The first of these was didactic poetry. His poem “On Music,”—a subject which he chose from his considerable proficiency in that art,—appeared in 1780, and was soon favorably known, not only at home, but in Italy and France. It consists of five books, in which he discusses with philosophical precision the elements of music; musical expression of different kinds, but especially martial and sacred; the music of the theatre; that of society; and that of man in solitude. The poem is written in the free, national silva, irregular, but flowing, and no want of skill is shown in its management. But, as a whole, it has too little richness and vigor to give life to the cold forms of instruction, in which it is throughout rigorously cast.[347]
The other department, in which Yriarte was more successful, was that of fables. Here he, in some degree, struck out a new path; for he not only invented all his fictions, which no other fabulist in modern times had done, but restricted them all, in their moral purpose, to the correction of the faults and follies of men of learning,—an application which had not before been thought of. Their whole number, including a few that are posthumous, is nearly eighty, above sixty of which appeared in 1782. They are written with great care, in no less than forty different measures, and show an extraordinary degree of ingenuity in adapting the attributes and instincts of animals to the instruction, not of mankind at large, as had always been done before, but to that of a separate and small class, between whom and the inferior creation the resemblance is rarely obvious. The task was certainly a difficult one. Perhaps, on this account, they are too narrative in their structure, and fail somewhat in the genial spirit which distinguishes Æsop and La Fontaine, the greatest masters of Apologue and Fable. But their influence was so much needed in the age of bad writing when they appeared, and they are besides so graceful in their versification, that they were not only received with great favor at first, but have never lost it since. Their author’s reputation, in fact, now rests on them almost exclusively.[348]
Yriarte, however, had a rival, who shared these honors with him, and in some respects obtained them even earlier. This was Samaniego, a Biscayan gentleman of rank and fortune, who was born in 1745, and died in 1801; having devoted his life, in the most disinterested manner, to the welfare of his native province. He was one of the earliest and most active members of the first of those societies sometimes called “Friends of the Country,” and sometimes “Societies for Public Improvement,” which began in the reign of Charles the Third, and soon spread through Spain, exercising an important influence on the education and public economy of the kingdom, and laboring to raise the arts of life from the degraded condition into which they had fallen during the latter period of the dominion of the House of Austria.
The Biscayan Society, founded in 1765, devoted itself much to the education of the people; and, to favor this great cause, Samaniego undertook to write fables suited to the capacity of the children taught in the Society’s seminary. How early he began to prepare them is not known; but in the first portion, published in 1781, and therefore one year before those of Yriarte appeared, he speaks of Yriarte as his model, and leaves no doubt that the fables of that poet had been seen by him. The second part of Samaniego’s collection was published in 1784, when that of his rival had been admired by the public long enough to change the relations of the two authors, and bring up a quarrel of pamphlets between them, little creditable to either. Both parts, taken together, contain a hundred and fifty-seven fables, the last nineteen of which and a few others are original, while the rest are taken, partly from Æsop, Phædrus, and the Oriental fabulists, but chiefly from La Fontaine and Gay. They succeeded at once. The children learned them by heart, and the teachers of the children found in them subjects for pleasant reading and reflection. They were, no doubt, less carefully written than the fables of Yriarte, less original and less exactly adapted to their purpose; but they were more free-hearted, more natural, and adapted to a larger class of readers; in short, there is a more easy poetical genius about them, and therefore, even if they cannot claim a higher merit than those of Yriarte, they have taken a stronger hold on the national regard.[349]
The best of them are the shortest and simplest, like the following, entitled “The Scrupulous Cats,” which was well suited to the time when it appeared, and can hardly be amiss at any other.
Two cats, old Tortoise-back and Kate,
Once from its spit a capon ate.
It was a giddy thing, be sure,
And one they could not hide or cure.
They licked themselves, however, clean,