The first striking effect produced by this movement in the reigns of Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third was one quite in sympathy with the spirit of the nation, then resisting the ecclesiastical abuses that had so long oppressed it. It was an attack on the style of popular preaching, which, originally corrupted by Paravicino, the distinguished follower of Góngora, had been constantly falling lower and lower, until, at last, it seemed to have reached the lowest point of degradation and vulgarity. The assailant was Father Isla, who was born in 1703 and died in 1781, at Bologna, where, being a Jesuit, he had retired, on the general expulsion of his Order from Spain.[324] His earliest published work is his “Triumph of Youth,” printed in 1727, to give the nation an account of a festival, celebrated that year during eleven days at Salamanca, in honor of two very youthful saints who had been Jesuits, and who had just been canonized by Benedict the Thirteenth; a gay tract, full of poems, farces, and accounts of the maskings and bull-fights to which the occasion had given rise, and coming as near as possible to open satire of the whole matter, but yet with great adroitness avoiding it. [324] Vida de J. F. de Isla, por J. I. de Salas, Madrid, 1803, 12mo. In a work somewhat similar, he afterwards went further. It was a description of the proclamation made in 1746, at Pamplona, on the accession of Ferdinand the Sixth, which was attended with such extravagant and idle ceremonies, that, being required to give some account of them to the public, he could not refrain from indulging in his love of ridicule. But he did it with a satire so delicate and so crafty, that those who were its subjects failed at first to apprehend his real purpose. On the contrary, the Council of the proud capital of Navarre thanked him for the honor he had done them; the Bishop and Archbishop complimented him for it; several persons whom he had particularly noticed sent him presents; and, when the irony began to be suspected, it became a subject of public controversy, as in the case of De Foe’s “Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” whether the praise bestowed were in jest or in earnest;--Isla all the time defending himself with admirable ingenuity and wit, as if he were personally aggrieved at the unfavorable construction put upon his compliments. The discussion ended with his retreat or exile from Pamplona.[325] [325] Juventud Triunfante, Salamanca, 1727, 4to. Dia Grande de Navarra, 2a ed., Madrid, 1746, 4to. Semanario Pintoresco, 1840, p. 130.