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Page 36
If, then, such reverses in opinion as to matters of taste can be so
readily brought about, when may an author feel himself secure? Where is
the anchoring-ground of popularity, when he may thus be driven from his
moorings, and foundered even in harbor? The reader, too, when he is to
consider himself safe in admiring, when he sees long-established altars
overthrown, and his household deities dashed to the ground!
There is one consolatory reflection. Every abuse carries with it its
own remedy or palliation. Thus the excess of crude and hasty criticism,
which has of late prevailed throughout the literary world, and
threatened to overrun our country, begins to produce its own antidote.
Where there is a multiplicity of contradictory paths, a man must make
his choice; in so doing, he has to exercise his judgment, and that is
one great step to mental independence. He begins to doubt all, where all
differ, and but one can be in the right. He is driven to trust to his
own discernment, and his natural feelings; and here he is most likely
to be safe. The author, too, finding that what is condemned at one
tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives
way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates
of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus
that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of
writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors,
and the hardihood of talent become restored.
G.C.
* * * * *
SPANISH ROMANCE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
Sir: I have already given you a legend or two drawn from ancient Spanish
sources, and may occasionally give you a few more. I love these old
Spanish themes, especially when they have a dash of the Morisco in them,
and treat of the times when the Moslems maintained a foot-hold in the
peninsula. They have a high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in
any other themes that are merely European. In fact, Spain is a country
that stands alone in the midst of Europe; severed in habits, manners,
and modes of thinking, from all its continental neighbors. It is a
romantic country; but its romance has none of the sentimentality of
modern European romance: it is chiefly derived from the brilliant
regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of Saracenic
chivalry.
The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and
a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a
quick-witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, and were
imbued with oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a
seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious;
and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered. By
degrees, occupancy seemed to give them a hereditary right to their
foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked upon as invaders, and
were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken up into a
variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became for centuries
a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the
principal business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of
romantic chivalry. The original ground of hostility, a difference of
faith, gradually lost its rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite
creeds, were occasionally linked together in alliances, offensive and
defensive; so that the cross and crescent were to be seen side by side
fighting against some common enemy. In times of peace, too, the noble
youth of either faith resorted to the same cities, Christian or Moslem,
to school themselves in military science. Even in the temporary truces
of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven together in
the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met at
tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged the
courtesies of gentle and generous spirits. Thus the opposite races
became frequently mingled together in peaceful intercourse, or if any
rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and nobler acts
which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors of opposite creeds
became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree
sometimes fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly
noble and affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious
instances of high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty
disinterestedness, and punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to
read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or
have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the
life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an
influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and
decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults,
and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many
points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe.
It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes.
It renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent; prone to
carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober
sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect
the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon
"arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but
this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors,
lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in
indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
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