visualizar documento

LETTER II

Latin poets in Spain after the conquest of the Romans, and under the Goths.

Barcelona, 12th May, 1778

As you proposed to set out immediately for England, and to pass with the utmost expedition through France, I hope I shall soon hear of your safe arrival, as it will be some time before I can join you. Whatever may be the novelties and pleasure arising from travel, the mind naturally preponderates towards home, and I seldom pass a day without casting a wistful eye towards England, and enjoying, in private, [p. 15] the pleasing expectation of returning to my own country, and once more with rapture, to hail fair Britannia!

I find, since I came here, that I had a narrow escape, and that if I had been longer at sea, and obliged by any accident, to put into Marseilles, our ship would have been seized and ourselves become the dupes of a perfidious and inveterate enemy! but thank God we have had the good fortune to avoid their deceitful wiles.

Having mentioned to you the defeat of the hero of La Mancha, you will perhaps expect from this place a scene on the gallies, similar to the one described in so lively a manner in Don Quixote, but those days are past at Barcelona; the harbour has long since been choaked up with sand; the plans offered to remedy this effect have been rejected, and though the city and port have lately been beautified, this place is only frequented by small vessels, and the arsenal which served for those gallies, formerly the terror of the Moors, is now converted into a foundery of cannon, where I have seen them busy at work. The corsairs are well apprized of this alteration, for the day I entered Barcelona, I saw two of their cruisers stand close in to the mouth of the harbour, with an exulting indifference. I have spent my time very agreeably in this place, and have been of several cheerful parties in the neighbourhood. I have laid in a provision of good Mataro wine, which is a red wine little inferior to Port, and considerably cheaper, and have had the pleasure to drink your health in a bumper of excellent Sitges, by far the best of all the Catalonian wines, which in general have a roughness, with a certain gout de terroir.

Previous to my departure for Valencia, I resume my favourite subject, and entertain you with the poets after the conquest of the Romans, and under the Goths, as introductory to what I shall say of the Castilian muse when I come to illustrate its different eras, under its monarchs, till the succession of a French prince to the throne of Spain. I shall point out the various Cancioneros, or collections, that have been made of the poets, the Spanish translations of the Greek and Latin classics, and Italian poets, as well as the Spanish writers who have professionally treated of the art.

We read that the natives were fond of a poetry time immemorial, and cultivated it with singular delight. Silius Italicus relates, that the people of Galicia composed and sung verses in their original tongue. Strabo extols the ingenuity of the Turdetani, and says that they had histories and poems, as well as laws written in verse, when it was first applied, as Horace says, to soften the manners, and introduce order and decorum into civil society. As to the primitive language of Spain we are still in the dark concerning it, if we give it a Greek or Phoenician original, a similar genius of poetry will naturally follow; if it should be compared to the Hebrew, which neither you nor I understand, I must refer you to a learned British prelate, to whose refined and classical taste we are indebted for a just idea of the poetry of that people.

After Spain had been conquered by the Romans, it insensibly became the seat of the muses. Caius Julius Hyginus, the freedman of Augustus, and according to Suetonius, a Spaniard by birth, was the intimate friend of Ovid, and is said to be the author of the astronomical poetry that goes under his name. In the same age flourished Sextiloius Hena, of whom Seneca speaks but indifferently, taxing him with being more ingenious than learned, and so slightly and unequal withal, that he seemed to fall into the bombast and fustian which Cicero takes notice of in the poets of Cordova, who perhaps had a peculiarity of manner and diction, such as even Livy the historian could not divest himself of. The city of Cordova produced three good poets under that monster Nero, the two Senecas and Lucan. The tragedies of Seneca are only Latin ones extant of the ancients. Martial of Bilbilis, now Bambola in Aragon, lived under Domitian. He mentions several other poets that made a figure in his days; such as Unicus, his kinsman, whose brother was also a poet, Canius of Cadiz, Decianus of Merida, and Licianus also of Bilbilis. From this time down to the emperor Constantine, the poetic vein seems to have greatly declined. Juvencus, a priest, put the gospel into hexameter verse, and was the first ecclesiastical bard. Arator translated the acts of the apostles into hexameters, and was followed by Sedulius. Latinus Pacatus, in a panegyric on the emperor Theodosius, declares, that Spain abounded in valiant soldiers, eloquent orators, and excellent poets. St. Jerome speaks of Aquilius Severus, a Spanish poet, who flourished under Valentinian. Prudentius, who lived in the fourth century, is equally read for the harmony of his numbers, as for the information he gives of the church history of his time. We now come to the fifth century, when the savage Goth overrun the dominions of Spain; though we must not charge these invaders with the ignorance and barbarity of the age, or make them the only despoilers of that taste which the romans had left with the Spaniards. A more powerful cause operated on the mind: The gloom of superstition universally prevailed, the ecclesiastic poet full of holy zeal for religion, was afraid to break in on its mysteries, and his genius was cramped; without a spark of poetic fire he writ hymns for the church to strengthen the devotion of the people, who were cautioned; against the allegory of the gentiles; so that by degrees every idea of the sublime and beautiful was lost. Idacius however speaks of a Spanish poet called Marobaudes, who was of illustrious birth, and an excellent orator, worthy to be classed with the ancients; adding that he flourished under Theodosius II, in whose days also lived Dracontius, who according to Isidore writ an, heroic poem on the creation of the world.

In the fifth century we find the bishop Ciponins who composed a poem in which he compares the story of Phaeton the fallen angels; a singular allusion for a Christian prelate. In the sixth century flourished Orencius, who is spoken of by Segebert Gemblacemcis, and writ a poem entitled Commonitorium, in hexameters and pentameters, published with notes by Father Martin Antonio del Rio, and more correctly by Don Juan Tamayo de Salazar. In the seventh century we have San Ildefonso, archbishop of Toledo, who composed epigrams and epitaphs. San Eugenio, archbishop of the same church, continued the poem of Dracontius on the creation of the world; a lofty theme seemingly reserved for the dignity of our own language, as the experience of many ages has evidently shewn, that it belonged to the divine Milton alone, to treat so sublime a subject and sing “Of man's first disobedience”.

Información sobre el texto