exquise. If, however, you are simply a lover of poetry, I would counsel you to avoid it and others like it, because they would seem to you to be insipid and would perhaps arouse your indignation at their pretence of art.

Have I perhaps seemed to lack of reverence for a personage so conspicuous, for a writer so remarkable in the spiritual life of the nineteenth century as Georges Sand certainly was? This would have been at least an act in the worst possible taste. I have only wished (in conformity with my already familiar idea or determination and with the task set to myself in composing these notes) to transfer Georges Sand also from the sphere Literaturgeschichte to that of Culturgeschichte, where alone her work can be adequately understood and justice rendered to it. It is useful to acquire the conviction that the history of poetry contains a far less numerous array of poetic and artistic talents than people imagine, when they read the manuals of literary history:

Many the fowls that fly, but few and far
Swans and true poets are." 1

The others are journalists, orators, conversers, narrators, composers of moving or pleasing works, but they are not swans," or poets.

1 Ariosto Orlando Furioso

XVII

FERNÁN CABALLERO

I BELIEVE discoverable a truer vein of poetry, even of "idyllic poetry," in the modest Spanish authoress who concealed herself under the name of Fernán Caballero (Cecilia Bohl de Faber) than in the very celebrated Georges Sand. She too was a polemist and a propagandist as ardent as the lady of Nohant, but in a precisely opposite sense, that is to say Catholic, traditionalistic and almost reactionary; yet I find in her a solidity of mind, a simplicity of heart and a liveliness of imagination which the other did not possess, for all her superior facility and virtuosity. In the history of poetry one often verifies the saying that the first shall be last and the last first.

To tell the truth, the very polemic and apostolate of the Caballero seem to me far more securely founded and more seriously justified than the turbid feminism and the superficial socialism of Georges Sand. The old Spain, so great and glorious, so Catholic and so warlike, after having suddenly shaken herself free from the sleep into which she had fallen after having combated French and Napoleonic imperialism with her popular resources, instead of persisting in the character which she had re-asserted with such prowess, began to accept new social and political forms, as presented to her by many of her national writers, and, accepting their point of view and beginning to vacillate

in her ancient faith and habits, seemingly accepting as just the criticisms and satires directed against her by foreign writers. This work of the innovators, liberals and free-thinkers was a defiance of her sacred past, which still formed the lively and actual present of so great a part of the Spanish people: Fernán Caballero took up the gauntlet.

You, the illuminated, enemies of superstitions, you who mock at popular customs, at sanctuaries, at miraculous paintings, at ex-votos, at sacred tattooings and the like, have you ever understood them as they are, symbols of the moral life, which restrain, menace, console and inspire kindly feelings and good actions? You scorn the clumsy Spanish churches, where the images of the saints are incrusted with silver plating and with other ornaments in bad taste: you think perhaps that those churches are really museums for artists, where the merely devout go to pray? Do you speak of the ignorance and crudity of the Spanish peoples? But how is it that you are never aware of the daily proofs of good sense and judgment, of disinterestedness, of sacrifice, of dignity, of noble pride, of the virtues which are the fruit of a long Christian education and of which they daily offer examples? Do you wish to educate the peoples with your vaporous and litigious philosophies? Will they ever be worth that serene light, that spring of pure crystalline waters that perpetually pours forth • in those that have learned to live and die in the Catechism? Do you wish to endow the poor with a rebellious spirit in order to raise them to the level of humanity? But why do you take from them that resignation to their own condition, that love of their own work and of peace, and that religion which

generates and maintains all these truly humane dispositions, to substitute for them your preachings of hatred? And above all, you who speak of a people, of the Spanish people, do you really know it? Have you sought out and observed it in real life? And how have you observed it? With the reason? That is not enough. "Todas las cosas de este mundo tienen dos modos de mirarse, el uno con la helada mirada de la razón, que todo lo enfria y lo rebaja, como la luz de la bujía, y el otro con la ardiente y simpática mirada del corazón, que todo lo dora y vivifica como el sol de Díos. Esta luz del corazón se llama Poesia. . . ."

This polemic, which took colour and character from its reference to Spanish life, was a particular aspect and instance of the polemic of historicism against intellectualistic radicalism, with which the nineteenth century opened. Not only had it political value at the time it appeared, but a true ideal value, so much so that we are ourselves constrained to have recourse to it, as coming generations will also certainly be obliged to do. What ideal value, on the other hand, is retained by the much-vaunted claim to follow the stimulus of the erotic imagination, or the desired fusion of the social classes by means of the marriage of ladies with workmen, advocated and maintained by Georges Sand? It will be said that the Caballero did not invent the idea of that polemic in support of tradition. Certainly, and it is difficult to determine who exactly did invent it, because it arose everywhere in Europe as the result of inevitable historical necessity. But she represented it very well, so far as it concerned her, and reproduced it anew in new conditions, by re-living it in herself.

With a view to secure this end, which is the first and most apparent of her work, the Caballero selected "the picture of customs," popular Spanish customs, more particularly Andalusian, and doing this with full spontaneity, she seemed also to conform to a literary example which had found in Scott its greatest protagonist; hence this authoress, whom we shall freely term the Catholic Sand, was hailed by preference as "the Spanish Walter Scott " by her contemporaries. So urgent to her seemed the duty she had assumed of defending the old religious and moral forms of her country, that she always protested against those who looked upon the stories she told as romances or "artistic works." More than once she declared, "I have not intended to write novels; I have tried to give a true, exact, genuine idea of Spain and of its society, to describe the internal life of our people, its beliefs, its feelings, its acute sayings; I have tried to rehabilitate things which the ignorant nineteenth century has trodden under its heavy and audacious foot, holy and religious things, religious practices and their lofty and tender significance, ancient and pure Spanish customs, the national character and mode of feeling, the bonds that unite society and the family, restraint in everything, and especially in those ridiculous passions which are affected without being really felt (because fortunately great passion is rare), modest virtues. The so-called romantic part of my work is intended only as the framework of the vast building that I have set myself to construct." She also confessed that her intention not only went beyond art, but even led her to oppose herself to art, sacrificing the logic of what she described as the donnée, that is to say, the artistic motive, to the