[269] See particularly the two beginning on pp. 413 and 423.
[270] It is in Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV.
[271] The atrocious passage is on p. 5. In an epistle, which he addressed to Ovando, the Maltese envoy, and published at the end of the “Laurel de Apolo,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 118), he gives an account of this poem, and says he wrote it in the country, where “the soul in solitude labors more gently and easily!”
[272] It is not easy to tell why these later productions of Lope are put in the first volume of his Miscellaneous Works, (1776-79), but so it is. That collection was made by Cerdá y Rico; a man of learning, though not of good taste or sound judgment.
[273] It fills the whole of the seventh volume of his Obras Sueltas.
[274] “Dorotea, the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my long-protracted life, still asks the public light,” etc. Egloga á Claudio; Obras, Tom. IX. p. 367.
[275] These three poems—curious as his last works—are in Tom. X. p. 193, and Tom. IX. pp. 2 and 10.
[276] “A continued melancholy passion, which of late has been called hypochondria,” etc., is the description Montalvan gives of his disease. The account of his last days follows it. Obras, Tom. XX. pp. 37, etc.; and Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. pp. 360-363.
[277] See Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX.-XXI., in which they are republished;—Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The Spanish, which were brought together by Montalvan, and are preceded by his “Fama Póstuma de Lope de Vega,” may be regarded as a sort of justa poética in honor of the great poet, in which above a hundred and fifty of his contemporaries bore their part.
[278] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 42. For an excellent and interesting discussion of Lope’s miscellaneous works, and one to which I have been indebted in writing this chapter, see London Quarterly Review, No. 35, 1818. It is by Mr. Southey.