In 1630, he published “The Laurel of Apollo,” a poem somewhat like “The Journey to Parnassus” of Cervantes, but longer, more elaborate, and still more unsatisfactory. It describes a festival, supposed to have been held by the god of Poetry, on Mount Helicon, in April, 1628, and records the honors then bestowed on nearly three hundred Spanish poets;--a number so great, that the whole account becomes monotonous and almost valueless, partly from the impossibility of drawing with distinctness or truth so many characters of little prominence, and partly from its too free praise of nearly all of them. It is divided into ten _silvas_, and contains about seven thousand irregular verses. At the end, besides a few minor and miscellaneous poems, Lope added an eclogue, in seven scenes, which had been previously represented before the king and court with a costly magnificence in the theatre and a splendor in its decorations that show, at least, how great was the favor he enjoyed, when he was indulged, for so slight an offering, with such royal luxuries.[272] [272] It is not easy to tell why these later productions of Lope are put in the first volume of his Miscellaneous Works, (1776-79), but so it is. That collection was made by Cerdá y Rico; a man of learning, though not of good taste or sound judgment. The last considerable work he published was his “Dorotea,” a long prose romance in dialogue.[273] It was written in his youth, and, as has been already suggested, probably contains more or less of his own youthful adventures and feelings. But whether this be so or not, it was a favorite with him. He calls it “the most beloved of his works,” and says he has revised it with care and made additions to it in his old age.[274] It was first printed in 1632. A moderate amount of verse is scattered through it, and there is a freshness and a reality in many passages that remind us constantly of its author’s life before he served as a soldier in the Armada. The hero, Fernando, is a poet, like Lope, who, after having been more than once in love and married, refuses Dorotea, the object of his first attachment, and becomes religious. There is, however, little plan, consistency, or final purpose in most of the manifold scenes that go to make up its five long acts; and it is now read only for its rich and easy prose style, for the glimpses it seems to give of the author’s own life, and for a few of its short poems, some of which were probably written for occasions not unlike those to which they are here applied. [273] It fills the whole of the seventh volume of his Obras Sueltas. [274] “Dorotea, the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my long-protracted life, still asks the public light,” etc. Egloga á Claudio; Obras, Tom. IX. p. 367.