enthusiastic admirers, and of being able to scorn the suffrage of the
multitude. Gongora, both in Spain and in France, found devoted admirers
and imitators.

LOPE DE VEGA.--Lope de Vega was one of the greatest of the world's poets,
although he was intelligible. Prodigiously fertile, which is not
necessarily a sign of mediocrity, he published some romances in prose
(_Dorothea Arcadia_), some novels, epic or historic poems (_Circe,
_Shepherds of Bethlehem_, Jerusalem Conquered_, _The Beauty of Angelica_,
_The Pilgrim in his Land_, _The White Rose_, _The Tragic Crown_, of which
Mary Stuart is the heroine, _The Laurel of Apollo_, etc.), burlesque and
satirical poems, and dramatic poems the number of which exceed eighteen
hundred. In this mass of production may be discerned comedies of manners,
comedies of intrigue, pastorals, historical comedies (with characters
whose names are known in history), classical and religious tragedies,
mythological, philosophical, and hagiological comedies. Despite these
distinctions, which are useful as a guide in this throng, all the
dramatic work of Lope de Vega is that of imagination which seems to owe
little to practical observation and is valuable through happy invention,
dexterous composition, and the charming fertility and variety of ideas in
the details. The dramatic work of Lope de Vega (as yet incompletely
published and which probably never will be published in its entirety) was
a vast mine wherein quarried not only all the dramatic authors but all
the romancists and novelists of Europe. This prodigious producer, who
wrote millions of verses, is the Homer of Spain and more fertile than
Homer, whilst also a Homer as to whose existence there is no doubt.

ERCILLA.--Alonso de Ercilla created a peculiar species, that of
memorialist epic poems. He was a man concerned in important events, who
took daily notes and subsequently, or even concurrently, put them into