Note 120 — BOOK VI.

Barrera believed that the reference is to Juan de Silva, Conde de Portalegre, afterwards Governor and Captain-General of the Kingdom of Portugal. A collection of his letters is said to be in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid: Silva is further stated to have revised the manuscript of Hurtado de Mendoza's Historia de la Guerra de Granada, first published (posthumously) by Luis de Tribaldos de Toledo at Lisbon in 1627. He certainly wrote the introduction to Tribaldos de Toledo's edition.

Juan de Silva, Conde de Portalegre, is said by Jacques-Charles Brunet (Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur de livres, Paris, 1861-1880, vol. ii., col. 217) to be the author of a work entitled Dell' unione del regno di Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia, istoria del Sig. Ieronimo di Franchi Conestaggio, gentilhuomo genovese (Genova, 1585). This volume was in Montaigne's library (see M. Paul Bonnefon's valuable contribution—La Bibliothèque de Montaigne—in the Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, Paris, 1895, vol. ii., pp. 344-345): so also was the Spanish version of López de Castanheda's Historia (M. Paul Bonnefon, op. cit., p. 362). A trace of both these works is observable in the 1595 edition of the Essais (liv. ii., chap. 21, Contre la fainéantise).