Page images
PDF
EPUB

Charlemain,

gets well off in every tongue and nation, Carlo Mano, Carolus Magnus. Even his plain monosyllable, Carl, which Camden tells us is the only appellation on his coins, has a self-sufficing and dominant sound. But we know not that he ever cut a more imperial figure than in this lofty and solemn agnomen of Carlo Mawr. It reminds one of the mountain.* The names that abound in this passage serve only to show to greater effect the obscurity of the rest. Uthr and Prydain we can make out: Damasco and Marocco, and Trebisond, are as familiar to us as the sounds of a trumpet; but "what the devil," as Brantome would say, is "oedd y pedditos mân?” There happens to be a note to these words; and the idea of explanation is so united with that of a note, that one looks involuntarily for some instruction on the point. The following is the elucidation. "Odd y pedditos mân."]-Syniad yw hyn am y ddammeg o ryfel rhwyng y crorod ac y creyrod." Even the Preface, we find, has nothing in it for us Saxons; nor the Index either. At last, in the former, we hit upon some Greek letters, and thought that some light was going to break in upon us, when lo! we know not for what cause, but these Greek letters contained only Welsh words. This was "the unkindest cut of all.” But they look like some memorial about a lady, perhaps an affectionate one ; and we return to our gravities.

The only remaining observation we have to make, is the

* Those rogues the punsters, who will be levelling every thing, and laying every language double, have already got hold of the translation of Mr. Owen Pughe. One of them, the other day, seeing the words "Mr. Tomkins" at the head of an advertisement, and finding that it concerned that late eminent writing-master, said that he was the greatest man that flourished during the last century, and that he ought to be called Penman-Mawr.

pleasure with which the great poet himself would have witnessed a translation of his work into this language: there has lately been an Icelandic version of Paradise Lost. This would have gratified him, from feelings common to all writers. The Italian ones were a matter of course. But a translation into old British would have been particularly curious to one, who had meditated an epic poem on the exploits of King Arthur, and had no doubt made himself as well acquainted as possible with Welsh antiquities, for that purpose. The overflowings of this first intention of his, when it was afterwards diverted, are visible in the little streams of romance which occasionally run into its other sphere. Among the subjects also which he has left on record for tragedy, are passages from the same period; and when he began a History of Britain, he delighted to go as far back as possible, and do justice to Briton as well as Saxon. He speaks of the intended epic poem in various parts of his writings, and talks of his subject with a zeal and even a British sort of partiality, which is as striking as the ardor of his verse. See particularly the famous passage in his Latin poem to Tasso's friend, Manso, where after expressing his wish to meet with so understanding a patron, and to write about the Round Table and Arthur, who "at that moment was preparing his wars under ground," he bursts out in a strain like the clang of metal :

Et, O modo spiritus adsit,

Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalangas !

And oh, did spirit come on me but fit for those high wars,
I'd crash the Saxon phalanxes beneath the British Mars!

Perhaps considering what a proud patriot Milton was, notwithstanding all his cosmopolitical qualities, it affords

some additional explanation to this British part of his enthusiasm, to find that his mother was of Welsh origin. His connections were probably a good deal among the countrymen of her family. His first wife was the daughter of a Powell. That he did not do what he intended, has been regretted by every poet who has alluded to it, from Dryden to Walter Scott. We remember a note in the latter's edition of Dryden, where he asks, what would not have been done with such subjects as the Perilous Chapel and the Forbidden Seat? So much, that being compelled to bring this article to a close, we dare not trust ourselves with dwelling upon it,—with fancying a thousandth part of the grand and the gorgeous things, the warlike and the peaceful, the bearded and the vermeil-cheeked, the manly, the supernatural, and the gentle, with which his poem would have burnt brightly down to us, like windows painted by enchantment.

THE BULL-FIGHT;

OR, THE STORY OF DON ALPHONSO DE MELOS AND THE JEWELLER's daughter.

VERYBODY has heard of the bull-fights in Spain. The noble animal is brought into an arena to make sport, as Samson was among the Philistines. And truly he presents himself to one's imagination, as a creature equally

superior with Samson to his tormentors; for the sport which he is brought in to furnish, is that of being murdered. The poor beast is not actuated by a perverse will,

and by a brutality which is deliberate. He does but obey to the last the just feelings of his nature. He would not be forced to revenge himself, if he could help it. He would fain return to the sweet meadow and the fresh air, but his tyrants will not let him. He is stung with arrows, goaded and pierced with javelins, hewn at with swords, beset with all the devilries of horror and astonishment that can exasperate him into madness; and the tormentors themselves feel that he is in the right, if he can but give bloody deaths to his bloody assassins. The worst of it is, that some of these assassins, who are carried away by custom, are persons who are otherwise among the best in the kingdom. They err from that very love of sympathy, and of the admiration of their fellows, which should have been employed to teach them better.

The excuse for this diabolical pastime is, that it keeps up old Spanish qualities to their height, and prevents the nation from becoming effeminate. To what purpose? And in how many instances? Are not the Spanish nobility the most degenerate in Europe? Has not its court, for three generations, been a scandal and a burlesque ? and would any other nation in Christendom consent to be made the puppets of such superiors? What could Spain have done against France without England? What have all its bull-fights, and all its other barbarities, done for it, to save it from the shame of being the feeblest and most superstitious of European communities, and of having no voice in the affairs of the world?

Poor foolish Matadore! Poor, idle illiterate, unreflecting cavallero! that is to say, "horseman !" which, by the noble power or privilege of riding a horse (a thing that any groom can do in any decent country), came to mean “gentleman!" (and no other country has derived its idea of a

gentleman from that of a centaur), can you risk your life for nothing better than this? Must you stake wife, children, mistress, father and mother, friends, fortune, love, and all which all of them may bring you, at no higher price than the power of having it said you are a better man than the butcher? Is there no sacred cause of country to fight for? No tyrant to oppose? No doctrine worth martyrdom? that you must needs, at the hazard of death and agony, set the only wits or the best qualities you possess on outdoing the greatest fools and ruffians in your city? And can you wonder that your country has no cause which it can stand to without help, or to any purpose? that your tyrants are cruel and laugh at you? and that your very wives and mistresses (for the most part) think there is nothing better in the world than a flaring show and a brutal sensation?

Bull-fights are going on now, and bull-fights were going on in the wretched time of King Charles the Second, of the House of Austria, whose very aspect seemed ominous of the disasters about to befall his country; for his face was very long, his lips very thick, his mouth very wide, his nose very hooked, and he had no calves to his legs, and no brains in his skull. His clemency consisted in letting assassins go, because passion was uncontrollable; and his wit, in sending old lords to stand in the rain, because they intimated that it would be their death. However, he was a good-natured man, as times went, especially for a King of Spain; and it is not of public disasters that we are to speak, but of the misery that befell two lovers in his day, in consequence of these detestable bull-fights.

Don Alphonso de Melos, a young gentleman of some five-and-twenty years of age, was the son of one of those

« PreviousContinue »