Note 310 — Chapter II

The “Teatro Crítico” and “Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas,” with the discussions they provoked, fill fifteen and sometimes sixteen volumes. The edition of 1778 has a Life of Feyjoó prefixed to it, written by Campomanes, the distinguished minister of state under Charles III.; the same person who, on the nomination of Franklin, was made a member of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia. Clemencin says truly of Feyjoó, that “to his enlightened and religious mind is due the overthrow of many vulgar errors, and a great part of the progress in civilization made by Spain in the eighteenth century.” Note to Don Quixote, Tom. V., 1836, p. 35.