[112] Capp. 24 and 26. The followers of Don John, however, have been more indebted to him than he was to his predecessors. Thus, the story of “Don Illan el Negromantico” (Cap. 13) was found by Mr. Douce in two French and four English authors. (Blanco White, Variedades, Lóndres, 1824, Tom. I. p. 310.) The apologue which Gil Blas, when he is starving, relates to the Duke of Lerma, (Liv. VIII. c. 6,) and “which,” he says, “he had read in Pilpay or some other fable writer,” I sought in vain in Bidpai, and stumbled upon it, when not seeking it, in the Conde Lucanor, Cap. 18. It may be added, that the fable of the Swallows and the Flax (Cap. 27) is better given there than it is in La Fontaine.
[113] Shakspeare, it is well known, took the materials for his “Taming of the Shrew,” with little ceremony, from a play with the same title, printed in 1594. But the story, in its different parts, seems to have been familiar in the East from the earliest times, and was, I suppose, found there among the traditions of Persia by Sir John Malcolm. (Sketches of Persia, London, 1827, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 54.) In Europe I am not aware that it can be detected earlier than the Conde Lucanor, Cap. 45. The doctrine of unlimited submission on the part of the wife seems, indeed, to have been a favorite one with Don John Manuel; for, in another story, (Cap. 5,) he says, in the very spirit of Petruchio’s jest about the sun and moon, “If a husband says the stream runs up hill, his wife ought to believe him, and say that it is so.”
[114] Fernan Gonzalez is the great hero of Castile, whose adventures will be noticed when we come to the poem about them; and in the battle of Hazinas he gained the decisive victory over the Moors which is well described in the third part of the “Crónica General.”
[115] “Y el Conde tovo este por buen exemplo,”—an old Castilian formula. (Crónica General, Parte III. c. 5.) Argote de Molina says of such phrases, which abound in the Conde Lucanor, that “they give a taste of the old proprieties of the Castilian”; and elsewhere, that “they show what was the pure idiom of our tongue.” Don John himself, with his accustomed simplicity, says, “I have made up the book with the handsomest words I could.” (Ed. 1575, f. 1, b.) Many of his words, however, needed explanation in the reign of Philip the Second, and, on the whole, the phraseology of the Conde Lucanor sounds older than that of the Partidas, which were yet written nearly a century before it. Some of its obsolete words are purely Latin, like cras for to-morrow, f. 83, and elsewhere.
[116] Cap. 20.
[117] Cap. 48.
[118] Cap. 8.—I infer from the Conde Lucanor, that Don John knew little about the Bible, as he cites it wrong in Cap. 4, and in Cap. 44 shows that he did not know it contained the comparison about the blind who lead the blind.
[119] There are two Spanish editions of the Conde Lucanor: the first and best by Argote de Molina, 4to, Sevilla, 1575, with a life of Don John prefixed, and a curious essay on Castilian verse at the end,—one of the rarest books in the world; and the other, only less rare, published at Madrid, 1642. The references in the notes are to the first. A reprint, made, if I mistake not, from the last, and edited by A. Keller, appeared at Stuttgard, 1839, 12mo, and a German translation by J. von Eichendorff, at Berlin, in 1840, 12mo. Don John Manuel, I observe, cites Arabic twice in the Conde Lucanor, (Capp. 11 and 14,)—a rare circumstance in early Spanish literature.
[120] Libro de la Monteria, que mando escrivir, etc., el Rey Don Alfonso de Castilla y de Leon, ultimo deste nombre, acrecentado por Argote de Molina, Sevilla, 1582, folio, 91 leaves,—the text not correct, as Pellicer says (note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 24). The Discurso of Argote de Molina, that follows, and fills 21 leaves more, is illustrated with curious woodcuts, and ends with a description of the palace of the Pardo, and an eclogue in octave stanzas, by Gomez de Tapia of Granada, on the birth of the Infanta Doña Isabel, daughter of Philip II.
[121] This old rhymed chronicle was found by the historian Diego de Mendoza among his Arabic manuscripts in Granada, and was sent by him, with a letter dated December 1, 1573, to Zurita, the annalist of Aragon, intimating that Argote de Molina would be interested in it. He says truly, that “it is well worth reading, to see with what simplicity and propriety men wrote poetical histories in the olden times”; adding, that “it is one of those books called in Spain Gestas,” and that it seems to him curious and valuable, because he thinks it was written by a secretary of Alfonso XI., and because it differs in several points from the received accounts of that monarch’s reign. (Dormer, Progresos de la Historia de Aragon, Zaragoza, 1680, fol., p. 502.) The thirty-four stanzas of this chronicle that we now possess were first published by Argote de Molina, in his very curious “Nobleza del Andaluzia,” (Sevilla, 1588, f. 198,) and were taken from him by Sanchez (Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 171-177). Argote de Molina says, “I copy them on account of their curiosity as specimens of the language and poetry of that age, and because they are the best and most fluent of any thing for a long time written in Spain.” The truth is, they are so facile, and have so few archaisms in them, that I cannot believe they were written earlier than the ballads of the fifteenth century, which they so much resemble. The following account of a victory, which I once thought was that of Salado, gained in 1340, and described in the “Crónica de Alfonso XI.,” (1551, fol., Cap. 254,) but which I now think must have been some victory gained before 1330, is the best part of what has been published:—