Garcilaso also produced many imitations of the
_Odes_. The Horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the Spanish
spirit and language. Fray Luis de Leon, of Salamanca, the first real
Spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the Spanish lovers of Horace,
was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great
men. He not only brought back to life once more "that marvelous
sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that
terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit
of the artist," which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the
Horatian lyre the new string of Christian mysticism, and thus wedded the
ancient and the modern. "Luis de Leon is our great Horatian poet," says
Menendez y Pelayo. Lope de Vega wrote an _Ode to Liberty_, and was
influenced by the _Epistles_. The _Flores de Poetas ilustres de Espana_,
arranged by Pedro Espinosa and published in 1605 at Valladolid, included
translations of eighteen odes. Hardly a lyric poet of the eighteenth
century failed to turn some part of Horace into Spanish. Salamanca
perfected the ode, Seville the epistle, Aragon the satire.
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