talents was Juan de Tassis, second inheritor of the title of Count of Villamediana. Of an ancient Milanese family, whose remote ancestors had resided at Bergamo, Roger de Tassis had passed into Germany, and gained the notice of the Emperor Frederic III. His heirs and representatives were distinguished for public services successively in the reigns of Maximilian and Charles V., and obtained dignities in Flanders. Raymond, the grandfather of the young Count, passing from Flanders into Spain in the time of Philip II., became naturalized there, married into the old Castillian family of the Acuñas, Counts of Buendia, and held the office of Postmaster General, which was held also by his two next descendants. In the exercise of the duties of this office, it was his painful task to disclose to the king the insane project of flight, which the unhappy Prince Don Carlos had sought to effect by his means.

Juan de Tassis the elder, son and heir of Raymond, had been a companion in arms of John of Austria, and is said to have fought well at the hot actions with the Moriscoes, at the storming of Galera and Peñon de Velez, and when succours were to be landed at Oran. He was one of the pall-bearers of his former commander, when the gallant Prince's remains were brought from Flanders to be deposited in the Escorial. What gave him a more questionable celebrity was that

* Prescott, Philip II. b. iv. c. vi. Chifflet, Maison de Tassis, Antwerp 1645 fol. p. 171.

he was reputed the best swordsman of his time; and, after he had been five times engaged in private duels or personal conflicts, and had come off successfully, though he bore the marks of certain gashes in his face, received in two hard-fought encounters, Philip thought proper to lay his commands upon him never to fight for his own hand again.

*

His suc

Philip III. in 1603 gave him the dignity of Count of Villamediana, and, after an intermediate mission to France and Flanders, sent him as his Ambassador to Great Britain and the Court of James I. cess on this mission has been already related. He remained about two years as Ambassador in ordinary at the English Court, and then returning to Spain died there in the following year, 1607, leaving an encumbered estate to his successor.

(III.) The poet, his only legitimate son, together with his title seems to have inherited much of the versatile talent of the father. He is said to have been born in Portugal at the time when Philip II. held his court there, in the year 1583, or 1584. His tutor in early life was Lewis Tribaldos de Toledo, a classical scholar of some distinction, and noted for his skill in Latin verse, who was afterwards domestic librarian to the Count-Duke.§ But joining to his literary lessons a *Haro, Nobiliario de España, ii. 28. Chifflet, Maison de Tassis, 179.

Chifflet, 201. Miñana, Hist. lib. viii. c. xi.

Nic. Antonio: Lope de Vega, Filom. 118.

ready aptitude for more active accomplishments, the young Count was soon famous in the tourney-field; and on one occasion, being in the retinue of the Count of Lemos, when he was viceroy of Naples, he made such a display of his valour and magnificence as to supply the Neapolitans with a lasting theme of wonder and applause.*

He was married at an early age to Anna de Mendoza y Cerda, a cousin of the Duke of Infantado;+ but the children who were born from this marriage died in infancy, and his title was destined to pass to the Count of Oñate, a descendant by the female side from Raymond de Tassis.

Little more has been hitherto told of him, than that, after other splendid appearances at festivals, and occasions of sumptuous expenditure in military services, he was suddenly assassinated in the streets of Madrid by an unknown hand.

(112.) The late lord Holland, in his lively "Account of the Life and Writings of Lope de Vega,"‡ gives the particulars nearly as they here follow. A few days only after the accession of Philip IV., the confessor of Balthasar de Zuñiga, uncle to the Count-Duke, bade Villamediana to look to himself; for his life was in danger. He despised the warning, and treated the adviser with disdain. However, that same evening, as he was driving with Don Lewis de Haro along one of the principal streets of Madrid, the coach was stopped, * Chifflet, 202. + Cabrera, III. Lond. 1806, p. 53-55

and he was requested by name to alight from it on urgent business. Almost before he had reached the carriage-step, he received a blow from a dagger near the heart, and in attempting to follow the assassin, he fell overpowered and bleeding to the ground. He was removed to his lodgings, but died shortly afterwards. His body was carried to St. Augustin's Church at Valladolid, a sumptuous edifice founded and endowed by his father, to be deposited there near the remains of his parents and his own little children.

The circumstances of his death are briefly stated by Nicolas Antonio, and many writers of comparatively modern date have alluded to them. But there is much silence in the writers of the time. Chifflet, whose Memoirs of the House of Tassis were published more than twenty years afterwards, either did not know the truth, or suppresses it, when he speaks of the Count as if he had been done to death by slanderous tongues.* In the edition of Gongora's works by Hozes, which Lord Holland had seen, there is the following singular effusion, in the form of a dialogue, between two idlers on the Mentidero, or "Lie-Walk," of Madrid, a place answering to the "Paul's Walk" of London in the days of the first Stewarts:—

"Upon the Lie-Walk of Madrid,

Where tales are staple, truth is strange,

And dealers in wild news outbid

Each other, as men do on 'Change;

* Chifflet, 204.

Madrid, 1633 and 1654, p. 67.

I question'd one who knew the town,
Hoping his tale might prove a true one,
'Pray, tell me, if it may be known,

Who kill'd the noble Count Don Juan?'

'It is not known, but not quite hid.'

'Nay, but a friend the truth would fain know.' 'Some say, it was the noble Cid,

'Who took him for the Count Lozano."

'Pshaw!' 'Nay, you know as much as I do;
The man did more than did behove him;
But who would dare to play Vellido,

Unless a Sovereign impulse drove him?'"*

The allusions in these lines to the death of Count Lozano at the hands of the Cid, and to Vellido Dolfos, the assassin of King Sancho, will be familiar to the readers of Don Quixote and the old Ballads.† The lines certainly appear to give some support to a common tradition, repeated by Lord Holland and Mr. Ticknor, of the cause of Villamediana's death. The story goes that Philip IV. having one day glided unperceived behind his young Queen in a corridor of the palace, put his hands before her eyes with the intention of surprising her. Thus taken off her guard, she exclaimed, "Que es esto, Conde?" "What means this, Count?" supposing it to have been Villamediana. The king understood her words to imply that she had permitted such liberties, and perhaps other liberties, to this nobleman; and determined to remove him by

* Obras de Gongora, ed. Madrid, 1633, fol. 67.

See Don Quixote's delicious prose on the Challenge of Diego Ordoñez, part ii. c. 27.