[196] Chronicle, vi. 29. The old Spanish writers observe that the Cid knew how to make a good knight, as a good groom knows how to make a good horse.
[197] Chronicle, vii. 19. Ximena was like the famous Oriana in Amadis of Gaul, who was always affrayed at military preparations.
[198] He had let it grow out of respect to Alfonso; and he intended it should be a matter of admiration both with Moors and Christians. Poema del Cid, v. 1230, &c.
[199] Chronicle, books 9 and 10. Every reader of Spanish history knows how fiercely the story of the Infantes has been discussed. I shall not burden my pages with a statement of the arguments, but I think that the balance is very much in favour of the truth of the story. Mr. Southey’s remark is judicious. “The conduct of the Infantes of Carrion is certainly improbable. There are instances enough of such cruelty, but none of such folly. Yet nothing can be so improbable as that such a story should be invented and related so soon after their death; of persons who had really existed, and were of such rank: and that it should be accredited and repeated by all the historians who lived nearest the time.”
[200] Hallam’s Middle Ages, iii. 482. 2d edit.
[201] The world has generally been acquainted with the fall of Grenada by the work of Genez Perez de Hita, which was translated into French, and acquired popularity when Florian made it the foundation of his Gonsalvo de Cordova. There is very little historical truth in the volume, and the value of the pictures of manners it contains has been much overrated: those pictures, moreover, are Moorish rather than chivalric, and therefore not of service to the present work.
[202] Warton on the Gesta Romanorum, in the first volume of his History of English Poetry.
[203] De Marca, Marca Hispanica, p. 1428.
[204] Con razon (dize) nos quitais las armas del linage, pues las ponemos à tan graves peligros, y traucos: vos las mereceis mejor, que como mas recatado, les teneis mejor guardados.
Mariana, Hist. de Espana, xiii. 7.