This is rather close translation; but students, more interested in matter than in form, asked for a complete rendering. Villena was already at work on the _Æneid_; at the suggestion of Santillana, he further undertook to translate the _Divina Commedia_ into Castilian prose. His diligence was equal to his intrepidity. Begun on September 28, 1427, his translation of Virgil was finished on October 10, 1428, and before this date he had finished his translation of Dante. These prose versions are Villena’s most useful contributions to literature. With the exception of the _Arte cisoria_—a prose pæan on eating which would have attracted Brillat-Savarin, and which confirms Pérez de Guzmán’s report concerning the author’s gormandising habits—his extant original writings are of small value. Pérez de Guzmán, Mena, and Santillana speak of him with respect as a poet, and, as Argote de Molina mentions his ‘coplas y canciones de muy gracioso donayre,’ it is evident that Villena’s verses were read with pleasure as late as 1575 when the _Conde Lucanor_ was first printed. But they have not reached us, and perhaps the world is not much the poorer for the loss. Still, we cannot feel at all sure of this. Villena showed some promise in _Los Trabajos de Hércules_, and ended by becoming one of the clumsiest prose writers in the world; yet Mena exists to remind us that a man who writes detestable prose may have in him the breath of a true poet. Judged by the vulgar test of success, Villena’s career was a failure, and a failure which involved him in dishonour. He did not obtain the marquessate of Villena, and, though inaccurate writers and the general public may insist on calling him the Marqués de Villena, the fact remains that he was nothing of the kind. He had set his heart on becoming Constable of Castile, and this ambition was also baulked. He winked at the adultery of his wife with Enrique III. and connived at her obtaining a decree of nullity on the ground that he was impotent—a statement ludicrously and notoriously untrue of one whom Pérez de Guzmán describes as ‘muy inclinado al amor de las mugeres.’ Enrique _el Doliente_ rewarded the complaisant husband by conferring on him the countship of Cangas de Tineo and the Grand Mastership of the Order of Calatrava; but he was unable to take possession of his countship, was chased from the Mastership by the Knights of the Order, and remained empty-handed and scorned as a pretentious scholar who had not even known how to secure the wages of sin. Meekly bowing under the burden of his shame, Villena retired to his estate of Iniesta or Torralba—two petty morsels of what had once been a rich patrimony—and there passed most of his last years working at his translations or miscellaneous treatises, and dabbling in alchemy. He had once hoped to reach some of the highest positions in the state; in his obscurity, his heart leapt up when he beheld a turkey or a partridge on his table, and he