[Footnote 9: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By A. R. SPOFFORD, LL.D.
(1436-1506)
[Illustration: Christopher Columbus.]
The discovery and the discoverer of America have furnished an almost
inexhaustible theme for the critic, the biographer, and the historian.
In the year 1892 there was celebrated an event which has come by common
consent to be regarded as a world-famous epoch, worthy to be held in
everlasting remembrance. We commemorated the man whose discovery almost
doubled the extent of the habitable globe.
The life, the voyages, the brilliant triumphs, and the mournful end of
Columbus are already familiar to most readers. To recount them at length
would be here a needless repetition. Let us rather attempt to glance at
some of the historic disputes involving the character and acts of the
great discoverer, to sketch briefly the sources of information about
him, and to characterize some of the more important writings upon the
subject.
There is no lack of biographical material concerning the discoverer of
America. He has left memorials of his personality and life-history more
abundant than most of the men who have influenced their age. There are
more than sixty authentic letters of Columbus in existence. There are
long narratives of his expeditions and discoveries, by persons who knew
him more or less intimately. There is an extended biography of him
written by his own son, Ferdinand Columbus, or from materials furnished
by him. There are numerous documents and state papers authenticating his
acts, his privileges, and his dignities. And yet, with all the wealth of
material, so copious upon his character and his career, it would seem,
from recent developments, that the true discoverer of America is yet to
be discovered.
Among the many lives of Columbus that have been written, there exist
some twenty-five in the English language. Of these two or three only
have any historical or critical value. The mass of biographies, both
English and American, are mere echoes or abridgments, in other forms of
language, of the great work of Washington Irving, first published in
1828. This book was written in Spain, and based upon collections of
documents (manuscript and printed) not previously used by biographers.
Hence its value as the most copious and systematic life of Columbus
which had appeared in any language. The finished and graceful style
which characterizes all the works of its accomplished author gave it a
high place in literature, which it has maintained for more than half a
century, being constantly reprinted.
Next in point of time to Irving, though treating Columbus with less
fulness of detail, came the polished historian Prescott, whose "History
of Ferdinand and Isabella" was published in 1837. This ardent and
laborious scholar was, like Irving, constitutionally inclined to the
optimistic view of his leading characters. To magnify the virtues and to
minimize the faults of their heroes has always been the besetting sin of
biographers. The pomp and picturesque circumstance of the Spanish court,
the splendid administrative abilities of Ferdinand, the beauty,
amiability, and devoted piety of Isabella, are depicted in glowing
colors, but the crimes and cruelties which they sanctioned, while
condemned upon one page, are softly extenuated upon others. Columbus
appears as a romantic figure in history, the glory of whose successful
discovery atones for his many failings.
Of the original sources of information about Columbus the most important
are:
1. The great collection of original documents printed in Spanish by
Navarrete, in 1825-37, in five volumes, and partly reprinted in a French
translation in 1828. These contain the precious letters of Columbus,
many of which have been translated and recently published in English.
2. The "Historia general de las Indias," of Oviedo, first published in
1535.
3. The "Historia de las Indias," of the Spanish Bishop Las Casas,
composed in 1527 to 1561, which remained in manuscript until 1875, when
it was printed from the original Spanish.
4. The "Letters and the Decades of Peter Martyr," written in part
contemporaneously with the discovery of America, and printed in Latin in
1530, and in English in 1555.