[23] Cancionero General, passim.—Moratin has given a list of the men of rank who contributed to this miscellany; it contains the names of the highest nobility of Spain. (Orig. del Teatro Español, Obras, tom. i. pp. 85, 86.) Castillo's Cancionero passed through several editions, the latest of which appeared in 1573. See a catalogue, not entirely complete, of the different Spanish Cancioneros in Bouterwek, Literatura Española, trad., p. 217.
[24] Cancionero General, pp. 83-89.—Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.
[25] Cancionero General, pp. 158-161.—Some meagre information of this person is given by Nic. Antonio, whose biographical notices may be often charged with deficiency in chronological data; a circumstance perhaps unavoidable from the obscurity of their subjects. Biblioteca Vetus, tom. ii. lib. 10, cap. 6.
[26] There are probably more direct puns in Petrarch's lyrics alone, than in all the Cancionero General. There is another kind of niaiserie, however, to which the Spanish poets were much addicted, being the transposition of the word in every variety of sense and combination; as, for example,
"Acordad Vuestros olvidos
Y olvida vuestros acuerdos
Porque tales desacuerdos
Acuerden vuestros sentidos," etc.
Cancionero General, fol. 226.
It was such subtilties as these, entricadas razones, as Cervantes calls them, that addled the brains of poor Don Quixote. Tom. i. cap. 1.
[27] Velasquez, Poesía Castellana, p. 122.—More than half a century later, the learned Ambrosio Morales complained of the barrenness of the Castilian, which he imputed to the too exclusive adoption of the Latin upon all subjects of dignity and importance. Obras, tom. xiv. pp. 147, 148.
[28] L. Marineo, speaking of this accomplished nobleman, styles him "virum satis illustrem.—Eum enim poetam et philosophum natura formavit ac peperit." He unfortunately fell in a skirmish, five years after his father's death, in 1479. Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. p. 531.
[29] An elaborate character of this Quixotic old cavalier may be found in Pulgar, Claros Varones, tit. 13.