onantes_"); Jose Ramon Yepes
(1822-1881), an army officer and the author of legends
in verse, besides the inevitable _Poesias_; Eloy Escobar
(1824-1889), an elegiac poet; and Francisco G. Pardo
(1829-1872), a mediocre imitator of Zorrilla.

Next to Bello alone, the most distinguished poet of
Venezuela is Jose Perez Bonalde (1846-1892), who was a
good German scholar and left, besides his original verses,
excellent translations of German poets. His metrical
versions of Heine, especially, exerted considerable
influence over the growth of literary feeling in Spanish
America (_Estrofas_, N.Y., 1877; _El poema del Niagara_,
N.Y., 1880). At least two other writers of the second half
of the nineteenth century deserve mention: Miguel Sanchez
Pesquera and Jacinto Gutierrez Coll.

Among the present-day writers of Venezuela, Luis Lopez
Mendez was one of the first to introduce into Spanish
America a knowledge of the philosophy and metrical
theories of Paul Verlaine. Manuel Diaz Rodriguez
(1868-___) has written little verse; but he is the best
known Venezuelan novelist of to-day [_Sangre page 320
patricia, Camino de perfeccion_ (essays), _Idolos rotos_,
_Cuentos_, 2 vols., _Confidencias de Psiquis_, _Cuentos de
color_, _Sensaciones de viaje_, _De mis romerias_].
The most influential of the younger writers is Rufino
Blanco-Fombona, who was expelled from his native country
by the present _andino_ ("mountaineer") government and now
lives in exile in Paris. At first a disciple of Musset
and then of Heine and Maupassant, he is now an admirer
of Dario and a pronounced _modernista_. His _Letras y
letrados de Hispano-America_ is the best recent work
of literary criticism by a Spanish-American author.
Blanco-Fombona is a singer of youthful ambition, force and
robust love. His verses have rich coloring, but are
at times erotic or lacking in restraint (prose works:
_Cuentos de poeta_, Maracaibo, 1900; _Mas alla de los
horizontes_, Madrid, 1903; _Cuentos americanos_, Madrid,
1904; _El hombre de hierro_, Caracas, 1907; _Letras
y letrados de Hispano-America_, Paris, 1908. Verses:
_Patria_, Caracas, 1895; _Trovadores y trovas_, Caracas,
1899; _Pequena opera lirica_, Madrid, 1904; _Cantos de la
prision_, Paris, 1911).

References: Menendez y Pelayo, _Ant. Poetas
Hisp.-Amer._, II, p. cx f.; Blanco Garcia, III, p. 321
f.; _Resena historica de la literatura venezolana_
(1888) and _Estado actual de la literat