Are mine, and many more shall be.
Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious,
I left his seat of empire."
This "grey veil" serves but to heighten the noble poetic quality which turned a cooler head than Shelley's. Goethe was moved to tears, and, though towards the end he perceived the mischief wrought in Germany by the uncritical idolatry of Calderón, he never ceased to admire the only Spanish poet that he really knew. And in our time men like Schack and Schmidt have dedicated their lives to the propagation of the Calderonian gospel. Some part of the poet's fame is due to his translators, some also to the fact that for a long time there was no rival in the field. To the rest of Europe he has stood for Spain. Readers could not divine (and in default of editions they could not contrive to learn) that Calderón, great as he is, comes far short of Lope's freshness, force, and invention, far short of Tirso's creative power and impressive conception. But Spaniards know better than to give him the highest place among their dramatic gods. He is too brilliant to be set aside as a mere follower of Lope's, for he rises to heights of poetry which Lope never reached; yet it is simple history that he did but develop the seed which Lope planted. He made no attempt—and there he showed good judgment—to reform the Spanish drama; he was content to work upon the old ways, borrowing hints from his predecessors, and, in a lazy mood, incorporating entire scenes. If we are to believe Viguier and Philarète Chasles, he went so far as to annex Corneille's Heraclius (1647), and publish it in 1664 as En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira (In this Life All's True and All's False); but, as he knew no French, the chances are that both plays derive from a common source—Mira de Amescua's Rueda de la fortuna (1614). In attempts to create character he almost always fails, and when he succeeds—as in El Alcalde de Zalamea—he succeeds by brilliantly retouching Lope's first sketch. Goethe hit Calderón's weak spot with the remark that his characters are as alike as bullets or leaden soldiers cast in the same mould; and the constant lyrical interruptions go to show that he knew his own strength. Others might match and overcome him as a playwright: there was none to approach him in such magnificent lyrism as he allots to Justina in El Mágico Prodigioso—to be quoted here in FitzGerald's rendering:—
"Who that in his hour of glory
Walks the kingdom of the rose,
And misapprehends the story
Which through all the garden blows;
Which the southern air who brings