It shows a good deal of the learning of its time, and still more of the acuteness of the scholastic metaphysics then in favor. But it is awkward and uninteresting in the general structure of its fiction, and meagre in its style and illustrations. This, however, did not prevent it from being much read and admired. There is one edition of it without date, which probably appeared about 1480, showing that the wish of its author to keep it from the public was not long respected; and there were other editions in 1489, 1526, and 1538, besides a translation into Catalan, printed as early as 1484. But the taste for such works passed away in Spain as it did elsewhere; and the Bachiller de la Torre was soon so completely forgotten, that his Vision was not only published by Dominico Delphino in Italian, as a work of his own, but was translated back into its native Spanish by Francisco de Caceres, a converted Jew, and printed in 1663, as if it had been an original Italian work till then quite unknown in Spain.[693]
An injustice not unlike the one that occurred to Alfonso de la Torre happened to his contemporary, Diego de Almela, and for some time deprived him of the honor, to which he was entitled, of being regarded as the author of “The Valerius of Stories,”—a book long popular and still interesting. He wrote it after the death of his patron, the wise Bishop of Cartagena, who had projected such a work himself, and as early as 1472 it was sent to one of the Manrique family. But though the letter which then accompanied it is still extant, and though, in four editions, beginning with that of 1487, the book is ascribed to its true author, yet in the fifth, which appeared in 1541, it is announced to be by the well-known Fernan Perez de Guzman;—a mistake which was discovered and announced by Tamayo de Vargas, in the time of Philip the Third, but does not seem to have been generally corrected till the work itself was edited anew by Moreno, in 1793.
It is thrown into the form of a discussion on Morals, in which, after a short explanation of the different virtues and vices of men, as they were then understood, we have all the illustrations the author could collect under each head from the Scriptures and the history of Spain. It is, therefore, rather a series of stories than a regular didactic treatise, and its merit consists in the grave, yet simple and pleasing, style in which they are told,—a style particularly fitted to most of them, which are taken from the old national chronicles. Originally, it was accompanied by “An Account of Pitched Battles”; but this, and his Chronicles of Spain, his collection of the Miracles of Santiago, and several discussions of less consequence, are long since forgotten. Almela, who enjoyed the favor of Ferdinand and Isabella, accompanied those sovereigns to the siege of Granada, in 1491, as a chaplain, carrying with him, as was not uncommon at that time among the higher ecclesiastics, a military retinue to serve in the wars.[694]
In 1493, another distinguished ecclesiastic, Alonso Ortiz, a canon of Toledo, published, in a volume of moderate size, two small works which should not be entirely overlooked. The first is a treatise, in twenty-seven chapters, addressed, through the queen, Isabella, to her daughter, the Princess of Portugal, on the death of that princess’s husband, filled with such consolation as the courtly Canon deemed suitable to her bereavement and his own dignity. The other is an oration, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, after the fall of Granada, in 1492, rejoicing in that great event, and glorying almost equally in the cruel expulsion of all Jews and heretics from Spain. Both are written in too rhetorical a style, but neither is without merit; and in the oration there are one or two beautiful and even touching passages on the tranquillity to be enjoyed in Spain, now that a foreign and hated enemy, after a contest of eight centuries, had been expelled from its borders,—passages which evidently came from the writer’s heart, and no doubt found an echo wherever his words were heard by Spaniards.[695]
Another of the prose-writers of the fifteenth century, and one that deserves to be mentioned with more respect than either of the last, is Fernando del Pulgar. He was born in Madrid, and was educated, as he himself tells us, at the court of John the Second. During the reign of Henry the Fourth, he had employments which show him to have been a person of consequence; and during a large part of that of Ferdinand and Isabella, he was one of their counsellors of state, their secretary, and their chronicler.[696] Of his historical writings notice has already been taken; but in the course of his inquiries after what related to the annals of Castile, he collected materials for another work, more interesting, if not more important. For he found, as he says, many famous men whose names and characters had not been so preserved and celebrated as their merits demanded; and, moved by his patriotism, and taking for his example the portraits of Perez de Guzman and the biographies of the ancients, he carefully prepared sketches of the lives of the principal persons of his own age, beginning with Henry the Fourth, and confining himself chiefly within the limits of that monarch’s reign and court.
Some of these sketches, to which he has given the general title of “Claros Varones de Castilla,” like those of the good Count Haro[697] and of Rodrigo Manrique,[698] are important for their subjects, while others, like those of the great ecclesiastics of the kingdom, are now interesting only for the skill with which they are drawn. The style in which they are written is forcible and generally concise, showing a greater tendency to formal elegance than any thing by either Cibdareal or Guzman, with whom we should most readily compare him; but we miss the confiding naturalness of the warm-hearted physician and the severe judgments of the retired statesman. The whole series is addressed to his great patroness, Queen Isabella, to whom, no doubt, he thought a tone of composed dignity more appropriate than any other.
As a specimen of his best manner, we may take the following passage, in which, after having alluded to some of the most remarkable personages in Roman history, he turns, as it were, suddenly round to the queen, and thus boldly confronts the great men of antiquity with the great men of Castile, whom he had already discussed more at large:—
“True, indeed, it is, that these great men,—Castilian knights and gentlemen,—of whom memory is here made for fair cause, and also those of the elder time, who, fighting for Spain, gained it from the power of its enemies, did neither slay their own sons, as did those consuls, Brutus and Torquatus; nor burn their own flesh, as did Scævola; nor commit against their own blood cruelties which nature abhors and reason forbids; but rather, with fortitude and perseverance, with wise forbearance and prudent energy, with justice and clemency, gaining the love of their own countrymen, and becoming a terror to strangers, they disciplined their armies, ordered their battles, overcame their enemies, conquered hostile lands, and protected their own.... So that, most excellent Queen, these knights and prelates, and many others born within your realm, whereof here leisure fails me to speak, did, by the praiseworthy labors they fulfilled, and by the virtues they strove to attain, achieve unto themselves the name of Famous Men, whereof their descendants should be above others emulous; while, at the same time, all the gentlemen of your kingdoms should feel themselves called to the same pureness of life, that they may at last end their days in unspotted success, even as these great men also lived and died.”[699]
This is certainly remarkable, both for its style and for the tone of its thought, when regarded as part of a work written at the conclusion of the fifteenth century. Pulgar’s Chronicle, and his commentary on “Mingo Revulgo,” as we have already seen, are not so good as such sketches.
The same spirit, however, reappears in his letters. They are thirty-two in number; all written during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the earliest being dated in 1473, and the latest only ten years afterwards. Nearly all of them were addressed to persons of honorable distinction in his time, such as the queen herself, Henry the king’s uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and the Count of Tendilla. Sometimes, as in the case of one to the king of Portugal, exhorting him not to make war on Castile, they are evidently letters of state. But in other cases, like that of a letter to his physician, complaining pleasantly of the evils of old age, and one to his daughter, who was a nun, they seem to be familiar, if not confidential.[700] On the whole, therefore, taking all his different works together, we have a very gratifying exhibition of the character of this ancient servant and counsellor of Queen Isabella, who, if he gave no considerable impulse to his age as a writer, was yet in advance of it by the dignity and elevation of his thoughts and the careless richness of his style. He died after 1492, and probably before 1500.