It begins with the supposed peopling of Spain by Tubal, the son of Japhet, and comes down to the death of Ferdinand the Catholic and the accession of Charles the Fifth; to all which Mariana himself afterwards added a compressed abstract of the course of events to 1621, when Philip the Fourth ascended the throne. It was a bold undertaking, and in some respects is marked with the peculiar spirit of its age. In weighing the value of authorities, for instance, he has been less careful than became the high office he had assumed. He follows Ocampo, and especially Garibay,—credulous compilers of old fables, who were his own contemporaries,—confessing freely that he thought it safest and best to take the received traditions of the country, unless obvious reasons called upon him to reject them. His manner, too, is, in a few particulars, open to remark. In the beautiful dedication of the Spanish version of his History to Philip the Third, he admits that antiquated words occasionally adhere to his style, from his familiar study of the old writers; and Saavedra, who was pleased to find fault with him, says, that, as other people dye their beards to make themselves look young, Mariana dyed his to make himself look old.[209]
But there is another side to all this. His willing belief in the old chronicles, tempered, as it necessarily is, by his great learning, gives an air of true-heartedness and good faith to his accounts, and a picturesqueness to his details, which are singularly attractive; while, at the same time, his occasional antiquated words and phrases, so well suited to such views of his subject, add to the idiomatic richness, in which, among Spanish prose compositions, the style of Mariana is all but unrivalled. His narratives—the most important part of an historical work of this class—are peculiarly flowing, free, and impressive. The accounts of the wars of Hannibal, in the second book; those of the irruption of the Northern nations, with which the fifth opens; the conspiracy of John de Procida, in the fourteenth; the last scenes in the troubled life of Peter the Cruel, in the seventeenth; and most of the descriptions of the leading events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, towards the conclusion of the work, give abundant proof of this peculiar historical talent. They seem instinct with life and movement.
His formal speeches, in which he made Livy his model, are, generally, less fortunate. Most of them want individuality and appropriateness. But the one which in the fifth book he has given to Ruy Lope Davalos, when that nobleman offers the crown of Castile to the Infante Don Ferdinand, is remarkable for the courageous spirit in which it discusses the foundations of all political government, and leaves the rights of kings to rest on the assent of their subjects;—a boldness, it should be added, which is apparent in many other parts of his history, as it was in much of his life.
The characters he has drawn of the prominent personages that, from time to time, come to the front of the stage, are almost always short, sketched with a few touches, and struck off with the hand of a master. Such are those of Alvaro de Luna, Alfonso the Wise, and the unhappy Prince of Viana, in which so few words could hardly be made to express more.
As a general remark, a certain nobleness of air and carriage, not, perhaps, without something of the old Castilian sturdiness, but never without its dignity, is the characteristic that most prevails throughout the whole work; and this, with its admirably idiomatic style,—so full, yet so unencumbered, so pure and yet so rich,—renders it, if not the most trustworthy of annals, at least the most remarkable union of picturesque chronicling with sober history, that the world has ever seen.[210]
Sandoval, who was one of the salaried chroniclers of the monarchy, and who, in that capacity, prepared the continuation of Morales, already noticed, seems to have been willing to constitute himself the successor of Mariana, and prosecute the general history of Spain where that eloquent Jesuit was likely to leave it, rather than from the point where he had himself officially taken it up. At least he began there, and wrote an elaborate life of Charles the Fifth. But it is too long. It fills as many pages as the entire work of Mariana, and, though written with simplicity, is not attractive in its style. His prejudices are strong and obvious. Not only the monk,—for he was a Benedictine, and enjoyed successively two very rich bishoprics,—but the courtier of Philip the Third, is constantly apparent. He lays the whole crime of the assault and capture of Rome upon the Constable de Bourbon; and, besides tracing the Austrian family distinctly to Adam, he connects its honors genealogically with those of Hercules and Dardanus. Still, the History of Sandoval is a documentary work of authority much relied on by Robertson, and one that, on the whole, by its ample and minute details, gives a more satisfactory account of the reign of Charles the Fifth than any other single history extant. It was first published in 1604-6, and its author died at the end of 1620 or the beginning of 1621.[211]
After this, no important and connected work on the history of Spain, that falls within the domain of elegant literature, appeared for a long period.[212] Portions of Spanish history, and portions of the history of Spanish discovery and conquest in the East and the West, were indeed published from time to time, but the official chroniclers of the crowns of Castile and Aragon no longer felt themselves bound to go on with the great works of their predecessors, and the decaying spirit of the monarchy made no earnest demands on others to tread in their steps. Some, however, of these historians of the outposts of an empire which now extended round the globe, and some of the accounts of isolated events in its annals at home, should be noticed.
Of this class, the first in importance and the most comprehensive in character is “The General History of the Indies,” by Antonio de Herrera. It embraces the period from the first discovery of America to the year 1554; and as Herrera was a practised writer, and, from his official position as historiographer to the Indies, had access to every source of information known in his time, his work, which was printed in 1601, is of great value. But he was the author of other historical works, for which his qualifications and resources were less satisfactory and his prejudices more abundant;—such as a “History of the World during the Reign of Philip the Second,” a History of the affairs of England and Scotland, during the unhappy times of Mary Stuart; a History of the League in France; and a History of the affair of Antonio Perez and the troubles that followed it;—all written under the influence of contemporary passions, and all published between 1589 and 1612, before any of these passions had been much tranquillized.
It is sufficient to say of them, that, in the case of Antonio Perez, Herrera suppresses nearly every one of the important facts that tend to the justification of that remarkable man; and that, by way of a glorious termination to his Universal History, he gives Philip the Second, in his death-struggles, miraculous assistance from heaven, to enable him to end his long and holy life by an act of devotion. Herrera’s chief reputation, therefore, as an historian, must rest upon his great work on the Discovery and Conquest of America, in which, indeed, his style, nowhere rich or powerful, seems better and more effective than it is in his other attempts at historical composition. He died in 1625, above seventy-six years old, much valued by Philip the Fourth, as he had been by that monarch’s father and grandfather.[213]
But the East, as well as the West, was now opened to Spanish adventure. The conquest of Portugal had brought the Oriental dependencies of that kingdom under the authority of the Spanish crown; and as the Count de Lemos, the great patron of letters in his time, and President of the Council of the Indies, chanced to have his attention particularly drawn in that direction, he commanded the younger of the Argensolas to write an account of the Moluccas. The poet obeyed, and published his work in 1609, dedicating it to Philip the Third. It is one of the most pleasing of the minor Spanish histories; full of the traditions found among the natives by the Portuguese, when they first landed, and of the wild adventures that followed when they had taken possession of the islands. Parts of it are, indeed, inconsistent with the nature of the civilization they found there, such as formal and eloquent harangues attributed to the natives; while other parts, like some of its love-stories, are romantic enough to be suspected of invention, even if they are true. But, in general, the work is written in an agreeable poetical style, such as is not unbefitting an account of the mysterious isles