Note 688 — Chapter XXI

Mariana, Hist., Lib. XXIV. c. 19, noticing his death, says, “He died in his best years,”—“en lo mejor de su edad”; but we do not know how old he was. On three other occasions, at least, Don Jorge is mentioned in the great Spanish historian as a personage important in the affairs of his time; but on yet a fourth,—that of the death of his father, Rodrigo,—the words of Mariana are so beautiful and apt, that I transcribe them in the original. “Su hijo D. Jorge Manrique, en unas trovas muy elegantes, en que hay virtudes poeticas y ricas esmaltes de ingenio, y sentencias graves, a manera de endecha, lloró la muerte de su padre.” Lib. XXIV. c. 14. It is seldom History goes out of its bloody course to render such a tribute to Poetry, and still more seldom that it does it so gracefully. The old ballad on Jorge Manrique is in Fuentes, Libro de los Quarenta Cantos, Alcalá, 1587, 12mo, p. 374.