In the admirable “Essay on the Genius of Calderon” (ch. ii. p. 34), with which Archbishop Trench introduces his spirited analysis of La Vida es Sueno, he refers to the group of dramas which forms, with one exception, the seventh and eighth divisions of the classification above referred to, and pays a just tribute to the superior merits of Los dos amantes del cielo.  After alluding to the dramas, the argument of which is drawn from the Old Testament, and especially to The Locks of Absalom, which he considers the noblest specimen, he continues:  “Still more have to do with the heroic martyrdoms and other legends of Christian antiquity, the victories of the Cross of Christ over all the fleshly and spiritual wickednesses of the ancient heathen world.  To this theme, which is one almost undrawn upon in our Elizabethan drama,—­Massinger’s Virgin Martyr is the only example I remember,—­he returns continually, and he has elaborated these plays with peculiar care.  Of these The Wonder-working Magician is most celebrated; but others, as The Joseph of Women, The Two Lovers of Heaven, quite deserve to be placed on a level, if not higher than it.  A tender pathetic grace is shed over this last, which gives it a peculiar charm.  Then too he has occupied what one might venture to call the region of sacred mythology, as in The Sibyl of the East, in which the profound legends identifying the Cross of Calvary and the Tree of Life are wrought up into a poem of surpassing beauty".[2] An excellent German version of Los dos amantes del cielo is to be found in the second volume of the “Spanisches Theater”, by Schack, whose important work on Dramatic Art and Literature in Spain, is still untranslated into the language of that country,—­a singular neglect, when his later and less elaborate work, “Poesie and Kunst der Araber in Spanien und Sicilien” (Berlin, 1865), has already found an excellent Spanish interpreter in Don Juan Valera, two volumes of whose “Poesia y Arte de los Arabes en Espana y Sicilia” (Madrid, 1868), I was fortunate enough to meet with during a recent visit to Spain.

The story of SS.  Chrysanthus and Daria (The Two Lovers of Heaven), whose martyrdom took place at Rome A.D. 284, and whose festival occurs on the 25th of October, is to be found in a very abridged form in the “Legenda Aurea” of Jacobus de Voragine, c. 152.  The fullest account, and that which Calderon had evidently before him when writing The Two Lovers of Heaven, is given by Surius in his great work, “De Probatis Sanctorum Vitis”, October, p. 378.  This history is referred to by Villegas at the conclusion of his own condensed narrative in the following passage, which I take from the old English version of his Lives of Saints, by John Heigham, anno 1630.

“The Church doth celebrate the feast of SS.  Chrisanthus and Daria, the 25th of October, and their death was in the year of our Lord God 284, in the raigne of Numerianus, Emperor.  The martyrdom of these saints was written by Verinus and Armenius, priests of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr:  Metaphrastes enlarged it somewhat more.  St. Damasus made certain eloquent verses in praise of these saints, and set them on their tombe.  There is mention of them also in the Romaine Martirologe, and in that of Usuardus:  as also in the 5. tome of Surius; in Cardinal Baronius, and Gregory of Turonensis”, p. 849.