QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, FRANCISCO GOMEZ DE Spanish satirist and poet, was born at Madrid, and was educated at the University of Alcala. At 21 he was in correspondence with Justus Lipsius on questions of Greek and Latin literature.
He betook himself to the court where the cynical greed of ministers, the meanness of their flatterers, the corruption of the royal officers, the financial scandals, afforded ample scope to Quevedo's talent as a painter of manners. In 1611 he fought a duel in which his adversary was killed, fled to Italy, and later on became secretary to Pedro Tellez Giron, duke of Osuna, and viceroy of Naples. Thus he learned politics (the one science which he had perhaps till then neglected), initiated himself into the questions that divided Europe, and penetrated the ambitions of the neighbours of Spain, as well as the secret history of the intriguers protected by the favour of Philip III. The result was that he wrote several political works, particularly a lengthy trea tise, La Politica de Dios (1626). The disgrace of Osuna (162o) compromised Quevedo, who was arrested and exiled to his estate at La Torre de Juan Abad in New Castile. On the death of Philip III. (March 31, 1621), Olivares recalled him from his exile and gave him an honorary post in the palace, and from this time Quevedo resided almost constantly at court, exercising a kind of political and literary jurisdiction due to his varied rela tions and knowledge, but especially to his biting wit, which had no respect for persons. In the midst of incessant controversy he found time to compose a picaresque romance, the Historia de la Vida del Busc6n . . . (1626) ; to write his Suelios (1627), in which all classes are flagellated; to pen a dissertation on The Constancy and Patience of Job (1631), to translate St.
Francis de Sales and Seneca, to compose thousands of verses, and to correspond with Spanish and foreign scholars. But Quevedo was not to maintain unscathed the high position won by his knowledge, talent, and biting wit. An anonymous petition in verse enumerating the grievances of his subjects was found, in Dec. 1639, under the very napkin of Philip IV. Suspicion fell on Que vedo, who had enemies glad to confirm them. He was arrested on Dec. 7, and kept in rigorous confinement in the monastery of St. Mark at Leon till the fall of Olivares (1643) restored him to light and freedom, but not to the health which he had lost in his dungeon. He had little more than two years to live, and these were spent in inactive retreat, first at La Torre de Juan Abad, and then at the neighbouring Villanueva de los Infantes, where he died.
As a satirist and humorist Quevedo stands in the first rank of Spanish writers. He merits attention not as humanist, phi losopher, and moralist, but as the keen polemic writer, the pitiless mocker, the profound observer of all that is base and absurd in human nature, and at the same time as a finished master of style and of all the secrets of the Spanish tongue. (J. F.-K.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Obras (prose), ed. A. Fernandez-Guerra y Orbe, (1852-59, Bib. de Autores esp., xxiii., xlviii.) ; (verse), ed. F. Janer (1877, Bib. de Autores esp. lxix.) ; Obras completas, ed. A. Fernandez Guerra y Orbe (annotated by M. Menendez y Pelayo) 1897-1907 (Soc. de Biblialos Andaluces). See also E. Merimee, Essai sur he vie et les oeuvres de Francisco de Quevedo (1886).