[551] The notices of Mira de Mescua, or Amescua, as he is sometimes called, are scattered like his works. He is mentioned in Roxas, “Viage” (1602); and I have his “Desgraciada Raquel,” both in a printed copy, where it is attributed to Diamante, and in an autograph MS., where it is sadly cut up to suit the ecclesiastical censors, whose permission to represent it is dated April 10th, 1635. Guevara indicates his birthplace and ecclesiastical office in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco VI. Antonio (Bib. Nov., ad verb.) gives him extravagant praise, and says that his dramas were collected and published together. But this, I believe, is a mistake. Like his shorter poems, they can be found only separate, or in collections made for other purposes. See also, in relation to Mira de Mescua, Montalvan, Para Todos, the Catalogue at the end; and Pellicer, Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 89. The story on which the “Raquel” is founded is a fiction, and therefore need not so much have disturbed the censors of the theatre. (Castro, Crónica de Sancho el Deseado, Alonso el Octavo, etc., Madrid, 1665, folio, pp. 90, etc.) Two _autos_ by Mira de Mescua are to be found in “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” Madrid, 1664, 4to. Joseph de Valdivielso, another ecclesiastic of high condition, was also a writer for the stage at the same time. He was connected with the great cathedral of Toledo and with its princely primate, the Cardinal Infante, but he lived in Madrid, where he was a member of the same religious congregation with Cervantes and Lope, and where he was intimately associated with the principal men of letters of his time. He flourished from about 1607 to about 1633, and can be traced, during the whole of that period, by his certificates of approbation and by commendatory verses which were prefixed to the works of his friends as they successively appeared. His own publications are almost entirely religious;--those for the stage consisting of a single volume printed in 1622, and containing twelve _autos_ and two religious plays.