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.