Note 272 — Chapter IX

The fairness of Ayala in regard to Don Pedro has been questioned, and, from his relations to that monarch, may naturally be suspected;—a point on which Mariana touches, (Historia, Lib. XVII. c. 10,) without settling it, but one of some little consequence in Spanish literary history, where the character of Don Pedro often appears connected with poetry and the drama. The first person who attacked Ayala was, I believe, Pedro de Gracia Dei, a courtier in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and in that of Charles V. He was King-at-Arms and Chronicler to the Catholic sovereigns, and I have, in manuscript, a collection of his professional coplas on the lineages and arms of the principal families of Spain, and on the general history of the country;—short poems, worthless as verse, and sneered at by Argote de Molina, in the Preface to his “Nobleza del Andaluzia,” (1588,) for the imperfect knowledge their author had of the subjects on which he treated. His defence of Don Pedro is not better. It is found in the Seminario Erudito, (Madrid, 1790, Tom. XXVIII. and XXIX.,) with additions by a later hand, probably Diego de Castilla, Dean of Toledo, who, I believe, was one of Don Pedro’s descendants. It cites no sufficient authorities for the averments which it makes about events that happened a century and a half earlier, and on which, therefore, it was unsuitable to trust the voice of tradition. Francisco de Castilla, who certainly had blood of Don Pedro in his veins, followed in the same track, and speaks, in his “Pratica de las Virtudes,” (Çaragoça, 1552, 4to, fol. 28,) of the monarch and of Ayala as

All this, however, produced little effect. But, in process of time, books were written upon the question;—the “Apologia del Rey Don Pedro,” by Ledo del Pozo, (Madrid, folio, s. a.,) and “El Rey Don Pedro defendido,” (Madrid, 1648, 4to,) by Vera y Figueroa, the diplomatist of the reign of Philip IV.; works intended, apparently, only to flatter the pretensions of royalty, but whose consequences we shall find when we come to the “Valiente Justiciero” of Moreto, Calderon’s “Médico de su Honra,” and similar poetical delineations of Pedro’s character in the seventeenth century. The ballads, however, it should be noticed, are almost always true to the view of Pedro given by Ayala;—the most striking exception that I remember being the admirable ballad beginning “A los pies de Don Enrique,” Quinta Parte de Flor de Romances, recopilado por Sebastian Velez de Guevara, Burgos, 1594, 18mo.