Sylvanus both forget Diana. The latter falls in love with Selvagia, who returns his passion, and they are happily married. Syrenus becomes indifferent to the charms of his former mistress, and Diana, who does not re-appear upon the scene until very late, is seized with a deep melancholy on beholding herself abandoned by him to whose affections she had herself been faithless. Montemayor concluded the work. Several persons, amongst whom the most distinguished is Gil Polo, have taken up the Diana at this place, and made that shepherdess the heroine of innumerable romances, less rich in adventures than in highwrought sentiments and in elegant verses.

Here

These, then, are the men who are properly called the classics of Spain; who, during the brilliant reign of Charles V., and in the midst of the disturbances which the ambitious policy of that prince created in Europe, changed the versification, the national taste, and almost the language, of Castile; who gave to the poetry of that country its most graceful, its most elegant, and its most correct form; and who have been the models of all who, from that period, have had any pretensions to classical purity. It is certainly a matter of surprise to find so few traces of a warlike reign in their compositions; to hear them, amidst all the intoxicating excitements of ambition, singing only their sweet pastoral fancies, their tender, their delicate, and their submissive

love. Whilst Europe and America were inundated with blood by the Spaniards, Boscan, Garcilaso, Mendoza, and Montemayor, all of them soldiers, and all of them engaged in the wars which at this period shook the foundations of Christendom, describe themselves as shepherds weaving garlands of flowers, or as lovers tremblingly beseeching the favour of a glance from their mistresses, while they stifle their complaints, suppress all the feelings of nature, and even renounce jealousy, lest it should render them not sufficiently submissive. There is in these verses a Sybaritic softness, a Lydian luxury, which we might expect to meet with in the effeminate Italians, whom servitude has degraded, but which astonishes us in men like the warriors of Charles V.

There exists, undoubtedly, a moral cause for this discordance. If Garcilaso de la Vega and Montemayor have not exhibited their own feelings in their poetry; if they have abandoned the habits, the manners, and the sentiments to which they were accustomed, in search of a poetical world, it was because they were disgusted with the realities around them. Poetry was attempting its first flight, when the Spanish nation lost every thing but the glory of its arms; and even this glory, soiled as it was by so many horrors, and prevented by the severity of discipline from becoming an individual feeling, was voiceless to the heart of the poet.

There was a noble spirit of martial enthusiasm in the ancient poem of the Cid, in the old romances, and in the warlike poems of the Marquis of Santillana; in short, the same inspiration appeared wherever the national honour was concerned. The Grand Master of Calatrava, Don Manuel Ponce de Leon, who in all the Moorish festivals appeared upon the Vega, or plain of Grenada, accompanied by a hundred knights, and after a courteous salutation to the king, offered to contend in single combat with the noblest and bravest of the Saracens, that he might thus contribute by a feat of arms to the pleasures of the day, upheld in these combats the honour of the Castilians; and, indeed, his poetical bravery was a fit subject for romance. In a war which was really national, the rivalry in glory was sufficient to keep alive the ardour of the combatants, while reciprocal esteem was the consequence of the length of the contest. But Garcilaso de la Vega, Mendoza, and their compeers were perfect strangers to the French, the Italians, and the Germans, against whom they marched. The army, of which they formed a part, had already begun to delight in blood, in order that they might supply, by the excitement of ferocity, the absence of national interest. When, therefore, they left the field of battle, they attempted to forget the fierce and cruel feelings which they blushed to acknowledge, and

they cautiously abstained from introducing them into their poems.

The effeminate languor and the luxurious enjoyment of life and love, which peculiarly characterise the Spanish poetry of this age, are discoverable in an equal degree in the Latin and Greek poets who wrote after the extinction of their national liberties. Propertius and Tibullus, as well as Theocritus, sometimes indulge in a degree of languor and tenderness, which often approaches to insipidity. They appear proud of exhibiting their effeminacy, as if for the purpose of demonstrating that they have voluntarily adopted it, and that they have not yielded to it from the influence of fear. The enervated poetry of the Spanish classics was, perhaps, suggested to them by similar motives, and by their desire to preserve the dignity of their character; but for this very reason the Castilian poetry of the reign of Charles V. was of a transitory nature, and at the highest pitch of its reputation the symptoms of its approaching decay might be distinctly seen.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Spanish Literature of the Sixteenth Century continued.-Herrera; Ponce de Leon; Cervantes; his Don Quixote.

WHEN We consider to what extent genius and talent are individual qualities, and how such qualities are modified by difference of opinion, of character, and of circumstances, we feel surprised at the uniformity in the progress of the human mind, whether we compare with one another the distinguished individuals of the same period, and remark how they all partake of the spirit of the age; or whether we observe the progressive advance of literature and taste in different nations, and the successive epochs when epic, and lyric, and dramatic poetry have flourished. The reign of Charles V., to which we devoted the last chapter, and with which our attention will be occupied during a portion of the present, was the age of lyric poetry in Castile. That inventive

spirit, that love of the marvellous, and that active curiosity which had, in the preceding century, produced so many romances to celebrate the heroes of Spain, and so many chivalrous tales in imitation of the Amadis to astonish the imagina