Afallezioseles el sol · al ora de mediodia,
No vedian por do ir · con la mercaderia.
Poema de José, MS.
[158] This is apparent also in the addition sometimes made of an o or an a to a word ending with a consonant, as mercadero for mercader.
[159] Thus, the merchant who buys Joseph talks of Palestine as “the Holy Land,” and Pharaoh talks of making Joseph a Count. But the general tone is Oriental.
[160] For the Rimado de Palacio, see Bouterwek, trad. de Cortina, Tom. I. pp. 138-154. The whole poem consists of 1619 stanzas. For notices of Ayala, see Chap. IX.
[161] Letrado has continued to be used to mean a lawyer in Spanish down to our day, as clerk has to mean a writer in English, though the original signification of both was different. When Sancho goes to his island, he is said to be “parte de letrado, parte de Capitan”; and Guillen de Castro, in his “Mal Casados de Valencia,” Act. III., says of a great rogue, “engaño como letrado.” A description of Letrados, worthy of Tacitus for its deep satire, is to be found in the first book of Mendoza’s “Guerra de Granada.”
[162] The passage is in Cortina’s notes to Bouterwek, and begins:—
Si quisiers sobre un pleyto · d’ ellos aver consejo,
Pónense solemnmente, · luego abaxan el cejo: