How successful the Spanish poets of the fifteenth century were in gay and graceful love songs, when guided only by their own feelings, is manifest from some of the compositions of Juan de Mena; but the charm vanishes the instant the poet begins to display his skill and erudition.[111] In a love song by Diego Lopez de Haro, reason and the mind enter into a prolix conversation on the value to be attached to affections of the heart; and the thinking faculty admits reason at the expense of poetry.[112] In the other songs of the same author, in which the mind obeys only the heart, he is poetic in all the simplicity of passion, though in search of wit he sometimes involves himself in obscure subtilties.[113] The fire of passion is excellently painted, even amidst sports of wit,[114] in several songs by Alonzo de Cartagena, afterwards archbishop of Burgos; and it seems to rage incessantly in the love songs of Guivara, to one of which he has given the emphatic title of _El Infierno de Amores_; or, The Hell of Love.[115] Sanchez de Badajoz, when, like a despairing lover, he wrote his will in poetry, thought he might avail himself of some passages from the book of Job to express his suffering. He divided this strange kind of will into nine lessons, (_leciones_). The ideas are very extravagant, but the execution is vigorous, and in many parts not unpoetic.[116] It might be presumed that profane applications of the doctrines and language of the bible would have given offence to the Spanish public, or at least alarmed the guardians of catholic orthodoxy. But such was not the case. Rodriguez del Padron chose the Seven Joys of Love as the subject of one of his songs, the title of which calls to mind the Marquis of Santillana’s Joys of the Holy Virgin; he also versified Love’s Ten Commandments, (_Los diez Madamientos de Amor_.)