[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application of
Dante's praise of Aristotle.]
[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!">[
THE
BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
Notice.
This is the
"sad and fearful story Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads: hence the famous passage in Milton,
"When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia:"
hence Dante's record of the dolorosa rotta (dolorous rout) in the Inferno, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning: and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.