rials for this are, for the most part, not very difficult to be procured; for Cervantes is the author whom his countrymen, since his death, with a spirit very different from that of his contemporaries, have most delighted to honor. Fortunately, the Castilian romancer has supplied us with materials for his own biography, which remind us of the lamentable poverty under which we labor in all that relates to his contemporary, Shakspeare. In Mr. Ticknor's biographical notice, the reader will find some details probably not familiar to him, and a careful discussion of those points over which still rests any cloud of uncertainty.

He inquires into the grounds of the imputation of an unworthy jealousy having existed between Lope and his illustrious rival, and we heartily concur with him in the general results of his investigation.

"Concerning his relations with Lope de Vega there has been much discussion to little purpose. Certain it is that Cervantes often praises this great literary idol of his age, and that four or five times Lope stoops from his pride of place and compliments Cervantes, though never beyond the measure of praise he bestows on many whose claims were greatly inferior. But in his stately flight, it is plain that he soared much above the author of Don Quixote, to whose highest merits he seemed carefully to avoid all homage; and though I find no sufficient reason to suppose their relation to each other was marked by any personal jealousy or ill-will, as has been sometimes supposed, yet I can find no proof that it was either intimate or kindly. On the contrary, when we consider the good nature of Cervantes, which made him praise to excess nearly all his other literary contemporaries, as well as the greatest of them all, and when we allow for the frequency of hyperbole in such praises at that time, which prevented them from being what they would now be, we may perceive an occasional coolness in his manner, when he speaks of Lope, which shows, that, without overrating his own merits and claims, he was not insensible to the difference in their respective positions, or to the injustice towards himself implied by it. Indeed, his whole tone, whenever he notices Lope, seems to be marked with much personal dignity, and to be singularly honorable to him."

Mr. Ticknor, in a note to the above, states that he has been able to find only five passages in all Lope de Vega's works where there is any mention of Cervantes, and not one

of these written after the appearance of the "Don Quixote," during its author's lifetime, a significant fact. One of the passages to which our author refers, and which is from the "Laurel de Apolo," contains, he says, "a somewhat stiff eulogy on Cervantes." We quote the original couplet, which alludes to the injury inflicted on Cervantes' hand in the great Battle of Lepanto.

"Porque se diga que una mano herida

Pudo dar á su dueño eterna vida."

Which may be rendered,

The hand, though crippled in the glorious strife,
Sufficed to gain its lord eternal life.

We imagine that most who read the distich, the Castilian, not the English,- will be disposed to regard it as no inelegant, and certainly not a parsimonious, tribute from one bard to another, at least, if made in the lifetime of the subject of it. Unfortunately, it was not written till some fourteen years after the death of Cervantes, when he was beyond the power of being pleased or profited by praise from any quarter.

Mr. Ticknor closes the sketch of Cervantes with some pertinent and touching reflections on the circumstances under which his great work was composed.

"The romance which he threw so carelessly from him, and which, I am persuaded, he regarded rather as a bold effort to break up the absurd taste of his time for the fancies of chivalry than as any thing of more serious import, has been established by an uninterrupted, and, it may be said, an unquestioned, success ever since, both as the oldest classical specimen of romantic fiction, and as one of the most remarkable monuments of modern genius. But though this may be enough to fill the measure of human fame and glory, it is not all to which Cervantes is entitled; for, if we would do him the justice that would have been dearest to his own spirit, and even if we would ourselves fully comprehend and enjoy the whole of his Don Quixote, we should, as we read it, bear in mind, that this delightful romance was not the result of a youthful exuberance of feeling and a happy external condition, nor composed in his best years, when the spirits of its author were light and his hopes high; but that with all its unquenchable and irresistible humor, with its bright views of the world, and its cheerful trust in goodness and virtue it was written in his old age, at the conclusion of a life nearly every step

of which had been marked with disappointed expectations, disheartening struggles and sore calamities; that he began it in a prison, and that it was finished when he felt the hand of death pressing heavy and cold upon his heart. If this be remembered as we read, we may feel, as we ought to feel, what admiration and reverence are due, not only to the living power of Don Quix ote, but to the character and genius of Cervantes."

The next name that meets us in the volume is that of Lope de Vega Carpio, the idol of his generation, who lived, in all the enjoyment of wealth and worldly honors, in the same city, and, as some accounts state, in the same street, where his illustrious rival was pining in poverty and neglect. If posterity has reversed the judgment of their contemporaries, still we cannot withhold our admiration at the inexhaustible invention of Lope, and the miraculous facility of his composition. His achievements in this way, perfectly well authenticated, are yet such as to stagger credibility. He wrote, in all, about eighteen hundred regular dramas, and four hundred autos pieces of one act each. Besides this, he composed, at leisure intervals, no less than twenty-one printed volumes of miscellaneous poetry, including eleven narrative and didactic poems of much length, in ottava rima, and seven hundred sonnets, also in the Italian measure. His comedies, amounting to between two and three thousand lines each, were mostly rhymed, and interspersed with ballads, sonnets, and different kinds of versification. Critics have sometimes amused themselves with computing the amount of matter thus actually thrown off by him in the course of his dramatic career. The sum swells to twenty-one million, three hundred thousand verses! He lived to the age of seventy-two, and if we allow him to have employed fifty years — which will not be far from the truth-in his theatrical compositions, it will give an average of something like a play a week, through the whole period, to say nothing of the epics, and other miscellanies! He tells us further, that, on one occasion, he produced five entire plays in a fortnight. And his biographers assure us that, more than once, he turned off a whole drama in twenty-four hours. These plays, it will be recollected, with their stores of invention and fluent versification, were the delight of all classes of his countrymen, and the copious fountain of supply to half the theatres of Europe.

Well might Cervantes call him the "monstruo de naturaleza," the "miracle of nature."

The vast popularity of Lope, and the unprecedented amount of his labors, brought with them, as might be expected, a substantial recompense. This remuneration was of the most honorable kind, for it was chiefly derived from the public. It is said to have amounted to no less than a hundred thousand ducats, which, estimating the ducat at its probable value of six or seven dollars of our day, has no parallel or, perhaps, not more than one

upon record.

Yet Lope did not refuse the patronage of the great. From the Duke of Sessa he is said to have received, in the course of his life, more than twenty thousand ducats. Another of his noble patrons was the Duke of Alva; not the terrible duke of the Netherlands, but his grandson a man of some literary pretensions, hardly claimed for his great ancestor. Yet with the latter he has been constantly confounded, by Lord Holland, in his life of the poet, by Southey, after an examination of the matter, and lastly, though with some distrust, by Nicholas Antonio, the learned Castilian biographer. Mr. Ticknor shows, beyond a doubt, from a critical examination of the subject, that they are all in error. The inquiry and the result are clearly stated in the notes, and are one among the many evidences which these notes afford of the minute and very accurate researches of our author into matters of historical interest, that have baffled even the Castilian scholars.

We remember meeting with something of a similar blunder in Schlegel's Dramatic Lectures, where he speaks of the poet Garcilasso de la Vega as descended from the Peruvian Incas, and as having lost his life before Tunis. The fact is, that the poet died at Nice, and that, too, some years before the birth of the Inca Garcilasso, with whom Schlegel so strangely confounds him. One should be charitable to such errors, though a dogmatic critic, like Schlegel, has as little right as any to demand such charity, for we well know how difficult it is always to escape them, when, as in Castile, the same name seems to descend, as an heirloom, from one generation to another; if it be not, indeed, shared by more than one of the same generation. In the case of the Duke of Alva, there was not even this apology.

Mr. Ticknor has traced the personal history of Lope de Vega, so as to form a running commentary on his literary. It will be read with satisfaction, even by those who are familiar with Lord Holland's agreeable life of the poet, since the publication of which more ample researches have been made into the condition of the Castilian drama. Those who are disposed to set too high a value on the advantages of literary success may learn a lesson by seeing how ineffectual it was to secure the happiness of that spoiled child of fortune. We give our author's account of his latter days, when his mind had become infected with the religious gloom which has too often settled round the evening of life with the fanatical Spaniard.

"But as his life drew to a close, his religious feelings, mingled with a melancholy fanaticism, predominated more and more. Much of his poetry composed at this time expressed them; and at last they rose to such a height, that he was almost constantly in a state of excited melancholy, or, as it was then beginning to be called, of hypochondria. Early in the month of August, he felt himself extremely weak, and suffered more than ever from that sense of discouragement which was breaking down his resources and strength. His thoughts, however, were so exclusively occupied with his spiritual condition, that, even when thus reduced, he continued to fast, and on one occasion went through with a private discipline so cruel, that the walls of the apartment where it occurred were afterwards found sprinkled with his blood. From this he never recovered. He was taken ill the same night; and, after fulfilling the offices prescribed by his Church with the most submissive devotion, - mourning that he had ever been engaged in any occupations but such as were exclusively religious, he died on the 25th of August, 1635, nearly seventythree years old.

"The sensation produced by his death was such as is rarely witnessed even in the case of those upon whom depends the welfare of nations. The Duke of Sessa, who was his especial patron, and to whom he left his manuscripts, provided for the funeral in a manner becoming his own wealth and rank. It lasted nine days. The crowds that thronged to it were immense. Three bishops officiated, and the first nobles of the land attended as mourners. Eulogies and poems followed on all sides, and in numbers all but incredible. Those written in Spain make one considerable volume, and end with a drama in which his apotheosis was brought upon the public stage. Those written in Italy