In 1820 the Espronceda family occupied an apartment in the Calle del Lobo. It was there and then that Patricio de Escosura firmed his intimacy with the future poet. He describes graphically his first meeting with the youth who was to be his lifelong friend. He first saw José sliding down from a third-story balcony on a tin waterspout. In the light of later years Escosura felt that in this boyish prank the child was father of the man. The boy who preferred waterspouts to stairways, later in life always scorned the beaten path, and "the illogical road, no matter how venturesome and hazardous it was, attracted him to it by virtue of that sort of fascinating charm which the abyss exercises over certain eminently nervous temperaments." The belief that Espronceda studied at the Artillery School of Segovia in 1821 appears to rest upon the statement of Solís alone. Escosura, who studied there afterwards, never speaks of his friend as having attended the same institution. Solís may have confused the younger José with his deceased, like-named brother, who, we know, actually was a cadet in Segovia. On the other hand, Solís speaks with confidence, though without citing the source of his information, and nothing would have been more natural than for the boy to follow in his elder brother's footsteps, as he did later when he joined the Guardia de Corps. However, the matter is of slight moment, for if he studied in Segovia at all he cannot have remained there for more than a few weeks.
What little education Espronceda was able to acquire in the course of his stormy life was gained mostly in the Colegio de San Mateo between the years 1820 and 1830. This was a private school patronized by sons of the nobility and wealthy middle class. Two of the masters, José Gómez Hermosilla and Alberto Lista, were poets of repute. Lista was the best teacher of his time in Spain. The wide range of his knowledge astonished his pupils, and he appeared to them equally competent in the classics, modern languages, mathematics, philosophy and poetics, all of which subjects he knew so well that he never had to prepare a lecture beforehand. Plainly Lista was not a specialist of the modern stamp; but he was something better, a born teacher. In spite of an unprepossessing appearance, faulty diction, and a ridiculous Andalusian accent, Lista was able to inspire his students and win their affection. It is no coincidence that four of the fellow students of the Colegio de San Mateo, Espronceda, Felipe Pardo, Ventura de la Vega, and Escosura, afterwards became famous in literature.
Espronceda's school reports have been preserved. We learn that he studied sacred history, Castilian grammar, Latin, Greek, French, English, mythology, history, geography, and fencing, which last he was later to turn to practical account. He showed most proficiency in French and English, and least in Greek and mathematics. His talent was recognized as unusual, his industry slight, his conduct bad. Calleja, the principal, writes in true schoolmaster's fashion: "He is wasting the very delicate talent which nature gave him, and is wasting, too, the opportunity of profiting by the information of his distinguished professors." It cannot be denied that Espronceda's conduct left much to be desired. According to Escosura he was "bright and mischievous, the terror of the whole neighborhood, and the perpetual fever of his mother." He soon gained the nickname buscarruidos, and attracted the notice of police and night watchmen. "In person he was agreeable, likable, agile, of clear understanding, sanguine temperament inclined to violence; of a petulant, merry disposition, of courage rash even bordering upon temerity, and more inclined to bodily exercise than to sedentary study." The two friends were much influenced by Calderón at this time. The height of their ambition was to be like the gallants of a cape-and-sword play, equally ready for a love passage or a fight. Lista's influence upon his pupils was not restricted to class exercises. In order to encourage them to write original verse and cultivate a taste for literature, he founded in April, 1823, the Academy of the Myrtle, modeled after the numerous literary academies which throve in Italy and Spain during the Renaissance period and later. Lista himself presided, assuming the name Anfriso. Was Delio, the name Espronceda assumed in his "Serenata" of 1828, his academic designation? The models proposed for the youthful aspirants were the best poets of antiquity and such modern classicists as Meléndez, Cienfuegos, Jovellanos, and Quintana. Two of Espronceda's academic exercises have been preserved. They are as insipid and jejune as Goethe's productions of the Leipzig period. As an imitator of Horace he was not a success. What he gained from the Academy was the habit of writing.
The Academy lasted until 1826, when many of its members had been driven into exile; but its later meetings must have seemed tame to spirited boys engrossed in the exciting political events of those times. The year 1823 is famous in Spanish history for the crushing out of liberalism. This was effected by means of the Holy Alliance, an infamous association of tyrants whose main object was to restore absolutism. Louis XVIII, the Bourbon king of France, sent a force of one hundred thousand men under the Duke of Angoulême who met with little resistance, and in short order nullified all that had been accomplished by the Spanish liberals. Before the end of the year Ferdinand VII, who had been virtually deposed, was restored to his throne, and the constitution of 1820 had been abolished. Espronceda, the son of a hero of the War of Liberation, felt that the work of the men of 1808 had been undone. They had exchanged a foreign for a domestic tyrant. What his feelings were we may gather from his ode in commemoration of the uprising of the Madrid populace against the troops of Murat, "Al Dos de Mayo":
¡Oh de sangre y valor glorioso día!
Mis padres cuando niño me contaron
Sus hechos, ¡ay! y en la memoria mía
Santos recuerdos de virtud quedaron.
But, as he says later in the poem,
El trono que erigió vuestra bravura,