d published
in six volumes under the title of _El ocioso de Faenza_.
These volumes contain poems by Bautista Aguirre of
Guayaquil, Jose Orozco (_La conquista de Menorca_, an epic
poem in four cantos), Ramon Viescas (sonnets, _romances_,
_decimas_, etc.) and others, most of whom were Jesuits.

The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 caused the closure
of several colleges in Ecuador, and for a time seriously
hampered the work of classical education. But even
before the edict of expulsion scientific study had been
stimulated by the coming of French and Spanish scholars to
measure a degree of the earth's surface at the equator.
The coming of Humboldt in 1801 still further encouraged
inquiry and research. The new spirit was given concrete
expression by Dr. Francisco Eugenio de Santa Cruz y
Espejo, a physician of native descent, in page 298
_El nuevo Luciano_, a work famous in the literary and the
political history of South America. In this work Dr.
Espejo attacked the prevailing educational and economic
systems of the colonies, and his doctrine did much to
start the movement toward secession from the mother
country.

Although the poetry of Ecuador is of relatively little
importance as compared with that of several other American
countries, yet Ecuador gave to the world one of the
greatest of American poets, Jose Joaquin de Olmedo. In the
Americas that speak Castilian, Olmedo has only two peers
among the classic poets, the Venezuelan Bello and the
Cuban Heredia. Olmedo was born in Guayaquil in 1780, when
that city still formed part of the Virreinato del Peru.
Consequently, two countries claim him,--Peru, because he
was born a Peruvian, and because, furthermore, he received
his education at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima;
and Ecuador, since Guayaquil became permanently a part
of that republic, and Olmedo identified himself with the
social and political life of that country. In any case,
Olmedo, as a poetic genius, looms suddenly on the horizon
of Guayaquil, and for a time after his departure there
was not only no one to take his place, but there were few
followers of note.

Olmedo ranks as one of the great poetic artists of Spanish
literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He
is of the same semi-classic school as Quintana, and
like him devoted to artistic excellence and lyric
grandiloquence. The poems of Olmedo are few in number
for so skilled an artist, and thoroughly imbued wit