The publication of the first part of “The Civil Wars of Granada,” by Hita, in 1595, containing about sixty ballads, some of them very old, and several of great poetical merit, increased, no doubt, the impulse which the frequent appearance of volumes of popular anonymous ballads continued to give to Spanish poetry in this attractive form.[40] This is yet more apparent in the new direction taken by ballad-writing, which from this time began to select particular subjects and address itself to separate classes of readers. Thus, in 1609, we have a volume of ballads in the dialect of the rogues, written in the very spirit of the vagabonds it represents, and collected by some one who concealed himself under the name of Juan Hidalgo;[41]--while in 1612, at the other extreme of the cycle, Valdivielso, the fashionable ecclesiastic, printed a large “Spiritual Ballad-book,” whose ballads are all on religious subjects, and all intended to promote habits of devotion.[42] In 1614 and 1622, Lope de Vega, always a lover of such poetry, gave to the religious world a collection of similar devout ballads, often reprinted afterwards;[43] and in 1629 and 1634, he contributed materials to two other collections of the same character,--the first anonymous, and entitled “A Bouquet of Divine Flowers”; and the other by Luis de Arellano, which, under the name of “Counsels for the Dying,” contains thirty ballads, several of which are by the principal poets of the time.[44] [40] Hita’s “Guerras Civiles de Granada” will be noticed when I come to speak of romantic fiction. [41] “Romances de Germanía,” 1609; reprinted, Madrid, 1789, 8vo. The words _Germanía_, _Germano_, etc., were applied to the jargon in which the rogues talked with one another. Hidalgo, who wrote only six of the ballads he published, gives at the end of his collection a vocabulary of this dialect, which is recognized as genuine by Mayans y Siscar, and reprinted in his “Orígenes”; so that the suggestion of Clemencin, which I have followed in the text, where I speak of Juan Hidalgo as a pseudonyme, may not be well founded;--a suggestion further discountenanced by the fact, that, in Tom. XXXVIII. of the Comedias Escogidas, 1672, the play of “Los Mozárabes de Toledo” is attributed to a Juan Hidalgo. That this had nothing to do with the Gypsies, though supposed, in the last edition, to have been connected with them, is shown in Borrow’s “Zincali,” London, 1841, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 143. Sandoval (Carlos V., Lib. III. § 38) more than once calls the rebellious _Comuneros_ of Valencia a _Germanía_, or combination, which can leave little doubt about the origin of the word from _Hermandad_, _Hermano_,--brotherhood and brother,--though Covarrubias does not seem sure about it, in verb. _Alemania._