Still, in spite of his capacious intellect, Gutierrez can hardly be looked upon as occupying the first place among the men of letters of Argentina, because he produced little original work.
Prose fiction now fills a very prominent place in the literature of almost every nation, and Argentina is no exception to the rule, but it cannot be said that her writers possess any great distinction. Dr. Quesada considers that José Marmol, distinguished in other branches of literature, was the best of the early novelists. In 1851 he published a spirited romance named "Amalia," somewhat after the style of the elder Dumas. It can hardly be called historical, for the scene is laid in 1840 and the subject is the tyranny of Rosas, but the author declares that he wishes to describe for the benefit of future generations, the Argentine dictatorship, and that therefore he has treated in a historical manner actual living persons. The book was a success, but Marmol does not appear to have followed it up.
In 1884 Carlos Maria Ocantos published a juvenile work, "La Cruz de la Falta," which was recognised as showing considerable promise, and in 1888 appeared "Leon Saldivar," which was hailed as a national novel. This writer, who, like most Argentine authors, is a diplomatist by profession and a man of letters by temperament, does not follow the trend of Argentine fiction, which is towards historical romances. He is a realist, and "Leon Saldivar" is a powerful study of Argentine life, and particularly life at the capital. The more spiritual people of the city were beginning to complain of it as a noisy, overgrown place, devoted to money-grubbing, and indeed its poets and philosophers in general made haste to quit it for a more favourable atmosphere, and often did not even pay it the compliment of allowing it to publish their works. Ocantos strove to elicit the romance of Buenos Aires as Dickens found out the romance of London. He continued this vein with a still more powerful and sombre work, "Quilito," in 1891. The two writers here briefly noticed illustrate the imitative character of the Argentine novel--the first looks to Dumas, the second to Zola.
Many critics think that the strongest Argentine novel which has yet appeared is "La Gloria de Don Ramiro," published at Madrid in 1908. The author, Sr. Enrique Larreta, lays his plot in the times of Philip II. of Spain, and stirring scenes are described with great verve. The musings of a boy, when his intellect is expanding and his head full of the books he has last read, are always a tempting theme for romancers, and the following passage, in the spirit of "the days of our youth are the days of our glory," reflects the glow of boyish dreams:--