Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/137

Rh V E G V E G 121 appear to be the only savage people who speak an Aryan language, for their present speech at least seems to be a degraded form of Singhalese, consisting mainly of Sanskrit intermingled with Dravidian elements. This circumstance has given rise to the theory that the Veddahs are a de graded group of Hindu outcastes, whereas they call them selves the &quot; sons of kings,&quot; and claim to belong to a superior caste, a claim which, strange to say, appears to be admitted by their neighbours. Their religion has been described as a kind of demon-worship, consisting of rude dances and shouts raised to scare away the evil spirits, whom they con found with their ancestors. But these &quot; demons &quot; and &quot;spirits&quot; are purely anthropomorphic beings; of a super natural order as understood by more cultured peoples they have no idea. Owing to an increasingly low birth-rate, the Veddahs are disappearing as a distinct ethnical group ; even including the Rhodiyas of the western uplands they numbered only 2284 in 1886 (Ferguson s Directory). But they should not be confounded with these Rhodiyas, who, although true outcastes, are nevertheless a much finer race, tall, well-proportioned, with regular features, and speak a language said to be radically distinct from all the Aryan and Dravidian dialects current in Ceylon. There is, how ever, in Travancore, on the mainland, a low-caste &quot;Veda&quot; tribe, nearly black, with wavy or frizzly hair, and now speaking a Malayalim (Dravidian) dialect (Jagor), who probably approach nearer than the insular Veddahs to the aboriginal pre-Dravidian &quot;Negrito&quot; element of southern India and Malaysia. VEGA CARPIO, LOPE FELIX DE (1562-1635), Spanish dramatist and poet, was born on 25th November 1562 at Madrid, in a house in the Platerias or jewellers quarter adjoining the Puerta de Guadalajara. His father and mother, Felix de Vega and Francisca Hernandez, belonged to the lesser provincial nobility, and originally came from the valley of Carriedo in Asturias, where the hamlet of Vega still exists. How they came by the illustrious name of Carpio is not very clear ; the family tradition which made them descendants of the famous Bernardo seems insufficiently supported. Lope himself frankly ridiculed the aristocratic pretensions of his parents ; but this did not prevent him from invariably signing his comedies at full length as Lope de Vega Carpio. Lope began his studies in the imperial college, the principal establishment of the Jesuits in Madrid, where he was instructed in grammar and rhetoric. His precocity was extraordinary and his memory astounding. At five he read not only Spanish but Latin, and already showed such a passion for poetry that he would give up part of his meals to the older boys in exchange for their services in writing out verses to his dictation. It was not the way of the Jesuits to turn out pedants ; educators of the nobility, their single aim was to make their pupils accomplished men of the world, and accordingly Lope learned with them, besides the ordinary book-lessons, the accomplishments of singing and dancing and fencing. On leaving college where he had been guilty of an escapade of some sort along with one of his companions he was placed by his parents, who were far from wealthy, in the service of Don Gcr6nimo Manrique, bishop of Avila. Such an arrangement did not at that time involve any sacrifice of dignity : it was almost the only resource open to a multitude of needy gentlemen, hidalgos, who, to avoid entering a trade, which would have compromised their position, found in the palaces of the higher aristocracy, first as pages and afterwards as secre taries, the wherewithal to pasar la vidn, as the phrase ran. In the service of Don Gcronimo, Lope appears to have begun the composition of his earlier dramas. But after a while he quitted the bishop s service to enter the university of Alcala, where for four years he devoted himself to what was then honoured with the name of philosophy, crammed his brain with names and citations from ancient writers, and acquired the habit of disputing in accordance with the formulas of the schools. It was then that he accumulated the materials for the pedantic dissertations with which the prefaces to his various works are encumbered, in which he so complacently displays everything that he has remembered of his university days. Leaving Alcala with the degree of bachelor in arts, Lope became secretary to the duke of Alva. Some time afterwards, about 1584, he married Isabel de Urbina, daughter of a herald-at-arms of Philip II. An incident such as he often afterwards reproduced in his plays soon arose to disturb the union. Some one who had spoken ill of Lope, and had in turn been severely lampooned by the poet, challenged him. In the encounter Lope wounded his opponent ; but he was unable to put himself right with the law and was compelled to take to flight. Perhaps he may have had upon his con science some other peccadilloes which prejudiced him in the eyes of his judges, as seems to be hinted in Montal- ban s words, &quot; This vexatious affair, and certain other bad turns of fortune,. . . compelled him to leave his home, his country, and his wife.&quot; He retired to Valencia, where he met with an enthusiastic reception from a group of young poets, who were destined afterwards to range them selves under the banner of the creator of the new comedy. After the lapse of two years Lope returned to Madrid ; but in 1588 his wife died after giving birth to a daughter, who did not long survive her mother. The death of his wife and daughter were doubtless what now led him to join the Invincible Armada, in which expedition he had one of his brothers shot dead by his side. Once more at Madrid, he again entered service, becoming secretary, first to the marquis of Malpica and afterwards to the duke of Lemos. Meanwhile he married a second wife, Juana de Guardio, a Madrilena, by whom he had two children (Carlos, who died in infancy, and Feliciana Felix) ; but she died, shortly after giving birth to the latter, in 1612. During this wife s lifetime the poet had by a mistress, Maria de Luxan, two other children, Marcela del Carpio, who became a nun, and Lope Felix del Carpio y Luxan, who chose the profession of arms and perished at sea at the age of fifteen. Widowed a second time, Lope, like many other men of letters of the period, sought a refuge in the church. After a period of initiation, and after hav ing been for some time affiliated to a tertiary order, he took priest s orders. At this juncture, that is to say, about 1614, he was in the very zenith of his glory. A veritable dictator and pope in the Spanish world of letters, he wielded over all the authors of his nation a sort of magisterial power similar to that which was exercised in France at a later period by Voltaire. At this distance of time we fail to see in Lope anything more than a great dramatic poet, the founder of the Spanish theatre ; but to his contemporaries he was a great deal more. His epics, his pastorals, his odes, his sonnets, buried though they now are in oblivion, all placed him in the front rank of authorship. Such was his prestige that he dealt with his noble patrons almost on a footing of equality. The duke of Sesa in particular, his last Maecenas, was also his per sonal friend, and the tone of the letters addressed to him by the poet is that of a frank familiarity, modified only by some forms of deference, a fact sufficiently striking to be worthy of notice at a time when talent, however great, in no way diminished differences of rank, and when the man of letters under the protection of a patron was neither more nor less than a kind of domestic in the house of a grand seigneur. Lope s fame, too, had travelled abroad : foreigners of distinction passing through Madrid made a point of visiting him; papal legates brought him the XXIV. - 1 6