Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/16

x her for many ages a succession of enlightened as well as war-like rulers, who are justly to be classed among the greatest patrons of literature and art; but they fostered rather than founded the sciences that afterwards flourished under their rule, and which they found preparing to burst forth in the country they conquered. Though their forefathers might have come from the seats of learning in the East, such as they then were, the immediate conquerors of Spain were natives of the neighbouring parts of Africa, where the sciences had not flourished in any remarkable degree before the conquest, and where they did not rise subsequently to any eminence. The learned Lampillas, who has given us a very able Vindication of Spanish Literature, in answer to the attacks of some Italian critics, might justly have gone further than he has done as to its merits under the Moorish domination. Rather than as owing her advances in learning and civilization to the Moors, it is more probable that these were the remains of former civilization, existing among the Roman colonies on the dissolution of the empire. At that time Spain was essentially inhabited by descendants of Romans, as it still continues to be, mainly, to the present day. Latin had become the language of the country, and the best of the later Latin authors, Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quinctilian and others, were natives of the Peninsula. The Romans had planted sixty-seven colonies there, and in the time of Vespasian could enumerate 360 cities inhabited by them. These would undoubtedly retain their municipal institutions, and were perhaps more retentive of Roman manners than were even the towns of Italy. The original inhabitants had been driven into the mountains of Catalonia, Cantabria and Lusitania. They were of Celtic origin, and their descendants in those provinces still show that origin by a different pronunciation of the language imposed on the country by the