Pedro Calderon de la Barca Barreda Henao y Riaño, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Priest, Honorary Chaplain of his Majesty, and our Lords the New Kings of the Cathedral of Toledo--to give him all his names and titles--was a native of Madrid, “though from another place he took his name, an house of ancient fame.” The splendour of his pedigree was perhaps exaggerated by the partiality of friends. It is a point on which the Spaniard has all the reverence of the Scotsman. Yet he was undoubtedly a noble, and “came from the mountain,” as indeed did all Spain’s greatest men in letters and art. His long life, which lasted from 1600 to 1681, unlike Lope’s, was honourable, but is otherwise little known. We are told that he served as a soldier in his youth, but in a time of truce when not much service was to be seen. From one of the few certain passages in his life it appears that he was not slow to draw his sword on sufficient provocation. He had once to take sanctuary after chasing an actor through the streets of Madrid sword in hand. The man had stabbed Calderon’s brother in the back, and the excuse was held to be good. For the rest, the poet’s life was peaceful and prosperous. He was educated by the Jesuits and at Salamanca, was known as a writer when he was twenty, and after the death of Lope de Vega, he became the acknowledged chief of Spanish dramatists. Philip IV. greatly favoured and employed him. Calderon was, in fact, as much the king’s poet as Velasquez was his painter. By the favour of the king he also was admitted into the Order of Santiago, which might bring with it a commandery and a revenue. In the revolt of Catalonia in 1640, when the king went to the army, Calderon joined the other knights who rendered their military service under the royal banner. At the age of fifty-one he took orders. This was not always a proof of a sincere vocation, for Swift’s saying, that it was easier to provide for ten men in the Church than one out of it, was even truer of Spain than of England. But Calderon’s sincerity need not be doubted. He appears to have given up writing directly for the theatre after taking orders, but continued to produce plays for the Court which were repeated in public. During the latter half of his life he preferred to devote himself to the _autos sacramentales_, which he had an exclusive right to supply to the town of Madrid. No dramatic author of the time seems to have been so indifferent to the fate of his plays. A few were printed by his brother, but he himself published none, though he was continually vexed by piracies, and by learning that rubbish had been presented in his name to provincial audiences. In his old age he drew up a list of his genuine plays at the request of the Duke of Veragua, the representative of Columbus. From the letter sent with the list we learn that there were two noted pests of the Madrid theatre, one known as Great, and the other as Little, Memory. The first could remember a whole play (one