A Castilian of refined manners; a gentleman, true to religion, and true
to honour.

A scholar and a soldier, and fought under the banners of Don John of
Austria, at Lepanto, lost his arm and was captured.

Endured slavery not only with fortitude, but with mirth; and by the
superiority of nature, mastered and overawed his barbarian owner.

Finally ransomed, he resumed his native destiny, the awful task of
achieving fame; and for that reason died poor and a prisoner, while
nobles and kings over their goblets of gold gave relish to their
pleasures by the charms of his divine genius. He was the inventor of
novels for the Spaniards, and in his Persilis and Sigismunda, the
English may find the germ of their Robinson Crusoe.

The world was a drama to him. His own thoughts, in spite of poverty and
sickness, perpetuated for him the feelings of youth. He painted only
what he knew and had looked into, but he knew and had looked into much
indeed; and his imagination was ever at hand to adapt and modify the
world of his experience. Of delicious love he fabled, yet with stainless
virtue.





LECTURE IX.