Note 202 — Chapter XXXVIII

The best notice of Gerónimo de Zurita is the one at the end of Part II. Chap. I. of Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella”;—the most ample is the folio volume of Diego Josef Dormer, entitled “Progresos de la Historia en Aragon” (Zaragoza, 1680, folio); really a life of Zurita, published in his honor by the Cortes of his native kingdom. There are several editions of his Annals; and Latassa (Bib. Nueva, Tom. I. pp. 358-373) gives a list of above forty of his works, nearly all unpublished, and none of them, probably, of much value, except his History, to which, in fact, they are generally subsidiary. He held several offices under Philip II., and there is a letter to him from the king in Dormer, (p. 109,) which shows that he enjoyed much of the royal consideration; though, as I have intimated, and as may be fully seen in Dormer, (Lib. II. c. 2, 3, 4,) he was much teased, at one time, by the censors of his History. The first edition of the “Anales de la Corona de Aragon” was published in different years, at Saragossa, between 1562 and 1580, to which a volume of Indices was added in 1604, making seven volumes, folio, in all. The third edition (Zaragoza, 1610-21, 7 tom. folio) is the one that is preferred.

Another volume was added to the Annals of Zurita (Zaragoza, 1630, fol.) by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, the poet, who brought them down to 1520, and whose style is better than that in Zurita’s portion; but not much of it is the work of Argensola, so heavy is it with documents.

I have said that Zurita was employed as secretary of Philip II., from time to time; and such was the fact. But this title often implied little except the right of the person who bore it to receive a moderate salary from the public treasury;—a circumstance which I mention because I have occasion frequently to notice authors who were royal secretaries, from the time of Baena, the Jew, in the days of John II., down to the disappearance of the Austrian family. Thus Gonzalo Perez and his son Antonio were royal secretaries; so were the two Quevedos, and many more. In 1605, Philip III. had twenty-nine such secretaries. Clemencin, note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 47.