OF LITERATURE. 



Iv 



of CALDKRON.* If Lope originated the Spanish 

 comedy, Calderon improved it. He drew char- 

 acter more vividly than Lope ; he unravelled 

 intrigue more skilfully. And yet Calderon lost 

 sight of nature in many of his portraits ; and 

 despised simplicity in much of his expression. 

 He is so addicted to strained conceits, to start- 

 ling hyperboles, that it is difficult to understand 

 the intense devotion of Schlegel to his memory. 

 And then to exalt Calderon as the poet of 

 Christianity ! The poet of Catholicism would 

 have been a fitter title. 



One wtrd on PORTUGAL for the sake of Ca- 

 nioeiis. The dialect of that country was distin- 

 guished from the sister language of Castile by 

 lighter and softer forms. It was early applied 

 to the purposes of poetry; and the national 

 jealousy of the Portuguese was sufficient to make 

 them contend with their neighbours in every other 

 branch of letters. Some of those natives of 

 Portugal, who shone in Spanish composition, 

 such as Miranda and Montemayor, took care to 

 write also in their own tongue. But it has been 

 justly said that the Portuguese literature is com- 

 plete without being rich. Although, in following 

 all the changes that affected the intellectual con- 

 dition of Spain, in yielding to the influence of 

 the Italians, and to the influence of the classics, 

 it still preserved an independent tone ; yet in 

 only two departments was remarkable excellence 

 achieved. The bucolic muse was most at home 

 on those banks of the Tagus, which LOBO f cele- 

 brated ; and the great Portuguese epic transcends 

 all the similar productions of Spain. As Portu- 

 gal had a golden period of maritime enterprise 

 and glory ,J so the very spirit of that period 

 seems to be infused into the mind of CAMOENS, 

 and to sustain the long and towering flight of his 

 Lusiad. That poem has some undeniable de- 

 fects. Its subject, the discovery of India, is 

 obviously rather historical than poetical : it is not 

 so much a regular epic, as a gallery of pictures 

 from the Portuguese annals, set in an epic frame : 

 and the mixture of different mythologies, though 

 not unknown in other works, is clumsy and 

 revolting. But it is equally undeniable that the 

 genius of Camoens has caught from the classic 

 poets of antiquity their clearness of intuition, 

 their inventive skill, their lively and elegant 

 simplicity, without ever forgetting his own age or 

 the land of his fathers. He deserves all this 

 praise : and if not enough to exalt him to the 

 side of Tasso, it is enough to place him not far 

 below that radiant light of Italy. In their 



A. D. 16011687. 

 I A. D. 14111578. 



+ A. D. 1S5U 

 A. D. 15241579. 



fortunes these illustrious contemporaries were 

 too much alike. Alfonso imprisoned Tasso : 

 Sebastian let Camoens starve. We rejoice in 

 the retributive ruin of Ferrara and of Portugal. 

 As for the latter, her neglected bard was speedily 

 revenged by Phillip II., and the enormities of 

 Spanish oppression. And, though the Portu- 

 guese at last shook off that iron yoke, among 

 all the honours of the house of Braganza, they 

 have never been able to reckon a rival for 

 Camoens. 



From the " sole dominion," or at least the 

 " surpassing glory " of this luminary in the 

 western horizon, let us divert our eyes to another 

 quarter, where the heavens are " sown with stars, 

 thick as a field." Simply to record the names of 

 the chief ENGLISH authors, between the beginning 

 of the sixteenth century and the reign of Queen 

 Anne, would require no little space. Many we 

 must omit altogether : on the greatest we can do 

 no more than touch, with a hasty though reverent 

 hand. 



Soon after the union of the Roses,* some rays 

 of intellectual light began to glimmer again. 

 But we must pass by Barklay,f and other obscure 

 versifiers of the time of Henry VII. In the 

 next reign we must not be delayed by the 

 king's fitful displays and capricious patronage 

 of talent ; nor by Wolsey's magnificent zeal for 

 true learning ; nor even by the sonnets of the 

 gallant and gentle SuRRET,t who hoped to make 

 his Geraldine as famous as Petrarch's Laura, and 

 who certainly copied Petrarch, in his best mood, 

 with brilliant success. Sonnets, however, have 

 never built up a high reputation in British litera- 

 ture ; though Shakspeare and Milton sometimes 

 imprisoned their elastic thoughts in that durance, 

 and later writers have been slow to discover that 

 the masculine spirit of our poetry is equally 

 averse to confining a rich conception, and to 

 expanding a poor one, to the limits of fourteen 

 lines. Wyat, likewise, the friend of Surrey, 

 must be passed by ; with a regret that is roused 

 less by his sonnets, stuffed as they are with 

 Italian conceits, than by the ease and point of 

 his satirical epistles, so superior to the acrimo- 

 nious grossness of the scurrilous ballad-monger 

 Skelton. Over the epoch of the bigoted Mary 

 we will not linger. Yet genius languished not 

 in those dreadful days. About the close of her 

 reign there was planned and partly composed 

 the famous Mirraurfor Magistrates, \\ an allegori- 



A. D. 1485. 



t Imitator of Brandt's Ship of Fool*, a German satire. About 

 A. D. 1500. 



t Executed A. D. 1517. 



Ski-lion published in 1512 ; died in 1529. 



II A. 1). 1557 : published, A. 1). 1559. 



