Then, further, in every estimate of Calderon's merits his infinite dramatic tact and skill may well claim to be prominently urged. To some, indeed, he is only a playwright. Now, playwright no doubt he was the most finished and accomplished, probably, that the world ever saw-understanding the mechanism of dramatic construction better than it has ever been understood by any other. It is no doubt in this sense, and having this merit in view, that Schiller has said of him: "This poet would have saved Goethe and myself from many mistakes if we had learned to know him earlier." At the same time we should entirely wrong Calderon if we merely gave him credit for a power of stage-effect, and not for this as subservient to the highest interest of art.

Let me illustrate, by a single instance, what I mean. I have already mentioned his Locks of Absalom as one of his finest plays founded on a scriptural subject. There is nothing in its kind grander than the scene in this, where Amnon is slain at the command of his brother Absalom. The marvellous skill with which this dreadful deed is prepared and brought about deserves the very highest admiration. With the interval of long years which had elapsed between this murder and the crime which it avenged, the utter absence scripsit, moriens præscribendo despexit." None of his biographers, that I am aware of, have taken any notice of the words, or sought to measure how much they imply. Did he denounce, or wish the suppression of, his secular plays?

of all suspicion with which Amnon had accepted his brother's invitation, an inferior artist might, indeed certainly would, have so brought about the catastrophe as merely to have revolted the spectators with what would have seemed a cold-blooded fratricide. But Calderon, with rare skill, and in one of the noblest scenes which his theatre possesses, brings the spectator to the point at which he still feels that it is indeed evil punishing evil, the wicked being used as scourges of the wicked; but he is not so far removed from all sympathy with the deed as would altogether mar the effect.

The idyllic aspect of the whole scene of the sheepshearing (2 Sam. xiii. 23), the pastoral quietness, the groups of simple shepherds and shepherdesses, form a contrast the most striking with the act of a terrible revenge which is presently to stain that green turf with blood. Tamar, ever since her wrong, has lived in deepest seclusion in this country-place of her brother's, "desolate in her brother Absalom's house," and moves like a dark shadow among the simple and joyous shepherdesses of the land; for the sin of Amnon shows itself also in this, that it has turned her whole soul, who was once gentle and loving, to bitterness, and hate, and the lust of revenge. The royal youths are assembled; they have brought with them the manners of the court, its freedom and its license, and do not fail to show that they have done so. Teuca, an

aged prophetess or hag, one hardly knows which, but in the secret of the blow which is about to fall, distributes different flowers to each-to Solomon, to Adonijah, to Absalom, to Amnon-to each with ambiguous words; and in each case the flower, with the words which accompany it, and the answer which it calls out, have something prophetic of the future fortunes of the receiver. There is for each, in all this, an unconscious prophecy of his own doom. The whole forms the most wonderful preparation for that which is about to be. The words which seem spoken at random, and which yet shall prove most literally true -the irony of fate, which unconsciously draws out of men's own lips the sentence of their doom-the first mutterings of those divine judgments which shall presently break in thunder over their heads-are all here.

Presently the banquet is announced, and the other guests go in. Ammon alone tarries behind. The same that he was of old, wanton and injurious, he has been taken with the shape and grace of one of these veiled shepherdesses, and will make near acquaintance with her. Her replies to his advances are abrupt, yet full of mysterious allusions to that which has been, to that which shall so shortly be, to the past outrage, to the coming revenge. Does she refuse to unveil at his request?-he will force her thereto. He is very fond of force, she answers. At last he

does forcibly remove her veil, and perceiving that it is Tamar, rushes out as from a Medusa's face with horror and dismay. "Ill beginning," he exclaims, "this banquet has had." “But it shall have a worse ending," she replies. How marvellous the art in this way to reproduce the feeling of the original outrage in the spectators, to revive in its strength the indignation against it which the long spaces of intervening time might else have weakened in great part. Amnon has scarcely gone out, when one cry, and then another, is heard within, for mercy from Amnon, of triumphant vengeance mingled with Tamar's name from Absalom. It is but the work of a moment-for no one knows better than Calderon when and where to precipitate the action-and the scene opens; the injurious Amnon lies dead across the tables with a bloody napkin thrown over him; Absalom stands triumphing above him; his sister takes her place by his side; while of the other guests some are flying, and others grouped in wildest confusion around. She had said in the moment of her agony, "I will cry to heav"Heaven answers late," he had scornfully replied. This was true, but though late it had answered still. There are scenes in Calderon equal to this; I know of none in which his genius shines more gloriously forth.

en."

When Calderon wrote, that noble Castilian language, the stateliest of the daughters of the Latin,

not clipped and cut short like the hungry French, which devours so many of its syllables, not emasculated, like the Italian, nor eviscerated, like the Portuguese, was in its prime, perhaps just beginning to decline from it. Of this glorious tongue there is no greater master than he. There seems no bidding of his which it does not wait to fulfil; and he sometimes loves to display his mastery in it by tours de force, which are executed by him seemingly with the most perfect ease, and which give no sign of the difficulty which must have attended their accomplishment. He did not indeed wield the language at all periods of his life with equal felicity. Rich, ornate, and decorated, as his diction always is, if only there is anything to justify its being so, he did not in his youth altogether escape the dulcia vitia of the estilo culto, which was the fashion then; while in the works of his old age there is a certain re-appearance of early faults, and this without the fiery vigor of youth to excuse or conceal them; but take him at his best, and none can justly deny him this praise.

Let us seek in other matters to measure out to him the praise or the blame which are fairly his, to avoid the extravagances in either of which not a few have been guilty. The wealth and prodigality of Calderon's imagery has been often extolled and admired; and with justice; while yet, wealthy and prodigal as he appears to be, and no doubt is, at the same time