servation of every rhyme. But it is far more questionable whether the palm of superior merit, independent of originality, should be awarded to the later poet. More elegance and purity of taste belong to the Aminta, more animation and variety to the Pastor Fido. The advantage in point of morality, which some have ascribed to Tasso, is not very perceptible; Guarini may transgress rather more in some passages, but the tone of the Aminta, in strange opposition to the pure and pious life of its author, breathes nothing but the avowed laxity of an Italian court. The Pastor Fido may be considered, in a much greater degree than the Aminta, a prototype of the Italian opera; not that it was spoken in recitative; but the short and rapid expressions of passion, the broken dialogue, the frequent changes of personages and incidents, keep the effect of representation and of musical accompaniment continually before the reader's imagination. Any one who glances over a few scenes of the Pastor Fido will, I think, perceive that it is the very style which Metastasio, and inferior coadjutors of musical expression, have rendered familiar

to our ears.

5. The great invention, which, though chiefly connected with the history of music and of society, was by Italian opera. no means without influence upon literature, the melodrame, usually called the Italian opera, belongs to the very last years of this century. Italy, long conspicuous for such musical science and skill as the middle ages possessed, had fallen, in the first part of the sixteenth century, very short of some other countries, and especially of the Netherlands, from which the courts of Europe, and even of the Italian princes, borrowed their performers and their instructors. But a revolution in church music, which had become particularly dry and pedantic, was brought about by the genius of Palestrina about 1560; and the art, in all its departments, was cultivated with an increased zeal for all the rest of the century. In the

This is that beginning, O bella età dell' oro.

f Ranke, with the musical sentiment of a German, ascribes a wonderful influence in the revival of religion after the middle of the century to the compositions of Palestrina. Church music had become so pedantic and technical that the

Council of Trent had some doubts whether it should be retained. Pius IV. appointed a commission to examine this question, who could arrive at no decision. The artists said it was impossible to achieve what the church required, a coincidence of expression between the words and the music. Palestrina ap

splendour that environed the houses of Medici and Este, in the pageants they loved to exhibit, music, carried to a higher perfection by foreign artists, and by the natives. who came forward to emulate them, became of indispensable importance; it had already been adapted to dramatic representation in choruses; interludes and pieces written. for scenic display were now given with a perpetual accompaniment, partly to the songs, partly to the dance and pantomime which intervened between them.s Finally, Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet of considerable genius, but who is said to have known little of musical science, by meditating on what is found in ancient writers on the accompaniment to their dramatic dialogue, struck out the idea of recitative. This he first tried in the pastoral of Dafne, represented privately in 1594; and its success led him to the composition of what he entitled a tragedy for music, on the story of Eurydice. This was represented at the festival on the marriage of Mary of Medicis in 1600. "The most astonishing effects," says Ginguéné, "that the theatrical music of the greatest masters has produced, in the perfection of the science, are not comparable to those of this representation, which exhibited to Italy the creation of a new art." It is, however, a different question whether this immense enhancement of the powers of music, and consequently of its popularity, has been favourable to the development of poetical genius in this species of composition; and in general it may be said that, if music has, on some occasions, been a serviceable handmaid, and even a judicious monitress, to poetry, she has been apt to prove but a tyrannical mistress. In the melodrame, Corniani well observes, poetry became her vassal, and has been ruled with a despotic sway.

h

The national

6. The struggle that seemed arduous in the earlier part of this century between the classical and national schools of dramatic poetry in Spain proved of no taste revives long duration. The latter became soon decisively drama."

peared at this time, and composed the mass of Marcellus, which settled the dispute for ever. Other works by himself and his disciples followed, which elevated sacred music to the highest importance among the accessories of religious worship. Die Päpste, vol. i. p. 498. But a large proportion of the performers, I

apprehend, were Germans, especially in theatrical music.

Ginguéné, vol. vi., has traced the history of the melodrame with much pains.

P. 474. Corniani, vii. 31, speaks highly of the poetical abilities of Rinuccini. See also Galluzzi, Storia del Gran Ducato, v. 547.

superior; and before the end of the present period, that kingdom was in possession of a peculiar and extensive literature, which has attracted the notice of Europe, and has enriched both the French theatre and our own. The spirit of the Spanish drama is far different from that which animated the Italian writers; there is not much of Machiavel in their comedy, and still less of Cinthio in their tragedy. They abandoned the Greek chorus, which still fettered their contemporaries, and even the division into five acts, which later poets, in other countries, have not ventured to renounce. They gave more complication to the fable, sought more unexpected changes of circumstance, were not solicitous in tragedy to avoid colloquial language or familiar incidents, showed a preference to the tragi-comic intermixture of light with serious matter, and cultivated grace in poetical diction more than vigour. The religious mysteries, once common in other parts of Europe, were devoutly kept up in Spain; and under the name of Autos Sacramentales, make no inconsiderable portion of the writings of their chief dramatists.'

7. Andrès, favourable as he is to his country, is far from enthusiastic in his praises of the Spanish theatre. Its exuberance has been its ruin; no one, he justly remarks, can read some thousand plays in the hope of finding a few that are tolerable. Andrès, however, is not exempt from a strong prejudice in favour of the French stage. He admits the ease and harmony of the Spanish versification, the purity of the style, the abundance of the thoughts, and the ingenious complexity of the incidents. This is peculiarly the merit of the Spanish comedy, as its great defect, in his opinion, is the want of truth and delicacy in the delineation of the passions, and of power to produce a vivid impression on the reader. The best work, he concludes rather singularly, of the comic poets of Spain has been the French theatre.

8. The most renowned of these is Lope de Vega, so Lope de many of whose dramas appeared within the preVega; sent century, that although, like Shakspeare, he is equally to be claimed by the next, we may place his name, once for all, in this period. Lope de Vega is called by Cervantes a prodigy of nature; and such he may justly

i Bouterwek.

k Vol. v. p. 138.

ordinary fer

be reckoned; not that we can ascribe to him a sublime genius, or a mind abounding with fine original thought, but his fertility of invention and readiness of ver- his extrasifying are beyond competition. It was said tility; foolishly, if meant as praise, of Shakspeare, and we may be sure untruly, that he never blotted a line. This may almost be presumed of Vega. "He required," says Bouterwek, " no more than four-and-twenty hours to write a versified drama of three acts in redondillas, interspersed with sonnets, tercets, and octaves, and from beginning to end abounding in intrigues, prodigies, or interesting situations. This astonishing facility enabled him to supply the Spanish theatre with upwards of 2000 original dramas, of which not more than 300 have been preserved by printing. In general the theatrical manager carried away what he wrote before he had even time to revise it; and immediately a fresh applicant would arrive to prevail on him to commence a new piece. He sometimes wrote a play in the short space of three or four hours." of three or four hours." ... "Arithmetical calculations have been employed in order to arrive at a just estimate of Lope de Vega's facility in poetic composition. According to his own testimony, he wrote on an average five sheets a day; it has therefore been computed that the number of sheets which he composed during his life must have amounted to 133,225; and that, allowing for the deduction of a small portion of prose, Lope de Vega must have written upwards of 21,300,000 verses. Nature would have overstepped her bounds and have duced the miraculous, had Lope de Vega, along with this rapidity of invention and composition, attained perfection in any department of literature." m

pro

cation;

9. This peculiar gift of rapid composition will appear more extraordinary when we attend to the nature his versifiof Lope's versification, very unlike the irregular lines of our old drama, which it is not perhaps difficult for one well practised to write or utter extemporaneously. "The most singular circumstance attending his verse, says Lord Holland, "is the frequency and difficulty of the tasks which he imposes on himself. At every step

m

P. 361, 363. Montalvan, Lope's friend, says, that he wrote 1800 plays and 400 autos. In a poem of his own, written in 1609, he claims 483 plays,

and he continued afterwards to write for the stage. Those that remain and have been collected in twenty-five volumes are about 300.

we meet with acrostics, echoes, and compositions of that perverted and laborious kind, from attempting which another author would be deterred by the trouble of the undertaking, if not by the little real merit attending the achievement. They require no genius, but they exact much time; which one should think that such a voluminous poet could little afford to waste. But Lope made a parade of his power over the vocabulary: he was not contented with displaying the various order in which he could dispose the syllables and marshal the rhymes of his language; but he also prided himself upon the celerity with which he brought them to go through the most whimsical but the most difficult evolutions. He seems to have been partial to difficulties for the gratification of surmounting them." This trifling ambition is usual among second-rate poets, especially in a degraded state of public taste; but it may be questionable whether Lope de Vega ever performed feats of skill more surprising in this way than some of the Italian improvvisatori, who have been said to carry on at the same time three independent sonnets, uttering, in their unpremeditated strains, a line of each in separate succession. There is reason to believe that their extemporaneous poetry is as good as anything in Lope de Vega. 10. The immense popularity of this poet, not limited, among the people itself, to his own age, bespeaks larity; some attention from criticism. "The Spaniards who affect fine taste in modern times," says Schlegel, "speak with indifference of their old national poets; but the people retain a lively attachment to them, and their productions are received on the stage, at Madrid, or at Mexico, with passionate enthusiasm." It is true that foreign critics have not in general pronounced a very favourable judgment of Lope de Vega. But a writer of such prodigious fecundity is ill appreciated by single plays; the whole character of his composition manifests that he wrote for the stage, and for the stage of his own country, rather than for the closet of a foreigner. His writings are divided into spiritual plays, heroic and historical comedies, most of them taken from the annals and traditions of Spain, and, lastly, comedies of real life, or, as they were called, "of the cloak and sword" (capa y espada), a name answering to the comedia togata of the

his popu