[344] From Parte II. c. 237 to the end, containing the account of the fabulous and loathsome penance of Don Roderic, with his death. Nearly the whole of it is translated as a note to the twenty-fifth canto of Southey’s “Roderic, the Last of the Goths.” Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346] Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress wander from country to country,[348] as they do in “Palmerin of England,” while, on all sides, we encounter fantastic personages, who were never heard of anywhere but in this apocryphal Chronicle.[349] [345] See the grand _Torneo_ when Roderic is crowned, Parte I. c. 27; the tournament of twenty thousand knights in Cap. 40; that in Cap. 49, etc.;--all just as such things are given in the books of chivalry, and eminently absurd here, because the events of the Chronicle are laid in the beginning of the eighth century, and tournaments were unknown till above two centuries later. (A. P. Budik, Ursprung, Ausbildung, Abnahme, und Verfall des Turniers, Wien, 1837, 8vo.) He places the first tournament in 936. Clemencin thinks they were not known in Spain till after 1131. Note to Don Quixote, Tom. IV. p. 315. [346] See the duels described, Parte II. c. 80 etc., 84 etc., 93. [347] The King of Poland is one of the kings that comes to the court of Roderic “like a wandering knight so fair” (Parte I. c. 39). One might be curious to know who was King of Poland about A. D. 700. [348] Thus, the Duchess of Loraine comes to Roderic (Parte I. c. 37) with much the same sort of a case that the Princess Micomicona brings to Don Quixote. [349] Parte I. c. 234, 235, etc.