The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written, was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction, just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least, were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350]
This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years, from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements. In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed and nourished in the long periods of national trial and suffering, are constantly coming out; hardly less in Columbus and his followers, or even amidst the atrocities of the conquests in the New World, than in the half-miraculous accounts of the battles of Hazinas and Tolosa, or in the grand and glorious drama of the fall of Granada. Indeed, wherever we go under their leading, whether to the court of Tamerlane, or to that of Saint Ferdinand, we find the heroic elements of the national genius gathered around us; and thus, in this vast, rich mass of chronicles, containing such a body of antiquities, traditions, and fables as has been offered to no other people, we are constantly discovering, not only the materials from which were drawn a multitude of the old Spanish ballads, plays, and romances, but a mine which has been unceasingly wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes, and still remains unexhausted.[351]
CHAPTER XI.
Third Class. — Romances of Chivalry. — Arthur. — Charlemagne. — Amadis de Gaula. — Its Date, Author, Translation into Castilian, Success, and Character. — Esplandian. — Florisando. — Lisuarte de Grecia. — Amadis de Grecia. — Florisel de Niquea. — Anaxartes. — Silves de la Selva. — French Continuation. — Influence of the Fiction. — Palmerin de Oliva. — Primaleon. — Platir. — Palmerin de Inglaterra.
Romances of Chivalry.—The ballads of Spain belonged originally to the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions. The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads, and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we can easily see, but a single step between large portions of several of the old chronicles, especially that of Don Roderic, and proper romances of chivalry.[352]
Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity. Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings, tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne by Adenés in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief scenes of which are laid either in Spain or in Fairy Land.[356] These, and similar poetical inventions, constructed out of them by the Trouveurs of the North, became, in the next age, materials for the famous romances of chivalry in prose, which, during three centuries, constituted no mean part of the vernacular literature of France, and, down to our own times, have been the great mine of wild fables for Ariosto, Spenser, Wieland, and the other poets of chivalry, whose fictions are connected either with the stories of Arthur and his Round Table, or with those of Charlemagne and his Peers.[357]
At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed, at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors.
This extraordinary family of romances, whose descendants, as Cervantes says, were innumerable,[358] is the family of which Amadis is the poetical head and type. Our first notice of it in Spain is from a grave statesman, Ayala, the Chronicler and Chancellor of Castile, who, as we have already seen, died in 1407.[359] But the Amadis is of an earlier date than this fact necessarily implies, though not perhaps earlier known in Spain. Gomez Eannes de Zurara, Keeper of the Archives of Portugal in 1454, who wrote three striking chronicles relating to the affairs of his own country, leaves no substantial doubt that the author of the Amadis of Gaul was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who was attached to the court of John the First of Portugal, was armed as a knight by that monarch just before the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, and died in 1403.[360] The words of the honest and careful annalist are quite distinct on this point. He says he is unwilling to have his true and faithful book, the “Chronicle of Count Pedro de Meneses,” confounded with such stories as “the book of Amadis, which was made entirely at the pleasure of one man, called Vasco de Lobeira, in the time of the King Don Ferdinand; all the things in the said book being invented by its author.”[361]
Whether Lobeira had any older popular tradition or fancies about Amadis, to quicken his imagination and marshal him the way he should go, we cannot now tell. He certainly had a knowledge of some of the old French romances, such as that of the Saint Graal, or Holy Cup,—the crowning fiction of the Knights of the Round Table,[362]—and distinctly acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the Infante Alfonso, who was born in 1370, for an alteration made in the character of Amadis.[363] But that he was aided, as has been suggested, in any considerable degree, by fictions known to have been in Picardy in the eighteenth century, and claimed, without the slightest proof, to have been there in the twelfth, is an assumption made on too slight grounds to be seriously considered.[364] We must therefore conclude, from the few, but plain, facts known in the case, that the Amadis was originally a Portuguese fiction produced before the year 1400, and that Vasco de Lobeira was its author.