Heine in _Les Dieux en Exile_—with splendid effect. Alfonso (xlii.) anticipated them by rendering the story in verses of incomparable beauty, pregnant with mystery and terror. For his part, Alfonso rifles Vincent de Beauvais, Gautier de Coinci, Berceo, and, in his encyclopædic way, borrows a hint from the old Catalan _Planctus Mariæ Virginis_; but his touch transmutes bold hagiology to measures of harmony and distinction. He was not—it cannot be claimed for him—a poet of supreme excellence; yet, if he fail to reach the topmost peaks, he vindicates his choice of a medium by outstripping his predecessors, and by pointing the path to those who succeed him. With the brain of a giant he combined the heart of a little child, and, technique apart, this amalgam which wrought his political ruin was his poetic salvation. Still an artist, even when he stumbles into the ditch, his metrical dexterity persists in such brutally erotic and satiric verse as he contributes to the Vatican _Cancioneiro_ (Nos. 61-79). Withal, he survives by something better than mere virtuosity; for his simplicity and sincere enthusiasm, sundered from the prevalent affectation of his contemporaries, ensure him a place apart. His example in so many fields of intellectual exercise was followed. What part he took (if any) in preparing _Kalilah and Dimnah_ is not settled. The Spanish version, probably made before Alfonso's accession to the throne, derives straight from the Arabic, which, in its turn, is rendered by Abd Allah ibn al-Mukaffa (754-775) from Barzoyeh's lost Pehlevī (Old Persian) translations of the original Sanskrit. This last has disappeared, though its substance survives in the remodelled _Panchatantra_, and from it descend the variants that are found in almost all European literatures. The period of the Spanish rendering is hard to determine exactly, but 1251 is the generally accepted date, and its vogue is proved by the use made of it by Raimond de Béziers in his Latin version (1313). It does not appear to have been used by Raimond Lull (1229-1315), the celebrated _Doctor illuminatus_, in his Catalan Beast-Romance, inserted in the _Libre de Maravelles_ about the year 1286. The value of the Spanish lies in the excellence of the narrative manner, and in its reduction of the oriental apologue to terms of the vernacular. Alfonso's brother, Fadrique, followed the lead in his _Engannos é Assayamientos de las Mogieres_ (Crafts and Wiles of Women), which is referred to 1253, and is translated from the Arabic version of a lost Sanskrit original, after the fashion of _Kalilah and Dimnah_.