'In the ninth century, the Normans or Northmen made piratical
excursions on the W. coast of Spain. They passed, in 843, from
Lisbon up to the straits and everywhere, as in France, overcame the
unprepared natives, plundering, burning, and destroying. They
captured even Seville itself, September 30, 844, but were met by the
Cordovese Kalif, beaten, and expelled. They were called by the Moors
_Majus_, _Madjous_, _Magioges_ (Conde, i. 282), and by the early
Spanish annalists _Almajuzes_. The root has been erroneously derived
from [Greek text], Magus, magicians or supernatural beings, as they
were almost held to be. The term _Madjous_ was, strictly speaking,
applied by the Moors to those Berbers and Africans who were Pagans or
Muwallads, _i.e._ not believers in the Khoran. The true etymology is
that of the Gog and Magog so frequently mentioned by Ezekiel
(xxxviii. and xxxix.) and in the Revelations (xx. 8) as ravagers of
the earth and nations, May-Gogg, "he that dissolveth,"--the fierce
Normans appeared, coming no one knew from whence, just when the minds
of men were trembling at the approach of the millennium, and thus
were held to be the forerunners of the destroyers of the world. This
name of indefinite gigantic power survived in the _Mogigangas_, or
terrific images, which the Spaniards used to parade in their
religious festivals, like the Gogs and Magogs of our civic wise men
of the East. Thus Andalucia being the half-way point between the N.
and S.E., became the meeting-place of the two great ravaging swarms
which have desolated Europe: here the stalwart children of frozen
Norway, the worshippers of Odin, clashed against the Saracens from
torrid Arabia, the followers of Mahomet. Nor can a greater proof be
adduced of the power and relative superiority of the Cordovese Moors
over the other nations of Europe, than this, their successful
resistance to those fierce invaders, who overran without difficulty
the coasts of England, France, Apulia, and Sicily: conquerors
everywhere else, here they were driven back in disgrace. Hence the
bitter hatred of the Normans against the Spanish Moors, hence their
alliances with the Catalans, where a Norman impression yet remains in
architecture; but, as in Sicily, these barbarians, unrecruited from
the North, soon died away, or were assimilated as usual with the more
polished people, whom they had subdued by mere superiority of brute
force.'
If the Moors called the Norsemen Al Madjus, which according to our author
signifies Gog and Magog, the Norsemen retorted by a far more definite and
expressive nickname; this was Blue-skins or Bluemen, doubtless in
allusion to the livid countenances of the Moors. The battles between the
Moors and the Northmen are frequently mentioned in the Sagas, none of
which, however, are of higher antiquity than the eleventh century. In
none of these chronicles do we find any account of this raid upon Seville
in 844; it was probably a very inconsiderable affair magnified by the
Moors and their historians. Snorre speaks of the terrible attack of
Sigurd, surnamed the Jorsal wanderer, or Jerusalem pilgrim, upon Lisbon
and Cintra, both of which places he took, destroying the Moors by
hundreds. He subsequently 'harried' the southern coasts of Spain on his
voyage to Constantinople. But this occurred some two hundred years after
the affair of Seville mentioned in the Handbook. It does not appear that
the Norse ever made any serious attempt to establish their power in
Spain; had they done so we have no doubt that they would have succeeded.
We entertain all due respect for the courage and chivalry of the Moors,
especially those of Cordova, but we would have backed the Norse,
especially the pagan Norse, against the best of them. The Biarkemal
would soon have drowned the Moorish 'Lelhies.'
'Thou Har, who grip'st thy foeman
Right hard, and Rolf the bowman,
And many, many others,
The forky lightning's brothers,
Wake--not for banquet table,
Wake--not with maids to gabble,
But wake for rougher sporting,
For Hildur's bloody courting.'
Under the head of La Mancha our author has much to say on the subject of
Don Quixote; and to the greater part of what he says we yield our
respectful assent. His observations upon the two principal characters in
that remarkable work display much sound as well as original criticism.
We cannot however agree with him in preferring the second part, which we
think a considerable falling off from the first. We should scarcely
believe the two parts were written by the same hand. We have read
through both various times, but we have always sighed on coming to the
conclusion of the first. It was formerly our custom to read the Don
'pervasively' once every three years; we still keep up that custom _in
part_, and hope to do so whilst life remains. We say _in part_, because
we now conclude with the first part going no farther. We have little
sympathy with the pranks played off upon Sancho and his master by the
Duke and Duchess, to the description of which so much space is devoted;
and as for the affair of Sancho's government at Barataria, it appears to
us full of inconsistency and absurdity. Barataria, we are told, was a
place upon the Duke's estate, consisting of two or three thousand
inhabitants; and of such a place it was very possible for a nobleman to
have made the poor squire governor; but we no sooner get to Barataria
than we find ourselves not in a townlet, but in a _capital_ in Madrid.
The governor at night makes his rounds, attended by 'an immense watch;'
he wanders from one street to another for hours; he encounters all kinds
of adventures, not mock but real adventures, and all kinds of characters,
not mock but real characters; there is talk of bull-circuses, theatres,
gambling-houses, and such like; and all this in a place of two or three
thousand inhabitants, in which, by the way, nothing but a cat is ever
heard stirring after eight o'clock; this we consider to be carrying the
joke rather too far; and it is not Sancho but the reader who is joked
with. But the first part is a widely different affair: all the scenes
are admirable. Should we live a thousand years, we should never forget
the impression made upon us by the adventure of the corpse, where the Don
falls upon the priests who are escorting the bier by torch light, and by
the sequel thereto, his midnight adventures in the Brown Mountain. We
can only speak of these scenes as astonishing--they have never been
equalled in their line. There is another wonderful book which describes
what we may call the city life of Spain, as the other describes the vida
del campo--we allude of course to Le Sage's novel, which as a whole we
prefer to Don Quixote, the characters introduced being certainly more
true to nature than those which appear in the other great work. Shame to
Spain that she has not long since erected a statue to Le Sage, who has
done so much to illustrate her; but miserable envy and jealousy have been
at the bottom of the feeling ever manifested in Spain towards that
illustrious name. There are some few stains in the grand work of Le
Sage. He has imitated without acknowledgment three or four passages
contained in the life of Obregon, a curious work, of which we have
already spoken, and to which on some future occasion we may perhaps
revert.
But the Hand-book? We take leave of it with the highest respect and
admiration for the author; and recommend it not only to travellers in
Spain, but to the public in general, as a work of a very high order,
written _con amore_ by a man who has devoted his whole time, talents, and
all the various treasures of an extensive learning to its execution. We
repeat that we were totally unprepared for such a literary treat as he
has here placed before us. It is our sincere wish that at his full
convenience he will favour us with something which may claim
consanguinity with the present work. It hardly becomes us to point out
to an author subjects on which to exercise his powers. We shall,
however, take the liberty of hinting that a good history of Spain does
not exist, at least in English--and that not even Shelton produced a
satisfactory translation of the great gem of Spanish literature, 'The
Life and Adventures of Don Quixote.'
* * * * *
LONDON:
Printed for THOMAS J. WISE, Hampstead, N.W.
_Edition limited to Thirty Copies_
Footnote:
{13} Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.