Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas, the contemporary of both Lope de Vega and Cervantes, was born at Madrid, in 1580.[462] His family came from that mountainous region at the northwest, to which, like other Spaniards, he was well pleased to trace his origin;[463] but his father held an office of some dignity at the court of Philip the Second, which led to his residence in the capital at the period of his son’s birth;--a circumstance which was no doubt favorable to the development of the young man’s talents. But whatever were his opportunities, we know, that, when he was only fifteen years old, he was graduated in theology at the University of Alcalá, where he not only made himself master of such of the ancient and modern languages as would be most useful to him, but extended his studies into the civil and canon law, mathematics, medicine, politics, and other still more various branches of knowledge, showing that he was thus early possessed with the ambition of becoming a universal scholar. His accumulations, in fact, were vast, as the learning scattered through his works plainly proves, and bear witness, not less to his extreme industry than to his extraordinary natural endowments. [462] A diffuse life of Quevedo was published at Madrid in 1663, by Don Pablo Antonio de Tarsia, a Neapolitan, and is inserted in the tenth volume of the best edition of Quevedo’s Works,--that of Sancha, Madrid, 1791-94, 11 tom., 8vo. A shorter, and, on the whole, a more satisfactory, life of him is to be found in Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. pp. 137-154. [463] In his “Grandes Anales de Quince Dias,” speaking of the powerful President Acevedo, he says, “I was unwelcome to him, because, coming myself from the mountains, I never flattered the ambition he had to make himself out to be above men to whom we, in our own homes, acknowledge no superiors.” Obras, Tom. XI. p. 63. On his return to Madrid, he seems to have been associated both with the distinguished scholars and with the fashionable cavaliers of the time; and an adventure, in which, as a man of honor, he found himself accidentally involved, had wellnigh proved fatal to his better aspirations. A woman of respectable appearance, while at her devotions in one of the parish churches of Madrid, during Holy Week, was grossly insulted in his presence. He defended her, though both parties were quite unknown to him. A duel followed on the spot; and, at its conclusion, it was found he had killed a person of rank. He fled, of course, and, taking refuge in Sicily, was invited to the splendid court then held there by the Duke of Ossuna, viceroy of Philip the Third, and was soon afterwards employed in important affairs of state,--sometimes, as we are told by his nephew, in such as required personal courage and involved danger to his life.