It was first published at Madrid, in the year 1610, five-and-thirty years after the death of the author, and was reprinted at Lisbon in 1617; but both editions were purposely mutilated.190 The text was at last given complete in the edition of the work, which appeared in 1776.
SAA DE MIRANDA.
The fame of the great reform of the Castilian poetry having penetrated into Portugal, a similar reform took place in the poetry of that nation. At this time the Castilian language was held in such high consideration in Portugal, that even Portuguese poets, without undervaluing their national tongue, thought themselves bound occasionally to write verses in Castilian, to entitle them to be regarded as perfect masters of the poetic art. In the first half of the sixteenth century, two of the most celebrated of these Portuguese poets laboured with such success to extend the dominion of Castilian pastoral poetry, that the thread of the history of Spanish literature would be broken, were a notice of the poetic merits of these two celebrated men confined solely to the history of the literature of Portugal. One of them, Francisco de Saa de Miranda, who was born in 1494, and died in 1558, belongs, however, in so eminent a degree, to his own nation, and the circumstances of his life are so closely connected with the history of Portuguese poetry, that it would be an injustice to Portuguese literature to rank him exclusively among the poets of Spain. Besides, most of his poetic works, with the exception of his pastoral poems, are written in the Portuguese language.191 The other Portuguese poet, who claims attention in the history of Spanish poetry, is Jorge de Montemayor. He, through his residence in Spain, became wholly a Spaniard:—the work to which he chiefly owes his celebrity is written in Spanish; and he had so decided an influence on Spanish literature, that this would be the proper place for introducing an account of his short life and of his poetry, did not Saa de Miranda’s Castilian pastorals, which are of older date, demand a previous notice.192
The bucolic effusions of Saa de Miranda exhibit in their general tone more traits of resemblance to Theocritus, than are to be found in the writings of Garcilaso de la Vega. Garcilaso’s pastoral style, with all its simplicity, was not sufficiently rural for Saa de Miranda. Like Theocritus his feelings seem to have dictated to him pure rural ideas; and he transferred this characteristic of his Portuguese eclogues to those which he wrote in Spanish, which are the most numerous. Nevertheless, even in his rural poems he did not wish to renounce the attributes of the loftier style of poetry. He was, however, heedless of all critical distinction of the different kinds of poetry, and would, without scruple, commence a poem, in the metre of an Italian canzone, as an ode, proceed with it in epic metaphors,193 and conclude it in the simplest idyllic style. With equal indifference he chose sometimes octave verse, sometimes tercets for his pastoral poems, which thus alternately assume a lyric and a dramatic tone. This capricious mixture of poetic genera and styles deteriorates in no slight degree the quality of Saa de Miranda’s poetry. The elevated tone of the ode forms a singular contrast when introduced in the same composition along with the easy familiar style, which, in the opinion of Saa de Miranda, the pure pastoral character of his poetry required. But no modern poet has succeeded so well in the union of simplicity and grace; and in this respect the eclogues of Saa de Miranda are unequalled. When he describes the gambols of the nymphs, with whom his fancy animates his native woodland scenes;194—when he sketches impetuous storms of passion, softened by the charm of his colouring, yet kept true to nature;195—when he introduces nymphs discoursing;196—or, when he abandons himself to a tone of elegiac melancholy;197—one knows not whether most to admire, the delicate truth and penetrating depth of his ideas, or the artless precision and facility of his expression. In such cases he often abandons the natural style of Theocritus for a more lofty or ideal manner. When, in some of his other eclogues, his shepherds converse on their occupations or superstitions,198 he likewise departs from the prosaic nature of real pastoral life, such as he had the opportunity of observing in his native country, and gradually elevates it to romantic ideality. It happened, however, that he occasionally found the prosaic truth of his pictures sufficiently interesting, and then to be truly natural he avoided all embellishment.199
Some of Saa de Miranda’s popular songs, called Cantigas, a term which in Portuguese corresponds with Villancicos in Spanish, are inimitable for grace and simplicity.200
MONTEMAYOR.
The poet who is celebrated in Spanish literature by the name of Jorge de Montemayor, was born in the year 1520, at Montemor, a little town of Portugal, not far from Coimbra. He took for his name that of his native city, spelt and pronounced in the Spanish way, probably because his own family name was not deemed sufficiently sonorous; and thus the latter has been entirely lost. The talent of this young Portuguese developed itself without the aid of a previous literary cultivation. At an early period of life he served in the Portuguese army, and, as there is reason to believe, in the rank of a common soldier. His taste for music, and the reputation he had acquired as a singer, induced him to visit Spain, where the Infant Don Philip, afterwards Philip II. had formed a company of court musicians, who were to accompany him on his travels through Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Jorge de Montemayor, being admitted as a vocal member of this travelling musical company, gained an opportunity of seeing the world, and at the same time making himself master of the Castilian language, which became to him a second mother tongue. He was, however, attached to Spain by a still closer link, namely, his love for a beautiful Castilian lady, whom he occasionally introduces in his poems under the name of Marfida. This Marfida became the deity of his poetry; and when, on his return to Spain, he found her wedded to another, he endeavoured to divert his sorrow by poetic effusions, in which he represented the faithless beauty as a romantic shepherdess; and, uniting these with several of his other compositions, he formed the whole into a romance. This romance, which he entitled Diana, was received by the Spanish public with a degree of favour never before extended to any Spanish book, Amadis de Gaul excepted; and it speedily found no fewer imitators than Amadis itself. The Queen of Portugal was desirous that the celebrated author of Diana should return to his native country. She recalled him, and he obeyed the honourable mandate. No further particulars of his history are known. He died by some violent means, either in 1561 or 1562. He was upwards of forty at the period of his death, which, according to some accounts, took place in Portugal, and according to others in Italy.201
The Diana of Montemayor is one of the few romantic works which belong entirely to the soul of the inventor, which are embued throughout with individual interest, and which on that very account exercise the more influence over unsophisticated minds, because the author possessed sufficient poetic genius successfully to convey the joys and sorrows of his own heart under the forms of a general interest. But this romance can never be to any other cultivated people what it was to the Spaniards of the sixteenth century. Still less can it be regarded as a classical fragment, even though judged according to the lenient rules by which every fragment is estimated; unless, indeed, after the manner of some modern critics, new rules of art be deduced from defective examples, for the sake of admiring as incomparable the grossest absurdities, under the title of romantic complexity. But with all its faults, this unfinished pastoral romance (for it was not brought to a conclusion by Montemayor) possesses a poetic merit, which entitles it to the esteem of all ages.
The design of the work, so far as Montemayor’s ideas render his intention obvious, sometimes charms by its graceful simplicity, and at others becomes grotesque, through an illegitimate romantic combination of heterogeneous species of composition. The shepherd Sireno, who represents the poet himself, on his return to his native country, visits the scene of the innocent joys which the inconstant shepherdess Diana once shared along with him. Overwhelmed with grief, he draws out first a lock of hair belonging to his mistress; and then one of her letters, which he reads. While he is thus communing with himself, he is joined by another romantic adorer of the beautiful Diana. This shepherd, whose love had always been unrequited, now joins his lamentations to those of the once happy Sireno, and each vies with the other in claiming to himself the heaviest load of misery. They are joined by a shepherdess, named