Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/249

225 ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 225 should probably be assigned to the oldest of them, in their present form, than the fifteenth century. ^° Another system of classification has been adopted, of distributing them according to their subjects ; and independent collections also of the separate departments, as ballads of the Cid, of the Twelve Peers, the Morisco ballads, and the like, have been repeatedly published, both at home and abroad.^^ The higher, and educated classes of the nation, were not insensible to the poetic spirit, which drew forth such excellent minstrelsy from the body of the people. Indeed Castilian poetry bore the same patrician stamp through the w^hole of the present reign, which had been impressed on it in its infancy. CHAPTER XX. Lyric poetry. ■20 Sarmiento, Memorias, pp. 242, 243. — Moratin considers that none have come down to us, in their original costume, of an earlier date than John II. 's reign, the first half of the fifteenth century. (Obras, tom. i. p. 84.) The Spanish trans- lators of Bouterwek transcribe a ro- mance, relating to the Cid, from the fathers Berganza and Merino, pur- porting to exhibit the primitive, un- corrupted diction of the thirteenth century. Native critics are of course the only ones competent to questions of this sort ; but, to the less experienced eye of a foreigner, the style of this ballad would seem to resemble much less that genuine specimen of the versification of the preceding age, the poem of the Cid, than the compositions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 21 The principle of philosophical arrangement, if it may so be called, is pursued still further in the latest Spanish publications of the ro- mances, where the Moorish min- strelsy is embodied in a separate volume, and distributed with refer- ence to its topics. This system is the more practicable with this class of ballads, since it far exceeds in number any other. See Duran, Romancero de Romances Moriscos. The Romancero I have used is the ancient edition of Medina del Campo, 1602. It is divided into nine parts, though it is not easy to see on what principle, since the productions of most opposite date and tenor are brought into juxta- position. The collection contains nearly a thousand ballads, which, however, fall far short of the entire number preserved, as may easily be seen by reference to other com- pilations. When to this is added the consideration of the large num- ber which insensibly glided into oblivion without ever coming to the press, one may form a notion of the immense mass of these humble lyrics, which floated among the common people of Spain ; and we shall be the less disposed to wonder at the proud and chivalrous bearing that marks even the peasantry of a nation, which seems to breathe the , very air of romantic song. VOL. II. 29