Differing entirely from those writers who suppose that the best days of Spanish literature have gone by, and believing, on the contrary, that it never has been more truly original and flourishing than during the present and preceding ages, it might be justly considered presumptuous in any new author to present such opinions to the world without showing the grounds on which they were founded. Bouterwek and his copyist, Sismondi, together with their criticisms on the several Spanish poets, contented themselves with giving merely a few lines from the more favoured ones in their original language, without any translation whereby to enable those ignorant of it to judge even of the thoughts they contained. They thus resemble the wiseacre in Hierocles (the Σχολαστικὸς, which word Johnson has strangely translated ‘pedant,’ taking the primary for the intended meaning), who brought a stone as a description of a building. In so doing, they have seldom given even favourable specimens; but if they had, there are few authors who can be rightly estimated by isolated passages, or even by any one short poem. Almost all authors are unequal in their productions, and many seem, by an accidental felicity, to have produced some one effusion to which none of their other efforts could ever approach. As instances of this, we may note Heber’s ‘Palestine;’ Pringle’s lines, ‘Afar in the Desert,’ and Leyden’s ‘Ode to an Indian Gold Coin,’ which Colton has pronounced, in his opinion, “to come as near to perfection as the sublunary Muse can arrive at.” It is only by several well-sustained efforts that any author has a right to be placed among poets, and it would not be just, therefore, to judge of any without such a consideration of their productions. In all the translations here given, the most characteristic specimens of the style of each writer have been sought, particularly those containing what seemed to be his favourite course of thought, while selecting entire, though generally short, poems for that purpose. With the exception of the Duke de Rivas, the poets enumerated in this work have not published poems of any great length, and therefore the plan adopted may be considered altogether appropriate to the object in view. With regard to the metres chosen, no rule has been attempted of taking the original strictly for a guide, where the style of verse, in a different language, would not admit of it easily. Perhaps the truest definition of Poetry may be given in the words of our great poet-- “Thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers--” for it may be observed, that the finest passages are generally the easiest for translation and for rhyme. Thus keeping the original constantly in view as the guide, the verse has been adopted as the thoughts seemed to indicate the metre most appropriate.