Another time he was in the company of friends who were engaged in a most exhaustive dissertation on the art of fencing. Innumerable were the experiences detailed in illustration of practice with the sabre, the sword, and the foil. Those who were least excited by the discussion turned now and then to Echegaray with a courteous explanation and a general air of respectful apology for treating of matters in which he could take no conceivable interest. Echegaray, in truth, had never held an offensive weapon in his hand. Next day, however, he appeared at the rooms of one of the best-known fencing masters of Madrid, enrolled his name as a pupil, and took his first lesson instantly. There are living eye-witnesses who tell how, three months afterwards, the grave mathematician, the coming lord of the Spanish drama, in a desperate encounter with foils, repeatedly hit, and at length actually disarmed his fencing master himself, amid the intense amazement and uproarious enthusiasm of bystanders, who counted among them some of the most expert fencers in the Spanish capital.
Echegaray’s very career as a dramatist might in a measure be described as a gigantic experiment in the art of vanquishing difficulties, an elaborate and prolonged _tour-de-force_. He was a spectator of his brother Miguel’s boyish and successful entrance into the domain of dramatic poetry. He saw nothing to prevent himself from following in the same path. His own prescription for writing verse is concise, and contains a justification of his new departure. He sums up the full requirements of a poet in “A little grammar, a little imagination, and a tolerable ear for music.” This is a matter-of-fact style of putting things which may seem rather like a ruthless tearing aside of the veil from a sanctuary that should never be revealed to profane eyes. The great unpublished poets whose own works are the result of the purest inspiration will resent it accordingly. Yet there is reason for suspicion that Shakespeare might have expressed himself on the dread mystery in some such light-hearted manner as Echegaray. The Spanish dramatist, however, omits one important condition which he, at least, has well fulfilled. He has all through life acted up to the letter of Carlyle’s teaching as to the “perennial nobleness and even sacredness” of “Work.” With him the main necessity in all the ways of life is hard labour, untiring drill, constant self-perfection. In his own example he seems to declare that even poets cannot straightway claim to be in the charmed circle of Mascarille’s “gens de qualité” qui “savent tout sans avoir jamais rien appris.”