The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria / A Drama of Early Christian Rome

This motto is taken from the engraved coat of arms prefixed to an historical account of the very noble and ancient house of Calderon de la Barca —a rather scarce work which I have never seen alluded to in any account of the poet. The circumstances from which the motto was assigned to the family are given with some minuteness at pp. 56 and 57 of the work referred to. It is enough to mention that the martyr who first used the expression was Don Sancho Ortiz Calderon de la Barca, a Commander of the Order of Santiago. He was in the service of the renowned king, Don Alfonso the Wise, towards the close of the thirteenth century, and having been taken prisoner by the Moors before Gibraltar, he was offered his life on the usual conditions of apostasy. But he refused all overtures, saying: Pues mi Dios por mi muriò, yo quiero morir por èl , a phrase which has a singular resemblance to the key note of this drama. Don Ortiz Calderon was eventually put to death with great cruelty, after some alternations of good and bad treatment. See Descripcion, Armas, Origen, y Descendencia de la muy noble y antigua Casa de Calderon de la Barca, etc., que Escrivió El Rmo. P. M. Fr. Phelipe de la Gandara, etc., Obra Postuma, que saca a luz Juan de Zuñiga. Madrid, 1753.


In his otherwise excellent analysis of The Dream of Gerontius, Sir F. H. Doyle is mistaken as to any direct impression having been made upon the mind of Dr. Newman in reference to it by the Autos of Calderon. So late as March 3, 1867, in thanking me for the volume made use of by Sir F. H. Doyle, Dr. Newman implies that up to that period he had not devoted any particular attention even to this most important and unique development of Spanish religious poetry. The only complete Auto of Calderon that had previously appeared in English—my own translation of The Sorceries of Sin, had, indeed, been in his hands from 1859, and I wish I could flatter myself that it had in any way led to the production of a master-piece like The Dream of Gerontius. But I cannot indulge that delusion. Dr. Newman had internally and externally too many sources of inspiration to necessitate an adoption even of such high models as the Spanish Autos. Besides, The Dream of Gerontius is no more an Auto than Paradise Lost, or the Divina Commédia. In these, only real personages, spiritual and material, are represented, or monsters that typified human passions, but did not personify them. In the Autos it is precisely the reverse. Rarely do actual beings take part in the drama, and then only as personifications of the predominant vices or passions of the individuals whose names they bear. Thus in my own volume, Belshazzar is not treated so much as an historical character, but rather as the personification of the pride and haughtiness of a voluptuous king. In The Divine Philothea, in the same volume, there are no actual beings whatever, except The Prince of Light and The Prince of Darkness or The Demon. In truth, there is nothing analogous to a Spanish Auto in English original poetry. The nearest approach to it, and the only one, is The Prometheus Unbound of Shelley. There, indeed, The Earth, Ocean, The Spirits of the Hours, The Phantasm of Jupiter, Demogorgon, and Prometheus himself, read like the Personas of a Spanish Auto, and the poetry is worthy the resemblance. The Autos Sacramentales differ also, not only in degree but in kind from every form of Mystery or Morality produced either in England or on the Continent. But to return to the lecture by Sir F. H. Doyle. Even in smaller matters he is not accurate. Thus he has transcribed incorrectly from my Introduction the name of the distinguished commentator on the Autos of Calderon and their translator into German—Dr. Lorinser. This Sir F. H. Doyle has printed throughout his lecture 'Lorinzer'. From private letters which I have had the honour of receiving from this learned writer, there can be no doubt that the form as originally given by me is the right one. With these corrections the lecture of Sir F. H. Doyle may be quoted as a valuable testimony to the extraordinary poetic beauty of these Autos even in a translation.