[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.