Et sous des noms Romains faisant notre portrait, The romance of ALMAHIDE, also by Mad. Scuderi, is founded on the dissen sions of the Zegris and Abencerrages, and opens with an account of a civil broil between these factions in the streets of Granada. The contest was beheld from the summit of a tower, by Rode ric de Narva, a Spanish general, who had been taken prisoner by the Moors, and Fernand de Solis, (a slave of Queen Almahide,) who, at the request of the Christian chief, related to him the history of the court of Granada. On the birth of Almahide, the reigning queen, an Arabian astrologer predicted that she would be happy and unfortunate, at once a maid and a married woman, the wife of a king and a slave, and a variety of similar conundrums. In order that she might avoid this inconsistent destiny, her father Morayzel sent her to Algiers, under care of the astrologer, who must have been the person of all others most interested in its fulfilment. After a number of adventures she was wrecked on the coast of Andalusia, and was received in the palace of the duke of Medina Sidonia, where a reciprocal attachment arose between her and Ponce de Leon, son of that nobleman, and she soon after won the affections of the marquis of Montemayor, heir of the duke d'Infantada. At length the parents of Almahide, learning that she was in the palace of Medina Sidonia, sent to reclaim her, and she was accordingly delivered up to them. Ponce de Leon followed her to Granada, in the garb of a slave: in that disguise he got himself sold to Morayzel, the father of Almahide, who presented him to that lady. A similar stratagem was adopted by her other Spanish lover, who allowed himself to be taken prisoner in a skirmish with the Moors, commanded by Morayzel, who ordered him to be conducted to Granada, and presented likewise as an attendant to his daughter. The dissensions which arose between the two lovers thus placed around the person of their mistress, are restrained by the prudence and temper of Almahide, but each watches in secret an opportunity of supplanting his rival. Meanwhile Boaudilin, king of Granada, beheld his empire a prey to the factions of the Zegris and Abencerrages. As the monarch was of the former tribe, it was judged advisable, in order to heal the dissensions, that he should chuse a queen from among the latter. Unfortunately he was so deeply enamoured of Miriam, a woman of low birth, whom it would have been unsuitable to have raised to the regal dignity, that he refused to offend her by espousing another. In these circumstances, Almahide was requested to impose on the public, by performing for a season the exterior offices of queen. She readily consented to execute a part in this plan; but she had scarcely entered on the public performance of royalty, when the king fell in love with her pseudo majesty, and unexpectedly proposed that she should not confine herself to the discharge of the ostensible duties of her situation. This important change in the original stipulation was resisted by Almahide, on the ground that her heart was already engaged to another, and the romance terminates with an account of some ineffectual stratagems, on the part of the king, to discover for whose sake Almahide rejected a more ample participation in the cares of royalty. It will be perceived that the romance is left incomplete, and the part of which an abstract has been given, though published in eight volumes 8vo., can only be regarded as a sort of introductory chapter to the adventures that were intended to follow. Mathilde d'Aguilar, the last romance of Mad. Scuderi, is also a Spanish story, and is partly founded on the contests between the Christians and Moors. Of the analogies that subsist between all the departments of Belles Lettres, none are more close than those of romance and the drama. Accordingly, as the Italian tales supplied the materials of our earliest tragedies and comedies, so the French heroic romances chiefly contributed to the formation of what may be considered as the second great school of the English drama, in which a stately ceremonial, and uniform grandeur of feeling and expression, were substituted for those grotesque characters and multifarious passions, which had formerly held possession of the stage. From the French romances were derived the incidents that constitute the plots of those tragedies which appeared in the days of Charles II. and William, and to them may be attributed the prevalence of that false taste, that pomp and unnatural elevation, which characterize the dramatic productions of Dryden and Lee. It appears very unaccountable that such romances as those of Calprenede and Scuderi, should in foreign countries have been the object of any species of literary imitation; but in their native soil the popularity of heroic romances, particularly those of Madame Scuderi, may, I think, be in some measure attributed to the number of living characters that were delineated. All were anxious to know what was said of their acquaintance, and to trace out a real or imaginary resemblance. The court ladies were delighted to behold flattering portraits of their beauty in Ibrahim or Clelia, and perhaps fondly hoped that their charms were consecrated to posterity. Hence the fame of the romance was transitory as the beauty, or, at least, as the existence, of the individuals whose persons or characters it pourtrayed. Mankind are little interested in the eyes or eye-brows of antiquated coquettes, and the works in which these were celebrated, soon appeared in that intrinsic dulness which had received animation from a temporary and adventitious interest. This charm being lost, nothing remained but a love so spiritualized, that it bore no resemblance to a real passion, and manners which referred to an ideal world of the creation of the author. The sentiments, too, of chivalry, which had revived under a more elegant |