It is difficult to believe that Gracián's attitude towards life is more than a pose; but the pose is dignified, and he puts the pessimistic case with vigour and skill. His _Oráculo Manual ó Arte de Prudencia_ (1653), a reduction of his gospel to the form of maxims, has found admirers (and even an excellent translator in the person of Mr. Joseph Jacobs). The reflection is always acute, and seems at whiles to anticipate the thought of La Rochefoucauld—doubtless because both drew from common sources; but though the doctrine and spirit be almost identical, Gracián nowhere approaches La Rochefoucauld's metallic brilliancy and concise perfection. He is not content to deliver his maxim, and have done with it: he adds—so to say—elaborate postscripts and epigrammatic amplifications, which debase the maxim to a platitude. Mr. John Morley's remark, that "some of his aphorisms give a neat turn to a commonplace," is scarcely too severe. Yet one cannot choose but think that Gracián was superior to his work. He had it in him to be as good a writer as he was a keen observer, and in many passages, when he casts his affectations from him, his expression is as lucid and as strong as may be; but he would posture, would be paradoxical to avoid being trite, would bewilder with his conceit and learning, would try to pack more meaning into words than words will carry. No man ever wrote with more care and scruple, with more ambition to excel according to the formulæ of a fashionable school, with more scorn for Gongorism and all its work. Still, though he avoided the offence of obscure language, he sinned most grievously by obscurity of thought, and he is now forgotten by all but students, who look upon him as a chief among the wrong-headed, misguided _conceptistas_.