upon as a favourable specimen of Quintana's genius, like the Ode to Balmis, which more fully shows the character of his mind.
Quintana, more than other poets of his time, has written in one style of verse, as in imitation of the Pindaric ode, or of our Gray and Dryden. Thus with free metres and often unfettered by rhyme, he has a staid measured tone, well suited to the subjects he has generally adopted. They are considered in Spain as of an elegiac character; and as accordant with them, they have fallen in the translation into the form of our elegies, or the heroic lines with alternate rhymes, the style of verse which Dryden, a high authority on such a question, pronounced "the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords."
Much as Quintana has published, both of his own works and of the works of others, for the advancement of sound learning and moral instruction, we have still great cause to regret that the circumstances of the times in which he has lived have prevented him from publishing more. Not only has he been interrupted in the course of those instructive biographies, of which we have such valuable beginnings, but we might have hoped, if he had lived in more peaceful times, that he would have given the world some work, of a character more distinctively his own, to place his name still higher in the history of elegant literature. It was one of the maxims of the wise Jovellanos, "that it was not sufficient for the purposes of good government to keep the people quiet, but that they ought to be kept contented." Without this condition the other cannot be expected; and for all public commotions, therefore, the rulers are always most responsible, as unmindful of this truth. The greatest evil is, when the whole literary world has thus also further cause to complain of their misdeeds, as affecting those who were endowed with talents of a
