N the Teatro escogido de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1868), at present in course of publication by the Royal Academy of Madrid, Calderon's dramas, exclusive of the autos sacramentales, which do not form a part of the collection, are divided into eight classes. The seventh of these comprises what the editor calls mystical dramas, and those founded on the Legends or the Lives of Saints. The eighth contains the philosophical or purely ideal dramas. This last division, in which the editor evidently thinks the genius of Calderon attained its highest development, at least as far as the secular theatre is concerned, contains but two dramas, The Wonder-working Magician, and Life's a Dream. The mystical dramas, which form the seventh division, are more numerous, but of these five are at present known to us only by name. Those that remain are Day-break in Copacabana, The Chains of the Demon, The Devotion of the Cross, The Purgatory of St. Patrick, The Sibyl of the East, The Virgin of the Sanctuary, and The Two Lovers of Heaven. The editor, Sr. D. P. De La Escosura, seems to think it necessary to offer some apology for not including The Two Lovers of Heaven among the philosophical instead of the mystical dramas. He says: "There is a great analogy and, perhaps, resemblance between El Magico Prodigioso (The Wonder-working Magician), and Los dos amantes del cielo (The Two Lovers of Heaven); but in the second, as it seems to us, the purely mystical predominates in such a manner over the philosophical, that it does not admit of its being classified in the same group as the first (El Magico Prodigioso), and La Vida es Sueño (Life's a Dream)". Introduccion, p. cxxxvii. note. Whether this distinction is well founded or not it is unnecessary to determine. It is sufficient for our purpose that it establishes the high position among the greatest plays of Calderon of the drama which is here presented to the English reader in the peculiar and always difficult versification of the original. Whether less philosophical or more mystical than The Wonder-working Magician, The Two Lovers of Heaven possesses a charm of its own in which its more famous rival seems deficient. In the admirable Essay on the Genius of Calderon (ch. ii. p. 34), with which Archbishop Trench introduces his spirited analysis of La Vida es Sueño, he refers to the group of dramas which forms, with one exception, the seventh and eighth divisions of the classification above referred to, and pays a just tribute to the superior merits of Los dos amantes del cielo. After alluding to the dramas, the argument of which is drawn from the Old Testament, and especially to The Locks of Absalom, which he considers the noblest specimen, he continues: "Still more have to do with the heroic martyrdoms and other legends of Christian antiquity, the victories of the Cross of Christ over all the fleshly and spiritual wickednesses of the ancient heathen world. To this theme, which is one almost undrawn upon in our Elizabethan drama,—Massinger's Virgin Martyr is the only example I remember,—he returns continually, and he has elaborated these plays with peculiar care. Of these The Wonder-working Magician is most celebrated; but others, as The Joseph of Women, The Two Lovers of Heaven, quite deserve to be placed on a level, if not higher than it. A tender pathetic grace is shed over this last, which gives it a peculiar charm. Then too he has occupied what one might venture to call the region of sacred mythology, as in The Sibyl of the East, in which the profound legends identifying the Cross of Calvary and the Tree of Life are wrought up into a poem of surpassing beauty".[2] An excellent German version of Los dos amantes del cielo is to be found in the second volume of the Spanisches Theater, by Schack, whose important work on Dramatic Art and Literature in Spain, is still untranslated into the language of that country,—a singular neglect, when his later and less elaborate work, Poesie and Kunst der Araber in Spanien und Sicilien (Berlin, 1865), has already found an excellent Spanish interpreter in Don Juan Valera, two volumes of whose Poesia y Arte de los Arabes en España y Sicilia (Madrid, 1868), I was fortunate enough to meet with during a recent visit to Spain.

The story of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria (The Two Lovers of Heaven), whose martyrdom took place at Rome A.D. 284, and whose festival occurs on the 25th of October, is to be found in a very abridged form in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, c. 152. The fullest account, and that which Calderon had evidently before him when writing The Two Lovers of Heaven, is given by Surius in his great work, De Probatis Sanctorum Vitis, October, p. 378. This history is referred to by Villegas at the conclusion of his own condensed narrative in the following passage, which I take from the old English version of his Lives of Saints, by John Heigham, anno 1630.

"The Church doth celebrate the feast of SS. Chrisanthus and Daria, the 25th of October, and their death was in the year of our Lord God 284, in the raigne of Numerianus, Emperor. The martyrdom of these saints was written by Verinus and Armenius, priests of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr: Metaphrastes enlarged it somewhat more. St. Damasus made certain eloquent verses in praise of these saints, and set them on their tombe. There is mention of them also in the Romaine Martirologe, and in that of Usuardus: as also in the 5. tome of Surius; in Cardinal Baronius, and Gregory of Turonensis", p. 849.

A different abridgment of the story as given by Surius, is to be found in Ribadeneyra's Flos Sanctorum (the edition before me being that of Barcelona, 1790, t. 3. p. 304). It concludes with the same list of authorities, which, however, is given with more precision. The old English translation by W. P. Esq., second edition: London, 1730, p. 369, gives them thus:

"Surius in his fifth tome, and Cardinal Baronius in his Annotations upon the Martyrologies, and in the second tome of his Annals, and St. Gregory of Tours in his Book of the Glory of the Martyrs, make mention of the Saints Chrysanthus and Daria".

The following is taken from Caxton's Golden Legende, or translation of the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine. I have transcribed from the following edition, which is thus described in the Colophon:

"The legende named in latyn Legenda Aurea, that is to say in englyshe the golden legende, For lyke as golde passeth all other metalles, so this boke excedeth all other bokes". "Finyshed the xxvii daye of August, the yere of our lord M. CCCCC. XXVII, the xix yere of the regne of our souverayne lord Kynge Henry the eyght. Imprynted at London in Flete Strete at the Sygne of the Sonne by Wynkyn de Worde".

In the following extract the spelling is somewhat modernised, and a few obsolete words are omitted.

"The Life of Saynt Crysant and Saynte Daria".
Fo. cc. lxxxv.