"To-morrow Christmas for Moros!" said the gentle Hamed, our Moorish servant, entering the room soon after the bang of the last sunset gun of Ramadan had shaken our windows, and the thick smoke of the coarse Moorish powder had floated away, temporarily obscuring the gorgeous hues bestowed by the retiring luminary on the restless waters of the South Atlantic.
"To-morrow Christmas for Moros! In the morning Hamed clean house, go forsoko; then all day notrabally; have newhaik, new slippers, walk about all sametejjer."
By which little speech our faithful attendant meant to convey that to-morrow's rejoicing at the termination of the long and irksome fast of Ramadan was equivalent to the "Ingleez's" Christmas, and that, after putting the house in order and bringing the provisions from thesoko, or market, he would do no moretrabally, or work—the word being a corruption of the Spanishtrabajo—but would don the newhaikand bright yellow slippers for which he had long been saving up, and to the purchase of which certain little presents from the children of our household had materially contributed; and would be entitled, by prescriptive holiday right, to "take his walks abroad" with thedolce far nientedignity of atejjer, or merchant.
I think we members of the little English community of Mogador—or, as the Moors fondly call this pleasantest town of the Morocco seaboard, "El Souerah," or The Beautiful—had almost as good reason as the Moslem population to rejoice at the termination of the great fast. The Moors not being allowed, during the holy month, to eat, drink, or smoke betwixt the rising and the setting of the sun—the more sternly orthodox even closing their nostrils against any pleasant odour that might casually perfume the air in their vicinity, and their ears against even thefaintest sound of music—debarring themselves, in fact, from whatever could give the slightest pleasure to any of the senses, a considerable amount of gloom and listlessness was the inevitable result.
The servants in the various households, not over active and intelligent at the best of times, became, as the weary days of prayer and fasting wore on, appallingly idiotic, sleepy, and sullen, would do but little work, and that little never promptly nor well. Meals could not be relied on within an hour or two, rooms were left long untidy, essential little errands and messages unperformed, and a general gloomy confusion prevailed.
Did I, tempted by the smoothness of the sea, desire a little fishing cruise, and send a youthful Moor to the neighbouring rocks to get me a basket of mussels for bait, he would probably, directly he got outside the town-gates, deposit the basket and himself in the shade of the first wall he came to, and slumber sweetly till the tide had risen and covered all the rocky ledges where it was possible to collect bait. Had I told the youngster over night that he must come out to sea with me in the morning, and take care that my boat was put outside the dock, so that she would be afloat at a certain hour, I would find, on going down at daybreak with rods and tackle, that the boat was high and dry upon the mud, and it would take the united efforts of half a dozen Moors and myself to get her afloat at the end of nearly an hour's frantic struggling and pushing through mud and water, necessitating on my part the expenditure of a great amount of perspiration, not a little invective, and sundry silver coins.
And when we were fairly afloat my Mahometan youth would be so weak from fasting that his oar would be almost useless; and when we did, after an hour or so of the most ignominious zigzaging, reach our anchorage on one of the fishing-grounds, then would he speedily become sea-sick, and instead of helping me by preparing bait and landing fish, he would lean despairingly over the side in abject misery, and implore me to go home promptly—a piteous illustration of the anguish caused by an empty stomach contracting on itself.
Nor were these the only discomforts under which we groaned and grumbled.
From the evening when the eager lookers-out from minarets of mosques and towers of the fortifications first descried the new moon which ushered in the holy month of fasting, every sunset, as it flushed the far-off waves with purple and crimson and gold, and turned the fleecy cloudlets in the western sky to brightest jewels, and suffused the white houses and towers of Mogador with sweetest glow of pink, and gilded the green-tiled top of each tall minaret, had been accompanied by the roar of a cannon from the battery just below our windows.
"What the deuce is that?" asked a friend of mine, lately arrived from England, as we strolled homewards one evening through the dusty streets, and the boom of the big gun suddenly fell upon his astonished ear.
"Only sunset," I replied.
"Queer place this," said J. "Does the sun always set with a bang?"
"Always during Ramadan."
"Does it rise with a bang too? I hate to be roused up early in the morning!"
"No, there is no gun at sunrise; but there is a very loud one at about three in the morning, or sometimes half-past, or four, or later."
"Shocking nuisance!" remarked J. "My bedroom window's just over that abominable battery."
The early morning gun was a great trial, certainly. I would not have minded beingreveille en sursaut, as a Frenchman would say, and then turning comfortably over on the other side, and going to sleep again.
But somehow or other I always found myself awake half an hour or an hour before the time, and then Icould notget to sleep again, but lay tossing about and fidgettily listening for the well-known din. At length I would hear a sound like the hum of an enormous fiendish nightmarish mosquito, caused by a hideous long tin trumpet, the shrill whistle of a fife or two, and the occasional tom-tomming of a Moorish drum. "Ha, the soldiers coming along the ramparts; they will soon fire now."
But the sound of the discordant instruments with which the soldiery solaced themselves in the night for their enforced abstinence from such "sweet sounds" in the day would continue for a long time before the red flash through my wide-open door would momentarily illumine my little chamber on the white flat roof, and then the horrid bang would rend the air, followed by a dense cloud of foul-smelling smoke; and then would my big dog Cæsar for several minutes rush frantically to and fro upon the roof in hot indignation, and utter deep-mouthed barks of defiance at the white figures of the "Maghaseni," as they flitted ghost-like along the ramparts below, and snort and pant and chafe and refuse to be pacified for a long time.
At the firing of the sunset gun the Moors were allowed to take a slight refection, which generally consisted of a kind of gruel. I have seen a Moorish soldier squatting in the street with a brass porringer in his lap, eagerly awaiting the boom of the cannon to dip his well-washed fingers in the mess.
At about 9p.m.another slight meal was allowed to the true believers, and they might eat again at morning gun-fire, after which their mouths were closed against all "fixings, solid and liquid," even against the smallest draught of water or the lightest puff at the darling little pipe of dream-inducingkief.
On the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan we were informed that twenty-seven guns would be fired that night, and that we had better leave all our windows open, or they would certainly be broken by the violence of the discharge. This was pleasant; still more delightful was the glorious uncertainty which prevailed in the minds of our informants as to the time at which we might expect the infliction.
Some said that the twenty-seven guns would be fired before midnight;Hamed opined that the cannonade would not take place till 3 or 4a.m.Many of the guns on the battery in close proximity to our abode were in a fearfully rusty and honeycombed condition, so that apprehensions as to some of them bursting were not unnatural, and I thought it extremely probable that a few stray fragments might "drop in" on me.
That night I burned the "midnight oil," and lay reading till nearly two, when sweet sleep took possession of me, from which I was awakened about four in the morning by a terrific bang that fairly shook the house.
A minute more, and there came a red flash and another bang, presently another. Thought I, "I will go out and see the show;" so I went on to the flat white roof in my airy nocturnal costume, and leaning over the parapet looked down on to the platform of the battery below. A group of dim white figures, a flickering lantern, a glowing match, a touch at the breech of a rusty old gun, a swift skurry of the white figures round a corner, a squib-like fountain of sparks from the touch-hole, a red flash from the mouth, momentarily illumining the dark violet sea, a bang, and a cloud of smoke.
Then the white figures and the lantern appeared again; another squib, another flash, another bang, Cæsar galloping up and down over the roof, snorting his indignation, but not barking, probably because he felt "unable to do justice to the subject;" and at length, after the eleventh gun had belched forth crimson flames and foul smoke, all was peace, save a distant discord of tin trumpets,goualsandgimbris, and I returned to my mosquito-haunted couch with a sigh of relief.
Pass we now to the eve of "Christmas for Moros," and let ethnologist and hagiologist derive some satisfaction from the evidences I collected in this far-away Moorish town that the gladness of the Mahometan festival does, similarly to the purer joy of the Christian, though in a less degree perhaps, incline towards "peace and good-will to men," charity and kindliness.
As we sat chatting that evening round the tea-table, to us entered Hamed, bearing, with honest pride illumining his brown features, a great tray of richly engraved brass, heaped up with curious but tempting-looking cakes.
Gracefully presenting them to "the senora," he intimated that this was his humble offering or Christmas token of good-will towards the family, and that his mother (whom the good fellow maintains out of his modest wages) had made them with her own hands.
The cakes were made of long thin strips of the finest paste, plentifully sweetened with delicious honey, twisted into quaint shapes, and fried in the purest of oil. I need hardly say that the children were delighted, and immediately commenced to court indigestion by a vigorous onslaught on the new and tempting sweets. Nay, why should I blush to confess that I myself have a very sweet tooth in my head, and such a liking for all things saccharine that my friends say jokingly that I must be getting into my second childhood?—an imputation which, as I am onlya little on the wrong side of thirty, I can bear with equanimity. However, I firmly decline to inform an inquisitive public how many of those delightful Moorish cakes I ate: truth to tell, I do not remember; but I enjoyed them heartily, nor found my digestion impaired thereby.
We had a little chat with Hamed—whose face was lighted up with the broadest of grins as we praised his mother's pastry and showed our appreciation of it in the most satisfactory manner—on certain matters of the Mahometan religion and the position of women in the future life. Some of the sterner Muslims believe that women have no souls; others opine that while good men go to "Eljannah," or heaven, and bad ones to "Eljehannam," or hell, women and mediocre characters are deported to a vague kind of limbo which they designate as "Bab Maroksh," or the Morocco Gate.
But the gentle, liberal, and gallant Hamed informed us, in reply to an individual query with regard to our Moorish housemaid, that "if Lanniya plenty good, notiefem(steal), no drinkumsharab(wine), and go forscula("school," or religious instruction in the mosque, or in a schoolhouse adjoining it), by and by she go for "Eljannah."
I am hardly correct, by the way, in speaking of Lanniya as "house-maid," for Moorish maidens and wives never go in the service of European families, being prohibited by their religion from showing their faces; it is only widows and divorced women who may go about unveiled, and mingle with Christians.
The next morning, soon after the last gun of Ramadan had sounded its joyous boom in my ear, I was up and stirring, donning my shooting apparel and preparing for an early country walk with my faithful four-footed comrade. I had no fear of exciting the fanaticism of the Muslim population by going out shooting on their holy day, for there is not much bigotry in Mogador,—Moors, Christians, and Jews observing their several religions peacefully side by side, so that three Sundays come in every week, the Mahometan on Friday, the Jewish on Saturday, and then ours.
The sun, just rising from behind the eastern sand-hills, was gilding all the house-tops and minarets, till our white town looked like a rich assemblage of fairy palaces of gold and ivory; the smiling sea, serene and azure, came rippling peacefully up to the base of the rugged brown rocks, enlivened to-day by no statuesque figures of Moorish fishermen; nor did a single boat dot the broad blue expanse of the unusually smooth South Atlantic, of which the fish and the sea-fowl were for once left in undisturbed possession.
As I gazed from the flat roof away over the great town, I heard from many quarters loud sounds of music and merriment. As I passed presently through the narrow streets, with their dead white walls and cool dark arches, scarcely a camel was to be seen at the accustomed corners by the stores of the merchants, where usually whole fleets of the "ships of the desert" lay moored, unloading almonds, and rich gums, and hides, and all the varied produce of the distant interior.
Outside the town-gates the very hordes of semi-wild scavenger dogs seemed to know that the day was one of peace, for they lay in the sunshine, nor barked and snapped at the infidel intruder as he walked over the golden sands, along the edge of the marshy pool, past the pleasant-looking Moorish cemetery with its graceful verdant palm-trees, a calm oasis in the sandy plain, and out across the shallow lagoon formed by overflows of high tides, by which a few late trains of homeward-bound camels went softly stepping, looking wonderfully picturesque as they marched through shallow waters so beautifully gilded by the morning sun, their drivers doubtless eager to reach their own home or the shelter of some friendly village to participate in the modest revelries of the joyous season. How I wandered along the shore of the "many-sounding sea," enjoying a little rough sport, and the blithe companionship of the big doggie; how I saw never a Moor upon the rocks, but many Jews with long bamboo rods, busily engaged in fishing for bream and bass and rock-fish, it boots not to describe with a minuteness which might be wearisome to my readers, for I am not now writing "of sport, for sportsmen."
So let us turn homewards, as the sun is getting high in the heavens, and note the scenes by the way.
Yonder, near the marshy corner of the plain, haunted by wild-fowl, and carrion crows, and mongrel jackal-like dogs, is the rough cemetery of the despised "Jehoud," the Israelites who form so large and so wealthy a portion of the population of Mogador. Among the long flat stones that mark the graves of the exiled sons and daughters of Israel there is a winding crowd of white-draped figures, a funeral procession. Unwilling to intrude upon their grief, I pass on, casting an involuntary glance at the picturesque garb and wild gesticulations of the mourners as the women's loud and bitter cry of "Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai!" sounds weirdly through the air, just as it may have done in the old scriptural times, when "the mourners went about the streets" and gave unchecked vent to their grief in public, even as they do to this day.
But as I neared Morocco Gate, from the neighbouring "Running Ground" came very different sounds—a din of many drums, a squeaking of merry fifes, the firing of many long Moorish guns, the shouting of men and boys, and the eerie shrilltagharietof the Moorish women.
And as I passed in front of the round battery, out from the great gate of the New Kasbah came the crowd of men, women, and children who had been clamouring joyfully in the Running-Ground, a bright throng of brown faces and white raiment, interspersed with the gay colours worn by the little children, and dotted here and there by the blood-red of the national flag. Suddenly from a cannon just behind me came a cloud of smoke enveloping me and the dog, and a bang which fairly shook us, and then another and another. The firing of the guns from this battery was the spectacle the Moorish populace had come out tosee.
It was an uncomfortable sensation to have big guns going off just behind one; they were only loaded with blank cartridge, of course, but we were quite near enough to be knocked down by a stray piece of wadding, and something did once whistle past my ear suggestively.
But it would never do for an "Ingleez" to run away in the presence of a lot of Moors; so I walked calmly across the sands while the whole battery of guns—twelve, I think—were fired, Cæsar meanwhile prancing about majestically, and loudly giving vent to his indignation at a proceeding which he evidently considered, as he always does the firing of any gun or pistol by any one but me, an express insult to his master, and an infringement of his peculiar privileges.
I went home by way of the Water-Port, where there was no movement of lighters or fishing-craft, no stir of bare-legged porters and fishermen, no bustle of Jewish and European merchants; nearly all the boats were drawn up on the shore, and those which remained afloat, slumbered tenantless on the broad blue bosom of the sea. On rocks, and in the pleasant shade of walls and arches, a few figures, in bright and gauzyhaiksand gorgeous new slippers, lounged and dozed, perchance tired with the revelries they had gone through since daybreak, and recruiting their energies for fresh rejoicings towards evening. Reaching home about eleven, I rested a while, deposited my birds in the larder, and then proceeded to stroll about the streets and see how the populace comported themselves on this festive occasion. I was sorry to learn that some of the younger and more fanatical of the Moors had been relieving their feelings by abusing the Jews, some of whom had had stones thrown at them, and their heads slightly broken. But this temporary riot was over, and now all was "peace and good-will," except that perhaps there may have lurked a little not unnatural ill-feeling in the minds of the broken-headed Israelites, who could not help feeling rather disgusted at the manner in which the Muslim youths had celebrated "Christmas for Moros."
As I passed along the narrow lane wherein the soldiers of the Kaid or Governor, in the snowiest ofhaiksand tallest and reddest oftarbooshes, squatted against the wall, chatting blithely as they awaited the advent of their master, a grave and venerable-looking Moorish grandpapa, hurrying along with a great armful of cakes in one of the folds of hishaik, stumbled against a loose stone and dropped several of the cakes.
I hastily stooped and picked them up; the old man muttered a few words of blessing upon me, insisted on my accepting the dainties I had rescued from the dust, utterly refused to receive them back, pressed my hand, and hurried on, leaving me in a state of embarrassment, from which I was opportunely relieved by the arrival of a bright-eyed little Moor of seven or eight summers, who was perfectly willing to relieve me from all trouble connected with the handful of cakes. Passing into the busy streets of the Moorish quarter, I found the population coming out of the various mosques, where they had been to morning service, and now going in for a systematic course of "greetings in the market-place,"and purchasing of presents. O, for an artist's pencil and colours to depict the gorgeous costumes of the town Moors, the quaint, wild garb of their country cousins; the gauzy cream-tintedhaiksfrom Morocco; the rich silkencaftansof purple, or crimson, or yellow, or green, or azure, or pink, sweetly half-veiled by a fold or two of snowy gauze thrown over them; the bright red fez caps, and voluminous snowy turbans of the patriarchal-looking old men; the broad silken sashes from Fez, heavy and stiff with rich embroidery of gold; the great curved daggers in their richly chased silver or brass sheaths, suspended amid the folds of thehaikby thick woolen cords of gay colours; the handsome brown faces, the flashing black eyes, the wonderful white teeth, the sinewy brown bare legs, the brand-new yellow slippers of the merry Moors of Mogador!
And the negroes, or, as old Fuller would quaintly have called them, "the images of God cut in ebony," how their honest black features glistened, and how their bright teeth grinned beneath turban or fez, or gaudy handkerchief of many colours!
The negro servant of one of the European residents, a good-humoured giant of nearly seven feet, whom his master is wont to describe as "his nigger and a half," came stalking down amongst the little shops and stalls with a flaunting bandanna round his head, a purple jacket, a most gorgeous sash, a pair of green baggy breeches, a glittering silver-sheathed dagger, and a most imposinghaik, thrown in toga-like folds over all.
Negro women, unveiled, white-clad, adorned as to their shiny black arms with rude heavy bracelets of silver or brass, sat at street-corners with baskets of sweet cakes and little loaves for sale. Veiled Moorish women, perchance showing just one bright black eye to tantalise the beholder, glided along like substantial ghosts in the white raiment which enveloped them from their heads down to the little feet shod with red or yellow slippers embroidered with gold thread or bright-coloured silks. Women leading tiny toddlers of children, little bright-eyed boys with crowns shaven all but one queer little tufted ridge in the middle, deftly curled this morning by mamma's loving fingers; foreheads adorned with quaint frontlets, from which hung curious ornaments of gold and coral and silver, spells against the evil eye, talismans, and what not.
Little boys in beautiful cloth or silken cloaks of pale blue, or delicate purple, or crimson, or rich green, or golden yellow, trotting along as proud as peacocks, holding by the hand some tiny brother who can barely toddle. Children who have just had new slippers purchased for them, and are carrying them home in triumph; children who, with funny little copper coins in their hand, are congregating round the stall of the swarthy seller of sweetstuffs, who is ejaculating loudly, "Heloua,Heloua!" busily brandishing a feathery branch of greenartimthe while, to keep the vagrom flies off his stores of rich dainties composed of walnut and almond toffee, pastes made of almonds and honey and sugar, little brown sugar balls thickly strewn with cummin-seeds, long sticks of peppermint, and other delicacies difficult to describe.
As to the grown-up Moors, never was seen such a hand-shaking as is going on amongst them. Everybody is shaking hands with everybody else, each wishing the other the Arabic substitute for "A merry Christmas," and after each handshaking each of the participants puts his hand to his lips and proceeds, to be stopped two yards farther on for a repetition of the performance.
On we go through the meat-market, and note pityingly the leanness of the Moors' Christmas beef, which has just been butchered, and of which an eager good-humored crowd are buying small pieces amid much vociferation, chaff, and "compliments of the season" generally.
Then we come to the green-grocers' shops, where we see huge radishes, great pomegranates, sweet potatoes, and bunches of fragrant mint for the flavouring of the Moors' passionately loved beverage, green tea; then to the grocers' quarter, where, asking a grave and portly Moor for a pennyworthfakea(dried fruit), he puts into half a gourd-shell a pleasant collection of dates, almonds, figs, and raisins, hands them to us with benign politeness. Opposite his store is a low table covered with queer bottles of all shapes and sizes, filled with a dubious-looking pink fluid, resembling the most delicious hair oil, but apparently highly appreciated by the Moorish and Jewish youth who crowd around.
In the centre is a burly brandy-bottle, bearing the well-known label of "J. and F. Martell," now filled with a fluid presumably more innocuous than the choicest cognac; the big bottle is flanked by rows of little medicine-vials and long thin bottles such as are used for attar of roses and other Eastern scents; for the vendor of this bright-coloured liquor does not possess cups or tumblers, but dispenses it in the little bottles. A bare-headed youth, with shaven crown, tenders amozouna, receives a two-ounce vial, empties it solemnly amid the envious looks of his comrades, sets it down, and walks gravely away.
Away we go too, Cæsar and I, and I note that there is hardly a Jew to be seen in the streets; they are afraid of stone-throwing, and outbursts of the slumbering hatred and contempt with which they are regarded by the orthodox Muslim.
As for Christians, Englishmen especially, they are much more tolerated and respected; and I know that I may walk the town all day without fear of molestation, and get plenty of kindly greetings and many a smile and shake of the hand.
Out of the busy market, up the narrow and shady streets, hearing sounds of the fearsome trumpet, which I have already compared to an exaggerated mosquito, meeting that instrument presently at a corner—a horrid tin thing about two yards long, wielded by a sinewy little man in a blue tunic, accompanying a gaily-dressed boy on a sleek and patient donkey. Fifing and drumming and firing of guns going on all around.
Fierce-looking Moors and Arabs from the country leaning on their long silver-mounted guns, scowling at the "Kaffer," whom they have perchance not seen until they came to El Souërah. A veiled, but evidentlyportly, dame, leading by the hand a pretty little girl, in a red skirt below a rich garment of lace or embroidery, with a crimson hooded cloak ordjelabover it, rich ornaments on her smooth brown forehead, enormous silver anklets, little bare feet, dyed, like her hands and those of most of the little girls and many of the big ones, a bright red with henna. Little girl shrinks behind her mother, afraid of the Giaour or of his big dog; the Giaour slips by with a smile, doggie with a friendly wag of his tail, and we go homeward for a while; Cæsar to make a hearty meal of the biscuits which have come all the way from England for him; his master to partake of lunch, then smoke a pipe on the roof, and look wistfully out over the bright blue sky, and let his thoughts wander far, far away to many a pleasant Christmas in a pleasant corner of the fair Western land:
"Where is now the merry partyI remember long ago,Laughing round the Christmas fireside,Brightened by its ruddy glow?"
"Where is now the merry partyI remember long ago,Laughing round the Christmas fireside,Brightened by its ruddy glow?"
But the Moor's Christmas has come early in October; there is time yet, and plenty of English steamers going backwards and forwards; who knows whether the wanderer may not yet spend the next Christmas by a genial English fireside, and recount to prattling children on his knee (others' children, alas!) the curious sights, sounds, and scenes of "Christmas for Moros?" But I have not quite done with you yet, kindly reader. I must just briefly tell you how I went out again in the afternoon with Cæsar and a two-legged friend, and found more shopping going on and more handshaking, and found the more festive spirits getting hilarious over green tea and coffee andkief; how we strolled down to the Water-Port and sat on the quay, surrounded by merry young Moors in their "Sunday best;" how my friend essayed to sketch one or two of them, and they did not like it, but thought some evil spell would be put upon them thereby; how they asked us many questions about England, and particularly wanted to know how many dollars we possessed; how my companion won the hearts of some of the younger members of the party by teaching them how to whistle between their thumbs, and how to make a certain very loud and direfully discordant screech; and how J. and I finished the afternoon by partaking of a delightful bottle of English ale in the courtyard of a cool store, leaning our chairs against massive stone pillars, and smoking the pipe of peace.
But I fear the stern Editor will not grant me any more space, and I must leave at present the recital of all that I saw on the ensuing day, which the gentle Hamed, if he were alittlemore closely acquainted with our institutions, would call "Boxing-day for Moros."
C. A. P. ("Sarcelle"),in London Society,
Mogador.
Pastoral poetry had in Italy a tendency to a rapid degeneration from the first. "Decipit exemplum vitiis imitabile." The earliest "pastorals" were far from being without merit, and merit of a high order. But they were eminently "vitiis imitabiles." Two specimens of Italian Arcadian poetry stand out, from the incredibly huge mass of such productions still extant, superior to all the innumerable imitations to which they gave rise in a more marked degree even than "originals" usually surpass imitations in value. These are the "Aminta" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido" of the poet with whom it is the object of these pages to make the English nineteenth century reader, who never will find the time to read him, in some degree acquainted—Batista Guarini. It would be difficult to say which of these two celebrated pastoral dramas was received with the greater amount of delight and enthusiasm by the world of their contemporaries, or even which of them is the better performance. The almost simultaneous production of these two masterpieces in their kind is a striking instance of the, one may almost say, epidemic nature of the influences which rule the production of the human intellect; influences which certainly did not cease to operate for many generations after that of the authors of the "Aminta" and the "Pastor Fido," although the servile imitation of those greatly admired works unquestionably went for much in causing the overwhelming flood of pastorals which deluged Italy immediately subsequent to their enormous success.
I have said that it would be difficult to assign a preëminence to either of these poems. But it must not be supposed that it is intended thence to insinuate an equality between the authors of them. Tasso would occupy no lower place on the Italian Parnassus if he had never written the "Aminta." His fame rests upon a very much larger and firmer basis. But Guarini would be nowhere—would not be heard of at all—had he not written the "Pastor Fido." Having, however, produced that work—a work of which forty editions are said to have been printed in his lifetime, and which has been translated into almost every civilised language, including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—he has always filled a space in the eyes of his countrymen, and occupied a position in the roll of fame, which render his admission as one of our select band here imperative. He is, besides, a representative poet; the head and captain of the pastoral school, which attained everywhere so considerable a vogue, and in Italy such colossal proportions.
Guarini was born in the year 1537 in Ferrara,—desolate, dreary, shrunken, grass-grown, tumble-down Ferrara, which in the course of one half-century gave to the world, besides a host of lesser names, three such poets as Tasso, Ariosto and Guarini. Ariosto died four years before Guarini was born; but Tasso was nearly his contemporary, being but seven years his junior.
In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona, where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370, taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. He lived to be ninety years old, and is recorded to have had twenty-three sons. It is certain that he had twelve living in 1438. One of them, Giovanni Batista, succeeded his father in his professorship at Ferrara, to which city the old scholar had been invited by Duke Hercules I. It would seem that another of his sons must also have shared the work of teaching in the University of Ferrara: for Batista the poet was educated by his great-uncle Alessandro, and succeeded him in his professorship. Of the poet's father we only learn that he was a mighty hunter, and further, that he and his poet-son were engaged in litigation respecting the inheritance of the poet's grandfather and great-uncle. It is probable that the two old scholars wished to bequeath their property, which included a landed estate, to their grandson and great-nephew, who already was manifesting tastes and capacities quite in accordance with their own, rather than to that exceptional member of the race who cared for nothing but dogs and horses.
Nor was Batista the last of his race who distinguished himself in the same career. His son succeeded him in his chair at the university; and we have thus at least four generations of scholars and professors following the same course in the same university, which was in their day one of the most renowned in Europe.
All this sounds very stable, very prosperous, very full of the element of contentment. And there is every reason to believe that the great-grandfather, the grandfather, the great-uncle, the son, were all as tranquil and contented and happy as well-to-do scholars in a prosperous university city should be. But not so the poet. His life was anything but tranquil, or happy, or contented. The lives of few men, it may be hoped, have been less so.
Yet his morning was brilliant enough. He distinguished himself so remarkably by his success in his early studies that, on the death of his great-uncle Alexander when he was only nineteen, he was appointed to succeed him. This was in 1556, when Hercules II. was Duke of Ferrara, and when that court of the Este princes was at the apogee of its splendour, renown, and magnificence. The young professor remained working at the proper labours of his profession for ten years; and they were in all probability the best and happiest, the only happy ones of hislife. Happy is the nation, it has been said, which has no history; and much the same probably may be said of an individual. Respecting these ten years of Guarini's life but little has been recorded. No doubt the chronicle of them would have been monotonous enough. The same quiet duties quietly and successfully discharged; the same morning walk to his school, the same evening return from it, through the same streets, with salutations to the same friends, and leisurely pauses by the way to chat, Italian fashion, with one and another, as they were met in the streets, not then, as now, deserted, grass-grown, and almost weird in their pale sun-baked desolation, but thronged with bustling citizens, mingled with gay courtiers, and a very unusually large proportion of men whose names were known from one end of Italy to the other. Those school haunts in the Ferrarese University were haunts which the world-weary ex-professor must often throughout the years of his remaining life—some forty-five of them, for he did not die till 1612, when he was seventy-five—have looked back on as the best and happiest of his storm-tossed existence.
There is, however, one record belonging to this happy time which must not be forgotten. It was at Padua,Padova la dotta, as she has been in all ages and is still called, Padua the learned, in the year 1565. Guarini was then in his twenty-eighth year, and had been a professor at Ferrara for the last eight years. Probably it was due to the circumstance that his friend and fellow-townsman, Torquato Tasso, was then pursuing his studies at Padua, that the young Ferrarese professor turned his steps in that direction, bound "on a long vacation ramble." Tasso was only one-and-twenty at the time; but he was already a member of the famous Paduan Academy of the "Etherials," which Guarini was not. And we may readily fancy the pride and pleasure with which the younger man, doing the honours of the place to his learned friend, procured him to be elected a member of the "Etherials." Guarini (so callednel secolo—in the world), wasIl Costante—the "Constant One" among the "Etherials." Scipio Gonzaga, who became subsequently the famous Cardinal, spoke an oration of welcome to him on his election. Then what congratulations, what anticipations of fame, what loving protestations of eternal friendship, what naïve acceptance of the importance and serious value of their Etherial Academic play, as the two youths strolling at the evening hour among the crowds of gravely clad but in no wise gravely speaking students who thronged the colonnades in deep shadow under their low-browed arches, sally forth from beneath them as the sun nears the west, on to the vast open space which lies around the great church of St. Antony! Advancing in close talk they come up to Donatello's superb equestrian statue of the Venetian General Gattamelata, and lean awhile against the tall pedestal, finishing their chat before entering the church for the evening prayer.
The "Etherials" of Padua constituted one of the innumerable "Academies" which existed at that day and for a couple of centuries subsequently in every one of the hundred cities of Italy. The "Arcadian"craze was the generating cause of all of them. All the members were "shepherds;" all assumed a fancy name on becoming a member, by which they were known in literary circles; and every Academy printed all the rhymes its members strung together!
Those must have been pleasant days in old Padua, before the young Professor returned to his work in the neighbouring university of Ferrara. The two young men were then, and for some time afterwards, loving friends; for they had not yet become rival poets.
At the end of those ten years of university life he may be said to have entered on a new existence—to have begun life afresh—so entirely dis-severed was his old life from the new that then opened on him. Alphonso II., who had succeeded his father, Hercules II., as Duke of Ferrara in 1559, "called him to the court" in 1567, and he began life as a courtier, or a "servant" of the Duke, in the language of the country and time.
Well, in 1567 he entered into the service of the Duke, his sovereign, and never had another happy or contented hour!
The first service on which the Duke employed him, and for the performance of which he seems specially to have taken him from his professional chair, was an embassy to Venice, to congratulate the new Doge, Pietro Loredano, on his elevation to the ducal throne, to which he had been elected on the previous 19th of June. On this occasion the Professor was created Cavaliere, a title to which his landed estate of Guarina, so called from the ancestor on whom it had been originally bestowed by a former duke, fairly entitled him.
Shortly afterwards he was sent as ambassador to the court of Turin; and then to that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innspruck. Then he was twice sent to Poland; the first time on the occasion of the election of Henry the Third of France to the throne of that kingdom; and the second time when Henry quitted it to ascend that of France on the death of his brother Charles IX. The object of this second embassy was to intrigue for the election to the Polish crown of Alphonso. But, as it is hardly necessary to say, his mission was unsuccessful.
It seems, too, to have been well-nigh fatal to the ambassador. There is extant a letter written from Warsaw to his wife, which gives a curious and interesting account of the sufferings he endured on the journey and at the place of his destination. He tells his wife not to be discontented that his silence has been so long, but to be thankful that it was not eternal, as it was very near being! "I started, as you know, more in the fashion of a courier than of an ambassador. And that would have been more tolerable if bodily fatigue had been all. But the same hand that had to flog the horses by day, had to hold the pen by night. Nature could not bear up against this double labour of body and mind; especially after I had travelled by Serravelles and Ampez,[48]which is more disagreeable and difficult than I can tell you, from the ruggedness noless of the country than of the people, from the scarcity of horses, the miserable mode of living, and the want of every necessary. So much so that on reaching Hala[49]I had a violent fever. I embarked, however, for Vienna notwithstanding. What with fever, discouragement, an intense thirst, scarcity of remedies and of medical assistance, bad lodging, generally far to seek,[50]and often infected with disease, food disgusting, even to persons in health, bed where you are smothered in feathers, in a word, none of the necessaries or comforts of life! I leave you to imagine what I have suffered. The evil increased; my strength grew less. I lost my appetite for everything save wine. In a word, little hope remained to me of life, and that little was odious to me. There is on the Danube, which I was navigating, a vast whirlpool, so rapid that if the boatmen did not avail themselves of the assistance of a great number of men belonging to the locality, strong and powerful and well acquainted with the danger, who are there constantly for the purpose, and who struggle with their oars against the rapacious gulf, there is not a vessel in that great river which would not be engulfed! The place is worthy of the name of "the Door of Death," which with a notoriety of evil fame it has gained for itself. There is no passenger so bold as not to pass that bit of the course of the river on foot; for the thing is truly formidable and terrible. But I was so overcome by illness, that having lost all sense of danger or desire to live, I did not care to leave the boat, but remained in it, with those strong men, I hardly know whether to say stupidly or intrepidly—but I will say intrepidly, since at one point, where I was within an ace of destruction, I felt no fear."
He goes on to tell how at Vienna a physician treated him amiss, and made him worse; how every kind of consideration, and his own desire to save his life, counselled him to delay there; but how the honour, the responsibility of the embassy wholly on his shoulders, his duty to his sovereign prevailed to drive him onwards. He feared, too, lest it should be supposed at Warsaw that he preferred his life to the business on which he came, an accusation which might have been made use of by suspicious and malignant adversaries to deprive him of all the credit of his labours, and "to snatch from my Prince the crown which we are striving to place on his head. It is impossible to imagine," he continues, "what I suffered in that journey of more than six hundred miles from Vienna to Warsaw, dragged rather than carried in carts, broken and knocked to pieces. I wonder that I am still alive! The obstinate fever, the want of rest, of food, and of medicine, the excessive cold, the infinite hardships, the uninhabited deserts, were killing me. More often than not it was a much lesser evil to crouch by night in the cart, which dislocated my bones by day, rather than to be suffocated in the foulness of those dens, or stables rather, where the dogs and cats, the cocks and hens, and the geese, the pigs and the calves, and sometimes the children, kept me waiting."
He proceeds to tell how the country was overrun, in that time of interregnum, by lawless bands of Cossacks; how he was obliged to travel with a strong escort, but nevertheless was obliged several times to deviate from the direct road to avoid the Cossacks, but on two occasions had very narrow escapes from falling into their hands. When he reached Warsaw at last, more dead than alive, the only improvement of his position was that he was stationary instead of in motion. "The cart no more lacerates my limbs!" But there was no rest to be got. "The place, the season, the food, the drink, the water, the servants, the medicines, the doctors, mental trouble, and a thousand other ills make up my torment. Figure to yourself all the kingdom lodged in one little town, and my room in the midst of it! There is no place from the top to the bottom, on the right or on the left, by day or by night, that is not full of tumult and noise. There is no special time here destined for business. Negotiation is going on always, because drinking is going on always; and business is dry work without wine. When business is over, visits begin; and when these are at an end, drums, trumpets, bombs, uproar, cries, quarrels, fighting, split one's head in a manner piteous to think of. Ah! if I suffered all this labour and this torment for the love and the glory of God, I should be a martyr!" (one thinks of Wolsey!) "But is he not worthy of the name who serves without hope of recompense?"
He concludes his letter, bidding his wife not to weep for him, but to live and care for her children, in a manner which indicates that he had even then but little hope of returning alive.
We are nevertheless assured by his biographers that he acquitted himself upon all these occasions in such sort as to give satisfaction to his sovereign and to acquire for himself the reputation of an upright and able minister. The Italian practice of entrusting embassies especially to men of letters, which we first had occasion to note when tracing the vicissitudes of the life of Dante in the thirteenth century, which we saw subsequently exemplified in the cases of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and which might be further exemplified in the persons of many other Italian scholars and men of letters, still, as we see, prevailed in the sixteenth century, and continued to do so for some little time longer.
But in no one instance, of all those I have mentioned, does the poet thus employed in functions which in other lands and other times have usually led to honours and abundant recognition of a more solid kind, appear to have reaped any advantage in return for the service performed, or to have been otherwise than dissatisfied and discontented with the treatment accorded to him.
It would have been very interesting to learn somewhat of the impression made upon an Italian scholar of the sixteenth century by the places visited, and persons with whom he must have come in contact in thosetransalpine lands, which were then so far off, so contrasted in all respects with the home scenes among which his life had been passed in the low-lying, fat, and fertile valley of the Po. Of all this his various biographers and contemporaries tell us no word! But there is a volume of his letters, a little square quarto volume, now somewhat rare, printed at Venice in the year 1595.[51]These letters have somewhat unaccountably not been included in any of the editions of his works, and they are but little known. But turning to this little volume, and looking over the dates of the letters (many of them, however, are undated), I found three written "Di Spruch," and eagerly turned to them, thinking that I should certainly find there what I was seeking. The letters belong to a later period of Guarini's life, having been written in 1592, when he was again sent on an embassy to the German Emperor. This circumstance, however, is of no importance as regards the purpose for which I wanted the letters. I was disappointed. But I must nevertheless give one of these letters, not wantonly to compel my reader to share my disappointment, but because it is a curiosity in its way. The person to whom he writes is a lady, the Contessa Pia di Sala, with whom he was evidently intimate. He is at Innspruck at the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. The lady is at Mantua, and this is what he writes to her: