Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/568

Rh 548 S P E S P ESPINEL, VICENTE (1551 ?-16341), a Spanish poet and ecclesiastic, born probably in 1551, at Honda, in the province of Granada. He was educated at Salamanca, was an early patron and friend of Lope de Vega, and served as a soldier in Flanders. His ecclesiastical position seems to have been that of a chaplain at Honda, but he resided chiefly at Madrid. He is now chiefly noted as having produced one of the best of those romances delineating Spanish manners that have found imitators in other countries. This book, which is entitled Relaciones de la Vida y Hechos del Escudero Marcos de Obregon, appeared in 1618 at Barcelona, at a period when Spanish literature was at a low ebb. Marcos is not a chivalresque &quot;esquire&quot;, but a simple individual who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to great men; and the object of the author is to warn young men against so degrading a course of life. The squire tells his own story. The incidents, which are not generally exciting, though amusing, and nationally characteristic, are supposed to be drawn in great part from the author s own life ; the style is correct, though somewhat diffuse. Its chief interest, like that of the clever Vida y Hechos del Picaro Guzman de Alfarache of Aleman, is that Le Sage has not scrupled to borrow from both writers many of the incidents and characters in his novel of Gil Bias a circumstance which induced an in dignant Spaniard to give to his translation into Spanish of Le Sage s work the title, Gil Bias restored to his Country and his Native Tongue, while in the preface he denounces the barefaced plagiarism. The charge of plagiarism against Le Sage was first made by Voltaire, who grossly exaggerates in saying that Gil Bias is taken entirely from the work of Espinel. Espinel was noted for his musical taste, and added a fifth string to the national guitar. He was also a poet of some reputation, especially for his Canciones and Kedondillas. His pastorals and elegies contain many spirited natural descriptions, though they do not abound in original conceptions ; and his versi fication is always harmonious. He was the inventor or reviver of the measure known as the decimas, and some times called after him Espi nelas, which consists of a stanza of ten verses of eight syllables each. He also translated into verse some of the odes and the Ars Poetica of Horace. Espinel seems to have been neglected in his old age, for he died in great poverty at Madrid in 1634. The Marcos dc Olregon was translated into German by Tieck, with a preface and valuable notes. There is a good English translation by Algernon Langton (2 vols. . London, 1816). ESPREMESNIL, OI-EPKEMENIL, JEAN JACQUES DUVAL D (1746-1794), was born in 1746 at Pondicherry, of which colony his father was at that time a member of the general council. He returned to France with his father in 1750, and after completing his studies for the legal profession became king s advocate at Chatelet, and shortly afterwards councillor of the parlement of Paris. He was an enthusiastic defender of the rights of the parlements against the edicts of Louis XVI. ; and having procured from ^the printers a copy of the edicts of May 1788, establishing bailiwicks, and re-establishing the cour pl eniere for the trial of those officers of the parlements who refused to register the edicts, he revealed this coup d etat to an extraordinary assembly of all the chambers, and by a speech of great eloquence induced the magistrates to pro test^ against what they considered the threatened violation of their rights. For this he was arrested, after an exciting scene, while occupying his place in the assembly. The president refused to point him out to the officer charged with his arrest, and each of the other members declared himself to be M. d Espremesnil ; but at last Espremesnil, while protesting against the violation of justice implied in his arrest, voluntarily delivered himself up. He was banished to the island of St Margaret, but when a change took place in the ministry a few months afterwards, he was recalled to Paris. Shortly after his return he was elected a deputy to the States-general, where he soon became as strenuous in his support of the privileges of the king as he had previously been of the privileges of the parlements; and after combating, often with a passionateness amount ing to violence, the various decrees restraining the royal authority, he at the close of the assembly in 1791 formally protested against the new constitution. In 1792 he was recognized by the revolutionary mob at the Tuileries, and would have suffered summary execution had he not been rescued half dead from the hands of his tormentors by a patrol of the national guard. He obtained temporary refuge in the monastery of St Germains, and soon afterwards went to Havre, where he lived apparently forgotten till toward the end of 1793, when he was arrested and brought to Paris. He was tried before the revolutionary tribunal, and, being condemned to death, was executed 23d April 1794. (See the histories of the time.) ESPRONCEDA, JOSE DE (1810-1842), a Spanish poet and political agitator, whose life is remarkable for the variety of its incidents. His father was colonel of the Bourbon regiment, and it was while the army was on the march that the boy was born, on the highway near Almen- dralejo in Estremadura. On the close of the war, his parents settled at Madrid, and he thus had the opportunity of becoming a pupil of Alberto Lista, the professor of litera ture in St Matthew s college. Before he was out of his fourteenth year, he had not only attracted his master s attention by his political poems, but had joined a conspiracy against the minister Calomardi. During the imprisonment and seclusion at Guadalajara which this offence brought upon him, he soothed his solitude by singing the fate of Pelayo, the patron of Spanish liberty. On his release he withdrew to Lisbon, only to find himself again imprisoned in the castle of St George, and to be transported with some of his fellow refugees to England. Here, by one of those turns of fortune which make truth stranger than fiction, he met with a young lady with whom he had fallen in love while in Lisbon ; and here too he became, what was per haps of as much importance for his poetic development, a student of Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron. In 1830 he took part in the July revolution at Paris, and soon after joined the ill-fated expedition of Pablo de Chapalangarra in Spain. On the death of Ferdinand, he was not only allowed to return to his native country, but obtained an appointment in the queen s guards. This, however, he soon forfeited by a political song, and he was banished to Cuellar, where he had leisure to compose a novel in six volumes, called Don Sancho Saldana 6 el Castellano de Cuellar. The publication of the estatuto real brought him back to Madrid to write and act with as little caution as ever. He joined the revolutionary movements of 1835 and 1836, and in 1840 entered the national guard as lieutenant. The republican party having come into power in 1840, he was appointed ambassador to the Hague, but was obliged to give up his post through an illness which terminated fatally at Madrid on the 23d of May 1842. His poetical works were collected by Villalta in 1840, and have been re printed more than once under the editorship of Hartzen- busch. The &quot; Student of Salamanca,&quot; El estuaiante de Salamanca, is a continuation of the legend of Don Juan, and El Diablo Mundo is based on the story of Faust. Of the lyric poems, which are frequently distinguished by great force of expression and skill in versification, the most remarkable are El Mendigo or the Beggar, El Verdugo or the Headsman, the Hymn to the Sun, and the Ode to Night. (See Ch. de Mazada, Etudes sur VEspagne, and Quinet, Vacances en Espagne,}