Note 278 — Chapter IX

Prefacion de Carvajal. Poetry of Rodriguez del Padron is found in the Cancioneros Generales; and of Diego de Valera there is “La Crónica de España abreviada por Mandado de la muy Poderosa Señora Doña Isabel, Reyna de Castilla,” made in 1481, when its author was sixty-nine years old, and printed, 1482, 1493, 1495, etc.,—a chronicle of considerable merit for its style, and of some value, notwithstanding it is a compendium, for the original materials it contains towards the end, such as two eloquent and bold letters by Valera himself to John II., on the troubles of the time, and an account of what he personally saw of the last days of the Great Constable, (Parte IV. c. 125,)—the last and the most important chapter in the book. (Mendez, p. 138. Capmany, Eloquencia Española, Madrid, 1786, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 180.) It should be added, that the editor of the Chronicle of John II. (1779) thinks Valera was the person who finally arranged and settled that Chronicle; but the opinion of Carvajal seems the more probable. Certainly, I hope Valera had no hand in the praise bestowed on himself in the excellent story told of him in the Chronicle, (Ann. 1437, Cap. 3,) showing how, in presence of the king of Bohemia, at Prague, he defended the honor of his liege lord, the king of Castile. A treatise of a few pages on Providence, by Diego de Valera, printed in the edition of the “Vision Deleytable,” of 1489, and reprinted, almost entire, in the first volume of Capmany’s “Eloquencia Española,” is worth reading, as a specimen of the grave didactic prose of the fifteenth century. A Chronicle of Ferdinand and Isabella, by Valera, which may well have been the best and most important of his works, has never been printed. Gerónimo Gudiel, Compendio de Algunas Historias de España, Alcalá, 1577, fol., f. 101. b.