On his return to Spain he took the military dress of Santiago, and entered the army. There he rose rapidly, till he reached the rank of colonel; but, in all the different places to which his own choice or the service of his regiment carried him,--Saragossa, Madrid, Alcalá de Henares, and Salamanca,--he sought occasion to continue his earlier pursuits, and succeeded in connecting himself with the leading spirits of the time, such as Moratin, Iglesias, Yriarte, the wise Jovellanos, and the young and promising Melendez Valdes. But his career, though successful, was short. He perished at the siege of Gibraltar, struck by a bomb, on the 27th of February, 1782, and the governor of the besieged fortress joined in the general sorrow over the grave of an honorable enemy who had been distinguished alike in letters and in arms.[345]
[345] Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 21. Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 493. His name, I believe, was originally spelt _Cadalso_; but as that is a recognized word, meaning “scaffold,” it is softened in the recent Madrid editions of his Works into _Cadahalso_, which means “cottage” or “shanty.” Both these words, however, are regarded as one and the same, in the first edition of the Dictionary of the Academy, so that perhaps not much is gained by the change.
In 1772 Cadahalso published his “Eruditos á la Violeta,” or Fashionable Learning, to which, from its considerable success, he added a supplement the same year. The original work is a pleasant satire on the superficial scholarship of his times, and is thrown into the form of directions how to teach the whole circle of human knowledge in a course of lectures, that shall just fill the seven days of the week; the supplement giving a few further illustrations of the same subject, and some of the results of such teachings on the unhappy scholars who had been its victims. This, with a volume of poems printed the next year, and containing several careful translations from the ancients, a few satirical trifles after the manner of Quevedo, and a good many Anacreontic songs and tales in the manner of Villegas, are all of his works that were published during his lifetime.
But after his death there was found among his papers a collection of letters, supposed to have been written by a person connected with an embassy to Spain from Morocco, and addressed to his friends at home. They belong to the large family of works of fiction, begun by Marana’s “Turkish Spy,” and are commonly set down as imitations of Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters,” but, in fact, show a nearer relationship with Goldsmith’s “Citizen of the World.” The whole work, however, is more occupied with literary discussions and temporary satire, than either of those just referred to; and therefore, though it is written in a pure and pleasant style, with wit and good sense, it has been far from obtaining a place, like theirs, in the general regard of the world. Still, like the rest of his posthumous works, which comprise a few more compositions in prose satire and a few more poems, the best of which are in the old short verses always so popular in Spain, “The Moorish Letters” of Cadahalso have been often reprinted, and probably are not destined to be forgotten.[346]