Note 180 — Chapter XXXVI

Marcos Garcia, “La Flema de Pedro Hernandez, Discurso Moral y Político,” Madrid, 1657, 12mo. The author was a surgeon of Madrid, and wrote “Honor de la Medecina”; and another “Papelillo,” without his name, which he mentions in his Prólogo. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 83.) He shows, at the beginning of his “Flema,” that he means to imitate Quevedo; but he has a good deal of cultismo in his style. For the meaning of “Flema,” see Covarrubias, ad verb.—One more trifle may here be mentioned; the “Desengaño del Hombre en el Tribunal de la Fortuna y Casa de Descontentos, ideado por Don Juan Martinez de Cuellar,” 1663. It is a vision, in which the author goes to the house of “Desengaño,”—that peculiarly Castilian word, which may here be translated Truth. He is led afterwards to the palace and tribunal of Fortune, where he is disabused of his errors concerning all earthly good. The fiction is of little worth, and the style is that of the school of Góngora.