[651] The minor poems of Juan de Mena are to be found chiefly in the old Cancioneros Generales; but some must be sought in the old editions of his own works. For example, in the valuable folio one of 1534, in which the “Trescientas” and the “Coronacion” form separate publications, with separate titles, pagings, and colophons, each is followed by a few of the author’s short poems.
[652] The author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas” (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. p. 148) complained of the frequent obscurities in Juan de Mena’s poetry, three centuries ago,—a fault made abundantly apparent in the elaborate explanations of his dark passages by the two oldest and most learned of his commentators.
[653] Juan de Mena has always stood well with his countrymen, if he has not been absolutely popular. Verses by him appeared, during his lifetime, in the Cancionero of Baena, and immediately afterwards in the Chronicle of the Constable. Others are in the collection of poems already noticed, printed at Saragossa in 1492, and in another collection of the same period, but without date. They are in all the old Cancioneros Generales, and in a succession of separate editions, from 1496 to our own times. And besides all this, the learned Hernan Nuñez de Guzman printed a commentary on them in 1499, and the still more learned Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas, commonly called El Brocense, printed another in 1582; one or the other of which accompanies the poems for their elucidation in nearly every edition since.
[654] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, Año 1436, c. 3. Mena, Trescientas, Cop. 160-162.
Aquel que en la barca parece sentado,
Vestido, en engaño de las bravas ondas,
En aguas crueles, ya mas que no hondas,
Con mucha gran gente en la mar anegado,
Es el valiente, no bien fortunado,
Muy virtuoso, perínclito Conde