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LETTER VIII

Origin and progress of national poetry in Castile.

Toledo, 29th June, 1778.

I have made an excursion to the city of Toledo, twelve leagues south of Madrid, and dignified with the title of imperial, after its conquest from the Moors, by Alfonso the 6th, who stiled himself emperor, and was crowned here; since which the city has bore for their armorial ensigns, an emperor seated in a royal chair in his robes, holding a drawn sword in his right hand, and a mund in his left.

I shall leave to travel writers to describe the numerous edifices and public structures, as well as churches, pictures, and stately monuments to be seen in this place. The cathedral alone would require a volume; amongst its many superb tombs, I particularly noticed that of Don Alvaro de Luna, constable of Castile, the unfortunate favourite of king John 2d, and that of Cardinal Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, son to that illustrious poet, the Marquis of Santillana. With respect to the variety of ornaments in this ancient cathedral, the critic has a noble field of matter; as for the unwieldy group of figures in this church, so much admired by the inhabitants, and called, I know not for what reason, El Transparente; one of their own writers, Don Antonio Ponz, a modern critic, fairly acknowledges, “That for any use or ornament, it affords, this immense mass of marble might as well have remained buried for ever in the quarry of Carrara!” I shall say nothing, of the badness and crooked form of the streets, still more inconvenient from the situation of the city on a hill, much less can be offered in favour of the environs of Toledo, which are bleak and in great want of trees, though Martial, in one of his epigrams to Licinius, represents the country in his time, on the bank of the Tagus, to have been much favoured with shade.

Æstus screnos aureo franges Tago
Obscurus umbris arborum.

But it is now high time to proceed on my favourite subject. —When the Latin tongue, which had been universal in Spain, became totally corrupted by such different invasions, and variety of nations, and dispositions, the Castilian language is supposed to have insensibly arose about the 12th century. —The oriental poetry had flourished near five hundred years, and the Provenzal and Galician dialects about one hundred, so that when the genius of Castilian poetry first began to expand and acquire a national form, it must have borrowed of course from the spirit of its predecessors, and had its origin, like all ancient languages, in singing the exploits of heroes, sounding forth the praise of the Deity, and tuning their lyre to the cause of religion: such were their Cantares, of which the Cancioneros have preserved ample collections. —I have enlarged upon the style and character of these several people, in order to form from thence some fixed idea, or rule proper to be assigned, as an origin to the poetry of Castile, tracing the sources of its singular variety, and discovering that want of unity in its character, in proportion as it has imitated such a diversity of models. The oriental style in the first place, delights in strained allusions, and extravagant metaphors, adorned with exuberance of expression, and an admirable variety and brilliancy of sentiment: it is happy in the harmony of its numbers, and when it rises to solemn and majestic subjects, is said to lose itself in enthusiasm and rapture. The Provenzal poetry on the other hand is restricted by the laws of the Trobadours, and being fettered in the golden chains of love, becomes languid and faint, when it attempts to describe the thunder of love, or the anger of military heroes, with the clangour of war.

Such was the stock from whence the Castilian bee was to draw an inexhaustible store, and to sip every flower, enriching itself with a fund that was to charm future ages, and convey to the mind the most permanent and pleasing sensations. When they followed the manner of the Orientals, the Trobadours, or the Italians, it proceeded from a natural impulse, which leads to imitate the objects constantly in view; when they copied the Greeks, and Romans, it owed its effect to a more refined and elevated genius. —The various objects of the bards successively altered with the times; the achievements of Charlemagne and the twelve peers of France, drew the attention of the French and Italians; then came the croisades and the seats of knights inspired with a military zeal for religion; after these were at an end, the mind was still exalted and attached to the marvellous, suited to the prevailing manners, so that the fictitious heroes and knight errants easily succeeded, and the tale was embellished with the amorous novel, in which the Spanish warriors were introduced with such a delusive medley of falsehood and truth, that some have taken fable for history, and others have rejected fact for romance. At last a surprising genius arose, the universal admiration of mankind, who with the invincible lance of Don Quijote, drove for ever all those extravagant heroes out of the field.

As music is composed of certain tones and cadences, it was necessary that what was to be sung should have a proper metre adapted to musical harmony, from whence the first origin of verse, in every part of the world; that the Spanish language is admirably adapted to poetic harmony, has been generally allowed, and has been evidently proved by an excellent judge, Francisco Salinas, of Burgos, born in 1513, celebrated by his contemporaries for his great skill in music, as a performer and a theorist; and though afflicted with blindness from his infancy, instead of depressing his mind, it tended to improve his musical genius in a wonderful manner. He went to Rome in the retinue of Don Pedro Sarmiento, archbishop of Compostella, and after twenty years spent in Italy, returned to Salamanca, where he held a professorship of music, and died at the age of seventy seven, universally admired and regretted.

In tracing then the poetry of Castile through its various modulations from its origin down to the present time, we may divide it into four periods; the first from its early dawn till the reign of king John the 2d; the next from this king to the days of Charles the 5th; the third from that emperor down to Philip the 4th; and the last from that reign down to Charles the 2d, the last Austrian monarch, when the genius of Homer and Virgil seems to have fled from the banks of the Manzanares, and to have fixed its residence on those of the Thames. In this manner its first state may be compared to its infancy, the second to its juvenile days, the third to its vigour and manhood, and the fourth to its old age and decline. The Castilian bard made his first effort in an age when there was little refinement in language, and the ear unaccustomed to melodious sounds, or skilful enough to be affected by the harmonious numbers of the ancients, much less in a situation to imitate them. The most ancient poet known in Castile is not of a higher date than the beginning of the thirteenth century. This is Gonzalo Berceo, native of the town of Berceo, in Guypuscoa and a monk of the convent of St. Milan, from whose archives it appears that he lived in 1220, he wrote the lives of St. Milan, St. Dominic of Silos, and other Spanish saints in verse, of twelve, thirteen and fourteen syllables, as well as a poem on the battle of Simancas, where the Moors were defeated by Ramiro the 2d, king of Leon. These with some others are in manuscript, in the convent of St. Milan. There is likewise a poem of his on the mass in the royal library at Madrid, but nothingmore has been printed than his life of St. Dominic, wherein he acquaints his readers that he attempted his poem in Spanish, being totally unable to perform it in Latin.

Quiero ser una prosa en roman paladino
En qual suele el pueblo fablar a vecino
Ca non so tan letrado por ser otro latino.

The similitude and analogy observed between the latin and Spanish verse, such as the verse of eight feet with the Trocaic, that of five with the Adonic, that of eleven with the Sapphic Asclepediad, or Choriambic, and other similar compositions, shew their origin from the Greek and Latin models; but with respect to imitation, we must rather look for it amongst the Trobadours and Italians, from whom they borrowed the Soneto, Madrigal, Cancion, Terceto, Octava Rima, and similar poems, different from the ancient Coplas of Spain.

The Coplas, called Redondillas, or Roundelays, are of great antiquity. The Spanish poets of those days, when they wrote in Latin, made use of the rhyme of the roundelays, and from them perhaps it was adopted in the national poetry. An epitaph in the church of Toledo, of the year 1333, has the following lines.

Mitibus hic mitis, tamen hostibus esse studebat
Hostis, fulgebat propter certamina litis.

Which divided by the Cesura of rhyme, would run thus.

Mitibus hic mitis,
Tamen hostibus esse studebat
Hostis, fulgebat
Propter certamina litis.

Another epitaph in the same church:

Toleti natus, cujus generosa propago
Moribus ornatus fuit hic probitatis imago:
Largus, magnificus, electus mendoniensis,
Donis inmensis, cunctorum verus amicus.

Which divided in the same manner, will be,

Toleti flatus,
Cujus generosa propago
Moribus ornatus
Fuit hic probitatis imago
Largus, magnificus
Electus Mendionensis,
Donis inmenfis
Cunctorum verus arnicus.

In the early days of their poetry we often find verse of four, five, six and eight syllables, in the works of the infant Don Manuel, who died in 1362, and also made use of the Hendecasyllable verse, as did the marquis of Santillana.

The verses of twelve syllables were styled De arte mayor, and were used by king Alfonso the Wise, in his poem of Las querelas, or “Complaints” against the rebellion of his undutiful son Sancho; but the verse of thirteen and fourteen feet are the most ancient metre, being used by Berceo the monk, and king Alfonso abovementioned.

As to rhyme, we know it existed before the Goths extended themselves to the south, or the Saracens penetrated into the west: it has been thought by some writers, that even in the Augustan age the poets had a partiality for rhyme at the end like the Leonine verse, instances of which are seen in Horace, 1 Ovid, 2 Propertius, 3 and Martial, 4 and the similsonance was considered as a figure of rhetoric. —However that might have been, the monkish writers, without any feeling for the true graces of poetry, were delighted with jingling sounds, thinking with consonance and rhyme to supply the place of genius and fancy. To perceive the similitude between their barbarous Latin verse and the Spanish rhyme of those days, we have only to compare them together. —An epitaph in the cathedral of Toledo, of 1326, is as follows:

Hoc positus tumulo fuit expers improbitatis,
Intus & extra fuit immensœ probitatis,
Largus, magnificus fuit, & dans omnia gratis,
Et speculum generis, totius fons bonitatis.

This strophe preserves the same rhyme, as those of the monk Berceo, with respect to the consonance of the four verses. —Let us now compare it with a Spanish epitaph of the year 1388.

D. Sancho obispo de avila como senor honrado,
Dio muy buen exemplo, como fue buen prelado,
Fizo este monasterio de S. Benito llamado
Y diole muy grandes algos, por do es substentado.

Verses ending with an echo were used by Juan de la Encina, and are with his other poems in the Cancionero general printed at Seville, in 1535. The last part of the penultimate word is echoed by a similar one, thus,

El mas querido, y inflamado, amado,
Puesto en el duro, y fin consuelo, suelo,
Sufre por mi, de tierra y cielo, yelo,
En un pesebre desechado, echado.

Many new kind of verse, such as sapphic, adonic, phaleucian and others, were introduced by Bermudez, in his tragedies of Nize. The verse called Esdrujulo was first used by Cayrasco de Figueroa, and always ends with dactyls, or words that have the accent on the antepenultimate syllable, with the two last syllables short, thus,

Al prado de san Geronimo
Con mis zelos, y mi cantaro.
Salgo a vengarme de un picaro
Que nove el estilo xacaro.

Vicente Espinel is commonly said to be the inventor of the verses called after him Espinelas, but this is controverted by Don Gregorio Mayans, who attributes them to Juan Angel, who used them in his poem of Tragitriumfo in 1523, and only allows to Espinel the merit of having improved the metre. Espinel also wrote a romance under the seigned name of El Escudero Marcos de Obregon, describing the follies of his youth, from whence the French writer La Sage has interwoven several of his characters in his romance of Gil Blas.

Other verses were called Felicianas, according to Lopez de Vega, from the inventress of that name, who spent some time in men’s apparel in the university of Salamanca. —It would be an useless task to relate the variety of inventions which sprang up in a barbarous age, such as the retrogade verse, the labyrinth, the cento, the acrostic, and other puerile fancies, of which Caramuel, a Spanish monk in the last century, has compiled two folio volumes under the title of Rythmica and Metramica, which were reprinted in Italy: but I will not take up more of your time with such trifles, and hasten to speak of blank verse, which is of great antiquity in Spain, where they seem as sensible of its dignity and majesty as we are in England. They had it at the same time that the famous Trissino first introduced it in Italy, for his contemporary Alonso de Fuentes, of Seville, published a poem there in 1547, in blank verse, entitled La Suma de Philosophia. Trissino died in 1550.

In this moment receive the agreeable news of your safe return to England. The melancholy account you give me of parties, and faction at home, grieves me exceedingly; but I trust in the spirit of our people and our numerous resources to overcome both foreign and domestic enemies. Foreign nations, unacquainted with our constitution and government, and who only hear the misrepresentations and clamour of faction, imagine we are undone; the French flatter themselves to have in a manner secured to themselves, the possession of America, under the veil of an alliance with the congress; and the Spaniards fondly conceive that Gibraltar will fall an easy prey into their hands; how egregiously they are deceived in this, as well as in their romantic ideas of conquering Jamaica, I trust to providence and our own vigorous exertions to shew! you tell me we have a fine fleet in the Bay under the command of an experienced officer, who, if he falls in with the enemy, no doubt will give a good account of them, and, I hope, return home, crowned with laurels, to receive the thanks of his countrymen. Methinks I see the gallant veteran entering London in triumph, like a Roman consul, with the spoils of the enemy, amidst the shouts and acclamations of a grateful people, repeating incessantly his victories! I must say no more, poets you know, are apt to have visions, let me wish this may be a true one, and that in all parts of the world our fleets and arms may ever be victorious, and, to use the expression of a great writer, “assert triumphantly the rights and honour of Great Britain, as far as waters roll, and as winds can waft them”. Adieu!