Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/239

215 ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 215 into oblivion, from which a few of their names only chapter have been rescued by the caustic criticism of the '■ — curate in Don Quixote ; who, it will be remem- bered, after declaring that the virtues of the parent shall not avail his posterity, condemns them and their companions, with one or two exceptions only, to the fatal funeral pile. ® These romances of chivalry must have undoubt- Their pemi- '' ciousefifect3. edly contributed to nourish those exaggerated senti- ments, which from a very early period entered into the Spanish character. Their evil influence, in a literary view, resulted less from their improbabili- ties of situation, which they possessed in common with the inimitable Italian epics, than from the false pictures which they presented of human character, familiarizing the eye of the reader with such mod- els as debauched the taste, and rendered him inca- pable of relishing the chaste and sober productions of art. It is remarkable that the chivalrous ro- mance, which was so copiously cultivated through the greater part of the sixteenth century, should not have assumed the poetic form, as in Italy, and indeed among our Norman ancestors ; and that, in its prose dress, no name of note appears to raise it 6 Cervantes, Don Quixote, torn, of the "Dialogo de las Lenguas " i. part. 1, cap. 6. chimes in with the same tone of The curate's wrath is very em- criticism. " Los quales," he says, phatically expressed. "Puesvayan speaking of books of chivalry, " de todos al corral, dixo el Cura, que a mas de ser mentirossissimos, son trueco de quemar a la reyna Pinti- tal mal compuestos, assi por dezir quiniestra, y al pastor Darinel y a las mentiras tan desvergoncjadas, sus eglogas, y a las endiabladas y como por tener el estilo desbara^a- revueltas razones de su autor, que- do, que no ay buen estomago que raara con ellos al padre que me lo pueda leer." Apud Mayans y engendro si andubiera en figura de Siscar, Origenes, torn. ii. p. 158. caballero andante." The author