[259] “But let the reader note well,” says Lope, “that the verses of Master Burguillos must be supposititious; for he did not appear at the contest; and all he wrote is in jest, and made the festival very savory. And as he did not appear for any prize, it was generally believed that he was a character introduced by Lope himself.” Obras, Tom. XI. p. 401. See also p. 598.
[260] The proceedings and poems of this second great festival were printed at once at Madrid, in a quarto volume, 1622, ff. 156, and fill Tom. XII. of the Obras Sueltas.
[261] The edition which claims a separate and real existence for Burguillos is that found in the seventeenth volume of the “Poesías Castellanas,” collected by Fernandez and others. But, besides the passages from Lope himself cited in a preceding note, Quevedo says, in an Aprobacion to the very volume in question, that “the style is such as has been seen only in the writings of Lope de Vega”; and Coronel, in some décimas prefixed to it, adds, “These verses are dashes from the pen of the Spanish Phœnix”; hints which it would have been dishonorable for Lope himself to publish, unless the poems were really his own. The poetry of Burguillos is in Tom. XIX. of the Obras Sueltas, just as Lope originally published it in 1634. There is a spirited German translation of the Gatomachia in Bertuch’s Magazin der Span. und Port. Literatur, Dessau, 1781, 8vo, Tom. I.
[262] The poems are in Tom. II. of the Obras Sueltas. The discussion about the new poetry is in Tom. IV. pp. 459-482; to which should be added some trifles in the same vein, scattered through his Works, and especially a sonnet beginning, “Boscan, tarde llegamos”;—which, as it was printed by him with the “Laurel de Apolo,” (1630, f. 123), shows, that, though he himself sometimes wrote in the affected style then in fashion, to please the popular taste, he continued to disapprove it to the last. The Novela is in Obras, Tom. VIII.
[263] The three poems are in Tom. III.; the epistles in Tom. I. pp. 279, etc.; and the three tales in Tom. VIII.
[264] Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. p. 2; also Tom. III. Preface.
[265] There are editions of the eight at Saragossa, (1648), Barcelona, (1650), etc. There is some confusion about a part of the poems published originally with these tales, and which appear among the works of Fr. Lopez de Zarate, Alcalá, 1651, 4to. (See Lope, Obras, Tom. III. p. iii.) But such things are not very rare in Spanish literature, and will occur again in relation to Zarate.
[266] The account is found in a MS. history of Madrid, by Leon Pinelo, in the King’s Library; and so much as relates to this subject I possess, as well as a notice of Lope himself, given in the same MS. under the date of his death. It is cited, and an abstract of it given, in Casiano Pellicer, “Orígen de las Comedias,” (Madrid, 1804, 12mo), Tom. I. pp. 104, 105.
[267] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIII.
[268] A la Muerte de Carlos Felix, Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 365.