Note 176 — BOOK VI.

Luis Barahona de Soto was born in 1548 at Lucena (Lucena de Córdoba and not Lucena del Puerto, as Barrera supposed). After some wanderings he settled at Archidona where he practised medicine. He is said to have died ab intestato on November 6, 1595. A complimentary sonnet by him appears in Cristóbal de Mesa's Restauración de España (Madrid, 1607): it would seem, therefore, that Mesa's Restauración must have been in preparation for at least a dozen years. Some verses by Barahona de Soto are given in Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres: four of his satires, and his Fábula de Acteón are printed in Juan José López de Sedano's Parnaso Español (Madrid, 1768-1778), vol. ix., pp. 53-123. Barahona de Soto's best known work is La primera parte de la Angélica (Granada, 1586) which, in the colophon, has the alternative title of Las lágrimas de Angélica. There is a famous allusion to this work in Don Quixote (Part I., chap. vi.):—"I should have shed tears myself," said the curate when he heard the title, "had I ordered that book to be burned, for its author was one of the famous poets of the world, not to say of Spain, and was very happy in the translation of some of Ovid's fables." As Mr. Ormsby observed:—"The anti-climax here almost equals Waller's:—

See vol. iii. of the present edition (Glasgow, 1901), p. 53, n. 3. It has often been questioned whether Barahona de Soto ever wrote a Second Part of the Angélica. Since the publication of the Diálogos de la Montería (Madrid, 1890) by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, under the editorship of Sr. D. Francisco R. de Uhagón, it seems practically certain that he at all events began the Second Part, if he did not finish it. The Diálogos de la Montéria contain numerous passages quoted from the Second Part; and in a biographical, bibliographical and critical study, which Sr. D. Francisco Rodríguez Marín is now correcting for the press, it will be shown that Barahona de Soto was, in all probability, himself the author of these Diálogos.