Another member of the society founded by Moratin, and one of the most prominent of them, was Thomas de Yriarte, a gentleman who was born on the island of Teneriffe in 1750, but received that part of his education which decided the course of his life at Madrid, under the auspices of his uncle, Don Juan de Yriarte, the learned head of the King’s Library. The young man was known as a dramatic writer, and as a translator of French plays for the royal theatres, from the age of eighteen; and from the age of twenty-one, when he printed some good Latin verses on the birth of the Infante, afterwards Charles the Fourth, he was distinguished at court for his accomplishments both in ancient and modern literature. Soon after this period he received a place under the government; and, though his employments, both in the Office of Foreign Affairs and in that of the Department of War, were of an intellectual nature, still his time was much occupied by them, and his opportunities for the indulgence of a poetical taste were much diminished. Besides this, he had rivalries and troubles with Sedano, Melendez, Forner, and some others of his contemporaries, and was summoned before the Inquisition in 1786, as one tainted with the new French philosophy. The result of all these trials and interruptions was, that when, after his death, which occurred in 1791, his works were collected and published, more than half of the eight small volumes through which they were spread was found to consist of translations and personal controversies; the translations made with skill, and the quarrels managed with spirit and wit, but neither of them important enough to be now remembered. His original poetry is better. It is marked by purity of style, regularity, and elegance, but not by power or elevation. The best of what is merely miscellaneous is to be found in eleven Epistles, with one of which, addressed to his friend Cadahalso, he dedicates to him a translation of Horace’s “Art of Poetry.” But in two departments, where his natural taste led him to labor with a decided preference, he apparently made more effort than in any other, and had greater success. The first of these was didactic poetry. His poem “On Music,”--a subject which he chose from his considerable proficiency in that art,--appeared in 1780, and was soon favorably known, not only at home, but in Italy and France. It consists of five books, in which he discusses with philosophical precision the elements of music; musical expression of different kinds, but especially martial and sacred; the music of the theatre; that of society; and that of man in solitude. The poem is written in the free, national _silva_, irregular, but flowing, and no want of skill is shown in its management. But, as a whole, it has too little richness and vigor to give life to the cold forms of instruction, in which it is throughout rigorously cast.[347]