[305] The first edition of the “Poética” of Luzan was printed in folio at Saragossa, in 1737, with long and extraordinary certificates of approbation by Navarro and Gallinero, two of the author’s friends. The second edition, materially improved by additions from the manuscripts of Luzan, after his death, was printed at Madrid, in 2 tom. 8vo, in 1789. When the first edition appeared, it was much praised in the “Diario de los Literatos” (Tom. VII., 1738); but, as one of the reviewers, Juan de Iriarte, who wrote the latter part of the article, made a few exceptions to his general commendations, Luzan, who was more sensitive than he needed to be, replied in a small bitter tract, under the name of Iñigo de Lanuza, Pamplona, [1740,] 12mo, pp. 144, with cumbrous and learned notes by Colmenares, to whom the tract is dedicated. Something more, however, than a reformation in taste was wanted in Spain before a sufficient foundation could be laid for advancement in elegant literature. The commonest forms of truth had been so long excluded from the country, that the human mind there seemed to have pined away, and to have become dwarfed, for want of its appropriate nourishment. All the great sciences, both moral and physical, that had been for a hundred years advancing with an accelerated speed everywhere else throughout Europe, had been unable to force their way through the jealous guard which ecclesiastical and political despotism had joined to keep for ever watching the passes of the Pyrenees. From the days of the _Comuneros_ and the Reformation of Luther, when religious sects began to discuss the authority of princes and the rights of the people, and when the punishment of opinion became the settled policy of the Spanish state, every thing in the shape of instruction that was not approved by the Church was treated as dangerous. At the universities, which from their foundation had been entirely ecclesiastical corporations, and were used constantly to build up ecclesiastical influences, no elegant learning was fostered, and very little tolerated, except such as furnished means to form scholastic Churchmen and faithful Catholics; the physical and exact sciences were carefully excluded and forbidden, except so far as they could be taught on the authority of Aristotle; and, as Jovellanos said boldly in a memorial on the subject to Charles the Fourth, “even medicine and jurisprudence would have been neglected, if the instincts of men had permitted them to forget the means by which life and property are protected.”[306] [306] Cean Bermudez, Memorias de Jovellanos, Madrid, 1814, 12mo, cap. x. p. 221.