- Performer Name:
- Moratin; Talassi
- Performance Venue:
- Performance Date:
- 1775
- Author:
- Date Written:
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany
- Article Title:
- Review of Obras Postumas de Don Nicolas Fernandez de Moratin
- Page Numbers:
- 1:426
- Additional Info:
- Publisher:
- William Clowes
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Date Published:
- 1828
Text:
Nicolas Moratin was extremely fluent in the composition of verses, as well as in the production of inventive poetry. This may be seen from the ease and smoothness with which his lines flow: a facility particularly proved by the circumstance of the Duke de Medina-Sidonia requesting him to compose an extempore comedy in commemoration of the defence of Melilla, in the year 1775, which, in six hours, he dictated to an amanuensis. Charles III. saw and admired it; but he did not wish to have it represented, observing, 'The war with the Moors is not yet terminated; these happy successes may be followed by some misfortune; let us wait till peace is made.' In the month of July, in the same year, happened the unfortunate attack on Algiers.
The instance, however, in which Moratin's talent for extempore verses shone most conspicuously, was, in the contest which he sustained, in the presence of the above nobleman and a select party of literary men, against the Italian poet Talassi, celebrated for his peculiar ability for improvising, and who considered himself as unsurpassed in his art. Talassi was not an ordinary extempore declaimer. He delivered his extemporaneous strains in a tasteful manner; with good images, pure diction, and in easy, melodious, and smooth verses. He had, moreover, the advantage of versifying in Italian, a language particularly adapted to extempore composition, owing to its copiousness, and, in a certain degree, consecrated to this department, through the facility of applying passages, and even entire verses, belonging to other authors; an advantage very difficult to attain in any other language, as long as the art of extemporising poetry is not encouraged, cultivated, and converted into a sure means of obtaining esteem and rewards. Moratin, however, could not excuse himself from this unequal contest. The subject which by lot fell to Talassi, was the Death of Adonis, and to Moratin, the Passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea. Each competitor excited the admiration of a numerous audience; and it must be confessed, that, although in the preference which the Spaniard obtained there might have been something of a national spirit, our author nevertheless established his reputation as a poet, and the honour and credit of Castilian poetry, by thus entering the lists with his renowned antagonist.
Notes:
Performance date is approximate.
- Collected by:
- AE