JUAN DE, a Castilian poet of considerable merit, was born at Cordova about 1411. He was early left an orphan; and at the age of twenty-three, as Romero naively informs us, he first gave himself to "the sweet labour of good learning," pursuing a regular course of study at Salamanca and Rome. On his return he was made a governor of his native city; and his learning and skill as a poet soon gained for him admittance at the court of Juan II., where he secured the friendship of the veteran soldier and elegant poet the Marquis of Santillana, and afterwards received the appointment of Latin secretary to the king and historiographer of Castile. He became ultimately a kind of poet-laureate. If a battle was won, Juan de Mena had to celebrate the victory in verse; if a pacification took place between the king and his son, the poet recorded the restoration of harmony in appropriate song; and if the Constable de Luna received a slight wound, Juan was ready with his quintillas to soothe the pain. He found friends also among eminent personages in Portugal. The Infante Don Pedro, himself a versifier of some note, made the acquaintance of Juan while in Spain, and on his return to Lisbon addressed him in tolerable verse, and afterwards wrote a skilful imitation of the Spanish poet's El Laberinto. De Mena died suddenly in 1456 at Torrelaguna, where Santillana, his fast friend and patron, wrote his epitaph, and erected a beautiful monument to his memory, which stands to the present day. Some of De Mena's shorter effusions are extremely pleasant and amusing; but the greater number of his minor poems are full of affectation and fashionable conceits. His poem of the Seven Deadly Sins, although of grave pretensions, is but a dull allegory full of pedantry and false metaphysics. The Coronation, written in honour of his noble patron the Marquis of Santillana, is a sort of light parody on the Divina Comedia of Dante, and while an improvement on his previous poem, is nevertheless overloaded with unprofitable learning. The descriptive passages, however, are often admirable, and the versification is smooth and flowing. His long poem, the Laberinto, or The Three Hundred, the composition of which was spread over a large portion of his life, was designed to teach, by vision and allegory, the duties and destinies of man, and is written in direct imitation of Dante's great work. Of the historical portraits introduced into the poem, the best are those of the poet's countrymen and contemporaries. Passing by the courtly flattery paid to the king and the constable, there are occasionally lines of uncommon power and tenderness, recording the premature fate of some noble Spaniard, such as the Count de Niebla. This poem met with great admiration at court; it was submitted to his majesty piecemeal as it was composed, and had the honour to receive a correction from the royal pen. Some have accorded to De Mena the title of the "Spanish Ennius," a distinction which may be considered generous, but can hardly be called just. He has always had a respectable position with his countrymen; if he cannot be considered absolutely popular. The most elaborate editions of his works are those of the learned Hernan Nunez de Guzman, with a comment, 1499; and of the eminent scholar, Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas, commonly called El Brocense, also with a gloss or comment, 1582. These editions have been frequently reprinted. The principal materials for the Life of Juan de Mena are to be found in the verses of Francisco Romero, in the Epicedio en la Muerte del Maestro Hernan Nuñez, 1578, at the end of the Refranes de Hernan Nuñez. (Ticknor's Hist. of Spanish Lit., vol. i., 1849.)