_O man, why linger, Now that Hearing hath firm fetter'd To the Faith thy Understanding? Quick, regain the saving vessel Of the sovereign Church, and leave Sin's so highly sweet excesses. Thou, Ulysses, Circe's slave, Fly this false and fleeting revel, Since, how great her power may be, Greater is the power of Heaven, And the true Jove's mightier magic Will thy virtuous purpose strengthen._ The Man. _Yes, thou'rt right, O Understanding; Lead in safety hence my senses._ All. _Let us to our ship; for here All is shadowy and unsettled."_ As a writer of _autos_ Calderón is supreme. Lope, who outshines him at so many points, is far less dexterous than his successor when he attempts the sacramental play. This kind of drama would almost seem created for the greater glory of Calderón. The personages of his worldly plays, and even of his _comedias devotas_, tend to become personifications of revenge, love, pride, charity, and the rest. His set pieces are disfigured by want of humour and by over-refinement—faults which turn to virtues in the _autos_, where abstractions are wedded to the noblest poetry, where the Beyond is brought down to earth, and where doctrinal subtleties are embellished with miraculous ingenuity. To assert that Calderón is incomparably great in the _autos_ is to imply some censure of his art in his secular dramas. The monotony and artifice of his sacramental plays might be thought inherent to the species, were not these two notes characteristic of his whole theatre. Nor is it an explanation to say that much writing of _autos_ had affected his general methods; for not merely are the secular plays more numerous—they are also mostly earlier than the _autos_, whose real defects are a lack of dramatic interest, an appeal to a taste so local and so temporary that they are now as extinct in Spain as are masques in England. Still the passing fashions which produced _Comus_ in the north, and the _Encantos de la Culpa_ or the _Cena de Baltasar_ in the south, are justified to all lovers of great poetry. The _autos_ lingered on the stage till 1765, but their genuine inspiration ended with Calderón, who, in all but a literal sense, may be held for their creator.