for turning into poetry immediate reality : for painting on the very cloth of life as it is woven under our eyes by the invisible hands of Time and Space. The Spanish Romanticists were, in fact, but a new generation of intellectuals, who, following the practice of those elders whose theory they loudly rejected, had fallen under a foreign artistic influence. This time the influence was English 1—Southey, Walter Scott, Hookham Frere—and this time, instead of pointing to Aristotle or Despreaux, it guided young Spaniards towards Myo Cid, the Romancero, and the -Golden Century Theatre. The result was an art which sought inspiration in Spanish historical legends, but not in nature. It is only national externally, as consciously traditional things generally are.

Yet there is something more than a mere confusion between subject and substance in that feeling which points to the Romantic period as the beginning of the modern era in Spanish literature. First, Rivas with his dramas, and, above all, Zorrilla with his legendary poems, turned th, attention of the literary public towards the long-neglected Spanish past. The critics began to be interested in Lope and Calderon.. The Romancero, which had never ceased to be sung by the people (it still is) began to be read again. There might be something in it, after all, since Monsieur Victor Hugo admired it. And in this way began a familiarity with the old models which had sooner or later to result in a truer understanding of their spirit—that is, of the creative spirit of Spain. Then the Romanticists did useful work as iconoclasts. They cleared the ground of many literary and iesthetical prejudices and left it free for the activities of unfettered individual genius. They were the first to benefit by their own

The historical circumstance was the exile of a group of young Spanish Liberals and their residence in London. Amongst them was the leader of Spanish Romanticism, El Duque de Rivas.

work, and, within the Romantic movement, there may be observed a distinct progress from the imitation to the re-creation of Spanish art : thus in Zorrilla, from El Punal del Godo, externally Spanish, to Don

Juan T enorio, in spirit and substance a true heir of La Vida es SueFzo and El Alcalde de Zalamea. But, considered as a whole, the Romantic movement does not essentially differ from previous periods of Spanish literature in its attitude towards the creative spirit of the race, and, as an intellectual or critical school, it is much more in harmony with foreign contemporary movements, such as French and English Romanticism, than with the true Spanish tradition which comes down, through the Romancero and the Theatre, from Myo Cid.

The movement towards incorporating the creative instinct of the race into the national culture—that is, towards the foundation of a Spanish culture truly deserving that name—is of more recent growth. In a sense it is but the natural result of the humanistic tendency of our age. Classical and Romantic, historic and futuristic ideas, are all for us but manifestations of the spirit of man, and in criticism no less than in economics we have at last come to believe that there is no wealth but in life. It may be, therefore, that even in this its last and saving movement the Spanish intellect is but following a lead come from abroad. At any rate, this time the lead is in the right direction, since modern criticism does but confirm old Spanish instinct in its adoption of life as the true criterion of art.

The present movement, not wholly conscious nor uniform nor deliberate, was heralded by a pioneering epoch in which three men stand out as the founders of contemporary Spanish culture : Giner, Menendez y Pelayo, and Galdes.

Giner and Galdes ere the subject of special articles in this volume. Don Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo is