Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/454

310 310 THE SPANISH ARABS. PART I. Influence on ihe Castil- iaa. SO offensive to a European, which distinguishes the later productions in the decay of the empire. Whatever be thought of the influence of the Arabic on European literature in general, there can be no reasonable doubt that it has been consider- able on the Provencal and the Castilian. In the latter especially, so far from being confined to the vocabulary, or to external forms of composition, it seems to have penetrated deep into its spirit, and is plainly discernible in that affectation of stateliness and oriental hyperbole, which characterizes Spanish writers even at the present day ; in the subtilties and conceits with which the ancient Castilian verse is so liberally bespangled ; and in the relish for proverbs and prudential maxims, which is so gen- eral that it may be considered national. ^^ 49 It would require much more learnings than I am fortified with, to enter into the merits of the ques- tion, which has been raised re- specting the probable influence of the Arabian on the literature of Europe. A. W. Schlegel, in a work of little bulk, but much value, in refuting with his usual vivacity the extravagant theory of Andres, has been led to conclusions of an opposite nature, which may be thought perhaps scarcely less ex- travagant. (Observations sur la Langue et la Litterature Proven- cales, p. 64.) It must indeed seem highly improbable, that the Sara- cens, who, during the middle ages, were so far superior in science and literary culture to the Europeans, could have resided so long in im- mediate contact with them, and in those very countries indeed which gave birth to the most cultivated poetry of that period, without ex- erting some perceptible influence upon it. Be this as it may, its influence on the Castilian cannot reasonably be disputed. This has been briefly traced by Conde in an ' ' Essay on Oriental Poetry, ' ' Poesia Oriental, whose publication he an- ticipates in the Preface to his "His- tory of the Spanish Arabs," but which still remains in manuscript. (The copy I have used is in the library of Mr. George Ticknor.) He professes in this work to dis- cern in the earlier Castilian poetry, in the Cid, the Alexander, in Ber- ceo's, the arch-priest of Hita's,and others of similar antiquity, most of the peculiarities and varieties of Arabian verse ; the same cadences and number of syllables, the same intermixture of assonances and consonances, the double hemistich and prolonged repetition of the final rhyme. From the same source he derives much of the earlier rural minstrelsy of Spain, as well ns the measures of its romances and se-