[888] It has been announced that Bandelier is engaged in a new translation of The Annals of Quauhtitlan for Brinton’s Aboriginal Literature series. Cf. Bancroft, iii. 57, 63, and in vol. v., where he endeavors to patch together Brasseur’s fragments of it. Short, p. 241.
[889] Humboldt says that Sigüenza inherited Ixtlilxochitl’s collection; and that it was preserved in the College of San Pedro till 1759.
[890] Giro del mondo, 1699, vol. vi. Cf. Kingsborough, vol. iv. Robertson attacked Carreri’s character for honesty, and claimed it was a received opinion that he had never been out of Italy. Clavigero defended Carreri. Humboldt thinks Carreri’s local coloring shows he must have been in Mexico.
[891] Cf. the bibliog., in Vol. II., p. 425, of his Storia Antica del Messico.
[892] We owe to him descriptions at this time of the collections of Mendoza, of that in the Vatican, and of that at Vienna. Robertson made an enumeration of such manuscripts; but his knowledge was defective, and he did not know even of those at Oxford.
[893] Robertson was inclined to disparage Clavigero’s work, asserting that he could find little in him beyond what he took from Acosta and Herrera “except the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada and Boturini.” Clavigero criticised Robertson, and the English historian in his later editions replied. Prescott points out (i. 70) that Clavigero only knew Sahagún through the medium of Torquemada and later writers. Bancroft (Nat. Races, v. 149; Mexico, i. 700) thinks that Clavigero “owes his reputation much more to his systematic arrangement and clear narration of traditions that had before been greatly confused, and to the omission of the most perplexing and contradictory points, than to deep research or new discoveries.”
[894] See Vol. II. p. 418. Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Hist. des Nations Civilisées, p. xxxii. Clavigero had described it.
[895] He had collected nearly 500 Mexican paintings in all. Aubin (Notices, etc., p. 21) says that Boturini nearly exhausted the field in his searches, and with the collection of Sigüenza he secured all those cited by Ixtlilxochitl and the most of those concealed by the Indians,—of which mention is made by Torquemada, Sahagún, Valadés, Zurita, and others; and that the researches of Bustamante, Cubas, Gondra, and others, up to 1851, had not been able to add much of importance to what Boturini possessed.
[896] This portion of his collection has not been traced. The fact is indeed denied.
[897] Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional (Madrid, 1746); Carter-Brown, iii. 817; Brasseur’s Bibl. Mex.-Guat., p. 26; Field, Ind. Bibliog., no. 159; Pinart, Catalogue, no. 134; Prescott, i. 160.