a fair emblem of the superiority in point of merit of Lope's verses over those of all other poets together." But setting aside the exaggerations of his devoted admirer, this much is pretty certain not only did Lope de Vega actually produce fifteen hundred dramas, but they were as our friend Johnson tells us his own five were-all successful! They delighted all Spain, charmed even the sombre spirit of Philip the Second, and-sure test of success

In present dramas, as in days gone by,

they brought in money to the theatres' treas uries, and secured a competence to their author.

We have already stated that the number of his works given above is that recorded by M. Damas Hinard, and others. But as if this were not sufficiently miraculous, some of his biographers adopt a considerably higher figure. Montalvan, above alluded to, asserts in his Fama Postuma (a work pub lished in honor of Lope de Vega, in sixteen hundred and thirty-six, a few months only after the poet's death) that he had written EIGHTEEN hundred plays, and FOUR hundred autos sacramentales! This is the number also quoted by Lord Holland, in his Life of Lope de Vega, published in eighteen hundred and six.

Bouterwek, in the volume of his Geschichte der Poesie and Beredsamkeit, which treats on Spanish literature (published about eighteen hundred and eight) surpasses even Montalvan in his estimate of Lope de Vega's fecundity. He says that "Lope de Vega required no more than four-and-twenty hours to write a versified drama of three acts in redondillas, interspersed with sonnets, tercets, and octaves, and from beginning to end abounding in intrigues, prodigies, or interesting situations. This astonishing facility enabled him to supply the Spanish theatre with upwards of TWO THOUSAND original dramas. He tells us that the theatrical managers would wait at Lope's elbow, carrying off the acts as fast as he could write them, not giving the poet time even to revise his work; and that immediately upon one play being finished, a fresh applicant would arrive to prevail on him to commence a new piece? A wholesale manufactory of dramas, truly! What would friend Johnson think of orders coming in like this?

testimony, he wrote on an average five sheets per day; it has therefore been computed that the number of sheets which he composed during his life must have amounted to one hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred and twenty-five." This computation, however, strikes us as somewhat doubtful, inasmuch as it proceeds on the supposition that Lope's average of five sheets per diem extended throughout the whole seventy-three years of his existence, commencing at his birth-when for a day or two at least he would not do much, precocious though we know him to have been-and finishing with his death. We should hardly think that Lope quite meant this when he laid down the average, though really we feel so bewildered amongst all these high figures, that we know not exactly what to think. We feel as if we were working out sums in astronomy, and calculating distances of stars, instead of reckoning a literary man's productions. However, come we at once to the last grand total-right or wrong. Bouterwek says it is estimated," that allowing for the deduction of a small portion of prose, Lope de Vega must have written upwards of twenty-one-million three hundred thousand verses.

Lord Holland also adopts this estimate, but, like all the rest of them, manages still to magnify it, even while he quotes. He tells us "twenty-one millions three hundred thousand of his lines are said to be actually printed." And yet we find Lope de Vega himself, in the Eclogue to Claudio, one of his latest works, declaring that, large as is the quantity of his printed works, those which still remain unprinted are even yet more numerous. So, if we take Lord Holland's statement of the quantity actually printed, and remembering that the printed portion is not half of what Lope de Vega wrote altogether,-But no. We must refrain. We are getting once more into the high numbers, and we begin already to feel giddy. So we must let Lord Holland, Bouterwek, Montalvan, and the rest, say what they please; we cannot possibly keep pace with them, but must needs content ourselves with the very moderate figure we commenced with, and say that Lope de Vega, after all, wrote only fifteen hundred plays.

For this quantity, however-marvellous, nay incredible, as it may seem-pretty conclusive evidence may be advanced. It would be tedious to enumerate all the facts which tend to prove it. Two will suffice. In the first place, that number was given by Doctor

Fernando Cardosa, the intimate friend of Lope de Vega, in the funeral speech he made over the poet's grave. It is just possible, we grant, that on so solemn, and yet so exciting, an occasion as a funeral oration, the orator may be induced to speak more highly of his friend departed than, perhaps, strictest truth would warrant. Nay, we have heard it said, that even sculptured epitaphs have been known, ere now, in some slight manner to exaggerate the merits of the dead. But figures will not stand this sort of thing. There is a stern matter-of fact principle about figures an absence of all poetry, sympathy, or feeling that at once suppresses anything like trifling with them. Orators may win men to anything, but figures know that two and two are four, and they will stick to it, say what you will. Therefore, however anxious the doctor may have been to make the most of his subject, he would hardly, we should say, have ventured on the hazardous experiment of "cooking the accounts," at a time when his arithmetic could be immediately set right by simple reference to the files of playbills. Managers did keep some accounts, we suppose, even in those days.

Still less safely could Lope de Vega himself in his own lifetime have ventured on exaggeration in this matter, and so we feel we must, at least, place some reliance on the statements he, from time to time, put out of his own progress. He was in the habit of publishing at various periods, in the prefaces to his new works, either a list or an account of the number of his plays when written. Accordingly, we find the figure regularly advancing from the year sixteen hundred and three, when, in the prologue to his Pelegrino, he gives a catalogue of three hundred and thirty-seven plays; to the list contained in his Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias, pub. lished in sixteen hundred and nine, when they amounted to four hundred and eighty-three; to that given with a new volume of his plays, in sixteen hundred and eighteen, when they had reached the number of eight hundred; to a list of nine hundred plays, in the year sixteen hundred and twenty; to one of a thousand and seventy in the year sixteen hundred and twenty-five: and, lastly, in his Eclogue to Claudio (sixteen hundred and thirty), he says: "But if I come now to tell you of the infinite number of comic fables, you will be astonished to hear that I have composed fifteen hundred."

Pero si ahora el numero infinito De las fabulas comicas intento VOL. XXXVI.—NO. III.

Is our account of Lope de Vega's labors yet sufficiently miraculous? Shall we now leave him with his fifteen hundred plays, and other works, content to let our readers wonder that he did so much? Or shall we risk their incredulity by telling them that he did more? We feel half tempted to go on,

and in a brief sketch of some of his adventures and occupations to show how much of his life, of little more than threescore years and ten, must have been taken up by other matters than this mighty mass of literary work. For Lope de Vega was a soldier, a secretary, an alchemist, a priest; he married twice, and had a family; he studied and became proficient in the Latin, Italian, French, and Portuguese tongues, and yet found time to write his fifteen hundred plays!

How

Our readers may suppose he was not long about anything he took in hand. In fact, if we believe his friend, Montalvan, he began at once as he intended to go on-almost we may say from his cradle. We are told that he understood Latin at the ripe age of five; and also, much about the same time commenced composing Spanish verses, which he dictated to his playfellows to write down for him-for he became an author before he had learned to write. He sold his verses too (the clever dog!) for toys and sweetmeats. rarely do we find the genius and the man of business thus combined! Between eleven and twelve years of age, he himself informs us, in his New Art of Dramatic Writing (Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias), he had written several petites comédies, in the antique Spanish form of four short acts. At fourteen years of age (Anno Domini fifteen hundred and seventy-six) he ran away from college to see the world; and, in the following year, entered the army, serving both in Portugal and in Africa, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz. The next year he came home again, and engaged himself as page and secretary to the Bishop of Avilla, working away, of course, at his poetry all the while, as none but Lope de Vega or a steam-engine could work, and producing, amongst various other things, a pastoral comedy in three acts, called La Pastoral de Jacinto, the authorsoldier-secretary being then sixteen years of age! Sent by his patron, the bishop, to the university of Alcalà, he went to work at the solid fare of philosophy, theology, and mathematics, taking at the same time, by way of a relish, the Italian, Portuguese and French

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for his voracious appetite. So-to carry out the simile he flew to the occult sciences, as to a lump of bread and cheese to finish up with. And now he was never happy but when in the midst of crucibles, furnaces, and alembics. If any one could have found out the grand secret, it would surely have been Lope de Vega. He didn't; so we must needs suppose the alchemists were laboring under a mistake.

Next Lope de Vega fell in love. Some say with one lady; some say with two. We should incline to think the latter--one at a time could hardly be enough for him. He didn't marry them, nor either of them. Some time afterwards, thinking it time to settle down in life, he made his mind up to become a priest. He underwent the necessary preparations, and was on the very eve of being ordained, when he fell in love again. The church and priestly vows were no more to be thought of. He married. This was in fifteen hundred and eighty-four.

Scarcely was he married, however, thanjust by way of a change-he got into prison, owing to a duel. He escaped, of course; it was not likely he could wait until his time of imprisonment was over. He went to Valencia, remained there some time writing, until upon the death of his wife he flew once more to battle, for excitement, and embarked on board the Invincible Armada, which Philip the Second was then fitting out to invade the English coasts. The Invincible Armada being thoroughly destroyed, Lope next visited Italy, spending some years in Naples, Parma, and Milan. Returning once more to Madrid, he married again, and by his second wife was soon made a happy father. Now he was writing in earnest for the stage, poverty and himself, as he tells us, "having entered into partnership as traders in verses;" and a very large proportion of his plays were the production of this trading firm during the tranquil years of his second marriage. He lost his second wife in the year sixteen hundred and seven, some sixteen years after he had married her, and then he joined the Inquisition, and finally became a priest.

His priestly duties were numerous, but even yet he managed to find time for the theatre, and the very year that he was made a priest (sixteen hundred and nine) he wrote his Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias, and we would rather not venture upon saying how many plays.

But we are not writing the life of Lope de Vega. We have alreadygone at a much greater

The writer for the theatre at Madrid was at one time at such a loss for comedies that the doors of the Theatre de la Cruz were shut; but as it was in the Carnival, he was extremely anxious on the subject, so Lope and his friend Montalvan were applied to, and they agreed to compose a joint comedy as fast as possible. It was the Tercera Orden de San Francisco, and is the very one in which Arias acted the part of the Saint (we beg the pardon of leading tragedians now living-the criticism is Montalvan's, not our own) more naturally than was ever witnessed on the stage. The first act fell to Lope's lot, the second to Montalvan's. These were despatched in two days, and the third act was to be divided equally between the two authors, each doing eight leaves. Montalvan went home at night, and being well aware that he could not equal Lope in the execution, he thought (misguided Montalvan !) that he would try and beat him in the despatch of the business. For this purpose he got up at two o'clock in the morning, and managed to complete his portion of the act by eleven. Montalvan then went out-not a little proud of what he'd done, no doubt-to look for Lope. He found him in his garden, very deeply occupied with an orange-tree that had been frost-bitten in the night. What? not at work? Montalvan doubtless thought he'd got him now! He asked him how he had got on with his task, when Lope answered:

"I set about it at five; but I finished the act an hour ago; took a bit of ham for breakfast, wrote an epistle of fifty triplets; and have watered the whole of the garden, which has not a little fatigued me."

Then, taking out the papers, he read to his collaborateur the eight leaves and the triplets, "a circumstance," Montalvan adds, "that would have astonished me, had I not known the fertility of his genius, and the dominion he had over the rhymes of our language."

Well might it have astonished him, indeed! It would have surprised us, if anything could. But then it can't—at least when it relates to Lope de Vega.

And now, out of all the astounding number of his works, how many are there that are ever heard of now? Lord Holland mentioned nine that were still played in his time. More, many more than these are read. But