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RITSON’S ANCIENT ENGLISH ROMANCES. 519 
agant inventions which were so peculiar 
their romantick and creative gertiuse ‘The 
al tales of these eastern invadeérs, recom- 
tp ended. by a brilliancy of description, a vari- 
Hie ; of imagery, and an exuberance of inven- 
ing eagerly caught up and universally 
diffu 
t 
sed. From Spain, he asserts, they soon 
_ pass’d into France and Italy. It is for this 
i Pin. he pretends, the elder Spanish ro- 
_ manceés have professedly more Arabian allu- 
‘ s ons than any other. There is, in fact, not 
_ ohe single French romance now extant, and 
but one, mention’d by any ancient writeér, 
hich existed before the first crusade, under 
iodfrey, Earl of Bologne, afterward King 
_ of Jerusalem, in 1097: neither is any thing 
known concerning theliterature of the Moors 
~ who came over from Barbary, and settle'd in 
Spain in 711 5 nor isit at all probable, or ca- 
~ pable of proof, that even theSpaniards, much 
Tess any of the other nations of Europe, had 
" an opportunity of adopting any literary infor- 
mation, or did so, in fact, from a eople, with 
Bator they had no connection, ii as ene- 
, whose language they never understood, 
whose manners they detested; or would 
en have condescended, or permitted them- 
“ices to make such an adoption, from a set of 
’ infidel barbarians, who had invadeéd, ravag- 
_ ed, and possess’d themselves of some of the 
‘q stand richest provinceés of Spain; with 
/ whom they had continual wars, tl they at 
Tast drove them out of the country; whom, 
) in fact, they allways avoided, abhor’d, and de- 
'spise'd. There is, doubtless, a prodigious 
| number of Arabick poems in the library of 
) the Escurial, which has been plunder'd from 
“the Moors, but which no Spanish poet ever 
“made tise of, or, in short, had ever access to. 
) 
_ title of ‘ Historia de las gnterras civiles de Gra- 
nada; at Paris, in 1600; both falsely pretend- 
_ ed to have been translateéd from the Arabick, 
_ and ridicule’d, on that account, by Cervantes, 
' who makes use of the same pretence in his 
Quixote. The Spaniards are so far from 
haveing any ancient historias de cavallerias, 
ich we call romanceés, that they have not 
single ballad (which they call’ romance?) 
ypon the subject of the Moors, except, it may 
be, afew compose’d after or about the time 
_ of their expulsion and extant in the Roman- 
cero general, or other compilations of the like 
_ With respect to the oriental literature 
> which we are indebted to the crusades, 
beside the Clericalis disciplina of Peter Al- 
- fonsus, a converted Jew, baptise’d in 1106, 
~ inwhich are many eastern tales, there is but 
ne single French romance, in rime er prose, 
5 
Me 
’ yest, this eloquent and 
of the thirteenth or fourteen century, which 
appears to have been takeén froman Arabian 
or oriental source ; it is that of Cleomedes, by . 
King Adenes (a minstrel-monarch, or herald, ) 
after ‘The story of the inchanted horse,’ in 
The thousand and one nights. As to the ~ 
owery historian, 
whose duty it was to ascertain truth from the 
evidence of facts and ancient documents, and 
not to indulge his imagination in reverie and 
romance, without the least support, or even 
colour of veracity or probability, has not the 
slightest authority for this visionary system, 
but assumes, with confidence, that which he 
knew himself unable to establish by proof.” 
In thus correcting the error of War- 
ton, Mr. Ritson has run into an opposite 
error himself. Nothing but the heat and 
passion of controversy could have misled 
him to such an assertion as, that the Spa- 
niards never had any connection with 
the Moors but as enemies, that they ne- 
ver understood their language, and that 
they detested their manners; how then 
does he account for the traces of Moorish 
manners that still exist, and for the Ara- 
bic words which abound in their lan- 
guage? Gastam de Fox, the first Bi- 
shop of Evora, after its recovery from 
the Moors, wrote a treatise upon God, 
the immortality of the soul, the concord- 
ance between the Sibylline oracles and 
the prophets, eternal happiness, purga- 
tory and hell, in Arabic: the language, says 
Barbosa, then most usedin Spain. The will 
of Nuno Alonso, Alcayde of Toledo 
about the same period, was written in 
Arabic. So much indeed was Arabic 
cultivated by the Spanish christians, that 
the ecclesiastics bitterly lament this at- 
tention to theinfidels language. Alvaro 
of Cordovo complains, that ‘ex omni 
Christi collegio,’ scarcely one in a thou- 
sand could decently reply to a Latin sa- 
lutation ; when crowds, out of number, 
were so versed in what he calls the Chal-_ 
daic tongue, as to vie with the Moors 
themselves in the pompous diction, and 
skilful structure, and elaborate rhymes 
of Arabic poetry. Among the archives of 
the Duque delInfantado, exist some Spa- 
nish writings in Arabic characters. The 
Spanish language abounds with ballads 
upon the subject of the Moors, chiefly 
composed after the conquest of Granada, 
and before their expulsion. The satire 
which these ballads excited is sufficient 
proof of their number and popularity : 
one-of Gongora’s burlesque romances is 
upon this subject, though he himself was 
an offender. TWA 
_Mr. Ritson’s general argument, how 
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