His soul to Him who gave it rose:
God lead it to its long repose,
Its glorious rest!
And though the warrior's sun has set,
Its light shall linger round us yet,
Bright, radiant, blest."
By the side of this achievement the remaining poems of Enrique IV.'s reign seem wan and withered. But mention is due to the Sevillan, Pedro Guillén de Segovia (1413-74), who, beginning life under the patronage of Álvaro de Luna, Santillana, and Mena, passes into the household of the alchemist-archbishop Carrillo, and proclaims himself a disciple of Gómez Manrique. His chief performance is his metrical version of the Seven Penitential Psalms, which is remarkable as being the first attempt at introducing the biblical element into Spanish literature.
Prose is represented by the Segovian, Diego Enríquez del Castillo (fl. 1470), chaplain and privy councillor to Enrique IV., whose official Crónica he drew up in a spirit of candid impartiality; but there is ground for suspecting that he revised his manuscript after the King's death. Charged with speeches and addresses, his history is written with pompous correctness, and it seems probable that the wily trimmer so chose his sonorous ambiguities of phrase as to avoid offending either his sovereign or the rebel magnates whose triumph he foresaw. Another chronicle of this reign is ascribed to Alfonso Fernández de Palencia (1423-92), who is also rashly credited with the authorship of the Coplas del Provincial; but it is not proved that Palencia wrote any other historical work than his Latin Gesta Hispaniensia, a mordant presentation of the time's corruptions. The Castilian chronicle which passes under his name is a rough translation of the Gesta, made without the writer's authority. Its involved periods, some of them a chapter long, are very remote from the admirably vigorous style of Palencia's allegorical Batalla campal entre los lobos y los perros (Pitched Battle between Wolves and Dogs), and his patriotic Perfección del triunfo militar, wherein he vaunts, not without reason, his countrymen as among the best fighting men in Europe. Palencia's gravest defect is his tendency to Latinise his construction, as in his poor renderings of Plutarch and Josephus. But at his best he writes with ease and force and distinction. The Crónica de hechos del Condestable Miguel Lucas Iranzo, possibly the work of Juan de Olid, is in no sense the history it professes to be, and is valuable mainly because of its picturesque, yet simple and natural digressions on the social life of Spain.
The very year of the Catholic King's accession (1474) coincides with the introduction of the art of printing into Spain. Ticknor dates this event as happening in 1468, remarking that "there can be no doubt about the matter." Unluckily, the book upon which he relies is erroneously dated. Les Trobes en lahors de la Verge María—the first volume printed in Spain—is a collection of devout verses in Valencian, by forty-four poets, mostly Catalans. Of these, Francisco de Castellví, Francisco Barcelo, Pedro de Civillar, and an anonymous singer—Hum Castellá sens nom—write in Castilian. From 1474 onward, printing-presses multiply, and versions of masters like Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, made by Pedro Fernández de Villegas, by Álvar Gómez, and by Antonio de Obregón, are printed in quick succession. Henceforward the best models are available beyond a small wealthy circle; but the results of this popularisation are not immediate.