Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/193

THE FRENCH DRIVEN FROM NAPLES. 167 ners of Spain victorious, for more than a century, chapter XV over the most distant parts of Europe. '. — ferent specimen of the rich old Spanish chronicle, exhibiting most of its characteristic blemishes, with a very small admixture of its beau- ties. The long- and prosy narra- tive is overloaded with the most frivolous details, trumpeted forth in a strain of glorification, which some- times disfigures more meritorious compositions in the Castilian. No- thing like discrimination of charac- ter, of course, is to be looked for in the unvarying swell of panegyric, which claims for its subject all the extravagant flights of a hero of ro- mance. With these deductions, however, and a liberal allowance, consequently, for the nationality of the work, it has considerable value as a record of events, too recent in their occurrence to be seriously de- faced by those deeper stains of er- ror, which are so apt to settle on the weather-beaten monuments of antiquity. It has accordingly form- ed a principal source of the " Vida del Gran Capitan," introduced by Quintana in the first volume of his " Espanoles C^lebres," printed at Madrid, in 1807. This memoir, in which the incidents are selected with discernment, displays the usual freedom and vivacity of its poetic author. It does not bring the gen- eral politics of the peiiod under re- view, but will not be found deficient in particulars having immediate connexion with the personal histo- ry of its subject ; and, on the whole, exhibits in an agreeable and com- pendious form whatever is of most interest or importance for the gen- eral reader. The French have also a " His- toire de Gonsalve de Cordoue," composed by father Duponcet, a Je- suit, in two vols. 12mo. Paris, 1714. Though an ambitious, it is a bung- ling performance, most unskilfully put together, and contains quite as much of what its hero did not do, as of what he did. The prolixity of the narrative is not even relieved by that piquancy of style, which forms something like a substitute for thought in many of the lower or- der of Frencli historians. It is less to history, however, than to ro- mance, that the French public is indebted for its conceptions of the character of Gonsalvo de Cordova, as depicted by the gaudy pencil of Florian, in that highly poetic color- ing, which is more attractive to the majority of readers than the cold and sober delineations of truth. The contemporary French ac- Frencii counts of the Neapolitan wars of chronicles, Louis XII. are extremely meagre, and few in number. The most striking, on the whole, is D'Auton's chronicle, composed in the true chivalrous vein of old Froissart, but unfortunately terminating before the close of the first campaign. St. Gelais and Claude Seyssel touch very lightly on this part of their sulject. History becomes in their hands, moreover, little better than fulsome panegyric, carried to such a height, indeed, by the latter writ- er, as brought on him the most se- vere strictures from his contempo- raries ; so that he was compelled to take up the pen more than once in his own vindication. The " Me- moiresde Bayard," Fleurange,and La Tremouille, so diffuse in most military details, are nearly silent in regard to those of the Neapolitan war. The truth is, the subject was too ungrateful in itself, and present- ed too unbroken a series of calami- ties and defeats, to invite the atten- tion of the French historians, who willingly turned to those brilliant passages in this reign, more sooth- ing to national vanity. The blank has been filled up, or rather attempted to be so, by the