So thunder on the darkened hill roars, and is no more.
The sun returns with his silent beams,
The glittering rocks, and green heads of the mountains smile.
This example serves to prove that eumolpique lines might easily adapt themselves to the dithyramb.
[227] The tragedy of the Cid, given by Pierre Corneille in 1626, upon which were based the grandeur and dominant character of the Théâtre Français, as well as the renown of the author, is taken from a Spanish ballad very celebrated in Spain. The Cid, who is the hero of it, lived towards the close of the eleventh century. He was a type of the paladins and knights errant of the romanesque traditions. He enjoyed a wide reputation and attained a high degree of fortune. Voyez Monte-Mayor, Diana, l. ii.; et Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs, t. iii., stéréotype, p. 86.
In the course of the sixteenth century, the Spanish held a marked superiority over the other peoples: their tongue was spoken at Paris, Vienna, Milan, Turin. Their customs, their manners of thought and of writing, subjugated the minds of the Italians, and from Charles V. to the commencement of the reign of Philip III., Spain enjoyed an importance that the other peoples never had. Voyez Robertson, Introduction à l’Histoire de Charles-Quint.
It would be necessary to overstep considerably the ordinary limits of a footnote, if I should explain how it happens that Spain has lost this supremacy acquired by her, and why her tongue, the only one capable of rivalling and perhaps effacing the French, has yielded to it in all ways, and by which it was eclipsed. This explanation would demand for itself alone a very lengthy work. Among the writers who have sought for the cause of the decadence of the Spanish monarchy, some have believed to discover it in the increase of its wealth, others, in the too great extent of its colonies, and the greater part, in the spirit of its government and its superstitious cult. They have all thought that the tribunal of the Inquisition alone was capable of arresting the impulse of genius and of stifling the development of learning. In this they have taken effects for causes, and consequences for principles. They have not seen that the spirit of the government and the cult is always not the motive, but the result of the national spirit, and that the wealth and the colonies, indifferent in themselves, are only instruments that this spirit employs for good or evil, according to its character. I can only indicate the first cause which has prevented Spain from reaching the culminating point which France is very near to attaining. This cause is pride. Whilst Europe, enveloped in darkness, was, so to speak, in the fermentation of ignorance, Spain, conquered by the Arabs, received a germ of science which, developing with rapidity, produced a precocious fruit, brilliant, but like hot-house fruit lacking internal force and generative vigour. This premature production having raised Spain abruptly above the other European nations, inspired in her that pride, that excessive amour propre, which, making her treat with contempt all that did not belong to her, hindered her from making any change in her usual customs, carried her with complacency in her mistakes, and when other peoples came to bring forth fruits in their season, corrupted hers and stamped her with a stationary movement, which becoming necessarily retrogressive, must ruin her, and did ruin her.
[228] In comparing the first lines of Homer with those of Klopstock, it is seen that the Greek contains 29 letters, 18 of which are vowels; and the German 48 letters, 31 of which are consonants. It is difficult with such disparity in the elements to make the harmony the same.
[229] GOLDEN VERSES OF THE PYTHAGOREANS (1)
PREPARATION