It has been granted us to know Lope de Vega better than we know most of our contemporaries. He lived in the merciless light of publicity; his slightest slip was noted by vigilant eyes and rancorous pens; and he has himself recorded the weaknesses which any other man would have studiously concealed. Yet, gross as were his sins, his individual charm is irresistible. Ruiz de Alarcón taxed him with being envious, and from the huge mass of his confidential correspondence, a few detached phrases are picked out to support this charge. None of us is as frank as Lope; yet it seems highly probable that, if a selection were made from the private letters written in this city to-day and this selection were published in the newspapers to-morrow, a certain number of personal difficulties might follow. But let us test Ruiz de Alarcón’s charge. Of whom should Lope be envious? Not of Ruiz de Alarcón himself, undoubtedly a remarkable dramatist, but never popular as Lope was. Not of Tirso de Molina, another great dramatist, but a personal friend of Lope’s. Not of Cervantes, who had abandoned the stage long before he succeeded so greatly in romance. Not of Góngora, of whose poetic principles Lope disapproved, but to whom he paid sedulous court. Not of Calderón, who was nearly forty years younger than himself, and whom he first presented to the public. The accusation has no more solid base than a few choleric words dropped in haste. The truth is that Lope is open to precisely the opposite charge of culpable complaisance. His genius, like that of Cervantes, was creative, not critical; his praise is fulsome, indiscriminating, and therefore ineffective. He was a most loyal friend, and to him all his geese are swans. His _Laurel de Apolo_ is an exercise in adulation of no more critical value than Cervantes’s _Canto de Calíope_. Famous writers, once in port, are inclined to ‘nurse’ their fame by conciliating their rivals. Lope’s constant successes provided him with so many foes that it would have been folly to increase their number by attacking rising men. Like most other contemporaries he detested Ruiz de Alarcón; but Ruiz de Alarcón could take very good care of himself in a wrangle, and perhaps a man is not universally detested without some good reason. Apart from any question of tactics, Lope was naturally generous. There is a credible story that he dashed off the _Orfeo_ to launch Pérez de Montalbán, who published it under his own name, and thus started on a prosperous, feverish career.