Whoever looks in the old _Cancioneros_ for a poetry constantly animated, interesting, and agreeable, will be disappointed. After perusing one or two pieces, wherein indulgence towards the writer supplies their frequent want of merit, the book drops from our hands, and we have little inclination to stoop to resume it. It is true that we often meet with an ingenious thought, an apposite image, and a stanza well constructed; but it is equally true, that we stumble, at the same instant, upon ideas puerile, mean, and trivial, upon uncouth verses, and indeterminate rhymes. The writer is seen to struggle with the rudeness of the language, as well as with the heaviness of the versification, and, in spite of all the efforts he makes, entirely overcome by the difficulty, he neither strikes out true expression nor elegant harmony. They knew, and they handled Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and other ancient poets; but if occasionally they subjected them to their service with propriety, they more frequently drew from those sources incoherent allusions, and a learning that degenerated into inapposite and puerile pedantry.[E] They did not succeed in imitating either the simplicity of their plans, or the admirable art with which, in their compositions, they knew how to unfold a thought with vigour, and to sustain and graduate the effect from first to last. Finally,--their verses, though more tolerable than those of a more ancient period, have the great disadvantage of monotony, and inability to accommodate themselves to the variety, elevation, and grandeur which the poetic period ought to possess in correspondence with the images, affections, and sentiments it developes. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote C: "Again and yet again do I deplore This injury; dissatisfied Castile Has lost a treasure, whose rare worth, I feel, The thoughtless nation never knew before. She lost thy books, all unappreciated! In funeral expiation some were thrown To the devouring flames, and others strewn About, in ruinous disorder spread. Surely, in Athens, the false books of fled Protagoras, esteemed so reprobate, Were to the fire consigned with greater state, When to the angry Senate they were read."]