all intended to ridicule or censure some reigning folly or vice or abuse. They have been called _Visions_ because most of them are cast in the form of dreams, in which the author takes us into the world below, among the Devil and his attendants, who are introduced with many lively touches of wit and strokes of humour. It is an invention which has been in favour with poets and satirists of all time, from Lucian to Dante, and from Dante to Lord Byron. By these _Visions_ (by himself never so called collectively) the name of Quevedo has been chiefly made known out of Spain. They are among the most characteristic of his works, in which his audacious humour and impetuous fancy found full exercise and a congenial element. They have been often translated into the various European languages, and were much read and quoted in the commerce of letters. Besides these, the _Visions_ proper, which are serious satires levelled at the abuses and the evils of the times, there were numerous other squibs, jests, and pasquinades, of less solid substance or of lower aim, in rebuke of the fashionable follies or the vulgar tastes, such as _El Cuento de los Cuentos_ (_The Tale of Tales_), which is levelled at the excessive use of proverbs; _El Caballero de la Tenaza_ (_The Knight of the Forceps_), being the apology of a miser for himself; _La Perinola_ (_The Teetotum_), which is a personal attack on the fussy and frivolous Perez de Montalvan, one of Quevedo's favourite butts. There are numerous others, of which the very titles are so coarse as not to be fit for mention--ephemeral and obscure, which have died with the occasions which gave them birth. That at least before 1613 Quevedo was esteemed, by those best capable of judging, as among the best wits of the time, appears from the very flattering notice of him which is contained in Cervantes' _Viage del Parnaso_ (_Voyage to Parnassus_). He is there called _Apollo's son--son of the Muse Calliope_; and his aid is declared to be absolutely necessary in the war which the god of poetry is about to wage with the bad poets. It is true that Cervantes was in the habit of praising almost everybody, but from the warmth of the terms used, and from other indications in Quevedo's own works, we may infer that the two greatest wits of the period had, as great wits rarely have, a just appreciation of each other. Lope de Vega also, who was of a different order of genius, as well of a nature dissimilar, ever suspicious of a rival and jealous of the applause given to another, could bring himself to speak of Quevedo in his _Laurel de Apolo_ as _prince of the lyric poets_, the Juvenal of Spanish verse, who might rival Pindar and replace Apollo himself if the god were to fail.