Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 01).djvu/84

 If, as is credibly asserted, the knowledge of reading and writing was more generally diffused in the Philippines than among the common people of Europe, we have the singular result that the islands contained relatively more people who could read, and less reading matter of any but purely religious interest, than any other community in the world. Yet it would not be altogether safe to assume that in the eighteenth century the list of printed translations into the native languages comprised everything of European literature available for reading; for the Spanish government, in order to promote the learning of Spanish, had prohibited at times the printing of books in Tagal. Furthermore, Zúñiga says explicitly that "after the coming of the Spaniards they (i. e. the people in Luzon) have had comedies, interludes, tragedies, poems, and every kind of literary work translated from the Spanish, without producing a native poet who has composed even an interlude." Again, Zúñiga describes a eulogistic poem of welcome addressed by a Filipino villager to Commodore Álava. This loa, as this species of composition was called, was replete with references to the voyages of Ulysses, the travels of Aristotle, the