ever seek any intercourse with them until they have them absolutely in their power. Indulging only emotions of love and of jealousy in their harems, they seem in every other place to forget the existence of the sex. The manners of the Spaniards are entirely opposite. Their whole lives are consecrated to gallantry. Every individual is enamoured of some woman who is not in his power, and makes no scruple of entering into the most indelicate intrigues to gratify his passions. The most virtuous heroines make assignations in the nighttime, at their chamber windows; they receive and write billets; and they go out masked to meet their lovers in the house of a third person. So completely is this gallantry supported by the spirit of chivalry, that when a married woman is pursued by her husband, or by her father, she invokes the first person whom she chances to meet, without knowing him or disclosing herself to him. She requests him to protect her from her impertinent pursuers, and the stranger thus called upon, cannot, without dishonoring himself, refuse to draw his sword to procure for this unknown female a liberty perhaps criminal. He, however, who thus hazards his life to secure the flight of a coquette, who has himself made many assignations and written billets, would be seized with unappeasable fury if he discovered that his own sister had inspired any person with love, had entertained that passion for another, or had taken any of those liberties which are authorized by universal custom. Such a circumstance would be a sufficient motive in his eyes to put to death both his sister and the man who had ventured to speak to her of love.

The theatre of Spain everywhere affords us examples of the practical application of this singular law of honor. Besides various pieces of Lope de Vega, many of those of Calderon, and amongst others the Lady Spectre and The Devotion of the Cross, place in the clearest light the contrast between the jealous fury of a husband or a brother, and the protection which they themselves afford to any masked damsel who may ask it; who, as it often happens, is one of the identical persons they would have the greatest desire to restrain if they had known her. But the argument which a Castilian philosopher advances against these sanguinary manners, in a comedy of an anonymous author of the Court of Philip VI. is still more extraordinary. A judge is speaking of a husband who has put his wife to death:

Our worldly laws he has obey'd,

But not those laws which God has made.

My other self, now, is my wife;
It is then clear, that if my life
I must not take, I cannot do
That violence to her. 'Tis true,
Man very rarely can control

The impulse which first moves his soul.*

A singular morality, which would prohibit murder, only when it resembles suicide!

In Lo Cierto por lo Dudoso† of Lope de Vega, Donna Juana prefers Don Henry to his brother the king, Don Pedro. To him she remains constant in spite of the passion of the monarch, who was neither less amiable, less young, nor less captivating. She endeavors in various ways to make known her attachment to Don Henry; and at last, when the king is on the point of receiving her hand, she begs to speak to him alone, hoping to free herself from him by a singular artifice.

JUANA. Don Pedro, I have ventured to confide
In your known valor and your generous wisdom,
To speak with you thus frankly. You must know,
Don Henry did address me, and I answer'd
His suit, though with a grave and modest carriage.
Never from him heard I unfitting words;
Never from him did I receive a line

Trenching upon mine honor; yet, believe me,
If I have answer'd not your love, I have
A deeper motive than you think of. Listen!
But no! how can I tell such circumstances,
And yet the hazard only may be blamed-
Doth not my cheek grow pale?
Juana, I am lost! my love begets

THE KING. Oh, I am lost!

A thousand strange chimeras. What shall I
Believe of this thy treachery-of thy honor?
Oh speak, nor longer torture me; I know
The hazards wherewith lovers are environ'd.

JUANA. I seek choice words, and the disguise of rhetoric,
And yet the simple truth will best excuse me.
I and Don Henry (he was speaking to me)
Descended the great staircase of the palace-

I cannot tell it will you let me write it?

THE KING. No, tarry not, my patience is exhausted.
JUANA. I said we did descend the staircase.-No,

Not the doom'd criminal can be more moved

* El montañes Juan Pasqual, y primer assistente de Sevilla, de un in

genio de la corte.

Complio con duelos del mundo

Mas no con leyes del cielo ;

Mi muger es otro yo:

Y pues yo a mi no me debo

Dar la muerte, claro està
Que a ella tampoco. Ya veo
Que raro es el que es señor
De su primer movimiento.

† [This Drama has been lately revived and acted at Madrid.-Tr.]

Than I am at this tale.

THE KING. In God's name, hasten!

THE KING. You torture me.
THE KING. Oh, end the tale!

JUANA. Wait but a little while.
JUANA. Nay, I will tell you all.
My blood creeps through each artery drop by drop.
JUANA. Alas! my lord, my crime was very light.
Well, Henry then approach'd me.

THE KING. Well! and then?

JUANA. His mouth ('twas by some fatal accident)
Met mine. Perchance he only sought to speak;
But in the obscurity of night he did
Unwittingly do this discourtesy.

Now then you know the hidden fatal reason
Why I can never be your wife.

THE KING. I know,

Juana, that this tale is the mere coinage

Of your own brain. I know too, that Don Henry
Hath not yet sought his exile, that he lingers
In Seville, plotting how to injure me.

I know that they will say it ill becomes
One of my rank to struggle for your love;
That wise men and that fools will all agree
In telling me I have forgot my honor.
But I am wounded. Jealousy and love
Have blinded me; I equally despise
The wise man and the fool, and only seek
To satisfy the injury I feel.

Vengeance exists not undebased with fury,
Nor love untainted by the breath of folly.
This night will I assassinate Don Henry,
And he being dead, I will espouse thee. Then
Thou never canst compare his love with mine.
'Tis true that while he lives I can't espouse thee,
Seeing that my dishonor lives in him

Who hath usurp'd the place reserved for me;
But while I thus avenge this crime, I feel
That it hath no reality, and yet

Though thine adventure be all false, invented
To make me yield my wishes and renounce
My marriage, it suffices that it hath

Been only told to me, to seal my vengeance;
Or if love makes me credit aught of it,
Henry shall die and I will wed his widow;
Then though the tale thou tellest were discover'd,
Thine honor and mine own will be uninjur'd.

It is neither a tyrant nor a madman who speaks. Don Pedro resolves to commit fratricide, not like a monster, but like a Spaniard, delicate upon the point of honor. He dispatches assassins by different routes to discover his brother. In the meantime, Don Henry marries Juana; and the King, when he thus finds the evil without remedy and his honor unimpaired, pardons the two lovers.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CONTINUATION OF LOPE DE VEGA.

It is not merely on his own account that our farther attention is directed to the poet whom Spain has designated as the phoenix of men of genius. Lope de Vega merits our attention still more, as having exhibited and displayed the spirit of his own age, and as having powerfully influenced the taste of succeeding centuries. After a long interruption to the dramatic art, and a silence of fifteen hundred years, on the theatres of Greece and Rome, Europe was suddenly surprised with the renewal of theatrical representations, and turned to them with delight. In every quarter the drama now revived; the eyes as well as the mind sought a gratification in the charms of poetry, and genius was required to give to its creations action and life. In Italy, tragedy had been already cultivated by Trissino, Rucellai, and their imitators, during the whole of the sixteenth century, but without obtaining any brilliant success or attracting the admiration of the spectators; and it was solely during the period which corresponds to the life of Lope de Vega, (1562-1635,) that the only dramatic attempts of which Italy has reason to boast before those of Alfieri, appeared. The Amyntas of Tasso was published in 1572; the Pastor Fido in 1585; and the crowd of pastoral dramas which seemed to be the only representation adapted to the national taste of a people deprived of their independence, and of all military glory, were composed in the years which preceded or immediately followed the commencement of the seventeenth century. In England, Shakspeare was born two years after Lope de Vega, and died nineteen years before him, (15641616.) His powerful genius raised the English theatre, which had its birth a few years before, from a state of extreme barbarism, and bestowed on it all the renown which it possesses. In France, Jodelle, who is now regarded as a rude author, had given to French tragedy those rules and that spirit which she has preserved in her maturity, even before the birth of Lope de Vega (1532 to 1573). Garnier, who was the first to polish it, was a contemporary of Lope. The great Corneille, born in 1606, and Rotrou, born in 1609, at

tained to manhood before the death of Lope. Rotrou had, before that event, given eleven or twelve pieces to the theatre; but Corneille did not publish the Cid until a year after the death of the great Spanish dramatist. In the midst of this universal devotion to dramatic poetry, we may well imagine the astonishment and surprise produced by one who seemed desirous of satisfying himself the theatrical wants of all Europe; one whose genius was never exhausted in touching and ingenious invention; who produced comedies in verse with more ease than others wrote sonnets; and who, during the period that the Castilian tongue was in vogue, filled at one and the same moment, with pieces of endless variety, all the theatres of the Spanish dominions, and those of Milan, Naples, Vienna, Munich, and Brussels. The influence which he could not win from his age by the polish of his works, he obtained by their number. He exhibited the dramatic art as he had conceived it, in so many different manners, and under so many forms, to so many thousands of spectators, that he naturalized and established a preference for his style, irrevocably decided the direction of Spanish genius in the dramatic art, and obtained over the foreign stage a considerable influIt is felt in the plays of Shakspeare and of his immediate successors; and is to be traced in Italy during the seventeenth century, but more particularly in France, where the great Corneille formed himself on the Spanish school; where Rotrou, Quinault, Thomas Corneille, and Scarron, gave to the stage scarcely any other than pieces borrowed from Spain; and where the Castilian names and titles and manners were for a long time in exclusive possession of the theatre.

ence.

The pieces of Lope de Vega are seldom read; they have not, to my knowledge, been translated, and they are rarely met with in detached collections of Spanish plays. The original edition of his pieces is to be found only in two or three of the most celebrated libraries in Europe.* It is, therefore, necessary to regard more closely a man who attained such eminent fame; who exercised so powerful and durable an influence not only over his native country, but over all Europe, and over ourselves; and with whom we have, nevertheless, little acquaintance, and whom we know only by name. I am aware that extracts from pieces, often monstrous, and always rudely sketched, may probably disgust

* There is a copy in the Bibliotheque Royale at Paris, but the fifth and sixth volumes are wanting.