The preceding lines seem imitated from the Cid’s fight before Alcocer, in such a way as to leave no doubt that its author had seen the old poem:-- Veriedes tantas lanzas · premer è alzar; Tanta adarga à · foradar è pasar; Tanta loriga falsa · desmanchar; Tantos pendones blancos · salir bermeios en sangre; Tantos buenos cavallos · sin sos duenos andar. vv. 734-738. [*] For the meaning of _asonante_, and an explanation of _asonante_ verse, see Chap. VI. and the notes to it. Three other poems, anonymous like that of the Cid, have been placed immediately after it, because they are found together in a single manuscript assigned to the thirteenth century, and because the language and style of at least the first of them seem to justify the conjecture that carries it so far back.[24] [24] The only knowledge of the manuscript containing these three poems was long derived from a few extracts in the “Biblioteca Española” of Rodriguez de Castro;--an important work, whose author was born in Galicia, in 1739, and died at Madrid, in 1799. The first volume, printed in 1781, in folio, under the patronage of the Count Florida Blanca, consists of a chronological account of the Rabbinical writers who appeared in Spain from the earliest times to his own, whether they wrote in Hebrew, Spanish, or any other language. The second, printed in 1786, consists of a similar account of the Spanish writers, heathen and Christian, who wrote either in Latin or in Spanish down to the end of the thirteenth century, and whose number he makes about two hundred. Both volumes are somewhat inartifically compiled, and the literary opinions they express are of small value; but their materials, largely derived from manuscripts, are curious, and frequently such as can be found in print nowhere else. In this work, (Madrid, 1786, fol., Vol. II. pp. 504, 505,) and for a long time, as I have said, there alone, were found notices of these poems; but all of them were printed at the end of the Paris edition of Sanchez’s “Coleccion de Poesías Anteriores al Siglo XV.,” from a copy of the original manuscript in the Escurial, marked there III. K. 4to. Judging by the specimens given in De Castro, the spelling of the manuscript has not been carefully followed in the copy used for the Paris edition.