upon, by his own excessive self-applause, to pass on this important portion of his private conduct and public administration. France has already answered our appeal. We have before us, for example, a review of M. Lamartine's Refutation' in the Courrier de la Somme of the 9th of June, 1850, in which the writer compares our assertions with M. Lamartine's reply, to M. Lamartine's utter discomfiture-and this is the more remarkable, because four of the six batches of fugitives into which the Royal family was scattered, escaped through that very department de la Somme, where of course the circumstances excited more interest, and would be better ascertained, than in more distant quarters. We shall quote in its own strong language the judgment of the Courrier de la Somme on M. Lamartine's Refutation' ::

'Se tresser des couronnes, se dresser des autels, se décerner l'apothéose, se placer au-dessus des plus grands et s'égaler à Dieu, ce peut être le dernier rêve d'une grande intelligence victime des écarts de son imagination. Mais le mensonge, même lorsqu'il a pour but d'excuser des fautes, de justifier des crimes, et surtout lorsqu'il tend à rejeter sur des innocens la cause et la responsabilité de ces fautes et de ces crimes, le mensonge est toujours la plus méprisable des armes de la vengeance, le plus bas et le plus honteux des étais sur lesquels puisse s'appuyer une renommée.

'Et quand un écrivain, poète ou homme politique, n'a pas rougi d'altérer les faits, de fausser l'histoire, de nier ou de défigurer la vérité, dans le but d'effacer de son front un stigmate indélébile, de se poser comme le protecteur généreux d'une famille qu'il a, plus qu'aucun autre, contribué à précipiter dans l'exil-de se donner comme le sauveur d'une nation sur laquelle il a attiré tous les malheurs de l'anarchiede se représenter comme le dompteur providentiel d'une révolution qu'il a, de sa main, déchaînée sur la France; quand il a essayé, par des phrases harmonieusement cadencées, de transformer l'innocent en coupable, et d'imposer le véritable coupable à la reconnaissance de tout un peuple abusé, il n'a pas droit de se plaindre, il n'a plus qu'à courber la tête, si, un jour, la vérité échappe aux voiles dont il l'avait enveloppée, et l'accable de son évidence.'

We have thought it just, and indeed necessary, to produce this specimen of what we believe to be the universal opinion as to this case in French society at the time when we write (June 20). But we shall be very anxious to see what further explanation M. de Lamartine may have to offer-and are meanwhile willing to hope that he may yet enable the world to acquit him of more than a deceitful memory—as respects the more important points at least of his apparently broad and deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

ERRATA.

In a part of the impression, p. 60, line 21-two pages' is misprinted for 'ten pages." p. 63, line 5 from bottom, 1811 is misprinted for 1810.

p. 125, last line, Mouceau is misprinted for Monceau.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-History of Spanish Literature. By George Ticknor. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1849.

MR.

R. TICKNOR'S work offers another proof of the creditable desire felt by one great section at least of America to discharge the debt due to Spain, her first discoverer. While the southern or Spanish states, in spite of more and stricter obligations, have folded their arms in indolent ingratitude, the northern and Anglo-Saxon portions, true to their race, have been up and doing. From the Black Prince downwards, England has been foremost with her best blood and brain to uphold her ally's independence in war and to illustrate her marvels in peace; and the English sword has long been wreathed with Spanish myrtle. Neither have our transatlantic kinsmen degenerated :—the names of Irving and Prescott are already associated with Columbus and Isabella; nor will Ticknor henceforward be forgotten where Cervantes and his compeers are held in remembrance.

Our author tells us in a modest preface the circumstances under which his book' was composed. On being appointed Professor of Modern Literature at Harvard College, he crossed the Atlantic in 1816, and in a good hour; for to every American of better caste and aspirations a pilgrimage to England must ever be, what a visit to Greece was for the vir bonus of ancient Rome, the crowning mercy and seal to the education of a gentleman; and we admire the good sense and feeling of the apparently established arrangement, which allows any young Professor to spend a certain period in this way, before he grapples with the active duties of his chair. After also studying the better known lands and languages of the continent, Mr. Ticknor passed into Spain, which eventually-there is bird-lime in that racy soil-became the country of his predilections, giving colour to his after-life, end and object to his studies, and corner-stone to his fame. his return to America, having come into the possession of ample fortune, he resigned the long-held professorship, but not the pursuit of literature; his affluence was employed in forming the best Spanish library in the New World, and his leisure-precious boon-in mastering its contents. To every author of his high

On

aims,

aims, the best resource lies in his own library; without a supply of instruments suitable, and always at hand, no one can achieve a first-rate work: the deficiencies of Mr. Ticknor's pioneers, Bouterwek and Sismondi, are mainly attributable to a want of proper materials; and this M. Clarus also (Pref. xxx.) laments and pleads in extenuation of what he-stern judge-considers to be his own short-comings.* What in truth is a history of literature but one of books? and without them how can it be adequately written?

To his labour of love Mr. Ticknor devoted more than thirty years-tantæ molis erat; but on no other conditions do the gods grant excellence. Venus, the type of grace and beauty, was wedded to Vulcan, the personification of skill and toil. The result of so much single-hearted industry may be said to exhaust an important subject hitherto neglected in France and Italy, and treated in Spain, Germany, and England more in detached portions than in one comprehensive whole. This matured and conscientious encyclopedia necessarily will draw increased attention to the too long sealed books of Spain, and widen the practicable breaches made of late in those ramparts behind which the recluse of Europe had concealed intellectual talents, buried like the soul of Pedro Garcia. In lending a hand to the good work and by pointing out a few pearls, we hope to encourage divers of longer breath--and in the mean while enable our own readers to form some opinion whether M. Montesquieu's saying, that the only good Spanish book was the one which pointed out the ridicule of all the others, was an oracle or an epigram.

Mr. Ticknor divides his inquiry into three periods. The first is that from the birth of Spanish literature in the twelfth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, when the middle ages came to a conclusion; the second extends to the close of the seventeenth; and the third to the early part of the nineteenth. We propose on this occasion to dwell chiefly on the first of these sections, as being at once the most genuinely Spanish and the least generally known.

In treating the entire literature of any country, as now is done ex cathedrâ, some preliminary inquiry into its language, the exponent of national heart and mind, must obviously be made. Accordingly, Mr. Ticknor collects in his first appendix the general philological results. Spain, from the earliest periods of authentic record, has been overrun and occupied by many dif

* Darstellung der Spanischen Literatur im Mittelalter. Ludwig Clarus,-2 vols. Maintz, 1846. This author's close, correct, and critical exposition of the literature of Spain down to Ferdinand and Isabella seems to have escaped Mr. Ticknor.

ferent

ferent races, who have left impressions on the distinct people formed from the ultimate fusion. In the beginning, one language, supposed by some to be of Ugro-Tartarian or NorthernAsian origin, was spread over the Iberian Peninsula; traces of which remain in local names-of all others the most lastingand in the Basque. This (with all the modifications of Celtic, Phoenician, and Hebrew admixtures) was, before the fourth century, all but superseded by the Latin, which itself-degenerated into a lingua vulgaris or rustica even in Italy—was further corrupted in Spain by the advent of the Goths, who, handling the sword better than the pen, found it easier to learn the vocabulary of their new subjects than its syntax. Hence the usual compromise took place-excellently developed by Clarus (i. 114)—and a hybrid middle idiom was formed, in which the mutilated torsos of antiquity were rebuilt with Teutonic cement. While the unwritten Gothic perished altogether, the Latin was preserved by the liturgies of the Church-but not purified; Christian not critical, and following in Gregory's steps, her antagonistic distinction between sacred and profane literature, and her setting up a corrupt monastic model, caused low Latinity to triumph over the classical. Ere these transitions were complete, the Moorish invasion took place (A.D. 711); the Arab subdued Spain in fewer years than the Roman had required centuries-and the conquests of Saracenic intellect rivalled those of the scimitar. The rude Gothic invader, we have seen, had surrendered to the superior civilization of the vanquished Hispano-Roman; but now the case was reversed: for this, the darkest night of Europe, was the brightest noontide of the East. Polished by new arts and elegancies, Cordova soon became the Athens of the West; before 850 the Spaniards, who continued to live among the tolerant Moors, adopted entirely the pomp and splendour of the Arabic idiom-and that not unreluctantly; for, whether because their civilization came originally from the East, or from some quality of climate and locality to which national idiosyncrasies have been attributed, Spaniards have always been predisposed to a full-toned articulation, with the exaggerated phraseology of the os magna sonaturum ; and to this day the pingue quiddam et peregrinum of old Cordova, which struck the ear of critical Rome, still finds the readiest echo in native hearts. Meantime, however, as the Celtiberian retired before the Roman into the Basque hills, a Gothic remnant fled from the Moors into the Alpine Asturias, carrying with them race, name, creed, language, and country-scotched but not killed. In that rocky school and amid storms and war the infant Spanish language-eldest child and heir to the Latin-was

U 2

slowly

slowly brought up; seven centuries were required to roughhew this formation of the granite, and three more to shape its ends. It was long called Romance, from the prevalence of the Roman element; but in the end the many dialects of different provinces gave way to the Castellano, or idiom spoken in dominant Castile ; and this, once a particular term, became a synonym for the Spaniard and his language. From its composite character it has been compared to a heap of mixed grain, while from its lofty cadences it was pronounced by Charles V. to be the only tongue in which mortal man should dare address his Creator. The terminations in consonants, and marked gutturals of Teutonic origin, confer on it a manliness, a back-bone, which is wanting to the soft Italian-fair daughter of the Latin. Clarus (i. 87), following Aldrete and Sarmiento, has philologically analyzed and pointed out the Latin, Greek, Teutonic, Hebrew, and Arabic components. This magnificent aggregate, based on Roman majesty, buttressed by Gothic force, and enriched with Arabian filagree, regular in construction, solemn and sonorous, nervous and emphatical, and fit alike for poetry as prose, is admirably adapted to the stately sententious Spaniardand makes him seem far wiser than he is. Foreigners listening to the imposing vehicle, infer the presence of much more meaning and thought than really exists in the natives, who, like melodious birds, are simply exercising, and without effort, an exquisite organ; a village alcalde proclaims and placards in the Cambyses vein, as naturally as Pitt spoke kings' speeches extemporaneously. The world for a long time took the Spaniards at their own word and valuation, and they successfully passed off their land as the best and finest, and themselves as the lords of the creation; but now, every day witnesses the explosion of some venerable Peninsular fallacy; and it is well if they can continue to cheat themselves on a point or two.

The earliest written specimen of this Spanish is the Carta Puebla, or Municipal Charter of the city of Aviles in the Asturias, confirmed in 1155; but no sooner had the language become thus far formed-and until genius can speak its own tongue, thought must be translated, and literature can neither be original nor national-than the Poema del Cid appeared; it was composed before 1200, according to Huber-whose authority we consider conclusive in the infinite Quæstiones Cidiacæ; for not dates alone but the Cid's very existence have been doubted by carpers, who, from the poor pleasure of contradicting, would reduce the sinewy champion to an imaginary Amadis.

But Ruy Diaz de Bibar (1040-1099) was a reality; and history