Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/125

Rh Three editions of the complete series of five Relaciones have been published in Spanish: one is found in the first volume of Historiadores Primitivos de Indias of Don Enrique de Vedia, which is contained in Rivadeneyra's Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Madrid, 1877; another appears in the first volume of the Biblioteca Historica de la Iberia, and the third is the admirable collection of the learned Don Pascual Gayangos of the Spanish Academy, Cartas y Relaciones de Hernan Cortés al Emperador Carlos V., published in Paris in 1866. The same author made an English translation of the Fifth Letter, which appeared in a single volume of the Hakluyt Society's publications in 1868.

A French translation of the five letters was published by Desiré Charnay in Paris in 1896 under the title of Lettres de Fernand Cortes à Charles Quint.

In preparing this present edition, a careful comparison has been made of the various texts known, and, while idiomatic differences have imposed certain rearrangements of form, particularly in the matter of punctuation, and the suppression of many cumbersome repetitions, it has been sought to leave to the letters their unique characteristics, due to the personality of their author, and to the temper of their times.

The Spanish language was not yet the strong and stately vehicle of thought into which it was afterward shaped by generations of scholars, whose writings not only brought the Castilian tongue to a superlative degree of purity and perfection, but also conspicuously enriched the universal patrimony of literature. Fernando Cortes had but scanty learning, and the conditions under which he wrote were little conducive to the cultivation of literary style, but the absence of adornment, the precision of fact, and forceful terseness of expression furnish his compositions with singular merit. The restraint and self-control of which he was master appear in the equal and passionless style of his writings; for he seems neither exalted by success nor cast down by misfortunes, both of which he describes with calm simplicity in language which is both natural and fluent. Perhaps nowhere does the real superiority and inherent strength of his character more plainly appear