Note 164 — BOOK VI.

Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza was introduced to England by Ben Jonson as an authority on honour and arms. Bobadil, in Every Man in his humour (Act 1, sc. 4) says:—"By the foot of Pharaoh, an' 'twere my case now I should send him a chartel presently. The bastinado, a most proper and sufficient dependence, warranted by the great Carranza." Carranza wrote the Philosophia y destreza de las armas (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, 1582); a later treatise, the Libro de las grandezas de la espada (Madrid, 1600) was issued by the counter-expert of the next generation, Luis Pacheco de Narváez. I need scarcely remind most readers that Pacheco de Narváez, the famous fencing-master, was ignominiously disarmed by Quevedo—an incomparable hand with the foil, despite his lameness and short sight. Pacheco naturally smarted under the disgrace, and seems to have shown his resentment in an unpleasant fashion whenever he had an opportunity. The respective merits of Carranza and Pacheco divided Madrid into two camps. Literary men were prominent in the fray. Suárez de Figueroa, Vélez de Guevara, and Ruiz de Alarcón declared for Pacheco. Among Carranza's partisans were Luis Mendoza de Carmona and, as might be expected, Quevedo who mentions the Libro de las grandezas de la espada in his Historia de la vida del Buscón (lib. i. cap. viii.).