As it is, he ranks only just below the greatest, and in one dramatic form peculiar to Spain, he is, by common consent, supreme. Everybody quotes Shelley’s phrase about ‘the light and odour of the starry _autos_’; but scarcely anybody reads the _autos_, and I rather doubt if Shelley read them. It is suggested that he took an _auto_ to mean an ordinary play, and this seems likely enough, for that is what an _auto_ did mean at one time. But an _auto sacramental_ in Calderón’s time was a one-act piece (performed in the open air on the Feast of Corpus Christi) in which the Eucharistic mystery was presented symbolically. We can imagine this being done successfully two or three times, but not oftener. The difficulty was extreme, and as a new _auto_—usually two new _autos_—had to be provided every year, authors had recourse to the strangest devices. There are _autos_ in which Christ is symbolised by Charlemagne (surrounded by his twelve peers), or by Jason, or Ulysses; there are _autos_ in which an attempt is made to evade the conditions by introducing saints famous for their devotion to the Eucharist. Such pieces are illegitimate: they are not really _autos sacramentales_, but _comedias devotas_. Calderón treats the subject within the rigid limits of the convention,—as a doctrinal abstraction,—and he treats it in a spirit of the most reverential art. He does not fail even in _El Valle de la Zarzuela_, where he hampers himself by connecting the theme with one of Philip IV.’s hunting-expeditions. He tells us with a certain dignified pride that his _autos_ had been played before the King and Council for more than thirty years, and he apologises for occasional repetitions by saying that these are not so noticeable at a distance of twenty years as when they occur between the covers of a book. But no apology is needed. Calderón dealt with his abstruse theme more than seventy times—not always with equal success, but never quite unsuccessfully, and never repeating himself unduly. This is surely one of the most dexterous exploits in literature, and Calderón appears to have done it with consummate ease. His reflective genius, steeped in dogma, was far more interested in the mysteries of faith than in the passions of humanity, far more interested in devout symbolism than in realistic characterisation. His figures are pale abstractions? Yes: but he compels us to accept them by virtue of his sublime allegory, his majestic vision of the world invisible, and the adorable loveliness of his lyrism.