[394] _Spain_, _Espagne_, _España_, _Hispania_, are evidently all one word. Its etymology cannot, in the opinion of W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens, 4to, 1821, p. 60,) be determined. The Spanish writers are full of the most absurd conjectures on the subject. See Aldrete, Orígen de la Lengua Castellana, ed. 1674, Lib. III. c. 2, f. 68; Mariana, Hist., Lib. I. c. 12; and Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ed. 1776, Lib. IV., p. 295. But it is difficult fully to examine or understand the literature of any country, without understanding something, at least, of the original elements and history of the language in which it is contained, and on which no small portion of its essential character must depend; while, at the same time, a knowledge of the origin of the language necessarily implies some knowledge of the nations that, by successive contributions, have constituted it such as it is found in the final forms of its poetry and elegant prose. As a needful appendix, therefore, to the history of Spanish literature, a very brief account will be here given of the different occupants of the soil of the country, who, in a greater or less degree, have contributed to form the present character both of the Spanish people and of their language and culture. The oldest of these, and the people who, since we can go back no farther, must be by us regarded as the original inhabitants of the Spanish Peninsula, were the Iberians. They appear, at the remotest period of which tradition affords us any notice, to have been spread over the whole territory, and to have given to its mountains, rivers, and cities most of the names they still bear,--a fierce race, whose power has never been entirely broken by any of the long line of invaders who, at different times, have occupied the rest of the country. Even at this moment, a body of their descendants, less affected than we should have supposed possible by intercourse with the various nations that have successively pressed their borders, is believed, with a good degree of probability, to be recognized under the name of Biscayans, inhabiting the mountains in the northwestern portion of modern Spain. But, whether this be true or not, the Biscayans, down to the present day, have been a singular and a separate race. They have a peculiar language, peculiar local institutions, and a literature which is carried back to a remoter antiquity than that of any other people now possessing, not the soil of the Spanish Peninsula merely, but of any part of Southern Europe. They are, in fact, a people who seem to have been left as a solitary race, hardly connected, even by those ties of language which outlive all others, with any race of men now in existence or on record; some of their present customs and popular fables claiming to have come down from an age, of which history and tradition give only doubtful intimations. The most probable conjecture yet proposed to explain what there