His
narrative is seasoned, moreover, with sensible reflections and
passing comments, that open gleams of light into the dark
passages of that eventful period. Yet the style of the author
can make but moderate pretensions to the praise of elegance or
exactness; while the sentences run into that tedious,
interminable length which belongs to the garrulous compositions
of the regular thoroughbred chronicler of the olden time.
The personalities, necessarily incident, more or less, to such a
work, led its author to shrink from publication, at least during
his life. By the jealous spirit of the Castilian cavalier,
"censure," he says, "however light, is regarded with indignation,
and even praise is rarely dealt out in a measure satisfactory to
the subject of it." And he expresses his conviction that those do
wisely, who allow their accounts of their own times to repose in
the quiet security of manuscript, till the generation that is to
be affected by them has passed away. His own manuscript,
however, was submitted to the emperor; and it received such
commendation from this royal authority, that Zarate, plucking up
a more courageous spirit, consented to give it to the press. It
accordingly appeared at Antwerp, in 1555, in octavo; and a second
edition was printed in folio, at Seville, in 1577. It has since
been incorporated in Barcia's valuable collection; and, whatever
indignation or displeasure it may have excited among
contemporaries, who smarted under the author's censure, or felt
themselves defrauded of their legitimate guerdon, Zarate's work
has taken a permanent rank among the most respectable authorities
for a history of the time.
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