of style in these renderings from the Arabic. Elsewhere a strange ignorance of Arabs and their history is shown by the compiler's inclusion of such fables as Muhammad's crusade in Córdoba. The inevitable conclusion is that the Estorias, like the Siete Partidas, are compilations by several hands; and the idea is supported by the fact that the prologue to the Estoria de Espanna is scarcely more than a translation of Jiménez de Rada's preface.
Late traditions give the names of Alfonso's collaborators in one or the other History as Egidio de Zamora, Jofre de Loaysa, Martín de Córdoba, Suero Pérez, Bishop of Zamora, and Garci Fernández de Toledo; and even though these attributions be (as seems likely) a trifle fantastical, they at least indicate a long-standing disbelief in the unity of authorship. It is proved that Alfonso gathered from Córdoba, Seville, Toledo, and Paris some fifty experts to translate Ptolemy's Quadri partitum and other astronomic treatises; it is natural that he should organise a similar committee to put together the first history in the Castilian language. Better than most of his contemporaries, he knew the value of combination. As with astronomy so with history: in both cases he conceived the scheme, in both cases he presided at the redaction and stamped the crude stuff with his distinctive seal. Judged by a modern standard, both Estorias lend themselves to a cheap ridicule; compared with their predecessors, they imply a finer appreciation of the value of testimony, and this notable evolution of the critical sense is matched by a manner that rises to the theme. Side by side with a greater care for chronology, there is a keener edge of patriotism which leads the compilers to embody in their text whole passages of lost cantares de gesta. And these are no purple patches: the expression is throughout dignified without pomp, and easy without familiarity. Spanish prose sheds much of its uncouthness, and takes its definitive form in such a passage as that upon the Joys of Spain: "More than all, Spain is subtle—ay! and terrible, right skilled in conflict, mirthful in labour, stanch to her lord, in letters studious, in speech courtly, fulfilled of gifts; never a land the earth overlong to match her excellence, to rival her bravery; few in the world as mighty as she." It may be lawful to believe that here we catch the personal accent of the King.
Compilations abound in which Alfonso is said to have shared, but they are of less importance than his Cantigas de Santa María (Canticles of the Virgin)—four hundred and twenty pieces, written and set to music in the Virgin's praise. Strictly speaking, these do not belong to Castilian literature, being written in the elaborate Galician language, which now survives as little better than a dialect. But they must be considered if we are to form any just idea of Alfonso's accomplishments and versatility. At the outset a natural question suggests itself: "Why should the King of Castile, after drawing up his code in Castilian, write his verses in Galician?" The answer is simple: "For the reason that he was an artist." Velázquez, indeed, asserts that Alfonso was reared in Galicia; but this is assertion, not evidence. The real motive of the choice was the superior development of the Galician, which so far outpassed the Castilian in flexibility and grace as to invite comparison with the Provençal. Troubadours in full flight from the Albigensian wars found grace at Alfonso's court; Aimeric de Belenoi, Nat de Mons, Calvo, Riquier, Lunel, and more.
That Alfonso wrote in Provençal seems probable enough, especially as he derides the incapacity in this respect of his father's trovador, Pero da Ponte; still, the two Provençal pieces which bear his name are spurious, and are the work of Nat de Mons and Riquier. Howbeit, the Provençal spell mastered him, and drove him to reproduce its elaborate rhythms. The first impression given by the Cantigas is one of unusual metrical resource. Verses of four syllables, of five, octosyllabics, hendecasyllabics, are among the singer's experiments. From the popular coplas, not unlike the modern seguidillas, he strays to the lumbering line of seventeen syllables; in five strophes he commits an acrostic as the name María; and half a thousand years before Matilda's lover went to Göttingen, he anticipates Canning's freak in the Anti-Jacobin by splitting up a word to achieve a difficult rhyme; he abuses the refrain by insistent repetition, so as to give the echo of a litany, or fit the ready-made melody of a juglar (clxxii.);—puerilities perhaps, but characteristic of a school and an epoch. Subjects are taken as they come, preference being given to the more universal version, and local legends taking a secondary place. A living English poet has merited great praise for his Ballad of a Nun. Six hundred years before Mr. Davidson, Alfonso gave six splendid variants of the famous story. Two men of genius have treated the legend of the statue and the ring—Prosper Mérimée in his Vénus d'Ille, and Heine in Les Dieux en Exile—with splendid effect. Alfonso (xlii.) anticipated them by rendering the story in verses of incomparable beauty, pregnant with mystery and terror.
For his part, Alfonso rifles Vincent de Beauvais, Gautier de Coinci, Berceo, and, in his encyclopædic way, borrows a hint from the old Catalan Planctus Mariæ Virginis; but his touch transmutes bold hagiology to measures of harmony and distinction. He was not—it cannot be claimed for him—a poet of supreme excellence; yet, if he fail to reach the topmost peaks, he vindicates his choice of a medium by outstripping his predecessors, and by pointing the path to those who succeed him. With the brain of a giant he combined the heart of a little child, and, technique apart, this amalgam which wrought his political ruin was his poetic salvation. Still an artist, even when he stumbles into the ditch, his metrical dexterity persists in such brutally erotic and satiric verse as he contributes to the Vatican Cancioneiro (Nos. 61–79). Withal, he survives by something better than mere virtuosity; for his simplicity and sincere enthusiasm, sundered from the prevalent affectation of his contemporaries, ensure him a place apart.
His example in so many fields of intellectual exercise was followed. What part he took (if any) in preparing Kalilah and Dimnah is not settled. The Spanish version, probably made before Alfonso's accession to the throne, derives straight from the Arabic, which, in its turn, is rendered by Abd Allah ibn al-Mukaffa (754–775) from Barzoyeh's lost Pehlevī (Old Persian) translations of the original Sanskrit. This last has disappeared, though its substance survives in the remodelled Panchatantra, and from it descend the variants that are found in almost all European literatures. The period of the Spanish rendering is hard to determine exactly, but 1251 is the generally accepted date, and its vogue is proved by the use made of it by Raimond de Béziers in his Latin version (1313). It does not appear to have been used by Raimond Lull (1229–1315), the celebrated Doctor illuminatus, in his Catalan Beast-Romance, inserted in the Libre de Maravelles about the year 1286. The value of the Spanish lies in the excellence of the narrative manner, and in its reduction of the oriental apologue to terms of the vernacular. Alfonso's brother, Fadrique, followed the lead in his Engannos é Assayamientos de las Mogieres (Crafts and Wiles of Women), which is referred to 1253, and is translated from the Arabic version of a lost Sanskrit original, after the fashion of Kalilah and Dimnah.
Translation is continued at the court of Alfonso's son and successor, Sancho IV. (d. 1295), who, as already noted, commands a version of Brunetto Latini's Tesoro; and the encyclopædic mania takes shape in a work entitled the Luçidario, a series of one hundred and six chapters, which begins by discussing "What was the first thing in heaven and earth?" and ends with reflections on the habits of animals and the whiteness of negroes' teeth. The Gran Conquista de Ultramar (Great Conquest Oversea) is a perversion of the history originally given by Guillaume de Tyr (d. 1184), mixed with other fabulous elements, derived perhaps from the French, and certainly from the Provençal, which thus comes for the first time in direct contact with Castilian prose. The fragmentary Provençal Chanson d'Antioche which remains can scarcely be the original form in which it was composed by its alleged author, Grégoire de Bechada: at best it is a rifacimento of a previous draught. But that it was used by the Spanish translator has been amply demonstrated by M. Gaston Paris. The translator has been identified with King Sancho himself; the safer opinion is that the work was undertaken by his order during his last days, and was finished after his death.
With these should be classed compilations like the Book of Good Proverbs, translated from Hunain ibn Ishāk al-'Ibādī; the Bonium or Bocados de Oro, from the collections of Abu 'l Wafā Mubashshir ibn Fātik, part of which was Englished by Lord Rivers, and thence conveyed into Caxton's Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers; and the Flowers of Philosophy, a treatise composed