A more powerful and splendid personality is that of the illustrious DIEGO HURTADO DE MENDOZA (1503-1575), one of the greatest figures in the history of Spanish politics and letters. Educated for the Church at the University of Salamanca, Mendoza preferred the career of arms, and found his opportunity at Pavia and in the Italian wars. Before he was twenty-nine he was named Ambassador to the Venetian Republic, became the patron of the Aldine Press, and studied the classics with all the ardour of his temperament. One of the few Spaniards learned in Arabic, Mendoza was a distinguished collector: he ransacked the monastery of Mount Athos for Greek manuscripts, secured others from Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, and had almost all Bessarion's Greek collection transcribed for his own library, now housed in the Escorial. The first complete edition of Josephus was printed from Mendoza's copies. He represented the Emperor at the Council of Trent, and saw to it that Cardinals and Archbishops did what Spain expected of them. In 1547 he was appointed Plenipotentiary to Rome, where he treated Pope Julius III. as cavalierly as his Holiness was accustomed to treat his own curates. In 1554 Mendoza returned to Spain, and the accession of Felipe II. in 1556 brought his public career to a close. He is alleged to have been Ambassador to England; and one would fain the report were true. His wit and picaresque malice are well shown in his old-fashioned _redondillas_; which delighted so good a judge as Lope de Vega, and his real strength lay in his management of these forms. But his long Italian residence and his sleepless intellectual curiosity ensured his experimenting in the high Roman manner. Tibullus, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Pindar, Anacreon: all these are forced into Mendoza's service, as in his epistles and his _Fábula de Adonis, Hipómenes y Atalanta_. It cannot be said that he is at his best in these pseudo-classical performances, and he dares to eke out his hendecasyllabics by using a final _palabra aguda_; but the extreme brilliancy of the humour carries off all technical defects in the burlesque section of his poems, which are of the loosest gaiety, most curious in a retired proconsul. Yet, if Mendoza, who excelled in the old, felt compelled to pen his forty odd sonnets in the new style, how strong must have been its charm! Whatever his formal defects, Mendoza's authority was decisive in the contest between the native and the foreign types of verse: he helped to secure the latter's definitive triumph.