[234] The “Fiestas de Denia,” a poem in two short cantos, on the reception of Philip III. at Denia, near Valencia, in 1598, soon after his marriage, was printed in 1599, but is of little consequence. It is not unlikely that Lope was induced to write the Angelica by the success of several poems that had preceded it on the same series of fictions, and especially by the favor shown to one published only two years before, in the same style and manner; the “Angélica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, which is noticed with extraordinary praise in the scrutiny of the Knight of La Mancha’s library, as well as in the conclusion to Don Quixote, where a somewhat tardy compliment is paid to this very work of Lope. Both poems are obvious imitations of Ariosto; and if that of De Soto has been too much praised, it is, at least, better than Lope’s. And yet, in “The Beauty of Angelica,” the author might have been deemed to occupy ground well suited to his genius; for the boundless latitude afforded him by a subject filled with the dreamy adventures of chivalry was, necessarily, a partial release from the obligation to pursue a consistent plan,--while, at the same time, the example of Ariosto, as well as that of Luis de Soto, may be supposed to have launched him fairly forth upon the open sea of an unrestrained fancy, careless of shores or soundings. But perhaps this very freedom was a principal cause of his failure; for his story is to the last degree wild and extravagant, and is connected by the slightest possible thread to the graceful fiction of Ariosto.[235] A king of Andalusia, as it pretends, leaves his kingdom by testament to the most beautiful man or woman that can be found.[236] All the world throngs to win the mighty prize; and one of the most amusing parts of the whole poem is that in which its author describes to us the crowds of the old and the ugly who, under such conditions, still thought themselves fit competitors. But as early as the fifth canto, the two lovers, Medoro and Angelica, who had been left in India by the Italian master, have already won the throne, and, for the sake of the lady’s unrivalled beauty, are crowned king and queen at Seville. [235] The point where it branches off from the story of Ariosto is the sixteenth stanza of the thirtieth canto of the “Orlando Furioso.” [236] La Angélica, Canto III.