The “Raquel” of Huerta, printed in 1778, three years after the “Numantia,” is not so creditable to the author, and produced a less lasting impression on the public. The story--that of the Jewess of Toledo, which has been so often treated by Spanish poets--is taken too freely from a play of Diamante; and though Huerta has, in some respects, given the materials he found there a better arrangement, and a more grave and sonorous versification, he has diminished the spirit and naturalness of the action by constraining it within the hard conventions he prescribed to himself, and has rendered the whole drama so uninteresting, that, notwithstanding its considerable reputation at first, it was soon forgotten.[375] [375] Ayala’s tragedy has been often printed. The “Raquel” is in Huerta’s Works, (Tom. I., 1786,) with his translations of the “Electra” of Sophocles, and the “Zaïre” of Voltaire. The original edition of the Raquel is anonymous, and without date or place of publication. The first real success of any thing in the French style on the Spanish stage, though not in the classical forms prescribed by Boileau and Racine, was obtained by Jovellanos. Early in life he had ventured a tragedy, entitled “Pelayo,” in the same measure with Ayala’s “Numantia,” and on nearly the same subject with the “Hormesinda” of the elder Moratin. But the philosophical statesman, though he wrote good lyric verse, was not a tragic poet. He was, however, something better;--he was a really good man, and his philanthropy led him, in 1773, to write his “Honored Culprit,” a play, intended to rebuke the cruel and unavailing severity of the laws of his country against duelling, as they then existed. It is a sentimental comedy in the manner of Diderot’s “Natural Son”; and, beside that it has the honor of being the first attempt of the kind on the Spanish stage, it has that of being more fortunate than any of its successors. The story on which it is founded is that of a gentleman, who, after repeatedly refusing a challenge, kills, in a secret duel, the infamous husband of the lady he afterwards marries; and, being subsequently led to confess his crime in order to save a friend, who is arrested as the guilty party, he is condemned to death by a rigorous judge, who unexpectedly turns out to be his own father, and is saved from execution, but not from severe punishment, only by the royal clemency.