Their shields before their breasts, · forth at once they go, Their lances in the rest, · levelled fair and low, Their banners and their crests · waving in a row, Their heads all stooping down · toward the saddle-bow; The Cid was in the midst, · his shout was heard afar, “I am Ruy Diaz, · the champion of Bivar; Strike amongst them, Gentlemen, · for sweet mercies’ sake!” There where Bermuez fought · amidst the foe they brake, Three hundred bannered knights, · it was a gallant show. Three hundred Moors they killed, · a man with every blow; When they wheeled and turned, · as many more lay slain; You might see them raise their lances · and level them again. There you might see the breast-plates · how they were cleft in twain, And many a Moorish shield · lie shattered on the plain, The pennons that were white · marked with a crimson stain, The horses running wild · whose riders had been slain.[19] [19] This and the two following translations were made by Mr. J. Hookham Frere, one of the most accomplished scholars England has produced, and one whom Sir James Mackintosh has pronounced to be the first of English translators. He was, for some years, British Minister in Spain, and, by a conjectural emendation which he made of a line in _this very poem_, known only to himself and the Marquis de la Romana, was able to accredit a secret agent to the latter in 1808, when he was commanding a body of Spanish troops in the French service on the soil of Denmark;--a circumstance that led to one of the most important movements in the war against Bonaparte. (Southey’s History of the Peninsular War, London, 1823, 4to, Tom. I. p. 657.) The admirable translations of Mr. Frere from the Poem of the Cid, are to be found in the Appendix to Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid; itself an entertaining book, made out of free versions and compositions from the Spanish Poem of the Cid, the old ballads, the prose Chronicle of the Cid, and the General Chronicle of Spain. Mr. Wm. Godwin, in a somewhat singular “Letter of Advice to a Young American on a Course of Studies,” (London, 1818, 8vo,) commends it justly as one of the books best calculated to give an idea of the age of chivalry. It is proper I should add here, that, except in this case of the Poem of the Cid, where I am indebted to Mr. Frere for the passages in the text, and in the case of the Coplas of Manrique, (Chap. 21 of this Period,) where I am indebted to the beautiful version of Mr. Longfellow, the translations in these volumes are made by myself.