PRINTED IN ENGLAND
AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY FREDERICK HALL




PREFACE


This biographical sketch is, in fact, a fragment of a book which will
now never come into existence. This particular chapter has been
snatched from the burning by an accident. The name of Luis de Leon
deservedly ranks as high as that of any poet in the history of Spanish
literature; but his reputation as a poet is mostly local, while he is
known all the world over as the subject of a dubious anecdote. The
attempt is now made to render him more familiar than he has hitherto
been to English-speaking people, and to do this, to exhibit the man as
he was, it proved necessary to analyse the two volumes of his first
trial, the evidence of which is brought together in vols. X and XI of
the _Coleccion de Documentos inéditos para la Historia de España_.
Edited by Miguel Salvá and Pedro Sainz de Baranda, these volumes
appeared in 1847; their value is incontestable, but, though they give
the evidence as it occurs in the register of the Inquisition, this
evidence is not arranged in consistent chronological order, nor is it
supplied with an index. The work, printed seventy-three years ago, is
not within easy reach of every reader; and of those who have access to
it not all are patient enough to read steadily through so large a mass
of somewhat incoherent matter. Should any such readers be tempted to