He sings in the vernacular, he declares, being too unlearned in the Latin; but he has his little pretensions. Though he calls himself a _juglar_, he marks the differences between his _dictados_ (poems) and the _cantares_ (songs) of a plain _juglar_, and he vindicates his title by that monotonous metre—the _cuaderna vía_—which was taken up in the _Libro de Apolonio_ and became the model of all learned clerks in the next generations. Berceo uses the rhythm with success, and if his results are not splendid, it was not because he lacked perseverance. On the contrary, his industry was only too formidable. And, as a little of the mono-rhymed quatrain goes far, he must have perished had he depended upon execution. Beside Dante's achievement, as Puymaigre notes, the paraphrases of Berceo in the _Sacrificio de la Misa_ (stanzas 250-266) seem thin and pale; but the comparison is unfair to the earlier Castilian singer, who died in his obscure hamlet without the advantage of Dante's splendid literary tradition. Berceo is hampered by his lack of imagination, by the poverty of his conditions, by the absence of models, by the narrow circle of his subjects, and by the pious scruples which hindered him from arabesquing the original design. Yet he possesses the gifts of simplicity and of unction, and amid his long digressions into prosy theological commonplace there are flashes of mystic inspiration unmatched by any other poet of his country and his time. Even when his versification, clear but hard, is at its worst, he accomplishes the end which he desires by popularising the pious legends which were dear to him. He was not—never could have been—a great poet. But in his own way he was, if not an inventor, the chief of a school, and the necessary predecessor of such devout authors as Luis de León and St. Teresa. He was a pioneer in the field of devout pastoral, with all the defects of the inexperienced explorer; and, for the most part, he had nothing to guide him but his own uncultured instinct. Some specimen of his work may be given in Hookham Frere's little-known fragmentary version of the _Vida de San Millán_:— "_He walked those mountains wild, and lived within that nook For forty years and more, nor ever comfort took Of offer'd food or alms, or human speech a look; No other saint in Spain did such a penance brook._ _For many a painful year he pass'd the seasons there, And many a night consumed in penitence and prayer— In solitude and cold, with want and evil fare, His thoughts to God resigned, and free from human care._ _Oh! sacred is the place, the fountain and the hill, The rocks where he reposed, in meditation still, The solitary shades through which he roved at will: His presence all that place with sanctity did fill._"