Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley--trivial points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evident that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the time of Marino in Italy; but the warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vulcanian forge.
Lopez de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says, "That the sea joyfully advances to gather her tears; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts them into pearls."
"Y el mar como imbidioso A tierra por las lagrimas salia, Y alegre de cogerlas Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas."
Villegas addresses a stream--"Thou who runnest over sands of gold, with feet of silver," more elegant than our Shakspeare's--"Thy silver skin laced with thy golden blood," which possibly he may not have written. Villegas monstrously exclaims, "Touch my breast, if you doubt the power of Lydia's eyes--you will find it turned to ashes." Again--"Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness;" much like our "None but himself can be his parallel."
Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by the epithet of _The Wonderful_, abounds with these conceits.
He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred thousand other nightingales in her breast, which alternately sang through her throat--
"Con diferancia tal, con gracia tanta, A quel ruysenor llora, que sospecho Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho, Que alterno su dolor por su garganta."
Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a few _years_ of life, but many _ages_ of beauty.
"Muchos siglos de hermosura En pocos anos de edad."
Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more beautiful from its age; it would be only a superannuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have but few charms.
In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the title of the _Duke of Streams_, and the _Viscount of Rivers_--
"Mançanares, Mançanares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Estois _Duque_ de Arroyos, Y _Visconde_ de los Rios."