Among the followers of Calderón are Antonio Cuello (d. 1652), who is reported to have collaborated with Felipe IV. in _El Conde de Essex_; Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón (fl. 1664), whose _Perfecta Casada_ is a good piece of work; Juan Matos Fragoso (? 1614-92), who borrowed and plagiarised with successful audacity; but these, with many others, are mere imitators, and the Spanish theatre declines lower and lower, till in the hands of Carlos II.'s favourite, Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo (1662-1704), it reaches its nadir. The last good playwright of the classic age is ANTONIO DE SOLÍS Y RIVADENEIRA (1610-86), who, by the accident of his long life, lends a ray of renown to the deplorable reign of Carlos II. His dramas are excellent in construction and phrasing, and his _Amor al uso_ was popular in France through Thomas Corneille's adaptation. But his title to fame rests, not on verse, but on prose. His _Historia de la Conquista de Méjico_ (1684) is a most distinguished performance, even if we compare it with Mariana's. Seeing that Solís lived through the worst periods of Gongorism, his style is a marvel of purity, though a difficult critic might well condemn its cloying suavity. Still, his work has never been displaced since its first appearance, for it deals with a very picturesque period, is eloquent and clear, and is almost excessively patriotic in tone and spirit. Gibbon, in his sixty-second chapter, mentions "an Aragonese history which I have read with pleasure"—the _Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos_ by Francisco de Moncada, Conde de Osuna (1586-1635). "He never quotes his authorities," adds Gibbon; and, in fact, Moncada mostly translates from Ramón Muntaner's Catalan _Crónica_, though he translates in excellent fashion. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1584-1648) writes with force and ease in his uncritical _Corona Gótica_, and in his more interesting literary review, the _República literaria_; his freedom from Gongorism is explained by the fact that he passed most of his life out of Spain. The Portuguese, FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELO (1611-66), is ill represented by his _Historia de los Movimientos, Separación y Guerra de Cataluña_ (1645), where he is given over to both Gongorism and _conceptismo_: in his native tongue—as in his _Apologos Dialogaes_—he writes with simplicity, strength, and wit. Melo's life was unlucky: when he was not being shipwrecked, he was in jail on suspicion of being a murderer; and being out of jail, he was exiled to Brazil. His reward is posthumous: both Portuguese and Spaniards hold him for a classic, and Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo even compares him to Quevedo.