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LITERATURE OF THE SPANIARDS.

of that hero, at the commencement of the Spanish monarchy, eclipses the glory of all who either preceded or followed him. Never was a reputation more completely national, and never, in the estimation of men, has there been a hero in Spain who has equalled Don Rodrigo. He occupies the debateable ground between history and romance, and the historian and the poet both assert their claims to him. The ballads which we have been examining are considered by Muller as authentic documents; while the poets of Spain have chosen them as the most brilliant subjects for their dramatic compositions. Diamante, an old poet, and subsequently Guillen de Castro, have borrowed from the early romances the plots of their tragedies of the Cid, both of which furnished a model to Corneille. Lope de Vega, in his Almenas de Toro, has dramatised the second period of the warrior's life, and the death of Sancho the Strong. Other writers have introduced other incidents of his life upon the stage. No hero, in short, has ever been so universally celebrated by his countrymen, nor is the fame of any individual so intimately connected as his, with all the poetry and the history of his native land.

CHAPTER XXV.

On Spanish Literature, during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.

In the formation of her language and her poetry Spain preceded Italy very considerably, though the progress which she afterwards made was so slow, that it was difficult to distinguish it. From the twelfth, until the end of the fifteenth century, when the spirit of Italian literature began to exert an influence in Spain, every production of value which proceeded from the pen of a Spaniard is anonymous and without date; and although, perhaps, in the songs and romances of these four centuries, the progress of the language and of the versification may be traced, yet in the ideas, in the sentiments, and in the images, there is so much similarity as to prevent us from dividing this portion of the literary history of Spain into separate epochs, and from assigning to each a distinctive character.

This uniformity in its literary history is likewise observable in the political history of Spain. During these four centuries, the Spanish charac

ter was strengthened, confirmed, and developed, but not changed, by the national successes. There was the same chivalric bravery exercised in combats against the Moors, and exercised too without ferocity, and even with feelings of mutual esteem. There was the same high feeling of honour, and the same gallant bearing, nourished by rivalry with a nation as honourable and gallant as themselves; a nation with whom the knights of Spain had been often mingled, with whom they had sought an asylum, and with whom they had even served under the same banners; and lastly, there was the same independence amongst the nobles, the same national pride, the same patriotic attachments which were nourished by the division of Spain into separate kingdoms, and by the right of every vassal to make war upon the crown, provided he restored the fiefs which he held from it.

Spain, from the commencement of the eleventh century, was divided into five Christian kingdoms. It would be no easy task to present, in a few words, a picture of the various revolutions to which these states were exposed, though the dates of their progress and decline may be succinctly stated. The kingdom of Navarre, which was separated very early from the Moors by the Castilians, gradually extended itself on the side of Gascony. But, notwithstanding its frequent wars with the neighbouring states, notwithstanding

various accessions of territory, followed invariably by new partitions, Navarre remained within nearly the same limits until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, who conquered it in 1512. The kingdom of Portugal, which was founded in 1090, by Alfonso VI. of Castile, as a provision for his son-in-law, extended itself during the twelfth century along the shores of the Atlantic, and at that period was comprised within the limits which, notwithstanding its long wars with Castile, it has since preserved. The kingdom of Leon, which formerly extended over Galicia and the Asturias, was the most ancient of all, and the true representative of the monarchy of the Visigoths. Having been founded by Pelagius and his descendants, it was to extend its frontiers that those heroic combats were fought, which, at the present day, fill the poetical history of Spain; and it was for the purpose of establishing the independence of this country, that the semi-fabulous hero Bernard del Carpio slew the Paladin Orlando at Roncevalles. The ancient house of the Visigoth kings became extinct in 1037, in the person of Bermudez III., and the kingdom of Leon then fell into the hands of Ferdinand the Great of Navarre, who united under his sceptre all the Christian states of Spain. On his death, he again severed Navarre and Castile in favour of one of his sons; and the kingdom of Leon, governed by the house of Bigorre, preserved an

VOL. III.

independent but inglorious existence until the year 1230, when it was for the last time united to Castile by an intermarriage of the sovereigns.

In the east of Spain the resistance of the Christians had been less effectual. At the foot of the Pyrenees, around the towns of Jaca and Huesca, and in the little county of Soprarbia, the kingdom of Aragon took its rise. Soon afterwards, the expedition of Charlemagne against the Moors, laid the foundation of the county of Barcelona, then confined by the shores of the sea. From this feeble origin a powerful monarchy arose. Aragon, reunited to Navarre under Sancho the Great, was again severed from it in 1035; Saragossa was won from the Moors in 1112, and the victories of Alfonso the warlike, who was in vain defeated at Fraga, in 1134, tripled the extent of the monarchy. Three years after his death the state of Aragon was united to that of Barcelona, in 1137, by marriage; and a second Alfonso, in 1167, added Provence to the same sovereignty. James I., in 1238, conquered the kingdom of Valencia, and his successors united to it the Balearic Isles, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and lastly the kingdom of Naples. The monarchy of Aragon had arrived at its highest pitch of glory, when Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1469, intermarried with Isabella of Castile, and founded, by the union of the two crowns, that powerful monarchy, which under Charles V. em