Quevedo's serious poems suffer from the conceptismo which disfigures his ambitious prose; his wit, his complete knowledge of low life, his mastery of language show to greater advantage in his picaroon ballads and exercises in lighter verse. His freedom of tone has brought upon him an undeserved reputation for obscenity; the fact being that lewd, timorous fellows have fathered their indecencies upon him. A passage from his Last Will of Don Quixote may be cited, as Mr. Gibson gives it, to illustrate his natural method:—
"Up and answered Sancho Panza;
List to what he said or sung,
With an accent rough and ready
And a forty-parson tongue:
''Tis not reason, good my master,
When thou goest forth, I wis,
To account to thy Creator,
Thou shouldst utter stuff like this;
As trustees, name thou the Curate