The other poetry attributed to Alfonso--except two stanzas that remain of his “Complaints” against the hard fortune of the last years of his life[58]--is to be sought in the treatise called “Del Tesoro,” which is divided into two short books, and dated in 1272. It is on the Philosopher’s Stone, and the greater portion of it is concealed in an unexplained cipher; the remainder being partly in prose and partly in octave stanzas, which are the oldest extant in Castilian verse. But the whole is worthless, and its genuineness doubtful.[59] [58] The two stanzas of the Querellas, or Complaints, still remaining to us, are in Ortiz de Zuñiga, (Anales, p. 123,) and elsewhere. [59] First published by Sanchez, (Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 148-170,) where it may still be best consulted. The copy he used had belonged to the Marquis of Villena, who was suspected of the black art, and whose books were burnt on that account after his death, temp. John II. A specimen of the cipher is given in Cortinas’s translation of Bouterwek (Tom. I. p. 129). In reading this poem, it should be borne in mind that Alfonso believed in astrological predictions, and protected astrology by his laws. (Partida VII. Tít. xxiii. Ley 1.) Moratin the younger (Obras, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 61) thinks that both the Querellas and the Tesoro were the work of the Marquis of Villena; relying, first, on the fact that the only manuscript of the latter known to exist once belonged to the Marquis; and, secondly, on the obvious difference in language and style between both and the rest of the king’s known works,--a difference which certainly may well excite suspicion, but does not much encourage the particular conjecture of Moratin as to the Marquis of Villena. Alfonso claims his chief distinction in letters as a writer of prose. In this his merit is great. He first made the Castilian a national language by causing the Bible to be translated into it, and by requiring it to be used in all legal proceedings;[60] and he first, by his great Code and other works, gave specimens of prose composition which left a free and disencumbered course for all that has been done since,--a service perhaps greater than it has been permitted any other Spaniard to render the prose literature of his country. To this, therefore, we now turn. [60] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XIV. c. 7; Castro, Bibl., Tom. I. p. 411; and Mondejar, Memorias, p. 450. The last, however, is mistaken in supposing the translation of the Bible printed at Ferrara in 1553 to have been that made by order of Alfonso, since it was the work of some Jews of the period when it was published.