; 



QUINTAUA, MANUEL JOS6. 



QUINTUS CALABEll. 



ion 



into America by tho Spaniard*, and oo the battle of Trafalgar. lu 

 the fink, after otlebraUug the great discover)- of Jeuner, Quintana 



" The (rift of the dinrorcrjr 1 the (rift 

 Of chance ; that let an Ennliihman enjoy, 

 But let Spain ahow her noble, gencroui heart," Ice., 



by conveying it to her colonies, apparently forgetting that England 

 imparted the discovery not only to her own coloniea, but also to the 

 nation* with which she was at war, in pite of their at first receiving 

 it with insulting suspicion. In the ode on Trafalgar, the battle is 

 represented throughout as between the English and Spaniards, the 

 Fix-uch not being even honoured with a mention ; and the poet 

 appears to think he is paying a very generous compliment to the 

 memory of Nelson by saying, "As an Englishman, I abhorred thee; 

 but as a hero, I admire." These points are worthy of notice as 

 characteristic not only of Quintana but of the majority of his country- 

 men. 



In dramatic poetry Quintana was far lees successful than in lyric 

 poetry. As early as in 1791 he had contended for a prize offered by 

 the Spanish Academy for a poem on the ' Rules of the Drama ' (' Los 

 Keglai del Drama '), and in this production, which was not printed 

 till long afterwards, he expresses unbounded admiration for Corueille 

 and Moliere, makes but lukewarm mention of Lope, Calderon, and 

 Morcto, and none whatever of Shakspere, though, probably in conse- 

 quence of his friendship with Molendez, he had studied English. In 

 his own tragedies, of which he gave two to the public, the same line 

 of thought is apparent. One of them, ' El Duque de Viseo ' (' The 

 Duke of Viseo '), acted in 1801, is acknowledged by tho author to bo 

 founded on an English drama, which he does not name ; and the finest 

 passage in it, the description of the villain's dream, is evidently taken 

 from the well-known dream of Osmond in Monk Lewis's ' Castle 

 Spectre,' but in other respects the resemblance is very slight. Tho 

 other tragedy, ' Pelayo,' which is somewhat better, is however loss a 

 drama than a collection of patriotic declamations, some of them fine 

 when separately taken, but quite undramatic, and reading like passages 

 from the author's odes. 



Up to the time of the French invasion in 1808, Quintana's position 



continued one of great prosperity. As an advocate, in spite of his 



liberal opinions, he held several important offices, among others, those 



of fiscal agent of the junta of commerce, secretary of tho department 



for the interpretation of foreign languages, and censor of the theatres. 



As a literary man bis reputation was constantly increasing. He edited 



a periodical entitled ' Variedades,' which was considered tho beet of 



it* time in Spain. In 1807 he issued the first volume of a prose work, 



the ' Vidas de Espanolcs celebres,' (' Lives of celebrated Spaniards '), 



commencing with the Cid, and going on to Oonzalvo de Cordova, the 



Great Captain. In the following year he published in three volumes 



a selection of specimens of the best Castiliau poetry from the time ol 



Juan de Mono, ' Poesias Selectas Castellonas,' to which he prefixed a 



short history of CastUion poetry, superior to anything of the kind that 



had before appeared, and which was afterwards rendered into English 



by Wiffen as an introduction to his translation of 'Uarcilaso de la 



Vega,' This was in the year of the French invasion. That great 



vent had a very different effect on the three friends, Cienfuegos 



Melendez, and Quintana. Cieufuegos siezed by Murat, and sent a 



pruouer to the south of Franco, died of indignation at the treatment 



of his country and himself; Melendez passed over to the ranks of the 



enemy ; Quintana became of all the literary antagonists of the French 



by far the most active and the most dangerous. He was the author 



of most of the manifestos of tbo insurrectionary Juntas, the fervic 



eloquence of which startled Europe, lie drew up most of the oificia 



documents of the first Cortes. His weekly periodical, ' El Semanario 



1'atriotioo,' was the leading organ of the patriotic party, and exerciae< 



great influence on the march of events, for Quintana was no leu 



uncompromising an advocate of liberal institutions than of the cxpul 



ion of the foreign invader. The six years of the war were the mosl 



glorious of bis long life. They were followed by six years of imprison 



ment. Tho return of Ferdinand VII. was to Quintana as to others 



who had saved his throne, the signal of ruin. His having been th< 



advocate of the Cortes and of a constitution was regarded as a crim 



that called for punishment He was suddenly seised and thrown iutc 



the fortress of Pamplona, where he was loft imprisoned with no hop 



or promise of release, debarred from all intercourse with his friends, 



and not allowed access to pen and ink. In this state of rigorous inoai 



coratin he remained till he was released by the outbreak of Riogo' 



insurrection, on the lit of January 1820. He was then at once set a 



liberty, saw himself surrounded with popularity, restored to his olc 



offices and honours, and was named president of the department o 



j. ul. lie instruction, but he was no longer tho man he had been before 



his imprisonment. His detestation of tyranny was still strong, an< 



his powers of eloquence unimpaired, but he had no faith in tho eon 



tmuance of the new order of things, and with guarded prudence h 



abstained from making himself conspicuous in the ranks of the libera 



party. When the second French invasion overthrew the constitution 



Le received the reward of his reserve by being allowed to remain o 



the soil of Spain, while bis friends and companions took refuge I 



England and France. Commanded to leave the capital he retired to 



abcza tlel Uuey, the town in Estremadura to which his ancestors 

 >elouged, and there lived in obscurity and absolute poverty for some 

 ears. In this retreat he composed a series of ' Letters to Lord 

 olland,' with whom he had become acquainted at Madrid, which 

 ontain an eloquent and touching vindication of the proceedings of tho 

 onstitutional party in Spain, not unmingled with reproach at the 

 ijustico with which they had been treated by England. These letters, 

 le last of which bears date in 1624, were of course carefully concealed 

 t tho time they were written, and did not see the light till they 

 ppeared in a collected edition of Quintaoa's works in 1852. At 

 le tune of King Ferdinand's marriage to his third wife, Queen Maria 

 hristina, in 1828, he sent an intimation to Quintana that he would bo 

 ermitted to return to Madrid, if he would write an ode in honour of 

 IB uuptiaU. The poet's proudest boast had hitherto been that ho had 

 ever written a line in praise of the powers that were, and his friends 

 wore at once grieved and astonished to find that he complied. The 

 oem was pronounced to be the best of all that were produced on the 

 vent, although Qaliano, an excellent judge, considered it the worst 

 inintana had ever written. The poet returned to Madrid, was no 

 >nger regarded as inflexible, and found himself on the road to fortune, 

 oon after he was named a member of the committee of the Museum 

 f Natural Sciences, in 1 833 he was for a third time appointed secretary 

 f the interpretation of languages, in 1835 he resumed tho office of 

 irector-general of studies and of public instruction, which he had 

 eld under the Cortes, and was elevated to the dignity of a senator 

 and peer of the kingdom. During the regency of Eopartero he was 

 ntrusted with the superintendence of the education of the ] ' 

 jiiiru of Spain. The Madrid newspapers of 1855 had to record an 

 jstuuco of public honours conferred on a poet, for a parallel to which 

 iie whole history of many nations might be searched without success. 

 juintaua was conducted in public procession through the streets of 

 he capital, he was introduced to the sitting of the Cortes, and a crown 

 if laurel was publicly placed on his head by the Queen of Spain. The 

 oronation of Oehleuschliiger [OEULENSCIILAGER] is the only event of 

 >ur times which bears much resemblance to it, but the coronation of 

 'etrarch and Tosao afforded some precedent for it in the past. Quin- 

 ana then very advanced in years did not long survive this act of public 

 lomage to his genius. He died at Madrid on the 1 1th of March 1857, 

 at the age of eighty-four, and his funeral, which took place on the 

 3th, was attended by Olozaga, by the Duo do Kivas, and almost all 

 the literary men of note in the Spanish capital. 



In the great collection of the Spanish classics now in course of 

 mblication, Rivudeneyra's 'Biblioteca de Autores Espaholes,' Quin- 

 aua was the only author whose works were admitted during his life- 

 ;ime. One of the volumes, edited by Ferrer del Rio, and published in 

 1852, comprises what are called the ' Complete Works ' of Quintana, 

 jut no specimen even is given of the proclamations and manifestos 

 issued in the name of the insurrectionary Juntas which excited the 

 admiration of Southey. Among the poems also we have been unable 

 x> find that on the nuptials of Ferdinand and Christina, on event so 

 fortunate in one sense for the poet ; but in addition to those fine odes 

 we have already mentioned, there are some 'On the Invention of 

 Printing,' 'The Pantheon of the Kscurial,' 'To Spain, after the 

 insurrection of March' (written in April 1808), 'On the Armament of 

 tho Spanish Provinces against the French' (written in July 1808), 

 which will continue to testify how well Quintana deserved the name 

 of the Spanish Tyrtocua. The prose part of the volume is principally 

 composed of the ' Lives of celebrated Spaniards,' of which Ferrer del 

 Rio complains in the preface that a single edition has hardly been 

 sold in Spain, while seven have been exhausted in the United States 

 of America. English translations of these biographies have been 

 issued by Preston and Mrs. Hodson. It is to Quintana's honour that 

 one causa of their scanty popularity in his native country was the 

 freedom with which the atrocities of tho Spaniards in the conquest 

 of America are spoken of, and which ho refused to modify. " Let us 

 give at least some place to justice in books,'' he exclaims in tho preface 

 to his life of Laa Casas, " since unfortunately so little is now usually 

 left to it in the affairs of tho world." 



. riUA.M'S. [QumcTiUANUs.] 



QUINTUS CA'LABEK, or QUINTUS SMYRN^US, a Greek poet, 

 who owes his name of Calaber merely to tho circumstance that towards 

 the close of the 15th century Cardinal liessarion discovered his poem 

 in the library of a monastery at Otrauto in Calabria. The poet in U* 

 own work (xii. 304, Ac. ; comp. iii. 233; i. 295; x. 128; Tzctzcs, 

 ' Chil.,' it 489, &c.) calls himself a native of Smyrna, and describes 

 himself as having in his youth been a shepherd in tho neighbourhood 

 of that city, lleuco he is more properly called Quintus Smyrnaus. 

 The original manuscript bears only the name of Kointos, and it has 

 been supposed that this is not the name of tho author, but of the 

 person to whom the manuscript belonged. Under such circumstances 

 it is not to be expected that anything respecting his life and the time 

 in which he lived should be known, beyond what can be inferred from 

 the character of the work itself and some alliuiona which occur in it. 

 Some scholars, led away by single beauties in the work, and the rich- 

 ne*s of expression and imagery, have ascribed it to Homer himself, or 

 some of the cyclic poets, while others have conceived him to have 

 been a contemporary of Augustus. The most probable opinion how- 

 ever is that he lived in the 6th century of our era, in the reign of tho 



