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LETTER VII

Poetry of Galicia and Portugal.

Madrid, 20th June, 1778.

The plains of Almanza had led me in my last letter, into a strain of historical and military reflections, which imperceptibly drew on a political rant, when I intended to speak to you of the Galician and Portuguese muse, previous to my account of the Poets of Castile, which you will now expect from me, being at present on that classic spot where the mighty emperor Charles held his court; where many of their best poets sung; where Quevedo besides his distinguished talents as a poet, gave such shining proofs of refined wit and profound erudition; and finally, where the ever admired Cervantes first exhibited his unparalleled hero.

The Galician muse was distinguished at an early period, though her flights were not lofty, and chiefly supported in the cause of religion, by the numerous votaries who resorted to the shrine of St. James, at Compostela. The poetical turn prevailed so far, as to be the chief employment of both sexes. King Alfonso, the wise, received his education in Galicia, and in that dialect composed canticles for the church, which, with other pieces of the times are preserved in the cathedral of Toledo. Some of them were published by Zuniga the historian, in his annals of Seville, as far as they related to Alfonso’s father, Fernando III, who conquered Seville from the Moors. The poems Of Macias, a native of Padron in Galicia, were in that dialect, though taken for Portuguese by Argote de Molina. The poet Juan de Mena laments the tragical end of Macias, as does Juan Rodriguez del Padron in his poem of gozos de Amor, “Enjoyments of Love”, who was so affected at the news of his death that he retired into a convent, where he ended his days, Garci Sanchez de Badojoz, art elegant poet, speaks feelingly of Macias in his poem Infierno de Amor, “Hell of Love”, and utters a desponding wish to be interred along with him, and share his reputation, which he expresses in the following pathetic stanza,

Si te plaze, que mis dias
Yo fenesca mal logrado
Tan en breve.

Plegate qui con Macias
Ser meresco sepultado, [5]
Y decir deve.

Do la sepultara sea,
Una tierra los crio,
Una muerte los llevo,
Una gloria los possea. [10]

The catastrophe of this unhappy poet, and the imprudence of his passion, has afforded a moral tale to all successive bards; many of his poems are in the Cancionero de Poetas Antiguos of Juan Alfonso de Baena, in the Escurial, and give a true idea of the Galician style of poetry, from whence we may fairly trace the Portuguese idiom, as the conquest and peopling of Portugal under Henry of Burgundy, was effected by people from the north of Galicia, in conjunction with foreigners. Many places in the north of Portugal acquired the same names with those in Galicia, as it happened in England after the coming in of the Saxons; Galicia then extended further to the south, including all those districts between the rivers Duero, and Minho, which did not appertain to Lusitania. Ptolemy distinguishes two classes of people in Galicia, the Bracenses, whose capital was at Braga, and the Lucenses at Lugo. When Portugal was erected into a separate kingdom, they encroached on the borders, so that what had belonged to Galicia, now became Portugal, and under their monarchs a new court supported a variation, and gave a national character to their language, of which Bluteau, an Englishman, and chaplain to Queen Catherine, consort of our Charles the 2d, has given a most ample and learned vocabulary.

The Portuguese muse made a figure in the 12th century, under Alfonso, the Ist king of Portugal, in whose reign Gonzalo Henriquez, and Egas Moniz, are the first poets in the records of that kingdom. In the next century, king Dennis was a poet, as was also his natural son Alfonso Sanchez. The 14th century furnished king Alfonso the 4th, a favourite of the muses, whose poems have been collected by father Bernardo Brito. His son king Peter was likewise a poet. In the reign of king John 1st, the Infant Don Pedro composed various sonnets, in praise of Vasco Lobeira, the supposed author of the celebrated romance of Amadis of Gaul, of which so much has been said, and who furnished so many admirable scenes to the animated pencil of Cervantes. In the 15th century, Henriquez Cayado distinguished himself under king Emanuel, as did afterwards the Infant Don Pedro, son of king John 2nd. At this time the Latin muse was again invoked by the Portuguese, and the purity of the Augustan age seemed to revive with Achilles Stacio, Diego Pereyra, Morais, Coelho and the Jesuit Luis de la Cruz, who wrote some latin tragedies; which made the historian Faria say, that in his country every fountain was an Hippocrene, and every hill a Parnassus. The 16th century produced Bernardino Ribeira, Francisco Saa de Miranda, Michael de Cabedo, the famous comedian Gil Vicente and his daughter Paula, who not only assisted her father in writing his comedies, but also composed others of her own invention. All these flourished under John III; to whom we ought to add the poets under the reign of the unfortunate king Sebastian, such as Eustacio de Faria, Geronimo de Corte Real, Jorge de Montemayor, and above all, the illustrious Camoens, whose beautiful poem of the Lusiad alone, would have been sufficient, to perpetuate the poetical character of his country; though Galicia lays a claim to his origin, as descended from a family of that kingdom.

The Portuguese Cancionero contains many more poets than the Spanish one, as that of Castile has only one hundred and twenty poets, and that of Portugal one hundred and fifty; the Spanish one, only includes those of the fifteenth century, that of Portugal goes as high as king Peter, who died in 1367. Amongst others of this amorous monarch, accept of the following, addressed to the lady of his affections, whom he stiles his second God.

Mais dyna de ser servida
Que senhora de este mundo!
Vos soes o meu Deos segundo
Vos soes meu bem de esta vida

You will think me a book worm indeed, for looking so far back into antiquity, and after the indifferent account I have given you of society in this place, will conclude that these pursuits waste away all my time, which might be much better employed; however I do not neglect exercise, and for this purpose have purchased a beautiful Andalusian genet, from a gentleman of Cordova, who boasts of its race. Though he would not win a plate at Newmarket, nor perhaps hold out at a fox chase, with an English hunter; he has nevertheless numerous qualities that give pleasure to his rider; the docility of his temper, the goodness of his mouth, and the agility and quickness of his motions, with, his elegant shape, form his principal character, while his flowing mane and well furnished tail, added to his stately carriage, give him a noble and graceful appearance; —his colour Isabel, a name given in allusion to the whimsical vow, and shift of Isabel Clara Eugenia, governess of the Netherlands, at the memorable siege of Ostend, which lasted from 1601 till 1604, and who wanted to persuade the ladies of her court to follow her example, which they imitated in having their linen dyed. —As to the swiftness of my courser I must however inform you that he was generated by the wind, and so they all are at Aranjuez, if you will believe the inscription over the king's stables at that place ex vento gravidas. If you will not trust to the king's equerry, nor rely upon what has been said by Varro, or Columella, I must refer you to Virgil,

Et sæpe sine ullis Conjugiis vento gravidæ, mirabile dictu Saxa per, & scopulos & depressas convalles Diffugiunt.

Georg. Lib. 3.

P. S. Excuse a digression from a Quixotic traveller, in favour of the famous Rocinante, though not generated by the wind, and moreover so steady, that he would not mend his pace if all the mares of the Dehesa, or pastures of Cordova, were in company. In the very first chapter speaking of this steed, the text says "Que tenia mas quartos que un Real." The drift of which consists in a pun, upon the double meaning of the word Quarto, which signifies a piece of copper money, as well as a defect in a horse's hoof, and as there are seventeen quartos in the silver coin, called Real, it alludes to the numberless defects in Rocinante’s hoof, and cannot be literally translated. This passage greatly puzzled Peter Motteux, the publisher of a translation of Don Quijote, by several hands, in 1733, who alters the sense of it by rendering it thus, “Whose bones stuck out like the corners of a Spanish real.” I suppose he had seen some of the old cut Spanish money which suggested this erroneous idea. Smollet has continued the same blunder, and learnedly added by way of note, that a Spanish real is a coin of a very irregular shape not unlike the figure in geometry, called Trapezium.

I have now on my table a treatise on farriery, by one of the king’s farriers, The Gibson of Spain, entitled, Instituciones de albeyteria por el Bachiller Francisco Garcia Cabrero, herrador, y albeylar de las cavallerizas del Rey. Madrid 1775. In which he gives the following account of the quarto. “To explain the reason why this accident is called by the name of a quarto I am perplexed, not being certain, nor convinced by the reasons given me by different persons; some say it is because it falls upon the fourth part of the hoof, others, because the animal by this means loses the fourth part of its value; to the first I answer, that I am unacquainted with the exact dimensions of a quarto; to the second that if the accident is of the compound kind, though the animal was ever so valuable before, it becomes then not only not worth a quarto, but not even an ochavo. ”

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