Modern Spanish Lyrics | Page 8

curb the
stifling domination of the Roman Church and its

agents
the Jesuits and the Inquisition. The Benedictine Feijóo

(1675-1764) labored faithfully to inoculate Spain, far
behind the rest
of Europe, with an inkling of recent
scientific discoveries. And the
budding prosperity,
however deceitful it proved, was reflected in a
more
promising literary generation. page xxix
Nicolás FERNÁNDEZ DE MORATÍN (1737-1780) followed the

French rules in theory and wrote a few mediocre plays in
accordance
with them; but he showed that at heart he was a
good poet and a good
Spaniard by his ode _Á Pedro
Romero, torero insigne_, some
romances and his famous
quintillas_, the _Fiesta de toros en Madrid.
Other
followers of the French, in a genre not, strictly
speaking, lyric
at all, were the two fabulists, Samaniego
and Iriarte. F. María de
SAMANIEGO (1745-1801) gave to the
traditional stock of apologues,
as developed by Phaedrus,
Lokmân and La Fontaine, a permanent and
popular Castilian
form. Tomás de IRIARTE (1750-1791), a more
irritable
personage who spent much time in literary polemics, wrote

original fables (_Fábulas literarias_, 1781) directed not
against the
foibles of mankind in general, but against the
world of writers and
scholars.
The best work which was done under the classical French
influence,
however, is to be found in the writers of the
so-called Salamancan
school, which was properly not a
school at all. The poets who are
thus classed together,
Cadalso, Diego González, Jovellanos, Forner,
Meléndez
Valdés, Cienfuegos, Iglesias, were personal friends thrown

together in the university or town of Salamanca, but they
were not
subjected to a uniform literary training and
possessed no similarity of
style or aim as did the men of
the later Sevillan school.
José de CADALSO (1741-1782), a dashing soldier of great
personal
charm killed at the siege of Gibraltar, is
sometimes credited with
founding the school of Salamanca.
He was a friend of most of the
important writers of his
time and composed interesting prose satires;

his verse
(_Noches lúgubres_, etc.) is not remarkable. FRAY DIEGO

GONZÁLEZ (1733-1794) is one of the masters of page xxx
idiomatic Castilian in the century. He admired Luis de
León and
imitated him in paraphrases of the Psalms. The
volume of his verse is
small but unsurpassed in surety of
taste and evenness of finish. The
_Murciélago alevoso_ has
passed into many editions and become a
favorite in Spain.
The pure and commanding figure of
JOVELLANOS (1744-1811)
dominated the whole group which
listened to his advice
with respect. It was not always sure, for he led
Diego
González and Meléndez Valdés astray by persuading them to

attempt philosophical poetry instead of the lighter sort
for which
they were fitted. He was in fact a greater man
than poet, but his
satires and _Epístola al duque de
Veragua_ are strong and dignified.
Juan MELÉNDEZ VALDÉS (1754-1817) was on the contrary a

greater poet than man. Brilliant from the first, he was
petted by
Cadalso and Jovellanos who strove to develop his
talent. In 1780 he
won a prize offered by the Academy for
an eclogue. In 1784 his
comedy Las bodas de Camacho, on
a subject suggested by Jovellanos
(from an episode in _Don
Quijote_, II, 19-21), won a prize offered by
the city of
Madrid, but failed on the stage. His first volume of poems

was published in 1785; later editions appeared in 1797 and
1820.
He attached himself to the French party at the time
of the invasion in
1808, incurred great popular odium and
died in France. He is the
most fluent, imaginative poet of
the eighteenth century and is
especially successful in the
pastoral and anacreontic styles. Fresh
descriptions of
nature, enchanting pictures of love, form an oasis in

an age of studied reasonableness. His language has been
criticized for
its Gallicisms. José IGLESIAS DE LA CASA
(1748-1791), a native
of Salamanca and a priest, wrote
much light satirical verse, epigrams,
parodies page xxxi and letrillas in racy Castilian; he was less
successful
in the graver forms. Nicasio ÁLVAREZ DE
CIENFUEGOS
(1764-1809) passes as a disciple of Meléndez; he was

a
passionate, uneven writer whose undisciplined thought and
habit
of coining words lead to obscurity. Politically he
opposed the French
with unyielding vigor, barely escaped
execution at their hands and
died in exile. The verse of
Cienfuegos prepared the way for Quintana.
Differing
from him in clarity and polish are Fr. Sánchez Barbero

(1764-1819) and Leandro F. de Moratín, the dramatist
(1760-1828).
One curious result of rationalistic doctrines was the
"prosaism" into
which it led many minor versifiers. These
poetasters, afraid of
overstepping the limits of
good sense, tabooed all imagination and
described in
deliberately prosy lines the most commonplace events.
The
movement reached its height at the beginning of the reign
of
Charles IV (1788-1808) and produced such efforts as
a poem to the
gout, a nature-poem depicting barn-yard
sounds, and even Iriarte's
_La música_ (1780), in which
one may read in carefully constructed
silvas the
definition of diatonic and chromatic scales.
II
SPANISH LYRIC POETRY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Early in the nineteenth century the armies of Napoleon
invaded Spain.
There ensued a fierce struggle for the
mastery of the Peninsula, in
which the latent strength and
energy of the Spaniards became once
more evident. The page xxxii French devastated parts of the country,
but they
brought with them many new