Another of the early followers of Lope de Vega, and one recognized as such at the time by Cervantes, is Luis Vélez de Guevara. He was born at Ecija in Andalusia, in 1570, but seems to have lived almost entirely at Madrid, where he died in 1644. Twelve years before his death, he is said, on good authority, to have written already four hundred pieces for the theatre; and as neither the public favor nor that of the court seems to have deserted him during the rest of his long life, we may feel assured that he was one of the most successful authors of his time.[513] [513] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 68, and Montalvan, Para Todos, in his catalogue of authors who wrote for the stage when (in 1632) that catalogue was made out. Guevara will be noticed again as the author of the “Diablo Cojuelo.” His plays, however, were never collected for publication, and few of them have come down to us. One of those that have been preserved is fortunately one of the best, if we are to judge of its relative rank by the sensation it produced on its first appearance, or by the hold it has since maintained on the national regard. Its subject is taken from a well-known passage in the history of Sancho the Brave, when, in 1293, the city of Tarifa, near Gibraltar, was besieged by that king’s rebellious brother, Don John, at the head of a Moorish army, and defended by Alonso Perez, chief of the great house of the Guzmans. “And,” says the old Chronicle, “right well did he defend it. But the Infante Don John had with him a young son of Alonso Perez, and sent and warned him that he must either surrender that city, or else he would put to death this child whom he had with him. And Don Alonso Perez answered, that he held that city for the king, and that he could not give it up; but that as for the death of his child, he would give him a dagger wherewith to slay him; and so saying, he cast down a dagger from the rampart in defiance, and added that it would be better he should kill this son and yet five others, if he had them, than that he should himself basely yield up a city of the king, his lord, for which he had done homage. And the Infante Don John, in great fury, caused that child to be put to death before him. But neither with all this could he take the city.”[514] [514] Crónica de D. Sancho el Bravo, Valladolid, 1554, folio, f. 76. Other accounts add to this atrocious story, that, after casting down his dagger, Alonso Perez, smothering his grief, sat down to his noon-day meal with his wife, and that, his people on the walls of the city witnessing the death of the innocent child and bursting forth into cries of horror and indignation, he rushed out, but, having heard what was the cause of the disturbance, returned quietly again to the table, saying only, “I thought, from their outcry, that the Moors had made their way into the city.”[515]