The Cid Ballads, and other Poems and Translations from the
Spanish and German. By the late James Young Gibson. Edited by Margaret D. Gibson. 2 vols. (Kogan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Mr. Gilson was a minister of the United Presbyterian Church who found himself unequal to his pastoral work, and resigned it after three years. Circumstances thenceforward enabled him to devote himself to literary pursuits. He contributed to Mr. Duffield's translation of "Don Quixote" all the versified portions, and published on his own account a version of Cervantes' " Viaje del Parnaso." He died suddenly in 1885, leaving in MS. the work now published. The first volume contains the " Cid Ballads" proper, and some minor "Historical Romances ;" in the second, we have "Romances of the Carlovingian Circle," "Moorish and Frontier Romances," some translations from Cervantes and from the German, and a few original poems. Mr. Gibson spent, it is evident, much pains on his work, and, indeed, the editor tells us as mach. Bat satisfactory as the translations are in many respects, for they can always be read with pleasure, they do not belong to the first class of this kind of work. The few poems of Mr. Gibson's own that are given in the second volume do not show us more than a careful versifier. His transla- tions, therefore, are not the transfusions that one poet makes of another. And it mast not be forgotten that some of the originals have very little literary merit about them. Here is a piece that we may quote (it is from the ballad of "Don Gayferos," showing how he released his captive wife from the Moor). Its realism is the mark of a genuine ballad. No modern writer would venture to show his hero in so unheroic a mood : — "On to the country of the Moors Gayferos travellei fast,
In eight short days the journey made that fifteen days should last ; 'Mid Sansuefia's mountains his temper knew no bounds, He told his sorrow to the winds that Heaven might hear the sounds; He 'ran to curse the wine he drank, and eke the bread cursed he, The bread the Moors are wont to eat, not that of Christendie; He cursed the noble lady who bad borne an only son, • For if his foes should cut him down, to avenge him there was none ; He cursed the cavalier who rode without a page in sight, For if his spur should tirmble off, there was none to set it right ; He cursed the solitary tree, that crew upon the plain. Where all the birds of all the world to pull it down were fain, And left no branch and kit no leaf to shield him in his pain."
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