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In quoting the passage from Quevedo which resembles that of our great dramatic poet, I am reminded of the accusation brought against Pedro Calderon de la Barca, that he copied from Shakspere. With regard to this, a Spanish author* says:-"It is a marvellous thing to read the works of Shakespeare and those of our Calderon. The identity of thoughts and of dramatic situations constantly found amongst the writings of these two poets, who are almost contemporaneous, is astonishing. Certainly they did not derive their thoughts one from the other. None of those who have written respecting the life of Calderon have said that he understood English, although it is notorious with what prodigality they have made mention of the most insignificant particulars.'

There are few men of letters whose history has been so serene and so happy, as far as outward events go, as that of Calderon. Spain, an ungrateful mother to her many illustrious sons, and above all to Cervantes, was, for Lope de Vega and Calderon, full of kindness. Both lived in the bosom of their country, dying at an advanced age, rich, and crowned with honours. The Spaniards will not, however, allow that these authors obtained their great reputation by anything like chance strokes of fortune. Both, say they, conquered the fickle goddess, not alone by the strength of their genius, but, by unremitting labour and an activity which appears to exceed the limits of human possibility and to "ray off into the marvellous."

This is a lesson which, we think, might be studied to advantage by the later poets of the sunny Peninsula, and, also, by some of our own land who are eagerly anticipating a fame which they do but little to deserve.

Another writer asserts that "Dante paints with more vigorous colours material nature and the exterior effect of the passions; but Calderon knows better the interior man; and hence, without so profoundly wounding or affecting the feelings, he speaks more directly to the heart."

He was born in 1600, of a noble family, and at fourteen years of age, we are assured, he began to write for the stage. He quitted his studies for the army, where he served some time, during several campaigns in Italy and Flanders, and afterwards attracted the notice of King Philip IV. by some of his compositions, who gave him an appointment near his own person. In 1652, Calderon entered into orders, but without renouncing the stage. Thenceforth, however, his compositions were generally religious pieces and autos sacramentales," and the more he advanced in years, the more he regarded all his works which were not religious as idle and unworthy of his genius. He says

A saber llego,

Que sin el gran Dios que busco,
Que adoro, y que reverencio,
Las humanas glorias son
Polvo, humo, ceniza, y viento.

This is my conviction,

That, without the great God whom I seek,
Whom I adore, and whom I reverence,
All earthly glories are at best

But dust, smoke, ashes, and airy nothings.

* Tesoro del Teatro Espanol.

This reminds one of that beautiful passage which occurs in "Festus," by our own poet, Bailey—a passage which cannot be too widely read and pondered over, so true and so pregnant with meaning is it:

"Poetry is in itself a thing of God.

He made his prophets poets: and the more
We feel of poesy do we become

Like God in love and power-under makers.
All great lays, equals to the minds of men,
Deal more or less with the Divine, and have
For end some good of mind or soul of man.
The mind is this world's; but the soul is God's:
The wise man joins them here all in his power.
The high and lofty works, mid lesser lays,
Stand up like churches among village cots:
And it is joy to think that, in every age,
However much the world was wrong therein,
The greatest works of mind or hand have been
Done unto God. So may they ever be!

It shews the strength of wish we have to be great,
And the sublime humility of might."

In the "Autos Sacramentales" of Calderon, the sweet verses of Fray Luis de Leon, and many other Spanish authors, though tinctured with the prejudices and superstitions—the affectation and bombast-of the age in which they were written, many traces of sincerity are to be found, which show that the spirit of these lines of a later poet was well known long before to those of another land.

In Calderon's drama of "The Exaltation of the Cross," occurs this highly poetic idea:-"The glorious cross, placed as a rainbow of peace between the wrath of heaven and the sins of the world."* There is a verse by the same author that, having read a long time ago, I invariably recollect when it happens, as no doubt is the case with all of us, that I receive a note with strict injunctions to keep the contents secret and burn the writing:

A thousand times, says Calderon,

The man may evil know,
Who, foolish as a pebble stone

That knows the hand by which 'tis thrown,

And not for whom the blow,

Entrusts a secret thought or word

Unto a paper's care;

For men may make the frail record

Serve purposes the most abhorred,

A thousand to ensnare.

Garcilaso de la Vega, I find, according to some authorities, was born in 1503, and in 1500 according to others, at Toledo, of a

* El madero soberano,
Iris de paz, que se puso
Entro las iras del cielo
Y los delitos del mundo.

LA EXALTACION DE LA CRUZ.

noble family. He was early distinguished for his wit and fancy, wrote a number of pathetic pastorals and sonnets, and did much towards reforming that taste for bombast which, at the period in which he flourished, disfigured the productions of his countrymen. He was the friend and rival of Boscan, (who survived him by five or six years), the disciple of Petrarch and Virgil, and the man who contributed most towards the introduction of Italian taste into Spain. Although designed by nature for a rural life, and although his poems invariably manifest the benevolence and the extreme mildness of his character, his brilliant but troubled life was passed amidst the turmoils of a camp. He attended Charles V. in many of his hazardous expeditions, and fell in battle in 1536. The emperor dispatched him to attack a fortified tower defended by a number of peasant "arcabuceros." Garcilaso intrepidly mounted the breach, when he received a heavy stone upon the head, from the effects of which he died in a few days, at the age of 33. "But though his life was so short," says a Spanish historian, "his name shall endure while the Spanish language remains. The enthusiasm of his time gave him the title of prince of Spanish poets: posterity has confirmed it, and his works are known and read by all that are lovers of our language and poetry."

The poems of this writer, remarks Sismondi, present few traces of his active and troubled life. His delicacy, his sensibility, and his imagination remind us of Petrarch. His poems when collected form only a single small volume; but such is the power of harmonious language when accompanied by harmony of thought, that the few poems of Garcilaz de la Vega have secured him an immortal reputation and gained him the first rank amongst the lyric and pastoral poets of his nation.

I cannot forbear making the following extract from Wiffen's admirable rendering of one of his most famous eclogues, written at Naples, where Garcilaso felt inspired at once by the spirit of Virgil and Sanazzaro. The portion which I have chosen is expressive of the grief of Vemeroso, a shepherd, at the death of his shepherdess :

"As at the set of sun the shades extend,

And when its circle sinks, that dark obscure
Rises to shroud the world, on which attend
The images that set our hair on end,

Silence, and shapes mysterious as the grave,

Till the broad sun sheds, once more, from the wave

His lively lustre, beautiful and pure;

Such shapes were in the night, and such ill gloom,

At thy departure: still tormenting fear

Haunts, and must haunt, me, until death shall doom
The so much wish'd for sun to re-appear

Of thine angelic face, my soul to cheer,
Resurgent from the tomb.

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Poor lost Eliza! Of thy locks of gold,
One treasured ringlet in white silk I keep
For ever at my heart, which when unroll'd,
Fresh grief and pity o'er my spirit creep:

And my insatiate eyes, for hours untold,
O'er the dear pledge will like an infant weep:
With sighs, more warm than fire, anon I dry
The tears from off it-number, one by one,
The radiant hairs—and with a love-knot tie:
Mine eyes, this duty done,

Give over weeping, and, with slight relief,
I taste a short forgetfulness of grief."

Some of the poems of Fray Luis de Leon, who was born in 1527, are very sweet and intellectual. They are like soft and delicious music that springs from the heart and goes direct to the heart. His third ode, "Noche Serena," is very beautiful. The translation of three verses here given, appeared, some years ago, in Chambers' Journal:

O! wake! ye mortals, wake,

Ere by your fatal negligence betrayed:
Behold your souls at stake;-

Souls for such glory made,

Ah! can they live on glitter and in shade ?*

Above, O! raise your eyes,

To yon eternal-yon celestial spheres;
And soon will you despise

The vanity and tears

Of life, with all its hopes and all its fears.

O! meads more blest than earth!
Pastures of true refreshment, ne'er to cease!
O! mines of richest worth!

O! fields of sweet increase!

O! dear retiring vales of pure celestial peace!

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is well known as the author of Don Quixote; by which work he desired to reform the taste and opinions of his countrymen, and to ridicule that adventurous heroism which had its evil consequences, and which was the source of innumerable novels on knight errantry. The beginning of the work was, at first, coldly received; but it soon met with the greatest applause. Still its extraordinary good fortune did not extend to the author, who struggled on for many years, with nothing to console him in his poverty but his genius and a consciousness of his own merit.

While it has been remarked, with justice, that no work of any language every exhibited a more exquisite or a more sprightly satire, or a happier vein of invention worked with more striking success; it has been said, with equal truth, that the Don Quixote is the most melancholy book that was ever written, looked at from another point of view. It is a wet blanket thrown over enthusiasm. The hero is described as of the most elevated and refined mind,

* O! despertad, mortales,

Mirad con atencion en vuestro dano!

Las almas inmortales,

Hechas á bien tamano,

Podrán vivir de sombras y de engano ?—NOCHE Serena.

making it the object of his life, at whatever personal sacrifice, to aid the oppressed, to defend the weak, and to be the champion of virtue and innocence. In all his adventures he meets with determined ill success. His most generous enterprises result only in blows and bruises. His most disinterested actions often serve to injure those whom he intended to succour, and whose wrongs he came to redress; an accomplished and brave man, he is the constant object of ridicule; discovering everywhere the reflection of those virtues which he worshipped, firmly believing that disinterestedness, nobility, courage, and chivalry, were still in existence, he exposed himself to difficulties and distresses of every kind-not only to mortal but to supernatural terrors, and sacrificed himself to laws and principles which carried too far become imaginary.

Whilst the madness of Don Quixote consists in pursuing too much that philosophy which is only the offspring of lofty minds, his Squire, Sancho Panza, rushes into the opposite extreme, in taking for his guide a cautiousness and prudence practical and calculating, on which the proverbs of all nations are founded. If enthusiasm suffers in the character of the exalted Don, egotism is lashed severely in that of his vulgar Squire one is full of the prosaic element, the other of the poetical.

At the same time that we cannot rise from the perusal of this extraordinary work without seeing the moral so forcibly conveyed; that a high degree of enthusiasm may not only be prejudicial to him who possesses and nourishes it, and who is thus resolved to sacrifice himself to others; but that it is equally dangerous to society, the spirit and institutions of which it throws into disorder, when used without judgment. At the same time that this is impressed upon our minds, it is equally evident that the satire is without bitterness. The author of the ridicule as well as those against whom it is directed are capable of high feeling and generosity. "Every enthusiastic mind, like that of Cervantes, readily joins in pleasantry which does not spare the individual himself, nor that which he most loves and respects, if at the same time it does not degrade him."*

The illusions of virtue, the self sacrifices of heroism, are the most affecting and the noblest themes in the history of the human race. They are the subjects of the highest species of poetry, which is nothing but the representation of disinterested feelings. A work seriously and logically attempting to disprove them would be as melancholy as degrading to humanity. A disbelief in the high and excellent deprives a man of the purest pleasures, and infallibly sinks him lower in proportion as he exercises it. Well has Mr. Langford said, in his "Age of Gold,"—

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