Note 293 — Chapter I

The “Sátira contra los Malos Escritores de su Tiempo” is commonly attributed to José Gerardo de Herbas; but Tapia (Civilisacion, Tom. IV. p. 266) says it was written by José Cobo de la Torre, besides which it is inserted in the “Rebusco de las Obras Literarias de J. F. de Isla,” (Madrid, 1790, 12mo,) as if it were unquestionably Isla’s. It first appeared in the second edition of the sixth volume of the “Diario de los Literatos”;—the earliest periodical work in the spirit of modern criticism that was published in Spain, and one so much in advance of the age that it did not survive its second year, having been begun in 1737, and gone on one year and nine months, till it made seven small volumes. It was in vain that it was countenanced by the king, and favored by the leading persons at court. It was too large a work; it was a new thing, which Spaniards rarely like; and it was severe in its criticisms, so that the authors of the time generally took the field against it, and broke it down.

To the same period with the Satire of Pitillas belongs the poem on “Deucalion,” by Alonso Verdugo de Castilla, Count of Torrepalma. It is an imitation of Ovid, in about sixty octave stanzas, somewhat remarkable for its versification. But in a better period it would not be noticed.