Note 194 — BOOK VI.
Herman Oelsner translation
The lawyer Francisco de la Cueva y Silva was born at Medina del Campo about 1550. His verses appear in Pedro Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres de España; he wrote a prefatory poem for Escobar Cabeza de Vaca's Luzero de la tierra sancta, and is said to be the author of a play entitled El bello Adonis. Lope de Vega's Mal Casada is dedicated to Cueva whose high professional reputation may be inferred from the closing lines of a well-known sonnet by Quevedo:—
Todas las leyes, con discurso fuerte Venció; y ansí parece cosa nueva, Que le vinciese, siendo ley, la muerte.
Cueva is mentioned, together with Berrío (see note 58), in the Dorotea (Act. iv. sc. ii.): "Don Francisco de la Cueva, y Berrío, jurisconsultos gravísimos, de quien pudiéramos decir lo que de Dino y Alciato, interpretes consultísimos de las leyes y poetas dulcísimos, escribieron comedias que se representaron con general aplauso."