octavo volume of 563 pages in double columns. Of course there are by the side of work of this kind imitations of the Italian epic serious or humorous, which have no pretensions to a historical character. Here it was only to be expected that Lope de Vega would be among the most fluent and the most conspicuous, for it may be repeated that he tried his hand at whatever others were doing. The epics in the Italian form being popular, he wrote several; and as he had an unparallelled command of facile verse which always stopped short of becoming bad, he is never unreadable, though, as he was also only a very superior _improvisatore_, his poems never quite compel reading. The subject of the _Dragontea_--the last cruise and death of Sir Francis Drake in 1594--is so much more attractive to an Englishman than the _Angelicas_ and _Jerusalem Conquistadas_, taken from Ariosto and Tasso, that one is perhaps prejudiced in its favour. And yet it seems to me to have a certain vitality not present in the rest, and to be by no means inferior to them in other respects.[20] [SN: _The_ Araucana.] The partiality of his countrymen and the too good-natured acquiescence of foreigners have given the name of epic to the _Araucana_ of Alonso de Ercilla.[21] The author was a very typical Spaniard of his century. He was born in 1533, and came to England as page to Philip of Spain at the time of his marriage with Mary Tudor. It was from England that he sailed to Chili for the purpose of helping in the suppression of the revolt of the Araucans, which, became the subject of his poem. While on service he was condemned to death for drawing his sword on a brother officer. The sentence was remitted, but Ercilla resented it so bitterly that he entirely omitted the name of his general, the Marquis of Cañete, in his poem. He returned to Spain in 1565, and passed the remainder of his life, until his end in 1595, partly in endeavouring to secure a reward from the king for his services, and partly in compiling his great _Araucana_. It appeared in three parts in 1569, 1575, and 1590. The story told by himself, that he wrote it on pieces of leather and scraps of paper during his campaign, applies, therefore, only to the first part. It is only by a figure of speech that the _Araucana_ can be described as an epic. Ercilla said that he found courage to print it because it was a true history of wars he had seen for himself. The first part is almost wholly occupied with the skirmishes of the Araucan war. In the later parts he was tempted to provide a proper epic machinery, but the change is only a proof of the tyranny of a fashion. Ercilla was a good handicraftsman of _ottava rima_ stanzas, he wrote very fine Castilian, and his poem has unquestionable vitality. Yet it is, after all, hybrid. At its best it is a superior version of the _Varones Ilustres_ of Castellanos, at its weakest an echo of the Italians. The literature of the world would have been richer, not