Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/241

217 ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 217 in this waj.^ The Italians, with a deeper poetic chapter feeling, were too early absorbed in the gross busi- — '—^ — ness habits of trade, and their literature received too high a direction from its master spirits, at its very commencement, to allow any considerable de- viation in this track. The countries where it has most thriven, are probably Great Britain and Spain. The English and the Scotch, whose constitutionally pensive and even melancholy temperament has been deepened by the sober complexion of the climate, were led to the cultivation of this poetry still fur- ther by the stirring scenes of feudal warfare in which they were engaged, especially along the bor- ders. The Spaniards, to similar sources of excite- ment, added that of high religious feeling in their struggles with the Saracens, which gave a some- what loftier character to their effusions. Fortunate- ly for them, their early annals gave birth, in the Cid, to a hero, whose personal renown was identified with that of his country, round whose name might be concentrated all the scattered lights of song, thus enabling the nation to build up its poetry on the proudest historic recollections.^ The feats of many other heroes, fabulous as well as real, were 8 The fabliaux cannot fairly be of patrician elegance, but refined considered as an exception to this, artifice, which must not be con- These graceful little performances, founded with the natural flow of the work of professed bards, who popular minstrelsy, had nothing further in view than 9 How far the achievements the amusement of a listless audi- claimed for the Campeador are ence, have little claim to be consid- strictly true, is little to the purpose, ered as the expression of national It is enough that they were receiv- feeling or sentiment. The poetry ed as true, throughout the Penin- of the south of France, more im- sula, as far back as the twelfth, or, passioned and lyrical in its charac- at latest, the thirteenth century, ter, wears the stamp, not merely VOL. II. 28