and poor in quality, in
view of the important position held by this flourishing
colony. The Peruvian writers, then and now, lack in
sustained effort.

During and immediately following the revolutionary period,
the greatest poet is Olmedo, who was born and educated in
Peru and became a citizen first of the primitive Colombia
and then of Ecuador, only as his native city, Guayaquil,
formed a part of one political division after another.
It is customary, however, to consider Olmedo a poet of
Ecuador, and it is so done in this volume.

After Olmedo, the commanding figure among the classical
poets of Peru is Felipe Pardo y Aliaga (1806-1868). Pardo
was educated in Spain, where he studied with Alberto
Lista. From his teacher he acquired a fondness page 304
for classical studies and a conservatism in letters that
he retained throughout his life. In his later years he was
induced to adopt some of the metrical forms invented or
revived by the romanticists, but in spirit he remained a
conservative and a classicist. He had a keen sense of wit
and a lively imagination which made even his political
satires interesting reading. Besides his _Poesias y
escritos en prosa_ (Paris, 1869), Pardo left a number
of comedies portraying local types and scenes which are
clever attempts at imitation of Spanish drama. As with all
the earlier poets of Spanish America, literature was only
a side-play to Pardo, although it probably took his time
and attention even more than the law, which was his
profession. A younger brother, Jose (1820-1873), wrote a
few short poems, but his verses are relatively limited
and amateurish. Manuel Ascension Segura (1805-1871) wrote
clever farces filled with descriptions of local customs,
somewhat after the type of the modern _genero chico_
(_Articulos, poesias y comedias_, Lima, 1866).

The romantic movement came directly from Spain to Peru and
obtained a foothold only well on toward the close of the
first half of the century. The leader of the Bohemian
romanticists of Lima was a Spaniard from Santander,
Fernando Velarde. Around him clustered a group of young
men who imitated Espronceda and Zorrilla and Velarde with
great enthusiasm. For an account of the "Bohemians" of the
fourth and fifth decades in Lima [Numa Pompilio Llona
(b. 1832), Nicolas Corpancho (1830-1863), Luis Benjamin
Cisneros (b. 1837), Carlos Augusto Salaverry (1830-1891),
Manuel Ascension Segura (b. 1805), Clemente Althaus
(1