If it be admitted that there remains in English literature a vacant place which ought to be occupied by a work of this kind, it is not apprehended that the means now resorted to for filling up the chasm will be disapproved; at least the translator is not aware that any better source could have been found for supplying the deficiency. In vain, she is persuaded, would any substitute be sought for in French, much as that language abounds in works of criticism. Sismondi in his _Litterature du Midi de l’Europe_, implicitly adopts the judgments passed by Bouterwek on Spanish and Portuguese literature; and indeed with respect to that part of his subject he says very little of importance that is not directly borrowed from the German critic.[2] The _Essai sur la Litterature Espagnole_, published in Paris in 1810, and which appears to have been well received by the French public, is a gross plagiarism. It is, with some slight additions, merely the translation of an anonymous English work, entitled, _Letters from an English Traveller in Spain_, the epistolary form being dropped, and the materials transposed for the purpose of concealing the theft.[3] The work of M. Bouterwek belongs, however, to a superior class. To say that M. Bouterwek has treated his subject with great perspicuity and precision, would be to express only a small portion of his merits. Extensive and laborious as his enquiries have evidently been, his judgment in the management of his materials is still more remarkable than the indefatigable research with which they must have been obtained. He has not confined himself to a mere narrative of the progress and an exemplification of the beauties and deformities of the literature of which he is the historian.--The philosophic spirit which pervades his criticism was not to be circumscribed within such narrow bounds. He seeks in the structure of society, the habits of the people, and the influence of events, for the causes of the intellectual phenomena he has to describe; and he examines with great candour and impartiality the effects of mis-government and arbitrary institutions on poetic genius and literary taste. Impressed with this favourable opinion of the work, the translator has endeavoured to give a true representation of its contents. In undertaking the translation, her wish was to preserve the character of the original, as far as possible, under an English dress. She began the task with an anticipation of its difficulty, and she ends it with a consciousness of the indulgence of which her labours stand in need; but at the same time with the hope that she will not be found to have altogether failed in the object she had in view.