Note 496 — Chapter XX

The “Comedia Jacobina” is found in a curious and rare volume of religious poetry, entitled “Libro de Poesía, Christiana, Moral, y Divina,” por el Doctor Frey Damian de Vegas (Toledo, 1590, 12mo, ff. 503). It contains a poem on the Immaculate Conception, long the turning-point of Spanish orthodoxy; a colloquy between the Soul, the Will, and the Understanding, which may have been represented; and a great amount of religious poetry, both lyric and didactic, much of it in the old Spanish measures, and much in the Italian, but none better than the mass of poor verse on such subjects then in favor.