THE AUTHOR OF "LA ESTRELLA DE SEVILLA " 299 Hermitaño de la Rizafa. But he was also a poet and a patron of poets. «< Typis mandari curavit primus opera poetica vernacula D. Ludovici a Gongora, adjuncto levi sed eleganti elogio. » (Antonio, ibid.) Thus he has the additional interest of being one of the earliest admirers and defenders of Góngora. (In the preface to Juan Lopez de Vicuña's 1627 edition of Góngora « D. Pedro de Córdoba y Angulo » must be a misprint for D. Pedro de Cá d nas.) He was a friend of the poet Antonio de Paredes (of him Antonio says laconically Antonius de Paredes composuit Rimas. Cordubae, apud Salvatorem de Cea. 1623. 8.), and when the latter's Rimas was published posthumously, with an aprobacion by Lope de Vega, at Córdoba in 1622, their editor dedicated them to D. Pedro de Cárdenas « tan afecto a las obras de excelentes poetas » and also printed an elegy on his friend by Cárdenas, of whom the editor, Andrés Jacinto del Aguila, says: «<lo celebró con versos llenos de majestad y elegancia, al fin como hijos de su gallardo ingenio (Gallardo, III, 1085). A sonnet and epistle both address Cárdenas as Cardenio (ibid., col. 1086). His brother, D. J. de Cárdenas y Bocanegra, wrote Italian verses (ibid.) and he himself composed a comedia in collaboration with Paredes (ibid., col. 1087). Further proof is scarcely needed to convince us that the long lost author of La Estrella de Sevilla is D. Pedro de Cárdenas y Angulo, who must henceforth figure prominently in histories of Spanish literature. If he is the same D. Pedro de Cárdenas who wrote quintillas for Ercilla's La Araucana (1569 ed. ad fin) and also two quintillas for Juan Lopez de Hoyos' Historia y relacion verdadera (Madrid, 1560), he would be considerably older than Paredes, who died « en su más florida edad » (Gallardo, III, 1085), unless his death had occur.ed long before the publication of his Rimas. The possible connection of Cárdenas with Lopez de Hoyos and with the Duque de Lerma (see La Estrella de Sevilla, ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc, p. 33), as well as the common interest of Cárdenas and Cervantes Saavedra in Seville (the fact that Cárdenas had another brother called D. Martin de Saavedra Caicedo of course proves nothing) furnishes a fragile, an almost imperceptible link between him and that other Andalusian, the Cardenio of Don Quixote. But the probability of a personal acquaintance between Cervantes and the author of La Estrella de Sevilla is increased when we remember that Juan de Cervantes, in all probability the grandfather of the author of Don Quixote, lived at Córdoba and was a friend of Juan de Cárdenas, a native of that city (as was also the poet Gonzalo de Cervantes Saavedra praised by Cervantes in La Galatea). Cárdenas was also of course the family name of the Duke of Maqueda, who figures for a moment in Cervantes' life at Valladolid. The author of the Annales,.. de Sevilla (Madrid, 1677), Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, writing in 1675, claims descent from the Maldonados « Este linaje ilustre » (Cervantes, Novelas Exemplares, 1613, f. 267) through his grandmother D. Ana Maldonado de Cárdenas y Saavedra (Annales, p. 448). It seems not unlikely that in the hands of a Spanish genealogist the Cárdenas clue may throw some fresh light on the ancestry of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Aubrey F. G. BELL. 5587. Tours, Imprimerie E. ARRAULT et C1. |