eir works are not incommensurable.
Burns took the strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar
took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought music.

Mention of Dunbar brings up for consideration the fact that, although he
is the most outstanding figure in literature among the Aframericans of the
United States, he does not stand alone among the Aframericans of the whole
Western world. There are Placido and Manzano in Cuba; Vieux and Durand in
Haiti, Machado de Assis in Brazil; Leon Laviaux in Martinique, and others
still that might be mentioned, who stand on a plane with or even above
Dunbar. Placido and Machado de Assis rank as great in the literatures of
their respective countries without any qualifications whatever. They are
world figures in the literature of the Latin languages. Machado de Assis
is somewhat handicapped in this respect by having as his tongue and medium
the lesser known Portuguese, but Placido, writing in the language of
Spain, Mexico, Cuba and of almost the whole of South America, is
universally known. His works have been republished in the original in
Spain, Mexico and in most of the Latin-American countries; several
editions have been published in the United States; translations of his
works have been made into French and German.

Placido is in some respects the greatest of all the Cuban poets. In sheer
genius and the fire of inspiration he surpasses even the more finished
Heredia. Then, too, his birth, his life and his death ideally contained
the tragic elements that go into the making of a halo about a poet's head.
Placido was born in Habana in 1809. The first months of his life were
passed in a foundling asylum; indeed, his real name, Gabriel de la
Concepcion Valdes, was in honor of its founder. His father took him out of
the asylum, but shortly afterwards went to Mexico and died there. His
early life was a struggle against poverty; his youth and manhood was a
struggle for Cuban independence. His death placed him in the list of Cuban
martyrs. On the 27th of June, 1844, he was lined up against a wall with
ten others and shot by order of the Spanish authorities on a charge of
conspiracy. In his short but eventful life he turned out work which bulks
more than six hundred pages. During the few hours preceding his execution
he wrote three of his best known poems, among them his famous sonnet,
"Mother, Farewell!"

Placido's sonnet to his mother has been translated into every impo