This is as characteristic as his _Oda á Carlos III._ or the remorseful Castilian lines on _Resigned Desire_, penned within a year of his death. A very similar talent was that of Blanco's friend, ALBERTO LISTA (1775-1848), also a Canon of Seville Cathedral, a most accomplished singer, whose golden purity of tone compensates for a deficient volume of voice and an affected method. But, save for such a fragment of impassioned, plangent melody as the poem _Á la Muerte de Jesús_, Lista is less known as a poet than as a teacher of remarkable influence. His _Lecciones de Literatura Española_ did for Spain what Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_ did for England, and his personal authority over some of the best minds of his age was almost as complete in scope as it was gentle in exercise and excellent in effect. The most famous of his pupils was JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA (1810-42), who came under Lista at the Colegio de San Mateo, in Madrid, where the boy, who was in perpetual scrapes through idleness and general bad conduct, attracted the rector's notice by his extraordinary poetic precocity. Through good and evil report Lista held by Espronceda to the last, and was perhaps the one person who ever persuaded him from a rash purpose. At fourteen Espronceda joined a secret society called _Los Numantinos_, which was supposed to work for liberty, equality, and the rest. The young Numantine was deported to a monastery in Guadalajara, where, on the advice of Lista (who himself contributed some forty octaves), he began his epical essay, _El Pelayo_. Like most other boys who have begun epics, Espronceda left his unfinished, and, though the stanzas that remain are of a fine but unequal quality, they in no way foreshadow the chief of the romantic school.