Like nearly all the other pieces of the same class, there is much in the “Lovers of Teruel” to offend us. The inevitable part of the comic servant is peculiarly unwelcome; and so are the long speeches, and the occasionally inflated style. But notwithstanding its blemishes, we feel that it is written in the true spirit of tragedy. As the story was believed to be authentic when it was first acted, it produced the more deep effect; and whether true or not, being a tale of the simple sorrows of two young and loving hearts, whose dark fate is the result of no crime on their part, it can never be read or acted without exciting a sincere interest. Parts of it have a more familiar and domestic character than we are accustomed to find on the Spanish stage, particularly the scene where Isabella sits with her women at her wearisome embroidery, during her lover’s absence; the scene of her discouragement and misgiving just before her marriage; and portions of the scene of horror with which the drama closes. The two lovers are drawn with no little skill. Our interest in them never falters; and their characters are so set forth and developed, that the dreadful catastrophe is no surprise. It comes rather like the foreseen and irresistible fate of the old Greek tragedy, whose dark shadow is cast over the whole action from its opening. When Montalvan took historical subjects, he endeavoured, oftener than his contemporaries, to observe historical truth. In two dramas on the life of Don Cárlos, he has introduced that prince substantially in the colors he must at last wear, as an ungoverned madman, dangerous to his family and to the state; and if, in obedience to the persuasions of his time, the poet has represented Philip the Second as more noble and generous than we can regard him to have been, he has not failed to seize and exhibit in a striking manner the severe wariness and wisdom that were such prominent attributes in that monarch’s character.[530] Don John of Austria, too, and Henry the Fourth of France, are happily depicted and fairly sustained in the plays in which they respectively appear as leading personages.[531] [530] “El Principe Don Carlos” is the first play in the twenty-eighth volume of the Comedias Escogidas, 1667, and gives an account of the miraculous cure of the Prince from an attack of insanity; the other, entitled “El Segundo Seneca de España,” is the first play in his “Para Todos,” and ends with the marriage of the king to Anne of Austria, and the appointment of Don John as generalissimo of the League. [531] Henry IV. is in “El Mariscal de Viron”; Don John in the play that bears his name.