Echegaray may be noted as displaying, even in the following mournful drama, a genuine and, as a rule, unforced sense of humour. In his comic passages, however, he has a fault which he shares with Shakespeare--and the editor of _Punch_. He is a remorseless punster.
This poet’s genius, as may have been remarked, burst into bloom at a time beyond the midsummer of life. He was forty-two before his first drama was produced. That is twenty-one years ago. Since then his activity has never known exhaustion. He is now the author of some fifty plays. There are particular years among the past twenty-one in the course of which he has put upon the stage as many as four dramas, not one of which is carelessly written, though one imitation from the German, “El Gladiador de Ravena,” was commenced and completed within three days. During these twenty-one years, indeed, he appears to have determined on making up for what, in other important respects, had certainly not been lost time. Civil engineers have found and still find it to their advantage to consult him on points which are the special study and occupation of their lives. He has published three formidable volumes on the “Modern Theories of Physics.” A well-known book of his has appeared on sub-marine vessels of war. He has lectured on Political Economy and Geology with equal success. He is admitted by Spaniards to be the chief of their own mathematicians; they further claim for him the honour of being one of the first mathematicians in the world. He is an orator who has won the applause of Castelar himself. There were only wanting his labours as a poet and a dramatist to set the seal upon a career of almost universal aptitude. Those labours have earned for him a renown which will assuredly not be allowed to die in his own country.
Be the praise high or low, in view of the condition of Spanish literature between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth, Spaniards declare that for more than two hundred years their drama has not brought forth a serious rival to this man. And there can hardly be a doubt that, in any selection of names of the greatest dramatists ever sprung from Spain, Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca will find the place nearest to themselves occupied by José Echegaray.