True and All's False); but, as he knew no French, the chances are that both plays derive from a common source—Mira de Amescua's _Rueda de la fortuna_ (1614). In attempts to create character he almost always fails, and when he succeeds—as in _El Alcalde de Zalamea_—he succeeds by brilliantly retouching Lope's first sketch. Goethe hit Calderón's weak spot with the remark that his characters are as alike as bullets or leaden soldiers cast in the same mould; and the constant lyrical interruptions go to show that he knew his own strength. Others might match and overcome him as a playwright: there was none to approach him in such magnificent lyrism as he allots to Justina in _El Mágico Prodigioso_—to be quoted here in FitzGerald's rendering:— "_Who that in his hour of glory Walks the kingdom of the rose, And misapprehends the story Which through all the garden blows; Which the southern air who brings It touches, and the leafy strings Lightly to the touch respond; And nightingale to nightingale Answering a bough beyond...._ _Lo! the golden Girasolé, That to him by whom she burns, Over heaven slowly, slowly, As he travels, ever turns, And beneath the wat'ry main When he sinks, would follow fain, Follow fain from west to east, And then from east to west again...._ _So for her who having lighted In another heart the fire, Then shall leave it unrequited In its ashes to expire: After her that sacrifice Through the garden burns and cries, In the sultry, breathing air, In the flowers that turn and stare...._"