Putting all these circumstances and hints together, it is plain that Lope suffered a good deal of adversity at this time. His illustrious patron, the duke of Alva, died soon after his marriage. When the duel and other circumstances caused him to fly, he had no powerful friend to assist him, but was driven to absent himself even for years. During so long a separation from home, and being only about four-and-twenty at this period, it is not impossible nor strange that he should have formed an unfortunate attachment. The sonnets Mr. Southey mentions, and which he translates, are the following:-- "Seven long and tedious years did Jacob serve, And short had been the term if it had found Its end desired. To Leah he was bound, And must by service of seven more deserve His Rachael.--Thus will strangers lightly swerve From their pledged word. Yet Time might well repay Hope's growing debt, and Patience might be crowned, And the slow season of expectance passed, True Love with ample recompense at last, Requite the sorrows of this hard delay. Alas for me--to whose unhappy doom, No such blest end appears! Ill fate is his, Who hopes for Rachael in the world to come, And chained to Leah drags his life in this."[87] "When snows before the genial breath of spring Dissolve--and our great Mother reassumes Her robe of green; the meadow breathes perfumes, Loud sings the thrush, the birds are on the wing, The fresh grass grows, the young lambs feed at will. But not to thee, my heart, doth nature bring The joy that this sweet season should instil: Thou broodest alway on thy cherished ill. Absence is no sore grief--it is a glass, Wherein true love from falsehood may be known; Well may the pain be borne which hath an end; But woe to him whose ill-placed hopes attend Another's life, and who till that shall pass In hopeless expectation wastes his own."[88] These sonnets are two among many, all addressed to a lady whom he calls Lucinda. Generally speaking, they treat only of her cruelty and his sufferings: there is no date given to certify at what period they were written; but they were published in 1604, during the life of his second wife--with whom there is every proof that he lived in harmony, and he would never have pained her by publishing his desire for her death. This circumstance renders it conclusive that they referred to the passions of his youth. The "Dorotea" is indeed a singular performance, and we have read it with some care to discover what it contains that gives the idea that he shadowed forth himself. And we will give some account of the work, which diffuse and tedious, will hardly attract the reader, but which at least presents a vivid picture of Spanish manners, and if relating to Lope himself, must be regarded with increased interest. We must premise that though this work was one of the last that he published, and that he mentions it as the favourite his of old age[89], yet that it was written at Valencia in his youth.[90]