had more spirit at seventeen than he ever showed afterwards. Villamediana had many of Góngora's qualities: his courage, his wit, his sense of form, his preciosity. In his _Fábula de Faetón_, as in his _Fábula de la Fénix_, he outdoes his master in eccentricity and verbal foppery: fish become "swimming birds of the cerulean seat," water is "liquid nutriment," time "gnaws statues and digests the marble"; and by hyperbaton and word-juggling he proves himself as _culto_ as he can. But it is fair to say that when it pleases him he is as simple and direct as the early Góngora. It must suffice here to quote Churton's rendering of a sonnet on the proposed marriage of the Infanta Doña María to the Prince of Wales:— "_By Heresy upborne, that giantess Whose pride heaven's battlements in fancy scales, With Villiers his proud Admiral, Charles of Wales To Mary's heavenly sphere would boldly press. A heretic he is, he must confess Heaven's light ne'er led his knighthood's roving sails; But the bright cause his error countervails, And heavenly beauty pleads for love's excess. So now the lamb with cub of wolf must mate; The dove must take the raven to her nest; Our palace, like the old ark, must shelter all: Confusion, as of Babylon the Great, Is round us, and the faith of Spain, oppress'd By fine State-reason, trembles to its fall._" This expresses—much more clearly than the _Gloria de Niquea_—the true feeling of Góngora and his circle towards Steenie and Baby Charles. Less nervous and energetic, but not less fantastic than Villamediana's worst extravagances, are the _Obras póstumas divinas y humanas_ (1641) of HORTENSIO FÉLIX PARAVICINO Y ARTEAGA (1580-1633), whose praises were sung by Lope:— "_Divine Hortensio, whose exalted strain, Sweet, pure, and witty, censure cannot wound, The Cyril and the Chrysostom of Spain._" The divine Hortensio was court-preacher to Felipe IV., and enchanted his congregations by preaching in the _culto_ style. His verses exaggerate Góngora's worst faults, and are disfigured by fulsome flattery of his leader, before whom, as he says, he is dumb with admiration. As thus:—"May my offering in gracious cloud, in equal wealth of fragrance, bestrew thine altars." Paravicino, whose works were published under the name of Arteaga, was a powerful centre of Gongoristic influence, and did more than most men to force _culteranismo_ into fashion. In sermons, poems, and a masque entitled _Gridonia_, he never ceases to spread the plague, which lasted for a century, attacking writers as far apart as Ambrosio Roca y Serna (whose _Luz del Alma_ appeared in 1623), and Agustín de Salazar, the author of the _Cítara de Apolo_ (1677).