[Footnote 1: _Florilegio de Poesías Castellanas del Siglo XIX_, con
introducción y notas, por Juan Valera. Madrid, 1902, vol. I, pp.
186-188.]

[Footnote 2: _Obras_, vol. I, p. L.]

Whatever may be one's opinion of the personality of the muse or muses
of his verse, the love that Becquer celebrates is not the love of
oriental song, "nor yet the brutal deification of woman represented in
the songs of the Provençal Troubadours, nor even the love that
inspired Herrera and Garcilaso. It is the fantastic love of the
northern ballads, timid and reposeful, full of melancholy tenderness,
that occupies itself in weeping and in seeking out itself rather than
in pouring itself forth on external objects."[1] In this matter of
lyrical subjectivism Becquer is unique, for it cannot be found in any
other of the Spanish poets except such mystic writers as San Juan de
la Cruz or Fray Luis de León.

[Footnote 1: Blanco Garcia, _op. cit._, p. 83.]

In one of Becquer's most beautiful writings in prose, in a _Prológo_
to a collection of _Cantares_ by Augusto Ferran y Forniés, our author
describes two kinds of poetry that present themselves to one's choice:
"There is a poetry which is magnificent and sonorous, the offspring of
meditation and art, which adorns itself with all the pomp of language,
moves along with a cadenced majesty, speaks to the imagination,
perfects its images, and leads it at will through unknown paths,
beguiling with its harmony and beauty." "There is another poetry,
natural, rapid, terse, which springs from the soul as an electric