Ad Exterum Res Hispanas Amantem

To a Foreigner Who Loves Spanish Affairs. That our Spain has been in every age a nurse of talents, there will be, I think, no one so blockish as to be ignorant; no one so envious as to dare to deny the attested and unshaken trustworthiness of so many records. I pass over the most ancient peoples, who, according to Strabo (Geography III), among the populations of Spain were thought to excel in wisdom, and who devoted themselves to the study of letters, and possessed volumes of venerable antiquity, poems, and also laws written in verse from six thousand years, as they say. For the other Spaniards had the use of letters, not indeed of one kind, nor in one language. A wonder indeed in those, for whom always ...........All the cause of light lies in arms, and it is a condemnation to live in peace; witness Italicus (Punica III), a Spanish bard. For to flourish in the arts of peace and the toga amidst the use of the sagum and the din of arms is a thing implanted by nature, not acquired by example. I pass over also that most fruitful harvest of Spanish writers, which from the Augustan age down to the Neronian itself

ken. The Romans, lords of the world and the toga-clad race, when most eloquent orators and most renowned poets were born to them from Spain, as Latinus Pacatus in his Panegyric to the Emperor Theodosius says, she was admired for her profession of every kind of eloquence. Hence, always with the prince of talents, Augustine (City of God, Book VIII, Chapter 11), we can call the Spaniards wise. Although many splendid monuments of their genius have perished through the spite of fate, yet most of them, by the favor of their own good genius, can be compared, with a more fortunate outcome in this regard than that of any other nation, even envy confessing it, to those of others. Among these, besides the thousands that are valued and broken among all, not a few lie hidden up to now in the most ancient libraries of rarer note, which, known and praised by the learned, have aroused a greater desire for others. Some have been brought forth for the common good of the republic by G. Loaisa, A. Morales, J. Mariana, and other men outstanding in learning and authority. Some I myself also have, still contending with moths and bookworms to the incredible loss of literature, rescued from darkness, collated with the most ancient manuscripts, and illustrated with notes, ready for publication. I would gladly weave a catalogue of them here, as they deserve, were I not afraid of the pitchy and thievish hands of certain busybodies, who, in the manner of Harpies, swoop down upon the desks of more modest men quite unlike themselves.

It is pleasing to gather spoils and live by plunder; indeed, for whom the foulest discharge of the belly and hooked hands... (Virgil, Aeneid III) ... beaks suited to rapine ... a hook is in the claws (Ovid, Fasti VI). But in truth, I will appease Carnes or the nymph Cardinea on the Kalends of June with old-rite sow's lard (Ovid, Fasti VI), so that she may either avert these Fidentini (Martial I, epigrams 30, 54, 73), Autolyci (Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, and Ovid, Metamorphoses), Gleptae (Plautus, Truculentus), Aesop's jackdaws (Horace, To the Pisos), and the evil Lavernae of good poems (Ausonius, To Theon), or at least impose shame upon the most audacious plagiarists present (Martial I, epigram 53). Certainly, even if for the harmless license of books there is no monster more grim, nor any pest more savage, nor any wrath of the gods brought forth from the Stygian waves (Virgil, Aeneid III), yet by the benefit of a better nature we are so disposed that whenever this resounding throng circles prey with hooked feet and defiles with the most shameless mouth another's and however snatched feasts, ... immediately by its own evidence the foulness of the edition and the crop of errors ... manifestly betrays the theft of poems. We learned this by experience yesterday and the day before; today we also fear it. But while they are carried about in the mask of a counterfeit and mendicant fame, we, by true merits toward the republic of letters and toward the fatherland, will not cease to deserve well of both (as we have done so far and perhaps not uselessly).