The praises lavished on the Argensolas by all parties, would afford sufficient ground for the conjecture that their poetic works had produced some influence on their contemporaries. But that influence is chiefly obvious from the poetic style of the men of talent with whom they lived on terms of intimacy, of one of whom, named Alonzo Esquerro, there is extant a short but excellent epistle, published along with the answer of Bartholemè de Argensola. The historical works of the younger Argensola, are also deserving of honourable mention in an account of the polite literature of Spain. Few narratives of Indian affairs are written with so much judgment and elegance as his History of the Conquest of the Molucca Islands;[408] and his continuation of the Annals of Zurita,[409] exceeds in rhetorical merit the work of the original historiographer. The circumstances connected with the accession of Charles V. and the Castilian rebellion, subjects to which no Spanish writer had previously ventured to allude, are related by Argensola with no less freedom and fidelity than other events; though of course without his attempting to urge any apology for the rebels. In the reign of Philip III. but little danger was to be apprehended from such freedom; and when, in the year 1621, Philip IV. ascended the throne in the seventeenth year of his age, Argensola did not hesitate to dedicate his Arragonian Annals to the Duke of Olivarez, who in the name of the young king was invested with unlimited sovereign authority. The Duke of Olivarez on receiving this dedication little imagined that the recollection of the ancient privileges of the Arragonian states, which had been solemnly ratified by Charles V. and which were so much expatiated on in these annals, would, at no very remote period, be the means of rousing the people of Arragon to take up arms in defence of their constitution, on which the duke wished to encroach, in order to recruit the exhausted strength of Castile. CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF SPANISH POETRY AND ELOQUENCE DURING THE AGE OF CERVANTES AND LOPE DE VEGA.