[810] Francisco de Portugal, in his “Arte de Galantería,” (Lisboa, 1670, 4to, p. 49,) says, that, when Mendoza went ambassador to Rome, he took no books with him for travelling companions but “Amadis de Gaula” and the “Celestina.”

[811] Mendoza’s success as an ambassador passed into a proverb. Nearly a century afterwards, Salas Barbadillo, in one of his tales, says of a chevalier d’industrie, “According to his own account, he was an ambassador to Rome, and as much of one as that wise and great knight, Diego de Mendoza, was in his time.” Cavallero Puntual, Segunda Parte, Madrid, 1619, 12mo, f. 5.

[812] Mendoza seems to have been treated harshly by Philip II. about some money matters relating to his accounts for work done on the castle of Siena, when he was governor there. Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, Madrid, 1819, 8vo, p. 441.

[813] One of his poems is “A Letter in Redondillas, being under Arrest.” Obras, 1610, f. 72.

[814] There is but one edition of the poetry of Mendoza. It was published by Juan Diaz Hidalgo at Madrid, with a sonnet of Cervantes prefixed to it, in 1610, 4to; and is a rare and important book. In the address “Al Lector,” we are told that his lighter works are not published, as unbecoming his dignity; and if a sonnet, printed for the first time by Sedano, (Parnaso Español, Tom. VIII. p. 120,) is to be regarded as a specimen of those that were suppressed, we have no reason to complain.

There is in the Royal Library at Paris, MS. No. 8293, a collection of the poetry of Mendoza, which has been supposed to contain notes in his own handwriting, and which is more ample than the published volume, Ochoa, Catálogo, Paris, 1844, 4to, p. 532.

[815] This epistle was printed, during Mendoza’s lifetime, in the first edition of Boscan’s Works (ed. 1543, f. 129); and is to be found in the Poetical Works of Mendoza himself, (f. 9,) in Sedano, Faber, etc. The earliest printed work of Mendoza that I have seen is a cancion in the Cancionero Gen. of 1535, f. 99. b.

[816] The Hymn to Cardinal Espinosa is in the Poetical Works of Mendoza, f. 143. See also, Sedano, Tom. IV., (Indice, p. ii.,) for its history.

[817] Obras, f. 99.

[818] See the sonnet of Mendoza in Silvestre’s Poesías, (1599, f. 333,) in which he says,—

and the epistle of Mesa to the Count de Castro, in Mesa, Rimas, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, f. 158,—

[819] The one called a Villancico (Obras, f. 117) is a specimen of the best of the gay letrillas.

[820] These two letters are printed in that rude and ill-digested collection called the “Seminario Erudito,” Madrid, 1789, 4to; the first in Tom. XVIII., and the second in Tom. XXIV. Pellicer, however, says that the latter is taken from a very imperfect copy (ed. Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 1, note); and, from some extracts of Clemencin, (ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 5,) I infer that the other must be so likewise. They pass, in the MS., under the title of “Cartas del Bachiller de Arcadia.” The Catariberas, whom Mendoza so vehemently attacks in the first of them, seem to have sunk still lower after his time, and become a sort of jackals to the lawyers. See the “Soldado Pindaro” of Gonçalo de Cespedes y Meneses, (Lisboa, 1626, 4to, f. 37. b,) where they are treated with the cruellest satire. I have seen it suggested that Diego de Mendoza is not the author of the last of the two letters, but I do not know on what ground.

[821] The first edition of the “Guerra de Granada” is of Madrid, 1610, 4to; but it is incomplete. The first complete edition is the beautiful one by Monfort (Valencia, 1776, 4to); since which there have been several others.

[822] The passage in Tacitus is Annales, Lib. I. c. 61, 62; and the imitation in Mendoza is Book IV. ed. 1776, pp. 300-302.

[823] The accounts may be found in Mariana, (Lib. XXVII. c. 5,) and at the end of Hita, “Guerras de Granada,” where two of the ballads are inserted.

[824] “Incedunt,” says Tacitus, “mœstos locos, visuque ac memoriâ deformes.”

[825] “Medio campi albentia ossa, ut fugerant, ut restiterant, disjecta vel aggerata; adjacebant fragmina telorum, equorumque artus, simul truncis arborum antefixa ora.”

[826] “Igitur Romanus, qui aderat, exercitus, sextum post cladis annum, trium legionum ossa, nullo noscente alienas reliquias an suorum humo tegeret, omnes, ut conjunctos ut consanguineos, auctâ in hostem irâ, mœsti simul et infensi condebant.”

[827] The speech of El Zaguer is in the first book of the History.

[828] There are some acute remarks on the style of Mendoza in the Preface to Garces, “Vigor y Elegancia de la Lengua Castellana,” Madrid, 1791, 4to, Tom. II.

[829] Pleasant glimpses of the occupations and character of Mendoza, during the last two years of his life, may be found in several letters he wrote to Zurita, the historian, which are preserved in Dormer, “Progresos de la Historia de Aragon” (Zaragoza, 1680, folio, pp. 501, etc.). The way in which he announces his intention of giving his books to the Escurial Library, in a letter, dated at Granada, 1 Dec., 1573, is very characteristic: “I keep collecting my books and sending them to Alcalá, because the late Doctor Velasco wrote me word, that his Majesty would be pleased to see them, and perhaps put them in the Escurial. And I think he is right; for as it is the most sumptuous building of ancient or modern times, that I have seen, so I think that nothing should be wanting in it, and that it ought to contain the most sumptuous library in the world.” In another, a few months only before his death, he says, “I go on dusting my books and examining them to see whether they are injured by the rats, and am well pleased to find them in good condition. Strange authors there are among them, of whom I have no recollection; and I wonder I have learnt so little, when I find how much I have read.” Letter of Nov. 18, 1574.

[830] Escobar complains that many of the questions sent to him were in such bad verse, that it cost him a great deal of labor to put them into a proper shape; and it must be admitted, that both questions and answers generally read as if they came from one hand. Sometimes a long moral dissertation occurs, especially in the prose of the second volume, but the answers are rarely tedious from their length. Those in the first volume are the best, and Nos. 280, 281, 282, are curious, from the accounts they contain of the poet himself, who must have died after 1552. In the Preface to the first volume, he says the Admiral died in 1538. If the whole work had been completed, according to its author’s purpose, it would have contained just a thousand questions and answers. For a specimen, we may take No. 10 (Quatrocientas Preguntas, Çaragoça, 1545, folio) as one of the more ridiculous, where the Admiral asks how many keys Christ gave to St. Peter, and No. 190 as one of the better sort, where the Admiral asks, whether it be necessary to kneel before the priest at confession, if the penitent finds it very painful; to which the old monk answers gently and well,—

The fifth part of the first volume consists of riddles in the old style; and, as Escobar adds, they are sometimes truly very old riddles; so old, that they must have been generally known. The second volume was printed at Valladolid, 1552, and both are in folio.

[831] The volume of Corelas’s “Trezientas Preguntas” (Valladolid, 1546, 4to) is accompanied by a learned prose commentary in a respectable didactic style.

[832] Docientas Preguntas, etc., por Juan Gonzalez de la Torre, Madrid, 1590, 4to.

[833] I should rather have said, perhaps, that the Preguntas were soon restricted to the fashionable societies and academies of the time, as we see them wittily exhibited in the first jornada of Calderon’s “Secreto á voces.”

[834] The general tendency and tone of the didactic prose-writers in the reign of Charles V. prove this fact; but the Discourse of Morales, the historian, prefixed to the works of his uncle, Fernan Perez de Oliva, shows the way in which the change was brought about. Some Spaniards, it is plain from this curious document, were become ashamed to write any longer in Latin, as if their own language were unfit for practical use in matters of grave importance, when they had, in the Italian, examples of entire success before them. Obras de Oliva, Madrid, 1787, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. xvi.-xlvii.

[835] There is a letter of Villalobos, dated at Calatayud, Oct. 6, 1515, in which he says he was detained in that city by the king’s severe illness, (Obras, Çaragoça, 1544, folio, f. 71. b.) This was the illness of which Ferdinand died in less than four months afterward.

[836] Mendez, Typographía, p. 249. Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 344, note.

[837] He seems, from the letter just noticed, to have been displeased with his position as early as 1515; but he must have continued at court above twenty years longer, when he left it poor and disheartened. (Obras, f. 45.) From a passage two leaves farther on, I think he left it after the death of the Empress, in 1539.

[838] If Poggio’s trifle, “An Seni sit Uxor ducenda,” had been published when Villalobos wrote, I should not doubt he had seen it. As it is, the coincidence may not be accidental, for Poggio died in 1449, though his Dialogue was not, I believe, printed till the present century.

[839] The Problemas constitute the first part of the Obras de Villalobos, 1544, and fill 34 leaves.

[840] Obras, f. 35.

[841] I have translated the title of this Treatise “The Three Great Annoyances.” In the original it is “The Three Great ——,” leaving the title, says Villalobos in his Prólogo, unfinished, so that every body may fill it up as he likes.

[842] The most ample life of Oliva is in Rezabal y Ugarte, “Biblioteca de los Escritores, que han sido individuos de los seis Colegios Mayores” (Madrid, 1805, 4to, pp. 239, etc.). But all that we know about him, of any real interest, is to be found in the exposition he made of his claims and merits when he contended publicly for the chair of Moral Philosophy at Salamanca. (Obras, 1787, Tom. II. pp. 26-51.) In the course of it, he says his travels all over Spain and out of it, in pursuit of knowledge, had amounted to more than three thousand leagues.

[843] Obras, Tom. I. p. xxiii.

[844] The works of Oliva have been published at least twice, the first time by his nephew, Ambrosio de Morales, 4to, Córdova, in 1585, and again at Madrid, 1787, 2 vols. 12mo. In the Index Expurgatorius, (1667, p. 424,) they are forbidden to be read, “till they are corrected,”—a phrase which seems to have left each copy of them to the discretion of the spiritual director of its owner. In the edition of 1787, a sheet was cancelled, in order to get rid of a note of Morales. See Index of 1790.

In the same volume with the minor works of Oliva, Morales published fifteen moral discourses of his own, and one by Pedro Valles of Córdova, none of which have much literary value, though several, like one on the Advantage of Teaching with Gentleness, and one on the Difference between Genius and Wisdom, are marked with excellent sense. That of Valles is on the Fear of Death.

[845] Siguense dos Coloquios de Amores y otro de Bienaventurança, etc., por Juan de Sedeño, vezino de Arevalo, 1536, sm. 4to, no printer or place, pp. 16. This is the same Juan de Sedeño who translated the “Celestina” into verse in 1540, and who wrote the “Suma de Varones Ilustres” (Arevalo, 1551, and Toledo, 1590, folio);—a poor biographical dictionary, containing lives of about two hundred distinguished personages, alphabetically arranged, and beginning with Adam. Sedeño was a soldier, and served in Italy.

[846] The whole Dialogue—both the part written by Oliva and that written by Francisco Cervantes—was published at Madrid (1772, 4to) in a new edition by Cerdá y Rico, with his usual abundant, but awkward, prefaces and annotations.

[847] It is republished in the volume mentioned in the last note; but we know nothing of its author.

[848] Diálogos muy Subtiles y Notables, etc., por D. Pedro de Navarra, Obispo de Comenge, Çaragoça, 1567, 12mo, 118 leaves. The first five Dialogues are on the Character becoming a Royal Chronicler; the next four on the Differences between a Rustic and a Noble Life; and the remaining thirty-one on Preparation for Death;—all written in a pure, simple Castilian style, but with little either new or striking in the thoughts. Their author says, it was a rule of the Academia, that the person who arrived last at each meeting should furnish a subject for discussion, and direct another member to reduce to writing the remarks that might be made on it,—Cardinal Poggio, Juan d’Estuñiga, knight-commander of Castile, and other persons of note, being of the society. Navarra adds, that he had written two hundred dialogues, in which there were “few matters that had not been touched upon in that excellent Academy,” and notes especially, that the subject of Preparation for Death had been discussed after the decease of Cobos, a confidential minister of Charles V., and that he himself had acted as secretary on the occasion. Traces of any thing contemporary are, however, rare in the forty dialogues he printed;—the most important that I have noticed relating to Charles V. and his retirement at San Yuste, which the good Bishop seems to have believed was a sincere abandonment of all worldly thoughts and passions. I find nothing to illustrate the character of Cortés, except the fact that such meetings were held at his house.

[849] Silva de Varia Leccion, por Pedro Mexia. The first edition (Sevilla, 1543, fol., lit. got., 144 leaves) is in only three parts. Another, which I also possess, is of Madrid, 1669, and in six books, filling about 700 closely printed quarto pages. It was long very popular, and there are many editions of it, besides translations into Italian, German, French, Flemish, and English. One English version is by Thomas Fortescue, and appeared in 1571. (Warton’s Eng. Poetry, London, 1824, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 312.) Another, which is anonymous, is called “The Treasure of Ancient and Modern Times, etc., translated out of that worthy Spanish Gentleman, Pedro Mexia, and Mr. Francisco Sansovino, the Italian,” etc. (London, 1613, fol.). It is a curious mixture of similar discussions by different authors, Spanish, Italian, and French. Mexia’s part begins at Book I. c. 8.

[850] The earliest edition of the Dialogues, I think, is that of Seville, 1547, 8vo. The one I use is in 12mo, and was printed at Seville, 1562, black letter, 167 leaves. The second dialogue, which is on Inviting to Feasts, is amusing; but the last, which is on subjects of physical science, such as the causes of thunder, earthquakes, and comets, is now-a-days only curious or ridiculous. At the end of the Dialogues, and sometimes at the end of old editions of the Silva, is found a free translation of the Exhortation to Virtue by Isocrates, made from the Latin of Agricola, because Mexia did not understand Greek. It is of no value.

[851] Diálogo de la Verdadera Honra Militar, por Gerónimo Ximenez de Urrea. There are editions of 1566, 1575, 1661, etc. (Latassa, Bib. Arag. Nueva, Tom. I. p. 264.) Mine is a small quarto volume, Zaragoza, 1642. One of the most amusing passages in the Dialogue of Urrea is the one in Part First, containing a detailed statement of every thing relating to the duel proposed by Francis I. to Charles V.

[852] As late as 1592, when the “Conversion de la Magdalena,” by Pedro Malon de Chaide was published, the opposition to the use of the Castilian in grave subjects was continued. He says, people talked to him as if it were “a sacrilege” to discuss such matters except in Latin. (f. 15.) But he replies, like a true Spaniard, that the Castilian is better for such purposes than Latin or Greek, and that he trusts before long to see it as widely spread as the arms and glories of his country. (f. 17.)

[853] A full account of Juan Lopez de Vivero Palacios Rubios, who was a man of consequence in his time, and engaged in the famous compilation of the Spanish laws called “Leyes de Toro,” is contained in Rezabal y Ugarte (Biblioteca, pp. 266-271). His works in Latin are numerous; but in Spanish he published only “Del Esfuerzo Belico Heroyco,” which appeared first at Salamanca in 1524, folio, but of which there is a beautiful Madrid edition, 1793, folio, with notes by Francisco Morales.

[854] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 8. He flourished about 1531-45. His “Agonía del Tránsito de la Muerte,” a glossary to which, by its author, is dated 1543, was first printed from his corrected manuscript, many years later. My copy, which seems to be of the first edition, is dated Alcalá, 1574, and is in 12mo. The treatise called “Diferencias de Libros que ay en el Universo,” by the same author, who, however, here writes his name Venegas, was finished in 1539, and printed at Toledo in 1540, 4to. It is written in a good style, though not without conceits of thought, and conceited phrases. But it is not, as its title might seem to imply, a criticism on books and authors, but the opinion of Vanegas himself, how we should study the great books of God, nature, man, and Christianity. It is, in fact, intended to discourage the reading of books then much in fashion, and deemed by him bad.

[855] He died in 1569. In 1534 he was in the prisons of the Inquisition, and in 1559 one of his books was put into the Index Expurgatorius. Nevertheless, he was regarded as a sort of Saint. (Llorente, Histoire de l’Inquisition, Tom. II. pp. 7 and 423.) His “Cartas Espirituales” were not printed, I believe, till the year of his death. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. pp. 639-642.) His treatises on Self-knowledge, on Prayer, and on other religious subjects, are equally well written, and in the same style of eloquence. A long life, or rather eulogy, of him is prefixed to the first volume of his works, (Madrid, 1595, 4to,) by Juan Diaz.

[856] A life of Guevara is prefixed to the edition of his Epístolas, Madrid, 1673, 4to; but there is a good account of him by himself in the Prólogo to his “Menosprecio de Corte.”

[857] See the argument to the “Década de los Césares.”

[858] Watt, in his “Bibliotheca Britannica,” and Brunet, in his “Manuel du Libraire,” give quite curious lists of the different editions and translations of the works of Guevara, showing their great popularity all over Europe. In French, the number of translations in the sixteenth century was extraordinary. See La Croix du Maine et du Verdier, Bibliothèques, (Paris, 1772, 4to, Tom. III. p. 123,) and the articles there referred to.

[859] There are editions of the Cartas del Bachiller Rua, Burgos, 1549, 4to, and Madrid, 1736, 4to, and a life of him in Bayle, Dict. Historique, Amsterdam, 1740, folio, Tom. IV. p. 95. The letters of Rua, or Rhua, as his name is often written, are respectable in style, though their critical spirit is that of the age and country in which they were written. The short reply of Guevara following the second of Rua’s letters is not creditable to him.

[860] Antonio, in his article on Guevara, (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 125,) is very severe; but his tone is gentle, compared with that of Bayle, (Dict. Hist., Tom. II. p. 631,) who always delights to show up any defects he can find in the characters of priests and monks. There are editions of the Relox de Principes, of 1529, 1532, 1537, etc.

[861] La Fontaine, Fables, Lib. XI. fab. 7, and Guevara, Relox, Lib. III. c. 3. The speech which the Spanish Bishop, the true inventor of this happy fiction, gives to his Rústico de Germania is, indeed, too long; but it was popular. Tirso de Molina, after describing a peasant who approached Xerxes, says in the Prologue to one of his plays,—

Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 102

La Fontaine, however, did not trouble himself about the original Spanish or its popularity. He took his beautiful version of the fable from an old French translation, made by a gentleman who went to Madrid in 1526 with the Cardinal de Grammont, on the subject of Francis the First’s imprisonment. It is in the rich old French of that period, and La Fontaine often adopts, with his accustomed skill, its picturesque phraseology. I suppose this translation is the one cited by Brunet as made by René Bertaut, of which there were many editions. Mine is of Paris, 1540, folio, by Galliot du Pré, and is entitled “Lorloge des Princes, traduict Despaignol en Langaige François”; but does not give the translator’s name.

[862] The “Década de los Césares,” with the other treatises of Guevara here spoken of, except his Epistles, are to be found in a collection of his works first printed at Valladolid in 1539. My copy is of the second edition, Valladolid, 1545, folio, black letter, 214 leaves.

[863] These very letters, however, were thought worth translating into English by Sir Geoffrey Fenton, and are found ff. 68-77 of a curious collection taken from different authors and published in London, (1575, 4to, black letter,) under the title of “Golden Epistles.” Edward Hellowes had already translated the whole of Guevara’s Epistles in 1574; which were again translated, but not very well, by Savage, in 1657.

[864] Epístolas Familiares de D. Antonio de Guevara, Madrid, 1673, 4to p. 12, and elsewhere. Cervantes, en passant, gives a blow at the letter of Guevara about Laïs, in the Prólogo to the first part of his Don Quixote.

[865] One of these religious treatises is entitled “Monte Calvario,” 1542, translated into English in 1595; and the other, “Oratorio de Religiosos,” 1543, which is a series of short exhortations or homilies with a text prefixed to each. The first is ordered to be expurgated in the Index of 1667, (p. 67,) and both are censured in that of 1790.

[866] Hellowes translated this, also, and printed it in 1578. (Sir E. Brydges, Censura Literaria, Tom. III. 1807, p. 210.) It is an unpromising subject in any language, but in the original Guevara has shown some pleasantry, and an easier style than is common with him.

[867] Both these treatises were translated into English; the first by Sir Francis Briant, in 1548. Ames’s Typog. Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, London, 1810, 4to, Tom. III. p. 460.

[868] Llorente (Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. II. pp. 281 and 478) makes some mistakes about Valdés, of whom the best accounts are to be found in McCrie’s “Hist. of the Progress, etc., of the Reformation in Italy,” (Edinburgh, 1827, 8vo, pp. 106 and 121,) and in his “Hist. of the Progress, etc., of the Reformation in Spain” (Edinburgh, 1829, 8vo, pp. 140-146). Valdés is supposed to have been an anti-Trinitarian, but McCrie does not admit it.

[869] His chief error is in supposing that the Greek language once prevailed generally in Spain, and constituted the basis of an ancient Spanish language, which, he thinks, was spread through the country before the Romans appeared in Spain.

[870] The intimations alluded to are, that the Valdés of the Dialogue had been at Rome; that he was a person of some authority; and that he had lived long at Naples and in other parts of Italy. He speaks of Garcilasso de la Vega as if he were alive, and Garcilasso died in 1536. Llorente, in a passage just cited, calls Valdés the author of the Diálogo de las Lenguas; and Clemencin—a safer authority—does the same, once, in the notes to his edition of Don Quixote, (Tom. IV. p. 285,) though in many other notes he treats it as if its author were unknown.

[871] The Diálogo de las Lenguas was not printed till it appeared in Mayans y Siscar, “Orígenes de la Lengua Española,” (Madrid, 1737, 2 tom. 12mo); where it fills the first half of the second volume, and is the best thing in the collection. Probably the manuscript had been kept out of sight as the work of a well-known heretic. Mayans says, that it could be traced to Zurita, the historian, and that, in 1736, it was purchased for the Royal Library, of which Mayans himself was then librarian. One leaf was wanting, which he could not supply; and though he seems to have believed Valdés to have been the author of the Dialogue, he avoids saying so,—perhaps from an unwillingness to attract the notice of the Inquisition to it. (Orígenes, Tom. I. pp. 173-180.) Iriarte, in the “Aprobacion” of the collection, treats the Diálogo as if its author were quite unknown.

[872] Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. I. p. 97.

[873] Ibid., p. 98.

[874] Sandoval says that Charles V. suffered greatly in the opinion of the Spaniards, on his first arrival in Spain, because, owing to his inability to speak Spanish, they had hardly any proper intercourse with him. It was, he adds, as if they could not talk with him at all. Historia, Anvers, 1681, folio, Tom. I. p. 141.

[875] Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. pp. 127-133. The author of the Diálogo urges the introduction of a considerable number of words from the Italian, such as discurso, facilitar, fantasia, novela, etc., which have long since been adopted and fully recognized by the Academy. Diego de Mendoza, though partly of the Italian school, objected to the word centinela as a needless Italianism; but it was soon fully received into the language. (Guerra de Granada, ed. 1776, Lib. III. c. 7, p. 176.) A little later, Luis Velez de Guevara, in Tranco X. of his “Diablo Cojuelo,” denied citizenship to fulgor, purpurear, pompa, and other words now in good use.

[876] Mendez, Typographía, p. 175. Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 333.

[877] Mendez, Typog., pp. 239-242. For the great merits of Antonio de Lebrixa, in relation to the Spanish language, see “Specimen Bibliothecæ Hispano-Mayansianæ ex Museo D. Clementis,” Hannoveræ, 1753, 4to, pp. 4-39.

[878] Mendez, pp. 243 and 212, and Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. II. p. 266.

[879] The Grammar of Juan de Navidad, 1567, is not an exception to this remark, because it was intended to teach Spanish to Italians, and not to natives.

[880] Clemencin, in Mem. de la Academia de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 472, notes.

[881] It is curious to observe, that the author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas,” (Orígenes, Tom. II. p. 31,) who wrote about 1535, Mayans, (Orígenes, Tom. I. p. 8,) who wrote in 1737, and Sarmiento, (Memorias, p. 94,) who wrote about 1760, all speak of the character of the Castilian and the prevalence of the dialects in nearly the same terms.

[882] De las Fiebres Interpoladas, Metro I., Obras, 1543, f. 27.

[883] See Mariana’s account of the glories of Toledo, Historia, Lib. XVI. c. 15, and elsewhere. He was himself from the kingdom of Toledo, and often boasts of its renown. Cervantes, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 19,) implies that the Toledan was accounted the purest Spanish of his time. It still claims to be so in ours.

[884] “Also, at the same Cortes, the same King, Don Alfonso X., ordered, if thereafter there should be a doubt in any part of his kingdom about the meaning of any Castilian word, that reference thereof should be had to this city as to the standard of the Castilian tongue [como á metro de la lengua Castellana], and that they should adopt the meaning and definition here given to such word, because our tongue is more perfect here than elsewhere.” (Francisco de Pisa, Descripcion de la Imperial Ciudad de Toledo, ed. Thomas Tamaio de Vargas, Toledo, 1617, fol., Lib. I. c. 36, f. 56.) The Cortes here referred to is said by Pisa to have been held in 1253; in which year the Chronicle of Alfonso X. (Valladolid, 1554, fol., c. 2) represents the king to have been there.

[885] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 127, and Preface to Epístolas Familiares of Guevara, ed. 1673.

[886] See the vituperative article Guevara, in Bayle.

[887] The best life of Ocampo is to be found in the “Biblioteca de los Escritores que han sido Individuos de los Seis Colegios Mayores,” etc., por Don Josef de Rezabal y Ugarte (pp. 233-238); but there is one prefixed to the edition of his Crónica, 1791.

[888] The first edition of the first four books of the Chronicle of Ocampo was published at Zamora, 1544, in a beautiful black-letter folio, and was followed by an edition of the whole at Medina del Campo, 1553, folio. The best, I suppose, is the one published at Madrid, 1791, in 2 vols. 4to.

[889] For this miserable forgery see Niceron (Hommes Illustres, Paris, 1730, Tom. XI. pp. 1-11; Tom. XX., 1732, pp. 1-6);—and for the simplicity of Ocampo in trusting to it, see the last chapter of his first book, and all the passages where he cites Juan de Viterbo y su Beroso, etc.

[890] Pero Mexia, in the concluding words of his “Historia Imperial y Cesarea.”

[891] Capmany, Eloquencia Española, Tom. II. p. 295.

[892] I say “apparently,” because in his “Historia Imperial y Cesarea,” he declares, speaking of the achievements of Charles V., “I never was so presumptuous as to deem myself sufficient to record them.” This was in 1545. He was not appointed Historiographer till 1548. See notices of him by Pacheco, in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1844, p. 406. He died in 1552.

From the time of Charles V. there seem generally to have been chroniclers of the kingdom and chroniclers of the personal history of its kings. At any rate, that monarch had Ocampo and Garibay for the first purpose; and Guevara, Sepúlveda, and Mexia for the second. Lorenço de Padilla, Archdeacon of Málaga, is also mentioned by Dormer (Progresos, Lib. II. c. 2) as one of his chroniclers. Indeed, it does not seem easy to determine how many enjoyed the honor of that title.

[893] The first edition appeared in 1545. The one I use is of Anvers, 1561, fol. The best notice of his life, perhaps, is the article about him in the Biographie Universelle.

[894] He left Salamanca two or three years before he came to the New World; but old Bernal Diaz, who knew him well, says: “He was a scholar, and I have heard it said he was a Bachelor of Laws; and when he talked with lawyers and scholars, he answered in Latin. He was somewhat of a poet, and made couplets in metre and in prose, [en metro y en prosa,]” etc. It would be amusing to see poems by Cortés, and especially what the rude old chronicler calls coplas en prosa; but he knew about as much concerning such matters as Mons. Jourdain. Cortés, however, was always fond of the society of cultivated men. In his house at Madrid, (see ante, p. 537,) after his return from America, was held one of those Academies which were then beginning to be imitated from Italy.