We have at last encountered a romance which does not end happily. In what manner such a dénouement was received by the Spanish public we know not, but at least they cannot but have been struck by its originality. That Tirante the White was a popular favourite, however, is clear from the praise lavished upon it by Cervantes. “By her taking so many romances together,” he says, “there fell one at the barber’s feet, who had a mind to see what it was, and found it to be Tirante the White. ‘God save me,’ quoth the priest in a loud voice, ‘is Tirante the White there? Give me him here, neighbour, for I shall find him a treasure of delight, and a mine of entertainment.’” He then advised the housewife to take it home and read it, “for though the author deserves to be sent to the gallows for writing so many foolish things seriously, yet in its way it is the best book in the world. Here the knights eat and sleep and die in their beds, and make their wills before their death, with several things which are wanting in all other books of this kind.”
Is not this the essence of the revolt against the unnatural absurdities which so often characterized romance, expressed succinctly by the man who headed the mutiny?
Chapter VII: Roderic, Last of the Goths
Last night I was a King of Spain—to-day no King am I.
Last night fair castles held my train, to-night where shall I lie?
Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee,
To-night not one I call my own; not one pertains to me.
Lockhart, Spanish Ballads
The tragic and tumultuous story of the manner in which Spain was delivered into the hands of the Moors is surely a theme worthy of treatment by the highest genius. But either because it offended the national pride or otherwise failed to make an appeal to the Castilian temperament, its epic remains unwritten. Few passages in history afford such an opportunity for the delineation of the deeper human passions as the episode which resulted in the betrayal of an entire country for the gratification of a private wrong. It presents such a catastrophe as urged Æschylus to compose the moving and majestic drama of Electra. Yet it has found no more potent expression than in the dreary parchment of the latest Spanish chronicle and the pedestrian verse of Southey’s Roderick, the Last of the Goths, which draws its inspiration from the pseudo-history of that account.[1]