[384] The popularity of Antonio Valladares de Sotomayor, of Gaspar Zavala y Zamora, and of Luciano Francisco Comella, did not last long enough to cause their works to be collected. But I have many separate plays of each of them, and of other forgotten authors of this period, such as Luis Moncin, Vicente Rodriguez de Arellano, José Concha, etc. Of Comella alone I have thirty, and I am ashamed to say how many of them I have read for the pleasure their mere stories gave me. But while Comella was at the height of his reputation, a formidable antagonist, both to himself and to the whole class of writers he represented, appeared in the person of Moratin the younger, son of that poet who first produced on the Spanish stage an original drama written according to the French doctrines. He was born in 1760. To insure for the child a subsistence he had with difficulty earned for himself, his father placed him as an apprentice to a jeweller, at whose trade the young man continued to work till he was twenty-three years old,--the latter part of the time in order to support his mother, who had been left a widow. But his natural disposition for poetry was too strong to be controlled by the hard circumstances of his situation. When seven years old he had written verses, and at eighteen he obtained the second prize offered by the Royal Spanish Academy for a poem to commemorate the taking of Granada,--a circumstance which astonished nobody more than it did his own family, for he had written it secretly, and presented it under a feigned name. Another success of the same sort, two years later, attracted more attention to the poor young jeweller; and at last, in 1787, by the kind intervention of Jovellanos, he was made secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris, and accompanied the ambassador, Count Cabarrus, to that capital. There he remained two years, and, during that time, became acquainted with Goldoni, and entered into relations with other men of letters, that determined the direction of his life and the character of his drama. On his return to Madrid, he obtained the patronage of Don Manuel Godoy, afterwards the all-powerful Prince of the Peace; and from this moment his fortune seemed certain. He was sent, at the public charge, to study the theatres of Germany and England, as well as those of Italy and France; he had pensions and places given him at home; and, while an honorable occupation in the department of Foreign Affairs, which awaited his return, insured him a distinguished position in society, he had still leisure left for that cultivation of letters which he prized above all his prosperity and all his official honors.