Imatges de pàgina
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O dotards, through your spectacles who pry,
And ask the measure of a lovely face;
Measure the influence of a woman's eye,

And ye may then I ween compute the space
That intervenes between the earth and sky.*

Among other candidates was a queen of Media, by name Ne-
reyda, so ugly, that if it were ever true what slanderers have said,
that women, like crocodiles, were bred by putrefaction in the
slime of the Nile, it could only be true of her. Her appearance
enables the poet, by a happy transition, to introduce his heroine.
Phantom of Lethe, wherefore art thou seen,
An inky spot upon this tablet white,
And all unwelcome as the birds obscene,
Who to the feast of Phineus took their flight?
Thinkest thou the foulest shall be named for queen,
Or has thy mirror thus deceived thy sight?
From Cytherea's temple haste away,
Nor with thy presence mar her holyday!
Yet thou art welcome here, as is the cloud
That gathers in the East before the day,
And with its tempering mantle serves to shroud
The orb of fire, which slowly wins its way;
So art thou welcome here, where else the crowd
Too suddenly had felt the dazzling ray,
When that Cathayan day-star on the sight
Arose in all the lustre of her light.+

The description of Angelica, which immediately ensues, is justly censured by Lord Holland, as being long, cold, minute and common-place :-' but there is more discrimination,' he adds, in the character of Medoro's beauty, than is usual in Lope's poetry.'

Tal viejo dize que mirar importa
Si ygual el cuerpo con el rostro sea,
Qual suele escultor que el leño corta;
Y por medidas justas le tentea,
Que en la materia alarga, quita, acorta,
Para que salga lo que fue la ydea,
Que la beldad de Tisbe sin medida
Con arte quieren que se juzgue, y mida.
Otro le aprueva, y dize que consiste

En una union de miembros la herinosura,
Y que si ygual aqueste al otro assiste

Entonces es perfeta la figura;

Y que de esta unidad se adorna y viste
Del cuerpo la acabada compostura;
Y que por esso la beldad tenia
El nombre de concordia y armonia.

O caducos juezes con antojos

Medid el ayre'de unos bellos ojos

Y me direys del cielo al suelo el trecho.'
Canto III. ff. 30.

A donde vas fantasma del Letheo,
Mancha de escura tinta en blanco raso?
Harpia entre las mesas de Fineo,

Aragne entre las musas del Parnaso ? Piensas que el premio se concede al feo?

Hante engañado o el espejo a caso? Sal del templo de Venus, y no acuerdes Que se apaguen en ti sus hachas verdes. Mas bien sera que vayas como niebla

Para que venga el sol con dulce salva, Por cuya sombra y frigida tiniebla

Qual suele por la noche rompa el alva. Que ya de resplandores cerea y puebla, Y de tus nubes nos defienda y salva La estrella de la Reyua del Cathaya

Quereis medir un rostro, un tierno pecho, Que deshara tu sombra con su rayo.'

The passage which is thus commended, is very happily rendered by his lordship

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And with her he, at whose success and joy

The jealous world such ills had suffer'd, came,
Now king, whom late as slave did kings employ,
The young Medoro, happy envied name!
Scarce twenty years had seen the lovely boy,
As ringlet locks and yellow down proclaim;
Fair was his height; and grave to gazers seem'd
Those eyes which where they turned with love and
softness beam'd.

Tender was he, and of a gentler kind,

A softer frame than haply knighthood needs;
To pity apt, to music much inclin'd,

In language haughty, somewhat meek in deeds;
Dainty in dress, and of accomplish'd mind,
A wit that kindles, and a tongue that leads;
Gay, noble, kind, and generous to the sight,

On foot a gallant youth, on horse an airy knight.'t

Among the oddities of this poem, Lord Holland extracts an inscription under a golden statue of Philip III. as being

'probably the only eight Latin lines of titles and names which are to be found in modern metre, and in a poem written in modern language: Phillippo Tertio, Cæsari invictissimo, Omnium maximo regum triumphatori, Orbis utriusque et maris felicissimo, Catholici secundi successori, Totius Hispaniæ principi dignissimo,

Ecclesiæ Christi et fidei defensori,

Fama, præcingens tempora alma lauro,
Hoc simulacrum dedicat ex auro.'

Though this poem was written in 1588, it was not published till 1602,-an unaccountable instance of delay, considering how rapidly the author wrote, and how much he published. He had wanted time to correct it, he says, in his dedication: some additions it had manifestly received, as appears from the political references which it contains, but correction seems to have been always the least of Lope's labours. The licenser of the Barcelona edition, Fray Jayme Rebullosa, wishes it might please God that the writer

+ Entró con ella aquel que tantos daños
Causó en el mundo por su dicha y gozo,
Aquel esclavo, rey de mil estraños,
Aquel dichoso y envidiado mozo;
Era Medoro un mozo de veinte años,
Ensortijado el pelo, y rubio el bozo,
De mediana estatura, y de ojos graves,
Graves mirados, y en mirar suaves.

Tierno en extremo, y algo afeminado,
Mas de lo que merece un caballero,
Gran llorador, y musico extremado,
Humilde en obras, y en palabras fiero;
Guardado en ambar, siempre regalado,
Sutil, discreto, vario, lisongero,
Noble, apacible, alegre, generoso,
A pie gallardo, y á caballo ayroso.'

would

would employ his extraordinary ability, happy genius, great learning, and continual study, in celebrating the beauty of the Angelicas of Heaven, meaning the Eleven Thousand Virgins whose skulls are to be seen at this day in satin caps at Cologne, and any other of the sisterhood of monastic saints.

At the same time with the Hermosura de Angelica, and in the same volume, Lope de Vega published an heroic poem, in ten books, upon Sir Francis Drake. Its title is La Dragontea, the reader being duly apprized, at the end of a list of names of places, persons, and things mentioned in the poem, that as often as he may find the word Dragon he has to understand by it the person of Francis Drake. The year before the destruction of the Armada, Drake had scoured the coast from Cadiz to Cape St. Vincent, and from thence to Cascaes; he had burnt, sunk, or carried off, at least ten thousand tons of their greater shipping, besides fifty or sixty smaller vessels, and that in the sight and under the protection of their forts, and almost under the eyes of their Great Admiral. 'I remember,' says Lord Bacon, Drake, in the vaunting style of a soldier, would call this enterprize the singeing of the king of Spain's beard.' Two causes, Lope de Vega said, induced him to write his Dragontea; one was that the people might be undeceived in their opinion of this enemy, the truth being, that every grain of gold which he had taken had cost him much blood; the other, that oblivion might not cover the important victory which had at last been gained over him: he was desirous also that the king should see the valour of the Spaniards, and the miserable end to which the enemies of the church came. There is a preface to the poem in a similar strain, by D. Francisco de Borja, better known afterwards as Principe de Esquilache. It may be asked, he says, seeing the English had had such good success against the Spanish Indies and the fleets of Spain, Why a Spaniard should compose a poem upon this subject? The answer is, the English never had obtained any such advantage, except it was owing to the inclemency of the sea, or to great superiority of force. In the present instance, when they came fairly to action, a hundred Spaniards had routed a thousand English, and killed three hundred of them: as many more had been slain at Puerto Rico and in the Canaries; their two commanders had perished, and of a fleet of fifty four sail which left England, five only had returned: all this was to the honour of Spain, and was faithfully related in this poem, following the account transmitted by the Royal Audience of Panama, and attested by competent witnesses. The Duke of Ossuna also prefixed a sonnet to the poem, addressed to the Prince, and saying that India, weary of presenting silver and gold to one who deserved greater things, sent him now the horns of that haughty

Bull

Bull who had persecuted her with such fury, filled with flowers by the Muses.

The names in this poem are given with as much precision as the facts; Cavendish is called Candir; Hawkins, Achines; and Sir Thomas Baskerville is metamorphosed into Don Thomas Vasuile. It opens in a bold spirit of Catholic fiction. Christianity appears before the throne of God, and complains against Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Drake. In her harangue she makes a pun upon the name of Sir Thomas More, calling him,

'Aquel martir Thomas, Christiano y Moro.'

And she adjures the Almighty by the Virgin Mary, and by the mystery of the Sacrament, not to let the Dragon of this new Medea exalt himself against the Woman. Her prayer is heard; meantime Drake sees in a vision that personage whom the Scripture describes with a crown upon her head, and the golden cup of her abominations in her hand; she does not tell him that the King of Spain is lawful master of the two worlds, nor of the great victories of Don Juan de Austria and the Alvas; but she tells him that while he is sleeping Spain sleeps, reminds him of his circumnavigation, and of his giving the master of the register-ship a receipt in his books for one million six hundred thousand ducats, which he had taken in her; and she exhorts him to undertake a second expedition in hope of equal success. In the progress of the expedition, Lope tells us, that some ships were lost, and the people who were on board went to hell by water; and that eighteen Englishmen, who were taken in another, were constrained to confess what they knew of their leader's plans, by having their skin and their nerves made to touch their bones, the thought of which operation makes him jocosely remark, that they had a great hatred to confession! *-The heart of the writer must here have been as much corrupted as his taste. Camden relates in his history, that when the squadron anchored before Puerto Rico, the enemy played upon them with their ordnance from the forts, and at supper-time, Sir Nicholas Clifford, Knight, and Brute Brown were mortally wounded with a shot.' The name of this last person would have been subjected to scurvy jests in abundance, if Lope had known it: he dwells upon the incident itself with much satisfaction; the salt, he says, was overturned for a sign of bad luck, sixteen persons who were seated at the board supt with death that night; the table, the dishes, the servants, the master and all going to hell together. At the end of the poem this veracious poet asserts, that Drake did not die of discase, but was poisoned by his own people, because he took all the

* Diez y ocho Ingleses que tomo pregunta, Y el cuero y nervios con el huessos junta.

Al tormento confiessan los que tienen,
Tan gran odio (señor) ai confessarse.'

booty

booty to himself, and fed them with salt fish, rancid cheese, wormeaten biscuit, and vinegar, while he was regaling upon poultry, veal, and spiced wines. This Dragon had now to pass, not the straits of Magalhaens, but the straits of death, which would bring him to a place drier and hotter than India. The people at Panama, he adds, were so rejoiced at the news of his death, that they appointed two days of public rejoicing; this may be believed on their own authority, and whether it be more honourable to them or to the enemy over whose decease they thus exulted,-is a point upon which a Spaniard in the present age would differ in opinion with Lope de Vega.

The poem concludes with a thanksgiving to the Lord of heaven and earth for having with the Lamb made war upon the Great Dragon and the Harlot, for having placed a hook in the Dragon's mouth, tied up his tongue, and given his head a prey to the fishes. For this, he says, Gregory the Pope blessed the Lord, and Philip blessed him, and he, the poet, proclaims his sense of this mercy to all mankind. He says also of the aforesaid Dragon, alias Sir Francis Drake, that the English themselves affirmed he had made a written compact with the devil, selling his soul to him at a certain time. If this be so indeed, he says, it is a portentous thing, and when his Muse relates it, the hair of her head stands on end. But in this mauner his own countrymen extolled him; it was no calumny invented by the Spaniards; and when a man had renounced his God, who can doubt that he would apply to the devil for assistance? That Drake dealt with the devil, and carried about with him a familiar spirit in a ring, was what he heard from some of his shipmates in the Armada, who had themselves heard it when they were prisoners in London. In all this Lope de Vega simply relates what he was credulous enough, and Catholic enough, to believe; and it is very probable that his shipmates really heard such things asserted in London, as they affirmed, for Sir Francis Drake has to this day, among the vulgar, the credit of being an enchanter. A wild tradition concerning him' is still current in Somersetshire. When he departed for his great voyage round the world, according to this tradition, he told his wife that if he did not return within ten years, she might marry again. During ten years Madam Drake was as true as Penelope, but when that term was expired, she accepted the offer of a suitor. On their way to church, a huge round stone fell through the air, close by her, upon the train of her gown, and immediately she turned back, for she said it came from her husband. It was not long before he returned; and, imitating Guy, Earl of Warwick, asked alms of her at his own door in disguise of a beggar; but a smile escaped him while

he

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