[311] The “Crónica de Don Alvaro de Luna” was first printed at Milan, 1546, (folio,) by one of the Constable’s descendants, but, notwithstanding its value and interest, only one edition has been published since,--that by Flores, the diligent Secretary of the Academy of History (Madrid, 1784, 4to). “Privado del Rey” was the common style of Alvaro de Luna;--“Tan privado,” as Manrique calls him;--a word which almost became English, for Lord Bacon, in his twenty-seventh Essay, says, “The modern languages give unto such persons the names of _favorites_ or _privadoes_.” [312] Tít. 91-95, with the curious piece of poetry by the court poet, Juan de Mena, on the wound of the Constable during the siege. [313] Tít. 68. [314] Tít. 74, etc. [315] Tít. 127, 128. Some of the details--the Constable’s composed countenance and manner, as he rode on his mule to the place of death, and the awful silence of the multitude that preceded his execution, with the universal sob that followed it--are admirably set forth, and show, I think, that the author witnessed what he so well describes. The last of the chronicles of individuals written in the spirit of the elder times, that it is necessary to notice, is that of Gonzalvo de Córdova, “the Great Captain,” who flourished from the period immediately preceding the war of Granada to that which begins the reign of Charles the Fifth; and who produced an impression on the Spanish nation hardly equalled since the earlier days of that great Moorish contest, the cyclus of whose heroes Gonzalvo seems appropriately to close up. It was about 1526 that the Emperor Charles the Fifth desired one of the favorite followers of Gonzalvo, Hernan Perez del Pulgar, to prepare an account of his great captain’s life. A better person could not easily have been selected. For he is not, as was long supposed, Fernando del Pulgar, the wit and courtier of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.[316] Nor is the work he produced the poor and dull Chronicle of the life of Gonzalvo first printed in 1580, or earlier, and often attributed to him.[317] But he is that bold knight who, with a few followers, penetrated to the very centre of Granada, then all in arms, and, affixing an Ave Maria, with the sign of the cross, to the doors of the principal mosque, consecrated its massive pile to the service of Christianity, while Ferdinand and Isabella were still beleaguering the city without; an heroic adventure, with which his country rang from side to side at the time, and which has not since been forgotten either in its ballads or in its popular drama.[318]