A SPAN ISH ESSAYIST.* ESSAT- wit TING has flouralled recently in Spain,
and Don Miguel de Unamuno excels in the art. His subjects cover a wide field, from the theatre to religion, from spelling to Spanish philosophy, and his manner is always fresh, stimulating, provocative alike of thought and action, as he goads and probes, with heart-searching and paradoxes. He agrees with no one but himself, and not with himself foe long. He is too sincere for conformity, even with nonconformists, and the Liberal or Anarchist reader who might Wish to hail Senor Unamuno as one of his party will find to his bewilderment a few pages further on that he is nothing of the kind, for, as he says in one of these volumes, " I hate labels." This is an unusual and refreshing attitude in Spain. But then Senor Unamuno is not a Spaniard, at least not a Castilian. A Basque, born at Bilbao in 1884, this Professor and ex-Rector of Salamanca University has nothing of the. Latin smoothness. If he resembles the Castilian in independence, he lacks the Castilian's love of formulas and conventions, and his directness and energy are of the Iberian strain. His prose, too, analytical and angular, is perfectly un-Castilian. He is a determined opponent of casticismo—that is, of the maintenance of Castilian purity of style to the exclusion of all modern terms—and he gives currency in these pages to many words which will be found in no Spanish dictionary, and some of which are living and deserve to live. The whole of the first volume is devoted to this question and to the Castilian character. Seiler Unamuno is a great lover of life and of Nature ; a persistent mountain-climber, he is well acquainted with many lovely nooks and crannies of Spain unknown to moat of his countrymen, and he remains young, younger than the undergraduates who listen to his lectures. Hence the charm of his literary work. He is familiar with the literatures of many lands, and has given special attention to that of England : Isaac Walton, Wordsworth, Meredith, Ruskin, are among his favourite authors, and his third volume contains a remarkable study of "the archquack Carlyle." Robert Browning, although he is not referred to, must also be a valued and familiar friend of a mind so curious and active. Few readers will agree with all of Sector Unamuno's opinions, fewer still will not welcome the brilliant championship of some cherished opinion of their own. How genuinely liberal and im- partial is his outlook may be seen in the passage (Vol. III., pp. 130-31) in which he advocates the teaching of religion in schools and universities :— "I was asked recently my opinion about religions education, and I answered that I was in favour of it as a liberal. . . . Our profound ignorance of religious subjects is the chief cause of moat of the evils which opponents of religious teaching complain of. , , Those who bring up. their children without religion are unaware that they are depriving them of the best that they themselves possess, of the positive root, and even of whatever fruitful or noble in their freethinking."
• Swaim. Per Miguel de VGamano. 0 Tole. MadrI4,1910-18. 118 pesetati] This passage recalls what the same writer, who is sometimes denounced as an Anarchist, and who has a quite un-Spanish sympathy towards foreign countries, wrote in a former book, Por Sierras de Portugal y de Espa;ia (1911) on the subject of Ferrer (at whose execution in 1909 the world betrayed its curious ignorance of Spain and Spaniards and heaped obloquy on the Conservative statesman, Sefior Mama). Ho speaks there of "the ridiculous agitation against Spain produced among inter- national idiots by the shooting of the unfortunate Ferrer, of whom they made almost a• genius," and whose " schools were closed not because they were anti-Catholic, but because they were Anarchist and conspired against the existence of the State ; as schools, moreover, they were detestable, centres of fanaticism, ruperstition, and ignorance" (p. 285). Never was there a more unprofessorial Professor than Sefior Unamuno. He is a modern Don Quixote tilting against the windmills of every rigid and stilted system, welcoming the wind of liberty from all the corners of heaven, and laughing down tyranny or intolerance wherever he finds it, in Bolshevik or bureaucrat, p Test, professor or pupil.
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