the other great
writers of the seventeenth century.

A Sevillan Italianate was Fernando de HERRERA
(1534?-1597), admirer and annotator of Garcilaso. Although
an ecclesiastic, his poetic genius was more virile than
that of his soldier master. He wrote Petrarchian sonnets
to his platonic lady; but his martial, patriotic spirit
appears in his _canciones_, especially in those on the
battle of Lepanto and on the expedition of D. Sebastian of
Portugal in Africa. In these stirring odes Herrera touches
a sonorous, grandiloquent chord which rouses the page xxii
reader's enthusiasm and places the writer in the first
rank of Spanish lyrists. He is noteworthy also in that
he made an attempt to create a poetic language by the
rejection of vulgar words and the coinage of new ones.
Others, notably Juan de Mena, had attempted it before, and
Gongora afterward carried it to much greater lengths; but
the idea never succeeded in Castilian to an extent nearly
so great as it did in France, for example; and to-day the
best poetical diction does not differ greatly from good
conversational language.

Beside Herrera stands a totally different spirit, the
Salamancan monk Luis DE LEON (1527-1591). The deep
religious feeling which is one strong trait of Spanish
character has its representatives in Castilian literature
from Berceo down, but Leon was the first to give it fine
artistic expression. The mystic sensation of oneness with
the divine, of aspiration to heavenly joys, breathes in
all his writings. He was also a devoted student of the
classics, and his poems (for which he cared nothing and
which were not published till 1631) show Latin rather than
Italian influence. There is nothing in literature more
pure, more serene, more direct or more polished than
_La vida del campo, Noche serena_ and others of his
compositions.

The other great mystics cared less for literature, either
as a study or an accomplishment. The poems of Saint
Theresa (1515-1582) are few and mostly mediocre. San Juan
de la Cruz, the Ecstatic Doctor (1542-1591), wrote the
most exalted spiritual poems in the language; like all the
mystics, he was strongly attracted by the Song of
Songs which was paraphrased by Pedro Malon de Chaide
(1530-1596?). It is curious to note that the stanza
adopted in the great mystical lyrics is one page xxiii
invented by Garcilaso and used in his amatory fifth
_Cancion_. It has the rime-scheme of the Spanish
_