visualizar documento

The verses written by King Alphonso the Wise, the son of San Fernando, in the thirteenth century, are interesting, as well from the rank of the writer, as from their strong harmonious tone. His Querellas celebrate his misfortunes; the Tesoro, a kind of treatise on the philosopher's stone, his love of science; and the Cantigas, in praise of our Lady, his devotion. The last are curious, from being written in the Valencian dialect, but they want the elucidations of a commentator to render them perfectly intelligible. His entire works exist only in a manuscript folio volume, in the library at Toledo; but the fame and merits of Alphonso by no means rest exclusively upon his verses. If he trifled away the powers of his mind upon the dark pursuit of alchemy, he enlarged its limits by the study of astronomy, the less illusive sister-science of the age. The celebrated calculations which he caused to be made, and which are named after him the Alphonsine Tables, are still, we believe, preserved as precious monuments of his glory, in the cathedral of Seville; and these, no less than the perfection which he gave to the Spanish code, (called Las siete Partidas, as being divided into sevensections, correspondent with the number of letters in his name,) attest his right to the surname of the Wise. A great number of works were also, by his order, translated into Castilian, and he has the praise of introducing the vulgar tongue in all judicial acts and instruments, which were before engrossed in Latin, an example shortly imitated in England by Edward the Third. His political career was less happy: a competitor with Richard Duke of Cornwall, for the imperial crown, he had the mortification to see his rival's claims preferred; his fancied discovery of the philosopher's stone could not fill his coffers, and he was compelled to impose yet heavier taxes on his people. They testified their impatience of the burden by a revolt, in which they were commanded by his second son, Don Sancho, who usurped his father's crown, a crime which not even the honour he obtained by that victory over the Moors, which has given him in history the surname of the Brave, can teach us to forget. The horrors associated with the tempestuous reign of Pedro the Cruel, are softened by the writings of Don Juan Manuel, a cousin of the unfortunate Alphonso, and by those of Juan Ruiz, archpriest of Hita, who lived in 1330. The work of the former, entitled El Conde Lucanor, is composed of forty-nine novels, each of which enforces some slight moral; that of Ruiz is one long history of his gallantries, and satire on the manners of the times, which, in its extreme license and keen irony, not unfrequently reminds us of Rabelais and Petronius. The versatility of the ecclesiastic is full as striking as his wit: he passes recklessly in his descriptions from the grave moral to the broad free jest, and again from laughing satire to absolutely beautiful hymns of devotion, with the most curious unconcern; and in the rambling incidents which he narrates, leaves the reader in doubt whether to be most amused with his vivacity, or scandalized by his licentious gaiety. He is 'a fellow,’ however, 'of infinite wit,' and we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of presenting what he says upon the advantages of Money, that 'unspiritual,' but allworshipped god, which is fraught with much satire and amusing humour.

'Monies do much in this vile world; they're good in love—they make
A man of consequence, and clear transforme the wildest rake;
They make the cripple run, the dumbe to speke, the blinde to wake,—
Yea, he who has noe hands to use, desires goode coine to take.

Or be a man an ignorant clowne, a real countreye elf, [5]
He soone becomes a lorde and sage when graced by princely pelfe;
A man is prized the more, the more there's money on his shelfe,
He who no money has is not the master of his owne selfe.

If you sholde have moche money, you will have moche consolation;
Pleasure; and of the Pope milde terms; in Lente a goodlie ration; [10]
You soone will purchase Paradise, you soon will get salvation;
Where moche coine chinks moche blessinge flowes and kind congratulation.

I in the court of Rome have seene, where lives moche sanctitité,
That all to money paye their courte, and bowe the reverente knee;
Grete honour do they yielde to it, with greetings grave to see,— [15]
All falle downe to it as to one in Power's most highe degree.

Money has manie an Abbote made, Archebisschopes, Bischopes, Priors,
Doctors and Patriarchs, Mayors and Monkes; to thousande brainlesse friers
Money has given acquirements soche as genius' selfe inspires;
Lies it has made of truth, and truth of lies,—as right requires! [20]

Money has laid down muche good law, given muche bad condemnation;
Money with manie an Advocate has bene the sole foundation
Of covenants and support of pleas where wrong outlaughs vexation;
With money, in fine, you may have law-grief and excellent reparation.

I have known it compasse marvels, where muche has beene employde, [25]
Many have death deserved who still thereby have life enjoyed;
Others have strait bene slaine whose life noe crime hath e'er alloyde;
Its pleadings manie a soule have saved, and manie a soul destroyde.

It has made the poor their vineyardes lose and homes, without a hinte,
Bed, boarde and furniture—all, all has melted in its minte; [30]
Through all the worlde the scurvie goes,—hands itch to take its printe;
Where money rings, as a man may saye, the eye is sure to squinte.

I have seene coine holde the best estates and palaces of price
Tall, costlie, and with paintings filled, arranged with taste moste nice;
Villas, and lawnes, and castled towers of admirable device,— [35]
All things serve money, all fulfil its wishes in a trice.

I have heard a number of preachinge monkes, with wondrous elocution,
Denounce on money and all its snares I ken not what confusion;
But though they in the streetes and squares cry up its persecution,
They hoarde it in convent cuppes and bagges with the fondest resolution. [40]

Every householde Joane in her village cot and ladie of condition
Has her toile and dowrie paide in coine, for comforte or nutrition;
I never kenned a beauty yet that did not as an apparition
Hate poverty; where there is money, there is state to her full ambition

Money's a subtle Advocate, a silver-slippered thinge [45]
Money's the worlde's revolver, for it makes a clowne a kinge;
For money and love and soche like giftes a woman will take winge,
Albeit the latch sholde be shut within, and mamma shulde holde the stringe.

It beates downe walls, it beates downe towers inviolate as a nunne;
And ye may take my worde for troth, there's not beneath the sunne [50]
A slave whose freedome may not bee by monies lightlie wonne;
But he who has noe golde to give, his palfreye will not runne.

Money makes grave thinges light, but let him who lays siege to my purse-strings know
I am not to be by his witte beguiled, however brave a beau;
Or little or moche it is not lente without usurie—No, no! [55]
I am not to be paide in pleasaunt wordes where money does not goe.

In soche a case, if you would not lende, joke too with a like franke browe,
Heare him not oute, to his well-urged suite nor ear nor time allow;
He who has not honey in his panne should have it in his vowe;
The merchaunt who does soe in sooth will trockle welle I trowe!' [60]

Of the two, however, Don Juan Manuel, uniting to a clear judgment considerable learning, and a generous disposition to the advantages of birth and fortune, and free from many of thedefects in taste and style which deform the writings of the ecclesiastic, must have given the more sensible impulse to Spanish poetry. To his influence and example, in fact, may be ascribed much of the dignity and grace which distinguish the writers of the age of D. Juan the Second. Besides the 'Conde Lucanor,' there are several ballads or romances which bear his name, and which, though probably retouched in some of their expressions by a later hand, shew the sensibility and refinement of the author. The encouragement extended to men of genius by that monarch himself, who ascended the throne of Leon in 1407, still further quickened its improvement: and neither at the courts of Charles the Seventh hand Louis the Eleventh of France, nor in the English annals from Henry the Fifth to Henry the Seventh, are so many poets to be found as the 'Cancionero' of Hernando de Castile discloses to us in Spain, enjoying the favour and emulating the example of their prince. To Don Henrique, Marques de Villena, has been attributed the introduction into Castile of the Floral Games of Toulouse, and a translation of the 'Divina Commedia' of Dante. His learning was so superior to that of his contemporaries, that he died with the character of a necromancer. Neither his quality as uncle to the king, nor the monarch's own efforts, sufficed to dissipate the popular delusion, and the prince found himself obliged to place his kinsman's library at the disposal of the bishop of Avila and Cuenca, who caused more than one hundred volumes to be burnt, which he no more understood than so many hieroglyphic characters; or, as Gomez de Ciudad Real more politely says, in a letter to Juan de Mena, 'than the Dean of the Cid Rodrigo!' Though but four songs only exist of Macias the Enamorado, his fame has been as widely extended as Don Enrique's, by his romantic and melancholy fate. Macias was a Galician, and a squire of the marquess's; he became enamoured of one of the ladies in his household. During the absence of Macias, Don Enrique married her to a hidalgo of Porcuna, but this event quenched not the poet's passion. After many fruitless remonstrances, the marquess had him confined in a tower at Arjonilla, near Jaen, whence the poet despatched to his lady several mournful songs; whereupon the irritated husband concerted with the alcalde of the tower, and assassinated him, by casting his lance through the bars of his cell, whilst he was singing one of his most touching compositions. In his devotion to the madrigal and love-song, Macias was followed by the Marques de Santillana, who introduced into Spanish verse somewhat of the Italian harmony. Don Jorge Manrique, in the verses on his father's death, though tedious from its length, has left us the most spirited, regular, and purely written poem of the age 1 . But of all the poets who flourished before the time of Charles the Fifth, it is to Juan de Mena that we must ascribe the most important place. He was born at Cordoba, in 1411, and died in 1456. Juan the Second entertained so strong a partiality for him, that he constantly retained him at his court, and often corrected with his own hand the verses of his favourite. His talents were great, and his learning not restricted to the writings of his countrymen. It is not surprising that the version by Don Enrique de Villena should have awakened in his contemporaries the highest admiration of a poem so regular, so finished, and profound beyond what had yet appeared in modern times, as the 'Divina Commedia.' It was studied by them with the greatest care, and by Santillana amongst the rest; but its kindling spark of inspiration seems to have fallen with most effect upon the mind of Juan de Mena. He undertook a voyage to Italy for the express purpose of making himself familiar with its language and its commentators; and the plan of his great poem, the Laberinto, is clearly modelled after that of the melancholy Florentine. It is written in three hundred octavo stanzas, divided into seven parts, after the names of the then known planets. The author imagines himself transported to a plain, whereon the palace of Fortune stands, through which he is guided by a beautiful virgin, the representative of divine Providence. Under these auspices, all the regions of the earth present themselves successively to his view, as three wheels are exhibited, representing, one which is in constant motion, the time present; the two others that are at rest, the past and future. The poet sees in the circles of the past and present a multitude of personages, whose names are written on their foreheads. In the circle of the future, nothing is perceived but vague figures and veiled phantoms, whichvanish rapidly from sight. All the characters introduced are ranged under the influence of one or other of the seven planets, a system which, at that period, was much in vogue. This plan naturally opens a wide field for the history of his own and former ages, and he accordingly paints, with no small force and truth, the persons that, like the ghosts of Dante, pass him in review, draws a genealogy of the kings of Spain down to Juan the Second, to whom he dedicates his work; and whilst expressing a wish to illustrate the happy events that were to adorn his reign, dexterously shuts up his phantasmagoria, and escapes from so delicate a task, by causing the whole vision to vanish. Unequal as Juan de Mena is, weak sometimes in his versification, and trivial in his style, he is that one of the old masters in Spanish song whose verse most uniformly pleases. Many of his descriptions are full of animation, and much of his language is resonant and glowing. The following extract, on the death of Lorenzo Davalos, son of the Constable, will shew the tenderness of his fancy, and the measure which he uses in his Laberinto.

'He whom thou view'st there in the round of Mars,
Who toils to mount, yet treads on empty air,
Whose face of manly beauty's seen to bear
The gashing print of two deforming scars,
Virtuous, but smiled on by no partial stars, [5]
Is young Lorenzo, loved by all! a chief,
Who waged and finished, in a day too brief,
The first and last of his adventured wars;—

He, whom his sire's renown had ever spurred
To worth, the Infante's cherished friend, and pride [10]
Of the most mournful mother that e'er sighed
To see her pleasant offspring first interred!
O sharp, remorseless Fortune! at thy word
Two precious things were thrown away in vain,
His brave existence, and her tears of pain, [15]
By the keen torment of the sword incurred.

Well spoke the mother in the piteous cries
She raised, soon as she saw, with many a tear,
That body stretched upon the gory bier,
Which she had nursed with such unsleeping eyes!— [20]
With cruel clamours she upbraids the skies,
Wounds with new sorrows her weak frame, and so
Droops, weary soul! that, with the mighty woe,
She faints and falls in Death's serene disguise.

Then her fair breast with little ruth or dread [25]
To beat, her flesh with cruel nails to tear.
Kiss his cold lips, and in her mad despair
Curse the fierce hand that smote his helmed head,
And the wild battle where her darling bled,
Is all she does,—whilst, quarrelsome from grief [30]
And busy wrath, she wars with all relief,
Till scarce the living differs from the dead.

Weeping, she murmurs, 'It had been more kind,
O cruel murderer of my son! to kill
Me, and leave him, who was not in his will [35]
So fierce a foe; he to a mother's mind
Was much more precious,—and who slays, to bind
The lesser prey? thou never shouldst have bared
Thy blade on him, unless thou wert prepared
To leave me sad and moaning to the wind. [40]

Had death but struck me first, my darling boy
With these his pious hands mine eyes had closed,
Ere his were sealed, and I had well reposed,
Dying but once, whilst now—alas the annoy!
I shall die often; I, whose sole employ [45]
Is thus to bathe his wounds with tears of blood
Unrecognised, though lavished in a flood
Of fondness, dead to every future joy!'

Twas thus the inconsolable matron mourned,' &c.
Orden de Marte. Stan. cci. 6.

We know not that Spanish poetry up to this period, if placed by the side of what had been accomplished by the art in England, would suffer much by the comparison. Neither Lydgate nor Gower can be thought to excel the author of the 'Cid' and Juan Lorenzo; and although what we most admire in the satire of the Archpriest of Hita, and the tales in the 'Conde Lucanor,' are combined in Chaucer, and surpassed by his pungent wit and picturesque narratives, we must not forget, in adjusting the balance of originality and merit, that Chaucer was as much indebted to Boccaccio, as Juan de Mena was to Dante; that the language and versification of the latter are much more refined and harmonious than the writings of his contemporaries in England; and that the love-lays of Juan Manuel or Santillana, and Manrique's elegy, may claim a perfect equality with, or rather an absolute superiority, over the amatory effusions of Lord Surrey and the touching 'Adieu' of the younger Wyatt to his Lute. With these impressions on his mind, an indulgent critic, who looks back upon the imperfect productions of this first period of the art in Spain, will ascribe much in them of what is tiresome in narrative and dull in subject, to the legendary and monastic spirit of the age; much of what is inanimate and rude in style, to the wildness of an unfixed language, which takes, notwithstanding, as it advances, a tone of greater pomp and compass; and finally, he will overlook the constant want of unity of the longer poems, in the beautiful simplicity, originality, and effect so remarkable in the older ballads, which often carry with them more real pathos and enchantment, than are to be met with in the imitative grace and studied ornament of a later and correcter age.

Información sobre el texto