JOHNSON From Household Words. SOMETHING LIKE A DRAMATIC AUTHOR. Johnson had written, he assured us, no less than five successful plays—all of which had been acted, and all applauded to the echo. "And now, sir," he continued, "what's the use of it? Five plays, sir, all successful! And yet, sir, every one of them forgotten! Here, sir," and Johnson dealt a vigorous blow on the unconscious and neglected volume. "Here, sir, I bring them out in a collected form, and not a copy has been asked for! Depend upon it, sir, it's all up with the drama. There was a time when men who wrote but one play gained celebrity; and here, sir, I've written five, sir -five!" matists was certainly a somewhat strange one. Poor Johnson! We had promised him posthumous and undying fame for his five dramashis "five, sir-five!" as he so proudly dwelt upon their number; and, for the life of us, we could not help laughing at our prophecy, as we asked ourselves, how many plays of all the hundreds the great Spaniard wrote, are heard of now. Nay, how many were there that even long survived their author. A per-centage, truly, most disheartening to Johnson! At once we mentally ran over all we knew of Lope de Vega-the "Prodigy of Nature," the "King of Comedy," the "Spanish Phoenix," as he was styled by his various critics - the man whose name became admitted into the Spanish language as an adjective expressing the extreme of excellence. At once we turned to different memoirs of the poet, and looked over the astounding arithmetical calculations that in different lands, at different times, have been made to state the number of his works And if the reader does not know already, we should like to hear him guess how many plays he thinks it possible that Lope de Vega wrote. We have prepared him, doubtless, to suppose the number large; but, in spite of all our warnings, we defy the boldest guesser to come near the truth. Let him think of a number that may seem preposterous. It will be much below the mark. Nay, let him even work out that mysterious problem in mental arithmetic which we remember puzzling over in our school-boy days, and, having thought of a number, double it, add ten to it, and so on — we forget, exactly, the true formula. Still will the total, in all probability fall considerably short of the number of plays composed by Lope de Vega. We condoled with him as we best could, and tried to hold out brilliant visions of the justice to be done to him by generations yet unborn: but it was useless; Johnson would not be comforted. Grateful, however, for our sympathy, he did the kindest thing he could have done - he left us; not, though, till we had given the most solemn promise that we would, at our very earliest leisure, read through the whole of the collected works, from title-page to Finis. We placed the copy of the works of John- The lowest calculation that seems based on son on the shelf behind us; and there, for seve- anything like solid grounds, is that given by M. ral days, it stayed as unmolested and unno-Damas Hinard, in an admirable memoir of the ticed as its thousand brethren that still encum- poet, prefixed to a French translation of his bered the warehouses of Johnson's publisher. plays; or rather some of his plays, for we should One morning, however, we thought that we would look at it, and see what Johnson really had produced, for we confess we had forgotten the very names of his plays quite as completely as it seemed the public had. Accordingly, we looked along our shelves for it; but for some time in vain. The volume was a thin one, and must, we supposed, have slipped be- Fifteen hundred plays! Written by one man's hind its bulkier neighbors. We were just hand-conceived by one man's brain! Well giving up our search as hopeless, when all at may another of his biographers, Mr.G.H. Lewes, once we caught a sight of it, and in such com- say: "It really takes one's breath away to hear pany, that it made us smile despite ourselves, of such achievements." But we have not yet as we remembered the poor fellow's sad com- done. At the imminent risk of having our veplaints, that he the author of no less a num-racity impugned, we must go on to tell what ber than five plays—was still unread-for- else Lope de Vega wrote. As though the fifgotten! teen hundred plays were not enough for one like to see the man who could translate them all, in one life-time, supposing all to be extant. M. Hinard informs usa statement in which Schah, the German historian of the Spanish drama, and others coincide-that Lope de Vega wrote the prodigious number of fifteen hundred plays! Johnson was squeezed between two volumes man's work, we find he wrote besides about of the works of Lope de Vega! three hundred interludes and autos sacramenThe accidental juxtaposition of the two dra-tales (a species of dramatic composition re sembling our ancient miracle-plays); ten epic | versified drama of three acts in redondillas, poems; one burlesque poem, called La Gato- interspersed with sonnets, tercets, and octaves, maquia; various descriptive and didactic po- and from beginning to end abounding in inems; a host of sonnets, romances, odes, ele- trigues, prodigies, or interesting situations. gies, and epistles; several works written in This astonishing facility enabled him to supmingled prose and verse; eight prose novels; ply the Spanish theatre with upwards of two not to mention other prose writings, or his nu- thousand original dramas." He tells us that merous prefaces and dedications! What a la- the theatrical managers would wait at Lope's bor for one lifetime! Were it for nothing more elbow, carrying off the acts as fast as he could than the stupendous quantity of his productions write them, not giving the poet time even to -leaving quality altogether out of the con- revise his work; and that, immediately upon sideration-Lope de Vega would be one of the one play being finished, a fresh applicant greatest wonders in the whole history of litera ture. would arrive to prevail on him to commence a new piece! A wholesale manufactory of dramas, truly! What would friend Johnson think of orders coming in like this? And yet his wonderful rapidity was not a mere flow of words unhampered by ideas. In speaking of the quantity of his productions Another calculation Bouterwek goes into, without regard to quality, we would by no as to the amount of paper Lope used. He means insinuate that in the latter respect they tells us, " According to his own (Lope's) testiwould not bear examination. We will not, it is mony, he wrote, on an average, five sheets true, go to such lengths as his friend and pupil, per day; it has therefore been computed that Montalvan, does, when he declares that if the the number of sheets which he composed works of Lope de Vega were placed in one during his life must have amounted to one scale, and those of all ancient and modern po-hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hunets in the other, the weight of the former dred and twenty-five." This computation, would not only decide the comparison in point however, strikes us as somewhat doubtful, inof quality, but would also be a fair emblem asmuch as it proceeds on the supposition that of the superiority in point of merit of Lope's Lope's average of five sheets per diem exverses over those of all other poets together." tended throughout the whole seventy-three But setting aside the exaggerations of his de- years of his existence, commencing at his birth voted admirer, this much is pretty certain not only did Lope de Vega actually produce fifteen hundred dramas, but they were as our friend Johnson tells us his own five were -all successful! They delighted all Spain, charmed even the sombre spirit of Philip the Second, and-sure test of success In present dramas, as in plays gone by, when for a day or two, at least, he would not do much, precocious though we know him to have been-and finishing with his death. We should hardly think that Lope quite meant this when he laid down the average, though really we feel so bewildered amongst all these high figures, that we know not exactly what to think. We feel as if we were working out sums in astronomy, and calculating distances of stars, instead of reckoning a literary man's productions. However, come we at once to the last grand total-right or wrong. Bouterwek says it is estimated, "that allowing for the deduction of a small portion of prose, Lope de Vega must have written upwards of twenty-one million three hundred thousand verses." they brought in money to the theatres' treasuries, and secured a competence to their author. We have already stated that the number of his works given above is that recorded by M. Damas Hinard and others. But, as if this were not sufficiently miraculous, some of his biographers adopt a considerably higher figure. Montalvan, above alluded to, asserts in his Fa- Lord Holland also adopts this estimate, but, ma Postuma (a work published in honor of Lo- like all the rest of them, manages still to magpe de Vega, in sixteen hundred and thirty-six, nify it, even while he quotes. He tells us a few months only after the poet's death), that" twenty-one million three hundred thousand he had written EIGHTEEN hundred plays, and of his lines are said to be actually printed." FOUR hundred autos sacramentales! This is And yet we find Lope de Vega himself, in the the number also quoted by Lord Holland, in Eclogue to Claudio, one of his latest works, his Life of Lope de Vega, published in eight-declaring that, large as is the quantity of his een hundred and six. printed works, those which still remain unBouterwek, in the volume of his Geschichte printed are even yet more numerous. So, if der Poesie and Beredsamkeit, which treats on we take Lord Holland's statement of the quanSpanish literature (published about eighteen tity actually printed, and remembering that hundred and eight) surpasses even Montalvan the printed portion is not half of what Lope in his estimate of Lope de Vega's fecundity. de Vega wrote altogether, He says that "Lope de Vega required no But no. We must refrain. We are getmore than four-and-twenty hours to write a ting once more înto the high numbers, and we begin already to feel giddy. So we must let to one of a thousand and seventy in the year Lord Holland, Bouterwek, Montalvan, and sixteen hundred and twenty-five; and, lastly, the rest, say what they please; we cannot pos- in his Eclogue to Claudio (sixteen hundred sibly keep pace with them, but must needs and thirty), he says: "But if I come now to content ourselves with the very moderate tell you of the infinite number of comic fables, figure we commenced with, and say that Lope you will be astonished to hear that I have de Vega, after all, wrote only fifteen hundred composed fifteen hundred." plays. Pero si ahora el numero infinito Mil y quinientas fabulas admira. For this quantity, however-marvellous, nay incredible, as it may seem-pretty conclusive evidence may be advanced. It would be tedious to enumerate all the facts which tend to prove it. Two will suffice. In the first place, that number was given by Doctor Fer- Is our account of Lope de Vega's labors nando Cardoso, the intimate friend of Lope yet sufficiently miraculous ? Shall we now de Vega, in the funeral speech he made over leave him with his fifteen hundred plays, and the poet's grave. It is just possible, we grant, other works, content to let our readers wonthat on so solemn, and yet so exciting, an oc-der that he did so much? Or shall we risk casion as a funeral oration, the orator may be their incredulity by telling them that he did induced to speak more highly of his friend de- more? We feel half tempted to go on, and parted than, perhaps, strictest truth would in a brief sketch of some of bis adventures warrant. Nay, we have heard it said, that even sculptured epitaphs have been known, ere now, in some slight manner to exaggerate the merits of the dead. But figures will not stand this sort of thing. and occupations to show how much of his life, of little more than threescore years and ten, must have been taken up by other matters than this mighty mass of literary work. For Lope de Vega was a soldier, a secretary, an alchemist, a priest; he married twice, and had a family; he studied and became proficient in the Latin, Italian, French, and Portuguese tongues, and yet found time to write his fifteen hundred plays! There is a stern matter-of-fact principle about figures-an absence of all poetry, sympathy, or feeling-that at once suppresses anything like trifling with them. Orators may win men to anything, but figures know that two and two are four, and they will stick to it, Our readers may suppose he was not long say what you will. Therefore, however about anything he took in hand. In fact, if anxious the doctor may have been to make we believe his friend, Montalvan, he began at the most of his subject, he would hardly, we once as he intended to go on-almost we may should say, have ventured on the hazardous say from his cradle. We are told that he unexperiment of "cooking the accounts," at a derstood Latin at the ripe age of five; and, also, time when his arithmetic could be imme- much about the same time commenced comdiately set right by simple reference to the posing Spanish verses, which he dictated to his files of play-bills. Managers did keep some playfellows to write down for him-for he beaccounts, we suppose, even in those days. came an author before he had learned to Still less safely could Lope de Vega himself write. He sold his verses, too, (the clever in his own lifetime have ventured on exag-dog!) for toys and sweetmeats. How rarely geration in this matter, and so we feel we do we find the genius and the man of business must, at least, place some reliance on the state-thus combined f ments he, from time to time, put out, of his | Between eleven and twelve years of age, own progress. he himself informs us, in his New Art of He was in the habit of publishing at various Dramatic Writing (Arte Nuevo de hacer periods, in the prefaces to his new works, Comedias), he had written several petites either a list or an account of the number of coinedies, in the antique Spanish form of four his plays then written. Accordingly, we find short acts. At fourteen years of age (Anno the figure regularly advancing from the year Domini fifteen hundred and seventy-six) he sixteen hundred and three, when, in the pro- ran away from college to see the world; and logue to his Pelegrino, he gives a catalogue of in the following year entered the army, servthree hundred and thirty-seven plays; to the ing both in Portugal and in Africa, under the list contained in his Arte Nuevo de hacer Marquis of Santa Cruz. The next year he Comedias, published in sixteen hundred and came home again, and engaged himself as page nine, when they amounted to four hundred and secretary to the Bishop of Avila, working and eighty-three, to that given with a new away, of course, at his poetry all the while, as volume of his plays, in sixteen hundred and none but Lope de Vega or a steam-engine eighteen, when they had reached the number could work, and producing, amongst various of eight hundred, to a list of nine hundred other things, a pastoral comedy in three acts, plays, in the year sixteen hundred and twenty, called La Pastoral de Jacinto, the author Vega. We have already gone at a much soldier-secretary being then sixteen years of age! Sent by his patron, the bishop, to the university of Alcala, he went to work at the solid fare of philosophy, theology, and mathematics, taking at the same time, by way of a relish, the Italian, Portuguese, and French languages. But even all this was insufficient The writer for the theatre at Madrid was at for his voracious appetite. So-to carry out one time at such a loss for comedies that the the simile-he flew to the occult sciences, as doors of the Theatre de la Cruz were shut; to a lump of bread and cheese to finish up but as it was in the Carnival, he was extremewith. And now he was never happy but ly anxious on the subject, so Lope and his when in the midst of crucibles, furnaces, and friend Montalvan were applied to, and they alembics. If any one could have found out agreed to compose a joint comedy as fast as the grand secret, it would surely have been possible. It was the Tercera Orden de San Lope de Vega. He didn't; so we must needs Francisco, and is the very one in which Arias suppose the alchemists were laboring under a acted the part of the Saint (we beg the parmistake. don of leading tragedians now living-the Next, Lope de Vega fell in love. Some say criticism is Montalvan's, not our own) more with one lady; some say with two. We should naturally than was ever witnessed on the incline to think the latter-one at a time could stage. The first act fell to Lope's lot, the hardly be enough for him. He didn't marry second to Montalvan's. These were de them, nor either of them. Some time after-spatched in two days, and the third act was to wards, thinking it time to settle down in life, be divided equally between the two authors, he made his mind up to become a priest. He each doing eight leaves. Montalvan went underwent the necessary preparations, and home at night, and being well aware that he was on the very eve of being ordained, when could not equal Lope in the execution, he he fell in love again. The church and priestly thought (misguided Montalvan!) that he Vows were no more to be thought of. He would try and beat him in the despatch of the married. This was in fifteen hundred and business. For this purpose he got up at two eighty-four. o'clock in the morning, and managed to com Scarcely was he married, however, than-plete his portion of the act by eleven. Monjust by way of a change-he got into prison, talvan then went out-not a little proud of owing to a duel. He escaped, of course; it what he'd done, no doubt-to look for Lope. was not likely he could wait until his time of He found him in his garden, very deeply ocimprisonment was over. He went to Valen-cupied with an orange-tree that had been cia, remained there some time writing, until frost-bitten in the night. What! not at upon the death of his wife he flew once more work? Montalvan doubtless thought he'd to battle, for excitement, and embarked on got him now! He asked him how he had got board the Invincible Armada, which Philip on with his task, when Lope answered:the Second was then fitting out to invade the English coasts. The Invincible Armada being thoroughly destroyed, Lope next visited Italy, spending some years in Naples, Parma, and Milan. Returning once more to Madrid, he married again, and by his second wife was soon made a happy father. : "I set about it at five; but I finished the act an hour ago; took a bit of ham for breakfast, wrote an epistle of fifty triplets; and have watered the whole of the garden, which has not a little fatigued me." Then, taking out the papers, he read to his collaborateur the eight leaves and the triplets, Now he was writing in earnest for the stage" a circumstance," Montalvan adds, "that -poverty and himself, as he tells us," having would have astonished me, had I not known entered into partnership as traders in verses;" the fertility of his genius, and the dominion and a very large proportion of his plays were he had over the rhymes of our language." the production of this trading firm during the Well might it have astonished him, indeed! tranquil years of his second marriage. He It would have surprised us, if anything could. lost his second wife in the year sixteen hun- But then it can't-at least when it relates to dred and seven, some sixteen years after he Lope de Vega. had married her, and then he joined the Inquisition, and finally became a priest. And now, out of all the astounding number of his works, how many are there that are His priestly duties were numerous, but even ever heard of now? Lord Holland menyet he managed to find time for the theatre, tioned nine that were still played in his time. and the very year that he was made a priest More, many more than these are read. But (sixteen hundred and nine) he wrote his Arte yet how small a portion of the mighty whole! Nuevo de hacer Comedias, and we would Poor Johnson! Your collected works must rather not venture upon saying how many form a very much more bulky volume, before plays. you've any right to grumble. But we are not writing the Life of Lope de From Chambers's Journal. sion of the multitude, and at the same time to give them enough for their money. The first popular engravings, judging from their style of THE love of pictures, of representations of execution, must have been exceedingly cheap. familiar or unfamiliar objects by outlines or Probably they were not engraved upon copcolors, or both, if it be not a universal passion, per, but upon some softer metal or admixture is something very like it. The savage indulges of metals; they were intended to be hung on It in his way, as much as the man of education the wall, portfolios being known only to artists and refinement: in default of other means, he and collectors; they were for the most part scores and tattoos designs upon his own skin colored, and were framed in a narrow black or that of his fellows, and bedaubs his flesh with moulding. Among the oldest subjects now to gaudy colors, making of himself the picture he be met with-and these must be looked for in loved to contemplate. All nations have had their the butler's parlor, or housekeeper's or servants' pictorial representations; of not a few, these room of some old mansion in the country-are have formed the national monuments and re- views of the palace and gardens of Versailles cords; and of more, it may be, than we are and Fontainbleau, in which the old fashioned aware of, they have been the originators of the trim gardens as they existed once, but exist alphabet, and thus the pioneers of literature. no longer, are shown in a bird's-eye species of Perhaps the man was never born who, with the perspective, not very correct. The walks are ordinary powers of vision, had not some taste, mathematically squared or circled, the trees or, to say the least of it, some liking for art are cut into formal spires or pyramids, and the under some form or other, and who was not fountains spout in arches geometrically true. capable of deriving some instruction, as well as The figures are long-legged gentlemen with satisfaction from gratifying that taste. We in- pigtails and powdered hair, collarless coats, tend, with the reader's permission, to glance waistcoats which repose on the hips, ruffles, and for a few moments at some of the popular tremendously lanky swords; with these are methods, so far as they are traceable from ladies in exalted head-dresses, with wasp-like present existing remains, which have been for waists, and enormous, swelling hoops below, number of generations past in operation and supporting themselves on heels of perilous in our own country, for supplying the height; in addition to the gentlemen, the lahumbler orders with the means of such gratifi cation. dies are attended by poodles, with head and shoulders shaggy as a lion, and hind-quarters bare as a frog. Contemporaneous with these were garden-scenes something in the Watteau style, in which nature was allowed a little latitude, and Damon and Phyllis, in wig and hoop, danced together on the green-sward, or posed themselves in picturesque attitudes beneath a shady tree by the running stream, or sent one another aloft in a swing, while the rest of the party picknicked together in the foreground. There was a time when comparatively few of our industrial classes could read, or cared to read; but there never was a time when they would not have looked with pleasure upon a picture. What were the household pictures, or whether there were any at all to be found in the humbler dwellings of our land even so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we cannot undertake to say, but are inclined to think there was nothing of the kind; and that rude Pictures of this sort-and most persons must Images and quaint casts or carvings constituted have met with them in the course of their exthe only sort of domestic art familiar to the perience-did their work in paving the way people. Though engraving on wood and cop- for something better. Before Hogarth's time, per has been practised for almost four hundred conversation pieces, and rude engravings of years, it would appear that, with the exception good pictures, had got into the market. They of such small specimens as were used for the were mostly, however, too dear for the agriillustration of a few books and ballads, but lit- cultural districts, where the people chose to tle of the engraver's work made its way to the buy, at a cheaper rate, a new class of subjects mass of the populace. At any rate we can meet brought to them by the peddlers and hawkers, with little or nothing now of a kind adapted and which were nearly all illustrations of Old for the walls of a cottage or humble residence, or New Testament history, or scenes from the which dates further back than the close of the martyrology. The trade in engravings of a seventeenth century. We have a notion that popular description had assumed a degree of the first commercial experiment in engraving importance by the time that Hogarth came upon pictures to meet a popular demand, was made the scene; the advantage he derived from it, about that time. The works of the best con- and the benefit he conferred upon art in this tinental engravers, and of the old etchers, were country in so doing, are well known. His untoo expensive for general circulation; and, rivalled productions did not, however, save in what is more, they were too learned for the exceptional cases, penetrate beyond the cities general taste. To create a demand for pictures, and larger towns; and it is a rare occurrence, it was necessary to descend to the comprehen-even at the present moment, to meet with one |
