lencia, which was of a very indirect and crooked kind, in which his promise was forfeited more than once, and to more than one person. This was a breach of honour on the part of the "Happy One, whom God created in a lucky hour," which seems to derogate from his knightly character. His mode of conducting the charge against the Infantes of Carrion, by which he secured restitution before he demanded revenge for his injured honour, argues a cool and interested mode of reason better becoming an attorney than a warrior. All these are, no doubt, qualified by his extreme and punctilious loyalty towards the king who had exiled him; his warm affection for his family; and his generosity to his vassals, and sometimes to his enemies. Yet, upon the whole, the Cid Ruy Diaz forms no exception to Froissart's general rule, that the knights of Spain had not attained the highest and most refined chivalry practised in France and England. And his story leaves us at a loss whether he had most of the fox, the tiger, or the lion in his disposition; for he seems to have been at least as crafty and cruel as he was brave. It is also worthy of remarking, that the supreme respect, enjoined by the laws of knighthood, to the fair sex, does not appear in this romance. The females all act a subordinate part, and that irreconcilable with their being persons of any influence. It may be hardly fair to quote the beating which the sons-in-law of the Cid bestow upon their wives, as proof of general manners. Yet this castigation, though utterly extra modum, was not much wondered at, except in relation to the power and generosity of the Cid, father of the patients. The counts appeal to the whole cortes, whether they had not a title to beat maids of low degree with their girths, and tear them with their long-rowelled spurs; and issue was joined upon an allegation, that the daughters of the Cid were of too high a rank to be subjected to such discipline. Ximena, also, makes a sorry figure in the tale; she comes before the king to ask the hand of the man who had killed her father-a step which surely argued a degraded state in society, and a want of free will. The daughters of the Cid are, with very little ceremony, and without at all consulting their own choice, bestowed on one set of husbands and transferred to another: and, lastly, the passion, or even the word love, does not occur in the whole volume. It is highly probable, that, in this respect, the manners of the

Spaniards were tinged by those of their Mahommedan conquerors, from whom they had caught the Oriental contempt of the female sex.

Many other marks of resemblance between those nations might be pointed out; nor indeed, upon the whole, do the Moors appear to have been a more unamiable race than the Castilian Christians. The volume contains many splendid instances of their generosity and good faith, which are sometimes but indifferently requited by the Christians. It is true, the situation of the Spanish Moors was already become de graded. They were a luxurious people, broken with domestic factions; split into petty principalities; superior to their Christian foes in the arts of peace, therefore affording a tempting prospect of plunder; inferior to them in the art of war, therefore an easy prey. Accordingly, they were considered as the common enemy; the feræ naturæ, whom every iron-clad champion had a natural right to hunt down and plunder; while, in obeying so tempting an impulse, he believed himself also to be doing God service.

Yet the constant wars between the Spaniards and the Moors were, from their very continuance, subjected to some degree of rule and moderation. The war was not directed, as in the crusades, to mutual extermination. The Spanish Christians hated the Moors and spoiled them, but their aspect and dress had not for them that novelty which, in the eyes of other nations, removed the infidels almost out of the class of human beings, and added peculiar zest to the pleasure of killing them. The Cid, when he had fairly got possession of Valencia, administered justice indifferently to Moor and Christian; and leaving his "paynim" subjects in possession of their property, contented himself with levying a tythe as an acknowledgement of sovereignty. Of the Moorish manners we do not learn much from this curious volume; but the lamentation over the ruin of Valencia (p. 179) is an interesting specimen of Arabian poetry.

It is sufficiently obvious, that whether the history of the Cid be real or fictitious, it is exceedingly valuable as a singular picture of manners of which we know little or nothing. The history, however, of the chief of a band of adventurers, making war on his own account, and becoming the prince of a conquered territory, with all his intermediate acts, is not so interesting as to lead us to investigate its authenticity.

That the Cid was a real existing personage, distinguished by his exploits against the Moors, cannot be doubted. But although his history does not present a more romantic air than the real chronicles of the age, and has not above a very conscionable proportion of miracles and prodigies, there is reason to believe that it is in many particulars fictitious. The conquest of Valencia seems particularly suspicious. In short, the whole may be dismissed with the account given of the adventures in Montesino's cave, by the ape of Ginez de Passamente, que parte de las cosas son falsas y parte verisimiles.

The faults which we have to notice belong to the style. This is an imitation of that of scripture; it is, we think, sometimes too periphrastical, and sometimes it abounds in unnecessary repetitions. It retains also marks of its derivation from metrical romance in the detail and accumulation of particulars, which though sometimes striking, at other times degenerate into mere expletives. Thus we have a march described with, "Who ever saw in Castile so many a precious mule and so many a good going palfrey, and so many great horses, and so many goodly streamers set up, goodly spears and shields adorned with gold and with silver, and mantles and skins, and such sandals of Adria." This is all very well and very animated; but why should we again, only six lines below, have a repetition of "many a great mule, and many a palfrey, and many a good horse," &c. &c. &c. As Mr. Southey was compiling a history, and not making a literal translation of a single work, he would, we think, have been justifiable in compressing one of these descriptions. There are, besides, sundry odd phrases which we could have wished amended. Thus the pursuers making havoc among a flying army, are said to "punish them badly;" we have elsewhere "happy man was his dole," and other expressions more venerable from simplicity than elegance. We dare not proceed too far in these censures, because Mr. Southey has informed us, that reviewers, in censuring his introduction of new words, have only shown their own ignorance of the English language. Despite of this "retort churlish," however, we must say, that if a word be so old that it has become new again, it is unfit, at least generally speaking, for modern use. We have a title to expect pay. ment in the current coin of the day, and may except against VOL. I.-21

that which bears the effigies of King Cnut, as justly as if it had been struck by Mr. Southey himself. It also seems to us that the story would have been improved by abridging some of the Cid's campaigns, if the conscience of the editor had permitted him.

While we are on the subject of faults, we may just remark that Mr. Southey appears to have mistaken the sense of two or three Spanish terms; but his knowledge of the language is so deep and extensive, that we must, in justice to him, attribute the oversight to a momentary lapse of

attention.

But in noticing these defects, we offer our sincere gratitude to Mr. Southey for a most entertaining volume, edited with a degree of taste and learning, which few men in England could have displayed. The introduction and notes are full of the most ample and extraordinary details concerning the state of Spain in the middle ages, from works of equal curiosity and scarcity.

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.*

[Quarterly Review, 1830.]

IT has been the boast of our ancestors to improve the constitution of their country by the address with which they have infused a new spirit into old institutions, like the skilful architect who contrives to make the turrets of a feudal castle subservient to the accommodations of modern hospitality. Thus it is, that although Gibbon had, with good reason, stigmatized the nature of the task imposed on the poets laureate during the reign of George III and his predecessors, as the establishment of a stipendiary bard, who every year, and under all circumstances, was bound to furnish a certain measure of praise and verse such as might be sung in presence of the monarch, the taste of our late amiable sovereign preferred, to the total abolition of the office, substituting for its old routine of drudgery the occasional exercise of varied talent and unequalled erudition in illustrating the antiquities and peculiarities of our national literature. Nor could Mr. Southey have chosen a more interesting point for illustration, than the circumstances under which John Bunyan, in spite of a clownish and vulgar education, rose into a degree of popularity scarce equalled by any English writer.

This "Spenser of the people," as Mr. D'Israeli happily calls him, was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in the year 1628. His parents were the meanest, according to his own expression, of all families in the land. They were workers in brass, or, in common parlance, tinkers, whose profession bore to that of a brazier the same relation which the cobbler's does to the shoemaker's. It was not followed, however, by Bunyan's father as an itinerant calling, which leads

* The_Pilgrim's Progress, with a Life of John Bunyan. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. L. L. D.