A Drama of Early Christian Rome.

FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON.

With Dedicatory Sonnets to
Longfellow,
etc.

BY DENIS FLORENCE MAC-CARTHY, M.R.I.A.

Por la Fe MORIRE. 
    Calderon’s Family Motto.

DUBLIN:  JOHN F. FOWLER, 3 CROW STREET.

London: 
John Camden Hotten, 74 and 75 Piccadilly.

1870.

Calderon’s Family Motto.

“Por la Fe MORIRE”. —­
For the faith welcome death.

This motto is taken from the engraved coat of arms prefixed to an historical account of “the very noble and ancient house of Calderon de la Barca”—­a rather scarce work which I have never seen alluded to in any account of the poet.  The circumstances from which the motto was assigned to the family are given with some minuteness at pp. 56 and 57 of the work referred to.  It is enough to mention that the martyr who first used the expression was Don Sancho Ortiz Calderon de la Barca, a Commander of the Order of Santiago.  He was in the service of the renowned king, Don Alfonso the Wise, towards the close of the thirteenth century, and having been taken prisoner by the Moors before Gibraltar, he was offered his life on the usual conditions of apostasy.  But he refused all overtures, saying:  “Pues mi Dios por mi murio, yo quiero morir por el”, a phrase which has a singular resemblance to the key note of this drama.  Don Ortiz Calderon was eventually put to death with great cruelty, after some alternations of good and bad treatment.  See “Descripcion, Armas, Origen, y Descendencia de la muy noble y antigua Casa de Calderon de la Barca”, etc., que Escrivio El Rmo.  P. M. Fr. Phelipe de la Gandara, etc., Obra Postuma, que saca a luz Juan de Zuniga.  Madrid, 1753.

D. F. M. C.

TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,

In grateful recollection of some delightful days spent with him at
Rome,

This Drama is dedicated
by
Denis Florence Mac-Carthy.

TO LONGFELLOW.

I.

Pensive within the Colosseum’s walls
    I stood with thee, O Poet of the West!—­
    The day when each had been a welcome guest
    In San Clemente’s venerable halls:—­
Ah, with what pride my memory now recalls
    That hour of hours, that flower of all the rest,
    When with thy white beard falling on thy breast—­
    That noble head, that well might serve as Paul’s