Lope de Vega, Calderon, Camoens, Göethe, Schiller, are equal objects of admiration in their native soils. Not only have the Portuguese claimed an equality of genius with Homer and Virgil for Camoens, but for another poet of the same century, Antonio Pereira, a native of Lisbon, born in 1528, as the ensuing lines attest, addressed to him by his friend Diego Bernardez "Ah bom cultor du Musa Portugueza, Qual fuy Virgilio a Roma, a Grecia Homero, He died in 1569-aged 41. Yet, as nations cannot, more than individuals, be impartial judges in their own cause, if we collect the now established opinions of foreign critics, especially of the Germans, by far the best qualified to award the precedence, little doubt can exist of Shakspere's acknowledged dramatic superiority. Scarcely, indeed, could our own enthusiasts be more impassioned in asserting it than Schlegel, Voss, Schiller, Göethe, and, we may add, the great musical composer, Beethoven. Johnson's language in regard to the Americans, when struggling for their independence, is wholly inexcusable. "They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything allowed them short of hanging," were his ungracious words. (Boswell, iii., 327.) But his expressed abhorrence of the Negro slavery, and his indignant reproval of the misrule of Ireland, are truly creditable to his humane and liberal feelings. At Oxford, in the company of grave doctors, he even gave as a toast, "The insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies;" (vol. iv., page 56,) and both in the Rambler, No. 114, and Idler, No. 22, he denounced the nefarious traffic. Of the Irish, he remarked, (vol. ii., p. 249,) that they were in a most unnatural state; "for we see there," he said, "the minority prevailing over the majority. There is not, even in the ten persecutions, an instance of such severity as that which Protestants have exercised in Ireland over the Catholics. King William was not their lawful king: he had not been acknowledged by the parliament of Ireland when they appeared in arms against him." On an union with England, though then not a legislative question, yet long in contemplation, he is reported in volume iv., page 287, to have addressed an Irish gentleman: "Do not make an union with us. We would unite with you only to rob you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had anything of which we could have robbed them." The union, however, was effected-legislatively, but not voluntarily; for it was the fruit of corruption, as distinctively expressed in the applied distich 66 Anglia vicisti, profuso turpiter auro, Armis pauca, dolo plurimum, jure nihil." but of corruption quite as foul, or rather more so, in the suicidal sellers of their independence, as in those who, in the conviction of its political necessity, spared no cost, and stopped at no device to achieve it. Still had its stipulated conditions been carried into full execution, in place of being flagrantly violated, it might, notwithstanding the sacrifice felt by national pride, in the surrender of even so depraved a legislature, have become a source of satisfaction and prosperity, as in Scotland, where the same odious means, and foul agency, had achieved the Union, and where, similarly, it had long continued to be the sorest of grievances and most sensitive ground of discontent, down even to 1787, as may be seen in the poems of Burns. Yet were all the resulting fruits of acts originating in, or accomplished by corruption or outrage, to be rejected, many a salutary measure, and many a valuable institution, would become the consequent sacrifice. It certainly was not by moral agency, or virtuous men, that the revolution of 1688 was produced, and, to the Protestant vaunt of the Refor mation, we would assert with Hume, (vol. iv., page 42-4to.,) "that its rapid advance, and the violence with which it was embraced, proved sufficiently, that it owed not its success to reason or reflection." Even the first of blessings-christianity-has been propagated, the sword in one hand and the Gospel in the other; the end appearing always to justify the means. But a wiser system gradually conciliated the Scottish nation; an example of enlightened justice, with its sure and happy consequences, soon, we trust, to be applied to Ireland, which, bound to England by natural position, and drawn by the improvements of science in closer cohesion, has been estranged by oppression—the oppression of ages. A generous impulse, or at least a well considered sense of national interest, will not, we hope, leave it to fear to produce a change of policy, and ensure to Ireland the accomplishment, in complete enjoyment, of the promised benefits of the union. Fear, however, though the least desirable, is too often found the most effective instrument of justice; and history impressively tells us, that it is to England only, when tremulous from domestic or foreign danger, and not when revelling in the insolence of prospe 66 rity, that Ireland has ever owed the concession of a demanded right, verifying the characteristic saying, Anglia gens est optima, flens; sed pessima, ridens." Had, we may finally observe on the subject, the stipulations of the Union, as in Scotland, relieved us from the incumbrance of an ascendant church, and, as in America, limited the clerical remuneration, to the communicants of each creed, how cheered would have been the act, and how different the feelings of the people, as well as the face of the country, during the long intermediate period! Luceat nobis tandem ista tam dia votis auspicata dies! After a cursory allusion to Thomas à Kempis, in volume the fourth, page 84, a note by Mr. Malone assigns the date of 1492 to the first edition of this admirable book, which Fontenelle, in his life of his uncle, "Le Grand Corneille," who translated it into verse, distinguishes, and we pleasurably repeat the eulogy, as, "le livre le plus beau qui soit parti de la main d'un homme, puisque l'Evangile n'en vient pas ;" and which the Abbé de Rancé, founder of the monastery of La Trappe, consonantly designates, "Le plus excellent des livres après l'Evangile," in his letter to the Abbé Nicaise. But at least a dozen editions, under the names of St. Bernard, Gerson, and others, had preceded that of 1492. Above twenty years before, in 1471, one (probably the first) was printed at Augsburgh, followed by several more in various parts of Europe, before Malone's date. Johnson is reported, on this occasion, to have said, "that, in one language or other, it had been printed as many times as there had been months since it first came out;" which, reckoning with Malone, from 1492 to 1792, would amount to three thousand six hundred times-a number, in his opinion, very improbable. But, in the first instance, we have to observe, that Fontenelle, from whom the enumeration was taken, limits it to the intervening years, not months, and to the original Latin impressions, which are thus reduced to three hundred. Yet we hesitate not to express our confident belief, that, including the translations in every European tongue, and which exceed six hundred, with constant republications of each, the volume has been printed quite as often as Malone had difficulty in crediting. The French version, by the Jesuit, Gonnelieu, has issued nearly fifty times from the press. That in English, by Stanhope, is a mutilation, the fourth book, because it treats of the Eucharist in the Catholic sense, and other parts implying Catholic doctrines, being retrenched. In June 1841, a medal was awarded M. Onésime Leroy by the French Academy, for his essay on the author, whom he maintains to have been John Charlier Gerson, chancellor of the diocese and university of Paris, (vixit, 1363-1429;) while the Benedictine, Dom Virginio Valsecchi, claims the work for one of his order, in his " Giovanni Gersen, Abate dell' Ordine di Sto. Benedetto, sustenato autore de' libri dell' Imitazione di Giesu-Christo." (Fiorenze, 1774, 8vo.) Bellarmine, Mabillon, and Valart have been of the same opinion; but the consonance of name with that of the Chancellor Gerson, has caused most probably the confusion of one with the other. Hammerlein, called Thomas à Kempis, has not at present many partisans; though, like the name of America, lost to its real discoverer, that of Kempis still stands prominent as the writer in every impression. |