Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/165

BIRTH OF ISABELLA. 21 I. Second, compiled the fugitive pieces of more than chapter fifty of these ancient troubadours into a cancionero, " for the disport and divertisement of his highness the king, when he should find himself too sorely oppressed with cares of state," a case we may imagine of no rare occurrence. The original man- uscript of Baena, transcribed in beautiful charac- ters of the fifteenth century, lies, or did lie until very lately, unheeded in the cemetery of the Es- curial, with the dust of many a better worthy. ^^ The extracts selected from it by Castro, although occasionally exhibiting some fluent graces with con- siderable variety of versification, convey, on the whole, no very high idea of taste or poetic talent.^^ Indeed this epoch, as before remarked, was not so much distinguished by uncommon displays of genius, as by its general intellectual movement, and the enthusiasm kindled for liberal studies. Thus we find the corporation of Seville granting a hundred doblas of gold as the guerdon of a poet, who had celebrated in some score of verses the glories of their native city ; and appropriating the 32 Castro, Biblioteca Espafjola, et seq. — The veneration enter- (Madrid, 1781,) torn. i. pp. 266, tained for the poetic art in that 267. — This interesting document, day may be conceived from Baena's the most primitive of all the Span- whimsical prologue. " Poetry," ish cancioneros, notwithstanding its he says, " or the gay science, is a local position in the library is very subtile and delightsome com- specified by Castro with great pre- position. It demands in him, who cision, eluded the search of the would hope to excel in it, a curi- industrious translators of Bouter- ous invention, a sane judgment, a wek, who think it may have dis- various scholarship, familiarity vnth appeared during the French inva- courts and public affairs, high birth sion. Literatura Espaiiola, trad, and breeding, a temperate, cour- de Cortina y MoUinedo, p. 205, teous, and liberal disposition, and, nota Hh. in fine, honey, sugar, salt, freedom, 33 ^ee these collected in Castro, and hilarity in his discourse." p. Biblioteca Espaflola, tom. ii. p. 265 268.