[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,—
He that, through suffering sent from God above
Confessing, kneels not, still commits no sin;