The unity of Spanish Literature.
The Literature of Spain, of which the Portuguese3 is the little sister, or even at times the echo, stands apart. In this fact lies the excuse for the division adopted in this volume. There is at first sight something arbitrary in beginning a survey of Literature of the later Renaissance4 with a book written at the close of the fifteenth century. To carry the story on till the close of the[2] seventeenth may well appear to be a violation5 of proportion. The Renaissance even in Italy was not in its later stages in 1500, and it is far behind us when we get to the years in which Boileau, Molière, and Racine were writing in France, while Dryden was the undisputed prince of English poets and prose-writers. Yet there is good critical reason for making a wide distinction between the one period of literary greatness of the Peninsula and those stages in the history of the Literatures of England, France, or Italy, which belong to the time of the later Renaissance. It is this—that we cannot, without separating things which are identical, divide the literature of Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The years between the appearance of the Shepherd’s Calendar and the death of Shakespeare form a period possessing a character of its own in the history of our poetry, our prose, and our drama. It is still more emphatically true that French literature, between the rise of the Pléiade and the death of Mathurin Regnier, is marked off sharply, both from what had gone before and what was to follow. But we cannot draw a line anywhere across the Spanish drama, poetry, or prose story of the great time and say, Here an old influence ended, here a new one began. We have to deal with the slow growth, very brief culmination8, and sudden extinction9 of a brilliant literature, which came late and went early, and which for the short time that it lasted is one and indivisible. It grew up partly from native roots, partly under an influence imparted by Italy; attained10 its full stature[3] in the early years of the seventeenth century; then “withered, fell into puerile12 ravings, and died,” with the close of the Austrian dynasty.
Limits of treatment.
As, then, the Golden Age of Spain is one, we are justified13 in taking it as a whole, even though we appear to violate the harmony of the arrangement of the series to which this volume belongs. And this division of the matter imposes an obvious limitation on the treatment to be adopted. Spanish literature is, in one sense, exceedingly rich. During the century and a half, or so, of its vigour14, it produced a vast number of books, and the catalogue of its authors is very long. Don Nicolas Antonio, the industrious15 compiler of the Biblioteca Hispana, has calculated the number of mystic and ascetic16 works (of which some are among the best of Spanish books) at over three thousand. The fecundity17 of its theatre is a commonplace; the fluency18 of its poets is boundless19; the bulk of its prose stories is considerable; its historians are many, and not a few are good. It is needless to add that much was written on law, theology, and the arts which has value. In dealing20 with all this mass of printed matter in the space at our disposal, it is clearly necessary to remember the injunction, “il faut savoir se borner.”
We must, to begin with, leave aside all that is not primarily literature, except when it can be shown to have influenced that which is. Again, even in dealing with our proper subject, we must submit to limits. It is manifestly necessary to omit scores—nay,[4] hundreds—of minor21 names. But that is not all. In making a survey of a fertile literature in a brief space, we are always obliged to go by kinds and classes rather than by individual writers. But in Spanish literature this is more especially true.
A prevailing characteristic.
In the course of an introduction to a translation of Shakespeare’s plays by Se?or Clarke, Don Juan Valera (himself the author of stories both Spanish and good) has made a complaint, which is of the nature of an unconscious confession22. He has lamented23 that the characters of Spanish drama are so little known. An artist, so he says, has only to paint a young man in a picturesque24 dress on a rope-ladder, with a beautiful young woman on a balcony above him, and all the world recognises Romeo and Juliet. If he takes his anecdote25 from Lope and Calderon, nobody will be able to guess what it is all about. With less than his usual good sense, Se?or Valera accounts for the obscurity into which the world has been content to allow the characters and scenes of the Spanish drama to fall, by the political decadence26 of his country at the end of the seventeenth century. Yet the passing away of Spain’s greatness has not prevented Don Quixote and Sancho from being familiar to the whole world. If anecdote pictures are to be the test, Cervantes has no reason to fear the rivalry27 of the English dramatic poet. There is less of Spanish pride than of its ugly shadow, Spanish vanity, in Don Juan Valera’s explanation. The Drama of Spain, brilliant as it was within its limits, is not universally known, because it does not[5] give what we find in Cervantes, and in boundless profusion28 in Shakespeare, characters true to unchanging human nature, and therefore both true and interesting to all time. It is mainly a drama of situation, and of certain stock passions working through personages who are rarely more than puppets. We may say the same of the prose stories, whether Libros de Caballerías, or Novelas de Pícaros—Books of Chivalry29, or Tales of Rogues30. They all have the same matter and the same stock figures. They differ only in the degree of dexterity32 with which the author has used his material. In the poetry of Spain we see two influences at work—first, the Italian Renaissance, which ruled the learned poetry of the school of Garcilaso; and then the native “romance” or ballad33 poetry, which held its ground beside the more varied34 and splendid metres imitated from abroad. Each of these, within its own bounds, is very uniform, and the works of each school vary only according to the writer’s greater or less mastery of what he uses in common with all others. Such a literature is manifestly best treated by classes and types. Cervantes, indeed, stands apart. His greatness is not a towering superiority but a difference of kind. It is as individual as the greatness of Velasquez in painting.
The division into native and imitative.
These two influences, the foreign and the native, divided Spanish literature of the Golden Age between them in very different proportions. To the first is owing the whole body of its learned poetry, and part of its prose. To the second belong all the “deliveries of the Spaniard’s[6] self,” as they may be called in a phrase adapted from Bacon, the prose tale, the ballad, the drama, and the ascetic works of the so-called mystics. These are the genuine things of Spanish literature, and in them the Spaniard expressed his own nature. It was very shrewdly noted36 by Aarsens van Sommelsdyck, a Hollander who visited Spain in the later seventeenth century, that however solemn the Spaniard may be in public, he is easy and jocular enough in private. He is very susceptible37 to what is lofty and noble, capable of ecstatic piety38, of a decidedly grandiose39 loyalty40 and patriotism41, endowed with a profound sense of his own dignity, which nerves him to bear adversity well, but which also causes him to be contumaciously42 impenetrable to facts when they tell him he must yield or amend43 his ways. With all that, and perhaps as a reaction from all that, he can enjoy crude forms of burlesque44, can laugh over hard realistic pictures of the sordid45 side of life, and delights in rather cynical46 judgments47 of human nature. The lofty and the low have their representations in his literature, in forms easily traced back to the middle ages. About the third quarter of the sixteenth century it might have appeared to a superficial observer that the native element was overpowered by the foreign. But the triumph of the “learned” literature was in show, not in reality.
The book already alluded49 to as marking the starting-point of the Golden Age is the once famous Celestina, a long story in dialogue, of uncertain authorship and age. It was written at some time between the conquest[7] of Granada and the end of the fifteenth century. Precision is in this case of no importance, since the true descendants of the Celestina were the Picaresque stories. Its first successor was the Lazarillo de Tormes, which, though no doubt written earlier, appeared in or about 1547. Then at an interval50 of fifty years came the Beacon51 of Life—Atalaya de la Vida—better known as Guzman de Alfarache, of Mateo Aleman, and from him sprang the great Rogue31 family. But while the Picaresque novel was gathering52 strength, all the more slowly because it was not an imitation, the classic school of poetry had blossomed, and was already showing signs of decadence. The drama, another purely53 native growth, had risen by degrees alongside the prose tale, and reached its full development at about the same time. Both are intrinsically of far greater value than the learned verse. Yet since their maturity54 came later, they may be postponed55 while the story of the school of Garcilaso is told.
The inheritance from the fifteenth century.
Before entering upon that, it is necessary to say something of the conditions which the “new poetry” and the influence of the Renaissance found before them when they began to influence Spain. The fifteenth century had not been barren of literature. King John II. (1407-1454) had collected round him a school of Court poets whose chief was Juan de Mena. Although the last representatives of this school resisted the innovations of Boscan and Garcilaso as unpatriotic, it was itself entirely57 foreign in origin—being, in truth, little more[8] than an echo of Proven?al and early Italian poetry. Juan de Mena, the Prince of Poets of his time, wrote long allegorical poems in imitation of Dante, and was perhaps not uninfluenced by the French rhétoriqueurs. Indeed the earlier leaders of the school made no secret of their debt. The Marquis of Santillana, a contemporary of King John, candidly58 says, in a letter to the Constable59 of Portugal, that he sought the origin of poetry in the Gai Saber of Provence. The troubadours, when driven from France, had found refuge in the dominions60 of Aragon, and had there given rise to a school of imitators. The connection of Aragon with Italy was close. Dante found translators, and Petrarch imitators, among the Catalan poets of Valencia, and from thence their influence spread to Castile. Juan del Encina, who in 1496 prefixed a brief Ars Poetica to one of those collections of lyric63 verse called Cancioneros, and who was himself a poet of the Court school, confessed that he and his brother verse-writers had conveyed largely from the earlier Italians. Moreover, he made this the main ground of their claim to be considered poets. It was not till the next century, and until the last representatives of this school found themselves opposed by the Italian influence, that they began to claim to be essentially64 Spanish.
Spanish verse.
What there was of really Spanish in their verse must be allowed to have been mainly the impoverishment65 of the original models. The Spaniard has always been recalcitrant66 to the shackles67 imposed by complicated and artful forms of verse, and there is a natural tendency in him to drift at all times[9] to his native trochaic assonants of eight syllables68. His language, admirable when properly handled for prose, wants the variety of melody required for poetry. Impatience70 of the difficulties of metre is another name for the want of a due sense of the beauty of form. Indeed it is not by its form that Spanish literature has been distinguished71. Given, then, a people who had very little faculty72 for delicate verse, and a language which wanted both the wealth of the Italian accent and the flexibility73 of the French, and it is easy to see what was likely to be the end of the Proven?al and Petrarchian influence in the Court school. Its poetry, never more than an echo, sank into mechanical verse-making—mostly in eight-syllabled couplets, relieved by a broken line of four. The inborn74 preference of the Spaniard for loose metres gradually gained the upper hand. No doubt fine verses may be picked out from the bulk of the writings of the troubadour school of Castile. The rhythmus de contemptu mundi, known as the coplas de Manrique, which has been made known to English readers by Mr Longfellow, is even noble in its rigid75 gravity. But the merit lies not in the melody of the verse, which soon becomes monotonous76. It is in this, that the coplas give us perhaps the finest expression of one side of the Spaniard. They are full of what he himself calls in his own untranslatable word el desenga?o—that is to say, the melancholy77 recognition of the hollowness of man’s life, and “the frailty78 of all things here”—not in puling self-pity, but in manly79 and pious80 resignation to fate and necessity.
[10]
The Cancioneros.
This old or troubadour school did not give up the field to the new Italian influence without a struggle. Its models continued to be imitated nearly all through the sixteenth century. It was praised and regretted by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. Boscan and Garcilaso found an opponent and a critic in Cristobal de Castillejo, a very fluent verse-writer, a most worthy81 man, and a loyal servant of the house of Austria, who died in exile at Vienna in 1556. El buen de Castillejo—the good Castillejo, as he is commonly called, with condescending82 kindness—was an excellent example of the stamp of critic, more or less common in all times, who judges of poetry exclusively by his own stop-watch. He condemned83 Boscan and Garcilaso, not for writing bad poetry, but for not writing according to what he considered the orthodox model. The new school not unnaturally84 retorted by wholesale85 condemnation86 of the old. When Hernan, or Fernan, de Herrera published his edition of Garcilaso in 1572, he was rebuked87 for quoting Juan del Encina in the commentary. A pamphleteer, believed to have been no less a person than the Admiral of Castile, whose likeness88 may be seen in the National Portrait Gallery among the ambassadors who signed the peace at the beginning of the reign35 of James I., laughed at Herrera for quoting as an authority one who had become a name for a bad poet. This was pedantry89 as bad as Castillejo’s, and represented an opinion never generally accepted by the Spaniards. They continued to read the collections of ancient verse called Cancioneros, even when[11] the new school was at the height of its vigour. The Cancioneros Generales of Hernan del Castillo, the great storehouse of the poetry of the fifteenth century, was reprinted, with some changes, no less than nine times between 1511 and 1573. The extreme rarity of copies of these numerous editions proves that they must have been well thumbed to pieces by admiring readers. Yet they constitute no inconsiderable body of literature. The modern reprint issued (unfortunately only to its own members) by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Espa?oles is in two weighty volumes.
The romances.
In this Cancionero there are two elements, destined90 to very different fates. Hernan del Castillo included eighteen romances in his collection, and they reappeared in subsequent editions. The importance of this word in Spanish literature seems to call for some definition of its scope. The word “romance” bore originally in Spanish exactly the same meaning as in other tongues descended91 from the Latin. It was the vernacular92, and to write en romance was to write Castilian, Galician, or Catalan. “Ni romance ni romano”—neither Romance nor Roman—is a phrase bearing more or less the meaning of our “neither rhyme nor reason.” But little by little, by use and wont93, it came about the end of the sixteenth century to be applied94 exclusively to the form of verse dearest and most native to the Spaniard, the already mentioned trochaic eight-syllable69 assonant metre. As the ancient ballads95 are mainly, though not exclusively, written in this form, they are called romances. Yet to write romances does not necessarily mean to write[12] ballads, but only to write in that metre, whether in the dialogue of a play or in long narrative96 poems, or for any other purpose.
The assonant metre, as is well known, is not peculiar97 to Spain. It may well have been imported into Castile from France by those churchmen to whom the country owes so much of its architecture, what learning it had, and its civilisation98 when it began to revive from the merely martial100 barbarism produced by the Moorish102 conquest. But if the Spaniard did indeed take the assonant metre from his French teachers, he soon subjected it to that process which all forms of verse are apt to undergo in his hands. He released it from shackles, and gave it a freedom amounting to licence. The romance is a loose-flowing rhythm, in which the rhyme is made by the last accented vowel103. Sometimes the same vowel is used line after line until it is exhausted104. More commonly the assonant comes in alternate lines. As a rule there is no division into stanzas105, but the verse runs on till the speech is ended, or the tale is told. To this there are, however, exceptions, and the romance is divided into redondillas—that is, roundels or staves of four lines, assonanced either alternately, or the first with the fourth and the second with the third, or into quintillas of five lines, with an assonant in three. The recalcitrance106 of the Spaniard to all limitations in verse-making has caused him to give a very wide range indeed to the assonant. The vowel u is allowed to rhyme with o, and i with e, though they have a very different sound and force. The Spaniard, again, allows a diphthong to be assonant[13] to a vowel, although he pronounces both the vowels107 in his diphthongs. It will be seen that such verse as this can be written with extreme facility. Indeed it is a byword in Spain that nothing is easier than to write romances—badly. The difficulty, in fact, is to avoid writing them in prose; and it is no small one, when the ear of a people finds a rhyme in so faint a similarity of sound, and in a language in which the accent is at once so pronounced and as little varied. It is not, I trust, superfluous108 to add that in Castilian, which we call Spanish, there is a marked accent in the last syllable of words ending in a consonant109, on the penult of words ending in a vowel, while a limited number of words are esdrujulo—that is, accented on the antepenult. The addition of a syllable to form the plural110, or of the adverbial termination mente, does not alter the place of the accent. These rules, though nowise severe, are not rigidly111 followed. Not infrequently the assonant rhyme falls into the full or consonant rhyme, while the liesse or stave formed on one vowel, and its equivalents, is broken by a line corresponding to nothing. Even the rule requiring the use of eight syllables is applied with restrictions,—an accented syllable at the end counts as two, while two unaccented syllables rank only as one. It must be acknowledged that this metre is unsatisfactory to an ear attuned112 to the melody of English poetry. In our language it renders hardly a tinkle113. When we have become accustomed to it in Castilian—and until we do it tantalises with a sense of something wanting—its highest virtue114 seems to be that it keeps the voice of[14] the speaker in a chanted recitative. It is more akin6 to numbered prose than to verse.
However incomplete the romance may seem to us, to the Spaniard it is dear. When romances were not being well written in Spain, it was because nothing was being written well. The metre not only held its ground against the court poetry of the fifteenth century, but prevailed against the new Italian influence. Here as in other fields the Spaniard was very tenacious115 of the things of Spain. To find a parallel to what happened in Spain we must do more than suppose that the Pléiade in France, or Spenser and his successors in England, had failed to overcome the already existing literary schools. It was as if the ballad metres had won a place even on the stage. No Spanish Sir Philip Sidney need have apologised for feeling his heart stirred by those ballads of the Cid, or of the Infantes de Lara, which answer to our Chevy Chase. They were strenuously116 collected, and constantly imitated, all through the sixteenth and well into the seventeenth century. The Romanceros So far were they from falling into neglect, that they were first able to shake the slowly withering117 poetry of the troubadour school, and then to fill a long series of collections, known, in the beginning, as Cancioneros, or Libros, or Sylvas de Romances, but finally as Romanceros. Much bibliographical118 learning and controversy119 has collected about these early editions. Even if I could profess120 to be competent to speak on such matters, they would have no proper place here. From the point of view of the literary historian, the interesting[15] fact is that at a time when classic, or at least new influences, born of the Renaissance, were carrying all before them in France and England, and in Italy had long ago definitively121 conquered, the Spaniards did not wholly part with their inheritance from the Middle Ages.
The few ballads, and fragments of ballads, printed by Hernan del Castillo in 1511, proved so popular that an editor was tempted122 to form a special collection. The place and date of this first ballad-book proper are both significant.[1] It appeared at Antwerp in or about 1546—that is to say, three years or so after the first edition of the poems of Boscan and Garcilaso. The editor was one Martin Nucio. Antwerp, be it observed, was always a great publishing place for Spanish books, a fact which may be accounted for, not only by the political connection between Spain and the Low Countries, the number of Spaniards employed there in various capacities, as soldiers, officials, or traders, and the then extensive use of their language, but also by the superiority of the Flemish printers. That same carelessness of form which is found in the Spaniard’s literature followed him in lesser123 arts, where neatness of handling was more necessary than spirit and creative faculty. He was, at any rate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rarely a good engraver124, and hardly ever a good printer. The[16] Cancionero de Romances, brought out, it may be, primarily for the pleasure of the Spaniards scattered125 over Flanders and Germany, was soon reprinted in Spain, by one Estéban de Najera, at Saragossa. These contemporary collections are not quite identical, but essentially the same. This Cancionero, or Sylva, de Romances met with a reception which proved how strong a hold his indigenous126 verse had on the Spaniard. Three editions, with corrections and additions, appeared by 1555. The latest of these was not reprinted until well into the next century. In the meantime other editors had followed Nucio and Najera. A Romancero in nine parts appeared at places so far distant from one another as Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid, between 1593 and 1597. This again grew into the great Romancero General of 1604-1614, wherein there are a thousand ballads.
The quality of this poetry.
In so far as this great mass of verse is really an inheritance from the Middle Ages, it does not belong to the subject of this book. All that it is necessary to do here is to note the fact that it did survive, and did continue to exert an influence. But nothing is more doubtful than the antiquity127 of the vast majority of the romances. The best judges have given up the attempt to class them by age, and indeed that must needs be a hopeless task where poems have been preserved by oral tradition alone, and have therefore been subject to modification128 by every succeeding generation. The presence of very ancient words is no proof of antiquity, since they may[17] be put in by an imitator. Neither is the mention of comparatively recent events, or of such things as clocks or articles of commerce only known in later times, of itself proof that the framework of the ballad was not ancient when it took its final shape. The Romances were collected very much in the style of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and we all know with what facility remains129 of popular poetry are found when there is a demand for them, when no critical tests are applied, and when the searchers are endowed with a faculty for verse-writing. The Moorish ballads have been called old, and yet nothing is more certain than that they were the fruits of a literary fashion of the later sixteenth century. The Moor101, like the Red Man, became a picturesque figure only when he ceased to be dangerous. Another class of the ballads, those called of chivalry, are full of references showing that the writers were acquainted with Ariosto, and cannot have been written before the middle of the century at the earliest. Where the romance is identical in subject with, and very similar in language to, a passage in the great chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, or other unquestionably medi?val work preserved in writing of known antiquity, it may be accepted as ancient. Where that test cannot be applied, it is safer not to think that the ballad is older than the sixteenth century. In some cases the inspiration can be shown to have been French. The subject of the Molinero de Arcos, a popular ballad existing in several versions, was taken from a well-known French farce131, Le Meunier d’Arleux.
[18]
It is very necessary, when judging this great body of verse, to stand on our guard against certain besetting132 fallacies. There is always a marked tendency in collectors to excuse what is grotesque133 on the ground that it is ancient, and to pardon what is bad on the ground that it is popular. The Spanish ballads have suffered from the too great zeal134 with which modern editors have reprinted what was accepted by the indiscriminate taste of first collectors. Many of the ballads belong to the class of romances de ciegos—i.e., “blindmen’s ballads”—which were doggerel135 at all times. Others are not above the level of the poets’ corner of not over-exacting newspapers. Even in the best, the intention and the first inspiration are commonly far better than the expression. The Spaniard’s slovenliness136 of form is found here as elsewhere. Lockhart, in the preface to his adaptations, has rebuked the Spaniards for “neglecting old and simpler poets,” who wrote the romances, in favour of authors “who were at the best ingenious imitators of classical or Italian models.” He has himself, however, subjected those he selected for translation into English to a treatment which conveys a severe and a just critical judgment48. A comparison between his ballads and the originals will show that he occasionally, though very rarely, weakened a forcible phrase. Now and again there are signs that his knowledge of Spanish was not deep. He writes, “So spake the brave Montanez,” as if that had been the name of the Lord of Butrago, whereas montanes (mountaineer) was a common old Spanish equivalent for noble, a custom[19] due to the belief that the old Castilian aristocracy drew its “blue blood,” shown by its grey or blue eyes, from the Visigoths, who held the mountains of Asturias against the Moors137. The Lord of Butrago was a historical personage, and the head of the house of Mendoza. But if a few faults of this kind can be found, there are to be set off against them a hundred passages in which he has suppressed a redundancy or replaced the purely prosaic138 original by poetry. A very good test case is to be found in the last verse of the Wandering Knight’s song—which stands thus in Lockhart:—
“I ride from land to land,
I sail from sea to sea;
Some day more kind I fate may find,
Some night kiss thee.”
What can be more pretty or more fit? but it is not in the Cancionero de Romances, where the words stand:—
“Andando de Sierra en Sierra
Por orillas de la mar7,
Por provar si en mi ventura
Ay lugar donde avadar;
Pero por vos, mi se?ora,
Todo se ha de comportar.”
“Wandering from hills to hills by the shore of the sea, to try whether my fortune will give me a ford139; but for you, my lady, all things are to be endured,” is the bald literal meaning, which, though it is at least as old as 1555, and is simple enough, is also, unfortunately, bathos. And this is very far from being[20] a solitary140 example. The result is, that Lockhart’s ballads give an unduly141 high estimate of the originals to those who only know the English rifacimento. A reader who refuses to be enslaved by authority will find that he is constantly compelled to make allowances for the faults which Lockhart was in the fortunate position of being able to correct—for redundancies, for lines of mere99 prose, for vulgarities, for flat, spiritless endings. He will often feel that he is reading mere repetitions in a popular form, written by painfully uninspired authors, whose too frequent use of stock literary phrases shows that they were far from the simplicity142 attributed to the ballad-maker. It is true that poetic62 feeling, and some poetic matter in the shape of traditional stories, is to be found in the romances, but, as it were, in solution. Nor is it to be denied that it is to the honour of a people when it clings to a national form of verse, and to its own traditions. Yet neither good poetic intention nor the most respectable patriotism will make inferior execution anything but inferior even in national ballads. It is unquestionably unjust to find fault with a body of professedly unlearned writers because they show the defects of men who have not a severe literary training. But the claim made for the Spanish romances is that they express the natural feelings of a poetic people with simplicity: it is quite fair to answer that the great mass of them belong to a time of high literary cultivation143; that they show signs of being the work of its inferior writers; that, even at their best, their loose metrical form—far looser as it is than our own[21] ballad stanza—permitted them to be written by persons who could not have mastered even doggerel rhyme; and that they are too often wanting in the direct, simple, passionate144 expression by which the rudest genuine poet can force his way to the realm of poetry.
Spain and Italy.
It was a real, but in all probability an inevitable145, misfortune that the best poetic faculty in Spain during the sixteenth century neglected the native metre, and turned for inspiration “to the sweet and stately measures of the Italian poesie.” An Italian influence, as has been already pointed146 out, was no new thing in Spain, and as the sixteenth century drew on it was sure to be felt again. Italy, indeed, was full of Spaniards. They were numerous at the papal Court, and the wars for Naples brought them in greatly increased numbers. Until the close of the fifteenth century those who settled in the southern kingdom were mainly drawn147 from Aragon. A great change came with the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic. He claimed Naples by right of his inherited crown of Aragon, but he fought for it with the forces, and the arms, of Castile. Isabel was tenacious of her rights as queen of the greater kingdom, but she was scrupulous148 in fulfilling her wifely duty to comfort her husband. She supported him with her own subjects. After her death he was regent, except for the short period during which he was displaced by his worthless son-in-law, Philip the Handsome. Thus the Castilians came more directly in contact with Italy and Italian civilisation than they had ever done before. They abounded149 as[22] soldiers, as diplomatists, lay and ecclesiastical, and as administrators150. Some among them were sure to feel the artistic151 and literary influences of that many-sided time. The way was prepared in Spain by the alliance between the crowns of Castile and Aragon, which could not give the country administrative152 unity, but did give an internal peace. It was a time of expansion and vigour. Isabel had favoured learning. Her favourite scholar, Antonio de Lebrija—better known by the Latinised form of his name as Nebrissensis—drew up a Castilian grammar and dictionary. The language came rapidly to maturity, and was in fact full grown at the beginning of the sixteenth century. This speedy maturity, though perhaps not for the good of the language in the end, was natural. Castilian, in spite of a large admixture of Arabic words, is so thoroughly153 Latin that little was needed to fit it for literary purposes when once the study of classical models was seriously begun—much as the art of printing came quickly to perfection because the early typographers had beautifully executed manuscripts before them as models.
The early sixteenth century in Spain was not barren in prose-writers, mostly didactic, and also for the most part imitators of the Italians. Francisco de Villalobos, of whom little is known except that he was doctor to Ferdinand the Catholic and the Emperor Charles V., and Fernan Perez de Oliva of Córdova (1492-1530), are the best remembered of the class. But the Problems of the first, and the treatise155 on the Dignity of Man of the second, are mainly notable as examples[23] of the growing wish to write Castilian for serious purposes.[2]
The Spanish tongue.
But a more interesting proof of the care the Spaniards were giving to their language is to be found in the Diálogo de la Lengua[3]—Talk about our Language, as it may be freely but not inaccurately156 translated. The Diálogo de la Lengua. This little book appears to have been written about, and perhaps a little after, 1530, but was not printed till Mayans included it in his Origenes de la Lengua Castillana in the last century. There is strong internal evidence to show that it was the work of one Juan de Váldes, a Spaniard belonging to the colony settled in Naples, a Castilian by birth, and a member of the doubtfully orthodox society collected round Vittoria Colonna. Juan de Váldes himself is included in the short list of Spanish Protestants, and his heterodoxy accounts for the length of time during which his work remained in manuscript. He smelt157 of the fagot, as the French phrase has it. All who possess even a slight acquaintance with the literary habits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are aware that we must not draw from the fact that work remained in manuscript the deduction158 that it was little known. The Diálogo de la Lengua was never quite forgotten. It is in itself somewhat disappointing, being altogether narrower in scope and less ambitious in aim than[24] Joachim du Bellay’s Défense et Illustration de la Langue fran?aise, published in 1549. Much of it is devoted159 to nice points in the use of words, while the scholarly, perhaps also the patriotic56, leanings of Váldes led him to assume the untenable position that the few Greek colonies on the Mediterranean160 coast of Spain had spread the use of their language all over the country before it was displaced by the Latin. But though the Diálogo is not, like the Défense, a great literary manifesto161, and though its learning is at times fantastic, it has some intrinsic interest, and no small value as a piece of evidence. That exceedingly difficult literary form the dialogue is very fairly mastered. The four speakers—two Spaniards and two Italians—who take part in the conversation have a distinct dramatic reality, and the tone of talk, familiar, occasionally even witty162 in form, but serious in substance, is well maintained. The scheme is that three of a party of four gentlemen who are spending a day at a villa154 on the Bay of Naples join in a friendly conspiracy163 to draw the fourth, whose name, by the way, is Váldes, into expounding164 to them, before they take horse to return to the city, how a cultivated man ought to speak and write Castilian. The doctrine165 of Váldes differs significantly from the lesson enforced by Joachim du Bellay. He does not call upon his countrymen to go forth166 to the conquest of the haughty167 Greeks and Romans. On the contrary, it is his contention168 that although the vocabulary requires refining, and the grammar needs to be better fixed61, the language is already as fit for every purpose[25] of literature as the Italian, or even as the classic tongues. With the pride of a genuine Spaniard he seeks his examples in the refranes, the proverbs and proverbial phrases. He makes free use of the collection formed in the fifteenth century by the Marquess of Santillana, who gathered the traditional sayings “from the old women sitting round the hearth169.” Váldes may be held to have given evidence in support of his own belief in the maturity of the language. The Castilian of the Diálogo has very little in it that is antiquated170, and where it differs from the modern tongue it is in being more terse171 and manly. His literary doctrine, which is rather indicated than expounded172, would have commended itself to our Queen Anne men. To be simple and direct, to avoid affectation, to prefer at all times the natural and straightforward173 way of saying what you have to say—that is the advice of Juan de Váldes. Withal, he has no squeamish dislike of the common, when, as in the case of his beloved proverbs, it is also pure Spanish. The principles of Váldes might have been fatal to a stately and embroidered174 eloquence175 (of which Castilian has in any case no great store), but they would preserve a literature from the affected176 folly177 of Góngorism on the one hand, and from the grey uniformity of general terms, which was the danger incident to the classic literature of the eighteenth century.
Váldes, who cited Garcilaso with praise, would not have agreed in many things with Cristobal de Castillejo, but he would have applauded his saying that Castilian is friendly to a “cierta clara brevedad”—to[26] a certain lucid178 brevity. We shall be better able to judge later whether the recognition of this truth does not lead directly to agreement with Mr Borrow, when he says that Spanish Literature is not wholly worthy of the language. The prose of the early sixteenth century. Lucid brevity is certainly not the quality to be noted in Spanish prose-writers of what we may call the time of preparation—the earlier sixteenth century. The quality may indeed be found in an eminent179 degree in the writings of Spaniards who were not men of letters—in the despatches of Cortes, or in the numerous extant narratives180 of soldiers or priests who were eyewitnesses181 of the wars of Italy, of the sack of Rome, or of the conquest of America. It would be easy to make an excellent collection of stories of adventure from their letters, which would show the masculine force and the savoury quality of Castilian. But these were men of the sword, or churchmen as adventurous182 as they—not men of letters who knew by what devious183 paths the Muses184 should be approached. The prose-writers of this epoch185 as a class need not detain us in what must be a brief outline portrait of Spanish literature. There is, however, one exception in Antonio de Guevara, the Bishop186 of Mondo?edo (d. 1545), who is best known to us as the author of the once famous Golden Epistles, if only for the sake of the influence he may have had on Lyly.[4] Guevara wants, indeed, the quaint130 graceful187 fancy, and also the oddity of the[27] English writer; but it is possible that his sententious antithetical style had some share in producing euphuism. Guevara is also worth notice as an early, though not the earliest, example of the pretentiousness188 and the tendency to wordy platitude189 which have been so fatal in Spanish literature. He had knowledge both of books and the world, and some command of sarcasm190. These qualities were, however, swamped in the “flowing and watery191 vein” of his prose style. No writer ever carried the seesaw192 antithetical manner to a more provoking extent. To make one phrase balance another appears to have been his chief aim, and in order to achieve this end he repeated and amplified193. In his own time, when whatever was at once sound as moralising, learned, and professedly too good for the vulgar was received with respect, Guevara had a wide popularity both in Spain and abroad. To-day he is almost unreadable, and for a reason which it is easy to make clear. It is known that La Fontaine took the subject of the Paysan du Danube from the Golden Epistles indirectly194 if not directly. Spaniards may be found to boast that there is nothing in the fable195 which is not in their countrymen. This is partly true, but it is stated in the wrong way. The accurate version is that there is nothing in Guevara’s prose which is not in La Fontaine’s verse, but that it is said in several hundred times as many words, and that the meaning (not in itself considerable) is smothered196 in tiresome197 digressions and amplifications.
The influence of the Inquisition.
A few words, and they need be very few, on the influence[28] of the Inquisition seem not out of place in a history of any part of Spanish life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are even to be justified by the fact that its oppressive influence has been called on to account for the withering of the national will and intelligence, which dried up the very sources of literature. The prevalence of the destructive affectation called Góngorism has been excused by Mr Ticknor on the ground that men were driven back on mere playing with words because the Inquisition made thinking dangerous. But we are met at once by the problem of the Sufi pipkin. It is hard to tell which is potter and which is pot. Did the Spanish intellect wither11 because the Inquisition wrapped it in over-tight swaddling-clothes? or did the Spaniard first create and then submit to this repressive institution because he had little tendency to speculation198? To judge by what went before and by what has come after the Inquisition, the second reading of the riddle199 is at least as plausible200 as the first. However that may be, it is difficult to see how the Inquisition is to be made responsible for the carelessness of form and the loquacious201 commonplace, which are the main defects of Spanish prose and verse, while it may fairly claim to have helped to preserve Spanish literature from one grave fault so visible in parts of our own. The Holy Office, which allowed Lope de Vega to write La Esclava de su Galan, would not have punished him for writing an As You Like It. Since it suffered Cervantes to create Don Quixote, it would not have[29] burnt the author of a Novela de Pícaros, who had made his hero as real as Gil Blas. The Inquisition was no more responsible for the hasty writing of Lope than for his undue202 complacence towards the vices203 of his patron the Duke of Sessa. A literature which could produce La Vida es Sue?o, El Condenado por Desconfiado, and the Mágico Prodigioso, had all the freedom necessary to say the profoundest things on man’s passions and nature in the noblest style. It was his own too great readiness to say “This will do,” and not the Inquisition, which prevented Tirso de Molina from making La Venganza de Tamar as perfect in form all through as it is in one scene. The Church had no quarrel with perfection of form. It had, indeed, a quarrel with mere grossness of expression, and would certainly have frowned on many so-called comic scenes of our own Elizabethan plays. This was a commendable204 fastidiousness of taste not peculiar to the Spanish Church. The Spaniard may not be always moral, but he has seldom been foul-mouthed. In this, as in other respects, the Church spoke205 for the nation; but it was the effective administrative instrument which could coerce206 an offending minority into decency—and that we may surely count to it for righteousness.
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1
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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4
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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mar
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| vt.破坏，毁坏，弄糟 | |
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8
culmination
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| n.顶点；最高潮 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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10
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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puerile
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| adj.幼稚的，儿童的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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fecundity
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| n.生产力；丰富 | |
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fluency
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| n.流畅，雄辩，善辩 | |
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19
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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30
rogues
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| n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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grandiose
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| adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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contumaciously
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43
amend
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| vt.修改，修订，改进；n.[pl.]赔罪，赔偿 | |
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burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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46
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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49
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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51
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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52
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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53
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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54
maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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55
postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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56
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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57
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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58
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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59
constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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60
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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61
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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63
lyric
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| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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impoverishment
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| n.贫穷，穷困；贫化 | |
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recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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67
shackles
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| 手铐( shackle的名词复数 )； 脚镣； 束缚； 羁绊 | |
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syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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69
syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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70
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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71
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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75
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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frailty
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| n.脆弱；意志薄弱 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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81
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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82
condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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83
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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84
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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85
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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86
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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87
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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88
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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89
pedantry
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| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
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90
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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91
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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92
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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93
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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94
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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95
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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96
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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97
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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98
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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99
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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100
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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101
moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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102
moorish
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| adj.沼地的，荒野的，生[住]在沼地的 | |
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103
vowel
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| n.元音；元音字母 | |
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104
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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105
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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106
recalcitrance
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| n.固执，顽抗 | |
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107
vowels
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| n.元音，元音字母( vowel的名词复数 ) | |
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108
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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109
consonant
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| n.辅音；adj.[音]符合的 | |
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110
plural
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| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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111
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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112
attuned
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| v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 )；调音 | |
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113
tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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114
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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115
tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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116
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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117
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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118
bibliographical
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| 书籍解题的，著书目录的 | |
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119
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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120
profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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121
definitively
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| adv.决定性地，最后地 | |
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122
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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123
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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124
engraver
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| n.雕刻师，雕工 | |
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125
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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126
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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127
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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128
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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129
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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130
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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131
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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132
besetting
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| adj.不断攻击的v.困扰( beset的现在分词 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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133
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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134
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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135
doggerel
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| n.拙劣的诗，打油诗 | |
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136
slovenliness
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137
moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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138
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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139
Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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140
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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141
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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142
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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143
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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144
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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145
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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146
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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147
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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148
scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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149
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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150
administrators
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| n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师 | |
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151
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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152
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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153
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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154
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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155
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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156
inaccurately
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| 不精密地，不准确地 | |
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157
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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158
deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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159
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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160
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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161
manifesto
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| n.宣言，声明 | |
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162
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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163
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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164
expounding
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的现在分词 ) | |
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165
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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166
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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167
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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168
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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169
hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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170
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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171
terse
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| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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172
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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173
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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174
embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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175
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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176
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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177
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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178
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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179
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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180
narratives
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| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
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181
eyewitnesses
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| 目击者( eyewitness的名词复数 ) | |
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182
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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183
devious
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| adj.不坦率的，狡猾的；迂回的，曲折的 | |
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184
muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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185
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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186
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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187
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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188
pretentiousness
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| n.矫饰；炫耀；自负；狂妄 | |
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189
platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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190
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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191
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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192
seesaw
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| n.跷跷板 | |
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193
amplified
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| 放大，扩大( amplify的过去式和过去分词 )； 增强； 详述 | |
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194
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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195
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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196
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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197
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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198
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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199
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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200
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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201
loquacious
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| adj.多嘴的，饶舌的 | |
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202
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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203
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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204
commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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205
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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206
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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