espada school. But these are stolen pleasures, glimpses into the dramatic paradise, foretastes. To-morrow I must go back." So the next day he went back to Torres Naharro, finished his task, and then proposed to take up the prose comedian Lope de Rueda," who, judging by a peep here and there, is full of fun." And then he added, as if a sudden thought struck him: "A good idea! Yes, I will write a comedy, The Spanish Stu

Whether or no the actual theme of his comedy as he afterward wrote it then flashed into his mind we cannot say, but from his familiarity with Cervantes, one of whose tales suggested the main action of the play and the name of the heroine, it is not impossible that at this time he conceived the notion of a student, as he had seen such in Spain, for his hero and a gypsy-girl for heroine. He seems to have allowed the subject to lie germinating in his mind till late in the fall of the same year, when he made a first draft of the play. "I have written," he says in a letter to his father, December 20, 1840, after speaking of The Skeleton in Armor," a much longer and more difficult poem, called The Spanish Student, a drama in five

acts; on the success of which I rely with some self-complacency. But this is a great secret, and must not go beyond the immediate family circle ; as I do not intend to publish it until the glow of composition has passed away, and I can look upon it coolly and critically. I will tell you more of this by and by. I hope you will not think me self-conceited because I parade all these things

before you. I remember that I am writing to my father."

There was some consultation with Mr. Ward upon the project of putting the play upon the stage, but the scheme was abandoned, and Mr. Longfellow turned his thoughts toward publication. As has been noted in the introduction to Ballads and other Poems he regarded that book as a sort of avant-coureur of The Spanish Student, but for some reason he decided to issue the play first in serial form, and it appeared in the September, October, and November numbers of Graham's Magazine, 1842, during the author's absence in Europe. Possibly Mr. Longfellow desired to test the public in this way, and also to obtain the preliminary criticism of printing. At any rate, when the book was published in the early summer of 1843 it was in a form very carefully revised from the magazine text; the alterations afterwards made by the author, as may be seen by the foot-notes, were very few and inconsiderable. The book bore upon the title-page a motto from Burns: —

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what 's resisted.

The following preface also was published in the first edition :

"The subject of the following play is taken in part from the beautiful tale of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a Gypsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details.

"In Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically; first by Juan Perez de Montalvan, in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solís y Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid.

"The same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gypsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Doña Clara, which is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre.

"The reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays of Montalvan, Solís, and Middleton will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs."

SCENE I. The COUNT OF LARA's chambers. Night.

The

COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking and conversing with DON CARLOS.

Lara. You were not at the play to-night, Don Carlos;

How happened it ?

I had engagements elsewhere.

Don C.
Pray who was there?

Lara.

Why, all the town and court.

The house was crowded; and the busy fans
Among the gayly dressed and perfumed ladies
Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers.
There was the Countess of Medina Celi;
The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover,
Her Lindo Don Diego; Doña Sol,

And Doña Serafina, and her cousins.

Don C. What was the play?

Lara.

It was a dull affair ;

One of those comedies in which you see,

As Lope says, the history of the world

Brought down from Genesis to the day of Judg

ment.

There were three duels fought in the first act,

Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds,

Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying, "Oh, I am dead!" a lover in a closet,

An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,
A Doña Inez with a black mantilla,

Followed at twilight by an unknown lover,
Who looks intently where he knows she is not!
Don C. Of course, the Preciosa danced to-night?
Lara. And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.

I think the girl extremely beautiful.

Don C. Almost beyond the privilege of woman! I saw her in the Prado yesterday.

Her step was royal, - queen-like, and her face As beautiful as a saint's in Paradise.

Lara. May not a saint fall from her Paradise,

And be no more a saint?

Line 29. As beauteous as a saint's in Paradise.