In the _Disputa del Alma y el Cuerpo_ (Argument betwixt Body and Soul), a subject which passes into all mediæval literatures from a copy of Latin verses styled _Rixa Animi et Corporis_, there is a recurrence, though with innumerable variants of measure, to the Alexandrine type. Thus it is sought to reproduce the music of the model, an Anglo-Norman poem, written in rhymed couplets of six syllables, and wrongly attributed to Walter Map. With it should go the _Debate entre el Agua y el Vino_ (Debate between Water and Wine), and the first Castilian lyric, _Razón feita d'Amor_ (the Lay of Love). Composed in verses of nine syllables, the poem deals with the meeting of two lovers, their colloquy, interchanges, and separation. Both pieces, discovered within the last seventeen years by M. Morel-Fatio, are the productions of a single mind. It is tempting to identify the writer with the Lope de Moros mentioned in the final line, "_Lupus me feçit de Moros_"; still the likelihood is that, here as elsewhere, the copyist has but signed his transcription. Whoever the author may have been—and the internal evidence tends to show that he was a clerk familiar with French, Provençal, Italian, or Portuguese exemplars—he shines by virtue of qualities which are akin to genius. His delicacy and variety of sentiment, his finish of workmanship, his deliberate lyrical effects, announce the arrival of the equipped artist, the craftsman no longer content with rhymed narration, the singer with a personal, distinctive note. Here was a poet who recognised that in literature—the least moral of the arts—the end justifies the means; hence he transformed the material which he borrowed, made it his own possession, and conveyed into Castile a new method adapted to her needs. But time and language were not yet ripe, and the Spanish lyric flourished solely in Galicia: it was not to be transplanted at a first attempt. Yet the attempt was worth the trial; for it closes the anonymous period with a triumph to which, if we except the _Poema del Cid_, it can show no fellow. FOOTNOTES: [2] Joannes Karl Thilo, _Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti_. Lipsiæ, 1833. Pp. 254-261, 388-393. CHAPTER III THE AGE OF ALFONSO THE LEARNED, AND OF SANCHO 1220-1300