school was healthful. By insisting upon purity of diction
and regularity in versification, the members of the school
helped somewhat to restrain the license and improve the
bad taste prevailing in the Spanish literature of the
time. The Catalonian Manuel de CABANYES (1808-1833)
remained unaffected by the warring literary schools and
followed with passionate enthusiasm the precepts of the
ancients and particularly of Horace.

In the third decade of the nineteenth century romanticism,
with its revolt against the restrictions of classicism,
with its free play of imagination and emotion, and with
lyricism as its predominant note, flowed freely into Spain
from England and France. Spain had remained preëminently
the home of romanticism when France and England had
turned to classicism, and only in the second half of the
eighteenth century had Spanish writers given to classicism
a reception that was at the best lukewarm. Now romanticism
was welcomed back with open arms, and Spanish writers
turned eagerly for inspiration not only to Chateaubriand,
Victor Hugo and Byron, but also to Lope de Vega and
Calderón. Spain has always worshiped the past, for Spain
was once great, and the appeal of romanticism was page xxxv
therefore the greater as it drew its material largely
from national sources.

In 1830 a club known as the Parnasillo was formed in
Madrid to spread the new literary theories, much as the
Cénacle had done in Paris. The members of the Parnasillo
met in a wretched little café to avoid public attention.