[339] “Poesías de Don Vicente Garcia de la Huerta,” Madrid, 1778, 12mo, and a second edition, 1786. “La Perromachia,” a mock-heroic on the loves and quarrels of sundry dogs, by Francisco Nieto Molina, (Madrid, 1765, 12mo,) is too poor to deserve notice, though it is an attempt to give greater currency to the earlier national verse,—the redondillas.

[340] J. J. Lopez de Sedano, “Parnaso Español,” (Madrid, Sancha, 1768-78, 9 tom. 12mo,) was the subject, of a good deal of criticism soon after it appeared. The club of the elder Moratin—to be noticed immediately—was much dissatisfied with it (Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, Londres, 1825, 12mo, p. xxv.);—Yriarte in 1778 printed a dialogue on it, “Donde las dan las toman,” full of severity (Obras, 1805, Tom. VI.);—and in 1785 Sedano replied, under the name of Juan Maria Chavero y Eslava de Ronda, in four volumes, 12mo, published at Málaga and called the “Colóquios de Espina.”

[341] T. A. Sanchez (born 1732, died 1798) published his “Poesías Anteriores al Siglo XV.” at Madrid, in 4 tom. 8vo, 1779-90, but printed very little else.

[342] Martin Sarmiento, “Memorias para la Historia de la Poesía y Poetas Españoles,” Madrid, 1775, 4to. He was born in 1692, and wrote a great deal, but published little. His defence of his master, Feyjoó, (1732,) generally goes with the “Teatro Crítico”; and some of his tracts are to be found in the Seminario Erudito, Tom. V., VI., XIX., and XX. His “Historia de la Poesía,” printed as the first volume of his Works, which were not further continued, is the more valuable, because, making his inquiries quite independently of Sanchez, he often comes to the same results.

[343] Besides the poems noted in the text, I have, by Moratin the elder, an Ode on account of an act of mercy and pardon by Charles III., in 1762, and the “Egloga á Velasco y Gonzalez,” printed on occasion of their portraits being placed in the Academy, in 1770; both of little consequence, but not, I believe, noticed elsewhere. His “Obras Póstumas” were printed at Barcelona, in 1821, 4to, and reprinted at London, in 1825, 12mo. Moratin’s “Carta Sobre las Fiestas de Toros,” (Madrid, 1777, 12mo,) which is a slight prose tract, is intended to prove historically that the amusement of bull-fighting is Spanish in its origin and character;—a point concerning which those who have read the Chronicles of Muntaner and the Cid can have little doubt. Moratin had the power of improvisating with great effect. Obras, 1825, pp. xxxiv.-xxxix.

[344] N. F. Moratin, Obras Póstumas, 1821, pp. xxiv.-xxxi.

[345] Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 21. Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 493. His name, I believe, was originally spelt Cadalso; but as that is a recognized word, meaning “scaffold,” it is softened in the recent Madrid editions of his Works into Cadahalso, which means “cottage” or “shanty.” Both these words, however, are regarded as one and the same, in the first edition of the Dictionary of the Academy, so that perhaps not much is gained by the change.

[346] His “Eruditos á la Violeta,” and his poetry, “Ocios de mi Juventud,” were printed at Madrid, 1772 and 1773, 4to, under the assumed name of Joseph Vasquez. An edition of his Works, with an excellent Life by Navarrete, appeared at Madrid, in 1818, in 3 tom. 12mo, and has been reprinted more than once since. For the contemporary opinion of Cadahalso, see Sempere, loc. cit.

[347] As a sort of counterpart to the poem on Music, by Yriarte, may be mentioned one of less merit, published soon afterwards by Don Diego Antonio Rejon de Silva, “La Pintura, Poema Didáctico en Tres Cantos,” (Segovia, 1786, 8vo,) the first canto being on Design, the second on Composition, and the third on Coloring, with notes and a defence of Spanish artists. He was a gentleman of Murcia, who indulged himself in poetry and painting as an amateur, but whose serious occupations were in the Office of Foreign Affairs at Madrid. He died about 1796. Sempere y Guarinos (Biblioteca, Tom. V. pp. 1-6) gives an account of his few and unimportant works, and Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p. 164) has a short notice of his life.

[348] Obras de Thomas de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 8 tom. 12mo. Villanueva, Memorias, Londres, 1825, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 27. Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. VI. p. 190. Llorente, Histoire, Tom. II. p. 449.

[349] Felix María de Samaniego, “Fábulas en Verso Castellano para el Uso del Real Seminario Vascongado,” Nueva York, 1826, 18mo. There is a Life of the author, by Navarrete, in the fourth volume of Quintana’s “Coleccion,” and a reply to his attack on Yriarte in the sixth volume of Yriarte’s Works. For an account of the “patriotic societies,” see Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. V. p. 135, and Tom. VI. p. 1.

[350] Parte II. Lib. II. Fab. 9. He gives, also, an expanded version of the same fable, but the shortest is much the best, Πλέον ἥμισυ παντός.

[351] A few words should be added, on each of these last five authors.

1. “Las Odas de Leon de Arroyal,” Madrid, 1784, 12mo. At the end are a few worthless Anacreontics by a lady, whose name is not given; and at the beginning is a truly Spanish definition of lyrical poetry, namely, that “whose verses can be properly played, sung, or danced.”

2. Pedro de Montengon, “Eusebio,” Madrid, 1786-87, 4 tom. 8vo. The first two volumes gave great offence by the absence of all injunctions to make religious instruction a part of education; and, though the remaining two made up for this deficiency, there is reason to believe that Montengon intended originally to follow the theory of the “Emile.” “El Antenor” (Madrid, 1788, 2 tom. 8vo) is a prose poem on the tradition of the founding of Padua by the Trojans. “El Rodrigo” (Madrid, 1793, 8vo) is another prose epic, in one volume and twelve books, on the “Last of the Goths.” “Eudoxia,” Madrid, 1793, 8vo; again, a work on education; but on the education of women. “Odas,” Madrid, 1794, 8vo; very poor. Montengon, of whom these are not all the works, was born at Alicante, in 1745, and was alive in 1815. He was very young when he entered the Church, and lived chiefly at Naples, where he threw off his ecclesiastical robes and devoted himself to secular occupations.

3. Francisco Gregorio de Salas, “Coleccion de Epigramas,” etc., 1792, 4th edition, Madrid, 1797, 2 tom. 12mo. His “Observatorio Rústico” (1770, tenth edition 1830) is a long dull eclogue, divided into six parts, which has enjoyed an unreasonable popularity. L. F. Moratin (Obras, 1830, Tom. IV. pp. 287 and 351) gives an epitaph for Salas, with a pleasing prose account of his personal character, which he well says was much more interesting than his poetry; and Sempere (Biblioteca, Tom. V. pp. 69, etc.) gives a list of his works, all of which, I believe, are in the collection printed at Madrid in 1797, ut sup. A small volume entitled “Parabolas Morales,” etc., (Madrid, 1803, 12mo,) consisting of prose apologues, somewhat better than any thing of Salas that preceded it, is, I suppose, later, and probably the last of his works.

4. Ignacio de Meras, “Obras Poéticas,” (Madrid, 1797, 2 tom. 12mo,) contain a stiff tragedy, called “Teonea,” in blank verse, and within the rules; a comedy called “The Ward of Madrid,” in the old figuron style, but burlesque and dull; an epic canto on “The Conquest of Minorca,” in 1782, to imitate Moratin’s “Ships of Cortés”; a poem “On the Death of Barbarossa, in 1518”; and a number of sonnets and odes, some of the last of which should rather be called ballads, and some of them satires;—the whole very meagre.

5. Gaspar de Noroña, whose family was of Portuguese origin, was bred a soldier and served at the siege of Gibraltar, where he wrote an elegy on the death of Cadahalso (Poesías de Noroña, Madrid, 1799-1800, 2 tom. 12mo, Tom. II. p. 190). He rose in the army to be a lieutenant-general, and, while holding that rank, published his Ode on the Peace of 1795, (Tom. I. p. 172,) by which he was first publicly known as a poet, and which, except, perhaps, a few of his shorter and lighter poems, is the best of his works. Afterwards he was sent as ambassador to Russia, but returned to defend his country when it was invaded by the French, and was made governor of Cadiz. He died in 1815, (Fuster, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 381,) and in 1816 his epic, entitled “Ommiada,” was published at Madrid, in two volumes, 12mo, containing above fifteen thousand verses; as dull, perhaps, as any of the similar poems that abound in Spanish literature, but less offensive to good taste than most of them. In 1833, there appeared at Paris his “Poesías Asiáticas puestas en Verso Castellano,” translations from the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, made, as he says in the Preface, to give him poetical materials for his epic. His “Quicaida,” a heroi-comic poem, in eight cantos, filled with parodies, is very tedious. It is in his Poesías, printed in 1800.

[352] Considerable improvement took place at Salamanca in some departments of study while Melendez was there. But still things remained in a very torpid state.

[353] Whether the “Caida de Luzbel” was written because a prize was offered by the Spanish Academy, in 1785, for a poem on that subject, which was to consist of not more than one hundred octave stanzas, I do not know; but I have a poor attempt with the same title, professing to be the work of Manuel Perez Valderrabano, (Palencia, 1786, 12mo,) and to have been written for such a prize, to all the conditions of which the poem of Melendez seems conformed. No adjudication of the prize, however, took place.

[354] The death of Melendez was supposed by his physician to have been occasioned by the vegetable diet to which he was driven, for want of means to purchase food more substantial; and, from the same poverty, his burial was so obscure that the Duke of Frias and the poet Juan Nicasio Gallego with difficulty discovered his remains, in 1828, and caused them to be respectfully interred, in one of the principal cemeteries of Montpellier, with an appropriate monument to mark the spot. Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, pp. 331-333; a striking and sad history.

[355] Juan Melendez Valdes, “Poesías,” Madrid, 1785, 12mo; 1797, 3 tom. 18mo; 1820, 4 tom. 8vo; the last with a Life, by Quintana. (Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 496.) I have seen it stated, that three counterfeit editions of the first small volume, printed in 1785, appeared almost at the same time with the true one; so great was the first outbreak of his popularity. The first volume of Hermosilla (Juicio Crítico de los Principales Poetas Españoles de la Ultima Era, Paris, 1840, 2 tom. 12mo) contains a criticism of the poems of Melendez, so severe that I find it difficult to explain its motive. The judgment of Martinez de la Rosa, in the notes to his didactic poem on Poetry, is much more faithful and true. Melendez corrected his verse with great care; sometimes with too much, as may be seen by comparing some of the poems as he first published them, in 1785, with their last revision, in the edition of his Works, 1820.

[356] “Poesías de M. T. Diego de Gonzalez,” Madrid, 1812, 12mo. He was a native of Ciudad Rodrigo, and was born in 1733. If he had been a little less modest, and a little less connected with Jovellanos and Melendez, we might have had a modern school of Seville as well as of Salamanca.

[357] Juan Pablo Forner, “Oracion Apologética por la España y su Mérito Literario,” Madrid, 1786, 12mo. His critical controversies and discussions were chiefly under assumed names,—Tomé Cecial, Varas, Bartolo, etc. His poetry is best found in the “Biblioteca” of Mendibil y Silvela, (Burdeos, 1819, 4 tom. 8vo,) and in the fourth volume of Quintana’s “Poesías Selectas”;—an attempt to publish a collection of all his works, edited by Luis Villanueva, having stopped after issuing the first volume, Madrid, 1843, 8vo.

[358] “Poesías de Don Josef Iglesias de la Casa,” Salamanca, 1798, 2 tom. 18mo, Segunda Edicion; forbidden by the Inquisition, Index Expurg., 1805, p. 27. The best editions are those of Barcelona, 1820, and Paris, 1821; but there are several others, and among them one in four small volumes, 1840, the last of which contains a considerable number of poems not before published, some of which, and perhaps all, are not by Iglesias.

[359] “Obras Poéticas de Nicasio Alvarez de Cienfuegos,” Madrid, 1816, 2 tom. 12mo. His style is complained of, both for neologisms and archaisms, the last of which have been made, though without sufficient reason, a ground of complaint against Melendez.

[360] “Coleccion de las Obras de Don Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos,” Madrid, 1830-32, 7 tom. 8vo. A declamatory prose satire on the state of Spain in the time of Charles IV., supposed to have been delivered in the Amphitheatre of Madrid, in 1796, has been attributed to Jovellanos. It is entitled “Pan y Toros,” or Bread and Bull-fights, from the old Roman cry of “Panem et Circenses,” and was suppressed as soon as it was published, but has often been printed since. Among other distinctions, it enjoyed the singular one of being translated and privately printed, in 1813, on board a British man-of-war, stationed in the Mediterranean. But it is not the work of Jovellanos, though it has almost always borne his name on the successive editions. Jovellanos was familiar with English literature, and translated the first book of the “Paradise Lost,” but not very successfully. For notices of him, see Memorias de Jovellanos, por Don Agustin Cean Bermudez, Madrid, 1814, 12mo; the Life at the end of his collected Works; Lord Holland’s Life of Lope de Vega, 1817, Tom. II., where is a beautiful tribute to him, worthy of Mr. Fox’s nephew; and Llorente, Tom. II. p. 540, and Tom. IV. p. 122, where are recorded some of his shameful persecutions. The name of Jovellanos is sometimes written Jove Llanos; and, I believe, was always so written by his ancestors.

[361] “Historia del Nuevo Mundo, por Don Juan Bautista Muñoz,” Madrid, 1793, small folio. Fuster, Bib., Tom. II. p. 191. Memorias de la Acad. de la Historia, Tom. I. p. lxv. The eulogy of Lebrixa, by Muñoz, in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Academy, a defence of his History, and two or three Latin treatises, are all that I know of his works, except the History.

[362] “Mexico Conquistada, Poema Heróico, por Don Juan de Escoiquiz,” Madrid, 1798, 3 tom. 8vo. A still more unhappy epic attempt on the subject of the Conquest of Mexico preceded that of Escoiquiz by about forty years. It was by Francisco Ruiz de Leon, and is entitled “La Hernandia, Triunfos de la Fé” (Madrid, 1755, 4to); a poem making nearly four hundred pages, and sixteen hundred octave stanzas.

[363] “Obras de L. F. Moratin,” Madrid, 1830-31, four vols. 8vo, divided into six, prepared by himself, and published by the Academy of History after his death. His Life is in Vol. I., and his miscellaneous poems are in the last volume, where the remarks on the Prince of the Peace occur, at p. 335, and a notice of his relations with Conti at p. 342. An unreasonably laudatory criticism of his works is to be found in the first volume of Hermosilla’s “Juicio.”

[364] “Poesías de M. J. Quintana,” Madrid, 1821, 2 tom. 8vo. The lyrical portion has been often reprinted since 1802, when the first collection of his Poems appeared at Madrid, in a thin beautiful volume of only 170 pages, 12mo. His life is in Wolf’s excellent Floresta, in Ochoa, Ferrer del Rio, etc.

[365] Montiano y Luyando, Discurso de la Tragedia, Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 66.

[366] He says, near the end, that his purpose was “to show how plays are written in the French style.” Plays arising from the circumstances of the times, and more in the forms and character of the preceding century, were sometimes represented, but soon forgotten. Of these, two may be mentioned as curious. The first is called, like one of Lope’s, “Sueños hay que son Verdades,” an anonymous drama, beginning with a dream of the king of Portugal and ending with its partial fulfilment in the capture of Monsanto, by the forces of Philip V., in 1704. The other is by Rodrigo Pero de Urrutia, entitled “Rey decretado en Cielo,” and covers a space of above six years, from the annunciation by Louis XIV. to the Duke of Anjou, in the first scene, that the will of Charles II. had made him king of Spain, down to the victory of Almansa, in 1707, which is its catastrophe. Both are of no value, and represent fairly, I believe, the merit of the few historical plays produced in the beginning of the eighteenth century, in Spain.

[367] Accounts of the theatre during this sort of interregnum, from about 1700 to about 1790, are found in Signorelli (Storia Critica dei Teatri, Napoli, 1813, 8vo, Tom IX. pp. 56-236); L. F. Moratin (Obras, 1830, Tom. II. Parte I., Prólogo); and four papers by Blanco White (in Vols. X. and XI. of the New Monthly Magazine, London, 1824). The facts and opinions in Signorelli are important, because from 1765 to 1783 he lived in Madrid, (Storia, Tom. IX. p. 189,) and belonged to the club of the Fonda de San Sebastian, noticed, ante, p. 274, several of whose members were dramatic writers, and one of the standing subjects for whose discussions was the theatre. Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, Londres, 1825, p. xxiv.

[368] L. F. Moratin, Prólogo, ut sup.; and Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, 1802, Tom. I. p. 264.

[369] “Alegría Cómica,” (Zaragoza, Tom. I., 1700, Tom. II., 1702,) and “Cómico Festejo,” (Madrid, 1742,) are three small volumes of entremeses, by Francisco de Castro; the last being published after the author’s death. They are not entirely without wit, regarded as caricatures; but they are coarse, and, in general, worthless.

[370] Thomas de Añorbe y Corregel published his “Virtud vence al Destino” in Madrid, 1735, and his “Paolino” in 1740. He calls himself “Capellan del Real Monasterio de la Incarnacion” on the title of the first of these plays, and inserts two absurd entremeses of his own composition between its acts.

[371] “Discurso sobre las Comedias Españolas de Don Agustin de Montiano y Luyando,” Madrid, 1750, 12mo; Discurso Segundo, Madrid, 1753, 12mo. They were translated into French by Hermilly, and an account of them and their author is given in Lessing’s Werke, (Berlin, 1794, 18mo, Band XXIII. p. 95,) where we learn, that Montiano was born in 1697, and that he published, in 1729, “El Robo de Dina,” which seems to have been so much in the tone of a play with the same title, in the seventeenth volume of Lope de Vega’s “Comedias,” that I cannot help thinking Montiano, following the fashion of Cañizares and the other plunderers of the time, was indebted largely to his great predecessor, the enemy of whose reputation he afterwards became. The story of Athaulpho is from the Corónica General, Parte II. c. 22. The “Virginia,” both in its attempt to exhibit Roman manners and in its poetical power, suffers severely when compared with Alfieri’s tragedy on the same subject. But the truth is, Montiano was a slavish imitator of the French school, which he admired so much as to be unable to comprehend and feel what was best in his own Castilian. In the “Aprobacion,” which he prefixed to the edition of Avellaneda, published in 1732, he says, comparing the second part of Don Quixote, by this pretender, with the true one by Cervantes,—“I think no man of judgment will give an opinion in favor of Cervantes, if he compares the two parts together.”

[372] “La Razon contra la Moda” (Madrid, 12mo, 1751) appeared without the name of the translator, and contains a modest defence of the French rules, in the form of a Dedication to the Marchioness of Sarria. Utility is much insisted upon; and the immorality of the elder drama is vigorously, but covertly, attacked.

[373] I know the plays of Moratin, the elder, only in the pamphlets in which they were originally published, and I believe they have never been collected. The “Don Sancho Garcia” was first printed in 1771, with the name of Juan del Valle, and in 1804 with the name of its author, accompanied the last time by some unfortunate prose imitations of Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and other miscellanies, which follow it into the third volume of their author’s works, 1818. Latre’s rifacimenti are printed in a somewhat showy style, probably at the expense of the minister of state, Aranda, under the title of “Ensayo sobre el Teatro Español,” Madrid, 1773, small folio. Latassa (Bib. Nueva, Tom. V. p. 513) gives some account of their author, who died in 1792. The “Anzuelo de Fenisa” and the “Estrella de Sevilla,” as set to the three unities by Trigueros, were printed both in Madrid and London. Of the last person, Candido M. Trigueros, it may be added, that he enjoyed a transient reputation in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and that his principal work, “La Riada,” in four cantos of irregular verse, (Sevilla, 1784, 8vo,) on a disastrous inundation of Seville that had just occurred, was demolished by a letter of Vargas, and a satirical tract which Forner published under the name of Antonio Varas. I do not know when he died, but an account of most of his life and many of his works may be found in the Biblioteca of Sempere y Guarinos, Tom. VI.

[374] The “Obras de Yriarte” (Madrid, 1805, 8 tom. 12mo) contain all his plays, except the first one, written when he was only eighteen years old, and called “Hacer que Hacemos,” or Much Cry and Little Wool. The play of Melendez Valdes is in the second volume of his Works, 1797.

[375] Ayala’s tragedy has been often printed. The “Raquel” is in Huerta’s Works, (Tom. I., 1786,) with his translations of the “Electra” of Sophocles, and the “Zaïre” of Voltaire. The original edition of the Raquel is anonymous, and without date or place of publication.

[376] I have the eighth edition of the “Delinquente Honrado,” 1803; still printed without its author’s name. It was so popular that it was several times published surreptitiously, from notes taken in the theatre, and was once turned into bad verse, before Jovellanos permitted it to appear from his own manuscript. (See Vol. VII. of his Works, edited by Cañedo.) It is somewhat singular, that, just about the time the “Delinquente Honrado” appeared in Spain, Fenouillet published in France a play, yet found in the “Théatre du Second Ordre,” with the exactly corresponding title of “L’Honnête Criminel.” But there is no resemblance in the plots of the two pieces.

[377] “Desengaño al Teatro Español,” three tracts, s. l. 12mo., pp. 80. Huerta, Escena Española Defendida, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, p. xliii. How long autos maintained their place in Spain may be seen from the fact, that very few are forbidden in the amplest Index Expurgatorius,—that of 1667, (p. 84,)—and that those few are, I believe, all Portuguese.

[378] Ramon de la Cruz y Cano, Teatro, Madrid, 1786-91, 10 tom. 12mo, Tom. IX. p. 3.

[379] L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. II. Parte I., Prólogo.

[380] Teatro de Don Ramon de la Cruz. In the Preface, he replies to Signorelli, who, in the seventh chapter of the ninth book of his “Storia dei Teatri,” makes a rude attack upon him, chiefly for sundry translations, which La Cruz does not seem to have printed. The “Coleccion de Sainetes tanto impresos como inéditos de Don Ramon de la Cruz, con un Discurso Preliminar de Don Agustin Duran,” etc., was printed at Madrid in 1843, 2 tom. 8vo. A notice of the life of the author is in Baena, Hijos, etc., Tom. IV., p. 280.

At about the same time that Ramon de la Cruz was amusing the society of Madrid with his popular dramas and farces, Juan Ignacio Gonzalez del Castillo was equally successful in the same way at Cadiz. He was, however, little known beyond the limits of Andalusia till 1845, when Don Adolfo de Castro published, in his native city, a collection of his “Saynetes,” filling two volumes, 12mo. In the variety of their tone, in their faithfulness to the national manners, and in the gayety of their satire, they resemble those of La Cruz; but they are a little more carefully finished than his, and somewhat less rich and genial.

[381] Obras de Cienfuegos, Madrid, 1798, 2 tom. 12mo;—the only edition published by himself.

[382] Vicente Garcia de la Huerta was born in 1734, and died in 1787. A notice of his life, which was not without literary and social success,—though much disturbed by a period of exile and disgrace,—is to be found in the Semanario Pintoresco, (1842, p. 305,) and some intimation of the various literary quarrels in which he was engaged with his contemporaries may be seen in the next note. His general character is not ill summed up in the following epitaph on him, said to have been written by Yriarte, one of his opponents, which should be read, recollecting that Saragossa was famous for a hospital for the insane,—the mad-house that figures so largely in Avellaneda’s “Don Quixote.”

[383] Don Jaime Doms attacked Montiano in a Letter, without date or name of place or printer, and was answered by Domingo Luis de Guevara in three Letters, (Madrid, 1753, 18mo,) to which a rejoinder by Faustino de Quevedo appeared at Salamanca in 1754, 18mo;—all the names being pseudonymes, and all the discussions more angry than wise. The publication of the “Teatro” of La Huerta excited still more discussion. He himself speaks (Escena Hespañola Defendida, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, p. cliii.) of the “enorme número de folletos” that appeared in reply to his “Prólogo,” many of which were probably only circulated in manuscript, according to the fashion of the times, while others, like those of Cosme Damian, Tomé Cecial (i. e. J. P. Forner), etc., were printed in 1786, and La Huerta replied to them in his angry “Leccion Crítica” of the same year. (Sempere, Bib., Tom. III. p. 88.) The whole of this period of Spanish literature is filled with the quarrels of Sedano, Forner, Huerta, Yriarte, and their friends and rivals.

[384] The popularity of Antonio Valladares de Sotomayor, of Gaspar Zavala y Zamora, and of Luciano Francisco Comella, did not last long enough to cause their works to be collected. But I have many separate plays of each of them, and of other forgotten authors of this period, such as Luis Moncin, Vicente Rodriguez de Arellano, José Concha, etc. Of Comella alone I have thirty, and I am ashamed to say how many of them I have read for the pleasure their mere stories gave me.

[385] Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, 1825, p. xvi.

[386] From a letter of Moratin, published in the Semanario Pintoresco, (1844, p. 43,) it seems that Comella and his friends prevented for some time the representation of the “Comedia Nueva,” and that the permission to act it was not granted till it had undergone five different examinations, and not till the very day for which it had been announced was come. The applause of the public, however, made amends to Moratin for the trouble which the intrigues of his rivals and enemies had given him.

[387] Every thing relating to Moratin the younger is to be found in the excellent edition of his Works, published by the Academy of History. Larra (Obras, Madrid, 1843, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 183-187) intimates that the “Mogigata” had been proscribed anew, and that the “Sí de las Niñas” had been mutilated, but that both were brought out again, in their original form, about 1838.

[388] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II. p. 41. Signorelli, Storia, Lib. IX. cap. 8. R. Cumberland (Memoirs of Himself, London, 1807, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 107) speaks of the Tirana as “at the very summit of her art,” and adds that on one occasion, when he was present, her tragic powers proved too much for the audience, at whose cries the curtain was lowered before the piece was ended. Maiquez was the friend of Blanco White, of Moratin the younger, etc. (New Monthly Mag., Tom. XI. p. 187, and L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 345). His best character was that of Garcia de Castañar, in Roxas, which I have seen him play with admirable power and effect.

[389] The war between the Church and the theatre was kept up during the whole of the eighteenth century, and till the end of the reign of Ferdinand VII., in the nineteenth. Not that plays were at any time forbidden effectually throughout the kingdom, or silenced in the capital, except during some short period of national anxiety or mourning; but that, at different intervals,—and especially about the year 1748, when, in consequence of earthquakes at Valencia, and under the influence of the Archbishop of that city, its theatre was closed, and remained so for twelve years, (Luis Lamarca, Teatro de Valencia, Valencia, 1840, 12mo, pp. 32-36,) and about the year 1754, when Father Calatayud preached as a missionary and published a book against plays,—there was great excitement on the subject in the provinces. Ferdinand VI. issued severe decrees for their regulation, which were little respected, and in different cities and dioceses, like Lérida, Palencia, Calahorra, Saragossa, Alicant, Córdova, etc., they were from time to time, and as late as 1807, under ecclesiastical influence, and, with the assent of the people, suppressed, and the theatres shut up. In Murcia, where they seem to have been prohibited from 1734 to 1789, and then permitted again, the religious authorities openly resisted their restoration, and not only denied the sacraments to actors, but endeavoured to deprive them of the enjoyment of some of the common rights of subjects, such as that of receiving testamentary legacies. This, however, was an anomalous and absurd state of things, making what was tolerated as harmless in the capital of the kingdom a sin or a crime in the provinces. It was a sort of war of the outposts, carried on after the citadel had been surrendered. Still it had its effect, and its influence continued to be felt till a new order of things was introduced into the state generally. Many singular facts in relation to it may be found scattered through a very ill-arranged book, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Murcia, in two volumes quarto, at different times between 1789 and 1814, in which last year it was published there, with the title of “Pantoja, ó Resolucion Histórica, Teológica de un Caso Prático de Moral sobre Comédias”;—Pantoja being the name of a lady, real or pretended, who had asked questions of conscience concerning the lawfulness of plays, and who received her answers in this clumsy way.

The state of the theatre, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, can be well seen in the “Teatro Nuevo Español,” (Madrid, 1800-1, 5 tom. 12mo,) filled with the plays, original and translated, that were then in fashion. It contains a list of such as were forbidden; imperfect, but still embracing between five and six hundred, among which are Calderon’s “Life is a Dream,” Alarcon’s “Weaver of Segovia,” and many more of the best dramas of the old school. Duran, in a note to his Preface to Ramon de la Cruz, (Tom. I. p. v.,) intimates that this ostracism was in some degree the result of the influence of those who sustained the French doctrines.

The number of plays acted or published between 1700 and 1825, if not to be compared with that of the corresponding period preceding 1700, is still large. I think that, in the list given by Moratin, there are about fourteen hundred; nearly all after 1750.

[390] The last Index Expurgatorius is that of Madrid, 1790, (4to, pp. 305,) to which should be added a Supplement of 55 pages, dated 1805; both very meagre, compared with the vast folios of the two preceding centuries, of which that of 1667 fills, with its Supplement, above 1200 pages. But the last of the race is as bitter as its predecessors, and, by the great number of French books it includes, shows the quarter from which danger was chiefly apprehended. To prevent any of this class from escaping, it is ordered that “all papers, tracts, and books, on the disturbances in France, which can inspire a spirit of seduction, shall be delivered to some servant of the Holy Office.” Supplement of 1805, p. 3. Burke’s “Reflections” are forbidden in the same Index.

[391] One of the most odious of the acts that marked the restoration of Ferdinand VII. related to the war of the Comuneros, nearly three centuries before. After the execution of Juan de Padilla and the exile of his noble wife, in 1521, their house was razed to the ground, and an inscription reproachful to their memory placed on the spot where it had stood. This the Cortes removed, and erected in its stead a simple monument in honor of the martyrs. In 1823, Ferdinand ordered the simple monument of the Cortes to be destroyed, and replaced the old inscription! But, since that time, Martinez de la Rosa has erected a nobler monument to their memory in his “Viuda de Padilla.” See Henri Ternaux, Les Comuneros, Paris, 1834, 8vo, p. 208; an interesting work and a work of authority, relying, in part, on unpublished materials.

[392] Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. IV. pp. 145-154. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War, London, 1823, 4to, Tom. I. The Inquisition was again abolished by the revolution or change of 1820, and when the counterchange came, in 1823, failed to find its place in the restored order of things. It may be hoped, therefore, that this most odious of the institutions, that have sheltered themselves under the abused name of Christianity, will never again darken the history of Spain.

[393] This movement, so honorable to the Spanish character, can be seen in the “Ocios de Españoles Emigrados,” a Spanish periodical work, full of talent and national feeling, published at London, in 7 vols. 8vo, between April, 1824, and October, 1827, by the exiles, who were then chiefly gathered in the capitals of France and England.

[394] Spain, Espagne, España, Hispania, are evidently all one word. Its etymology cannot, in the opinion of W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens, 4to, 1821, p. 60,) be determined. The Spanish writers are full of the most absurd conjectures on the subject. See Aldrete, Orígen de la Lengua Castellana, ed. 1674, Lib. III. c. 2, f. 68; Mariana, Hist., Lib. I. c. 12; and Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ed. 1776, Lib. IV., p. 295.

[395] On the subject of the Biscayans and the descent of their language from the ancient Iberian, two references are sufficient for the present purpose. First, “Über die Cantabrische oder Baskische Sprache,” by Wilhelm von Humboldt, published as an Appendix to Adelung and Vater’s “Mithridates,” Theil IV., 1817, 8vo, pp. 275-360. And, second, “Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der Vaskischen Sprache,” etc., von W. von Humboldt, 4to, Berlin, 1821. The admirable learning, philosophy, and acuteness which this remarkable man brought to all his philological discussions are apparent in these treatises, both of which are rendered singularly satisfactory by the circumstance, that, being for some time Prussian Minister at Madrid, he visited Biscay and studied its language on the spot. The oldest fragment of Basque poetry which he found, and which is given in the “Mithridates,” (Theil IV. pp. 354-356,) is held by the learned of Biscay to be nearly or quite as old as the time of Augustus, to whose Cantabrian war it refers; but this can hardly be admitted, though it is no doubt earlier than any thing else we have of the Peninsular literature. It is an important document, and is examined with his accustomed learning and acuteness by Fauriel, “Hist. de la Gaule Méridionale,” 1836, 8vo, Tom. II. App. iii. I do not speak of a pleasant treatise, “De la Antiguedad y Universalidad del Bascuense en España,” which Larramendi published in 1728, nor of the Preface and Appendix to his “Arte de la Lengua Bascongada,” 1729; nor of Astarloa’s “Apologia,” 1803; nor of Erro’s “Lengua Primitiva,” 1806, and his “Mundo Primitivo,” an unfinished work, 1815; for they all lack judgment and precision. If, however, any person is anxious to ascertain their contents, a good abstract of the last two books, with sufficient reference to the first, was published in Boston, by Mr. G. Waldo Erving, formerly American Minister at Madrid, with a preface and notes, under the title of “The Alphabet of the Primitive Language of Spain,” 1829. But Humboldt is to be considered the safe and sufficient authority on the whole subject, for though Astarloa’s work is not without learning and acuteness, yet, as both he and his follower, Erro, labor chiefly to prove, as Larramendi had done long before, that the Basque is the original language of the whole human race, they are led into a great many whimsical absurdities, and must be considered, on the whole, any thing but safe guides.