[Footnote 22: Mendoza felt himself obliged in his own person to refrain from all censure on the edicts of his sovereign. But in a speech he introduced after the manner of Sallust, as spoken by one of the chiefs, he conveyed, in forcible terms, his sense of the persecution which the unhappy Moors endured. The conspirator exclaims: "What hinders a man, speaking Castilian, from following the law of the prophet, or one who speaks Morisco from following that of Jesus? They take our children to their congregations and schools, teaching them arts which our ancestors forbade, that purity of the law might not be disturbed nor its truth disputed. We are threatened at every hour that they shall be taken from the arms of their mothers and the bringing up of their fathers, and carried into distant lands, where they will forget our customs, and learn to become the enemies of the fathers who begot them, and the mothers who bore them. We are ordered to cast off our national dress, and to adopt the Castilian. Germans dress after one manner, the French after another, the Greeks after another. The clergy have a peculiar garb--youths one sort of dress--old men another--each nation, and each profession, and each rank, adopts its own style of dress. Yet all are Christians. And we Moors--why do we dress in the Morisco, as if our faith hung in our garb--not in our hearts?"] LUIS DE LEON 1527-1591. There is a variety in the physiognomy and character of the poets whose biography is here traced, that renders each in himself highly interesting; our misfortune is that we know so little of them. Sedano bitterly laments the obscurity which wraps the history of the great literary men of Spain, through the neglect of their contemporaries to transmit the circumstances of their lives. We have but slight sketches; yet their works, joined to these, individualise the man, and give animation and interest to very slender details. We image Boscan in his rural retirement, philosophising, book in hand;--revolving in his thoughts the harmonies of verse, conversing with his friends, enjoying with placid smile the calm content, or rather, may we not say, the perfect home-felt, heart-reaching happiness of his married life, which he felt so truly, and describes in such lively colours. Young still, his affections ardent, but concentrated, he acknowledges that serenity, confidence, and sweet future hopes; unreserved sympathy, and entire community of the interests of life, is the real Paradise on earth. Garcilaso, the gallant soldier, the tender poet, the admired and loved of all, is of another character, more heroic, more soft, more romantic. Mendoza, with his fiery eye, his vehement temper, his untamed passions--and these mingled with respect for learning, friendship for the worthy, and talents that exalted his nature to something noble and immortal, despite his defects, contrasts with his friends: and the fourth now coming, Luis de Leon--more earnest and enthusiastic than