[348] Obras de Thomas de Yriarte, Madrid, 1805, 8 tom. 12mo. Villanueva, Memorias, Londres, 1825, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 27. Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. VI. p. 190. Llorente, Histoire, Tom. II. p. 449.
Yriarte, however, had a rival, who shared these honors with him, and in some respects obtained them even earlier. This was Samaniego, a Biscayan gentleman of rank and fortune, who was born in 1745, and died in 1801; having devoted his life, in the most disinterested manner, to the welfare of his native province. He was one of the earliest and most active members of the first of those societies sometimes called “Friends of the Country,” and sometimes “Societies for Public Improvement,” which began in the reign of Charles the Third, and soon spread through Spain, exercising an important influence on the education and public economy of the kingdom, and laboring to raise the arts of life from the degraded condition into which they had fallen during the latter period of the dominion of the House of Austria.
The Biscayan Society, founded in 1765, devoted itself much to the education of the people; and, to favor this great cause, Samaniego undertook to write fables suited to the capacity of the children taught in the Society’s seminary. How early he began to prepare them is not known; but in the first portion, published in 1781, and therefore one year before those of Yriarte appeared, he speaks of Yriarte as his model, and leaves no doubt that the fables of that poet had been seen by him. The second part of Samaniego’s collection was published in 1784, when that of his rival had been admired by the public long enough to change the relations of the two authors, and bring up a quarrel of pamphlets between them, little creditable to either. Both parts, taken together, contain a hundred and fifty-seven fables, the last nineteen of which and a few others are original, while the rest are taken, partly from Æsop, Phædrus, and the Oriental fabulists, but chiefly from La Fontaine and Gay. They succeeded at once. The children learned them by heart, and the teachers of the children found in them subjects for pleasant reading and reflection. They were, no doubt, less carefully written than the fables of Yriarte, less original and less exactly adapted to their purpose; but they were more free-hearted, more natural, and adapted to a larger class of readers; in short, there is a more easy poetical genius about them, and therefore, even if they cannot claim a higher merit than those of Yriarte, they have taken a stronger hold on the national regard.[349]