With regard to the number of verses he wrote there is also exaggeration. He says he often wrote five sheets a day; and the most extravagant calculations have been made on this, as if he had written at this rate from the day of his birth, till a month or two after his death. It is evident, however, that the period when he wrote five sheets a day, and a play in the twenty-four hours, was limited to a few years. With all this he is doubtless, even in prolific Spain, the most prolific of writers, and the most facile. Montalvan tells us, that when he was at Toledo, he wrote fifteen acts in fifteen days, making five plays in a fortnight; and he adds an anecdote that fell under his own experience. Roque de Figueroa, a writer for the theatre of Madrid, found himself on an occasion without any new play, and the doors of his theatre were obliged to be shut--a circumstance which shows the vast appetite for novelty that had arisen, and the cause wherefore Lope was induced to write so much, since the public rather desired what was new than what was good. But to return to Montalvan's story. Being carnival, Figueroa was eager to open his theatre, and Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a play together; and they brought out the "Tercera Orden de San Francisco," dividing the labour. Lope took the first act and Montalvan the second, which they completed in two days; and the third they partitioned between them, eight pages for each; and as the weather was bad, Montalvan remained all night in Lope's house. The scholar finding that he could not equal his master in readiness, wished to surpass him by force of industry, and rising at two in the morning, finished his part by eleven. He then went to seek Lope, and found him in the garden, occupied by an orange-tree, which had been frost-bitten in the night. Montalvan asked how his verses speeded? Lope replied, "I began to write at five, and finished the act an hour ago. I breakfasted on some rashers of bacon, and wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and having watered ray garden, I am not a little tired." On this he read his act and his triplets, to the wonder and admiration of his hearer.