But the least favourable judges, whose abomination of the Purists and the school of Elegant Obscurity has been the most pronounced, have yet been willing to allow to Gongora the praise of wit, genius, and learning, and have spoken with unreserved admiration of those portions of his writings, which they considered to be exempt from his peculiar vice of style. (2.) What is more important, the study of these poems is necessary to all who wish to become acquainted with the age of Spain's brief literary renown, her short Augustan era, the age of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and Calderon; her days of courtly splendour under the ministry of the Duke of Lerma, and the Count-Duke Olivares, and when the fine arts, beginning to attract the titled patrons of that splendid court in the works of Coello, Pantoja, and the famous Greek, were crowned with the wonders of the pencil of Zurbaran, Velasquez, and Murillo. For Gongora's writings are eminently national, an image of the history of his time; his sonnets, with their vivid touches of character, are historical portraits of the chiefs and statesmen of his age; his other poems were often suggested by the events which were then passing, and have thence a further interest beyond their poetical merit and on this ground alone they deserve a different kind of attention from any that can be claimed by the multitude of Spanish ballad-mongers, the mechanical mock-birds of the classics, the tribe of pastoral poets whom Cervantes alternately imitated and laughed at, and all the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. It will be the object of this Essay, with the honest desire of affording useful pleasure, which animated our veteran critic and moralist of the last century in writing his lives of the English Poets, to lay before the reader a short account of the life and times of Lewis Gongora, the manners of the Spanish Court under the Duke of Lerma, the poet's patrons, friends, and imitators, the literary history of his poems, the controversies of critics concerning them, and lastly, the principle which has guided the translator in the selection now offered to the English public. (3.) Lewis de Gongora y Argote was born at Cordova on the 11th of July 1561. His father was Don Francisco de Argote, corregidor, or chief magistrate, of the city of Cordova; his mother, Doña Leonora de Gongora. Both his parents were of ancient and noble extraction; but, probably because his mother was of the higher lineage, the son seems to have chosen not only to call himself by her family name conjointly with his father's, but to write it first of the two. name is derived from a little village of Navarre, Gongora, in the valley of Aranguren; and the name of the lord of this place, Don Antonio de Gongora, appears among the nobles and gentlemen of the province, in public acts of the reign of Charles V.* There was also a Gonzalo de Gongora in the preceding century, * Chavier, Fueros de Navarra, pt. ii. 19 and 36. The * who had married into the family of the Count of Cabra, one of the most powerful nobles of Castille in the time of Henry IV. The branch, however, from which the poet was descended, was probably that of Ximeno de Gongora, Lord of Magaña in the province of Jaen, the source of the house of the Marquis of Almodovar, and the Viscount of Puebla de los Infantes, two brothers receiving these titles from Philip IV. in the later years of his reign. Pedro de Gongora y Lujan, sixth Marquis of Almodovar, was successively Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador at the Court of Lisbon and of St. Petersburg in the time of Charles III. There was also about the same period a worthy prelate, whose name shews him to have been descended from the same family. Don Antonio Caballero y Gongora, after being for some years Archbishop of Santa Fé in South America, returned home to be made Bishop of Cordova; where, among other good works, he is commended for having been the founder of a school of design, as a means of reviving the study of the fine arts in his diocese. The family of the Gongoras of Magaña appear to have held by hereditary right the dignity of a Veintiquatro, or member of the Council of Twenty-four, by which Cordova and other principal cities of Andalusia were governed. We find some of the personal friends of the poet holding the same office; particularly Don Pedro de * Ramos, Titulos de Castilla, p. 116, 117; Malaga, 1777. Angulo, a literary friend, whom we may have occasion to mention hereafter. (4.) At the age of fifteen, Gongora went to the University of Salamanca; where it was his father's wish that he should perfect himself in the study of the laws, canonical and civil. "I would have you to know," says a Spanish bachelor, in a light production attributed to Cervantes, "that I am a graduate of the University of Salamanca, not of Alcala, where poor students go, losing the privileges and exemptions given at Salamanca to the sons of Spanish gentlemen."* This may possibly have been said in jest; for some of the privileges were certain practical jokes, not unlike those which Antony Wood describes as undergone by himself at Oxford a few years later, shewing such a relish for their remembrance as to imply his fond regret that they were afterwards interrupted, like other good old customs, in the civil war.t "We came," says the hero of an amusing tale of the same period,‡ "to the city of Salamanca, the mother of wits, and queen of sciences; and joined ourselves to the rest of the students. But as soon as it was seen that I was a freshman, a circle of fellowstudents was formed round me, and all came pre * El Buscapié, p. 13, 14. † Antony Wood's Life, p. xiv. Antony's speech is much according to the conceived notion of Gongorism. El Donado Hablador, first published in 1624. pared with a handful of chalk or lime-powder, which they showered upon me as thick as hail in March; after which they kindly enquired after the health of the good lady my mother, and my brothers at home, and asked whether I had shed many tears at parting from them, and whether I had brought any plum-cake or comfits for my college-breakfasts. Then I had to mount up to one of the Professors' chairs, and was forced to stay there till I had made a speech. When this was done, they pronounced me free of their company; but all the while I was looking like a pigeon in a flock of crows; for my black gown came out of the encounter as white as a miller's working suit." (5.) The tide of students in these days to Salamanca was almost as large as any which we read of to Oxford in the Middle Ages. The writer just quoted speaks of five thousand as admitted in one year; and in Gongora's time, according to the account of his friend and biographer Gonzalo de Hozes, the whole number amounted to fourteen thousand.* Other writers of the age of Philip II. reckon it at fifteen or sixteen thousand. "From Salamanca alone," says one of these writers, "there have gone out more subjects for the King's service, than from all the military regiments in the world. It is a living well of distinguished men; and the more his Majesty draws from it, the more it flows."+"They come," says another, "from all the * Vida de Gongora, prefixed to his Works. + Carnestolendas de Castilla, 1603, p. 19. |