GALATE A. A PASTORAL ROMANCE, BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. LITERALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY GORDON WILLOUGHBY JAMES GYLL, ESQ., AUTHOR OF "A TRACTATE ON LANGUAGE," "THE HISTORY OF WRAYSBURY, ench prod antes v LONDON: BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1867. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. In this translation of the Galatea of Cervantes, the object has been to convey the story in language as closely as possible to the original. The translator fears he may not alway have succeeded in completely rendering the narratives of the various incidents which characterise this simple pastoral epic, and that also he may have to apologise for somewhat of roughness in his transfusion of the poetry, which has found its equivalent, where the lines have been long, in blank verse. The other portions of the poetry he has rendered literally, but wherever the two dialects assimilated he has thought it sufficient to furnish only a kind of metrical rhythm. This elegant and simple production, the earliest from the pen of the eminent poet and novelist of Spain, pourtraying young, fresh, and vivid scintillations of genius, has never been translated into any language. We have only its shadow in the French production of Florian, which is based on the Spanish story, and though written in an engaging and graceful style, is not that mature and elegant child of the brain of Cervantes which is now for the first time presented to the English reader. It has been asserted that in the Galatea all the characters are strictly innocent; there are, however, occasional cases of homicide and abduction, while envy and jealousy, the never failing vices of nature in all conditions of life, are found in contrast with the more ennobling and elevating virtues. This kind of composition seems to have been peculiarly in the vein of Cervantes, who had previously tried "his 'prenticed hand" at another pastoral epic, the Filena, but which, although he states that it had been generally read, soon disappeared, and is now rarely found, not having been printed in the collected works of the author, who probably felt that the Filena was a failure, although with pride he averred" resono por las silvas,"-it reverberated in the groves. But as he was unwilling to allow his epic talent to be quenched, he judiciously selected Galatea as a new and happy medium of success. The distance between these two pastorals must have been very marked; Galatea possessing all the good properties which should stamp such a pastoral-for the rural characters are nicely defined; modesty and grace with simplicity prevailing. The texture is simple, yet rich, the figures are adapted to the ideas, while the general diction is at once. plain, modest, and artless, furnishing a supplement to the graces of conception. This eminent man, Cervantes de Saavedra, whose name is synonymous with fertility and fancy, and which will ever survive in his Don Quixote and Galatea, did not slide softly into old age. He died hardly in 1616, tempest-beaten, about the same time with our great dramatic poet, having attained the nominal period allotted to humanity. He was to Spain what Sir Walter Scott became in England; the minds of both instinctively gravitating towards romances and novels. Poetry too was the affection of both. Cervantes constantly introduced sweet snatches of songs into all his compositions. The Galatea is replete with various forms of verse and rhythm in upwards of one hundred and fifty songs, diffused through its six cantos, styled in Spanish tercets, redondillos, octaves, and lines, like the Alexandrine, extending to twelve and more syllables. The compositions are cast in lyrics and iambics, without being quite of a dithyrambic character, furnishing relief to the prose, and evincing the skill and tendency of the bard in all effusions relative to love, the master passion of our existence, without which all would be arid and disappointing to the eagle spirit of the child of song. The most esteemed poems in Galatea are in the Cancion style, some being iambic, some trochaic, but all subsiding in rhyme. The dactylic stanza is also found, and assonances take place of rhyme, common in most dialects excepting English, the finest of languages for oratory and poetry, owing to its innate robustness and ductility and its almost entire freedom from inflection. Spanish poetry is perhaps more decidedly national than any recognised in Europe, and Cervantes is the Spanish high priest. He may be said to belong to the whole world as one of the great parent geniuses who have nursed and nourished the universe of literature-a poet and a versifier of a high class, composing in modulated prose and well-constructed verse, presenting resistless charms of rhythmical harmony in most species of composition. Among the earliest of Cervantes' poetic pieces were his "Sonnets" and the "Filena," all delivered to the Spanish world of literature soon after he had attained his majority. From being a poet and a romancer, he became a son of Mars, and his zeal in his new profession honourably swelled his renown. At the famous battle of Lepanto, in 1571, the Trafalgar of the time, where Turks and Christians engaged in the furious close of naval war, and the combined fleets of Spain and other maritime states, under John of Austria, won that celebrated victory, Cervantes was but twenty-five years old. He had there the misfortune to lose his left hand and a part of his arm. He remarks, in his writings, that the scars which a soldier shows in his face and breast, are stars which guide others to the haven of honour, and the desire of just praise. This honourable mutilation constrained him to return homewards, and that circumstance was the precursor of future fame. He now felt the divine energy of genius within him, and eventually his name filled Spanish literature, which he flooded with a golden light by virtue of that moral purity which enriched his labours, and that simple, soft, yet touching eloquence which is the mistress of the affections. Adventures, intrigues and surprises are inventions prominent and prevailing in all his writings, conciliating, informing and moving as became the qualities of a bard whose flight is epic. |