ABSTRACT
In the year 1561, Luis de Leon was elected to the chair of St. Thomas, over the heads of seven candidates, by a large majority. Leon appeared serene and cheerful, and commenced as if nothing had happened; nor alluded to the long interval, filled with such misery, that had intervened since his last lecture. Leon translated all the Eclogues of Virgil, and the first book of his Georgics. He tells us, that he endeavoured to make the ancient poets speak as they would have expressed themselves, had they been born in his own age, in Castile, and had written in Castilian. Wiffen’s spirited translation of his ode on the Moorish invasion: the animation and fire which it breathes has made it a favourite, and shows that Luis de Leon was confined to didactic subjects rather from choice, than by the necessity or narrowness of his genius.
