[541] The discussion makes out two points quite clearly, viz.: 1st. There was a person named Jordi, who lived in the thirteenth century and in the time of Jayme the Conqueror, was much with that monarch, and wrote, as an eyewitness, an account of the storm from which the royal fleet suffered at sea, near Majorca, in September, 1269 (Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 1; and Fuster, Biblioteca Valentiana, Tom. I. p. 1); and, 2d. There was a person named Jordi, a poet in the fifteenth century; because the Marquis of Santillana, in his well-known letter, written between 1454 and 1458, speaks of such a person as having lived in his time. (See the letter in Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. lvi. and lvii., and the notes on it, pp. 81-85.) Now the question is, to which of these two persons belong the poems bearing the name of Jordi in the various Cancioneros; for example, in the “Cancionero General,” 1573, f. 301, and in the MS. Cancionero in the King’s Library at Paris, which is of the fifteenth century. (Torres Amat, pp. 328-333.) This question is of some consequence, because a passage attributed to Jordi is so very like one in the 103d sonnet of Petrarch, (Parte I.,) that one of them must be taken quite unceremoniously from the other. The Spaniards, and especially the Catalans, have generally claimed the lines referred to as the work of the elder Jordi, and so would make Petrarch the copyist;—a claim in which foreigners have sometimes concurred. (Retrospective Review, Vol. IV. pp. 46, 47, and Foscolo’s Essay on Petrarch, London, 1823, 8vo, p. 65.) But it seems to me difficult for an impartial person to read the verses printed by Torres Amat with the name of Jordi from the Paris MS. Cancionero, and not believe that they belong to the same century with the other poems in the same manuscript, and that thus the Jordi in question lived after 1400, and is the copyist of Petrarch. Indeed, the very position of these verses in such a manuscript seems to prove it, as well as their tone and character.
[542] Torres Amat, pp. 636-643.
[543] Of this remarkable manuscript, which is in the Royal Library at Paris, M. Tastu, in 1834, gave an account to Torres Amat, who was then preparing his “Memorias para un Diccionario de Autores Catalanes” (Barcelona, 1836, 8vo). It is numbered 7699, and consists of 260 leaves. See the Memorias, pp. xviii. and xli., and the many poetical passages from it scattered through other parts of that work. It is much to be desired that the whole should be published; but, in the mean time, the ample extracts from it given by Torres Amat leave no doubt of its general character. Another, and in some respects even more ample, account of it, with extracts, is to be found in Ochoa’s “Catálogo de Manuscritos” (4to, Paris, 1844, pp. 286-374). From this last description of the manuscript we learn that it contains works of thirty-one poets.
[544] Torres Amat, p. 237. Febrer says expressly, that it is translated “en rims vulgars Cathalans.” The first verses are as follows, word for word from the Italian:—
En lo mig del cami de nostra vida
Me retrobe per una selva oscura, etc.,
and the last is—
L’amor qui mou lo sol e les stelles.
It was done at Barcelona, and finished August 1, 1428, according to the MS. copy in the Escurial.
[545] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, where Tirante is saved in the conflagration of the mad knight’s library. But Southey is of quite a different opinion. See ante, [note to Chap. XI]. The best accounts of it are those by Clemencin in his edition of Don Quixote, (Tom. I. pp. 132-134,) by Diosdado, “De Prima Typographiæ Hispanicæ Ætate,” (Romæ, 1794, 4to, p. 32,) and by Mendez, “Typographía Española” (Madrid, 1796, 4to, pp. 72-75). What is in Ximeno (Tom. I. p. 12) and Fuster (Tom. I. p. 10) goes on the false supposition that the Tirante was written in Spanish before 1383, and printed in 1480. It was, in fact, originally written in Portuguese, but was printed first in the Valencian dialect, in 1490. Of this edition only two copies are known to exist, for one of which £300 was paid in 1825. Repertorio Americano, Lóndres, 1827, 8vo, Tom. IV. pp. 57-60.