Oliva's reputation is strictly Spanish: not so that of Carlos Quinto's official chronicler, ANTONIO DE GUEVARA (d. 1545), a Franciscan monk who held the bishopric of Mondoñedo. His _Reloj de Príncipes_ (Dial of Princes), a didactic novel with Marcus Aurelius for its hero, was originally composed to encourage his own patron to imitate the virtues of the wisest ancient. Unluckily, however, Guevara passed his book off as authentic history, alleging it to be a translation of a non-existent manuscript in the Florentine collection. This brought him into trouble with antagonists as varied as the court-fool, Francesillo de Zúñiga, and a Sorian professor, the Bachelor Pedro de Rhua, whose _Cartas censorias_ unmasked the imposture with malignant astuteness. But this critical faculty was confined to the Peninsula, and North's English translation, dedicated to Mary Tudor, popularised Guevara's name in England, where he is believed by some authorities to have exercised considerable influence on the style of English prose. This, however, is not the place to discuss that most difficult question. An instance of Guevara's better manner is offered by his _Década de los Césares_, though even here he interpolates his own unscrupulous inventions and embellishments, as he also does in his _Familiar Epistles_, Englished by Edward Hellowes, Groom of the Leash, from whose version an illustration may be borrowed:—"The property of love is to turn the rough into plain, the cruel to gentle, the bitter to sweet, the unsavoury to pleasant, the angry to quiet, the malicious to simple, the gross to advised, and also the heavy to light. He that loveth, neither can he murmur of him that doth anger him: neither deny that they ask him: neither resist when they take from him: neither answer when they reprove him: neither revenge if they shame him: neither yet will he be gone when they send him away." These pompous commonplaces abound in the _Familiar Epistles_, which, though still the most readable of Guevara's performances, are tedious in their elaborate accumulation of saws and instances, unimpressively collected from the four quarters of the earth. But the rhetorical letters went the round of the world, were translated times out of number, and were commonly called "The Golden Letters," to denote their unique worth.