[201] The letters of Argensola are in the “Cartas de Varios Autores Españoles,” by Mayans y Siscar, (Valencia, 1773, 5 tom. 12mo,)--itself a monument of the poverty of Spanish literature in that department from which it attempts to make a collection, since by far the greater part of it consists of old printed dedications, formal epistles of approbation that had been prefixed to books when they were first published, lives of authors that had served as prefaces to their works, etc. The letters of Quevedo and Lope are chiefly on literary subjects, and are scattered through their respective writings. Those of Antonio and Solís are in a small volume published by Mayans at Lyons, in 1733; to which may be added those at the end of Antonio’s “Censura de Historias Fabulosas,” Madrid, 1742, fol. The “Cartas Philologicas” of Cascales, (of which there is a neat edition by Sanchez, Madrid, 1779, 8vo,) are to Spain and the age in which they were written what the terse and pleasant letters published by Melmoth, under the pseudonyme of Fitzosborne, are to England in the reign of George II.,--an attempt to unite as much learning as the public would bear with an infusion of lighter matter in discussions connected with morals and manners. But no writer in the history of Spanish epistolary correspondence can be compared for acuteness and brilliancy with Antonio Perez, or for eloquence with Santa Teresa. CHAPTER XXXVIII. HISTORICAL COMPOSITION.--ZURITA, MORALES, RIBADENEYRA, SIGUENZA, MARIANA, SANDOVAL, HERRERA, ARGENSOLA, THE INCA GARCILASSO, MENDOZA, MONCADA, COLOMA, MELO, SAAVEDRA, SOLÍS.--GENERAL REMARKS ON THE SPANISH HISTORIANS. The fathers of Spanish history, as distinguished from Spanish chronicling, are Zurita and Morales, both of whom, educated in the reign of Charles the Fifth, show that they were not insensible to the influences of that great period in the annals of their country, and both of whom, after its close, prepared and published their works under the happiest auspices. Zurita was born in Saragossa in 1512, and died there in 1580; so that he had the happiness to live while the political privileges of his native kingdom were yet little impaired, and to die just before they were effectually broken down. His father was a favored physician of Ferdinand the Catholic, and accompanied that monarch to Naples in 1506. The son, who showed from early youth a great facility in the acquisition of knowledge, was educated at the University of Alcalá, where it was his good fortune to have, for his chief instructor, Fernan Nuñez, who was commonly called the Greek Commander, from the circumstance, that, while his position in the state as a member of the great family of the Guzmans made him Knight Commander of the Order of Santiago, his personal acquisitions and talents rendered him the first Greek scholar of his age and country.