QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS

   Francisco Gomez de, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid, of an old illustrious family; left an orphan at an early age, and educated at Alcalá, the university of which he left with a great name for scholarship; served as diplomatist and administrator in Sicily under the Duke of Ossuna, the viceroy, and returned to the Court of Philip IV. in Spain at his death; struggled hard to purify the corrupt system of appointments to office in the State then prevailing but was seized and thrown into confinement, from which, after four years, he was released, broken in health; he wrote much in verse, but only for his own solace and in communication with his friends, and still more in prose on a variety of themes, he being a writer of the most versatile ability, of great range and attainment (1580-1645).