His friend and pupil, the marquess of Santillana, was a better poet. Quintana remarks of him that "he was one of the most generous and valiant knights that adorned his age. A learned man, an easy and sweet love poet, just and serious in sentiment." His elegy on the death of the marquess of Villena is the most celebrated of his poems. Other names occur of less note. Jorge Manrique, who has left a fragment of poetry more purely written than belongs to his age. Garci Sanchez of Badajos, and Marcias. This last is less known for his poetry, of which we possess only four songs, than for his melancholy death. He loved one who refused to, or, disdaining, him, married another. But still he was unable to conquer his fatal attachment. The husband obtained that he should be thrown into prison; but this did not suffice for his vengeance, nor are we surprised when we know the delicate sense of connubial honour entertained by the Spaniards. He, the husband, concerted with the alcaide of the tower in which Marcias was imprisoned, and found means to throw his lance at him as he stood at a window. Marcias was at this moment singing one of the songs he had composed upon the lady of his love; the lance pierced him to the heart, and he died with the tale of passion still hovering on his lips. These circumstances, and probably the enthusiastic and amiable qualities of the poet, rendered him an object of reverence and regret to his countrymen. He was surnamed the Enemorado, and his name, grown into a proverb, is still the synonyme in Spain for a martyr to devoted love. His contemporary, Juan de Mena, has commemorated his death in some of the sweetest and most poetic verses of his Labyrinto. Juan de Mena is often called the Ennius of Spain. He is the most renowned of the writers of that early age. He was born at Cordova in about the year 1412. Cordova, the seat of the most famous Moorish university, had just been recovered by the Christians. Juan de Mena was sprung from a respectable though not noble family; at the age of twenty-three he fulfilled some civil office in his native city, of which in after times he spoke with affection, as we find these lines in one of his poems:-- "Thou flower of wisdom and of chivalry, Cordova, mother mine! forgive thy son, If in the music of my lyre, no tone Be sweet and loud enough to honour thee. Models of wisdom and of bravery I see reflected through thy annals bright. I will not praise thee, praise thee though I might. Lest I of flattery should suspected be."[8]