ably
inferior in bulk even to that of Italy; it is certainly far less rich
in named and more or less known authors, while it is a mere drop as
compared with the Dead Sea of Byzantine writing. But by virtue of at
least one really great composition, the famous _Poema del Cid_, it
ranks higher than either of these groups in sheer literary estimation,
while from the point of view of literary history it is perhaps more
interesting than the Italian, and certainly far more interesting than
the Greek. It does not rank with French as an instance of real
literary preponderance and chieftainship; or with German as an example
of the sudden if short blossoming of a particular period and dialect
into great if not wholly original literary prominence; much less with
Icelandic and Provencal, as containing a "smooth and round" expression
of certain definite characteristics of literature and life once for
all embodied. It has to give way not merely to Provencal, but to
Italian itself as an example of early scholarship in literary form.
But it makes a most interesting pair to English as an instance of
vigorous and genuine national literary development; while, if it is
inferior to English, as showing that fatal departmental or provincial
separation, that "particularism" which has in many ways been so
disastrous to the Peninsula, it once more, by virtue of the _Poema_,
far excels our own production of the period in positive achievement,
and foretells the masterpieces of the national poetry in a way very
different from any that can be said to be shown in Layamon or the
_Ancren Riwle_, even in the Arthurian romances and the early lyrics.

[Footnote 193: Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an
extent commensurate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study
of the older forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in
English, and I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor's
_History of Spanish Literature_ (3 vols., London, 1849, and reprinted
since), in the early part of which he had the invaluable assistance of
the late Don Pascual de Gayangos. Some scattered papers may be found
in _Romania_. Fortunately, almost all the known literary materials for
our period are to be found in Sanchez' _Poesias Castellanas Anteriores
al Siglo XV._, the Paris (1842) reprint of which by Ochoa, with a few
valuable additions, I have used. The _Poema del Cid_ is, except in
this old edition, rather discreditably inaccessible--Vollmoell