James Montgomery

“ Those Spaniards, who are addicted to the tinsel of versification, accuse him of want of loftiness; but nothing can exceed the harmony and flow of his verse, the grace and propriety of his ideas, and the truth and simplicity—the extreme ease and animation, of his style. It is unornamented—but for that very reason, more purely poetic. The most perfect of his compositions is his "Ode to Tranquil Life," in which he dwells with brooding, earnest delight on all the objects, and all the reveries that bless a man, content in solitude. ”

“ Don Quixote is as courageous, noble, princely, and virtuous as the greatest of the men whom he imitates: had he attempted the career of knight errantry, and afterwards shrunk from the consequent hardships, he had been a crazy man, and no more; but meeting all and bearing all with courage and equanimity, he really becomes the hero he desired to be. Any one suffering from calamities would gladly have recourse to him for help, assured of his resolution and disinterestedness, and thus Cervantes shows the excellence and perfection of his genius. ”

“ Truth, absolute and unshakeable, ought to be the foundation of our assertions, or we paint a fancy head instead of an individual portrait. Truth is all in all in matters of history, for history is the chart of the world's sea; and if imaginary lands are marked, those who would wisely learn from the experience of others, are led sadly astray. Petrarch has been the mark of similar conjectures to a great extent; but his letters give a true direction to our researches. We have no such guide in the history of Camoens's attachment. ”

“ Boscan's poem has nothing of the ideal creativeness which sheds a halo round its object, making one feel as if Laura fed upon different food, and had limbs of more celestial texture than other women: but Boscan's sentiments are true to nature. His tenderness is that of a real and fervent lover; without raising her whom he loves into an angel, he gives us a lively and most sweet picture of how his heart was spent upon thoughts of her ”

“ Yet this is not done in the German style. The Germans subtilise, mystify, and cloud the real and distinct: they dissolve flesh and blood into a dream. Calderon, on the contrary, turns a dream into flesh and blood: he gives a pulse to a skeleton; he breathes passion from the lips of ghosts and spectres. Which is the greater power, others must decide. The influence of Calderon is greatest to us; he is master of a spell to which our souls own obedience.
Calderon, as a poet, is diffuse and exaggerated at times, but he is highly imaginative ”

“ Originality is the great distinctive of the Spanish character. Every line each author wrote was in its turn of thought and expression national. The conceits resulting from a meeting of ardent imaginations with ardent passions, which brought the whole phenomena of nature in the poet's service,—the burning emotions, the very constant brooding on one engrossing subject,—all belonged to a people whose souls were fiery, proud, and concentrated. ”

“ We have no room to multiply passages, and with this ode must conclude our specimens. Garcilaso is a happy type of a Spanish poet; and when we think that such men were the children of the old liberty of Spain, how deeply we must regret the worse than iron rule that blasted the race; while we view in any attempt to regain her ancient freedom, a promise of a new people, to adorn the annals of mankind with all the virtues of heroism and all the elevation of genius. ”

“ At the commencement we compared his fortunes with those of Cervantes; but the career of Camoens was the most disastrous. Every act of his life had an adverse termination. In the early season of youth he loved tenderly and ardently; and this feeling had not injured his fortunes, if his attachment had not been returned. A modern poet asks, "What makes it fatal in this world of ours, to be loved?" It was the love that Dona Catarina bore the poet, that awakened the enmity of her powerful relations, and cast his whole life into shadow. ”

“ Nothing can be more truly national than the drama; and, as if fearful that a Spanish audience would feel too deeply the catastrophe, he introduces Spain, the river Duero, War, Sickness, and Famine, as allegorical personages, who, while they mourn over the present, prophesy the future triumphs of their country. Another merit of this play is one not usual in Spanish authors: it is of no more than the necessary length to develope its interest; there is no long spinning out, and except quite at the outset, before the poet had warmed to his subject, it has not a cold or superfluous line. ”

“ It inspires infinite contempt for the arbitrary distinctions of society when we find this prince and leader among his fellows was, when restored to his native country, depressed by poverty and obscured by want; and when we find no spirit of repining displayed during his after life, though he had dignity of soul to assert his worth, we are impelled to give Cervantes as high a place for moral excellence as his genius has secured for him in the world of intellect. ”

“ It is most certain, that all those capable of feeling a generous interest in the fate of genius will turn with eager curiosity to the page inscribed with the name of Cervantes: not even Shakspeare has so universal a reputation. While the sublime character of Don Quixote warms the heart of the enthusiast, the truth of the sad picture which his fortunes present tickles the fancy of the man of the world. Children revel in the comedy, old men admire the shrewdness, of Sancho Panza. That this work is written in prose increases its popularity. ”

“ As Cervantes often alludes to himself, it is strange that he did not write an account of his years of captivity; but the truth is, that, though we may be led to mention ourselves, it is ever a tedious task to write at length on the subject: recollections come by crowds; hopes baffled, our dearest memories discovered to have a taint, our lives wasted and fallen into contempt even in our own eyes: so that we readily turn from dispiriting realities to such creatures of the imagination as we can fashion according to our liking. ”

“ Herrera is a great favourite with those Spanish critics who prefer loftiness to simplicity of style, and the ideas of the head rather than the emotions of the heart: the sublime style at which he aimed gained for him the surname of Divine. Boscan, Garcilaso, and Luis de Leon, adopted the Italian metres, and with greater diffuseness, and therefore less classical elegance, but with equal truth and poetic verve, and informed the Spanish language with powers unknown to former poets. ”

“ From a thousand causes Spain is the land of romance. There never was any one who has travelled in that country, whatever might be his political opinions, or his view of human nature and society, but admired and loved the Spaniards. There is an {Pg 1} originality, an independence, an enthusiasm, in the Spanish character that distinguishes them from every other people. Despotism and the Inquisition, ignorance and superstition, have been unable to level the noble altitude of their souls; and even while the manifestations of genius have been crushed, genius has survived. ”

“ Mendoza was not an imaginative poet; and it is observable, that when a person, not such by nature, deals in the ideal, the result is rather the ridiculous than the sublime. Acute, earnest, playful, passionate, but neither tender nor sublime, if we except a few of his minor love poems, we read Mendoza's verses rather to become acquainted with the man than seek the soul of poetry in his compositions. ”

“ He passed his early life at Cordova, known and esteemed as a poet and a man of talent. His spirit was high, his character ardent and penetrating, and his pen ready, so that he was induced to indulge in personal satire, a circumstance which in after years he deeply regretted; and he changed so much that a friend of his writes, "he became the most ingenuous, candid, and unoffending man in conversation and writing that Spain ever saw." ”

“ In every other country, to treat of its literary men is at the same time to give a history of its literature. In Spain it is otherwise. We have no trace of who the poets were who produced that vast collection of ballads and romances, which, full of chivalry and adventure, love and war, fascinate the imagination, and bestow immortality on heroes—some real, some fictitious—who otherwise had never been known. ”

“ The first Spanish poet who introduced the Italian style was Mosen Juan Boscan Almogaver. He was a man of mild and contemplative disposition, and thus fitted to receive the shackles of rules of taste from others, at the same time that, being a genuine poet, he could animate the harmony and grace of his versification with earnest sentiments and original thought. Restrain himself as he would, the genius of the Spanish language and early association, forced him into greater vividness and simplicity of expression than his Italian prototypes ”

“ We are ordered to cast off our national dress, and to adopt the Castilian. Germans dress after one manner, the French after another, the Greeks after another. The clergy have a peculiar garb—youths one sort of dress—old men another—each nation, and each profession, and each rank, adopts its own style of dress. Yet all are Christians. And we Moors—why do we dress in the Morisco, as if our faith hung in our garb—not in our hearts? ”

“ To find me miserable, and to do me good, makes the praise yours; and if I am unworthy of pity, your Excellency is worthy to feel it, and it is the appropriate virtue of so great a noble and minister. 'There is nothing,' says Seneca, when consoling Marcia, 'that I consider so meritorious in those who hold a high station, as the pardoning many things, and seeking pardon for none.' What worse crime can I commit, than persuading myself that my misfortunes are to be the limit of your magnanimity? I ask time from your Excellency to revenge myself on myself. ”

“ Sismondi says, that his life is sprinkled with few events. How do we know this? Throughout these campaigns, during these years of youthful ardour and enterprise, how much may have occurred, what dangers he may have run—what generosity, what valour he may have displayed—how warmly he may have loved, how deeply have suffered! As a poet and a master of the passions he must have felt them all. But a blank meets us when we seek to know more of these things. A poet's life is ever a romance. That Calderon's was such we cannot doubt ”

“ Ferreira, without possessing the originality of Gil Vicente, his sweetness or his genius, was eminently useful to the art of poetry in Portugal. He taught the writers of that country to aim at correctness, and to enrich their compositions by the knowledge acquired from the writings of other countries; but not, for that purpose, to adopt a foreign tongue, but to raise the Portuguese to the level of other languages, and gift it with the purest and noblest poetic measures. He is, himself, novel, however, rather in his style than in his ideas. ”

“ Boscan imitated Horace as well as Petrarch. In the epistle from which a passage has been quoted, he abides by the unornamented style of the Latin poet; but he wants his terseness, his epigrammatic turns, his keen observation. His poem is descriptive, and sweetly so, of the best state of man,—that of a happy marriage; but while he presents a faithful picture of its tranquil virtuous pleasures, and imparts the deep serene joy of his own heart, his hues are not stolen from the rainbow, nor his music from the spheres: it is all calm, earthly, unidealised, though not unimpassioned. ”

“ In judging of him as a poet, he falls far short of Garcilaso; but in some respects he may be considered as superior to Boscan. His short and simple poems, named in Spanish vilancicos, are full of life and spirit, and are fitted to become popular from the simplicity and yet vivacity of their sentiments and versification: they are the sparkling emanations of the passions, expressed at the moment, with all the ardour of living emotion. ”

“ On his marriage, Cervantes took up his abode at Esquivias, probably from some motive of economy. Still feeling within him the innate assurance of genius, and the laudable desire of distinction which that feeling engenders, he dwelt on the idea of becoming an author. Esquivias is so near Madrid that he could pay frequent visits to the capital; and he cultivated the acquaintance of the authors of that day, and in particular of Vicente Espinel, one of the most charming romance writers of Spain. ”

“ Young still, his affections ardent, but concentrated, he acknowledges that serenity, confidence, and sweet future hopes; unreserved sympathy, and entire community of the interests of life, is the real Paradise on earth. Garcilaso, the gallant soldier, the tender poet, the admired and loved of all, is of another character, more heroic, more soft, more romantic. ”

“ When we read of such acts as the banishment of the Moriscos, and the history of all that high-hearted people suffered—torn from their native vales and hills, and cast out upon the stranger—we wonder what manner of men lived in Spain, and feel that these inhuman and impious deeds must have poisoned the very air. But, politically speaking, it is not the act, but its effects, that are so baneful; national crime influences by causing the degeneracy of the race. The youth may live a life of sin; it is the man that is the sufferer. ”

“ No plagiarism is more impudent and inexcusable. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were the offspring and the property of Cervantes: to take these original and unparalleled creations out of his hands—to make them speak and act according to the fancy of another, and that while he was alive, and still occupied in adorning them with fresh deeds and thoughts, all his own, is a sort of theft no talent could excuse. Avellanada's "Don Quixote" is not destitute of talent ”