ever sought for publication. These, however, have been lately gathered together with much industry and exactness in the last edition of his collected works, published by Mellado at Madrid in five volumes, 1845. As the last and fullest, it is also the best collection of them, four other editions of them previously published having been comparatively very deficient with regard to them. Besides those, there were various reprints of several others of his works, which were all received with much favour, both in Spain and abroad.
Jovellanos was never married, and in private life seems to have considered himself under the obligations of the profession for which he was originally intended. His character altogether is one to which it would be difficult to find a parallel, and is an honour to Spain as well as to Spanish literature. His virtues are now unreservedly admitted by all parties of his countrymen, who scarcely ever name him except with the epithet of the illustrious Jovellanos, to which designation he is indeed justly entitled, no less for his writings, than for his many public and private virtues and services to his country. These may be forgotten in the claims of other generations and succeeding statesmen; but his writings must ever remain to carry his memory wherever genius and worth can be duly appreciated.
The charge of writing a memoir of Jovellanos was entrusted by the Historical Society of Madrid to Cean Bermudez, who fulfilled it with affectionate zeal, Madrid, 1814; several other notices of his life have appeared in Spain, including that by Quintana, which has been copied by Wolf. The English reader will find an excellent one in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 10, February, 1830; and the Spanish scholar a further very eloquent encomium on his talents and merits in Quintana's second Introduction to his collection of Spanish Poetry.
