Mendoza writes for the pleasure of writing, with no polemical or didactic purpose. His plain-speaking concerning the war, and the part played in it by great personages whom he had no cause to love, accounts for the tardy publication of his book, which should be considered as a confidential state-paper by a diplomatist of genius. Yet, though he wrote chiefly to pass the time, he has the qualities of the great historian—knowledge, impartiality, narrative power, condensation, psychological insight, dramatic apprehension, perspective and eloquence. His view of a general situation is always just, and, though he has something of the credulity of his time, his accuracy of detail is astonishing. His style is a thing apart. He had already shown, in a burlesque letter addressed to Feliciano de Silva, an almost unique capacity for reproducing that celebrity's literary manner. In his _Guerra de Granada_ he repeats the performance with more serious aim. One god of his idolatry is Sallust, whose terse rhetoric is repeatedly echoed with unsurpassable fidelity. Another model is Tacitus, whose famous description of Germanicus finding the unburied corpses of Varus' legions is annexed by Mendoza in his account of Arcos and his troops at Calalín. This is neither plagiarism nor unconscious reminiscence; it is the deliberate effort of a prose connoisseur, saturated in antiquity, to impart the gloomy splendour of the Roman to his native tongue. To say that Mendoza succeeded were too much, but he did not altogether fail; and, despite his occasional Latinised construction, his _Guerra de Granada_ lives not solely as a brilliant and picturesque transcription. It is also a masterly example of idiomatic Castilian prose, published without the writer's last touches, and, as is plain, from mutilated copies.[15] Mendoza may not be a great historian: as a literary artist he is extremely great. FOOTNOTES: [8] The sources are carefully traced by L. A. Stiefel in the _Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie_ (vol. xx. pp. 183 and 318). One specimen suffices here:— GIANCARLI, iii. 16. _Falisco._ Padrone, o che la imaginatione m'inganna, o pur quella è la vuestra Madonna Angelica. _Cassandro._ Sarebbe gran cosa che la imaginatione inganassa me anchora, perch' io voleva dirloti, etc. RUEDA, _Escena_ iii. _Falisco._ Señor, la vista ó la imaginacion me engaña ó es aquella vuestra muy querida Angélica. _Casandro._ Gran cosa seria si la imaginacion no te engañase, antes yo te lo quería decir, etc. [9] I learn that D. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo is preparing a new edition of the _Anotaciones_. [10] For a full and very able account of the proceedings, see Alejandro Arango y Escandon's _Ensayo histórico_ (Méjico, 1866). [11] The Christian name of the author of the _Visión deleitable_ was Alfonso. [12] See the second volume (pp. 79-104) of the _Discursos leidos en las recepciones públicas que ha celebrado desde 1847 la Real Academia Española_ (Madrid, 1861).