That the attempt to count them all were vain
As would be his who sought to count the stars,
Or the wide sea’s unnumbered waves and sands.
Their noble blood goes back to Zuria,
The lord of all Biscay.
Arauco Domado, Acto III., Comedias, Tom. XX. 4to, 1629, f. 95.
Gaspar de Avila, in the first act of his “Governador Prudente,” (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tomo XXI., 1664,) gives even a more minute genealogy of the Mendozas than that of Lope de Vega; so famous were they in verse as well as in history.
[807] The number of editions of the Lazarillo, during the sixteenth century, in the Low Countries, in Italy, and in Spain is great; but those printed in Spain, beginning with the one of Madrid, 1573, 18mo, are expurgated of the passages most offensive to the clergy by an order of the Inquisition; an order renewed in the Index Expurgatorius, 1667. Indeed, I do not know how the chapter on the seller of indulgences could have been written by any but a Protestant, after the Reformation was so far advanced as it then was. Mendoza does not seem ever to have acknowledged himself to be the author of Lazarillo de Tórmes, which, in fact, was sometimes attributed to Juan de Ortega, a monk. Of a translation of Lazarillo into English, reported by Lowndes (art. Lazarillo) as the work of David Rowland, 1586, and probably the same praised in the Retrospective Review, Vol. II. p. 133, above twenty editions are known. Of a translation by James Blakeston, which seems to me better, I have a copy, dated London, 1670, 18mo.
[808] This continuation was printed at Antwerp in 1555, as “La Segunda Parte de Lazarillo de Tórmes,” but probably appeared earlier in Spain.
[809] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. pp. 680 and 728. Juan de Luna is called “H. de Luna” on the title-page of his Lazarillo,—why, I do not know.