sed of conspiracy against the Spanish government, he
fled to the United States in 1823, and there eked out a
precarious existence by giving private lessons. In 1825 he
went to Mexico, where he was well received and where he
held several important posts, including those of member
of Congress and judge of the superior court. In Heredia's
biography two facts should be stressed: that he studied
for five years in Caracas, the city that produced Bolivar
and Bello, respectively the greatest general and the
greatest scholar of Spanish America; and that he spent
only twelve years, all told, in Cuba. As he lived for
fourteen years in Mexico, that country also claims him as
her own, while Caracas points to him with pride as another
child of her older educational system.

Heredia was most unhappy in the United States. He admired page 293
the political institutions of this country; but
he disliked the climate of New York, and he despaired of
learning English. Unlike Bello and Olmedo he was not a
classical scholar. His acquaintance with the Latin poets
was limited, and seldom does a Virgilian or Horatian
expression occur in his verses. Rather did he stand for
the manner of Chateaubriand in France and Cienfuegos in
Spain. Though strictly speaking not a romantic poet, he
was a close precursor of that movement. His language is
not seldom incorrect or lacking in sobriety and restraint;
but his numbers are musical and his thought springs
directly from imaginative exaltation.

Heredia's poorest verses are doubtless his early
love-songs: his best are those in which the contemplation
of nature leads the poet to meditation on human existence,
as in _Niagara_, _El Teocalli de Cholula_, _En una
tempestad_ and _Al sol_. In these poems the predominant
note is that of gentle melancholy. In Cuba his best known
verses are the two patriotic hymns: _A Emilia_ and _El
himno del desterrado_. These were written before the
poet was disillusioned by his later experiences in the
turbulent Mexico of the second and third decades of the
nineteenth century, and they are so virulent in their
expression of hatred of Spain that Menendez y Pelayo
refused to include them in his _Anthology_. Heredia
undertook to write several plays, but without success.
Some translations of dramatic works, however, were well
received, and especially those of Ducis' _Abufar_,
Chenier's _Tibere_, Jouy's _Sila_, Voltaire's _Mahomet_
and Alfieri's _Saul_. The Garnier editio