LARRA, MARIANO JOSE DE, a popular Spanish writer on literary and political subjects, was born at Madrid on the 4th of March 1509. His father, a physician of repute, was an adherent of King Joseph, and found himself obliged to leave Spain with the French army when it was driven out of the country at the close of the Peninsular War. The boy, who was taken with him, wan first sent to school in Franca, and when the family obtained permission to return to Spain in 1817, it was found that he had almost entirely forgotten the Spanish language. This deficiency was however soon repaired, and he was noted in after life for the freedom and raciness of his Spanish, and his hostility to the practice of sullying its purity with Gallic idioms. As a boy he was remarkably fond of study and averse to ordinary pastimes, and it was then generally augured that he would become what is termed a bookish man. As he approached manhood his whole character appeared to change; a quarrel with his father, which was never made up, and which was connected, either as cause or effect, with his abandonment of the study of the law, threw him on the world without resources, and at the age of twenty ho contracted a marriage which he afterwards repented, and gave his wife reason to repent. For a profession he adopted that of literature, which, in the time of Ferdinand, was miserably ill-paid in Spain, and so surrounded with restrictions that the works then published had no value in his own eyes, and they were systematically omitted by himself in afterwards collecting his works. It was in 1832 when these restrictions were relaxed that ho first gained a success with a series of periodical essays called 'El Pobrecito Habilis/or,' which however was impeded by Calorearde's ministry, and stopped by Zeds at its fourteenth number. The freedom of the press however soon followed, and Larra commenced in the Revisits Espanola,' under the signature of Figaro, a series of sketches of Spanish manners, similar to those of Jouy'e ' Hermit in Paris,' and Macdonough's now forgotten Hermit in London.' Intermingled with these were lively theatrical criticisms, and some sharp political articles of a witty character, and Larra also wrote a novel and a play, besides translating several plays from the French. The name of Figaro was soon universally known, Lana began to move in the first circles, was a constant guest at the English embassy, where ho was a favourite companion of the ambassador Mr. Villiers, now earl of Clarendon, and wise presented to Queen Chriatioa at her own desire. In 1835 he took a trip to Portugal, England and France, and was received in the best society of London and Paris, but at the end of ten months returned abruptly to Madrid, and gave as a reason that ho could not do without tho "sun and chocolate." He said in ono of his Figaro essays, speaking of comic authors, "If I might dare to mention myself in company with Moliere and Moratin, if I too might be allowed to claim the title of 'satirical writer,' I would frankly confess that it is only in moments of melancholy that I aspire to amuse the public." His
friends knew this to be too true. He was a prey to the blackest and most incessant melancholy. While also his manners 'in society were the perfection of polish, his wife and family were the victims of his ill-temper at home. All came to a sudden close. An intrigue with a married woman, which had lasted five years, was cut short by a deter mination on her part to relinquish his society : on the 13th of February 1837 Larra had an interview with her at his own house, to prevail on her to give up her intention, but his entreaties were in vain. She left him, and, when some time after, his little daughter entered the room she found her father', corpse stretched on the floor before a mirror, which had probably helped him to aim the pistol which blew his brains out. His remains, even under these circum stances, were honoured with a public funeral, and among those who recited verses over his grave was a boy of eighteen, whose fame dates from that day, when he was hailed by the mourners with sudden enthusiasm as a compensation for their loss. This was the leading lying poet of Spain, Don Jos6 A collection of Lama's articles in the periodicals was made, and bad partly run to a second edition during his life-time. A collection of his entire works was published after his death in Spanish America, another collection appeared at Madrid in 1843, and this was reprinted in two volumes in 1848 in Baudry's Paris 'Coleccion do doe mejorea Antonia Espalioles.' The short essays are undoubtedly his beat productions, they are happily deficient in that "gravity" of which the Spaniards are in general too fond, and yet are so thoroughly Spanish in their colouring that after the lapse of more than twenty years they seem to have rather gained than lost in popularity. Ilia novel ' El Doncel de Don Enrique of Doliente,' (' The Page of Don Henry the Melancholy written in imitation of Walter Scott, is on the contrary heavy and cumbersome. It is founded ou the history of the Galilean poet of the 15th century, Macias 'el Enamored°, who was killed by the husband of a lady to whom ho addressed his verses. The same story is the theme of one of Lames plays, Macias; in which he treats the whole subject so differently and with so much more spirit, that no one would, without positive information of the fact, suppose that both play and novel were by the same author. His other dramas are mostly adaptations or translations from the French. It is singular that the last of them bears the title of 'Thy Love or Death ' (' Tu Amor ö la Muerte so applicable to his own unhappy eud.