But what is wanting of severity in this whimsical fiction is fully made up in his Visions, six or seven in number, some of which seem to have been published separately soon after his first persecution, and all of them in 1635.[491] Nothing can well be more free and miscellaneous than their subjects and contents. One, called “El Alguazil alguazilado,” or The Catchpole Caught, is a satire on the inferior officers of justice, one of whom being possessed, the demon complains bitterly of his disgrace in being sent to inhabit the body of a creature so infamous. Another, called “Visita de los Chistes,” A Visit in Jest, is a visit to the empire of Death, who comes sweeping in surrounded by physicians, surgeons, and especially a great crowd of idle talkers and slanderers, and leads them all to a sight of the infernal regions, with which Quevedo at once declares he is already familiar, in the crimes and follies to which he has long been accustomed on earth. But a more distinct idea of his free and bold manner will probably be obtained from the opening of his “Dream of Skulls,” or “Dream of the Judgment,” than from any enumeration of the subjects and contents of his Visions; especially since, in this instance, it is a specimen of that mixture of the solemn and the ludicrous in which he so much delighted. [491] One of these _Sueños_ is dated as early as 1608,--the “Zahurdas de Pluton”; but none, I think, was printed earlier than 1627; and all the six that are certainly by Quevedo were first printed together in a small collection of his satirical works that appeared at Barcelona, in 1635, entitled “Juguetes de la Fortuna.” They were translated into French by Genest, and printed in 1641. Into English they were very freely rendered by Sir Roger L’Estrange, and published in 1668 with such success, that the tenth edition of them was printed at London in 1708, 8vo, and I believe there was yet one more. This is the basis of the translations of the Visions found in Quevedo’s Works, Edinburgh, 1798, Vol. I., and in Roscoe’s Novelists, 1832, Vol. II. All the translations I have seen are bad. The best is that of L’Estrange, or at least the most spirited; but still L’Estrange is not always faithful when he knew the meaning, and he is sometimes unfaithful from ignorance. Indeed, the great popularity of his translations was probably owing, in some degree, to the additions he boldly made to his text, and the frequent accommodations he hazarded of its jests to the scandal and taste of his times by allusions entirely English and local.