The Bible in Spain. Volume 2 of 2. Borrow George

6

Galician; lit. the shore of the outer sea.

7

“By God! I am going too.”

8

Who served as a subordinate general in the Carlist armies.

9

“The good lad.”

10

In Spanish, guardacostas.

11

More correctly, el Ferrol or farol, the lighthouse. Nothing can more strikingly give the lie to the conventional taunt that Spain has made no progress in recent years than the condition of the modern town of el Ferrol compared with the description in the text. It is now a flourishing and remarkably clean town of over 23,000 inhabitants, with an arsenal not only magnificent in its construction, but filled with every modern appliance, employing daily some 4000 skilled workmen, whose club (el liceo de los artesanos) might serve as a model for similar institutions in more “advanced” countries. It comprises a library, recreation-room, casino, sick fund, benefit society, and school; and lectures and evening parties, dramatic entertainments, and classes for scientific students, are all to be found within its walls.

12

A little town charmingly situated on a little bay at the mouth of the river Eo, which divides Galicia from Asturias, famous for oysters and salmon.

13

Signifying in Portugese or Galician, “A thing of gold.”

14

Tertian ague, or intermittent three-day fever.

15

“Come along, my little Parrot!”

16

A town on the sea-coast about half-way between Rivadeo and Aviles.

17

Query. See note, p. 45.

18

On the right bank of the Eo, over against Rivadeo.

19

The port of Oviedo.

20

See the Glossary, s. v. Copla.

21

“God bless me!”

22

I.e. Bascuence, or Vascuence, the Basque language.

23

Query, Aviles?

24

Job xxxix. 25: “.. the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

25

“Good heavens!”

26

I.e. jacas.

27

The cathedral at Oviedo is one of the oldest and most interesting foundations in Spain. The first stone was laid by Alfonso II. in 802; the greater part of the existing edifice is of the fourteenth century.

But the great glory of Oviedo, entitling it to rank as second among the holy cities of Christian Spain, is the Camara Santa, and the relics therein contained (see Burke’s History of Spain vol. i. pp. 122–124, 140, 141, 147–150, 165, 275; vol. ii. pp. 8–11; and Murray’s Handbook, sub. Oviedo).

28

Benito Feyjoo was born in 1676, and having assumed the Benedictine habit early in life, settled at length in a convent of his order at Oviedo, where he lived for hard on fifty years. He died in 1764.

A strange mixture of a devout Catholic and a scientific innovator, he was an earnest student of Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Leibnitz, and others, whose opinions he embodied in his own works. Learned, judicious, and diligent rather than a man of genius, he was original at least as regards his conceptions of the nature and limits of scientific research in Spain. He kept on good terms with the Inquisition, while he continued to publish in his Teatro Critico and his Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas all that the Inquisitors would desire to remain unread; attacked the dialectics and metaphysics then taught everywhere in Spain; maintained Bacon’s system of induction in the physical sciences; ridiculed the general opinion as regards eclipses, comets, magic, and divination; and laid down canons of historical criticism which would exclude many of the most cherished traditions of his country and his Church. The best edition of his works is that by Campomanes, the minister of the enlightened Charles III., with a Life of the author. 16 vols. Madrid, 1778.

29

Charles III. of Spain (1759–1788), the most enlightened of the Bourbon kings.

30

Literally, dry.

31

George Dawson Flinter began life in an English West India regiment, served in the Spanish American forces, and afterwards obtained a commission in the Spanish army. In 1833, on the outbreak of the civil war, he declared for Isabella, and served with considerable distinction in the constitutional army. A prisoner in 1836, he was entrusted with a high command at Toledo in 1837, but having failed to satisfy the Cortes in an engagement in September, 1838, he cut his throat (see Gentl. Mag., 1838, vol. ii. p. 553, and Duncan, The English in Spain, pp. 13, 189).

32

There is still a fairly frequented high-road from Santander to Burgos, inasmuch as the railway from Santander to Madrid takes a more westerly route through Palencia, the actual junction with the main line from Irun being at Venta de Baños, a new creation of the railway not even mentioned in the guidebooks a few years ago, and now one of the most important stations in Spain.

Yet in railway matters Spain has still some progress to make. From Santander to Burgos viâ Venta de Baños is just 120 English miles; but the time occupied in the journey by train in this year 1895 is just seventeen hours, the traveller having to leave Santander at 1 p.m. in order to reach Burgos at 6 o’clock the following morning!

33

See Introduction.

34

“Office of the Biblical and Foreign Society,” rather an odd rendering of the original title!

35

The briefest of all abbreviations and modifications of the objectionable Carajo.

36

Rather south-south-west.

37

Domenico Theotocoupoulis, a Greek or Byzantine who settled at Toledo in 1577. He is said to have been a pupil of Titian. The picture so highly praised in the text is said by Professor Justi to be in “his worst manner,” and is indeed a very stiff performance. There are many of El Greco’s pictures in Italy, where his work is often assigned to Bassano, Paul Veronese, and Titian. His acknowledged masterpiece is the Christ on Mount Calvary in the cathedral of Toledo. El Greco died in 1625, after an uninterrupted residence of nearly forty years in Spain.