In Hernando de Pulgar, author of the _Cronica de los Reyes Católicos_, on the other hand, we find what might be called the historical consciousness in embryo. The beginning of this work which relates to a period before 1482 when he became official historiographer and secretary to the Queen is often wildly inaccurate; but the latter portion which is much more careful shows an attempt to produce a chronological summary that should give to each event its due importance. If the style is sometimes heavy, its very prolixity provides a wealth of circumstantial detail; and though his admiration for the sovereigns, and in especial for the Queen, have laid him open to the charge of flattery, the tone of his chronicle is in the main neither illiberal nor fulsome. It is to a later reign and Zurita’s _Anales de Aragon_ that we must turn for the first piece of real historical work founded on a study of original documents and contemporary foreign sources; but in descriptive power Hernando de Pulgar remains infinitely Zurita’s superior. Besides his _Cronica de Los Reyes Católicos_, he wrote also _Claros Varones_, a series of biographical sketches of illustrious people of his own day. They are carefully drawn portraits, by many critics considered his best work; but their realism is impaired by his tendency to blur the fine edges of appreciation with over-enthusiastic praise. It is the courtier’s temptation, which the trend of the Castilian literature of his time towards exaggeration would do little to mitigate. Fantasy not realism was the popular demand amongst the cultured in their leisure hours; and those, for whom the ballads were too rough and the chronicles too heavy, fed with delight on “Romances of Chivalry” as insipid in style as their adventures were far removed from real life. Cervantes, in the story of his mad Knight, Don Quixote, was to kill these monsters of imagination with his satire, but in condemning the whole brood as fit material for a bonfire he spared their original model, _Amadis de Gaula_. The latter is found by the Priest and the Barber, Master Nicholas, on the shelves of the old Knight’s library. This, as I have heard say [exclaimed the Priest], was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and all the rest have had their foundation and rise from it; therefore I think, as head of so pernicious a sect, we ought to condemn him to the fire without mercy. Not so, Sir [answered the Barber], for I have heard also that it is the best of all books of this kind; and therefore as being singular in his art he ought to be spared. With this judgment the Priest at once concurred.