[77] The prefatory notice to this edition contains all that is known of Balbuena.

[78] There was an edition with a French translation in 1614, but the best is that of Madrid, 1781, 8vo.

[79] It was first printed, I believe, at Naples, in 1602, but was improved in the edition at Valencia, 1609, 12mo, pp. 278, from which I transcribe the opening of Act III.:—

This passage is so nearly word for word, that it is not worth while to copy the Italian, and yet its fluency and ease are admirable.

There is a translation of the “Pastor Fido,” by a Jewess, Doña Isabel de Correa, of which I know only the third edition, that of Antwerp, 1694, 12mo. It is one of the few trophies in poetry claimed by the fair sex of its author’s faith; but it is not worthy of much praise. Ginguené complains of the original, which extends to seven thousand lines, for being too long. It is so; but this translation of Doña Isabel is much longer, containing, I think, above eleven thousand lines. Its worst fault, however, is its bad taste. There is a drama with the same title, “El Pastor Fido,” in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. VIII., 1657, f. 106;—but, though it is said to be written by three poets no less famous than Solís, Coello, and Calderon, it has very little value.

[80] Antonio (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 251) gives a list of nine of the works of Figueroa, some of which must be noticed under their respective heads; but it is probably not complete, for Figueroa himself, in 1617, (Pasagero, f. 377,) says he had already published seven books, and Antonio gives only six before that date; besides which, a friend, in the Preface to Figueroa’s Life of the Marquis of Cañete, 1613, says he had written eight works in the ten years then preceding.

[81] Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 179-181, and elsewhere. The very curious notices given by Figueroa of his own life, which have never been used for his biography, are in his “Pasagero,” from f. 286 to f. 392, and are, like many other passages of that singular book, full of bitterness towards his contemporaries, Lope de Vega, Villegas, Espinosa, etc.

[82] Pasagero, f. 96. b.

[83] “El Premio de la Constancia y Pastores de Sierra Bermeja, por Jacinto de Espinel Adorno,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo, 162 leaves. I find no notice of it, except the slight one in Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 613; but it is not worse than some that were more valued.

[84] “El Pastor de Clenarda de Miguel Botelho de Cavalho,” Madrid, 1622, 8vo. He wrote, also, several other works; all in Castilian, except his “Filis,” a poem in octave stanzas. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. III. p. 466.

[85] “Experiencias de Amor y Fortuna, por el Licenciado Francisco de las Cuevas de Madrid,” Barcelona, 1649, 12mo. See, also, Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. pp. 172 and 189. Francisco de Quintana dedicated this pastoral to Lope de Vega, who wrote him a complimentary reply, in which he treats Quintana as a young man, and this as his first work. There were editions of it in 1626, 1646, 1654, as well as the one at Barcelona, above noted, and one at Madrid, 1666, 12mo; and in the nineteenth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas, pp. 353-400, is a sermon which Quintana delivered at the obsequies of Lope, in the title of which he is called Lope’s “intimate friend.”

[86] “La Cintia de Aranjuez, Prosas y Versos, por Don Gabriel de Corral, Natural de Valladolid,” Madrid, 1629, 12mo, 208 leaves. I know of no other edition. He lived in Rome from 1630 to 1632, and probably longer. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 505.) He is Gongoresque in his style, as is Quintana.

[87] “Los Pastores del Betis, por Gonzalvo de Saavedra,” Trani, 1633, 4to, pp. 289. It seems to have been written in Italy; but we know nothing of its author, except that he was a Veintiquatro of Córdova. His style is affected. In my copy, which in the colophon is dated 1634, there are, as a separate tract, four leaves of religious and moral advice to the author’s son, when he was going as governor to one of the provinces of Naples; better written than the romance that precedes it.

[88] Portugal might have been added. The “Menina é Moça” of Bernardino Ribeyro, printed 1557, is a beautiful fragment; and the “Primaveira” of Francisco Rodriguez de Lobo, in three long parts, printed between 1601 and 1614,—the first of which was translated into Spanish by Juan Bart. Morales, 1629,—is among the best full-length pastoral romances extant. Both for a long time were favorites in Portugal, and are still read there. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. I. p. 518, Tom. II. p. 242.

[89] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, in the examination of the library, where his niece begs that the pastorals may be burnt as well as the books of chivalry, lest, if her uncle were cured of knight-errantry, he should go mad as a shepherd;—and Parte II. c. 67 and 73, where her fears are very nigh being realized.

[90] Comedias, Parte VI., Madrid, 1615, 4to, f. 102. El Cuerdo en su Casa, Act. I.

[91] “The Diana of Montemayor,” says Lope de Vega, in the passage from his “Dorotea” already cited, (n. [64],) “was a lady of Valencia de Don Juan, near Leon, and he has made both her and the river Ezla immortal. So the Fílida of Montalvo, the Galatea of Cervantes, and the Filis of Figueroa, were real personages.” Others might be added, on the authority of their authors, such as “Los Diez Libros de Fortuna y Amor,” “La Cintia de Aranjuez,” etc. See a note of Clemencin, Don Quixote, Tom. VI. p. 440.

[92] For these low, vagabond attorneys, or jackals of attorneys,—the Catariberas,—see, ante, Vol. I. p. 519, and note.

[93] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Article Matthæus Aleman; and Salvá, Repertorio Americano, 1827, Tom. III. p. 65. For his troubles with the government, see Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” 1819, p. 441. He seems to have been old when he went to Mexico; and Don Adolfo de Castro, at the end of the “Buscapié,” 1848, gives us a letter, dated at Seville, April 20th, 1607, from Aleman to Cervantes, of whose origin or discovery we receive no account whatever, and into which its author seems to have thrust all the proverbs and allusions he could collect;—none, however, so obscure that the curious learning of Don Adolfo cannot elucidate them. The whole letter is a complaint of Aleman’s own hard fortune, and a prediction of that of Cervantes, ending with a declaration of the purpose of its writer to go to Mexico. It does not seem to me to be genuine; but if it is, it gives the coup de grace to Clemencin’s conjectures, in his notes to both the first and second part of Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 22, and Parte II. c. 4,) that Cervantes intended to speak slightingly of the “Guzman de Alfarache”;—a conjecture not to be sustained, if the relations of Cervantes with Aleman were as friendly as this letter, published by Don Adolfo de Castro, implies.

[94] The first three editions, those of Madrid, Barcelona, and Saragossa, are well known, and are all of 1599; but most of the remaining three-and-twenty rest on the authority of Valdes, in a letter prefixed to the first edition of the second part, (Valencia, 1605, 12mo,) an authority, however, which there seems no sufficient reason to question, remarkable as the story is. Valdes says expressly, “The number of printed volumes exceeds fifty thousand, and the number of impressions that have come to my notice is twenty-six.”

[95] This continuation, not quite so long as the first part of the original work, was printed at Madrid, 1846, 8vo, in the third volume of the “Biblioteca” of Aribau. Previously, it had been hardly known in literary history, and much overlooked by the bibliographers; Ebert, who had found some traces of it, attributing it to Aleman himself, and considering it as a true second part of the Guzman. But this is a mistake. Both Aleman himself and his friend Valdes are explicit on the subject, in their epistles prefixed to the first edition of the second part;—Valdes declaring that the author of the continuation in question was “a Valencian, who, falsifying his own name, called himself Mateo Luxan, to assimilate himself to Mateo Aleman.” Aleman himself says he was obliged to rewrite his second part, because he had, through a prodigal communication of his papers, been robbed and defrauded of the materials out of which he had originally composed it. The work of the Valencian was printed at Barcelona in 1603, at Brussels, 1604, etc. On the title-page to the first edition of the genuine second part Aleman says, “Let the reader take notice, that the second part published before this is none of mine, and that this is the only one I recognize.” Fuster, in his “Biblioteca,” Tom. I. p. 198, gives strong reasons for supposing the spurious second part was written by Juan Marti, a Valencian advocate.

[96] There has been some confusion about the time of the first appearance of these two second parts; one having sometimes been mistaken for the other. But Fuster evidently believed in no edition of the spurious second part older than 1603, the license to which is dated in 1602; and I possess the edition of the genuine second part, printed at Valencia in 1605, with a license of the same year, recognizing no earlier publication, and bearing all the usual proofs of being the first. Both of the second parts promise a third, which never appeared.

[97] Parte II. Lib. I. c. 8.

[98] The common bibliographers give lists of all the translations. The first English is by Mabbe, and is excellent. (See Wood’s Athenæ, ed. Bliss, Tom. III. p. 54, and Ret. Review, Tom. V. p. 189.) It went through at least four editions, the fourth being printed at London, 1656, folio; besides which there has been a subsequent translation by several hands, taken, however, I think, from the French of Le Sage. The Latin translation was by Gaspar Ens, and I have seen editions of it referred to as of 1623, 1624, and 1652. Every thing, indeed, shows that the popular success of the Guzman was immense throughout Europe.

[99] See the verses prefixed to the translation of Mabbe, and signed by Ben Jonson.

[100] There are four French translations of it, beginning with one by Chappuis, in 1600, and coming down to that of Le Sage, 1732, which last has been many times reprinted. The third in the order of dates was made by Bremont, while in prison in Holland; and, out of spite against the administration of justice, from which he was suffering, he made bitter additions to the original whenever a judge or a bailiff came into his hands. See the Preface of Le Sage.

[101] Parte I. Lib. I. c. 8. It is related by Guzman, however, who is much too young to tell such a story. It may be noted, also, that Guzman grows very suddenly to man’s estate, after leaving Madrid and before reaching Toledo, whither he went as fast as he could to escape pursuit.

[102] Beaumont and Fletcher, ed. Weber, Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo, Vol. V. p. 120. Le Sage omits it in his version, because, he says, Scarron had made it one in his collection of tales. It has, in fact, been often used, as have many other stories of the same class.

[103] The first edition of the “Pícara Justina” is that of Medina del Campo, 1605, 4to, since which time it has been often printed; the best edition being probably that of Madrid, 1735, 4to, edited by Mayans y Siscar, who, in a prefatory notice, makes the reproach against its author, as the oldest corrupter of the Spanish prose style, alluded to in the text. There is a good deal of poetry scattered through the volume; all very conceited and poor. Some of it is in that sort of verses from which the final syllable is cut off,—such verses, I mean, as Cervantes has prefixed to the first part of Don Quixote; and as both that part and the “Pícara Justina” were originally published in the same year, 1605, some question has arisen with Pellicer and Clemencin, who is the inventor of these poor, truncated verses. Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. But, as the first part of Don Quixote, according to the Tassa prefixed to it, was struck off as early as the 20th of December, 1604, though the full copyright was not granted till the 9th of February following, there can be little doubt that Cervantes was the earliest.

[104] See the “Cancion á su Patria,” which is creditable alike to his personal feelings and—with the exception of a few foolish conceits—to his poetical character. Diversas Rimas de V. Espinel, Madrid, 1591, 12mo, f. 23.

[105] Espinel’s own Prólogo to “Marcos de Obregon.”

[106] End of the first silva to the “Laurel de Apolo,” which was published in 1630.

[107] Lope de Vega, Dorotea, Acto I. Sc. 8.

[108]

says Lope, in the “Laurel.”

[109] Salas Barbadillo, Estafeta del Dios Momo, 1627, Dedicacion. Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 1819, 8vo, pp. 178, 406.

[110] The first edition is dedicated to his patron, the Archbishop of Toledo, whose daily pension to him, however, may have well been called “alms”—limosna—by Salas Barbadillo. Other editions followed, and “Marcos” has continued to be reprinted and read in Spain down to our own times. In London, a good English translation of it, by Major Algernon Langton, was published in 1816, in two volumes, 8vo; and in Breslau, in 1827, there appeared a very spirited, but somewhat free, translation into German, by Tieck, in two volumes, 18mo, with a valuable Preface and good notes. The original is on the Index of 1667 for expurgation.

[111] The Escudero of the plays and novels of the seventeenth century is wholly different from the Escudero of the romances of chivalry of the sixteenth. Covarrubias, in verb., well describes both sorts, adding, “Now-a-days” (1611) “esquires are chiefly used by ladies, but men who have any thing to live upon prefer to keep at home; for as esquires they earn little, and have a hard service of it.”

[112] “Marcos de Obregon” has been occasionally a good deal discussed, both by those who have read it and those who have not, from the use Le Sage has been supposed to have made of it in the composition of Gil Blas. The charge was first announced by Voltaire, who had personal reasons to dislike Le Sage, and who, in his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” (1752,) said, boldly enough, that “The Gil Blas is taken entirely from the Spanish romance entitled ‘La Vidad de lo Escudiero Dom Marcos d’Obrego.’” (Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo, Tom. XX. p. 155.) This is one of the remarks Voltaire sometimes hazarded, with little knowledge of the matter he was discussing, and it is not true. That Le Sage had seen the “Marcos de Obregon” there can be no doubt; and none that he made some use of it in the composition of the Gil Blas. This is apparent at once by the story which constitutes its Preface, and which is taken from a similar story in the Prólogo to the Spanish romance; and it is no less plain frequently afterwards, in the body of the work, where the trick played on the vanity of Gil Blas, as he is going to Salamanca, (Lib. I. c. 2,) is substantially the same with that played on Marcos, (Relacion I. Desc. 9,)—where the stories of Camilla (Gil Blas, Liv. I. c. 16, Marcos, Rel. III. Desc. 8) and of Mergellina (Gil Blas, Liv. II. c. 7, Marcos, Rel. I. Desc. 3), with many other matters of less consequence, correspond in a manner not to be mistaken. But this was the way with Le Sage, who has used Estevanillo Gonzalez, Guevara, Roxas, Antonio de Mendoza, and others, with no more ceremony. He seemed, too, to care very little about concealment, for one of the personages in his Gil Blas is called Marcos de Obregon. But the idea that the Gil Blas was taken entirely from the Marcos de Obregon of Espinel, or was very seriously indebted to that work, is absurd. See the next Period, Chap. IV., note on Father Isla.

[113] The name of this author is one of the many that occur in Spanish literature and history, where it is difficult to determine which part of it should be used to designate its owner. The whole of it is Gerónymo de Alcalá Yañez y Rivera; and, no doubt, his personal acquaintances knew him as “the Doctor Gerónymo.” In the Index to Antonio’s Bib. Nova, he is placed under Alcalá; but as that name only implied, I presume, that he had studied in Alcalá, I have preferred to call him Yañez y Rivera, the first being his father’s name and the second his mother’s; and I mention the circumstance only because it is a difficulty which occurs in many cases of the same sort, and should be noticed once for all. The title of his romance is “Alonso Moço de Muchos Amos,” and the first part was first printed at Madrid, in 1624; but my copy is of the edition of Barcelona, 1625, 12mo, showing that it was well regarded in its time, and soon came to a second edition. Many editions have been published since; sometimes, like that of Madrid, 1804, 2 tom. 12mo, with the title of “El Donado Hablador,” or The Talkative Lay-Brother, that being the character in which the hero tells his story. Yañez y Rivera was born in 1563.

[114] Alonso de Castillo Solorzano seems to have had his greatest success between 1624 and 1649, and was at one time in the service of Pedro Faxardo, the Marquis of Velez, who was Captain-general of Valencia. There is an edition of the “Niña de los Embustes” as early as 1632, and one of the “Garduña de Sevilla” in 1634. But, except the few hints concerning their author to be gathered from the titles and prefaces to his stories, and the meagre notices in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel de Apolo,” Silva VIII., and Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 15, we know little of him. He sneers at cultismo on one page of his “Niña de los Embustes,” and falls into it on the next.

[115] “El Siglo Pitagórico y la Vida de Don Gregorio Guadaña,” was written by Antonio Enriquez Gomez, a Portuguese by descent, who was educated in Castile, and lived much in France, where several of his works were first printed. The earliest edition of the “Siglo Pitagórico” is dated Rouen, 1644, but the one I use is of Brussels, 1727, in 4to. There is a notice of the life of Gomez in Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 297, and an examination of his works in Amador de los Rios, “Judios de España,” 1848, pp. 569, etc. He was of a Jewish Portuguese family, and Barbosa says he was born in Portugal, but Amador de los Rios says he was born in Segovia. That he renounced the Christian religion, which his father had adopted, that he fled to France in 1638, and that he was burnt in effigy by the Inquisition in 1660, are facts not doubted. His Spanish name was Enriquez de Paz; and in the Preface to his “Sanson Nazareno” he gives a list of his published works.

[116] “Vida y Hechos de Estevanillo Gonzalez, Hombre de Buen Humor, compuesta por el mismo,” was printed at Antwerp in 1646, and at Madrid in 1652. Whether there is any edition between these and the one of 1795, Madrid, 2 tom. 12mo, I do not know. The rifacimento of Le Sage appeared, I believe, for the first time in 1707.

[117] I know only the edition of Antwerp, 1556, 12mo, but there are several others. Lowndes, Bib. Manual, Article Aurelio, and Malone’s Shakspeare, by Boswell, Vol. XV.

[118] “Historia de los Amores de Clareo y Florisea, por Alonso Nuñez de Reinoso,” Venecia, 1552, reprinted in the third volume of Aribau’s Biblioteca, 1846. The author is said by Antonio to have been a native of Guadalaxara, and, from his poems, published at the same time with his story, and of no value, he seems to have led an unhappy life, divided between the law, for which he felt he had no vocation, and arms, in which he had no success.

[119] It claims to be “sacado del estilo Griego,” and in this imitates one of the common fictions in the title-pages of the romances of chivalry. There are several editions of it,—one at Venice, 1553, 12mo, which is in my library, entitled “Quexa y Aviso de un Cavallero llamado Luzindaro.”

[120] Historia de la Reyna Sevilla, 1532, and 1551;—and Libro de los Honestos Amores de Peregrino y de Jinebra, 1548.

[121] The “Selva de Aventuras” was printed at Salamanca, in 1573, 12mo, and probably earlier, besides which there are subsequent editions of Barcelona, Saragossa, etc. (Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 572); but it is in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 529. Philip II., in the Licencia, calls Contreras “nuestro cronista.” The Selva was translated into French by G. Chapuys, and printed in 1580. (Bibliothèque de Duverdier, Tom. IV. p. 221.) Contreras wrote, also, a volume of allegories in prose and verse, (Dechado de Varios Subjetos, Zaragoza, 1572, and Alcalá, 1581, 12mo,) which is very formal and dull.

[122] The Chronicle of Pedro de Moncayo, published in 1589, is cited in Chap. XII., and the first edition of the first part of the Guerras Civiles, as is well known, appeared at Saragossa in 1595, 12mo. This part was reprinted much oftener than the second. There are editions of it in 1598, 1603, 1604 (three), 1606, 1610, 1613, 1616, etc., besides several without date.

[123] Bertuch, Magazin der Spanischen und Portugiesischen Literatur, Tom. I., 1781, pp. 275-280, with the extract there from “Carter’s Travels.” A suggestion recently reported—not, however, without expressing doubts of its accuracy—by Count Albert de Circourt, in his curious and important “Histoire des Arabes d’Espagne,” (Paris, 1846, 8vo, Tom. III. p. 346,) that Don Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid, has in his possession the Arabic original of the Guerras de Granada, is equally unfounded. From Don Pascual himself, I learn that the MS. referred to is one obtained by him in London, where it had been carried from Madrid as a part of Conde’s collection, and that it is merely an ill-made translation, or rather abridgment, of the romance of Hita;—probably the work of some Morisco Spaniard, not thoroughly acquainted with his own language.

[124] The second part appeared for the first time at Alcalá, in 1604, but has been reprinted so rarely since, that old copies of it are very scarce. There is a neat edition of both parts, Madrid, 1833, 2 tom. 12mo, and both are in the third volume of Aribau’s Biblioteca, 1846.

[125] Parte I. c. 18, Parte II. c. 25.

[126] In my copy of the second part, printed at Madrid, 1731, 12mo, the Aprobacion, dated 10th of September of that year, speaks distinctly of three parts, mentioning the second as the one that was printed at Alcalá in 1604, and the third as being in manuscript. I know no other notice of this third part. Circourt (Histoire des Maures Mudejares et des Moresques) has frequently relied on the second part as an authority, and, in the passage just cited, gives his reasons for the confidence he reposes in it.

[127] Scott is reported to have said, on being shown the Wars of Granada in the latter part of his life, that, if he had earlier known of the book, he might have placed in Spain the scene of some of his own fictions. Denis, Chroniques Chevalresques, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 323.

[128] “La Cryselia de Lidaceli, Famosa y Verdadera Historia de Varios Acontecimientos de Amor y Fortuna,” was first printed at Paris, 1609, 12mo, and dedicated to the Princess of Conti; besides which I have seen a third edition, of Madrid, 1720. At the end a second part is announced, which never appeared. The other work of El Capitan Flegetonte is entitled “La Famosa y Temeraria Compañía de Rompe Columnas,” and was also printed in 1609, with two Dialogues on Love; all as poor as can well be imagined. The “Cryselia” is a strange confusion of the pastoral style with that of serious romance;—the whole mingled with accounts of giants and enchantments, and occasionally with short poems.

[129] Benito Remigio Noydens was author of a number of moral and ascetic works. The “Historia Moral del Dios Momo” (4to, Madrid, 1666, 12mo) is an account of the exile of the god Momus from heaven, and his transmigration through the bodies of persons in all conditions on earth, doing mischief wherever he goes. Each chapter of the eighteen into which it is divided is followed by a moralizing illustration; as, for instance, (c. 5,) the disturbance Momus excites on earth against heaven is illustrated by the heresies of Germany and England, in which the Duke of Saxony and Henry VIII. appear to very little advantage.

[130] “Poema Trágico del Español Gerardo y Desengaño del Amor Lascivo” is the title of the story; and, besides the first edition, it was printed in 1617, 1618, 1623, 1625, 1654, etc. The “Varia Fortuna del Soldado Píndaro,” who, notwithstanding his classical name, is represented as a native of Castile, was less favored. I know only the editions of 1626 and 1661, till we come to that of Madrid, 1845, 8vo, illustrated with much spirit. Of Céspedes y Meneses a slight notice is to be found in Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 362.

[131] The “Historia Tragicómica de Don Enrique de Castro” was printed at Paris, in 1617, when its author was twenty-nine years old. Two years earlier he had published “Engaños deste Siglo.” (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 358.) I believe he sometimes wrote in French.

[132] I do not know who was the author of this foolish fancy, which is, perhaps, a chronique scandaleuse of the court. It was printed at Roussillon, and is a small 18mo volume.

[133] The names of a good many unpublished manuscripts of such works can be found in the Bibliotheca of Antonio, and in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid.”

[134] The MS. of “El Caballero Venturoso,” which is evidently autograph throughout, belongs to Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University of Madrid, and fills 289 closely written leaves, in 4to. A second part is announced, but was probably never written.

[135] “Leon Prodigioso, Apología Moral, por el Licenciado Cosmé Gomez Texada de los Reyes,” Madrid, 1670, 4to;—“Segunda Parte del Leon Prodigioso, Entendimiento y Verdad, Amantes Filosóficos,” Alcalá, 1673, 4to. The first part was licensed in 1634. The author published “El Filósofo,” a miscellany on the physical sciences and moral philosophy, in 1650. In the “Leon Prodigioso” is a good deal of poetry; particularly, in the first part, a poem called “La Nada,” which is very dull, and one in the second, called “El Todo,” which is still worse. His ridicule of the culto style, in Parte I. pp. 317, 391-395, is acute and successful.

[136] My copy is of the eleventh edition, Madrid, 1734, 4to; and Lib. III. c. 1, p. 237, was written just at the moment of the accession of Charles II. The story is connected with the favorite doctrine of the Spanish Church: that of the immaculate conception, whose annunciation by the Madonna is described with dramatic effect in Lib. I. c. 10. The earliest edition I have seen noticed is of 1667.

[137] The only grave romance of this class, after 1650, that needs, I believe, to be referred to, is “La Historia de Lisseno y Fenisa, por Francisco Parraga Martel de la Fuente,” (Madrid, 1701, 4to,)—a very bad imitation of the “Gerardo Español” of Céspedes y Meneses.

[138] The “Inventario” of Villegas was twice printed, the first edition in 4to, 1565, and the second in small 12mo, 1577, 144 leaves;—both times at Medina del Campo, of which its author is supposed to have been a native, and both times with a note especially prefixed, signifying that the first license to print it was granted in 1551.

[139] The story of Narvaez, who is honorably noticed in Pulgar’s “Claros Varones,” Título XVII., and who is said to have been the ancestor of Narvaez, the minister of state to Isabella II., is found in Argote de Molina (Nobleza, 1588, f. 296); in Conde (Historia, Tom. III. p. 262); in Villegas (Inventario, 1565, f. 94); in Padilla (Romancero, 1583, ff. 117-127); in Lope de Vega (Remedio de la Desdicha; Comedias, Tom. XIII., 1620); in Don Quixote (Parte I. c. 5), etc. I think, too, that it may have been given by Timoneda, under the title of “Historia del Enamorado Moro Abindarraez,” sine anno, (Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 162,) and it is certainly among the ballads in his “Rosa Española,” 1573. (See Wolf’s reprint, 1846, p. 107.) It is the subject, also, of a long poem by Francisco Balbi de Corregio, 1593. (Depping’s Romancero, Leipsique, 1844, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 231.) That Montemayor took his version of the story of Narvaez from Villegas nobody will doubt who compares both together and remembers that it does not appear in the first edition of the “Diana”; that it is wholly unsuited to its place in such a romance; and that the difference between the two is only that the story, as told by Montemayor, in the “Diana,” Book IV., though it is often, for several sentences together, in the same words with the story in Villegas, is made a good deal longer by mere verbiage. See, ante, Chap. XXXIII., note.

In the “Nobiliario” of Ferant de Mexia, (Sevilla, 1492, folio,)—a curious book, written with Castilian dignity of style, and full of the feudal spirit of an age that believed in the inherent qualities of noble blood,—its author (Lib. II. c. 15) boasts that Narvaez was the brother of his grandfather, calling him “cavallero de los bienaventurados que ovo en nuestros tiempos desde el Cid acá batalloso é victorioso.”

[140] Rodriguez, Biblioteca, p. 283. Ximeno, Bib., Tom. I. p. 72. Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 161, Tom. II. p. 530. The “Sobremesa y Alivio de Caminantes,” by Timoneda, printed in 1569, and probably earlier, is merely a collection of a hundred and sixty-one anecdotes and jests, in the manner of Joe Miller, though sometimes cited as a collection of tales. They are preceded by twelve similar anecdotes, by a person who is called Juan Aragones. In all the editions of the “Patrañuelo,” I believe, except the first and that in Aribau’s Biblioteca, there are only twenty-one tales;—the eighth, which is a coarse one borrowed from Ariosto, being omitted.

[141] The story of Apollonius,—the same with that in Shakspeare’s “Pericles,”—was, as we have seen, (Vol. I. p. 24,) known in Spanish poetry very early, though the old poetical version of it was not printed till 1844; but it is more likely to have been taken by Timoneda from the “Gesta Romanorum,” Tale 153, in the edition of 1488. The story of Griselda he, no doubt, took from the version of it with which the “Decamerone” ends, though he may have obtained it elsewhere. (Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, Firenze, 1742, 4to, p. 603.) As to the story so familiar to us in Percy’s “Reliques,” he probably obtained it from the fourth Novella of Sacchetti, written about 1370; beyond which I think it cannot be traced, though it has been common enough ever since, down to Bürger’s version of it. Similar inquiries would no doubt lead to similar results about other tales in the “Patrañuelo”; but these instances are enough to show that Timoneda took any thing he found suited to his purpose, just as the Italian Novellieri and the French Trouveurs had done before him, without inquiring or caring whence it came.

[142] See, ante, Vol. II. p. 84.

[143] It is in the form of dialogues, and called “Carnestolendas de Castilla, dividido en las tres Noches del Domingo, Lunes y Martes de Antruexo, por Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo, Vezino de la Villa de Madrid,” Barcelona, 1605, 12mo, ff. 108. Editions are also noted of 1606 and 1618.

[144] “El Pasagero” (Madrid, 1617, 12mo, ff. 492) is in ten dialogues, carried on in the pauses or rests of two travellers, and thence affectedly called Alivios. I have a small volume entitled “Historia de los Siete Sabios de Roma, compuesta por Marcos Perez, Barcelona por Rafael Figuero,” 12mo,—no date; but, I think, printed in the eighteenth century. It contains the story of “The Seven Wise Masters,” which is one of the oldest of modern fictions,—the Emperor, in this version of it, being named Ponciano, and being called the son of Diocletian. The style is somewhat better than that of the “Donzella Teodor,” (ante, II. 212,) but seems to be of about the same period.

[145] Notices for the life of Barbadillo may be found in Baena (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. I. p. 42); in Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 28); and in the Prefaces to his own “Estafeta del Dios Momo,” (Madrid, 1627, 12mo,) and his “Coronas del Parnaso” (Madrid, 1635, 12mo). He was associated with Cervantes in the same religious fraternity, and gave his strong testimony in favor of the tales of his friend in their first edition. (Navarrete, Vida, §§ 121, 132.) He seems to have had an office at court, for he calls himself “Criado de su Magestad.”

[146] “La Ingeniosa Helena, Hija de Celestina,” Lerida, 1612, and often since. The edition I have is of Madrid, 1737, 12mo.

[147] “El Caballero Perfeto,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo.

[148] “Casa del Plazer Honesto,” Madrid, 1620, 12mo.