published some ancient verses in his grammar of the Nahuatl (Mexico,
1645). Several which appear in later works do not seem to merit the
credit of antiquity. They are more like those which Sahagun wrote and
published, in Nahuatl, at a very early period,[76] Christian songs,
intended to take the place of the ditties of love and chants of war,
which the natives had such a passion for singing.

Under the title _Cantares de los Mexicanos_, there was long
preserved in the library of the University of Mexico a manuscript of the
sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a large number of supposed
ancient Aztec songs; but what has become of it now, nobody knows.[77]
Thus it is that these precious monuments of antiquity are allowed to lie
uncared for, through generations, until, at length, they fall a prey to
ignorance or theft.

A few other fragments of Nahuatl poetry, all probably modern, but some
of them the versification of native bards, might be named; but the whole
of it, as now existing, could give us but a faint idea of the perfection
to which the art appears to have attained in the palmy days of the great
Tezcucan poet-prince.

In the literature of the Maya group of dialects, there have been
preserved various sacred chants, some in the _Books of Chilan
Balam_, others in the Kiche _Popol Vuh_. What are known as the
"Maya Prophecies" are, as I have said, evidently the originals, or
echoes of the mystic songs of the priests of Kukulkan and Itzamna,
deities of the Maya pantheon, who were supposed to inspire their
devotees with the power of foretelling the future.

The modern Maya lends itself very readily both to rhyme and rhythm, and