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MS has not survived. Previously published: Monthly Magazine, 3 (April 1797), 270–272 [from where the text is taken] under pseudonym ‘T.Y.’. For attribution to Southey, see Kenneth Curry, ‘Southey’s contributions to The Monthly Magazine and The Athenaeum’, The Wordsworth Circle, 11 (1980), 216.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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ESTEBAN MANUEL DE VILLEGAS
His “Delicias” were, as he himself tells us, in the first of them, written at fourteen, and corrected at twenty.
They form the second book of his Eroticas, or Amatory Poems,
which he published at Nagera, in 1618.
Something must be allowed for the prodigality of a Spaniard’s praise; something
for the age and country in which Villegas wrote; and something for the errors of
a work, “written at fourteen, and corrected at twenty.” The poems are trifling,
like their subjects, playful and elegant. One, perhaps the best of the series,
addressed to a stream, has lately been translated.
TO WINTER.
The reputation of these poems has been severely attacked, in an
essay, prefixed to the posthumous poems of Don Joseph Iglerias de la Casa,
printed at Salamanca, 1793. “The Delicias of Villegas (says the anonymous
writer) are the first poems of their kind, which obtained celebrity in the
Spanish language.
“You will be astonished to see me treat with so little respect, a
poet of such high estimation. But the fame of this writer, like that of many
others, is merely the fame of tradition: not founded upon his real merit, but
upon the opinion of some person, who knew how to impose upon the mob of readers.
This assertion may appear somewhat bold, if we consider when Don Vicente de los
Rios published and panegyrized Villegas.
The censure of the essayist is too unqualified. Of all poems,
such as are entitled Amatory, are most devoid of feeling. Petrarch and
Hammond
Strange and uncouth metaphors are undoubtedly to be found in the poems of Villegas. He addresses a stream, “thou who runnest over sands of gold, with feet of silver.” — “Touch my breast (says he) if you doubt the power of Lydia’s eyes, you will find it turned to ashes.” He has hyperbolized the Spanish hyperbolical salutation, “may you live a thousand years!” and wishes that the young grandee, to whom the first of his Delicias is addressed, may enjoy more years than there are days in an age, drops of water in the ocean, and grains of land on the shore. “Thou art so great (says he) that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness.” Joshua Sylvester calls Du Bartas’ Weeks,
So that “none but himself can be his parallel,” is not an
unparalleled line; and when Aaron Hill defended it,
Anacreon may be read with pleasure in the translation of the
Spaniard who has been honoured with his name; nor will he, who peruses the
version of Villegas, remember to its disadvantage the harmony of Grecian
cadence. He has likewise introduced hexameters and Sapphics, with success, into
his native language; and even the critic, who so severely attacks the Eroticas,
calls his Sapphic ode to Zephyrus most beautiful (bellissima
oda).
From Salamanca, Villegas returned to Nagera, his native place: where he lived with his mother, then a widow, and availed himself of leisure and retirement to follow his favourite studies, till his marriage. — His marriage appears to have been a fortunate one; the account he has left is interesting:
As these lines indicate, Villegas now bade adieu to poetry, and applied himself to such studies as were likely to be more esteemed, and better rewarded. Two folio volumes of classical criticism, entitled