he one case, as in the other, the language is the most direct and
simple required. It is also the least literary and the most popular.
Unamuno, who lives in close touch with the people, has enriched the
Spanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. His
vocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain from
them an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his own
Basque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with the
thoughts and feelings to be expressed, the flow of which, but loosely
controlled by the critical mind, often breaks through the meshes of
established diction and gives birth to new forms created under the
pressure of the moment. This feature Unamuno has also in common with
Santa Teresa, but what in the Saint was a self-ignorant charm becomes in
Unamuno a deliberate manner inspired, partly by an acute sense of the
symbolical and psychological value of word-connections, partly by that
genuine need for expansion of the language which all true original
thinkers or "feelers" must experience, but partly also by an acquired
habit of juggling with words which is but natural in a philologist
endowed with a vigorous imagination. Unamuno revels in words. He
positively enjoys stretching them beyond their usual meaning, twisting
them, composing, opposing, and transposing them in all sorts of possible
ways. This game--not wholly unrewarded now and then by striking
intellectual finds--seems to be the only relaxation which he allows his
usually austere mind. It certainly is the only light feature of a style
the merit of which lies in its being the close-fitting expression of a
great mind earnestly concentrated on a great idea.

* * * * *

The earnestness, the intensity, and the oneness of his predominant
passion are the main cause of the strength of Unamuno's philosophic
work. They remain his main asset, yet become also the principal cause of
his weakness, as a creative artist. Great art can only flourish in the
temperate zone of the passions, on the return journey from the torrid.
Unamuno, as a creator, has none of the failings of those artists who
have never felt deeply. But he does show the limitations of those
artists who cannot cool down. And the most striking of them is that at
bottom he is seldom able to put himself in a purely esthetical mood. In
this, as in many other features, Unamuno curiously resembles
Wordsworth--wh