[366] In his Prólogo, Montalvo alludes to the conquest of Granada in 1492, and to both the Catholic sovereigns as still alive, one of whom, Isabella, died in 1504.
[367] I doubt whether the Salamanca edition of 1510, mentioned by Barbosa, (article Vasco de Lobeira,) is not, after all, the edition of 1519 mentioned in Brunet as printed by Antonio de Salamanca. The error in printing, or copying, would be small, and nobody but Barbosa seems to have heard of the one he notices. When the first edition appeared is quite uncertain.
[368] Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria, (Milano, 1829, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 242,) and Brunet’s Manuel; to all which should be added the “Amadigi” of Bernardo Tasso, 1560, constructed almost entirely from the Spanish romance; a poem which, though no longer popular, had much reputation in its time, and is still much praised by Ginguené.
[369] For the old French version, see Brunet’s “Manuel du Libraire”; but Count Tressan’s rifacimento, first printed in 1779, has kept it familiar to French readers down to our own times. In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619; but the abridgment of it by Southey (London, 1803, 4 vols. 12mo) is the only form of it in English that can now be read. It was also translated into Dutch; and Castro, somewhere in his “Biblioteca,” speaks of a Hebrew translation of it.
[370] “Casi que en nuestros dias vimos y comunicamos y oimos al invencible y valeroso caballero D. Belianis de Grecia,” says the mad knight, when he gets to be maddest, and follows out the consequence of making Amadis live above two hundred years and have descendants innumerable. Parte I. c. 13.
[371] Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 107, note.
[372] Amadis de Gaula, Lib. I. c. 4.
[373] Lib. II. c. 17.
[374] Lib. IV. c. 32.
[375] See Lib. II. c. 13, Lib. IV. c. 14, and in many other places, exhortations to knightly and princely virtues.