Note 592 — Chapter XXII

This correspondence, so honorable to Calderon, as well as to the head of the family of Columbus, who signs himself proudly, El Almirante Duque,—as Columbus himself had required his descendants always to sign themselves, (Navarrete, Tom. II. p. 229),—is to be found in the “Obelisco,” and again in Huerta, “Teatro Hespañol” (Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte II. Tom. III.). The complaints of Calderon about the booksellers are very bitter, as well they might be; for in 1676, in his Preface to his Autos, he says that their frauds took away from the hospitals and other charities—which yet received only a small part of the profits of the theatre—no less than twenty-six thousand ducats annually.