it as representative of the submerged mass of _cantares de gesta_, and is rightly valued as the venerable relic of a lost school. To these succeed three anonymous poems, the _Libro de Apolonio_ (Book of Apollonius), the _Vida de Santa María Egipciaqua_ (Life of St. Mary the Egyptian), and the _Libre dels Tres Reyes dorient_ (Book of the Three Eastern Kings), all discovered in one manuscript in the Escurial Library by Pedro José Pidal, and first published by him in 1844. The story of Apollonius, supposed to be a translation of a Greek _romance_, filters into European literature by way of the _Gesta Romanorum_, is found even in Icelandic and Danish versions, and is familiar to English readers of _Pericles_. The nameless Spanish arranger of the thirteenth century (probably a native of Aragón) gives the story of Apollonius' adventures with force and clearness, anticipating in the character of Tarsiana the type of Preciosa, the heroine of Cervantes' _Gitanilla_ and of Weber's opera. Unfortunately the closing tags of moralisings on the vanity of life destroy the effect which the writer has produced by his free translation. His text is suffused with Provençalisms, and his mono-rhymed quatrains of fourteen syllables are evidence of French or Provençal origin. This metrical novelty, extending over more than six hundred stanzas, is properly regarded by the author as his chief distinction, and he implores God and the Virgin to guide him in the exercise of the new mastery (_nueva maestría_). It is fair to add that his experiment has the interest of novelty, that it succeeded beyond measure in its time, and that its monotonous vogue endured for some two hundred years. To the same period belongs the _Vida de Santa María Egipciaqua_, the earliest Castilian example of verses of nine syllables. In substance it is a version of the _Vie de Saint Marie l'Egyptienne_, ascribed without much reason to the veritable Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste (? 1175-1253), among whose _Carmina Anglo-Normannica_ the French original is interpolated. The Spanish version follows the French lead with almost pedantic exactitude; but the metre, new and well suited to the common ear, is handled with an easy grace remarkable in a first effort. As happens with other works of this time, the title of the short _Libre dels Tres Reyes dorient_ is misleading. The visit of the Magi is briefly dismissed in the first fifty lines, the poem turning chiefly upon the Flight into Egypt, the miracle wrought upon the leprous child of the robber, and the identification of the latter with the repentant thief of the New Testament. Like its predecessor, this legend is given in nine-syllabled verse, and is undoubtedly borrowed from a French or Provençal source not yet discovered.