view of the profits, and thought that nothing was certain but
the cost of the edition, would have excused himself from this proof of
his master's liberality. It was all in vain; Charles was not to be
balked in his generous purpose; and, without a line to propitiate the
public favor, by stating in the preface the share of the royal hand in
the composition, it was ushered into the world.[360]

Whatever Charles may have done in the way of an autobiography, he was
certainly not indifferent to posthumous fame. He knew that the greatest
name must soon pass into oblivion, unless embalmed in the song of the
bard or the page of the chronicler. He looked for a chronicler to do for
him with his pen what Titian had done for him with his pencil,--exhibit
him in his true proportions, and in a permanent form, to the eye of
posterity! In this he does not seem to have been so much under the
influence of vanity as of a natural desire to have his character and
conduct placed in a fair point of view,--what seemed to him to be
such,--for the contemplation or criticism of mankind.

[Sidenote: HIS DEATH AND CHARACTER.]

The person whom the emperor selected for this delicate office was the
learned Sepulveda. Sleidan he condemned as a slanderer; and Giovio, who
had taken the other extreme, and written of him with what he called the
"golden pen" of history, he no less condemned as a flatterer.[361]
Charles encouraged Sepulveda to apply to him for information on matters
relating to his government. But when requested by the historian to
listen to what he had written, the emperor refused. "I will neither
hear nor read," he replied, "what you have said of me. Others may do
this when I am gone. But if you wish for information on any point, I
shall be always ready to give it to you."[362] A history thus compiled
was of the nature of an autobiography, and must be considered,
therefore, as entitled to much the same confidence, and open to the same
objections, as that kind of writing. Sepulveda was one of the few who
had repeated access to Charles in his retirement at Yuste;[363] and the
monarch testified his regard for him, by directing that particular care
be taken that no harm should come to the historian's manuscript before
it was committed to the press.[364]

Such are some of the most interesting traits and personal anecdotes I
have been able to collect of the man who, for nearly forty years, ruled
over an empire more vast, with an authority mor