But finding the disease deeply fixed in the national taste, and models of a purer style of poetry wanting to resist it, he printed, in 1631,--the same year in which, for the same purpose, he published a collection of the poetry of Luis de Leon,--a small volume which he announced as “Poems by the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre,”--a person of whom he professed, in his Preface, to know nothing, except that he had accidentally found his manuscripts in the hands of a bookseller, with the Approbation of Alonso de Ercilla attached to them; and that he supposed him to be the ancient Spanish poet referred to by Boscan nearly a hundred years before. But this little volume is a work of no small consequence. It contains sonnets, odes, _canciones_, elegies, and eclogues; many of them written with antique grace and simplicity, and all in a style of thought easy and natural, and in a versification of great exactness and harmony. It is, in short, one of the best volumes of miscellaneous poems in the Spanish language.[479] [479] Perhaps there is a little too much of the imitation of Petrarch and of the Italians in the Poems of the Bachiller de la Torre; but they are, I think, not only graceful and beautiful, but generally full of the national tone, and of a tender spirit, connected with a sincere love of nature and natural scenery. I would instance the ode, “Alexis que contraria,” in the edition of Velazquez (p. 17), and the truly Horatian ode (p. 44) beginning, “O tres y quatro veces venturosa,” with the description of the dawn of day, and the sonnet to Spring (p. 12). The first eclogue, too, and all the _endechas_, which are in the most flowing Adonian verse, should not be overlooked. Sometimes he has unrhymed lyrics, in the ancient measures, not always successful, but seldom without beauty. No suspicion seems to have been whispered, either at the moment of their first publication, or for a long time afterwards, that these poems were the productions of any other than the unknown personage whose name appeared on their title-page. In 1753, however, a second edition of them was published by Velazquez, the author of the “Essay on Spanish Poetry,” claiming them to be entirely the work of Quevedo;[480]--a claim which has been frequently noticed since, some admitting and some denying it, but none, in any instance, fairly discussing the grounds on which it is placed by Velazquez, or settling their validity.[481] [480] “Poesías que publicó D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, Cavallero del Órden de Santiago, Señor de la Torre de Juan Abad, con el nombre del Bachiller Francisco de la Torre. Añadese en esta segunda edicion un Discurso, en que se descubre ser el verdadero autor el mismo D. Francisco de Quevedo, por D. Luis Joseph Velazquez,” etc. Madrid, 1753, 4to.