The works of Espronceda ()purist of a single volume of Poesias,' and of the historical novel already mentioned, which was published at Madrid in 1834 in six small volumes, the whole of which would be easily comprised in a single volume of an English ' Railway Library.' The poems were printed at Madrid in 1340 during the author's absence by his friend Villalta, who in the preface calls him "the great Spanish poet of the present epoch," and appeals to "the enthusiasm which the sublime compositions of the 'Pirate,' the 'Beggar,' the 'Executioner,' the 'Hymn to the Sun,' and others excited" in all classes of Spanish society, when circulated in manuscript, as a proof of the justice of his estimate. Other Spanish critics, and one English writer, 31r. Kennedy, author of the 'Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain,' have concurred in the same view. Esproncoda certainly deserves the credit of having been one of the first to introduce into Spanish literature some forms of poetical compo.sitiou, which in other parts of Europe have been invented or adopted by men of high genius, but his originality is for Spaniards only, and it may be doubted if his high reputation is likely to be durable. Tho Pirnte,' which
is of the same class precisely as 'The Sea, the Sea,' of Barry Cornwall, will hardly sustain a comparison with its English rival. It may be said indeed that the Spanish language, rich, grave, and sonorous, is sometimes from those very qualities singularly unadapted for the expression of those brief and abrupt burst's of passion which form some of the brightest ornaments of the English poetical treasury. Perhaps the finest abort poem by Espronceda is ' The Night of the Condemned to Death,' in which, like Victor Hugo, he alms at delineatiug the feelings of a criminal the night before execution. This e lib some of his other poems has been translated by Mr. Kennedy. An extensive fragment of a long poem, 'The Devil World,' was first published in a secoud edition of Esproneeda's poems issued after his death by Ilartzenbuech in 1848, with a biographical notice be Ferrer del Rio.