Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/254

230 230 CASTILIAN LITERATURE. PART the language, whose delicate finish is so essential , to the purposes of the poet, but which was so im- perfect at this period, that Juan de la Encina, a popular writer of the time, complained that he was obliged, in his version of Virgil's Eclogues, to coin, as it were, a new vocabulary, from the want of terms corresponding with the original, in the old one.^'^ It was not until the close of the present reign, when the nation began to breathe awhile from its tumultuous career, that the fruits of the patient cultivation which it had been steadily, though silently experiencing, began to manifest themselves in the improved condition of the lan- guage, and its adaptation to the highest poetical uses. The intercourse with Italy, moreover, by naturalizing new and more finished forms of versi- fication, afforded a scope for the nobler efforts of the poet, to which the old Castilian measures, how- ever well suited to the wild and artless movements of the popular minstrelsy, were altogether inade- quate. copiasof We must not dismiss the miscellaneous poetrv of Maurique. ■» •' this period, without some notice of the " Coplas " of Don Jorge Manrique,^^ on the death of his father, the count of Paredes, in 1474.^^ The elegy is of 27 Velasquez, Poesia Cast ellana, " virum satis illustrem. — Eum p. 122. — More than half a centu- enim poetam et philosophum natu- ry later, the learned Ambrosio ra forniavit ac peperit." He un- Morales complained of the barren- fortunately fell in a skirmish, five ness of the Castilian, which he years after his father's death, in imputed to the too exclusive adop- 1179. Mariana, Hist, de Espaiia, tion of the Latin upon all subjects tom. ii. p. 531. of dignity and importance. Obras, 20 An elaborate character of this lom. xiv. pp. 147, 118. Quixotic old cavalier may be found ^ L. Marinco, speaking of this in Pulgar, Claros Varoncs, tit. 13. accomplished nobleman, styles him