GO'NGORA (LUIS GUNGORA Y ARGOTE), was born at Cordova in 156]. He was sent at the age of fifteen to Salamanca, to study the law, which the love of poetry soon induced him to abandon. He wrote during his stay at that university tho greater part of his jocose, amatory, and satirical pieces, which in language and versification are the best of his compositions. He bad frequently to struggle with poverty, which evidently embittered his sarcastic muse. At last, iu his forty-fifth year, he took holy orders, and obtained a scanty prebend in the cathedral of Cordova. He tried however to improve his pros pects by going to Madrid, where, after eleven years of wearisome ex pectation, he was made one of the chaplains of Philip III., in whose court he found his talents fully appreciated. A sudden illness subse quently deprived him of his memory, and he returned to his native city, whore he died on the 24th of May, 1627.
The disciples of the classic Spanish school were already tainted with the extravagant notions of the Italian Marinists, when Gongora unfortuuately came with his vigorous mind, and as it were at tee critical hour, to bring them into full fashion. Ile tortured tho Spanish language without mercy, called his new phraseology cello culto, and answered with intemperate abuse the judicious censure of his eminent contemporaries, the two brothers Argenaolas, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo. On the other hand, the declining state and cousequeut
wavering taste of his countrymen gave him what he desired, a crowd of admirers and imitators, who, with lees talent, carried to excess the empty pomp and verbose obscurity of the artificial language and uncommon turn of thought of their dazzling model. They even split into two distinct although congenial schools : that of the cultoristas,' the more zealous adherents of the pedantry of their =later; and that of the 'conceptistas,' the rivals of the Italian 'concettiati,' who formed a sect of still more conceited revellers in the wild regions of fancy. There are various compositions of Gongora still unpublished, but a Romancero under the title of Delicias del Parnaso' contains all his 'romances' and g letrillas.' Tha cultorista Alonso Castillo Solorzano extended Gongorism even to America, where he published his own works in Mexico in 1625. The earliest German romances were imitations of Gougora by Gleim.