Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain. James Kennedy
friendship itself, which commands us to avail ourselves of a friend in necessity, also commands that without it, we should not take advantage of his confidence.”
Study, to which he now returned to engage himself with more intensity than ever, was the best alleviant of his sorrow, and time as usual at length allayed it. “He then gave himself up to the reading and study of the English poets: Pope and Young enchanted him. Of the former, he said that four lines of his ‘Essay on Man’ were worth more, taught more, and deserved more praise than all his own compositions.” The latter he attempted to imitate, and in effect did so, in the poem on ‘Night and Solitude,’ but in remitting it to his friend, expressed with much feeling his sense of its deficiencies compared with the original. Thomson also he studied, and Gesner, in his lonely exercises by the Tormes, and acknowledged how much he was indebted to the former for many thoughts with which he subsequently enriched his pastoral poems.
Thus having prepared himself to appear before the literary world as a candidate for fame, an opportunity soon occurred for him to obtain distinction. The Spanish Academy had been proposing subjects for prizes, and then having given one for an Eclogue, ‘On the happiness of a country life,’ Melendez felt himself in his element, and sent in his Essay for the prize. This succeeded in receiving the first. The second was awarded to Iriarte, who showed his mortification on account of the preference, more sensibly than was becoming, under the circumstances.
In the following year, 1781, Melendez went to Madrid, where his friend Jovellanos had already been appointed Councillor of the Military Orders, when for the first time they met. Melendez was already in the road to fame, which his friend had foretold for him; and Jovellanos, delighted with the realization of his hopes and endeavours, received him into his house, introduced him to his society, and took every opportunity of advancing his interests. It was the custom of the Academy of San Fernando to give triennial celebrations, with much solemnity, for the distribution of prizes, when eloquence, poetry and music were tasked to do honour to the fine arts. One of these celebrations was about to take place; Jovellanos was engaged to pronounce a discourse, and Melendez was invited to exercise his genius on the same subject, as the first literary characters of preceding times had already given the example. Melendez acceded, and delivered accordingly his Ode on the Glory of the Arts, which was received with rapturous admiration, and ever since seems to have been considered his masterpiece.
In the midst of these successes, Melendez received the Professorship of Humanities in his University, and in the following year, 1782, proceeded to the degree of Licentiate, and in 1783 to that of Doctor of Law, having shortly before the last married a lady of one of the principal families of Salamanca. But as his professorship gave him little occupation, and his marriage no family, he remained free to continue his favourite studies.
In 1784, on the occasion of peace being made with England, and the birth of twin Infantes, to give hopes of secure succession to the throne, the city of Madrid prepared magnificent celebrations of rejoicings, and among the rest, a prize was proposed for the two best dramatic pieces that might be offered within sixty days, under the condition that they should be original, appropriate, and capable of theatrical pomp and ornament. Out of fifty-seven dramas that were offered, the prize was awarded to the one sent in by Melendez, ‘The Bridals of Comacho the Rich,’ a pastoral comedy, which, however, though abounding in poetical passages, was found on representation wanting in effect, so as to be coldly received on the stage, where it has not since been attempted.
This ill-success gave occasion to several detractors of Melendez to pour forth the effusions of envy or disappointment against him, to which he gave no other answer than by the publication of his poems in a collected form. This was in 1785; and the manner in which they were received, it could be said, had had no parallel in Spain. Four editions, of which three were furtive, were at once taken up, and all classes of persons seemed to have the book in hand, commenting on its excellences. The lovers of ancient poetry, who saw so happily renewed the graces of Garcilasso, of Leon and Herrera, and “even improved in taste and perfection,” saluted Melendez as the restorer of the Castillian Muses, and hailed the banishment of the prosaic style which had previously prevailed. The applauses extended beyond the kingdom, and found especially in Italy the admiration repeated, as well as in France and England, where several of the poems are said to have been imitated.
Great as was his success in literature, it was not enough provision for his daily needs, notwithstanding the help of his professorship; and Melendez accordingly applied for and obtained an office as a local judge at Zaragoza, of which he took possession in September 1789. The duties of this office were too onerous to admit of much study; but he was soon removed, in 1791, to the chancery of Valladolid, where he had more leisure, and where he remained till 1797, when he was appointed Fiscal of the Supreme Court at Madrid. During this time he wrote apparently little; but he prepared, and in 1797 published, another edition of his works with two additional volumes, enriched with many new poems, in which he “had elevated his genius to the height of his age;”—“descriptive passages of a superior order, elegies powerful and pathetic, odes grand and elevated, philosophic and moral discourses and epistles, in which he took alternately the tone of Pindar, of Homer, of Thomson, and of Pope, and drew from the Spanish lyre accents she had not previously learned.”
But notwithstanding the great merit of many of these poems, the biographer of Melendez had it to confess that this publication was not so favourably received as the first had been; and attempts to account for it partly by the circumstances of the times, and partly by what was new not being on the whole so finished and well-sustained in interest as his former poems. Some of them also met with decided disfavour; especially one, ‘The Fall of Lucifer,’ which showed that his genius was not of the severer cast calculated for graver and higher subjects allied to the epic, any more than to the dramatic. But the merits of Melendez in his own sphere are too great, and his fame is too well-founded to lose by acknowledgements which must be made in truth and justice. It is not improbable that he had been urged by his admirers to these attempts, to which his own inclinations would not have led him, and it might thus have been the easiness of his disposition that made him yield to suggestions which ended in failure.
In the prologue which he affixed to this edition, Melendez attempted to prove that poetic studies derogated nothing from the judicial dignity, and that they had no incompatibility with the duties and talents of a public man or man of business. But without following him or his biographer into such a discussion, we may concede the point so far, that any one undertaking responsible duties from the State, is bound to give them his best and undivided energies. If, however, he has any hours of leisure free from those responsibilities, it is surely only an extension of his duty for him to employ them in attempting to make his fellow-men wiser and better, or happier, in the manner most congenial to his disposition or talents. Melendez certainly had no need to exculpate himself in this respect, having been “long remembered at Zaragoza and Valladolid as a model of integrity and application, for his zeal in arranging amicably all disputations in his power, for his affability and frankness in listening to complaints, and for the humane and compassionate interest with which he visited the prisoners, accelerating their causes, and affording them assistance, with an inseparable adhesion to justice.” It was for his detractors—and Melendez had them, notwithstanding the amiability of his character and the superiority of his talents—to make these objections, if they could have done so. His resorting to such apologies only gave the appearance of a consciousness of weakness, which was not becoming either in the one character or the other.
Shortly after the publication of this edition, Melendez went to Madrid to take possession of his new office. The advanced age of his predecessor in it had for some time prevented his due attention to its duties, so that Melendez had many arrears to dispose of in addition to the ordinary services, through all which he laboured with much assiduity and credit. But they were the last satisfactory events of his life, which was henceforth to be passed in reverses and misery. Yet at that time he seemed to be in the height of prosperity. Holding an elevated post under the government, of which his friend Jovellanos was a member, and respected both at home and abroad as one of the first literary characters of the age, he might have justly hoped to be free from any of the darker misfortunes of life. This exemption, however, was not to be his lot, serving