Note 806 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Toma Veinte y tres generaciones La prosapia de Mendoça. No hay linage en toda España, De quien conozca Tan notable antiguedad. De padre á hijos se nombran, Sin interrumpir la linea, Tan excelentes personas, Y de tanta calidad, Que fuera nombrarlas todas Contar estrellas al cielo, Y á la mar arenas y ondas: Desde el señor de Vizcaya, Llamado Zuria, consta Que tiene origen su sangre.
For three-and-twenty generations past Hath the Mendozas’ name been nobly great. In all the realm of Spain, no other race Can claim such notable antiquity; For, reckoning down from sire to son, they boast, Without a break in that long, glorious line, So many men of might, men known to fame, And of such noble and grave attributes, That the attempt to count them all were vain As would be his who sought to count the stars, Or the wide sea’s unnumbered waves and sands. Their noble blood goes back to Zuria, The lord of all Biscay.
Arauco Domado, Acto III., Comedias, Tom. XX. 4to, 1629, f. 95.
Gaspar de Avila, in the first act of his “Governador Prudente,” (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tomo XXI., 1664,) gives even a more minute genealogy of the Mendozas than that of Lope de Vega; so famous were they in verse as well as in history.