Francisco de Quevedo, or, to give him his full title, Francisco de Gomez de Quevedo Villegas, was born at Madrid on the 26th of September, 1580. He was thus thirty-three years younger than Cervantes, eighteen years younger than Lope de Vega, and some twenty years older than Calderon. His father had been a servant to the Emperor Charles V., and his mother was a lady in attendance upon Philip II.'s fourth wife, Anne of Austria. The family of Quevedo drew its source from the mountains of Old Castile, near Burgos. This was a circumstance of which every good Spaniard of the age was proud, as proving that he was descended from the pure Gothic race, who maintained their hold of the soil even after the Moorish invasion, and therefore was an _old Christian_, of blood unmixed with Moor or Jew. From his parents' position the young Francisco must have been early trained in the life of the Court and brought into contact with those who dispensed the power and patronage of the king. He was educated at the University of Alcalá de Henares, then in the height of its fame. At fifteen he graduated in theology, and soon afterwards acquired great distinction for his attainments in the civil and common law and in the learned languages. That he was early distinguished as a scholar is proved by his correspondence with Lipsius and other foreign men of learning, by whom he was addressed as an equal. For some time, however, Quevedo seems to have lived the usual life of a gay cavalier of the Court, indulging, as he confesses himself, in the pleasures of his age and the time, and taking part in those adventures which formed matter for his lighter works. At twenty-three he was already a poet distinguished enough to be included in Espinosa's _Flores de Poetas Ilustres_ (1603). A few years afterwards was published the first collection of his prose satires, which are better known to the world as _Visions_--the _Zahurdas de Pluton_ (_Pigstyes of Pluto_), with a dedication to the Conde de Lemos--a Mæcenas of the period, to whom afterwards Cervantes dedicated the second part of his _Don Quixote_. The pieces which are known as _Visions_ are among the most characteristic and original, as they have been the most popular, of all Quevedo's works. They bear such titles as _El Sueño de las Calaveras_ (_The Dream of Skulls_); _El Alguacil Alguacilado_ (_The Catchpole Caught_); _Visita de los Chistes_ (_Visitation of the Jests_); _El Mundo por de Dentro_ (_The World Inside Out_); _El Entremetido, la Dueña, y el Soplon_ (_The Intermeddler, the Duenna, and the Informer_); and (the authorship of which is more doubtful) _La Casa de los Locos de Amor_ (_The House of the Love-Madmen_). These, which were published at various times, are satires of a kind then new to the world, or known only in the works of Lucian; audacious and somewhat extravagant of conception; abounding in wit, in fancy, and in humour; various in character and in design, but