[33] The shorter poems, noticed as didactic, are found in the Cancioneros and other collections already referred to, or in the works of their respective authors.
[34] When looking through any of the large collections of ballads, especially those produced in the seventeenth century by the popularity of the whole class and the facility of their metrical structure, we find pertinent an excellent remark of Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” 1592, p. 38:—“There is nothing easier than to make a ballad, and nothing more difficult than to make it what it ought to be.”
[35] “Romances nuevamente sacados de Historias Antiguas de la Crónica de España, compuestos por Lorenço de Sepúlveda,” etc., en Anvers, 1551, 18mo. There were editions, enlarged and altered, in 1563, 1566, 1580, and 1584, mentioned by Ebert. That of 1584 contains one hundred and fifty-six ballads;—that of 1551 contains one hundred and forty-nine. Many of them are in the Romanceros Generales, and not a few in the recent collections of Depping and Duran.
[36] The “Cantos de Fuentes,” in the Epístola to which this ballad is found, were printed three times, and in the edition of Alcalá, 1587, 12mo, fill, with their tedious commentary, above eight hundred pages. Fuentes is noted by Zuñiga, in his “Annals of Seville,” 1677, p. 585, as a knight of Seville “of an illustrious lineage.” See also, ante, Vol. I. pp. 36-38.
[37] The only copy of this volume known to exist is among the rare and precious Spanish books given by Reinhart to the Imperial Library at Vienna; but an excellent account of it, followed by above sixty of the more important ballads it contains, was published at Leipzig, 1846, 12mo, under the title of “Rosa de Romances,” by Mr. Wolf, the admirable scholar, to whom the lovers of Spanish literature owe so much.
[38] “Romancero de Pedro de Padilla,” Madrid, 1583, 12mo. The ballads fill about three hundred and sixty pages. The first twenty-two are on the wars in Flanders; afterwards there are nine taken from Ariosto’s stories; then several on the story of Rodrigo de Narvaez, on Spanish traditions, etc.
[39] Cueva, whom we have found in several other departments of Spanish literature, printed his ballads with the title of “Coro Febeo de Romances Historiales,” in his native city, Seville, 1587, 12mo,—a volume of nearly seven hundred pages. Only four or five are on Spanish subjects;—that on Doña Teresa (f. 215) being obviously taken from the “Crónica General,” Parte III. c. 22. The ballad addressed to his book, “Al Libro,” is at the end of the “Melpomene,” and is of value for his personal history.
[40] Hita’s “Guerras Civiles de Granada” will be noticed when I come to speak of romantic fiction.
[41] “Romances de Germanía,” 1609; reprinted, Madrid, 1789, 8vo. The words Germanía, Germano, etc., were applied to the jargon in which the rogues talked with one another. Hidalgo, who wrote only six of the ballads he published, gives at the end of his collection a vocabulary of this dialect, which is recognized as genuine by Mayans y Siscar, and reprinted in his “Orígenes”; so that the suggestion of Clemencin, which I have followed in the text, where I speak of Juan Hidalgo as a pseudonyme, may not be well founded;—a suggestion further discountenanced by the fact, that, in Tom. XXXVIII. of the Comedias Escogidas, 1672, the play of “Los Mozárabes de Toledo” is attributed to a Juan Hidalgo. That this had nothing to do with the Gypsies, though supposed, in the last edition, to have been connected with them, is shown in Borrow’s “Zincali,” London, 1841, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 143. Sandoval (Carlos V., Lib. III. § 38) more than once calls the rebellious Comuneros of Valencia a Germanía, or combination, which can leave little doubt about the origin of the word from Hermandad, Hermano,—brotherhood and brother,—though Covarrubias does not seem sure about it, in verb. Alemania.
[42] Valdivielso’s name occurs very often in the Aprobacion of books in the sixteenth century. His “Romancero Espiritual,” Valencia, 1689, 12mo, first printed 1612, was several times reprinted, and fills above three hundred and fifty pages. It is not quite all in the ballad measure or in a grave tone.