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LETTER X

Second Period of Spanish Poetry in the 15th century. —Character of king John the second, and of his son king Henry the fourth of Castile.

Madrid, 20th July, 1778.

As the heats begin to be excessive here, I shall soon make an excursion to St. Ildefonso, a royal seat, which stands in a very high situation amidst the Guadarrama mountains, that are covered with snow till the middle of June; there the court enjoy a cool and pleasant summer, and behold a second spring after their departure from Aranjuez, which they generally leave towards the end of June. In autumn they remove again to the Escurial, spend part of the winter in the new palace at Madrid, and are occasionally at the Casa del Campo, a small villa near Madrid, or at the Pardo, about sour leagues from hence; and thus, with the different hunting parties of the season, these regal constellations perform their annual orbits, with great punctuality and sameness. —On these occasions everything is extravagantly dear at these places, which becomes a heavy charge upon all the foreign ministers, whose duty obliges them to attend on the monarch; and since Lord Rochford's time I understand an extraordinary allowance is made to our ambassadors for this purpose. —Let me now make a retrograde movement, and recall your attention to the court of John the second, king of Castile, son of Henry the third and Catharine daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, by Constance of Castile. Under this prince we may properly fix the second period of Spanish poetry, in the fifteenth century, and I shall just give you a slight sketch of some of the principal characters of his court. The king himself was a great favourite of the muses and an excellent judge of poetical merit; he understood and spoke Latin fluently, and was not only a good poet, but moreover, encouraged all those that excelled in that art, delighting in the conversation of men of genius and talents; under such a Mecenas, no wonder that the nobles should follow the royal example, and the palace of king John resemble the court of Apollo: but with all these amiable qualities, this indolent prince suffered himself to be governed by his favourites and minions, which brought on him the hatred of his subjects, who shewed their spirit of resentment to such a degree, that the king caused his Privado, Don Alvaro de Luna, to be beheaded at Valladolid. —I shall say nothing more of the marquis of Villena, as he lived in retirement under this reign, where we find Fernan Perez de Guzman, Lord of Barres, who was both an historian and a poet; the printed Cancioneros abound with his works, and some are in the manuscript one of Juan Alfonso de Baena; he is author of a poem intitled Las sentencias y coplas de bien vivir, printed at Lisbon in 1564, and also published the chronicle of king John. He likewise wrote in prose the lives of all the great men who flourished in that king’s reign in arms, or letters entitled Claros varones Espanoles, a book greatly esteemed: In its imitation Fernando del Pulgar afterwards writ another, dedicated to Isabella queen of Castile, printed at Madrid in 1678, at the end of the epitome of the chronicle of king John the second. Guzman had for contemporary that illustrious nobleman Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana, who lived till the time of Henry the fourth, son to John the second. By order of king John he drew up a collection of moral proverbs for the instruction of prince Henry his son, and for the same purpose also wrote a treatise on favourites, entitled Doctrinal de privados, in which Don Alvaro de Luna is represented as speaker, and gives advice to his successor, how he should behave like a good minister, and not follow his treacherous example. —He likewise made a collection of ancient proverbs in the Spanish language, which were reprinted with other curious pieces of Spanish literature in 1737, by Don Gregorio Mayans. The marquis supported a literary correspondence with the lord high constable of Portugal, Don Pedro, son of the Infant Don Pedro, duke of Coimbra; at the request of this prince, he wrote him a long letter, sending him a collection of his poems, and giving him a circumstantial account of the state of poetry in Spain. Father Labbe says, that amongst the king of France’s manuscripts, they possess several of the marquis’s poems and letters. All the great men of his time were desirous of a literary correspondence with him. Don Gomez Manrique, a great poet, and brother to Don Roderic, first Count of Paredes, and uncle to Don George Manrique, another celebrated poet, wrote a poem to the marquis, requesting his works, and composed several others in his praise. This great man died in 1458, to the great regret of all his acquaintance. The famous poet Juan de Mena particularly laments this event in a poem he wrote on the occasion, entitled Coronation, wherein he supposed himself to have been carried up to Parnassus, and seen the muses and virtues crown the marquis with laurels, and with much elegance sings his praises as a philosopher, a poet, a soldier, and a Christian.

The first Duke of Infantado was son to this illustrious Marquis, and directed in his will, that all the poems of his father, as well as his library, should be entailed in the family along with the estate; and be preserved in his palace of Guadalaxara, where it is said there is a very curious collection of manuscripts. This ducal family has built at Guadalaxara a sumptuous chapel to deposit the remains of their ancestors, in imitation of that famous one at the Escurial; and is also called a pantheon; it contains twenty-six urns arranged in proper order, with a great profusion of curious marble, and cost 1,082,770 reals vellon, or £12181.

After having said so much of the marquis of Santillana, I come to the great Juan de Mena, of Cordova, his friend, whose poetical talents were so admired by king John, that he retained him constantly at his court, and would frequently correct his verses with his own hand. The most celebrated piece of this poet is his Labyrintho, in three hundred octavas, from whence it is called Las tres cientas de Juan de Mena, divided into seven parts according to the planets, beginning with the moon, and finishing with Saturn, which has been learnedly commented upon by Fernan Nunez de Guzman, stiled El Pinciano, to distinguish him from the historiographer I before mentioned. Mena’s poems have gone through a variety of editions, the oldest was printed at Sarragossa in 1515. That of Seville in 1528 contains more poems, and they were reprinted at Antwerp in 1552.

I must mention a very polite and accomplished gentleman, who just reached the days of King John; his prose compositions are estimable for their antiquity, as well as purity and elegance of language. This was Pedro Lopez de Ayala. He translated Livy into Spanish, much about the time that it first appeared in French by Peter Berchorius, a Benedictine monk. He also translated, from the Italian, the fall of princes of Boccaccio, and the Trojan history of Guido Colonna; Boetius de Consolatione Philosophiae, and Isidore de Summo Bono. He lived under four kings, Peter, Henry 2d, John 1st, and Henry 3d, of all which he compiled the chronicles; the three first were printed, but that of Henry the 3d is still in manuscript, in the convent of St. Martin, in Madrid. In this work there is an original letter, from Bajazet to Henry 3d, which occasioned the famous embassy to Tamerlane, by Henry, who sent Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, as his ambassador to that sovereign, an account of which was published by Argote de Molina. —Ayala is taxed with great partiality and flattery in favour of the rebel Henry against his brother king Peter, whom he stabbed with his own hand, and then usurped his dominions. The true chronicle of Peter was written by John de Castro bishop of Jaen, but was suppressed by the partisans of Henry, after he came to the throne. Before I take my leave of king John,let me mention another writer that will afford you much entertainment, that is the bachelor Fernan Gomez de Ciudad Real, who was forty-four years physician to king John 2d, and of course well acquainted with all the intrigues of his court; his letters were published at Burgos in 1499, and throw great light on many actions of the principal characters of his time. This book was lately reprinted at Madrid. 1 There is a letter amongst them from the poet Juan de Mena, complaining of the behaviour of the bishop of Cuenca, in burning and secreting the books of the marquise of Villena. 2

The depravity of the age gave rise to another satyrist, whose verse is mentioned in Don Quixote, under the feigned name of Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, a satyrical poem, written in a pastoral dialogue, consisting of thirty-five stanzas between the shepherd Mingo, or Dominic, and Gil Arrebato, de scribing the vices of king Henry the fourth, son to John the second, reproaching him as a bad shepherd, who took no care of his flock. The stuttering shepherd, Tartamudo, is Moses, Christoval Mexia is the Messiah, and the Meco Moro is Mahomet. All their flocks are represented as grazing promiscuously, without any regulation or government, to the ruin and downfall of the kingdom, in which Christians, Jews, and Mahometans, lived intermixed, without control or subordination; for thus we must understand the tenth couplet.

Moderrado con el sueno
No lo cura de almagrar,
Porque no entiende de dar
Cuenta de ello a ningún dueño.
Quanto yo no amoldada
Lo de Christoval Mexia,
Ni del otro tartamudo,
Ni del Meco Moro agudo:
Todo va por una via!

Some have attributed this poem to Juan de Mena, others to Fernán del Pulgar, of which opinion is the historian Mariana; and when we consider the comment of Pulgar, always printed along with the poem, explaining the most obscure passages, it seems to be a probable conjecture. As to the vices of Henry the fourth, they exceed the pen of the most poignant satyrist. He stands charged with having consented to the infidelity of his queen, with Betran de la Cueva, who for recompense was created count of Ledesma. The princess Jane was supposed to be the issue of this amour; her legitimacy was publicly contested, which occasioned much bloodshed, and ended, in her being obliged to retire to a convent, stigmatized with the name of La Bertrandina; and Henry’s sister Isabella became heiress of the crown of Castile, which by her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon, became united for ever to that kingdom.

We now draw near to a more polished age, and to new events under the auspicious reign of Ferdinand and Isabel; another great genius appears on the horizon, the poet Juan de la Encina, who went to Jerusalem with the marquis of Tarifa, and has describedthat expedition in verse; while we class him in point of time as the last poet of the age, we must exalt him to the first rank for the harmony and power of his numbers. He translated the eclogues of Virgil, applying the circumstances to the events of Ferdinand and Isabel, in whose praise he wrote his poem of Triunfo de la fama, and his Arte de poesía Castellana in prose, dedicated to the prince Don John, all which he completed, between the age of fourteen and twenty-five, as appears from the, collection of his works printed at Saragossa, in 1516.

The Castilian muse now began to assume a loftier flight. Juan de Mena introduced an elegance of expression, George Manrique and his nephew 3 polished her style, and embellished it with more easy rhyme. The marquis of Santillana disembarrassed her from the fetters of couplets, and made her acquainted with the Versification of the Provenzals and Italians. Finally, Juan de la Encina shewed her to be equal to the powers of the drama, following the example of the marquis of Villena in translating the Latin poets, and in laying down precepts for the art, which was as much as could be expected at that time. —Besides the Cancionero of Baena, a further Cancionero general was compiled by Hernan del Castillo, including all the poets from Juan de Mena down to the editor, and has gone through several editions, the third was at Seville in 1535, and another at Antwerp, in 1573.

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