3. POEMA DEL CID. Sandoval first mentioned this poem, which is preserved at Bivar, and gave the four first lines, calling the whole Versos Barbaros y Notables.' Berganza afterwards inserted seventeen lines in his Antiguedades. The notice which they thus gave of its existence excited the curiosity of Sanchez, to whom Spanish literature has been so greatly indebted, and he published it in the first volume of his Coleccion de Poesias Castellanas Anteriores al Siglo XV. Some leaves are wanting at the beginning of the manuscript, and one in the middle. The whole fragment consists of 3744 lines, the three last of which are added by the transcriber; Quien escribio este libro del' Dios paraiso: Amen. En era de mill e CC.. XLV. años. Who Per Abbat was, and whether Abbat implied his rank or his name, cannot now be known: it is certain that he was the copier of the book, not the author, by the language, which is much older than the date of the manuscript. But there is difficulty concerning the date. There is a space between the CC and the XLV; and that space is just as much as another C would have filled. Perhaps, says Sanchez, the copier put one C too much and erased it; perhaps he placed the conjunction e, part of the date being expressed by words and part by figures, and afterwards erased it as superfluous; or possibly some person thought to give the manuscript greater value by obliterating one C, to make it appear a century older. The writing seems to be of the fourteenth century It is of little consequence; even upon that supposition the date is 1307: and no person can doubt that the language of the poem is considerably older than that of Gonzalo de Berceo, who flourished about 1220;... a century is hardly sufficient to account for the difference between them. Sanchez is of opinion that it was composed about the middle of the twelfth century, some fifty years after the death of the Cid; ... there are some passages which induce me to believe it the work of a contemporary. Be that as it may, it is unquestionably the oldest poem in the Spanish Tanguage. In my judgment it is as decidedly and beyond all comparison the finest. One other source of information remains to be mentioned, the popular ballads of the Cid. ROMANCES DEL CID. Sarmiento (Mem. para la Hist. de la Poesie, § 546. 548. 550.) delivers it as his opinion, that the popular ballads of the Twelve Peers, Bernardo del Carpio, Ferran Gonzalez, the Cid, &c. were composed soon after the age of the heroes whom they celebrate, and were what the Copleros, Trouveurs, Joculars, and all the common people, sung at their entertainments. That these being orally preserved, were subject to frequent alterations as the language of the country altered; and thus when at length they were committed to writing, their language was materially different, but their substance remained the same. In support of this authority which he assigns to them in point of fact, he observes that the Cor. General frequently cites the Joglares or popular poets. Their present form he assigns to the end of the fifteenth century. Sarmiento describes the collection which he had seen of the Ballads of the Cid as containing one hundred and two ballads, in old style, and in eight syllable verse. This is the Historia del muy valeroso Cavallero el Cid Ruy Diez de Bivar, en Romances, en lenguage antiguo, recopilados por Juan de Escobar. Sevilla, 1632. The ballads in this little volume are chronologically arranged; it is, I believe, the only separate collection, and by no means a complete one. Two which Escobar has overlooked are among the Romances nuevamente sacados de Historias Antiguas de la Cronica de España ( por Lorenso de Sepulveda vezino de Sevilla. Van añadidos muchos nunca vistos, compuestos por un Cavallero Cesario, cuyo nombre se guarda para mayores cosas. Anvers, 1566. This volume contains forty-one ballads of the Cid, scattered through it without any regular order. There are thirty-two in the Romancero General, en que se contienen todas los Romances que andan impressos, en las nueve partes de Romanceros. Aora nuevamente impresso, añadido, y emendado. Medina del Campo, 1602. Twelve of these are not in Escobar's collection; and probably others which he has overlooked may be found in other Romanceros. Many of these ballads are evidently little older than the volumes in which they are contained; very few of them appear to me to bear any marks of antiquity, and the greater part are utterly worthless. Indeed the heroic ballads of the Spaniards have been overrated in this country: they are infinitely and every way inferior to our own. There are some spirited ones in the Guerras Civiles de Granada, from which the rest have been estimated; but excepting these, I know none of any value among the many hundreds which I have perused. I have very seldom availed myself of the Romances del Cid. The Chronicle of the Cid is the main web of the present volume. I have omitted such parts as relate to the general history of Spain but have no reference to Ruydiez, and I have incorporated with it whatever additional circumstances, either of fact or costume, are contained in the Cronica General or the Poema del Cid. The poem is to be considered as metrical history, not metrical romance. It was written before those fictions were invented which have been added to the history of the Cid, and which have made some authors discredit what there is not the slightest reason to doubt. I have preferred it to the Chronicles sometimes in point of fact, and always in point of costume; for as the historian of manners, this poet, whose name unfortunately has perished, is the Homer of Spain. A few material additions have been made from other authentic sources, and the references are given, section by section, with exemplary minuteness. If any country might have been thought safe from the Saracens, it was Spain. The Wisi-Goths had been nearly three centuries in possession of it: during that time the independent kingdoms which were founded by the first conquerors, had been formed into one great monarchy, more extensive and more powerful than any other existing at the same time in Europe; they and the conquered were blended into one people; their languages were intermingled, and the religion and laws of the peninsula had received that character which they retain even to the present day. The Wisi-Goths themselves were a more formidable enemy than the Mahommedans had yet encountered; in Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they had found a race always accustomed to oppression, and ready for the yoke of the strongest; among the Greeks a vicious and effeminated people, a government at once feeble and tyrannical, and generals who either by their treachery or incapacity, afforded them an easy conquest; in Africa they overrun provinces which had not yet recovered from the destructive victories of Belisarius. But the Spanish Goths were a nation of freemen, and their strength and reputation unimpaired. Yet in two battles their monarchy was subverted; their cities fell as fast as they were summoned, and in almost as little time as the Moors could travel over the kingdom, they became masters of the whole, except only those mountainous regions in which the language of the first Spaniards found an asylum from the Romans, and which were now destined to preserve the liberties and institutions of the Goths. No country was ever yet subdued by foreign enemies, unless the badness of its government, or the folly of its governors, prepared the way for them. The laws of succession among the Wisi-Goths were ill-defined and worse observed. There were claimants to the crown abject enough to be willing to accept it from the hand of the Moorish Conqueror, and fools enough to suppose that a conqueror would give it them; actuated by this vile hope, and by the desire of destroying their rival, though the utter overthrow of their country should be brought about by the same means, they invited the invaders, and aided them with all their influence. These wretches are inexcusable. Count Julian was provoked by heavier injuries to pursue the same unhappy course. Rodrigo the reigning King had forcibly violated his daughter. An act of manly vengeance would have been recorded with applause; but he betrayed his country and renounced his religion to revenge an individual wrong, and for him too there is no excuse. There is little for those Arians and other persecuted sectaries, with whom Spain abounded, who welcomed the Moors, or willingly submitted to them, . . weak and miserable men, to rejoice in ruin, because it fell heavier upon their oppressors than themselves! But there were two classes in Spain, the Jews and the slaves, whom the grievances which they endured justified in forwarding any revolution that afforded them even a chance of change, and in joining any invaders as their deliverers. The persecution which the Jews endured from the Wisi-Goth Kings was more atrocious than any to which that persecuted race had yet been exposed: . . . the fiendish system of extirpation, which has since been pursued against them in the same country, was little more than a renewal of the execrable laws enacted by Sisebuto, Suingo. 1. 12. thela, Recesuinto, and Egica. If they were detected in 3-11. observing any custom or ceremony of their religion, they Fuero Juz tit. 2. Ley |