CHAPTER X.
Chronicles of Particular Events. — The Passo Honroso. — The Seguro de Tordesillas. — Chronicles of Particular Persons. — Pero Niño. — Alvaro de Luna. — Gonzalvo de Córdova. — Chronicles of Travels. — Clavijo, Columbus, Balboa, and others. — Romantic Chronicles. — Roderic and the Destruction of Spain. — General Remarks on the Spanish Chronicles.
Chronicles of Particular Events.—It should be borne in mind, that we have thus far traced only the succession of what may be called the general Spanish chronicles, which, prepared by royal hands or under royal authority, have set forth the history of the whole country, from its earliest beginnings and most fabulous traditions, down through its fierce wars and divisions, to the time when it had, by the final overthrow of the Moorish power, been settled into a quiet and compact monarchy. From their subject and character, they are, of course, the most important, and, generally, the most interesting, works of the class to which they belong. But, as might be expected from the influence they exercised and the popularity they enjoyed, they were often imitated. Many chronicles were written on a great variety of subjects, and many works in a chronicling style which yet never bore the name. Most of them are of no value. But to the few that, from their manner or style, deserve notice we must now turn for a moment, beginning with those that refer to particular events.
Two of these special chronicles relate to occurrences in the reign of John the Second, and are not only curious in themselves and for their style, but valuable, as illustrating the manners of the time. The first, according to the date of its events, is the “Passo Honroso,” or the Passage of Honor, and is a formal account of a passage at arms which was held against all comers in 1434, at the bridge of Orbigo, near the city of Leon, during thirty days, at a moment when the road was thronged with knights passing for a solemn festival to the neighbouring shrine of Santiago. The challenger was Suero de Quiñones, a gentleman of rank, who claimed to be thus emancipated from the service of wearing for a noble lady’s sake a chain of iron around his neck every Thursday. The arrangements for this extraordinary tournament were all made under the king’s authority. Nine champions, mantenedores, we are told, stood with Quiñones, and at the end of the thirty days it was found that sixty-eight knights had adventured themselves against his claim; that six hundred and twenty-seven encounters had taken place; and that sixty-six lances had been broken;—one knight, an Aragonese, having been killed, and many wounded, among whom were Quiñones and eight out of his nine fellow-champions.[295]
Strange as all this may sound, and seeming to carry us back to the fabulous days when the knights of romance
“Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,”
and Rodamont maintained the bridge of Montpellier, for the sake of the lady of his love, it is yet all plain matter of fact, spread out in becoming style, by an eyewitness, with a full account of the ceremonies, both of chivalry and of religion, that accompanied it. The theory of the whole is, that Quiñones, in acknowledgment of being prisoner to a noble lady, had, for some time, weekly worn her chains; and that he was now to ransom himself from this fanciful imprisonment by the payment of a certain number of real spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. All this, to be sure, is fantastic enough. But the ideas of love, honor, and religion displayed in the proceedings of the champions,[296] who hear mass devoutly every day, and yet cannot obtain Christian burial for the Aragonese knight who is killed, and in the conduct of Quiñones himself, who fasts each Thursday, partly, it should seem, in honor of the Madonna, and partly in honor of his lady,—these and other whimsical incongruities are still more fantastic. They seem, indeed, as we read their record, to be quite worthy of the admiration expressed for them by Don Quixote in his argument with the wise canon,[297] but hardly worthy of any other; so that we are surprised, at first, when we find them specially recorded in the contemporary Chronicle of King John, and filling, long afterwards, a separate chapter in the graver Annals of Zurita. And yet such a grand tournament was an important event in the age when it happened, and is highly illustrative of the contemporary manners.[298] History and chronicle, therefore, alike did well to give it a place; and, indeed, down to the present time, the curious and elaborate record of the details and ceremonies of the Passo Honroso is of no little value as one of the best exhibitions that remain to us of the genius of chivalry, and as quite the best exhibition of what has been considered the most characteristic of all the knightly institutions.
The other work of the same period to which we have referred gives us, also, a striking view of the spirit of the times; one less picturesque, indeed, but not less instructive. It is called “El Seguro de Tordesillas,” the Pledge or the Truce of Tordesillas, and relates to a series of conferences held in 1439, between John the Second and a body of his nobles, headed by his own son, who, in a seditious and violent manner, interfered in the affairs of the kingdom, in order to break down the influence of the Constable de Luna.[299] It receives its peculiar name from the revolting circumstance, that, even in the days of the Passo Honroso, and with some of the knights who figured in that gorgeous show for the parties, true honor was yet sunk so low in Spain, that none could be found on either side of this great quarrel,—not even the King or the Prince,—whose word would be taken as a pledge for the mere personal safety of those who should be engaged in the discussions at Tordesillas. It was necessary, therefore, to find some one not strictly belonging to either party, who, invested with higher powers and even with supreme military control, should become the depositary of the general faith, and, exercising an authority limited only by his own sense of honor, be obeyed alike by the exasperated sovereign and his rebellious subjects.[300]
This proud distinction was given to Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, commonly called the Good or Faithful Count Haro; and the “Seguro de Tordesillas,” prepared by him some time afterwards, shows how honorably he executed the extraordinary trust. Few historical works can challenge such absolute authenticity. The documents of the case, constituting the chief part of it, are spread out before the reader; and what does not rest on their foundation rests on that word of the Good Count to which the lives of whatever was most distinguished in the kingdom had just been fearlessly trusted. As might be expected, its characteristics are simplicity and plainness, not elegance or eloquence. It is, in fact, a collection of documents, but it is an interesting and a melancholy record. The compact that was made led to no permanent good. The Count soon withdrew, ill at ease, to his own estates; and in less than two years his unhappy and weak master was assailed anew, and besieged in Medina del Campo, by his rebellious family and their adherents.[301] After this, we hear little of Count Haro, except that he continued to assist the king from time to time, in his increasing troubles, until, worn out with fatigue of body and mind, he retired from the world, and passed the last ten years of his life in a monastery, which he had himself founded, and where he died at the age of threescore and ten.[302]
Chronicles of Particular Persons.—But while remarkable events, like the Passage of Arms at Orbigo and the Pledge of Tordesillas, were thus appropriately recorded, the remarkable men of the time could hardly fail occasionally to find fit chroniclers.
Pero Niño, Count de Buelna, who flourished between 1379 and 1453, is the first of them. He was a distinguished naval and military commander in the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second; and his Chronicle is the work of Gutierre Diez de Gamez, who was attached to his person from the time Pero Niño was twenty-three years old, and boasted the distinction of being his standard-bearer in many a rash and bloody fight. A more faithful chronicler, or one more imbued with knightly qualities, can hardly be found. He may be well compared to the “Loyal Serviteur,” the biographer of the Chevalier Bayard; and, like him, not only enjoyed the confidence of his master, but shared his spirit.[303] His accounts of the education of Pero Niño, and of the counsels given him by his tutor;[304] of Pero’s marriage to his first wife, the lady Constance de Guebara;[305] of his cruises against the corsairs and Bey of Tunis;[306] of the part he took in the war against England, after the death of Richard the Second, when he commanded an expedition that made a descent on Cornwall, and, according to his chronicler, burnt the town of Poole and took Jersey and Guernsey;[307] and finally, of his share in the common war against Granada, which happened in the latter part of his life and under the leading of the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[308] are all interesting and curious, and told with simplicity and spirit. But the most characteristic and amusing passages of the Chronicle are, perhaps, those that relate, one to Pero Niño’s gallant visit at Girfontaine, near Rouen, the residence of the old Admiral of France, and his gay young wife,[309] and another to the course of his true love for Beatrice, daughter of the Infante Don John, the lady who, after much opposition and many romantic dangers, became his second wife.[310] Unfortunately, we know nothing about the author of all this entertaining history except what he modestly tells us in the work itself; but we cannot doubt that he was as loyal in his life as he claims to be in his true-hearted account of his master’s adventures and achievements.
Next after Pero Niño’s Chronicle comes that of the Constable Don Alvaro de Luna, the leading spirit of the reign of John the Second, almost from the moment when, yet a child, he appeared as a page at court, in 1408, down to 1453, when he perished on the scaffold, a victim to his own haughty ambition, to the jealousy of the nobles nearest the throne, and to the guilty weakness of the king. Who was the author of the Chronicle is unknown.[311] But, from internal evidence, he was probably an ecclesiastic of some learning, and certainly a retainer of the Constable, much about his person, and sincerely attached to him. It reminds us, at once, of the fine old Life of Wolsey by his Gentleman Usher, Cavendish; for both works were written after the fall of the great men whose lives they record, by persons who had served and loved them in their prosperity, and who now vindicated their memories with a grateful and trusting affection, which often renders even their style of writing beautiful by its earnestness, and sometimes eloquent. The Chronicle of the Constable is, of course, the oldest. It was composed between 1453 and 1460, or about a century before Cavendish’s Wolsey. It is grave and stately, sometimes too stately; but there is a great air of reality about it. The account of the siege of Palenzuela,[312] the striking description of the Constable’s person and bearing,[313] the scene of the royal visit to the favorite in his castle at Escalona, with the festivities that followed,[314] and, above all, the minute and painful details of the Constable’s fall from power, his arrest, and death,[315] show the freedom and spirit of an eyewitness, or, at least, of a person entirely familiar with the whole matter about which he writes. It is, therefore, among the richest and most interesting of the old Spanish chronicles, and quite indispensable to one who would comprehend the troubled spirit of the period to which it relates; the period known as that of the bandos, or armed feuds, when the whole country was broken into parties, each in warlike array, fighting for its own head, but none fully submitting to the royal authority.
The last of the chronicles of individuals written in the spirit of the elder times, that it is necessary to notice, is that of Gonzalvo de Córdova, “the Great Captain,” who flourished from the period immediately preceding the war of Granada to that which begins the reign of Charles the Fifth; and who produced an impression on the Spanish nation hardly equalled since the earlier days of that great Moorish contest, the cyclus of whose heroes Gonzalvo seems appropriately to close up. It was about 1526 that the Emperor Charles the Fifth desired one of the favorite followers of Gonzalvo, Hernan Perez del Pulgar, to prepare an account of his great captain’s life. A better person could not easily have been selected. For he is not, as was long supposed, Fernando del Pulgar, the wit and courtier of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.[316] Nor is the work he produced the poor and dull Chronicle of the life of Gonzalvo first printed in 1580, or earlier, and often attributed to him.[317] But he is that bold knight who, with a few followers, penetrated to the very centre of Granada, then all in arms, and, affixing an Ave Maria, with the sign of the cross, to the doors of the principal mosque, consecrated its massive pile to the service of Christianity, while Ferdinand and Isabella were still beleaguering the city without; an heroic adventure, with which his country rang from side to side at the time, and which has not since been forgotten either in its ballads or in its popular drama.[318]
As might be expected from the character of its author,—who, to distinguish him from the courtly and peaceful Pulgar, was well called “He of the Achievements,” El de las Hazañas,—the book he offered to his monarch is not a regular life of Gonzalvo, but rather a rude and vigorous sketch of him, entitled “A Small Part of the Achievements of that Excellent Person called the Great Captain,” or, as is elsewhere yet more characteristically said, “of the achievements and solemn virtues of the Great Captain, both in peace and war.”[319] The modesty of the author is as remarkable as his adventurous spirit. He is hardly seen at all in his narrative, while his love and devotion to his great leader give a fervor to his style, which, notwithstanding a frequent display of very unprofitable learning, renders his work both curious and striking, and brings out his hero in the sort of bold relief in which he appeared to the admiration of his contemporaries. Some parts of it, notwithstanding its brevity, are remarkable even for the details they afford; and some of the speeches, like that of the Alfaquí to the distracted parties in Granada,[320] and that of Gonzalvo to the population of the Abbaycin,[321] savor of eloquence as well as wisdom. Regarded as the outline of a great man’s character, few sketches have more an air of truth; though, perhaps, considering the adventurous and warlike lives both of the author and his subject, nothing in the book is more remarkable than the spirit of humanity that pervades it.[322]
Chronicles of Travels.—In the same style with the histories of their kings and great men, a few works should be noticed in the nature of travels, or histories of travellers, though not always bearing the name of Chronicles.
The oldest of them, which has any value, is an account of a Spanish embassy to Tamerlane, the great Tartar potentate and conqueror. Its origin is curious. Henry the Third of Castile, whose affairs, partly in consequence of his marriage with Catherine, daughter of Shakspeare’s “time-honored Lancaster,” were in a more fortunate and quiet condition than those of his immediate predecessors, seems to have been smitten in his prosperity with a desire to extend his fame to the remotest countries of the earth; and for this purpose, we are told, sought to establish friendly relations with the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, with the Sultan of Babylon, with Tamerlane or Timour Bec the Tartar, and even with the fabulous Prester John of that shadowy India which was then the subject of so much speculation.
What was the result of all this widely spread diplomacy, so extraordinary at the end of the fourteenth century, we do not know, except that the first ambassadors sent to Tamerlane and Bajazet chanced actually to be present at the great and decisive battle between those two preponderating powers of the East, and that Tamerlane sent a splendid embassy in return, with some of the spoils of his victory, among which were two fair captives, who figure in the Spanish poetry of the time.[323] King Henry was not ungrateful for such a tribute of respect, and, to acknowledge it, despatched to Tamerlane three persons of his court, one of whom, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, has left us a minute account of the whole embassy, its adventures and its results. This account was first published by Argote de Molina, the careful antiquary of the time of Philip the Second,[324] and was then called, probably in order to give it a more winning title, “The Life of the Great Tamerlane,”—Vida del Gran Tamurlan,—though it is, in fact, a diary of the voyagings and residences of the ambassadors of Henry the Third, beginning in May, 1403, when they embarked at Puerto Santa María, near Cadiz, and ending in March, 1406, when they landed there on their return.
In the course of it, we have a description of Constantinople, which is the more curious because it is given at the moment when it tottered to its fall;[325] of Trebizond, with its Greek churches and clergy;[326] of Teheran, now the capital of Persia;[327] and of Samarcand, where they found the great Conqueror himself, and were entertained by him with a series of magnificent festivals continuing almost to the moment of his death,[328] which happened while they were at his court, and was followed by troubles embarrassing to their homeward journey.[329] The honest Clavijo seems to have been well pleased to lay down his commission at the feet of his sovereign, whom he found at Alcalá; and though he lingered about the court for a year, and was one of the witnesses of the king’s will at Christmas, yet on the death of Henry he retired to Madrid, his native place, where he spent the last four or five years of his life, and where, in 1412, he was buried in the convent of Saint Francis, with his fathers, whose chapel he had piously rebuilt.[330]
His travels will not, on the whole, suffer by a comparison with those of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville; for, though his discoveries are much less in extent than those of the Venetian merchant, they are, perhaps, as remarkable as those of the English adventurer, while the manner in which he has presented them is superior to that of either. His Spanish loyalty and his Catholic faith are everywhere apparent. He plainly believes that his modest embassy is making an impression of his king’s power and importance, on the countless and careless multitudes of Asia, which will not be effaced; while, in the luxurious capital of the Greek empire, he seems to look for little but the apocryphal relics of saints and apostles which then burdened the shrines of its churches. With all this, however, we may be content, because it is national; but when we find him filling the island of Ponza with buildings erected by Virgil,[331] and afterwards, as he passes Amalfi, taking note of it only because it contained the head of Saint Andrew,[332] we are obliged to recall his frankness, his zeal, and all his other good qualities, before we can be quite reconciled to his ignorance. Mariana, indeed, intimates, that, after all, his stories are not to be wholly believed. But, as in the case of other early travellers, whose accounts were often discredited merely because they were so strange, more recent and careful inquiries have confirmed Clavijo’s narrative; and we may now trust to his faithfulness as much as to the vigilant and penetrating spirit he shows constantly, except when his religious faith, or his hardly less religious loyalty, interferes with its exercise.[333]
But the great voyagings of the Spaniards were not destined to be in the East. The Portuguese, led on originally by Prince Henry, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, had, as it were, already appropriated to themselves that quarter of the world by discovering the easy route of the Cape of Good Hope; and, both by the right of discovery and by the provisions of the well-known Papal bull and the equally well-known treaty of 1479, had cautiously cut off their great rivals, the Spaniards, from all adventure in that direction; leaving open to them only the wearisome waters that were stretched out unmeasured towards the West. Happily, however, there was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the height to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true, Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national character, when he became a part of its glory. His own eyes, he tells us, had watched the silver cross, as it slowly rose, for the first time, above the towers of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final and absolute overthrow of the infidel power in Spain;[334] and from that period,—or one even earlier, when some poor monks from Jerusalem had been at the camp of the two sovereigns before Granada, praying for help and protection against the unbelievers in Palestine,—he had conceived the grand project of consecrating the untold wealth he trusted to find in his westward discoveries, by devoting it to the rescue of the Holy City and sepulchre of Christ; thus achieving, by his single power and resources, what all Christendom and its ages of crusades had failed to accomplish.[335]
Gradually these and other kindred ideas took firm possession of his mind, and are found occasionally in his later journals, letters, and speculations, giving to his otherwise quiet and dignified style a tone elevated and impassioned like that of prophecy. It is true, that his adventurous spirit, when the mighty mission of his life was upon him, rose above all this, and, with a purged vision and through a clearer atmosphere, saw, from the outset, what he at last so gloriously accomplished; but still, as he presses onward, there not unfrequently break from him words which leave no doubt, that, in his secret heart, the foundations of his great hopes and purposes were laid in some of the most magnificent illusions that are ever permitted to fill the human mind. He believed himself to be, in some degree at least, inspired; and to be chosen of Heaven to fulfil certain of the solemn and grand prophecies of the Old Testament.[336] He wrote to his sovereigns in 1501, that he had been induced to undertake his voyages to the Indies, not by virtue of human knowledge, but by a Divine impulse, and by the force of Scriptural prediction.[337] He declared, that the world could not continue to exist more than a hundred and fifty-five years longer, and that, many a year before that period, he counted the recovery of the Holy City to be sure.[338] He expressed his belief, that the terrestrial paradise, about which he cites the fanciful speculations of Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustin, would be found in the southern regions of those newly discovered lands, which he describes with so charming an amenity, and that the Orinoco was one of the mystical rivers issuing from it; intimating, at the same time, that, perchance, he alone of mortal men would, by the Divine will, be enabled to reach and enjoy it.[339] In a remarkable letter of sixteen pages, addressed to his sovereigns from Jamaica in 1503, and written with a force of style hardly to be found in any thing similar at the same period, he gives a moving account of a miraculous vision, which he believed had been vouchsafed to him for his consolation, when at Veragua, a few months before, a body of his men, sent to obtain salt and water, had been cut off by the natives, thus leaving him outside the mouth of the river in great peril.
“My brother and the rest of the people,” he says, “were in a vessel that remained within, and I was left solitary on a coast so dangerous, with a strong fever and grievously worn down. Hope of escape was dead within me. I climbed aloft with difficulty, calling anxiously and not without many tears for help upon your Majesties’ captains from all the four winds of heaven. But none made me answer. Wearied and still moaning, I fell asleep, and heard a pitiful voice which said: ‘O fool, and slow to trust and serve thy God, the God of all! What did He more for Moses, or for David his servant? Ever since thou wast born, thou hast been His especial charge. When He saw thee at the age wherewith He was content, He made thy name to sound marvellously on the earth. The Indies, which are a part of the world, and so rich, He gave them to thee for thine own, and thou hast divided them unto others as seemed good to thyself, for He granted thee power to do so. Of the barriers of the great ocean, which were bound up with such mighty chains, He hath given unto thee the keys. Thou hast been obeyed in many lands, and thou hast gained an honored name among Christian men. What did He more for the people of Israel when He led them forth from Egypt? or for David, whom from a shepherd He made king in Judea? Turn thou, then, again unto Him, and confess thy sin. His mercy is infinite. Thine old age shall not hinder thee of any great thing. Many inheritances hath He, and very great. Abraham was above a hundred years old when he begat Isaac; and Sarah, was she young? Thou callest for uncertain help; answer, Who hath afflicted thee so much and so often? God or the world? The privileges and promises that God giveth, He breaketh not, nor, after he hath received service, doth He say that thus was not his mind, and that His meaning was other. Neither punisheth He, in order to hide a refusal of justice. What He promiseth, that He fulfilleth, and yet more. And doth the world thus? I have told thee what thy Maker hath done for thee, and what He doth for all. Even now He in part showeth thee the reward of the sorrows and dangers thou hast gone through in serving others.’ All this heard I, as one half dead; but answer had I none to words so true, save tears for my sins. And whosoever it might be that thus spake, he ended, saying, ‘Fear not; be of good cheer; all these thy griefs are written in marble, and not without cause.’ And I arose as soon as I might, and at the end of nine days the weather became calm.”[340]
Three years afterwards, in 1506, Columbus died at Valladolid, a disappointed, broken-hearted old man; little comprehending what he had done for mankind, and still less the glory and homage that through all future generations awaited his name.[341]
But the mantle of his devout and heroic spirit fell on none of his successors. The discoveries of the new continent, which was soon ascertained to be no part of Asia, were indeed prosecuted with spirit and success by Balboa, by Vespucci, by Hojeda, by Pedrárias Dávila, by the Portuguese Magellanes, by Loaisa, by Saavedra, and by many more; so that in twenty-seven years the general outline and form of the New World were, through their reports, fairly presented to the Old. But though some of these early adventurers, like Hojeda, were men apparently of honest principles, who suffered much, and died in poverty and sorrow, yet none had the lofty spirit of the original discoverer, and none spoke or wrote with the tone of dignity and authority that came naturally from a man whose character was so elevated, and whose convictions and purposes were founded in some of the deepest and most mysterious feelings of our religious nature.[342]
Romantic Chronicles.—It only remains now to speak of one other class of the old chronicles; a class hardly represented in this period by more than a single specimen, but that a very curious one, and one which, by its date and character, brings us to the end of our present inquiries, and marks the transition to those that are to follow. The Chronicle referred to is that called “The Chronicle of Don Roderic, with the Destruction of Spain,” and is an account, chiefly fabulous, of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. An edition is cited as early as 1511, and six in all may be enumerated, including the last, which is of 1587; thus showing a good degree of popularity, if we consider the number of readers in Spain in the sixteenth century.[343] Its author is quite unknown. According to the fashion of the times, it professes to have been written by Eliastras, one of the personages who figures in it; but he is killed in battle just before we reach the end of the book; and the remainder, which looks as if it might really be an addition by another hand, is in the same way ascribed to Carestes, a knight of Alfonso the Catholic.[344]
Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346] Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress wander from country to country,[348] as they do in “Palmerin of England,” while, on all sides, we encounter fantastic personages, who were never heard of anywhere but in this apocryphal Chronicle.[349]
The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written, was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction, just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least, were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350]
This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements. In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and nourished in the long periods of national trial and suffering, are constantly coming out; hardly less in Columbus and his followers, or even amidst the atrocities of the conquests in the New World, than in the half-miraculous accounts of the battles of Hazinas and Tolosa, or in the grand and glorious drama of the fall of Granada. Indeed, wherever we go under their leading, whether to the court of Tamerlane, or to that of Saint Ferdinand, we find the heroic elements of the national genius gathered around us; and thus, in this vast, rich mass of chronicles, containing such a body of antiquities, traditions, and fables as has been offered to no other people, we are constantly discovering, not only the materials from which were drawn a multitude of the old Spanish ballads, plays, and romances, but a mine which has been unceasingly wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and still remains unexhausted.[351]