The side-glance of his eye, and the sneer of his nostril, | Hareth here represents himself as sojourning Showed that he was like a wild beast waiting to spring. among them; during his residence he lost a milch camel, and determined to set out in search of her lance, He starts up and says that he knows of a modern author who is inferior to none of the ancient; all So I mounted a swift steed, and poised a quivering eagerly ask his name, and are equally astonished when he avows that he himself is the man. After And travelled all night long, crossing the desert, a little discussion, one of the company undertakes And exploring every woodland and waste place, to prove his powers, and relates that he is in the Till the time when the morn unfurls her banner, service of the governor, and desires to retire to his And the muezzin summons to early prayer; native place, but the governor refuses to let him And then, after alighting to perform the prescribed depart, unless he can present him a petition in a duties, most difficult Arabic measure, which neither he nor I sprang again upon my beast and put her to full any of his literary friends had been able to achieve; And went forward, following every trace that I saw, this was the task which they therefore imposed on the stranger. Abou Zaid at once accepts the chal-Ascending every hill, and crossing every valley on lenge, saying speed, my way, And interrogating every traveller that I met with, -Thou art as one who has challenged a fleet Though still my assiduity proved abortive, While I blamed him for his refusal of the office. And my quest obtained not any satisfactory return, So that I was sure, unless I found shelter from the Or an opportunity to refresh myself by reposing, eve. to rest, One in quest of the same thing that I had sought myself, And approaching rapidly in my direction. Now I disliked his turning aside to the place that I occupied, And commended myself to God for protection against intruders; Though I hoped that he might prove my guide to what was lost, Or appear as my leader in the right way. The stranger proves to be our old friend Abou Zaid; they sit under the tree, and, after discoursing But he turned away with a smile, and sang these awhile, Abou Zaid falls asleep; Hareth, perhaps lines: "In poverty, through distant lands, 'Tis better far to roam, Than station eminent to hold In princely courts at home: For mark, how prone to wild caprice, How few complete their own good work, Let, then, no glare of false mirage Lest haply like the wretch thou prove, Who dreams of bliss, though certain woe suspecting his companion, had intended to keep watch; But sleep seized upon me when our tongues were hushed, Nor did I wake till night was come and the stars shone, When lo! Abou Zaid and my steed were both gone. Great of course is poor Hareth's distress at discovering his loss; but resigning himself to his lot, he was returning home, when he saw a man at a distance mounted on a camel, which on his nearer approach he found out to be his own. He at once made his way up to him, and demanded the restitution of his property; a violent altercation ensues, which was proceeding to blows. Lo! Abou Zaid came suddenly upon us, dressed in tiger's skin, Our favorite is the Bedouin Makamah, which was originally written, Mr. Preston says, to em- And careering along like an inundating flood; ploy and illustrate a number of rare words and So that I feared he would treat me as he had done proverbs in use among the Bedouin Arabs. already, And his conduct be the same as it had been the day before, And myself have to share the fate of the two tanners, With nothing left of me but the tale of which I was the subject; But all that I could do was to remind him of his past promises, And of what he had done to me on the preceding day. I therefore conjured him to tell me if he was now come To effect reconciliation with me, or to complete my ruin. And he replied, "God forbid that I should kill a wounded man, Or add a simoom by day to my hot wind of the night! I came to thee only to ascertain the state of thy affairs, And to make myself as a right hand to thy left !” We will conclude our extracts with a song from the Holouan Makamah Hoary locks and withered features Doom to change our mortal state; Though they seem thy friends to-day, Thou must feel their ruthless sway; Let thy patience still endure, Only shines more bright and pure. We may remark, ere we close, the great importance of the Makamat in a very different point of Thus my heart was set at rest and my fear dis-view, viz., as a help to the elucidation of Hebrew, pelled, and the Hebrew Scriptures. Mr. Preston, in his notes, points out many interesting instances of this; and Gesenius, in his Lexicon, frequently explains a Hebrew root by reference to this treasury of Semitic philology. For Hariri's work, comprising Mr. as it does so much of the more ancient and recondite stores of Arabic, necessarily involves much of the same stores of kindred languages; and many a doubtful word or obscure construction in Hebrew, may be illustrated by this Arabian Varro. Preston has well concluded his preface with those words of a learned German: Lectione Haririi nemo carere protest qui de linguæ Aribicæ copiâ, volubilitate, elegantia, genio, omninoque de dialectis Semiticis rectum judicium facere voluerit." In conclusion, we would again congratulate Mr. Preston on the triumph he has achieved, in thus putting a book, which had been hitherto inaccessible, except to the learned, in the reach of all who turn their eyes to the East; his translation is as suited to the general reader, who would see pictures of the Mohammedan world, as it appeared to a shrewd observer, nearly eight centuries ago, as it is to the student who has sighed for a guide to lead him in the difficult original; and we bid him farewell with a hearty au revoir ! C. THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S POCKET-BOOK.-The British Museum has recently become possessed of a memorandum-book which was found in the pocket of very interesting and important historical relic-the the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth at the time he was taken prisoner by the troops of James II. It is about six inches long by four broad, and the cover is black leather. It contains some forty or fifty pages, Imost of which are written upon by the duke; but what gives it peculiar authenticity is an inscription on a fly-leaf, in the hand-writing of the king himself, stating that it was taken from the person of the Duke of Monmouth after the battle of Sedgemoor. After his abdication, James II. seems to have presented the little volume to a monastery in Paris, where it was preserved with religious care until subsequent to the late revolution. The contents are of a very varied description, and singularly illustrative of the character of the noble and misguided writer; prayers, songs, medical receipts, and accounts of journeys and personal expenses, are mixed up together confusedly, sometimes carefully written, and at others hastily scribbled. One or more of the songs are accompanied by the music belonging to them, and it is conjectured that the words, at least, were the authorship of the duke. Other songs are known to have been the production of poetical contemporaries. mondi; in all that goes to make a valuable one he leaves them far behind. There is an air of thorough acquaintance with his subject which meets us in every page, such as only long and diligent study could give; and it is a proof of real love for the subject that, in 1818 and 1835, the author came from America to Europe to accumulate a Spanish library, and acquire materials. The consequence is, that in every part of his work he is completely at home; we feel that the quantity of learning, bibliographical and historical, which is thrown in the frequent notes at the foot of the page, is all genuine and his own; and that which in a mere compiler is wearisome has here all the charm of originality. He gives us, in fact, the harvest of his thirty years, and we thankfully and heartily accept it. Mr. Ticknor shows that the Inquisition did not cause the Spanish character; but, on the contrary, the Spanish character caused the Inquisition. Of course the two acted and reäcted on each other as they severally developed themselves; but still the elements of the Inquisition must have lain in the Spanish mind long before it was established, or it could never have come into being as it did. We quote the following from p. 431 of vol. i. After speaking of the miserable marks of slavery in the abject title-pages, certificates, and supplicatory colophons of every book, he thus proceeds : FEW national names are finer than that of Spain, echo as it is of the old Hispania, that oft struck fear in the hearts of Roman soldiers when they left the capital, as did that of Hungary, last year, in the Austrian reinforcements as they left Vienna. Spain sounds like a trumpet in the mind's ear, and wakes up long trains of memories from her eventful history. We think of Julius Cæsar, when he came to Cadiz as quastor, overwhelmed with debt, and with no glorious prospects in the far future before him, and groaned as he gazed on the statue of Alexander in the temple of Hercules, and thought that to him those years were already past and lost, which had won the world to Philip's son, (Suetonius;) or of those old bards, who, Strabo tells us, (lib. iii.,) had "records of ancient memory, and poems and laws, in verse, six thousand years old, as they say;" or the names of Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Columella, and Quintilian, rise to attest the genius of her sons in Roman days. The seven centuries and a half of Moorish sway are filled with stirring achievements, and only want a fit historian to become one of the most thrilling pages of European story. And, surely, to one who lived in 1492, and saw, as Columbus saw," the silver cross, as these deep marks and strange peculiarities in Spanish But we shall be greatly in error, if, as we notice it slowly rose, for the first time, above the towers literature, we suppose they were produced by the of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final direct action either of the Inquisition or of the civil and absolute overthrow of the infidel power in government of the country, compressing, as with a Spain," it might well have seemed the dawn of a physical power, the whole circle of society. This yet brighter day for his country, and the future would have been impossible; no nation would have might well seem big with all that is glorious in a submitted to it, much less so high-spirited and chival great nation. But how fatally was the augury re-rous a nation as the Spanish in the reign of Charles versed; here, as often, the moment of apparent V., and in the greater part of that of Philip II. This triumph was that of real decay; and Ruin, not dark work was done earlier; its foundations were laid Victory, met Ferdinand and Isabella at the gates deep and sure in the old Castilian character. of Granada, and delivered up the keys of the con- the result of the excess and misdirection of that very quered city. From that hour Spain declined; the Christian zeal which fought so fervently and gloriousfierce spirit of superstitious zeal and chivalric ly against the intrusion of Mohammedanism into Euloyalty which, through the long centuries of war-rope; and of that military loyalty which sustained fare with the Moors-from 711, A. D., when Rod- the Spanish princes so faithfully through the whole eric lost his crown, of that terrible contest-both of them high and entill 1492, when Granada surrendered-had grown to be the national life of wrought into the popular character than they ever nobling principles, which, in Spain, were life, had now no foreign unbeliever to spend its were in any other country. force upon; and the establishment of the Inquisition in Seville, in 1481, the banishment of all the Jews a few months after the fall of Granada, and the Index Expurgatorius" in 1546, attest, only too fatally, whither it now turned. The wealth of the Indies could not save an empire where the poverty was that of the soul; and the apparent splendors of the reign of Charles V. were only those deceitful symptoms which hide and yet accelerate the disease. It was more Spanish submission to an unworthy despotism, and Spanish bigotry, were, therefore, not the results of the Inquisition and the modern appliances of a corrupting monarchy; but the inquisition and the despotism were rather the results of a misdirection of the old religious faith and loyalty. The civilization that recognized such elements, presented, no doubt, much that was brilliant, picturesque, and ennobling; but cite and cherish many of the most elevating qualities it was not without its darker side; for it failed to exduced in domestic life, and result in the cultivation of our common nature-those qualities which are proof the arts of peace. Spain's literature (like all national literatures) faithfully mirrors the growth and decay of the national character. To those who feel but little interest in the mere annals of warfare abroad and The presence of the Inquisition rests as a nightpersecution at home, and care only for the history mare on Spanish literature; and history, philosoof the human soul under these adverse circum-phy, and the noblest kinds of poetry were rendered stances, Mr. Ticknor's three volumes will supply impossible. No Thucydides or Tacitus has ever more of interest and information than a hundred risen in Spain to hold the mirror to the times; or, regular histories. We have here a faithful record of the history of the human mind in Spain; thirty years of literary labor have been spent to make it what it is, and they have not been spent in vain. In all that goes to make a readable book Mr. Ticknor is superior to either Bouterwek or Sis if they have, they have languished, in dumb oblivion, in the prisons of the Inquisition; no solitary footstep (ex pede Herculem) of a Bacon or a Pascal has been found throughout her literature; and epic poetry languished in Lope de Vega's hands as an improvisazione, and in those of Ercilla, as a rhymed newspaper. Spain has only her ballads, her " Don | Congreve, Wycherley, Shadwell, from Goldoni, Quixote," and her drama, but these are a literature Nota, Giraud, and others, all that they have by themselves. Her" Don Quixote," who knows borrowed directly or indirectly from Spain, and not? and Lockhart's fine translations have, we hope, naturalized her ballads amongst us. We cannot refrain from quoting the following passages on these from Mr. Ticknor's first volume, p. 139:Yet there are certainly few portions of the literature of any country that will better reward a spirit of adventurous inquiry than these ancient Spanish ballads, in all their forms. In many respects, they are unlike the earliest narrative poetry of any other part of the world; in some they are better. The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal coarseness and violence prevailed, which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness, but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty; a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons, or the gross maraudings of a border warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio; or if we compare the deep tragedy of "Edom o' Gordon" with that of the "Conde Alarcos;" or, what would be better than either, if we would sit down to the "Romancero General," with its poetical confusion of Moorish splendors and Christian loyalty, just when we have come fresh from Percy's Reliques," or Scott's "Minstrelsy." you beggar them in respect of situation and incident." It is idle to shut our eyes to such a broad fact that thus stares us in the face, and as idle to deny merit, and high merit too, to that which has won, and did so long hold, such an extensive sway. Whatever we may think of the moral code or the taste of the Spanish dramatists, we must give them the praise of unrivalled fertility of invention; nor is this confined to their highest authors. The inferior writers are almost equally remarkable for this talent, and have exercised a similar influence; and, indeed, Schlegel remarks, "what has been taken from the most celebrated Spanish poets, might be easily pointed out, but the writers of the second and third rank have been equally laid under contribution." "Ingenious boldness," he adds, "joined to easy clearness of intrigue, is so exclusively peculiar to the Spanish dramatists, that, whenever I find these in a work, I consider myself justified in suspecting a Spanish origin;" and it has been often remarked that, corresponding to this active faculty in the Spanish dramatist, there is a similar passive and recipient one in the Spanish spectator and reader. The most intricate plot is at once intelligible to him, while to a foreigner it would seem only an inextricable confusion; and we often fancy that this is attributable in part to the oriental cross in the Spanish blood. Eight centuries of Moorish sway have left deep traces in the national mind as well as the language, and especially in its poetry, just as the old Calpe still wears the name of "Tarik's Mountain," and the Bætis But besides what the Spanish ballads possess dif- (Guadalquiver,) or "the great river" of the Moor. yet flows past Seville as the Wad-al-Gabir, ferent from the popular poetry of the rest of Europe, No poetry is so like the Arabian or Persian as the they exhibit, as no others exhibit it, that nationality, which is the truest element of such poetry everywhere. Spanish; we meet resemblances at every turn, and They seem, indeed, as we read them, to be often little especially we may trace the likeness in the fondmore than the great traits of the old Spanish charac-ness for long and intricate story. The Arabians ter, brought out by the force of poetical enthusiasm ; so that, if their nationality were taken away from them, they would cease to exist. This, in its turn, has preserved them to the present day, and will continue to preserve them hereafter. The great Castilian heroes, such as the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith and poetry of the common people of Spain; and are still, in some degree, honored as they were honored in the age of the Great Captain, or, further back, in that of St. Ferdinand. The stories of Guarinos, too, and of the defeat of Roncasvalles, are still sung by the wayfaring muleteers, as they were when Don Quixote heard them in his journeying to Toboso; and the showmen still rehearse the adventures of Gayferos and Melisendra, in the streets of Seville, as they did at the solitary inn of Montesinos, when he encountered them there. 66 But it is to her drama that we must look, if we would trace Spain's influence on Europe; and here, indeed, we may well find cause for wonder. Critics may differ toto cœlo in their various estimates of its worth according as they hold by Aristotle's unities, or stand up for the romantic school; we may agree, or not, with Schlegel's eulogiums or Sismondi's censures; but still none can dispute the fact, that, to use Mr. Lewes' words, "the Spaniards have had the honor of supplying Europe with plots, incidents, and situations"-"the European drama is saturated with Spanish influence. Take from the French, and from Beaumont and Fletcher, and their contemporaries, from Dryden, have their "Alif Laila" or "Arabian Nights," and "Calila-wa-Dimna," with story interwoven with story, like the Pilpay's fables of our childhood; and in the same way the Shahnameh of the Persian rolls its length of legendary lore through one hundred and twenty thousand lines. The same peculiarity meets us in the later Hindu mind, (witness the "Ocean of the Streams of Narrative" by Somadeva Bhatta,) and it seems something essentially oriental, and the Spanish love of plot and intricate adventure always appears to us to point to a similar origin. It is not our purpose, in this article, to trace the history of the Spanish drama, and we would refer the reader for this, to Mr. Ticknor's second volume, or Mr. Lewes' little work, which presents an admirable view of the whole subject; suffice it to say, that the drama in Spain, as elsewhere, owes its beginnings to the rude and barbarous "mysteries" and "miracle plays," of the dark ages; after its first escape from these, under Torres Naharro, who flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century, it languished for some time in the hands of Lope de Rueda and others, until, towards the end of the century, Lope de Vega arose, who, by his genius, changed the whole style of the drama, and established the true Spanish style which has continued ever since. To Mr. Ticknor's volume we refer for a long and interesting account of Lope de Vega's literary history; of his life we cannot say so much, for Lope de Vega was not one of those whose genius, like Midas in the myth, turns all that surrounds him into pure gold. No generous impulses, no chivalrous heart, warms the dull details of his years; a gleam of domestic love and peace seems to shine in some of his private verses, but they vanish in the cold day-light of history, and we find that Lope was as unfaithful to his first wife in marriage, as he was to the memory of the second, the very year-perhaps the very month that she died, (vide Ticknor, vol. ii., p. 124.) His comedies seem to us to be faithful mirrors of his character; they are full of action and impulse, as was his chequered life; they abound with wit and fancy of every kind, but in vain do we look for any deep outburst of poetry, or listen for one of those condensed lines of passion, whose weight, as Aristophanes says, "a hundred Egyptian slaves could not lift.' But, indeed, how could we look for such in an author who wrote eighteen hundred plays, and four hundred autos, besides several long epics, prose novels, &c.? Twenty-four, he himself says, were written in as many days, and all were probably dashed off without any premeditation, or effort, or after-correction; after this, need we wonder at their faults? Shall we not rather wonder that they are so good as they are? But it is to another poet that we would now turn our reader's attention, from the gay, careless Lope, and we at once breathe a fresher and purer air. Lope's life is no less a contrast to Calderon's than his works. Calderon, we are told, was remarkable for his personal beauty, which he long preserved by the serenity and cheerfulness of his spirit. The engraving* published soon after his death, shows at least a strongly marked and venerable countenance, to which, in fancy, we may easily add the brilliant eye and gentle voice given to him by his friendly eulogist, while, in its ample and which we are familiar in the portraits of our own great finely turned brow, we are reminded of that with dramatic poet. His character throughout seems to have been benevolent and kindly. In his old age, we learn that he used to collect his friends round him on his birth-days, and tell them amusing stories of his childhood; and during the whole of the active part of his life he enjoyed the regard of many distinguished persons of his time, who, like the Count Duke of Olivares and the Duke of Veraguas, seem to have been attached to him quite as much by the gentleness of his nature as by his genius and fame. Calderon was like Shakspeare in his grand carelessness for his own works; for, except a few of his autos, or religious dramas, he may be said to have published none: those that were published during his lifetime, were done so surreptitiously, (except a few published by his brother,) and many spurious ones went under his name. At last, in 1680, the Duke of Veraguas wrote to him for a list of his genuine works, and the old poet replied by a list of one hundred and eleven full-length dramas, and seventy sacramental autos; of these not all are extant, but a few others have been added, on what was deemed sufficient authority. We accordingly now possess seventy-three sacramental autos, and one hundred and eight comedies; and on these, then, rests his fame. Pedro Calderon de la Barca was born on the 17th of January, 1600, and Mr. Ticknor remarks the curious circumstance that, while the two masters of the Spanish drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon, were both born at Madrid, the families of both are to In Calderon's plays, as, indeed, in all the "Tebe sought for, at an earlier period, in the same little atro Espanol," we must not look for a" Hamlet" or picturesque valley of Carriedo, where each pos-"As You Like It," or "Faust" far other are his sessed an ancestral fief. His earliest appearance in history is in 1620, when he was competitor for one of the prizes of poetry at a poetical festival in honor of the beatification of Saint Isidore, at Madrid. In 1625, we hear of him in the Milanese army, and in 1640, after he had commenced his career as a poet, we find him, like a true knight, in the body of troops commanded by the Count Duke Olivares in person, at the time of the Catalonian rebellion. After his return, he speedily rose through royal favor, and obtained a pension of thirty gold crowns a month, and in 1649 he was employed in the arrangement of the festivities of the court, when the new queen, Anna Maria, of Austria, made her entrance into Madrid. In 1651 he entered a religious brotherhood; in 1663 he was appointed chaplain of honor to the king, and priest of the congregation of St. Peter, and soon rose to be its head- an office of some importance, which he held during the last fifteen years of his life, and exercised with great gentleness and dignity." He died in 1681, on the 25th of May, and was buried quietly, as his will directed, in the church of San Salvador, by the priests of the congregation over which he had so long presided. In 1840 his remains were removed to the more splendid church of the Atocha, where they now rest. The following passage from Mr. Ticknor will tell us all that is known of Calderon himself, the "ego" who lived among men and passed away, of which the works that we have are only the scintillations, not the personal reality. This little incident of his youth reminds one of the boy Sophocles dancing at the festival after the battle of Salamis. creations, of a far grosser mould, and of a far lower world. We shall never forget our first impressions when we read our first play, warmed as we had been by Schlegel's hyperbolical praises, and full of gorgeous dreams of what our new world was to be. At first, we confess, we were disappointed; but the disappointment did not last. If we found not that which we expected, we found that which we expected not; if there was not the majestic sublimity or the deep pathos which we had looked for, there was a certain tropical splendor of color and luxuriance of growth which belonged to no northern clime, and we gazed with wonder on the strange world in which we found ourselves. We were as Thespesius in the dream which Plutarch relates, when he opened his eyes in the world of spirits, and saw on every side the disembodied souls floating around him, unconscious of his presence, moving by unknown impulses, and darting hurriedly away after unknown objects. It is this that must strike every reader of Calderon. When we enter within the magic ring where the enchanter holds his sway, we find ourselves surrounded by characters in many respects like ourselves, but all hurried onward by an irresistible impulse which we cannot comprehend, overpowering all the feelings which they share in common with us. This impulse, which often reminds us of the Greek idea of * Mr. Ticknor mentions in a note, how little this portrait resembles the copies made by other engravers, and we may specially mention the miserable one in Don Ochoa's "Teatro," vol. iii. Paris. 1838. The genuine portrait may be seen in Keil's edition, vol. ii. Leipsic, 1828; and also in a little volume, containing three plays, published in London, by Senior, 1838. |