myself heard speak of the "Autos" in a way that
showed how deeply he had studied them in the original, wrote, in 1857:
"You are doing this work admirably, and seem to gain new strength and
sweetness as you go on. It seems as if Calderon himself were behind you
whispering and suggesting. And what better work could you do in your
bright hours or in your dark hours that just this, which seems to have
been put providentially into your hands." Again, in 1862: "Your new
work in the vast and flowery fields of Calderon is, I think, admirable,
and presents the old Spanish dramatist before the English reader in a
very attractive light. Particularly in the most poetical passages you
are excellent; as, for instance, in the fine description of the
gerfalcon and the heron in 'El Mayor Encanto.' I hope you mean to add
more and more, so as to make the translation as nearly complete as a
single life will permit. It seems rather appalling to undertake the
whole of so voluminous a writer; nevertheless, I hope you will do it.
Having proved that you can, perhaps you ought to do it. This may be
your appointed work. It is a noble one."[5] Ticknor ("History of
Spanish Literature," new edition, vol. iii. p. 461) writes thus:
"Calderon is a poet who, whenever he is translated, should have his very
excesses and extravagances, both in thought and manner, fully
reproduced, in order to give a faithful idea of what is grandest and
most distinctive in his genius. Mr. MacCarthy has done this, I
conceive, to a degree which I had previously supposed impossible.
Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an
impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama; perhaps
I ought to say, of what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry
generally."

Another eminent Hispaniologist (Mr. C. F. Bradford, of Boston) has
spoken of the work in similar terms. His labours did not pass without
recognition from the great dramatist's countrymen. He was elected a
member of the Real Academia some years ago, and in 1881 this learned
body presented him with the medal struck in commemoration of Calderon's
bicentenary, "in token of their gratitude and their appreciation of his
translations of the great poet's works."

In 1855, at the request of the Marchioness of Donegal, my father wrote
the ode which was recited at the inauguration of the statue of her son,
the Earl of Belfast. About the same time, his Lectures on Poetry were
delive