Poesias Barias y Recreacion de Buenos Ingenios 
In the Catalog^ of the manuscripts belonging to the Gayan- 
gos collection that passed into the possession of the Biblioteca 
Nacional of Madrid is found the following entry: 
790. “Poesias barias y recreacion de buenos ingenios.” 
Dedicatoria al Marques del Valle. 
L. de fines del s. XVII o priiicipios del XVIII; 184 h., 4°, Pta. 
This very meagre description, together with the indication 
of relative lateness of composition, has served probably to di- 
vert attention from an anthology of seventeenth-century 
Spanish poetry which was the object of unusual care on the 
part of its compiler and which for more than one reason well 
merits the attention of those interested in the poetic produc- 
tion of the Golden Age of Spanish letters. 
The volume is a paper manuscript consisting of 11 unnum- 
bered preliminary leaves, 184 numbered leaves, and three un- 
numbered leaves at the end. Of the numbered leaves two are 
missing, folio 1 and folio 103. The volume is richly bound 
in full calf, with gold ornamentation on both covers and on 
the back and with full gilt edges. The paper is of excellent 
quality and the sheets measure 205 x 140 mm. The sheets are 
carefully ruled in two columns for all compositions except the 
sonnets and glosas, the normal length of a column being twen- 
ty lines. Titles usually occupy a space of four lines and are 
done for the most part in red ink, some in red and black. 
Where several compositions of the same kind follow each other 
the compiler contented himself with the title : Otro, meaning, 
of course, Otro romance, Otro soneto, etc. The hand is ex- 
tremely neat and is uniform for the entire volume except the 
last folio. The usual spellings characteristic of Spanish sev- 
enteenth-century orthography are to be found and present no 
striking peculiarity. The copyist almost always wrote qe, gi, 
and occasionally omitted the cedilla in ga, go, gu. Errors in 
spelling are not numerous, indicating that the text was pre- 
pared by a person of no mean culture. 
1 Catdlogo de los ma/nmcritos que 'pertenecieron a> D. Pascual de Gayangos existentes 
hoy en la Biblioteca Nacional, redactado por don Pedro Roca. Madrid, 1904. 
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