If, as is credibly asserted, the knowledge of reading and writing
was more generally diffused in the Philippines than among the common
people of Europe, [134] we have the singular result that the islands
contained relatively more people who could read, and less reading
matter of any but purely religious interest, than any other community
in the world. Yet it would not be altogether safe to assume that
in the eighteenth century the list of printed translations into the
native languages comprised everything of European literature available
for reading; for the Spanish government, in order to promote the
learning of Spanish, had prohibited at times the printing of books
in Tagal. [135] Furthermore, Zúñiga says explicitly that "after the
coming of the Spaniards they (_i.e._ the people in Luzon) have had
comedies, interludes, tragedies, poems, and every kind of literary
work translated from the Spanish, without producing a native poet
who has composed even an interlude." [136] Again, Zúñiga describes
a eulogistic poem of welcome addressed by a Filipino villager to
Commodore Alava. This _loa_, as this species of composition was called,
was replete with references to the voyages of Ulysses, the travels
of Aristotle, the unfortunate death of Pliny, and other incidents in
ancient history. The allusions indicate some knowledge at any rate
outside the field of Christian doctrine, even if it was so slight
as not to make it seem beyond the limits of poetic license to have
Aristotle drown himself in chagrin at not being able to measure the
depths of the sea, or to have Pliny throw himself into Vesuvius in his
zeal to investigate the causes of its eruption. The literary interests
of the Indians found their chief expression however in the adaptation
of Spanish plays for presentation on religious holidays. Zúñiga gives
an entertaining description of these plays. They were usually made
up from three or four Spanish tragedies, the materials of which were
so ingeniously interwoven that the mosaic seemed a single piece. The