is in the least obscure.  Faith, Hope, Charity, the Five Senses, Heresy, Judaism, Paganism, Atheism, and the like, which in inferior hands must have been mere lay figures, are there instinct with a dramatic life and energy such as beforehand I could hardly have supposed possible.  Moreover, in spite of Dr. Lorinzer’s odd encomiums, each allegory as it rises is more neatly rounded off, and shows a finer grain, than any of the personifications of Spenser; so that the religious effect and the theological effect intended by the writer, are both amply produced—­yes, produced upon us, his heretical admirers.  Hence, even if there be mysterious treasures of beauty below the surface, to which we aliens must remain blind for ever, this expression, which broke from the lips of one to whom I was eagerly reading [Mr. Mac-Carthy’s translation of] the play, ’Why, in the original this must be as grand as Dante’, tends to show that such merits as do come within our ken are not likely to be thrown away upon any fair-minded Protestant.  Dr. Newman, as a Catholic, will have entered, I presume, more deeply still into the spirit of these extraordinary creations; his life, however, belongs to a different era and to a colder people.  And thus, however much he may have been directed to the choice of a subject by the old Mysteries and Moralities (of which these Spanish Autos must be taken as the final development and bright consummate flower), he has treated that subject, when once undertaken by him, entirely from his own point of view.  ‘Gerontius’ is meant to be studied and dwelt upon by the meditative reader.  The Autos of Calderon were got ready by perhaps the most accomplished playwright that ever lived, to amuse and stimulate a thronging southern population.  ‘Gerontius’ is, we may perhaps say for Dr. Newman in the words of Shelley,

’The voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought’;

whilst the conceptions of the Spanish dramatist burst into life with tumultuous music, gorgeous scenery, and all the pomp and splendour of the Catholic Church.  No wonder therefore that our English Auto, though composed with the same genuine purpose of using verse, and dramatic verse, to promote a religious and even a theological end, should differ from them in essence as well as in form.  There is room however for both kinds in the wide empire of Poetry, and though Dr. Newman himself would be the first to cry shame upon me if I were to name him with Calderon even for a moment, still his Mystery of this most unmysterious age will, I believe, keep its honourable place in our English literature as an impressive, an attractive, and an original production”—­pp. 109, 115.

I may mention that the volume containing Belshazzar’s Feast, and The Divine Philothea, the Auto particularly referred to by Sir F. H. Doyle, has been called Mysteries of Corpus Christi by the publisher.  A not inappropriate title, it would seem, from the last observations of the distinguished Professor.  A third Auto, The Sorceries of Sin, is given in my Three Plays of Calderon, now on sale by Mr. B. Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly, London.  The Divine Philothea, The Sorceries of Sin, and Belshazzar’s Feast are the only Autos of Calderon that have ever been translated either fully, or, with one exception, even partially into English.