&60 
nary man; but he would not have fufpett- 
edhim to have beena poet. The Spaniards 
have well charaéteriied his genius by its 
monfiruofidad, a word which muf literally 
be rendered monftruofity : no other term 
could fo well have delineated it. Lope 
de Vega is never fublime, feldom pathe- 
tic, and feldom natural; rarely above me- 
diocrity in any of his writings, he has 
attained to celebrity by their number. 
Purity of language and harmonious 
verfification diftinguith all the poems of 
this indefatigable Spaniard. Born and 
educated at Madrid, if he had beheld no 
ftream but the Manzanares, and no coun- 
try but the melancholy plains of Caftille, 
‘we might have expected dullnefs ; but 
the fecretary and favourite of the duke 
of Alva muft have accompanied his maf- 
ter to Villa Franca and to Oropefa; and 
the tranquil and majeftic beauty of the 
one, and the wild {ublimity of the other, 
would have awakened all the enthufiafm 
of poetry, if Lope de Vega had been in- 
deed a poet. 
When a fchool-boy, he bartered his 
verfes with his {chool-fellows, for hymns 
and prints: when a young man, he wrote 
eclogues, and a comedy, in praife of the 
Grand Inquifiter ; and a paftoral, in ho- 
nour of the duke of Alva. From thefe 
fymptoms, one who knew the human 
heart might have prophefied, that the 
young poet never would attain to ex- 
cellence. The Dutch idea of bartering 
his verfes could not have entered the 
mind of the enthufiaft: the young en- 
thufiaft carefully conceals his feelings 
from obfervation, and he who js not an 
enthufiaft muft never expeét to be a 
poet. 
Is there who ne’er thofe myftic tranfports felt 
OF folitude and melancholy born ? 
He needs not woo the Mufe! 
Were it not for the reverenee which 
fafhion has attached to their names, we 
fhould yawn over Virgil and Herace, 
when they proftitute poetry to panegy- 
ric. No great or good man ever encou- 
raged a rhymer to befpatter him with 
raife ; panegyric has, therefore, ufnally 
feck employed on “the weak and the 
“wicked, on thofe whom we defpife and 
deteft ; but, among the villains whofe 
‘deeds pollute the page of hiftory, the 
duke of Alva ranks in the firft clafs. 
‘This man united in himfelf the bigetry 
of the prieft, the duplicity of the poli- 
tician, and the brutality of the foldier ; 
and to this man did Lope de Vega write 
a paftoral! Arcadia and the duke of 
Spanifh Poetry .++ Lope de Vega. 
Alva! Madnefs never produced a more 
monftrous affociation ! 
The Arcadia of Lope de Vega is one 
of the innummerable imitations that 
{warmed in Spain, after George of 
Montemayor publifhed his Diana. The 
age had been accuftomed to extravagance 
by their books of chivalry ; compared 
with whith, the paftoral romance ap- 
peared natural. That this fpecies of 
compofition may poffefs very great beau- 
ty, has been fufficiently proved by Flo- 
rian, in his alteration of the Galatea of 
Cervantes, and more particularly in his 
Eftelle. I know of no work in the 
Engltth language that can properly be 
elaffed under this head, though a very 
interefting one might be produced on the 
model of Florian, if the French frippery 
of fentiment, which infeéts even his 
writings, were avoided. 
I never toiled through the Arcadia of 
Lope de Vega. After penetrating fome 
thirty or forty pages into the little vo- 
lume, I found that a few feattered con- 
ceits could not atone for its intolerable 
dullnefs. Great ftrength of imagination 
only can reconcile the readey to a total 
want of tafte, but the imagination of 
this indefatigable Spaniard was not ftrong, 
and his tafte may be judged of by a fen- 
tence relating to the heroine of his Ar- 
cadia: ** the rays of Belifarda’s eyes 
fhone upon the water like the reflec- 
tion of the fun upon 2 looking-glefs.”” 
Of his longer poems, EF have never 
feen the Jerufalen Conquiftada: I am, 
however, well enough acquainted with 
the fiyle and powers of Lope de Vega, ~ 
fully to credit Mr. Hayley, when he 
fays, that it is, in every refpect, infinitely 
inferior to the work of Taffo, which it 
attempted to rival. Of his ‘* Beauty of 
Angelica,”’ a complete analyfis, with {pe- 
cimens ‘fufficiently copious, may foon be 
expeéted in a promifed work upon Spain 
and Portugal. His Dragontea is very 
bad. It is reported, that Mr. Polwhele 
has likewife chofen Sir Francis Drake, 
as the fubjeét of an epic poem. Sir 
Francis Drake was a good failor; he 
makes a very refpeétable frgure in the 
naval hiftory of England ; but he is but 
a forry hero for the poet! A privateer 
is only a legalized pirate, which old Ful- 
ler calls the devil's water rat, and the 
worft kind of fea vermin. 
Diogo de Soufa, in his celebrated fa- 
tire called the Journey of Diogo Cama- 
cho to Parnaffus, has made a happy allu- 
fion to the rivalry of Lope de Vega with 
‘Taffo, and his lamentable inferiority. Ca- 
mache 
[Dec 
