The same our sufferings and care;
In vain thou hold’st thy tears apart;
Like me thou also hast to bear
A wounded and an aching heart!
XII.
JOSÈ ZORRILLA.
It has been said that “the life of a poet is ever a romance.” Perhaps this observation may apply equally well to the history of every man of ardent genius who enters with characteristic enthusiasm into the affairs of life, so as to invest even ordinary circumstances with the glow and hue of his own excited imagination. But this is more especially the case with poets who make us participate in their feelings, their joys or their sorrows, so as to give a character of romance to incidents that with other persons would have passed away as unnoticed. In the course of the preceding narratives, no doubt, many instances may be remembered to verify this remark, and the life of the eminent and deservedly popular poet with which we have to close the series, even in his yet youthful career, may be found to afford a further exemplification of it.
On the 14th February, 1837, a funeral car, over which was placed a crown of laurel, had to traverse the streets of Madrid, bearing to their resting-place in the cemetery, the remains of the talented but wrong-minded Larra. The car was followed by an immense concourse of mourners, principally young men of the first classes of Madrid, who were so testifying their regret for the loss they had sustained. The whole scene presented a spectacle of homage paid to genius, such as had seldom been witnessed. It was such as power might have envied, and as worth scarcely ever attained. Melancholy as had been the end of the unhappy being they mourned, envy and hatred had become silenced, morality and charity joined in regret, and no one disputed the propriety of the funeral honours paid to the dead.
It was already late when the ceremonies were concluded, and the darkening shadows of the night, in such a place and on such an occasion, gave the countenances of all assembled an extraordinary character. The shock they had felt, to lose so suddenly from among them one so well-known to them all, in the fulness of youth and intellect, in the height of fame and popularity, without any apparent motive and enveloped in mystery, was of itself sufficient to penetrate their minds with sorrow. They felt that a bright light had been extinguished, and they feared there was no hope of another arising to shine in its place. A strange spell seemed to have come over the bystanders, and they lingered round the vault with an unaccountable disinclination to separate.