IV.
LEANDRO FERNANDEZ MORATIN.
Spanish writers have in general too much overrated the merits of their national dramas,[1] and foreigners have too often repeated the eulogies, as if they were deserved. Like those of antiquity, the Spanish, though they abound in passages of much poetry and feeling, are almost entirely deficient in that delineation of individual character, which constitutes the highest class of the art. Thus all the representations may be observed of the same description of personages and incidents, given often with much ingenuity, but also often in the worst taste, and always betokening a limited power of invention. Of this school Calderon de la Barca was the great type, both as regards his merits and defects. Lopez de Vega too, though his comedies are more representations of manners and every-day life than Calderon's, only showed his capability of something better, if he had allowed his genius to seek a reputation for perfectness, rather than for fecundity. The inferior order of writers mistook the errors of these for excellences, and thus exaggerated them.
There were not, however, wanting in Spain persons of better judgement, who observed those errors with a view to
- ↑ For an excellent criticism on the Spanish drama, see the article in the twenty-fifth volume of the Quarterly Review.
