From “Spanish Literature.”

THE OLDEST documents known to exist with ascertained dates in the Spanish language come from the reign of Alfonso VII. The first of them is a character of Oviedo, in 1145, and the other is the confirmation of a charter of Avilés, in 1155;—neighboring cities in Asturias, and therefore in that part of Spain where we should naturally look for the first intimations of a new dialect. They are important, not only because they exhibit the new dialect just emerging from the corrupted Latin, little or not at all affected by the Arabic infused into it in the southern provinces, but because they are believed to be among the oldest documents ever written in Spanish, since there is no good reason to suppose that language to have existed in a written form even half a century earlier.

  How far we can go back towards the first appearance of poetry in the Spanish, or as it was oftener called, Castilian dialect, is not so precisely ascertained. But we know that we can trace Castilian verse to a period surprisingly near the date of the documents of Oviedo and of Avilés. It is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of popular poetry, by which we mark indistinctly the beginning of almost every other literature, are abundant in the Spanish, we are not obliged to resort to them, at the outset of our inquiries, since other obvious and decisive monuments present themselves at once.

  The first of these monuments in age, and the first in importance, is the poem commonly called, with primitive simplicity and directness, “The Poem of the Cid.” It consists of above three thousand lines, and can hardly have been composed later than the year 1200. Its subject, as its name implies, is taken from among the adventures of the Cid, the great popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain; and the whole tone of its manners and feelings is in sympathy with the contest between the Moors and Christians, in which the Cid bore so great a part, and which was still going on with undiminished violence at the period when the poem was written. It has, therefore, a national bearing and a national character throughout.

  The Cid himself, who is to be found constantly commemorated in Spanish poetry, was born in Burgos about the year 1046, and died in 1099 at Valencia, which he had rescued from the Moors. His original name was Ruy Diaz, or Rodrigo Diaz; and he was by birth one of the considerable barons of his country. The title of “Cid,” by which he is almost always known, is often said to have come to him from the remarkable circumstance that five Moorish kings or chiefs acknowledged him in one battle as their “Seid,” or their lord and conqueror; and the title of “Campeador,” or Champion, by which he is hardly less known, though it is commonly assumed to have been given to him as a leader of the armies of Sancho the Second, has long since been used almost exclusively as a mere popular expression of the admiration of his countrymen for his exploits against the Moors. At any rate, from a very early period he has been called “El Cid Campeador,” or the Lord Champion. And in many respects he well deserved the honorable title; for he passed almost the whole of his life in the field against the oppressors of his country, suffering so far as we know, scarcely a single defeat from the common enemy, though, on more than one occasion, he was exiled and sacrificed by the Christian princes to whose interests he had attached himself, and, on more than one occasion, was in alliance with the Mohammedan powers, in order, according to a system then received among the Christian princes of Spain, and thought justifiable, to avenge the wrongs that had been inflicted on him by his own countrymen.

  But whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a deep shadow, he comes to us in modern times as the great defender of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen, that centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry and tradition have delighted to attach to his name a long series of fabulous achievements, which connect him with the mythological fictions of the Middle Ages, and remind us almost as often of Amadis and Arthur as they do of the sober heroes of genuine history.

  The “Poem of the Cid” partakes of both these characters. It has sometimes been regarded as wholly, or almost wholly, historical. But there is too free and romantic a spirit in it for history. It contains, indeed, few of the bolder fictions found in the subsequent chronicles and in the popular ballads. Still, it is essentially a poem, and in the spirited scenes at the siege of Alcocer and at the Cortes, as well as in those relating to the Counts of Carrion, it is plain that the author felt his license as a poet. In fact, the very marriage of the daughters of the Cid has been shown to be all but impossible; and thus any real historical foundation seems to be taken away from the chief event which the poem records. This, however, does not at all touch the proper value of the work, which is simple, heroic, and national. Unfortunately, the only ancient manuscript of it known to exist is imperfect, and nowhere informs us who was its author. But what has been lost is not much. It is only a few leaves in the beginning, one leaf in the middle, and some scattered lines in other parts. The conclusion is perfect. Of course there can be no doubt about the subject or purpose of the whole. It is the development of the character and glory of the Cid, as shown in his achievements in the kingdoms of Saragossa and Valencia; in his triumph over his unworthy sons-in-law, the Counts of Carrion, and their disgrace before the king and Cortes; and finally, in the second marriage of his two daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon; the whole ending with a slight allusion to the hero’s death, and a notice of the date of the manuscript.

  But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so remote from our own experience, that, where they are attempted in formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology. We read it because it is a contemporary and spirited exhibition of the chivalrous times of Spain, given occasionally with a Homeric simplicity altogether admirable. For the story it tells is not only that of the most romantic achievements, attributed to the most romantic hero of Spanish tradition, but it is mingled continually with domestic and personal details, that bring the character of the Cid and his age near to our own sympathies and interests. The very language in which it is told is the language he himself spoke, still only half developed; disencumbering itself with difficulty from the characteristics of the Latin; its new construction by no means established; imperfect in its forms, and ill furnished with the connecting particles in which so much of the power and grace of all languages resides; but still breathing the bold, sincere, and original spirit of its times, and showing plainly that it is struggling with success for a place among the other wild elements of the national genius.

  And, finally, the metre and the rhyme into which the whole poem is cast are rude and unsettled: the verse claiming to be of fourteen syllables, divided by an abrupt cæsural pause after the eighth, yet often running out to sixteen or twenty; and sometimes falling back to twelve; but always bearing the impress of a free and fearless spirit, which harmonizes alike with the poet’s language, subject, and age, and so gives the story a stir and interest, which, though we are separated from it by so many centuries, bring some of its scenes before us like those of a drama.

  The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and stood looking at them. He saw his doors open, and his household chests unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks, and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee, Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have done this thing unto me.’”

  He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his time, to win land and fortune from the common enemy, and providing for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him in their turn, so that he can save himself only by a bold rally, in which he overthrows their whole array. The rescue of his standard, endangered in the onslaught by the rashness of Bermuez, who bore it, is described in the very spirit of knighthood:—

  The poem afterwards relates the Cid’s contest with the Count of Barcelona; the taking of Valencia; the reconcilement of the Cid to the king, who had treated him so ill; and the marriage of the Cid’s two daughters, at the king’s request to the two Counts of Carrion, who were among the first nobles of the kingdom. At this point, however, there is a somewhat formal division of the poem, and the remainder is devoted to what is its principal subject, the dissolution of this marriage in consequence of the baseness and brutality of the Counts; the Cid’s public triumph over them; their no less public disgrace; and the announcement of the second marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon, which, of course, raised the Cid himself to the highest pitch of his honors, by connecting him with the royal houses of Spain. With this, therefore, the poem virtually ends.

  The most spirited part of it consists of the scenes at the Cortes, summoned, on demand of the Cid, in consequence of the misconduct of the Counts of Carrion. In one of them, three followers of the Cid challenge three followers of the Counts, and the challenge of Munio Gustioz to Assur Gonzalez is thus characteristically given:—

  Munio Gustioz rose and made reply:—

  Thus was ended the parley and challenge betwixt these two.

  The opening of the lists for the six combatants, in the presence of the king, is another passage of much spirit and effect:—

  These are among the most characteristic passages in the poem. But it is throughout striking and original. It is, too, no less national, Christian, and loyal. It breathes everywhere the true Castilian spirit, such as the old chronicles represent it amidst the achievements and disasters of the Moorish wars; and has very few traces of an Arabic influence in its language, and none at all in its imagery or fancies. The whole of it, therefore, deserves to be read, and to be read in the original; for it is there only that we can obtain the fresh impressions it is fitted to give us of the rude but heroic period it represents: of the simplicity of the governments, and the loyalty and true-heartedness of the people; of the wide force of a primitive religious enthusiasm; of the picturesque state of manners and daily life in an age of trouble and confusion; and of the bold outlines of the national genius, which are often struck out where we should least think to find them. It is indeed a work which, as we read it, stirs us with the spirit of the times which it describes; and as we lay it down and recollect the intellectual condition of Europe when it was written, and for a long period before, it seems certain that, during the thousand years which elapsed from the time of the decay of Greek and Roman culture, down to the appearance of the “Divina Commedia,” no poetry was produced so original in its tone, or so full of natural feeling, graphic power, and energy.