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discreet persons, who gave their children an education conformable to their illustrious lineage." These children were four: an eldest son, D. Diego, who succeeded to the family estates and honors; a daughter, who became a professed nun of the order of St. Clare, and survived the poet by a year; D. Josef, who followed the career of arms, and fell in battle in the year 1645; and D. Pedro, the youngest, with whom we have to do.* He received his first rudiments of education in the Jesuit college at Madrid; and then for five years studied philosophy and the scholastic theology (of which fact abundant traces appear in his writings) at the university of Salamanca. Leaving it at nineteen, he spent the five or six years that followed at the capital, having already in his fourteenth year shown the bent of his genius toward the stage by a drama, The Chariot of Heaven, which has not come down to us.

Like so many other of the most distinguished authors of Spain, he began his active career as a soldier

-in his twenty-fifth year serving in the Milanese, and afterward in the Low Countries, his biographer assuring us that his studies were not through these his more active engagements at all intermitted. Some have supposed that he was present at the siege and taking of Breda by Spinola, the great Genoese captain in the service of Spain (1625); inferring this from his singular familiarity with all the details of

*Los Hijos de Madrid, t. 1, p. 305; t. 2, p. 218; t. 3, p. 24.

displayed in his play How long his military We find him, at a date

this famous feat of arms, as called The Siege of Breda.* career lasted we are not told. somewhat later than this, again at Madrid, whither he had been summoned by the reigning monarch, Philip IV. In 1630, his fame was so well established, that Lope de Vega recognises him as his true and equal successor; while, five years later, the death of Lope (1635) left him the undisputed occupant of the highest place among the poets of Spain, a pre-eminence which he held without the challenge of a rival to the end of his life.

It was observed just now that Calderon came to Madrid in obedience to the summons of Philip IV. This monarch, himself an author, and writing his own language with precision and purity,† was passionately addicted to the drama. Indeed, some plays, said not

Gallery at Madrid, and (See Stirling, Velasquez spirited, is too much a It was probably a mere

*The surrender of Breda was a subject which employed the pencil of Velasquez as well as the pen of Calderon. The picture bearing this name is a chief ornament of the Royal one of the greatest works of a great master. and his Works, p. 148.) The play, though mere chronicle of the siege and capitulation. piece for the occasion. It is pleasant to notice the justice which Calderon does to the gallantry of Morgan, an English captain, who, with a small body of his countrymen, as we know from other sources, assisted in the defence of the place.

† Pellicer, a Spanish scholar of the last century, and librarian of the Royal Library at Madrid, states that in that library are preserved MS. translations by this king of Francis Guicciardini's History of the Wars of Italy, and also of his nephew's Description of the Low Countries; to the latter of which a graceful and sensible prologue has been prefixed by the king. (Origen y Progresos de la Comedia en España, Madrid, 1804, t. 1, p. 162.)

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to be without merit, are ascribed, but on no sufficient evidence, to him. Unfortunately, he expended on his artistic and literary pursuits a great portion of that time, and those energies, which would have been far better bestowed on the fulfilment of the kingly duties which were so greatly neglected by him. There was much, however, in the character of the youthful monarch (he was five years younger than the poet), which was gracious, amiable, and attractive; and a little. anecdote or two imply that the relations between the two were easy and familiar. Director of the court theatre, which was the post that Calderon, whether nominally or not, yet really occupied now, does not appear a very promising, nor yet a very dignified one, for a great poet to assume; yet one not very dissimilar Goethe was willing for many years to sustain at Weimar and, no doubt, like so many other positions, it was very much what the holder was willing to make it.

*For a happy sketch of his charactsr, see Stirling, Velasquez and his Works, London, 1855, pp. 46-48. Dunlop's Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II. (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1834), are not very profound, and their idiom is occasionally rather Scotch than English. They contain, however, enough of information agreeably conveyed, and which is not very easily found elsewhere, to occasion a regret that he never carried out a purpose entertained by him (see vol. i., p. 9; vol. ii., p. 415) of dedicating a third volume to the history of dramatic art in Spain during the seventeenth century: As it is, the intention of devoting an especial treatise to this subject has caused him almost wholly to pass by a matter, which, in the life of such a monarch as Philip IV., could else have hardly failed to occupy some prominence in his book.

A member of the military order of Santiago (for in 1637 he had received this honor), Calderon had the opportunity of showing in his middle age that his martial ardor was not quenched. On occasion of the revolt in Catalonia, in 1640, the members of the three military orders were summoned to take the field. His biographer tells us that it was only by a device that Calderon was able to take that part in the perils of the campaign to which in duty and honor he felt himself bound. The king wished to detain the poet at his side. Garcilasso, the author of the most elegant lyrics after the Italian fashion which Spain had produced, had perished quite in his youth at the storming of a fortified mill, leaving only the first-fruits of his graceful genius behind him. Philip may not have been willing to expose a far greater light to a like premature extinction. At any rate, he desired to hinder the poet from going; and this he supposed that he had effectually done, when he gave him a festal piece to prepare, which, according to the king's anticipation, would abundantly occupy him until after the expedition had set out. Calderon, however, defeated his purpose-bringing his appointed task with such rapidity to a close, that he was able to follow and join the army in time, as Vera Tassis tells us, to share with it all its dangers until peace was concluded.

Such is the account of his biographer; and such conduct would be entirely in keeping with the chival

rous character of Calderon: yet it is not without its difficulties. In the first place, the king could only have expected, by such an artifice as this, to detain him from the perils of the campaign, on the assumption that the war would be over almost as soon as begun. A fleet which had once set sail it might be impossible afterward to join; but infinite opportunities must have offered of joining an army only two or three provinces off, and between such and the capital there must have been constant communication. Perhaps such expectation of immediate success may have prevailed at Madrid. As it proved, the contest in Catalonia lasted for twelve years, the revolt being only suppressed in 1652 -which makes another difficulty. Vera Tassis states that Calderon remained with the army till peace was concluded; which would be for these twelve years. It is quite certain that long before this he was again in attendance on the court. In 1649, he took a prominent share in preparing the shows and festivities which welcomed the arrival of Philip's new queen, Anna Maria of Austria, to Madrid; while, in 1651, a year before the rebellion was quelled, he had taken holy orders: for, like so many other of his countrymen, illustrious in war, or statesmanship, or art, the career which he began as a soldier he concluded as a priest.

In a church so richly endowed as the Spanish was then, and one in which the monarch had been so successful in keeping the richest endowments in his own gift, it was not likely that Calderon would long re

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