" T MUST learn Spanish one of these days," wrote
Robert
Browning ; but he was too much wrapped up. in Italy to carry out his intention. It is astonishing that this easy and beautiful language remains unknown to so many Englishmen. Spanish scholars in England have been singularly few, and if we compare the number of persons who are writing about things Spanish at the present day in England, France, and. America, we must he surprised at our supineness. Yet it is a language which holds out every incentive to study. Spoken by twenty million inhabitants of Spain and by a vast population, rapidly
increasing in number and importance, in South America, it is, with English and Portuguese, one of the three languages most necessary to commerce ; in sheer beauty it rivals Italian, it has a vigorous literature of eight centuries, and its pronunciation is comparatively easy, far less difficult than Portuguese for Englishmen. The supreme book of Spanish literature, Don Quixote., has been translated into every language and has become as universal. as Shakespeare ; yet who would care to read Shake- speare only in a Spanish translation 1. There are a large number, of Spanish books which lose far more than Don Quixote in trans- lation ; in fact, they cannot be translated without losing all their spice and charm and that scent of the soil which makes up a great part of their worth, the old Castilian romances, for instance, or the se:manillas (mountain songs) of the North-West, or many of the modern novels. Yet we cannot neglect these without foolishly and willinglyimpoverishing ourselves. The fascination of travelling in Spain is greatly increased by acquaintance with modem Spanish novels, for, apart from regional literature in various languages, comparatively slight in Basque and the bable poetry of Asturias, but more copious and interesting in Galician and Catalan, there are novels written in Spanish (Castilian) which contain curious and delightful descriptions of whatever region you may choose to visit. If you go to Oviedo, is it not the Vetusta of Leopoldo Alas' great novel La Regenta I If you go to Santander, the town and all the mountain country at its back live in the work of Pereda, as Seville lives in the pages of Palacio Valdes- or. Toledo in Perez GaldOs''Angel Guerra.. For Asturias we have the celebrated, novels of Don Armando Palacio Valdes, for Galioia those of the Condesa de Pardo Bazan and Don RamOn del Valki Inclan. The latter and Don Pio Baroja and others have written of the Basque country, and Don Vicente Blasco Ihkfiez has. made the region of Valencia. peculiarly his own. Seiler Perez Gald4s, Sailor Pie6n, " Azorin," Don Ricardo Loon have, among many others, described Castile; while Andalacia charms ma in the stories of. Foram Caballero or Juan Valera..
If, however, weset aside mere literary enjoyment, inno country.
does the traveller derive greater advantage from knowing the, language than in. Spain.. The ordinary Spaniard is illiterate, he is perfectly unacquainted with other countries, and hale a creature of foams and: formulas. The accepted custom of centuries is. good,, and if you do. nott observe: it you cannot. be an hombre. formal- If you cannot speak any- Spanish, if you do not make: an offer of your food before eating it, if .you do: not sign your. letters -with a q.b.s.tra (or p.): "who- kisses your bands" (or, feet), you are, apt to be: set. down not, merely, as an ignorant; foreigner but as mal.elevi—neither a Christian . nor a caballero. Otherwise why did you not do what every one does ? It is, only the Spaniard's courtesy that smoothes. the path of' the: foreigner.
There are a few pages in. modem Spanish novels. which vie with the worst of the French naturalistic school, but this is very rare among Spanish writers, whose works show a humour, frankness, and independence of character which are delightful to English readers. The two novelists best known to English readers are probably Perez Galdos and Palaeio Valdes. The whole of Spain's modern history, and nearly every Spanish province, is studied in the five series of the former's National Episodes.
They form a delightful commentary to the late Henry Butler
Clarke's Modern Spain (Cambridge, 1906). In criticism no scholar can afford to be unacquainted with the work of Menendez
Pelayo, and his example has. been taken up by a large number
of Spanish scholars. It is worth calling special attention to the very full bibliography of the new Reviata de Filologia Espanola,
under the editorship of Don Berm% Menendez Pidal. The basis
and starting-point for all English-speaking persons will be Professor James Fitzmaurice-Kelly's History of Spanish Litera- ture. If one is asked what edition should be used, the answer
to this question should in itself cause us to wonder whether all is right with the world of study in England. The first edition of this work appeared in English in 1898. During the last twenty years Spanish studies have made such rapid progress that the author has not only revised but rewritten his work. Not, however, in English, but in French (two editions) and Spanish (three editions). Those who read English only must content themselves with the now wholly inadequate edition of 1898, or with the untrustworthy history of the American, George Ticknor.
There are at the present time many conflicts in Spain, that for instance between the intransigent and the liberal Roman Catholics, between those who wish Spain to become more Euro- pean and those who have no such desire, between Castilian and Catalan, regionalist and nationalist, revolutionary and reformer, between the defenders of the old style of Spanish poetry and. the admirers of the new. But no question is discussed with more ardour than that of casticismo ; that is, whether the narrow traditions of pure Castiliau shall be maintained or the boundaries of the language be enlarged so as to include even a multitude of ga2icismos (Frenchisms). Some writers seem to think that by merely docking a word of its tail it becomes legitimate Spanish. Thus we have plafon. (plafond) or mitin (meeting) or infervia (interview). The beginner in the study of Spanish will do well to be a purist and to start with the novels of Valera, GaldOs, or Pereda. Certainly no language, except perhaps Greek and French, has more to offer. Some minds would, indeed, prefer to be Frenchless than to have no Spanish, for the very reason that French is more universal and familiar, Spanish more fresh and indigenous. As to German, a competent staff of translators could give the nation all that it needs from that source. It is well known that even when German writers have valuable ideas to express, the style in which they express them does not as a rule add to their clearness or value. Moreover, the most modern German is often a strange jargon (something like most reoent German music), for, perhaps in view of their coming conquest of the world, it was choked with foreign words : one comes across such phrases as. sine fashionable Mode—s. French noun and an English adjective piloted by a German article. Happily no Spanish writer could use such a phrase without a storm of protest.
If any be inclined to- consider Spanish a dead language, he is marvellously mistaken. Its literature is flourishing in the twentieth century : there are writers of great excel- lence at Madrid, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires. A modern poet who has some claims to greatness is a Nicaraguan, Ruben Dario (1867-1916), and one of the most momentous facts of to-day is the renewal of the Spanish language and literature by South American writers. Everything points to a splendid future for Spanish. Let us then make it impossible to say that while Spanish writers, like the pitchers. of a Spanish well, pour forth living water, the British public, like the mule which turns the well, continues to plod, blindly on its beaten track. There is more pleasure and profit to be had from the reading in Spanish of the Poema del Old or the Copies of Jorge Manrique than from reading abstruse German philosophers in German. If we will not open our eyes, for pleasure, we must do so from patriotism, since, now that we can no longer afford to remain insular, we have everything to. gain from& closer relations, with the other countries of Europe. A transparent dearness has been the aim and achievement of most ;Castilian writers, but it has been a notable error for us to believe that what is clear and simple is not worth imderatanding. By refusing, to learn Spanish we voluntarily shut ourselves out from a new kingdom, rich, delightful, and unique.
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