But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so remote from our own experience, that, where they are attempted in formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology. We read it because it is a contemporary and spirited exhibition of the chivalrous times of Spain, given occasionally with an Homeric simplicity altogether admirable. For the story it tells is not only that of the most romantic achievements, attributed to the most romantic hero of Spanish tradition, but it is mingled continually with domestic and personal details, that bring the character of the Cid and his age near to our own sympathies and interests.[16] The very language in which it is told is the language he himself spoke, still only half developed; disencumbering itself with difficulty from the characteristics of the Latin; its new constructions by no means established; imperfect in its forms, and ill furnished with the connecting particles in which resides so much of the power and grace of all languages; but still breathing the bold, sincere, and original spirit of its times, and showing plainly that it is struggling with success for a place among the other wild elements of the national genius. And, finally, the metre and rhyme into which the whole poem is cast are rude and unsettled: the verse claiming to be of fourteen syllables, divided by an abrupt cæsural pause after the eighth, yet often running out to sixteen or twenty, and sometimes falling back to twelve;[17] but always bearing the impress of a free and fearless spirit, which harmonizes alike with the poet’s language, subject, and age, and so gives to the story a stir and interest, which, though we are separated from it by so many centuries, bring some of its scenes before us like those of a drama. [16] I would instance the following lines on the famine in Valencia during its Siege by the Cid:-- Mal se aquexan los de Valencia · que non sabent ques’ far; De ninguna part que sea · no les viene pan; Nin da consejo padre à fijo, · nin fijo à padre: Nin amigo à amigo nos · pueden consolar. Mala cuenta es, Señores, · aver mengua de pan, Fijos e mugieres verlo · morir de fambre. vv. 1183-1188. Valencian men doubt what to do, · and bitterly complain, That, wheresoe’er they look for bread, · they look for it in vain. No father help can give his child, · no son can help his sire, Nor friend to friend assistance lend, · or cheerfulness inspire. A grievous story, Sirs, it is, · when fails the needed bread, And women fair and children young · in hunger join the dead.