ernal Diaz of being a nonentity,--of having,
like Rosalind in "As you like it," merely "counterfeited to be a _man_."
As a natural _sequitur_ to this delicious train of reasoning, he
proceeds to take this nonentity, this "myth," as his guide throughout
the narrative of the Conquest. "We may safely follow Diaz," he remarks,
"in unimportant particulars"; and the "particulars" of the Conquest
being, in Mr. Wilson's narration of them, all equally "unimportant," he
is so far consistent in following Diaz throughout. Surely the Grecian
fables will never grow old; here again we have blind Polyphemus groping
in pursuit of cunning [Greek: Outis]. But we must be allowed to ask Mr.
Wilson why he has not rather preferred to take Gomara as his guide.
It is true that he entertains a strong loathing, a rooted
aversion, for this harmless old chronicler, whom he calls always
"Gomora,"--associating him, apparently, by some confusion of ideas, with
the ancient city of bad fame, buried with Sodom beneath the waters of
the Dead Sea. But, at least, he does not deny that Gomara had an actual
existence, that he was a veritable somebody,--a reality, and not a
"myth,"--that he was the chaplain of Cortes, that he had access to the
papers of the great commander, that he wrote a history of the Conquest,
and that this history is still extant. Mr. Wilson himself asserts that
the dispatches of Cortes "and the work of Gomora are the only original
documents touching the Conquest of Mexico, its people, its civilization,
its difficulties, and its dangers." After this declaration, it is
somewhat remarkable, that, throughout his narrative of the Conquest,
while continually quoting from Diaz, he makes not a single reference to
Gomara; and he even censures Mr. Prescott for having pursued a different
course. How shall we explain this fact? Alas for Gomara! he wrote in his
native Castilian, no Lockhart or Folsom had done him into English, and
so he missed his chance of having his statements cited, and, possibly
even,--though we should not like to hazard an assertion on this
point,--of having his name correctly spelt, by the author of the "New
History of the Conquest of Mexico."

It remains only that we should notice, as briefly as possible, the use
which Mr. Wilson has made of his two authorities, the translations of
Bernal Diaz and Cortes, which, rejecting all assistance from other
quarters, he takes for the basis of his narrative. That narrative is
constructed