On leaving the university Don Diego went to serve with the Spanish armies in Italy. [Sidenote: His services in Italy.] He also attended lectures at Rome, Bologna, and Padua, and was a profound scholar as well as a statesman and a soldier. Charles V. appreciated his ability and his acquirements. In 1538, at the age of thirty-five, he was appointed Ambassador at Venice. He assisted and patronised the Aldi, and Josephus was first printed complete from his library. Afterwards he was for some time Military Governor of Sienna; and he was sent to the Council of Trent to maintain the imperial interests there. His next employment was at Rome, as special Plenipotentiary to rebuke and overawe Pope Julius III., which he did. Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza returned to Spain in 1554 at the age of fifty. [Sidenote: The library.] He was not appreciated by Philip II. and seldom came to Court, living, with his splendid library, in his house at Granada. In his retirement he wrote a good deal of poetry. But his great work was the _Guerra de Granada_, a narrative of the rebellion of the Moors in 1568-1570. [Sidenote: The _Guerra de Granada_.] He did the Moors such impartial justice that his book could not be published until many years after his death. Sallust was his model. The first edition appeared in 1610, and the second more complete edition at Valencia in 1776. It is one of the finest pieces of prose-writing in the Spanish language. In his last years Don Diego found much pleasant employment in his library. [Sidenote: Last days.] He corresponded with Zurita, the historian of Aragon, telling him how the work of looking over his books reminded him of many long-forgotten things, and supplied him with much food for thought. While in Italy he had been diligent in obtaining Greek MSS., and in other respects his library was quite unique. He bequeathed it to Philip II., and it is now in the Escurial. [Sidenote: Death of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza.] Don Diego died at Madrid in April 1575, aged 72. THE BOOK, “LAZARILLO DE TORMES” Ticknor[3] describes _Lazarillo de Tormes_ as “a work of genius unlike anything that had preceded it. [Sidenote: Ticknor’s opinion of the work.] Its object is to give a pungent satire on all classes of society. It is written in a very bold, rich, and idiomatic Castilian style. Some of its sketches are among the most fresh and spirited that can be found in the whole range of prose works of fiction. Those of the friar and the seller of Indulgences were put under the ban of the Church.” They were expurgated by the Inquisition in 1573, when an expurgated edition was published at Madrid, and in the _Index Expurgatorius_ of 1667. [3] _History of Spanish Literature_, i. 469-71.