Quevedo Villegas

Quevedo Villegas, Francisco Gomez da (1580-1645), a Spanish writer and diplomatist, was born at Madrid. He made a great name as a scholar at the university of Alcala, but in 1611 was obliged to leave Spain in consequence of a duel. Under the Duke of Ossuna, when Viceroy of Sicily and Naples, he showed much diplomatic and financial ability, but was involved in his fall in 1619. In 1623 he came to the court of Philip IV., whom he tried to dissuade from government by favoritism, attacking the system in his Politica de Dios (1626) and Hell Reformed (1628), but was at length overthrown by the Count Duke of Olivarez and imprisoned in a convent at Leon from 1639 till the fall of the minister four years later. His health was completely broken by this imprisonment, and he only survived his liberation two years. Quevedo wrote much on various subjects, and was especially known as "the scourge of silly poets." His own verse was published without his consent; but he discovered and published the works of the poet Francisco de la Torre, which were for a time thought to have been his own. Among his prose writings El Vida del Buscon Pablos (1626), a novel, and five Visions (of which an English version appeared in 1667 by Sir R. L'Estrange) should be mentioned, Unfortunately we have the latter only in a very corrupt form, and not as the author wrote them.