seems to give vent, in the most approved polished language, to the complaint of a jealous or rejected suitor : "Distrusted, scant of breath, I bend the knee, Or, where hoarse Lethe's roar in darkness dies, .* The reader, who may think it worth while to refer to the amusing scene between Gil Blas and Fabricio in the well-known novel of Le Sage, will see how the Frenchman had picked up his notions of Gongora from the Spanish comedian ;* but adding some particulars which are not very accurate, as when he speaks of Gongora as a rapid writer, and a rapid writer of comedies. However, as Lope had compared the style to the Latin of Justus Lipsius, at which the learned used to say that Cicero and Quinctilian laughed in the other world, Le Sage says, that some of Gongora's censurers compared it to the verses which the Salian priests sang in the processions, which none could * Gil Blas, lib. vii. c. 13. understand. "It is the very virtue of the style," says Fabricio, "to be unintelligible." Enough of this banter. It is only necessary to exhibit it to shew that those rival poets, or critics, of Gongora's age, attacked him very much as the elder Colman, also a comedian, attacked our poet Gray, in his "Odes to Oblivion and Obscurity." That is, if we suppose Lope, against his own protest to the contrary, to have meant to attack the master, and not his less skilful scholars. (136.) Thus the controversy seems to have stood, the literary men divided between admirers and opponents of the style, till the time of Luzan, about the middle of the last century, whose "Art of Poetry," founded on French and late Italian models, and written, as he said, "with the view to bring Spanish poetry under the control of such precepts as are observed among polished nations," had the effect, for some time, of making the Spaniards ashamed of admiring their own distinctive guides in matters of taste and works of fancy. Nothing could be a greater contrast to the bold neglect and multiform irregularity of the age of Cervantes, Lope, and Gongora, than the cold. correctness, and careful rules and precedents, of Luzan. However it was a time when the court was become half French; and the fashion had set towards adjusting the national literature to a French standard. later school, with its claim to another kind of polished style, drove out the few remaining admirers of Gon This gora. It was still in vogue when Quintana wrote, who had a great respect for Luzan. But it seems to have been more fatal than the disease it sought to remedy to the native genius of the country. We cannot wonder that a French Art of Poetry should have disagreed with a Spaniard's literary digestion, since it would certainly have relished ill with ours. Let us see whether Spain herself could not have found some precepts to help her at her need, without going to France or Italy to find them. (137.) "I hold, most worthy Sir," says Don Quixote in one of his most brilliant lucid intervals, talking with Don Diego de Miranda, "that Poesy is like a tender damsel, young and passing fair; on whom many other damsels wait-I mean the other Sciences-whose care and duty it is to enrich and beautify and adorn their mistress: she has at her command the services of all, and all must act when they have authority from her. She will not be rudely handled, nor forced to walk the streets, nor make her face common at the corners of market-squares, nor yet will she hide it in the secret chambers of palaces; but the frame of which she is made is so fine and pure, that he who has the touch of skill, will bring her forth to view brighter than unvalued gold."* Cervantes evidently meant his hero to speak as one who knew the duty of a true votary of the Muses. The Sciences ought to be the handmaids of Poetry; * Don Quix. part ii. c. 16. and the poet will be but a bungler in his art, who does not call them to adorn their queen. And there is a style, equally remote from rude coarseness and finical refinement, which, like the classic Genius of the changing year, may wear a thousand ornaments, and each comely in its place; not like Lope's similitude of a woman who paints, and puts the rouge not only on her cheeks, but on her nose and forehead. (138.) There was in Gongora's day a host of writers in easy unpremeditated verse, with whose loose shambling rhymes he may well have been dissatisfied. Such were the two Arragonese brothers, the Argensolas, to whom Villegas paid court, and whom Lope professed warmly to admire. "It seemed,” he said, "as if they had come from Arragon to reform in our poets the Castillian tongue, which is suffering loss by the introduction of new and horrid phrases, causing confusion rather than light."* It looks as if he had meant to make his praise more pointed by contrasting the poems of the Argensolas with the new poetry before mentioned. The respect paid to these two brothers by others of their contemporaries was equally marked. But Quintana's estimate of them both, as their verse bears a strong fraternal similarity of character, is one which any nearer acquaintance will confirm. He complains of the complaisance or little discernment of their contemporaries, who compared them to Horace, deficient as they are in the liveliness, the ease and freedom, * Prolegomena to Rimas de los Argensolas, 1634. the terseness, and every other delicate grace of their admirable model. "A facility of rhyming," he says, "led them to link together triplet after triplet, without knowing where to end; and in these triplets, if the words are not ill-stitched together, the thoughts at least are so. It is lamentable to see, that they never deviate from the insipid and negligent tone which they have once taken, never roused to words of greater force by indignation against vice, nor moved to deeper feeling or warmer praise by friendship or admiration. One chooses one's friends among the authors one reads as one does among the companions with whom one converses: I confess I am not the friend of these poets, who, to judge from their verses, never loved or esteemed any one." (139). There was at the same time a different school of writers of whom Quevedo was the most remarkable, the Conceptistas, or Conceited school. There was much sympathy of style between these writers and the English Euphuists with Lylie at their head; but more in style than in matter. Perhaps no country ever produced such perfect models of both true and natural, and forced and false wit and humour, as that which in the same age gave birth to Cervantes and Quevedo. It is only necessary to mention this as a distinct school, not to be confounded with the school of Gongora. (140.) The principle, which Gongora sought to * Quintana, Introd. sec. iv. |