Juan de Enzina, though he had sojourned in Italy, became imbued by none of its spirit. It could not always be thus. The Neapolitan wars in the time of Ferdinand caused numbers of Spaniards to visit Italy. From the very beginning of the reign of Charles V., these wars increased in importance, and the intercourse between the two countries became more frequent and intimate. The time therefore was at hand when Spain would learn from Italy that poetic art in which she was yet a child, though a child of genius. At this epoch we commence the lives of the literary men of Spain. They came out many at once, like a constellation. The first in the list were born either quite at the end of the fifteenth, or at the very commencement of the sixteenth century, and accordingly were contemporaries of Charles V. [Footnote 1: "Duosque Senecas, unicumque Lucanum, Facunda loquitur Corduba." _Martial_, ep. LXII. lib. I. And Statius records the same fact:-- "Lucanum potes imputare terris. Hoc plus quam Senecam dedisse mundo, Aut dulcem geuerasse Gallionem. Ut tollat refluos in astra fontes Grajo nobilior Melete Bætis." _Genethliacon._ --_Retrospective Review_, vol. III.] [Footnote 2: Retrospective Review, vol. III.] [Footnote 3: Boutervek.] [Footnote 4: "Through the decree of the fifth council of Toledo, each Gothic king swore, before he was crowned, to extirpate the Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella renewed the nefarious oath, and thus generated the spirit which caused Lope de Vega to recur with satisfaction to the old Gothic law:-- "The sceptre was denied of yore, "Vedando el consilio Toledano, To the elected king, until he swore tomar el cetro al rey sinque primero With his own royal hand limpiase el verdadero To purge the fertile land trigo con propria mano, Of the vile tares that choke the de la cizana vil que le suprime genuine grain, la Santa Ley en la corona inprime." And write the holy law upon the crown of Spain." _Retrospective Review_, vol. III.] [Footnote 5: In the Retrospective Review, vol. III., in the article on the poetical literature of Spain, the whole of Sant Jordi's Song of Contraries (Cancion de Opositos), is given, from which Petrarch adopted, it is alleged, whole lines. Nothing is less derogatory to a poet of the highest genius than the fact that he picked up here and there lines and ideas, amalgamating them with his own, and adorning them with alien splendour. It is honourable, however, to Sant Jordi, to be stolen from the spirit of the two poems is different and the lines scattered and disconnected. Those of Petrarch are--and they are some of his finest-- "Pace non trovo e non ho da far guerra, E volo sopra 'l cielo, e giaceio in terra, E nulla stringo e tutto il mondo abraccio, E ho in odio me stesso e amo altrui, Se non e amor, cosé dunque ch'io sento?" Sant Jordi, describing the struggles of his mind, has these similar lines:--