QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, ka-vaqh1 vt?-lyil' gfis, FRANCISCO DE (15S0-1645). A Spanish an thor. He was born in Madrid. studied at Alcala de Henares. and became versed in theology, law. Hebrew. Greek. Arabic, and Latin. as well as in modern languages. Although a cripple and de fective in eyesight, he figured in many duels, in one of which he mortally wounded a nobleman and had to flee the country in 1611. Soon, however. he was employed in connection with certain dip lomatic missions, and when the Duke of Osuna was put at the head of the Administration at Quevedo was made Minister of Finance under him. Osuna fell in 1620 and Quevedo shared in his misfortunes, being imprisoned for a good part of the next three years. Later he held a nominal appointment as secretary to King Philip IV. In 1639. suspected of having written some satiric verses attacking the extravagance of the King and his Ministers, he was arrested and spirited off to the monastery of Saint Mark in Leon. where he was kept for four years. At the fall of Olivarez, the Prime Minister responsible for this last imprisonment, he was again set free, but his health was now undermined, and he died at Villanueva de los Infantes, September 8, 164.5. A moralizing tone prevailed in his earlier
prose works. but it is as a satirist that he best showed his powers. especially in the picaresque novel Historia y rides del Buse6n (also called El gran Tacano), published in 1626. and in his series of Suefios (Visions). The former work is ex cessively coarse, yet one of the most important of the spanish romances of roguery. At the outset Quevedo was a sturdy opponent of the ;ongo ristie movement that did so much to vitiate Spanish style. but he yielded to the all-pervading power of Gongora's school and allowed bombast. obscurity. and strained conceit to enter into his own verse and prose. His verse shows no slight influence of Italian poetry, but in general it is marked by a satiric spirit that goes directly back to Juvenal. His prose writings are to be found in the Hiblioteea de autorrs espanolcs, vols. xxiii. and xlviii.: for his verse, see vol. lxix. Consult Merimee, Essai sur la vie et Ica eruvrcs de Que redo (Paris,