The graceful luxuriance of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in modern literature; and, generally speaking, no modern writer has so well succeeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the modern. But constantly to observe that correctness of ideas, which distinguished the classical compositions of antiquity, was by Villegas, as by most Spanish poets, considered too rigid a requisition, and an unnecessary restraint on genius. He accordingly sometimes degenerates into conceits and images, the monstrous absurdity of which are characteristic of the author’s nation and age. For instance, in one of his odes in which he entreats Lyda to suffer her tresses to flow, he says, that “when agitated by Zephyr, her locks would occasion a thousand deaths, and subdue a thousand lives;”[499] and then he adds, in a strain of extravagance, surpassing that of the Marinists, “that the sun himself would cease to give light, if he did not snatch beams from her radiant countenance to illumine the east.”[500] But faults of this glaring kind, are by no means frequent in the poetry of Villegas; and the fascinating grace with which he emulates his models, operates with so powerful a charm, that the occasional occurrence of some little affectations, from which he could scarcely be expected entirely to abstain, is easily overlooked by the reader. The order in which the poetic works of Villegas are arranged, is by no means the best; but as it was chosen by the author, it is proper that it should be observed in pursuing a notice of the poems themselves. The first book of the first part commences with thirty-six odes in the style of some of the odes of Horace. The Dedicatory Ode addressed to the king, announces, in language truly charming, the spirit of the whole collection.[501] Then follow in a similar strain, the most delightful plays of fancy, abounding in classical allusions, without the least trace of pedantry. The style of Villegas even imparts a charm of novelty to descriptions of the oftenest described things.[502] In these odes, romantic levity assumes freedoms, which if not always of the most excusable, are invariably of the most graceful description;[503] and the soft and melodious expression of tender passion, which in more than one instance occurs, has never been surpassed.[504] The second book of the first division of the poems of Villegas, consists of odes, which are free translations of the first book of Horace. It ought not, therefore, to have been ranked under the same title with the other poems in the collection. There is something pedantic in the generical titles by which he distinguishes the different odes; for example--_Memptica_, _Enetica_, _Parænetica_, &c.