prose and verse, all written with a boldness and freedom to which the age was unaccustomed, which brought their author frequently into trouble. He assailed a scheme for the debasement of the coinage with a courage and a power of wit and sarcasm such as were not excelled even by the famous Drapier, on the same theme, a hundred years later. He exposed certain abuses in the distribution of the patronage of the military order of Santiago with a fearlessness which cost him another period of banishment from Court. He wrote letters to the King of France (Louis XIII.) and others, more or less directly impugning the conduct of affairs then under the worthless favourite, the Count-Duke of Olivares. In 1634 Quevedo, being in his fifty-fourth year, married--to the surprise, and somewhat to the amusement, of his friends. His way of life hitherto had scarcely been such as to proclaim his confidence in the married state; and a letter which he had written to his friend, the widowed Duchess of Lerma, on the qualities required of a wife, had seemed to set his standard of taste so high as to condemn him to celibacy. His wife died soon after their marriage, leaving Quevedo with fresh troubles, arising out of his satirical humour, or rather from his reputation for satire. He had betaken himself, after his wife's death, to his country retreat at Torre de Juan Abad to seek consolation in literature; and this was probably his busiest period of production. He wrote a life of Marcus Brutus, of which the scarcely concealed intention was to point to the Cæsar who then tyrannized over Spain. He aimed satires in verse, after the classical model, at the reigning favourite. He wrote the _Politica de Dios y Gobierno de Cristo_ (_Policy of God and Government of Christ_), which, under the guise of a religious work, was a biting satire on the King and the Count-Duke. He wrote other works, some of which have perished, distinguished by elegance of style and energy of expression, none of them deserving of more than a passing mention, and all belonging rather to the political history than to the literature of Spain. To this period also, probably, are to be referred the greater part of those satirical works, under the name of _Visions_, which have chiefly contributed to make the name of Quevedo known to the nations outside of Spain--those bitter, half-humorous, half-serious, and all-fantastical inventions, such as _The Dream of Skulls_ and _The World Inside Out_.