h
of the complete works of Calderon. Two experimental volumes,
containing six dramas of the same author, appeared in 1853, winning the
well-merited encomium of every person of true taste into whose hands
they happened to fall. The Translator was encouraged, if not by the
general chorus of popular applause, by the precious and emphatic
approbation of those best entitled by knowledge and accomplishments to
pronounce judgment. So here, after an interval of seven years, we have
right worthily presented to us three of those famous Autos, which for
two centuries drew together all the multitude of the Madrilenos, on
the annual return of the great feast of Corpus Christi. On that same
self-same festival, in a northern land, under a gray and clouded sky, in
the heart of a city most unlike gay, garden-hued, out-of-door Madrid, we
have spent the long hours over these resurrected dramas, and the spell
of both the poets is still upon us, as we unite together, in dutiful
juxtaposition, the names of Calderon and Mac-Carthy.

"How richly gifted was this Spanish priest-poet! this pious
playwright! this moral mechanist! this devout dramatist! How rare his
experience! how broad the contrasts of his career, and of his
observation. . . . . Happy poet! blessed with such fecundity! Happy
Christian! blessed with such fidelity to the divine teachings of the
Cross. . . .

"Very highly do we reverence Calderon, and very highly value his
translator; yet, if it be not presumptuous to say so, we venture to
suggest that Mac-Carthy might find nearer home another work still
worthier of his genius than these translations. Now that he has got the
imperial ear by bringing his costly wares from afar, are there not
laurels to be gathered as well in Ireland as in Spain? The author of
'The Bell-Founder', of 'St. Brendan's Voyage', of 'The Foray of Con
O'Donnell', and 'The Pillar Towers', needs no prompting to discern what
abundant materials for a new department of English poetry are to be
found almost unused on Irish ground. May we not hope that in that field
or forest he may find his appointed work, adding to the glory of first
worthily introducing Calderon to the English readers of this century,
the still higher glory of doing for the neglected history of his
fatherland what he has chivalrously done for the illustrious Spaniard".

A LIST
OF
Calderon's Dramas and Autos Sacramentales,

Translated into English Verse
BY DENIS FLORENCE MAC