Nicolás FERNÁNDEZ DE MORATÍN (1737-1780) followed the
French rules in theory and wrote a few mediocre plays in
accordance with them; but he showed that at heart he was a
good poet and a good Spaniard by his ode _Á Pedro
Romero, torero insigne_, some _romances_ and his famous
_quintillas_, the _Fiesta de toros en Madrid_. Other
followers of the French, in a genre not, strictly
speaking, lyric at all, were the two fabulists, Samaniego
and Iriarte. F. María de SAMANIEGO (1745-1801) gave to the
traditional stock of apologues, as developed by Phaedrus,
Lokmân and La Fontaine, a permanent and popular Castilian
form. Tomás de IRIARTE (1750-1791), a more irritable
personage who spent much time in literary polemics, wrote
original fables (_Fábulas literarias_, 1781) directed not
against the foibles of mankind in general, but against the
world of writers and scholars.

The best work which was done under the classical French
influence, however, is to be found in the writers of the
so-called Salamancan school, which was properly not a
school at all. The poets who are thus classed together,
Cadalso, Diego González, Jovellanos, Forner, Meléndez
Valdés, Cienfuegos, Iglesias, were personal friends thrown
together in the university or town of Salamanca, but they
were not subjected to a uniform literary training and
possessed no similarity of style or aim as did the men of
the later Sevillan school.

José de CADALSO (1741-1782), a dashing soldier of great
personal charm killed at the siege of Gibraltar, is