Holding such high opinions in all his writings, it may be seen that the youth of Spain cannot have a better guide to take for private study than those writings, the best preparatives for honourable exertion in life; and Quintana’s own history shows, that whatever misfortunes may befall any one individually, he does not labour or suffer in vain, who labours or suffers honestly in a just cause. In another part of the same prologue, Quintana says of his own lot, “Of this variety of circumstances and continued alternations, from good to ill, and from ill to good, not small has been the part fallen to the author of this work. Drawn by the force of events from his study and domestic lares, flattered and excessively exalted now, afterwards borne down and contemned, falling into imprisonment and proceeded against capitally, destined to a long and perhaps indefinite detention, deprived during it of communications and even of his pen, released from it, when he least hoped, to rise and prosper, and descending again soon to be endangered, he has experienced all, and nothing now can be to him new. Let it not be supposed from this that he puts it forth here as a merit, and less, that he presents it in complaint. For of whom should I complain? Of men? These in the midst of my greatest calamities, with very few exceptions, have shown themselves constantly regardful, benevolent, and even respectful towards me. Of fortune? And what pledges had she given me to moderate for me the rigour with which she treated the rest? Were they not of as much or more value than I? Political and moral turbulences are the same as the great physical disorders, in which the elements becoming excited, no one is sheltered from their fury.”
Resigning himself thus to his fate, Quintana seems to have learned the philosophical secret of preserving his equanimity in all the vicissitudes of life, to the enjoyment of a tranquil old age. The privilege of attaining this is a favour to every one, to whom it is granted; but its highest enjoyments must be consequent only on a life of active usefulness, with a conscience void of offence. The man of cultivated mind, who has been called upon to do or to suffer more than others his fellows in the turmoils of the world, may then be supposed to receive his greater reward in the remembrances of scenes, happier perhaps in the retrospect than in the reality, which may have given them even the semblance of a longer existence. As perspectives appear lengthened, according to the number and variety of objects that intervene to the view, so life itself may appear to have been longer or shorter, according to the memory and character of events witnessed in its course. Described as a person of athletic form, yet unbowed by the burden of fourscore years, Quintana, as before observed, still survives, to receive the honour justly due to him for his honourable exertions through life, the remembrances of which may thus give him more pleasurable enjoyments, than can be supposed to fall to the lot of ordinary mortals.
As a poet, if a foreigner may be allowed to express an opinion, for which he has no native authority to adduce, Quintana may be said to be more eloquent than poetical. As Quintilian said of Lucan, both also natives of Spain, “ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis annumerandus.” Quintana’s eloquence consists in earnestness more than in flights of fancy. His favourite subjects were the glories of his country; and his patriotic odes, in which he endeavoured to incite his countrymen to imitate the examples of their forefathers, have been pronounced his best compositions. He has as a poet paid his tribute of admiration to beauty and the arts; but his whole soul seems to be poured forth when pathetically mourning over the dimmed glories of his country, as when at the thought “of our miserable squadrons flying before the British,” he turns to the Padillias and Guzmans of former days, “when the Spaniard was master of half of Europe, and threw himself upon unknown and immense seas to give a new world to men.”
As a patriotic poet Quintana has been compared to Beranger, and is said to have had the same power over the minds of his countrymen. If the parallel be correct, it may be curious to consider how characteristically these two poets appeal to the feelings of their admirers; one by songs and incidents, which though often trivial, yet speak to the heart in its most sensitive points, while the other proceeds to the same object by martial odes of commanding austerity. Besides the Ode to Balmis, the other one in this work, on the Battle of Trafalgar, has been chosen for translation, as most likely to interest the English reader, though it may not be in itself so much to be admired as some others of his poems. The reader will perhaps observe a constrained style in it, even beyond that of translation,—sentiments forced, as if the subject had not been taken voluntarily. It must not therefore be looked upon as a favourable specimen of Quintana’s genius, like the Ode to Balmis, which more fully shows the character of his mind.
Quintana, more than other poets of his time, has written in one style of verse, as in imitation of the Pindaric ode, or of our Gray and Dryden. Thus with free metres and often unfettered by rhyme, he has a staid measured tone, well suited to the subjects he has generally adopted. They are considered in Spain as of an elegiac character; and as accordant with them, they have fallen in the translation into the form of our elegies, or the heroic lines with alternate rhymes, the style of verse which Dryden, a high authority on such a question, pronounced “the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords.”
Much as Quintana has published, both of his own works and of the works of others, for the advancement of sound learning and moral instruction, we have still great cause to regret that the circumstances of the times in which he has lived have prevented him from publishing more. Not only has he been interrupted in the course of those instructive biographies, of which we have such valuable beginnings, but we might have hoped, if he had lived in more peaceful times, that he would have given the world some work, of a character more distinctively his own, to place his name still higher in the history of elegant literature. It was one of the maxims of the wise Jovellanos, “that it was not sufficient for the purposes of good government to keep the people quiet, but that they ought to be kept contented.” Without this condition the other cannot be expected; and for all public commotions, therefore, the rulers are always most responsible, as unmindful of this truth. The greatest evil is, when the whole literary world has thus also further cause to complain of their misdeeds, as affecting those who were endowed with talents of a higher order, such as to make all men interested in their well-being. It is to be hoped that we are now, under the benignant reign of Isabel the Second, entitled to expect a more liberal government, and the advent of a still brighter æra for the literature of Spain.
Taking the space of eighty years, as comprehending the period during which modern Spanish poetry has been peculiarly distinguished for superior excellence, we may now make a further division of this period, into the former and latter parts of it. All the poets, whose lives we have hitherto traced, wrote their principal works previously to the year 1810; after which time we have a succession of writers, whose genius may perhaps be found to take a yet wider range of thought and feeling, consequent on the extended field of knowledge, which later events presented to their observation.