The next work that comes under our notice is in some respects the most remarkable in Spanish Historical Literature. When the eminent critic and historian Prescott awarded to Antonio de Solis the honor of being the first Spanish writer who treated history as an art, not a science, and first appreciated the indissoluble bond that should ever connect it to poetry and belles-lettres, he certainly overlooked the prior claims of Garcias Laso or Garcilasso de la Vega. Born in Cusco in the year 1539,[9] claiming by his mother the regal blood of the Incas, and by his father that of the old Spanish nobility, he received a liberal education both in Peru and Spain. With a mind refined by retirement, an imagination attuned by a love of poetry and the drama, and with a vein of delicate humor, he was eminently qualified to enter into the spirit of an undertaking like De Soto’s. His Conquest of Florida[10] is a true historical drama, whose catastrophe proves it a tragedy. He is said to lack the purity of Mariana, and not to equal De Solis in severely artistic arrangement; but in grace and fascination of style, in gorgeous and vivid picturing, and in originality of diction--for unlike his cotemporaries, La Vega modelled his ideas on no Procustean bed of classical authorship--he is superior to either. None can arise from the perusal of his work without agreeing with Southey, that it is “one of the most delightful in the Spanish language.” But when we descend to the matter of facts and figures, and critically compare this with the other narratives, we find the Inca always gives the highest number, always makes the array more imposing, the battle more furious, the victory more glorious, and the defeat more disastrous than either. We meet with fair and gentle princesses, with noble Indian braves, with mighty deeds of prowess, and tales of peril, strange and rare. Yet he strenuously avers his own accuracy, gives with care his authorities, and vindicates their veracity. What then were these? First and most important were his conversations with a noble Spaniard who had accompanied De Soto as a volunteer. His name does not appear, but so thorough was his information and so unquestioned his character, that when the Council Royal of the Indies wished to inquire about the expedition, they summoned him in preference to all others. What he related verbally, the Inca wrote down, and gradually moulded into a narrative form. This was already completed when two written memoirs fell into his hands. Both were short, inelegant, and obscure, the productions of two private soldiers, Alonso de Carmona and Juan Coles, and only served to settle with more accuracy a few particulars. Though the narrative published at Elvas had been out nearly half a century before La Vega’s work appeared, yet he had evidently never seen it; a piece of oversight less wonderful in the sixteenth century than in these index and catalogue days. They differ