[196] “La Ulyxea de Homero,” etc., por Gonzalo Perez, (Venecia, 1553, 18mo,) is in blank verse; but in this edition we have only the first thirteen books, with a dedication to Philip the Prince, whose chief secretary Gonzalo Perez then was, as his son Antonio was afterwards secretary of the same Philip on the throne. Subsequently, when he had translated the remaining eleven books, he dedicated the whole anew to Philip as king, (Anvers, 1556, 12mo,) correcting and amending the first part carefully. Lope de Vega (in his Dorotea, Acto IV. sc. 3) praises the version of Perez; but, like most of the Spanish translations from the ancients in the sixteenth century, it shows little of the spirit of the original.
[197] Obras, Genevra, 1654, 12mo, p. 1073.
[198] Ibid., p. 96.
[199] The first publication of Perez, I think, is the one made at Lyons, without date, but supposed to be of 1598, and entitled “Pedaços de Historia,” etc.; but, the same year, the contents of this volume were reprinted at Paris, with the more appropriate title of “Relaciones.” Perez seems to have amused himself with publishing different portions of his works at different times and in different places; but the most complete collection is that of Geneva, 1654, 12mo, pp. 1126. His life is admirably discussed by M. Mignet, in his “Antonio Perez et Philippe II.” (2de édit., Paris, 1846). The work of Salvador Bermudez de Castro, entitled “Antonio Perez, Estudios Históricos,” (Madrid, 1841, 8vo,) would be better worth reading if the author had not permitted himself to indulge in fictions, such as ballad poetry, which he calls the poetry of Perez, and which he gives as part of the means Perez used to stir up the people of Saragossa, but which is, no doubt, the work of Castro himself. The lives of Perez in Baena (Tom. I., 1789, p. 121) and Latassa (Bib. Nov., Tom. II., 1799, p. 108) show how afraid men of letters were, as late as the end of the eighteenth century, to approach any subject thus connected with royalty. The works of Perez are strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition to the last,—in 1790 and 1805. The letters of Perez to Essex are in pretty good Latin, and out of his Spanish works there were early made two or three collections of very acute and striking aphorisms, which have been several times printed. There are many MS. letters of Perez at the Hague and elsewhere, referred to by Mignet, and there is in the Royal Library at Paris an important political treatise which bears his name, but which, though strongly marked with his acuteness and brilliancy, Ochoa hesitates to attribute to him. It is, however, I doubt not, his. (See Ochoa, Manuscritos Españoles, pp. 158-166; and Seminario Erudito, Tom. VIII. pp. 245 and 250.) Further accounts of Perez are to be found in Llorente, Tom. III. pp. 316-375.
[200] “Cartas de Santa Teresa de Jesus,” Madrid, 1793, 4 tom. 4to,—chiefly written in the latter part of her life.
[201] The letters of Argensola are in the “Cartas de Varios Autores Españoles,” by Mayans y Siscar, (Valencia, 1773, 5 tom. 12mo,)—itself a monument of the poverty of Spanish literature in that department from which it attempts to make a collection, since by far the greater part of it consists of old printed dedications, formal epistles of approbation that had been prefixed to books when they were first published, lives of authors that had served as prefaces to their works, etc. The letters of Quevedo and Lope are chiefly on literary subjects, and are scattered through their respective writings. Those of Antonio and Solís are in a small volume published by Mayans at Lyons, in 1733; to which may be added those at the end of Antonio’s “Censura de Historias Fabulosas,” Madrid, 1742, fol. The “Cartas Philologicas” of Cascales, (of which there is a neat edition by Sanchez, Madrid, 1779, 8vo,) are to Spain and the age in which they were written what the terse and pleasant letters published by Melmoth, under the pseudonyme of Fitzosborne, are to England in the reign of George II.,—an attempt to unite as much learning as the public would bear with an infusion of lighter matter in discussions connected with morals and manners.
[202] The best notice of Gerónimo de Zurita is the one at the end of Part II. Chap. I. of Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella”;—the most ample is the folio volume of Diego Josef Dormer, entitled “Progresos de la Historia en Aragon” (Zaragoza, 1680, folio); really a life of Zurita, published in his honor by the Cortes of his native kingdom. There are several editions of his Annals; and Latassa (Bib. Nueva, Tom. I. pp. 358-373) gives a list of above forty of his works, nearly all unpublished, and none of them, probably, of much value, except his History, to which, in fact, they are generally subsidiary. He held several offices under Philip II., and there is a letter to him from the king in Dormer, (p. 109,) which shows that he enjoyed much of the royal consideration; though, as I have intimated, and as may be fully seen in Dormer, (Lib. II. c. 2, 3, 4,) he was much teased, at one time, by the censors of his History. The first edition of the “Anales de la Corona de Aragon” was published in different years, at Saragossa, between 1562 and 1580, to which a volume of Indices was added in 1604, making seven volumes, folio, in all. The third edition (Zaragoza, 1610-21, 7 tom. folio) is the one that is preferred.
Another volume was added to the Annals of Zurita (Zaragoza, 1630, fol.) by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, the poet, who brought them down to 1520, and whose style is better than that in Zurita’s portion; but not much of it is the work of Argensola, so heavy is it with documents.
I have said that Zurita was employed as secretary of Philip II., from time to time; and such was the fact. But this title often implied little except the right of the person who bore it to receive a moderate salary from the public treasury;—a circumstance which I mention because I have occasion frequently to notice authors who were royal secretaries, from the time of Baena, the Jew, in the days of John II., down to the disappearance of the Austrian family. Thus Gonzalo Perez and his son Antonio were royal secretaries; so were the two Quevedos, and many more. In 1605, Philip III. had twenty-nine such secretaries. Clemencin, note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 47.
[203] The History of Ambrosio de Morales was first published in three folios, Alcalá, 1574-77; but the best edition is that of Madrid, 1791, in six small quartos, to which are commonly added two volumes, dated 1792, on Spanish Antiquities, and three more, dated 1793, of his miscellaneous works;—the whole being preceded by the work of Ocampo, in two volumes, already noticed, and followed by the continuation of Sandoval, in one volume, a work of about equal merit with that of Morales, and first printed at Pamplona, in 1615, folio. The three authors, Ocampo, Morales, and Sandoval, taken together, are thus made to fill twelve volumes, as if they belonged to one work, to which is given the unsuitable title of “Corónica General de España.”