ancient chronicles; his Anales de la corona de Aragón is a book
of great value, though written in a laboured style. With Juan
de Mariana history ceases to be a mere compilation of facts or
a work of pure erudition, and becomes a work of art. The
Historia de España by the celebrated Jesuit, first written in
Latin (1592) in the interest especially of foreigners, was afterwards
rendered by its author into excellent Castilian; as a general
survey of its history, well planned, well written and well thought
out, Spain possesses nothing that can be compared with it.
Various works of less extent—accounts of more or less important
episodes in the history of Spain—may take their place beside
Mariana’s great monument: for example, the Guerra de Granada,
by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (a history of the revolt of the
Moors of the Alpujarras under Philip II.), written about 1572,
immediately after the events, but not published till 1627;
the narrative of the expedition of the Catalans in the Morea in
the 14th century, by Francisco de Moncada (d. 1635); that of
the revolt of the same Catalans during the reign of Philip IV.,
by Francisco Manuel de Mello, a Portuguese by birth; and that
of the conquest of Mexico by Antonio de Soils. Each of these
writers was more or less inspired by some Latin author, one
preferring Livy, another Sallust, &c. Most of these imitations
are somewhat stilted, and their artificiality in the long run
proves as fatiguing as the heaviness of the medieval chroniclers.
On the other hand, the historians of the wars of Flanders, such
as Carlos Coloma, Bernardino de Mendoza, Alonso Vazquez
and Francisco Verdugo, are less refined, and for that very reason
are more vivid and more capable of interesting us in the struggle
of two races so foreign to each other and of such different genius.
As for the accounts of the transatlantic discoveries and conquests,
they are of two kinds—either (1) memoirs of the actors
or witnesses of those great dramas, as, e.g. the Historia verdadera
de la conquista de la nueva España, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
(1492–1581), one of the companions of Cortés, and the Historia
de las Indias, by Bartolomé de las Casas, the apostle of the
Indians; or (2) works by professional writers, such as Francisco
Lopez de Gomara, official historiographers who wrote in Spain
on information sent to them from the newly-discovered lands.
Letter writers, a rather numerous body in Spanish literature, are nearly related to the historians; in fact, letters written to be read by others than the persons addressed, or in any case revised afterwards, are only a method of writing history in a familiar style. Fernando Letter Writers. del Pulgar appended to his Claros varones a series of letters on the affairs of his time; and in the 16th century Antonio de Guevara (d. 1544) collected, under the title of Epistolas familiares, his correspondence with his contemporaries, which throws a great light on the early part of the reign of Charles V., although it must be used with caution because of the numerous recasts it has undergone. A celebrated victim of Philip II., Antonio Perez (d. 1611), revenged himself on his master by relating in innumerable letters, addressed during his exile to his friends and protectors, all the incidents of his disgrace, and by selling to the ministers of France and England the secrets of the Spanish policy in which he had a hand; some of these letters are perfect specimens of urbane gallantry.
Philosophy is rather poorly represented in the 16th and 17th
centuries in the literature of the vernacular. The greater
number of the Spanish thinkers of this epoch,
whatever the school to which they belonged—scholastic,
Platonic, Aristotelian or independent—wrote in
Philosophy.
Mysticism.Latin. Ascetic and mystical authors alone made use of
the vulgar tongue for the readier diffusion of their doctrine
among the illiterate, from whose ranks many of
their disciples were recruited. Luis de Granada
(1504–1588), Luis Ponce de León (1528–1598), Teresa de
Jesus (1515–1582), Pedro Malón de Chaide and St John of
the Cross are the brighter lights of this class of writers.
Some of their books, like the Guia de pecadores of Luis de
Granada, the autobiography of St Theresa, and Malón de Chaide’s
Conversion of the Magdalen (1588), have obtained a lasting
success beyond the limits of the Peninsula, and have influenced
the development of mysticism in France. The Spanish mystics
are not only remarkable for the depth or subtlety of their
thoughts and the intensity of the divine love with which they
are inspired; many of them are masters of style, and some,
like St John of the Cross, have composed verses which rank
with the most sublime in the language. A notable fact is that
those who are regarded as illuminati profess the most practical
ideas in the matter of morality. Nothing is more
Moralists.
sensible, nothing less ecstatic, than the manual of
domestic economy by Luis de León—La Perfecta casada. Lay
moralists are numerous in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Some write long and heavy treatises on the art of governing,
the education of princes, the duties of subjects, &c. Pedro
Fernandez de Navarrete’s Conservación de monarquias, Diego
de Saavedra Fajardo’s Idea de un príncipe cristiano, Quevedo’s
La Política de Dios y gobierno de Cristo, give a correct
idea of the ability which the Spaniards have displayed in this
kind of didactic literature—ability of no high order, for the
Spaniard, when he means to expound a doctrine, loses himself
in distinctions and easily becomes diffuse, pedantic and obscure.
But there is a kind of morality in which he indubitably excels,
namely, in social satire, which, under all its forms—dialogue
and dream in the style of Lucian, epistle after the manner of
Juvenal, or pamphlet—has produced several masterpieces and
a host of ingenious, caustic and amusing compositions. Juan
de Valdés (d. 1541), the most celebrated of the Spanish Protestants,
led the way with his Diálogo de Murcurio y Carón, where
the great political and religious questions of the first half of the
16th century are discussed with admirable vigour and freedom.
The most eminent author in the department of social satire,
as in those of literary and political satire, is Quevedo. Nothing
escapes his scrutinizing spirit and pitiless irony. All the vices
of contemporary society are remorselessly pilloried and cruelly
dissected in his Suefios and other short works. While this great
satirist, in philosophy a disciple of Seneca, imitates his master
even in his diction, he is none the less one of the most vigorous
and original writers of the 17th century. The only serious
defect in his style is that it is too full, not of figures and epithets, but of thoughts. His phrases are of set purpose charged with a double meaning, and we are never sure on reading whether
we have grasped all that the author meant to convey. Conceptism is the name that has been given to this refinement of thought, which was doomed in time to fall into ambiguity; it must not be confounded with the cultism of Góngora, the artifice of which lies solely in the choice and arrangement of words. This new school, of which Quevedo may be regarded as the founder, had its Boileau in the person of Baltasar Gracian, who published his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1642), in which all the subtleties of conceptism are reduced to an exact code. Gracian, who had the gift of sententious moralizing rather than of satire, produced in his Criticón animated pictures of the society of his own day, while he also displayed much ingenuity in collections of political and moral aphorisms which have won him a great reputation abroad.
Spanish thought as well as public spirit and all other forms of national activity began to decline towards the close of the 17th century. The advent of the house of Bourbon, and the increasing invasion of French influence in the domain of politics as well as in literature and 18th Century.science, frustrated the efforts of a few writers who had remained faithful to the pure Spanish tradition. In the hands of the second-rate imitators of Calder6n the stage sank lower and lower; lyric poetry, already compromised by the affected diction of Góngora, was abandoned to rhymesters who tried to make up by extravagance of style for poverty of thought. The first symptoms, not of a revival, but of a certain resumption of intellectual production, appear in the department of linguistic study. In 1714 there was created, on the model of the French academies, La Real Academia Española, intended to maintain the purity of the language and to correct its abuses. This academy set itself at once to work, and in 1726 began the
