With these coarser tastes Charles combined many others of a refined and intellectual character. We have seen his fondness for music, and the delight he took in the sister art of design,--especially in the works of Titian. He was painted several times by this great master, and it was by his hand, as we have seen, that he desired to go down to posterity. The emperor had, moreover, another taste, perhaps talent, which, with a different training and in a different sphere of life, might have led him to the craft of authorship.
A curious conversation is reported as having been held by him with Borja, the future saint, during one of the visits paid by the Jesuit to Yuste. Charles inquired of his friend whether it were wrong for a man to write his autobiography, provided he did so honestly, and with no motive of vanity. He said that he had written his own memoirs, not from the desire of self-glorification, but to correct manifold mistakes which had been circulated of his doings, and to set his conduct in a true light.[354] One might be curious to know the answer, which is not given, of the good father to this question. It is to be hoped that it was not of a kind to induce the emperor to destroy the manuscript, which has never come to light.
However this may be, there is no reason to doubt that at one period of his life he had compiled a portion of his autobiography. In the imperial household, as I have already noticed, was a Flemish scholar, William Van Male, or Malinæus, as he is called in Latin, who, under the title of gentleman of the chamber, wrote many a long letter for Charles, while standing by his bedside, and read many a weary hour to him after the monarch had gone to rest,--not, as it would seem, to sleep.[355] This personage tells us that Charles, when sailing on the Rhine, wrote an account of his expeditions to as late a date as 1550.[356] This is not very definite. Any account written under such circumstances, and in so short a time, could be nothing but a sketch of the most general kind. Yet Van Male assures us that he had read the manuscript, which he commends for its terse and elegant diction; and he proposes to make a Latin version of it, the style of which should combine the separate merits of Tacitus, Livy, Suetonius, and Cæsar![357] The admiring chamberlain laments that, instead of giving it to the world, Charles should keep it jealously secured under lock and key.[358]