It is this degradation of the loyalty and religion of the country, infecting as it did every part of the national character, which we have felt to be undermining the general culture of Spain during the seventeenth century; its workings being sometimes visible on the surface, and sometimes hidden by the vast and showy apparatus of despotism and superstition under which it was often concealed even from its victims. But it is a most melancholy fact in the case, that whatever of Spanish literature survived at the end of this period found its nourishment in such feelings of religion and loyalty as still sustained the forms of the monarchy,--an imperfect and unhealthy life, wasting away in an atmosphere of death. At last, as we approach the conclusion of the century, the Inquisition and the despotism seem to be everywhere present, and to have cast their blight over every thing. All the writers of the time yield to their influences, but none in a manner more painful to witness, than Calderon and Solís; the two whose names close up the period, and leave so little to hope for the future. For the “Autos” of Calderon and the “History” of Solís were undoubtedly regarded, both by their authors and by the public, as works eminently religious in their nature; and the respect, and even reverence, with which each of these great men treated the wretched and imbecile Charles the Second, were as undoubtedly accounted to them by their contemporaries for religious loyalty and patriotism. At the present day, we cannot doubt that a literature which rests in any considerable degree on such foundations must be near to its fall.[275] [275] See the end of “El Segundo Scipion,” and that of “El Segundo Blason de Austria,” by Calderon; and the Dedication of his History to Charles II., by Solís, in which, with a slight touch of the affectations of _cultismo_, which Solís did not always avoid, he tells this “king of shreds and patches”: “I find, in the _shadow_ of your Majesty, the _splendor_ that is wanting in my own works.” In the same spirit, Lupercio de Argensola made the canonization of San Diego a sort of prophetical canonization of Philip II., in a _cancion_ of no mean merit as a poem, but one that shocks all religious feeling, by recalling the apotheosis of the Roman emperors. HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. THIRD PERIOD. THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE ACCESSION OF THE BOURBON FAMILY AND THE INVASION OF BONAPARTE; OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EARLY PART OF THE NINETEENTH. HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE THIRD PERIOD. CHAPTER I. WAR OF THE SUCCESSION.--BOURBON FAMILY.--PHILIP THE FIFTH.--ACADEMY OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE: ITS DICTIONARY, ORTHOGRAPHY, GRAMMAR, AND OTHER WORKS.--ACADEMY OF BARCELONA.--ACADEMY OF HISTORY.--STATE OF LETTERS.--POETRY: MORAES, BARNUEVO, REYNOSA, ZEVALLOS, LOBO, BENEGASI, PITILLAS.