Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/369



has been said that "the life of a poet is ever a romance." Perhaps this observation may apply equally well to the history of every man of ardent genius who enters with characteristic enthusiasm into the affairs of life, so as to invest even ordinary circumstances with the glow and hue of his own excited imagination. But this is more especially the case with poets who make us participate in their feelings, their joys or their sorrows, so as to give a character of romance to incidents that with other persons would have passed away as unnoticed. In the course of the preceding narratives, no doubt, many instances may be remembered to verify this remark, and the life of the eminent and deservedly popular poet with which we have to close the series, even in his yet youthful career, may be found to afford a further exemplification of it.

On the 14th February, 1837, a funeral car, over which was placed a crown of laurel, had to traverse the streets of Madrid, bearing to their resting-place in the cemetery, the  remains of the talented but wrong-minded Larra. The car was followed by an immense concourse of mourners,