This rapid summary is enough to prove that Spain, in copying French originals, was doing no more than other countries. The work of her early singers has the interest which attaches to every new literary experiment, but the great mass of it necessarily lacks originality and force. It was not until the fourteenth century was fairly advanced that Spain produced two authors of unmistakable individual genius. One of these was the Infante Don Juan Manuel, the earliest prose-writer of real distinction in Castilian, and the other was Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, near Guadalajara. We know scarcely anything certain about Ruiz except his name and status which he gives incidentally when invoking the divine assistance in writing his work:— E por que de todo bien es comienço e rays la virgen santa marja por ende yo Joan Rroys açipreste de fita della primero fis cantar de los sus goços siete que ansi dis. In one of the manuscripts[2] which contain his poems, his messenger Trotaconventos seems to state his birthplace:— Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que es de Alcalá. It has been inferred from this that the Archpriest was a native of Alcalá de Henares, and therefore a fellow-townsman of Cervantes. It is possible that he may have been, but the Gayoso manuscript gives a variant on the reading in the Salamanca manuscript:— Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que mora en Alcalá. The truth is that we do not know where and when Juan Ruiz was born, nor where and when he died. It is thought that he was born towards the end of the thirteenth century, and Sr. Puyol y Alonso in his interesting monograph suggests 1283 as a likely date: but these are conjectures. Many persons, however, find it difficult to resign themselves to humble agnosticism, and, by drawing on imagination for fact, endeavour to construct what we may call hypothetical biographies. Ruiz is an unpromising subject, yet he has not escaped altogether. A writer of comparatively modern date—Francisco de Torres, author of an unpublished _Historia de Guadalajara_—alleges that the Archpriest was living at Guadalajara in 1410. It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the assertion made by Alfonso Paratinén who seems to have been the copyist of the Salamanca manuscript. At the end of his copy Paratinén writes: ‘This is the Archpriest of Hita’s book which he composed, being imprisoned by order of the Cardinal Don Gil, Archbishop of Toledo.’ This refers to Don Gil de Albornoz, an able, pushing prelate who was Archbishop of Toledo from 1337 till his death in 1367. It is known that Don Gil de Albornoz was exiled from Spain by Peter the Cruel in 1350, and that on January 7, 1351, one Pedro Fernández had succeeded Juan Ruiz as Archpriest of Hita. Now, according to stanza 1634 in the Salamanca manuscript, Ruiz finished his work in 1381 of the Spanish Era:—