not likely to have claimed kindred with Horatio, who did such useful, but questionable service to Queen Elizabeth, and was intrusted with such important missions by Burleigh and Walsingham.* Possibly the changes now in progress in Naples may bring the present representatives of the name again into some posts of observation.

(122.) Beside these two, there were many persons of rank and literary fame, who are claimed as disciples of the school of Gongora. Among these was the young Duke of Sesa, afterwards chosen by Lope de Vega as his testamentary executor, but now a gay attendant on the court, busy in the nightly serenades listened to by the high-born ladies of Madrid, and sometimes, it would seem, equally prompt in the brawls provoked by rival competitors for woman's gracious ear. He was found one fine night, as Cabrera tells us, in the month of August 1609, seated under a porch-door, a sword broken at the hilt in one hand, the other holding a handkerchief, with which he was staunching the flowing blood from a gash made in his face. The Duke of Pastrana and Marquis of Barcarrota, who had heard the noise of the fray, occasioned by the wild young Duke of Maqueda, who had broken the head of the Duke of Sesa's minstrel with his own guitar, came to enquire of the wounded man whether he was much hurt: "If I am,"

* Camden, Annals, i. 396; ii. 20. 255.

Nichols' Lit. Aned. v. + Relac. 378.

he said, "I know how to take care of myself; and I have still half a sword left to pay off the chickenhearted cowards who came against me three to one." The two friendly enquirers accordingly left him alone in his glory.

Ticknor mentions the Prince of Esquilache among the opponents of the school of Gongora: but a Spanish apologist of the school, Martin de Angulo y Pulgar, who wrote in 1633, claims him as a disciple.* He claims also the Marquis of Ayamonte, to whom and to the Marchioness Gongora has addressed two or three sonnets, and speaks of the poets of his house. The Marquis was about to go out as Viceroy to Mexico; but was prevented by death in November 1607. This apologist also lays claim to the Count of Lemos, Lewis Cabrera the historian, and between twenty and thirty other literary names of the day.

(123.) Meantime the unfortunate Rodrigo Calderon had been carried from his long imprisonment of two years and six months, to die by the hand of the executioner. He suffered on a scaffold erected in the great public square at Madrid, within six months after the accession of Philip IV., October 21, 1621. As his cause had been all this time in suspense, and the judges, according to the barbarous usage then scarcely abolished even with us, had twice examined their prisoner by torture, one may conclude that it was not easy to find proofs of the charges brought against him. Gayangos, Notes to Ticknor, iii. 511.

*

to Spain, probably in no very flourishing condition, took up his abode at Valladolid, where he had been born, and Rodrigo, when he was growing up, was received as a page into the household of the Marquis of Denia, the future Duke of Lerma. It does not appear that he was at once placed in any office of government; but from being the Duke's confidential private secretary, he was soon known to be a person whom it was not advisable to have as an enemy. * In 1602 he is mentioned as having a key of the royal bedchamber; and in 1604, as he was coming at midnight to his lodgings from an evening party at the royal palace in Valladolid, lighting from a sedan-chair in the porch of his house, he received the first warning of the danger of his position, a person who had secreted himself there having tried to fire a pistol in his face. It however missed fire, and the assassin escaped. For the last ten or twelve years of the Duke's administration he had almost greater power than the Duke himself, having such influence as an active man, ready on all occasions, is likely to have with one who is somewhat indolent and self-indulgent. But he never attempted to supplant his patron: if we assign only the worse motive, it may be that he knew his own popularity would not enable him to stand alone.

His father, in his old age and widowhood, obtained by his son's means some offices of no great consideration, a habit of Santiago, and a Commandery of the * Contarini, 577. + Cabrera, 131, 227. Ib. 351.

Order in Arragon. He is said to have declined higher advancement, as fearing that the haughty spirit of his son betokened a speedy fall. The old man seems to have died in 1614.

*

(126.) Rodrigo, it is evident from Cabrera's jour nal, was the mark of much public enmity, long before the blow fell upon him: but the intrigues and conflicts were a little suspended by his being sent out on several foreign missions, to Venice, to the Emperor at Cologne, to the Court of France, and perhaps also to Rome. There was at one time some thought of sending him to England. Fulfilling such missions with ability, he returned to be in still higher favour. He seems to have been first raised to the peerage, as Count of Oliva, in 1613; and in the following year was made Marquis and Count of Siete Iglesias ;+ though Ramos says that in the archives of the family, which he saw, the date given was 1618. Eventually, no doubt, his unfortunate temper not only hastened his own ruin, but involved the Duke in the same overthrow.

His wife, whom he left as a widow at his death, was Ines de Vargas, a lady of good family. They had several children. Gongora seems to have been on familiar terms with them, and wrote in his merry trifling rhyme on a little accident which befel the eldest boy in an early experiment in horsemanship: + Ib. 558. Ramos, sec. 192. N

* Cabrera, 549.

VOL. I.

66

'Horse, who hast thrown our boy so fair,
And, by his fall unbound,

Hast trail'd in dust his golden hair,

Like sun-rays on the ground :
Get thee a pair of wings, and soar,
Like Pegasus, on high;

Or like th' imperial bird, that bore
Jove's minion to the sky :

Else all unmeet will be thy speed

To bear so bright a Ganymede.'

It is sad to think of the change that must have passed over the poor child's morning dreams, when, after the forfeiture of all his father's estate, he was left to a poor pension from the royal bounty. But perhaps this did not continue long. For, within two years after the death of Rodrigo, Philip IV., on the 17th of August, 1623, gave again the title of Count of Oliva to Francisco Calderon, the eldest son, with permission to his mother also to bear the title of Countess for her life.*

(127.) The date reminds us, that this grace was shewn during the stay of Charles and Buckingham at the Spanish Court. There are many notices of this visit of "Steenie and Baby Charles" in Antonio de Mendoza and other Spanish poets of the time; and Gongora has a sonnet which shews him to have been a well-wisher to the match, while he hoped that it would lead to the conversion of the heir of Great Britain. He had a respect for Gondomar, who had done his part to promote it. The last act of Gondo* Salazar de Mendoza, Tit. de Castilla, ann. 1623.