GONGORA Y ARGOTE, Luis de (1561-1627), Spanish lyric poet, was born at Cordova, on the 11th of July 1561. His father, Don Francisco de Argote, was corregidor of that city; and his mother, Dona Leonora de Gôngora, was descended from an ancient and noble family of Navarre. Having been sent, at the age of fifteen, as a studeut of civil and canon law to the university of Salamanca, he soon took a prominent place among his fellowstudents; but the great talent which he exhibited did not point in the direction either of legal or of diplomatic employments. Leaving the university some years afterwards (the exact date is unknown) without a degree, but already with a considerable literary reputation, he returned to Cordova, where he had succeeded to a moderate property, and where he was able to associate on terms of intimacy and equality with the best society of the city and province. Lope de Vega, writing about 1593, speaks of him as surrounded there by a literary society, and acknowledged as its chief. In 1604, when past his fortieth year, he took the tonsure, and accepted a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Cordova,—steps which have usually been attributed to worldly or sordid motives, but which really cannot be regarded as unnatural or unbecoming in a man circumstanced as he was. From this time he began to spend a portion of each year at the seat of the court, first at Valladolid and afterwards at Madrid, where as Pellicer, his contemporary, remarks, he “noted everything and pecked at everything with his satirical pen.” His circle of literary and other distinguished admirers was now greatly enlarged; but the acknowledgment which the court accorded to his singular genius was both slight and tardy. Ultimately indeed, through the influence of the duke of Lerma and the ...