The longest of the nine divisions is that which passes under the name and authority of Thalia, the goddess who presided over rustic wit, as well as over comedy. Indeed, the more prominent characteristics of the whole collection are a broad, grotesque humor, and a satire sometimes marked with imitations of the ancients, especially of Juvenal and Persius, but oftener overrun with puns, and crowded with conceits and allusions, not easily understood at the time they first appeared, and now quite unintelligible.[473] His burlesque sonnets, in imitation of the Italian poems of that class, are the best in the language, and have a bitterness rarely found in company with so much wit. Some of his lighter ballads, too, are to be placed in the very first rank, and fifteen that he wrote in the wild dialect of the Gypsies have been ever since the delight of the lower classes of his countrymen, and are still, or were lately, to be heard, among their other popular poetry, sung to the guitars of the peasants and the soldiery throughout Spain.[474] In regular satire he has generally followed the path trodden by Juvenal; and, in the instances of his complaint “Against the existing Manners of the Castilians,” and “The Dangers of Marriage,” has proved himself a bold and successful disciple.[475] Some of his amatory poems, and some of those on religious subjects, especially when they are in a melancholy tone, are full of beauty and tenderness;[476] and once or twice, when most didactic, he is no less powerful than grave and lofty.[477] [473] “Los equívocos y las alusiones suyas,” says his editor, in 1648, “son tan frequentes y multiplicados, aquellos y estas, ansí en un solo verso y aun en una palabra, que es bien infalible que mucho número sin advertirse se haya de perder.” Obras, Tom. VII., Elogios, etc. [474] They are at the end of the seventh volume of the Obras, and also in Hidalgo, “Romances de Germania” (Madrid, 1779, 12mo, pp. 226-295). Of the lighter ballads in good Castilian, we may notice, especially, “Padre Adan, no lloreis duelos,” (Tom. VIII. p. 187), and “Dijo á la rana el mosquito,” Tom. VII. p. 514. [475] Obras, Tom. VII. pp. 192-200, and VIII. pp. 533-550. The last is somewhat coarse, though not so bad as its model in this respect. [476] See the _cancion_ (Tom. VII. p. 323) beginning, “Pues quita al año Primavera el ceño”; also some of the poems in the “Erato” to the lady he calls Fili, who seems to have been more loved by him than any other. [477] Particularly in “The Dream,” (Tom. IX. p. 296), and in the “Hymn to the Stars,” p. 338.