Unfortunately we have few of his earlier efforts. He seems, however, to have begun upon the old foundations of the eclogues and moralities, whose religious air and tone commended them to that ecclesiastical toleration without which little could thrive in Spain.[283] An eclogue, which is announced as having been represented, and which seems really to be arranged for exhibition, is found in the third book of the “Arcadia,” the earliest of Lope’s published works, and one that was written before his exile.[284] Several similar attempts occur elsewhere,--so rude and pious, that it seems almost as if they might have belonged to the age of Juan de la Enzina and Gil Vicente; and others of the same character are scattered through other parts of his multitudinous works.[285] [283] In one of his earlier efforts he says, (Obras, Tom. V. p. 346), “The laws help them little.” But of this we shall see more hereafter. [284] It is probable, from internal evidence, that this eclogue, and some others in the same romance, were acted before the Duke Antonio de Alva. At any rate, we know similar representations were common in the age of Cervantes and Lope, as well as before and after it. [285] Such dramas are found in the “Pastores de Belen,” Book III., and elsewhere. Of his more regular plays, the two oldest, that were subsequently included in his printed collection, are not without similar indications of their origin. Both are pastorals. The first is called “The True Lover,” and was written when Lope was fourteen years old, though it may have been altered and improved before he published it, when he was fifty-eight. It is the story of a shepherd who refuses to marry a shepherdess, though she had put him in peril of his life by accusing him of having murdered her husband, who, as she was quite aware, had died a natural death, but whose supposed murderer could be released from his doom only at her requisition, as next of kin to the pretended victim;--a process by which she hoped to obtain all power over his spirit, and compel him to marry her, as Ximena married the Cid, by royal authority. Lope admits it to be a rude performance; but it is marked by the sweetness of versification which seems to have belonged to him at every period of his career.[286] [286] “El Verdadero Amante” is in the Fourteenth Part of the Comedias, printed at Madrid, 1620, and is dedicated to his son Lope, who died the next year, only fifteen years old;--the father saying in the Dedication, “This play was written when I was of about your age.”