came like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low. The spring returned with its showers; no leaf of mine arose ! The virgins saw me silent in the hall; they touched the harp of joy. The tear was on the cheek of Malvina: the virgins beheld me in my grief. Why art thou sad? they said, thou first of the maids of Lutha? Was he lovely as the beam of the morning, and stately in thy sight?'

"Pleasant is thy song in Ossian's ear, daughter of streamy Lutha! Thou hast heard the music of departed bards in the dream of thy rest, when sleep fell on thine eyes, at the murmur of Moruth. When thou didst return from the chase, in the day of the sun, thou hast heard the music of bards, and thy song is lovely! It is lovely, O Malvina! but it melts the soul. There is a joy in grief when peace dwells in the breast of the sad. But sorrow wastes the mournful, O daughter of Toscar! and their days are few! They fall away, like the flower on which the sun hath looked in his strength, after the mildew has passed over it, when its head is heavy with the drops of night. Attend to the tale of Ossian, O maid! He remembers the days of his youth!

Read in tears, daughter of our love, the opening and the close of Berrathron-the last of Ossian's songs.

Bend thy blue course, O stream! round the narrow plain of Lutha. Let the green woods hang over it, from their hills; the sun look on it at noon. The thistle is there on its rock, and shakes its beard to the wind. The flower hangs its heavy head, waving at times, to the gale. 'Why dost thou awake me, O gale?' it seems to say: 'I am covered with the drops of heaven. The time of my fading is near, the blast that shall scatter my leaves. Tomorrow shall the traveller come: he that saw me in my beauty shall come. His eyes will search the field, but they will not find me,' So shall they search in vain for the voice of Cona, after it has failed in the field. The hunter shall come forth in the morning, and the voice of my harp shall not be heard. 'Where is the son of car-borne Fingal? The tear will be on his cheek! Then come thou, O Malvina; with all thy music, come! Lay Ossian in the plain of Lutha: let his tomb rise in the lovely field.

"Malvina! where art thou, with thy songs, with the soft sound of thy steps? Son of Alpin, art thou near? where is the daughter of Toscar? I passed, O son of Fingal, by Torlutha's mossy walls. The smoke of the hall was ceased. Silence was among the trees of the hill. The voice of the chase was over. I saw the daughters of the bow. I asked about Malvina, but

they answered not. They turned their faces away: thin darkness covered their beauty. They were like stars, on a rainy hill, by night, each looking faintly through her mist."

"Pleasant be thy rest, O lovely beam! soon hast thou set on our hills! The steps of thy departure were stately, like the moon, on the blue-trembling wave. But thou hast left us in darkness, first of the maids of Lutha! We sit at the rock, and there is no voice; no light but the meteor of fire! Soon hast thou set, O Malvina, daughter of generous Toscar! But thou risest like the beam of the east, among the spirits of thy friends, where they sit, in their stormy halls, the chambers of the thunder! A cloud hovers over Cona. Its blue curling sides are high. The winds are beneath it, with their wings. Within it is the dwelling of Fingal. There the hero sits in darkness. His airy spear is in his hand. His shield, half-covered with clouds, is like the darkened moon; when one-half still remains in the wave, and the other looks sickly on the field!

"His friends sit around the king, on mist! They hear the songs of Ullin: he strikes the half-viewless harp. He raises the feeble voice. The lesser heroes, with a thousand meteors, light the airy hall. Malvina rises in the midst; a blush is on her cheek. She beholds the unknown faces of her fathers. She turns aside her humid eyes. Art thou come so soon?' said Fingal, daughter of generous Toscar! Sadness dwells in the halls of Lutha. My aged son is sad! I hear the breeze of Cona, that was wont to lift thy heavy locks. It comes to the hall, but thou art not there. Its voice is mournful among the arms of thy fathers! Go, with thy rustling wing, O breeze! sigh on Malvina's tomb. It rises yonder beneath the rock, at the blue stream of Lutha. The maids are departed to their place. Thou alone, O breeze, mournest there!'

"But who comes from the dusky west, supported on a cloud? A smile is on his gray, watery face. His locks of mist fly on wind. He bends forward on his airy spear. It is thy father, Malvina! Why shinest thou, so soon, on our clouds,' he says,

O lovely light of Lutha? But thou wert sad, my daughter. Thy friends had passed away. The sons of little men were in the hall. None remained of the heroes, but Ossian king of spears!'

"And dost thou remember Ossian, carborne Toscar, son of Conloch? The battles of our youth were many. Our swords went together to the field. They saw us coming like two falling rocks. The sons of the stranger fled. There come the warriors of Cona!' they said. Their steps

are in the paths of the flying!' Draw near, son of Alpin, to the song of the aged. The deeds of other times are in my soul. My memory beams on the days that are past: on the days of mighty Toscar, when our path was in the deep. Draw near, son of Alpin, to the last sound of the voice of Cona!"

The son of Alpin must now be his guide, but not long-for Ossian may not survive Malvina. Hesings to the son of the friend of his youth a dying song of his own deeds of old, and of Toscar, the father of her, the beloved one, now a ghost; and this is the farewell of Ossian.

"Such were my deeds, son of Alpin, when the arm of my youth was strong. Such the actions of Toscar, the car-borne son of Conloch. But Toscar is on his flying cloud. I am alone at Lutha. My voice is like the last sound of the wind, when it forsakes the woods. But Ossian shall not be long alone. He sees the mist that shall receive his ghost. He beholds the mist that shall form his robe, when he appears on his hills. The sons of feeble men shall behold

me, and admire the stature of the chiefs of old. They shall creep to their caves. They shall look to the sky with fear: for my steps shall be in the clouds. Darkness shall roll on my side.

"Lead, son of Alpin, lead the aged to his woods. The winds begin to rise. The dark wave of the lake resounds. Bends there not a tree from Mora with its branches bare? It bends, son of Alpin, in the rustling blast. My harp hangs on a blasted branch. The sound of its strings is mournful. Does the wind touch thee, O harp, or is it some passing ghost? It is the hand of Malvina! Bring me the harp, son of Alpin. Another song shall rise. My soul shall depart in the sound. My fathers shall hear it in their airy hall. Their dim faces shall hang with joy from their clouds; and their hands receive their son.

The

aged oak bends over the stream. It sighs

with all its moss. The withered fern whistles near, and mixes, as it waves, with Ossian's hair.

"" Strike the harp, and raise the song: be near, with all your wings, ye winds. Bear the mournful sound away to Fingal's airy hall. Bear it to Fingal's hall, that he may hear the voice of his son: the voice of him that praised the mighty!

"" The blast of the north opens thy gates, O king! I behold thee sitting on mist dimly gleaming in all thine arms. Thy form now is not the terror of the valiant. It is like a watery cloud; when we see the stars behind it with their weeping eyes, Thy shield

is the aged moon: thy sword a vapour half kindled with fire. Dim and feeble is the chief who travelled in brightness before! But thy steps are on the winds of the desert. The storms are darkening in thy hand. Thou takest the sun in thy wrath, and hidest him in thy clouds. The sons of little men are afraid. A thousand showers descend. But when thou comest forth in thy mildness, the gale of the morning is near thy course. The sun laughs in his blue fields. The gray stream winds in its vale. The bushes shake their green heads in the wind. The roes bound toward the desert.

""There is a murmur in the heath! the stormy winds abate! I hear the voice of Fingal. Long has it been absent from mine ear! "Come, Ossian, come away," he says. Fingal has received his fame. We passed away, like flames that had shone for a season. Our departure was in renown. Though the plains of our battles are dark and silent, our fame is in the four gray stones. The voice of Ossian has been heard. The harp has been strung in Selma. "Come, Ossian, come away," he says; come, fly with thy fathers on clouds." I come, I come, thou king of men! The life of Ossian fails. I begin to vanish on Cona. My steps are not seen in Selma. Beside the stone of Mora I shall fall asleep. The winds whistling in my gray hair, shall not awaken me. Depart on thy wings, O wind, thou canst not disturb the rest of the bard. The night is long, but his eyes are heavy. Depart, thou rustling blast.

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""But why art thou sad, son of Fingal? Why grows the cloud of thy soul? The chiefs of other times are departed. They have gone without their fame. The sons of future years shall pass away. Another race shall arise. The people are like the waves of ocean; like the leaves of woody Morven, they pass away in the rustling blast, and other leaves lift their green heads on high.

""Did thy beauty last, O Ryno? Stood the strength of car-borne Oscar? Fingal himself departed! The halls of his fathers

forgot his steps. Shalt thou then remain, thou aged bard! when the mighty have failed? But my fame shall remain, and grow like the oak of Morven; which lifts its broad head to the storm, and rejoices in the course of the wind.'"

And now, our good children, when asked, HAVE YOU READ OSSIAN ? you will answer, "Yes-at the feet of Christopher." The mirthful are often the most melancholy, and know best that there is " a joy in grief." That is the chief charm of the poetry at which you have now been looking, as at the

WITH the exception of some scenes from Lopé and Guillen de Castro, contained in Lord Holland's Life of Lopé de Vega, the first English specimens of translation from the Spanish Theatre, we believe, appeared in this Magazine; where Lopé's Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas,* and Calderon's Devotion of the Cross, his Courtesy not Love, and his Dancing-Master, were analysed at length, with liberal extracts, in which the peculiarities of the Spanish dramatic versification, on which so much of the effect of the original depends, were in general imitated in English. These specimens of that noble theatre, it is our intention intention, from time to time, to resume: and in the mean time, to preface our translations by some general remarks on the greatest ornament of the Spanish drama, Calderon de la Barca.

We know little of the private life of Shakspeare. The incidents of his his tory, prior to his leaving Warwickshire, are few and doubtful. Even the incidents of his theatrical career in London, so far as they are establish ed from any authentic sources, afford but slight glimpses of the outward surface of the poet's character; and after his return to Stratford, his life is for the biographer a mere blank. As a man, in short, Shakspeare is to us little more than a name.

This want of authentic materials for the private history of one, who, even in his own day, was the object of some interest and curiosity, and whose dramas had certainly eclipsed in popularity those of his predecessors and contemporaries, may, however, in Shakspeare's case, have been in some degree accounted for by the fact, that his habits and employments disinclined him to letter-writing, while his theatrical associates and rival authors were too much occupied with their own bustling and precarious employments, to find time for recording the memorabilia of a brother dramatist, whose vast superiority to themselves their very proximity to him prevented them from appreciating.

The extreme meagreness of our information, however, with regard to the prince of Spanish dramatists, Calderon de la Barca, is more unaccountable, when we recollect, that from about 1628 to his death in 1687, he lived at the Spanish Court, the favourite of two successive monarchs, Philip IV. and Charles II.- that he was a man of rank and of learning, enjoying all the sweets of lettered ease that his fame, eclipsing even that of Lopé, was spread over all Europe, and his pieces imitated on every stage. And yet, of his personal history we know nothing more, at the present day, than what is contained in the meagre notice prefixed by his friend

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and editor, Don Juan de Vera Tassis, to the collected edition of his works, (undertaken by him in 1685,) in which the incidents are as scanty as the style is pompous and unmeaning. The substance of the whole is simply this: That he was the descendant of a noble family, and born in 1601; that he studied at Salamanca, and afterwards served during some campaigns in Italy and Flanders; that in consequence of the success of some of his earlier dramas, he was invited by Philip IV. (himself a passionate admirer of the drama, and, it is said, the author of some theatrical pieces of tolerable merit,) to the court of Madrid, where he received the appointment of court poet, and continued till 1652, (when he entered into holy orders,) to pour out tragedies and comedies for the stage, with equal facility, brilliancy, and success. From that time to his death, his compositions, though in a dramatic form, and not unfrequently on subjects of a secular character, were chiefly Autos Sacramentales, and Loas, pieces of a spiritual, moral, or religious character. The whole number of his plays conPlays tained in Vera Tassis' collection, (excluding those on religious subjects,) amounts to a hundred and eight. Twelve others, intended by Vera Tassis for the tenth volume of his works, were never printed, and are supposed to be now lost.

The number here mentioned is great; but, after all, the dramatic activity of Calderon is scarcely greater than that of Shakspeare. The thirty-six plays of Shakspeare range over a period of only seventeen years, (1597 to 1614;) the one hundred and twenty of Calderon --if Schlegel's statement be correct, that he began to write for the stage when only fourteen years old-must be distributed over a period of seventy-three years, in which case his fertility, though still great, is by no means astonishing. It would be a mistake, no doubt, to suppose that Calderon rivalled or sought to rival the almost preternatural rapidity of Lopé, to whom twenty-four hours, it is said, were sufficient for the composition of a play. On the contrary, his plots were generally carefully studied and digested, the combinations of the intrigue very artfully and elaborately prepared, the brilliant passages in his dramas highly wrought up; though long practice and extensive acquaintance with the stage,

coupled with the facilities afforded by a musical language, copious in rhymes, and by occasional repetitions of the same incidents and imagery, enabled him to produce a drama in a space of time, which, though long if compared with that usually given by Lopé to his brilliant improvisations, certainly appears wonderfully short in comparison with that which an English dramatist would have bestowed upon a play of corresponding length.

It is certainly singular, that in the case of a person so distinguished as Calderon, enjoying in his own day the favour of successive sovereigns, and the proud title of "Phoenix of Poets," no life but this meagre memorial of Vera Tassis should have appeared; and that no correspondence, or documents illustrative of his character or his poetical views, have yet been published. It is difficult to believe that such materials do not exist in Spain, if sufficient zeal and perseverance were bestowed on their acquisition: and we could scarcely point out a subject of greater interest and novelty for a critical biography than that which a life of Calderon, constructed from materials of sufficient minuteness and personal interest, combined with an impartial and temperate appreciation of his works, would afford.

The task would undoubtedly be a difficult one. The sudden and total neglect into which not only the works of Calderon, but that of all the Spanish dramatists of the early school, sank upon the introduction of the French taste into Spain, under the Bourbons, and from which, in their own country, they have never emerged, has left the theatre of Calderon with a most corrupted and mutilated text-so corrupt, indeed, as to be occasionally unintelligible, notwithstanding the attempts at emendation by Vera Tassis and Apontes. Frequently nothing exists, except the internal evidence of style, or allusions to passing events, or the date of representation, to mark the date of the composition of any particular play. All of them are left without the slightest commentary to explain the many difficulties arising sometimes from a real obscurity in the ideas themselves, sometimes from a form of expression now antiquated, sometimes from plays on words which escapethe notice of the foreign readerand still more frequently from the per