The verse, by which leisure is assisted, and work is cheered,-which soothes the cares of the high-born damsel, and makes the spinning-wheel of the cottage maid whirl with redoubled velocity, although usually comprehended under the name of popular poetry,-should be considered as distinct from the narrative ballad. It seems that, in Germany, no specimens of this species of poetry have survived, anterior to the fragments which John Gansbein, the town-clerk of Limburg, has saved from the general wreck, by inserting them in his chronicle. Amongst other particulars, he has carefully noted, that in the year 1360 a general change took place in the fashion of popular song, when the musicians also learned to "pipe" in a better style than had been hitherto used. The historian inserts a portion of "the Complaint of the Wanton Nun," "as it was sung and piped by the people;" and also preserves the memory of a bare-footed monk, a poor lazar, who, according to the severe but necessary laws of those times, was banished from society," but who was the best song-writer in the Rheinland." The war songs of the Swiss are written in a fine strain of genuine ballad poetry. Halb Suter's song on the battle of Sempach (1386), in which Duke Leopold of Austria was defeated and slain, may be given as an instance. The ballad begins in admirable keeping with the omen which warns the husbandman of the approach of the unbidden guests; the description of the Castle of Willison in flames; and the boasts of the invaders : "Die Biene kam geflogen, macht in der Lind ihi nest, Die Schweitzer wollen in Södten, das jung und alte Blut." The wars of Burgundy established the military fame of the Swiss. Their successes raised their patriotism to the highest pitch of enthusiasm ; and the same warriors who had fought in the ranks, afterwards caused their cottages to resound with the strains of honest exultation. The ballads of Veit Weber, who was born out of the pale of the Helvetic confederacy, but who supported the cause with the loyalty of a native, are written with all the flush of victory. He hurries over the field of battle, and points out the flying Burgundians "driven into the lake, and dyeing it with their blood, or climbing into the high trees, from which they are shot down by the Swiss cross-bow men." The fluctuating fortunes of the Protestants under Charles the Fifth afforded matter for innumerable ditties. The doleful" Lament of the Electress Dame Sybilla of Saxony," and the "Complaint of the Landgrave of Hesse," may be contrasted with others of a less desponding nature; such as were sung by the well-armed lansquenet, playing cards on the drumhead all the while; or, as animated the sturdy citizens of Frankfort and Magdeburg, when they had cleared the churches of papal trumpery, and bade defiance to the Emperor and his Spaniards. A history of German music is yet wanting. In the few tunes of the "Master-singers" which are published, we cannot distinguish any national or characteristic melody. Some very ancient tunes of Danish ballads have been recovered and collected by Nyerup and Rahbeck. They possess a full and plaintive harmony, although we do not find in them any vestiges of the "symphonious singing" which Giraldus imagined the Northumbrians had borrowed from the Danes and Norwegians. Vocal music became a favourite accomplishment in Germany in the sixteenth century, during which several collections of song were published. Italian composers came to the assistance of the native amateurs, amongst whom are mentioned the names of Orlando di Lasso, Raynardi, and Mancini. Song writing, unfettered by the rules of the Masters," thus found encouragement. It was necessary, of course, to suit every taste; and the good wine of the Rheinland, which, by the way, appears to have been the most poetical tract in Germany, came in for its full share of praise. The old German songs, in general, have a pleasing simplicity, and often show a degree of delicacy of sentiment—we do not mean sentimentality-of which there are not the slightest traces in the more bulky productions of the later part of the sixteenth century. But the few good writers who appeared, perverted their vigorous talents, and employed themselves in coarse and clumsy satires and travesties. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, some attempts were made for the refinement of the German language, and the preservation of its purity. Academies, the old nostrum, were founded: these produced little benefit; but Martin Opitz (1620) in the north of Germany, and his little knot of poetical disciples-and Weckherlin (1618) in the south, rose far above mediocrity. After the peace of Westphalia, solid learning and the sciences flourished in no ordinary degree; but the art of composition in the vernacular tongue seemed wholly lost. The Germans held an honourable station in the republic of letters; but, until the modern school of poetry and literature was created by Halus and Hagedorn and Gellert,-their stern jurists covered with learned dust,-their philologists and theologians, each wrapped in an ambient atmosphere of tobacco smoke,-their chemists, worn down and parched with the heat of the laboratory, and all speaking a barbarous form of a dead language-formed an uncouth group by the side of the polished and courtly wits of France, and the graceful dignity of their English rivals. THE POETRY OF RUSSIA, BATAVIA, SPAIN, POLAND, SERVIA, AND OF THE MAGYARS.* The translator is to poetry what the adventurous merchant is to commerce. He circulates the produce of thought, varies our intellectual banquet, teaches us that some accession to our stores may be derived even from those quarters which we had regarded as the most sterile and unpromising, and thus adds another link to the chain of social and kindly feelings which should bind man to his fellows. In this commerce of mind few have laboured more assiduously than Dr. Bowring. At one time" he hath an argosy bound for Tripoli, another for the Indies, a third for Mexico, a fourth for England"-ventures, in short, "enough to bear a royal merchant down" and yet, with the exception of one cargo under Dutch colours, where he appears to have had a partner, he seems to trust entirely to his own 1. Specimens of the Russian Poets. Translated by John Bowring. LL.D. 2. Batavian Anthology, or Specimens of the Dutch Poets. By John Bowring, LL.D. 3. Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain. Selected and translated by John Bowring, LL.D. and H. S. Van Dyk. 4. Specimens of the Polish Poets. By Johu Bowring, LL.D. 5. Servian Popular Poetry. Translated by John Bowring, LL.D. 6 Poetry of the Magyars. By John Bowring, LL.D.— Vol. lii. p. 322. January, 1831. laste and research in the selection of his commodities. His varied and almost Mithridatic acquaintance with the languages of modern Europe, extending even to their less classical or almost forgotten dialects, and that liberal spirit in literature, which so extensive a field of enquiry is sure to produce, seemed peculiarly to mark him out as one fitted to transfer to his country those strains which had conferred celebrity on their authors in their own, or which, though their origin and authorship are lost in the darkness of antiquity, had long cheered the peasant in his sledge amidst the frozen snow, or been associated with the jollity of the harvest and the vintage, or the more tranquil mirth of the cottage fire. It is true, it may be said, that no very accurate idea of the poetry of a foreign nation, separated from ourselves by seas and continents, and still farther separated in mind by diversity of habits and feelings, can be gained by the labours of any one translator; and the observation is well-founded to a certain extent. The edifice he seeks to illuminate is, no doubt, too vast to be fully enlightened by a solitary torch; but at least it is probable that, in moving with him along its vast halls and long arches, the light he carries will strike occasionally on objects of splendour or value; that our eyes will catch dim glimpses of treasures in its inner recesses-sudden openings into far-off gardens, the trees of which, like those which dazzled Aladdin in the cave, seem bright with the tints of the diamond, the ruby, and the emerald; and that the result of this hasty glance may be a desire to return, and to investigate for ourselves, and with more leisure and minuteness, the scenes of which we have caught these dim but pleasing outlines. He who transfers a single strain of true and natural poetry, however simple, however brief, from another language to ours, performs no mean service to literature, and, it may be, to the interests of civilisation in general. He has thrown, as it were, the first plank over the gulf which separated two nations,-has taught them that they have feelings, "eyes, organs, dimensions, affections, passions," in common,-has awakened a spirit of literary enterprise, and pointed out, if he cannot guide us through, the promised land. Other adventurers will soon throng after him ; a broader bridge will be thrown over the channel that divided them; an exchange of feelings and associations may take place; the old may impart to the new some portion of the polish which long civilisation has produced; while it receives in return a new infusion of the freshness, rapidity, and wild vigour which characterise an infant literature; thus bartering its Persian ornaments of gold and silver to receive repayment in a Spartan coinage of iron. The interest of Dr. Bowring's earliest work-his Specimens of the Russian Poets—was in a great measure that arising from surprise; from discovering that, in the country which, until the days of Peter the Great, had never made its voice heard among the dynasties of Europe, there had grown up, almost with the suddenness of an exhalation, a poetical literature betraying no marks of its barbaric origin; possessing, in fact, the very qualities which are most commonly found associated with a longestablished literature, light, graceful, equable, rather than startling, either by its beauties or its faults; moral, didactic, tender, or satirical, rather than narrative, martial, or mystical in short, so little hyperborean in its general aspect, that but for some occasional traits of nationality, which give it a certain distinctive and original character, we had great difficulty in believing that any thing so trim and so polished could have been imported from the rough shores of the Don and the Wolga. Perhaps, however, there was but little room for surprise when the peculiar circumstances of Russia were adverted to. Called into existence as a European power, by the genius of one man, she had to borrow every thing from civilised Europe-arts, arms, philosophy, learning-and it was but natural she should borrow her poetry with the rest. Being, as it were, at the time almost in a state of poetical nudity, it was far more easy for her to step into the ready-made, though somewhat faded, habiliments which France, England, and Germany politely pressed upon her acceptance, than to construct a national costume for herself out of the coarse and scanty materials which had constituted her wardrobe in former and ruder centuries; and so, slipping his person unceremoniously into English pantaloons, and a French robe de chambre, the Russian poet went sideling up the walks of Parnassus with a meershaum in his mouth, Young's Night Thoughts in his hand, and Voltaire in his pocket, all unconscious that the Monmouth-street air of his habiliments was visible to every myrmidon that guarded that quarter of Apollo's domain. Let us not, however, be unjust to the high merit of some of the specimens of Russian poetry, to which we were introduced by Dr. Bowring. We cannot certainly sympathise with him to the full extent of his admiration; for it is an infallible effect of translation, that the translator acquires an undue attachment to the authors on whom he has exercised his powers; and as in general we are apt to estimate the merit of our own works according to the labour which we have bestowed upon them, it may frequently happen that pieces of inferior merit may be rated higher than the works of greater poets in the scale of the translator; simply because it has required a greater exertion of his own skill and ingenuity to bring them into shape, and to present them in an attractive dress to an English reader. We cannot, therefore, but regret, that Russia in borrowing from other countries, did not labour to impart to the materials she imported a stronger air of nationality-to efface more completely the former die from the coin, and to stamp on it her own image and superscription; and that more use was not made on the whole of her national traditions and historical annals; but we admit, at the same time, that many causes have existed, and do exist, in Russia, calculated to narrow the field on which originality can be displayed, and to contract the sphere of feeling and thought; and we willingly do justice to the merits of such men as Derzhaven, Lomonosov, and Zhuskovsky. The ballad of "Catherine," in particular, by the latter, wild and spectral like Bürger's "Lenore," but national in all its pictures and allusions, scarcely loses by a comparison with its Teutonic prototype: and some of the national songs which close the second volume, brief, artless, tender, and picturesque, seem deserving of the high eulogiums bestowed upon them by the translator. 66 They are no subjects for criticism," observes Dr. Bowring; "for criticism cannot reach them-it cannot abstract one voice from the chorus, nor persuade the village youths and maidens that the measure is false, or the music is discordant." The rude melody, often gentle and plaintive, in which they find utterance, still vibrate in my ear. I ask for them no admiration-they are the delight of millions." A different object from that which he had in view in his Russian, selections was to be effected by the Batavian Anthology of Dr. Bowring-not to introduce to our notice a nation, in the infancy of literature and civilisation, making her first timid essay in the paths of poetry; but one long celebrated in learning, science, philosophy, and arms, where hard-won Liberty had early made her cradle and home, and still dwelt, though in a more splendid mansion, and amidst the modern luxuries and refinements spread around her by an abundant commerce. It was to dispel the prejudices supposed to exist among ourselves as to the poetry of Holland, and to satisfy the critic by experiment that the country of William I., of Grotius, Erasmus, and Rembrandt, could not be without its poets, as well as its painters, philosophers, and statesmen. This attempt, however, we cannot help thinking, was less successful than its predecessor; not through any fault on the part of Dr. Bowring (for its execution was, on the whole, more skilful), but that, in truth, the opinion which had been formed of the poets of Holland, though exaggerated, was in the main correct;-that although occasional magnificence and constant purity of taste characterise the choruses of Vendel; though Cats be nervous, simple, and sententious; though Decker, Brederode, and Westerbain are often touching and natural-a great number of the specimens exhibited by him rather sunk beneath than rose above mediocrity; and that, consequently, the general aspect of the Dutch Parnassus, even as placed by him in its best point of view, too much resembled that of their own gardens-all very smooth and pleasing, and irreproachable in point of neatness, with here and there, too, some stately and umbrageous trees, but seldom varying from a dead level, and with a temperature, on the whole, rising but little above freezing. Dr. Bowring will perhaps think we do injustice to his favourites, and we are willing to hope that his supplementary volume may exhibit the beauties of Batavia in a more favourable light. Meantime, we willingly acknowledge the skill with which many of his own translations are executed.+ From the amphibious world of Holland "The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale, The willow-tufted bank, and gliding sail" Dr. Bowring turned suddenly to a more striking region of song-to the deep valleys and sunburnt sierras, the vineyards, the Moorish palaces and Gothic ruins of Spain; to the romantic chronicles of her ancient kings, so rich in eventful changes and picturesque details; to the magic names of the Cid, of Bernardo del Carpio, and of that train of heroes who hold an equivocal position on the debatable land between truth and fiction; to Granada, with its Alhambra, Albaycin, and Generalife, its Zegris and Abencerrages, its chivalry, its learning, and its splendour; to those heroic ballads, where the light and graceful Arabesque wreathes itself, like a vine, round the massive solidity of the Gothic fabric which it decorates; and to that vast collection of national songs, nameless themselves, and touching the imagination and the heart with a nameless but powerful spell. His object now was neither to awaken our interest for an infant literature, nor to disabuse us of prejudices against an old one; but rather to justify to ourselves the prepossessions of which we were conscious towards the literature of the Peninsula. He wished to afford evidence that there was a reality in the dreams which we connected with these shores of old romance, and to make us acquainted with that peculiar anonymous ballad literature, the glory of Spain, which, more than even her laboured productions, evinces the diffusion of See p. 326 of the Review for some pretty stanzas from one of Brederode's songs, which the critic considers to resemble the manner of Herrick. |