RAMON DE CAMPOAMOR Y CAMPOOSGRIO (1817-1901)  ,

Spanish poet, was born at Navia (Asturias) on the 24th of September 1817 . Abandoning his first intention of entering the Jesuit order, he studied medicine at Madrid, found an opening in politics as a supporter of the Moderate party, and, after occupyingseveral subordinate posts, became governor of Castellon de la . Plana, of Alicante and of Valencia . His conservative tendencies grew more pronounced with time, and his Polemicas con la Democracia (1862) may be taken as the definitive expression of his political opinions . His first appearance as a poet dated from 1840, when he published his Ternezas y flares, a collection of idyllic verses, remarkable for their technical excellence . His Ayes del Alma (1842) and his Fdbulas morales y politicas (1842) sustained his reputation, but showed no perceptible increase of power or skill . An epic poem in sixteen cantos, ColOn (1853), is no more successful than modern epics usually are . Campoamor's theatrical pieces, such as El Palacio de la Verdad (1871), Dies Irae (1873), El Honor (1874) and Glorias Humanas (1885), are interesting experiments; but they are totally lacking in dramatic spirit . He always showed a keen interest in metaphysical and philosophic questions, and defined his position in La Filosofia de las leyes (1846), El Personalismo (1855), Lo Absolute (1865) and El Ideismo (1883) . These studies are chiefly valuable as embodying fragments of self-revelation, and as having led to the composition of those doloras, humoradas and pequenos poemas, which the poet's admirers consider as a new poetic species . The first collection of Doloras was printed in 1846, and from that date onwards new specimens were added to each succeeding edition . It is difficult to define a dolora .

One critic has described it as a didactic, symbolic

stanza which combines the lightness and grace of the epigram, the melancholy of the endecha, the concise narrative of the ballad, and the philosophic intention of the apologue . The poet himself declared that a dolora is a dramatic humorada, and that a pequeno poema is a dolora on a larger scale . These definitions.are unsatisfactory . The humoristic, philosophic epigram is an ancient poetic form to which Campoamor has given a new name; his invention goes no further . It cannot be denied that in the Doloras Campoamor's special gifts of irony, grace and pathos find their best expression . Taking a commonplace theme, he presents in four, eight or twelve lines a perfect miniature of condensed emotion . By his choice of a vehicle he has avoided the fatal facility and copiousness which have led many Spanish poets to destruction . It pleased him to affect a vein of melancholy, and this affectation has been reproduced by his followers . Hence he gives the impression of insincerity, of trifling with grave subjects and of using mysticism as a mask for frivolity . The genuine Campoamor is a poet of the sunniest humour who, under the pretence of teaching morality by satire, is really seeking to utter the gay scepticism of a genial, epicurean nature . His influence has not been altogether for good . His formula is too easily mastered, and to his example is due a plague of doloras and humoradas by poetasters who have caricatured their model .

Campoamor, as he himself said, did not practise

art for art's sake; he used art as the medium of ideas, and in ideas his imitators are poor . He died at Madrid on the 12th of February 1901 . Of late years a deep silence had fallen upon him, and we are in a position to judge him with the impartiality of another generation . The overwhelming bulk of his work will perish; we may even say that it is already dead . His pretensions, or the pretensions put forward in his name, that he discovered a new poetic genre will be rejected later, as they are rejected now by all competent judges . The title of a philosophic poet will be denied to him . But he will certainly survive, at least in extract, as a distinguished humorist, an expert in epigrammatic and sententious aphorism, an artist of extremely finished execution . (J .