(88.) Did then any more patriotic statesmen, or party of statesmen, contrive to remove the favoured Sandoval at last? The true story was told at the English Court by the sagacious man, whom Ben Jonson calls, probably from his use of such apologues, “old Esop Gondomar ;" "There were two rats who set out to try their fortune for a livelihood, and fell upon a house of plenty, where for many years they lived in the greatest enjoyment, till, overcome by an ambitious thirst of advancing, together with themselves, all that could pretend to their alliance or friendship, they committed such spoil as to alarm the whole family, and became so numerous, that traps and poison were laid for them in every place.”*

By speaking of "two rats," Gondomar seems to have meant to connect with the Duke his unfortunate associate Rodrigo Calderon, who was the peculiar object of hatred, and was, a few days after the Duke's retirement, committed to prison, from which he was only to be set free in the following reign by a public execution. The great favour, which the Duke had shewn to him, and to a few other persons raised from obscurity by himself, seems to have been impolitic. They could not save him in the day of adversity; and it was dangerous to themselves, if, like Calderon, they continued true to their patron.

(89.) It were needless to seek for any other cause which may have contributed to the Duke's fall. He * Osborne's Advice to a Son, part ii. sec. 26.

had been for twenty years in power,—a long time for any minister to hold the helm of any earthly state. The time was come when the envy of the grandees, and the aversion of the little people, could no longer be withstood. The accusations made against him by some zealous friars, and by Garceran de Albanel, the private tutor of the young Prince, of some neglect about the Prince's household, were only indications of the public feeling. It is not improbable that the Duke may have wished to see his nephew and son-inlaw, the Count of Lemos, his successor in the king's favour, in preference to his son, the Duke of Uceda. If he did, it only proves that he wished to prefer the abler and better man. The idle tales, with which Le Sage has garnished this part of his story, are even chronologically impossible.+ And the temporary banishment of the Count of Lemos from the Court was not owing, as it is sometimes stated, to the king's resentment against the Duke for seeking by his means to ingratiate himself with the heir-apparent; but took place some time afterwards, when the Duke had been for some months in retirement, and his son was in power. The character of the Count of Lemos deserved a little more respect even at the hands of a French novelist. The patrons of good literature are not to be sought among the servants of corruption. The Count was again at the council-board after the *Cespedes, Hist. de Phil. IV. lib. i. c. 4. † Gil Blas, lib. viii. + Cespedes.

accession of Philip IV.; but, dying in October 1622, he was removed from further changes of the wheel of fortune. It was the testimony given to him, when flattery could avail nothing, that "he had lived well, governed well, and died well."*

(90.) The Duke's farewell to public life was taken on the 4th of October 1618. He had a long interview of two hours with the king at the Escorial, no other person being present. It is said that he was even then so poor, that the king would have given him a benevolence from the royal treasury, but found it impossible to do it. When it was known that he was out of office, the public hostility was at once mitigated. He was accompanied by a noble attendance on the first stage of his journey. Many of his old dependants would have continued with him, but he would not allow it. "I can no longer do you service," he said. The king sent a courier after him the same evening with the present of a stag, which he had just killed in the chase, and a letter written by the royal hand, assuring him of his unabated private regard.

(91.) From the time of the Duke's retirement, there seems to have been less of interest taken by Gongora in public affairs. There are but few poems, and these of little value, relating to the statesmen who held office after this period. He takes no notice of the Duke of Uceda, or of Lewis de Aliaga, who *Davila, Grandezas, 468. † Davila, Phil. III. 204

next two years and a Lewis de Aliaga was

were the chief ministers for the half till the death of Philip III. a Dominican Friar, who had been recommended by the Duke of Lerma to the office of Confessor to the king; and afterwards, while he was also acting as minister of state, he was appointed Inquisitor General. But Philip III. does not appear to have admitted him to any great confidence; and, immediately after the accession of Philip IV., he was deprived both of his place in council and his Inquisitorship.*

(92.) As to the Duke of Uceda, he must have secured himself by some unbecoming compliances with his father's enemies, with Olivares and his friends, who were watching their opportunity to oust him in his turn. But while he held the reins, he imitated his father, as the mad son of Juvenal's Centronius, and was driven out of Court, when he had just completed for himself a new and stately palace :

"Thro' new-raised halls the curfew bell

Rang out Presumption's funeral knell."+ The counsellors of Philip IV. sent him to prison and to trial: he was heavily fined; then pardoned, but sent, as to an honourable banishment, to be Viceroy of Catalonia. He died soon afterwards, as it was reported, from discontent and disappointment. During

Davila, Grandezas, 172. Villamediana MS.

+

"Su casa,

Donda ya tañen a queda

De su vana presumpcion." Villamediana MS.

his sickness the old Duke wrote to him: "They tell me you are dying, like a simpleton, because you are out of place. For my part, I am more afraid of my years than of my enemies." It is well known that the Duke of Lerma had provided himself the promise of a Cardinal's hat for his retirement; and took refuge from the storms of state, like some of our old Anglo-Saxon Princes, within monastic walls. He passed his declining years at Valladolid, a place where he was likely to be welcomed with gratitude, officiated and sang in the choir, and occupied his time in devotion and works of piety. There his death took place in 1625, about two years before the death of Gongora.

(93.) After this change of ministry, our poet seems at first to have found a friend in Archbishop Sandoval, and to have retired to some office or appointment which he gave him near Toledo.* He had previously, in the autumn of 1616, taken a part with Jauregui, Christoval de Mesa, and other poets, in the public celebrity of the consecration of the Archbishop's sumptuous chapel of the Sagrario; when he wrote his poem on the vision of St. Ildefonso, translated in the following pages. Philip the third was present with the royal children; and the most distinguished Courtpreachers were in requisition with a Novena of Sermons. The University-scholars got up a masque on St. Simon and St. Jude's day on the Zocodover; when

* Such is our inference from a Sonnet, translated in this Selection: "Farewell the moral strain I lately took."