Montiano, however, was not discouraged. In 1753 he published another critical discourse and another tragedy, with similar merits and similar defects, taking for its subject the reign and death of Athaulpho, the Goth, as they are found in the old chronicles. But this, too, like its predecessor, was never acted, and both are now rarely read.[371] [371] “Discurso sobre las Comedias Españolas de Don Agustin de Montiano y Luyando,” Madrid, 1750, 12mo; Discurso Segundo, Madrid, 1753, 12mo. They were translated into French by Hermilly, and an account of them and their author is given in Lessing’s Werke, (Berlin, 1794, 18mo, Band XXIII. p. 95,) where we learn, that Montiano was born in 1697, and that he published, in 1729, “El Robo de Dina,” which seems to have been so much in the tone of a play with the same title, in the seventeenth volume of Lope de Vega’s “Comedias,” that I cannot help thinking Montiano, following the fashion of Cañizares and the other plunderers of the time, was indebted largely to his great predecessor, the enemy of whose reputation he afterwards became. The story of Athaulpho is from the Corónica General, Parte II. c. 22. The “Virginia,” both in its attempt to exhibit Roman manners and in its poetical power, suffers severely when compared with Alfieri’s tragedy on the same subject. But the truth is, Montiano was a slavish imitator of the French school, which he admired so much as to be unable to comprehend and feel what was best in his own Castilian. In the “Aprobacion,” which he prefixed to the edition of Avellaneda, published in 1732, he says, comparing the second part of Don Quixote, by this pretender, with the true one by Cervantes,--“I think no man of judgment will give an opinion in favor of Cervantes, if he compares the two parts together.” The earliest comedy within the French rules that appeared in the Spanish language was the translation of Lachaussée’s “Préjugé à la Mode” by Luzan, which was printed in 1751.[372] It judiciously preserved the national _asonantes_, or imperfect rhymes, throughout, and was followed, in 1754, by the “Athalie” of Racine, rendered with much taste, principally into blank verse, by Llaguno y Amirola, Secretary of the Academy of History. But the first _original_ Spanish comedy formed on French models was the “Petimetra,” or the Female Fribble, by Moratin the elder. It was printed in 1762, and was preceded by a dissertation, in which, while the merits of the schools of Lope and Calderon are imperfectly acknowledged, their defects are exhibited in the strongest relief, and the impression left, in relation to the old masters, is of the most unfavorable character.