Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 3 (of 3)Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
History
Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 3 (of 3)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Authors -- Biography; Scientists -- Biography
His funeral took place the third day after his death, and was conducted
with splendour by the duke of Sesa, the most munificent of his patrons,
whom he had named his executor. Don Luis de Usategui, his son-in-law,
and a nephew, went as mourners, accompanied by the duke of Sesa and many
other grandees and nobles. The clergy of all classes flocked in crowds.
The procession attracted a multitude; the windows and balconies were
thronged, and the magnificence was such, that a woman going by,
exclaimed, "This is a Lope funeral!" ignorant that it was the funeral of
Lope himself, and so applying his name as expressive of the excess of
all that was splendid. The church was filled with lamentation when at
last he was deposited in the tomb. For eight days the religious
ceremonies were kept up, and on the ninth, a sermon was preached in his
honour, when the church was again crowded with the first people of
Spain.
By his will, his daughter, donna Feliciana de Vega, married to don Luis
de Usategui, inherited the moderate fortune he left behind. He added in
his will a few legacies of pictures, books, and reliques to his friends.
In person Lope de Vega was tall, thin, and well made; dark complexioned,
and of a prepossessing countenance; his nose aquiline; his eyes lively
and clear; his beard black and thick. He had acquired much agility, and
was capable of great personal exertion. He always enjoyed excellent
health, being moderate in his tastes, and regular in his habits.
To gather Lope's character from the events of his life, and his accounts
of himself, it may be assumed that while young his disposition had all
the vivacity of the south--that his passions were ardent, his feelings
enthusiastic--that he was heedless and imprudent perhaps, but always
amiable and true. Generous to prodigality--pious to bigotry--patriotic
to injustice, he was given to extremes, yet he did not possess the
higher qualities, the cheerful fortitude, and fearless temper of
Cervantes. Time and sorrow softened in after times some portions of his
character; but still in his garden, among his flowers and books, he was
vivacious, perhaps petulant (for his complaints of neglect are to be
attributed to petulancy rather than to a repining temper); warm-hearted,
charitable and social, vain he might also be, for that we all are. The
activity of his mind resembled more a spontaneous fertility of soil,
than the exertion of labour: "plays and poetry were the flowers of his
plain," as he says: and this seems an unexaggerated picture of the ease
with which he composed. We need scarcely allude to the hypochondria that
darkened his last hours, as Montalvan seems to mention it as a mere
precursor of death. If it were more, it is only another proof that the
mind must not work too hard, while it has this fragile body for its
instrument and prop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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