[222] Epístola al Doctor Mathias de Porras, and Epístola á Amarylis; to which may be added the pleasant epistle to Francisco de Rioja, in which he describes his garden and the friends he received in it. [223] On this son, see Obras, Tom. I. p. 472;--the tender _Cancion_ on his death, Tom. XIII. p. 365;--and the beautiful Dedication to him of the “Pastores de Belen,” Tom. XVI. p. xi. [224] Obras, Tom. I. p. 472, and Tom. XX. p. 34. [225] Obras, Tom. IX. p. 355. [226] “El Remedio de la Desdicha,” a play whose story is from the “Diana” of Montemayor, (Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620), in the Preface to which he begs his daughter to read and correct it; and prays that she may be happy in spite of the perfections which render earthly happiness almost impossible to her. She long survived her father, and died, much reverenced for her piety, in 1688. [227] The description of his grief and of his religious feelings as she took the veil is solemn, but he dwells a little too complacently on the splendor given to the occasion by the king, and by his patron, the Duke de Sessa, who desired to honor thus a favorite and famous poet. Obras, Tom. I. pp. 313-316. [228] Obras, Tom. XI. pp. 495 and 596, where his father jests about it. It is a _Glosa_. He is called Lope de Vega Carpio, _el mozo_; and it is added, that he was not yet fourteen years old. [229] Obras, Tom. I. pp. 472 and 316. [230] In the eclogue, (Obras, Tom. X. p. 362), he is called, after both his father and his mother, Don Lope Felix del Carpio y Luxan. After the birth of these two children, we hear nothing more of their mother. Indeed, soon afterwards, Lope, no longer at an age to be deluded by his passions, began, according to the custom of his time and country, to turn his thoughts seriously to religion. He devoted himself to pious works, as his father had done; visited the hospitals regularly; resorted daily to a particular church; entered a secular religious congregation; and finally, at Toledo, in 1609, received the tonsure and became a priest. The next year he joined the same brotherhood of which Cervantes was afterwards a member.[231] In 1625, he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties, that, in 1628, he was elected to be its chief chaplain. He is, therefore, for the twenty-six latter years of his long life, to be regarded as strictly connected with the Spanish Church, and as devoting to its daily service some portion of his time. [231] Pellicer, ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. cxcix.