[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 80.]

In spite of the fascination early exercised by Julia Espin y Guillen
over the young poet, it may be doubted if she can fairly be said to
have been the muse of his _Rimas_. She doubtless inspired some of his
verse; but the poet seems to sing the praises or lament the cruelty of
various sweethearts. The late Don Juan Valera, who knew Gustavo well,
goes so far as to say: "I venture to suspect that none of these women
ever lived in the world which we all corporeally inhabit. When the
mind of the poet descended to this world, he had to struggle with so
much poverty, he saw himself engulfed and swallowed up by so many
trials, and he was obliged to busy himself with such prosaic matters
of mean and commonplace bread-winning, that he did not seek, nor would
he have found had he sought them, those elegant and semi-divine women
that made of him now a Romeo, now a Macias, now an Othello, and now a
Pen-arch.... To enjoy or suffer really from such loves and to become
ensnared therein with such rare women, Becquer lacked the time,
opportunity, health, and money.... His desire for love, like the arrow
of the Prince in one of the tales of the Arabian Nights, shot high
over all the actual _high-life_ and pierced the golden door of the
enchanted palaces and gardens of the Fairy Paribanu, who, enraptured
by him, took him for her spouse."[1] In fact Becquer, speaking of the
unreality of the numerous offspring of his imagination, says in the
Introduction to his works, written in June, 1868: "It costs me labor
to determine what things I have dreamed and what things have happened
to me. My affections are divided between the phantasms of my
imagination and real personalities. My memory confuses the names and
dates, of women and days that have died or passed away with the days
and women that have never existed save in my mind."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Florilegio de Poesias Castellanas del Siglo XIX_, con
introduccion y notas, por Juan Valera. Madrid, 1902, vol. I, pp.
186-188.]

[Footnote 2: _Obras_, vol. I, p. L.]

Whatever may be one's opinion of the personality of the muse or muses
of his verse, the love that Becquer celebrates is not the love of
oriental song, "nor yet the brutal deification of woman represented in
the songs of the Provencal Troubadours, nor even the love that
inspired Herrera and Garcilaso. It is the fantastic love of the
northern ballads, timid and reposeful, full of melancholy tende