As a prose writer he began with a _Life of St. Thomas of Villanueva_ (1620), and ended with a _Life of St. Paul the Apostle_ (1644). These, and his other moralisings—_Virtue Militant_, the _Cradle and the Tomb_—call for no notice here. The _Política de Dios_ (1618) is apparently an abstract plea for absolutism; in fact, it exposes the weakness of Spanish administration just as the _Marcus Brutus_ (1644) is a vehicle for opinions on contemporary politics. Learned and acute, these treatises show Quevedo's concern for his country's future, and a passage in his sixty-eighth sonnet forecasts the future of the Spanish colonies:—"'Tis likelier far, O Spain! that what thou alone didst take from all, all will take from thee alone"— "_Y es más facil! oh España ¡en muchas modas Que lo que á todos les quitaste sola, Te puedan á tí sola quitar todos._" The prophecy is just being fulfilled, and the chief interest of Quevedo's prose treatises lies in their _conceptismo_—the flashy epigram, the pompous paradox, the strained antithesis, the hairsplitting and refining in and out of season. It was vain for Quevedo to edit Luis de León and Torre as a protest against Gongorism, for in his own practice he substituted one affectation for another. The true and simpler Quevedo is to be sought elsewhere. His picaresque _Historia de la Vida del Buscón_, best known by its unauthorised title, _El Gran Tacaño_ (The Prime Scoundrel), though not published till 1626, was probably written soon after 1608. Pablo, son of a barber and a loose woman, follows a rich schoolfellow to Alcalá, where he shines in every kind of devilry. Thence he passes into a gang of thieves, is imprisoned, lives as a sham cripple, an actor, a bravo, and finally—his author being weary of him—emigrates to America. There is no attempt at creating character, no vulgar obtrusion of Alemán's moralising tone: such amusement as the novel contains is afforded by the invention of heartless incident and the acrid rendering of villany. The harsh jeering, the intense brutality, the unsympathetic wit and art of the _Buscón_, make it one of the cleverest books in the world, as it is one of the cruellest and coarsest in its misanthropic enjoyment of baseness and pain. No less characteristic of Quevedo are his _Sueños_ (Visions), printed in 1627. These fantastic pieces are really five in number, though most collections print seven or eight; for the _Infierno Enmendado_ (Hell Reformed) is not a vision, but is rather a sequel to the _Política de Dios_; the _Casa de Locos de Amor_ is probably the work of Quevedo's friend, Lorenzo van der Hammen; and the _Fortuna con Seso_ was not written till 1635. Quevedo himself calls the _Sueño de la Muerte_ (Vision of Death) the fifth and last of the series. Satire in Lucian's manner had already been introduced into Spanish literature by Valdés in the _Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón_, in the _Crotalón_ (which most authorities ascribe to Cristóbal de Villalón), and in the