[355] Juan Melendez Valdes, “Poesías,” Madrid, 1785, 12mo; 1797, 3 tom. 18mo; 1820, 4 tom. 8vo; the last with a Life, by Quintana. (Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 496.) I have seen it stated, that three counterfeit editions of the first small volume, printed in 1785, appeared almost at the same time with the true one; so great was the first outbreak of his popularity. The first volume of Hermosilla (Juicio Crítico de los Principales Poetas Españoles de la Ultima Era, Paris, 1840, 2 tom. 12mo) contains a criticism of the poems of Melendez, so severe that I find it difficult to explain its motive. The judgment of Martinez de la Rosa, in the notes to his didactic poem on Poetry, is much more faithful and true. Melendez corrected his verse with great care; sometimes with too much, as may be seen by comparing some of the poems as he first published them, in 1785, with their last revision, in the edition of his Works, 1820. Older than Melendez, but somewhat influenced by him and by Cadahalso, who had an effect on the taste of both, was the excellent Father Diego Gonzalez, a modest Augustinian monk, a part of whose life was spent in active religious duties at Salamanca, where he became intimate with the poets of the new school; a part of it at Seville, where he was the friend of Jovellanos; and a part of it at Madrid, where he died in 1794, about sixty years old, sincerely lamented by some of the noblest spirits of his time. As a poet, Gonzalez adhered more to the old Castilian school than Melendez did. But his model was the best. He imitated Luis de Leon; and did it with such happy success, that, in some of his odes and in some of his versions of the Psalms, we might almost think we were listening to the solemn tones of his great master. His most popular poems, however, were light and gay; such as his verses “To a Perfidious Bat,” which have been very often printed; his verses “To a Lady who had burned her Finger”; and similar trifles, in which he showed that all the secret idiomatic graces of the old Castilian were at his command. A didactic poem on “The Four Ages of Man,” which he began, and in the first book of which there is a fine dedication of the whole to Jovellanos, was never finished. Indeed, his poetry, though much known and circulated during his lifetime, was an object of little interest or care to himself, and was collected with difficulty after his death, and published by his faithful friend, Juan Fernandez.[356] [356] “Poesías de M. T. Diego de Gonzalez,” Madrid, 1812, 12mo. He was a native of Ciudad Rodrigo, and was born in 1733. If he had been a little less modest, and a little less connected with Jovellanos and Melendez, we might have had a modern school of Seville as well as of Salamanca.