"
The scene of this obscure retreat was not, however, as the reader
might imagine from this tone of philosophic resignation, in the
depths of some rural wilderness, but in Cordova, once the gay
capital of Moslem science, and still the busy haunt of men. Here
our philosopher occupied himself with literary labors, the more
sweet and soothing to his wounded spirit, that they tended to
illustrate the faded glories of his native land, and exhibit them
in their primitive splendor to the eyes of his adopted
countrymen. "And I have no reason to regret," he says in his
Preface to his account of Florida, "that Fortune has not smiled
on me, since this circumstance has opened a literary career
which, I trust, will secure to me a wider and more enduring fame
than could flow from any worldly prosperity."
In 1609, he gave to the world the First Part of his great work,
the Commentarios Reales, devoted to the history of the country
under the Incas; and in 1616, a few months before his death, he
finished the Second Part, embracing the story of the Conquest,
which was published at Cordova the following year. The
chronicler, who thus closed his labors with his life, died at the
ripe old age of seventy-six. He left a considerable sum for the
purchase of masses for his soul, showing that the complaints of
his poverty are not to be taken literally. His remains were
interred in the cathedral church of Cordova, in a chapel which
bears the name of Garcilasso; and an inscription was placed on
his monument, intimating the high respect in which the historian
was held both for his moral worth and his literary attainments.
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