Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/215

191 CLASSICAL LEARNING. — SCIENCE. 191 dandy attested by the commendations of contem- chapter XIX porary writers, both at home and abroad, who en-. '- — large on his fondness for letters, and for the society of learned men, on his various attainments, and more especially his Latin scholarship, and above all on his disposition, so amiable, as to give promise of the highest excellence in maturer life, — a promise alas I most unfortunately for his own nation, des- tined never to be realized.^ Next to her family, there was no object which The queens J ' J care for the the queen had so much at heart, as the improve- he" Mbie".° ment of the young nobility. During the troubled reign of her predecessor, they had abandoned them- selves to frivolous pleasure, or to a sullen apathy, from which nothing was potent enough to arouse them, but the voice of war. ^° She was obliged to relinquish her plans of amelioration, during the all- engrossing struggle with Granada, when it would have been esteemed a reproach for a Spanish knight to have exchanged the post of danger in the field for the effeminate pursuit of letters. But, no sooner was the war brought to a close, than Isabella re- sumed her purpose. She requested the learned 9 Mem. de la Acad, de Hist., ordinary promise of this young torn. vi. Ilust. 14. prince, made his name known in Juan de la Encina, in the dedi- distant parts of Europe, and his cation to the prince, of his transla- untimely death, which occurred in tion of Virgil's Bucolics, pays the the twentieth year of his age, was following compliment to the en- commemorated by an epitaph of lightened and liberal taste of Prince the learned Greek exile, Constan- John. " Favoresceis tanto la sci- tine Lascaris. encia andando acompafiado de tan- lo " Aficionados a la guerra," tos e tan doctisimos varones, que says Oviedo, speaking of some no menos dejareis perdurable me- young nobles of his time, ^' for su moria de haber alargado e estendido JEspanola y natural inclinacion.^^ los limites e terminosde la sciencia Quincuagenas., MS., hat. 1, quinc. que los del imperio." The extra- 1, dial. 36.