None were printed, and little
or no care was taken to collect or preserve the manuscripts, so that
probably most of them were destroyed. At length, in 1736-45, an
enthusiastic Italian archaeologist, the Chevalier Lorenzo Boturini
Benaduci, devoted nearly ten years to collecting everything of the kind
which would throw light on ancient Mexican history. He was quite
successful, and his library, had it been preserved intact, would have
been to-day an invaluable source of information. But the jealous Spanish
government threw Boturini into prison; his library was scattered and
partly lost, and he died of chagrin and disappointment. Yet to him we
probably owe the preservation of the writings of Ixtlilxochitl,
Tezozomoc, and others who wrote in Spanish, and whose volumes have since
seen the light in the collections of Bustamente, Lord Kingsborough,
Ternaux-Compans, and elsewhere.
The Nahuatl MSS. have remained unedited. Few took an interest in their
contents, fewer still in the language. The science of linguistics is
very modern, and that even so perfect an idiom as the Nahuatl could
command the attention of scholars for its own sake, had not dawned on
the minds of patrons of learning.
Boturini catalogues some forty or fifty more or less fragmentary
anonymous MSS.
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