The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume II Part 16

[8] The fabliaux cannot fairly be considered as an exception to this.

These graceful little performances, the work of professed bards, who had nothing further in view than the amus.e.m.e.nt of a listless audience, have little claim to be considered as the expression of national feeling or sentiment. The poetry of the south of France, more impa.s.sioned and lyrical in its character, wears the stamp, not merely of patrician elegance, but refined artifice, which must not be confounded with the natural flow of popular minstrelsy.

[9] How far the achievements claimed for the Campeador are strictly true, is little to the purpose. It is enough that they were received as true, throughout the Peninsula, as far back as the twelfth, or, at latest, the thirteenth century.

[10] One exception, among others, readily occurs in the pathetic old ballad of the Conde Alarcos, whose woful catastrophe, with the unresisting suffering of the countess, suggests many points of coincidence with the English minstrelsy. The English reader will find a version of it in the "Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain," from the pen of Mr. Bowring, to whom the literary world is so largely indebted for an acquaintance with the popular minstrelsy of Europe.

[11] I have already noticed the insufficiency of the _romances_ to authentic history, Part I. Chap. 8, Note 30. My conclusions there have been confirmed by Mr. Irving, (whose researches have led him in a similar direction,) in his "Alhambra," published nearly a year after the above note was written.

The great source of the popular misconceptions respecting the domestic history of Granada is Gines Perez de Hyta, whose work, under the t.i.tle of "Historia de los Vandos de los Zegries y Abencerrages, Cavalleros Moros de Granada, y las Guerras Civiles que huvo en ella," was published at Alcala in 1604. This romance, written in prose, embodied many of the old Moorish ballads in it, whose singular beauty, combined with the romantic and picturesque character of the work itself, soon made it extremely popular, until at length it seems to have acquired a degree of the historical credit claimed for it by its author as a translation from an Arabian chronicle; a credit which has stood it in good stead with the tribe of travel-mongers and _raconteurs_, persons always of easy faith, who have propagated its fables far and wide. Their credulity, however, may be pardoned in what has imposed on the perspicacity of so cautions an historian as Muller. Allgemeine Geschichte, (1817,) band ii. p. 504.

[12] Thus, in one of their _romances_, we have a Moorish lady "shedding drops of liquid silver, and scattering her hair of Arabian gold" over the corpse of her murdered husband!

"Sobre el cuerpo de Albencayde Destila liquida plata, Y convertida en cabellos Esparce el oro de Arabia."

Can anything be more Oriental than this imagery? In another we have "an hour of years of impatient hopes;" a pa.s.sionate sally, that can scarcely be outmatched by Scriblerus. This taint of exaggeration, however, so far from being peculiar to the popular minstrelsy, has found its way, probably through this channel in part, into most of the poetry of the Peninsula.

[13] The _redondilla_ may be considered as the basis of Spanish versification. It is of great antiquity, and compositions in it are still extant, as old as the time of the infante Don Manuel, at the close of the thirteenth century. (See Cancionero General, fol. 207.) The redondilla admits of great variety; but in the romances it is most frequently found to consist of eight syllables, the last foot, and some or all of the preceding, as the case may be, being trochees. (Rengifo, Arte Poetica Espanola, (Barcelona, 1727,) cap. 9, 44.) Critics have derived this delightful measure from various sources. Sarmiento traces it to the hexameter of the ancient Romans, which may be bisected into something a.n.a.logous to the redondillas. (Memorias, pp. 168-171.) Bouterwek thinks it may have been suggested by the songs of the Roman soldiery. (Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, band iii., Einleitung, p. 20.)--Velazquez borrows it from the rhyming hexameters of the Spanish Latin poets, of which he gives specimens of the beginning of the fourteenth century.

(Poesia Castellana, pp. 77, 78.) Later critics refer its derivation to the Arabic. Conde has given a translation of certain Spanish-Arabian poems, in the measure of the original, from which it is evident, that the hemistich of an Arabian verse corresponds perfectly with the redondilla. (See his Dominacion de los Arabes, pa.s.sim.) The same author, in a treatise, which he never published, on the "poesia oriental," shows more precisely the intimate affinity subsisting between the metrical form of the Arabian and the old Castilian verse. The reader will find an a.n.a.lysis of his ma.n.u.script in Part I. Chap. 8, Note 49, of this History.

This theory is rendered the more plausible by the influence which the Arabic has exercised on Castilian versification in other respects, as in the prolonged repet.i.tion of the rhyme, for example, which is wholly borrowed from the Spanish Arabs; whose superior cultivation naturally affected the unformed literature of their neighbors, and through no channel more obviously than its popular minstrelsy.

[14] The _asonante_ is a rhyme made by uniformity of the vowels, without reference to the consonants; the regular rhyme, which obtains in other European literatures, is distinguished in Spain by the term _consonante_.

Thus the four following words, taken at random from a Spanish ballad, are consecutive _asonantes_; _regozijo_, _pellico_, _luzido_, _amarillo_. In this example, the two last syllables have the a.s.sonance; although this is not invariable, it sometimes falling on the antepenultima and the final syllable. (See Rengifo, Arte Poetica Espanola, pp. 214, 215, 218.) There is a wild, artless melody in the _asonante_, and a graceful movement coming somewhere, as it does, betwixt regular rhyme and blank verse, which would make its introduction very desirable, but not very feasible, in our own language. An attempt of the kind has been made by a clever writer, in the Retrospective Review. (Vol. iv. art. 2.) If it has failed, it is from the impediments presented by the language, which has not nearly the same amount of vowel terminations, nor of simple uniform vowel sounds, as the Spanish; the double termination, however full of grace and beauty in the Castilian, a.s.sumes, perhaps from the effect of a.s.sociation, rather a doggerel air in the English.

[15] This may be still further inferred from the tenor of a humorous, satirical old _romance_, in which the writer implores the justice of Apollo on the heads of the swarm of traitor poets, who have deserted the ancient themes of song, the Cids, the Laras, the Gonzalez, to celebrate the Ganzuls and Abderrahmans and the fantastical fables of the Moors.

"Tanta Zayda y Adalifa, tanta Draguta y Daraxa, tanto Azarque y tanto Adulce, tanto Gazul, y Abenamar, tanto alquizer y marlota, tanto almayzar, y almalafa, tantas emprisas y plumas, tantas cifras y medallas, tanta roperia Mora.

Y en vanderillas y adargas, tanto mote, y tantas motas muera yo sino me cansan."

"Los Alfonsos, los Henricos, los Sanchos, y los de Lara, que es dellos, y que es del Cid?

tanto olvido en glorias tantas?

ninguna pluma las buela, ninguna Musa las canta?

Justicia, Apollo, justicia, vengadores rayos lanca contra Poetas Moriscos."

Dr. Johnson's opinions are well known, in regard to this department of English literature, which, by his ridiculous parodies, he succeeded for a time in throwing into the shade, or, in the language of his admiring biographer, made "perfectly contemptible."

Petrarch, with like pedantry, rested his hopes of fame on his Latin epic, and gave away his lyrics, as alms to ballad-singers. Posterity, deciding on surer principles of taste, has reversed both these decisions.

[16] "Algunos quieren que sean la cartilla de los Poetas; yo no lo siento a.s.si; antes bien los hallo capaces, no solo de exprimir y declarar qualquier concepto con facil dulzura, pero de prosequir toda grave accion de numeroso Poema. Y soy tan de veras Espanol, que por ser en nuestro idioma natural este genero, no me puedo persuadir que no sea digno de toda estimacion."(Coleccion de Obras Sueltas, (Madrid, 1776-9,) tom. iv. p.

176, Prologo.) In another place he finely styles them "Iliads without a Homer."

[17] See, among others, the encomiastic and animated criticism of Fernandez and Quintana. Fernandez, Poesias Escogidas, de Nuestros Cancioneros y Romanceros Antiguos, (Madrid, 1796,) tom. xvi., Prologo.-- Quintana, Poesias Selectas Castellanas, Introd. art. 4.

[18] Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Nova, tom. ii. p. 10.--The Spanish translators of Bouterwek have noticed the princ.i.p.al "collections and earliest editions" of the _Romances_. This original edition of Sepulveda has escaped their notice. See Literatura Espanola, pp. 217, 218.

[19] See Grimm, Depping, Herder, etc. This last poet has embraced a selection of the Cid ballads, chronologically arranged, and translated with eminent simplicity and spirit, if not with the scrupulous fidelity usually aimed at by the Germans. See his Sammtliche Werke, (Wien, 1813,) band iii.

[20] Sarmiento, Memorias, pp. 242, 243.--Moratin considers that none have come down to us, in their original costume, of an earlier date than John II.'s reign, the first half of the fifteenth century. (Obras, tom. i. p.

84.) The Spanish translators of Bouterwek transcribe a _romance_, relating to the Cid, from the fathers Berganza and Merino, purporting to exhibit the primitive, uncorrupted diction of the thirteenth century.

Native critics are of course the only ones competent to questions of this sort; but, to the less experienced eye of a foreigner, the style of this ballad would seem to resemble much less that genuine specimen of the versification of the preceding age, the poem of the Cid, than the compositions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

[21] The principle of philosophical arrangement, if it may so be called, is pursued still further in the latest Spanish publications of the _romances_, where the Moorish minstrelsy is embodied in a separate volume, and distributed with reference to its topics. This system is the more practicable with this cla.s.s of ballads, since it far exceeds in number any other. See Duran, Romancero de Romances Moriscos.

The Romancero I have used is the ancient edition of Medina del Campo, 1602. It is divided into nine parts, though it is not easy to see on what principle, since the productions of most opposite date and tenor are brought into juxtaposition. The collection contains nearly a thousand ballads, which, however, fall far short of the entire number preserved, as may easily be seen by reference to other compilations. When to this is added the consideration of the large number which insensibly glided into oblivion without ever coming to the press, one may form a notion of the immense ma.s.s of these humble lyrics, which floated among the common people of Spain; and we shall be the less disposed to wonder at the proud and chivalrous bearing that marks even the peasantry of a nation, which seems to breathe the very air of romantic song.

[22] The t.i.tle of this work was "Coplas de Vita Christi, de la Cena con la Pasion, y de la Veronica con la Resurreccion de nuestro Redemtor. E las siete Angustias e siete Gozos de nuestra Senora, con otras obras mucho provechosas." It concludes with the following notice, "Fue la presente obra emprentada en la insigne Ciudad de Zaragoza de Aragon por industria e expensas de Paulo Hurus de Constancia aleman. A 27 dias de Noviembre, 1492." (Mendez, Typographia Espanola, pp. 134, 136.) It appears there were two or three other cancioneros compiled, none of which, however, were admitted to the honors of the press. (Bouterwek, Literatura Espanola, nota.) The learned Castro, some fifty years since, published an a.n.a.lysis with copious extracts from one of these made by Baena, the Jewish physician of John II., a copy of which existed in the royal library of the Escurial. Bibliotheca Espanola, tom. i. p. 265 et seq.

[23] Cancionero General, pa.s.sim.--Moratin has given a list of the men of rank who contributed to this miscellany; it contains the names of the highest n.o.bility of Spain. (Orig. del Teatro Espanol, Obras, tom. i. pp.

85, 86.) Castillo's Cancionero pa.s.sed through several editions, the latest of which appeared in 1573. See a catalogue, not entirely complete, of the different Spanish Cancioneros in Bouterwek, Literatura Espanola, trad., p.

217.

[24] Cancionero General, pp. 83-89.--Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.

[25] Cancionero General, pp. 158-161.--Some meagre information of this person is given by Nic. Antonio, whose biographical notices may be often charged with deficiency in chronological data; a circ.u.mstance perhaps unavoidable from the obscurity of their subjects. Biblioteca Vetus, tom.

ii. lib. 10, cap. 6.

[26] There are probably more direct puns in Petrarch's lyrics alone, than in all the Cancionero General. There is another kind of _niaiserie_, however, to which the Spanish poets were much addicted, being the transposition of the word in every variety of sense and combination; as, for example,

"Acordad Vuestros olvidos Y olvida vuestros acuerdos Porque tales desacuerdos Acuerden vuestros sentidos," etc.

Cancionero General, fol. 226.

It was such subtilties as these, _entricadas razones_, as Cervantes calls them, that addled the brains of poor Don Quixote. Tom. i. cap. 1.

[27] Velasquez, Poesia Castellana, p. 122.--More than half a century later, the learned Ambrosio Morales complained of the barrenness of the Castilian, which he imputed to the too exclusive adoption of the Latin upon all subjects of dignity and importance. Obras, tom. xiv. pp. 147, 148.

[28] L. Marineo, speaking of this accomplished n.o.bleman, styles him "virum satis ill.u.s.trem.--Eum enim poetam et philosophum natura formavit ac peperit." He unfortunately fell in a skirmish, five years after his father's death, in 1479. Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. p. 531.

[29] An elaborate character of this Quixotic old cavalier may be found in Pulgar, Claros Varones, t.i.t. 13.

[30] "Don Jorge Manrique," says Lope de Vega, "cuyas coplas Castellanas admiren los ingenios estrangeros y merecen estar escritas con letras de oro." Obras Sueltas, tom. xii. Prologo.

[31] Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique, ed. Madrid, 1779.--Dialogo de las Lenguas, apud Mayans y Siscar, Origenes, tom. ii. p. 149.--Manrique's Coplas have also been the subject of a separate publication in the United States. Professor Longfellow's version, accompanying it, is well calculated to give the English reader a correct notion of the Castilian bard, and, of course, a very exaggerated one of the literary culture of the age.

[32] After proscribing certain profane mummeries, the law confines the clergy to the representation of such subjects as "the birth of our Saviour, in which is shown how the angels appeared, announcing his nativity; also his advent, and the coming of the three Magi kings to wors.h.i.+p him; and his resurrection, showing his crucifixion and ascension on the third day; and other such things leading men to do well and live constant in the faith." (Siete Partidas, t.i.t. 6, ley 34.) It is worth noting, that similar abuses continued common among the ecclesiastics, down to Isabella's reign, as may be inferred from a decree, very similar to the law of the Partidas above cited, published by the council of Aranda, in 1473. (Apud Moratin, Obras, tom. i. p. 87.) Moratin considers it certain, that the representation of the mysteries existed in Spain, as far back as the eleventh century. The princ.i.p.al grounds for this conjecture appear to be, the fact that such notorious abuses had crept into practice by the middle of the thirteenth century, as to require the intervention of the law. (Ibid., pp. 11, 13.) The circ.u.mstance would seem compatible with a much more recent origin.

[33] Cervantes, Comedias y Entremeses, (Madrid, 1749,) tom. i. prologo de Nasarre.--Velazquez, Poesia Castellana, p. 86.--The fifth volume of the Memoirs of the Spanish Royal Academy of History contains a dissertation on the "national diversions," by Don Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, replete with curious erudition, and exhibiting the discriminating taste to have been expected from its accomplished author. Among these antiquarian researches, the writer has included a brief view of the first theatrical attempts in Spain. See Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. v. Mem. 6.

[34] Moratin, Obras, tom. i. p. 115.--Nasarre (Cervantes, Comedias, prol.), Jovellanos (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. v. Memor. 6), Pellicer (Origen y Progreso de la Comedia, (1804,) tom. i. p. 12), and others, refer the authors.h.i.+p of this little piece, without hesitation, to Juan de la Encina, although the year of its representation corresponds precisely with that of his birth. The prevalence of so gross a blunder among the Spanish scholars, shows how little the antiquities of their theatre were studied before the time of Moratin.

[35] This little piece has been published at length by Moratin, in the first volume of his works. (See Origenes del Teatro Espanol, Obras, tom.

i. pp. 303-314.)

The celebrated marquis of Santillana's poetical dialogue, "Comedieta da Ponza," has no pretensions to rank as a dramatic composition, notwithstanding its t.i.tle, which is indeed as little significant of its real character, as the term "Commedia" is of Dante's epic. It is a discourse on the vicissitudes of human life, suggested by a sea-fight near Ponza, in 1435. It is conducted without any attempt at dramatic action or character, or, indeed, dramatic development of any sort. The same remarks may be made of the political satire, "Mingo Revulgo," which appeared in Henry IV.'s reign. Dialogue was selected by these authors as a more popular and spirited medium than direct narrative for conveying their sentiments. The "Comedieta da Ponza" has never appeared in print; the copy which I have used is a transcript from the one in the royal library at Madrid, and belongs to Mr. George Ticknor.

[36] Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, (Alcala, 1586,) Introd.--Nothing is positively ascertained respecting the authors.h.i.+p of the first act of the Celestina. Some impute it to Juan de Mena; others with more probability to Rodrigo Cota el Tio, of Toledo, a person who, although literally nothing is known of him, has in some way or other obtained the credit of the authors.h.i.+p of some of the most popular effusions of the fifteenth century; such, for example, as the Dialogue above cited of "Love and an Old Man," the Coplas of "Mingo Revulgo," and this first act of the "Celestina." The princ.i.p.al foundation of these imputations would appear to be the bare a.s.sertion of an editor of the "Dialogue between Love and an Old Man," which appeared at Medina del Campo, in 1569, nearly a century, probably, after Cota's death; another example of the obscurity which involves the history of the early Spanish drama. Many of the Castilian critics detect a flavor of antiquity in the first act which should carry back its composition as far as John II.'s reign. Moratin does not discern this, however, and is inclined to refer its production to a date not much more distant, if any, than Isabella's time. To the unpractised eye of a foreigner, as far as style is concerned, the whole work might well seem the production of the same period. Moratin, Obras, tom. i. pp. 88, 115, 116.--Dialogo de las Lenguas, apud Mayans y Siscar, Origenes, pp. 165- 167.--Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Nova, tom. ii. p. 263.