"_I must confess, Don John, on due inspection, That dame Elvira's charming red and white, Though fair they seem, are only hers by right, In that her money purchased their perfection; But thou must grant as well, on calm reflection, That her sweet lie hath such a lustre bright, As fairly puts to shame the paler light, And honest beauty of a true complexion! And yet no wonder I distracted go With such deceit, when 'tis within our ken That nature blinds us with the self-same spell; For that blue heaven above that charms us so, Is neither heaven nor blue! Sad pity then That so much beauty is not truth as well._" Lupercio's manifold interests in politics, in history, and in the theatre left him little time for poetry, and a large proportion of his verses were destroyed after his death; still, partially represented as he is, the pretty wit, the pure idiom, and elegant form of his lyrical pieces vindicate his title to rank among Castilian poets of the second order. As for Bartolomé, he resembles his brother in natural faculty, but his fibre is stronger. A hard, dogmatic spirit, a bigot in his reverence for convention, an idolater of Terence, with a stern, patriotic hatred of novelties, he was regarded as the standard-bearer of the anti-Gongorists. Too deeply ingrained a doctrinaire to court popularity, he was content with the applause of a literary clique, and had practically no influence on his age. Yet his precept was valuable, and his practice, always sound, reaches real excellence in such devout numbers as his _Sonnet to Providence_.