Yo soy Ruy Diaz el Cid · Campeador de Bibar,” etc.
[19] This and the two following translations were made by Mr. J. Hookham Frere, one of the most accomplished scholars England has produced, and one whom Sir James Mackintosh has pronounced to be the first of English translators. He was, for some years, British Minister in Spain, and, by a conjectural emendation which he made of a line in this very poem, known only to himself and the Marquis de la Romana, was able to accredit a secret agent to the latter in 1808, when he was commanding a body of Spanish troops in the French service on the soil of Denmark;—a circumstance that led to one of the most important movements in the war against Bonaparte. (Southey’s History of the Peninsular War, London, 1823, 4to, Tom. I. p. 657.) The admirable translations of Mr. Frere from the Poem of the Cid, are to be found in the Appendix to Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid; itself an entertaining book, made out of free versions and compositions from the Spanish Poem of the Cid, the old ballads, the prose Chronicle of the Cid, and the General Chronicle of Spain. Mr. Wm. Godwin, in a somewhat singular “Letter of Advice to a Young American on a Course of Studies,” (London, 1818, 8vo,) commends it justly as one of the books best calculated to give an idea of the age of chivalry.
It is proper I should add here, that, except in this case of the Poem of the Cid, where I am indebted to Mr. Frere for the passages in the text, and in the case of the Coplas of Manrique, (Chap. 21 of this Period,) where I am indebted to the beautiful version of Mr. Longfellow, the translations in these volumes are made by myself.
[20] This division, and some others less distinctly marked, have led Tapia (Historia de la Civilización de España, Madrid, 1840, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 268) to think, that the whole poem is but a congeries of ballads, as the Iliad has sometimes been thought to be, and, as there is little doubt, the Nibelungenlied really is. But such breaks occur so frequently in different parts of it, and seem so generally to be made for other reasons, that this conjecture is not probable. (Huber, Chrónica del Cid, p. xl.) Besides, the whole poem more resembles the Chansons de Geste of old French poetry, and is more artificial in its structure, than the nature of the ballad permits.
Asur Gonzalez entraba · por el palacio;
Manto armino è un · Brial rastrando:
Bermeio viene, · ca era almorzado.
En lo que fabló · avie poco recabdo.
“Hya varones, quien · vió nunca tal mal?