Here, of course, if the poem had a regular subject, it would end; but now we are plunged at once into a series of wars and disasters, arising out of the discontent of unsuccessful rivals, which threaten to have no end. Trials of all kinds follow. Visions, enchantments and counter enchantments, episodes quite unconnected with the main story, and broken up themselves by the most perverse interruptions, are mingled together, we hardly know why or how; and when at last the happy pair are settled in their hardly won kingdom, we are as much wearied by the wild waste of fancy in which Lope has indulged himself, as we should have been by almost any degree of monotony arising from a want of inventive power. The best parts of the poem are those that contain descriptions of persons and scenery;[237] the worst are those where Lope has displayed his learning, which he has sometimes done by filling whole stanzas with a mere accumulation of proper names. The versification is extraordinarily fluent.[238] [237] Cantos IV. and VII. [238] La Hermosura de Angélica was printed for the first time in 1604, says the editor of the Obras, in Tom. II. But Salvá gives an edition in 1602. It certainly appeared at Barcelona in 1605. The stanzas where proper names occur so often as to prove that Lope was guilty of the affectation of taking pains to accumulate them are to be found in Obras, Tom. II. pp. 27, 55, 233, 236, etc. As the Beauty of Angelica was written in the ill-fated Armada, it contains occasional intimations of the author’s national and religious feelings, such as were naturally suggested by his situation. But in the same volume he originally published a poem in which these feelings are much more fully and freely expressed;--a poem, indeed, which is devoted to nothing else. It is called “La Dragontea,” and is on the subject of Sir Francis Drake’s last expedition and death. Perhaps no other instance can be found of a grave epic devoted to the personal abuse of a single individual; and to account for the present one, we must remember how familiar and formidable the name of Sir Francis Drake had long been in Spain.