In prison Fray Luis wrote his celebrated treatise, the greatest of Spanish mystic books, _Los Nombres de Cristo_, a series of dissertations, in Plato's manner, on the symbolic value of such names of Christ as the Mount, the Shepherd, the Arm of God, the Prince of Peace, the Bridegroom. Published in 1583, the exposition is cast in the form of a dialogue, in which Marcelo, Sabino, and Julián examine the theological mysteries implied by the subject. With Fray Luis's theology we have no concern; nor with his learning, save in so far as it is curious to see the Hellenic-Alexandrine leaven working through in his imitation of St. Clement's _Epistle to the Corinthians_. But his concise eloquence and his classic purity of expression rank him among the best masters of Castilian prose. The like great qualities are shown in his _Exposición del libro de Job_, drawn up by request of Santa Teresa's friend, Sor Ana de Jesús, and in his rendering of and commentary on the _Song of Solomon_, which he holds for an emblematic eclogue to be interpreted as a poetic foreshadowing of the Divine Espousal of the Church with Christ. A book still held in great esteem is his _Perfecta Casada_ (The Perfect Wife), suggested, it may be, by Luis Vives' _Christian Woman_, and composed (1583) for the benefit of María Varela Osorio. It is not, indeed, "_That hymn for which the whole world longs, A worthy hymn in woman's praise._" It is rather a singularly brilliant paraphrase of the thirty-first chapter of the _Book of Proverbs_, a code of practical conduct for the ideal spouse, which may be read with delight even by those who think the friar's doctrine reactionary. Great in prose, Luis de León is no less great in verse. With San Juan de la Cruz he heads the list of Spain's lyrico-mystical poets. Yet he set no value on his poems, which he regarded as mere toys of childhood: so that their preservation is due to the accident of his collecting them late in life to amuse the leisure of the Bishop of Córdoba. We owe their publication to Quevedo, who issued them in 1631 as a counterblast to _culteranismo_. Of the three books into which they are divided, two consist of translations—from Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Euripides, and Pindar; and from the Psalms, the Book of Job, and St. Thomas of Aquin's _Pange lingua_. "I have tried," says Fray Luis of his sacred renderings, "to imitate so far as I might their simple origin and antique flavour, full of sweetness and majesty, as it seems to me;" and he succeeds as greatly in the primitive unction of the one kind as in the faultless form of the other. Still these are but inspired imitations, and the original poet is to be sought for in the first book. Some idea of his ode entitled _Noche Serena_ may be gathered from Mr. Henry Phillips' version of the opening stanzas:—