Huerta, Vincent Garica De La

, a Spanish poet and critic, and a member of the Spanish academy, was born at Zaira in Estremadura, about the year 1730. Among his countrymen he acquired considerable fame by the exercise of his poetical and critical talents, and was at least successful in one of his dramas, “La Raquel,” a tragedy, which, to many stronger recommendations, adds that of being exempt from the anachronisms and irregularities so often objected to the productions of the Spanish stage. He published “A Military library;” and “Poems” in 2 vols. printed at Madrid in 1778: but his principal work is his “Teatro Hespanol,Madrid, 1785, 17 vols. 4to, a collection of what he reckoned the best Spanish plays, with prefaces, in which he endeavours to vindicate the honour of Spanish literature from the strictures of Voltaire, Linguet, Signorelli, and others of its adversaries; but on the whole, in the opinion of lord Holland, who appears well acquainted with this work, so far from retrieving the lost honours of the Spanish theatre, he has only exposed it to the insults and ridicule of its antagonists. La Huerta died about the close of the last century. 2

2

Dict. Hist. Lord Holland’s Life of Lops de Ve^a, p. 235, &c.