[15] ... Il s’est établi dans Madrid un systême de liberté sur la vente des productions, qui s’étend même à celles de la presse; et que, pourvu que je ne parle en mes écrits ni de l’autorité, ni du culte, ni de la politique, ni de la morale, ni des gens en place, ni des corps en crédit, ni de l’Opera, ni des autres spectacles, ni de personne qui tienne à quelque chose, je puis tout imprimer librement, sous l’inspection de deux ou trois censeurs.--_Marriage de Figaro, Act 5, Sc. 3_.
“Yet such is the energy of the human mind, when once acquainted with its own powers, that the best organized system of intellectual tyranny, though so far successful as to prevent Spanish talent from bringing any fruit to maturity, fails most completely of checking its activity. Could I but accurately draw the picture of an ingenuous young mind struggling with the obstacles which Spanish education opposes to improvement--the alarm at the springing suspicions of being purposely betrayed into error--the superstitious fears that check its first longings after liberty--the honest and ingenious casuistry by which it encourages itself to leave the prescribed path--the maiden joy and fear of the first transgression--the rapidly-growing love of newly discovered truth, and consequent hatred of its tyrants--the final despair and wild phrenzy that possess it on finding its doom inevitable, on seeing with an appalling evidence, that its best exertions are lost, that ignorance, bigotry, and superstition claim and can enforce its homage--no plot of romance would be read with more interest by such as are not indifferent to the noblest concerns of mankind. As I cannot, however, present an animated picture, I shall proceed with a statement of facts.
“An imperfect knowledge of logic and natural philosophy was all I acquired at the university before I began the study of divinity; and like most of my countrymen, I should have completed my studies without so much as suspecting the existence of elegant literature, had it not been for my acquaintance with an excellent young man, much my senior at the university, who, by his own unassisted industry, had made some progress in the study and imitation of the classics.[16] To him I owed my first acquaintance with Spanish poetry, and my earliest attempts at composition in my own language. My good fortune led me, but a short time after, to a member of the _Colegio Mayor_ of this town--another self-improved man, whose extraordinary talents having enabled him, at the age of nineteen, to cast a gleam of good taste over the system of his own university of Osuna, made him subsequently, at Seville, the centre of a small club of students.[17] Through the influence of his genius, and the gratuitous assistance he gave them in their studies, some of his private pupils rose so far above the mass of their academical fellows, as to shew by the fair, though scanty, produce of their minds, the rich promise which the state of their country yearly blasts.