HISTORY OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LITERATURE. HISTORY OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LITERATURE. BY FREDERICK BOUTERWEK. IN TWO VOLUMES. Translated from the Original German, BY THOMASINA ROSS. VOL. I. SPANISH LITERATURE. LONDON: BOOSEY AND SONS, BROAD STREET. 1823. F. Justins, Printer, 41, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. PREFACE. The growing interest of Spanish and Portuguese Literature would, perhaps, be thought a sufficient reason for laying the following translation before the public, were the merits of the original work even less conspicuous, and the deficiency it appears fitted to supply in our language less sensibly felt. It is, indeed, extraordinary, that no similar work has hitherto appeared in a country, where the subject of which this history treats, has, in the instances in which it has been partially explored, always been found a rich source of pleasure and instruction. But the information thus collected from the literary stores of Spain and Portugal, however satisfactory on particular points, is, from its nature, detached and incomplete, and seems calculated to increase rather than to diminish the desire for such a connected and comprehensive view of the whole subject as M. Bouterwek has exhibited in his General History of Modern Literature. The following volumes on the literature of Spain and Portugal are extracted from a work, entitled, _Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende der dreizehnten Jahrhunderts_, (History of Poetry and Eloquence from the close of the thirteenth Century,) in which M. Bouterwek has taken an historical and critical survey of the literature of the principal nations of Europe. The work consists of twelve volumes, published at different periods at Göttingen; the first volume having appeared in 1805, and the last, which contains an index to the whole, in 1819.[1] The two volumes now translated are the third and fourth of the German original.