the stage. The first act fell to Lope’s 
Jot, and the second to mine; we dis- 
" patched these in two days, and the 
third was to be divided into eight 
leaves each. As it was bad weather, 
I remained in his house that night, 
and knowing that I could not equal 
_ him in the execution, I had a fancy 
_ tobeat him in the dispatch of the 
_ business ; for this purpose I got up 
at two o’clock, and at cleven had 
' completed my share of the work. I 
_ immediately went out to look for 
him, and found him very deeply 
_ eccupied with an orange-tree that 
had been frost-bitten in the night. 
- Upon my asking him how he had 
_ gone on with his task, he answered, 
_ * Iset about it at five; but I finish- 
_ ed the act an hour ago ; took a bit 
* of ham for breakfast ; wrote an 
epistle of filty triplets ; and have 
_ watered the whole of the garden : 
_ which has not a little fatigned me.’ 
_ Then taking out the papers, he read 
me the eight leaves and the triplets ; 
a circumstance that would have asto- 
nished me, had [ not known the fer- 
tility of his genius, and the domi- 
Rion he had over the rhymes of our 
language.” 
One of his admirers told an Ita- 
‘lian, he was so.good a_ poet, 
_ that in order to oblige africnd, he 
‘wrotea whole comedy, witha Loa 
and Entremesis; in one night. ‘That, 
sir, replied the Italian, proves hing 
to be a good friend, but not a good 
poet. 
: As Lope had sinsliad Ariosto in his 
Angelica, so he thought to rival 
Wasso in his Jerusalem. ‘Lhis poem 
ke the former consists of twenty 
cantos, it is equally irregular and 
xtravagant in story, and does not 
rontain parts of such beauty, yet it 
isnot one of those books over which 
the reader fcels disposed to fall 
CHARACTERS. 
851 
asleep. Among other odd things 
it contains a long string of riddles. 
There is in the first canto, a picture, 
which walks out of the pannel, as 
in the Castle of Otranto.. A Por. 
tuguese who wrote under the feigne 
ed name of Diogo Camacho, has al- 
Iuded very neatly to this ferusalem 
and the Arcadia, and their great in- 
feriority tothe epic, and the pasto- 
sal of Tasso, 
Lope de Vega, as adramatic wri- 
ter, decided the character of the 
Spanish stage, and to his genius, 
therefore, are in some measure to 
be ascribed, the peculiarities which 
distinguish the modern drama from 
the ancient. 
‘* Whatever may be their com- 
parative merit, it is surely both ab- 
surd and pedantic to judge of the 
one by rules laid down for the 
other,-—a practice which had begun 
in the time of Lope, and is not alto- 
gether abandoned to this day. 
There are many excellencies te 
which.all dramatic authors of every 
age must aspire, and their success 
in these forms the just points of 
comparison: but to censure a mo- 
dern author for not following the 
plan of Sophocles, is as absurd as to 
object to a fresco that it is not 
painted in oil coldurs ; or, as Tira- 
boschi, in his parallel of Arioste 
and ‘Tasso, happily observes, to 
blame Livy for uot writing a poem 
instead of a history. The Greek 
tragedians are probably superior to 
all moderns, if we except Racine, 
in the correctness of their taste, and 
thei> equals at least in the sublimity 
of their peetry, and in the just and 
apirited dclingation of those events 
and passions which they represent. 
These, however, are the merits of 
the execution rather than of the de. 
sign; the talents of the disciple ra- 
ai? ther 
