Yriarte also wrote a didactic poem on music, which obtained a considerable reputation ; but which, notwithstanding the poetical ornaments with which the author has occasionally interspersed it, is, in the scientific portion of it, little more than rhymed prose.

Boutterwek, in conclusion, celebrates, as a favourite of the Graces, and as a poet worthy of the best times of Spanish literature, Juan Melendez Valdes, who is, probably, still alive, and who, at the close of the last century, was Doctor of Laws in Salamanca. His poems were printed at Madrid, in two volumes, octavo, 1785. From his youth he was a follower of Horace, Tibullus, Anacreon, and Villegas; and, if he has not attained the voluptuous grace of the last, he has still adorned his poetry with a moral delicacy, to which Villegas had little pretension. The pleasures, the pains, and the joys of love, the festivals, the leisure, and the tranquil hours of a country life, are the subjects which Melendez delighted to celebrate. His lively and romantic genius would characterise him as a Spaniard; but the turn of his thoughts is more allied to England and Germany. Some of his idyls have all the grace of Gessner, joined to the harmonious language of the South. I shall annex in a note, an example from Boutterwek;* and this is the last specimen of Spanish poetry which I shall present to the reader.

We shall here close the history which we proposed to give of the literature of Spain; and it is with regret that we perceive the brilliant illusions which illustrious names and chivalric manners at first excited in us, successively vanishing from our eyes. The poem of the Cid first presented itself to us amongst the Spanish works, as the Cid himself amongst

* The following is an idyl of Melendez:

Siendo yo niño tierno,
Con la niña Dorila,
Me andaba por la selva
Cogiendo florecillas,
De que alegres guirnaldas
Con gracia peregrina
Para ambos coronarnos
Su mano disponia.
Así en niñeces tales
De juegos y delicias
Pasábamos felices
Las horas y los dias.
Con ellos poco a poco
La edad corrió de prisa,

Y á mi, de solo hablarla
Tambien me daba risa.
Luego al darle las flores
El pecho me latia,
Y al ella coronarme
Quedabase embebida.
Una tarde tras esto
Vimos dos tortolillas
Que con tremulos picos
Se halagaban amigas.
Alentónos su exemplo,
Y entre honestas caricias,
Nos contamos turbados
Nuestras dulces fatigas.

麗麗

Y fué de la inocencia
Saltando la malicia.

Yo no sé; mas al verme
Dorila se reia,

Y en un punto, qual sombra
Voló de nuestra vista

La niñes; mas en torno
Nos dió el amor sus dichas.

the heroes of Spain; and after him we find nothing in any degree equalling either the noble simplicity of his real character, or the charm of the brilliant fictions of which he is the subject. Nothing that has since appeared can justly demand our unqualified admiration. In the midst of the most brilliant efforts of Spanish genius, our taste has been continually wounded by extravagance and affectation, or our reason has been offended by an eccentricity often bordering on folly. It is impossible to reconcile the alliance of so rich an imagination with so whimsical a taste, and such an elevation of soul with so great a perversion of truth. It may be observed that we have seen the Italians fall into the same error; but they retrieved their reputation, and the age which gave birth to Metastasio, Goldoni, and Alfieri, may, if it does not rival that of Ariosto and Tasso, at least bear a comparison with it without humiliation. But the feeble efforts of Luzan, of la Huerta, of Yriarte, and of Melendez, the only boast of their nation for a whole century, convince us how low their country has fallen. The inspiration of the earlier ages is extinct, and modern culture has been too imperfect, and too restricted, to supply the place of those riches no longer accorded by genius. The Italians had three periods of letters, divided by two long intervals of rest; that of original vigour, when Dante seemed to draw his inspiration from the force and plenitude of his own sentiments; that of classical taste, when the study of the ancients presented new treasures to Ariosto and to Tasso; and lastly, that of reason and mind devoted to the arts, when the elevation of thought and manly eloquence of Alfieri, and the exquisite observation of Goldoni, atone for the want of that fervent imagination which began to be exhausted. But the literature of Spain has, strictly speaking, only one period, that of chivalry. Its sole riches consist in its ancient honour and frankness of character. Its imagination is supported only by its ignorance, and creates prodigies, adventures, and intrigues in abundance, as long as it feels itself unrestrained by the bounds of the possible and the probable. Spanish literature shines forth in all its splendour in the ancient Castilian romances; all the fund of sentiments, ideas, images, and adventures, of which she afterwards availed herself, is to be found in this original treasure. Boscan and Garcilaso, indeed, gave it a new form, but not a new substance and a new life. The same thoughts, the same romantic sentiments are found

in these two poets and in their school, with the addition only of a new dress and a form almost Italian. The Spanish drama awoke; and, for the third time, this primitive source of adventures, images, and sentiments, was brought into action in a new shape. Lope de Vega and Calderon introduced on the stage the subjects of the early romances, and transferred to the dramatic dialogue the language of the national songs. Thus, under an apparent variety, the Spaniards have been wearied with monotony. The prodigality of their images and the brilliancy of their poetry, discover only a real poverty. If their minds had been properly disciplined, and if they had enjoyed freedom of thought, the Spanish writers would ultimately have extricated themselves from this dull routine, and would have run the same career as those of other nations.

This fund of images and adventures of which the Spaniards have so frequently availed themselves, is that to which in our days the name of romance has been particularly attached. We here find the sentiments, the opinions, the virtues, and the prejudices of the middle ages; the picture of that good old time to which all our habits attach us; and since chivalric antiquity has been placed in opposition to heroic antiquity, it is interesting, even in a literary point of view, to see the manner in which it has been treated by a lively and sensitive people, who rejected all new ideas, all foreign assistance, and the results of experience derived from other principles. This observation may, perhaps, teach us that the manners and prejudices of the good old time present, in fact, an abundance of riches to the poet, but that it is necessary to be elevated above them to employ them with advantage; and that, in appropriating these materials from remote ages, it is requisite to treat them in the spirit of our own times. Sophocles and Euripides, when they represent to us with so much sublimity the heroic age, are themselves raised above it, and employ the philosophy of the age of Socrates to give a just idea of the sentiments of the ages of Edipus and Agamemnon. It is only by an accurate knowledge of the times, and the truth of all its history, that we can expect to give a new interest to the age of chivalry. But the Spaniards of modern days were in no wise superior to the personages who were the subject of their poetry. They were, on the contrary, inferior to them; and they found themselves unqualified to render justice to a theme of which they were not masters.

In another point of view also, the literature of Spain presents to us a singular phenomenon, and an object of study and observation. Whilst its character is essentially chivalric, we find its ornaments and its language borrowed from the Asiatics. Thus, Spain, the most western country of Europe, presents us with the flowery language and vivid imagination of the East. It is not my design to inculcate a preference of the oriental style to the classical, nor to justify those gigantic hyperboles which so often offend our taste, and that profusion of images by which the poet seems desirous to inebriate our senses, investing all his ideas with the charm of sweetest odours, of beautiful colours, and of harmonious language. I would only wish to remark that the qualities which continually surprise us, and sometimes almost disgust us in the poetry of Spain, are the genuine characteristics of the poetry of India, Persia, Arabia, and the East; poetry, to which the most ancient nations of the world, and those which have had the greatest influence on civilization, have concurred in yielding their admiration; that the sacred writings present to us in every page instances of that highly figurative language, which we there receive with a kind of veneration, but which is not allowed in the moderns; that hence we may perceive that there are different systems in literature and in poetry; and that, so far far from assigning to any one an exclusive preference over the rest, we ought to accustom ourselves to estimate them all with justice, and thus to enjoy their distinct and several beauties. If we regard the literature of Spain as revealing to us, in some degree, the literature of the East, and as familiarizing us with a genius and taste differing so widely from our own, it will possess in our eyes a new interest. We may thus inhale, in a language allied to our own, the perfumes of the East, and the incense of Arabia. We may view as in a faithful mirror, those palaces of Bagdad, and that luxury of the caliphs, which revived the lustre of departed ages; and we may appreciate, through the medium of a people of Europe, that brilliant Asiatic poetry, which was the parent of so many beautiful fictions of the imagination.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

STATE OF PORTUGUESE LITERATURE UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF THE SIXTERNTH CENTURY.

THERE now remains to be considered only one other language of those which are denominated the Romance, or such as are compounded of the Latin and Teutonic tongues ; and we here approach the Portuguese. We have already observed the rise and progress of the Provençal, the RomanceWallon, the Italian, the Castilian, and, indeed, of all of those mixed tongues peculiar to the South of Europe, from the extreme point of Sicily to the Levant; and we next prepare to trace their progress as far as the western extremity of the same region, in Lusitania. We shall thus have completed a view of the chief part of the European languages, those which may be said, more particularly, to owe their existence to the Roman. In the Sclavonian and Teutonic tongues there yet remain two distinct subjects of consideration. The former of these have never yet been carried to a sufficiently high point of cultivation to exhibit those powers of which they might be rendered capable among a more civilized people, and in a more advanced state of society. But we look forward to a period when we may direct our enquiries both to the western and eastern regions of the North of Europe; and after dwelling upon the more abundant resources of the English and German, the two most distinguished among the Teutonic nations, we shall proceed to take a more rapid view of the respective literatures of Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Thence extending our researches into the Polish and the Russian, we shall have completed the very enlarged outline of our original design, and shall have traced the progress and developement of the human mind throughout the different countries of Europe.

The kingdom of Portugal forms, in fact, only an integral portion of Spain, and was formerly considered in this light by the Portuguese, who even assumed the name of Spaniards, conferring on their neighbours and rivals, with whom they participated its sovereignty, the appellation of Castilians. Portugal, nevertheless, possesses a literature of its own; and its language, so far from being ranked as a mere dialect of the Spanish, was regarded by an independent people as the cha