"His verse, however, is for the most part full and sonorous, his rhyme rich and easy. His poetry, strong and nervous, proceeds impetuously to its end; and if his movements betray too much of the effort, affectation and bad taste of the writer, their course is yet frequently seen to have a wildness, an audacity, and a singularity hat is surprising.[121]" To give some idea of Quevedo's style to the English reader we may liken him to Butler; but it is Butler rather in his fragments than in Hudibras, for a more elevated poetic tone is displayed in those. Quevedo could be sublime, though only by snatches. Serious he could be, to the depths of grave and profound disquisition, as his ethical and religious treatises testify. One singular circumstance appertains to Quevedo's literary career--that he published none of his poetry himself, except that portion which he gave to the world under the feigned name of the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre. These are the choice of all. Being more elevated, more sweet, more pure in their diction and taste, several critics would deprive Quevedo of the merit of being their author. But who Torre was, if he were not Quevedo, nobody can tell: while, these poems appearing under his editorship, and the very name--Francisco being his own, and the surname, "of the Tower," appropriate to his position, as the verses were written while he was living secluded in his patrimonial villa of Torre Juan Abaci, seems to fix them unquestionably on him. Of the rest, a friend of Quevedo assures us that not a twentieth part of what he wrote has escaped destruction. His dramas and historical works have perished; by which he has lost the right to being considered the universal writer his contemporaries name him. This friend, and afterwards his nephew and heir, published his poems, distributed under the head of six muses, pedantically headed with mottos from Seneca. There is Clio the historic, consisting chiefly of sonnets on great events addressed to great people; Polyhimnia the sententious; Melpomene, composed chiefly of epitaphs; Erato the erotic, or as it is styled, "singing of the achievements of love and beauty:" the greater part of which is dedicated to Lisi. Terpsichore the light, gay and satirical, a large portion of which are written in the jargon of the gypsies, and are unintelligible on this side of the Pyrenees; and Thalia, longest of all, which sings, "de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis."