These passages, extracted from various satires of Bartolomé, and many others of equal or superior merit, which might be quoted as well from him as from Lupercio, prove their happy genius for this kind of poetry. They have been compared to Horace, and undoubtedly bear most similarity to him, notwithstanding the preference that Bartolomé gave to Juvenal.[J] But at what a distance do they stand from him! The vivacity, the freedom, the variety, the conciseness, the exquisite and delicate mixture of praise and censure, the amiable disdain, and spirit of friendship, which enchant and despond in that ancient model, are all wanting in them, and condemn the excessive condescension or want of taste which led their cotemporaries to give them the title of Horaces. Facility of rhyming led them to string tercetos together without end, in which, if we meet with no unnecessary words, we find plenty of unnecessary thoughts. This causes their satires and epistles frequently to appear prolix, and even at times wearisome. Horace would have counselled Lupercio to shorten the introduction of his satire on the Marquesilla, and many of the tales that occur in it; and Bartolomé to suppress, in his fable of the Eagle and Swallow, the long enumeration of birds, useless and unseasonable for a poet, superficial and scanty for a naturalist; he would have reminded both, in short, that strokes of satire, like arrows, should carry feathers and fly, to wound with certainty and force. It is painful, on the other hand, to find that they never leave the tone of ill-temper and suspicion which they once assume; and that neither indignation against vice, nor friendship, nor admiration, can draw from them one warm sentiment or gleam of enthusiasm. We choose friends amongst the authors we read, as amongst the men we have to deal with: I confess that I am not for those poets who, to judge by their verses, never appear to have loved nor esteemed any body. Villegas was a disciple of the younger Argensóla, and if to the native talent he had joined some portion of the judgment and good sense of his master, he would have left nothing to desire in the department which he cultivated. He was the first that introduced Anacreontics in Spanish poetry, and, in spite of their defects, his Cantilenas and Monostrophes are read with delight, and remain imprinted on the minds of youth. The cause of this is, that there is vivacity in them, playfulness, grace, and cadence, which are the qualities that characterise this class of compositions, charming alike the imagination and the ear. His longer verses have not had equal success, because their ease, their harmony, and learning, do not compensate for the dissatisfaction caused by affectation, pedantry, and want of enthusiasm, for the violent transpositions, vicious modes of speech, and, lastly, the ringing changes and puerile antitheses in which they abound.[K]