British Periodicals and Spanish Literature

### **ANGLO-IBERIAN STUDIES**

María Eugenia Perojo Arronte / Cristina Flores Moreno (eds.)

British Periodicals

and Spanish Literature

Mapping the Romantic Canon

Edited by Rogério Miguel Puga and Laura Martínez-García

### **VOLUME 3**

María Eugenia Perojo Arronte / Cristina Flores Moreno (eds.)

**ANGLO-IBERIAN STUDIES** 

Edited by Rogério Miguel Puga and Laura Martínez-García

**VOLUME 3** 

# British Periodicals and Spanish Literature

Mapping the Romantic Canon

#### **Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek**

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data** 

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

> ISSN 2698-9662 ISBN 978-3-631-88549-9 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88550-5 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88551-2 (E-PUB) DOI 10.3726/b19994

Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

© María Eugenia Perojo Arronte / Cristina Flores Moreno (eds.), 2022

Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

### **Acknowledgments**

**Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek** The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

> **Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**  A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

> > ISSN 2698-9662 ISBN 978-3-631-88549-9 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88550-5 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-88551-2 (E-PUB) DOI 10.3726/b19994

Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

© María Eugenia Perojo Arronte / Cristina Flores Moreno (eds.), 2022

Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien

This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

This book arises within the framework of the Research Project LHIBRO, "La literatura hispánica en la prensa periódica británica del Romanticismo (1802– 1832): Apropiación y reescritura del canon" (grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00), based at the University of Valladolid (Spain) since 2019, and the network Anglo-Hispanic Horizons (AHH). The editors wish to thank the collaboration of some of its members. Special thanks are due to Joselyn Almeida, Tim Fulford, Ian Haywood and Diego Saglia for their participation in the design of the Project, which later materialized through the sponsorship of the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, whose funding for this publication is here gratefully acknowledged. Thank you also to the contributors to this volume, whose unyielding enthusiasm and dedication along the whole process has been commendable. And finally, thanks to Laura Martínez-García and Rogério Miguel Puga, the general editors of the Peter Lang series, for believing in our project and offering us their support and advice.

> María Eugenia Perojo Arronte Cristina Flores Moreno

## **Table of Contents**


#### 8 Table of Contents


María Eugenia Perojo Arronte and Cristina Flores Moreno

### **Introduction**

At the turn of the nineteenth century, German authors such as Ludwig Tieck, Jean Paul Richter, August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel placed Spanish literature at the top of the European cultural tradition and granted it a high status within the new literary system that took shape with the Romantic revolution. This had an impact upon British culture, favoured by the European political instability provoked by the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15). The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula put an end to centuries of confrontation between Spain and Great Britain and gave way to a new political and military alliance. The conflict provoked a rampant Francophobia among the British, which was reasserted, in the cultural sphere, by new German literary trends, heavily biased against the French Enlightenment. Consequently, the British Romantics reacted against French eighteenth-century cultural hegemony and set their sights on other literary traditions. More or less at the same time, the independence of the former Spanish colonies in Latin America offered new possibilities for the expansion of British commercial interests overseas, a move usually accompanied by processes of cultural colonization. As a consequence, the status of Spanish literature was boosted to unprecedented heights. However, the process was complex on account of the deep ideological conflicts stemming from the diverse cultural identities that were taking shape in various European nations in the midst of a profound geopolitical crisis.

The fascination with Spain experienced by a section of the British cultural elites in the earlier phases of the Peninsular War turned into a profound disenchantment after the Vienna Conference (1814–15) because of the anti-liberal and reactionary turn of Spanish politics in its wake, with the exception of the Liberal Triennium (1820–3). Moreover, the negative view of Spain propagated through the Black Legend1 was fuelled in this period by the conflict around the Catholic Emancipation, a political process aimed at liberating British Catholics from most of the restrictions imposed upon them since the sixteenth-century. Kindled in 1800 by the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain, the

<sup>1</sup> The Black Legend is the anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda disseminated in Northern European countries since the sixteenth century, aimed at vilifying the Spanish Empire.

conflict acquired momentum in the 1820s, arousing much controversy in both countries. It was finally settled by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. The first three decades of the nineteenth century were thus marked by strong anti-Catholic sentiment in Great Britain (Andrews; Kumar), that was also boosted by the centrality of Protestantism in the shaping of a national identity among the British (Colley). More broadly, the crisis of the Spanish Empire, the independence of the former American colonies, the struggle for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, and British interests overseas were also decisive in shaping the discourse on Spanish culture. The relations between Great Britain and Spain were then subject to a difficult balance of power that was reflected in the ideological filters and discursive strategies with which the British represented Spain. All these circumstances informed British authors' perception of the Spanish cultural tradition, which ranged from fascination to outright rejection. A kind of impossible balance of these opposed views was also attempted by using very singular strategies of appropriation.

In the last couple of decades, several volumes have explored this phenomenon, beginning with Diego Saglia's groundbreaking *Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia*, whose cultural approach is continued in several collected volumes: Joselyn Almeida's *Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary*, Ian Haywood's and Saglia's *Spain and British Romanticism*, Bernard Beatty's and Alicia Laspra Rodríguez's *Romanticism, Reaction and Revolution: British Views on Spain 1814*–*1823* and Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez's *Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550*–*1850)*. Moreover, British interest in Spain as a literary topic has been further explored in Susan Valladares's *Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres 1807*–*1815* and in Agustín Coletes Blanco and Alicia Laspra Rodríguez's *Romántico país: poesía inglesa del Trienio*. From the perspective of the history of the book, recent studies have also analysed the material presence of Spanish editions in London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Bas Martín and Taylor; Bas Martín), and Saglia's *European Literatures in Britain* has studied the cultural translations and appropriations of foreign traditions through which British Romanticism acquired a cosmopolitan dimension. All these contributions have opened new paths and illuminated particular areas.

In addition, many studies have shown the interest of the British Romantic authors in Spanish literature, particularly that of the so-called Siglo de Oro [Golden Age]. From an early date, the reception of Pedro Calderón de la Barca was attested in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron (Madariaga; Gates; Saglia, *Byron and Spain*; Robinson; Insausti; Dumke; Moro Martín, "Calderón de la Barca," "Calderón en Inglaterra;"

#### Introduction 11

Perojo Arronte, "Coleridge and Spanish Literature;" Almeida, "The Shelleys"). The critical interest in Lope de Vega by English Hispanists has been analysed in several studies. Comellas and Sánchez Jiménez focused their attention on John Talbot Dillon and Wiliam Hayley, and Robert Southey's interest in Lope de Vega has been explored by Gonzalez ("Poetic Industry") and Flores and González. A celebrated Spanish writer whose imprint upon English literature already had an established tradition by the early nineteenth century was Miguel de Cervantes, particularly his universal *Don Quixote.* Cervantes's masterpiece was viewed in a new light in the Romantic period (Close) and its impact has been traced in the writings of S. T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley (Sarmiento; Dudley; Garrido Ardila; Donahue; Moro Martín, "Everything," "Extraños;" Perojo Arronte, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge"). Furthermore, the canon of British Hispanism has been extended to other classical authors such as Francisco de Quevedo, whose influence has been found in Lord Byron's satirical works (Cochran), and Teresa of Ávila, who impacted Coleridge's poetry and drama (Perojo Arronte, "Coleridge"). More widely, the Romantic development of national literary historiographies has attracted the attention of some British Hispanists to Spanish literary history, such as John Bowring (Comellas-Aguerrizábal, "La historia literaria").

All these works reveal that the British Romantic authors faced a cultural and literary tradition to which they attributed a high degree of cultural capital but which they perceived as alien to both their native tradition and their national identity. The different ways used to both self-represent and represent the Other determined their strategies of appropriation and rewriting of foreign literary traditions. One of these strategies was the creation of a British canon of Spanish authors, for which the periodical press was instrumental.

Although the aforementioned studies on the reception of Spanish literature by individual British writers have been groundbreaking and enlightening, the repertoire of Spanish authors and works in British Romanticism can undoubtedly be expanded, and there remain unexplored relevant aspects that require scholarly attention. One of these is the role played by the periodical press during the Romantic period in the process of dissemination and canonization of Spanish literature. Even though the important role granted to literary reviews for the development of Romanticism in Great Britain has been solidly established (Behrendt; Butler; Christie; Demata; Hayden; Parker; Schoenfield; Wheatley), the impact of the periodical press as a tool for the shaping of public opinion about Spanish literature and culture in Great Britain is an area that was rather neglected until the last decade, following Vicente Llorens's pioneering study *Liberales y románticos: una emigración española en Inglaterra*  *(1823–1834)*, which revealed the literary activities of Spanish political exiles in the British press. More recent criticism has followed suit. Blanco White's criticism of Spanish literature in the British press for a wide Hispanic readership led Almeida ("Blanco White") to propound the concept of an Anglo-Hispanic Romanticism, and Medina Calzada's *José Joaquín de Mora and Britain: Cultural Transfers and Transformations,* and García Castañeda and Romero Ferrer's collected edition, *José Joaquín de Mora o la inconstancia: periodismo, política y literatura*, offer interesting insights into the literary criticism published by the exile José Joaquín de Mora in British periodicals. More broadly, Saglia has analysed the presence of Spanish literature in *The New Monthly Magazine* ("Hispanism") and more recently in the chapter "Periodicals and the Construction of European Literatures" of his *European Literatures in Britain*. Of great interest, too, are Durán López's study on the reviews of Böhl von Faber's *Floresta de rimas castellanas* in British magazines and Susan Valladares' illuminating analysis of the clash between Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in the discourse on Spain developed by the British reviews during the Peninsular War. These studies shed light on the ideological and aesthetic implications of the reception of Spanish literature in Romantic Great Britain, but the literature on British magazines is still insufficient and the research offered in this volume is intended to take a step forward in the mapping of British Hispanism through the periodical press.

This was a time in which critical activity underwent a revolution in Great Britain. Founded in 1802, *The Edinburgh Review* established the pattern for a new highbrow cultural journalism with a liberal bent. This journal was soon imitated by ideological counterparts *The Quarterly Review* (founded in 1809) and *Blackwood's Magazine* (founded in 1817). As a consequence, a dialogue was established among them, often determined by European political events. Other major journals which featured Spanish matters were *The Examiner*, a weekly founded by the brothers John and Leigh Hunt in 1808 and edited until 1821 by the latter, a reputed author and critic well known for his radicalism; the *New Monthly Magazine* (1814); the *Westminster Review* (1824); and the *London Review* (1829). In Marilyn Butler's words, journals were "culture's medium" (121) and key to the perception of books by a reading public that was increasingly becoming a mass audience. On top of that, literary journalism was closely related to historical events, and the ideological agendas of the periodical press were obviously linked to partisan positions in political controversies. This circumstance might be reflected in the selection of works and authors, and in the choice of writers for the reviews. The value granted (or denied) to foreign literatures in these publications must therefore be considered from the perspective of both literary and cultural

#### Introduction 13

studies since, as previously discussed, this was a critical time in European history. The attention to or rejection of a specific literary tradition usually implied an ideological bias regarding the changing and unstable geopolitics of the time. The political agendas of the publications and the specific historical background of their reviews are key issues for the interpretation of their production. Hence, the analysis of the reviews of Spanish literature published in these journals sheds light on the practice of British Romantic writers regarding Spanish literature in their own works and, in more general terms, on the reception of Spanish culture in Great Britain. This line of research spreads out from a literary approach to also explore ideological and identity issues that will contribute to a better understanding of the complex interrelations between Great Britain and Spain in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Spanish books were accessible, though with certain difficulties in the case of highly specialized ones, and circulated in Great Britain during the Romantic era. The formidable task of cataloguing the editions and translations of Spanish works that were available to English readers in the first half of the nineteenth century – a task inevitably doomed to remain incomplete – was first attempted by José Alberich in his *Bibliografía anglo-hispánica*, where he records 141 Spanish literary works, biographies of Spanish authors and essays on Spanish literature published in England. This work was later complemented by Remigio Ugo Pane's *English Translations from the Spanish, 1484*–*1943: A Bibliography*, which provided a reference list of the translations of Spanish literature and history made into English between the fifteenth and the mid-twentieth century. The records compiled in these two monographs show a clear preference for medieval ballads and chivalric romances, such as the volume by George Bernhard Depping, *Colección de los más célebres romances antiguos españoles, históricos y caballerescos*, or the translations by Robert Southey of *Amadís de Gaula* and the *Chronicle of the Cid*, picaresque novels such as *The Adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes* and *The Life and Adventures of Guzman d'Alfarache*, and Spanish Golden Age literature, among which Miguel de Cervantes's *Don Quixote* stands out.

Nonetheless, these records cover but a small portion of the Spanish literary works present on British soil. The list could be greatly enlarged with information drawn from the catalogues of circulating libraries, booksellers, antiquarians, and private libraries, all of which are important channels for the import and circulation of foreign books. As Bas Martín notes, the sales and auctions of books that were so much in vogue in England in the Romantic era were the sites of some of the most important transactions. In fact, many private libraries were created thanks to the rise of Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses. In addition, bookshops and the circulating libraries often associated with them were the main channels for the distribution of literary texts. At the turn of the nineteenth century, foreign books could be obtained in London, a "center of cultural power based, among other things, on the collection, diffusion, and discussion (and, albeit to a lesser degree, production) of foreign language works" (Saglia, "Foreign Books" 52). While most of the foreign books sold were French (the most popular) and Italian, Spanish works could be found in the bookshops owned by William Earle, Michael Heavisides, Rudolf Ackermann, and the Valencian liberal exile Vicente Salvá y Pérez, who opened his Spanish and Classic Library in Regent Street in 1824. Spanish books were pursued by some bibliophile collectors such as Richard Heber, Henry George Bhon, Richard Ford, or Obadiah Rich (Bas Martín and Barry 11), who treasured them in their private libraries. A thorough scrutiny of the selling catalogues issued by auctioneers, relevant London booksellers, and collectors would thus, in all likelihood, reveal a wider presence of Spanish letters in Romantic Great Britain than that pictured by Alberich and Pane.

The routes taken by Spanish literary commodities on their way to Great Britain and the intermediary agents who assisted their reception were various. Travellers such as Richard Twiss, Edward Clarke, John Talbot Dillon, Robert Southey, and William Jacob not only provided English readers with accounts of Spanish literature in the pages of their travelogues, they also brought home a good number of Spanish publications acquired during their sojourns in the Iberian Peninsula. Likewise, diplomats such as John Hookham Frere, Wyndham Beawes, the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, or Alexander Jardine, also got hold of certain volumes during their residences in Spain which ended up on British shelves. Finally, editors such as John Gibson Lockhart and John Rutter Chorley also played a noteworthy role as intermediaries providing texts and references to British authors.

Given that books from Spain and in Spanish were frequently acquired through personal contacts, literary and cultural networks were central to the diffusion of Spanish literature. An interesting case is the Club Hispanus, a "political forum organised along the lines of a Gentlemen's Club," whose list of Spanish members included the writer Fernández de Moratín (Bas Martín 145).2 Holland House stands out among literary circles for its instrumental role in the dissemination of Spanish literature. It was the most outstanding centre of cultural and political

<sup>2</sup> Wolfson, Fulford, and, more recently, Bowers and Crummé have shown that British Romanticism was shaped above all "by the shared writing and reading practices of literary coteries" (Fulford 3).

#### Introduction 15

activity related to Spain in London, where the Hispanist Henry Richard Vassal Fox, Third Lord Holland, possessed – and shared with his personal circle – a private collection that included numerous, and often rare, Spanish volumes. Lord Holland was a "man of many friendships" (Sanders 15, 97), among them one can list some of the major Romantic poets (Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, among others), to whom he granted access to his impressive library, while denying it to others such as Mary Shelley. Holland also welcomed into his circle the Spanish exiles, who "occupied an intermediate position that made them the embodiments of the intercultural relations between the two countries and cultures" (Saglia and Haywood 8). This complex network of the book trade, collections, auctions, and personal connections favoured the circulation of Spanish books that were noticed, advertised, and reviewed in the periodical press, which emerges as a key element in this intricate mechanism of cultural and literary exchange during the Romantic period.

This volume mainly features work resulting from the research project "Hispanic Literature in the British Romantic Periodical Press (1802–32): Appropriating and Rewriting the Canon." With the main goal of contributing to a wider understanding of the presence of Spanish literature and culture in British Romanticism, the chapters gathered here focus on the instrumental role played by the British periodical press in Anglo-Hispanic literary and cultural exchange in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The volume is divided into four different but complementary sections. The three chapters in Part 1, "Cultural Mediators," examine the main agents of dissemination, while the two chapters in Part 2, "Constructing the Canon," dive into the discursive strategies for Spanish literature's canonization in the British press during the Romantic period. Part 3, "Appropriating Classical Authors," comprises three chapters devoted more specifically to an analysis of the reception of three major Golden Age authors: Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Miguel de Cervantes. Finally, Part 4, "Appropriating Contemporary Authors," gathers three chapters on critical reactions to three contemporary authors published in British periodicals: Tomás de Iriarte, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa and Fernán Caballero.

Part 1 opens with three chapters addressing the influential role of literary critics as cultural mediators. Chapter 1, by María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia, delves into the role of the literary historian and critic Ángel Anaya in the rewriting of the Spanish canon for English audiences. Lorenzo-Modia explores this enigmatic figure of Spanish letters whose main works, the four-volume anthology *El teatro español* (1817–21) and *An Essay on Spanish Literature* (1818), were published in London and widely reviewed by British and Irish periodicals. They were also known in America, as Lorenzo-Modia attests. She also highlights the role of their respective publishers – George Smallfield, and Boosey and Sons – as cultural mediators through their production of Spanish books. The chapter also includes a copy and transcription of Anaya's will. In Chapter 2, Sara Medina Calzada examines the reviews of Spanish literary works that the Spanish liberals exiled in London published in British periodicals between 1823 and 1834, crucial in the dissemination of Spanish literature. Their attempt to reinterpret the history of Spanish literature and, more generally, Spanish history and national identity from their position as liberals and exiles was a singular one. They also had to contend with the clash between their Neoclassical background and the appeal of English Romanticism, which is reflected in their writings and made their contributions on Spanish literature illuminating critical pieces which offered alternative views to those prevailing among British Romantic critics. In turn, Begoña Lasa-Álvarez underlines in Chapter 3 the role of literary advertisers as tastemakers, exploring the reviews of and advertisements for Spanish books of a variety of genres published in *The Literary Gazette* during the 1830s. Grounded in Pierre Bourdieu's notion of cultural mediators and Michele Espagne and Matthias Midelle's concept of cultural transfer, Lasa-Álvarez analyses how editors mediated and attracted readers' attention to books on Spanish matters and translations by drawing on the clichés established in the two previous decades about Spanish patriotism and the idealization of Spain as a Romantic land.

In Part 2, Chapters 4 and 5, by María Eugenia Perojo Arronte and Diego Saglia, respectively, show that the literary reviews were inextricable from current issues and concerns. They both explore the literary, political and historical contexts and analyse strategies of canonization. In her chapter, Perojo Arronte compares the discursive strategies through which, in their criticism of ballads, nineteenth-century Spanish and British critics offered their views of the Spanish political nation on account of their respective geopolitical stances and ideologies. Underlying their sometimes opposed discourses is the role granted or denied to Spain in the new Concert of Nations. Saglia is concerned with John Gibson Lockhart's "Horæ Hispanicæ," a series of essays on Spanish literature published in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* in the 1820s. Saglia compares the Spanish series with the previous German one ("Horæ Hispanicæ"), noting that where the latter is dedicated mostly to contemporary literature, the former focuses on earlier periods (the Middle Ages and early Renaissance) with a heavily ideological bias in line with Friedrich Schlegel's *Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur* (1815), which Lockhart had in fact translated in 1818. Saglia contends that this British writer contributed to establishing Spanish literature within the new post-Waterloo European cultural and ideological system.

#### Introduction 17

Part 3, devoted to the British critical reception and the influence of individual Golden Age authors during the Romantic period, opens with Chapter 6, by Cristina Flores Moreno, on the presence of Lope de Vega in some of the major British periodicals. As the critical appraisal of Lope is generally filtered through a net of cultural, political and religious prejudices beyond the literary quality of the work under scrutiny, from the analysis of the reviews emerges not only an overview of Lope's afterlife in Romantic England but also of the intricacies of Anglo-Spanish cultural exchange during that period, and the construction of different views of Spanishness. Calderón de la Barca is the other Siglo de Oro author whose reception in the British press is explored in this volume. Davinia Rodríguez-Ortega offers in Chapter 7 an analysis of Mary Margaret Busk's translations of three of Calderón de la Barca's comedies, published in 1825–6 in *Blackwood's Magazine*. The study of the fragments translated, of those passages that are summarized and the introduction that precedes the translations illustrates Busk's view of Spanish Golden Age drama, a viewpoint that reveals itself to be conditioned by her strong belief in British superiority. The final two chapters of this part deal with the reception of *Don Quixote* in Romantic Britain. Chapter 8, by Alfredo Moro Martín, traces Cervantean echoes in Walter Scott's *The Antiquary* (1816). Moro Martín argues that the archetype of the Quixotic pedant, shaped by some of the most notable eighteenth-century English novelists, finds a clear echo in the figure of Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Scott's novel. Moro Martín traces in detail not only the Quixotic features of the erudite archetype in Scott's character, but more generally the prevalence of Cervantes's model in the novel, a sign of its hold over the British narrative tradition over the centuries. Finally, Fernando and Beatriz González Moreno discuss the new Romantic conception of Cervantes's masterpiece through an analysis of the reception of illustrated editions of *Don Quixote* in Romantic England, such as that of Harrison and Co. (1782), with illustrations by Thomas Stothard, or, more significantly, T. Cadell and W. Davies (1818), with designs by Robert Smirke, among others, which put forward aesthetic novelties and underlined a new Romantic reading of the novel. As the González Morenos contend, drawing on the eighteenthcentury caricatural tradition of William Hogarth, the parodic potential created by Cervantes was exploited to satirize other genres and literary types beyond chivalric books. One clear instance is William Combe's *The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. A Poem* (1809 and 1812), where the travel book aspects of Cervantes's novel are used to parody the picturesque traveller and more widely Romantic travel literature.

While recent scholarship has mainly focused on the reception of classic Spanish writers, proving the dedicated interest of British Romantic authors in medieval and early modern Spanish literature, the reception of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Spanish authors and works in British Romanticism has received scant attention. The three chapters in the closing section of the volume seek to fill this gap. Hence, in Chapter 10, Leticia Villamediana González explores the reception of the Spanish Enlightenment author Tomás de Iriarte and multiple reviews and translations of his works, with particular attention to his collection *Fábulas literarias* (1782), which was partially translated by Robert Southey in his *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* (1797) and also in several periodicals, where the English author uses various strategies to achieve a cultural adaptation of the work. The interest that Iriarte's book aroused is further illustrated by John Belfour's translation in 1804 and its London edition by the Hispanist Agustín Luis Josse in 1809. The multiple reviews in the periodical press note the modernity of Iriarte's fables but also point to the international rivalry among competing literatures. Villamediana González also proves the pedagogical value of Iriarte's text for learners of Spanish, which was acquiring importance as a commercial language among the British. Chapter 11, by Fernando Durán López, explores the reception of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa's *Obras literarias*, published in Paris in 1827–8. This esteemed Spanish author and politician had a rather poor reception in the British periodical press. Durán López analyses the reviews that soon appeared in *The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany* and *The Foreign Quarterly Review* (1829), showing the disregard and lack of appreciation generally displayed in both. In 1835, José María Blanco White's proposal to review Martínez de la Rosa's work for the *London Review* (1835) was accepted by its editor, John Stuart Mill, probably seeking to exploit Martínez de la Rosa's fame as Prime Minister of Spain at the time*.* Durán López argues that Blanco White's criticism, despite its apparently objective tone, is rather negatively biased for aesthetic and ideological reasons: Martínez de la Rosa's Neoclassicism was much too outdated by the time of this review and his role as Prime Minister encapsulated an image of Spain that diverged significantly from Blanco White's European outlook. Finally, in Chapter 12, Daniel Muñoz Sempere deals with the reception of Fernán Caballero in early Victorian Britain, with particular attention to her novel *La Gaviota* (1849). The works of Caballero attracted the attention of British reviewers as examples of Spanish modern literature. However, Muñoz Sempere argues that clear echoes of earlier Romantic idealized views of Andalusia can be perceived in their assessment and criticism, which brings back the dichotomy between past and present upon which the British built their Spanish imaginary, one more instance of how the past veils the present in the process of cultural transfer and reception.

Introduction 19

All the chapters in this volume bear witness to the contrasting and varied perception of everything Spanish, and different strategies of exploration, appropriation and rewriting of its cultural and literary tradition. They all reveal an intricate web of cultural, political and religious factors colouring the discourse of British Romantic literary critics and authors on Spanish cultural capital.

#### **Bibliography**

Alberich, José. *Bibliografía anglo-hispánica, 1801–1850*. Gustavo Gili, 1978.


*Countries (1550*–*1850)*, edited by Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez. Amsterdam University Press, 2020, pp. 213–33.

Valladares, Susan. *Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres, 1807*–*1815.* Routledge, 2019.

Wheatley, Kim, editor. *Romantic Periodicals and Print Culture*. Frank Cass, 2003.

Wolfson, Susan J. *Romantic Interactions: Social Being and the Turns of Literary Action*. John Hopkins University Press, 2010.

**Part I Cultural Mediators**

#### María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia

### **Chapter 1 Literary Critics as Cultural Mediators between Spain and the United Kingdom in the Romantic British Press: The Case of Ángel Anaya\***

**Abstract** The cultural and literary exchange between Spain and the United Kingdom in the Romantic period was powered by newspapers and literary magazines in which members of the public could find both reviews and announcements of new publications of Spanish literature being produced in London. This information appeared not only in periodicals issued in the metropolis of London and the city of Edinburgh, but also in Ireland. This chapter explores the role of the Spaniard Ángel Anaya, a literary critic, anthologizer and translator based in London, who wrote various books, notably *La belleza. Silva* (1790?), *El teatro español* (1817–18) and *An Essay on Spanish Literature containing its History, from the commencement of the Twelfth Century, to the present time* (1818). Although there is speculation about the reasons for his presence in the United Kingdom, little is known about it. He has been considered a liberal in exile, following the accession to the Spanish throne of Ferdinand VII, although this may be contradicted by the dedication of his essay to the Spanish ambassador sent to Britain by Ferdinand. Additionally, his mastery of Italian and French, and references in his texts to members of the Society of Jesus have led some to believe that he was an expelled Jesuit. This study of this, hitherto rather unknown, aspect of the history of Spanish literature sheds light on both the author's origins and – more importantly – the dissemination of Spanish culture in the English-speaking world.

**Keywords:** Ángel Anaya, literary criticism, Spain, United Kingdom, Romantic British press, cultural mediator.

The constant cultural and literary exchange between Spain and the United Kingdom in the early nineteenth century was fuelled by newspapers and literary

<sup>\*</sup> The author hereby acknowledges the support of the following: the research projects "The Animal Trope: An Ecofeminist Analysis of Contemporary Culture in Galicia and Ireland" (PGC-2018-093545-B100) and "Aesthetics, Ethics and Strategies of the New Migratory Cartographies and Transcultural Identities in 21st-Century Literature(s) in English" (PID2019-109582GBI00), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities-State Agency for Research-AEI/ERDF-UE and the Research Group of Modern and Contemporary Literature and Language (CLIN), Universidade da Coruña.

magazines, in which readers could find both reviews and announcements of new British publications relating to Spanish literature. Such information featured not only in journals based in the metropolis of London or in the city of Edinburgh, but also in others in Dublin and other Irish cities. The present chapter examines literary historian, anthologizer and translator Ángel Anaya, who published a variety of texts, the most notable being a treatise on Spanish literature which was widely publicized in journals: *An Essay on Spanish Literature containing its History, from the commencement of the Twelfth Century, to the present time* (1818). Although there is speculation as to the reasons for his presence in London, little is known about his life, the only reliable evidence being his published work, and a handwritten English translation of his will – originally in Spanish – held in the British National Archive (Public Record Office, PROB 11/1618/3) and transcribed at the end of this chapter. His books, plus their announcements and reviews in the British literary press, are thus the best means of understanding his intellectual life and the cultural dissemination of his work.

Anaya published the above-mentioned treatise on Spanish literature in English and – according to the catalogue of the British Library – he was also a translator, his literary career having begun in 1790 with *La belleza. Silva*, a book containing Spanish translations of the fifth canto of *L'imagination* by Jacques Delille (1738– 1813), a member of the Académie Française, and of two fables by the Italian writer Lorenzo Pignotti (1739–1812) and a translation into Italian of a fable by the Basque author Félix María Samaniego (1745–1801) *Fábulas*. The first poem is Delille's "El templo de la fama," [The Temple of Fame], an allegorical dream composed on the occasion of the weddings of Mr. Juan Bergnes and Mr. Antonio Rave, and dedicated by Anaya to his disciple Josefina de Olivier y de Comerás, "A mi discípula Josefina de Olivier y de Comerás."1 The volume's place of publication is tentatively listed as Barcelona in the British Library Catalogue, and the French and Catalan family names of Bergnes and Olivier y de Comerás lend this supposition some credence, since they lived in Barcelona. Juan Bergnes is probably the uncle of Antoni Bergnes de las Casas (1801–79), a language teacher, Hellenist and publisher with French roots, and future rector of the University of Barcelona (Villoria 178). The second dedicatee, Antonio Rave, is said to be Antoni's nephew (Camós Cabeceran 662; Clua 59–71; Thion Soriano-Molla 343). Anaya's dedication indicates that Rave was the language and literature tutor of a young lady belonging to the Barcelona bourgeoisie and also that he was connected to families of French origins, who we might imagine would appreciate the literary

<sup>1</sup> All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

value of the work of so august a writer as Delille. As noted above, the book also contains two fables by Pignotti, translated into Spanish: "La rosa y la zarza, fábula en verso" [The Rose and the Brier, a Fable in Verse], and "El Milano y la paloma ó la lisonja" [The Eagle and the Dove, or Flattery]. Finally, there is a version in Italian of Samaniego's fable "El ciudadano pastor" [The Shepherd Citizen], translated as "Il citadino fatto pastore." The inclusion of this writer, who had published his first volume of fables in 1781 with the Real Sociedad Bascongada de Amigos del País [Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country], may be understood as reflecting Anaya's interest in his own Basque origins.

After the publication of this book in Barcelona, Anaya reappears as an author in London in 1816, apparently continuing his activity as a teacher and a writer with *Leçons de langue italienne ou grammaire complète*, published by Boosey and Sons. The work appears in the catalogues of contemporary publications such as *A Catalogue of Books with their sizes and prizes*, compiled by William Bent in 1816 (32). Anaya's work is listed in the section "Miscellaneous Literature" alongside texts such as *Robinson Crusoe* and *Emma, a Novel*, *Gil Blas de Santillana*, described simply as "Spanish," and *Sancho or The Proverbialist* (1816) by John William Cunningham. Anaya's relevance as a writer is perhaps indicated by the fact that this work still features some four decades later in *The Classified Index to the London Catalogue* from 1853, for books "*published in Great Britain 1816 to 1851*" (197). The work was also briefly appraised in the "Education" section of *The Monthly Review* following its publication in 1817: "M. Anaya has furnished a distinct, methodical and useful guide. The exercises, which correspond to the respective lessons, present the double advantage of illustrating the rules laid down and of fixing them in the memory" (222). The second edition of *Leçons de langue italienne* was also announced, under a slightly different title: *Grammaire italienne ou grammaire complète*, in the Boosey and Sons Catalogue (8) annexed to *The Quarterly Review* 24 (1821), edited by John Murray, a publication which had arisen as a means of counterbalancing the influence of *The Edinburgh Review*. A previous review essay of the 1818 edition of the work (*Discours*) by François-Just-Marie Raynouard, a member of the Académie Française, had already appeared in *Journal des savans*: "La seconde partie de l'ouvrage de M. Anaya mérite l'attention des philologues, et elle ne peut qu'être très utile aux personnes qui étudient les poètes italiens et les poètes espagnols" (89) [Mr. Anaya's work merits the attention of Philologers, and cannot be but very useful to those who study the Spanish and Italian poets]. His work is also advertised in J. Marconi's *A Key to the Italian Language* (1826).

Anaya's Italian grammar would be followed in 1817 by *El teatro español*, in 4 volumes (1817–21), an anthology of Spanish plays and authors, which illustrates his particular interest in the dissemination of Spanish culture in Britain. Both the full title of this publication, and its length, indicate a deep interest in Spanish Golden-Age drama as well as playwrights from the following centuries: *El teatro español, ó colección de dramas escogidos de Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Moreto, Rojas, Solís, Moratín y otros célebres escritores, precedida de una breve noticia de la escena española y de los autores que la han ilustrado* [Spanish Theatre, or Selected Plays by Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Moreto, Rojas, Moratín, and Other Illustrious Playwrights, Preceded by a Brief Note on Spanish Theatre and on the Authors Who Have Contributed to it].

All the above-mentioned works suggest that Anaya was accepted as a literary anthologizer in London for readers of texts in both English and Spanish, and indeed his anthology in particular was the subject of a twentyfour-page review article in *The Quarterly Review* (April 1821) and referred to in *The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres* (7 July 1821). Its publication was also announced by Boosey and Sons on the back of various of their other books, together with Luis Vélez de Guevara's *El Diablo Cojuelo* and *Don Quijote*, as being published "in Monthly Numbers, handsomely printed in Octavo, single Columns, each Number to contain a Play, the price of which will not exceed 3s." *El teatro español* is, like *Leçons de langue italienne*, cited in the 1851 *London Catalogue of Books Published in Great Britain 1816 to 1851* (550). The review of *El teatro español* in *The Quarterly Review*, attributed to Henry Hart Milman and Robert Southey, states that "The drama of Spain, although its influence has been felt both in France and England, is by no means generally known beyond the precints [*sic*] of the Peninsula" (1). The reviewers engage with Spanish literature more broadly, referring to the text on Spanish drama recently published by Lord Holland (*Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope de Vega Carpio and Guillén de Castro*, 1817), as well as responding to *De la littérature du Midi de l'Europe* by French critic Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (4, 5, 21). In addition, they praise Cervantes's play *El cerco de Numancia* (1585), "which stands alone in the drama of Spain in its rude and austere simplicity" (12) and provide an excerpt in translation (8–12). The review pays special attention to the dramas of Calderón de la Barca: "The florid and ornamented manner of Lope, wrought to its highest perfection by Pedro Calderon della Barca [*sic*], gained undisputed possession of the stage" (12). The reviewers compare Anaya's work with that of other internationally reputed critics, and also note the high esteem in which Calderón is held by the German critic Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel:

M. Schlegel, however, is deeply enamoured, as it would seem, even of the defects of Calderon. This extravagant tone of sentiment, and this luxuriant language are to him the purest idealism; Calderon is his poet *par excellence*, and in a long and rapturous eulogy he dwells on his boundless imagination, and his high conceptions of unsullied honour among men and spotless chastity among women (14).

The reviewers include a long quotation by Schlegel in French (20) and end the review by indicating that his "estimate of Calderon approaches much nearer to that of Sismondi than that of Schlegel" (24).

Another text by Anaya published at Boosey and Sons is *Discours sur la manière d'apprendre les langues vivantes, et particulièrement l'italienne et l'espagnole. Suivi d'un traité sur les difficultés de la lecture des poètes de ces deux nations* (1818), listed that year, under the abbreviated title *Discours sur les langues vivantes*, in the conservative High Church journal *The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review* (670). Although this is a handbook for the teaching of languages, its relation to literature can be perceived even in its title, mentioning as it does the poetry of the two countries in question.

*The British Critic* (670) also announced the publication in English of a history of Spanish literature by Anaya: *An Essay on Spanish Literature containing its History, from the commencement of the Twelfth Century, to the present time with an account of the best Writers in their several Departments, and some critical remarks, followed by a history of the Spanish drama and specimens of some of the writers of the different ages* (1818). The essay includes an "Appendix on the Metres and Forms of Verse used by the Spaniards" (111–25). It was printed by George Smallfield for Thomas Boosey and Sons, as were Anaya's previous books. *An Essay on Spanish Literature* was reviewed extensively in the United Kingdom. In *The Edinburgh Monthly Review*, Robert Southey describes it as "a mere introductory work" (85) and concludes by saying that Portuguese literature should not be excluded from Anaya's work as had happened in texts by Bouterwek and Sismondi: "The sister tongues, however, should go together, and it is perhaps doing justice to neither to consider them separately" (94). A critical tone permeates the review, which starts by noting that "Political events, a few years ago, attracted the public attention of this country in an unexampled manner to the Peninsula," and he goes on to say that criticism depends on "the political creed of the critic" (84). The review essay contains a two-page excerpt in Spanish (with a translation) from the *Chronicle* by Pedro López de Ayala (1332– 1407) (89–91). The reviewer rejects Anaya's structuring of the history of Spanish literature and does not share the Spaniard's appreciation of mystic authors such as Saint Theresa and Father Luis of León: "Who, now, reads the *Vida Interior* of Palafox, or the *Symbolo* of Fr. Luiz of Granada? even [*sic*] the spiritual letters of Santa Teresa de Jesus, have lost their once enthusiastic admirers. And the *Exercicios* of Rodrigues, and the *Perfecta Casada* of Fr. Luis of Leon, sleep together undisturbed, on the dusty shelves of the few libraries in which they are to be found" (93). The reviewer regrets that Baltasar Gracián is not included, and compares Miguel de Cervantes to Walter Scott, asserting that the former is superior in style: "We question whether the author of *Waverley* himself has ever given us a more natural or pleasing specimen of the language of low life, as it does still, and always did exist, than is to be found in the letters of Teresa Panza to her husband, and to the duchess" (94). Henry W. Sullivan suggests that this assessment may have been written by the poet Robert Southey (500), but Denis F. MacCarthy attributes it to another Hispanist, John Gibson Lockhart (21), while García Gómez gives this less credence (168).

*An Essay on Spanish Literature* was also advertised in other English journals, for instance in the November issue of *The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences* (736), and again in the January issue of the following year. In a section on "New Publications" both *Leçons de langue italienne*, *Discours sur les langues vivantes* and *An Essay on Spanish Literature containing its History* are mentioned (Nov. 7, 1818). The same journal advertised Anaya's *Essay*, alongside *Northanger Abbey* and *Persuasion* in January 1818, and with *Rob Roy*, the *Collected Works of Lord Byron* and *Frankenstein* the following week.

Anaya's works were also advertised in Irish publications. *The Freeman's Journal*, mentioned them twice in 1818, on 26 August and 23 November, both indicating where it could be bought in Dublin (2). The *Essay* was also included in the same section on new books in the following year, and appeared once more much later, on 7 May 1827 (4). *The Dublin Journal* edited by George Faulkner, announced its publication on the 1 February 1819 (3), although on this occasion it was heavily criticized. It appears again in the same publication in 1820 in a list of books sold at an auction. These public references indicate that the dissemination of the text is at least relatively widespread.

*An Essay on Spanish Literature* was also advertised in the end pages of several books, for instance in *Ancient Spanish Ballads Historical and Romantic*, translated with notes by John Gibson Lockhart and published in Edinburgh by Thomas Caddell in 1823. The influence of Anaya's history of Spanish literature among British and American intellectual circles is also reflected in the fact that it was cited and listed in the Bibliography section of the 1842 American edition of J. G. Lockhart's *Ancient Spanish Ballads*, on the same page as works relating to Spanish matters such as Robert Southey's *Chronicle of the Cid* (1808), Friedrich Bouterwek's *Historia de la literatura española* (1829), J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi's *De la littérature du Midi de l'Europe* (1829) and even work by the American poet Henry W. Longfellow (272). Indeed, Longfellow introduced Anaya's books to the library of Bowdoin College in Brunswick (Maine) when he studied there (Emerson 68). *An Essay on Spanish Literature* can also be found in other American libraries, as shown by Boston Public Library's Index of 1861 (Jewett 741), together with other histories of Spanish literature such as George Ticknor's *History of Spanish Literature* and Bouterwek's *Historia de la literatura española*.

Although some claim that Anaya's analysis of Spanish literature "appears not to have been widely known nor disseminated" (Escribano 77; González Cañal 100), others describe the text as groundbreaking (Rodríguez 249; Álvarez Barrientos 156–7). Paul Larson argues that the text was a pioneer in the constant development of literary history (114), setting it alongside works by other authors of various nationalities, such as Paul Ferdinand Buchholtz's *Handbuch der spanischen Sprahe und Litteratur* (1801–4), Victor Rendu's *Leçons espagnoles de literature et de morale* (1830) and Luis de Mata y Araujo's *Lecciones elementales de literatura* (1839). Anaya's *El teatro español* is also referred to by the German Romantic critic Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber (1770–1836) (Tully 159), who lived in Spain and was the father of novelist Fernán Caballero.

Anaya was relatively well-known professionally in the United Kingdom. He was described as a teacher of Spanish and other languages in London by his publisher, in an announcement at the end of *An Essay on Spanish Literature*: "Mr Anaya, Teacher of languages" (Montoliu 263; Allison Peers 233–4). It is also interesting here to analyse the London publishing house by which his books were issued, since it acted as a cultural mediator and publicized his books. The printer, George Smallfield, produced books in both Spanish and Portuguese, and the publisher, Boosey and Sons, also issued books in various other European languages. Although well known as printmakers and lithographers, Boosey and Sons were also publishers of language and literary texts, such as *La floresta española* by Antonio Garrido (1807).

Another question concerns the reasons why Ángel Anaya was living in the city of London. Due to the difficult situation of Spanish liberal intellectuals during the reign of Ferdinand VII, many had to leave the country and chose to travel to the English capital as exiles. Anaya has thus been considered to be a liberal in exile (Pérez 104; Álvarez Rubio 92; Allison Peers 233–4), although no reasons are forthcoming and such an assertion may be contradicted by the dedication in the *Essay on Spanish Literature*, which is to the Spanish Ambassador to Britain, appointed by Ferdinand VII. It has also been speculated that Anaya was an expelled Jesuit, in view of his mastery of both the Italian and French languages and references in his text to members of the Society. However, another reason to doubt this line of reasoning is that he had been in London since at least 1816. Also, although he may have met other émigrés in the city, he is not included in the dictionaries of London exiles (Gil Novales), and the copy of his *Essay* extant in the Spanish Biblioteca Nacional comes from the library of an exile, Pascual de Gayangos y Arce.

One of the seemingly contradictory elements in Anaya's oeuvre is the dedication of *An Essay on Spanish Literature* "by permission" to the Spanish Ambassador, the Duke of San Carlos, José Miguel de Carvajal Manrique de Lara (1771–1828), after the accession to the throne of Ferdinand VII, for whom De Carvajal had participated in the mutiny of Aranjuez in order to depose Charles IV. This laudatory dedication would have been rather unlikely if Anaya had been in any sense a prominent member of the Spanish liberal exile community, and thus it seems that he was either an unknown member of this group, with an interest in gaining admission to the royal circle, or indeed simply a teacher and writer with no political affiliations. Since the copy of *An Essay on Spanish Literature* extant in the Spanish National Library comes from the personal library of Gayangos (BN 1/ 43468), an eminent intellectual of the London circle, one might infer that Anaya was not altogether rejected by members of the exiled community, and might even have been considered to be one of them. However, he is not included in Gil Novales's *Diccionario biográfico del trienio liberal*. Perhaps the truth is that the situation of the Spanish expatriates in the British capital at the time was more fluid than one might think from a Spanish perspective.

Some, as noted above, have argued that he was a Jesuit in exile, since he knew both French and Italian. Such a suggestion emerges from the references to many Jesuit authors from the sixteenth century onwards in his *Essay*: Juan Andrés (1740–1817), author of *Origen, progreso y estado actual de toda la literatura* (8); Juan de Mariana (1536–1624), author of *Historia general de España* (1601) (18); Francisco de Toledo Herrera (1532–96) *Opera* (23); Father Luis de la Puente (1554–1624) *Meditaciones* (58); Father Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595–1658) *Obras christianas* (58); Father Manuel de Larramendi (1690–1766), who advocated the study of the Basque language in *De la antigüedad y universalidad del bascuence en España* (1728) (17) or in *Diccionario trilingüe* (1745); Father Juan Francisco de Masdeu, Jesuit historian and author of *Historia crítica de la cultura española de todo género* (1783–1805) (67); Father Francisco José de Isla (1681– 1748), author of *Fray Gerundio de Campazas* (1758) (49); and Francisco Javier Lampillas, author of *Saggio storico-apologetico della letteratura spagnola* (1778– 81) (177), translated into Spanish by Josefa Amar y Borbón as *Ensayo históricoapologético de la literatura española contra las opiniones preocupadas de algunos escritores modernos italianos.*

However, it must be taken into account that Anaya is not included in Charles O'Neill's and Joaquín María Domínguez's *Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús*, and that he includes references to many other writers, both secular and belonging to different religious orders. In the latter group we find: the Benedictines Father Benito J. Feijoo, author of *Theatro crítico universal* (1726– 40) (30), and Father Antonio de Yepes (1560?–1618), author of the *Historia de la Orden de San Benito* (1615) (42); Augustine monks such as Father Pedro Malón de Chaide (1530–89) (56), Father Juan Márquez (1565–1621), author of *El Gobernador Christiano* (31, 58), and Father Flores, who published *Tratado de las antiguas medallas de las colonias y pueblos de España* (1757–73) (31); the Dominicans Father Luis de Granada (1504–88) (56) and Father Luis Bertrán (1526–81) (57); also mentioned are Father Diego de Estella (1524–78) (56), a Franciscan friar, and Father Joseph of Sigüenza (56), monk of the Order of Saint Jerome. To these we can add many other writers and intellectuals who were members of no order. Indeed, the Jesuits cited in the book do not represent a large proportion of the many writers mentioned, particularly if we consider that a text that lists notable works of Spanish literature until the early nineteenth century will necessarily refer to a range of Jesuit authors, since they were reputed for their intellectual pursuits. Likewise, the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Spain does not correspond exactly to the period Anaya was known to have been in the United Kingdom, since the Jesuits were expelled by Charles III and subsequently restored by Ferdinand VII in 1814. Thus, Anaya does not seem to have been a Jesuit or an exile (Baasner 47), but rather an expatriate. He wrote his will in England, and it is held in the National Archives. The date of the document is 1 July 1818. In it he bequeaths his legacy to his Spanish relatives, namely to his niece and godchild or, alternatively, to his friends. There are no references either to offspring or to the Society of Jesus.

This study of a largely unknown yet comprehensive early history of Spanish literature by Ángel Anaya has shed some light on the author's origins. More importantly, it has provided a detailed picture of the dissemination of Spanish culture in the English-speaking world, of the rewriting of the Spanish canon for English audiences, particularly in comparison to works by other Spanish and international critics: Andrés, Lampillas and Antonio de Capmany among the Spanish, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel and Sismondi – all of whom Anaya cited in his conclusion (125), as well as a book published by the Hispanist Lord Henry Richard Vassal Fox, third Baron Holland, (1773–1840) on Lope de Vega and Guillén de Castro (89) – and later publications such as those of Friedrich Bouterwek (1823), George Henry Lewes (1846) and George Ticknor (1849).

#### 36 María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia

**Figure 1.** Will of Angel Anaya of Finsbury Square, Middlesex.

#### **Will of Angel Anaya of Finsbury Square, Middlesex. Translated from Hispanish [***sic***] language**

IN THE NAME OF GOD and this his Monsignor when I submit my Soul to my Creator and my body to the Earth, and out of my property consisting of certain sums of money deposited in Her Majesty's banks of England and what appears from Boots and other things existing in London to be sold the whole to the care of Mr. Jonny Gibbs. I dispose […] thereof in favour of my cousin? and godchild Constantia Pison/Prior? y Anaya, the sum of which is to serve for her Education and Maintenance, as far as it will go, and afterwards the whole to be for her marriage portion if she marries a respectable and religious man, for otherwise the said money [should go] to my cousin […] Anaya […] at […] in the province of […] appointing for my Attorney and?? for my friend Mr. Robert Manning […] at […] for him to dispose of the said money for the purposes above expressed. London, 17th June 1818, Angel Anaya.

#### **Bibliography**


*Regimen, and Pronunciation of the A and O.* 2nd ed., London: R. A. Taylor and Author, 1819.


*preocupadas de algunos escritores modernos italianos.* 2nd ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Pedro Marín, 1789. 7 vols.]


#### Sara Medina Calzada

### **Chapter 2 Challenging the Canon: Spanish Exiles' Articles on Spanish Literature in British Periodicals (1823–1834)\***

**Abstract** This chapter explores the role of the Spanish liberals exiled in London as critics and disseminators of Spanish literature in Britain by examining the reviews of and articles on Spanish literature that they published in British periodicals between 1823 and 1834. Joseph Blanco White, José Joaquín de Mora, Antonio Alcalá Galiano, Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza and Pablo de Mendíbil provided British readers with a far from idealized overview of Spanish letters and underlined the negative effects that the dependence on foreign cultural models and political and religious despotism had had on Spanish culture. Their attempts to reinterpret the history of Spanish literature and, more generally, Spanish history and national identity from their position as liberals and exiles who oscillated between Neoclassicism and Romanticism are not devoid of inconsistencies. However, even if their articles do not comprise a comprehensive and coherent body of work, they questioned or complemented the interpretation and appraisal of Spanish literature prevalent among British Romantic critics, in particular by refuting the views on the Spanish Golden Age disseminated by German scholars and by publicizing Spanish eighteenth-century writers. These exiles thus challenged the canon of Spanish literature that British Romanticism was constructing at the time, but they failed to create a new liberal canon of their own.

**Keywords:** liberal Spanish exile, Spanish literature, British periodicals, British Romanticism, canon.

With the collapse of the constitutional regime in Spain in 1823, thousands of Spanish liberals were forced to seek refuge abroad. Most left Spain for France, but around a thousand families – according to Llorens's (23) rough but widely accepted estimation – settled in England, where interest in Spanish affairs had intensified with the crisis of Spanish liberalism. This interest was not restricted to politics, however. Spanish literature gained visibility in Britain in the 1820s, as illustrated by the publication of translations and anthologies of Spanish texts – including John Gibson Lockhart's *Ancient Spanish Ballads* (1823) and John Bowring's *Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain* (1824) – together with the

<sup>\*</sup> The research for this chapter was funded by the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00.

English translations of Simonde de Sismondi's *Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe* (1823–4) and Friedrich Bouterwek's *History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature* (1823), which contributed to circulating continental Romantic interpretations of Spanish literature. Moreover, the dissemination of Spanish letters was fostered by the rise in the importation of foreign books and the increasing presence of foreign literatures in British literary magazines (Saglia 15, 32–72). A few Spanish exiles contributed to these periodicals and helped keep Spain in the spotlight through their commentaries of Spanish history, culture and literature. In this chapter, my focus is on the reviews of and articles on Spanish literature that they published in British magazines from 1823 to 1834. Through these contributions, the exiles participated in ongoing transnational debates on Spanish culture and national identity, offering a particular interpretation of Spanish literature that was significantly influenced by their political agenda and reading of Spanish history. They provided a remarkably negative image of Spain that challenged the canon of Spanish literature being constructed by British and European Romanticism at that time, but they failed to create their own alternative.

The articles and reviews under analysis here do not exactly comprise a comprehensive and coherent study of Spanish literature as they are but a series of scattered pieces published in different periodicals over the span of a decade. Periodical articles were hardly ever signed at the time, but the authors of most of the texts about Spanish literature published in the 1820s and 1830s have been identified in the Wellesley Index and the Curran Index. Llorens is responsible for the attribution of most of the Spanish émigrés' articles (342–85).

Liberal Spanish exiles became contributors to some of the major literary magazines of the time but, significantly, not the most prestigious ones, the *Edinburgh Review* and the *Quarterly Review*. There was no place for them in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* either as their political and literary ideas did not conform to the essence and scope of that periodical. Only Joseph Blanco White was able to publish in the *Quarterly Review* (a review of a novel by another Spanish expat, Valentín de Llanos's *Don Esteban*), but his circumstances were different from those of the liberals who arrived in London after 1823. He had resided in England in voluntary exile since 1810 and had assimilated the English lifestyle, but he continued writing about Spain and its culture. The clearest exposition of his literary ideas can be found in his articles in *Variedades; o Mensajero de Londres* (1823–5), a Spanish periodical produced by Rudolph Ackermann and distributed in the recently independent Spanish American republics. These articles contextualize and complement the few reviews of Spanish works that he published in the *Quarterly Review*, the *New Monthly Magazine* and the *London*  *Review*. Although Blanco's texts provide an incomplete and unsystematic examination of Spanish literature, his views were particularly influential on other Spanish exiles, most notably José Joaquín de Mora and Antonio Alcalá Galiano (Llorens 412–14), who disseminated them in other British periodicals.

Mora published a series of three articles on Spanish poetry in *European Review* between 1824 and 1826 ("Spanish Poetry," "First Period," "Moorish Romances"). The first of these pieces is a chronological overview of Spanish literature that follows Blanco's interpretation of the Spanish literary tradition as expressed in one of his articles for *Variedades* ("Bosquejo"), while the second and third are devoted to medieval poetry and Moorish ballads, respectively. As for Alcalá Galiano, he published reviews of translations of Llanos's and Telesforo de Trueba y Cossío's novels in the *Westminster Review* and an article on Jovellanos in the *Foreign Quarterly Review*, but his most detailed analysis of Spanish literature is his five-part series "Literature of the Nineteenth Century. Spain" in *The Athenaeum* (1834).

Spanish exiles created a niche for themselves in the periodicals where Spain and Spanish literature figured more prominently: the *New Monthly Magazine* and the foreign reviews that appeared in the late 1820s, that is, the *Foreign Quarterly Review* and the *Foreign Review*. The *New Monthly Magazine* published Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza's four-part study "On the Modern Spanish Theatre" as well as Blanco's articles on Don Juan Manuel's *El conde Lucanor*. In the *Foreign Quarterly Review*, besides Alcalá Galiano's article on Jovellanos, we find a lengthy and laudatory piece on Spanish novelists by Trueba. Finally, in the *Foreign Review* there are three articles on Jovellanos and Nicolás and Leandro Fernández de Moratín by Pablo de Mendíbil (Review of *Obras póstumas*; Review of *Obras dramáticas*; Review of *Noticias históricas*).

This brief overview of the contributions of the Spanish exiles to British periodicals shows that their articles and reviews cover around seven centuries, from the origins of Castilian poetry to their present, but they focus on specific periods, genres and authors. What they understand by Spanish literature is mostly the literature written in Spanish by Peninsular Spanish authors. They completely ignore Spanish American writers and hardly ever refer to the non-Castilian literatures of Spain. The linguistic and cultural diversity of the country was acknowledged by British Hispanists like John Bowring (*Autobiographical* 102), but this issue should be investigated further to complement Romero Tobar's and Pérez Isasi's studies of multilingualism in Spanish literary historiography. The Spanish exiles, however, did not foster interest in non-Castilian literary traditions in Britain. There is a single article on Basque traditional dances in the *Foreign Review*, probably written by the Basque writer Mendíbil, who was a regular contributor to that periodical (Review of *Guipuzcoaco*). Beyond this, there is only Blanco, who comments vaguely on Galician-Portuguese, Catalan and Valencian poetry in the *London Review*, arguing that Galicia and Aragon were more civilized than Castile, but Castile eventually dominated them (Review of *Espagne poétique* 396). Nevertheless, this should not be read as a vindication of these languages and literatures since Blanco's purpose is to underline the backwardness and mediocrity of Castilian poetry – and, by extension, Spanish literature.

Blanco's articles in British periodicals offer a most negative and pessimistic assessment of Spanish literature, whose problems started with the language itself – he believed that Spanish was unsuitable for poetry. In *Letters from Spain*, he claims that there was "a want of flexibility in the Spanish language, arising from the great length of most of its words, the little variety of its terminations, and the bulkiness of its adverbs" (338–9), but he explores this further in his review of Juan María Maury's *Espagne poétique* (1826–8) in the *London Review*. For Blanco, Spanish was copious and sonorous, but it had become vulgar and artificial due to the intellectual and political oppression that afflicted first Castile and then the rest of Spain (392–8). He argues that religion had also contributed to the affectation of the Spanish language, adding that the English and the German had preserved their naturalness because the translation of the Bible and the liturgical use of the vernacular had given them "a manly freedom of expression" (394). These ideas go against some of Maury's views, but Blanco's ultimate purpose is not to refute Maury but to counteract "the exaggerated praises which the German critics have of late bestowed on the poetical genius of the Spanish language" (398). Blanco could not agree with the Romantic reappraisal of Spanish literature popularized by German critics like August Wilhelm Schlegel and Bouterwek since their celebration of the chivalric spirit of the Spanish nation and vindication of Golden Age dramatists conflicted with Blanco's literary ideas and his interpretation of Spanish history and national identity.

Blanco's article in the *London Review* also proves that for him power, religion, customs and culture were closely interrelated. Since he understood literature as the product of the political, religious and moral conditions of a given nation, he saw Spanish literature as a sign of the state of perpetual degradation and oppression suffered by his compatriots. This interpretation was not particularly original and can be found in the texts written by other liberal exiles, but Blanco took it to extremes. As Durán López observes, Blanco's evaluation of Spanish literature is "una enmienda a la totalidad" ("Introducción" xii), a total rejection of Spanish culture and literary tradition that breaks with the history of Spanish literature constructed by his predecessors and contemporaries (xi). Even if he praises and admires a few exceptional works and authors, Blanco believes that Spanish literature cannot provide contemporary writers with suitable models for the creation of a truly original and genuine national literature.

Although Blanco shows a remarkable interest in medieval literature, he still regards it as an unrefined and immature form of expression. This is clear in the articles preceding his translation of tales XI and XLIV of Don Juan Manuel's *El conde Lucanor* (c. 1331–5), which he published in the *New Monthly Magazine* in 1824. Disregarding the moral purpose of the work, Blanco draws attention to Don Juan Manuel's portrayal of the customs and national character of the Spanish people at the time ("Prince Don Juan Manuel") and uses the tales to illustrate the imaginative power of primitive literature ("The Dean"). He concludes that reading medieval texts may still be pleasurable, but trying to imitate them would be as ridiculous as an adult playing with his cherished old toys ("The Dean" 97–8).

Blanco's English articles disregard Spanish ballad literature, which had fascinated some British Hispanists and received significant critical attention in British periodicals, especially in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*, where Lockhart published some of the *romances* that he collected in *Ancient Spanish Ballads* (1823). Even if the interest in the *romancero* had already emerged in Spain in the eighteenth century, Spanish liberals pay little attention to these compositions in their English articles. Only Mora writes about the *romances*, in the *European Review*, where he presents them as the "true national poetry of the Spaniards" ("First Period" 540). In his view, these popular compositions depict nature and truth faithfully and possess a "touching simplicity" that cannot be subject to rules because they are "dictated by the heart" and inspired by "vehement passions" ("Spanish Poetry" 375–6; "First Period" 540).

Mora's enthusiastic and Romantic appraisal of Spanish ballads contrasts with the Neoclassical tenets that he had supported at the time of the *querella calderoniana* (1814–20), the literary dispute with Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber regarding Romanticism and Calderón's drama (Llorens 366; Flitter 50–2). It is not my purpose to revisit this polemic or examine the evolution of Mora's literary ideas, but even if it is always difficult to know when Mora was expressing his opinion or trying to adjust his ideas to the situation, while in London he undeniably moved closer to the Romantic school that he had despised a few years before. These tensions between their Neoclassical education and the Romantic fashion they discovered in England are also present in the articles by other Spanish exiles. Even Blanco, who has been made responsible for Mora's alleged conversion to Romanticism (Llorens 421), oscillates between Neoclassicism and Romanticism and, as Durán López ("Introducción" xx) and Comellas ("Construcción" 259) have indicated, both Blanco and Mora can be classified as representatives of what Checa Beltrán calls "neoclasicismo heterodoxo" (*Razones* 307). Leaving aside these classifications, both Blanco and Mora regard Spanish medieval literature as original and natural, but in his articles in *European Review* Mora seems closer to Romantic historicism than Blanco. In fact, for Blanco medieval literature deserved to be known and appreciated, but he did not celebrate or idealize the Middle Ages and felt no nostalgia for a time he held to represent a lower plane of civilization (Durán López, "Introducción" cix–cx).

Blanco, however, preferred these original but unrefined and timid literary manifestations than the literature produced afterwards. In his view, as Spain gained power in the sixteenth century, Spanish writers also gained confidence, but they lost their originality (Review of *Don Esteban* 209). He laments that Spanish poets started to imitate Italian models, but above all he condemns the "vicious style" of the "school of metaphysical bombast" established by Lope de Vega and Calderón (210). Only Cervantes and Bernardo de Balbuena receive some commendatory remarks, but he does not pay special attention to any of them. Criticism of the so-called "Golden Age" of Spanish literature is also present in the texts by other Spanish exiles, who thus engage in the complex and polyphonic debate on early modern Spanish literature that emerged in the eighteenth century, as explored by Baasner and Comellas ("Argumentos"). Although Blanco expresses objections to both Renaissance and Baroque writers, other exiles do not condemn them *in toto* but treat sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors differently, showing particular animosity or preference for particular individuals.

On the whole, Mora agrees with Blanco's assessment and interpretation of Golden Age literature. For Mora, with the introduction of Italian models and the use of "forced constructions" based on Latin, Spanish poetry became pedantic and unintelligible ("Spanish Poetry" 377). He complains that these foreign influences contaminated the primitive essence of Spanish poetry and, what is worse, that the despotism of the Habsburg monarchs made impossible the expression of nature and truth that he found in medieval ballads (377, 379). However, he approves of some sixteenth-century "men of distinguished talents" who belonged to the "golden age of literature," for their "taste, correctness, and moderation" (377) – three qualities that illustrate that Mora had not renounced the principles of his Neoclassical education. Although he refers to "men" plural, he only mentions Fray Luis de León, whom he profoundly admired for "the most natural simplicity" of his poetry (377–8). In addition, in his articles on modern Spanish theatre in the *New Monthly Magazine*, Gorostiza praised Classicist authors like Juan Boscán, Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera and Bernardo de Balbuena (329). With the exception of Garcilaso, whose poems had been translated into English by Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen in 1823, the other authors commended by Gorostiza were virtually unknown in Britain. Gorostiza does not mention León and, in contrast to Blanco (Review of *Don Esteban* 209), Mora ("Spanish Poetry" 377, 379) and Alcalá Galiano ("Literature" 290), he does not seem particularly concerned about these poets' lack of originality. He celebrates the "happy introduction" of Italian models in Spain and praises Spanish Renaissance poetry as "perfect in form" and "exquisite in taste" (329). Gorostiza remained a Neoclassicist and his interpretation of Spanish literature is less influenced by the political and religious context of the period under analysis, so his position tends to be less ambivalent than Blanco's or Mora's.

As Neoclassical critics had done in the preceding decades, Spanish exiles unanimously condemned the affectation of Baroque writers, Góngora in particular. Mora presents Góngora as the founder of *culteranismo*, a "sect" that threw poetry over "the precipices of extravagance and the dark labyrinths of *obscurantisme*" through their use of enigmatic allegories, difficult metaphors, hyperbole and extravagant rhymes ("Spanish Poetry" 380–1). Paradoxically, this affectation did not confine poetry to the cultivated elite. On the contrary, in Mora's view, poetry was debased and "became a national malady, a universal contagion" (379). Using the same metaphor, Gorostiza complains that members of the upper and lower classes alike "were infected" with "the mania of rhyming," which in turn encouraged the Gongorists to go even further (329–30). Regarding drama, Gorostiza laments that Lope's natural style was replaced by "the most elaborate affectation, the most puerile metaphysics and the most inexcusable extravagance" (331), which also affected some of Calderón's drama, mostly the *autos sacramentales* and the plays dealing with heroic and mythological subjects, but not his "cloakand-dagger" comedies (332).

By contrast, Mora's main target in *European Review* is not Calderón but Lope. He complains that Lope wasted his talent writing just to please his audience ("Spanish Poetry" 380). Although in the same article he celebrates the popular nature of traditional ballads, probably influenced by the contemporary vogue for popular forms of poetry, he despises Lope for speaking the language of the people. This may seem contradictory but, despite his vehement enthusiasm for the *romances*, his critical writings and literary practice suggest that he believed that literature should be written by and for the cultivated elites. Moreover, he believed that literature reflected society and society shaped literature, so he could not accept Lope's drama as for him it represented political and religious despotism, moral degradation, intellectual lethargy and bad taste. The same could be said of Calderón, although Mora does not even mention him in his articles for *European Review*. In fact, Böhl's identification of Calderonian drama with the Spanish national spirit is one of the main reasons why he reacted against him at the time of the *querella calderoniana*.

Alongside the German critics, nineteenth-century Anglo-American scholars generally argued that Spanish drama reflected the Spanish national identity (Fuchs 221). As Rodríguez Pérez observes, "the Spanish Golden Age was identified as the core of the Spanish literary canon and singled out by foreign scholars as the perfect mirror of Spanishness, in all its Hispanophilic and Hispanophobic connotations" (317). The Spanish exiles' opposition to this Romantic interpretation of Golden Age drama not only responded to their Neoclassical inclinations, which made them disdain what they deemed these playwrights' extravagance, affectation and disrespect for classical rules. Their position was also politically and ideologically motivated. Their interpretation of the literary history of Spain was part of a wider process by which they were trying to define a new liberal Spanish national identity, which they wanted to disassociate from the despotism of the Habsburg monarchs and the Catholic Church. Spanishness, in their view, could not be based on the sense of honour and religiosity displayed in Spanish Baroque theatre.

Such unfavourable judgement of Golden Age drama clashes with the enthusiastic appraisal of Spanish Baroque dramatists, especially Calderón, by European Romanticism. This enthusiasm was far less intense in Britain than in Germany, but the dissemination of the works by German Romantic critics like A. W. Schlegel and Bouterwek also revived interest in Spanish drama in Britain. Fanny Holcroft's pioneering English translations of Calderón's plays *Peor está que estaba* and *Mejor está que estaba* in 1805 and 1806 were soon followed by others, including those by Lord Holland in *Three Comedies Translated from Spanish* (*La dama duende* and *Nadie fíe su secreto* by Calderón and *Un bobo hace ciento* by Antonio Solís) in 1807. Lord Holland also wrote *Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio*, first published in 1806 and revised in 1817. Then, in the 1820s, translated passages of Calderón's plays by Mary Margaret Bush were published in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*. Furthermore, some of the leading figures of British Romanticism showed interest in Spanish dramatists. Although Southey held ambivalent views on Lope (Gonzalez; Flores and González), Coleridge, Byron and, above all, the Shelleys were fascinated by Calderón, who was mostly unknown to the public, but enjoyed considerable prestige among the British literary elites (Moro and Sáez; Almeida; Perojo Arronte, "Coleridge" 108–11).

Despite the influence of German Romantic criticism in Britain, British scholars did not unanimously embrace their interpretation of Spanish literature. In fact, critics like George Moir and John Bowring agree with some of the Spanish exiles' views. Moir and Bowring showed a preference for Spanish medieval literature, which they considered essentially national, but they deemed that from the sixteenth century onwards Spanish literature had entered a period of decline set in motion by the imitation of foreign trends and the pernicious effects of corruption, oppression and religious fanaticism on Spanish culture (Comellas, "Argumentos" 154–9; Durán López, "Recepción" cxiv–cxix). Their ideas are particularly similar to those expressed by Mora in the *European Review*. In fact, as Comellas indicates ("Construcción" 258–9), Bowring, who had met Mora when he visited Spain in 1819, reproduces several passages from Mora's first article ("Spanish Poetry") in a piece on Spanish poetry published in *La Belle Assemblée* in 1828 ("A Glance"). This confirms that different trends and interpretations coexisted, and although there are few quotations of and direct allusions to the reviews and articles published by the Spanish exiles, they exerted at least some impact on British criticism.

As opposed to the interest that Golden Age Spanish literature aroused in British and European Romanticism – and probably because of it – eighteenthcentury Spanish authors were mostly ignored abroad. Since their works were generally perceived as insipid imitations of French literature, few articles were dedicated to eighteenth-century Spanish writers in the British press and most of them were written by Spanish exiles who, only to a certain extent, advocated their merits. Although Blanco (*Letters* 342–3), Mora ("Spanish Poetry" 381) and Gorostiza (502) openly stood against the imitation of French models (which, in their view, thwarted the creation of a real national literature and even Gallicized the Spanish language), the Spanish exiles generally agree that the arrival of the Bourbon monarchs had favoured the reform of taste and the protection of the arts, especially during the reign of Charles III.

Gorostiza applauds Leandro Fernández de Moratín's leading role in the reform of Spanish drama (87–92), in which he also assigns a central part to the actor Isidoro Máiquez (186–92). A playwright himself, Gorostiza shows his good knowledge of the Spanish scene and contradicts Bouterwek's judgement of Luciano Francisco Comella and Teodoro de la Calle. Gorostiza, aware of the spread and reputation of Bouterwek's history of Spanish literature, acknowledges that he aims to correct the latter's views as he considers that these two authors did not deserve the esteem that Bouterwek's recognition may have granted them (90, 192). He was not the only Spanish author who refuted foreign critics' views on eighteenth-century Spanish literature. In 1828, Mendíbil (Review of *Obras dramáticas*) published a review of Leandro Fernández de Moratín's *Obras dramáticas y líricas* (1825) in the *Foreign Review* in response to Samuel Durham Whitehead's examination of modern Spanish comedy in the *Foreign Quarterly Review*. The rivalry between the two reviews is manifest in the hostile tone of a note appended to Mendíbil's review (not necessarily by Mendíbil), which claims that the *Foreign Quarterly Review* was a "blundering and faulty" periodical and Whitehead an ignorant critic unable to understand the Spanish texts about which he wrote.1

Whitehead offers a very negative judgement of Moratín and modern Spanish theatre and blames the "malignant" influence of the Bourbons, especially Charles III, for having "blighted the genius of the nation" (600). He also warns his readers that they should not trust Spanish critics as, depending on whether they belonged to "the classical or the romantic sect," they unfairly despised the ancient dramatists or praised them blindly (596). Mendíbil refrains from commenting on the debate between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, but he commends Moratín for restoring the splendour of Spanish theatre (Review of *Obras dramáticas* 165), and considers his father, Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, the reformer of lyric Spanish poetry, arguing that he had found it "at the lowest ebb of debasement" and had made it "elegant, soft, florid, pathetic, learned, and harmonious" (Review of *Obras póstumas* 428).

The Spanish exiles also paid tribute to Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, whom they unanimously admired for his erudition, eloquent prose and patriotism (Gorostiza 506; Mendíbil, Review of *Noticias históricas*; Alcalá Galiano, Review of *Noticias históricas*). Even Blanco praises Jovellanos' "elegant mind," although he also complains that as a minister he could have done more to help the Spanish people (*Letters* 306). Blanco adopts a similar attitude when he refers to other contemporary figures: he acknowledges some of their skills and accomplishments, but he points out their faults and limitations, too. In his view, Quintana, Moratín (the younger) and Meléndez were talented writers, but they had been unable to develop their potential in such a context of political, religious and intellectual oppression (336–40).

Like Blanco, Mora ("Spanish Poetry" 382–3) and Alcalá Galiano also believed that even if the situation had improved in the late eighteenth century, absolutism had thwarted the progress of Spanish letters, which still required a process of renewal and regeneration. They display a sort of inferiority complex that is conspicuous in Alcalá Galiano's articles in *The Athenaeum* (1834), which are the most detailed examination of Spanish contemporary literature in the British

<sup>1</sup> For the history of the *Foreign Review* and its rivalry with the *Foreign Quarterly Review*, see Curran.

press. In these articles, he refers to other Spanish refugees in London, such as Blanco, Mora, Mendíbil and Gorostiza, but he mentions neither Llanos nor Trueba, whose novels he had reviewed in the *Westminster Review* ("Spanish Novels [*Don Esteban*]" and "Spanish Novels [*Gomez Arias*]"). Although these reviews are not particularly positive, he probably excludes them because they published their works in English. In any case, he disregards Spanish novelists and when analysing Spanish prose, he mostly refers to scholars and writers of non-fiction ("Literature" 293–5, 329–33).

The novel is, in fact, ignored by these Spanish exiles. With the exception of Trueba, who published a piece on Spanish novelists in the *Foreign Quarterly Review* in 1828, the Spanish exiles focused on poetry and drama and, most significantly, they paid almost no attention to Cervantes. Considering the Neoclassical prejudice against the novel and the poor reputation that modern novels still had in Spain in the early nineteenth century, the exiles probably considered it a minor genre and preferred to ignore contemporary novelists. However, this does not explain why they also disregarded Cervantes and the picaresque tradition. This omission makes us wonder how Cervantes and his portrayal of Spain in *Don Quixote*, which nineteenth-century European critics and readers assimilated with the Romantic image of the country (Álvarez Junco 186–8), may have fit the Spanish literary tradition and national identity that they wanted to construct. Similarly, integrating the picaresque novel may have been problematic, but it is difficult to determine the reasons for such silences. In any case, this does not imply that they excluded Cervantes from their canon or considered him overrated. On the contrary, they may have thought that Cervantes and *Don Quixote* were sufficiently known and acclaimed in Britain, so it was not necessary to write about them, especially when they felt that there were other aspects of Spanish literature they could expand, clarify and revise. After all, they were acting as commentators and disseminators of Spanish literature in Britain and their texts should be read in this light.

However, although mostly aimed at a British readership, their articles do not ignore domestic debates about Spanish literature. In fact, they borrowed some of their ideas from the previous generation of Spanish critics, and their contributions to British periodicals can be read as a continuation of the debates that had emerged in Spain in the late eighteenth century. These debates reveal a palimpsest of opposing and divergent interpretations of Spanish literature where, as in these exiles' views, aesthetic and ideological concerns are often intermingled (Checa Beltrán, *Debate* 45–69). A full comparison of their ideas is beyond the scope of this chapter, but in general, these exiles are closer to Manuel José Quintana than to Leandro Fernández de Moratín, and their views are more in tune with Hugh Blair's pre-Romantic *Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres* (translated into Spanish by José Luis Munárriz) than with Charles Batteux's Neoclassical *Principes de la littérature* (Comellas "Construcción;" Durán López, "Introducción" xv, xx; Perojo Arronte, "Spanish Translation" 65). Therefore, there is no total rupture with the preceding literary historiography, but they do not completely align with its positions either, offering a more negative assessment of Spanish literature. Furthermore, their views also differ from those of other liberal exiles. Leaving aside Trueba's and Mendíbil's reviews, their articles depart from the more apologetic appraisal of Spanish literature that can be found in *Ocios de Españoles Emigrados*, one of the magazines edited by the Spanish exile community in London.

Spain and Spanish literature were certainly debated in an international arena in which multiple and interconnected conversations coexisted. The exiles understood that it was legitimate for them to project their own vision of Spain and its literature in this multivoiced discussion. Their critical and pessimistic assessment of Spanish literature differs significantly from the Romantic interpretation of Spanish literature that had spread throughout Britain and the continent thanks to the diffusion of German literary criticism. In fact, as discussed above, some of these exiles purposely refuted the views on the Spanish Golden Age disseminated by the Schlegels and Bouterwek. There is also a conscious attempt to publicize Spanish eighteenth-century writers, generally ignored in Britain at the time, even if they were aware of the decadence of contemporary Spanish letters. This extremely negative judgement of most Spanish writers, trends and periods challenges traditional historiography and, more particularly, the canon of Spanish literature that was shaped in Romantic Britain. Nevertheless, the exiles failed to create a canon of their own. Their literary principles, oscillating between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, combined with their political liberalism, led them to reject and refute those views that did not align with their own ideas of Spain and Spanish literature, and although they knew what Spanishness was not and should not be, they were unable to define a new liberal national identity through their literary tradition.

#### **Bibliography**

Alcalá Galiano, Antonio. "Literature of the Nineteenth Century. Spain." *The Athenaeum*, nos. 338, 19 Apr. 1834, pp. 290–5; vol. 340, 3 May 1834, pp. 329– 33; vol. 342, 17 May 1834, pp. 370–4; vol. 344, 31 May 1834, pp. 411–14; vol. 346, 14 Jun. 1834, pp. 450–4.


#### Begoña Lasa-Álvarez

### **Chapter 3 Selling Spain in the British Press during the 1830s: Advertisers as Cultural Mediators\***

**Abstracts** During the first decades of the nineteenth century, writers, journalists, critics, publishers and others involved in what we today call the marketing and advertising sector were struggling to integrate such apparently distant fields as culture and commerce. They became tastemakers and directed readers to specific repertoires of knowledge by means of the advertisements and reviews they published in the press, particularly in literary advertisers. Among the books promoted in this type of publication, those about Spain occupied a considerable and regular space. After the Peninsular War and the advent of the new Romantic world view, Spain developed into an admired and attractive country which deserved greater attention. British literary advertisers are illustrative of this appeal, as they included numerous references to books about Spain, covering such topics as the Peninsular and Carlist wars, Spanish history, literature, culture and wines, among others. Drawing on Bourdieu's notion of cultural intermediaries or mediators (1984), this article explores promotional texts in *The Literary Gazette* during the 1830s, in order to trace the types of literary works published in Britain about Spain and the themes discussed in them.

**Keywords:** Spain, 1830s, literary advertisers, cultural intermediaries, periodical press, advertisement, review.

#### **1. Introduction**

In a letter to the owner of the *Morning Post*, the poet Robert Southey, who was himself involved in the literary section of the newspaper, wrote: "One newspaper will do more for a book than two reviews" (qtd. in McFall 541). The letter was written in 1807 and illustrates the close relationship between writers such as Southey and the owners and publishers of periodicals. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, writers, journalists, critics, publishers and those working in what today we call the marketing and advertising sectors were struggling to

<sup>\*</sup> The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the following projects and institutions: the research project "Portal Digital de Historia de la traducción en España" (ref. PGC2018-095447-B-I00, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities-State Agency for Research-AEI/ERDF-UE) and the Research Group of Modern and Contemporary Literature and Language (CLIN), University of A Coruña.

integrate fields as seemingly distant as culture and commerce. In an increasingly competitive literary market, with a growing number of books being published, they became cultural mediators and tastemakers (Bourdieu), directing readers to specific repertoires of knowledge through the advertisements and the reviews they published in the press, particularly in literary advertisers. This chapter will explore promotional texts placed in *The Literary Gazette* during the 1830s in order to trace the type of books about Spain published in Britain, and the topics discussed therein.

As Richard Cronin has argued, the period under analysis in this chapter has been neglected by Romanticists and Victorianists alike, describing it is a "shadowy stretch of time sandwiched between two more colourful periods" (1). The same might be also said of King William IV, who reigned between 1830 and 1837, an almost forgotten ruler in comparison to the monarchs who preceded and followed him. However, in terms of British print culture and media, the 1820s and 1830s constitute, in the words of Angela Sterhammer, "a key moment of experimentation and innovation" in which a market-conscious attitude among writers and publishers is indeed observable ("The 1820s" 74). In fact, this period is crucial for the development of modern advertising, seeing as it did notable technical innovations and the modernization of marketing methods and thematic techniques (Strachan 3–4), which influenced the advertisement of books, particularly in literary advertisers. The role that this sector came to fulfil was so significant that, as Mason notes, following the banking crisis of 1826, when the book market collapsed, advertising played its part in reviving the literary sector, and those writers who participated in the areas of marketing and advertising began to be regarded as artists (9–10).

Following the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Smith Maguire has argued that the occupation of cultural intermediary is informed by various factors: the new economy and new class relations, new occupations, tastemakers, expertise and legitimacy, and cultural capital and disposition (17). Applying these factors to the period I am considering here, we can see in the first place that there is indeed an expansion of a consumer culture and economy, in which the production of need is required, and there is also a growth in the middle classes and bourgeoisie, and subsequent emergence of new readers. The second point, the creation of new occupations or the professionalization of existing ones to mediate between the fields of production, the press, books and consumers, is also clearly borne out. As already noted, cultural intermediaries are tastemakers; they create the conditions for consumers to direct their preferences towards certain books, fitting these to existing tastes and vice versa. In order to be able to do their job, cultural mediators also assert their expertise by emphasizing their knowledge and experience, and by legitimizing their profession, as can be observed, for instance, in book reviews. Finally, from their background and education, cultural intermediaries generally possess refined manners and social skills, enabling them to act as mediators; more importantly, they often share their readers' tastes, lending sincerity and trustworthiness to their opinions in the eyes of the latter.

#### **2. The** *Literary Gazette*

Amongst the most renowned publishers of the period was Henry Colburn, who founded the *Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Science, and Art* in January 1817, the first weekly review of literature and the arts (Matoff 190). He was accused of using techniques similar to those for the marketing of everyday products, such as hair oil and lottery tickets, in the promotion of books (Strachan 253). Indeed, Colburn was an astute businessman who saw the commercial opportunities of publishing both books and journals (Cronin 11), and thus he printed favourable reviews of his own books, which were also being advertised in his periodicals. Puffery, the publication of artificially positive book reviews, was indeed the most common strategy used by editors and printers at this time.

However, for most of the life of the *Literary Gazette*, the editor was William Jerdan, who bought one third of the shares of the journal in July 1817, and is thought to have been the main reviewer from that point. As Matoff notes, Jerdan sought to publish objective reviews, although the journal was frequently accused of puffing and of incorporating reviews that were merely long extracts from the books under discussion (191). Either way, "Jerdan was at the center of a vast web of writers, booksellers, publishers, politicians, institutional directors and socialites, ideally placed to act as facilitator or mediator in any number of ways" (Matoff 192), and he and most periodical editors were conscious of their role. For instance, Jerdan took an active part in helping Letitia Landon to publish her first poem in the *Literary Gazette* in 1820.

In the final issue of every annual volume, the editor of the *Literary Gazette* wrote a sort of review of the year, in terms of both the magazine itself and the current condition of the literary market. In 1832 the editor explained the purpose of the journal:

The aim of our Journal is, and has ever been, to reflect the literature, arts, sciences, discoveries, and improvements, of the times: the images as faithful as a pure medium could render them […] in the character of a general guide of reference, we do not hesitate to point to sixteen volumes of the Literary Gazette as a national record of all that civilised man desires to know and to preserve, such as has never hitherto been produced in any form of periodical publication. (Jerdan (?), "Te *Likes*" 817)

The *Literary Gazette* was a weekly periodical, each number including sixteen pages, which were later bound and sold as an annual. As its full title illustrates, it was actually a miscellany: *The Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, etc. Comprising Reviews of New Publications; Original Essays on Polite Literature, the Arts and Sciences; Poetry; Criticism on the Fine Arts, the Drama, etc.; Biography; Correspondence of Distinguished Persons; Anecdotes, Jeux d'Esprit, etc.; Sketches of Society and Manners; Proceedings of Scientific and Learned Societies; Astronomical Reports, Meteorological Tables, Literary Intelligence, etc. etc.* At the end of each issue a number of pages, typically three or four, were devoted to book advertisements. These were usually placed in three columns and promoted individual books or groups of books on the same topic, by the same author, from the same collection or the same printing house. In some of the issues there were also larger two-column ads, and even very large ones spanning three columns and covering almost the entire page.

#### **3. Spain in the** *Literary Gazette*

As shown in other contributions to this volume, as well as in previous research (Llorens, "Colaboraciones" and *Liberales*; Saglia, "Hispanism," "Imag(in)ings" and "Iberian," among others), the role of the British periodical press in the dissemination of ideas and information about Spain and Spanish literature and culture during the early decades of the nineteenth century is remarkable. The selection of books advertised and reviewed in the *Literary Gazette* can be said to provide a very clear representation of what Saglia has termed "a monumental operation of inscription and translation of Spain" ("Iberian" 44) for the British audience. In each year of the decade under examination here, the periodical published a significant amount of information about Spain, in the form of both advertisements and reviews. And when we also consider other sections in the magazine, the number of allusions to Spain is even higher. For instance, in the "Fine Arts" section, there are numerous references to paintings, engravings and watercolours in various exhibitions which reproduce Spanish landscapes and characters.

The tone of these references is a mixture of admiration and a patronizing attitude towards Spain. Furthermore, the remarkable presence of Spain in the journal, particularly during the 1830s, reflects, on the one hand, the sustained relevance of the Peninsular War and its implications for the British, given that the Spanish thus acquired a new role as a people fighting for their freedom, and, on the other, the consideration of Spain as a new tourist destination, characterized by picturesque scenery and adventurous possibilities for English travellers seeking new and different experiences (Saglia and Haywood 10). However, there was also considerable interest in information about Spanish current affairs, as can be seen in the review of the book *Spain in 1830*, by Henry D. Inglis, published in 1831. The review that appeared in the *Literary Gazette* in June of that year mentions "The numerous publications of late years on the subject of Spain;" but the reviewer adds that

after reading them, we are almost as profoundly ignorant of the present state of the Peninsula as we were previously to undergoing the labour of their perusal […] We willingly admit that much talent and learning have occasionally been applied to the illustration of the early poetry, and the elucidation of the history of Spain; but as members of a commercial community, we have looked in vain for notices of her manufactures, and details of their processes; for the condition of her agriculture, and the products of her mines: as devoted to the art and sciences, we have been anxious to be informed of their present state and application, and the nature of the encouragement for their advancement and protection; as lovers of constitutional liberty, we expected to have the result of shrewd and impartial observation on the sources of those springs of action in the people, and their ruler, which cause Spain to be an anomaly in this age of improvement and civilisation. (Jerdan (?), Review of *Spain in 1830* 389)

In the following pages a brief examination of some of the books advertised in the *Literary Gazette* will be presented. Due to space limitations, many works on Spain will not be mentioned, but the most significant topics will be explored and the most illustrative examples will be cited.

The sustained attraction of the Peninsular War in Britain can be perceived in the *Literary Gazette*, particularly a thirst for narratives by military men who participated actively in the fighting. With the passing of time, the war was increasingly seen in Europe as a patriotic and national conflict, the Spaniards viewed as a brave people who had risen up together against Napoleon, and this in turn provoked great admiration and curiosity. One of the most relevant books on the topic to be advertised during the 1830s is Robert Southey's three-volume *History of the Peninsular War* (1823–32). Adverts for it appeared in 1830 and in 1832, the year in which the final volume was published. The review of this latter in 1832 stresses the relevance of the conflict for England: "The Peninsular war, most glorious for England, is a theme which may well delight and animate her sons; and its events are here related in that style of perspicacity and simplicity which is most consonant to effect as well as to truth" (Jerdan (?), Review of *The History of the Peninsular War* 241).

A significant number of military men aroused perhaps the greatest interest among the public, offering as they did their own experiences and versions of the conflict (Esdaile xii–xiv). The *Literary Gazette* carried numerous advertisements for texts of this kind, even grouping them into sections, such as "Military Memoirs and Histories" in 1831 (Jerdan (?), "Military Memoirs and Histories" 127), which included seven eyewitness accounts of the hostilities by authors of various nationalities, among them: "Captain Blakiston's Narrative of Twelve Years Military Adventure in Three Quarters of the Globe. Comprising an Account of the early Military Career of the Duke of Wellington in India, and his last Campaign in the Spanish Peninsula and the South of France," "Journal of an Officer of the King's German Legion. An Account of his Campaigns and Services in the Peninsula, Sicily, Italy, Malta, England, Ireland, and Denmark," "Adventures of a Young Rifleman in the French and English Armies, during the War in Spain and Portugal, from 1806 to 1816. Written by Himself " and "Adventures of a Sergeant in the French Army, during the Campaigns in Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., from 1806 to 1823. Written by Himself."

Interest in the events of the war was so great that, as we can see in the *Literary Gazette*, there even existed texts written especially for young readers on this topic. In the 1833 volume there is a section called "New Christmas Presents for Children," including various books for this new sector of readers, who were of particular interest to marketers during the Christmas holidays. In this special section, alongside a book by Maria Edgeworth, and another of biblical stories, there is a text entitled "The History of the late War, with Sketches of Napoleon, Nelson, and Wellington, in the Style of Stories for Children. With Woodcuts" (Jerdan (?), "New Christmas Presents for Children" 14), clear evidence of the increasing presence of secular texts among the reading material for the youngest audiences (St Clair 137).

It is worth noting that the Peninsular War was also an inspiration for fictional genres, such as *Salvador, the Guerrilla*, by the Spanish writer Telesforo de Trueba y Cossío, which was advertised in the section of "Books in Press" on 1 March 1834 (Jerdan (?), "Books in Press" 160). At the end of the same month, the *Literary Gazette* printed a review of this book, as usual comprising long passages of the novel with a short introduction that described the Peninsular War as a setting for a romance: "abounding with that excitement, variety, and wild adventure, which would formerly have attracted the poet, and now form the vantage ground of the novelist" (Jerdan (?), Review of *Salvador, the Guerrilla* 220). In January 1837 another fictional text with this conflict as a background was advertised (Jerdan (?), "Books in the Press" 29): *The Bivouac, or Stories of the Peninsular War*, by W. H. Maxwell, which would go on to be advertised throughout the year in the *Literary Gazette*. In these advertisements some detail of the book is offered in the form of short excerpts of previous reviews: "A more rare and charming combination of fact and fiction we have never met with, than is to be found in these delightful pages" (Jerdan (?), "Mr. Bentley's New Works" 567).

The desire to voyage and see new places and subsequently to record one's experiences of a different culture were the main elements of travel writing, a genre very much in vogue from the eighteenth century onwards. An increasing number of foreign travellers visited Spain after the Peninsular War, attracted mainly by the perceived exotic nature of Spanish culture, and many such authors published their experiences for the enjoyment of a British readership. A notable number of publications in this genre were characterized by their multimodality, comprising as they did both text and images (Saglia "Imag(in)ing"). They often adopted the form of sketches, a term that often featured in their very title. In the nineteenth century a literary appropriation of this type of visual art form is observed (Byerly 349). According to Byerly, a sketch is "a rapidly drawn picture that sacrifices aesthetic finish for a sense of spontaneity. The sketch embraces a certain ease or even disdain; the artist could draw a detailed portrait if he wished, but chooses to give a rapid impression of certain elements of the scene rather than elaborate them into a complete picture" (349). Indeed, in 1831, the reviewer of one of these sketch books, *Sketches in Spain and Morocco* by Sir Arthur De Capell Brooks, alluded to what was expected of collections of this type: "it is precisely one of those entertaining books of travel which are well calculated to suit the general reader, without presenting any strong claims to perpetuity beyond the usual limits of the genus of 'Sketches' " (Jerdan (?), Review of *Sketches in Spain and Morocco* 307).

The following year, one of the most famous sketch books on Spain was published, Washington Irving's *Tales of the Alhambra*. The American writer had previously published another book of the same type, *The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon* (1820), in which he expounded his particular approach when recording his experiences as a traveller: "caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friend" (qtd. in Byerly 354). Irving acknowledged that he was not a professional, but simply a tourist writing and drawing his impressions for friends. Exploiting a similar technique, and under a pen name, Irving published *Tales of the Alhambra* (1832), which was preceded by various notes and advertisements in the *Literary Gazette* announcing its forthcoming publication.

Irving was already a celebrity in Britain, a concept that emerged during the Romantic period, as "a product of material culture, the circulation of print, and an ever-expanding reading public" (Esterhammer, "Identity" 771). International celebrities, such as Irving, apart from seeking inspiration for their books, exploited tourism and travel to extend their public reach. According to the *Literary Gazette*, he was a kind of symbolic character capable of cementing the relationship between England and America, despite "the quarrels of our grandmothers and grandfathers," as he "has always taken in speaking of the two countries" (Jerdan (?), Review of *Tales of the Alhambra* 257). This quotation is drawn from the long review published in the *Literary Gazette* just before the publication of the book. In the reviewer's opinion, in this new sketch book "Mr. Irving has fairly trusted himself 'to the golden shores of old romance,' and yielded to all their influences. He has carried us into a world of marble fountains, moonlight, arabesques, and perfumes … if there be any fantasies … the *Tales of the Alhambra* must awaken them" (257). In order to illustrate these qualities, the review reproduces part of one of the tales from the book, "The Legend of the Three Beautiful Princesses." In the following issue of the journal, a second review of Irving's *Tales* included another section of the book: "The Legend of the Rose of the Alhambra" (Jerdan (?), Review of *Tales of the Alhambra* (second notice) 278).

Given the increasing importance of objects of visual beauty in Romantic pre-Victorian society, more and more citizens, and not only among the privileged classes, wanted to acquire pictures to display in their homes. Artistic sketch books, which resembled painters' portfolios, were widely advertised. A notable number of collections of images, including portraits and landscapes, were published, such as David Roberts's and John F. Lewis's *Spanish Sketches*, which shared the same title and were advertised jointly in 1837. Interestingly, they were offered in two different versions at different prices: the cheaper in imperial folio, tinted and half-bound, and another, more expensive version, coloured and mounted, in folio (Jerdan (?), "Books Printed by Hodgson and Graves" 311). In both cases the images were likely to be used as ornamental objects within readers' homes. The perspective offered in all these artistic works was that of a foreigner enraptured by the exotic culture of Spain. However, in the *Literary Gazette* a collection of drawings by a Spanish author was also advertised: "*The Andalusian Annual*, with 12 exquisitely coloured life drawings by Becquer," referring to José Domínguez Bécquer, the father of the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (Jerdan (?), "New Works Published by Mr. Macrone" 736). The subsequent review of this book specifies the contents, since they are not the usual ones to be found in this type of publication:

After all our Annuals, this is a Novelty: after all we have had of late about Spain, it has new features to recommend it. These consist of whole-length portraits, in the costume of Andalusia, of remarkable characters – bandits, smugglers, actresses, matadors, etc., from the easel of José Becquer, a painter of Seville, rendered on stone by Gauci, and coloured to the life; and also in illustrations, tales, legends, descriptions, robberies, and anecdotes, from the able and popular pen of Mr. Honan. (Jerdan (?), Review of *The Andalusian Annual for 1837* 773)

This extract makes clear the significance of illustrations and images in these collections, to the detriment of text, which served only as a kind of unifying thread for the visual contents of the book. This is particularly the case in annuals, which were published in order to sell as gifts, especially during the Christmas season. Ample space in the *Literary Gazette* is given over to advertisements for annuals, such as the very popular Jennings' Landscape Annuals series, which published four volumes on Spanish topics during the 1830s: Granada and the Alhambra in 1835, Andalusia in 1836, Biscay and the two Castiles in 1837, and finally Spain and Morocco in 1838. All of these were by the same author, Thomas Roscoe, and the same illustrator, David Roberts, who published abundantly on Spain.

Scenes from the north of Spain began to occupy greater space in the *Literary Gazette* partly as a consequence of the interest of the British public in the First Carlist War, a conflict which broke out in 1833 after the death of King Ferdinand VII. Several foreign military men, from both sides – the Carlists and the Cristinos – wrote about their experiences in book form, as had happened with the Peninsular War. These works include *The Striking Events of a Twelvemonth's Campaign with Zumalacarregui, in Navarre and the Basque Provinces* by Charles Frederick Kenningsen, a captain of lancers in the service of Don Carlos, and *The Court and Camp of Don Carlos; being the results of a late Tour in the Basque Provinces, and parts of Catalonia, Aragon, Castile and Estremadura* by M. Burke Honan, both publicized with ads in the *Literary Gazette* of 1836. As is common in such writings, the authors not only narrated events of war, but also described the landscapes, people and different cultural aspects of the territories they visited. A clear example of this is a book advertised in 1839 in which the writer even incorporates transcriptions of music he heard while visiting the Basque provinces as a surgeon during the conflict: *Sketches of Scenery in the Basque Provinces of Spain, with a Selection of Natural Music, arranged for Piano-Forte and Guitar*, by Henry Wilkinson, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

All these narratives acquainting British readers with Spain and the Spanish people encouraged travellers to visit the Peninsula. However, specific books were also published with this in mind, helping travellers to get by in distant and unknown places. Examples of these book series appeared in 1832: Josiah Cander's thirty-volume *The Modern Traveller. A popular description, geographical, historical and topographical of the various Countries of the Globe*, including two about Spain and Portugal (Jerdan (?), "Te Modern Traveller" 175), and *A Variety of Descriptive Guides for the Use of Travellers on the Continent*, which included a volume on Spain and Portugal (Jerdan (?), "A Variety of Descriptive Guides" 239).

Spain was also a place of historical interest for the British public, as well as being characterized by picturesque and legendary elements. Indeed, this was stressed in most of the historical books about Spain published during this period, in that they often recounted legends, romances and ballads, mixing history and fiction. Some examples published in the 1830s illustrate this approach to the Peninsula: *The Romance of History*, which dedicated a volume to Spain (1830) by Telesforo de Trueba y Cossío; *A Set of Six Ancient Spanish Ballads, Historical and Romantic*, by John Lockhart and by Mrs. Roberts (1830); *Lays and Legends*, by W. J. Thoms; and *Legends of the Conquest of Spain*, by Washington Irving (1835).

Irving's continuing fascination for Spanish history is also underlined by other publications advertised in the *Literary Gazette*, such as new editions of *The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus*, *A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada* and *Voyages of the Companions of Columbus*, first published in 1828. Interestingly, the latter was published in special collections, such as "The Family Library," which indicates that it was considered appropriate for the youngest members of society. This collection was established by the editor John Murray in order to offer adapted or abridged versions of renowned books for the whole family (Jerdan (?), "Te Family Library" 264). In certain issues of the *Literary Gazette* we see a special focus on advertising educational and pedagogical books, since these had become a lucrative area in the literary market. History was a recurring topic in books targeting children. For example, in 1837 Lady Calcott's *History of Spain* featured in multiple adverts in the journal, including groups of ads for "Approved School-Books" (Jerdan (?), "Approved School-Books" 487) and "Approved Children's Books" (Jerdan? Advertisements about "Approved Children's Books" 743). Interestingly, ads of this type tended to appear more abundantly in the final issues of the year, when Christmas was approaching, as they were intended to be bought as gifts for young readers.

Biography was another popular historical genre in the nineteenth century and the *Literary Gazette* devoted ample space to them, particularly to celebrate the lives of individuals. Indeed, *Lives of Celebrated Spaniards*, a translation of *Vidas de españoles célebres* (1807–33) by the esteemed Spanish author Manuel José Quintana, which included patriotic biographies of quasi-mythical heroes such as the Cid Campeador, the Prince of Viana, Guzman the Good and the Great Captain, among others, was advertised in October 1837, one of the few English translations of Spanish books in the journal (Jerdan (?), "Books in the Press" 678). Also advertised and reviewed in December 1837 was *The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic of Spain*, by the American Hispanist William Prescott, published by Richard Bentley in January 1838. Though it is not exactly a biography, it is very close to this genre. Interestingly, the review begins by alluding indirectly to the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus:

This remarkable and important work is the production of an American; and there is singular fitness that it should be the task of one whose country was, as it were, called into existence during the very age he depicts. Mr. Prescott has chosen one of the most important periods in modern history, and one, too, which exercised the greatest control over succeeding times. (Jerdan (?), Review of *The History of the Reign* 793)

This approach to the Catholic monarchs was the prevalent one during the period, particularly by British and American authors, since the discovery of the new continent was of particular relevance for their history as colonizers of the territories of North America.

Spanish literature received less attention in the pages of the *Literary Gazette*; however, the most emblematic of Spanish literary works, Cervantes's *Don Quixote* did merit a place in the journal. In 1833, *The Achievements of Don Quixote* was published as part of the "Novelists' Library" collection, which was edited by Thomas Roscoe and included works by German, Italian and Spanish novelists. The three-volume Spanish series, entitled *Spanish Novelists. A Series of Tales, from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Seventeenth Century*, included *Don Quixote* and other writings, as well as Don Juan Manuel's *El Conde Lucanor*, *El Lazarillo* and Mateo Alemán's *Guzman de Alfarache*. The advertising in the journal emphasizes the number of illustrations and portraits by George Cruikshank, particularly their humorous qualities (Jerdan (?), "Books to Be Published" 61). Curiously enough, in a subsequent advert for the book, it is recommended particularly for women, since the series's abridged version "is freed from those impurities which have hitherto rendered it all but a sealed book to female readers, and this too without, in any one single instance, trenching upon the humour of the story. We can now safely recommend it to the most delicate lady" (Jerdan (?), "Books Just Published" 238). Four years later, in 1837, illustrations by Cruikshank were used to adorn another book related to Cervantes's masterpiece, the posthumously published *Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote* (1837) by H. D. Inglis. On his death, the book was heavily advertised, as indeed were other travelogues by the author, one of those about Spain, as seen above (Jerdan (?), "Inglis's Travels" 245). In the same year, the editor J. J. Dubochet and Sons began to serialize Charles Jarvis's translation of *Don Quixote* in monthly instalments that continued to 1839, described in June 1837 as "Revised, and corrected, and beautifully illustrated after Original Designs, by Tony Johannot" (Jerdan (?), "Books in the Press" 406). The subsequent review of the first instalment of Jarvis's translation also mentions the "admired embellishments of the Paris editions (eight hundred in number)," and the reviewer praises the inclusion of a biography of Cervantes, as the events of his life are "so varied in their character, and so striking" that they constitute one of the most interesting parts of the present edition. Thus, the review includes a long passage on the events of Cervantes's life (Jerdan (?), Review of *Don Quixote* 461).

In 1835, a translation of Tomás de Iriarte's *Fábulas literarias* (1781), the *Literary Fables*, was reviewed in the *Literary Gazette*. 1 The originality of Iriarte's tales was mentioned, in that they are "devoted entirely to the illustration of literary subjects" (Jerdan (?), Review of *Literary Fables* 230); for instance, one of the fables quoted in the review, "The Bear, the Monkey and the Pig," is said to explain the reasons behind "the strings of complimentary eulogies" in advertisements of "works which we have examined and found utterly worthless" (231). Most importantly, certain literary works were not translated but were published in Britain in Spanish, which indicates that a notable number of readers must have been able to read in that language, most of these probably Spanish émigrés residing in the country. However, the number is very low compared to books in French advertised in the *Literary Gazette*, which can be explained by the fact that the French language was part of the school curriculum and the most common foreign language spoken by the educated classes. Nevertheless, Iriarte appears again in the British book market with *Compendio de la historia de España*, an edition revised by Juan Blázquez and published by Boosey and Sons, together with other printers, such as the Spanish Vicente Salvá, in London in 1826. It was advertised in the *Literary Gazette* in 1830 alongside another book in Spanish, *La floresta española, o Collecion* [*sic*] *de piezas escogidas de los mejores autores*, and a text to learn the Spanish language: De Lara's *Key to the Spanish Language*, both likewise published by Boosey and Sons (Jerdan (?), "Books by the Editor Boosey and Sons" 95). In 1837, a volume of three of Calderón's plays, *El mágico prodigioso*, *La vida es sueño* and *El príncipe constante*, were advertised in the journal, published by British (C. and H. Senior in London, Milliken and Mon. in Dublin, Laing and Forbes in Edinburgh) and Spanish printers (Hortal y Compañía in Cádiz) (Jerdan (?), "Calderón" 262).

<sup>1</sup> See Leticia Villamediana González's chapter in this book on Tomás de Iriarte's *Fables* in the British press.

Besides Spanish literature, translations from Spanish into English featuring in the *Literary Gazette* include other fields of knowledge, such as mining: Richard Heathfield's translation of *Commentaries on the Mining Ordinances of Spain* by Francisco Xavier de Gamboa, published in 1830 by Longman in London, was reviewed in the *Literary Gazette* the same year (Jerdan (?), Review of *Commentaries on the Mining Ordinances* 653). Spanish wines also attracted the attention of British writers, editors and readers, as is attested by the long excerpt devoted to them in the review of *A History and Description of Modern Wines* (1833) by Cyrus Redding, published in London by Whittaker and Co. Interestingly, according to the reviewer, Spanish wines "will one day rank much higher in estimation than they do at present" (Jerdan (?), Review of *A History* 802). Another book on Spanish wines reviewed in the *Literary Gazette* of 1834 is *Journal of a Recent Visit to the Principal Vineyards of Spain and France* by James Busby, published in London by Smith, Elder and Co. The short review includes a paragraph about the contents of the book, which indicates the relevance of Spanish wines for the British market: "The most interesting portion of this volume is that which relates to the vineyards of Spain, particularly those near Xeres, where about 7000 acres supply all the real sherry fit for the English market, and amounting annually to some 2500 butts" (Jerdan (?), "Miscellaneous Works" 499).

Finally, it is worth noting the case of Telesforo de Trueba, who was sent to an English school when he was twelve and lived in England for some time, and thus was able to write in perfect English. In 1824 he returned to England as a political exile. Various of his works were advertised in the *Literary Gazette*: the aforementioned *The Romance of History, Spain* (1830) and *Salvador, or the Guerrilla* (1834), as well as *The Incognito: or Sins and Peccadillos* (1831), which together attest to the role of Spanish émigrés in Britain's rediscovery of the Iberian Peninsula. Trueba wrote only on Spanish issues, and seemed to try to mix fictional traits into his writing of historical fact, as noted in the review of *The Incognito*: "The story is quite a romance" (Jerdan (?), Review of *The Incognito* 99). The inclusion of a heartfelt obituary on Trueba's premature death in 1835 is testimony to the friendly relationship of the editor of the *Literary Gazette* with some of the writers whose books were advertised in the journal (Jerdan (?), "Don Telesforo de Trueba" 651).

#### **4. Conclusion**

As technical advances facilitated the publication of more and more books during the initial decades of the nineteenth century, readers might have found themselves at a loss when trying to decide what they wanted to purchase and read, and publications like literary advertisers afforded them a glimpse of the content of books in the form of reviews and advertisements. Reviews gave a potential readership the opportunity to read extracts from books, while adverts described their main characteristics, usually including details about the physical appearance and price of the work, and particularly about any illustrations which embellished the volumes and could be used as visual ornaments. Additionally, the presence of different groups of readers with particular tastes can be seen in various references to specific sectors in the reviews, such as books about Spain in collections addressed to children and young adults, as the didactic sections of publishing houses were flourishing at that moment. The current study of the principal issues addressed with regard to Spain in books advertised and reviewed in the *Literary Gazette* during the 1830s has shown that the editors and other possible contributors to the journal acted as cultural mediators, offering a wide assortment of texts for potential readers' perusal. Some specific traits have been established, such as the focus on Romantic clichés about the supposed exotic nature and legendary past of Spain, as well as Spaniards' bravery and patriotism, with the intention to capture readers' attention and thus encouraging them to buy books on the subject.

#### **Bibliography**


**Part II Constructing the Canon**

#### María Eugenia Perojo Arronte

### **Chapter 4 Shifting Views on the Political Nation: A Comparison of British and Spanish Criticism of Spanish Ballads\***

**Abstract** In the early nineteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder's concept of *Volkspoesie* and Germaine de Staël's *De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales* (1800) were seminal influences on a new trend in literary criticism based on sociopolitical, historicist and nationalist approaches. It favoured new political uses of literary criticism by means of which European nations shaped and interpreted both native and foreign canons through the mirror of their own geopolitical interests. Criticism of Spanish ballads became one of the discursive elements that contributed to the Romanticization of Spain. The *romances*, however, offered a multifaceted and malleable set of features that resulted in a diversity of views of the Spanish contemporary political nation on account of the various geopolitical stands and ideologies. The comparison between British and Spanish critical discourses sheds light on this heterogenous panorama and its political implications. Spanish critics such as Agustín Durán offered interpretations of the *romances* intended for the regeneration of Spain. British critics, however, independently of their ideology, used discursive strategies that separated Spain from the modern Concert of Nations. The most prestigious British literary magazines were instrumental in the dissemination of this idea. Moreover, their simultaneous publication of reviews of books dealing with Spanish *romances* and reviews of books and articles on contemporary Spain created a kind of osmotic and fluid exchange not only between past and present, but also between fiction and reality, that seemed to blur the boundaries between them and contributed to Othering Spain in the imagination of their readers.

**Keywords:** Spanish ballads, British Romantic periodicals, Romantic criticism, literary geopolitics, Spanish political nation.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder and Germaine de Staël inaugurated a trend in literary criticism based on sociopolitical, historicist and nationalist approaches to literature. It offered new political uses of literary criticism by means of which the European nations shaped and interpreted both native and foreign canons through the mirror of their geopolitical interests. In

<sup>\*</sup> The research for this chapter was funded by the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00.

this context, the political use made of historical consciousness and "temporal self-representations" by Europeans was instrumental for "the construction of differences" (Altschul 6). The case of Spain is a well-known instance of this procedure of self-representation and representation of the Other. As Spain was shaping its identity as a nation in the midst of profound political conflicts and a slow and late industrialization that cast serious doubts about its place within European geopolitics, the critical writings by Madame de Stäel, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Bouterwek and Simonde de Sismondi were instrumental for its romanticization with their emphasis on the Oriental and chivalric clichés of its literary tradition. A view of Spain as a nation cut off from modernity was consolidated, trapped in its medievalism and its Orientalism, at the crossroads of the symbolic North/South–East/West axes from the Eurocentric perspective (Cabo Aseguinolaza, "La dimensión geoliteraria" 17 ff.; Cabo Aseguinolaza "The European Horizon;" Saglia "The True Essence;" Iarocci).

In this context, and in their obsessive desire to build up a modern nation state, the Spanish liberals fought not only political and military battles, but also cultural ones that seriously hindered their efforts. As Fox has argued, Spanish political nationalism, which aimed at the establishment of a liberal and democratic nation state, was accompanied by a cultural nationalism that was subservient to it (*La invención* 12). However, the relationship between the literary and the political nation was neither univocal nor aligned with a single ideological strain. As a matter of fact, a conservative ideology was the first to appear in the Romantic canonization of Spanish literature. The reappraisal of the seventeenth-century playwright Calderón de la Barca served August Wilhelm Schlegel's counterattack against the French Enlightenment and French Republican ideas. Indeed, Calderón's drama seemed to allow only a conservative interpretation, whereas the Middle Ages were liable to both conservative and liberal interpretations. The Spanish liberals created the myth of Spanish medieval liberties to avoid being associated with the French Revolution (Fernández Sebastián 71; Nieto Soria 12). A liberal view of the Spanish Middle Ages also emerged in Great Britain (Comellas, "Argumentos poéticos" 150).1 However, the critical pieces discussed in this essay reveal significant nuances in the construction of the Spanish political nation in apparently similar ideologies in Britain and Spain.

<sup>1</sup> Flitter (*Spanish Romantic Literary Theory*) has underlined the influence of the Schlegel brothers on Spanish Romanticism and has argued in favour of the pre-eminence of a conservative Spanish Romanticism in opposition to authors such as Fox, Navas Ruiz and Abellán, who have stressed the relevance of liberal ideology.

The Spanish ballads, the *romances*, offered a multifaceted and malleable set of features that favoured diverse discursive strategies: their large number, thematic variety and the great confusion about their chronology and origins could direct interpretations in opposite directions. In the following discussion, I analyse a selection of British and Spanish criticism of the *romances* that can illustrate this procedure and the discursive strategies by which shifting views of the Spanish political nation were offered not only on account of individual ideologies, but also of geopolitical interests. In Spain, the period covered, 1812–49, was marked by a growing sense of decadence and a need for regeneration, for which culture was instrumental (Flitter, *Spanish Romanticism* 9). The Spanish Romantics resorted to the historicist trend insofar as it could contribute to build up the present (Moreno Alonso, *Historiografía romántica* 60). This interrelation between past and present was bidirectional since not only was the past viewed through the lens of the present, but the present was viewed through the lens of the past and was interpreted accordingly.

#### **1. The** *Romances* **and British Critics**

The interest that the *romances* aroused in Great Britain in the Romantic period is proven not only by the various translations published, but also by the numerous articles and reviews in the periodical press. As Saglia notes, "periodicals treated foreign literatures and cultures as battlegrounds where cultural and ideological views could be compared and contrasted" (*European Literatures* 35). Moreover, the magazines also offered reviews of books on contemporary topics and events that created a kind of osmotic and fluid exchange not only between past and present, but also between fiction and reality.2

One significant instance of this procedure is found in Thomas Rodd's *History of Charles the Great and Orlando, ascribed to Archbishop Turpin; translated from the Latin in Spanheim's Lives of ecclesiastical writers: together with English metrical versions of the most celebrated ancient Spanish ballads relating to the twelve peers of France mentioned in Don Quixote*. 3 The *romances*<sup>4</sup> included accounts of

<sup>2</sup> Saglia notes how Spain "was imagined […] as a land divided between reality and fiction" (*Poetic Castles* 59).

<sup>3</sup> The Latin chronicle the *Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi*, a twelfth-century forgery, contains legendary material on the historical figure of Charlemagne. His contemporary Turpin, Archbishop of Reims, is identified as author in the text.

<sup>4</sup> The part including the *romances* is a translation from Damián López de Tortajada's *Floresta de varios Romances, sacados de las historias antiguas de los hechos famosos de los Doce Pares de Francia*, first published in Valencia (n.d.) and Madrid (1713). Rodd's

the Battle of Roncevalles and the figure of Bernardo del Carpio which outdo the narrative in the Turpin's Chronicle about the fictitious conquest of Spain by Charlemagne. Rodd's book came out in 1812, an important year in the progress of the Peninsular War. In early 1812 the Duke of Wellington had advanced into Spain once more with important victories over the French in Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. It was also the year in which the Spanish Constitution was promulgated by the Cortes of Cádiz. In the Preface to the *romances*, Rodd makes explicit the parallelism between past and present, calling his readers' attention to "The danger of breaking off the spirit of a free people" (xi, unnumbered note), a direct allusion to the Spanish reaction to the French invasion. He also remarks that if the Spanish Cortes had been active at the time of the invasion, the latter could have been prevented through parliamentary debate. Finally, Rodd expresses his hopes for a future victory. A well-timed second edition was issued in 1821, when Ferdinand VII, post-Waterloo Absolutism, was suspended for the brief period of the Liberal Triennium (1820–3). This new edition gave prominence to the *romances*, which appeared first in the title of the book: *Ancient Spanish Ballads, relating to the Twelve Peers of France, Mentioned in Don Quixote, with Metrical Versions, preceded by a History of Charles the Great and Orlando, Translated from the Latin of Spanheim.*

The next important compilation was John Gibson Lockhart's *Ancient Spanish Ballads: Historical and Romantic*, published in 1823. This was the year in which the political liberties of the Liberal Triennium were finally ended by French intervention. Lockhart's anthology contains a substantial introduction, which Diego Saglia has insightfully analysed (*European Literatures*). Its content had already appeared in the February 1820 issue of *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* as part of the "Horæ Hispanicæ" series.5 In his view of the political nation, the conservative Lockhart surprisingly wavers between an idealized past of civil liberties, a myth of the Middle Ages that Spanish liberals shared and promoted, when "every Spaniard, of whatever degree, was penetrated with a sense of his own dignity as a freeman" ("Ancient" xx), and a much-deteriorated present where all social orders except the peasants bore the traces of racial degeneration. The latter's Visigothic ascendance granted them a share in the noble ethos that paradoxically, as Álvarez

earlier *Ancient Ballads from the Civil Wars of Granada and the Twelve Peers of France* (1801) is the first nineteenth-century English compilation of *romances*; Rodd is also the translator of the first part of Ginés Pérez de Hita's historical novel *The Civil Wars of Granada* (1803).

<sup>5</sup> See Diego Saglia's chapter in this book on Lockhart's German and Spanish "Horæ" in *Blackwood's*.

Junco has noted, was also a recurrent motif in the construction of Spanish identity by liberal Spaniards. In Lockhart's criticism, the Spanish people have lost their power as a collective political subject and have no chance of a regeneration.6 *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* published a very favourable review in March 1823 signed by John Wilson, one of the main contributors to the periodical alongside Lockhart himself. The piece is a mere repetition of Lockhart's ideas with many quotes from his introduction. In the December 1823 issue, when Absolutism was fully restored in Spain, an article entitled "Spain" again echoed the ideas of Lockhart's text. It was essentially intended to justify the neutrality of Great Britain in the recent Spanish conflict. Its central element is a review of Joseph Blanco White's *Letters from Spain* (1822), which is strategically used to blame the Church and the Inquisition for contemporary evils in the country. The author recalls many ideas in Wilson's earlier article. He praises the unity of the nation at the time of the Napoleonic invasion – "The priests, the nobles, the peasants, the whole people, rose as with one heart – it was a nation, not a faction" (682) – and he blames the Spanish liberals for their French Jacobinism and for taking control of the guerrillas, with which "the exertions of the peasantry were neutralized" (683). The author also criticizes the 1812 Constitution on account of its Jacobin bias, which "in a great number of the cities, in most of the towns, in all the villages, and universally amongst the peasantry in the interior of the country […] was received with dissatisfaction, with disgust, and, in many places, with abhorrence" (684). This was a generalized view in Great Britain, not only among Tory circles such as *Blackwood's*, but also among Whig ones. According to Lord Holland, the Spanish liberals "had imbibed their notions of freedom from the encyclopaedists of France, rather than from the history of their antient institutions, or from the immediate wants of their country" (145).7 In Spain, there was also resistance against the Constitution among several social groups, which was particularly strong in some rural areas and among the peasants. The article's author appears to consider the peasants as the bulwark of sound conservatism, or at least moderate politics. Finally, the Absolutist monarch, Ferdinand VII, is presented as the epitome of Spanish decadence (691).

The critical Whig alternative was offered by the Hispanist John Bowring in eleven articles on Spanish literature published in magazines between 1820 and

<sup>6</sup> See Fox ("La invención" 1–3) on the development of the concept of the nation as an active political subject.

<sup>7</sup> See Moreno Alonso (*La forja del liberalismo* 47 ff.) for a thorough discussion of this issue.

1823. The earliest, on contemporary literature, came out in the *Monthly Magazine* of June 1820 and was mainly an excuse to attack the intolerance of Spanish Catholicism (Comellas, "La historia literaria" 415). Another three appeared in the *Retrospective Review* (1821–2) and the remaining seven in the *London Magazine* (1823)*.* In the third article in *The Retrospective Review*, Bowring praises passages from the *Poem of the Cid* for their portrayal of medieval society, which countered its idealization by the Schlegel brothers, Bouterwek and Sismondi: "The blind obedience to kingly authority – the influence of the priests – the disorganized state of society, are strikingly developed" ("Poetical Literature" 25).8 These words clearly contain an indirect criticism of Ferdinand VII's recent Absolutism, the power of the Church and the still extremely precarious centralization of power that the liberals were trying to achieve.9 The articles in the *London Magazine* were published from April 1823. The initiative seems to offer both an imitation of Lockhart's "Horæ Hispanicæ" in the rival *Blackwood's* and also a foretaste of Bowring's own anthology, *Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain* (1824). The text in the articles is more substantial than his introduction in that volume, so I will only refer to the former. Bowring offers a positive appraisal of *Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas* (1821–25)10 by Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber (Bowring, "Spanish Romances. No. III" 605),11 but he attacks Lockhart's *Ancient Spanish Ballads* for the poor quality of the translations ("Spanish Romances. No. IV" 47), offering his own critical alternative. The French army under the command of the Duke of Angoulême had invaded Spain only a matter of days or weeks previously, on 7 April. Bowring reminds his readers of the Anglo-Spanish alliance, tacitly invoking some kind of intervention: "and now that Alliance with Spain is become an Alliance with freedom, and virtue, and valor, let England echo back the fraternal greeting!" ("Spanish Romances. No. II" 513–14). Contrary to his previous articles, in number five of the series, Bowring offers a positive image of contemporary Spain through an idealized picture in which the courtly medieval myth is evoked and transplanted to the contemporary scene: "that chivalric spirit

<sup>8</sup> Comellas has discussed Bowring's discontent with their criticism ("La historia literaria" 413).

<sup>9</sup> See Duggett (98) for the similarities with the picture of Spain in Jean-François Bourgoing's *Tableau de l'Espagne Moderne* (1807). Bourgoing's book was reviewed in the October 1804 issue of *The Edinburgh Review.*

<sup>10</sup> The *Floresta* was published in three volumes. By the time of this review, only volumes 1 and 2 had come out.

<sup>11</sup> See Durán López for an assessment of the reviews of Böhl's collection in British periodicals.

which has descended to the very lowest classes of Spain from the feudal times," characterized by "a high sense of honour, a self supporting dignity, and a mutual respect […] among all the classes in the Peninsula" ("Spanish Romances. No. V" 163). And thus Spain becomes a kind of palimpsest, where the present is erased and the past written over it.

The treatment of one of the most iconic figures of the *romancero* or body of Spanish ballads, the Cid, was also subject to a variety of viewpoints. He had become popular in England through Southey's *Chronicle of the Cid* – a prose version more or less freely rendered from a combination of prose and verse Spanish sources12 – that was published at the outbreak of the Peninsular War. Southey promotes the Cid's image as a national hero – very much widespread in Spain – in the midst of the debate about British intervention in the war. In October 1808, *The Edinburgh Review* published Francis Jeffrey and Henry Brougham's controversial article on "Don Cevallos" against war with Napoleon and justifying reform at home. In January 1809, both countries signed the treaty by which Britain recognized Ferdinand VII as king of Spain. The prointervention *Quarterly Review* published in February 1809 a review of the *Chronicle of the Cid* written by Walter Scott, a favour to Southey (Saglia, "Robert Southey's *Chronicle*" 43). The Spanish hero bravely fighting and subduing a foreign invader was undoubtedly a trope that commended the British intervention, which the *Quarterly* supported, and Scott's assessment of Southey's translation is generally expressed in laudatory terms, but his attitude to the Spanish hero is not so sympathetic. Scott undermines the model of perfection that Southey presents by addressing the Cid's cruelty and lack of refinement, which are both breaches of the code of chivalry (150–1). He sees in Ximena's request for the hand of the man who had killed her father a sign of a "degraded state of society and a want of free will" (151)*.* Scott even dismisses the authenticity of the Cid as a historical figure.

The Cid was consolidated as an icon of nationality and chivalric values in Felicia Hemans's *The Siege of Valencia* and *Songs of the Cid*, published in the same volume in 1823. They were reviewed in the September–December issue of *The Monthly Review*. The return to Absolutism after the Liberal Triennium leads the reviewer to compare the idealized Spanish hero to contemporary leaders, regretting the "degradation and shame at the fate with which Spain is at this

<sup>12</sup> These include the *Chronica del famoso cavallero Cid Ruy Diez Campeador* (Burgos, 1593), the epic poem known as *Cantar del Mío Cid* (c. 1200) and Spanish *romances* dealing with the famous hero.

moment visited" and how "Apathy seems to have unnerved the hands of her soldiers, and reason to have corrupted the hearts of her commanders" (180). The *romancero* and the Cid also feature in a review of Johannes von Müller's edition of Juan de Escobar's *Romancero* (1828) and Manuel Risco's *Historia del célebre castellano Rodrigo Díaz* (1792) published in *The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany* in January 1829. The reviewer extols the Cid's "independence and national pride," his "chivalrous sense of honour," his loyalty to the king and his preservation of public liberties against "the abuses of absolute power" (452). Although he expresses hope that Spain may regain "her Rank among the nations" (454), he offers a negative assessment of the Spanish victory in the battle of Mariel (La Habana) against Mexico and remarks that the future of the Spanish empire is doomed. Spain had at this time already lost all of its American continental colonies, whose trade Britain was trying to control and this kind of comment was common in periodical publications. The reviewer's ambivalent attitude and his good knowledge of Spanish literature arouses doubts about his identity. He declares that he has with him a collection of 120 romances compiled by a Spaniard – with whom he admits to having close communication – which can only be Agustín Durán's *Romancero de Romances Moriscos* (1829), reviewed in the section "Short Reviews of Books" of the same issue of *The Foreign Review*. The reviewer's conservative traits are again reflected in this piece, where Spain is praised as "the land of chivalry and love" and its past is revered because "when monarchs were obeyed with an almost idolatrous veneration, man was free" (Review of *Romancero* 498). A possible candidate for the authorship of these reviews is Nikolaus Böhl von Faber, a German Hispanist settled in Cádiz: he was conservative; he had a relationship with Durán, with whom he had become acquainted in 1828 and maintained an intense intellectual exchange; and he also knew Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, a German doctor and writer cited in the first review.13 In 1830, Böhl wrote to Durán that his *romanceros* were receiving very favourable reviews in England (Tully 248). In January 1829, Durán's *Romancero de romances moriscos* (1828) was briefly reviewed in the "Short Reviews" section of *The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany*. The author of this review was somebody in contact with Durán as he writes that the Spanish author has told him about plans for a new volume.

As we move forward in time, the romanticized view of Spain seems to prevail among British authors. A brief anonymous article entitled "Romantic Poetry of Spain" published in *Fraser's Magazine* in 1832 containing several translations

<sup>13</sup> Tully has edited their correspondence.

from medieval poetry, repeats the old clichés about the "chivalrous melancholy" of the "beautiful fables of the heroic ages" (44), but it denies any value to contemporary Spanish poetry, and thus, as a consequence of its literary decline, the country is implicitly marginalized from the modern Concert of Nations. In 1841, the famous Hispanist Richard Ford reviewed a new edition of Lockhart's anthology in the *Edinburgh Review* in an article where he repeated the clichés about the idealized Spanish past and the *romances* as representative of national identity, but opposed this imagery to a perceived present decline and degeneracy among Spaniards. He compared Lockhart's collection with Agustín Durán's first *romancero* (1828), much to the advantage of the British critic. This demonstration of British supremacy seems to be the aim in Ford's discussion.

#### **2. The** *Romances* **and Spanish Critics**

The rediscovery of the *romances* in Spain was initiated by the reputed turnof-the-century writer and critic Manuel José Quintana (1772–1857), who was also a prominent figure of Spanish liberalism. His *Poesías escogidas de nuestros cancioneros y romanceros antiguos* (1796) was volume sixteen of Ramón Fernández's *Colección de poetas castellanos*, edited by Pedro Estala.14 Quintana's Neoclassical background can be perceived in his selection of *romances* since all of them belong to the so-called *romancero nuevo*, the late literary ballads composed in the seventeenth century*.* His patriotic interest in the *romances* is revealed when he describes Spain as "una nacion guerrera, acostumbrada en siete siglos continuos á luchar con los bárbaros usurpadores" [A warlike nation, used to fighting against barbarian invaders for seven centuries] (Fernández ii).15 However, his qualification of the early *romances* as "la Poesía del vulgo" [the poetry of the masses] (Fernández xiv) differs from that of later collectors, whose Herderian influence would lead them to use the term "pueblo" [people] instead. The next important compiler is Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber, who includes several *romances* in his *Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas* (1821). In contrast to Quintana, Böhl's philological interests led him to select only popular *romances*, but even though he was an important disseminator of Schlegel's critical and political ideas in Spain, his prologue to this compilation does practically nothing to serve this purpose.

<sup>14</sup> He also included his compilation of *romances* in his later *Colección de Poesías* (1807), which indicates his appreciation of this genre.

<sup>15</sup> Author's translation.

A different political approach to contemporary Spain is found in three articles on Spanish poetry that the liberal émigré José Joaquín de Mora contributed to the *European Review* between 1824 and 1826. The first is an overview of Spanish poetry that exudes the exalted patriotism of the recently arrived exile in England. The *romances* are presented as genuine expressions of Spanish nationality, when "everyman was a soldier" and "the whole nation took part" in the war against the "foreign power [Andalusian Muslims …] prosecuted […] without the aid of any government, solely opinion and patriotism" ("Spanish Poetry" 376).16 The language evokes the recent invasion by French forces and invites comparison of a heroic past of political unity and a fragmented present. Mora uses Spanish liberal commonplaces to explain contemporary decadence: the dominance of foreign dynasties (the Habsburgs and Bourbons) and the dissolution of "ancient institutions, usages, and prerogatives" ("Spanish Poetry" 381). The signs of political regeneration are traced in contemporary poetry, which Mora considers "equal to all that lyric poetry has produced most perfect in the other nations of Europe" ("Spanish Poetry" 382). He parallels politics and literature in the second article, dedicated to the *romances*, whose "progress follows, step by step, that made by the body politic" ("Spanish Poetry. First Period" 536). Mora's most interesting move is his rejection of chivalry as native to Spain (Comellas, "Argumentos poéticos" 156), a common claim among the progressive liberals (Sanmartín 539). He attributes to it a French origin and argues that this imitation of foreign mores had caused the decline of the genuine national spirit of the *romances* and, by extension, of the genre itself.17 Mora even accuses Quintana of acting rather as a "French *litterateur* than as a national judge" ("Spanish Poetry. First Period" 536).18 As a Spanish liberal, Mora could not endorse the ideological connotations of chivalry, associated with the absolutism he was fighting against. It may surprise, therefore, that in the third article of this series, dedicated to the Moorish *romances*, Mora attributes a chivalric spirit to Spaniards and repeats the commonplaces found in Sismondi's and Bouterwek's literary histories about the peaceful cohabitation between Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain. This change is probably explained by his desire to (indirectly) voice his views on religious tolerance at a critical moment of the Catholic Emancipation debate

<sup>16</sup> On Orientalism and national identity in Mora's articles, see Comellas ("La construcción de la identidad") and Saglia ("La escritura del desplazamiento").

<sup>17</sup> Medina Calzada has studied the politics underlying Mora's progression towards Francophobia.

<sup>18</sup> Despite Mora's words, Lara Garrido has highlighted the significance of Quintana's selection and critical remarks for a change in the critical paradigm*.*

in Britain, which had almost caused the resignation of Lord Liverpool as Prime Minister (Machin 458).

At that time in Spain, Agustín Durán was one of the first Spaniards to have fully assimilated and incorporated the critical ideas of the Coppet and Göttingen circles. His *Discurso sobre el influjo que ha tenido la crítica moderna en la decadencia del teatro español* (1828) is considered to be the first piece of Romantic criticism by a Spaniard. Its publication led Böhl von Faber to contact Durán (Tully 182), with whom he established a long and fruitful scholarly collaboration and exchange, as their letters attest.19 Durán was a moderate liberal with strong monarchic and Catholic convictions, which placed him somewhere between the liberal Quintana and the conservative Böhl. He published a first collection of *romances* in five volumes between 1828 and 1832, and a later impressive one of 1,806 *romances* in two volumes, between 1849 and 1851, with the prestigious Biblioteca de Autores Españoles.20 Where Durán's *Discurso* on Spanish drama has become a landmark in the history of Spanish Romantic criticism, his critical remarks in the first collection have passed largely unnoticed, except for Gies's biography and Reyes Ponce's unpublished PhD dissertation. Furthermore, the second collection has only recently been analysed, briefly, by Gomis.

The fifth volume of the first compilation (1832) contains the most interesting critical piece of this set, the "Discurso preliminar." Although it is heavily indebted to Madame D'Stäel, Bouterwerk, Sismondi and A. W. Schlegel, Durán complains that the chivalric ethos has been wrongly associated with the Spanish character, which he depicts instead as "grave, fiero y guerrero" [grave, fierce and warlike] ("Discurso preliminar" xxvii), embodied in the heroic figures of Roderic and the Cid:

Propiamente caballeros españoles, que luchan á brazo partido contra el dominio Musulman en un pais determinado, y tienen las ideas, los trages y las costumbres de su misma nación, tales como entonces eran. (xxviii)

[Truly Spanish knights, who fight bravely against Muslim domination in their land and adhere to the ideas, dress and manners of their own nation such as they were at the time.]

<sup>19</sup> Tully and Reyes Ponce have studied their relationship and exchange of critical ideas.

<sup>20</sup> The (abbreviated) titles and dates of the various volumes are *Romancero de romances moriscos* (1828), *Romancero de romances doctrinales*, *amatorios, festivos*, *jocosos, satíricos y burlescos* (1829), *Cancionero y romancero de coplas y canciones de Arte Menor, letras, letrilla, romances cortos y glosas anteriores al siglo XVIII* (1829), *Romancero de romances caballerescos é históricos anteriores al siglo XVIII* (1832), *Romancero general o Colección de romances castellanos anteriores al siglo XVIII* (Vol. 1, 1849; Vol. 2, 1851). Pérez Isasi (171 n. 14) has noted the need of an in-depth study of Durán's whole *oeuvre*.

Reyes Ponce (296) compares Durán's adjectives ("grave, fiero y guerrero") with Sismondi's description of Spain as "Cette nation brave, chevaleresque, dont la fierté et la dignité ont passé en proverbe" [This brave chivalrous nation whose pride and dignity are proverbial] (101), but in Durán's choice of words, the chivalric features, which he also attributes to French influence, disappear. And, even more importantly, like Mora, he denies the existence of feudalism in Spain (Durán, "Discurso preliminar" xl).

In the first volume of his later collection, Durán expresses the political implications of these ideas more openly, explaining the reasons for his cautious attitude in the earlier collection: "Emprendí estas tareas cuando un poder arbitrario dominaba nuestra patria, y por ello me fue imposible manifestar libremente las ideas filosóficas que abrigaba" [When I undertook this task, an arbitrary power was ruling my homeland, and for this reason I could not express my philosophical ideas freely]. He mentions the "semilla de buenas y *liberales doctrinas*" [seed of good, liberal doctrines] that the national genius needed for its rebirth ("Prólogo" vi; author's emphasis).21 He acknowledges his political allegiance and debt to Quintana in the preface to the first volume: "El nuevo giro que dí a la obra, más que a nadie, se debió a los consejos de mi muy querido amigo D. Manuel José Quintana" [the new direction of my work is due to the counsel of my good friend Don Manuel José Quintana more than anybody else] (vii n. 4). Durán's liberalism was tempered, however, by his moderate bent and contemporary politics. By this time, Queen Isabella II was reigning over a moderate liberal regime based on the identification of the State with the Crown, at the service of the economic interests of the bourgeoisie. This implied putting an end to the feudal prerogatives of the aristocracy, the unification of the State and the preservation of a representative democratic system. The moderate liberals aimed at a perfect balance of power between the Crown and the Cortes or Parliament. In their historiographical discourse, any imbalance in this respect was interpreted as a betrayal to the very essence of Spanishness (Cirujano Marín et al. 164).

In the 1845 Constitution, which predated the publication of Durán's second *romancero* by a few years, power resides not in the nation, as in the Constitutions of 1812 and 1837, but in the historical institutions of the Crown and the Cortes (Medina Muñoz 133). Durán reflects these moderate ideas in his second collection, where he argues insistently in favour of a democratic monarchy – the

<sup>21</sup> Ginger (67) also attributes to Durán a liberal political message regarding cultural heterogeneity rather than a mere native *casticismo* in Spanish literature after the medieval period.

conservative turn taken by the queen in the late 1840s may also have influenced his discourse. He writes that feudalism had only triumphed in northern nations, where it gave way to their chivalric ethos, exclusive to the aristocracy:22 "Los fueros adquiridos individualmente por los señores en el Norte, formáron la monarquía feudal, mientras en Castilla los fueros de los Comunes produjeron la monarquía democrática" [The civil liberties individually acquired by the aristocracy in the north shaped the feudal monarchy, whereas, in Castile, the civil liberties of the commons shaped the democratic monarchy] ("Prólogo" ix n. 7). Durán argues "Un pueblo entero que parcial ó generalmente gozaba de las exenciones entonces concedidas á la nobleza, ¿qué otra cosa podia ser mas que una democracia?" [A whole people that universally or partially enjoyed the exemptions granted to the nobility – what else could it be but a democracy?] (xix n. 13). Durán's words echo the liberal myth about the Spanish nation which had appeared in such important political documents as the *Discurso preliminar* of the 1812 Constitution and Francisco J. Martínez Marina's *Teoría de las Cortes* (1813)*.*

For the liberals, the defeat of the anti-feudal rebels at Villalar de los Comuneros by Emperor Charles V marked the end of this idealized world (Álvarez Junco 223), as Durán notes: "Vencido en Villalar y privado de toda esperanza de ser libre, dejó de existir como poder público, y se transformó en vulgo miserable" [Defeated at Villalar and deprived of any hopes of freedom, it disappeared as a political power and was transformed into the wretched masses] ("Prólogo" xxi). This transformation of the *pueblo* [people] into a *vulgo* [common masses] spelled the end of the political nation. When the first volume of Durán's second collection was published, the second Carlist War, provoked by the rebellion of the Absolutists, very popular in rural areas, had just ended. Durán's *vulgo* – mainly the peasants – had reacted against the so-called *desamortización* or confiscation of the landed properties of the Church, which the liberals deemed necessary for Spain's socio-economic modernization. Cirujano Marín (140) has noted that it was characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century historiography to attack the Carlists for using the *pueblo ignorante* [ignorant common people] to their advantage in the defence of their privileges.

Durán's discourse follows this historiographical trend, but he also offers the possibility of overcoming stagnation. In his view, the political continuity with the historical civil liberties could only be fully accomplished through a moral regeneration of the nation, for which literature was instrumental. For the liberals,

<sup>22</sup> Durán attributes it to the conflict between Christians and Muslims, as Gomis has remarked (102).

the end of the political nation under the Habsburgs had also meant the end of the literary nation. Durán saw in the *romances* the most genuine expression of the Spanish *Volksgeist*. They blend past and present better than any other tradition: "el romance era el amalgama de lo pasado con lo presente: era la historia no interrumpida del pueblo y la nacionalidad que lo produjo" [The *romance* fused past and present: it was the uninterrupted history of the people and the nationality that produced it] ("Advertencia" vii). In Durán's organicist view, the *romance* genre had reached perfection in the mid-seventeenth century and experienced a decline in later years (Reyes Ponce 313).23 In a very interesting move for Spanish literary historiography and the literary canon, he argues that Lope de Vega and Miguel de Cervantes were the inheritors of their spirit, which they had truly assimilated in their works,24 thus replacing the author whom Schlegel and Böhl von Faber had extolled as the epitome of traditional values: Calderón. Durán argues that Cervantes did away with the chivalric myth that was alien to the native character and literature:

Cervantes caricaturó [*sic*] en su obra el espíritu ridículamente exagerado de las altas clases, contraponiéndole el sesudo y razonable de las medias, y el prosáico de la gente vulgar, cuyo carácter tímido, receloso, desconfiado y egoísta, se formó bajo el despotismo y la inquisición. Don Quijote, el cura y Sancho Panza forman la unidad complexa de la sociedad española en aquel tiempo. ("Prólogo" xiv)

[In his work, Cervantes satirized the ridiculously pompous manners of the upper classes and opposed them to both the rational and sensible ones of the middle class and the prosaic ones of the common people, whose timorous, suspicious and selfish character was shaped by despotic rule and the Inquisition. Don Quixote, the priest and Sancho Panza represented the complex whole of Spanish society at that time.]

The social implications of Durán's ideas are patent in these lines: the moral regeneration of Spain can only be expected to come from its only socially and politically healthy group, the middle class, the one that was leading the political and economic reformation of the country. Similar ideas had been expressed by the liberal exile Antonio Alcalá Galiano in *The Westminster Review* in April 1824. In his account of the events that had led to the restoration of Absolutism, Alcalá Galiano praises the middle class, "in whom consists the real dignity and strength of all states," in opposition to the "nobility, degraded and insignificant" and "the bands of the Faith […] composed only of outcasts, or the most wretched of the populace" (301). The Spanish liberal revolution thus owed its support only to

<sup>23</sup> Flitter (*Spanish Romanticism*) has discussed the influence of Giambattista Vico's organicism as a characteristic of Spanish mid-nineteenth-century conservative historiography.

<sup>24</sup> Reyes Ponce (341–2) notes that Durán is indebted to Schlegel, who hints at this idea.

"The general mass of reasonable and pacific men, whose adherence to the constitutional system had hitherto sustained it" (314).

#### **3. Conclusion**

The above discussion has shown that the most outstanding difference between British and Spanish attitudes lies in the possibility of what was perceived as the necessary regeneration of Spain. The Spanish authors are very much aware of the role played by the middle class in the economic and political transformation of their country during the first half of nineteenth century and defend their moral supremacy over the nobility and the populace. Durán offers a dynamic view of society, connected to the past but also reaching forward to a future in which the political nation is built upon the foundation of a stable and solid middle class. Its members, described by Durán and Alcalá Galiano as peaceful, enlightened and reasonable, are firmly rooted in their times, not in the evanescent shadows of a romanticized past. Mora's and Durán's rejection of the chivalric ethos as characteristic of the Spanish *Volksgeist* implies that the sound moral character of the Spanish people is to be located in the social group that has led the political (and literary) regeneration of the country. British critics, however, seem generally to reject this idea. In their representations, contemporary Spanish society is anchored in the past and offers no signs of regeneration. When they attribute the values of times past – be they those of the chivalric or the liberal trope – they are implicitly denying Spain a place in the modern Concert of Nations. The message was undoubtedly useful for replacing the old empire (Spain) with the new one (Great Britain). As Duggett has put it, following a different thread in his discussion: "With all the negative connotations of the Gothic concentrated in the Spanish other, the Briton becomes the Goth purified and reinvented for the modern age" (121). Ford's 1841 review of Lockhart's collection mentioned above endorses this idea openly with the claim that the English are the real inheritors of the Spanish character, the *Volksgeist*, in the *romances*: "Their manly tone of liberty and independence, their reflective, somewhat saddened turn, their sincere religious character, their sterling loyalty, patriotism, and love of country, never will find a truer echo than in honest English hearts" (416). This supreme instance of cultural appropriation encapsulates my contention in the preceding discussion about the clash between Spanish and British views of the political nation in the criticism of *romances* in the first half of the nineteenth century.

#### **Bibliography**


#### Diego Saglia

### **Chapter 5** *Blackwood***'s "Horæ Hispanicæ" and the Conservative Construction of Spanish Literature**

**Abstract** A series of essays on Spanish literature entitled "Horæ Hispanicæ" began appearing in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* in February 1820, a mere few months after the launch of its "Horæ Germanicæ" (November 1819). The man behind both series was Walter Scott's son-in-law and major Edinburgh intellectual John Gibson Lockhart. While in his German essays he tended to examine recent works and authors, in the Spanish series he followed a different approach by concentrating on earlier literature, starting from the medieval *romances*. Though less numerous and frequent than the German ones, these essays made a significant contribution to determining a literary-historical and ideologically weighted interpretation of medieval and early modern Spanish literature in English-language culture of the Romantic period. Specifically, this chapter explores "Horæ Hispanicæ" in light of Lockhart's engagements with Friedrich Schlegel's work on ancient and modern literatures, which he translated as *Lectures on the History of Literature: Ancient and Modern from the German of Frederick Schlegel* (1818). In doing so, it illuminates how, in "Horæ Hispanicæ," Lockhart promoted a construction of Spanish literature that was deeply attuned to the cultural, ideological, and political climate of Britain and the European continent during the post-Napoleonic Restoration.

**Keywords:** Spanish literature, German criticism, Restoration, Middle Ages, *romances*, Golden Age drama.

Between the late 1810s and early 1820s, *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* gathered its essays on foreign literary topics into series collectively entitled "Horæ." The first essay under this rubric ("Horæ Historicæ") appeared in the opening issue of November 1817 and was followed by such variations as "Horæ Juridicæ," "Cantabrigiensis" and "Nicotianæ." But the "Horæ" were principally associated with explorations of foreign traditions: "Horæ Scandicæ" (mostly polemical spoofs), "Sinicæ," "Cambricæ," "Hispanicæ," "Scoticæ," "Danicæ," "Gallicæ," "Italicæ" and "Germanicæ" (Saglia, *European Literatures* 48–9). These national "Horæ" shared some distinctive features that differentiated them from other periodical formats covering foreign literatures such as the lengthy review, the one-off article or series composed of a limited or set number of essays. Each "Hora" usually focuses on one work or cluster of works, and is part of a continuous, open-ended set which, in some cases, developed over several years. Consequently, the "Horæ" tend to be characterized by fragmentation and variation, continuity and transformation over time, as well as homogeneity. As one of the magazine's fixed "departments," these similarly titled series gave a measure of coherence to *Blackwood's* treatment of foreign literary traditions, which avoided the limitations of chronological narration while also grounding the coherence of each tradition in its national identity.

Running from November 1819 to August 1828, the "Horæ Germanicæ" was the longest-lived of these series thanks to the committed enthusiasm for German literature of John Gibson Lockhart (Walter Scott's son-in-law and future biographer, as well as editor of the *Quarterly Review* from 1825), Robert Pearse Gillies, and several other collaborators including Alexander Blair, Mary Margaret Busk, John Anster and R. Ferguson (see Strout). As Dan Wall remarks, the "Horæ Germanicæ" pieces are an especially relevant feature of *Blackwood's*, since Lockhart employed them to delineate "an alternative model of imaginative literature to which he believed Scotland should aspire" (Wall 212). Also initiated by Lockhart, the "Horæ Hispanicæ" appeared soon after the first German essay, in February 1820, and the series continued into the middle of that decade, though in more desultory forms than its German counterpart. At the outset, the two series were closely interlinked, since Lockhart conceived them as parts of the same cultural and ideological programme, which the Spanish "Horæ" illuminate in ways that interestingly expand the implications suggested by Wall.1

The Germanic and Hispanic literary fields often intersect in the issues of *Blackwood's Magazine* from the early 1820s. In the fourth of the "Horæ Danicæ" (March 1821), dedicated to Adam Oehlenschläger's tragedy *Hagbarth and Signa*, Lockhart notes that "By an elaborate and ornate style, founded on that of Calderon, the masters of the modern schools in Germany exhibit all the arts […] of eloquence, and irresistibly attract admiration" (646). In contrast, from a thematic point of view, the first of the "Horæ Germanicæ" focuses on Adolph Müllner's tragedy *Guilt; or, The Anniversary*, whose Spanish-born protagonist is given by his mother to an aristocratic couple who raise him in their Scandinavian castle; later, as a young man on his travels, his return to Spain sets off the play's tragic chain of events when he falls in love with the beautiful Elvira (124). These two instances signal two possible lines of Germanic-Hispanic

<sup>1</sup> Significantly, Lockhart started to learn German and Spanish at the same time, around 1814 while at Balliol College, Oxford, in order to read the literatures in the original (Wall 209).

intersection: one based on aesthetic affinities, the other on cultural-historical analogies (in this case, the relevance of feudalism and chivalry in the history of the two countries). More generally, Hispano-Germanic consonances of the most disparate kinds were recurrent in Romantic-period literature, as exemplified by the shifts between Spain and Germany in the settings and plots of Matthew Gregory Lewis's *The Monk* (1797); the scholarly interest in the Visigothic past of the Iberian Peninsula, traces of which appear in the extensive notes to Robert Southey's *Roderick, the Last of the Goths* (1814), and, relatedly, references to the Gothic virtues of the Spaniards (Duggett 97–142); Percy Bysshe Shelley's parallel reading of, and translations from, Calderón's *El mágico prodigioso* and Goethe's *Faust* in 1822;2 or Walter Scott's examination, in his essay on chivalry for the *Encyclopædia Britannica* (1818), of how medieval Germany and Spain jointly "partook of the spirit of Chivalry" (Scott II, 107), the former as its birthplace among the Gothic tribes, and the latter as one of the countries where it was most deeply rooted.

Based on a mixture of historical facts and widespread commonplaces, this baggy set of ideas bore on the near-contemporaneous genesis of *Blackwood's* German and Spanish "Horæ." It was also reinforced by influential critical and scholarly publications such as those of the Schlegel brothers, which instigated a Europe-wide rediscovery and re-evaluation of Spanish literature (see Saglia "True Essence"). In Britain, John Black's translation of August Wilhelm Schlegel's *Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature* appeared in 1815 and was widely reviewed, as was John Gibson Lockhart's version of Friedrich Schlegel's *Lectures on the History of Literature: Ancient and Modern* (see Boening). Though often inaccurate and provocative (Vigus 701), the latter provided an authoritative foundation for the two series of "Horæ" thanks to Friedrich Schlegel's universalizing approach coupled with a localized focus, its transnational outlook and the singling out of the peculiarities and merits of Spanish and German literature.

Originally delivered in Vienna in 1812 and published in 1815, Friedrich Schlegel's *Lectures* trace an extensive and polemically argued history of literature from antiquity, covering Western, Northern and Eastern Europe and some Oriental traditions such as the Indian. German literature holds a central place, and this patriotic priority, as well as that of August Wilhelm's *Lectures on Dramatic Literature*, did not pass unnoticed. William Hazlitt explicitly addressed

<sup>2</sup> In a letter to John Gisborne of 10 April 1822, Shelley compares *Faust* and *El mágico* and observes that, of the two writers, "Göthe was the greatest philosopher & Calderon the greatest poet" (II, 407).

it at the start of his *Edinburgh Review* piece on August Wilhelm's *Lectures*: "This work is German; and is to be received with the allowances which that school of literature generally requires," such as what he terms a remarkable "desire of distinction" (67).3 Friedrich Schlegel's *Lectures* delineate a literary-cultural narration in which German literature stands out at strategic turning points: structurally, at the beginning and the end of his account; in literary history, in the Middle Ages and the present. Thus, at the start of the first lecture, Schlegel extols the "great" and "fortunate alteration" undergone by the "human mind" particularly in Germany over the previous hundred years (I, 1), and in subsequent lectures regularly covers aspects of German literature in detail.4 In the conclusion, he declares that, if other nations of Europe "have had their time [in literature], it is fit that we should now have ours" (II, 309). This patriotic note resonates throughout the *Lectures* together with a countervailing celebration of the values of other European literatures, and particularly that of Spain, to the extent that this work marks an epoch in the reception and construction of Spanish literature, fixing the critical direction of travel for decades to come (Cabo Aseguinolaza 54).

For Schlegel, Spanish literature possesses several unique features, the most conspicuous being its "historical heroic romance of the Cid" (I, 343) because of its antiquity and intensely national qualities: "A single work, such as the Cid, is of more real value to a nation than a whole library of books, however abounding in wit or intellect, which are destitute of the spirit of nationality" (I, 343). Thanks to its equally outstanding corpus of medieval ballads and Golden Age drama, Spain encapsulates the "essence of the romantic" outlined in the twelfth lecture (II, 135).5 Spanish poetry is "the matchless wonder of romantic writing" (II, 96), and Calderón "the best of all romantic dramatists" (II, 139). The special qualities of this literary tradition are fully visible in passages such as the following:

<sup>3</sup> On August Wilhelm Schlegel's greater impact than Friedrich's on British Romantic-era culture, see Dumke and Halmi. In 1825, Lockhart wrote on behalf of the publisher John Murray to invite August Wilhelm to write for the *Quarterly Review* (Paulin 513).

<sup>4</sup> Schlegel's comments on the remarkable changes undergone by Germany in the preceding century recall Walter Scott's similar observations in chapter 25 of *Waverley* (1814), entitled "A Postscript, which should have been a Preface," and in the "Dedicatory Epistle" to *Ivanhoe* (1819).

<sup>5</sup> In Lecture XII, Schlegel defines the romantic as consisting "entirely in that feeling of love […] by which sorrows are represented as the only way to happiness," predominant in Christianity but "by no means inconsistent with the ancients and the true antique" (II, 135–6).

That the peculiar language and cultivation of the Spaniards have attained within their own limits a very great degree of perfection, has been recognised of late years with more justice than formerly. The only relic of the old prejudice is the notion so prevalent among our critics, that the excellence of the Spanish language and literature has been almost entirely confined to poetry; whereas, as all well acquainted with the subject must know, one great advantage of the Spanish language, and I might add of the national character, consisted in this, that the prose of that language was much more early and had been much more excellently developed than in any other of the Romanic dialects. (II, 43)

This passage pivots on the term and concept of *limits*, which, as Santiago Pérez Isasi observes, informs nineteenth-century definitions of "the chronological, linguistic and geographical limits of the Spanish nation and literature," and also of "the inner limits of Spanishness" (171). In turn, in Lockhart's translation, *limits* does not refer to limitations or shortcomings, but rather boundaries, the clearly delimited perimeter of the national imagination, its linguistic, geo-cultural and spiritual extension. Focusing on Spain's limits, Schlegel composes a picture in which the nation's place, character and imagination neatly overlap. In actual fact, elsewhere in the book Schlegel notes that Spain's early literature should be properly called Castilian, and that Catalonia possesses a separate tradition. These reservations notwithstanding, the *Lectures* posit Spanish literature as a homogeneous ensemble that, as an undiluted expression of the national character, has achieved a "very great degree of perfection." Unsurprisingly, praise for its qualities is often phrased in the superlative: "the literature and poetry of Spain are most admirable," in that "Every part of them is penetrated with the noblest natural feeling; strong, moral, and deeply religious, even where the immediate subject of writing is neither morality nor religion" (Schlegel II, 97–8).

More generally, Spanish literature is central to Schlegel's narrative because it bears out "one general reflection" developed in the tenth lecture and one of the key statements in the entire work: "Every independent and distinct nation has, as I believe, the right to possess a peculiar literature; that is, to possess an improved and cultivated national language, for without that no degree of intellectual refinement can become truly national and effectual" (II, 56). A truly national literature is grounded in a solidly national language, the strength of which is also demonstrated by its capacity to assimilate elements from other languages without losing its own identity. The "care of the national language," the need to keep it "pure and entire," also involves the correct – that is, carefully monitored – incorporation of features from other "modern dialects" (II, 57). Specifically, Spain has a major advantage over other European cultures, since its language "was much more early and had been much more excellently developed" in prose, and not merely in poetry, "than in any other of the Romanic dialects" (II, 43).

The August 1818 issue of *Blackwood's* carried an essay by Lockhart entitled "Remarks on Schlegel's History of Literature," where he reprised some of the central ideas in the *Lectures* and explored further the implications of Schlegel's "one general reflection." This was both a promotional piece for his translation and a means of expounding his critical reflections on Schlegel's work. Anticipating the launch of both the German and Spanish "Horæ" by only a few months, the essay is a significant part of their theoretical background.

In accordance with *Blackwood's* direct and pugnacious style, Lockhart's main statements tend to take the form of proclamations. He applauds Schlegel's tenet that "literature should have reference to an established centre, namely, to religious faith, and to national history and character" (Lockhart 500). He also extols the *Lectures* as a timely intervention because of their endorsement of conservative and traditionalist principles, which are fully visible in the closing lecture, where Schlegel attacks the "wild wanderings of reason and power of thought" promoted by radical Enlightenment philosophy (II, 308). Glossing this point, Lockhart stresses that "The object of that philosophy was revolution; its engine was derision. Its masters devoted all their talents to destroy the habitual veneration with which their countrymen of France and of Europe were accustomed to regard the political, moral, and religious institutions of their fathers" (498–9). He adds that "a single generation of abstract reasoners is enough to vitiate the pedigree of national sentiment and association" (511). And this is where Schlegel's *Lectures* become especially relevant, since they point to literature as an antidote for the most pernicious effects of Enlightenment thinking: "[Schlegel] is quite right in believing that, as the evil has proceeded, so must the cure also proceed from the influence of literature" (499).

Envisaging the *Lectures* as "a noble effort to counteract and repel" the noxious power of abstract rationalism (499), Lockhart subscribes to Schlegel's reflections on the capacity of literature to influence "the fate of nations" (I, 1). Echoing the German author's strenuous defence of the Middle Ages, Lockhart transforms him into a knight valiantly fighting Enlightenment rationalistic excess thanks to the chivalrous "liberality of his views" (507). The latter trait is especially significant, in that it attenuates the hostility towards Schlegel's Catholicism, making it palatable to a Protestant readership. It also serves to prepare the ground for the readers' appreciation of Calderón, one of the pivotal authors in Schlegel's account, whose dramatic production is steeped in Catholic dogma and bears out Schlegel's religiously inflected notion of "the romantic" in *Lectures*. In addition, "liberality" presents some evidently ideological connotations by association with the political meaning of "liberal" that was gaining ground at the time and was one of the favourite targets of *Blackwood's* vitriol.6 In view of the strongly ideological tenor of Schlegel's *Lectures*, by referring to the liberality of his ideas Lockhart seems to be covertly appropriating this term and concept in order to reintegrate it into conservative discourse and provide further weaponry for *Blackwood's* anti-liberal campaign.

The "Remarks" of August 1818 confirm that Lockhart found in Schlegel's *Lectures* some formidable support for a conservative rethinking of literature, which has different but connected results in the German and Spanish "Horæ." The former outline German literature as recent, intensely contemporary and innovative. Not so much in contrast, but rather relatedly, the value of Spain's ancient literature lies in its providing Lockhart with an additional point of access to the Schlegelian notion of "the potential of literary culture to reinvigorate national identities, define societies and capture the spirit of an age" (Wall 211). As in Schlegel's *Lectures*, in Lockhart's "Horæ" literature is an instrument of ideological fashioning, a means of acting upon what, in the Romantic period, commentators called "the public mind" (Bowers 7–10). The unique features of Spain's literature make it a source of invaluable evidence in support of this reconfiguration of ideology and politics through the correcting power of a genuinely national literature; and, as anticipated, the early "Horæ" outline a decidedly "Germanized" vision of Spanish literature.

The inaugural Spanish "Hora" starts with an overview of the Arabic influence on the language and literary imagination of Spain, rehearsing some familiar facts and commonplaces: the transformation of the Iberian Peninsula into a province of the Umayyad Caliphate set off the process of the Christian Reconquest and the emergence of the spirit of Spain, in which, as its poetry demonstrates, "the rage of hostility" (482) between Christianity and Islam gradually gave way to cultural interfusion. Recurrent in Romantic-era accounts of the foundations of Spanish literature, this orientalist opening seems to contradict the Schlegelian emphasis on the national integrity of Spanish literature. It is, in fact, entirely consonant with Schlegel's notion that a healthy national language (and literature) can incorporate and successfully assimilate elements from other traditions. Accordingly, Lockhart considers the late medieval *romances* as evidence of the

<sup>6</sup> See, for instance, the savage attack on Byron's, Shelley's and Leigh Hunt's periodical *The Liberal* (1822–3), entitled "The Candid" (possibly by J. Gillon or John Wilson), the first instalment of which appeared in the January 1823 number of *Blackwood's*. The issue for March of the same year contained John Wilson's review of Lockhart's *Ancient Spanish Ballads* (1823), which recovered some of the material published in the earliest "Horæ Hispanicæ."

Spaniards' "erect and high-spirited" character, still present among the "peasantry of that country," who are "the genuine and uncorrupted descendants of their manly forefathers" (482). He also underlines the absence of "bigotry" (483) in the Spanish character at least until the reign of Charles V, and emphasizes the "liberality of the old Spaniards" (483), thus reiterating a keyword from his 1818 essay on Schlegel's *Lectures*. The latter chivalric trait manifested itself in the many instances of "mutual esteem" and cultural, religious, and political coexistence in medieval Spain, which was registered in poetry about warriors like the Cid or Bernardo del Carpio, who fought for Christian and Islamic rulers alike (484). Lockhart then introduces the ballad cycles on these two warrior-heroes, the Infantes de Lara, and King Pedro the Cruel, and provides selected translations including the "famous ballad on Don Raymon of Butrago," "The Death of Queen Blanche," and a number of *romances* on Granadan themes.

With its markedly prefatory tone, the first "Hora" converged into Lockhart's introduction to his 1823 volume of *Ancient Spanish Ballads*, where he also specifies his major German source: G. B. Depping's innovative *Sammlung der besten alten Spanischen Historischen, Ritter und Maurischen Romanzen*, published in 1817 (in the "Hora," in contrast, the only *auctoritas* indicated in a footnote is J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi). But, if the first Spanish "Hora" seemed to promise further in-depth investigations of, and translations from, the *romances*, subsequent instalments turned out to be short notices rather than full-fledged essays. The second and third Spanish "Horæ" are strikingly brief in comparison with the much more expansive contemporaneous "Horæ Germanicæ," which probably absorbed most of Lockhart's energies at this stage. Even so, these short pieces should not be overlooked, in so far as they lay bare and strengthen *Blackwood's* Germanized approach to Spanish literature. Specifically, the second and third "Horæ" are doubly "interlocutory" pieces, since they present a dialogic and conversational form, as well as registering the Hispano-Germanic intersections mentioned above.

The second "Hora" (June 1820) contains two translations, "Song for the Morning of the Day of St John the Baptist" and "The Death of Don Alonzo of Aguilar," which the Editor (the fictional Christopher North) places in a German frame from the outset:

We have no doubt our readers will thank us for inserting the two following ballads, immediately after the preceding article on the Faustus of Goethe […] it cannot but afford a delightful sensation, to pass at once from the awful dreams and terrors of the most wildly imaginative poem that has been produced in these days, to the simplicity of those natural feelings, that are painted in both the pastoral song and the warlike ballad of the old days of Spain. (259)

He also suggests that passing from *Faust* to the *romances* "is like being thrown back at once, from the midst of the agonies of disturbed and perverted reason, into the clear open daylight of external things," or like "passing from some gloomy cathedral aisle, hung round with all the emblems of human nothingness" to "the smiling freshness of the green meadow, or the healthy breezes of the mountain" (259). The transition is from the "intangible" to the "tangible" (259), from a writing centred on inwardness to one focusing on exteriority, a difference that calls to mind Friedrich Schiller's contrast between sentimental and naïve poetry, which here translates into a shift from an unsettling to a fortifying literary experience.

If the Editor's list of natural images sets off the spiritual import of Spanish literature, the antithesis between *Faust* and the *romances* highlights the complementary nature of the two literary traditions. The more recently developed literature of Germany can offer figurations of human experience that are complexly and intensely of the present. Indeed, praising *Faust* in the *Lectures* as one of Goethe's greatest creations, Schlegel proclaims its utterly modern "representation of the mind struggling with the world" (II, 300). Relatedly, the literature of the "old days of Spain" encapsulates energies that, as the Editor intimates, are still fresh and new. Moreover, Lockhart's text reinforces the Hispano-Germanic connection by noting, in relation to the ballad on San Juan, that "Depping, in his annotations […], mentions that a custom, and a belief similar to those commemorated [in] Stanza 5th, are even at this time to be found extant among the Catholic peasantry of Southern Germany," so that the celebrations of St John's day are "still to be regarded in many parts of Europe, in something like the same light with our Allhallows Eve" (259). In the reduced space of this "Hora," various features of *Blackwood's* Hispano-Germanism interact, delineating an approach to Spanish literature that is emphatically transnational, even as it insists on its deep-seated national qualities. By the same token, Spanish literature emerges as the ambivalent – ancestral and originary, yet ever new – component of an intercultural matrix that speaks of and to the literary and cultural modernity of Europe.

The third "Hora" (January 1821) is framed as a letter to the Editor signed and dated "T. C. Dublin, 7th December, 1820." Authored by the Irish *Blackwood's* contributor George Downes, it is a response and a reaction to Lockhart's second "Hora." As with the latter, it is a conversationally structured piece linking the contents of different issues and creating a fictitious dialogue between the Editor and a reader, which echoes the dialogue between the Spanish and German literary traditions. The focus is still on "the romantic Minstrelsy" of Spain, and the country is defined as "*Spanien \* \* \* \* \* \* / Dem schönen Land des Weins und der Gesänge*" (359; italics original), a quotation from Goethe's *Faust* (as indicated in a note). This is followed by the remark "Having Rodd's and Depping's Collections by me, I was induced to look into the latter, and now send you the result of my meditations therein," and by the translations "The Ruins of the Castle of St Cervantes" and "The Fall of Roderick and Spain." Mentioning Thomas Rodd's pioneering *The Civil Wars of Granada* (1803) alongside Depping's more scholarly and philologically advanced *Sammlung*, the author sets into further relief the relevance of German scholarship for *Blackwood's* Hispanists. In light of their brevity and heterogeneous forms, the second and third "Horæ" contrast with the opening one and with later "Horæ Hispanicæ," such as those on *Siglo de Oro* drama penned by Mary Margaret Busk in the mid-1820s. However, though disarmingly brief at less than three pages, the third "Hora" reinforces the connection between this series and the "Horæ Germanicæ," as well as the participation of the "Horæ Hispanicæ" in *Blackwood*'s assemblage of multiple voices and points of view, a kaleidoscopic discourse that, in this case, produces a crosscultural focus on Spain and its literary heritage.

The Schlegelian focus introduced by Lockhart continued in later "Horæ Hispanicæ," though with interestingly different results, as in the tenth "Hora" (June 1825) in which Busk examines, and translates from, Calderón's *Agradecer y no amar*. In the opening paragraph, the author stresses that Spanish theatre deserves "more attention than it has hitherto met with in this country" for it may be "justly regarded as the parent stock of the modern Continental theatres" (641). These words blend an emphasis on relevance with a clear delimitation of that relevance, since Busk implicitly but unmistakably separates English and British drama and theatre from those of the rest of Europe. And, at this point, Friedrich Schlegel reappears, since Busk adds that Calderón's play is "the work of an author highly and deservedly celebrated by foreigners and rivals, as well as by his own countrymen – although we must confess ourselves absolutely astounded at Schlegel's comparing him to Shakespeare" (641).

Busk identifies affinities, but also draws lines, between national traditions through cross-referencing and comparison: "the Spanish theatre is the only one which can compete with our own in antiquity; it alone, like ours, burst at once from its shapeless chrysalis state, in full beauty and vigour, whilst those of France, Germany, &c. had, like some marine insects, to pass through various minor, unornamental, intermediate changes, previous to attaining their perfect form" (641). Regularly employed by Schlegel in *Lectures* to assess the potential and merits of different literatures, this comparative or contrastive approach appears also in the early "Horæ Germanicæ," where Lockhart suggests that the contemporary German stage may provide a model for the regeneration of English theatre. Emblematically, in the first German "Hora," on Müllner's *Guilt*, Lockhart exclaims: "What would we give to see such a genius among ourselves bestowing all the fine and free energies of his youth upon our own drama" (122). In contrast, Busk's remarks sound a much more distinct note of national pride, reflecting an awareness of the historical, formal and spiritual peculiarities of the English-language literary tradition. In contrast to what happens in Calderón's religious dramas, she observes, bringing "sacred beings" on stage is blasphemy "to our English ideas" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. X" 641). Thus, while following the Schlegelian principle of literary nationalism, Busk's piece also demonstrates that the Spanish "Horæ" do not hold to it unconditionally. Firmly placed at the centre of the series by Lockhart, Schlegel continues to be a major point of reference, but also of disagreement and revision, as in Busk's piece, where she accepts his singling out of the Baroque playwright, yet is also wary of bestowing undiluted praise and disregarding national cultural traits.

Put differently, though Busk qualifies the extent to which the "Spanish Horæ" adhere to Schlegel's assessments, she still refers to him as an authority and, in line with his *Lectures*, focuses on Calderón from a national perspective promoting the values of tradition and heritage. The latter had been highlighted by Lockhart in his essay of August 1818, where he denounced the "self-gratulations of the present generation" stemming from the misplaced conviction that "the present age" is "the most enlightened which the world has ever seen" (497). Building upon Schlegel's ideologically embattled critical positions, he counters such short-sighted notions by insisting on historical depth. In line with the *Lectures*, he emphasizes "the spirit of thought introduced by the philosophy of the last century," which harnessed "derision" and "revolution" to "undermine those forms of government which are established among all the descendants of the Gothic conquerors of Europe" (498–9). Schlegel's work is a powerful corrective to these tendencies, a work intended "to arouse forgotten thoughts and despised feelings, and to make men be national and religious once more, in order that once more they may be great" (499). Capitalizing on the principle introduced by Schlegel in Lecture XVI, that a "revived love of old traditions and romantic poetry" (II, 308) can protect nations and societies "from the first encroachments of corruption" (II, 310), Lockhart appropriates and redeploys what Paul Hamilton defines as the German critic's endorsement of "a fundamental historicism of the past to reinvent the present Europe" (137).

That this operation is largely consonant with the climate of the post-Napoleonic Restoration is clear from Lockhart's 1818 essay, which celebrates *Lectures* as "the most rational and profound view of the history of literature which has yet been presented to Europe" (511) and casts Schlegel as the restorer of rationality to its proper sphere by removing it from the "wild wanderings of reason and power of thought set free from all controul" (Schlegel II, 308). Schlegel's programme of literary regeneration signals a process of beneficial transformation, through which "profoundness of reason" and "fullness and majesty of fancy […] have been *restored*" (II, 309; emphasis added). As Fiona Robertson points out, two meanings of "restoration" coexisted in post-Napoleonic cultural and political discourse – returning to an original state and introducing something new (48, 49) – and both informed a lively debate on the Restoration as "not simply looking backwards, but also creating a present and future […] for post-Napoleonic Europe" (51). Aptly, Robertson examines these ideas in relation to Walter Scott's fiction, and indeed they play a central part in a text roughly contemporary with Lockhart's ventures examined in the essay: the Dedicatory Epistle to *Ivanhoe*, which problematizes the links between past and present, and the translatability of the former into the latter.7 Schlegel's *Lectures* interweave these two perspectives through a critical approach that, as Hamilton suggests, "historicizes the middle ages [*sic*], rendering past and present contingent upon what we make of them" (135) within a European frame, so that, "Schlegel tells us, Spain is a way of being European; so is France, so is Germany, so is a sensitivity to the Eastern sources of European culture" (136). This amounts to a "synthetic method" that "should drive an understanding of the process of a common culture and translate into political tolerance and unity" (136), an outlook informed by the blend of transnational and national features peculiar to Europe's history.

As the early Spanish "Horæ" belong to this fraught terrain, their ideological intentionality also reads as a response to contemporary liberal engagements with southern European literatures, most notably the pieces on Spanish literature regularly appearing in the Whig *New Monthly Magazine* in these years (see Saglia "Hispanism"). After the institution of a constitutional monarchy in 1820, following Rafael del Riego's liberal *pronunciamiento*, Spain had again become a crucible of confrontations between liberal and reactionary ideas and politics. Thus, discussions of its history and heritage were rarely neutral, and the strongly conservative nature of a Schlegelian approach to Spanish literature could not be ignored. In a review of Lockhart's translation of *Lectures* published in the *Monthly Review* for October 1819, before reproducing a long excerpt on early Germanic epos and Scandinavian mythology, the author sketches a revealing portrait of the German author:

<sup>7</sup> The novel was published in December 1819, but bears the date 1820; the Dedicatory Epistle is dated 1817. On the latter, see Chandler 140–7.

Mr Frederick Schlegel is of Danish extraction, was born a Protestant, and began his literary career in a liberal spirit, as a friend of freedom: but circumstances, and the writings of Mr Burke, have altered the direction of his opinions: he has conformed to the Romish religion, has accepted employment at the court of Vienna, and, under the patronage of Prince Metternich, (to whom the German original of this work is dedicated,) undertakes in sixteen lectures a survey of the literature of the world, with a view to discredit the philosophic and innovative class of writers, and to revive public confidence in the panegyrists of orthodoxy and legitimacy. ("Schlegel's *Lectures*" 148)

This passage registers all the failings that liberal opinion could attribute to Schlegel. The critic is a turncoat in more ways than one, being of Danish origins but now fully Germanized, a Protestant turned Catholic, a liberal seemingly converted by Edmund Burke's conservative writings and in the service of one of the most obscurantist and autocratic powers in Europe. As the author of this piece intimates, Schlegel's *Lectures* are the product of a backward-looking process of Restoration, an instrument of the Holy Alliance; and by this token, the liberalleaning periodical seems to warn its readers to beware of those who follow in the path of the *Lectures*, such as Schlegel's Scottish translator and commentator.

Placing Spanish literature within a conservative critical frame, the "Horæ Hispanicæ" set store by its traditional and originary features, its status as a reservoir of national identity and a textual shrine of the nation's spiritual essence. At the same time, as the contextual explorations in this essay demonstrate, Lockhart's operation had wider aspirations, too, since it aimed to contribute to a more general counteracting of the "wild wanderings of reason […] set free from all controul" and an opposition to emancipatory developments, radical or liberal discourse, and revolutionary ferments. In light of this conception of Restoration, his early "Horæ Hispanicæ" afford insights into Spanish literature that converge into a broader therapeutic programme based on Schlegel's principle that, "as the evil has proceeded, so must the cure also proceed from the influence of literature."

#### **Bibliography**


### **Part III Appropriating Classical Authors**

#### Cristina Flores Moreno

### **Chapter 6 Lope de Vega Reviewed in the British Romantic Periodical Press (1790s– 1820s): Building the Spanish National Character\***

**Abstract** This chapter delves into the reception of the Spanish Golden Age author Lope de Vega in the British Romantic periodical press. With the exception of some publications exploring Lope's presence in works by Robert Southey and Mary Shelley, there is a conspicuous lack of scholarly work on his literary afterlife in Romantic Great Britain, while no study has yet provided a comprehensive view of his presence in the literary reviews published in periodicals during the Romantic period. The survey of the main British periodicals of this period reveals a number of reviews of the "Phoenix of Spain" published in *The Annual Review*, *The Monthly Magazine*, *The Edinburgh Review*, *The Quarterly Review*, *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* and *The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal.* In them, reviewers comment on a good number of works by the prolific Spanish author, with a clear preference for his poetic production. Interestingly, these comments often touch on cultural, political and religious issues beyond the literary quality of the work reviewed. Their analysis thus offers not only an overview of Lope's reception in Romantic Britain but also allows us to explore the intricacies of Anglo-Spanish cultural exchange and the construction of a certain idea of *Spanishness*, the latter of which was not independent of the reviewers' and journals' ideological stances or developments on the political scene.

**Keywords:** British Romanticism, periodical press, Lope de Vega, canon, national identity.

At the end of the eighteenth century, little was known in Great Britain about Lope de Vega apart from his prolific body of work, generally exaggerated. Only two of Lope's plays were available in English translation: *El peregrino en su patria* (1604), rendered in two different anonymous translations, *The Pilgrime of Casteele* (1621) and *The Pilgrim; or the Stranger in His Own Country* (1738), notorious for the liberties taken with the integrity of the original (Chamosa 150); and *Castelvines y Montaneses* (1647), translated as *Romeo and Juliet. A Comedy* (1770), which seems to have received a certain degree of attention given its similarity to

<sup>\*</sup> The research for this chapter was funded by the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00.

Shakespeare's well-known play.1 Due to this conspicuous absence of Lope's texts in English, British readers of his works necessarily had to do so either in the original Spanish or, perhaps most frequently, through secondary sources. In the first group, eighteenth-century authors such as Edward Clarke, George Glas and Sir John Talbot Dillon contributed to the creation of English opinions on Spanish letters in general and Lope in particular through their travel narratives, as has been brilliantly shown by Comellas and Sánchez Jiménez. Their sojourns in Spain provided these authors with the opportunity to learn the language and gain access to Spanish texts. They read not only Lope's *oeuvre* but also some critical and biographical pieces that presented the Spanish playwright as one of the best, and almost at the same level of excellence as the English Bard. As a case in point, Clarke announced that "Lopez [*sic*] de Vega Carpio […] comes nearest to our Shakespeare" (65); and Dillon underlined "the surprising genius of Lope de Vega, the contemporary, and in a manner rival, of our immortal Shakespeare" (v).

The reception of Lope gained momentum at the turn of the nineteenth century, thanks mainly to the influential works by Robert Southey and Henry Richard Vassal Fox, Third Lord Holland, two of the most prominent Hispanists of the Romantic period,2 who paved the way for the growth of Lope's popularity in the context of the then emergent Romantic Movement. Southey's *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* (1797), which recounts his four-month visit to the Iberian Peninsula in 1795–6, follows in the tradition of travelogues written by British travellers in Spain but stands out for the close attention devoted to Spanish (and Portuguese) literature. His work, meaningfully subtitled *With some Account of Spanish and Portugueze Poetry*, includes "An Essay on Spanish and Portuguese Poetry" and "Analysis of *La Hermosura de Angelica*. An Heroic Poem by Lope de Felix de Vega Carpio," the latter interspersed with translations of long passages of Lope's poem.3 Southey's narrative, along with Holland's *Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio* (1806), engendered interest

<sup>1</sup> The full title of the translation reads: *Romeo and Juliet. A Comedy*. *Written originally in Spanish by that celebrated dramatic poet, Lopez de Vega, contemporary with Shakespear, and built upon the same story on which that greatest Dramatic Poet of the English Nation has founded his well-known Tragedy.*

<sup>2</sup> For Southey's translations of Spanish texts, see: Chamosa González and Guzmán González; Saglia, "Robert Southey's *Chronicle;*" Zarandona, "Robert Southey" and "*The Amadis of Gaul.*"

<sup>3</sup> For the identification of the Spanish and Portuguese literary texts included in *Letters*, as well as a detailed study of Southey's analysis and fragmentary translation of Lope's *La hermosura de Angélica*, see Flores and González.

in the Spanish author among their contemporaries. Holland, whose house and private library became the cultural centre of London Hispanophilia,4 felt a deep fascination for Lope. His reading of Lope's works, which can be traced back to the 1790s (Bowers 164), eventually materialized in the pages of *Some Account* in 1806, and its revised edition in 1817. There, he provided a biography and a selection of texts along with his own translation. Many of Lope's texts are referred to in *Some Account*, 5 and some are discussed in greater detail and are even partially translated, as in the case of *Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo* (9–10), *Arcadia* (17–23), *La hermosura de Angélica* (31–8, 41), *Écloga a Claudio* (45–6), *El duque de Viseo* (119–24) and *La Estrella de Sevilla* (132–76). Thanks to the translations, albeit fragmentary, of Lope in Southey's and Holland's volumes, the catalogue of his works in English increased in number and displayed examples of a wider variety of genres. In fact, apart from the rendering of *El padre engañado*, from a French version, probably by Thomas Holcroft published in *The Theatrical Recorder* (1805) (29–41), there would be no further translations of Lope's works before Fanny Kemble's *The Star of Seville* (1837).

Holland's *Some Account* would prove to be the most influential text on Lope in Britain throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. As Southey claimed in his review of the first edition: "concerning Lope de Vega, it will now no longer be excusable for Englishmen to be ignorant" (Review of *Some Account* 397). No wonder, then, that when Mary Shelley undertook the task of writing the Spanish author's biography for her *Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal* (1834–9), published in 1837, she drew mostly upon Holland's treatise (Vargo xxxi–xxxii). Shelley, like Southey and Holland before her, presented an ambiguous attitude towards the Spanish author, due to her liberal ideology, her romantic aesthetics and her anti-Catholic prejudices (Sánchez

<sup>4</sup> See Bowers for an introduction to Holland House as a literary coterie; and Moreno Alonso, with Saglia's "Holland House," for Lord Holland's connections with relevant Spanish political figures.

<sup>5</sup> The list of Lope's works mentioned and briefly discussed in *Some Account* is long: *Laurel de Apolo*, *Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo*, *La hermosura de Angélica*, *La Dragontea*, *Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos*, *Égloga a Claudio*, *Jerusalén conquistada*, *El peregrino en su patria*, *Pastores de Belén*, *Triunfo de la fe*, *Las fortunas de Diana*, *La Circe*, *La Filomena*, *Soliloquios amorosos de un alma a Dios*, *Corona trágica*, *La Andrómeda*, *La Gatomaquia*, *El duque de Viseo*, *Roma abrasada*, *El marido más firme*, *La Estrella de Sevilla* (and Trigueros's reworking *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas*), *La dama melindrosa*, *El acero de Madrid*, *La esclava de su galán* and *La bella malmaridada.*

Jiménez 21). In their texts, these three British authors engaged in a dialogue among themselves and with other early tentative accounts of Spanish literature, thus taking an active part in the forging of the then emerging historiography of that literary tradition. In this process, the role of the periodical press should not be passed over for, as Parker has argued, "They produce[d] the official discourse on literature, through reviews and running commentary through their pages" (27). Reviews and articles in the press also participated in that dialogue and helped shape the image of a literary tradition, an author or a work, actively contributing to the creation of literary history and canons. And yet, only Saglia has discussed the important part played by one specific journal, *The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal*, in the diffusion of Spanish material and Spanishinspired literature over a span of five years (1820–5) ("Hispanism").

It is also worth noting that the birth of literary history in the early nineteenth century was closely connected to the notion of national identity, which originated in the Romantic period. Johann Gottfried von Herder's concept of *Volksgeist*, or national character, was crucial in the configuration of modern literary history, as Pérez Isasi notes, "not only because it establishes its object […] but because it also affects the way in which texts, authors, genres and periods are read and assessed" (185). This is particularly interesting in the case of Spanish literary history, since the earliest accounts were provided by foreign authors, such as Voltaire, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Simonde de Sismondi or Friedrich Bouterwek, as well as foreign travellers and reviewers, who attempted a delineation of the genuine features of Spanishness by contrast with their own national identity. Therefore, to write about Spanish literature in the first decades of the nineteenth century was not only an aesthetic choice, it was also an ideological position that confronted the foreign, or Other, and the autochthonous (Rodríguez Cuadros 258). In this context, different and sometimes even antithetical constructions of Spain arose. It is agreed that the image of Spain was "largely the creation of Romanticism" (Saglia and Haywood 1), an "invention" (Howarth).

Johnston, in his study of the English translations of Lope's texts, alludes to the national character of his works, which he describes as the "model of Spanish ethnicity" (301), as the main reason for the lack of interest in the Spanish author in England before the eighteenth century. Lope was closely associated with national aspirations, and his drama was encoded as a "'national' theatre whose frame of reference could only be understood through the framework of local history" (301). This association was not only a serious obstacle to the foreign reception of Lope's works, as Johnston rightly suggests, but it also determined how they were interpreted and assessed, as is attested by the reviews published in British periodicals during the Romantic period. This chapter traces the presence of Lope de Vega in the major British magazines and journals of the Romantic period so as to draw a picture of the images projected of the Spanish playwright and his works, which prove not to be entirely separate from a certain ideologically biased construct of the Spanish national character.

A survey of the main British magazines and journals of the Romantic period reveals the presence of the "Spanish Phoenix," as Lope was known, in a number of articles and reviews published in *The Annual Review*, *The Monthly Magazine*, *The Edinburgh Review*, *The Quarterly Review*, *The Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* and *The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal*. Some are long discussions on Lope, while others make only a passing reference. Among the latter is an article that refers to Lope as "that prodigy of nature" (Munden 121), and a review in which little is said about Lope beyond the general statement that he "never attains to the highest degree of excellence, and never sinks to mediocrity" (Hare-Naylor 141). The rest, however, comment on a good number of works by the prolific Spaniard, with a clear preference for his non-dramatic production, since allusions to his epic poems (*La hermosura de Angélica*, *La Dragontea*, *Isidro* and *Jerusalén conquistada*) and shorter poetry (*Rimas Humanas y Divinas del Licenciado Tomé de Burguillos* and *Rimas sacras*) abound. References are also made to Lope's pastoral fiction (*La Arcadia*, *La Dorotea*) but, as regards his dramatic production, only *La Estrella de Sevilla* (at that time unquestionably attributed to Lope) and the revised version by Cándido María Trigueros, entitled *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas* (sometimes wrongly attributed to Lope), and some interludes are also reviewed.

In December 1796, Robert Southey wrote a sketch demolishing the Spanish author. Back home after his journey through the Iberian Peninsula, during which he was engaged in reading, writing commentary on, and abridging some of Lope's works, he published an article entirely devoted to the Phoenix in the liberal *The Monthly Magazine*. "On the Poetry of Spain and Portugal," which is surely a blueprint for the "Essay on Spanish and Portuguese Poetry" he later included in *Letters* (1797), is part of a series of ten articles on Spanish and Portuguese poetry published between 1796 and 1798 in *The Monthly Magazine* (Curry, "Southey's Contributions" 215).6 In the first piece of the series, Southey states: "We have, indeed, often heard of Lope de Vega," "but with [his] merit the English reader is utterly unacquainted" ("On the Poetry of Spain and Portugal

<sup>6</sup> See Curry's "Reviews, Editions, and Translations" for a brief introduction to Southey's task as a reviewer, with a focus on his work for the *Quarterly Review* and the *Annual Review*, and "Southey's Contributions" for a list of Southey's articles in *The Monthly Magazine* and *The Athenaeum*.

[1]" 451). To reverse this situation, he aimed to give "some account of the best Spanish and Portuguese poets, to analyse the plans of their most esteemed works, and translate such specimens as […] may give some idea of the genius, taste, and manner of authors" (451). Southey acknowledges as his main sources Dillon's *Letters from an English Traveller in Spain in 1778 on the Origin and Progress of Poetry in that Kingdom* (1781), which in turn draws upon *Fama posthuma a la vida y muerte del doctor Frey Lope Felix de Vega Carpio* (1636) by Juan Pérez de Montalbán, and Miguel de Cervantes's prologue to *Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos* (1615), along with William Hayley's *An Essay on Epic Poetry* (1782). Both Dillon and Hayley take a Neoclassicist approach in their assessment of Lope's work, but they do this without diminishing his merits. Thus Dillon laments that the Spanish author "violated all the laws of drama, and introduced innumerable defects on the stage" (203), but nevertheless recognizes the "genius" of Lope, who "as another Shakespeare […] acquired universal admiration" (243). Their opinion of the Spanish author's works is essentially built upon aesthetic tenets, without the interference of any other ideological considerations, whether religious, political or national (Comellas and Sánchez Jiménez 269).

Southey's analysis of Spanish letters in his articles for *The Monthly Magazine* is, in contrast, rather ideologically biased. Having suggested that "poetical genius is certainly a barometer that rises or falls according to the state of the political atmosphere" ("On the Poetry of Spain and Portugal [1]" 452), he argues that the state of contemporary politics greatly hindered the genius of Lope. Southey first places the Spanish author in his historical background, alluding to the Black Legend and the decline of Spain:

The decline of the empire quickly succeeded, and Lope de Vega lived to witness the defeat of that Armada […] Spain has never recovered herself since the ruinous reign of Philip the Second. Not content with oppressing the Spaniards by the inquisition, he made them the instrument of oppression abroad; there indeed he failed; but though the liberty of Holland was established, the glory of Spain was destroyed. (452)

In these political circumstances, he continues:

He who entertains liberal sentiments, if he be obliged to submit his productions to the scrutiny of the inquisition, will write with timidity; and it may safely be asserted, that he who writes timidly, cannot write well. To look for the bold sublimity of genius where men are thus depressed, were as rational as to chain a race-horse, and expect him to win the race. (452)

In what at first may seem a rather contradictory line of argument, Southey assumes Lope's "liberal sentiments," only to assert that the Spaniard's alleged lack of poetic abilities is the result of his detrimental professional and personal connections with the Inquisition and the Duke of Alba, whom he wrongly identifies as the third Duke of Alba,7 the infamous politician and soldier, and a central figure in the Spanish Black Legend. These connections, in Southey's view, held Lope back from greatness:

[W]hen a young man, he wrote eclogues, and a comedy, in praise of the Grand Inquisidor; and a pastoral, in honour of the duke of Alva. From these symptoms, one who knew the human heart might have prophesied, that the young poet never would attain to excellence. ("On the Poetry of Spain and Portugal [2]" 860)

Southey believed that "the characteristic traits of every age […] may be read in their poetry" (*Letters* 132) and, consequently, did not dissociate the historical and political background from literary production in his assessment of Lope. Even though the Phoenix may have embraced hidden "liberal sentiments," he also suffered from the symptoms of contemporary Spanish political and religious maladies, and, as a consequence, in Southey's view, he was irremediably doomed to be "never sublime, seldom pathetic, and seldom natural; rarely above mediocrity in any of his writing" (860). Southey underlines the "intolerable dullness" of Lope's *Arcadia*, describes *Jerusalén conquistada* as "infinitely inferior to the works of Tasso, which it attempted to rival;" claims his *Dragontea* to be "very bad," the *Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos* to be "a species of poetry so despicable" and bluntly states of Lope's sonnets that "none of them are perfect as wholes." Ultimately, he concludes that "the impartial judgment of foreigners cannot rank his productions above mediocrity" (860, 861). Southey purposefully places himself in a position that he assumes confers objectivity to his appraisal. He acknowledges, however, that he views Lope's literary production from a national standpoint. His is an ethnocentric approach to the study of Lope, based on "difference" and the implied superiority of his own national identity which, far from bestowing impartiality to his viewpoint, highly conditions Southey's evaluation of Lope's production. With this brief sketch, which differs little from his opinion in *Letters*, Southey established the paradigm through which the Spanish author's works would generally be read subsequently. Lope is encoded as the epitome of a particular ideological construct of Spain, of which despotism, Inquisition, religious bigotry and superstition are the main constituent parts. The playwright is depicted as embodying the Black Legend that still lingered in the British cultural imaginary of Spanishness, and which Southey most probably saw mirrored

<sup>7</sup> Southey assumed that Lope's patron was Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, third Duke of Alba (1507–82), while he actually worked for Antonio Álvarez de Toledo y Beaumont, fifth Duke of Alba (1568–1635). See Southey (*Letters* 403 n. 178).

in contemporary Spain, under the rule of the absolutist monarch Charles IV (r*.* 1788–1808), an ally of France against the British.

The publication of Lord Holland's *Some Account* (1806) and its 1817 revised second edition, which was expanded to include a study of the Spanish dramatist Guillén de Castro y Bellvís, fostered debate about Lope in the pages of the main literary periodicals. *Some Account* was reviewed by Francis Jeffrey in *The Edinburgh Review* (1806) and twice by Southey, first in *Annual Review* (1807) and, a decade later, on the occasion of the second edition, in the *Quarterly Review* (1818).

Francis Jeffrey, editor and major contributor to *The Edinburgh Review*, agreed elsewhere with Southey that Spanish superstition and tyranny, the Inquisition and arbitrary governments had "in a great degree prevented those of the Spaniards in the career of letters and philosophy. But for this, the Spanish genius would probably have gone far" (Review of *De la Litérature considérée* 41). Accordingly, in his 1806 review of Holland's *Some Account*, Jeffrey pictures Lope as a "slave of jealousy, bigotry, and envy; [who] died at last a victim of the most degrading and miserable superstition" (227), which explain the numerous formal defects in his literary production, and he underlines the multitude of unnatural and improbable incidents that populate Lope's works: "his tragedies are stuffed full of inconsistencies and absurdities; and his comedies, of plots and intrigues," and the "chief merit of his dramatic pieces is […] that unlimited power of invention by which the author was enabled to crowd into most of his tragedies as much plot as would serve for at least four plays on any other theatre" (233). Jeffrey, a Whig, offers an assessment of Lope's drama noticeably coloured by his own political and religious prejudices.

As for Southey, in his review of the first edition of Holland's book, he stops to discuss Lope's *La Dragontea*, *El Isidro* and the play *La Estrella de Sevilla*, of which Holland had provided long summaries accompanied by quotations and translations of some excerpts. As noted above, the list of Lope's works mentioned and commented on in *Some Account* is certainly long and the short selection made by Southey is significant, since through the analysis of this particular corpus he finds the opportunity to reinforce his portrayal of Lope's production as the embodiment of Spanish popery and despotism. The epic poem *La Dragontea* is an account of Francis Drake's last expedition and death, which Lope presents as a successful Spanish Catholic crusade against English Anglicanism. And this is precisely what Southey emphasizes: "Lope had little reason to love Sir Francis Drake, and for Elizabeth he entertained a right catholick abhorrence, it is amusing to read the invectives in which the Spanish poets vented their hatred against her." And he concludes: "it is a dull poem" (401). In *El Isidro*, Southey sees best represented one of the aspects of Catholicism that he despised the most, the veneration of saints and miracles: "The Isidro is a wearying collection of miraculous stories" (401). In *La Estrella de Sevilla* it is the despotism and corruption of the Spanish monarchy: "such a story could excite no sympathy in our country. [An English audience] would revolt at it […] as something too monstrous, and too shocking to be believed. In Spain this was not felt; assassins were employed by their princes" (410). Southey transfers his criticism of the play to the audience on account of their reaction and, by doing so, extends his evaluation to all Spaniards and to their institutions. He also contrasts Spanish and English audiences in order to argue for the moral superiority of the latter.

This attitude towards Lope and Spain differs notably from that which Southey would display a decade later. By the time he embarked on a review of the second edition of *Some Account* in 1817, he had amassed a much greater knowledge of Lope's *oeuvre*, which had inspired some of his own literary outputs, as Gonzalez has shown. In this sense, it is worth noting the influence of Lope in Southey's *Roderick, The Last of the Goths* (1814), based upon the Spaniard's tragedy *El último godo*, which recounts the Spanish resistance against the Moorish invasion. With this poem, Southey aimed to show his disapproval of the Peninsular War (1808–14), in which the forces of Spanish resistance and the British were allied against the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.8 His wholehearted support of the Spanish and Portuguese cause is clearest in a series of articles he published in the *Edinburgh Annual Register*, where he provides a "non-Anglocentric account of the conflict" (Packer and Pratt 40). Moreover, he felt strong sympathies for the Spanish liberal movement that led to the ratification of the first Spanish Constitution in 1812 and effected some political reforms that moved Spain forward. He had also recently been appointed an honorary member of both the Spanish Royal Academy (1814) and the Spanish Royal Academy of History (1815). His long-felt wavering between fascination and repulsion for the Other fell more heavily on the side of fascination at this moment, as the limits between himself and the Spanish Other had started to fade away:

The account of Lope de Vega in the last Quarterly is mine […] I have read widely in Spanish poetry; and might in historical and literary recollections call myself half a Spaniard, if, being half a Portuguese also, this would leave any room for the English part of my intellectual being. (*Collected Letters* no. 3119)

<sup>8</sup> See Sánchez's "Southey, Spain, and Romantic Apostasy" for an analysis of *Roderick* in the light of the Peninsular War.

Southey's attitude towards all things Spanish had changed notably and, consequently, Lope is portrayed in a more sympathetic light in his review of the revised *Some Account of the Lives*. There, Southey revisits *La hermosura de Angélica*, *La Dragontea* and *Jerusalén conquistada*, and while he maintains his negative view of *La hermosura de Angélica* as unworthy of analysis, "without regularity, order, purport or interest of any kind" (22), his opinion of the other works has evolved. He shows his disagreement with Holland's censure of *Arcadia*, which is here said to be a poem that, although bearing a "meagre" fable, deserves to be praised for in its style there "is often felicity as well as force," and "Human feelings also are delineated with truth as well as passion" (16). As regards the poem on Francis Drake, *La Dragontea*, Southey shows some understanding of the reasons that moved Lope to write it, that is, to show "the valour of the Spaniards, and the miserable end to which the enemies of the church came" (25), given "that national hatred which Drake had well deserved of the Spaniards" (28). Finally, while he reasserts *Jerusalén conquistada*'s lack of unity, branding it a "failure […] and a total one," he concludes that "there is more vigour of thought in it, and more felicity of expression than in any other of his long poems" (30). He closes the article with the expression of his desire to "leave upon the reader an impression more favourable to the poet" (46).

Coinciding with the Liberal Triennium (1820–3), a period of constitutional monarchy, the *New Monthly Magazine*, whose political orientation under the influence of the Holland House Circle had become a liberal one, played an important role in the diffusion of Spanish literature (Saglia, "Hispanism"). As Sweet posits, the *New Monthly*'s politics mirrored those of the reform era itself; it supported constitutional and institutional reform, and its rallying point was Spain's Constitution of 1812, reinstated by Spanish liberals between 1820 and 1823 (Sweet 148, 151). In this context, an anonymous D published an article titled "On the Interludes of the Early Spanish Theatre" (1822), which is in fact a review of some of Lope's interludes: *Entremés de los huevos* (1612), *Entremés noveno de la cuna* (1609), *Entremés del sacristán Soguijo* (1613), *Entremés de los Romances* (1612) and *Entremés famoso del hospital de los podridos* (1617). The author underlines Lope's "brilliant imagination" and his "genius" (549, 550), and the discussion centres on the character of the sacristan as an example of the "hypocrisy and libertinism" (551) of the Catholic Church, which is the object of ridicule in most of these interludes. Finally, the author concludes, in these plays "we may judge of the frank and unrestrained joyousness of the old Spanish character, before bigotry and the Inquisition had rendered hypocrisy a duty, and thrown a deep and sombre tint over the manners of the people" (549–50). In these interludes, the "old Spanish character" is recovered. The author addresses here a different and more positive construction of the notion of Spanishness, of which Lope's works are also said to be representative. The interludes allow a glimpse of the Spanish past, before the Black Legend and the Inquisition, when chivalry was the main feature of the Spanish character. Nevertheless, they also address the present, that of a liberal Spain, where the 1812 Constitution has been restored and the Inquisition abolished.

In 1821, an anonymous review published in the *Quarterly Review*, tentatively attributed to Henry Hart Milman or Robert Southey, brought to the fore Ángel Anaya's anthology of Spanish drama *El teatro español, ó colección de dramas escogidos de Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Moreto, Roxas, Solis, Moratin y otros célebres escritores* (1817–21). The collection featured *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas*, *La moza de cántaro*, *El mejor alcalde, el rey* and *Por la puente, Juana*. The reviewer asserts: "The 'Estrella di [*sic*] Sevilla' is far superior to all the works by Lope which have fallen in our hands; indeed the arrangement of the plot is excellent" (5). Trigueros's recasting of *La Estrella de Sevilla*, *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas*, is the object of analysis of Mary Margaret Busk's review published in *Blackwood's Magazine* in 1825. Busk was a frequent contributor to *Blackwood's*, *The Foreign Quarterly* and *The Athenaeum*, where she discussed almost every continental literature (Curran 10). Busk, who in her review wrongly attributes *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas* to Lope and identifies both plays as one and the same, has been said to qualify "the ideas from the Continent that her work imported into England, more for the purpose of affirming England's superior standing in the world, and explaining European literatures against their English counterparts" (Johnston, *Victorian Women* 78). This is unquestionably the purpose behind her review of *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas*, which she considered "illustrative of the [Spanish] national character" (681). A summary of the plot and a translation of select passages are followed by a political interpretation of the play. The review concludes with a harsh attack on Spanish despotism, which well serves the purpose of proving, by contrast, the superiority of the English nation:

[W]e will detain our readers no longer than whilst we point out the whimsical anomaly arising from the poet's endeavour to represent such an equal administration of justice, even in opposition to the royal will or interest, as we enjoy in this free and happy land, as compatible with the licence of arbitrary power […] it is far from our purpose, in making this remark, to attempt convincing the contented slaves of an *absolute king* of the superior blessings of a limited and constitutional monarchy, such as ours. We value liberty too highly to cram it like a nauseous potion down the throat of any *Despotomaniac* patient, or even to bestow it as an alms upon a heartless and helpless mendicant. We merely meant to indulge an inclination which we sometimes could not bridle if we would, and oftener would not if we could – the inclination to enforce upon the hearts and minds of our readers the inestimable advantages enjoyed by them as Britons. (690)

As Southey had done in his review of *Some Account*, Busk transfers her criticism from the play on to the audience's reaction to it. Nonetheless, while Southey criticizes the acquiescence of Lope's contemporary audience, Busk finds a way to turn her review of *Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas* into a stern attack on Spanish contemporary politics. It makes a rather straightforward allusion to the recent return of King Ferdinand VII to absolute power in Spain, which brought the Liberal Triennium to an end. Once more, in a curious interplay between past and present, the past is used to address contemporary politics which, in turn, underpins the image projected of Lope's work for the British readership.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, when an author's "identification with the spirit of the nation was the key that guaranteed their inclusion in the literary canon" (Pérez Isasi 178), Lope de Vega ‒ "once the pride and glory of Spaniards" (Holland, *Some Account* 188) ‒ was granted an important place in the Spanish literary canon. In the reception of Lope's work in the British Romantic press, the opinions formed were far from based strictly upon aesthetic tenets. As shown above, Lope was generally decoded as the embodiment of a despotic and Catholic Spain, usually with the purpose of showing British superiority by contrast. Nonetheless, the more or (most frequently) less favourable appraisal of his work was linked to a certain extent to the changing political landscape and the reviewers' and journals' ideological stances. Hence, the analysis of Lope in the British press allows us a glimpse into the intricate mechanisms underpinning the construction of literary history and national character, and the pivotal role of the periodical press in this process.

#### **Bibliography**


#### Davinia Rodríguez-Ortega

### **Chapter 7 Translating Calderón de la Barca in British Romanticism: The Texts by Mary Margaret Busk in** *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* **(1825–1826)\***

**Abstract** In 1825 and 1826, the writer and translator Mary Margaret Busk published translations of three comedies by Calderón de la Barca in the pages of *Blackwood's Magazine*: *La devoción de la cruz*, *Agradecer y no amar* and *El maestro de danzar*. This chapter studies these translations in detail, paying special attention to points – such as the treatment of metre and rhyme, the choice of translated passages versus summarized passages, the relationship between Busk's translations and the literary essays that preceded them, and Busk's views on Calderón's dramatic output and the Spanish Golden Age – which betray her thoughts regarding Britain's literary superiority. Busk is particularly interested in the playwright's comic works, frowns upon the violation of the three classical or Aristotelian unities and expresses her difficulty in coming to terms with the polymetry that is such a recurrent feature of Calderón's plays. These translations are popularizing and light-hearted works mediated by an aesthetics that is not very sophisticated relative to Romantic innovations or to the author's Protestant ideology. All in all, they provide an illustration of the complexities involved in the assimilation of Calderonian drama within British Romanticism.

**Keywords:** Calderón de la Barca, *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*, Mary Margaret Busk, *Agradecer y no amar*, *La devoción de la cruz*, *El maestro de danzar*, translation.

#### **1. The Romantic Reception of Calderón in Europe: Germany and Britain**

Although traditionally it has been claimed that German Romanticism was a unique intellectual movement in its appropriation of the canon of Spanish Baroque literature, it is also essential to consider the way in which this canon reached other countries, like Britain, as the present chapter illustrates, so as to gain a more accurate insight into the broader reception of seventeenth-century Spanish authors in Europe. In the following pages I will address an example of

<sup>\*</sup> The research for this chapter was funded by the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00.

the reception of dramatic texts from the Spanish Golden Age: three comedies by Calderón de la Barca (*Agradecer y no amar*, *El maestro de danzar* and *La devoción de la cruz*). More specifically, I will focus on the English translations of these plays by Mary Margaret Busk, which were published in the conservative newspaper *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* in 1825 and 1826.

Calderón's theatre has been the subject of comprehensive studies concerning its reception in Europe (Franzbach) and, more particularly, in Germany (Sullivan). The critical reception of Calderón's plays by the English Romantics has been discussed by Almeida, Moro Martín, Moro Martín and Sáez, and Rodríguez Ortega, who pays special attention to the case of the *autos sacramentales*. These scholars highlight the recuperation of Calderonian theatre by British Romanticism after the rejection of Spain's Golden Age drama by Neoclassicism for precisely the same reasons mentioned by Busk herself in her introductory pieces: the mishmash of genres, the lack of historical rigour, the violation of the three classical unities, etc. However, the interest of the German Hispanists in the Romantic period succeeded in restoring Calderón de la Barca to the top of the European literary canon. The response of the British Hispanists, as I will illustrate below, was marked by a more reserved attitude regarding the merits of the Spanish playwright.

It should be mentioned at this point that Calderón was not the only author of the Spanish Golden Age to capture the interest of British Romantic scholars. Lope de Vega was especially favoured by the Hispanists Lord Holland and Robert Southey. Henry Richard Vassal Fox, Third Baron of Holland published the influential *Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio* (1806), which he later expanded with a study on another Golden Age playwright, Guillén de Castro, under the title *Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega and Guillen de Castro* (1817). Poet laureate Southey showed a continued interest in Lope de Vega throughout his life, as Flores and González, and Gonzalez, have shown. However, although Lope de Vega won the admiration of prestigious British Hispanists, he was generally considered inferior to Calderón, who would eventually occupy the first place in the Spanish literary canon of the seventeenth century.

#### **2. Outstanding English Translations of Calderón from the Romantic Period: Fanny Holcroft, Holland and Denis MacCarthy**

García Gómez ("Contextualización") sketches the landscape of Calderón's British reception in the nineteenth century one hundred years after the last significant adaptations and/or translations of his works. It was probably during the Romantic period that interest in the Madrid playwright really flourished: between 1805 and 1806, Fanny Holcroft published translations of *Peor está que estaba* [*From Bad to Worse*] and *Mejor está que estaba* [*Fortune Mends*]; and in 1807, Holland did the same with *La dama duende* [*The Fairy Lady*] and *Nadie fíe su secreto* [*Keep Your Own Secret*], and Antonio Solís y Rivadeneyra's *Un bobo hace ciento* [*One Fool Makes Many*], which were jointly published as *Three Comedies, translated from the Spanish*. The translators took a similar approach in their treatment of the original texts: for Holcroft, a mediation between Calderón's text and the English audience was necessary, since a literal rendering would not have been to their liking (García Gómez, "Contextualización" 164); Holland, in turn, argued that: "for this purpose the omission has not been scrupled of such passages as would have been particularly repugnant to our taste" ("Preface" xii–xiv). Issues as central to Calderón's theatre as its conservative character or the important role played by the Catholic religion had to be polished if the intention was to leave a mark on the British public.

Following the way paved by Holcroft and Holland, between 1819 and 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley worked on several scenes from *El mágico prodigioso*. The result was the partial translation that came to light after the poet's death in the joint work with Mary Shelley, *Posthumous Poems* (1824), and the rendering of a lost verse fragment from *La cisma de Inglaterra*, whose existence is corroborated in his correspondence (García Gómez, "Contextualización" 165). *El mágico prodigioso* had already aroused the interest of the British public, since in January 1824 *The Monthly Magazine* published an anonymous English translation of a well-known passage from the play, lines 349–436, a beautiful passage in which Calderón poetically recreates, through rich metaphors, the pallor of Anne Boleyn (Escudero Baztán, "Introducción" 6–7). This was one of the passages by the Madrid playwright that P. B. Shelley wanted to make known to the British public.

Then, between 1825 and 1826, the texts that constitute the subject of my analysis were published: the translations made by Mary Margaret Busk of *Agradecer y no amar* [*Courtesy Not Love*], *La devoción de la cruz* [*Worship of the Cross*]1 and *El maestro de danzar* [*The Dancing-Master*], in three issues

<sup>1</sup> This comedy was already known to the broader European public thanks to August Wilhelm Schlegel's 1804 translation which, according to Perojo Arronte (109), may have provided a starting point for Coleridge when he approached the work of the Madrid playwright; the English Romantic author may even have contemplated translating the play himself. For further information on Coleridge's interest in Calderón,

of *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*. Finally, special mention must be made of the enormous work by Denis F. MacCarthy, the most prolific translator of Calderón into English (Maggi 335),2 having translated eleven Calderonian comedies and three *autos sacramentales* between 1853 and 1873. Next, I will review the interpretive contribution of Holcroft and MacCarthy, since their translations frame Busk's work, both chronologically and with regard to the complexity of the results achieved.

Fanny Holcroft's translations of Calderón's comedies *Peor está que estaba* and *Mejor está que estaba* were published in 1806 in *The Theatrical Recorder*, a magazine founded and directed by her father, Thomas Holcroft. The latter knew French and Italian, but not Spanish, so that his own translation of Lope de Vega's *entremés* "El padre engañado" [The Father Outwitted] (1784) was produced based on the French version "Le Père trompé" (García Gómez, "Fanny Holcroft" 3–4). The choice of two Calderonian pieces by Fanny Holcroft was not a matter of chance: these translations would serve as an endorsement of her father's tirade against those who defended the three dramatic unities, providing relevant counterevidence from Calderón's plays (9). It is worth remembering that there was also controversy around the validity of Aristotelian poetics during the Golden Age, a period in which Lope de Vega laid down the basic premises of the socalled *comedia nueva* in his famous *Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo* [*New Art of Writing Plays in This Time*] (1609). According to Cañas Murillo (n. p.), Lope de Vega proposed a new way of making theatre that responded to public tastes, but also those of contemporary playwrights, since many of them adopted these theoretical premises in their texts.

With regard to the three unities, Lope only supported the need for the unity of action, as he indicates in *Arte nuevo* (181–200). We must not forget this point, since Busk's translations reveal a total unawareness of this debate, while her own preliminary comments point at flaws in Calderón's plays that are precisely a consequence of the innovations sanctioned by Lope following the changing tastes and demands of the contemporary public. All of which despite the fact that *Arte nuevo* was already known in England at that time, as is made evident in Holland's *Some Account*, where he dedicates many pages to this matter, incorporating

see Perojo Arronte. Another possible reader of *La devoción de la cruz* (and of *El purgatorio de San Patricio*) was P. B. Shelley, as is implied by a letter he addressed to Maria Gisborne, thanks to whom he had learned enough Spanish to be able to understand the text (Almeida 163).

<sup>2</sup> I am grateful to Eugenio Maggi for providing me with a copy of his manuscript, which was pending publication during the preparation of this study.

passages from the original and his own English translation. Holland defends the innovations that were being established at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Spain because, despite the fact that classical theatre could still be seen as a superior form of drama in terms of complexity of plots and poetic craft, Lope de Vega could not be expected to faithfully follow the rules upheld by Sophocles or Aristotle, which he considered extremely outdated after so many centuries. The following condenses Holland's praise of the main virtues of the new theatre of the Golden Age:

the moderns, by admitting a complication of plot, have introduced a greater variety of incidents and characters. The province of invention is enlarged; new passions, or at least new forms of the same passions, are brought within the scope of dramatic poetry. Fresh sources of interest are opened, and additional powers of imagination called into activity. (*Some Account* 118–19)

Finally, regarding the formal aspects of Holcroft's Calderonian translations, García Gómez (10) points out that while they are prose texts, they retain the entire external framework of the original work: acts, time, spaces, characters, number and order of the characters' speeches. In summary, following Urzainqui's typology for eighteenth-century translations, these versions could be classified under the category "translation-abbreviation" (627–8), which is characterized by the reworking of the text so that it provides a compendium of the fundamental ideas while eliminating those sections that are considered incidental and of lesser importance, a class that would include Holland's translations in *Some Account*, Southey's in his *Letters* and Busk's in the press.

A very different case are the translations of the Irish poet, translator and biographer Denis F. MacCarthy who, inspired by the legacy of P. B. Shelley, first approached Calderón precisely through *El mágico prodigioso*, a translation of which he published in 1873 under the title *The Wonder-Working Magician* (Maggi 334). MacCarthy's preference for Calderón seems to stem from personal and religious reasons, as does his choice of the texts for translation, which do not follow a pattern in terms of genre. Still, according to Maggi (337), it is remarkable that the Irishman does not show a special interest for the swashbuckling comedies that had been so prominent during the previous two centuries, but rather, the translator chooses Calderonian plays that possess a more "religious and spiritual" character (337), which should not surprise us given his profession of the Catholic faith. There is no doubt that these translations completely depart from the previous tradition: unlike Southey, Holland or Holcroft, who feel free to adapt Calderón's work to conform to British taste, MacCarthy sets out to produce a faithful translation of plays by the man he considered to be the most prominent author of Hispanic literature, one who deserved careful appreciation despite his poetic weaknesses (Maggi 343).

#### **3. Busk's Translation Work for** *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine***:** *Agradecer y no amar***,** *El maestro de danzar* **and** *La devoción de la cruz* **by Calderón de la Barca**

As already mentioned, Mary Margaret Busk published three translations of plays by Calderón in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*, in the "Horæ Hispanicæ" section. The first was *Courtesy Not Love*, her translation of *Agradecer y no amar*, in the June 1825 issue; a month later *Worship of the Cross* appeared in the same publication, her translation of *La devoción de la cruz*; finally, in October 1826 came the turn of the translation of *El maestro de danzar*, published as *The Dancing-Master*. Although the authorship of these translations was initially unknown (García Gómez, "Contextualización" 165), Curran has established that Busk was responsible for them. She was a busy translator and traveller according to Johnston's extensive and detailed study, and a regular contributor to *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* between 1825 and 1827 (García Gómez, "Contextualización" 75). Busk's main intent does not seem to have been intellectual, but economic. Pressing financial need led her to publish seven articles on German, Italian and Spanish authors, not without disputes with her publishers at *Blackwood's* on account of her impulsive and disorderly way of working: her submissions were often hastily written and premature, and later corrections and additions tended to be messy and unclear (Curran 18).

Busk's translations fall somewhere between the projects of Holcroft and MacCarthy, in terms of depth and rigour: they mix prose and verse, but the original rhyme is not respected; instead they resort to blank verse, a commonly used pattern in English poetry, where it originated. Following the precepts of "translation-selection" discussed above, Busk translated a number of passages that she thought would entertain and interest the English public because they had romantic plots and dialogues full of wit, while reducing to a prose summary both secondary action and lengthy lines that could be tedious. Her own introductory passages that precede the texts are particularly useful in identifying the major difficulties involved in the translation work itself and providing Busk's own opinion of the author and the plays she rewrote into English. The translator's arguments focus mainly on three aspects: her dislike of the mixing of genres, the use of the metrical form known as *romance* with its assonant rhyme and her reasons for choosing each title. In addition, in the introduction to her first work, the translation of *Agradecer y no amar* (the longest of the three), she expresses her views on Spanish theatre within the European literary context, which, in principle, could not be more favourable. Following August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, she equates it in longevity with the British theatre and mentions Shakespeare, Lope and Calderón in the same sentence:

Spanish theatre is the only one which can compete with our own in antiquity; it alone, like ours, burst at once from its shapeless chrysalis state, in full beauty and vigour, whilst those of France, Germany, &c. had, like some marine insects, to pass through various minor, unornamental, intermediate changes, previous to attaining their perfect form […] nearly contemporaneous with Shakespeare, arose Lope de Vega, and his immediate successor Calderon, since whose days no dramatist has appeared at all capable of rivalling their fame. ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. X" 641)

However, the British playwright remains unequalled in her appreciation despite her rating *Agradecer y no amar* "as the work of an author highly and deservedly celebrated by foreigners and rivals, as well as by his own countrymen – although we must confess ourselves absolutely astounded at Schlegel's comparing him to Shakespeare" (641). Even so, she attributed the paternity of European theatre to Spanish drama: "the Spanish theatre may, in consequence, be justly regarded as the parent stock of the modern Continental theatres" (641). These strong statements ultimately acknowledge that while Spanish seventeenth-century drama was the origin of European theatre as a whole, the English "disciple" had managed to surpass his master.

#### **3.1. Metrical Issues**

One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in a verse translation is obviously rhyme, a hurdle made more difficult by the fact that there is no equivalence of metrical forms between English and Spanish. Holcroft had not encountered this problem in her prose translations, but MacCarthy had, and he solved it in the following way: regarding rhyme, since assonance would not work for a translation into English, the Irish writer tried to offer the reader some form of equivalence, mainly through the use of blank verse. While assonant rhymes could be rendered to some extent, the same was not true of the *quintillas*, *redondillas*, *décimas*, etc. which filled Calderón's texts and which MacCarthy did translate with the determination of a translator bent on dealing even with Calderón's flaws. Busk, on the other hand, proved herself to be completely unfamiliar with the Spanish metrical system, to which she declared her opposition:

These dramas are commonly written in lines of eight syllables in trochaic metre, and with what are called *asonante* terminations […] This species of versification could, in English, scarcely bear a semblance of metre or rhythm, and accordingly we have, in translating, abstained from any attempt at imitation, boldly substituting our natural blank verse. In Spanish, after a little habit, it satisfies the ear, but when it does so, its effect is, to us, decidedly lyrical and consequently anti-dramatic; an effect heightened by frequent, apparently most arbitrary, deviation into rhyme of all sorts; couplets, triplets, and stanzas of every possible length and structure, being promiscuously interspersed. ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. X" 642)

The use of polymetry and the presence of assonance in Spanish seventeenthcentury theatrical compositions are not insignificant matters – quite the opposite. Let us remember that Thomas Holcroft had already defended the possibility of breaking away from the rule of the three unities of Aristotelian poetics against its still numerous advocates at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a controversy which, as we have seen, had already been resolved and overcome during the Golden Age through the publication of Lope de Vega's *New Art of Writing Plays* in 1608. The appearance of this short treatise in the Spanish publishing scene of the seventeenth century was in no way a random occurrence, but rather the response of an already famous playwright to the diatribes against a new way of making theatre that responded to the tastes of contemporary audiences while moving away from classical assumptions. The result of this shift in taste was that the rigid rule of the three unities was broken and polymetry was introduced into Spain's Golden Age drama.

For Busk, as later for MacCarthy, octosyllabic verse with assonant rhyme (the *romance*) sounded strange to the British ear and, moreover, presented great difficulties in translation.3 This is understandable, and yet the complaint against polymetry shows a profound lack of familiarity with the texts of the Spanish Golden Age. In her introduction to the comedy *El maestro de danzar*, Busk further labours her point about this usage:

The piece is written in the formerly described metre, mingling occasional scenes, or passages in rhyme, with the regular *asonancias*; which, it will be remembered, consist in the accordance of vowels, without regard to consonants; the same *asonante* vowels running through a whole act, or being changed for other at the end of every long speech, *selon le bon plaisir* of the author. ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XIII" 559)

According to the translator, the choice of one metrical form or another is arbitrary and *romance* is mixed with all of them for no apparent reason. It is worth

<sup>3</sup> Much to Busk's irritation, research shows that Calderón had a predilection for *romance*, whose multiple variations he took to the extreme, for he hardly ever used the same assonance more than once, producing no fewer than seven different examples in a single comedy (Marín 353).

remembering that Lope de Vega's poetic precepts linked each of them (the most common at the time) to specific content types.

In asserting that there is no fundamental reason for the use of polymetry and considering that the various forms appear in Calderón's comedies "promiscuously interspersed," Busk adopted a typically British perspective. Indeed, it is true that British drama made little use of polymetry, and showed no knowledge of one of the basic characteristics of the new form of theatre-making that arose in the Spanish Baroque within which Calderón's work is fully inscribed. Notwithstanding which, it is also true that Busk had little chance of naturalizing in English the polymetry of the original. This is one aspect of the richness of Spanish Golden Age theatre that the English translator was forced to sacrifice.

#### **3.2. "The mixture of tragedy and comedy, Terence and Seneca"**

Another issue about which Busk expresses her dissatisfaction is the mixing of the comic and tragic genres in the same play. Thus, in the comments that precede her translation of *La devoción de la cruz*, she states that "literally until we come to the decisive word '*muere*,' dies, or the curtain falls, leaving everybody alive, we remain wholly ignorant whether we are perusing a tragedy or a comedy" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XI" 83). In her introductory remarks to *The Dancing-Master* she elaborates on this point, remarking that readers may "recollect our account of the tragedy *La Devoción de la Cruz*, and of the extraordinary admixture of the buffooneries of the *Gracioso*, with not only the tragical events therein exhibited, but even with miracles" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XIII" 559).

Again, an explanation for this "flaw" in Calderón's plays can be found in Lopesque theory, and more particularly in one of the most famous extracts from his *Arte nuevo*, where we find a most remarkable departure of the "new comedy" from the rules of classical theatre as the Phoenix confirms the possibility of mixing tragedy and comedy, Terence and Seneca, since, although such a mixture produces a peculiar result, it enjoyed the support of audiences.4 In her evaluation of Calderón, however, Busk takes a Neoclassical stance, one far

<sup>4</sup> In *Some Account*, Holland takes up this idea in what appears to be his own translation of a fragment from *Arte nuevo*: "The tragic with the comic muse combin'd, / Grave Seneca with sprightly Terence join'd, / May seem, I grant, Pasiphaë's monstrous birth, / Where one half moves our sorrow, one our mirth. / But sweet variety must still delight; / And, spite of rules, dame Nature says we're right, / Thro' all her works she this example gives; / And from variety her charms derives" (135).

removed from the Romantic trends espoused by the Germans, with which she was not unfamiliar.

Regarding the presence of miracles (which would not be to the liking of the Protestant British public), she adds the following comment: "Miracles enough occur in the course of the play, to justify our omitting about a hundred lines of his speech, in which Eusebio narrates all those with the cross, stamped naturally upon his bosom" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XI" 85). In her preliminary discussion of *Agradecer y no amar*, she mentions another example of the negative impression that Calderón's tone could make on the English audience for reasons related to religion. Among the main characteristics of the comedy in question, she highlights that "the most striking is that to which we have already alluded; a familiarity with all we deem too holy to be even mentioned lightly, amounting, according to our English ideas, to blasphemy" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. X" 641).

#### **3.3. Why These Three Comedies?**

Lastly, I will analyse the reasons why Busk chose this particular corpus of three titles for translation. The choice seems to stem from her desire to offer the British public various examples of Calderón's dramatic work in the subgenres of palatine comedy5 (*Agradecer y no amar*), *comedia de capa y espada* or swashbuckling comedy (*El maestro de danzar*) and religious comedy (*La devoción de la cruz*). This can be inferred from her words in the introduction to her version of *Courtesy Not Love*, which also provide insight into her translation work and, more specifically, the reasons why she renders certain passages in verse and others she simply summarizes: "We have given this long scene with little curtailment, because we think it offers a favourable specimen of both the bustle, and the laughable distress resulting from a perplexed situation, which characterize Spanish comedy" ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. X" 665). Also favourable is her judgement on *El maestro de danzar*, which she praises for its status as a comedy according to the classic definition of the genre:

<sup>5</sup> Palatine comedy is very similar to swashbuckling plays in terms of plot and themes, the main difference being that in the former the setting is the court and the characters are courtiers. Regarding the swashbuckling comedy, it is necessary to remember that these plays were characterized by having a "Spanish plot," popular among English authors of the second half of the seventeenth century. In both cases, the main storyline is provided by a romantic entanglement with a happy ending. Religious comedy, as its name suggests, focuses on devotional issues: *La devoción de la cruz* deals with Eusebio's sinful actions and later repentance, and is a text pervaded by violence and cruelty.

We now propose to offer them one of the proper comedy [*sic*], which we shall select from the Works of the acknowledged master of the Spanish Theatre, Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca. *La famosa comedia* El Maestro de Danzar, the Dancing Master, is a comedy of familiar kind; more particular of the description termed by French critics, *Comedies d'Intrigue.* ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XIII" 559)

All in all, Busk expresses displeasure with *La devoción de la cruz*, an example of those comedies whose texts are in fact permeated by tragic, violent and cruel events, and which do not meet Busk's own expectations of the genre. Even so, she notes the interest in Calderón aroused by previous translations and provides the authoritative argument that this Calderonian play has enjoyed critical acclaim (it is worth remembering that it was one of the favourite plays of August Wilhelm Schlegel and P. B. Shelley). Here are Busk's own words in the introduction to her *Worship of the Cross*:

Our own taste, as we have already stated, would certainly not have led to the selection of *La Devoción de la Cruz*, as the most pleasing specimen of Calderón's tragic powers; but in the hope that our article upon the more comic *Famosa Comedia of Agradecer y no Amar*, might have somewhat predisposed our readers in favour of our author, we were content to submit our private opinion to that of the great majority of Spanish scholars, who consider this piece as one of the best productions of the first Spanish dramatists. ("Horæ Hispanicæ. No. XI" 92)

#### **4. Conclusions**

In the pages above, I have examined the translations of three Calderonian plays by the writer and journalist Mary M. Busk published in *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* between 1825 and 1826. These translations are positioned somewhere between Fanny Holcroft's publications in *The Theatrical Recorder* (1805–6) and the stand-alone versions by Denis F. MacCarthy (1853–73). While Holcroft confined herself to a prose summary, MacCarthy strove to respect rhyme and polymetry in order to offer a text as close as possible to the original. Busk, in turn, delved into the scenes she considered most relevant to the development of the action, suppressing those that might be tedious for British audiences because of their length or unsuitability to British tastes as a result of the idiosyncrasies of the two nations.

I have attempted to highlight three aspects of Busk's translations specifically: her views on the Spanish comedy of the Baroque period and more particularly on Calderón de la Barca; the motivations behind her choice of this particular corpus; and her rejection of both polymetry and the mixing of genres (tragic and comic). Against the backdrop of these issues, Busk only seems to have a rather general and theoretical appreciation of Calderón as a playwright and of his "comic" comedies (palatine and cloak-and-dagger plays), which only accounts for a small part of his work. On the other hand, she rejects the mixture of metrical forms, the frequent use of the *romance*'s octosyllabic verse characterized by assonant rhyme (so recurrent in Calderón and almost impossible to translate into English) and the merging of tragic and comic aspects in plays that contain the word "comedy" in their titles.

While these characteristic traits of Calderón's plays may appear to be objectionable for one who posits the validity of classical precepts, it is questionable that they can be spurned thus without taking into consideration the specific style of comedy writing that was consolidated in Spain following the publication of Lope's *Arte nuevo*. Busk seems unfamiliar with both the literary context of the Spanish Baroque period and the break with the rigid Neoclassical norms proposed by the German Romantics. It may be argued, therefore, that there is a certain interest on her part in upholding the supremacy of English theatre over Spanish drama, even though Shakespeare's plays are marked by the same genre hybridity which Busk sees as a weakness in Calderón's works. This is one more instance of the intricate web of aesthetic and ideological factors discussed in these pages that mediated the reception of Golden Age authors and their plays in Britain during the Romantic period.

#### **Bibliography**


#### Alfredo Moro Martín

### **Chapter 8 Cervantes, Sir Walter Scott and the Quixotic Satire on Erudition: Cervantean Echoes in Scott's** *The Antiquary* **(1816)**

**Abstract** Satire on erudition and pedantic learning is a long-standing presence in Western literature. If the figure of the erudite pedant had already taken its first steps in the French and Italian drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century witnessed its naturalization within the realm of the novel. According to Pedro Javier Pardo, the eighteenth century generated an ideal context for the satirical portrayal of any deviation from standard notions of knowledge, making the erudite outcast a natural choice for authors wishing to experiment with satirizing outdated or extravagant forms of knowledge. The period also saw the naturalization of the erudite fool on British soil and, more importantly, its association with another successful import from European literature, the Quixotic archetype, which would permeate most of the satirical portrayals of the erudite outcast of the century. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how the archetype of the Quixotic pedant, shaped and given form by some of the most notable novelists of the British eighteenth century, finds a clear echo in the figure of Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter Scott's third novel, *The Antiquary* (1816). The detailed analysis of the Quixotic scent of Scott's characterization of Oldbuck and of the clear Cervantean tone of the novel itself demonstrates how the archetype of the erudite outcast acquired a clear transnational and trans-secular character during the early nineteenth century. Thus, Scott's *The Antiquary* (1816) is not only an important witness to the British reception of Cervantes's *Don Quixote*, but also a clear example of the rich exchange between Spanish and British letters during the early nineteenth century.

**Keywords:** satire on erudition, Quixotism, Cervantes, Sir Walter Scott.

#### **1. Introduction**

Satire on erudition and pedantic learning is a long-standing presence in Western literature. According to Elizabeth Frenzel (138), the figure of the ridiculous *savant* could be included in the wider category of the extravagant outcast or *Sonderling*, characterized by odd behaviour and a patent incapacity to adapt to the immediate context, attributes which usually give the figure a pathetic and ridiculous aspect. In the opinion of the German scholar, these characters usually become symbols of "ungeneralized inclinations" or ideas which have long ceased to be common, making this archetype the perfect fit for the satirization of all kinds of deviations from the norm.

The figure of the bookish fool or erudite outcast can already be found in the Italian comedy of the sixteenth century, in the works of authors like Francesco Bello (*Il pedante*, 1529) or Pietro Aretino (*Il filosofo*, 1546). The archetype was soon transferred to the domain of the *commedia dell'arte* with the figure of the *dottore*, also quite popular in the French theatres of the early seventeenth century, where the type acquired a more sensual nature, making it a quite different figure from the erudite outcasts of Italian comedy.

If the figure had already taken its first steps in the French and Italian drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century witnessed its naturalization within the realm of the novel. According to Pedro Javier Pardo, the eighteenth century, an age "of conflict between old learning, scholastic and pseudo-scientific knowledge based on authority and religious revelation on the one hand, and, on the other, the modern forms of knowledge based on reason and experimentation" ("Satire on Learning" 7) offered an ideal context for the satiric portrayal of any deviation from standard notions of knowledge, making the erudite outcast a natural choice for authors willing to experiment with the satire of outdated or extravagant forms of learning.

In England, excess of futile or anachronistic learning had already been ruthlessly ridiculed by writers like Samuel Butler in *The Elephant in the Moon* (1670– 1) and *Satire in Two Parts upon the Imperfections and abuse of Human Learning* (1670–1), but also in his famous *Hudibras* (1663–78). The eighteenth century would, however, see the naturalization of the erudite fool in British soil, and more importantly, its association with another successful import from European literature, the archetype of the Quixote, which would permeate most of the satiric portrayals of the erudite outcast of the 1700s. Thus, the Cervantean shadow can be clearly recognized in the *Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus* (1741), a collaborative project by the members of the Scriblerus Club: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell and John Gay. Martinus Scriblerus became the "model or paradigm of the genre" (Pardo, "Satire on Learning" 4), and its influence is evident in the figures of Thwackum and Square in Henry Fielding's *Tom Jones* (1749), in the pedantic Mr Selvin in Charlotte Lennox's *The Female Quixote* (1752) and, most clearly, in Laurence Sterne's Walter and Toby Shandy (*The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*, 1761–7). Even some minor works like *Learning at Loss* (1778), a novel by the long-forgotten author Gregory Lewis Way, show a clear influence of the archetype, evincing the robust health of the Quixotic pedant during the eighteenth century.

The Continent also participated in this trend. In France, novels such as Laurent Bordelon's *Histoire de Monsieur Ouffle* (1710), the anonymous *Le Chefd'oeuvre d'un Inconnu* (1714) or Pierre Jean Grosley's *Memoirs de l'Academie de Troyes* (1744) also demonstrate a clear emphasis on the satire of pseudoscientific erudition, while in Spain, José Francisco de Isla's Quixotic novel *Fray Gerundio de Campazas* (1758–68), José Cadalso's *Eruditos a la violeta* (1772) and Pedro Centeno's *Don Quijote el Escolástico* (1788–9) also portray pseudo-erudite pedants. In Germany, novels such as Johann Karl August Musäus's *Grandison der Zweite* (1760–2), Friedrich Nicolai's *Leben und Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker* (1773) or the Sternean works of Jean Paul Richter also explore the figure of the erudite pedant or the bookish monomaniac to a greater or lesser degree.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how the archetype of the Quixotic pedant, shaped and given form by some of the most notable British novelists of the eighteenth century, finds a clear echo in the figure of Jonathan Oldbuck, the protagonist of Sir Walter Scott's third novel, *The Antiquary* (1816). A detailed analysis of the Quixotic feel of Scott's characterization of Oldbuck and the clear Cervantean tone of the novel will show that the archetype of the erudite outcast acquired a clear transnational and trans-secular nature in the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, Scott's Quixotic pedant will continue the brilliant tradition of satire on learning developed by the eighteenth-century novelists, clearly immersed in the enthusiastic contemporary reception of Cervantes, but, on the other, the Scottish author gave the figure a new emphasis in clear consonance with his own novelistic project, employing the figure of Oldbuck as a means of interrogating the nineteenth-century fascination with history and the past, and its possible use as creative material for the novel writer. In this way, Scott's *The Antiquary* (1816) will be shown to be not only a fundamental element in the British reception of Cervantes's *Don Quixote*, but also a clear example of the rich exchange between Spanish and British letters during the early nineteenth century.

#### **2. The Quixotic Satire on Erudition in Sir Walter Scott's** *The Antiquary* **(1816)**

The Quixotic figure offers, as Pedro Javier Pardo has pointed out, a fictional pattern of literary monomania which was already present in the first appearances of the erudite pedant, making the alloy between them both absolutely natural ("Satire on Learning" 5). According to Pardo, the erudite pedant evinces a series of Quixotic traits an analysis of which seems pertinent before I proceed to examine the figure of Jonathan Oldbuck, the main character of Scott's novel.

In the first place, the erudite pedant, like the Manchegan knight-errant, is characterized by a literary monomania, not of a chivalric nature, but one of erudite tone and colour, although sometimes the two may converge. In addition to this, or rather as a consequence of this, the Quixotic pedant embarks upon extravagant or ridiculous enterprises, usually linked with his erudite lore. Like Don Quixote, the erudite outcast sees "everything framed by an intellectual pattern, through the lenses of his bookish worldview" (Pardo, "Satire on Learning" 6). This epistemological distortion usually implies a clear parodic portrayal of his sources, corresponding with the satiric objectives of the author in question.

In addition to the characteristics identified by Pardo, we may add that the erudite monomania of the Quixotic pedant frequently finds a clear reflection in his use of language, which is usually rich in Latinisms, cultisms and obscure references, thus generating a clear communicative distance between the Quixotic pedant and other characters. Only those characters who share the referential universe of the Quixotic pedant may engage in a debate with him, creating a clear comic effect precisely because of his mental rigidity, which frequently leads to hilarious discussions relating to the most abstruse and ridiculous questions.

These characteristics can all be observed in Jonathan Oldbuck, the eponymous protagonist of Scott's third novel, *The Antiquary* (1816), a text which demonstrates a clear appropriation of the figure of the Quixotic pedant by the Scottish author, who demonstrated an intense interest in Cervantes and his works throughout his life. The aim of this chapter is not to trace a general overview of the intense influence of Cervantes in Scott's work, however, but rather to analyse the presence of a particular Quixotic type, the Quixotic pedant, in his third novel.1

Oldbuck reveals his eccentricity and erudition from his first appearance in the novel, when he meets the other protagonist, the young Englishman Lovel, in the Queensferry diligence. On their way from Edinburgh to Queensferry, Oldbuck, who has just acquired his copy of Alexander Gordon's *Itinerarium Septentrionale*, overwhelms his fellow traveller with his passion for Roman antiquities in Scotland, particularly urns, vases, votive altars, Roman camps and his

<sup>1</sup> For more general overviews of Scott's interest in the Spanish author, see Snel-Wolfe; McDonald; Welsh; Wolpers; Müller; Müllenbrook; ter Horst; Gerli; Mancing; Moro Martín, "Don Quijote" and *Transformaciones*; and Pardo, "Viajeros quijotescos" and "Cervantes."

favourite topic, the rules of castrametation, a passion which becomes a clear echo of another notorious Quixotic pedant, Sterne's Uncle Toby. Oldbuck decides to take advantage of a stop on their way to Queensferry to take Lovel to a place he considers to be a clear Pictish camp. The natural consequence of the excursion is that Oldbuck and Lovel fail to return to the diligence before it leaves, offering Oldbuck an excellent opportunity to exhaust the patience of his victim with a long dissertation on the differences between the *castra stativa* and the *castra aestiva* (*The Antiquary* 20), at least until they reach Monkbarns, Oldbuck's home.

The residence, a former monastery, is transformed by Scott into an opportunity for Oldbuck to give free rein to his erudition and extravagance, as he explains to Lovel his different theories about the inscription on a certain stone after the young English gentleman makes a casual enquiry about it. His erudite speculations and their abstruse nature, completely detached from reality, portray the antiquary, as Ina Ferris has pointed out, as a "strangely extopic creature who primarily lives in – and almost as – text" (281).

In fact, the description of one of the chambers of Monkbarns, the library, is employed by Scott to reflect not only the extravagant and bookish nature of Oldbuck's interests – which in many ways reflect Scott's own – but also the profoundly Quixotic nature of his erudition:

[I]t was chiefly upon his books that he prided himself […] The collection was, indeed, a curious one, and might well be envied by an amateur. Yet it was not collected at the enormous prices of modern times, which are sufficient to have appalled *the most determined, as well as earliest bibliomaniac upon record, whom we take to have been none else than the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha*, as among other slight indications of an infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious historian Cid [*sic*] Hamet [*sic*] Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for folios and quartos of chivalry. In this species of exploit, the good-knight errant has been imitated by lords, knights and squires of our own day, though we have not yet heard of any that has mistaken an inn for a castle, or laid his lance in rest against a windmill. (*The Antiquary* 34–5; emphasis added)

The reference to Don Quixote is in no way arbitrary, as it links the figure of the erudite pedant with that of Alonso Quijano, promoted to patron saint to all antiquarians. The Manchegan knight thus becomes a clear fictional antecedent for Oldbuck, establishing a sort of Cervantean genealogy for Scott's antiquary. In any case, the Quixotic characterization of Oldbuck is not limited to the narrator's Cervantean reference, as there are multiple examples of Oldbuck's Quixotic behaviour throughout the novel.

In the fourth chapter, for example, in one of Oldbuck's antiquarian expeditions, the reader witnesses another example of his imaginative erudition or Quixotic antiquarianism. If in *Don Quixote* Cervantes articulated a continuous dialogue between the imagination of the Manchegan knight-errant and the more realistic epistemology of his squire Sancho Panza; in *The Antiquary*, Scott employs a very similar procedure when Oldbuck defends a well-articulated but ultimately extravagant theory explaining his "discovery" of the exact place of the last battle fought between Gnaeus Julius Agricola and the Caledonians, which is none other than the Kaim of Kinprunes, a property he has recently acquired:

"You must know," he said, "our Scottish antiquaries have been greatly divided about the local situation of the final conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians […] Now, after all discussion," continued the old gentleman, with one of his slyest and most complacent looks, "what would you think, Mr Lovel, – I say, what would you think, – if the memorable scene of conflict should happen to be on the very spot called the Kaim of Kinprunes, the property of the obscure and humble individual who now speaks to you?" – Then, having paused a little, to suffer his guest to digest a communication so important, he resumed his disquisition in a higher tone. "Yes, my good friend, I am indeed greatly deceived if this place does not correspond with all the marks of that celebrated place of action. It was near to the Grampian mountains – lo! yonder they are, mixing and contending with the sky on the skirts of the horizon! – it was in *conspectu classis* – in sight of the Roman fleet; and would any admiral, Roman or British, wish a fairer bay to ride in than that on your right hand? It is astonishing how blind we professed antiquaries sometimes are […] I was unwilling to say a word about it till I had secured the ground, for it belonged to auld Johnnie Howie, a bonnet-laird hard by, and many a commuting we had before he and I could agree.

At length – I am almost ashamed to say it – but I even brought my mind to give acre for acre of my good corn-land for this barren spot […] I began to trench the ground, to see what might be discovered: and the third day, sir, we found a stone, which I have transported to Monkbarns in order to have the sculpture taken off with plaster of Paris; it bears a sacrificing vessel, and the letters A. D. L. L. which may stand, without much violence, for *Agricola Dicavit Libens Lubens*." (*The Antiquary* 41)

The discovery, apparently corroborated by the stone, is soon refuted by the less erudite authority of the vagabond Edie Ochiltree, who confirms that the initials correspond to Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle and that the whole Kaim of Kinprunes was built as a dyke for the wedding of Aiken Drum, kale-supper of Fife:2

Ou, I ken this about it, Monkbarns, and what profit have I for telling ye a lie – I just ken this about it, that about twenty years syne, I, and a when hallenshakers like mysell, and the mason-lads that built the lang dyke that gaes down the loaning, and twa or three herds maybe, just set to wark, and built this bit thin here that ye ca' the – the – Praetorian, and a' just for a bield at auld Aiken Drum's bridal, and a bit blithe gae-down

<sup>2</sup> With the term "kale-supper," Ochiltree refers to Fifeshire people, famed for their consumption of kale or broth.

wi' had in't, some sair rainy weather. Mair by token, Monkbarns, if ye howk up the bourock, as ye seem to have begun, ye'll find, if ye hae not fund it already, a stane that ane o'the mason-callants cut a ladle on to have a bourd at the bridegroom, and he put four letters on't, that's A. D. L. L. Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle – for Aiken was ane o' the kale-suppers o' Fife. (*The Antiquary* 43–4)

Ochiltree's words function as a clear epistemological corrective to Oldbuck's imaginative archaeology, revealing the evident Quixotic character of his erudite apprehension of reality, especially when taking into account that Oldbuck exchanged fertile land for this barren spot, just as Alonso Quijano sold most of his land to purchase quartos of chivalrous literature in *Don Quixote*.

Scott employs this procedure throughout his novel. After finding a horn which, in the opinion of Oldbuck, clearly represents a *cornucopia* or horn of plenty (*The Antiquary* 229), Ochiltree explains how the ram's horn was just a snuff recipient he had exchanged for a similar one with a miner named George Glen (332). Similarly, when faced with the destruction of a small urn which Oldbuck pompously labels as the "Clochnaben lacrimatory," which he considers "the main pillar of my theory, on which I rested to show […] that the Romans had passed the defiles of these mountains and left behind them traces of their arts and arms" (288), his nephew, Hector M'Intyre asserts that the supposed "lacrymatory" was nothing more than a ceramic pot used to cool wine of a type he had brought back as a souvenir of a military campaign in Egypt (289). Oldbuck's antiquarian theories about the objects he purchases – sometimes at great cost – are proven to be nothing more than a result of his Quixotic misconceptions. Indeed, Oldbuck's antiquarian bargains are recurrently portrayed as rather unfavourable deals. For example, in the twenty-sixth chapter of the novel, the narrator reveals how one of the town hall clerks finally convinced Oldbuck to agree to the construction of a canal that would cross his property. The deal was secured in exchange for one of the stones of St Donagild's church, an object of little or no value:

They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily Clerk had most reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole proposal of an exchange between the monuments (which the council had determined to remove as nuisance, because they encroached three feet upon the public road,) and the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh through the estate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated with himself upon the pressure of the moment. (*The Antiquary* 150)

Besides Oldbuck's archaeological forays, the reader may observe another dimension of the antiquary's Quixotic erudition in his own literary production, which is employed by Scott to satirize the great number of pseudo-erudite treatises of a period when the historical science was in the process of institutionalization. Thus, Oldbuck's *Essay upon Castrametation*, his articles on the practice of duelling written under the alias "Pacificator" and his offer of economic support to Lovell to write an epic poem, "The Caledoniad," in which, altering the course of history, the Caledonians defeat the Roman legions of Agricola, all give the intellectual enterprises of Oldbuck a clear Shandian colour, portraying them as examples of a sort of intellectual Quixotism.

Finally, there is one additional dimension of Scott's use of the Quixotic pedant which I would like to analyse. As commented above, *The Antiquary* articulates a clear dialogic contrast between the extravagant, erudite theories of Oldbuck and the more pedestrian explanations of Ochiltree, but this is not the only dialogic contrast of the novel. Following the path already trodden by other eighteenthcentury novelists such as Henry Fielding with the figures of Thwackum and Square in *Tom Jones*, or Laurence Sterne with the unforgettable discussions of the Shandy brothers in *Tristram Shandy*, Scott confronts different erudite obsessions of a clearly extravagant character, completely detached from reality.

This technique can be clearly observed in the dialogic triangle of Quixotic erudition formed by Oldbuck, his neighbour Sir Arthur Wardour, an impoverished Jacobite Baronet with pretensions to erudite lore, and the Reverend Blattergowl, a clergyman obsessed with ecclesiastical law. All three, defined – quite significantly – by the narrator as "humourists" (*The Antiquary* 52) form a clear "strife of narrators" in which their surrounding reality or their respective views of the Scottish past are interpreted through a myriad of erudite visions, each one more extravagant than the last, transforming some of the novel's chapters into an interpretative kaleidoscope that reveals the antiquarian Quixotism of these characters.

The sixth chapter of the novel may be taken as a paradigmatic example of this trend. Here, the conflict between Oldbuck and Wardour – who are waging a long-standing feud over the supposed Celtic or Germanic origins of the Picts – arises because of a dispute on the etymology of the Scottish toponym Benval, the only word of Pictish origin preserved at the time the novel was published. For Oldbuck, *val* originates in the Saxon *-wall*, and in that sense, the term would come to mean "head of the wall," as he links *ben* to the Celts (*The Antiquary* 64). But for Wardour, exactly the opposite process is at work, as the Picts adopted the suffix *-val* from the Latin *vallum*, whereas the prefix *ben* shows the Celtic origins of the Picts.

As may be inferred, the word "Benval" becomes a linguistic *baciyelmo* whose ridiculous and dialogic character is underlined by Lovel, who declares that "the controversy is not unlike that which the two knights fought, concerning the shield that had one side white and the other black" (*The Antiquary* 65). Indeed, each of these Quixotic erudite knights rides their respective hobby horse, continuing a tradition initiated by Fielding and Sterne, two authors dear to Scott as their notable presence in the library of Abbotsford demonstrates.3

The hobby-horsical nature of the dialogic triangle described above can also be appreciated in another erudite discussion of the three "humourists," relating in this case to the origins of St Ruth, a ruined church located within Sir Arthur Wardour's estate. The debate on the church's construction date engages these three knights errant of erudition in another learned combat in which each of the contenders will offer his particular and biased vision on the topic. Oldbuck refers to a recent publication on Scottish antiquities, whereas Wardour turns to the heroic feats of family lore when the antiquary mentions one of his forebears. The Reverend Blattergowl, more specialized in canonical law, also offers his erudite perspective on the matter:

The Antiquary, starting like a war-horse at the trumpet sound, plunged at once into the various arguments for and against the date of 1273, which had been assigned to the priory of St. Ruth by a late publication on Scottish architectural antiquities. He raked up the names of all the priors who had ruled the institution and bestowed lands upon it, and of the monarchs who had slept their last sleep among its roofless courts. As a train which takes fire is sure to light another, if there be such in the vicinity, the Baronet, catching the name of one of his ancestors which occurred in Oldbuck's disquisition, entered upon an account of his wars, his conquests and his trophies; and worthy Dr. Blattergowl was induced, from the mention of a grant of lands, *cum decimis inclusis tam vicariis quam garbalibus, et nunquam antea separatis*, to enter into a long explanation concerning the interpretation given by the Teind Court in the consideration of such a clause, which had occurred in a process for localling his last augmentation of stipend. The orators, like three racers, each pressed forward to the goal, without much regarding how each crossed and jostled his competitors. Mr. Oldbuck harangued, the Baronet declaimed, Mr. Blattergowl prosed and laid down the law, while the Latin forms of feudal grants were mingled with the jargon of blazonry, and yet the more barbarous phraseology of the Teind Court of Scotland. (*The Antiquary* 183)

<sup>3</sup> Cochrane's catalogue of the Abbotsford library notes the presence of novels such as *Joseph Andrews*, *Tom Jones*, *Amelia* or *Jonathan Wild* (*Catalogue of the Library at Abbotsford* 63), as well as Fielding's complete works, edited by A. Chalmers in 1806 (188). Sterne also features prominently in Scott's library. Apart from his *Sentimental Journey* and *Tristram Shandy* (63), Scott also possessed a complete edition of the works of the Anglo-Irish author, as well as a biography of the eighteenth-century novelist (181). To all this, one may add the essays dedicated to both authors in Scott's *Lives of the Novelists* (1821–4).

The episode reflects the kaleidoscope of erudite visions of reality which Scott articulates in his novel by confronting his three Quixotic knights riding their respective hobby horses, continuing the eighteenth-century tradition of Quixotic pedantry developed by Fielding and Sterne.

#### **3. Conclusions: The Quixotic Pedant as a Satirical Tool in a Time of Historiographical Change**

From all the episodes mentioned above we may conclude that, with his use of the Quixotic pedant in *The Antiquary*, Scott offers a sympathetic, but no less poignant portrayal of certain amateurish forms of historiographical research in a clear process of decadence by the first decades of the nineteenth century. As Ina Ferris has pointed out, the novel draws the attention to the generic rivalry "between philosophical, 'conjectural' history […] and antiquarian history, which remained primarily an amateur enterprise pursued mostly (but not exclusively) by leisured gentlemen in rural environs," displacing antiquarianism as a form of erudite pedantry and distortion of knowledge (274). In this sense, through his portrayal of these Quixotic erudites and their hobby horses, Scott illustrates this process, transforming the Quixotic satire on erudition into a means to separate two very different spheres, the scientific reconstruction of the past, on the one hand, and the fascination with history and its use as a suitable material for literature on the other.

In any case, this innovative use of the Quixotic pedant by Scott should not obscure the many similarities which Oldbuck and his erudite troupe share with the Shandys and other Quixotic figures of the eighteenth-century British novel. Scott adapts many of the traits already developed by Fielding and Sterne to the historiographical context of the early nineteenth century, turning one of the trends of the British and European Cervantean traditions to the intellectual context of his time. In this sense, *The Antiquary* becomes a bridge between the eighteenth century and the appropriation of Cervantes's *Don Quixote* by the British Romantics, which is not only, as I have tried to show in this article, purely idealistic.

#### **Bibliography**

Cochrane, John G. *Catalogue of the Library at Abbotsford*. Edinburgh: Constable, 1834.


Scott, Walter. *The Antiquary*. Oxford University Press, 2002.


#### Fernando González Moreno and Beatriz González Moreno

### **Chapter 9 Idle English Reader: Romanticism and the Illustrated Reception of** *Don Quixote* **in England**

**Abstract** The image of Don Quixote as a Romantic hero was mostly consolidated thanks to two French illustrators, Tony Johannot and Gustave Doré. However, in England, towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, different editions evince aesthetic novelties and underline the Romantic reading of Cervantes's novel. Editions such as that of Harrison and Co. (1782), with illustrations by Thomas Stothard, or, more significantly, Cadell and Davies (1818), with designs by Robert Smirke, contributed to ending the Neoclassical tradition which John Vanderbank had imposed in England with the edition published by Tonson (1738). Tonson's edition had helped to canonize *Don Quixote*, establishing an allegorical reading, serious and moralizing, which held sway to the end of the century. In opposition to this tradition, Stothard and Smirke, among others, began to emphasize aspects such as Don Quixote's melancholy, the knight's visions and the portrayal of Cervantes himself as a Romantic writer who had suffered a reversal of fortune. This essay examines this new way of reading *Don Quixote*, which spread throughout England in the nineteenth century, enjoying great success and popularity.

**Keywords:** Don Quixote, Cervantes, Romanticism, illustrators, reception, Smirke, Stothard.

The image of Don Quixote as a Romantic hero was mostly consolidated thanks to two French illustrators, Tony Johannot and Gustave Doré. However, in England, towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, different editions can be identified which present aesthetic novelties and underline the Romantic reading of Cervantes's novel. In this regard, it is worth highlighting editions such as that of J. Cooke (1774), with plates designed by Samuel Wale; that of Harrison and Co. 1782, with illustrations by Thomas Stothard (1755–1834); or, more significantly, that of Cadell and Davies (1818), with designs by Robert Smirke. All of these contributed to putting an end to the Neoclassical tradition which Lord Carteret and John Vanderbank had established in England with their edition (1738). Carteret's edition had helped to canonize *Don Quixote*, establishing an allegorical reading, serious and moralizing, which endured for the rest of the eighteenth century (Schmidt 47–88). A good example of this continuity is an edition published around 1794 by Alex Hogg. The frontispiece includes an emblematic composition designed by Riley and engraved by Scott with a brief explanation that perfectly reflects how *Don Quixote* had been read during the eighteenth century:

Emblematical Representation of TRUTH, with her MIRROR, dispelling the Visions of GOTHIC SUPERSTITION and KNIGHT-ERRANTRY, while the Enchanted Castle and its Giant Master, the Dragon, the Distressed Damsel Ghost in the back-ground & C. describe the wild creations of a distempered brain.

Here are listed many of the typical elements of Romantic iconography. Nevertheless, they are mentioned here to be criticized, and to reflect that the main aim of this novel was to fight that "Gothic" literature based on superstition and fantasies, "wild creations of a distempered brain."

As opposed to this tradition, the designs by Wale, Stothard, and Smirke, among others, began to explore those "wild creations," emphasizing aspects such as the eponymous knight's fantasy, Don Quixote's melancholy, the portrayal of Cervantes himself as a Romantic writer who had suffered a reversal of fortune, or the presence of nature. The exaltation of nature, of rural life, is in fact the distinctive element that makes J. Cooke's edition (1774) the first Romantic one. Samuel Wale (1721–86), painter and illustrator, was in charge of the twenty plates included in this edition, engraved by Rennoldson and Thomas Ryder I. Among these designs, we must highlight *Don Quixote entertain'd by the Goatherds*, based on the episode featuring several goatherds and Antonio, who sings a love poem (Figure 2). Wale's plate includes four verses that have nothing to do with the original song in Cervantes's text, but are used to claim the novel as a Romance:

> Sway ye Romantic thoughts howe'r ye please, Yet Nature always will incline to ease A Goatherd's Cot a Palace will precede, And rural Nature study'd Art exceed. (f. 70)

In these verses there is a clear declaration of intent against the precepts of Neoclassicism, which Lord Carteret's edition had embodied in England up to this point. Now, a new conception of art and literature is vindicated. Art should not be the result of academic study, which only produces artificial and untrue works; it should rely on that unbound nature that fosters the artist's imagination. This, as we will see later, favoured a renewed interest in the rural world and the countryside as true sources of inspiration. Wale's plate already shows this preference and, for this reason, Givanel recognized this edition as that which inaugurated the Romantic reading of *Don Quixote*:

Estas sentencias, que el cabrero endilga a Don Quijote, en versos cantados, no son, claro está, cervantinas, ni siquiera quijotescas. Son, sencillamente, "hijas del siglo", de aquel fin de siglo, profundamente influído por el sentimentalismo naturalista de J. J. Rousseau,

**Figure 2:** *Don Quixote Entertain'd by the Goatherds*, Samuel Wale (il.); Rennoldson (eng.). London: J. Cooke, 1774. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

en Francia, y por el humanitarismo suave de Goldsmith y Sterne, en Inglaterra, donde Wordsworth, Cowper, Coleridge, y sobre todo Blake, crean una nueva poesía subjetiva y visionaria, que aún no se sabe calificar a sí misma, pero que ya es francamente romántica. (150)1

<sup>1</sup> "These sentences, which the goatherd bestows on Don Quixote, in sung verses, are not,

Regarding Thomas Stothard's designs, his set of illustrations was quite popular, and was reprinted in 1784 and 1792. His sixteen plates mainly combine the two ways of reading *Don Quixote* that had prevailed in England till that moment, seeking a balance between them. The first approach, in keeping with the early Flemish and Dutch editions, was focused more on the comical episodes, for example *Sancho's Blanketing* or *Don Quixote Attacking the Flock of Sheep*. The second, following the Neoclassical reading imposed by Carteret's edition, was focused on Don Quixote's dialogues, as we can see in *Don Quixote Talking to the Galley Slaves* or in *Don Quixote and Sancho's Encounter with Two Shepherdesses*.

However, we can also appreciate how these two traditions begin to be complemented by a third, which will succeed them during the Romantic period. In the representation of *Don Quixote's Night Vigil of Arms*, the comical aspects of the scene, the fighting with the *arrieros*, which had been emphasized in previous illustrations, are gone (Figure 3). Rather, we have the image of a serene and melancholic knight reflecting on his deed. He resembles a lonely young poet looking for inspiration under the full moon in the middle of the night more than a mad old man who imagines himself a knight. This loneliness, a main attribute of the Romantic hero, will accompany Don Quixote from now on. In this sense, one of the favourite episodes of the illustrators under this new aesthetic will be Don Quixote in Sierra Morena, because here, surrounded by nature, Don Quixote's loneliness encounters its perfect mirror. Stothard represented the moment when Don Quixote enters Sierra Morena accompanied by Sancho, but the relation between the two characters is non-existent: absorbed in his thoughts, the knight is utterly alone.

A further illustrative early example of how the Romantic visual reading of *Don Quixote* was beginning to take shape is the edition illustrated by Richard Corbould (1757–1831), Thomas Kirk (1765–97) and W. H. Brown. This set, published in London by C. Cooke c. 1796, opens with an image of Don Quixote meditating on his exploits. Sadness and melancholy permeate the scene, completed with an ornamental frame where the knight appears with hay instead of hair. He resembles a scarecrow that could easily be set on fire by the nearby torch.

of course, Cervantes's, or even quixotic. They are simply 'daughters of the century,' of that fin de siècle, deeply influenced by the naturalistic sentimentality of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in France, and by the gentle humanitarianism of Goldsmith and Sterne, in England, where Wordsworth, Cowper, Coleridge and especially Blake are creating a new subjective and visionary poetry which does not yet know how to describe itself, but which is already truly Romantic." All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are our own.

**Figure 3:** *Don Quixote's Night Vigil of Arms*, Thomas Stothard (il.); William Angus (eng.). London: Printed for Harrison and Co., 1784. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

The composition is completed with the allegory of Folly, a buffoon, underneath. Another consequence of unrequited love, despair, is depicted in the scene in which Cardenio is observed by the goatherds; in this case, the meaning of the scene is completed with an ornamental frame that includes Cupid's attributes (bow and arrows), a butterfly and roses (Figure 4). All these are references to foolish love, the kind based on fleeting beauty that frequently overcomes the young man. The interest in this sort of melodramatic love scene is also represented in *Zorayda* 

**Figure 4:** *Cardenio Discovered by the Goatherds*, Thomas Kirk (il.); Charles Turner Warren (eng.). London: C. Cooke, ca. 1796. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

*with the Captive*, which, furthermore, shows the Romantic predilection for Orientalist settings. This scene had been illustrated for the first time in Carteret's edition and instantly became a must-have for English editions, especially during the Romantic period, due to its evocative character. A similar interest is shown in *The Disastrous Situation of Sancho & His Ass*, whose ancient ruins and mysterious atmosphere must be connected to one of the aesthetic developments of Romanticism: the picturesque.

In the same year as *Frankenstein* was published, 1818, the first truly Romantic edition of *Don Quixote* made its appearance. The lead illustrator, the full academician Robert Smirke (1752–1845), was an established landscape painter who also specialized in book illustrations. He developed a characteristic format of small monochrome paintings that made them particularly appropriate for use by engravers to produce book illustrations. His designs appeared in *The Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare* (1783–7), *The Arabian Nights* (1802) and Alain René Le Sage's *The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane* (1809), among many other publications; he also illustrated the works of several British poets, such as James Thomson. Smirke had a personal interest in *Don Quixote*, as we can see in the different paintings he made on this literary topic. In 1793, as part of the process to be accepted as a full academician by the Royal Academy, he had chosen for his diploma *Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.* The painting, where both characters appear seated in the middle of a rocky landscape, may allude to the episode where they enter Sierra Morena. It already shows some of the novelties that Smirke would develop years later in his 1818 illustrations, such as the melancholic atmosphere that surrounds the characters, emanating loneliness, and the increasing presence of nature, which now begins to be recognized as one of the main characters in the novel.

The 1818 edition includes forty-eight full-page illustrations and twenty-six vignettes that Ashbee declared a "lovely series of illustrations, full of grace, delicacy, and poetic feeling, of which the one shortcoming would seem to be that they are not sufficiently Spanish in character" (119).2 From the very beginning, Smirke established a new way of reading *Don Quixote*, transforming not only Don Quixote himself but Cervantes too into Romantic and tragic characters. In fact, the edition opens with Cervantes himself, who begins to make his way as a Romantic hero, alone, unjustly imprisoned and melancholic (Figure 5); a hero mistreated by his homeland to the extent that even Givanel confused him with his literary creation:

Esta figura que veis ahí, sentada meditativamente ante una mesa de pino, con la pluma de ave en el tintero, el brazo izquierdo sobre las albas cuartillas, y el derecho sirviendo de soporte a la abstraída y alborotada cabeza, no es un poeta romántico encerrado en una buhardilla, abrigado en su *carrick*, con un jarro de agua fría por toda bebida y en

<sup>2</sup> The engravers were Francis Engleheart, Richard Golding, Abraham Raimbach, James Fittler, John Scott, Anker Smith, James Heath, Charles Heath "the elder," Charles Turner Warren, James Mitan, William Finden and Cosmo Armstrong. The Tate Britain holds thirteen of the original paintings used for this edition, plus two more canvases by Smirke depicting episodes from *Don Quixote*: *The Countess Trifaldi Unveiling* and *Sancho Panza and the Duchess.* These two episodes also appear among the 1818 illustrations, but the compositions of the paintings are not the same as those of the prints, they are different versions.

trance de solicitar la inspiración de la musa. Ese es Don Quijote en su biblioteca, y está proyectando mentalmente, a solas, su primera salida […] Más que un retrato del loco sublime, lo que vemos es el retrato de toda una época sombríamente demencial. (183–4)3

In this description, Givanel mistakes Cervantes writing his prologue for Don Quixote in his library – actually, the first full-page plate *is* dedicated to Don Quixote in his library – and he criticizes the representation of the knight as a Romantic poet. Givanel considered the Romantic period "a gloomily mad era" and, as a consequence, was highly dismissive of this reading of the novel.4

England favoured that the "Interspersed Stories," sometimes harshly criticized as nonsense addenda, were reappraised. They included adventure but, above all, Orientalist features that attracted the illustrator's attention. Both the Captive's and the Curious Impertinent's stories had been illustrated for the first time in 1738; now, Smirke focuses more attention on them. Regarding the Captive, he not only represents the well-known and melodramatic scene of Zoraida pretending to faint (her sensual image is outstanding), but also the despair of Agi Morato having been left in La Cava Rumia. Furthermore, for the first time we see the fictitious Arab author of the novel, Cide Hamete, whose presence, again, is in tune with Smirke's Orientalist tastes. Similar ideas are represented through the tale of the Curious Impertinent, where we can appreciate the first stage of seducing and deceiving love, the subsequent melodrama (Camila pretending to have stabbed herself) and the final despair and death. Love based on romantic folly only leads to self-destruction.

Certainly, for *Don Quixote* Romanticism meant the triumph of fantasy. In his foreword to Lord Carteret's canonical edition, John Oldfield advised against

<sup>3</sup> "This figure that you see there, sitting meditatively before a pinewood table, with his quill pen in the inkwell, his left arm on the white sheets and the right supporting his preoccupied and tousled head, is not a Romantic poet shut away in an attic, sheltered in his carrick with only a jug of cold water to drink and in the process of requesting the muse's inspiration. That is Don Quixote lone in his library, and he is mentally projecting his first outing […] Rather than a portrait of the sublime madman, what we see is the portrait of an entire era that was gloomily mad."

<sup>4</sup> It is worth mentioning that Juan Givanel y Mas (1867–1946) was a Cervantes scholar among whose works we must highlight the Catalogue of Bonsoms's Cervantean collection at the Library of Catalonia and his *Historia gráfica de Cervantes y del Quijote* (1946). He did not elaborate an aesthetic theory on *Don Quixote per se*; however, throughout his *Historia*, he offers a glimpse of his own preference for certain editions, styles and periods, Romanticism not being one of his favourites.

**Figure 5:** *Cervantes Thinking about His Preface*, Robert Smirke (il.). London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1818. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

representing any of the scenes imagined by the knight, because this would destroy the verisimilitude of the novel (Oldfield i–viii; González-Moreno, "Aproximación" 679–704). By contrast, now Smirke gives free rein to Don Quixote's imagination, as we can see in his illustration of the Knight of the Lake, presenting a medieval castle, evocative of distant times. Similarly, against Oldfield's recommendation, Smirke represents Don Quixote visiting the Montesinos cave as the latter imagines it. The painter transforms the cave into a richly detailed Gothic abbey or church, a setting that had become a distinctive element in Romantic literature since Horace Walpole's inaugural Gothic novel *The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story* (1764).

Among Smirke's illustrations, probably the most iconic, as regards this new way of reading Cervantes's novel, is *Don Quixote's Penance in Sierra Morena* (Figure 6). Here, alone surrounded by nature, among rough cliffs, deep gorges and stormy skies, the knight finds the perfect mirror for his soul, tormented and melancholic. The sublimity of nature reflects the nobility of his ideals, but also the terror, the despair, of the impossibility of reaching them. Givanel harshly criticized such portrayals of Quixote:

La estampa de Smirke nos muestra una imagen humana que hasta ahora -hasta que Europa entera no estuvo sumergida en las nieblas del Romanticismo- en vano habríamos buscado en parte alguna. Es el Poeta, así, con mayúscula, el ser angélico o demoníaco, *Ariel* o *Childe Harold*, en rebeldía contra todo el mundo, incluso contra el propio destino, encaramado en la roca de su desesperación, desafiando, con los cabellos al viento, los cielos tempestuosos y los abismos sin fondo […] Este solitario en camisa es, sencillamente, Don Quijote en trance de practicar su enamorada penitencia en Sierra Morena, mientras Sancho se ha ido a llevar la carta a Dulcinea. El virus romántico no podía, en verdad, atacar más fuertemente al héroe cervantino. (187–8)5

Another novelty that from this point on acquires a greater presence is the illustrator's interest in the fatal outcome of the novel. We can certainly trace previous representations of Don Quixote's death, but Smirke's is especially remarkable. Alonso Quijano lies serene and inert on his deathbed. Sancho, who seems to have just noticed, approaches as if driven by an impulse, while the priest acts as a notary and certifies his death. On one side, the housekeeper and the niece weep, forming a set of great plastic beauty and classicism. However, this image cannot be fully understood without the colophon that Smirke adds to the episode. There, the busts of Don Quixote and Sancho appear with a variety of symbols around their plinth (weapons, books, lion's skin, the basin, a hen in a saucepan…). The representation recalls the sculptures of classical heroes or emperors, a funerary monument by way of apotheosis, deification, a symbol of the eternity that memory and remembrance entail. The death of Alonso Quijano,

<sup>5</sup> "Smirke's print shows us a human image that until now – until the whole of Europe was submerged in the mists of Romanticism – we would have searched in vain for anywhere. It is the Poet, like this, with a capital *P*, the angelic or demonic being, *Ariel* or *Childe Harold*, in rebellion against the whole world, even against his own destiny, perched on the rock of his despair, defying the stormy skies and bottomless abysses, his hair in the wind [. . .] This lonely man in his shirt sleeves is simply Don Quixote in the process of practising his penance in love in Sierra Morena, while Sancho has gone to take the letter to Dulcinea. The Romantic virus could not, in truth, have hit the Cervantean hero more strongly."

**Figure 6:** *Don Quixote's Penance on the Mountain*, Robert Smirke (il.); Francis Engleheart (eng.). London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1818. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

represented in the plate, does not imply any drama, since this vignette proposes that Don Quixote continues to live through the immortality of his exploits (González-Moreno and Urbina 28–31).

The path inaugurated by these early editions was followed by others such as that of 1842 illustrated by the painter and prolific illustrator John Gilbert (1817– 97). Just as Smirke had, Gilbert found in *Don Quixote* a source of inspiration for both his illustrations and his paintings: *Don Quixote and Sancho* (1840) and *Don Quixote Disputing with the Priest and the Barber* (1844) held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; *Sancho Panza* (1859) at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery (Preston); *Don Sancho Panza, Governor of Barataria* (1875) at the Manchester Art Gallery; *Don Quixote and Sancho at the Castle of the Duke* (1883) and *Don Quixote Discourses on Arms and Letters to the Company at the Inn* (1890) at the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums of Liverpool); and *Don Quixote's Niece and Housekeeper* (1891) at the Guildhall Art Gallery (London). All of these are perfect examples of how very popular Cervantes's novel had become in England during the nineteenth century in keeping with Romantic culture. In this sense, Gilbert's portrayal of Don Quixote's niece, as a gipsy or Moorish girl, is especially remarkable.

Regarding his illustrations, Gilbert designed a frontispiece, an illustrated title page and sixteen full-page scenes for the 1842 edition. The frontispiece is already a declaration of intent: Don Quixote sets out with Sancho; the knight opens and raises his arms ready for the adventures that await him (Figure 7). These (castles, damsels, knights errant, giant serpents, enchanters, armies) appear around him as visions while the shining presence of Dulcinea serves as his guide. It is an exaltation of fantasy. Unluckily for Gilbert, Dubochet's edition with Tony Johannot's designs had already appeared in 1836–7, and had met with such success that they dominated the whole European market. Thus, in the very same year that Gilbert's edition was published, 1842, English editors such as Henry G. Bohn began to publish Gilbert's illustrations together with Johannot's (the latter numbering over 700); in this edition, the English illustrator was exiled from the title page, where, listed under beneath Johannot, he is merely referred to as "others."6 Gilbert's designs were unfairly considered as a mere continuation of the fashion imposed by Johannot, an idea that subsisted in Givanel. The latter stated, in his usual derogatory tone when dealing with this kind of Romantic visual reading, that: "El inglés John Gilbert fue un hábil, jugoso y afortunado continuador de la obra vulgarizadora de Johannot" [The Englishman John Gilbert was a skilful, profitable and fortunate successor of the vulgarizing work of Johannot] (205–6).

Perhaps trying to recover the glory that Johannot had taken from him, Gilbert produced a second set of illustrations about *Don Quixote.* This set, published in London (1865) and then New York (1866), included eight new designs masterfully engraved by the Dalziel brothers. Romanticism is still present in these illustrations, in two in particular: *Don Quixote on the Sierra Morena Doing Penance* and *Don Quixote and Sancho Return Home to Their Native Village* (Figure 8). The first represents a topic which had already become one of the most iconic images of the Romantic hero, alone and meditative in the middle of a craggy landscape; the second, a major novelty, reflects the deep melancholy and infinite sorrow of the defeated knight, the beginning of the end of his ideal quest. These illustrations continued to be published in later editions,

<sup>6</sup> Gilbert's illustrations continued to appear in later reprints, alone (1843) or with Johannot's work (1847 and 1895). They even crossed the Atlantic, being published in 1853 and 1857.

**Figure 7:** *Frontispiece with Don Quixote and Sancho in Search of Adventures*, John Gilbert (il.); Folkard (eng.). London: Charles Daly, 1842. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

but not for a long time. In 1863, Gustave Doré's universally acclaimed designs had been published in Paris, before appearing in instalments between 1864 and 1867 printed in London by Cassell, Petter and Galpin. Faced with Doré's work, Gilbert's illustrations had no chance.

The French Romantic approach overshadowed any English attempt to compete with the same weapons. Therefore, if the British illustrators wanted to find a place for themselves, they would have to follow a different path, and they encountered it in satire and in its visual aspect: caricature. The philosophical and aesthetic novelties that arose between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth allowed writers and artists to explore all those

**Figure 8:** *Don Quixote on the Sierra Morena Doing Penance*. John Gilbert (il.); Dalziel Brothers (eng.). London and New York: G. Routledge & Sons, 1865. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

aesthetic categories that Neoclassicism had shunned. Under the classicist principles, the unique aim of Art was beauty; in contrast, in the nineteenth century, the ideas of the sublime, the picturesque or the grotesque began to break through. Thanks to this, among the multiple different, rich facets that the Romantic period offers us, we discover the use of caricature. Freed from the restrictions imposed by the principle of mimesis and its idealization as the basis of any art, artists began to distort or exaggerate reality to create comic or grotesque effects and, ultimately, to parody and criticize that reality. *Don Quixote* certainly offered a perfect source of inspiration for those interested in this use of caricature as a way of criticizing the defects of human nature under the mask of comedy; and British illustrators were eager to offer a reading of the novel inspired by the aesthetic freedom of the nineteenth century. That renewed reading paralleled and complemented the French Romantic proposal on the one hand and, on the other hand, broke with the neoclassical tradition.

Since the publication of the aforementioned Tonson 1738 edition, in which Carteret and Oldfield defended a more serious and deeper reading of Cervantes's novel, the illustrators who had followed this tendency were forced to pay a very high price: they had to give up the humorous episodes in favour of those with dialogues and speeches. The first victim of this shift was the painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764), one of the most eminent English satirists. Recognizing the value of these humorous episodes as a fundamental aspect of Cervantes's novel to develop his satire, Hogarth offered seven designs to be included in Carteret's edition, intending to reinforce the parodic image of certain of the characters. Thus, Maritornes and the innkeeper's wife were both represented with grotesque features, as was the priest, who was also dressed in women's clothes. Six of these designs, inappropriate and lacking decorum according to Oldfield's criteria, were rejected (*The Funeral of Chrystom and Marcella Vindicating Herself*, *The Innkeeper's Wife and Daughter Taking Care of the Don after Being Beaten and Bruised*, *Don Quixote Seizes the Barber's Bason for Mambrino's Helmet*, *Don Quixote Releases the Galley Slaves*, *The Unfortunate Knight of the Rock Meeting Don Quixote*, and *The Curate and Barber Disguising Themselves to Convey Don Quixote Home*), and only one was accepted: *Don Quixote Arrives at the Inn and Encounters the Ladies of Easy Virtue*. We must highlight *The Innkeeper's Wife and Daughter Taking Care of the Don after Being Beaten and Bruised* because the episode, imagined as a dark scene of sorcery presided over by an owl, is a perfect precedent of the Romantic tendency; it is also an example of Hogarth's capacity to parody and criticize human vices such as superstition (Figure 9).

Although Hogarth might have lost this battle, he inaugurated in England a powerful new trend of satirical illustration whose practitioners were ready to bring humour back to *Don Quixote* over the nineteenth century*.* Two of the most remarkable followers of Hogarth's tradition were the English caricaturists Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and George Cruikshank (1792–1878). Rowlandson was in charge of the illustrations for William Combe's *The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque* (1812),7 a quixotic parody written to satirize Romantic travel literature. Combe's poem shows us the extent to which

<sup>7</sup> It first appeared in monthly instalments in Akermann's *Poetical Magazine* with coloured designs by Rowlandson under the title *The Schoolmaster's Tour* (1809–11)*.* The first edition of the complete poem was published in 1812 by Akermann (London). Combe

**Figure 9:** *The Innkeeper's Wife and Daughter Taking Care of the Don after Being Beaten and Bruised*, William Hogarth (il.); John Mills (eng.). London: J. & J. Boydell, 1798. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

England was already experiencing in those early years of the nineteenth century an authentic fashion – or aesthetic epidemic – that was allowing English readers to rediscover not only their own nation, but the rest of Europe, through the gaze of the recently developed aesthetic category of the picturesque:

also wrote *Second Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of Consolation, a Poem* (1820) and *Third Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of a Wife, a Poem* (1821), both published by Akermann and illustrated by Rowlandson.

I'll ride and write, and sketch and print, And thus create a real mint; I'll prose it here, I'll verse it there, And picturesque it everywhere. (Combe I, 5)

Such is the goal that Doctor Syntax sets himself when travelling and sketching the plain and the Lake District and, like him, numerous travellers, writers and painters launched themselves into a quest to discover the most picturesque corners and the most picturesque nations. Spain and Don Quixote's region, La Mancha, were soon incorporated among those picturesque and romanticisminspiring destinies. Following the Peninsular War against Napoleon, in which English troops had participated under the command of Lord Wellington, Spain had been rediscovered by the British. For many, *Don Quixote* was their main source of knowledge about this "exotic," savage, and "Moorish" country. This was the case of the Scottish travel writer Henry David Inglis, who in 1830 toured Spain with Don Quixote on his mind. Back in England, he not only published a book relating his experience, *Spain in 1830* (1831), but also a fictional journey through La Mancha, *Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote* (1837).8 These *Rambles* included illustrations by the above-mentioned George Cruikshank, whose experience illustrating *Don Quixote* and related works was already proven (González-Moreno and González-Moreno, *Andanzas* 33–61).9

Cruikshank, whose characteristic style ranges from the most benevolent humour to the most grotesque satire, was a very appropriate candidate to tackle *Don Quixote* and it is no wonder that he accepted the challenge twice. First in 1824, for the Knight and Lacey edition of Charles Jarvis's translation, for which he produced twenty-four illustrations, wood-engraved by Sears and William Hughes (reprinted in London in 1828 and 1831). And then, as part of "Roscoe's Novelists' Library," for E. Wilson's 1833 edition of the translation by Tobias Smollett. For this, Cruikshank etched fifteen plates, accompanied by three portraits (Don Quixote, Sancho and Dulcinea) designed by Joseph Kenny Meadows and wood-engraved by J. Smith. For both editions, Cruikshank selected episodes not according to the visual reading initiated by Oldfield and

<sup>8</sup> This journey began to be published in instalments in the *Englishman's Magazine* (1831), but it remained incomplete. The first complete publication was posthumous (1837).

<sup>9</sup> In addition to *Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote* (1837), Cruikshank illustrated George Buxton's *The Political Quixote; or, The Adventures of the Renowned Don Blackibo Dwarfino, and his Trusty Squire, Seditiono; A Romance, in Which Are Introduced Many Popular Celebrated Political Characters of the Present Day* (1820). See González-Moreno and González-Moreno (*Andanzas* 15–64).

**Figure 10:** *Don Quixote's Penance in Sierra Morena*, George Cruikshank (il.); William Hughes (eng.). London: Knight & Lacey, 1824. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

Vanderbank, but in accordance with the tradition of the early Flemish and Dutch editions (Savery, 1657; Juan Mommarte, 1662; and Geronymo and Juan Bautista Verdussen, 1672–3). Thus, both sets of illustrations included scenes such as the blanketing of Sancho, the fight against the windmills, Don Quixote's penance in Sierra Morena (Figure 10), the attack against the wine skins, the encounter with the false Dulcinea, Don Quixote's "fight" with the lion, the adventure of Clavileño, the night visit of Doña Rodríguez and Sancho's dinner on the isle of Barataria. These are scenes that we can consider as parodic; perfect examples of the burlesque mode displayed by Cervantes and representative of the laughter and humour provoked by the novel.

Cruikshank was severely criticized for his selection. Ashbee declared that the illustrations in the 1824 edition "are of not great merit" (140). And Río y Rico, referring to the etchings of 1833, remarked that "ambos artistas demuestran que no habían sabido entender la inmortal novela" [both artists (Cruikshank and Meadows) show that they failed to understand this immortal novel] (497), meaning that they were unable to read *Don Quixote* in all its depth, and thus were limited to a burlesque and comical interpretation. These illustrated readings may seem clumsy, exaggerated and superficial, more in keeping with the first Flemish editions than with the subsequent academic ones, although such considerations are in themselves reductionist. Cruikshank's comic illustrations have nothing to do with the kind of humour depicted in the Flemish editions. As a skilled caricaturist, he recognized Cervantes as a man of his own profession; he was able to see the parody in the writer's sense of humour and, therefore, the path that led to satire. Givanel understood his work in a similar way and for him "Cruikshank es, indudablemente, un gran dibujante de los nuevos tiempos" [Cruikshank is undoubtedly a great illustrator of modern times] (198). The English caricaturist redeems humour and brings laughter back to *Don Quixote* by means of a disproportionate and gawky Don Quixote, a Sancho who alternates between being terrified and amazed, mocking innkeepers and wenches, and near-grotesque servants (González-Moreno and Urbina 31–2).

Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836–75) may be considered a successor of this tradition who knew how to read the parody in *Don Quixote*. His ninety-nine illustrations for the 1866 edition published in London by Frederick Warne and Co. and in New York by Scribner, exude wit and fine humour: the "excellent" Rocinante, more like a decrepit donkey; the cunning innkeeper and the ladies of the party; the plump priest; Don Quixote resignedly enchanted in the cage; the fake Dulcinea and the peasants; Lady Belerma, represented as an obese woman (Figure 11); Sancho dressed as a pompous governor. However, his drawing style, exquisitely wood-engraved by the Dalziel brothers, shows that the Romantic period was coming to an end and that other aesthetic novelties were beginning to make their entrance. Houghton pays special attention to the design of the dresses, cloaks and draperies, puffed and marked by wavy lines and arabesques. The arabesque is the basis of Houghton's drawing; as Givanel puts it, "sus líneas 'quieren ser bellas en sí mismas' independientemente de lo que expresan" [his lines "wish to be beautiful in themselves" independently from what they express] (239). The foundations were being laid for Art Nouveau, whose greatest proponent in connection to *Don Quixote* is to be found in William Heath Robinson (1872–1944).

We may conclude by stating that British Romanticism, as a multifaceted period, rediscovered Cervantes's novel as a complex literary work of multiple perspectives and angles. Lord Carteret's edition had imposed in England one reading so focused on its moralizing aspects that others had been set aside: the humour, the melodrama, the romantic scenes, the adventure, the parody, the fantasy, the imagination, the values of the quest, etc. For their part, Stothard, Corbould, Smirke, Gilbert and Cruikshank returned these topics to the novel

**Figure 11:** *Belerma*, Arthur Boyd Houghton (il.); Dalziel Brothers (eng.). London & New York: Frederick Warne and Co.; Scribner, 1866. Source: Cervantes Project (Public domain).

and promoted the image of Don Quixote as a Romantic hero who embodied the ideals of this period, such as freedom and the fight against injustice. Nature was reappraised, too: the plain, the craggy mountains, the rivulets were no longer mere scenery, they became mirrors of the characters and characters in themselves. Moreover, British readers found in Cervantes's descriptions a kind of travel book that responded to their interest in revisiting the world through the picturesque paradigm. Nevertheless, as an example of the richness and greatness of *Don Quixote*, the story devised by Cervantes was able to be part of this picturesque madness as well as part of the cure. Thus, the same book that encouraged the search for the picturesque as one of the facets of Romanticism was used to criticize this very same fashion. Cervantes's novel had become a universal metaphor capable of transcending time and boundaries both national and aesthetic.

#### **Illustrated Editions of** *Don Quixote*


#### **Bibliography**


by Hans Christian Hagedorn. Empresa Pública Sociedad Don Quijote de Conmemoraciones Culturales de Castilla-La Mancha/Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2009, pp. 343–68.


### **Part IV Appropriating Contemporary Authors**

#### Leticia Villamediana González

### **Chapter 10 "A distinguished place in the Temple of the Muses": Tomás de Iriarte's** *Fables* **in the British Romantic Press (1795–1820)\***

**Abstract** British Romantic reappraisal of Spain meant that knowledge of its literature and culture began to increase. This Romantic re-evaluation of Spain at first mainly focused on the country's Gothic past and its medieval poetry, its ballad or *romance* tradition, and then on the so-called *Siglo de Oro*. As such, these two traditions have been the main concern of recent scholarship, whilst the reception and circulation of more modern authors, particularly eighteenth-century ones, have been overlooked. Yet modern writers were not ignored, as is clear from the case of Tomás de Iriarte and his *Fábulas literarias* (1782): 67 verse fables full of satirical allusions which represent a perfect distillation of the critical and didactic spirit of eighteenth-century Spanish literature. However, the arrival of Iriarte's fables in England, and their subsequent circulation in English translation, have remained unexplored. The present chapter seeks to highlight the overlooked presence of Iriarte on British shores, by exploring the circulation and reception of his work in the British Romantic press, particularly in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In so doing, I argue how writing about and reviewing modern Spanish authors in British Romantic periodicals constituted a way to present a new image of modernity in Spain, as well as a new interest in the Spanish language in a moment when British Hispanism was flourishing.

**Keywords:** Tomás de Iriarte, *Fábulas literarias*, eighteenth-century Spanish literature, British Romantic press, literary reviews.

On 28 August 1806, the conservative paper *The Morning Post* welcomed recent British interest in Spanish literature, noting that "it is with pleasure we perceive, after a lapse of almost two centuries, that the study of the Spanish language begins to revive among us. Of the literature of that enlightened nation, with the exception of the Works of MARIANA, CERVANTES, LOPE DE VEGA, DE SOLIS, QUEVEDO, and a few other writers, we are almost wholly unacquainted" (3). On the one hand, these words confirm the narrative of a new Romantic reappraisal of Spain at the dawn of the nineteenth century, only two years before the outbreak of the Peninsular War, one of the main catalysts of this

<sup>\*</sup> The research for this chapter was funded by the former Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant no. RTI2018-097450-B-I00.

revival. As several scholars have shown, that reappraisal would grow and expand from mere curiosity to a more profound knowledge of the history, literature, culture and language of the country, which became a focus of intense interest and study for the British public, and leading to the construction of a Spanish literary canon (Saglia and Haywood 2). However, *The Morning Post*'s narrative of revival also tacitly indicates a significant lacuna in British knowledge and historiography of Spain, namely eighteenth-century and modern Spanish literature. It subscribes to a view of Spain that was common across Europe, whereby the country was seen as a stagnant geopolitical and cultural entity, the antithesis of Enlightenment ideals of progress and improvement. That same image of decadence was also applied to the country's literature. As Bas Martín has recently pointed out, "When it came to Britain's image of Spain, it was as if time had stopped in 1700. The Spanish books that were known about and read in Britain's capital tended to communicate a traditional view of the country, rather than act as an instrument of renovation and modernity" (252). There was indeed a striking absence of the most significant authors of the Spanish Enlightenment, save for very few exceptions such as Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, whose works and essays had been published, edited and translated in England in the eighteenth century (Sánchez Espinosa).

This shadow over eighteenth-century Spanish literature explains why during the "second mini-poetic canon" or wave of Hispanism in Britain (Saglia and Haywood 8), some Spanish exiles living in Britain after 1823 published articles and essays in British periodicals in an attempt to salvage the reputation of certain figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. To this end, Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza published several articles on "Modern Spanish Theatre" in the *New Monthly Magazine* in 1824 which offered a thorough overview of modern Spanish authors and publications, together with a more advanced and progressive view on Spain and its literature. Similarly, Alcalá Galiano published an article on Jovellanos in *The Foreign Quarterly Review* in 1830 and a series of five articles on Spanish authors in *The Athenaeum* in 1834, the most prestigious literary weekly in Victorian England (Perojo Arronte 219). For these authors, this revival of interest in Spanish matters was an opportunity to present a modern view of Spain and its literature, given that "en un momento en que culmina el interés romántico por lo español, solo lo moderno padecía excepción, oscurecido por el pasado […] La [literatura] española, como si fuera una literatura muerta, tenía pasado, pero carecía de presente" (Llorens 137).

Indeed, the first breakthrough of the Romantic re-evaluation of Spain mainly focused on a Romantic reappraisal of Spain's Gothic past and of its medieval poetry, its ballad or *romance* tradition; and, secondly, on the so-called *Siglo*  *de Oro* (Saglia and Haywood 4). As such, these two traditions have been the main focus of recent scholarship (Saglia, *Poetic Castles*; Saglia and Haywood; Almeida), whilst the reception and circulation of more modern authors have been overlooked. Yet modern writers were hardly ignored, as is clear from the case of Tomás de Iriarte (1750–91) and his *Fábulas literarias* (1782): sixty-seven verse fables full of satirical allusions which represent a perfect distillation of the critical and didactic spirit of eighteenth-century Spanish literature. They offered a new method of literary criticism and were very well received in Spain, although they did not meet with universal acceptance, as Iriarte's ideas also sparked theoretical controversies. The *Fábulas*' popularity soon expanded beyond the boundaries of the Peninsula, with Spanish editions being printed and edited in several different countries alongside translations into German, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedish and English throughout the nineteenth century (Poggio Capote; Álvarez Rubio; Poggio Capote and Regueira Benítez; Zillén). However, the arrival of Iriarte's fables in England, and their subsequent circulation in English, has remained unexplored. The present chapter therefore seeks to highlight this overlooked presence of Iriarte on British shores, by exploring the circulation and reception of his work in the British Romantic press, particularly in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

At the turn of the century, in 1800, *The Critical Review* – the influential periodical first edited by Tobias Smollett in 1756 – dedicated a whole essay to discussing *Fables by the Duke of Nivernois. Translated into English Verse*, published by Cadell and Davies in 1799. The essay offers many thought-provoking reflections on the translation exercise in itself and the challenges this type of task presented for a translator. The anonymous author concluded his article surprisingly with an interesting claim: "some of the best fables which we have seen are by the Spaniard Yriarte. They well deserved to be translated" (35). While it is true that no English edition or stand-alone translation of Iriarte's work had yet been published (the first would appear in 1804), his fables had already appeared in some of the most popular journals – both in Spanish and English – thanks to the Hispanist Robert Southey. In fact, it seems that it was Southey who first formally introduced Iriarte and his fables to an English audience, via various channels: first, to a more exclusive sphere of friends and relatives through his private correspondence, and later, more publicly, through his *Letters Written During a Short Residency in Spain and Portugal*. *With Some Account of Spanish and Portuguese Poetry* (1797) and his diverse contributions to different British periodicals. As Flores and González (1224) argue, Southey constitutes a key element in the reception of Spanish literature in England during this period, but his role as a Hispanist and translator has not yet been fully explored.

Southey became acquainted with Iriarte's work at the very beginning of his Spanish sojourn in 1795–6. In fact, he first acquired Iriarte's *La música* as soon as he arrived in Corunna in mid-December 1795 (Gonzalez 9), and soon after embarked upon the translation of the literary fables. Though there is no record of Southey buying *Fábulas*, Gonzalez and Flores have identified the Madrid edition of 1782 as the source text (Southey, *Letters* 399 n. 146). This is corroborated by the first drafts Southey included in one of his early letters to his friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford: the translations without titles of two fables that correspond to "El burro flautista" and "El oso, la mona y el cerdo," which he used to illustrate all the discomfort and discontent he experienced while travelling in the Peninsula, particularly during his stay in Lisbon. We know these were Southey's own translations because a few years later, on 23 March 1812, in another letter to his friend Robert Gooch in which he also quoted a short passage of "The Musical Ass" (which he entitled "The Ass and the Flute"), Southey claimed: "I translated it more than fifteen years [ago] at Lugo, – the first fruits of my studies in Spanish" (Southey, *Collected Letters* no. 2064). In fact, it became something of a habit for Southey to insert quotations, fragments or references to these fables in his own correspondence, usually with a moral purpose or to adorn his criticism or dislike of someone or something.

Revised versions of these two free translations, together with their originals in Spanish, were later included in his first edition of *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal*, this time with the titles "The Musical Ass" (Southey, *Letters* 89–91) and "The Dancing Bear" (Southey, *Letters* 332–3). In the fourth letter, Southey also decided to provide some more background on Iriarte for his British circle of friends and acquaintances introducing him as a Spanish author who had "written several comedies, a history of Spain, a didactic poem on music, and translated the Aeneid of Virgil" (89). However, the first to appear in periodicals were two free translations of "El pato y la serpiente" ("A Duck, upon a Waterside") and "La ardilla y el caballo" ("The Squirrel and the Horse") published in March and July of 1798 in *The Morning Post*, a newspaper to which Southey contributed over two hundred poems, both translations and original work (Southey, *Letters* 399).

All these translations scattered across Southey's sundry writings and publications manifest his keen enthusiasm for and interest in the Spanish fables. Unfortunately, although Southey did include commentary on or analysis of some of his own translations and poetical imitations in his *Letters*, his versions of Iriarte are not among those he selected for comment. Similarly, his contributions to the *Monthly Magazine*, for which he wrote a series of essays entitled "On the Poetry of Spain and Portugal," included reviews and translations of Spanish and Portuguese poems, but again Iriarte's fables were not included, although he did briefly comment on Iriarte's didactic poem *La música* (1779), "written with incomparable skills, and singular genius" (Southey, "On the Poetry of Spain" 275).

In the absence of a definitive statement of his own rationale, the question therefore arises: why did Southey take such an interest in Iriarte's work? If we pay attention to the list of authors and works he translated and inserted in his *Letters*, it is worth noting that Iriarte is the only eighteenth-century Spanish author and the only contemporary to the British writer. On the one hand, we can argue that Iriarte's fables constituted an ideal tool for those attempting to learn the Spanish language. The type of language used, the correctness and neatness of the grammatical constructions and the cultured phraseology are only some of the features that, as outlined below, made them suitable and enjoyable reading, easy to memorize. In fact, they became extremely popular in many manuals and grammars of Spanish published in English later in the century, both in England and in North America. This could explain why Southey turned to them at the very beginning of his journey in Spain, both as an introduction to the literature of the country in the vernacular and as a preliminary experimental exercise in translation, at a moment where he was also attempting longer and more complex works by Lope de Vega, Fray Luis de León, Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo, among others, which would also later appear in his *Letters*. As Zarandona (312– 13) has argued, Southey was a dedicated translator aware of contemporary theories and reflections on translation, such as Alexander Frases Tytler's *Essay on the Principles of Translation* (1790). Furthermore, Sebold (63) has noted the possible influence of Lope de Vega on Iriarte's fables, particularly certain echoes and parallelisms between the use of the *redondilla* in "El oso, la mona y el cerdo" and Lope's *Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo* (1609), for instance. Despite Southey's ambivalence towards Lope de Vega's production, it is more than evident that he celebrated and admired it.

In addition, given the number and type of references to both Iriarte and his work found throughout Southey's correspondence, we can infer that Southey also enjoyed the simplicity and playfulness of his style, and the wit and moral element of the fables, as well as the subject matter. Despite Southey's domestication of the fables, with evident and logical differences between the original and the translation, the moral message of each fable remained unchanged, contributing to what Saglia has called "a process of 'cultural translation' of Spain into the British cultural domain" ("Robert Southey's *Chronicle*" 40). In this particular case, it certainly contributed to the promotion of a more modern image of Spain and her literature that diverged from that fascination with Spain as Europe's other, as the land of wild and exotic landscapes which would become so popular, especially from the 1820s.

However, Southey's engagement with Iriarte's fables is not only visible in his domesticated translations, as elements of the fables also became embedded in his own compositions, influencing his animal poems such as "The Pig. A Colloquial Poem," "The Fillbert" and, above all, "The Dancing Bear. Recommended to the Advocates for the Slave Trade" (1799), a political poem where the fate of the slave is compared to the anguish of a bear forced by its master to dance clumsily in front of the crowd. In fact, in a letter of 20 March 1799, fellow poet Charles Lamb, while discussing Southey's poem "The Spider," attempts to persuade him to start a series of animal poems, "which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. I love this sort of poems, that open [*sic*] a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think the vein may be further opened" (Lamb, *Letters* 45). This also fed into a broader movement for and interest in the concept of animal rights, as was seen in Romantic literature more generally, in the conviction that "animals are fellow sufferers with human beings […] or could be presented as fellow victims of human cruelty" (Perkins 937), as Southey had done with the English version of the "Dancing Bear."

Southey's knowledge of and interest in Iriarte's fables went beyond his role as a translator. Among his contributions to different newspapers, he reviewed both the Spaniard's work and some of the translations in English that came to light, notably John Belfour's *Fables on Subjects connected with Literature. Imitated from the Spanish of Don Tomas de Yriarte*, printed by C. Whittingham and sold by J. Richardson in London in 1804. The book included thirty-four fables translated into English and an introduction, written by Belfour's brother, which discusses the history, theory and nature of fables. Unfortunately, little is known about the figure of John Belfour (1768–1842), but it is clear that he also contributed to the circulation of Spanish literature in Romantic Britain. From his obituary, published in August 1842 in *The Gentleman's Magazine*, we learn that he was a poet, a member of the Royal Society of Literature and a translator "proficient in several modern tongues, in particular Spanish" (213). Besides translating Iriarte's *Literary Fables*, he also translated his *La música*, published as *Music. A Didactic Poem in Five Cantos* in 1807, and composed the ballad *Spanish heroism, or the Battle of Roncesvalles*, published in London in 1809, which received, to my knowledge, at least four different reviews in *The Satirist, or Monthly Meteor*, *The Monthly Review or Literary Journal*, *The Critical Review* (these three in 1809) and *The Poetical Register* in 1812.

Due to the copious reviews commenting on Belfour's translation of Iriarte's work that emerged in some of the most iconic newspapers of the period, it may be definitively stated that the book sparked attention and received considerable recognition, albeit alongside some unfavourable criticism. Two of these reviews may be attributed specifically to Southey, both published in 1804: one in *The Annual Review and History of Literature*, of which he claimed authorship in a letter to his friend and patron Charles Watkin Williams Wynn on 16 November 1807 (*Collected Letters no.* 1380); and a second in *The Critical Review*. The first one is shorter and includes Belfour's translation of "The Bear, the Ape, and the Hog," juxtaposed with Southey's translation of the same fable, inviting the reader to compare and decide on the quality of the first:

These imitations are, without exception, the very worst we ever saw. Mr. Belfour either has not understood the original, or has made the most unwarrantable alterations, as the following specimen will prove […] The reader may judge for himself whether Mr. Belfour has spoilt this fable from ignorance […] or from thinking that he could improve it. (Southey, Review of *Fables on Subjects* 597)

Following this, *The Critical Review* dedicated six and a half pages to a discussion of the quality of Iriarte's fables and of Belfour's translation. The reviewer praises Iriarte's style and the playfulness of his verse as well as its ingenuity of thought, refined language, and clarity and delight in expression. As regards the translation, the essay offers a long and detailed comparative analysis of both the source and target texts, paying special attention to the choice of syntax, lexis and versification – a task that only someone with a firm knowledge of the Spanish language and familiarity with Iriarte's work could have accomplished.

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, a certain literary rivalry arose between Southey and Belfour which seems to have endured for several years. On 29 June 1807, in a letter to the publisher Longman, Southey stated: "I believe a new translation has been announced by Mr. ——, whose translation of Yriarte proved that either he did not understand the original, or that of all translators he is the most impudent" (*Collected Letters no.* 1337). Later in the same year, on 11 December 1807, Southey wrote to update his friend and patron George Howland Beaumont on his dispute regarding the edition of *Don Quixote* he had been commissioned to produce, and once again took the opportunity to express his profound disapproval of Belfour's translation, echoing his previous statements in the aforementioned reviews:

The projected edition of D. Quixote has terminated in the worst of all ways. Cadell and Davies authorised Longman to apply to me concerning it, and meantime, without his knowledge, concluded a bargain with a Mr. Balfour [*sic*], a gentleman who translated Yriarte's Fables about three years ago, and by that translation proved himself more thoroughly devoid of all taste than it is possible for any person to conceive who has not seen his miserable mutilations of those excellent originals. (*Collected Letters* n. 1397)

In contrast, a second review published in the conservative newspaper *The British Critic* considered Belfour's translation overall "very pleasing and satisfactory" (Review of *Fables on Subjects* 199) and that the author deserved thanks for facilitating access to such a significant work to an English-speaking audience. More interestingly, however, the review culminates with a recognition of the political as well as literary ends to which these fables were turned, noting that they "may afford a good lesson to those factions in a state, which contend with each other, while an enemy is at the door" (200). In choosing the fable of "The Two Rabbits" – which in Spanish includes the phrase "No debemos detenernos en cuestiones frívolas, olvidando el asunto principal" [we must not detain upon frivoulous matters and forget the main ones] – the newspaper takes the opportunity to comment on the hostile political context of the period. At the dawn of the Peninsular War, the newspaper's observation constitutes an early claim of Spanish literature as a locus for discussion of both domestic and international politics, in this case the national rivalry associated with Anglo-French politics and the controversial figure of Napoleon.

Similarly, in August 1806, the conservative *Morning Post* dedicated half of its regular column on "Spanish Literature" to modern Spanish authors, given that "although of late years literature has been on the decline in Spain, there are still existing in that nation men of great erudition and genuine poetical talent" (3). The article, curiously situated immediately below a poem entitled "Nelson's Victory," includes praise for both Iriarte's work and Belfour's second edition (published in 1806), asserting that the latter "has performed his task with ease and spirit in a volume elegantly printed" (3). It is worth noting, nevertheless, how the newspaper grounds the value of the literary pieces in their political patronage:

We understand that, moreover, this original Poem […] was produced under the auspices of the present King of Spain, while Prince of Asturias, which is alone an indication of its worth. But however flattering it might be to Yriarte to see his work so distinguished, we are certain it must be infinitely more gratifying to the feelings of Mr. Belfour, to find his translation honoured by the countenance of a Personage in every respect so pre-eminent as the Heir Apparent to the Throne of this enlightened and mighty Kingdom. (3)

This view of the direct connection between political and literary modernization continued to inform commentary, though, as Kelly points out, "moves to political modernization at the Spanish court prompted expressions of optimism in British observers" (30). However, notwithstanding these early signs of Hispanophilia and recognition of Spanish literature, it could be argued that national modern literatures were subtly used to represent international rivalry and established political hierarchies, in an attempt to maintain the geopolitical status quo.

Alongside this spirited discussion of the quality of Belfour's translation, newspapers soon began to give consideration to the work of another relatively unknown Hispanist, Agustín Luis Josse (1763–1841), a "teacher of Spanish who made a more positive and practical contribution to the English cult of Spanish by publishing grammars and anthologies of poetry and prose, editing texts and translating" (Glendinning 71). In 1802, his four-volume *El Tesoro español o biblioteca portátil española* (1802) came out in London; in 1809, he published his own Spanish edition of *Fábulas literarias por Don Tomás de Iriarte*. In the first work, his intention was to offer a literary history of Spain with some verse and prose extracts from outstanding authors; Iriarte's fables found a place among those extracts and were also used by Josse in the elaboration of his Spanish grammars. Despite being published in Spanish, the book was very well received in the press, evidence of a flourishing market-driven industry already interested in Spanish-language editions in the early years of the century. Furthermore, this period is also marked by a growing interest in literary histories, a clear by-product of Romantic historicism, as Saglia explains ("Iberian Translations" 35). As the reviews of *El Tesoro español* illustrate, there was a thirst for this type of Spanish literary history among British readers, which might help to explain why, in the early nineteenth century, the first histories of Spanish literature were mainly written by foreign scholars. As the *British Critic* commented:

[A] compilation of this kind is greatly more desirable in the Spanish, than in the French or English, languages; on account of the much greater scarcity of the original Spanish authors in this country, than of our own writers, or those of our continental neighbours. Even an Italian work of this nature, though greatly desirable, would, in this point of view, be much less important than the present selection from authors, whose works, if not thus known, may be concealed for many years from the eyes of English enquirers. (Review of *El Tesoro español* 573)

In this same spirit, *The Annual Review or Register of Literature* dedicated nine double-columned pages to a detailed analysis of Josse's work, commenting on the choice of authors and materials selected and including some examples in the review. Among modern Spanish authors, the anonymous reviewer focused on Iriarte's fables, printing two translations: "The Squirrel and the Horse" and "The Crow and the Peacock" (Review of *El Tesoro español*, *The Annual Review* 565–6). According to Packer and Pratt, editors of his letters, Southey was responsible for the review, which would explain the knowledgeable and detailed nature of the analysis regarding classic and modern Spanish literature, as well as the particular choice of extracts to print (Southey, *Collected Letters no.* 834).

Josse's later edition of the *Fábulas literarias* (1809) received a similar level of attention in periodical publications. As the very short introduction tells us, the volume constitutes an updated and corrected version of the original text published in Spain in 1782, the justification for this new edition being that "empezaban a andar en manos de los curiosos algunas copias diminutas y viciadas de estas fábulas" (iii), a clear reference to Belfour's translation. However, Josse's edition did not include an English translation of the fables, only an appendix with a bilingual glossary of the most difficult words. This editorial decision was not welcomed particularly warmly: while the *Critical Review* praised once again the quality of "this ingenious work, by an author distinguished for the number and variety of compositions," it also acknowledged that "their utility would be general, if their circulation were rendered so, by translations into the different languages" (Review of *Fábulas literarias* 541). Indeed, a Spanish work published in a Spanish-language edition in London might have seemed an oddity, but there was a clear investment in this type of edition aimed at the vast and mostly untouched colonial and postcolonial South American countries (Saglia, "Iberian Translations" 43). Nonetheless, Josse's edition in Spanish seemed to be more oriented towards a specific British audience: those seeking to learn the language. The *Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine*, in its section dedicated to "Foreign Literature," described Josse's edition as

a work which, containing such a great variety of Spanish versification, will always be acceptable to the students of the Castilian language; is more correctly printed than any other London edition of a Spanish volume which we have lately seen. We recommend it as worthy of a place in every library containing Spanish books. (Review of *Fábulas literarias* 499)

Certainly, Spain's central position and fascination in British political, literary and public spheres after the outbreak of the Peninsular War in 1808 provoked curiosity and interest in the language. The traveller Alexander Jardine, in his *Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal* (1788), had already warned his readers of the necessity of learning the Spanish language since "without it, you can expect but little knowledge of this people, and less satisfaction" (55). Similarly, twenty years later, *The European Magazine and London Review* labelled Spanish a "commercial language" of great value for the British nation in its review of Thomas Planquais's *A New Spanish and English Grammar*:

The commerce of the British nation, which, we foresee, will again raise its head, and reunite us to every country in the world, most imperatively demands an acquaintance with the Spanish language. To the politician and the man of literature it is equally useful. The government of Spain is an object which, from the state papers of that country, may be contemplated with great advantage in this. The Spanish language, therefore, we deem of infinite importance. (462–3)

As Hooper has highlighted, Britain's intense historical connection with Spain meant that learning Spanish was considered a valuable means of getting ahead in business, if not in society (60). As a result, Iriarte's literary fables became ideal pedagogical texts with which to learn the language in a moment when British Hispanism was beginning to flourish. They featured in many grammar books and manuals of Spanish, while Iriarte's name was quoted beside other great writers like Cervantes and Lope de Vega, thus winning a place in the British Romantic canon. In fact, in February 1821, *The Monthly Review*'s critique of Ángel Anaya's *An Essay on Spanish Literature* (1818) referred to Iriarte as the "newest of the writers who have been permitted to contribute to this garland" (223). This, however, coincides with the "second wave" of Hispanism in Britain during the 1820s, where we find sundry references to Iriarte and his work in essays published by Spanish exiles and British authors in periodicals such as *The Monthly Magazine*, *The New Monthly Magazine*, *The Athenaeum* or *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine*, to name just a few; or even new edited translations such as Richard Andrew's, published in London in 1835, and Robert Rockliff 's edition of 1851, printed in Liverpool, which clearly shows that interest in these fables remained alive throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. While analysis of this later period is beyond the remit of the present study, further work in this regard will allow for a fuller appreciation of the circulation and appraisal of Iriarte's work in England.

In sum, newspaper reviews show that British Romantic re-evaluation of Spain embraced a certain reassessment of eighteenth-century Spanish literature, which was mostly unacknowledged. For Spanish émigrés living in England, writing about modern and contemporary authors constituted a way to present an image of modernity. However, as I have demonstrated with the case of Iriarte and his work, those seeds of modernity had already been planted during the first decade of the century via the contribution of Hispanists such as Southey, Belfour and Josse. Iriarte's literary fables and their translations aroused great interest among the British public for diverse reasons, as we have seen, eventually becoming an example of accessible literature and a pedagogical text for those seeking to learn the language. To quote Joselyn Almeida, "a reassessment of attitudes towards Spain went hand in hand with the need to have first-hand knowledge of the place" (14) and also of the language. As such, Iriarte gained his place in this Anglo-Spanish Romantic canon or, as the *Morning Post* put it, "a distinguished place in the Temple of the Muses […] and [his work] will be read by every admirer of Spanish Poetry with the highest pleasure" ("Spanish Literature" 3).

#### **Bibliography**


#### Fernando Durán López

### **Chapter 11 Between Disdain and Disappointment: Three English Reviews of Martínez de la Rosa's** *Obras literarias*

**Abstract** José María Blanco White resumed an intense literary activity as he settled in Liverpool with the Unitarians. In order to ensure an income as well as a public forum for himself, in 1835 and 1836 he wrote five long articles for *The London Review* edited by John Stuart Mill. The first piece was dedicated to the *Obras literarias* of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, printed in Paris in 1827–8. Such a late review of a writer irrelevant to an English readership can be explained by the fact that Martínez de la Rosa was at the time the Prime Minister of Spain, a country then immersed in the Carlist War. This text is Blanco White's only critical work on Spanish literature from this period. The collection had also received reviews in *The Foreign Quarterly Review* and *The Foreign Review* in 1829. This reception shows that the interest in modern Spanish literature in the United Kingdom was marginal compared to that in Spain's ancient literature or in other aspects of Spanish culture and society.

**Keywords:** Blanco White, Martínez de la Rosa, Neoclassicism, critical reception, Spanish literature.

The purpose of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the poor reception in the British press of contemporary Spanish literature from the first decades of the nineteenth century as exemplified by a significant case: the *Obras literarias* [Literary Works] of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, published in four volumes between 1827 and 1828 (i.e. during the author's exile in Paris). These volumes encapsulate the contribution of a writer who up until that date had been purely Neoclassical – his relative approximation to Romanticism happened later (Ojeda) – and who was also one of the most prominent liberal politicians of the day. Indeed, his political prominence, together with the fact that the collection was published in Paris and its anthological nature, anticipated a much larger reception than that afforded to any single work by a Spanish writer printed in Spain. And yet the bar for Britain's interest in contemporary Hispanic literature was so high that the critical response in this case rather expressed a profound lack of interest; Martínez de la Rosa eventually managed to meet the standard, albeit barely, since the reviews I am about to discuss are all peripheral to what was then the central journalistic debate in the United Kingdom.

#### **1. News from the Continent**

Upon publication, Martínez de la Rosa's *Obras literarias* attracted a certain amount of attention from two London literary reviews in 1828 and 1829. I say "a certain amount" because these were *The Foreign Quarterly Review* and *The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany*, periodicals expressly devoted to literary novelties from the continent and therefore predictable outlets for a publication about which English readers were unlikely to hear about in any of the great generalist reviews. Even so, neither magazine dedicated a long article to Martínez de la Rosa, but only a brief review instead in their respective sections "Critical Sketches" and "Short Reviews of Books," which initially signals a marginal level of attention, confirmed by the indifference with which one of the reviewers states that he will not discuss certain theatrical contents "for the plain reason that we have not yet perused them" ("Critical" 320). The pieces, moreover, lacked the additional punch of political news since, while the author had been president of the Council of Ministers for a few months in 1822, by this time he was just another member of the group of liberals defeated and scattered throughout Europe, as the same reviewer notes: "he is a Liberal, and as such an exile, it should seem" (319).

The two literary periodicals were very similar, but while *The Foreign Review* frequently engaged foreign collaborators, including Spanish exiles, *The Foreign Quarterly Review* employed only British reviewers (Curran 119). The difference is very clearly noticeable in this particular case. The write-up in *The Foreign Review*<sup>1</sup> was divided into two issues, the first part dealing with volumes 1 and 3 and the second with volumes 2 and 4; given its favourable tone and its familiarity with the fundamentals of Spanish literature, it is likely that it was written by an exile. The reviewer praised the patriotism of *Zaragoza* and *The Widow of Padilla*, evincing a close acquaintance with the historical episode of the *comuneros*, but considers it a mistake to have tried to follow Alfieri's way in the tragedy, since the female protagonist acts out of revenge and therefore cannot truly represent the national yearning for freedom; the author, said the critic, was too timid to endow the play with greatness, so that the latter would not be able to endure beyond

<sup>1</sup> I am grateful to María Eugenia Perojo Arronte for having drawn my attention to the existence of this text.

its original context under the Napoleonic invasion. Yet the reviewer praised the beauty and purity of the play's verses, just as he did regarding the poem *Zaragoza*, "among the best detached epics of which Spain can boast" ("Short" 243). He offered some brief praise for the comedy *La niña en casa y la madre en la máscara* [The Girl at Home and the Mother at the Masquerade], although he missed "the peculiar charm of Moratín, in blending the metrical art with a perfectly natural arrangement of phrases" (244); it was, in other words, a pleasant satire whose characters and situations presented little that was particularly remarkable. In the second instalment of this critical assessment there is a disdainful comment on Martínez de la Rosa's adherence to rules "which are really losing ground" (494): a statement that rather reflects the moderate evolution of a Spaniard trained in the classicist tradition rather than the head-on rejection by an English literary critic estranged from this tradition. Finally, there is a clear disapproval of the *Morayma* and *Oedipus* tragedies, judged to be devoid of any dramatic interest. Despite these objections, this was the most sympathetic response that Martínez de la Rosa's collection received in Britain.

The harsh appraisal published in *The Foreign Quarterly Review* is more enlightening, since it stems from a purely British point of view: it sets out to measure the distance that separated Martínez de la Rosa from an English reader while taking it for granted, of course, that the latter possessed a superior advantage over the former. There is no intent in this review to understand the functioning of Spanish literature, but rather encouragement for readers to rank its merits with regard to their own literary taste, including a fair amount of condescension and a strong anti-classicist spirit. The opening sentence already posits that the literary value of Martínez de la Rosa is conditioned by his affiliation to a decadent literature – though nevertheless one about which English readers have the right to know something, however uninspiring it may be:

Had the Señor D. Francisco Martinez de la Rosa been a Frenchman, German, or Italian, his productions should have found their own way to the temple of fame, or the chandler's shop, unassisted by us. But as in Spain literary genius or talent has not, for the last 200 years, been equally active, whilst of the activity it has displayed little or nothing is known in this country, four volumes of new Spanish poetry and prose command some attention. ("Critical" 318)

One wonders if a two-volume collection, let alone a solitary volume, would have demanded similar attention, since it took four for a new Spanish book to make its way to the Temple of Fame (that is to say, the British reviews). But apart from the disdainful superiority that the critical piece exudes, it confirms an undeniable fact: modern Spanish literature, in the eyes of British critical audiences, possessed inherent shortcomings that prevented it from being considered a legitimate object of interest. In this sense, the critique under examination is justified as an exception, one perhaps resulting from the need to fill a little pocket of curiosity further stirred by the publication's bulky content, but not out of appreciation of the author, his work or his literary context. And, while not mentioned in the review, there is the fact that the book was printed in France: Madrid was undoubtedly much further away from the Temple of Fame.

The reviewer ignores the prose works and concentrates on Martínez de la Rosa's *Poetics*, his poem about the siege of Zaragoza, the three tragedies (of which he confesses to having read only one) and the aforementioned comedy *La niña*. The critic is reluctant to attach any value to the author's prescriptive teachings in verse: "It is not much heavier than such instructive poetry usually is, and occupies a sixth of the first volume;" since the rest is spent on comments and prose lessons on numerous Spanish writers, mixed with matters of prosody, meter or rhyme, the reviewer allows himself to claim that these are "such as we should hope no English schoolboy of ordinary proficiency could require" (319). But, above all and in horrified shock, he reveals to his readers that Martínez de la Rosa provides Homer's passages in Spanish, while he does not follow the same method in the case of quotes of Virgil's Latin. No Spaniard would have been surprised by what to an English intellectual of the early nineteenth century, trained in the direct cultivation of classical languages, must have been an unusual discovery: that Spanish scholars were not generally proficient in Greek.

Once the author's erudition has been ridiculed, it is time to scrutinize his artistic performance. The reviewer recalls that *Zaragoza* was written for a contest launched by the Central Junta of Spain and that one of the jury members was Jovellanos: "from a poem approved by such authority we shall translate a few lines" (319). Indeed, seven verses from the composition are then rendered into English, but not without first drawing the reader's attention to the fact that the Spanish and sometimes the Italians occasionally leave lines unrhymed in an irregular and arbitrary fashion (the poem is written in a poetic form named *silva*, an observation that the critic of *The Foreign Review* states simply, as if taking knowledge of this metrical formula for granted and needing no further explanation, let alone any show of surprise). This passage is the closest the reviewer gets to praising Martínez de la Rosa's work, since the piece's last page, dedicated to the author's theatrical output, conveys an overt rejection of the dramatic modes employed. He asserts that the merit of *The Widow of Padilla* lies chiefly in the circumstances of its premiere in Cádiz in 1812, notwithstanding the fact that it is ultimately a poor imitation of Alfieri:

To us the author appears to have imitated Alfieri, whom he professes to have taken as his model, rather in his cold simplicity of plot, than in his powerful language and vigorous conception of character […] This subject was susceptible of two interests; one in the rebellion itself, provoked by insults and by real grievances; the other, in the character of the Protagonista. A blending of the desolate sorrow of widowhood, with the romantic enthusiasm of woman, (devoted in this instance to the cause of liberty in which her lamented husband had perished upon the scaffold,) with the thirst for vengeance upon his executioners, and with ardent maternal affection, might have produced an original and highly tragic character. Rosa's widow is merely a revengeful virago, whose courage and whose grief are masculine, not feminine, who makes liberty a stalking-horse, and forgets her living son in her wild passion for his dead father. We suspect that our poet's chief deficiency as a dramatist, is of deep strong feeling – no uncommon defect in the Spanish theatre. (320)

A tragic author without deep feelings and moving language deserves little esteem, no doubt, but such deficiencies are here construed as a feature common to all Spanish theatre. The critic's judgement on the comedy *La niña en casa y la madre en la máscara* [The Girl at Home and the Mother at the Masquerade] does nothing to temper such a negative view and again goes beyond the particular case. He considers that "the comedy […] is better, but neither very laughable nor very interesting. It is, however, essentially Spanish" (320). The reviewer expresses moral qualms about the play's plot, in which a married mother and her daughter fight for the love of the same dissolute young man: "It is hard to conceive how any audience, accustomed to the thronging incidents, the profuse invention, and the harassingly involved plot of the older Spanish dramatists, should cordially delight in such a dry exhibition of history and morality" (320). Thus – with an allusion to the theatre of Spain's Golden Age, and an implicit condemnation of modern Spanish drama as lacking similar virtues – concludes this perfunctory approach to contemporary Hispanic letters, the corollary of which is that there is little in them worth the time of an English reader of 1829. The mission of the reviewer has been completed: one which rather consists in confirming that there is no reason to take interest in these writers.

#### **2. Blanco White in His Labyrinth**

When José María Blanco White left Dublin and the Church of England at the beginning of 1835 to settle in Liverpool, he once again needed an income, the only thing that could have led him back to practising journalistic literary criticism (Durán López 495 ff.). Thus, between 1835 and 1836 he published five reviews signed with the initial W. in *The London Review*. This periodical, which had reused the name of a failed magazine run by Blanco White himself in 1829, was a spin-off of *The Westminster Review*, the iconic publication founded in 1824 by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill and the mouthpiece of political radicalism and philosophical utilitarianism. Dissatisfied with the editorial line, the young John Stuart Mill (James's son) separated himself from this enterprise in 1835 in order to found, with Thomas Falconer and other associates, *The London Review*, which advocated a more advanced intellectual platform. J. S. Mill, who was twenty-nine years old in 1835, had met Blanco White years earlier in the circle of his father and Lord Holland. Although many years separated them and their religious ideas were very different, Mill respected the Sevillian, especially since his break with Anglican conservatism. He turned to him partly to help him, but also because he valued his knowledge of European thought. It is clear from the correspondence between the two that Mill hoped to use Blanco White's skills to balance his political line with lighter matters.

What is most fascinating about the relationship between Mill and Blanco White is the struggle to establish the content and focus of the latter's collaborations, since the Spaniard was not at all willing to become a mere literary critic. In fact, the first title proposed by Blanco White for critical scrutiny was not exactly apolitical: Alexis de Tocqueville's *Democracy in America*, which had just appeared in French as *De la démocratie en Amérique*. The proposal was not accepted because Mill was manoeuvring to keep Blanco White away from political matters. A second suggestion to review the novel *The Last Days of Pompeii* by Edward Bulwer (1834) was also rejected, as Mill argued that the author was going to collaborate in the magazine and this entailed a conflict of interest, since the novel's flaws should be pointed out. Finally, he accepted the proposition to review the works of Martínez de la Rosa, which became the subject of Blanco White's first article, "Recent Spanish Literature;" Mill gave the go-ahead to a piece that did not in principle pose any problems (Mill, letter no. 122, 2 March 1835). The collection to be reviewed had been printed in 1827 and 1828, but such a late critique of a writer irrelevant to an English readership was justified by its journalistic currency: from January 1834 to June 1835 the author had served as President of the Council of Ministers and State Minister of Spain while the country was immersed in civil war. As Blanco White reported to Elizabeth Whately:

Forced by the necessity of opposing mental distress, as much as possible, I have written an article for the *London Review*. It is on the works of the present Spanish Prime Minister. It is liked by the editors. They seem to want *literary* articles. I think the review itself will be in a spirit far superior to the *Westminster*. Have you seen the prospectus? It appears to me excellent.2

The collaboration was short-lived. Blanco White was hypersensitive as well as highly radicalized on the issue of religion, for him of paramount importance at the time. Despite courtesies and words of praise, he never really shared a common understanding with Mill about the purpose of these articles, and the link was broken when the magazine decided not to publish Blanco White's last submission. This is how he told Mrs Whately on 22 October 1837 in a letter written in Liverpool:

I thought the editor of the *London* had treated me quite uncivilly, but John Mill wrote to me a few days ago to make an apology. He explained the apparent neglect, and the cause that the last article I had written at their desire was not published. They were obliged to try every means of alluring purchasers, and my articles have no attraction for the class among whom they may expect encouragement. He most earnestly requests my not giving them up, in hopes that when they have recovered from their pecuniary losses, they may have an opportunity of inserting something from me. I am glad that I am thus spared the unpleasant sense of an unmerited slight. I am aware that I cannot write anything to be put side by side with their best articles. My separation from the world, my great want of strength, most reduce my writing to a perfect twaddle.3

Thus, while being among the best critical writing by Blanco White, these reviews were conditioned by Mill's editorial surveillance, whose influence affected not only the choice of topics but the final manuscript, which he sometimes personally retouched. The selection of topics suggests Blanco White's disengagement from Spanish subjects, despite the fact that in the eyes of the British public he continued to be seen as an expert in Spanish matters. Blanco White negotiated his interests and managed to produce two reviews on English literature, another on the French historian François Guizot and two on Spanish subjects, Godoy and Martínez de la Rosa.4 Even so, in truth, Godoy was a subject of European scope and his memoirs, published in French, were then being translated into English, so this was not exactly a Spanish novelty. The piece on Martínez de la Rosa was most likely the one that best met Mill's expectations, although I tend to

<sup>2</sup> Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 2164, *Whately Papers*, fols. 236–7. Letter from Blanco White to Elizabeth Whately, dated in Liverpool on 19 March 1835.

<sup>3</sup> Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 2164, *Whately Papers*, fols. 263–4. The date seems too late for the matter at hand, but it is the one that appears in the chronologically ordered, autograph correspondence of Blanco White to the Whatelys.

<sup>4</sup> From April 1836, the *London Review* was no longer published as such, but under the combined title *The Westminster and London Review*, in reference to the publication from which it had originally split.

believe that each man saw the assignment as serving a different goal. All in all, this splendid text is Blanco White's only critical approach to Spanish literature from this period.

#### **3. A Spain Trapped in Time**

Blanco White's review of Martínez de la Rosa is the opposite of that published in *The Foreign Quarterly Review*: long, by no means dismissive, highly analytical and formulated from within an idea of Spain, and not as an act of condescension over otherness. However, their final conclusions are not so very different. The forces at stake in the assignment were various: the Neoclassical nature of the work of Martínez de la Rosa, the political role of the author, the distance maintained by Blanco White with respect to the Spain of his time, whatever could be of interest about the reviewed work for the British public and the expectations of John Stuart Mill himself. These factors were not aligned and it is not unlikely that Mill, the magazine and its readers were willing to learn something about recent Spanish literature, the progress or setbacks of that convulsed Spain whose president was inclined to write verses and dramas; they must have wished to find out about this Spanish politician who appeared in the pages of newspapers. The paradox is that Blanco White was probably not the best writer for this purpose. His Spain had disappeared in 1810; the rest was literature, memory, reflection and agony, but by 1835 he was already considerably estranged from contemporary Spain. He himself betrays his estrangement as he expresses his views on the country's nobility of blood: "From everything we hear concerning the present state of the Peninsula, we conclude that […] the prejudices of birth […] are fast disappearing" ("Recent" 79). He is obviously speaking from hearsay of a Spain whose changes fall beyond his direct observation. At the end of the day, in other words, he was only willing and able to speak of an underlying Spain, the foundations of the civilization that he was exploring from a distant and critical stance, unaware of current developments and superficial changes. Perhaps, it was precisely currency and superficiality that his editors and his readers were looking for above anything else.

The truth is that Blanco White approaches his review in an elusive fashion, eschewing the subject and using Martínez de la Rosa to raise certain points that are only partly related to modern Spanish letters. He is least interested in discussing Martínez de la Rosa, and even if he had been willing to analyse Spanish literature in the 1820s and 1830s, he would not have been able to do so, since he was largely unfamiliar with it. He does, however, express his political sympathy for the author, whom he perhaps frequented at the salon held at the Madrid home of Manuel José Quintana between 1805 and 1808, and most certainly in the Holland House circle in London in the years 1810–11 (in fact, Martínez de la Rosa got one of his articles published in *El Español*), and later perhaps during the politician's stays in London after 1823 (Moreno Alonso 268, 358 and 371). Blanco White treats him with kid gloves and endorses his conservative liberalism:

In conclusion, we must protest that far from intending to turn away Spanish scholars from Martinez de la Rosa's works, we wish those works to become as popular in England as circumstances allow. Few Spanish books could afford the student of that language a better specimen of the good Spanish of our own times; and fewer still could give him a more accurate and pleasing history of Spanish poetry. The present and past exertions of the author, in favour of the liberty of his country; his sufferings in that cause, and the high and influential stations which he occupies, must be sources of a lively interest to every one who, animated by a love of the progress of mankind, shall become acquainted with the refined, enlightened, and evidently amiable mind, which could bear literary fruits so near maturity and richness, under the overcast skies of Spain. Martinez de la Rosa has our heart's best wishes, in the difficult and important task which, to the credit of the Queen Regent of Spain, must now interrupt his more pleasing and favourite pursuits. ("Recent" 93)

Blanco White's words about the figure of Martínez de la Rosa were indeed favourable, but this sympathy does not lead to a positive judgement of his literary achievements. Obviously, when he protests that his intention is not to "turn away" the gaze of English Hispanists from the politician's literary writings, he does so because he knows only too well that the review does not contain a favourable assessment. All he can claim is that Martínez de la Rosa writes well, that he is a paragon of modern style and that his works are highly commendable reading for students of Spanish: a very lowly artistic accomplishment, but ultimately a compliment after pages of reservations, frowns and digressions. In fact, the review is made up of several independent reflections that avoid focusing too much on Martínez de la Rosa, whom Blanco White views as a symptom and expression of the evils that had plagued Spanish culture since ancient times, and not as a writer who deserves to be analysed for his own sake. There is no attempt to hide this: "Our object is to present one of the best living specimens of the literature of Spain, that [our readers] may perceive the mental stage at which that nation finds itself at this moment" (81). Let us now focus on the review's sequence of arguments.

#### **3.1. Martínez de la Rosa as an Expression of Spain's "Intra-History"**

It is likely that, before Blanco White wrote this long review, he had reread the short text that he himself published in 1811 in *El Español* on the poem *Zaragoza* (Blanco White, "Zaragoza;" see also Blanco White, *Artículos* 37–42). There seems to be an implicit dialogue between the two reviews, whose opening lines take Martínez de la Rosa as a representative sample of a generation of open-minded and intellectually liberated young Spaniards; in both cases a judgement is made on the level of "progress" achieved in Spanish society. But the shift that has taken place between the two pieces illustrates the development of Blanco White's relationship to Spain: the 1822 article is optimistic about those young reformists who, had it not been for the French invasion, would have produced "a healthy revolution" in the country; in 1835, he recalled them as one of few exceptions in a sea of hopelessness.5 Indeed, the beginning of the 1835 piece constitutes a shocking exercise in yearning and despair:

A domestic history of Spain – a picture of the internal state of that unfortunate country during the last sixty years – unfolding the progress of the mental struggles of individual Spaniards – the vague aspirations after a moral and intellectual excellence, which they rather imagined than knew – the glimpses of hope which broke out, at distance and short intervals, through the clouds of ignorance, profligacy, and superstition which enveloped the court, on whose changeable humours and fancies depended the fate of the whole nation – a faithful, simple, unaffected portrait of the Spanish Peninsula, drawn by the hand of one familiarly acquainted with, and personally concerned in the events, but, nevertheless, free from the deep-rooted prejudices of a Spaniard – would be one of the most affecting, as well as instructive works which the now extremely rich literature of Europe could boast of. ("Recent" 76)

The phrase "a domestic history" was a common cliché in the titles of nineteenthcentury books published in Britain, the word "domestic" being used both in the sense of "national" (by contrast with the universal and the foreign) and to refer to the private sphere. Blanco White wanted to merge both meanings in order to refer to a particular history of Spain that would study the latter country as separate from other nations, yet paying attention to its internal life, its moral state and the forms adopted by its civility in relation to its political, religious and social organization. Perhaps the most precise meaning of the phrase is captured

<sup>5</sup> Alcalá Galiano's 1834 study of contemporary Spanish literature begins with a statement that is closer to the Blanco of 1811 than to his 1835 self: "At the close of the reign of Charles III […] it may truly be said that Spain had reached a comparatively high point in the scale of civilization […]" (290).

by Unamuno's anachronistic concept of *intrahistoria*, since what is actually intended is the writing of *an intra-history of Spanish culture and society*. And, of course, being both familiar with Spain and uprooted from its prejudices, Blanco White was the right person for the job. By contrast, Martínez de la Rosa was no more than a laboratory sample for perceptive observers to get a glimpse of the misfortune of a nation whose hopes had collapsed. Indeed, the argument's upshot was that the Spain of the day was a dejected country that evaded its sad reality by displaying an exaggerated and unfounded pride in its past.

Although Blanco White attenuates his statements so that they are not aggressive, he reproaches Martínez de la Rosa for being one of those Spaniards possessed of an excessive patriotic pride: "They still speak, in sounding phrases, of the golden age of their literature" (77).6 His compliments are always minimized: individually he has great talents, but his immersion in the Spanish context thwarts them: "Martinez de la Rosa is a man whose mind, though certainly not deficient in power, is more remarkable for taste than vigour" (77–8). And he dedicates a couple of pages to outlining his personal and political trajectory as a representative of the young generation that entered public life with the French invasion, manifesting an impulse for rupture and modernity that would later come to nothing.

#### **3.2. Neoclassicism as Poetic Orthodoxy**

The article's second section provides a literary characterization of the author and revolves around the value of the Aristotelian rules. This is the most incisive and profound piece that Blanco White wrote on the principles of Neoclassicism, which he challenged here in terms that were not very different from those he had already used as a young critic in Spain. Now, however, his criticism went deeper and targeted a new key aspect: the concept of orthodoxy. While in the preceding pages Martínez de la Rosa had represented the shortcomings that afflicted Spanish civilization, in this segment he becomes an example of how respect for the classical rules is apt to impede any natural talent: "we will endeavour to give some idea of their general character, and of the critical theory which, in our opinion, has cramped the genius of the author" (80). Blanco White's point, therefore, is to diagnose the reasons why the literary output of Martínez de la Rosa is not good enough, despite his talent; yet the ultimate question he sets out to answer is why modern Spanish literature, as a whole, *cannot be good enough*.

<sup>6</sup> In his *Obras literarias* (II, 314), Martínez de la Rosa praised the Spanish sixteenth century as the golden age of Spain's literature, on a par with those of other countries.

The portrait of Martínez de la Rosa includes some positive traits, although Blanco White's words of praise often take the form of disguised criticism: he is a better prose writer than a poet; his prose is elegant and, thanks to his exposure to European literatures, he has freed himself from the archaic affectation that dominates Spanish writers; he has made an effort to naturalize in prose "the *European mode of thinking*" (80); as a poet he is fluid and harmonious, but without any superior merit and always timid; and, above all, he has restrained the power of his inventiveness "by his superstitious reverence for the rules of a most narrow, useful, and yet dogmatic criticism" (81). This assessment gives way to a mature challenge of classicist precepts as applied in Spain: by its very nature, but also by the particular circumstance that it has been associated with the slavish imitation of ancient Spanish authors and French models. Martínez de la Rosa's poetic theories, he states, "are a very late and unseasonable echo of the Abbé Batteux, and the French aesthetic writers of that period" (82). Finally, Blanco White joins in the classicists versus romantics disputes by condemning rules insofar as they constitute a generalization based on a few poetic phenomena and derive from a kind of realism in which certain material forms of imitation (space, time, etc., in the case of theatre) replace the true purpose of art, which is to imitate ideally the actions and passions of human beings. Blanco White passes a negative judgement on such precepts for their "paltry realism" (82), a verdict that would consequently apply to all Spanish literature that adhered to them.

However, the substance of his criticism is not only aesthetic: "It is indeed painful to observe the injurious effects of this poetical orthodoxy upon our author's inventive as well as discriminating powers" (81). By 1835 the word "orthodoxy" had acquired a transcendental significance for Blanco White: one which subsumed a host of old enemies (intolerance, superstition, fanaticism, Inquisition …). Shortly after this review, he would publish his theological masterpiece, the culmination of his spiritual journey: *Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy* (1835). His ultimate view is that the truth of faith is betrayed when it becomes orthodoxy, that is, a rigid set of rules, rites and words, with a body of unique interpreters of its meanings, which prevents the spontaneous operations of human reason from taking place. This suffices to understand the enormous pejorative burden of defining Neoclassical aesthetics as "poetical orthodoxy," which, added to the fact that he had previously spoken of "superstitious reverence" and "dogmatic criticism," shows Blanco White's transference of his religious phraseology into the field of literary criticism. Neoclassicism is thus transmuted into another form of fanaticism, and Martínez de la Rosa, together with other Spanish writers, into pathetic sectarians.

#### **3.3. An Idealistic Theory of Theatre**

From the above claims, already moving away from Martínez de la Rosa as a critical subject, a general reflection derives on theatre as an artistic form, into which I will barely enter. Blanco White never wrote an article or theatrical review *stricto sensu* on a piece performed in his day. Nor did his writings in the magazine *Variedades* substantially address this literary genre, other than considering *La Celestina* as a theatrical work, dedicating a piece to opera, analysing – or rather demolishing – a comedy by Lope de Vega, translating several Shakespearean passages and little else. In the remainder of his English phase, he became interested in Shakespeare from a poetic rather than a theatrical point of view. All in all, his response to plays seems to have always been that of a reader rather than a spectator. This is relevant, given the very central role that dramatic poetry occupied in literary controversies and in the overall crisis of the classical system of genres. Only in this review did he reflect on the performing arts, not only to challenge the rules and units thereof, but to bear witness to the demise of theatre as an artistic expression – in favour of the novel, including a laudatory reference to Sir Walter Scott – and its regression to a coarse mass spectacle:

We must express our conviction, at the risk of some popular disapprobation, that as the drama began in the character of a show, in the early growth of refined society, so it must gradually return to its origin, and become little more than a *show*, fit only for those classes of society which, in respect to high civilization, must always exist in a relative infancy. (84)

#### **3.4. The** *Comuneros*

Finally, the review ends by discussing the only piece of Martínez de la Rosa's *Obras literarias* that deserves specific treatment: *La viuda de Padilla*. It is the historical background, together with the political significance of this tragedy, that arouses the reviewer's interest: "the struggle against the arbitrary rule of the Crown, which began at Cadiz, with the framing of the Spanish Constitution, evidently led our author to that subject" (86). Blanco White summarizes the play's plot and reproduces in Spanish verse (followed by a translation into English prose) the most valuable fragment, the widow's oath: "This scene is one of the best in the play; but, as this portion shows, it never rises above well-written rhetorical declamation" (88). The conclusion of this critical scrutiny does not stray too far from that of the anonymous reviewers of both *Foreign Review*s: the tragedy has no flaws in style or composition, but lacks warmth, sublimity and strength, "it is so completely argumentative and declamatory, that we are strongly inclined to think that the account just given of the subject is more likely to raise interest than the play" (89). A misconception of the rules of drama has led a talented author to produce a play that is pompous and lacking in true dramatic power. The rest of the article is a digression on the *comuneros* with which Blanco White wants to show that this historical episode provided figures and scenes of great theatrical intensity, which Martínez de la Rosa was unable to grasp. The critic is reproachful of the author's failure to include Joanna the Mad as a character (the unity of place would not have allowed it without departing from historical truth). The ultimate assessment is that theatrical rules prevented the playwright from exploiting the material available to him, which in turn symbolizes the overall failure of Spanish literature. The French, Blanco White insists, had proven themselves able to take advantage of classicism and naturalize it so as to produce great works, despite the fact that classicism itself provides very little room for artistic creation; this is not the case, however, of their Spanish followers.

### **4. "Every book not quite contemptible"**

The standards of quality and interest set by both the reviews of *The Foreign Review* and *The Foreign Quarterly Review* (especially the latter) and Blanco White's in *The London Review* are therefore unattainable in absolute terms for any modern Spanish literary product. The point is devastatingly made by Blanco White in the following comment, where only the British propensity to litotes somewhat soothes the statement's impact:

The same painful conviction appears in almost every book, not quite contemptible, which has been published in Spain during the period just alluded to. Hopeless, defeated aspirations breathe out in every page of the best modern Spanish works. (77)

The only hope for improvement left to a modern Spanish writer – he claims – is that exile forces him to leave Spain and disabuses him of his prejudices, as had happened to Blanco White himself. That was not, however, enough for Martínez de la Rosa, who had to content himself with being, for any cultivated British reader of those decades, no more than the one-eyed man in the country of the blind: the author of a not-entirely-contemptible book.

#### **Bibliography**


#### Daniel Muñoz Sempere

### **Chapter 12 "A more genuine and healthy tone in Spanish Literature": Fernán Caballero in Britain\***

**Abstract** British Romantic interest in Spanish literature was often underpinned by the idea that the literary genius of Spain was a casualty of its social and political decay. The revival of the *romancero*, Cervantes and Golden Age drama in British criticism during the first half of the nineteenth century suggests a stark contrast between a glorious chivalric past and a present marked by economic decline and literary stagnation. Reviews of contemporary Spanish literature were, therefore, less prevalent than those of translations, editions and anthologies of medieval and early modern classics. Although towards the middle of the century some British magazines featured appraisals of contemporary Romantic writers such as Larra or the Duke of Rivas, the turning point in the reception of nineteenth-century Spanish literature was the publication of Fernán Caballero's *La Gaviota* (1849) – and its English translation of 1867 – and her collection of Andalusian folk tales (1859). The works of Caballero were reviewed, excerpted and commented on in some of the main periodicals of the age, often as specimens of a modern Andalusian genius that built on well-known Romantic ideas about the peninsular south and its folklore. This chapter interrogates the reasons for Caballero's popularity in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, and the ways in which her reception was influenced by the dichotomies between past and present, and between north and south, that informed British literary approaches to Spain.

**Keywords:** Cecilia Böhl von Faber, Fernán Caballero, Andalusia in literature, *La Gaviota*, Spanish literature in Britain.

In his 1961 essay on Fernán Caballero, José Montesinos remarked on the mixed feelings aroused in the novelist by her success abroad. The pride at being read, reviewed and translated in France and Germany was tarnished by poor translations, unauthorized editions of her works and a degree of ill-concealed resentment towards her European achievements in Spanish literary circles (Montesinos 129–32). Montesinos goes on to explore this international impact

<sup>\*</sup> This chapter draws on research conducted as part the international project "The Idea of Andalusia and the Idea of Spain in the XVIII and XIX centuries," funded by Spain's Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2019-110208GBI00/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033).

of Fernán Caballero in a bibliographical appendix that lists a number of English, French and German translations of her works unmatched by any other writer from mid-nineteenth-century Spain.

The European projection of Fernán Caballero, the pseudonym used by Cecilia Böhl von Faber (1796–1877), merits a more thorough study than the one that can be accomplished here. In the 1860s, Fernán Caballero's name was increasingly well-known thanks to the publication of her works in the *Colección de Autores Españoles* by the German publisher Brockhaus and through the laudatory writings by Antoine de Latour and Carlos Mazada, who presented her to foreign audiences as the most representative of Spanish novelists (Comellas cxvi). In Britain, the reception of her novels took place later than in France or Germany, and it has received less critical attention. It reveals attitudes towards contemporary Spanish literature and the way in which Spain and, in particular, Andalusia was being imagined in British print culture.

In his reassessment of the Spanish novel of the first half of the nineteenth century, Juan Luis Alborg (362) observed that Fernán Caballero's prime achievement was that of decentralizing the focus and location of the novel, developing a regional and local setting enriched with a vivid depiction of the customs and ways of the rural peasantry. This geographical decentralization was, however, mirrored by the centrality Caballero acquired in the European canon of contemporary Spanish literature via the extensive discussions of her work by travellers to Spain and Hispanophiles. As Romero Tobar (30) has shown, the reception of Caballero and her appraisal as a reviver of Spanish literature, was also an early foray into the configuration of a canon of Spanish Realism and its place within European literature, as well as representing a landmark in the associations constructed by nineteenth-century intellectuals between Realism and modern national identity.

Fernán Caballero's interest in rural Andalusia was of course rooted in her own upbringing in southern Spain, surrounded by the influences of her traditionalist Andalusian mother, Frasquita Larrea, and her father, the German-born merchant and Romantic erudite Nikolaus Böhl von Faber. The image of Andalusia as a privileged land, a repository of spiritual values and a bastion of Christian tradition, was a recurrent feature of Larrea's thought (Herrero 125) and it permeated her daughter's work, more markedly in her extremely successful novel *La Gaviota* (1849). Significantly, the first half of this novel unfolds in a meticulously depicted but also highly idealized rural Andalusia. This idealized portrayal of the region will be the main focus of the analysis of Fernán Caballero's reception in Britain in this essay; in particular, the way in which the poetic Andalusian landscape is reconfigured as a bastion of tradition and Catholic spirituality, stepping away from previous Romantic and Orientalizing imaginings of the region, which depicted it as a battleground of political and religious struggles which sometimes served as a symbolic correlate of the ventures of international Liberalism.1 The role of the Andalusian past, its ideological connotations and influence upon contemporary Andalusia, were the subject of different, contested positions taken by authors as diverse as François-René de Chateaubriand, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, José María Blanco White and Telesforo de Trueba. However, the Orientalizing and the Catholic fundamentalist myths have a common Romantic matrix which persists in the reception of novels such as *La Gaviota*, published in 1849 but possibly conceived much earlier, coinciding with the Andalusianthemed works of the British Romantics (Herrero 180).

The late reception of Fernán Caballero is thus revealing of the journey taken by Romantic imaginings of Andalusia and their transnational negotiations. By the time her works were noticed in Britain, the Romantic image of Andalusia had been fostered by travel writers such as Washington Irving, Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier and Richard Ford, whose *Handbook for Travellers in Spain* (1845) repeatedly emphasizes the differences between the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, Andalusia offering a stark contrast with the northern provinces that were historically less exposed to "Oriental" influence. As Ford argues:

It was here, in a congenial soil, that the Oriental took the deepest root. Here he has left the noblest traces of power, taste, and intelligence – here he made his last desperate struggle. Six centuries after the chilly north had been abandoned to the Gotho-Spaniard, Granada still was held; and from this gradual recovery of Andalucía, the Oriental divisions into separate principalities are still retained, and it is still called Los Cuatro Reinos, the "Four Kingdoms", viz. Seville, Cordova, Jaén, and Granada. (147)

Andalusians are thus characterized by "ignorance, indifference, procrastination," as well as "passive victims to violent impulse, gay, clever, good-humoured, and light hearted" (Ford 114). Around the same time, another famous traveller, Théophile Gautier (32), described the crossing of Sierra Morena into Andalusia as the arrival in an earthly paradise touched by the magic of the Orient, a region where national customs still survived in their purest form.

Images of Andalusia had therefore circulated widely as part of the British fascination with Spain, more often than not inflected by the Orientalist perspective so influential in early Romantic depictions. Among these, the *Letters from Spain*

<sup>1</sup> An idea explored to some extent by Torrecilla and, more cautiously, Andreu Miralles. For a recent analysis of the appropriation of the Andalusian theme for the post-Waterloo liberal *internationale*, see Saglia (forthcoming).

(1825) by the Andalusian author Blanco White, was also immensely influential in popularizing the contemporary customs of the region from the insider's perspective of a Sevillian priest exiled in England, well before the translation of *La Gaviota* into English made them available to the reader in the form of a novel.

The first mentions of Fernán Caballero in British periodicals started appearing towards the end of the 1850s, when her name was already well known in Spain, France and Germany. The *Literary Gazette* published a review of two of her works, *Relaciones* and *Elia o España 30 años ha*, in March 1858. The reviewer starts by noting the lack of literary and scientific activity in contemporary Spain, and presents a panorama of stagnation in literary production, dominated by French translations, historical novels and other forms of fiction: "Her printingpress rumbles on, it is true; but save for a certain amount of raw materials it produces, which has been turned to account by the genius of Prescott, Irving or Helps, or in the tasteful narratives of Stirling, its creakings might probably never be heard beyond its national confines" ("*Relaciones* (*Tales*)" 229). The "raw materials" of Spanish literature are thus only worthy insofar as they are transformed into the more perfect products of northern authors who write for a truly "global" readership. Within the genre of fiction, the reviewer notes the rising popularity of Fernán Caballero, whose identity seems to remain uncertain at this point. A shade of doubt is thrown upon her merit, however, because the religious dimension of her novels grants them a powerful patronage and popularity in such a religious country as Spain. In the same year, an article in *Chambers's Journal* began by invoking the name of Cervantes and the subsequent dearth of literary creativity after his death. The works of Fernán Caballero are presented as not exactly a rival, but at least a worthy successor, "a novelist, a powerful painter of national manners and customs," author of "very remarkable tales and sketches" ("A Spanish Novelist" 237). According to the reviewer, the author, whom he recognizes as "Ms Cecilia Böhl de Faber," has produced a rich body of work describing the historical identity of the region she inhabits, and, especially, "the transition period when Andalucia has begun to throw off some of her traditional manners and feelings" (238). The review gives notice of the works included in Caballero's recently published *Obras completas*, which is also the subject of another full-length review in *The North British Review* in February of the following year.

The article in *The North British Review* also links the reception of Fernán Caballero to the question of the merits of contemporary Spanish literature, noting the stark contrast between its present state and its glorious past. This is an issue that becomes somewhat enmeshed into the critical appraisals of Caballero's works and in particular *La Gaviota*, which is often assessed as a sign of the revival of Spanish genius. The author begins by invoking a statement by George Moir decrying present-day Spaniards when it comes to "Romantic literature" (i.e. imaginative prose fiction). If romance was extinct in the land that had been its cradle, Caballero recovers it by focusing on popular characters, religious beliefs and folklore. For the writer in the *North British Review*, Fernán Caballero represents a new direction for the Spanish novel which, having oscillated first between the poles of the picaresque and the pastoral, had in recent times been dominated by translations as well as by the historical fiction of Escosura and Martínez de la Rosa. Fernán Caballero asserted a new direction to the novel, taking up

a thoroughly original position. No echo of foreign literary impressions, she is true to her own land; no reflection of former literary periods, she is true to her own age. The Spain, and especially the Andalusian Spain of the present time, in town and country life, in the various strata of society, rich and poor, travelled and home-bred, polished and uncultivated – such forms the staple of her stories. (Review of *Obras completas*, *North British Review* 267)

The reduction of contemporary Spanish novels to the historical genre here has the effect of amplifying the novelty of Caballero's work. In particular, the omission of the social novel of Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco and others from this panorama deprives the reading of Caballero of an essential aspect in its background: the ideological campaign against Democrats and *progresistas*, and specially against the novels that disseminated progressive ideas amongst the youth. As Zavala (124–31) has shown, the poetic, idealized views in novels such as *La Gaviota* can be read as a reaction to a perceived invasion of novels that eroded Catholic doctrine and the "healthy" principles upon which society stood, and against whom Caballero stood as a champion of conservative Catholicism.

This aspect of Caballero's works, and her conservative polemicist side, was insinuated in the review from the *Literary Gazette* and reappears in early assessments of her works, such as in the 1861 *Saturday Review* article on *La familia de Alvareda*, where Caballero (thought by the reviewer to be a man) is considered "a Conservative by nature" who thinks that progress can only lead to social dissolution ("A Spanish Novel" 677). The political dimension of her works is elided in much of what was written about her in British periodicals, however, as attention turned increasingly towards her work as a folklorist first and later as the author of *La Gaviota*. In that same year, two separate reviews of her collection of Andalusian folk tales presented her as a compiler of legends in the manner of the Brothers Grimm – both in a short note in *The Examiner* ("Foreign Books") and in a lengthier review of her legends in Charles Dickens's periodical *All the Year Round*, where Caballero is said to be "the first person who has heartily undertaken to search out and print the legends, songs and proverbs, of the [Spanish] people" ("Andalusian Tales" 401).

In 1863, the *Saturday Review* turned its attention to Caballero's compilation of legends. Noting the striking similarities between some of the folkloric tales of Andalusia and those of northern lands (such as the theme of the man who loses his shadow due to dealings with the Devil, with roots in the Germanic legend of Peter Schlemihl), the reviewer praises Caballero for her pioneering work in popularizing the folklore of a land as fertile of imagination as Germany. Interestingly, the reviewer raises some objections of a religious character, not due to Caballero's excessive zeal, but rather due to an irreverent and somewhat indecorous mixing of the sacred and the profane, of institutions and symbols of Christianity and popular imagination. This is put down to Andalusian popular mythology being "more indissolubly and directly connected with the mysteries of the Christian faith, and not admitting the introduction of any purely phantastic beings, like the pixies and the kobolds" ("The Popular Muses" 479).

This idea, that Spain as a land of romance was fertile soil for legends but lacked compilations in the manner of those published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, was present in authors such as Blanco White, who voiced them through the character of Montesdeoca in the short story "El Alcázar de Sevilla" (1824). For the *Saturday Review*, the romance of the land in Caballero's work was grounded in the author's discovery of the peasantry, in popular wisdom, religiosity and the quick wit of Andalusian peasants, who inhabit an unspoilt land, wealthy in picturesque popular customs and blessed with a privileged climate.

In 1867 the *Dublin University Magazine* summarized this Edenic vision of Andalusia: "With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants, and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants and peasantesses afford suitable subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil" ("Modern Writers of Spain" 54). Caballero is an apt painter of "the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that southern paradise, Andaluçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where life is not only supportable but enjoyable at very small expense" (53). This highly idealized image of rural Andalusia echoes that which is found in *La Gaviota*, whose first half is set in the idyllic Villamar (a fictional village more or less based on El Puerto de Santa María, north of Cádiz). Villamar functions in the novel as a sort of paradise suspended in time whose monuments have been ravaged by contemporary Liberal policies, although it is still somehow sheltered from history when the German doctor Stein arrives. The serenity of Villamar rested on the pillars of tradition and piety, presented in stark contrast with the corrupting atmosphere of Madrid. Characters who leave this haven of tranquillity ultimately meet a tragic fate, and the only means of redemption seems to be to return to Andalusia. This is the course taken by the Duke of Almansa at the end of the novel, who relocates with his family to his southern properties having reconciled himself to marital love after renouncing his adulterous infatuation with Marisalada. Much of the logic of the novel is predicated upon that contrast between this idyllic village that seems to lie somewhere outside of history – and where Stein hopes, in vain, to rebuild his life – and the urban society of Seville and Madrid, in the same way that the novel itself was written against the social-realist *feuilletons* that depicted city life and the conditions of the urban working classes.

There were two important turning points in the reception of Fernán Caballero in 1860s Britain: the 1861 review of her complete works in the *Edinburgh Review* and the 1867 English translation of her most famous novel, *La Gaviota,* as *The Sea-Gull.* The former begins with a survey of the contemporary Spanish literary scene as a barren land dominated by the shadow of Cervantes and then goes on to list a few names of writers from the recent past worthy of a certain artistic esteem: Leandro Fernández de Moratín, Tomás de Iriarte, Jaime Balmes, the Count of Toreno, "the unfortunate [Mariano José de] Larra" and the generation of minor poets of some note that emerged after the War of Independence, among whom José Zorrilla and José de Espronceda claim a pre-eminent status. In this meagre canon of early nineteenth-century Spanish literature, the reviewer finds "little sign of genuine national inspiration," a lack now compensated by the appearance of the works of Fernán Caballero, "a really original writer of fictions offering vivid delineations of the most poetic province of the Peninsula" (Review of *Obras completas*, *Edinburgh Review* 100). The originality of Caballero as a painter of Spanish life stands in stark contrast to a general panorama of the Spanish novel dominated by historical novels, translations of Sue and Dumas and serialized *feuilletons*. This decadence is more striking when it is borne in mind that Spanish prose romances had once been the most influential in European courts.

Interestingly, the reviewer finds that their "surprise at the appearance of such a novelist in Spain, is lessened by the fact that the author is partly of German extraction, and that the writer shows abundant evidence of being deeply tinctured with the study of heretical romance" (101). In other words, Fernán Caballero is full of national inspiration and signals "a new birth in Spanish literature" (100) mainly because of her German descent and her familiarity with northern European writers. In accordance with Romantic historicist ideas, the German influence offers a more genuine way of looking at contemporary Spanish reality (and, somehow, less foreign) than the French perspective represented by Sue and the social-realist novelist. This form of dual consciousness is what allows Caballero's works to transcend the local and become part of a European canon where Spanish literature is represented by the colourful depiction of contemporary customs and manners, at whose heart lie the simple life and popular wisdom of the peasantry.

This review motivated an indignant response from Juan Valera, in the form of a well-known article published in *El contemporáneo*. Valera defended the value of contemporary Spanish novelists such as Francisco Navarro Villoslada, Enrique Gil y Carrasco, Patricio de la Escosura or Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, and criticized the *Edinburgh Review* and, by extension, British reviews, which were disproportionally revered by the public and preferred to the more enjoyable – and no less sound from an intellectual point of view – French ones. The appreciation of European languages and cultures in these reviews was marred, according to Valera, by anti-Catholic prejudice and a narrow English world view that precluded the appreciation of common human features. Deficient knowledge of the language and the literature of Spain leads the reviewer to see in Fernán Caballero an exceptional writer who towers over her contemporaries. However, the decline of Spanish literature is not so grave, Valera writes, as to herald the appearance of Fernán Caballero as the resurrection of the national spirit. For Valera, Caballero is a notable writer, but one who looks at the Spanish reality through a "prisma de sentimentalismo germánico que las desfigura o trastueca" [prism of Germanic sentimentalism that distorts or subverts it] (Valera 4), thus presenting a picture of Spain informed by German ideas rather than by close observation.

If we return to the *Edinburgh Review*, we can observe how the reviewer's reading of the works of Caballero emphasizes the idealist representation of Andalusia, both as a textual representation and as the context of production of the text itself:

It must be allowed that she has been fortunate in obtaining Andalusia for her province as a novelist; where the brilliancy of the skies, the transparency of the atmosphere, and the fertility of the soils are rivalled by the never-failing gaiety, the quick perceptions, the poetic vivacity, the graceful manners and gay costume of the inhabitants […] Nature is not the harsh stepmother and mistress which she is in the North; here her hands are always full of gifts for her favoured children. The Andalusian confides in her beauty, and lives a life free from care; he takes no thought for the morrow – he expects the morrow will be no worse than to-day, and no better; and he lives content. He does his labour cheerfully, for his labour is light, and little as are his gains, they are sufficient to provide him with all the luxuries of life and all the pleasures he requires. It is impossible, perhaps, to imagine a semi-sensual felicity more perfect than that of the Andalusian; his daily life is precisely such a life as we see, in northern countries, alone on the stage. (103)

This image of Andalusia harks back once again to Romantic idealizations of Spain – where depictions of the country as a land of romance put forth an imaginary geography which blurred the distinction between fiction and reality, between life and the stage. This time around, however, the Iberian landscape, and specifically Andalusia, is not imagined as a theatre of conflict but rather as a preindustrial Eden populated by ascetic peasants who remain untouched by modernity and who live a restful life. This idealization closely follows the characterizations found in the first half of *La Gaviota* and is presented in the review as a reality independent from its textual representation in Caballero's novel, which portrays Andalusia as a land free from social conflicts or class struggles on the eve of several republican-inspired peasant uprisings that shook the region, such as those of El Arahal (1857) and Loja (1861).

The portrayal of the region in the first half of *La Gaviota* is therefore the main appeal of Caballero's works, while other themes, locations and stories from her complete works are dismissed as tales of "girls educated in convents, full of tears and simplicity" (125). It is the force of her descriptive powers that grants Caballero's work a degree of transnational interest. Fernán Caballero is not the Walter Scott of Spain – as famously proclaimed by Eugenio de Ochoa in an early Spanish review of *La Gaviota* (340) – but it is true that "no living writer has shed so bright a lustre on Spanish literature" (Review of *Obras completas*, *Edinburgh Review* 129).

In 1867, an English translation of *La Gaviota* was published in Britain, as *The Sea-Gull*, following a previous translation, published in New York in 1864, by J. Leander Starr. Some novels by Caballero had found their way into English before via Grace Jane Wallace (Lady Wallace), who in 1861 had published translations of *Elia*, *La familia de Alvareda*, *Callar en vida y perdonar en muerte* and *Pobre Dolores* in the volume collection entitled *The Castle and Cottage in Spain*. The 1867 translation of *La Gaviota* was the work of Augusta Bethell, author of several collections of legends and fairy tales aimed at young readers, and who justified the value of the translation on the basis of the high esteem in which Caballero was held in Spain as well as the favourable reception of Wallace's translations of her works by the *Edinburgh Review* in 1861.

In April 1867, *The Athenaeum* published a review of *The Sea-Gull* by the wine merchant and Hispanophile Frederick Cossens, an avid collector of Spanish books and art who had published several translations of Spanish classics and had links to the same Andalusian region depicted by Caballero via his business dealings in El Puerto de Santa María and the large sherry-producing area of southern Spain (see West). "La Gaviota," Cossens writes, "gave promise of a return to truth and decency of Nature. Fernán Caballero does not sketch from the lay figure; her models are real, breathing Andalusians" (451). Although the translation is not perfect, and "the spice of the Andaluz is now and then lost," Cossens commends it for making a work that was originally hailed as "a step in the direction of a more genuine and healthy tone in Spanish literature, tinged here and there with extreme views on religion […] undoubtedly, a clever book" (451) available to the general reader. Cossens succinctly summarizes the views that make *La Gaviota* an example of the revival of a quintessentially Spanish genius, that is considered fundamentally folkloric and "realist," faithful to its surroundings and free from foreign contamination. Finally, Caballero's novel is deemed to be a watershed in a national literary canon that stretches from Cervantes to Galdós.

*The Saturday Review* locates Caballero's works more explicitly within a political and cultural struggle: "As the product of a season of animosities and excited prejudices, [*The Sea-Gull*] is too much of an occasional satire to be a thoroughly good novel" (Review of *La Gaviota* 608). Her depiction of her region is impressive, however, based on a real familiarity with the scenes she describes and with the expectations and potential reactions of a foreign readership, all of which is interwoven with the thread of a conservative world view that regards change as a dangerous dissolution:

Yet the first part of the narrative, that belonging to the old-fashioned country-folks of Spain, contains many tranquil and beautiful scenes, which are as instructive as they are impressive; for the writer has looked on familiar things with the freshness of a traveller's eye, and expounded them from the experience and feelings of a true Spanish woman […] Above all, she would show us that a Spanish woman who cannot profit by the old faith and discipline of her native soil has no chance of finding better examples of more healthy culture elsewhere. The great cities, with the prizes they offer to talent, the higher circles, with their levity and flippancy and their manias for or against the institutions of France and England, can only open a broader way for her towards ruin, secular and spiritual. (609)

The merit of Caballero is, once again, the dual consciousness that, in a way similar to the Blanco White of *Letters from Spain*, allows her to look "into familiar things with the freshness of a traveller's eye" (609). In the bucolic universe that Caballero creates in the first half of *La Gaviota*, Marisalada provides the central conflict of the story by transgressing against her own social status. She is "thus the heroine of her own story in the same way that Satan is the hero of *Paradise Lost*. She is the one incompatible nature in a decayed Andalusian Eden, where the middle ages are still lingering on into the nineteenth century" (609). Her rebellion, and her ill-fated journey to Madrid, provides a bridge and a contrast between the simple – and "healthier" – Villamar and the dangers of the capital, personified in the bullfighter Pepe Vera.

Another full-length review of *The Sea-Gull*, this time in *The Examiner*, informs us that *La Gaviota* was used as a text to learn Spanish, thanks to its abundance of idiomatic expressions. Beyond that, its appeal rests, once again, upon "the scenes among the Andalusian country people. The first dozen chapters are charming in the half poetical, half humorous appreciation of Spanish life among the labourers beside the shore […] of such stuff nobody can paint Spanish pictures which come near in excellence to those of Fernan Caballero" (Review of *The Sea-Gull* 326). The article "A Spanish and a Danish Novel," published three months later in *Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country*, frames its review of Caballero within a wider reflection on the value of the novel as a companion or sister genre to history (192). A perusal of the uneven manifestations of the genre found across Europe serves as a starting point for a joint review of Bethell's translation of *La Gaviota* and Carl Henrik Scharling's *Nöddebo Parsonage* (1862, trans. 1867). Of the former, the reviewer notes that "Perhaps no novel has ever exhibited national characteristics more vividly: the characteristics of men and women developed under a special order of circumstances, of religion, of government, and of climate, including their different influences upon the lower and the upper classes of society," although the novel leaves the reader "desiring a more intimate acquaintance with the Spanish peasantry, and unwilling to form any with the Spanish aristocracy" (193). The reviewer considers Caballero not a gifted storyteller, and her main characters generally disagreeable, either of a "revolting brutality" (Marisalada, Pepe Vera) or feeble to the point of "contempt" (Stein), but her descriptions are such that "It is in the sunny village of Villamar that we are disposed to linger" (195). In both of the foreign novels reviewed, the interest for a British reader lies not in the emotions at play or in the plot, but rather in the soft touch with which the simple pleasures of daily life are elevated into a literary moment which evokes the experience of travel in a way that bridges the foreign and the familiar: "penetrating into the heart of the mystery: joining in the social talk; learning the national habits; living among the people, with their feelings, their movements, their religion, interpreted to us; following a guide who is never noisy and obtrusive – always ready and instructive" (203).

The last full-length review of *The Sea-Gull* near its time of publication appeared in *The North British Review* in March 1868. This final review repeats many of the observations that we have come across thus far: Caballero is an excellent painter of customs, if perhaps her scenes of urban sociability are less interesting than the rural scenes. These skills are not matched by her narrative gifts or her ability to weave an interesting plot, which, albeit assessed in less harsh terms than in other reviews, are deemed poor in comparison with the descriptive passages. Caballero is thus worthy, according to the reviewer, of being considered the Walter Scott of Spain, and *La Gaviota* her *Waverley*. The interest of the *North British Review* lies not so much in the appraisal of Caballero's skills as a novelist as in what it says about two paradoxical aspects of her authorial voice: her conservatism and her condition as an author endowed with a double consciousness. Caballero's disdain for new ideas and social progress, insofar as they represent a threat to the cherished traditions and harmony of idyllic Villamar, are contradicted by the novel itself, since its clever analysis and lifelike depictions speak for a rather advanced state of civilization. Caballero, the reviewer notes,

has done something to raise up the fallen literature of Spain, and thus to stimulate that intellectual life which turns towards civilization as flowers turn towards light. Her very descriptions of the Spanish life which to her seems so admirable, are an unconscious but effective attack upon it. Few foreigners, we should think, lay down one of her volumes without feeling how widely and deeply Spain must be changed before she can resume her place as one of the great nations of the world. ("Recent Spanish Romances" 132)

In other words: "her own career was the most telling refutation of her own opinions" (132). The conservatism of *La Gaviota* is therefore, paradoxically, modern and European, due to the gap between the clarity of the novelist's voice and the stagnation depicted in the text. The second paradox goes to the heart of this question by focusing on her dual consciousness. Her "devotion to the habits of Old Spain" is tempered by a reformist attitude towards certain customs, such as her hatred of bullfighting and her defence of animal welfare. Likewise, the reviewer wonders "how far she is to be classed as a Spaniard, and how far as a foreigner," due to her German ancestry and because she had published some of her early works in that language, but also due to the fact that "the only modern Spanish writer of fiction who has risen even to mediocrity had the benefit of a foreign education, for that writer is herself" (130).

Between the publication of this review and the death of Cecilia Böhl von Faber in 1877, there were other references to her works in the British press, including short translations of some of her stories ("The Two Graces," "The Daughter of the Sun") and a full-length review of *La familia de Alvareda* in *The Illustrated Review*. By this time, aided by a decade of translations and reviews, Fernán Caballero's name had been established as a somewhat isolated sign of a revival in Spanish letters. She went on to embody the preservation of a particular Spanish literary genius, but at the same time she was ostensibly a writer with a multilingual and multinational background, well-travelled and in touch with the European intelligentsia. In the examples of her reception in Britain discussed in these pages, her conservatism is seen as modern because it represents a compromise between or an integration of the northern and the southern imaginations. Readings of her work, and of *La Gaviota* in particular, helped create an image of Andalusia as a place with Edenic overtones, a preindustrial paradise populated by characters who embody the author's own opposition to social mobility and political revolution while being endowed with a striking tangibility.

#### **Bibliography**


### **Notes on Contributors**

**Fernando Durán López** is Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Cádiz (Spain). He has specialized in autobiography, the periodical press, literature and politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular concern about the Spanish liberal exiles and their activities in England. He has published extensively on these fields, amongst others, the monographs *José María Blanco White, o la conciencia errante* (Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2006) and *Versiones de un exilio. Los traductores españoles de la Casa Ackermann. Londres, 1823–1830* (Escolar y Mayo editores, 2015), and edited several literary works, of which Enrique Mullor de Quesada's *En busca del Pernales, por El Capitán Tormenta* (Ediciones Espuela de Plata, 2019) is the most recent one. He is a member of Grupo de Estudios del Siglo XVIII and coeditor of the journal *Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo.*

**Cristina Flores Moreno** is a Tenured Professor in English Literature at the University of La Rioja (Spain). Her main research interests include Romantic literary theory and poetry as well as the Anglo-Spanish literary and cultural exchanges during the Romantic period. She is the author of *Plastic Intellectual Breeze. The Contribution of Ralph Cudworth to S. T. Coleridge's Early Poetics of the Symbol* (Peter Lang, 2008). Some of her recent publications are: the first critical edition of Robert Southey's *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* (co-ed. with Jonathan Gonzalez, Routledge, 2021); "'Spain! Most pleasant were my wanderings': Robert Southey's Pedestrian and Mountaineering Writing in the Iberian Peninsula" (*Romanticism*, 2021); and "Sick as a Rose: William Blake in Leopoldo María Panero's Poetry of Experience" (*Blake. An Illustrated Quarterly*, 2022). She is the co-director of the research project LHIBRO (2019–2022), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

**Beatriz González Moreno** is a Tenured Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, where she teaches English Literature. Her research interests focus on the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the role of aesthetics. She has published extensively on gender issues and aesthetic experience, specially focusing on Mary Shelley and *Frankenstein*. She has co-edited *A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and his Works* (Peter Lang) and has published *Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text* (co-ed. with Fernando González-Moreno, Routledge, 2020). Currently, she is part of the interdisciplinary project LyA; and of the research project "Edgar A. Poe on-line. Text and Image."

**Fernando González Moreno** is a Tenured Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, where he teaches Art History. His main research lines include the history of illustrated books, the illustrated editions of Edgar Allan Poe, the graphic evolution of *Don Quixote*, the development of illustrated travel books in relation to the aesthetic category of the picturesque, and the illustrated editions of *Frankenstein*. Since 2015, he co-directs the group of interdisciplinary studies in Literature and Art "LyA," organizing annual seminars and conferences, and promoting interdisciplinary publications such as *Painting Words: Aesthetics and the Relationship between Image and Text* (Routledge, 2020; co-ed. with Beatriz González Moreno).

**Begoña Lasa-Álvarez** is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the Universidade da Coruña (Spain). She holds two BAs in English and Spanish Studies, and a Ph.D. on the Spanish reception of eighteenth-century English novels by women. Her academic interests focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, literary and cultural interchanges between English-speaking countries and Spain, and English language and literature teaching. Some of her recent publications include: "The Spanish Monarchy in Mary Hays's Biographical Works" (*Women's Writing*, 2018), "The Maid of Saragossa, a Spanish Woman Warrior in Anglo-American Catalogues of Celebrated Women" (*Journal of War & Culture Studies*, 2020) and "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" in *Diccionario Histórico de la Traducción en España* (2020). She has also published a monograph entitled *Novelistas británicas del siglo XVIII en España* (ArCiBel, 2017).

**María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia** is Full-Professor of English Studies, Universidade da Coruña (Spain). Her latest publications include monographs: *Mid Eighteenth-century Female Literary Careers in* The Monthly Review *and* The Critical Review, with Mónica Amenedo (ArCiBel, 2018); edition of George Eliot's *La gitanilla española*. Poema dramático (Vértere, Univ. Valladolid 2020), journal articles: *Multicultural Shakespeares* (2017), *Coolabah* (2017), *ES Review* (2017), *Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal* (2018), *Estudios Irlandeses* (2020), and book chapters: *The Reception of George Eliot in Europe,* eds. Elinor Shaffer and Catherine Brown (Bloomsbury, 2016), *The Invention of Female*, *Biography*, ed. Gina L. Walker (Routledge, 2018), *Femmes auteurs du dix-huitième siécle. Nouvelles approches critiques*, (Honoré Champion, 2018), eds. Ángeles Sirvent et al., *The Ethics and Aesthetics of Ecocaring: Contemporary Debates on Ecofeminism(s)*, with Margarita Estévez (Routledge, 2019), *Gender and Identity Worldwide* (ABC-CLIO, 2020) with Begoña Lasa, and *The Reception of Joseph Conrad in Europe*, ed. Robert Hampson (Bloomsbury, 2022, forthcoming).

**Sara Medina Calzada** teaches English language and literature at the University of Valladolid (Spain). Her main research interest is in Anglo-Hispanic historical and cultural relations in the nineteenth century and, more particularly, in the literary activities of the liberal Spanish exiles in London (1823–33), the reception of British literature in the Hispanic world, and the representations of Spain in Romantic Britain. Relevant publications include *José Joaquín de Mora and Britain: Cultural Transfers and Transformations* (Peter Lang, 2022) and "The Felon King: Ferdinand VII in British Print Culture (1814–1833)" (*Bulletin of Spanish Studies*, 2019).

**Alfredo Moro Martín** is Lecturer in English at the Department of Philology of the University of Cantabria (Spain). His field of research focuses on the influence of Cervantes in authors such as Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, C. M. Wieland, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Mary W. Shelley. He is also interested in more general aspects of the literary relationships between Spain, Great Britain and Germany during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 2015, he was awarded the Third Casasayas Award for Cervantean Research for his study *Transformaciones del* Quijote *en la novela inglesa y alemana del siglo XVIII*, which was published as a monograph one year later (Editorial Universidad de Alcalá, 2017). Moro has stayed at the universities of Cambridge, Münster and Piemonte Orientale as a visiting scholar.

**Daniel Muñoz Sempere** is Senior Lecturer in Modern Spanish Studies at King's College London (UK) and, since 2020, Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the University of Cádiz (Spain). His field of expertise is the Spanish literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the study of the Spanish Romantic exile in Britain and the representation of the Inquisition in fiction. He has written *La Inquisición Española como tema literario*, (Támesis Books, 2008) and has edited *Mariano José de Larra, Artículos de costumbres* (Manchester University Press, 2018) and (with Gregorio Alonso), *Londres y el Liberalismo Hispánico* (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2011).

**María Eugenia Perojo Arronte** is Senior Lecturer of English literature at the University of Valladolid (Spain). She has specialized in the fields of Romantic literature and literary theory and the Anglo-Hispanic cultural and literary exchange. Among other publications, she is the author of "Samuel Taylor Coleridge on *Don Quixote*" (*Cervantes*, 2014), "Coleridge and Spanish Literature" (*Spain in British Romanticism. 1800–1840*, 2018), "Coleridge's Criticism of the Don Juan Tradition" (*Romanticism, Reaction and Revolution: British Views on Spain 1814–1823*, 2019) and "The Spanish Translation of Hugh Blair's Lectures: An Early Anglo-Hispanic Canon" (*Comparative Critical Studies*, 2021). She is the co-director of the research project LHIBRO (2019–2022) on the reception of Hispanic literature in British Romantic magazines, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

**Davinia Rodríguez-Ortega**, Ph.D., is a Lecturer of Spanish literature at the Public University of Navarra (Spain). Her main fields of research are seventeenthcentury religious drama (Calderón's and Lope de Vega's *autos sacramentales*), female monastic literature, Golden Age editorial practice and contemporary critical editions of this period. She has published articles and reviews on Spanish Golden Age drama and she participates in a project directed by Professor Claudia Demattè to publish a critical edition of Pérez de Montalbán's complete works. She is an associate member of the research groups GRISO and *Texto*, at the Public University of Navarra.

**Diego Saglia** is Professor of English Literature at the University of Parma (Italy), and a substantial part of his research examines Anglo-Hispanic relations in Romantic-period literature and culture. He is the author of *Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia* (2000) and co-editor, with Ian Haywood, of *Spain and British Romanticism 1800–1840* (2018). His essays and articles on Anglo-Hispanic topics have appeared in several edited books and international scholarly journals. He is a member of the steering committee of the "Anglo-Hispanic Horizons, 1780s-1840s" research group, and sits on the advisory committee of the Byron Museum in Ravenna (Italy). His latest publication is *European Literatures in Britain, 1815–1832: Romantic Translations* (2019).

**Leticia Villamediana González** is an Associate Professor in Hispanic Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick (UK). Her research interests lie in the fields of eighteenth-century Spanish literature and culture, and Anglo-Spanish cultural transfers. Some of her recent publications include the monograph *Anglomanía: la imagen de Inglaterra en la*  *prensa española del siglo XVIII* (Tamesis Books, 2019) and a co-edited volume on *The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere: from the Enlightenment to the indignados* (Berghahn Books, 2019). She also contributes to *The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies*, reviewing the section of Spanish Studies: Literature, 1700–1823.

### **List of Figures**


### **Index**

1812 Constitution, Spain 82, 83, 90, 91, 125–127, 211 Ackermann, Rudolph 14, 44 Alcalá Galiano, Antonio 43, 45, 49, 52, 92, 93, 186, 208 Alemán, Mateo 69 – *Guzmán de Alfarache* 13, 69 Alfieri, Vittorio Amedeo 200, 202, 203 *All the Year Round* 220 Anaya, Ángel 15, 16, 27, 28, 29–35, 127, 195 – *Discours sur la manière d'apprendre les langues vivantes*, *et particulièrement l'italienne et l'espagnole* 31, 32 – *El teatro español* 15, 27, 29, 30, 33, 127 – *Essay on Spanish Literature*, *An* 15, 27, 28, 31–34, 195 – *La belleza. Silva* 27, 28 – *Leçons de langue italienne ou grammaire compléte* 29, 30, 32 Andalusia 18, 67, 215–217, 220– 223, 226 Andrés y Morell, Juan 34, 35 – *Origen, progreso y estado actual de toda la literatura* 34 *Annual Review* 117, 121, 124, 191, 193 Anster, John 100 *Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine* 194 Aragon 46, 67 Aretino, Pietro 148 – *Il filosofo* 148 Aristotle 137

*Athenaeum* 45, 52, 121, 127, 186, 195, 223 Ávila, Teresa of 11, 32 Balbuena, Bernardo de 48, 49 Balmes, Jaime 221 Batteux, Charles 54, 210 – *Principes de la littérature* 54 Beawes, Wyndham 14 Bécquer, José Domínguez 66 Belfour, John 18, 190–195 Bello, Francesco 148 – *Il pedante* 148 Bergnes de las Casas, Antonio 28 Bethell, Augusta 223, 225 Bhon, Henry George 14 Black, John 101 Black Legend 9, 122, 123, 127 *Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine* 12, 16, 17, 44, 47, 50, 82–84, 99–101, 104–108, 117, 121, 127, 133, 134, 136, 138, 143, 195 Blake, William 161, 162, 229 Blanco White, Joseph 12, 18, 43–49, 51–53, 83, 199, 203–212, 217, 218, 220, 224 – "El Alcázar de Sevilla" 220 – *Letters from Spain* 46, 83, 217, 224 – *Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy* 210 Böhl von Faber, Cecilia *see* Caballero, Fernán Böhl von Faber, Johann Nikolaus 12, 33, 47, 50, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 216 – *Floresta de rimas antiguas* 

*castellanas* 12, 84, 87

Bonaparte, Napoleon 63, 64, 85, 175, 192 Bourbon dynasty, Spain 51, 52, 88 Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 59, 60 Bourgoing, Jean-François de 84 – *Tableau de l'Espagne Moderne* 84 Bouterwek, Friedrich 31–33, 35, 44, 46, 50, 51, 54, 80, 84, 88, 89, 120 – *History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature* 44 Bowring, John 11, 43, 45, 51, 83, 84 – *Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain* 20, 43, 84, 95 *British Critic* 31, 192, 193 Busk, Mary Margaret 17, 100, 108, 109, 127, 128, 133–137, 138–144 Butler, Samuel 148 – *Elephant in the Moon*, *The* 148 – *Hudibras* 148 – *Satire in Two Parts upon the Imperfections and abuse of Human Learning* 148 Byron, George Gordon, Lord 10, 11, 22, 50, 105 Caballero, Fernán 15, 18, 33, 215–226 – *Callar en vida y perdonar en muerte* 223 – *Élia*, *ó La España treinta años ha* 218 – *La familia de Alvareda* 219, 223, 226 – *La Gaviota* 18, 215–221, 223–226 – *Pobre Dolores* 223 – *Relaciones* 218 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 10, 15, 17, 30, 31, 47–50, 70, 80, 92, 100– 102, 104, 108, 109, 112, 136, 137, 140, 141, 143, 144 – *Agradecer y no amar* 108, 133– 135, 138, 139, 142, 143

– *autos sacramentales* 49, 134, 136

	- 79, 92, 117, 120, 128, 133, 134, 186, 195, 196, 216, 221, 222, 224

Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, The 68, 85, 86, 89, 102, 106 Colburn, Henry 61 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 10, 11, 15, 50, 135 Combe, William 17, 173 – *Second Tour of Doctor Syntax*, *in Search of Consolation*, *a Poem* 174 – *Third Tour of Doctor Syntax*, *in Search of a Wife*, *a Poem* 174 – *Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, a Poem*, *The* 17, 173 *comuneros* of Castile 91, 200, 211, 212 Corbould, Richard 162, 177 Cossens, Frederick 223, 224 *Critical Review* 187, 190, 191, 194 Cruikshank, George 69, 173, 175–177 Delille, Jacques 28, 29 Depping, Georges Bernard 13, 106–108 – *Sammlung der besten alten Spanischen Historischen*, *Ritter und Maurischen Romanzen* 106 Dickens, Charles 219 Dillon, John Talbot 11, 14, 118, 122 Doré, Paul Gustave 159, 171 Downes, George 107 *Dublin University Magazine* 220 Dumas, Alexandre 217, 221 Durán, Agustín 79, 86, 87, 89, 90–93 – *Discurso sobre el influjo que ha tenido la crítica moderna en la decadencia del teatro español* 89 – *Romancero de romances* 

*moriscos* 86, 87, 89

*Edinburgh Monthly Review* 31 *Edinburgh Review* 12, 29, 44, 84, 85, 87, 102, 117, 121, 124, 221–223

*El contemporáneo* 222 *El Español* 207, 208 *Englishman's Magazine* 175 Escosura, Patricio de la 219, 222 *European Magazine and London Review* 194 *European Review* 45, 47–51, 56, 57, 88, 94, 96 *Examiner* 12, 219, 224 Feijoo, Benito Jerónimo 35, 186 – *Theatro crítico universal* 35 Ferdinand VII of Spain 27, 33–35, 67, 82–85, 128 Ferguson, Robert 100 Fernández de Moratín, Leandro 14, 30, 45, 51–53, 201, 221 Fernández de Moratín, Nicolás 52 Fielding, Henry 148, 154–156, 231 – *Amelia* 155 – *Jonathan Wild* 155 – *Joseph Andrews* 155 – *Tom Jones* 148, 154, 155 Ford, Richard 14, 87, 93, 217 *Foreign Quarterly Review* 18, 45, 52, 53, 127, 186, 199–201, 206, 212 *Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany* 18, 45, 51, 52, 86, 199, 200, 202, 212, 213 *Fraser's Magazine* 86, 225 Fray Luis de Granada 31, 35 Fray Luis de León 48, 189 *Freeman's Journal* 32 Gautier, Pierre Jules Théophile 217 *Gentleman's Magazine* 190 Gilbert, John 169–171, 177 Gillies, Robert Pearse 100 Godoy, Manuel 205 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 101, 106, 107 – *Faust* 101, 106, 107

Golden Age, Spanish literature 10, 13, 15, 17, 30, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 54, 102, 108, 185 Góngora y Argote, Luis de 49, 189 Gorostiza y Cepeda, Manuel Eduardo de 43, 45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 186 Habsburg dynasty, Spain 48, 50, 88, 92 Hayley, William 11, 122 Hazlitt, William 101 Hemans, Felicia Dorothea 85 – *Siege of Valencia*, *The* 85 – *Songs of the Cid* 85 Herder, Johann Gottfried 79, 120 Hogarth, William 17, 173 Holcroft, Fanny Margaretta 50, 135, 136–139, 143 Holland House 14, 119, 126, 207 Holland, Henry Richard Vassal-Fox, Lord 15, 35, 39, 96, 118, 131, 134, 145, 146 – *Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio* 50, 118, 119, 124, 128, 134 – *Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio and Guillen de Castro* 30, 119, 125, 126, 128, 134, 136, 137, 141 – *Three Comedies Translated from Spanish* 50, 135 Homer 202 Houghton, Arthur Boyd 177 Hunt, John 12 Hunt, Leigh 12, 105 *Illustrated Review* 226 Inglis, Henry David 63, 69, 175 – *Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote* 69, 175

– *Spain in 1830* 63, 175

Iriarte, Tomás de 15, 18, 70, 74, 185–196, 221

– *Compendio de la historia de España* 70

– *Fábulas literarias* 18, 70, 185, 187, 193, 194, 196–198

– *La música* 188–190

Irving, Washington 65, 66, 68, 217, 218

– *Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada*, *A* 68

– *History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus*, *The* 68

– *Legends of the Conquest of Spain* 68

– *Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon*, *The* 65

– *Tales of the Alhambra* 65, 66

– *Voyages of the Companions of Columbus* 68 Isabella II of Spain 90

Isla, Francisco José de 34

– *Fray Gerundio de Campazas* 34, 149

Jacob, William 14 Jardine, Alexander 14, 194 – *Letters from Barbary*, *France*, *Spain*, *Portugal* 194 Jarvis, Charles 69, 70, 175 Jerdan, William 61 Johannot, Tony 70, 159, 170 Josse, Agustín Luis 18, 193–195 – *El Tesoro español o biblioteca portátil española* 193 *Journal des savans* 29 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de 52, 45, 186, 202 Juan Manuel, Don 45, 47, 69 – *El conde Lucanor* 45, 47, 69

Kirk, Thomas 162, 164 *La Belle Assemblée* 51 Larra, Mariano José 215, 221 Lewis, Matthew Gregory 101 – *The Monk* 101 *Liberal, The* 105 Liberal Triennium 9, 82, 85, 126, 128 *Literary Gazette* 16, 30, 32, 59–72, 218, 219 Llanos Gutiérrez, Valentín de 44, 45, 53 – *Don Esteban* 44, 48, 49, 53 Lockhart, John Gibson 14, 16, 32, 43, 47, 68, 82–84, 87, 99–111 – *Ancient Spanish Ballads* 32, 43, 47, 68, 82, 84, 105, 106 *London Magazine* 84 *London Review* 12, 18, 46, 199, 204, 205, 212 MacCarthy, Denis Florence 32, 134–143 Mariana, Juan de 34 – *Historia general de España* 34 Martínez de la Rosa, Francisco 15, 18, 199–212 – *El gobernador christiano* 35 – *La niña en casa y la madre en la máscara* 201, 203 – *La viuda de Padilla* 200, 202, 211 – *Morayma* 201 – *Obras literarias* 18, 199–212 Maury, Juan María 46 – *Espagne poétique* 46 Mendíbil, Pablo de 43, 45, 51–54 Mill, John Stuart 18, 199, 204, 206 Milman, Henry Hart 30, 127 Miranda, Francisco de 14 Moir, George 51, 219

*Monthly Magazine* 84, 117, 121, 122, 135, 188, 195 *Monthly Review* 29, 85, 110, 190, 195 Mora, José Joaquín de 12, 43, 45, 47–49, 51–53, 88, 90, 93 *Morning Post* 59, 185, 186, 188, 192, 196 Müllner, Adolph 100, 108 Murray, John 29, 68, 102 national identity 10, 11, 16, 43, 44, 46, 50, 53, 54, 87, 88, 100, 111, 117, 120, 123, 216 *New Monthly Magazine* 12, 44, 45, 47, 48, 110, 117, 120, 121, 126, 186 *North British Review* 218, 219, 225 North, Christopher *see* Wilson, John *Ocios de Españoles Emigrados* 54 Oehlenschläger, Adam 100 *Oedipus* 201 Oldfield, John 166, 167, 173, 175 Peninsular War 9, 12, 59, 62–65, 67,

82, 85, 125, 175, 185, 192, 194 Phoenix of Spain *see* Vega, Lope Félix de Pignotti, Lorenzo 28, 29 *Poetical Register* 190 Prescott, William 69, 218 – *History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella*, *The* 69

*Quarterly Review* 12, 29, 30, 44, 85, 100, 102, 117, 121, 124, 127 *querella calderoniana* 47, 50 Quevedo, Francisco de 11, 189 Quintana, Manuel José 52, 53, 68, 87–89, 90, 207 – *Colección de poesías castellanas* 87


Reconquest of Spain 105 *Retrospective Review* 84 Richter, Jean Paul 9, 149 Riego, Rafael de 110 Roberts, David 66, 67 Rodd, Thomas 81, 82, 108 – *Ancient Ballads from the Civil Wars of Granada and the Twelve Peers of France* 82, 108 – *History of Charles the Great and Orlando, ascribed to Archbishop Turpin* 81 Roderic, King of Spain 89 *La Celestina* 211 *Romancero* 47, 85–87, 89, 90, 215 *romances* 13, 43, 45, 47, 49, 68, 79, 81, 82, 84–89, 92, 93, 99, 105– 107, 221 Roscoe, Thomas 67, 69, 175 Rousseau, Jean- Jacques 160, 162 Rowlandson, Thomas 173, 174 Saint Theresa *see* Ávila, Teresa of Salvá y Pérez, Vicente 14 Samaniego, Félix María de 28, 29 – "El ciudadano pastor" 29 – *Fábulas* 28 *Satirist*, *or Monthly Meteor* 190 *Saturday Review* 219, 220, 224 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 9, 46, 50, 54, 80, 84, 89, 92, 101, 102, 120, 135, 139, 143


Scott, Walter 17, 32, 85, 99, 100– 102, 110, 211, 223, 225 – *Antiquary*, *The* 17, 147, 149–156 – *Ivanhoe* 102, 110 – *Lives of the Novelists* 155 – *Rob Roy* 32 – *Waverley*, *or 'Tis Sixty Years Since* 32, 102, 225 Seneca 141 Shakespeare, William 108, 118, 122, 139, 144, 165, 211 Shelley, Mary 10, 11, 15, 50, 117, 119, 135 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 10, 50, 101, 105, 113, 135, 137, 143 *Siglo de Oro see* Golden Age Sismondi, Simonde de 30–32, 35, 44, 80, 84, 88–90, 106, 120 – *De la littérature du midi de l'Europe* 30, 32 Smallfield, George 16, 31, 33 Smirke, Robert 17, 159, 160, 168, 177, 164–169 Smollett, Tobias George 175, 187 Solís y Rivadeneyra, Antonio 135 – *Un bobo hace ciento* 50, 135 Sophocles 137 Southey, Robert 11, 13–15, 18, 30– 32, 51, 59, 63, 85, 101, 117–119, 121–128, 134, 137, 187–191, 193, 195, 196, 198 – *Chronicle of the Cid* 13, 32, 85 – *History of the Peninsular War* 63 – *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* 18, 118, 188 – *Roderick*, *the Last of the Goths* 101, 125 Spanish ballads see *romances*

Staël, Anne-Louise Germaine

Necker, Madame de 79, 80, 89


Umayyad Caliphate 105

Valera y Alcalá Galiano, Juan 222 Vanderbank, John 159, 176 *Variedades* 44, 45, 211 Vega, Garcilaso de la 48, 49 Vega, Lope Félix de 11, 15, 17, 35, 48–50, 92, 117–132, 134, 136, 137, 139–141, 144, 185, 189, 195, 211


Wale, Samuel 159–161 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of 64, 82, 175 *Westminster and London Review* 205 *Westminster Review* 12, 45, 53, 92, 204 Whitehead, Samuel Durham 52 Wilson, John 83, 105 Wordsworth, William 11, 15, 161, 162

#### **Anglo-Iberian Studies**

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