Much that he wrote is lost, but the seventeen hundred stanzas that remain suffice for any reputation. Juan Ruiz strikes the personal note in Castilian literature. To distinguish the works of the clerkly masters, to declare with certainty that this Castilian piece was written by Alfonso and that by Sancho, is a difficult and hazardous matter. Not so with Ruiz. The stamp of his personality is unmistakable in every line. He was bred in the old tradition, and he long abides by the rules of the _mester de clerecía_; but he handles it with a freedom unknown before, imparts to it a new flexibility, a variety, a speed, a music beyond all precedent, and transfuses it with a humour which anticipates Cervantes. Nay, he does more. In his prose preface he asserts that he chiefly sought to give examples of prosody, of rhyme and composition:—"_Dar algunas lecciones, é muestra de versificar, et rimar et trobar._" And he followed the bent of his natural genius. He had an infinitely wider culture than any of his predecessors in verse. All that they knew he knew—and more; and he treated them in the true cavalier spirit of the man who feels himself a master. His famous description of the tent of love is manifestly suggested by the description of Alexander's tent in the _Libro de Alexandre_. The entire episode of Doña Endrina is paraphrased from the _Liber de Amore_, attributed to the Pseudo-Ovid, the Auvergnat monk who hides beneath the name of Pamphilus Maurilianus. French _fableaux_ were rifled by Ruiz without a scruple, though he had access to their great originals in the _Disciplina clericalis_ of Petrus Alphonsus; for to his mind the improved treatment was of greater worth than the mere bald story. He was familiar with the _Kalilah and Dimnah_, with Fadrique's _Crafts and Wiles of Women_, perhaps with the apologues of Lull and Juan Manuel. Vast as his reading was, it had availed him nothing without his superb temperament, his gift of using it to effect. Vaster still was his knowledge of men, his acquaintance with the seamy side of life, his interest in things common and rare, his observation of manners, and his lyrical endowment. The name of "the Spanish Petronius" has been given to him; yet, despite a superficial resemblance between the two, it is a misnomer. Far nearer the truth, though the Spaniard lacks the dignity of the Englishman, is Ticknor's parallel with Chaucer. Like Chaucer, Ruiz had an almost incomparable gust for life, an immitigable gaiety of spirit, which penetrates his transcription of the Human Comedy. Like Chaucer, his adventurous curiosity led him to burst the bonds of the prison-house and to confer upon his country new rhythms and metres. His four _cánticas de serrana_, suggested by the Galician makers, anticipate by a hundred years the _serranillas_ and the _vaqueiras_ of Santillana, and entitle him to rank as the first great lyric poet of Castile. Ruiz, likewise, had a Legend of Women; but his reading was his own, and Chaucer's