americanos_, Paris, 1866; _Cien sonetos_, Quito,
1881). The gentle, melancholy bard, Julio Zalumbide
(1833-1887), at first a skeptic and afterwards a devout
believer in Christianity, wrote musical verse in correct
language but of little force. Juan Leon Mera (1832-1894)
was one of the most prominent literary historians and
critics of the Republic. Besides his _Poesias_ (2d
ed., Barcelona, 1893), Leon Mera left a popular novel,
_Cumanda_ (Quito, 1876; Madrid, 1891), an _Ojeada
historico-critica sobre la poesia ecuatoriana_ (2d ed.,
Barcelona, 1893), and a volume of _Cantares del Pueblo_
(Quito, 1892), published by the Academia del Ecuador,
which contains, in addition to many semi-popular songs in
Castilian, a few in the Quichua language.

A younger generation that has already done some good
work in poetry includes Vicente Pedrahita, Luis Cordero,
Quintiliano Sanchez and Remigio Crespo y Toral.

References: Men. Pel., _Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer._, III, p.
lxxxiii f.; Blanco Garcia, III, 350 f.; _Ensayo sobre la
literatura ecuatoriana_, Dr. Pablo Herrera, Quito, 1860;
_Ojeada historico-critica sobre la poesia ecuatoriana_,
Juan Leon Mera, Quito, 1868, 2d ed., Barcelona, 1893;
_Escritores espanoles e hispano-americanos_, Canete,
Madrid, 1884; _Lira ecuatoriana_, Vicente Emilio
Molestina, Guayaquil, 1865; _Nueva lira ecuat._, Juan Abel
Echeverria, Quito, 1879; _Parnaso ecuat._, Manuel Gallegos
Naranjo, Quito, 1879; _America poetica_, Juan Maria
Gutierrez, Valparaiso, 1846 (the best of the early
anthologies: contains a few poems by Olmedo); _Antologia
ecuat._, published by the Academy of Ecuador, with a
second volume entitled _Cantares del pueblo ecuat._
(Edited by Juan Leon Mera), both Quito, 1892.

=Peru.= The literature of Ecuador is so closely associated
with that of Peru, that the one cannot be properly treated
without some account of the other. The Virreinato del Peru
was the wealthiest and most cultivated Spanish colony in
South America, and in North America only Mexico rivaled
it in influence. Lima, an attractive city, thoroughly
Andalusian in character and appearance, was the page 301
site of important institutions of learning, such as the
famed Universidad de San Marcos. It had, moreover, a
printing-press toward the close of the sixteenth century,
a public theater by 1602, and a gazette by the end of the
seventeenth century. The spread of learning in colonial
Peru may be illustrated by the fact