rned to ashes." Again--"Thou art so
great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness;" much
like our "None but himself can be his parallel."

Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by
the epithet of _The Wonderful_, abounds with these conceits.

He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and
sang in different manners, had a hundred thousand other nightingales in
her breast, which alternately sang through her throat--

"Con diferancia tal, con gracia tanta,
A quel ruysenor llora, que sospecho
Que tiene otros cien mil dentro del pecho,
Que alterno su dolor por su garganta."

Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but a few _years_ of
life, but many _ages_ of beauty.

"Muchos siglos de hermosura
En pocos anos de edad."

Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more
beautiful from its age; it would be only a superannuated beauty. A face
of two or three ages old could have but few charms.

In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the title of the
_Duke of Streams_, and the _Viscount of Rivers_--

"Mancanares, Mancanares,
Os que en todo el aguatismo,
Estois _Duque_ de Arroyos,
Y _Visconde_ de los Rios."

He did not venture to call it a _Spanish Grandee_, for, in fact, it is
but a shallow and dirty stream; and as Quevedo wittily informs us,
"_Mancanares_ is reduced, during the summer season, to the melancholy
condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of
hell." Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood spreads
itself over the neighbouring fields; for this reason Philip the Second
built a bridge eleven hundred feet long!--A Spaniard passing it one day,
when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, archly
remarked, "That it would be proper that the bridge should be sold to
purchase water."--_Es menester, vender la puente, par comprar agua._

The following elegant translation of a Spanish madrigal of the kind here
criticised I found in a newspaper, but it is evidently by a master-hand.

On the green margin of the land,
Where Guadalhorce winds his way,
My lady lay:
With golden key Sleep's gentle hand
Had closed her eyes so bright--
Her eyes, two suns of light--
And bade his balmy dews
Her rosy cheeks suffuse.
The River God in slumber saw her laid:
He raised