Constable’s Magazine.—“The Abencerrage is a romance, the scene of which is appropriately laid in a most romantic period, and in the country of all others in which the spirit of romance was most powerful, and lingered longest—in the kingdom of Granada, where the power of the Moors was first established, and had the greatest continuance.... The leading events of the narrative are strictly historical, and with these the fate and sufferings of the unfortunate lovers are very naturally interwoven. The beauty of the descriptions here is exquisite.... Choice is bewildered among the many fine passages we are tempted to extract from The Abencerrage.
“If any reader considers our strictures tedious, and our extracts profuse, our best apology is, that the luxury of doing justice to so much genuine talent, adorning so much private worth, does not often occur to tempt us to an excess of this nature.”
THE SCEPTIC.[136]
“Leur raison, qu’ils prennent pour guide, ne presente à leur esprit que des conjectures et des embarras; les absurdités où ils tombent en niant la Religion deviennent plus insoutenables que les verités dont la hauteur les étonne; et pour ne vouloir pas croire des mysteres incomprehensibles, ils suivent l’une après l’autre d’incomprehensibles erreurs.”—Bossuet.
When the young Eagle, with exulting eye,
Has learn’d to dare the splendour of the sky,
And leave the Alps beneath him in his course,
To bathe his crest in morn’s empyreal source;
Will his free wing, from that majestic height,
Descend to follow some wild meteor’s light,