TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE * Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_, and small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS. * Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected. * Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant usage was found. * Footnotes have been renumbered into a single series and placed at the end of the paragraph that includes each anchor. * Footnotes inside a footnote are not numbered, but marked with [*] and placed at the end of the main footnote. They are found at footnotes [23], [142], [154] and [251]. * The anchor placements for footnote [543] (p. 331) and footnote [696] (p. 421) are conjectured. No anchors were found in the printed original. * Caesuras in split verses have been marked as “ · ”. HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. VOL. I. HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE. BY GEORGE TICKNOR. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOLUME I. NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET M DCCC XLIX. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by GEORGE TICKNOR, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. In the year eighteen hundred and eighteen I travelled through a large part of Spain, and spent several months in Madrid. My object was to increase a very imperfect knowledge of the language and literature of the country, and to purchase Spanish books, always so rare in the great book-marts of the rest of Europe. In some respects, the time of my visit was favorable to the purposes for which I made it; in others, it was not. Such books as I wanted were then, it is true, less valued in Spain than they are now, but it was chiefly because the country was in a depressed and unnatural state; and, if its men of letters were more than commonly at leisure to gratify the curiosity of a stranger, their number had been materially diminished by political persecution, and intercourse with them was difficult because they had so little connection with each other, and were so much shut out from the world around them.