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LITERATURE OF THE ITALIANS.

glory and the lost liberties of Florence. I have heard her compose a fragment of a tragedy, on a subject which the tragic poets had never touched, so as to give an idea in a few scenes of the plot and the catastrophe; and lastly I have heard her pronounce, confining herself to the same given rhymes, five sonnets on five different subjects. But it is necessary to hear her, in order to form any idea of the prodigious power of this poetical eloquence, and to feel convinced that a nation in whose heart so bright a flame of inspiration still burns, has not yet accomplished her literary career, but that there still perhaps remain in reserve for her greater glories than any which she has as yet acquired.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Origin of the Spanish Language and Poetry. Poem of the Cid.

WE may be considered as making the tour of Europe for the purpose of examining, nation by nation, and country by country, the effect which was produced by the mixture of the two great races of men, the northern and the southern. We are thus present, as it were, at the birth of the modern languages, and of that genius and literature with which they were accompanied. We remark the local circumstances which modified each simultaneous developement. We behold the formation of national taste and genius; and we are enabled to understand in what manner each nation of Europe created a literature which differed from the rest, not only in the rules which it laid down, but likewise in the object which it proposed to itself, and in the means which it took to secure the accomplishment of that object. Having already traversed Provence, the North of France, and Italy, we now arrive at Spain; and in proportion as we advance, the difficulty of our task increases. With the language of which we are now about to treat, we are not so familiarly ac

quainted as with the Italian, nor is it indeed generally known. Spanish books, moreover, are rare in France and difficult to be procured; and there are scarcely any of the writers in that language whose works have been translated, and whose fame has become general throughout Europe. The Germans alone have studied the literary history of Spain with zeal and attention; and, notwithstanding the efforts I have made to procure the original authors in the most celebrated libraries of those Italian towns over which Spanish princes have reigned, I shall yet be compelled occasionally to form my judgment on the credit of other writers, and to consult the German authors, Boutterwek, Dieze, and Schlegel. The number of Spanish writers, also, is very considerable, and their fecundity is most appalling. For example, there are more dramas in the Spanish, than in all the other languages of Europe put together; and it cannot be allowed us to judge of these compositions by specimens chosen by chance from the bulk. The very peculiar national taste of the Spaniards likewise augments the difficulty we feel in becoming acquainted with them. The literature of the nations upon which we have hitherto been employed, and of those of which we have yet to treat, was European: the literature of Spain, on the contrary, is decidedly oriental. Its spirit, its pomp, its object, all belong to another sphere of ideas-to another world.

We must become perfectly familiar with it before we can pretend to judge of it, and nothing could be more unjust than to estimate by our notions of poetry, which the Spaniards neither know nor regard, works which have been composed upon absolutely different principles.

On the other hand, the literature of Spain will amply repay the labour which an examination of it requires. This brave and chivalrous nation, whose pride and dignity have passed into a proverb, is reflected in its literature, in which we may delight to find all the distinctive traits which characterise the part which the Spaniards have acted in Europe. The same nation which opposed so strong a barrier to the Saracen invaders, which maintained for five centuries its civil and religious liberties, and which, after it had lost both the one and the other, under Charles V. and his successors, seemed desirous of burying both Europe and the New World under the ruins of its own constitution, has also displayed in its literature, the loftiness and grandeur of its character, and the power and richness of its imagination. In its early poems, we again behold the heroism of its ancient knights; and in the poets of its brightest age, we recognize the magnificence of the court of Charles V.; when the same men who led armies from victory to victory likewise held the first rank in the empire of letters. Even in the universal decay which

succeeded, we behold the loftiness of the Spanish character. The poets of later times sunk under the weight of their riches, and yielded to the strength of their own efforts, less for the purpose of vanquishing others, than of surpassing themselves.

The literature of Spain manifests itself in sudden and fitful lights. We admire it for an instant, and it is again lost in obscurity; but these glimpses always induce a desire to see more of it. The first tragic writer of the French stage borrowed his grandeur from the Spaniards; and, after the Cid, which he imitated from Guillen de Castro, many tragi-comic pieces and chivalric dramas transport us into Spain. The celebrated romancewriter, Le Sage, has displayed all the gaiety of a Spaniard's genius; and Gil Blas, though the production of a Frenchman, is completely Spanish in manners, in spirit, and in action. Don Quixote is well known to every nation as one of the most animated, witty, and pleasant satires in the world. A few novels translated by M. de Florian, and some dramatic pieces which Beaumarchais has adapted to our stage from the Spanish, have once more awakened our curiosity with regard to this peculiar country, yet without satisfying it; and its literature is still very little known to the French.

At the period of the subversion of the empire of the West, during the reign of Honorius, Spain