He passed his early life at Cordova, known and esteemed as a poet and a man of talent. His spirit was high, his character ardent and penetrating, and his pen ready, so that he was induced to indulge in personal satire, a circumstance which in after years he deeply regretted; and he changed so much that a friend of his writes, "he became the most ingenuous, candid, and unoffending man in conversation and writing that Spain ever saw." At the age of forty-five he took holy orders, and soon after visited Madrid, invited by several nobles who, esteeming his worth, and regretting his slender means, believed that he would there be enabled to increase them. But though he frequented the society of the great, he was but slightly benefited. However, through the patronage of the duke of Lerma and the marques de Siete Iglesias, he was named honorary chaplain to Philip III. He was held in much esteem by those nobles who cultivated literature, on account of his great talents; and he founded a sort of school of literature whose disciples were bigoted, zealous, and intolerant. He thus wasted eleven years at court, not deceived by vain hopes, for his experienced understanding prevented his entertaining any such illusions, but forced by necessity. He was then taken suddenly and dangerously ill, while attending on the king in a journey to Valentia, away from all his friends; the queen, however, hearing of his illness, sent a physician to attend him. His head was attacked in a manner not so much to destroy reason, as to take from him all memory; and in this manner he continued lost to the end of his life. At one time, during a short interval of comparative health, he returned to Cordova that he might be buried in his native place. Not long after he died, on the 24th May, 1627, at the age of sixty-six.