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 Lorenzo 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 todos 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 over-rated 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.

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INTRODUCTION.

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 independant 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 for+ midable enemy than the Mahommedans had yet encountered; in Persia, Syria, and Eygpt, 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