Yet his chief glory must, like Burns's, be ever local. Cervantes, for all his national savour, might conceivably belong to any country; but Lope de Vega is the incarnate Spains. His gaiety, his suppleness, his adroit construction, his affluence, his realism, are eminently Spanish in their strength; his heedless form, his journalistic emphasis, his inequality, his occasional incoherence, his anxiety to please at any cost, are eminently Spanish in their weakness. He lacks the universal note of Shakespeare, being chiefly for his own time and not for all the ages. Shakespeare, however, stands alone in literature. It is no small praise to say that Lope follows him on a lower plane. There are two great creators in the European drama: Shakespeare founds the English theatre, Lope de Vega the Spanish, each interpreting the genius of his people with unmatched supremacy. And unto both there came a period of eclipse. That very generation which Lope had bewildered, dominated, and charmed by his fantasy turned to the worship of Calderón. Nor did he profit by the romantic movement headed by the Schlegels and by Tieck. For them, as for Goethe, Spanish literature was incarnated by Cervantes and by Calderón. The immense bulk of Lope's production, the rarity of his editions, the absence of any representative translation, caused him to be overlooked. To two men—to Agustín Durán in Spain and to Grillparzer in Germany—he owes his revival;[24] and, in more modest degree, Lord Holland and George Henry Lewes have furthered his due recognition. The present tendency is, perhaps, to overrate him, and to substitute uncritical adoration for uncritical neglect. Yet he deserves the fame which grows from day to day; for if he have bequeathed us little that is exquisite in art—as _Los Pastores de Belén_—the world is his debtor for a new and singular form of dramatic utterance. In so much he is not only a great executant in the romantic drama, a virtuoso of unexcelled resource and brilliancy. He is something still greater: the typical representative of his race, the founder of a great and comprehensive _genre_. The genius of Cervantes was universal and unique; Lope's was unique but national. Cervantes had the rarer and more perfect endowment. But they are immortals both; and, paradox though it may seem, a second Cervantes is a likelier miracle than a second Lope de Vega. * * * * *