phrase—"I write, and truth dictates to me." His gaiety, his picaresque enjoyment, his exuberant humour, his jokes and puns and quips, lend an extraordinary vivacity to his presentation of the most trifling incidents. He might have been—as he began by being—a pompous prig and bore, preaching high doctrine, and uttering the platitudes, which alone were thought worthy of the sock and buskin. He chose the better part in rendering what he knew and understood and saw, in amusing his public for thirty years, and in bequeathing a thousand occasions of laughter to the world. He wrote with a reckless, contagious humour, with a comic _brio_ which anticipates Labiche; and, unambitious and light-hearted as Cruz was, we may learn more of contemporary life from _El Prado por la Noche_ and _Las Tertulias de Madrid_ than from a mountain of serious records and chronicles. In the following generation LEANDRO FERNÁNDEZ DE MORATÍN (1760-1828) won deserved repute as a playwright. His father, the author of _Hormesinda_, made a jeweller's apprentice of the boy who, in 1779 and 1782, won two _accesits_ from the Academy. He thus attracted the notice of Jove-Llanos, who secured his appointment as Secretary to the Paris Embassy in 1787. His stay in France, followed by later travels through England, the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, completed his education, and obtained for him the post of official translator. His exercises in verse are more admirable than his prose version of _Hamlet_, which offended his academic theories in every scene. Molière, who was his ideal, has no more faithful follower than the younger Moratín. His translations of _L'École des Maris_ and _Le Médecin malgré lui_ belong to his later years; but his theatre, including those most striking pieces _El Sí de las Niñas_ (The Maids' Consent) and _La Mojigata_ (The Hypocritical Woman), reflects the master's humour and observation. The latter comedy (1804) brought him into trouble with the Inquisition; the former (1806) established his fame by its character-drawing, its graceful ingenuity, and witty dialogue. His fortunes, which seemed assured, were wrecked by the French war. Moratín was always timid, even in literary combats: he now proved himself that very rare thing among Spaniards—a physical coward. He neither dared declare for his country nor against it, and went into hiding at Vitoria. He finally accepted the post of Royal Librarian to Joseph Bonaparte, and when the crash came he decamped to Peñiscola. These events turned his brain. All efforts to help him (and they were many) proved useless. He wandered as far as Italy to escape imaginary assassins, and finally settled in Bordeaux, where he believed himself safe from the conspirators. _El Sí de las Niñas_ is an excellent piece among the best, and is sufficient to persuade the most difficult reader that Leandro Moratín was one of nature's wasted forces. He must have won distinction in any company: in this dreary period he achieves real eminence.