My hoary locks I dye with care, Not that I hate their hue, Nor yet because I wish to seem More youthful than is true. But ’t is because the words I dread Of men who speak me fair, And ask within my whitened head For wit that is not there. [*] buscarian? After a longer introduction than is needful, the moral counsels begin, at the fifty-third stanza, and continue through the rest of the work, which, in its general tone, is not unlike other didactic poetry of the period, although it is written with more ease and more poetical spirit. Indeed, it is little to say, that few Rabbins of any country have given us such quaint and pleasant verses as are contained in several parts of these curious counsels of the Jew of Carrion. In the Escurial manuscript, containing the verses of the Jew, are other poems, which were at one time attributed to him, but which it seems probable belong to other, though unknown, authors.[143] One of them is a didactic essay, called “La Doctrina Christiana,” or Christian Doctrine. It consists of a prose prologue, setting forth the writer’s penitence, and of one hundred and fifty-seven stanzas of four lines each; the first three containing eight syllables, rhymed together, and the last containing four syllables unrhymed,--a metrical form not without something of the air of the Sapphic and Adonic. The body of the work contains an explanation of the creed, the ten commandments, the seven moral virtues, the fourteen works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the five senses, and the holy sacraments, with discussions concerning Christian conduct and character. [143] Castro, Bibl. Esp., Tom. I. p. 199. Sanchez, Tom. I. p. 182; Tom. IV. p. xii. I am aware that Don José Amador de los Rios, in his “Estudios Históricos, Políticos y Literarios sobre los Judios de España,” a learned and pleasant book published at Madrid in 1848, is of a different opinion, and holds the three poems, including the Doctrina Christiana, to be the work of Don Santo or Santob of Carrion. (See pp. 304-335.) But I think the objections to this opinion are stronger than the reasons he gives to support it; especially the objections involved in the following facts, viz.: that Don Santob calls himself a Jew; that both the manuscripts of the Consejos call him a Jew; that the Marquis of Santillana, the only tolerably early authority that mentions him, calls him a Jew; that no one of them intimates that he ever was converted,--a circumstance likely to have been much blazoned abroad, if it had really occurred; and that, if he were an unconverted Jew, it is wholly impossible he should have written the Dança General, the Doctrina Christiana, or the Ermitaño.