Yet with his limitations Calderon was a considerable poet, and a very skilful master of the machinery of the Spanish comedy. When not misled into Góngorism he wrote magnificently, and there are lyric choral passages in the _autos_ which Mr Ticknor rightly praised as worthy of Ben Jonson’s masques. Indeed not a little of his work is identical in purpose with the masque, though different in form. As a Court poet he was called upon to write for the entertainment of the king and the courtiers, and to supply theatrical shows at royal marriages, births of princes, and so forth. There was no intrinsic novelty here, for Calderon did but give the high-bred Spaniard of the Court a finer poetic version of the dances, songs, and bright short pieces under various, names, which delighted the humbler Spaniard in the _patios_. The intensely national sentiment which he expresses may strike us at times as a little empty, but is high and shining, and lends itself to a certain stately treatment which he could give. The romantic sentiment was strong in Calderon, and even in the most purely Spanish trappings that is not remote from us. A poet who dealt not inadequately with great passions could hardly help sometimes piercing through the merely national to the universal, though it must be acknowledged that his characters rarely utter the individual human saying, and that he was far too fond of long casuistical amplifications, which are almost always frigidly pedantic, and not rarely bombastical. The most quoted passage in all his work, the lines which close the second act of _La Vida es Sueño_, gain by being taken apart from their context: “Que es la vida? Un frenesi: Que es la vida? Una ilusion, Una sombra, una ficcion Y el mayor bien es pequeño Que toda la vida es sueño Y los sueños sueño son.” “We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” It is a fine poetic reflection, well fitted to stand beside the yet more beautiful lines of the _Tempest_, but it is not wise to approach the play in the hope that all of it will be found at the same level.