apart, Mena does himself injustice by too close a devotion to æsthetic principles, that made failure a certainty. Careful, conscientious, aspiring, he had done far more if he had attempted much less. * * * * * Meanwhile Castilian prose goes forward on Alfonso's lines. The anonymous _Crónica_ of Juan II., wrongly ascribed to Mena and Pérez de Guzmán, but more probably due to Álvar García de Santa María and others unknown, is a classic example of style and accuracy, rare in official historiography. Mingled with many chivalresque details concerning the hidalgos of the court is the central episode of the book, the execution of the Constable, Álvaro de Luna. The last great scene is skilfully prepared and is recounted with artful simplicity in a celebrated passage:—"He set to undoing his doublet-collar, making ready his long garments of blue camlet, lined with fox-skins; and, the master being stretched upon the scaffold, the executioner came to him, begged his pardon, embraced him, ran the poniard through his neck, cut off his head, and hung it on a hook; and the head stayed there nine days, the body three." Passionate declamation of a still higher order is found in the _Crónica de Don Álvaro de Luna_, written by a most dexterous advocate, who puts his mastery of phrase, his graphic presentation and dramatic vigour, to the service of partisanship. Perhaps no man was ever quite so great and good as Álvaro de Luna appears in his _Crónica_, but the strength of conviction in the narrator is expressed in terms of moving eloquence that would persuade to accept the portrait, not merely as a masterpiece—for that it is—but, as an authentic presentment of a misunderstood hero. After much violent controversy, it may now be taken as settled that the _Crónica del Cid_ is based upon Alfonso's _Estoria de Espanna_. But it comes not direct, being borrowed from Alfonso XI.'s _Crónica de Castilla_, a transcript of the _Estoria_. The differences from the early text may be classed under three heads: corruptions of the early text, freer and exacter quotations from the _romances_, and deliberate alterations made with an eye to greater conformity with popular legends. Valuable as containing the earliest versions of many traditions which were to be diffused through the _Romanceros_, the _Crónica del Cid_ is of small historic authority, and Alfonso's stately prose loses greatly in the carrying.