Readers curious as to the Spanish poets of the eighteenth century may turn with confidence to the masterly and exhaustive _Historia Crítica_ of the Marqués de Valmar. Their number may be inferred from this detail: that more than one hundred and fifty competed at a poetic joust held in honour of St. Aloysius Gonzaga and St. Stanislaus Kostka in 1727. But none of all the tribe is of real importance. It is enough to mention the names of Juan José de Salazar y Hontiveros, a priestly copromaniac, like his contemporary, Swift; of José León y Mansilla, who wrote a third _Soledad_ in continuation of Góngora; and of Sor María del Cielo, a mild practitioner in lyrical mysticism. A little later there follow Gabriel Álvarez de Toledo, a representative _conceptista_; Eugenio Gerardo Lobo, a romantic soldier with a craze for versifying; Diego de Torres y Villarroel, an encyclopædic professor at Salamanca, who, half-knowing everything from the cedar by Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth on the wall, showed critical insight by the contempt in which he held his own rhymes. The Carmelite, Fray Juan de la Concepción, a Gongorist of the straitest sect, was the idol of his generation, and proved his quality, when he was elected to the Academy in 1744, by returning thanks in a rhymed speech: an innovation which scandalised his brethren, and has never been repeated. A head and shoulders over these rises the figure of IGNACIO DE LUZÁN CLARAMUNT DE SUELVES Y GURREA (1702-54), who, spending his youth in Italy, was—so it is believed—a pupil of Giovanni Battista Vico at Naples, where he remained during eighteen years. For his century, Luzán's equipment was considerable. His Greek and Latin were of the best; Italian was almost his native tongue; he read Descartes and epitomised the Port-Royal treatise on logic; he was versed in German, and, meeting with _Paradise Lost_—probably during his residence as Secretary to the Embassy in Paris (1747-50)—he first revealed Milton to Spain by translating select passages into prose. His verses, original and translated, are insignificant, though, as an instance of his French taste, his version of Lachaussée's _Préjugé à la Mode_ is worthy of notice: not so the four books of his _Poética_ (1737). So early as 1728, Luzán prepared six _Ragionamenti sopra la poesia_ for the Palermo Academy, and on his return to Spain in 1733 he re-arranged his treatise in Castilian. The _Poética_ avowedly aims at "subjecting Spanish verse to the rules which obtain among cultured nations"; and though its basis is Lodovico Muratori's _Della perfetta poesia_, with suggestions borrowed from Vincenzo Gravina and Giovanni Crescimbeni, the general drift of Luzán's teaching coincides with that of French doctrinaires like Rapin, Boileau, and Le Bossu. It seems probable that his views became more and more French with time, for the posthumous reprint of the _Poética_ (1789) shows an increase of anti-national