CALDERON. 429 



the religious melancholy pervading the writings of Fray Luis 

 de Leon, as, for instance, in his description of the charming 

 night, when he celebrates the eternal lights (resplandores 

 eternales) of the starry heavens ;* and in the compositions of 

 Calderon. " At the period when Spanish comedy had at- 

 tained its fullest development," says my friend Ludwig Tieck, 

 one of the profoundest critics of dramatic literature, "we 

 often find, in the romanesque and lyrical metre of Calderon 

 and his cotemporaries, dazzlingiy beautiful descriptions of the 

 sea, of mountains, gardens, and sylvan valleys, but these are 

 always so interwoven with allegorical allusions, and adorned 

 with so much artificial brilliancy, that we feel we are reading 

 harmoniously rhythmical descriptions, recurring continually 

 with only slight variations, rather than as if we could breathe 

 the free air of nature, or feel the reality of the mountain 

 breath and the valley's shade." In the play of Life is a 

 Dream, (la vida es sueno,} Calderon makes the Prince Sigis- 

 mund lament the misery of his captivity in a number of grace- 

 fully drawn contrasts with the freedom of all organic nature. 

 He depicts birds " which flit with rapid wings across the wide 

 expanse of heaven;" fishes, "which but just emerged from 

 the mud and sand, seek the wide ocean, whose boundlessness 

 seems scarcely sufficient for their bold course. Even the 

 stream which winds its tortuous way among flowers finds a 

 free passage across the meadow; and I," cries Sigismund, in 

 despair, " I who have more life than these, and a freer spirit, 

 must content myself with less freedom!" In the same 

 manner Don Fernando speaks to the King of Fez, in The 

 Steadfast Prince, although the style is often disfigured by 

 antitheses, witty comparisons, and artificially turned phrases, 

 from the school of Gongora.f I have referred to these indi- 

 vidual examples because they show, in dramatic poetry, which 



* Fray Luis de Leon, Obras proprias y traducciones, dedicadas a 

 Don Pedro Portocarero, 1681, p. 120: Noche serena. A deep feeling 

 for nature also manifests itself occasionally in the ancient mystic poetry 

 of the Spaniards (as, for instance, in Fray Luis de Granada, Santa 

 Teresa de Jesus, and Malon de Chaide) ; but the natural pictures are 

 generally only the external investment under which the ideal religious 

 conception is symbolised. 



j- Calderon, in The Steadfast Prince, on the approach of the fleet, 

 Act i. scene 1 ; and on the sovereignty of the wild beasts in the forests, 

 Act iii. scene 2. 



