The historian’s overweening partiality to the Conquerors is still further heightened by those feelings of patriotism--a bastard patriotism--which, identifying the writer’s own glory with that of his countrymen, makes him blind to their errors. This partiality is especially shown in regard to Cortés, the hero of the piece. The lights and shadows of the picture are all disposed with reference to this principal character. The good is ostentatiously paraded before us, and the bad is winked out of sight. Solís does not stop here, but, by the artful gloss which makes the worse appear the better cause, he calls on us to admire his hero sometimes for his very transgressions. No one, not even Gomara himself, is such a wholesale encomiast of the great Conqueror; and, when his views are contradicted by the statements of honest Diaz, Solís is sure to find a motive for the discrepancy in some sinister purpose of the veteran. He knows more of Cortés, of his actions and his motives, than his companion in arms or his admiring chaplain.
In this way Solís has presented a beautiful image of his hero,--but it is a hero of romance; a character without a blemish. An eminent Castilian critic has commended him for “having conducted his history with so much art that it has become a panegyric.” This may be true; but, if history be panegyric, panegyric is not history.
Yet, with all these defects,--the existence of which no candid critic will be disposed to deny,--the History of Solís has found such favor with his own countrymen that it has been printed and reprinted, with all the refinements of editorial luxury. It has been translated into the principal languages of Europe; and such is the charm of its composition, and its exquisite finish as a work of art, that it will doubtless be as imperishable as the language in which it is written, or the memory of the events which it records.
At this place also we are to take leave of Father Sahagun, who has accompanied us through our narrative. As his information was collected from the traditions of the natives, the contemporaries of the Conquest, it has been of considerable importance in corroborating or contradicting the statements of the Conquerors. Yet its value in this respect is much impaired by the wild and random character of many of the Aztec traditions,--so absurd, indeed, as to carry their own refutation with them. Where the passions are enlisted, what is too absurd to find credit?