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a kind and affectionate husband. For it is contrary to common sense to believe, that he could have sought or fostered conjugal happiness while he was spending his nights rambling about the woods in lover-like despair; and his days in addressing to the object of his wild flame, such verses as the cantiga before quoted. Certain it is, that after his vain and daring visit to Savoy, he resigned his post at the Court of Lisbon, and withdrew into retirement. But whether it were, that the court had grown distasteful to him from the absence of Beatrix; or that his mind had become enlightened on the true nature of his duties, and the true source whence he should seek for happiness, we have not data to decide. Perhaps these, and other motives and feelings mingled and worked together; for, according to a sensible German proverb: "Everything in the world has more than one reason." "Alle Dinge haben ein paar Ursachen."

In Ribeyro's retirement his own slighted wife became so much endeared to him, that when she died, his excessive grief for her loss threw him into a deep melancholy, from which he never recovered, and he did not long survive her; but the date of his death is not recorded.

We are unacquainted with the personal history of poor Donna Ribeyro; but she appears to have been one of those "obscure martyrs," and domestic heroines of endurance, whose memorials the recording angel loves to confine to his own pen. She must have been

meek, patient, devoted, and magnanimous; since, insulted by her husband's avowed preference of another, neglected and deserted for a worse than phantom love, still, forbearing and forgiving, with an enduring tenderness, and a generous pity, she re-conquered his rebel heart back to its lawful alle. giance (a greater and more difficult victory than any achieved on the battle field), soothing his retreat, and rendering herself so necessary to his well-being, that without her his life became a blank. Donna Ribeyro, however, had not had the pain of seeing herself cast aside for an unworthy, or degrading object. She had no cause to despise her husband; and could, there

fore, the more easily forgive, and the more cordially desire to win back his alienated, but not disgraced affections. A degraded heart she would neither have hoped nor wished to recover.

Besides his poems, Ribeyro wrote a prose romance, which is entitled "Menina e Moça,' (i. e. the Young and Innocent Maiden). It is a singular composition, containing many passages of considerable beauty and pathos. Bouterwek says:—

"In point of intricacy this fragment has no parallel in the whole range of romantic literature. The mysterious Ribeyro has here employed all the powers of his inventive fancy, in giving utterance to his enthusiastic feelings, and in minutely expressing the sentiments of his heart; while, at the same time, he has confounded and changed characters and events so as to secure every circumstance and allusion against every malicious interpretation... It would be impossible to furnish an abstract of the tale of love and heroism which forms the subject of this romance. Even on a perusal of the whole, so great is the obscurity, that nothing can be comprehended of the circumstances without the utmost effort of attention. That Ribeyro has clothed, in the disguise of this story, the most interesting events of his own life, is a fact which admits of no doubt."

And as those "most interesting events" were closely connected with Donna Beatrix, it was of the highest importance that Ribeyro should mislead the conjectures and interpretations on that delicate subject; content to be the sole possessor of the key that unlocked those, to him, treasures of memory. The title of the fragmentary romance bears an allusion to the writer's hopeless love: "Menina e Moça; or, the Saudades of Bernardim Ribeyro." The word Saudades has no corresponding word in English, and must be translated paraphrastically. "It is the most refined, most tender, and ardent desires for something absent, accompanied with a solicitude and anxious regard, which cannot be expressed by one word in any other language." The nearest approach to the meaning of saudade, made by any single word with which we are acquainted is, the Latin desiderium; or the Greek, Пofes; but even those are far from the compre

History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature. † See Note to the Spectator, No. 201.

hensive expression of feeling in the Portuguese word.

Ribeyro's romance opens with the commencement of a narrative by a nameless lady, dwelling on a wild and lonely part of the sea shore. She relates, that while a young and innocent maiden (Meninà e Moça) she was carried away from her father's house to a foreign land, and from that period had been doomed to a life of solitude and wretchedness (apparently an allusion to the removal of Beatrix from Portugal to Savoy, and to her misfortunes on the spoliation of her husband's territories by the French).

The lady

proceeds to say, she has discovered a female still more unfortunate than herself (perhaps Ribeyro's neglected wife), and at this point the obscurity begins; for the Menina breaks off her promised story, and the second female becomes the speaker; lamenting the vanished. days of chivalry, and eulogising the virtues of the former knights and ladies. She says, the wild valleys which she inhabits were once the scene of brilliant and memorable events; but instead of relating them, or continuing her own adventures, she diverges into an intricate tale of love and valour, appertaining to the olden times of chivalry, which is left unfinished. The romance was never published by Ribeyro; from which circumstance, and from that of his never having concluded it, we may infer that the extravagance of his passion had become sobered down, by time and reason, and his long alienated affections had returned to their home, since he desisted from completing a work that would have testified to the continuance of an error, which he would once have called his constancy. It was not till after the author's death that the romance became known to the world.

Between Ribeyro and Petrarch are a few coincidences; both were natives of the genial south; both loved the wedded wives of other men, with a hopeless passion that gave a colouring to their whole lives; both dedicated their muse to the effusions of their love, and by such dedication obtained their celebrity. But the parallel proceeds no further; in their styles they were

widely dissimilar. True, both were addicted to conceits and plays upon words, Petrarch punning on his Laura, and the Laurel (Lauro), and Ribeyro on his own name, as Ribeiro, masculine, a river, and Ribeira, feminine, the river's bank, in allusion to his beloved one; but the style of Petrarch, who lived upwards of a century before Ribeyro, is as polished and studied as that of the later poet is plain and even careless. Petrarch is tender, but the feeling of Ribeyro is more earnest and energetic. It is evident that Petrarch wrote for public approval, but Ribeyro solely for his own gratification and solace. We may instance the sonnet of Petrarch which commences:

"Voi ch' ascoltate in rime sparse il suono Di quei sospiri, ond' io nudriva il core In sul mio primo giovenile errore."*

We cannot recollect in any of Ribeyro's poems a similar allusion to his probable readers or hearers; he never appears to have contemplated publicity. Neither Petrarch nor Ribeyro possessed much invention; but the mystery of the latter gives him an air of greater originality; the verse of both is soft and melodious, but from the genius of the two languages, the Italian poet seems somewhat effeminate beside the more manly Portuguese. In concluding our remarks, we would recommend the Italian reader to compare Petrarch's visionary canzone, mencing:

"Nel dolce tempo della prima etade,"

com

with Ribeyro's vision; he will be interested by some features of resemblance. The date of Ribeyro's death has not been recorded, consequently we do not know whether, like Petrarch, he survived the object of his long-cherished attachment.

Donna Beatrix is interesting to us, not only as the lady of a poet's love, but also as the niece of a celebrated Queen of England, on whose melancholy fate Shakspeare has exercised his pathetic powers; and thus a few concluding words relative to the Infanta's subsequent history may not be misplaced. Though married to an

* Ye who do hear, in these my scatter'd rhymes, The echo of the sighs with which my heart I nourish'd in the error of my youth.

amiable and devoted husband, the lot of Beatrix was one of many and deep sorrows. She was the mother of seven sons and three daughters, but of her eldest child, Adrian, she was deprived by death after her heart had been accustomed to cling to him for thirteen years, and all the rest save three died in their infancy. The survivors were, Emanuel Philibert, who succeeded his father, and the princesses Mary and Isabella. By her great talents, still more than by her beauty, Beatrix gained a complete ascendancy over her husband, who was pious, just, accomplished, and a lover and patron of literature, but deficient in moral courage and political abilities. And this ascendancy was fatal to the interests of Savoy, and to the welfare of the Duke and Duchess, for the latter, proud of her connexion with the Emperor, Charles V. (who was the nephew of her mother, and the husband of her elder sister, Isabella) she induced the Duke to espouse the Imperial cause in the wars between the Emperor and Francis I., in consequence of which the French troops overran the territories of Savoy, and the Duke saw himself divested of all, save Piedmont, by

which he and his family were reduced to a state of extreme distress. Beatrix sustained her reverse with a courage and constancy that excited general admiration, and she nobly supported the mind and spirit of her husband till he had the affliction to lose her in 1538, a year doubly disastrous to him. Beatrix died on the 8th of January at Nice, at the age of thirty-four, in the maturity of her beauty, and in the June following the Treaty of Nice was ratified, by which the Duke, deserted by the Emperor for whom he had suffered so much, was despoiled by the French of all that had till then remained to him in Piedmont, being reduced to the possession of Nice alone, where seventeen years before he had received as his bride the lovely young Portuguese, with her magnificent and numerous suite; and at Nice she died, a mother bereaved of nearly all her children, a sovereign princess deprived of her dominions and her court. Charles of Savoy survived his wife fifteen years, but would never entertain the idea of a second marriage. He died in 1553, aged sixty-seven.

M. E. M.

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A REMNANT OF "FONTENOY."

THERE was no resisting the inquisitive curiosity of my companion. The short, dry cough, the little husky "ay," that sounded like anything rather than assent, which followed on my replies to his questions, and, more than all, the keen, oblique glances of his shrewd grey eyes, told me that I had utterly failed in all my attempts at mystification, and that he read me through and through.

"And so," said he, at last, after a somewhat lengthy narrative of my shipwreck, "and so the Flemish sailors wear spurs?"

"Spurs! of course not; why should they?" asked I, in some astonishment. "Well, but don't they?" asked he again.

"No such thing; it would be absurd to suppose it."

"So I thought," rejoined he; "and when I looked at yer 'honor's' boots (it was the first time he had addressed me by this title of deference), and saw the marks on the heel for spurs, I soon knew how much of a sailor you were."

"And if not a sailor, what am I, then?" asked I; for, in the loneliness of the mountain region where we walked, I could afford to throw off my disguise without risk.

"Ye'r a French officer of dragoons, and God bless ye; but ye'r young to be at the trade. Arn't I right now?"

"Not very far from it certainly, for I am a lieutenant of hussars," said I, with a little of that pride which we of the loose pelisse always feel on the mention of our corps.

"I knew it well all along," said he, coolly; "the way you stood in the room, your step as you walked, and, above all, how ye believed me when I spoke of the spring tides, and the moon only in her second quarter, I saw you never was a sailor anyhow. And so I set a thinking what you were. You were too silent for a pedlar, and your hands were too white to be in the smuggling trade; but when I saw

your boots, I had the secret at once, and knew ye were one of the French army that landed the other day at Killala."

"It was stupid enough of me not to have remembered the boots!" said I, laughing.

Arrah, what use would it be?" replied he; "sure ye'r too straight in the back, and your walk is too reg'lar, and your toes turns in too much, for a sailor; the very way you hould a switch in your hand would betray you!"

"So it seems, then, I must try some other disguise,” said I, "if I'm to keep company with people as shrewd as you are."

"You needn't," said he, shaking his head doubtfully; "any that wants to betray ye wouldn't find it hard."

I was not much flattered by the depreciating tone in which he dismissed my efforts at personation, and walked on for some time without speaking.

"Yez came too late, four months too late," said he, with a sorrowful gesture of the hands. "When the Wexford boys was up, and the Kildare chaps, and plenty more ready to come in from the North, then, indeed, a few thousand French down here in the West would have made a differ; but what's the good in it now? The best men we had are hanged or in gaol; some are frightened; more are traitors! 'Tis too late-too late!"

"But not too late for a large force landing in the North, to rouse the island to another effort for liberty."

"Who would be the gin'ral?" asked he, suddenly.

"Napper Tandy, your own countryman," replied I, proudly.

"I wish ye luck of him!" said he, with a bitter laugh; "'tis more like mocking us than anything else the French does be, with the chaps they sent here to be gin'rals. Sure it isn't Napper Tandy, nor a set of young lawyers like Tone and the rest of them, we wanted. It was men that

knew how to drill and manage troopsfellows that was used to fightin'; so that when they said a thing, we might believe that they understhood it, at laste. I'm ould enough to remimber the Wild Geese,' as they used to call them the fellows that ran away from this to take sarvice in France; and I remimber, too, the sort of men the French were that came over to inspect them-soldiers, real soldiers, every inch of them. And a fine sarvice it was. Volle-face!" cried he, holding himself erect, and shouldering his stick like a musket, "marche! Ha, ha! ye didn't think that was in me; but I was at the thrade long before you were born."

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"How is this," said I, in amazement, "you were not in the French army ?"

"Wasn't I, though? maybe I didn't get that stick there." And he bared his breast as he spoke, to show the cicatrix of an old flesh-wound from a Highlander's bayonet. I was at Fontenoy!"

The last few words he uttered with a triumphant pride that I shall never forget. As for me, the mere name was magical. "Fontenoy" was like one of those great words which light up a whole page of history; and it almost seemed impossible that I should see before me a soldier of that glorious battle.

"Ave, faith!" he added, "tis more than fifty, 'tis nigh sixty years now since that, and I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was in the regiment • Tourville; I was recruited for the 'Wellon,' but they scattered us about among the other corps afterwards, because we used now and then to be fighting and quarrellin' among one an' other. Well, it was the Wellons that gained the battle; for after the English was in the village of Fontenoy, and the French was falling back upon the heights near the wood-arrah, what's the name of the wood? Sure I'll forget my own name next. Aye, to be sure, Verzon-the wood of Verzon.' Major Jodillon-that's what the French called him, but his name was Joe Wellon-turned an eight-pounder short round into a little yard of a farm-house, and, making a breach for the gun he opened a dreadful fire on the English column. It was loaded with grape, and at half musket range, so you may think what a peppering they got. At

last the column halted, and lay down; and Joe seen an officer ride off to the rere, to bring up artillery to silence our guns. A few minutes more, and it would be all over with us. So Joe shouts out as loud as he could, 'Cavalry there! tell off by threes, and prepare to charge.' I needn't tell you that the devil a horse nor a rider was within a mile of us at the time; but the English didn't know that, and, hearin' the order, up they jumps, and we heerd the word passin', 'Prepare to receive cavalry.' They formed square at once, and the same minute we plumped into them with such a charge as tore a lane right through the middle of them. Before they could recover, we opened a platoon fire on their flank; they stag gered, broke, and at last fell back in disorder upon Aeth, with the whole of the French army after them. Such firin'-grape, round-shot, and musketry-I never seed afore, and we all shouting like divils, for it was more like a hunt nor anything else; for ye see the Dutch never came up, but left the English to do all the work themselves, and that's the reason they couldn't form, for they had no supportin' colum'.

"It was then I got that stick of the bayonet, for there was such runnin' that we only thought of pelting after them as hard as we could; but ye see, there's nothin' so treacherous as a Highlander. I was just behind one, and had my sword-point between his bladebones ready to run him through, when he turned short about, and run his bayonet into me under the short ribs, and that was all I saw of the battle; for I bled till I fainted, and never knew more of what happened. "Tisn't by way of making little of Frenchmen I say it, for I sarved too long wid them for thatbut sorra taste of that victory ever they'd see if it wasn't for the Wellons, and Major Joe that commanded them! The English knows it well, too! Maybe they don't do us many a spite for it to this very day!"

"And what became of you after that?"

"That same summer I came over to Scotland with the young Prince Charles, and was at the battle of Prestonpans afterwards! and, what's worse, I was at Culloden! Oh, that was the terrible day. We were dead bate before we began the battle. We were on the march from one o'clock the night

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