Barrientos, however, seems to have been made a scapegoat in this matter. He asserts that he acted on the express order of Juan II., and, in any case, we may feel tolerably sure that he burned as few books as possible, for he kept what was saved for himself. However this may be, owing to his supposed dealings with the devil and the alleged destruction of his library after his death, Villena’s name meets us at almost every turn in Spanish literature: in Quevedo’s _La Visita de los chistes_, in Ruiz de Alarcón’s _La Cueva de Salamanca_, in Rojas Zorrilla’s _Lo que quería ver el Marqués de Villena_, and in Hartzenbusch’s _La Redoma encantada_. These presentations of the imaginary necromancer are interesting in their way, but we have in _Generaciones y Semblanzas_ a portrait of the real Villena done by the hand of a master. There we see him—‘short and podgy, with pink and white cheeks, a huge eater, and greatly addicted to lady-killing; some said derisively that he knew a vast deal of the heavens above, and little of the earth beneath; alien and remote from practical affairs, and in the management of his household and estate so incapable and helpless that it was a wonder manifold.’ Yet Pérez de Guzmán is too keen-eyed to miss Villena’s intellectual gifts. From him we learn that, at an age when other lads are dragged reluctantly to school, Villena set himself to study without a master, and in direct opposition to the wishes of his grandfather and family, showing ‘such subtle and lofty talent that he speedily mastered whatever science or art to which he applied himself, so that it really seemed innate in him by nature.’ Here we have the man set before us—vaguely recalling the figure of Gibbon, but a Gibbon who has left behind him nothing to represent his rare abilities. It must be confessed that Villena owes more of his celebrity to his legend than to his literary work. Perhaps the nearest parallel to him in our own history is Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Both were fired by the enthusiasm of the Renaissance; both were patrons of literature; both were popularly supposed to practise the black art—Villena in person, and Gloucester through the intermediary of his wife, Eleanor Cobham. But, while Duke Humphrey was content to give copies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio to the University of Oxford, Villena took an active part in spreading the light that came from Italy. He was not the first Spaniard in the field. Francisco Imperial, in his _Dezir de las siete virtudes_, had already hailed Dante as his guide and master, and had borrowed phrases from the _Divina Commedia_. Thus when Dante writes— O somma luz, che tanto ti levi dai concetti mortali, alla mia mente ripresta un poco di quel che parevi— Imperial transfers these lines from the _Paradiso_ to his own page in this form:— O suma luz, que tanto te alçaste del concepto mortal, á mi memoria represta un poco lo que me mostraste.