afterwards heard the clamours and execrations of his soldiers, who were looking at the execution. When he was told the cause of their exlamation, he merely observed, I thought the enemy had entered the town: The moors speedily raised the siege, in despair of overcoming such iron firmness. The comparative dissertation on the language and literature of Spain, which forms the preliminary matter, affords proof that the author is not only acquainted with the modern languages which are the richest in literature, but that he has also investigated those subtle and obscure peculiarities, which regulate the differences of their metrical harmony. After having analyzed the subject with a good deal of acuteness, he gives the preference, on this point, to Spanish; and there is, certainly, no language more sonorous and musical. But we are strongly inclined to doubt another of his conclusions, that it is the most abundant in poetry. It has produced only one great poem, the Araucania, which though instinct in many parts with high genius, is also full of imperfections, and can never bear the least comparison with the Divina Comedia, or Paradise lost. The Spaniards possess, indeed, a most rich and varied drama, though here again they can shew nothing comparable to Hamlet or Comus, or Faust, or Athalie, or the Tartufe. They have a considerable number of fine lyric poets-a class rather confined both in number and merit, in all other European countries, except Italy. England, in spite of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Campbell, is rather deficient in the greater ode. France is in a similar predicament, though some of J. B. Rousseau's and Delavigne's are elegant and impassioned, and De Lamartine has published two delightful volumes of grave and lofty and tender meditation. Spain has a long list of fine lyric writers, from the day-spring of her poetry down to the times of Melendez and Quintana; but on the whole, though we confess that the comedies of Caldron are very brilliant and fascinating, we must add, that the poetry of Spain seems to us to be of a much lower grade of excellence than that of Italy and England. The Spanish language is copious, energetic, and melodious; but M. Maury carries its praises rather too far, when he prefers it to all the others of Europe. In spite of its precision, its brilliancy, its naiveté, and its general fitness for conversation and business, we are inclined to give up French, which is monotonous and poor in sound, and miserably restricted in its poetical vocabulary. There is a good deal of roughness and awkwardness in the guttural German. English is certainly objectionable from its jarring consonants; and the disuse of the plurals in en, and of the third person singular in th, has overwhelmed the language with a deluge of hissing ss. There are, perhaps, too many vowels in Italian, and the c recurs too frequently in conjunction with the e and i. Yet the vague declamatory diffuseness of Spanish, leaves it no advantage over a language like the first of these; which, from its unlimited power of combination, gives room for any required degree of precision; or over English, which probably from the national habits of business, has been disciplined into the most concise strength, and from the general intelligence of society and the happy want of an academy, has obtained to the greatest copiousness of expression in all departments of thought. Neither can it be said that the Spanish is superior to the Italian, which whatever may be the lax and licentious habits of composition indulged in by its titled sonnateers and idle improvisatori, has been shewn by Dante and by Machiavelli, to be susceptible of the most stern and lofty energy. The Spanish, however, is a language which, beautiful and powerful even now, will probably be extremely improved by the entire regeneration (not distant, we trust) of the people. Habits of industry, and serious objects of attention, must inevitably curtail its luxuriant proportions; and in the multiplication of national affairs, the Arguelles and Galianos yet unborn, will learn to save the time of the Cortes, and to express in three words what has heretofore been arranged in three magnificent sentences. Not only does M. Maury set forth those excellences of his language, which we have most readily allowed, but he seems inclined to infer from them, that the thoughts which it has been used to express, are also of extreme importance, and to prove the value of the literature from the merits of the vocabulary, besides this defect in his logic, his partiality to his own dialect makes him now and then a little unjust to other languages. It is not true, for instance, that Italian has been spoilt through the wish to adapt it more perfectly to music; or that effort is necessary to give it strength, which is only obtained by the employment of the r. It is not strength, but imitative harmony which the Italian poets aim at by the use of this letter, as in the lines of Tasso: Chiama gli abitator de l'ombre eterne Il rauco suon de la tartarea tromba. He doubtless wished to give force to the verse, but then his main object evidently was to express, as vividly as possible, the sound of the infernal trump. Pope has done the same thing: But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. And Racine, in describing the serpents seen by Orestes, Pour qui sont ces serpents qui sifflent sur vos têtes? has obviously endeavoured to use words of a hissing sound. The fact is, that in all languages, and especially in English, the only objects which it is really possible to mimic in verse, have naturally been expressed by imitative words, and it is by no means difficult to turn them to account in writing, though at one time it was far too prevalent a fashion. M. Maury is quite persuaded, that no poetry except the Spanish, contains specimens of the kind of rhyme called assonante. We believe that it was frequent in the early songs of most of the Teutonic nations. It was obviously the result of negligence, of extempore composition; and so far from being an excellence in the versification of any language, it can now only be the mere resourse of indolence and the want of skill. For the objections made by Milton, and many others, to the employment of rhyme at all, apply to the ruder, fully as much as to the more perfect kinds; which last have all the advantage of completeness and finish, over the botched productions of half-taught artizans. In proof of our assertion that these assonante rhymes have been used beyond the Peninsula, we may observe, that all the older English ballads are full of them. In Gil Morrice, for instance, we find, "Oh! where will I get a bonny boy That will win both horse and shoon, In the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, it is written, Our good ship sails the morn; O no, O no, my master dear, For I fear a deadly storm." Solari translated a great number of Horace's Odes into this vowel rhyme; and the French troubadours employed it very frequently. There is an instance in an old song attributed to Henry IV. "Si le roi en avait donné Paris sa grand ville, Et qu'il en eut fallut quitter The nearest approach to this which now remains in French verse, is the rhyme suffisanté, the same as the assonante of the Italians, as distinguished from the 'rime riche.' In the latter case the rhyming syllables consist of three or four letters exactly the same, as, for instance, in these lines of Voltaire : "Leandre conduit par l'amour, The following stanzas by the same author contain only the 'rime suffisante!' "Au nom du Pinde et de Cythère, Gentil Bernard est averti ; Que l'art d'aimer doit samedi, Vener diner chez l'art de plaire." These comments refer only to the preliminary portion of M. Maury's work, which, allowing for a certain quantity of mistake and prejudice, deserves the approbation of all men who wish for freedom of trade in literature, as well as in wines, cottons, and hardware. We confess ourselves considerably surprised at finding any one but a native of France, who manages with such ease and correctness the language of that country. ART. IV. Nebenstunden von Ernst. Moritz Arndt. 1 vol. 12mo. Leipzig. Black and Young. London. 1826. THIS is an agreeable work, though on a subject somewhat trite to us the Shetland and Orkney islands. Mr. Arndt, however, though he is indebted for his materials in a great measure to English writers, has introduced such a variety of original observations, as to make his book interesting even to persons well acquainted with Hibbert and Barry, his two principal authorities. Mr. Arndt is already well known to the literary world by his travels in Sweden, his Popular Tales, and other works. He is a native of the island of Rugen, and at present a professor in the university of Bonn, which also reckons Niebuhr and A. W. Schlegel among its members; and having been all his life an admirer of the old times of the north, and a student of its history, he has formed the idea of beguiling old age, of which he begins to feel the approaches, by works like the present, which he designates Nebenstunden, or Leisure-Hours, and which will principally treat of the manners, history, and languages of the northern nations. We believe we might assert with safety, that more persons would be found in the metropolis who are acquainted with the manners and history of the Society and Sandwich islands than of Shetland and Orkney. Yet these are by no means destitute of interest; they contain a population lineally descended from the celebrated Vikinger, those northmen, once the terror of Europe, a race with which hardly any other is to be compared for feats of daring courage and unwearied resolution. Old northern manners and superstitions still linger in those isles; and the antiquary can there meet with monuments and fragments of a language that is now no more. The early history of those islands is covered in impenetrable darkness. Who were their first inhabitants? whether Caledonians, Scots, Picts, or German or northern Vikinger? These are questions not to be answered with certainty; but there is every reason to conclude that they must have been peopled by the nation inhabiting Caledonia, which lay within sight of them. That the Caledonians could not have been mere tribes of savages, thinly sprinkled over the country, Mr. Arndt argues with great justice, from the very large armies, of from 50,000 to 80,000 men, brought against them by Agricola and Severus, who defeated but could not conquer them; and that the Orkneys were at that time inhabited, he thinks very evident, from the language of Tacitus, who says of Agricola, "Orcades invenit domuitque." In the four centuries that followed the departure of the Romans from Britain, we only occasionally meet the name, nothing more, of the Orcades in the lives of the British and Irish saints; but about the middle of the ninth century, a new impulse was given in the north, and daring bands of Vikinger poured over the seas in search of conquest and plunder in the middle regions of the south. The occasion of this new migration, resembling in extent that which in the fifth century rushed down on the south western parts of the Roman Empire, was the contemporary establishment of monarchies in Norway and Denmark, by Gorm, and by Harold the Fairhaired. The proud and high spirited men who had formerly been the equals of these princes, who derived their descent from their gods, and were either princes themselves, or the sons and grandsons of princes, could ill brook submission. They gathered together bands of adventurous followers; their fleets covered the seas, they descended on the wealthy coasts of Belgium, France, and England; and the rich booty which they gained, and the glory and the fame which they acquired, attracted every year fresh numbers of their countrymen to their standard. It was not alone the thirst of plunder that now actuated the northmen, they, in their love of independence, sought for increase of territory even in inhospitable climes; they discovered and colonized Greenland and Iceland, and conquered and settled in the Shetlands, Orkneys, and Hebrides, exterminating the old inhabitants; of whom all we know is, that they were called the Peti and Papæ, and from thence, harassed by their incursions the dominions of Gorm and Harold, which led to the invasion of the islands by the latter monarch, and their conquest and formation into a countship. The memory of these events is chiefly preserved in the Icelandic Sagas, those histories and biographies which transmit to us in full freshness, the actions, and the mode of thinking of, perhaps, the noblest race the world has ever seen, mingled indeed with fable, like the earlier tales of Greece, when departing from their immediate home, and describing adventures in the eastern land of Gardarika (Russia), or the southern regions of France, Spain, or even the land of the Blue-men (Africa); but sincere and true, whenever the truth was attainable by the writer. Even their most wonderful and fabulous narrations are based on facts, and everywhere they present a faithful picture of the high thoughts, and the daring spirit of enterprise which, at that period, characterised the hardy sons of the north. Mr. Arndt gives from the Thimkringle, or Home Circuit, (a Saga containing the history of the countries possessed by the Northmen), an account of the invasion and settlement of the islands by Harold; and as it is a specimen of the simple, unadorned style that generally prevails in those mixed prose and poetical compositions, we shall translate from it a few extracts. After having related the |