that Calderon was the poet of the Inquisition, and if this is not said as mere blame, it conveys a truth. That solution of the riddle of the painful earth which A. W. Schlegel professed to have found in him, is no doubt only the teaching of the mediæval Church. We may on this account decline very properly to receive him as a deeper thinker than Shakespeare, but that teaching of the Church, to which the Inquisition strove to confine all Spaniards, had been the guide and consolation of all civilised Europe. To have given it a lofty poetical expression for the second time, as Dante had for the first, was no contemptible feat. FOOTNOTES: [35] Those who wish to make a closer acquaintance with the minor forms of the Spanish play may be referred to the _Entremeses, Loaas, y Jácaras_, of Don Luis Quiñones de Benavente (----?-1652), edited by Don C. Rosell in the _Libros de Antaño_. Madrid, 1872. [36] Vol. v. of _Autos Sacramentales_ de Don P. Calderon, published by Don Juan Fernandez de Apontes, Madrid, 1757-1760--five years before the public performance of _autos_ was forbidden by Charles III. CHAPTER V. SPANISH PROSE ROMANCE. PASTORALS AND SHORT STORIES--THE ORIGINAL WORK OF THE SPANIARD--THE “LIBROS DE CABALLERÍAS”--THE ‘AMADIS OF GAUL’--FOLLOWERS OF ‘AMADIS OF GAUL’--INFLUENCE AND CHARACTER OF THESE TALES--THE REAL CAUSE OF THEIR DECLINE--THE CHARACTER OF THE “NOVELAS DE PÍCAROS”--THE ‘CELESTINA’--‘LAZARILLO DE TORMÉS’--‘GUZMAN DE ALFARACHE’--THE FOLLOWERS OF MATEO ALEMAN--QUEVEDO--CERVANTES--HIS LIFE--HIS WORK--THE MINOR THINGS--‘DON QUIXOTE.’ [SN: _Pastorals and short stories._]