EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.
THIS volume is almost wholly occupied with the eminent men of Spain. It contains a short introductory view of the early litera- ture of that country, followed by lives of the most distinguished of those writers who flourished almost contemporaneously during the brief period of Spanish literary glory. We are not sure, in- deed, if the word " flourish" can be applied to men whose ex- istence (with few exceptions) was passed in misfIrrtune and neglect. Spain has bad, like other countries, an Augustan age of letters,— an age, that is to say, rendered remarkable by the appearance of a constellation of genius; but, unlike other countries, this phe- nomenon cannot be ascribed to the stimulus given to literary pur- suits by the encouragement of the great, or the congenial spirit of the nation. Among the authors of whose lives we have notices in the volume before us, by far the greater number were unfor- tunate and poor, the victims not only of neglect but of persecu- tion. Luis DE LEON lay five years in the dungeon of the Inquisi- tion at Valladolid, because he had translated the Sung of Solo- mon into Spanish. ALONZO DK ERCILLA, the author of La Araucana, was imprisoned, banished, and died at Madrid, aban- dulled and destitute. The melancholy story OWERVANTES is well known. The author of Don Quixote languished in his youth as an Algerine captive; in his mature age was thrown into prison by a royal order, on a charge of a pretended deficit of less than thirty pounds sterling in the accounts of a petty Mike; and died, an old man, in poverty and distress. VICENTE EsriNEL died poor and in obscurity, at Madrid, in his ninetieth year. QUEYEDO, the author of the Visions, (once a very popular book in England, but now almost forgotten,) after a long life spent in struggling with mis- fortune, was at length, on suspicion of being the author of some libels against time Court, confined for two years in a dungeon ; and died in consequence of the hardship he endured. There is not, in short, an instance of a man having prospered who depended on literature, except the popular dratnatIst LOPE DE VEGA; for CAL'. DERON, who is equally celebrated in the same walk, belonged to the aristocracy. Even during the brief summer of Spanish literature, Lime cold and inhospitable climate blighted the productions of the soil; and it has been followed by a long and apparently hopeless winter, uncheered by a single ray of sunshine. Of the Portuguese literati, the only one of "mark or likelihood' is the celebrated author of the Lusiad, it hose history is as melan- choly as that of any of his Spanish brethren. CAmoEms died in a hospital in 1579, and in circumstances of such obscurity that the month and day of his death are unknown.
The Lives in the present volume, so far as we have read, exhi- bit due research ; and are agreeably written.
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