[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.