had, I doubt not, their full effect under the Stuarts, in deterring the scholars of that period from any close communion with her poets. Meanwhile the corruption of style which had so baneful an effect on her literature, was silently going forward under Gongora, Quevedo, and their numerous imitators. Before the reign of Philip the Fifth, this corruption had reached its height; his accession to the crown of Spain, and the encouragement he gave to letters, might have re-established the national literature in its first lustre, if the evil had not struck root so deeply, and if another cast of corrupters had not opposed themselves to the views of this monarch, viz. the numerous translators of French works, who disfigured the idiom by forming a French construction with native words. Thus the curiosity of the poets of Queen Anne's time, if it was ever excited, must have been speedily laid asleep; and (though we may notice in Dryden, and perhaps in Donne, a study of Castilian,) it was scarcely before the middle of the last century that this study began permanently to tinge our literature. To Mr. Hayley, who first directed public attention to the great merits of Dante, must be ascribed the praise also of first calling our notice in any great degree to the Spanish poets. Southey followed, and by his "Chronicle of the Cid" and "Letters from Spain," quickened the curiosity excited by Mr. Hayley's analysis and translated specimens of the Araucana of Ercilla. Lord Holland's admirable dissertation on the genius and writings of Lope de Vega, gave us a clearer insight into the literature of Spain, whilst the French invasion brought us into a more intimate connexion and acquaintance with her chivalrous people; nor could the many English visitants which this drew to her shores view the remains which she keeps of Arabian and Moorish magnificence, or even listen to her language, which preserves such striking vestiges of oriental majesty, without having their imagination led back to her days of literary illumination, and without deriving some taste for the productions of her poets. The struggle which she then made, and that which she is now making, first against the unhallowed grasp of foreign coercion, and next of that priestly tyranny which has so long cramped her political and intellectual energies, have excited in every British bosom the most cordial sympathy; and it is evident that from these causes, there is a growing attention amongst us to her language and literature. Since the present volume was begun, a translation has appeared of the excellent work of Bouterewek, on Spanish and Portuguese poetry; another is going through the press of Sismondi "Sur la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe;" and Mr. Lockhart has just given us a choice selection of those beautiful old Spanish ballads, which, as Mr. Rogers observes of the narratives of the old Spanish chroniclers, 'have a spirit like the freshness of waters