seen in flames. He himself rushes out, bearing Leonora dead in his arms. She has perished, he says, in the flames; after the loss of such a pattern of female virtue, his home is loathsome to him; he asks and obtains leave to join the expedition to Africa. Thus, as his friend Don Juan observes,
He consigns his secret
To the waves, and to the flames,
That he only who the outrage
Knew, should know the vengeance too.
Asi el secreto
Al aguay, fuego le entrega,
Porque el que supo el agravio
Solo la venganza sepa.
III. The consequence of these objective inflexible principles of action is, of course, a very considerable monotony, both in the characters of Calderon, and in the general treatment of his themes. All his characters of the same class have the strongest resemblance to each other. They are brothers of a great Spanish noble family; all brave, punctilious, chivalrous, courteous, somewhat arrogant and over-bearing; in short, their leading features are so alike, that they leave upon the mind no impression of individuality, as those of Shakspeare do, but become confounded with each other in the memory. Who, for instance, could point out any characteristic differences between the heroes of the two plays, Mejor esta que estava, and Peor esta que estava—Count Carlo Colonna, and Don Cæsar Ursino; except that the latter has a little of the disposition of Don Galaor about him; and, though not absolutely faithless to his first attachment, cannot resist the temptation of an intermediate love passage with the daughter of the governor of Gaeta? Again, in his picture of jealous husbands, what feature of distinction can be pointed out between Don Gutierre in the Medico de su Honra, Don Juan in the Pintor de su Deshonra, and Don Lopé in A Secreto Agravio? How different, on the contrary, in Shakspeare, is the jealousy of Leontes from that of Othello or Posthumus; as the passion acts on different natures, and its blind impulses are modified by an energy from within! Generally speaking, then, Calderon's characters are simply the representatives of classes: husbands, fathers, princes, lovers; all partaking of the same type, and rarely, if ever, discriminated from each other by any marked differences in the strength of passion in tragedy, or of humours and peculiarities in comedy. Indeed, the portraiture of humours or oddities of any kind, Calderon has never attempted. All his characters of the higher classes are grave and serious; they quibble and refine in the dialectics of love and compliment, but they never jest; and the province of humour is entirely abandoned to the servants, one of whom is invariably the established jester of the piece. The part of the Gracioso, with his satirical observations on the pompous sentiments of the higher personages, his cowardice or covetousness, his perfect insensibility to the punctilios of honour, courtesy, or gallantry, by which they are distracted or embarrassed, is, in fact, a perpetual commentary of vulgar common sense upon the sentimental refinements of chivalry; and nothing but the secret consciousness which probably existed in the breast of every spectator—namely, that much real meanness of spirit, or baseness of heart, often lurked beneath these high-sounding manners of morality, just as a ragged doublet was often concealed beneath the cloak of some knight of Calatrava—and the pleasure of thus gratifying the imagination, and satisfying the reason at the same time, by a picture of romance in the Master, and of homely reality in the Man, could explain the invariable introduction of these privileged buffoons into the most serious scenes, and the pleasure with which their sallies appear to have been received. Generally speaking, then, the plays of Calderon are in the highest degree conventional as to character. Among the pieces with which we are acquainted, we should be disposed to say that the comedy entitled, Guardate de la Agua Mansa, (Beware of Still Water,) is the one in which the characters appear to us to have most the air of being taken from real life. Another, Hombre Pobre todo es trazas, (The Poor are full of Projects,) of which the hint appears to have been taken from the Picaresco Romances of Mendoza, has also more of characteristic delineation, though not of a very pleasing kind, than is usual with Calderon.
IV. While the characters appear thus stereotyped, there is also not a little monotony in the constant recurrence of the themes. In ail Calderon's plays, the motives are nearly
