at least often with singular good fortune ; witness that interesting chapter in Troteras y Danzaderas, in which a young and cultivated artist reads Shalespeare's Othello to a wholly illiterate girl, rich only in the wisdom of the streets, and delights in her spontaneous reactions as the tragedy reveals itself to the young woman. These four first novels, Tinieblas en las Cumbres, 21. M. D. G., La Pata de la Raposa, and Troteras y Danzaderas (a title, this last one, which savours of Juan Ruiz), are but the steps by which the novelist rises to his full stature. The raw matter of the author's experience appears in them as yet insufficiently wrought out by art. Yet the gradation of progress is obvious as we pass from the first to the last of them, and constitutes a striking proof of the consistency and the continuity of Ayala's development. But it is in the Novelas Poemdticas, of which an English translation is available, that Ayala reveals himself as a complete artist of fiction. Here at last we have a modern mind, conscious of his links with a racial past which manifests itself in continuity of spiritual and formal traditions, whose powers of observation are enriched by the habit of dwelling on the eternal questionings of man, and whose powers of expression are rendered more telling and subtle by a poetical mind, skilled in the use of symbols. These three short stories are little masterpieces of observation, of original creation and arrangement, of truly poetical feeling and of smiling humour, despite their inexorable Spanish realism. Prometeo, in particular, the first of them, is written on a level of gentle irony so delicately defined that even its desolate end cannot destroy the elusive charm of the tale, while its composition, with its admirable adaptation of mythological language to the life of present-day Spain, is so ample and free, so deeply human despite its strictly logical and intellectual substratum, as to make of this

story a real apologue, a true enxienplo, in the manner of Don Juan Manuel, with the added merit of beauty.

The Novelas Poemdticas offer numerous cases of that perfect adaptation of form to substance which is the essence of style, the style of great writers, not of mere stylists. Such is, for instance, the opening of Prometeo. There are passages in this book written with so true a sense of language that they sound to the mind's ear like an echo of the voice of Cervantes. But pray do not imagine that this high level of writing is—or can be—reached by endeavouring to raise the tone to the classic pitch, by donning as it were the Spanish sixteenth-century ruff. It is sheer directness and simplicity, together with the right human attitude, which makes the following lines sound like a reminiscence of immortal words :

Odysseus deseaba partirse, y no sabia como, que Federica no le retuviese con llantos, clamores y escandalo. Por olvidarse de su congoja, y con achaque de que gustaba mucho de la nataciem, Odysseus se pasaba casi todo el dia en el mar. Nadaba como un triton. Ibase mar adentro, y se estaba cuatro y cinco horas nadando sin cesar. Y, cuando no estaba en el bane), procuraba acogerse a la esquividad de un bosque, en donde suspiraba largamente por su libertad perdida. Hasta que se determine) en su inimo a escapar. Y fue de esta suerte   .1

Thus in full possession of his instrument, Ayala might well attempt the writing of a full-fledged novel. Such a novel, and no ordinary one, he has given us in his Belarmino y Apolonio. In a sense, one might con-

1 Odysseus wanted to depart, and knew not how, so that Federica should not retain him with tears, plaints and outcry. Seeking to forget his anguish, and under cover of his love of swimming, Odysseus spent most of the day in the water. He swam like a Triton. He went far out to sea and remained four and five hours swimming unceasingly. And, when not bathing, he sought protection in the seclusion of a forest, where long he sighed for his lost liberty. Till finally he made up his mind to escape. And it was in this guise ...