SIR,
Permit me to correct some errors in my account of Lupercio and
Bartolome Leonardo. [1] I asserted, from the Parnaso Espanol, that no
edition of their works had been printed since that of Zaragosa, 1634: [2] I have now procured one published since the Parnaso. Don Ramon
Fernandez, the editor, has prefixed a sensible preface: “One of the principal
causes,” he says, “of the bad taste observable in the greater part of the poetry
of the present day, is the scarceness of good authors, who might serve as models
to our youth; while the multiplied editions of the corruptors of our poetry are
in the hands of all, maintaining and perpetuating a bad taste.” [3] He remarks the vague eulogies
lavished upon the Spanish poets by their editors, applying to them
indiscriminately the phrases of purity, elegance, enthusiasm, beauty, &c.
and proceeds to point out the characteristic and peculiar merit of the two
Argensolas. In this preface there is a very curious trait of the national
vanity. After mentioning the rich and harmonious versification of these authors,
he adds, this has at all times been an endowment peculiar to the Spanish poets,
for if we consider well, we shall find that they gave a harmony and ease to the
Latin metres which is not to be met with in the poets anterior to Lucan and
Seneca. [4] The chorusses of the
three genuine tragedies of this great tragedian, [5] incomparably
exceed those of Horace in their flowingness and harmony; and the excellent
hexameters of Lucan, have, in these points, a great advantage over those of
Virgil. And even what Cicero [6] says of the
Cordovan poets confirms this, though some, from wrongly understanding the
passage, interpret it as a reproach: for Tully, in this place, speaks only of
their pronunciation and accent, which to Roman ears, accustomed only to
sweetness, might appear strange and harsh; this by no means proves that their
verses were bad or deficient in harmony; instead of this I presume, that the too
great swell and fullness of the Spanish poets, that loquiore
rotundo, [7] that os magna sonaturum, [8] which
Horace so much recommends, and which since the Greeks none have executed better
than the Spaniards; this I conceive to be what appeared unpleasant to Cicero,
whose ears were accustomed to verse little more harmonious than those of
Ennius. [9]
The epistle from which an extract was printed in your Magazine,
is given by the present editor to Francisco de Rioje. [10] I know not whether the reasons he
assigns are sufficient to ascertain the author, but they certainly prove that it
could not have been written by Bartolome Leonardo:
I have selected three sonnets as characteristic of these authors,
the two first are by Lupercio:
Thou art determined to be beautiful,
Lyris! and, Lyris, either thou art mad,
Or hast no looking-glass; dost thou not know
Thy paint-beplaster’d forehead, broad and bare,
With not a grey lock left, thy mouth so black,
And that invincible breath? We rightly deem
That with a random hand blind Fortune deals
The lots of life, to thee she gave a boon
That crowds so anxiously and vainly wish,
Old age, and left in thee no trace of youth
Save all its folly and its ignorance. [11]
———
Content with what I am; the foundling names
Of glory tempt not me; nor is there ought
In glittering grandeur that provokes one wish
Beyond my peaceful state. What tho’ I boast
No trapping that the multitude adores
In common with the great; enough for me
That naked, like the mighty of the earth,
I came into the world, and that like them
I must descend into the grave, the house
For all appointed; for the space between,
What more of happiness have I to seek
Than that dear woman’s love, whose truth I know,
And whose fond heart is satisfied with me? [12]
———
From Bartolome Leonardo
Fabius, to think that God hath in the lines
Of the right hand disclosed the things to come,
And in the wrinkles of the skin pourtrayed,
As in a map, the way of human life,
This is to follow with the multitude
Error or ignorance, their common guides;
Yet surely I allow that God has placed
Our fate in our own hands, or evil or good
Even as we make it: tell me, Fabius,
Ar’t not a king thyself? — when envying not
The lot of kings, no idle wish disturbs
Thy quiet life; when, a self-govern’d man,
No laws exist to thee; and when no change
With which the will of Heaven may visit thee,
Can break the even calmness of thy soul? [13]
T.Y.
Notes* MS: MS has not
survived
Previously published: Monthly Magazine, 5
(January 1798), 11–12 [from where the text is taken] under the pseudonym ‘T.
Y.’ For attribution to Southey, see Kenneth Curry, ‘Southey’s contributions
to The Monthly Magazine and The Athenaeum’,
The Wordsworth Circle, 11 (1980), 216. BACK [1] The Spanish poets
Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola (1559–1613) and Bartolomè Leonardo de
Argensola (1561–1631). BACK [2] Juan José Lopez de Sedano (1729–1801), El
Parnaso Español, 9 vols (Madrid, 1768–1778), III, p.
xvii. BACK [3] Ramon Fernandez [pseud. Pedro Mariano de los
Ángeles Estala Ribera] (1757–1815), Rimas del Doctor Bartolome
Leonardo de Argensola, 3 vols (Madrid, 1786), I, p. [4]. The
translation is probably Southey’s own. BACK [4] Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD
39–65) and Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–AD 65). BACK [5] Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola wrote three tragedies,
Filis, Isabela and
Alejandra. The first was lost, the latter two were
modelled on Seneca and remained unpublished until 1772. BACK [6] Southey adds
footnote: ‘Cordubae natis poetis pingue quiddam cantibus atque peregrinum.
Cicer. pro Archia.’ [Editorial note: The Latin translates as ‘to poets born
at Cordova who sound a bit coarse and foreign’, Marcus Tullius Cicero
(106–43 BC), Pro Archia Poeta, 26.] BACK [7] Horace (65–8 BC),
Ars Poetica, line 323. The Latin translates as ‘with
full-voice’. BACK [8] Horace, Satires, Book 1, no. 4,
lines 43–44. The Latin translates as ‘a grand and lofty style’. BACK [9] Quintus Ennius (239–c. 169
BC), Roman poet. The previous paragraph derives from Ramon Fernandez,
Rimas del Doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, 3 vols
(Madrid, 1786), I, pp. 17–18. The translation is probably Southey’s
own. BACK [10] The ‘Epistola’ (‘Fabio, las esperanzas cortesanas’) had been
attributed to Bartolomè Leonardo de Argensola by Juan José Lopez de Sedano,
El Parnaso Español, 9 vols (Madrid, 1768–1778), I, pp.
226–233. Southey had included a translated extract from the poem in a letter
published in the Monthly Magazine in July 1797 (see
The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1, Letter
230). The poem was reattributed to Francisco de Rioja (1583–1659) by Ramon
Fernandez, Rimas del Doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola,
3 vols (Madrid, 1786), III, p. 10. BACK [11] Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, ‘Por fuerza
quieres, Lice, ser hermosa’, in Ramon Fernandez, Rimas del Doctor
Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, 3 vols (Madrid, 1786), I,
p. 73. The translation is probably Southey’s own, and a copy in
his Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series
(London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 272, dated 2 January 1798, suggests it was a
very recent one. BACK [12] Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, ‘Dentro
quiero vivir de mi fortuna’, in Ramon Fernandez, Rimas del Doctor
Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, 3 vols (Madrid, 1786), I,
p. 18. The translation is probably Southey’s own, and a copy in his
Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series
(London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 272, dated 1 January 1798, suggests it was a
very recent one. BACK [13] Bartolomè Leonardo de Argensola (1561–1631),
‘Fabio, pensar que el Padre soberano’, in Ramon Fernandez, Rimas
del Doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola, 3 vols (Madrid,
1786), II, p. 187. The translation is probably Southey’s own, and a copy
in his Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series
(London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 272–273, dated 31 December 1797, suggests
it was a very recent one. BACK |
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