Of the Arabic authors of Spain the greater portion were natives of Andalusia. The number of their poets was very considerable. Of the _Romances Moriscos_ doubtless many originated in Arabic poetry. The old Roman rhythm, the Gothic love of music, the Arab chivalry, and the noble spirit generated by a generous love of freedom, were the sources of these romances. Before we recur to them however, we will mention the connection between the troubadour and Provençal poetry with the Valentian. It is a singular anomaly, we may almost call it, in literature, that a dialect become a written one, adorned by poets and spoken through extensive provinces, should have become the dead tongue of modern times. The French, Italian, and Castillian absorbed the genius that once took form in a tongue which, whether it be called Provençal, Limousin, or Valentian, is still the same, and in it were written the earliest modern verses. Petrarch and Dante raised their native tongue in opposition; but the poetry they studied as anterior to their own was the Provençal. The peculiar tone of troubadour poetry; the refined and somewhat abstract mode in which love is treated, was adopted by Petrarch, and by Dante also, in his sonnets and canzoni. The rhythm and the subjects were more artful and scientific than the songs of Castille, and thus at one time it was held in higher regard by the Spanish sovereigns who wished to introduce learning and poetry among their subjects. John I. of Arragon invited many Provençal and Narbonne poets to settle at Barcelona and Tortosa. He established an academy in the former city for the cultivation of poetry. The Spanish troubadours became celebrated; Mosen Jordi de Sant Jordi is one of the first and best-known. Petrarch read and, perhaps, imitated him.[5] Though protected and encouraged by the sovereigns of Arragon, and read and lauded, and even imitated, by the nobles of their courts, the Valentian never became the national poetry of Spain, and we turn from poets who will find better place among the early French writers to the genuine productions of Castille. We have seen that it was during the Moorish wars, under the successors of Don Pelayo, that these romances had birth. The kings of the various provinces of Spain, ever at war with the Moors, were, of course, in a state of great dependence on their warrior nobles. They needed their subjects to form expeditions against the enemy or to resist their encroachments. Often, also, the Spanish princes were at enmity with each other; and civil discord, or the war of one Christian kingdom against the other, caused temporary alliance with the Mahometans. This brought the chivalry of the two nations into contact. The Spaniards learned the arts of civilisation from their conquerors--they learned also the language of love.