golfos inavegables navegando, 



Estendiendo Senor, vuestra corona 



Hasta la austral frigida zona." 



"The flower of my life is past ; late instructed, I will renounce earthly things, 

 weep, and no longer sing." The natural descriptions of the garden of the 

 sorcerer, of the tempest raised by Eponamon, and of the ocean (P. i. p. 80, 

 135, and 173; P, ii. p. 130 and 161, in the edition of 1733), are cold and 

 lifeless : geographical registers of words are accumulated in such manner, 

 that, in Canto xxvii., twenty-seven proper names follow each other in immediate 

 succession in a single stanza of eight lines. Part IT. of the Araucana is not 

 by Ercilla, but is a continuation, in twenty cantos, by Diego de Santistevau 

 Osorio, appended to the thirty-seven cantos of Ercilla. 



( 97 ) p. 60. In the Romancero de Romances caballeresco e historicos orde- 

 nado, por D. Augustin Duran, P. i. p. 189, and P. ii. p. 237, see the fine 

 strophes commencing "Yba declinaudo el dia" " Su curso y ligeros horas" 

 and on the flight of King Roderick, beginning 

 *' Quando las pintadas aves 



Mudas estan y la tierra 



Atenta esucha los rios." 



(") p. 60. Fray Luis de Leon, Obras proprias y traduceiones, cledicadas a 

 Don Pedro Portocarero, 1681, p. 120 : Noche serena. A deep feeling of 

 nature also reveals itself at times in the ancient mystic poetry of the Spaniards 

 (Fray Luis de Granada, Santa Teresa de Jesus, Malon de Chaide) ; but the 

 natural pictures are usually only the external veil symbolising ideal contem- 

 plations. 



(") p. 61. Calderon, in the " Steadfast Prince :" on the approach of the 

 Spanish fleet, Act i. scene 1 ; and on the sovereignty of the wild beasts in 

 the forest, Act iii. scene 2. 



