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The works of Garcilaso de la Vega were reprinted in Madrid 1765, 8vo. 187 pages, and consists of three elegies, about forty sonnets, and a few other pieces: the elegies are too long, and the other poems too trite to insert here.

The works of Don Lewis de Gongora are contained in a quarto volume (650 pages): this author died in 1627, aged seventy-five. They consist of about a hundred sonnets (chiefly nonsense), and various miscellaneous poems. One of these sonnets is written in four languages, which are Spanish, Latin, Italian, and Portuguese. Another, which is addressed to the bridge of Segovia, on the river Mançanares at Madrid, wishes that mules urine may supply that river with water. In another sonnet, the author says, “this river does not deserve half a bridge, and this bridge may serve for thirty seas; an ass drank it up yesterday, and to-day has voided it out again by urine.” Another gives an account of a boy’s having tied a horn to the tail of a dog, and that a widow cried out that it was a shame to see a thing which had been emblematically worn by so many honourable personages, prostituted so far as to be fastened to a dog’s tail. A poetical piece in this work, which is addressed to two gentlemen who had a great affection for nuns, says, “you are troubled with three hundred female saints, you are either broken looking-glasses, or you have three hundred faces: but you have much of the god-head in you (teneis mucho de Dios), for you are present every where.”

In 1694, was published at Antwerp, a Spanish translation of Guarini’s Pastor Fido, by Doña Isabel Correa.

The most striking passages in this pastoral drama, are part of the chorus at the end of the second act, and the fourth scene of the third. This drama was translated into English verse in 1647: this translation was reprinted in 1736, and in the preface I find it attributed to Mr. Fanshaw. Into French, much about the same time, and several times reprinted, though without the chorusses; and into Dutch verse by David de Potter, in 1695.

At the end of the Italian Grammar, by the Abbé Antonini, I find an elegant French translation of the above-mentioned scene; and in Jackson’s Elegies it is parodied and set to music. I believe there are other translations extant, but they are very difficult to be met with.

The Spanish translation of part of the second chorus is as follows:

Es bien suave cosa
El beso que se coxe
De la purpurea y delicada roja,
Que una mexilla virginal descoxe,
Mas quien experto la verdad entiende,
Otro nectar mayor dulce comprende.
Como juzgais vosotros venturosos,
Que los probais amantes deliciosos,
Dirà ser beso muerto ciertamente,
Aquel a quien al punto la besada
Belleza no bolviere el beso ardiente.
Mas los tiernos con dulzidos resabios
Golpes de dos enamorados labios
Quando a herirse se van boca con boca.
En aquel punto toca
A batalla (el amor) altisonante,
Despuntando una y otra flecha amante
Que en suave venganza,
Un labio y otro reiterado alcanza.
Son verdaderos besos, besos donde,
Como en flores abeja, amor se esconde,
Con firmes voluntades que exercita,
Tanto à otro fe dà, quanto se quita;
Bese boca que el ambar lisongea,
O frente, o pecho, o mano,
Jamas podra dezirse en modo llano,
Sin que encuentre la duda que à atropella,
Que parte alguna bese en muger bella,
Que besadora sea,
Sino la boca, donde en dulze calma,
Acuden à besarse una y otra alma,
Y con despiertos siempre veladores,
Peregrinos espiritus da vida,
Al hermoso tesoro,
De rubis besadores
Assi que entre ellos hablan alternados
Aquellos eloquentes si animados
Vesos, en son pequeño, aunque canoro
Grandes cosas en lengua no aprendida
Dulcissimos secretos veramente
Manifiestos a ellos solamente,
Y à otros encubiertos;
Tal gozo amando prueba, antes tal vida,
Alma con alma unida
Y son como de amor sin desconciertos
Besos tiernos besados
Por modos elegantes
Los encuentros tambien de dos amantes
Corazones amados.

The English translation is thus:

“Well may that kiss be sweet that’s giv’n t’ a sleek
And fragrant rose of a vermilion cheek;
And understanding tasters (as are true
And happy lovers) will commend that too.
’Tis a dead kiss, say I, and must be poor,
Which the place kist hath no means to restore.
But the sweet ecchoing, and the dove-like billing
Of two encountring mouths, when both are willing;
And when at once both loves advance their bows,
Their shafts drawn home, at once sound at the loose
(How sweet is such revenge!) this is true kissing,
Where there is one for t’other without missing
A minute of the time, or taking more
Than that which in the taking they restore;
Where, by an interchange of amorous blisses,
At the same time they sow and gather kisses.
Kiss a red swelling lip, then kiss a wrist,
A breast, a fore-head, or what else thou list,
No part of a fair nymph so just will be,
Except the lip, to pay this kiss to thee.
Thither your souls come sallying forth, and they
Kiss too, and by the wand’ring pow’rs convey
Life into smacking rubies, and transfuse
Into the live and sprightly kiss their use
Of reason; so that you discourse together
In kisses, which with little noise deliver
Much matter; and sweet secrets, which he spells
Who is a lover; gibb’rish to all else.

“Like life, like mutual joy they feel, where love
With equal flames as with two wings doth move;
And as where lips kiss lips, is the best kiss:

So where one’s lov’d, to love, best loving is.” 16

The poetical works of Don Antonio de Mendoça were printed in a quarto volume, 460 pages, in 1690: they consist of five Comedias Famosas, and miscellaneous poems, one of which addressed to a beautiful lady, who had a beautiful daughter, is as follows:

O fue milagro ó ventura,
Que una beldad prodigiosa
Quedò hermosa, quando hermosa
Pariò la misma hermosura:
Yo en novedad tan segura
Mi admiracion no acomodo
Solamente admiro el modo
De arrojallo, y no perdello
Pues dando todo lo bello
Se supo quedar con todo.

“It was either by a miracle, or through luck, that a prodigious beauty should remain handsome, while being handsome, she brought forth beauty itself: I cannot refrain from admiring such a novelty, and am astonished how she could throw away so much beauty, and yet not lose any, and bestowing all that is beautiful, should still know how to preserve the whole.”

The Life of our Lady, precedes the comedies, and consists of 800 verses, not worth reading.

The poetical works of Don Juan de Tarsis, were first published in quarto, 1680: they may be consigned to oblivion without detriment to Spanish literature.

There is a Spanish comedy, intitled The Adventures of Perseus, in which Neptune and Medusa are among the dramatis personæ. 17

Lope de Vega wrote a book entitled la Dorotea, in two octavo volumes: it is a kind of pastoral rhapsody, in prose and verse.

Romances and books of chivalry, of which the Spaniards have a great variety, are very difficult to procure: I purchased a few; one of these is entitled Various Prodigies of Love, 1665, in eleven novels, five of which are written each without one of the five vowels; these are comprised altogether in 130 quarto pages: the first novel is wholly without any A, the second without an E, &c. It may easily be imagined that the sense is sacrificed to the whim, and that these novels are not distinguished for any peculiar beauty of style. Another is called La Picara Justina; it was first printed in quarto in 1640, and reprinted in 1735. At the head of the fifty chapters, into which this romance is divided, are the like number of Spanish verses, in all varieties: the book itself is the Life of a Libertine Hostess, and contains a strange mixture of indecency, nonsense, and religious matters: at the end of every chapter is a moral, to inform the reader that he is to take what he has been reading in the direct contrary sense, which is, as if a child were first to be taught mischief and then forbid to practise it. The author concludes thus: “All that this book contains I subject to the correction of the holy Roman Catholic Church, and of the holy inquisition; and I warn the reader, that as often as he finds any passage which appears to set a bad example, he is to take notice, that it is there placed to be burnt in effigy; and, in such a case, he is to have recourse to the moral at the end of the chapter, and by so doing he will extract utility from the description I have given of the vices which abound in the world. Vale. Laus Deo.”!

Excepting this work, there is no indecent book in either the Spanish or the Portuguese languages.

El Diablo Coxuelo, is the original romance by Luis Perez de Guevara, which was translated into French, with great improvements, by le Sage, under the title of le Diable Boiteux.

At the end of the Spanish book is a novel, entitled the Invisible Cavalier composed entirely of quibbles and low conceits; and another in which the vowel A is omitted.

The same le Sage translated and imitated another Spanish romance, called the Life and Deeds of Estevanillo Gonzalez.

The Spanish romance of the Life of Guzman de Alfarache, 2 vols. 8vo. by Mateo Aleman, 1681, has likewise been translated into the French language.

Three small duodecimo volumes were published in Madrid in 1769, after the old edition 1618, with additions, containing jests and witty sayings, for the most part as stale and insipid as those with which the English language is enriched by means of our sixpenny jest-books.

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