Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/109

Rh of that career, no one would have judged him the same young man, whose inclination for poetry and learning was soon after to place him at the head of the elegant literature of his country."

Fortunately for Melendez, continues his biographer, there happened then to be at Salamanca Don Jose de Cadalso, "a man celebrated for extensive erudition, combined with more than ordinary talent for poetry and letters, and a zeal for the glory and advancement of his country, learned in the school, and under the inspiration of virtue. Generous and affable, always lively, and at times satirical without branching off into maliciousness, his conversation was kind and instructive, and his principles indulgent and steadfast." This eminent individual, already well known in the literary world by several works published in 1772 and 1773, immediately recognized the value of Melendez: he took him to his house to live with him, showed him the beauties and defects of the older writers, taught him how to imitate them, and opened to him the road to become acquainted with the literature of the learned nations of Europe. "He afforded him an instruction yet more precious, in the beautiful example he gave him to love all writers of merit, to rise superior to envy, and to cultivate letters without degrading them by unworthy disputations. The eulogies Cadalso bestowed on his contemporaries are a public testimony of this noble character; and the works of Melendez, where there is not a single line detracting from the merit of any one, and his whole literary career, exempt from all attack, show how he profited by the lessons of his master."

The Anacreontic style, in which Cadalso excelled, was also that first cultivated by Melendez; and the former, seeing the progress of his pupil, and the first efforts of his Muse, unreservedly acknowledged him his superior, and in prose and