The plans for this book, as well as for my Studies
in Spanish-American Literature, were conceived during
the years 1910-1912 while I was engaged in research
work under Professor J. D. M. Ford, head of the De-
partment of Romance Languages, Harvard Univer-
sity. It was not merely that text-books were lacking
in both the Spanish-American and the Brazilian fields, for
my interest is centred upon aesthetic pleasure rather
than upon the depersonalized transmission of facts. A
yawning gap of ignorance separated us then from the
America that does not speak English, nor was the ig-
norance all on our side. Commercial opportunities,
more than cultural curiosity, served to impart an im-
petus to the study of Spanish and soon we were reading
fiction not only from Spain but from Spanish America.
In so far as the mercantile spirit was responsible for this
broader literary interest, it performed an undoubted
service to art by widening our horizons, but one should
be wary about overestimating the permanent gain. Un-
fortunately, the phonographic iteration of diplomatic
platitudes brings continents no nearer, unless it be for
the mad purposes of war. If, then, we are, as a people,
quite as far as ever from Spanish America, what shall
we say of our spiritual distance from the United States
of Brazil?

I may be pardoned if I indicate, for example, that
the language of Brazil is not Spanish, but Portuguese.

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