The “Casa de los Locos de Amor,” the Lovers’ Mad-house,--which is placed among Quevedo’s Visions, though it is the work of his friend Lorenzo Vander Hammen, to whom it is dedicated,--lacks, no doubt, the freedom and force which characterize the Vision of the Judgment.[492] But this is a remark that can by no means be extended to the Vision of “Las Zahurdas de Pluton,” Pluto’s Pigsties, which is a show of what may be called the rabble of Pandemonium; “El Mundo por de Dentro,” The World Inside Out; and “El Entremetido, la Dueña, y el Soplon,” The Busy-body, the Duenna, and the Informer;--all of which are full of the most truculent sarcasm, recklessly cast about, by one to whom the world had not been a friend, nor the world’s law. [492] The six unquestioned _Sueños_ are in Tom. I. of the Madrid edition of Quevedo, 1791. The “Casa de los Locos de Amor” is in Tom. II.; and as N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., I. 462, and II. 10) says Vander Hammen, a Spanish author of Flemish descent, _told him_ that he wrote it himself, we are bound to take it from the proper list of Quevedo’s works. In these Visions, as well as in nearly all that Quevedo wrote, much is to be found that indicates a bold, original, and independent spirit. His age and the circumstances amidst which he was placed have, however, left their traces both on his poetry and on his prose. Thus, his long residence in Italy is seen in his frequent imitations of the Italian poets, and once, at least, in the composition of an original Italian sonnet;[493]--his cruel sufferings during his different persecutions are apparent in the bitterness of his invectives everywhere, and especially in one of his Visions, dated from his prison, against the administration of justice and the order of society;--while the influence of the false taste of his times, which, in some of its forms, he manfully resisted, is yet no less apparent in others, and persecutes him with a perpetual desire to be brilliant, to say something quaint or startling, and to be pointed and epigrammatic. But over these, and over all his other defects, his genius from time to time rises, and reveals itself with great power. He has not, indeed, that sure perception of the ridiculous which leads Cervantes, as if by instinct, to the exact measure of satirical retribution; but he perceives quickly and strongly; and though he often errs, from the exaggeration and coarseness to which he so much tended, yet, even in the passages where these faults most occur, we often find touches of a solemn and tender beauty, that show he had higher powers and better qualities than his extraordinary wit, and add to the effect of the whole, though without reconciling us to the broad and gross farce that is too often mingled with his satire.[494] [493] Obras, Tom. VII. p. 289.