Whatever he did was well received, but little of it was published at the time, and not much has appeared since. His “Odes on the Conquest of Oran” were particularly admired by his friends, and, though somewhat cold, may still be read with pleasure. These and other compositions made him known to the government at Madrid, and procured for him, in 1747, the appointment of Secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris. There he remained three years, and, from the absence of the ambassador, acted, for a large part of the time, as the only representative of his country at the French court. On his return home, he continued to enjoy the confidence of the king; and when he died suddenly, in 1754, he was in great favor, and about to receive a place of more consequence than any he had yet held.[296]
[296] Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. V. p. 12, and Preface to the edition of Luzan’s Poética, by his son, 1789. His poetry has never been collected and published, but portions of it are found in Sedano, Quintana, etc. The octaves he recited at the opening of the Academy of Fine Arts, in 1752, and published at p. 21 of the “Abertura Solemne,” etc., printed in honor of the occasion (Madrid, folio); and the similar poems recited by him at a distribution of prizes by the same Academy, in 1754, and published in their “Relacion,” etc., (Madrid, folio, pp. 51-61,) prove rather the dignity of his social position than any thing else. Latassa gives a long account of his unpublished works.
The circumstances of the country, and those of his own education, position, and tastes, opened to Luzan, as a critic, a career of almost assured success. Every thing was so enfeebled and degraded, that it could offer no effectual resistance to what he might teach. The political importance of his country among the nations of Europe had been crushed. Its moral dignity was impaired. Its school of poetry had disappeared. The old system of things in Spain, as far as poetical culture was concerned, had passed away, no less than the Austrian dynasty, with which it had come in; and no attempt deserving the name had yet been made to determine what should be the intellectual character of the system that should follow it. A small effort, under such circumstances, would go far towards imparting a decisive movement; and, in literary taste and criticism, Luzan was certainly well fitted to give the guiding impulse. He had been educated with great thoroughness in the principles of the classical French school, and he possessed all the learning necessary to make known and support its peculiar doctrines. In 1728, he had offered to the Academy at Palermo, of which he was a member, six critical discussions on poetry, written in Italian; so that, when he returned to Spain, he had only to take these papers and work them into a formal treatise, suited to what he deemed the pressing wants of the country. He did so;--and the result was his “Art of Poetry,” the first edition of which appeared in 1737.