But now, the admiration that followed Góngora almost necessarily introduced conceits into prose writing, such as were thought so worthy of imitation in poetry. Those, therefore, who most coveted public favor, began to play with words, and seek to surprise by an unexpected opposition of ideas and quaintness of metaphor, little consistent with the old Castilian dignity, until at last they quite left the stately constructions in which resides so much of what is peculiar to the sonorous declamations of Luis de Leon and Luis de Granada, and by excessive efforts at brilliancy became so involved and obscure, that they were not always intelligible. Instances of such affectation may be found in Saavedra and Francisco de Portugal. But the innovation itself is older than either of their published works. It broke out with Paravicino, who, besides imitating Góngora’s poetry, as we have already seen, carried similar extravagances of metaphor and construction into his oratorical and didactic prose; intimating, in a characteristic phrase, that he claimed the honor of being the Columbus who had made this great discovery. As early as 1620, it was matter of censure and ridicule to Liñan, in his “Guide to Strangers in Madrid,” and soon afterwards to Mateo Velazquez, in his “Village Philosopher”; so that from this period we may consider _cultismo_ nearly or quite as prevalent in Spanish prose as it was in Spanish poetry.[259] [259] See Declamacion, etc., of Vargas y Ponce, 1793, App., § 17; Marina, Ensayo, in Memorias de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., 1804; Liñan y Verdugo, Avisos de Forasteros, 1620, noticed (_ante_, p. 103) under the head of Romantic Fiction; and “El Filosofo del Aldea, y sus Conversaciones Familiares, su Autor el Alferez Don Baltazar Mateo Velazquez,” Zaragoza, por Diego de Ormer, 12mo, 106 leaves, s. a.; a singular book, didactic in its main purpose, but illustrating with stories its homely philosophy. I find no notice of it, though the author, in his Dedication, intimates that it is not his first published work. It seems to have been written soon after the death of Philip III. in 1621, and its last dialogue is against _cultismo_, of the introduction of which into Spanish prose I have spoken when noticing the “Pícara Justina” of Andreas Perez, 1605, _ante_, p. 67.