The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

proceed to consider what those gifts were, and what he
accomplished with them.

The remarks on Calderon as a Romanist
merit deep attention :
Calderon is, and probably will remain, the last great
poet of Romanism. Saying this, I would not imply that
there have not been since his time poets of considerable
mark, who have been serious and earnest in their allegi-
ance to the Church of Rome ; Fiiicaja and Mailzuni
would refute me, if I made any assertion of the kind ; nor
yet that there may not be such again ; but he is, I am
persuaded, the last great poet who will have found in the
Roman Catholic as distinguished from, and, alas ! some-
times as contrasted with, the universally Christian, any
portion of the motive powers of his poetry ; who will so
believe in and live by this, that he shall be able in return
to shed around it the glories of his own art. There will
be abundance of ostentatiously Romanist art, poetical and
other. There will be many a scornful challenge—" See
what we can believe—how much more than you, poor un•
believing Protestants ; what sources of inspiration are
open to us, which are for ever closed to you." But that
which the challengers produce will not for a moment im-
pose on the discerning; and the artist, at bottom as in-
credulous in respect of his legend or his miracle as those
whom he affects to despise, will be rewarded with hearers
or spectators as incredulous as himself. But while I say
this of Calderon, it must not be understood as implying
that his inspirat►ons were predominantly Romanist as dis-
tinguished from Christian. Whatever is universally
Christian in him or in any other is for all time; and this,
I am persuaded, despite of all that Southey, Sismondi,
and others have affirmed to the contrary, so far in him ex
ceeds the distinctively Romanist, that he will hold his
ground and maintain his place in the august synod of the
great " heirs of memory," whose reputation is for all time:
nay, at each reconsideration of his claims he is likely on
the whole to take a higher, and not a lower, place than
that which he occupied before. If on some points the
orb of his fame must decrease, it will increase on others.

On some it is true it must decrease ; he already
suffers, and as the great stream of faith and passion
recedes further from Rome, will suffer still more, from
having committed himself so far to that, which will every
da) be more plainly overlived ; and will by more be aban-
doned. There will thus be the need in reading him of
large abatements and allowances. There will be that in
him wherein an ever larger number of readers will sympa-
thise coldly ; there will be that wherein they will sympa•
thise not at all; there will be that against which their
whole moral soul and being will protest and revolt. Thus
to say a word on this last point. What were that " Pecca
fortiter," even supposing it meant, which it does not in
the least, " Sin strongly, that so grace may abound "
what were that, as compared with Calderon's theology in
his " Devotion of the Cross "--despite of all its perversity
a wonderful and terrible drama, but the very sublime of
antinomianism ? Its hero Eusebio, after various disorders,
takes to the mountains, becomes in the end a robber, a
murderer, and a ravisher. He has never, however, amid
all his crimes renounced his devotion to the Cross. nor
yet his confidence that on the ground of this he shall be
ultimately saved, as accordingly in the end he is.

There is no poetry where there is no faith.
With some rare exceptions, faith in Romanism
is on the wane among the educated classes,
especially in those countries where it is the
established religion ; and this may possibly
account for the condition of poetry both in
Italy and Spain, no less than their political
degradation. It is also to be observed that in
the full-blown Romanism of the present day
there is an element of coarseness, which, how-
ever much certain resolute partisans may shut
their eyes to it, must always prove offensive
to the refined sensibilities of a poet.
Between Shakespeare and Calderon Mr.
Trench draws a suggestive comparison :

It is only in consistency with the profounder thought-
fulness, the more introverted eye of the great English
dramatist, that in him the action is subservient to the
character, while in Calderon the character !ti subservient
to the action. In Shakespeare you are more concerned
with what his people are, in Calderon with what they do.
Of course this is not to be pushed on either side too far;
Shakespeare often interests with his plots ; to Calderon
was by no means denied the power of drawing characters.
Of the drama of Shakespeare it has been said, " The soul
of man is the subject of its delineation ; the action and
the circumstances of the piece are entirely subordinate and
subservient to the displaying of the passions and affections
of the persons represented. The interest of the piece,
though sometimes most skilfully maintained, is neverthe-
less a secondary object." When the same writer goes on
to say, " In the Spanish theatre it is exactly the reverse ;
the interest is everything, the characters comparatively are
nothing," this, having its truth, is yet too strongly put.
In Shakespeare, again, where everything is wonderful,
there is yet perhaps nothing more wonderful than the way
in which characters grow before our eyes, as the action of
the drama proceeds. It is not merely that he gradually
shows us more fully and from more various points of view
what they are; but with the advance of the action his per-
sons are different from what they were when it com-
menced ; they are in process of becoming. As in actual
life no character stands still, but all are changing, are
either growing worse or better, so it is in the mimic life
of his stage. You note, for instance, in his plays which
have to do with our civil wars, the English barons growing
worse and worse. more unscrupulous, more cruel, more
treacherous, more vindictive at every step ; the poet thus
unobtrusively showing the hideous moral effects of such ,

859

wars upon those who are engaged in them. Or again you
see in Margaret of Anjou the forward flirt passing into the
unfaithful wife, and the unfaithful wife into the cursing
bag. Calderon is not wholly without this, but there is
comparatively little of it in him. Goethe has observed
this; in Calderon, he says, you have the hands of the
clock as they are seen upon the dial-plate, but in Shake-
speare all the inner works as well. Or more exactly to
this point he has observed, in a piece of criticism on the
Spanish poet, which, brief as it is, is the profoundest and
moat satisfying that has yet been written,—ln Calderon
you have the wine as the last artificial result of the grape,
but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and
sweetened, and so given you to drink ; but in Shakespeare
you have the whole natural process of its ripening besides,
and the grapes themselves one by one fur your enjoyment
if you will.

As a brief summary of Shakespeare's leading
excellencies, these remarks have seldom been
equalled.
The chapter upon the " Autos," or religious
dramas of Calderon, is very interesting and
apparently complete. The " Morality," a
sort of improvement on the old " Miracle"
play, was the foundation of these. They have
hitherto inspired many of Calderon's readers—
among whom Mr. Trench mentions Southey
and Sismoudi—with, in his opinion, a most
unjustifiable contempt :

The bare enumeration (i.e. of their titles and dramatis
persona) is alone trifficient to present ample material of
ridicule to one unable or unwilling to plant himself in a
region of art altogether new, and alien from all those in
which he may hitherto have moved. But one who is able
to plant himself there, and who cares to make ilbser ac-
quaintance with these poems, will very amp be filled with
quite other feelings, as this acquaintance increases.
He will be filled, l fear not to say, with an endless
astonishment and admiration at the skill of the poet in
conquering the almost unconquerable difficulties of his
theme, at the power with which he masters and moulds
the most heterogeneous materials, combining them and
making them subservient to the purposes of his art, at the
inexhaustible variety which he contrives by aid of new
combinations to impart to materials which he may have
been already compelled often to employ, at the transparent
intention of his allegory, so that the inner spirit looks ever
through the symbol, informs it with its own life, and
leaves no doubt or hesitation about its meaning. Add to
these merits the gorgeous poetic .fiction wherein he
clothes the eights of an imagination, for which nothing is
too bold, which dares to reach all worlds; while, greatest
trinmph of all, he is able to impart even a dramatic inle•
rest to that which, whatever other merits it might acquits
in its treatment, seemed in its very nature incapable of
this merit.

Mr. Trench has some acute remarks on the
difficulties of translating Calderon, but he has
grappled with those difficulties with great
skill in his translations from " Life's a Dream."
The " Great Theatre of the World " is an
Auto, in which God, the author, is described
as distributing their various parts to men, the
actors. After death, the following dialogue
ensues:—

Begg. Since the world in this rude fashion
From its bosom thrusts us naked,
Let us seek that splendid feast,
Which has been prepared, the banquet
Which shall recompense our toils.
King. Wilt thou too affront my greatness,
Daring thus to pass before me ?
Has it from thy memory faded,
Wretched mendicant, already
That thou vast my slave so lately?
Begg. Now that thy part is concluded,
We are equal, slave and master,
In this vestry of the tomb.
What thou haal been, little matters.
King. How forgettest thou that alms
Yesterday of me thou cravest ?
Begg. How forgettest thou that such
Thou refused'st ?
Beau. So soon failest
Thou in the respect thou owest
Unto me as richer, fairer?
Disc. All of us are equal now,
Having laid aside our garments;
For in this poor winding•sheet
No distinction more remsineth.
Rich M. Do you go before me, villain ?
Iluab. Leave this foolish dream of greatness;
For, once dead, thou art the shadow
Of the sun which thou west lately.
Rich M. Some strange fear in me the prospect
Of the Author's presence wakens.
Begg. Author of the earth and heaven,
All thy company, the pla3ers,
Who that briefest comedy
Played of human life so lately,
Are arrived, of that thy promise
Mindful, of that noble banquet.
Let the curtains be drawn hack,
And thy glorious seat unveiled.
This metre wins upon the ear by degrees, till
at last it becomes very musical. There is in
it a strange melody, wonderfully well adapted
to the subject; and we cannot but entertain a
hope that Mr. Trench's labours in this direc-
tion will not terminate with the present