240 SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. [Oct. 7, 



de los Reyes. "^ It is a quarto codex, on parchment, and has 

 eighty leaves well and clearly written. It has generally been be- 

 lieved to belong to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and the 

 nameless author or ''arranger" is believed to have been contempo- 

 rary with the author of the Poema del Cid"^ (1135-1175). The MS. 

 was first published by its discoverer, Pedro Jose Pidal, in 1844. 

 It is in Sanchez's Coleccion de poetas Castellanos anteriores al siglo 

 dechno quinfo, which is a collection found in Biblioteca de Auiores 

 Espatioles desde la formacio7idel lenguaje hasta nuestros dias (tomo 

 quincuagesimosetimo [57] Madrid, 1864.^ The 'Mibre de Apol- 

 lonio " of this publication occupies pp. 283-305, and has a pre- 

 liminary note by Pidal (pp. xxxvi-xli). 



It is written in stanzas of four verses, all terminating with the 

 same rhyme. The verses contain fourteen syllables and bear evi- 

 dence of Provencal origin. The metre was a novelty'' and was 

 ** properly regarded by the author as his chief distinction," and he 

 implores the divine aid in his new experiment while he essays his 

 six hundred stanzas : 



** Componer un romance de mieva nKzstria, 

 Del buen rey Apolonio e de sa cortesia, 

 El rey Apolonio de Tiro natural, 

 Que porlas aventuras visto grant tenporal, 

 Como perdio la fija e la mujer capdal 

 Como las cobro amas, ca les fue muy leyal." 



" I will write a romance (story) in the new mastery {inethod).'*^ 

 Nueva maesiria no doubt refers to the form of the stanza and to its 

 rhyme. George Ticknor says '' The merit of the poem is small. 

 It contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it 

 was produced — among the rest, some sketches of a female jongleur^ 

 of the class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Al- 

 fonso the Wise, that are curious and interesting. Its chief attrac- 

 tion, however, is its story, and this, unhappily, is no original" 

 (^History of Spanish Literature^ ist ed., 1849, ^o^- b P- 25). The 



1 Or, Libre dels Tres Reyes dorient. 



^ According to Fitzmaurice-Kelly, the most recent historian of Spanish litera- 

 ture, the narrator of the ApoUonius story was " probably a native of Aragon " 

 {Spanish Literature , 1898). 



3 This is the admirable collection of Spanish classics in 79 vols, by Manuel 

 Rivadeneyra. 



*F. Wolf, Blatter fUr literarische Unterhaltiing, Jahrgang 1850, zweiter 

 Band, No. 232. 



