The best edition of Arriaza’s works is that of 1829, printed at the Royal Press of Madrid, of which the one of Paris, 1834, is a reprint. They consist of almost all varieties of song, and are almost all equally charming. His satirical pieces even are light and pleasing, as well as his anacreontic and erotic effusions, while his patriotic songs and odes breathe a spirit well suited to the subjects. Maury, who has made him better known abroad by his praises than others, his contemporaries, seems to have regarded him with especial favour. He says of him:--“Depuis Lope de Vega, M. d’Arriaza est le seul de nos poëtes qui nous semble penser en vers. La nature le fit poëte, les évènements l’ont fait auteur. Il était arrivé à sa réputation littéraire sans y prétendre, il l’accrue pour ainsi dire à son corps défendant.” In truth he seems to have poured forth his verses without effort, as a bird does its song, with a simplicity and truthfulness which went to the heart of the hearer, and left in it a sensation of their being only the echoes of its own. As Maury has well observed, “parlent à la raison et à l’esprit, comme au cœur et à l’imagination, elles offrent en même temps aux amateurs de la langue Castillane les sons harmonieux et les tournures piquantes qui la distinguent avec une grande élégance de diction et une clarté rare chez la plupart de nos écrivains.” It is true that his style is exceedingly easy, and the expression generally very clear, but it must also be acknowledged, on the part of the translator, that obscurities are frequently to be found in his lines, when he must discover a meaning for himself. It was Arriaza’s own doctrine in the prologue to his works, “that there can be no true expression of ideas where there does not reign the utmost clearness of diction; that what the reader does not conceive at the first simple reading, cannot make in his imagination the prompt effect required, and much less move his heart in any way. This clearness,” he observes, “should also be associated with a constant elegance of expression; though he does not consider this elegance to consist in a succession of grammatical inversions, or revolving adjectives, or metaphor on metaphor, but the mode most select and noble of saying things becomingly to the style in which they are written.”