Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/211

1839.] have been strongly brandied, they appeared to require that a translator should infuse a spirit of his own into them, in order to adapt them for the English palate. The critic, I fear, will decide that, in seeking to improve, I have only adulterated them.

Yriarte was a voluminous author, and attempted almost every kind of poetical composition; but his writings seldom rise above mediocrity, and are distinguished rather by judgment and good taste than by force and originality. Next to his Literary Fables, a didactic poem on Music, which, I believe, has been translated into English, enjoys the highest celebrity.

One day, as a silkworm slowly spun Its delicate threads in the noon-tide sun,