The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist, nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest now accessible to us dating from 1519. Twelve more followed in the course of half a century, so that the Amadis succeeded, at once, in placing the fortunes of its family on the sure foundations of popular favor in Spain. It was translated into Italian in 1546, and was again successful; six editions of it appearing in that language in less than thirty years.[368] In France, beginning with the first attempt in 1540, it became such a favorite, that its reputation there has not yet wholly faded away;[369] while, elsewhere in Europe, a multitude of translations and imitations have followed, that seem to stretch out the line of the family, as Don Quixote declares, from the age immediately after the introduction of Christianity down almost to that in which he himself lived.[370] [366] In his Prólogo, Montalvo alludes to the conquest of Granada in 1492, and to _both_ the Catholic sovereigns as still alive, one of whom, Isabella, died in 1504. [367] I doubt whether the _Salamanca_ edition of 1510, mentioned by Barbosa, (article _Vasco de Lobeira_,) is not, after all, the edition of 1519 mentioned in Brunet as printed by _Antonio de Salamanca_. The error in printing, or copying, would be small, and nobody but Barbosa seems to have heard of the one he notices. When the first edition appeared is quite uncertain. [368] Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria, (Milano, 1829, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 242,) and Brunet’s Manuel; to all which should be added the “Amadigi” of Bernardo Tasso, 1560, constructed almost entirely from the Spanish romance; a poem which, though no longer popular, had much reputation in its time, and is still much praised by Ginguené. [369] For the old French version, see Brunet’s “Manuel du Libraire”; but Count Tressan’s _rifacimento_, first printed in 1779, has kept it familiar to French readers down to our own times. In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619; but the abridgment of it by Southey (London, 1803, 4 vols. 12mo) is the only form of it in English that can now be read. It was also translated into Dutch; and Castro, somewhere in his “Biblioteca,” speaks of a Hebrew translation of it. [370] “Casi que _en nuestros dias_ vimos y comunicamos y oimos al invencible y valeroso caballero D. Belianis de Grecia,” says the mad knight, when he gets to be maddest, and follows out the consequence of making Amadis live above two hundred years and have descendants innumerable. Parte I. c. 13.