Calderón goes even further, attributing it to the Greeks; and Inzenga descries in its cheerful rhythm an affinity with Neapolitan measures.

Not all of these regional dances are equally pleasing to the eye; but handed down from generation to generation, they afford in every instance a precious index to the history and spirit of their possessors, and even those which are least engaging to the on-looker are fully able to atone in interest and originality for what they lack in beauties of a more extrinsic character.

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CHAPTER V.

POPULAR LITERATURE.

HE popular literature of the Spaniards forms so integral a part of their manners and customs, of their personal temperament, I might almost say of the very atmosphere they breathe, that the present chapter is wholly indispensable, although I cannot but approach it with the utmost diffidence. For unfortunately I must endeavour to portray what is to a great extent invisible. The beauties of Spanish popular literature-by which I mean a body of work deriving its very origin from the masses, and not the productions of cultured authors who have chanced to win the general ear-depend for their appreciation, not so much upon intelligence or literal translation as upon sympathy; and sympathy, in the present instance, involves an intimate knowledge of Spanish and the Spanish people; qualities which possibly I myself possess, but which I can hardly impart at a moment's notice to my readers. Yet if, indeed, this popular literature were capable of a comparatively flawless rendering into a foreign tongue, the case would even then be somewhat different; but the melodious verses which vibrate within the hearts and upon the lips of the Spanish peasantry are positively untranslatable. They are too subtle, too

spontaneous, or too beautiful. The Homeric directness of diction (I shall presently show how eighteen words of verse are capable of narrating a complete tragedy of lower-class life) which constitutes one of their most transcendent merits, on being conveyed to other tongues evaporates altogether, by the fault, not necessarily of the translator, but certainly of the medium of translation.

Is it not the same, though in a lesser degree, with our own North-Country ballads? For instance, Helen of Kirkconnell

"I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnell lee!

"Curst be the heart that thought the thought,

And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!

"O think ye na my heart was sair,

When my love dropt down and spake nae mair!
There did she swoon wi' meikle care,

On fair Kirkconnell lee."

or again, in The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow

"She's ta'en him in her armis twa,

And gien him kisses thorough;

And wi' her tears she washed his wounds
On the dowie banks o' Yarrow."

"Now haud your tongue, my daughter dear,
For a' this breeds but sorrow;

I'll wed ye to a better lord

Than him ye lost on Yarrow."

"She kissed his lips and kaimed his hair,
As oft she'd done before, O;

Syne wi' a sigh her heart did break,
On the dowie braes o' Yarrow."

Here we have so natural a pathos that the least and tenderest touch must spoil it. The elaborate versification of scholar-poets affords nothing more moving than these stanzas; and yet in what does that impulse consist? Certainly not in their technique, which is commonly doggerel. It is the resolute, inflexible sacrifice of form to sentiment; of metrical ornament to expressional utility. This is their only merit, yet it suffices to render them imperishable. Such lines as those I have quoted defy translation. Not even the genius of a Father Prout could conserve in Latin, Greek, or French, the qualities of the original. The sentiment is too naked in its loneliness; the structure is too artless. For by a singular paradox we can imitate or transfer the exceedingly complex, but we cannot the exceedingly simple: and simplicity or sincerity (for the words are identical) is ever the crowning part and grandest essential of all true poetry.

For this reason it is impossible to overrate the popular literature of any humanized people; and since the Spaniard hardly ever speaks without a refrán falling from his lips; since his cantares survive in countless quantities from century to century, not in a single province, but everywhere throughout the land, it would be arrant cowardice if I shirked describing them. The essay is inadequate, but at least I am fulfilling my duty in attempting it: and perhaps it may at least discover the slender charm of novelty;