[133] The names of a good many unpublished manuscripts of such works can be found in the Bibliotheca of Antonio, and in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid.”
[134] The MS. of “El Caballero Venturoso,” which is evidently autograph throughout, belongs to Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University of Madrid, and fills 289 closely written leaves, in 4to. A second part is announced, but was probably never written.
[135] “Leon Prodigioso, Apología Moral, por el Licenciado Cosmé Gomez Texada de los Reyes,” Madrid, 1670, 4to;—“Segunda Parte del Leon Prodigioso, Entendimiento y Verdad, Amantes Filosóficos,” Alcalá, 1673, 4to. The first part was licensed in 1634. The author published “El Filósofo,” a miscellany on the physical sciences and moral philosophy, in 1650. In the “Leon Prodigioso” is a good deal of poetry; particularly, in the first part, a poem called “La Nada,” which is very dull, and one in the second, called “El Todo,” which is still worse. His ridicule of the culto style, in Parte I. pp. 317, 391-395, is acute and successful.
[136] My copy is of the eleventh edition, Madrid, 1734, 4to; and Lib. III. c. 1, p. 237, was written just at the moment of the accession of Charles II. The story is connected with the favorite doctrine of the Spanish Church: that of the immaculate conception, whose annunciation by the Madonna is described with dramatic effect in Lib. I. c. 10. The earliest edition I have seen noticed is of 1667.
[137] The only grave romance of this class, after 1650, that needs, I believe, to be referred to, is “La Historia de Lisseno y Fenisa, por Francisco Parraga Martel de la Fuente,” (Madrid, 1701, 4to,)—a very bad imitation of the “Gerardo Español” of Céspedes y Meneses.
[138] The “Inventario” of Villegas was twice printed, the first edition in 4to, 1565, and the second in small 12mo, 1577, 144 leaves;—both times at Medina del Campo, of which its author is supposed to have been a native, and both times with a note especially prefixed, signifying that the first license to print it was granted in 1551.
[139] The story of Narvaez, who is honorably noticed in Pulgar’s “Claros Varones,” Título XVII., and who is said to have been the ancestor of Narvaez, the minister of state to Isabella II., is found in Argote de Molina (Nobleza, 1588, f. 296); in Conde (Historia, Tom. III. p. 262); in Villegas (Inventario, 1565, f. 94); in Padilla (Romancero, 1583, ff. 117-127); in Lope de Vega (Remedio de la Desdicha; Comedias, Tom. XIII., 1620); in Don Quixote (Parte I. c. 5), etc. I think, too, that it may have been given by Timoneda, under the title of “Historia del Enamorado Moro Abindarraez,” sine anno, (Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 162,) and it is certainly among the ballads in his “Rosa Española,” 1573. (See Wolf’s reprint, 1846, p. 107.) It is the subject, also, of a long poem by Francisco Balbi de Corregio, 1593. (Depping’s Romancero, Leipsique, 1844, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 231.) That Montemayor took his version of the story of Narvaez from Villegas nobody will doubt who compares both together and remembers that it does not appear in the first edition of the “Diana”; that it is wholly unsuited to its place in such a romance; and that the difference between the two is only that the story, as told by Montemayor, in the “Diana,” Book IV., though it is often, for several sentences together, in the same words with the story in Villegas, is made a good deal longer by mere verbiage. See, ante, Chap. XXXIII., [note].
In the “Nobiliario” of Ferant de Mexia, (Sevilla, 1492, folio,)—a curious book, written with Castilian dignity of style, and full of the feudal spirit of an age that believed in the inherent qualities of noble blood,—its author (Lib. II. c. 15) boasts that Narvaez was the brother of his grandfather, calling him “cavallero de los bienaventurados que ovo en nuestros tiempos desde el Cid acá batalloso é victorioso.”
[140] Rodriguez, Biblioteca, p. 283. Ximeno, Bib., Tom. I. p. 72. Fuster, Bib., Tom. I. p. 161, Tom. II. p. 530. The “Sobremesa y Alivio de Caminantes,” by Timoneda, printed in 1569, and probably earlier, is merely a collection of a hundred and sixty-one anecdotes and jests, in the manner of Joe Miller, though sometimes cited as a collection of tales. They are preceded by twelve similar anecdotes, by a person who is called Juan Aragones. In all the editions of the “Patrañuelo,” I believe, except the first and that in Aribau’s Biblioteca, there are only twenty-one tales;—the eighth, which is a coarse one borrowed from Ariosto, being omitted.
[141] The story of Apollonius,—the same with that in Shakspeare’s “Pericles,”—was, as we have seen, (Vol. I. p. 24,) known in Spanish poetry very early, though the old poetical version of it was not printed till 1844; but it is more likely to have been taken by Timoneda from the “Gesta Romanorum,” Tale 153, in the edition of 1488. The story of Griselda he, no doubt, took from the version of it with which the “Decamerone” ends, though he may have obtained it elsewhere. (Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, Firenze, 1742, 4to, p. 603.) As to the story so familiar to us in Percy’s “Reliques,” he probably obtained it from the fourth Novella of Sacchetti, written about 1370; beyond which I think it cannot be traced, though it has been common enough ever since, down to Bürger’s version of it. Similar inquiries would no doubt lead to similar results about other tales in the “Patrañuelo”; but these instances are enough to show that Timoneda took any thing he found suited to his purpose, just as the Italian Novellieri and the French Trouveurs had done before him, without inquiring or caring whence it came.