Another of the persons who, at this time, sought popular favor on the public stage was Gabriel Tellez, an ecclesiastic of rank, better known as Tirso de Molina,--the name under which he slightly disguised himself when publishing works of a secular character. Of his life we know little, except that he was born in Madrid; that he was educated at Alcalá; that he entered the Church as early as 1613; and that he died in the convent of Soria, of which he was the head, probably in February, 1648;--some accounts representing him to have been sixty years old at the time of his death, and some eighty.[540] [540] Deleytar Aprovechando, Madrid, 1765, 2 tom., 4to, Prólogo. Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 267. In other respects we know more of him. As a writer for the theatre, we have five volumes of his dramas, published between 1616 and 1636; besides which, a considerable number of his plays can be found scattered through his other works, or printed each by itself. His talent seems to have been decidedly dramatic; but the moral tone of his plots is lower than common, and many of his plays contain passages whose indecency has caused them to be so hunted down by the confessional and the Inquisition, that copies of them are among the rarest of Spanish books.[541] Not a few of the less offensive, however, have maintained their place on the stage, and are still familiar, as popular favorites. [541] Of these five volumes, containing fifty-nine plays, and a number of _entremeses_ and ballads, whose titles are given in Aribau’s Biblioteca, (Madrid, 1848, Tom. V. p. xxxvi.), I have never seen but four, and have been able with difficulty to collect between thirty and forty separate plays. Their author says, however, in the Preface to his “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (1624), that he had written three hundred; and I believe about eighty have been printed. Of these, the best known out of Spain is “El Burlador de Sevilla,” or The Seville Deceiver,--the earliest distinct exhibition of that Don Juan who is now seen on every stage in Europe, and known to the lowest classes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, in puppet-shows and street-ballads. The first rudiments for this character--which, it is said, may be traced historically to the great Tenorio family of Seville--had, indeed, been brought upon the stage by Lope de Vega, in the second and third acts of “Money makes the Man”; where the hero shows a similar firmness and wit amidst the most awful visitations of the unseen world.[542] But in the character as sketched by Lope there is nothing revolting. Tirso, therefore, is the first who showed it with all its original undaunted courage united to an unmingled depravity that asks only for selfish gratifications, and a cold, relentless humor that continues to jest when surrounded by the terrors of a supernatural retribution.