History of Spanish Literature (vol. 1 of 3)

In the year eighteen hundred and eighteen I travelled through a large part of Spain, and spent several months in Madrid. My object was to increase a very imperfect knowledge of the language and literature of the country, and to purchase Spanish books, always so rare in the great book-marts of the rest of Europe. In some respects, the time of my visit was favorable to the purposes for which I made it; in others, it was not. Such books as I wanted were then, it is true, less valued in Spain than they are now, but it was chiefly because the country was in a depressed and unnatural state; and, if its men of letters were more than commonly at leisure to gratify the curiosity of a stranger, their number had been materially diminished by political persecution, and intercourse with them was difficult because they had so little connection with each other, and were so much shut out from the world around them.

It was, in fact, one of the darkest periods of the reign of Ferdinand the Seventh, when the desponding seemed to think that the eclipse was not only total,[p. vi] but “beyond all hope of day.” The absolute power of the monarch had been as yet nowhere publicly questioned; and his government, which had revived the Inquisition and was not wanting in its spirit, had, from the first, silenced the press, and, wherever its influence extended, now threatened the extinction of all generous culture. Hardly four years had elapsed since the old order of things had been restored at Madrid, and already most of the leading men of letters, whose home was naturally in the capital, were in prison or in exile. Melendez Valdes, the first Spanish poet of the age, had just died in misery on the unfriendly soil of France. Quintana, in many respects the heir to his honors, was confined in the fortress of Pamplona. Martinez de la Rosa, who has since been one of the leaders of the nation as well as of its literature, was shut up in Peñon on the coast of Barbary. Moratin was languishing in Paris, while his comedies were applauded to the very echo by his enemies at home. The Duke de Rivas, who, like the old nobles of the proudest days of the monarchy, has distinguished himself alike in arms, in letters, and in the civil government and foreign diplomacy of his country, was living retired on the estates of his great house in Andalusia. Others of less mark and note shared a fate as rigorous; and, if Clemencin, Navarrete, and Marina were permitted still to linger in the capital from which their friends had been driven, their footsteps were watched and their lives were unquiet.

[p. vii]Among the men of letters whom I earliest knew in Madrid was Don José Antonio Conde, a retired, gentle, modest scholar, rarely occupied with events of a later date than the times of the Spanish Arabs, whose history he afterwards illustrated. But, far as his character and studies removed him from political turbulence, he had already tasted the bitterness of a political exile; and now, in the honorable poverty to which he had been reduced, he not unwillingly consented to pass several hours of each day with me, and direct my studies in the literature of his country. In this I was very fortunate. We read together the early Castilian poetry, of which he knew more than he did of the most recent, and to which his thoughts and tastes were much nearer akin. He assisted me, too, in collecting the books I needed;—never an easy task where bookselling, in the sense elsewhere given to the word, was unknown, and where the Inquisition and the confessional had often made what was most desirable most rare. But Don José knew the lurking-places where such books and their owners were to be sought; and to him I am indebted for the foundation of a collection in Spanish literature, which, without help like his, I should have failed to make. I owe him, therefore, much; and, though the grave has long since closed over my friend and his persecutors, it is still a pleasure to me to acknowledge obligations which I have never ceased to feel.

Many circumstances, since the period of my visit to[p. viii] Spain, have favored my successive attempts to increase the Spanish library I then began. The residence in Madrid of my friend, the late Mr. Alexander Hill Everett, who ably represented his country for several years at the court of Spain; and the subsequent residence there, in the same high position, of my friend, Mr. Washington Irving, equally honored on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially cherished by Spaniards for the enduring monument he has erected to the history of their early adventures, and for the charming fictions, whose scene he has laid in their romantic country;—these fortunate circumstances naturally opened to me whatever facilities for collecting books could be afforded by the kindness of persons in places so distinguished, or by their desire to spread among their countrymen at home a literature they knew so well and loved so much.

But to two other persons, not unconnected with these statesmen and men of letters, it is no less my duty and my pleasure to make known my obligations. The first of them is Mr. O. Rich, formerly a Consul of the United States in Spain; the same bibliographer to whom Mr. Irving and Mr. Prescott have avowed similar obligations, and to whose personal regard I owe hardly less than I do to his extraordinary knowledge of rare and curious books, and his extraordinary success in collecting them. The other is Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University of Madrid,—certainly in his peculiar department among[p. ix] the most eminent scholars now living, and one to whose familiarity with whatever regards the literature of his own country, the frequent references in my notes bear a testimony not to be mistaken. With the former of these gentlemen I have been in constant communication for many years, and have received from him valuable contributions of books and manuscripts collected in Spain, England, and France for my library. With the latter, to whom I am not less largely indebted, I first became personally acquainted when I passed in Europe the period between 1835 and 1838, seeking to know scholars such as he is, and consulting, not only the principal public libraries of the Continent, but such rich private collections as those of Lord Holland in England, of M. Ternaux-Compans in France, and of the venerated and much-loved Tieck in Germany; all of which were made accessible to me by the frank kindness of their owners.

The natural result of such a long-continued interest in Spanish literature, and of so many pleasant inducements to study it, has been—I speak in a spirit of extenuation and self-defence—a book. In the interval between my two residences in Europe I delivered lectures upon its principal topics to successive classes in Harvard College; and, on my return home from the second, I endeavoured to arrange these lectures for publication. But when I had already employed much labor and time on them, I found—or thought I found—that the tone of discussion which I had adopted for[p. x] my academical audiences was not suited to the purposes of a regular history. Destroying, therefore, what I had written, I began afresh my never unwelcome task, and so have prepared the present work, as little connected with all I had previously done as it, perhaps, can be, and yet cover so much of the same ground.

In correcting my manuscript for the press I have enjoyed the counsels of two of my more intimate friends; of Mr. Francis C. Gray, a scholar who should permit the world to profit more than it does by the large resources of his accurate and tasteful learning, and of Mr. William H. Prescott, the historian of both hemispheres, whose name will not be forgotten in either, but whose honors will always be dearest to those who have best known the discouragements under which they have been won, and the modesty and gentleness with which they are worn. To these faithful friends, whose unchanging regard has entered into the happiness of all the active years of my life, I make my affectionate acknowledgments, as I now part from a work in which they have always taken an interest, and which, wherever it goes, will carry on its pages the silent proofs of their kindness and taste.

Park Street, Boston, 1849.

I cannot dismiss the last sheet of this History, without offering my sincere thanks to the conductors of the University Press at Cambridge, and to Mr. George[p. xi] Nichols, its scholarlike corrector, for the practised skill and conscientious fidelity with which, after it was in type, my work has been revised and prepared for publication.

FIRST PERIOD.

The Literature that existed in Spain between the First Appearance of the Present Written Language and the Early Part of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, or from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Beginning of the Sixteenth.

SECOND PERIOD.

The Literature that existed in Spain From the Accession of the Austrian Family to its Extinction; or from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the End of the Seventeenth.

In the earliest ages of every literature that has vindicated for itself a permanent character in modern Europe, much of what constituted its foundations was the result of local situation and of circumstances seemingly accidental. Sometimes, as in Provence, where the climate was mild and the soil luxuriant, a premature refinement started forth, which was suddenly blighted by the influences of the surrounding barbarism. Sometimes, as in Lombardy and in a few portions of France, the institutions of antiquity were so long preserved by the old municipalities, that, in occasional intervals of peace, it seemed as if the ancient forms of civilization might be revived and prevail;—hopes kindled only to be extinguished by the violence amidst which the first modern communities, with the policy they needed, were brought forth and[p. 4] established. And sometimes both these causes were combined with others, and gave promise of a poetry full of freshness and originality, which, however, as it advanced, was met by a spirit more vigorous than its own, beneath whose predominance its language was forbidden to rise above the condition of a local dialect, or became merged in that of its more fortunate rival;—a result which we early recognize alike in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, where the authority of the great Tuscan masters was, from the first, as loyally acknowledged as it was in Florence or Pisa.

Like much of the rest of Europe, the southwestern portion, now comprising the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, was affected by nearly all these different influences. Favored by a happy climate and soil, by the remains of Roman culture, which had lingered long in its mountains, and by the earnest and passionate spirit which has marked its people through their many revolutions down to the present day, the first signs of a revived poetical feeling are perceptible in the Spanish peninsula even before they are to be found, with their distinctive characteristics, in that of Italy. But this earliest literature of modern Spain, a part of which is Provençal and the rest absolutely Castilian or Spanish, appeared in troubled times, when it was all but impossible that it should be advanced freely or rapidly in the forms it was destined at last to wear. For the masses of the Christian Spaniards filling the separate states, into which their country was most unhappily divided, were then involved in that tremendous warfare with their Arab invaders, which, for twenty generations, so consumed their strength, that, long before the cross was planted on the towers of the Alhambra, and peace had given opportunity[p. 5] for the ornaments of life, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had appeared in the comparative quiet of Lombardy and Tuscany, and Italy had again taken her accustomed place at the head of the elegant literature of the world.

Under such circumstances, a large portion of the Spaniards, who had been so long engaged in this solemn contest, as the forlorn hope of Christendom, against the intrusion of Mohammedanism[1] and its imperfect civilization into Europe, and who, amidst all their sufferings, had constantly looked to Rome, as to the capital seat of their faith, for consolation and encouragement, did not hesitate again to acknowledge the Italian supremacy in letters,—a supremacy to which, in the days of the Empire, their allegiance had been complete. A school formed on Italian models naturally followed; and though the rich and original genius of Spanish poetry received less from its influence ultimately than might have been anticipated, still, from the time of its first appearance, its effects are too important and distinct to be overlooked.

Of the period, therefore, in which the history of Spanish literature opens upon us, we must make two divisions. The first will contain the genuinely national poetry and prose produced from the earliest times down to the reign of Charles the Fifth; while the second will contain that portion which, by imitating the refinement of Provence or of Italy, was, during the same interval, more or less separated from the popular spirit and genius. Both, when taken together, will fill up the period in which the main elements and characteristics of Spanish literature were[p. 6] developed, such as they have existed down to our own age.

In the first division of the first period, we are to consider the origin and character of that literature which sprang, as it were, from the very soil of Spain, and was almost entirely untouched by foreign influences.

And here, at the outset, we are struck with a remarkable circumstance, which announces something at least of the genius of the coming literature,—the circumstance of its appearance in times of great confusion and violence. For, in other portions of Europe, during those disastrous troubles that accompanied the overthrow of the Roman power and civilization, and the establishment of new forms of social order, if the inspirations of poetry came at all, they came in some fortunate period of comparative quietness and security, when the minds of men were less engrossed than they were wont to be by the necessity of providing for their personal safety and for their most pressing physical wants. But in Spain it was not so. There, the first utterance of that popular feeling which became the foundation of the national literature was heard in the midst of the extraordinary contest which the Christian Spaniards, for above seven centuries, urged against their Moorish invaders; so that the earliest Spanish poetry seems but a breathing of the energy and heroism which, at the time it appeared, animated the great mass of the Spanish Christians throughout the Peninsula.

Indeed, if we look at the condition of Spain, in the centuries that preceded and followed the formation of its present language and poetry, we shall find the mere[p. 7] historical dates full of instruction. In 711, Roderic rashly hazarded the fate of his Gothic and Christian empire on the result of a single battle against the Arabs, then just forcing their way into the western part of Europe from Africa. He failed; and the wild enthusiasm which marked the earliest age of the Mohammedan power achieved almost immediately the conquest of the whole of the country that was worth the price of a victory. The Christians, however, though overwhelmed, did not entirely yield. On the contrary, many of them retreated before the fiery pursuit of their enemies, and established themselves in the extreme northwestern portion of their native land, amidst the mountains and fastnesses of Biscay and Asturias. There, indeed, the purity of the Latin tongue, which they had spoken for so many ages, was finally lost, through that neglect of its cultivation which was a necessary consequence of the miseries that oppressed them. But still, with the spirit which so long sustained their forefathers against the power of Rome, and which has carried their descendants through a hardly less fierce contest against the power of France, they maintained, to a remarkable degree, their ancient manners and feelings, their religion, their laws, and their institutions; and, separating themselves by an implacable hatred from their Moorish invaders, they there, in those rude mountains, laid deep the foundations of a national character,—of that character which has subsisted to our own times.[2]

[p. 8]

As, however, they gradually grew inured to adversity, and understood the few hard advantages which their situation afforded them, they began to make incursions into the territories of their conquerors, and to seize for themselves some part of the fair possessions, once entirely their own. But every inch of ground was defended by the same fervid valor by which it had originally been won. The Christians, indeed, though occasionally defeated, generally gained something by each of their more considerable struggles; but what they gained could be preserved only by an exertion of bravery and military power hardly less painful than that by which it had been acquired. In 801, we find them already possessing a considerable part of Old Castile; but the very name now given to that country, from the multitude of castles with which it was studded, shows plainly the tenure by which the Christians from the mountains were compelled to hold these early fruits of their courage and constancy.[3] A century later, or in 914, they had pushed the outposts of their conquests to the chain of the Guadarrama, separating New from Old Castile, and they may, therefore, at this date, be regarded as having again obtained a firm foothold in their own country, whose capital they established at Leon.

From this period, the Christians seem to have felt assured of final success. In 1085, Toledo, the venerated head of the old monarchy, was wrested from the Moors, who had then possessed it three hundred and sixty-three years; and in 1118, Saragossa was recovered: so that, from the beginning of the twelfth[p. 9] century, the whole Peninsula, down to the Sierra of Toledo, was again occupied by its former masters; and the Moors were pushed back into the southern and western provinces, by which they had originally entered. Their power, however, though thus reduced within limits comprising scarcely more than one third of its extent when it was greatest, seems still to have been rather consolidated than broken; and after three centuries of success, more than three other centuries of conflict were necessary before the fall of Granada finally emancipated the entire country from the loathed dominion of its misbelieving conquerors.

But it was in the midst of this desolating contest, and at a period, too, when the Christians were hardly less distracted by divisions among themselves than worn out and exasperated by the common warfare against the common enemy, that the elements of the Spanish language and poetry, as they have substantially existed ever since, were first developed. For it is precisely between the capture of Saragossa, which insured to the Christians the possession of all the eastern part of Spain, and their great victory on the plains of Tolosa, which so broke the power of the Moors, that they never afterwards recovered the full measure of their former strength,[4]—it is precisely in this century of confusion and violence, when the Chris[p. 10]tian population of the country may be said, with the old chronicle, to have been kept constantly in battle array, that we hear the first notes of their wild, national poetry, which come to us mingled with their war-shouts, and breathing the very spirit of their victories.[5]

The oldest document in the Spanish language with an ascertained date is a confirmation by Alfonso the Seventh, in the year 1155, of a charter of regulations and privileges granted to the city of Avilés in Asturias.[6] It is important, not only because it exhibits the new dialect just emerging from the corrupted Latin, little or not at all affected by the Arabic infused into it in the southern provinces, but because it is believed to be among the very oldest documents ever written in Spanish, since there is no good reason to suppose that language to have existed in a written form even half a century earlier.

How far we can go back towards the first appearance of poetry in this Spanish, or, as it was oftener called, Castilian, dialect is not so precisely ascertained; but we know that we can trace Castilian verse to a period surprisingly near the date of the document of Avilés. It is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of[p. 12] popular poetry, by which we mark indistinctly the beginning of almost every other literature, are abundant in the Spanish, we are not obliged to resort to them, at the outset of our inquiries, since other obvious and decisive monuments present themselves at once.

The first of these monuments in age, and the first in importance, is the poem commonly called, with primitive simplicity and directness, “The Poem of the Cid.” It consists of above three thousand lines, and can hardly have been composed later than the year 1200. Its subject, as its name implies, is taken from among the adventures of the Cid, the great popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain; and the whole tone of its manners and feelings is in sympathy with the contest between the Moors and the Christians, in which the Cid bore so great a part, and which was still going on with undiminished violence at the period when the poem was written. It has, therefore, a national bearing and a national character throughout.[7]

[p. 13]

The Cid himself, who is to be found constantly commemorated in Spanish poetry, was born in the northwestern part of Spain, about the year 1040, and died in 1099, at Valencia, which he had rescued from the Moors.[8] His original name was Ruy Diaz,[p. 14] or Rodrigo Diaz; and he was by birth one of the considerable barons of his country. The title of Cid, by which he is almost always known, is believed to have come to him from the remarkable circumstance, that five Moorish kings or chiefs acknowledged him in one battle as their Seid, or their lord and conqueror;[9] and the title of Campeador, or Champion, by which he is hardly less known, though it is commonly supposed to have been given to him as a leader of the armies of Sancho the Second, has long since been used almost exclusively as a popular expression of the admiration of his countrymen for his exploits against the Moors.[10] At any rate, from a very early period, he has been called El Cid Campeador, or The Lord Champion. And he well deserved the honorable title; for he passed almost the whole of his life in the field against the oppressors of his country, suffering, so far as we know, scarcely a single defeat from the common enemy, though, on more than one occasion, he was exiled and sacrificed by the Christian princes to whose interests he had attached himself.

But, whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a deep shadow,[11] he comes to us in modern times as the great defender of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen, that, centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry and tradition[p. 15] have delighted to attach to his name a long series of fabulous achievements, which connect him with the mythological fictions of the Middle Ages, and remind us almost as often of Amadis and Arthur as they do of the sober heroes of genuine history.[12]

The Poem of the Cid partakes of both these characters. It has sometimes been regarded as wholly, or almost wholly, historical.[13] But there is too free and romantic a spirit in it for history. It contains, indeed, few of the bolder fictions found in the subsequent chronicles and in the popular ballads. Still, it is essentially a poem; and in the spirited scenes at the siege of Alcocer and at the Cortes, as well as in those relating to the Counts of Carrion, it is plain that the author felt his license as a poet. In fact, the very marriage of the daughters of the Cid has been shown to be all but impossible; and thus any real historical foundation seems to be taken away from the chief event which the poem records.[14] This, however, does not at[p. 16] all touch the proper value of the work, which is simple, heroic, and national. Unfortunately, the only ancient manuscript of it known to exist is imperfect, and nowhere informs us who was its author. But what has been lost is not much. It is only a few leaves in the beginning, one leaf in the middle, and some scattered lines in other parts. The conclusion is perfect. Of course, there can be no doubt about the subject or purpose of the whole. It is the development of the character and glory of the Cid, as shown in his achievements in the kingdoms of Saragossa and Valencia, in his triumph over his unworthy sons-in-law, the Counts of Carrion, and their disgrace before the king and Cortes, and, finally, in the second marriage of his two daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon; the whole ending with a slight allusion to the hero’s death, and a notice of the date of the manuscript.[15]

But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so remote from our own experience, that, where[p. 17] they are attempted in formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology. We read it because it is a contemporary and spirited exhibition of the chivalrous times of Spain, given occasionally with an Homeric simplicity altogether admirable. For the story it tells is not only that of the most romantic achievements, attributed to the most romantic hero of Spanish tradition, but it is mingled continually with domestic and personal details, that bring the character of the Cid and his age near to our own sympathies and interests.[16] The very language in which it is told is the language he himself spoke, still only half developed; disencumbering itself with difficulty from the characteristics of the Latin; its new constructions by no means established; imperfect in its forms, and ill furnished with the connecting particles in which resides so much of the power and grace of all languages; but still breathing the bold, sincere, and original spirit of its times, and showing plainly that it is struggling with success for a place among the other wild elements of the national genius. And, finally, the metre and rhyme into which the whole poem is cast are rude and unsettled: the verse claiming to be of fourteen syllables, divided by an abrupt cæsural pause after the eighth, yet often running out to sixteen or twenty, and sometimes[p. 18] falling back to twelve;[17] but always bearing the impress of a free and fearless spirit, which harmonizes alike with the poet’s language, subject, and age, and so gives to the story a stir and interest, which, though we are separated from it by so many centuries, bring some of its scenes before us like those of a drama.

The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and stood looking at them. He saw his doors open and his household chests unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks, and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee, Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have done this thing unto me.’”

He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his time, to win lands and fortunes from the common enemy, and providing for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him in their turn, so that he can save himself[p. 19] only by a bold sally, in which he overthrows their whole array. The rescue of his standard, endangered in the onslaught by the rashness of Bermuez, who bore it, is described in the very spirit of knighthood.[18]

[p. 20]The poem afterwards relates the Cid’s contest with the Count of Barcelona; the taking of Valencia; the reconcilement of the Cid to the king, who had treated him so ill; and the marriage of the Cid’s two daughters, at the king’s request, to the two Counts of Carrion, who were among the first nobles of the kingdom. At this point, however, there is a somewhat formal division of the poem,[20] and the remainder is devoted to what is its principal subject, the dissolution of this marriage in consequence of the baseness and brutality of the Counts; the Cid’s public triumph over them; their no less public disgrace; and the announcement of the second marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon, which, of course, raised the Cid himself to the highest pitch of his honors, by connecting him with the royal houses of Spain. With this, therefore, the poem virtually ends.

The most spirited part of it consists of the scenes at the Cortes, summoned, on demand of the Cid, in consequence of the misconduct of the Counts of Carrion. In one of them, three followers of the Cid challenge three followers of the Counts, and the challenge of Munio Gustioz to Assur Gonzalez is thus characteristically given:—

The opening of the lists for the six combatants, in the presence of the king, is another passage of much spirit and effect.

[p. 22]These are among the most picturesque passages in the poem. But it is throughout striking and original. It is, too, no less national, Christian, and loyal. It breathes everywhere the true Castilian spirit, such as the old chronicles represent it amidst the achievements and disasters of the Moorish wars; and has very few traces of an Arabic influence in its language, and none at all in its imagery or fancies. The whole of it, therefore, deserves to be read, and to be read in the original; for it is there only that we can obtain the fresh impressions it is fitted to give us of the rude but heroic period it represents: of the simplicity of the governments, and the loyalty and true-heartedness of the people; of the wide force of a primitive religious enthusiasm; of the picturesque state of manners and daily life in an age of trouble and confusion; and of the bold outlines of the national genius, which are often struck out where we should least think to find them. It is, indeed, a work which, as we read it, stirs us with the spirit of the times it describes; and as we lay it down and recollect the intellectual condition of Europe when it was written, and for a long period before, it seems certain, that, during the thousand years which elapsed from the time of the decay of Greek and Roman culture, down to the appearance of the “Divina Commedia,[p. 23]” no poetry was produced so original in its tone, or so full of natural feeling, picturesqueness, and energy.[23]

[p. 24]

Three other poems, anonymous like that of the Cid, have been placed immediately after it, because they are found together in a single manuscript assigned to the thirteenth century, and because the language and style of at least the first of them seem to justify the conjecture that carries it so far back.[24]

The poem with which this manuscript opens is called “The Book of Apollonius,” and is the reproduction of a story whose origin is obscure, but which is itself familiar to us in the eighth book of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and in the play of “Pericles,” that has sometimes been attributed to Shakspeare. It is found in Greek rhyme very early, but is here taken, almost without alteration of incident, from that great repository of popular fiction in the Middle Ages, the “Gesta Romanorum.” It consists of about twenty-six hundred lines,[p. 25] divided into stanzas of four verses, all terminating with the same rhyme. At the beginning, the author says, in his own person,—

The new mastery or method—nueva maestría—here claimed may be the structure of the stanza and its rhyme; for, in other respects, the versification is like that of the Poem of the Cid; showing, however, more skill and exactness in the mere measure, and a slight improvement in the language. But the merit of the poem is small. It contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it was produced,—among the rest, some sketches of a female jongleur, of the class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Alfonso the Wise,—that are curious and interesting. Its chief attraction, however, is its story, and this, unhappily, is not original.[25]

The next poem in the collection is called “The Life of our Lady, Saint Mary of Egypt,”—a saint formerly much more famous than she is now, and one whose history is so coarse and indecent, that it has often been rejected by the wiser members of the church that canonized her. Such as it appears in the old traditions, however, with all its sins upon its head, it is here set[p. 26] forth. But we notice at once a considerable difference between the composition of its verse and that of any Castilian poetry assigned to the same or an earlier period. It is written in short lines, generally of eight syllables, and in couplets; but sometimes a single line carelessly runs out to the number of ten or eleven syllables; and, in a few instances, three or even four lines are included in one rhyme. It has a light air, quite unlike the stateliness of the Poem of the Cid, and seems, from its verse and tone, as well as from a few French words scattered through it, to have been borrowed from some of the earlier French Fabliaux, or, at any rate, to have been written in imitation of their easy and garrulous style. It opens thus, showing that it was intended for recitation:—

It consists of fourteen hundred such meagre, monkish verses, and is hardly of importance, except as a monument of the language at the period when it was written.[26]

The last of the three poems is in the same irregular measure and manner. It is called “The Adoration of the Three Holy Kings,” and begins with the old tradition about the wise men that came from the East; but its chief subject is an arrest of the Holy Family, during[p. 27] their flight to Egypt, by robbers, the child of one of whom is cured of a hideous leprosy by being bathed in water previously used for bathing the Saviour; this same child afterwards turning out to be the penitent thief of the crucifixion. It is a rhymed legend of only two hundred and fifty lines, and belongs to the large class of such compositions that were long popular in Western Europe.[27]

Thus far, the poetry of the first century of Spanish literature, like the earliest poetry of other modern countries, is anonymous; for authorship was a distinction rarely coveted or thought of by those who wrote in any of the dialects then forming throughout Europe, among the common people. It is even impossible to tell from what part of the Christian conquests in Spain the poems of which we have spoken have come to us. We may infer, indeed, from their language and tone, that the Poem of the Cid belongs to the border country of the Moorish war in the direction of Catalonia and Valencia, and that the earliest ballads, of which we shall speak hereafter, came originally from the midst of the contest, with whose very spirit they are often imbued. In the same way, too, we may be persuaded that the poems of a more religious temper were produced in the quieter kingdoms of the North, where monasteries had been founded and Christianity had already struck its roots deeply into the soil of the national character. Still, we have no evidence to show where any one of the poems we have thus far noticed was written.

[p. 28]But as we advance, this state of things is changed. The next poetry we meet is by a known author, and, comes from a known locality. It was written by Gonzalo, a secular priest who belonged to the monastery of San Millan or Saint Emilianus, in the territory of Calahorra, far within the borders of the Moorish war, and who is commonly called Berceo, from the place of his birth. Of the poet himself we know little, except that he flourished from 1220 to 1246, and that, as he once speaks of suffering from the weariness of old age,[28] he probably died after 1260, in the reign of Alfonso the Wise.[29]

His works amount to above thirteen thousand lines, and fill an octavo volume.[30] They are all on religious subjects, and consist of rhymed Lives of San Domingo de Silos, Santa Oria, and San Millan; poems on the Mass, the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, the Merits of the Madonna, the Signs that are to precede the Last Judgment, and the Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross, with a few Hymns, and especially a poem of more than three thousand six hundred lines on the Miracles of the Virgin Mary. With one inconsiderable exception, the whole of this formidable mass of verse is divided into stanzas of four lines each, like those in the poem of Apollonius of Tyre; and though in the language there is a perceptible advance since the days when the Poem of the Cid was written, still the power and movement[p. 29] of that remarkable legend are entirely wanting in the verses of the careful ecclesiastic.[31]

[p. 30]“The Life of San Domingo de Silos,” with which his volume opens, begins, like a homily, with these words: “In the name of the Father, who made all things, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the glorious Virgin, and of the Holy Spirit, who is equal with them, I intend to tell a story of a holy confessor. I intend to tell a story in the plain Romance, in which the common man is wont to talk to his neighbour; for I am not so learned as to use the other Latin. It will be well worth, as I think, a cup of good wine.”[32] Of course, there is no poetry in thoughts like these; and much of what Berceo has left us does not rise higher.

Occasionally, however, we find better things. In some portions of his work, there is a simple-hearted piety that is very attractive, and in some, a story-telling spirit that is occasionally picturesque. The best passages are to be found in his long poem on the “Miracles of the Virgin,” which consists of a series of twenty-five tales of her intervention in human affairs, composed evidently for the purpose of increasing the spirit of devotion in the worship particularly paid to her. The opening or induction to these tales contains, perhaps, the most poetical passage in Berceo’s works; and in the following version the measure and system of rhyme in the original have been preserved, so as to give something of its air and manner:—

[p. 31]

This induction, which is continued through forty stanzas more, of unequal merit, is little connected with the stories that follow; the stories, again, are not at all connected among themselves; and the whole ends abruptly with a few lines of homage to the Madonna. It is, therefore, inartificial in its structure throughout. But in the narrative parts there is often naturalness and spirit, and sometimes, though rarely, poetry. The tales themselves belong to the religious fictions of the Middle Ages, and were no doubt intended to excite de[p. 32]vout feelings in those to whom they were addressed; but, like the old Mysteries, and much else that passed under the name of religion at the same period, they often betray a very doubtful morality.[34]

“The Miracles of the Virgin” is not only the longest, but the most curious, of the poems of Berceo. The rest, however, should not be entirely neglected. The poem on the “Signs which shall precede the Judgment” is often solemn, and once or twice rises to poetry; the story of María de Cisneros, in the “Life of San Domingo,” is well told, and so is that of the wild appearance in the heavens of Saint James and Saint Millan fighting for the Christians at the battle of Simancas, much as it is found in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” But perhaps nothing is more characteristic of the author or of his age than the spirit of childlike simplicity and religious tenderness that breathes through several parts of the “Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross,”—a spirit of gentle, faithful, credulous devotion, with which the Spanish people in their wars against the Moors were as naturally marked as they were with the ignorance that belonged to the Christian world generally in those dark and troubled times.[35]

I cannot pass farther without offering the tribute of my homage to two persons who have done more than any others in the nineteenth century to make Spanish literature known, and to obtain for it the honors to which it is entitled beyond the limits of the country that gave it birth.

The first of them, and one whose name I have already cited, is Friedrich Bouterwek, who was born at Oker in the kingdom of Hanover, in 1766, and passed nearly all the more active portion of his life at Göttingen, where he died in 1828, widely respected as one of the most distinguished professors of that long favored University. A project for preparing by the most competent hands a full history of the arts and sciences from the period of their revival in modern Europe was first suggested at Göttingen by another of its well-known professors, John Gottfried Eichhorn, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. But though that remarkable scholar published, in 1796-9, two volumes of a learned Introduction to the whole work which he had projected, he went no farther, and most of his coadjutors stopped when he did, or soon afterwards. The portion of it assigned to Bouterwek, however, which was the entire history of elegant literature in modern times, was happily achieved by him between 1801 and 1819, in twelve volumes octavo. Of this division, “The History of Spanish Literature” fills the third volume, and was published in 1804;—a work remarkable for its general philosophical views, and by far the best extant on the subject it discusses; but imperfect in many particulars, because its author was unable to procure a large number of Spanish books needful for his task, and knew many considerable Spanish authors only by insufficient extracts. In 1812, a translation of it into French was printed, in two volumes, by Madame Streck, with a judicious preface by the venerable M. Stapfer;—in 1823, it came out, together with its author’s brief “History of Portuguese Literature,” in an English translation, made with taste and skill, by Miss Thomasina Ross;—and in 1829, a Spanish version of the first and smallest part of it, with important notes, sufficient with the text to fill a volume in octavo, was prepared by two excellent Spanish scholars, José Gomez de la Cortina, and Nicolás Hugalde y Mollinedo,—a work which all lovers of Spanish literature would gladly see completed.

Since the time of Bouterwek, no foreigner has done so much to promote a knowledge of Spanish literature as M. Simonde de Sismondi, who was born at Geneva in 1773, and died there in 1842, honored and loved by all who knew his wise and generous spirit, as it exhibited itself either in his personal intercourse, or in his great works on the history of France and Italy,—two countries, to which, by a line of time-honored ancestors, he seemed almost equally to belong. In 1811, he delivered in his native city a course of brilliant lectures on the literature of the South of Europe, and in 1813, published them at Paris. They involved an account of the Provençal and the Portuguese, as well as of the Italian and the Spanish;—but in whatever relates to the Spanish Sismondi was even less well provided with the original authors than Bouterwek had been, and was, in consequence, under obligations to his predecessor, which, while he takes no pains to conceal them, diminish the authority of a work that will yet always be read for the beauty of its style and the richness and wisdom of its reflections. The entire series of these lectures was translated into German by L. Hain in 1815, and into English with notes by T. Roscoe in 1823. The part relating to Spanish literature was published in Spanish, with occasional alterations and copious and important additions by José Lorenzo Figueroa and José Amador de los Rios, at Seville, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1841-2,—the notes relating to Andalusian authors being particularly valuable.

None but those who have gone over the whole ground occupied by Spanish literature can know how great are the merits of scholars like Bouterwek and Sismondi,—acute, philosophical, and thoughtful,—who, with an apparatus of authors so incomplete, have yet done so much for the illustration of their subject.

The second known author in Castilian literature bears a name much more distinguished than the first. It is Alfonso the Tenth, who, from his great advancement in various branches of human knowledge, has been called Alfonso the Wise, or the Learned. He was the son of Ferdinand the Third, a saint in the Roman calendar, who, uniting anew the crowns of Castile and Leon, and enlarging the limits of his power by important conquests from the Moors, settled more firmly than they had before been settled the foundations of a Christian empire in the Peninsula.[36]

Alfonso was born in 1221, and ascended the throne in 1252. He was a poet, much connected with the Provençal Troubadours of his time,[37] and was besides so greatly skilled in geometry, astronomy, and the occult sciences then so much valued, that his reputation was[p. 36] early spread throughout Europe, on account of his general science. But, as Mariana quaintly says of him, “He was more fit for letters than for the government of his subjects; he studied the heavens, and watched the stars, but forgot the earth, and lost his kingdom.”[38]

His character is still an interesting one. He appears to have had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any other man of his time; to have reasoned more wisely in matters of legislation; and to have made further advances in some of the exact sciences;—accomplishments that he seems to have resorted to in the latter part of his life for consolation amidst unsuccessful wars with foreign enemies and a rebellious son. The following letter from him to one of the Guzmans, who was then in great favor at the court of the king of Fez, shows at once how low the fortunes of the Christian monarch were sunk before he died, and with how much simplicity he could speak of their bitterness. It is dated in 1282, and is a favorable specimen of Castilian prose at a period so early in the history of the language.[39]

“Cousin Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman: My affliction is great, because it has fallen from such a height that it will be seen afar; and as it has fallen on me, who was the friend of all the world, so in all the world will men know this my misfortune, and its[p. 37] sharpness, which I suffer unjustly from my son, assisted by my friends and by my prelates, who, instead of setting peace between us, have put mischief, not under secret pretences or covertly, but with bold openness. And thus I find no protection in mine own land, neither defender nor champion; and yet have I not deserved it at their hands, unless it were for the good I have done them. And now, since in mine own land they deceive, who should have served and assisted me, needful is it that I should seek abroad those who will kindly care for me; and since they of Castile have been false to me, none can think it ill that I ask help among those of Benamarin.[40] For if my sons are mine enemies, it will not then be wrong that I take mine enemies to be my sons; enemies according to the law, but not of free choice. And such is the good king Aben Jusaf; for I love and value him much, and he will not despise me or fail me; for we are at truce. I know also how much you are his, and how much he loves you, and with good cause, and how much he will do through your good counsel. Therefore look not at the things past, but at the things present. Consider of what lineage you are come, and that at some time hereafter I may do you good, and if I do it not, that your own good deed shall be its own good reward. Therefore, my cousin, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, do so much for me with my lord and your friend, that, on pledge of the most precious crown that I have, and the jewels thereof, he should lend me so much as he may hold to be just. And if you can obtain his aid, let it not be hindered of coming quickly; but rather think how the good friendship that may[p. 38] come to me from your lord will be through your hands. And so may God’s friendship be with you. Done in Seville, my only loyal city, in the thirtieth year of my reign, and in the first of these my troubles.

Signed, The King.”[41]

The unhappy monarch survived the date of this very striking letter but two years, and died in 1284. At one period of his life, his consideration throughout Christendom was so great, that he was elected Emperor of Germany; but this was only another source of sorrow to him, for his claims were contested, and after some time were silently set aside by the election of Rodolph of Hapsburg, upon whose dynasty the glories of the House of Austria rested so long. The life of Alfonso, therefore, was on the whole unfortunate, and full of painful vicissitudes, that might well have broken the spirit of most men, and that were certainly not without an effect on his.[42]

So much the more remarkable is it, that he should be distinguished among the chief founders of his country’s intellectual fame,—a distinction which again becomes more extraordinary when we recollect that he enjoys it not in letters alone, or in a single department, but in many; since he is to be remembered alike for the great advancement which Castilian prose composition made in his hands, for his poetry, for his astronomical[p. 39] tables, which all the progress of science since has not deprived of their value; and for his great work on legislation, which is at this moment an authority in both hemispheres.[43]

Of his poetry, we possess, besides works of very doubtful genuineness, two, about one of which there has been little question, and about the other none; his “Cántigas,” or Chants, in honor of the Madonna, and his “Tesoro,” a treatise on the transmutation of the baser metals into gold.

Of the Cántigas, there are extant no less than four hundred and one, composed in lines of from six to twelve syllables, and rhymed with a considerable degree of exactness.[44] Their measure and manner are Provençal. They are devoted to the praises and the miracles of the Madonna, in whose honor the king founded in 1279 a religious and military order;[45] and in devotion[p. 40] to whom, by his last will, he directed these poems to be perpetually chanted in the church of Saint Mary of Murcia, where he desired his body might be buried.[46] Only a few of them have been printed; but we have enough to show what they are, and especially that they are written, not in the Castilian, like the rest of his works, but in the Galician; an extraordinary circumstance, for which it does not seem easy to give a satisfactory reason.

The Galician, however, was originally an important language in Spain, and for some time seemed as likely to prevail throughout the country as any other of the dialects spoken in it. It was probably the first that was developed in the northwestern part of the Peninsula, and the second that was reduced to writing. For in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, just at the period when the struggling elements of the modern Spanish were disencumbering themselves from the forms of the corrupted Latin, Galicia, by the wars and troubles of the times, was repeatedly separated from Castile, so that distinct dialects appeared in the two different territories almost at the same moment. Of these, the Northern is likely to have been the older, though the Southern proved ultimately the more fortunate. At any rate, even without a court, which was the surest centre of culture in such rude ages, and without any of the reasons for the development of a dialect which always accompany political power, we know that the Galician was already sufficiently formed to pass with the conquering arms of Alfonso the Sixth, and[p. 41] establish itself firmly between the Douro and the Minho; that country which became the nucleus of the independent kingdom of Portugal.

This was between the years 1095 and 1109; and though the establishment of a Burgundian dynasty on the throne erected there naturally brought into the dialect of Portugal an infusion of the French, which never appeared in the dialect of Galicia,[47] still the language spoken in the two territories under different sovereigns and different influences continued substantially the same for a long period; perhaps down to the time of Charles the Fifth.[48] But it was only in Portugal that there was a court, or that means and motives were found sufficient for forming and cultivating a regular language. It is therefore only in Portugal that this common dialect of both the territories appears with a separate and proper literature;[49] the first intimation of which, with an exact date, is found as early as 1192. This is a document in prose.[50] The oldest poetry is to be sought in three curious fragments, originally published by Faria y Sousa, which can hardly be placed much later than the year 1200.[51] Both show that the Galician in Portugal, under less favorable circumstances than those which accompanied the Castilian in Spain, rose at the[p. 42] same period to be a written language, and possessed, perhaps, quite as early, the materials for forming an independent literature.

We may fairly infer, therefore, from these facts, indicating the vigor of the Galician in Portugal before the year 1200, that, in its native province in Spain, it is somewhat older. But we have no monuments by which to establish such antiquity. Castro, it is true, notices a manuscript translation of the history of Servandus, as if made in 1150 by Seguino, in the Galician dialect; but he gives no specimen of it, and his own authority in such a matter is not sufficient.[52] And in the well-known letter sent to the Constable of Portugal by the Marquis of Santillana, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we are told that all Spanish poetry was written for a long time in Galician or Portuguese;[53] but this is so obviously either a mistake in fact, or a mere compliment to the Portuguese prince to whom it was addressed, that Sarmiento, full of prejudices in favor of his native province, and desirous to arrive at the same conclusion, is obliged to give it up as wholly unwarranted.[54]

We must come back, therefore, to the “Cántigas” or Chants of Alfonso, as to the oldest specimen extant in the Galician dialect distinct from the Portuguese; and since, from internal evidence, one of them was written after he had conquered Xerez, we may place them between 1263, when that event occurred, and 1284, when[p. 43] he died.[55] Why he should have chosen this particular dialect for this particular form of poetry, when he had, as we know, an admirable mastery of the Castilian, and when these Cántigas, according to his last will, were to be chanted over his tomb, in a part of the kingdom where the Galician dialect never prevailed, we cannot now decide.[56] His father, Saint Ferdinand, was from the North, and his own early nurture there may have given Alfonso himself a strong affection for its language; or, what perhaps is more probable, there may have been something in the dialect itself, its origin or its gravity, which, at a period when no dialect in Spain had obtained an acknowledged supremacy, made it seem to him better suited than the Castilian or Valencian to religious purposes.

But however this may be, all the rest of his works are in the language spoken in the centre of the Peninsula, while his Cántigas are in the Galician. Some of them have considerable poetical merit; but in general they are to be remarked only for the variety of their metres, for an occasional tendency to the form of ballads, for a lyrical tone, which does not seem to have been earlier established in the Castilian, and for a kind of Doric simplicity, which belongs partly to the dialect he adopted and partly to the character of the author himself;—the whole bearing the impress of the Provençal poets, with whom he was much connected, and whom through life he patronized and maintained at his court.[57]

[p. 44]The other poetry attributed to Alfonso—except two stanzas that remain of his “Complaints” against the hard fortune of the last years of his life[58]—is to be sought in the treatise called “Del Tesoro,” which is divided into two short books, and dated in 1272. It is on the Philosopher’s Stone, and the greater portion of it is concealed in an unexplained cipher; the remainder being partly in prose and partly in octave stanzas, which are the oldest extant in Castilian verse. But the whole is worthless, and its genuineness doubtful.[59]

[p. 45]Alfonso claims his chief distinction in letters as a writer of prose. In this his merit is great. He first made the Castilian a national language by causing the Bible to be translated into it, and by requiring it to be used in all legal proceedings;[60] and he first, by his great Code and other works, gave specimens of prose composition which left a free and disencumbered course for all that has been done since,—a service perhaps greater than it has been permitted any other Spaniard to render the prose literature of his country. To this, therefore, we now turn.

And here the first work we meet with is one that was rather compiled under his direction, than written by himself. It is called “The Great Conquest beyond Sea,” and is an account of the wars in the Holy Land, which then so much agitated the minds of men throughout Europe, and which were intimately connected with the fate of the Christian Spaniards still struggling for their own existence in a perpetual crusade against misbelief at home. It begins with the history of Mohammed, and comes down to the year 1270; much of it being taken from an old French version of the work of William of Tyre, on the same general subject, and the rest from other less trustworthy sources. But parts of it are not historical. The grandfather of Godfrey of Bouillon, its hero, is the wild and fanciful Knight of the Swan, who is almost as much a representative of the spirit of chivalry as Amadis de Gaul, and goes through adventures no less marvellous; fighting on the Rhine like a knight[p. 46]-errant, and miraculously warned by a swallow how to rescue his lady, who has been made prisoner. Unhappily, in the only edition of this curious work,—printed in 1503,—the text has received additions that make us doubtful how much of it may be certainly ascribed to the time of Alfonso the Tenth, in whose reign and by whose order the greater part of it seems to have been prepared. It is chiefly valuable as a specimen of early Spanish prose.[61]

Castilian prose, in fact, can hardly be said to have existed earlier, unless we are willing to reckon as specimens of it the few meagre documents, generally grants in hard legal forms, that begin with the one concerning[p. 47] Avilés in 1155, already noticed, and come down, half bad Latin and half unformed Spanish, to the time of Alfonso.[62] The first monument, therefore, that can be properly cited for this purpose, though it dates from the reign of Saint Ferdinand, the father of Alfonso, is one in preparing which, it has always been supposed, Alfonso himself was personally concerned. It is the “Fuero Juzgo,” or “Forum Judicum,” a collection of Visigoth laws, which, in 1241, after his conquest of Córdova, Saint Ferdinand sent to that city in Latin, with directions that it should be translated into the vulgar dialect, and observed there as the law of the territory he had then newly rescued from the Moors.[63]

The precise time when this translation was made has[p. 48] not been decided. Marina, whose opinion should have weight, thinks it was not till the reign of Alfonso; but, from the early authority we know it possessed, it is perhaps more probable that it is to be dated from the latter years of Saint Ferdinand. In either case, however, considering the peculiar character and position of Alfonso, there can be little doubt that he was consulted and concerned in its preparation. It is a regular code, divided into twelve books, which are subdivided into titles and laws, and is of an extent so considerable and of a character so free and discursive, that we can fairly judge from it the condition of the prose language of the time, and ascertain that it was already as far advanced as the contemporaneous poetry.[64]

But the wise forecast of Saint Ferdinand soon extended beyond the purpose with which he originally commanded the translation of the old Visigoth laws, and he undertook to prepare a code for the whole of Christian Spain that was under his sceptre, which, in its different cities and provinces, was distracted by different and often contradictory fueros or privileges and laws given to each as it was won from the common enemy. But he did not live to execute his beneficent[p. 49] project, and the fragment that still remains to us of what he undertook, commonly known by the name of the “Setenario,” plainly implies that it is, in part at least, the work of his son Alfonso.[65]

Still, though Alfonso had been employed in preparing this code, he did not see fit to finish it. He, however, felt charged with the general undertaking, and seemed determined that his kingdom should not continue to suffer from the uncertainty or the conflict of its different systems of legislation. But he proceeded with great caution. His first body of laws, called the “Espejo,” or “Mirror of all Rights,” filling five books, was prepared before 1255; but though it contains within itself directions for its own distribution and enforcement, it does not seem ever to have gone into practical use. His “Fuero Real,” a shorter code, divided into four books, was completed in 1255 for Valladolid, and perhaps was subsequently given to other cities of his kingdom. Both were followed by different laws, as occasion called for them, down nearly to the end of his reign. But all of them, taken together, were far from constituting a code such as had been projected by Saint Ferdinand.[66]

This last great work was undertaken by Alfonso in 1256, and finished either in 1263 or 1265. It was originally called by Alfonso himself “El Setenario,” from the title of the code undertaken by his father; but it is now always called “Las Siete Partidas,” or[p. 50] The Seven Parts, from the seven divisions of the work itself. That Alfonso was assisted by others in the great task of compiling it out of the Decretals, and the Digest and Code of Justinian, as well as out of the Fuero Juzgo and other sources of legislation, both Spanish and foreign, is not to be doubted; but the general air and finish of the whole, its style and literary execution, must be more or less his own, so much are they in harmony with whatever else we know of his works and character.[67]

The Partidas, however, though by far the most important legislative monument of its age, did not become at once the law of the land.[68] On the contrary, the great cities, with their separate privileges, long resisted any thing like a uniform system of legislation for the whole country; and it was not till 1348, two years before the death of Alfonso the Eleventh, and above sixty after that of their author, that the Partidas were finally proclaimed as of binding authority in all the territories held by the kings of Castile and Leon. But from that period the great code of Alfonso has been uniformly respected.[69] It is, in fact, a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since; and becoming in this way a part of the constitution of the state in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time when Louisiana and Florida were added to the United[p. 51] States, become in some cases the law in our own country;—so wide may be the influence of a wise legislation.[70]

The Partidas, however, read very little like a collection of statutes, or even like a code such as that of Justinian or Napoleon. They seem rather to be a series of treatises on legislation, morals, and religion, divided with great formality, according to their subjects, into Parts, Titles, and Laws; the last of which, instead of being merely imperative ordinances, enter into arguments and investigations of various sorts, often discussing the moral principles they lay down, and often containing intimations of the manners and opinions of the age, that make them a curious mine of Spanish antiquities. They are, in short, a kind of digested result of the opinions and reading of a learned monarch, and his coadjutors, in the thirteenth century, on the relative duties of a king and his subjects, and on the entire legislation and police, ecclesiastical, civil, and moral, to which, in their judgment, Spain should be subjected; the whole interspersed with discussions, sometimes more quaint than grave, concerning the customs and principles on which the work itself, or some particular part of it, is founded.

As a specimen of the style of the Partidas, an ex[p. 52]tract may be made from a law entitled “What meaneth a Tyrant, and how he useth his power in a kingdom when he hath obtained it.”

“A tyrant,” says this law, “doth signify a cruel lord, who by force, or by craft, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or country; and such men be of such nature, that, when once they have grown strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit, though it be in harm of the land, than the common profit of all, for they always live in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to fulfil this their purpose unencumbered, the wise of old have said that they use their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous, because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that they be not kindly and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one another, for, while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm, that it may never come into their hearts to devise any thing against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from oppression. And, moreover, we say, that, though any man may have[p. 53] gained mastery of a kingdom by any of the lawful means whereof we have spoken in the laws going before this, yet, if he use his power ill, in the ways whereof we speak in this law, him may the people still call tyrant; for he turneth his mastery which was rightful into wrongful, as Aristotle hath said in the book which treateth of the rule and government of kingdoms.”[71]

In other laws, reasons are given why kings and their sons should be taught to read;[72] and in a law about the governesses of king’s daughters, it is declared:—

“They are to endeavour, as much as may be, that the king’s daughters be moderate and seemly in eating and in drinking, and also in their carriage and dress, and of good manners in all things, and especially that they be not given to anger; for, besides the wickedness that lieth in it, it is the thing in the world that most easily leadeth women to do ill. And they ought to teach them to be handy in performing those works that belong to noble ladies; for this is a matter that becometh them much, since they obtain by it cheerfulness and a quiet spirit; and besides, it taketh away bad thoughts, which it is not convenient they should have.”[73]

Many of the laws concerning knights, like one on their loyalty, and one on the meaning of the ceremonies used when they are armed,[74] and all the laws on the establishment and conduct of great public schools, which he was endeavouring, at the same time, to encourage, by the privileges he granted to Salamanca,[75] are[p. 54] written with even more skill and selectness of idiom. Indeed, the Partidas, in whatever relates to manner and style, are not only superior to any thing that had preceded them, but to any thing that for a long time followed. The poems of Berceo, hardly twenty years older, seem to belong to another age, and to a much ruder state of society; and, on the other hand, Marina, whose opinion on such a subject few are entitled to call in question, says, that, during the two or even three centuries subsequent, nothing was produced in Spanish prose equal to the Partidas for purity and elevation of style.[76]

But however this may be, there is no doubt, that, mingled with something of the rudeness and more of the ungraceful repetitions common in the period to which they belong, there is a richness, an appropriateness, and sometimes even an elegance, in their turns of expression, truly remarkable. They show that the great effort of their author to make the Castilian the living and real language of his country, by making it that of the laws and the tribunals of justice, had been successful, or was destined speedily to become so. Their grave and measured movement, and the solemnity of their tone, which have remained among the characteristics of Spanish prose ever since, show this success beyond all reasonable question. They show, too, the character of Alfonso himself, giving token of a far-reaching wisdom and philosophy, and proving how much a single great mind happily placed can do towards imparting their final direction to the language and literature of a country, even so early as the first century of their separate existence.[77]

The proof that the “Partidas” were in advance of their age, both as to style and language, is plain, not only from the examination we have made of what preceded them, but from a comparison of them, which we must now make, with the poetry of Juan Lorenzo Segura, who lived at the time they were compiled, and probably somewhat later. Like Berceo, he was a secular priest, and he belonged to Astorga; but this is all we know of him, except that he lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and has left a poem of above ten thousand lines on the life of Alexander the Great, drawn from such sources as were then accessible to a Spanish ecclesiastic, and written in the four-line stanza used by Berceo.[78]

What is most obvious in this long poem is its confounding the manners of a well-known age of Grecian antiquity with those of the Catholic religion, and of knighthood, as they existed in the days of its author. Similar confusion is found in some portion of the early[p. 57] literature of every country in modern Europe. In all, there was a period when the striking facts of ancient history, and the picturesque fictions of ancient fable, floating about among the traditions of the Middle Ages, were seized upon as materials for poetry and romance; and when, to fill up and finish the picture presented by their imaginations to those who thus misapplied an imperfect knowledge of antiquity, the manners and feelings of their own times were incongruously thrown in, either from an ignorant persuasion that none other had ever existed, or from a wilful carelessness concerning every thing but poetical effect. This was the case in Italy, from the first dawning of letters till after the time of Dante; the sublime and tender poetry of whose “Divina Commedia” is full of such absurdities and anachronisms. It was the case, too, in France; examples singularly in point being found in the Latin poem of Walter de Chatillon, and the French one by Alexandre de Paris, on this same subject of Alexander the Great; both of which were written nearly a century before Juan Lorenzo lived, and both of which were used by him.[79] And it was the case in England, till after the time of Shakspeare, whose “Midsummer Night’s Dream” does all that genius can do to justify it. We must not, therefore, be surprised to find it in Spain, where, derived from such monstrous repositories of fiction as the works of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, Guido de Colonna and Walter de Chatillon, some of the histories and fancies of ancient times already filled the thoughts of those men who were unconsciously begin[p. 58]ning the fabric of their country’s literature on foundations essentially different.

Among the most attractive subjects that offered themselves to such persons was that of Alexander the Great. The East—Persia, Arabia, and India—had long been full of stories of his adventures;[80] and now, in the West, as a hero more nearly approaching the spirit of knighthood than any other of antiquity, he was adopted into the poetical fictions of almost every nation that could boast the beginning of a literature, so that the Monk in the “Canterbury Tales” said truly,—

Juan Lorenzo took this story substantially as he had read it in the “Alexandreïs” of Walter de Chatillon, whom he repeatedly cites;[81] but he has added whatever he found elsewhere, or in his own imagination, that seemed suited to his purpose, which was by no means that of becoming a mere translator. After a short introduction, he comes at once to his subject thus, in the fifth stanza:—

Then comes the history of Alexander, mingled with the fables and extravagances of the times; given generally with the dulness of a chronicle, but sometimes showing a poetical spirit. Before setting out on his grand expedition to the East, he is knighted, and receives an enchanted sword made by Don Vulcan, a girdle made by Doña Philosophy, and a shirt made by two sea fairies,—duas fadas enna mar.[83] The conquest of Asia follows soon afterwards, in the course of which the Bishop of Jerusalem orders mass to be said to stay the conqueror, as he approaches the Jewish capital.[84]

In general, the known outline of Alexander’s adventures is followed, but there are a good many whimsical digressions; and when the Macedonian forces pass the site of Troy, the poet cannot resist the temptation of making an abstract of the fortunes and fate of that city, which he represents as told by Don Alexander himself to his followers, and especially to the Twelve Peers, who accompanied him in his expedition.[85] Homer is vouched as authority for the extraordinary narrative that is given;[86] but how little the poet of Astorga[p. 60] cared for the Iliad and Odyssey may be inferred from the fact, that, instead of sending Achilles, or Don Achilles, as he is called, to the court of Lycomedes of Scyros, to be concealed in woman’s clothes, he is sent, by the enchantments of his mother, in female attire, to a convent of nuns, and the crafty Don Ulysses goes there as a peddler, with a pack of female ornaments and martial weapons on his back, to detect the fraud.[87] But, with all its defects and incongruities, the “Alexandro” is a curious and important landmark in early Spanish literature; and if it is written with less purity and dignity than the “Partidas” of Alfonso, it has still a truly Castilian air, in both its language and its versification.[88]

A poem called “Los Votos del Pavon,” The Vows of the Peacock, which was a continuation of the “Alexandro,” is lost. If we may judge from an old French poem on the vows made over a peacock that had been a favorite bird of Alexander, and was served accidentally at table after that hero’s death, we have no reason to complain of our loss as a misfortune.[89][p. 61] Nor have we probably great occasion to regret that we possess only extracts from a prose book of advice, prepared for his heir and successor by Sancho, the son of Alfonso the Tenth; for though, from the chapter warning the young prince against fools, we see that it wanted neither sense nor spirit, still it is not to be compared to the “Partidas” for precision, grace, or dignity of style.[90] We come, therefore, at once to a remarkable writer, who flourished a little later,—the Prince Don Juan Manuel.

Lorenzo was an ecclesiastic,—bon clérigo é ondrado,—and his home was at Astorga, in the northwestern portion of Spain, on the borders of Leon and Galicia. Berceo belonged to the same territory, and, though there may be half a century between them, they are of a similar spirit. We are glad, therefore, that the next author we meet, Don John Manuel, takes us from the mountains of the North to the chivalry of the South, and to the state of society, the conflicts, manners, and interests, that gave us the “Poem of the Cid,” and the code of the “Partidas.”

Don John was of the blood royal of Castile and Leon; grandson of Saint Ferdinand, nephew of Alfonso the Wise, and one of the most turbulent and dangerous of the Spanish barons of his time. He was born in Escalona, on the 5th of May, 1282, and was the son of Don Pedro Manuel, an Infante of Spain,[91] brother of[p. 62] Alfonso the Wise, with whom he always had his officers and household in common. Before Don John was two years old, his father died, and he was educated by his cousin, Sancho the Fourth, living with him on a footing like that on which his father had lived with Alfonso.[92] When twelve years old he was already in the field against the Moors, and in 1310, at the age of twenty-eight, he had reached the most considerable offices in the state; but Ferdinand the Fourth dying two years afterwards, and leaving Alfonso the Eleventh, his successor, only thirteen months old, great disturbances followed till 1320, when Don John Manuel became joint regent of the realm; a place which he suffered none to share with him, but such of his near relations as were most involved in his interests.[93]

The affairs of the kingdom during the administration of Prince John seem to have been managed with talent and spirit; but at the end of the regency the young monarch was not sufficiently contented with the state of things to continue his grand-uncle in any considerable employment. Don John, however, was not of a temper to submit quietly to affront or neglect.[94] He left the court at Valladolid, and prepared himself, with all his great resources, for the armed opposition which the politics of the time regarded as a justifiable mode of obtaining redress. The king was alarmed,[p. 63] “for he saw,” says the old chronicler, “that they were the most powerful men in his kingdom, and that they could do grievous battle with him, and great mischief to the land.” He entered, therefore, into an arrangement with Prince John, who did not hesitate to abandon his friends, and go back to his allegiance, on the condition that the king should marry his daughter Constantia, then a mere child, and create him governor of the provinces bordering on the Moors, and commander-in-chief of the Moorish war; thus placing him, in fact, again at the head of the kingdom.[95]

From this time we find him actively engaged on the frontiers in a succession of military operations, till 1327, when he gained over the Moors the important victory of Guadalhorra. But the same year was marked by the bloody treachery of the king against Prince John’s uncle, who was murdered in the palace under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.[96] The Prince immediately retired in disgust to his estates, and began again to muster his friends and forces for a contest, into which he rushed the more eagerly, as the king had now refused to consummate his union with Constantia, and had married a Portuguese princess. The war which followed was carried on with various success till 1335, when Prince John was finally subdued, and, entering anew into the king’s service, with fresh reputation, as it seemed, from a spirited rebellion, and marrying his daughter Constantia, now grown up, to the heir-apparent of Portugal, went on, as commander-in-chief, with an uninterrupted succession of victories over the Moors, until almost the moment of his death, which happened in 1347.[97]

[p. 64]In a life like this, full of intrigues and violence,—from a prince like this, who married the sisters of two kings, who had two other kings for his sons-in-law, and who disturbed his country by his rebellions and military enterprises for above thirty years,—we should hardly look for a successful attempt in letters.[98] Yet so it is. Spanish poetry, we know, first appeared in the midst of turbulence and danger; and now we find Spanish prose fiction springing forth from the same soil, and under similar circumstances. Down to this time we have seen no prose of much value in the prevailing Castilian dialect, except in the works of Alfonso the Tenth, and in one or two chronicles that will hereafter be noticed. But in most of these the fervor which seems to be an essential element of the early Spanish genius was kept in check, either by the nature of their subjects, or by circumstances of which we can now have no knowledge; and it is not until a fresh attempt is made, in the midst of the wars and tumults that for centuries seem to have been as the principle of life to the whole Peninsula, that we discover in Spanish prose a decided development of such forms as afterwards became national and characteristic.

Don John, to whom belongs the distinction of producing one of these forms, showed himself worthy of a family in which, for above a century, letters had been honored and cultivated. He is known to have written twelve works; and so anxious was he about their fate, that he caused them to be carefully transcribed in a large volume, and bequeathed them to a monastery he had founded on his estates at Peñafiel, as a burial-place[p. 65] for himself and his descendants.[99] How many of these works are now in existence is not known. Some are certainly among the treasures of the National Library at Madrid, in a manuscript which seems to be an imperfect and injured copy of the one originally deposited at Peñafiel. Two others may, perhaps, yet be recovered; for one of them, the “Chronicle of Spain,” abridged by Don John from that of his uncle, Alfonso the Wise, was in the possession of the Marquis of Mondejar in the middle of the eighteenth century;[100] and the other, a treatise on Hunting, was seen by Pellicer somewhat later.[101] A collection of Don John’s poems, which Argote de Molina intended to publish in the time of Philip the Second, is probably lost, since the diligent Sanchez sought for it in vain;[102] and his “Conde Lucanor” alone has been placed beyond the reach of accident by being printed.[103]

[p. 66]All that we possess of Don John Manuel is important. The imperfect manuscript at Madrid opens with an account of the reasons why he had caused his works to be transcribed; reasons which he illustrates by the following story, very characteristic of his age.

“In the time of King Jayme the First of Majorca,” says he, “there was a knight of Perpignan, who was a great Troubadour, and made brave songs wonderfully well. But one that he made was better than the rest, and, moreover, was set to good music. And people were so delighted with that song, that, for a long time, they would sing no other. And so the knight that made it was well pleased. But one day, going through the streets, he heard a shoemaker singing this song, and he sang it so ill, both in words and tune, that any man who had not heard it before would have held it to be a very poor song, and very ill made. Now when the knight heard that shoemaker spoil his good work, he was full of grief and anger, and got down from his beast, and sat down by him. But the shoemaker gave no heed to the knight, and did not cease from singing; and the further he sang, the worse he spoiled the song that knight had made. And when the knight heard his good work so spoiled by the foolishness of the shoe[p. 67]maker, he took up very gently some shears that lay there, and cut all the shoemaker’s shoes in pieces, and mounted his beast and rode away.

“Now, when the shoemaker saw his shoes, and beheld how they were cut in pieces, and that he had lost all his labor, he was much troubled, and went shouting after the knight that had done it. And the knight answered: ‘My friend, our lord the king, as you well know, is a good king and a just. Let us, then, go to him, and let him determine, as may seem right, the difference between us.’ And they were agreed to do so. And when they came before the king, the shoemaker told him how all his shoes had been cut in pieces and much harm done to him. And the king was wroth at it, and asked the knight if this were truth. And the knight said that it was; but that he would like to say why he did it. And the king told him to say on. And the knight answered, that the king well knew that he had made a song,—the one that was very good and had good music,—and he said, that the shoemaker had spoiled it in singing; in proof whereof, he prayed the king to command him now to sing it. And the king did so, and saw how he spoiled it. Then the knight said, that, since the shoemaker had spoiled the good work he had made with great pains and labor, so he might spoil the works of the shoemaker. And the king and all they that were there with him were very merry at this and laughed; and the king commanded the shoemaker never to sing that song again, nor trouble the good work of the knight; but the king paid the shoemaker for the harm that was done him, and commanded the knight not to vex the shoemaker any more.[104]

[p. 68]

“And now, knowing that I cannot hinder the books I have made from being copied many times, and seeing that in copies one thing is put for another, either because he who copies is ignorant, or because one word looks so much like another, and so the meaning and sense are changed without any fault in him who first wrote it; therefore, I, Don John Manuel, to avoid this wrong as much as I may, have caused this volume to be made, in which are written out all the works I have composed, and they are twelve.”

Of the twelve works here referred to, the Madrid manuscript contains only three. One is a long letter to his brother, the Archbishop of Toledo, and Chancellor of the kingdom, in which he gives, first, an account of his family arms; then the reason why he and his right heirs male could make knights without having received any order of knighthood, as he himself had done when he was not yet two years old; and lastly, the report of a solemn conversation he had held with Sancho the Fourth[p. 69] on his death-bed, in which the king bemoaned himself bitterly, that, having for his rebellion justly received the curse of his father, Alfonso the Wise, he had now no power to give a dying man’s blessing to Don John.

Another of the works in the Madrid manuscript is a treatise in twenty-six chapters, called “Counsels to his Son Ferdinand”; which is, in fact, an essay on the Christian and moral duties of one destined by his rank to the highest places in the state, referring sometimes to the more ample discussions on similar subjects in Don John’s treatise on the Different Estates or Conditions of Men, apparently a longer work, not now known to exist.

But the third and longest is the most interesting. It is “The Book of the Knight and the Esquire,” “written,” says the author, “in the manner called in Castile fabliella,” (a little fable,) and sent to his brother, the Archbishop, that he might translate it into Latin; a proof, and not the only one, that Don John placed small value upon the language to which he now owes all his honors. The book itself contains an account of a young man who, encouraged by the good condition of his country under a king that called his Cortes together often, and gave his people good teachings and good laws, determines to seek advancement in the state. On his way to a meeting of the Cortes, where he intends to be knighted, he meets a retired cavalier, who in his hermitage explains to him all the duties and honors of chivalry, and thus prepares him for the distinction to which he aspires. On his return, he again visits his aged friend, and is so delighted with his instructions, that he remains with him, ministering to his infirmities and profiting by his wisdom, till his death, after which the young knight goes to his own[p. 70] land, and lives there in great honor the rest of his life. The story, or little fable, is, however, a very slight thread, serving only to hold together a long series of instructions on the moral duties of men, and on the different branches of human knowledge, given with earnestness and spirit, in the fashion of the times.[105]

The “Conde Lucanor,” the best known of its author’s works, bears some resemblance to the fable of the Knight and the Esquire. It is a collection of forty-nine tales,[106] anecdotes, and apologues, clearly in the Oriental manner; the first hint for which was probably taken from the “Disciplina Clericalis” of Petrus Alphonsus, a collection of Latin stories made in Spain about two centuries earlier. The occasion on which the tales of Don John are supposed to be related is, like the fictions themselves, invented with Eastern simplicity, and reminds us constantly of the “Thousand and One Nights,” and their multitudinous imitations.[107]

[p. 71]The Count Lucanor—a personage of power and consideration, intended probably to represent those early Christian counts in Spain, who, like Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, were, in fact, independent princes—finds himself occasionally perplexed with questions of morals and public policy. These questions, as they occur, he proposes to Patronio, his minister or counsellor, and Patronio replies to each by a tale or a fable, which is ended with a rhyme in the nature of a moral. The stories are various in their character.[108] Sometimes it is an anecdote in Spanish history to which Don John resorts, like that of the three knights of his grandfather, Saint Ferdinand, at the siege of Seville.[109] More frequently, it is a sketch of some striking trait in the national manners, like the story of “Rodrigo el Franco and his three Faithful Followers.”[110] Sometimes, again, it is a fiction of chivalry, like that of the “Hermit and Richard the Lion-Hearted.”[111] And sometimes it is an apologue, like that of the “Old Man, his Son, and the Ass,” or that of the “Crow persuaded by the Fox to sing,” which, with his many successors, he must in some[p. 72] way or other have obtained from Æsop.[112] They are all curious, but probably the most interesting is the “Moorish Marriage,” partly because it points distinctly to an Arabic origin, and partly because it remarkably resembles the story Shakspeare has used in his “Taming of the Shrew.”[113] It is, however, too long to be given here; and therefore a shorter specimen will be taken from the twenty-second chapter, entitled “Of what happened to Count Fernan Gonzalez, and of the answer he gave to his vassals.”

“On one occasion, Count Lucanor came from a foray, much wearied and worn, and poorly off; and before he could refresh or rest himself, there came a sudden message about another matter then newly moved. And the greater part of his people counselled him, that he should refresh himself a little, and then do whatever should be thought most wise. And the Count asked Patronio what he should do in that matter; and Patronio replied, ‘Sire, that you may choose what is best, it would please me that you should know the answer which Count Fernan Gonzalez once gave to his vassals.

[p. 73]“‘The story.—Count Fernan Gonzalez conquered Almanzor in Hazinas,[114] but many of his people fell there, and he and the rest that remained alive were sorely wounded. And before they were sound and well, he heard that the king of Navarre had broken into his lands, and so he commanded his people to make ready to fight against them of Navarre. And all his people told him, that their horses were aweary, and that they were aweary themselves; and although for this cause they might not forsake this thing, yet that, since both he and his people were sore wounded, they ought to leave it, and that he ought to wait till he and they should be sound again. And when the Count saw that they all wanted to leave that road, then his honor grieved him more than his body, and he said, “My friends, let us not shun this battle on account of the wounds that we now have; for the fresh wounds they will presently give us will make us forget those we received in the other fight.” And when they of his party saw that he was not troubled concerning his own person, but only how to defend his lands and his honor, they went with him, and they won that battle, and things went right well afterwards.

“‘And you, my Lord Count Lucanor, if you desire to do what you ought, when you see that it should be achieved for the defence of your own rights and of your own people and of your own honor, then you must not be grieved by weariness, nor by toil, nor by danger, but rather so act that the new danger shall make you forget that which is past.’

“And the Count held this for a good history[115] and[p. 74] a good counsel; and he acted accordingly, and found himself well by it. And Don John also understood this to be a good history, and he had it written in this book, and moreover made these verses, which say thus:—

It is not easy to imagine any thing more simple and direct than this story, either in the matter or the style. Others of the tales have an air of more knightly dignity, and some have a little of the gallantry that might be expected from a court like that of Alfonso the Eleventh. In a very few of them, Don John gives intimations that he had risen above the feelings and opinions of his age: as, in one, he laughs at the monks and their pretensions;[116] in another, he introduces a pilgrim under no respectable circumstances;[117] and in a third, he ridicules his uncle Alfonso for believing in the follies of alchemy,[118] and trusting a man who pretended to turn the baser metals into gold. But in almost all we see the large experience of a man of the world, as the world then existed, and the cool observation of one who knew too much of mankind, and had suffered too much from[p. 75] them, to have a great deal of the romance of youth still lingering in his character. For we know, from himself, that Prince John wrote the Conde Lucanor when he had already reached his highest honors and authority; probably after he had passed through his severest defeats. It should be remembered, therefore, to his credit, that we find in it no traces of the arrogance of power, or of the bitterness of mortified ambition; nothing of the wrongs he had suffered from others, and nothing of those he had inflicted. It seems, indeed, to have been written in some happy interval, stolen from the bustle of camps, the intrigues of government, and the crimes of rebellion, when the experience of his past life, its adventures, and its passions, were so remote as to awaken little personal feeling, and yet so familiar that he could give us their results, with great simplicity, in this series of tales and anecdotes, which are marked with an originality that belongs to their age, and with a kind of chivalrous philosophy and wise honesty that would not be discreditable to one more advanced.[119]

The reign of Alfonso the Eleventh was full of troubles, and the unhappy monarch himself died at last of the plague, while he was besieging Gibraltar, in 1350. Still, that letters were not forgotten in it we know, not only from the example of Don John Manuel, already cited, but from several others which should not be passed over.

The first is a prose treatise on Hunting, in three books, written under the king’s direction, by his Chief-huntsmen, who were then among the principal persons of the court. It consists of little more than an account of the sort of hounds to be used, their diseases and training, with a description of the different places where game was abundant, and where sport for the royal amusement was to be had. It is of small consequence in itself, but was published by Argote de Molina, in the time of Philip the Second, with a pleasant addition by the editor, containing curious stories of lion-hunts and bull-fights, fitting it to the taste of his own age. In style, the original work is as good as the somewhat similar treatise of the Marquis of Villena,[p. 77] on the Art of Carving, written a hundred years later; and, from the nature of the subject, it is more interesting.[120]

The next literary monument attributed to this reign would be important, if we had the whole of it. It is a chronicle, in the ballad style, of events which happened in the time of Alfonso the Eleventh, and commonly passes under his name. It was found, hidden in a mass of Arabic manuscripts, by Diego de Mendoza, who attributed it, with little ceremony, to “a secretary of the king”; and it was first publicly made known by Argote de Molina, who thought it written by some poet contemporary with the history he relates. But only thirty-four stanzas of it are now known to exist; and these, though admitted by Sanchez to be probably anterior to the fifteenth century, are shown by him not to be the work of the king, and seem, in fact, to be less ancient in style and language than that critic supposes them to be.[121] They are in very flowing Castilian, and their tone is as spirited as that of most of the old ballads.

[p. 78]Two other poems, written during the reign of one of the Alfonsos, as their author declares,—and therefore almost certainly during that of Alfonso the Eleventh, who was the last of his name,—are also now known in print only by a few stanzas, and by the office of their writer, who styles himself “a Beneficiary of Ubeda.” The first, which consists, in the manuscript, of five hundred and five strophes in the manner of Berceo, is a life of Saint Ildefonso; the last is on the subject of Saint Mary Magdalen. Both would probably detain us little, even if they had been published entire.[122]

We turn, therefore, without further delay, to Juan Ruiz, commonly called the Archpriest of Hita; a poet who is known to have lived at the same period, and whose works, both from their character and amount, deserve especial notice. Their date can be ascertained[p. 79] with a good degree of exactness. In one of the three early manuscripts in which they are extant, some of the poems are fixed at the year 1330, and some, by the two others, at 1343. Their author, who seems to have been born at Alcalá de Henares, lived much at Guadalaxara and Hita, places only five leagues apart, and was imprisoned by order of the Archbishop of Toledo between 1337 and 1350; from all which it may be inferred, that his principal residence was Castile, and that he flourished in the reign of Alfonso the Eleventh; that is, in the time of Don John Manuel, and a very little later.[123]

His works consist of nearly seven thousand verses; and although, in general, they are written in the four-line stanza of Berceo, we find occasionally a variety of measure, tone, and spirit, before unknown in Castilian poetry; the number of their metrical forms, some of which are taken from the Provençal, being reckoned not less than sixteen.[124] The poems, as they have come to us, open with a prayer to God, composed apparently at the time of the Archpriest’s imprisonment; when, as one of the manuscripts sets forth, most of his works were written.[125] Next comes a curious prose prologue, explaining the moral purpose of the whole collection, or rather endeavouring to conceal the immoral tendency of the greater part of it. And then, after somewhat more of prefatory matter, follow, in quick succession, the poems themselves, very miscellaneous in their subjects, but ingeniously connected. The entire mass, when taken together, fills a volume of respectable size.[126]

[p. 80]It is a series of stories, that seem to be sketches of real events in the Archpriest’s own life; sometimes mingled with fictions and allegories, that may, after all, be only veils for other facts; and sometimes speaking out plainly, and announcing themselves as parts of his personal history.[127] In the foreground of this busy scene figures the very equivocal character of his female messenger, the chief agent in his love affairs, whom he boldly calls Trota-conventos, because the messages she carries are so often to or from monasteries and nunneries.[128] The first lady-love to whom the poet sends her is, he says, well taught,—mucho letrada,—and her story is illustrated by the fables of the Sick Lion visited by the other Animals, and of the Mountain bringing forth a Mouse. All, however, is unavailing. The lady refuses to favor his suit; and he consoles himself, as well as he can, with the saying of Solomon, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.[129]

In the next of his adventures, a false friend deceives him and carries off his lady. But still he is not discouraged.[130] He feels himself to be drawn on by his fate, like the son of a Moorish king, whose history he then relates; and, after some astrological ruminations,[p. 81] declares himself to be born under the star of Venus, and inevitably subject to her control. Another failure follows; and then Love comes in person to visit him and counsels him in a series of fables, which are told with great ease and spirit. The poet answers gravely. He is offended with Don Amor for his falsehood, charges him with being guilty, either by implication or directly, of all the seven deadly sins, and fortifies each of his positions with an appropriate apologue.[131]

The Archpriest now goes to Doña Venus, who, though he knew Ovid, is represented as the wife of Don Amor; and, taking counsel of her, is successful. But the story he relates is evidently a fiction, though it may be accommodated to the facts of the poet’s own case. It is borrowed from a dialogue or play, written before the year 1300, by Pamphylus Maurianus or Maurilianus, and long attributed to Ovid; but the Castilian poet has successfully given to what he adopted the coloring of his own national manners. All this portion, which fills above a thousand lines, is somewhat free in its tone; and the Archpriest, alarmed at himself, turns suddenly round and adds a series of severe moral warnings and teachings to the sex, which he as suddenly breaks off, and, without any assigned reason, goes to the mountains near Segovia. But the month in which he makes his journey is March; the season is rough; and several of his adventures are any thing but agreeable. Still he preserves the same light and thoughtless air; and this part of his history is mingled with spirited pastoral songs in the Provençal manner, called “Cántigas de[p. 82] Serrana,” as the preceding portions had been mingled with fables, which he calls “Enxiemplos,” or stories.[132]

A shrine, much frequented by the devout, is near that part of the Sierra where his journeyings lay; and he makes a pilgrimage to it, which he illustrates with sacred hymns, just as he had before illustrated his love-adventures with apologues and songs. But Lent approaches, and he hurries home. He is hardly arrived, however, when he receives a summons in form from Doña Quaresma (Madam Lent) to attend her in arms, with all her other archpriests and clergy, in order to make a foray, like a foray into the territory of the Moors, against Don Carnaval and his adherents. One of these allegorical battles, which were in great favor with the Trouveurs and other metre-mongers of the Middle Ages, then follows, in which figure Don Tocino (Mr. Bacon) and Doña Cecina (Mrs. Hung-Beef), with other similar personages. The result, of course, since it is now the season of Lent, is the defeat and imprisonment of Don Carnaval; but when that season closes, the allegorical prisoner necessarily escapes, and, raising anew such followers as Mr. Lunch and Mr. Breakfast, again takes the field, and is again triumphant.[133]

[p. 83]

Don Carnaval now unites himself to Don Amor, and both appear in state as emperors. Don Amor is received with especial jubilee; clergy and laity, friars, nuns, and jongleurs, going out in wild procession to meet and welcome him.[134] But the honor of formally receiving his Majesty, though claimed by all, and foremost by the nuns, is granted only to the poet. To the poet, too, Don Amor relates his adventures of the preceding winter at Seville and Toledo, and then leaves him to go in search of others. Meanwhile, the Archpriest, with the assistance of his cunning agent, Trota-conventos, begins a new series of love intrigues, even more freely mingled with fables than the first, and ends them only by the death of Trota-conventos herself, with whose epitaph the more carefully connected portion of the Archpriest’s works is brought to a conclusion. The volume contains, however, besides this portion, several smaller poems on subjects as widely different as the “Christian’s Armour” and the “Praise of Little Women,” some of which seem related to the main series, though none of them have any apparent connection with each other.[135]

The tone of the Archpriest’s poetry is very various. In general, a satirical spirit prevails in it, not unmingled with a quiet humor. This spirit often extends into the gravest portions; and how fearless he was, when he indulged himself in it, a passage on the influence of money and corruption at the court of Rome leaves no doubt.[136] Other parts, like the verses on Death, are[p. 84] solemn, and even sometimes tender; while yet others, like the hymns to the Madonna, breathe the purest spirit of Catholic devotion; so that, perhaps, it would not be easy, in the whole body of Spanish literature, to find a volume showing a greater variety in its subjects, or in the modes of managing and exhibiting them.[137]

The happiest success of the Archpriest of Hita is to be found in the many tales and apologues which he has scattered on all sides to illustrate the adventures that constitute a framework for his poetry, like that of the “Conde Lucanor” or the “Canterbury Tales.” Most of them are familiar to us, being taken from the old store-houses of Æsop and Phædrus, or rather from the versions of these fabulists common in the earliest Northern French poetry.[138] Among the more fortunate of his very free imitations is the fable of the Frogs who asked for a King from Jupiter, that of the Dog who lost by his Greediness the Meat he carried in his Mouth, and that of the Hares who took Courage when they saw the Frogs were more timid than themselves.[139] A few of them have a truth, a simplicity, and even[p. 85] a grace, which have rarely been surpassed in the same form of composition; as, for instance, that of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse, which, if we follow it from Æsop through Horace to La Fontaine, we shall nowhere find better told than it is by the Archpriest.[140]

What strikes us most, however, and remains with us longest after reading his poetry, is the natural and spirited tone that prevails over every other. In this he is like Chaucer, who wrote a little later in the same century. Indeed, the resemblance between the two poets is remarkable in some other particulars. Both often sought their materials in the Northern French poetry; both have that mixture of devotion and a licentious immorality, much of which belonged to their age, but some of it to their personal character; and both show a wide knowledge of human nature, and a great happiness in sketching the details of individual manners. The original temper of each made him satirical and humorous; and each, in his own country, became the founder of some of the forms of its popular poetry, introducing new metres and combinations, and carrying them out in a versification which, though generally rude and irregular, is often flowing and nervous, and always natural. The Archpriest has not, indeed, the tenderness, the elevation, or the general power of Chaucer; but his genius has a compass, and his verse a skill and success, that show him to be more nearly akin to the great English master than will be believed,[p. 86] except by those who have carefully read the works of both.

The Archpriest of Hita lived in the last years of Alfonso the Eleventh, and perhaps somewhat later. At the very beginning of the next reign, or in 1350, we find a curious poem addressed by a Jew of Carrion to Peter the Cruel, on his accession to the throne. In the manuscript found in the National Library at Madrid, it is called the “Book of the Rabi de Santob,” or “Rabbi Don Santob,” and consists of four hundred and seventy-six stanzas.[141] The measure is the old redondilla, uncommonly easy and flowing for the age; and the purpose of the poem is to give wise moral counsels to the new king, which the poet more than once begs him not to undervalue because they come from a Jew.

After a longer introduction than is needful, the moral counsels begin, at the fifty-third stanza, and continue through the rest of the work, which, in its general tone, is not unlike other didactic poetry of the period, although it is written with more ease and more poetical spirit. Indeed, it is little to say, that few Rabbins of any country have given us such quaint and pleasant verses as are contained in several parts of these curious counsels of the Jew of Carrion.

In the Escurial manuscript, containing the verses of[p. 88] the Jew, are other poems, which were at one time attributed to him, but which it seems probable belong to other, though unknown, authors.[143] One of them is a didactic essay, called “La Doctrina Christiana,” or Christian Doctrine. It consists of a prose prologue, setting forth the writer’s penitence, and of one hundred and fifty-seven stanzas of four lines each; the first three containing eight syllables, rhymed together, and the last containing four syllables unrhymed,—a metrical form not without something of the air of the Sapphic and Adonic. The body of the work contains an explanation of the creed, the ten commandments, the seven moral virtues, the fourteen works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the five senses, and the holy sacraments, with discussions concerning Christian conduct and character.

Another of these poems is called a Revelation, and is a vision, in twenty-five octave stanzas, of a holy hermit, who is supposed to have witnessed a contest between a soul and its body; the soul complaining that the excesses of the body had brought upon it all the punishments of the unseen world, and the body retort[p. 89]ing, that it was condemned to these same torments because the soul had neglected to keep it in due subjection.[144] The whole is an imitation of some of the many similar poems current at that period, one of which is extant in English in a manuscript placed by Warton about the year 1304.[145] But both the Castilian poems are of little worth.

We come, then, to one of more value, “La Dança General,” or the Dance of Death, consisting of seventy-nine regular octave stanzas, preceded by a few words of introduction in prose, that do not seem to be by the same author.[146] It is founded on the well-known fiction, so often illustrated both in painting and in verse during the Middle Ages, that all men, of all conditions, are summoned to the Dance of Death; a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which the different ranks of society, from the Pope to the young child, appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is striking and picturesque,—more so, perhaps, than in any other,—the ghastly nature of the subject being[p. 90] brought into a very lively contrast with the festive tone of the verses, which frequently recalls some of the better parts of those flowing stories that now and then occur in the “Mirror for Magistrates.”[147]

The first seven stanzas of the Spanish poem constitute a prologue, in which Death issues his summons partly in his own person, and partly in that of a preaching friar, ending thus:—

Death now proceeds, as in the old pictures and poems, to summon, first, the Pope, then cardinals, kings, bishops, and so on, down to day-laborers; all of whom are forced to join his mortal dance, though each first makes some remonstrance, that indicates surprise, horror, or reluctance. The call to youth and beauty is spirited:—

The fiction is, no doubt, a grim one; but for several centuries it had great success throughout Europe, and it is presented quite as much according to its true spirit in this old Castilian poem as it is anywhere.

A chronicling poem, found in the same manuscript volume with the last, but very unskilfully copied in a different handwriting, belongs probably to the same period. It is on the half-fabulous, half-historical achievements of Count Fernan Gonzalez, a hero of the earlier period of the Christian conflict with the Moors, who is to the North of Spain what the Cid became somewhat later to Aragon and Valencia. To him is attributed the rescue of much of Castile from Mohammedan control; and his achievements, so far as they are matter of historical rather than poetical record, fall between 934, when the battle of Osma was fought, and his death, which occurred in 970.

The poem in question is almost wholly devoted to his glory.[149] It begins with a notice of the invasion[p. 92] of Spain by the Goths, and comes down to the battle of Moret, in 967, when the manuscript suddenly breaks off, leaving untouched the adventures of its hero during the three remaining years of his life. It is essentially prosaic and monotonous in its style, yet not without something of that freshness and simplicity which are in themselves allied to all early poetry. Its language is rude, and its measure, which strives to be like that in Berceo and the poem of Apollonius, is often in stanzas of three lines instead of four, sometimes of five, and once at least of nine. Like Berceo’s poem on San Domingo de Silos, it opens with an invocation, and, what is singular, this invocation is in the very words used by Berceo: “In the name of the Father, who made all things,” etc. After this, the history, beginning in the days of the Goths, follows the popular traditions of the country, with few exceptions, the most remarkable of which occurs in the notice of the Moorish invasion. There the account is quite anomalous. No intimation is given of the story of the fair Cava, whose fate has furnished materials for so much poetry; but Count Julian is represented as having, without any private injury, volunteered his treason to the king of Morocco, and then carried it into effect by persuading Don Roderic, in full Cortes, to turn all the military weapons of the land into implements of agriculture, so that, when the Moorish invasion occurred, the country was overrun without difficulty.

The death of the Count of Toulouse, on the other[p. 93] hand, is described as it is in the “General Chronicle” of Alfonso the Wise; and so are the vision of Saint Millan, and the Count’s personal fights with a Moorish king and the King of Navarre. In truth, many passages in the poem so much resemble the corresponding passages in the Chronicle, that it seems certain one was used in the composition of the other; and as the poem has more the air of being an amplification of the Chronicle than the Chronicle has of being an abridgment of the poem, it seems probable that the prose account is, in this case, the older, and furnished the materials of the poem, which, from internal evidence, was prepared for public recitation.[150]

The meeting of Fernan Gonzalez with the King of Navarre at the battle of Valparé, which occurs in both, is thus described in the poem:—

This is certainly not poetry of a high order. Invention and dignified ornament are wanting in it; but still it is not without spirit, and, at any rate, it would be difficult to find in the whole poem a passage more worthy of regard.

In the National Library at Madrid is a poem of twelve hundred and twenty lines, composed in the same system of quaternion rhymes that we have already noticed as settled in the old Castilian literature, and with irregularities like those found in the whole class of poems to which it belongs. Its subject is Joseph, the son of Jacob; but there are two circumstances which distinguish it from all the other narrative poetry of the period, and render it curious and important. The first[p. 95] is, that, though composed in the Spanish language, it is written wholly in the Arabic character, and has, therefore, all the appearance of an Arabic manuscript; to which should be added the fact, that the metre and spelling are accommodated to the force of the Arabic vowels, so that, if the only manuscript of it now known to exist be not the original, it must still have been originally written in the same manner. The other singular circumstance is, that the story of the poem, which is the familiar one of Joseph and his brethren, is not told according to the original in our Hebrew Scriptures, but according to the shorter and less interesting version in the eleventh chapter of the Koran, with occasional variations and additions, some of which are due to the fanciful expounders of the Koran, while others seem to be of the author’s own invention. These two circumstances taken together leave no reasonable doubt that the writer of the poem was one of the many Moriscos who, remaining at the North after the body of the nation had been driven southward, had forgotten their native language and adopted that of their conquerors, though their religion and culture still continued to be Arabic.[152]

The manuscript of the “Poem of Joseph” is imperfect, both at the beginning and at the end. Not much of it, however, seems to be lost. It opens with the jealousy of the brothers of Joseph at his dream, and[p. 96] their solicitation of their father to let him go with them to the field.

When the brothers have consummated their treason, and sold Joseph to a caravan of Egyptian merchants, the story goes on much as it does in the Koran. The fair Zuleikha, or Zuleia, who answers to Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who figures largely in Mohammedan poetry, fills a space more ample than usual in the fancies of the present poem. Joseph, too, is a more considerable personage. He is adopted as the king’s son, and made a king in the land; and the dreams of the real king, the years of plenty and famine, the journeyings of the brothers to Egypt, their recognition by Joseph, and his message to Jacob, with the grief of the latter that Benjamin did not return, at which the manuscript breaks off, are much amplified, in the Oriental manner, and made to sound like passages[p. 97] from “Antar,” or the “Arabian Nights,” rather than from the touching and beautiful story to which we have been accustomed from our childhood.

Among the inventions of the author is a conversation which the wolf—who is brought in by his false brethren, as the animal that had killed Joseph—holds with Jacob.[154] Another is the Eastern fancy, that the measure by which Joseph distributed the corn, and which was made of gold and precious stones, would, when put to his ear, inform him whether the persons present were guilty of falsehood to him.[155] But the following incident, which, like that of Joseph’s parting in a spirit of tender forgiveness from his brethren[156] when they sold him, is added to the narrative of the Koran, will better illustrate the general tone of the poem, as well as the general powers of the poet.

On the first night after the outrage, Jusuf, as he is called in the poem, when travelling along in charge of a negro, passes a cemetery on a hill-side where his mother lies buried.

[p. 99]The age and origin of this remarkable poem can be settled only by internal evidence. From this it seems probable that it was written in Aragon, because it contains many words and phrases peculiar to the border country of the Provençals,[158] and that it dates from the latter half of the fourteenth century, because the four-fold rhyme is hardly found later in such verses, and because the rudeness of the language might indicate even an earlier period, if the tale had come from Castile. But in whatever period we may place it, it is a curious and interesting production. It has the directness and simplicity of the age to which it is attributed, mingled sometimes with a tenderness rarely found in ages so violent. Its pastoral air, too, and its preservation of Oriental manners, harmonize well with the Arabian feelings that prevail throughout the work; while in its spirit, and occasionally in its moral tone, it shows the confusion of the two religions which then prevailed in Spain, and that mixture of the Eastern and Western forms of civilization which afterwards gives somewhat of its coloring to Spanish poetry.[159]

The last poem belonging to these earliest specimens of Castilian literature is the “Rimado de Palacio,” on the duties of kings and nobles in the government of the state, with sketches of the manners and vices of the times, which, as the poem maintains, it is the duty of the great to rebuke and reform. It is chiefly written in the four-line stanzas of the period to which it belongs; and, beginning with a penitential confession of its author, goes on with a discussion of the ten command[p. 100]ments, the seven deadly sins, the seven works of mercy, and other religious subjects; after which it treats of the government of a state, of royal counsellors, of merchants, of men of learning, tax-gatherers, and others; and then ends, as it began, with exercises of devotion. Its author is Pedro Lopez de Ayala, the chronicler, of whom it is enough to say here, that he was among the most distinguished Spaniards of his time, that he held some of the highest offices of the kingdom under Peter the Cruel, Henry the Second, John the First, and Henry the Third, and that he died in 1407, at the age of seventy-five.[160]

The “Rimado de Palacio,” which may be translated “Court Rhymes,” was the production of different periods of Ayala’s life. Twice he marks the year in which he was writing, and from these dates we know that parts of it were certainly composed in 1398 and 1404, while yet another part seems to have been written during his imprisonment in England, which followed the defeat of Henry of Trastamara by the Duke of Lancaster, in 1367. On the whole, therefore, the Rimado de Palacio is to be placed near the conclusion of the fourteenth century, and, by its author’s sufferings in an English prison, reminds us both of the Duke of Orleans and of James the First of Scotland, who, at the same time and under similar circumstances, showed a poetical spirit not unlike that of the great Chancellor of Castile.

In some of its subdivisions, particularly in those that have a lyrical tendency, the Rimado resembles some of the lighter poems of the Archpriest of Hita. Others are composed with care and gravity, and express the[p. 101] solemn thoughts that filled him during his captivity. But, in general, it has a quiet, didactic tone, such as beseems its subject and its age; one, however, in which we occasionally find a satirical spirit that could not be suppressed, when the old statesman discusses the manners that offended him. Thus, speaking of the Letrados, or lawyers, he says:[161]—

Somewhat farther on, when he speaks of justice, whose administration had been so lamentably neglected in the civil wars during which he lived, he takes his graver tone, and speaks with a wisdom and gentleness we should hardly have expected:—

There is naturally a good deal in the Rimado de Palacio that savors of statesmanship; as, for instance, nearly all that relates to royal favorites, to war, and to the manners of the palace; but the general air of the poem, or rather of the different short poems that make it up, is fairly represented in the preceding passages. It is grave, gentle, and didactic, with now and then a few lines of a simple and earnest poetical feeling, which seem to belong quite as much to their age as to their author.

We have now gone over a considerable portion of the earliest Castilian literature, and quite completed an examination of that part of it which, at first epic, and afterwards didactic, in its tone, is found in long, irregular verses, with quadruple rhymes. It is all curious. Much of it is picturesque and interesting; and when, to what has been already examined, we shall have added the ballads and chronicles, the romances of chivalry and the drama, the whole will be found to constitute a broad basis, on which the genuine literary culture of Spain has rested ever since.

But, before we go farther, we must pause an instant, and notice some of the peculiarities of the period we have just considered. It extends from a little before the year 1200 to a little after the year 1400; and, both in[p. 103] its poetry and prose, is marked by features not to be mistaken. Some of these features were peculiar and national; others were not. Thus, in Provence, which was long united with Aragon, and exercised an influence throughout the whole Peninsula, the popular poetry, from its light-heartedness, was called the Gaya Sciencia, and was essentially unlike the grave and measured tone, heard over every other, on the Spanish side of the mountains; in the more northern parts of France, a garrulous, story-telling spirit was paramount; and in Italy, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had just appeared, unlike all that had preceded them, and all that was anywhere contemporary with their glory. On the other hand, however, several of the characteristics of the earliest Castilian literature, such as the chronicling and didactic spirit of most of its long poems, its protracted, irregular verses, and its redoubled rhymes, belong to the old Spanish bards in common with those of the countries we have just enumerated, where, at the same period, a poetical spirit was struggling for a place in the elements of their unsettled civilization.

But there are two traits of the earliest Spanish literature which are so separate and peculiar, that they must be noticed from the outset,—religious faith and knightly loyalty,—traits which are hardly less apparent in the “Partidas” of Alfonso the Wise, in the stories of Don John Manuel, in the loose wit of the Archpriest of Hita, and in the worldly wisdom of the Chancellor Ayala, than in the professedly devout poems of Berceo and in the professedly chivalrous chronicles of the Cid and Fernan Gonzalez. They are, therefore, from the earliest period, to be marked among the prominent features in Spanish literature.

Nor should we be surprised at this. The Spanish[p. 104] national character, as it has existed from its first development down to our own days, was mainly formed in the earlier part of that solemn contest which began the moment the Moors landed beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, and which cannot be said to have ended, until, in the time of Philip the Third, the last remnants of their unhappy race were cruelly driven from the shores which their fathers, nine centuries before, had so unjustifiably invaded. During this contest, and especially during the two or three dark centuries when the earliest Spanish poetry appeared, nothing but an invincible religious faith, and a no less invincible loyalty to their own princes, could have sustained the Christian Spaniards in their disheartening struggle against their infidel oppressors. It was, therefore, a stern necessity which made these two high qualities elements of the Spanish national character,—a character all whose energies were for ages devoted to the one grand object of their prayers as Christians and their hopes as patriots, the expulsion of their hated invaders.

But Castilian poetry was, from the first, to an extraordinary degree, an outpouring of the popular feeling and character. Tokens of religious submission and knightly fidelity, akin to each other in their birth and often relying on each other for strength in their trials, are, therefore, among its earliest attributes. We must not, then, be surprised, if we hereafter find, that submission to the Church and loyalty to the king constantly break through the mass of Spanish literature, and breathe their spirit from nearly every portion of it,—not, indeed, without such changes in the mode of expression as the changed condition of the country in successive ages demanded, but still always so strong in their original attributes as to show that they survive[p. 105] every convulsion of the state and never cease to move onward by their first impulse. In truth, while their very early development leaves no doubt that they are national, their nationality makes it all but inevitable that they should become permanent.

Everywhere in Europe, during the period we have just gone over, the courts of the different sovereigns were the principal centres of refinement and civilization. From accidental circumstances, this was peculiarly the case in Spain, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise, Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala, to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who, perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of Spain and at the North.[164]

But the literature produced or encouraged by these[p. 107] and other distinguished men, or by the higher clergy, who, with them, were the leaders of the state, was by no means the only literature that then existed within the barrier of the Pyrenees. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry was, to an extraordinary degree, abroad throughout the whole Peninsula, so far as it had been rescued from the Moors, animating and elevating all classes of its Christian population. Their own romantic history, whose great events had been singularly the results of popular impulse, and bore everywhere the bold impress of the popular character, had breathed into the Spanish people this spirit; a spirit which, beginning with Pelayo, had been sustained by the appearance, from time to time, of such heroic forms as Fernan Gonzalez, Bernardo del Carpio, and the Cid. At the point of time, therefore, at which we are now arrived, a more popular literature, growing directly out of the enthusiasm which had so long pervaded the whole mass of the Spanish people, began naturally to appear in the country, and to assert for itself a place, which, in some of its forms, it has successfully maintained ever since.

What, however, is thus essentially popular in its sources and character,—what, instead of going out from the more elevated classes of the nation, was neglected or discountenanced by them,—is, from its very wildness, little likely to take well-defined forms, or to be traced, from its origin, by the dates and other proofs which accompany such portions of the national literature as fell earlier under the protection of the higher orders of society. But though we may not be able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be distributed into four different classes,[p. 108] and will afford tolerable materials for a notice of its progress and condition under each.

These four classes are, first, the Ballads, or the poetry, both narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times; second, the Chronicles, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued with the popular feelings and character; third, the Romances of Chivalry, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the Drama, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France.

These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very nature, were opposed to the Provençal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be subsequently examined.

The Ballads.—We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote than that of[p. 109] the origin of the present Spanish language itself;[165] that such a tendency may, perhaps, be traced back to those indigenous bards of whom only a doubtful tradition remained in the time of Strabo;[166] and that it may be seen to emerge again in the Leonine and other rhymed Latin verses of the Gothic period,[167] or in that more ancient and obscure Basque poetry, of which the little that has been preserved to us is thought to breathe a spirit countenancing such conjectures.[168] But these and similar suggestions have so slight a foundation in recorded facts, that they can be little relied on. The one more frequently advanced is, that the Spanish ballads, such as we now have them, are imitations from the narrative and lyrical poetry of the Arabs, with which the whole southern part of Spain for ages resounded; and that, in fact, the very form in which Spanish ballads still appear is Arabic, and is to be traced to the Arabs in the East, at a period not only anterior to the invasion of Spain, but anterior to the age of the Prophet. This is the theory of Conde.[169]

[p. 110]But though, from the air of historical pretension with which it presents itself, there is something in this theory that bespeaks our favor, yet there are strong reasons that forbid our assent to it. For the earliest of the Spanish ballads, concerning which alone the question can arise, have not at all the characteristics of an imitated literature. Not a single Arabic original has been found for any one of them; nor, so far as we know, has a single passage of Arabic poetry, or a single phrase from any Arabic writer, entered directly into their composition. On the contrary, their freedom, their energy, their Christian tone and chivalrous loyalty, announce an originality and independence of character that prevent us from believing they could have been in any way materially indebted to the brilliant, but effeminate, literature of the nation to whose spirit every thing Spanish had, when they first appeared, been for ages implacably opposed. It seems, therefore, that they must, of their own nature, be as original as any poetry of modern times; containing, as they do, within themselves proofs that they are Spanish by their birth, natives of the soil, and stained with all its variations. For a long time, too, subsequent to that of their first appearance, they continued to exhibit the same elements of nationality; so that, until we approach the fall of Granada, we find in them neither a Moorish tone, nor Moorish subjects, nor Moorish adventures; nothing, in short, to justify us in supposing them to have been more indebted to the culture of the Arabs than was any other portion of the early Spanish literature.

[p. 111]Indeed, it does not seem reasonable to seek, in the East or elsewhere, a foreign origin for the mere form of the Spanish ballads. Their metrical structure is so simple, that we can readily believe it to have presented itself as soon as verse of any sort was felt to be a popular want. They consist merely of those eight-syllable lines which are composed with great facility in other languages as well as the Castilian, and which in the old ballads are the more easy, as the number of feet prescribed for each verse is little regarded.[170] Sometimes, though rarely, they are broken into stanzas of four lines, thence called redondillas or roundelays; and some of them have rhymes in the second and fourth lines of each stanza, or in the first and fourth, as in the similar stanzas of other modern languages. Their prominent peculiarity, however, and one which they have succeeded in impressing upon a very large portion of all the national poetry, is one which, being found to prevail[p. 112] in no other literature, may be claimed to have its origin in Spain, and becomes, therefore, an important circumstance in the history of Spanish poetical culture.[171]

The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the asonante,—an imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the consonante, or full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore, just what rhyme is in English.[172] Thus, feróz and furór, cása and abárca, infámia and contrária, are good asonantes in the first and third ballads of the Cid, just as mál and desleál, voláre and caçáre, are good consonantes in the old ballad of the Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The asonante, therefore, is something be[p. 113]tween our blank verse and our rhyme, and the art of using it is easily acquired in a language like the Castilian, abounding in vowels, and always giving to the same vowel the same value.[173] In the old ballads, it generally recurs with every other line; and, from the facility with which it can be found, the same asonante is frequently continued through the whole of the poem in which it occurs, whether the poem be longer or shorter. But even with this embarrassment, the structure of the ballad is so simple, that, while Sarmiento has undertaken to show how Spanish prose from the twelfth century downwards is often written unconsciously in eight-syllable asonantes,[174] Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century actually converted large portions of the old chronicles into the same ballad measure, with little change of their original phraseology;[175] two circumstances which, taken together, show indisputably that there can be no wide interval between the common structure of Spanish prose and this earliest form of Spanish verse. If to[p. 114] all this we add the national recitatives in which the ballads have been sung down to our own days, and the national dances by which they have been accompanied,[176] we shall probably be persuaded, not only that the form of the Spanish ballad is as purely national in its origin as the asonante, which is its prominent characteristic, but that this form is more happily fitted to its especial purposes, and more easy in its practical application to them, than any other into which popular poetry has fallen in ancient or modern times.[177]

A metrical form so natural and obvious became a favorite at once, and continued so. From the ballads it soon passed into other departments of the national poetry, especially the lyrical. At a later period, the great[p. 115] mass of the true Spanish drama came to rest upon it; and before the end of the seventeenth century more verses had probably been written in it than in all the other measures used by Spanish poets. Lope de Vega declared it to be fitted for all styles of composition, even the gravest; and his judgment was sanctioned in his own time, and has been justified in ours, by the application of this peculiar form of verse to long epic stories.[178] The eight-syllable asonante, therefore, may be considered as now known and used in every department of Spanish poetry; and since it has, from the first, been a chief element in that poetry, we may well believe it will continue such as long as what is most original in the national genius continues to be cultivated.

Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are, no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest times, their very name, Romances, may intimate; since it seems to imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the Romance language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other than the one immediately following the formation of the language itself. Popular poetry of some sort—and more probably ballad poetry than any other—was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as early as 1147.[179] A century later than this,[p. 116] but earlier than the prose of the “Fuero Juzgo,” Saint Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville in 1248, gave allotments or repartimientos to two poets who had been with him during the siege, Nicolas de los Romances, and Domingo Abad de los Romances, the first of whom continued for some time afterwards to inhabit the rescued city and exercise his vocation as a poet.[180] In the next reign, or between 1252 and 1280, such poets are again mentioned. A joglaressa, or female ballad-singer, is introduced into the poem of “Apollonius,” which is supposed to have been written soon after the year 1250;[181] and in the Code of Laws of Alfonso the Tenth, prepared about 1260, good knights are commanded to listen to no poetical tales of the ballad-singers except such as relate to feats of arms.[182] In the “General Chronicle,” also, compiled soon afterwards by the same prince, mention is made more than once of poetical gestes or tales; of “what the ballad-singers (juglares) sing in their chants, and tell in their tales”; and “of what we hear the ballad-singers tell in their[p. 117] chants”;—implying that the achievements of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, to which these phrases refer, were as familiar in the popular poetry used in the composition of this fine old chronicle as we know they have been since to the whole Spanish people through the very ballads we still possess.[183]

It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics, arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now, merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185]

One more fact will conclude what we know of their early history. It is, that ballads were found among the poetry of Don John Manuel, the nephew of Alfonso the Tenth, which Argote de Molina possessed, and intended to publish, but which is now lost.[186] This brings our slight knowledge of the whole subject down to the death of Don John in 1347. But from this period—the same with that of the Archpriest of Hita—we almost lose sight, not only of the ballads, but of all genuine Spanish poetry, whose strains seem hardly to have been heard during the horrors of the reign of Peter the Cruel, the contested succession of Henry of Trastamara,[p. 118] and the Portuguese wars of John the First. And even when its echoes come to us again in the weak reign of John the Second, which stretches down to the middle of the fifteenth century, it presents itself with few of the attributes of the old national character.[187] It is become of the court, courtly; and therefore, though the old and true-hearted ballads may have lost none of the popular favor, and were certainly preserved by the fidelity of popular tradition, we find no further distinct record of them until the end of this century and the beginning of the one that followed, when the mass of the people, whose feelings they embodied, rose to such a degree of consideration, that their peculiar poetry came into the place to which it was entitled, and which it has maintained ever since. This was in the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth.

But these few historical notices of ballad poetry are, except those which point to its early origin, too slight to be of much value. Indeed, until after the middle of the sixteenth century, it is difficult to find ballads written by known authors; so that, when we speak of the Old Spanish Ballads, we do not refer to the few whose period can be settled with some accuracy, but to the great mass found in the “Romanceros Generales” and elsewhere, whose authors and dates are alike unknown. This mass consists of above a thousand old poems, unequal in length and still more unequal in merit, composed between the period when verse first appeared in Spain and the time when such verse as that of the ballads was thought worthy to be written down; the whole bearing to the mass of the Spanish people, their[p. 119] feelings, passions, and character, the same relations that a single ballad bears to the character of the individual author who produced it.

For a long time, of course, these primitive national ballads existed only in the memories of the common people, from whom they sprang, and were preserved through successive ages and long traditions only by the interests and feelings that originally gave them birth. We cannot, therefore, reasonably hope that we now read any of them exactly as they were first composed and sung, or that there are many to which we can assign a definite age with any good degree of probability. No doubt, we may still possess some which, with little change in their simple thoughts and melody, were among the earliest breathings of that popular enthusiasm which, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, was carrying the Christian Spaniards onward to the emancipation of their country; ballads which were heard amidst the valleys of the Sierra Morena, or on the banks of the Turia and the Guadalquivir, with the first tones of the language that has since spread itself through the whole Peninsula. But the idle minstrel, who, in such troubled times, sought a precarious subsistence from cottage to cottage, or the thoughtless soldier, who, when the battle was over, sung its achievements to his guitar at the door of his tent, could not be expected to look beyond the passing moment; so that, if their unskilled verses were preserved at all, they must have been preserved by those who repeated them from memory, changing their tone and language with the changed feelings of the times and events that chanced to recall them. Whatever, then, belongs to this earliest period belongs, at the same time, to the unchronicled popular life and character of which it was a part; and[p. 120] although many of the ballads thus produced may have survived to our own day, many more, undoubtedly, lie buried with the poetical hearts that gave them birth.

This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down. Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were, of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed. But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special “Cancioneros”—which were collections of whatever verses the person who formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]—began to come in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked, that not a single ballad occurs in either of them.

The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and 1500, or[p. 121] who, like Lope de Sosa, appear so often in the collections of that age, that they may be fairly assumed to have belonged to it. Of the remainder, several seem much more ancient, and are, therefore, more curious and important.

The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the Provençal manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop, on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true lover, pass almost into a proverb.

The next is also a fragment, and relates, with great simplicity, an incident which belongs to the state of society that existed in Spain between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the two races were much mingled together and always in conflict.

[p. 123]The next is complete, and, from its early imitations and glosses, it must probably be quite ancient. It begins “Fonte frida, Fonte frida,” and is, perhaps, itself an imitation of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” another of the early and very graceful lyrical ballads which were always so popular.

The parallel ballad of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” is[p. 124] no less simple and characteristic; Rosa being the name of the lady-love.

[p. 125]Several of the other anonymous ballads in this little collection are not less curious and ancient, among which may be noted those beginning, “Decidme vos pensamiento,”—“Que por Mayo era por Mayo,”—and “Durandarte, Durandarte,”—together with parts of those beginning, “Triste estaba el caballero,” and “Amara yo una Señora.”[192] Most of the rest, and all whose authors are known, are of less value and belong to a later period.

The Cancionero of Castillo, where they appeared, was enlarged and altered in eight subsequent editions, the last of which was published in 1573; but in all of them this little collection of ballads, as originally printed in the first edition, remained by itself, unchanged, though in the additions of newer poetry a modern ballad is occasionally inserted.[193] It may, therefore, be doubted whether the General Cancioneros did much to attract attention to the ballad poetry of the country, especially when we bear in mind that they are almost entirely filled with the works of the conceited school of the period that produced them, and were probably little known except among the courtly classes, who placed small value on what was old and national in their poetical literature.[194]

But while the Cancioneros were still in course of publication, a separate effort was made in the right direction to preserve the old ballads, and proved successful.[p. 126] In 1550, Stevan G. de Nagera printed, at Saragossa, in two successive parts, what he called a “Silva de Romances,” the errors of which he partly excuses in his Preface, on the ground that the memories of those from whom he gathered the ballads he publishes were often imperfect. Here, then, is the oldest of the proper ballad-books; one obviously taken from the traditions of the country. It is, therefore, the most curious and important of them all. A considerable number of the short poems it contains must, however, be regarded only as fragments of popular ballads already lost; while, on the contrary, that on the Count Claros is the complete one, of which the Cancionero, published forty years earlier, had given only such small portions as its editor had been able to pick up; both striking facts, which show, in opposite ways, that the ballads here collected were obtained, as the Preface says they were, from the memories of the people.

As might be anticipated from such an origin, their character and tone are very various. Some are connected with the fictions of chivalry, and the story of Charlemagne; the most remarkable of which are those on Gayferos and Melisendra, on the Marquis of Mantua and on Count Irlos.[195] Others, like that of the cross miraculously made for Alfonso the Chaste, and that on the all of Valencia, belong to the early history of Spain,[196] and may well have been among those[p. 127] old Castilian ballads which Argote de Molina says were used in compiling the “General Chronicle.” And finally, we have that deep, domestic tragedy of Count Alarcos, which goes back to some period in the national history or traditions of which we have no other early record.[197] Few among them, even the shortest and least perfect, are without interest; as, for instance, the obviously old one in which Virgil figures as a person punished for seducing the affections of a king’s daughter.[198] As specimens, however, of the national tone which prevails in most of the collection, it is better to read such ballads as that upon the rout of Roderic on the eighth day of the battle that surrendered Spain to the Moors,[199] or that on Garci Perez de Vargas, taken, probably, from the “General Chronicle,” and founded on a fact of so much consequence as to be recorded by Mariana, and so popular as to be referred to for its notoriety by Cervantes.[200]

The genuine ballad-book thus published was so suc[p. 128]cessful, that, in less than five years, three editions or recensions of it appeared; that of 1555, commonly called the Cancionero of Antwerp, being the last, the amplest, and the best known. Other similar collections followed; particularly, one in nine parts, which, between 1593 and 1597, were separately published at Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid; a variety of sources, to which we no doubt owe, not only the preservation of so great a number of old ballads, but much of the richness and diversity we find in their subjects and tone;—all the great divisions of the kingdom, except the southwest, having sent in their long-accumulated wealth to fill this first great treasure-house of the national popular poetry. Like its humbler predecessor, it had great success. Large as it was originally, it was still further increased in four subsequent recensions, that appeared in the course of about fifteen years; the last being that of 1605-1614, in thirteen parts, constituting the great repository called the “Romancero General,” from which, and from the smaller and earlier ballad-books, we still draw nearly all that is curious and interesting in the old popular poetry of Spain. The whole number of ballads found in these several volumes is considerably over a thousand.[201]

But since the appearance of these collections, above two centuries ago, little has been done to increase our stock of old Spanish ballads. Small ballad-books on particular subjects, like those of the Twelve Peers and of the Cid, were, indeed, early selected from the larger ones, and have since been frequently called for by the general favor; but still it should be understood, that, from the middle and latter part of the seventeenth cen[p. 129]tury, the true popular ballads, drawn from the hearts and traditions of the common people, were thought little worthy of regard, and remained until lately floating about among the humbler classes that gave them birth. There, however, as if in their native homes, they have always been no less cherished and cultivated than they were at their first appearance, and there the old ballad-books themselves were oftenest found, until they were brought forth anew, to enjoy the favor of all, by Quintana, Depping, and Duran, who, in this, have but obeyed the feeling of the age in which we live.

The old collections of the sixteenth century, however, are still the only safe and sufficient sources in which to seek the true old ballads. That of 1593-1597 is particularly valuable, as we have already intimated, from the circumstance, that its materials were gathered so widely out of different parts of Spain; and if to the multitude of ballads it contains we add those found in the Cancionero of 1511, and in the ballad-book of 1550, we shall have the great body of the anonymous ancient Spanish ballads, more near to that popular tradition which was the common source of what is best in them than we can find it anywhere else.

But, from whatever source we may now draw them, we must give up, at once, all hope of arranging them in chronological order. They were originally printed in small volumes, or on separate sheets, as they chanced, from time to time, to be composed or found,—those that were taken from the memories of the blind ballad-singers in the streets by the side of those that were taken from the works of Lope de Vega and Góngora; and just as they were first collected, so they were afterwards heaped together in the General Romanceros, without affixing to them the names of their authors, or[p. 130] attempting to distinguish the ancient ballads from the recent, or even to group together such as belonged to the same subject. Indeed, they seem to have been published at all merely to furnish amusement to the less cultivated classes at home, or to solace the armies that were fighting the battles of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, in Italy, Germany, and Flanders; so that an orderly arrangement of any kind was a matter of small consequence. Nothing remains for us, therefore, but to consider them by their subjects; and for this purpose the most convenient distribution will be, first, into such as relate to fictions of chivalry, and especially to Charlemagne and his peers; next, such as regard Spanish history and traditions, with a few relating to classical antiquity; then such as are founded on Moorish adventures; and lastly, such as belong to the private life and manners of the Spaniards themselves. What do not fall naturally under one of these divisions are not, probably, ancient ballads; or, if they are such, are not of consequence enough to be separately noticed.

Ballads of Chivalry.—The first thing that strikes us, on opening any one of the old Spanish ballad-books, is the national air and spirit that prevail throughout them. But we look in vain for many of the fictions found in the popular poetry of other countries at the same period, some of which we might well expect to find here. Even that chivalry, which was so akin to the character and condition of Spain when the ballads appeared, fails to sweep by us with the train of its accustomed personages. Of Arthur and his Round Table the old ballads tell us nothing at all, nor of the “Mervaile of the Graal,” nor of Perceval, nor of the Palmerins, nor of many other well-known and famous heroes of the shadow land of chivalry. Later, indeed, some of these personages figure largely in the Spanish prose romances. But, for a long time, the history of Spain itself furnished materials enough for its more popular poetry; and therefore, though Amadis, Lancelot du Lac, Tristan de Leonnais, and their compeers, present themselves now and then in the ballads, it is not till after the prose romances, filled with their adventures,[p. 132] had made them familiar. Even then, they are somewhat awkwardly introduced, and never occupy any well-defined place; for the stories of the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio were much nearer to the hearts of the Spanish people, and had left little space for such comparatively cold and unsubstantial fancies.

The only considerable exception to this remark is to be found in the stories connected with Charlemagne and his peers. That great sovereign—who, in the darkest period of Europe since the days of the Roman republic, roused up the nations, not only by the glory of his military conquests, but by the magnificence of his civil institutions—crossed the Pyrenees in the latter part of the eighth century, at the solicitation of one of his Moorish allies, and ravaged the Spanish marches as far as the Ebro, taking Pamplona and Saragossa.[202] The impression he made there seems to have been the same he made everywhere; and from this time the splendor of his great name and deeds was connected in the minds of the Spanish people with wild imaginations of their own achievements, and gave birth to that series of fictions which is embraced in the story of Bernardo del Carpio, and ends with the great rout, when, according to the persuasions of the national vanity,

These picturesque adventures, chiefly without countenance from history, in which the French paladins appear associated with fabulous Spanish heroes, such as Montesinos and Durandarte,[203] and once with the noble Moor[p. 133] Calaynos, are represented with some minuteness in the old Spanish ballads. The largest number, including the longest and the best, are to be found in the ballad-book of 1550-1555, to which may be added a few from that of 1593-1597, making together somewhat more than fifty, of which only twenty occur in the collection expressly devoted to the Twelve Peers, and first published in 1608. Some of them are evidently very old; as, for instance, that on the Conde d’ Irlos, that on the Marquis of Mantua, two on Claros of Montalban, and both the fragments on Durandarte, the last of which can be traced back to the Cancionero of 1511.[204]

The ballads of this class are occasionally quite long, and approach the character of the old French and English metrical romances; that of the Conde d’ Irlos extending to about thirteen hundred lines. The longer ballads, too, are generally the best; and those, through large portions of which the same asonante, and sometimes, even, the same consonante or full rhyme, is continued to the end, have a solemn harmony in their protracted cadences, that produces an effect on the feelings like the chanting of a rich and well-sustained recitative.

Taken as a body, they have a grave tone, combined with the spirit of a picturesque narrative, and entirely different from the extravagant and romantic air afterwards given to the same class of fictions in Italy, and even from that of the few Spanish ballads which, at a[p. 134] later period, were constructed out of the imaginative and fantastic materials found in the poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. But in all ages and in all forms, they have been favorites with the Spanish people. They were alluded to as such above five hundred years ago, in the oldest of the national chronicles; and when, at the end of the last century, Sarmiento notices the ballad-book of the Twelve Peers, he speaks of it as one which the peasantry and the children of Spain still knew by heart.[205]

Historical Ballads.—The most important and the largest division of the Spanish ballads is, however, the historical. Nor is this surprising. The early heroes in Spanish history grew so directly out of the popular character, and the early achievements of the national arms so nearly touched the personal condition of every Christian in the Peninsula, that they naturally became the first and chief subjects of a poetry which has always, to a remarkable degree, been the breathing of the popular feelings and passions. It would be easy, therefore, to collect a series of ballads,—few in number as far as respects the Gothic and Roman periods, but ample from the time of Roderic and the Moorish conquest of Spain down to the moment when its restoration was gloriously fulfilled in the fall of Granada,—a series which would constitute such a poetical illustration of Spanish history as can be brought in aid of the history of no other country. But, for our present purpose, it is enough to select a few sketches from these remarkable ballads devoted to the greater heroes,—personages half-shadowy, half-historical,—who, between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the twelfth century, occupy a wide space in all the old traditions, and[p. 135] serve alike to illustrate the early popular character in Spain, and the poetry to which that character gave birth.

The first of these, in the order of time, is Bernardo del Carpio, concerning whom we have about forty ballads, which, with the accounts in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, have constituted the foundations for many a drama and tale, and at least three long heroic poems. According to these early narratives, Bernardo flourished about the year 800, and was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de Saldaña and the sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was so much offended, that he kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment, and sent the Infanta to a convent; educating Bernardo as his own son, and keeping him ignorant of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo, ending with the victory of Roncesvalles,—his efforts to procure the release of his father, when he learns who his father is,—the falsehood of the king, who promises repeatedly to give up the Count de Saldaña and as often breaks his word,—with the despair of Bernardo, and his final rebellion, after the Count’s death in prison,—are all as fully represented in the ballads as they are in the chronicles, and constitute some of the most romantic and interesting portions of each.[206]

Of the ballads which contain this story, and which generally suppose the whole of it to have passed in one reign, though the Chronicle spreads it over three, none, perhaps, is finer than the one in which the Count de Saldaña, in his solitary prison, complains of his son, who, he supposes, must know his descent, and of his wife, the Infanta, who, he presumes, must be in league[p. 136] with her royal brother. After a description of the castle in which he is confined, the Count says:—

[p. 137]The old Spanish ballads have often a resemblance to each other in their tone and phraseology; and occasionally several seem imitated from some common original. Thus, in another, on this same subject of the Count de Saldaña’s imprisonment, we find the length of time he had suffered, and the idea of his relationship and blood, enforced in the following words, not of the Count himself, but of Bernardo, when addressing the king:—

In reading the ballads relating to Bernardo del Carpio, it is impossible not to be often struck with their resemblance to the corresponding passages of the “General Chronicle.” Some of them are undoubtedly copied from it; others possibly may have been, in more ancient forms, among the poetical materials out of which we know that Chronicle was in part composed.[209] The best[p. 138] are those which are least strictly conformed to the history itself; but all, taken together, form a curious and interesting series, that serves strikingly to exhibit the manners and feelings of the people in the wild times of which they speak, as well as in the later periods when many of them must have been written.

The next series is that on Fernan Gonzalez, a popular chieftain, whom we have already mentioned, when noticing his metrical chronicle; and one who, in the middle of the tenth century, recovered Castile anew from the Moors, and became its first sovereign Count. The number of ballads relating to him is not large; probably not twenty. The most poetical are those which describe his being twice rescued from prison by his courageous wife, and those which relate his contest with King Sancho, where he displayed all the turbulence and cunning of a robber baron, in the Middle Ages. Nearly all their facts may be found in the Third Part of the “General Chronicle”; and though only a few of the ballads themselves appear to be derived from it as distinctly as some of those on Bernardo del Carpio, still two or three are evidently indebted to[p. 139] that Chronicle for their materials and phraseology, while yet others may possibly, in some ruder shape, have preceded it, and contributed to its composition.[210]

The ballads which naturally form the next group are those on the Seven Lords of Lara, who lived in the time of Garcia Ferrandez, the son of Fernan Gonzalez. Some of them are beautiful, and the story they contain is one of the most romantic in Spanish history. The seven Lords of Lara, in consequence of a family quarrel, are betrayed by their uncle into the hands of the Moors, and put to death; while their father, by the basest treason, is confined in a Moorish prison, where, by a noble Moorish lady, he has an eighth son, the famous Mudarra, who at last avenges all the wrongs of his race. On this story there are about thirty ballads; some very old, and exhibiting either inventions or traditions not elsewhere recorded, while others seem to have come directly from the “General Chronicle.” The following is a part of one of the last, and a good specimen of the whole:—[211]

But, as might be anticipated, the Cid was seized upon with the first formation of the language as the subject of popular poetry, and has been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of Spanish history or fable.[212] They were first collected in a separate ballad-book as early as 1612, and have continued[p. 141] to be published and republished at home and abroad down to our own times.[213] It would be easy to find a hundred and sixty; some of them very ancient; some poetical; many prosaic and poor. The chronicles seem to have been little resorted to in their composition.[214] The circumstances of the Cid’s history, whether true or fictitious, were too well settled in the popular faith, and too familiar to all Christian Spaniards, to render the use of such materials necessary. No portion of the old ballads, therefore, is more strongly marked with the spirit of their age and country; and none constitutes a series so complete. They give us apparently the whole of the Cid’s history, which we find nowhere else entire; neither in the ancient poem, which does not pretend to be a life of him; nor in the prose chronicle, which does not begin so early in his story; nor in the Latin document, which is too brief and condensed. At the very outset, we have the following minute and living picture of the mortification and sufferings of Diego Laynez, the Cid’s father, in consequence of the blow he had received from Count Lozano, which his age rendered it impossible for him to avenge:—

In this state of his father’s feelings, Roderic, a mere stripling, determines to avenge the insult by challenging Count Lozano, then the most dangerous knight and the first nobleman in the kingdom. The result is the death of his proud and injurious enemy; but the daughter of the fallen Count, the fair Ximena, demands vengeance of the king, and the whole is adjusted, after the rude fashion of those times, by a marriage between the parties, which necessarily ends the feud.

The ballads, thus far, relate only to the early youth of the Cid in the reign of Ferdinand the Great, and constitute a separate series, that gave to Guillen de Castro, and after him to Corneille, the best materials[p. 143] for their respective tragedies on this part of the Cid’s story. But at the death of Ferdinand, his kingdom was divided, according to his will, among his four children; and then we have another series of ballads on the part taken by the Cid in the wars almost necessarily produced by such a division, and in the siege of Zamora, which fell to the share of Queen Urraca, and was assailed by her brother, Sancho the Brave. In one of these ballads, the Cid, sent by Sancho to summon the city, is thus reproached and taunted by Urraca, who is represented as standing on one of its towers, and answering him as he addressed her from below:—

[p. 144]Alfonso the Sixth succeeded on the death of Sancho, who perished miserably by treason before the walls of Zamora; but the Cid quarrelled with his new master, and was exiled. At this moment begins the old poem already mentioned; but even here and afterwards the ballads form a more continuous account of his life, carrying us, often with great minuteness of detail, through his conquest of Valencia, his restoration to the king’s favor, his triumph over the Counts of Carrion, his old age, death, and burial, and giving us, when taken together, what Müller the historian and Herder the philosopher consider, in its main circumstances, a trustworthy history, but what can hardly be more than a poetical version of traditions current at the different times when its different portions were composed.

Indeed, in the earlier part of the period when historical ballads were written, their subjects seem rather to have been chosen among the traditional heroes of the country, than among the known and ascertained events in its annals. Much fiction, of course, was mingled with whatever related to such personages by the willing credulity of patriotism, and portions of the ballads about them are incredible to any modern faith; so that we can hardly fail to agree with the good sense[p. 145] of the canon in Don Quixote, when he says, “There is no doubt there was such a man as the Cid and such a man as Bernardo del Carpio, but much doubt whether they achieved what is imputed to them”;[217] while, at the same time, we must admit there is no less truth in the shrewd intimation of Sancho, that, after all, the old ballads are too old to tell lies. At least, some of them are so.

At a later period, all sorts of subjects were introduced into the ballads; ancient subjects as well as modern, sacred as well as profane. Even the Greek and Roman fables were laid under contribution, as if they were historically true; but more ballads are connected with Spanish history than with any other, and, in general, they are better. The most striking peculiarity of the whole mass is, perhaps, to be found in the degree in which it expresses the national character. Loyalty is constantly prominent. The Lord of Buitrago sacrifices his own life to save that of his sovereign.[218] The Cid sends rich spoils from his conquests in Valencia to the ungrateful king who had driven him thither as an exile.[219] Bernardo del Carpio bows in submission to the uncle who basely and brutally outrages[p. 146] his filial affections;[220] and when, driven to despair, he rebels, the ballads and the chronicles absolutely forsake him. In short, this and the other strong traits of the national character are constantly appearing in the old historical ballads, and constitute a chief part of the peculiar charm that invests them.

Ballads on Moorish Subjects.—The Moorish ballads form a brilliant and large class by themselves, but none of them are as old as the earliest historical ballads. Indeed, their very subjects intimate their later origin. Few can be found alluding to known events or personages that occur before the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and even in these few the proofs of a more recent and Christian character are abundant. The truth appears to be, that, after the final overthrow of the Moorish power, when the conquerors for the first time came into full possession of whatever was most luxurious in the civilization of their enemies, the tempting subjects their situation suggested were at once seized upon by the spirit of their popular poetry. The sweet South, with its picturesque, though effeminate, refinement; the foreign, yet not absolutely stranger, manners of its people; its magnificent and fantastic architecture; the stories of the warlike achievements and disasters at Baza, at Ronda, and at Alhama, with the romantic adventures and fierce feuds of the Zegris and Abencerrages, the Gomeles and the Aliatares;—all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada, its rich plain and snow[p. 147]capped mountains, that fairy land which the elder and sterner ballad poetry of the North had failed to create. From this time, therefore, we find a new class of subjects, such as the loves of Gazul and Abindarraez, with games and tournaments in the Bivarrambla, and tales of Arabian nights in the Generalife; in short, whatever was matter of Moorish tradition or manners, or might by the popular imagination be deemed such, was wrought into Spanish ballad poetry, until the very excess became ridiculous, and the ballads themselves laughed at one another for deserting their own proper subjects, and becoming, as it were, renegades to nationality and patriotism.[221]

The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century that elapsed after the fall of Granada; the same in which all classes of the ballads were first written down and printed. The early collections give full proof of this. Those of 1511 and 1550 contain several Moorish ballads, and that of 1593 contains above two hundred. But though their subjects involve known occurrences, they are hardly ever really historical; as, for instance, the well-known ballad on the tournament in Toledo, which is supposed to have happened before the year 1085, while its names belong to the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and the ballad of King Belchite, which, like many others, has[p. 148] a subject purely imaginary. Indeed, this romantic character is the prevalent one in the ballads of this class, and gives them much of their interest; a fact well illustrated by that beginning “The star of Venus rises now,” which is one of the best and most consistent in the “Romancero General,” and yet, by its allusions to Venus and to Rodamonte, and its mistake in supposing a Moor to have been Alcayde of Seville, a century after Seville had become a Christian city, shows that there was, in its composition, no serious thought of any thing but poetical effect.[222]

These, with some of the ballads on the famous Gazul, occur in the popular story of the “Wars of Granada,” where they are treated as if contemporary with the facts they record, and are beautiful specimens of the poetry which the Spanish imagination delighted to connect with that most glorious event in the national history.[223] Others can be found in a similar tone on the stories, partly or wholly fabulous, of Muça, Xarifé, Lisaro, and Tarfé; while yet others, in greater number, belong to the treasons and rivalries, the plots and adventures, of the more famous Zegris and Abencerrages, which, as far as they are founded in fact, show how internal dissensions, no less than external disasters, prepared the way for the final overthrow of the Moorish empire. Some of them were probably written in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; many more in the time of Charles the Fifth; the most brilliant, but not the best, somewhat later.

Ballads on Manners and Private Life.—But the bal[p. 149]lad poetry of Spain was not confined to heroic subjects drawn from romance or history, or to subjects depending on Moorish traditions and manners; and therefore, though these are the three largest classes into which it is divided, there is yet a fourth, which may be called miscellaneous, and which is of no little moment. For, in truth, the poetical feelings even of the lower portions of the Spanish people were spread out over more subjects than we should anticipate; and their genius, which, from the first, had a charter as free as the wind, has thus left us a vast number of records, that prove at least the variety of the popular perceptions, and the quickness and tenderness of the popular sensibility. Many of the miscellaneous ballads thus produced—perhaps most of them—are effusions of love; but many are pastoral, many are burlesque, satirical, and picaresque; many are called Letrillas, but have nothing epistolary about them except the name; many are lyrical in their tone, if not in their form; and many are descriptive of the manners and amusements of the people at large. But one characteristic runs through the whole of them. They are true representations of Spanish life. Some of those first printed have already been referred to; but there is a considerable class marked by an attractive simplicity of thought and expression, united to a sort of mischievous shrewdness, that should be particularly noticed. No such popular poetry exists in any other language. A number of these ballads occur in the peculiarly valuable Sixth Part of the Romancero, that appeared in 1594, and was gathered by Pedro Flores, as he himself tells us, in part least, from the memories of the common people.[224][p. 150] They remind us not unfrequently of the lighter poetry of the Archpriest of Hita in the middle of the fourteenth century, and may, probably, be traced back in their tone and spirit to a yet earlier period. Indeed, they are quite a prominent and charming part of all the earliest Romanceros, not a few of them being as simple, and yet as shrewd and humorous, as the following, in which an elder sister is represented lecturing a younger one, on first noticing in her the symptoms of love:—

A single specimen like this, however, can give no idea of the great variety in the class of ballads to which it belongs, nor of their poetical beauty. To feel their true value and power, we must read large numbers of[p. 153] them, and read them, too, in their native language; for there is a winning freshness in the originals, as they lie imbedded in the old Romanceros, that escapes in translations, however free or however strict;—a remark that should be extended to the historical as well as the miscellaneous portions of that great mass of popular poetry which is found in the early ballad-books, and which, though it is all nearly three centuries old, and some of it older, has been much less carefully considered than it deserves to be.

Yet there are certainly few portions of the literature of any country that will better reward a spirit of adventurous inquiry than these ancient Spanish ballads, in all their forms. In many respects, they are unlike the earliest narrative poetry of any other part of the world; in some, they are better. The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal coarseness and violence prevailed, which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness, but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty; a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons or the gross maraudings of a border warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio; or if we compare the deep tragedy of Edom o’ Gordon with that of the Conde Alarcos; or what would be better than either,[p. 154] if we would sit down to the “Romancero General,” with its poetical confusion of Moorish splendors and Christian loyalty, just when we have come fresh from Percy’s “Reliques,” or Scott’s “Minstrelsy.”[226]

But, besides what the Spanish ballads possess different from the popular poetry of the rest of Europe, they exhibit, as no others exhibit it, that nationality which is the truest element of such poetry everywhere. They seem, indeed, as we read them, to be often little more than the great traits of the old Spanish character brought out by the force of poetical enthusiasm; so that, if their nationality were taken away from them, they would cease to exist. This, in its turn, has preserved them down to the present day, and will continue to preserve them hereafter. The great Castilian heroes, such as the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith and poetry of the common people of Spain; and are still, in some degree, honored as they were honored in the age of the Great Captain, or, farther back, in that of Saint Ferdinand. The stories of Guarinos, too, and of the defeat of Roncesvalles are still sung by the wayfaring muleteers, as they were when Don Quixote heard them in his journeying to Toboso; and the showmen still rehearse the adventures of Gayferos and Melisendra, in the streets of Seville, as they did at the solitary inn of Montesinos, when he encountered them there. In short, the ancient Spanish ballads are so truly national in their spirit, that they became at once identified with the popular char[p. 155]acter that had produced them, and with that same character will go onward, we doubt not, till the Spanish people shall cease to have a separate and independent existence.[227]

Chronicles.—Ballad poetry constituted, no doubt, originally, the amusement and solace of the whole mass of the Spanish people; for, during a long period of their early history, there was little division of the nation into strongly marked classes, little distinction in manners, little variety or progress in refinement. The wars going on with unappeased violence from century to century, though by their character not without an elevating and poetical influence upon all, yet oppressed and crushed all by the sufferings that followed in their train, and kept the tone and condition of the body of the Spanish nation more nearly at the same level than the national character was probably ever kept, for so long a period, in any other Christian country. But as the great Moorish contest was transferred to the South, Leon, Castile, and indeed the whole North, became comparatively quiet and settled. Wealth began to be accumulated in the monasteries, and leisure followed. The castles, instead of being constantly in a state of anxious preparation against the common enemy, were converted into abodes of a crude, but free, hospitality; and those distinctions of society that come from differ[p. 157]ent degrees of power, wealth, and cultivation grew more and more apparent. From this time, then, the ballads, though not really neglected, began to subside into the lower portions of society, where for so long a period they remained; while the more advanced and educated sought, or created for themselves, forms of literature better suited, in some respects, to their altered condition, and marking at once more leisure and knowledge, and a more settled system of social life.

The oldest of these forms was that of the Spanish prose chronicles, which, besides being called for by the changed condition of things, were the proper successors of the monkish Latin chronicles and legends, long before known in the country, and were of a nature to win favor with men who themselves were every day engaged in achievements such as these very stories celebrated, and who consequently looked on the whole class of works to which they belonged as the pledge and promise of their own future fame. The chronicles were, therefore, not only the natural offspring of the times, but were fostered and favored by the men who controlled the times.[228]

I. General Chronicles and Royal Chronicles.—Under such circumstances, we might well anticipate that the proper style of the Spanish chronicle would first appear at the court, or in the neighbourhood of the throne; because at court were to be found the spirit and the materials most likely to give it birth. But it is still to be considered remarkable, that the first of the[p. 158] chronicles in the order of time, and the first in merit, comes directly from a royal hand. It is called in the printed copies “The Chronicle of Spain,” or “The General Chronicle of Spain,” and is, no doubt, the same work earlier cited in manuscript as “The History of Spain.”[229] In its characteristic Prologue, after solemnly giving the reasons why such a work ought to be compiled, we are told: “And therefore we, Don Alfonso, ... son of the very noble King Don Fernando, and of the Queen Doña Beatrice, have ordered to be collected as many books as we could have of histories that relate any thing of the deeds done aforetime in Spain, and have taken the chronicle of the Archbishop Don Rodrigo, ... and of Master Lucas, Bishop of Tuy, ... and composed this book”; words which give us the declaration of Alfonso the Wise, that he himself composed this Chronicle,[230] and which thus carry it back[p. 159] certainly to a period before the year 1284, in which he died. From internal evidence, however, it is probable that it was written in the early part of his reign, which began in 1252; and that he was assisted in its composition by persons familiar with Arabic literature and with whatever there was of other refinement in the age.[231]

It is divided, perhaps not by its author, into four parts: the first opening with the creation of the world, and giving a large space to Roman history, but hastening over every thing else till it comes to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths; the second comprehending the Gothic empire of the country and its conquest by the Moors; the third coming down to the reign of Ferdinand the Great, early in the eleventh century; and the fourth closing in 1252, with the death of Saint Ferdinand, the conqueror of Andalusia and father of Alfonso himself.

Its earliest portions are the least interesting. They contain such notions and accounts of antiquity, and especially of the Roman empire, as were current among the common writers of the Middle Ages, though occasionally, as in the case of Dido,—whose memory has[p. 160] always been defended by the more popular chroniclers and poets of Spain against the imputations of Virgil,[232]—we have a glimpse of feelings and opinions which may be considered more national. Such passages naturally become more frequent in the Second Part, which relates to the empire of the Visigoths in Spain; though here, as the ecclesiastical writers are almost the only authority that could be resorted to, their peculiar tone prevails too much. But the Third Part is quite free and genial in its spirit, and truly Spanish; setting forth the rich old traditions of the country about the first outbreak of Pelayo from the mountains;[233] the stories of Bernardo del Carpio,[234] Fernan Gonzalez,[235] and the Seven Children of Lara;[236] with spirited sketches of Charlemagne,[237] and accounts of miracles like those of the cross made by angels for Alfonso the Chaste,[238] and of Santiago fighting against the infidels in the glorious battles of Clavijo and Hazinas.[239]

The last part, though less carefully compiled and elaborated, is in the same general tone. It opens with the well-known history of the Cid,[240] to whom, as to the great hero of the popular admiration, a disproportion[p. 161]ate space is assigned. After this, being already within a hundred and fifty years of the writer’s own time, we, of course, approach the confines of more sober history, and finally, in the reign of his father, Saint Ferdinand, fairly settle upon its sure and solid foundations.

The striking characteristic of this remarkable Chronicle is, that, especially in its Third Part, and in a portion of the Fourth, it is a translation, if we may so speak, of the old poetical fables and traditions of the country into a simple, but picturesque, prose, intended to be sober history. What were the sources of those purely national passages, which we should be most curious to trace back and authenticate, we can never know. Sometimes, as in the case of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, the ballads and gestes of the olden time[241] are distinctly appealed to. Sometimes, as in the case of the Children of Lara, an early Latin chronicle, or perhaps some poetical legend, of which all trace is now lost, may have constituted the foundations of the narrative.[242] And once at least, if not oftener, an entire and separate history, that of the Cid, is inserted without being well fitted into its place. Throughout all these portions, the poetical character predominates much oftener than it does in the rest; for while, in the earlier parts, what had been rescued of ancient history is given with a grave sort of exactness, that renders it dry and uninteresting, we have in the concluding portion a simple narrative, where, as in the account of the death of[p. 162] Saint Ferdinand, we feel persuaded that we read touching details sketched by a faithful and affectionate eyewitness.

Among the more poetical passages are two at the end of the Second Part, which are introduced, as contrasts to each other, with a degree of art and skill rare in these simple-hearted old chronicles. They relate to what was long called “the Ruin of Spain,”[243] or its conquest by the Moors, and consist of two picturesque presentments of its condition before and after that event, which the Spaniards long seemed to regard as dividing the history of the world into its two great constituent portions. In the first of these passages, entitled “Of the Good Things of Spain,”[244] after a few general remarks, the fervent old chronicler goes on: “For this Spain, whereof we have spoken, is like the very Paradise of God; for it is watered by five noble rivers, which are the Duero, and the Ebro, and the Tagus, and the Guadalquivir, and the Guadiana; and each of these hath, between itself and the others, lofty mountains and sierras;[245] and their valleys and plains are great and broad, and, through the richness of the soil and the watering of the rivers, they bear many fruits and are full of abundance. And Spain, above all other things, is skilled in war, feared and very bold in battle; light of heart, loyal to her lord, diligent in learning, courtly in speech, accomplished in all good things. Nor is there land in the world that may be accounted like her in abundance, nor may any equal her in strength, and few there be in[p. 163] the world so great. And above all doth Spain abound in magnificence, and more than all is she famous for her loyalty. O Spain! there is no man can tell of all thy worthiness!”

But now reverse the medal, and look on the other picture, entitled “The Mourning of Spain,” when, as the Chronicle tells us, after the victory of the Moors, “all the land remained empty of people, bathed in tears, a byword, nourishing strangers, deceived of her own people, widowed and deserted of her sons, confounded among barbarians, worn out with weeping and wounds, decayed in strength, weakened, uncomforted, abandoned of all her own.... Forgotten are her songs, and her very language is become foreign and her words strange.”

The more attractive passages of the Chronicle, however, are its long narratives. They are also the most poetical;—so poetical, indeed, that large portions of them, with little change in their phraseology, have since been converted into popular ballads;[246] while other portions, hardly less considerable, are probably derived from similar, but older, popular poetry, now either wholly lost, or so much changed by successive oral traditions, that it has ceased to show its relationship with the chronicling stories to which it originally gave birth.[p. 164] Among these narrative passages, one of the most happy is the history of Bernardo del Carpio, for parts of which the Chronicle appeals to ballads more ancient than itself, while to the whole, as it stands in the Chronicle, ballads more modern have, in their turn, been much indebted. It is founded on the idea of a poetical contest between Bernardo’s loyalty to his king, on the one side, and his attachment to his imprisoned father, on the other. For he was, as we have already learned from the old ballads and traditions, the son of a secret marriage between the king’s sister and the Count de Sandias de Saldaña, which had so offended the king, that he kept the Count in prison from the time he discovered it, and concealed whatever related to Bernardo’s birth; educating him meantime as his own son. When, however, Bernardo grew up, he became the great hero of his age, rendering important military services to his king and country. “But yet,” according to the admirably strong expression of the old Chronicle,[247] “when he knew all this, and that it was his own father that was in prison, it grieved him to the heart, and his blood turned in his body, and he went to his house, making the greatest moan that could be, and put on raiment of mourning, and went to the King, Don Alfonso. And the king, when he saw it, said to him, ‘Bernardo, do you desire my death?’ for Bernardo until that time had held himself to be the son of the King, Don Alfonso. And Bernardo said, ‘Sire, I do not wish for your death, but I have great grief, because my father, the Count of Sandias, lieth in prison, and I beseech you of your grace that you would command him to be given up to me.’ And the King, Don Alfonso, when he heard this, said to him, ‘Bernardo, begone from before me, and never[p. 165] be so bold as to speak to me again of this matter; for I swear to you, that, in all the days that I shall live, you shall never see your father out of his prison.’ And Bernardo said to him, ‘Sire, you are my king, and may do whatsoever you shall hold for good, but I pray God that he will put it into your heart to take him thence; nevertheless, I, Sire, shall in no wise cease to serve you in all that I may.’”

Notwithstanding this refusal, however, when great services are wanted from Bernardo in troubled times, his father’s liberty is promised him as a reward; but these promises are constantly broken, until he renounces his allegiance, and makes war upon his false uncle, and on one of his successors, Alfonso the Great.[248] At last, Bernardo succeeds in reducing the royal authority so low, that the king again, and more solemnly, promises to give up his prisoner, if Bernardo, on his part, will give up the great castle of Carpio, which had rendered him really formidable. The faithful son does not hesitate, and the king sends for the Count, but finds him dead, probably by the royal procurement. The Count’s death, however, does not prevent the base monarch from determining to keep the castle, which was the stipulated price of his prisoner’s release. He therefore directs the dead body to be brought, as if alive, on horseback, and, in company with Bernardo, who has no suspicion of the cruel mockery, goes out to meet it.

“And when they were all about to meet,” the old Chronicle goes on, “Bernardo began to shout aloud with great joy, and to say, ‘Cometh indeed the Count Don Sandias de Saldaña!’ And the King, Don Alfonso, said to him, ‘Behold where he cometh! Go, therefore, and[p. 166] salute him whom you have sought so much to behold.’ And Bernardo went towards him, and kissed his hand; but when he found it cold, and saw that all his color was black, he knew that he was dead; and with the grief he had from it, he began to cry aloud and to make great moan, saying, ‘Alas! Count Sandias, in an evil hour was I born, for never was man so lost as I am now for you; for, since you are dead, and my castle is gone, I know no counsel by which I may do aught.’ And some say in their ballads (cantares de gesta) that the king then said, ‘Bernardo, now is not the time for much talking, and therefore I bid you go straightway forth from my land,’” etc.

This constitutes one of the most interesting parts of the old General Chronicle: but the whole is curious, and much of it is rich and picturesque. It is written with more freedom and less exactness of style than some of the other works of its noble author; and in the last division shows a want of finish, which in the first two parts is not perceptible, and in the third only slightly so. But everywhere it breathes the spirit of its age, and, when taken together, is not only the most interesting of the Spanish chronicles, but the most interesting of all that, in any country, mark the transition from its poetical and romantic traditions to the grave exactness of historical truth.

The next of the early chronicles that claims our notice is the one called, with primitive simplicity, “The Chronicle of the Cid”; in some respects as important as the one we have just examined; in others, less so. The first thing that strikes us, when we open it, is, that, although it has much of the appearance and arrangement of a separate and independent work, it is substantially the same with the two hundred and eighty pages which[p. 167] constitute the first portion of the Fourth Book of the General Chronicle of Spain; so that one must certainly have been taken from the other, or both from some common source. The latter is, perhaps, the more obvious conclusion, and has sometimes been adopted;[249] but, on a careful examination, it will probably be found that the Chronicle of the Cid is rather taken from that of Alfonso the Wise, than from any materials common to both and older than both. For, in the first place, each, in the same words, often claims to be a translation from the same authors; yet, as the language of both is frequently identical for pages together, this cannot be true, unless one copied from the other. And, secondly, the Chronicle of the Cid, in some instances, corrects the errors of the General Chronicle, and in one instance at least makes an addition to it of a date later than that of the Chronicle itself.[250] But, passing over the details of[p. 168] this obscure, but not unimportant, point, it is sufficient for our present purpose to say, that the Chronicle of the Cid is the same in substance with the history of the Cid in the General Chronicle, and was probably taken from it.

When it was arranged in its present form, or by whom this was done, we have no notice.[251] But it was[p. 169] found, as we now read it, at Cardenas, in the very monastery where the Cid lies buried, and was seen there by the youthful Ferdinand, great-grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was afterwards emperor of Germany, and who was induced to give the abbot an order to have it printed.[252] This was done accordingly in 1512, since which time there have been but two editions of it, those of 1552 and of 1593, until it was reprinted in 1844, at Marburg, in Germany, with an excellent critical preface in Spanish, by Huber.

As a part of the General Chronicle of Spain,[253] we must, with a little hesitation, pronounce the Chronicle of the Cid less interesting than several of the portions that immediately precede it. But still, it is the great[p. 170] national version of the achievements of the great national hero who freed the fourth part of his native land from the loathed intrusion of the Moors, and who stands to this day connected with the proudest recollections of Spanish glory. It begins with the Cid’s first victories under Ferdinand the Great, and therefore only alludes to his early youth, and to the extraordinary circumstances on which Corneille, following the old Spanish play and ballads, has founded his tragedy; but it gives afterwards, with great minuteness, nearly every one of the adventures that in the older traditions are ascribed to him, down to his death, which happened in 1099, or rather down to the death of Alfonso the Sixth, ten years later.

Much of it is as fabulous[254] as the accounts of Bernardo del Carpio and the Children of Lara, though perhaps not more so than might be expected in a work of such a period and such pretensions. Its style, too, is suited to its romantic character, and is more diffuse and grave than that of the best narrative portions of the General Chronicle. But then, on the other hand, it is overflowing with the very spirit of the times when it was written, and offers us so true a picture of their generous virtues, as well as their stern violence, that it may well be regarded as one of the best books in the world, if not the very best, for studying the real character and manners of the ages of chivalry. Occasionally there are passages in it like the following description of the Cid’s feelings and conduct, when he left his good castle of Bivar, unjustly and cruelly exiled by the king,[p. 171] which, whether invented or not, are as true to the spirit of the period they represent, as if the minutest of their details were ascertained facts.

“And when he saw his courts deserted and without people, and the perches without falcons, and the gateway without its judgment-seats, he turned himself toward the East and knelt down and said, ‘Saint Mary, Mother, and all other Saints, graciously beseech God that he would grant me might to overcome all these pagans, and that I may gain from them wherewith to do good to my friends, and to all those that may follow and help me.’ And then he went on and asked for Alvar Fañez, and said to him, ‘Cousin, what fault have the poor in the wrong that the king has done us? Warn all my people, then, that they harm none, wheresoever we may go.’ And he called for his horse to mount. Then spake up an old woman standing at her door and said, ‘Go on with good luck, for you shall make spoil of whatsoever you may find or desire.’ And the Cid, when he heard that saying, rode on, for he would tarry no longer; and as he went out of Bivar, he said, ‘Now do I desire you should know, my friends, that it is the will of God that we should return to Castile with great honor and great gain.’”[255]

Some of the touches of manners in this little passage,[p. 172] such as the allusion to the judgment-seats at his gate, where the Cid in patriarchal simplicity had administered justice to his vassals, and the hint of the poor augury gathered from the old woman’s wish, which seems to be of more power with him than the prayer he had just uttered, or the bold hopes that were driving him to the Moorish frontiers,—such touches give life and truth to this old chronicle, and bring its times and feelings, as it were, sensibly before us. Adding its peculiar treasures to those contained in the rest of the General Chronicle, we shall find, in the whole, nearly all the romantic and poetical fables and adventures that belong to the earliest portions of Spanish history. At the same time, we shall obtain a living picture of the state of manners in that dark period, when the elements of modern society were just beginning to be separated from the chaos in which they had long struggled, and out of which, by the action of successive ages, they have been gradually wrought into those forms of policy which now give stability to governments and peace to the intercourse of men.

The idea of Alfonso the Wise, simply and nobly expressed in the opening of his Chronicle, that he was desirous to leave for posterity a record of what Spain had been and had done in all past time,[256] was not without influence upon the nation, even in the state in which it then was, and in which, for above a century afterwards, it continued. But, as in the case of that great king’s project for a uniform administration of justice by a settled code, his example was too much in advance of his age to be immediately followed; though, as in that memorable case, when it was once adopted, its fruits became abundant. The two next kings, Sancho the Brave and Ferdinand the Fourth, took no measures, so far as we know, to keep up and publish the history of their reigns. But Alfonso the Eleventh, the same monarch, it should be remembered, under whom the[p. 174] “Partidas” became the law of the land, recurred to the example of his wise ancestor, and ordered the annals of the kingdom to be continued, from the time when those of the General Chronicle ceased down to his own; embracing, of course, the reigns of Alfonso the Wise, Sancho the Brave, and Ferdinand the Fourth, or the period from 1252 to 1312.[257] This is the first instance of the appointment of a royal chronicler, and may, therefore, be regarded as the creation of an office of consequence in all that regards the history of the country, and which, however much it may have been neglected in later times, furnished important documents down to the reign of Charles the Fifth, and was continued, in form at least, till the establishment of the Academy of History in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

By whom this office was first filled does not appear; but the Chronicle itself seems to have been prepared about the year 1320. Formerly it was attributed to Fernan Sanchez de Tovar; but Fernan Sanchez was a personage of great consideration and power in the state, practised in public affairs, and familiar with their history, so that we can hardly attribute to him the mistakes with which this Chronicle abounds, especially in the part relating to Alfonso the Wise.[258] But, whoever may have been its author, the Chronicle, which, it may be noticed, is so distinctly divided into the three reigns, that it is rather three chronicles than one, has little value as a composition. Its narrative is given with a[p. 175] rude and dry formality, and whatever interest it awakens depends, not upon its style and manner, but upon the character of the events recorded, which sometimes have an air of adventure about them belonging to the elder times, and, like them, are picturesque.

The example of regular chronicling, having now been fairly set at the court of Castile, was followed by Henry the Second, who commanded his Chancellor and Chief-Justiciary, Juan Nuñez de Villaizan, to prepare, as we are told in the Preface, in imitation of the ancients, an account of his father’s reign. In this way, the series goes on unbroken, and now gives us the “Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh,”[259] beginning with his birth and education, of which the notices are slight, but relating amply the events from the time he came to the throne, in 1312, till his death in 1350. How much of it was actually written by the chancellor of the kingdom cannot be ascertained.[260] From different passages, it seems that an older chronicle was used freely in its composition;[261] and the whole should, therefore, probably be regarded as a compilation made under the responsibility of the highest personages of the realm. Its opening will show at once the grave and measured tone it takes, and the accuracy it claims for its dates and statements.

“God is the beginning and the means and the end of all things; and without him they cannot subsist. For by his power they are made, and by his wisdom ordered, and by his goodness maintained. And he is the Lord; and, in all things, almighty, and conqueror in[p. 176] all battles. Wherefore, whosoever would begin any good work should first name the name of God, and place him before all things, asking and beseeching of his mercy to give him knowledge and will and power, whereby he may bring it to a good end. Therefore will this pious chronicle henceforward relate whatsoever happened to the noble King, Don Alfonso, of Castile and Leon, and the battles and conquests and victories that he had and did in his life against Moors and against Christians. And it will begin in the fifteenth year of the reign of the most noble King, Don Fernando, his father.”[262]

The reign of the father, however, occupies only three short chapters; after which, the rest of the Chronicle, containing in all three hundred and forty-two chapters, comes down to the death of Alfonso, who perished of the plague before Gibraltar, and then abruptly closes. Its general tone is grave and decisive, like that of a person speaking with authority upon matters of importance, and it is rare that we find in it a sketch of manners like the following account of the young king at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

“And as long as he remained in the city of Valladolid, there were with him knights and esquires, and his tutor, Martin Fernandez de Toledo, that brought him up, and that had been with him a long time, even before the queen died, and other men, who had long been used to palaces, and to the courts of kings; and all these gave him an ensample of good manners. And, moreover, he had been brought up with the children of men of note, and with noble knights. But the king, of his own condition, was well-mannered in eating, and[p. 177] drank little, and was clad as became his estate; and in all other his customs he was well conditioned, for his speech was true Castilian, and he hesitated not in what he had to say. And so long as he was in Valladolid, he sat three days in the week to hear the complaints and suits that came before him; and he was shrewd in understanding the facts thereof, and he was faithful in secret matters, and loved them that served him, each after his place, and trusted truly and entirely those whom he ought to trust. And he began to be much given to horsemanship, and pleased himself with arms, and loved to have in his household strong men, that were bold and of good conditions. And he loved much all his own people, and was sore grieved at the great mischief and great harm there were in the land through failure of justice, and he had indignation against evil-doers.”[263]

But though there are few sketches in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh like the preceding, we find in general a well-ordered account of the affairs of that monarch’s long and active reign, given with a simplicity and apparent sincerity which, in spite of the formal plainness of its style, make it almost always interesting, and sometimes amusing.

The next considerable attempt approaches somewhat nearer to proper history. It is the series of chronicles relating to the troublesome reigns of Peter the Cruel and Henry the Second, to the hardly less unsettled times of John the First, and to the more quiet and prosperous reign of Henry the Third. They were written by Pedro Lopez de Ayala, in some respects the first Spaniard of his age; distinguished, as we have seen,[p. 178] among the poets of the latter part of the fourteenth century, and now to be noticed as the best prose-writer of the same period. He was born in 1332,[264] and, though only eighteen years old when Peter ascended the throne, was soon observed and employed by that acute monarch. But when troubles arose in the kingdom, Ayala left his tyrannical master, who had already shown himself capable of almost any degree of guilt, and joined his fortunes to those of Henry of Trastamara, the king’s illegitimate brother, who had, of course, no claim to the throne but such as was laid in the crimes of its possessor, and the good-will of the suffering nobles and people.

At first, the cause of Henry was successful. But Peter addressed himself for help to Edward the Black Prince, then in his duchy of Aquitaine, who, as Froissart relates, thinking it would be a great prejudice against the estate royal[265] to have a usurper succeed, entered Spain, and, with a strong hand, replaced the fallen monarch on his throne. At the decisive battle of Naxera, by which this was achieved, in 1367, Ayala, who bore his prince’s standard, was taken prisoner[266] and carried to England, where he wrote a part at least of his poems on a courtly life. Somewhat later, Peter, no longer supported by the Black Prince, was dethroned; and Ayala, who was then released from his tedious imprisonment, returned home, and afterwards became Grand-Chancellor to Henry the Second, in whose service he gained so much consideration and influence, that he seems to have descended as a sort of traditionary[p. 179] minister of state through the reign of John the First, and far into that of Henry the Third. Sometimes, indeed, like other grave personages, ecclesiastical as well as civil, he appeared as a military leader, and once again, in the disastrous battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, he was taken prisoner. But his Portuguese captivity does not seem to have been so long or so cruel as his English one; and, at any rate, the last years of his life were passed quietly in Spain. He died at Calahorra in 1407, seventy-five years old.

“He was,” says his nephew, the noble Fernan Perez de Guzman, in the striking gallery of portraits he has left us,[267] “He was a man of very gentle qualities and of good conversation; had a great conscience and feared God much. He loved knowledge, also, and gave himself much to reading books and histories; and though he was as goodly a knight as any, and of great discretion in the practices of the world, yet he was by nature bent on learning, and spent a great part of his time in reading and studying, not books of law, but of philosophy and history. Through his means some books are now known in Castile that were not known aforetime; such as Titus Livius, who is the most notable of the Roman historians; the ‘Fall of Princes’; the ‘Ethics’ of Saint Gregory; Isidorus ‘De Summo Bono’; Boethius; and the ‘History of Troy.’ He prepared the History of Castile from the King Don Pedro to the King Don Henry; and made a good book on Hunting, which he greatly affected, and another called ‘Rimado de Palacio.’”

We should not, perhaps, at the present day, claim so much reputation as his kinsman does for the Chancellor[p. 180] Ayala, in consequence of the interest he took in books of such doubtful value as Guido de Colonna’s “Trojan War,” and Boccaccio “De Casibus Principum,” but, in translating Livy,[268] he unquestionably rendered his country an important service. He rendered, too, a no less important service to himself; since a familiarity with Livy tended to fit him for the task of preparing the Chronicle, which now constitutes his chief distinction and merit.[269] It begins in 1350, where that of Alfonso the Eleventh ends, and comes down to the sixth year of Henry the Third, or to 1396, embracing that portion of the author’s own life which was between his eighteenth year and his sixty-fourth, and constituting the first safe materials for the history of his native country.

For such an undertaking Ayala was singularly well fitted. Spanish prose was already well advanced in his time; for Don John Manuel, the last of the elder school of good writers, did not die till Ayala was fifteen years old. He was, moreover, as we have seen, a scholar, and, for the age in which he lived, a remarkable one; and, what is of more importance than either of these circumstances, he was personally familiar with the course of public affairs during the forty-six years embraced by his Chronicle. Of all this traces are to be found in[p. 181] his work. His style is not, like that of the oldest chroniclers, full of a rich vivacity and freedom; but, without being over-carefully elaborated, it is simple and business-like; while, to give a more earnest air, if not an air of more truth to the whole, he has, in imitation of Livy, introduced into the course of his narrative set speeches and epistles intended to express the feelings and opinions of his principal actors more distinctly than they could be expressed by the mere facts and current of the story. Compared with the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, which preceded it by above a century, it lacks the charm of that poetical credulity which loves to deal in doubtful traditions of glory, rather than in those ascertained facts which are often little honorable either to the national fame or to the spirit of humanity. Compared with the Chronicle of Froissart, with which it was contemporary, we miss the honest-hearted, but somewhat childlike, enthusiasm that looks with unmingled delight and admiration upon all the gorgeous phantasmagoria of chivalry, and find, instead of it, the penetrating sagacity of an experienced statesman, who looks quite through the deeds of men, and, like Comines, thinks it not at all worth while to conceal the great crimes with which he has been familiar, if they can be but wisely and successfully set forth. When, therefore, we read Ayala’s Chronicle, we do not doubt that we have made an important step in the progress of the species of writing to which it belongs, and that we are beginning to approach the period when history is to teach with sterner exactness the lesson it has learned from the hard experience of the past.

Among the many curious and striking passages in Ayala’s Chronicle, the most interesting are, perhaps, those that relate to the unfortunate Blanche of Bour[p. 182]bon, the young and beautiful wife of Peter the Cruel, who, for the sake of María de Padilla, forsook her two days after his marriage, and, when he had kept her long in prison, at last sacrificed her to his base passion for his mistress; an event which excited, as we learn from Froissart’s Chronicle, a sensation of horror, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe, and became an attractive subject for the popular poetry of the old national ballads, several of which we find were devoted to it.[270] But it may well be doubted whether even the best of the ballads give us so near and moving a picture of her cruel sufferings as Ayala does, when, going on step by step in his passionless manner, he shows us the queen first solemnly wedded in the church at Toledo, and then pining in her prison at Medina Sidonia; the excitement of the nobles, and the indignation of the king’s own mother and family; carrying us all the time with painful exactness through the long series of murders and atrocities by which Pedro at last reaches the final crime which, during eight years, he had hesitated to commit. For there is, in the succession of scenes he thus exhibits to us, a circumstantial minuteness which is above all power of generalization, and brings the guilty monarch’s character more vividly before us than it could be brought by the most fervent spirit of poetry or of eloquence.[271] And it is precisely this cool and patient minuteness of the chronicler, founded on his personal knowledge, that gives its peculiar character to Ayala’s record of the four wild reigns in which he lived; pre[p. 183]senting them to us in a style less spirited and vigorous, indeed, than that of some of the older chronicles of the monarchy, but certainly in one more simple, more judicious, and more effective for the true purposes of history.[272]

The last of the royal chronicles that it is necessary to notice with much particularity is that of John the Second, which begins with the death of Henry the Third, and comes down to the death of John himself, in 1454.[273] It was the work of several hands, and contains[p. 184] internal evidence of having been written at different periods. Alvar Garcia de Santa María, no doubt, prepared the account of the first fourteen years, or to 1420, constituting about one third of the whole work;[274] after which, in consequence perhaps of his attachment to the Infante Ferdinand, who was regent during the minority of the king, and subsequently much disliked by him, his labors ceased.[275] Who wrote the next portion is not known;[276] but from about 1429 to 1445, John de Mena, the leading poet of his time, was the royal annalist, and, if we are to trust the letters of one of his friends, seems to have been diligent in collecting materials for his task, if not earnest in all its duties.[277] Other parts have been attributed to Juan Rodriguez del Padron, a poet, and Diego de Valera,[278] a knight and gentleman often men[p. 185]tioned in the Chronicle itself, and afterwards himself employed as a chronicler by Queen Isabella.

But whoever may have been at first concerned in it, the whole work was ultimately committed to Fernan Perez de Guzman, a scholar, a courtier, and an acute as well as a witty observer of manners, who survived John the Second, and probably arranged and completed the Chronicle of his master’s reign, as it was published by order of the Emperor Charles the Fifth;[279] some passages having been added as late as the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, who are more than once alluded to in it as reigning sovereigns.[280] It is divided, like the Chronicle of Ayala, which may naturally have been its model, into the different years of the king’s reign, each year being subdivided into chapters; and it contains a great number of important original letters and other curious contemporary documents,[281] from which, as well as from the care used in its compilation, it has been considered more absolutely trustworthy than any Castilian chronicle that preceded it.[282]

In its general air, there is a good deal to mark the manners of the age, such as accounts of the court ceremonies, festivals, and tournaments that were so much loved by John; and its style, though, on the whole, un[p. 186]ornamented and unpretending, is not wanting in variety, spirit, and solemnity. Once, on occasion of the fall and ignominious death of the Great Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose commanding spirit had, for many years, impressed itself on the affairs of the kingdom, the honest chronicler, though little favorable to that haughty minister, seems unable to repress his feelings, and, recollecting the treatise on the “Fall of Princes,” which Ayala had made known in Spain, breaks out, saying: “O John Boccaccio, if thou wert now alive, thy pen surely would not fail to record the fall of this strenuous and bold gentleman among those of the mighty princes whose fate thou hast set forth. For what greater example could there be to every estate? what greater warning? what greater teaching to show the revolutions and movements of deceitful and changing fortune? O blindness of the whole race of man! O unexpected fall in the affairs of this our world!” And so on through a chapter of some length.[283] But this is the only instance of such an outbreak in the Chronicle. On the contrary, its general tone shows, that historical composition in Spain was about to undergo a permanent change; for, at its very outset, we have regular speeches attributed to the principal personages it records,[284] such as had been introduced by Ayala; and, through the whole, a well-ordered and documentary record of affairs, tinged, no doubt, with some of the prejudices and passions of the troublesome times to which it relates, but still claiming to have the exactness of regular annals, and striving to reach the grave and dignified style suited to the higher purposes of history.[285]

[p. 187]Of the disturbed and corrupt reign of Henry the Fourth, who, at one period, was nearly driven from his throne by his younger brother, Alfonso, we have two chronicles: the first by Diego Enriquez de Castillo, who was attached, both as chaplain and historiographer, to the person of the legitimate sovereign; and the other by Alonso de Palencia, chronicler to the unfortunate pretender, whose claims were sustained only three years, though the Chronicle of Palencia, like that of Castillo, extends over the whole period of the regular sovereign’s reign, from 1454 to 1474. They are as unlike each other as the fates of the princes they record. The Chronicle of Castillo is written with great plainness of manner, and, except in a few moral reflections, chiefly at the beginning and the end, seems to aim at nothing but the simplest and even the driest narrative;[286] while[p. 188] the Chronicle of Palencia, who had been educated in Italy under the Greeks recently arrived there from the ruins of the Eastern Empire, is in a false and cumbrous style; a single sentence frequently stretching through a chapter, and the whole work showing that he had gained little but affectation and bad taste under the teachings of John Lascaris and George of Trebizond.[287] Both works, however, are too strictly annals to be read for any thing but the facts they contain.

Similar remarks must be made about the chronicles of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, extending from 1474 to 1504-16. There are several of them, but only two need be noticed. One is by Andres Bernaldez, often called “El Cura de los Palacios,” because he was curate in the small town of that name, though the materials for his Chronicle were, no doubt, gathered chiefly in Seville, the neighbouring splendid capital of Andalusia, to whose princely Archbishop he was chaplain. His Chronicle, written, it should seem, chiefly to please his own taste, extends from 1488 to 1513. It is honest and sincere, reflecting faithfully the physiognomy of his age; its credulity, its bigotry, and its love of show. It is, in truth, such an account of passing events as would be given by one who was rather curious about them than a part of them; but who, from accident, was familiar with whatever was going on[p. 189] among the leading spirits of his time and country.[288] No portion of it is more valuable and interesting than that which relates to Columbus, to whom he devotes thirteen chapters, and for whose history he must have had excellent materials, since not only was Deza, the Archbishop, to whose service he was attached, one of the friends and patrons of Columbus, but Columbus himself, in 1496, was a guest at the house of Bernaldez, and intrusted to him manuscripts which, he says, he has employed in this very account; thus placing his Chronicle among the documents important alike in the history of America and of Spain.[289]

The other chronicle of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella is that of Fernando del Pulgar, their Councillor of State, their Secretary, and their authorized Annalist. He was a person of much note in his time, but it is not known when he was born or where he died.[290] That he was a man of wit and letters, and an acute observer of life, we know from his notices of the Famous Men of Castile; from his Commentary on the Coplas of Mingo Revulgo; and from a few spirited and[p. 190] pleasant letters to his friends that have been spared to us. But as a chronicler his merit is inconsiderable.[291] The early part of his work is not trustworthy, and the latter part, beginning in 1482 and ending in 1490, is brief in its narrative, and tedious in the somewhat showy speeches with which it is burdened. The best of it is its style, which is often dignified; but it is the style of history, rather than that of a chronicle; and, indeed, the formal division of the work, according to its subjects, into three parts, as well as the philosophical reflections with which it is adorned, show that the ancients had been studied by its author, and that he was desirous to imitate them.[292] Why he did not continue his account beyond 1490, we cannot tell. It has been conjectured that he died then.[293] But this is a mistake, for we have a well-written and curious report, made by him to the queen, on the whole Moorish history of Granada, after the capture of the city in 1492.[294]

The Chronicle of Ferdinand and Isabella by Pulgar is the last instance of the old style of chronicling that should now be noticed; for though, as we have already observed, it was long thought for the dignity of the[p. 191] monarchy that the stately forms of authorized annals should be kept up, the free and picturesque spirit that gave them life was no longer there. Chroniclers were appointed, like Fernan de Ocampo and Mexia; but the true chronicling style was gone by, not to return.

Chronicles of Particular Events.—It should be borne in mind, that we have thus far traced only the succession of what may be called the general Spanish chronicles, which, prepared by royal hands or under royal authority, have set forth the history of the whole country, from its earliest beginnings and most fabulous traditions, down through its fierce wars and divisions, to the time when it had, by the final overthrow of the Moorish power, been settled into a quiet and compact monarchy. From their subject and character, they are, of course, the most important, and, generally, the most interesting, works of the class to which they belong. But, as might be expected from the influence they exercised and the popularity they enjoyed, they were often imitated. Many chronicles were written on a great variety of subjects, and many works in a chronicling style which yet never bore the name. Most of them are of no value. But to the few that, from their manner or style, deserve notice we must now turn for a moment, beginning with those that refer to particular events.

[p. 193]Two of these special chronicles relate to occurrences in the reign of John the Second, and are not only curious in themselves and for their style, but valuable, as illustrating the manners of the time. The first, according to the date of its events, is the “Passo Honroso,” or the Passage of Honor, and is a formal account of a passage at arms which was held against all comers in 1434, at the bridge of Orbigo, near the city of Leon, during thirty days, at a moment when the road was thronged with knights passing for a solemn festival to the neighbouring shrine of Santiago. The challenger was Suero de Quiñones, a gentleman of rank, who claimed to be thus emancipated from the service of wearing for a noble lady’s sake a chain of iron around his neck every Thursday. The arrangements for this extraordinary tournament were all made under the king’s authority. Nine champions, mantenedores, we are told, stood with Quiñones, and at the end of the thirty days it was found that sixty-eight knights had adventured themselves against his claim; that six hundred and twenty-seven encounters had taken place; and that sixty-six lances had been broken;—one knight, an Aragonese, having been killed, and many wounded, among whom were Quiñones and eight out of his nine fellow-champions.[295]

[p. 194]Strange as all this may sound, and seeming to carry us back to the fabulous days when the knights of romance

and Rodamont maintained the bridge of Montpellier, for the sake of the lady of his love, it is yet all plain matter of fact, spread out in becoming style, by an eyewitness, with a full account of the ceremonies, both of chivalry and of religion, that accompanied it. The theory of the whole is, that Quiñones, in acknowledgment of being prisoner to a noble lady, had, for some time, weekly worn her chains; and that he was now to ransom himself from this fanciful imprisonment by the payment of a certain number of real spears broken by him and his friends in fair fight. All this, to be sure, is fantastic enough. But the ideas of love, honor, and religion displayed in the proceedings of the champions,[296] who hear mass devoutly every day, and yet cannot obtain Christian burial for the Aragonese knight who is killed, and in the conduct of Quiñones himself, who fasts each Thursday, partly, it should seem, in honor of the Madonna, and partly in honor of his lady,—these and other whimsical incongruities are still more fantastic. They seem, indeed, as we read their record, to be quite worthy of the admiration expressed for them by Don Quixote in his argument with the wise canon,[297] but hardly worthy of any other; so that we are surprised, at first, when we find them specially recorded in[p. 195] the contemporary Chronicle of King John, and filling, long afterwards, a separate chapter in the graver Annals of Zurita. And yet such a grand tournament was an important event in the age when it happened, and is highly illustrative of the contemporary manners.[298] History and chronicle, therefore, alike did well to give it a place; and, indeed, down to the present time, the curious and elaborate record of the details and ceremonies of the Passo Honroso is of no little value as one of the best exhibitions that remain to us of the genius of chivalry, and as quite the best exhibition of what has been considered the most characteristic of all the knightly institutions.

The other work of the same period to which we have referred gives us, also, a striking view of the spirit of the times; one less picturesque, indeed, but not less instructive. It is called “El Seguro de Tordesillas,” the Pledge or the Truce of Tordesillas, and relates to a series of conferences held in 1439, between John the Second and a body of his nobles, headed by his own son, who, in a seditious and violent manner, interfered in the affairs of the kingdom, in order to break down the influence of the Constable de Luna.[299] It receives its peculiar name from the revolting circumstance, that, even in the days of the Passo Honroso, and with some of the knights who figured in that gorgeous show for the parties, true honor was yet sunk so low in Spain, that none could be found on either side of this great quarrel,—not even the King or the Prince,—whose[p. 196] word would be taken as a pledge for the mere personal safety of those who should be engaged in the discussions at Tordesillas. It was necessary, therefore, to find some one not strictly belonging to either party, who, invested with higher powers and even with supreme military control, should become the depositary of the general faith, and, exercising an authority limited only by his own sense of honor, be obeyed alike by the exasperated sovereign and his rebellious subjects.[300]

This proud distinction was given to Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, commonly called the Good or Faithful Count Haro; and the “Seguro de Tordesillas,” prepared by him some time afterwards, shows how honorably he executed the extraordinary trust. Few historical works can challenge such absolute authenticity. The documents of the case, constituting the chief part of it, are spread out before the reader; and what does not rest on their foundation rests on that word of the Good Count to which the lives of whatever was most distinguished in the kingdom had just been fearlessly trusted. As might be expected, its characteristics are simplicity and plainness, not elegance or eloquence. It is, in fact, a collection of documents, but it is an interesting and a melancholy record. The compact that was made led to no permanent good. The Count soon withdrew, ill at ease, to his own estates; and in less than two years his unhappy and weak master was assailed anew, and besieged in Medina del Campo, by his rebellious family and their adherents.[301] After this, we hear little of[p. 197] Count Haro, except that he continued to assist the king from time to time, in his increasing troubles, until, worn out with fatigue of body and mind, he retired from the world, and passed the last ten years of his life in a monastery, which he had himself founded, and where he died at the age of threescore and ten.[302]

Chronicles of Particular Persons.—But while remarkable events, like the Passage of Arms at Orbigo and the Pledge of Tordesillas, were thus appropriately recorded, the remarkable men of the time could hardly fail occasionally to find fit chroniclers.

Pero Niño, Count de Buelna, who flourished between 1379 and 1453, is the first of them. He was a distinguished naval and military commander in the reigns of Henry the Third and John the Second; and his Chronicle is the work of Gutierre Diez de Gamez, who was attached to his person from the time Pero Niño was twenty-three years old, and boasted the distinction of being his standard-bearer in many a rash and bloody fight. A more faithful chronicler, or one more imbued with knightly qualities, can hardly be found. He may be well compared to the “Loyal Serviteur,” the biographer of the Chevalier Bayard; and, like him, not only enjoyed the confidence of his master, but shared his spirit.[303] His accounts of the education of Pero Niño,[p. 198] and of the counsels given him by his tutor;[304] of Pero’s marriage to his first wife, the lady Constance de Guebara;[305] of his cruises against the corsairs and Bey of Tunis;[306] of the part he took in the war against England, after the death of Richard the Second, when he commanded an expedition that made a descent on Cornwall, and, according to his chronicler, burnt the town of Poole and took Jersey and Guernsey;[307] and finally, of his share in the common war against Granada, which happened in the latter part of his life and under the leading of the Constable Alvaro de Luna,[308] are all interesting and curious, and told with simplicity and spirit. But the most characteristic and amusing passages of the Chronicle are, perhaps, those that relate, one to Pero Niño’s gallant visit at Girfontaine, near Rouen, the residence of the old Admiral of France, and his gay young wife,[309] and another to the course of his true love for Beatrice, daughter of the Infante Don John, the lady who, after much opposition and many romantic dangers, became his second wife.[310] Unfortunately, we know nothing about the author of all this entertaining history except what he modestly tells us in the work itself; but we cannot doubt that he was as loyal in his life as he claims to be in his true-hearted account of his master’s adventures and achievements.

Next after Pero Niño’s Chronicle comes that of the Constable Don Alvaro de Luna, the leading spirit of the reign of John the Second, almost from the moment[p. 199] when, yet a child, he appeared as a page at court, in 1408, down to 1453, when he perished on the scaffold, a victim to his own haughty ambition, to the jealousy of the nobles nearest the throne, and to the guilty weakness of the king. Who was the author of the Chronicle is unknown.[311] But, from internal evidence, he was probably an ecclesiastic of some learning, and certainly a retainer of the Constable, much about his person, and sincerely attached to him. It reminds us, at once, of the fine old Life of Wolsey by his Gentleman Usher, Cavendish; for both works were written after the fall of the great men whose lives they record, by persons who had served and loved them in their prosperity, and who now vindicated their memories with a grateful and trusting affection, which often renders even their style of writing beautiful by its earnestness, and sometimes eloquent. The Chronicle of the Constable is, of course, the oldest. It was composed between 1453 and 1460, or about a century before Cavendish’s Wolsey. It is grave and stately, sometimes too stately; but there is a great air of reality about it. The account of the siege of Palenzuela,[312] the striking description of the Constable’s person and bearing,[313] the scene of the royal visit to the favorite in his castle at Escalona, with the festivities that followed,[314] and, above all, the minute and painful details of the Constable’s fall from power, his arrest,[p. 200] and death,[315] show the freedom and spirit of an eyewitness, or, at least, of a person entirely familiar with the whole matter about which he writes. It is, therefore, among the richest and most interesting of the old Spanish chronicles, and quite indispensable to one who would comprehend the troubled spirit of the period to which it relates; the period known as that of the bandos, or armed feuds, when the whole country was broken into parties, each in warlike array, fighting for its own head, but none fully submitting to the royal authority.

The last of the chronicles of individuals written in the spirit of the elder times, that it is necessary to notice, is that of Gonzalvo de Córdova, “the Great Captain,” who flourished from the period immediately preceding the war of Granada to that which begins the reign of Charles the Fifth; and who produced an impression on the Spanish nation hardly equalled since the earlier days of that great Moorish contest, the cyclus of whose heroes Gonzalvo seems appropriately to close up. It was about 1526 that the Emperor Charles the Fifth desired one of the favorite followers of Gonzalvo, Hernan Perez del Pulgar, to prepare an account of his great captain’s life. A better person could not easily have been selected. For he is not, as was long supposed, Fernando del Pulgar, the wit and courtier of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.[316] Nor is the work he[p. 201] produced the poor and dull Chronicle of the life of Gonzalvo first printed in 1580, or earlier, and often attributed to him.[317] But he is that bold knight who, with a few followers, penetrated to the very centre of Granada, then all in arms, and, affixing an Ave Maria, with the sign of the cross, to the doors of the principal mosque, consecrated its massive pile to the service of Christianity, while Ferdinand and Isabella were still beleaguering the city without; an heroic adventure, with which his country rang from side to side at the time, and which has not since been forgotten either in its ballads or in its popular drama.[318]

As might be expected from the character of its author,—who, to distinguish him from the courtly and peaceful Pulgar, was well called “He of the Achievements,” El de las Hazañas,—the book he offered to his monarch is not a regular life of Gonzalvo, but rath[p. 202]er a rude and vigorous sketch of him, entitled “A Small Part of the Achievements of that Excellent Person called the Great Captain,” or, as is elsewhere yet more characteristically said, “of the achievements and solemn virtues of the Great Captain, both in peace and war.”[319] The modesty of the author is as remarkable as his adventurous spirit. He is hardly seen at all in his narrative, while his love and devotion to his great leader give a fervor to his style, which, notwithstanding a frequent display of very unprofitable learning, renders his work both curious and striking, and brings out his hero in the sort of bold relief in which he appeared to the admiration of his contemporaries. Some parts of it, notwithstanding its brevity, are remarkable even for the details they afford; and some of the speeches, like that of the Alfaquí to the distracted parties in Granada,[320] and that of Gonzalvo to the population of the Abbaycin,[321] savor of eloquence as well as wisdom. Regarded as the outline of a great man’s character, few sketches have more an air of truth; though, perhaps, considering the adventurous and warlike lives both of the author and his subject, nothing in the book is more remarkable than the spirit of humanity that pervades it.[322]

Chronicles of Travels.—In the same style with the histories of their kings and great men, a few works should be noticed in the nature of travels, or histories[p. 203] of travellers, though not always bearing the name of Chronicles.

The oldest of them, which has any value, is an account of a Spanish embassy to Tamerlane, the great Tartar potentate and conqueror. Its origin is curious. Henry the Third of Castile, whose affairs, partly in consequence of his marriage with Catherine, daughter of Shakspeare’s “time-honored Lancaster,” were in a more fortunate and quiet condition than those of his immediate predecessors, seems to have been smitten in his prosperity with a desire to extend his fame to the remotest countries of the earth; and for this purpose, we are told, sought to establish friendly relations with the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, with the Sultan of Babylon, with Tamerlane or Timour Bec the Tartar, and even with the fabulous Prester John of that shadowy India which was then the subject of so much speculation.

What was the result of all this widely spread diplomacy, so extraordinary at the end of the fourteenth century, we do not know, except that the first ambassadors sent to Tamerlane and Bajazet chanced actually to be present at the great and decisive battle between those two preponderating powers of the East, and that Tamerlane sent a splendid embassy in return, with some of the spoils of his victory, among which were two fair captives, who figure in the Spanish poetry of the time.[323] King Henry was not ungrateful for such a tribute of respect, and, to acknowledge it, despatched to Tamerlane three persons of his court, one of whom, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, has left us a minute account of the whole embassy, its adventures and its results.[p. 204] This account was first published by Argote de Molina, the careful antiquary of the time of Philip the Second,[324] and was then called, probably in order to give it a more winning title, “The Life of the Great Tamerlane,”—Vida del Gran Tamurlan,—though it is, in fact, a diary of the voyagings and residences of the ambassadors of Henry the Third, beginning in May, 1403, when they embarked at Puerto Santa María, near Cadiz, and ending in March, 1406, when they landed there on their return.

In the course of it, we have a description of Constantinople, which is the more curious because it is given at the moment when it tottered to its fall;[325] of Trebizond, with its Greek churches and clergy;[326] of Teheran, now the capital of Persia;[327] and of Samarcand, where they found the great Conqueror himself, and were entertained by him with a series of magnificent festivals continuing almost to the moment of his death,[328] which happened while they were at his court, and was followed by troubles embarrassing to their homeward journey.[329] The honest Clavijo seems to have been well pleased to lay down his commission at the feet of his sovereign, whom he found at Alcalá; and though he lingered about the court for a year, and was one of the witnesses of the king’s will at Christmas, yet on the death of Henry he retired to Madrid, his native place, where he spent the last four or five years of his life,[p. 205] and where, in 1412, he was buried in the convent of Saint Francis, with his fathers, whose chapel he had piously rebuilt.[330]

His travels will not, on the whole, suffer by a comparison with those of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville; for, though his discoveries are much less in extent than those of the Venetian merchant, they are, perhaps, as remarkable as those of the English adventurer, while the manner in which he has presented them is superior to that of either. His Spanish loyalty and his Catholic faith are everywhere apparent. He plainly believes that his modest embassy is making an impression of his king’s power and importance, on the countless and careless multitudes of Asia, which will not be effaced; while, in the luxurious capital of the Greek empire, he seems to look for little but the apocryphal relics of saints and apostles which then burdened the shrines of its churches. With all this, however, we may be content, because it is national; but when we find him filling the island of Ponza with buildings erected by Virgil,[331] and afterwards, as he passes Amalfi, taking note of it only because it contained the head of Saint Andrew,[332] we are obliged to recall his frankness, his zeal, and all his other good qualities, before we can be quite reconciled to his ignorance. Mariana, indeed, intimates, that, after all, his stories are not to be wholly believed. But, as in the case of other early travellers, whose accounts were often discredited[p. 206] merely because they were so strange, more recent and careful inquiries have confirmed Clavijo’s narrative; and we may now trust to his faithfulness as much as to the vigilant and penetrating spirit he shows constantly, except when his religious faith, or his hardly less religious loyalty, interferes with its exercise.[333]

But the great voyagings of the Spaniards were not destined to be in the East. The Portuguese, led on originally by Prince Henry, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, had, as it were, already appropriated to themselves that quarter of the world by discovering the easy route of the Cape of Good Hope; and, both by the right of discovery and by the provisions of the well-known Papal bull and the equally well-known treaty of 1479, had cautiously cut off their great rivals, the Spaniards, from all adventure in that direction; leaving open to them only the wearisome waters that were stretched out unmeasured towards the West. Happily, however, there was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the height to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true, Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national[p. 207] character, when he became a part of its glory. His own eyes, he tells us, had watched the silver cross, as it slowly rose, for the first time, above the towers of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final and absolute overthrow of the infidel power in Spain;[334] and from that period,—or one even earlier, when some poor monks from Jerusalem had been at the camp of the two sovereigns before Granada, praying for help and protection against the unbelievers in Palestine,—he had conceived the grand project of consecrating the untold wealth he trusted to find in his westward discoveries, by devoting it to the rescue of the Holy City and sepulchre of Christ; thus achieving, by his single power and resources, what all Christendom and its ages of crusades had failed to accomplish.[335]

Gradually these and other kindred ideas took firm possession of his mind, and are found occasionally in his later journals, letters, and speculations, giving to his otherwise quiet and dignified style a tone elevated and impassioned like that of prophecy. It is true, that his adventurous spirit, when the mighty mission of his life was upon him, rose above all this, and, with a purged vision and through a clearer atmosphere, saw, from[p. 208] the outset, what he at last so gloriously accomplished; but still, as he presses onward, there not unfrequently break from him words which leave no doubt, that, in his secret heart, the foundations of his great hopes and purposes were laid in some of the most magnificent illusions that are ever permitted to fill the human mind. He believed himself to be, in some degree at least, inspired; and to be chosen of Heaven to fulfil certain of the solemn and grand prophecies of the Old Testament.[336] He wrote to his sovereigns in 1501, that he had been induced to undertake his voyages to the Indies, not by virtue of human knowledge, but by a Divine impulse, and by the force of Scriptural prediction.[337] He declared, that the world could not continue to exist more than a hundred and fifty-five years longer, and that, many a year before that period, he counted the recovery of the Holy City to be sure.[338] He expressed his belief, that the terrestrial paradise, about which he cites the fanciful speculations of Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustin, would be found in the southern regions of[p. 209] those newly discovered lands, which he describes with so charming an amenity, and that the Orinoco was one of the mystical rivers issuing from it; intimating, at the same time, that, perchance, he alone of mortal men would, by the Divine will, be enabled to reach and enjoy it.[339] In a remarkable letter of sixteen pages, addressed to his sovereigns from Jamaica in 1503, and written with a force of style hardly to be found in any thing similar at the same period, he gives a moving account of a miraculous vision, which he believed had been vouchsafed to him for his consolation, when at Veragua, a few months before, a body of his men, sent to obtain salt and water, had been cut off by the natives, thus leaving him outside the mouth of the river in great peril.

“My brother and the rest of the people,” he says, “were in a vessel that remained within, and I was left solitary on a coast so dangerous, with a strong fever and grievously worn down. Hope of escape was dead within me. I climbed aloft with difficulty, calling anxiously and not without many tears for help upon your Majesties’ captains from all the four winds of heaven. But none made me answer. Wearied and still moaning, I fell asleep, and heard a pitiful voice which said: ‘O fool, and slow to trust and serve thy God, the God of all! What did He more for Moses, or for David his servant? Ever since thou wast born, thou[p. 210] hast been His especial charge. When He saw thee at the age wherewith He was content, He made thy name to sound marvellously on the earth. The Indies, which are a part of the world, and so rich, He gave them to thee for thine own, and thou hast divided them unto others as seemed good to thyself, for He granted thee power to do so. Of the barriers of the great ocean, which were bound up with such mighty chains, He hath given unto thee the keys. Thou hast been obeyed in many lands, and thou hast gained an honored name among Christian men. What did He more for the people of Israel when He led them forth from Egypt? or for David, whom from a shepherd He made king in Judea? Turn thou, then, again unto Him, and confess thy sin. His mercy is infinite. Thine old age shall not hinder thee of any great thing. Many inheritances hath He, and very great. Abraham was above a hundred years old when he begat Isaac; and Sarah, was she young? Thou callest for uncertain help; answer, Who hath afflicted thee so much and so often? God or the world? The privileges and promises that God giveth, He breaketh not, nor, after he hath received service, doth He say that thus was not his mind, and that His meaning was other. Neither punisheth He, in order to hide a refusal of justice. What He promiseth, that He fulfilleth, and yet more. And doth the world thus? I have told thee what thy Maker hath done for thee, and what He doth for all. Even now He in part showeth thee the reward of the sorrows and dangers thou hast gone through in serving others.’ All this heard I, as one half dead; but answer had I none to words so true, save tears for my sins. And whosoever it might be that thus spake, he ended, saying, ‘Fear not; be of good cheer; all these[p. 211] thy griefs are written in marble, and not without cause.’ And I arose as soon as I might, and at the end of nine days the weather became calm.”[340]

Three years afterwards, in 1506, Columbus died at Valladolid, a disappointed, broken-hearted old man; little comprehending what he had done for mankind, and still less the glory and homage that through all future generations awaited his name.[341]

But the mantle of his devout and heroic spirit fell on none of his successors. The discoveries of the new continent, which was soon ascertained to be no part of Asia, were indeed prosecuted with spirit and success by Balboa, by Vespucci, by Hojeda, by Pedrárias Dávila, by the Portuguese Magellanes, by Loaisa, by Saavedra, and by many more; so that in twenty-seven[p. 212] years the general outline and form of the New World were, through their reports, fairly presented to the Old. But though some of these early adventurers, like Hojeda, were men apparently of honest principles, who suffered much, and died in poverty and sorrow, yet none had the lofty spirit of the original discoverer, and none spoke or wrote with the tone of dignity and authority that came naturally from a man whose character was so elevated, and whose convictions and purposes were founded in some of the deepest and most mysterious feelings of our religious nature.[342]

Romantic Chronicles.—It only remains now to speak of one other class of the old chronicles; a class hardly represented in this period by more than a single specimen, but that a very curious one, and one which, by its date and character, brings us to the end of our present inquiries, and marks the transition to those that are to follow. The Chronicle referred to is that called “The Chronicle of Don Roderic, with the Destruction of Spain,” and is an account, chiefly fabulous, of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the eighth century. An edition is cited as early as 1511, and six in all may be enumerated, including the last, which is of 1587; thus showing a good degree of popularity, if we consider the number of readers in Spain in the sixteenth century.[343][p. 213] Its author is quite unknown. According to the fashion of the times, it professes to have been written by Eliastras, one of the personages who figures in it; but he is killed in battle just before we reach the end of the book; and the remainder, which looks as if it might really be an addition by another hand, is in the same way ascribed to Carestes, a knight of Alfonso the Catholic.[344]

Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346] Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress wander[p. 214] from country to country,[348] as they do in “Palmerin of England,” while, on all sides, we encounter fantastic personages, who were never heard of anywhere but in this apocryphal Chronicle.[349]

The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written, was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction, just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least, were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350]

[p. 215]

This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements. In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and[p. 216] nourished in the long periods of national trial and suffering, are constantly coming out; hardly less in Columbus and his followers, or even amidst the atrocities of the conquests in the New World, than in the half-miraculous accounts of the battles of Hazinas and Tolosa, or in the grand and glorious drama of the fall of Granada. Indeed, wherever we go under their leading, whether to the court of Tamerlane, or to that of Saint Ferdinand, we find the heroic elements of the national genius gathered around us; and thus, in this vast, rich mass of chronicles, containing such a body of antiquities, traditions, and fables as has been offered to no other people, we are constantly discovering, not only the materials from which were drawn a multitude of the old Spanish ballads, plays, and romances, but a mine which has been unceasingly wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and still remains unexhausted.[351]

Romances of Chivalry.—The ballads of Spain belonged originally to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads, and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we can easily see, but a single step be[p. 219]tween large portions of several of the old chronicles, especially that of Don Roderic, and proper romances of chivalry.[352]

Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity. Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings, tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne by Adenés in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief scenes of which[p. 220] are laid either in Spain or in Fairy Land.[356] These, and similar poetical inventions, constructed out of them by the Trouveurs of the North, became, in the next age, materials for the famous romances of chivalry in prose, which, during three centuries, constituted no mean part of the vernacular literature of France, and, down to our own times, have been the great mine of wild fables for Ariosto, Spenser, Wieland, and the other poets of chivalry, whose fictions are connected either with the stories of Arthur and his Round Table, or with those of Charlemagne and his Peers.[357]

At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed, at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors.

This extraordinary family of romances, whose de[p. 221]scendants, as Cervantes says, were innumerable,[358] is the family of which Amadis is the poetical head and type. Our first notice of it in Spain is from a grave statesman, Ayala, the Chronicler and Chancellor of Castile, who, as we have already seen, died in 1407.[359] But the Amadis is of an earlier date than this fact necessarily implies, though not perhaps earlier known in Spain. Gomez Eannes de Zurara, Keeper of the Archives of Portugal in 1454, who wrote three striking chronicles relating to the affairs of his own country, leaves no substantial doubt that the author of the Amadis of Gaul was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who was attached to the court of John the First of Portugal, was armed as a knight by that monarch just before the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, and died in 1403.[360] The words of the honest and careful annalist are quite distinct on this point. He says he is unwilling to have his true and faithful book, the “Chronicle of Count Pedro de Meneses,” confounded with such stories as “the book of Amadis, which was made entirely at the pleasure of one man, called Vasco de Lobeira, in the time of the King Don Ferdinand; all the things in the said book being invented by its author.”[361]

[p. 222]Whether Lobeira had any older popular tradition or fancies about Amadis, to quicken his imagination and marshal him the way he should go, we cannot now tell. He certainly had a knowledge of some of the old French romances, such as that of the Saint Graal, or Holy Cup,—the crowning fiction of the Knights of the Round Table,[362]—and distinctly acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the Infante Alfonso, who was born in 1370, for an alteration made in the character of Amadis.[363] But that he was aided, as has been suggested, in any considerable degree, by fictions known to have been in Picardy in the eighteenth century, and claimed, without the slightest proof, to have been there in the twelfth, is an assumption made on too slight grounds to be seriously considered.[364] We must therefore conclude, from the few, but plain, facts known in[p. 223] the case, that the Amadis was originally a Portuguese fiction produced before the year 1400, and that Vasco de Lobeira was its author.

But the Portuguese original can no longer be found. At the end of the sixteenth century, we are assured, it was extant in manuscript in the archives of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon; and the same assertion is renewed, on good authority, about the year 1750. From this time, however, we lose all trace of it; and the most careful inquiries render it probable that this curious manuscript, about which there has been so much discussion, perished in the terrible earthquake and conflagration of 1755, when the palace occupied by the ducal family of Arveiro was destroyed with all its precious contents.[365]

The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist, nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest[p. 224] now accessible to us dating from 1519. Twelve more followed in the course of half a century, so that the Amadis succeeded, at once, in placing the fortunes of its family on the sure foundations of popular favor in Spain. It was translated into Italian in 1546, and was again successful; six editions of it appearing in that language in less than thirty years.[368] In France, beginning with the first attempt in 1540, it became such a favorite, that its reputation there has not yet wholly faded away;[369] while, elsewhere in Europe, a multitude of translations and imitations have followed, that seem to stretch out the line of the family, as Don Quixote declares, from the age immediately after the introduction of Christianity down almost to that in which he himself lived.[370]

The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal. It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and[p. 225] tone of the whole fiction are original, and much more free than those of the French romances that had preceded it. The story of Arthur and the Holy Cup is essentially religious; the story of Charlemagne is essentially military; and both are involved in a series of adventures previously ascribed to their respective heroes by chronicles and traditions, which, whether true or false, were so far recognized as to prescribe limits to the invention of all who subsequently adopted them. But the Amadis is of imagination all compact. No period of time is assigned to its events, except that they begin to occur soon after the very commencement of the Christian era; and its geography is generally as unsettled and uncertain as the age when its hero lived. It has no purpose, indeed, but to set forth the character of a perfect knight, and to illustrate the virtues of courage and chastity as the only proper foundations of such a character.

Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate, and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child, exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions and amidst enchantments,—sometimes under the favor of their ladies, and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island,[p. 226] under their frowns,—fill up the book, which, after the broad journeyings of the principal knights, and an incredible number of combats between them and other knights, magicians, and giants, ends, at last, in the marriage of Amadis and Oriana, and the overthrow of all the enchantments that had so long opposed their love.

The Amadis is admitted, by general consent, to be the best of all the old romances of chivalry. One reason of this is, that it is more true to the manners and spirit of the age of knighthood; but the principal reason is, no doubt, that it is written with a more free invention, and takes a greater variety in its tones than is found in other similar works. It even contains, sometimes,—what we should hardly expect in this class of wild fictions,—passages of natural tenderness and beauty, such as the following description of the young loves of Amadis and Oriana.

“Now Lisuarte brought with him to Scotland Brisena, his wife, and a daughter that he had by her when he dwelt in Denmark, named Oriana, about ten years old, and the fairest creature that ever was seen; so fair, that she was called ‘Without Peer,’ since in her time there was none equal to her. And because she suffered much from the sea, he consented to leave her there, asking the King, Languines, and his Queen, that they would have care of her. And they were made very glad therewith, and the Queen said, ‘Trust me that I will have such a care of her as her mother would.’ And Lisuarte, entering into his ships, made haste back into Great Britain, and found there some who had made disturbances, such as are wont to be in such cases. And for this cause, he remembered him not of his daughter, for some space of time. But at last, with much toil that he took, he obtained his kingdom, and he was the[p. 227] best king that ever was before his time, nor did any afterwards better maintain knighthood in its rights, till King Arthur reigned, who surpassed all the kings before him in goodness, though the number that reigned between these two was great.

“And now the author leaves Lisuarte reigning in peace and quietness in Great Britain, and turns to the Child of the Sea, [Amadis,] who was twelve years old, but in size and limbs seemed to be fifteen. He served before the Queen, and was much loved of her, as he was of all ladies and damsels. But as soon as Oriana, the daughter of King Lisuarte, came there, she gave to her the Child of the Sea, that he should serve her, saying, ‘This is a child who shall serve you.’ And she answered, that it pleased her. And the child kept this word in his heart, in such wise that it never afterwards left it; and, as this history truly says, he was never, in all the days of his life, wearied with serving her. And this their love lasted as long as they lasted; but the Child of the Sea, who knew not at all how she loved him, held himself to be very bold, in that he had placed his thoughts on her, considering both her greatness and her beauty, and never so much as dared to speak any word to her concerning it. And she, though she loved him in her heart, took heed that she should not speak with him more than with another; but her eyes took great solace in showing to her heart what thing in the world she most loved.

“Thus lived they silently together, neither saying aught to the other of their estate. Then came, at last, the time when the Child of the Sea, as I now tell you, understood within himself that he might take arms, if any there were that would make him a knight. And this he desired, because he considered that he should[p. 228] thus become such a man and should do such things, as that either he should perish in them, or, if he lived, then his lady should deal gently with him. And with this desire he went to the King, who was in his garden, and, kneeling before him, said, ‘Sire, if it please you, it is now time that I should be made a knight.’ And the king said, ‘How, Child of the Sea, do you already adventure to maintain knighthood? Know that it is a light matter to come by it, but a weighty thing to maintain it. And whoso seeks to get this name of knighthood and maintain it in its honor, he hath to do so many and such grievous things, that often his heart is wearied out; and if he should be such a knight, that, from faint-heartedness or cowardice, he should fail to do what is beseeming, then it would be better for him to die than to live in his shame. Therefore I hold it good that you wait yet a little.’ But the Child of the Sea said to him, ‘Neither for all this will I fail to be a knight; for, if I had not already thought to fulfil this that you have said, my heart would not so have striven to be a knight.’”[372]

Other passages of quite a different character are no less striking, as, for instance, that in which the fairy Urganda comes in her fire-galleys,[373] and that in which the venerable Nasciano visits Oriana;[374] but the most characteristic are those that illustrate the spirit of chivalry, and inculcate the duties of princes and knights. In these portions of the work, there is sometimes a lofty tone that rises to eloquence,[375] and sometimes a sad one full of earnestness and truth.[376] The general story,[p. 229] too, is more simple and effective than the stories of the old French romances of chivalry. Instead of distracting our attention by the adventures of a great number of knights, whose claims are nearly equal, it is kept fastened on two, whose characters are well preserved;—Amadis, the model of all chivalrous virtues, and his brother, Don Galaor, hardly less perfect as a knight in the field, but by no means so faithful in his loves;—and, in this way, it has a more epic proportion in its several parts, and keeps up our interest to the end more successfully than any of its followers or rivals.

The great objection to the Amadis is one that must be made to all of its class. We are wearied by its length, and by the constant recurrence of similar adventures and dangers, in which, as we foresee, the hero is certain to come off victorious. But this length and these repetitions seemed no fault when it first appeared, or for a long time afterwards. For romantic fiction, the only form of elegant literature which modern times have added to the marvellous inventions of Greek genius, was then recent and fresh; and the few who read for amusement rejoiced even in the least graceful of its creations, as vastly nearer to the hearts and thoughts of men educated in the institutions of knighthood than any glimpses they had thus far caught of the severe glories of antiquity. The Amadis, therefore,—as we may easily learn by the notices of it from the time when the great Chancellor of Castile mourned that he had wasted his leisure over its idle fancies, down to the time when the whole sect disappeared before the avenging satire of Cervantes,—was a work of extraordinary popularity in Spain; and one which, during the two[p. 230] centuries of its greatest favor, was more read than any other book in the language.

Nor should it be forgotten that Cervantes himself was not insensible to its merits. The first book that, as he tells us, was taken from the shelves of Don Quixote, when the curate, the barber, and the housekeeper began the expurgation of his library, was the Amadis de Gaula. “‘There is something mysterious about this matter,’ said the curate; ‘for, as I have heard, this was the first book of knight-errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others have had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch-heretic of so mischievous a sect, I think he should, without a hearing, be condemned to the fire.’ ‘No, Sir,’ said the barber, ‘for I, too, have heard that it is the best of all the books of its kind that have been written, and therefore, for its singularity, it ought to be forgiven.’ ‘That is the truth,’ answered the curate, ‘and so let us spare it for the present’”;—a decision which, on the whole, has been confirmed by posterity, and precisely for the reason Cervantes has assigned.[377]

[p. 231]

But before Montalvo published his translation of the Amadis, and perhaps before he had made it, he had written a continuation, which he announced in the Preface to the Amadis as its fifth book. It is an original work, about one third part as long as the Amadis, and contains the story of the son of that hero and Oriana, named Esplandian, whose birth and education had already been given in the story of his father’s adventures, and constitute one of its pleasantest episodes. But, as the curate says, when he comes to this romance in Don Quixote’s library, “the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son.” The story of Esplandian has neither freshness, spirit, nor dignity in it. It opens at the point where he is left in the original fiction, just armed as a knight, and is filled with his adventures as he wanders about the world, and with the supernumerary achievements of his father Amadis, who survives to the end of the whole, and sees his son made Emperor of Constantinople; he himself having long before become King of Great Britain by the death of Lisuarte.[378]

But, from the beginning, we find two mistakes committed, which run through the whole work. Amadis, represented as still alive, fills a large part of the can[p. 232]vas; while, at the same time, Esplandian is made to perform achievements intended to be more brilliant than his father’s, but which, in fact, are only more extravagant. From this sort of emulation, the work becomes a succession of absurd and frigid impossibilities. Many of the characters of the Amadis are preserved in it, like Lisuarte, who is rescued out of a mysterious imprisonment by Esplandian as his first adventure; Urganda, who, from a graceful fairy, becomes a savage enchantress; and “the great master Elisabad,” a man of learning and a priest, whom we first knew as the leech of Amadis, and who is now the pretended biographer of his son, writing, as he says, in Greek. But none of them, and none of the characters invented for the occasion, are managed with skill.

The scene of the whole work is laid chiefly in the East, amidst battles with Turks and Mohammedans; thus showing to what quarter the minds of men were turned when it was written, and what were the dangers apprehended to the peace of Europe, even in its westernmost borders, during the century after the fall of Constantinople. But all reference to real history or real geography was apparently thought inappropriate, as may be inferred from the circumstances, that a certain Calafria, queen of the island of California, is made a formidable enemy of Christendom through a large part of the story; and that Constantinople is said at one time to have been besieged by three millions of heathen. Nor is the style better than the story. The eloquence which is found in many passages of the Amadis is not found at all in Esplandian. On the contrary, large portions of it are written in a low and meagre style, and the rhymed arguments prefixed to many of the chapters are any thing but poetry, and[p. 233] quite inferior to the few passages of verse scattered through the Amadis.[379]

The oldest edition of the Esplandian now known to exist was printed in 1526, and five others appeared before the end of the century; so that it seems to have enjoyed its full share of popular favor. At any rate, the example it set was quickly followed. Its principal personages were made to figure again in a series of connected romances, each having a hero descended from Amadis, who passes through adventures more incredible than any of his predecessors, and then gives place, we know not why, to a son still more extravagant, and, if the phrase may be used, still more impossible, than his father. Thus, in the same year 1526, we have the sixth book of Amadis de Gaula, called “The History of Florisando,” his nephew, which is followed by the still more wonderful “Lisuarte of Greece, Son of Esplandian,” and the most wonderful “Amadis of Greece,” making respectively the seventh and eighth books. To these succeeded “Don Florisel de Niquea,” and “Anaxartes, Son of Lisuarte,” whose history, with that of the children of the last, fills three books; and finally we have the twelfth book, or “The Great Deeds in Arms of that Bold Knight, Don Silves de la Selva,” which was printed in 1549; thus giving proof how extraordinary was the success of the whole series, since its date allows hardly half a century for the production in Spanish of all these vast romances, most of which, during the same period, appeared in several, and some of them in many editions.

[p. 234]Nor did the effects of the passion thus awakened stop here. Other romances appeared, belonging to the same family, though not coming into the regular line of succession, such as a duplicate of the seventh book on Lisuarte, by the Canon Diaz, in 1526, and “Leandro the Fair,” in 1563, by Pedro de Luxan, which has sometimes been called the thirteenth; while in France, where they were all translated successively, as they appeared in Spain, and became instantly famous, the proper series of the Amadis romances was stretched out into twenty-four books; after all which, a certain Sieur Duverdier, grieved that many of them came to no regular catastrophe, collected the scattered and broken threads of their multitudinous stories and brought them all to an orderly sequence of conclusions, in seven large volumes, under the comprehensive and appropriate name of the “Roman des Romans.” And so ends the history of the Portuguese type of Amadis of Gaul, as it was originally presented to the world in the Spanish romances of chivalry; a fiction which, considering the passionate admiration it so long excited, and the influence it has, with little merit of its own, exercised on the poetry and romance of modern Europe ever since, is a phenomenon that has no parallel in literary history.[380]

[p. 235]The state of manners and opinion in Spain, however, which produced this extraordinary series of romances, could hardly fail to be fertile in other fictitious heroes, less brilliant, perhaps, in their fame than was Amadis, but with the same general qualities and attributes. And such, indeed, was the case. Many romances of chivalry appeared in Spain, soon after the success of this their great leader; and others followed a little later. The first of all of them in consequence, if not in date, is “Palmerin de Oliva”; a personage the more important, because he had a train of descendants that place him, beyond all doubt, next in dignity to Amadis.

The Palmerin has often, perhaps generally, been regarded as Portuguese in its origin, and as the work of a lady; though the proof of each of these allegations is somewhat imperfect. If, however, the facts be really as they have been stated, not the least curious circumstance in relation to them is, that, as in the case of the Amadis, the Portuguese original of the Palmerin is lost, and the first and only knowledge we have of its story is from the Spanish version. Even in this version, we can trace it up no higher than to the edition printed at Seville in 1525, which was certainly not the first.

But whenever it may have been first published, it was successful. Several editions were soon printed in Spanish, and translations followed in Italian and French. A continuation, too, appeared, called, in form, “The Second Book of Palmerin,” which treats of the achievements of his sons, Primaleon and Polendos, and of[p. 236] which we have an edition in Spanish, dated in 1524. The external appearances of the Palmerin, therefore, announce at once an imitation of the Amadis. The internal are no less decisive. Its hero, we are told, was grandson to a Greek emperor in Constantinople, but, being illegitimate, was exposed by his mother, immediately after his birth, on a mountain, where he was found, in an osier cradle among olive and palm trees, by a rich cultivator of bees, who carried him home and named him Palmerin de Oliva, from the place where he was discovered. He soon gives token of his high birth; and, making himself famous by numberless exploits, in Germany, England, and the East, against heathen and enchanters, he at last reaches Constantinople, where he is recognized by his mother, marries the daughter of the Emperor of Germany, who is the heroine of the story, and inherits the crown of Byzantium. The adventures of Primaleon and Polendos, which seem to be by the same unknown author, are in the same vein, and were succeeded by those of Platir, grandson of Palmerin, which were printed as early as 1533. All, taken together, therefore, leave no doubt that the Amadis was their model, however much they may have fallen short of its merits.[381]

The next in the series, “Palmerin of England,” son of Don Duarde, or Edward, King of England, and Flerida, a daughter of Palmerin de Oliva, is a more formidable rival to the Amadis than either of its predecessors. For a long time it was supposed to have been first writ[p. 237]ten in Portuguese, and was generally attributed to Francisco Moraes, who certainly published it in that language at Evora, in 1567, and whose allegation that he had translated it from the French, though now known to be true, was supposed to be only a modest concealment of his own merits. But a copy of the Spanish original, printed at Toledo, in two parts, in 1547 and 1548, has been discovered, and at the end of its dedication are a few verses addressed by the author to the reader, announcing it, in an acrostic, to be the work of Luis Hurtado, known to have been, at that time, a poet in Toledo.[382]

Regarded as a work of art, Palmerin of England is second only to the Amadis of Gaul, among the romances of chivalry. Like that great prototype of the whole class, it has among its actors two brothers,—Palmerin, the faithful knight, and Florian, the free gallant,—and, like that, it has its great magician, Deliante, and its perilous isle, where occur not a few of the most agreeable adventures of its heroes. In some respects, it may be favorably distinguished from its model. There is[p. 238] more sensibility to the beauties of natural scenery in it, and often an easier dialogue, with quite as good a drawing of individual characters. But it has greater faults; for its movement is less natural and spirited, and it is crowded with an unreasonable number of knights, and an interminable series of duels, battles, and exploits, all of which claim to be founded on authentic English chronicles and to be true history, thus affording new proof of the connection between the old chronicles and the oldest romances. Cervantes admired it excessively. “Let this Palm of England,” says his curate, “be cared for and preserved, as a thing singular in its kind, and let a casket be made for it, like that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, and destined to keep in it the works of the poet Homer”; praise, no doubt, much stronger than can now seem reasonable, but marking, at least, the sort of estimation in which the romance itself must have been generally held, when the Don Quixote appeared.

But the family of Palmerin had no further success in Spain. A third and fourth part, indeed, containing “The Adventures of Duardos the Second,” appeared in Portuguese, written by Diogo Fernandez, in 1587; and a fifth and sixth are said to have been written by Alvarez do Oriente, a contemporary poet of no mean reputation. But the last two do not seem to have been printed, and none of them were much known beyond the limits of their native country.[383] The Palmerins, therefore, notwithstanding the merits of one of them, failed to obtain a fame or a succession that could enter into competition with those of Amadis and his descendants.

The “Bibliotheca Hispana” has already been referred to more than once in this chapter, and must so often be relied on as an authority hereafter that some noticeof its claims should be given before we proceed farther. Its author, Nicolas Antonio, was born at Seville, in 1617. He was educated, first by the care of Francisco Jimenez, a blind teacher, of singular merit, attached to the College of St. Thomas in that city; and afterwards at Salamanca, where he devoted himself with success to the study of history and canon law. When he had completed an honorable career at the University, he returned home, and lived chiefly in the Convent of the Benedictines, where he had been bred, and where an abundant and curious library furnished him with means for study, which he used with eagerness and assiduity.

He was not, however, in haste to be known. He published nothing till 1659, when, at the age of forty-two, he printed a Latin treatise on the Punishment of Exile, and, the same year, was appointed to the honorable and important post of General Agent of Philip IV. at Rome. But from this time to the end of his life he was in the public service, and filled places of no little responsibility. In Rome he lived twenty years, collecting about him a library said to have been second in importance only to that of the Vatican, and devoting all his leisure to the studies he loved. At the end of that period, he returned to Madrid, and continued there in honorable employments till his death, which occurred in 1684. He left behind him several works in manuscript, of which his “Censura de Historias Fabulosas”—an examination and exposure of several forged chronicles which had appeared in the preceding century—was first published by Mayans y Siscar, and must be noticed hereafter.

But his great labor—the labor of his life and of his fondest preference—was his literary history of his own country. He began it in his youth, while he was still living with the Benedictines,—an order in the Romish Church honorably distinguished by its zeal in the history of letters,—and he continued it, employing on his task all the resources which his own large library and the libraries of the capitals of Spain and of the Christian world could furnish him, down to the moment of his death. He divided it into two parts. The first, beginning with the age of Augustus, and coming down to the year 1500, was found, after his death, digested into the form of a regular history; but as his pecuniary means, during his lifetime, had been entirely devoted to the purchase of books, it was published by his friend Cardinal Aguirre, at Rome, in 1696. The second part, which had been already printed there, in 1672, is thrown into the form of a dictionary, whose separate articles are arranged, like those in most other Spanish works of the same sort, under the baptismal names of their subjects,—an honor shown to the saints, which renders the use of such dictionaries somewhat inconvenient, even when, as in the case of Antonio’s, full indexes are added, which facilitate a reference to the respective articles by the more common arrangement, according to the surnames.

Of both parts an excellent edition was published in the original Latin, at Madrid, in 1787 and 1788, in four volumes, folio, commonly known as the “Bibliotheca Vetus et Nova of Nicolas Antonio”; the first being enriched with notes by Perez Bayer, a learned Valencian, long the head of the Royal Library at Madrid; and the last receiving additions from Antonio’s own manuscripts that bring down his notices of Spanish writers to the time of his death in 1684. In the earlier portion, embracing the names of about thirteen hundred authors, little remains to be desired, so far as the Roman or the ecclesiastical literary history of Spain is concerned; but for the Arabic we must go to Casiri and Gayangos, and for the Jewish to Castro and Amador de los Rios; while, for the proper Spanish literature that existed before the reign of Charles V., manuscripts discovered since the careful labors of Bayer furnish important additions. In the latter portion, which contains notices of nearly eight thousand writers of the best period of Spanish literature, we have—notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies and oversights inevitable in a work so vast and so various—a monument of industry, fairness, and fidelity, for which those who most use it will always be most grateful. The two, taken together, constitute their author, beyond all reasonable question, the father and founder of the literary history of his country.

See the lives of Antonio prefixed by Mayans to the “Historias Fabulosas,” (Valencia, 1742, fol.,) and by Bayer to the “Bibliotheca Vetus,” in 1787.

Although the Palmerins failed as rivals of the great family of Amadis, they were not without their influence and consideration. Like the other works of their class, and more than most of them, they helped to increase the passion for fictions of chivalry in general, which, overbearing every other in the Peninsula, was now busily at work producing romances, both original and translated, that astonish us alike by their number, their length, and their absurdities. Of those originally Spanish, it would not be difficult, after setting aside the two series belonging to the families of Amadis and Palmerin, to collect the names of about forty; all produced in the course of the sixteenth century. Some of them are still more or less familiar to us, by their names at least, such as “Belianis of Greece” and “Olivante de Laura,” which are found in Don Quixote’s library, and “Felixmarte of Hircania,” which was once, we are told, the summer reading of Dr. Johnson.[384] But, in general, like “The Renowned[p. 242] Knight Cifar” and “The Bold Knight Claribalte,” their very titles sound strangely to our ears, and excite no interest when we hear them repeated. Most of them, it may be added,—perhaps all,—deserve the oblivion into which they have fallen; though some have merits which, in the days of their popularity, placed them near the best of those already noticed.

Among the latter is “The Invincible Knight Lepolemo, called the Knight of the Cross and Son of the Emperor of Germany”; a romance, which was published as early as 1525, and, besides drawing a continuation after it, was reprinted thrice in the course of the century, and translated into French and Italian.[385] It is a striking book among those of its class, not only from the variety of fortunes through which the hero passes, but, in some degree, from its general tone and purpose. In his infancy Lepolemo is stolen from the shelter of the throne to which he is heir, and completely lost for a long period. During this time he lives among the heathen; at first in slavery, and afterwards as an honorable knight-adventurer at the court of the Soldan. By his courage and merit he rises to great distinction, and, while on a journey through France, is recognized by his own family, who happen to be there. Of course he is restored, amidst a general jubilee, to his imperial estate.

In all this, and especially in the wearisome series of its knightly adventures, the Lepolemo has a sufficient resemblance to the other romances of chivalry. But in two points it differs from them. In the first place, it[p. 243] pretends to be translated by Pedro de Luxan, its real author, from the Arabic of a wise magician attached to the person of the Sultan; and yet it represents its hero throughout as a most Christian knight, and his father and mother, the Emperor and Empress, as giving the force of their example to encourage pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre; making the whole story subserve the projects of the Church, in the same way, if not to the same degree, that Turpin’s Chronicle had done. And in the next place, it attracts our attention, from time to time, by a picturesque air and touches of the national manners, as, for instance, in the love passages between the Knight of the Cross and the Infanta of France, in one of which he talks to her at her grated balcony in the night, as if he were a cavalier of one of Calderon’s comedies.[386] Except in these points, however, the Lepolemo is much like its predecessors and followers, and quite as tedious.

Spain, however, not only gave romances of chivalry to the rest of Europe in large numbers, but received also from abroad in some good proportion to what she gave. From the first, the early French fictions were known in Spain, as we have seen by the allusions to them in the “Amadis de Gaula”; a circumstance that may have been owing either to the old connection with France through the Burgundian family, a branch of which filled the throne of Portugal, or to some strange accident, like the one that carried “Palmerin de Inglaterra” to Portugal from France rather than from Spain, its native country. At any rate, somewhat later, when the passion for such fictions was more developed, the French stories were translated or imitated in Spanish,[p. 244] and became a part, and a favored part, of the literature of the country. “The Romance of Merlin” was printed very early,—as early as 1498,—and “The Romance of Tristan de Leonnais,” and that of the Holy Cup, “La Demanda del Sancto Grial,” followed it as a sort of natural sequence.[387]

The rival story of Charlemagne, however,—perhaps from the greatness of his name,—seems to have been, at last, more successful. It is a translation directly from the French, and therefore gives none of those accounts of his defeat at Roncesvalles by Bernardo del Carpio, which, in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, so gratified the national vanity; and contains only the accustomed stories of Oliver and Fierabras the Giant; of Orlando and the False Ganelon; relying, of course, on the fabulous Chronicle of Turpin as its chief authority. But, such as it was, it found great favor at the time it appeared; and such, in fact, as Nicolas de Piamonte gave it to the world, in 1528, under the title of “The History of the Emperor Charlemagne,” it has been constantly reprinted down to our own times, and has done more than any other tale of chivalry to keep alive in Spain a taste for such reading.[388] During a considerable period, however, a few other romances shared its popularity. “Reynaldos de Montalban,” for[p. 245] instance, always a favorite hero in Spain, was one of them;[389] and a little later we find another, the story of “Cleomadez,” an invention of a French queen in the thirteenth century, which first gave to Froissart the love for adventure that made him a chronicler.[390]

In most of the imitations and translations just noticed, the influence of the Church is more visible than it is in the class of the original Spanish romances. This is the case, from its very subject, with the story of the Saint Graal, and with that of Charlemagne, which, so far as it is taken from the pretended Archbishop Turpin’s Chronicle, goes mainly to encourage founding religious houses and making pious pilgrimages. But the Church was not satisfied with this indirect and accidental influence. Romantic fiction, though overlooked in its earliest beginnings, or perhaps even punished by ecclesiastical authority in the person of the Greek Bishop to whom we owe the first proper romance,[391] was now become important, and might be made directly useful. Religious romances, therefore, were written. In general, they were cast into the form of allegories, like “The Celestial Chivalry,” “The Christian Chivalry[p. 246],” “The Knight of the Bright Star,” and “The Christian History and Warfare of the Stranger Knight, the Conqueror of Heaven”;—all printed after the middle of the sixteenth century, and during the period when the passion for romances of chivalry was at its height.[392]

One of the oldest of them is probably the most curious and remarkable of the whole number. It is appropriately called “The Celestial Chivalry,” and was written by Hierónimo de San Pedro, at Valencia, and printed in 1554, in two thin folio volumes.[393] In his Preface, the author declares it to be his object to drive out of the world the profane books of chivalry; the mischief of which he illustrates by a reference to Dante’s account of Francesca da Rimini. In pursuance of this purpose, the First Part is entitled “The Root of the Fragrant Rose”; which, instead of chapters, is divided into “Wonders,” Maravillas, and contains an allegorical version of the most striking stories in the Old Testament, down to the time of the good King Hezekiah, told as the adventures of a succession of knights-errant. The Second Part is divided, according to a similar conceit, into “The Leaves of the Rose”; and, beginning where the preceding one ends, comes down,[p. 247] with the same kind of knightly adventures, to the Saviour’s death and ascension. The Third, which is promised under the name of “The Flower of the Rose,” never appeared, nor is it now easy to understand where consistent materials could have been found for its composition; the Bible having been nearly exhausted in the two former parts. But we have enough without it.

Its chief allegory, from the nature of its subject, relates to the Saviour, and fills seventy-four out of the one hundred and one “Leaves,” or chapters, that constitute the Second Part. Christ is represented in it as the Knight of the Lion; his twelve Apostles as the twelve Knights of his Round Table; John the Baptist as the Knight of the Desert; and Lucifer as the Knight of the Serpent;—the main history being a warfare between the Knight of the Lion and the Knight of the Serpent. It begins at the manger of Bethlehem, and ends on Mount Calvary, involving in its progress almost every detail of the Gospel history, and often using the very words of Scripture. Every thing, however, is forced into the forms of a strange and revolting allegory. Thus, for the temptation, the Saviour wears the shield of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and rides on the steed of Penitence, given to him by Adam. He then takes leave of his mother, the daughter of the Celestial Emperor, like a youthful knight going out to his first passage at arms, and proceeds to the waste and desert country, where he is sure to find adventures. On his approach, the Knight of the Desert prepares himself to do battle; but, perceiving who it is, humbles himself before his coming prince and master. The baptism of course follows; that is, the Knight of the Lion is received into the order of the Knighthood of Baptism, in the presence of an old man, who turns out to be the[p. 248] Anagogic Master, or the Interpreter of all Mysteries, and two women, one young and the other old. All three of them enter directly into a spirited discussion concerning the nature of the rite they have just witnessed. The old man speaks at large, and explains it as a heavenly allegory. The old woman, who proves to be Sinagoga, or the representation of Judaism, prefers the ancient ordinance provided by Abraham, and authorized, as she says, by “that celebrated Doctor, Moses,” rather than this new rite of baptism. The younger woman replies, and defends the new institution. She is the Church Militant; and the Knight of the Desert, deciding the point in her favor, Sinagoga goes off full of anger, ending thus the first part of the action.

The great Anagogic Master, according to an understanding previously had with the Church Militant, now follows the Knight of the Lion to the desert, and there explains to him the true mystery and efficacy of Christian baptism. After this preparation, the Knight enters on his first adventure and battle with the Knight of the Serpent, which, in all its details, is represented as a duel,—one of the parties coming into the lists accompanied by Abel, Moses, and David, and the other by Cain, Goliath, and Haman. Each of the speeches recorded in the Evangelists is here made an arrow-shot or a sword-thrust; the scene on the pinnacle of the temple, and the promises made there, are brought in as far as their incongruous nature will permit; and then the whole of this part of the long romance is abruptly ended by the precipitate and disgraceful flight of the Knight of the Serpent.

This scene of the temptation, strange as it now seems to us, is, nevertheless, not an unfavorable specimen of the entire fiction. The allegory is almost everywhere[p. 249] quite as awkward and unmanageable as it is here, and often leads to equally painful and disgusting absurdities. On the other hand, we have occasionally proofs of an imagination that is not ungraceful; just as the formal and extravagant style in which it is written now and then gives token that its author was not insensible to the resources of a language he, in general, so much abuses.[394]

There is, no doubt, a wide space between such a fiction as this of the Celestial Chivalry and the comparatively simple and direct story of the Amadis de Gaula; and when we recollect that only half a century elapsed between the dates of these romances in Spain,[395] we shall be struck with the fact that this space was very quickly passed over, and that all the varieties of the romances of chivalry are crowded into a comparatively short period of time. But we must not forget that the success of these fictions, thus suddenly obtained, is spread afterwards over a much longer period. The earliest of them were familiarly known in Spain during the fifteenth century, the sixteenth is thronged with them, and, far into the seventeenth, they were still much read; so that their influence over the Spanish character extends through quite two hundred years. Their number, too, during the latter part of the time when they prevailed, was large. It exceeded seventy, nearly all of them in folio; each often in more than one volume, and still oftener repeated in successive editions;—circumstances which, at a period when books were comparatively rare and not frequently reprinted, show that[p. 250] their popularity must have been widely spread, as well as long continued.

This might, perhaps, have been, in some degree, expected in a country where the institutions and feelings of chivalry had struck such firm root as they had in Spain. For Spain, when the romances of chivalry first appeared, had long been peculiarly the land of knighthood. The Moorish wars, which had made every gentleman a soldier, necessarily tended to this result; and so did the free spirit of the communities, led on as they were, during the next period, by barons, who long continued almost as independent in their castles as the king was on his throne. Such a state of things, in fact, is to be recognized as far back as the thirteenth century, when the Partidas, by the most minute and painstaking legislation, provided for a condition of society not easily to be distinguished from that set forth in the Amadis or the Palmerin.[396] The poem and history of the Cid bear witness yet earlier, indirectly indeed, but very strongly, to a similar state of the country; and so do many of the old ballads and other records of the national feelings and traditions that had come from the fourteenth century.

But in the fifteenth, the chronicles are full of it, and exhibit it in forms the most grave and imposing. Dangerous tournaments, in some of which the chief men of the time, and even the kings themselves, took part, occur constantly, and are recorded among the important events of the age.[397] At the passage of arms[p. 251] near Orbigo, in the reign of John the Second, eighty knights, as we have seen, were found ready to risk their lives for as fantastic a fiction of gallantry as is recorded in any of the romances of chivalry; a folly, of which this was by no means the only instance.[398] Nor did they confine their extravagances to their own country. In the same reign, two Spanish knights went as far as Burgundy, professedly in search of adventures, which they strangely mingled with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; seeming to regard both as religious exercises.[399] And as late as the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, Fernando del Pulgar, their wise secretary, gives us the names of several distinguished noblemen personally known to himself, who had gone into foreign countries, “in order,” as he says, “to try the fortune of arms with any cavalier that might be pleased to adventure it with them, and so gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and bold knights for the gentlemen of Castile.”[400]

A state of society like this was the natural result of the extraordinary development which the institutions of chivalry had then received in Spain. Some of it was suited to the age, and salutary; the rest was knight-errantry, and knight-errantry in its wildest extravagance. When, however, the imaginations of men were so excited as to tolerate and maintain, in their daily life, such manners and institutions as these, they[p. 252] would not fail to enjoy the boldest and most free representations of a corresponding state of society in works of romantic fiction. But they went farther. Extravagant and even impossible as are many of the adventures recorded in the books of chivalry, they still seemed so little to exceed the absurdities frequently witnessed or told of known and living men, that many persons took the romances themselves to be true histories, and believed them. Thus, Mexia, the trustworthy historiographer of Charles the Fifth, says, in 1545, when speaking of “the Amadises, Lisuartes, and Clarions,” that “their authors do waste their time and weary their faculties in writing such books, which are read by all and believed by many. For,” he goes on, “there be men who think all these things really happened, just as they read or hear them, though the greater part of the things themselves are sinful, profane, and unbecoming.”[401] And Castillo, another chronicler, tells us gravely, in 1587, that Philip the Second, when he married Mary of England, only forty years earlier, promised, that, if King Arthur should return to claim the throne, he would peaceably yield to that prince all his rights; thus implying, at least in Castillo himself, and probably in many of his readers, a full faith in the stories of Arthur and his Round Table.[402]

Such credulity, it is true, now seems impossible, even if we suppose it was confined to a moderate number of intelligent persons; and hardly less so, when, as in the admirable sketch of an easy faith in the stories of chivalry by the innkeeper and Maritornes in Don Quixote, we are shown that it extended to the[p. 253] mass of the people.[403] But before we refuse our assent to the statements of such faithful chroniclers as Mexia, on the ground that what they relate is impossible, we should recollect, that, in the age when they lived, men were in the habit of believing and asserting every day things no less incredible than those recited in the old romances. The Spanish Church then countenanced a trust in miracles, as of constant recurrence, which required of those who believed them more credulity than the fictions of chivalry; and yet how few were found wanting in faith! And how few doubted the tales that had come down to them of the impossible achievements of their fathers during the seven centuries of their warfare against the Moors, or the glorious traditions of all sorts, that still constitute the charm of their brave old chronicles, though we now see at a glance that many of them are as fabulous as any thing told of Palmerin or Launcelot!

But whatever we may think of this belief in the romances of chivalry, there is no question that in Spain, during the sixteenth century, there prevailed a passion for them such as was never known elsewhere. The proof of it comes to us from all sides. The poetry of the country is full of it, from the romantic ballads that still live in the memory of the people, up to the old plays that have ceased to be acted and the old epics that have ceased to be read. The national manners and the national dress, more peculiar and picturesque than in other countries, long bore its sure impress. The old laws, too, speak no less plainly. Indeed, the passion for such fictions was so strong, and seemed so dangerous, that in 1553 they were prohibited from being[p. 254] printed, sold, or read in the American colonies; and in 1555 the Cortes earnestly asked that the same prohibition might be extended to Spain itself, and that all the extant copies of romances of chivalry might be publicly burned.[404] And finally, half a century later, the happiest work of the greatest genius Spain has produced bears witness on every page to the prevalence of an absolute fanaticism for books of chivalry, and becomes at once the seal of their vast popularity and the monument of their fate.

The Drama.—The ancient theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued under some of its grosser and more popular forms at Constantinople, in Italy, and in many other parts of the falling and fallen empire, far into the Middle Ages. But, under whatever disguise it appeared, it was essentially heathenish; for, from first to last, it was mythological, both in tone and in substance. As such, of course, it was rebuked and opposed by the Christian Church, which, favored by the confusion and ignorance of the times, succeeded in overthrowing it, though not without a long contest, and not until its degradation and impurity had rendered it worthy of its fate and of the anathemas pronounced against it by Tertullian and Saint Augustin.[405]

A love for theatrical exhibitions, however, survived the extinction of these poor remains of the classical drama; and the priesthood, careful neither to make itself needlessly odious, nor to neglect any suitable[p. 256] method of increasing its own influence, seems early to have been willing to provide a substitute for the popular amusement it had destroyed. At any rate, a substitute soon appeared; and, coming as it did out of the ceremonies and commemorations of the religion of the times, its appearance was natural and easy. The greater festivals of the Church had for centuries been celebrated with whatever of pomp the rude luxury of ages so troubled could afford, and they now everywhere, from London to Rome, added a dramatic element to their former attractions. Thus, the manger at Bethlehem, with the worship of the shepherds and Magi, was, at a very early period, solemnly exhibited every year by a visible show before the altars of the churches at Christmas, as were the tragical events of the last days of the Saviour’s life during Lent and at the approach of Easter.

Gross abuses, dishonoring alike the priesthood and religion, were, no doubt, afterwards mingled with these representations, both while they were given in dumb show, and when, by the addition of dialogue, they became what were called Mysteries; but, in many parts of Europe, the representations themselves, down to a comparatively late period, were found so well suited to the spirit of the times, that different Popes granted especial indulgences to the persons who frequented them, and they were in fact used openly and successfully, not only as means of amusement, but for the religious edification of an ignorant multitude. In England such shows prevailed for above four hundred years,—a longer period than can be assigned to the English national drama, as we now recognize it; while in Italy and other countries still under the influence of the See of Rome, they have, in some of their forms,[p. 257] been continued, for the edification and amusement of the populace, quite down to our own times.[406]

That all traces of the ancient Roman theatre, except the architectural remains which still bear witness to its splendor,[407] disappeared from Spain in consequence of the occupation of the country by the Arabs, whose national spirit rejected the drama altogether, cannot be reasonably doubted. But the time when the more modern representations were begun on religious subjects, and under ecclesiastical patronage, can no longer be determined. It must, however, have been very early; for, in the middle of the thirteenth century, such performances were not only known, but had been so long practised, that they had already taken various forms, and become disgraced by various abuses. This is apparent from the code of Alfonso the Tenth, which was prepared about 1260; and in which, after forbidding the clergy certain gross indulgences, the law goes on to say: “Neither ought they to be makers of buffoon plays,[408] that people may come to see them; and if other men make them, clergymen should not come to see them, for such men do many things low and unsuitable. Nor, moreover, should such things be done in the churches; but rather we say that they should be cast[p. 258] out in dishonor, without punishment to those engaged in them. For the church of God was made for prayer, and not for buffoonery; as our Lord Jesus Christ declared in the Gospel, that his house was called the House of Prayer, and ought not to be made a den of thieves. But exhibitions there be, that clergymen may make, such as that of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows how the angel came to the shepherds and how he told them Jesus Christ was born, and, moreover, of his appearance when the Three Kings came to worship him, and of his resurrection, which shows how he was crucified and rose the third day. Such things as these, which move men to do well, may the clergy make, as well as to the end that men may have in remembrance that such things did truly happen. But this must they do decently, and in devotion, and in the great cities where there is an archbishop or bishop, and under their authority, or that of others by them deputed, and not in villages, nor in small places, nor to gain money thereby.”[409]