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SPAIN" (LANGUAGE AND LITEEATUEE) 219 (new ed., Madrid, 1868), Salva, Rementeria, and Bello ; among foreign ones, those of Mallefille (Paris, 1846) and.Chantreau (Paris, 1862). The best material for a historical grammar is to be found in Omgines de la len- gua espanola, by Mayans y Siscar (Madrid, 1737 and 1873). The best dictionaries are those of the Spanish academy, Salva, and Do- minguez, purely Spanish ; while among the bilingual dictionaries, the most valuable are those of Salva and of Nunez de Taboada, French-Spanish ; of Seckendorf (3 vols., Ham- burg, 1823), Spanish-German; and of Neuman and Baretti, revised by Velazquez de la Cadena (New York, 1852), Spanish-English. A com- prehensive dictionary purely Spanish, etymo- logical and raisonne, is now (1876) in course of preparation by a society of literati in Bo- gota. LITEEATUEE. The literary life of the Spanish people began under the rule of the Romans, when Spain became a chief seat of Roman civilization, and produced many of the greatest writers of Latin literature. After the Christianization of Spain and S. W. Eu- rope in general, ecclesiastical literature found, next to Italy and Gaul, its most fertile soil in Spain. After the invasion by the Arabs, Arabian literature attained a high degree of prosperity, and the numerous Jews cultivated Hebrew literature with great success. The national literature of Spain begins in the 12th century with epic and didactic poems in Cas- tilian verse, and resting on strong national sen- timents as a basis. The first of these poems in age as well as in importance is the one com- monly called the " Poem of the "Old," composed probably in the second half of the 12th centu- ry. Its subject is taken from the adventures of Ruy Diaz, surnamed el Cid Campeador, " the Lord Champion," the popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain, and the defender of his country against the Moorish invaders. It is a rhymed narrative of events in chrono- logical order, partly historical and partly ro- mantic, told with Homeric simplicity ; and, although its verse is rude and unadorned, the t^ poem deserves to be ranked among the finest productions of the middle ages. Before this Spain had many popular songs, both lyric and epic, but we know little of their original form, as they were not committed to writing be- fore the 16th century. The single manuscript which has preserved the "Poem of the Cid" contains three other poems, all like that anony- mous, viz. : " The Book of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre," "The Life of our Lady, St. Mary of Egypt,"^and "The Adoration of the Three Holy Kings." These poems, as well as the rhymed " Lives of Saints" by the priest Gon- zalo de Berceo (died about 1260), and the anon- ymous poem of " Count Fernan Gonzales," a hero of the earlier period of the Christian con- flict with the Moors, who is to the north of Spain what the Cid became somewhat later to Aragon and Valencia, betray the influence of the ecclesiastical poetry of those times and of the chivalric poetry of France. They are writ- ten either in stanzas of Alexandrine verse or in the indigenous rhythm of the redondillas. Berceo is the earliest Spanish poet whose name can with certainty be connected with his works, which comprised more than 13,000 lines. A great impulse to the development of literature was given by King Alfonso the Wise of Cas- tile, who substituted the Spanish language for the Latin in the courts, and ordered the laws to be published in it. Alfonso himself was a Srolific author. In order to bring uniformity ito the different systems of Spanish legisla- tion, he compiled several codes of laws, the most celebrated of which has the title Las siete partidas. Several historical works, as a uni- versal history of the world, a history of the crusades {La gran conquista de ultramar), and the celebrated Cronica general, a general his- tory of Spain until the death of his father, were compiled under his direction. By these works, as well as by a translation of the Bi- ble into Spanish, he became the creator of Spanish prose. Some of his poetical works have also considerable merit, though in gen- eral they are most remarkable for the varie- ty of their metres, some of which were first introduced by Alfonso into Spanish poetry. The Poema de Alejandro of Juan Lorenzo Se- gura is a work of more than 10,000 lines on the life of Alexander the Great, filled with the fables and extravagances of the times. A continuation of it, called Los votos del pawn, is now lost. Alfonso found many imitators, as author and patron of literature, among the succeeding kings and the princes of the royal family. The most important of these works of royal origin is El conde Lucanor, by the prince Don Juan Manuel (died about 1347), a collection of 49 tales, anecdotes, and apologues, in the oriental manner, and partly taken from oriental sources. The most remarkable poet of the 14th century is Juan Ruiz, commonly called the archpriest of Hita (died about 1350). His works, embracing religious, pastoral, and erotic songs, fables, satires, and proverbs, con- sist of nearly 7,000 verses ; and, although gen- erally written in the four-line stanza of Ber- ceo, they contain no fewer than 16 metrical forms, some of which are taken from the Pro- vencal. The didactic tendency of the poetry of this period is apparent in the Oonsejos y documentos al rey Don Pedro, commonly called the book of Rabbi Don Santob, a curious poem, addressed by a Jew of Carrion to Pedro the Cruel on his accession to the throne, for the purpose of giving to him wise moral coun- sels. Another didactic poem is " The Dance of Death " (Danza general de la muerte), a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which the different ranks of society, from the pope to the young child, appear dancing with the skeleton form of death. The formation of a courtly school of lyric poets, after the model of the trouba- dours, had commenced under Alfonso X., who himself wrote lyric poems in the dialect of Ga-