Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/330

320 But the literary splendour of Spain became overcast along with its political horizon. Its energies became exhausted—reverses and disasters checked the flights of fancy, and the fatal influence of the Inquisition, chilling into timidity the natures that had been so fearless and free, put a finishing-stroke to the mental degradation of the people. The country of those Moors, to the elegance of whose ideas the halls of the Alhambra still bear witness—the land of the Cid—the birthplace of Cervantes, became as an arid desert—a tangled wilderness in the midst of those enlightened European nations upon whom it had once looked down with proud disdain.

The art of sinking, unhappily, is more easily acquired, both by communities and by individuals, than the art of rising; and during the reign of Charles II. there no longer existed a single poet, or a single writer of the slightest pretensions to celebrity in all Spain! "The literary aliment disappeared along with the political vitality,” and it is from this abject fall in its position in the world of letters, that the authors of modern Spain have to elevate it.

The Duke de Rivas, whose history is in itself a romance, is taking the lead among these pioneers, it is to be hoped, of brighter days. Circumstances have thrown this remarkable man both into camps and courts, and have made him by turns a soldier and a statesman; but it is to prodigal nature alone that he owes his genius and his poetical talents. Don Angel de Saavedra (it is worthy of remark that he bears the same name as the author of "Don Quixotte"—Miguel Saavedra Cervantes) was born on the 10th of March, 1791, at Cordova, and was the second son of the Duke de Rivas, a Spanish grandee. From his infancy he evinced a decided taste for poetry and painting. The first elements of education he received from an emigrant French priest, and afterwards he was placed at a seminary for young noblemen at Madrid. Entering the army at a very early age, he was constantly engaged in the stirring events of war, from the year 1808 till 1814, when the pacification of Europe permitted Spain, for a brief space, to taste of repose.

In 1822, Don Angel was sent as a deputy from his native town, Cordova, and speedily became involved in the political broils of that period, which, within one year, led to his proscription and flight from Spain. In the midst of the powerfully stimulating occupations of war and politics, which would have been sufficient to have absorbed the faculties of most men, Saavedra contrived to cultivate his literary tastes and studies. Their literary tastes, as well as their political sympathies, formed a band of union between him, Quintana, and Martinez de la Rosa, who also, during the war of 1808, had appeared before the public as authors.

This union of physical and mental activity, considered in general so rare, was a distinguishing characteristic of some of the ancient authors of the Peninsula. It was during his military movements from Vienna to Tunis, that Garcilasso de la Vega, one of the most renowned soldiers of Charles V., wrote his Spanish Eclogues, as if therein to seek temporary repose from the din and tumult of arms. Hurtado de Mendoza was better known as a diplomatist and governor in Italy than as an author, and yet he wrote the history of the Wars of Grenada. Cervantes himself had lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and having been taken prisoner by an Algerine corsair in 1574, he had been a captive at Algiers for five years before he wrote "Don Quixotte."