ficient leisure and occasion to prepare myself for my last end; and, by God, for nothing do I owe him more thanks than for having so speedily delivered me of the troubles of this world.' His friend still told him, that it was the royal will he should abstain from all harangue to the people before his execution. 'It is well you inform me of this,' answered Sir Thomas, for I had purposed to speak some words on the occasion, though nothing that might offend his Majesty or any body else. But I shall willingly obey the commands of my master, and I only beseech you, good Mr. Pope, to obtain from his Majesty that my daughter Margaret may assist at my burial.' The King,' replied Pope, 'is content that your wife and children, and your other friends, be at liberty to assist at it.' Oh, how much am I obliged to his Majesty for taking my poor burial in his gracious consideration!' He then, with many tears, took leave of Sir Thomas Pope: 'Be comforted,' he said, I trust to God we shall once meet again;' and in order to cheer his friend by his own example, he composedly observed, Indeed, I do not perceive any dangerous symptoms: our patient could have lived still many a day, if such had been the pleasure of the King.'

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At nine in the morning he was led from the Tower. His beard was long, his face pale and emaciated, his eyes often turned to heaven; in his hands he bore a red crucifix. When he passed the house of some pious woman, she came to offer him a cup of wine; but he refused it with the words, Christ drank not wine, but vinegar and gall.' Another woman pursued him, asking for the papers she had left in his hands as Lord. Chancellor; Good woman,' More told her, have but patience for one hour, and you shall see how the King will deliver me from the care of your papers as of all other things.' By a third woman he was even reproached for having wronged her by his judgment as Chancellor; I remember your cause very well,' he said, but if I had still to decide it, I should not judge otherwise.'

Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, he turned to one of the sheriff's officers, begging his assistance in ascending it, adding, For my descent I shall take care myself.' As he was forbidden to harangue the people, he desired them to pray for him, declaring he died a faithful subject to the King, in the true Catholic faith. Upon this he knelt down, and prayed with great fervency. Having finished his devotion, he cheerfully rose, and, embracing the executioner, who had begged his pardon, he said, Thou wilt to-day do me the greatest service that is in the power of man. Have courage, and do not fail to perform

perform thy office; my neck is very short, therefore take care how thou strikest, that thou acquit thyself honourably.'

When the executioner was about to muffle his head, that will I do myself,' he said, and tied the neckcloth round his eyes. Laying his head upon the block, he desired the executioner to stay one moment till he had put aside his beard, as that had committed no treason and with one stroke the head was severed from the body.

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ART. VI.-Las Comedias de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Por Juan Jorge Keil. Tomos primero y secundo. Leipsique, 1827, 1828.

THE drama of Spain, arising out of the same state of society

and manners as her poetry, presents to us the same characteristic features of Gothic chivalry and Arabian romance; is modified by the same circumstances of international intercourse; and, like the latter, is also marked by two distinct periods-the first an age of barbarous grandeur, and the second the perfection of the romantic style, when Lope de Vega and Calderon embellished it with all the grace and sublimity of which it was susceptible;-in its infancy nurtured by the people, and in its maturity and decline the favourite of kings and courts. Rejecting the conventional rules of the Greek and Latin stages, on which Ferreira in Portugal, and Trissino and Ruccelai in Italy, had framed their works; those officers, who, during the Italian wars of Charles the Fifth, witnessed, at the Court of Ferrara, and elsewhere, the comedies of Ariosto and Macchiavelli, perhaps possessing, like our own great dramatist, but small Latin and less Greek, desired to have something of their own resembling those compositions, without dreaming of the study or imitation of the ancients. Hence their drama acquired a noble and chivalrous character, which, if not formed in obedience to the laws of literary jurisconsults, at least preserves a more independent and original spirit. Hence, too, the contrast between the tameness of the Italian and the native genius of the Spaniard, the eternal mythology of the Greeks, and the more interesting materials drawn from the history and feelings of Christian ages.

On perusing their works, we are struck with the want of some piece of commanding merit, to which we might at once refer, as displaying the genius of the Spanish people, and which might stand a comparison with the masterpieces of other nations. No celebrated tragedy, (for it is by tragedies more than by come

dies that the drama of any nation is appreciated,) developing those universal passions which make the whole world akin. As it is evident that many of their early poets had the requisite powers, a spirit of intense nationality, and lived in an age when the imagination predominated over rules, it is only to be accounted for on the supposition that their powers were dissipated by their great fertility. It would seem as if they never thought of acquiring a lasting reputation or superiority over their rivals by one grand effort of thought, but rather by a multiplicity of loose works, which reduce their merit merely to that of ingenious novel-writers. This, however, might also depend upon what was then considered by the public as the scope and tendency of the stage. Their plays were too often the labour but of a few days, sometimes even of a few hours; and, seduced by the advantage of a language in which almost every person could versify, and the prospect of speedy remuneration, it was not surprising that they should have preferred the fleeting breath of popular applause to the criticism of their more learned contemporaries, or the judgment of posterity. It was not until a national style of comedy had become firmly established, that Calderon, Moreto, Solis, and others, turned their genius to the composition of plays of more purity, more invention, and exhibiting more correct copies of manners. Among that variety there will be found much invention, noble and refined sentiments, characters marked with force and sustained with dignity, happy situations, well-managed surprises, and a rapid succession of incidents, that never permits the attention of the spectator to languish for a moment. Such are the beauties which the comedies of those illustrious poets offer to us, from whose spoils the Cid, Geolier de Soi-même, Le Menteur, and so many other works, were brought from the heart of Castile to shine on the French boards; and from whom Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Dryden, in England, extracted so much of what is excellent in their dramatic works. The last age includes the termination of the Austrian and the commencement of the French rule, the period of the greatest degradation of Spain in politics, and of her greatest abasement in literature. That flame of imagination which, during a century, had given her so many poets, was now extinct, and those who came after no longer possessed the same enthusiasm or brilliancy. Then sprung up a crowd of parasites, similar to the opera-writers and courtflatterers of Louis XIV., and the ignoble race of our own second Charles, of whose name or works the world has no renown. As their poets, debarred from the more noble subjects of the muse, and contrasting the beauty of external nature in a

smiling,

smiling, glowing land, with the moral deformity of man, found a vent to their feelings by ranging in the Armida gardens of romance, and by clothing the pastoral life with the charms of an ideal Arcadia, (even as Guido traced an angel-beauty from the coarse features of a rustic,)-or were obliged to content themselves with singing, in long obscure canzonis, the incomparable 'beauty of their mistresses, and their own intolerable martyrdom; in like manner, their dramatists were reduced by a similar necessity to recur to an ideal world, and to the hurry and excitement of romantic, though unnatural, incidents—and this was all that was demanded of them by their hearers. Since the discovery of America, luxury and effeminacy had made rapid progress, and the ancient virtues had disappeared; the age of chivalry was gone; a customary indulgence in gratifications had rendered the taste more lively, the imagination more craving; and an impassioned people, living under an ardent sky, desired to have pleasure at will, wherever they had nothing to dread from the king or the grand inquisitor. It was in this disposition the Spaniards now visited their theatres; and the most ingenious and captivating works could not satisfy their taste, if they did not intoxicate their imagination by a succession of brilliant and varied scenes, and offer to their minds a strong excitement, without disturbing them with the recollection of any sort of principle or method-any rule or law. On that stage, every regularity seemed tiresome, even that of beauty itself.

As no history which we could presume to give of the national drama could equal, either in interest or authority, the description presented by Cervantes, in the preface to his Comedies, we shall make no apology for laying the words of it before our readers.

'Gentle reader,' says he, 'you must pardon me, if, in this prologue, you see me depart a little from my usual modesty. Some time ago, I happened to be in a society of my friends, where they treated of comedies, and things relating to them. This subject was discussed with so much subtlety and learning, that it seemed to me they arrived at perfection. They spoke also of him who, first of all in Spain, drew Comedy from her swaddling-clothes, and dressed her in pomp and magnificence. As the eldest of the company, I said that I remembered hearing the great Lope de Rueda, a man equally famous for his acting and intelligence. He was born at Seville, and by trade a gold-beater. He was admirable in pastoral poetry, in which style no one surpassed him, either before or since. Although I could not then judge of the goodness of his verses, being a child, there still abide some of them in my memory, which, on reviewing in this my ripe age, I find not unworthy of their reputation. In the time of this celebrated Spaniard, all the furniture of a comedian was held in one sack, and consisted of four white shep

herd's

herd's pelisses, garnished with gilt copper; four beards, and false heads of hair; and four crooks, more or less. The comedies were only conversations, like eclogues, between two or three swains and shepherdesses, embellished and prolonged by two or three intermedes, with negroes, clowns, and Biscayans. This same Lope made these four parts with all the excellence and truth imaginable. In those days there were no wings to the stage, no combats of Moors and Christians on foot and horseback, no figures which arose, or seemed to arise, from the centre of the earth, by means of the trapdoor of the stage; and that was formed by a few benches and planks, which raised it about four palms above the ground. One did not then see, descending from the heavens, angels, or souls borne upon clouds. All the ornament of the theatre was an old rug, sustained by cords from one side to the other, which separated the tiring-room from the scene. Behind it were placed the musicians, who sung, without guitar, some old romance or so. Lope de Rueda died, and, on account of his celebrity and excellence, was interred between the two choirs, in the great church of Cordova, in the same spot where that famous clown, Luis Lope, lies buried. Naharro, a native of Toledo, succeeded him, and made himself celebrated above all others for the character of a foolish, cowardly intermeddler. He increased the decorations of the comedies, and changed the sack for the dresses into coffers and chests, and brought on the scene, the music, which, prior to that time, sung behind the curtain, and also deprived the farce-players of their beards; for, till his day, no one acted without them. He wished that all should show themselves with uncovered batteries, except those who were to play the parts of old men, or to change their visages. Naharro invented scenes, clouds, thunder, lightning, challenges, and battles; but nothing of all this was carried to the perfection which we see now-a-days, (and it is here that I may be permitted to depart from the limits of my modesty,) at a time when we see acted on the theatres of Madrid, The Captives of Algiers,' which I composed, the Numantia,' and the Naval Battle.' It is there that I ventured to reduce comedies of five acts, of which they had formerly consisted, into four. I was the first who represented the imaginations and secret workings of the soul, and brought forth images of morality on the stage, with the universal applause of spectators. In that time I composed from twenty to thirty comedies, which were all acted without the public throwing at the actors cucumbers or oranges, or any of those things which the spectators launch at the heads of bad comedians. They followed their career without hisses, confusion, or clamour. I began to occupy myself with other affairs, abandoned the pen and the stage, and thereupon appeared that prodigy of nature, Lope de Vega, who bore away the comic diadem. He subjected and reduced to his dominion all the farce writers, filled the world with comedies, agreeable, happily arranged, and in so great profusion, that those which he has written are not contained in ten thousand leaves, and, wonderful to tell, he has seen them all acted, or at least has been assured that they were. If all those writers who wished to share his glory were to unite their works together,

they