a few Italian sonnets, and some coplas in the Valencian language. In proportion as the collection extended, the additions were always inserted at the end of the book. In the oldest editions the number of poets mentioned amounts to one hundred and thirty-six.[104] A nation which can enumerate one hundred and thirty-six song writers in a single century, and which also possesses a great number of songs by unknown authors, produced within the same period, may well boast of its lyric genius; and the literary historian, before he proceeds to a closer review of this collection, may reasonably expect to find in it a full and true representation of the national character. Thus the old Spanish _Cancionero_ is even more interesting to the philosophic observer of human nature than to the critic. The Spiritual Songs, (_Obras de Devocion_,) at the head of the collection, probably will not fulfil the expectations which may be formed respecting them. It is natural to presume that in a nation so poetically inclined, and in an age when, for the most part, nature was followed without reference to the rules of art, the poets could not fail to view Christianity on its poetic side. But the scholastic forms of the existing theology crushed the genius of poetry; and the unpoetic side of Christianity, because it was the most learned, was alone deemed worthy the strains of the Spanish poets of the fifteenth century. They likewise seldom ventured to give scope to the fancy in devotional verses, because the nation was accustomed to the most implicit faith in every dogma of the church, and the recognition of the sacredness of literal interpretation was identified with orthodoxy, long before the terrors of the inquisition and its burning piles were known. This rigid orthodoxy of the Spanish Christians was a consequence of their war of five hundred years duration with the Moors. Throughout that long period the Spanish knight invariably fought for religion and his country; and from the constant hostility that prevailed between the Christian and Mahometan faiths, the Spanish Christians were wont to make a parade of their creed, as the Christians of the east are accustomed to do at the present day. Hence the strictest formality was observed in all matters connected with religion; and great as was the enthusiasm of the Spaniards in the fifteenth century, it produced few, if any, lyric compositions, containing more poetry than a common hymn. Whether reference be made to the Twenty Perfections of the Holy Virgin,[105] (_Obra en loor de veinte excellencias de nuestra Señora_), by Juan Tulante, who is the author of most of the spiritual songs in the _Cancionero general_; to the play on the five letters of the name _Maria_,[106] by the Visconde de Altamira; or to Fernan Perez de Guzman’s versions of the _Ave Maria_ and _Paternoster_,[107] which could not have been more dryly and formally written in prose; we find in all the same monotony without any poetic adaptation of the