[347] As a sort of counterpart to the poem on Music, by Yriarte, may be mentioned one of less merit, published soon afterwards by Don Diego Antonio Rejon de Silva, “La Pintura, Poema Didáctico en Tres Cantos,” (Segovia, 1786, 8vo,) the first canto being on Design, the second on Composition, and the third on Coloring, with notes and a defence of Spanish artists. He was a gentleman of Murcia, who indulged himself in poetry and painting as an amateur, but whose serious occupations were in the Office of Foreign Affairs at Madrid. He died about 1796. Sempere y Guarinos (Biblioteca, Tom. V. pp. 1-6) gives an account of his few and unimportant works, and Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p. 164) has a short notice of his life. The other department, in which Yriarte was more successful, was that of fables. Here he, in some degree, struck out a new path; for he not only invented all his fictions, which no other fabulist in modern times had done, but restricted them all, in their moral purpose, to the correction of the faults and follies of men of learning,--an application which had not before been thought of. Their whole number, including a few that are posthumous, is nearly eighty, above sixty of which appeared in 1782. They are written with great care, in no less than forty different measures, and show an extraordinary degree of ingenuity in adapting the attributes and instincts of animals to the instruction, not of mankind at large, as had always been done before, but to that of a separate and small class, between whom and the inferior creation the resemblance is rarely obvious. The task was certainly a difficult one. Perhaps, on this account, they are too narrative in their structure, and fail somewhat in the genial spirit which distinguishes Æsop and La Fontaine, the greatest masters of Apologue and Fable. But their influence was so much needed in the age of bad writing when they appeared, and they are besides so graceful in their versification, that they were not only received with great favor at first, but have never lost it since. Their author’s reputation, in fact, now rests on them almost exclusively.[348] [348] Obras de Thomas de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 8 tom. 12mo. Villanueva, Memorias, Londres, 1825, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 27. Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. VI. p. 190. Llorente, Histoire, Tom. II. p. 449.