The Dragontea, however, whose ten cantos of octave verse are devoted to the expression of this national hatred, may be regarded as its chief monument. It is a strange poem. It begins with the prayers of Christianity, in the form of a beautiful woman, who presents Spain, Italy, and America in the court of Heaven, and prays God to protect them all against what Lope calls “that Protestant Scotch pirate.”[241] It ends with rejoicings in Panamá because “the Dragon,” as he is called through the whole poem, has died, poisoned by his own people, and with the thanksgivings of Christianity that her prayers have been heard, and that “the scarlet lady of Babylon”--meaning Queen Elizabeth--had been at last defeated. The substance of the poem is such as may beseem such an opening and such a conclusion. It is violent and coarse throughout. But although it appeals constantly to the national prejudices that prevailed in its author’s time with great intensity, it was not received with favor. It was written in 1597, immediately after the occurrence of most of the events to which it alludes; but was not published till 1602, and has been printed since only in the collective edition of Lope’s miscellaneous works, in 1776.[242] [241] He was in fact of Devonshire. See Fuller’s Worthies and Holy State. [242] There is a curious poem in English, by Charles Fitzgeffrey, on the Life and Death of Sir Francis Drake, first printed in 1596, which is worth comparing with the Dragontea, as its opposite, and which was better liked in England in its time than Lope’s poem was in Spain. See Wood’s Athenæ, London, 1815, 4to, Vol. II. p. 607. In the same year, however, in which he gave the Dragontea to the world, he published a prose romance, “The Pilgrim in his own Country”; dedicating it to the Marquis of Priego, on the last day of 1603, from the city of Seville. It contains the story of two lovers, who, after many adventures in Spain and Portugal, are carried into captivity among the Moors, and return home by the way of Italy, as pilgrims. We first find them at Barcelona, shipwrecked, and the principal scenes are laid there and in Valencia and Saragossa;--the whole ending in the city of Toledo, where, with the assent of their friends, they are at last married.[243] Several episodes are ingeniously interwoven with the thread of the principal narrative, and, besides many poems, chiefly written, no doubt, for other occasions, several dramas are inserted, which seem actually to have been performed under the circumstances described.[244] [243] The time of the story is quite unsettled. [244] At the end of the whole, it is said, that, during the eight nights following the wedding, eight other dramas were acted, whose names are given; two of which, “El Perseguido,” and “El Galan Agradecido,” do not appear among Lope’s printed plays;--at least, not under these titles.