tion foreign to theirs. Differing from those of the third, the ballads of this first class, though vitiated by the ballad-singers, though somewhat altered from the primitive text, preserve always the salt of nationality entire, pure and unmingled with foreign matter. They are those which best portray the civilisation of the time, and preserve most faithfully the original source of Spanish poetry. Free from all scientific imitation, without any pretensions to learning or to art, they are rude as those who composed them, as the actions they narrate, and as the society of which they are a picture. Although in their actual condition, the ballads of the first class, which have not been introduced in a disguised shape either into the "Poem of the Cid" or into the "Chronicles," may be posterior to those works, many their fragments which have remained uninjured, betray an earlier origin. It may have happened that they were not so introduced from the circumstance that the subject did not require them; or if it did, it was in such a manner as to preclude the possibility of recognising them, from their being reduced to a totally different kind of verse, or to simple prose.

of

By comparing those ballads with the analogous fragments which appear to be more ancient, and to have undergone less alterations, it may be seen that the greater portion of the variations consist in the words having undergone certain modern changes, or modifications, which do not extend to the construction of the phrase, nor to the order and expression of the ideas, nor to those traits and types of manners which they delineate.

The proper and peculiar character of the ballads of this class consists in their being purely objective-that is to say, that in them events are simply related without reflections or deductions of any kind, and almost without a description of the scene in which they occur. The poet only appears as a narrator; and of him no more is seen than the style in which he has expressed, and the order in which he has arranged his thoughts. He relates what passes outside of himself, without allowing his own inner impressions to appear. He seems to see, but not to think; he is like a mirror which reflects, and gives back the appearance of objects, but gives them back unmodified by their connexion with itself.

His poetry may be styled an articulate memory, that repeats what it retains. But these ballads are deficient in lyrical enthusiasm, in the colouring and embellishment of fancy; and if at any time they allow a flash of epic elevation to illuminate them, it is only found to arise from the nature of the events which they describe. Such is the essential type of these ballads. As to the forms which modify them, it may be said that they are only artificial to the extent of the measure and the rhyme which are peculiar to them, and which distinguish them from simple prose; and even these outward forms are only preserved when they present themselves naturally and unforcedly to the extemporising poet; but they are set at naught and changed without scruple, if they do not readily occur, or if they present any amount of difficulties to be overcome. When any obstacle of this kind threatens to impede their onward career, it is bounded over-the measure is broken -the rhyme is changed, or finally becomes prose, if the difficulty does not yield easily in any other manner. These peculiarities may be observed in the few ballads of the first class that are presumed to be primitive: in those of the second class, transmitted by the minstrel ballad-singers, a little more art is discernible. Frequently, to preserve the measure and the rhyme, the poet vitiates the words, by increasing or diminishing the number of the syllables, or by changing the natural accents, or by writing and pronouncing, as mute, vowels which are not correctly so; or, finally, if nothing else could be done, by following the example of those who preceded them-that is to say, by throwing colour and art aside, and continuing the narrative in the best way they could. Nor is it strange that this should be so in an epoch of transition, when the new language was struggling for existence, and was forming itself as if by instinct. At that time art had scarcely any influence on the formation of the vulgar dialect, which was arising from the ashes, as it were, of the expiring Latin, since it was only a commingling of ruins heaped up without order or method previously arranged, and having no other basis than the natural necessity of having some medium for the communication of simple thoughts, to which frequently gesture and intonation supplied the deficiency of words,

or the want of logical sequence. The popular ballads born at this period, by expressing themselves in a rude jargon only spoken by the common people, obviously betray a disorder and arbitrariness in the manufacture of ideas, and in the mode of uniting them into a smooth and connected discourse. Hence the continual suppression of conjunctions, the shortening of the pauses in periods, the isolation of thought, and the sudden transitions that are to be found in them. Hence, also, is it that the old ballads pass from continuous narration to dialogue, from the dialogue to the drama, converting the epic characters into interlocutors, and narrative into action, more or less vivid, whilst the popular improvisatore found means of regaining the lost path of his story, by availing himself of conventional phrases, of understood mongrelisms, of frequent expletives, which gave him time and breath to continue his work after the manner in which it commenced.

THE SECOND CLASS OF BALLADS, in our system of arrangement, is formed of certain romances, which, by their Hispano-Arabic complexion, of which profound vestiges remain, belong to the traditional history of Spain, and to the period of its closest connexion with the Moors. Proceeding from a civilisation more refined than existed at that time among the people, they were destined to have a powerful influence on the poetical system which resulted from the combination of such diverse elements. They were eminently popular in their origin, and in their connexion with the epoch in which they appeared, since they flattered the national instincts of the people, by giving them pictures of the manners of a race, which, though in a state of warfare, were living together with them on the same soil, and of whose valour and culture they were not wholly ignorant. In their essence these ballads differed from those of the first and third class by their tone, which was more lyrical, fanciful, and sentimental, and by the better and more brilliant colouring which ani. mated them. In their external forms they differed from them also in the more highly finished versification which they exhibit. None of them appear to be anterior to the fifteenth century.

Contemporaneous, if not more ancient than those of the first, are THE BALLADS OF THE THIRD CLASS. They

must be considered as exclusively made by the minstrel balladists, under the influence of an imitative type different from the national, though assimilated to it by the form of expression. Composed upon subjects foreign to the history and to the indigenous customs of Spain, traced as it were upon traditions and chronicles written in another language, and founded on events, whether historical or fabulous, peculiar to a distinct civilisation, they presuppose at least study, art, and observation employed upon distant objects, and acquired by the reading of works proper to other conditions of society. In the ballads of the first class, even those which were transmitted by the minstrel balladists, the people beheld their own portrait, since that was the model of imitation to those who sang of their glories, their deeds, and their thoughts. In those of the third class were presented only copies of models which were unknown to the vulgar, of whose truth no one could judge, except by a remote assimilation to, and by a faint perception of, actions and of objects which they never had under their im mediate inspection, or by their own sides, but only by means of the knowledge which their minstrels acquired in books, or from the information which strangers communicated concerning themselves. The ballad-minstrels, by selecting as the themes for their songs subjects taken from the Bible, from ancient history, anterior to the middle ages, and from times and countries completely feudal, created the third class of ballads, which are also contained in the traditional epoch. Rude still, but more polished than those of the first class, they advanced, gradually widening the circle of popu, lar poetry, but never going outside of certain boundaries that prevented their being confounded with the learned or erudite class, properly so called, and still less with the artistic. class of ballads being accepted by the people, and gradually received into favour, produced the effect that might have been anticipated namely, the commencement at this period of an alteration not only in the form, but even in the essence of the indigenous poesy, by admitting a foreign ideal which falsified its primitive charac ter painting national events, and even characters, with an exotic colouring, which blending soon with the

This

habits of the people, greatly facilitated the changes which were experienced in some of the subsequent gyrations of society.

The present class of ballads differs from those of the first in this respect, that, being the work of professional balladists a circumstance which presupposes in their authors some degree of cultivation-a greater degree of skill is employed in their versification and in the arrangement of their subjects. Thus it is seen, that in these the poet supports his narration by argumentthat he takes a personal and subjective part in the story, and ventures to make reflections, and to express some opinions of his own, but deduced from the épie object which he and his brethren proposed to themselves in their songs. It is true that, from the limited number of such digressions, they are not numerous enough to give this class of ballads a character distinct from those of the first. They, however, guided popular poetry a step or two in the subjective, lyrical, and descriptive direction, which ultimately led to the literary and the artistic. With respect to the language, the phraseology, and the mode in which thought is expressed, the ballads of this class identify themselves with those of the first, since, notwithstanding their being taken from foreign models, the poets could not prevent them from being assimilated in some degree to the habits and customs of the country which they shared, and in whose element they lived. It is thus that " Bernardo del Carpio " is not exactly a French "Roland," but an imitation of him, sufficiently free, and adapted to the peculiar character of Spanish feudalism, such as then began to exist.

When tra

THE LITERARY EPOCH. ditional poetry came to be reduced to writing, the strolling ballad minstrels who preserved it began to disappear; and with them the creation of new matter, which had fed the curiosity and kept alive the interest that the people took in ancient things. In such circumstances, poesy directly popular, being reduced to the condition of producing nothing original or new, would have died away, if some persons, weary of the learned style of the fifteenth century, and lovers of the national glory, had not possessed themselves of the old ballads, in order to give them back to the people, and to revive in them the love of national things. In place

of creating a new kind of poesy, they imitated the ancient ballads, and reproduced them under the same forms, but stripping them of that fabulous portion which they believed disfigured them and kept them aloof from rational criticism. But, in acting thus, they did not remember that they deprived ancient poesy of its interest, and that, in uniting it to real events, they deprived it of the vivifying spirit which was proper to it, and which animates the existence of peoples, and distinguishes them from each other. For national faith and credulity, and even superstition, are they not an essential part of history? Do they not constitute its very truth? Have they not an influence on events? Do they not explain them, by making the mind ascend to the causes of actions which, taken in their isolated condition, are not history, but a dry catalogue of events, without animation or life? Fortunately those who, in imitating the old ballads, expurgated them, were good believers, even as those who compiled the chronicles, which served thein as a guide in this attempt to free their models from the portion of their contents supposed to be fabulous; and, as the old ballads themselves had supplied this very guide, with its authorities, the pretended reform could do them little injury.

If the early ballads, reduced to prose, or at least apparently so, served as the text of the most ancient chronicles, or were cited in them, the ballads of the literary period, on the contrary, were formed out of those very chroni cles themselves, by the addition of metre and of rhythm. A little before the middle of the sixteenth century appeared the poets of this school, who attempted to reproduce the old ballads by imitating them with indiscriminating judgment; and by versifying, but not poetising, the chronicles, they adapted to their language the traditions preserved in the popular songs, first divesting them of those portions which were believed to be fabulous.

LORENZO DE SEPULVEDA, who, it must be confessed, was neither a good poet nor a good versifier, was the first who published a collection of ballads of this class; partly written by himself, and partly by another author, whose name he has not made public, under the title of "Romances newly taken from the ancient Histories, from the Chronicles of Spain," &c. Ballads of a somewhat

similar class and character, but with more freedom, breadth, and art, were produced by various other poets, and, among them, JUAN SIMONEDA, who intermingled some of his own in those anthologies published under the title of "The Rose of Love," "The Spanish Rosa," ," "The Gentile Rose," so called from the poems which it contains being on heathen subjects, and "The Royal Rose," which is on the fates and fortunes of princes; all of which would have been lost to literature but for their fortunate discovery in the Royal Library of Vienna, and for the scrupulous care with which a number of those compositions (of which no other copies are known to exist) have been reprinted by Ferdinand Joseph Wolf, the eminent German critic, whose labours in connexion with the ballad literature of Spain are inappreciable.

We have already described what principally characterises and distinguishes the literary epoch from the traditional. We shall now briefly refer to the fourth and fifth classes of ballads, of which the literary epoch

consists.

BALLADS OF THE FOURTH CLASS.The compositions of which the fourth class consists were composed, not by the rude and illiterate people, nor by the rustic minstrels, but by persons skilled, to a certain extent, in the literary dexterity of the period, who artificially imitated the popular primitive poesy, and affected its lan guage. Moulded according to an undeviating model, their ballads were prose narratives, badly versified — a servile copy of the thoughts of others, which dispensed with and even prohibited all invention, and which, as it denied to genius its full liberty, restrained its ambition and its flight.

The ballads of this class preserve the external forms of the traditional ones, but not the living spirit which spontaneously produced them, nor their direct imitation of nature. They enable us to perceive how vainly art struggles to rival the unconscious perfection of inspiration, and how art itself inconsistently retrogrades even to the point of adopting as its model the imitation of a language and of a vocabulary belonging to another time, very remote and widely separated from that in which the attempt is made. But this very affectation of ancient phraseology betrays the artifice, since for want of a constant critical watch

fulness in those who imitated it, modern words and phrases are frequently found in their works side by side with the more ancient ones; thus creating a continued anachronism both of language and of style. Although these ballads generally preserve the objective form of the epic element, their authors, more frequently than the older poets, introduce the subjective, and appear in the action as commentators and teachers, blending their own individuality with the events they narrate.

THE BALLADS OF THE FIFTH CLASS are very similar to the preceding, being only distinguished by a greater freedom of treatment, and by the more frequent prevalence of the subjective element. The poets who cultivated this division stamped it with the seal of reality, by abandoning the imitation of the language of the chronicles, and the construction of the old romances. Being dedicated to the people, and specially created for them, it had of necessity to vulgarise its mode of expression, and to adopt the language which was then in general use.

THE BALLADS OF THE SIXTH CLASS being dedicated to contemporaneous historical events, being expressed according to the existing condition of the civilisation of the people, the language employed in them was appropriate to the time in which they were composed. They are for their epoch something like what those of the first period were for it; but being founded on official documents in prose, or upon floating news, they participate a good deal in the spirit of those of the fourth class. They are, however, akin to those of the first, because, referring to events contemporaneous with, or proximate to, the age in which they were composed, they may be considered as having an original inspiration, being to a certain extent primitive, and of the first workmanship; and, in consequence of their being written and printed at the time of their being composed, they have descended to us without the alterations incidental to those that were transmitted by oral tradition alone. Their tone, and the prosaic material out of which they were formed, connect them, however, more directly with the fourth class, they being intended, like those, to popularise history. Taking into view also the subjective and lyrical forms which they affect, the ballads of this sixth class may be considered as the link of the

chain which unites the literary epoch with the artistic, since they participate of both elements.

The prosaic defect which they laboured under from their very origin especially characterises them; but they are favourably distinguished also by the exhibition of a more elaborate and skilful versification and metre-accomplishments, indeed, that were rendered necessary by the progressive improvement of the people, as they advanced gradually into a more refined and civilised condition of society. They display also a foreshadowing of the lyrical and epic elevation of the artistic epoch which was about being born, and an attempt to restore the ancient marvellous ingredient which a more advanced civilisation had eliminated from the faith and credulity of the people. Wanting these, the poets who aspired to be emphatically popular, and to win immediate applause from their hearers or readers, mistook their way, and substituted for the rough, but antique simplicity, the extrava gance of a proud and pedantic erudition, the exaggerated colours of a worse taste, and, lastly, the emptiness of ideas and thoughts, disguised under the appearance of knowledge, which itself was incomplete, undigested, and untrue. The ancient balladists were honestly and openly ignorant, and never thought of concealing it; but the modern, aspiring to be considered learned, became fastidious and affected. To an age of ignorance ever follows an epoch of false knowledge and pedantic pretensions: such is the progress of society in its march to civilisation. It is thus that these indifferent compositions which point out the way that knowledge has walked, are useful for the light which they cast upon the history of literature and of society. The ballads of this class are to be found in all the anthologies published posterior to the latter half of the sixteenth century, some of them appearing in the first editions, others added in those that subsequently appeared some in collections made expressly for themselves, while many of them were circulated among the people in the loose leaves of the ballad-singers, who thus inherited the office of the ancient minstrels.

THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CLASSES OF SPANISH BALLADS are included in the Artistic Epoch, and they supply

VOL. XLVI.—NO. CCLXXI.

abundant materials for tracing their progress in this direction from their first feeble step to their maturity and decline. We have said that until the latter portion of the fifteenth century, the refined courtly poets (that is to say, the troubadours) did not adopt the form of the ballad in the composition of their works. Until then no literary production, purely popular, had been reduced to writing. But ultimately, JUAN DEL ENCINA, and some other artistic versifiers, ventured to compose them, or rather to mould according to their shape, the affected poesy which they imitated from the Provençals and the Italians. The metaphysical subtlety, the philosophical pretensions, the artificial ideas and thoughts which such models suggested to the troubadours, were unintelligible to the people; and it was impossible that those ballads could be popular which were made under the influence of a poetic ideal, the offspring of foreign imitation and of elaborate art, applied to what was essentially opposed to native character and taste. Sometimes they descended from their elevation, and were accepted by the people, probably because their authors had that object in view, and therefore concealed their learning and their art; or because they imitated, or amplified, or abridged the old romances, or were impregnated with those chivalrous ideas which were ever grateful to the generous spirit of the nation. The greatest number of the compositions of this class are devotional, mystical, doctrinal, allegorical, and amatory. In all of them the artificial nature of their structure, their style, and their versification is clearly visible. They are generally distinguished by an argumentative spirit which overrules them, by an exquisite subtlety and refinement of thought, and by a paradoxical and indefinable affectation in the expression of ideas as fantastical as the language in which they were conveyed. The lyrical element preponderates in all of them over the epic, and the poet himself, or his inmost thoughts, are the subjects upon which in general they turn.

The time of perfection at length arrived, when the poets, inspired by genius, by employing the assistance of art, and by drinking from the fountains of nationality, and by availing themselves of all the aids that an ad

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