Pastorals and short stories.
The mere3 bulk of the Spanish stories was great, but it is subject to many deductions4 before we can disentangle the permanently5 important part. Pastorals, for instance, were much written in Spain, and one, the Diana[37] of Jorge de Montemayor (1520?-1561?), is excellent in its insipid6 kind. But they were and could be only echoes of Sannazzaro. In estimating the literature of any nation we can afford to pass over what it has only taken from a neighbour with a notice that the imitation was made. The merit of creating the type, be[125] it great or little, belongs to the original. Even when an imitator is himself widely read, as was the case with Montemayor, he is but carrying on the work of the first master. Short stories, again, were popular enough in Spain; but to a large extent they, too, were imitations. The Patra?uelo—‘The Story-Teller’—of Juan de Timoneda, or the Cigarrales de Toledo of Tirso de Molina, are full of the matter of the Fabliaux and the Italian Novelli.[38] What the Spaniard did which was also a contribution to the literature of Europe was done neither in the pastoral nor in the short story, but in the long tale of heroic or of vulgar adventure. His are the Libros de Caballerías—‘Books of Knightly7 Deeds’ which are the parents of the true modern romance; and the Novelas de Pícaros, or, ‘Tales of Rogues,’ the counterpart, and even perhaps a little the burlesque9 of the first, are the ancestors of all the line which comes through Gil Blas. Then his was Don Quixote, which belongs to no class, but is at once universal and a thing standing10 by itself, a burlesque of the Libros de Caballerías which grew into a sadly humorous picture of human delusion11, and was also an expression of the genius of Miguel de Cervantes.
The books of Chivalry12, or of Knightly Deeds, which is perhaps the more accurate translation of the Spanish plural13 Caballerías, like the Romances, cannot be said[126] to belong to the literature of the Renaissance14. They were a survival of the Middle Ages, the direct successors of the Romans d’Aventures, which had sprung from the Chansons de Gestes.
The Arthurian stories of Lancelot and of Merlin were known to the Spaniards, and had an enduring popularity by the side of their own Tales of Chivalry. There is even one book belonging in essential to the school which certainly preceded the Amadis. This is the Valencian Tirant lo Blanch15, written in Catalan, of which the first three books are the work of Juan Martorell, and the fourth was added by Mosen Juan de Galbá, at the request of a lady, Isabel de Loriz. It was printed in Valencia in 1490, was translated into Spanish, though with suppressions, and had the rather curious fortune to be published in a French version in 1737 by a gentleman whose own name was not unworthy of a Libro de Caballerías, A. C. P. Tubières de Grimoard de Pestels de Levi, Count of Caylus.
Here it is, perhaps, but fair to warn the reader of the extreme difficulty of making more than a slight acquaintance with these once widely read tales. Popularity and neglect have alike been fatal to them. They were thumbed to pieces while they were liked, and thrown aside as worthless when the fashion had changed. Single copies alone remain of some, as, for instance, the curious ‘Don Florindo, he of the Strange Adventure,’ of which Don Pascual de Gayangos gives a long analysis. Even Don Pascual had never seen the Spanish original of the once renowned18 Palmerin of England. Southey was compelled to make up his[127] Palmerin by correcting Anthony Munday’s translation from a French version. Surviving copies are scattered19 in the public libraries, and it is probable that nobody has seen them all. So we must speak with a certain reserve concerning them, but yet with a tolerably well-founded conviction that what one has not seen does not differ in material respects from what has come in one’s way.
The Libros de Caballerías.
It is not the matter of these tales, but the spirit, which attaches them to the Middle Ages. Knights20 and damsels errant, dwarfs21, dragons, giants, and enchanters were not neglected by the poets of the Italian Renaissance, but they were dealt with in gaiety, and more than half in mockery. But the Libros de Caballerías are very serious. Chivalry was not to their authors an old dream, but a still living standard of conduct, and they carried on the tradition of the Middle Ages with absolute sincerity22.
The Amadis of Gaul.
When the Libros de Caballerías are described as the direct descendants of the Romans d’Aventures, it must be understood that this does not imply that the actual story had its origin out of Spain. We cannot say stories, because there is in reality only one, which was constantly rewritten, with changes which in the majority of cases hardly go beyond the names. There is one parent story closely imitated by the others, and that is the Amadis of Gaul.[39] The honour of the first invention has been claimed by the French, on the general[128] ground that their influence in Spain and Portugal was great, and that therefore they must not only have carried the taste for tales of chivalrous23 adventure beyond the Pyrenees, but have created all the stories and personages. But the French Amadis has been lost, and though that may be his only defect, it suffices to leave us entitled to doubt whether he ever existed, except in the patriotic24 French literary imagination. What is certain is that Amadis was a popular hero of romance with the Castilians and Portuguese25 before the end of the fourteenth century. It also appears to be put beyond doubt that a version of the story was written by Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who died in 1403. Whether it was the first, or was a version of a Castilian original, or whether the French, who were then very numerous both in Castile and Portugal, and had an undeniable influence on the poetry of both countries, and more especially of the second, did not at least inspire Vasco de Lobeira, are questions which can be debated for ever by national vanity, without settlement. The Amadis of Gaul, which belongs to literature, and not to the inane26 region of suppositions, disputes, and lost manuscripts, is the work of Garcia Ordo?ez de Montalvo, of Medina del Campo in Leon. It was announced as an adaptation from the Portuguese. As the manuscript of Vasco de Lobeira was lost in the destruction of the Duke of Arveiro’s library in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, we cannot tell how far Montalvo followed, or improved upon, or did not improve upon, his original. Indeed, in the absence of[129] a Portuguese manuscript, it is impossible to be sure that the Spanish author did not adopt the common device of presenting his work as a translation, when in fact it was wholly his own. It is certainly strange, considering the immense popularity of the Amadis of Gaul all over Europe, that the Portuguese did not vindicate28 their right to him by publishing Vasco de Lobeira, since the manuscript was known to exist, and to be accessible in the library of a great noble.
Be all that as it may, we are on firm ground when we come to the proved facts concerning the actual writing of the Spanish Amadis. It belongs to the years between 1492 and 1504. The first known edition, that of Rome, is dated 1519; but it is unlikely, though not impossible, that there had not been a Spanish predecessor29. There is a known edition of the first of the rival Palmerin series, which is dated 1511. What is beyond doubt is that its popularity was immediate30 and widespread. Spain produced twelve editions in fifty years. It was translated in French and Italian with immense acceptance. One of the best known stories of lost labour and disappointment in literature is that Bernardo Tasso, the father of Torquato, founded a considerable reputation on the fact that he had undertaken to make the Amadis the foundation of an epic31, which reputation endured until the appearance of the poem.
As if in direct imitation of the medi?val custom, Amadis was made the founder32 of a family. Montalvo gave the world the deeds of his son Esplandian in 1526, and from another hand came in the same year[130] his nephew, Florisando, and then a long line, reaching to the twelfth book. The succession in France was even longer, for it reached the twenty-fourth. Beside the house of Amadis, there arose and flourished the distinguished33 family known as the Palmerines. The first two of this series, the Primaleon and the Palmerin de Oliva, are said to have been the work of a lady of “Augustobriga, a town in Portugal.” But her name and very existence are uncertain, while neither of the places called Augustobriga in the time of the Roman dominion34 in the Peninsula is in Portugal. The most famous of this line, the Palmerin of England, was for long attributed to a Portuguese, Francisco de Moraes, who after a rather distinguished public career was murdered at Evora in 1572; but it was probably the work of a Spaniard, Luis Hurtado of Toledo. It was the confusing habit of the authors of these tales to call them the fifth, or sixth, or other, “book” of Amadis, or of Primaleon. Sometimes rival fifths or sixths appeared, and translators did not follow the Spanish numeration. Hence much trouble to the faithful historian. Yet the family history can be followed with tolerable accuracy. Don Pascual de Gayangos has been at the pains to make a regular pedigree for both, showing the main lines and collateral35 branches. It is a satisfaction to be able to state with confidence that the lady Flérida, daughter of Palmerin de Oliva, married Don Duardos (Edward), son of Frederick, King of England, and of a sister of Melèadus, King of Scotland, and that Palmerin of England was their son. He again married Polinarda, and was the father of Don Duardos de[131] Breta?a II., who was the father of Don Clarisel. The Palmerin series, by the way, is much less rich than the Amadis in those superb names which are not the least of the pleasures of the Tales of Chivalry. It rarely rises to the height of Cadragante, or Manete the Measured, or Angriote de Estravaus, and never to the level of the Queen Pintiquinestra, or the Giant Famongomadan, whom Cervantes had in his mind when he imagined Brandabarbaran de Boliche. The stories independent of these two series are numerous, though less numerous than the reader who has not looked into the matter may suppose. Their names—and that is all which survives of some—will be found in their proper places in the lists of Don Pascual de Gayangos.
It will be seen that much of this work is either anonymous37, or is attributed on vague evidence to authors of whom the name only is known. The chief exception is the Feliciano de Silva at whose style Cervantes laughed. It happens that something is known of Feliciano, and that it is to his honour. He was page to the sixth Duke of Medina Sidonia, and he saved the Duchess from being drowned in the Guadalquivir at the risk of his own life; which, it will be allowed, was an action not unworthy of the author of Libros de Caballerías. He wrote the Lisuarte de Grecia, the Amadis de Grecia, and several others, including the Florisel de Niquea. Feliciano was an industrious38 man of letters, who would have been a useful collaborator39 with, and fairly successful imitator of, Dumas, had time and chance suited. He adulterated his tales of knightly deeds by imitations[132] of the pastoral model, and his style certainly laid him open to the ridicule40 of Cervantes. Yet it is not more pompous41 and mechanical than our own Lyly, and is better than the manner of some of the Novelas de Pícaros.
Influence and character of these Tales.
None of the commonplaces in the history of literature are better established than these: that the Libros de Caballerías were tiresome42 and absurd; that they appeared in immense numbers, and flooded out all better and more wholesome43 reading; and that they were killed by Don Quixote. Yet there are probably not three worse founded commonplaces. That these books can be tedious, and that the worst of them can be very tedious, is true. But none are more long-winded than the Golden Epistles, which had an equally great popularity, or than some well-accepted reading of any generation is apt to look to later times, when fashion has changed. They were certainly neither more tiresome nor more essentially44 absurd than the Novela de Pícaros. Their number was not very great. The whole body is not nearly as numerous as the yearly output of novels to-day in England; and even when their inordinate45 length is allowed for, their total bulk is not greater, though they were written during a century. As for their supposed predominance, it must be remembered that the great time of the Libros de Caballerías was also the time of the “learned poetry” of Spain, of the growth of the drama, of most of the romances, and of some of the best work of the historians and the mystic writers. That Don Quixote[133] destroyed them may seem to be a truth too firmly established to be shaken, and yet the contrary proposition, that it was the waning46 popularity of the Tales of Knightly Deeds which made Don Quixote possible, is on the whole more consistent with fact. They had been less and less written for a generation before Cervantes produced his famous First Part. The Novela de Pícaros was taking their place. Readers were predisposed to find them laughable, and therefore enjoyed the burlesque. Cervantes’ own half-humorous boast has been taken too seriously. The ridicule of the Libros de Caballerías is the least valuable part of Don Quixote, and is not in itself better than much satire47 which has yet failed to destroy things more deserving of destruction than the family of Amadis.
Neither the popularity nor the decline of the Libros de Caballerías was in the least unintelligible48. These books supplied the Spaniards with stories of fighting and adventure in a fighting adventurous50 time, when the taste for reading, or at least hearing others read, was spreading, and when the theatre—the only possible rival—was still in its feeble beginnings. And what they gave was not only suited to the time but not inferior to what came after. The English reader who wishes to put it to the test has an easy way open to him. Let him take the adaptations which Southey made of Amadis of Gaul, or Palmerin of England, and compare them, not with Sir Walter Scott, who showed what a great genius could do with a motive51 not unlike that of the Libros de Caballerías; not with Gil Blas, which shows what genius could do with the machinery52[134] of the Novela de Pícaros; not with Don Quixote, which is for all time,—but with an English version of the Guzman de Alfarache, the book which first firmly established the gusto picaresco at the very close of the sixteenth century. He will find much repetition (though Southey, who made one or two notable additions, has suppressed largely) in both, but in the Guzman it is endless sordid53 roguery, in which there is no general human truth, and in place of it a mechanical exaggeration of a temporary form of Spanish vagabondage, while in the Amadis or Palmerin it is something not unlike the noble fancies of the Arthurian legend.
The real cause of their decline.
The decline of the Libros de Caballerías is easily accounted for. They ended by wearying the world with monotony, and the increasing extravagance of incident and language, which was their one resource for avoiding monotony. The Spaniard’s tendency to repeat stock types in the same kind of action was visible here as elsewhere. The Amadis gave the pattern, and it was followed. A hero who is the son of a king, and is also a model of knightly prowess and virtues54, with a brother in arms who, while no less valiant55, is decidedly less virtuous57, are the chief figures. Amadis, the Beltenebros—the lovely dark man—is the pink of loyalty58 to his peerless Oriana, who is the fairest and most loving of women. Galaor is gay and volatile59, light of love, but loyal in friendship. Amadis is born out of wedlock60, and left to fortune by his mother, or for some other reason brought up far away from the[135] throne which is lawfully61 his, and fights his way to his crown without ever failing for an instant in his devotion to Oriana. Galaor helps him, and loves what ladies he meets on the road. Amadis breathes out his mistress’s name as he lays his lance in rest, Galaor throws a defiant63 jest in front of him; Amadis has the gift of tears, but Galaor laughs in the jaws64 of death, laughs in fact at everything except the honour of a gentleman—and on that he smiles. It is a brotherhood65 between Sir Charles Grandison and Mercutio. Combats, giants, fairy ladies, enchanters good and bad, make up the matter of the story. If it is essentially unwholesome, so is the Round Table legend; and if it is necessarily absurd, so is the Fa?rie Queen. But when it had been done once in Amadis, and for a second time in Palmerin, it was done for good. To take the machinery of the Libros de Caballerías, and put a new spirit into it, which, as Cervantes saw, was possible, was not given to any Spaniard. All they could do was to repeat, and then endeavour to hide the repetition by multiplying everything on a fixed66 scale. The giants grew bigger, the sword-cuts more terrific, the combats more numerous, the monsters more hideous67, the exalted68 sentiments swelled69 till they were less credible70 than the giants. The fine Castilian of Garcia Ordo?ez was tortured into the absurdities71 which bad writers think to be style. The Libros de Caballerías, which had been a natural survival, and revival72, of the Middle Ages in the early sixteenth century, were unnatural73 at its close. Don Quixote did but hasten their end. They[136] would have perished in any case before the Novelas de Pícaros, which in turn ran much the same course, and were extinguished without the intervention74 of satire. That the taste of the time was tending away from the higher forms of romance is shown by the little following found for the Civil Wars of Granada by Ginés Perez de Hita, of whom little or nothing is known.[40] This book, of which the first part was published in 1598 and the second in 1604, is the original source of all the stories of the Zegries and Abencerrages. It gave the Spaniards a model for the historical novel proper, but though it was popular at the time—so popular that it was taken for real history—Perez de Hita founded no school. The Spanish character was becoming too impoverished75 for a large and poetic76 romance. What imagination there was, was becoming concentrated in the theatre before withering77 entirely78.
Character of the Novelas de Pícaros.
The fate of the Novelas de Pícaros is one of the most curious in literature. But for them, and their popularity outside of Spain, there could not well have been any Gil Blas, and without him the history of modern prose fiction must have been very different. Yet apart from the example they set, and the machinery they supplied, their worth is small. We find in them the same monotony of type and incident as in the comedia and the Libros de Caballerías, while they have neither the fine theatrical79 qualities of the first (which was, we may allow, inevitable) nor the[137] manly80 spirit of the second. Poetry, heroic sentiment, or deep religious feeling we could not expect from what only professed81 to deal with the common and animal side of life. But they do not give what might have compensated82 for these things, average sensual human nature, acting83 credibly84 and drawn85 with humour. Their fun—and they strained at jocularity—is of the kind which delights to pull the chair from below you when you are about to sit down, and laughs consumedly at your bruises86. To make the jest complete you must be old, ugly, sickly, and very poor. There is no laugh in the Novelas de Pícaros, only at their best a loud hard guffaw87, and when they do not rise to that, a perpetual forced giggle88. Truth to life is as far from them as from the Libros de Caballerías, but the two are on opposite sides. In mere tediousness they equal the heroic absurdity89, for—and this is not their least offensive feature—they are obtrusively91 didactic. The larger half of the Guzman de Alfarache is composed of preachment of an incredibly platitudinous92 order. Boredom93 for boredom, the endless combats of the knight-errant are better. And withal we find the same childish effort to attain94 originality95 by mere exaggeration. The Lazarillo de Tormés forces the tone of the Celestina, Guzman de Alfarache advances, more particularly in bulk, beyond Lazarillo, Marcos de Obregon improves on Guzman, and so it goes on to the grinning and sardonic96 brutality97 of Quevedo’s Pablo de Segovia and the jerking capers98 of Don Gregorio Guada?a. This last is the work of an exiled Spanish[138] Jew, Enriquez Gomez (f. 1638-1660). Imagine Villon’s Ballade des Pendus without the verse, without the pathos99, spun100 out in prose, growing ever more affected101 through endless repetitions of sordid incident, and you have the Novela de Pícaros.[41]
The Celestina.
Yet they started from what might well have been the beginning of better. The Celestina had a certain truth to life in its really valuable parts, and it did not strive to amuse with mere callous102 practical joking.[42] This curious dialogue story was written perhaps before, or it may be about, the time of the conquest of Granada—1492—and both the identity of its author and its date of publication are obscure. It is divided into twenty-one so-called acts, of which the first is very long and the others are very short. Fernando Rojas of Montalvan, by whom it was published, says that the first act was the work of Rodrigo Cota of Toledo, a Jew, the known author of some tolerable verses in the style of the Court school; and that he himself finished it at the request of friends. This account has been disputed by the criticism which delights in disputing the attribution of everything to everybody. It is neither supported by internal, nor contradicted by external, evidence. The literary importance of the tale is not affected by it in the least. There are two elements in the Celestina. It contains[139] a love-story of the headlong southern order, sudden and violent in action, inflated103, and frequently insufferably pedantic104 in expression, withal somewhat commonplace. With this, and subservient105 to this, there is a background, a subordinate, busy, scheming world of procuresses, prostitutes, dishonest servants, male and female, and bullies106, which is amazingly vivid. Celestina, whose name has replaced the pompous original title of the story, Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melib?a, is the ancestress of the two characters of similar trade in Pamela and Clarissa. She had many forerunners108 in medi?val literature, in and out of Spain. But she has never been surpassed in vividness of portraiture109, while her household of loose women and bullies, with their intrigues110 and jealousies111, their hangers-on, and their arts of temptation, is drawn with no less truth than gusto. The quality of their talk is admirable, and the personages are not described from the outside, or presented to us as puppet types, but allowed to manifest themselves, and to grow, with a convincing reality rare indeed in Spanish literature.
Though the popularity of the Celestina, not only in Spain but abroad, was great, it did not produce any marked effect on Spanish literature until a generation had passed. It was adapted on the stage, but there it left few traces except on the racy dialogue of the prose entremeses. The poetic form of the Spanish comedy did not, and even perhaps could not, adapt itself to the alert naturalistic tone of the Celestina, and the subjects of the plays grew ever more romantic and more remote from the vulgar world. But this answered too[140] well to a natural taste of the Spaniards to remain without a following. The Lazarillo de Tormés. Its first real successor (apart from rifacimentos or mere echoes, of which there were several) was the Vida de Lazarillo de Tormés; sus Fortunas y Adversidades,[43] attributed on very dubious112 evidence to the famous Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and with not much greater probability to Fray113 Juan de Ortega, of the Order of St. Jerome. The date of its composition is uncertain. The first known edition is of 1553, but it may have been read in manuscript before that. In the Lazarillo we have the Novela de Pícaros already complete, differing only from those which were to come after in the greater simplicity114 of its style and in freshness. The hero is a poor boy of Tormés, in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, none too honest by nature, and made perfectly115 unscrupulous by a life of dependence116 on harsh, or poverty-stricken, masters. The story tells how he passes from one service to another, generally after playing some more or less ferocious117 trick on his employer. It is a scheme which affords a good opening for satirical sketches119 of life, and the author, whoever he was, clearly adopted it for that among other reasons. Lazarillo’s master, the poor cavalier who keeps up a show of living like a gentleman while in fact he is starving at home—too proud either to work or beg, but not too proud to cherish schemes of entrapping[141] a wife with a dowry, and not spirited enough to serve as a soldier—was no doubt a familiar figure in Spain, and he became a stock puppet of the Novelas de gusto Pícaresco. Another scene of real, though not peculiarly Spanish, satire deals with a dishonest seller of pardons and his sham120 miracles. The Reformation had imposed limits on the freedom of orthodox writers to deal with the sins, or even absurdities, of churchmen, and this passage was suppressed, as of bad example, by the Inquisition. The majority of the figures are, however, less satirical than grotesque122. We find in the Lazarillo, though not to the extent which afterwards become common, the love of dwelling123 on starvation, poverty, and physical infirmities as if they were things amusing in themselves. But this is less the case than in its successors, and being nearly the first, or even the actual first, in the fully62 developed form, it has a certain freshness. It has the merit of being short, and leaves its hero dishonourably married, with a promise of a continuation, which was never written by the author.
Guzman de Alfarache.
Putting aside spurious “second parts” of the Lazarillo, the next event in the advance—we cannot say the development—of the Novela de Pícaros is the publication of the Guzman de Alfarache of Mateo Aleman, a Sevillian of whose birth, life, and death nothing certain is known. This book, appearing just as the Libros de Caballerías were dying of exhaustion124, set the example to a swarm125 of followers. Yet it was itself but an imitation of Lazarillo, greatly enlarged, and over-burdened with what Le Sage121,[142] who translated it, most justly called “superfluous moral reflections.” The second title of the book, La Atalaya de la Vida—‘The Beacon126 of Life’ indicates Aleman’s didactic intention, which even without it is obtrusive90. But a beacon of life, to be other than a useless blaze, must be set to warn us off real dangers in real life: it must flame with satire on possible human errors. The satire of Aleman is akin17 to Marston’s, and Marston’s many followers among ourselves,—it is a loud bullying127 shout at mere basenesses made incredible by being abstracted from average human nature, and kneaded into dummies128. Celestina, besides being an impudent129, greedy servant of vice27, is also a woman with humour and an amusing tongue. Her household are the scum of the earth, but they are human scum, with a capacity for enjoying themselves as men and women without dragging their humour of vice in, when no cause sets it in motion. They can laugh and cry, like and dislike, as other human beings do. But the personages of Mateo Aleman are grinning puppets, galvanised to imitate the gestures of greed, cowardice130, mendacity, and cruelty, abstracted from humanity. Then, they are set to play a wild fantasia in vacuo. What is true of Mateo Aleman applies equally to his followers.
Followers of Mateo Aleman.
A brief outline must suffice for his successors. A spurious second part of Guzman de Alfarache was published in 1603, written, as it would seem by one Marti, a Valencian, who assumed the noble name of Luxan. This, by the way, is one proof among many that the Libros de Caballerías[143] were not the prevailing131 taste of readers when Cervantes published his first part of Don Quixote in 1605, or else it would have suggested itself to nobody to trade on the popularity of Guzman. In 1605 Aleman wrote a second part, in which he victimises the plagiarist132 in a fashion afterwards followed by Cervantes when provoked in the same fashion. In the same year came out the Pícara Justina of Andreas Perez, a Dominican who wrote under the name of Francisco Lopez de Ubeda, with a she rogue8 as heroine, with exactly the same spirit and machinery, and an identical didactic purpose, but written in a tortured style. Vicente Espinel (?1551-?1630), who was otherwise notable for adding the fifth string to the guitar and as a verse-writer, published El Escudero (i.e., Squire133) Marcos de Obregon in 1618. This squire is of the class of the Biscayan whom Don Quixote overthrew134, an elderly man who waited on ladies—the forerunner107 of the footman with the gold-headed stick, familiar to ourselves till very recent times. He has led the usual life. The Marcos de Obregon had the honour of contributing a few incidents to Le Sage. The soul of Pedro Garcia is not taken from the introduction, but put in place of what Espinel had written. In the Spanish story two students find a tombstone on which are written the words “Unio, unio,” a pun on pearl and union. One sees nothing in the riddle135, and goes on. The other digs and finds—the skeletons of the lovers of Antequera, who threw themselves together from a precipice136 to escape capture by the Moors137. Here we see[144] what Le Sage did with the framework supplied him by the Spaniards. He took what was only Spanish, and made it universal. We can all laugh over the bag of coin which was the soul of Pedro Garcia, but who understands the story of the Spanish lovers without a commentary? After Marcos de Obregon there follow mainly repetitions.
Quevedo.
An exception must, however, be made for the Gran Taca?o—‘The Great Sharper,’ Paul of Segovia, by Quevedo.[44] Don Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas, Se?or de la Torre de Juan Abad (1580-1645), was a very typical Spaniard of those who came from “the mountain,” and lived an agitated138 life in the Spain of the seventeenth century. He served under the once famous Duke of Osuna, viceroy of Sicily and Naples, was implicated139 in the mysterious conspiracy140 against Venice, and finally suffered from the hostility141 of the Count Duke of Olivares. In literature he is still the shadow of a great name as poet, scholar, and satirist142. Among his countrymen his memory is still popular as the hero of innumerable stories of much the same kind as those told in Scotland of Buchanan, and in France of Rabelais. For his sake Pablo de Segovia may be mentioned, and also because it is the Novela de Pícaros as the Spaniards wrote it, stripped of the last rag of whatever[145] could disguise its essential hard brutality. If you can gloat over starvation—if the hangman expatiating143 joyfully144 over halters and lashes145 seems a pleasant spectacle to you—if blows, falls, disease, hunger, dirt, and every form of suffering, told with a loud callous laugh, and utterly146 unrelieved, seem to you worth reading about, then Pablo de Segovia is much at your service. But Quevedo did other than this. Some of his satiric118 verse has life, and if not gaiety, still a species of bitter jocularity; and moreover, he gave a new employment to the gusto picaresco in his Visions. These once world-renowned satires147 are composed of such matter as the vices148 of lawyers, doctors, police-officers, unfaithful wives, complacent149 husbands, &c. To those who wish to master the Castilian language in all its resources they are invaluable150, and it is in itself so fine that we can endure much to gain access to its treasures. But it is possible to gain a quite accurate understanding of Quevedo by reading the translation and amplification151 of his Visions by our own Sir Roger L’Estrange. Then, just in order to see where this spirit and this method lead, it is not a waste of time to go on to Ned Ward36. There was something very congenial to the Restoration in the Spanish gusto picaresco, and that is its sufficient condemnation152. Yet it did supply Le Sage with what he might not have been able to elaborate for himself, and thereby153 it contributed to the gaiety and the wisdom of nations.
Cervantes.
That the name of Miguel de Cervantes towers above all others in Spanish literature is a commonplace.[146] Montesquieu’s jest, that Spain has produced but one good book, which was written to prove the absurdity of all the others, is only the flippant statement of the truth that the one Spanish book which the world has taken to itself is Don Quixote. What else the Spaniards have done in literature may have its own beauty and interest. It may even have affected the literature of other nations. The Spanish drama did something to form the purely154 theatrical skill of the playwright155, and the Novela de Pícaros gave a framework for the prose story of common life. Yet the plays of Lope or of Calderon, the tales of Aleman, Espinel, and others, are essentially Spanish, and Spanish of one time. It is only in touches here and there that we find in them, behind their native vesture, any touch of what is human and universal. Even when they dealt with what was common to them with other peoples, the emotions of piety156 and devotion, they gave them their own colour, their own purely Spanish flavour. There is no Imitation of Christ, no Pilgrim’s Progress, in their religious writing. But Don Quixote is so little purely Spanish that its influence has been mainly felt abroad, that it has been, and is, loved by many who have neither heard nor wish to hear of the literature lying round it.
His life.
The life of Cervantes has been made so familiar that the details need only be briefly157 mentioned here.[45] It[147] is within the knowledge of all who take any interest in him at all that he was by descent a gentleman of an ancient house. His own branch of it had become poor. He was born, probably on some day in October 1547, at Alcalá de Henares, a town lying to the east of Madrid, and the seat of the university founded by Cardinal158 Jimenez. It does not appear that Cervantes ever attended the university, or received more than the trifling159 schooling160 which fell to the lot of Shakespeare also. Mar16, Iglesia, y casa de rey—the sea (i.e., adventure in America), the Church, and the king’s service—were the three careers open to a gentleman at a time when trade, medicine, and even the law, were plebeian161. Cervantes began life in the household of a great Italian ecclesiastic162, Cardinal Acquaviva, in one of those positions of domestic service about men of high position which were then, in all countries, filled by gentlemen of small or no fortune. From 1571 to 1575 he served as a soldier under Don John of Austria, and received that wound in the left hand at the battle of Lepanto in which he took a noble pride. From 1575 to 1580 he was a prisoner in Algiers. After his release in 1580 till his death in 1616—for thirty-six long years full of misfortune—he led the struggling life of a Spanish gentleman who had no fortune, no interest, no command of the arts which ingratiate a dependent[148] with a superior. At the very end he may have enjoyed some measure of comparative ease, but few men of letters have been poorer. Most men of his class were no richer than himself,—for Spain was a very poor country, and mere poverty was deprived of its worst sting when men ranked by birth and not by their possessions. No want of means could cause a noble to be other than the social superior of the merely rich man, while the Church had been only too successful in investing poverty with a certain sanctity. Yet though there were alleviations, the lot of Cervantes was a hard one, embittered163 by disappointments and imprisonments, which seem to have been chiefly due to the clumsy brutality of the Spanish judicial164 system. All this he bore with that dignity in misfortune which is one of the finest features in the character of the Spaniard, and with a cheerful courage all his own. Everything known of his life shows that he possessed165 two of the finest qualities which can support a man in a life of hardship—pride and a sweet temper.
His work.
The written work of Cervantes is divided in a way not unexampled in literature, but nowhere seen to the same extent except in the case of Prevost, a far smaller, but a real, genius. If he had left nothing but Don Quixote, his place in literature would be what it is. If he had not written his one masterpiece, he would have passed unnoticed; and there would have been no reason why he should have been remembered, unless it were with Bermudez and Virues, as one of the forerunners of Lope who made vague, ill-directed experiments in the childhood of[149] Spanish dramatic literature. Even the Novelas Ejemplares, though they possess a greater measure of his qualities than any part of his literary inheritance, other than Don Quixote and his entremeses, are mainly interesting because they are his. Other Spaniards did such things as well as he, or better, but none have approached Don Quixote. The difference is not in degree, it is in kind.
The minor things.
We may, then, pass rapidly over the minor things. It is to be noted166 that his natural inclination167 was not towards letters, but to arms. When a mere boy he did, indeed, write some verses on the death of Isabelle of Valois, the wife of Philip II., but they were school exercises written at the instigation of his master, Juan Lopez de Hoyos, and published by him. Like Sir Walter Scott, he believed in the greater nobility of the life of action, and more particularly in the superiority of the “noble profession of arms.” If he could have had his choice it would have been to serve the king, and more especially to serve him in the reconquest of Northern Africa from the Mahometans. He was driven to write by mere necessity, and the want of what he would fain have had. During his captivity168 in Algiers he made plays for the amusement of his fellow-prisoners. After his release, when he was again employed as a soldier in the conquest of Portugal, in 1580 he wrote his unfinished pastoral, the Galatea. He was married in 1584, and established in Madrid. At this period he wrote many plays, now lost, and two which have survived. The Trato de Argel, or ‘Life in[150] Algiers,’ has some biographical interest, and some general value as a picture of the pirate stronghold, but is valuable on these grounds only. The Numancia belongs to the class of works describable in the good sense as curious. It is a long dialogued poem divided into scenes and acts, on the siege of Numantia by Scipio, and is not without a certain grandiose169 force. As a play it shows that the Spanish drama had not found its way, and that Cervantes was not to be its guide. It struggles between imitation of the mystery, vague efforts to follow an ill-understood classic model, and attempt to strike a new and native path which the author could nowhere find. Then comes a long interval170, during which Lope was sweeping171 all rivals from the stage, and Cervantes, in his own phrase, was buried “in the silence of oblivion.” He was struggling for mere subsistence, working as a clerk under the Commissary of the Indian fleet, collecting rents for the Knights of St John, and finally, as it would seem, supporting himself, his wife, a natural daughter born to him in Portugal before his marriage, and a sister, by the trade of escribiente at Valladolid. The escribiente, still a recognised workman in Spain, writes letters for those who cannot write for themselves.
He never quite lost his connection with literature. A few commendatory verses in the books of friends, and other slight traces, remain to show that in the intervals172 of the work by which he lived he endeavoured to keep a place among the poets and dramatists of the time. During these years he wrote the first part of[151] Don Quixote. It appeared in 1605, but, according to the usual practice, had been shown to friends in manuscript. His last years were spent in Madrid. How he lived must remain a mystery. The Don Quixote was popular, but copyrights were then not lucrative173, even if they could be said to exist. He again tried the stage, and was again unsuccessful. In 1613 he published the Novelas Ejemplares, a collection of short stories, partly on the picaresque, partly on an Italian, model. During the following year he brought out the Voyage to Parnassus, a verse review of the poets of his time, a common form of literary exercise, and not a good specimen174 of its kind. In 1614 he was provoked by the false second part of Don Quixote. This was a form of literary meanness from which Mateo Aleman had already suffered, but Cervantes had particular cause to be angry. The continuer of Guzman de Alfarache appears to have been only an impudent plagiarist, but the writer who continued Don Quixote was obviously animated175 by personal hostility. He descended176 to a grovelling177 sneer178 at Cervantes’ wounded hand. It has been guessed that this is another chapter in the miserable179 history of the quarrels of authors. Avellaneda, as the author of the false second part called himself, is supposed to have acted on the instigation of Lope de Vega, who is known to have had no friendly feelings for Cervantes. The trick, which was as clumsy as it was spiteful, probably hastened the appearance of the genuine second part. It undoubtedly180 had some influence on the form, for it induced Cervantes to alter the course of the story, in[152] order to make the two as unlike as possible. Perhaps it decided56 the author to kill the hero lest another should murder him. The second part was printed in 1615. Cervantes died in the next year. Cheerful and hopeful to the end, even when “his foot was in stirrup” for the last journey, he had prepared his Persiles y Sigismunda for the press before he died. This was meant to be a model of what a tale of adventure might be, and was written with more care in the formal and mechanical parts than he gave to Don Quixote; but, like almost all he is known to have done with deliberate literary intentions, it is dull and lifeless.
Don Quixote.
There is a difficulty in speaking of Don Quixote. One has to come after Fielding and Scott, Heine, Thackeray, and Sainte-Beuve, not to mention many others hardly less illustrious. These are great names, and it may seem that after they have spoken there is nothing left to say. The first duty which this position imposes is not to endeavour deliberately181 to be different, in the vain hope of attaining182 originality. But the cloud of witnesses who might be summoned to prove the enduring interest of Don Quixote is itself a part of the critical history of the book, and a tribute to its solitary183 place in Spanish literature. The ascetic184 and so-called mystic writers had their day of influence among us in the seventeenth century. Crashaw alone is enough to prove that here, and in a certain section of English life and literature, Santa Teresa and Juan[153] de la Cruz were living forces. Quevedo had his day, and the Novela de Pícaros their following. During the romantic movement, the dramatists were much in men’s mouths. But in each case the Spaniard remained only for a time. Calderon once had his place in Lord Tennyson’s Palace of Art, but he fell out, and that has been the fate of all things Spanish in literature. They have given an indication, have been used—and forgotten, or they have been welcomed as strange, mysterious, probably beautiful, and then silently dropped as too exclusively Spanish, too entirely belonging to a long past century. But Don Quixote has been always with us since Shelton’s translation of the first part appeared in 1612. This of itself is proof enough that there is something in Don Quixote which is absent from other Spanish work, whether his own or that of other men.
No words need be wasted in controverting185 the guesses of those who wish to account for the greatness of a great piece of literature by some hidden quality not literary. They have ranged from the fantastic supposition that Cervantes was ridiculing186 Charles V. down to the amazing notion that he was attacking the Church. Nor need much respect be shown to the truth that Don Quixote was meant to make fun of the books of chivalry. This would be self-evident even if Cervantes had not said so. It may be that this was all he meant, and then he builded better than he knew. The work of burlesque, though often necessary, and, when decently done,[154] amusing, is essentially of the lower order. In this case it was not necessary, for the Libros de Caballerías were already dying out before the sordid rivalry187 of the Novelas de Pícaros. It was the less necessary, because it was no reform. The Spain of the Libros de Caballerías was the Spain of Santa Teresa and Luis de Leon, of the great scholars of the stamp of Francisco Sanchez El Brocense, of Diego de Mendoza, of Cortés and Pizarro and Mondragon—the Spain which Brant?me saw, “brave, bravache et vallereuse et de belles188 paroles proférées à l’improviste.” It was a better country than that in which the Count Duke of Olivares had to complain that he could find “no men.” The follies189 of the Libros de Caballerías were a small matter. It was not a small matter that a nation should replace Amadis of Gaul by Paul of Segovia, should pass from the lofty romantic spirit of Garcia Ordo?es to the carcajada—the coarse, braying190, animal, and loveless guffaw of Quevedo.
In so far as Cervantes forwarded that change he did evil and not good. He did help to laugh Spain’s chivalry away. But in truth it was dying, and the change would have come without him. He is great in literature, because while consciously doing a very small, unnecessary, and partially191 harmful thing, he created a masterpiece of that rare and fine faculty192 which while thinking in jest still feels in earnest (the definition of what is, it may be, undefinable is taken from Miss Anne Evans), and which we call humour. Elsewhere in Spanish literature we find a type fixed and unvarying,[155] or even a mere puppet, met through a succession of events, and moved about by them. In Don Quixote we have two characters acting on one another, and producing the story from within. And these two characters are types of immortal193 truth—the one a gentleman, brave, humane194, courteous195, of good faculty, for whom a slight madness has made the whole world fantastic; the other an average human being, selfish, not over-brave, though no mere coward, and ignorant, yet not unkindly, nor incapable196 of loyalty, and withal shrewd in what his limited vision can see when he is not blinded by his greed. The continual collisions of these two with the real world make the story of Don Quixote. Cervantes had a fine inventive power, the adventures are numerous and varied197, yet the charm lies not in the incidents, but in the reality and the sympathetic quality of the persons. We have no grinning world of masks made according to a formula. The country gentlemen, priests, barbers, shepherds, innkeepers, tavern198 wenches, lady’s-maids, domestic curates, nobles, and officials are living human beings, true to the Spain of the day no doubt, but also true to the humanity which endures for ever, and therefore intelligible49 to all times. In the midst is honest greedy Sancho with his peering eyes, so shrewd, and withal so capable of folly199, the critic, and also the dupe of the half-crazed dreamer, by whom he rides, and will ride, as long as humanity endures, in this book, and under every varying outward form in the real earth.[156] As for Don Quixote, is he not the elder brother of Sir Roger de Coverley, of Matthew Bramble, of Parson Adams, of Bradwardine, of Colonel Newcome, and Mr Chucks, the brave, gentle, not over-clever, men we love all the more because we laugh at them very tenderly?
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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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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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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insipid
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| adj.无味的，枯燥乏味的，单调的 | |
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knightly
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| adj. 骑士般的 adv. 骑士般地 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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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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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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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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plural
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| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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blanch
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| v.漂白；使变白；使(植物)不见日光而变白 | |
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mar
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| vt.破坏，毁坏，弄糟 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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dwarfs
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| n.侏儒，矮子（dwarf的复数形式）vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的第三人称单数形式） | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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inane
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| adj.空虚的，愚蠢的，空洞的 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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vindicate
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| v.为…辩护或辩解，辩明；证明…正确 | |
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predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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collaborator
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| n.合作者，协作者 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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pompous
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的 | |
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42
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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44
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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45
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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46
waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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47
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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48
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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50
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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51
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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52
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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53
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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54
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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56
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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57
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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58
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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59
volatile
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| adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质 | |
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60
wedlock
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| n.婚姻，已婚状态 | |
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61
lawfully
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| adv.守法地，合法地；合理地 | |
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62
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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63
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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64
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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65
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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66
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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67
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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68
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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69
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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70
credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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71
absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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72
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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73
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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74
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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75
impoverished
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|
| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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76
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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77
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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78
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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79
theatrical
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|
| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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80
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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81
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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82
compensated
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|
| 补偿，报酬( compensate的过去式和过去分词 )； 给（某人）赔偿（或赔款） | |
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83
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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84
credibly
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| ad.可信地；可靠地 | |
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85
drawn
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|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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86
bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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87
guffaw
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| n.哄笑；突然的大笑 | |
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88
giggle
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|
| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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89
absurdity
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|
| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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90
obtrusive
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|
| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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91
obtrusively
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| adv.冒失地，莽撞地 | |
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92
platitudinous
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|
| adj.平凡的，陈腐的 | |
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93
boredom
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|
| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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94
attain
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|
| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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95
originality
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|
| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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96
sardonic
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|
| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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97
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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98
capers
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| n.开玩笑( caper的名词复数 )；刺山柑v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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99
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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100
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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101
affected
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|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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102
callous
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|
| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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103
inflated
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|
| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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104
pedantic
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|
| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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105
subservient
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|
| adj.卑屈的，阿谀的 | |
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106
bullies
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|
| n.欺凌弱小者, 开球 vt.恐吓, 威胁, 欺负 | |
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107
forerunner
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| n.前身，先驱（者），预兆，祖先 | |
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108
forerunners
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| n.先驱( forerunner的名词复数 )；开路人；先兆；前兆 | |
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109
portraiture
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| n.肖像画法 | |
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110
intrigues
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|
| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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111
jealousies
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|
| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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112
dubious
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|
| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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113
fray
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|
| v.争吵；打斗；磨损，磨破；n.吵架；打斗 | |
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114
simplicity
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|
| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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115
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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116
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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117
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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118
satiric
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|
| adj.讽刺的，挖苦的 | |
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119
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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120
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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121
sage
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|
| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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122
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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123
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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124
exhaustion
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|
| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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125
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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126
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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127
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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128
dummies
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|
| n.仿制品( dummy的名词复数 )；橡皮奶头；笨蛋；假传球 | |
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129
impudent
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|
| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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130
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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131
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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132
plagiarist
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| n.剽窃者，文抄公 | |
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133
squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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134
overthrew
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| overthrow的过去式 | |
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135
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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136
precipice
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|
| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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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
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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139
implicated
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|
| adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的 | |
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140
conspiracy
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|
| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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141
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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142
satirist
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| n.讽刺诗作者，讽刺家，爱挖苦别人的人 | |
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143
expatiating
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|
| v.详述，细说( expatiate的现在分词 ) | |
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144
joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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145
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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146
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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147
satires
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| 讽刺，讥讽( satire的名词复数 )； 讽刺作品 | |
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148
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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149
complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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150
invaluable
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|
| adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的 | |
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151
amplification
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| n.扩大，发挥 | |
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152
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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153
thereby
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|
| adv.因此，从而 | |
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154
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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155
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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156
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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157
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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158
cardinal
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|
| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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159
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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160
schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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161
plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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162
ecclesiastic
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| n.教士，基督教会；adj.神职者的，牧师的，教会的 | |
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163
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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164
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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165
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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166
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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167
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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168
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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169
grandiose
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| adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的 | |
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170
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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171
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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172
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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173
lucrative
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|
| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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174
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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175
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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176
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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177
grovelling
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|
| adj.卑下的，奴颜婢膝的v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的现在分词 )；趴 | |
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178
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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179
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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180
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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181
deliberately
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|
| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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182
attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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183
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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184
ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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185
controverting
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| v.争论，反驳，否定( controvert的现在分词 ) | |
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186
ridiculing
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|
| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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187
rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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188
belles
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| n.美女( belle的名词复数 )；最美的美女 | |
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189
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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190
braying
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| v.发出驴叫似的声音( bray的现在分词 )；发嘟嘟声；粗声粗气地讲话（或大笑）；猛击 | |
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191
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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192
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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193
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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194
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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195
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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196
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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197
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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198
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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199
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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