FABIO, EPISTOLA MORAL A. - An eighteenth-century Spanish poetic composition in tercets of hendecasyllables, attributed to B. L. de Argensola (by Sedano, 1768), to Rioja (by Estala, 1786), to Fernández de Andrada (by A. de Castro, 1875), and to Medrano (by Foulché-Delbos, 1900). It is a noble discourse in which historical tradition and the Christian vision of Spain under the Catholic Reformation are fused.
The author counsels his friend F., a fictitious character, to abandon hopes and corruptions corrigisse, to seek refuge in the countryside, to hate adventure, pretence, and ostentation, and to practise virtue in fervent silence. His ideas derive from Seneca (De tranquillitate animi, X) and, in general, from the Stoics, so well known in Spain especially through Quevedo; the Horatian Beatus ille echoes in the exaltation of rural happiness, just as sentiments analogous to those of Plantin C.’s famous sonnet Le bonheur de ce monde re-emerge. Despite such antecedents, the Epistola is one of the most original, elegant, and harmoniously composed Spanish poems, and among those most deeply permeated by Christian spirituality.