Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/270

246 246 CASTILIAN LITERATURE. Ollva's clas- sic imita- tions. PART at Cordova, in 1494, and, after many years passed '. — in the various schools of Spain, France, and Italy, returned to his native land, and became a lecturer in the university of Salamanca. He instructed in moral philosophy and mathematics, and established the highest reputation for his critical acquaintance with the ancient languages and his own. He died young, at the age of thirty-nine, deeply lamented for his moral, no less than for his intellectual worth. ^^ His various works were published by the learned Morales, his nephew, some fifty years after his death. Among them are translations in prose of the Electra of Sophocles, and the Hecuba of Euri- pides. They may with more propriety be termed imitations, and those too of the freest kind. Al- though they conform, in the general arrangement and progress of the story, to their originals, yet characters, nay whole scenes and dialogues, are occasionally omitted ; and in those retained, it is not always easy to recognise the hand of the Gre- cian artist, whose modest beauties are thrown into shade by the ambitious ones of his imitator. ^^ But with all this, Oliva's tragedies must be admitted to be executed, on the whole, with vigor ; and the diction, notwithstanding the national tendency to 53 Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca No- "Habed, yo os ruego, de mi va, torn. i. p. 386. — Oliva, Obras, compassion, no querais atapar con pref. de Morales. vuestros consejos los respiraderos 54 The following passage, for de las hornazas de fuego, que den- example, in the " Venganza de tro me atormentan." See Oliva, Agamemnon," imitated from the Obras, p. 185. Electra of Sophocles, will hardly be charged on the Greek dramatist.