The entire romance is divided into five books, and is carefully constructed and finished. Some of Lope’s own experiences at Valencia and elsewhere evidently contributed materials for it; but a poetical coloring is thrown over the whole, and, except in some of the details about the city, and descriptions of natural scenery, we rarely feel that what we read is absolutely true.[245] The story, especially when regarded from the point of view chosen by its author, is interesting; and it is not only one of the earliest specimens in Spanish literature of the class to which it belongs, but one of the best.[246] [245] Among the passages that have the strongest air of reality about them are those relating to the dramas, said to have been acted in different places; and those containing descriptions of Monserrate and of the environs of Valencia, in the first and second books. A sort of ghost-story, in the fifth, seems also to have been founded on fact. [246] The first edition of the “Peregrino en su Patria” is that of Madrid, 1604, 4to, and it was soon reprinted; but the best edition is that in the fifth volume of the Obras Sueltas, 1776. A worthless abridgment of it in English appeared anonymously in London in 1738, 12mo. Passing over some of his minor poems and his “New Art of Writing Plays,” for noticing both of which more appropriate occasions will occur hereafter, we come to another of Lope’s greater efforts, his “Jerusalem Conquered,” which appeared in 1609, and was twice reprinted in the course of the next ten years. He calls it “a tragic epic,” and divides it into twenty books of octave rhymes, comprehending, when taken together, above twenty-two thousand verses. The attempt was certainly an ambitious one, since we see, on its very face, that it is nothing less than to rival Tasso on the ground where Tasso’s success had been so brilliant.