In the intercourse of everyday life, in his relations with his contemporaries, Lope was affable and kindly. He sometimes defended himself when attacked, especially on the subject of his dramatic writings, but always in measured terms and without any pretence that his high position exempted him from criticism by his less successful rivals. Some severe and unjust criticisms on other writers, notably on Cervantes, are quoted against him; but it is only fair to remember that they occur in letters to his intimates and that it is not necessary to regard them as deliberate. It would be just as fair to set him down as an enemy of the secular clergy because in writing to the duke of Sesa he on one occasion expressed himself thus freely about the monks: “Los frailes son los hombres mas discretos del mundo: no van a la guerra, ni pagan millones, gozan lo mejor, y danles dineros, . . . ellos hacen hijos y otros los crian, perdone lo descalzo.” It would indeed be more just to reproach him with his universal and uniform indulgence, which he extends to all, great and small, good and bad, and with his mania for praising in hyperbolical and extravagant terms. He loved all the arts, particularly painting; his little house in the Calle de Francos was full of pictures. He himself writes to a friend in 1619: “With some garden flowers, half-a-dozen pictures, and a few books, I live without envy, without desire, without fear, and without hope” (dedication of El Alcalde Mayor). But his most marked taste was for flowers. He had a small garden, which he himself tended with jealous care; he sought out rare species and tried to acclimatize in Spain varieties of plants sent by his friends from abroad. In particular he was a tulip - fancier; hence his dedication of Lucinda Perseguida to Manuel Sueiro, a Spaniard resident in Flanders who had supplied him with fine specimens. Tending this garden became the great occupation of his old age; he watered it with his own hands, and, according to Montalban, the chill which led to his death was caught while he was thus engaged.

One can easily detect in his writings the traces of this taste. It is not that he had in a higher degree than his contemporaries the feeling for nature, but the form, the colour, the perfume of flowers largely supply him with his figures and metaphors—his flowers of rhetoric, in short. It is to be regretted that this delicate taste of his, a taste very rare in Spain, where flowers and trees have never been greatly cared for, should have contributed rather to augment than to lessen the elaborateness, pomposity, and affectation of his style. But these faults were shared by all the writers of that age. In his comedies, for example, where he does not pique himself on a fine style and does not attempt to take the Latins or the Italians for his models, his language is, if not nervous and self-restrained, at least limpid and flowing, in this respect contrasting very favourably with the florid and laboured style of his epics and prose pastorals. Viewed broadly, and leaving out of account certain theories which in the long run greatly influenced his manner of writing, Lope belonged in literature to what may be called the school of good sense; he made it his boast that he was a Spaniard pur sang, and steadfastly maintained that a writer’s business is to write so as to make himself understood. When brought face to face with the coterie of the précieux and quintessenciés, the “cultos,” and “criticos,” and “conceptistas,” Lope takes the position of a defender of the language of ordinary life, the good old Castilian tongue. In the dispute which arose between the partisans of the two schools of “cultos” or “culteranos” and “llanos,” the dramatist ranged himself on the side of the latter. In the matter of versification he refuses to admit that the long Italian verse has the advantage of the Castilian octosyllabic: “No pienso que el verso largo Italiano haga ventaja al nuestro, que si en Espana lo dizen es porque, no sabiendo hazer el suyo, se passan al estrangero como mas largo y licencioso. . . . Qué cosa iguala á una redondilla de Garci Sanchez ό Don Diego de Mendoza ?” (Preface to Isidro). Unfortunately the books that he read, his literary connexions, his fear of being unfavourably judged by the Italians, all exercised an influence upon his naturally robust spirit, and, like so many others, he caught the prevalent contagion of mannerism and of empty and pompous phraseology. In his studies at the imperial college and at Alcala Lope had never found his way up to the truest and highest sources of the beautiful; he had never attempted Greek, but had contented himself with Latin, which he chose to regard as the only ancient tongue which a man of letters needed to learn. To his natural son, Lope Felix del Carpio, when entering upon his Latin studies, he wrote, ‘ ‘ So you have begun to grapple with the rudiments? It is one of the things which cannot possibly be avoided; but, for all that, if I could find some one to teach you your own language well, I should be quite satisfied, for I have seen too many of those who, having learned Latin, are ignorant of their native tongue and affect to despise everything written in the vulgar idiom. What presumption to forget that the Greeks did not write in Latin or the Latins in Greek! I confess I laugh whenever I see men giving themselves out for Latin poets who write in their own language like mere barbarians; and I conclude that they cannot possibly have been born poets, for the true poet (there is not more than one, they say, in a generation) writes in his own language, and it is therein that he shows his excellence,—witness Petrarch in Italy, Ronsard in France, and Garcilaso in Spain. Nevertheless I do not wish to discourage you from learning that queen of languages (Latin), the third in the world in point of antiquity. Try to know it as well as you can, my son, but by no means learn Greek, for I would not have you like those who strut and give themselves airs because they have acquired a smattering of it. Greek tends too much to vanity, and what is the use of learning a language which is known to so few ?” After thus warning his son against the dangers of Greek, Lope adds other counsels which reveal to us his feelings towards his own bygone days. “Have but few books, and those choose with care; diligently observe the thoughts they contain, and do not let anything noteworthy pass without a mark on the margin. Should it be your misfortune to become a maker of verses (which God forbid !) try at least not to make that your chief occupation, nor let it divert you from more important matters, for therein you will spend your time to no profit. The less of verse you make the more you will be esteemed and appreciated. You need only take an example from me. Certainly you will never be able to render more services than I have done to so many patrons, and see to what my diligence has brought me,—to the smallest of houses, a narrow bed, a poor table, and a patch of garden, the flowers of which dispel my cares and supply me with ideas.” Lope knew only Latin, but this he knew well. Yet, instead of filling himself with the spirit of antiquity, and purifying his taste by contact with its literary masters, he regarded their writings as nothing more than repertories of beautiful and out-of-the-way expressions. After the Latins Lope turned by preference to the Italians. Like every other Spanish man of letters of his time, he had been reared on Italian literature: he knew intimately the works of its great poets of the Renaissance, especially Ariosto and Tasso, as well as Sannazaro, the last-named of whom he imitated on several occasions; he kept a steady watch upon all that was published in Italy, cultivated carefully the connexions he had established with Italian writers of repute, and was always flattered by the eulogies which reached him from that quarter. His principal friend and correspondent in Italy was the Neapolitan poet, G. B. Marini, one of the worst corrupters of Italian literature (see vol. xiii. p. 511). He puts himself at Marini’s feet, calls him antistes Musarum and Italiae décos, sends him his portrait, and humbly begs his indulgence for a drama which he has been so bold as to dedicate to him (see dedication to Virtud, Pobreza, y Muger). Lope knew French also, and his works give evidence of an acquaintance with French poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries such as is rare in Spain; he occasionally quotes Ronsard and Malherbe, and shows solicitude as to French opinion about his dramatic writings. In a word, his literary culture was chiefly Latin-Italian; and, if he defends the tradition of the nation, and the pure simplicity of the old Castilian against “los de la nueva poesia,” that is to say, the innovators of the school of Gongora, and against the jargon of the “cultos,” still he does not wish to be taken for an uninformed person, for a mere casual litterateur devoid of classical training: he especially emphasizes the fact that he has passed through the university, and is continually accentuating the difference between the “ingenios científicos” (those who know Latin) and “legos ignorantes” (ignorant laymen). With what a sense of superiority, for example, does he mention that Cervantes was not to his mind sufficiently “científico” (preface to Las Fortunas de Diana), the fact being that Cervantes had been neither at Alcala nor at Salamanca!

For a rapid survey of the works of Lope, it is convenient to begin with those which the Spaniards include under the name of Obras Sueltas, the title of the large collection of the poet’s non-dramatic works (Madrid, 21 vols. 4to, 1776-79). We shall enumerate the most important of these, as far as possible in the order of publication. The Arcadia (1598), a pastoral romance, composed at the instance of the duke of Alva, and inspired by Sannazaro, Montemayor, and Cervantes, is one of the poet’s feeblest and most wearisome productions. Isidro (1599), a narrative of the life of Isidore, patron of Madrid, is called a Castilian poem on account of the rhythm in which it is composed,— quintillas of octosyllabic verse. The Hermosura de Angélica (1602), in three books, is a sort of continuation of the Orlando Furioso, in octaves after the fashion of the original poem. Similar in form is La Dragontea, a fantastic history of the last expedition and the death of Sir Francis Drake, who was such a terror to the fleets and the coast of Spain that his name had become a synonym for that of the evil one. Finally the Rimas are a miscellany of short pieces. In 1604 was published the Peregrino en su Patria, a romance in prose and verse, similar in kind to the Aethiopica of Heliodorus; it is a mediocre work, but of great bibliographical interest, on account of its authentic list of the comedies which Lope recognized as having been written by him up to that date, a list which he augmented by 114 new titles in the 1618 edition of the novel. The more Lope composed poetry the more he went to the Italian poets for inspiration, labouring to show that the mechanism of the Italian octave was as familiar to him as that of the national redondilla. Having imitated Ariosto, he proceeded to imitate Tasso; but his Jerusalem Conquistada (1609) has preserved nothing of the...