general title of "Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos" (Library of Mexican Authors). More than fifty volumes are now collected under this series, which has been well received.
Born in 1884 in Tlalchapa, in the State of Guerrero, Señor Agüeros had a long literary career. He left law for letters, as so many Mexican authors have done, and edited the journal El Imparcial. Later he founded El Tiempo, an ultra-Conservative journal. Among his best known books are Escritores Mexicanos Contemporaneos (Contemporary Mexican Writers) and Confidencias y Recuerdos (Confidences and Recollections).
Señor Agüeros, as has been said, was excessively severe in his criticism of the modern Mexican school. In one of his essays he says of its members: "In my opinion the new generation of writers has no significance. I discern no writers in it, no love for erudition, no noble tendencies such as would foster the advance of our literature…. They believe that they are well informed because they have culled jokes from low dramas, have studied history in novels and opera librettos, and gallantries in fashionable periodicals. They conceive themselves littérateurs and poets because they have published some article in theand have in theprinted some verses describing their disenchantments, their ennui, their doubts, their hours of pain. Miserable though beardless, their lamentations for their disillusions are boundless … to be singular is what they most desire." Señor Agüeros proceeds to castigate the Mexican jeunesse dorée of letters by saying that they do not study or acquire new information, that they are unmindful of the literary movement of the epoch, and do not follow the masters of their art.
"And if they do none of these things, it is useless for them to write and publish verses, since the progress of a literature has never yet consisted in the abundance of authors and of works. Love of study and for work, close thought, good selection of themes and care in expression these are the things necessary. Criticism also is completely lacking among us."
