Nor should we be surprised at this. The Spanish national character, as it has existed from its first development down to our own days, was mainly formed in the earlier part of that solemn contest which began the moment the Moors landed beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, and which cannot be said to have ended, until, in the time of Philip the Third, the last remnants of their unhappy race were cruelly driven from the shores which their fathers, nine centuries before, had so unjustifiably invaded. During this contest, and especially during the two or three dark centuries when the earliest Spanish poetry appeared, nothing but an invincible religious faith, and a no less invincible loyalty to their own princes, could have sustained the Christian Spaniards in their disheartening struggle against their infidel oppressors. It was, therefore, a stern necessity which made these two high qualities elements of the Spanish national character,--a character all whose energies were for ages devoted to the one grand object of their prayers as Christians and their hopes as patriots, the expulsion of their hated invaders. But Castilian poetry was, from the first, to an extraordinary degree, an outpouring of the popular feeling and character. Tokens of religious submission and knightly fidelity, akin to each other in their birth and often relying on each other for strength in their trials, are, therefore, among its earliest attributes. We must not, then, be surprised, if we hereafter find, that submission to the Church and loyalty to the king constantly break through the mass of Spanish literature, and breathe their spirit from nearly every portion of it,--not, indeed, without such changes in the mode of expression as the changed condition of the country in successive ages demanded, but still always so strong in their original attributes as to show that they survive every convulsion of the state and never cease to move onward by their first impulse. In truth, while their very early development leaves no doubt that they are national, their nationality makes it all but inevitable that they should become permanent. CHAPTER VI. FOUR CLASSES OF THE MORE POPULAR EARLY LITERATURE.--FIRST CLASS, BALLADS.--OLDEST FORM OF CASTILIAN POETRY.--THEORIES ABOUT THEIR ORIGIN.--NOT ARABIC.--THEIR METRICAL FORM.--REDONDILLAS.-- ASONANTES.--NATIONAL.--SPREAD OF THE BALLAD FORM.--NAME.--EARLY NOTICES OF BALLADS.--BALLADS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND LATER.--TRADITIONAL AND LONG UNWRITTEN.--APPEARED FIRST IN THE CANCIONEROS, THEN IN THE ROMANCEROS.--THE OLD COLLECTIONS THE BEST.