f ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 247 exaggeration above alluded to, may be generally chapter commended for decorum and an imposing dignity, — '— — quite worthy of the tragic drama ; indeed, they may be selected as afifording probably the best specimen of the progress of prose composition during the present reign. ^^ Oliva's reputation led to a similar imitation of Not popular. the antique. But the Spaniards were too national in all their tastes to sanction it. These classical compositions did not obtain possession of the stage, but were confined to the closet, serving only as a relaxation for the man of letters ; while the voice of the people compelled all who courted it, to ac- commodate their inventions to those romantic forms, which were subsequently developed in such variety of beauty by the great Spanish dramatists. ^^ We have now surveyed the different kinds of National spirit ot the poetic culture familiar to Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Their most conspicuous element is the national spirit which pervades them, and the exclusive attachment which they manifest to the primitive forms of versification peculiar to the Pen- insula. The most remarkable portion of this body 55 Compare the diction of these successful writers in this depart- tragedies with that of the " Centon ment have been constrained to Epistolario," for instance, esteemed adopt them by public opinion, rath- one of the best literary composi- er than their own, which would tions of John II. 's reign, and see have suggested a nearer imitation the advance made, not only in of the classical models of antiquity, orthography, but in the verbal ar- so generally followed by the Ital- rangement generally, and the whole ians, and which naturally recom- complexion of the style. mends itself to the scholar. See 56 Notwithstanding some Span- the canon's discourse ia Cervantes, ish critics, as Cueva, for example, Don Quixote, ed. de Pellicer, torn, have vindicated the romantic forms iii. pp. 207-220, — and, more ex of the drama on scientific princi- plicitly, Lope de Vega, Obras Suel- pJes, it is apparent that the most tas, torn. iv. p. 406. literature of this epoch.
