and published by Segura in 1629, comprehending together nearly three hundred;--most, but not all, of them known before, and many of them of great beauty.[49] And other ballad-books of the same sort, as well as these, continued to be printed in cheap forms for popular use till the old Castilian culture disappeared with the decay of the old national character. [46] It is entitled “Silva de Varios Romances,” and contains the well-known ballads of the Conde d’ Irlos, the Marquis of Mantua, Gayferos, and the Conde Claros, with others, to the number of twenty-three, that are in the Ballad-book of 1550. Those on the death of Philip II. and Doña Isabel de la Paz are, of course, not in the first edition of this Silva. They occur in that of Barcelona, 1602, 18mo. [47] “Floresta de Varios Romances, sacados de las Historias Antiguas de los Hechos Famosos de los Doce Pares de Francia,” Madrid, 1728, 18mo, first printed 1608. See Sarmiento, § 528, for its popularity; but the later ballads in the volume do not relate to the Twelve Peers. [48] “Romancero y Historia del muy Valeroso Cavallero, el Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar, recopilado por Juan de Escobar,” Alcalá, 1612, 18mo, and many other editions, the most complete being that of Stuttgard, 1840, 12mo. [49] Besides the editions of 1623 and 1629, I know that of Madrid, 1659, 18mo, in two parts, containing additions of satirical ballads, _letrillas_, etc., by Francisco de Segura. But during the long period of a century and a half when this kind of poetry prevailed so widely in Spain, the ballads were not left to the formal Romanceros, whether anonymous, like the largest, or by known authors, like those of Sepúlveda and Cueva, nor even to persons who wrote them in great numbers and printed them in a separate department of their collected works, as did Prince Esquilache. On the contrary, between 1550 and 1700, hardly a Spanish poet can be found through whose works they are not scattered with such profusion, that the number of popular ballads that could be collected from them would, if brought together, greatly exceed in amount all that are found in the ballad-books proper. Many of the ballads which thus occur either separately or in small groups are picturesque and beautiful in the same way the elder ones are, though rarely to the same degree. Silvestre, Montemayor, Espinel, Castillejo, and, above all of his time, Lopez de Maldonado, wrote them with success, towards the end of the sixteenth century.[50] A little later, those of Góngora are admirable. Indeed, his more simple, childlike ballads, and those in which a gay, mischievous spirit is made to conceal a genuine tenderness, are unlike almost any of their class found elsewhere, and can hardly be surpassed.[51] But Góngora afterwards introduced the same affected and false style into this form of his poetry that he did into the rest, and was followed, with constantly increasing absurdities, by Arteaga,