Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/315

Rh which is central and precious, but which appears merely incidental as we look back over the centuries. Here we have a definitive history of a single human intuition, not an exclusive study of one dramatic composition. The vicissitudes of a certain skeptical and pessimistic view of life are traced through religions, mysticisms, mythologies, through fiction and through philosophy—with an intensive treatment of a particular Spanish dramatic masterpiece of the seventeenth century.

The fact that this play stands out as the centre of the research is perhaps a result of the personal predilections of Farinelli, who has devoted the better part of his life to Spanish studies. All students of comparative literature are acquainted with his early studies of Calderón. But those studies were primarily bibliographical. Now the scholar gives place to the thinker; and the thinker proceeds from the examination of a particular plot to the contemplation of a moral drama which has the entire earth as its stage and the saddest geniuses of humanity as its dramatis personæ.

Calderón’s play has perhaps received more honor than it deserves. It was immensely popular in Europe in the Romantic period, thanks in particular to the two Schlegels and to other German critics. For a time it seemed the choicest fruit of Spanish genius. Some critics rated