"_Since thou desirest, I will then unveil Myself to thee;—for in myself I am A world of happiness and misery; This I have lost, and that I must lament For ever. In my attributes I stood So high and so heroically great, In lineage so supreme, and with a genius Which penetrated with a glance the world Beneath my feet, that was by my high merit. A King—whom I may call the King of kings, Because all others tremble in their pride Before the terrors of his countenance— In his high palace roofed with brightest gems Of living light—call them the stars of heaven— Named me his counsellor. But the high praise Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose In mighty competition, to ascend His seat, and place my foot triumphantly Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know The depth to which ambition falls: too mad Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now Repentance of the irrevocable deed; Therefore I close this ruin with the glory Of not to be subdued, before the shame Of reconciling me with him who reigns By coward cession. Nor was I alone, Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone; And there was hope, and there may still be hope, For many suffrages among his vassals Hailed me their lord and king, and many still Are mine, and many more shall be. Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious, I left his seat of empire._" This "grey veil" serves but to heighten the noble poetic quality which turned a cooler head than Shelley's. Goethe was moved to tears, and, though towards the end he perceived the mischief wrought in Germany by the uncritical idolatry of Calderón, he never ceased to admire the only Spanish poet that he really knew. And in our time men like Schack and Schmidt have dedicated their lives to the propagation of the Calderonian gospel. Some part of the poet's fame is due to his translators, some also to the fact that for a long time there was no rival in the field. To the rest of Europe he has stood for Spain. Readers could not divine (and in default of editions they could not contrive to learn) that Calderón, great as he is, comes far short of Lope's freshness, force, and invention, far short of Tirso's creative power and impressive conception. But Spaniards know better than to give him the highest place among their dramatic gods. He is too brilliant to be set aside as a mere follower of Lope's, for he rises to heights of poetry which Lope never reached; yet it is simple history that he did but develop the seed which Lope planted. He made no attempt—and there he showed good judgment—to reform the Spanish drama; he was content to work upon the old ways, borrowing hints from his predecessors, and, in a lazy mood, incorporating entire scenes. If we are to believe Viguier and Philarète Chasles, he went so far as to annex Corneille's _Heraclius_ (1647), and publish it in 1664 as _En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira_ (In this Life All's