poetry. They have indeed the name; but it has no such arbitrary meaning as that attached to it by the Italians.

Between the Spanish-Arabian poetry and the later Castilian alone is there any great affinity; and nothing is more widely removed from the French Troubadour than the Castilian school, till about the 15th century, when it began to be imitative.

For the best idea that can now perhaps be formed of the style and merits of the Hispan-Arabic poets, the reader must be referred to the highly interesting and valuable, though imperfect, work of Conde, on the history of the Moors of Spain, compiled exclusively by translating and arranging chronologically the Moorish chronicles; (Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España sacada de varios manuscritos y memorias Arabicas, por el Doctor Don Jose Antonio Conde, &c. Madrid, 1820. 3 vols.) This is a book which it is to be hoped will appear in an English dress, and cannot but be considered of the highest value as a picture of the manners, thoughts and literature of this most singular people, drawn by their own cotemporary historians, and brought before the public by a man who devoted his life to the pursuit. No one but must be curious to see the campaigns in France, the battles with Charles Martel, and the perpetual struggles with the rising Christian states of Spain, in the chronicles of a people for a long time

perhaps the most enlightened in Europe. The work is continually interspersed with selections from the Moorish poetry of the time; and certainly the tone and character of none of these extracts give the least countenance to the supposition that the Troubadour poetry was borrowed from, or had the least affinity to, the early Arabian school. The burden of them in general is warlike or didactic, and the allusions to the female sex are just what would be expected to characterize Eastern manners, and as much the reverse of Troubadour feelings.

To illustrate this observation, we need only quote the little song of Hemad de Taharti, who concealed his verses in a rose, where it was likely to meet the eye, not of his mistress, as a Troubadour would have done, but of his king. It has more of the Troubadour turn than any other of the pieces in Conde: yet the singular and unchivalric mode of addressing and complimenting the lady, by reminding her of her being made for a slave, is sufficiently distinctive of this class of poetry from the Provençal taste.

Woman, though but the dross of man,
Created to obey,

Reverses nature's wisest plan,

And soon usurps the sway.

When,-not in summer-hours,—the rose
Through many a field we seek,
'Tis vain; but no! the sweetest blows,
Fair damsel, on thy cheek.

Grant the petition I present,

Grant this one prayer of mine :
'Tis form'd of roses, and 'twas meant

To praise those cheeks of thine.

These verses, adds the Moorish chronicler, were read, applauded and sung by the slaves of the king, and Taharti obtained the favour he sought, and a sum of money. In the chronicle of the exploits of king Abdelmumen (A.D. 1155), he is stated to have been a prince of great taste and erudition; to have made several literary innovations, particularly in "prohibiting with much severity the burning of books of chivalrous adventures; and to have permitted the writing of histories, adventures, and tales." "These orders," it is stated, "were published in all the provinces as well of Africa as of Andalusia," which was always the fountain of Moorish genius and poetry. This curious passage throws still further doubt on the theories which place the origin of any of this sort of literature in Spain, and would rather lead us to suspect the direct reverse to be the truth.

During the splendid period of Arabic literature in Spain, the Gothic party in their retreat had, doubtless, preserved and gradually fixed that species of Romance which became the language, in the first instance, of Castille, and eventually of all Spain. Its earliest state and formation it is as impossible to trace in Spain as in other European states. That language

cannot, however, have been of recent formation, which in the works of its earliest poets appeared in nearly as determinate a form of construction as it possesses at this day, allowance being made for the greater or less preponderance of Arabic words, which depends principally on the relative positions of the different provinces.

The earliest efforts of the Castilian poets are of an epic cast, abounding chiefly in military adventure, and consisting for the most part in detached scenes of the exploits of the Cid and other warriors. This seems the genuine early national school of Castilian poetry. It has no feature in common with the Provençal or Catalan Troubadours, and scarcely any affinity to the Oriental schools. Next come the ballads of chivalry founded on the French romances, which are probably none of them older than the latter part of the 14th century. Soon after commenced the æra of the later Spanish romances, pastoral ballads, &c. so justly admired, and of the Trobador or amatory school of Spain, which is to a great extent merely imitative of the later efforts of the Provençaux and Italians. Last in date are the ballads of the proper Moorish school, which belong to the age when the Spanish power was finally overwhelming the Moorish dynasty, and entering on the seats of their luxury and ease of these it has been said with truth they "live like echoes about the ruins of Moorish greatness."

But though the proper Trobador or amatory poetry of the Spaniards did not arise till it had nearly expired in other countries, the early kings of Leon and Castille were not insensible of the attractions of the Provençal poets. Ferdinand III. of Castille, in the beginning of the 13th century, welcomed them to his court, as Alphonso IX. had done at that of Leon and Alphonso the Wise, the great poet and astronomer of the same century, is reported to have issued an edict, at the suggestion of Giraud Riquier, a Troubadour, for purging their ranks of those idle pretenders who disgraced them, and restoring the honourable name of Troubadours to those only "qui supieren componer danzas, coplas, arias, juegospartidos," &c.

Little of the existing poetry of Spain can be traced to a very remote antiquity. The venerable but rude poem of the Cid is probably to be dated half a century after the Troubadour William count of Poitiers had flourished; and Gonzalo Berceo, who selected religious legends for his subjects, is to be placed in the middle of the 13th century, about which time also, or perhaps rather earlier, was written the romance of Alexandro Magno, of which an extract will shortly be given. In the second half of the 14th century, the regular school of Castilian poetry may be said to have its proper commencement; in that period we may probably date the earliest of the ro