'"If thou art Solomon," said the owner of the field, "how canst thou ask? In my youth I learnt from the ant to be industrious and to accumulate wealth. That which I then learnt I now practise." '"Thou hast learnt but half of thy lesson," pursued the spirit. "Go once more to the ant, and she will teach thee to rest in the winter of thy existence, and enjoy what thou hast earned."' Don Tomas de Yriarte, or Iriarte, a Spanish fabulist of the eighteenth century, born at Teneriffe in 1750, is held in much esteem by cultured readers in Spain. His 'Fabulas Literarias,' or Literary Fables (1782), sixty-seven in all, and mostly original, were written with a view to inculcating literary truths. In other words, their object was to praise or censure literary work according to its supposed deserts. Their moral or application is therefore limited in scope; they do not touch human nature as a whole, and being thus restricted in their range, they are deficient in general interest and value. Obviously, however, it is possible to give a wider application to the truths enforced in the apologues, and this is sometimes done by omitting the special moral supplied by the writer. Yriarte's versification is graceful and sprightly, 'combining the exquisite simplicity of the old Spanish romances and songs with the true spirit of Æsopian fable;'[62] some of them are composed in the redondilla measure much affected by the lyrical poets of Spain, and please by their style quite as much as by their intrinsic merits. Yriarte died in 1791. We select the piece which follows to illustrate his skill as a fabulist: '_The Two Thrushes._