all their show of passion, true Romanticists seldom gave their real
selves to their art. They created a stage double of their own selves for
public exhibitions. They sought the picturesque. Their form was lyrical,
but their substance was dramatic. Unamuno, on the contrary, even though
he often seeks expression in dramatic form, is essentially lyrical. And
if he is always intense, he never is exuberant. He follows the Spanish
tradition for restraint--for there is one, along its opposite tradition
for grandiloquence--and, true to the spirit of it, he seeks the maximum
of effect through the minimum of means. Then, he never shouts. Here is
an example of his quiet method, the rhythmical beauty of which is
unfortunately almost untranslatable:

"Y así pasaron días de llanto y de negrura hasta que las lágrimas fueron
yéndose hacia adentro y la casa fué derritiendo los negrores" (_Niebla_)
(And thus, days of weeping and mourning went by, till the tears began to
flow inward and the blackness to melt in the home).

* * * * *

Miguel de Unamuno is to-day the greatest literary figure of Spain.
Baroja may surpass him in variety of external experience, Azorín in
delicate art, Ortega y Gasset in philosophical subtlety, Ayala in
intellectual elegance, Valle Inclán in rhythmical grace. Even in
vitality he may have to yield the first place to that over-whelming
athlete of literature, Blasco Ibáñez. But Unamuno is head and shoulders
above them all in the highness of his purpose and in the earnestness and
loyalty with which, Quixote-like, he has served all through his life his
unattainable Dulcinea. Then there is another and most important reason
which explains his position as first, _princeps_, of Spanish letters,
and it is that Unamuno, by the cross which he has chosen to bear,