Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/159

15 BIRTH OF ISABELLA. 15 prose, and is said to have given the first example chapter of a version of the ^neid into a modern language. ^^ '- — He labored assiduously to introduce a more culti- vated taste among his countrymen, and his little treatise on the gaya sciencia, as the divine art was then called, in w^hich he gives an historical and critical view of the poetical Consistory of Barce- lona, is the first approximation, however faint, to an Art of Poetry in the Castilian tongue. ^^ The exclusiveness, with which he devoted himself to science, and especially astronomy, to the utter neglect of his temporal concerns, led the wits of that day to remark, that " he knew much of heaven, and nothing of earth." He paid the usual penalty of such indifference to worldly weal, by seeing himself eventually stripped of his lordly possessions, and reduced, at the close of life, to extreme pov- erty.^° His secluded habits brought on him the appalling imputation of necromancy. A scene took place at his death, in 1434, which is sufficiently characteristic of the age, and may possibly have suggested a similar adventure to Cervantes. The king commissioned his son's preceptor, Brother Lope de Barrientos, afterwards bishop of Cuen9a, to examine the valuable library of the deceased ; Antonio had also fallen in suppos- terwek, Literatura Espanola, trad. ing Villena's "Trabajos de Hercu- de Cortina y Mollinedo, nota S. les," written in verse, has been ^^ See an abstract of it in Bubsequently corrected by his learn- Mayans y Siscar, Origines de la ed commentator Bayer. See Ni- Lengua Espafiola, (Madrid, 1737,) colas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana tom. ii. pp. 321 et seq. Vetus, (Matriti, 1788,) tom. ii. p. 2o Zurita, Anales de la Corona de 222, nota. Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1669,) tom. iii. 18 Velazquez, Origenes de la p. 227 Guzman, Generaciones, Poesla Castellana, p. 45. — Bou- cap. 28.