His reputation was more proportioned to his efforts than to his merit. He was translated and panegyrized in France and Italy, and out of Spain contributed to corrupt that taste which in his own country was in its last decline.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

DON PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA.

OUR attention is now called to a Spanish poet whom his fellow-countrymen have designated as the prince of dramatists, who is known to foreigners as the most celebrated in this class of literature, and whom some critics of Germany have placed above all dramatic writers of modern days. It would be improper to impeach with levity so high a reputation; and whatever my own opinion may be on the merits of Calderon, it is my duty to show in the first place the esteem in which he has been held by persons of the first distinction in letters, in order that the reader, in the extracts which I shall submit to him, may not give too much attention to national forms, often in opposition to our own; but that he may seek and feel the excellences of the author, and may arm himself against prejudices from which I am myself perhaps not exempt.

The life of Calderon was not very eventful. 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. After having finished his studies at the university, he remained some time attached to his patrons at court. He quitted them to enter into the army, and served during several campaigns in Italy and Flanders. Some time afterwards, King Philip IV., who was passionately attached to the drama, and who himself published many pieces which purported to be written, By a Wit of this Court: Un ingenio de esta Corte; having seen some pieces of Calderon, gave the author of them an appointment near his own person, presented him with the order of St. James, and attached him permanently to his court. From that time the plays of Calderon were represented with all the pomp which a rich monarch, delighting in such entertainments, had the power to bestow on them, and the Poet Laureate was often called on for occasional pieces on festive days at court. 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. Admired by his contemporaries, caressed by kings, and loaded with honours and more substantial benefits, he survived to a very great age. His friend Juan de Vera Tassis y Villaroel, having undertaken, in 1685, a complete edition of his dramatic works, Calderon authenticated all that are found in that collection. He died two years after, in his eighty-seventh year.

Augustus William Schlegel, who more than any person has contributed to the diffusion of Spanish literature in Germany, thus speaks of Calderon in his Lectures on the Drama. "At length appeared Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca, as fertile in genius and as diligent in writing as Lope, but a poet of a different kind; a true poet, indeed, if ever man deserved the name. For him, but in a superior degree, was renewed the admiration of nature, the enthusiasm of the public, and the dominion of the stage. The years of Calderon's age coincided with those of the seventeenth century. He was, therefore, sixteen years old when Cervantes died, and thirty-five at the time of the death of Lope, whom he survived nearly half a century. According to his biographers, Calderon wrote more than one hundred and twenty tragedies or comedies, more than a hundred sacred allegorical pieces (autos sacramentales), a hundred humorous interludes or saynetes, and many other pieces not dramatic. As he composed for the theatre from his fourteenth year to his eighty-first, we must distribute his productions through a long space of time, and there is no reason to suppose that he wrote with such wonderful celerity as Lope de Vega. He had sufficient time to mature his plans, which he did without doubt, but he must have acquired from practice great facility of execution.

art.

"In the almost countless number of his works, we find nothing left to chance; all is finished with the most perfect talent, agreeable to fixed principles, and to the first rules of This is undeniable, even if we should consider him as a mannerist in the pure and elevated romantic drama, and should regard as extravagant those lofty flights of poetry which rise to the extreme bounds of imagination. Calderon has converted into his own what served only as a model to his predecessors, and he required the noblest and most

delicate flowers to satisfy his taste. Hence he repeats himself often in many expressions, images, and comparisons, and even in dramatic situations, although he was too rich to borrow, I do not say from others, but even from himself. Theatrical perspective is in his eyes the first object of the dramatic art; but this view, so restricted in others, becomes positive in him. I am not acquainted with any dramatic author who has succeeded in an equal degree in producing that poetical charm which affects the senses at the same time that it preserves its ethereal essence.

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"His dramas may be divided into four classes; representations of sacred history, from Scripture or legends; historical pieces; mythological, or drawn from some poetical source; and, lastly, pictures of social life and modern manners. a strict sense we can only call those pieces historical which are founded on national events. Calderon has painted with great felicity the early days of Spanish history; but his genius was far too national, I may almost say too fiery, to adapt itself to other countries. He could easily identify himself with the sanguine natives of the South or the East, but in no manner with the people of classic antiquity, or of the North of Europe. When he has chosen his subjects from the latter, he has treated them in the most arbitrary manner. The beautiful mythology of Greece was to him only an engaging fable, and the Roman history a majestic hyperbole.

"Still, his sacred pieces must, to a certain extent, be considered as historical; for, although he has ornamented them with the richest poetry, he has always exhibited with great fidelity the characters drawn from the Bible and sacred history. On the other hand, these dramas are distinguished by the lofty allegories which he often introduces, and by the religious enthusiasm with which the poet, in those pieces which were destined for the feast of the Holy Sacrament, has illumined the universe, which he has allegorically painted with the purple flames of love. It is in this last style of composition that he has most excited the admiration of his contemporaries, and he himself also attached to it the greatest value."

I think it my duty to give a further extract from Schlegel on Calderon. No one has made more extensive researches into Spanish literature; no one has developed with more enthusiasm the nature of this romantic poetry, which it is not just to submit to austere rules; and his partiality has

added to his eloquence. The passage I am about to translate has been highly extolled in Germany. I shall, in my turn, present Calderon under another aspect; but that under which his admirers have viewed him must still be allowed to possess a degree of truth.

"Calderon served in several campaigns in Flanders and in Italy; and, as a knight of St. James, performed the military duties of that order until he entered into the church; by which he manifested how much religion had been the ruling sentiment of his life. If it be true that a religious feeling, loyalty, courage, honour, and love are the basis of romantic poetry, it must in Spain, born and nourished under such auspicious circumstances, have attained its highest flight. The imagination of the Spaniards was as daring as their spirit of enterprise; and no adventure was too perilous for them. At an earlier period the predilection of the nation for the most incredible wonders had been manifested in the chivalric romances. These they wished to see repeated on the stage; and as at this epoch the Spanish poets had attained the highest point of art and social perfection, had infused a musical spirit into their poetry, and purifying it of every thing material and gross, had left only the choicest colours and odours, there resulted an irresistible charm of contrast between the subject and its composition. The spectators imagined they again saw on the stage a revival of that national glory, which, after having threatened the whole world, was now become half extinct, whilst the ear was gratified by a novel style of poetry, in which were combined all the harmony of the most varied metres, elegance, genius, and a prodigality of images and comparisons which the Spanish tongue alone permitted. The treasures of the most distant zones were in poetry, as in reality, imported to satisfy the mother-country, and one may assert that, in this poetic empire, as in the terrestrial one of Charles V., the sun

never set.

"Even in the plays of Calderon which represent modern manners, and which for the most part descend to the tone of common life, we feel ourselves influenced by a charm of fancy which prevents us from regarding them as comedies, in the ordinary sense of the word. The comedies of Shakspeare are composed of two parts, strangers to each other: the comic part, which is always conformable to English manners,

because the comic imitation is drawn from well-known and local circumstances; and the romantic part, which is derived from the stage of the South, as his native soil was not in itself sufficiently poetical. In Spain, on the contrary, national manners might be regarded in an ideal point of view. It is true that would not have been possible if Calderon had introduced us into the interior of domestic life, where its wants and habits reduce every thing to narrow and vulgar limits. His comedies conclude, like those of the ancients, with marriage, but differ from them wholly in the antecedent part. In these, in order to gratify sensual passions and interested views, the most immoral means are often employed; the persons, with all the powers of their mind, are only physical beings, opposed to one another, seeking to take advantage of their mutual weaknesses. In those, a passionate sentiment prevails which ennobles all that it surrounds, because it attaches to all circumstances an affection of the mind. Calderon presents to us, it is true, his principal personages of both sexes in the first effervescence of youth, and in the confident anticipation of all the joys of life; but the prize for which they contend, and which they pursue, rejecting all others, cannot in their eyes be exchanged for any other good. Honour, love, and jealousy are the ruling passions. Their noble struggles form the plot of the piece, which is not entangled by elaborate knavery and deceit. Honour is there a feeling which rests on an elevated morality, sanctifying the principle without regard to consequences. It may by stooping to the opinions and prejudices of society become the weapon of vanity, but under every disguise we recognize it. as the reflection of refined sentiment. I cannot suggest a more appropriate emblem of the delicacy with which Calderon represents the sentiment of honour, than the fabulous trait narrated of the ermine, which, rather than suffer the whiteness of its fur to be soiled, resigns itself to its pursuers. This refined sentiment equally predominates in the female characters of Calderon, and overrules the power of love, who only ranks at the side of honour and not above it. According to the sentiments which the poet professes, the honour of woman consists in confining her love to an honourable man, loving him with pure affection, and allowing no equivocal attentions, inconsistent with the most severe feminine dignity. This love demands an inviolable secrecy, until a legal union per