SECTION II. CATALONIA.-Connection between the courts of Barcelona and Provence.-Catalan language.-Remains of its poetry.Ascendancy of the Castilian tongue.-Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi. Mosen Jayme Febrer.-Jayme Roig. — Ausias March. CASTILLE.-Supposed Hispano-Arabic origin of Troubadour poetry controverted.-The different classes of early Castilian poetry.-The Spanish Trobadors.-Alexandro Magno, THE intimate connection between the Troubadours of Provence and those of Catalonia and Arragon leads us naturally to a few observations on the obscure memorials, which have come down to us, of the history and works of the poets who once graced this division of Spain. From the earliest days of Provençal glory its court had enjoyed the most intimate union with that of Barcelona; and its subsequent union with the Arragonese crown, in the person of Alphonso the Second, extended the empire of love and poetry over a great portion of the south-western district of Spain. The Provençal language seems to have been popular at the court, and many of the Spanish poets wrote in it; but their native tongue, which bears great affinity to it, is one of great force and beauty, and probably of equal antiquity. It is certainly more ancient, at least as devoted to literary purposes, than the Castilian, which was then, probably, only developing itself upon amongst the adventurers who gradually encroached the dominion of their Moorish conquerors; and it still continues to be the popular dialect in Catalonia and (with more of Moorish intermixture) in Valencia. The Catalan is a genuine Romance tongue, evidently deduced from the Latin by the same process as the Provençal and as the latter had received less intermixture from the Northern invaders, and was therefore less removed from its parent than the Norman French, so the Catalan suffered less adulteration than the Castilian from the Moors, whose empire was in this part of Spain short and precarious. It is a language "rich in musical sounds, abounding in rhymes, and divested of every thing harsh and grating in its utterance; equally free from the deep gutturals of its twin sister the Castilian, and the perpetually recurring nasal twang of the Portuguese." Yet if the Catalan poets did often use their native tongue, few early productions in it have survived to us. This is a matter of regret, as the pieces which we have of a later date in this tongue are often distinguished for the harmony of their versification, as well as the simplicity, tenderness and energy of their style. It is to be hoped that the awakened industry of the Spaniards will be directed towards the revival of this department of their ancient national literature. No one doubts the great prevalency of Provençal poetry in this part of Spain during the 12th and 13th centuries; yet it has often been remarked with astonishment that hitherto not a single MS. has come from thence the scantiness of the published remains of Catalan poetry is therefore no argument against its having once been as prolific and popular as the Provençal. The highly valuable letter of the Marquis of Santellana (the cotemporary of Ausias March), published by Sanchez, speaks of the Catalonian Troubadours as numerous, and in his day well known; and there is reason to believe that research alone is wanted, to bring to light treasures which ignorance and religious bigotry have so long consigned to neglect. Indeed a pamphlet by Fr. Jayme de Villanueva, entitled "Notizia del Viage Literario a las Iglesias de España, Valencia 1820," has lately reached this country; in which the author enumerates, amongst the other fruits of his inquiries, "a collection of unedited Provençal poets, with accounts of their authors, commencing with a fragment of the 12th century on the first Crusade; and notices of forty Limosin poets of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, with copies of some of their works," amongst which is the famous cancion of Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi, called "Los opositos." The Catalan Troubadours were doomed, like their Provençal brethren, to bow before more fortunate rivals. The Castilian was the triumphant star. Poets here too flocked to the rising court, and the Spanish heroic romances better suited the tastes and feelings excited by the restless state of warfare in which Spain was perpetually engaged with the Moors. Yet the Catalonian school did not fall without efforts for its support. John the First of Arragon, according to Zurita, invited the poets of the South of France to Barcelona and Tortosa, and founded in 1390 an academy "dels Jogos florios," which he sought to supply from a similar academy of the Gay Saber, which had been formed at Toulouse in 1323. But this was only a lingering protraction of the natural decay of the art. The gloom of an academy was a poor substitute for the sparkling light of a court of beauty. The heart must join in that gaiety which could inspire a genial Troubadour; for, as Bernard Ventadour sings, Chantars no pot guaire valer Si d' ins del cor no mov lo chans, Of all my song and all my joy, Entrancing eyes and lips, heart, soul, in harmony. On the union of the crowns of Castille and Arra gon, the language of the former court became that of literature, and its rival met the same fate as the Provençal, and was reduced to the degradation of becoming a mere patois. It has already been remarked, that scarcely any of the early productions of the Catalan poets have as yet been before the public; it will not therefore detain us long to mention the names of the few that have reached us. We have nothing left of what the Marquis de Santellana describes as the elegant poetry of Mosen Pero March, a knight of noble family of the 12th century; and must content ourselves with noticing, as the first known Catalan Troubadour, Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi, who is usually placed in the beginning of the 13th century, subject to the doubts on that head which have arisen from the coincidence between some of his lines and parts of Petrarch's 104th Sonnet. The elucidation of this question may be sought with advantage in a learned article on the poetic literature of Spain, in the seventh number of the Retrospective Review (ascribed to the pen of Mr. Bowring), from which it may be permitted to quote a few lines, with their accompanying translation, as a specimen of the state of the language in which Mosen Jordi wrote: Esperanza res nom dona |