He went to England, and, under the protec- | with only Free Will her attendant. Here comes tion of old Oliver, printed three Hebrew Bibles in his own house. [Fr. Joze de Natividade.] Published Terremoto Destruedo, ou Esaido celestial contra os Torremotos, Peste-Rayos, Trovoês e Tempestades. 1757. La Divina Semana. the tale of Apuleius-a mountain opens and the palace of the New Jerusalem appears, where Faith-the Psyche of this Cupid—is hymned as mistress; but no one is seen. Faith gives Free Will a candle to search about and find somebody. Cupid blows out the candle, and promises Psyche that she shall for ever enjoy that palace and him, and that all the nations of the earth, yea Gentile and Jew and her sisters shall one day serve her, and that she shall have bread and wine for food if she will love him and never I HAVE not yet read this poem; it must inev-seek to see his face, for seen he will not be. itably be worthless. The first chapter of Genesis will not bear a paraphrase; it cannot be lengthened without exhibiting the minutiæ; it cannot be particularized without becoming ridiculous. Calderon. El Arbol del Mejor Fruto. "WHO wrote this Auto?" says one of the characters in the Loa-the prelude. "Quien sabe, que no es errár errár por obedezer." ace. May she see her fathers and sisters? Yes, Cu pid will even send doctors and saints and preachers to invite them and importune them to see her. The ship is wrecked-Old World and his family escape by swimming and come to the palThey see their sister, hear of her happiness, envy and ensnare her. It is a serpent that is her Lord and love, and Synagogue reminds her of what tricks the serpent played in Genesis. Apostacy succeeds in tempting her to the trial, and she promises him if Cupid be not God to be his. Free Will brings the candle, the fatal light of enquiry. Cupid awakes in wrath-the palace is destroyed, and Faith left to her punishment, but she repents, confesses, and Cupid re Perhaps this was designed to apologize for the appears with the Pix and the Cup, the precious absurdities of writing a mystery. Psyche and Cupid. gift of his body and blood. CALDERON has another Auto upon the same subject, the characters differently named, but with little variation of story. He says in his ject and one set of characters. The more merit, then, if he resembles Nature, who with eyes, nose and mouth, makes so many faces, and no two alike. OLD World has three daughters, Idolatry the eldest, married to Gentile, Emperor of the East. Synagogue the second, married to Jew the emi-preface that in all his plays there is but one subgrant, and Faith, a virgin. She the youngest and the most beautiful, is courted by Apostacy, King of the North, but her affections are given to one whom she has never yet seen, Love, the sacramented God. Apostacy says that he has this Love God in his breast, and threatens her on her rejecting him, for Old World her father favours his suit. As he is running after her and her servant Free Will to detain them, Cupid enters with a white veil on, to protect her; Apostacy struggles with him, and roars out in the torments of an inward fire so as to alarm the family. Cupid avows himself to be God the maker of the world. Old World will not believe that Cupid made him, and advances to pull off his veil and see him, but he is stopt by some unseen power. Idolatry and Gentile say that a God made the world, but that if it was him, he must be one of their deities. They get a little further than Old World and then stopt. Synagogue and Jew the emigrant say there is but one God the Creator, and they advance beyond Idolatry and Gentile, but that Cupid is him they deny-they stop. Apostacy confesses one God incarnate and precedes all-he asserts that that God cannot be in body and spirit behind the white veil-and then his power also ceascs. As they cannot get at Cupid, they vent their anger upon Faith, force perpetuated. Justice. IN the General Indulgence is a scene between the Prince, Justice and Mercy. The prince asks his companions, though he says he has no occasion to be informed, what he ought to grant his subjects; and by what means they might be best managed. Mercy says the subjects of a government ought to be born under it. Prince. They may be reborn-I give them baptism. Birth is not enough-they must be strengthened and grow up. I give them confirmation. Mercy. But if they feel sick some remedy must be provided. I will give them the physic of Repentance. Justice. But even if they recover, some-, thing is necessary to carry away the effects of the 'sickness. I grant them extreme unction. Mercy. With all these, Lord, you have provided, nothing to eat. They shall partake the Bread of Life in the Communion. Justice. But there must be a Tribunal to govern them-I appoint an order of Priests. But with all these favours they will die away, one by one-they should be I institute Matrimony-and it is her into a vessel, set sail with her upon the sea so important an institution-that I have just choof Tribulation, and turn her on a desert shoresen a wife myself! 180 CALDERON-JUAN YAGUE DE SALAS. The Food of Man. FATHER OF the family to his son Adam. "Get out of my house, you villain!" Adam begs in vain for himself, and his brother Emanuel begs as vainly for him, he is stripped of his wedding-garment-drest in vile skins awkwardly put together and turned out, and Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, are all called in and ordered to give him nothing but what he works for. Adam thus desolate and adrift, complains bitterly he gets upon an eminence and looks about him, and complains that he can see nobody, nor a village nor a house: as he is looking about his feet slip and he falls from a precipice. The Devil and an Angel run at once to catch him, and he falls into the arms of both, they quarrel for him, and the one calling Appetite and the other Reason to supply their places, both leave him. Adam soon quarrels with Reason and turns him off-and then he quarrels with Appetite because Appetite gives him nothing to eat, but he is much surprised that he cannot get rid of him as easily as he did of Reason. Appetite sticks to him in spite, and advises him to go a begging. He begs of Spring, and Spring gives him a spade-of Summer he gets a sickle —of Autumn a pruning-hook-of Winter a shepherd's staff, sorry alms!—and Appetite goes to hunt the fields for food, while poor Adam soliloquizes upon his hard lot, when trees, and fish, and fowl, and beasts grow and live without care. Reason comes to explain the cause of this difference, and with such effect, that when Appetite returns with some wild herbs, Adam abuses him: they fight, and Adam gets the better and turns him off. Reason then advises Adam to go to law with his father, who, he says, is obliged to find him food. An Angel is retained for him-the Devil counsel against the plaintiff, but Adam wins his cause and the father settles upon him Oil, Bread, Wine, and Lamb. Mount Olivet is to supply the oil, Emanuel the Lamb, the bread and wine is to be Emanuel's own body and blood -a scene opens and shows the Pix and the Cup -and so ends the Mystery. 5. Destruction of Jerusalem. Sifandino has now got it, and Marzilla takes prisoner his son Solipino. 6. Sifandino yields up the Holy City in exchange for Soliphino, and Frederic appoints Marzilla to the command of four gallies: and so ends the man's story. 146. A scandalous picture of Fame. 7. The Devil-a council below. P. 178, some puzzling reasoning of the old angel.—What now frightens him is the Friars on board; he had a great dread of a Franciscan establishment in Spain. P. 180, possibly seen by Milton “all is not lost!"-Clumsy mixture, making Pluto his majesty who sends off Satan. 186, the Merlin's cave almost of Spenser. 8. A storm, of course, and the Devil appears in angel's shape and orders them, Jonah-like, to throw over the Friars-which the pilot does before Marzilla has time to prevent it. Then the Devil laughs and prophesies much misery to Marzilla, and the marriage of Segura. The shipwreck. 9. Marzilla and one companion enter a cave of banditti, when they deliver the four friars and a lady called Felicia, whose bridegroom has just been killed. He convoys her to her father and there relates what happened to him in and after the storm-which indeed was so extraordinary as to be worth relating, this gentleman meeting the very same adventures as Ulysses had done before him. 10. Felicia falls in love with him and talks to her nurse. On making the discovery she is compared to a mother fainting at the news of her son's death. It is the most comical of similes, describing in seventy-two lines the whole anatomical process of a fit-and how she recovers at hearing the news is false-how the neighbours crowd round her, and when she is well go about their own business. Marzilla goes on with his history-his improvements upon the Odyssey are all that need be noted. A hermit gives him some goat-skin bags. He comes into a sea where the vessel is becalmed among an army of sea-monsters that approach to eat the crew. Then he blows these skins full and hangs them at the prow. The great fish tug at them taking them Juan Yague de Salas. for men, and so hawl on the vessel for four days Valencia, 1616. till it is out of danger-then he cuts the bags VERSO suelto-but each paragraph ends with away. a couplet. Los Amantes de Teruel. Canto 1. Four Franciscans mobbed at Genoa. Marzilla protects them. They relate the history of their Saint-somebody else the conquest of Spain by the Moors. 2. The recovery of Sobrarbe and some account of the Kings of Aragon and the families who peopled Teruel. 3. Marzilla and the Friars embark. His men relate how Marzilla and Segura loved and were separated-he going to seek his fortunes and she promising not to marry before seven years shall be expired. He went to Jerusalem with Frederic II. 4. History of the Jews and the wonders of Solomon's temple. 11. He tells the Cyclops that his name is I myself, and the same foolish blunder is made by the giants. Here he leaves Homer and follows Lucan. They arrive at the Syrtes. The Poet is well informed, but never man so catalogued all his knowledge. He describes the Sand Columns, temple of Jupiter Ammon and a speech of Marzilla meant as an improvement upon Cato's. O dog-dog-impudent beast brute! An 12. The serpents destroy his followers. other wreck, which leads him to the cave and concludes the story. Felicia's love increases. The story then hops to Teruel: seven years are gone, and two months and more and Segura is urged to marry. She earnestly longs to know JUAN YAGUE DE SALAS. 181 what is become of Marzilla, and Axa, her maid, they are buried in one grave; the Franciscans offers to show her. build a monastery in Teruel, go to Valencia and preach in a mosque. 13. All the crimes of Erictho are heaped upon this Arabian witch. First she shows all the descendants that are to be of Marzilla's family. Nothing was ever more quaintly absurd-Captains, Hidalgos, Secretaries, Deans, Archdeans, Professors, Fiscals, Priors, Abbots, Provincials, &c., &c., &c., Bishops, Archbishops, and one Pope. Then pass the dead comrades of Marzilla; then the three survivors and he himself sick in bed of Felicia, to whom he gives a ring. Mad with jealousy, Segura insists on being married. Açafra is her husband, and the ceremony is performed with all ill omens. 14. Marzilla dreams of Segura, and determines to depart. Felicia attempts to detain him. She says the given ring implies a promise of marriage. She prays-she imprecates upon him all the curses that have ever fallen upon man, enumerating as many as she can recollect in about 150 lines, from all authors, ancient and modern. 15. At that time when-we have fifty-four lines to say at what time-Segura was preparing for her marriage. She is working the story of Ariadne-p. 405, perhaps Beaumont and Fletcher had seen this poem. Great festivalsbull fights a mast erected with four varas of green taffety, twelve silver spoons (cucharas) and covered prizes for who can climb, and a pigeon to be shot at for a cross-bow. The mast has been well greased; one of the bulls which has fire on his horns runs against it and it is burnt. The best and bravest bull Marzilla kills -and discovers himself. Se 16. Disguised, Marzilla goes to the wedding supper, and hides himself in the bedroom. gura has vowed her wedding night to heaven, and Açafra goes to sleep. Marzilla speaks to her-upbraids her-all is explained-he begs a kiss, which she refuses-it is besought and denied with equal obstinacy, till he dies for grief. Açafra rises, and with her carries the corpse to his father's door, where they leave. A huge quarrel arises between his three friends for his sword—that Ovid may be imitated. They refer it to K. Jayme, then in Teruel, and he makes it the reward of which shall do best in the conquest of Valencia. 17. Segura wrapt up goes to the funeral, and gives Marzilla's corpse the kiss, in that act she dies, his life on hers, his hands in her grasp, 1 Bible and Prayer Book version, Psalm cix. J. W. W. 18. The Alfaquis complain to K. Zeyt Buzeyte of the missionaries, he sends for them, and they beg leave to talk to him: they give him a learned dissertation upon God, that there can be only one, and then comes the Trinity, the creation and the nature of man, all the absurd analogical whims of the day. Then they abuse the unalphabeted Mohammed, accusing him of idolatry among other crimes,—a character drawn with that scandalous ignorance, or more scandalous impudence of wilful falsehood, with which those writers have almost invariably treated the legislator of Arabia; the Moor hears them with much curiosity and more patience, and he sends them to prison, hearing that the enemy approach. 19. The Friars, Pedro and Juan, are brought out, and go on about the Trinity, which they prove by all absurd analogies, and the mystical way in which the declension of Jesus includes the word sum; when they have done, the king orders their heads to be cut off: Heaven opens and the angels carry them a crown a piece, and up they go to wear them. 20. K. Jayme went a hunting, and follows a boar into a cave, and finds an old Astrologer and hears a prophecy. 21. The prophecy goes on with the history of Aragon. Jayme takes several small towns in Valencia. 22. The siege of Valencia. 24. The city surrenders; then the three competitors for Marzilla's sword come to the king for sentence, he rewards them all, and takes the sword himself. 25. Three hundred and thirty years after the martyrdom of Friars Pedro and Juan, a Franciscan, Vicent Gomez, having been cured of a tertian by drinking well water which had wasted their relics, set about getting them canonized, for which laudable end he got an authentic account of their lives, deaths, and miracles at Valencia, and also another at Teruel, obtaining a commission from the Nuncio. Dirigida a Pedrellas Arcediano Por ser de la Ciudad el Secretario. Thus fortified with document, an embassy is dispatched to Rome; on the way they find a knight in bed in a castle, very bad with a quartan, a fine patient! out come the relics, and he takes a dose of the cold bone broth, with the proper texts from the four gospels. The cure is instant; overjoyed, he asked whose are the relics, and where they came from; from Teruel-Teruel, says he ian poetry. The revolution accepted in the re mainder of the provinces, and in the colonies. There ends the old man, and M. Thomas goes home and finds it all true. 5. Manoel Thomas goes to bed and sleeps. Morpheus comes to him, and goes on with the history. The proclamation of John, and the exploits of some Madeira-Portugueze; very sleepy work. No, said Friar Vicent, that proverb is true of the German Tyrol; but not of Teruel. If you will give me leave I will tell you a thousand excellencies of Teruel. So he relates all about it, how many parishes, churches, charities, &c., &c. 26. And moreover what great men have been Teruelites,- -a string of names; what relic riches the city possesses, this brings it round to Friars Pedro and Juan; some of their miracles are story-skirmishes-attempt on towns and all so related; the Knight is greatly delighted and unsuccessful that down went Envy to the Devil edified. The Friars proceed on their way to Rome, and the poem ends. The Constable makes a favourite metaphor with this poet; winter is the alguazil of the waters; Felicia's eyes are the alguazils of love; death is God's alguazil. Manoel Thomaz. He was quarto neto of the Manoel Thomas who at twenty-two months spoke Latin, and of whom Garcia de Resende speaks "Em Evora vi hum menino Que a dous annos nao chegava, E era ja bom Latino, Respondia, preguntava: Era de maravilhar Ver seu saber e fallar, Sendo de vinte e dous mezes, M. Thomas was born at Guimaraens-but his life was past at Madeira, where the son of a farrier killed him 1665, at the age of eighty. O Phænix da Lusitania, by Manoel Thomas. Book 1. A description of Europe and a history of Portugal. The tale of Inez de Castro told as much at length as by Camoens, and not worse, though quite badly enough. Much mythological or classical allusion. A full and sonorous verse, but no passage that detains with approbation. 2. He, the author, Manoel Thomas, takes a walk at Madeira, and comes to a cavern, and rings a bell, and follows an old man to a garden and a palace; and he complains to the old man about Portugal, and asks him when her oppressions shall cease, and the old man makes him look in a mirror, and then he sees the Terreiro do Paço and a great mob-and the old man shews him all the heroes who are to assist in delivering Portugal. The trisyllable rhyme often 6. M. Thomas slept so long that Morpheus wanted to leave him and go home, but before he went he brought old Tagus to go on with the provokes him, and off he sends Discord to the palace of the Buen Retiro-then she wakes Philip. He makes great preparation-and John sends to defend the frontier. The last stanza of each canto always speaks of the Phoenix-and usually it is the last line. 7. Skirmishes and battles. Old Tagus is a dull newsmonger. 8. M. Thomas is writing all that Tagus told after the old gentleman's departure-when a huge armed giant enters-so terrible to sight that he dropt the pen in fear. The apparition bade him go on, for he was Mars come from the fifth heaven to aid him and the Portugueze-he drops Manoel Thomas upon the Estralla mountain that he may see all. 9. Stanzas 5 and 7 true. 10. The cattle of Montijo. Stanza 42. A [Portuguese Language.] THE Latinistas condemn superlatives, such as bonissimo, malissimo, grandissimo, humildissimo, and insist upon the Latin anomalies, optimo, pessimo, maximo, humillimo, &c. This mode carried through the language, of trying Portugueze by Latin analogy, is one cause of the corruption of the language. Says ANTONIO DAS NEVES PEREIRA, "This people are not content that the Portugueze language, as daughter of the Latin, should have the flesh and the bones of the parent, but they would give her the skin, and the complection, and the features. A language all of grave and serious words," (says he,) "would be fit for a Carthusian convent, not for the mixed business and conversation of the world.” The Puristas excommunicate certain words capriciously. The extravagant praises lavished upon each other by Portugueze writers, produced disappointment in the reader and disgust, and ruined the flattered. Even now it is not very difficult to procure the original editions of the best authors, scattered as they are over Europe, so little national reading is there. As a language, the Portugueze has about a due proportion of vowels and consonants-bones enough for solidity, not all bone like the German. This eldest daughter of the Latin has been CAMOENS-VIEYRA-JUAN DE ESCOBAR. There is a fashion of language. The choice of expressions of the best authors in Portugueze, were aped affectedly in conversation; thus they became trite and vulgar. Fellows who could not ride Pegasus, made use of his trappings, and dirtied them, and wore them to rags and shabbiness. 183 the servant of the Goths and the slave of the made him lose his name, do not deserve to have Moors. their own mentioned. Of the commentators, Manoel Correa was too short, and Manoel de Faria too long. "But I," says DON FRANCIS MANOEL, "from my friendship think it short," though his trouble was not, for more than twenty years did he study this book. There are besides MSS. commentaries of Joao Pinto Ribeyro, and another of Ayres Correa, corrected by Frey FranAn affectation of French words has brought cisco do Monti. Besides, Camoens complains of the vernacular ones often into disuse, and the the Abbot Joao Soares, and the Sancristao Mapuppies of the day call the legitimate words of noel Pires, for an Apology and a Defence, "for the old authors, the "wells undefiled" of Por- which God forgive them!" "Are there more tugueze, gothic, and rusty, and obsolete. A Camoistas?" says LIPSIUS. Author. One RoFrench dictionary is now more necessary than a lim, and one Gallejos." Lipsius. "Both learnPortugueze, to enable our youth to understand ed men, as I have heard." Boccalini. Both, their native tongue. This alters the construc-like many of our time, very learned, que sempre tion of the sentences. The Portugueze is an in- sabem o que naõ importa." verted syntax, not difficultly perplexed, but well varied; the French, a straight-forward phraseology: thus translations have impoverished and debased the Portugueze. He treated the language like a man of genius, supplying its defects. To nouns only plural he gave a singular; changed the termination of proper names for the sake of euphony; lengthened, or abbreviated words, and made them from the Latin. "Sometimes," says ANTONIO DAS NEVES, "he abused this liberty, and coined words almost macarronic." He revived obsolete words also. These are merits which escape the notice of a foreigner. We look at Camoens as a dim-eyed man beholds a cathedral. He catches the general plan, and the stronger features; but the minuter parts, the numberless ornaments escape him he sees an arch indeed, but the capital and the frieze elude his eyesight; he beholds the battlements, but he cannot see the Caryatides that form them and their varying attitudes of beauty. We build with ready materials, but Camoens dug in the quarry, and hewed the stones for his edifice. Camoens called Barros his Ennius, and the frequent perusal of his Decades kindled his imagination. By studying the same author, Vieyra acquired his power of language. In the Hospital de Letras, Camoens is complaining of four translators and two commentators. The Bishop Thome de Faria, who translated him into such Latin that mais parece Romance Punico que Romano. But if one Faria lessened him, another as extremely magnified him,-Manoel Severem de Fana, in his life. Macedo was the other translator, who rather travestied than translated him. Besides these was a Castelhão, and a Franchinoti, who, as they 1 In the earlier extracts the MS. has almost invariably Camoes. J. W. W. 66 Besides, he complains that certain booksellers have had little conscience enough to bind him up with the Sylvia de Lizardo ! Vieyra. "LIKE Seneca, he corrupted the oratory of his countrymen, but not the language, which he alone enriched as much as all the poets."-FR. DIAS. Corrupted! Vieyra is the Jeremy Taylor of Portugal. Can the Arte de Furtar be his? It wants the flow, the fulness, the flood of language, the life, warmth, the animation of spirit. His is a rapid style; he runs, yet is never out of breath: it is a current that hurries you on. A compressed sententious language would, in a fourth part of the words, express the meaning: perhaps the reader would not gain time: he must pause and ponder as he proceeded, the galley may equal the speed of the brig, but the one sails easily along, and the other is impelled by the tug and the labour of arms. The Cid to his Sword. fasta la Cruz en mi pecho "TODOS cavalgan a mula, |