Spain; and in proportion as we advance, the difficulty of our task increases. With the language of which we are now about to treat, we are not so familiarly acquainted as with the Italian, nor is it indeed generally known. Spanish books, moreover, are rare in France and difficult to be procured; and there are scarcely any of the writers in that language whose works have been translated, and whose fame has become general throughout Europe. The Germans alone have studied the literary history of Spain with zeal and attention; and, notwithstanding the efforts I have made to procure the original authors in the most celebrated libraries of those Italian towns over which Spanish princes have reigned, I shall yet be compelled occasionally to form my judgment on the credit of other writers, and to consult the German authors, Boutterwek, Dieze, and Schlegel. The number of Spanish writers, also, is very considerable, and their fecundity is most appalling. For example, there are more dramas in the Spanish, than in all the other languages of Europe put together; and it cannot be allowed us to judge of these compositions by specimens chosen by chance from the bulk. The very peculiar national taste of the Spaniards likewise augments the difficulty we feel in becoming acquainted with them. The literature of the nations upon which we have hitherto been employed, and of those of which we have yet to treat, was European the literature of Spain, on the contrary, is decidedly oriental. Its spirit, its pomp, its object, all belong to another sphere of ideas-to another world. We must become perfectly familiar with it before we can pretend to judge of it, and nothing could be more unjust than to estimate by our notions of poetry, which the Spaniards neither know nor regard, works which have been composed upon absolutely different principles.

On the other hand, the literature of Spain will amply repay the labour which an examination of it requires. This brave and chivalrous nation, whose pride and dignity have passed into a proverb, is reflected in its literature, in which we may delight to find all the distinctive traits which characterise the part which the Spaniards have acted in Europe. The same nation which opposed so strong a barrier to the Saracen invaders, which maintained for five centuries its civil and religious liberties, and which, after it had lost both the one

and the other, under Charles V. and his successors, seemed desirous of burying both Europe and the New World under the ruins of its own constitution, has also displayed in its literature, the loftiness and grandeur of its character, and the power and richness of its imagination. In its early poems, we again behold the heroism of its ancient knights; and in the poets of its brightest age, we recognize the magnificence of the court of Charles V.; when the same men who led armies from victory to victory likewise held the first rank in the empire of letters. Even in the universal decay which succeeded, we behold the loftiness of the Spanish character. The poets of later times sunk under the weight of their riches, and yielded to the strength of their own efforts, less for the purpose of vanquishing others, than of surpassing themselves.

The literature of Spain manifests itself in sudden and fitful lights. We admire it for an instant, and it is again lost in obscurity; but these glimpses always induce a desire to see more of it. The first tragic writer of the French stage borrowed his grandeur from the Spaniards; and, after the Cid, which he imitated from Guillen de Castro, many tragi-comic pieces and chivalric dramas transport us into Spain. The celebrated Romance-writer, Le Sage, has displayed all the gaiety of a Spaniard's genius; and Gil Blas, though the production of a Frenchman, is completely Spanish in manners, in spirit, and in action. Don Quixote is well known to every nation as one of the most animated, witty, and pleasant satires in the world. A few novels translated by M. de Florian, and some dramatic pieces which Beaumarchais has adapted to our stage from the Spanish, have once more awakened our curiosity with regard to this peculiar country, yet without satisfying it; and its literature is still very little known to the French.

At the period of the subversion of the empire of the West, during the reign of Honorius, Spain was invaded about the year 409, by the Suevi, the Alani, the Vandals, and the Visigoths. This nation, which for six centuries had been subjected to the dominion of the Romans, and had completely adopted the language and civilized arts of its masters, experienced those changes in its manners, its opinions, its military spirit, and its language, which, we have already observed, took place in the other provinces of the empire, and which were in fact, the origin of the nations which arose on the overthrow

of the Roman power. Amongst the conquerors, the Visigoths were the most numerous, which may be considered as a fortunate circumstance for Spain, since, of all the northern nations, the Goths both of the east and the west were by far the most just and enlightened; affording greater protection to the vanquished, and establishing amongst them an excellent system of legislation. The Alani were subdued by the Visigoths ten years after their entry into Spain; and ten years later, the Vandals passed into Africa, for the purpose of founding that warlike monarchy which was destined to avenge Carthage and to pillage Rome. The Suevi, who had preserved their independence for a century and a half, were at last overcome in their turn in the year 585. The dominion of the Visigoths was thus extended over all Spain with the exception of a few maritime towns, which still remained in the power of the Greeks of Constantinople; and which, by their commercial pursuits, acquired great riches and an abundant population. The ancient Roman subjects who were elevated by the laws of the Visigoths to a level with their conquerors, being educated in the same manner, admitted to the same public employments, and professing the same religion, were speedily confounded with them; and when, in the year 710, Spain was invaded by the Musulmans, all the Christians who inhabited that country were amalgamated into one people.

It is the opinion of the Spaniards themselves that their language was formed during the three hundred years of the Visigothic dominion. It is evidently the result of a mixture of the German with the Latin, the termination of the words in the latter language being contracted. The Arabic afterwards enriched it with a number of expressions, which preserve their foreign character in the midst of a language derived from the Latin; and this circumstance has, no doubt, had an influence on the pronunciation of the language, although not so much as to change its genius. The Spanish and Italian, possessing a common origin, yet differ in a very striking manner. The syllables lost in the contraction of words, and those retained, are by no means the same in both; insomuch that many words derived in each tongue from the Latin, have little resemblance to one another.* The Spanish, more sonorous, and more full

* A few general rules on the transformations which different letters have undergone, may enable us to recognize words which have passed VOL. II

F

of aspirates and accents, has something in it more dignified, firm, and imposing; while, on the other hand, having been less cultivated by philosophers and by orators, it possesses less flexibility and precision. In its grandeur it is occasionally obscure, and its pomp is not exempt from being turgid. But notwithstanding these diversities, the two languages may still be recognized as sisters, and the passage from the one to the other is certainly easy.

There are no remains of the Spanish language during the dominion of the Visigoths. The laws which they promulgated were in Latin, in which language their chronicles also were written. Some people pretend that in these productions traces of the Spanish character are to be found. The Visigoths manifested an extreme jealousy with regard to their women, by no means common to the other northern nations; but all that remains of their history and their manners is too scanty to allow us to form any judgment respecting them.

The extreme corruption of the Goths, under their later sovereigns, was the cause of their ruin, at the period when the Arabs were extending their conquests in Africa. Roderick having driven the sons of Witiza, the legitimate heirs to the throne, into exile, mortally offended Count Julian, the governor of the provinces situated on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, by dishonouring his daughter. Julian and the sons of Witiza placed themselves under the protection of the Moors. Musa, the Moorish commander in from one language to another. F, which is in fact a strong aspirate, is often changed in Spanish into h, and sometimes the h into f. Thus fabulari, to speak, is hablar in Spanish; in Italian, favellar; and as the b and the v are continually used for one another, this word is, in fact, precisely the same in both languages. The j, which is strongly aspirated by the Spaniards, is frequently substituted for the liquid l, so that hijo and figlio are the same word. The liquid, in Spanish, is always used instead of the pl of the Latins, and the pi of the Italians. Thus, planus, Latin, llano, Spanish, piano, Italian; Plenus, Latin, lleno, Spanish, pieno, Italian. The Spanish ch supplies the place of the Latin ct, and the Italian tt. Factus, hecho, fatto; dictus, dicho, detto. The Spanish terminate their words with consonants more frequently than the Italians; and the language is full of words ending in ar, er, os, and as. The infinitive of verbs, and the plural of nouns, are terminated by consonants; but the former are accentuated, and the latter not. In short, the Italians have softened down the pronunciation of the Romans, while the Spaniards have preserved a great number of harsh syllables, and have multiplied aspirates in the letters x, j, g, h, and ƒ.

Africa, dispatched Tariffa, or Tarikh, in the year 710, with a Musulman army to their assistance, and to these forces all the malcontent Visigoths united themselves. A pitched

battle was fought between the hostile armies, each consisting of nearly a hundred thousand men, at Xeres, on the borders of the Guadaleta, from the nineteenth to the twenty-sixth day of July, 711. The Goths were vanquished; a defeat which their king, Roderick, could never repair; and by this battle the monarchy of the Goths was destroyed, and Spain was subjected to the Musulmans.

A few valorous chieftains, however, retired into the mountains, and especially into that vast chain which extends along the northern part of the Peninsula. In 716 they drove out of one portion of the Asturias the Christian governor, whom the Arabs had placed there; and they at length succeeded in establishing their independence. This example was imitated; and from these fugitives proceeded the kings of Oviedo, descended from Pelagius, one of the princes of the family of the Visigoth kings; the kings of Navarre, the counts of Castile, the counts of Soprarbia, who afterwards reigned in Aragon, and the counts of Barcelona; princes who were destined at a future time to reconquer the Peninsula from the Arabians. But by far the greater number of the Christians submitted to the yoke of the Moors, who granted them the fullest toleration in religious matters, and who freely communicated to them the knowledge of which they were themselves masters. In a former chapter we have given some account of the literary splendour of Spain during the government of the Moors, and of the influence which they exercised over the Christians. By a foolish policy, however, common to all Musulman conquerors, they neglected to amalgamate the vanquishers and the vanquished; and throughout all their successes they oppressed the nations whom they held tributary to them, by whom they were hated in return. It was by these means that they supplied the Spaniards, who had taken refuge in the mountains, with powerful allies in the Moorish provinces.

These mountaineers, who had preserved the religion, the laws, the honour, and the liberty of the Visigoths, together with the use of their Roman language, did not all speak the same dialect. In Catalonia the Provençal or Limousin,