notwithstanding, in most of the scenes, a very captivating effect; and that passionate vehemence, in the painting of which Virues was eminently successful, is, in this drama, characteristically Spanish. The horrible deaths with which the piece closes, and which, according to the nature of the catastrophe were by no means necessary, are likewise in unison with the spirit of a Spanish national tragedy. The spring of action is the wicked spirit of a revengeful woman whom jealousy betrays into a series of the most treacherous intrigues. The dialogue is occasionally somewhat declamatory; but in its best parts it is energetic and unconstrained.[460] Of all the dramas of Virues, his _Marcella_ in which princes, princesses, robbers, peasants, and servants, are jumbled together in irregular confusion, was doubtless most in unison with the Spanish taste. The other Spanish dramatist who remains to be noticed among the poetic writers of the age of Lope de Vega, is Juan Perez de Montalvan, whom Lope himself regarded as his first pupil, and who obtained, probably through the interest of his patron, the post of notary to the inquisition. He was a young man of distinguished talent, and even in his seventeenth year he wrote plays in the style of Lope de Vega. He first entered the lists in competition with his master, after whose death he pursued his literary occupations with such assiduity, that when he died in 1639, though aged only thirty-five, the number of his comedies and autos amounted to nearly one hundred. He was also the author of several novels, which will be particularly noticed in another place. He put together in a single volume, some of his dramas and novels, and his moral reflections, full of formal erudition; and this singular compilation was published under the no less singular title of Book for All.[461] His comedies are neither more finished nor more systematic than those of his master, but they prove how easily a Spanish writer of imagination might, in that age, be roused to venture into competition with the inexhaustible Lope de Vega, and also how far a poet of talent, with a certain degree of practice, was capable of succeeding in dramatic intrigue. Montalvan’s comedies possess, however, a more particular interest, inasmuch as they exhibit traces of genius, which under other circumstances would have constituted a painter of dramatic character. In two of his historical comedies, he has introduced Henry IV. of France, and Philip II. of Spain. A kind of moral dignity, almost approaching to sanctity, is falsely attributed to the latter; but the prominent features of his character are truly seized and strikingly delineated.[462] The amiable Henry IV. is, however, pourtrayed to the life.[463] In his _Autos Sacramentales_, Montalvan even ventured to differ from Lope de Vega, in order to give to these dramas the popular character which Lope had sacrificed in his allegorical moralities. He composed an auto on the romantic conversion