Wouldst thou engage with the bulls in fight, My friend! thy wish to be gratified, When to the best champion known will light Some luckless thrust give through the right side? To try thy skill thou art surely free: Much be the good it will do to thee! Martin goes a poor rabbit to chase, When he could buy for a trifle one Fully as good in the market-place; And he gets fever-struck by the sun! Well, at the least he has had his whim: Much be the good it will do to him! If when such a thing he least expects, His house should tumble upon his head, Because a doubloon Anton neglects To give for mending the roof instead, The hole some rat had made in the rim, Much be the good it will do to him! If should some crusty reader exclaim Over these lines,--What a wretched style! What a bad taste to make it his aim! My pen more gracefully could the while Have made the verse go easy and trim, Much be the good it will do to him! X. JOSÈ MARIA HEREDIA. The people of Cuba have good cause to be proud of a poet born in their island, whose genius seems always to have found its highest inspiration in expatiating on the charms of the place of his birth. Heredia was born the 31st December, 1803, at Santiago de Cuba, in which city his family had taken refuge when driven away by the revolution from the island of Santo Domingo, where they had been previously settled. His father, whose profession was that of the law, was shortly afterwards appointed a Judge in Mexico, where he accordingly went with his family, taking his son there for his education under his special superintendence. This duty he had the privilege allowed him to accomplish, when he died in 1820, leaving a reputation for ability and uprightness so eminent as to prove highly advantageous to his son in his subsequent necessities. On his father’s death, Heredia returned with his mother and three sisters to Cuba, where he had an uncle and other relations residing, and there he engaged in a course of study for the profession of the law, at the termination of which he was, in 1823, admitted an Advocate in the Supreme Court of the island. From his earliest years he had always shown himself possessed of a very studious disposition, and some of his poems seem to have been written when only eighteen years of age.