PEON Y CONTRERAS AND HIS ROMANCES DRAMATICOS.
These suggestions and many others which it would be impertinence to present in this article were suggested to me by the precious little volume which, with the title Romances dramaticos, our inspired poet José Peon y Contreras has just published; and in order to render a tribute to justice and merit, rather than to praise one who is sufficiently praised by his very work, I am about to say something about it.
Fourteen pieces form the collection, and although short they are choicest gems in which are brilliantly displayed the most exquisite and delicate beauties. In my opinion the first is a certain originality in the form, under which the poet encloses a veritable drama, a terrible and sad catastrophe, a poem in which the great passions of the soul are stirred and the tender breathing of the purest affections are felt. The form, I say, but I do not mean precisely the meter—since it is understood what that must be—but the unfolding of the romance, the design of the composition, the manner employed by the author to present and develop his thought. In these lovely ballads (for such they appear) there are no details; the movement of the action, the rapid development of the plot, the violence and precision with which the figures appear upon the scene, demand few but energetic pencil strokes and do not permit digressions nor long and minute descriptions of places and persons; they are like those pretty miniatures whose merit consists in the exactness, the clearness, the grace, with which the scene or picture is reproduced in spite of the small space at the disposition of the artist. As little are there inopportune references to times preceding the drama which develops; nothing to distract the reader from the scenes which the poet places in view: all is actual, if I may so express myself, and only the final catastrophe is presented in which a passion or a misfortune culminates, at the conclusion of a series of unhappy incidents. For the rest, it is easy to divine what elements Peon y