The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-07 00:00:00

THE EURIA.L IN THE ALPS.

And when the small quiet life of Alpine solitude has
passed, when the body is given back to the earth whence it
came, a very peculiar impression is made upon us by the
last solemn duty. Down in the country where all the
neighbours live close together, and have grouped their
houses round the village church, there (if we do not attend
to special country customs) burial is almost everywhere
alike. It is different in the Alps, where, an hcur from the
common resting-place, the citizen of this world enters eter-
nity. The way which he went every Sunday to church
while alive his corpse has now to go in its narrow house
of boards for the last time. It is hard to carry him so far
down. Then if it is summer the son places his father's or
mother's coffin on a small narrow car, harnesses whatever
he has in his stable, a horse or a cow, in front of it, and so
bears the earthly remains to the valley. Wherever the
mournful procession comes the people run out, pray aloud,
" Our Father," or join the procession ; and if winter has
cast his mantle of snow over mountain and valley, the
sleigh has to do its last service for the dead The coffin is
firmly tied on, a strong,-powerful man, with two Alpen
stocks under his arms, places himself in front, guides it with
his feet, and starts down with the corpse in rapid flight to
the valley.

Love, the Greatest Enchantment : The Sorceries
of' Sin : The Devotion of the Cross. From the
Spanish of Calderon. By Denis Florence Mac-
Carthy. With Introduction, Notes, and the
Spanish Text. Longman.
This accomplished Irish poet claims the distinc-
tion of having been the first who presented to the
English public a complete version of any of the
plays of the great Spanish dramatist. It is now
some years since he published two volumes of
translations, which met with a favourable reception.
In rendering those plays into our tongue, however,
Mr. M'Carthy did not attempt to represent in Eng-
lish verse the peculiarities of the Spanish metre•
In preparing the volume before us greater leisure
and increased confidence have induced him to imi-
tate closely the rhythm of the Spanish text, not-
withstanding the great difficulties which such an
underta.king presents to the English writer. As
the peculiarity of the asonance, which is its distinc-
tive feature, may not be known to many readers,
we subjoin the following passage from the pre-
face :

The peculiar feature of this translation is its rigid adhe-
rence to the metres of the original, and particularly to that
especial Spanish one, the asonante vowel rhyme, of which
but a few scattered specimens exist in English, and these
rather as samples of what our language was incapable of
producing to any considerable extent, than of what it could
achieve. This metre is so very peculiar, and so opposed to
anything that has the semblance of rhyme in English, that
I have known several persons who were able to read in the
original a romance, and who, notwithstanding, never per-
ceived the delicate and most elaborate form of versification
they had been enjoying until their attention was drawn to
it. When once seen or heard, however, the discovery is
hailed with delight, and we look or listen for the ever recur-
ring similarity of cadence or construction, 'the manifold
wild chimes' of the Spanish atonance, with pleasure and
surprise. The numerous examples of it throughout this
volume will show the reader what it is more clearly perhaps
than any explanation, and yet some definition of it may not
be inappropriate in this place. "The Spanish asonante,"
says the late Lord Holland, " is a word which resembles
another in the vowel on which the last accent falls, as well
as the vowel or vowels which follow it ; but every conso-
nant after the accented vowel must be different from that in
the corresponding syllable. Thus, toss and amor, orilla and
delira, alamo and paxaro, are all asonantes." This defini-
tion, though perhaps a little too limited for the boundless
variety and freedom of the asonante, may be considered
tolerably satisfactory. . . . In English, from the compa-
rative weakness of the vowel sounds, from the rare possi-
bility of combining them, and, what is still more, from
their perpetual variation in quantity, anything like produc-
ing the same effect as in the Spanish is impossible ; yet this
ghost of a rhyme, as Dean Trench calls it, is better than
none at all, and 1 have found that an inflexible determina-
tion to reproduce it at whatever trouble, even though with
imperfect success, enables the translator more closely to
render the meaning of the original, and saves him from the
danger of being tempted into diffuseness by the facilities of
expansion, which even the unrhymed trochaic, without the
asonante, too readily supplies.
It can easily be imagined that to render so peculiar
a metre into English verse has been no easy task;
but Mr. M'Carthy has done so with very great
success, and his example may encourage other
translators, by proving to them that a faithful ad-
herence to the original text is by no means incom-
patible with free and flowing English. He has
, submitted himself to a severe test, and one that a
less faithful translator would have cause to dread
by printing the Spanish by the side of the English,
and thus any departure from the text of his author
could be easily detected. The dramas he has
selected are peculiar ones. The first and longest
in the volume—" Love, the Greatest Enchantment"
—refers to the ancient legend of Circe and Ulysses.
In the opening passages there is a striking resem-
blance to the first scene of The Tempest, which is,
the translator considers, quite accidental. If so, it
is certainly very singular. The second piece In
the volume is one of the autos, or religious mystical
plays, which are completely unknown be-
yond the circle of those familiar withthe original.
" With the exception of the scenes introduced into
Dean Trench's analysis of The Great Theatre of the
World, not a single line of these remarkable dramas
has ever been previously presented in English
verse. Writers in reviews and magazines have oc-
casionally drawn attention to a few of the secular
dramas of Calderon ; but the Autos, the most won-
derful of all his productions, and the only ones
(with but two exceptions) which the great poet
himself thought worthy of his revision, have been
passed over, I may say, in almost utter silence." In
this remarkable production the dramatis personce
are no longer men and women, but impersonations
of intangible things. Man indeed is prominent as
the hero, and so to speak the scene of the play, for
Sin, Flattery, and all the several senses exert their
influence upon him, resisted only by the warning
voice of the Understanding. This piece, the Sorceries
of Sin, is also founded on the story of Ulysses and.
Circe, and some of the opening passages are almost
precisely similar. The drama of the Devotion of
the
wonderful
Cross
d
h has been n
terribletruly
tragedy. b D
Itsya pm
Dean
ro Trench,prominent
at
feature is one which revolts the reader, and a
gloomy horror reigns over it. "In English and
French Literature," says the translator in speaking
of this play, " few writers have ever referred to
Calderon without praising the poetical power and
beauty of this drama, and condemning it as ' the
very sublime of Antinomianism.' Like many other
celebrated literary works, however,it has been more
frequently referred to than read, and many writers
have, either through carelessness or wilful hostility
needlessly misrepresented and exaggerated its de-
fects." Sismondi is one of these inaccurate critics,
and Boutewek falls into the mistake of calling it an
Auto, not understanding, says Mr. M'Carthy, the
marked difference betwoen a religious DRAMA and.
an Auto. The Sorceries of Sin which we have
alluded to above, is properly an auto, which it will be
seen is entirely distinct in its character from a play
representing human actions or agencies. Those who
wish to familiarise themselves with these and other
peculiarities of the Spanish drama cannot do bettor
than follow Mr. M'Carthy's guidance through this
beautiful and interesting volume.

_ -
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LARGE ARRIVALS OF EAST INDIA COTTON IN
LIVERPOOL.—During the last few days thorn have been
some large arrivals of East India cotton in the Mersey. On
Tuesday there were no fewer than fivo large ships posted
as having arrived from Bombay, having on board 25,461
bales of cotton. The names of the respective vessels, to_
are :--The City of Agra, with 4,751 bales ; the East, with
bales;ast India cotton now at sea, according to late
694 bales, against 55,812 bales for the cor-,
gether with theth ne uom
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f;135 ,
The Langdale made the voyage home in 93 d
days. The
rospeudiug period last year,