Note 199 — Chapter XXXVII
Reading edition
The first publication of Perez, I think, is the one made at Lyons, without date, but supposed to be of 1598, and entitled “Pedaços de Historia,” etc.; but, the same year, the contents of this volume were reprinted at Paris, with the more appropriate title of “Relaciones.” Perez seems to have amused himself with publishing different portions of his works at different times and in different places; but the most complete collection is that of Geneva, 1654, 12mo, pp. 1126. His life is admirably discussed by M. Mignet, in his “Antonio Perez et Philippe II.” (2de édit., Paris, 1846). The work of Salvador Bermudez de Castro, entitled “Antonio Perez, Estudios Históricos,” (Madrid, 1841, 8vo,) would be better worth reading if the author had not permitted himself to indulge in fictions, such as ballad poetry, which he calls the poetry of Perez, and which he gives as part of the means Perez used to stir up the people of Saragossa, but which is, no doubt, the work of Castro himself. The lives of Perez in Baena (Tom. I., 1789, p. 121) and Latassa (Bib. Nov., Tom. II., 1799, p. 108) show how afraid men of letters were, as late as the end of the eighteenth century, to approach any subject thus connected with royalty. The works of Perez are strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition to the last,—in 1790 and 1805. The letters of Perez to Essex are in pretty good Latin, and out of his Spanish works there were early made two or three collections of very acute and striking aphorisms, which have been several times printed. There are many MS. letters of Perez at the Hague and elsewhere, referred to by Mignet, and there is in the Royal Library at Paris an important political treatise which bears his name, but which, though strongly marked with his acuteness and brilliancy, Ochoa hesitates to attribute to him. It is, however, I doubt not, his. (See Ochoa, Manuscritos Españoles, pp. 158-166; and Seminario Erudito, Tom. VIII. pp. 245 and 250.) Further accounts of Perez are to be found in Llorente, Tom. III. pp. 316-375.