Whether Lope shadowed forth himself is very doubtful. There is a sort of dwelling upon trifles, and a reality in the situations, that makes the whole look as if it were founded on fact; yet the facts do not accord with the circumstances known of his life. If it be himself that he portrays, it is himself at two or three and twenty, in the first inexperienced dawn of life, in all the heyday of the passions, when love was life, and moral considerations and the softer affections still lingered far behind in the background. To this period he often alludes in his epistles, when he mentions the troubled sea of love in which he was lost before his second marriage; from which period he dates his peace and felicity. And all this together proves to us that his allusions to an unfortunate attachment have no reference to that happier time. We deduce also from this various evidence that his taking up the life of a soldier, and joining the Armada, arose from his desire to fly from the adversity he had fallen into, "to change clime and element," to begin a new career, in the hope of becoming a new man. Montalvan strengthens this view, when he says that this enterprise was undertaken in a fit of desperation, when he was desirous of finishing life and its sorrows at the same time; and thus driven by adversity, he enlisted under the banners of the duke of Medina Sidonia. Leaving Madrid, he traversed Spain to Cadiz, and thence repaired to Lisbon, where he embarked with a brother, who was an alferez de marina, a title probably answering to our midshipman, unless it be that he was ensign in a marine corps. Lope was a simple volunteer.[91] It is well known with what sanguine expectations of glorious victory the Invincible Armada sailed. The privateering or piratical expeditions of Drake and Hawkins though in accordance with the manners of the times, and, indeed, disgracefully imitated in late years, had excited feelings full of burning animosity and fierce vengeance in the hearts of the Spaniards. Added to these natural feelings, was the odium of English heresy, which, deep rooted and rankling in Philip II.'s heart, was participated in by his subjects; they considered the expedition of the Armada as holy, as well as patriotic. Lope felt the full force of these sentiments; he bade the invincible fleet go forth and burn the world; wind would not be wanting to the sails, nor fire to the artillery, for his breast, he said, would supply the one, and his sorrow the other. Such was his ardour and such his sighs.