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The second era of poetry in Spain, which presents the Castilian Muse to our notice with an aspect altogether new, began with the accession of Charles the Fifth, and it is here that Don Juan Maury commences his selected specimens. Himself a native of the Peninsula, the friend of Quintana and Arriaza, to whom he dedicates his work, he has done good service to its literature, by translating the choicest of those poems, whose force and beauty he must estimate so well, into a language so widely diffused, and over which he seems to have nearly as much command as though it were his own. The skill and felicity with which he has transfused into his verses much of the spirit of the originals, which accompany the translations, may have the effect of extending in France the study of the language and of those lettered stores upon which Corneille did not disdain to draw; whilst the brief, yet comprehensive selections he has made, and the memoirs and historical notes which he has affixed, tend to give a more popular interest to the work than if he had gone more deeply into his subject. Dividing his specimens into a number of epochs, he draws a rapid sketch of the writers that distinguish each, in poetical introductions which enable him, whilst avoiding the appearance of neglect, to pass over such as are either uncongenial to his own taste, or whose productions he may imagine would not please the general reader. In a very few pages, therefore, he despatches his notice of the poets previous to Garcilaso upon whose merits we have commented, omitting even a much more extended recognition of Mendoza and Boscán, although they were his contemporaries, and form the connecting link between the ancient and the modern school of Spanish poetry, the Dantistas and Petrarquistas of her 'debateable land.' We know not that the omission is much to be regretted, as Mendoza is better known as a general and a diplomatist than a poet, and Boscán, apart from the revolution which he originated in the taste of his countrymen, is little more than an ingenious versifier. Yet there are many readers who would be curious to see how the author of Lazarillo de Tormes and the historian of the Moorish revolt in the Alpuxarras, would shine in poetry, and there are some pleasing passages in his epistles, wherein, fierce and ambitious and restless as he was, he dwells with delight upon domestic pleasures, the bliss of solitude, and the simple enjoyments of a country life. Boscán too has left in ottava rima a description of the kingdom of Love, possessing both harmony and elegance. Hitherto the hymns of Juan Ruiz, and the lyrical or ballad measures which Villena, Santillana, and Manrique had adopted from the Troubadours, formed the sole variety to the heavy quadruplicate rhymes, octaves, and Alexandrines that pervade the art from Berceo to Juan de Mena. Boscán, upon the recommendation of Navagero, their Venetian ambassador, himself an elegant Latin versifier, introduced from Italy the endecasyllabic measure, the stanza of Ariosto, and the complicated structure of the ode and sonnet. Garcilaso de la Vega, his most intimate friend, fortified him in his undertaking by his encouragement and example; and under their culture, and the new laws of composition imposed by their influence, Spanish versification acquired a flexibility and compass that fitted it for every requisition of the Muse.

Garcilaso may be regarded as the first Spanish poet who combined, in a very great degree, the two essential qualities of excellence, genius and good taste. It is true that his disposition, different from Juan de Mena's, inclined him rather to Virgil and Petrarch, than to Dante, and his admiration and study of their writings, whilst it led to exquisite imitations of their imagery and harmony, induced him to rely less than he needed on his own resources. But considering him not only as the principal agent by whom the new system of versification, commenced by Boscán, became established, but as the founder of a new school of poetry, it is impossible not to ascribe to him much real genius. His talents excite a yet higher estimation, when we reflect that he died at the age of thirty-three, and that, far from enjoying the quiet leisure of his friend Boscán, he accompanied Charles the Fifth both to Pavia and Tunis, fighting in the field, and during the intervals of battle, writing his verses in the tent. His taste was, notwithstanding, superior to his genius; and as he took the Mantuan for his model, his writings have a classical elegance, purity, and charm, unsurpassed by any succeeding poet. His first eclogue, and his beautiful Ode on the Flower of Gnido, are the two most celebrated of his compositions; the latter is full of grace and lyrical effect; and the ivies, trees, and waters sung of in the former, convey a freshness equal to that of the woods and pastures in 'Lycidas;' whilst the grief of his shepherds exceeds even in pathos that which is painted in the pastoral of Milton. But the critics who have written on the subject appear to have praised them a little too much at the expense of the third eclogue, which possesses, in our opinion, a very perfect beauty. It is written in the ottava rima, and we are tempted to present a specimen of its harmony and poetic picture, from the version of Mr. Wiffen, who has given us a translation of his entire works. The extract will exhibit some of those merits which have obtained for Garcilaso the high title of prince amongst the Spanish poets.

'In a sweet solitude by Tajo's flood
Is a green grove of willows, trunk-entwined
With ivies climbing to the top, whose hood
Of glossy leaves, with all its boughs combined,
So interchains and canopies the wood. [5]
That the hot sunbeams can no access find;
The water bathes the mead; the flowers around
It glads, and charms the ear with its sweet sound.

The glassy river here so smoothly slid
With pace so gentle on its winding road, [10]
The eye, in sweet perplexity misled,
Could scarcely tell which way the current flowed:
Combing her locks of gold, a nymph her head
Raised from the water where she made abode;
And as the various landscape she surveyed, [15]
Saw this green meadow full of flowers and shade.

That wood, the flowery turf, the winds that wide
Diffused its fragrance, filled her with delight;
Birds of all hues in the fresh bowers she spied,
Retired, and resting from their weary flight. [20]
It was the hour when hot the sunbeams dried
Earth's spirit up—'twas noontide still as night;
Alone, at times, as of o'erbrooding bees,
Mellifluous murmurs sounded from the trees.

Having a long time, lingered to behold [25]
The shady place in meditative mood,
She waved aside her flowing locks of gold,
Dived to the bottom of the crystal flood,
And when to her sweet sisters she had told
The charming coolness of this vernal wood, [30]
Prayed and advised them to its green retreat
To take their tasks, and pass the hours of heat.

She had not long to sue,—the lovely three
Took up their work, and looking forth descried,
Peopled with violets, the sequestered lea, [35]
And toward it hastened: swimming, they divide
The clear glass, wantoning in sportful glee
Through the smooth wave; till issuing from the tide,
Their white feet dripping to the sands they yield,
And touch the border of the verdant field. [40]

Pressing the elastic moss with graceful tread,
They wrung the moisture from their shining hair,
Which shaken loose, entirely overspread
Their beauteous shoulders and white bosoms bare;
Then, drawing forth rich webs whose spangled thread [45]
Might in fine beauty with themselves compare,
They sought the shadiest covert of the grove,
And sat them down, conversing as they wove.

White-bosomed Nyse took not for her theme
Memory of past catastrophes, nor twined
In her fine tissue aught that poets dream
In antique fable, for her heart inclined
To the renown of her dear native stream; [5]
The glorious Tagus therefore she designed,
There where he blesses with his sinuous train
The happiest of all lands, delightful Spain!

Deep in a rocky valley was compressed
The wealthy river, winding almost round [10]
A mountain, rushing with impetuous haste,
And roaring like a lion as it wound:
Mad for its prey, high flew its foaming crest,
But it was labour lost, and this it found;
For soon, contented with its wrack, the wave [15]
Lost its resentment, and forgot to rave.

On the high mountain's airy head was placed
Of ancient towers a grand and glorious weight;
Here its bare bosom white-walled convents graced.
There castles frowned in old Arabian state; [20]
In windings grateful to the eye of taste,
Thence the smooth river, smilingly sedate,
Slid, comforting the gardens, woods, and flowers,
With the cool spray of artificial showers.

Elsewhere the web, so richly figured o'er, [25]
Shewed the fair Dryads issuing from a wood,
With anxious haste all tending to the shore,
The grassy margin of the shaded flood;
In sable stoles, with aspect sad, they bore
Baskets of purple roses in the bud, [30]
Lilies and violets, which they scattering poured
On a dead nymph whom deeply they deplored.

All with dishevelled hair were seen to shower
Tears o'er the nymph, whose beauty did bespeak,
That death had cropt her in her sweetest flower, [35]
Whilst youth bloomed rosiest in her charming cheek;
Near the still water, in a myrtle bower,
She lay amongst the green herbs, pale and meek;
Like a white swan, that sickening where it feeds,
Sighs its sweet life away amidst the reeds.' [40]

It seems impossible that the writer should have been inspired with such exquisite imagery amidst the turmoil of a camp; but such he informs the Countess of Uraña was the case:

'Midst arms—with scarce one pause from bloody toil,
Where war's hoarse trumpet breaks the poet's dream,
Have I these moments stolen, oft claimed again,
Now taking up the sword, and now the pen.'

The courage, in fact, which he displayed in battle, exposed him to perpetual danger. At Pavia it gained him the particular notice of Charles; in Africa he was sorely wounded, and rescued from the Moors only by the intrepidity of Federico Carrafa, a noble Neapolitan, who, at the risk of his own life, attacked the crowd that surrounded him, and bore him off half fainting in his arms. In his 'Epistle to Boscán,' he expresses a presentiment that he should fall in battle, and the omen was too fatally fulfilled. Scaling too rashly a tower at Frejus, he was killed in 1533 by a mass of stone hurled down by the besiegers, and the emperor gave a striking but cruel proof of his grief at the event, by putting to the sword the garrison that had deprived his court of so great an ornament. The impulse given by Garcilaso to the other poets of his time, is to be seen not only in the numbers that followed his steps in abandoning the school of the Dantistas, whereof Castillejo was the bitter advocate, but in their implicit imitation of his class of subjects. As he, delighting in the shades and fountains of an ideal Arcadia, had affected the elegy and eclogue, consulting Virgil and Tibullus, they too must delight in the same pages, and imitate him as he had imitated them. Hence it is no wonder that a reader of the present day should pass carelessly over the pastorals of Cetina, Gil Polo, and others, who, although occasionally very passable in their descriptions, give back merely upon the ear and imagination, mechanic echoes of his flute and syrinx. From this censure must be excepted the tender and pathetic muse of Francisco de la Torre, whose eclogues and canciones are so elegant and charming, that we wonder M. Maury should have omitted all selection from him for such poor substitutes as the sonnets of Santa Teresa and the verses of Cervantes. Quintana justly observes, that no Castilian poet has known how to draw, from the simplest rural objects, sentiments at once so tender and so full of melancholy. His 'Ode to the Turtle,' for example, is one of the very sweetest colloquies with inarticulate Nature which, without excepting the 'Dying Fawn' of Marvell, the compass of poetry presents.

It is very unfortunate, however, that the successors of Garcilaso should have so servilely followed his steps in their unvaried imitation of the classics. What might be necessary in him as the first great refiner of the poetry and language, was superfluous, or worse than superfluous, in them. His example should have engaged them to give deep attention to their principles of taste and composition, but not so utterly to renounce their self-dependence and innate resources. But the spring-tide of admiration for this class of subjects had set in, and every consideration of what was national in the writings of their earlier predecessors was overborne. Hence, properly speaking, they ceased to be original, and were content to occupy but a secondary place in merit and reputation. The bondage in which they were held by Aristotle, whose philosophy long continued to be taught in their universities, rivetted their chains more closely. It would have been thought a species of literary heresy if they had dared to introduce anything but what was absolutely accordant with his rescripts and with the practice of Virgil and their Garcilaso. We meet accordingly, in the poets of the time of Charles the Fifth, with little that is purely Spanish, either in subject or in imagery. Copious and admirable as were the materials which their native scenery, their customs and amusements offered to a poet's eye;—the dance with castanets in the chestnut shade to the rebeck and guitar; the courage of the sworded matador; the coquetry of the lady with her fan and her mantilla; the careless song of the muleteer as he loads his panniers with grapes; the sound of the evening bell that calls to vespers, and a thousand other images which might have furnished subjects at once poetical and characteristic, were all religiously proscribed, and made to vanish in the insipid contests and complaints of shepherds, in imitation of Theocritus or Virgil, or in sonnets more refined and more affected than those of Petrarch. The new world discovered; Mexico and Peru pouring treasures at their feet; voyagers returning with the marvels of other lands upon their lips; and, looking nearer home, the corsairs of the sea chastised upon a soil made holy in their eyes by the crusades of St. Louis; the chivalry of France abased upon the field of Pavia; and Rome, the eternal city, unbarring its gates before their arms;—all were wooing the echoes of their harps, and yet found not a single poet to adventure a sound in their celebration. Had 'Don Quixote' then existed, to which some have ascribed the extinction in Spain of chivalric inspiration, the singularity might in some degree be accounted for; but as it is, the fact is most remarkable. Not that great and romantic events ever operate so fully, or at least so inspiringly upon the generation which witnesses them, as upon those which succeed, when fancy adds her colouring to truth; but surely some strong impress still is left upon the minds of contemporaries, which their writings may be expected to display. Garcilaso, in his second eclogue, gives some spirited particulars of the retreat of Solyman from Vienna, to which he was an eye-witness; but this passing picture forms a solitary instance, and in no respect invalidates the justice of our complaints.

In the reign of Philip, however, flourished two admirable poets, who, whilst studying the classics with the greatest assiduity, left behind them some fine odes upon subjects purely Spanish,— Herrera and Fray Luis de Leon. In the Ode to Don John of Austria, the Hymn on the Battle of Lepanto, and his Elegiac Ode to King Don Sebastian, animated with the same fire as the hymn, but much more beautiful, we trace the successful study of Pindar and the Hebrew prophets, and recognise the sublime sentiment, the glowing imagery, the bold and ornamented diction, the vivid march and harmony of verse, which obtained for him, among his contemporaries, the surname of the Divine. To us he often appears pompous and inflated where the subject calls solely for simplicity and ease, and we cannot endure the frigid refinement of his love verses: yet we can allow these faults to detract nothing from the merit of his successful adventure into that more original and national path of poetry, in which he was accompanied or followed by his estimable rival. The ode of Luis de Leon, entitled ‘La Profecía del Tajo’ 1 , on the fatal love of Don Roderick, and the irruption of the Goths, is a splendid and powerful composition, more perfect, perhaps, than any of Herrera's, and certainly characterized by a nobler simplicity. The odes on the Ascension, and on Night, in their force, their elevation and grave beauty, occupy a rank little less conspicuous. Were it not that he lived in the bigot reign of Philip, it would scarcely be conceived possible that the writer who shows the most genuine enthusiasm for religion, who paints with the devoutest feeling the beneficence and grandeur of the Deity, could have been subjected to a long process and imprisonment for his suspected orthodoxy. The philosophy with which he endured the trial was worthy of a Roman, and proves that he knew what was most dignified in character, as well as what was most sublime in poetry.

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