Iglesias, though his life was even shorter, was, in some respects, more fortunate. He was born in Salamanca, and educated there under the most favorable auspices. Offended at the low state of morals in his native city, he indulged himself at first in the free forms of Castilian satire;--ballads, apologues, epigrams, and especially the half-simple, half-malicious _letrillas_, in which he was eminently successful. But, when he became a parish priest, he thought such lightness unbecoming the example he wished to set before his flock. He devoted himself, therefore, to serious composition; wrote serious ballads, eclogues, and _silvas_ in the manner of Melendez; and published a didactic poem on theology;--all a result of a most worthy purpose, and all written in the pure style which is one of his prominent merits; but none of it giving token of the instinctive promptings of his genius, and none of it fitted to increase his final reputation. After his death, which occurred in 1791, when he was thirty-eight years old, this became at once apparent. His works were collected and published in two volumes; the first being filled with the graver class of his poems, and the second with the satirical. The decision of the public was instant. His lighter poems were too free, but they were better imitations of Quevedo than had yet been seen, and became favorites at once; the serious poems were dull, and soon ceased to be read.[358] [358] “Poesías de Don Josef Iglesias de la Casa,” Salamanca, 1798, 2 tom. 18mo, Segunda Edicion; forbidden by the Inquisition, Index Expurg., 1805, p. 27. The best editions are those of Barcelona, 1820, and Paris, 1821; but there are several others, and among them one in four small volumes, 1840, the last of which contains a considerable number of poems not before published, some of which, and perhaps all, are not by Iglesias. Cienfuegos, who was ten years younger than Melendez, was more strictly his follower than either of the two poets last mentioned. But he had fallen on evil times, and his career, which promised to be brilliant, was cut short by the troubles they brought upon him. In 1798 he published his poetical works; the miscellaneous portion consisting of Anacreontics, odes, ballads, epistles, and elegies, which, while they give proof of much real talent and passion, show sometimes an excess of sentimental feeling, and sometimes a desire to imitate the metaphysical and philosophical manner supposed to be demanded by the spirit of the age. Both were defects, to which he had been partly led by the example of his friend and master, Melendez, at whose feet he long sat in the cloisters of Salamanca; and both were affectations, from which a character so manly and decided as that of Cienfuegos might in time have emancipated itself.