xliv 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



Liberty which was long their finest characteristic. 

 The Castiliau strains were of a higher mood than 

 either the Provencal or the Liinosinic songs. 

 AMiile they gave a voice to amorous ecstasies, 

 their chief function was the rehearsal of heroic 

 deeds. Above all other relics of those remote 

 times, the chronicle of the CID, however barbar- 

 ous in point of style and metre, must delight the 

 antiquarian as the oldest epic in a Romanic 

 language, the philosopher as a vivid and various 

 picture of human nature. It is, probably, not 

 less ancient than the eleventh century; and it 

 reveals all the soul of that chivalrous age. 

 Without pretension, it is full of greatness ; with- 

 out disdaining a mixture of comic description, 

 it teems with high sentiment and marvellous 

 exploits. And, though some of its materials 

 were perhaps Arabic ; and much of its spirit is 

 necessarily that both of Moors and Spaniards ; 

 it is nevertheless a true national image of the 

 Gastilian race. Profound was the impression 

 made by this poem, and by its hero, upon the 

 Spanish mind : still is heard among the house- 

 hold words of Spain the name of Don Rodrigo 

 de Bivar. 



Time rolled on : ALFONSO THE WISE,* chemist, 

 astronomer, and poet, while he wrote some can- 

 ticles in the Gallician dialect, lavished his chief 

 care on the amelioration of that of Castile, and 

 even tried to tune it to a philosophic key : but 

 the Cid was not forgotten. That portion of his 

 story, which is commemorated in the ancient 

 epic, together with his previous and subsequent 

 adventures, proved the parents of a numerous 

 family of romantic ballads, all glowing with 

 heroic ardour. This fact should be noted in its 

 bearing upon the critical question as to the com- 

 position of the Iliad ;f and gladly do we draw, 

 from a work so Homeric in its best qualities, any 

 argument honourable to the memory of Homer. 

 It may be merely by accident that the great poem 

 of the Cid, as it has reached us, is confined, like 

 the Iliad, to a brilliant segment of its hero's 

 history ; but it is of infinite moment to observe 

 how much its being the exact reverse of a com- 

 pilation out of shorter separate lays makes 

 against the theory that the Iliad was so com- 

 piled. 



The literature of Spain, throughout the thir- 

 teenth century, has nothing worth recording 

 except its ballads. In prose, the symptoms of 

 rusticity were not mitigated until the next age 

 began. Alfonso the wise reaped no good fruits 

 froin his endeavours to promote historical com- 

 position. But the prince JUAN MANUEL, who 



* A. D. 12211284. 



t Sec Part 1. pp. viii. ix. 



died in 1362, exhibits some grace in the forty- 

 nine novels, of which his Count Lucartor consists. 

 LOPEZ DE A YALA$ translated Livy into Castiliau ; 

 and essayed, without much success, to imitatt; 

 him in his own chronicles. FERNANDO DE Pui.- 

 GAR, eighty years afterwards, was first dis- 

 tinguished by a more ripe and manly method 

 of writing Spanish history ; but in the province 

 of fiction, a contemporary of Juan Manuel, 

 named VASCO LOBEIRA, produced a powerful 

 sensation by four books of Amadis de Gaul. 

 Whether or not the germ of this renowned 

 romance, on which even Cervantes has mercy,|| 

 were borrowed from France, there is no doubt of 

 the greedy acceptance it met with from all ranks 

 of Spaniards, and its instantaneous effect upon 

 their taste. The spirit of those French works, 

 with which, whatever its precise origin, it must 

 certainly be classed, spread on all sides. Even 

 the verse -romances of Spain became more chi- 

 valrous, more inventive, more fanciful than ever. 



Thus proceeded the course of Spanish litera- 

 ture, mainly directed in one channel, as being 

 animated and controlled by a forcible unvarying 

 national character, to the end of the fifteenth 

 century. Its tone was that of chivalry, until 

 chivalry itself was no more. The feeble and 

 troubled reign of John II.,^[ during which the 

 Castilian power seemed utterly sunk, was not 

 without poetry. Honour, pride, and gallantry 

 still burned in verse. These attributes combine 

 even with the erudition of Lope de Mendoza and 

 the pedantry of Juan de Mena.** But as another 

 epoch drew near, new species of poetical com- 

 position began to predominate ; the lyric, in 

 which the warm passions of the Spanish heart 

 were damped by a fondness for conceits ; the 

 allegorical, in which Dante was ineffectually 

 imitated. Even the rudiments of the drama, 

 religious, pastoral, and satiric, showed them- 

 selves, and were marked by sundry traits of 

 original thought and talent. None of these 

 branches yet rivalled the excellence of the 

 romantic ballads : but in some the way was 

 paved for future triumphs. 



GERMANY shared in the general movement of 

 the European mind at the dawn of the modern 

 era. No country more warmly embraced the 

 institution of knighthood ; in none was the pas- . 

 sion for crusading more vivacious. Thus the 

 Germans were brought into an ennobling fellow- 

 ship with other nations ; their perception of the 

 grand and the beautiful in art or nature was 



t A. D. 1332. 1407. A. D. 1325. 



I) Don Quixote, Book I. c. 6. f A. D. 14071454. 



** Lope de Mendoza, A. D. 1398 1458 : Juan de Mena, 

 A. D. 1412 14SG. 



