LITMIR.BIZ

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1683,) pp. 371–376.) His mother was an illegitimate daughter of Henry II., of Castile. Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.—Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía de España, (Madrid, 1770,) tom. i. pp. 203, 339.

      [16] Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.—Juan de Mena introduces Villena into his "Laberinto," in an agreeable stanza, which has something of the mannerism of Dante.

      "Aquel claro padre aquel dulce fuente

       aquel que en el castolo monte resuena

       es don Enrique Señor de Villena

       honrra de España y del siglo presente," etc.

       Juan de Mena, Obras, (Alcalá, 1566,) fol. 138.

      [17] The recent Castilian translators of Bouterwek's History of Spanish Literature have fallen into an error in imputing the beautiful cancion of the "Querella de Amor" to Villena. It was composed by the Marquis of Santillana. (Bouterwek, Historia de la Literatura Española, traducida por Cortina y Hugalde y Mollinedo, (Madrid, 1829,) p. 196, and Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. pp. 38, 143.)

      [18] Velazquez, Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana, p. 45.—Bouterwek, Literatura Española, trad. de Cortina y Mollinedo, nota S.

      [19] See an abstract of it in Mayans y Siscar, Orígines de la Lengua Española, (Madrid, 1737,) tom. ii. pp. 321 et seq.

      [20] Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1669,) tom. iii. p. 227.—Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.

      [21] Centon Epistolario, epist. 66.—The bishop endeavored to transfer the blame of the conflagration to the king. There can be little doubt, however, that the good father infused the suspicions of necromancy into his master's bosom. "The angels," he says in one of his works, "who guarded Paradise, presented a treatise on magic to one of the posterity of Adam, from a copy of which Villena derived his science." (See Juan de Mena, Obras, fol. 139, glosa.) One would think that such an orthodox source might have justified Villena in the use of it.

      [22] Comp. Juan de Mena, Obras, copl. 127, 128; and Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 220.

      [23] Pulgar, Claros Varones de Castilla, y Letras, (Madrid, 1755,) tit. 4.—Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, lib. 10, cap. 9.—Quincuagenas de Gonzalo de Oviedo, MS., batalla 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.

      [24] Garcilasso de la Vega, Obras, ed. de Herrera, (1580,) pp. 75, 76—Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. p. 21.—Boscan, Obras, (1543,) fol. 19.—It must be admitted, however, that the attempt was premature, and that it required a riper stage of the language to give a permanent character to the innovation.

      [25] See Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. pp. 1–119.—A copious catalogue of the marquis de Santillana's writings is given in the same volume, (pp. 33 et seq.) Several of his poetical pieces are collected in the Cancionero General, (Anvers, 1573,) fol. 34 et seq.

      [26] Pulgar, Claros Varones, tit. 4.—Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía, tom. i. p. 218.—Idem, Orígen de las Dignidades Seglares de Castilla y Leon, (Madrid, 1794,) p. 285.—Oviedo makes the marquis much older, seventy-five years of age, when he died. He left, besides daughters, six sons, who all became the founders of noble and powerful houses. See the whole genealogy, in Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.

      [27] "Flor de saber y cabellería." El Laberinto, copla 114.

      [28] Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. pp. 265 et seq.

      [29] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, epist. 47, 49.

      [30] See Velazquez, Poesía Castellana, p. 49.

      [31] A collection of them is incorporated in the Cancionero General, fol. 41 et seq.

      [32] Castro, Biblioteca Española, (Madrid, 1781,) tom. i, pp. 266, 267.— This interesting document, the most primitive of all the Spanish cancioneros, notwithstanding its local position in the library is specified by Castro with great precision, eluded the search of the industrious translators of Bouterwek, who think it may have disappeared during the French invasion. Literatura Española, trad. de Cortina y Mollinedo, p. 205, nota Hh.

      [33] See these collected in Castro, Biblioteca Española, tom. ii. p. 265 et seq.—The veneration entertained for the poetic art in that day may be conceived from Baena's whimsical prologue. "Poetry," he says, "or the gay science, is a very subtile and delightsome composition. It demands in him, who would hope to excel in it, a curious invention, a sane judgment, a various scholarship, familiarity with courts and public affairs, high birth and breeding, a temperate, courteous, and liberal disposition, and, in fine, honey, sugar, salt, freedom, and hilarity in his discourse." p. 268.

      [34] Castro, Biblioteca Española, tom. i. p. 273.

      [35] Perhaps the most conspicuous of these historical compositions for mere literary execution is the Chronicle of Alvaro de Luna, to which I have had occasion to refer, edited in 1784, by Flores, the diligent secretary of the Royal Academy of History. He justly commends it for the purity and harmony of its diction. The loyalty of the chronicler seduces him sometimes into a swell of panegyric, which may he thought to savor too strongly of the current defect of Castilian prose; but it more frequently imparts to his narrative a generous glow of sentiment, raising it far above the lifeless details of ordinary history, and occasionally even to positive eloquence.

      Nic. Antonio, in the tenth book of his great repository, has assembled the biographical and bibliographical notices of the various Spanish authors of the fifteenth century, whose labors diffused a glimmering of light over their own age, which has become faint in the superior illumination of the succeeding.

      [36] Sempere, in his Historia del Luxo, (tom. i. p. 177,) has published an extract from an unprinted manuscript of the celebrated marquis of Villena, entitled Triunfo de las Doñas, in which, adverting to the petits- maîtres of his time, he recapitulates the fashionable arts employed by them for the embellishment of the person, with a degree of minuteness which might edify a modern dandy.

      [37] Crónica de Juan II., p. 499.—Faria y Sousa, Europa Portuguesa, (1679,) tom. ii. pp. 335, 372.

      [38] Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128.—Crónica de Juan II., pp. 457, 460, 572.—Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. fol. 227, 228.—Garibay, Compendio Historial de las Chrónicas de España, (Barcelona, 1628,) tom. ii. p. 493.

      [39] Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128.—What a contrast to all this is afforded by the vivid portrait, sketched by John de Mena, of the constable in the noontide of his glory.

      "Este caualga sobre la fortuna

       y doma su cuello con asperas riendas

       y aunque del tenga tan muchas de prendas

       ella non le osa tocar de ninguna," etc.

       Laberinto, coplas 235 et seq.

      [40] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, ep. 103.—Crónica de Juan II., p. 564.—Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128, and Apend. p. 458.

      [41] Entitled "Doctrinal de Privados." See the Cancionero General, fol. 37 et seq.—In the following stanza, the constable is made to moralize with good effect on the instability of worldly grandeur.

      "Quo se hizo la moneda que guarde para mis daños tantos tiempos tantos años plata joyas oro y seda y de todo no me queda sine este cadahalso; mundo malo mundo falso no ay quien contigo pueda."

      Manrique has the same sentiments in his exquisite "Coplas." I give Longfellow's version, as spirited as it is literal.

      "Spain's haughty Constable—the great

       And gallant Master—cruel fate

       Stripped him of all.

       Breathe not a whisper of his pride,

       He on the gloomy scaffold died,

       Ignoble fall!

       The countless treasures of his care,

       Hamlets and villas green and fair,

       His mighty power—

      

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