Lope was the idol of his contemporaries; and on the fruits of his labor, he lived in Madrid in what might be called splendor, when the really far greater Cervantes was starving in the same street. To such an extent was the popular admiration of him car ried, that his very name became a synonym of excellence; and people spoke of a Lope jewel, a Lope poem, or the like, as one of unsurpassable perfection. For a long time nobody else than Lope de Valencia was willingly heard on the Spanish stage; and his fame abroad (especially, of course, in Italy and in France) was almost as remarkable. In one quality, at least, Lope must be held to have surpassed all other poets—his product iveness was something portentious, and without parallel. Setting aside his other mul titudinous performances, the dramas on which his popularity mainly rested, and which have since perpetuated his fame, have been calculated to number not less than 1800. He himself, in one of his latest works, more modestly puts them at something over 1500, and assures us that to write a whole drama in a day was no unusual feat with him.
Even if we suppose in this something of the fabulous, there remain in print between five and six hundred of these pieces, to testify to his enormous fecundity; and it is cer tain that many more of his plays were acted, which have not in this form survived. The quantity of his work considered, its quality is not much less surprising. His fer tility of invention is marvelous; the ease and grace of his versification are unsurpassed iu the language in which he writes; and his pieces, even when slight in substance, are instinct with life and dramatic movement. In deep and serious qualities he is deficient, on which ground he is now ranked below his immediate successor, and some time con temporary, Calderon. With this single exception, he remains, however, chief orna ment of the Spanish stage, and a not inconsiderable figure in the dramatic literature of the world. An intelligent and full survey of his works, so far as the infinity of them permits it to be full, will be found in Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, to which readers are referred.