Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/90

44, did not give himself much scope for fancy, much less for passion. But as applied to the fables, the objection was unnecessary. If they deserved praise for their vivacity of style, that very circumstance, independent of the subjects, rendered them passionless,, as Longinus remarks, where stronger feelings could scarcely be brought into connexion with such discussions. The great difficulty in such cases is, when metres are chosen to suit the subject, abounding in pyrrhics, trochees, and such measures, as the same great critic adds, to guard, lest the sense be lost in too much regard to the sound, raising only attention to the rhythm, instead of exciting any feeling in the minds of the hearers.

Of the five fables chosen for translation, the two first were taken from Bouterwek, and the third on account of its having been particularly noticed by Martinez de la Rosa. The Epistle to his Brother was selected partly on account of its notices of other countries, as a foreigner's judgement of them; and partly as being most characteristic of the writer, showing his tastes and dispositions more perhaps than the rest. The reader generally feels most interested in such parts of the works of favourite writers, especially when their private history gives the imagination a right to ask sympathy for their sufferings.

Nothing is to be found in Iriarte's works to show any peculiar opinions on religion, though the tendency of his mind is everywhere clearly seen, as leading to freedom of thought, instead of subjection to dogmas. In his poem on Music, as already intimated, some devotional rather than free-thinking principles are developed; yet it is said that it was from a suspicion of his being affected by the French philosophy of the day he fell under the censure of the Inquisition, and was seized in 1786, and imprisoned three years in the dungeons of that institution. What was the particular offence