22 REIGN OF JOHN II., OF CASTILE. I. I'ART same sum as an annual premium for a similar per- formance.^^ It is not often tljat the productions of a poet laureate have been more liberally recom- pensed even by royal bounty. But the gifted spirits of that day mistook the road to immortality. Disdaining the untutored simplicity of their prede- cessors, they sought to rise above them by an ostentation of learning, as well as by a more classical idiom. In the latter particular they suc- ceeded. They much improved the external forms of poetry, and their compositions exhibit a high degree of literary finish, compared with all that preceded them. But their happiest sentiments are frequently involved in such a cloud of metaphor, as to become nearly unintelligible ; while they in- voke the pagan deities with a shameless prodigality, that would scandalize even a French lyric. This cheap display of school-boy erudition, however it may have appalled their own age, has been a prin- cipal cause of their comparative oblivion with posterity. How far superior is one touch of nature, as the " Finojosa " or " Querella de Amor," for example, of the marquis of Santillana, to all this farrago of metaphor and mythology ! The impulse, given to Castilian poetry, ex- unii.r jnim ^gj^^jg^j ^q othcr dcpartmcuts of elegant literature. Epistolary and historical composition were culti- vated with considerable success. The latter, es- pecially, might admit of advantageous comparison with that of any other country in Europe at the 34 Castro, Biblioteca Espaiiola, torn. i. p. 273. C^HSllIlllII lileiHttire unilir Jiihit
