The people of Cuba have good cause to be proud of a poet born in their island, whose genius seems always to have found its highest inspiration in expatiating on the charms of the place of his birth.
Heredia was born the 31st December, 1803, at Santiago de Cuba, in which city his family had taken refuge when driven away by the revolution from the island of Santo Domingo, where they had been previously settled. His father, whose profession was that of the law, was shortly afterwards appointed a Judge in Mexico, where he accordingly went with his family, taking his son there for his education under his special superintendence. This duty he had the privilege allowed him to accomplish, when he died in 1820, leaving a reputation for ability and uprightness so eminent as to prove highly advantageous to his son in his subsequent necessities. On his father’s death, Heredia returned with his mother and three sisters to Cuba, where he had an uncle and other relations residing, and there he engaged in a course of study for the profession of the law, at the termination of which he was, in 1823, admitted an Advocate in the Supreme Court of the island. From his earliest years he had always shown himself possessed of a very studious disposition, and some of his poems seem to have been written when only eighteen years of age.
In the pursuit of the profession he had adopted, with his talent and energy, Heredia might have hoped soon to acquire a very honourable position; but unfortunately for his future comfort in life, he had imbibed too strongly the principles then prevailing to consider the domination of Spain as an evil which ought to be removed. It is stated, that there was a conspiracy even then formed to declare the independence of the island, in which he was implicated; and that on his being denounced to the government in consequence, he was obliged to fly from the island. Proceedings under this charge were notwithstanding instituted against him, under which he was formally declared banished. He thereupon went, in November 1823, to New York, where he passed the following three years, appearing, from the accounts that reached his friends, to have lived there during that time in great privations. These, and the variableness of the climate, operating severely on his constitution, as a native of the tropics, were no doubt the causes of his becoming a victim to that fatal disease which terminated his existence a few years afterwards.
In New York he acquired soon an accurate knowledge of the English language, which enabled him also to become familiarly acquainted with English literature. Of this he showed no inconsiderable tokens, in a volume of poems which he published there in 1825, having included among them several translations from the English, though he has not acknowledged them generally as such. He continued the same neglect in the edition of his works published subsequently in Mexico in 1832, which was a much superior edition to the former, being more than doubled in regard to its contents, and having the poems formerly published now much corrected and improved.
Not finding his residence in New York offering him any hopes of advancement in life, and despairing of being able to return to his family in Cuba, he determined to go thence to Mexico and seek the assistance of his father’s friends in that city. He accordingly went there in 1826, and had scarcely arrived when he was at once appointed to a situation in the office of the Secretary of State. From this minor post he was soon afterwards promoted to discharge various important offices in the provinces, and finally to be named one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Mexico and a Senator of the Republic. It was while holding one of those appointments as a local judge at Toluca that he published there the second edition of his works just mentioned.
After the death of Ferdinand VII., in 1833, the Regent, Queen Christina, wisely accorded a general amnesty to all expatriated Spaniards, when Heredia, notwithstanding the favourable position he held in Mexico, where also he had married in 1827, wished to take advantage of it to return to his family. On making application, however, for permission to do so, he was refused it by the Captain-General of Cuba, and all he could obtain was permission to go there for two months to visit his aged mother and other relatives, subject to the observation of the police. He went there accordingly in 1836, when, by a singular coincidence, he joined his family again on the same day of the month that thirteen years before he had parted from them.
On his arrival in Cuba, he was subjected to some of those petty annoyances which military governments too often impose on people under their sway. A friend of his who had gone to meet him, found him, notwithstanding his rank in the Mexican republic, or his reputation as a literary character, or his evident state of ill-health, seated on a bench in the court of the government office, to wait his turn at the pleasure of the official, who thought he was showing his dignity by exposing to unnecessary delay those whom he had to note under his inspection. Heredia was so altered that his friend could scarcely recognize him, and his relatives soon had to become apprehensive that his health was seriously endangered. He had given the most solemn assurance to the authorities that he would not in any way during his visit interfere in the public questions of the day, and he fulfilled his promise. If he really had entered in his youth into any plot against the government, the most dangerous conspirator in it could scarcely have been a young man of nineteen, who seems to have been the principal sufferer. But in any case, he had by time and reflection become very altered in sentiment, and his failing strength would not admit of any extraordinary exertion, even if he had remained the same enthusiast for political liberty as he was in his youth. He would have wished to stay the remainder of his life with his family, but it was his duty to return to Mexico after the expiration of the period allowed him, and there he died of consumption on his return, the 6th May, 1839. After his death, his widow and her children came to Cuba, where she died the 16th June, 1844, leaving a son and two daughters in the kindly charge of his relatives.
The Toluca edition of Heredia’s poems in two volumes, 1832, does great credit to the Mexican press, being one of the best printed Spanish works to be found. But it is extremely scarce, and therefore deserves a more detailed account of it than might be requisite with works better known. In addition to those contained in the first edition, which is yet comparatively frequently to be met with, it contains his philosophic and patriotic poems, some of which are very spirited, and one, the ‘Hymn of the Banished,’ an extremely fine one. The copies of the work sent to Havana had these patriotic poems taken out, as otherwise they would have been seized by the authorities; so that most of the copies of the work existing are deficient with regard to them. In the place of the odes thus taken out, another poem, ‘On Immortality,’ was inserted, which, however, is principally taken from the Seventh Book of Young’s Night Thoughts, though not so stated. The other principal poems, in respect of length, are, ‘On the Worth of Women,’ and ‘the Pleasures of Melancholy.’ Of another very fine ode, ‘To Niagara,’ a very excellent translation into English blank verse has appeared in the United States Review.
In the preface to the second edition, he states that he had been induced to undertake it, upon finding that several of the poems in the first had been reprinted in Paris, London, Hamburg and Philadelphia, and had been received with much favour in his own country, where [the celebrated Lista] had pronounced him “a great poet.” There can be no doubt that other editions would have met with very favourable reception, had it not been for the circumstance of his being considered an author obnoxious to the Spanish government. As it is, the Creoles of Cuba have manuscript copies of his poems circulating amongst themselves, generally faulty as dependent on the taste of the individuals who had copied them. The effect of this is apparent in the only edition I am aware of, that has been published in Spain, that of Barcelona, in 1840, acknowledged to be taken from a manuscript copy, in which not only are some of his best compositions omitted, such as the ‘Lines to his Horse,’ and the poem entitled, ‘The Season of the Northers,’ but some others, for instance, the ‘Ode to the Sun,’ are given imperfectly. In return, it gives a poem on receiving the portrait of his mother, which had not appeared in the former editions, and which is not unworthy of being compared with Cowper’s on the same subject, though treated differently.
In the prologue to this edition the editor observes, that “in all his productions is seen an excellency of heart and an imagination truly poetical, enabling us to assert with Lista that he is a great poet, and one of the best of our day.” He adds, “the poems of Heredia have, in our judgement, the merit of a purity of language, which unfortunately begins to be unknown in Spain. They are of a kind equally apart from the monotony and servileness, ascribed perhaps with reason to the classicists, and from the extravagant aberration of those who affect to be called Romanticists, and believe they are so, because they despise all rules in their compositions, substituting words and phrases unknown to our better writers and poets.”