Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/138

Rh 122 compliments of their master; in 1627 Urban VIII., a Barberini, sent him the diploma of doctor of theology in the Collegium Sapientise and the cross of the order of St John of Jerusalem (whence the poet s titles of Doctor and Frey Since Lope s correspondence with the duke of Sesa has made us acquainted with the closing period of his life, we may well ask whether his retirement within the church was the result of any genuine vocation, and up to what point his devotion was sincere. It is difficult to avoid inquiring whether it may not have been due to a mere selfish desire for tranquillity, a desire to protect himself against any further reverse of fortune. This feel ing may very well have had something to do with his decision ; still it would be unjust to regard Lope as nothing better than a mere hypocrite. Certainly he was far from being an ideal priest ; we now know something of the nature of the services which he often rendered to the duke of Sesa, and we know how lightly he held one of his most sacred vows, maintaining for a long period illicit re lations with Marta de Nevares Santoyo, a married woman, by whom he even had a daughter, who was baptized very publicly at San Sebastian in Madrid (26th August 1617), the son of the duke of Sesa acting as godfather. But, on the other hand, we must not forget his penitence, frequently expressed in touching terms, the sincerity of which ought to be above suspicion : &quot; Mai haya amor que se quiere oponer al cielo ! &quot; He has a claim also to our pity for having been at an advanced age the victim of foolish passion which his extreme mobility of character and his utter want of balance made him unable to resist : &quot; Yo naci en dos extremes que son amar y aborrecer ; no he tenido medio jamas.&quot; His last years were years of severe penance : Montalban tells us that every Friday the poet scourged himself so severely that the walls of his room were sprinkled with his blood. His death, on 27th August 1635, was followed by national mourning. The duke of Sesa, his executor, was chief mourner ; the nobility and the church were represented by high digni taries ; the populace crowded the streets. After the funeral came a multitude of funeral orations and of pane gyrics in prose and verse. Montalban has collected into a volume the tributes of posthumous admiration thus paid by Spanish authors ; another collection was printed in Italy under the auspices of Marini. In the intercourse of everyday life, in his relations with his con temporaries, Lope was affable and kindly. He sometimes defended himself when attacked, especially on the subject of his dramatic writings, but always in measured terms and without any pretence that his high position exempted him from criticism by his less successful rivals. Some severe and unjust criticisms on other writers, notably on Cervantes, are quoted against him ; but it is only fair to remember that they occur in letters to his intimates and that it is not necessary to regard them as deliberate. It would be just as fair to set him down as an enemy of the secular clergy because in writing to the duke of Sesa he on one occasion expressed himself thus freely about the monks : &quot; Los frailes son los hombres mas discretos del mundo : no van a la guerra, ni pagan millones, gozan lo mejor, y danles dineros,. . . ellos hacen hijos y otros los crian, perdone lo descalzo.&quot; It would indeed be more just to reproach him with his universal and uniform indulgence, which he extends to all, great and small, good and bad, and with his mania for praising in hyperbolical and extravagant terms. He loved all the arts, particularly painting ; his little house in the Calle de Francos was full of pictures. He himself writes to a friend in 1619 : &quot; With some garden flowers, half-a-dozen pictures, and a few books, I live without envy, without desire, without fear, and without hope&quot; (dedication of El Alcalde Mayor}. But his most marked taste was for flowers. He had a small garden, which he himself tended with jealous care ; he sought out rare species and tried to acclimatize in Spain varieties of plants sent by his friends from abroad. In particular he was a tulip -fancier ; hence his dedication of Lucinda Perseguida to Manuel Sueiro, a Spaniard resident in Flanders who had supplied him with fine specimens. Tending this garden became the great occupation of his old age ; he watered it with his own hands, and, according to Montalban, the chill which led to his death was caught while he was thus engaged. One can easily detect in his writings the traces of this taste. It is not that he had in a higher degree than his contemporaries the feeling for nature, but the form, the colour, the perfume of flowers largely supply him with his figures and metaphors his flowers of rhetoric, in short. It is to be regretted that this delicate taste of his, a taste very rare in Spain, where flowers and trees have never been greatly cared for, should have contributed rather to augment than to lessen the elaborateness, pomposity, and affecta tion of his style. But these faults were shared by all the writers of that age. In his comedies, for example, where he does not pique himself on a fine style and does not attempt to take the Latins or the Italians for his models, his language is, if not nervous and self-restrained, at least limpid and flowing, in this respect contrast ing very favourably with the florid and laboured style of his epics and prose pastorals. Viewed broadly, and leaving out of account certain theories which in the long run greatly influenced his manner of writing, Lope belonged in literature to what may be called the school of good sense ; he made it his boast that he was a Spaniard pur sang, and steadfastly maintained that a writer s business is to write so as to make himself understood. When brought face to face with the coterie of the precieim and quintcsscncies, the &quot; cultos,&quot; and &quot;criticos,&quot; and &quot;conceptistas,&quot; Lope takes the position of a defender of the language of ordinary life, the good old Castilian tongue. In the dispute which arose between the partisans of the two schools of &quot;cultos&quot; or &quot;culteranos&quot; and &quot;llanos,&quot; the dramatist ranged himself on the side of the latter. In the matter of versification he refuses to admit that the long Italian verse has the advantage of the Castilian octosyllabic : &quot; No pienso que el verso largo Italiano haga ventaja al nuestro, que si en Espaiia lo dizen es porque, no sabiendo hazer el suyo, se passan al estrangero como mas largo y licencioso. . . . Que cosa iguala a una redorulilla de Garci Sanchez 6 Don Diego de Mendoza ? &quot; (Preface to Isidro}. Unfortunately the books that he read, his literary connexions, his fear of being unfavourably judged by the Italians, all exercised an influence upon his naturally robust spirit, and, like so many others, he caught the prevalent contagion of mannerism and of empty and pompous phraseology. In his studies at the imperial college and at Alcala Lope had never found his way up to the truest and highest sources of the beautiful ; he had never attempted Greek, but had contented himself with Latin, which he chose to regard as the only ancient tongue which a man of letters needed to learn. To his natural son, Lope Felix del Carpio, when enter ing upon his Latin studies, he wrote, &quot;So you have begun to grapple with the rudiments ? It is one of the things which cannot possibly be avoided ; but, for all that, if I could find some one to teach you your own language well, I should be quite satisfied, for I have seen too many of those who, having learned Latin, are ignorant of their native tongue and affect to despise everything written in the vulgar idiom. What presumption to forget that the Greeks did not write in Latin or the Latins in Greek ! I con fess I laugh whenever I see men giving themselves out for Latin poets who write in their own language like mere barbarians ; and I conclude that they cannot possibly have been born poets, for the true poet (there is not more than one, they say, in a generation) writes in his own language, and it is therein that he shows his excellence, witness Petrarch in Italy, Ronsnrd in France, and Garcilaso in Spain. Nevertheless I do not wish to discourage you from learning that queen of languages (Latin), the third in the world in point of antiquity. Try to know it as well as you can, my son, but by no means learn Greek, for I would not have you like those who strut and give themselves airs because they have acquired a smattering of it. Greek tends too much to vanity, and what is the use of learning a language which is known to so few ? &quot; After thus warning his son against the dangers of Greek, Lope adds other counsels which reveal to us his feelings towards his own bygone days. &quot; Have but few books, and those choose with care ; diligently observe the thoughts they contain, and do not let any thing noteworthy pass without a mark on the margin. Should it be your misfortune to become a maker of verses (which God forbid !) try at least not to make that your chief occupation, nor let it divert you from more important matters, for therein you will spend your time to no profit. The less of verse you make the more you will be esteemed and appreciated. You need only take an example from me. Certainly you will never be able to render more services than I have done to so many patrons, and see to what my diligence has brought me, to the smallest of houses, a narrow bed, a poor table, and a patch of garden, the flowers of which dispel my cares and supply me with ideas.&quot; Lope knew only Latin, but this he knew well. Yet, instead of filling himself with the spirit of antiquity, and purifying his taste by contact with its literary masters, he regarded their writings as nothing more than re pertories of beautiful and out-of-the-way expressions. After the Latins Lope turned by preference to the Italians. Like every other Spanish man of letters of his time, he had been reared on Italian literature : he knew intimately the works of its great poets of the Renaissance, especially Ariosto and Tasso, as well as San- nazaro, the last-named of whom he imitated on several occasions ;