History of Spanish Literature, vol. 3 (of 3) (part 5 of 6)

Appendix

APPENDIX, A.

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE.

(See Vol. I. pp. 11 and 47.)

The country which now passes under the name of Spain has been subjected to a greater number of revolutions, that have left permanent traces in its population, language, and literature, than any other of the principal countries of modern Europe.[394] At different periods, within the reach of authentic record, it has been invaded and occupied by the Phœnicians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Arabs; all distinct races of men with peculiar characteristics, and forming, in their various combinations with each other or with the earlier masters of the soil, still new races hardly less separate and remarkable than themselves. From the intimate union of them all, gradually wrought by the changes and convulsions of nearly three thousand years, has arisen the present Spanish people, whose literature, extending back about seven centuries, has been examined in the preceding volumes.

[394] Spain, Espagne, España, Hispania, are evidently all one word. Its etymology cannot, in the opinion of W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens, 4to, 1821, p. 60,) be determined. The Spanish writers are full of the most absurd conjectures on the subject. See Aldrete, Orígen de la Lengua Castellana, ed. 1674, Lib. III. c. 2, f. 68; Mariana, Hist., Lib. I. c. 12; and Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ed. 1776, Lib. IV., p. 295.

But it is difficult fully to examine or understand the literature of any country, without understanding something, at least, of the original elements and history of the language in which it is contained, and on which no small portion of its essential character must depend; while, at the same time, a knowledge of the origin of the language necessarily implies some knowledge of the nations that, by successive contributions, have constituted it such as it is found in the final forms of its poetry and elegant prose. As a needful appendix, therefore, to the history of Spanish literature, a very brief account will be here given of the different occupants of the soil of the country, who, in a greater or less degree, have contributed to form the present character both of the Spanish people and of their language and culture.

The oldest of these, and the people who, since we can go back no farther, must be by us regarded as the original inhabitants of the Spanish Peninsula, were the Iberians. They appear, at the remotest period of which tradition affords us any notice, to have been spread over the whole territory, and to have given to its mountains, rivers, and cities most of the names they still bear,--a fierce race, whose power has never been entirely broken by any of the long line of invaders who, at different times, have occupied the rest of the country. Even at this moment, a body of their descendants, less affected than we should have supposed possible by intercourse with the various nations that have successively pressed their borders, is believed, with a good degree of probability, to be recognized under the name of Biscayans, inhabiting the mountains in the northwestern portion of modern Spain. But, whether this be true or not, the Biscayans, down to the present day, have been a singular and a separate race. They have a peculiar language, peculiar local institutions, and a literature which is carried back to a remoter antiquity than that of any other people now possessing, not the soil of the Spanish Peninsula merely, but of any part of Southern Europe. They are, in fact, a people who seem to have been left as a solitary race, hardly connected, even by those ties of language which outlive all others, with any race of men now in existence or on record; some of their present customs and popular fables claiming to have come down from an age, of which history and tradition give only doubtful intimations. The most probable conjecture yet proposed to explain what there is peculiar and remarkable about the Biscayans and their language is that which supposes them to be descended from those ancient and mysterious Iberians, whose language seems to have been, at one period, spread through the whole Peninsula, and to have left traces which are recognized even in the present Spanish.[395]

[395] On the subject of the Biscayans and the descent of their language from the ancient Iberian, two references are sufficient for the present purpose. First, “Über die Cantabrische oder Baskische Sprache,” by Wilhelm von Humboldt, published as an Appendix to Adelung and Vater’s “Mithridates,” Theil IV., 1817, 8vo, pp. 275-360. And, second, “Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der Vaskischen Sprache,” etc., von W. von Humboldt, 4to, Berlin, 1821. The admirable learning, philosophy, and acuteness which this remarkable man brought to all his philological discussions are apparent in these treatises, both of which are rendered singularly satisfactory by the circumstance, that, being for some time Prussian Minister at Madrid, he visited Biscay and studied its language on the spot. The oldest fragment of Basque poetry which he found, and which is given in the “Mithridates,” (Theil IV. pp. 354-356,) is held by the learned of Biscay to be nearly or quite as old as the time of Augustus, to whose Cantabrian war it refers; but this can hardly be admitted, though it is no doubt earlier than any thing else we have of the Peninsular literature. It is an important document, and is examined with his accustomed learning and acuteness by Fauriel, “Hist. de la Gaule Méridionale,” 1836, 8vo, Tom. II. App. iii. I do not speak of a pleasant treatise, “De la Antiguedad y Universalidad del Bascuense en España,” which Larramendi published in 1728, nor of the Preface and Appendix to his “Arte de la Lengua Bascongada,” 1729; nor of Astarloa’s “Apologia,” 1803; nor of Erro’s “Lengua Primitiva,” 1806, and his “Mundo Primitivo,” an unfinished work, 1815; for they all lack judgment and precision. If, however, any person is anxious to ascertain their contents, a good abstract of the last two books, with sufficient reference to the first, was published in Boston, by Mr. G. Waldo Erving, formerly American Minister at Madrid, with a preface and notes, under the title of “The Alphabet of the Primitive Language of Spain,” 1829. But Humboldt is to be considered the safe and sufficient authority on the whole subject, for though Astarloa’s work is not without learning and acuteness, yet, as both he and his follower, Erro, labor chiefly to prove, as Larramendi had done long before, that the Basque is the original language of the whole human race, they are led into a great many whimsical absurdities, and must be considered, on the whole, any thing but safe guides.

The first intruders upon the Iberians were the Celts, who, according to Doctor Percy’s theory, constituted the foremost wave of the successive emigrations that broke upon Europe from the overflowing multitudes of Asia. At what precise period the Celts reached Spain, or any other of the Western countries they overran, can no longer be determined. But the contest between the invaders of the soil and its possessors was, from the few intimations of it that have come down to us, long and bloody; and, as was generally the case in the early successful invasions of countries by wandering masses of the human race, portions of the ancient inhabitants were driven to the fastnesses of their mountains, and the remainder became gradually incorporated with the conquerors. The new people, thus formed of two races that, in antiquity, had the reputation of being warlike and powerful, was appropriately called the Celtiberian,[396] and constituted the body of the population which, broken into various tribes, but with similar manners and institutions, occupied the Peninsula when it first became known to the civilized nations of Europe. The language of the Celts, as might be expected, is represented in the present Spanish, as it is in the French and even in the Italian, though but slightly, of course, in any of them.[397]

[396] The remarkable passage in Diodorus Siculus, Bib. Hist., Lib. V. c. 33, is well known; but the phraseology should be noted for our purpose when he speaks of the union of the people as δυοῖν ἐθνῶν ἀλκίμων μιχθέντων. The fortieth section of Humboldt’s “Prüfung” should also be read; and the beginning of the Third Book of Strabo, in which he gives, as usual, a good deal that is curious about history and manners, as well as geography, and a good deal that is incredible, such as that the Turdetani had poetry and poetical laws six thousand years old. Ed. Casaub., 1720, p. 139. C.

[397] In speaking of the two earliest languages of the Spanish Peninsula, I have confined myself to the known facts of the case, without entering into the curious speculations to which these facts have led inquisitive and philosophical minds. But those who are interested in such inquiries will find abundant materials for their study in the remarkable “Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, by Dr. J. C. Prichard,” 5 vols. 8vo, London, 1836-47; and in the acute “Report” of the Chevalier Bunsen to the Seventeenth Meeting of the British Association, London, 1848, pp. 254-299. If we follow their theories, the Basque may be regarded as the language of a race that came originally from the northern parts of Asia and Europe, and to which Prichard gives the name of Ugro-Tartarian, while the Celtic language is that of the oldest of the great emigrations from the more southern portions of Asia, which Bunsen calls the Japhetic.

Thus far, all access to Spain had been by land; for, in the earliest periods of the world’s history, no other mode of emigration or invasion was known. But the Phœnicians, the oldest commercial people of classical antiquity, soon afterwards found their way thither over the waters of the Mediterranean. At what time they arrived in Spain, or where they made their first establishment, is not known. A mystery hangs over this remarkable people, darker than belongs to the age in which they lived, and connected, no doubt, with the wary spirit in which they pursued their commercial adventures. Their position at home made colonization the obvious and almost the only means of commercial wealth among them, and Spain proved the most tempting of the countries to which their power could reach. Their chief Spanish colonies were near the Pillars of Hercules, in the neighbourhood of our present Cadiz, which they probably founded, and about the mouth and on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Their great object was the mines of precious metals with which ancient Spain abounded. For Spain, from the earliest notices of its history till the fall of the Roman Empire, was the El Dorado of the rest of the world, and furnished a large proportion of the materials for its circulating wealth.[398] During a long period, too, these mines seem to have been known only to the Phœnicians, who thus reserved to themselves the secret of a great power and influence over the nations near them, while, at the same time,--establishing colonies, as was their custom, to secure the sources of their wealth,--they carried their language and manners through a considerable part of the South of Spain, and even far round on the shores of the Atlantic.[399]

[398] The general statement may, perhaps, be taken from Mariana, (Lib. I. c. 15,) who gives the story as it has come down through tradition, fable, and history, with no more critical acumen than is common with the Spanish historians. But such separate facts as are mentioned by Livy (Lib. XXXIV. c. 10, 46, Lib. XL. c. 43, with the notes in Drakenborch) bring with them a more distinct impression of the immense wealth obtained anciently from Spain than any general statements whatever; even more than those of Strabo, Diodorus, etc. It has been supposed by Heeren, and by others before and since, (Ideen, 1824, Band I. Theil ii. p. 68,) that the Tarshish of the Prophets Ezekiel (xxvii. 12) and Isaiah (lx. 8, 9) was in Spain, and was, in fact, the ancient Tartessus; but this is denied, (Memorias de la Academia de la Historia, Tom. III. p. 320,) and, no doubt, if the Tarshish of the Prophets were in Spain, there must have been another Tarshish in Cilicia, that is mentioned in other parts of Scripture.

[399] See Heeren’s Ideen, Band I. Theil ii. pp. 24-71, 4th edit., 1824, where the whole subject is discussed.

But the Phœnicians had still earlier founded a colony on the northern coast of Africa, which, under the name of Carthage, was destined to grow more powerful than the country that sent it forth. Its means were the same; for the Carthaginians became eminently a commercial people, and depended, in no small degree, upon the resources of their colonies. They trod closely and almost constantly in the footsteps of their mother country, and often supplanted her power. It was, in fact, through the Phœnician colonies that the Carthaginians entered Spain, whose tempting territory was divided from them only by the Mediterranean. But for a long period, though they maintained a large military force in Cadiz, and stretched their possessions boldly and successfully along the Spanish shores, they did not seem inclined to penetrate far into the interior, or to do more than occupy enough of the country to overawe its population and control its trade. When, however, the First Punic War had rendered Spain of more consequence to the Carthaginians than it had ever been before, they undertook its entire conquest and occupation. Under Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, about two hundred and twenty-seven years before the Christian era, they spread themselves at once over nearly the whole country, as far as the Iberus, and, building Carthagena and some other strong places, seemed to have taken final possession of the Peninsula, on which the Romans had not yet set foot.

The Romans, however, were not slow to perceive the advantage their dangerous rivals had gained. By the first treaty of peace made between these great powers, it was stipulated, that the Carthaginians should advance no farther,--should neither molest Saguntum nor cross the Iberus. Hannibal violated these conditions, and the Second Punic War broke out, two hundred and eighteen years before the Christian era. The Scipios entered Spain in consequence of it; and at its conclusion, in the year B. C. 201, the Carthaginians had no longer any possessions in Europe, though, as descendants of the Phœnicians, they left in the population and language of Spain traces which have never been wholly obliterated.[400]

[400] A sufficient account of the Carthaginians in Spain may be found in Heeren’s Ideen, Band II. Theil i. pp. 85-99, and 172-199. But Mariana contains the more national ideas and traditions, (Lib. I. c. 19, etc.,) and Depping is more ample (Hist. Générale de l’Espagne, 1811, Tom. I. pp. 64-96).

But,[401] though, by the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians were thus driven from the Spanish Peninsula, the Romans were far from having obtained unmolested or secure possession of it. The Carthaginians themselves, even when engaged in a commerce whose spirit was, on the whole, peaceful, had never ceased to be in contest with the warlike Celtiberian tribes of the interior; and the Romans were obliged to accept the inheritance of a warfare to which, in their character of intruders, they naturally succeeded. The Roman Senate, indeed, according to their usual policy, chose to regard Spain, from the end of the Second Punic War, both as conquered and as a province; and, in truth, they had really obtained permanent and quiet possession of a considerable part of it. But, from the time when the Roman armies first entered the Peninsula until they became masters of the whole of it,--except the mountains of the Northwest, which never yielded to their power,--two complete centuries elapsed, filled with bloodshed and crime. No province cost the Roman people a price so great. The struggle for Numantia, which lasted fourteen years, the wars against Viriates, and the war of Sertorius,--to say nothing of that between Pompey and Cæsar,--all show the formidable character of the protracted contest by which alone the Roman power could be confirmed in the Peninsula; so that, though Spain was the first portion of the continent out of Italy which the Romans began to occupy as a province, it was the very last of which their possession was peaceful and unquestioned.[402]

[401] Of the Greeks in Spain, it has not been thought necessary here to speak. Their few establishments were on the southern coast, and rather on the eastern part of it; but they were of little consequence, and do not seem to have produced any lasting effect on the character or language of the country. They were, in fact, rather a result of the influence of the rich and cultivated Greek colony in the South of France, whose capital seat was Marseilles, or of the spirit which in Rhodes and elsewhere sent out adventurers to the far west. (See Benedictins, Hist. Litt. de la France, 1733, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 71, etc.) For those who are curious about the Greeks in Spain, more than they will probably desire will be found in the elaborate and clumsy work of Masdeu, Hist. Crit. de España, Tom. I. p. 211, Tom. III. pp. 76, etc. Aldrete (Orígen de la Lengua Española, 1674, f. 65) has collected about ninety Spanish words to which he attributes a Greek origin; but nearly all of them may be easily traced through the Latin, or else they belong to the Northern invaders or to Italy. Marina, a good authority on this particular point, says: “I do not deny, nor can it be doubted, that, in the Spanish language, are found many words purely Greek, and occasional phrases and turns of expression that are in Attic taste; but this is because they had first been adopted by the Latin language, which is the mother of ours.” Mem. de la Real Acad., Tom. IV., Ensayo, etc., p. 47. There is a curious inscription in Nunes de Lião, (Origem da Lingoa Portugesa, Lisboa, 1784, p. 32,) from a temple erected by Greeks at Ampurias to Diana of Ephesus, which states, that “nec relicta Græcorum lingua, nec idiomate patriæ Iberæ recepto, in mores, in linguam, in jura, in ditionem cessere Romanam, M. Cathego et L. Apronio Coss.” No doubt, these Greeks came from Marseilles, or were connected with it; and no doubt they spoke Latin. But the ancient Iberian language seems to be recognized as existing, also, among them. Ampurias, however, was generally in Spain held to be of Greek origin, as we may see in different ways, and among the rest in the following lines of Espinosa, who, when Alambron comes there with the Infanta Fenisa, says:--

Juntan á la ciudad, que fué fundada De cautos Griegos, rica y bastecida. Segunda Parte de Orlando, ed. 1556, Canto xxxi.

[402] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XXVIII. c. 12. The words are remarkable. “Itaque ergo prima Romanis inita provinciarum, quæ quidem continentis sint, postrema omnium, nostrâ demum ætate, ductu auspicioque Augusti Cæsaris, perdomita est.”

From the outset, however, there was a tendency to a union between the two races, wherever the conquerors were able to establish quietness and order; for the vast advantages of Roman civilization could be obtained only by the adoption of Roman manners and the Latin language. This union, from the great importance of the province, the Romans desired no less than the natives. Forty-seven years only after they entered Spain, a colony, consisting of a large body of the descendants from the mingled blood of Romans and natives, was established by a formal decree of the Senate, with privileges beyond the usual policy of their government.[403] A little later, colonies of all kinds were greatly multiplied; and it is impossible to read Cæsar and Livy without feeling that the Roman policy was more generous to Spain, than it was to any other of the countries that successively came within its control. Tarragona, where the Scipios first landed, Carthagena, founded by Asdrubal, and Córdova, always so important, early took the forms and character of the larger municipalities in Italy; and, in the time of Strabo, Cadiz, for numbers, wealth, and activity, was second only to Rome itself.[404] Long, therefore, before Agrippa had broken the power of the mountaineers at the North, the whole South, with its rich and luxuriant valleys, had become like another Italy; a fact, of which the descriptions in the third book of Pliny’s Natural History can leave no reasonable doubt. To this, however, we should add the remarkable circumstance, that the Emperor Vespasian, soon after the pacification of the North, found it for his interest to extend to the whole of Spain the privileges of the municipalities in Latium.[405]

[403] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XLIII. c. 3.

[404] Strabo, Lib. III., especially pp. 168, 169, ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620; and Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. III. §§ 2-4, but particularly Vol. I., ed. Franzii, 1778, p. 547. A striking proof of the importance of Spain, in antiquity generally, may be found in the fact incidentally stated by W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung, etc., § 2, p. 3,) that “ancient writers have left us a great number of Spanish names of places;--in proportion, a greater number than of any other country except Greece and Italy.”

[405] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. VII. c. 44, where the distinction is spoken of as something surprising, since Pliny adds, that it was “an honor which our ancestors refused even to those of Latium.”

Spaniards, too, earlier than any other strangers, obtained those distinctions of which the Romans themselves were so ambitious, and which they so reluctantly granted to any but native citizens. The first foreigner that ever rose to the consulship was Balbus, from Cadiz, and he, too, was the first foreigner that ever gained the honors of a public triumph. The first foreigner that ever sat on the throne of the world was Trajan, a native of Italica, near Seville;[406] and indeed, if we examine the history of Rome from the time of Hannibal to the fall of the Western Empire, we shall probably find that no part of the world, beyond the limits of Italy, contributed so much to the resources, wealth, and power of the capital, as Spain, and that no province received, in return, so large a share of the honors and dignities of the Roman government.

[406] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. V. c. 5, with the note of Hardouin, and with Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, fol., 1787, Lib. I. c. ii.

On all accounts, therefore, the connection between Rome and Spain was intimate, and the civilization and refinement of the province took their character early from those of the capital. Sertorius found it a wise policy to cause the children of the principal native families to be taught Latin and Greek, and to become accomplished in the literature and elegant knowledge to be found in those admirable languages;[407] and when, ten years later, Metellus, in his turn, had crushed the power of Sertorius, and came home triumphant to Rome, he brought with him a number of native Cordovan poets, against whose Latinity the fastidious ear of Cicero was able to object only that their accent had pingue quiddam ... atque peregrinum,--something thick, or rude, and foreign.[408]

[407] Plutarchus in Sertorium, c. 14.

[408] Pro Archiâ, § 10. It should be noted especially, that Cicero makes them natives of Córdova,--“Cordubæ natis poetis.”

From this period Latin writers began to be constantly produced in Spain.[409] Portius Latro, a native of Córdova, but a public advocate of the highest reputation at Rome, opened in the metropolis the earliest of those schools for Roman rhetoric, that afterwards became so numerous and so famous, and, among other distinguished men, numbered as his disciples Octavius Cæsar, Mæcenas, Marcus Agrippa, and Ovid. The two Senecas were Spaniards, and so was Lucan; names celebrated enough, certainly, to have conferred lasting glory on any city within the limits of the Empire. Martial came from Bilbilis, and, in his old age, retired there again to die in peace, amidst the scenes which, during his whole life, seem to have been dear to him. Columella, too, the best of the Roman writers on agriculture, was a Spaniard; and so, it is probable, were Quinctilian and Silius Italicus. Many others might be added, whose rights and reputation were fully acknowledged in the capital of the world, during the last days of the Republic, or the best days of the Empire, as orators, poets, and historians; but their works, though famous in their own time, have perished in the general wreck of the larger part of ancient literature. The great lights, however, of Roman letters in Spain are familiar to all, and are at once recognized as constituting an important portion of the body of the Latin classics, and an essential part of the glory of Roman civilization.[410]

[409] Some excellent and closely condensed remarks on this subject may be found in the Introduction to Amédée Thierry’s “Histoire de la Gaule sous l’Administration Romaine,” 8vo, 1840, Tom. I. pp. 211-218; a work which leaves little to be desired, as far as it goes.

[410] Of Roman writers in Spain, the accounts are abundant. The first book, however, of Antonio’s “Bibliotheca Vetus” is sufficient. But, after all that has been written, it has always seemed singular to me that Horace should have used exactly the word peritus, when intending specifically to characterize the Spaniards of his time, (II. Od. xx. 19,) unless peritus is used with reference to its relations with experior, rather than in its usual sense of learned. Sir James Mackintosh, speaking of the Latin writers produced by Spain, says they were “the most famous of their age.” Hist. Eng., Vol. I. p. 21, London, 1830.

After this period, no considerable change, that needs to be noticed, took place in the Spanish Peninsula, until the final overthrow of the Roman power.[411] Undoubtedly, at the Northwest, and especially among the mountains and valleys of what is now called Biscay, the language and institutions of Rome were never established;[412] but, in all the remainder of the country, whatever there was of public policy or intellectual refinement rested on the basis of the Roman character and of Roman civilization. But the Roman character and civilization decayed there, as they did everywhere, and though, during the last four centuries in which the Imperial authority was acknowledged in Spain, the country enjoyed more of tranquillity than was enjoyed in any other province within the limits of the Empire, still, like the others, it was much disturbed during the whole of this fatal period, and was gradually yielding to the common destiny.

[411] The story told by Aulus Gellius, (NN. AA., Lib. XIX. c. 9,) about Antoninus Julianus, a Spaniard, who exercised the profession of a rhetorician at Rome, shows pleasantly that there was no Spanish language at that time (circa A. D. 200) except the Latin; for when the “Greci plusculi” at table reproached Antoninus with the poverty of Latin literature, they reproached him as one who was a party concerned, and he defended himself just as a Roman would have done, by quotations from the Latin poets. His patriotism was evidently Roman, and the patria lingua which he vindicated was the Latin.

[412] In the beautiful fragment of a History of England by Sir J. Mackintosh, he says, ut supra, with that spirit of acute and philosophical generalization for which he was so remarkable: “The ordinary policy of Rome was to confine the barbarians within their mountains.” The striking poem in Basque, given by W. von Humboldt, (Mithridates, Band IV. p. 354,) shows the same fact in relation to Biscay.

It was during this troubled interval, that another great cause of change was introduced into Spain, and began to produce its wide effects on whatever of intellectual culture existed in the country. This great cause was Christianity. The precise point of time, or the precise mode, of its first appearance in Spain cannot now be determined. But it was certainly taught there in the second century, and seems to have come in, through the southern coast, from Africa.[413] At first, as elsewhere, it was persecuted, and therefore professed in secret; but, as early as the year 300, churches had been publicly established, and from the time of Constantine and Osius of Córdova, it was the acknowledged and prevalent religion of large parts of the country. What is of consequence to us is, that the language of Christianity in Spain was the Latin. Its instructions were obviously given in Latin, and its early literature, so far as it appeared in Spain, is found wholly in that language.[414] This is very important, not only because it proves the great diffusion of the Latin language there from the third century to the eighth, but because it shows that no other language was left strong enough to contend with it, at least through the middle and southern portions of the country.

[413] Depping, Tom. II. pp. 118, etc. But those who wish to see how absurdly even grave historians can write on the gravest subjects may find all sorts of inconsistencies, on the early history of Christianity in Spain, in the fourth book of Mariana, as well as in most of the other national writers who have occasion to touch upon it.

[414] On the subject of early Christianity in Spain, the third chapter of the fourth book of Depping contains enough for all but those who wish to make the subject a separate and especial study. Such persons will naturally look to Florez and Risco, “España Sagrada,” and their authorities, which, however, must be consulted with great caution, as they are full of the inconsistencies alluded to in the last note.

The Christian clergy, however, it must be recollected, did little or nothing to preserve the purity of the Latin language in Spain, or to maintain whatever of an intellectual tone they found in the institutions established by the Romans.[415] How early these institutions, and especially the ancient schools, decayed there, we do not know; but it was earlier than in some other parts of the Empire. In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries even the ecclesiastics were sunk into the grossest ignorance, so that, when Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604, warned Licinian, Bishop of Carthagena, not to give consecration to persons without education, Licinian replied, that, unless it were permitted to consecrate those who knew only that Christ had been crucified, none could be found to fill the priestly office.[416] In fact, Isidore of Seville, the famous Archbishop and saint, who died in 636, is the last of the Spanish ecclesiastics that attempted to write Latin with purity; and even he thought so ill of classical antiquity, that he prohibited the monks under his control from reading books written by heathen of the olden time;[417] thus taking away the only means of preserving from its threatened corruption the language they wrote and spoke.[418] Of course this corruption advanced, in times of confusion and national trouble, at a rapid pace, until the spoken language of the country became, to those out of it, an almost unintelligible jargon; and the offices of the Church, as they were read at mass and on feast days, could no longer be understood by the body of the worshippers. This was the result, partly of the decay of all the Roman institutions, and, indeed, of all the principles on which those institutions had rested, and partly of the invasion and conquest of the country by the Northern barbarians, whose irruption, with the violences that followed it, left for a long time neither the quietness nor the sense of security necessary even to the humblest intellectual culture.[419]

[415] One reason why the clergy did little to preserve the purity of the Latin, and much to corrupt it, in the South of Europe, was, that they were obliged to hold their intercourse with the common people in the degraded Latin. And this intercourse, which consisted chiefly of instructions given to the common people, was a large part of all the clergy did in the early ages of the Church. For the Christian clergy in Spain, as elsewhere, addressed themselves, for a long period, to the lower and more ignorant classes of society, because the refined and the powerful refused to listen to them. But the Latin spoken by those classes in Spain, whether it were what was called the “lingua rustica” or not, was undoubtedly different from the purer Latin spoken by the more cultivated and favored classes, just as it was in Italy, and even much more than it was there. In addressing the common people, their Christian teachers in Spain, therefore, very early found it expedient, and probably necessary, to use the degraded Latin, which the common people spoke. At last, as we learn, no other was intelligible to them; for the grammatical Latin, even of the office of the Mass, ceased to be so. In this way, Christianity must have contributed directly and materially to the degradation of the Latin, and to the formation of the new dialects, just as it contributed to form the modern character, as distinguished from the ancient. Indeed, without entering into the much vexed questions concerning the lingua rustica or quotidiana, its origin, character and prevalence, I cannot help saying, that I am persuaded the modern languages and their dialects in the South of Europe were, so far as the Latin was concerned, formed out of the popular and vulgar Latin found in the mouths of the common people; and that Christianity, more than any other single cause, was the medium and means by which this change from one to the other was brought about. For the lingua rustica, see Morhof, De Patavinitate Livianâ, capp. vi., vii., and ix.; and Du Cange, De Causis Corruptæ Latinitatis, §§ 13-25, prefixed to his Glossarium.

[416] The passage from Licinian is given in a note to Eichhorn’s “Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur,” 1799, 8vo, Band II. p. 467. See, also, Castro, Biblioteca Española, 1786, folio, Tom. II. p. 275.

[417] Isidore, as cited at length in Eichhorn’s “Cultur,” Band II. p. 470, note (I).

[418] For Isidorus Hispalensis, see Antonio, Bib. Vet., Lib. V. capp. iii., iv.; and Castro, Bib. Esp., Tom. II. pp. 293-344. I judge Isidore’s Latinity chiefly from his “Etymologiarum Libri XX.,” and his “De Summo Bono, Libri III.,” fol., 1483, lit. Goth. No doubt, there are many words in Isidore of Seville, that are not of classical authority, some of which he marks as such, and others not; but, on the whole, his Latinity is respectable. Among the corrupt words he uses are a few that are curious, because they have descended into the modern Castilian; such as, “astrosus, ab astro dictus, quasi malo sidere natus,” (Etymol., 1483, fol. 50. a,) which appears in the present astroso, the familiar term for unhappy, disastrous, and permitted by the Spanish Academy;--cortina, of which Isidore says, “Cortinæ sunt aulæa, id est, vela de pellibus, qualia in Exodo leguntur,” (Etym., f. 97. b,) which appears in the modern Spanish cortina, for curtain;--”camisias vocamus, quod in his dormimus in camis,” (Etym., f. 96. b,) which last word, cama, is explained afterwards to be “lectus brevis et circa terram,” (Etym., f. 101. a,) and both of which are now Spanish, camisa being the proper word for shirt, and cama for bed;--”mantum Hispani vocant quod manus tegat tantum, est enim brevis amictus,” (Etym., f. 97. a,) which is the Spanish manto;--and so on with a few others. They are, however, only curious as corrupted Latin words, which happened to continue in use, till the modern Spanish arose several centuries later.

[419] See Eichhorn’s Cultur, Band II. pp. 472, etc.;--or, for more ample accounts, Antonio, Bib. Vet., Lib. V. and VI.; and Castro, Bib. Esp., Tom. II.

This great irruption of the Northern barbarians effected another and most important revolution in the language of the Peninsula. It in fact gave to it a new character. For the race of men by whom it was made was entirely different, both in its origin, its language, and, indeed, in all that goes to make up national character, from the four races that had previously occupied the country. The new invaders belonged to those vast multitudes beyond the Rhine, who had been much known to the Romans from the time of Julius Cæsar, and who, at the period of which we speak, had been, for above a century, leaning with a portentous weight upon the failing barriers, which, on the banks of that glorious stream, had long marked the limits of Roman power. Urged forward, not only by the natural disposition of Northern nations to come into a milder climate, and of barbarous nations to obtain the spoils of civilization, but by uneasy movements among the Tartars of Upper Asia, which were communicated through the Sclavonic tribes to those of Germany, their accumulated masses burst, in the beginning of the fifth century, with an irresistible impulse, on the wide and ill-defended borders of the Empire. Without noticing the tumultuous attempts that preceded this final and fatal invasion and were either defeated or turned aside, it is enough to say, that the first hordes of the irruption which succeeded in overthrowing the empire of the world began to pass the Rhine at the end of the year 406, and in the beginning of 407. These hordes, however, were pressed forward, it may be said almost without a figure, by the merely physical weight of the large bodies that followed them. Tribe succeeded tribe, with all the facility and haste of a nomadic life, which knows neither local attachments nor local interests, and with all the eagerness and violence of barbarians seeking the grosser luxuries of civilization; so that when, at the end of that century, the last of the greater warlike emigrations had forced for itself a place within the limits of the Roman empire, it may be truly said, that, from the Rhine and the British Channel on the one side, to Calabria and Gibraltar on the other, there was hardly a spot of that empire over which they had not passed, and few where they were not then to be found possessors of the soil, and masters of the political and military power.[420]

[420] Gibbon, Chap. XXX.

In the particular character of the multitudes that finally established themselves within its territory, Spain was certainly less unfortunate than were most of the countries of Europe, that were in a similar manner invaded. The first tribes that rushed over the Pyrenees--the Franks, who came before the general invasion, and the Vandali, the Alani, and the Suevi, who, as far as Spain was concerned, formed its vanguard--committed, no doubt, atrocious excesses, and produced a state of cruel suffering, which is eloquently and indignantly described in a well-known passage of Mariana;[421] but, after a comparatively short period, these tribes or nations passed over into Africa and never returned. The Goths, who succeeded them as invaders, were, it is true, barbarians, like their predecessors, but they were barbarians of a milder and more generous type. They had already been in Italy, where they had become somewhat acquainted with the Roman laws, manners, and language; and when, in 411, they traversed the South of France and entered the Peninsula, they were received rather as friends than as conquerors.[422] Indeed, at first, their authority was exercised in the name and on behalf of the Empire; but, before the century was ended, the last Emperor of the West had ceased to reign; and, by a sort of inevitable necessity, the Visigoth dynasty was established throughout nearly the whole of Spain, and acknowledged by Odoacer, the earliest of the barbarian kings of Italy.

[421] Lib. V. c. 1.

[422] Mariana, Lib. V. c. 2.

Previously, however, to the entrance of the Visigoths into Spain, they had been converted to Christianity by the venerable Ulfilas; and, as early as 466-484, in a period of great confusion, they had formed for themselves a criminal code of laws, to which, in 506, they added a civil code,--the two being subsequently made to constitute the basis of that important body of laws which, above a century later, was compiled by the fourth Council of Toledo.[423] But, though the Visigoths had thus adopted some of the most important means of civilization, their language, like that of the rest of the Northern invaders, remained essentially barbarous. It was never, at any time, in Spain, a written language. It was of the Teutonic stock, and had nothing, or almost nothing, in common with the Latin. Still, the people who spoke it were so intimately mingled with the conquered people, and each, from its position, had become so dependent on the other, that it was no longer a question whether they should find some medium of communication suited to the daily and hourly intercourse of common life. They were, in fact, compelled to do so. The same consequences, therefore, followed, that followed in the other Roman or Romanized countries which were invaded in the same way. A union of the two languages took place; but not a union on equal terms. This was impossible. For on the side of the Latin were not only the existing, though decayed, institutions of the country, but whatever of civilization and refinement was still to be found in the world, as well as the vast and growing power of the Christian religion, with its organized priesthood, which refused to be heard in any other language. So that, if the Goths, on their part, had the political and military authority, and even a more fresh and vigorous intellectual character, they were obliged, on the whole, to submit to such prevalent influences, and to adopt, in a great degree, the language through which alone they could obtain the benefits of a more advanced state of society. The Latin, therefore, corrupted and degraded as it was, remained in Spain, as it did in the other countries where similar races of men came together, by far the most prominent element in the language that grew out of their union, and was thus made to constitute the grand basis of the modern Spanish.

[423] Gibbon, Chap. XXXVII.; an article in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXXI., on the Gothic Laws of Spain; and Depping, Tom. II. pp. 217, etc.

The most considerable change effected by the invaders in the language they found established in Spain was a change in its grammatical structure. The Goths, like any uncivilized people, could learn the individual words of the more cultivated language they every day heard, easier than they could comprehend the philosophical spirit of its grammar. While, therefore, they freely adopted the large and convenient vocabulary of the Latin, they compelled its complicated forms and constructions to yield to the simpler constructions and habits of their own native dialects. This may be illustrated by the striking changes they wrought in the established inflections of the Latin nouns and verbs. The Romans, it is well known, had strict declensions to mark the relations of their nouns, and strict conjugations by which they distinguished the times of their verbs. The Goths had neither, but used articles united with prepositions to mark the cases of their nouns, and auxiliaries of different kinds to mark the changes in the meanings of their verbs.[424]

[424] In the earliest Gothic that remains to us, (the Gospels of Ulfilas, circa A. D. 370,) there is no indefinite article; and the definite does not always occur where it is used in the original Greek, from which, it is worthy of notice, the venerable Bishop made his version, and not from the Latin. But there is no reason, I think, to suppose that the articles of both sorts were not used by the Goths, as well as by the other Northern tribes, in the fifth century, as they have been ever since. See Ulfilas, Gothische Bibelübersetzung, ed. Zahn, 1805, 4to, and, especially, Einleitung, pp. 28-37.

When, therefore, in Spain, they received the Latin, where no article existed, they compelled ille, as the nearest word they could find, to serve for their definite article, and unus for their indefinite,--so that, in their oldest deeds and other documents, we find such phrases as ille homo, the man; unus homo, a man; illa mulier, the woman; and so on,--from which the modern Spanish derives its articles el and la, uno, una, etc., just as the French, by a similar process, obtained the articles le and la, un and une, and the Italians il and la, uno and una.[425] The same sort of compromise took place in relation to the verbs. Instead of vici, I have conquered, they said habeo victus; instead of saying amor, I am loved, they said sum amatus; and from such a use of habere and esse, they introduced into the modern Spanish the auxiliaries haber and ser, as the Italians introduced avere and essere, and the French avoir and être.[426] This example of the effect produced by the Goths on the nouns and verbs of the Latin is but a specimen of the changes they brought about in the general structure of that language, by which they contributed their full share towards still further corrupting it, as well as towards modelling it into the present Spanish;--a great revolution, which it required above seven centuries fairly to accomplish, and two or three centuries more entirely to carry out into all its final results.[427]

[425] Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. I. pp. 39, 43, 48, etc., and Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, 1838, 8vo, Band II. pp. 13, 14, 98-100, 144, 145.

[426] Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. I. pp. 76-85.

[427] See, on the whole of this subject,--the formation of the modern dialects of the South of Europe,--the excellent “Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen von Fried. Diez,” Bonn, 1836-38, 2 vols. 8vo. For examples of corruptions of the Spanish language, such as are above referred to, take the following:--Frates, orate pro nos, instead of Fratres, orate pro nobis;--Sedeat segregatus a corpus et sanguis Domini, instead of corpore et sanguine. (Marina, Ensayo, p. 22, note, in Memorias de la Academia de la Hist., Tom. IV.) The changes in spelling are innumerable, but are less to be trusted as proofs of change in the language, because they may have arisen from the carelessness or ignorance of individual copyists. Specimens of every sort of them may be found in the “Coleccion de Cédulas,” etc., referred to in Vol. I. p. 47, note, and in the “Coleccion de Fueros Municipales,” by Don Tomas Muñoz y Romero, Madrid, 1847, fol., Tom. I.

But, in the mean time, another tremendous invasion had burst upon Spain; violent, unforeseen, and for a time threatening to sweep away all the civilization and refinement, that had been preserved from the old institutions of the country, or were springing up under the new. This was the remarkable invasion of the Arabs, which compels us now to seek some of the materials of the Spanish character, language, and literature in the heart of Asia, as we have already been obliged to seek for some of them in the extreme North of Europe.

The Arabs, who, at every period of their history, have been a picturesque and extraordinary people, received, from the passionate religion given to them by the genius and fanaticism of Mohammed, an impulse that, in most respects, is unparalleled. As late as the year of Christ 623, the fortunes and the fate of the Prophet were still uncertain, even within the narrow limits of his own wild and wandering tribe; yet, in less than a century from that time, not only Persia, Syria, and nearly the whole of Western Asia, but Egypt and all the North of Africa had yielded to the power of his military faith. A success so wide and so rapid, founded on religious enthusiasm, and so speedily followed by the refinements of civilization, is unlike any thing else in the history of the world.[428]

[428] See some striking remarks on the adventures of Mohammed, in Prof. Smyth’s genial Lectures on Modern History, Vol. I. pp. 66, 67, 8vo, London, 1840.

When the Arabs had obtained a tolerably quiet possession of the cities and coasts of Africa, it was natural they should turn next to Spain, from which they were separated only by the straits of the Mediterranean. Their descent was made, in great force, near Gibraltar, in 711; the battle of the Guadalete, as it is called by the Moorish writers, and of Xerez, as it is called by the Christians, followed immediately; and, in the course of three years, they had, with their accustomed celerity, conquered the whole of Spain, except the fated region of the Northwest, behind whose mountains a large body of Christians, under Pelayo, retreated, leaving the rest of their country in the hands of the conquerors.

But while the Christians, who had escaped from the wreck of the Gothic power, were thus either shut up in the mountains of Biscay and Asturias, or engaged in that desperate struggle of nearly eight centuries, which ended in the final expulsion of their invaders, the Moors[429] throughout the centre and especially throughout the South of Spain were enjoying an empire as splendid and intellectual as the elements of their religion and civilization would permit.

[429] They were so called from their African abode, Mauritania, where they naturally inherited the name of the ancient Mauri.

Much has been said concerning the glory of this empire, and the effect it has produced on the literature and manners of modern times. Long ago, a disposition was shown by Huet and Massieu to trace to them the origin both of rhyme and of romantic fiction; but both are now generally admitted to have been, as it were, spontaneous productions of the human mind, which different nations at different periods have invented separately for themselves.[430] Somewhat later, Father Andres, a learned Spaniard, who wrote in Italy and in Italian, anxious to give to his own country the honor of imparting to the rest of Europe the first impulse to refinement after the fall of the Roman empire, conceived the theory, at once broader and more definite than that of Huet, that the poetry and cultivation of the Troubadours of Provence, which are generally admitted to be the oldest of Southern Europe in modern times, were derived entirely and immediately from the Arabs of Spain; a theory which has been adopted by Ginguené, by Sismondi, and by the authors of the “Literary History of France.”[431] But they all go upon the presumption that rhyme and metrical composition, as well as a poetic spirit, were awakened later in Provence than subsequent inquiries show them to have been. For Father Andres and his followers date the communication of the Arabian influences of Spain upon the South of France from the capture of Toledo in 1085, when, no doubt, there was a great increase of intercourse between the two countries.[432] But Raynouard[433] has since published the fragment of a poem, the manuscript of which can hardly be dated so late as the year 1000, and has thus shown that the Provençal literature is to be carried back above a century earlier, and traced to the period of the gradual corruption of the Latin, and the gradual formation of the modern language. The elder Schlegel, too, has entered into the discussion of the theory itself, and left little reason to doubt that Raynouard’s positions on the subject are well founded.[434]

[430] See Huet, “Origine des Romans,” (ed. 1693, p. 24,) but especially Warton, in his first Dissertation, for the Oriental and Arabic origin of romantic fiction. The notes to the octavo edition, by Price, add much to the value of the discussions on these questions. Warton’s Eng. Poetry, 1824, 8vo, Vol. I.; Massieu (Hist. de la Poésie Françoise, 1739, p. 82) and Quadrio (Storia d’ Ogni Poesia, 1749, Tom. IV. pp. 299, 300) follow Huet, but do it with little skill.

[431] The opinion of Father Andres is boldly stated by him in the following words: “Quest’ uso degli Spagnuoli di verseggiare nella lingua, nella misura, e nella rima degli Arabi, può dirsi con fondamento la prima origine della moderna poesia.” (Storia d’ Ogni Lett., Lib. I. c. 11, § 161; also pp. 163-272, ed. 1808, 4to.) The same theory will be found yet more strongly expressed by Ginguené (Hist. Litt. d’Italie, 1811, Tom. I. pp. 187-285); by Sismondi (Litt. du Midi, 1813, Tom. I. pp. 38-116; and Hist. des Français, 8vo, Tom. IV., 1824, pp. 482-494); and in the Hist. Litt. de la France (4to, 1814, Tom. XIII. pp. 42, 43). But these last authors have added little to the authority of Andres’s opinion, the very last being, I think, Ginguené.

[432] Andres, Storia, Tom. I. p. 273. Ginguené, Tom. I. pp. 248-250, who says: “C’est à cette époque (1085) que remontent peut-être les premiers essais poétiques de l’Espagne, et que remontent sûrement les premiers chants de nos Troubadours.”

[433] Fragment d’un Poème en Vers Romans sur Boèce, publié par M. Raynouard, etc., Paris, 8vo, 1817. Also in his Poésies des Troubadours, Tom. II. Consult, further, Grammaire de la Langue Romane, in the same work, Tom. I.

[434] I refer to “Observations sur la Langue et la Littérature Provençales, par A. W. Schlegel,” Paris, 1818, 8vo, not published. See, especially, pp. 73, etc., in which he shows how completely anti-Arabic are the whole tone and spirit of the early Provençal, and still more those of the early Spanish poetry. And see, also, Diez, Poesie der Troubadours, 8vo, 1826, pp. 19, etc.; an excellent book.

But, though we cannot, with Father Andres and his followers, trace the poetry and refinement of all the South of Europe in modern times primarily or mainly to the Arabs of Spain, we must still, so far as the Spanish language and literature are concerned, trace something to them. For their progress in refinement was hardly less brilliant and rapid than their progress in empire. The reigns of the two Abderrahmans, and the period of the glory of Córdova, which began about 750 and continued almost to the time of its conquest by the Christians in 1236, were more intellectual than could then be found elsewhere; and if the kingdom of Granada, which ended in 1492, was less refined, it was, perhaps, even more splendid and luxurious.[435] The public schools and libraries of the Spanish Arabs were resorted to, not only by those of their own faith at home and in the East, but by Christians from different parts of Europe; and Pope Sylvester the Second, one of the most remarkable men of his age, is believed to have owed his elevation to the pontificate to the culture he received in Seville and Córdova.[436]

[435] Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España, Madrid, 1820-21, 4to, Tom. I. and II., but especially Tom. I. pp. 158-226, 425-489, 524-547.

[436] Sylvester II. (Gerbert) was Pope from 999 to 1003, and was the first head France gave to the Church. I am aware that the Benedictines (Hist. Litt. de la France, Tom. VI. p. 560) intimate that he did not pass, in Spain, beyond Córdova, and I am aware, too, that Andres (Tom. I. pp. 175-178) is unwilling to allow him to have studied at any schools in Seville and Córdova except Christian schools. But there is no pretence that the Christians had important schools in Andalusia at that time, though the Arabs certainly had; and the authorities on which Andres relies assume that Gerbert studied with the Moors, and prove more, therefore, than he wishes to be proved. Like many other men skilled in the sciences during the Middle Ages, Gerbert was considered a necromancer. A good account of his works is in the Hist. Litt. de la France, Tom. VI. pp. 559-614.

In the midst of this flourishing empire lived large masses of native Christians, who had not retreated with their hardy brethren under Pelayo to the mountains of the Northwest, but dwelt among their conquerors, protected by the wide toleration which the Mohammedan religion originally prescribed and practised. Indeed, except that, as a vanquished people, they paid double the tribute paid by Moors, and that they were taxed for their Church property, these Christians were little burdened or restrained, and were even permitted to have their bishops, churches, and monasteries, and to be judged by their own laws and their own tribunals, whenever the question at issue was one that related only to themselves, unless it involved a capital punishment.[437] But, though they were thus to a certain degree preserved as a separate people, and though, considering their peculiar position, they maintained, more than would be readily believed, their religious loyalty, still the influence of a powerful and splendid empire, and of a population every way more prosperous and refined than themselves, was constantly pressing upon them. The inevitable result was, that, in the course of ages, they gradually yielded something of their national character. They came, at last, to wear the Moorish dress; they adopted Moorish manners; and they served in the Moorish armies and in the places of honor at the courts of Córdova and Granada. In all respects, indeed, they deserved the name given to them, that of Mozárabes or Muçárabes, persons who seemed to become Arabs in manners and language; for they were so mingled with their conquerors and masters, that, in process of time, they could be distinguished from the Arabs amidst whom they lived by little except their faith.[438]

[437] The condition of the Christians under the Moorish governments of Spain may be learned, sufficiently for our purpose, from many passages in Conde, e. g. Tom. I. pp. 39, 82, etc. But after all, perhaps, the reluctant admissions of Florez, Risco, etc., in the course of the forty-five volumes of the “España Sagrada,” are quite as good a proof of the tolerance exercised by the Moors, as the more direct statements taken from the Arabian writers. See, for Toledo, Florez, Tom. V. pp. 323-329; for Complutum or Alcalá de Henares, Tom. VII. p. 187; for Seville, Tom. IX. p. 234; for Córdova and its martyrs, Tom. X. pp. 245-471; for Saragossa, Risco, Tom. XXX. p. 203, and Tom. XXXI. pp. 112-117; for Leon, Tom. XXXIV. p. 132; and so on. Indeed, there is something in the accounts of a great majority of the churches, whose history these learned men have given in so cumbrous a manner, that shows the Moors to have practised a toleration which, mutatis mutandis, they would have been grateful to have found among the Christians in the time of Philip III.

[438] The meaning of the word Mozárabe was long doubtful; the best opinion being that it was derived from Mixti-arabes, and meant what this Latin phrase would imply. (Covarrubias, Tesoro, 1674, ad verb.) That this was the common meaning given to it in early times is plain from the “Chrónica de España,” (Parte II., at the end,) and that it continued to be so received is plain, among other proofs, from the following passage in “Los Muçárabes de Toledo,” (a play in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXXVIII., 1672, p. 157,) where one of the Muzárabes, explaining to Alfonso VII. who and what they are, says, just before the capture of the city,--

Muçárabes, Rey, nos llamamos, Porque, entre Arabes mezclados, Los mandamientos sagrados De nuestra ley verdadera, Con valor y fé sincera Han sido siempre guardados. Jornada III.

But, amidst the other rare learning of his notes on “The Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain,” (4to, London, 1840, Vol. I. pp. 419, 420,) Don Pascual de Gayangos has perhaps settled this vexed, though not very important, question. Mozárabe, or Muzárabe, as he explains it, “is the Arabic Musta’rab, meaning a man who tries to imitate or to become an Arab in his manners and language, and who, though he may know Arabic, speaks it like a foreigner.” The word is still used in relation to the ritual of some of the churches in Toledo. (Castro, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 458, and Paleographía Esp., p. 16.) On the other hand, the Moors who, as the Christian conquests were advanced towards the South, remained, in their turn, inclosed in the Christian population and spoke or assumed its language, were originally called Moros Latinados. See “Poema del Cid,” v. 266, and “Crónica General,” (ed. 1604, fol. 304. a,) where, respecting Alfaraxi, a Moor, afterwards converted, and a counsellor of the Cid, it is said he was “de tan buen entendimento, e era tan ladino que semejava Christiano.”

The effect of all this on whatever of the language and literature of Rome still survived among them was, of course, early apparent. The natives of the soil who dwelt among the Moors soon neglected their degraded Latin, and spoke Arabic. In 794, the conquerors thought they might already venture to provide schools for teaching their own language to their Christian subjects, and require them to use no other.[439] Alvarus Cordubensis, who wrote his “Indiculus Luminosus” in 854,[440] and who is a competent witness on such a subject, shows that they had succeeded; for he complains that, in his time, the Christians neglected their Latin, and acquired Arabic to such an extent that hardly one Christian in a thousand was to be found who could write a Latin letter to a brother in the faith, while many were able to write Arabic poetry so as to rival the Moors themselves.[441] Such, indeed, was the early prevalence of the Arabic, that John, Bishop of Seville, one of those venerable men who commanded the respect alike of Christians and Mohammedans, found it necessary to translate the Scriptures into it, because his flock could read them in no other language.[442] Even the records of Christian churches were often kept in Arabic from this period down through several succeeding centuries, and in the archives of the cathedral at Toledo, above two thousand documents were recently and are probably still to be seen, written chiefly by Christians and ecclesiastics, in Arabic.[443]

[439] Conde, Tom. I. p. 229.

[440] Florez, España Sagrada, Tom. XI. p. 42.

[441] The “Indiculus Luminosus” is a defence of the fanatical martyrs of Córdova, who suffered under Abderrahman II. and his son. The passage referred to, with all its sins against pure Latinity and good taste, is as follows:--“Heu, proh dolor! linguam suam nesciunt Christiani, et linguam propriam non advertunt Latini, ita ut omni Christi collegio vix inveniatur unus in milleno hominum numero, qui salutatorias fatri possit rationabiliter dirigere literas. Et reperitur absque numero multiplex turba, qui eruditè Caldaicas verborum explicet pompas. Ita ut metricè eruditiori ab ipsis gentibus carmine et sublimiori pulchritudine,” etc. It is found at the end of the treatise, which is printed entire in Florez (Tom. XI. pp. 221-275). The phrase omni Christi collegio is, I suppose, understood by Mabillon, “De Re Diplomaticâ,” (fol., 1681, Lib. II. c. 1, p. 55,) to refer to the clergy, in which case the statement would be much stronger, and signify that “not one priest in a thousand could address a common letter of salutation to another” (Hallam, Middle Ages, London, 8vo, 1819, Vol. III. p. 332);--but I incline to think that it refers to the whole body of Christians in and about Córdova.

[442] The time when John of Seville lived is not settled (Florez, Tom. IX. pp. 242, etc.); but that is not important to our purpose. The fact of the translation is in the Crónica General (Parte III. c. 2, f. 9, ed. 1604): “Trasladó las sanctas Escripturas en Arávigo e fizó las exposiciones dellas segun conviene a la sancta Escriptura.” And Mariana gives the true reason for it: “A causa que la lengua Arábiga se usaba mucho entre todos; la Latina ordinariamente ni se usaba, ni se sabia.” (Lib. VII. c. iii., prope finem.) See, also, Antonio, Bib. Vet., Lib. VI. c. 9; Castro, Bib. Esp., Tom. II. pp. 454, etc.

[443] Paleographía Española, p. 22.

Nor was this state of things at once changed when the Christians from the North prevailed again; for, after the reconquest of some of the central portions of the country, the coins struck by Christian kings to circulate among their Christian subjects were covered with Arabic inscriptions, as may be seen in coins of Alfonso the Sixth and Alfonso the Eighth, in the years 1185, 1186, 1191, 1192, 1199, and 1212.[444] And in 1256 Alfonso the Wise, when, by a solemn decree dated at Burgos, 18th December, he was making provision for education at Seville, established Arabic schools there, as well as Latin.[445] Indeed, still later, and even down to the fourteenth century, the public acts and monuments of that part of Spain were often written in Arabic, and the signatures to important ecclesiastical documents, though the body of the instrument might be in Latin or Spanish, were sometimes made in the Arabic character, as they are in a grant of privileges by Ferdinand the Fourth to the monks of Saint Clement.[446] So that almost as late as the period of the conquest of Granada, and in some respects later, it is plain that the language, manners, and civilization of the Arabs were still much diffused among the Christian population of the centre and South of Spain.

[444] Memorias de la Real Acad. de la Hist., Tom. IV., Ensayo de Marina, pp. 40-43.

[445] Mondejar, Memorias de Alonso el Sabio, fol., 1777, p. 43. Ortiz y Zuñiga, Anales de Sevilla, fol., 1677, p. 79.

[446] Mem. de la Real Acad. de la Hist., Tom. IV., Ensayo de Marina, p. 40.

When, therefore, the Christians from the North, after a contest the most bitter and protracted, had rescued the greater part of their country from thraldom, and driven the Moors before them into its southwestern provinces, they found themselves, as they advanced, surrounded by large masses of their ancient countrymen, Christians, indeed, in faith and feeling, though most imperfect in Christian knowledge and morals, but Moors in dress, manners, and language. A union, of course, took place between these different bodies, who, by the fortunes of war, had been separated from each other so long, that, though originally of the same stock and still connected by some of the strongest sympathies of our nature, they had for centuries ceased to possess a common language in which alone it would be possible to carry on the daily intercourse of life. But such a reunion of the two parts of the nation, wherever and whenever it occurred, necessarily implied an immediate modification or accommodation of the language that was to be used by both. No doubt, such a modification of the Gothicized and corrupted Latin had been going on, in some degree, from the time of the Moorish conquest. But now it was indispensable that it should be completed. A considerable infusion of the Arabic, therefore, quickly took place;[447] and the last important element was thus added to the present Spanish, which has been polished and refined, indeed, by subsequent centuries of progress in knowledge and civilization, but is still, in its prominent features, the same that it appeared soon after what, with characteristic nationality, is called the Restoration of Spain.[448]

[447] For the great Arabic infusion into the language of Spain, see Aldrete, Orígen, Lib. III. c. 15; Covarrubias, Tesoro, passim; and the catalogue, of 85 pages, in the fourth volume of the Memorias de la Academia de Historia. To these may be well added the very curious “Vestigios da Lingua Arábica em Portugal per João de Sousa,” Lisboa, 1789, 4to. A general notice of the whole subject, but one that gives too much influence to the Arabic, may be found in the “Ocios de Españoles Emigrados,” Tom. II. p. 16, and Tom. III. p. 291.

[448] The common and characteristic phrase, from a very early period, for the Moorish conquest of Spain, was “la pérdida de España,” and that for its reconquest, “la restauracion de España.”

The language, however, which was thus brought from the North by the Christian conquerors, and became modified as it advanced among the Moorish population of the South, was, as we have seen, by no means the classical Latin. It was Latin corrupted, at first, by the causes which had corrupted that language throughout the Roman empire, even before the overthrow of the Roman power,--then by the inevitable effect of the establishment in Spain of the Goths and other barbarians immediately afterwards,--and subsequently by additions from the original Iberian or Basque, made during the residence of the Christians, after the Moorish conquest, among the mountaineers, with whom that language had never ceased to prevail. But the principal cause of the final degradation of the Latin at the North, after the middle of the eighth century, was, no doubt, the miserable condition of the people who spoke it. They had fled from the ruins of the Latinized kingdom of the Goths, pursued by the fiery sword of the Moslem, and found themselves crowded together in the wild fastnesses of the Biscayan and Asturian mountains. There, deprived of the social institutions in which they had been nurtured, and which, however impaired or ruined, yet represented and retained to the last whatever of civilization had been left in their unhappy country; mingled with a people who, down to that time, appear to have shaken off little of the barbarism that had resisted alike the invasion of the Romans and of the Goths; and pent up, in great numbers, within a territory too small, too rude, and too poor to afford them the means of a tolerable subsistence, the Christians at the North seem to have sunk at once into a state nearly approaching that of savage life,--a state, of course, in which no care or thought would be given to preserve the purity of the language they spoke.[449] Nor was their condition much more favorable for such purposes when, with the vigor of despair, they began to recover the country they had lost. For they were then constantly in arms and constantly amidst the perils and sufferings of an exhausting warfare, embittered and exasperated by intense national and religious hatreds. When, therefore, as they advanced with their conquests towards the south and the east, they found themselves coming successively in contact with those portions of their race that had remained among the Moors, they felt that they were at once in the presence of a civilization and refinement altogether superior to their own.

[449] The Arabic accounts, which are much to be relied on, because they are contemporary, give a shocking picture of the Christians at the North in the eighth century. “Viven como fieras, que nunca lavan sus cuerpos ni vestidos, que no se las mudan, y los llevan puestas hasta que se les caen despedezados en andrajos,” etc. (Conde, Dominacion, etc., Parte II. c. 18.) The romantic and uncertain accounts, in the beginning of the third part of the Crónica General, and the more formal narrative of Mariana, (book seventh,) leave little doubt that such descriptions must be near the truth.

The result was inevitable. The change, which, as has been said, now took place in their language, was governed by this peculiar circumstance in their position. For, as the Goths, between the fifth and eighth centuries, received a vast number of words from the Latin because it was the language of a people with whom they were intimately mingled and who were much more intellectual and advanced than themselves, so now, for the same reason, the whole nation received, between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, another increase of their vocabulary from the Arabic, and accommodated themselves, in a remarkable degree, to the advanced cultivation of their Southern countrymen and of their new Moorish subjects.

At what precise period the language, since called the Spanish and Castilian, can be said to have been formed by this union of the Gothicized and corrupted Latin that came from the North with the Arabic of the South, cannot now be determined.[450] Such a union was, from its nature, brought about by one of those gradual and silent changes in what belongs essentially to the character of a whole people, which can leave behind them no formal monuments or exact records. But the learned Marina, who may perhaps be safely trusted on this point, asserts that no document in the Castilian language, with a date anterior to the year 1140, exists, or, in his opinion, ever did exist.[451] Indeed the oldest yet cited is a confirmation of privileges by Alfonso the Seventh, in the year 1155, to the city of Avilés in Asturias.[452] However gradual, therefore, and indistinct may have been the formation and first appearance of the Castilian as the spoken language of modern Spain, we may no doubt feel sure, that, about the middle of the twelfth century, it had risen to the dignity of being a written language, and had begun to appear in the important public documents of the time.

[450] Consult Marina, Ensayo, p. 19.

[451] Ibid., pp. 23, 24.

[452] The Avilés document is regarded by all who have noticed it as of great importance for the earliest history of the Castilian. It is first mentioned, I believe, by Father Risco, in his “Historia de la Ciudad y Corte de Leon” (Madrid, 1793, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 252, 253); and next by Marina, in his “Ensayo” (Memorias de la Acad. de Historia, Tom. IV., 1805, p. 33);--both competent witnesses, and both entirely satisfied that it is genuine. Risco, however, printed no part of it, and Marina published only a few extracts. But in the “Revista de Madrid,” (Segunda Epoca, Tom. VII. pp. 267-322,) it is published entire, as part of an interesting discussion concerning the old codes of the country, by Don Rafael Gonzalez Llanos, a man of learning and a native of Avilés, who seems to have a strong love for the place of his birth and to be familiar with its antiquities.

The document in question belongs to the class of instruments sometimes called “Privilegios,” and sometimes “Foros,” or “Fueros” (see, ante, Vol. I. p. 47, note 28); but where, as in this case, the authority of the instrument is restricted to a single town or city, it is more properly called “Carta Puebla,” or municipal charter. This Carta Puebla of Avilés contains a royal grant of rights and immunities to the several citizens, as well as to the whole municipality, and involves whatever regarded the property, business, and franchises of all whom it was intended to protect. Charters, which were so important to the welfare of many persons, but which still rested on the arbitrary authority of the crown, were, as we have previously said, (Vol. I. p. 47, note 27,) confirmed by succeeding sovereigns, as often as their confirmation could conveniently be procured by the communities so deeply interested in their preservation.

The Carta Puebla of Avilés was originally granted by Alfonso VI., who reigned from 1073 to 1109. It was, no doubt, written in such Latin as was then used; and in 1274 it was formally made known to Alfonso the Wise, that it had been burnt during the attack on that city by his son Sancho. The original, therefore, is lost, and we know how it was lost.

What we possess is the translation of this Carta Puebla, made when it was confirmed by Alfonso VII., A. D. 1155. It is still preserved in the archives of the city of Avilés, on the original parchment, consisting of two skins sewed together,--the two united being about four feet and eleven inches long, and about nineteen inches wide. It bears the known seal of Alfonso VII., and the original signatures of several persons who were bound to sign it with him, and several subsequent confirmations, scattered over five centuries. (See Revista, ut sup., pp. 329, 330.) So that in all respects, including the coarseness of the parchment, the handwriting, and the language, it announces its own genuineness with as much certainty as any document of its age. As printed, it fills about twelve pages in octavo, and enables us to judge somewhat of the state of the Castilian at the time it was written.

After a caption or enrolment in bad Latin, it opens with these words:--

“Estos sunt los foros que deu el rey D. Alfonso ad Abilies cuando la poblou par foro Sancti Facundi et otorgo lo emperador. Em primo, per solar pinder, I solido a lo reu et II denarios a lo saion, é cada ano un sólido en censo per lo solar: é qui lo vender, de I solido á lo rai, é quil comparar dará II denarios a lo saion,” etc. p. 267.

A part of one of its important regulations is as follows:--“Toth homine qui populador for ela villa del rey, de quant aver qui ser aver, si aver como heredat, dè fer en toth suo placer de vender o de dar, et á quen lo donar que sedeat stabile si filio non aver, et si filio aver del, delo á mano illo quis quiser é fur placer, que non deserede de toto, et si toto lo deseredar, toto lo perdan aquellos á quen lo der.” Revista, p. 315.

Its concluding provisions are in these words:--“Duos homines cum armas derumpent casa, et de rotura de orta serrada, LX. sólidos al don de la orta, el medio al rei, é medio al don dela.--Homines populatores de Abilies, non dent portage ni rivage, desde la mar ata Leon.” Ibid., p. 322.

It ends with bad Latin, denouncing excommunication on any person who shall attempt to infringe its provisions, and declaring him “cum Datam et Abiron in infernum damnatus.” Ibid., p. 329.

By the general consent of those who have examined it, this Carta Puebla of Avilés is determined to be the oldest document now known to exist in the Castilian or vulgar dialect of the period, which dialect, in the opinion of Don Rafael Gonzalez Llanos, received its essential character as early as 1206, or six years before the decisive battle of the Navas de Tolosa, (see, ante, Vol. I. p. 9, note,) though not a few documents, after that date, abound in Latin words and phrases. Revista, ut supra, Tom. VIII. p. 197.

I am aware that two documents in the Spanish language, claiming to be yet older, have been cited by Mr. Hallam, in a note to Part II. c. 9 of his Middle Ages, London, 1819, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 554, where he says: “The earliest Spanish that I remember to have seen is an instrument in Martene, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, Tom. I. p. 263; the date of which is 1095. Persons more conversant with the antiquities of that country may possibly go farther back. Another of 1101 is published in Marina’s Teoria de las Cortes, Tom. III. p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter the Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a translation from the Latin.” There can be no higher general authority than Mr. Hallam for any historical fact, and this statement seems to carry back the oldest authentic date for the Spanish language sixty years earlier than I have ventured to carry it. But I have examined carefully both of the documents to which Mr. Hallam refers, and am satisfied they are of later date than the charter of Avilés. That in Martene is merely an anecdote connected with the taking of “the city of Exea,” when it was conquered, as this story states, by Sancho of Aragon. Its language strongly resembles that of the “Partidas,” which would bring it down to the middle of the thirteenth century; but it bears, in truth, no date, and only declares at the end that the city of Exea was taken on the nones of April, 1095, from the Moors. Of course, there is some mistake about the whole matter, for Sancho of Aragon, here named as its conqueror, died June 4th, 1094, and was succeeded by Peter I., and the person who wrote this account, which seems to be, after all, only an extract from some monkish chronicle, did not live near enough to that date to know so notorious a fact. Moreover, Exea is in Aragon, where it is not probable the earliest Castilian was spoken or written. Thus much for the document from Martene. That from Marina’s Teoria is of a still later and quite certain date. It is a charter of privileges granted by Alfonso VI. to the Mozárabes of Toledo, but translated in 1340, when it was confirmed by Alfonso XI. Indeed, it is so announced by Marina himself, who in the table of contents says especially, that it is “translated into Castilian.”

From this period, then, we are to recognize the existence in Spain of a language spreading gradually through the greater part of the country, different from the pure or the corrupted Latin, and still more different from the Arabic, yet obviously formed by a union of both, modified by the analogies and spirit of the Gothic constructions and dialects, and containing some remains of the vocabularies of the Germanic tribes, of the Iberians, the Celts, and the Phœnicians, who, at different periods, had occupied nearly or quite the whole of the Peninsula. This language was called originally the Romance, because it was so much formed out of the language of the Romans; just as the Christians, in the northwestern mountains, were called by the Arabs Alromi, because they were imagined to be descended from the Romans.[453] Later, it was called Spanish, from the name taken by the whole people, and perhaps, at last, it was even more frequently called Castilian, from that portion of the country, whose political power grew to be so predominant, as to give its dialect a preponderance over all the other dialects, which, like the Galician, the Catalonian, and the Valencian, were, for a longer or shorter period, written languages, each with claims to a literature of its own.

[453] Marina, Ensayo, p. 19.

The proportion of materials contributed by each of the languages that enter into the composition of the Spanish has never been accurately settled, though enough is known to permit an adjustment of their general relations to each other. Sarmiento, who investigated the subject with some care, thinks that six tenths of the present Castilian are of Latin origin; one tenth Greek and ecclesiastical; one tenth Northern; one tenth Arabic; and the remaining tenth East Indian and American, Gypsy, modern German, French, and Italian. Probably this estimate is not very far from the truth. But Larramendi and Humboldt leave no doubt that the Basque should be added; and, while Marina’s inquiries give a smaller proportion to the Arabic, those of Gayangos raise it to an eighth. The main point, however, is one concerning which there can be no doubt;--the broad foundations of the Castilian are to be sought in the Latin, to which, in fact, we are to trace nearly or quite all the contributions sometimes attributed to the Greek.[454]

[454] The most striking proof, perhaps, that can be given of the number of Latin words and constructions retained in the modern Spanish, is to be found in the many pages of verse and prose that have, from time to time, been so written that they can be read throughout either as Latin or as Spanish. The first instance of this sort that I know of is by Juan Martinez Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo and preceptor to Philip II., who, when he was in Italy, wrote a short prose dissertation that could be read in both languages, in order to prove to some of his learned friends in that country that the Castilian of Spain was nearer to the Latin than their Italian;--a jeu-d’esprit, which he printed in his treatise on Arithmetic, in 1514. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 737.) Other examples occur afterwards. One may be found in a Spanish Grammar, published at Louvain in 1555, and entitled “Util y Breve Institution para aprender Lengua Hespañola”; a curious book, which treats the Castilian as only one of several languages then spoken in the Spanish Peninsula, and says of it, “no es otra cosa que Latin corrupto,”--adding that many letters had been written in Spanish words that were yet Latin letters, one of which he proceeds to give in proof. Other examples occur in a Dialogue by Fern. Perez de Oliva, and an Epistle of Ambrosio Morales, the historian, printed in 1585, with the works of the first; in a Sonnet published by Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” in 1592; and, finally, in an excessively rare volume of terza rima, by Diego de Aguiar, printed in 1621, and entitled “Tercetos en Latin congruo y puro Castellano,” of which the following is a favorable specimen:--

Scribo historias, graves, generosos Spiritus, divinos Heroes puros, Magnanimos, insignes, bellicosos; Canto de Marte, defensores duros Animosos Leones, excellentes, De rarâ industriâ, invictos, grandes muros, Vos animas illustres, præeminentes Invoco, etc.

Much cannot be said for the purity of either the Castilian or the Latin in verses like these; but they leave no doubt of the near relationship of the two. For the proportions of all the languages that enter into the Spanish, see Sarmiento, Memorias, 1775, p. 107;--Larramendi, Antiguedad y Universalidad del Bascuence, 1728, c. xvi., apud Vargas y Ponce, Disertacion, 1793, pp. 10-26;--Rosseeuw de St. Hilaire, Etudes sur l’Origine de la Langue et Romances Espagnoles, Thèse, 1838, p. 11;--W. von Humboldt, Prüfung, already cited;--Marina, Ensayo, in Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., 1805;--and an article in the British and Foreign Review, No. XV., 1839.

The Spanish, or Castilian, language thus formed was introduced into general use sooner and more easily than, perhaps, any other of the newly created languages, which, as the confusion of the Middle Ages passed off, were springing up, throughout the South of Europe, to take the place of the universal language of the Roman world. The reasons of this were, that the necessity for its creation and employment was more urgent, from the extraordinary relations between the Moors, the Muçárabes, and the Christians; that the reign of Saint Ferdinand, at least as late as the capture of Seville in 1247, was a period, if not of quiet, yet of prosperity and almost of splendor; and that the Latin, both as a written and a spoken language, had become so much degraded, that it could offer less resistance to change in Spain than in the other countries where a similar revolution was in progress.[455] We must not be surprised, therefore, to find, not only specimens, but even considerable monuments, of Spanish literature soon after the first recognized appearance of the language itself. The narrative poem of the Cid, for instance, cannot be dated later than the year 1200; and Berceo, who flourished from 1220 to 1240, though he almost apologizes for not writing in Latin,[456] and thus shows how certainly he lived in the debatable period between the two languages, has left us a large mass of genuine Spanish, or Castilian, verse. But it is a little later, and in the reign of Alfonso the Tenth, from 1252 to 1282, that we are to consider the introduction of the Spanish, as a written, a settled, and a polite language, to have been recognized and completed. By his order, the Bible was translated into it from the Vulgate; he required all contracts and legal instruments to be written in it, and all law proceedings to be held in it; and, finally, by his own remarkable code, “Las Siete Partidas,” he at once laid the foundations for the extension and establishment of its authority as far as the Spanish race and power should prevail.[457] From this period, therefore, we are to look for the history and development of the Spanish language, in the body of Spanish literature.

[455] All the documents containing the privileges granted by St. Ferdinand to Seville, on the capture of the city, are in the vernacular of the time, the Romance. Ortiz y Zuñiga, Anales de Sevilla, fol., 1677, p. 89.

[456] Quiero fer una prosa en Roman paladino, En qual suele el pueblo fablar a su vecino, Car non so tan letrado por fer otro latino, etc. Vida de S. Domingo de Silos, St. 2.

Roman paladino means the “plain Romance language,” paladino being derived, as I think, with Sanchez, from palam, though Sarmiento (in his manuscript on “Amadis de Gaula,” referred to, Vol. I. p. 322, note) says, when noticing this line: “Paladino es de palatino y este es de palacio.” The otro latino is, of course, the elder Latin, however corrupted. Cervantes uses the word ladino to mean Spanish, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 41, and the note of Clemencin,) and Dante (Par., III. 63) uses it once to mean plain, easy; both curious instances of an indirect meaning, forced, as it were, upon a word. Prosa means, I suppose, story. Biagioli (Ad Purgatorio, XXVI. 118) says: “Prosa nell’ Italiano e nel Provenzale del secolo xiii. significa precisamente istoria o narrazione in versi.” It may be doubted whether he is right in applying this remark to the passage in Dante, but it is no doubt applicable to the passage before us in Berceo, the meaning of which both Bouterwek and his Spanish translators have mistaken. (Bouterwek, Trad. Cortina, etc., 8vo, Madrid, 1829, Tom. I. pp. 60 and 119.) Ferdinand Wolf (in his very learned work, “Über die Lais, Sequenzen und Leiche,” Heidelberg, 1841, 8vo, pp. 92 and 304) thinks the use of the word prosa, here and elsewhere in early Spanish poetry, had some reference to the well-known use of the same word in the offices of the Church. (Du Cange, Glossarium, ad verb.) But I think the early Spanish rhymers took it from the Provençal, and not from the ecclesiastical Latin.

[457] Mondejar, Memorias del Rey D. Alonso el Sabio, fol., Madrid, 1777, pp. 450-452. Mariana, Hist., Lib. XIV. c. 7, and Castro, Bib., Tom. I. pp. 411, etc.

APPENDIX, B.

ON THE ROMANCEROS.

(See Vol. I. p. 128.)

As the earliest ballads were not by known authors, but were gathered at different times, from the traditions of the people, it is impossible to understand their history without understanding something of the history of the Ballad-books in which they are found. A sketch of such a history has been written, with much knowledge of the subject, by Ferdinand Wolf, and is found in the “Jahrbücher der Literatur” (Band CXIV., Wien, 1846, pp. 1-72). I do not willingly enter into a discussion so peculiarly within the province of this distinguished scholar; but, as I possess, or have seen, several very early Ballad-books which he does not mention, and am besides unable to agree with him as to which is the oldest of them all, and therefore the most important, I will, as briefly as I can, give my views of this obscure branch of bibliography; confining myself, where it is possible to do so, to what has not before been published, and touching the whole matter only so far as it concerns the history of Spanish poetry.

A considerable number of ballads, printed on one or more sheets, in black letter, for popular use, may still be found. Such are “El Conde Alarcos”; “El Moro Calaynos”; a collection of twelve separate pieces, and a collection of fifty-nine, sold at Heber’s sale; with others noticed by Brunet, under the head of Romances Séparées, in his article “Romanceros.” But they are all without dates; it is extremely uncertain when any one of them was printed; and it seems to me, judging from those I have seen, to be more probable, that they were taken from collections now known to exist or to have existed, than that they helped to make up those collections,--the oldest of which claims to have been taken from the memories of the people, and from imperfect manuscript copies circulating only for popular use.

1. The first separate collection of ballads ever published was, I think, the one printed at Saragossa, under the title of “Silva de Varios Romances,” by Stevan G. de Nagera, in two parts, 1550. (See Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, ed. 1843, art. Silva.) I have seen a copy of this Silva belonging, in 1838, to M. Henri Ternaux-Compans, of Paris. In a prefatory address to the First Part, the collector says, “I have taken the trouble in this Silva to bring together all the ballads that have come to my knowledge”; adding afterwards, “It may be that some, though very few, of the old ballads are wanting, which I have not inserted, either because they did not come to my knowledge, or because I did not find them so complete and perfect as I wished. Nor do I deny, that, in some of those here printed, there may be an occasional error; but this is to be imputed to the copies from which I took them, which were very corrupt, and to the weakness of memory of some persons, who dictated them to me, and who could not recollect them perfectly. I did all I could to obtain the least faulty that were to be had, and had no little trouble to collect and amend them, and add to some that were imperfect. However, I wished they should stand in some order, and so I placed, first, those of devotion and from the Holy Scriptures; next, those that relate Castilian stories; next, those of Troy; and, lastly, those that relate to affairs of love.” After these ballads, which fill one hundred and ninety-six leaves, he gives us twenty-five leaves of canciones, villancicos, and chistes, or jests, among which, at folio 199, is the well-known witty Dialogue of Castillejo and his Pen. At the end of the First Part, folio 221, we have the following Address to the Reader, in which the collector has evidently changed his mind about having obtained all but a “very few of the old ballads” known to exist; for he now says: “Some of my friends, as they knew I was printing this ‘Cancionero,’ brought me many ballads, in order that I might insert them; but as we were coming to the end of the printing, I chose not to put them in, since they would interrupt the order that had been begun; but rather to make another volume, which will be the Second Part of this ‘Silva de Varios Romances,’ which is now in the press. Vale.”

This “Segunda Parte” was published in the same year, 1550, and consists of two hundred and three leaves of ballads, nineteen leaves of chistes, and two leaves of contents, at the end of which the “Impresor” says: “I did not wish to put into this part any more of those short chistes, because, if God pleases, they will be put into the Third Part, with other things agreeable to the curious reader. Vale.” I know of no copy of this Third Part; but it is possible it was printed, because, in the “Silva de Varios Romances,” of which Wolf and Brunet mention several editions between 1578 and 1673, and of which I possess that of 1602, the title-page declares that it contains “los mejores romances de los tres libros de la Silva.”

2. The first two parts, however, combined into one, but omitting the chistes, etc., soon appeared at Antwerp, printed by Martin Nucio, a well-known publisher, with considerable additions, but without the date of its publication. The Preface is in nearly the same words with that of the Silva of Nagera, Parte I.; but, when it announces the arrangement of the ballads, it changes their order, and puts “first, those that speak of France and the Twelve Peers; then, those that relate Castilian stories; then, those of Troy; and, lastly, those that treat of affairs of love.” Some of the ballads of the Saragossa collection are omitted, and the whole is called “Cancionero de Romances.” There is a copy of it in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal at Paris; and that it is subsequent to the Saragossa Silva, and taken from it, seems certain, because one must be taken from the other, and the note at the end of the Silva, Parte I., shows that the Saragossa Silva was collected and printed at different times; while the arrangement of the ballads in the Cancionero of Antwerp shows that they were necessarily all present to the editor when he put his work together. Besides, how should Nucio collect ballads from the memories of the people around him at Antwerp, where there were few Spaniards, except soldiers? And how much less valuable would be any collection made there than one made in Spain?

3. Again, a “Cancionero de Romances” occurs, printed “En Envers en casa de Martin Nucio, MDL.,” a copy of which is in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal of Paris. It has the same Preface with the one last mentioned, from which it differs only in omitting seven of its ballads, and inserting thirty-seven others. The errors noted in the one without date, at folios 272. b, etc., are corrected in this one, dated 1550, and prove it to be the subsequent edition of the two,--a fact necessarily inferred, also, from the additions it contains.

4. This edition of 1550 seems to have been issued with different title-pages, for Wolf says there is a copy of it in the Imperial Library at Vienna, dated 1554. But nearly all the copies now known to exist bear the date of 1555, under which this collection is best known, and is commonly cited. It is absolutely the same work with the copy at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, dated 1550, ballad for ballad, and page for page; and as there is no appearance that the title-page of the copy at the Arsenal has been tampered with, we are to suppose that three editions of the collection of ballads made at Saragossa in 1550 appeared in the course of that year; two of which were published by Martin Nucio, at Antwerp. That all three are only one work is apparent from the circumstance, that their ballads are generally the same, and that they have the same Preface, a little changed in the second and third editions to meet the changes in the ballads contained in them. They are all in 18mo. The first, taking both its parts together, fills four hundred and thirty-six leaves; the second, two hundred and seventy-six; and the third, three hundred. Several reprints of the last are given by Wolf; namely, Antwerp, 1568 and 1573; Lisbon, 1581; and Barcelona, 1587 and 1626.

Subsequent to the Silva of Saragossa, we have several collections of ballads, that are noticed in the text,--such as those of Sepulveda, 1551, Timoneda, 1573, Linares, 1573, Padilla, 1583, Maldonado, 1586, and Cueva, 1587,--consisting chiefly or entirely of ballads written by their respective authors. At last, an attempt was made to gather another Romancero from all the sources, whether of books, memory, or tradition, that were open to its collectors,--the true principle on which the popular Spanish Romanceros have always been compiled. It seems to have been begun at Valencia, when the first volume of the “Flor de Varios y Nuevos Romances, Primera y Segunda Parte,” collected by Andrés de Villalta, with a Third Part by Felipe Mey,--himself a poet and scholar as well as a printer,[458]--were printed in one volume, in 1593, though each of them had, probably, been printed earlier by itself. It is cited by Duran (Romances Caballarescos, Madrid, 1832, 12mo, Tom. I., Advertencia); and from the ballads he took out of it there can be no doubt, that its three parts differed little from the first three parts of the “Romancero General” printed somewhat later. The second volume of this collection, which is entitled “Quarta y Quinta Parte de Flor de Romances,” was collected by Sebastian Velez de Guevara, Racionero de la Colegial de Santander, and was printed at Burgos, in 1594, 18mo, one hundred and ninety-one leaves. It is apparently not the first edition, for the Aprobacion by Pedro de Padilla, and a permission to print it, are dated 1592, while the permission to print the present edition is dated August 11, 1594, and says it has been “otras veces impreso.” Probably the two parts were originally printed separately.

[458] Felipe Mey printed a volume of his own poems at Tarragona, in 1586, from which Faber, in his Floresta, Tom. II., has taken three sonnets of some merit. A Life of him may be found in Ximeno, (Tom. I. p. 249,) completed by Fuster (Tom. I. p. 213). As a translator of Ovid he is favorably noticed by Pellicer, Biblioteca de Traductores, Tom. II. p. 76.

The third volume, and the most important, is entitled “Sexta Parte de Flor de Romances Nuevos, recopilados de muchos Autores, por Pedro de Flores, Librero,” and was printed at Toledo, in 1594, 18mo, one hundred and ninety leaves. It is the first edition, but the license seems to speak of a fourth and fifth part as if also made by Flores. In a ballad prefixed to this third volume, Flores is accused before Apollo of having taken great pains to collect its contents.

“De diversas flores Un ramillete ha juntado, Las quales con grande afan, De estrañas partes buscaron”;--

to which, in a defence immediately following, Flores replies, that “they were stray ballads [romances que andavan descarriados], which he had brought together with great labor,” and for which the god proceeds to reward rather than to punish him. Flores adds, that he gives each ballad complete, and not like the street-singers, who drawl out one half, and then say they are tired of it. The whole account shows that many of the ballads in this Sixth Part--which is excellent and contains a hundred and fifty-eight--were collected from the memories of the people by Pedro Flores himself.

The fourth volume contains “Septima y Octava Parte de Flor de Varios Romances Nuevos, recopilados de muchos Autores”; printed by Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, Alcalá de Henares, 1597, 18mo. There is a license for each part; that of the first dated May 4, 1596, and recognizing it as a reprint, and that of the second dated September 30, 1597, as if it were the original edition, and entitling it “Flores del Parnaso, Octava Parte.” The Seventh Part fills one hundred and sixty-eight leaves, and the Eighth one hundred and thirty-two leaves, numbered separately.

The fifth and last volume is called “Flor de Varios Romances diferentes de todos impresos, Novena Parte,” printed by Juan Flamenco, Madrid, 1597, 18mo, one hundred and forty-four leaves. The Aprobacion, 4th September, 1597, and the Tassa, 22d March, 1596, speak of it as the eighth and ninth parts; but the license, without date, is only for Part Ninth.

5. From these nine parts was made, with slight changes and additions, chiefly toward the end, the first edition of the “Romancero General,” which was printed at Madrid, 1600, 4to; the Tassa being dated 16th December, 1599. A copy of it is in the National Library at Madrid. A new edition--again with slight changes--appeared in 1602; and another in 1604. This last was reprinted, without alteration, by Juan de la Cuesta, at Madrid, in 1614. But Miguel de Madrigal had previously published the “Segunda Parte del Romancero General y Flor de diversa Poesía,” (Valladolid, 1605, 4to,) which may appropriately be added to either of the last two editions of the principal work; and thus, from nine parts, of which all four of the editions otherwise consist, extend them to thirteen parts. All these editions are in small quarto, and constitute the well-known “Romanceros Generales.”

The publication of so many different collections of ballads, in the last half of the sixteenth century and the first years of the seventeenth, leaves no doubt that ballads had then become known in all classes of society, and were gradually finding favor with the highest. But the Romanceros Generales were too large for popular use. Smaller ballad-books, therefore, were printed; such as the “Jardin de Amadores,” by Juan de la Puente, 1611; the “Primavera” of Pedro Arias Perez, made with much judgment, and printed in 1626, 1659, etc.; the “Maravillas del Parnaso” of Jorge Pinto de Morales, 1640; the “Romances Varios” of Pablo de Val, 1655; and several others, to say nothing of the many still less considerable collections, making only a sheet or two, which are noticed by Depping and Wolf, and which were published to meet the broad demands of the less cultivated portions of the Spanish people, just as they have been published and republished down to our own times. For similar reasons, though, perhaps, more to gratify the military taste of the age, and afford amusement to the armies in Flanders, Italy, and the Indies, selections were made from the Romanceros Generales, and contributions obtained from other sources, to make smaller and more convenient ballad-books of a stirring nature. Such is the “Floresta de Romances de los Doce Pares de Francia,” by Damian Lopez de Tortajada, the first edition of which was printed at Alcalá in 1608, (Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, 1797, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 105,) and such is the “Romancero del Cid,” by Juan de Escobar, first printed at Alcalá in 1612 (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 684); both of which have often been reprinted since.

But towards the end of the seventeenth century, a love for the old Spanish ballads, as well as for the rest of the elder national literature, began to decay in the more favored classes of society; and, with the coming in of the eighteenth century and the Bourbon family, it disappeared almost entirely. So strong a feeling, however, and one that had struck its roots so deeply in the popular character, could not be extirpated. The ballads were forgotten and neglected by the courtly and the noble, but that the mass of the nation was as faithful to them as ever we have the plain testimony of Sarmiento, and the fact, that they were constantly reprinted for popular use in the humblest forms,--most frequently in what are called broadsides. At last, an attempt was made to replace them on their old ground. Fernandez, in 1796, printed two volumes of them in his collection of Castilian poetry, and Quintana made a small, but dainty, bouquet of them for his lyrical extracts in 1807, adding to each publication a Preface, which gave them praise high and graceful, if not such as seemed to be imbued with their own earnest spirit. Little effect, however, was yet produced at home, but some was soon apparent abroad. Jacob Grimm published at Vienna, in 1815, a small collection of the best old ballads, chiefly taken from the Romancero of 1555; and C. B. Depping published at Leipzig, in 1817, a larger one, containing above three hundred ballads, with a Preface and notes in German, the whole of which was republished in Spanish, first, with slight additions and corrections, at London, in 1825, by V. Salvá, and secondly, with very large and important additions, at Leipzig, by Depping himself and by A. A. Galiano, in 1844;--publications of great merit, which have done more than all that had been done previously to make the old Spanish ballads known in Europe generally, and which have apparently called forth the admirably spirited translations of ballads by J. G. Lockhart, 1823, and the interesting historically-arranged French versions in prose of nearly three hundred, by Damas Hinard, 1844.

A very important publication of Spanish ballads in later times comes, however, as it should come, from Spain itself, and was made by Don Agustin Duran, to whom early Spanish literature, in other respects, owes much. He began, in 1828, with the Moorish ballads in the Romancero General of 1614, and went on, in 1829, with two volumes of miscellaneous ballads, ending his labors, in 1832, with two volumes more, containing historical ballads and ballads of chivalry;--in all, five volumes,--the last four of which are collected from all the sources he could command earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century, and the whole of which, with additions, have been republished at Paris by Ochoa, in 1838, and at Barcelona by Pons, in 1840.

Still, a general, thorough, and critical collection of Spanish ballads is wanting;--one embracing those of the known authors, like Cueva, Padilla, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and Góngora, as well as the untold wealth that remains, and must always remain, anonymous in the elder Romanceros. When we possess such a work, and not before, we can understand and honor, as they deserve to be understood and honored, the poetry and the nationality of the old Spanish ballads, upon which, as upon its true foundations, rests the old Spanish drama. But to whom shall we look for it? Is it to Duran at Madrid, or to Wolf at Vienna, or to Huber at Berlin? I have intimations that one may be expected from Duran, and hope they may soon be fulfilled.

APPENDIX, C.

ON FERNAN GOMEZ DE CIBDAREAL AND THE “CENTON EPISTOLARIO.”

(See Vol. I. p. 398.)

I have treated the “Centon Epistolario” in the text just as it has heretofore been treated; that is, as a collection of the unstudied letters of a simple-hearted, vain man, who, for above forty years, was attached to the person of John the Second, and familiar with what was done at his court. Still, the exactness and genuineness of the work have not been entirely unquestioned. Mayans y Siscar (in his Orígenes, Tom. I., 1737, p. 203) speaks of Antonio de Vera y Zuñiga, (see, ante, Vol. II. p. 500, Vol. III. p. 184,) the well-known author and diplomatist of the time of Philip the Fourth, sometimes called Vera y Figueroa, and says, “Feamente adulteró las epístolas históricas del Bachiller Fernan Gomez de Ciudad Real,”--He shamefully adulterated the historical letters of the Bachelor Ferdinand Gomez de Cibdareal; but Mayans gives no reasons or facts to support this severe charge, and he is roundly rebuked for it by Diosdado, (in his treatise “De Primâ Typographiæ Hispanicæ Ætate,” Romæ, 1794, p. 74,) who calls it “an atrocious calumny.” And again, Quintana, in his Life of Alvaro de Luna, (Vidas de Españoles Célebres, Tom. III., 1833, p. 248, note,) is so much troubled about some of the discrepancies between the Bachelor’s accounts of the death of the Constable and the known facts of history, that he, too, suggests all sorts of doubts, but ends by saying that he follows the Bachelor’s accounts as a sufficient authority where they are not directly contradicted by others higher and safer.

My own opinion is, that the book is a forgery from beginning to end; but a forgery so ingenious, so happy, so agreeable, that it may seem an ungracious thing to tell the truth about it, or attempt to disturb the position it has so long held in the Castilian literature of the fifteenth century. The facts on which I ground my opinion are chiefly these:--

1. No such person as the Bachelor Cibdareal is mentioned in the chronicles or correspondence of the period during which he is supposed to have lived, though our accounts from such sources are copious and minute; noticing, I believe, everybody of consequence at the court of John the Second, and certainly many persons of much less importance than the king’s confidential physician.

2. No manuscript of the Letters is known to be in existence.

3. The first notice of them is, that they appear in an edition in small quarto, black letter, one hundred and sixty-six pages, which claims to have been printed at Burgos in 1499. Of this edition, few copies have ever been seen. Antonio, who died in 1684, intimates (Bib. Vetus, Tom. II. p. 250) a doubt about the truth of its date; Bayer, in his note on the passage, 1788, says that learned men commonly supposed that Antonio de Vera y Zuñiga, (who died in 1658,) published this edition; and Mendez (in his Typographia, 1796, pp. 291 and 293) declares the edition to be unquestionably half a century later than its pretended date;--all three of these learned men being experts and good witnesses concerning a fact, which, I think, must be obvious to any person familiar with the earliest printed Spanish books, who should look on a copy of it now before me. The name of the printer on its title-page, Juan de Rei, it is important to add, is otherwise suspected.

4. The next edition of the Letters of Cibdareal is that of Madrid, 1775, edited by Don Eugenio Llaguno y Amirola, Secretary of the Academy of History, who thinks the first edition could not have been printed till after 1600;--a circumstance otherwise probable, as I am not aware that it is cited by any author of an earlier date. Indeed, if Antonio de Vera y Zuñiga had any thing to do with it, we must suppose it to have been printed yet later; for in 1600 that statesman was only about ten years old.

5. The Bachelor Cibdareal gives a date to no one of his letters; but so completely are the facts or hints for them to be detected in the Chronicle of John the Second, that the editor of the Letters in 1775 has been able, by means of that Chronicle, to affix its proper date to every one, I believe, of the hundred and five letters of which the collection consists. This would hardly be possible, if the two works had been written quite independently of each other.

6. The style of the Letters, though certainly adapted with great skill and felicity to its supposed period, is not uniformly true to it, erring on the side of curious archaisms. Sometimes it goes further, and uses words for which no example can be adduced. Thus the use of ca in the sense of than is wholly unjustifiable; and wherever it so occurs in the first edition, it is altered in the edition of 1775 to que, in order to make sense. Other errors more trifling might be noticed; and in the spelling there is a systematical use of c for z in words that never were spelt with a c.

7. The few words in the “Aviso al Letor,” and the still fewer that introduce the verses at the end of the volume, profess to come from the Editor, who, according to Bayer, Mendez, etc., lived after 1600, and should, therefore, have written in the style of the period when Mariana and Cervantes flourished. But he writes exactly in the style of the Letters he edits, which claim to be a century and a half older; and, what is worse, he uses in his own person the ca for que, which, as we have noticed, nobody else ever used, except his Bachelor.

8. All accounts represent Juan de Mena as having died at Torrelaguna in 1456, at the age of forty-five. (Antonio, Bib. Vetus, ed. Bayer, Tom. II. p. 266; and Romero, Epicedio, 1578, f. 486, at the end of Hernan Nuñez, Proverbios.) Now the supposed Cibdareal (Epist. 20) places Juan de Mena, in 1428,--when he was, of course, only seventeen years old,--on the most familiar footing at court, and makes him already historiographer to the king, and far advanced in his principal poem;--a statement the more incredible when we recollect that Romero says expressly, that Mena was twenty-three years old when he first gave himself to “the sweet labor of good learning,”--“al dulce trabajo de aquel buen saber.” See the notice of Juan de Mena, ante, Vol. I. pp. 379-388.

9. The contemptuous account Cibdareal gives of Barrientos is not one which a courtier in his position would be likely to give of a person already of great consequence, and rising fast to the highest places in the government. But, what is more, it is not the true account. He represents that distinguished ecclesiastic, as we have seen, (ante, Vol. I. p. 359,) to have burnt, in a very rash and reckless manner, a large quantity of books, from the library of the Marquis of Villena, sent to him for examination after the death of their owner, because he had been accused, in his lifetime, of studying magic,--Barrientos, as Cibdareal would have us believe, knowing nothing about the contents of the books, which he burnt, at once, only because he would not take the trouble to examine them. Now I happen to possess, in an unpublished manuscript of Barrientos, his own account of this very matter. It is in a learned treatise on Divination, which he wrote by order of John the Second, and addressed to that monarch; and in the Preface to the Second Part of which he declares that he burnt the books in question by the royal order, and intimates, that, in his own opinion, they should have been spared. “And this book,” he says, speaking of the one called “Raziel,” to which I have alluded, (ante, Vol. I, p. 359, note,) “this book is the one, which, after the death of Don Enrique [de Villena], you, as king, commanded me, your servant and creature, to burn, with many others, which I did, in presence of sundry of your servants;--a matter in which, as in many other things, you showed and still show the great devotion your Highness has always had for the Christian religion. And, although this was and is to be praised, still, for other respects, it is good in some way to preserve such books, provided they are in the hands and power of good, trustworthy persons, who will take heed that they be read by none but wise men,” etc.;--a very different account certainly from the one given in the letter of Cibdareal, and one which, being addressed to the king, who was necessarily acquainted with the whole transaction, can hardly have been untrue.

10. The most considerable event recorded in the Letters of Cibdareal, and one of the most considerable occurrences in Spain during the fifteenth century, is the execution of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, at Valladolid, June 2, 1452. The Bachelor says, he was with the king in that city the day it happened and the night preceding; that the king showed great irresolution as to the fulfilment of the sentence up to the last moment; that he had a sorrowful and sleepless night before it occurred; and that nobody dared to tell him the execution was absolutely over till he had eaten his dinner;--adding to these striking statements sundry picturesque local details, as if they had come within his own knowledge by his witnessing the execution. Now the truth is, that the king was not in Valladolid on that day, nor for some days before and after; and it would have been a very hard-hearted thing if he had been there at the moment when his old friend and favorite minister of state, to whom he never ceased to be attached, was brought to the scaffold, in order to satisfy the turbulent nobility whom he had oppressed. The king was, in fact, then at the siege of Maqueda, a little town northwest of Toledo, above eighty miles off, as appears by his letters still extant, dated May 29, June 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.; so that many of the circumstances recorded in Cibdareal’s letter (the 103d) are necessarily untrue. Moreover, the supposed Cibdareal places the execution of the Constable on the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen,--“Víspera de la Magdalena,”--confounding it with the date of the death of the king, which happened on that day the next year, and thus placing it on the 21st of July, which was the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen, instead of the 2d of June, which, after some discussion, long since the time when these Letters were first printed, has been determined to be the true day of the execution. This gross mistake in the Letters about the date of the Constable’s death was made, I suppose, in part from carelessness, and in part because that date was not then settled, as it is now. (See Mendez, Typographia, 1796, pp. 256-260; and Quintana, Vidas, Tom. III. pp. 437-439.)

11. The age in which I suppose the Letters of Cibdareal to have been forged was one in which such attempts were likely to be made. It was in Spain an age of forgeries. Guevara had just before maintained his “Marcus Aurelius” to be true history. (See, ante, Vol. I. p. 541.) The “Leaden Books” of Granada, and the “Chronicones” of Father Higuera,--the first decided by the whole civil authority of the realm to be genuine, and the second received as such by a very general consent,--were, from 1595 to 1652, at the height of their success, though both have long since been admitted to be gross frauds, which acute scholars like Montano, and historians like Mariana, must, indeed, have seen through, and were too high-minded to countenance; but which, it should be remembered, they did not feel strong enough openly to resist and denounce. In this state of opinion in Spain, some ingenious scholar--perhaps Vera y Zuñiga--as clear-sighted as they were and only a little less scrupulous, may well have been encouraged to imitate Father Higuera in a matter which, instead of being an attempt, like his, to bring false records concerning important affairs into the history of the kingdom, may have been regarded merely as a literary jeu d’esprit, intended to mislead nobody on any point except merely that of the genuineness of the correspondence. (See, ante, Vol. III. p. 152, note.)

Against all this may be urged the general simplicity and interesting details of the Letters themselves, so appropriate in their tone to the age they illustrate, and the fact, that for above two centuries they have been cited as the highest authority for the events of which they speak; a fact, however, whose importance is diminished when we recollect how rarely a spirit of criticism has shown itself in Spanish historical literature, and that even in Spanish poetry the case of the Bachiller de la Torre is, in some respects, as strong as that of the Bachiller de Cibdareal, and in others yet stronger. At any rate, all we know with tolerable certainty about the Bachelor Cibdareal is, that the first edition of his Letters is a forgery, intended to conceal something, and more likely, I think, intended to conceal the spuriousness of the whole than any thing else.

APPENDIX, D.

ON THE BUSCAPIÉ.

(See Vol. II. pp. 105, etc.)

A good deal has been said within the last seventy years, and especially of late, (1847-49,) about a pamphlet entitled “El Buscapié,”--“The Squib,” or “Search-foot,”--supposed by some persons to have been written by Cervantes, soon after the publication of the First Part of his Don Quixote. The subject, though not one of great consequence, is certainly not without interest, and the facts in relation to it are, I believe, as follows.

In the Life of Cervantes, by Vicente de los Rios, prefixed to the magnificent edition of the Don Quixote published by the Spanish Academy in 1780, (see, ante, Vol. II. p. 52,) it is stated, that, on the appearance of the First Part of that romance, in 1605, the public having, according to a tradition not, I think, earlier recorded, received it with coldness or censure, the author himself published an anonymous pamphlet, called “The Squib,” in which he gave a pleasant critique on his Don Quixote, insinuating that it was a covert satire on sundry well-known and important personages, without, however, in the slightest degree intimating who those personages were; in consequence of which, the public curiosity became much excited, and the Don Quixote obtained such attention as it needed in order to insure its success. (Tom. I. p. xvii.)

In a note appended (p. cxci.) to this statement of the tradition, we have a letter of Don Antonio Ruydiaz,--a person of whom little or nothing is now known, except that Don Vicente declares him to have been a man of learning worthy of credit,--in which letter, under date of December 16, 1775, Don Antonio asserts, that, about sixteen years earlier, he had seen a copy of the Buscapié at the house of the Count of Salceda, and had read it;--that it was a small anonymous volume, printed at Madrid with a good type and on poor paper;--that it pretended to be written by a person who had neglected to buy or read the Don Quixote for some time after its first appearance, but who, having at last bought and read it, had been filled with admiration at its merits and resolved in consequence to make them known;--that this Buscapié declared the characters in the Don Quixote to be, in the main, imaginary, but yet insinuated that they had certain relations to the designs and gallantries of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and of some of the principal personages in his government;--and that the Count de Salceda being dead, and the copy of the Buscapié in question having been only lent to that nobleman by some person unknown to the writer of the letter, he could give no further account of the matter.

This statement, differing, it will be noted, from the tradition recorded in the text to which it is appended, in what relates to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, was not, on the whole, deemed satisfactory. Pellicer, besides other strong doubts, doubted whether Cervantes wrote the pamphlet, even if all the rest related of it were true, (Don Quixote, ed. 1797, Tom. I. p. xcvii.,) and Navarrete inclined to the opinion, that there was some mistake about the whole affair, and that Cervantes could never have intended to allude to the Emperor in the way intimated (Vida de Cervantes, 1819, § 105, etc.); to which Clemencin has since added the suggestion, that the copy of the Buscapié, alleged to have been seen by Ruydiaz, might have been a forgery cunningly imposed on the Count of Salceda, who was “rich and greedy”--rico y goloso--in such matters (ed. D. Quixote, Tom. IV., 1835, p. 50). Indeed, the intimations concerning Charles the Fifth were so absurd in themselves, and the fact,--unknown when the Academy published their edition of 1780,--that four editions of the First Part of Don Quixote were, within a year from the date of its appearance, demanded in order to satisfy the impatient curiosity of the public, is so decisive of its popular success from the outset, that men were, before long, disposed to believe that there never was a Buscapié written by any body. After a time, therefore, the discussion about it ceased, except among those who were interested in the smallest details of the life of Cervantes.

But in 1847 the whole subject came up afresh. Don Adolfo de Castro, a young Andalusian gentleman, much devoted to researches in early Spanish literature, and the author of several curious historical works, which give proof of his success, declared that he had accidentally found a copy of the Buscapié. In 1848 he published it at Cadiz, in a duodecimo volume, with a body of very learned notes,--the text, in large type, making forty-six pages, and the notes one hundred and eighty-eight pages, which, if printed with the same type, would make above two hundred and fifty.

In the Preface, Don Adolfo declares, that the Buscapié he thus publishes was printed from a manuscript which he had obtained from the library of Don Pascual de Gándara, a lawyer of the city of San Fernando, which library, apparently after the death of its owner, had been brought, less than three months before, to the city of Cadiz, the residence of Don Adolfo, to be publicly sold;--that the title of the manuscript, which purports throughout to be the work of Cervantes, is “The very pleasant little Book, called the Squib, in which, besides its much and excellent Learning, are explained all the hidden and unexplained Matters in the Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by a certain Cervantes de Saavedra”;--that the manuscript in question is not in the handwriting of Cervantes, but, as appears by a memorandum following the title, is a copy made at Madrid, February 27, 1606, for Agostin de Molina, son of Argote de Molina, and that it had subsequently come into the possession of the Duke of Lafões, of the royal family of Braganza;--that it contains no allusion whatever disrespectful to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, for whom, as Don Adolfo believes, Cervantes had a sincere admiration;--that it was, according to the Aprobacion of Gutierre de Cetina, June 27, 1605, and that of Thomas Gracian Dantisco, on the 6th of August following, prepared for the press, but that it was not in fact printed, or it would not have been needful to make a copy of it in manuscript the next year;--and that the true and real object of the Squib was, not to attract attention to the Don Quixote, but to defend that work against many persons accounted learned, who, as Don Adolfo suggests, had attacked it with some severity.

In the Buscapié, which immediately follows these statements, Cervantes represents himself as riding on his mule one day upon the road to Toledo, a little beyond the Puente Toledana, when he sees coming towards him a Bachelor mounted on a sorry hack, that at last falls with him to the ground, in the midst of a contest between the beast and his rider, as to whether they shall go on or no. Cervantes courteously helps the stranger to rise; and then, after a few introductory words, they agree to spend together, under some neighbouring trees, the heat of the day, then fast coming upon them. The Bachelor, a foolish, conceited little fellow, with a very deformed person, produces two books for their common entertainment. The first of them is “The Spiritual Verses of Pedro de Ezinas,” which they both praise, and of whose author Cervantes speaks as of a personal acquaintance. The other is the Don Quixote, which the Bachelor treats very slightingly, and which Cervantes, a little disturbed by such contempt, maintains, in general terms, to be a book of merit, not hinting, however, to the Bachelor that he is its author, and putting his defence on the ground, that it is a well-intended attempt to drive the institution of chivalry from the world.

But the vain, garrulous little Bachelor prefers to talk about himself or to tell stories about his father, and is with difficulty brought back to the Don Quixote, which he then assails as a book absurdly recognizing the existence of knight-errantry at the time it was published, and therefore at the very time when they are talking about it,--a position which Cervantes fully admits and then defends, alleging, in proof of its truth, the examples of Suero de Quiñones and Charles the Fifth; while, on the other side, the Bachelor sets forth, how glad he should be if it were really so, because he would then turn knight himself, and come by a princess and a kingdom as other knights had done before him;--all in a strain as crazy as that of the hero of Cervantes, and sometimes much resembling it. Cervantes replies, maintaining the real, actual existence of knight-errantry in his own time by the examples of Olivier de Lamarche and others, which are as little to the purpose as those of Quiñones and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, already cited by him; and so the discussion goes on, until a scene occurs between the hack of the Bachelor and the mule of Cervantes, not unlike that between Rozinante and the horse-flesh of the Galician carriers, in the fifteenth chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote, and one that ends with the total overthrow and demolition of the Bachelor’s beast. This breaks up the conversation between their two riders, and brings the pamphlet to a conclusion,--Cervantes leaving the unlucky Bachelor to get out of his troubles as best he may.

On closing this gay little trifle, we are at once struck with the circumstance, that the Buscapié we have just read, avowing itself on every page to be the work of Cervantes, and declared never to have been printed till the year 1848, can have nothing at all to do with the anonymous Buscapié of which a printed copy is supposed to have been seen about the year 1759;--in fact, that it involves a formal and complete contradiction of every thing of consequence that was ever said or supposed on the subject, before it appeared. This simplifies the matter very much. It is as if a Buscapié had never before been mentioned, and we are therefore to examine the one now published by Don Adolfo de Castro as if the statement of Los Rios and the letter of Ruydiaz had never appeared.

The next thing that occurs to us is the strangeness of the circumstance, that the copy of such a work, not anonymous, but professing to have been written by the greatest and most popular genius of his nation, should, during two centuries and a half, have attracted nobody’s notice; though, during that time, it must have travelled from Madrid to Lisbon and from Lisbon back again to Spain, and though, during the last seventy years, a Buscapié has been much talked about and eagerly asked for.

Nor is the history of the individual manuscript now printed and offered to us, so far as it professes to have a history, more satisfactory. It claims to have been owned by three persons, and a word must be said about each of them.

First, it is said to have been “copied from another copy in the year 1606, at Madrid, on the 27th of February of the said year, for Señor Agustin de Argote, son of the very noble Señor (may he be in holy glory!) Gonzalo Zatieco de Molina, a knight of Seville.”[459] Now, that Argote Zatieco de Molina, a person I have often had occasion to mention, (see, ante, Vol. I. pp. 74, 75, 77, 117, etc.,) was, as this certificate sets forth, dead in 1606, I have no doubt. A manuscript copy of his well-known hints for the history of Seville, now in the possession of one of my friends, contains notices and documents relating to his life, collected, apparently, by the early copyist, from which we learn that Argote de Molina, by a deed dated July 5, 1597, left to his daughter, two sisters, and a brother the patronage of a chaplaincy he had founded in a chapel prepared by him for his burial-place in the church of Santiago, at Seville;[460] and that in 1600 this chapel was completed, and an inscription placed in it, signifying that it was the burial-place of Argote de Molina, late a chief of the Hermandad, and a Veintequatro, or Regidor, of Seville;[461] from all which, as well as from other grounds, it appears that Argote de Molina died between 1597 and 1600. But why is no son of his mentioned in the deed of 1597, providing for the care of his chapel and the protection of his family burial-place after his own death? This is explained by Ortiz de Zuñiga, the very best authority on such a point, who, when giving an account of Argote de Molina and his manuscripts, some of which Zuñiga had then in his possession, says that Argote de Molina had sons, but that they died before him, and that their loss so embittered the latter part of his life, that his reason was impaired by it.[462] What, then, are we to say about this “Agustin,” for whom Don Adolfo’s copy of the Buscapié is certified to have been made in 1606, after the death of his father, Argote, who died without leaving any son?

[459] “Copióse de otra copia el año de 1606, en Madrid, 27 de Ebrero año dicho. Para el Señor Agustin de Argote, hijo del muy noble Señor (que sancta gloria haya) Gonzalo Zatieco de Molina, un caballero de Sevilla.” Zatieco occurs elsewhere, as part of the name of Argote de Molina, or of his family.

[460] “En otra escritura de 5 de Julio de 1597 deja por patronas de una capellanía fundada por él en la dicha iglésia de Santiago á Doña Francisca Argote de Molina y Mexia, su hija, y despues de ella á Doña Isabel de Argote y á Doña Gerónima de Argote sus hermanas, y á sus hijos y descendientes, y á Juan Argote de Mexia su hermano y á sus hijos,” etc.

[461] “En dicha Capilla hay una inscripcion del tenor siguiente: Esta capilla mayor y entierro es de Don Gonzalo Argote de Molina, Provincial de la Hermandad del Andalucia y Veintequatro que fué de Sevilla, y de sus herederos. Acabóse año de 1600.” He purchased this privilege, January 28, 1586, for 800 ducats.

[462] “Tuvo hijos que le precedieron en muerte, cuyo sentimiento hizo infausto el último término de su vida, turbando su juizio que, lleno de altivez, levantaba sus pensamientos á mayor fortuna.” Anales de Sevilla, fol., 1677, p. 706.

Vanflora, Hijos de Sevilla, No. II. p. 76, says: “Murió sin dexar hijos ni caudales y con algunas señas de demente.”

The second trace of this manuscript is, that it professes to have been a part of the library of the Duke of Lafões; the inscription to this effect being in Portuguese, and without a date.[463] But is it likely that such a manuscript could have remained in such a position unnoticed? Is it likely that João de Braganza, one of the most cultivated and distinguished men of his time, who was born in 1719, and died in 1806; who was the friend of the Prince de Ligne, of Maria Theresa, and of Frederic the Great; who founded the Academy of Lisbon, and was its head till his death; in whose family lived Correa de Serra, and who every evening collected the chief men of letters of his country in his saloon,--is it likely that a work avowedly by Cervantes, and one concerning which, after 1780, the Spanish Academy had caused much inquiry to be made, should have remained in the library of such a man without attracting, during his long life, either his own notice or that of the scholars by whom he was surrounded? Or, finally, as to the third and last presumed possessor of this manuscript of the Buscapié, is it likely that it would have wandered on without being recognized by any body until it found its obscure way into the collection of an Andalusian advocate,--Don Pascual de Gándara,--and that even he, in the nineteenth century, when Navarrete and Clemencin were keeping alive the discussion of the eighteenth about it, should yet know nothing of its import or pretensions, or, knowing them, should withhold his knowledge from all the world?

[463] “Da Livreria do Senhor Duque de Lafões.”

Thus much for the external evidence, the whole of which, I believe, I have examined. It is, as it seems to me, very suspicious and unsatisfactory.

Nor can the internal evidence be accounted more satisfactory than the external.

In the first place, the Buscapié in question is a closer imitation of Cervantes than he would be likely to make of himself. It opens like the Prólogo to the “Persiles and Sigismunda,” in which the conversation that Cervantes says he held with a travelling medical student seems to have been the model for the one he is represented as holding with the travelling Bachelor in the Buscapié;--it then goes on with an examination of one or two contemporary authors, and allusions to others, in the manner of the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library;--and it ends with an acknowledged parallel to the story of the Yanguese carriers and their beasts; different parts of the whole reminding us of different works of Cervantes, but of the “Adjunta al Parnaso” oftener than of any other. In many cases, phrases seem to be borrowed directly from Cervantes. Thus, of an author praised in the Buscapié, it is said, “Se atreve á competir con los mas famosos de Italia,” (p. 20,) which is nearly the phrase applied to Rufo, Ercilla, and Virues in the Don Quixote. In another place, (p. 22,) Cervantes is made to say of himself, when speaking in the third person of the author of Don Quixote, “Su autor esta mas cargado de desdichas que de años,” which strongly resembles the more beautiful phrase he, in the same way, applies to himself, as the author of the “Galatea”; and in another place, (p. 10,) the little Bachelor’s shouts to his mule are said to be as much wasted “as if they were tossed into the well of Airon, or the pit of Cabra,”--an allusion much more appropriately made by Cervantes in the “Adjunta al Parnaso,” where mothers are advised to threaten their naughty children, that “the poet shall come and toss them, together with his bad verses, into the pit of Cabra, or the well of Airon,”--natural caves in the kingdoms of Granada and Córdova, about which strange stories were long credited. (Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 25; Diccionario de la Academia, 1726, in verb. Airon; Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV. p. 237; and Miñano, Diccionario Geográfico.) But there is no need of citing parallel passages. The Buscapié is full of them; some being happily chosen and aptly adjusted to their new places, like three allusions to the words of Cervantes in Don Quixote about “driving books of chivalry out of the world,” (see, ante, Vol. II. p. 105, note,) and others, like those I have just cited, being awkwardly introduced, and fitting their subjects less well than they did those to which they were originally applied. But whether well or ill selected, whether well or ill applied, these phrases in the Buscapié have seldom or never the appearance of accidental coincidences arising out of the carelessness of an author repeating from himself. They seem rather to be words and forms of expression carefully selected, and are so used as to give an air of constraint to the passages where they occur, showing that the writer turns, as it were, in a narrow circle;--an air as unlike as possible to the bold and unfettered movement which is so eminently characteristic of Cervantes.

In the next place, the Buscapié contains many allusions to obscure authors and long-forgotten trifles; but, with an inconsiderable exception, which seems to be a little ostentatiously announced as such, (p. 12, and note B,) not one, I believe, occurs, that is beyond the reach of the singular learning of Don Adolfo, whose ample notes, fitting with suspicious exactness to the text, drive the reader to the conjecture, that the text may have been adjusted to the notes quite as much as the notes to the text. Now and then, this conjecture seems to be confirmed by a slight inaccuracy. Thus, in both text and notes, the name of Pedro de E_n_zinas--whose poetry is cited and examined just as I find it in my copy of the “Versos Espirituales,” printed at Cuenca, in 1596 (see, ante, Vol. III. p. 13, note)--is uniformly spelt many times over Ezinas, that is, without the first n, (Buscapié, pp. 19-21, and note I,)--a trifling mistake, which a copyist might easily have made in 1606, or which Don Adolfo might have easily made in 1847, when transcribing, as he did, from the printed book before him, but a mistake which there is not one chance in a thousand that both should have made, if there were no other connection between the two than the one avowed. And, again, a little farther on, a mistake occurs which seems to have arisen from the very excess of Don Adolfo’s recondite learning. The old Castilian proverb, “Al buen callar llaman sage,”--or, “He is a wise man that knows when to hold his tongue,”--is found in the text of the Buscapié, (p. 26,) and Don Adolfo in the note on it (L) informs us, that, “in the same way in which this proverb is here used by Cervantes, it is to be seen in the Conde Lucanor,[464] and in other older works. Somebody corrupted it into ‘Al buen callar llaman Sancho.’” But the idea, that Cervantes adhered to an old form of the proverb, because he rejected or did not know the supposed corrupt one, is not well founded. The proverb occurs, in what Don Adolfo considers a corrupted form, as early as the “Cartas de Garay,” in 1553, and the collection of Proverbs by the learned Hernan Nuñez, in 1555, and in this very form it is, in fact, used by Cervantes himself (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 43); for when Sancho Panza is rebuked by his master for stringing together proverbs without end, he first promises he will not utter another, and then instantly opens his mouth with this one. Indeed, I rather think that the word sage, which was in use as late as the time of Juan de Mena, had dropped out of the current language of good society before that of Cervantes. Nebrixa, before 1500, says it was then antiquated. (See Diccionario de la Academia, 1739.)

[464] I suspect Don Adolfo may have made another little mistake here; for I have had occasion, since I read his note, to read the “Conde Lucanor,” and, though I kept his criticism in mind, I did not notice the proverb in any form in any one of the tales. Sometimes it occurs in later authors in another form, thus: “Al buen callar llaman santo”; or, “He who knows when to hold his tongue is a saint.” But this is rare.

The last suggestion I have to make in relation to the genuineness of the Buscapié published by Don Adolfo de Castro is, that, though on its title-page it professes to explain “all the hidden and unexplained things” in the Don Quixote, it does not, in fact, even allude to one such; and though it professes to have been written by Cervantes in order to defend himself against certain learned adversaries, it does not cite any one of them, and only defends him in a light, jesting tone against the charge of the little Bachelor by admitting its truth, and then justifying it, on the ground that knight-errantry is still flourishing and vigorous in Spain,--a charge which no sensible or learned man can be supposed to have made, and a defence which is humorous, so far as it is so at all, only for its absurdity.

Other things might be mentioned, such as that Cervantes, in the Buscapié, is made to speak in a disparaging way of Alcalá de Henares, his native place, (pp. 13 and 41,) which, as we have seen, (ante, Vol. II. p. 53,) he delighted to honor; and that he is made to represent his imaginary Bachelor as talking about his own painful personal deformities, (pp. 24, 25, 28, 29,) and his father’s contemptible poltroonery, (pp. 27, 28, 34,) in a way inconsistent with the tact and knowledge of human nature which are among the strongest characteristics of the author of Don Quixote.

But I will go no farther. The little tract published by Don Adolfo de Castro is, with the exception of two or three coarse passages,[465] a pleasant, witty trifle. It shows in many parts much lively talent, a remarkable familiarity with the works of Cervantes, and a hardly less remarkable familiarity with the literature of the period when Cervantes lived. If Don Adolfo wrote it, he has probably always intended, in due time, to claim it as his own, and he may be assured that, by so doing, he will add something to his own literary laurels without taking any thing from those of Cervantes. If he did not write it, then he has, I think, been deceived in regard to the character of the manuscript, which he purchased under circumstances that made him believe it to be what it is not. In any event, I find no sufficient proof that it was written by Cervantes, and therefore no sufficient ground to think that it can be placed permanently under the protection of his great name.

[465] They are, I believe, all omitted in the translation of Miss Thomasina Ross, which appeared in Bentley’s Magazine, (London, August and September, 1848,) and in the translation by “A Member of the University of Cambridge,” published at Cambridge, 1849, with judicious notes, partly original and partly abridged from those of Don Adolfo de Castro.

APPENDIX, E.

ON THE DIFFERENT EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND IMITATIONS OF THE “DON QUIXOTE.”

(See Vol. II. p. 108, note, and p. 112, note.)

Whatever relates to the “Don Quixote” of Cervantes is so interesting, that I will add here such an account of its different editions, translations, and imitations as may serve, in some degree, to give the just measure of its extraordinary popularity, not only in Spain, but all over Christendom.

The first edition of the First Part of Don Quixote, of which I have a copy, was printed with this title: “El Ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha, compuesto por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, dirigido al Duque de Bejar, Marques de Gibraleon, etc. Año 1605. Con Privilegio, etc. En Madrid, por Juan de la Cuesta,” 4to, in one volume. Three editions more appeared in the same year, namely, one at Madrid, one at Lisbon, and the other at Valencia. These, with another at Brussels, in 1607,--five in all,--are the only editions that appeared, till he took it in hand to correct some of its errors. But he did this, as I have intimated, very imperfectly and carelessly. Among other changes, he did away with the division of the volume into four parts or books, but did not take the trouble to remove from the text the proofs of such a division, as may be seen at the end of Chapters VIII., XIV., and XXVII., where the work was divided, and where, in all our editions, the proofs of it still remain. Such corrections, however, as he saw fit to make, with sometimes a different spelling of words, appeared in the Madrid edition of 1608, 4to; of which I have a copy. This edition, though somewhat better than the first, is yet ordinary; but, as the one containing Cervantes’s only amendments of the text, it is more valued and sought after than any other, and is the basis on which all the good impressions since have been founded. After this, an edition at Milan, 1610, and one at Brussels, 1611, are known to have been printed before the appearance of the Second Part, in 1615. So that, in nine or ten years, there were eight editions of the First Part of Don Quixote, implying a circulation greater than that of the works of Shakspeare or Milton, Racine or Molière, who, as of the same century, may be fitly compared with him.

The first edition of the Second Part of Don Quixote, which, like the first edition of the First Part, is poorly printed, is entitled, “Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, autor de su Primera Parte, dirigida á Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Conde de Lemos, etc. Año 1615. Con Privilegio, en Madrid, por Juan de la Cuesta,” 4to. It was printed separately, Valencia, 1616; Brussels, 1616; Barcelona, 1617; and Lisbon, 1617; after which no separate edition is known to have appeared.[466]

[466] It is curious, that the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 794, and that of 1790, p. 51, direct two lines to be struck out from c. 36, but touch no other part of the work. The two lines signify that “works of charity performed in a lukewarm spirit have no merit and avail nothing.” These lines are carefully cancelled in my copy of the first edition. Cervantes, therefore, did not, after all, stand on so safe ground as he thought he did, when, in c. 20 of the same Part, he says his Don Quixote “does not contain even a thought that is not strictly Catholic.”

Thus, as we have seen, eight editions of the First Part were printed in ten years, and five of the Second Part in two years. Both parts appeared together at Barcelona in 1617, in two volumes, duodecimo; and from this period the number of editions has been very great, both in Spain and in foreign countries; nearly fifty of them being of some consequence. Only five, however, need to be here particularly noted. These are,--1. Tonson’s edition, (London, 1738, 4 vols., 4to,) published at the instance of Lord Carteret, in compliment to the queen, and containing the Life by Mayans y Siscar, already noticed; the first attempt either to edit Don Quixote or to write its author’s life with care. 2. The magnificent edition printed by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 tom., folio,) in which the text is settled with some skill, a few notes are added, and the Life of Cervantes and an Analysis, or rather an extravagant eulogy and defence, of the Don Quixote, by Don Vicente de los Rios, prefixed. It has been several times reprinted, though not without expressions of disapprobation, especially at the indiscriminate admiration of Los Rios, who found, among other opponents, a very resolute one in a Spaniard by the name of Valentine Foronda, who, in 1807, printed in London a thin octavo volume of very captious notes on Don Quixote, written in the form of letters, between 1793 and 1799, and entitled “Observaciones sobre Algunos Puntos de la Obra de Don Quixote, por T. E.” Clemencin gives the name of the author, who is otherwise unknown to me. (Ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 305.) 3. The extraordinary edition published in two volumes, quarto, at Salisbury, in England, in 1781, and accompanied by a third volume, consisting of notes and verbal indexes, all in Spanish, by the Rev. John Bowle, a clergyman in a small village near Salisbury, who gave fourteen years of unwearied labor to prepare it for the press; studying, as the basis of his system of annotation, the old Spanish and Italian authors, and especially the old Spanish ballad-books and books of chivalry, and concluding his task, or at least dating his Prefaces and Dedication, on the 23d of April, the anniversary of Cervantes’s death. There are few books of so much real learning, and at the same time of so little pretension, as the third volume of this edition. It is, in fact, the true and safe foundation on which has been built much of what has since been done with success for the explanation and illustration of the Don Quixote, which thus owes more to Bowle than to any other of its editors, except Clemencin. 4. The edition of Juan Antonio Pellicer, (Madrid, 1797-98, 5 tom., 8vo,) an Aragonese gentleman, who employed above twenty years in preparing it. (Latassa, Bib. Nov., Tom. VI. p. 319.) The notes to this edition contain a good deal of curious matter, but this matter is often irrelevant; the number of the notes is small, and they explain only a small part of the difficulties that occur in the text. It should be observed, too, that Pellicer is indebted to Bowle further than he acknowledges, and that he now and then makes mistakes on points of fact. 5. The edition of Diego Clemencin, (Madrid, 1833-39, 6 tom., 4to,) one of the most complete commentaries that has been published on any author, ancient or modern. It is written, too, with taste and judgment in nearly all that relates to the merits of the author, and is free from the blind admiration for Cervantes which marks Vicente de los Rios and the edition of the Academy. Its chief fault is, that there is too much of it; but then, on the other hand, it is rare to find an obscure point which it does not elucidate. The system of Clemencin is the one laid down by Bowle; and the conscientious learning with which it is carried out seems really to leave little to be desired in the way of notes.

In other countries the Don Quixote is hardly less known than it is in Spain. Down to the year 1700, it is curious to observe, that as many editions of the entire work were printed abroad as at home, and the succession of translations from the first has been uninterrupted. The oldest French translation is of 1620, since which there have been six or seven others, including the poor one of Florian, 1799, which has been the most read, and the very good one of Louis Viardot, (Paris, 1836-38, 2 tom., 8vo,) with the admirable illustrations of Granville,--a translation, however, which has been somewhat roughly handled by F. B. F. Biedermann, in a tract entitled “Don Quixote et la Tâche de ses Traducteurs” (Paris, 1837, 8vo). The oldest English one is by Shelton, 1612-20, the first half of which was made, as he says in the Dedication, in forty days, some years before, and which was followed by a very vulgar, unfaithful, and coarse one by John Philips, the nephew of Milton, 1687; one by Motteux, 1712; one by Jarvis, 1742, which Smollet used too freely in his own, 1755; one by Wilmot, 1774; and, finally, the anonymous one of 1818, which has adopted parts of all its predecessors. Most of them have been reprinted often; and, on the whole, the most agreeable and the best, though certainly somewhat too free, is that of Motteux, in the edition of Edinburgh, 1822, (5 vols., 12mo,) with notes and illustrative translations, full of spirit and grace, by Mr. J. G. Lockhart. No foreign country has done so much for Cervantes and Don Quixote as England, both by original editions, published there, and by translations. It may be noticed further, that, in 1654, Edmund Gayton, a gay fellow about town, of whom Wood gives no very dignified account, published in London a small folio volume, entitled “Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote,” the best of its author’s various works, and one that was thought worth publishing again in the next century, for the sake, I suppose, of the amusing vein in which it is written, but not on account of any thing it contains that will serve to explain difficult or obscure passages in the original. Some of it is in verse, and the whole is based on Shelton’s translation.

All countries, however, have sought the means of enjoying the Don Quixote, for there are translations in Latin, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Russian, Polish, and Portuguese. But better than any of these is, probably, the admirable one made into German by Ludwig Tieck, with extraordinary freedom and spirit, and a most genial comprehension of his author; four editions of which appeared between 1815 and 1831, and superseded all the other German versions, of which there are five, beginning with an imperfect attempt in 1669. It ought, perhaps, to be added, that, in the course of the last half-century, more editions of the original have appeared in Germany than in any other foreign country.

Of imitations out of Spain, it is only necessary to allude to three. The first is a “Life of Don Quixote, merrily translated into Hudibrastic Verse, by Edward Ward,” (London, 1711, 2 vols., 8vo,)--a poor attempt, full of coarse jests not found in the original. The second is “Don Silvio de Rosalva,” by Wieland, (1764, 2 vols.,) in ridicule of a belief in fairies and unseen agencies;--his first work in romantic fiction, and one that never had much success. The third is a curious poem, in twelve cantos, by Meli, the best of the Sicilian poets, who, in his native dialect, has endeavoured to tell the story of Don Quixote in octave stanzas, with the heroi-comic lightness of Ariosto; but, among other unhappinesses, has cumbered Sancho with Greek mythology and ancient learning. It fills the third and fourth volumes of Meli’s “Poesie Siciliane” (Palermo, 1787, 5 vols., 12mo). All these, as well as Smollet’s “Sir Launcelot Graves” and Mrs. Lenox’s “Female Quixote,” both published in 1762, are direct imitations of the Don Quixote, and on that account, in part, they are all failures. Butler’s “Hudibras,” (first edition, 1663-78,) so free and so full of wit, comes, perhaps, as near its model as genius may venture with success.

Don Quixote has often been produced on the stage in Spain; as, for instance, in a play by Francisco de Avila, published at Barcelona, in 1617; in two by Guillen de Castro, 1621; in one by Calderon, that is lost; and in others by Gomez Labrador, Francisco Marti, Valladares, Melendez Valdes, and, more lately, Ventura de la Vega; some of which were noticed when we spoke of the drama. But all of them were failures. (Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV., 1835, p. 399, note.)

As to prose imitations in Spain, except the attempt of Avellaneda, in 1614, I know of none for above a century;--none, indeed, till the popularity of the original work was revived. But since that period, there have been several. One is by Christóval Anzarena,--“Empressas Literarias del ingeniosíssimo Cavallero, Don Quixote de la Manchuela,” (Sevilla, 12mo, without the year, but printed about 1767,)--intended to ridicule the literary taste of the times, which, after going through the education of the hero, breaks off with the promise of a second part, that never appeared. Another is called “Adiciones á Don Quixote, por Jacinto María Delgado,” (Madrid, 12mo, s. a.,) printed apparently soon after the last, and containing the remainder of Sancho’s life, passed chiefly with the Duke and Duchess in Aragon, where, at a very small expense of wit, he is fooled into the idea that he is a baron. Another, by Alonso Bernardo Ribero y Sarrea, called “El Quixote de la Cantabria,” (Madrid, 1792, 2 tom., 12mo,) describes the travels of a certain Don Pelayo to Madrid, and his residence at court there, whence he returns to his native mountains, astonished and shocked that the Biscayans are not everywhere regarded as the only true nobility and gentlemen on earth. A fourth, “Historia de Sancho Panza,” (Madrid, 1793-98, 2 tom., 12mo,) is an unsuccessful attempt to give effect to Sancho as a separate and independent person after Don Quixote’s death, making him Alcalde of his native village, and sending him to figure in the capital and get into prison there;--the whole bringing the poor esquire’s adventures down to a very grave ending of his very merry life. And a fifth, by Juan Siñeriz, “El Quixote del Siglo XVIII.,” (Madrid, 1836, 4 tom., 12mo,) is an account of a French philosopher, who, with his esquire, travels over the earth to regenerate mankind; and, coming back just at the close of the French Revolution, which happened while he was in Asia, is cured, by the results of that great convulsion, of his philosophical notions; a dull, coarse book, whose style is as little attractive as its story. Perhaps there are other Spanish imitations of Don Quixote; but there can be none, I apprehend, of any merit or value.

All this account, however, incomplete as it is, of the different editions, translations, and imitations which, for above two centuries, have been poured out upon the different countries of Europe, gives, still, but an imperfect measure of the kind and degree of success which this extraordinary work has enjoyed; for there are thousands and thousands who never have read it, and who never have heard of Cervantes, to whom, nevertheless, the names of Don Quixote and of Sancho are as familiar as household words. So much of this kind of fame is enjoyed, probably, by no other author of modern times.

APPENDIX, F.

ON THE EARLY COLLECTIONS OF OLD SPANISH PLAYS.

(See Vol. II. p. 429.)

Two large collections of plays, and several small ones, much resembling each other, both in the character of their contents and the form of their publication, appeared in different parts of Spain during the seventeenth century, just as the ballads had appeared a century before; and they should be noticed with some care, because they exhibit the peculiar physiognomy of the Spanish national drama with much distinctness, and furnish materials of consequence for its history.

Of the first collection, whose prevailing title seems to have been “Comedias de Diferentes Autores,” it would, I suppose, be impossible now to form a complete set, or one even approaching to completeness. I possess only three volumes of it, and have seen satisfactory notices of only two more. The first of the five is the twenty-fifth volume of the collection itself, and was printed at Saragossa, in 1633, by Pedro Escuer. As is usual with such volumes of the old Spanish dramatists, it is in small quarto and contains twelve plays, seven of which are attributed to Montalvan, then at the height of his success as a living author, and one to Calderon, who was just rising to his great fame; but one of the seven plays of Montalvan belongs to his master, Lope de Vega, and the only one taken from Calderon is printed from a text grossly corrupted. The twenty-ninth volume was printed at Valencia, in 1636, and the thirty-second at Saragossa, in 1640; but I have seen neither of them. In the thirty-first, printed at Barcelona, in 1638, all the twelve plays are given without the names of their authors, though the persons who wrote most of them are still known; and the forty-third volume was printed at Saragossa, in 1650, containing plays by Calderon, Moreto, and Solís, with enough by more obscure authors to make up the regular number of twelve. It is no doubt singular, that, of a collection like this, extending to at least forty-three volumes, so little should now be known. But such is the fact. The Inquisition and the confessional were very busy in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when, under the imbecile Charles the Second, the theatre had fallen from its high estate; and in this way the oldest large collection of plays published in Spain, and the one we should now be most desirous to possess, was hunted down and nearly exterminated.

The next, which is the collection commonly known under the title of “Comedias Nuevas Escogidas de los Mejores Autores,”--a title by no means strictly adhered to in its successive volumes,--was more fortunate. Still it is very rare. I have never seen a set of it absolutely complete; but I possess in all forty-one volumes out of the forty-eight, of which such a set should consist, and have sufficiently accurate notices of the remaining seven.

The first of these volumes was published in 1652, the last in 1704; but, in the latter part of the period embraced between these dates, the theatre so declined, that, though at first two or three volumes came out every year, none was issued during the twenty-three years that followed the death of Calderon in 1681, except the very last in the collection, the forty-eighth. Taken together, they contain five hundred and seventy-four comedias, in all the forms and with all the characteristics of the old Spanish drama; their appropriate loas and entremeses being connected with a very small number of them. Thirty-seven of these comedias are given as anonymous, and the remaining five hundred and thirty-seven are distributed among one hundred and thirty-eight different authors.

The distribution, however, as might be anticipated, is very unequal. Calderon, who was far the most successful writer of the period he illustrated, has fifty-three plays assigned to him, in whole or in part, of which it is certain not one was printed with his permission, and not one, so far as I have compared them with the authentic editions of his works, from a text properly corrected. Moreto, the dramatic writer next in popularity after Calderon, has forty-six pieces given to him in the same way; all probably without his assent, since he renounced the stage as sinful, and retired to a monastery in 1657. Matos Fragoso, who was a little later, has thirty-three; Fernando de Zarate, twenty-two; Antonio Martinez, eighteen; Mira de Mescua, eighteen; Zavaleta, sixteen; Roxas, sixteen; Luis Velez de Guevara, fifteen; Cancer, fourteen; Solís, twelve; Lope de Vega, twelve; Diamante, twelve; Pedro de Rosete, eleven; Belmonte, eleven; and Francisco de Villegas, eleven. Many others have smaller numbers assigned to them; and sixty-nine authors, nearly all of whose names are otherwise unknown, and some of them, probably, not genuine, have but one each.

That the dramas in this collection all belong to the authors to whom it ascribes them, or that it is even so far accurate in its designations as to be taken for a sufficient general authority, is not for a moment to be supposed. Thirteen at least of the plays it contains, that bear the name of Calderon, are not his; one known to be his, “La Banda y la Flor,” is printed as anonymous in the thirtieth volume, with the title of “Hazer del Amor Agravio”; and another, “Amigo Amante y Leal,” is twice inserted,--once in the fourth volume, 1653, and once in the eighteenth volume, 1662,--each differing considerably from the other, and neither taken from a genuine text.

Of its carelessness in relation to other authors similar remarks might be made. Several of the plays of Solís are printed twice, and one three times; and in two successive volumes, the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, we have the “Lorenzo me llamo” of Matos Fragoso, a well-known and, in its time, a popular play. On all accounts, therefore, this collection, like its predecessor, is to be regarded as a mere bookseller’s speculation, carried on without the consent of the authors whose works were plundered for the purpose, and sometimes, as we know, in disregard of their complaints and remonstrances. How recklessly and scandalously this was done may be gathered from the facts already stated, and from the further one, that the “Vencimiento de Turno,” in the twelfth volume, which is boldly ascribed to Calderon on its title, is yet given to its true author, Manuel del Campo, in the very lines with which it is ended.

Still, these large collections, with the single volumes that, from time to time, were sent forth in the same way by the booksellers,--such as those published by Mateo de la Bastida, in 1652; by Manuel Lopez, in 1653; by Juan de Valdes, in 1655; by Robles, in 1664; and by Zabra and Fernandez, in 1675, all of which have been used in the account of the theatre in the text,--give us a living and faithful impression of the acted Spanish drama in the seventeenth century; for the plays they contain are those that were everywhere performed on the national stage, and they are here presented to us, not so often in the form given them by their authors, as in the form in which they were fitted for the stage by the managers, and plundered from the prompter’s manuscripts, or noted down in the theatres, by piratical booksellers.

APPENDIX, G.

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE BAD TASTE IN SPAIN, CALLED CULTISMO.

(See Vol. II. p. 533, note.)

A remarkable discussion took place in Italy in the latter part of the eighteenth century, concerning the origin of the bad taste in literature that existed in Spain after 1600, under the name of “Cultismo”;--some of the distinguished men of letters in each country casting the reproach of the whole of it upon the other. The circumstances, which may be properly regarded as a part of Spanish literary history, were the following.

In 1773, Saverio Bettinelli, a superficial, but somewhat popular, writer, in his “Risorgimento d’Italia negli Studj, etc., dopo il Mille,” charged Spain, and particularly the Spanish theatre, with the bad taste that prevailed in Italy after that country fell so much under Spanish control; adding to a slight notice of Lope de Vega and Calderon the following words:--“This, then, is the taste which passed into Italy, and there ruined every thing pure.” (Parte II. cap. 3, Tragedia e Commedia.) Girolamo Tiraboschi, in his “Storia della Letteratura Italiana,” first published between 1772 and 1783, maintained a similar position or theory, tracing this bad taste, as it were, to the very soil and climate of Spain, and following its footsteps, both in ancient times, when, he believed, the Latin literature had been corrupted by it after the Senecas and Martial came from Spain to Rome, and in modern times, when he charged upon it the follies of Marini and all his school. (Tom. II., Dissertazione Preliminare, § 27.)

Both these writers were, no doubt, sufficiently decided in the tone of their opinions. Neither of them, however, was harsh or violent in his manner, and neither, probably, felt that he was making such an attack on the literature and fair fame of another country as would provoke a reply;--much less, one that would draw after it a long controversy.

But at that period there were in Italy a considerable number of learned Spaniards, who had been driven there, as Jesuits, by the expulsion of their Society from Spain in 1767; men whose chief resource and amusement were letters, and who, like true Spaniards, felt not a whit the less proud of their country because they had been violently expelled from it. With hardly a single exception, they seem to have been offended by these and other similar remarks of Bettinelli and Tiraboschi, to which they were, perhaps, only the more sensitive, because the distinguished Italians who made them were, like themselves, members of the persecuted Order of the Jesuits.

Answers to these imputations, therefore, soon began to appear. Two were published in 1776;--the first by Thomas Serrano, a Valencian, who, in some Latin Letters, printed at Ferrara, defended the Latin poets of Spain from the accusations of Tiraboschi, (Ximeno, Tom. II. p. 335; Fuster, Tom. II. p. 111,) and the second by Father Giovanni Andres, who, in a Dissertation printed at Cremona, took similar ground, which he further enlarged and fortified afterwards, in his great work on universal literary history, (Dell’ Origine, Progresso, e Stato Attuale di Ogni Letteratura, 1782-99, 9 tom., 4to,) where he maintains the dignity and honor of his country’s literature on all points, and endeavours to trace the origin of much of what is best in the early culture of modern Europe to Arabian influences coming in from Spain, through Provence, to Italy and France.

To the Letters of Serrano rejoinders appeared at once from Clement Vannetti, the person to whom Serrano had addressed them, and from Alessandro Zorzi, a friend of Tiraboschi;--and to the Dissertation of Father Andres, Tiraboschi himself replied, with much gentleness, in the notes to subsequent editions of his “Storia della Letteratura.” (See Angelo Ant. Scotti, Elogio Storico del Padre Giovanni Andres, Napoli, 1817, 8vo, pp. 13, 143, Tiraboschi, Storia, ed. Roma, 1782, Tom. II. p. 23.)

Meantime, others among the exiled Spanish Jesuits in Italy, such as Arteaga, who afterwards wrote the valuable “Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale,” 1783, and Father Isla, who had been famous for his “Friar Gerund” from 1758, took an interest in the controversy. (Salas, Vida del Padre Isla, Madrid, 1803, 12mo, p. 136.) But the person who brought to it the learning which now makes it of consequence in Spanish literary history was Francisco Xavier Lampillas, or Llampillas, who was born in Catalonia, in 1731, and was, for some time, Professor of Belles Lettres in Barcelona, but who, from the period of his exile as a Jesuit in 1767 to that of his death in 1810, lived chiefly in Genoa or its neighbourhood, devoting himself to literary pursuits, and publishing occasionally works, both in prose and verse, in the Italian language, which he wrote with a good degree of purity.

Among these works was his “Saggio Storico-apologetico della Letteratura Spagnuola,” printed between 1778 and 1781, in six volumes, octavo, devoted to a formal defence of Spanish literature against Bettinelli and Tiraboschi;--occasionally, however, noticing the mistakes of others, who, like Signorelli, had touched on the same subject. In the separate dissertations of which this somewhat remarkable book is composed, the author discusses the connection between the Latin poets of Spain and those of Rome in the period following the death of Augustus;--he examines the question of the Spanish climate raised by Tiraboschi, and claims for Spain a culture earlier than that of Italy, and one as ample and as honorable;--he asserts that Spain was not indebted to Italy for the revival of letters within her borders at the end of the Dark Ages, or for the knowledge of the art of navigation that opened to her the New World; while, on the other hand, he avers that Italy owed to Spain much of the reform of its theological and juridical studies, especially in the sixteenth century;--and brings his work to a conclusion, in the seventh and eighth dissertations, with an historical exhibition of the high claims of Spanish poetry generally, and with a defence of the Spanish theatre from the days of the Romans down to his own times.

No doubt, some of these pretensions are quite unfounded, and others are stated much more strongly than they should be; and no doubt, too, the general temper of the work is any thing rather than forbearing and philosophical; but still, many of its defensive points are well maintained, and many of its incidental notices of Spanish literary history are interesting, if not important. At any rate, it produced a good effect on opinion in Italy; and, when added to the works published there soon afterwards by Arteaga, Clavigero, Eximeno, Andres, and other exiled Spaniards, it tended to remove many of the prejudices that existed among the Italians against Spanish literature;--prejudices which had come down from the days when the Spaniards had occupied so much of Italy as conquerors, and had thus earned for their nation the lasting ill-will of its people.

Answers, of course, were not wanting to the work of Lampillas, even before it was completed; one of which, by Bettinelli, appeared in the nineteenth volume of the “Diario” of Modena, and another, in 1778, by Tiraboschi, in a separate pamphlet, which he republished afterwards in the different editions of his great work. To both, Lampillas put forth a rejoinder in 1781, not less angry than his original Apology, but, on the whole, less successful, since he was unable to maintain some of the positions skilfully selected and attacked by his adversaries, or to establish many of the facts which they had drawn into question. Tiraboschi reprinted this rejoinder at the end of his own work, with a few short notes; the only reply which he thought it necessary to make.

But in Spain the triumph of Lampillas was open and unquestioned. His Storia Apologetica was received with distinguished honors by the Academy of History, and, together with his pamphlet defending it, was published first in 1782, in six volumes, and then, in 1789, in seven volumes, translated by Doña Maria Josefa Amar y Borbon, an Aragonese lady of some literary reputation. What, however, was yet more welcome to its author, Charles the Third, the very king by whose command he had been exiled, gave him an honorable pension for his defence of the national literature, and acknowledged the merits of the work by his minister, Count Florida Blanca, who counted among them not only its learning, but an “urbanity” which now-a-days we are unable to discover in it. (Sempere, Biblioteca, Tom. III. p. 165.)

After this, the controversy seems to have died away entirely, except as it appeared in notes to the great work of Tiraboschi, which he continued to add to the successive editions till his death, in 1794. The result of the whole--so far as the original question is concerned--is, that a great deal of bad taste is proved to have existed in Spain and in Italy, especially from the times of Góngora and Marina, not without connection and sympathy between the two countries, but that neither can be held exclusively responsible for its origin or for its diffusion.

APPENDIX, H.

INEDITA.

Having a little enlarged the first and second volumes for the purpose, I am enabled here to present some of the very old and interesting Spanish poetry, furnished to me by Don Pascual de Gayangos, but never before published. I wish it were in my power to print more of the manuscripts in my possession, but I have not room.

No. I.

POEMA DE JOSÉ EL PATRIARCA.

The first of the manuscripts referred to is the one mentioned in Vol. I. pp. 94-99, as a poem on the subject of Joseph, the son of Jacob,--remarkable on many accounts, and, among the rest, because, in the only copy of it known to exist,--that in the National Library, Madrid, MSS. G. g., 4to, 101,--it is written entirely in the Arabic character, so that, for a long time, it was regarded as an Arabic manuscript. It has not, I believe, been deemed of a later date than the end of the fourteenth century. Indeed, its language and general air would seem to indicate an earlier one; but we should bear in mind that the Moriscos, to some one of whom this poem is due, did not make a progress in the language and culture of Spain so rapid as the Spaniards did, by whom, long before the fall of Granada, large masses of them were surrounded and kept in subjection. On this account we may conjecture the poem to have been written as late as the year 1400; but its date is uncertain.

· · · · · · · · · · · ·

Jusuf seiendo chico i de pocos annos, Castigandolo su padre no se encubrió de sus ermanos, Dijoles el suenno que bido en los altos; Pensaronle traision é fizieronle engannos.

Dijeronle sus ermanos, “Agamosle certero; Roguemos a nueso padre rogaria berdadera, Que nos deje a Jusuf en la comanda berdadera, I amostrarle emos mannas de cazar la alimanna berdadera.”

· · · · · · · · · · · ·

Porque Jacab amaba á Jusuf por marabella, Porque el era disquito i agudo de orella, Porque la su madre era fermosa e bella, Sobre todas las otras era amada ella.

Aquesta fue la razon porque le obieron enbidia, Porque Jusuf sonno un suenno una noche ante el dia, Suenno que entendieron sus ermanos siempre todabia, Que Jusuf seiendo menor abria la mejoria.

· · · · · · · · · · · ·

Dijieron sus filhos, “Padre, eso no pensedes, Somos dies ermanos, eso bien sabedes; Seriamos taraidores, eso no dubdedes; Mas enpero, si no vos place, aced lo que queredes.

“Mas aquesto pensamos, sabelo el Criador; Porque supiese mas, i ganase el nuestro amor, Enseñarle aiemos las obelhas e el ganado maior; Mas enpero, si no vos place, mandad como señor.”

Tanto le dijeron de palabras fermosas, Tanto le prometieron de palabras piadosas, Que él les dió el ninno, dijoles las oras, Que lo guardasen a el de manos enganosas.

Dioseles el padre, como no debia far, Fiandose en sus filhos, e no quis mas dubdar; Dijo, “Filhos, los mis filhos, lo que os quiero rogar, Que me lo catedes e me lo querais guardar.

“E me lo bolbades luego en amor del Criador, A él fareis placer, i a mi mui grand fabor, Y en esto no fallescades, filhos, por mi amor, Encomiendolo a el de Allah, poderoso Señor.”

Lebaronlo en cuello mientras su padre los bido. De que fueron apartados bien beredes que fueron á far; Bajaronlo del cuello, en tierra lo van a posar. Quando esto bido Jusuf por su padre fué á sospirar.

Dejabanlo zaguero mal andante e cuitado, E él como era tierno quedo mui querebantado; Dijoles, “Atendedme, ermanos, que boi mui cansado, No querais que quede aqui desmamparado.

“Dadme agua del rio o de fuente o de mar, No querades que muera de sete ni de fambar; No querades que finque de sin padre ni madre; Acuerdeseos lo que os dijo el cano de mi padre.”

Esto que oyera el uno de ellos, bien beredes lo que fizo; Dio de mano al gua, en tierra la bacio, De punnos e de cozes mui mal lo firio, El ninno con las sobras en tierra cayo.

Alli se fue a rencorar uno de sus ermanos, Jahuda tiene por nombre, mui arreciado de manos; Fuesele a rogar ad aquellos onrados No murió entonces qui sieronlo sus fados.

Tomaron su consejo, i obieronlo por bien, Que lo llebasen al monte al pozo de Azraiel; Frio es el fosal, e las fieras ia se acian, Porque se lo comiesen i nunca mas lo bian.

Pensaban, que dirian al su padre onrrado, Que, estando en las obelhas, bino el lobo airado, Estando durmiendo Jusuf a su caiado, Bino el lobo maldito i a Jusuf hubo matado.

Jacub estaba aflejido por la tardanza de su fijo, Saliose por las carreras por oir i saber de sus fijos nuebas berdaderas; Bidolos benir, meciendo las cabezas, Diciendo, “O ermano Jusuf!” de tan buena manera.

Quando los bido benir con tal apellido, Luego en aquella ora caio amortesido; Quando llegaron a él no le hallaron sentido, Dijeron todos, “Senor, dale el perdon cumplido.”

Dijo Jahuda a todos sus ermanos, “Bolbamos por Jusuf, donde estaba encelado, I abremos gualardon de nueso padre onrrado; Io prometo de encelar quanto abemos errado.”

Dijeron sus ermanos, “Eso no aremos; Somos diez ermanos, eso bien sabemos; Bamos a nueso padre e todo se lo contaremos, Que, contandole aquesto, seremos creederos.”

Hasta poco de rato Jacob ubo recordado; Dijo, “Que es de mi fijo, que es de mi amado? Que le abedes fecho, en do lo abeis dejado?” E todos dijeron, “El lobo lo ha matado.”

“No bos creio, filhos, de quanto me dezides; Idme a cazar el lobo de aquel donde benides, Que io le fare ablar corbas sus corbizes; Con la aiuda de Allah, el me dira si falsia me dezedes.”

E fueronse a cazar el lobo con falsia mui grande, Diciendo que abia fecho una muerte tan mala; Traieron la camisa de Jusuf ensangrentada, Porque creiese Jacob aquello sin dudanza.

Rogo Jacob al Criador, e al lobo fué á fablar. Dijo el lobo, “No lo manda Allah que a nabi fuese á matar; En tan estranna tierra me fueron á cazar, Anme fecho pecado, i lebanme a lazrar.”

Dijo Jacob, “Filhos que tuerto me tenedes, De quanto me decides de todo me fallesedes, En el Allah creio, e fio que aun lo beredes Todas estas cosas que aun lo pagaredes.”

E bolbiose Jacob e bolbiose llorando, E quedaron sus filhos como desmamparados; Fueronse a Jusuf donde estaba encelado, E lebaronle al pozo por el suelo rastrando.

Echaronle en el pozo con cuerda mui luenga; Quando fue a medio ubieronla cortada, E caio entre una penna i una piedra airada, E quiso Allah del cielo, e no le nocio nada.

Alli caio Jusuf en aquella agua fria, Por do pasaba gente con mercaduria, Que tenian sed con la calor del dia, I embiaron por agua alli donde el iacia.

Echaron la ferrada con cuerda mui larga; No la pudieron sacar, cá mucho les pesaba Por razon que Jusuf en ella se trababa; Pusieron i esfuerzo, i salto la bella barba.

Ellos de que bieron a tan noble criatura Marabillaronse de su grand fermosura; Llebaronle al mercader, e plaziole su figura; Prometioles mucho bien e mui mucha mesura.

Asta poco de rato sus ermanos binieron A demandarlo, su catibo lo ferieron; El lo otorgo pues ellos lo quisieron; Jahuda los aconsejo por alla por do binieron.

Dijo el mercader, “Amigos, si queredes Aquestos vente dineros por él si lo bendedes. Dijeron, “Contentos somos con que lo enpresionedes, Asta la tierra santa que no lo soltaredes.”

E fizieron su carta, de como lo bendieron; E todo por sus manos por escripto lo pusieron, E ad aquel mercader su carta le rindieron, E lebaronlo encadenado ansi como punsieron.

Quando bino el mober, Jusuf iba llorando, Por espedirse de sus ermanos mal iba quexando, Malos eran ellos, mas él acia su guisado, Demandó al mercader i otorgoselo de grado.

Dijo el mercader, “Esta es marabella, Que ellos te an vendido como si fueses obelha, Diciendo que eras ladron e de mala pelelha; E io por tales senores no daria una arbelha.”

Partiose Jusuf con la cadena rastrando, E Jahuda aquella noche estabalos belando, Espertolos a todos tan apriesa llorando, Diziendo, “Lebantadbos, recibid al torteado.”

Dijo Jusuf, “Ermanos, perdoneos el Criador Del tuerto que me tenedes, perdoneos el Senor; Que para siempre e nunca se parta el nuestro amor.” Abraso á cada guno, e partiose con dolor.

Iba con gran gente aquel mercadero; Alli iba Jusuf solo e sin companero; Pasaron por un camino por un fosal sennero, Do iacia la su madre acerca de un otero.

Dio salto del camello donde iba cabalgando; No lo sintio el negro que lo iba guardando; Fuese a la fuesa de su madre a pedirla perdon doblando Jusuf a la fuesa tan apriesa llorando.

Disiendo, “Madre, Sennora, perdoneos el Sennor, Madre, si me bidieses de mi abriais dolor; Boi con cadenas al cuello, catibo con sennor, Bendido de mis ermanos, como si fuera traidor.

“Ellos me han bendido, no teniendoles tuerto; Partieronme de mi padre, ante que fuese muerto, Con arte, con falsia, ellos me obieron buelto; Por mal precio me han bendido por do boi ajado e cucito.”

E bolbiose el negro ante la camella Requiriendo a Jusuf e no lo bido en ella, E bolbiose por el camino aguda su orella, Bidolo en el fosal, llorando que es marabella.

E fuese alla el negro e obolo mal ferido, E luego en aquella ora caio amortesido; Dijo, “Tu eres malo e ladron conpilido, Ansi nos lo dijeron tus senores que te hubieron bendido.”

Dijo Jusuf, “No soi malo ni ladron, Mas aqui iaz mi madre e bengola a dar perdon; Ruego ad Allah, i a el fago loaiçon Que, si colpa no te tengo, te enbie su maldicion.”

Andaron aquella noche fasta otro dia; Entorbioseles el mundo, gran bento corria, Afallezioseles el sol al ora de medio dia, No vedian por do ir con la mercaderia.

Aqueste mercader base marabillado De aquella fortuna que traia el pecado. Dijo el mercader, “Yo mando pribado, Que quien pecado a fecho que bienga acordado.

“Que es aquesta fortuna que agora veiemos Por algun pecado que entre nosotros tenemos; Quien pecado a fecho perdone e perdonemos, Mejoremos ventura e todos escaparemos.”

Dijo el negro, “Señor, io di una bofetada A de aquel tu catibo que se fue a la alborada.” Llamó el mercader a Jusuf la begada, Que se viniere a bengar del negro e su errada.

Dijo Jusuf, “Eso no es de mi a far; Io no vengo de aquellos que ansi se quieren vengar; Ante bengo de aquellos que quieren perdonar; Por gran que seia el ierro, io ansi lo quiero far.”

Aquesto fecho i el negro perdonado, Aclarecioles el dia i el mercader fue apagado. Dijo el mercader, “O amigo granado! Sino por lo compuesto soltariate de grado.”

Mas a pocos de dias a su tierra llegaron; Jusuf fue luego suelto, que un rio lo bañaron; De purpura e de seda mui bien lo guisaron, E de piedras preciosas mui bien lo afeitaron.

Quando entraron por la cibdad, las gentes se marabillaban; El dia era nublo e el sol no relumbraba, Magüer era oscuro e el la hazia calara, Por do quier que pasaba todo lo relonbraba.

Decian las gentes a de aquel mercadero, Si era aquel angel o ombre santurero. Dijo, “Este es mi catibo leal e berdadero, Io quiero lo bender, si le hallo mercadero.”

Dijo el mercader, que él lo benderia en mercado. Fizo a saber las nuebas por todo el reinado, Que biniese toda la gente para el dia sennalado, Estando Jusuf apuesto en un banco posado.

No fincó en toda la comarca hombre ni muger, Ni chico ni grande, que non le fuese a ber. Alli bino Zaleja e dejó el comer, Cabalgada en una mula a quanto podia correr.

Su peso de palata por el daba bien pesado, E otro que tal haria de oro esmaltado, E de piedras preciosas como dice el ditado, Mercolo el Rei por su peso de oro granado.

Diolo el Rei a Zaleja con amor, Tomaronlo por filho legitimo e maior, Tomaronlo dambos de mui buen amor; Lebantose el pregonero, e pregono a sabor.

Lebantose el pregonero, e pregono a sabor; Dijo, “Quien compra Profeta cuerdo e sabidor, Leal i berdadero i firme en el Criador, Ansi como parece por fecho e balor?”

Dijo Jusuf, “Tu pregonaras, amado, Quien comprara catibo, torpe e abiltado?” Dijo el pregonero, “Eso no faré io, amado, Que, si aqueso pregonase, no te mercaran de grado.”

Dijo, “Pues eso no quieres, pregona la berdad, E ruegote, ermano, que no la quieras negar. Di, Quien comprara profeta del alto lugar, Filhos de Jacob si lo aveis oido nombrar?”

De que supo el mercader que era de tal altura, Rogo al comprador le bolbiese por mesura E doblarle i a el precio de su compradura, E él no lo quiso hacer porque ia tenia bentura.

Besandole pies i manos que lo quisiese far, El por ninguna bia no lo quiso derogar, Tubose por mal andante; la cuenta ia le fue a tornar, Salbante lo que costo no lo quiso mas tomar.

Rogo el mercader a Jusuf la sazon, Que rogase ad Allah del cielo de buen corazon, Que en doce mugeres que tenia, todas doce en amor, Que en todas doce le diese filhos e criazon.

Lebantose Jusuf e fizo loacion, Rogo ad Allah del cielo de buen corazon, Que alargase la bida al buen baron, I emprennaronse todas, cada una a su sazon.

Cuando bino la ora ubieron de librar, Quiso Allah del cielo, e todas fueron a hechar Mui nobles criaturas e figuras de alegrar, Porque nuestro Señor las quiso ayudar.

Criolo Zaleja, mui bien lo hubo criado, E de corazon lo hubo guardado, I él como era apuesto apegose del pribado, Demandole el su cuerpo, e no le semejo guisado.

Dijo a su pribada, “Ia sabes, amada, Como io he criado a Jusuf cada semana, De noche e de dia io bien lo guardaba, I él no me lo prezia mas que si fuese bana.

“Dame sabiduria, a mi sapiencia clara. Io no puedo facer que el acate en mi cara; Solo que él me bediese i el luego me amara, E de él faria a mi guisa en lo que io le mandara.”

Dijo su pribada, “Io bos daré un consejo; Bos dadme haber, i os faré un bosquejo, Io habre un pintor i mistorara a arrecho, Io faré el meter, e a que se benga a buestro lecho.”

De quanto le demando todo lo fué bien guisado; Fizo fazer un palacio mui apuesto e cuadrado, Todo lo fizo balanco paredes e terrado, E fizo figurar a un pintor piribado.

De Jusuf e de Zaleja allí hizo sus figuras, Que se abrazaban dambos pribados sin mesura, Porque semejaban bibos con seso e cordura, Porque eran misturados de mistura con natura.

De que el palacio fue fecho e todo bien acabado, Alli bino Zaleja e asentose ia de grado, E embio por Jusuf luego con el mandado, “Jusuf, tu Señora te manda que baias mui pribado.”

E fuese Jusuf do Zaleja salia, E como quiso de entrar luego sintió la falsia, E quisose bolber, e ella no lo consentia, Tarabolo de la falda, e llebolo do iacia.

Alli quedó Jusuf con mui gran espanto; Afalagabolo Zaleja i el bolbiase de canto, Prometiendole aber e riquezas a basto. La ora dijo Jusuf, “Allah mandara a farto.”

Por do quier que cataba beia figora artera; Deciale Zaleja, “Esta es fiera manera; Tu eres un catibo é io tu Sennora certera; Io no puedo fazer que tu guies a mi carrera.”

Jusuf en aquella ora quisose encantar; El pecado lo fazia que lo queria engannar; E bido que no era a su padre onrrar; Repentido fue luego i empezo de firmar.

Jusuf bolbió las cuestas e empezo de fuir; De zaga ibale Zaleja, no lo podia sofrir; Trabolo de la falda como oirias decir, Echando grandes boces, “Aqui abras de benir.”

Oiolo su marido por do allí bino pribado; Falló a Jusuf llorando su mal fado; Rota tenia la falda en su costado, I el su corazon negro por miedo de pecado.

Zaleja tenia tendidos sus cabellos, En manera de forzada con sus olhos bermellos; Diziendo al buen Rei, “Sennor, de los consellos Aqui son menester; cata todos tus consejos.

“Cata aqui tu catibo, que tenias en fieldad; Ame caecido por sin ninguna piedad, Abiendolo criado con tan gran piedad Como faze madre á filho ansi lo quise aquesto far.”

Dijo el Rei a Jusuf aquesta razon; “Como me as pensado en tan grande traision, Tobiendote puesto en mi corazon?” La ora dijo Jusuf, “No bengo de tal morgon.”

Reutaban á Zaleja las duennas del lugar Porque con su catibo queria boltariar. Ella de que lo supo arte las fue á buscar, Combidolas a todas e llebolas a cantar.

Diolas ricos comeres é binos esmerados, Que hijan todas agodas de dictados, Diolas sendas toronjas e caminetes en las manos, Tajantes e apuestos e mui bien temperados.

E fuese Zaleja a do Jusuf estaba, De purpura e de seda mui bien lo aguisaba, E de piedras preciosas mui bien lo afeitaba, Berdugadero en sus manos a las duennas lo embiaba.

Ellas de que lo bieron perdieron su cordura, Tanto era de apuesto e de buena figura; Pensaban que era tan angel e tornaban en locura, Cortabanse las manos e non se abian cura,

Que por las toronjas la sangre iba andando. Zaleja quando lo bido toda se fue alegrando; Dijoles Zaleja que fais lo cas de sin cuidado, Que por buesas manos la sangre iba andando.”

I ellas de que lo bieron sintieron su locura. “Que a par una bista sola tomades en locura? Io que debia fazer e dende el tiempo que medura?”

Dijeronle las duennas, “A ti no te colpamos, Nosotras somos las ierradas que te razonamos; Mas antes guisaremos que él te benga a tus manos De manera que seais abenidos enterambos.”

E fueronse las duennas a Jusuf a rogar; Bederedes cada una como lo debia far; Pensabase Zaleja que por ella iban á rogar, Mas cada guna iba para sí a recabar.

Jusuf quando aquesto bido reclamose al Criador; Diziendo, “Padre mio, de mi aiades dolor; Son tornadas de una muchas en mi amor, Pues mas quiero ser preso que no ser traidor.”

Cuando bido Zaleja la cosa mal parada, Que por ninguna bia no pudo haber de entrada, Dijo al buen Rei, “Este me a difamada No teniendo la culpa, mas a falsia granada.”

Echolo en la prision aqui a que se bolbiese, E que por aquello a ella obedeciese; E entiendolo el Rei ante que muriese E juró que non salria mientras que él bibiese.

E quando aquesto fue fecho, Zaleja fue repentida; No lo abria querido fazer en dias de su vida, Diziendo, “O mezquina, nunca seré guarida De este mal tan grande en que soi caida.

“Que si io supiera que esto abia de benir, Que por ninguna bia no se ha podido complir, Que io no he podido de este mal guarir, Por deseo de Jusuf habré io de morir.”

Alli iaze diez annos como si fuese cordero, Daquí á que mandó el Rei á un su portero Echar en la prision dos ombres i el tercero, El uno su escancieno e el otro un panicero;

Porque abian pensado al Rei de far traicion, Que en el bino e en el pan que le echasen ponzon. Probado fué al panicero, e al escancieno non, Porque mejor supo catar e encobrir la traicion.

Allí do estaban presos mui bien los castigaba, E qualquiera que enfermaba mui bien lo curaba; Todos lo guardaban por do quiera que el estaba, Porque el lo merecia, su figura se lo daba.

Sonno el escancieno un suenno tan pesado; Contolo a Jusuf, i sacosele de grado. Dijo, “Tu fues escancieno de tu Sennor onrrado, Mas oi en seras a tu oficio tornado,

“E abras perdon de tu Sennor; Aiudete el seso i guiete el Criador, I a quien Allah da seso dale grande onor; Bolberas á tu oficio con mui grande balor.”

Dijo el panicero al su compannero, “Io dire a Jusuf que e sonnado un suenno De noche en tal dia, quando salia el lucero, I beré que me dize en su seso certero.”

Contole el panicero el suenno que queria, I sacosele Jusuf é nada no le mentia; Dijo, “Tu fues panicero del Rei todabia, Mas aqui iaceras porque fiziste falsia;

“Que al tercero dia seras tu luego suelto, E seras enforcado a tu cabeza el tuerto, E comeran tus meollos las abes del puerto; Alli seras colgado hasta que sias muerto.”

Dijo el panicero, “No sonné cosa certera, Que io me lo dezia por ber la manera.” Dijo Jusuf, “Esta es cosa berdadera, Que lo que tu dijestes, Allah lo embió por carrera.”

Dijo Jusuf al escancieno aquesta razon; “Ruegote que recuerdes al Rei de mi prision, Que arto me a durado esta gran maldicion.” Dijo el escancieno, “Plaze me de corazon.”

Que al tercero dia salieron de grado, E fueron delante del Rei, su Sennor onrrado; E mandó el panicero ser luego enforcado, Dijo, “El escancieno á su oficio a tornado.”

Olbidosele al escancieno de decir el su mandado, E no le membro por dos años ni le fué acordado, Fasta que sonnó un suenno el Rei apoderado; Doce annos estubo preso, e esto mal de su grado.

Aqueste fue el suenno que el Rei ubo sonnado, De que salia del agua un rio granado, Anir era su nombre preciado e granado, I bido que en salian siete bacas de grado.

Eran bellas e gordas e de lai mui cargadas, I bido otras siete magras, flacas, e delgadas. Comianse las flacas a las gordas granadas, E no se les parecia ni enchian las hilladas.

E bido siete espigas mui llenas de grano, Berdes e fermosas como en tiempo de berano; E bido otras siete secas con grano bano, Todas secas e blancas como caballo cano.

Comianse las secas a las berdes del dia, E no se les parecia ninguna mejoria; Tornabanse todas secas cada guna bacia, Todas secas e blancas como de niebla fria.

El Rei se marabello de como se comian Las flacas a las gordas granadas, I las siete espigas secas a las berdes mojadas, I entendio que en su suenno abia largas palabras, E no podia pensar a que fuesen sacadas.

E llamo a los sabidores e el suenno les fue a contar, Que se lo sacasen e no ge diesen bagar, E ellos le dijeron, “Nos querais aquejar, Miraremos en los libros o no te daremos bagar.”

Dijeronle, “Sennor, no seais aquejado; No son los suennos ciertos en tiempo arrebatado. Los amores crecen segun noso cuidado, Mas a las de beras suelen tornar en falso.”

I amansose el Rei, e dioles de mano, Porque el entendio que andaban en bano. E ubo de saber aquello el escancieno, E binose al Rei, e diole la mano.

E dijole, “Sennor, io sé un sabidor onrrado El qual está en prision firmemente atorteado; Dos annos abemos que del non me e acordado, E fecho como torpe, e sientome ierrado.

“Ia me saco un suenno, cierto le bi benir.” E el Rei le respondio, “Amigo, empieza de ir, E contaselo todo, como as oido dezir, E librarlo emos mui presto e sacarlo io de alli.”

E fuese el escancieno a Jusuf de grado, E dijo, “Perdoname, amigo, que olbidé tu mandado, E fizolo el miedo de mi Sennor onrrado, Mas agora es tiempo de mandarlo doblado.

“Mas ruegote, ermano, en amor del Criador, Que me saques un suenno que bido mi Sennor.” La ora dijo Jusuf, “Plazeme de corazon, Pues que no puedo salir fasta que quiera el maior.”

E contole el suenno todo bien cumplido, Porque no ierrase Jusuf en lo que era sabido. Quando el suenno fue contado, Jusuf ubo entendido; Dijo Jusuf, “El suenno es cierto e benido.

“Sabras que las siete bacas gordas e granadas, E las siete espigas berdes e mojadas, Son siete annos mui llubiesos de aguas, Do quiera que sembraredes todas naceran dobladas.

“I las magras bacas e las secas espigas Son siete annos de mui fuertes prisas; Comense a los buenos bien a las sus guisas, Do quiera que sembraredes no ia saldran espigas.

“Porque face menester, que sembraredes á basto En estos annos buenos que aberedes á farto, I dejaredes probiendo para bosotros e al ganado I alzaredes lo a otro ansi fechos llegado.

“Ansi con su espiga sin ninguna trilladura E la palla sera guardada mui bien de afolladura, Porque no ii caiga polilla, ni ninguna podredura, Porque en estos tiempos secos tengades folgadura.

“Porque en aquestos annos tengades que comer E buestros bestiales e las bacas de beber, E todos los esforzades, e poredes guarecer, E saldreis al buen tiempo e abreis mucho bien.”

Cuando bió el escancieno del suenno la glosa, Bolbiose al Rei con berdadera cosa, E fizole a saber al de la barba donosa, Que era el suenno con razon fermosa.

E placiole mucho al Rei, e ovo gran plazer, E supole malo de tal preso tener, Cuerdo e berdadero, complido en el saber, E mandó que lo traiesen, que el lo queria ber.

E fuese el escancieno a Jusuf con el mandado, E dijo como el Rei por él abia embiado, E que fuese presto del Rei, no fuese airado. E dijo Jusuf, “No sere tan entorbiado;

“Mas buelbete al Rei i dile desta manera, Io que feuza tendré en su merced certera, Que me a tubido preso doce annos en la carcel negra A tuerto e sin razon e a traision berdadera.

“Mas io de su prision no quiero salir Fasta que me benga de quien alli me fizo ir, De las duennas fermosas que me fizieron fuir, Quant se cortaban las manos e no lo podian sentir.

“Aplazelas el Rei pues que me dannaron, Que digan la berdad porque me colparon, O por qual razon en carcel me echaron, Porque entienda el Rei, porque me acolparon.

“E quando seran ajuntadas e Zaleja con ellas, Demandelas el Rei berdad a todas ellas, E quando el bera que la culpa tienen ellas La ora io saldré de mui buena manera.

Aplazolas el Rei, e demandalas la berdad; Ellas le dijeron, “Todas fizimos maldad, E Jusuf fue certero manteniendo lealtad; Nunca quiso boltariar ni le dió la boluntad.”

Lebantose Zaleja, i empezo de decir, “A todas las duennas no es otra de mentir, Sino de seier firmes e la berdad dezir, Que io me entremeti por mi loado dezir.

“Que todas hizimos ierro si nos balga el Criador, E le tenemos culpa, Allah es perdonador; Jusuf es fuero de ierro e de pecado maior.” El Rei, quando las oiera, maldiciolas con dolor.

E fizo saber el Rei a Jusuf la manera, Como era quito cosa berdadera De todas las duennas con prueba certera; E la ora salio Jusuf de la carcel negra.

E en el portal de la prision fizo fazer un escripto; “La prision es fuesa de los hombres bibos E sitio de maldicion e banco de los abismos, E Allah nos cure de ella a todos los amigos.”

Embiole el Rei mui rica cabalgadura E gran caballeria, e abianlo a cura; Llebanlo en medio como Sennor de natura, E fueronse al palacio del buen Rei de mesura.

E el Rei como lo bido luego se fue á lebantar, E el Rei se fue a él, que no solia usar, E asentolo cabo a él, lo que no solia far, E en la ora le dijo el Rei, “Mi fillol te quiero far.”

E con setenta fablaches el Rei le obo fablado, E respondiole Jusuf a cadauno pribado; E fabló Jusuf al Rei otro fablado e el Rei no supo dar recaudo, E marabillose el Rei de su saber granado.

Dijo el Rei a Jusuf, “Ruegote, ermano, Que me cuentes el suenno que te dijo mi escancieno, Que lo oiga de tu lengua, i sea io alegrado, I aderezaremos nuestras cosas seiendo librado.”

E dijo Jusuf al Rei, “Encomiendote al Criador, Que de aqueste suenno habras mui grande onor; Mas tu as menester hombre de corazon, Que ordene tu ficienda e la guie con balor.

“Mas adreza tu ficienda como io te he fablado, Que el pan de la tierra todo seia alzado, El de los annos buenos para el tiempo afortunado, Que de sede e de fambre todo el mundo sea aquejado.

“Berná toda la gente en los tiempos faltos, E mercaran el pan de los tus alzados Por oro e plata e cuerpos e algos, De manera que sereis Sennor de altos i de bajos.”

E el Rei, quando esto oiera, comenzo de pensar; Jusuf, como le bido, bolbiole a fablar, I dijole, “En eso no pensedes, que Allah lo ha de librar, Que io habré de ser quien lo abré de guiar.”

Dijo el Rei, “O amigo, e como me has alegrado; Io te lo agradezco, de Allah habras grado, Que tu seras aquel por quien se ensalzara el condado, I que de hoi adelante te dejo el reinado.

“Porque tu perteneces mandar el reinado I a toda la gente ibierno e berano; Todos te ubedeceremos el joben e el cano, Como las otras gentes quiero ser de garado.

“Porque tu lo mereces, de Allah te benga guianza; Pero ruegote, amigo, que seias en amiganza, Que me buelbas mi reino e no pongas dudanza, Al cabo de dicho tiempo no finques con mala andanza.

“Con aquesta condicion que te quedes en tu estado, Como Rei en su tierra mandando i sentenciando, Que asi lo mandare hoi por todo el reinado, Que io no quiero ser ia mas Rei llamado.”

I placiole a Jusuf, hubolo de otorgar, I en el sitio del Rei luego se ha de sentar, I mando el Rei a la gente delante del humillar; Firmemente lo guardaban como lo debian far.

I quando bido Jusuf la luna prima i delgada En el seno que se iba con planta apresurada, Que dentraban los annos de bentura abastada, Mando juntar la tierra i toda su companna.

I de que fueron llegados todos sus basallos, Fizoles a saber porque eran llegados, Que se fuesen a sembrar los bajos i altos, Que sembrasen toda la tierra balles e galachos.

I fueronse a sembrar todos con cordura, Asi como mandaba su Sennor de natura; Benian redoblados con bien e con bentura, I marabillaronse de su sabencia pura.

I luego mando Jusuf a todos sus maestros, Que fiziesen graneros de grandes peltrechos, Mui anchos i largos, de mui fuertes maderos, Para ad alzar el pan de los tiempos certeros.

Nunca bieron hombres estancias tamannas, Unas encima de otras que semejaban montannas, I mando segar el pan ansi entre dos tallas, I ligar los fachos con cuerdas delgadas.

I facialos poner en los graneros atados, Ansi con sus espigas que fuese bien guardado, Que no i caiese polilla ni nada ubiese cuidado; Cada anno lo hizo facer ansi, i fizieronlo de grado.

E tanto llego del pan que no le fallaban quantia, E quando bido la luna en el seno que se iba, Que dentraba la seca de mui mala guisa, Mando que no sembrasen de pues de aquel dia,

Fasta que pasasen otros siete annos cumplidos Que de sete e de fambre serian fallecidos; E no i abia aguas de cielo nin de rios; Ansi como lo dijo Jusuf, asi fueron benidos.

I puso el Rei fieles para su pan bender, Buenos e berdaderos segun el su saber, E mando que diesen el derecho, ansi lo mando fazer, E precio subido por el que fiz prender.

E mando a sus fieles que bendiesen de grado, El uno a los de la tierra, e el otro a los de fuera del reinado, A cada guno demandasen nuebas de do eran pribados, O, si eran de la tierra, que no les diesen recaudo.

Que a pocos de dias las tierras fueron bacias De todo el pan e mercaderias, E no ia i abia que comer en cibdades ni en billas, E mercaban de Jusuf el que sabian las guaridas.

Los primeros annos con dinero e moblo mercaron, Llebaron plata e oro e todo lo acabaron, E luego en pues de aquello la criazon ia lebaron, E no les basto aquello, que mucha res ia llebaron.

Que al seteno anno bendieron los cuerpos, E fueron todos catibos todos bibos e muertos, E todo bolbio al Rei las tierras e los pueblos, I estendiose la fambre en reinos estrangeros.

Pues, quando lo bido Jusuf todo a su mandar, E todos los catibos que podia bender o dar, Bolbiose al Rei e fuele a fablar; Dijo, “Que te parece, Rei, de lo que me has bisto far.”

E dijole el Rei, “Tu aras por el reinado, Porque tu mereces mandar el condado, Porque tu perteneces mandar el reinado, Que io no quiero ser ia mas Rei llamado.”

Dijo Jusuf al Rei aquesta razon; “Io fago franco a todos e quito con onor Ia tu tu reismo con todo Sennor;” La ora dijo el Rei, “Eso no seria razon,

“Que no me lo consintiria el mi corazon, Que tan noble sabencia fuese a baldon; Antes de oi adelante quiero que tu seias Sennor.”

E bido Jusuf la fambre apoderada, Que por toda la tierra era tan encargada; Entendio que en la tierra de su padre seria llegada; Puso ia regimiento como la nueba fuese arribada.

Mas a pocos de dias la fambre fue llegada A tierra de Jacob e su barba onrrada; Tenia mucha gente e una moier guardada.

Dijo Jacob, “Filhos, io he sentido Que en tierras de Egito hai un Rei cunplido, Bueno e berdadero, franco i entendido, E tiene mucho pan partido e bendido.

“Querria que tomasedes deste nuestro aber, E que fueseis luego ad aquel Rei a ber, Contadle nuestra cuita e querra bos creier, Con la aiuda de Allah querra a bos bender.”

Dijeron sus filhos, “Placemos de grado; Iremos a beier ad aquel Rei onrrado, E beremos la su tierra e tambien el su reinado, E, con la aiuda de Allah, él nos dara recaudo.”

De que llegaron a la tierra abistada, Preguntaron por el Rei do era su posada; Dijo un escudero, “Aqui i es su morada; Io bos dare del pan e tambien de la cebada.

“Que io soi fiel del Rei, que bendo el pan alzado A los de fuera del reino, a los otros no me es mandado; Decidme de donde sois, e libraros e de grado, O, si sois de aquesta tierra, no bos dare recaudo.

“Decid me de donde sois o de que lugar, Porque podais deste pan llebar, E dare a cada guno quanto querais mercar, Segun el dinero le hare io mesurar.”

I ellos le dijeron todos sus nombres, E la tierra de do eran, e como eran ermanos, Filhos de Jacob e de Ishac mui amados, En Cherusalem alli eran fincados.

Ed entro el escudero al Rei e contestole la razon, E de que logar e de qual morgon, E filhos de Profeta de buena generacion; “Sennor, si tu lo mandas librarlos e con amor.”

E mando el Rei que entrasen delante del pribado, E que les diesen de comer del maior pescado, E que los guardasen por todo el reinado, E no los dejasen ir tobiesen su mandado.

E el Rei como los bido obo placer con ellos, E mandose aderezar el Rei de unos bestidos bellos, E mil caballeros al costado esquerro e mil al derecho, E de una parte placer e de otra gran despecho.

Los bestidos que traia eran de gran balor, Eran de oro e de seda e de fermosa labor, E traia piedras preciosas de que salia claror, Mas traia algalia e mui rico golor.

E mando qued entrasen a beier su figura, E dieronle salbacion segun su catadura, E mandolos asentar con bien i apostura, E marabillaronse de su buena bentura.

Ellos estando en piedes i el Rei parado E belos el Rei fieramente catando, I ellos no se dudaban nin de abian cuidado, Retrobalos el Rei de amor e de grado.

E de que bieron al Rei bella su catadura, Judas dijo, “Ermanos, oid mi locura, Temome de este Rei e de su encontradura, Roguemosle que nos embie por mesura.”

Por mucho que le dijeron él no lo quiso far, Fasta el tercero dia alli los fizo estar, Fizoles mucha onrra, quanta les pudo far, Ansi como a filhos los mandaba guardar.

La mesura del pan de oro era labrada, E de piedras preciosas era estrellada, I era de ber toda con guisa enclabada, Que fazia saber al Rei la berdad apurada.

Dijoles el Rei, nuebas les demandaba, La mesura en su mano que se la meneaba, Disiendoles el Rei que mirasen lo que ablaban, Que si dezian mentira ella lo declaraba;

Quien con el Rei abla guardese de mentir, Ni en su razon no quisiere mentir, Porque, quando lo fazia, haciala retinir, I ella le dezia berdad sin cuentradecir.

Dijoles el Rei, “De quien sedes filhos, O de que linage sois benidos? Beos io de gran fuerza fermosos e cumplidos, Quiero que me lo digades e seremos amigos.”

Ellos le dijeron, “Nosotros, Sennor, Somos de Profeta, creientes al Criador, De Jacob somos filhos, creientes al Criador, E benimos por pan si hallamos bendedor.”

E firio el Rei en la mesura e fizola sonar, Ponela a su orelha por oir e guardar; Dijoles, e no quiso mas dudar, “Segun dize la mesura berdad puede estar.”

Dijoles el Rei, “Quantos sos, amados?” Ellos le dijeron, “Eramos doze ermanos, I al uno se comio el lobo segun nos cuidamos, E el otro queda con él, su amor acabado.”

Dijoles el Rei, “Prometo al Criador, Sino por acatar a buestro padre e sennor, Io os tendria presos en cadena con dolor, Mas por amor del biejo enbiaros e con onor.”

Ellos dijeron, “Sennor, rogamoste en amor, Por el Sennor del mundo que te dio onrra e balor, Nos quieras embiar a nueso padre e sennor, I abras galardon e merced del Criador.

“E no cates a nos, mas al biejo de nueso padre, Por que es ombre mui biejo e flaco, en berdad, Que si tu le conocieses querriaslo onrrar, Porque es ombre mui sano e de buena boluntad.”

“Io no cato a bosotros, mas a quien debo mirar; E por aquel ombre bueno me benides a rogar, Allah me traiga en tiempo que io lo pueda onrrar, Que, como faze filho a padre, io asi lo quiero far.

“Saludadme al biejo, a bueso padre el cano, I que me embie una carta con el chico bueso ermano, E que fue de su tristeza que a tornado en bano, E si aquesto olbidas no os daremos grano.

“Mas en bosotros no me fio, ni me caie en grado; Mas, porque a mi sea cierto, quede el uno restado, Hasta que benga la carta con el chico bueso ermano; I en esto echad suertes qual quedara arrestado.”

E caio la suerte a uno que dezian Simeon, El que corto la soga a Jusuf la sazon, Quando lo echaron en el pozo i caio alli el baron, E ubo de fincar alli con la dicha condicion.

E luego el Rei mando la moneda a ellos ser tornada, E luego a cada uno en su saco ligada, E ellos no se dudaban nin de abian cuidado, I fizolo el Rei porque tornasen de grado.

I espidieronse del Rei, e binieron mui pagados, E contaron al su padre del Rei e sus condados, Que nunca bieron tal Rei e de tantos basallos, E de buena manera e de consejos sanos;

E que se berificaba en todo su afar E su padre Jacob en onrra e saber, Quien no lo conociese e lo fuese a ber, Entenderia que es Profeta, abrialo a creier.

Desataron los sacos del trigo e ubieron catado, Fallaron la quantia que ubieron llebado; Dijeron a su Padre, “Este es ombre abonado, Que sobre toda la onrra la quantia nos a tornado.

“Mas sepades, Padre, que el os embia a rogar, Que le embies a bueso filho e non le querais tardar, Con una carta escripta de todo bueso afar; Padre, si no nos lo dades, no nos cabe mas tornar,

“Ni nos dará del pan, ni seremos creidos. Padre, si nos lo dades seremos guaridos, Ternemos nuestra fe i seremos creidos, E traeremos del pan e ganaremos amigos.”

Dijoles el Padre, “No lo podria mandar; Este es mi bida e con él me e de conortar, Ni en bosotros io no quiero fiar, Porque antes de agora me obiestes a falsia.

“Quando llebastes a Jusuf, no me lo tornastes, Quebrantastes buestra fe e buestro omenage, Perdistes a mi filho como desleales; Io quiero me guardar de todas buestras maldades.”

Por mucho que le dijeron el no lo quiso far, Ni por ninguna bia lo quiso otorgar; Obieronme de sofrir e no ia quisieron tornar Fasta que el pan fue comido e no ia abia que amasar.

E la ora tornaron a su padre a rogar Que les diese a su ermano e los quiera guiar, Que al buen Rei prometieron de sin él no tornar, E quellos lo guardarian sin ninguna crueldad.

Tanto le dijeron e le fueron a rogar, E biendo la gran fortuna hubolo de otorgar, I ellos le prometieron de mui bien le guardar, E de no bolber sin él, jura le fueron a far.

I a uno de sus filhos fizo facer un escripto, En el qual decia, “A tu Rei de Egipto Salud e buen amor de Jacob el tristo; Io te agradezco tu fecho e tu dicto.

“A lo que me demandas que fue de mi estado, Sepas que mi bejez e mi bien e logrado, O la mi ceguedad que ia soi quebrantado, Primero por favor del Criador onrrado.

“E por Jusuf mi filho, parte de mi corazon, Aquel que era fuerza de mi en toda sazon, I era mi amparo, e perdilo sin razon, No sé triste si es muerto o bibo en prision.

“Entiendo que soi majado del Rei celestial, I ansi que deste mi filho tomes mancilla e pesar, E lo que io te ruego como a Rei natural, Que me buelbas a mi filho que por él soi io mortal.

“Que si no por este filho io ia seria finado, Que el me daba conuerto de Jusuf el mi amado; Io te lo embio en fe que me lo tornes pribado, En guardete el Allah Sennor apoderado.”

De que la carta fue fecha, dijolos él de grado, “Filhos, los mis filhos, cumplid el mi mandado; No entreis por una puerta mas por muchas pribado, Porque seria major porque ansi lo e probado.”

Despidieronse de su padre e fueron con alegria, Caminaron todos juntos la noche i el dia, E llegaron a la cibdad con la claror del dia, I el Rei como lo supo ubo gran mejoria.

E mandose aderezar el Rei de ricos bestidos, I a toda su gente mas ricas cabalgaduras, En balsamiento de oro, e safomerios de gran mesura, De diversas maneras i oloros de gran altura.

Quando fue acabado lo que el Rei obo mandado, Mando qued entrasen delante de él pribado; E quando ellos por la corte iban dentrando, Echoles palmas el chico en las golores de grado.

E besoles por su cara e por su bestidura; Rautabanlo los otros que hacia gran locura, Diziendo, “Que haces, loco de sin cordura? Entiendes que por tí han puesto aquesta fermosura?”

Dijoles, “Ermanos, ruegoos no bos quejades, Oid mi razon que luego lo sabredes, Mas combieneos, ermanos, que os aparejedes, Porque entienda el Rei que parientes buenos tenedes.”

E conocieron todos que tenia razon; Tomaron su consejo como de buen baron, E fueron delante del Rei con buena condicion; De parte del padre era su generacion.

Tanto era el Rei de apuesto que, no lo conocian, Unos certificaban i otros no podian, I el Rei se sonrrio e dijo, que querian, O de que tierra eran, que buena gente parecian.

I ellos le dijeron del afar pasado, De como traian la carta con el chico su ermano, Ansi como prometieron con omenage dado; Pusieronle delante e placiole de grado.

Traia con él una carta escripta Del estado de su padre e de su bida feita; El Rei quando la leio lloro con gran mancilla, I encubriose de los otros que ellos no lo beian.

E luego mando el Rei a todos sus menesteres, E de enbarillamiento de oro henchesen las mesas, E otras tantas de plata de dibersas maneras, E mandoles asentar a que comiesen en ellas.

E de que fueron sentados mando que los sirbiesen, E mando el Rei que de dos en dos comiesen, Ansi como nacieron que ansi lo fiziciesen, Por que a él le parecia a que no se ende estobiesen.

De que bieron de comer entre dos una escodilla Hubo de fincar el chico con su mano en la mexilla, Porque fincaba solo triste con mancilla, Por tristeza de su ermano que eran de una nacida.

E bedosele él comer por dolor de su ermano, Porque comia cada guno con su par ermano, Llorando con tristeza e el su meollo cano, E dejo el comer el filho del cano.

Quando aquesto ubieron fecho caio amortecido, E el Rei quando lo bido a el fue arremetido, Tomolo de la mano i onrrole el balido.

Dijo el Rei, “Amigo, quien te a ferido?” Dijo él, “Bos soi, Sennor, cumplido, Que me mandaste a mi ermano el balido, El qual mi corazon no lo echo en olbido.”

Dijo el Rei, “Amigo, quieres me perdonar Que io no sabia quien eras ni de que lugar, Pues que tu fincas solo abrete de acompannar, En lugar de tu ermano con tu quiero iantar.”

Sirbiole el Rei de buena boluntad, E mando que le parasen mesa de gran beldad, Que quiere comer con él que le abia piedad, Tanta fue la bondad del Rei i onrra que le fue a dar.

Que le quito la ira e comio con él de grado; Sus ermanos que lo bieron tomaron mal cuidado, E por inbidia quisieron aberlo matado, Disiendo unos a otros, “Aqueste nuestro ermano

“Allá con nuestro padre luego fará grandia De que seremos en nuestra tierra el todabia, ‘Io comi con el Rei porque lo merecia, I aquestos a mis piedes de noche e de dia.’”

Dijole el Rei, si abia moier e filho; I él le dijo, “E moier con tres ninnos; Por deseo de Jusuf puseles nombres piadosos, El qual mi corazon no lo echa en olbido.

“Al uno dizen Lobo, i al otro dizen Sangre, I al otro dizen Jusuf, filho de buena madre; Esto porque dijeron mis ermanos a mi padre, Que el lobo maldito en Jusuf se fue afartado.

“Traieron su sangre en su camisa clara, E io con aquestos nombres no olbido su cara; Pero no le olbido de noche ni de dia encara, Porque el era mi bida i era mi amparo.

“Nacimos dambos juntos en el bientre de mi madre, I ubose de perder en el tiempo de mi padre; No sé triste si es muerto o bibo en tierra o mar; Habeismelo mandado e fizisteme pesar.”

I aquejosele al Rei a la ora el corazon, I quiso echar boces i encubrir la razon, I tomolo de la mano i apartolo a un rincon, I dijole el Rei i ablo como baron.

Dijole el Rei, “Conoces me, escudero?” I él le dijo, “No a fe, caballero.” Dijo, “Io soi Jusuf, io soi tu ermano certero.” I abrazaronse dambos i andarian un millero.

Tanto tomo del gozo con Jusuf su ermano, Que caio amortecido el su miollo bano, I el Rei como le bido tomole de la mano, Dijoles, “No haias miedo mientras io seia sano.”

Apartolo el Rei i dijole esta razon; “Io quiero que finques con mi en toda sazon, No lo sabra ninguno, muger ni baron, Io acerlo e con buen arte e mui buena razon.

“E por far lo mas secreto te fago sabidor, Porque non aias miedo ni ningun temor, Io mandare meter la mesura de balor Dentro en el tu saco, i esto por tu amor.”

Ninguno sabia del Rei la puridad, I embioles a todos de buena boluntad: Caminaron todos juntos toda la ermandad, E de alli oieron boces de gran crueldad.

E pararonse todos a ber que querian, E bieron que era el Rei con gente que corrian, Diciendo, “Guardaos, traidores, que abeis echo falta; Mala obra obrastes al Rei todabia.”

Quedaronse todos cada guno espantado Del dicho que oieron a tan mal airado, E dijeron todos, “Aun ganades gran pecado De llamarnos ladrones, no siendo probado.

“Decidnos que queredes o que demandades, O que os han furtado que ansi bos quejades.” E ellos les dijeron, “La mesura bos tomastes, La que decia al Rei todas las berdades.

“Dela quien la tiene, i albricias le daremos, Un cafiz de trigo del mejor que tenemos.” I ellos los dijeron, “Por la fe que tenemos, No somos malfautores que nos no lo faremos.

“No benimos de natura de fazer desguisado, No lo abemos fecho en el tiempo pasado, Esto bien sabedes, pues nos lo abeis probado; No nos aquejeis aquejamiento airado.”

E dijo un caballero aquesta razon; “Amigos, si mentedes, que sera en gualardon?” I ellos le dijeron, “Catebo quede el ladron Al uso de la tierra con mui buena razon.”

Buscaron los sacos del trigo e cada uno pribado, Dejaronse en tal mente el del chico atado; Sus ermanos de que lo bieron tomaron mal cuidado, Porque como su saco no le abian buscado.

Dijeron al Rei i tambien a su caudillo, Porque no abian buscado el saco de su ermanillo; Dijeron ellos, “Antes bamos al castillo”; E ellos mismos le buscaron e fallaron el furtillo.

E de que bieron ellos todos los ermanos Que era la mesura, quedaron espantados; Dijeron, “O ermano, como nos as abellado, Que te abe acontecido quedamos desonrrados.”

Dijo, “Ermanos, ruegoos no bos quejedes; Oidme razon que luego lo beredes, Que io culpa no bos tengo e luego lo otorguedes; No lo querrio far por quanto bosotros tenedes.

“Mas acuerdeseos, ermanos, quando fallastes la quantia Cada uno en su saco no supiendola aquel dia, Si aquello bosotros furtastes de noche o de dia Ansi e furtado io la mesura todabia

“Si dezis que no sabeis, tampoco sabo io, Que aquesto nunca furte ni nunca tal fize io.” Sus ermanos que le bieron en su razonar E con aquello ubieron a sosegar.

Dijeron, “Sennor, si a furtado no lo aias a marabella, Que un ermano tenia de mui mala pelelha; Quando era chico furtose una cinta bella, Ellos eran de una madre, e nosotros non de aquella.”

E sonriose el Rei dentro en su corazon De la palabra mala dicha a sin razon; Dijoles el Rei, “Io bos dicho la razon, Que todos a mi tenedes figuras de ladron.”

E mando que lo tomasen e lo llebasen rastrado, Mas no de manera que ia lo abia mandado, Mas porque sus ermanos fuesen certificados, Que lo llebaban preso i esto mal de su grado.

E mandolo llebar el Rei a su camara real Fasta que sus ermanos fuesen a iantar; E quando fueron idos e mandados del lugar, El Rei se fue aprisa a su ermano a fablar.

E tomaronse los dos luego de mano a mano, Disendole el Rei, “Io soi Jusuf tu ermano, El que fue perdido de mi padre el cano, El qual por mi es triste i io por él no soi sano.”

Mandolo adereza el Rei de nobles pannos pribados, Los mejores que abia en todos sus reinados; Dijole el Rei, “Ermano acabado, Ruegote que te alegres e fagas lo que te mando.

“Ir tu a nuesos ermanos i bere en que andan, O que querran fazer, e bere que demandan.” Quando el Rei fue a ellos fallolos que pensaban, Tristes e mal andantes con berguenza andaban.

Firio el Rei en la mesa como de primero; El son escuitaba el buen Rei berdadero, Disendoles, “Que dize este son certero?” I dijeronle ellos, “No lo entendemos a fe, caballero.”

“Dize aqueste son, que todos abeis pecado De setenta annos aca, que no os abeis tornado.” E comenzaron de plorar e dijeron, “Sennor onrrado, Quierenos perdonar e del maior ende abras grado.

“E no cates a nos, que andamos en bano, Mas cata a nueso padre que ia es anciano, Que si tu le conocieses a nueso padre el cano, Luego le embiaras al preso nueso ermano.”

E quando oiera el nombre de Jacob nombrar Afligiosele el corazon i el Rei cuido llorar; Dijoles, “Amigos, sino fuera por acatar A bueso padre Jacob, io bos faria matar.”

Dijoles el Rei, “Id buesa carrera; No bos e menester por ninguna manera; Bueso padre me rogo por su carta berdadera Que luego os embiase en toda manera.”

Bolbieronse al Rei de cabo a rogar, Que les diese a su ermano e los quiera guiar, Que a su padre prometieron de sin él no tornar, E que tomase al uno de ellos e lo pusiese en su lugar.

Dijoles el Rei, “Eso no seria razon Que io tomase al catibo e dejase al ladron; Id de aqui; no me enojeis que me haiceis gran sermon, I empezad de caminar que no abreis mas razon.”

I apartaronse a consejo en que manera farian, O a su padre que razon le darian, O si por fuerza de alli lo sacarian, E la fe que dieron como se la tendrian.

Comenzó de dezir Judas el maior, “Id a bueso padre e contadle la razon, Que su filho ha furtado, fizo nos desonor, Que el Rei lo tiene preso por furto de grand balor.

“Porque sepades, ermanos, que io de aqui no partiria, Que todos le prometimos de no fazerle falsia, Ni a nueso padre mentir no le poria; Fasta que el Rei lo mande, io de aqui no iria.

“Mas fagamos tanto, si nos caie en grado, Bolbamos al Rei, i roguemosle pribado, I, si no lo quiere fazer, pongamos i a recaudo, Conbatiremos el castillo i en la cibdad entramos.

“Io fallo en la cibdad nuebe barrios granados, I el palacio del Rei al un costado, Io combatiré al Rei e matarle e a recaudo, I bosotros a la cibdad cada uno a su barrio.”

I dentro Judas al Rei, sannudo como un leon, Dijo, “Ruegote, Rei, que me des un don, Que me des a mi ermano, i abernos gualardon, I, sino lo quieres fazer, tomar no quieres onor.

“Que si echo una boz como faze el cabron, No fincara en la comarca muger ni baron, Ni aun prennada que no crie la sazon, Todos amortecidos caeran a baldon.”

Dijoles el Rei, “Faced lo que querrades, Que en mal grado os lo pongo, si bos no lo fazedes, Que si bos sois de fuerza, otros ne fallaredes, Que en lugar sois agora e menester lo abredes.”

Judas se ensanno de una sanna mui airada; El tomo una muela mucho grande i pesada, I echola por cima del muro como a una manzana, I mandola bolber al Rei a su lugar sitiada.

Allegose el Rei a la muela pribado, I puso el pie en el olhola mui irado, Mui alta por cima del muro denque por él no era posada, E la falda no era arremangada.

Judas en aquella hora empezose de ensannar, I el Rei como lo conocia dejole bien hinchar, E, quando entendio que abia de baciar, Senno a su filho que lo fuese a tocar.

E lebantose su filho e fuele a tomar, Delante del Rei su padre lo fue a llebar, E luego la sanna se le fue a quitar, E tambien la fuerza le fue a faltar.

E fue a buscar a sus ermanos e non de bido cosa; “En mi alma me a tocado esta criazon donosa; Entiendo que es criazon de Jacob esta barba canosa;” E fuelos a buscar por la cibdad donosa.

E quando los fallo dijo, “Ermanos, quien me a tocado?” Ellos le dijeron, “No nos a la fe, ermano.” Dijo, “Cierto sois segun mi cuidado De la crianza de Jacob anda por el mercado.”

Alli fablo Jahuda a todos sus ermanos, “Este es el consejo de los ombres malos; Quando io bos decia no seiamos ierrados, E no me quisisteis creier, caimos en los lazos.

“Quando io dezia algun bien, no me queriais escuchar; De mi padre me pesa quanto me puede pesar; Roguemos al Criador que nos aia piedad, E tambien al noble Rei que nos quiera perdonar.”

Alli fué a ablar Judas el maior; “Bamos delante del Rei con mui fermosa razon, E de qualquiera manera demandemosle perdon, Querria que fuesemos fuera del Reino del Leon.”

E fueronse al Rei e dijeronle esta razon; “Quieres acatar primero al Criador, I a nueso padre Jacob, de Allah es conocedor.” Dijoles el Rei, “Guerra me izistes e error.

“Io quiseos mostrar mi fuerza i mi bentura, E porque todos entendiesedes con seso i cordura Que la nuestra fuerza sobra por natura;” E perdonolos el Rei i asentose la mesura.

I ellos estaban alegres porque el Rei los abia perdonado; E dijoles el Rei, “Amigos, la mesura me a fablado, E dize que ad aquel bueso ermano en un pozo lo abeis echado, Io creo que lo fizistes e eso mas de grado.

“E quando lo sacastes por mal precio fue bendido, Distes lo por beinte dineros como abatido.” “Rogamoste, Sennor, que seamos creidos, No creia tales malezas, de tal parte no benimos.”

E saco el Rei una carta que tenia en alzado, Escripta en Ebraico del tiempo pasado, De como lo bendieron e lo ubieron mercado, E tubola guardada el balido fasta de aquel estado.

Judas tomo la carta e leio dictados, Llorando de sus olhos todos marabillados, Disiendo, “Quien dio esta carta al Rei en sus manos?” Dijoles el Rei, “No seiades dudados.”

Dijeron, “Sennor, aquesta es carta Del catibo que teniamos i dimosla por falta.” Judas leio toda aquella carta; Dijoles el Rei, “Sois de mui mala barta.”

E firio el Rei en la mesa como de primero I el son escuitaba el buen Rei berdadero, Disendoles el Rei, “Dice este son certero, Que aquel bueso ermano es bibo e caballero.

“E que sinifica, que el cierto no es muerto, E que aun bendra con mui gran conpuerto, E dira a todas las gentes los que le abian buelto, I a todos los de la tierra los que le an fecho tuerto.

“E dira aqueste son que todos sois pecadores, E que a bueso padre izisteis malas labores, I que es la su tristeza por los buesos ierrores, Cada dia le entristecedes como fazen traidores.”

I el Rei quando bido aquesto llamo a sus pribados, Que llamasen a los ferreros e les cortasen las manos; I ellos, de que los bieron con cuchillos i mazos, Dijeron, “Somos perdidos por nuesos pecados.”

E dijeron al Rei, “Si nosotros lo biesemos, La tierra que él pisara todos la besariamos; Mas conbiene nos que nos remediemos, E mejoremos bentura e todos escaparemos.”

E perdonolos el Rei puesque conocieron Que andaban ierrados, e se arrepintieron, E fizieron buenas obras e ansi lo prometieron, E fueron a su padre, e grande alegria fizieron.

Alli se fue a quedar Judas i Simeon, I no fueron a su padre mas de ocho, non; I el padre, quando los bido, dijo aquesta razon, “No abedes berguenza de muger ni de baron.

“Que son de buesos ermanos el chico e maior e menor, Candela de mis olhos que por él soi con dolor?” Dijeronle, “Padre, la mesura furto al Emperador; El Rei lo abria muerto sino por tu amor.

“I quedan por tu berguenza Judas i Simon, No quisieron benir por ninguna razon.” E dijoles el Padre, “Benides con traicion, De guisa faredes que non de quedara morgon.

“Cada dia menguades e crece mi tristura, I aun testiguades firmemente en locura, Que mi filho furto al Rei la mesura.” I dijeronle, “Padre, lo que bimos es cierto todabia.”

E fizoles una carta para daquel Rei onrrado, Mas le enbiaba a dezir que buscasen a su ermano, A Jusuf el chico, el mal abenturado, Por do quiera que pasasen siempre abenturando.

I dijeronle, “Padre, bolbes en buesa cordura; Agora nos i mentades de muertos sin figura.” Dijoles, “Fared lo que io mando, que io sé de la altura Lo que bosotros no sabeis, de buen Sennor de natura.”

· · · · · · · · · · · ·

There is little, as it seems to me, in the early narrative poetry of any modern nation better worth reading, than this old Morisco version of the story of Joseph. Parts of it overflow with the tenderest natural affection; other parts are deeply pathetic; and everywhere it bears the impress of the extraordinary state of manners and society that gave it birth. From several passages, it may be inferred that it was publicly recited; and even now, as we read it, we fall unconsciously into a long-drawn chant, and seem to hear the voices of Arabian camel-drivers, or of Spanish muleteers, as the Oriental or the romantic tone happens to prevail. I am acquainted with nothing in the form of the old metrical romance that is more attractive,--nothing that is so peculiar, original, and separate from every thing else of the same class.

No. II.

LA DANÇA GENERAL DE LOS MUERTOS.

The next of the Inedita is the “Danza General,” which I have noticed, (Vol. I. pp. 89-91,) and which is found in the Library of San Lorenzo del Escorial, MSS., Cas. IV., Let. b, No. 21. In note 27 on the passage referred to I have suggested a reason for conjecturing that the Spanish poem may be taken from an earlier French one; but I ought to add, that, so far as I am aware, this ghastly fiction is not known to exist in any earlier form, than that in which it appears in this Manuscript.

Aqui comienza la danza general, en la qual tracta como la muerte dice abisa á todas las criaturas, que pare mientes en la brevedad de su vida, é que della mayor cabdal non sea fecho que ella meresce. E asy mesmo les dice é requiere que bean é oyan bien lo que los sabios pedricadores les disen é amonestan de cada dia, dandoles bueno é sano consejo, que puguen en fazer buenas obras por que ayan conplido perdon de sus pecados. E luego syguiente, mostrando por espiriençia lo que dise, llama e requiere á todos los estados del mundo, que vengan de su buen grado ó contra su boluntad. Comenzando, dise ansy.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Yo so la muerte cierta á todas criaturas Que son é seran en el mundo durante; Demando y digo, o orbe, porque curas De vida tan breve en punto pasante; Pues non ay tan fuerte nin rescio gigante, Que deste mi arco se puede amparar; Conviene que mueras quando lo tirar Con esta mi frecha cruel traspasante.

Que locura es esta tan magniesta, Que piensas tu, ome, que el otro morirá Et tu quedaras por ser bien compuesta La tu complysion, é que durará? Non eres cierto, sy en punto verná Sobre ty á desora alguna corrupcion De jandre ó carbonco ó tal ynphyçyon, Porque el tu vil cuerpo se desatará.

O piensas, por ser mancebo valiente O niño de dias, que á lueñe estaré, O fasta que llegues á viejo impotente La mi venida me detardaré. Abisate bien que yo llegaré A ty á desora, que non he cuydado Que tu seas mancebo ó viejo cansado, Que qual te fallare tal te levaré.

La plática muestra ser pura berdad; Aquesto que digo, syn otra fallencia, La santa escriptura con çertinidad Da sobre todo su firme sentencia, A todos disciendo, fasced penitencia, Que a morir avedes non savedes quando; Sy non ved el frayre que esta predicando, Mirad lo que disce de su grand sabiençia.

DICE EL PEDRICADOR.

Señores honrados, la santa escriptura Demuestra e disce, que todo ome nascido Gostara la muerte, maguer sea dura, Ca truxo al mundo un solo bocado, Ca Papa ó rey ó obispo sagrado, Cardenal ó duque ó conde excelente, O emperador con toda su gente, Que son en el mundo de morir han forçado.

BUENO E SANO CONSEJO.

Señores, punad en fascer buenas obras; Non vos confiedes en altos estados, Que non vos valdran thesoros nin doblas A la muerte que tiene sus lasos parados; Gemid vuestras culpas, descid los pecados, En cuanto podades con satisfaçion, Sy queredes aver complido perdon De aquel que perdona los yerros pasados.

Fasced lo que digo, non vos detardedes, Que ya la muerte encomienza á hordenar Una dança esquiva de que non podedes Por cosa ninguna que sea escapar; A la cual disce, que quiere levar A todos nosotros lançando sus redes; Abrid las orejas que agora oyredes De su charambela un triste cantar.

DICE LA MUERTE.

A la dança mortal venit los nascidos, Que en el mundo sois, de qualquiera estado; El que no quisiere, a fuerça é amidos Fascer le he venir muy toste privado, Pues que ya el frayre vos ha predicado, Que todos vayais á fascer penitencia; El que non quisiere poner diligencia Por mi non puede ser mas esperado.

PRIMERAMENTE LLAMA A SU DANÇA A DOS DONCELLAS.

Esta mi dança traye de presente Estas dos donçellas que vedes fermosas; Ellas vinieron de muy mala mente A oyr mis canciones que son dolorosas; Mas non les valdran flores ny rosas, Nin las composturas que poner solian; De mi si pudiesen partir se querrian, Mas non puede ser, que son mis esposas.

A estas y á todos, por las aposturas, Daré fealdad la vida partida, E desnudedad por las vestiduras, Por siempre jamas muy triste aborrida. O, por los palacios, daré por medida Sepulcros escuros de dentro fedientes; E, por los manjares, gusanos royentes Que coman de dentro su carne podrida.

E porque el santo padre es muy alto señor E que en todo el mundo non ay su par, E desta mi dança será guiador; Desnude su capa, comiençe á sotar, Non es ya tiempo de perdones dar, Nin de celebrar en grande aparato, Que yo le daré en breve mal rato; Dançad, padre santo, sin mas detardar.

DICE EL PADRE SANTO.

¡Ay de mi triste! que cosa tan fuerte A yo, que tractaba tan grand preslacia, Aber de pasar agora la muerte, E non me valer lo que dar solia; Beneficios é honrras é gran señoria Tobe en el mundo, pensando vevir; Pues de ty, muerte, non puedo fuyr, Valme Jesuchristo e la virgen Maria.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Non vos enojedes, señor padre santo, De andar en mi dança que tengo ordenada Non vos valdrá el vermejo manto; De lo que fuistes abredes soldada; Non vos aprovecha echar la cruzada, Proveer de obispados, nin dar beneficios; Aqui moriredes syn ser mas bollicios. Dançad, imperante, con cara pagada.

DICE EL EMPERADOR.

Que cosa es esta que á tan syn pauor Me lleva á su dança, á fuerça, sin grado? Creo, que es la muerte, que non ha dolor De ome que sea, grande ó cuytado. No hay ningund rey nin duque esforçado, Que della me pueda agora defender; Acorredme todos; mas non puede ser, Que ya tengo della todo el seso turbado.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Emperador muy grande, en el mundo potente, Non vos cuitedes, ca non es tiempo tal Que librar vos pueda imperio nin gente, Oro, nin plata, nin otro metal; Aqui perderedes el vuestro cabdal, Que athesorastes con grand tyrania, Faciendo batallas de noche e de dia. Morid, non curedes. Venga el cardenal.

DICE EL CARDENAL.

Ay, madre de Dios, nunca pensé ver Tal dança como esta á que me fasen yr; Querría, si pudiese, la muerte estorcer, Non sé donde vaya, comienço á thremer. Siempre trabajé noctar y escrevir Por dar beneficios á los mis criados; Agora mis miembros son todos torvados, Que pierdo la vista e non puedo oyr.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Reverendo padre, bien vos abisé, Que aqui avriades por fuerça allegar En esta mi dança en que vos faré Agora ayna un poco sudar; Pensastes el mundo por vos trastornar Por llegar á papa e ser soberano; Mas non lo seredes aqueste verano. Vos, rey poderoso, venit á dançar.

DICE EL REY.

Valia, valia, los mis caballeros, Yo non querria yr á tan baxa dança; Llegad, vos con los ballesteros, Hamparadme todos, por fuerça de lança; Mas, que es aquesto que veo en balança Acortarse mi vida é perder los sentidos? El coraçon se me quiebra con grandes gemidos; Adios, mis vasallos, que muerte me trança.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Ay, fuerte tirano, que siempre robastes Todo vuestro reyno ó fenchistes el arca; De fazer justicia muy poco curastes, Segunt es notorio por vuestra comarca; Venit para mi, que yo so monarca, Que prenderé á vos é á otro mas alto; Llegat á la dança cortés en un salto; En pos de vos venga luego el patriarca.

DICE EL PATRIARCA.

Yo nunca pensé venir á tal punto, Nin estar en dança tan sin piedad; Ya me van privando, segunt que barrunto, De beneficios e de dignidad. O home mesquino! que en grand ceguedad Andove en el mundo non parando mientes, Como la Muerte, con sus duros dientes, Roba á todo home de qualquier edad.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Señor Patriarca, yo nunca robé En alguna parte cosa que non deva; De matar á todos costumbre lo he; De escapar alguno de mi non se atreva. Esto vos ganó vuestra madre Eva Por querer gostar fruta derredada. Poned en recabdo vuestra cruz dorada; Sygase con vos el Duque antes que mas veva.

DICE EL DUQUE.

O, que malas nuevas son estas syn falla, Que agora me trahen, que vaya á tal juego! Yo tenia pensado de faser batalla; Esperame un poco, Muerte, yo te ruego. Sy non te detienes, miedo he, que luego Me prendas ó me mates; abré de dexar Todos mis deleytes, ca non puede estar, Que mi alma escape de aquel duro fuego.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Duque poderoso, ardit e valiente, Non es ya tiempo de dar dilaciones; Andad en la dança con buen continente! Dexad á los otros vuestras guarniciones! Jamas non podredes cebar los alcones, Hordenar las justas, nin faser torneos; Aqui avran fin los vuestros deseos. Venit, Arçobispo, dexat los sermones!

DICE EL ARÇOBISPO.

Ay, Muerte cruel, que te merescí! O porque me llebas tan arrebatado? Viviendo en deleytes nunca te temí; Fiando en la vida, quedé engañado. Mas sy yo bien rrijera mi arçobispado, De ti non oviera tan fuerte temor, Mas siempre del mundo fuy amador; Bien se que el infierno tengo aparejado.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Senor Arçobispo, pues tan mal registres Vuestros súbditos é cleresçia, Gostad amargura por lo que comistes Manjares diversos con grand golosya. Estar non podredes en Santa María Con palo Romano en pontifical; Venit á mi dança pues soes mortal! Pare el Condestable por otra tal vía!

DICE EL CONDESTABLE.

Yo vi muchas danças de lindas doncellas, De dueñas fermosas de alto linaje, Mas, segunt me paresce, no es esta dellas, Ca el thañedor trahe feo visaje. Venit, camarero! desid á mi paje, Que trayga el caballo, que quiero fuir, Que esta es la dança que disen morir; Sy della escapo, thener me han por saje.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Fuyr non conviene al que ha de estar quedo; Estad, Condestable, dexat el caballo! Andad en la dança alegre muy ledo, Syn faser rruydo, ca yo bien me callo. Mas verdad vos digo que, al cantar del gallo, Seredes tornado de otra figura; Alli perderedes vuestra fermosura. Venit vos, Obispo, á ser mi vasallo!

DICE EL OBISPO.

Mis manos aprieto, de mis ojos lloro, Porque soi venido á tanta tristura; Yo era abastado de plata y de oro, De nobles palacios é mucha folgura: Agora la Muerte, con su mano dura, Traheme en su dança medrosa sobejo; Parientes, amigos, ponedme consejo, Que pueda salir de tal angostura!

DICE LA MUERTE.

Obispo sagrado, que fuestes pastor De animas muchas, por vuestro pecado A juicio yredes ante el Redentor, E daredes cuenta de vuestro obispado. Syempre anduvistes de gentes cargado, En corte de rey é fuera de ygreja, Mas yo gorsiré la vuestra pelleja. Venit, Caballero, que estades armado!

DICE EL CABALLERO.

A mi non paresce ser cosa guisada, Que dexe mis armas e vaya dançar A tal dança negra, de llanto poblada, Que contra los vivos quesiste hordenar. Segunt estas conviene dexar Mercedes e tierras que gané del rrey; Pero, á la fyn, sin dubda non sey Qual es la carrera que abré de levar.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Caballero noble, ardit, é lijero, Fased buen semblante en vuestra persona! Non es aqui tiempo de contar dinero; Oyd mi cancion, por que modo entona! Aqui vos faré mover la athaona, E despues veredes como pone freno A los de la banda que roban lo ageno. Dançad, Abad gordo, con vuestra corona!

DICE EL ABAD.

Maguer provechoso só á los religiosos, De tal dança, amigos, yo non me contento; En mi celda avia manjares sabrosos, De ir non curava comer a convento. Darme hedes sygnado como non consyento De andar en ella, ca he grand rescelo, E, sy tengo tiempo, provoco y apelo; Mas non puede ser que ya desatiento.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Don Abad bendicto, folgado, vicioso. Que poco curastes de vestir çelicio, Abraçadme agora, seredes mi esposo, Pues que deseades placeres é vicio; Ca yo so bien presta á vuestro servicio, Avedme por vuestra, quitad de vos saña, Que mucho me plaze en vuestra compaña. E vos, Escudero, venit al oficio!

DICE EL ESCUDERO.

Dueñas é doncellas, aved de mi duelo! Que fasenme por fuerça dexar los amores, Echome la muerte su sotil ansuelo, Fasenme dançar dança de dolores; Non trahen por cierto firmalles nin flores Los que en ella dançan, mas grand fealdad; Ay de mi cuytado! que en grand vanidad Andove en el mundo sirviendo señores.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Escudero polido, de amor sirviente, Dejad los amores de toda persona! Venit! ved mi dança é como se adona! E á los que dançan acompañaredes. Mirad su figura! tal vos tornaredes, Que vuestras amadas non vos querran ver. Abed buen conorte que ay ha de ser. Venit vos, Dean, non vos corrçedes!

DICE EL DEAN.

Que es aquesto que yo de mi seso salgo? Pensé de fuyr é non fallo carrera; Grand venta tenia é buen deanasgo E mucho trigo en la mi panera. Allende de aquesto estava en espera De ser proveido de algund obispado; Agora la Muerte enbiome mandado, Mala señal veo, pues fasen la sera.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Don rico avariento, Dean muy ufano, Que vuestros dineros trocastes en oro, A pobres é á viudas cerrastes la mano E mal despendistes el vuestro tesoro; Non quiero que estedes ya mas en el coro; Salid luego fuera sin otra peresa! Yo vos mostraré venir á pobresa. Venit, Mercadero, á la dança del lloro!

DICE EL MERCADERO.

A quien dexaré todas mis riquesas E mercadurias que traygo en la mar? Con muchos traspasos é mas sotilesas Gané lo que tengo en cada lugar; Agora la Muerte vinome llamar: Que será de mi? Non se que me faga. O Muerte, tu sierra á mi es grand plaga! Adios, mercaderos, que voyme á finar!

DICE LA MUERTE.

De oy mas non curedes de pasar en Flandes; Estad aqui quedo e iredes ver La tienda que traygo de buvas y landres; De gracia las do, non las quiero vender; Una sola dellas vos fará caer De palmas en tierra dentro en mi botica, E en ella entraredes, maguer sea chica. E vos, Arcediano, venid al tañer!

DICE EL ARCEDIANO.

O, mundo vil, malo, é fallescedero! Como me engañaste con tu promision; Prometisteme vida, de ty non la espero, Siempre mentiste en toda sason. Faga quien quisiere la vesytacion De mi arcedianasgo por que trabajé! Ay de mi cuytado! grand cargo tomé; Agora lo siento, que fasta aqui non.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Arcediano, amigo, quitad el bonete! Venit á la dança suave e onesto! Ca quien en el mundo sus amores mete, El mesmo le faré venir a todo esto. Vuestra dignidad, segund dice el testo, Es cura de animas, é daredes cuenta; Sy mal las registes, abredes afruenta. Dançad, Abogado; dexad el digesto.

DICE EL ABOGADO.

Que fue ora, mesquino, de quanto aprendy, De mi saber todo é mi libelar! Quando estar pensé, entonçe cay; Çegome la muerte; non puedo estudiar; Resçelo he grande de yr al lugar, Do non me valdrá libelo nin fuero, Peores amigos que syn lengua muero; Abarcome la Muerte, non puedo fablar.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Don falso Abogado, prevalicador, Que de amas las partes levastes salario, Venga se vos miente como syn temor Volvistes la foja por otro contrario; El chino é el Bartolo é el coletario Non vos libraran de mi poder mero; Aqui pagaredes, como buen romero. E vos, Canónigo, dexad el breviario.

DICE EL CANÓNIGO.

Vete agora, Muerte, non quiero yr contigo; Dexame yr al coro ganar la rracion; Non quiero tu dança, nin ser tu amigo; En folgura vivo, non he turbacion. Aun este otro dia obe provysion Desta calongya, que me dio el perlado; Desto que tengo soy bien pagado; Vaya quien quisiere á tu vocacion.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Canonigo, amigo, non es el camino Ese que pensades. Dad aca la mano; El sobrepeliz delgado de lino · · · · · · Darvos he un consejo que vos sera sano; Tornad vos á Dios, e fased penitencia, Ca sobre vos cierto es dada sentencia. Llegad acá, Fisico, que estades ufano.

DICE EL FISICO.

Myntiome, sin duda, el fin de Abicenna, Que me prometio muy luengo vevir, Rygiendome me bien á yantar é cena, Dexando el bever despues de dorrmir. Con esta esperança pensé conquerir Dineros é plata, enfermos curando; Mas agora veo que me va llevando La Muerte consygo; conviene sofrir.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Pensaste vos, Fisico, que, por Galeno O Don Ypocras con sus inforismos, Seriades librado de comer del teno Que otros gastaron de mas sologismos? Non vos valdrá faser gargarismos, Componer xaropes, nin tener dieta; Non só sy lo oystes, yo só la que aprieta. Venid vos, Don Cura, dexad los bautismos.

DICE EL CURA.

Non quiero exebçiones, ni conjugaciones; Con mis perrochianos quiero yr folgar; Ellos me dan pollos é lechones E muchas obladas con el pié de altar. Locura seria mis diesmos dexar, E ir a tu dança de que non se parte; Pero, á la fin, non se por qual arte Desta tu dança pudiese escapar.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Ya non es tiempo de yaser al sol Con los perrochianos beviendo del vino; Yo vos mostraré un semifasol Que agora compuse de canto muy fino; Tal como á vos quiero aver por vecino, Que muchas animas tovistes en gremio; Segunt los registes, abredes el premio. Dance el Labrador, que viene del molino.

DICE EL LABRADOR.

Como conviene dançar al villano Que nunca la mano sacó de la reja? Busca, si te place, quien danse liviano. Deja, Muerte, con otro treveja, Ca yo como toçino é á veces oveja, E es mi oficio trabajo é afan, Arando la tierra para sembrar pan; Por ende non curo de oyr tu conseja.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Si vuestro trabajo fue syempre sin arte, Non fasiendo furto en la tierra agena, En la gloria eternal abredes grand parte, E por el contrario sufriredes pena. Pero con todo eso poned la melena; Allegad vos á me, yo vos buire, Lo que á otros fise, á vos lo faré. E vos, Monje negro, tomad buen estrena.

DICE EL MONJE.

Loor é alabança sea para siempre Al alto Señor, que con piedad me lieva A su santo reyno, á donde contemplo Por siempre jamás la su magestad; De carcel escura vengo á claridad, Donde abré alegria syn otra tristura; Por poco trabajo abré grand folgura; Muerte, non me espanto de tu fealdad.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Sy la regla santa del Monje Bendicto Guardastes del todo syn otro deseo, Sin duda temed que soes escripto En libro de vida, segunt que yo creo; Pero, si fesistes lo que faser veo A otros, que andan fuera de la regla, Vida vos daran que sea mas negra. Dançad, Usurero, dexad el correo!

DICE EL USURERO.

Non quiero tu dança nin tu canto negro, Mas quiero prestando doblar mi moneda; Con pocos dineros, que me dió mi suegro, Otras obras fago que non fiso Beda. Cada año los doblo, demas está queda La prenda en mi casa que está por el todo; Allego rriquezas y hyariendo de cobdo; Por ende tu danza á mi non es leda.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Traydor Usurario, de mala concencia, Agora veredes lo que faser suelo; En fuego ynfernal sin mas detenencia Porné la vuestra alma cubierta de duelo; Allá estaredes, do está vuestro abuelo, Que quiso usar segund vos usastes; Por poca ganancia mal syglo ganastes. E vos, Frayre Menor, venit á señuelo!

DICE EL FRAYRE.

Dançar non conviene á maestro famoso, Segunt que yo so en religion; Maguer mendigante vivo vicioso, E muchos desean oyr mi sermon, Desidesme agora que vaya á tal son; Dançar non querria sy me das lugar; Ay de mi cuydado! que abré á dexar Las honrras e grado, que quiera ó que non.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Maestro famoso, sotil, é capaz, Que en todas las artes fuistes sabidor, Non vos acuytedes, limpiad vuestra faz, Que á pasar abredes por este dolor; Yo vos levaré ante un sabidor Que sabe las artes syn ningunt defecto, Sabredes leer por otro decrepto. Portero de Maça, venid al tenor!

DICE EL PORTERO.

Ay, del rey barones, acorredme agora! Llevame syn grado esta muerte brava; Non me guarde della, tornome á dessora, A puerta del Rey guardando estava; Oy en este dia al Conde esperava, Que me diese algo por que le dy la puerta; Guarde quien quisyere ó fynquese abierta, Que ya la mi guarda non vale una fava.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Dexad esas vozes, llegad vos corriendo, Que non es ya tiempo de estar en la vela; Las vuestras baratas yo bien las entiendo A vuestra cobdicia por que modo suena; Cerrades la puerta de mas quando yela Al ome mesquino que vien á librar; Lo que del levastes abres á pagar. E vos, Hermitaño, salid de la celda!

DICE EL HERMITAÑO.

La Muerte reçelo, maguer que so viejo, Señor Jesu Christo, a ty me encomiendo; De los que te sirven, tu eres espejo; Pues yo te servi, la tu gloria atiendo; Sabes, que sufri lazeria viviendo En este desierto en contemplacion, De noche é de dia faziendo oracion, E por mas abstinencia las yerbas comiendo.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Fazes grand cordura; llamarte ha el Señor, Que con diligencia pugnastes servir; Sy bien le servistes abredes honor En su santo reyno, do abes á venir; Pero con todo esto abredes á yr En esta mi dança con vuestra barvaça; De matar á todos aquesta es mi caça. Dançad, Contador, despues de dormir!

DICE EL CONTADOR.

Quien podria pensar que tan syn disanto Abia á dexar mi contaduría? Llegué á la Muerte, e vi desbarato Que faria en los omes con grand osadia; Alli perderé toda mi valía, Averes, é joyas, y mi grand poder; Faza libramientos de oy mas quien quisiere, Ca cercan dolores el anima mia.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Contador, amigo, ssy bien vos catades, Como por favor é averes por don; Librastes las cuentas, razon es que ayades Dolor é quebranto por tal ocasyon. Cuento de alguarismo nin su division Non vos ternan pró, e yredes comigo; Andad aca luego asy vos lo digo. E vos, Diacono, venid á leccion!

DICE EL DIACONO.

Non veo que tienes gesto de lector Tu que me convidas que vaya á leer; Non vy en Salamanca maestro nin doctor Que tal gesto tenga nin tal paresçer. Bien sé que con arte me quieres fazer, Que vaya á tu dança para me matar; Sy esto asy es, venga administrar Otro por mi, que yo vome á caer.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Maravillome mucho de vos, Diacon, Pues que bien sabedes, que es mi doctrina Matar á todos por justa rraçon, E vos esquivades oyr mi bocina; Yo vos vestiré almatica fina, Labrada de pino en que miniestredes, Fasta que vos llamen en ella yredes. Venga el que rrecabda, é dance ayna!

DICE EL RECABDADOR.

Asaz he que faga en recabdar Lo que por el rey me fue encomendado; Por ende non puedo nin devo dançar En esta tu dança que non he acostumbrado. Quiero yr agora apriessa priado Por unos dineros que me han prometido; Ca he esperado é el plazo es venido, Mas veo el camino del todo cerrado.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Andad acá luego syn mas tardar, Pagad los cohechos que avedes levado, Pues que vuestra vida fue en trabajar Como robariedes al ome cuytado; Dar vos he un pago en que esteys asentado, E fagades las rentas que tenga dos pasos; Alli dares cuenta de vuestros traspasos. Venid, Subdiacono, alegre é pagado!

DICE EL SUBDIACONO.

Non he menester de yr á trocar Como fazen esos que traes á tu mando; Antes de evangelio me quiero tornar Estas quatro témporas, que aun seran llegando. En lugar de tanto, veo que llorando Andan todos essos, no fallan abrigo; Non quiero tu dança, asy te lo digo, Mas quiero pasar el salterio reszando.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Mucho es superfluo el vuestro alegar; Por ende dexad aquesos sermones; Non tenes maña de andar á dançar, Nin comer obladas cérca los tizones; Non yredes mas en las proçysiones Do davades vozes muy altas en grito, Como por enero fazia el cabrito. Venid, Sacristan, dexad las rraçones.

DICE EL SACRISTAN.

Muerte, yo te rruego, que ayas piadad De mi que so moço de pocos dias; Non conosci á Dios con mi mocedad, Nin quise tomar nin seguir sus vias. Fia de mi, amiga, como de otro fias, Porque satisfaga del mal que he fecho. A ty non se pierde jamas tu derecho, Ca yo yre, sy tu por mi envias.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Don Sacristanejo, de mala picaña, Ya non tienes tiempo de saltar paredes, Nin andar de noche con los de la caña, Faziendo las obras que vos bien sabedes. Andar á rondar vos ya non podredes, Nin presentar joyas á vuestra señora; Sy bien vos quiere, quinte vos agora. Venit vos, Rrabi, acá meldaredes.

DICE EL RRABI.

Heloim e Dios de Habrahan, Que prometiste la redepçion! Non sé que me faga con tan grant afan; Mandadme que dançe, non entiendo el son. Non ha ome en el mundo de quantos y sson Que pueda fuyr de su mandamiento. Veladme, dayanes, que mi entendimiento Se pierde del todo con grand afliccion.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Don Rrabi, Rrabi barbudo, que siempre estudiastes En el talmud é en sus doctores, E de la verdad jamas non curastes, Por lo cual abredes penas é dolores, Llegad vos acá con los dançadores, E diredes por canto vuestra beraha, Dar vos han possada con Rrabi aça. Venit, Alfaqui, dexad los sabores.

DICE EL ALFAQUI.

Sy Allaha me vala, es fuerte cosa Esto que me mandas agora facer; Yo tengo muger discreta, graciosa, De que he garajado é ausar plazer; Todo quanto tengo quiero perder, Dexame con ella solamente estar; De que fuere viejo mandame levar, E á ella conmigo, sy a ty pluguiere.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Venit vos, amigo, dexar el zalá, Ca el gameño pedricaredes A los veinte é siete: vuestro capellá Nin vuestra camisa non la vestiredes En Meca ni en layda, y non estaredes Comiendo buñuelos en alegría; Busque otro alfaquí vuestra moreria. Passad vos, Santero, veré que diredes.

DICE EL SANTERO.

Por cierto mas quiero mi hermita vivir Que non yr allá do tu me dizes; Tengo buena vida aunque ando á pedir, E como á las veces pollos é perdices; Sé tomar al tiempo bien las codornices, E tengo en mi huerto asaz de repollos. Vete, que non quiero tu gato com pollos; Adios, me encomiendo y á señor San Helices.

DICE LA MUERTE.

Non vos vale-nada vuestro recelar; Andad acá luego vos, Don Taleguero, Que non quisistes la hermita adobar; Fezistes alcuza de vuestro garguero; Non visitaredes la bota de cuero Con que á menudo soliades beber; Çurron nin talega non podres traer, Nin pedir gallofas como de primero.

LO QUE DICE LA MUERTE Á LOS QUE NON NOMBRO.

A todos los que aqui no he nombrado, De qualquier ley e estado ó condicion, Les mando que vengan muy toste priado A entrar en mi dança sin escusaçion; Non rescebiré jamas exebcion, Nin otro libelo, nin declinatoria; Los que bien fizieron abran syempre gloria; Los que al contrario abran dapnacion.

DICEN LOS QUE HAN DE PASAR POR LA MUERTE.

Pues que asy es que á morir avemos De necesidad syn otro remedio, Con pura conciencia todos trabajemos En servir á Dios sin otro comedio; Ca el es Principe, fin, é el medio, Por do, sy le place, abremos folgura; Aunque la Muerte, con dança muy dura, Nos meta en su corro en qualquier comedio.

No. III.

EL LIBRO DEL RABI SANTOB.

The poetry of the Rabbi de Santob, whose name and title are spelt in different ways, is here printed from the manuscript in the National Library at Madrid, marked B. b. 82, folio, beginning at f. lxi. I have spoken of it, (Vol. I. pp. 86, 87,) and would repeat the wish there expressed, that the present copy should be collated with the one in the Library of the Escurial.

Como quiera que dize Salomon, e dize verdat, en el libro de los proverbios, “quien acrecienta ciencia, acrescienta dolor,” pero que yo entiendo que a esto que el llama dolor que es trabajo del coraçon e del entendimiento. E asi no lo devemos tener al tal dolor por malo, ca el non lo dixo mal dolor, nin por que ome deue causa escusarse de la ciencia e de la buena arte en la ciencia es causa al entendido, poned le en folgura corporal e espiritual, e aun digo que Salomon antes cual e despues que escrivio e dixo en los dicho proverbios e el que acreçienta çiençia acresçienta dolor al acresçento ciencia amos del ade oy vista en la biblia que le e ... el dicho libro de proverbios e el libro de los cantares o canticores e el libro de vanidades o clesiasticas, e fiso el libro de sapiençia, amad justiçia los que judgades la tierra, e sea asy que se entiende que no lo dixo por mal dolor, casy lo el syntiera por dolor no se trabajara de acresçentar çiençia, pero este dolor es asemejado al trabajo de bien faser, que trabaja ome en yr luengo camino por alcançar conplimiento de su deseo, e es aquel trabajo folgura, gloria, e no dolor, aunque pasa por el por lo mucho del bien fase ninguno aquelo dolor, e asi que dixo, acreçienta dolor, por que quien mucho lee mucho trabaja, e mientra mas acresçienta el estudio mas acrescienta trabajo para el fruto que el entendides ssaca del tal trabajo para el fruto o dolor es de tamaña gloria que el trabajo e dolor con que se alcanço es ninguno e cosa olvidada e non sentyda, non enpecible mas antes fue, e es causa de bien e es afigurado, como sy disen a omen contar doblas para el ciento es que trabaja en el contar, pero mas pro saca myentra mas contare asi que non lo dixo por dolor es pecible ni malo, ca dolor ay que ome desea á las veses que con el avrie grant folgura e non syn el asi que es muchas veses deseado dolor et commo la tanger mañera que todavia cobdiçia aquel dolor mas que todas las folguras e viçios del mundo porque es causa de todo su deseo asi que es dolor nesçesario o provechoso, e por esto non deve çesar de fablar çiençia el que sabe por cuyta de sofrir trabajos o dolor, mayor mente que es notorio, que vyene por devyna influyda de Dios en el omen que la asi que non la da Dios para que la calle nin para quel influydo solo salvo para faser bien commo la sacra ley que dio a Muyssen non sollamente para el mas para ssu pueblo de generaçion e aun para todos los nasçidos que a su ley sse allegaron, como dise Ysayas en el cº.

El linaje que lo serviere sera contado a el por publico suyo asi que el sseñor da sabiduria a uno para enseñarla a muchos, e puede aqui desir que qvien quisyere pues el señor Dios commo da la sabiduria a uno para enseñarla a muchos, tan bien la podria dar á los muchos e en verdat para que o porque es esto diria yo a el respondote que tan bien podria dar Dios la ley syn que se enseñase por escritura a cada nasçido pero no se le entendia ni seria sabido que bynya de Dios, nin por acarreamiento del Espiritu Sancto asy que non seria Dios tan conoscido, e por esto es en el secreto de Dios vien lo que a nos non se entyende, ca el Señor todas las cosas que el fiso e son con sabiduria acabada que es en el asi que devemos creer que es bien aprender que quien pretende e entender del que entyende e punar en el tal trabajo que naçe dello gloria e folgura asi que non es dolor doloroso, mas es dolor provechoso. Pues asi es, plaziendo a Dios, declarare algo en las trobas de Rabisantob el Judio de Carrion en algunas partes que parescen escritas aunque no son escritas salvo por quanto son trobas e todas escritura rymada paresçe entrepatada e non lo es que por guardar los consonantes disce algunas veses lo que ha de desir despues disce lo antes. E esto quiero yo trabajar en declarar con el ayuda de Dios para algunos que pueden ser que leeran e non entenderan syn que otro gelas declare commo algunas veses la he ya visto esto por cuanto syn dubda las dichas trobas son muy notable escritura, que todo omen la deviera de curar, ca esta fue la entençion del sabio Raby que las fiso, por que escritura rimada es mejor decorada que non la que va por testo llano, e dise asy el prologo de sus rymas es veynte e tres coplas fasta de quiero desir del mundo.

Señor Rey, noble, alto, Oy este sermon, Que vyene desyr Santob, Judio de Carrion,

Comunalmente trobado De glosas moralmente, De la filosofia sacado Segunt que va syguiente.

Quando el Rey Don Alfonso Fyno, fynco la gente, Como quando el pulso Fallesçe al doliente.

Que luego non ayudaua, Que tan grant mejoria A ellos fyncaua, Nin omen lo entendia.

Quando la rosa seca En su tiempo sale, El agua della fynca Rosada que mas vale.

Asi vos fyncastes del Para mucho turar, E faser lo que el Cobdiciava librar.

Como la debda mia Que a vos muy poco monta Con la qual yo podria Bevyr syn toda onta,

Estando con cuyta De miedos de pecados, Que muchos fis syn cuyta, Menudos e granados.

Teniame por muerto, Mas vyno me el talante Un cornote muy cierto, Que me fiso vien andante.

Omen torpe, syn seso, Seria a Dios baldon La tu maldat en peso Poner con su perdon.

El te fiso nascer, Byves en merced suya; Como podria vencer A su obra la tuya?

Pecar es la tu maña, E la suya perdonar, El alongar la saña, Los yerros oluidar.

Bien commo es mas alto El cielo que la tierra, El su perdon es tanto Mayor que la tu yerra.

Segunt el poder suyo Tanto es la su obra suya, Segunt el poder tuyo Tal es la obra tuya.

Obrar de omen que nada Es todo el su fecho, Es su vyda penada, Es a muy poco trecho.

Como seria tan grande Como la del Criador, Que todo el mundo anda E fas en derredor

Andar aquella rueda El sol e las estrellas, E jamas nunca queda, E sabe cuenta dellas.

Quanto el tu estado Es ante la tu gloria, Monta el tu pecado A su mysiricordia.

Seria cosa estraña Muy fuera de natura, La tu yerra tamaña Ser como su mesura.

Et desto non temas Que ser non podria, En que non tornes jamas En la tu rebeldia,

Mas en te arrepentyr E fazer oraçion, Et merced le pedyr Con magnifestaçion

De todo lo pasado, E partyr de lo mano, Con tanto perdonado Seras bien de lyviano.

Et non sabe la persona Torpe que non se baldona Por las priesas del mundo Que nos da a menudo.

I non sabe que la manera Del mundo esta era, Tener syempre viciosos A los onbres astrosos,

Et ser [de] guerreados Los omes onrrados, Alça los ojos a cata E veras la mar alta,

Et sobre las sus cuestas Anda cosas muertas, E yazen çafondadas En el piedras presciadas.

Et el peso asi Avaga otro si, La mas llena balança E la mas vasya alça.

Et en el çielo estrellas E sabe cuenta dellas, Non escuresçen dellas una, Sy non el sol e la luna.

Las mys canas teñilas, Non por las auorrescer, Ni por desdesyrlas, Nin mançebo parescer,

Mas con miedo sobejo De omes que bastarian En mi seso de viejo, E non lo fallarian.

Pues trabajo me mengua, Donde puede auer, Prodire de mi lengua Algo de mi saber.

Quando no es lo que quiero, Quiero yo lo que es; Si pesar he primero, Plaser avré despues.

Mas pues aquella rueda Del cielo una ora Jamas non esta queda, Peora et mejora,

Aun aqueste laso Renovara el escripto, Este pandero manso Aun el su rretynto;

Sonara vernaadia, Avra su libertad, Paresçio como solia Valer el su quintal.

Yo proue lo pesado, Prouare lo lyviano, Quiça mudare fado Quando mudare la mano.

Resçele si fablase Que enojo faria, Por si me callase Por torpe fyncaria.

Quel que no se muda, Non falla lo que plas; Disen que ave muda Aguero nunca fas.

Porque pisan poquella, Saron tierra perlando; Omes que pisan ella Para siempre callando.

Entendi que en callar Avri grant mejoria, Avorresçi fablar E fueme peoria.

Que non so para menos Que otros de mi ley, Que ovieron buenos Donadios del Rey.

Syn mi rrason ser buena Non sea despreçiada Por que la dis presona Rafez que mucha espada.

De fyno azero sano Sale de rrota vayna; Salir e del gusano Se fare la seda fyna.

E astroso garrote Fare muy ciertos trechos, E algunt astroso pellote Cubre blancos pechos.

Et muy sotil trotero Aduze buenas nuevas, E muy vil vezerro Presenta ciertas prueuas.

Por nascer en el espino No val la rosa cierto Menos, nin el buen vyno Por nascer en el sarmyento.

Non val el açor menos Por nascer de mal nido, Ni los enxemplos buenos Por los dezir Judio.

Non me desdeñen por corto, Que mucho Judio largo Non entraria a coto A fazer lo que yo fago.

Bien se que nunca tanto Quatro tyros de lança Alcançaria quanto La saeta alcança;

Et rrazon muy granada Se diz en pocos versos, E cinta muy delgada Suffre costados gruesos.

Et mucho ome entendido, Por ser vergonçoso, Es por torpe tenido E llamado astroso.

Et sy viese sazon Mejor e mas apuesta, Diria su razon Aquel que lo denuesta.

Quiero dezir del mundo E de las sus maneras, E commo del dubdo Palabras muy certeras.

Que non se tomar tiento, Nin fazer pleytesia, De acuerdos mas de çiento Me torno cada dia.

Lo que uno demuestra Veo a otro loallo, Lo que este apuesta Veo a otro afeallo.

La vara que menguada La diz el comprador, Esta mesma sobrada La diz el vendedor.

El que lança la lança Semejale vaguarosa, Pero al que alcança Semejale presurosa.

Dize, sy quier no diese Pan nin vyno al suelo En tal que ome viese Ya la color del çielo.

Olvidado amenos Su color con nublados, Con lodos non podemos Andar por los mercados.

Lo mucho non es nunca Vueno nin de espeçia fyna, Mas vale contrilla poca Que mucha melezyna.

Non puede cosa ninguna Syn fyn mucho cresçer, Desque fynche la luna Torrne a fallesçer

A todo ome castigo De sy mesmo se guarde Mas que de enemigo Con tanto seguro ande.

Guardese de su envidia, Guardese de su saña, Guardese de su cobdiçia, Que es la peor maña.

Non puede ome tomar En la cobdiçia tyento; Es profundo mar, Syn orilla e syn puerto.

De alcançar una cosa Nasce cobdiçia de otra; Mayor e mas sabrosa Que mengua bien de sobra.

Quien buena piel tenia Que el amplia para el frio, Tabardo non pidiria Jamas, sy non por vrio.

Por quel su veryno Buen tabardo tenia, Con zelo el mesquino En cuydado venia.

Fue buscar tabardo, E fallolo a otir acuesta Por otro mas onrrado Para de fyesta en fiesta.

Et sy este primero Tabardo non fallara, Del otro di santero Jamas non se membrara.

Quando lo poco vyene Cobdiçia de mas cresçe; Quanto mas ome tyene Tanto mas le fallesçe.

Et quanto mas alcança Mas cobdiçia dos tanto, Alfyn desque calça Calças tyene por quebranto.

De andar de pye camino E va buscar rroçyn; De calçar calças vyno A cobdiçia syn fyn.

Para el rrocyn quier ome Quel piense e çeuada, Establo e buen pesebre E desto todo nada.

No te menguava nada, Las calças non tenia; Los çapatos solados Su jornada conplia.

Yo fallo en el mundo Dos omes e non mas, E fallar nunca puedo El terçero jamas;

Un buscador que cata E non alcança nunca, E otro que nunca se farta Fallando quanto busca;

Quien falle e se farte Yo non puedo fallarlo; Que pobre bien andante E rrico omen llamarlo.

Que non ya omen pobre Synon el cobdiçioso, Nin rrico synon ome Con lo que tiene gozoso.

Que en lo quel cumple quiere Poco le abondara, E quen sobras quesyere El mundo non le cabra.

Quanto cumple a omen de su, De su algo sy syrve; De lo demas es syenpre Syervo a quanto vyve,

Todo el dia lazrado, Corrido por traello; A la noche cuytado Por miedo de perdello.

El tanto non le plaze Del algo que averlo, Quanto pesar le faze El miedo de perderlo.

Non se farta non le carbiendo En afan nin en talega; Et lazra non sabiendo Para quien lo allega.

Syenpre las almas grandes, Queriendose honrrar, Fazen en sus demandas A los cuerpos lazrar.

Por conplir sus talantes Non les dexan folgar; Fazen los viandantes De logar en logar.

La alma granada vyene A perderse con el çelo, Quanto que demas tyene Su vesyno un pelo.

Tyende grant miedo fuerte Que le aventajaria, E non le membraria de la muerte Que los ygualaria.

Por buscar lo demas Es quanto mal auemos; Por lo necessario jamas Mucho non le lazraremos.

Sy non que te mengue quieres Dexa la tu cobdiçia; Lo que auer podieres Solo eso cobdiçia

Tanto es un debdo fuera De la rraya asignada, Commo si lueñe tierra fuera Dende una jornada.

Quanto mas que auia Pesar el omen loco, En lo queste perdia Por mucho que por poco.

Quando por poco estoruo Perdio lo que buscaua, Del grant pesar que ovo Nunca se conortava.

Non sabe que por cobrirse Del ojo cunple tanto Un lienço, como si fuese Muro de cal i canto.

Tanto se lo que yaze Detras del destajo, Quanto se lo que faze El de allende tajo.

Lo que suyo non era, Tanto, con dos pasadas, Lueñe, como sy fuera Dende veynte jornadas.

Tan lueñe es de ayer Commo el año pasado, Es quien ha de ser De feridas guardado.

Tanto val un escudo Entre el e la saeta, Como sy todo el mundo Entre el e ella meta.

Ca pues non lo firio, Tal es un dedo cerca Del, commo la que dio Allende la çerca.

El dia de ayer tanto Alcançar podemos, Nin mas nin menos quanto Oy null años faremos.

Tu por mucho andar Alyñar lo pasado, Nin pierde por quedar Lo que non es llegado.

Tan fea nin fermosa, En el mundo ya ves, Se puede alcançar cosa Sinon por su reves.

Quien ante non esparze Trigo, non allega, Sy con tierra non ayaze A espiga nunca llega.

Non se puede coger rosa Syn pisar las espynas, La miel es dulce cosa Mas tyen agras vezyna.

La pas non se alcança Synon con guerrear; Non se gana folgança Synon con el lazrar.

Por la grant mansedat A ome fallaran; E por grant crueldat Todos lo aborresçeran.

Por la grant escaseza Tener lo ha por poco; Por mucha franqueza Rrazonar lo ha por loco.

Sy tacha non oviese En el mundo pobreza, Non aunque valiese Tanto como la flaqueza.

Mas ha en ella una Tacha que le enpesce Mucho, que commo la luna Mengua e despues cresce.

La franqueza sosobra Es de toda costunbre, Que por usar la cobra Saber las cosas onbre.

Lo que omen mas usa, Eso mejor aprenda, Sy non es esta cosa Que por usar la mas pierde.

Usando la franqueza, No se puede escusar De venir a pobreza, Que en mucho la usar.

Que todavia dando Non fyncaria que dar, Asi que franqueando Menguara al franquear.

Commo la candela mesma, Tal cosa es al ome Franco, que ella se quema Por dar a otro lunbre.

Al rey solo conviene De usar la franqueza, E sigurança tyene De non venyr a pobreza.

A otro non es bien Sy non lo comunal; Dar e tener convien; E lo demas es mal.

Sy omen dulce fuere Commo agua lo veneran, E sy agro sopiere Todos lo escopiran.

Sy quier por se guardar De los astreros omes A menudo mudar Deve las costunbres.

Que tal es ciertamente El come commo el viso, Rrecelando la gente Ante que lo han pasado.

Uno dando vozes Donde entrades, Fondo es cient braças Que vos aventurades;

Desque a la orilla pasa Diz que dubdades; No dan a la rodilla, Pasad e non temades.

Et bien tal es el ome, Desque es barruntado En alguna costunbre, Por ella es entrado.

Por esto los omes, Por se guardar de dampno, Deven mudar costunbres Como quien muda damno.

Oy bravo, cras manso; Oy sinple, cras lozano; Oy largo, cras escaso; Oy en cerro, cras en llano.

Una vez umildança, E otra vez baldon; E un tienpo vengança, E en otro tienpo perdon.

Bien esta el perdon Al que se puede vengar, E soffrir el baldon Quando se puede negar.

Con todos non convienen Usar por un ygual, Mas a los unos con bien, A los otros con mal.

Pagado e sanudo Vez dexa e vez tien, Que non ha mal en el mundo En que non ay bien.

Tomar del mal lo menos E lo demas del bien; A malos e a buenos, A todos estos convien.

Honrrar por su bondat, Al bueno es prouado; Al malo de maldat Suya por ser nunca dado.

Lo peor del buen ome Que non vos faga bien, Que dano de costunbre Del bueno nunca vyen.

Et lo mejor del malo Que mas del non ayades, Ca nunca bien fallarlo En el non entendades.

Pues ser ome manso Con todos non convien; Mas oy priesa, eras paso; Vezes mal, vezes bien.

El que quisiere folgar Ha de lazrir primero, Sy quiere a paz llegar Sea antes guerrero.

Al que torrna al robo Fuelga maguer le agrado, Plazer al ojo del lobo Con el polvo del ganado.

Sienbra cordura tanto Que non nasca paresa, E verguença, en quanto Non la llamen torpeza.

Fizo para lacerio Dios al ome nascer, Por yr de feria en feria A buscar do guarescer.

Por rruas e por feria A buscar su ventura, Ca es muy grant soberuia Quere pro con folgura.

Non ha tal folgura Commo lazeria conpró, E quien por su cordura Su entencion cunplio.

Quien por su seso cierto Quiere acabar su fecho, Una vez entre ciento No sacaria provecho.

Ca en las aventuras Yaze la pro colgada, E es con las locuras La ganancia conprada.

Quien las cosas dubdadere, Todas non se meseran; De lo que cobdiciare Poco acavara.

Por la mucha cordura Es la pro estoruada, Pues en la aventura Esta la pro colgada.

Pues por rregla derecha, Derecha el mundo non se guia; El mucho dubdar echan A ome en astrosia.

Mal seso manifiesto Non digo yo usar, Quel peligro presto Deuelo escusar.

Mas ygual uno de otro El menguar e el sobrar, A lazrar o encuentro Deuese aventurar.

Quien vestyr non quiere Sy non piel syn yjada, De frio que fizyere Avra rraçon doblada.

Quien de la pro quiere mucha A de perder e vrio; Quien quiere tomar trucha Aventurese al rrio.

Quien los vientos guardare Todos non se abraran, E quien las trunes guardare Jamas non segara.

Non syn noche dia, Nin segar syn senbrar, Nī ha fumo syn fuego, Nī reyr syn llorar.

Nō ay syn corro luēgo, Nī syn tarde ayna, Nī ha fumo syn fuego, Nī syn comas faryna.

Nī ganar syn perder, Nī syn luxar altera, Saluo en Dios poder Quel y a syn flaqueza.

Nī ha syn tacha cosa, Nī cosa syn soçobra, Nī syn fea fermosa, Nī sol nō ha syn sonbra.

La vondat de la cosa Saben por su rreues; Por agra la sabrosa, La faz por el reues.

Syn noche nō ouiesemos, Ninguna mejoria Conoscer lo sabriamos A la lunbre del dia.

Nō ha piel syn yjadas, Nī luēgo syn despues, Nī viētre syn espaldas, Nī cabeça syn pies.

Demas q son muy pocos Los q saben el seso, Tā poco como de los locos Los cuerdos por un peso.

Uno nō sabe el quanto Buscar de lo q deue, E el otro dos tanto Del derecho se atreue.

El uno por allēde Buscar de su derecho, E otro por aquende Nō ovieron provecho.

Et los q trabajaron De los en paz meter, Por muy torpes fyncaron Solo en lo cometer.

De sy dan cuēta cyerta, Qēn orgullo mantyē, Que poco en su tyesta De meollo nō tyē.

Que sy nō fuere loco Nō usaria asy, Si conosciese un poco Al mūdo e a sy.

Sy esta paz fysiera Ligero fuera luego De creer que boluiera Al agua con el fuego.

Usa el omē noble A los altos alçarse, Synple e cōuenible A los baxos mostrarse.

Muestra la su grandeza A los desconoscidos, E muestra grant synpleza A los baxos caydos.

Es en la su pobreza Alegre e pagado, E en la su riqueza Muy synple mesurado.

Su pobreza encubre, Dase por viē andante; E la su pries a sufre Mostrādo buē talāte.

Reues usa el vyllano Abaxādose a los mayores; Alto e loçano Se muestra á los menores.

Mas de quantas es dos tanta Muestra su mal ādança, E el mundo espāta En la su buena andāça.

En la su mala andança Et mas baxos q tierra, E en su buena andança Al cielo quere dar guerra.

Al que oyr q syere Las trueuas del villano, Por que quādo lo vyere Lo conosca de plano.

Nō far nada por rruego, E la pena cōsyente; Que brantadlo e luego Vos sera obendiēte.

Corno el arco lo cuento Yo en todo su fecho, Que fasta q el fare tuerto Nunca fare derecho.

Peor es leuantarse Un malo en la gēte, Mucho mas q perderse Diez buenos ciertamente.

Ca perderse los buenos, Cierto el bien fallesçe; Pero el daño menos Es el ql mal cresçe.

Quando el alto cae El baxo se leuāta, Uida al fumo trae El fuego q amata.

El caer del rroçio Faz leuantar yeruas, Onrraste con el ofeçio Del señor las syeruas.

Omē que la paz qēres, E nō semer merino, Qual para ty quisyeres Quieras para tu vezyno.

Fijo de omē q te querellas, Quando lo q te aplaze Nō se cunple e rrebellas En Dios porque nō faze.

Todo lo q tu queres E andas muy yrado, Nō te miēbras q eres De vil cosa criado?

De una gota suzya Podrida e dañada, E tyenes te por luzya Estrella, muy presçiada.

Pues dos vezes paresciste, Camino muy abiltado, Locura es preciarte, Daste por mēguado.

E mas q un moxquito El tu cuerpo nō ual; Desque aquel espryto Q el mesçe del cal.

Nō se te mīetra tu cima E andas de galope, Pisando sobre la syma Do las muestra dō lope.

Que tu señor seria Mill vezes, et gusanos Comē de noche e de dia Su rrostro e sus manos.

Mucho te maravillas, Tyenes te por mēguado, Por q todas las villas Nō mandas del rregnado.

Eres rrico, nō te fartas, E tyenes te por pobre, Cō codicia q as, nō catas Si ganas para otre.

E de tu algo pocas, Para envolver tus huesos Abras varas pocas De algunos lienços gruessos

Lo al heredara Alguno q nō te ama, Para ty nō fyncara Sola la mala fama,

Del mal q en tus dias E la mala verdat En las plaças fazyas E en tu poridat,

Quando las tus cobdicias Ganar para ser mītroso, Por muy sabio te presçias E antes por astroso.

Et los enxemplos buenos Nō murieron jamas, E quanto es lo de menos Tanto es lo demas.

El seso, certero Al q da Dios ventura Acierta de ligero E non por su cordura.

Fazere lo que plaze A Dios en toda plīto, Omē nada nō faze Por su entendymiento.

Sy fas por ventura Lo q a el plazya, Tyeñ que por su cordura E su sabiduria.

E faze del escarnio Dios, por q quiere creer Q puede alongar daño E provecho traer.

Por nō errar Este seso çierto, Trabaja por lazrar, Sy quier ladra de riebto.

Que las gentes nō digan Del que es perezoso, Nī del escarnio fagan, Nī lo tengan por astroso.

Trabaje, asy como Sy en poder Del omē fuere mismo El ganar e el perder.

Et por conortarse, Sy lazrarē vano, Deue bien acordarse Q nō es en su mano.

Lazre por guaresçer Omē e la pro cuelgue. En Dios que lo fyzo nascer Fyzo por q nō fuelgue.

Darle ha su gualardon Bueno e syn destajo, Nō qrra que syn don Sea el su trabajo.

Nō puede cosa nascida Syn afan guarescer, E nō avra guarida Menos por hollesçer.

Nō quedan las estrellas Punto en un lugar, Seria mal lazrar ellas E los omes folgar.

Nō se mesçen las estrellas Por fazer a si vicio, Es el merçed dellas Fazer a Dios seruiçio.

Et el merced del ome Es para mejoria A si e non á otre Lo mandaros lazrar.

Diole Dios entēdymiento Por q busque guarida, Por q fallescimiento Nō aya en su vyda.

Sy cobro nō fallo For el bolleçer, Nō deziā que valio Menos por sollesçer.

Por su trabajo quito De culpa fyncaria, E qçaria evito Alguno faltaria.

Es por andar la rrueda Del molyno presdada, E por estar queda La tierra es follada.

Establo es de huerta En q fruto nō nasce, Nō vale mas q muerta El omē que nō se mesçe.

Nō cumple q non gana, Mas lo ganado pierde, Fazyendo vyda penada El su cabdal espiende.

Nō ha mayor afan Q la mucha folgura, Que pone a omē en grant Valdon e desmesura.

Faze el cuerpo folgado El coraçon lazrar Con mucho mal cuydado, Q lo trae a errar.

Demas el q qsiere Estar syempre folgado, De lo que mas ovyere Menester sera mēguado.

El qle desearia, Quando le nō toviese a ojo, Veyēdo lo cada dia Toma con el enojo.

Sacan por pedyr lluuia Las rrequilias e cruzes, Quando el tpo nō uvia, Dan por ella vozes.

Et sy viene a menudo, Enojase con ella, E maldizen al mūdo E la pro q vyen della.

Farian dos amigos Cinta de un anillo, En q dos enemigos Nō meteriā un dedillo.

Aun lo q Lope gana, Domīgo enpobresce, Con lo q Sancho sana, Pedro adoleçe.

Qudo vyento se leuanta, Ya apelo, ya auriego, La candela amata, Ençiende el grāt fuego.

Do luego por my sentēçia Que es biē del cresçer, E tomar grāt acuçia Por yr bollesçer.

Que por la su flaquesça La candela muriô, E por su fortaleza El grāt fuego byuio.

Mas apelo a poco Rato deste juysyo, Q veo escapar el flaco E puresçer el rrezyo.

Q ese mesmo viēto Q a esos dos fazia, Fizo çoçobra desto En este mesmo dia.

El mesmo menuzo El arbol muy granado, E non se el peruze Del la yerua del plado.

Q en sus casas se qma, Grant pesar ha del viento, Qñdo sus eras auienta Con el ha grāt pagamiento.

Por ende nō se jamas Tener me a una estaca, Nī se qual me val mas Sy preta nī sy blanca.

Qñdo caydo, ql derecho En toda cosa presta, Fallo a poco trecho Q no es cosa çierta.

Sy uno pro ha A otro caro cuesta, Si el pero lo loa Al arco lo denuesta;

Ca el derecho del arco Es ser tuerto fecho, E su plazer del maestro Auer pesar derecho.

Por ende nō puedo cosa Loar nī denostalla, Nī desyr la fermosa Sol, nī feo llamalla.

Segūt es el lugar E la cosa qual es, Sy faz priesa o vagor E faz llama en vez.

Yo nunca he querella Del mūdo, de q muchos La han, q por muchos Se tienē por mal trechos.

Que faz bien a menudo Al torpe e al sabio, Mas el entendido Esto ha por agrauio.

Et visto como omē Saluese grande o chico, Faz al acuçioso pobre E al q se duerme chico.

E aquesto Dios usa, Por q uno de ciēto Nō cuyda, q faz cosa Por su entendimiento.

Unos vi por locura Al cançar grāt prouecho, E otros que por cordura Pierdē todo su fecho.

Nō es buena locura, La q a su dueño baldona, Nin es mala locura La q lo apresona.

Yo vi muchos tornar Sanos de la fazyenda, E otros ocasionar Dentro en la su tyenda.

Et muere el doctor Que la fisique reza, E por guaresce[r] el pastor Con la su grāt torpeza.

Nō cumple grāt saber A los q a Dios nō temen, Nin acunple el auer De que pobres nō comen.

Quādo yo meto miētes, Mucho alegre seria Con lo q otros tristes Veo de cada dia.

Pues si certero bien Es aql q cobdiçio, Por ql q lo tien Nō toma coñl viçio

Mas esta es señal Q nō ha biē terçero En el mūdo e nō ha mal Q sea verdadero.

Bien cierto el seruiçio De Dios es ciertamente, Mas por quitar el viçio Oluidanlo la gente.

Et otro bien a par deste El seruiçio del rey, Q mantyene la gente A derecho e ley.

Suma de la razō Es grande torpedat, Leuar toda sazon Por una egualdat.

Mas tornasse a menudo, Como el mūdo se torna, A las vezes estudo, A las vezes esbona.

Toda buena costunbre Ha cierta medida, E, si la pasa onbre, Su bondat es perdida.

De las cobdiçias syēpre Los sabores dexando, E de toda costumbre Lo de medio tomando.

De las muchas querellas Q en coraçon tengo, Una la mayor dellas Es la contar uengo.

Dar la ventura pro Al q faria malicia, E se echariā pro E otros cobdiçia.

De poco algo ganar Faria grāt astrosia, E de qrer perdonar Esto nō lo podria.

Q la ventura tyene Por guisado de le dar, Mucho mas ql vyene Por boca de mandar.

Et faze le bien andante De la honrra e valia, Lo qual por talāte Buscar nō le pesaria.

Ventura qere usar Subir de tal subyda, Ql nō lo treueria buscar Cobdiçiar en su vyda.

El syenpre trabajado E meter se a quāto Baldon tyene el hōrrado, Por honrrar e por qbrāto.

Tenerse ya por vano Syn sol cuydase en ella E vienele a la mano Syn trabajar por ella.

Al sabio pregūtaua Su deçiplo un dia, Porque trauajava De alguna merchandia;

Et yr bollesçer De lugar en lugar Para enrriqier E algo ganar.

Et rrespondiole el sabio Que, por algo cobrar, Non tomaria agrauio De un punto lazrar.

Diz por que buscare Cosa de que jamas Nunca me fartare, Fallandolo e mas.

Acuçia nin cordura Non ganan aver; Ganase por ventura Non por sy, nin por saber.

Pierde por flaqueza Fazer e mucho bien, Guardanlo escazesa, Vileza non mantyen.

Et, por esta rrazon, Faria locura granada El sabio que sazon Pediese en tal demanda.

Con todo eso convyen Al que algo ouiere, Fazer del mucho vien Quanto el mas pudiere.

Non lo pierde franqueza Quando es devenida, Nin lo guarda escaseza Quando es de yda.

Non ha tan buen thesoro Como el bien fazer, Nin aver tan seguro, Nin con tanto plazer.

Como el que tomara Aquel que lo fizyere, En la vida lo honrrara E despues que muriere.

El que bien fecho non teme, Que lo furtaran ladrones, Nin que fuego lo queme, Nin otras ocasiones;

Nin ha por guardarlo Conde fijo menester, Nin en arca cerrarlo, Nin so llaue meter.

Fynarle ha buena fama, Quando fueren perdidos, Los algos e la cama E los buenos vestidos.

Por el seria onrrado El linaje que fyncare, Quando fuere acabado Lo que del heredare.

Jamas el su buen onbre Non se oluidara, Que el tenga de todo onbre Syempre lo nombrara.

Por ende bel bien fazer Tu poder mostraras, En al do tu plazer Lo demas dexaras.

De toda cobdiçia Dexa la mayor parte, E de fazer maliçia Los omes han talante.

Quien de mala ganancia Quiere sus talegas llenas, De buena segurança Vazyara sus venas.

Non ha tan dulce cosa Como la segurança, Nin ha miel mas sabrosa Que por omildança.

Nin ha cosa tan quista Como la humildança, Nin tan sabrosa vista Como la buena andança.

Nin ha tal locura Como la obedencia, Nin tal baragania Como la buena sufrençia.

Non puede aver tal maña Omen como en sofrir, Nin faga con la saña Que le faga rrepentyr.

El que por que sufrio Se touo por abiltado, A la syma salio Por mas aventurado.

Non ha tan atreguada Cosa como la pobreza, Nin cosa guerreada Tanto como la riqueza.

Digo que omen pobre Es pryncipe desonrrado, Asy el rico omen Es lazrido, onrrado.

Quien se enloçanescio Con honrra que le crescia, A entender bien dio, Que no lo meresçia.

Tyene la loçania El seso tan desfecho, Que entrar non podrya Con ella so un lecho.

Nunca omen nasció Que quanto le pluguiese, Segunt lo cobdició, Tal se le cumpliese.

Quien quiere fazer pesar, Convienle apercebyr; Que non se puede escusar De a tal rrescebyr.

Si quieres fazer mal, Pues farlo a tal pleito, De rrescebyr a tal Qual tu fysyeres çierto.

Non puede estar paz Sy una mala obra, Fyzyere a topar En rresçebyr tu otra.

Quien sabe que non nasciste Por venir apartado, Al mundo non veniste Por ser auentajado.

En el rrey mete mientes, Toma enxemplo del, Mas lazro por las gentes Que las gentes por el.

Por sus mañas el onbre Se pyerde o se gana, E por su costunbre Adoleçe o sana.

Cosa que tanto le cunple Para amigos ganar, Non ha como ser synple; Viensse razon.

Syn que este pressente, Conosceras de ligero Al omen, en su absente, En el su mensajero.

Por su carta sera Conoscido en cierto, Por ella parescera El su entēdymiento.

En el mundo tal cabdal Non ha como el saber, Nin heredat, nin al, Nin alguno otro aver.

El saber es la glorya De Dios e la su gracia, Non ha tan noble joya, Nin tan buena ganancia;

Nin mejor compasion Quel libro, nin tal, E tomar entençion Con el mas que paz val.

Los sabios que querrian Uer lo fallara Con el, e toda vya Con ellos fablara.

Los sabios muy granados Que omen deseaua, Filosofos honrrados E ver cobdiciava.

Lo que de aquellos sabyos El cobdiçiaua, auia; Eran sus petafios, E su sabyduria.

Ally lo fallara En el libro sygnado, Respuesta avra Dellos por su dyctado.

Aprendera nueva cosa De muy buen çierto, De mucha buena glossa Que fyzieron al testo.

Non querria synon leer Sus letras e sus versos Mas, que non ver Sus carnes e sus huessos.

La su sabencia pura Escryta la dexaron; Sin ninguna voltura Coporal la asumaron.

Si buelta terrenal De ningun elemento Saber celestial Claro entendimiento;

Por esto solo quier Todo ome de cordura A los sabios ver, E non por la fygura.

Por ende tal amigo Non ha como el libro Para los sabios digo, Que con cortes non lidio,

Ser syeruo del sabio E syeruo del omen nesçio, Destos dos me agrauio, Que andan por un presçio.

El omen torpe es La peor animalia Que en el mundo es, Cierto e syn falia.

Non entyende fazer Synon deslealtad; No es su plazer Synon fazer maldad.

Lo que es mas entyende Que bestia en acuçia, En engaños lo espiende E en fazer malyçia;

Non puede otro aver En el mundo tal amigo, Como el buen saber Nin peor enemigo

Que la su torpedat, Que del torpe su saña Mas pesa en verdat Que arena e maña.

Non ha tan peligrosa Nin ocasion tamaña, Como en tierra dobdosa Camino sin conpaña.

Nin tan esforçada cosa Como la verdat, Nin cosa mas dobdosa Que la deslealtad.

El sabio coronada Leona semeja; La verdat es formada La materia gulpeja.

Dizyr sienpre verdat Maguer que daño tenga, E non la falsedat Maguer pro della venga.

Non ha cosa mas larga Que la lengua del mintroso, Nin aura mas amarga De comienço sabroso.

Faze rrycos los omes Con sus prometymientos Despues fallanse pobres Omes llenos de vyentos.

Las orejas tiene faltas El coraçon fanbriento El que las oye tantas Cosas dize cimiento.

Non ha fuerte cosa castillo Mas que la lealtad, Nin tan ancho portyllo Como la mala verdat.

Non ha ome tan cobardo Como el que mal ha fecho, Ni baragan tan fuerte grande, Como el que trae derecho.

Non ha tan syn verguença Como es el derecho, Que faze esa fuerça Del daño que del prouecho.

Tan syn piedat meta Al pobre e al rrico, E con un ojo cata Al grande e al chico.

Al señor non lisonja Mas que al serviçial; El rrey non aventaja Sobre su officyal.

Para el juez malo Fazese del muy franco; Al que no lo tyendalo Faze vara del arco.

El mundo, en verdat, De tres cosas se mantyen, De juyzio, e de verdat, E paz, que dellos vyen.

El juyzio es La piedra ametal; De todas estas tres Es la que mas val.

Ca el juysio fas Descobryr la verdat, E con la verdat Viene e amistad.

Et pues por el juyzio El mundo se mantyene, Tan honrrado ofyçio Baldonar non conuiene.

Deuiase catar antes De dar tal petycion Al omen que byen cate, Que le es su entyncion.

Tal omen que nō mude La entynçion del oficio Ualdonar non convyene · · · · · · Ni entyenda nin cuyde, Que fue dado por vicio.

Ca por perro del ganado Es puesto el pastor, Non pone el ganado Por la pro del pastor.

Non cuyde que fue fecho Por que por presente Del ageno derecho Faga al su paryente.

Nin por que de por suelto Al que fue su amigo, E syn derecho tuerto Faga al su enemygo.

Ca non se puede ayunar Jamas este pecado, Al sano perdonar Feridas del llagado.

Al pagado soltar Demanda del forçado; Al entrego tostar La voz del tortyçiado.

Por amor nin presçio Maldizelo la ley, Ca de Dios el juyzio Es solo e del rrey.

De las vezes tenyente Es de Dios et del rrey, Por que judguen lo gento A derecho e a la ley.

Mensajero lo fysieron De una cosa sygnada, En poder no le dieron Cresçer nin menguar nada.

Para sy non entyenda Leuar sy non las vozes; Su salario a tyenda De aquel quel da las vozes.

Et quel obra fysyere Tal gualardon avra, E que en esto entendyere Jamas non errara.

Al juez syn maliçia Es afan e enbargo, E juez syn codiçia Valele un obrado.

Cobdiçia e derecho, Esto es cosa cierta, Non entraran en un techo Nin so una cubyerta.

Nunca de una camisa Amas se vistieron; Jamas de una deuisa Señores nunca fueron.

Quando cobdicia vyene Derecho luego sale; Do este poder tyene, Este otro poco vale.

El oficio al omen Es enpresentada cosa, E la buena costunbre Es joya muy presçiada.

Quien de Dios tyene Fuerça, non faga del anillo; Guarde Dios la cabeça Que non le manguara el capillo.

Lo que es suyo pierde Omen por su maldat, E lo ageno puede Ganarlo por bondat.

Perdezsea un consejo Por tres cosas priuado, Saber el buen consejo Que non es escuchado,

E las armas tener El que no las defyende, E algo aver El que non lo despyende.

Fallo tres dolencias, Que non puede guaresçer, Nin ha tales especias Que las puedan vencer.

El pobre peresoso Non puede aver consejo, Mal querençia de envidioso E dolencia de onbre viejo.

Ssi de los pies guaresçe, Duele luego la mano; Del baço adoleçe, Quando del ffigado es sano.

Et mal querençia que vyen De çelo non se puede Partyr syn aquel byen; El que lo ha non pyerde.

A los omes el celo Mata e la cobdicia; Pocos haze el çielo Sanos desta dolençia.

Hacelo uno de otro, El alto e el symple; E el que tyene quatro Tanto de lo que l’ cumple.

Quanto quier que mas algo Ha el su vezino, Tyene todo su algo Por nado el mesquino.

Tan bien grant mal le faz, Non le teniendo tuerto, Por venyr tu en paz Sse tyene el por muerto.

Que mas que sie venga quisiste Aver del enbidioso, Que estar el triste Quando tu estas gozoso.

Tres son los que vienen Cuytados syn cuydado, E de los que mas deuen Dolerse todo el mundo.

Fijo dalgo que menester Ha al ome villano, E con mengua a meter Se vyene en su mano.

E fidalgo de natura, Usado de franqueza, Traxolo la ventura A mano de vyleza.

E justo, ser mandado De senor tortyçiero Ha de fazer fuerçado, E el otro tercero.

Sabio que ha por premia De seruir señor nesçio, Toda la otra lazerya Ante esta es grant viçio.

De dos panes se gouierna, E de fuera se farta, E en cada tauerna Beue hasta que se farta.

Este solo en el mundo Byue sabrosa uyda, E otro ha segundo De otra mayor medida.

El torpe bien andante, Que con su grant torpeza Non le pasa en talante, Que puede aver pobreza?

Fazyendo lo quel’ plaze Non entyende el mundo, Nin los cambios que faze Su rrueda a menudo.

Cuyda que estara Syenpre de una color, E que non abaxara El de aquel valor.

Como el pesce en el rrio Vicioso e rryendo, Non sabe el sandio La red que l va texendo.

Mas omen entendido Sabio por byen que l vaya, Non le puede fazer el mundo Bien con que plazer aya.

Rescelando del mundo E de sus cambiamientos, E de como a menudo Se cambia los sus vientos.

Sabe que la ryqueza Pobreza es su cima, E sola alteza Yaze fonda cima.

Ca el mundo conosce, E que su buena obra Muy ayna fallesçe E se pasa como sonbra.

Quanto es el estado Mayor de su medyda Ha omen mas cuydado Teniendo la cuyda.

Quanto mas cae de alto Tanto peor se fiere, Quanto mas bien ha, tanto Mas teme, sy se pyerde.

Al que por llano anda Non tyene que se desçender; El que non tyene nada Non recela perder.

Erfuerço en dos cosas Non puede omen tomar, Tanto son dubdosas El mundo e la mar.

El bien non es seguro, Tan ciertos son sus cambios; Non es su plazer puro Con sus malos rresabios.

Torrna su detenencia La mar mansa muy braua; E el mundo oy despreçia Al que ayer honrraua.

Por ende el grant estado Ha omen de saber; Fazelo beuyr cuytado E tristeza auer.

El omen que es onbre Syempre byue cuytado; De rryco es pobre, Nunca le mengua cuydado.

El afan del fidalgo Sufre en sus cuydados, E el uyllano largo Afan en su costados.

El omen presçiado Non es mas quel muerto, E el rryco es guerreado Non teniendo tuerto.

Del omen uyuo dizen Las gentes sus maldades, E desque muerte fazen Cuenta de sus bondades.

Quando pro non le terrna Loanlo vien la gente, De lo que le non verna Bien danle largamente.

Et quando es byuo callan Con çelo todos quantos Byenes ha en el, e fallan Desque mueren dos tantos.

Que myentra byuo fuere Syenpre le cresçeran celosos, E mengua desque mueren E cresçen mintrosos.

Quien de sus mānas quiere Ser enderesçado E guardado quesyere Ser bien de pecado,

Nunca jamas faga Escondydamente Cosa que l’pesara, Que lo sepan la gente.

Poridat, que querria Encobrir de enemigo, Non la descubra Tan poco al amigo;

Que puede ocasionar, Fyando de amigo, Que se podra tornar Con saña enemigo.

Que por poca contyenda Se canbian los talantes, E sabran su fasyenda Omens que querria antes.

Moryr quebrantado Oviese el su fecho, E rrepentyr sea quando Non le tterna prouecho.

Si esto que a el Otro amigo suyo, E el, fyando del, Descobrir sea lo tuyo.

Et el amor del tuyo No le aprouecha[ra], Pues quel amygo suyo Tu fasyenda sabra;

Ca, puesto que non venga Daño por el prymero, Non se que pro te tenga, Pues lo sabe el terçero.

Enxemplo es tercero Que lo que saben tres Es ya pleyto plazero Sabelo toda rey. [sic]

Demas es grant denuesto E fealdat e mengua; Su corazon angosto, E larga la su lengua.

Son las buenas costunbres Ligeras de nonbrar, Mas son pocos los omens Que las saben obrar.

Seria muy buen omen El que sopiese obrar Tanto buena costunbre, Que sabria yo non obrar.

Todo omen non es Para dezyr e fazer; E asi como alguna vez En las contar plazer

Pesar tomo despues, Por que las se nonbrar Tan byen que cunple pues Non las se obrar.

Entregome en nonbrallas, Como sy las sopiese Obrar, e encontrallas Como sy las sopiese;

Syn las obrar dezyrlas, Sy a my pro non tyen, Algunos en oyrlas Aprenderan algunt byen.

Non dezyr nin fazer, Non es cosa loada; Quanto quier de plazer Mas vale algo que nada.

Non tengas por vil omen Por que pequenno quel veas, Nin escryuas tu nonbre En carta que non leas.

De lo que tu querras Ffazer al tu enemygo, Deso te guardaras Mas que del te castyllo.

Ca por le enpesçer Te torrnas en mal, quanto Non te podra nasçer Del enemigo tanto.

Todo el tu cuydar Prymero e mediano Sea en byen guardar Luego a ty de mano.

Et desque ya pusyeres Byen en saluo lo tuyo, Entonçes sy quisyeres Piensa en daño suyo.

Fasta que puesto aya En saluo su rreyno, El rrey cuerdo non vaya Guerrear el ageno.

Lo que ayna quisyeres Fazer, faz de vagar; Ca sy priesa tu dyeres Convyene enbargar.

Por enderesçar errança Nascera del quexarte, E sera tu tardança Mas por apresurarte.

Quien rrebato senbro Cojo rrepetymiento, Quien con sosyego obro Acabo su talento.

Nunca omen perdio Cosa por la sufrençia, E quien priesa se dio Rrescebio rrepentençia.

De peligro e mengua Sy quisyeres ser quito, Guardate de tu lengua E mas de tu espirito.

De una fabla conquista Puede nasçer e muerte; E de una sola vista Cresçer grant amor fuerte.

Pero lo que fablares Sy en escrito no des, Sy tu pro fallares, Negar lo has despues.

Negar lo que se dize, Han vezes, han lugar; Mas sy escryto yaze Non se puede negar.

La palabra a poca Sazon es oluidada, E la escritura fynca Para syenpre guardada.

E la rraçon que, puesta Non yaçe en escryto, Tal es como saeta, Que non llega al tyro.

Los unos de una guisa Dizen, los otros de otra, Nunca de su pesquisa Vyene cierta obra.

De los que y estouyeron Pocos se acordaran; De como lo oyeron Non concertaran.

Sy quier braua sy pransa, La palabra es tal Como sombra que pasa, E non dexa señal.

Non ha lança que pase Todas las armaduras, Nin que tanto traspase Como las escrituras.

Que la saeta lança Fasta un çierto fyto, E la letra alcança De Burgos a Egibto.

Que la saeta fyere Al byuo, que se syente, E la letra conquiere En vida e en muerte.

La saeta non llega Sy non al que es presente, E la escrytura llega Al de allende Oryente.

De saeta defyende A omen el escudo, E de letra non puede Defender todo el mundo.

A cada plazer ponen Los sabios un sygnado Tienpo, e desde ende vyenen Todauia menguado.

Plazer de nueuo paño Quanto un mes despues; Toda via han daño, Fasta que rroto es.

Un año cosa nueva En quanto la llauilla, Es flor blanca fasta que llueua E torrna amarylla.

Demas que es natura Del omen enojarse, De lo que mucho tura E con ello quexarse

Por tal demudar cosa Nueua de cada dia, Por poco la fermosura Por fea canbiaria.

Plazer que toma omen Con quien byen lo entyende, Mejor plazer omen Tomar nunca puede.

Pues la cosa non sabe Con que a mi plaze, Que ture o que acabe, Dello fuera non faze;

Mas la que entendyere Que dello aplazer Fara quanto podyere Por la fazer cresçer.

Por aquesto fallesce El plazer corporal, E el que syempre cresce Es el espirytual.

Tristeza ya non syento Que mas me faz quemar, Que plazer que so cierto Que se ha de acabar.

Turable plazer puedo Dezyr del buen amygo; Lo que me dyz entyendo E el lo que yo digo.

Muy grant plazer en que Me entyende me faz, E mas por que ese que Del my bien le plaz.

Aprendo toda via Del buen entendimiento, E el de mi cada dia Nuevo departimiento.

El sabio, que de glosas Ciertas fazer non queda, Dize, que, de las cosas Que son de una manera

Et en el mundo, non auia; Nin sobre fyerro, oro; E en grande mejorya Commo ha un omen sobre otro?

Ca el mejor cauallo En el mundo non val cierto, E un omen diz fallo Que vale de otros un ciento.

Onça de mejoria Del oro espiritual Comptar non se podria Con quanto el mundo val.

Todos los corporales Syn entendimiento, Mayormente metales, Que non ha sentymiento;

Todas sus mejorias Podrian poco montar, E en muy pocos dias Non se puede descontar.

Las cosas de syn lengua E syn entendymiento, Su plazer va á mengua E a fallescimiento.

Desque a desdezyr Su conpustura venga, Non sabe dezyr Cosa que la mantenga.

Por esto el plazer Del omen crescer deue En dezyr e en fazer Cosa que lo rremueue.

El omen de metales Dos es confaçionado, Metales desyguales Uno vyl e otro honrrado.

El uno terenal, E el bestia semeja, E el otro celestial, Angeles le apareja.

Et en que come e beue Semeja alymalia; Asi byue et muere Commo bestia syn falla.

Et en el mundo entendimiento Commo el angel es; Non ha deprymento Sy por cuerpo non fues.

Que, en preso de un dinero, Ha mas de un entendimiento; Por aquello señero Vale un omen por cierto.

Ca, de aquel cabo tyene Todo su byen el omen; De aquella parte le vyene Todo buena costunbre,

Mesura e franqueza, Bueno seso e saber, Cordura e sympleza, E las cosas saber.

Del otro cabo nasçe Toda la mala maña, E por ally cresçe La cobdiçia e saña.

De ally le vyene malicia E la mala verdat, Forrniçio e dolencia E toda enfermedat.

Et engaños en arte E mala entynçio, Que trunca Dios a parte En la mala cobdiçia.

Por ende non fallesçe Plazer de compañia, E de omens sabios creçe E va a mejoria.

Plaze a omen con ellos E a ellos con el; Entyende el a ellos E ellos tan byen a el.

Porque aquesta conpaña De omen entendido, Alegria tamaña Non ha en el mundo.

Pero amigo claro, Leal, e verdadero, Es de fallar muy caro; Non se falla a dynero.

Omen es grande de topar En conplision egual, De fallar en su par Buen amigo leal.

Amigo de la buena Andança quando cresçe Luego asy se torna, Quando ella fallesçe.

Amigo quanto loar De bien que no fezyste, Non deues del fiar El mal que tu obraste.

Afeartelo han En pos ty çierto seas, Pues tu costunbre han De lysonjar byen creas.

Por lysonjar te quien Te dixere de otry mal, A otros atan byen Dira de ty al.

El omen lysonjero Miente a cada uno, Ca amor verdadera Non ha con ninguno.

Anda joyas faziendo De mal deste a este, Mal de uno dezyendo Fara al otro presente.

Tal omen nunca acojas Jamas en tu conpañia, Que con las sus lysonjas A los omens engañan.

Quien una hermandat Aprenderla quisyera, E una amistad, Usar sabor oviera,

Syempre mientes deuia Meter en las tyseras; Dellas aprenderian Muchas buenas maneras.

Et quando meto mientes Cosas tan derechas, Non fallo entre las gentes Como son las tyseras.

Paren al que las parten Et non por se vengar, Synon con grant talante Que ha de se juntar.

Como en rio quedo El que metyo entrellas Dentro el su dedo, Metio entre dos muelas.

Quien mal trahe dellas El mesmo ge lo busca, Que de grado dellas Non lo buscaran nunca.

Desque de entre ellas sal Tanto son pagadas; Que nunca fazen mal En quanto son juntadas.

Yaze boca con boca E manos sobre manos; Tan semejados nunca Yo vy dos hermanos.

Tan grande amor ovieron Leal e verdadero, Que amas se ouyeron En un solo çintero.

Por amor de estar en uno Syempre aman á dos; Por fazer de dos uno Fazen de uno dos.

Non ha mejor rriqueza Que buena hermandat, Nin tan mala pobreza Commo la soledat.

La soledat aduce Mal pensamiento fuerte; Por ende el sabio dize, Conpañia o muerte;

Porque tal podria Ser la soledat, Que mas que ella valdria Esta es la verdat.

Mal es la soledat; Mas peor es conpaña De omen syn verdat, Que a omen engaña.

Peor conpañia destas Es omen torpe pesado; Querria traer a cuestas Albarda mal de su grado.

Mueuo pleytesia Por tal que me dexase; Digol que non querria, Que por mi se estoruasse.

Yd uos en ora buena A ubrar vuestra fazyenda, Quiça que pro alguna Vos verna a la tienda.

El diz, por bien non tenga Dios que solo fynquedes, Fasta que alguno venga Otro con quien fabledes.

El cuyda que plazer Me faze su conpaña, E yo querria mas yazer Solo en la montaña;

Yazer en la montaña A peligro de syerpes, Que non entre conpañas De omens pesados torpes.

El cuydaua que yrse Seria demesurado, E yon temo caerse Con nusco el sobrado.

Ca de los sus enojos Esto ya tan cargado, Que, fasta en mis ojos, Son mas que el pesado.

El medio mal seria Sy el callar quisyera; Yon del cuenta faria Como sy un poste fuese.

Non dexaria nunca Lo que me plaze aydar, Mas el razones busca Para nunca quedar.

No le cumple dezyr juntas Quantas vanidades cuyda, Mas el fare preguntas Nesçias aquel rrecuyda;

E querria ser muerto Ante que le rresponder, E querria ser sordo Antes que lo entender.

Cierto es par de muerte La soledat; mas tal Conpañia como esta, Estar solo mas val.

Sy mal es estar solo, Peor es tal conpañia; E bien cumplido dolo Fallar quien lo podria.

Non ha del todo cosa Mala nin toda una, Mas que sayan fermosura Que en fea agena.

Omen non cobdiciaua Synon lo que tyene, E luego lo despreçia Desque a mano le vyene.

Ssuma de la rrazon Non ha en el mundo cosa, Que non l’ aya ssazon, Quier fea o fermosa.

Peor lo que es omens Todos en general, Lo que de las costunbres Es lo comunal.

Mal es mucho fablar Mas peor es ser mudo; Ca non fue por callar La lengua, segunt cuydo.

Pero la mejoria Del callar non podemos Negar de todavia; Convien que la tomemos.

Por que la myatad de Quando oyamos fablemos, Una lenga (sic) por ende E dos orejas auemos.

Que en mucho que en fablar Syn grant sabiduria, Cierto en se callar Mejor baratarya.

El sabio que loar El callar byen querria E el fablar afear, Esta razon dezya:

Ssi fuese el fablar De plata figurado, Seria el callar De oro debuxado.

De byenes del callar La pas una de ciento, De males de fablar El mejor es el riebto.

E dize mas, a buelta De mucha mejoria, E el callar syn esta Sobre el fablar auia;

Sus orejas faryan Pro solamente a el, De su lengua auyan Pro los otros, e non el.

Contesce al que escuchan, Aun quando yo fablo, Del byen se aprouechan E rreutamelo malo.

El sabio, por aquesta Razon, callar querria, Por que su fabla presta Solo al que lo oya;

Et querria castigarse En otro el callando, Mas que castigarse Otro, en el fablando.

Las bestias han afan E mal por nō fablar; E los omēs lo han Los mas por nō callar.

El callar tiempo nō pierde, E pierdelo ē fablar; Por ende omē nō puede Perder por el callar.

El calla razon, Que le cūpliera fablar; Nō mēgua sazon Que perdio por callar.

Mas quien fabla rrazon Que deueria callar, Perdio ya la sazon Que nō podra cobrar.

Lo que oy se callare Puedese cras fablar, E lo que oy se fablare, Nō se puede callar.

Lo dicho dicho es, Lo que dicho nō es Dezyr lo has despues, Si oy nō, sera cras.

De fabla, que podemos Nīgunt mal afear, Es la que despendemos En loar el callar.

Por que sepamos Que nō ha mal syn byen, E byen que mal digamos; A par dello convyen.

Pues que tanto denostado El fablar ya abemos, Semejante guisado De oy mas que lo leemos.

E pues tanto avemos Loado el callar, Sus males cōtaremos, Loando el fablar.

Con el fablar dezymos Mucho bien del callar, Callando nō podemos Dezyr byen del fablar.

Por ende es derecho Que sus byenes contemos, Ca byenes ha de fecho, Por que nō lo denostemos.

Porque todo omē vea, Que en el mundo cosa Non ha del todo fea, Nī del todo fermosa.

Et el callar jamas Del todo nō leemos, Sy nō fablemos, mas Que vestias nō valemos.

Sy los sabios callaran, El saber se perderya; Sy ellos nō fablaran, Disçiplo no ovyeran.

Del fablar escryvamos, Por ser el muy noble, Aun que pocos fallamos Que lo sepan comō cūple.

Mas el que sabe byen Fablar, nō ha tal cosa, Que diz lo que cōvyen, E lo demas es cosa.

Por bien fablar, hōrrado Era en toda plaça; Por el sera nōbrado, E ganara andança.

Por razonarse bien Sera omē amado; E sy salario tyen, Los omēs a mandado.

Cosa que menos cuesta E que tanto pro tenga, Nō como rrespuesta Cōtra o lengua

Nō han tan fuerte gigante Como la luengua (sic) tyerra, Aunque asy qbrante A la saña la pierna.

Ablanda la palabra Buena la dura cosa, A la voluntad agra Far dulçe e sabrosa

Sy termyno obyese El fablar mesurado, Que dezyr nō podiese, Sy nō lo guysado?

En el mundo nō avria Cosa tan presçiada, La su grant mejoria Nō podrya ser conplida.

Mas porque ha poder De mal se rrazonar, Por eso el su perder Es mas que el ganar.

Que los torpes, mill tantos Son los que los entendidos, E nō saben en qntos Peligros son caydos.

Por el fablar por ēde Es el callar loado, Mas por el q entyēde Mucho es denostado.

Ca el q aperçebyr Se sabe en fablar, Sus byenes escreuir En tablas nō podran.

El fablar es clareza, E el callar escureza; E el fablar es frāqueza, Et el callar escuseza.

Et el fablar ligereza, E el callar pereza; Et el fablar es franqueza, El callar pobreza.

Et el callar torpedat, El fablar saber; El callar ceguedat, E el fablar vista aver.

Cuerpo es de callar, E el saber su alma; Omē es fablar Et el callar su cama.

El callar es tardada, E el fablar ayna; El saber es espada, Et el callar su vayna.

Talega es el callar, Et algo que yaze En ella es el fablar, E prouecho nō faze.

En quanto encerrado En ella estudiere, Non sera mas hōrrado Por ello cuyo fuere.

El callar es nīguno Que nō meresçe nōbre, E el fablar es algo Et por el es omē hōbre.

Figura es el fablar Al callar, e asy Nō sabe el callar De otro, nī de ssy.

El fablar sabe byen El callar razonar, Que mal guisado tyen De lo gualardonar.

Tal es en toda costūbre, Sy byen parares miētes, Fallaras en todo onbre Que loes et que denuestes.

Segunt que el rayz tyen, El arbon asy cresçe; Qual es el omē e quien, En sus obras paresçe.

Qual talante ovyere Tal rrostro mostrara, E como sesudo fuere Tal palabra oyra.

Syn tacha son falladas Dos costūbres cruētas, A mas son ygualadas Que nō han cōprimentas.

La una es el saber, E la otra es el bien fazer; Qualquier destas aver Es cōplido plazer.

De todo quanto fase El ome se arrepiente, Con lo que oy le plase Cras toma mal talāte.

El plaçer de la sciencia Es complido plaçer, Obra sin rependencia Es la del bien facer.

Quanto mas aprendio Tanto mas plaçer tiene, Nunca se arrepintio Ome de plaçer bien.

Ome que cuerdo fuere, Siempre se resçelara; Del gran bien que oviere Mucho nol fincara.

Ca el grant bien se puede Perder por culpa de hombre, E el saber nol defiende De al fī non [de] ser pobre.

Ca el bien que dello Fisiere, le fincara, E para siempre aquello Guardado estara.

E fucia non ponga Jamas en su algo, Por mucho que lo tenga Bien parado e largo.

Por rason que en el mundo Han las cosas zozobras, Fase mucho amenudo Contrarias cosas de otras.

Cambiase como el mar De abrego á cierzo, Non puede ome tomar En cosa del esfuerzo.

Non deve fiar sol Un punto de su obra, Veses lo pon al sol E veses a la sombra.

Todavia, por cuanto La rueda se trastorna El su bien, el zapato Fas igual de corona.

De la sierra al val, De la nube al abismo, Segunt lo pone val Como letra de guarismo.

Sol claro e plasentero Las nubes façen escuro; De un dia entero Non es ome seguro.

El ome mas non bal, Nin monta su persona De bien e asi de al, Como la espera trastorna.

El ome que abiltado Es en su descendida, Asi mesmo honrrado Es en la subida.

Por eso amenudo El ome entendido A los cambios del mundo Es a bien apercebido.

Non temer apellido Los omes apercebidos, Mas val un apercebido Que muchos anchalidos.

Ome cuerdo non puede Cuando entronpezare Otre que tome alegria De su pesar pues ome.

Seguro non ha que tal A el non acaesca, Nin se alegre del mal Que a otre se acontesce.

De haber alegria Sin pesar nunca cuide, Como sin noche dia Jamas haber non puede.

La merced de Dios sola Es la fusia cierta, Otra ninguna dola En el mundo que non mienta.

De lo que a Dios plase Nos pesar non tomemos, E bien es cuanto face E nos nol lo entendemos.

Al ome mas le dio E de mejor mercado, De lo que entendio Que le era mas forzado.

De lo que mas aprovecha, De aquello mas habemos, Pan e del agua mucha E del ayre tenemos.

Todo ome de verdat E bueno estuptor De contar la bondat De su buen servidor.

Cuando serviese por prescio O por buen gualardon, Mayormente servicio Que lo serviendo merescio.

Por ende un servicial De que mucho me prescio, Quiero tanto es leal Contar el su bollicio.

Ca debdor so forzado Del gran bien conoscer, Que me han adelantado Sin gelo merescer.

Non podria nombrar, Nin sabria en un año Su servicio contar, Cual es cuan estraño.

Sirve boca callando, Sin faser grandes nuevas, Servicio muy granado Es sin ningunas bielmas.

Cosa maravillosa E milagro muy fiero, Sin le decir yo cosa Fase cuanto quiero.

Con el ser yo mudo, Non me podria noscir, Ca fas quanto quiero, Sin gelo yo desir.

Non desir e faser, Es servicio loado, Con que tome plaser Todo ome granado.

Ca en quanto ome ē desir, Tanto ha mengua Del faser, e fallescer La mano por la lengua.

Leyendo e pensando Siempre en mi servicio, Non gelo yo nombrādo Fase quanto cobdicio.

Esta cosa mas ayna Que del ninguna nasce, Nin quier capa nin saña, Nin zapato que calze.

Tal qual salio Del vientre de su madre, Tal anda en mi servicio, En todo lo que el mande.

E ningunt gualardon Non quiere por su trabajo, Mas quiere servicio en don, Es sin ningunt trabajo.

Non quier manjar comer, Sy non la boca Un poquillo mojar En gota de agua poca.

E luego que la gosta, Semejal que tien carga, E esparse la gota Jamas della non traga.

Non ha ojos, nin ve Cuanto en corazon tengo, E sin orejas lo oye, E tal lo fase luego.

Callo yo e el calla, E amos non fablamos; En callando non fabla, Lo que amos buscamos.

Non quier ningun embargo De comer rescebir, De su afan es largo Para buenos servir.

Si me plase o pesa, Si fea o fermosa, Tal mesma la fase, Qual yo pienso la cosa.

Vesino de Castilla Por la su entencion, Sabrá el de Sevilla En la su cobdicion.

Las igentes han acordado Despagarse del non, Mas de cosa tan pagado Non so yo como del non.

Del dia que preguntado Ove a mi señora, si non Habia otro amado, Sy non yo, dije que non.

E syn fuego ome vida Un punto non habria, E sin fierro guarida Jamas non fallaria.

Mil tanto mas de fierro Que de oro fallamos, Por que salvos de yerro Unos de otros seamos.

Del mundo mal desimos, E en el otro mal Non han, si non nos mismos Nin vestijelos siñal.

El mundo non tien ojo, Nin entiende faser. A un ome enojo E a otro plaser.

Rason a cada uno Segunt la su fasienda, El non ha con ninguno Amistad contienda.

Nin se paga, nin se ensaña, Nin ama, nin desama, Nin ha ninguna maña, Nin responde, nin llama.

El es uno todavia Cuanto es denostado, A tal como el dia Que es mucho loado.

El vicio razonable Vien e tenlo por amigo, La cuita lo baldona E tienlo por enemigo.

Non se fallan ningunt Canbio los sabidores, Los canbios son segunt Los sus rrecebidores.

La espera del cielo Nos fase que nos mesce, Mas amor nin celo De cosa non le cresce.

So un cielo todavia Encerrados yacemos, E fasemos noche é dia E nos a el non sabemos.

A esta lueñe tierra Nunca posimos nombre, Si verdat es o mentira, Della mas non sabe ome.

E ningunt sabidor Non le sopo u ombre cierto, Sy non que obrador Es de su cimiento.

De Dios vida al Rey, Nuestro mantenedor, Que mantiene la ley E es defendedor.

Gentes de su tierra Todas a su servicio Traiga, e aparte guerra Della, mal e bollicio.

E la mercet que el noble Su padre prometio, La terrna como cumple Al Santob el Judio.

Aqui acaba el Rab Don Santob. Dios sea loado.

* * * * *

In all three of the inedited poems contained in this Appendix, and especially in that of the Rabbi Santob, are mistakes and false readings, that have arisen directly from the imperfections of the original manuscripts. Many of them are obvious, and could have been corrected easily; but it has not seemed to me that a foreigner should venture into a field so peculiarly national. I have confined myself, therefore, to such a punctuation of each poem as would make it more readily intelligible,--leaving all further emendations, and all conjectural criticism and illustration, to the native scholars of Spain. To them, and to the loyal patriotism for which they have always been distinguished, I earnestly commend the agreeable duty of editing, not only what is here published for the first time, but the “Rhymed Chronicle of Fernan Gonzalez,” the “Rimado de Palacio” of the great Chancellor Ayala, the “Aviso para Cuerdos” of Diego Lopez de Haro, the works of Juan Alvarez Gato, and other similar monuments of their early literature, of which I have already spoken, but which, existing sometimes, like the “Poema de José,” only in a single manuscript, and rarely in more than two or three, may easily be lost for ever by any one of the many accidents that constantly endanger the existence of all such literary treasures.

INDEX.

INDEX.

The Roman numerals refer to the volume, and the Arabic figures to the page; d. means died; f., flourished; n., notes; and c., for circa, signifies that the year indicated is uncertain.

A.

Aarsens de Somerdyck, Travels, II. 345.

Abarbanel, by the Inca Garcilasso, III. 156.

Abderrahman of Córdova, III. 375.

Abril, Simon, translations, II. 30.

Academia de Barcelona, III. 224.

Academia de Buen Gusto, III. 251.

Academia de la Lengua Española, founded, III. 216. Its Dictionary, 217. Abridgment of it, 220. Its orthography, 220. Its Grammar, 221. Its other labors, 223, III. 418.

Academia de los Nocturnes, II. 283 and n.

Academia Real de la Historia, I. 47, 49, n., III. 224.

Academias, after the Italian fashion, III. 223.

Academias of Polo, III. 106, n.

Acosta, Christóval de, f. 1578. His works, III. 175.

Actors, kinds of, II. 332, n. Improvisated sometimes, 253, n. Condition and numbers, 433. The more distinguished, 434, III. 340. Paid daily, II. 436, n.

Actresses, perform men’s parts, II. 435, n.

Acuña, Fernando de, d. 1580. Life and works, I. 497-500. On Universal Empire, 459, n. Blank verse of, 481, n. Poems, with Silvestre’s, 506.

Addison, J., dedication of his Works, II. 99.

Adenés, Ogier le Danois, I. 219. Cleomades, 245, n.

Adorno, Espinel, f. 1620. Premio de la Constancia, III. 51.

Adrien, Cardinal, Grand Inquisitor and Pope, I. 464.

Advenant, Maria L’, actress, III. 340.

Agreda y Vargas, Diego de, f. 1620. Tales, III. 102.

Aguas Santas, Nuestra Señora de, by Diaz, II. 474.

Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio of Gracian, III. 192.

Aguiar, Diego de, f. 1621. Tercetos en Latin Congruo, III. 385, n.

Aguilar, Alonzo de, in Hita’s Guerras Civiles, III. 81. In Mendoza, I. 524.

Aguilar, Gaspar de, dramatist, f. 1623, II. 280-283. Friend of Lope, II. 128.

Aguilar, Juan Bautista, poet, f. 1680, II. 550, n.

Agustin, Antonio, f. 1560. Letters, III. 129.

Aimeric de Bellinoi, Troubadour, I. 44, n.

Aimeric de Peguilan, Troubadour, I. 311.

Alarcon, Ruiz de, d. 1639. Dramas, II. 319-323.

Alarcos, Count, ballad on, I. 127. Dramas on, 127, n.

Albigenses, war of, I. 312 and n. Poem on, 313 and n.

Albornoz, Carillo de, f. 1364, I. 348.

Alcahuetas, what, I. 80, n.

Alcalá, University of, I. 473.

Alcalá, Gerónymo de. See Yañez.

Alcalá y Herrera, Alonso de, f. 1641. Tales, III. 109 and n.

Alcalde de Zalamea, by Calderon, II. 212, n., 367, n., 389, n.

Alcazar, Baltazar de, d. 1606. Poet, II. 533 and n.

Alciatus, Emblemata, III. 22.

Aldana, Cosmé de, f. 1586, II. 487, 488, n.

Aldana, Francisco de, d. 1590. Didactic poetry, III. 19.

Aldeanos Críticos of Isla, III. 266, n.

Alderete, Pablo, edits part of Quevedo’s works, II. 260.

Aldi, patronized by Diego de Mendoza, I. 514.

Alegoría, La, of Boscan, I. 484.

Alegría Cómica of Castro, III. 316, n.

Aleman, Mateo, f. 1609, III. 59. Letter to Cervantes, 59, n. Guzman de Alfarache, 60. Ortografía, 188, 220, 221, n. San Antonio de Padua, 221, n.

Alexander the Great, Lorenzo Segura’s poem on, 156. A favorite subject of verse, 58.

Alexandra of Lupercio Leon de Argensola, II. 33.

Alfarache. See Guzman de.

Alfonso, ó Fundacion de Portugal, III. 225.

Alfonso ii. of Aragon, d. 1196, I. 311.

Alfonso iii. of Aragon, d. 1291, I. 322.

Alfonso iv. of Aragon, d. 1336, I. 323.

Alfonso v. of Aragon, d. 1458, I. 329, 334, 350.

Alfonso vii. of Castile, Fueros de Avilés, III. 382.

Alfonso viii. of Castile, in Lope de Vega’s Jerusalem, II. 143 and 144, n.

Alfonso ix. of Castile, d. 1214. Connected with Provençal poets, I. 324.

Alfonso x. of Castile, el Sabio, or the Wise, d. 1284, I. 35. Connected with the Troubadours, 35, n., 324. Life of, 35-38. Letter to Alonso Perez de Guzman, 36-38. List of his works, 39, n. His Cántigas, 39, 42. His Querellas, 44. His Tesoro, 44. His translation of the Bible, 45. His Ultramar, 45. The Fuero Juzgo, 47. Espejo, 49. Fuero Real, 49. Siete Partidas, 49. Opúsculos Legales, 49, n. The Chrónica General, 158. Ballad on, III. 28. Arabic schools of, 379. Influence on the Spanish language, 387. Establishes the Castilian, I. 551 and n.

Alfonso xi. of Castile, d. 1350. His Monteria, I. 76. Poetical chronicle of his reign, 77, 78, n. Enforces the Partidas, 50.

Alfonso el Sabio, or the Wise. See Alfonso x.

Algiers, Cervantes’s captivity in, II. 57. Account of, by Haedo, 58, 59, n. Slavery in, influences Spanish fiction, III. 39, 79; and drama, II. 419, n.

Aliaga, Luis de, supposed to be Avellaneda, II. 110.

Alivios de Cassandra of Castillo Solorzano, III. 108.

Almela, Diego de, f. 1472. Valerio de las Historias, I. 418.

Alonso, Agustin, f. 1585, II. 477.

Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos, of Yañez y Rivera, III. 71.

Alphonsus, Petrus, f. 1106, I. 70, n.

Alromi, who, III. 384.

Altamira, Pedro de, dramatist, II. 5.

Altamira, Viscount, I. 435, 436.

Alva, Antonio, Duke of, patron of Lope de Vega, II. 124, 125 and n.

Alva, Fernando, Duke of, and the Inquisition, I. 467. Taught by Boscan, 480. Not in Lope’s Arcadia, II. 124. Causes Luis de Granada’s works to be printed, III. 178, n.

Alvares, Joam, Chronicle, II. 377.

Alvarez y Baena. See Baena.

Alvaro de Luna. See Luna.

Alvarus Cordubensis, III. 378.

Amadis de Gaula, I. 221. Portuguese original lost, 223. Spanish by Montalvo, 223. Its great success, 224. Its character, 225-230. The romances of the family of Amadis, 231-234. Admired by Tasso, 230, n.; by Diego de Mendoza, 514.

Amadis de Gaula, a play of Vicente, II. 4.

Amadis of Greece, romance of chivalry, I. 233.

Amador de los Rios, translation of Sismondi on Spanish Literature, I. 34, n. His Judios de España, 88, n.

Amante Generoso of Cervantes, II. 86.

Amantes de Teruel of Montalvan, II. 301-304; of Tirso de Molina, 302, n.; of Artieda, ib. See Salas.

Amar despues de la Muerte of Calderon, II. 360, 364.

Amar y Borbon, Maria, III. 430.

Amarilis of Figueroa, III. 51.

Amat, Felix Torres de, Autores Catalanes, I. 310, n.

Amaya, Juan Francisco de, on Góngora, II. 526.

America, early accounts of, I. 556. Poems on, II. 467.

American Indian words in Spanish, I. 548.

Amescua. See Mira de Mescua.

Amigo Amante y Leal of Calderon, II. 360.

Amirola, Eugenio de Llaguno, editor of different books, I. 197, n., 395, 401, n., III. 398.

Amor Enamorado of Villalpando, II. 483.

Amphryso, poetical name of Antonio, Duke of Alva, II. 128, n.

Amphytrion of Plautus, by Villalobos, I. 533.

Anacreon by Quevedo, II. 275, n. Imitated by Villegas, II. 543.

Anaxarete of Gallegos, II. 541, n.

Anaxartes, romance of chivalry, I. 233.

Ancient manners and modern confounded, I. 56.

Ancient measures imitated in Spanish, II. 543.

Andrada, Pedro Fern. de, f. 1599. Libro de la Gineta, III. 188.

Andres, Giovanni, on the origin of modern poetry, III. 374. On Cultismo, 428.

Andromeda, La, of Lope de Vega, II. 155.

Anélier, Guillaume, Troubadour, I. 314.

Angélica, Hermosura de, of Lope de Vega, II. 130, 137-139.

Angélica. See Lagrimas de Angélica.

Anonymous poetry of the earliest age, I. 27.

Añorbe, Thomas de, f. 1740. Dramas, III. 316 and n.

Antenor, El, of Montengon, III. 283, n.

Antes que todo es mi Dama of Calderon, II. 360, 382.

Antillon, Isidro, on the Amantes of Teruel, II. 485, n.

Antonio, Nicolas, d. 1684. Notice of, and of his works, I. 239. Historias Fabulosas, III. 153, n. Letters, 136.

Antonio de Padua, San, by Aleman, III. 221, n.

Antruejo of Enzina, I. 279 and n.

Anzarena, Christóval, his Don Quixote, III. 421.

Anzuelo de Fenisa, El, of Lope de Vega, II. 190.

Apollonius, Book of, 13th cent., I. 24. Tale of, by Timoneda, III. 97, n.

Apolo y Clymene of Calderon, II. 389.

Apontes, edition of Calderon’s Comedias, II. 343.

Aposentos, what, II. 438, 439, n., III. 315.

Arabic characters used in Spanish manuscripts, I. 95 and n., III. 201, n.

Arabic language, prevalence of, in Spain, III. 377-379. Infusion into the modern Spanish, 380.

Arabs, invasion of Spain, III. 373: Glory of their empire, 374. Influence on modern cultivation, 374. On Christian Spanish culture, 375. Christians live among them, 376 and n. Muçarabes, 377 and n.

Aragon, History of, by Zurita, III. 139; by Argensola, 140, n.

Aragones, Juan, anecdotes by, III. 97, n.

Aranda, Luis de, Commentary on Manrique, I. 409.

Aranda, patronage of the drama, III. 320, n.

Aranjuez, revolution begins at, III. 345.

Araucana of Ercilla, II. 461. Continued by Osorio, 464. Translations from, by Hayley, 464, n.

Arauco Domado of Oña, II. 466.

Arauco Domado of Lope de Vega, I. 510, n., II. 207, n., 466, n.

Arcadia, Bachiller del, pseudonyme of Diego de Mendoza, I. 519, n.

Arcadia, La, of Lope de Vega, II. 125, III. 49. Eclogue in, II. 168. Tales in, III. 117.

Arcadia, La, of Sannazaro, II. 126.

Archivos de las Indias at Seville, II. 79.

Arellano, Luis de, f. 1634. Avisos para la Muerte, II. 341, n., III. 32.

Argamasilla in La Mancha, II. 80.

Argensolas, brothers, II. 536-539. Their satires, III. 5. Elegies, 9. Epigrams, 15. Didactic poetry, 19.

Argensola, Bartolomé Leonardo, d. 1631, II. 537-539. Resists the old drama, 328. His letters, III. 136. His Anales de Aragon, 140, n. Conquista de las Malucas, 155.

Argensola, Lupercio Leonardo, d. 1613, II. 536-539. His three dramas, 32-34. Resists the old drama, 330.

Argentina, La, of Centenera, II. 469.

Argote de Molina. See Molina.

Arguijo, Juan de, f. 1605, II. 534. Poetical Epistles, III. 6.

Ariosto, his Negromante, II. 21. See Urrea; Bolea; Villena, Garrido de; Alonso, Agustin.

Aristophanes, II. 12, n., 92, n.

Aristotle’s Poetica, translated by the Prince of Viana, III. 168, n.

Armada, Lope de Vega serves in the, II. 129, 130. Góngora’s Ode to, 523.

Armas de la Hermosura, play of Calderon, II. 361, n., 390.

Arnalto y Lucenda, I. 426, n.

Arnaud Plagnés, Troubadour, I. 314.

Arredondo, Gonzalo de, f. 1522, II. 457, n.

Arrieta, Espíritu de Cervantes, II. 88, n.

Arroyal, Leon de, f. 1784. Odas, III. 283, n.

Arteaga, Stefano, Teatro Musicale, II. 426, n., III. 429.

Arteaga. See Paravicino.

Arte Cisoria of Villena, I. 360.

Arte de la Pintura of Céspedes, III. 21.

Arte Nueva de hacer Comedias of Lope de Vega, II. 166.

Arte Poética of Rengifo, III. 236.

Arte de Trobar of Villena, I. 361.

Artemidoro, pseudonyme. See Artieda.

Artes, poet, I. 442, n.

Artes y Muñoz, Rodrigo, poet, f. 1680, II. 550, n.

Arthur and his Round Table, I. 219.

Artieda, Andres Rey de, opposes the old drama, II. 328. His Amantes, 302, n. His didactic poetry, III. 19. See Rey.

Artiga, Fran. Joseph, f. 1725. Eloquencia Española, III. 237.

Ascetic writers, III. 176.

Aschbach, Jos., I. 170, n.

Asneida of Aldana, II. 487.

Asonante, what, I. 112. Character of, 113. Great popularity, 115. English, 114, n.

Astarloa, Apologia, III. 357, n.

Astorga, Marquis of, I. 435.

Astrólogo Fingido of Calderon, II. 342, 382.

Astronomical Tables of Alfonso the Wise, I. 39, n.

Astry, Sir J., translation of Faxardo, III. 185, n.

Atalanta y Hipomenes of Moncayo, II. 483 and n.

Athaulpho of Montiano, III. 317.

Athenæum, Boston, III. 266, n.

Atila Furioso of Virues, II. 29.

Audiences of the theatre in the seventeenth century, II. 437-440. In the eighteenth, III. 325, 341.

Aula de Dios of Dicastillo, III. 23.

Aulnoy, Mad. la Comtesse de, Travels in Spain, II. 352, n., 437, n.

Aurelia of Timoneda, II. 20.

Aurelio y Isabela of Flores, III. 77.

Aurora en Copacabana of Calderon, II. 358, 359.

Auroras de Diana of Castro y Anaya, III. 107.

Austriada of Rufo, II. 493, 494, n.

Authors, relations of, to the Inquisition, I. 451, 461, 462, n., 466, 469.

Auto, what, I. 275, n., II. 227, n.

Autor, what, II. 431. Ridiculed in plays, 431, n.

Autora, what, II. 431, n.

Autos da Fé, first, I. 448. Of Protestants, 465. Popular, III. 205, 206. Refused as a compliment by Philip v., 246. Autos of his time, 248. Last, 257.

Autos Sacramentales, what, II. 226. Antiquity and popularity, 227. Lope de Vega’s, 229-234. Manuscript collection of, 230 and n. Of Montalvan, 305. Of Tirso de Molina, 314. Of Valdivielso, 317. Of Calderon, 344-351. His last work, 339. Of Roxas, 408, n. Prohibited, but not entirely suppressed, II. 351, III. 324. See Farsas del Sacramento.

Avellaneda, Alonso Fernando de, pseudonyme, attack on Cervantes, II. 80, n. His Second Part of Don Quixote, 109-113. Cervantes’s reply to, 111. Translated by Le Sage, III. 269. See Aliaga; Blanco de Paz; Sage, Le.

Avellaneda, Thomas de, f. 1665, defends the drama, II. 394, n.

Avila, a poet, I. 442, n.

Avila, Francisco de, play on Don Quixote, III. 421.

Avila, Gaspar de, his Governador Prudente, I. 510, n., II. 466, n.

Avila, Juan de, d. 1569. Persecuted, I. 466. His Cartas Espirituales, 540 and n., III. 129.

Avila y Heredia, Andres de, defends the theatre, II. 352, n.

Avila y Zuñiga, Luis de, f. 1555. Guerra de Alemaña, III. 142, n.

Avilés, Fueros de, I. 11, 47, n., III. 382, 383 and n.

Avisos para la Muerte, por Luis de Arellano, II. 341, n., III. 32.

Ayala, Iñigo Lopez de, f. 1775. Life of Mendoza, I. 509, n. His Numancia, III. 321.

Ayala, Pedro Lopez de, d. 1407. His Rimado de Palacio, I. 100. His Chronicles, 177-183. Other works, 179. Character, 180. Reads Amadis, 221. Knows Italian literature, 351.

Ayllon, a poet, I. 442, n.

Ayllon, Diego Ximenez, f. 1579. Poem on the Cid, II. 457.

Azara, Joseph Nicolas, Edition of Garcilasso, I. 494, n.

Azémar le Noir, Troubadour, I. 313.

Azero de Madrid, El, of Lope de Vega, II. 181-184.

Azevedo, Alonso de, f. 1615, II. 474.

Azote de su Patria, by Moreto, II. 419, n.

B.

Bacallar y Sanna, Marques de San Phelipe. See Phelipe.

Bachiller de Salamanca, III. 268, n.

Badajoz, Garci Sanchez de, I. 436, 442, n.

Baena, Jos. Ant. Alvarez y, his Hijos de Madrid, I. 205, n.

Baena, Juan Alfonso de, f. 1454. Poet, I. 394. His Cancionero, 428.

Balboa, the discoverer, I. 211.

Balbuena, Bernardo de, d. 1627. His Siglo de Oro, III. 49. Gains a prize in Mexico, II. 151, n. His Bernardo, 479. Lyric poetry, 544. Eclogues. III. 12.

Baldovinos of Cancer, II. 487.

Ballads, English and Scotch, I. 153.

Ballads, national, origin of, I. 108. Form of, 111. Measure of, 111, n. Many taken from old chronicles, 113, n. Their name Romances, 115. Early notices of, 115-118. Lope de Vega’s opinion of their measure, 115, n. Long unwritten, 119. Some in the oldest Cancioneros Generales, 120-125, 438. Multitudes in the Romanceros, 125-129. Connection with the old Chronicles, 127. Not to be arranged by the dates of their composition, 129. Four classes of:-- i. Ballads of Chivalry, 131. Charlemagne, 132. The Paladins, 132. Their great popularity, 134. ii. Historical Ballads, important, 134. Bernardo del Carpio, 135. Fernan Gonzalez, 138. Infantes de Lara, 139. The Cid, 140. iii. Ballads on Moorish subjects, 146. Excess of, 147 and n. iv. Ballads on Manners, 148-152. General character of Spanish ballads, 153. Their nationality, 154. Much cultivated, III. 25. By Sepulveda, 26. Fuentes, 27. Timoneda, 29. Padilla, 30. Cueva, 31. Hita, 31. Hidalgo, 32. Valdivielso, 32. Lope de Vega, II. 127, n., 129, n., 150, n., 225, 247, III. 32-36. Arellano, 32. Roca y Serna, Esquilache, Mendoza, Quevedo, 33. Silvestre, Montemayor, Espinel, Castillejo, Maldonado, Góngora, Arteaga, Pantaleon, Villamediana, Coronel, 35. Cervantes, II. 89, n., III. 36. Ferreira, Rebolledo, Solís, Alarcon, La Chica, 36. Great number of ballads and their great popularity, 35-37. Ballads by Jovellanos, 299. By Moratin, 307. Collections of, 388-396. A good collection still wanted, 396. Ballads used by Lope de Vega, II. 193, n., 206, n., 233 and n., 235, n., 247, 248 and n. By Guillen de Castro, 292, 293. By Valdivielso, 318. Parodied on the stage, 442, 443, 487, n. Ballad measure used in the old drama, I. 115. Ballads used by Lope de Vega in his plays, II. 247, 248. By Montalvan, 306, n. Ballads connected with the old chronicles, I. 137, III. 26. Their loyal spirit, I. 145.

Baltasar, Prince, II. 383, n., 395, n.

Baltasara, Francisca, actress and hermit, II. 435.

Balvas, Antonio, poet, d. 1629, II. 534. Eclogues, III. 13.

Bamba, play on, by Lope de Vega, II. 206.

Banda. See Vanda.

Bandoleros, what, I. 336.

Bandos, what, I. 200.

Bank of Exchange, first, I. 349.

Baños de Argel of Cervantes, II. 91, n.

Barahona de Soto, Luis. See Soto.

Barba, what, II. 240.

Barbadillo. See Salas Barbadillo.

Barbara, Santa, of Guillen de Castro, II. 286.

Barbosa, Arias, I. 473.

Barbosa, Diogo, his Bibliotheca Lusitana, III. 163, n.

Barcelo, Juan, poet, f. 1680, II. 550, n.

Barcelona, Provençal literature in, I. 308. Taken from the Moors, 309, n. Consistory of Poets at, 329. Influence of, 349. See Capmany.

Barcia, d. 1743. His Historiadores, I. 557, n.

Barnuevo, Pedro de Peralta, f. 1732. His Lima Fundada, III. 226.

Barnuevo. See Mosquera.

Baron, El, of Moratin, III. 337.

Baretti, J., publishes Friar Gerund, III. 264.

Barreto, J. V., and Monteiro, J. G., edition of Gil Vicente, I. 284, n.

Barrientos, Lope de, d. 1469, I. 359, n., III. 400.

Barrios, Miguel de, f. 1690. Duels in his plays, II. 393. Dramas, 415. Lyrical poetry, 549. Eclogues, III. 13.

Basque language, III. 357. Unchanged, I. 550. See Biscayans.

Bastida, Mateo de la. Collection of Plays, III. 426.

Batalla Naval of Cervantes, II. 90, n.

Bautismo del Príncipe de Marruecos of Lope de Vega, II. 223.

Bayer, Perez, editor of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Vetus, I. 239, III. 249.

Bayle, what, II. 447, n. Entremesado, ib.

Beaumont and Fletcher, III. 65.

Belando, persecuted, III. 248.

Belardo, poetical name of Lope de Vega, II. 128, n.

Belerma, ballad on, I. 133, n.

Belianis of Greece, romance of chivalry, I. 241.

Belisa, anagram of Isabela, wife of Lope de Vega, II. 129, n.

Bello, Don Andres, on the Asonante, I. 112, n.

Belmonte, Luis, II. 323, 327. Play on the Marquis of Cañete, 466, n. In the Comedias Escogidas, III. 425.

Bembo, his Eclogues, III. 40.

Benamarin, African princes, I. 37, n.

Benavente, Luis Quiñones de, Loas, II. 442.

Benedictina, La, of Bravo, II. 472.

Benegasi y Luxan, J. J., f. 1743. Poems, III. 227.

Berceo, Gonzalo de, f. 1220-1246. Life and works, I. 28-32. His metrical form, 29, n.; and sweet versification, 30, n.

Bermudez, Gerónimo, f. 1589. Dramas, II. 31, 34.

Bermudez de Castro, on Antonio Perez, III. 134, n.

Bernaldez, Andres, El Cura de los Palacios, f. 1513, I. 188.

Bernard de Rovenac, Troubadour, I. 315.

Bernardo del Carpio, ballads on, I. 135. Often taken from the chronicles, 137. Story in Crónica General, 163, n., 164-166. Plays on, II. 206. Poem of Balbuena, 479. See Roncesvalles; Hazañas.

Berriozabal, Juan Manuel de, rifacimento of the Christiada, II. 474, n.

Bertuch, translation of Lope’s Gatomachia, II. 155. Notice of, 269, n.

Bética, La, of Cueva, II. 497.

Bettinelli, Saverio, on Cultismo, III. 427, 430.

Beuve, Sainte, Critiques, II. 102, n.

Bible, translated into Castilian, by order of Alfonso the Wise, I. 39, n., 45. In Provençal, 322. In Catalan, 345, n. In Arabic, III. 378, n.

Biblioteca. See Antonio; Barbosa; Castro; Fuster; Rodriguez; Ximeno.

Bidpai, I. 70, n.

Biedermann, F. B. F., on Don Quixote, III. 419.

Bisbe y Vidal, pseudonyme, Tratado de Comedias, II. 217, n.

Biscay, not conquered by the Romans, III. 365.

Biscayan mountains, refuge of Spanish Christians from the Moors, I. 7.

Biscayans, their character and language, III. 356.

Blakeston, James, translation of Lazarillo, I. 512.

Blanche of Bourbon, Ayala’s account of, I. 181. Ballads on, I. 182, n.

Blanco de Paz, supposed to be Avellaneda, II. 110.

Blank verse of Boscan, I. 480. Notice of Spanish, 481, n. Of Garcilasso, 490.

Blasco, Fran. Hernan., f. 1590, II. 470. Glossary by, III. 217.

Blind Beggars, a Paso of Timoneda, II. 22.

Boba para los Otros of Lope de Vega, II. 189.

Bobo, in Autos, II. 230, n., 244.

Bobo, Un, hace Ciento of Solís, II. 420.

Boccaccio, known in Spain, I. 180. Imitated, III. 97. His Ameto, III. 40.

Bodas de Camacho of Melendez, III. 287, 321.

Boëthius, translated by Villegas, II. 542.

Boiardo. See Villena, Alonso Garrido de.

Bolea, Josef de, a dramatist, f. 1667, II. 396, n.

Bolea, Martin Abarca de, f. 1578, II. 477.

Bologna, University of, I. 348.

Books, forbidden, I. 460. Seized, 461. Effects of intolerance on, 469.

Booksellers, defraud dramatic authors, II. 180, n., 300, 343.

Borja y Esquilache, Prince of. See Esquilache.

Boscan, Juan, f. 1540. Life, I. 477. Intercourse with Navagiero, 478. Scholarship, 480. Works, 482-486. Deserts the Catalan, 341. Translation of Euripides, II. 30, n. His Leandro, 481. His Satire, III. 3. Pastoral verse, 10. Eclogues, 13.

Botelho de Cavalho, Miguel, f. 1622. Pastor de Clenarda, III. 51.

Botelho Moraes. See Moraes.

Bouscal, Guérin de, imitates Spanish plays, II. 285, n.

Bouterwek, F., notice of, and of his History of Spanish Literature, I. 33, n. On Don Quixote, II. 104, n.

Bowle, Letter to Dr. Percy, II. 107. On the date of Cervantes’s death, 77, n. Edition of Don Quixote, III. 418.

Bravo, Nicolas, f. 1604, II. 472.

Breeches, dialogue on, by Lope de Rueda, II. 17. Style in time of Philip ii., 18, n.

Bremont, translates Guzman de Alfarache, III. 65, n.

Breton de los Herreros, Sátiras, II. 439, n.

Briant, Sir Francis, translation from Guevara, I. 545, n.

Bristol, Lord, imitates Calderon, II. 381.

Brocense, El. See Sanchez.

Bruce-Whyte, I. 325.

Buelna, Conde de. See Niño, Pero.

Bueltas, what, II. 547, n.

Buen Placer of Mendoza, III. 18, n.

Buen Retiro, auto of Calderon, II. 396, n.

Bululu, what, II. 332, n.

Bull-fights of Moratin, III. 273.

Bülow, Edward, Celestina in German, I. 272.

Bunsen, Chevalier, III. 358.

Burgos, Diego de, I. 410, n.

Burguillos, Tomé, II. 152, 154, 155, n. III. 6.

Burgundians in Provence, I. 307, 308.

Burlador de Sevilla, play of Tirso de Molina, II. 309.

Buscapié, II. 105, III. 404-415.

Bustamente, edition of Gomara, I. 558.

Bustos, Francisco Gonzalez de, Españoles en Chili, II. 466, n.

Butler’s Hudibras and Don Quixote, III. 421.

Butrago, Lord of, ballad on, I. 145.

Butron, Father, f. 1722. Poem on Sta. Teresa, III. 227, n.

Byron, Lord, Don Juan, II. 310.

C.

Caballero del Febo, romance of chivalry, II. 107, n.

Caballero, Fermin, Pericia Geográfica de Cervantes, II. 87, n.

Caballero Perfeto of Salas Barbadillo, III. 100.

Caballero Puntual of Salas Barbadillo, III. 101.

Caballero Venturoso of Valladares, III. 88.

Caballero y Escudero, Libro del, by D. Juan Manuel, I. 65, n., 69.

Caceres, Francisco de, I. 418.

Caceres, Juan Bautista Felices de, f. 1629, II. 150, n.

Caceres, Pedro de, I. 506.

Cadahalso, José de, d. 1782. Works, III. 275. Dramas, 320. Translation of Young, 320, n. Influence on Melendez, 286.

Cadiz founded, III. 360. Wealth and power, 362.

Caida de Luzbel of Melendez, III. 289; of Valderrabano, 290, n.

Calatayud, Father, denounces the theatre, III. 342.

Calavera, I. 394.

Calaynos, ballad, I. 133.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro de, d. 1681. Birth, II. 333. Name, 333, n. Education, 334. Festivals of San Isidro, 151, 153, 335. A soldier, 336. Patronized by Philip iv., 336. Serves in Catalonia, 337. King’s marriage, 337. Religious brotherhood, 337. Royal chaplain, 338. His death, 339. Monument, 339. Personal appearance and character, 340. His works, II. 340-343 and n. Dramas falsely attributed to him, 342, III. 425. List of his plays, II. 343. His losses by piracy, 343. His Religious Dramas, 351. His Secular Dramas, 360. Characteristics, 361, 388. Carelessness of historical truth, 362. Comedias de Capa y Espada, 381. Sources of his stories, 390. Immorality, 391. Ideas of honor, 392. Duels, 393. Notices of passing events, and flattery, 395. His style and versification, 396. Long success, 398. What he did for the theatre, 399. Character of his dramas, 400-402. Dramas sung, II. 424. His Alcalde de Zalamea, 57, n. Amar despues de la Muerte, II. 364, III. 83. Autos flatter Charles ii., III. 209. Médico de su Honra, I. 183, n. Share in Pastor Fido, III. 50, n. His school, II. 403-429. Lost play on Don Quixote, III. 421. Plays in Comedias Escogidas, 424, 425.

Calderon. See Apontes; Bristol, Lord; Corneille, T.; Dryden; Goethe; Gozzi; Hauteroche; Keil; Lara; Malsburg; Panzano; Rosenkranz; Schlegel, A. W.; Schmidt, F. W. v.; Tuke; Vera Tassis.

Calderon, María, actress, II. 434.

Calderon, Rodrigo, II. 486.

Calisto y Melibœa. See Celestina, La.

Calvo, Sebastian de Nieva, f. 1625, II. 474.

Calzada, Bern. María de, f. 1792. Gil Blas, III. 267, n.

Calzas. See Breeches.

Camargo, Hernando Dominguez, f. 1666. His Loyola, II. 474.

Camargo, Ignacio, assails the drama, II. 352, n.

Camerino, Joseph, f. 1623. Tales, III. 103.

Camino de Perfeccion of Sta. Teresa, III. 178.

Camoens, epigrammatic poetry, III. 15. Ballad, 36, n.

Campeador, the Cid, I. 14.

Campillo de Bayle, Gines, f. 1689. Tales, III. 106, n.

Campomanes, Life of Feyjoó, III. 245, n.

Campo Raso, Joseph del. Continuation of San Phelipe, III. 232, n.

Campo-redondo, Calisto Fernandez, poem, III. 160, n.

Cancer y Velasco, d. 1654, dramas, II. 413. Poems, 414, n., 548. His Baldovinos, 487. In Comedias Escogidas, III. 425.

Cancion, I. 120, n.

Cancionero, what, I. 120, n., 428.

Cancionero of Baena, I. 428.

Cancionero of Estuñiga, I. 430.

Cancionero of Catalan poets, I. 329, 430.

Cancionero of Martinez de Burgos, I. 430, n.

Cancionero, seven others in manuscript, I. 430.

Cancionero, Saragossa, I. 431.

Cancionero General of Castillo, I. 432-442, II. 506.

Cancionero de Obras de Burlas, I. 442, n.

Cancionero de Romances, III. 390.

Canciones in Cancionero General, I. 437.

Candamo, Francisco Bances, d. 1704. Dramas, II. 422. Poems, 423, n., 549.

Cañete, Marquis of. See Mendoza, Garcia.

Cañizares, Josef de, dramatist, d. 1750, II. 427. Imitates the French, III. 313.

Cantares, what, I. 161, n.

Cántigas, Las, of Alfonso the Wise, I. 39 and n., 42, 43.

Cantoral, Lomas de, f. 1578, II. 506. Satires, III. 4. Elegies, 9. Eclogues, 10. Didactic poetry, 19.

Cantos de Fuentes, III. 27.

Çapata, Luis de, f. 1565, II. 456. Garcilasso, I. 489, n.

Capmany, History of Barcelona, I. 323. Eloquencia Española, III. 128.

Caporali, Cesare, imitated by Cervantes, II. 88, n.

Çarate, Agustin de, f. 1540, I. 568.

Carbajal y Saavedra, Mariana de, f. 1633, III. 107 and n.

Carcel de Amor of San Pedro, I. 424. Continued by Nuñez, 425.

Cardenal de Belen, El, of Lope de Vega, II. 223.

Cardenal, Pierre, Troubadour, I. 315.

Cardona, I. 442, n.

Carducho, Vincencio, d. 1638. De la Pintura, III. 190, n.

Carew, Richard, translation of Huarte, III. 189, n.

Caricature, tendency to, in Spanish literature, II. 487.

Carillo, Joseph, f. 1750. Defence of the old drama and Cervantes, II. 96.

Carillo Laso de la Vega, Alonso, f. 1657. Blank verse of, I. 481, n.

Carlo Famoso of Çapata, II. 456.

Carlomagno, a Romance of Chivalry, I. 244.

Carlos, son of Lope de Vega, II. 131, 132, n. 148, 158.

Carlos, Don, play on, by Montalvan, II. 304.

Carnestolendas de Castilla of Hidalgo, III. 99, n.

Caro, Rodrigo, f. 1595, II. 546.

Carolea, La, of Sempere, II. 455.

Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, persecuted, I. 466.

Carriedo, valley of, II. 120, 121, n., 334.

Carrillo y Sotomayor, Luis, d. 1610. Works, II. 516, 517, n. Eclogues III. 13. His Erudicion Poética, III. 237, n.

Carrion, Judio de. See Santob, Rabbi.

Carroz, Frances, I. 442, n.

Carta Puebla, what, III. 382, n. Of Avilés, I. 11, 47, III. 383, n.

Cartagena, Alfonso de, I. 120, 294, n., 399, 435, 437.

Cartas del Cavallero de la Tenaza, by Quevedo, II. 269.

Cartas de Enzina of Isla, III. 266, n.

Cartas Eruditas of Feyjoó, III. 244.

Cartas Marruecas of Cadahalso, III. 277.

Cartas Philologicas of Cascales, III. 136.

Carteret, Lord. Edition of Don Quixote, III. 417.

Cartuxano, El. See Padilla, Juan de, and Montesino, Ambrosio.

Casa con Dos Puertas of Calderon, II. 382.

Casa del Plazer Honesto of Salas Barbadillo, III. 101.

Casa, Giovanni della, his Galateo, III. 187.

Casaus. See Casas.

Casarse por Vengarse of Roxas, III. 270, n., II. 409, n.

Casas, Bartolomé de las, d. 1566. Works, I. 563. His relations to slavery, I. 564, n. His Brevísima Relacion, I. 565. His History of the Indies, I. 566.

Cascales, Fr., f. 1616. Tablas Poéticas, III. 236. His letters, 136. Opposes the old drama, II. 328. Partly defends it, 332, n. Attacks Góngora, 532.

Casilda, Santa, of Reynosa, III. 226.

Cassandra, Auto, by Vicente, I. 285.

Castega, Domingo, f. 1534. Segunda Celestina, I. 269.

Castel, Louis de Vieil, on the Spanish drama, II. 327, n.

Castellanos, Juan de, f. 1588, II. 468.

Castellanos, Pedro de la Vezilla. See Vezilla.

Castelví, Francisco, Valencian poet, I. 340.

Castiglione, Balthazar, his Courtier, translated by Boscan, I. 481.

Castigo de la Miseria, by Hoz, II. 417.

Castigo, Dos Venganzas de un, of Montalvan, II. 306, n.

Castigo sin Venganza of Lope de Vega, n. 202-204.

Castile, name of, I. 8.

Castilla, Diego de, I. 183, n.

Castilla, Francisco de, f. 1536, didactic poetry, III. 17 and n., I. 183, n. Submits a book to the Inquisition, I. 462, n. His Proverbios, III. 171, n.

Castillejo, Cristóval de, f. 1580, poetry of, I. 500-503. Narrative poetry, II. 482, n. Religious, 517. Satirical, III. 3, 4.

Castilian, prevails in the South of Spain, I. 341-345. Is the pure Spanish, 551. Name of, III. 384. Its purity in Garcilasso, I. 495, n. See Spanish.

Castillo, André del, Tales, III. 108.

Castillo, Diego Enriquez de, f. 1474, chronicler, I. 187, 394.

Castillo, Fernando del, his Cancionero General, I. 120, 432.

Castillo Interior of Sta. Teresa, III. 178.

Castillo, Juan Ignacio Gonzalez de, f. 1800, dramas, III. 328, n.

Castillo, Leonardo del, f. 1667. Journey of Philip iv., II. 396, n.

Castillo, Solorzano. See Solorzano.

Castro, Adolfo de, III. 59, n., 270, n., 328, n. On the Buscapié, III. 406.

Castro, Count, poet, I. 442, n.

Castro, Damian de, actor, III. 340.

Castro, Duke Fadrique de, poetical court of, I. 431.

Castro, Francisco de, f. 1720. Dramas, III. 316.

Castro, Guillen de, d. 1639. Dramas, II. 283-293. Mocedades del Cid, 287. Uses ballads on the Cid, I. 142, 144, n. Friend of Lope de Vega, II. 128. At the Festivals of San Isidro, 152, 153. His Conde Alarcos, I. 127, n. Plays on Don Quixote, III. 421. See Corneille, P.

Castro, Julian de, dramatist, c. 1770, III. 325.

Castro, Rodriguez de, d. 1799. Biblioteca Española, I. 24, n.

Castro y Anaya, Pedro de, f. 1632. Tales, III. 107 and n.

Castro y Orozco, José, Luis de Leon, II. 51, n.

Catalan, or Catalonian dialect, I. 323 and n., 325. Flourishes, 329. Decays, 338. Still loved, 344, n.

Cataluña, Guerra de, of Melo, III. 163.

Catariberas, satire on, by Diego de Mendoza, I. 519 and n. What, III. 58.

Cautivos de Argel of Lope de Vega, II. 214.

Cavallero Assisio of Mata, II. 470.

Cavallero de Olmedo of Monteser, II. 487, n.

Cavallero Determinado of Acuña, I. 499.

Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, I. 199.

Cazella, Chaplain of Charles v., persecuted, I. 466.

Cazuela, what, II. 438, III. 315.

Cean Bermudez, Life of Jovellanos, III. 304, n. Diccionario, 21, n.

Cecial, Tomé, pseudonyme of Forner, III. 294, n., 331, n.

Céfalo y Procris of Calderon, II. 361.

Cejudo, Gerónimo Martin Caro y, f. 1675, Proverbs, III. 172, 173, n.

Celestial Chivalry, a romance, I. 245-249.

Celestina, La, c. 1480, I. 262-272. Its actors, 263, n. Its authors, 263, n. Its date, 263, n. Style of its two portions, 265 and n. Its character, 267. Its merits and defects, 267, 268. Its editions, 268, n. Its translations, 268. Its imitations, 269-271. Its influence and popularity, 272. Opinion of, by Joam de Barros, 292, n.; by Diego de Mendoza, 514, n. Used by Zepeda, II. 28.

Celestina, Segunda Comedia de, by Silva, I. 269; by Castega, ib.; by Gomez de Toledo, ib.

Celtiberians, III. 358.

Celtic language in Spain, III. 358.

Celts in Spain, III. 357.

Centenera, Martin del Barco, f. 1602, II. 469.

Cepeda, Joaquin Romero de, f. 1582. Comedia Selvage, I. 270. Works, II. 27, 482, 509, n.

Cepeda. See Zepeda.

Cerco de Sta. Fé of Lope de Vega, I. 487, n., II. 248.

Cerda y Rico, edition of the Diana of Polo, III. 45, n.

Certamen de Amor y Zelos of Calderon, II. 337.

Certamenes. See Justas.

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, d. 1616. Lives of, II. 52, n. Birth and education, 53, 54. First printed verses, 54. At Rome, 55. A soldier, 55. At Lepanto, and wounded, 56. At Tunis, 56. Captive in Algiers, 57-60. Returns home, 60, 61. Generous nature, 60, n. In Portugal and the Azores, 61. His Galatea, 61-64. Marries, 64. Literary friends, 65. Writes plays, 65-76. At Seville, 77. Imprisoned, 78. Asks an employment in America, 78. Poems, 79. In La Mancha, 80. In Valladolid, 81. In poverty and in prison, 81. Don Quixote, First Part, 81. In Madrid, 82. Joins a religious brotherhood, 82. His relations with Lope de Vega, 82-84. His Novelas Exemplares, 84-88, II. 306, 420, III. 67, 98. His Viage al Parnaso, II. 89. His view of the drama, 89, 90. Writes more plays, 91-97. Don Quixote, Second Part, 97. His Persiles y Sigismunda, 98. His illness and death, 98, 99. Monuments to him, 99, n. His lost works, 100, n. His Persiles y Sigismunda, 100-103. His Don Quixote, 104-119. Minuteness and accuracy of his reading, 107, n., 117, n. His popularity and fame, 118, III. 422. His character, II. 119. His knowledge of human nature, I. 194, n. His ballads, III. 36. His verses without the final syllable, 67. n. Sees Lope de Rueda act, II. 10. Figures in a play of Lope de Vega, 215. Adds words to the language, III. 217, 218, n. On Cultismo, II. 531. Attacked by Figueroa, III. 51, n.; by Villegas, II. 542 and n. His opinion of Celestina, I. 268; of Amadis de Gaula, 230; of Esplandian, 231; of Palmerin, 238; of Garcilasso, 495; of Lope de Rueda, II. 20, n. See Arrieta; Avellaneda; Bouterwek; Bowle; Buscapié; Caballero; Caporali; Carillo; Conde; Foe, De; Eximeno; Fermin; Fletcher; Florian; Garcés; Haedo; Hoyos; Inglis; Lampillas; Mabbe; Mayans y Siscar; Nasarre; Navarrete; Pellicer, J. A.; Perez; Rios; Roscoe; Salvá; Sismondi; Temple; Vega, Lope de; Wolf, F. A.; Zavaleta, T.

Cervantes de Salazar, f. 1546. Works, I. 536, 537.

Céspedes, Pablo de, d. 1608. Didactic poetry, III. 20.

Céspedes y Meneses, Gonzalo de, f. 1617. His Gerardo and Píndaro, III. 87. Tales, 107.

Cetina, Gutierre de, c. 1560. Poems, I. 500, 501 and n.

Cevallos, Pedro Ordoñez de, f. 1614. Viage, III. 183, n.

Chaide. See Malon de Chaide.

Character, national, formation of, I. 7 and n., 102-105, 156, 218. Provençal influence on it begins, 306; decays, 337, 341. Influence of Italy on it, 346-352. Its intolerance, 446. Its persecuting spirit, 460. Its servile spirit, 468. Its bigotry, 468. Its decay, 471, 472. Its effect on the drama, II. 430, 448-451; on epic poetry, 455, 502-504; on lyrical poetry, 519, 550-552; on satirical poetry, III. 4, 8; on pastoral poetry, 10; epigrammatic, 14; didactic, 24; ballad, 25, 37, I. 106, 154; on prose fiction, III. 38-40, 54, 55-58, 75, 76, 84, 118-120; on eloquence, 121-123; on epistolary correspondence, 128; on historical composition, I. 156, 215, 216, 553, III. 138, 145, 152, 153, 165, 167; on proverbs, 169-174; on didactic prose, 196, 197. False direction given to the national character under Charles v. and Philip ii., 199. Decay under Philip iii., 200; under Philip iv., 201; under Charles ii., 203. Its continued degradation by bigotry and persecution, 204, 205; by servility, 207-209. Its low state under Philip v., 239, 240, 246-248. Its improvement under Ferdinand vi., 249; under Charles iii., 254-258. Its trials under Charles iv. and Ferdinand vii., 343-348. Hopes for the future, 349, 350.

Charlemagne, a French poem of the 12th century, I. 112, n.

Charlemagne, ballads on, I. 132.

Charlemagne and his Peers, romances of the 12th century, I. 219.

Charles i. of Spain, v. of Germany, abdicates, 1555, dies. Life by Sandoval, III. 151. Translates the Chevalier Délibéré, I. 497. Great glory of his reign, 458. Conquests in Italy, 475, 476. Coronation there brought on the stage, 476. Sustains the Inquisition, III. 205. Effect of his reign on the national character, 199; on epic poetry, II. 455; on romantic fiction, III. 38; on letter-writing, 128. Lives at Madrid, II. 276.

Charles ii., d. 1700, effects of his reign, III. 203, 213; on the Inquisition, 205. Believes he is bewitched, 204 and n. Flattered by Solís and Calderon, II. 396 and n., III. 209.

Charles iii., d. 1788, effects of his reign on letters, III. 255, 257.

Charles iv., effects of his reign on letters, III. 343, 344. Abdicated, 1808, 345. Persecutes Jovellanos, 300.

Chateaubriand, L’Abencerrage, III. 85.

Chatillon, Walter de, I. 57.

Chaucer, I. 22, n., 85.

Chevalier Délibéré, I. 498.

Chivalry, institutions of, in Spain, I. 250.

Chrespina, a mock-heroic poem, II. 488.

Christiada, La, of Hojeda, II. 473.

Christiada, La, of Encisso y Monçon, II. 474, 475.

Christian Chivalry, a romance, I. 245, 246, n.

Christian History, a romance of chivalry, I. 246.

Christianity introduced into Spain, III. 365. Its effect on the Latin spoken there, 366 and n.

Christian Spaniards, early, ignorance of, III. 378. Sufferings, 381, I. 7 and n.

Christina of Sweden, play on, by Calderon, II. 390.

Christovalina, Doña, f. 1605, II. 515.

Chronicles, I. 156-217. General and royal, 157-191. Of particular events, 192-197. Of particular persons, 197-202. Of travels, 202-212. Romantic chronicles, 212-214. Character of the early Spanish chronicles, 215-217. Period for, ended, 553, 556. Chronicles of America, 556. Chronicles used for ballads, I. 135, 137 and n., 138, 139 and n., III. 26. See Crónica.

Chroniclers of the kingdom, I. 174, 555. n. Of the king’s person, 555, n.

Chronicones, forged by Higuera, III. 152, n.

Church, opposition to the drama, time of Charles v. and Philip ii., II. 329, 330, 216; in the time of Calderon, 394; in the 18th century, III. 341, n.

Cibdareal, Fern. Gomez de, Letters, I. 395-398, 353, 356, 359, 380, 382, 387. Their genuineness, III. 397-403.

Cicero of Father Isla, III. 264.

Cid, notice of, I. 13. Arabic accounts of, 13, n., 15, n. Lives of, by Risco, Müller, etc., 13, n. Obscurity of his history, 15, 16, n. Life in Crónica Rimada, 23, n.; in Crónica General, 160; in Crónica del Cid, 167-172; in Southey’s Chronicle, 12, n., 13, n. Tomb of, 168, n.

Cid, Poem of, c. 1200, I. 12-23. Date of MS. of, 12, n. Date of the poem itself, ib. Not strictly historical, 15. Its subject, 16. Its language, measure, and rhyme, 17. Was probably recited publicly, 17, n. Its story, 18-20. Translations from it by Frere, 19, n. Not a congeries of ballads, 20, n. Its character, 22. Opinions on, 23, n. Used in the Crónica General, 171, n.; in the Crónica Rimada, 24, n.

Cid, Poem of, by Ayllon, II. 457; by Arredondo, 457, n.

Cid Resuscitado, by Santos, III. 115.

Cid Romancero, I. 141, n., III. 34, n. Ballads on, I. 140. Not historically exact, 144. Sung in the streets, II. 287, n. Additional ballads on, III. 116, n. See Mocedades del Cid.

Cielo, Violante del, d. 1693. Poetess, II. 529.

Cienfuegos, Nicasio Alvarez de, d. 1809. Works. III. 295. Dramas, 329.

Cifar, romance of chivalry, I. 242.

Cigarrales de Toledo of Tirso, III. 104.

Cinco Martires de Arabia, by Vargas, II. 474.

Cinna of Corneille, III. 312.

Cintia de Aranjuez of Corral, III. 51, n.

Cintio Merctisso, his Chrespina, II. 488.

Circe of Lope de Vega, II. 156.

Circourt, Albert de, I. 449, n., III. 82, n., 85, n.

Cisma de Inglaterra of Calderon, II. 390.

Cisneros, Alonso, his Autos Sacramentales, II. 227, n.

Cisneros, Antonio, f. 1579, dramatist, and actor, II. 25, 39, n.

Clareo y Florisea of Reinoso, III. 77.

Claribalte, romance of chivalry, I. 242.

Claros, Count, ballad, I. 121, 126.

Claros Varones of Pulgar, I. 421.

Clavellinas de Recreation of Salazar, III. 103.

Clavijo, Ruy Gonzalez de, d. 1412. Vida del Gran Tamorlan, I. 203. Idea of a River of Paradise, I. 209, n.

Clemencin, Diego de, on the Buscapié, III. 405. Edition of Don Quixote, 419. On Queen Isabella, 129, n.

Clement, St., Spanish college of, at Bologna, I. 349.

Cleomadez, a romance of chivalry, I. 244.

Clergy write plays, II. 352.

Clymente, Fabio, II. 483, n.

Coblas, what, I. 311, n.

Cobo de la Torre, José, III. 229, n.

Coello, Antonio de, dramatist, II. 327.

Cofradias, religious; interest in the theatre, II. 36, n.

Coins, Arabic, of Christian potentates in Spain, III. 379.

Coleccion de Cédulas, etc., I. 47, n.

Coloma, Juan de, f. 1579. Decada de la Pasion, II. 458.

Coloma, Marquis of Espinar, d. 1637. Guerras de los Estados Baxos, III. 160. Adds words to the Castilian, 217, 218, n.

Colonna, Guido de, I. 57.

Colonna, Giovanni, Mare Historiarum, I. 401.

Colonna, Vittoria, I. 474.

Coloquios de Espina, by Sedano, III. 20.

Coloquios of Lope de Rueda, II. 13.

Colmenares, Diego de, Hist. de Segovia, II. 10, n.

Columbus, d. 1506, I. 206-211. His works, 211, n. Account of, by Bernaldez, 189. By Humboldt, 211, n. His intolerance, 447. In plays of Lope de Vega, II. 199-202. His signature, 343, n. His letters, III. 128.

Columbus, Ferdinand, I. 325.

Columella, a Spaniard, III. 364.

Comedia Famosa, title, II. 441.

Comedias, what, II. 178.

Comedias de Capa y Espada, II. 179, 381.

Comedias Heróicas, II. 192, 215, n.

Comedias on common life, II. 210.

Comedias de Apariencias, II. 210, n.

Comedias de Ruido, II. 210, n., 437.

Comedias Religiosas, II. 217.

Comedias de Santos, II. 223. Alleged religious influence, 226, n., 327, 330. Not always true, 330, n. Light, worldly tone, 358, n. Figueroa’s account of, 358, n.

Comedias de Diferentes Autores, collection of, III. 423.

Comedias Escogidas, collection of, III. 424, 426.

Comedieta de Ponza, not a drama, I. 259, n. Account of, 375.

Comella, Luciano Francisco de, f. 1790. Dramas, III. 332. Attacked by Moratin, 336.

Comentarios de la Guerra de España, by San Phelipe, III. 230.

Cómico Festejo of Castro, III. 316, n.

Commercial Code, first, I. 349.

Commines, I. 181.

Commodus of Herodian, translated by Zabaleta, II. 414, n.

Comparaciones of Villegas, I. 504.

Complaints of Alfonso the Wise. See Querellas.

Comuneros, War of, III. 199.

Conceptistas, school of, II. 518.

Conceptos Espirituales of Ledesma, II. 518.

Conde, Claudio, friend of Lope de Vega, II. 127 and n., 130.

Conde, J. A., d. 1821. Preface vii., I. 9, n. On the Ballads, 109 and n. On Miguel de Luna, 215, n. On Don Quixote, II. 117. Story of Narvaez, III. 95.

Conde Lucanor. See Lucanor.

Condenado por Desconfiado of Tirso de Molina, II. 355.

Condesa de Castilla of Cienfuegos, III. 329.

Confusa, La, lost play of Cervantes, II. 66, 89, n.

Conquista de la Nueva Castilla, poem, II. 456, n.

Conquista del Nuevo Mexico of Villagra, II. 469.

Conquista en Granada of Diaz, II. 495.

Consejos, Libro de, of Don Juan Manuel, I. 65, n., 69.

Consonante, what, I. 112.

Constante Amarilis of Figueroa, III. 50.

Contra Valor no hay Desdicha, by Lope de Vega, II. 208, n.

Contreras, Hierónimo de, f. 1573. Selva de Aventuras, III. 78. Dechado, ib., n.

Coplas Trecientas of Juan de Mena, I. 384.

Coplas of Manrique, I. 406.

Cordero, Jacinto, dramas, II. 323.

Córdova, culture there under the Arabs, III. 375.

Córdova, Gonzalvo de, Chronicle of, by Pulgar, I. 200.

Córdova, Maria de, actress, II. 434 and n.

Corelas, Alonso Lopez de, f. 1546. His Trecientas Preguntas, I. 531.