Mendoza had been destined to the Church, for which the extensive patronage of his family offered obvious advantages. But the taste of the young man, as might be inferred from his novel, took another direction, and he persuaded his father to allow him to enter the army, and take service under the banner of Charles the Fifth. Mendoza's love of letters did not desert him in the camp; and he availed himself of such intervals as occurred between the campaigns to continue his studies, especially in the ancient languages, in the principal universities of Italy.
It was impossible that a person of such remarkable endowments as Mendoza, the more conspicuous from his social position, should escape the penetrating eye of Charles the Fifth, who, independently of his scholarship, recognized in the young noble a decided talent for political affairs. In 1538 the emperor appointed him ambassador to Venice, a capital for which the literary enterprises of the Aldi were every day winning a higher reputation in the republic of letters. Here Mendoza had the best opportunity of accomplishing a work which he had much at heart,—the formation of a library. It was a work of no small difficulty in that day, when books and manuscripts were to be gathered from obscure, often remote sources, and at the large cost paid for objects of virtù. A good office which he had the means of rendering the sultan, by the redemption from captivity of a Turkish prisoner of rank, was requited by a magnificent present of Greek manuscripts, worth more than gold in the eyes of Mendoza. It was from his collection that the first edition of Josephus was given to the world. While freely indulging his taste for literary occupations in his intervals of leisure, he performed the duties of his mission with an ability that fully vindicated his appointment as minister to the wily republic. On the opening of the Council of Trent, he was one of the delegates sent to represent the emperor in that body. He joined freely in the discussions of the conclave, and enforced the views of his sovereign with a strength of reasoning and a fervid eloquence that produced a powerful impression on his audience. The independence he displayed recommended him for the delicate task of presenting the remonstrances of Charles the Fifth to the papal court against the removal of the council to Bologna. This he did with a degree of frankness to which the pontifical ear was but little accustomed, and which, if it failed to bend the proud spirit of Paul the Third, had its effect on his successor.
Mendoza, from whatever cause, does not seem to have stood so high in the favour of Philip the Second as in that of his father. Perhaps he had too lofty a nature to stoop to that implicit deference which Philip exacted from the highest as well as the humblest who approached him. At length, in 1568, Mendoza's own misconduct brought him, with good reason, into disgrace with his master. He engaged in a brawl with another courtier in the palace; and the scandalous scene, of which the reader will find an account in the preceding volume, took place when the prince of Asturias, Don Carlos, was breathing his last. The offending parties were punished first by imprisonment, and then by banishment from Madrid. Mendoza, who was sixty-five years of age at this time, withdrew to Granada, his native place. But he had passed too much of his life in the atmosphere of a court to be content with a provincial residence. He accordingly made repeated efforts to soften his sovereign's displeasure, and to obtain some mitigation of his sentence. These efforts, as may be believed, were unavailing; and the illustrious exile took at length the wiser course of submitting to his fate and seeking consolation in the companionship of his books,—steady friends, whose worth he now fully proved in the hour of adversity. He devoted himself to the study of Arabic, to which he was naturally led by his residence in a capital filled with the monuments of Arabic art. He also amused his leisure by writing verses, and his labours combined with those of Boscan and Garcilasso de la Vega to naturalize in Castile those more refined forms of Italian versification that made an important epoch in the national literature.
But the great work to which he devoted himself was the history of the insurrection of the Moriscoes, which, occurring during his residence in Granada, may be said to have passed before his eyes. For this he had, moreover, obvious facilities, for he was the near kinsman of the captain-general, and was personally acquainted with those who had the direction of affairs. The result of his labours was a work of inestimable value, though of no great bulk—being less a history of events than a commentary on such a history. The author explores the causes of these events. He introduces the reader into the cabinet of Madrid, makes him acquainted with the intrigues of the different factions, both in the court and in the camp, unfolds the policy of the government and the plans of the campaigns—in short, enables him to penetrate into the interior, and see the secret working of the machinery, so carefully shrouded from the vulgar eye.
The value which the work derived from the author's access to these recondite sources of information is much enhanced by its independent spirit. In a country where few dared even think for themselves, Mendoza both thought with freedom and freely expressed his thoughts. Proof of this is afforded by the caustic tone of his criticism on the conduct of the government, and by the candour which he sometimes ventures to display when noticing the wrongs of the Moriscoes. This independence of the historian, we may well believe, could have found little favour with the administration. It may have been the cause that the book was not published till after the reign of Philip the Second, and many years after its author's death.
MENDOZA.
The literary execution of the work is not its least remarkable feature. Instead of the desultory and gossiping style of the Castilian chronicler, every page is instinct with the spirit of the ancient classics. Indeed, Mendoza is commonly thought to have deliberately formed his style on that of Sallust; but I agree with my friend Mr. Ticknor, who, in a luminous criticism on Mendoza, in his great work on Spanish Literature, expresses the opinion that the Castilian historian formed his style quite as much on that of Tacitus as of Sallust. Indeed, some of Mendoza's most celebrated passages are obvious imitations of the former historian, of whom he constantly reminds us by the singular compactness and energy of his diction, by his power of delineating a portrait by a single stroke of the pencil, and by his free criticism on the chief actors of the drama, conveyed in language full of that practical wisdom which, in Mendoza's case, was the result of a large acquaintance with public affairs. We recognize also the defects incident to the style he has chosen—rigidity and constraint, with a frequent use of ellipsis, in a way that does violence to the national idiom, and, worst of all, that obscurity which arises from the effort to be brief. Mendoza hurts his book, moreover, by an unseasonable display of learning, which, however it may be pardoned by the antiquary, comes like an impertinent episode to break the thread of the narrative. But, with all its defects, the work is a remarkable production for the time, and, appearing in the midst of the romantic literature of Spain, we regard it with the same feeling of surprise which the traveller might experience who should meet with a classic Doric temple in the midst of the fantastic structures of China or Hindostan.
Not long after Mendoza had completed his history, he obtained permission to visit Madrid, not to reside there, but to attend to some personal affairs. He had hardly reached the capital when he was attacked by a mortal illness, which carried him off in April, 1575, in the seventy-third year of his age. Shortly before his death he gave his rich collection of books and manuscripts to his obdurate master, who placed them, agreeably to the donor's desire, in the Escorial, where they still form an interesting portion of a library of which so much has been said, and so little is really known by the world.
The most copious notice with which I am acquainted, of the life of Mendoza, is that attributed to the pen of Iñigo Lopez de Avila, and prefixed to the Valencian edition of the "Guerra de Granada," published in 1776. But his countrymen have been ever ready to do honour to the memory of one who, by the brilliant success which he achieved as a statesman, a diplomatist, a novelist, a poet, and an historian, has established a reputation for versatility of genius second to none in the literature of Spain.