thing from the plasticity of the representation. For example, the authoress, having described the daily life of Don Gil, so idyllic, so Catholic, cannot refrain from exclaiming :

e

"¡Oh querido, feliz y excelente Don Gil, de grotesca, pero suave y risueña memoria!" dall'esclamazione passa all'invettiva e alla parenetica: "¡Triste filosofía que te quemas las pestañas sobre tus libros y te derrites los sesos en tus cavilaciones, buscando la piedra filosofal, esto es, la verdad y felicidad que no encuentras! ¿qué éres tú en comparación de aquella tranquilidad de espiritu, de aquella serenidad de alma, que nada busca y todo lo halla?...'

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I shall give another instance of this polemic which rises up beside the picture she is painting without spoiling it, of this union of the poetical spirit with the combative spirit. In the romance entitled Un servilón y un liberalito is represented a family of poor but very honest people, of almas de Dios. One of these poor folk, head of the family, dies quietly as he had lived. The two women who survive accept his death tranquilly and with religious thoughts:

"Una noche, después de haber rezado, se acostó don José en perfecta salud, al lado de su buena compañera á la mañana siguiente llamó ésta su cuñada

doña Liberata, acudió y.

Hermana, le dijo, mira que me parece que Pepe se ha muerto.

-¡Que! no; no puede ser ! . .

repuso ésta

acercándose á su hermano ya cadaver. - Pepe ! Pepe !

llamó; pero viendo que no respondía, se puso á

tentarle la frente y el pulso, hecho lo cual, volviéndose á su cuñada le dijo:

- Mujer, como que tienes razon . . . muerto esta! Nos cogió la delantera, dijo su mujer.

- Ayer me dijo: alli te espero, añadió doña Liberata. Pero se ha ido sin los santos Sacramentos, Escolástica.

Ayer, confesó y comulgó, repuso su mujer; ¿ si le diria el corazón que se iba á morir?

Se lo diría al oído el Angel de su guarda, dijo doña Liberata. Vamos, hermana, á encomendar su alma á Díos, que es lo que nos queda.

Y ambas cayeron de rodillas, y se pusieron á rezar con voz tranquila y espiritu recogido y fervoroso, pero sereno."

Here too the narrator cannot restrain herself, and having told the story with so much simplicity and beauty, exclaims:

"¡Oh, almas de Díos ! Sencillas, mansas, tranquilas y conformes. Almas mil veces bienaventuradas! ¡ ¡Qué lecciones dais á las almas mundanales, inquietas, apuradas, extremosas, que refinan y alambican el dolor gastando su buena savia en hojarasca ! "

These exclamations and reflections will perhaps seem artistically redundant, because they are not able to add anything to the force of the narrative; they may even seem extraneous and distracting; but what matters is that they do not suppress or disturb the poetical pages written by the Caballero, with which they are rather on neighbourly terms. As is the case with almost all female writers, the practical tendency predominated in the Caballero, rendering her careless

or impatient of artistic elaboration and resulting in the defects noted by us, for the rest sufficiently evident in themselves. But Caballero's work is able to resist this practical tendency and the bad literary effects which result from it, because, differently from other women writers, she did not look with one eye at the paper and the other at the public (as Heine would have put it), she attempted no blandishments, she paid no attention to arranging herself in such a way as to excite or to seduce the imaginations of readers, she did not expand and falsify feelings and passions, nor raise them to the rank of theories, but was animated with a pure and serious conviction, and possessed sound judgment. And above all a spring of poetry was bubbling in her heart, which maintained itself fresh and lively even in the midst of the fervent apostolate which she exercised in the service of her faith as a Catholic of the old Church and as a Spaniard of the old Spain.

XVIII

DE MUSSET

If poetry could be identical with life (as some extreme romantics of all times dream), Alfred de Musset would have approached this ideal more nearly than any ever did, and should be numbered among the great poets. For he did not conceive of poetry otherwise than as an efflux from his life and his life as an efflux from his poetry, making them perfectly identical. And in order to arrive at this identity, he gave to his life for unique content what is reputed to be the content most proper to poetry: the drama of love. Not politics then, not country, not humanity, not family, not religion, not search for truth; but only love. Nor was this love of Musset's a spiritual association between two beings in order to achieve a harmony for each, a common activity; no, for this would mean duty and sacrifice and have in it something of prose. Nor was it the love which is complete abandonment of self to another creature, made an idol and reason for life; for this would have savoured of religion and mysticism and would have offered little variety. Musset's love was both comedy and tragedy, the love which claims the faithfulness of the loved one, but reserves the right of being unfaithful to her. But if she in her turn break the bonds of fidelity, malediction falls upon her, and if she remain faithful, then she is overcome with ennui, which is worse than a malediction.

What Musset sought, then, was passionate love, with all the volubility and all the contradictions which are of its very nature: love, which is a rose rich in thorns, a rose to be plucked with loud outcry at the pricks, yet the desire that the thorns should be there. Sensibility, imagination and the leisure of a poet are needed for such a love as this, and only a poet can give or receive such love. Poetry should be the echo of this, echo of joy, of enthusiasm, of delirium, and then of delusion and desperation and bitterness and disdain, and then, all over again, of hope, of joy renewed and of new delirium. Always it must be melodious and tuneful, always facile and spontaneous, without any hindrances such as are presented by meditations, condensations, elaboration of verse, rich rhymes. Such things are of the domain of literary men and pedants, cold souls all of them; they have nothing akin with lovers or with blond, pale, vibrating and lamenting poets.

There is something juvenile, almost childish, in this idea both of love and of poetry. And it is for this reason that De Musset has been called the young man's poet. We have all of us loved and cared for him in our youthful days, and some of us have carried nosegays to lay upon his tomb, shaded by the willow-tree, itself both real and poetic. All of us have since in a way felt ashamed of our admiration, talking of him with reservations not untinged with pity. In so doing we have been unjust, in addition to being cruel, because Alfred de Musset represents in a definite classical form one of the eternal tendencies or eternal weaknesses of the human heart. For this reason I am pleased to think that Donnay-well qualified to feel the value of such a kind of life and poetry-has lately