The chronology of Lope's youth is perplexing, and the events of this time are, as a rule, wrongly given by his biographers, even including that admirable scholar, Cayetano Alberto de la Barrera y Leirado, whose _Nueva Biografía_ is almost above praise. In a poetic epistle to Luis de Haro, Lope asserts that he fought at Terceira against the Portuguese: "in my third lustre"—_en tres lustros de mi edad primera_: and Ticknor is puzzled to reconcile this with facts. It cannot be done. Lope was fifteen in 1577, and the expedition to the Azores occurred in 1582. The obvious explanation is that Lope was in his fourth lustre, but that, as _cuatro_ would break the rhythm of the line, he wrote _tres_ instead. Some little licence is admitted in verse, and literal interpreters are peculiarly liable to error. At the same time, it should be said that Lope is coquettish as regards his age. Thus, he says that he was a child at the time of the Armada, being really twenty-six; and that he wrote the _Dragontea_ in early youth, when, in fact, he was thirty-five. This little vanity has led to endless confusion. It is commonly stated that, on Lope's return from the Azores, he entered the household of Gerónimo Manrique, Bishop of Ávila, who sent him to Alcalá de Henares. That Lope studied at Alcalá is certain; but undergraduates then matriculated earlier than they do now. When Lope's first campaign ended he was twenty-one, and therefore too old for college. He was a Bachelor before ever he went to the wars. The love-affair, recounted in his _Dorotea_, is commonly said to have prevented his taking orders at Alcalá: in truth, he never saw the lady till he came back from the Azores! He became private secretary to Antonio Álvarez de Toledo y Beaumont, fifth Duque de Alba, and grandson of the great soldier; but the date cannot be given precisely. As far back as 1572 he had translated Claudian's _Rape of Proserpine_ into Castilian verse, and we have already seen him joined with Cervantes in penning complimentary sonnets for Padilla and López Maldonado (1584). It may be that, while in Alba's service, he wrote the poems printed in Pedro de Moncayo's _Flor de varios romances_ (1589).