Lope left no achievement unattempted: the epic, Homeric or Italian, the pastoral, the romantic novel, poems narrative and historical, countless eclogues, epistles, not to speak of short tales, of sonnets innumerable, of verses dashed off on the least occasion. His voluminous private letters, full of wit and malice and risky anecdote, are as brilliant and amusing as they are unedifying. It is sometimes alleged that he deliberately capped Cervantes' work; and, as instances in this sort, we are bid to note that the _Galatea_ was followed by _Dorotea_, the _Viaje del Parnaso_ by the _Laurel de Apolo_. In the first place, exclusive "spheres of influence" are not recognised in literature; in the second, the observation is pointless. The _Galatea_ is a pastoral novel, the _Dorotea_ is not; the first was published in 1585, the second in 1632. Again, the _Viaje del Parnaso_ appeared in 1614, the _Laurel de Apolo_ in 1630. The first model was the _Canto del Turia_ of Gil Polo. It would be as reasonable—that is to say, it would be the height of unreason—to argue that _Persiles y Sigismunda_ was an attempt to cap the _Peregrino en su patria_. The truth is, that Lope followed every one who made a hit: Heliodorus, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso. A frank success spurred him to rivalry, and the difficulty of repeating it was for him a fresh stimulus. Obstacles existed to be vanquished. He was ever ready to accept a challenge; hence such a dexterous _tour de force_ as his famous _Sonnet on a Sonnet_, imitated in a well-known _rondeau_ by Voiture, translated again and again, and by none more successfully than by Mr. Gibson:— "_To write a sonnet doth Juana press me, I've never found me in such stress and pain; A sonnet numbers fourteen lines 'tis plain, And three are gone ere I can say, God bless me! I thought that spinning rhymes might sore oppress me, Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain; And, if the foremost tercet I can gain, The quatrains need not any more distress me. To the first tercet I have got at last, And travel through it with such right good-will, That with this line I've finished it, I ween. I'm in the second now, and see how fast The thirteenth line comes tripping from my quill— Hurrah, 'tis done! Count if there be fourteen!_"