Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/422

376 aim is to seek the clearest style of expressing those thoughts which they have to convey. As Martinez de la Rosa has well observed in this prologue, "I do not remember any one sublime passage, in whatever language it may be, that is not expressed with the utmost simplicity; and without this most essential quality, they cannot excite in the mind that lively and instantaneous impression which distinguishes them." 35. Page. "The light foot that never stirs," &c.

An Andalusian poet may be excused entering into hyperbolical praise of his countrywomen, but we find an English traveller almost as hyperbolical in praise of them also. "It is beyond the power of language to describe those slow and surpassingly graceful movements which accompany every step of the Andalusa; her every attitude is so flowing, at the same time so unforced, that she seems upborne by some invisible power that renders her independent of the classically moulded foot she presses so lightly on the ground."—Murray's Cities and Wilds of Andalusia. 36. Page. "His biographer, Pastor Diaz," &c.

In the work already mentioned, 'Galería de Españoles contemporáneos,' under his own superintendence, and from which the notices in this compilation are principally taken. Pastor Diaz was born at Vivero in Galicia, in the year 1811, and was educated at Alcalá de Henares. Having been admitted an Advocate in the courts of law, he engaged, in 1833, in the public service, and has held various offices under the government in the provinces. In 1847 he published a volume of poems, of which two,—one, 'The Black Butterfly,' and the other, an 'Ode to the Moon,'—Ochoa declares, in his opinion, "two of the most beautiful pieces that have been written for many years in Spain." Disagreeing very much with this opinion, it is only quoted in token of the estimation in which Pastor Diaz is held among his countrymen. (Ochoa, vol. ii. p. 628.)