This motley company was dispersed later. In the revised version of _The Palace of Art Calderón_ finds no place, and the omission causes no more surprise than the omission of ‘eastern Confutzee.’ He is admired as a splendid poet and a great dramatist, but we no longer see him, as Tennyson saw him in 1833, on a sublime and solitary pinnacle of glory—‘a poetical Melchisedec, without spiritual father, without spiritual mother, with nothing round him to explain or account for the circumstances of his greatness.’ As Trench says, there are no such appearances in literature, and Calderón has ceased to be a mystery or a miracle. Yet it was not unnatural that those who took the Schlegels for guides should see him in this light. The fact that the works of other Spanish dramatists were not easily obtainable necessarily gave an exaggerated idea of Calderón’s originality and importance, for it was next to impossible to compare him with his rivals. We are now more favourably situated. We know—what our grandfathers could not know—that Friedrich von Schlegel was as wrong as wrong can be when he assured the world that Calderón was too rich to borrow. In literature no one is too rich to borrow, and Calderón’s indebtedness to his predecessors is great. To give but one instance out of many: the Second Act of _Los Cabellos de Absalón_ is taken bodily from the Third Act of Tirso de Molina’s sombre and sinister tragedy, _La Venganza de Tamar_. This was no offence against the prevailing code of morality in literary matters. Most Spanish dramatists of this period borrowed freely. Lope de Vega, indeed, had such wealth of invention that he was never tempted in this way: so, too, he seldom collaborated. So far from being a help, this division of labour was almost an impediment to him, for he could write a hundred lines in the time that it took him to consult his collaborator. But Lope was unique. Manuel de Guerra, in his celebrated _Aprobación_ to the _Verdadera Quinta Parte_ of Calderón’s plays, calls him a _monstruo de ingenio_. The words recall the _monstruo de naturaleza_, the phrase applied by Cervantes to Lope, but there is a marked difference between the two men—a difference perhaps implied in the two expressions. Lope was possessed by an irresistible instinct which impelled him to constant, and often careless, creation; Calderón creates less lavishly, treats existing themes without scruple, and his recasts are sometimes completely successful. His devotees never allow us to forget, for instance, that in _El Alcalde de Zalamea_ he has transformed one of Lope’s dashing improvisations into a most powerful drama, and they cite as a parallel case the _Electra_ of Euripides and the _Electra_ of Sophocles. Just so, when Calderón receives a prize at the poetical jousts held at Madrid in 1620-22, the extreme Calderonians are reminded of ‘the boy Sophocles dancing at the festival after the battle of Salamis.’ Why drag in Sophocles? There are degrees. It is