[37] The only copy of this volume known to exist is among the rare and precious Spanish books given by Reinhart to the Imperial Library at Vienna; but an excellent account of it, followed by above sixty of the more important ballads it contains, was published at Leipzig, 1846, 12mo, under the title of “Rosa de Romances,” by Mr. Wolf, the admirable scholar, to whom the lovers of Spanish literature owe so much. In 1583, the series of such popular works was still further continued by Pedro de Padilla, who published a Romancero containing sixty-three long ballads of his own,--about half of them taken from uncertain traditions, or from fables like those of Ariosto, and the others from the known history of Spain, which they follow down through the times of Charles the Fifth and the Flemish wars of Philip the Second. The Italian measures several times intrude, where they can produce only an awkward and incongruous effect; and the rest of the volume, not devoted to ballads,--except fifty _villancicos_, which are full of the old popular spirit,--is composed of poems in the Italian manner, that add nothing to its value.[38] [38] “Romancero de Pedro de Padilla,” Madrid, 1583, 12mo. The ballads fill about three hundred and sixty pages. The first twenty-two are on the wars in Flanders; afterwards there are nine taken from Ariosto’s stories; then several on the story of Rodrigo de Narvaez, on Spanish traditions, etc. Juan de la Cueva, finding the old national subjects thus seized upon by his predecessors, resorted, it would seem, from necessity, to the histories of Greece and Rome for his materials, and in 1587 published a volume containing above a hundred ballads, which he divided into ten books, placing nine of them under the protection of the nine Muses, and the other under that of Apollo. Their poetical merit is inconsiderable. The best are a few whose subjects are drawn from the old Castilian Chronicle, like that on the sad story of Doña Teresa, who, after being wedded against her will to the Moorish king of Toledo, was miraculously permitted to take refuge in a convent, rather than consummate her hated marriage with an infidel. Two ballads, however, in which the author gives an account of himself and of his literary undertakings, are more curious;--the latter containing an amusing account of some of the bad poets of his time.[39] [39] Cueva, whom we have found in several other departments of Spanish literature, printed his ballads with the title of “Coro Febeo de Romances Historiales,” in his native city, Seville, 1587, 12mo,--a volume of nearly seven hundred pages. Only four or five are on Spanish subjects;--that on Doña Teresa (f. 215) being obviously taken from the “Crónica General,” Parte III. c. 22. The ballad addressed to his book, “Al Libro,” is at the end of the “Melpomene,” and is of value for his personal history.