nor alluded to the long interval, filled with such misery, that had intervened since his last lecture, beginning thus:--"We said yesterday that he had a willow for his symbol, and at its foot a hatchet, with this inscription, 'Through injury and death.' Nobleness, virtue, and generosity spring up under the very attacks of adversity and persecution. A willow the more it is cut, so much the more vigorously does it throw out its shoots; and for this cause has it its name (_salix_) from the vigour with which it sprouts, and the swiftness of its growth."[25] And thus he adopted for his emblem, a pruned tree with the knife at its foot, and the motto "_Ab ipso ferro._" As a theologian, his works are held in high repute. It is to his praise that, though austere and regular as a monk, he yet studied the liberal arts with assiduity and success. He was well versed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, besides being entire master of his native Castilian. His poetry is held in great estimation: the purity and elegance of his style are unsurpassed. Those Spaniards, who are addicted to the tinsel of versification, accuse him of want of loftiness; but nothing can exceed the harmony and flow of his verse, the grace and propriety of his ideas, and the truth and simplicity--the extreme ease and animation, of his style. It is unornamented--but for that very reason, more purely poetic. The most perfect of his compositions is his "Ode to Tranquil Life," in which he dwells with brooding, earnest delight on all the objects, and all the reveries that bless a man, content in solitude. His religious poetry comes less home to our hearts: it is so entirely catholic, but all is marked by enthusiasm and sincerity. As a translator, he holds a high place; though he may be said rather to paraphrase than translate his models. He thus rendered into Spanish many of the odes of Horace, and various others selected from Pindar, Tibullus, and Theocritus. He translated all the Eclogues of Virgil, and the first book of his Georgies. He tells us, that he endeavoured to make the ancient poets speak as they would have expressed themselves, had they been born in his own age, in Castile, and had written in Castilian. In an inferior poet this attempt had been indiscreet and rash, but Luis de Leon was so much master of style and harmony, that it is impossible to regret the new costume with which he invests our old favourites. He is chiefly blamed because the beauty of his paraphrases is so great: and they have taken such hold of Spanish readers, that they preclude all future attempts at more literal translation. This is of slight import. If the poems he gives us in Castilian are in themselves beautiful, the Spanish reader must be satisfied. A vigorous desire to have a perfect understanding of the originals ought to lead to the study of them in their native language--the only way really to attain it, and, to a Castilian, not a difficult one. Were there a good translation of the ode