ESPRONCEDA, JOSE DE, a Spanish poet of great popularity and reputation, was born on the high road near Almendralejo iu Estrema, dura, during a march of the campaign of 1810. His father was colonel of the regiment of Bourbon which distinguished itself at the battle of Talavera, and at the age of five, as soon as the child was old enough to mount on horseback, he was entered as a cadet of the regiment. At the concluaion of the war he was sent to school at Madrid, and when at the college of St. Matthew became a favourite pupil of Alberto Lista, the poet and lecturer on literature, who, discovering his talents, encouraged him to compose and corrected his verses. Politics however divided the youth's attention with poetry, and before the age of fifteen he was in prison as a conspirator, as one of the society of Numantines,' a secret combination against the despotic rule of tho minister Calomarde [CALostenna]. On account of his tender age he was allowed to escape with only four months' imprisonment and a short 'reclusion' in a convent, and it was while in the convent at Guadalajara that he commenced an epic poem on the favourite subject of the Spanish writers, 'Pelayo,' the hero of the epic, which a few years later Ruiz de la Vega compoaed when a refugee in England. On leaving the convent Eapronceda made himself again so troublesome, that at the age of seventeen he was obliged to banish himself to Lisbon. Wien there he was shut up by Don Miguel in the castle of St. George, and one day with several of the other Spaniah refugees put on board a ship and sent to England. In the castle of St. George he had became enamoured of a girl of sixteen, the daughter of a fellow-prisoner, a Spanish military officer of rank, and his absenco from Portugal was felt as irksome, till one day on witnessing the arrival of a ship in the Thames, he unexpectedly saw her disembark. His residence in England he afterwards looked back upon as the happiest period of his life. He made himself acquainted with the language and studied Milton, and Byron, espe cially the last of the three, whom he took in many respects as his modeL One of his poems which has been much admired, an Ode to Spain on its fallen condition,' is dated from London in 1829. A darkness rests on the conclusion of his love affair, and towarda the end of 1829 he was in Paris, where in the following year he fought bravely at the barricades. The success of the revolution of 1830
naturally led the Spaniah refugees to try their fortune on their native soil, but the expedition of Pablo de Chapalangarra, in which Espronceda took a part, only gave him an opportunity of displaying his signal courage and of writing a poem on the death of the leader. The ohange which the exiles had been unable in the least to accelerate, was effected as if by magic by the death of Ferdinand; and Eapronceda, who returned to Madrid and entered tho regiment of body-guards of the queen, seemed for a short time at the commencement of a career of good fortune. A song which be wrote for a banquet of the regiment soon altered his prospects—it contained some offensive political allu sions, which not only led to his dismissal by the ministry, but his banishment to Cuellar, where he occupied himself by writing ' Sancho Saldaha 6 el Castellano de Cuellar,' an historical novel in the style of Walter Scott. On the promulgation of the ' Estatuto Real,' the con stitutional charter of modern Spain, he returned to Madrid, and took part in the newspaper `El Siglo,' or The Age.' At this time his political sentiments were not only of a republican but a socialist character, and he was so ready to carry them into action, that twice in the years 1835 and 1836 he was engaged in defending barricades in the streets of Madrid. His friends, who continued so to tho last, make it no secret that at the same time his private life was oue of disorder and excess. At length in 1840, after some years of struggle, varied with occasional flights from the reach of the authorities, he was fortunate enough to take part, in a successful 'pronunciansiento,' or outbreak, in the September of that year, and in 1841, as a reward, was named secretary of embassy at the Hague. lie travelled to his post in the depth of winter, and found his health so affected in consequence, that he was obliged to return soon after to Spain, where he was highly gratified by being chosen representative of Almeria, and thus becoming a member of the Cortes, long an object of his ambition. In the midst of bright anticipations he was suddenly carried off on the 23rd of May 1S42 by an inflammation in the throat, in the thirty-second year of his age, and his death produced a strong and sad impression.