A History of Spanish Literature. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

de Palacio "was written during his imprisonment in England,"—pleasant, but difficult. To begin with, it is by no means sure that Ayala ever quitted the Peninsula. More than this: though the Rimado de Palacio was composed at intervals, the stages can be dated approximately. The earlier part of the poem contains an allusion to the schism during the pontificate of Urban VI., so that this passage must date from 1378 or afterwards; the reference to the death of the poet's father, Hernán Pérez de Ayala, brings us to the year 1385 or later; and the statement that the schism had lasted twenty-five years fixes the time of composition as 1403.

      Rimado de Palacio (Court Rhymes) is a chance title that has attached itself to Ayala's poem without the author's sanction. It gives a false impression of his theme, which is the decadence of his age. Only within narrow limits does Ayala deal with courts and courtiers; he had a wider outlook, and he scourges society at large. What was a jest to Ruiz was a woe to the Chancellor. Ruiz had a natural sympathy for a loose-living cleric; Ayala lashes this sort with a thong steeped in vitriol. The one looks at life as a farce; the other sees it as a tragedy. Where the first finds matter for merriment, the second burns with the white indignation of the just. The deliberate mordancy of Ayala is impartial insomuch as it is universal. Courtiers, statesmen, bishops, lawyers, merchants—he brands them all with corruption, simony, embezzlement, and exposes them as venal sons of Belial. And, like Ruiz, he places himself in the pillory to heighten his effects. He spares not his superstitious belief in omens, dreams, and such-like fooleries; he discovers himself as a grinder of the poor man's face, a libidinous perjurer, a child of perdition.

      But not all Ayala's poem is given up to cursing. In his 705th stanza he closes what he calls his sermón with the confession that he had written it, "being sore afflicted by many grievous sorrows," and in the remaining 904 stanzas Ayala breathes a serener air. In both existing codices—that of Campo-Alange and that of the Escorial—this huge postscript follows the Rimado de Palacio with no apparent break of continuity; yet it differs in form and substance from what precedes. The cuaderna vía alone is used in the satiric and autobiographical verses; the later hymns and songs are metrical experiments—echoes of Galician and Provençal measures, redondillas of seven syllables, attempts to raise the Alexandrine from the dead, results derived from Alfonso's Cantigas and Juan Ruiz' loores. In his seventy-third year Ayala was still working upon his Rimado de Palacio. It was too late for him to master the new methods creeping into vogue, and though in the Cancionero de Baena (No. 518) Ayala answers Sánchez Talavera's challenge in the regulation octaves, he harks back to the cuaderna vía of his youth in his paraphrase of St. Gregory's Job. If he be the writer of the Proverbios en Rimo de Salomón—a doubtful point—his preference for the old system is there undisguised. Could that system have been saved, Ayala had saved it: not even he could stay the world from moving.

      His prose is at least as distinguished as his verse. A treatise on falconry, rich in rarities of speech, shows the variety of his interests, and his version of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum illustrium brings him into touch with the conquering Italian influence. His reference to Amadís in the Rimado de Palacio (stanza 162), the first mention of that knight-errantry of Spain, proves acquaintance with new models. Translations of Boëtius and of St. Isidore were pastimes; a partial rendering of Livy, done at the King's command, was of greater value. In person or by proxy, Alfonso the Learned had opened up the land of history; Juan Manuel had summarised his uncle's work; the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, otherwise Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Mūsā, had been translated from the Arabic; the annals of Alfonso XI. and his three immediate predecessors were written by some industrious mediocrity perhaps Fernán Sánchez de Tovar, or Juan Núñez de Villaizán. These are not so much absolute history as the raw material of history. In his Chronicles of the Kings of Castile, Ayala considers the reigns of Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I., and Enrique III., in a modern scientific spirit. Songs, legends, idle reports, no longer serve as evidence. Ayala sifts his testimonies, compares, counts, weighs them, checks them by personal knowledge. He borrows Livy's framework, inserting speeches which, if not stenographic reports of what was actually said, are complete illustrations of dramatic motive. He deals with events which he had witnessed: plots which his crafty brain inspired, victories wherein he shared, battles in which he bit the dust. The portraits in his gallery are scarce, but every likeness, is a masterpiece rendered with a few broad strokes. He records with cold-blooded impartiality as a judge; his native austerity, his knowledge of affairs and men, guard him from the temptations of the pleader. With his unnatural neutrality go rare instinct for the essential circumstance, unerring sagacity in the divination and presentment of character, unerring art in preparing climax and catastrophe, and the gift of concise, picturesque phrase. A statesman of genius writing personal history with the candour of Pepys: as such the thrifty Mérimée recognised Ayala, and, in his own confection, so revealed him to the nineteenth century.

      Footnote:

[4] The contents of this work are summarised in the author's Book of States (chap. xci.).