No More Learning

It was twenty-four years after the founding of the city, and it required
a mission to Spain and two years of lobbying to obtain the royal
* A recent Chilean writer, José Bernardo Suárez, complaining of this mu-
tual isolation, remarks: “In Chile we know more about what is going on in
France than we do about occurrences in Venezuela or Ecuador. The several
governments ought to take concerted action to put an end to this state of
affairs, which is highly prejudicial, etc. -- Rasgos Biográficos de Mujeres
Célebres de América, page 51.


## p. 8907 (#535) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8907
permission to have a school at all; and its field of usefulness was at
first limited to Spanish grammar and rhetoric. *
Books could be imported only on permits, obtainable with diffi-
culty, after close scrutiny and long delay. An equally strict surveil-
lance was exercised over colonial literary productions: each volume
of each edition had to be registered separately, after donating twenty
copies to the legal and regal authorities; and the publisher had not
even the privilege of fixing the price.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
It was in such arid and sulphurous soil as has been described
that Latin-American literature had to germinate. The first cultivators
had to overcome difficulties unknown to those of happier countries;
and it is with a feeling of wonder mixed with reverence that we
realize how patiently and successfully they did overcome them.
Learning made its first appearance-
where alone it could — among
the monks. Several lines of research were open to them without
hindrance; and others could occasionally be indulged in surrepti-
tiously.
As their special mission was to convert the Indians, they might
study Indian languages, customs, and antiquities; and it is to the
diligence of these men that ethnologists owe nearly all that is known
of the ancient civilizations of Mexico, Peru, and Cundinamarca. Bot-
any and vegetable pharmacy afforded another appropriate field; and
the various colonial governments fitted out at different times as many
as five botanical expeditions. The students of the mathematics found
exercise in geodetic surveys; and a knowledge of mechanics was
essential in the working of the mines.
Clavijero furnishes a long list of those who had made translations
into the native tongues. All with one or two exceptions belonged to
the monastic orders; and their studies embraced fifteen languages.
Humboldt himself saw dictionaries and grammars of fourteen. Que-
sada says that printing was introduced into Mexico in 1535, and into
Lima in 1538; † and that the first books printed in America were for
the use of the Indians. In the remainder of the century there were
written or printed eighty-two books for the religious instruction of
the aborigines in Mexico, and fifty for learning the native languages.
* Aristides Rojas, Orígenes Venezolanos,' i. 308.
+ See (Recopilación de las Indias,' Lib. i. , Tit. xxiv.
† Ernesto Quesada, Discours Prononcé au Congrès International des
Américanistes, Séance du 24 Septembre, 1879, à Bruxelles,' pages 17-20.
$ Ático Selvas Zenén, (Episodios Históricos de América) (Paris, 1891),
pages 106-117.


## p. 8908 (#536) ###########################################

8908
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
In time higher schools, colleges, and universities were established
in the principal colonies. - the instructors being, with scarcely an
exception, ecclesiastics. The little Jesuit college of Bahia began its
dubious existence in 1543, and another and larger one was established
at Piratininga in 1554; and the roll of alumni of these two schools
contains the most prominent names of early Brazilian literature and
jurisprudence. The University of the City of Mexico opened its doors
to students in June 1553; and two years later saw the establishment
of the University of San Marcos, at Lima. In Ecuador, not to men-
tion several colleges founded in the sixteenth century, the University
of San Gregorio was opened at Quito in 1620; and the famous univer-
sity of Santo Tomás at Bogotá dates its existence from the year 1627.
The University of Chuquisaca (the modern Sucre) in Bolivia, the Uni-
versity of Córdoba in what is now the Argentine Republic, and the
College of Santa Rosa which afterwards became the University of
Caracas, were all founded in the seventeenth century.
As the good fathers had abundant leisure, they committed to writ-
ing an enormous amount of details of the matters that chiefly inter-
ested them. During the three centuries of the colonial period, no
part of the world furnished a greater amount of historical material.
The single national library of Santiago de Chile contains a catalogued
collection of 2,740 manuscripts by the Jesuits alone. The material
is indeed somewhat monotonous; and a larger space is devoted to
monastic and episcopal interests, and to miraculous manifestations of
the Virgin and her pictures, than accords with our northern tastes.
In reading these old authors, one is often reminded of the wide dif-
ference between the sixteenth or seventeenth century and some parts of
the world in the nineteenth; as when Antonio de León Pinela, scholar
and poet, historiographer of the Indies, authorized by royal order to
lay three continents and the isles of the ocean under contribution
for light and knowledge, seriously discusses the gravity of the sin of
drinking chocolate on fast days.
Foremost upon the long roll of early chroniclers stands the princely
name of Ixtlilxóchit1, the descendant of the ancient chiefs of Texcoco.
Three of the family acquired literary reputations; but the one here
meant bore the Christian appellation of Fernando de Alva. His vast
knowledge of native languages, songs, traditions, and pictographs pro-
cured him employment as interpreter to the viceroy; and about the
beginning of the seventeenth century that ruler employed him to
write in Spanish a history of his race. No one was equally qualified.
His style alone has earned for him, from Europeans, the titles of the
Cicero and the Livy of Anáhuac. His industry and his opportunities
were equally great. He was personally acquainted with all the Indian
sages - — some over a hundred years old — who had seen the empire of


## p. 8909 (#537) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8909
Motecuhzoma at the height of its glory. His work, in thirteen books,
began with the oldest traditions, and came down to his own time.
The thirteenth book, dealing with the Spanish conquest, was printed
separately in Mexico in 1829; but the whole is now accessible to the
general reader in the French translation of Ternaux Compans. * Car-
los de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700) acquired a high reputation for
writing a similar history from the materials furnished by Ixtlilxóchitl.
Although far from being the only native work of importance, that of
the Indian prince is the most interesting product of the aboriginal
mind. The translator, in his preface, names thirteen other natives
who attempted history. The most successful of these was Tezozo-
moc, who wrote (about 1598) a minute and circumstantial history of
the Aztec nation from its original starting-place. As he and Ixtlilxó-
chitl were not of the same nation, they had their partialities, and do
not always agree with each other or with the Spanish chroniclers;
but the art of ascertaining and telling the truth was then in its
infancy,— nearly as much in the Old World as in the New.
Of the many writers belonging to the monastic orders who made
valuable contributions to Indian ethnology and early colonial history,
none is more widely known than Francisco Bernardino Sahagún, who
went to Mexico as a young man in 1529 and died there in 1590, after
spending sixty-one years in teaching the Indians. He acquired such
facility in using the native tongues that he wrote his great work,
(Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España,' in one of them. I
It is a fine tribute to his human sympathies and his justice to a
fallen race, that his contemporaries accused him of paganism. In
the latter part of the eighteenth century, Francisco Xavier Clavijero
(1721-93), a Jesuit and a native of Vera Cruz, spent many years as a
missionary among the Indians, acquiring an extensive knowledge of
their languages, customs, and traditions. Upon the suppression of the
Jesuits he was compelled to leave his country, and he took refuge in
Italy, where he wrote in Italian his great work (Storia Antica del
Messico) (4 vols. , 1780–83). S Although the work is not free from the
inaccuracy that belongs to almost everything written in that age and
from materials so uncertain, it has been the great storehouse of infor-
mation regarding the ancient inhabitants of Mexico.
No American historian of his time surpassed the Brazilian Sebas-
tião Rocha Pitta (1660-1738), a graduate of the ancient Jesuit college
* Histoire des Chichémécas,' 2 vols. , Paris, 1840.
+ The work of Tezozomoc has also been translated into French by Ternaux
Compans, Paris, 1853.
His history has been incorporated in Lord Kingsborough's monumental
work on Mexico.
$ An English translation in two quarto volumes was made by C. Cullen in
1787.


## p. 8910 (#538) ###########################################

8910
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
of Bahia. His great work “Historia da America Portugueza desde o
seu Descobrimento Até o Anno 1724' is the outcome of great labor
and fidelity, involving the special study of the native languages and
the examination of the archives of several European nations. It is
true that the author sometimes failed, as did most of his contempo-
raries, in distinguishing history from legend.
Not a few of the early historical productions were in verse; but
these were usually commemorative of some particular event. One
of the most extensive of these rhyming chronicles was that entitled
Elegías de Varones Ilustres,' written by Juan de Castellanos, one of
the original conquistadores of Venezuela.
Numerous epics, half history half romance, were written in Latin
America about the episodes of the conquest. Of these the Arauco
Domado) is one of the earliest and most famous. Of all the native
American races, the Araucans of Chile possessed in the highest degree
those qualities that make up the ideal of manhood, - bodily strength
and activity, intelligence, honorable truthfulness, indomitable courage,
and love of independence. The Incas had never been able to subdue
them; and they resisted the Spaniards with varying results 186 years,
when in 1732 their independence south of the Bio-Bio River was
acknowledged by treaty. During one of the periods of Spanish suc-
cess, when Santiago and Valdivia were founded, Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza led a party to the conquest of Chiloe in 1558. Among his
followers was a young poet, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, who began
by the nightly camp-fires to write a narrative of the war. Being
afterwards banished for supposed complicity in some attempt at re-
volt, he returned to Spain and lived in great poverty; but completed
his poem “La Araucana,' which has been praised as one of the truly
great epics of the world. The scenery of that distant country be-
tween the Andes and the ocean, varied by earthquake shocks and
volcanic fires, the trained valor of the Spaniards, the heroic courage
of the natives, the hand-to-hand battles where the Indian women
fought by the side of their husbands, all furnished abundant fresh
material which the poet presented in colors vivid and deep. A recol-
lection of his own treatment may have contributed to his making the
Araucan the nobler combatant. It was to remedy this defect, and to
render what he thought justice to the Spanish commander, that the
Peruvian poet Pedro de Oña recast the epic and produced the shorter
and inferior (Arauco Domado, in which the European is entirely vic-
torious. It is to be regretted that from the fact of their living and
writing in Spain, Ercilla y Zúñiga, together with Garcilaso de la
Vega, the descendant of the Incas, cannot be reckoned among Amer-
ican authors.
Another famous epic dealing with episodes of the conquest is the
Lima Fundada,' composed by the Peruvian poet Pedro de Peralta y


## p. 8911 (#539) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8911
Barnuevo (1663–1743); a man of almost universal genius and attain-
ments, as is attested by his numerous writings upon a wide range of
subjects. A Mexican bishop, Bernardo Balbuena, who died in 1627,
left a descriptive patriotic poem of great literary worth, entitled "La
Grandeza de México”; a pastoral called 'El Siglo de Oro,' the scene
of which is laid in the New World; and “El Bernardo,' an epic in
three volumes, which is one of the most finished productions in the
language.
Along with a considerable number of local chroniclers and toler-
able versifiers, Brazil presented in the eighteenth century two epic
poets of distinction, José da Santa-Rita Durão and José Basilio da
Gama. The former is best known to the present age by his epic
"Caramurú. The hero, Diogo Alvares Correa, is a personage of act-
ual history,-a Portuguese adventurer, who with a number of others
was shipwrecked on the Brazilian coast about 1509. They were able
to save a good part of their effects, including arms and ammunition;
and by the possession of these, Alvares became a powerful chief by
the name of Caramurú (Man-of-fire), and played an important part in
the history of the early Brazilian settlements. The poet has embroi-
dered the tale with a golden thread of romance by introducing as his
heroine the beautiful Indian maiden Paraguassú, the Brazilian Poca-
hontas. Da Gama's epic, the Uruguay,' although containing some
fine descriptive passages, is not of equal merit. It is a polemic
against the Jesuits, accusing them of trying to found an ecclesiastical
empire; and fails to do justice to their civilizing influence.
No other American writer of colonial times was surrounded with
such a halo of mystery and glory as Juana Inés de Azbaje y Ramírez
(1651-94), more generally known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her
beauty, genius, and learning were alike celebrated in the most exalted
terms; and she was called by her admirers “the Tenth Muse. » She
was the one peerless star of the viceregal court of Mexico. Suddenly,
for reasons known to herself, among which may be safely surmised
one of those disappointments to which young women are so greatly
exposed, she forsook domestic ties and the splendors of a court for
the seclusion of a convent. But she could not escape from her fame;
and the highest dignitaries in Church and State sought the wisdom
that dropped from her inspired lips. Her modesty was equal to her
other virtues; and when twice elected abbess she declined the honor.
Yet with all this sanctity and austerity, whenever the vestal veil is
blown aside, the features revealed beneath are not only mortal but
distinctly feminine. Her thoughts dwelt on love, jealousy, desertion,
and disappointment; as is revealed in her drama Amor es Labe-
rinto,' based on the legend of Theseus and Ariadne. In Los Em-
peños de una Casa,' a drama of intrigue and unrequited affection,


## p. 8912 (#540) ###########################################

8912
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
she herself is evidently the heroine. Ovillejos' is a satire on a rival
beauty; and her criticism on a famous sermon has a flavor of modern
free-thinking. So too her sonnets reveal not the incloistered devotee,
but the living, susceptible woman.
As is well known, the “Golden Era” of the literature of the Iberian
peninsula, which reached its height during the lifetime of Camoens,
of Cervantes, and of Lope de Vega, was followed by a period of rapid
literary and political decadence extending well into the eighteenth
century. This condition could not fail to be reflected, after a time,
in the colonies; and the close of the seventeenth and the beginning
of the eighteenth centuries mark the centre of a period of intellectual
coma almost as profound as that existing in the mother countries.
But as the eighteenth century advances, we begin to perceive there,
just as in the Peninsula, the signs of a coming change. Numerous
traces are to be found of an early influence, on the one hand of the
Encyclopædists, and on the other of Rousseau. More important still
was the revival of interest in the physical sciences, which was par-
ticularly in evidence on the plateaus of New Granada and Mexico.
The pioneer of this movement was José Celestino Mutis, a native
of Cádiz; who came to America in 1760 along with Mesía de la Cerda,
then recently appointed viceroy of New Granada. He was made pro-
fessor of mathematics in the College of Nuestra Señora del Rosario;
and it was due to his efforts that the Observatory of Bogotá was
built, at that time the finest in the New World. He devoted forty
years to the botany of those regions, and determined the species that
yield quinine, balsam of tolu, balsam of Peru, and other valuable
products. He was also the patron and instructor of a whole genera-
tion of men whose names are honorable in the history of science. Of
those none was more famous, or more unfortunate, than Francisco José
de Caldas. He was one of the earliest scientists in America to make
and record meteorological observations; and he measured with great
accuracy the altitudes of Chimborazo and Turguragua. He accom-
panied Mutis in his botanical explorations, and in 1804 was made
director of the observatory. In 1816, when revolution was all abroad
in Spanish America, a Spanish commander, Morillo, took possession
of Bogotá. He knew the republican preferences of the professors:
and they knew their consequent fate. On bended knees Caldas
begged for a year of close confinement prior to his execution, in
order that he might finish the great botanical work that had been in
progress half a century, and the plan of which he alone understood;
but he plead to insensate ears, and he and all the savants who had
not effected their escape were butchered. *
* Lino de Pombo, Vida de Caldas, page 287.


## p. 8913 (#541) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8913
Meanwhile in Mexico, the astronomical observations of Velázquez y
Cárdenas, Alzate y Ramírez, and León y Gama were attracting the
attention of the French Academy and the leading astronomers of
Europe; the Botanic Garden was established; and the Royal School
of Mines and the Academy of Fine Arts were founded, — institutions
which earned the unstinted encomiums of Humboldt.
The accession of Philip V. , the grandson of Louis XIV. of France,
to the throne of Spain, was distinguished by the advent of French
influences, and the founding of academies and literary societies. The
Spanish Royal Academy and the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences
were established in 1714, and numerous societies, formed upon French
or Italian models, sprang up in the Peninsula and the colonies,
being especially noticeable in Brazil and the regions of the Plata.
Another phase of the general intellectual revival was in progress in
Caracas, the capital and leading commercial port of Venezuela, where
foreign intercourse was spreading new and revolutionary ideas in
politics.
It is in colonial Venezuela that we first meet, on American soil,
with the Basques of the Pyrenees, a people that are the living
enigma of ethnology, without known kinship among the races of men.
Shrewd, energetic, sturdy maintainers of liberty, they came over in
great numbers in the eighteenth century, not to dig for gold, but to
clear farms and introduce the culture of cocoa, cotton, coffee, and
indigo. To them were largely due the material prosperity of Vene-
zuela and its readiness to cast off the Spanish yoke. The liberator
Simón Bolívar was a Basque, as were many of his principal followers. *
For the past hundred years the stream of Basque emigration has
been toward the region of the Plata, where they have contributed to
make the Argentine Republic a second New England: + but they are
scattered everywhere, and recognized by their industry, thrift, and
un-Castilian names, as Icazbalceta, the Mexican archæologist; Narciso
Aréstegui of Perú, author of the historical novel “El Padre Orani';
the brothers Amunátegui of Chile, authors of 'Los Precursores de la
Independencia de Chile); Anauzamendi, Arrechaveleta, Goicoerrotea,
etc.
Thus we see that many important influences were tending towards
a greater maturity of intelligence and independence of judgment in
the Latin-American colonies, and energy was gradually accumulating
for the next great advance in their national development.
* Arístides Rojas, Orígenes Venezolanos,' Tomo i. , page 125; Antonio de
Trueba, Venezuela y los Vascos,' in (La Ilustración Española y Americana,
1876.
+ Revue des Deux Mondes, 1868.
XV-558


## p. 8914 (#542) ###########################################

8914
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
The yoke of Spain, however legitimate, had long been felt to be
heavy on the neck of her colonies; and the prostration of the Iberian
peninsula beneath the heel of Napoleon furnished an opportunity
for insurrections, which in 1810 broke out almost simultaneously in
Mexico, Venezuela, New Granada, Quito, Chile, and Buenos Ayres.
The last viceroys of Mexico and Peru departed in 1821; and the inde-
pendent empire of Brazil was proclaimed October 12th, 1822. That
date may be held to close the revolutionary period, considered as a
struggle for national independence. *
The revolutionary period, as thus defined, covered only twelve
years; and during this epoch the constant demands for action were
a check to the powers of reflection. The poet abandoned his pen to
grasp a flint-lock; and the diligent consumer of midnight oil now kept
lonely vigil as a sentry on some rugged mountain pathway. There
was neither time nor opportunity for deliberate literary composition;
yet alınost every day brought forth some event that served as ma-
terial for writers during the years to come.
Wordsworth's statement
that “poetry is the outcome of emotion reflected in tranquillity” finds
here a wider application; for these stirring scenes proved, in the calm
of later years, to be the most prolific of themes that poet or historian
could desire.
There is little permanent merit in the numerous harangues and
pamphlets that were the “trumpet-call to arms of the early Ameri-
can patriots; and the popular rhymes in which some colonial hero was
glorified, or some Peninsular leader ridiculed, lack importance except
as rough embodiments of the sentiment of the hour. It is not until
the waves of the contest begin to recede that the true literature en-
gendered by the revolution comes into evidence.
One poet of the revolution, José Joaquín Olmedo of Ecuador
(1781-1847), rises far above all others for the sublimity and classic
finish of his style, which earned for him the epithet of “the Ameri-
can Pindar”; and it is no exaggeration to say that he possessed a
magnificence of rhetoric and a power of patriotic exaltation such as
few poets besides the great Theban have exhibited. Miguel Luis
Amunátegui, the Chilean critic, says of him :-“He applies in his
writing a system of poetical tactics, as a general employs strategy.
He locates his figures, his comparisons, his thoughts, according to a
* The various so-called «revolutions » that have unhappily so often since
agitated those countries have related to the power and tenure of office of the
chief magistrate, or to the degree of union to be maintained between the
component parts of the nation, and have nothing to do with the question of
freedom from foreign domination.


## p. 8915 (#543) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8915
carefully preconceived plan: he places an apostrophe here, a maxim
there; on the one hand an antithesis, on the other an exclamation; he
paves the way for a profound observation by introducing a pleasant
and flowery description; he is careful to place near the sombre por-
tions, colors of a warmer tone in order to diversify impressions; he
selects words that possess imitative harmony; he handles his ideas
and phrases as a general does his men, his horses, and his field-
pieces. " Yet the patriotic fervor of Olmedo's verse is such that the
reader sees only the perfection of the finished production, without
discerning the assemblage of its parts. Olmedo's masterpiece is his
"Canto á Junín,'* an epic ode without an equal in the Spanish lan-
guage. Some of the patriotic poems of Numa Pompilio Llona of Peru
are especially fine; and the sonnet to Bolívar by the Peruvian Adolfo
García is one of the most beautiful compositions of its kind.
The name of Andrés Bello recalls all that is ripest and best
in Latin-American scholarship, statesmanship, and patriotism. The
teacher of Bolívar, the personal friend and companion of Humboldt,
in the inception of the revolution Bello took his place by the side
of his illustrious pupil, and was by him sent on a difficult and deli-
cate mission to England. There he labored assiduously, from 1810 to
1829, to strengthen the hands of his compatriots and procure for them
the means of resistance. On the close of the revolutionary struggle
he was induced by the Chileans to make his home in their country;
where, as rector of the University of Santiago, he was universally
recognized until his death in 1865, at the ripe age of eighty-four, as
the brightest intellectual light of the southern continent. Deeply
read in the ancient and modern literatures of Europe, in national and
international affairs, his field of usefulness covered all that concerns
mankind; and every part of Chilean life felt his invigorating influ-
ence. He prepared the great civil code that became law in 1855; and
wrote treatises on international law, literary history, grammar, rhet-
oric, philology, pedagogics, and mental philosophy. To crown all, his
poetic temperament, added to his clear and comprehensive intellect,
made him one of the greatest masters of Castilian verse. His Agri-
cultura en la Zona Tórrida' is a magnificent georgic of the remote
south; and not less admired is his Oración por Todos,' — suggested
by Victor Hugo's Prière pour Tous. '
Of the revolutionary heroes who aided the cause of liberty with
the tongue and pen as well as with the sword, one of the most pro-
lific writers was Carlos María de Bustamante (1774-1848), the author
of the Mexican declaration of independence. During the war he
* Junín, the name of a village and lake (and now also of a Department) of
Central Peru, made celebrated by Bolívar's victory over the Spanish in 1824.


## p. 8916 (#544) ###########################################

8916
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
was four times a prisoner, and often a fugitive in peril of his life
His greatest literary work was a history of the Mexican revolution
in six quarto volumes; and he was the author of several other con-
siderable works on Mexican affairs. He edited eight successive news-
papers; and wrote seventy-eight pamphlets, nearly all relating to
political or other national matters.
The revolution in the region watered by the Plata was illustrated
by the names and writings of Mariano Moreno, the disciple of Adam
Smith; Esteban Lena y Patrón, diplomat, editor, and poet, the author
of 'La Libertad de Lima'; the philosophic Juan Crisostomo Lafinur,
famed for his beautiful elegy on the death of General Belgrano, the
hero of Tucumán; and Vincente López y Planes, who wrote 'El Tri-
unfo Argentino' in honor of the repulse of the English invasion of
Buenos Ayres (1806–7), and also composed the national hymn of the
republic.
During the period under consideration, the literary tone of Brazil
presented a
more placid character, due to her exemption from the
violent contests that were agitating the remainder of the continent.
This difference of tone is finely exemplified in the writings of Do-
mingo Borges de Barros, Viscount of Pedra Branca (1783-1855), —
more frequently spoken of simply as Pedra Branca Born in afſlu-
ence, he was educated in the mother country, where he became the
boon companion of the literary coteries of Lisbon; and his sojourn of
four years in France (1806-10) served to imbue him with the light
Epicureanism of Paris. On his return to his native country, he
showed republican leanings, and even carried them so far as to suf-
fer a brief and genteel imprisonment. That, however, was soon over;
in 1820 he was elected delegate to the Cortes at Lisbon; and on the
establishment of independence he was made a senator of the Empire.
Yet he never took any leading part as a legislator. He was essen-
tially one of those who seek to enliven the brevity of life with the
enjoyments of friendship, wine, gallantry, and song. The song too
was characteristic: no grand epic or solemn ode, but Poesias offere-
cidas ás Senhoras Brazileiras. ' His polished manners, light brilliancy,
and unvarying geniality made him the favorite poet of the young
empire; so that he was as truly a representative man as if he had
been the Moses of a great emancipation.
THE PERIOD OF INDEPENDENCE
OF THE present sixteen independent republics of Latin America,
three great countries — Chile, the Argentine Republic, and Brazil *
* The reader will bear in mind that Brazil, although it achieved its auto11
omy as an empire in 1822, did not become a republic until 1889.


## p. 8917 (#545) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8917
have attained in this century to greater importance than the early
seats of aboriginal or viceregal splendor.
Chile had been a doubtful appendage of the empire of the Incas:
after the downfall of that dynasty, the brave Araucans contested its
possession with the Spanish invaders one hundred and eighty years;
and when at length they were driven to the regions south of the
Bío-Bío River, the northern portion was held as a part of the vice-
royalty of Peru until the time of the revolution. Independence was
secured in 1817; and the next few years were taken up with domestic
wrangling and political experiments, until the present constitution
was adopted in 1833. Since that time there has been continuous
progress and prosperity. The great mineral and agricultural resources
have been developed; education has been vigorously advanced; and
in its national organization the republic compares favorably with the
most progressive nations of the northern hemisphere.
The settlements in the region of the Plata and its great tributa-
ries were made fitfully and under unusual disadvantages; and it was
only in 1776 that Buenos Ayres was made the residence of a viceroy,
whose authority extended over the present Argentine Republic, Bo-
livia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The existence of this government was
neither tranquil nor durable; and active revolutionary measures were
begun in 1813. Independence was secured and a federal constitution
adopted in 1825. Half a century of domestic factions and foreign
wars succeeded; and now the country has enjoyed twenty years of
peace and prosperity, during which its growth has been rapid and
healthy. As at present constituted, the Argentine Republic is one
of the best-situated countries in the world, and seems destined to
become in the next century one of the most powerful of nations. It
is as large as Central and Western Europe, and nearly equal in extent
to all of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains; its climate
admits of the full development of man's physical and mental powers;
it has a vast extent of fertile soil; and its future prosperity depends
not on precarious mines of gold, silver, or diamonds, but on steady
labor and the orderly succession of seed-time and harvest.
Brazil is equal in area to the entire United States excluding
Alaska; but its tropical climate is an obstacle to advancement. Be-
fore the present century the settlements in that country had a feeble,
often disturbed existence; and until the discovery of diamonds in 1786,
the peculiar red dye-stuff called “Brazil wood” was about the sole
attraction to Europeans. When Napoleon was turning all European
affairs into chaos and dissolution, João VI, left Lisbon in 1807 and
set up his throne in Rio de Janeiro. That seemed to the Brazilians
a great event, as it was the first time in history that a colony had
become the head of a united kingdom. In time, however, they became


## p. 8918 (#546) ###########################################

8918
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
em-
discontented at seeing themselves as subordinate as ever, and that
the Portuguese court retained all the powers and honors. When the
King returned to Portugal in 1821, his son Dom Pedro was left as
regent of the kingdom of Brazil. He became so popular that in the
following year the Cortes at Lisbon ordered him to return home;
but the people of Brazil begged him not to go, and proclaimed him
emperor as Dom Pedro I. Thus Brazil's independence of European
control was attained without bloodshed or display of armed force;
and under the wise direction of a permanent ruler, she was spared
the internal dissensions that long proved a formidable obstacle to the
progress of some of her neighbors.
Politics and literature are much allied in Latin America. The
beginnings of revolution had little to do with theories of government
or abstract rights of man: they aimed at the immediate ends of free
trade and relief from foreign domination. Brazil accepted an
peror with enthusiasm; independent Mexico offered the crown to a
Spanish prince, and on his refusal made Iturbide emperor; and Vene-
zuela, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and the Argentine admitted dictators.
There has always been a tendency to run into dictatorial govern-
ment. There is a permanent party — including the powerful influence
of the Church — in favor of a strong personal government and a large
amount of interference with individual interests. At the same time
there have been large numbers with the apparent ideal of “every
man his own lawgiver, judge, and executioner. ” The contest has
been between these parties, over the question of how much govern-
ment people require. The Church and the older men generally have
upheld rule and authority; literary men — the young, enthusiastic,
-
and poetic — have as generally striven for larger freedom. It is al-
most a stereotyped phrase in any account of a poet that he was “an
ardent advocate of liberty. ” It is encouraging to observe that the
distance between the two wings is diminishing; that the one party is
becoming less eager to govern, and the other a little more willing to
be governed.
WRITERS ON POLITICAL SCIENCE. — The necessities arising from the
acquisition of national independence caused such subjects as political
economy, international and constitutional law, and public education,
to occupy a prominent place in the minds of the founders of the new
republics. Early in the century, treatises on these topics began to
appear which won the encomiums of eminent European authorities.
The valuable labors of Andrés Bello have been already referred to.
Juan Bautista Alberdi, the Argentine jurist (born 1808), is entitled to
take rank in the class of publicists represented in Europe by Guizot,
De Tocqueville, and the Mills, and by Kent and Story in the United


## p. 8919 (#547) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8919
(
States. He was the author of the Argentine constitution, and of
eight substantial works, of which the most important are “Bases y
Puntos de Partida para la Organización de la República Argentina)
and (Sistema Económico y Rentístico de la Confederación Argentina. '
A slight, delicate man, he was when aroused a powerful writer and
speaker, his power being augmented by a vein of caustic irony. As
polemic articles, his pamphlets are as famous for their aggressive
virility as those of Paul Louis Courier. A celebrated work of more
recent date is La Reforma Política' of Dr. Rafael Núñez, recently
president of the republic of Colombia; Núñez is an ultra-conservative,
and his great treatise favors a "paternal despotism. ” Rafael Seijas
of Venezuela is a distinguished jurist who has written ably upon
international law; he is also a diligent student of English, French,
and Italian literatures, upon which he has given to the public some
interesting articles.
After Andrés Bello, few promoters of public education have better
earned the esteem of their countrymen than Domingo Faustino Sar-
miento, an Argentine born in 1811. He began his career as head of
a female college; and in 1842 he established the first normal school
of South America, at the same time that as an editor he was com-
bating with all his might the «separatist” dictatorship of Rosas and
advocating the union of the several States. While minister to the
United States (1865–67) he made a careful study of the school system;
and the results of his investigations were given to the world in an
essay entitled 'Las Escuelas: Base de la Prosperidad de los Estados
Unidos. ) He was favored by the personal friendship and assistance
of Horace Mann, who was perhaps the best-known educationalist
that the United States has ever produced. Sarmiento was president
of the Argentine Republic from 1868 to 1874. As a writer he was
gifted with great originality and vigor of expression, which make his
(Recuerdos de Provincia) one of the most entertaining books of its
kind. His masterpiece is entitled 'Facundo,' in which he presents in
a series of glowing pictures a comprehensive survey of the points of
difference between civilization and barbarism.
HISTORIANS. History has always been well represented in the lit-
erature of Latin America. Most of the States have comprehensive
histories, the fruit of much research, and written with careful regard
to facts and form. There are also numerous historical works of more
limited scope, devoted to certain districts or periods, or gathered
around the achievements of individuals.
The national or State histories often surprise the stranger by the
liberal scale upon which they are constructed. A profusion of material
handed down from the old days of viceregal and monastic supremacy,


## p. 8920 (#548) ###########################################

8920
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
combined with the greater leisure of the southern life, and a certain
tendency to wordiness on the part of writers, have resulted in mak-
ing these histories bulky, if not at times wearisome. We could wish
a broader treatment of essentials, and less space devoted to details.
The authors often lived too near the events they record, or were too
deeply interested in them, to be able to take an impartial, pano-
ramic view; or are weighted by religious, political, or social prepos-
sessions.
Father Suárez informs his readers that in collecting material for
his history of Ecuador, he examined ten thousand packages of papers
filed in the Archives of the Indies in Seville. León Fernández, find-
ing no history of his native State of Costa Rica, set about collecting
materials; and in 1881-86 he gave to the world 1,917 closely printed
pages of documents, not previously edited, bearing upon the history of
a country of less than a quarter of a million of inhabitants, and whose
first printing-press was set up in 1830. The history of Mexico from
the earliest times to the death of Maximilian, by Niceto de Zamacóis,
fills eighteen thick octavo volumes. Lorenzo Montúfar's 'Reseña His-
tórica de Centro-América' - a mere outline makes seven volumes
royal octavo; and the recent Historia General de Chile,' by Diego
Barros Arana, comprises thirteen octavo volumes. Another Chilean
historian, Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, has written an account of a
single campaign, Historia de la Campaña de Tarapacá,' in two vol-
umes of a thousand pages each; his collective historical works fill
fifteen volumes. The government of Venezuela is now publishing the
historical essays of Arístides Rojas relative to that country, and they
are estimated to form thirteen or fourteen volumes. The third stout
volume of the Historia General de la República del Ecuador,' by
Suárez, reaches only to the year 1718. Then there are the exhaustive
works relating to Peru, of which we may mention the magnificent
treatise of Raimondi, cut short in its fourth volume by the author's
death in 1892. The tenth volume of the Historia de la República
Argentina' by Vicente Fidel López has just appeared, and its ven-
erable author is continuing the work with an industry unchecked by
the weight of his seventy-six years.
Among special historical works which even the briefest enumera-
tion would include, the most widely known are probably the twin
histories of General Bartolomé Mitre of Buenos Ayres (born 1821),
bearing the titles Historia de Belgrano y de la Independencia
Argentina,' and Historia de San Martín y de la Emancipación Sud-
Americana. ' Special mention should be given to the standard work
of . Rafael Maria Baralt of Maracaibo (1810-60), entitled (Resumen
de la Historia Antigua y Moderna de Venezuela,' which Aristides
Rojas has more recently supplemented by seven “studies” on various


## p. 8921 (#549) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8921
(
epochs and aspects of the national history. Two histories written by
Colombians rank very high; namely, the Historia de la Nueva
Granada' by José Antonio de Plaza, and the Historia de la Revo-
lución de Colombia' by José Manuel Restrepo. The historical works
of Mariano Paz Soldán are characterized by that patient accumulation
of facts which is supposed to distinguish German scholarship; his rep-
utation rests more especially upon his “Historia del Perú Independi-
ente de 1819 á 1827,' and his Diccionario Geográfico-Estadístico del
Perú. '
Manuel Orozco y Berra gave to the public in 1880 an elaborate
account of the ancient nations of Mexico in his Historia Antigua y
de la Conquista de México,' in which he goes over the whole subject
treated by Prescott, and adds a profusion of further details. Vicente
Fidel López, the author of the large History of the Argentine Re-
public previously mentioned, has written two historical works of great
interest to the ethnologist and antiquarian; they are entitled 'Las
Razas del Perú Anteriores á la Conquista' and 'Les Races Aryennes
au Pérou. '
Brazil has produced several historical writers of merit. The stand-
ard history is by Fr. Antonio de Varnhagen, and is entitled “Historia
Geral do Brazil. ) It extends to the last half of the present cen-
tury, but does not reach the abdication of Pedro II. Varnhagen's
style is lucid and dignified, as required by the subject, and free from
the rhetorical inflation too common among inferior writers in the
southern continent. His descriptive passages are often particularly
fine. He published in 1860 an interesting little book, A Caça no
Brazil,' — the first of the kind that has appeared in South America,-
describing the wild animals and the modes of pursuing them in the
great forests and on the plains of that country. Pereira da Silva's
Historia da Fundação do Imperio Brazileiro) is one of the standard
works of Brazilian history.
>
LITERARY Critics. – Opinions on authors and books occupy a larger
relative space in Latin-American literature than in that of Anglo-Saxon
nations. Criticism, among our southern neighbors, deals less with the
views and statements of an author than with his manner of present-
ing them; so by treating literature as a fine art, along with painting
and music, it becomes in itself a fine art, requiring artistic faculties
carefully cultivated. One of the highest authorities in the southern
continent has said : “That which above all other things exalts an
author and enables him to reach posterity, is style. ” The more staid
people of the north hold that substance is even more important than
form, and that the enduring masterpieces of the world's literature
combine both. It is a question of relative estimate.


## p. 8922 (#550) ###########################################

8922
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
Criticism, as a fine art, has been cultivated in Latin America with
surprising assiduity; and includes among its eminent masters such
men as Torres Caicedo, Miguel Luis Amunátegui, and Calixto Oyuela,
the author of Estudios y Artículos Literarios. A few words must
be spared for Rafael M. Merchán, the Cuban exile, of whom it has
been elegantly said that he writes with a gloved hand and a pen of
gold. ” He made his home in Bogotá, one of the foremost literary
centres of the southern continent, and became secretary to the Presi-
dent. His poetic temperament, wide reading, and fine discernment
furnish the qualifications that make him above all a critic, and which
shine conspicuously in his study on Juan Clemente Zenea and in his
(Estudios Críticos. )
Of all this wealth of critical discussion, no part affords more at-
tractive reading than the works of Martín García Mérou, the present
Argentine minister to the United States. They show a wide famili-
arity with the literatures of Europe and America, a delicate judg-
ment, and that kind of fairness that can appreciate the merits of one
with whom he does not agree.
In addition, his personal acquaint-
ance with the leading contemporary authors of South America imparts
to his writings a peculiar interest that is lacking in the works of less
favored critics. His essay on the poet Echeverría may be cited as
one of his most thorough studies; while in his two recent reminis-
cences, Recuerdos Literarios) and Confidencias Literarias,' he fits
from one author or book to another with all the vivacity and brill-
iancy of a tropical humming-bird.
Those most interested in the subject of Latin-American literature
are now eagerly awaiting the great work in preparation by Professor
García Velloso, of Buenos Ayres. It is to be a comprehensive history
of the literature of the entire southern continent.
a
NOVELISTS. — The novel, as means of interesting and influen-
cing the public mind, did not begin to assume prominence in Latin
America until the latter half of the present century; and the class of
writers whose specialty is prose fiction is still relatively small. Jorge
Isaaks, the Colombian poet, is widely known by his María,' a simple
and pathetic story of rural life, a translation of which has been ex-
tensively read in the United States. His compatriot Julio Arboleda
has given the public a bright contrast to this sombre picture, in his
sparkling romance (Casimiro el Montañés. '
The collection of stories known as “La Linterna Mágica,' writ-
ten by José T. del Cuellar, of Mexico, has been deservedly popular.
Ignacio M. Altamirano, a Mexican lawyer and orator of pure Indian
blood, has left a novel, Clemencia,' which for style and pathos has
seldom been surpassed. The Mexican historian Orozco y Berra wrote


## p. 8923 (#551) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8923
a beautiful novel, `Escenas de Treinta Años,' relating the experiences
of an unfortunate disappointed invalid. Dr. J. J. Fernández Lizardi,
generally known by the pseudonym of «El Pensador Mexicano,” has
revived the old Spanish picaresque type of romance in his 'Periquillo
Sarmiento. )
The Argentine historian Vicente Fidel Lopez is the author of a
thrilling historical novel entitled 'La Novia del Hereje,' the scene of
which is laid in Lima in the time of the Inquisition; but the favorite
romance of the region of the Plata is the Amalia' of José Mármol,
one of the most beautiful of modern novels. Chile has produced sev-
eral noted works of fiction, among which the Alberto el Jugador of
the poetess Rosario Orrego de Uribe, La Dote de una Joven,' by
Vicente Grez, and the historical novel Los Héroes del Pacífico,' by
Ramón Pacheco, are much admired. (Contra la Marea,' by the Chi-
lean Alberto del Solar, is one of the most powerful of recent American
novels.
Quite a number of romances have been founded upon Indian
legends, or tell of Indian life and customs, after the manner of
Fenimore Cooper. Two of the best of these are quite recent, -the
Painé) and Relmú' of the Argentine publicist Estanislao S. Zebal-
los, who, still young, combines every form of literary activity. The
(Huincahual, by Alberto del Solar, is one of the most able produc-
tions of this class, and gives evidence of a diligent study of Araucan
customs and character. The Brazilian novelist José Martinião Alencar
wrote two famous Indian romances, entitled 'Iracema' and 'Guarany. "
Iracema' develops the main feature of the story of John Smith and
Pocahontas. The other novel, like Helen Hunt Jackson's (Ramona,'
tells how a young Indian loves a Portuguese woman. Carlos Gomes
has transformed it into an opera which has become well known in
Europe, retaining the name of (Guarany. '
Besides Martinião Alencar, Brazil has produced during the present
century two highly successful writers of prose fiction, — Joaquim
Manoel de Macedo and Bernardo Guimarães. Macedo was a doctor of
medicine, a professor in the University of Rio, a member of Congress,
and a prolific writer in prose and verse.
His Moreninha' (Brunette),
published in 1840, undertook for the first time to portray Brazilian
society as it really was; it enjoyed extraordinary popularity, as did
also his (Senhora,' which some critics consider superior to Moreninha. '
Guimarães is one of the most powerful and original writers of Brazil.
'Ermitão de Muquem' is considered his best novel. It is written in
three versions or styles: one plain prose, one poetic prose, and one
peculiar to the author, like the styles of Bentham and Carlyle. His
(Seminarista' is a romance with a tragic outcome, and is directed
against the enforced celibacy of the clergy.


## p. 8924 (#552) ###########################################

8924
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
(
POETS AND DRAMATISTS. The Spanish and Portuguese languages
lend themselves so readily to versification that the amount of poetry
produced is enormous; indeed, it may almost be assumed that every
South-American writer not a scientific specialist is also a poet. Juan
León Mera published in 1868 a critical history of the poets of Ecua-
dor, at a time when many persons were not aware that that coun-
try had ever possessed any. Cortés, in his Parnaso Peruano, fills
eight hundred pages with choice extracts from forty-four of the lead-
ing poets of Peru; and the great anthology of Menéndez y Pelayo,
consisting of four thick volumes of poetical selections, purports to
give only the very best that Spanish-American writers have pro-
duced in verse. ”
Four names may represent the different styles of poetry cultivated
in Mexico. Manuel Carpio, a physician by profession, was well read
in Greek and Roman literatures, and a still more diligent student of
Jewish lore. His “Tierra Santa' is a work of great learning, not
inferior to Robinson's Biblical Researches. ' He is best known,
however, by his poems; one of which, La Cena de Baltasar,' shows
remarkable descriptive power. Fernando Calderón is distinguished
rather by the sweetness than the strength of his verse. The tender-
ness of his sentiments is well displayed in Hermán, ó la Vuelta del
Cruzado. He was the author of a comedy entitled "Á Ninguna de
las Tres,' intended as a satire on those who return from foreign
travel only to find fault with everything at home. José Joaquín
Pesado has at once tenderness, sublimity, and classic finish. In La
Revelación' he has essayed to wake anew the harp which Dante
swept; and he has given to his countrymen in their own tongue the
odes of Horace and the psalms of David, along with some minor
poems of rare beauty. Last of all, in Los Aztecas) he has sought
to restore and interpret the hymns, chants, and lost lore of the prim-
itive races of Anáhuac. Manuel Acuña, whose unhappy life extended
only from 1849 to 1873, holds the place among Mexican poets that
Edgar A. Poe does among those of the United States. In his nerv-
ous, delicate nature, poetry was a morbid secretion, like the pearl in
the oyster; and he became the self-appointed priest and prophet of
sorrow and disappointment. His most noted poems are El Pasado,'
"Á Rosario,' and a drama entitled (Gloria. '
One of the most enduring masterpieces of Spanish-American verse
is Gonzalo de Oyón,' a beautifully wrought tale based upon an epi.
sode in the early history of the country. Its author, Julio Arboleda
(1817-62), held the foremost rank among the Colombian writers of
the first half of this century. Another Colombian writer who reflects
the sentiments of the past is Silveria Espinosa de Rendón, who
laments the expulsion of the Jesuits in her (Lágrimas i Recuerdos. '


## p. 8925 (#553) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8925
Among the young and hopeful spirits that enliven the brilliant society
of Bogotá at the present time, Antonio José Restrepo is the poet lau-
reate. The most celebrated of his longer poems are Un Canto' and
El Dios Pan'; in which the author shows himself to be a liberalist
of the most pronounced type, who writes in utter fearlessness of all
absolute rulers for man's mind, body, or estate.
The extensive writings of Estebán Echeverría (1809-51) contain
many passages that are weak and commonplace; but he stands forth
as the national poet of the Argentine Republic, reflecting the life and
thought found on its vast plains and along its mighty rivers. The
productions to which his fame is chiefly due are Avellaneda,' 'La
Revolución del Sur,' and 'La Cautiva. ' The last-named poem, an
Indian story of the Pampas, deserves a place by the side of Hia-
watha,' which it resembles in the unaffected beauty of its descriptive
passages and the flowing simplicity of its versification. Martín Coro-
nado and Rafael Obligado, two of the leading poets of Buenos Ayres,
are disciples of Echeverría, though of different types. Coronado's
verse is impassioned and dazzling; while Obligado's muse loves the
contentment of the family hearth or the shady banks of the majestic
Paraná, where the stillness is broken only by the cry of a wild bird
or the lazy dip of an oar.
The poems of Arnaldo Márquez and Clemente Althaus of Peru
take a very high rank for their beauty and tenderness of sentiment
as well as purity of style. The Noche de Dolor en las Montañas)
and the Canto de la Vida' of the Peruvian Numa Pompilio Llona
are compositions which will be admired for centuries. The Romances
Americanos) of the Chilean poet Carlos Walker Martínez, and the
(Flores del Aire of Dr. Adán Quiroga of Argentina, are collections
of poems of great merit and originality. Compositions of remark-
able beauty will be found in the Brisas del Mar) of the Peruvian
Manuel Nicolás Corpancho, the Armonías' of Guillermo Blest Gana
of Chile, and the (Flores Silvestres) of Francisco Javier de Acha of
Uruguay.
José Batrés y Montúfar of Guatemala, a lyric poet of merit, is
one of the most noted satirists of America. Matías Córdoba and Gar-
cía Goyena of Guatemala have been justly compared, as fabulists, to
Æsop and La Fontaine,
Among Brazilian writers of the present century, two representative
poets may be selected: Antonio Gonçalves Dias and Domingos José
Gonçalves Magalhães. Dias was even more esteemed as a patriot
than as a poet; and was much employed by the late emperor in
carrying out educational and other reforms, in which that estimable
sovereign was deeply interested. The successive issues of miscella-
neous poems by Dias are now known collectively as his Canteiros,'
(


## p. 8926 (#554) ###########################################

8926
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
and won the enthusiastic commendation of the Portuguese critic Her-
culão. He also left some Indian epics, and the two dramas Leonor
de Mendonça) and (Sextilhas de Frei Antão. He was so far honored
in his own country that his fellow-townsmen erected a statue to his
memory, with an inscription declaring him the foremost poet of
Brazil. The best productions of Magalhães are a tragedy entitled
Antonio José ou o Poeta e a Inquisição,' and A Confederação dos
Tamayos,' the latter an epic founded on an outbreak of the Tamayo
and other Indians.
SUMMARY
On looking across the Rio Grande at authors and books beyond,
one is struck by some points that contrast with our northern life.
There, public men are writers. Whether it be that political life
stimulates literary activity, or that the latter is a passport to the
former, presidents, senators, cabinet officers, judges, and ministers
plenipotentiary all write. Many of them read, write, and speak a
number of languages, -an accomplishment so rare in Saxon America
that an envoy is sometimes sent on an important mission without
being able to speak the language of the country to which he is
accredited.
Again, the literary men of the far South, with scarce an exception,
write poetry as readily as prose. Nothing could be more incongruous
than the idea of the average public man in the United States writing
poetry. Something is due to the character of the language, that a
stranger does not readily appreciate. In Spanish and Portuguese
verse the words roll and swell, liquid and lengthy, like the waves of
the sea, and tempt one to prolong the billowy movement. An excel-
lent critic has said on this point, “The seeming ease of the versifica-
tion is constantly enticing the poet on. The result is that we get
not only good measure in the length of words, but liberal count in
their number. Furthermore, we of the north are actively looking
around, watching the chances; the man of the south is reflective,
introspective, and he commits his soliloquies to paper. He is often
more intent on photographing his own mind than on reaching the
minds of others. Latin-American verse is glowingly descriptive, or
plaintive and tender, with an occasional tinge of melancholy; but it
all possesses a healthy and natural tone, and has not yet been in-
fected by the morbid unrest and hopeless cynicisin that characterizes
much of the recent poetry of older nations.
> *
* Martín García Mérou, Ensayo sobre Echeverría, page 174.


## p. 8927 (#555) ###########################################

LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8927
In most Latin-American countries the persons of unmixed European
descent are still in a minority. This alone would lead to a marked
distinction of classes. Actually the difference between the highest
and the lowest is still extreme. On the one hand there are learn-
ing and careful education --somewhat different from ours in kind, but
by no means inferior in degree; on the other, the densest ignorance
and superstition. The great bulk of the people from Texas to Cape
Horn cannot read and write. Great efforts are put forth to remedy
this state of things by general education, and much has already been
accomplished; but the task is immense and will occupy several gen-
erations. In the United States, books are intended for a reading class
numbering many millions, and are made as cheap as possible, so as
to come within their reach. This is still more conspicuously the case
in Germany. In Latin America there are no millions to read, and
the best books are addressed to a relatively small class. As sales are
limited, large works of general interest or permanent value are pub-
lished or aided by the governments, or by wealthy and public-spirited
individuals. Lesser works are often put forth in small editions at the
cost of the author. No pains or expense is spared to make some of
these masterpieces of their kind; and combinations of paper, typogra-
phy, and binding are produced whose elegance is nowhere surpassed.
Of the lighter literature of the southern republics, a large part first
appears in the various revistas and other literary periodicals main-
tained in all the principal cities. It consists principally of odes, son-
nets, short stories, and essays. These essays embrace every variety
of subject: the authors traverse – often literally — the Old World and
the New, view them geographically, ethnologically, sociologically, and
write under such captions as (A Winter in Russia,' (The Bedouins of
the City,' (The Literature of Slang,' or (The History of an Umbrella. '
The subjects are generally treated in a light, sketchy style, so as
to be pleasant reading, and afford at least as much entertainment as
information.
Novelists and dramatists are under a great disadvantage, having no
protective tariff to save them from European, and especially French,
competition. Editors and managers find translations cheaper and
easier to obtain than native productions. There is happily a growing
reaction in favor of native writers who represent American subjects
as seen by American eyes. When the cultivated public becomes fully
aware of the greater genuineness of these domestic productions, native
talent will have an ampler field; and there is every reason to believe
that it will be prepared to satisfy the fullest demand.
AUTHORITIES. –J. M. Pereira da Silva, Os Varões Illustres do
Brazil durante os Tempos Coloniaes,' Paris, 1858. Ferdinand Wolff,


## p. 8928 (#556) ###########################################

8928
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
(
(
Histoire de la Littérature Brésilienne,' Berlin, 1863. (Lira Americana,'
by R. Palma, Paris, 1865. Domingo Cortés, América Poética,' Paris,
1875; and Diccionario Biográfico Americano, Paris, 1875.