Some other kindred attempts should, however, be remembered, of which the oldest, made in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout Europe, were in the form called “Emblems,” or explanations in verse for hieroglyphical devices. The most successful of these were probably the Emblems of Daza, in 1549, imitated from the more famous Latin ones of Alciatus; and those of Covarrubias, published originally in Spanish by their author in 1591, and afterwards translated by him into Latin;--both of them curious specimens of this peculiar style of composition, and as agreeable, perhaps, as any which the age of Emblems produced.[30] [30] “Los Emblemas de Alciato, etc., añadidos de nuevos Emblemas,” Lyon, 1549, 4to,--on the Index Expurgatorius of 1790. Those of Covarrubias were printed in Spanish in 1591; and in Spanish and Latin, Agrigenti, 1601, 12mo;--the last, a thick volume, with a long and learned Latin dissertation on Emblems prefixed. Covarrubias was brother of the lexicographer of the same name. Tesoro, Art. _Emblema_. The other form was that in which the didactic runs into the descriptive. Of this the most poetical example in Spanish is by Dicastillo, a Carthusian monk, at Saragossa, who published, in 1637, under the auspices of his friend Mencos, a long poetical correspondence, intended to teach the vanity of human things, and the happiness and merit to be found in a life of penitential seclusion. The parts that relate to the author himself are sometimes touching; but the rest is of very unequal worth,--the better portions being devoted to a description of the grand and sombre monastery of which he was an inmate, and of the observances to which his life there was devoted.[31] Castilian verse, however, did not often take a descriptive character, except when it appeared in the form of eclogues and idyls; and even then it is almost always marked by an ingenuity and brilliancy far from the healthy tone inspired by a sincere love of what is grand or beautiful in nature;--a remark which finds ample illustration in the poems devoted to the Spanish conquests in America, where the marvellous tropical vegetation of the valleys through which the wild adventurers wound their way, and the snow-capped volcanoes that crowned the _sierras_ above their heads, seem to have failed alike to stir their imaginations or overawe their courage.[32] [31] “Aula de Dios, Cartuxa Real de Zaragoza. Descrive la Vida de sus Monjes, acusa la Vanidad del Siglo, etc., consagrala á la Utilidad Pública Don Miguel de Mencos,” Zaragoza, 1637, 4to. They are written in _silvas_, and their true author’s name is indicated by _puns_ in some of the laudatory verses that precede the work.