Schlegel particularly celebrates him as displaying the purest model of the romantic ideal, the most perfect development of the sentiments of love, heroism, and religious devotion. This exaggerated tone of eulogy calls forth the rebuke of Sismondi, who was educated in a different school of criticism, and whose historical pursuits led him to look below the surface of things to their moral tendencies. By this standard, Calderon has failed. And yet it seems to be a just standard, even when criticizing a work by the rules of art; for a disregard of the obvious laws of morality is a violation of the principles of taste, on which the beautiful must rest. that Calderon's plays are chargeable with licentiousness or indecency to a greater extent than was common in the writers of the period. But they show a lamentable confusion of ideas in regard to the first principles of morality, by entirely confounding the creed of the individual with his religion. A conformity to the established creed is virtue, the departure from it vice. It is impossible to conceive, without reading his performances, to what revolting consequences this confusion of the moral perceptions perpetually leads. Not Yet Calderon should not incur the reproach of hypocrisy, but that of fanaticism. He was the very dupe of superstition; and the spirit of fanaticism he shares with the greater part of his countrymen - even the most enlightened-of that period. Hypocrisy may have been the sin of the Puritan, but fanaticism was the sin of the Catholic Spaniard of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The one quality may be thought to reflect more discredit on the heart, the other on the head. The philosopher may speculate on their comparative moral turpitude; but the pages of history show that fanaticism armed with power has been the most fruitful parent of misery to mankind. Calderon's drama turns on the most exaggerated principles of honor, jealousy, and revenge, mingled with the highest religious exaltation. Some of these sentiments, usually referred to the influence of the Arabs, Mr. Ticknor traces to the ancient Gothic laws, which formed the basis of the early Spanish jurisprudence. The passages he cites are pertinent, and his theory is plausible; yet, in the relations with woman, we suspect much must still be allowed for the long contact with the jealous Arabian. Calderon's characters and sentiments are formed, for the most part, on a purely ideal standard. The incidents of his plots are even more startling than those of Lope de Vega, more monstrous than the fictions of Dumas or Eugene Sue. But his thoughts are breathed forth in the intoxicating language of passion, with all the glowing imagery of the East, and in tones of the richest melody of which the Castilian tongue is capable. Mr. Ticknor has enlivened his analysis of Calderon's drama with several translations, as usual, from which we should be glad to extract, but must content ourselves with the concluding portion of his criticism, where he sums up the prominent qualities of the bard. "Calderon neither effected nor attempted any great changes in the forms of the drama. Two or three times, indeed, he prepared dramas that were either wholly sung, or partly sung and partly spoken; but even these, in their structure, were no more operas than his other plays, and were only a courtly luxury, which it was attempted to introduce, in imitation of the genuine opera just brought into France by Louis the Fourteenth, with whose court that of Spain was now intimately connected. But this was all. Calderon has added to the stage no new form of dramatic composition. Nor has he much modified those forms which had been already arranged and settled by Lope de Vega. But he has shown more technical exactness in combining his incidents, and arranged every thing more skilfully for stage-effect. He has given to the whole a new coloring, and in some respects, a new physiognomy. His drama is more poetical in its tone and tendencies, and has less the air of truth and reality, than that of his great predecessor. In its more successful portions, — which are rarely objectionable from their moral tone, it seems almost as if we were transported to another and more gorgeous world, where the scenery is lighted up with unknown and preternatural splendor, and where the motives and passions of the personages that pass before us are so highly wrought, that we must have our own feelings not a little stirred and excited before we can take an earnest interest in what we witness or sympathize in its results. But even in this he is successful. The buoyancy of life and spirit that he has infused into the gayer divisions of his drama, and the moving tenderness that pervades its graver and more tragical portions, lift us unconsciously to the height where alone his brilliant exhibitions can prevail with our imaginations, where alone we can be interested and deluded, when we find ourselves in the midst, not only of such a confusion of the different forms of the drama, but of such a confusion of the proper limits of dramatic and lyrical poetry. "To this elevated tone, and to the constant effort necessary in order to sustain it, we owe much of what distinguishes Calderon from his predecessors, and nearly all that is most individual and characteristic in his separate merits and defects. It makes him less easy, graceful, and natural than Lope. It imparts to his style a mannerism, which, notwithstanding the marvellous richness and fluency of his versification, sometimes wearies and sometimes offends us. It leads him to repeat from himself till many of his personages become standing characters, and his heroes and their servants, his ladies and their confidants, his old men and his buffoons, seem to be produced, like the masked fig. ures of the ancient theatre, to represent, with the same attributes and in the same costume, the different intrigues of his various plots. It leads him, in short, to regard the whole of the Spanish drama as a form, within whose limits his imagination may be indulged without restraint; and in which Greeks and Romans, heathen divinities, and the supernatural fictions of Christian tradition, may be all brought out in Spanish fashions and with Spanish feelings, and led, through a succession of ingenious and interesting adventures, to the catastrophes their stories happen to require. "In carrying out this theory of the Spanish drama, Calderon, as we have seen, often succeeds, and often fails. But when he succeeds, his success is sometimes of no common character. He then sets before us only models of ideal beauty, perfection, and splendor; a world, he would have it, into which nothing should enter but the highest elements of the national genius. There, the fervid, yet grave, enthusiasm of the old Castilian heroism; the chivalrous adventures of modern, courtly honor; the generous self-devotion of individual loyalty; and that reserved, but passionate love, which, in a state of society where it was so rigorously withdrawn from notice, became a kind of unacknowledged religion of the heart; all seem to find their appropriate home. And when he has once brought us into this land of enchantment, whose glowing impossibilities his own genius has created, and has called around him forms of such grace and loveliness as those of Clara and Doña Angela, or heroic forms like those of Tuzani, Mariamne, and Don Ferdinand, then he has reached the highest point he ever attained, or ever proposed to himself; - he has set before us the grand show of an idealized drama, resting on the purest and noblest elements of the Spanish national character, and one which, with all its unVOL. LXX. NO. 146. 5 questionable defects, is to be placed among the extraordinary phenomena of modern poetry.' We shall not attempt to follow down the long file of dramatic writers who occupy the remainder of the period. Their name is legion; and we are filled with admiration, as we reflect on the intrepid diligence with which our author has waded through this amount of matter, and the fidelity with which he has rendered to the respective writers literary justice. We regret, however, that we have not space to select, as we had intended, some part of his lively account of the Spanish players, and of the condition of the stage. It is collected from various obscure sources, and contains many curious particulars. They show that the Spanish theatre was conducted in a manner so dissimilar from what exists in other European nations as perfectly to vindicate its claims to originality. It must not be supposed that the drama, though the great natural diversion, was allowed to go on in Spain, any more than in other countries, in an uninterrupted flow of prosperity. It met with considerable opposition more than once in its career; and, on the representations of the clergy, at the close of Philip the Second's reign, performances were wholly interdicted, on the ground of their licentiousness. For two years the theatre was closed. But, on the death of that gloomy monarch, the drama, in obedience to the public voice, was renewed in greater splendor than before. It was urged by its friends that the theatre was required to pay a portion of its proceeds to certain charitable institutions, and this made all its performances in some sort an exercise of charity. Lope de Vega also showed his address by his Comedias de Santos, under which pious name the life of some saint or holy man was portrayed, which, however edifying in its close, afforded, too often, as great a display of profligacy in its earlier portions as is to be found in any of the secular plays of the capa y espada. His experiment seems to have satisfied the consciences of the opponents of the drama, or at least to have silenced their opposition. It reminds us of the manner in which some among us, who seem to have regarded the theatre with the antipathy entertained by our Puritan fathers, have found their scruples vanish at witnessing these exhibitions under the more reputable names of "Athenæum," "Museum," or "Lyceum." Our author has paid due attention to the other varieties of elegant literature which occupy this prolific period. We can barely enumerate the titles. Epic poetry has not secured to itself the same rank in Castile as in many other countries. At the head stands the "Araucana" of Ercilla, which Voltaire appears to have preferred to "Paradise Lost"! Yet it is little more than a chronicle done into rhyme; and, notwithstanding certain passages of energy and poetic eloquence, it is of more value as the historical record of an eyewitness than as a work of literary art. In Pastoral poetry the Spaniards have better specimens. But they are specimens of an insipid kind of writing, notwithstanding it has found favor with the Italians, to whom it was introduced by a Spaniard - a Spaniard in descent - the celebrated author of the "Arcadia." In the higher walks of Lyrical composition they have been more distinguished. The poetry of Herrera, in particular, seems to equal, in its dithyrambic flow, the best models of classic antiquity; while the Muse of Luis de Leon is filled with the genuine inspiration of Christianity. Mr. Ticknor has given a pleasing portrait of this gentle enthusiast, whose life was consecrated to Heaven, and who preserved a tranquillity of temper unruffled by all the trials of an unmerited persecution. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting a translation of one of his odes, as the last extract from our author. The subject is, the feelings of the disciples on witnessing the ascension of their Master. "And dost thou, holy Shepherd, leave Thine unprotected flock alone, Here, in this darksome vale, to grieve, While thou ascend'st thy glorious throne ? "O, where can they their hopes now turn, |