CHAPTERS ON SPANISH LITERATURE.* SPANISH literature opens with a masterpiece,

the Pocma del

Cid. Here, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly says, "we meet for the first time with that forcible realistic touch, that alert vision, that intense impression of the thing seen and accurately observed which give to Spanish literature its peculiar stamp of authenticity." And here, too, we have a foretaste of that humour which is so prominent in Spanish authors. Who can forget the pitiful reappearance of the Infautes of Carrion after the lion is slain, or the release of the Count of Barcelona, prisoner of the Cid P He refused all food, but the Cid informed him that if he ate he should go free. At last he yielded, and the Cid, watching him, bade him eat well if he loved liberty; whereupon with what speed the prisoner plied his hands After the meal he rode away, often turning his head, still half fearful that the Cid was not in earnest. To the Cid is devoted the first chapter of Mr. Kelly's new book,—the Cid of history, skilfully unravelled from the Cid of romance, stands before us "brave, mercenary, perfidious and cruel." Yet, though untrustworthy in details, in its general effect the Poema dcl Cid is not altogether misleading : "The spirit of the poet is not consciously unhistorical; he conveys the impression of

believing in the truth of his own story." And he tells his story with so great a directness una rapidity, with such a glow of delight, that he carries the reader with him.

The second chapter deals with "the most brilliant literary figure in Spanish history till the coming of Garcilaso de In Vega"—the Archpriest of Hita—and it has plainly caught his "contagious merriment," so that we laugh and learn in the

same breath. A survey of the poets and historians of the reign of Juan II. is followed by a long—and, need we add P original—chapter on the Romancero. Dull will he he of soul who, when reading it, does not turn to the collection to which reference is so freely given,—the Primavera v Flor de Romances, in the recent enlarged edition by Seilor Menendez y Pelayo.

We come, then, to three great men of genius : Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon. Cervantes is little read in England, Calderon less, Lope de Vega not at all. Every one knows Don Quixote, all are ready to smile at the very mertion of the Ingenious Knight, but how few have read hie history, how few are really well acquainted with Sancho Panza. Yet Sancho stands without an equal in modern literature; has he not himself told us that el deeir gracias no es para todoe ? "The only possible rival to Sancho Panza is Sir John Falstaff; but Falstaff is emphatically English, whereas Sancho Panza is a citizen of the world, stamped with the seal of universality." It is sometimes complained that the style of Don. Quixote is unequal. Mr. Kelly shows this to be one of the virtues of the book :—

" As Don Quixote progresses the parody of the books of chivalry becomes less insistent, the style grows more subtle and adaptable, reaches a high level of restrained eloquence in the knight's speeches, is forcible and familiar in expressing the squire's artful simplicity, is invariably appropriate in the mouths of mon differing so widely from each other as Vivaldo and the Barber, GinOs de Fasamonte and Cardenio, Don Fernando and the left- handed landlord, the Captive and the village priest. The dramatic fitness of the dialogue in Don Quixote, its intense life and speedy movement, are striking innovations in the development of the Spanish novel, and give the book its abiding air of modernity. Cervantes had discovered the great secret that truth is a more essential element of artistic beauty than all the academic elegance in the world."

It was a marvel to have written the first part of Don Quixote, but to have continued it in a second part equal, if not superior, to the first was little short of a miracle. "Shakespeare wrote Hamlet : one Hamlet. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote—two Don Quixotes : a feat unparalleled in the history of literature." It would be difficult to say whether the chapter on the works of

* Chapters on Spanish Literature. By James Fitzmaurioe-Kelly. London: A. Constable and Co. els. ed. not.]

Cervantes or that on his life is of more absorbing interest.

We learn to love Cervantes in his works, and are eager to know more of him. His life was in itself a strange and fascinating romance, and it was natural that legends should grow up around it. "But the researches of the last few years have brought much new material to light, and have dissipated a cloud of myths concerning him : we are not yet able to see him at every stage of his chequered career, but we are nearer him than we ever were before."

That Lope de Vega is little read is partly due to his copious.

ness. Though not a quarter of the eighteen hundred plays and four hundred autos and entremeses ascribed to him have survived, the number of them that we possess—four hundred and thirty-one plays and fifty autos—is sufficient to make the reader pause:—

" The student," says Mr. Kelly, "who sits down to the paltry remnant that has reached us will, if he reads Lope de Vegas plays without interruption for seven hours a day, be over six months before he reaches the end of his delightful task. I say it in all seriousness—a delightful task—but it would be idle to pretend that there are no tracts of barren ground. A large pro- portion of Lope's dramatic work is brilliant improvisation, and is not of stuff that endures ; but there are veins of pure ore in his dross, and in moments of inspiration he ranks with the greatest dramatists in the world."

If after the glowing account of Lope de Vega the chapter on Calderon is cold, we must remember that Calderon still suffers from the fanatical adoration bestowed on him by certain German scholars in the early part of last century. On p. 195 we read that

"the superstition spread to England, and would seem to have infected a group of brilliant young men at Cambridge—Trench, FitzGerald, and Tennyson. In The Palace of Art, as first pub- lished, Calderon was introduced with some unexpected com- panions:— ° Cervantes, the bright face of Calderon, Robed David touching holy strings, The lialicarnaescin, and alone, Alfred the flower of kings,

Isaiah with tierce Ezekiel, Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea, Plato, Petrarea, Livy and Raphael, And eastern Confutzee.'

This motley company was dispersed later. In the revised version of The Palace of Art Calderon finds no place, and the omission causes no more surprise than the omission of 'eastern Confutzeo.' He is admired as a splendid poet and a great dramatist, but we no longer see him, as Tennyson saw him in 1833, on a sublime and solitary pinnacle of glory-4a poetical Molchisedee, without spiritual father, without spiritual mother, with nothing round him to explain or account for the circumstances of his greatness.' As Trench says, there aro no such appearances in literature, and Calderon has ceased to be a mystery or a miracle."

" A splendid poet and a great dramatist,"—it will be seen

that Mr. Kelly is not unfair to Calderon, and he speaks else- where of "his sublime allegory, his majestic vision of the

world invisible, and the adorable loveliness of his lyristn."

Mr. Kelly's last chapter is entitled "Modern Spanish Novelists," and here for the first time a full measure of appreciation is given to the great writer Pereda—" an artist whose instantaneous presentation of character and of the visible world has a singular relief and saliency "—who pub- lished his first work, Escenas montaitesas, in 1864. " Pereda has something of Cervantes's seriousness without his constant amenity. He is nearer to Quevedo's intolerant spirit. Exasperated by absurdity and pretence, be reverses the

apostolic precept, and so far from suffering fools gladly, he gladly makes fools suffer." But there is the other side of the picture,—his loving, if lifelike, portrayal of the peasants of the Cantabrian mountains, as in Pacts arriba, or of the fisherfolk of Santander, as in Sotileza. A character in one of the earliest of Perez Galchis's Episoclios Nacionales —Napoleon en Chanzartin, written in January, 1874—deplored the fact that Spain, which had produced the source of all the novels of the world, was now unable to do more than trans- late " these sentimental French stories." Curiously enough, in the course of that very year appeared Alarcon's delightful sketch, El Sombrero de tree picog, and Valera's Pepita .Tinikcites• and since that time Spanish novelists have been many and

excellent.

Chapters on Spanish Literature is composed of ten lectures delivered in America and at University College, London. It is unnecessary to say that it gives us the result of the most recent research, since in many instances that research has been conducted by the author of this book. A deep learning perpetually enlivened by lightning-flashes of humour, a critical analysing spirit united with a breadth of insight due

to wide sympathy and knowledge of the literatures of many Other countries, combine to form a very striking work,—a Work that will delight Spanish scholars, and appeal also to the more general reader. And the vivid, forcible style is a keen sword of mordant irony or epigrammatic praise. The following description of Perez de GuzmAn's Generaciones y Semblanzas la but one of many instances "There is no rhetoric, no Waste: the person concerned is brought forward at the right moment, described in a few trenchant words, and discharged with a stain on his character " ; nor is it easy to forget the novelist Trueba, who, "if he flickers up into infantile pretti- flees, sputters out in insipid optimism," or Maths Fragoso, the dramatist, who "may be read with real pleasure when he hits on a good original and gives us next to nothing of his own."