The three volumes by which he is represented are made up of prose legends, and of poems modestly entitled _Rimas_. Though Hoffmann is Bécquer's intellectual ancestor in prose, the Spaniard speaks with a personal accent in such examples of morbid fantasy as _Los Ojos Verdes_, wherein Fernando loses life for the sake of the green-eyed mermaiden: as the tale of Manrique's madness in _El Rayo de Luna_ (The Moonbeam), as the rendering of Daniel's sacrilege in _La Rosa de Pasión_. And as Hoffmann influences Bécquer's dreamy prose, so Heine influences his _Rimas_. It is argued that, since Bécquer knew no German, he cannot have read Heine—an unconvincing plea, if we remember that Byron's example was followed in every country by poets ignorant of English. Howbeit, it is certain that Heine has had no more brilliant follower than Bécquer, who, however, substitutes a note of fairy mystery for Heine's incomparable irony. His circumstances, and the fact that he did not live to revise his work, account for occasional inequalities of execution which mar his magical music. To do him justice, we must read him in a few choice pieces where his apparently simple rhythms and suave assonantic cadences express his half-delirious visions in terms of unsurpassable artistry. At first sight one is deceived into thinking that the simplicity is a spontaneous result, and there has arisen a host of imitators who have only contrived to caricature Bécquer's defects. His merits are as purely personal as Blake's, and the imitation of either poet results almost inevitably in mere flatness. * * * * *