easily amenable to rule and measure. This severe self-sacrifice is the guarantee of all philosophic and scientific progress, of all abstract thought, in fact. But it goes without saying that the tendency is previous to, and more general than, purely scientific and philosophical ambitions. It is in fact a natural tendency in the central-European type, whether under its French, German, or Italian variety. The characteristic faculty of continental Europe is its power for abstract thought. Hence its art and literature. Dante Goethe, Rabelais, are guided in their art by definite philosophies. Europe is objective and forces man to stand aside in order that the mind may understand. England, on the other hand, eminently active, seeks above all the adjustment of the individual to a social system so that co-operation may be most efficient and smooth. English art, therefore, develops sunder a moral-social influence. Spain, meanwhile, keeps intact her respect for all-round man. Neither the mind, as in Europe, nor the community, as in England, but man himself is the point of departure of her philosophy and of her art. Her genius is homocentric.

That is the cause of her weakness and of her strength. Measured in area the Spanish genius is poor. Measured in depth, it is rich. It neglects the developments which an ever curious intellect opens out continually before the French, the Germans, the Italians—those experiments in form or in sensation to which the art of Europe owes so much of its appeal. It does not pursue those applications of art and thought to the business of life which give so much weight and value to English literature. It does not disperse itself in a nice analysis of the thousand little forces which converge upon and radiate from a civilized citizen, but rather considers man as a whole, in hie struggle and dealings with the great elementary powers : Evil, Death, Love.

Evil, Death, Love, are the threads of the canvas of

Time. All the rest is embroidery on the canvas. Evil (or Experience), Death, and Love are the Muses of Spanish literature. In its great lines, therefore, Spanish literature might be considered as composed of three symbolical books—a Book of Proverbs, an Ecclesiastes, and a Song of Songs.

Every one has read Don, Quixote. Every one is familiar with the inexhaustible fund of proverbs which Sancho deals out with a generosity in him altogether exceptional. It would be a mistake to pass over that wealth of proverbs as if it were a mere

side-show' in the book. Far from it, it is one of its main features ; one which contributes as much as any other towards giving Don Quixote its representative value as the Book of Spain par' excellence. Proverbs, indeed, are the salt not only of Don Quixote, but also of almost every classical Spanish narrative. They are equally conspicuous in the theatre. Not only do they occur in the text of many plays—fitting as they do into the octosyllabic scheme of versification as to the manner born—but they may be said to form the substance as they provide the title of numerous comedias. It is indeed hardly an exaggeration to say that many a comedia is but the development and the illustration of a proverb. Inversely, we must look upon most of these Spanish proverbs as real little poems, which being of a marked dramatic character, may be considered as lightning comedias—the last stage of a process of dramatic condensation the successive phases of which would be the comedia, the entremes, the romance, the popular song and the proverb. Needless to say, this succession is not suggested as historical, nor do I mean to imply that the Spanish mind passes from one to the other of these forms ; but merely to point out the existence of five different states of condensation in which dramatic matter can be found in Spanish life and literature.