Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/672

652 country in the liberal reception of foreign ideas. Indeed, she has remained a mere copyist, it is presumed because her best men devote their attention mostly to politics.

The creoles are precocious and impulsive, but unsustained and not persevering. Indolence of spirit, added to the non-reflective bent of the Castilian, imparted a shallowness to their efforts. It must be acknowledged, nevertheless, that the catalogue of prominent writers presents many Mexicans of the European race who obtained transoceanic fame. The Indian element furnished from early days a long list of writers who redeemed their race from the unjust obloquy cast upon it by a short-sighted and brutal policy; and while the Indian mind in those early times was almost wholly imitative, lacking in breadth and subtlety, and strikingly devoid of imagination and invention, yet its aptitude for mastering mechanical details tended to hide many imperfections. In an early volume, I have given the state of advancement in literature and the fine arts of the Aztecs before the Spanish conquest. With the advent of the Spaniard, a more perfect language came to the aid of native thought. At first it could not throw off the shackles of the former language; the Indians' Spanish poetry, for instance, indicating crudeness and mediocrity; yet these defects may have resulted from submissiveness and bigotry. Among the more prominent writers, deserve special mention three bearing the princely name of Ixtlilxochitl — Fernando Pimentel, his son Antonio, and Fernando de Alva, who recorded the glories of their ancestors. The last named, notwithstanding his faults of construction, won the name of the Cicero of Anáhuac. Juan de Tovar, to whom