[2] See vol. i., p. 98.

[3] For Byron’s and Shelley’s dealings with Dante, vide supra, pp. 99-102.

[4] For the type of prose romance essayed by Shelley, see Vol. i., p. 403.

[5] “Mary, the Maid of the Inn.”

[6] Duran’s great collection, begun in 1828, embraces nearly two thousand pieces.

[7] It is hardly necessary to mention early English translations of “Palmerin of England” (1616) and “Amadis de Gaul” (1580), or to point out the influence of Montemayor’s “Diana Enamorada” upon Sidney, Shakspere, and English pastoral romance in general.

[8] “The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal violence and coarseness prevailed which did not, indeed, prevent the poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of tenderness; but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty—­a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons or the gross maraudings of a border warfare.  The truth of this will at once be felt, if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on the Cid and Bernardo de Carpio; or if we compare the deep tragedy of Edom O’Gordon with that of the Conde Alarcos; or, what would be better than either, if we should sit down to the ‘Romancero General,’ with its poetical confusion of Moorish splendours and Christian loyalty, just when we have come fresh from Percy’s ‘Reliques’ or Scott’s ’Minstrelsy’.”  ("History of Spanish Literature,” George Ticknor, vol. i., p. 141, third American ed., 1866).  The “Romancero General” was the great collection of some thousand ballads and lyrics published in 1602-14.

[9] “The Ancient Ballads of Spain.”  R. Ford, in Edinburgh Review, No. 146.

[10] “A History of Spanish Literature.”  By James Fitz-Maurice Kelly, New York, 1898, pp. 366-67.

[11] Ibid., pp. 368-73.

[12] Kelly, p. 270.

[13] The collection of Sanchez (1779) is described as an imitation of the “Reliques” (Edinburgh Review, No. 146).

[14] He preferred, however, Sir Edmund Head’s rendering of the ballad “Lady Alda’s Dream” to Lockhart’s version.

[15] Scott and Motherwell never met in person.

[16] Mr. Churton Collins thinks that the lines in “Guinevere”—­

    “Down in the cellars merry bloated things
    Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts
    While the wine ran”—­

was suggested by Croker’s description of the Cluricaune. ("Illustrations of Tennyson” (1891), p. 152.)

[17] “The Fairies.”  William Allingham.