His integrity had been put to the proof at Naples, where bribes were offered him to conceal the frauds practised on the royal revenue; but he was far above dishonesty and peculation. The only slur on his character is his possible complicity in the Bedmar conspiracy; but in those days the advantage of the state to which a man belonged was deemed preponderant to all the suggestions of justice and right. Quevedo also acted on this occasion (if he did act) under the command of his superiors; and believed that fidelity to his patron was his first duty. Of his "Affaires du Cœur," the great subject with poets, we know little. Several ladies are celebrated in his verses; but a great proportion of his erotic poetry is dedicated to one, whom he names Lisi, and to whom he appears to have been faithfully attached for a considerable space of time. In one of his sonnets to her, he says that ten years had taken their swift and noiseless flight since first he saw her; and for these ten years the soft flame had warmed his veins, and reigned over his soul; "for the flame," he says, "that aspires to immortal life, neither fears to die with the body, nor that time should injure or extinguish it." Many of his poems express great aversion to matrimony, and when, at last, in advanced age, he did marry, we have seen that he was widowed almost as soon as wed. With the never-to-be-omitted exception of Cervantes, Quevedo is the most original prose writer Spain has produced; but at the same time he is so quaint, referring to local peculiarities, and using words unknown, except colloquially, that he is often unintelligible, especially in his burlesque poetry, to a foreigner. His countrymen esteem him highly. One of the most pleasing stanzas of Lope de Vega's Laurel de Apolo is dedicated to his praise. He speaks of him as "Possessing an acute but gentle spirit; agreeable in his wit, and profound in his serious poetry." He adopted something of the _culto_ style and conceits blemish his verses. Quintana says of him, "Quevedo was every thing in excess; no one in the same manner displays in the serious, a gravity so rigid, and morals so austere; no one in the jocose, shows a humour, so gay, so free, and so abandoned to the spirit of the thing. His imagination was vivid and brilliant but superficial and negligent; and the poetic genius that animates him, sparkles but does not glow, surprises but does not move deeply, bounds with impetuosity and force, but neither flies nor supports itself at the same elevation. I am well aware that Quevedo often diverts with what he writes, and raves because it is his pleasure. I know that puns have their proper place in such compositions, and that no one has used them more happily than he. But every thing has its bounds; and heaped together with a prodigality like his, instead of pleasing they only create weariness.