establish, is one not clearly avowed by himself, but deducible from those of his poems, which were made especially the mark of censure by his opponents. It concerns the nice point of poetic diction. What ought poetic diction to be? Wordsworth answers the question: it is "the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." He condemns the curiously elaborate style affected by some masters of the song, as if they thought the poet was to hold a peculiar language of his own, different from the forms in which men express their purposes in prose. But he says also, much to the same effect as Cervantes, that "poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression, which is in the countenance of all science :" and that the poet's subjects "will naturally, and on fit occasion, lead him to passions, the language of which, if selected truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated, and alive with metaphors and figures." Only he subjoins the necessary caution: let the poet take care "not to interweave any foreign splendour of his own with that which the passion naturally suggests."

Now certainly Gongora was not one who supposed a studiously ornamented kind of diction to be constantly requisite in all poetical compositions. For all his critics, from Lope de Vega to Lord Holland and Mr. Ticknor, have praised in high terms the natural grace and beauty of many of his earlier poems, which they grant to be exempt from the vices of his polished

style. Which then are the pieces of his writing, which are especially subject to the common censure? Ramon Fernandez properly restricts the charge principally to the "Polifemo" and the "Soledades;" but he does not deny that some symptoms of the same disordered fancy appear in others of his compositions.

(141.) With regard to the "Polifemo," the English reader may form a judgment from our translation. He may find some stanzas translated, but perhaps not more carefully or faithfully, by Mr. Thomas Roscoe, in his English version of Sismondi's "Literature of the South of Europe."+ The figure of speech, which seems most especially to offend the critics in this fanciful poem, is hyperbole, extravagant and overcharged metaphors, and inflated style. Mr. Ticknor has almost exceeded all his predecessors in his condemnation of it. This is rather to be regretted. Mr. Ticknor is the author of an excellent 66 History of Spanish Literature," which the Spaniards have translated and adopted as their own, and which deserves a place in every well-furnished scholar's library on the same shelf with Tom Warton's "History of English Poetry." It is somewhat disappointing to find him, in treating of our poet, following the common crowd of French or Italian critics, such as Sismondi, whose knowledge on this subject Mr. Ticknor himself has properly noted as extremely imperfect.

* Fernandez, Poesias, vol. ix. Prolog. p. 5, sqq.
Lond. 1823, vol. iv. 57.

There are certain subjects in poetry, to which the figure of hyperbole has always been considered properly applicable; and when it is properly applied, scarcely any other figure is more amusing, or more attractive to young wits which have any sense of humour. To a foreign critic, like Sismondi, whose imperfect perception of the meaning of Gongora prevented him from suspecting any thing humorous in the gigantic picture which he draws, it is no wonder if the poem appeared destitute of interest. But Mr. Ticknor is as well acquainted with the classic giant of the Odyssey, and Ovid and Theocritus, as with the giants of romance; and he knows that which every English schoolboy knows, that a pleasant vein of exaggeration is the approved mode of playing with the children of such monstrous birth, wherever they are exhibited in poetry.

What is the nature of the figure, which we call hyperbole Quinctilian defines it well enough, "a mode of falsification, by which nobody is intended to be deceived."* Of course, it is easy to carry this too far, to do it rather clumsily than neatly, to make it more ridiculous than amusing. Or it may be done in too servile a spirit of imitation of old models by a dull writer. We do not perceive that Gongora's Polypheme is chargeable with these faults. Let the reader of the original, or of our translation, judge.

(142.) As to the "Soledades," our line of defence * Instit. Orat. viii. 6. 74.

must be a little more special. The name of the poem itself is a puzzle to some of the critics. "The word," says Sismondi, “is of rare occurrence in Spain, and expresses the solitude of the forest.” On the contrary the word is as common as the English form of it where English is spoken. As to "the solitude of the forest," it is a mere blunder. The Spanish poets gave the title of "Soledades" to some of their compositions, as the Latins gave to some of theirs the title of "Silvæ," or, as some of our Elizabethan poets wrote their "Forests of Fancy," essays in verse on miscellaneous subjects, without much plan or premeditation.* Gongora's Solitary Musings are in two cantos of irregular rhyme, containing rather more than two thousand lines. They describe a number of rural scenes, a rural wedding, rustic games, contests of skill in leaping, running, and wrestling, lives of fishermen, parties going hunting and hawking, all witnessed by a shipwrecked man, who, after escaping from the sea, is kindly entertained by country-people on the shore, with whom he has found refuge. The poem appears to be unfinished, as the hero's adventures are not wound up.

It cannot be denied that this poem is exceedingly obscure. Persons and things are spoken of in such enigmatical phrases, as have scarcely been employed

Quinctilian x. 3, 17. Salcedo Coronel, Coment. in Soledades, Madrid, 1636. Lope has some well-known lines, "A mis soledades voy."

by any other poet since the days of Lycophron. Thus a falcon of Scandinavian breed is called, from the speed and power of his flight, a "Norwegian whirl blast" the bright bubbles in a gushing fountain are "sparks struck from the flinty rock by the hand of Spring." The present writer must confess, that, but for the elaborate explanatory commentary of Salcedo Coronel, he must almost have despaired of penetrating to the sense of many phrases in these "Solitary Musings." It is a study for the ingenious; but when the difficulty is mastered, the impression is hardly one of pleasure. A long poem of this nature is to severe a trial of patience.

(143.) Mr. Ticknor points out, among other violent and extravagant passages, that Gongora in this poem speaks of a rustic bride, "so beautiful, that she might parch Norway with her two suns, and bleach Ethiopia with her two hands." It is ill-natured to turn poetry into the most prosaic prose; it is like yoking Schiller's Pegasus to the stone-cart. When Apollo on Parnassus gave to Cervantes his "Privileges and Ordinances for the Spanish poets," he did not forget to grant "that every good poet might dispose of all the celestial signs in praise of his lady; and especially make sun-rays of her hair, and two suns of her two eyes; for no doubt, with three suns, the world would come out better illuminated." Gongora was only one of many, who made use of this privilege; and one * Viage al Parnaso : Obras Posth. 149.