This folly spread as rapidly as the imitation of Italian models had done. It was in vain that Lope argued against it for common-sense. He was himself conquered. Quevedo,[17] who attacked it, was driven to worse straits, for he endeavoured to resist it by means of another affectation, the _conceptista_, or conceited style, which is more like our “metaphysical” manner, but never had the popularity of Góngorism. The founder of this school of affectation was Alonso de Ledesma of Segovia (1552-1623). The poems which Quevedo published under the name of the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre were meant to reinforce Luis de Leon, and were free from either kind of fault; but the learned poetry of Spain had not vitality enough to throw off the disease. Góngorism became the literary taste of the day, and was soon traceable everywhere. [SN: _The Epics._] The great mass of epics, or so-called epics,[18] which form the non-lyric side of the learned poetry of Spain, belong with rare exceptions, if not with only one exception, to the domains of bibliography and curiosity. I have to confess that I do not speak with any personal knowledge of the _Carolea_ of Hierónimo Sempere, published in 1560, or many others, and with only a slight acquaintance with the _Carlo Famoso_ of Don Luis de Zapata. This second poem, published in 1565, is in 50 cantos, and contains 40,000 verses. The subject is the history of the Emperor Charles V., and it may stand here as a specimen of the whole class to which it belongs. The _Carlo Famoso_ is essentially prose, disguised in such _ottava rima_ stanzas as any one who had once acquired the trick could probably write as easily as prose pure and simple. If Don Luis de Zapata, who had served the emperor, had been content to tell us of what he saw in prose, he would probably have left a readable, and perhaps a valuable, book. But, unfortunately, he felt called upon to build the lofty rhyme, in imitation of Ariosto, and this brought with it the necessity for supernatural machinery, which the Don Luis de Zapatas of all countries are very ill qualified to handle. The ease with which verses of a kind are written in Spanish, the influence of a fashionable model, and the prestige attaching to the writing of verse, led to the production of innumerable volumes on historical subjects of what would fain have been poetry if it could. Some of this mass of writing is not without merit, the Elegies of Famous Men of the Indies--_Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias_--of Juan de Castellanos[19] is readable enough, and has some historical value. Juan de Castellanos, whose dates of birth and death are unknown, was an old soldier turned priest, who in common with many others could in a fashion write _ottava rima_ stanza. He seems to have thought that “Elegy” meant much the same thing as “Eulogy,” and his _Elegias_ are, in fact, a history of the conquest of America by the Spaniards, carried down to 1588. It is only a fragment, but even so, it fills a crown