Note 605 — Chapter XXII

Doblado’s Letters, 1822, pp. 296, 301, 303-309; Madame Calderon’s Life in Mexico, London, 1843, Letters 38 and 39; and Thompson’s Recollections of Mexico, New York, 1846, 8vo, Chap. 11. How much the autos were valued to the last, even by respectable ecclesiastics, may be inferred from the grave admiration bestowed on them by Martin Panzano, chaplain to the Spanish embassy at Turin, in his Latin treatise, “De Hispanorum Literatura,” (Mantuæ, 1759, folio), intended as a defence of his country’s literary claims, in which, speaking of the autos of Calderon, only a few years before they were forbidden, he says they were dramas, “in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nec in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderantur.”—p. lxxv.