Читать книгу Iberia Won; A poem descriptive of the Peninsular War - T. M. Hughes - Страница 5

ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ.—Olymp. xii.

“domi pugnans ceu Gallus.” To be sure, it is just possible that the learned Theban may have meant that humble domestic fowl, a cock. Erasmus reads “domi abditus.” There can be no doubt that a cock was meant, and unquestionably it is a bellicose bird. The passage from Pindar might be fairly rendered by the Latin adage: “Gallus in suo sterquilinio,” which it is needless to turn into the vernacular. There are symptoms of the French reforming this national vice, and I therefore shall not dwell upon a somewhat disagreeable subject.

I am happy to be the first to record the true orthography of one of our two first and not least important battles in the Peninsula, Roriça and Vimieiro. They used to be invariably written Roleia and “Vimeira.” Napier has considerably improved upon this, making the latter “Vimiero.” But still he is wrong. The correct word is “Vimieiro.” Even had I made no other discovery, my four years’ residence in Portugal would not have been useless. True, it may be said that the General has only “knocked an i out of it” in military fashion. But, though the error be confined to a single letter, it would be only the change of a letter to call Waterloo “Waterlog,” and who could excuse such a travesty of our glorious victory? These mistakes in the orthography of the names of Peninsular localities are common to all English writers, and excellent a scholar as Southey was, they disfigure his History as well as that of Napier. I find the names of these two battles misdescribed as “Roleia” and “Vimieira” in the memoir by Sir B. D’Urban lately reproduced at the elevation of Sir H. Hardinge to the Peerage—should I not rather say the elevation of the Peerage by the accession to it of that gallant and chivalrous Peninsular veteran?

The French, too, write the names of these battles as erroneously. They call them uniformly “Roliça” and “Vimeiro,” vide “Histoire de la Guerre de la Péninsule, par le Général Foy,” “Mémoires par Pellot, Campagnes par De la Pène,” and “Mémoires de M. la Duchesse d’Abrantès” passim. Napier in the twenty-fourth book of his History takes leave of the comparative approach to accuracy in his earlier books, and speaks of these battles every where as “Roliça” and “Vimiera.” Specks in the sun!

In my choice of a metre I have been led by the following considerations. The beauty and completeness of the stanza of Spenser appear now to be generally acknowledged. But it certainly presents great difficulties in a language so unvocal compared with those of Southern Europe, and so little abounding in rhymes as the English. It is more difficult in a narrative and consecutive poem than in one of a descriptive and reflective character, like Childe Harold, where the topics and the order in which they shall be discussed are both at the discretion of the poet. Yet the terrible exigencies of four recurring rhymes in each stanza have led even such a master as Byron into not a few puzzling dilemmas, as in his description of Cintra (Childe Harold, i. 19), where he has completed a stanza, in which “steep,” “weep,” and “deep” had already done service, with “torrents leap,” although the faintest trickle of a torrent was never seen in that locality! As he proceeded in his task, he attained to a more perfect mastery of his materials; and, I think, the fourth canto unsurpassed in English poetry. It may be asked why I hoped to succeed in what Byron found so difficult? My answer is that I do not think the difficulty insuperable, as Byron has proved it not to be in the latter and infinitely finer part of his poem, that none but a Milton could elevate blank verse to the sublimity as well as harmony of the Paradise Lost, that rhyme, and especially such an elegant form of rhymed verse as the stanza of Childe Harold, possesses a popular and inalienable charm, that success (if achieved at all) rises with the magnitude of the difficulties encountered, and that Spenser himself, Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, his other imitators, Shenstone’s Schoolmistress, Beattie’s Minstrel and West’s Education, Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, occasional short pieces by Wordsworth, Wiffin’s Translation of Tasso, Scott’s introductions to very many cantos of his several poems (in these two latter cases I speak merely of mechanical execution), Shelley’s Revolt of Islam and Adonais, Kirke White’s Hermit of the Pacific and Christiad, Mrs. Norton’s Child of the Islands, and a few (too few) verses of Tennyson and Milnes abundantly prove the capability of the stanza. The Italian ottava rima, although sanctified by the use of Tasso and Ariosto, adopted almost universally in the heroic poetry of one Peninsula, and most successfully introduced by Camóens into the only epic poetry of the other, appears unadapted for any but burlesque or satirical poetry in the English language, the serious passages of Don Juan deriving all their beauty from being interspersed with lighter, and the excellence and power of Fairfax’s Tasso being marred by the effect of the metre. The English heroic couplet becomes clearly, I think, monotonous in a long poem—a doom from which not all the genius of Dryden and Pope could rescue it. And if in his Corsair, Lara, and The Island, Byron proved, in the words of Jeffrey, that “the oldest and most respectable measure that is known amongst us is as flexible as any other,” and elicited from Sir E. Brydges a just tribute to his “unbroken stream of native eloquence,” it is precisely because “the narrative (as he says) is rapid,” and because the hazardous experiment is not tried of continuing rhymed distiches through a long poem. The Italian ottava rima has been observed to derive great strength from its majestic close, which is invariably in a doubly rhymed couplet, and I have occasionally introduced double rhymes in this and other parts of the stanza to relieve the tendency to monotony. The most distinguished cultivator of Southern literature that England has ever produced, Lord Holland, in his translations from Lope de Vega, Luis de Gonzaga, &c., and from Ariosto, was very successful in this imitation. The hypercatalectic syllable occurs in every line of Tasso’s Gerusalemme, and in every line of Camóens’ Lusiadas, and the Italians and Portuguese therefore call the verse “hendecasyllabic.” A poem of any length constructed on this principle in English would degenerate into pure burlesque; but Byron and others have proved that it may be advantageously introduced as a pleasing variety.

The Alexandrine at the close of each stanza of Spenser produces an equivalent, and perhaps even a more majestic effect. It has been objected to this Alexandrine that it gives a drawling tone to a long narrative poem; but I do not think with justice, since very much depends on the mode in which the line is constructed. Pope’s celebrated “needless Alexandrine” has created a prejudice against this metre, which I admit to be just where it is interspersed with heroic verse, since, as Johnson correctly observes, it disappoints the ear. But in the stanza of Spenser it is expected. How easily the form and character of a verse may be changed by transposing a word or two will appear from Pope’s famous imitative Alexandrine:

“Which like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.”

Alter two monosyllables, and it goes quite trippingly from the tongue:

“And like a wounded snake it drags its length along.”

There is no essential alteration. The adjective “slow” omitted is an incorrect epithet applied to “length,” since the quickest objects in nature, a racehorse or a greyhound, appear very long when upon full stretch, and in most rapid movement. The trick of the line is in the simple use of spondees in the place of iambuses, “which like,” “drags its,” “slow length.” How short and compact an Alexandrine may be, may be seen in Horace’s Epodes passim. Take the first line of the celebrated second ode, the “longè pulcherrima” by the consent of all critics:

“Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.”

This is a perfect Alexandrine, and though consisting of twelve syllables, does not appear longer than one of Scott’s shortest octosyllabic lines in the Lady of the Lake:

“Thy threats, thy mercy I defy.”

The reason is because it is a pure Iambic line, and therefore very vocal; since, if it contained many consonants, as nearly every English line does, they must make most of the previous vowels long by position; and, though accent generally determines the quantity in English, literal quantity enters more into the construction of English verse than is commonly supposed.

I may here observe that the stanza commonly called “Spenserian” is by no means so purely an original invention of that most imaginative poet as is usually represented. The Alexandrine at the close is the only part that is original. I find the germ of Spenser’s stanza very palpably in the old ballet-staves and in the works of two poets who lived fully a century before him, Skelton who styled himself Poet Laureate to Henry VII. and Stephen Hawes who was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the same monarch. The following stanza is from Skelton’s “Elegy on the death of Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland:”—it is the ballet-stave of seven, in which was written an enormous quantity of early, but now forgotten, English poetry, and in which Spenser has written his “Ruins of Time,” and Shakspeare his “Rape of Lucrece.”

O cruell Mars, thou dedly god of war!

O dolorous Teusday, dedicate to thy name,

When thou shoke thy sworde so noble a man to mar!

O grounde ungracious, unhappy be thy fame,

Which wert endyed with rede blode of the same!

Most noble earl! O fowle mysuryd grounde

Whereon he gat his fynal dedely wounde!

Down to the end of the fifth line this is precisely the stanza of Spenser. With the addition of two lines, one rhyming with the last, and the other with the fifth, and of two syllables to the closing line, it is literally that stanza. But in fact the latter addition was often made by both Skelton and Hawes, though irregularly, metrical cadence being then imperfectly understood, and both poets being of the “tumbling” school. This poem was probably composed in the year 1490. Skelton died in 1529, and an edition of his poems in black letter appeared in 1568. I take the stanza which follows from a poem of Hawes’s called “The History of Graunde Amoure and la Belle Pucel,” written in 1505 and published in quarto in 1555:

Till that I came unto a ryall gate,

Where I saw stondynge the goodly portresse,

Whyche asked me from whence I came a-late;

To whom I gan in every thynge expresse

All myne adventure, chaunce, and busynesse,

And eke my name; I told her every dell;

Whan she herde this she lyked me right well.

The construction of this stanza is the same as of the former, but the versification is rather rougher. It, like the other, is very near the Spenserian stanza. But it is not the Spenserian stanza. Friar Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci were very near the discovery of steam, but they did not discover steam, or at all events they did not apply it. The stanzas cited, however, contain the great distinguishing peculiarity of the stanza of Spenser, which is the reduplication of the rhyme, that closes the second and fourth lines, in the fifth—the doubling of the stanza within itself, and turning upon this most musical pivot. And this beauty, like so many other great discoveries, I believe to be probably the result of accident. Add another line to each of the foregoing stanzas, make it rhyme with the first and third, and interpose it between the fourth and fifth lines, and you have the exact ottava rima of the Italians. This ballet-stave is the clear germ of the Spenserian stanza, which with a few perfectionnemens is precisely as it stands. It may be traced more directly to the ballet-stave of eight, but either will suit equally well for illustration.

To make this quite intelligible to every reader, Hawes’s stanza becomes the exact ottava rima of the Italians, which Surrey brought into England, and in which Spenser wrote two of his poems, the rhyme of Fairfax’s Tasso, of Frere’s Whistlecraft, and Byron’s Don Juan, by the insertion of the single line which I have added here in italics:

Till that I came unto a royal gate,

Where I saw standing the goodly portresse,

Who askéd me from whence I came of late;

To whom I ’gan in every thing express

The various hazards of my chequered fate,

All mine adventure, chaunce, and busynesse,

And eke my name; I told her every dell:[B]

When she heard this she likéd me right well.

The stanza becomes purely Spenserian by the addition of the two lines and one word which I here insert in italics:

Till that I came unto a royal gate,

Where I saw standing the goodly portresse,

Who askéd me from whence I came of late;

To whom I ’gan in every thing express

All mine adventure, chaunce, and busynesse,

With every accident that me befel

Throughout my chequered life—I could no less—

And eke my name; I told her every dell:

When she this story heard she likéd me right well.

The ballet-stave of seven is one of the many varieties of Chaucer, who has written in this measure four of his “Canterbury Tales,” and composed a very long poem in it, Troylus, of which the following stanza is a specimen (lib. ii. 1030.)

For though that the best harper upon live

Would on the beste sounid jolly harpe

That evir was, with all his fingers five

Touch aie o string, or aie o warble harpe,

Were his nailes poincted nevir so sharpe,

It shoulde makin every wight to dull

To heare is glee, and of his strokes full.

This, like the other, becomes the perfect ottava rima by the addition of a single line, which I have likewise marked in italics:—

For though that the best harper upon live

Would on the beste sounid jolly harpe

That evir was, with all his fingers five

Touch aie o string, or aie o warble harpe,

And with Glaskyrion the Briton strive,

Were his nailes poincted nevir so sharpe,

It shoulde makin every wight to dull

To heare his glee, and of his strokes full.

The addition refers to a celebrated ancient Welsh harper mentioned with honour by Chaucer himself in his Boke of Fame. I shall not further meddle by patchwork with the illustrious Father of English Poetry. But, as in the former case, by the addition of two lines and one word I could at once convert his stanza into that of Spenser. The ottava rima was not then invented, nor for many years after Chaucer wrote, not having made its appearance until the days of Boiardo and Berni, nor been brought to perfection until the lyre was held by the master hands of Ariosto and Tasso. The secret of the great resemblance of this stanza as employed by Chaucer to that subsequently invented by his Italian successors is, that both delved in the same mine and wrought upon the same material—the Sicilian sonnet, first introduced and naturalized in Europe by Chaucer’s great contemporary, Petrarch. So perfect was this instrument, the sonnet, at its discovery, that the fine taste of Petrarch adhered to it throughout life with marvellous tenacity, and at this day Wordsworth has without change written nearly half his poetry in it. I believe Chaucer, who either copied or adapted many of his modes of versification from Petrarch, to have moulded his ballet-staves both of seven and eight, by squaring them with the first half of the Sicilian or Petrarcan sonnet, with which they are nearly identical. The Italian successors of Petrarch in the same way took the first half of the sonnet, transposing the first and second lines, and inserting another line between the fourth and fifth lines. Thus simply is derived the far-famed ottava rima.

In real fact and truth, Chaucer has had nearly as much share in the formation of what is known as the stanza of Spenser as Spenser himself. That stanza is purely the ballet-stave of eight with three close rhymes—with the simple addition by Spenser of an Alexandrine at the close, rhyming with the last verse of the ballet-stave. There are some who trace these ballet-staves to the Latin rhymed church iambics, and the germ of the ballet-stave of eight has been sought in a Latin hymn written by the German monk, Ernfrid, in the ninth century; but they are to be traced more probably (at least in their more perfect shape) to the Romance poetry of the Provençals. The first instance I meet with of the use of the ballet-stave of eight in English verse is in the elegy on the death of our first Edward, written from internal evidence shortly after that period. The rhymes and their arrangement are precisely as in the stanza of Spenser, but the verse is octosyllabic:

Alle that beoth of huerte trewe

A stounde herkneth to my song

Of duel that deth hath diht us newe

That maketh me syke and sorrow among. &c.

Chaucer was the first who wrote this stanza in the heroic line of ten syllables, and his contribution to the stanza is therefore quite as important as Spenser’s addition of the closing Alexandrine. In this stanza Chaucer has written the whole of the Monk’s Tale, and how entirely it is the stanza of Childe Harold, with the exception of the Alexandrine at the end, may be seen from the following example:—

His wif his lordes, and his concubines

Ay dronken, while her appetitis last,

Out of thise noble vessels sondry wines;

And on a wall this King his eyen cast,

And saw an hand armles that wrote ful fast,

For fere of whiche he quoke, and siked sore.

This hand that Balthasar so sore aghast,

Wrote Mane techel phares and no more.

The Faëry Queen stanza must be regarded as a felicitous discovery rather than invention, and even the merit of the addition becomes diminished by the consideration that Alexandrine verse had become a great favourite amongst his contemporary poets before he used it. It was the favourite metre of a Howard and a Sidney at the commencement of the era of Elizabeth, and is frequently met in our alliterative poems, both early English and Anglo-Saxon. Yet Dr. Johnson has most erroneously represented Spenser as the inventor of the Alexandrine! But so fortunate was Spenser’s completion of the stanza, that all the attempts of Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Prior, and even Milton, to improve on it were unavailing, and it may now be regarded as one of the special glories of England.

The stanza of Spenser, as used by that poet, was by no means the perfect musical stave that it is at present, so exquisitely attuned with the dominant quadruple rhyme for its key-note. Thomson appears to me to have brought it very nearly to perfection—his sole drawback being a too frequent indulgence in imperfect rhymes. In Byron’s fourth canto of Childe Harold I conceive it to be brought to perfection. Spenser indulges constantly in imperfect rhymes, and though sometimes musical as well as often charmingly fanciful and suggestive, he was by no means such a master of language and rhythm as Shakspeare, whose influence, followed up by the examples of Milton, Dryden, and Pope, is felt in the excellence of the poetical diction of the poets of this century. Though Spenser in some degree discovered the stanza which bears his name, he did not complete the discovery, for his Alexandrine is commonly deficient in the cæsural pause, which is absolutely essential to the satisfaction of the ear and to the majestic close of the stanza, and now almost as much de rigueur as it is in the French Alexandrine, which is the common heroic measure of our neighbours. The Alexandrine in every second stanza of Spenser is without it, and the effect is very bad, as may be seen from the following examples:—

“So shall wrath, jealousy, grief, love, die and decay.”

“You shame-faced are but Shame-facedness itself is she.”

“Save an old nymph, hight Panope, to keep it clean.”

“Of turtle doves, she sitting in an ivory chaire.”

“And so had left them languishing ’twixt hope and feare.”

“Excludes from faire hope withouten further triall.”

“All mindless of the golden fleece which made them strive.”

“The other back retired, and contrary trode.”

“With which it blessed concord hath together tied.”

“Did waite about it, gaping griesly, all begor’d.”

“Yet spake she seldome, but thought more the less she said.”

“But of her love to lavish, little have she thank.”

“And unto better fortune doth herself prepare.”

“Fails of her souse, and passing by doth hurt no more.”

“Forgetful of his safety hath his right way lost.”

“But with entire affection, and appearance plaine.”

“Great liking unto many, but true love to few.”

“Into most deadly danger and distressed plight.”

“Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.”

“They have him taken captive, tho’ it grieve him sore.”

“So kept she them in order, and herself in hand.”

“’Mongst which crept the little angels through the glittering gleames.”

“And thereout sucking venom to her parts intire.”

“Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.”

Admitting the richness and fertility of Spenser’s fancy, I cannot find that he has depth, originality, or brilliancy of thought to compensate for a roughness, which is amazing by the side of Shakspeare’s exquisite versification, or to justify the high opinion expressed by Wordsworth. Compare Spenser’s Description of Lucifer’s Palace, commencing

“A stately palace built of squared brick,

“Which cunningly was without mortar laid”

with Milton’s Pandemonium!

Superadded to Spenser’s roughness, which the antique style affected by him in some degree palliates, are very frequent imperfect rhymes and slovenly repetitions of the same identical metrical sounds, as plain, plane, and complain, see and sea, rhyming in the same stanza—liberties which now are utterly inadmissible. It is very true that the recurrence of four lines which rhyme together and of three lines which likewise rhyme with each other in each stanza makes the Spenserian stanza in a long poem extraordinarily difficult, without an occasional manifestation of these defects; but the exigencies of modern criticism, I think justly, require that the difficulty be overcome. And a portion, doubtless, of the superiority of modern English to modern French and Italian poetry arises from explosion of imperfect rhymes. If the poets of these days are degenerate in grasp of thought, they are at least superior to their predecessors and to their continental contemporaries in the mechanism of their art.

Having said thus much of the stanza which I have chosen, I shall add that, rejecting classical conformity in all those matters wherein I conceive the advanced spirit of the age to demand modern treatment, I have availed myself largely of classical allusion, and to a certain extent of classical imagery, to impart interest to a subject which might otherwise smell too much of “villanous saltpetre,” and have in some cases adhered more closely to true classical nomenclature than has hitherto been the custom. I regard it as one of the advantages of the acuteness of modern scholarship to have cleared away much rubbish and removed many an excrescence. But the Grecian may unhappily descend into the Græculist, and by adopting too much spoil every thing. Thus I conceive no good effect to be produced by writing the name Pisistratus in a serious work “Peisistratus,” and I would not imitate in modern poetry Homer’s not at all ignobly meant comparison of Aias (Ajax) to an ass any more than I would adopt the word hog as applied to Achilles: ὅγ’ ὣς εἰπὼν “he thus speaking”—“Hog thus speaking” would be rather offensive to English ears. Neither would I write “Klutaimnestra” for Clytemnestra, “Loukas” for Luke, “Dabid” for David, or “Eua” for our first mother. In matters of taste, like these, above all things we must observe the modus in rebus. Quintilian, a master in all that relates to elegance of speech, explains very well that such things must be regulated by feeling. Speaking of the beauty of one of the smallest of particles in a passage of Cicero, he says: “Cur hosce potiùs quàm hos? Rationem fortassè non reddam; sentiam esse melius,” Instit. ix. 4. “Aias” I would at once reclaim from the vulgar tyranny of “Ajax,” which, as we pronounce it, scarcely differs from a jakes. This pronunciation, be it observed, is purely British and German, for it is nearly certain that the Latins pronounced the word which they spelt Ajax quite like the Greek Aias, Ajax being pronounced Aias in nearly all the languages of Southern Europe at this day. In this poem, accordingly, I spell the name “Aias.” In the same way I restore the ancient and true spelling of the name “Leonides.” (Herod. lib. vii. passim. Thucyd. i, 132.) Achilles I would retain because more musical than “Achilleus;” but I would expunge the word “Hectoring” from our language, as originating in disgraceful ignorance, because so far from being a bully, Hector was a hero of the noblest and most amiable character, and is so described by Homer. Helen thus apostrophizes his dead body:

Ἕκτωρ, ἐμῷ θυμῷ δαέρων πολὺ φίλτατε πάντων, * *

Ἀλλ’ οὔπω σεῦ ἄκουσα κακὸν ἔπος, οὐδ’ ἀσύφηλον·

Ἀλλ’ εἴτις με καὶ ἄλλος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐνίπτοι,

* * σὺ τόνγ’ ἐπέεσσι παραιφάμενος κατέρυκες,

Σῇ τ’ ἀγανοφροσύνῃ, καὶ σοῖς ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσι.

Iliad. xxiv. 762.

“Hector, to my soul far dearest of all my brothers-in-law! Never from you have I heard a bad or contumelious word; but if any other in all the household reproached me, you with admonishing voice restrained him—with your bland humanity and gentle words.” Yet with gross and disgusting ignorance this high-souled hero is thus slaughtered in all our dictionaries:—

“Hector—a bully, a blustering, turbulent, noisy fellow!!”

I have adopted the Homeric names in preference to the common Latin forms, as Aphrodité instead of Venus, Atrides for Menelaüs (where so substituted in the original) for the same reasons which have influenced Archdeacon Williams in the spirited prose translations which accompany his learned Essay, “Homerus,” Mr. Guest of Caius College, Cambridge, in the specimen of translation of the first book of Homer into hexameters which is introduced into his ingenious History of English Rhythms, the Translator of Homer in the late numbers of Blackwood’s Magazine, and the learned Voss in his hexametrical German version. I have chosen the name Paris, however, in place of Alexander, for the sake of clearness and appropriateness in the allusion, and to avoid confusion with the better-known hero of that name. I do not know that it is necessary to extend my poetical confessions on this subject further. But I shall just add that in pronunciation I have adhered to classical quantity, wherever it could be done without a sacrifice of beauty, but have unhesitatingly departed from it in such cases as that of the word “Hyperion,” in which Shakspeare has fixed the accent on the antepenultimate, with so fine an effect in the way of improvement on the (to merely English ears) intolerable “Hyperíon” which is of classical rigueur, as to have induced the otherwise uncompromising Cooke, translator of Hesiod, to follow his too sweetly sinning example. I hope I shall not be exorcised for thus erring with Shakspeare.

The best image that I can offer of the Græculist carver of cherry-stones is such a realization of Buridan’s ass suspended between two rival and opposite bundles of hay, as might be presented by a bad concocter of College exercises, puzzled in an address to Prometheus to choose between the heptasyllabic form “Iapetionides” and the tetrasyllabic “Japetides,” to commence his puling hexameter!

The earliest military expedition into Spain, of which there is mention amongst ancient poets or doubt amongst historians, is that of Hercules, amongst whose twelve labours is recorded his victory over Geryon and obtaining possession of his crown. Geryon, the son of Crysaör, was King of the Balearic Isles, and hence by poetical fiction he was endowed with three bodies, and is commonly called tricorpor, triplex, or tergeminus, and sometimes Pastor Iberus. Virgil describes Hercules proceeding to the conquest of Cacus from that of Geryon thus:

——Nam maximus ultor,

Tergemini nece Geryonis spoliisque superbus,

Alcides aderat, taurosque huc victor agebat

Ingentes: vallemque boves amnemque tenebant.

Æn. viii. 201.

Of these Cacus stole four of the finest, and though he ingeniously dragged them by the tails, was the cause of his own destruction. And that was not the first time that meddling with Spanish affairs was fatal to a foreign robber! Horace likewise alludes to this expedition of Hercules, in compliment to Augustus (Carm. iii. 14), where he compares the victorious return of the Roman from Iberia to that of Hercules—“Herculis ritu.” The first authenticated occupation of the country was by the Phœnicians, who colonized it extensively, but according to their usual practice endeavoured long to keep their discovery secret. The name of the country “Span” in the Phœnician signifies “a mystery.” The rivalry between Rome and Carthage brought the Romans subsequently to the Peninsula, and Spain since that period has played a great part in the history of the world.

The warlike character of the ancient Spaniards is attested by a variety of circumstances; by the terrific struggle which they maintained against the overwhelming power of Rome, by their determined and unflinching resistance to Hannibal as well as Scipio, by such desperately sustained sieges as those of Saguntum and Numantia, by the complimentary allusions to their valour with which the Latin poets abound, and not least by the reputation of their ancient armour, which was in the highest esteem at Rome in the days of Julius and Augustus Cæsar. Thus, when Horace addresses Iccius on his change of the study of Philosophy for a military life, he twits him with having promised better things than to exchange his splendid library for Iberian cuirasses:

Cùm tu coëmptos undique nobiles

Libros Panæti, Socraticam et domum

Mutare loricis Iberis,

Pollicitus meliora, tendis?

Carm. i. 29.

The metallurgic fame of Spain covers a period of nearly two score centuries. It is attested by Hudibras and Horace, by Le Sage and Pliny:—“Iron ores are almost everywhere found ... there is a variety of different species ... and great difference in the forges. But the greatest difference of all is the water, into which it is plunged when red-hot. This glory of her iron has ennobled certain places, as Bilbilis in Spain,” lib. xxxiv. cap. 14. Pliny here alludes to the town now known as Bilbao, which retained its reputation for sword-blades, like Toledo, down to a recent period. He speaks of it as a city in Tarracon or Cantabria, corresponding with the Basque Provinces of which Bilbao is one of the chief towns. How strange that, after the lapse of seventeen centuries, representatives from this very Bilbao should have accompanied the Asturian Deputies to England to solicit a subsidy of arms from the descendants of those who were such utter barbarians, when the cuirasses of Cantabria were eagerly sought after by the nobles of Imperial Rome!

The Greeks called Italy “Hesperia,” because it was situated to the west of them, and the Romans called Spain “Hesperia” equally, because it was to the west of Italy. But the Latin poets, imitating the Greeks, very frequently call Italy “Hesperia” also. Thus Virgil:

Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt.

Æn. i. 534.

Macrobius prefers deriving the origin of the name, as applied to Italy, from its western situation, to the fact of its being chosen by Hesperus for his residence, when he was expelled by his brother Atlas: “Italy is called Hesperia, because it lies to the west.” (Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. cap. 3.)

Horace, when he applies the name to Spain, distinguishes the latter country by the addition of the word “ultima,” thus:

Qui nunc Hesperiâ sospes ab ultimâ

Caris multa sodalibus, &c.

Carm. i. 36.

Strabo, lib. i. seems to derive the name from situation, where he describes the Spaniards as the most western nation, “μάλιστα ἑσπέριοι.” And both he and Pliny state that Hispania was likewise called Iberia, either from a king of that name or from the river Iberus (Ebro).

Iberia, though the name by which, after Hispania, Spain was most commonly known to the Latins was, by a confusion not very complimentary to their geographical accuracy, likewise the name of a region in Asia Minor. It was a tract in Pontus separated from Colchis by the Moschic mountains, and corresponds with the modern Georgia:

Herbasque, quas Iolcos atque Iberia

Mittit venenorum ferax.

Horat. Epod. 5.

The names “Hesperia” and “Iberia” are found together in the same stanza of Camóens as applied to the Peninsula, yet with some vague attempt to confine the latter name to the Spanish portion exclusively:

“Nome em armas ditoso, em noss’ Hesperia,

*****

Se não quizera ir ver a terra Iberia.”

Lus. iv. 54.

Both names are properly applicable to the entire Peninsula, including Spain and Portugal, the second epithet, modified by the prefix Celto into “Celtiberia,” being the ancient name of Aragon and Catalonia, and Iliberia that of Granada. The name Iberia as applied to Spain is found in Virgil, Æn. ix. 582:

Pictus acu chlamydem, et ferrugine clarus Iberâ,

and under this name the country is described elaborately by Avienus (P. C. 380).

Quamque suis opibus cumulavit Iberia dives, &c.

Ausonius (also P. C. 380) makes use of both the names “Hispania” and “Iberia:”

His Hispanus ager tellus ubi dives Iberum.

Juvenal (P. C. 120) uses the name “Hispania” as the distinctive appellation of the country, which became better and more perilously known in his time than in the days of Horace and Virgil:

Horrida vitanda est Hispania.

Sat. viii. 116.

There is classical authority for a happy variety of names in describing Spain—“Hesperia,” “Iberia,” “Hispania:”

Tum sibi Callaïco Brutus cognomen in hoste

Fecit, et Hispanam sanguine tinxit humum.

Ov. Fast. vi. 461.

Herculis ritu, modò dictus, ô plebs,

Morte venalem petiisse laurum

Cæsar, Hispanâ repetit Penates

Victor ab orâ

Horat. Carm. iii. 14.

Spain was anciently divided into Hispania Ulterior and Citerior. The former comprehended Bætica, the present Andalucía, and Lusitania nearly corresponding to what is now called Portugal. Hispania Citerior comprised all the rest of the Peninsula. The name “Hesperia” was more commonly applied by the ancient poets to the Italian Peninsula than to the Spanish. Thus Virgil (in addition to the passage above cited):

Et sæpe Hesperiam, sæpe Itala regna vocare. * *

Sed quis ad Hesperiæ venturos littora Teucros

Crederet?

Æn. iii. 185.

The preponderance of authority is clearly in favour of designating Spain as “Iberia” or “Hispania,” and generally confining “Hesperia” to Italy. Ovid has a very charming nymph named Hesperie, no connection, however, of the Hesperides, of whom the most famous was that Arethusa whose fountain-streamlet is so celebrated, and whose enchanting name has been tastefully introduced into the nomenclature of the British Navy. Ovid’s Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenis, was loved and persecuted by the Trojan hero Æsacos, whose discovery of her is thus exquisitely described:

Aspicit Hesperien patriâ Cebrenida ripâ,

Injectos humeris siccantem sole capillos.

Visa fugit Nymphe!

Ov. Met. xi. 769.

A very amusing and somewhat malicious mistake was recently witnessed at one of our English Universities. A prize was offered for a composition on “Hesperiæ mala luctuosæ.” Spain was manifestly intended. But the wags spreading all manner of doubts and difficulties, the “Dons” were obliged to come out with a public notice, intimating that “the gentlemen had better confine themselves to the Spanish Peninsula!”

Cantabria, which is the scene of this poem, was likewise the scene of some of Augustus’s victories. His policy seems to have been here as successful as his generalship. “Domuit autem, partim ductu, partim auspiciis suis Cantabriam.” (Sueton. cap. 20.) But the Cantabrians, then as now unformed for subjugation, rebelled again the moment Augustus returned to Rome. Augustus, however, paid them a second visit, and appears to have quieted them in Roman fashion, this being the last of his warlike exploits: “Hic finis Augusto bellicorum certaminum fuit: idem rebellandi finis Hispaniæ.” (Luc. Flor. lib. iv. c. 12.)

It was the proud distinction of the Cantabrian in the ancient world to be indomitable, a character very significantly assigned to him in Horace’s well known line: