Spain collected her ballads early in numerous songbooks—­cancioneros, romanceros—­the first of which, the “Cancionero” of 1510, is “the oldest collection of popular poetry, properly so-called, that is to be found in any European literature.” [9] But modern Spain had gone through her classic period, like England and Germany.  She had submitted to the critical canons of Boileau, and was in leading-strings to France till the end of the eighteenth century.  Spain, too, had her romantic movement, and incidentally her ballad revival, but it came later than in England and Germany, later even than in France.  Historians of Spanish literature inform us that the earliest entry of French romanticism into Spain took place in Martinez de la Rosa’s two dramas, “The Conspiracy of Venice” (1834) and “Aben-Humeya,” first written in French and played at Paris in 1830; and that the representation of Duke de Rivas’ play, “Don Alvaro” (1835), was “an event in the history of the modern Spanish drama corresponding to the production of ‘Hernani’ at the Theatre Francais” in 1830.[10] Both of these authors had lived in France and had there made acquaintance with the works of Chateaubriand, Byron, and Walter Scott.  Spain came in time to have her own Byron and her own Scott, the former in Jose de Espronceda, author of “The Student of Salamanca,” who resided for a time in London; the latter in Jose Zorrilla, whose “Granada,” “Legends of the Cid,” etc., “were popular for the same reason that ‘Marmion’ and ‘The Lady of the Lake’ were popular; for their revival of national legends in a form both simple and picturesque.” [11] Scott himself is reported to have said that if he had come across in his younger days Perez de Hita’s old historical romance, “The Civil Wars of Granada” (1595), “he would have chosen Spain as the scene of a Waverley novel.” [12]

But when Lockhart, in 1824, set himself to

          “—­relate
  In high-born words the worth of many a knight
  From tawny Spain, lost in the world’s debate”—­

her ballad poetry had fallen into disfavour at home, and “no Spanish Percy, or Ellis, or Ritson,” he complains, “has arisen to perform what no one but a Spaniard can entertain the smallest hope of achieving.” [13] Meanwhile, however, the German romantic school had laid eager hands upon the old romantic literature of Spain.  A. W. Schlegel (1803) and Gries had made translations from Calderon in assonant verse; and Friedrich Schlegel—­who exalted the Spanish dramatist above Shakspere, much to Heine’s disgust—­had written, also in asonante, his dramatic poem “Conde Alarcos” (1802), founded on the well-known ballad.  Brentano and others of the romantics went so far as to practise assonance in their original as well as translated work.  Jacob Grimm (1815) and Depping (1817) edited selections from the “Romancero” which Lockhart made use of in his “Ancient Spanish Ballads.”  With equal delight the French romanticists—­Hugo and Musset in particular—­seized upon the treasures of the “Romancero”; but this was somewhat later.