History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol 1 of 2)

1 This, in its turn, is only a small part of a very extensive work, the general title of which is, Geschichte der Künst und Wissenschaften seit der Wiederherstellung derselben bis an das Ende des achtzenten Jahrhunderts, von einer Gesellschaft gelehrter männer ausgearbeitet. (History of Arts and Learning from their restoration to the end of the eighteenth century, by a society of learned men.) Different authors have each taken a part in this great literary enterprize, which may be said to form an Encyclopedia, though not on the usual plan of a dictionary.

2 There is also a French translation of Bouterwek’s volume on Spanish literature, which, as far as it goes, is correct and well executed in point of style; but notwithstanding that the translator appears to have been capable of doing justice to the work, it is greatly mutilated. The Portuguese volume, which is in some respects the more valuable of the two, is not touched by the French translator.

3 Letters from an English Traveller in Spain, in 1778, on the Origin and Progress of Poetry in that kingdom, London 1781.—This book was written by Mr. Dillon, author of “Travels through Spain,” “History of Peter the Cruel,” &c.

4 Fought in the year 712.

5 This remark, from the Indiculo luminoso of Bishop Alvaro of Cordova, is noticed in the preface to Du Cange’s Glossary, and is repeated by Velasquez in his History of Spanish Poetry, Dieze’s edition, page 33.—See also Eichhorn’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur und Litteratur, vol. i. p. 121. The details of the history of Arabic poetry in Spain cannot be comprehended in a history of Spanish and Portuguese poetry. The bibliographic erudition on the subject of Arabic poetry, which Dieze has displayed in his remarks on Velasquez, does not belong to the subject of this work.

6 Velasquez, Dieze, and other authors, furnish information on the history of the Biscayan language and poetry. This language, with the poetry to which it may have given birth, has had no influence on literature beyond its own territory, and appears to have had very little even there.

7 How sensibly the neglect of the Catalonian or Valencian tongue, after the union of the kingdoms of Arragon and Castile, was felt in the provinces which belonged to the former, may be seen from the passage quoted by Eichhorn, in his Allg. Gesch. der Cul. u. Litt. vol. i. page 129, from Scuolano’s History of Valencia. But the pleasing language of the Troubadours was doubtless very defective. It would otherwise have been difficult to have made the Catalonian poets so soon proselytes to the Castilian dialect, especially as, besides the difference of language, the natural jealousy between the Arragonian and Castilian provinces was strong enough to manifest itself by political effects even in the eighteenth century. The imperfection of the Troubadour phraseology may have been partly owing to its fluctuations, and the various forms it assumed, in the several dialects. The difference of the dialects appears particularly evident on comparing the real Provençal of the French Troubadours with the Valencian, called Lengua Vallenciana. The dialect of the Provençal Troubadours may, without much difficulty, be translated by conjecture, if the reader be acquainted with French and Italian; but the meaning of the Valencian cannot be so easily guessed at, even with the additional knowledge of Castilian. As a proof of this, it will be sufficient to peruse a passage of the Libre de los Dones, of Mosen, [that is, Monsieur, instead of the Castilian Don] Jaume [James] Roig, reprinted in Valencia, 1735, in 4to. The author is one of the last poets who wrote in the Valencian dialect, and the whole didactic poem, if so it may be called, is composed in short verses of the following description:

Owing to the difference of the dialects, a foreigner might, by a short residence in Madrid, learn to express himself in Castilian with more fluency than it is spoken by a great part of the inhabitants of the Arragonian provinces.

8 At least such is the opinion of Gregorio Mayans y Ziscar, given in his work, known under the title of Origenes de la Lengua Española, part i. page 8.

9 An old prejudice attributes the forcible aspiration which the Spanish shares in common with the German and Arabic, solely to the mixture of the latter with the Castilian. This prejudice is pardonable in the Spaniards, who are not aware of the influence which the German guttural must have had over their language; but the Germans, who know the nature of their mother tongue, ought to recollect that the same Arabic words which are strongly aspirated by the Spaniards, are pronounced by the Portuguese, though equally naturalized among them, with a hissing sound. Besides, how does it happen that the G before E and I, which is a guttural with the Germans, has nearly the same sound with the Castilians, though it is never so pronounced by any other people whose language appears to have risen on the ruins of that of ancient Rome? The Germanic pronunciation of the Visigoths, which was doubtless preserved in the mountains of Castile, would afterwards be easily confounded with the Arabic. The Castilian conversion of O into UE, also resembles the change which takes place in German of O into OE. Let, for instance, the Spanish Cuerpo and Pueblo be compared with the German Körper and Pöbel.

10 The Portuguese language would perhaps be less depreciated by the Spaniards, if it did not remind them of the vulgar idiom spoken by the Galician water-carriers in Madrid. On the contrary, the Portuguese think the Castilian language inflated, and at the same time rough and also affected. Both nations are as little disposed to come to an agreement on the merits of their respective languages as the Danes and Swedes are regarding theirs; for the Castilian and Portuguese are, like the Danish and Swedish, only two conflicting dialects of the same tongue. The Swedes admit that the Danish language exceeds their own in softness, though they consider that softness disagreeable, and the harsher Swedish more sonorous on account of the greater abundance and fulness of its vowel sounds; thus, precisely in the same manner, do the Spaniards condemn the softness of the Portuguese tongue. The elision of the letter L in a great number of Portuguese words, as in COR, PAÇO, for color, palacio, and the remarkable change of L into R, as in branco, brando, for blanco, blando, are peculiarities of that language to which foreigners do not easily reconcile themselves.

11 The first essay towards a history of the Portuguese language, and an introduction to Portuguese orthography, were published in Lisbon at the time when Portugal was a Spanish province.—Duarte Nunez de Liaõ, the author of both works, was a statesman and magistrate. (Desembargador da Camara da Supplicaçaõ.) The former is entitled Origem da Lingoa Portugueza, Lisb. 1606, in 8vo. It is dedicated to Philip III. king of Spain, who is, however, on this occasion merely addressed as Dom Phelipe II. de Portugal. In the preface the author states his other, but older work, (Orthographia da Lingoa Portugueza, Lisb. 1576, in 8vo.) to be the first of the kind. The Portuguese have, however, for two centuries laboured with as little success as the Germans, to introduce uniformity of orthography into their language. The convertible M and AÕ appear to have been so early selected to denote the French nasal tone which occurs in numerous final syllables, that Nunez de Liaõ found it necessary to acquiesce in the custom, according to which the same word might be very differently written, as naçaõ or naçam, naõ or nam, pronounced nearly as nassaong and naong, with the French sound of on, bon. But it surely could not have been very difficult to dispossess the totally unnecessary and barbarous H in hum and huma (from the latin unus and una) of the place it had assumed, as it is now banished from elegant Portuguese orthography. Trifles of this kind present more materials for reflection than a first view gives reason to expect. When the orthography of a country continues to be an object of reform, that nation is deficient in a certain degree of refinement, the attainment of which has either been missed, or the right pursuit of which is but just commenced. Indeed what necessity is there for the French, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese, writing the same sound, occurring in the same word, in four different ways, as for example, bataille, battaglia, batalla, batalha?

12 Nothing could be more improper than to follow Du Cange, (Glossar. praef. § 34, sq.) in dividing the vulgare idioma of the present inhabitants of the Pyrenean Peninsula into the Castellanum, Limosinum, and Vasconicum.

13 A particular account of the Limosin poetry, even in its last period, which is late enough to come into the division of time called the latter ages, does not belong to the history of modern poetry. It ought to be treated as the last part of the chivalrous poetry of the middle ages.—See the notices in Velasquez and Dieze, p. 45, and the still more instructive sketch of the history of Limosin poetry, in Eichhorn’s Gesch. der Cult. u. Litt. vol. i. p. 123.

14 That the Portuguese and the Galician were originally not to be distinguished from each other, is expressly stated by that attentive observer of the forms of his native language, Nunez de Liaõ, who says, As quaes ambas, (namely, the Portuguese and the Galician tongues) eraõ antigamente quasi huma mesma nas palavras, e diphthongos, e pronunciação, que as outras partes de Hespanha naõ tem. Origem da Lingoa Portugueza, cap. VI.

15 Velasquez, who felt this, thought fit when he read the Lusiade de Camões, to pay a particular compliment to the author, at the expense of the Portuguese language; for, after delivering the same opinion on that language, which is entertained by most Spaniards, he very elegantly adds: “the muses thought otherwise when they spoke through the mouth of Camoens.”

16 Cada fuente de Portugal y cada monte son Hippocrenes y Parnassos, says Manuel de Faria y Sousa, in his Epitome de las Historias Portugueses. Father Sarmiento, a Spanish author, whom national prejudice does not prevent from doing justice to the Portuguese, mentions this observation in his instructive Memorias para la Poesia Española.

17 The word is used in this extensive sense by Sarmiento in his Memorias, or as the book is sometimes called, Obras posthumas, parte i. p. 168. Authors are far from being agreed respecting the origin of the term redondillas, (according to the Portuguese orthography redondilhas.) But is not the word more naturally derived from redondo (round), than from a small town called Redondo? Instead of redondillas, these compositions are sometimes named redondillos, the word versos being understood. In German they might be called ringelverse (circular verses.)

18 Shall it be said that there is, in the German language, no kind of verse which unites to so much grace, a character so truly popular! Let Burger’s Nachtfeier der Venus be considered, before this be determined. Even the Esthonian Serfs, on the coast of the Baltic, chaunt their simple ballads in the same measure. Proof of this may be seen on reference to Petri’s Nachrichten von den Esthen, vol. ii. p. 69.

19 Among others, Sarmiento, who in support of this opinion, quotes some verses from Virgil, for example: Inter viburna cupressi—Tondenti barba cadebat, &c. These verses have, it is true, eight syllables, but not four trochaic feet.

20 How does it happen that none of the Spanish authors have taken notice of the ancient songs sung by the Roman soldiers, though they are evidently redondillas? Suetonius has preserved some remarkable examples of these songs; and the same measure occurs after the decline of latin poetry, particularly in some pious verses of Prudentius, which are quoted by Sarmiento.