Twelve of the largest vessels, according to the favourite Spanish custom, were named after the twelve apostles. Lope's brother had a commission in the galleon San Juan, and he embarked on board the same vessel. In accordance with the crusading spirit of the expedition, all persons sailing in it were called upon to be duly shriven, and receive the sacrament with humility and repentance; and the general order went on to forbid all blasphemy against God, our Lady, and the saints; all gambling, all quarrels, all duels. Lope felt the enthusiasm of such an hour, and of such a character: a soldier of God going to relieve many contrite spirits oppressed by heretics,--a patriot about to avenge the disasters brought on his country by her enemies. Lope gives an animated description of the setting forth of the Armada,--its drums and clarions, its gay pendants, the ploughing up of the waves by the keels, and the gathering together of the busy crews.[92] Of himself, he says that Aristotle slept, with matter, forms, causes, and accidents; but he was not idle; and in another work, he mentions that in this expedition, in which, for a few years, he followed the career of arms, "my inclination prompted me to use my pen, and the general finished his enterprise when I did mine; for there, on the waters upon the deck of the San Juan, beneath the banners of the Catholic king, I wrote, 'The Beauty of Angelica.'" Thus, amidst storms and disasters, when his brother died in his arms, struck by a ball in a skirmish with the Dutch at the very commencement of the expedition; while the ships around them were a prey to winds, and waves, and the enemy; and the fury of the violent tempests spread destruction around, Lope wrapped himself in his imagination, and beguiled his sorrows and anxieties by the pleasures of composition. "The Beauty of Angelica" is a continuation of Ariosto's poem. The Italian leaves the heroine on her road to Cathay, and Lope brings them to Spain. His tale is unconnected. Carried away by Spanish diffuseness, he frames neither plot nor story, but rambles on as his fancy leads. It opens with the marriage of Lido, a king of Andalusia with Clorinarda, a daughter of the king of Fez, who, meanwhile, loves Cardiloro, a son of Mandricardo and Doralice; a pair familiar to all the readers of Ariosto. The unhappy bride dies of grief, and her husband follows her to the tomb, leaving his kingdom to the most beautiful, be that either man or woman. The judges sit in judgment, and give their stupid opinions, on which Lope exclaims-- "O dotards! through your spectacles who pry, And ask the measure of a lovely face; Measure the influence of a woman's eye, And ye may then I ween compute the space; That intervenes between the earth and sky."[93]