_Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the
Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives_.
Published in the Original, with Translations, Illustrative Notos, Maps,
and Biographical Sketches. By K.G. SQUIER, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc. New
York: Charles B. Norton. 1860.
No. I. Carta dirigida al Key de Espana, por el Licenciado Dr. Don DIEGO
GARCIA DE PALACIO, Oydor de la Real Audiencia de Guatemala, Ano 1576.
Being a Description of the Ancient Provinces of Guazacapan, Izalco,
Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula, in the Audiencia of Guatemala: with an
Account of the Languages, Customs, and Religion of their Aboriginal
Inhabitants, and a Description of the Ruins of Copan. Square 8vo. pp.
132.
This tract is the first number of a series of Rare and Original
Documents, relating to the first settlement of America by the Spaniards,
which Mr. Squier proposes to edit and publish. The undertaking is one of
interest to all students of American history, and deserves a generous
encouragement from them. Its success must depend not on the usual
machinery of bookselling so much as on the ready support of individuals.
Mr. Squier's proposed collection resembles in its scope the well-known
"Recueil des Documents et Memoires Originaux" of M. Ternaux-Compans.
Familiar, by long residence and longer study, as few men are or ever
have been, with those portions of our continent of which the Spaniards
first took possession, acquainted with their antiquities and former
condition, and a curious investigator of their present state and
prospects, Mr. Squier is peculiarly fitted to select and edit--with
judgment such documents of historical interest as his unrivalled
opportunities have enabled him to collect.
The Letter of Palacio is now for the first time published in the
original, although it was largely used by Herrera in his "Historia
General." "To me," says Mr. Squier, "the relation has a special
interest. I have been over a great part of the ground that was traversed
by its author, and I am deeply impressed with the accuracy of his
descriptions.... His memoir will always stand as one of the best
illustrations of an interesting country, as it was at the period
immediately succeeding the Conquest." It appears, that, under an order
from the Crown, Palacio was deputed to visit a number of the Provinces
of Guatemala, and to report upon them, especially in respect to the
condition of their native inhabitants. The memoir now published relates
chiefly to the territory comprised in the present Republic of San
Salvador. It shows Palacio to have been an intelligent observer, and a
kindly, well-disposed man,--not free from the superstitions of his time
and race, but less credulous than many of his contemporaries. His
report is full of matter of value to the historical inquirer, and of
entertainment for the general reader. His stories of the manners of the
people, and his accounts of the animals of the district are brief, but
characteristic. But the most interesting part of his narrative is that
which relates to the wonderful ruins of Copan. It is a remarkable fact,
stated by Mr. Squier in his Prefatory Note, that these ruins do not
appear to have been noticed by any of the chroniclers of the country
down to the time of Fuentes, who wrote in 1689, more than one hundred
years after Palacio. It was not, indeed, until 1841, when Stephens
published his account of them, that an accurate description was given
to the world of these most interesting and most puzzling remains of a
forgotten people and an unknown antiquity. Even in Palacio's time, only
vague traditions existed regarding them. His account has a permanent
value from being the earliest known, and as proving that within fifty
years after the Spanish Conquest they presented very nearly the same
appearance as at present.
Mr. Squier has enriched Talacio's Letter with numerous and important
notes. He claims a lenient judgment of his translation, which is printed
side by side with the original, on account of the obscurities of the
manuscript, and the uncertainty as to the meaning of some of the
writer's expressions. But, allowing for these difficulties, we regret
that Mr. Squier did not bestow a little more pains on this part of his
work. He has fallen into some slight errors, which might easily have
been corrected, and he has, as we think, lost something of the spirit of
the original by too free a version. The book is one which in typographic
beauty would meet the demands of the most exacting bibliographer. We
regret the more that the pages are disfigured with misprints, many of
which are left uncorrected in the long list of _Errata_, while others
occur in the very list itself.
1. _Le Panlatinisme, Confédération Gallo-Latine et Celto-Gauloise,
Contre-Testament de Pierre le Grand et Contre-Panslavisme_. Paris:
Passard, Libraire-Éditeur. 1860. 8vo. pp. 260.
2. _Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de Domination Européenne
laissé par lui à ses Descendants et Successeurs au Trône de la Russie_.
Édition suivie de Notes et de Pièces Justificatives. Paris: Passard.
1860. 8vo.
We seem to be living in an age of pamphleteers. More than ever, both in
France and Germany, are pamphlets the order of the day. In Paris
alone, the year 1860 has given birth to hundreds of these writings of
circumstance,--political squibs, visionary remodellings of European
states,--vying with each other for ephemeral celebrity. They fill the
windows of the book-shops, and are spread by scores along the stands
in the numerous galleries which the Parisian population throngs of
evenings. Those issued in the early part of the year have gradually
descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on
every quay, spread out, for a few _centimes_, side by side with
old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which
book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some
rarity, in the worthless mass.
Thus we have seen the interminable Rhine question discussed in its every
possible phase,--still more that of Italy. Between come the Druses, the
Orient, the Turks. Then Italy again, Garibaldi, Naples, the Pope.
To state in general terms the tendency of these rockets of literature,
or to arrive at the spirit which seems to pervade them, is not quite so
easy as it would seem. They are written by authors of all party-colors,
within certain impassable limits prescribed by the parental restrictions
of Government. Still it seems to be the old story of soothing; and many
a conclusion--as where England is smoothed down by a few flatteries and
told that her most natural ally is France, or where Germany is heartily
assured that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are
for the good of the Teutonic race--reminds us very strongly of that
widely known verse in child-literature,--
"Will you walk into my parlor," etc.
We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from
the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various
productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice
in the daily press.
The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a
complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and
rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were
it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The
author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having
labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the
interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most
remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at
full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be
seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning
the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his
argumentation:--
"It has seemed to us proved, that the names,
Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh,
Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls,
Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians,
Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels,
Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola,
Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same
word under different forms."
The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and
Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million
individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would
wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America.
Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much
debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration
is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in
a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of
Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one
banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may
have become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite
meanings, according as they were uttered by radical or conservative.
Hence the confusion, hence the many strange phrases to be met with in
the periodical press. The author of the present work has sought to throw
some light on this important point. Leaving aside his prophetic fears of
future shocks with American or Asiatic powers as visionary, we can say
for the work that it presents in a clear light the question of races
as referring to European politics. The notes are good, and no research
seems to have been spared by the writer to establish the position he
maintains.
1. _Ancient Danish Ballads._ Translated from the Originals, by R.C.
ALEXANDER PRIOR, M.D. London: Williams & Norgate. Leipzig: R. Hartmann.
1860, 3 vols. pp. lx., 400, 468, 500.
2. _Edinburgh Papers._ By ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., etc., etc. _The
Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship._ W. & R.
Chambers: London and Edinburgh. 1859. pp. 40.
3. _The Romantic Scottish Ballads, and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy._ By
NORVAL CLYNE. Aberdeen: A. Brown & Co. 1859. pp. 49.
The expectations raised by the title of Dr. Prior's volumes are in a
great measure disappointed by their contents. The book is of value only
because it gives for the first time, in English, the substance of a
large number of Danish ballads, and points out the relations between
them and similar productions in other languages. Of the spirit and life
of these remarkable poems a person hitherto unfamiliar with them would
find but scanty indication in Dr. Prior's versions. He has merely done
them into English in a somewhat mechanical way, and one scarcely gets
a better notion of the more imaginative ones in his bald reproductions
than of the "Iliad" from the analysis of that poem in the "Epistolae
Obscurorum Virorum." It seems to require almost as peculiar powers to
translate an old ballad as to write a new one.
Dr. Prior complains of Jamieson, that his versions from the Danish are
done in a broad Scotch dialect, almost as unintelligible to ordinary
readers as the language of which they profess to give the meaning. But
if any one compare Jamieson's rendering of "The Buried Mother" with Dr.
Prior's, (Prior, vol. i. p. 368,) he will, we think, see cause to regret
that Jamieson did not do what Dr. Prior has attempted, and that he has
not left us a greater number of translations equally good. Jamieson's
fault was not so much his broad Scotch as his over-fondness for
archaisms, sometimes of mere spelling, which give rise to a needless
obscurity. We think that he was theoretically right; but he should not
have pushed his theory to the extent of puzzling the reader, where his
aim was to give only that air of strangeness which allures the fancy. As
respects ballads dealing with the supernatural, Jamieson's notion of
the duty of a translator was certainly the true one. There is something
almost ludicrous in a ghost talking the ordinary conversational language
of every-day life, which might, to be sure, serve very well for some
of Jung Stilling's spirits in bottle-green hunting-coats with brass
buttons, but hardly for the majesty of buried Denmark. Dr. Prior may
claim that his renderings are more literal; but it is the vice of
literal translation, that the phrases of one language, if exactly
reproduced in another, while they may have the same sense, convey a
wholly different impression to the imagination. It is to such cases that
the Italian proverb, _Tradutiore traditore_, applies. Dryden, citing
approvingly Denham's verses to Fanshawe,
"They but preserve his ashes, thou his flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame,"
says, with his usual pithiness, "Too faithfully is indeed pedantically."
In Dr. Prior's version of the "The Buried Mother" we find a case
precisely in point. The Stepmother says to the poor Orphans,--
"In blind-house shall ye lie all night."