He remained at Valencia for some years, and doubtless wrote a great deal, though at that time he published nothing. He formed a friendship there with Vicente Mariner, himself a voluminous poet, whose compositions remain inedited in the king of Spain's libraries. Among these are many to the honour and memory of Lope, and in fierce attack of his enemies--so fierce that they deserve the name of abuse, and show that the Spanish cavalier could descend, as so many literary men have before, to calling names, as argument.[82] After a few years, Lope returned to Madrid; and such was his joy in revisiting the scenes of his youth, and being reunited to his wife, that even his health was affected by it. He did not, however, long enjoy this newfound happiness: his wife died shortly after his return. The death of this lady was celebrated in an eclogue, written conjointly by Lope and Medina Medinilla. The strophes, composed by Lope, are full of the tenderest grief and impatient despair, but there is not a word relative to their separation; he exclaims at Death for having divided them, and implores her to take him to where she is--to where they might live for ever secure together. [Sidenote: 1588. Ætat. 26.] Almost immediately after he became a soldier, and joined the Invincible Armada. The causes of this apparent freak are differently represented. Montalvan attributes it chiefly to his grief on losing his wife. In the eclogue to Claudio, which Lope writes with the avowed intention of recording the events of his early life, but in which he mentions no adventures anterior to this period, he speaks of being banished from Filis, and that he sought relief from his tender sorrows by changing climate and element; and Mars coming to his aid, he marched to Lisbon with the Castilian troops, with a musket on his shoulder, and tore up for cartridges the verses he had written in his mistress's praise. In several of his sonnets also he gives the same reason for his military career.[83]