Note 894 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
He left Salamanca two or three years before he came to the New World; but old Bernal Diaz, who knew him well, says: “He was a scholar, and I have heard it said he was a Bachelor of Laws; and when he talked with lawyers and scholars, he answered in Latin. He was somewhat of a poet, and made couplets in metre and in prose, [en metro y en prosa,]” etc. It would be amusing to see poems by Cortés, and especially what the rude old chronicler calls coplas en prosa; but he knew about as much concerning such matters as Mons. Jourdain. Cortés, however, was always fond of the society of cultivated men. In his house at Madrid, (see ante, p. 537,) after his return from America, was held one of those Academies which were then beginning to be imitated from Italy.