He intends to sing of the vicissitudes of fortune, ruled, as they are, by the seven planets, to whom Providence gives such power. He invokes Apollo and Calliope, and then apostrophises Fortune, asking leave to blame her when she may deserve censure. He then, in imitation of all vision-writers, loses himself, when a lady of wonderful beauty appears, and presents herself to him as his guide. The lady is Providence: she bids him look, and he goes on to describe what he saw:-- Turning my eyes to where she bade me gaze, Behold, three ponderous wheels I saw within; And two were still--nor even moved their place; The other swiftly, round and round, did spin. Below them on the ground I saw the space O'erspread by nations vast, who once had been, And each upon the brow engraven wore The name and fate the which on earth they bore. And in one wheel that stood immoveable I saw the gatherings of a future race; And that, which to the ground was doomed to fall, A dark veil cast upon the hideous place, Covered with all her dead.--I was not able The meaning of the sight I saw to trace; So I implored my guide that she would show The meaning of the vision there below.[9] The wheels of course represent the past, present, and future, each governed by the seven planets. Providence points out the various personages distinguished in the wheel of the past and the present; and the poet has thus occasion to make great display of knowledge on every subject, and deduces from time to time maxims upon the conduct of life and the government of nations; and thus, as Dante intended in his Commedia, does Juan de Mena introduce instruction on all the sciences then known. In common with every writer of his class, he thinks more of what he has to say, than of the melody of his versification; sometimes his subject suggests lines at once animated and sonorous; at other times they are tame or turgid. He is not backward in giving moral lessons, either to prince or people; yet Quintana regards this work probably with too much partiality when he says that we shall always dip into it with pleasure. We regard it with some curiosity, and more respect, and with but little liking.