Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/62

16 other Satires, it is written in blank verse; which style, though not entirely unknown in Spain, he had the merit of first bringing into favour. He probably gained his predilection for it from his study of Milton, for whose works he had great admiration, and of whose Paradise Lost he translated the first book into Spanish verse.

The Epistle to Bermudez is remarkable as written with much earnestness, in censure not only of the common vices and follies of mankind, but in also going beyond ordinary satirists into the sphere of the moralist, to censure the faults of the learned. What our great modern preacher Dr. Chalmers has termed the "practical atheism" of the learned, was indeed the subject of rebuke from many English writers, as Young and Cowper, but may be looked for in vain in the works of others. Jovellanos had no doubt read the former, at least in the translation of his friend Escoiquiz, and meditated on the sentiment,—"An undevout astronomer is mad," even if not in the original. It can scarcely be supposed that he was so well acquainted with English literature as to have read Cowper; but there are several passages in his Epistles of similar sentiments. The praise of wisdom especially, in the one to Bermudez,—by which we may understand, was meant the wisdom urged by the kingly preacher of Jerusalem, or the rule of conduct founded on right principles, in opposition to mere learning,—is also that of our Christian poet:—

In his hours of leisure, Jovellanos employed himself in composing occasional verses at times, for the amusement of the society in which he lived, without thinking of their being