communicated to the Moors a taste for Greek literature. He first translated Aristotle into Arabic, and acquired by his annotations, the emphatic title of "The Commentator."*" The European schools may have done nothing for many ages but translate, &c. Arabic books. Gerbert, Leonardo, Morley, Gerard, Campanus, Athelard, and a crowd of other European scholars, may have gone from England, France and Italy, to study in the Saracen Universities of Spain. Charlemagne may have had great numbers of Arabic works translated into Latin; but the books thus rendered, and the studies thus pursued by Christian scholars in Spain, were confined to physical, mathe matical and metaphysical science. No Christian ever went thither to study poetry or eloquence." Nor is there the slightest evidence, that they ever brought away with them any information or improvement of mind, except in the above mentioned departments. "Non trovo chi andasse alle loro scuole ad apprendere la poesia e la eloquenza, come molti vi si portavano per imparare le matematiche; non vedo tradotti in latino i loro poeti ed oratori, come tradotti furono da principio i matematici e i medici." "Non che i fonti della nostra eloquenzia, e poesìa nati sieno dalle Arabiche scuole, non che i loro libri sieno statì ì modelli a nostri poeti ed oratori." We must, therefore, conclude irresistibly, that the schools of Saracen Spain, had no influence on the rise, progress and character of European literature (considered as distinguished from science) in France or Italy. And may we not fearlessly assert, that they had as little influence on the Spanish, when we look at the remarkable fact, that, after a period of 400 years, the early language and authors of the peninsula, instead of resembling the Arabian, themselves so rich, various and accomplished, belong beyond controversy, sentiment and thought, in style and taste, to the same class of half-formed dialects and infant literature, with those of France and Italy?

But let us now consider, whether the effect could have been produced through the medium of the people. The first caliph, who patronised literature was Ali, and he began to reign A. D. 655. The Saracens entered Spain A. D. 711, and soon

In the middle of the twelfth century, says Andrès, (vol. ii. p. 185) there was no copy of Homer in all France; whilst the Greek Philosophy and Metaphysics were familiar, through the means of the Arabians. It is true, the whole character of the Saracen poetry shows, that the Mahometans never studied or imitated the Greek poetry; yet Theophilus of Edessa, a Maronite, translated Homer into Syriac, about the year 770; and about 750, both Pindar and Homer were turned into Arabic. a 1 Wart. 2 Diss. b Andrès, vol. ii. p. 34. pp. 27--32.

o 1 Wart. 2 Diзs. Andrès, vol. ii. d Andrès, vol. ii. pp. 135-137. VOL II. No. 3.

e Andrès, vol. i. p. 187.

6

conquered all but the northern and north-western provinces: but we cannot believe, that they ever produced any great radical change in the people, except in the south and southeast, for the following reasons. The original inhabitants of Spain lost their languages and religion in those of the victorious Romans; but we know that the Goths, though conquerors, yielded their's to the influence of the conquered in Italy, France and Spain; especially after Euric, towards the end of the fifth century, had united the Alani, Suevi and Vandals, under one crown. They became a Latin Christian people; but the Saracens preserved their own language and religion, and so did the Spaniards. The language of Spain, as far back as we can trace it (with the exception of the Biscayan, doubtless a relict of the Cantabrian) is as much a dialect of Latin, as the Italian, and was less affected by the Arabic, than by the Gothic.

The facts that the Moors adopted Cordova as their capital, and not some central city, such as Toledo, the Gothic capital, and

*This is true of the Gothic, but not of the Moorish parts of Spain: that is, of the south as compared with the north, on a general survey of Spain, for several centuries after the battle of Xeres. As late as the eleventh century, A. D. 1039, it was necessary to transcribe an Arabic version of the Acts of the Spanish Councils, for the use of the Bishops and Clergy in the Moorish kingdoms. Spain had, in a few generations, in the South at least, imbibed the manners of the Arabians-they had submitted to circumcision, and to the legal abstinence from wine and pork: the name of Mozarabes (adscititii) derived from Musa, their conqueror, marked their civil and religious conformity; but it was not till the middle of the twelfth century, that the worship of Christ, and the succession of Pastors was abolished in the kingdoms of Seville and Cordova, of Grenada and Valencia;-and when Ferdinand of Castile, retook Seville, &c. no Christians, except captives, were found. (9th Gibbon, c. 51, p. 486, &c.) Abderame the First, (756 to 787) though he did not persecute his Christian subjects yet deprived the cities of their Bishops, and the Churches of their Priests. (Gonzalva, of Cordova, vol. i. p. 39, Summ. Hist. of Moors.) It is a remarkable fact, in connexion with the question of Moorish influence, that the Castilian or classic Spanish, is the appropriate dialect of New Castile, the ancient Moorish kingdom of Toledo, which was not taken from the Moors, until 1085; and yet a dominion of 374 years, left but few vestiges of the supposed predominance of the Arabic language and literature. Nor let us forget, that Sismondi himself, (vol. i. p. 38, N) assigns the reign of Ferdinand the Great, A. D. 1037, to 1065, as the era of the origin of the Castilian, the literary language of all Spain, ancient and modern. This must, of course, have sprung up and pursued its own progress towards maturity, uninfluenced by the Moors; and must have displaced the Moorish dialect, in Toledo and throughout New Castile generally, as speedily and thoroughly, as the Anti-Episcopal Biscayans, who would never permit a Bishop to set foot within their territory, compelled Ferdinand of Castile, to send away one, whom he had inadvertently brought with him! and having gathered the very earth that he had trod upon, burnt it and scattered the ashes to the winds.

The Biscayans speak that language, but write the French or Spanish, according to the kingdom, to which they belong. As we are on the subject of rhyme, we may mention, as a curious fact, that the first four lines of the Lord's Prayer, in the language of Biscay, are rhymed, at least if we judge by the practice of French poets: "Gure Aita, ceruëtan aicena,

that their power, their wealth and magnificence were lavished so prodigally only in the south, show that their actual strength and influence were chiefly seated in that portion of Spain: and, as they had previously colonized their eastern conquests, and all the north of Africa (the sleeve of the Robe, as their historians call it,) they could not have had so redundant a population to transplant into the peninsula, as to bear any comparison in numbers with the natives, except in the south. The great superiority of the Saracens in wealth, arts and arms, their wonderful improvement and embellishment of Southern Spain, their equity and toleration," sufficiently account for the acquiescence of that portion of the country. But from the time of the conquest in 711, beginning with the kingdoms of Oviedo and Leon, which arose immediately after it, there was an unremitted struggle between the Moors and Spaniards for 700 years; during which period, Spain was covered with Catholic and Mussulman kingdoms. Compendio de la Hist. de España. tom. i. p. 149. As early as 733-757, Alfonso, the Catholic, reigned from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees, and from the Bay of Biscay to Tierra de Campos, in old Castile. In 778, Charlemagne established the march of Spain, extending from the Pyrenees to the Ebro. Roussillon and Catalonia, Navarre and Arragon became his; and they continued under the jurisdiction of France, till the reign of Charles the Simple, (about A. D. 900) when they became independent both of France, and of Gothic and Saracen Spain. Ramiro II. 845 to 851, took Madrid from the Moors, and possessed himself of Saragossa. Alfonso the Great, 862 to 910, extended his dominions to the Tagus and Guadiana. Ordogno II. 913 to to 924, possessed himself of many parts of Andalusia. Indeed, with the exception of Grenada, Murcia, Valencia and Andalusia, (in Arabic, the region of the Evening, the Hesperia of the Greeks, but most probably derived from its Vandal name, Wandalenhaus,) the other parts of Spain appear to have been, more or less, in every succeeding reign, the seat of war, and the subject of conquest and reconquest. Even Abderame the III. who reigned fifty years, from 912 to 961, and was their greatest monarch in arts and arms, possessed only Portugal, Andalusia, Grenada, Murcia, Valencia, and the greater part of New Castile. It is very remarkable also, that the Christians, for nearly 250 years after the battle of Xeres, (718 to 967) were ruled by such a succession of eminent statesmen and warriors, as is, perhaps, unexampled in the annals of nations. Victory almost invariably declared for them; and in the period from the battle of Xeres (711) to the fall of Grenada, (1492) 3700 g Gibb. vol. ix. c. 51, p. 480. h Sismondi, vol. i. p. 94.

battles were fought.

It would seem then a fair conclusion, that the Moors could not have exercised a deep, permanent, extensive influence, except in the southern and south-eastern provinces, over the national habits, taste, and literature of the Hispano-Goths, with whom the literature of Spain had its origin.

Let us now survey the Spanish literature itself, in order to discover the supposed genealogy of modern rhyme. When the Romans had conquered Spain, they converted its tribes into a Latin people. Hence, Latin became the native language, and the literary influence of Rome is attested by the writings of the Senecas, Quinctilian, Trogus Pompeius, Justin, Lucan, Mela, Columella, Silius Italicus, Martial, Florus, Hyginus, Vigilantius, Prudentius, Juvencus, Dracontius, Orosius, Ildefonso, and Isidore, But no such state of things attests a correspondent effect on the part of the Saracens, whose power and glory, in arts and arms, were on the decline, at the end of the tenth century. Is it not a very remarkable fact, that there should have been no Spanish literature, in any part of Spain, where the Moorish power prevailed? Indeed, none is found anywhere, until more than half of the peninsula had been reconquered. Andrès himself dates the beginning of the vulgar Spanish poetry from the taking of Toledo, A. D. 1085, and Sismondi classes the Castilian, the noblest dialect of the Spanish, under the reign of Ferdinand the Great, A. D. 1037 to 1065. He denies that the claim of Spanish literature to such antiquity, as of the eighth century, is well grounded; and will not concede to the oldest poetry of the peninsula, an earlier date than the eleventh century. The most ancient poetry extant, is the Cid, which belongs to the middle of the twelfth century. The poem of Fernan Gonzales, he ranks after the æra of the Cid. verses of Gonzalo Hermiguez, are classed as Galician or Portuguese, and referred to the middle of the eleventh century. Bouterwek, in his work on Spanish literature,' says, that the most ancient of the Spanish romances, in the form, in which they now appear, do not ascend to the twelfth century: and in page 85, that it is difficult to fix the date of the Cid, more especially as there is an ancient prose chronicle, of the same kind: the very state of facts, as to the Niebelungen, the ancient heroic poem of Germany, which appears in verse in the thirteenth century, but in prose in the ninth or tenth. The poem of Alexander the Great, is traced no farther back than the twelfth or thirteenth century; and instead of being a copy or imitation of the eastern fiction of Escander, is supposed

m

i Hist. of Spain, vol. i. p. 162. Andrès, vol. ii. p. 158.

j Andrès, vol. ii. p. 157.
Vol. ii. p. 84.

The

m Sism. vol. i. p. 100.

by Bouterwek," to have been translated from the French or Latin chronicle of the same name.*

It appears to us impossible, not to see, upon this review, that Spanish literature arose, as it did in England and France, with the natural developement of the language and state of society, unaffected entirely by the neighbourhood of Saracen academies and libraries. The earliest original efforts are native in subject and language, and have nothing Arabic about them. "There are here," says Schlegel, speaking of the romance of the Cid, " no trace of that oriental taste for the wonderful and the fabulous, which afterwards became so predominant. It breathes the pure, true-hearted, noble, old Castilian spirit, and is in fact, the true history of the Cid." Even their imitations or translations are not from Arabic works, but from Latin or French. Besides, Sismondi admits, that, with the single exception of Ferdhuzi's historical poem, entitled Schâh-namah, oriental poetry is altogether lyric or didactic: and, although the mere catalogue of Arabic poems in the Escurial, occupies twenty-four volumes, yet neither tragic, nor comic, nor epic poetry is found among them. Is it not then singular, that the earliest Spanish literature should be totally different in essential character, as well as in style and versification, from any of the Arabian models; for the Schâh-namah is Persian? As to the life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, written A. D. 1198, it is a perversion of terms to call it a Romance, in any proper understanding of the word. Whoever has read the work of Tophail, must admit that it has

n Vol. 1. p. 87.

* The old French tales and fabliaux, says Schlegel, show that most of these fictions came from the East into Europe, chiefly with the crusades. At the same time, he thinks there was a reaction, and that many of the European novels were conveyed to the professional story-tellers of the east. But there is no evidence in his judgment, that we ever borrowed any entire heroic fictions from oriental sources; and he then expresses the same opinion, as to the romances of Alexander and the wars of Troy, as Bouterwek. (1 Schlegel, pp. 324-325.) Warton's account of it is very interesting and curious. (Vol. i. p. 128, &c.) "The truth is, Alexander was the most eminent knight-errant of Grecian antiquity. He could not, therefore, be long without his romance. Callisthenes, educated under Aristotle, with Alexander, wrote an authentic life of Alexander, which has been long since lost. But a Greek life of this hero, under the adopted name of Callisthenes, at present exists, and is no uncommon manuscript in good libraries. It is entitled Bios Αλεξανδρου του Μακεδόνος και Пeas: That is, the life and actions of Alexander, the Macedonian. This piece was written in Greek, being a translation from the Persic, by Simeon Seth, styled Magister and Protovestiary, or wardrobe-keeper of the palace of Antiochus at Constantinople, about the year 1070, under the emperor Michael Ducas. It was, most probably, very soon afterwards translated from the Greek into Latin, and at length, from thence into French, Italian and German." "This Latin translation, however, is of high antiquity, in the middle age of learning; for it is quoted by Gyraldus Cambrensis, who flourished about the year 1190. About the year 1236, the substance of it was thrown into a long Latin poem, written in elegiac verse by Aretinus Quilichinus." It was even turned into Hebrew. It is remarkable that Warton does not notice the Spanish romance of Alexander. o Vol. i. p. 344.