[891] Capmany, Eloquencia Española, Tom. II. p. 295.
[892] I say “apparently,” because in his “Historia Imperial y Cesarea,” he declares, speaking of the achievements of Charles V., “I never was so presumptuous as to deem myself sufficient to record them.” This was in 1545. He was not appointed Historiographer till 1548. See notices of him by Pacheco, in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1844, p. 406. He died in 1552.
From the time of Charles V. there seem generally to have been chroniclers of the kingdom and chroniclers of the personal history of its kings. At any rate, that monarch had Ocampo and Garibay for the first purpose; and Guevara, Sepúlveda, and Mexia for the second. Lorenço de Padilla, Archdeacon of Málaga, is also mentioned by Dormer (Progresos, Lib. II. c. 2) as one of his chroniclers. Indeed, it does not seem easy to determine how many enjoyed the honor of that title.
[893] The first edition appeared in 1545. The one I use is of Anvers, 1561, fol. The best notice of his life, perhaps, is the article about him in the Biographie Universelle.
[894] He left Salamanca two or three years before he came to the New World; but old Bernal Diaz, who knew him well, says: “He was a scholar, and I have heard it said he was a Bachelor of Laws; and when he talked with lawyers and scholars, he answered in Latin. He was somewhat of a poet, and made couplets in metre and in prose, [en metro y en prosa,]” etc. It would be amusing to see poems by Cortés, and especially what the rude old chronicler calls coplas en prosa; but he knew about as much concerning such matters as Mons. Jourdain. Cortés, however, was always fond of the society of cultivated men. In his house at Madrid, (see ante, [p. 537],) after his return from America, was held one of those Academies which were then beginning to be imitated from Italy.
[895] The printed “Relaciones” may be found in Barcia, “Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales,” (Madrid, 1749, 3 tom., folio,)—a collection printed after its editor’s death and very ill arranged. Barcia was a man of literary distinction, much employed in affairs of state, and one of the founders of the Spanish Academy. He died in 1743. (Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. I. p. 106.) For the last and unpublished “Relacion” of Cortés, as well as for his unpublished letters, I am indebted to my friend Mr. Prescott, who has so well used them in his “Conquest of Mexico.”
[896] “The first worthy of being so called,” says Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1793, folio, p. xviii.
[897] The two works of Gomara may be well consulted in Barcia, “Historiadores Primitivos,” Tom. II., which they fill. They were first printed in 1553, and though, as Antonio says, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 437,) they were forbidden to be either reprinted or read, four editions of them appeared before the end of the century.
[898] “About this first going of Cortés as captain on this expedition, the ecclesiastic Gomara tells many things grossly untrue in his history, as might be expected from a man who neither saw nor heard any thing about them, except what Fernando Cortés told him and gave him in writing; Gomara being his chaplain and servant, after he was made Marquis and returned to Spain the last time.” Las Casas, (Historia de las Indias, Parte III. c. 113, MS.,) a prejudiced witness, but, on a point of fact within his own knowledge, one to be believed.
[899] See “Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, por el Capitan Bernal Diaz del Castillo, uno de los Conquistadores,” Madrid, 1632, folio, cap. 211.