Not a single Spanish poet of distinguished merit flourished during the first half of the eighteenth century. That such a barrenness should have succeeded so great a fertility of talent, is a circumstance which the exhaustion of the national spirit does not sufficiently explain. It is also necessary to take into the account the conflict maintained between favour shewn to the French style and the demands of the Spanish public. Supported by national approbation, the Spanish poetry had gloriously flourished; but it perished when new arbiters of taste, who judged according to foreign principles, could with impunity treat the Spanish public as an ignorant multitude.[601] In this collision Spanish eloquence sustained no immediate injury. The influence of the French style, could indeed at that time do it no injury, for at the commencement of the eighteenth century, French prose was fitted to serve as a model for clearness, precision, facility and elegance. But no aspiring spirit now animated Spanish authors. Books written in correct prose were produced in sufficient numbers; and yet no work appeared which deserved particular distinction for rhetorical merit, or which contributed in any degree to invigorate the literature of Spain. CHAPTER III. CONCLUDING PERIOD OF THE HISTORY OF SPANISH POETRY AND ELOQUENCE. The Spanish writers who lived about the middle of the eighteenth century, began to be ashamed of the unworthy bondage which had severed them from all common feeling with the public taste. It is doubtful whether at this particular period, the nation in general began once more to be roused to a sense of its own importance; but this is certain, that a literary patriotism imperceptibly revived within the narrow circle of Spanish authorship. Even several members of the Spanish academy proved that they were no longer to be satisfied with mere French elegance. The works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were again received into favour. Men of superior talents arose, who endeavoured to combine Spanish genius with French elegance; and the literature of Spain began to acquire a new life. LA HUERTA.