TOMAS DE, nephew of Don Juan de Yriarte, the learned keeper of the King's Library in Spain, was born in the island of Tenerife in 1750. He early displayed a taste for dramatic writing, and for introducing French plays upon the Spanish stage; and at the age of twenty-one he gained considerable reputation by his Latin verses on the birth of Charles IV. Having gained the situation of archivist in the office of the principal secretary of state, much of his time was necessarily occupied with the duties of this office, and he had less leisure for the indulgence of his poetical taste than formerly. Much of his leisure time, besides, was occupied with petty squabbles with his contemporaries, Sedano, Melandez, and Forner; and it is to be regretted that many of his writings likewise are filled with those personal controversies.

The poetry of Yriarte is marked by purity of style and elegance of expression, but it is wanting both in power and elevation. It is destitute of that richness and vigour which belongs to all poetry of a very high class. His didactic poem on Music (La Musica, 1780), consisting of five books, shows considerable skill in the management of the details. His book of Fables (Fabulas Literarias), consisting of some eighty original fictions, published in 1782, are so easy in their versification, and generally the moral aim of them is so well taken, that while they want the geniality of Aesop and La Fontaine, they nevertheless possess the abiding merit of sustaining unaided the reputation of their author down to the present day. The best of Tomas de Yriarte's miscellaneous poems are his eleven Epistles. He died in 1791. His whole Obras were published at Madrid in 8 vols. 1805.