With regard to the objection made to these fables, that they are often deficient in poetical warmth or colouring, it may be observed that the subjects would scarcely admit of any. Iriarte was certainly a writer of more poetic taste than talent, and it must be acknowledged that his genius, judging by the works he left, was not one to soar to the higher flights of poetry. He felt this himself, as he intimates in his Epistle to his brother; and, choosing a subject like Music for a didactic poem, or writing familiar epistles on occasional subjects, did not give himself much scope for fancy, much less for passion. But as applied to the fables, the objection was unnecessary. If they deserved praise for their vivacity of style, that very circumstance, independent of the subjects, rendered them passionless, ἀπαθέστατα, as Longinus remarks, where stronger feelings could scarcely be brought into connexion with such discussions. The great difficulty in such cases is, when metres are chosen to suit the subject, abounding in pyrrhics, trochees, and such measures, as the same great critic adds, to guard, lest the sense be lost in too much regard to the sound, raising only attention to the rhythm, instead of exciting any feeling in the minds of the hearers. Of the five fables chosen for translation, the two first were taken from Bouterwek, and the third on account of its having been particularly noticed by Martinez de la Rosa. The Epistle to his Brother was selected partly on account of its notices of other countries, as a foreigner’s judgement of them; and partly as being most characteristic of the writer, showing his tastes and dispositions more perhaps than the rest. The reader generally feels most interested in such parts of the works of favourite writers, especially when their private history gives the imagination a right to ask sympathy for their sufferings.