Rojas is the first Spanish novelist who brings a conscience to his work, who aims at more than whiling away an idle hour. He is not great in incident, his plot is clumsily fashioned, the pedantry of his age fetters him; but in effects of artistry, in energy of phrasing, he is unmatched by his coevals. Though he invented the comic type which was to become the _gracioso_ of Calderón, his humour is thin; on the other hand, his realism and his pessimistic fulness are above praise. Choosing for his subject the tragedy of illicit passion, he hit on the means of exhibiting all his powers. His purpose is to give a transcript of life, objective and impersonal, and he fulfils it, adding thereunto a mysterious touch of sombre imagination. His characters are not Byzantine emperors and queens of Cornwall: he traffics in the passions of plain men and women, the agues of the love-sick, the crafts of senile vice, the venality and vauntings of picaroons, the effrontery of croshabells. Hence, from the first hour, his book took the world by storm, was imprinted in countless editions, was continued by Juan Sedeño and Feliciano da Silva—the same whose "reason of the unreasonableness" so charmed Don Quixote—was imitated by Sancho Muñón in _Lisandro y Roselia_, was used by Lope de Vega in the _Dorotea_, and was passed from the Spanish stage to be glorified as _Romeo and Juliet_. Between the years 1508-12 was composed the anonymous _Cuestión de Amor_, a semi-historical, semi-social novel wherein contemporaries figure under feigned names, some of which are deciphered by the industry of Signor Croce, who reveals Belisena, for example, as Bona Sforza, afterwards Queen of Poland. Though much of its first success was due to the curiosity which commonly attaches to any _roman à clef_, it still interests because of its picturesque presentation of Spanish society in Italian surroundings, and the excellence of its Castilian style was approved by that sternest among critics, Juan de Valdés.