ical, which existed under the direction of P. M. de Olive, from 1805 to 1808 and from 1817 to 1818, is to be found in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, but disappointment awaits the eager student who expects to discover at once this important version, for the desired cuaderno happens to be missing. Turning the leaves of the Gaceta de Madrid, however, one's eye might tall on this advertisement in the issue of February 25, 1819: "Minerva ó el Revisor general trimestre 6°., cuaderno de Diciembre, contiene el sitio de Corinto, traduccion libre de un poema ingles del lord Byron, el cual tambien se vende suelto á real". As the copy in the Biblioteca Nacional lacks precisely this last quarter, October to December 1818 we must rest content with this contemporaneous testimony concerning this important translation.

The reactionary government of Ferdinand VII either silenced or sent into exile all of Spain's progressive spirits. Groups of these exiles gathered in Paris and in London, and some of them began publishing interesting journals. While most of these publications were political or commercial, literary news finds a place in them from time to time; and we should not be surprised to note traces of Byronism here before they can be discovered in the home journals. Such, however, does not appear to be the case. As I have found nothing about Byron in the earliest numbers of the periodicals published by the Spanish exiles, we may turn at once to Spain, taking up in chronological order such meager news of the poet as the journals may contain, and noting as well the appearance of translations. The Bibliografia Nacional y Extrangera for the year 1821 has no evidence of the romantic movement beyond some references to Rousseau-nothing of Byron or Scott or even Chateaubriand; but the Censor, published in Madrid in the years 1820-1822, and numbering among its editors such distinguished men as Miñano and Lista, contained in its thirteenth volume some curious Imprecations of Lord Byron in Stanzas: Translated from

the English, "made and sent in by a littérateur of standing ". The editors admit that they have not yet seen the original; neither have I. The poem consists of ten stanzas railing at the Neapolitans for their failure to strike and be free, and while some of it sounds like Byron, and though we know of his interest in the Carbonari movement, the lines cannot be identified. The Neapolitan affair occurred in 1821, and this so-called translation appeared in January, 1822; it must, then, have been written in 1821. Byron's letters for this period mention a poem by Moore on the Neapolitans, but contain no reference to one written by himself, though he is continually writing to Murray and Moore about his own productions. Nor does an examination of the index of proper names occurring in Byron's poetry bring the composition to light. Moore did publish on April 9, 1821, - some lines concerning the surrender of Naples; these are in the same bitter spirit as the Spanish production which purports to be a translation of Byron, but they are by no means identical. The case is curious. Some light may perhaps be thrown on it by the existence, in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, of an eight-page unbound pamphlet bearing this title: Imprécations: Stances Traduites de l'Anglais, de Lord Byron, Brussels, January, 1822. While I have not been able to make a detailed comparison of the two compositions, I feel pretty certain that they are identical. But the source of the hoax remains a mystery.

We have now reached the ominous year 1823 when a reactionary government plunged Spain back into medieval darkness in matters intellectual and political. Says Blanco García: "A contar desde la reacción absolutista (1823) paralizóse por completo la agitación de los años anteriores; y mientras se publicaban los Ocios de españoles emigrados en Inglaterra (1824-26), la Corte de Madrid se entretenía en descubrir tramas y conspiraciones, sumida en un quietismo literario que, después de todo, quizá no deba posponerse a las intemperancias del período constitu

cional. Allá en 1828, y amparándose con el incoloro de su carácter, apareció El Correo Literario y Mercantil, con alguna firma ilustre como la de Bretón, junto á otras como la del indispensable D. Mariano Rementeria". Whether or not this deplorable state of affairs be the reason why the timid beginnings of Byronism which we have just been noting were not followed by a steady increase of interest in the poet, we can but guess — until further research proves that less radical foreigners were more welcome. At any rate such is the truth, as we shall soon see; for it is not until after the amnesty of 1833, and the dawn of a brighter day for political liberty, that Byronism began to take a conspicuous place in Spanish periodicals. We may allow ourselves to note, by way of anticipation, that the translating of our poet into Spanish in book form does not wait so long ; let us not forget, however, that all but one of the versions we have to report before the year 1833 were printed in Paris.

An excellent illustration of this lack of interest in Lord Byron during these years is the case of the Gaceta de Madrid, an important periodical appearing thrice a week, which I have examined from 1816 to 1836. The conservatism of this paper may account in part for the absence of news of Byron from its columns, for it follows Scott's career with minute interest. Byron's death seems to have passed unnoticed by the Gaceta, though an issue of the same year records the death of an obscure Frenchman at

1. Op. cit., I, 96.

2. Later it became a daily. In July, 1816, the Gaceta has the following gem: « Soberanía del pueblo; discurso en que se impugna ese tan funesto fantasma; se prueba el origen divino, el carácter sagrado é inviolable de la autoridad de los Soberanos: se demuestra el poder legislativo de los Monarcas con varias pruebas, y el de los de España, con las que suministra su intento el autor de la Teoría de las cortes escrito por el P. Mtro. D. Josef Bassa, exvicario general de la congregacion cisterciense de la corona de Aragon y Navarro ». We need not be surprised if a public fed upon such intellectual pabulum found Byron's political ideas rather hard to digest at first.

the tender age of 124 years. But a dispatch from Paris six months after the poet's death (April 19, 1824) gives in detail the prices paid by Murray, the publisher, for the various poems. In August of the same year Byron is labeled one of " the foremost poets of the century". The first mention in the Gaceta of a Spanish. translation of any of Byron's verse is an announcement of El Corsario in the issue of September 21, 1833.

Things intellectual being in this deplorable state in Spain, we may turn perhaps with profit to an examination of the activities of the liberal emigrados Blanco White, one of the best English scholars among XIXth century Spaniards and long an exile in London, published there a quarterly in the years 1824 and following. In April, 1825, he printed an article on Newstead Abbey, with high praise of Byron, who, he said, was very little known in Spain at that time. Another London publication called Ocios de españoles emigrados the entrance of which into

Spain was prohibited because of its "subversive and alarming nature in the eyes of the enlightened government of that time → was sufficiently under English influences to publish imitations. of Moore's "What the Bee is to the Flowret" and of Coleridge's "Something Childish but very Natural "; but this journal contained a review of Heredia's poems in the year 1825 without mention of Byronic tendencies. The Repertorio Americano, however, likewise published in London, reviewed the same poems two years later in the following terms: "His pictures. generally have a somber tint, and in his sentiments there dominates a melancholy which now and then is not far from misanthropy, and in which we think we note a certain likeness to the genius and style of Lord Byron ". The case of Heredia will now be taken up.

This unfortunate young Cuban fled from his native land to Boston in November, 1823. In 1825 he published at New York the first edition of his poems, the criticisms of which have been referred to above. Though the critic of the Repertorio Americano

thought he could discover Byronic melancholy in this collection, direct Byronic influence is hard to find. As a matter of tact much of this verse, except obviously the ode to Niagara, had probably been written in Cuba, and it is by no means certain that Heredia had heard of Byron before coming to the United States. The poet went to Mexico in 1825, and there became one of the editors of El Iris'. In this periodical he published, February 11, 1826 (I, 16), his Versos escritos en el album de una señorita, imitando á Lord Byron; and on page 24 of the same volume he published a translation of the Versos escritos al pasar el golfo de Ambracia (Del inglés de Lord Byron). Both of these were signed "H". On page 26 of this volume, again over the signature "H", we find an article on Poetas Ingleses Contemporáneos; Lord Byron. Here Heredia says: "Si la literatura inglesa puede gloriarse de sus autores antiguos, no debe desdeñar los tesoros con que la han enriquecido nuestros contemporáneos. Los nombres de Byron, Scott, Campbell, Rogers y Moore bastarían por sí solos á dar esplendor á su siglo ". He then proceeds to discuss Byron, "the most celebrated of all ". Though his remarks would now be considered commonplace, they are exact and sympathetic, in spite of his objection to Byron's skepticism and to the immorality of Don Juan. Heredia's poetry got to Spain at least as early as 1840, an edition being published in Barcelona in that year, without, however, including the Byronic imitations 2.

We have now reached the point when the translations in book form begin to appear. I have consulted the following sources for information along this line: the translations themselves to

1. Cf. Appendix B.

2. Poesias || de || Don José Maria de Heredia, || Magistrado del Tribunal supremo || de Justicia de Méjico, y Sena- || dor de aquella República. || [Fig] || Barcelona || Por Don Juan Francisco Piferrer, || Impresor de S. M. Plaza del Angel. || 1840 ||. 197 pp., 8°. The preface refers to the first edition of Mexico], 1825, and the second of Toluca, 1832.