LOPE DE VEGA.--HIS EARLY LIFE.--A SOLDIER.--HE WRITES THE ARCADIA.--MARRIES.--HAS A DUEL.--FLIES TO VALENCIA.--DEATH OF HIS WIFE.--HE SERVES IN THE ARMADA.--RETURNS TO MADRID.--MARRIES AGAIN.--DEATH OF HIS SONS.--HE BECOMES RELIGIOUS.--HIS POSITION AS A MAN OF LETTERS.--HIS SAN ISIDRO, HERMOSURA DE ANGÉLICA, DRAGONTEA, PEREGRINO EN SU PATRIA, AND JERUSALEN CONQUISTADA. It is impossible to speak of Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has been since reached by few of any country. To the examination, therefore, of this great man’s claims--which extend to almost every department of the national literature--we naturally turn, after examining those of the author of Don Quixote. Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born on the 25th of November, 1562, at Madrid, whither his father had recently removed, almost by accident, from the old family estate of Vega, in the picturesque valley of Carriedo.[200] From his earliest youth he discovered extraordinary powers. At five years of age, we are assured by his friend Montalvan, that he could not only read Latin as well as Spanish, but that he had such a passion for poetry as to pay his more advanced school-fellows with a share of his breakfast for writing down the verses he dictated to them, before he had learned to do it for himself.[201] His father, who, he intimates, was a poet,[202] and who was much devoted to works of charity in the latter years of his life, died when he was very young, and left, besides Lope, a son who perished in the Armada in 1588, and a daughter who died in 1601. In the period immediately following the father’s death, the family seems to have been scattered by poverty; and during this interval Lope probably lived with his uncle, the Inquisitor, Don Miguel de Carpio, of whom he long afterwards speaks with great respect.[203]