The account of the rebellion of the Moriscoes written by Don Diego de Mendoza supplies a link between the series of histories just named and the histories which belong wholly to learning and literature. The subject was contemporary to the author, and members of his family took an active part in the events; but Don Diego had a literary ambition which is only too visible. It was plainly his intention to make a careful copy of Latin models--chiefly Sallust--and in one passage he slavishly follows the account given by Tacitus of the discovery of the remains of the legions of Varus, by the soldiers of Germanicus. But there was an intrinsic force in Diego de Mendoza which saved him from falling into a mere school exercise, and though the mould of sentence is too much taken from the Latin, the vocabulary is very pure Castilian. He protests in one place against the use of the foreign word _centinela_ for a sentinel, in place of the old Spanish _atalaya_ for the watch by day, and _escucha_ (listen) for the watch by night. _The Expedition of the Catalans and Aragonese against the Turks and Greeks_ of Francisco de Moncada, Count of Osona (1635), which Gibbon said he had read with pleasure, has a great reputation among the Spaniards. It is certainly a well-written account of the expedition of the Free Companions who were led by Roger de Flor to serve under the Paleologi against the Turks, and who, after making themselves intolerable to their employers, ended by expelling the Dukes of Athens of the house of Brienne from their duchy, and then held it for the crown of Aragon. Moncada was a viceroy and general who served with high distinction, and a very accomplished man of literary tastes; but his narrative, which is very brief, is mainly a good Castilian version of the Catalan _Chronicle_ of Ramon Muntaner, and has, in a phrase dear to Mr Hallam, been praised to the full extent of its merits. It appeared in 1623, twelve years before the death of the author, who was then viceroy in Lombardy. A work on the same scale as Moncada’s, which has been praised much beyond its merits, is the account of the revolt of the Catalans against Philip IV. in 1640 by Francisco Manuel de Melo. It contains only the beginning of the war, and though the author seems to promise a continuation, he never went further. The book was published in 1645. Melo had a curious literary history. He was a Portuguese in the Spanish service, and a kinsman of the unfortunate general who lost the battle of Rocroi. He lived long, wrote much, and it was his fortune to survive Góngorism. But his _History of the Troubles, Secession, and War of Catalonia_ was written while he was under a bad literary influence. Without being exactly “Góngorical,” it is written in a strained, pretentious, snappy style, which covers a decided poverty of thought. [SN: _General Histories._]