Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/253

229 ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 229 puerilities so common with the sister Muse of chapter Italy, • " Scritta cosi come la penna getta, Per fuggir 1' ozio, e non per cercar gloria." It is true, he is occasionally betrayed by verbal subtilties and other affectations of the age ; ^^ but even his liveliest sallies are apt to be seasoned with a moral, or sharpened by a satiric sentiment. His defects, indeed, are of the kind most opposed to those of the Italian poet, showing themselves, es- pecially in the more elaborate pieces, in a certain tumid stateliness and overstrained energy of diction. On the whole, one cannot survey the " Cancion- low state ' •' of lyric ero General" without some disappointment at the ^°^"^'- little progress of the poetic art, since the reign of John the Second, at the beginning of the century. The best pieces in the collection are of that date, and no rival subsequently arose to compete with the masculine strength of Mena, or the delicacy and fascinating graces of Santillana. One cause of this tardy progress may have been, the direction to utility manifested in this active reign, which led such as had leisure for intellectual pursuits to culti- vate science, rather than abandon themselves to the mere revels of the imagination. Another cause may be found in the rudeness of 26 There are probably more di- « Acordad vuestros olvidos • rj i. u 7 1 • 1 Y olvida vuestros acuerdos rect puns in Petrarch's lyrics alone, p^^^^^ tales desacuerdos than in all the Cancionero General. Acuerden vuestros sentidos," <fec. There is another kind of niaiserie, Cancionero General, fol. 226. however, to which the Spanish It was such subtilties as these, poets were much addicted, being entricadas razones, as Cervantes the transposition of the word in calls them, that addled the brains every variety of sense and combi- of poor Don Quixote. Tom. i. nation ; as, for example, cap. 1.