[8] The Arabic accounts represent the Cid as having died of grief, at the defeat of the Christians near Valencia, which fell again into the hands of the Moslem in 1100. (Gayangos, Mohammedan Dynasties, Vol. II. Appendix, p. xliii.) It is necessary to read some one of the many Lives of the Cid in order to understand the Poema del Cid, and much else of Spanish literature; I will therefore notice four or five of the more suitable and important. 1. The oldest is the Latin “Historia Didaci Campidocti,” written before 1238, and published as an Appendix in Risco. 2. The next is the cumbrous and credulous one by Father Risco, 1792. 3. Then we have a curious one by John von Müller, the historian of Switzerland, 1805, prefixed to his friend Herder’s Ballads of the Cid. 4. The classical Life by Manuel Josef Quintana, in the first volume of his “Vidas de Españoles Célebres” (Madrid, 1807, 12mo). 5. That of Huber, 1829; acute and safe. The best of all, however, is the old Spanish “Chronicle of the Cid,” or Southey’s Chronicle, 1808;--the best, I mean, for those who read in order to enjoy what may be called the literature of the Cid;--to which may be added a pleasant little volume by George Dennis, entitled “The Cid, a Short Chronicle founded on the Early Poetry of Spain,” London, 1845, 12mo. [9] Chrónica del Cid, Burgos, 1593, fol., c. 19. [10] Huber, p. 96. Müller’s Leben des Cid, in Herder’s Sämmtliche Werke, zur schönen Literatur und Kunst, Wien, 1813, 12mo, Theil III. p. xxi. But, whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a deep shadow,[11] he comes to us in modern times as the great defender of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen, that, centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry and tradition have delighted to attach to his name a long series of fabulous achievements, which connect him with the mythological fictions of the Middle Ages, and remind us almost as often of Amadis and Arthur as they do of the sober heroes of genuine history.[12] [11] “No period of Spanish history is so deficient in contemporary documents.” Huber, Vorwort, p. xiii.