5. Gaspar de Noroña, whose family was of Portuguese origin, was bred a soldier and served at the siege of Gibraltar, where he wrote an elegy on the death of Cadahalso (Poesías de Noroña, Madrid, 1799-1800, 2 tom. 12mo, Tom. II. p. 190). He rose in the army to be a lieutenant-general, and, while holding that rank, published his Ode on the Peace of 1795, (Tom. I. p. 172,) by which he was first publicly known as a poet, and which, except, perhaps, a few of his shorter and lighter poems, is the best of his works. Afterwards he was sent as ambassador to Russia, but returned to defend his country when it was invaded by the French, and was made governor of Cadiz. He died in 1815, (Fuster, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 381,) and in 1816 his epic, entitled “Ommiada,” was published at Madrid, in two volumes, 12mo, containing above fifteen thousand verses; as dull, perhaps, as any of the similar poems that abound in Spanish literature, but less offensive to good taste than most of them. In 1833, there appeared at Paris his “Poesías Asiáticas puestas en Verso Castellano,” translations from the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, made, as he says in the Preface, to give him poetical materials for his epic. His “Quicaida,” a heroi-comic poem, in eight cantos, filled with parodies, is very tedious. It is in his Poesías, printed in 1800. CHAPTER V. SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA.--MELENDEZ VALDES.--GONZALEZ.--FORNER.--IGLESIAS.-- CIENFUEGOS.--JOVELLANOS.--MUÑOZ.--ESCOIQUIZ.--MORATIN THE YOUNGER.--QUINTANA. Both the parties, into which Spanish literature was divided about the middle of the eighteenth century, erred by running into those extremes of opinion which are rarely right in any thing and never in matters of taste. Moratin was wrong in speaking with contempt of such poetry as the fine old ballad of “Calaynos,” and Huerta was equally wrong when he said, that the “Athalie” of Racine might be fit to be represented by boarding-school misses, but was fit for nothing else. It was natural, therefore, that another party, or school, should be formed, which should endeavour to avoid the excesses of both its predecessors, and unite their merits; one that should not be insensible to the power and richness of the old writers of the time of the Philips, and yet, escaping from their extravagances and bad taste, should mould itself in some degree according to the severe state of literary opinion then prevailing on the Continent. Such a school in fact appeared at Salamanca in the latter part of the reign of Charles the Third and the beginning of that of Charles the Fourth.