which so long engaged our attention, was spoken. In Asturias, in old Castile, and in the kingdom of Leon, the Castilian prevailed; and in Galicia, the Gallego, whence the Portuguese had its origin. In Navarre, and in some parts of Biscay, the Basque was still preserved; a Celtic dialect, or, according to others, of African or Numidian origin, prior to the conquests of the Romans, which never intermingled with the Spanish language, nor exercised any influence over its literature. When the Christians, profiting by the extinction of the Caliphate of the Ommiades of Cordova, and the division of the Musulmans into a number of petty principalities, began, posterior to the year 1031, to recover Spain from the Saracens, they introduced into the South the language which they had preserved amidst the mountains; and Spain was divided into three longitudinal portions, of which the inhabitants of each spoke a separate language. The Catalan, in the states of Aragon, extended along the Mediterranean, from the Pyrenees, to the kingdom of Murcia; the Castilian occupied the centre of the country, and extended likewise from the Pyrenees to the kingdom of Grenada; while the Portuguese was spoken from Galicia to the kingdom of Algarves.

The Christians who had preserved their independence amidst the fastnesses of the mountains, were illiterate and rude men, though high-spirited, courageous, and incapable of bearing the yoke. Each valley regarded itself as a separate state, and attempted by its own strength to render itself respected abroad, and to maintain its laws and manners at home. These valleys had received Visigoth Kings, Counts who administered justice, and led the troops to battle. Their authority continued to subsist after the destruction of the monarchy, but they were rather considered as military leaders, and as protectors of the people, than as masters. Every man by defending his own liberty, became cognizant of his own rights. Every man was aware of the power with which his own valour endowed him, and exacted towards himself the same respect which he paid to others. A nation composed for the greater part of emigrants, who had preferred liberty to riches, and who had abandoned their country, in order that they might preserve amidst the solitude of the mountains their religion and their laws, were not likely to

recognize, to any great degree, the distinctions which fortune created. The son of the governor of a province might often be seen clothed in very homely garments; and the hero by whose valour a battle had been gained, might be found reposing in a hut. The dignity of the people of Castile, which is observable even amongst the beggars, and their respect for every citizen, whatever may be his fortune, are peculiarities in Spanish manners, which may no doubt be referred to the period of which we are speaking. The forms of the language, and the usages of society established at this period, became an integral part of the national manners, and display their ancient dignity even at the present day.

Civil liberty was preserved as perfect in Spain, as it can be under any constitution. The nation seemed to have created kings, in order that the authority, which necessarily devolved upon the sovereign power might be circumscribed within narrower limits. Their object was to provide themselves with able captains, with judges of the lists, and with chieftains who might serve as models to a gallant nobility; but they yet watched with jealousy any attempts to extend the royal prerogative. Judges were appointed, to whom the nation might appeal under ordinary circumstances, and legal forms were established, by which the people were authorized to resist by force abuses of power. All classes were admitted to an equal share in the representation, and every Spaniard was taught to place a due value on his privileges as a citizen, and on his nobility as a Visigoth. The Court, the general nobility, and the equal balance of ranks, of which no one was suffered to feel degraded, preserved in the manners, the language, and the literature of the Spaniards, a kind of elegance, and a tone of courtesy and high-breeding, with somewhat of an aristocratical character of manners, which the Italians lost very early, because they owed their liberties to a democratical spirit.

When political liberty was once properly appreciated, religious servitude could not long continue to exist; and the Spaniards therefore, until the time of Charles V., maintained their independence, in a great degree, against the church of Rome, of which they subsequently became the most timid vassals, when once deprived of their free constitution. religious independence of the Spaniards has been little re

The

marked upon, because the native writers of the present day are ashamed of the fact, and have endeavoured to conceal it, while foreign authors have formed their opinion of that nation from its situation during their own time. We shall, however, have occasion to remark in examining the early Spanish poets, that even in the wars with the Moors, as early as the eleventh century, they ascribe to their heroes a spirit of charity and humanity for their enemies, as a quality highly honourable to them. All their most celebrated men. as Bernard de Carpio, the Cid, and Alfonso VI., had combated in the ranks of the Moors. About the twelfth century, as we have already said in treating of the Troubadours, the kings of Aragon granted free liberty of conscience in their states to the Paulicians, and to the sectaries, who afterwards acquired the name of Albigenses. They likewise took arms in their defence in that deadly crusade which was headed by Simon de Montfort; and Peter II. of Aragon was slain, in 1213, at the battle of Muret, fighting against these crusaders, in the cause of religious toleration. In 1268, two princes of Castile, brothers of Alfonso X., quitted the banners of the infidels, under which they had served at Tunis, to give their assistance, at the head of eight hundred gentlemen of Castile, to the Italians, who were endeavouring to throw off the tyranny of the Pope, and of Charles of Anjou. At the conclusion of the same century (1282), Peter III. of Aragon, voluntarily exposed himself to the thunders of the Church, in order to rescue Sicily from the oppression of the French. He and his descendants lived under sentence of excommunication for nearly the whole of the fourteenth century; nor ever consented to purchase the repeal of those censures by any concession of their rights. In the great schism of the West (1378), Peter IV. embraced that side which was regarded by the Church as schismatic; a course which was suited to his political interests, since Peter de Luna, who was afterwards Anti-pope, under the name of Benedict XIII., was his subject. His successors still continued to countenance the schism, notwithstanding the efforts of all the rest of Christendom to extinguish it. Alfonso V. of Aragon again renewed it, after the council of Constance, and even after the death of Benedict XIII. He consented in 1429 to the deposition of that shadow of a Pope, which he had himself

created; an act of condescension which was repaid by the Holy Pontiff with great sacrifices. Until the reign of Charles V., this monarch, his son, and his successors on the throne of Naples, were in a state of almost perpetual hostility with the Popes. We are not inclined to attribute any extraordinary merit to the Aragonese sovereigns, on account of these prolonged contests with the church. It is not to be doubted that they frequently sacrificed their religion to their temporal interests on those occasions; but a nation, which, during three centuries, lived in a state of almost constant controversy with the papal power, and despised its excommunications, was undoubtedly far removed from that blind faith and superstitious submission, to which Philip II. ultimately succeeded in reducing it. The last struggles in defence of the liberties of Aragon occurred in the year 1485; when the people rose to repel the introduction of the Inquisition, which Ferdinand the Catholic attempted to impose upon them. To resist the establishment of this odious tribunal, the whole population took up arms. The grand inquisitor was put to death, and his infamous agents were expelled from Aragon.

Although the minds of the Spaniards were not directed to the subtleties of scholastic theology, yet their ardent and passionate imaginations produced amongst them some mystics who, confounding together love and religion, mistook the aberrations of their feelings for divine inspirations. These were almost the only sectaries whom the Roman Church had occasion to condemn in Spain. Even at the period when they enjoyed the greatest religious liberty, few men devoted themselves to the examination of the orthodox dogmas, or to the discussion of points of faith. The Jews and the Musulmans remained steady in their belief, while the Catholics likewise persisted in their faith without taking the trouble to examine the grounds of it; and religion was only employed to furnish occasional matter of controversy in a convent, or the subject of a hymn in honour of some saint.

The literary men of Spain have collected with great diligence, the earliest remains of their native poetry. D. Thomas Antonio Sanchez, librarian to the king, in 1779 published four octavo volumes containing specimens of the most ancient Castilian poets, of whose works he had been able to procure

manuscripts. The first in the collection is the poem of the Cid, which, in his opinion, was written towards the middle of the twelfth century, that is to say, about fifty years after the death of the hero. Although the Cid, both in versification and in language, is almost absolutely barbarous, it is yet so curious on account of its simple and faithful descriptions of the manners of the eleventh century, and still more on account of its date, it being the most ancient epic in the modern languages, that we have determined to present a detailed analysis of the poem.*

In order to give the reader some idea of the place where the scene is laid, it will, however, be necessary to make a few previous remarks on the situation of Spain, at the period when the Cid was written. Sancho III. of Navarre, who died in 1034, had united almost all the Christian states of the Peninsula under one dominion, having married the heiress of the county of Castile, and obtained the hand of the sister of Bermudez III., the last king of Leon, for his second son, Ferdinand. The Asturias, Navarre, and Aragon, were all subject to him, and he was the first who assumed the title of King of Castile. To him the sovereign houses of Spain have looked up as their common ancestor, for the male line of the Gothic Kings became extinct in Bermudez III. It was in the reign of this Sancho, surnamed the Great, that D. Rodrigo Laynez, the son of Diego, was born, to whom the Spaniards gave the abbreviated appellation of Ruy Diaz, while the five Moorish Generals whom he had vanquished bestowed upon him the title of Es Sayd, (or, my Lord,) whence the name of the Cid had its origin. Muller conjectures that he was born about the year 1026. The castle of Bivar, two leagues from Burgos, whence he took his name, was probably the place of his birth, and perhaps a conquest of his father's. On the female side he was descended from the ancient Counts of Castile; yet, though his birth was illustrious, he was com

*The MS. which has been preserved, bears the date of 1207, or 1245, of the Spanish æra, though it is certainly not the most ancient. M. Raynouard has promised us a Provençal poem on Boethius, anterior to the year 1000, and which must consequently be of higher antiquity than the poem of the Cid. This discovery is due to M. Raynouard, who as yet is the only person who possesses the means of forming a judgment upon the composition. [This poem may be found in Raynouard, vol. ii. p. 4.-Tr.]