the curt reply of Pero Bermuez to the Infantes of Carrión—Frere proposed to read _merezcades_ for _merezca dos_, and his conjectural emendation was approved by Romana to whom alone he mentioned it. Some years later Romana was destined to hear it again in striking circumstances. He was then serving with the French in Denmark, and it became necessary for Frere to communicate with him confidentially. It was indispensable that Frere’s messenger should be fully accredited; it was of the utmost importance that, in case of arrest, he should not be found in possession of any paper which might suggest his mission. The emended verse of the _Poema del Cid_, easily remembered, formed his sole credentials. Romana at once knew that the agent must come from Frere, who—apart from his fragmentary translation of the _Poema_, now superseded by Ormsby’s version—thus began in a small amateurish way the work of critical reconstitution which has been continued by Damas-Hinard and Bello, by Cornu and Restori, by Vollmöller and Lidforss, by Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Mr. Archer Milton Huntington. Thanks to these and other scholars whose labours cannot be adequately acknowledged by any formal compliment, the text of the _Poema del Cid_ has been purged of many corruptions, and made vastly more intelligible. But there are still problems to be solved in connection with it. What, for instance, is the relation of the Spanish epic to the French? The ‘patriotic bias’ should have no place in historical or literary judgments, but this is a counsel of perfection. Scholars are extremely human, and experience shows that the ‘patriotic bias’ often intrudes itself unseasonably in their work. In writing of the French _chansons de geste_, Gaston Paris says:—‘L’Espagne s’en inspirait dès le milieu du XII^e siècle pour chanter le Cid, et composait, même sur les sujets carolingiens des _cantares de gesta_ dont quelques débris se retrouvent dans les _romances_ du XV^e siècle.’ Rightly interpreted, this is a fair statement of the case. But earlier French scholars inclined to exaggerate the amount of Spain’s indebtedness to France in this respect, and—by a not unnatural reaction—there is a tendency among the younger generation of Spanish scholars to minimise it. We are not called upon to take part in this contention of wits: we are not concerned here to-day with ingenious special pleas, but with facts.