"
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.
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