LITMIR.BIZ

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Bedford. Jovellanos has been compared by his countrymen to Cicero. A writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review has instituted an ingenious parallel between him and Montesquieu. With either, or with Burke, he may be observed to have possessed the philosophy and feeling, which give eloquence its chief value and effect.

      As a prose writer, Jovellanos, for elegance of style and depth of thought, may be pronounced without a rival in Spanish literature. As a dramatist, he only gave the public a tragedy and comedy, both of which continue in much favour with the public. The latter, “The Honourable Delinquent” is particularly esteemed; but it is a melodrame rather than a comedy, according to our conceptions. It turns on the principal character having been forced into fighting a duel, and who, having killed his opponent, is sentenced to die; but after the usual suspenses receives a pardon from the king. There are several interesting scenes and much good writing in the piece; but no particular delineation of character, to bring it any more than the other into the higher class of dramatic art. It has, however, been observed, that it only needs to have been written in verse to make it a perfect performance, and this alone shows the hold it must have on the Spanish reader.

      As a poet, Jovellanos is chiefly to be commemorated for his Satires. Two of these, in which he lashes the vices and follies of society at Madrid—“girt with the silent crimes of capitals,”—are pronounced by the critic in the Madrid Review to be “highly finished” compositions. They were, in fact, the only poems he himself published, and those anonymously. With the strength of Juvenal, they have also his faults, and abound too much in local allusions to be suited for translation. In somewhat the same style were several epistles he addressed to different friends, of which the one written to his friend and biographer Bermudez has been chosen for this work, as most characteristic of the author. Like his other Satires, it is written in blank verse; which style, though not entirely unknown in Spain, he had the merit of first bringing into favour. He probably gained his predilection for it from his study of Milton, for whose works he had great admiration, and of whose Paradise Lost he translated the first book into Spanish verse.

      The Epistle to Bermudez is remarkable as written with much earnestness, in censure not only of the common vices and follies of mankind, but in also going beyond ordinary satirists into the sphere of the moralist, to censure the faults of the learned. What our great modern preacher Dr. Chalmers has termed the “practical atheism” of the learned, was indeed the subject of rebuke from many English writers, as Young and Cowper, but may be looked for in vain in the works of others. Jovellanos had no doubt read the former, at least in the translation of his friend Escoiquiz, and meditated on the sentiment—“An undevout astronomer is mad,” even if not in the original. It can scarcely be supposed that he was so well acquainted with English literature as to have read Cowper; but there are several passages in his Epistles of similar sentiments. The praise of wisdom especially, in the one to Bermudez—by which we may understand, was meant the wisdom urged by the kingly preacher of Jerusalem, or the rule of conduct founded on right principles, in opposition to mere learning—is also that of our Christian poet:—

      Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,

      Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells

      In heads replete with thoughts of other men;

      Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

      In his hours of leisure, Jovellanos employed himself in composing occasional verses at times, for the amusement of the society in which he lived, without thinking of their being ever sought for publication. These, however, have been lately gathered together with much industry and exactness in the last edition of his collected works, published by Mellado at Madrid in five volumes, 1845. As the last and fullest, it is also the best collection of them, four other editions of them previously published having been comparatively very deficient with regard to them. Besides those, there were various reprints of several others of his works, which were all received with much favour, both in Spain and abroad.

      Jovellanos was never married, and in private life seems to have considered himself under the obligations of the profession for which he was originally intended. His character altogether is one to which it would be difficult to find a parallel, and is an honour to Spain as well as to Spanish literature. His virtues are now unreservedly admitted by all parties of his countrymen, who scarcely ever name him except with the epithet of the illustrious Jovellanos, to which designation he is indeed justly entitled, no less for his writings, than for his many public and private virtues and services to his country. These may be forgotten in the claims of other generations and succeeding statesmen; but his writings must ever remain to carry his memory wherever genius and worth can be duly appreciated.

      The charge of writing a memoir of Jovellanos was entrusted by the Historical Society of Madrid to Cean Bermudez, who fulfilled it with affectionate zeal, Madrid, 1814; several other notices of his life have appeared in Spain, including that by Quintana, which has been copied by Wolf. The English reader will find an excellent one in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 10, February, 1830; and the Spanish scholar a further very eloquent encomium on his talents and merits in Quintana’s second Introduction to his collection of Spanish Poetry.

JOVELLANOS.

       Table of Contents

      EPISTLE TO CEAN BERMUDEZ, ON THE VAIN DESIRES AND STUDIES OF MEN.

      Arise, Bermudo, bid thy soul beware:

      Thee raging Fortune watches to ensnare;

      And, lulling others’ hopes in dreams supine,

      A fell assault she meditates on thine.

      The cruel blow which suffer’d from her rage

      Thy poor estate will not her wrath assuage,

      Till from thy breast her fury may depose

      The blissful calm to innocence it owes.

      Such is her nature, that she loathes the sight

      Of happiness for man in her despite.

      Thus to thine eyes insidious she presents

      The phantasies of good, with which she paints

      The road to favour, and would fain employ

      Her arts thy holds of virtue to destroy.

      Ah! heed her not. See her to rob thee stand

      Ev’n of the happiness now in thy hand.

      ’Tis not of her; she cannot it bestow:

      She makes men fortunate;—but happy? No.

      Thou think’st it strange! Dost thou the names confound

      Of Fortune with felicity as bound?

      Like the poor idiots, who so foolish gaze

      On the vain gifts and joys which she displays,

      So cunning to exchange for real good.

      O cheat of human wisdom! say withstood,

      What does she promise, but what beings born

      To our high destiny should hold in scorn?

      In reason’s balance her best offers weigh,

      And see what worthless lightness they betray.

      There are who, burning in the track of fame,

      Wear themselves ruthless for a sounding name.

      Buy it with blood, and fire, and ruin wide;

      And if with horrid arm is death descried,

      Waving his pennon as from some high tower,

      Their hearts swell proud, and trampling

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