Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper. Francisco de Quevedo
various in character and in design, but all intended to ridicule or censure some reigning folly or vice or abuse. They have been called Visions because most of them are cast in the form of dreams, in which the author takes us into the world below, among the Devil and his attendants, who are introduced with many lively touches of wit and strokes of humour. It is an invention which has been in favour with poets and satirists of all time, from Lucian to Dante, and from Dante to Lord Byron.
By these Visions (by himself never so called collectively) the name of Quevedo has been chiefly made known out of Spain. They are among the most characteristic of his works, in which his audacious humour and impetuous fancy found full exercise and a congenial element. They have been often translated into the various European languages, and were much read and quoted in the commerce of letters. Besides these, the Visions proper, which are serious satires levelled at the abuses and the evils of the times, there were numerous other squibs, jests, and pasquinades, of less solid substance or of lower aim, in rebuke of the fashionable follies or the vulgar tastes, such as El Cuento de los Cuentos (The Tale of Tales), which is levelled at the excessive use of proverbs; El Caballero de la Tenaza (The Knight of the Forceps), being the apology of a miser for himself; La Perinola (The Teetotum), which is a personal attack on the fussy and frivolous Perez de Montalvan, one of Quevedo’s favourite butts. There are numerous others, of which the very titles are so coarse as not to be fit for mention—ephemeral and obscure, which have died with the occasions which gave them birth.
That at least before 1613 Quevedo was esteemed, by those best capable of judging, as among the best wits of the time, appears from the very flattering notice of him which is contained in Cervantes’ Viage del Parnaso (Voyage to Parnassus). He is there called Apollo’s son—son of the Muse Calliope; and his aid is declared to be absolutely necessary in the war which the god of poetry is about to wage with the bad poets. It is true that Cervantes was in the habit of praising almost everybody, but from the warmth of the terms used, and from other indications in Quevedo’s own works, we may infer that the two greatest wits of the period had, as great wits rarely have, a just appreciation of each other. Lope de Vega also, who was of a different order of genius, as well of a nature dissimilar, ever suspicious of a rival and jealous of the applause given to another, could bring himself to speak of Quevedo in his Laurel de Apolo as prince of the lyric poets, the Juvenal of Spanish verse, who might rival Pindar and replace Apollo himself if the god were to fail.
But before Quevedo had made his name in letters he was destined to earn distinction in a public career, which afforded him a rare opportunity for displaying the versatility of his talents and the soundness of his judgment. Debarred from the profession of arms by his physical infirmity—he was lame of both feet from his birth—he was driven to seek a career in civil employment. An adventure which befell him at Madrid served to fix his destiny. Being in a church at Madrid during the Holy Week, he saw a gallant of the Court offer a gross insult to a modest woman. He interfered to protect her, swords were drawn, and Quevedo slew the aggressor. The slain man being discovered to be a person of rank, nearly related to those who had power at Court, Quevedo was forced to fly the country, taking refuge in Sicily, then a dependency of Spain. The governor or viceroy of the island was Don Pedro Tellez Giron, Duke of Osuna, a powerful grandee, of whom it was said that nature made him a very little gentleman and his deeds a very great lord; a man of mark in the civil and military transactions of Philip III. Quevedo was made his secretary by the Duke, and employed in many delicate and important affairs of state, in all of which he is declared to have proved, on the Duke’s own testimony, his prudence, courage, and ability. The Duke of Osuna was transferred, in 1615, from the government of Sicily to that of Naples, and thither he was followed by Quevedo, who was made Minister of Finance. In the interval between his employment in Sicily and his higher office at Naples, Quevedo was despatched to Madrid on a confidential mission in connection with the revenues of the island, and was able to commend himself so greatly to the authorities that the affair of the fatal duel was condoned and a pension of four hundred ducats bestowed on him. At Naples Quevedo discharged his duties of financial secretary with great ability and conspicuous success, so that we are told that, while he reduced the burdens of the people, he augmented the revenues of the State. During the years following he seems to have been employed in various high and secret diplomatic businesses in connection with the policy of the ambitious and turbulent Duke, his master, being entrusted with the duties of a plenipotentiary at Rome and at Venice, and managing them, according to the contemporary historians, with much address and discretion. In the course of his political adventures Quevedo was involved, in 1617, in that strange affair among conspiracies which has since been so great a puzzle to historians, the so-called Conjuracion de Venise, which has furnished St. Real with a subject for his history, and Otway with characters and a plot for his tragedy. Whether there really was, on the part of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, an attempt to overthrow the government of the Venetian Republic, or whether, as later historians are inclined to believe, the whole business was planned by the agents of the Venetian Senate to enable them to reach certain of their political enemies, is a question which is still under controversy—a controversy in which we are not concerned to take a part. Certain it is that Quevedo contrived, as an agent of Spain, to make himself a person the most ungrateful to the Republic, which pursued him, for some months afterwards, with a fury of hate and bitterness of malice, which, though flattering to his character of political intriguant, seem irreconcilable with the theory of his innocence. He even ran a narrow risk of losing his life when on a visit, apparently secret and unauthorized, to Venice. He was chased by the officers of justice, and only escaped, we are told, through the completeness of his disguise, being habited in the rags of a beggar, and his perfect command of the Venetian dialect. He had the honour of being afterwards burnt in effigy, a compliment he returned by pouring a stream of invective on Venice and her government out of the resources of his abundant rhetoric. Venice he called the lumber-house of the world—the toll-booth of princes—a republic such as cannot be credited and cannot be forgotten—greater than it is fitting for her to be, and less than she gives herself out to be; powerful in treaties, and feeble in power; sumptuous in arsenals, profuse in ships; terrible to those who fear the hulks of a fleet, where fleet is none—a dominion which exposes the hollowness of many fears. It is a state the more prone to dissensions of all that exist, more hurtful to her friends than to her enemies, whose embrace is a peaceful war,—with a good deal else, in a tone which savours of very bitter recollections.
Quevedo had now arrived at the zenith of his fame and fortunes. In 1617 he was in Madrid, where he was received with great honour by the King, Philip III., and his minister, the all-powerful Duke of Lerma. He was advanced to the much-coveted distinction of a Knight of the Order of Santiago. The highest posts seemed to be awaiting him at home, through favour of the feeble and besotted King, then under the influence of a corrupt and incapable favourite, who was himself ruled by his minion, Don Rodrigo Calderon. The ambition of Quevedo, as all his serious works clearly show, was rather for power as a man of affairs than for fame as a man of letters. But now he was destined to encounter a sudden change of fortune. The death of Philip III. brought to the throne, in 1621, his son, Philip IV., then a lad of seventeen, under the dominion of his gentleman of the bedchamber, known to history as the Count-Duke Olivares. All the principal officers of the late administration were dismissed in disgrace. Even the powerful and able Duke of Osuna, whose brilliant and successful rule in Naples had shed so much lustre on the reign of the feeble Philip III., was recalled from his post. His ministers and secretaries were involved in his fate. Quevedo was sentenced to exile from Court, and confined to his patrimonial village of La Torre de Juan Abad, where he was kept in a kind of imprisonment for more than three years. To a man of his fervid temperament and aspiring hopes this was a punishment worse than death, which seems for ever after to have embittered his soul and soured his temper. Writing to the President of Castile to complain of his miserable state and the treatment to which he was subjected, he tells him that he had seen many men condemned to death, but no one condemned to make away with himself. He was ultimately allowed to go free without being told of what charge there had been against him or any reason given for his detention. Henceforth Quevedo seems to have abandoned all hopes of preferment at Court, exhibiting more philosophy and more steadfastness in his resolve to abstain from further thoughts of political life than other men of letters have shown, in a similar turn of fate,