on Spanish novels and romances; and there is abundant evidence that Spanish was during the latter half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century very widely known in England; indeed, far more familiar than it ever since has been. The wars in the Low Countries, in which so many of our countrymen served, the probabilities at one period of a match with Spain, the fact that Spanish was almost as serviceable, and scarcely less indispensable, at Brussels, at Milan, at Naples, and for a time at Vienna, not to speak of Lima and Mexico, than at Madrid itself, the many points of contact, friendly and hostile, of England with Spain for well nigh a century, all this had conduced to an extended knowledge of Spanish in England.* It was popular at

The number of Spanish words in English (I do not mean to say they all belong to this period, yet certainly many of them do) are a signal evidence of a lively intercourse between the nations, and familiar acquaintance on our part with the language. Such are 'alcove,' 'alligator,' 'armada,' 'armadillo,' 'barricade,' 'buffalo,' 'cambist,' 'caprice' (the earlier spelling 'caprich' seems to indicate that we got the word from Spain, not from France or Italy), 'carbonado,'' cargo,' 'cigar,' 'creole,' 'don,' 'duenna,' 'embargo,' 'flotilla,' 'gala,' 'grandee,' 'jennet,' 'mosquito,' 'mulatto,' 'negro,' 'olio,' 'palaver,' 'paragon,' 'platina,' 'parroquet,' 'punctilio,' 'renegado,' 'savannah,' 'sherry,' 'strappado,' ' tornado,' ' vanilla,' ' verandah.' To these may be added some which, having held their place awhile in the language, have now disappeared from it again. Such are 'quirpo' (cuerpo) a jacket fitting quite close to the body, 'quellio,' (cuello) a collar or ruff, 'flota,' the constant name for the yearly fleet from the Indies, ' matachin,' a sword-dance, 'privado,' a prince's favorite, one admitted into his privacy; 'reformado,' an officer for the present out of employment, but retaining his rank; 'alferez,' an ensign; none of

court. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were both excellent Spanish scholars. A passage in Howell's Letters would imply that at the time of Charles the First's visit to Madrid, his Spanish was imperfect; but at a later date, that is, in 1635, a Spanish play was acted by a Spanish company before him.* The statesmen and scholars of the time were rarely ignorant of the language. We might confidently presume Raleigh's acquaintance with it; but in his Discovery of Guiana and other writings there is abundant proof of this. We observe the same evidence of a familiar knowledge of Spanish on Lord Bacon's part in the Spanish proverbs which he quotes, and in the fine observation which occasionally he makes on a Spanish word. It was among the many accomplishments of Archbishop Williams, who, when the Spanish match was pending, eaused the English Liturgy to be translated under his own eye into Spanish.‡

The language, therefore, would have opposed no barrier; yet it is not till after the Restoration that any traces of acquaintance with Calderon on the part of English writers appear. Little or nothing, however, came of this acquaintance then; as the genius which are of unfrequent occurrence in our literature of the seventeenth century.

* Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, 1831, vol. ii., p. 69. †Thus on desenvoltura in his Essay on Fortune.

Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams, part i., p. 127. For proofs of Ben Jonson's Spanish, if there needed such, see The Alchemist, act iv., scenes i. and ii.

was wanting on the part of our playwrights to create poetry of their own, so was it wanting to profit by the creations of others. Elvira or The worst not always true, by the earl of Bristol, is a very poor recast of Calderon's comedy of the same name;* one from which all the grace and charm of the original have departed. Another piece in Dodsley's Collection, The Adventures of Five Hours, which one crown translated at the desire of Charles II., is a Spanish piece, but is not Calderon's, as is erroneously asserted in the preliminary remarks. Dryden's Mock Astrologer, which appeared in 1668,† is drawn directly from Le Feint Astrologue of the younger Corneille, but not without comparison on the English poet's part with Corneille's original, El Astrologo Fingido of Calderon. Dryden, in that same spirit of strange delusion which, in respect of the worth of his own and his contemporaries' dramatic compositions, seemed always to possess him, ventures on the following assertion, "I will be so vain to say, it has lost nothing in my hands" (p. 229). Never was poet more mistaken; it has lost the elegance, the fancy, everything which was worth retaining; its gains being only in ribaldry, double-entendre, and that sort of coarse impurity in which, unhappily, Dryden so much delight

* See Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, vol. xii., pp. 127–212 Its date is 1667.

↑ Works (Sir Walter Scott's edition), vol. iii., p. 207, sqq.

ed; a sort which fortunately in great part defeats itself, being very much more calculated to turn the stomach than to kindle the passions. His plays are, indeed, as a German critic has styled them, "incredibly bad," their moral tone and their art being about on an equality of badness, so that they appear, I confess, to me quite undeserving that toleration, and sometimes much more than toleration, which Sir Walter Scott has extended to them.

During the eighteenth century Calderon's name is, I should suppose, hardly mentioned, or only mentioned in the slightest and most inaccurate way, in English books. One comedy I am aware of, which the author announces as a translation* from him; but of no other point of contact between him and our English literature during the century. In fact, for a long period Don Quixote was supposed to be Spanish literature; and, as we esteemed, we had here not the man unius libri, but in a somewhat different sense, the nation. The Schlegels were the earliest to waken up any new interest about him. This they did first in Germany, and the same has since extended, though very faintly indeed, to England. They effected this, Augustus William by his Spanish Theatre, which, in fact, is a translation of five plays of Calderon ;† by

* 'Tis well it's no worse, London, 1770, from Calderon's El Escondido y la Tapada.

+ Berlin, 1803-1809.

his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature ;* and Frederic by his History of Ancient and Modern Literature.† One of the first in England whose attentions was attracted to Calderon was Shelley, who, in one of his letters, with date December, 1819, preserved to us in Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, expresses himself thus: "Some of the ideal dramas of Calderon with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted, are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the gray veil of my own words."

Various articles have since appeared from time to time in our leading periodicals, either seeking to take the measure of Calderon's genius, or presenting actual specimens of it, in more than one case entire dramas and in this way, or in independent volumes. a considerable number of his plays have been made accessible to the English reader, who, however, has never been persuaded to take any lively interest in the literature thus brought within his reach. The deeper reasons of this indifference, the causes which will always hinder his finding any very cordial recep

*Heidelberg, 1809-1811.

† Vienna, 1815.

As one in the Quarterly Review, April, 1821. This, with another in Blackwood, December, 1839, and a third in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly, January, 1851, are, with one exception, of which I shall speak presently, the best general articles on Calderon of which I know; although none of them can be considered wholly satisfactory.