Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

ed by the union of Diana with Delio. This lady, it is said, lived to a great age in the province of Leon, and was visited there in the beginning of the 17th century, by Philip III. and his court, on their return from Portugal.

The Galatea of Cervantes, which was formed on the model of the Diana, is also reported to have been written with the intention of covertly relating the anecdotes of the age in which the author flourished, by a representation of the lives, the manners, and occupations of shepherds and shepherdesses, who inhabited the banks of the Tagus and Henares. Thus, under Damon, Cervantes is understood to represent himself, and by Amarillis, the obdurate nymph he courted. This romance, which, with the exception of a few unsuccessful poems, was the earliest work of its author, and was first printed in 1584, is now well known through the imitation of Florian. The adventures are not so extravagant as those of the Diana, but the style is greatly inferior, particularly in the poetical parts, which show that the author, as he himself expresses it in Don Quixote, was more conversant with misfortune than with the muse.'

The

Il ne dit pas ce qu' il pense, mais Je pense ce qu'il dit.

episodes, as in its prototype, are interwoven in the most complicated manner. There are the same long discussions on the nature of love as in the Diana-equal pedantry, and a greater number of far-fetched conceits; all the heroes of fable and history are quoted, and the sun only shines with the light which he borrows from the eyes of Galatea:

Ante la luz de unos serenos Ojos

Que al Sol dan Luz con que da Luz al Suelo.

The work consists of six parts, and though it be not completed, there is enough to bestow on Cervantes the reputation of having written one of the most tiresome as well as one of the most amusing books in the world.

As the Diana of Montemayor became the most popular romance which had appeared in Spain since the time of Amadis de Gaul, there were many imitations of it, besides the Galatea of Cervantes. Among these may be numbered Los Dies Libros de Fortuna d'Amor, by Pedro Frasso, printed in 1573, and mentioned in Don Quixote; the Pastor de Iberia, by Bernardo de la Vega; Desenganno de Celos, by Lope de Enciso, 1586, and the Ninfas de Henarez, in six books, Alcala, 1587, by Bernardo Gonzales, who, I see, confesses in his

[ocr errors]

prologue, that he had just come from the Canary Islands, and had never seen the banks of the He

narez.

These Spanish compositions resemble in nothing the pastoral of Longus, (which has been regarded as the prototype of this species of romance,) except that the scene is laid in the country, and that the characters are shepherds and shepherdesses. Their authors have not rivalled the beauty and harmony of the rural descriptions of the Grecian, and the simplicity of his characters and sentiments they have not attempted to imitate.

Subsequent writers unfortunately chose for their model the Spanish instead of the Grecian style of pastoral composition.

In imitation of Montemayor and Cervantes, whose romances had been so popular in the peninsula, Honore D'Urfé, a French nobleman, wrote his

ASTRÉE,

a work, which, under the disguise of pastoral incidents and characters, exhibits the singular history of his own family, and the amours at the court of Henry the Great. The first volume, dedicated

to that monarch, appeared in 1610, the second ten years afterwards, and the third, which is addressed to Lewis XIII., was given to the world four or five years subsequent to the publication of the second. The duke of Savoy was depositary of the fourth part, which remained in manuscript at the death of the author, and was transmitted on that event to Mademoiselle D'Urfé. She confided it to Baro, the secretary of her deceased relative, who published it two years after the death of his master, with a dedication to Mary of Medicis, and made up a fifth part from memoirs and fragments, also placed in his hands. The whole was printed at Rouen, 1647, in five volumes. A modern edition has been published by the Abbé Souchai, in which many things, especially the dialogues, have been much curtailed.

The period of the action of this celebrated work is feigned to be the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, and the scene the banks of the Lignon. Celadon was the most amiable and most enamoured of the shepherds who lived in that happy age and delightful region: his passion was

1 This district was afterwards by no means remarkable for its pastoral beauty. In the preamble to St Pierre's Arcadia, which partly consists of a dialogue between the au

returned by the beautiful Astrea, but at length the treachery and envy of the shepherd Semire inflame her mind with jealousy. She meets her lover, reproaches him with his perfidy, and then flies from his presence. Celadon casts himself, with arms across, into the river; but his hopes of submersion, however well founded, are totally frustrated. He is thrown at some distance on the banks of the stream, near a grove of myrtles, where three nymphs come to his assistance, and conduct him to the castle of Issoura.

Astrea, who in concealment had perceived her lover precipitate himself into the stream, but had not foreseen such powerful effects from her re

thor and Rousseau, the latter replies with a smile, to some observation of the former, Now you mention the shepherds of the Lignon, I once made an excursion to Forez, on purpose to see the country of Celadon and Astrea, of which D'Urfé has drawn such charming pictures. Instead of amorous swains, I found on the banks of the Lignon nothing but blacksmiths, forgemen, and iron-workers.'

Author. What, in such a delightful country?'

Rousseau. It is full of nothing else but forges. It was this journey to Forez that undeceived me. Previous to that time not a year passed without my reading Astrea from beginning to end. I was perfectly familiar with all the characters in that performance. Thus knowledge robs us of our pleasures.'

« ZurückWeiter »