Somewhat of a controversial interest has been created of late years by the critiques of Henry Harrisse on Ferdinand Columbus and his Life of his father, questioning the usually accepted statements in Spotorno’s introduction of the _Codice_ of 1823. Harrisse undertakes to show that the manuscript was never in Don Luis’ hands, and that Ferdinand could not have written it. He counts it as strange that if such a manuscript existed in Spain not a single writer in print previous to 1571 refers to it. “About ten years ago,” says Henry Stevens,[246] “a society of Andalusian bibliographers was formed at Seville. Their first publication was a fierce Hispano-French attack on the authenticity of the Life of Columbus by his second son, Ferdinand, written by Henri Harrisse in French, and translated by one of the Seville bibliófilos, and adopted and published by the Society. The book [by Columbus’ son] is boldly pronounced a forgery and a fraud on Ferdinand Columbus. Some fifteen reasons are given in proof of these charges, all of which, after abundant research and study, are pronounced frivolous, false, and groundless.” Such is Mr. Stevens’s view, colored or not by the antipathy which on more than one occasion has been shown to be reciprocal in the references of Stevens and Harrisse, one to the other, in sundry publications.[247] The views of Harrisse were also expressed in the supplemental volume of his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, published as _Additions_ in 1872. In this he says, regarding the Life of Columbus: “It was not originally written by the son of the bold navigator; and many of the circumstances it relates have to be challenged, and weighed with the utmost care and impartiality.” The authenticity of the book was ably sustained by D’Avezac before the French Academy in a paper which was printed in 1873 as _Le livre de Ferdinand Colomb: Revue critique des allégations proposées contre son authenticité_. Harrisse replied in 1875 in a pamphlet of fifty-eight pages, entitled _L’histoire de C. Colomb attribuée à son fils Fernand: Examen critique du mémoire lu par M. d’Avezac à l’Académie_, 8, 13, _22 Août, 1873_. There were other disputants on the question.[248] The catalogue of the Colombina Library as made by Ferdinand shows that it contained originally a manuscript Life of the Admiral written about 1525 by Ferdinand Perez de Oliva, who presumably had the aid of Ferdinand Columbus himself; but no trace of this Life now exists,[249] unless, as Harrisse ventures to conjecture, it may have been in some sort the basis of what now passes for the work of Ferdinand. * * * * *