In none of his personal relations, however, does Moratin appear to such obvious advantage as in the difficult ones in which he stood at different times with the Prince of the Peace. To that profligate minister he owed, not only all his means for training himself as a dramatic writer, but the position in society which insured his success; and when the day of retribution came, and his patron fell, as he deserved to fall, Moratin, though he suffered in every way from his changed condition and the persecution of the enemies of the Prince, refused to join their cry against the crushed favorite. He said truly and nobly, “I was neither his friend, nor his counsellor, nor his servant; but all that I was I owed to him; and, although we have now-a-days a convenient philosophy, which teaches men to receive benefits without gratitude, and, when circumstances alter, to pay with reproach favors asked and received, I value my own good opinion too much to seek such infamy.” A person who acted under the impulse of principles so generous was not made for success in the reign of Ferdinand the Seventh. It is not remarkable, therefore, that nearly all the latter part of Moratin’s life was spent, either voluntarily or involuntarily, in foreign countries, and that he died at last in want and exile.[363] [363] “Obras de L. F. Moratin,” Madrid, 1830-31, four vols. 8vo, divided into six, prepared by himself, and published by the Academy of History after his death. His Life is in Vol. I., and his miscellaneous poems are in the last volume, where the remarks on the Prince of the Peace occur, at p. 335, and a notice of his relations with Conti at p. 342. An unreasonably laudatory criticism of his works is to be found in the first volume of Hermosilla’s “Juicio.”