Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/22

xvi the authors; but for the general reader, the better course seems rather to be to pass by those works which the nation had not accepted as to be incorporated in the national literature, and to dwell extendedly on those which, by repeated editions, were entitled to be considered of that character. Bouterwek's work on Spanish literature, which appears to have been his own performance, and which certainly does great credit to his industry, is an exemplification of the former course. The volume on Portuguese literature, under his name, which he acknowledges to have been the contribution of a friend, is not so liable to the same objection, and may be considered written according to the other. It is so difficult a task, and so enviable a lot for any one to attain to excellence above his fellows, that beyond its being due to his own merits, it is an advantage to others to show them by his example the way to attain to the same eminence. Johnson, in his Lives of the English Poets, has given us a work admirable for its criticisms as well as for the other lessons it conveys for general conduct in life; but those criticisms would have lost much of their effect, if they had not had appended to them the works to which they referred. Biography, to be worthy of study, should be something more than a mere enumeration of those particulars of a man's life which are of the common class of every-day events, so as to be the reflex of every one's in his station. If any man's life be at all more memorable than that of ordinary mortals, the means by which he obtained his reputation alone merit a lengthened consideration for an example for others. With authors those claims must rest on their writings, which will speak for themselves; but this cannot be the case with foreign authors, as few readers of other nations can ever be expected to have acquired their language so perfectly as to understand the essential beauty of their poetry. To enable such readers therefore