But the poetic fame of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, does not rest on his tragedies. His lyric poems, epistles, and satires in the manner of Horace, have transmitted his name, without the aid of any recommendation to posterity. Lupercio formed his style after that of Horace, with no less assiduity than Luis de Leon; but he did not possess the soft enthusiasm of that pious poet, who in the religious spirit of his poetry is so totally unlike Horace. An understanding at once solid and ingenious, subject to no extravagant illusion, yet full of true poetic feeling, and an imagination more plastic than creative, impart a more perfect horatian colouring to the odes, as well as to the canciones and sonnets of Lupercio. He closely imitated Horace in his didactic satires, a style of composition in which no Spanish poet had preceded him. But he never succeeded in attaining the bold combination of ideas which characterizes the ode style of Horace; and his conceptions have therefore seldom any thing like the horatian energy. On the other hand, all his poems express no less precision of language, than the models after which he formed his style. His odes, in particular, are characterized by a picturesque tone of expression, which he seems to have imbibed from Virgil rather than from Horace.[399] The extravagant metaphors by which some of Herrera’s odes are deformed, were uniformly avoided by Lupercio. His best sonnets are those of a sententious cast, which have some moral idea for their subject.[400] He was likewise successful in the composition of popular songs in redondillas. His epistles in tercets present, in their kind, about the same degree of resemblance to the epistles of Horace, as is observable between his odes and those of his classic model. The ideas are expressed in a clear, precise, and pleasing style; and these compositions are not destitute of poetic and didactic interest. Still, however, the vigour of Horace is wanting.[401] Lupercio did not enter, with sufficient decision, into the true spirit of horatian satire. He consigned to his brother the task of cultivating that class of composition, in which poetry is scarcely distinguishable from spirited prose. Among his writings, which escaped the flames, there is only one piece of satirical raillery, in the form of an epistle to a coquette.[402]